Scenes from a BBQ obsessed Birthday

Needless to say, but the time we finished the chalet, we were pretty much done with BBQ. Having ate through the piles of grocery we overdid on the first day *winks*.

First day god awful dinner

Burnt everything. We started at 7pm, cooked by moonlight. The next door man kept coming out to smoke with his "pai kia" looking son and chatting about how to be a man (according to B1 who overheard).

Last Day Lunch

2nd day dinner

This was when we were watching the younger man next door marry his China bride. Oh. Interesting. She is incredibly hot. And everyone in that family smokes, even Mommy dearest. We wondered why everyone dressed so well for BBQ, when we realized it was a ROM party! Amazingly for a family who ate huge prawns the night before (and had some leftover, based on what I saw the cleaning lady clear out the day after the wedding), they were REALLY STINGY with the buffet dinner. No kidding. Only four dishes. But tons of alcohol. Even had a swinging Martell and everything. Their poor guests had to buy KFC to feel full, and the man apologized to his wife's friends for being a poor host. I should think so.

Didn't know you could still get married at chalets. Since you have to have the marriage location imprinted on the marriage cert, don't know how weird it looks to have X-X Costa Sands Resort printed on your cert...These clams were done using beer and butter, ala Brussels (the Belgian eatery at East Coast Park - now to think about it, I never got around to upping those pics) style.

B1 and I became very expert in raising fires. We had an awful time with our late start on the first day.

My personal fave =D

I thought this photo looked pretty professional, even though I might have killed the chicken a bit much. This was the 2nd day dinner on a plate.

Butter roll, grilled to a crisp. Yum yum.

Gooey on the inside, crispy on the outside. Me Likes!!

We changed grille every night because..... sparklers!!!

Ah my youth so fleeting like the sparklers...

Thank You Cards

I had thought rather hard about what to show my appreciation to the office buddies who gave me birthday $$ (which I didn't expect). I had thought of cooking something, or buying some food (which is easy and appropriate for the recipients, since most of us OT). But in the end, while I was buying the stuff for decorating the walls, I spent a lot of time thinking of what to make for everyone. I was torn between buying these pretty Japanese cards and drawing on them or making cute door signs that they could use. But when I discovered that the signs were made of foam, I went ahead with the Japanese cards.

My birthday was over by like 11 days, and I was still drawing until 3 am last night. Oops going to be 12 days already, man, and I still hadn't bought the 0.3 pen, so in the end I used a ballpoint pen with many colors haha. This morning I sprayed on some fixature to hold the colors and brought them to work.

The stupid thing was that I left the camera in B1's car yesterday. So I had to use the really shit ass Android phone. Didn't do my pics justice. *Annoyed* But I had to give the cards out anyway, otherwise rather insincere. Where got people return thanks so late one?!!!

After I took this pic, I sat down and decided who to get what. Considerations: those who are more likely to keep the cards for a long time, and those who will treat them like flyers, keep for a while and then throw. B1 said I was nuts, why go to the effort to draw?

My faves were the one I drew first, which was the bottom right, and the top left (which was the last one I drew).

Wah... B1 strikes Beary good Luck

While we were at the chalet, I told B1 that one of the things I always wanted to do was to just take S$10 to play the UFO catcher game. I am a pretty thrifty person, so doing such things seem like decadence to me, especially since there is no guarantee you would win. 

He gave me S$10 bucks to try at the stupid X Zone arcade, but other than nullifying all my hard-earned points, it also had some really unfriendly UFO catchers. First the damn things are very weak, couldn't even lift up the toys, let alone flinging it any old how (as it is supposed to - the luck element). Second of all, most of them cost an eye-popping S$2 a try.

I tried the S$1 ones. Total snoozefest. After a futile S$4, I told B1 to forget it (he also changed S$10 to play), that we should save the money and try at those actual UFO catcher shops like the ones at Junction 8 and Marina Square. He said ok, and we wasted some money at those machines on the third floor, where you turn and turn and a toy falls out, just to get a R2D2 and a Darth Vader (which he wanted) handphone straps.

So just now after dinner at the House of Seafood (they gave us a cute Cancer handphone strap *how appropriate =D), I asked B1 if we could go to Junction 8 since it was still early. He agreed, so we drove there, and started trying our luck. I tried for a Winnie the Pooh, and the bunny head toy, but to no avail. B1 was bored watching me try so he tried for the Rilakkuma, which I thought was too heavy for the catcher. 

Ohmigod! He got it on the first try!!! I stared disbelievingly, mid-gloat, as the toy tumbled head in into the bin. Needless to say, the second time I tried, it didn't work. The girl let me chose one of the toy designs in the machine and went to grab a new one for me. She said that luck and skill were the important elements of the game. 

I think I am more impressed by the plastic bag than the bear. I am NEVER using the plastic bag!!!

To me, the important part was that, we still managed to get it within the $$ we spent trying. B1 said I missed the point of the whole game. Anyway we saw that another version of the toy (smaller size)  was retailing at S$35 plus. Wow *eye pop*!!! 

I finally get to experience the exhilaration a chick gets when her guy catches her a toy at a fair. *thumbs up* Though the competitive part in me wishes it had been me who won...

Der Bär ist sehr Gross!!!

Happy Birthday to me

I have a yearly tradition of carrying out a blitzkreig of posts on my blogs on my birthday. The usual goal is 24 for every hour of my birthday, which I usually get stuck and quit by post 15. But due to a sudden uplevelling of maturity (due to my old age) and the fact that I was at a chalet with B1 (uneventful birthday with exciting events happening around us), meant that while I had somewhat internet access (through his iPhone),  I wasn't very inclined to do the same thing this year.

And just to prove how unlucky I continue to be, I was super duper horrified to see that I had missed the deadline for claiming my ZoneX (arcade) points by June 2011 because I had avoided the arcade during the June holidays because of all the kids. Shit. 4000 over points, I can get some really cool stuff for that. FUCK SHIT. All because the stupid Toa Payoh branch (since closed) ran out of XBOX games by the time I accumulated the necessary 3600 points. So I just haplessly continued to accumulate points...to 0.