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Pixel had an small housewarming party at his new place during the Raya holidays, and hubby and I were invited…=) After stopping by at BSC to pick up a bottle of wine and two of Chef Jerome’s cakes from Mr. Ho’s @ BSC, and after a couple of wrong turns…we finally arrived only to find that we were the last ones….*blush*

When we arrived, WS was already at the BBQ busy BBQ-ing the kebabs that they had prepared earlier…mmmm! Plates were already laid out on the table out on the veranda, with ice-cold glasses of fizzy apple juice all ready for consumption! Boy…was I hungry! Mvo had prepared a salad called Insalada Caprese that comprised of Bocconcini, basil, rocket leaves, tomato and herb vinagrette that tasted oh-so-divine! There were three types of kebabs: chicken, beef and vegetarian, pasta, another salad and BBQ-ed pineapple…what a feast! And yes…the BBQ-ed pineapple tasted great with everything! But honestly, my personal favourite was the salad…I’m tempted to try to recreate it one fine day…it was so yummy! For dessert, Pixel had prepared lemon sorbet as well as a huge plate of kuih, and he had my favourite blue and white kuih ( I really can’t remember what it’s called) with kaya (coconut jam). He also had mak chok (boiled barley soup) that he kindly heated up for me and hubby to try. All that coupled with the two cakes (Royal - rich choc with a hazelnut base and Foret Noir - blackforest cake)…well, you can just imagine how stuffed we all were! Burp, indeed!

After dinner, Pixel gave us a tour of his house…I totally love all the knick knacks that they have all around the house…if only I had my camera with me! It would’ve made such interesting photos! The guys adjourned upstairs to play with Pixel’s X-box, while I spent the time with mvo in Pixel’s room viewing lots and lots of cool stuff on her iBook. Amazingly enough, hubby actually walked away from the X-Box to join us later…but we knew the real reason why…he wanted to play around with mvo’s Nikon D50 SLR camera! *grin* Oh oh….and Pixel and WS bought us two cuddly stuffed toys from Jim Thompson while they were in Bangkok…thanks, guys!!! Mine is the elephant cause it’s PINK.

By the time we left, it was almost 1am, and drizzling slightly. The guys were engrossed in playing a card game called Dungeoneer (I think!), so we quickly said our goodbyes and thanked Pixel and his family for having us over…=) And no…we didn’t get lost on the way back….

We recently had a surprise farewell party@ Saisaki for our boss, L, whose last day was on 15th November. For her farewell gift, we were all supposed to fill up an Ikea photo box each, with the central theme being shoes (L is a shoe lover…or collector…heheh…). I agonized over mine for days, and just couldn’t think of what to do. Furthermore, we were supposed to complete the boxes by the 11th, and I was in Singapore from the 10th to 13th, so I begged for a deadline extension.

While in Singapore, I kept a lookout for miniature shoes, or any shoe-like accessories…and I got lucky on my first and third day there! On the first day, I found four dangly handphone accessories with little shoes attached….and on the third day, I hit gold! There was a stall in Isetan that were selling charm bracelets, and OMG, they had like tons of tiny miniature shoes!! I picked out another six in pink, red and blue with tiny diamente on top…sooo cute!

As soon as we got back from Singapore, I made a beeline to Toys R Us @ Midvalley. Earlier in the evening, I’d already decided that I would decorate the box like a bedroom, with the miniature shoes scattered all around. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any doll furniture small enough to fit the box…=( The best I could find were wooden furniture sets for dollhouses, but the cabinet itself took up almost all the space in the box! Darn! I decided to try Jusco’s toy section, but just in case, I hid the furniture sets (there were not many left!) at the back of one of the shelves…*grin*

At first, I still couldn’t find anything suitable at Jusco’s toy section…but just when I was about to give up, I ended up on one aisle that had the cutest dollhouse furniture from Japan! A tad bit pricey, but at that point, I was desperate, people! After spending almost half an hour comparing furniture sets and opening up boxes to try to see how much furniture can fit into the box, I finally settled upon a bedroom set that consisted of a bed, dressing table, wardrobe, side table, carpet, photo frame, and all sorts of super-duper-small-sized stuff. As the furniture was white with lavender details, I bought some light and dark purple paper from The Paper Boutique as well as some ribbons to serve as the wallpaper.

By the time I got back home, it was close to 9pm and I was panicking big time! I scattered everything on the floor of our study room and proceeded to use pliers to remove all the shoes from the bracelet and handphone straps. After that, I begin UHU-ing all the small items from the furniture set together…clock and photo frame to the side table, lipstick, perfume bottles, etc. to the dressing table. Once done, I left those to dry while I started on the ‘wallpaper’ of the room. Finally, everything was starting to come together…and after some fiddling around (the furniture was so damn small!) and arranging the shoes, I finalized the layout and started glueing everything into place.

Headache, people!!!

By the time I finished everything, it was 1am, and I was dead-tired…but really satisfied with my creation…=) The next day, I glued the remaining lavender paper to the back to cover the unsightly hardboard, and covered the side with the ribbons I bought. I had to really press some of the shoes firmly into place as I used double-sided tape instead of glue for those shoes so that L could still pull them out and use them as charms for the charm bracelet, or as handphone accessories.

Almost there…:

And if you were wondering how the final product turned out to be….well, here’s a pic…=)

Trust me, I was so relieved I managed to finish everything in one night…it was like a whole load off my shoulders…=) But I have to admit that I did have four freaking hours of fun putting all the pieces together…!

All About Love
Man….this is one huge tearjerker! The only actor that I like in this show is Andy Lau….Charlene Choi is cute, but quite irritating at times, and Charlie Yeung has a really funny way of crying that just drove me nuts while watching the show!! The ending surprised me a little bit…maybe because I’m a little bit blur when it comes to Cantonese shows (I read the English substitles cause my Cantonese just totally sucks). Won’t divulge details of the ending of course, in case you are equally blur…heheh…=) But I remember thanking god that I didn’t wear mascara on the night I watched this show! *sob sob sob sob sob*

April Snow
I have to admit that my expectations were set quite high for this show. Not to say I was disappointed, but I found the show a tad bit slow. And after throwing in the censorship board snipping away bits and pieces of the show and really lousy English subtitles that disappears and reappears throughout the whole show….well, I didn’t leave the cinema with an all-too-happy feeling. Of course, the famed si-lai-sat-sau looked as good as ever…*drool*…=) The characters were believeable and the acting, especially during the scenes where they cried were absolutely heartrending. You’ll find out the meaning of the title somewhere in the middle of the show….and the ending was pretty nice…=) But there’s just something that doesn’t feel right about the two of them falling in love in those circumstances. Gimme Winter Sonata anytime!

The Legend of Zorro
A fun show, but not as good as The Mask of Zorro. Just doesn’t quite have that oommpph. And what is it with Antonio Banderas’s hair in this show? It looked flat and oily…eww!! And the kid is just…urmm…irritating. But Catherine Zeta Jones looked as good as ever as Elena! =)

Election.
Yeah…I forgot I watched this show…cause it totally sucked. The story was disjointed, and I swear the ending was tailor-made for the M’sian market. Pfffttpphhhtt. Two thumbs down all the way!

Just after posting an entry on how much I missed my camera…hubby gave me the good news that it’s ready and we went to collect it today! Yay yay! I can finally take nice(r) shots of the stuff I bought in Singapore.

Spent the whole day (was on leave) relaxing…=) Woke up late, had a good lunch, took a nap in the evening, went to parent’s place for dinner, updated some photos in Photoblogum, trying to catch up on my blog entries, cleaned up some Singapore photos to be posted up later….bliss…=) Tomorrow’s Friday, which is my favourite working day of the week…and then it’s weekend! Yay yay again! Am now updating songs into my new toy…iPod video! White, of course….=) Just copied the full Chanel No. 5 ad over…ooo…I get goosebumps watching it!

And by that, I mean my Canon SLR camera which has been sent for servicing 3 weeks ago. I can’t get used to using a compact anymore! I brought our Canon PowerShot to Singapore and all the photos that we, or rather, I took just didn’t turn out nice! Especially all the foodie photos…damn spoil lar. Either the flash was way too bright for close-up shots of the food, or I can’t get my favourite blurry effect…*strangles poor, helpless compact camera*. Argh. And and and….the sound. No sound effect lar…I kept on telling anyone and everyone that would listen that the sound effect matters (the chik-chak sound of the shutter opening and closing). And I want to be able to focus. And change the aperture. And change the shutter speed. Well, ooookkk…technically, I can do that on my compact in manual mode…but eeeyeeeerrr…it’s like…ok. I can’t think of an example to compare it to. Suffering.

*chants…I want my camera back, I want my camera back…*