39th Birthday Celebration Part 3

Celebration with friends

To finish off my birthday celebrations this year, we had a dinner gathering at HDL yesterday. For the first time, there was no queue at the peak dinner hour and we were offered the cosy VIP room, due to the COVID situation. We felt happy with the food and the company. Hurray to the friendship!

39th Birthday Surprises from Hubby P

This year's birthday falls on a Tuesday, a day of tiring meetings and a day packed with lessons. I didnt really expect anything as P usually surprise me with a cake after midnight and sometimes there were small surprises here and there as he loved surprises, but most of the times we discussed how we would spend the day. This year was very different though. I was tired after a long Monday, completed with a short nap and a short run around the neighbourhood. I was just waiting for the clock to strike 12 and then go to bed.

Leftover cake from the family celebration

P took out a very tiny piece of cake leftover from the family celebration and ceremoniously lit up the candle so that he could sing me the birthday song. I thought that was about it, when he suddenly whipped out a LV paper bag. I was really surprised and confused, I'm a big fan of LV but this is the first time he bought me something from the boutique. It was a new LV wallet, honestly not the design I would choose so I did not appreciate the effort at first. But after I moved all my stuff over from the old LV wallet (serving me for 9 good years) then I realised my old wallet was really coming apart and it was time to change a new one.

My birthday surprise gift

It didnt occur to me that I need a new wallet, so it was a very thoughtful gift. I was very curious as the wallet was not newly bought from the boutique so I really wanted to know how it came about. However, P is very determined to keep mum about it (as usual) and he's an expert with online buying and selling so there could be many possibilities. What really touched me was the part when I asked him why he didnt let me choose something I liked, he said "this is the only thing I can afford at the moment..." I felt so bad and fell in love with the new wallet immediately.

First bouquet of flowers from the man

The second surprise came after work today. As far as I can remember, it is very very rare for P to buy me bouquet of flowers for such occasions or even V day. I knew something was amiss once I step out from shower as he was standing in a very curious manner, I stopped dead on my track and kept asking him what he was up to. He spoilt his own surprise by a little as he was so excited to see my reaction upon seeing the flowers.

Phew, my birthday is over... it is really a day full of surprises. We went to Genki Sushi as planned and had a simple dinner after that.

Happy birthday! (to myself)

39th Birthday Celebration Part 2

Today was the family affair. To be honest, I was grouchy and moody prior to heading over as Monday's blues probably hit me and all I wanted to do was to sleep my way through Sunday. On top of that, Mum always prefer to have our meals at home and she reminded us over and over again to get over there early, as always. Of course, things were fine once we were there and it was a simple meal but happy times together.

My family and the tasty birthday cake

The spread mum prepared

39th Birthday Celebration Part 1

Most of my friends are dreading the fact that the big 4 is hitting us but somehow I'm looking forward to that as I'm loving the surprised looks on people's faces when I said I'm hitting 40 or I'm near 40. Anyway, I dont usually care about birthdays but it is a good excuse to go out and enjoy stuff. 

I've been craving for a good wagyu steak so I sent P a list of recommended steak places online here on Seth Lui's page and get him to choose a nice place as he's a big fan of wagyu too. We usually eat at Aston's buffet at Centrepoint but our January visit was a bit disappointing as we were told they ran out of wagyu for quite some time then. Anyway, to cut the long story short, he choose Fat Belly that is near Botanic Gardens and its just three stops away from us. The picture posted on the page looked really good too. I really wanted to splurge but places like Waku Ghin is too much out of our league so the price point and the location pointed us to this place. 

The place is chic and cozy

I did a reservation online at the restaurant's website a few days before. At the back of my mind, I thought the place will probably be empty but I was wrong, and I'm glad we did not just walk-in as the place was busy on Saturday night and people are being turned away without reservation. The shop is not really big, they tried to utilise the seating as much as possible and there are both outdoor and indoor area. Anyway, visiting this place is quite nostalgic for me as it's at Serene Centre and I used to hang out at the area after school more than 2 decades ago. I have no idea it's so near to Botanic Gardens and it has turned out so chic after the MRT station is built just next to it. There was quite a few eateries and a young crowd had gathered on a weekend night.

The menu

There wasnt a lot of items on the menu, they specialise in steaks and there were one angus beef and three wagyu choices. Usually we just share one steak as we are not big eaters and we will not be able to finish if we order one each. We ordered the deckle wagyu which was the most fatty at 250g and the weight and the cost are both in the middle range. P usually have his steak with rice and sauces, he did not mind not having rice as they didnt have it at the restaurant anyway. He ordered two sauces (at additional prices) to go with the steaks and the peppercorn one was the one he preferred.

The deckle wagyu

The place was really busy and we sat down for an hour before the food finally arrived. It was a good thing we were not hungry even though it was already 9.30pm. We were a bit worried at first as the portion was definitely not big, but we still stick to one order as we really could not finish two of this. I had a glass of red wine to go along with the steak, usually I do not order drinks but I picked up the habit after our trip to Italy. :)

The truffle fries

We also added a side and a dessert with the steak, topping up $17. Ordering these items individually will cost $19 so we only saved a couple of bucks. We are not having a lot of food so topping up with side and dessert filled up our stomachs and the meal portion was just right for us. The truffle fries tasted decent and it was not too bad.

Us taking the bartop seat near the kitchen 

Tiramisu

We finished the meal with tiramisu, I did not fancy it as much as it was too creamy and the taste of alcohol/coffee was not as strong. Probably I'll choose the burnt cheesecake if we go back again. Once again, they only had 4 choices for sides and 3 for desserts but I like that they specialise in these dishes. The bill came up to around $120 which was not bad for this chic and cozy place. We went for a walk around Botanic Gardens before heading home.

The year of 2020

After my previous post, something really big hit the world. It came upon us without warning just few weeks into 2020, and COVID-19 had hit us really hard as people are fearful, plans are disrupted and people are losing their lives around the world.

My original big plan for this year was to be on the plane ride at this moment, heading to Tokyo for Tokyo marathon 2020, it was supposed to be my 10th marathon and my first WMM. I had tried my luck for a chance to run the race and I failed to get a place for three consecutive years, finally I was 4th time lucky but this happened. I was still doing my long runs just before CNY this year but things got really bad after that. Our CNY was spent in PH in the most extraordinary way as COVID-19 had just landed in SG so we spent the holidays glued to our phones with news and updates coming in everyday.

We went ahead with the trip (cloth masks more for looking cool)

Things got worse after that and now Tokyo marathon was announced to be canceled this year (bummer, but I was already planning to abort the trip) and all of us got deferred to next year's race. I think I was not as affected as other runners as I already made up my mind that it was too risky to go ahead with the race. It's not that I'm afraid of contacting the virus, but there's too many complications if people around me are affected. 

Best souvenirs

There are just a few cases of COVID in PH till now yet in SG we are hitting 100 soon. Before we left PH, I'm glad we decided to be really 'kiasu' and stock up on hand sanitizers and bottles of 70% alcohol, there was no competition there anyway and P had been using such bottles of alcohol at home since I met him. We even managed to get 30 pieces of masks at very cheap price on the first day of CNY at Manila, but it went out of stock when we tried to get more before coming back to SG. We had wanted to help friends and family get a lot masks but we were not able to find them. I gave out those bottles of hand sanitizers to my colleagues after we got back. 

My anti virus supply

Over the past few weeks, I went through many channels to stock up on some masks, disinfectant sprays, hand sanitizers and Vitamin C. I'm glad the stocks are replenishing on the shelves already and prices are falling and things are slowly getting back to normal (for SG but not the rest of the world) right now. I'm crossing my fingers that things will stay this week as I feel kind of sad that we cant travel till a few months later *crossing my fingers*. We have big plans for travel this year as I've booked June trip to US and year end trip to Europe on top of two other trips to Japan. The wanderlust is killing me right now. :(

First Day of 2020

It's very rare for me to blog on the first day of the year, and this is just the fifth or sixth hour of the year to be exact. For the past few months, I have been going through stages of being really motivated to blog and don't feel like blogging at all. I had awesome experiences the past months, and I hope the coming year will be just as awesome and peaceful. :)