Valentine's Day

Yay… my hubby agreed to become my co-blogger wakkaka. So, it is only appropriate to let him begin his debut to a blogging world by writing about our Valentine's Day 2012 experience.
v(=^o^=)v

.: February 14, 2012. Tuesday :.
Written by: FM
About a week before the D-day, I went to several flower shops to look for special bouquet to give to my wife on Valentine's day. I already had an idea of the bouquet and what I actually wanted was to have the florist to deliver the bouquet to our home, exactly on 12am, but they could not do it, saying that the service is not available for Valentine's day. I was disappointed but I figured that I would just bring it home myself after work.
Secondly, I thought of having a good dinner for our Valentine's day.  So, I was out searching for a nice restaurant for the special dinner.  With a help (or no help) from my colleague, we created a list of restaurants. However, after making some calls, I immediately realized that it was tough to find a good restaurant when I tried to book just a day before the D-day. In the end, I was relieved that I could find one :)
After bouquet and dinner reservation, I still need to prepare for gift. Again, a day before the D-day, I went down to Tiffany & Co in Takashimaya to look for the gift and I got a pendant that I hoped she would like.
This is the first year we celebrate Valentine's Day as wedded couples. It started at 12am at home when I presented the gift to her. I was really glad that she loved it.

The next day, I was able to sign off early from work. I went to pick up the bouquet and actually wanted to take a cab home after that. The queue was long (guess a lot of people went home early from work that day) so I decided to take the bus home. I was the only one bringing bouquet of flower on my hand, but I could not care less. When I finally arrived home and presented the bouquet, it was well received (hurray) :D
We could not spend more time at home as we need to send our parents and brother to the airport. When we reached the airport and finished checking in, it was still early. To spend more time together while waiting for boarding, we went to "Paradise Inn" restaurant (just upstairs) to relax and have some food. However, after flipping the menu for about 10 minutes, we could not decide on what to order. We ended up ordering set menu. It came with a veggie dish cooked with salted egg, fried rice, wasabi shrimp, chicken soup, desserts and cold drinks. It was good. I ended up eating a lot and was wondering whether I could eat my Valentine's dinner later :P
After waving goodbye to our parents and brother, we realized that it was still 7.30pm when our dinner would be at 9pm. We, then decided to go to Changi City Point to just walk around until about 8.15pm before going for the dinner. The dinner was at "Forlino" restaurant, located at One Fullerton. I'd never been to that place so we just followed the sign and after going through alleys and steps, we're finally in the dining hall. The place was exquisite and the view was great. We spent our 7-course Valentine's dinner accompanied by great music from the violinists. The dinner was a special way to close our Valentine's Day. Most importantly, though, I got to spend the special day with my special one ;)

~ Our Sumptuous 7-Course Dinner ~

Another Yazawa Dinner

.: February 13, 2012. Monday :.

My mum and dad and my bro came to Singapore before traveling to Australia on the 14th. And today, we brought them to Yazawa for dinner. Yeah, it is the same Yazawa that my ex-colleague introduced to us and the beef was really on-par with those I had in Kobe that I wanted my family to try it as well.

And... they liked it, as I knew they would. Whenever I'm craving for a good (best?) bbq, i would go to Yazawa. Hmmm beefff… gimme more beef...

Busy Saturday

.: February 11, 2012. Saturday :.

What a busy Saturday we had.

This morning we went to a wedding. The bride and groom are our friends at church. Luckily their wedding reception ended at 2 PM so we rushed to the other end of Singapore to attend my colleague's daughter birthday bash. After that, accompanied Fred to hospital. It was a long day and it made me down to think that I had to work again at midnight today. At my state, I could drift off anytime soon let alone survived till morning. Thank God we reached home at around 7 PM, so I had 4 hours to steal some sleep.

What's for Dinner?

.: February 7 - 8, 2012 :.

I'm glad we have a Japanese supermarket, all the major Japanese food brands can be found here. So me and hubby went there for our weekly groceries shopping and I decided to try kare udon and katsu don recipes.

Oh well, kare udon is a no brainer really, you just melt down some kare blocks, add beef, put it on rice or udon. But I was a bit nervous about katsu don tho. As always, I hate it when it comes to deep frying. I can't tell if the dish is cooked or not. My idea of making sure it is cooked through, is to keep frying until it's blackened. If it's not dark golden brown yet, it's not cooked haha. And it didn't stop there, there is another stage of cooking involved in making katsu don.

So when I tasted the final dish, I was quite surprised that it tasted good (not to boast or anything, but it did taste good :p). Now, katsu don is our favorite meal (I leave the frying part to my hubby).

Cell Group Dinner

.: February 3, 2012. Friday :.

This week's Friday we had a cell group + dinner in our place. I prepared a very simple dishes, mpek-mpek, otak-otak, sushi roll, inari zushi and chicken wings. On top of that, our friends brought some side dishes and a huge blackforest cake. What a feast it was when I thought we only had a simple dinner :) We were celebrating our two cell group friends' birthday as well. Lovely night.

A Wedding and Reunion

.: January 28 - 30, 2012 :.

I was so excited to be back in Jakarta again. This time it was for a friend's wedding. We arrived on saturday, my mum and bro picked us up at the airport and we went to Bekasi straight away to inspect our new house. From there, we drove to Plaza Indonesia, since it is the closest mall to our hotel, to meet my friends Tika and Rosa. I discovered huge news, soo happy for my girl, way to go Tik, hihi.

Sadly, time didn't allow us to share many more gossips, my mum's close friend already booked us to have dinner together. Aahh the same restaurant we always went to whenever my mum visited me during my college years. After dinner, we even went to Binus, my bro wanted to sleep over at his friend's place near there. Seeing again the building where I stayed for over 3 years brought back old memories. I remember me and my "Golden Bowl" friends went out at midnight in search of a bowl of noodle and we had to literally make our way back through thunders and rain. In the middle of the night! I didn't know why I said yes to such an idea back then lol.

 

~ Our sinful yet super delicious dinner! ~

The drink is from a fruit called "Holland eggplant". I thought I heard my mum wrongly but yes, she said "terong belanda" with a face that said it wasn't a big deal at all haha. I asked her why would I want to drink an eggplant juice and my mum gave me her word that it was good, and It was indeed.

 

~ JW Marriott, the hotel we stayed at ~

 

~ The wedding ~

Hihi it felt weird seeing my friend's getting married, particularly this friend of mine. He is a friend that has seen the lowest of my lowest states, seen my teary face and listened patiently to my incoherent blubbering. He did all those with his signature goofiness wakkkaka. So, I am super duper happy for him.