On the eve of CNY, the whole of Sai Family were back at home together, including my eldest sister. We spring cleaned the house, secretly trying to throw away a lot of things, prepared food together and joke together.

Our reunion dinner consist of lou hei, prawns, chicken, fish and many other home cooked food.

On the 1st day of CNY, everyone started to prepare to go out to pai lin.

The usual sequence of activities is ‘go neighbour’s house’, ‘tea ceremony’, ‘family portrait taking’, ‘go aunt’s house’, ‘visit good shepherd sister’, ‘then to tapah’. But this time, we took a different approach cause my dad didn’t want other people to keep rushing us to their houses. So, it was ‘go neighbour’s house’, ‘visit good shepherd sister’, ‘go aunt’s house’, ‘tea ceremony’, ‘family portrait taking’, ‘to tapah’.

It was a good change, we had more time to ourselves without my dad keep asking us to quickly go out. haha.. we even had time for a quick photoshoot.

My eldest sister was the ‘happiest’ this year round cause it has been years she didn’t come back for the tea ceremony, going to tapah and all.

Our family took some crazy photographs in our family portrait.

Going back to Tapah was quite fun too. The crowd has been smaller since my eldest uncle passed away, but we’re still managing to keep things together.

And similar to last year, we went to our 2nd eldest uncle’s house to eat their delicious Choi Kiok, Kai Jau (Alcohol Chicken), Chao Dou (Sambal Petai) and Chu Kiok Chou (Pig’s Trotter)!

On the 2nd day of CNY, we went to Kuala Kangsar and Lisa picked up her kids from BM. At night, we took a ‘more complete’ family portrait.

We had dinner at Mun Chong with Ah Chia, Sai Lui and Ah Lek’s family.

After that, we played some ‘creative firecrackers’. My nieces made some artistic words from the sparkles!

I then went to Chee Lim’s house for a small friend’s gathering. One thing’s for sure, the crowd is getting thinner over the years..

On the 3rd day, I spent most of the day at home. When night came, I went to Chin Zwen’s house for her BBQ open house!

Again, the crowd’s pretty small but we still had some good time eating, chatting and gambling. Zwen’s dad thought us some new gambling game. I left early to join my family in a bistro that Lisa usually visit. There’s actually a bistro with live jazz band in Ipoh Garden!

They have an ‘open’ concept where anyone can come up to play the instruments and even sing! My brother sang awfully well and had lots of applause from the crowd. I even had some fair share of singing there. haha

Rosemary also did a duet with James too!

On the 4th day, everyone started leaving already. James and Rosemary’s family went back to KL. Grace left the day before and only left me, lisa and alice’s family. It was until the 4th day that I only started to initiate meetups with some friends. I met up with Mun Keng, Sek Hee, Joanna, Pinkie and Yee Hui.

On the 5th day, Yin Sin came down to Ipoh!! She’s taking a bus back to Singapore from Ipoh cause Alor Star’s bus station tickets to SG got sold out. On this day, there was a tragic news where we learned that our cousin passed away from cancer. So, my dad, lisa and alice went down to kl to pay a visit. Only left with me, yin sin and my mum at home.

I left Ipoh to SG on the 7th day, where I took the train to KL, then the plane from KL to SG. I also sent off Yin Sin from Changi Airport to Japan…That marks the end to my CNY holidays.

It was an awesome CNY week. It’s always nice to be around your family members.

“Man…. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present, the result being that he does not live in the present or the future. He lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.”

The casts are so good. The acting, the singing, the music and the scenes.. The ‘typical blonde’ of Glinda was so entertaining.

The touching moments of Glinda and Elphaba growing up together and being separated..

How the Wicked Witch of the West came to be..

Worth every penny watching it.

1. Our 1st Housemate ‘Overseas’ Trip to Malacca
2. Be part of my first close friend’s door to Marriage; Ian’s engagement. This means that it’s the start of the Marriage Chapter in my social life.
3. Travelled to Indonesia twice in a year. Once with my family, and once with yin sin.
4. Many great buys: iPad2, Crucial C300 SSD, my Desk Chair,
5. Planted my first tree
6. Attended my first LGBT event
7. Yin Sin’s Graduation!
8. My trip to Laos
9. Attended my first friend’s wedding; Oh Chin Zwen!
10. Ran my first (and probably last) Standard Chartered Marathon.

And as to my 2011 new year’s resolution of getting a six pack. This was what happened. I signed up for gym membership and it went quite well. I actually lost my tummy but not to the extent of getting a six pack. After the 2011 Christmas and New Year’s gastronomical treats, my little tummy came back. And what more, CNY is just around the corner. I guess I’ll stick to what I read recently on 9gag.com.

“I’m too in love with my six-pack that I protect it with layers of fat”.

My Year 2012 Resolution: To read all the books I bought last time that end up laying around my room, untouched.

At night, I met up with Yee Hui, Chee Lim, Choon May and her boyfriend at Friend’s Cafe for the New Year’s countdown. It was the first time I met up with any friends since I came back. Hasn’t seen any of them since CNY.

Here’s to the last day of 2011 and onwards to 2012!

Christmas started off with the ending of Christmas mass in OMPH, Ipoh. Then, my mum prepared fruitcake, complemented by red wine.

When morning is dawn, Yin Sin and I went down to KL with my parents to meet with the rest of the Sai family. My eldest sister and her children, my 2nd sis with her children, rosemary with her kids, james, grace and myself gathered at Rosemary’s house to have Christmas lunch.

Rosemary catered Indian food for lunch. It was just a small celebration with a few of her close friends and our family. Jah Jah boy, rosemary’s son, is almost 2 years old and has a very cheeky face.

We had briyani, satay, rendang, fried chicken and lots of spicy food actually. It wasn’t too much to my liking (spicy food and all) but it wasn’t the main purpose we’re there. The main purpose is to witness the family bond; especially among generations.

All my nieces and nephews prepared a Christmas performance for us. They rehearsed for the past few nights and even has a lighting crew.

They performed ballet dance, K-pop dance, shuffling, singing and several sketches.

There were a lot of presents this year. It filled almost the entire living hall.

To speed up the presents opening process, all the kids worked together to sort and distribute the presents to the respective recipients.

The kids has lots of presents.

The adults were not left behind too.

Some are accompanied with heart-warming hugs,

While some of unique sisterly-love.

These are my presents!

I got lots of colognes and portable batteries.

Merry Christmas to everyone!

As it was too early, they were no shops open for breakfast. So, we headed back home and helped my mum prepare tong yuen. We mixed the flour, rolled the tong yuen and put in gula melaka. My mum would then boil the sweet soup.

We ate our tong yuen around 7am and right then, we decided to eat dim sum at yoke fook moon. The dim sum there is still good and maintained it’s quality.

For the rest of the day, it was just sleeping and eating. I slept after breakfast, and woke up for lunch. Then took an afternoon nap and woke up for dinner. How not to get fat in Ipoh?

Posted from Ipoh, Perak, Malaysia.

We reached JB around noon where we had the duck rice near city square mall. We wanted to head to the new Premium Outlet but since there were 5 of us, we needed to take two taxis and each taxi will cost us RM40 for one way. Instead, we decided to just spend the day at City Square Mall. We really didn’t plan anything and we ended up loitering in the mall, sat down at café and talk nonsense, and watched New Year’s Eve movie at the cinema. Once that’s done it was time for dinner and then we headed back to SG.

So, it was just eat, shop, eat, movie and eat. The simple day was both relaxing and tiring (physically tired due to walking aimlessly in the mall). It felt like high school again where we would go to Jusco to lepak and watch movies.

So, come marathon day. I did no training, no nothing! I had to get up from bed at 530am to run! My run was supposed to start at 715am but due to human traffic at the starting line, I only crossed the starting line at 740am.

I ran and saw past the 1km sign, and then right before the 2km sign, I felt something was wrong. My knee cap started to hurt. Then i realized, “shit! I used to injure my knee cap last time when I climbed mount Kinabalu”.

I started to walk from then on. When I feel that it was not as painful, I ran again and the cycle continues.

People say running marathon is about mental and not physical. I beg to differ. Mentally and in stamina, I would still be able to continue on but do to physical limitations, I could not.

I tried running more, ignoring the pain. And by the time I finished and my body started to relax, the sharp pain came. Guess I won’t be running any other marathon in the future.

But nevertheless, at least I complete the marathon run for this round!

Posted from Singapore.

My flight was scheduled at 11:20 AM. Everything was going smoothly at that time. We even boarded the plane and sat comfortably at our seats. Just when we were expecting the flight to take off, I noticed that the right engine propeller was spinning smoothly while the left side was not moving at all.. Not long later, there was an announcement from the captain saying that Engine 1 cannot be started and asked us to leave the plane and is safe for us to LEAVE OUR BELONGINGS in the aircraft!

Knowing best, I did not take their advise and took my bag down to the airport and wait. I thought it was just a minor fault and we would be up back in no time. After waited for more than an hour, I went out to their office to ask how long more do we have to wait. It was about 100pm at that time. The Fireflyz employee told us that we had to wait at least an hour and hope everything should be alright by 3pm. “Okay, I thought. I could at least ask my dad to pick us up back home cause we were quite hungry already”. So, I left my contact number with them cause they say they will call me when everything is in order.

I went back home for  a while and went back to the airport at 3pm, hoping (and fearing that the plane left without us) that everything would be okay. When I reached back there at 3pm, there were still a lot of people waiting. So, okay, I hope that it would not be long. We waited and waited and waited… and then.. I got a phone call from Ian.

You see, Ian, Mel, Bishan, Susan and Kuan bought the evening fireflyz ticket back to SIngapore as well. Their flight was at 440pm. We waited so long such that it was time for them to board their flight. Well, at least, there were more people now for us to share our misery with. We talked for a while and it was about 430pm already. Ian told me their flight also delay for about 20min. However, they waited till 515pm before the gates were opened to them to go into the boarding area.

Just when everyone was clearing the room, that was when I realized “Shit, where is everyone else?!” Luckily, I went to their office to enquire and one of their running workers told me that the morning flight people can board now. They have somewhat negotiated with the plane and manage to get us up on the plane. So, Yin Sin and I quickly rushed to the boarding room and boarded the flight.

But wait! They say that they’ve negotiated with the flight to bring us back… Does it mean that we have hijacked Ian and the rests’ flight? I looked at the air strip and there were 2 fireflyz plane there. One was the one that we are going to board, and another was the one that failed to take off the morning. I guess we have ‘hijacked’ the evening plane back… By the time the plane took off, it was 550pm already.

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When I reached Hougang, I thought I could share my story with Jit Vern since he took the 930am bus back to Singapore. When I reached home about 9pm, he was still not back yet! Oh noo… He was supposed to reach at 6pm or so. JV was only home at 930pm and he told me of his crazy waiting bus journey. It was waiting and waiting for bus passengers throughout his entire journey.

Shucks! and while I’m writing this post at 1020pm, Ian is still not back yet.. I hope his flight does not delay too much and can come back soon.

What a way to spend a Sunday!!