Quarter 2 Team Building

Our next team building is 2 more weeks from now so I think if I don't write about my last team buildings, I never will.

Initially we wanted to go to Universal Studios, because the last time we went for team building, the Galactica and Transformers ride were not ready! However, my boss wanted something different, something away from Marina Bay and Sentosa because most of our activities and dinners revolve around these 2 places.

We voted and decided to rent chalets and do a BBQ instead. BBQ? Under the blazing hot sun? I, for one, definitely wasn't looking forward to it.

#1 Goldkist beach resort. Turns out it was some ancient old chalet at East Coast.

#2 The beach, just 5 minutes walk from the chalet.

#3 The guys, put to work rightaway. Started barbeque pit fire while waiting for the vendor to deliver the marinated BBQ food.

#4 Kenny, the organizer, also my cube neighbor, and Ken.

#5 We rented 2 'villa's and we seem to be the only residents there.

#6 Danh, one of my badminton kaki and Alec, the assigned photographer of the day. He took all the photos here.

#7 The vendor was pretty good. So much food! Even though there's 40 of us we still could not finish it. Other things are mediocre, except sambal sotong and stingray which is quite yummeh! Oh, premium cup-otah too. The rest are just fried bee hoon, noodle, satay, garlic bread, chicken wing, butter corn, lamb, the usual BBQ food. Good thing about ordering from vendor is they marinate and pack all the things nicely and even deliver with the utensils, charcoal, aluminium tray etc. Which means, we dont have to do ANYTHING at all except starting fire and EAT.

#8 Tung, my Vietnamese colleague, also an alcoholic. He drinks almost every other day, and once he got so drunk during our annual dinner that we went on stage and hugged our CEO.

#9 Elvie. One of the major contributor of the day. Before I go for the BBQ, I was still thinking who the hell would want to stand outside and BBQ under the hot weather. Turns out almost all of them took turns without being asked! Ehem, except, for my team.

#10 I did not bring my camera. So took my boss's camera and played around while people cook for me haha.

#11 The one on the right is my manager. On the left, is the SAP business IT manager. Both of them sat there and bbq for us. When he's done, he'll shout for us to pick up the food!

#12 My team. Obviously not contributing except finishing all the beer.

#13 While I hid in the chalet which was air-conditioned.

#14 My team mates and lunch kakis.

#15 Kenny shouted and tried to get us to play a game, and it took him almost 1 hour to finally get our name on the board.

#16 At that time, this "Draw Something" game was still the IN thing. I also played it almost everyday at that time, then one day I just decided to quit and never logged in since! Not long after, I never hear people talk about 'Draw Something' at all.

#17 Our boss rented bicycle for all of us after the game so we can go cycle around the park all the way to the beach. I haven't cycled in ages! It took me almost 15 minutes to finally get the hang of it. I used to have a racing bike, not mine, my brothers! Haven't cycled since I left Segamat.

#18 Pit stop.

#19 Then the rest caught up.

#20 Pit stop again at the hawker on the way back to get sugarcane because we're all exhausted and dehydrated.

#22 They're both my cube neighbors and I'm never bored because they talk all the time. So loving wtf.

#23 Heading back to the chalet!

#24 Then we stayed in the air-conditioned room and watched while one of our team mate did his dirty dance thing and shake his bootay to songs he picked from his own iPod wtf. Nobody forced him! He volunteered to entertain us. As you can see he's the only one dancing in the middle while all 40 of us sat around him laughing coz he's so daring!

#25 Our 2 IA students. Left is Pris from NUS who's in our team and right is Hyosun from Korea who's in the business IT team. She had peace sign in EVERY SINGLE PHOTO. I guess that's the Korean way of taking photo. Her boss can never pronounce her name correctly so in the end he just called her 'Samsung', during her whole 6 months training.

#26 Amy, Juliet and me.

#27 Most of us! That's our director lying there.

#28 Last one!

Work environment is pretty harsh over here compared to my previous company. But still, I think most of them are still OKAY to work with. At times I get really frustrated but I'm slowly getting the rhythm and catching up on how to get things done with the military working style.

I cannot believe I'm here for 2 years already. Time really flies!

Sports

I had an awesome day!

I haven't played tennis for the past 5 years? 10 years? OK come to think of it, I do remember playing once when I was back in Penang with Porny and Joe. I moved house a couple of times and I lost my beloved 'Hammer' racquet which has followed me since I was playing for 'Under 15' all the way till Uni. I didn't even realize I lost it! I kept blaming my mum for losing it during the infamous Segamat flood though.

I joined Badminton session every Tuesday sponsored by the company. Even though I suck at badminton but I think they can tell I play some sort of ball game wtf. So one of them asked me what sports I was involved in and I told him TENNIS.

That's how it all started.

He told his colleagues who also play tennis and they invited me to their weekly Wednesday tennis session! I don't really know any of them but I went anyway because..oh tennis...how I missed you so.

I thought I had forgotten how to play. It's been soooo many years. So I was really glad to know I haven't lost my momentum. The fundamental is still there and even though I can't smash as hard as before, but I think I'm still pretty good for I still can make killer shots /shameless wtf.

When they told me they don't really know how to play, I was expecting balls flying all over the court. Well, balls did fly all over the court, but surprisingly they can play rather well! If I feed the ball to them they can hit it back. So I think I had a pretty good 3 hours warm up today!

Now I have badmintons on Tuesdays, tennis on Wednesdays, table tennis on Thursdays and all with different group of people from the company. Though I sort of give up on badminton already because there's this guy who is SO RELUCTANT to play everytime it's my turn to play. And he tried at all cost to avoid playing with me. NOT LIKE HE VERY GOOD ALSO ! I try not to let his unsporting-ness get to me but still, extremely discouraging la ok.

I can't decide if I still want to continue joining next Tuesday. Apparently it proves that one person's shitty face can spoil a lot of things.

The Hossan Leong Show

My colleague randomly showed me a brochure one day and asked if I'm interested to go watch this Hassan's show and I'm like huh who's Hassan wtf. His real name is Hossan Leong and he's a Singapore comedian so I said sure why not since everyone's going anyway even though it's S$55 per person.



This is..err..Hassan.



I met up with 7 of them in Drama Center, National Library Building near Bugis Junction. And I'm severely underdressed. Most of the people there are in formal dresses and heels and makeup all over. But then, hmm, it's Singapore. Everyone's always overdressed anyway.



The hall wasn't very big, probably just 30 rows? And few more rows upstairs. We're seated at the 2nd last row but can still see his face clearly.

It's......okay. It's not that I dont think he's funny, it's just that he's not hilarious. But for Singapore standard, good enough lah. If you are not Singaporean, you probably won't be able to catch most of the jokes since it's all making fun of the recent SG General Election, Presidential Election, and the current local issues like foreign talent, domestic helpers, then they made their own version of Iron Chef and So You Think You Can Dance.

It's a good night out but I don't think I'll go for the 4th episode.

Swensens And Japanese.

The boss dragged all of us out for lunch on him out of a sudden. Probably 3rd or 4th this year. This time it's in Swensen's and each of us get to order a main entrée of our choice, 1 side, 1 mushroom soup, 1 ice cream and 1 soda.

End up we ordered all the sides in the menu since there's almost 18 of us.


#1 The guys. Not that I want to curi take their photo but because they got their food earlier and the girls have nothing to do except complaining why ours are so slow.


#2 The famous U.S fries. konon la. Not very nice also. But I finished most of it since nobody else wants it.


#3 My side. The spicy chix fingers.


#4 My entrée. Grilled barramundi with lemon butter sauce with mashed potato (that flower-like thing). Only managed to eat half of it coz I'm stuffed from all the sides!

By the way,
I did my Japanese final exam today woohoo finally after 6 looong months. I don't know if I will pass (I sure hope I do) but if fail then no choice but to go back and re-sit lor. I get 1 month rest before the next level starts, so yay to free Monday nights!

I'm pretty happy with my year so far. I think I made good progress, unlike previous few years where resolution is made but never fulfilled. Previous few years are spent doing absolutely nothing which is..kinda fun too wtf.

So now I have to concentrate on that one item which had been on my list for like..FOREVER...which is...losing off the extra weights la what else! I can foresee it failing also this year. I tried to exercise..really! I ran for 300m (not even 1 football field) and started to feel out of breath and my vision is blur and I want to faint. I'm serious! Is that what age does to people! /finding excuse wtf. So yah...I need to make time for bodyrocking 3 days a week at least! (i actually wrote 5 then change to 4 now 3 wtf).

Mad For Garlic

One random Friday we decided to make a trip down to Suntec City after work to try this restaurant that XiaoJun raved about so many times. If someone can rave about one restaurant for more than 5 times then there's no reason you don't go try it out right.

Mad For Garlic, a unique restaurant that offered 40 kinds of Italian dishes with a Korean twist. The restaurant originated from Korea and it is a hit in Singapore. We were there on a Friday night and it was packed. On weekends if we do not make a reservation then we will have to sit outdoor which is not very comfortable. Some of the waiter/tress are Korean and there're also a lot of Korean customers too.

Their signature dishes: Dracula Killer, Garlic Snowing Pizza, Garlicpeno Pasta, Mushroom Risotto and Garlic Steak, which we did not manage to order all cause there's only 5 of us.


#1 The interior is as expected, full of GARLIC and wines and wine glasses. We thought it's almost like a dracula house err and the hanging wine racks right on top of our table. No actually right on top of our head.


#3 Anchovy garlic cream fondue. Which is the best we had for the night. No I mean the rest are good too but I love love love this! The bread is soft yet crunchy and when dipped into the garlic cream fondue...heavenly! But I'm thinking the next time I go I'll request them to replace all the extras (tomato and greens) with bread. Absolutely mouthwatering.


#4 Garlic bread tower. If you think this is a normal garlic bread then you're so wrong. The bread came standing with lots of garlic bits on top then the waitress will press them all down into the middle and lie it flat and cut it into pieces. Not the usual garlic bread but is really BREAD WITH GARLIC BITS you know what I mean?


#5 Garlic Snowing Pizza. Sweet garlic pizza topped with shrimps and pineapple dice. The waiter did 1 round of cheese snowing on top, but we requested for 1 more round so it's so FULL of cheese then we can barely see the fried garlic bits and shrimp on top!


#6 Mushroom risotto. Risotto cooked with spinach and mushroom topped with grilled chicken leg. Obviously I didn't try this one because it's full of mushroom and I hate risotto coz I'm super Cina like that. I hate WET rice! But I can tell they don't really like this dish coz they say it's too spicy for their liking.


#7 3 of us ordered Garlicholic Rice. Special fried rice with garlic pickles, shrimp and asparagus. We're a bit too greedy because we should have just ordered two. The entree is huge so none of us could finish it. I...don't really like this because there's just TOO MUCH garlic! There's like 40% garlic cloves in it, not the small chopped ones that we use for chinese cooking but the big cloves and many many of them! Err I'm okay with garlic but this is wayyyyyyyyyyy over.

Bill comes up to $109 for 2 starters (garlic bread tower and garlic cream fondue), 5 entrée and 5 warm water, which translates to just $22 per person for all that food!

If you're not a garlic lover, there's also a couple of other dishes you can try but very limited though. Otherwise, try this place out! I'm sure you'd love the bread garlic cream fondue! At least I do =) Which reminds me, if Joe is okay with garlic I should totally buy him a dinner here since he paid for mine like 2374623465234873459 times wtf.

Downside? I burp and fart garlic the whole night and even had a garlic pee wtf.

Mad For Garlic

3, Temasek Boulevard , #01-039,

Suntec City Mall,

038983, Singapore.

+65 6333 1507

Sunday to Thursday 11:30am - 10:00pm
Friday to Saturday 11:30am - 11:00pm

Eat with Your Family Day 2011

Today is our "Eat with Your Family Day" and we get to leave work early.
And the slogan is "Make a date with your family now! Live, love and play together".

Okay now only I know people in my company dont eat with family on usual days and only during these days that they "make a date" with family wtf.

My colleagues immediately called up the CC and booked 2 hours of badminton court so everybody's going...everybody except me. I'll be traveling up to KL again this weekend and it's gonna be a busy Sat and Sun with confined water trainings and exam.

Can't wait for June. I'll be getting my much needed weekend hibernation in SG for the whole month before Vietnam & Perhentian in July!

Oh and GSS starts tomorrow!

New Food Vendor Today.

Every now and then, my company would hire different vendors to setup stalls in the office (in addition to the existing cafeteria vendor). Everything is free of charge. The stall will be open from 8am till 10pm so whenever you feel like eating, you just drag your ass down to the cafeteria and have them make it fresh and you can take as many as you like. Normally, each vendor lasted 3 days. ENOUGH to make you sick of the thing.

The previous time was Muar Chee, you know, the sticky rice balls coated with sugar and peanut.


Credit: rasamalaysia.com

And then last last month was Popcorn and they have both the caramel and the unsweetened ones. I was so bloody kiasu I took 1 packet every 2 hours wtf until I'm so sick of popcorn! I hadn't had any since that day until now.

I cannot remember the others coz it was last year already.

Today, it's Old Chang Kee. They brought the whole big truck and parked right outside the lobby so anytime you feel like having one or maybe two curry puffs, just drop by and have them make it fresh for you. Crispy hot!

I'm sure all of you know Old Chang Kee 老曾记, the ubiquitous little shop at almost every corner of major streets.



And one thing I cannot tahan is when people pronounce curry puff as KALIPOK. Dont know lah I felt it's err..not very nice to say KALIPOK.

Very tough to say Curry Puff..or Karipap meh? Kalipok kalipok kalipok...chickenpok..taupok.. niamehpok. ok obviously this one is a Hainanese vulgar word. I don't know what it means exactly but whenever something pisses korej off, he will say niamehpok! LOL.

Sakura Buffet

Hey this one photo a day thing seems to be going well! I remembered to whip out my phone and took photo of my...lunch...heh.

Of course this is not just what I ate. The first dish of fried rice, kong pao chicken, tofu, crackers, roast chicken & garlic bread finished before I remembered to record it down.

The black thing on the top right corner is the Herbal Chicken Soup and Pulut Hitam (black sesame dessert). There're a whole lot of teppanyaki and sushi and raw salmons and stuff but I was too full to take those. I probably only manage to eat less than $10 worth of food..how can!

This is actually our quarterly lunch with the boss at Sakura International Buffet, around $20 per person for 15 of us, which is OVERPRICED for the quality of the food. I don't think there's 1 thing I ate that I felt like taking the 2nd round, okay maybe just the breaded tempura but that's it! Others just spell mediocre. Initially the plan is just to go for Popeye since everybody's busy but the boss is kind enough to fork out more $$ and let us hang out there longer. Come to think of it, I actually think Popeye would probably taste better!

I wanted to take photo of the sushi and teppanyaki but the waiter told me NO PHOTOS ALLOWED so I went to the corner and while I was taking mushroom soup and pulut hitam, I curi curi take one photo, which is pretty much meaningless since you cant see anything also.

Okay! Back to my desperado housewifeto!

Resorts World Sentosa - Universal Studios Singapore Part II

Action!

Part I here.

Universal Studios is built up of 7 main areas.


#1 Park map.

Source

Entrance is at the bottom. When you walk left, it's the Madagascar (with the ship & huge tree). After Madagascar, is Far Far Away (the palace). Moving on, is The Lost World (with the streams of river). Walk straight down, is Ancient Egypt. After Egypt, is Sci-Fi City (with the galactica roller coaster). Beside SciFi is New York. And the last one is Hollywood, which is where you exit the park as well.

We reached the entrance around 1.30pm and spent like half an hour there getting the tickets ready and also for the rest of the team to arrive.


#2 Me, Amy & Juliet. Amy is the organizer so she's busy going around buying McDonalds and getting tickets for all of us.


#3 USS Entrance.


#4 The gang. We sorta hang out together and makan together and a bit antisocial and never join any other teams. fuh. So many "and"s. Right most is my boss. He looks really garang. No I mean he IS really garang but garang towards our users which is a good thing then we won't kena bully. We always call him the gangster of the team coz everytime he say something he looks like he's gonna punch you in the face.


#5 My printed ticket. Looks a bit cheap right. That's what I get from the counter.


#6 My cube neighbours. Left is Asri, who was extremely helpful and any questions asked he would really take time and answer you patiently. Right is Shen Yi. As you can see he doesn't really like me from the distance between us haha NO LA he's just really really really shy! Really! He doesn't hate me! *in denial


#7 The team that went that day. Some of the team member was clearing annual leaves so missed out on this. And another team of 5-6 has not yet arrived so, only left us few small potatoes here. They're all wearing the team shirt. I also got but I don't really wanna take photo in USS with that shirt! So............I had it hang around me instead.


#8 Dreamworks row of shops at the entrance.


#9 Right after entrance, you turn left to the office and get the $5 food voucher & $5 gift voucher and the park maps. They say Yang Bin (on the left) looks like some ah pek going to pasar buy pork like that coz of the slipper and how he sit! He's from China and he's funny, but not intentional funny, coz he can't speak English that well so whenever he tries to explain something, it turns out to be a joke to the rest of us haha so bad esp when he talks to his best friend Tung (who's a Vietnamese). Only both of them can understand each other haha so cute.


#10 The entrance road leading to the start of the park. Turn left to Madagascar and right to Hollywood.


#11 We also hang out here for almost half an hour taking photos and checking maps.


#12 I didn't watch Madagascar so I have no idea but they say this is the tree from Madagascar so, Madagascar tree it is!


#13 Life size replica of a ship. I have no idea but I googled and it seems like this ship is the ship that the zoo animals fell off at the start of their adventure in Madagascar. If you have watched the cartoon, you should know what I'm talking about?

We didn't go for any rides in Madagascar land but if I'm not mistaken, there's this ride called "A Crate Adventure". It's a ride on wooden boats where you'll drift down rivers and meet the characters from Madagascar.


#14 Me and XiaoJun, the doll in the team. When I first saw her I thought she looked like Liang Yong Qi from some HK movies. Her skin is super soft and nice! And veryyyyyyyyyy tallllllll toooooooo. She used to do part time modelling when she was younger. We took 3-4 photos here and actually bought an official one took by USS staffs for $12 per photo! A bit regret coz so expensive!


#15 We didn't go for the ride because we are busy queuing to take photo with the characters. We managed to get this one with the penguins but after that we queued for the lion and when it's our turn, they had to go in and perform so we didn't get to take any! boohoo.


#16 Before the characters left, they were dancing to the "Move it Move It" song and it's sooooo adorable!


#17 I nearly bought the lion soft toy even though i don't like cartoons wtf.


#18 Okay after all the cute dancing and shows and everything, I still don't think I will download and watch a cartoon..hmm...


#19 On the right opposite Madagascar is this tree house. We just nonchalantly walked past it because none of us know what it is. So we didn't even bother going in and walk around. Only when I reached home and downloading the photos into my PC that my 5 year old nephew ran in, saw this and say SHREK HOUSE and I'm like OHHHHHHHHHHH SHREK HOUSEEEEEE...wtf.


#20 Right after Madagascar is the Far far away land.


#21 The girls with Shrek! The fake papan Shrek. I couldn't find the real walking Shrek though if not definitely I will queue to take photo with it. U know I always say the boy looks like Shrek but I said it in the adorable Shrek cute way not the disgusting burping Ogre but he's still offended by my comment aih haha.


#22 We then went in the palace for Shrek 4D show and thank god it's air-conditioned because I'm almost barbecued! Mind you it's only like 1 hour out in the park only I nearly sweat to death. Queue was still bearable because the hall can withstand a lot of people. And there's water inside so everyone was filling cold water and stuff.


#23 The girls, somewhat refreshed 0.01% after drinking cold water.


#24 Shrek is the only cartoon I watch and I loved it! Only like the 1st one though, 2nd one is a bit mehhhhh. Can't decide whether pig is cuter or donkey or Pinocchio!


#25 After like 10 minutes of pestering by us, the boss finally agreed to let us take 1 photo of him -_-"


#26 This part is exactly the same as the one in Universal Studios L.A. You will first gather in this mini hall where they will give you a quick brief story of Shrek and Fiona. Then there's a big screen at the middle showing Gingerbread man trapped in the Dungeon.


#27 Mirror mirror on the wall tell me if I'm the fairest of them all wtf.


#28 We're then ushered into this hall and everyone grab their own 4D glass, or 3D glass. err. Is the 4D show and 3D show glasses the same wtf?


#29 HAHA Da Wei dont know how to wear glasses!

The show itself is different from the one in LA though. This one has the air from the back of your seat and geli ticklish thing at your ankle there. But quite enjoyable lah not sure is it because of the show or the air-conditioning. The show is quite short, maybe less than 10 minutes only.


#30 Haha mutant dragon donkey. I really don't understand how the donkey can make the dragon pregnant lol but it's a god damn cartoon so, what the heck.


#31 I was walking around and I told them "hey we haven't go to the palace yet" and they said "wtf you just came out of it for the shrek show" and me "oh the show's in THAT palace?" wtf blur max.

Okay! This USS journey is only 3 hours plus but I have to divide into so many parts not because got a lot of things to say but because I malas already! I got some things to do now so I'll continue with the other parks later ok!

Weather has been crazy lately. Every morning I woke up to gloomy sky and was extremely windy when I walk to the bus stop and every evening it rains! I hate it! My bus stop is opposite the company so I hate to cross the road and everyday I'm drenched like shit and my umbrella always fail on me. At critical times it will refuse to open aih. Can the sky please stop raining on evenings and rain at noon insteadddddddddddddddddddd?