The Prima Deli saga continues as more samples came in late on Friday night. That meant that we all had to stay back to process them. We all look forward to Fridays since it's the start of the weekend and we get to go back at 5.30 pm. But this week (again!), we stayed till 7.30 pm and I had to come back the next day to do the follow-ups. Sigh...

I thought it wouldn't be so bad to go back on Saturday, even though I was exhausted from Friday night. My colleague offered to pick me up from Toa Payoh at 8 am and I had a direct bus from my place down to Toa Poyah. So I woke up at 6.15 am (15 minutes later than normal!) and went down to wait for the bus. I missed the first bus, partly because my eyes were half-open and my brain was not in operation mode just yet. But I thought to myself, I had time to wait for the next one since I was out early and it usually took around 45 minutes to get down to Toa Payoh. I ended up waiting for 20 minutes for the next bus. Then this bus had to break down right at the bus stop of Milo's place and we had to get off and wait for another bus. ARGH!!! By then I knew I wouldn't be able to meet my colleague in time so I sent her a message asking her to go down first and I would make my own way there. I felt bad to ask a 50+ year old lady to wait for me. Once I made it to Toa Payoh, I walked at super fast speed to the MRT station, stopping for 2 minutes to buy breakfast at Mr Bean. I had cravings for soya bean milk and I was hungry. The train was arriving in 1 minute so I ran down to catch it. I didn't know that the ride from Toa Payoh to Choa Chu Kang would take 35-40 minutes and actually, I slept most of the way there. Still, it was such a long ride! I should have taken the East-West line instead. Ok, never mind. From CCK, I had to take another bus to my workplace. When I got to the bus stop, bus 975 came. But I couldn't remember which bus I was supposed to take. I thought it was 925 so I went to the bus directory to check. Turns out I was suppose to take 975 and I had to wait for the next bus again. By the time I reached work, it was 9.45 am and I meant to be there at 8.30 am. Sian!!!!!!!!!

Mantou asked me out for dinner yesterday. It's such a surprise. Usually her schedule is packed on Saturdays so the moment her message came in, I knew that if I didn't go, it might be months before I see her again.

I still wanted to have korean even though I had that on Thursday with my colleagues so I suggested Mario's Kitchen at Bugis. Mag had trouble finding a parking lot and her car was starting to heat up. I went out to meet her and go around with her while she hunted for a slot and brought her good luck. After picking me up and making 1 turn around Liang Seah street, we actually got a slot a few doors away from Mario's Kitchen. Should have picked me up earlier eh? Haha!

At Mario's Kitchen, we shared a kimchi pancake (this is my absolute favourite korean dish), a chicken BBQ and a spicy soup. The chicken BBQ was huge. I think the plate was almost the size of a large pizza. The soup was weird. It had mushrooms, watercress and some preserved veg with beef chunks. It tasted weird too. I had a cup of korean green tea which was something new and I really liked it. It was a little pricey at $2.50 per cup but it was different and nice. The best was still the kimchi pancake. I had expected Mantou to not want this since she hates vegetables but she preferred it to the seafood pancake which came with spring onions. That was good because I wasn't too keen on the spring onions either. The last time we had korean together was in Brisbane, somewhere near Chinatown and we also ordered the seafood pancake. It came with more spring onions than seafood and we spent the dinner picking out every strand and packing them for Milo. We tried to bluff her, telling her that it was a dish on its own. I don't know if she believed us but she did finish it. Hahahhaa...ahhhh those good old days...

After dinner we were so full (as usual) so we proceeded to walk slowly and aimlessly around till we felt better. We walked back into Bugis Junction where we saw a roadshow for teeth whitening. There was a guy doing that right there in the middle of Parco and it looked so weird. He had blue gel on his teeth and there was a red mouth-opening thing so basically, that part looked rather like a clown. It was such a coincidence since Mantou had been talking about doing teeth whitening during dinner and this roadshow was offering it at a lower price than her friend's dentist. But she didn't want to do it in the middle of the crowd and frankly, I wouldn't want to either. I offered to bring a towel to do crowd-control for her though, haha!!! We got a pamphlet and continued walking but as we were about to cross over to Bugis Village, we has thi discussion about the teeth whitening. The pamphlet said that you had to do 4 sessions of 10 minutes each which would take around 45 minutes in total. To me, it sounded like you had to go back 4 times for 10 minutes worth of treatment but Mantou argued that the 45 minutes meant that you could do the 4 sessions at the same time. We couldn't agree so we went back and it turns out that Mantou was right. While we were there, Mantou asked more questions and the lady offered to give us the treatment for $400 each which was the same price as what that guy was paying except that we could do it in the clinic instead. By right, doing it at the clinic would cost $99 more than doing it on the spot. Mantou was keen but I wasn't sure. In the end, while Mantou was chatting with the lady, I decided to go for it. A present to myself. We weren't going to do it on the spot though. Instead we put a down-payment and would probably do it sometime in February when Mantou and I are less busy.

Something to look forward to...

December 2007

The end of another year.

I always assumed that December would be a slacking month. After all, many companies shut down or slow work because a lot of people would be clearing and taking leave to go on holidays. I was so wrong. Work was busier than ever, with many more samples coming in due to the festive season. Then Singapore got hit with a big food poisoning outbreak courtesy of Prima Deli. (These things really don't have any sense of timing.) Since the culprit was Salmonella, my lab became the main testing facility and I must say that we have all been working like crazy because of this. In the midst of this Prima Deli frenzy, oysters starting coming in like mad as well. I don't want to elaborate too much but just know that in this month, all of us felt like overworked crazy people. As my friend so correctly pointed out, we don't even have the time to commit suicide. HAHA!!!

Thank goodness things are winding down a bit. We still have a whole lot of work and I still have a whole lot of oysters to clear but because of Hari Raya Haji, Christmas and New Year, there's only so much we can do.

Then there's Chris's and Ju's birthdays this month. How could I have ever thought this would be a relaxing month??? I was damn stressed in trying to plan for both their birthdays, having missed celebrating them last year.

Chris's Bday Celebration:

I brought her for a pedicure treat before we met up with the rest of the gang for dinner. My first pedicure and Chris's second. We took so long to choose the colours we wanted for our feet. But it was a good experience and we will be going back for more since we both got psycho-ed into taking up a package with that place. Two guillible fools...hahhaha...


We had dinner at Tony Roma's and had to queue for a table for 8. They didn't take reservations, how dumb!!!

After dinner, all of us headed down to Mount Faber in Keong's and Ju's cars. We went to the Jewel Box, recommended by a friend. We had to pay $8 to enter but that included a cable car ride and a $5 drink discount so it was worth it. The cable car ride was great! How often do you get to take the ride late at night, all the way down to Sentosa and back?

My surprise for Chris and Ju was asking Ah Ren out to meet us. This is no easy feat since he is always extremely busy but I managed to persuade him to come; plus he stays right at the foot of Mount Faber.

I got her a heart and flower white gold, rose gold and diamond pendent with a white gold chain. It wasn't cheap but we had a whole lot of people wanting to chip in for her present.

There was a live band and we each ordered a drink. Actually the Jewel Box is a really nice place with great atmosphere. The only problem is that the place is open-air and so you get a lot of second-hand smoke from people sitting around you.



A very nice day and night out. Totally memorable and I hope it's the same for the rest who joined me on this day.