Tag Archives: surprise!

birthday boy

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birthday boy

Donald turned 31 yesterday. Yep, he’s officially old. hehe. Had spent the week wracking my brains to do something special for him this year, and managed to scrouge up some things to do, and buy for his birthday.

#1. Ordered an iPad to be delivered to his office

Blah. All that went down the drain when I found out that it still wasn’t delivered by 6pm on Friday, 4 Nov 2011, despite being “told” (i.e., read off the website) that it would be delivered by 4th Nov, and between 9am – 5pm for corporate addresses. *sigh* No sms from him to say “thanks for the present!” meant it wasn’t delivered. Called DHL to check out the status, etc., and finally got it delivered by 7.10pm, just before Donald left to pick me up from work. Some surprise. pfffpt.

Guess the surprise was on me instead. heh. I had it engraved, and it was similar to what we got on this blog. “just some tings. big tings. small tings.” *beams*

#2. Buy him an iPhone

Yep. He’s been debating whether to get an iPhone 4s or not after so long. He only wants it cos of Siri. *roll eyes* So we dragged our asses to the telco shop that afternoon after an unearthly morning breakfast, queued for almost an hour, only to find out that hey, i could recontract my line one day earlier if i wanted to! meh. And I would also need to bring the charger and data cable if I wanted to trade in my phone as well. Doh.

So we drove back home to grab all the necessary stuff before heading out again. This time, we left the telco shop with a 16GB black iPhone 4s, and a Nokia N9 (for me). I couldn’t resist, and my N8 was getting a little laggy (though post-purchase, I still prefer my N8 to the N9..oops)

#3. Dining @ height

Rushed back home after the purchases, cos Donald reckoned that we should charge the new phones, so that we could play around with them when we got home tonight. *roll eyes* Anyways, earlier this week, I had been thinking alot about places that we could try for dinner. I thought about dining at height, and immediately came up with Equinox, the restaurant at the top of Swissotel Raffles. The menu was a little meh-ish, so decided to looking around a little more. Came up with a few more selections:

one Altitude @ 1 Raffles Place.
Si Chuan Dou Hua Restaurant @ 80 Raffles Place.
Ku De Ta @ Marina Bay Sands.
Salt Grill @ ion Sky.

I picked Salt Grill cos it was served Australian cuisine, and there was a chocolate dessert with my name on it on the menu. *grin* Well, also because we were going to have breakfast at Wild Honey @ Mandarin Gallery that morning, and thought that if we hung around Orchard the entire day, dinner at Orchard would be perfect.

Salt Grill & Sky Bar

Salt Grill was on the 55th floor of ion Orchard, and there was only one pair of elevators that would take you up there, like from the 4th floor to the 55th floor, no other stops in between. At the restaurant, you could take a walk around the viewing gallery for a 360 degree view of Singapore. It was pretty crazy. A shame that it was a cloudy day. I was hoping to get a gorgeous sunset. =( The food was pretty good though. This was what we had:

Appetizer:

Roast gnocchi, pork & fennel sausage, parmesan pangritata

 I’ve been wanting to try gnocchi since I saw how it was being made on Masterchef Australia Season 1. I always saw the premade ones in the supermarkets, but never knew what it was. Then I found out that it was potatoes, so we took the opportunity to try this entree. And ohhh boy, was it good. I would have been happy to have that as a main if I had known how good it was. It was like eating little dumplings of mashed potatoes, with a sauce similar to that of bolognaise, but a lot lighter, and it went so well with the parmesan. *blissful sigh* Happiness.

We shared it between the two of us, and it was a nice portion. Something light to start off the evening. Thinking about it is making me hungry!

Mains:

180g grilled barramundi fillet with wasabi mayo   
Scotch 300g Rangers Valley 300 days grain fed

To be honest, the mains weren’t much to rave about. It was good. The fish was fresh, and the steak was really tender, but it didn’t make me go wow. Neither did it make Donald go wow either. I was surprised how well the fish went with the wasabi mayo though. Gave it that little extra oomph to it. Not shown in the pictures, we also ordered a bowl of fries with rosemary salt for a side. We couldn’t taste much of the rosemary in that one. We’ve had better fries at Mad Monks @ Fremantle. Those fries we had then were rough cut fries with heaps of salt and fried rosemary leaves. mmMM..those memories.

Still, it was the experience. Maybe we’ll try another main the next time round. Heh.

Dessert:

Pineapple, coconut mousse, white chocolate and honeycomb semifreddo , pineapple granita

With dessert, we decided to take the route less travelled (for the both of us), skip the safe choice of a chocolate dessert, and tried the one above. Am I glad we did. Cos we definitely didn’t regret it. The pineapple granita balanced out the sweetness of the honeycomb, and there was a hint of coconut aftertaste, nothing too heavy. Shiok! Very light dessert. Next time I’m there, I want to try the passionfruit banana souffle with mascorpone sorbet. *licks lips* 

Reservations for dinner is a must, and you can request for a window seat subject to availability.

#4. Movie date

Donald had mentioned a couple of times that he wanted to catch Real Steel. Bearing in mind that I have not watched the trailer for that movie, of course I thought it was going to be a boys kind of movie, all technical about robots and boxing. But heck. It was his birthday, and I should let him watch what he would want to watch. So Real Steel it was. *sigh*

Gotta admit though, it was quite a good movie. A feel good kinda movie. Of course, with decent popcorn, made it alot better. *grin* Yes, after all that dinner. Donald was about to heave at the smell of popcorn, and even at the mention of food. I need my sweet popcorn. Pregnant and all. *pats tummy*

Overall, it was a pretty full on day, especially when we had been up fairly late the night before to wake up early for breakfast the next morning, and then going around the entire day, only to come home and stay up till 3am to play with our new toys. In addition to that, I had to wake up early this morning to head to the wet markets to buy the ingredients for dinner tomorrow, cos the markets don’t open on Mondays. I spent a good part of the day sleeping to catch up on that sleep debt. Geez.

But it was a good birthday. Donald’s last lavish birthday before I spend all my attention (and money) on my son next year.

Category: Daily, Special | Tags: , ,

2009

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meant to write this out earlier. but with Donald around, I can’t write. I hate people peeking over my shoulder to see what I’m writing. =P

I need my writing space! heheh.

so. the first post of 2010.

2009 was an awesome year for me. Donald and I did enough crazy stuff.

We got married! And that in itself is crazy. =P

It has been quite a good year for me. I rediscovered friendship, and affirmed friendships. I still have a job. We got married. We had an awesome holiday. Donald got a job. And we decided that we are moving back to SG. And the cats get to go home earlier with us. =D

There probably have been some crazy times but not enough to outshadow the good =P

Cause of the wedding, I flew home so many times in 2009, that I got enough frequent flyer points to redeem a impromptu flight for Donald to go back to SG in Dec 09.

Cause of the wedding, I realised that I had friends who were genuinely happy for me, and wouldn’t think twice about helping me out on my day. And that they were there cos they wanted to be. They were long days, and I probably didn’t get to spend alot of time with them, but I felt that friendship. And I appreciate it.

2009 is the year I met Sam face to face too! hahaha. Finally. =P

And if anything, I had a great past 10 years. 10 years since I got to know great friends like Justina & Kenneth. 10 years since I got to know Sam. 10 years since studying in Ngee Ann Poly, then on to UTas and getting to know Cheryl, CF, CJ & Ally, and the Bruny Island days!, then on to Perth, and then now to SG.

Adopted 2 cats, who I can go on and on about, and went on some really good holidays too.

New year, new job, new adventures ahead with the move back to SG. We’ve spent the last couple of days packing up with the boxes that we had. Books. Pots and pans. Tools. some furniture. More kitchen stuff. Yeah, I won’t be needing that much kitchen stuff since Donald will be leaving AGAIN in 5 days time. Bleh.

Speaking of which, I have to thank all the lovely people who wrote on those cards that Donald has gotten them to write greetings on. =D You guys really really made my Xmas special.

Donald thought that he wouldn’t be spending NY with me. So..he bought a stack of small coloured index cards, small Post-Its sized, and went around meeting up with my friends to get them to write me Christmas greetings so I’d feel more love from home. *beams* I did suspect something was up when Donald got Andrew and Joanna’s mobile number from me. And even more suspicious when people were telling me via email and Facebook that Donald appeared in church! hahaha.

My uncle let the cat out of the bag though. No fault of his cos Donald didn’t say it was going to be a surprise. =P I still wasn’t sure about it was like anyways. So the surprise is not exactly spoilt. hehe.

I always love to hear the process more than the outcome. How he contacted my friends. How he got them to write the cards. How he met up with Justina in the morning a couple of hours before his flight. How he got my family involved.

Just like I loved to hear how he thought about proposing last Nov.

Just like how he thought about surprising me on my first birthday in Perth.

Just like how he thought about surprising me on my first birthday together.

Yes, I know I scored a decent, romantic husband. =D (can sense someone’s ego getting big liao….)

But apart from that, 2010 is gonna be an interesting year I reckon. Adjusting back to the SG lifestyle. New job. New family. Definitely looking forward to hanging out with friends again *uber beams*.

Maybe kids? hahaha. We’ll see.

Category: Daily | Tags: , , ,

#38

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#38
#38

I want to marry you cos when you pick pressies, you pick the best & you pick what you want to give me, not what I want. HRM. Surprises, and I love surprises!
-31/05

Yeah. Donald’s weird that way. For the first birthday after we got together, I got a 128mb thumbdrive and a pair of earrings. I got the thumbdrive so that I wouldn’t keep borrowing his. -_-

Category: Love | Tags: ,