Innerpeace

Recap...A post which was meant to be up before I flew off for Eindhoven...

The day has come

In less than 23 hours, I'll be on SQ 324, leaving Singapore for the Netherlands for freaking 5 months or more. This is by far the craziest thing I've done in my entire 21 years of life, and I just realised my 21st year is truly going to be a challenging and exciting one for me. So later in the day, I'll be leaving home at 8ish for Changi Airport Terminal 3, and spending the last few hours with my dearest people before I'll say bye at about 10.45pm to explore a little of T3 before I head for the boarding gate.

Just wanted to say, I'm so glad I wasn't able to leave last Thursday. The past 2 weeks gave me more time to prepare for the trip, with Tian driving up and down town with me, making sure I have bought everything that I need to survive for the next 5 months. I had a proper dinner with my family one Sunday evening when Tian drove my whole family down to Yanqing at Sixth Avenue for some Shanghai cuisine. I love the food there that's why I decided to bring my family there. We ordered so much food cos Tian thinks it's not enough but we managed to finish up in the end and I could tell that everyone enjoyed the food. My family rarely go out for a proper dinner at a restaurant, and in the first place, we rarely sit down together for dinner on a typical day. After dinner I brought them to Island Creamery cos I know Jonathan and Jovina would love some ice cream. It was my mum's first time there and she thought the ice cream there was very cheap! haha. She compared it with Anderson's Ice Cream at Jurong Point which cost about $4 for a scoop, that's why.

I also had more time to meet up with more people: I had time to shop with Michelle and Jamie, then Jamie and I, with our boyfriends, crashed Michelle's and Jega's date and had fish head curry with them at Little India, plus a never-before excursion to Mustafa Shopping Centre post-dinner. If not for it's location, that place is a rather fun place to be shopping at! You can find almost everything there! Mich and I also had the golden opportunity to ransack Jamie's sacred home, and you must note that visits to Jamie's home is rarer than visits to the Istana. The last time I was allowed into her home was in secondary school, I think.

Then there was chilli crab excursion to Jalan Malu Malu, with us plus Huiping, Betty and Bernard. Freaking far but the food was rather cheap and I was probably the most unglam one with chilli crab sauce all over my fingers. I tell you Bernard and Betty looked so civilised eating those crabs with their utensils. Special thanks to Huiping for making a trip down with us. That night ended at Island Creamery, which saw the couples happily enjoying their ice creams and Tian and I fighting over a mudpie.

There was also a brief meet-up with Li Quan, Lenithe and Chiew at Holland V last Monday over Crystal Jade and Coffee Club. Found out more about Li Quan's IA and Chiew's start-of-semester and was quite horrified to hear that she's mostly alone in her classes. That meet-up subsequently saw us going to Strip for an upper-lip wax the following Monday. Haha. All three of us, although only Li Quan and I are the virgins. There was a burning sensation and itchiness after the waxing, and I bet I was at Strip for less than 5 mins.

Then last Saturday, Yanli and I had our farewell gathering over Thai food at Yishun, near Chong Pang and then Roy's house. Of course Roy was the one who brought us there. Said byes to William and Alyssa (I realised I don't know the spelling of her name), Yanrong, Chester, Raphael and Roy of course. Jerry and Zhenjin couldn't make it but few nights ago, we had a farewell mahjong session at Tian's place which ended with prata at Al Azhar. I thought the chicken curry was much spicer that night.

The rest of the days was seriously quality time spent with Tian. Be it running errands in town, a little shopping for shoes, toiletries and webcam, rushing to eat all the delicious local food like Zion Road's char kuay teow and Thomson Prata House, or a quality afternoon and evening spent in Sentosa, every moment spent together with him was so much fun and so precious. We're totally living in our own world. Most memorable was the afternoon spent in Sentosa, where we lazed and busked under the sun at Tanjong Beach, our favourite spot in Sentosa, watching the Thong man suntanning and strolling alone in his THONG, and then we continued people-watching when Oily Man came. Oily Man was a guy who was suntanning alone and he applied so much sun-tanning oil which made his whole body looked so oily hence we nicknamed him Oily Man. Haha. Tian was too lazy to go rollerblading so he suggested building sandcastles. But then unlike Roy and Yanli who worked part-time teaching kids to build sandcastles, we did not so we know nuts about sandcastle-building and Tian decided to bury my foot in the end. It kept my foot cool. That's what we do when we are lazing on a beach on a lovely weekday and the sky did not threaten to rain at all, despite the past few rainy days. I got a slight tan. :)

Later in the evening we checked out the new areas of Sentosa, the Imbiah area, wanting to buy tickets to Songs of the Sea but we couldn't find the information counter and we were getting hungry so we gave up and headed to Il Lido for our romantic dinner. Il Lido is rather significant to us and it's our 3rd time there. First was with Tian's family, then I treated him there for his birthday dinner 2 years ago. Tian knows I absolutely love their veal ravioli with truffles. As expected, I ordered what we enjoyed 2 years ago, which was the beef carpaccio and my ravioli while Tian had their classic dinner set. I seriously think they changed their chef, because the beef carpaccio was not like how it was done the previous time we ate there, and the ravioli looked totally different too. I think the taste was slightly comprimised too or maybe I was just bias. However Tian's classic set was very good. I guess I still prefer my veal ravioli with more filling, thinner pasta dough and more sauce. We had a great evening nonetheless, gossiping about all the other couples around us, noticing how almost every couple there is an ang moh guy with a chinese or asian girl. Serious. Most of the customers were ang moh guys. It was a weekday evening but the whole outdoor area was booked by these foreigners.