A lazy weekend

This is the first weekend of the year when I can really say that I have no work or markings on hand to clear. I've returned everything to the kids for revision and been leisurely spending the past few days in school finding things to mark and clear or tidy up. Anyhow, I thought I better work hard at my workouts and diet plans this weekend and try to get below 60kg again before we go overseas for a month. We are now exactly a month away from the trip! 

I did get to 58.2kg somewhere in late August when P was not around, but the trip to Taiwan with my girl friends in early September left me in digit 6 again, sigh! For the whole weekend, the scale stayed at 60kg and did not budge 0.1kg less for me to reach my target, but I would say I didnt really indulge either. 

I woke up on Sat morning munching on some snacks and P finally heated up his tinola after he woke up and I ate some pieces of those chicken with a bit of rice. We wanted to do our walks since Friday evening but we took turns to nap though I got home really early and we missed the timing to do our walk on Friday night. I ended up knocking out early before 11pm on Friday although I thought I'll just take a nap while waiting for P.

On Saturday evening, we couldnt decide what's for dinner and P suggested mookata and then we'll go for our walk after. We took our own sweet time going out of the house and by the time I finished my mookata order, it was 11.02pm when I headed to the cashier for payment. To our horror, we were informed the last order was at 11pm! We were in a really bad mood and walked in total silence as we did not get to eat dinner and P was not in the mood for anything else. Fortunately, we still finished the 4km+ walk (with iced milo in my tummy) and then P made some bread later that night while I cooked half a packet of Shin ramyun (with egg and cheese for protein).

His favourite ikura gunkan

Grilled soy cod fish

$13 Venchi gelato dessert

I only slept at 4am (updating last year's trip blog) and P slept at 6.30am, so he woke up late again. I only had some snacks in the morning and heading back to bed to nap at 2pm. After waking up, we decided to head to MBS to make use of his monthly $100 voucher at Sen of Japan. We were there quite early, I think it was before 6pm and it was good that we reached before the dinner crowd as we did not make any reservations. We topped up $40 cash for the orders and then headed to Venchi to get an ice cream for sharing.

The flyer at dusk

One love Asian Festival

My favorite skyline

Always loved the vibes here

We finished the ice cream and headed towards GBTB for our walk. It was a windy night and there were dark clouds, we thought it would rain but it didnt. There were lots of tourists and foreigners walking towards the barrage and we only did a short 1km+ and then headed back to MBS again. It got a bit more humid as the dark clouds cleared but I was still glad there were some wind. P went into MBS to look for his friend for a short chat while I continued my walk towards Fullerton.

Being in this area always remind me of COVID years, as we stayed more than 40 nights in MBS over the three years, the last being 31/12/2022, I think we were really lucky even though they stopped giving us the free nights after that. I'm really really glad everything is back to normal again after COVID as I still prefer all the traveling that we can do and plan now, even though it made us so so broke. I met up with P again at 8.30pm and we headed home. The ikura gunkan from Sen of Japan seemed to shrink quite a bit and we thought we would still go to mookata after getting home, but we got sleepy and and the ice cream had already filled our tummy after the walk. 

I missed my GEWR HM this morning but I'm glad I still managed to do 10km of walks this weekend. With my anemic body now, it's so hard to get back into jogging and running, but I need to buck up and start preparation for Nagoya if I really want to go back to my overseas runcation. 

Introducing our ride - Kobe

After we bought our new home here in Kovan, I realised the journey to school is really long and started going for driving lessons to get a license. I enrolled in Ubi driving centre in Dec 2021, but the theory lessons and practical lessons took longer than expected (we can only book 10 sessions per month then) and after failing my practical test once, I finally got my license in May 2022. For the whole of 2022, I took Grab to school in the morning and I realised the cost of such private hire is going up, inflation on the whole post-Covid is really no joke! My record was a $32 one way trip to school on a rainy Saturday morning. To save money, I tried to walk and take public transport home after work but it was a long long journey.

We also rented Get-go vehicles ( one of the ad hoc car rental services here) from July 2022 onwards to get our stuff home from storage and to drive ourselves around, we found that it’s a great convenience to have a ride. We started thinking about getting our own ride as it’s tiring and costly to pick up Getgo vehicles if we’re going to use it regularly. On top of that, we were worried about the cost of repair from such rental company if we were real unlucky. We went for one car viewing before we left for the month long Europe trip last year and it was a second hand Volvo, but it did not have a wow factor so we did not do anything after the viewing.

After our trip, we continued to rent Getgo almost every weekend to get around and run errands and suddenly started viewing second hand cars on SgCarMart and other platforms again. On the eve of CNY, we went to Ubi and saw a A180 Mercedes that we really liked. We were disappointed when we called my bro-in-law to take a look and he found many issues with the car. P scoured through the second hand cars platform looking for a mini after that and we only found two at that point of time, but we really liked Kobe colour and the price was also just right (with about 30 months left until Sept 2025). I was busy with work after that so P contacted the owner and viewed the car with my bro-in-law. It was love at first sight for him and we finally became car owners on 02/02/23. On the first day he picked up the car, I drove it home from work and really loved it as it’s so easy to drive. We became fans of mini cars after that. 

Kobe is one with wow factor! (For us at least) P named it Kobe after Kobe Bryant as Kobe is the same colour as his Chicago Bull jersey. He also became fans of the mini Union Jack logo and all sorts of mini accessories. 

Kobe has been with us for 8 months already.

Can do without a car nowadays, we love Kobe!

Met up with other mini fanatics at an awesome event.

Minis are awesome and cool, we would stick to one

A mini version of our mini

Winter Europe Trip 11th December 2022 (Sunday) Day 15

(This posted is written on 15th October 2023, I finally have time as the school year is coming to an end and I really missed our Europe trip) *Look at that, I managed to update my travel journal till Day 15!

On 11th December, it's the last day that we were in Tromso and Norway, we really wanted to go Arctic Cathedral but we got too lazy in the end. We got up again at 5+ pm to go out but we realised the cathedral was closed early, so we decided to just get out and walk around and look for dinner. 

Church in Tromso

We chanced upon this church in Tromso, and many people were going in for their Sunday mass, we went in to take a look but left as soon as the mass was starting. P always loved to visit churches when he's in Europe. We also wanted to try the hotdog at the smallest bar in the world but that was also closed as we went out too late. We walked around for a bit and at 6pm we were finally too hungry and decided to just go back to the Thai restaurant we went on the first night. 

Olaf in one of the shops

P had teriyaki chicken with rice

I had seafood tom yum soup... yum!

The price is certainly not cheap for asian food but we had been out in Europe for two weeks already, thus we were really craving for asian food. P had his milk shake fix after the dinner, then we walked around a bit more and went back to hotel to rest again. 

Burger King milkshake, yum! 

Winter Europe Trip 10th December 2022 (Saturday) Day 14

(This posted is written on 15th October 2023, I finally have time as the school year is coming to an end and I really missed our Europe trip) *Look at that, I managed to update my travel journal till Day 14!

After the light chasing tour on the 9th, we felt lazy to tour Tromso although the light chasing mission could be considered completed. We have two more days in the city before flying out to Amsterdam on the 12th. However, for the two days, we stayed in the hotel most of the time and lazed around, so we didnt even go to the Artic Cathedral in the end. 

On the 10th, it’s a Saturday and we lazed in the hotel after breakfast. The sun havent really been up so that added to our laziness and messed up our sense of day and night, we also felt a bit disappointed after seeing our photos from the previous night and had no motivation to go out until it was really late at night (think about 10pm) and we had to get dinner. It was Saturday so we saw a lot of youth out on the streets at that time, partying and having fun in the city. I was really amazed how everyone can walk easily on the ice without slipping. 

Many wood decor in the restaurant 

We saw many Egon restaurants all over Norway

Cant really say if the decor theme is about sea voyage or what

Our cosy seat

Decor just next to our seat

We saw many outlets of Egon restaurant when we were in Norway but didn’t think of going in. However, as it was so late and choices are limited, P had a craving for steak and we saw that it was available at the restaurant at a pretty reasonable price. It was late but the food took some time to come, we were able to view the menu electronically but had to queue at the bar for payment. Luckily for us, the steak was cooked to our liking so it was all good. 

We headed to Burger King for some dessert and there were lots of people there. Unfortunately, they ran out of milk shake so P couldnt get his craving satisfied. 

Gratitude Journal for 25th November 2022 (Friday)

Cant believe we are finally one day away!

 Things I'm grateful about:

• The school year is offically and finally over! We sent off the kids last week and completed our work week ending with the first aid course today.
• Very blessed year when everything went smoothly for me. I'm really glad and truly grateful.
• We said our goodbyes some colleagues and I'm sad that they are leaving but glad that beautiful memories are left behind.
• Finally I can get a breather and just do whatever I like and not worry about work.

Things I'm looking forward to:

• The TRIP! Although I was updating the Germany travel blog the past few days, I made a mental note to do a gratitude journal today as I've been counting down to the trip since March. 

Gratitude Journal for 6th November 2022 (Sunday)

 

Great run tonight, not the speed but the feel

Things I'm grateful for:

• Woke up early, cleared the last few pieces of my marking and I went to visit the folks early by noon, unlike the previous weeks when I procrastinated and only appeared in evening. 
• Went out for a MAF run by 8pm, the weather was cool and windy and I really did enjoy getting back into jogging/running I've signed up for Nagoya Marathon (my 10th marathon) and I'm hoping to just finish it within the COT. The trainings (if I can follow through) will be disrupted by my month long trip but I'll have another 10 weeks to train after that. 

Things I'm looking forward to:

• Clearing this week and flying over to visit P on Friday. 
• After tomorrow, we'll have a marking day so it's kind of a break for us again. Yay!
• We are down to 10+++++ days to our trip! 

Gratitude Journal for 5th November (Saturday)

 

I'm so thankful

What I'm grateful for:

• The very hectic exam marking week is finally coming to an end, I'm just finishing the last few scripts and I'm done! I feel so tired as it's been consecutive days of marking and marking but I'm just glad I'm done for this year.
• As in the drawing, I'm glad to have my family, loved ones and good health. 
• It's been a week since I last took a long walk at ECP (though I've took several 1.5km walks from school to MRT station throughout the week), so I quickly went to the gym and did a 3km short walk just now, even though I almost wanted to shower and just slack off. 

What I'm looking forward to:

• We are counting down to just 20 days to our trip, and next weekend I'll be with P for just two nights. Really looking forward!
• Just last two weeks of seeing the kids in school and we are really winding down to the end of the school year already. Life is great! 

Gratitude Journal for 29th October 2022 (Friday)

Our twinning outfit and shoes

 What I'm grateful about:

• The week flew really fast and it's Friday again! 3 more weeks for the whole school year! 
• P left for PH again and somehow I have gotten used to being by myself at home. 
• We have not received the refunds for our TK tix and it's been almost two weeks, I have an early day off from work today so I went down to their sales office near Bugis area. It went on quite well and hopefully everything is sorted out and we will get back the $$ in another two weeks' time. Feeling so broke as there's so much expenses with the trip coming up. 

What I'm looking forward to:

• We are counting down less than a month to the trip! 29 days to be exact.
• This period is busy busy yet somehow there's many things to look forward to, sending off another batch of students, tying up all loose ends and ending the school year with much excitement and happiness.

Gratitude Journal for 23rd October 2022 (Sunday)

My lovely parents

What I'm grateful about:

• My ever supportive mum, whether is it buying a new house or getting a car, she has been always supportive and positive, giving me the courage to move ahead.
• We invited some old friends over today and had a lovely time. We had been putting this off for ages and I asked P to do it this long weekend as we will be overseas soon.

What I'm looking forward to:

• It's already T4W7 and its a short week, this week I will have no long days so things are great and will pass fast. 
• We are already 33 days to the trip! Just a month and a bit more! 

Gratitude Journal for 22nd October 2022 (Saturday)

Totally candid photo of me outside the restaurant

All of us

What I'm grateful about:

• It's my baby sister and dearest Father's birthday. I'm glad that I have such a wonderful family and my parents are in the best of health. I wish with everything I have in the world that things will stay this way. 
• We decided to have a nice dinner out as birthday celebration. Family craving for Korean BBQ so I brought them to this BBQ friend close to our place and they really had a great time.

What I'm looking forward to:

• More occasions with the folks and I really cherish all these moment nowadays. 
• It's a long weekend for us again so rest well and work harder. 

Gratitude Journal for 19th October 2022 (Wednesday)

 

Cute photo of us doing the jump shot in Ipoh

Things I'm grateful about:

• Although we did not go home as early as we did last year, it is still a blessing we managed to complete everything by the 3rd day and tomorrow we can WFH.
• I took early dinner and early nap and woke up at 9pm, P wanted to have mookata so we went ahead and we did another 6km+ walk. Altogether 21km+ since Sunday!
• Managed to redo my hotel bookings last night, most of the prices went up though price of Oslo hotel went down. Overall same as before as we are now staying one night less than previously.  

Things I'm looking forward to:

• Just one easy day of work on Friday then long weekend again! We are spending time with the folks as it's Dad's birthday. 

Gratitude Journal for 18th October 2022 (Tuesday)

Another random pic from our ECP walks

 Things I'm grateful for:

• The tri-factor to happiness: exercise, meditation and gratitude. There's more to it but I try to keep to these at the very least for my daily dose of happiness, as much as I can. 
• Today's work is getting better and smoother and I got home early, P got my dinner these days and I nap before the 6km PCN walks.

Things I'm looking forward to:

• 4 weeks to school hols! 5 weeks for us! 39 days to my grand trip and the plans are falling into place. :)

Gratitude Journal for 17th October 2022 (Monday)

 

Throwback to our biz class adventure from Copenhagen Jun22 

Things I'm grateful for:

• Woke up to rainy weather this morning but generally everything went on well on the first day of marking. Unlike last year when I left the school with terrible headache till the next morning, this year I'm just sleepy and hungry. Hopefully next few days will be even better. 
• Non teaching days like these always seems like holidays to me, but I'll sleep earlier tonight to be more refreshed tomorrow. 

Things I'm looking forward to:

• Counting down to 39 days more to the trip! Just one month plus plus to go... hope the next few weeks fly by without us noticing. I'm just truly excited although the next one month should be easy as we are winding down to the holidays. 

Gratitude Journal for 16th October 2022 (Sunday)

 

P and I had a nice dinner at St Marc Cafe (ECP)

What I'm grateful about:

• On Saturday morning, we woke up to the news of TK screwing up our flight to Oslo, when we are counting down to 40 days to our trip. It was stressful as we could not change our flights with the same airline and we are quite disappointed with them giving us problems when the trip is so near and we actually booked the air tix like 4 months ago. If we stick to TK, the transit time in Istanbul is really long, we can only fly on Sunday night (instead of Friday night) and we'll only reach Oslo on Monday noon. We started looking for alternatives and it turned out to be a blessing in disguise as we paid a total of 4k for our biz class tix and they are actually refunding us 5k. So we earned 1k from there, which is really weird. I looked for alternative flights to Europe (anywhere cheap where we can transit to Oslo) but most of those did not work out. I suddenly remembered it could be much cheaper or easier if we station ourselves at nearby hubs like BKK, KL or Jakarta instead. And voila! We found biz class tix on Qatar at 5.7k, in total we have to top up another $500 each to transit at BKK and get on Qatar but Qatar is way better than TK (or even better than SQ) and we're excited to try their premium product on A380 flight. Soooo looking forward now.  
• After all the stress and excitement, we finally took our nap and made our way to HHN10. I think I'll do a separate post for that. 
• We went ECP for our weekly walk and bonding time this evening. It was lovely.

What I'm looking forward to:

• The trip! The trip! The trip! Although we're financially drained again, I'm really ready to YOLO and just be in the moment. Another 40 days to go.

Gratitude Journal for 14th October 2022 (Friday)

My deferred entry from 2020

Things I'm grateful about: 

• I actually got a slot for Tokyo Marathon when everyone is dying to get a chance to run! It has a lot of eager participants since the race had been deferred for 3 years already. I actually got my slot when I balloted in 2019 and it was the 4th time I tried for the slot and the only time I got lucky. Unfortunately, COVID struck and I did not get to run after training. Now I'm super unfit and I'm not sure if I should go ahead, actually I signed up for Nagoya marathon (which is one week after Tokyo Marathon) instead, thinking I'll just try my best to get back into running aim to finish within the COT. Its less stressful as there's a lot of restrictions running TM and I'll get to travel a little after the race. Sigh, think I'll give up my TM slot and try balloting again next year when I'm more confident again.
• I'm glad this week had passed, it's the last full week of teaching before the EYE. I think it could be the last full week we are having till the end of the term as well. 
• I actually said farewell to a beloved ex colleague who had passed on earlier this week. She was one of the first few close mentors I had worked with when I just started teaching graduating students. I still fondly remember her mannerisms, her energy and everything even though we're no longer working together in the same school for the past decade. Its really sad but I'm glad I went to her wake and memorial service. 

Things I'm looking forward to:

• Taking a break from my classes the next one week!
• HHN10 tomorrow! 

Gratitude Journal for 13th October 2022 (Thursday)

Things I'm grateful for:

• It's been a hectic week, I've been frantically marking in school and at home, wishing for this week to be quickly over. Now, I've finally reached Friday which is a the best day for me this week, TGIF!
• I managed to hit my marking target this week and was even more productive than I expected. I stopped my gratitude blogging for a few days as I was really stressed looking at the pile of markings I have at the beginning of the week. I set a target that I will need to finish and return by Friday and I managed to make it by Wednesday! Amazing feat! 
• Today was a really bad day, two extras periods of FTGP, two extra periods of remedial and two extra periods of relief. I was really sulking at my table thinking of the day ahead this morning but I motivated myself by getting through each period and each hour counting down to the end, telling myself 'one at a time'. I made it!

What I'm really looking forward to:

• We are going to HHN this weekend! After two years of no-go due to COVID, we are back again! I cant rem how many times we've been to HHN, but it had become a tradition for us.
• Finishing the last 5 weeks of school strong and happy, I would say this is the best time of the whole year, winding down to December hols! 

Random photo from our ECP walk

Gratitude Journal for 9th October 2022 (Sunday)

Heavy traffic near the sports hub, but the clouds are nice

 What I'm grateful for:

• Lots of family time with the folks today, since we rented the car we brought papa and mama to quite a few places (visit our relatives) and ran our errands as well.
• I'm glad and grateful that we were on the road for hours but P did most of the driving. He got comfortable and used to driving here and he didnt mind doing it. It would be really stressful for me if I was in the driver's' seat the whole time.

What I'm looking forward to:

• Since we got used to being behind the wheels, we can consider going on road trips in future and not just dependent on public transport to get us around when we travel abroad.
• Determined to get our own wheels by next year. Just too busy with everything to settle with one right now. 

Gratitude Journal for 8th Oct 2022 (Saturday)

Our mookata dinner

 

Things I'm grateful for:

• P was actually craving for mookata yesterday but I had an early dinner as I was strangely craving for mee sua in the cold weather and I had Grab sending it to me at 5pm. The grand plan was to have mookata on Sat and then go ECP for our walk, so we kept to it.
• Weather was still very cooling and cloudy today, though very very light drizzle fell on us every now and then when we were out and about in the evening.
• We actually walked a total of 21km this week and it was at 3 different places, 7+ km at GBTB, 6+km at our homeground PCN and tonight we walk 8km+ at ECP. I'm actually motivated to go back ECP for my long runs in the weeks to come as I'm going to complete my 10th marathon at Nagoya next year March.

Things I'm looking forward to:

• We're have some family time tomorrow as I'm picking up the folks at 1pm and sending them back to our old place at Sembawang to talk to the tenants.
• Next week is our last full week of lessons, complete with remedial and CCA and stuff. Cant say I'm looking forward to it but I'm looking forward to it to be over. Anyway, October payday is coming up and we're getting a 5% pay raise! 

Gratitude Journal for 8th October 2022 (Friday)

Our playground now

 What I'm grateful for:

• P is at the second stage of visa application, as we are going to the schengen region + UK so the two visas have to be done separately. We met some hiccups as UK visa is having a lot of backlog and the waiting time is 5-7 weeks instead of the usual two weeks! Luckily we can pay extra to solve this issue and did not have to leave his passport with the embassy as he is planning to go home before our trip.
• I really appreciate our red passport now as I had no idea travelling can be so troublesome for other nationalities, we can get to almost everywhere in the world visa free. So far I only applied for visas when going to US and Australia and those can be done online/ immediately. 
• Very cooling weather today, it rained most of today once it was noon. We finally went out for a walk again and usually there's a lot of cyclists on the PCN during weekend but it was so quiet tonight as the sky was still overcasted. 

What I'm looking forward to:

• Nice that I've hit my marking target for today and there's still the weekend to look forward to.
• We are less than 50 days to the grand trip! 

Gratitude Journal for 6th October 2022 (Thursday)

Last Sunday where we watched F1 with a view

Complimentary gift as it's F1, cute exquisite dessert spoons

Things I'm grateful for:

1. I love cooling weather more than the sun and the cooling weather has persisted the whole of this week, since last weekend.
2. Everything went well today, I actually enjoyed myself with the Children's Day celebration, the kids and I had fun. For the first time this year, it actually occured to me that I’ll miss them. 
3. It's the long weekend! It feels good that it's just Thursday and I have a long weekend ahead, though I have lots of marking to clear this weekend.
4. Last two Thursdays been very tiring for me and today is much much better as I was just doing Zoom for torta. 

Things I'm looking forward to:

1. Making good use of this long weekend for my physical and general well-being, and time for my loved ones. 
2. Next week we are officially crossing into the mid term. Woohoo...