I can't wait to go home

Yes, I can't wait to go home. After 2 weeks here with meetings and discussions everyday. I am really tired and I really want to go home and not back to a hotel room every night...watching the TV programmes till i fall asleep.

Mandoruam and Keukenhof

Decided to take it easy today and started the day around 10am. First stop, Mandouram which is a mini Netherlands. Took a train to the Den Haag station and board a tram to the venue.

The place was amazing, everything was so real and so cute. You can put in coins to get a sourvenir from a clog-making factory or mars chocolate from a chocolate factory. You can also see the ferries moving, the trains hooting along the railway tracks and even a place preparing to take off at the airport. Had lunch at the cafeteria-sort of restaurant there and headed for my next destination.

Next stop Keukenhof, the famous tulip garden. There were so much flowers and it’s really therapeutic walking around the flowers. I bought some bulbs of flowers (not tulips though, tried tulips last year and they didn't survive). The place is huge and I almost got lost.

The flowers were really beautiful and there were so many species of tulips.

Brussels, Belgium

I signed up for a day trip to Brussels and Antwerp today but I missed the train and I missed the whole day trip…I literally watched the bus left when walking out from the train station to the meeting place. Sigh…that was 50 euros, ok. So I bought myself a train ticket to Brussels and that cost me around 48euros. The whole train journey was 3 solid hours and I thought it’s faster. I later realised I should have taken a fast train but never mind.

Reached the station and was waylaid by these people who is sort of touting…asking you to join the city sightseeing tour. In any case, I joined one as I thought its quite a good way to know generally the places of attractions in a quick way.

The first pic is the Palais Royal de Bruxelles and if the flag is there, it indicated that the King of the Belgians is in the country. The Parc Du Cinquantenaire in the 2nd pic is a public park and consists of 3museums - the autoworld, royal museum of art and history and the museum of army and aviation. Lastly, I stopped at the Atomium which was built in 1958 for the Brussels World Expo. The Atomium, which had been closed to the public since October 2004, re-opened on 18th February 2006 after a much needed renovation work which sees the old aluminium sheets fading off.

I took a ride up to the top level where there is a restaurant as well. It took me 15 mins to queue to go up and 15 mins to queue to go down and just 30 seconds around the circumference of the balls.

I hopped on the bus again and went back to the station. Decided to take the next train, I took a walk around the market and the square. Passed by the St. Michael and Gudula Cathedral which is located at the Treurenberg hill on the edge between lower and upper town. Further down you will walked into a small market place (3rd last pic). Not the famous Grote Markt - Market Square though. Bought some souvenirs, famous Belgium waffles and plenty of chocolates (last pic, the choco from jamin are bought from Amsterdam though). So that concludes my own day trip to Brussels.

Tulip Land

After 14 hours long flight with a crying kid besides me on the plane, I was super tired when I reached the airport on Sunday. Nonetheless, I went to book a day trip out to Belgium this coming saturday.

Hopped on a cab and to the hotel I go. Along the way, I can see beautiful tulips on the fields....so beautiful...there is a tulip field directly in front of my hotel.

Before I continue, the blogspot that I'm using now is all in dutch...cute..

Ok, so after I checked in at 8am, I decided to take a shower and rest. The seminar started on sunday with a social event of getting to know each other and then a bowling session and a sort of hotstones dinner. It had a similar concept like hotstones just that you cooked the meat yourself. It's also similar to the meat fondue I had here in Jan.

I was really feeling the jetlag at dinner time and I can't wait to get back to bed. The weather was pretty warm...hovering around 27 deg cel...which was good weather for the pple here but bad for me as I wanted a more cooling temperature. The sun was so shiny and the room had no air-conditioner so it got pretty warm in the room.


The picture above was taken when I am on the way to the office. Beautiful isn't it? I am going to visit the famous tulip garden this weekend.

I also took this picture of the windmill while stuck in the traffic.

Today was where the real action begins...gone through so many presentations that I am going to be information over-loaded. We ended the day with a nice dinner at a thai restaurant which had pretty much the standard we had back in Singapore.

The weather started to get a bit chilly later in the evening. So I am now in the hotel after returning from the dinner...logging in to check emails....which costs me 10euro an hour for internet connection. It's 11pm here which is 5am back home.

And I just received an sms from my hubby...saying he misses me....heehee

This is what I intend to do

I have decided. I'm going to join a day trip to Brussels and Antwerp from Amsterdam.

Chanced upon this website -> www.viator.com and they have a departure on 21st April.

I am also switching hotels, from Noordwijk to Leiden for the 2nd week.

My new iPod Shuffle

It's so super duper tiny and cute. I got my new iPod Shuffle from Oracle yesterday.

It's not for free as I need to do a survey for them. Ok....I know that's not that too difficult to do...hahaha

My colleague has been passing me songs which can last her for 5.5 days to me. My ipod can just hold 1 GB....need to try to maximise the use of it.

This came just at the right time when I will be away for 2 weeks and I can use it on the plane or on the road...

Pasir Ris Park

While having lunch today with hubby, i stumbled upon the idea of having a picnic.

Actually I have been planning to organise one with LeAnne & Co one of the days. It's been a while since we had one and now with baby Iain as well...it will be fun.

Ok ok....back to what i wanted to say. So I decided that we should go to Pasir Ris Park for a picnic. It was a last minute thing so we didn't really prepare much for the picnic.

We bought some fried bee hoon, had some leftover mei2 cai4, some gyoza I made and I cut some really sweet mangoes I bought 2 days back. So off to the park to we went...

Found a nice spot near the beach and put out our mats. We brought along some magazines but hubby was too pre-occupied with his new gadget...yes...he just bought his new dopod 838 pro on friday. He was meddling with it till 4am this morning before he decided to go to bed.

Men and their gadgets....sigh

We saw this group of 3 girls and 1 guy pitching a really small tent (think the tent is meant for 2 only) somewhere nearby and then came an extended family of malays who built 6 tents directly behind this one tent and sprawl a huge mat just next to the tent for picnics. The 4 people were like squeezing inside the tent. It was an interesting sight. They left not long after the sky turn dark.

Finally, we left around 8.30pm. It was fun....I should consider doing it more often.

Qing Ming

It's the annual Qing Ming Festival....don't ask me what's the real meaning of Qing Ming as I only started this practice when I got married.

We had 3 places to cover this year as usual....Choa Chu Kang, Mt. Vernon and Mandai Crematorium and Columbarium.

Choa Chu Kang is the burial ground so you get to see the tombstones and some really are very fanciful.














The Mt Vernon site, I heard is going to be gone so the family of the deceased are being asked to move the deceased's urns elsewhere.

Mandai is the new guy in town although there is a new and old section to it as well. In there, our former president Dr Wee Kim Wee's urn was placed there as well.

On the left is how the old section of the Mandai Crematorium and Columbarium looked like.

What Should I do???

I have a weekend in Netherlands on 21st april and am thinking of where to go. Dilemma....

Should I stay overnight at a neighbour country or should I just take a day trip or should i just stay in Netherlands??

What should I do? Arghhhh....

Hotspots.Com....Me!!!

Ok, I just discovered I am on this website called www.hotspots.com and i'm featured on the single sites page for asia.

I didn't know it until my friend told me so. This is really strange.

Our 2nd Anniversary

Time really past by so quickly. It's our 2nd wedding anniversay already. I surprised hubby by bringing him to Ritz Carlton for a night stay. It was pretty expensive though as I had requested for a marina bay view room.



There is a 37 inch LCD TV in the room but the resolution doesn't seem that well and it's a sharp AQUOS. Maybe the cable isn't that good. The comfortable bed with lots of pillows...heehee

Selections from their mini bar. They have this really cute candies from their mini bar but costs S$15 each.

We went to this place called Tent - Mongolian Grill Restaurant at Clarke Quay for dinner. They only have buffet dinner at night. The concept is pretty simple, each of us had a token which represent our table numbers with an alphabet suffix.

So you take a big bowl and a small bowl for food and sauce respectively. There are rice, bee hoon, noodles, kway teow etc to choose from and then you move forward to the vegetables section where there are various kinds of vegetables and there's the meat and seafood section where there are prawns, mussels, squids, lamb, beef, fish etc. So you put all these in a big bowl. As for the small bowl, you can choose from over 20 sauces such as black pepper sauce, their house special, sesame oil, satay sauce etc. Give these to the person with the token and they will cook the food and bring them to your table. Attached pic is a concortion of vegetables and squid...yummy

And a very nice night view from the hotel room overlooking marina bay, the skylight of the city and fullerton hotel with part of the esplanade in sight.