Amour Chaleur » Gatherings

Blogger’s Camera. Action. Cut! Episode 1

Dayna — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 04:25:24 +0000

I have finally decided on the blog title for all future blogger’s meet up with the girls – Blogger’s Camera. Action. Cut! Our meet up is more like an unconventional photography session. Impromptu meet up with Brenda and Cherlynn yesterday at Bugis for dinner. Ivy is down with a flu and Terry is still in Malaysia so they couldn’t make it. Somehow, I manage to drag myself from Bukit Batok to town after a long day at work to meet up with the girls. I swear my legs and eyes were deactivating and running low on battery already. We were supposed to meet monthly but due to everyone’s hectic schedule, we haven’t met up since April? Anyway, here are some of the crazy shots we have taken. All photos credit to Brenda!

Left to Right: Cherlynn, Brenda, Me

We look like flies squashed on the walls

The love of bloggers, not each other!

Brenda absolutely (loves) it when we do the peace sign

Honey, we got squashed up again!

Konichiwa

Charlie Angels!

I feel like my life is revolving around sleep, food and work. I need to get out, blog, socialise (not like I’m not socialising before) more and GET A LIFE! Girls, we are going to stick to the plan and meet up every month. This also reminds me, I should really start blogging more. 20 years down the road while looking back at these photographs, I will laugh at myself thinking “Gosh, I can’t believe I did that!”. I won’t be going to Illuma in the next 3 to 6 months in case someone goes “Oh look, that’s one of the crazy girls from the other day”.

K-box session up next! Stay tune for the next episode of “Blogger’s Camera. Action. Cut!”.

Birthday surprise!

Dayna — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 05:45:40 +0000

We had a gathering co-organised by James and I to meet up with Huaian who came back to Singapore during his school vacation yesterday. I was extremely surprised when these adorable fruit tarts with smiley faces popped out in front of me as an early birthday celebration. Who doesn’t love these freshly home-baked low sugar fruit tarts with love from Jess? Honestly, I’m so touched they took the effort to “secretly” planned everything and Jess’s effort for waking up at 9 in the morning to bake the tarts. I feel loved! I didn’t suspect anything even when Jess kept walking around and sneaking behind James. I thought she was asking him to show her where’s the washroom. I thought that was odd though.

They taste as good as they looked which reminds me I should get the recipe from Jess and try this at home sometime. The custard tastes heavenly!

We dropped by Mind’s Cafe and found a new game which was really fun! True colours is a game where players attempt to best anticipate how others perceive them. Each round consists of several private ballot votes on who best fits a particular question. Once votes are entered players guess at the number of votes they received for that particular question. The better your estimate the more points you make and the winner being the player who best understands how others see the player. I ended up as the one with the lowest point. Hopefully James will get this for his board games rental site! It’s really fun and entertaining playing with people whom you know.

We went to Bottle Tree Village for dinner and got lost on our way there because the taxi drivers didn’t know how to go there. We chalked up to about SGD 30 of fares. That wasn’t the worst part because the walk back to the bus stop was so creepy. There wasn’t much street lights and no one was walking along the road. It was like a mini night adventure similar to the night walk during our secondary 4 adventure camp but I swear I’m not going there again without a car. It was horribly inconvenient!

On a last note, thanks guys for the gift, tarts and wishes! I really appreciated your thoughtfulness and everything.

What happens when 4 girls are put together?

Dayna — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 03:38:02 +0000

Fun, laughter, jokes and embarrassment are what you get if you put 4 girls (who are all bloggers) together. I meet up with some fellow Singapore bloggers, Ivy, Brenda and Cherlynn last Saturday during our monthly meetup session. Terry, our wonderful organiser couldn’t make it because he was sick. With one more guy, it would be a blast! We miss you Terry, hope you get well soon. We meet up at Relax Bistro at Somerset 313 for lunch and here’s a peek of what we had.

Delicious looking soup

Grilled Chicken

Cherlynn is totally (not) camera-shy!

After a hearty lunch, Brenda suggested going to the flea market near by. As I’ve never been to a flea market, I gladly agreed, so did the rest of the girls. The last time I tried to go to a flea market, I spend 2 hours trying to find my way, got lost and never made it there in the end.

Come to think of it, I’ve done a couple of things I’ve never done before that day. I have never withdraw cash from an ATM machine nor have I ever been to a flea market before Saturday. I can explain myself. Let me see, the probability of Dayna losing her wallet is 10% and the probability that she will drop some cash when she opens her wallet is 30% which is about 40% in total and this is considered high risk. To mitigate the financial risk, it’s safer for her to bring lesser cash when she leaves the house. Sounds cool? Since it was my first time, I thought it was normal that I inserted the card in the wrong direction! Ivy helped me on that and Brenda even conducted an interview with me. I feel grown up to have finally used the ATM machine (lol).

We conquered the flea market! - Photo by Brenda & edited by me

Flowery vintage top

The flea market was packed and we had a hard time trying to escape. We went across the road to the other flea market (I’m not sure if it’s suppose to be the same one) beside Cineleisure. It’s quieter and we had a better time shopping if you ignored the hot weather. Everyone bought something and I’m no exception being a hardcore shopaholic myself.

I got myself a brand new vintage flowery top for SGD 18. It was priced at SGD 20 and Brenda manage to bargain to 18 for me. Lesson learn: always try to bargain if the tops are above SGD 15. According to the girls, the top is so me! They practically know my style 101% in an hour. I thought the photo of us above is so “blogger-style”.

We were melting by the time we “conquered” the flea market. Some air-con shopping and Sakura flowers sounds like a good plan? We headed to Takashimaya excitingly to view the exhibition of live Sakura flowers and here’s what we saw…

Click here to view the embedded video.

This fantastic video is taken and edited by Brenda. You should definitely check out her post and Cherlynn’s about our outing. It has an extremely unflattering but cute (according to her) photo of me and I’m definitely not going to post that photo of myself here.

Sakura flowers & a really cool pose - Photo by Brenda

Cherlynn and I look kind of dumb beside Brenda’s awesome pose. It’s kind of funny how all of us did the peace sign in a lot of photographs to piss Brenda off. The awesome pose ended with a bang as well as Brenda fell after a few seconds. I think a few others saw it but we were too busy wondering if Brenda’s okay to bother about the attention. At least her effort was not in vain as Ivy managed to capture this great shot of us. We should all do the star jump pose the next time we meet!

The day ended with more shopping and jokes, of course. I will proudly present the joke of the day award to Cherlynn (I’ve got a feeling she’s going to kill me for this). So what happen exactly? We were trying out some clothes at Fox. Cherlynn tried out this grey superman tank and denim shorts. We thought she look great in it and urge her to grab the top. She thought the denim shorts was a bit too short. It all happened within a few seconds when she asked the big question: Do I look like a hooker in it? And the next moment, this was what we heard over the speaker: And you ain’t nothin’ but a hooker. According to Brenda, this song is titled ‘Hooker’ by Pink. It was so much of a coincident that all of us burst out laughing uncontrollably. I feel bad for exposing her in this entry, how about a little cartoon as compensation?

Cartoon illustration of the awesome photo above

A brand new year with lots of new memories

Dayna — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 04:28:49 +0000

It’s the start of the new year right after Christmas. A very happy new year to you and I wish this year will be filled with lots of new and happy memories for you no matter which part of the world you are in! I had a blast during the small Christmas gathering at home and the countdown towards the new year is not an exception either. We held a not-so-small family and friends gathering at home. I love holding such parties in the comfort of my own house. It’s much more comfortable and I like how the entire house is filled with noise and laughter.

On a side note, I realised I fulfilled a few of my new year resolutions for 2009. Reading back the post I wrote at the end of 2008, I managed to get at least 50 marks for each of my UOL papers in the 2009 examinations and I got myself a new wallet as well. 2 out of 4 accomplished in the last year! I hope I managed to get those for 2010 done as well.

Presents for myself - Slingbag and wallet

Here’s the delicious looking dinner we had:

Sausages and bacon

A sumptuous dinner

Instant pizza!

Black forest cake

Benjamin is definitely enjoying the food

Sharon and her signature scarf

Sing towards your 21st

Dayna — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 04:34:28 +0000

The gang went out to celebrate Sharon’s belated 21st birthday yesterday. We went to sing at K-Box, followed by dinner at Waraku. The lamest joke of the day was when Sin Yin asked James if he could rap and Yee Loong replied “I can crap”. That was so hilarious!

Happy Birthday, Sharon

My favourite macro shot of the day

I really like this photo showing everyone's presence

Somehow they always laugh when I'm taking photographs of them

Getting really engrossed into the song

Peach Sundae - This ice cream is love!

Scallops and chicken baked rice

Delicious pasta

Group photo

We took a short walk from Orchard all the way to City Hall and I noticed they are putting up the Christmas decorations already. I have to say that the Santa isn’t adorable at all. A bigger head and a smaller body would definitely looks cuter than a smaller head and fatter body. On a random note, I couldn’t wait for Christmas to come. It’s the gift exchange season again and it’s time to love and share! Is there anyone in Singapore who would like to do a gift/card exchange?

Christmas decorations at Orchard Road

Yee Loong also gave me some tips on taking night shots and gave me a short lesson about shutter speed and aperture. I think Orchard is a good place to take night shots in Singapore. All the newly renovated buildings have fantastic lightings.

Orchard Central at night

Make a wish

Dayna — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 10:56:04 +0000

Yesterday was our scholar’s¹ 21st birthday! Happy birthday my friend. As your official photographer of the day, here’s a photo collage for you. I would have given you a tiara as a special gift to wear on your birthday had I found one. I should have borrowed Terry’s². That would be so exciting.

Happy Birthday, my friend

Jen Yi’s our top student so I named him “the scholar”.
Terry had a tiara on his 21st birthday as well.

I love Mr Chewy

Dayna — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 16:45:22 +0000

(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. 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.

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.

Farewell gathering for our dear friend

Dayna — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 10:25:58 +0000

Yesterday was our official farewell gathering for Huaian. It’s been 8 years since I last knew him in Secondary School. He’s a nice guy and someone all of us can look for when we have problems. I would say he’s quite wise and have taught me some important life lessons. I’m really thankful he’s my good friend and I shall wish him all the best in his studies in Australia. The 8 of us (Huaian, Ben, James, Yee Loong, Pui Han, Sharon, Jess and I) went for lunch at Ding Tai Feng at Paragon and then we played pool for a few hours before heading home.

The 8 of us, guess which one is me?

The Ladies: (left to right) Pui Han, Sharon, Me, Jess

The Guys: (left to right) Yee Loong, Huaian, Ben, James

Ben seems to be enjoying himself.

Huaian - My mentor who teaches me how to play pool

A page I made for the scrapbook we gave Huaian as a gift

Hey guy, you shall be missed! Please don’t forget us! We might just drop by in Brisbane to visit you.

Christmas Gathering 2008

Dayna — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 04:25:02 +0000

We had a Christmas gathering yesterday with a small group of my secondary school friends. We went to Shokudo for dinner and catch the Twilight movie at Jurong Point. It was Ben’s treat yesterday, thanks Ben! As usual, I had my tofu cheese cake for dessert and it’s delicious (and expensive at the same time). We did a gift exchange and guess what the presents were. After drawing lots, my gift was for Sharon and I got Jess’s gift. I think her gift was chosen especially for me since it’s “The Panda”. I hope Sharon like the gift, it’s the Cranberry Body Shop gift set with the shower gel, body lotion and the shimmer soap. I love that scent because it smells heavenly. I think all girls will like it.

By the way, I think I need to mention this, this is my first time seeing someone ordered hot tea into the theatres for the movie, and that’s Meng How. Nice one, I should try this the next time I watch a movie, let’s just hope the tea from GV taste good, mental reminder to ask him the next time I saw him.

The movie was good although some parts were quite long winded. The main couple looks good together and I love the plot. Vampires, fantasy, action! I plan to get the books and the DVD soon. Maybe I’ll get the books as Christmas gifts (courtesy of mum). I’ll give it 4 stars.

(Left to Right) Sharon, Me, Jess, Huaian, Ben, Meng How, Yee Loong

(Left to right) Sharon, Me and Jess

My favourite dessert - The Tofu Cheese Cake

My present - the cord wrapping panda