*~ Cherindipity Moments ~*

A little gift to show our support for you through the tough times.

End of the yr is always nice.. lots of good food and celebrations! Birthdays and holidays!~ And always a reason to be eating! haha~ We were sooooo hungry after making a trip to Bugis to 'bai bai', we settled for our favourite seafood restaurant at Turf City! Owen Seafood Restaurant. (That one experience at Ah Yat had disappointed us terribly.. we had to boycott it once and for all..)

Anyway we had a HUGE meal for 5+1 pple ("+1" cos Baby Claire was still in Bing's womb) :D

Left to Right, Top to Bottom: (Not remembering the exact names)
1)Drunken Prawns
2)Sharksfin soup
3)Beancurd with Veg
4)Stir Fried Ostrich
5)Deep fried Garoupa
6)Pork Ribs
7)Crab in Butter Cream sauce
8)Mango pudding
9)Black Sesame
Rating: YYYYY


A family photo as usual~


wangwang~

How wangwang entertains himself when phiaphia and i watch tv and ignore him.. hehe~

We had a hard time picking a place to eat.. he didn't like fast food nor spicy food.. and his favourite lunch place was the Food court in Akira.. luckily being a friday we had a good excuse to eat at a nicer place..~
Almost settling down for Bali Thai, qinyu gave a.. "no spicy food" look at i suggested Fish & Co. A little impromptu but well, its the thought that counts right? ;)

New York Fish & Chips!~


Some other fish dish..


Masala pizza..

Thow wee informed the crew to serve a small piece of cake at the end of the meal.. which turned out to be a little more elaborate than expected.. :P The fish&co crew requests for Qinyu to stand on a chair, a distance from our table and starts their birthday cheer! Then makes the birthday boy blow out the candles on his cake from where he was standing!! wah!!~


The birthday boy trying to blow out candles


All of us~


Look what they gave to the birthday boy!

Its not bad! We had fun!~ And birthday boy is happy with the food quality and freshness! Also credit to the spontaneous crew in the IMM outlet. :)

Rating: YYYYY

busy busy.. hectic life around work and Japanese..

so much going on lately..
gotta find time to update after mi exams..

Finished with Oral on 11th Nov, and Grammar, Listening, Dictation, Kanji today 21st Nov. Tomorrow will be compo.. *sigh*
Taking a little break and JLPT3 on 2nd Dec => means no bday till after JLPT is over.. *sob*

Needa blog abt the Linz pple visit and my 1-on-1 with Chuck.. Was quite a hectic work week last week..

A thin line between life & death...

Harry-yeye, a penpal of mine for many years is very ill. He can't reply my emails anymore. Cried myself to sleep a few nites cos i was feeling so bad that I will never make it to New York to say hi in person.. I can only hope he read my last email, cos i wrote him all that i needed him to know. :'(

And there was a great loss.. someone whom was precious to a close friend. Not sure what to say about that now, but hearing the news was pretty devastating even for me.. :(

Life is vulnerable.. treasure the people whom you care abt..

I gave up being angry finally...

A busy week in November (12th~15th) Chuck & Stan (from Austin), Dietmar & Max (from Linz) visited EQC also known as Borland Engineering Services now.. :)
As usual, lotsa meetings, discussions and meetings...

Didi kept his word and brought us some goodies from Linz~

*~Goodies!~*

Loved the Papillon! need to remind him to bring more the next time he comes~

Pretty cool~ i had the good fortune to chat with Chuck personally.. and he was really easy to talk to.. so we chatted abt interests, about his career history.. well it didn't really help me get a better picture of the direction i was gonna take, but nevertheless its nice to know abt what other pple went through to get to where they are today. Anyway, Chuck was really nice and it's great to know your superior although so distant is a nice guy~


*~Chuck & I~*

As for the guys from Linz, i've been working with them since i joined Borland and over the past yr, the relationship between Linz and EQC also drew closer.. thank goodness! Think I tried to feed Didi and Max too much, they were both very small eaters compared to the Austin guys..


*~Didi & I~*

Organised a very impromptu pizza lunch for everyone on their last day here so encourage more interaction. Wasn't really given much green light by our manager but after alot of persistence.. it all went well ;)


*~LQM Team Photo!~*

Looking forward to their next visit~

Took mi a long time to find time to blog all these backdated entries.. and as bad as my memory can be, i had to "steal" from phia's blog the details of our Deepavali~ hehee :D

Deepavali... the Charmed sisters had a date to go shopping, partly to do some last min shopping for Bing
Parents decided to tag along too~ Actually mom wanted to.. cos it has been a long time since the 5 of us go out together as a Family~ ;)

Had a deal with Phia that she has to complete 10 substantial driving lessons under mi supervision before she can drive alone. Phia drove to Pasir Ris to fetch Bing.. hmm not bad~ hehee~

Parked at Far East Plaza's carpark..which is only $3/entry.. and very lucky! Cos there were just 2 lots when we turned in~ Must be my niece that brought us all the luck!

We did some shopping at Isetan for baby stuff~ and finally felt too hungry and decided to have our dinner at my planned destination Din Tai Fung 鼎泰豐~
Having been introed there and LOVE the fried rice, I had to bring my family there!



Address: PARAGON #01-03/06
Tel: 6836 8336


A family photo..


Our food..

From Phia's blog:
"The food was good!
I love the Fried Rice~ It just taste so yummy!
very different from other fried rice I have ever eaten.
XiaoLongBao taste great too~
Bing likes the Xiao Cai..which is served as an appetizer."

I'm so glad!~ hee~ so it was worth the $$~

Total bill: $81.20.
Finally for to use my $30 voucher which was exchanged with DBS credit card points.
so we only spent $51.20.

Went to heeren for Phia to do some memberships stuff..
then to Kinokuniya...and Bing bought a baby diary!
specially took this photo for her to paste in the diary for her baby to see..


My darling sister and a beautiful mummy, Bing.

I love holidays! hahaha~ Too bad we all had to work the next day.. :(

Heard abt the trishaw incident from phia. Felt so angry with the 3 caucasians and sad for the trishaw uncle. Phia let me watch the youtube clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KB_GoQ-h9Zg and I almost cried seeing Uncle being laughed at like that. It was really horrible and intolerable.
But the trishaw uncle isn't even angry with the 3 guys. He accepted it as *bad luck*
Anyway, try googling for "Bo Davis UK" and you will see that Bo Davis has apologised..
Copied and pasted this from another blog:

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

I have already sent 2 apologies out on you tube. But I'll apologise again. As I don't think many people have seen it.

When I look back at the video it does look very bad. I offer my sincerest apologies to Mr Lee, his son & everyone that has been offended. It was very disrespectful and insensitive to make fun of an old man. If you knew us you'd realise that we are actually nice guys.

On that night we'd had a few beers (slightly drunk), and needed to get back to our hostel. So we began walking up the street looking for a taxi. The trishaw driver was waiting at the side of the road and suggested we take his taxi. At first we declined as we wanted an actual car, but he insisted we got in. I thought ok, I'd never been on one before and told him our destination. He said $10 which was fine.

After setting off I did start laughing, I was a little drunk and thought it was funny how slow we were going. I did actually ask the driver if I could peddle before we got the camera out.
So after travelling hardly any of the distance agreed, I could see that it was stupid for us to continue and said we should get out. We'd only travelled around a quarter of the agreed distance so I at the time I thought $5 was reasonable. Bearing in mind that we'd just come from Thailand where drivers initially charge way over the odds and it's customary to haggle the price.

I don't know why Mr Lee is saying we didn't pay, when in the end we gave him the $10. I know I was laughing but I wouldn't dream of not paying for the ride! That would be unforgivable. The camera cuts out before we actually leave the trishaw but I can guarantee everyone that we paid the $10 before we left.

My upmost apologies again go out to Mr Lee and his son. If it were my dad with 3 young guys laughing at him, I'd want to find out who they were and speak my mind. But can I just confirm again that we did pay!

Best Regards
Bo

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*


Maybe we've really just heard one side of the story.. after reading the apology letter Bo Davis posted, guess we have to give them the benefit of the doubt..

This we have our closure on this incident. The 3 guys got what they deserved, and returned uncle his dignity.

Respect everyone around you the way you want to be respected.

scams are ever-so-convincing.. :( Websites, contact numbers, News.. everything is in place.

==========================================

Few weeks ago, a lady called me from a company 嘉寶科技股份有限公司 (Jiaebao Science & Technology Co. Ltd) for a phone survey asking which brand of hp i'm using, how much would i be willing to spend on a new phone. Sounds like pretty normal questions to ask.
After the short survey, she took down some particulars like Name, Age.. and gave me a Lucky draw number and invited me for their event at:

How strange.. never have i heard of publicity events held there. I guess it might be a more cost effective choice..

==========================================

On sunday evening i received a call from this lady. Sounding very excited she asked me if i was present at the event as I had just won a BIG PRIZE!
Asking what i won, she said she wasn't able to disclose.. and kept persuading mi to get there asap. -_- Confirming that i wasn't able to, she said she will forward my details to their head office in HK.

==========================================

Following morning (Monday) a received a call from an Unknown number, from HK..
a nice lady introduced herself in a chinese accent. Telling me abt mi prize and sounding very happy to handle mi "case". I had won the 2nd prize of HKD350k!
That's a tempting sum of money! Entering my Lucky draw number into the prize winning section, it was true i had won what she said i did! *suspicious already*
She was very patient in explaining what the company was doing.. and i was thinking *scam?* or *mlm?* saying she wanted to make friends cos in 2008 the company will be setting up an office in sg. Finally she gave me a HK number to call to the supposed Sponsor HongKong Jockey Club.
Thinking since i have free IDD to HK, i called.. and the lady on the phone told me abt this "insurance deposit" which is 5% of my winnings to the HK Law department to handle this transaction. Partly as proof for myself that its not black market $$ and also for the Club to prove their sponsorship and to "reduce tax".

Pretty convinced then it was a scam, i rejected claiming this prize. She said "OK" and then that was it!

Extracted from their website http://www.jiaebao.com/, exactly what the lady told me on the phone:


These people really know how to play mind games..
The lady from JiaeBao called again and asked me why i wanted to give up the prize $$.. started explaining.. blah blah and said as a friend she really wished to help me.
I said i dun have this 5%, why not you help me pay?
Strange, she was going on and on abt how it was a small amt then said she too, din have this $$. But would help as much as she could. I asked to think abt it.. wanting to spend some time to google on the company. I found NOTHING!

==========================================

Calling me again, said she wasn't gonna force me to claiming this prize but what a pity it would be. Mind games i'm telling ya!! I said I didn't want it anymore.

==========================================

A week later she called again.. saying this "case" was just brought up at their meeting. She felt bad about not handling my case well. And started her long story again. Said if she put my particulars as a student, i only had to pay half of the 5%! hmm sounds good, but still near $2k SGD. Geez.. i was feeling guilty rejecting her leh!! but again i said NO, i had to give it up since i didn't have $2k! :P

==========================================

Today she called again.. actually i'm pretty fed up already. I hate it when people prey on my sense of trust. So while on the phone with her, i was doing some research, and for the first time i found this: http://www.hktourismboard.com/seasia/images/misrep.pdf
Saw the company name on the list! I said no and convinced I need not feel bad anymore towards this woman and her "sincerity". *disappointed*

==========================================

Anyway, guess it takes some time for information to be online even... 3~4 weeks before i found some legitimate documents to prove its a scam.

Important notes:
1. Google the company name for any postings of similar cases
2. http://www.whois.com.cn/ <-- check registration date / info on the website they provide you 3. Most importantly, i found that these syndicates are evolving, they do not stick to the same company name. Jiaebao is a new one. I still can't find anything on it except for the pdf by HKTB. 4. Kenny's post, came across while googling.. Funny guy but i loved what he did to those "SCAMmers": http://www.kennysia.com/archives/2007/08/cheated_by_the.php

First drive to UIC building to attend the dinner at Noble House.. Been there once for dim sum~ Food was great! The first dish presentation wasn't fantastic.. have seen better.. but they ended it with party poppers!



While waitin.. decided to take some photos.. cos we were dressed up for once outside of work except for Mummy-WuFang :P


Table decor was pretty.. flowers and "fishtanks" seem to be in nowadays~ hehee~


And our take home gift - Chocolates!!
Reminds mi how we were all wondering how to write "Double Happiness" guess we did figure it out in the end.. *i hope?*


Finally the table photo~ So honoured! cos i got to stand beside the gorgeous Bride :D

Wishing the couple, Thow Wee & Eliz, a Blissful Marriage!!~

To celebrate Phia's bday, Phia, WQ and me played cards and opened a bottle of Gordon's London Dry Gin to try.. mixed with Coke and Juice~

Gordon's London Dry Gin

The gin smelled really nice.. like jasmines but.. drinking it was another story :P eeek~ decided to give the bottle away.. heee~

There's always a reason to celebrate and have a big feast.. Birthdays are usually a good "excuse"~ So as usual we hunted for a good restaurant and we ended up at:


Nanyang Seafood Restaurant

Somewhere in boonlay, pretty near to NTU.. hee~


The family~


Glorious FOOD!~


And a little publicity for




We shop at our own shop too!! And the clothes aren't too bad at all!~

Always getting entertained my WanRenMi on FM93.3 in the mornings~
This morning they were talking abt mispronouncing words.
Commonly known mistakes:
English.... "l" becomes r", "r" becomes "l"
Chinese... "sh" becomes "s", "s" becomes "sh"

What i've come across, what they talked about in wanrenmi this morning.. hee~

Actual Words and how to read?
problem .... ploblem
umbrella .... umbwerra
important .... impotent
cement .... semen
circuit .... cir'cute'
birt .... birf pie chart .... pie charge

These students wrote a song for their teacher that couldn't do his/her 'R's and 'L' svery well...

"wow wow wow ur boat gentwy out to sea
mewwiwy mewwiwy mewwiwy mewwiwy wife is but a dweam~ "

Finally added myself to the popular Facebook network~
So much invites to the uninteresting Vampire, Slayer etc etc games..
But! Fluff!! is cool!~

Meet my Chupps!

Had assumed chupps was a girl.. but after testing all the fluff food, i found that chupps had taken a liking to the boot -_-".. so have confirmed chupps is a boy! :P
Anyways! Pet chupps to gimme 3 munny! I will pet your fluff back too! ^^