To new beginnings

2017 has been a very fulfilling year for me. First off, I got married to my best friend and soulmate. (He probably doesn't like to hear the word "friend" because I friend-zoned him in the past oops sorry darling). Anyway, it has been an awesome journey thus far and I can only say, I <3 you dear!

Through the months of adapting to married life, he has been my pillar of strength and support and I cannot be thankful enough. (: I feel very fortunate to have found this kind and sincere soul that I can now call my husband.

For the past few months, he has also shown me what love really is, fussing over me, and truly being there for me when I was physically and mentally out of it. Thank you for being patient, for taking care of me when I could barely take care of myself. For worrying about me and zooming here and there just to make sure my needs were taken care of.

While he is away on a work trip right now, I took the time to reflect on us and our relationship and I realised that I have little to nothing to feel negative about. I'm really really very blessed to have Sam in my life. Through our time together, he also taught me how to be a better person, a better daughter, a better wife. In September (I just scrolled my phone to find this message), he said something which really took me by surprise (in a good way). He said "I don't want your potential to be wasted, because you are made for more". I was mind-blown... no one has ever said that to me and for many days I was just trying to absorb the enormity that he believes so much in me. Thank you darling. (':

So today, I decided to look back at some of our wedding photos and pick out some of my favourites to share! Here goes...

Thank you for everything and I'm looking forward to new beginnings in 2018 with you!!! (:

Jeju Part 2

During our time in Jeju, we stayed at this inn called Breakfast at Tiffany's. The owner, Mr Chung, was very kind to help us plan what to do after finding out what we generally like to see and how much time we had in Jeju. 

For a start, he recommended this viewing point, 1km up Hallasan. As we drove higher, the scenery started to change and trees turned from green to white. It was beautiful, cold, but just what we liked. 

Once we reached the viewing point, we took a stroll on the boardwalk. Frozen streams, swamps, and trees branches were layered in snow - presenting a brilliant snowball-throwing opportunity for the bf where I was the unfortunate victim.

This was taken just after he threw one at me. It probably hit me while I was taking this shot. -.-

After Hallasan, we went to the Jeju stone park. I found out that we had to pay and we didn't want to so we walked to the carpark, climbed up a small wall and took this shot. This was only a small part of the stone park but this also affirmed our decision to not pay to go in.

According to the description, each of these stone structures represents past generals in the army. Not sure why there were so many of them though. Go google.

After the stone park, we made a visit to the Dongamburi crater. I think Iceland's volcanoes fascinated us (since we had 2 just behind school) so we wanted to see how a volcano in Korea would look like. (Sorry no volcano pic, the crater looked like a forest)

Since we already jammed packed our day with site visits, we decided to go for one more - the Seongsan sunrise hill.

It was a really nice peak to visit, especially since we climbed up when the sun was about to set. 

My handsome boy and me! ^^

What a view!

Descending

The next day, we decided to have seafood soup! This soup was sold everywhere in Jeju and this particular restaurant was generous with their abalones, clams and crabs too - that's half a small crab in the soup. I think this only cost us $15. How awesome!

Next, we visited the Teddy Bear Museum, the very place we failed to visit on our first day in Jeju. 

Mona Lisa

Goong

Einstein and Sam

Steve Jobs and I

Bf was hungry so he bought some dried tangerine snacks to try.

Then we visited this place called the Jusangjeolli cliff. I was fascinated by the geography of the rocks with columnar joints. Just thought it was pretty cool to have natural rock formations that could form cool shapes repeatedly - tessellations! (Ok I shall stop the lecture here)

Of course, we also visited one of the waterfalls - can't remember if it was Cheonjeyeon or Cheonjiyeon, both sounded the same. It was too dark and there were no visitors left so we didn't spend a lot of time there. 

During our stay in Jeju, we got to experience teenie weenie drops of snow at our bnb resort and heard a woodpecker at his job on our last day too! The owner of our bnb brought in superb orange juice and even made their own jam. We just had to buy some back! All in all, we really enjoyed our stay in Jeju! Will share the last leg of our Korea trip soon! 

Xoxo.

Seoul Part 1

I wanted to go on a grad trip with Sam last year but it was difficult for him to take leave so we had our holiday this year instead. We booked our tickets many months in advance so the built up excitement for our trip was huge - even though we had no clue what activities we were going to do until we reached Korea. I guess we were still excited because it was winter in Korea and after Iceland in 2013, we fell in love with the cold (and snow).

I took Baby Eeyore with me on this trip. Most of the time he lived in my pocket and only appeared when I remembered to take him out for pictures.

We boarded Scoot to Korea and transited at Taipei. It was a little tiring but since we were used to flying budget, it wasn't too bad. It also helped that our transit in Taipei was only about an hour long. 

We arrived in Seoul late at night so the first thing we did when we woke up the next morning was to head to a hair salon to get our hair fixed. Sam desperately needed a cut. He let his hair grow long for 2-3 months before our trip just for this haircut. I previously told him that Korean hair salons were awesome and we just had to try. I dyed my hair my natural hair colour because I just didn't want to maintain dyed (half brown, half dark brown) hair anymore. 

After the cut, Sam's hair looked like this and I found it so amusing because I couldn't get used to it. The hairstylist cut his hair very systematically and it looked super neat. For the next few days, he styled his hair just to maintain this look, until we came back to Singapore and it was back to square 1. He needs another cut.

After our little salon adventure, we met our Korean friend, Kyung Eun and she brought us to eat chicken stew. The warm soup was refreshingly awesome! The last time we saw her was almost 3 years ago in Iceland when we lived together for about 4 months or so.

After a short visit to Gyeongbokgung palace, she brought us to Samcheongdong. 

Found this stylish little shop selling men's accessories.

We walked to the top of some hill which overlooked Samcheongdong and Kyung Eun told us that the president stayed in that dark blue-roofed house in the distance, right at the end, before the mountains.

It was our first time coming here and the atmosphere was breathtaking!

Sam desperately wanted to eat authentic Korean BBQ so Kyung Eun brought us to this place in Insadong (or somewhere nearby). It was a little pricey but probably the best Korean BBQ we've ever tried. Yum!

The next day, we woke up at 4am and left Seoul for Alpensia to ski. It was such a tiring but fun day. It was also Sam's first time skiing and he picked up the sport just after 2-3 tries and 2 YouTube videos. I made the mistake of bringing him to the primary slope for his very first try instead of the bunny slope and he sped out of control all the way down. Oops!

After eventually finding and then practicing on the bunny slope, we headed to the primary slope and then moved up to the middle slope. This was all done in a day - that was how fast Sam picked up the sport! Just before leaving the resort, we decided to do one last hoorah by trying the high slope. Sam lost control almost immediately and while laughing at his hilarious fall, I fell too. This happened all the way down and because of that one try on the high slope, we ended up returning our ski clothes and gear entirely covered in snow.

Our crazy guts led us here...

The slopes look so shallow here but it's a huge contrast to what we experienced.

Can't wait to ski again!!!

A break

It's February.

Where did the time go?

Sam has been working night shifts for the past 2 months and it's been extremely difficult to meet him except for the weekends and I miss him. ):

But, this also means that when we get to see each other, we appreciate each other's company a lot more. The other day, we went shopping at 2am, bought a whole lot of twisties, ate the twisties and watched The Flash together. Fattening but happy. (:

On another occasion, I had red nail polish on and it was around Christmas time so I placed my finger on his nose and said, Hello Rudolf! Lame, but that's how we've been passing our days.

My Rudolf and I. Better to have 2 Rudolfs than 1!

I met up with Nic, Jo and Vanna when Nic came back in December and we had so much laughter. I think we spent 4 hours at Din Tai Fung.

I also met Nic + Nastasha during lunch one day.

 And that was how I ended my 2015.

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Work has been okay recently. Today I had some fun. Here's how it happened:

Daryl went to play badminton but I didn't notice him leaving. After he was gone, Karen turned around and asked me "Where's Daryl". After looking around for awhile, I said "I don't know, he's been gone for awhile". 

Then we both saw his pants on his chair and Karen exclaimed "Omg Daryl is walking around office without his pants?!" I pulled his chair out and saw his shirt and then found his shoes on the floor. We kind of figured he changed out of office attire and went to the gym... But I couldn't resist doing this:

And that's my boss at the crime scene. Here's a glimpse of the fun times in my office. :D

Till next time! Ciao!

Graduation shoots

After my commencement ceremony, I did a couple of grad shoots with my closest. (:

Thank you Joey, Justin, Zane and Zhu Hong for helping us take them! Photo credits to Joey and Zane!

Each photoshoot was sweaty and hot but I'm so glad we took them! Yay to memories for life. (: Shall enjoy my last few weeks of freedom before I start work!!!