clean linen

On Vesak Day public holiday, I had McDonald's breakfast and stayed at home in the morning. At about 2pm, I left the house to catch the train down to Bayfront MRT station to meet the rest of my cell group. They had lunch at Joel's ramen place before going down. But I didn't feel up to ramen so I didn't join them for lunch. Anyway, we went to the ArtScience Museum at MBS to check out the Lego exhibition. It has been open for awhile now, and I think we went for this exhibition on the last week of its stint here. Each ticket cost $11.30. One lego sculpture that I was quite impressed with was this sculpture below of a guy swimming. It was completely made out of lego, as with the rest of the portraits and sculptures in this exhibition. I walked past this comment from the person who did all these lego art pieces, and discovered that he was a lawyer! I don't think I will ever realise that I am more comfortable sitting on the floor creating sculptures... I can...

I just put this picture as my desktop wallpaper at work... I mark this day as the day I start putting in effort to learn the Korean language so that I can try to contribute with my knowledge of the language during our family holiday to Korea in October.

The family sans Edmund went to Pontini for dinner. Pontini is an Italian fine dining restaurant at Grand Copthorne Waterfront hotel. We went back there just to spend a $100 voucher that was to expiry this 31st May. The last time we went there with the intention of spending this same $100 voucher, the restaurant staff applied a different discount instead, which was probably a trick to make us come back a second time to spend WAY more than the value of the voucher... But anyway. This time round, on my father's encouragement, I tried ordering a carbonara, which is not in the menu. I found it a little bit too salty because there was bacon EVERYWHERE, and it was the bacon that made it very very salty. Some people may have found it a tad too creamy, but my brother seemed to like it.  I think it's nothing to shout about. Except for the fact that it actually cost $38. My title says "before Philippines" because my parents, brother and sister were all going to the Phi...

I think the weekend that just passed was the longest ever for me. LSBC was one of the hosting venues for Global Day of Prayer (GDOP) on 19 May. This was on top of the youth service and 2 main services where I was also rostered to play the keyboard. Due to the additional songs for GDOP, worship practice started at 11am on Saturday, instead of the usual 1pm. The plan was to practice all the way till 3pm, then rest for an hour before playing for youth service. However, we practiced all the way till 3:30pm and we were still left with a few songs to practice. When the youths went off for their cell discussion time, I was SO tired I gave up on the idea of sitting in with one of my sec 3 cell groups. I walked straight home and slept until 7:45pm, when cell group starts at 8pm. I was late for cell group, but the nap did wonders. I don't know how I would have lasted through cell group if not for the wondrous nap. I quickly left cell group at about 10:30pm and got into bed a...

I look at my calendar for this weekend and the next 2 weekends, and I appreciate the one free weekend I had last week.  Now when I say "free", it's not that I had absolutely nothing on and I had the chance to just wile the time away at home with my dog for company. No, there was still the usual youth service and cell group to attend on Saturday. But at least I could wake up for a swim without worrying about practicing the keyboard, and I didn't need to spend the entire afternoon in church because of worship practice. Instead, I had a long leisurely brunch with my fabulous friends (and cell leaders), Boon Yeow and Faith. Then I could actually take my time to head back home and take a 2-hour nap all the way till Youth Service. SHIOK. So anyway, they picked me up and we made our way to 112 Katong. We had a delicious brunch at this Italian place called Baci. I ordered the Breakfast in Europe (or something like that... Can't remember the exact name now)....

I know I should just get over myself and move on from this fact, but I still haven't gotten used to seeing a ring on my brother's left hand. Why? Because he isn't an accessories person who is into cuff links or bracelets or necklaces. He wears a watch for convenience, or a wristband if it's part of a camp or event or something, and that's it. So now he's wearing a fashion accessory on his left hand all the time?? It's weird for me:D ANYWAY. Douglas and team did a GREAT job on this video!! Just had to embed it here for anybody who passes by my blog or still reads my blog:) Ern Kiang & Carolin Full Day Highlight from XD Studios on Vimeo .

I was taking a break at work by scrolling through the Home page on Facebook when I saw a friend share this article -  http://www.relevantmagazine.com/life/relationships/myth-perfect-dating  - and it caught my attention because I had just been talking to a friend the night before who had broken up with someone about a month ago and she is still recovering from the heartbreak. And the reason for the guy breaking up with her was that he needed time to focus on his studies and it was wrong if he had time for a relationship but no time for God...:/ Then I clicked on another article in the same website and I think it was most interesting, so I thought I'd just share it here:)  http://www.relevantmagazine.com/life/relationships/stop-waiting-him-ask-you-out

For our last day of the holiday, we woke up early to have our hotel's really good coffee. Then we met up with the rest to eat at a nearby cafe. It was the one and only time on my trip that I had a good English breakfast! The serving was just really big and I was so glad I shared with my mum. On our way back to the hotel after breakfast, I took a photo of the hotel facade and got a really zoomed out photo of it with my mum. The sun was out but it was still cold. There were flowers blooming but it still felt very much like end-of-winter temperatures... We were all packed, checked out and all ready to take the tube to the airport. At King's Cross tube station, my dad and a few of them had some difficult getting through so I waited for them 20 minutes before I caught the tube without them to head to the airport first, since my flight was over an hour earlier than theirs. It also followed that I had less time to do mindless impulsive shopping for knick-knacks and wh...

I had a good night's sleep on the comfy air bed and was served with a lovely cup of tea before I officially got up for the day. It was a new experience to wake up to a meowing cat as compared to a barking dog... Talking about this cat, it is a very different cat from the stereotyped cat. It would follow the family members around like a pet dog wanting attention. It would sit near my feet and not mind me stroking it the way I would stroke and pet a dog. Just as how my dog would bark to be part of the (what seems to them to be) action in the house, this cat would keep meowing to be let into the house! I had a nice simple breakfast with Mike and Jane before it was time to really pack up and leave for church. We managed to prop up my phone camera and after 1 failed attempt, we succeeded at taking a group photo:) I took bus 36 to church as Mike and Jane were only attending the evening service that Sunday. It felt nice to just look out the window of the bus and to see the...

Once every few months, we'll try to find a day where majority of the group is available for a meal, and a meetup would materialise. We had a good time chatting over pizza, dessert and soda drinks at United Square's Extra Virgin Pizza. And of course we had to laugh over more JC memories. We also marvelled at the fact that we managed to keep in good contact as a group for the past 8 years. I thank God for this wonderful group of friends who add so much good colour to my life!

I caught the 9:30am train at London St Pancras, and arrived in Nottingham at 11:30am. I was shocked to find that the Nottingham train station was undergoing quite a bit of renovation in the original front entrance, and it took me awhile before John found me. We had a drive around Beeston as we tried to figure our way around, what with tram works going on and changing the roads. We finally walked through Beeston's High Street. I didn't take any photos but just took Beeston in with my eyes. And I felt strangely comforted that things hadn't really changed much in the past 3 years. We bought back Sukho Thai to John's house - the green curry and egg fried rice was just as great tasting as before! We talked, then we had a tour of John's nice house. I then discovered, with great joy, that John had put up photos of Singapore in different spots of his house! So of course I got John to take cheesy photos with the Singapore photos as a proud homeowner - and he readil...

On Friday, we met up with the rest at about 10:30am and took the tube to Queensway tube station, thinking that Royal China opened at 11am. We got there, only to discover the doors locked and that they only opened at 12pm! So we spent the hour walking down the street and sitting in McDonald's for awhile. As we walked back up the street to Royal China, it started to rain, and just in time the doors opened! And there already was a queue outside the restaurant! Of course, dad had to have his roast duck again, which was really good and was whacked up by everybody at the table. And my highlight of the meal and the day: THEIR EGG TARTS! I made sure I photographed it and ate my sister's share because their egg tarts are REALLY yummy. I LOVE DIMSUM!:D After dimsum, we went to Harrods and everybody left Harrods with a pouch or bag or two... From Harrods, we took the tube to Oxford Circus tube station and it started raining again, which split us into 2 gr...

On Thursday morning, we got up and had an earlier breakfast before setting off in 2 taxis for the Barcelona airport to catch our British Airways flight to London Heathrow.  It was late afternoon by the time we found our accommodations and arranged to meet at the nearest tube station, King's Cross St Pancras. The weather was FANTASTIC, at about 20 degrees celcius (We would learn the next day that today's weather was FREAK fantastic weather). On accommodation, my parents and I stayed in a different hotel from the others. They stayed at Tunes Hotel King's Cross, after they got a REALLY good and cheap deal at the NATAS fair. I decided to join them too late, i.e. after they had gotten 3 rooms in this hotel, and the hotel was already fully booked. So my parents were so loving to agree to stay with me at another hotel. On booking.com, I found Comfort Inn King's Cross that is more like a B&B. It was even nearer to King's Cross St. Pancras, but definitely mo...