Maldives: Sea, Sun, and More Sun

Deciding where we would go for our honeymoon was no easy task, albeit fun and exciting. So many places to go, many choices and I just couldn't make up my mind. Since winter always be my favorite season and I would love to feel snow falling on my face again, I wanted to go to Europe. But then, swimming at the beach is also feels like heaven. Remembering Lombok *gee, we used to go to the beach there, swimming every weekend* and Phuket, made me yearn for a little bit of sunshine and sea. So Maldives it was for us.

We took a late evening flight to Male from Singapore, a four hours flight. Male International Airport is the main airport in Maldives. From there, a team from Club Med escorted us to a speed boat for a 30 minutes ride to Kani island. What a bumpy ride it was, like, at times we were literally being tossed off our seat.

At Kani, we were given a light green ribbon to be worn as a bracelet. So, apparently, they use this ribbon to distinguish people who stay in lagoon suite from other guests who stay in other types of suites (beach, land, etc.). They have a special lounge area, called Manta Lounge, where everyone is denied access except for guests staying in lagoon suites, so it's for this purpose.

 

~ Manta Lounge, a place where you can have a free flow of champagne while basking in the sun ~

 

~ A bottle of champagne *on the house, of course* awaited us in our room. We didn't it drink it tho, we brought back home haha ~

Things that I like about staying in a lagoon suite; whenever I felt like swimming, I went to the room terrace, and the sea was right down there. How cool is that. Also, a bath tub facing the ocean and we had our mini bar refilled everyday!

Being in Maldives, I remember I only took a shower once a day haha *oops*. Well, why bother? Where you can throw yourself in water at anytime? And an abundance of food! We had breakfast, walked along the beach, collecting shells, dropped by at beach bar, grabbed a bite, went snorkeling, had lunch, swam at the pool, dropped by at beach bar again, and hang out there until it came time for dinner. And amazingly, I only gained 1 kg! Maybe walking under the sun equals to sauna :p

I guess we were lucky. As it happened, on our last day there, they arranged a special dinner event. Dining Under the Stars. True enough, that night stars indeed shone brightly and in just a couple of hours later, we were rushing to a jetty deck ready to endure 30 minutes speed-boat ride back to Male airport. Hope there will be honeymoon part 2 hoho.

Chinese New Year Lunches

.: Monday, January 23, 2012 :.

Happy chinese new year! Now… I know people got excited over this year's being a dragon year. I say, every second, every hour, every day, every month, and every year is good since it is created by Him for us. So… be it dragon year, rat, bla bla bla, continue on living and giving our best <3

What I like about CNY here is we have 2 days off, how cool is that. And initially I wanted to go back Bali, playing with my "barongsai" puppies, but as it happened, we have family coming over instead. We spent Sunday afternoon having dinner together at fred's brother's place. Then, we had the rest of the days off for ourselves. Off to Vivo city we went, to take a look at Sentosa Flower Festival. But oh my, when we reached vivo, it looked like the mall was being invaded by those Chinese and Indians wanting to go to Sentosa as well. Bye bye flower festival.

Aahh… it was Padang dishes for our lunch. I wanted to have dim sum but all chinese restaurants were closed on first day of CNY.

 

.: Tuesday, January 24, 2012 :.

Okay so Padang was not that bad, but I was dying for dim sum. Thank God the 2nd day of CNY, one decent chinese restaurant was open.

Dinner Marathon with Colleagues

.: Thursday, January 19, 2012 :.

One of our ex-colleagues will be leaving for Taiwan, so we arranged a little farewell dinner cum pre chinese new year dinner. After office, five of us heading to Hillman Restaurant at Ferrer Park. There, we met two ex-colleagues. Meeting ex-colleagues together over meal will certainly bring a lot of interesting gossips haha. Overall, having dinner together with colleagues is what makes me remember we are all "human being", and we tend to forget that when we get so stressed out. So it was nice, to recall again why I like working together with them, and on top of that, to bitch together about our sworn enemy at office lol. 😏

 

.: Friday, January 20, 2012 :.

Yazawa is a traditional Japanese yakiniku style restaurant. I like the ambiance, like a real izakaya place. Well, my ex-colleague Kenjin has been persuading me to try this restaurant for literally since the first month of us working together until now, that is almost 1.5 year. And wanna know why it took me 1.5 year? It's because Yazawa only serves a top quality beef which only means one plate of certain part of cow can cost $120 - $150, only for 5-6 slices 😱  But those meat… they're so ridiculously good.

So, five of us *two of them are ex-colleagues* braced ourselves to enter this place. We trusted Kenjin, who clearly is a Yazawa regular, to pick a menu for us. For an appetizer, we had a tomato flown over from Japan which costed $12, for one bloody tomato! But the grown-in-Japan tomato proved itself worth the price. Really, I never tasted tomato that good before nor have I ever eaten one when I still stayed in Japan. If I knew Japan's tomatoes cost so high here, I would have eaten myself sick of tomatoes in Japan. 😪

For the drink, what else could best accompany beef other than sake? Besides, our friend Kenjin is notoriously fond of wine and sake. I had a Calpis, aaah hishashiburi ni~

Oh the meat, made me recall my wagyu kobe beef experience with my family. It melted in your mouth, that's how good it is. And see that marble like pattern?… kampeki. They said that all the beef is flown from Japan everyday without refrozen twice so it's all fresh… and tastes so lip-smackingly good 😘

The Forgotten Blog

Well well well, if this blog was a book, it would be collecting dust by now haha. Just finished setting up new blog editor in iMac and guess what, I forgot my blog URL @.@ and I had to open up my iPad whose browser cache, luckily hasn't been cleared for decade, to look up my blog URL!

So it is some sort of wake up call I guess, for me to start blogging again.

To start off with a topic, I switched to Mac. Noo, not completely, I mean I still own my dear old pink vaio but it is getting less and less used now. And this iMac is not mine but Fred's. He has it since.. i dunno, more than three years ago maybe, a gift from his boss, but is never used. I know, riiigghht?? When I figured out this iMac whereabout almost two years ago, I literally rolled my eyes, took a deep sigh and began throwing him a series of why's. Why he is not using it is incomprehensible to me. I mean, who doesn't want to use Mac especially when he has one?  Such a beauty and he has it covered up in a box *sob, sob* So, it is up to me now to unleash this pretty iMac.