Finally things quiet down somewhat at the office. Managed to clear some of the backlogs. Was able to take a few hours off last Friday to watch WALL.E with my family. Re-started my gym schedule. I even have the luxury of time to have breakfasts with Gabriel after my gym sessions. Wat a relief!

Saturday, as usual, spent almost the whole day at United Sq. Had a jamming session with Firuz and 2 boys. But there no singer and no 1st guitar playing, so I had some difficulty. Keep losing my count after a while. heehee.. sorry lah.. still green lah! Drum exam is in November. That's less than 2 months. So I better start practising for it.

Had dinner at Youtei Sushi Restuarant. The one at United Sq. closed down and the staff was reassigned to the outlets at Marina Sq and Forum Galleria. Rachel & I were such regulars at the old United Sq outlet that we became friends with the waitresses and managers. So it was not just dinner but also to visit them too.

And after dinner, I went to Vino Vino to meet D. She & Akie bought me a bag. So sweet of them! Had a nice time chatting with D. Akie wasn't feeling too good, might have caught a chill. According to him carrying a brolly wouldn't look cool. Luth didn't look too well either.  Said he slept only 3 hours the night before.  But they still had to continue entertaining the patrons. Poor chaps.  Noticed Rafi, Zul and Ros yawning away earlier on too.  This was their 1st week of fasting so i guess they're still adjusting to it.

On Sunday I made orange sorbet. It was quite easy .. 300ml of freshly hand-squeezed orange juice, 30~40g of sugar depending on sweetness of the orange, 15g of Granfruttosa, and 1 tbsp orange zest. That's it! Simple yet delightful! I could use a juicer for the orange but I choose to hand-squeeze them cos the fibrous part will leave a bit of bitterness.  Rachel, the family fussbudget, loved it.

I was quite tired the rest of Sunday since I slept at 2 am. But I still had 3 baby showers to attend. Gu's, Anthony's and Leon's. Jeff passed me a gift for Leon and I almost gave it to Anthony by mistake.  I saw Anthony's iPhone.  He 'jailbroke' it and it looked totally cool!  I'm so tempted to try it myself.  Gotten the websites from him.  But I'm waiting for the release of iPhone 2.1.  Supposed to be today together with iTunes 8.  Let's see what improvements have been made.. and then I'll jailbreak my iPhone too!

Plenty of things happened since the last post.

Work? As usual. Very busy. BCA has tightened the requirements for Temporary Earth Retaining System (otherwise known as TERS). Even go as far as to introduce jail-terms for failure to comply. This is good news for me. My designs will have to be robust. Builder has no choice but to follow and I can sleep better at night knowing that the Builder will not cut corners and whatever. On top of that any excavation deeper than 6m will require a Geotechnical PE to endorse the report. And so far there're only about 50 such PEs (including moi~) in the whole country, half of whom are in the public sector and don't do commercial designs. This means mo jobs coming my way. yeah!

Family? All are well. My baby niece is soooo cute. My son is having his Primary School Leaving Examination, otherwise known as PSLE. (God! I hate acronyms!) He just had his English papers. Told me it was esaily than his school's mid-year papers. Well. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Hopefully he does ok. He hasn't really been spending much time on studies. Oh well.

Personal? I'm having lots of fun learning drums. I've learnt Yellow, Chasing Cars and Linkin Park's "What I've Done". Suppose to jam with my son and his instructor this weekend. Looking forward to it. So glad that Sep/Oct is here. All my favorite TV shows are back! Heroes, CSI (all 3 of them), Supernatural. Yeah!!!

On Halloween the Great Pumpkin will rise from the most sincere pumpkin patch and will deliver presents to kids all over the world! - Linus

My daughter's school celebrated Racial Harmony Day yesterday. The school encouraged them to wear traditional costumes for the day and she had wanted a traditional Chinese costume.

But I suggested costumes of other races. After all it's Racial Harmony so what better way to demonstrate that than to actually wear the clothes of a different race? Rachel was keen on the idea so I left work early on Monday and brought her to Little India at Serangoon Road. We went to a few shops and finally decided on this saree. It was fun learning the proper way of wearing the saree. I even got her the bangles and the little decorative things for the forehead to complete the look!

After 2 weeks at the new house I finally figured out what's wrong with it... It's too damn quiet!!

Back at our old place in Pasir Ris Town, there were hundreds of families all living within shouting proximity of one another. There is always a constant drum of background noises made by people going about their daily lives.. sounds of kids playing, Hi-Fi & TVs, babies crying, aunties or maids chatting at the corridors, workers drilling at roadsides, mahjong sessions, occasional karaoke sessions.. Not to mention funerals rites or Malay weddings at the void decks complete with "live" bands...

With all that cacophony, you would think I couldn't wait to get away. But... strange as it may seem, I miss all that noise! I even miss my inquisitive neighbours! (My enounters with one particular neighbour guy six years ago were so weird that I had wanted to move away then, just to be rid of him.) Here, I barely get to see my neighbours. I don't even know who is staying next to us!

I miss all the hustle and bustle of heartland. Well, I guess I shouldn't be complaining... we have plenty of privacy and quietness... except after a rainfall, then the air will come alive with nature's orchestra... a combined cricket-bullfrog symphony...

Finally set up the new phone line and internet access this morning.

Moving to a new place was a really tiring process. It took us more than a week to pack all our stuffs into cartons. 40 cartons! and that's not counting the 8 bags of clothes, shoes, toys etc. we had to give away. The books were the heaviest and took up 15 cartons. My hubs fell sick the day before the move. So I slept barely 3 hours that night in order to pack the remaining items.

On Saturday 17 June, the movers came around 9am. I was a little surprised that they sent only 2 workers. I did warn them that the new place is a 3-storey cluster housing. But hubs said they ought to know what they were doing.

It took them about 50 minutes to load the furnitures and all the cartons into the truck. I wasn't too keen to have them move my computers so we loaded those into our SUV instead.

When the workers saw our new house, they were shocked. They said they didn't know there was no lift. So I showed them my fax and that I had highlighted it when I engaged their service. Well, it took them more than 2 hours to unload and carry everything into our house. I knew it was very tiring for them so I kept serving them cold drinks. And finally when they were done, I gave them a $50 tip. Felt sorry for them.

Now it's our turn. The kids were really excited about having their own rooms. So we left it to them how they want to organise their things. Gu sent his maid over to help us with the cleaning. We couldn't unpack much. Too tired. And we weren't used to the stairs. Our previous home was a HDB apartment. Living room, bedrooms, kitchen were all on the same floor. Now we have to climb the stairs numerous times. Very tiring indeed! Hubs was too sick to help and spent the rest of the 1st day in bed.

Bought a new accessory for my ipod... FM remote. I still can't understand why Apple doesn't include a AM/FM function in their ipods. Well, not that I want to listen to our radio stations. Who wants to listen to the DJs' non-stop chatter and non-stop endorsements of products. But then, on and off I want to listen to the news.

It's expensive though. I could have gotten a mini-radio for much lesser. Well, I was weak... shouldn't have stepped into the Apple Centre. Almost came away with the MacPro Book.. very dangerous place.

as I need to clear as much work as possible before I go on a 2-week break. Will be flying to US with my family on 29 May. Will be going to Orlando (Disneyland etc), then to Toronto (visiting my uncle) and to NY for a few days and before coming back to Singapore.

I haven't gone for vacation in 4 years. Hubby called me a workaholic. He's got to be kidding! Given a choice, I rather stayed in bed with a book and my ipod. It's just that I've been handling most of my office's projects and I tend to worry about things that might go wrong when I'm not around. You know how things are... a small problem left unresolved will somehow escalate. Anyway looks like I have to lug my laptop along, just in case. I'm not a workaholic. Call me responsible instead!

I've arranged for Gu to look after our car and have also decided on the pet boarding house for my two cats. So what's left is the packing. The kids are so excited about the trip. I did warn them about the long flight. It's a total of 21 hours with two transits, one at Narita Airport and the other in Minnieapolis. Will bring along some VCDs and games so that they won't get too bored on the planes. So I guess a laptop will be good. Plus I could listen in to darth radio too!

I was at home last Sunday listening to darth radio. I left a message on his blog that I was tuned in and he played Summer of '69 for me. It was quite fun! It's cool how this blog stuff brings people together. I've never met darth and may never will because of the vast (physical) distance between us. But that doesn't stop us from being friends. (right? darth?)

Ok. I better get back to work. Lunch break's over!

Brought Ebbi, my cat, to the vet. The lower part of her jaw was imflamed. Not too sure what caused it. One of her tooth is loose too. But think I'll wait till her jaw recovers before tackling her dental problem. She's almost 12 year old. Think that translate to 64 yrs in human age. So not advisable to stress her too much. She gets rather stressed up and nervous whenever she visits the vet.

I just found out that I'm not allowed to keep big dogs in our HDB flats. What's up with that?!? I really want a Golden Retriever. I wonder how firm are the authorities on the rules. Will have to check it up. Maybe I could pretend I'm blind and need the help of a seeing-dog.

There's going to be a full-dressed rehearsal at the National Stadium tonight for the National Day celebration on 9 August. I might join a friend Leon to shoot some photos of the fireworks. In Singapore, everything must be done to 'perfection' so we have rehearsals for almost everything. We even have a rehearsal culling of chickens during the Bird-Flu scare!