100 DAYS TO OUR WEDDING!!

YAY! Can’t wait.

From Our Wedding

Where has Chunnie been?

Around the world and back it seems.
Yes, I was back in Singapore and it was a busy busy trip, but in short:

*I landed back in Singapore on the morning of Ian’s birthday bearing Magnolia Bakery cupcakes!

*We celebrated Ian’s birthday with his mommy and sister over yummy choco-lava cake.

*I joined Ian on his weekly Breakfast Club ride – was embarrassingly slow and bad at it, and was absolutely terrified by the experience

*I worked a week at the Singapore office, caught up with ma old peeps, felt strange in the different office

*Brother took the family out for crabs to celebrate mommy’s birthday – and Ian was such a good SILTB, he remembered to call my mommy to wish her happy birthday!

*We checked out Suburbia, the first time seeing our solemnization venue for me.. and I like it!! 28 Nov. 12pm. Suburbia. Done.

*We celebrated daddy’s 60th birthday with a nice big dinner at Hua Ting.

*We had dinner with Ian’s ACN peeps. I met up with my girlies. And of course we met often for our toast and teh-C breakfasts.

And now I’m back in New York, with a short stopover in London. Oh and yes I flew the A380, not a biggie I thought, like any other plane.

Ian called me schnookums

Iαη Hαll says (11:20 PM):hey schnookums

Which rhymes with Skookum.

10,000

Nope, its not the number of days Chunnie and I have been dating.

Its the number of page views that this blog has had!! The statistics for the site just ticked over the 10,000 mark yesterday… WOW!

Cycling in Central Park

I went cycling in Central Park today for 3 reasons –

1) It was a brilliant Sunday afternoon…sunny and warm (relatively) at 18C;

2) I got too lazy to do what I’d originally intended, which was to take the train 80 mins north to go see the art museum at Beacon;

and most importantly..

3) Ian scoffed at me because he didn’t think I could cycle an entire loop around Central Park without stopping to push my bike up the hilly bits on the east side.

As it turns out, I managed to prove Ian wrong.
Well, it was quite a pain riding uphill, and I was embarrassingly slow that runners whom I’d passed earlier caught up and went by..but still, I refused to get off my bike and persisted.

It was a pleasant excursion, it’d only been a month ago since I was last in Central Park and the trees were still somewhat bare. Summer is obviously around the corner because the trees were full of leaves and there was grass all over the ground, so much so that for awhile it was difficult for me to recognize the places that I’d always ran past. Interesting how plants grow so quickly.

I did my obligatory loop, then gave up in favour of a hotdog and reading my magazine in the sun. Need to work on that tan now that it’s swimsuit season.

From Random Photos

PS OK Ian, you can scoff at me for stopping after a mere 5 miles, but I win on the uphill one.

My birthday ski trip

This post is a tad late, but I was inspired to post it as I was looking through old photos and a very funny video of Ian, and realized that neither of us had mentioned this trip in our previous posts about Ian’s New York visit!

Well, one of the highlights of Ian’s visit was that we drove about 5 hours north to Okemo, VT to go skiing over my birthday week.

Interestingly, I thought the best part of our trip was lazing in our rented apartment -

It had a real working fireplace, and “Man Make Fire” Ian proudly tried to start a fire…

From Ian in NYC – Feb 09

We had hot chocolate lazing on the couch, and watched lots of Friday Night Lights which was how Ian made a fan out of me

From Ian in NYC – Feb 09

I gave Ian some “lets hit the slopes” attitude

From Ian in NYC – Feb 09

Ian took me out to a nice dinner, and got me my birthday cheesecake!

From Ian in NYC – Feb 09

I woke up one morning to find Ian busy cooking away in the kitchen – turns out he was making me a surprise breakfast! What a sweetie!

From Ian in NYC – Feb 09

From Ian in NYC – Feb 09

Oh yes, and we did some skiing too!

From Ian in NYC – Feb 09

A skip and hop across the Pond!

It’s been a year since we’ve gotten engaged! And although Ian didn’t want to make this a big deal, I did make the effort to speak to him while waiting at the airport and he was getting ready for work.

For 121, I took a trip across the Pond to reunite with my girlies in London. Somewhat of a deja vu, since we did the same trip in March 08, just before Ian proposed. This time, we met up for a week-long girlie trip that was meant to be my “hen party week”!

We actually didn’t party that much, but it was nice and relaxing to catch up. We took a long weekend trip to Bristol and Bath, both very nice and peaceful cities very different from London.

From London, Bristol, Bath – Mar 09

I also managed to squeeze in the time to do a lunchtime race on Friday – the Brooks Last Friday of the Month 5K race around Sepentine Lake in Hyde Park. The scenery was really pretty, and it was good weather (esp for London!), and even though I had a hangover from Thurs night drinking, I still thought I did pretty well with a time of 28:18 min.

From London, Bristol, Bath – Mar 09

And the best thing about my trip to London? I found “cheap” Louboutins! If the recent financial crunch has taught me anything, its that we should always ensure that we get good value for our money… which was what I did by buying my dream pair of Christian Louboutin Very Prive patent pumps that I’ve been eyeing for almost 2 years!! Hee hee, with the weak GBP and the VAT refund, I managed to save US$200 compared to what they would cost in New York!

From London, Bristol, Bath – Mar 09

Note: Ian’s initial reaction was “How much are the shoes that you can save us$200?!?!” .. BUT after awhile, he too came around to how precious and sexy those shoes are, and he now has them up as his MSN profile picture!

Chunnie’s first (accidental) half-marathon

I did my first half-marathon! Unintentionally. Without training. WOOT!

Pre-race

So way back in December, when I knew that Ian was coming to visit me, I signed us both up for a couple of races – the Gridiron 4 mile race, and the Bronx half-marathon.

I had every intention of training for the half-marathon between Dec and Feb, so that I could complete my first half-marathon, in a race that Ian was also running in. Unfortunately, the cold, laziness and the holiday season got in the way of my training schedule.

The night before, we agreed that my strategy was to stop at the 6-mile mark (which was probably the furthest race I’d ran thus far), because that was near where the finish line and baggage area was. And I would pick up the bag with the camera and wait for Ian at the finish line.

During the race

It was good weather, about 4C, and sunny. Surprisingly I felt good running, even though I hadn’t been training at all. In fact, so good, that at the 6-mile mark, I didn’t want to stop running. At the 7-mile mark, I thought I was still doing well, so I’ll just run a little longer and see how I feel. So I did a Forrest Gump – I just kept on running. By the time I felt tired, almost at the 8-mile mark, I’d realised that I’d gone too far past the 6-mile mark/ finish line/ baggage area that turning around and going back was almost the same distance as if I’d finished the race.
Then it struck me – I was going to have to try and complete the full 13.1 miles.

From Ian in NYC – Feb 09

At around the 9-mile mark, when Ian ran past me in the opposite direction, and I managed to yell out at him that I was going to try and complete the race. Hee hee, he looked confused and shocked to even see me make it this far!

Somehow I managed to keep going, sometimes stopping to walk… but I surprised myself at how well I was actually doing, considering the lack of training.

Sweetheart that Ian is, he was waiting for me at the last 0.1 mile mark and ran with me towards the finish line.
(Ian claims that apparently I had told him “Don’t talk to me” when he tried encouraging me over the last 0.1 mile. It can’t be true, because I barely had the energy to even breathe.)

The result? 2hr 19 mins. Not bad. I’m proud of myself.

That’s us taking the subway back home. Only because my first choice of transportation, the taxi, was nowhere to be seen up wherever we were in the Bronx.

From Ian in NYC – Feb 09

Post-race

We had originally planned to go watch a Jewel concert in CT that afternoon, but we both agreed that we didn’t have the energy left after the run. Another time, I guess.

Instead, we went to Nyonya with Mark and Ken, in the midst of big scary lion dances, to feast on Singaporean food, where I proudly out-ate Ian. Thereafter, we went back and I slept through the afternoon, only to wake up to my favourite Red Mango yogurt ice-cream that Ian had gone out to buy for me. Sweetie.
Yogurt ice-cream, and Lego Star Wars on the Xbox the rest of the day. Yay.

Reunited in New York City! :D

Ian came to visit me recently. We just had been too busy having fun.. then too busy catching up with work, to blog.

Needless to say, I’d been missing him since the last time we were together in Singapore in Nov 08, and so I’d been eagerly waiting for his visit, which was after the Chinese New Year. That’s us in the taxi on the way home from the airport. Can you tell we’re really happy to see each other?

From Ian in NYC – Feb 09

There’s Ian lying exhausted all over my living room floor, not from his long flight because he slept most of the way, but from unpacking all the goodies that he brought me from Singapore! Hmm, I think he actually goes so well with the decor, he should just be a permanent fixture in my apartment!

From Ian in NYC – Feb 09

Now that we’re all settled back in, I’ll prod Ian to blog about his trip…

Its sure been quiet around here…

I haven’t posted in a while because I’ve been all tied up with work… You know, being part of the “High Performance” being “Delivered”. But well.. I’ve still had time to go to Batam to wakeboard on the cable and I think I’m really improving. Its much easier there because of the calm water. sadly there are no photos (of me) from the trip there. But thats not important since Chunnie is coming back in SEVEN DAYS!! WHOOOOooooooooo……..