I am a little anxious about going to Dalian for a week. It will be such a challenge to speak mandarin all the time. My Chinese has improved slightly since i started hanging out with Becky during lunch. Becky is my colleague from Beijing, and my best girlie at work. My best guy friend at work, Captain, is also a Chinese national.
It is different, however, to have to spend three full days in a conference room full of senior top chinese officials. And I have to conduct an interview with the education bureau in Chinese!
I am ashamed that I cannot communicate in Chinese after studying the language till I was 18. It is so strange to look chinese and yet be so far from being one.
The title of this post is (again) a little random. It is Oyvind's birthday today and I was just thinking of the circumstances of how we met.
In a short one year, he has made it to my 'good friend' list (yes, I categorize my friends and keep them in a little black book), so I think I can indulge him by dedicating a post to him. (And I did not mail him any gift this year, so yes, it is a little out of guilt as well.)
And as you know I love lists, here is one of 5 reasons why Oyvind is a dear friend:
5. He has the best moves to Lady Gaga's Poker Face and Telephone.
4. He whips up a mean appetizer called bruschetta with chorizo sausage and feta cheese.
3. He makes me laugh 80 per cent of the time. The other 20 per cent is spent recuperating from the exhaustion.
2. We always seem to have another hour's worth of conversation, and then another, then another.
1. He is a hot geek. So calling out all single girls out there reading this - I think the criteria is pretty and smart - please submit your application to me! 
How I met Oyvind? It was along the corridor outside my room at Jazz Hostel on my first night in New York. Spontaneous and unplanned, we headed to Webster Hall with six to seven other travellers for a crazy night of dancing. And there was no turning back for our friendship since.
Perfect time to check out the hundreds of stalls selling home soft furnishing, baju kurung (Malay traditional costumes), biscuits, kebabs, chicken wings, and Ramly Burger!
Diana, Fiza, KC and I knew exactly what we wanted. We kept our priorities straight and headed first to the Hari Raya decorations stall. I am sure we were the biggest customer for the day. The Alphabet family can look forward to a colourful home with flashing light balls, oversized green and yellow ketupats, hanging cut-outs, and 3D paper dolls.
It was an extremely fruitful excursion. 
We spent:
My favourite part of the evening were chatting about the origin and meaning of Muslim prayer, checking out traditional costumes and discovering dendengs, BBQ meat which looked a little like 美珍香肉干.
Do you remember the reality show 'The Bachelorette'? I enjoyed several episodes, normally the earlier ones of each season before it gets painfully complicated. It is just wrong dating so many people at one time and having to meet their families. The title reminded me of the show but really the bachelorette of the day - or at least of this post - is none other than my best girlie at work, Becky! 
She has two weddings, well sort of. A dinner in China, then a bigger affair in Singapore. I have the privilege of being her coordinator for the ROM and wedding dinner in Singapore.
There is not much really to do. Most of the time, the bride knows what she wants exactly and gets stuff done pretty quickly. So for the few times I was assigned the role of coordinator, it really was sharing of the emotional stress, and being there whenever the bride needed to bounce off some ideas.
The most exciting part of this role, in my opinion, has always been the organization of... The Bachelorette Party!! Getting the girls together for the evening and making sure the bride-to-be feels like a princess for that day!
Becky always wanted to own a cheesecake cafe, so we booked a private cheesecake baking class. Chef Liu from Creative Culinary spent slightly over three hours teaching us how to make Oreo Cheesecake and Orange Cheesecake.
At the end
of the class, the 姐妹 gang left with three cheesecakes that looked as good as they tasted. Much of that success was because they tasked me with the camera so I did not get a chance to ruin the cakes. Smart.
To celebrate our victory, we threw a slumber party at Becky's new home, with Super her dog as the guest of honor. After a quick tour of the lovely home, we gathered around a basketful of nail polish and did our DIY manicure while ogling over Kevjumba on YouTube.
We chatted over chocolates, crisps and cuttlefish snacks. It was only until 3am that exhaustion kicked in and we decided to call it a night. It was so much fun. We should do this again soon. Now, the only task is to find the next bride-to-be.
There are many reasons why I never thought I would be a diver, let alone a Dive Master.It started from a casual invitation from Charmaine while we were in-line skating at East Coast Park, to join the next Open Water Diver course. Before I knew it, after four hours of classroom theory on the basics of scuba diving and S$590, I was standing in my swim suit behind a row of air tanks and dive gear at the Mount Fabre Safra swimming pool.
My memory of that evening is a little fuzzy now but I can remember vividly how safe (and happy) I felt as I knelt at the bottom of the pool breathing the minty cool compressed air. My fear of water quickly eased away. I was hooked.
That was June 2008 when I did my first dive in the open sea. Quickly I had many other firsts - turtle, shark, night dive, ray, etc. I took on more advanced courses shortly after.
It has been two years. Today, I am a Dive Master with the same dive school which got me started. Deep Blue Scuba has my favourite instructors and divers, especially Pierre Chew, whom I crowned 'Best Instructor'! I do not know another sport that got me this crazy, and I doubt I will find another.
If you are not a diver now, please come dive with me. I promise you a different world, one He created which is less explored. You will love it. Trust me.
The last time I was in Redang Malaysia, I came back with the song 浪花一朵朵 ringing in my head. This time, it was Lady Gaga's Bad Romance and the Hong Konger DJ's enthusiastic call for people to join the dance floor at Summer Mambo. "Mo mo pee pil!' or if your Cantonese is not great, it is "more more people!". It did not take much persuasion to get us on the dance floor. Not when we had a professional dancer in our midst! I was getting a complimentary hip hop private class from Alvan to all my favouite sexy Lady Gaga hits.
It was not all drinks and dance. We had lots of wholesome fun (not that dancing is not, but you know what I mean) at the pool and watching the non-existent sunset. In my excitement, I convinced a pretty big group of us to walk to the end of the beach to catch the sunset, including our new friend, Chat, from London. I even got Bernice to risk her life to cross the rocks onto the edge of the cliff. Fortunately, the disappointment of realising we were facing East and twelve hours late - or too early - for the sun rise did not last long. We were rewarded with the amazing view of the islands scattered around Redang and the entire stretch of the beach.
The pool was a natural assembly point in between dives. I figured we might have bought all the ice-cream there was from the pool side convenience store. It was fun monopolising the pool, chit chatting on the side or taking silly photographs.
Oh, and if you were wonde
ring, we were in Redang for diving. I realised I have been writing about everything else besides the dives, but I guess those are the things that make the trip. It is always the people you remember, and the fun times you have with them.
I had wanted to go as a leisure diver this time. My church friends were diving with Deep Blue for the first time and I thought it would be cool to simply relax, put my feet up and do nothing for four days with them. But YP was short on crew for that National Day weekend because everyone else was going to Bali! So, I had to suck it in and go as Dive Master. My anxieties were really unfounded because the divers were great, and so was Laurence, the instructor who went on the trip too. There are so many people to thank...
really need to go try Trance one of these days.
g: They are absolutely nuts some times (or rather most of the time). They looked pretty normal the first day I met them, then surely but slowly, as they let loose in the evenings and the rest of the weekend, I saw the other side of them and loved it! We should have taken a group photo!
If you are wondering what 'Jumba' is, that is a good question. In fact, it was what one of KevJumba's fans asked when he gave them the chance to submit questions. Joanne introduced me to KevJumba last night and we were going gaga over him. But that is not the point.
Watching KevJumba, and speaking to Ben and Jenn about Mr Brown on Friday over supper, reminded me of how much I miss blogging.
So watch this space, it may not (very likely not) be as intense as Europein37days, but it's still seeing the world through me. So I hope you will enjoy the upcoming posts.
