In three days,
word shutter will officially be ONE YEARS OLD! Yeah~~ *throws confetti*
And to commemorate this special day (and to shamelessly commemorate my 22nd year on this planet we call Earth), I shall be blogging on my 22nd birthday celebration. There will be three parts to this collection (each part will be released every day until anniversary day arrives), unlike my
21st birthday, because you have to admit, being 22 years old is nothing special but at least it gives me content to blog about, yes? Plus, it's been awhile since I've actually blogged about my personal life on this personal blog - it's looking more like a CD review blog nowadays...
I've decided to call this year
~22nd: LITTLE MONSTER~ because of what happened on the actual day of my birthday. For more details which I shall not go into, you can read my
latest piece of the same title which I've blogged previously. If you get it, you will. If not, just treat it like a photographer/poet went insane.
And now, to the few readers out there (because I honestly think no one actually really reads my blog other than for the
ONE DIRECTION album which garnered over 2,000 views and counting), let's begin with the party!!
Seems that my birthday is always tied to singing, no? Like last year, I've celebrated my birthday by singing 3 times in 7 days! Well, not that I mind because I love singing with awesome people but maybe next year, I shall try something different. Anyway, the first stretch of the celebration (sounds like a festival already!!) is with my IS platoon mates from army and the location is the
10 DOLLAR CLUB at Chinatown. Now, I won't be going into the details of this cheap singing location because I've already did so just click on the name to go to the link, yes?
I arrived even before my friends did because I took the day off after running till my back almost snapped on that faithful day - April 5, 2012. Sickening IPPT never fail to make me feel like some broken machine. I say, IPPT is the most inhumane thing that the government makes its male (sexist sexist) citizens go through but anyway...
This is the large room of the 10 Dollar Club. Considering that we had a gang of... *counts the number of faces in the group photo* 11 people, getting the smaller rooms was out of the question. The big room costs the same, in case you're wondering, and comes with a huge ass screen and a TV along with 2 wireless microphones. Feels almost like TOY MUSEUM already eh eh?
Shortly after snapping photos of the room specially to
brag blog about it, my friends arrived straight from camp after booking out and we starting to sing out vocal cords hoarse. If you've been to the 10 Dollar Club or had actually been obedient enough to read through my review of this place (link above), you would have known that the 10 Dollar Club is not just cheap but also generous with their free flow drinks, like the warm honey lemon that most of us had that day to soothe our throats. Really delicious~ Plus it's free flow!! What could be better?
I'm not going to go crazy featuring every single shot that I took that day because I think I took well over 200 photos but I'm just going to use some to introduce the fabulous people who really made my day that day. Here's Aaron and Jun Sheng, best pals since Signal Institute. For y'all non-Singaporean lucky people out there, Signal Institute is a place in the army and it's not very interesting so let's move on...
Jia Wei, my legal buddy in my current unit. Also the one who often preaches that 人是自私的 (Every man is selfish). An important "life lesson" that I will use in my future endeavors so the rest of the world would probably know what a bitch I am *evil laughter*. Loving my neck and my jaw line in this photo!
The Client team!! Well I know that does not make much sense to those who are not in my platoon but my platoon is split into specialized teams. Yeap. That's as much as I can explain without being too technical. Here's the other April baby, Pei Da (guy in the middle) from my platoon who's also celebrating his birthday with the entire gang! His official birthday is on the 20th but I shall wish him...
HAPPY 22nd BIRTHDAY PEI DA!!
...before everyone else does because I'm that
kiasu. Pei Da has always been the patient one in the platoon and often the 开心果 (Direct translation: "Pistachio nuts" but it also means "the one who brings much joy"). Sometimes I wonder how he can keep his calm so much and smile at everything. He also says and does the funniest things at times and I don't even know where to start elaborating. Person on the right is my new, and going-to-be-ex boss, of the client team, Ryan. Wonderful person to work with.
Joel Chua, also known as the slut amongst other things. Well, he may be a slut, or a vixen as some calls him, but he's extremely fun to be around because of his extremely (maybe
too extreme) outgoing personality and non-stop nonsense. Shaun, on the other hand, is the polar opposite of this outrageous character and it's a surprise that they are actually caught on film together. Hahahahahaha...
Looks like Ryan is turning to the dark side... This is actually one of my favorite photos of the day~ I just realized that looking through the film, Joel appeared in many shots. I wonder if it has anything to do with his Pikachu shirt that I want so badly or because he's so photogenic and fun to photograph. Bet if he reads this, he will go around parading this fact but oh well...
"Exorcism of the Vixen" - I think this is the perfect title for this photo. You know, when there are so many people in a karaoke room and there are only 2 microphones, the ones who are not singing tend to do lots of funny funny stuff and here, my superior who we affectionately call Staff Jo, is exorcising the vixen in Joel for being too close to Ryan. And that's my tripod, by the way...
Surprise of the day - Amoz actually turned up for the celebration! He's normally quite elusive and rarely joins us for such events but this time round, he actually came and amazed the whole lot of us with his
weird unique taste in old music and his ability to sing. But again, it's quite a known fact that he can sing because he sings randomly in camp anyway.
This photo shows 2 things - my big boss sitting on the right and the fact that she actually wasn't sitting next to Ryan. In fact, in the actual photo, there was an awkward space in between for some Capser the Friendly Ghost to sit in and so, I edited the photo to shift my ma'am over to the left. Not bad eh, my editing skills~ For the record, the edit is just to make the photo look better and no other intentions were intended, no matter how you think otherwise. :)
Someone took a photo of me singing and I believe I was singing "Born This Way" by Mother Monster, Lady Gaga. Ever since that song was released, it seems to make its way into my Must-sing-list every time I go to K. In fact, it's almost like a birthday song to me now because last year, I performed this song acoustically with my SAFTI mates and this year, I did it again but with the PV instead of acoustic instruments. Sigh~~ Miss those days in SAFTI...
Well Staff Jo had to leave early because he had some dinner to attend to but before that, he threw 2 big "bombs" at Pei Da and I - these envelopes which seemingly yearns to rob us of our weekends. In case y'all don't know, this organization
loves us so much they don't even want to release us for our weekends at times so yes... Honestly, when I saw the title on the envelope, I was a little *sigh!!*
So, I opened the envelope to see what the "joining instructions" (which I stupidly didn't realize was wrong!! Who says joining instructions anyway!!) to see what nonsense the organization has to tell me but when I reached my hand to pick out the letter, it felt stiff and hard. And furthermore, it felt like it's been folded into a really tiny piece. The envelope wasn't small so I wasn't expecting the letter to be folded to a quarter of an A4 size so I started to get suspicious...
And I was right to be! The cheeky platoon used that envelope just to give Pei Da and me a horrible scare but what's inside the envelope is actually a card with all their well wishes! Honestly didn't see that one coming!! These are more than just plain cards...
They are actually
BOARDING PASSES to Kuala Lumpur!! I was extremely stunned because few days prior to this celebration, they were telling me that our planned KL trip would cost almost 500 dollars and of course, I went berserk and started to bitch and bitch and bitch till no ends. In fact, I bitched so much that everyone got really sick of me bitching but I continued bitching. 500 freaking dollars to go to Malaysia for just 2 days?! I could use that money to go to Langkawi!!
Then when I realized that these cards are passes to KL, I was like "BITCHES Y'ALL!!" in my mind because they made the trip seem expensive just to get me to bitch non-stop! I hope they regretted that prank because boy did I bitch! But if they enjoyed that sick prank, then so be it. And yes, 500 dollars was a lie.
These passes are actually fake ones that Jia Wei painstakingly made by hand and they look pretty genuine, no? In fact, if they didn't tell me that these passes were fake, I would have brought them to the airport to get laughed at by the staff. But yes, they are really paying for the flight to KL for Pei Da and myself. Touched to the max!! I will never ever forget this horrible prank and this wonderful present~
A fabulous group photo with the platoon!! Thank you IS platoon for making my 22nd birthday so much fun and for that terrible scare (please don't do that again!) of going to KL for 500 dollars and of course, for the wonderful company! That basically marks the end of the singing session. We sang from 2:30pm all the way till 7:00pm, till our voices became really sexy but if you think that the day is over, you can't be more wrong... READ ON!!
Singing has always been a tiring affair because you use so much strength in your abdomen and that makes lots of us hungry. We left the 10 Dollar Club when we were done and headed over to bustling Bugis for dinner along this road filled with lots of restaurants. While heading to the carpark to Amoz's car, we saw these huge Chow Chow dogs and one of it was resting in this pram like some oversized infant. Really adorable!!
We arrived at the eatery which I have no clue what it's called and started ordering food around this miserably small table. We were sitting literally shoulder to shoulder because they ran out of large tables and the ones taking up those tables are really taking their own sweet time to consume their dinner. Well, can't really blame them for enjoying the food but I'm entitled to bitch, yes?
This is probably the first time ever in my blogging life that I've actually combined photos into a single shot to save memory and to save myself from actually having to caption every single photo. The food that we ordered were very Thai-inspired and knowing that it would be spicy, lots of us ordered drinks like lime or barley. Their barley was pretty good!!
We had this green curry that looks more greenish after post-processing that was quite nice but sadly, by the time it arrived, I finished most of my rice to accompany the curry. The chicken in it was so-so though but at least the sauce was great. The potato leaves were not bad as well but I prefer crunchier veggies.
Here, we have a hotpot tofu with vegetables, mango salad, frogs' legs and cereal squids. The mango salad was quite tasty but it lacked cashew nuts! I thought all mango salads should come with cashew nuts?! I love the sauce of the frogs' legs but after imagining those green creatures, the meat was a little hard to swallow. The cereal squids were probably the best dish of the day because it was so flavorful and well cooked - not rubbery at all! Favorite of the day!!
As we all know, Thai food is horribly spicy and I think I damaged my tastebuds. I think the reason why I was so full even though I think I ate the least of all that evening was because I was gulping down water and ice to extinguish the wildfire in my mouth. Thankfully, Ryan brought us to this really good ice-cream parlor just opposite the area we had our dinner - Tom's Palette.
At Tom's Palette, they serve homemade ice-cream featuring really funky flavors at a really reasonable price! Here's the signboard with the pricing if you're interested. I would recommend the medium cup because the small one is a little pathetic but if you're watching your diet, then it's probably worth it. But honestly, for just 80 cents more, you get a lot more creamy goodness as compared to the small cup.
When I meant funky flavors, I wasn't kidding. Who heard of a salted egg ice-cream before? What about lime and wasabi? How about chocolate sorbet? These flavors were so unique that a lot of my friends got them. The salted egg ice cream was quite unique - savory but yet still fits as a dessert. But for me, I stuck to the classic sweets of the chocolate sorbet (which was as creamy as any ice-cream~) and one of my favorites - rum and raisins. But if you want to experience new and funny flavors, be sure to visit them. The staff will be glad to give you samples.
For their opening hours and promotions, visit their website at:
To end the post, here are the pleased customers of Tom's Palette (including myself but I can't be in the photo obviously because I'm taking this shot). Do head down to try it out if you happen to go around Bugis because I think it's really worth it. Will definitely bring my other friends there next time!!
This marks the first part of my ~22nd: LITTLE MONSTER~ celebration! Can't believe I've actually managed to discipline myself to sit in front of my laptop to do a full length blog post that's about my life for a change.
Be sure to come back tomorrow to catch the second part of LITTLE MONSTER where I've got a pleasant surprise from my best friend, Alvin, and for more (hopefully) stunning photos. :D
Thanks for reading!! *waves to that few people who actually reads*
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