It’s the first time we took a family photograph with my uncle’s family. I’m definitely going to print these out and display them in my room. No words can describe how much I love my family. They meant the world to me.

• Happy Dad’s Day
• APB Family Day at the Zoo

My check-list for the new year:

• Chinese New Year decorations – Check!
• Spring cleaning – Check!¹
• New clothes – Check!²
• New Year goodies, snacks, chocolates, drinks and food – Check!
• Mahjong table – Check! We bought a new one after one of ours was stolen a few weeks back.
• Manicure nails – Check!
• Prepare my stomach to welcome all the delicious food and snacks – Check!

What else are there left?

Chinese New Year Goodies

Colourful candies

Lots of vegetables for the reunion dinner on Saturday

Pink glittery nails to welcome the new year

French tips

With purple crystals and pearls

Speaking of which, is anyone planning to head to Resort World Sentosa during the Chinese New Year? =p

1. My room is messier now as compared to the day I tidied it, it’s piling up with all my exams notes
2. Surprise surprise, it isn’t black this year

• Happy New Year 2009
• Pinky nails and last minute spring cleaning
• A brand new year with lots of new memories

Note: There is a file embedded within this post, please visit this post to download the file.

I made the wallpaper above during one of my study breaks. These wallpapers can be found in the resources section and if you want to send some love over during Valentine’s, you can buy the prints over at deviantART.

While working on the wallpaper yesterday, I was thinking of things associated with the occasion. Things and words like hearts, love, balloons, teddy bears and the colours red and pink. I cannot figure out the connections between teddy bears, balloons and love. Does everyone who is in love owns a teddy? Or maybe they always held on to balloons when visiting theme parks? The latter is always the case in Korean dramas. When the protagonist fall out of love, they will usually be shown letting go of the balloon and the poor balloon will fly away. It reminds me of a scene in Princess Hours.

I can understand balloons during Birthdays but why Valentine’s? Are balloons considered sweet things for ladies? Balloons are sometimes also used to signify freedom thus explaining the release of the balloon. Releasing a balloon may also meant that the protagonist is letting go of the relationship. Am I wrong to think that it’s an inverse relationship with love?

My teddy bear

Teddy bears again reminds me of scenes in Princess Hours whereby the male lead gave a teddy bear to the female lead or the bear is a representation of one of the leads and they fell in love. Why bears? Pandas are adorable as well and most robots are cute. However most of the time, bears especially teddy ones are used. Why do you think that’s the case? What makes teddy bears so special?

1. Chewy is in the army currently

• Teddy bear christmas tree and lots of food

On a side note, I actually drew the above illustration for my own Christmas cards but couldn’t find a inexpensive place to print it. There’s usually a minimum quantity of 100 to 200 and I don’t need that much. I only got to know of a shop at Bras Plaza that does printing for $1 per card with minimum spending of $30 from Ivy when we meet up for lunch last week. Hence, I will just leave the handmade cards for this year since it’s a bit too late to do that now.

I spent Christmas eve at home with my friends and family. We didn’t want to hang out at the parties due to the crowd. So Dad cooked steak and we had Christmas dinner at home. Michelle joined us for dinner and mahjong session as well. No turkeys on the table though.

We had a small gift exchange session and here’s Francis, Michelle and my sister with their presents. The panda Michelle’s hugging is from Chewy. He bought it in Hong Kong and she’s utterly soft and adorable. Definitely the cutest panda on earth.

My sister showing off her new iphone. She’s been waving it in front of me these past few days! I’m super envy because I’m dying to get my hands on an iphone. I’ll wait and get it next year.

It’s our custom to get a Christmas cake every year. Ta-da! This is our log mango mousse cake from The Icing Room. We couldn’t find a small log cake for 6 so we decided to get this instead. I was surprised when the cashier asked me if I want any candles. Does anyone put candles on Christmas cakes?

Joke of the day:
Mum: Is there cheese in the cake?
Dad: Yes, there is cheese in basement 1 of the cake.
Me: LOL! Our cake has basement 1, 3, 5 – mango mousse and basement 2, 4, 6 – chocolate sponge.

The cake is delicious though. Everyone gave the thumbs up for it.

I received this card from Huaian today. I was really touched. It has a photo of us taken 6 years back and he still has it sent all way from Australia. I love it Huaian! Thanks so much for the awesome card. I hope to see you back in Singapore in Feburary.

This is from my sister and her boyfriend, Francis. My sister gave me a beautiful necklace from Gold Heart which matches all the tank tops in my wardrobe.

That’s it for today. Hope you have fun on Christmas eve as well and have a great Christmas!

• Happy Merry Christmas
• Christmas Gathering 2008
• Our DIY cake

Our hotel room at Times Square

Our rooms are on the highest floor at the 43rd level. This is our window view. Kuala Lumpur looks beautiful at night when all the lights are brightly lit.

Times Square Shopping Mall

I saw Santa at Times Square! He was giving out candies to the kids with his uhm, wife? Santa has a wife right?

Huge rotating Christmas tree at Times Square

Chewy in front of a gingerbread house

Mid Valley Mega Mall

These are some gorgeous Christmas decorations at Mid Valley. I couldn’t think of any malls in Singapore that’s comparable with this. Somehow, it reminds me of Harry Potter. The castle, the fir trees and especially the floating candles! I guess it’s a Harry Potter inspired theme?

Fooling around in Toys R Us

Saw this toy on display, it's pretty cute!

The Garden Mall

I think this mall has a white Christmas theme. It seems to remind me of England in the 90′s and gives off a very elegant feeling. It’s simple but it does have very eye catchy decorations.

KLCC

I think I just arrived at Candy Land when I saw the Christmas decorations around me. Lots of candies, colours and the ginger breadman family.

Chewy and I in front of Candy House, notice his Threadless tee

Michelle and Te Wei

Pavilion

It was snowing when we left

Food food and more food

Before

After

I tested the video function on my Canon SX10 IS for the first time. The funny thing was that everyone thought I was taking photographs of them when I’m actually recording a video clip. I uploaded this short clip of Chewy during breakfast when he thought I was taking photos of him. It’s hilarious but cute at the same time.

On a side note, I think the videos taken with the Canon SX 10 has a pretty good quality. Perhaps I should start taking videos more often, it’s really fun! I feel that moving videos speak a lot more than still pictures.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Check out the rest of the photos from the trip in my Flickr album.

• “How do you know Christmas is coming?” meme
• Malaysia Trip, photos as promised
• Sing towards your 21st

This is a “How do you know Christmas is coming?” meme and I’m tagging everyone who’s reading this post to blog about your personal experiences. I’ll love to know how you spot the Christmas season. Is it the beautifully decorated trees? Turkeys on sale? Trim shops or…?

Christmas in Singapore

Novena Square

Velocity Christmas Party

It's snowing at Velocity

Christmas lightings along Orchard Road

Huge Christmas tree outside Ion

Beautiful Christmas lights along Orchard

Another view of the lights at Orchard

Trim Shop at Takashimaya

Takashimaya Christmas Tree

Teddy bears Christmas tree inside Takashimaya

I love this tree! It looks like a tree from fairylands

Christmas decorations at Hereen

Christmas tree at Paragon

Trim shop at Paragon

Beautiful masquerade masks for sale

Happy Christmas Shoppers

• Getting into the holiday shopping mood
• Christmas is coming to town
• Teddy bear christmas tree and lots of food

My Samsung Corby

I finally bought some pop-up stickers from Urban Write to “brand” my Samsung Corby. I didn’t want to make it too fanciful thus I just added 2 little star stickers to brand it as my personal phone. I have to say this isn’t an original idea from me. This idea was from my current favourite show, You’re Beautiful. In the show, the female protagonist has a few pop-up stickers on her Corby as well. I love this idea because I find it really cute.

Mi Nam's Pig-Rabbit

I’m a Christmas girl and I love buying gifts for myself during the Christmas season. I admit I’m a huge fan of You’re Beautiful. Hence, I ordered the pig-rabbit toy from Korea for SGD 39! Mama never fails to get me a Christmas gift every year and this is her gift for me. =D It’s an extremely unique toy since it’s a rabbit with a pig nose. It’s definitely not the kind of toys you see everyday.

Pig-Rabbit

Isn’t it the most adorable bunny? It’s a huge toy standing at 55cm and I’m so excited to receive it. It will arrived in Singapore at the beginning of December. I’ll be posting photographs of my new toy then. I am thinking of naming it “Minami” after the female protagonist in the show. Sounds cute, no?

Click here to view the embedded video.

I shall end this post with my Christmas wishlist of 2009.

Christmas Wishlist

• Bod Clarifying Clay Mask – I got this as a gift for myself today!
• The BodyShop Winter Makeup – Eye & Cheek Palette
• The BodyShop Winter Makeup – Shimmer Gloss
• The BodyShop Divine Calm Essential Oil
• Eco Tools Retractable Kabuki Brush
• You’re Beautiful Pig-Rabbit Stuff Toy – Just ordered this from Korea
• Long Bi-Fold Clutch Wallet / Hello Birdie in Almond from Cottonpurr

• “How do you know Christmas is coming?” meme
• My first Christmas gift of 2009
• Happy Merry Christmas

Samsung Corby

I received my first Christmas gift of 2009 – A Samsung Corby from Chewy. It was an early gift as we wouldn’t be celebrating Christmas together this year. He’s going back home to Kuala Lumpur so I’ll be alone during Christmas. Chewy seems to like the touchscreen of Corby. I can’t remember how many times I’ve said this but I am not a fan of touchscreen phones. I think I’ll need some time to get use to using such phones again because I spend 10 minutes trying to send an SMS this morning. I know I fail.

My friends from school highly preferred the Corby over my INQ mini. They are like “oh my gosh Dayna, your new phone looks great. Glad you decided to get a new one.” when they see me with my new phone in class. By the way, my INQ mini is still alive and I gave up my LG Viewty for adoption today. I’m going to miss it. So, back to the Corby… there are 3 colours – white, yellow and pink. There are also green and orange in Korea but somehow they didn’t bring those into Singapore. I like the orange and yellow one but Chewy is a fan of white and black phones so I got the white one. Even though I’m a huge fan of pink, I decided a universal colour will be better. It’s easier to sell it off in the future since not everyone is a fan of pink like me. On a totally random note, according to the korean drama, You’re Beautiful (which I’m so in love with), white stands for purity. It’s not a bad choice eh?

Close up of Samsung Corby

Each set comes with 3 covers – plain white, white with prints and a plain black. I like the plain white one because I was going to get some pop-up stickers to decorate the phone but Chewy prefers the one with prints. I’m still going to get the stickers though. It needs something to be branded as “Dayna’s mobile”. =D

Back cover - White with green and grey prints

Side buttons - I always press the wrong one when I'm unlocking it

Default wallpaper of the cartoon theme

Animated main menu

I was quite wowed by the google maps. The location shown wasn’t exact but it was within a 1 kilometre radius of where I was so I guess it can be considered pretty accurate. For someone who has a poor sense of direction, this will certainly comes in handy when I get lost.

Google Maps

Wallpaper from my own illustrations

After playing around with it for a day, I think it’s not too bad. The set doesn’t comes with a data cable which may be quite troublesome for some. However, I use bluetooth more often so it doesn’t bothers me much. Similar to the INQ, the camera of the Corby is 2MP and takes quite decent shots. The quality is slightly better than the INQ mini. It isn’t a 3G phone and does not have Wi-Fi. Internet speed is a bit slower but it’s not a big deal to me. I don’t surf the net often with my phone. Most of the time, I use it only for twittering and twitpic-ing.

The Corby also has the smart unlock feature which is really cool in my opinion. You can set the phone to unlock by writing any one of the alphabets on the screen. I tested quite a few letters and I think V is the easiest to unlock. This feature is more convenient since the “press side button and hold” option is slower. There are also 3 types of fonts for users to choose from. I’m using the cartoonish font (type 1) and it’s really cute.

How do I like this phone? Quite a lot, considering the fact that it was a gift from Chewy. Hopefully, it will be my trusty phone for the next 1 to 2 years.

• Christmas is coming to town
• Secret Santa Gift
• Christmas Gifts from lovely mum

(Right to left) Iris and I

Mr Chewy and I

I had a rather enjoyable Valentine’s this year although we only went out for dinner at Bobby’s. It was my first time having dinner there. Chewy and I met up with Iris and Ming Ngam at CHIJMES¹. It’s been a really long time since the four of us went out together. Each of us are busy with our own life mainly school, work and for the guys, National Service. We took around 3.5 hours to finish our dinner. Most of the time was spend waiting and talking. I think there’s too much customers such that the waiters kept forgetting about our orders. We waited nearly an hour for the dessert and reminded them for around 3 to 4 times before our desserts were served. I was afraid that the taste and quality of the food might be compromised since that’s always the case when it’s a special day due to the large number of customers. The food was surprisingly good despite the long waiting time. It’s a plus point that the location and ambience was good, it was in CHIJMES so I didn’t expect anything less.

My present to Mr Chewy

Blue Roses

I gave a panda notebook and a huge box of chocolates to Mr Chewy for his Valentine’s gift. There’s about 40 over different chocolates in it, I think if he eat 1 a day, it can last him for about 1.5 to 2 months. I’m going to make my own chocolates next time! After 4 years of waiting, I finally got blue roses from Mr Chewy. It’s always hard to get blue roses for Valentine’s Day. I’m really surprised that he managed to order it this year. I love you Chewy! Maybe white lilies next year? Hint Hint. I love white lilies as well. I don’t mind them on my 21st birthday. Are you reading this Mr Chewy?

Handmade Photo Frame

To your right is the card I’ve drawn for Mr Chewy. I had to admit the colouring was poor. I’m going to learn to colour after my final exams. It looks like it was drawn by a 5 year old kid. :cry: Apart from the flowers, I have gotten a handmade photo frame from him as well. Ignore the bluetacks, they look tacky but cute at the same time. His bluetacks concept certainly gave me a shock. It’s rare to see a DIY frame full of bluetacks. See, I told you he’s “special”. The photo in the frame was actually taken when we went Malaysia last December. It was a good choice as that is one of my favourite as well. Although it was just a simple dinner, I really enjoyed it today. Thanks Chewy for giving me time to study at home in the afternoon. I really appreciate the understanding you gave me during my exams period. I know I get cranky easily at this time of the year due to Missy being a “exams revision procrastinator”.

I’m putting all the images in thumbnails now for posts with more than 3 images. Just click on them to see the full size images, I think that will help to cut down some loading time? Off topic but I just installed the Fluency Admin 2.0 for my WordPress platform and I love it! The WordPress dashboard loads so much faster now and it cuts down on all the unnecessary clicks to get to a certain page. The design is also much nicer than the default one. Check it out if you haven’t, it really loads much faster.

1. CHIJMES is a historic building complex in Singapore, which began life as a Catholic convent known as the Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus (CHIJ) and convent quarters known as Caldwell House. The complex is located at Victoria Street in the Downtown Core, within Singapore’s central business district.

• Chewy is not a good online alias?
• I’ll love you eternally if you …
• Exploring Iluma

• Why teddy bears and balloons?