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. 

My kind of lunch/dinner

Some of these days I came home really hungry and had my favourite early dinner (around 3pm-5pm). Shin ramyeon! I’ll just have half a packet and make it more nutritious by adding runny egg/ kimchi/ seaweed/ cheese and other stuff. I’ll still lose weight this way as I only ate some biscuits with black coffee in school. 

Yummy! 

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

Another random post

 

Attended colleague's wedding last sat

It reminded me so much of our wedding 6 years ago. How time flies! It had been a long time since I've attended a colleague's wedding, think the last time was a Sat wedding lunch 5 years ago. 

Photo with the couple and the photo-bomber after the dinner

The bride was nice to send us the table photos

First post for 2023

 

• Somehow during last year's Europe trip, I kind of got tired of blogging and stopped for quite awhile. 
• It's already the start of the March holidays and I'm back again. So much has happened, and ten weeks of the school term had passed.
• My birthday came and went last weekend, nothing special this year but I'm glad and I feel very blessed as always. 
• The big thing that had happened over the last 10 weeks was we finally bought our ride and we are now owners of our very handsome Mini, which we named Kobe (as it's orange yellow) and we loved it a lot. 

Winter Europe Trip 12th December 2022 (Monday) Day 16

(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 16!

I did not feel too good about previous two days in Tromso as we felt so lazy, therefore I was kind of glad we were leaving and heading to a new destination. It's been five days since we had the same breakfast at Scandic, we were also not looking forward to it and went down quite late. I would recommend staying at Radisson Blu instead if we were ever back in Tromso, though that is highly unlikely. 

After we checked out from the hotel, we waited just a bit for the shuttle to arrive and the pickup is just outside our hotel so it was really convenient. I felt a bit sad leaving Norway and its wonderful scenery so I took some videos of our bus route all the way to the airport. We were heading to the airport around noon so the sun actually was up just for that short while. 

P was busy handling his family matters

Time to board the flight, bye bye Norway!

We were the only two passengers heading to airport

Tromso airport was a small one and the flights we were taking was SAS (Scandinavian Airlines), with a stopover at Oslo before heading to Amsterdam. As there were only small planes and a few flights, we tagged our luggages on our own before sending them in. I already had a bad feeling about it as it was a small regional plane and we also had a stopover which complicated things. On top of that, Schiphol Airport is also known for delays and stuff. I was telling P to hope for the best and hopefully our luggages will turn up at the destination, never did I know that my foreboding was right. We ended up having a long long day.

Flying into Amsterdam

Waited quite a while for P's luggage

Schiphol airport was quite big and we finally reached around 6.30pm after a short transit at Oslo. We waited quite a while for P's luggage but it didnt turn up. So P started going to the office that managed lost luggages and there was a queue there with various people who met with the same issues from different flights and airlines. We finally managed to track down P's luggage and apparently it was still in Oslo, luckily there are other SAS flights after ours so they were going to transport his luggage to Amsterdam but it will take hours. Initially they offered to send it to our hotel but after that, they mentioned that the staff who can do so are already going home from work so we decided to check into our hotel first and then come back later for his luggage since it will take hours. 

The train bringing us to the city centre

Train journey is not too bad

Luckily it was quite easy for us to get tickets to the city centre, where our hotel is located. It was already 7.30pm when we hopped onto the train and unfortunately at Amsterdam, my Changi wifi did not work too well with the change in country and location so it took us a bit of time to navigate to our hotel. I think the train journey only took 30 min or so, but the train station was a rather big one so we had to navigate around to get the right direction to the hotel.

Room on the second floor

Lighting in the room is kind of dim

A bit better after we tried to on all the lights

We finally got to the hotel room at 8.30pm. We felt tired but we had to head back to the airport and hopefully P's luggage arrived. I booked Mai hotel Amsterdam due to its proximity to the train station and the popular area in the city area. However, I felt that the hotel lighting is kind of too dim for my liking as it's really dark along the corridors, probably they wanted to achieve the chic look but it's a bit spooky for me. They used an asian theme to decorate the lobby but it felt weird seeing chinese deities statues as decor there. 

P saw dunkin donuts at the station and got attracted to the nice donuts

I took a photo while waiting for the donuts and drinks

It's kind of tiring to head back to the airport again but we just hope that the luggage eventually arrive in Amsterdam. We bought some donuts and drinks as I cant remember if we ate anything on the flights but I dont think they served any food, probably only some hot drinks. Our spirits were high after dropping off my luggage at the hotel, although we did not get any rest. We got some sweet yummy donuts and drinks and headed back to the airport again.

We kept checking if the plane has arrived

Apparently, P's luggage made a stop at Copenhagen

Finally it's here! 

Now you can see why

P had a piece of form, so we spoke to the officers to allow us back into the baggage claim area and we kept checking the status of the flight his luggage was supposed to be on. However, the information we got was quite ambiguous. P headed back to the lost luggage office and there were still some distressed guys there waiting to track their luggages, some had been traveling on several flights and transit at different countries so they lost track of their luggages at some point. Fortunately, at 1030pm, we finally got hold of P's luggage and I realised he did not remove the initial tags when he tagged his luggage this morning, that might be the reason for his luggage to get 'lost' in Oslo. 

Finally we are on our way with both luggages

Amsterdam train station

The train station is rather large and grand

It was near 11.30pm when we reached amsterdam city again and almost midnight when we stepped out looking for dinner. Luckily, this is the city of sin and nightlife so there were still many tourists around after we walked a short distance to the canal and bridge area. There were also many eateries still opened.

The famous spot for taking photos of the red light district

There are girls standing behind the glass windows

We didnt walk far from our hotel and reached the long canal where the famous Amsterdam red light district is located, we took a long time taking photos there as there were so many people trying to get photos there as well. It was cold and it was not easy taking these photos though. 

Famous Febo eatery, where fried food are sold vending machine style

P fell in love with cheese during this trip

Shops selling sex toys

Very nice pizza

Very nice carbonara 

It was already past midnight and we really had a very very long day, luckily there were still some eateries opened. We were craving for Italian food and I was so glad we finally decided on this as there was another one further down and we were thinking of having that at first. The food was so so good and although we knew the pizza going to be big and enough for us, we still ordered carbonara as P crave for that from time to time. We took away the pizza and even decided to go back to the same restaurant the next day. 

Coffee shops were common here, not the kind in SG

Those who watched the movie ‘Europe Trip’ would know this

P had been a fan of the movie ‘Europe Trip’ and it inspired him to visit Amsterdam and other cities like Bratislava (in 2023!). Something that stood out in Amsterdam was all the sex shops and coffee shops openly selling marijuana. Of course we did not try any of those as it’s first of all illegal for all Singaporeans and also P fell very very sick when someone played a prank on him once upon a time.

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!