Time flies! It has been two months since baby S was born into our family. While the first month was on “easy mode” thanks to the confinement nanny, the second month was much tougher without the nanny. The day the nanny left, and after the celebratory mood that was associated with our baby’s first month has evaporated, that was when it sunk in that we are on our own – a family of three.
Of course, it must be said that we are not truly alone – our parents were more than ready to provide a helping hand. But for us, we felt that it was still important for us to give this parenting thing a try by just the two of us. In some ways, compared to my cousins who had kids and were staying with their parents, we are jumping in to the deep end of the metaphorical pool here.
As all parents already know, taking care of a newborn is relentless. There is barely any break – in between the two-to-three hour feeds, diaper changes, burping and Chelsea expressing her breast milk, there really is not much free time for other things like Netflix. The house still needs to be cleaned, laundry still needs to be washed. Having no “extra” hands in this context makes the days ever more so tiring.
But I think we have tried admirably and made it to our little one’s two-month mark. There have been (very) trying moments – when S is crying for long stretches and we couldn’t figure out why, or when we try to put her to sleep when we are exhausted ourselves. But looking back (it’s always on hindsight, isn’t it) it was quite a memorable month.
It really helps that I’m able to work from home too. The separation anxiety that I imagine I would face during pre-COVID days is virtually eliminated, other than the occasional day that I do need to go back to office. The shift to WFH has been probably the best thing for me as a new dad. It allows me to remain engaged in childcare during lull times at work.
So we have made it to two months. Every day, our little one grows just a bit more, and looks just a bit different from the previous day. When we look at photos from her first few days on Earth we are amazed at how much she has grown. At the same time we know that she will grow even more in the months ahead. Time is relentless; like it or not, the moment will pass. So it is a reminder for me to cherish the moments – even the loud colicky crying that comes ever so often.
Wow wow, how time has passed! I think “how quickly time has passed” is probably the single phrase that has been repeated over and over again on this blog, but it’s true. I’ve always wished I had taken some time to write down some of the things happening in my life, but always tend to get swept away by other things to do just when I feel like getting down to doing it. (Plus I don’t like to type long paragraphs on my phone because I feel quite slow doing so)
But okay, here’s a brief moment for me to write some thoughts and feelings on the last day of September!
The third quarter of the year has been a wild one. From checking of defects at the start of July, to finally moving in to our new nest in mid-September (right after the seventh lunar month), we really progressed from property owners to homeowners. It’s really another chapter in the #adulting story.
The last post was really just about key collection. This time round, just would want to share a few photos from post-defect checking (which took a whole month) to getting our home done! Since it’s an EC, and since we are simple people, we didn’t engage another interior designer to co-ordinate renovation or to provide us with renders for how the house will look like. It was all co-ordinated by me, and all the furniture was just chosen based on our window shopping for the past few months.
Even though the renovation work was ‘simple’, every weekend was spent at our not-quite-ready-to-be-home home, or doing something related to it. It was wedding planning all over again; our free time was consumed almost wholesale to the renovation and furniture purchasing process.
The funny thing about our renovation process was that we weren’t even in Singapore when most of the renovation was taking place; we were having our pre-planned vacation in Vietnam! Our electrician and false ceiling contractor (basically the only two parties we involved in our renovation process) updated us through WhatsApp. Our parents also went down to help take a physical look while we were away.
One of the first lights installed in our home; lighting was extended to include a L-box on the left and right side of the living/dining halls
Our master bedroom became very messy after our electrician hacked the walls to install new 2-way switches
Master bedroom with the false ceiling installed without lights…
The renovation process was honestly much faster than defects rectification… just a week after the renovation started, we headed back to Singapore to find many lights installed, and the false ceiling works largely completed. Soon the remaining lights were installed, and we just needed to paint the walls (more importantly the false ceilings which were not painted), clean the place, install the curtains and move furniture in.
Works almost done!
A (probably) more unconventional approach for us is that we opted to paint the walls ourselves, with the help from my parents. It was tough work but it was satisfying that the walls in our home are painted by us… a little homemade touch and effort. We had a tough time choosing the two coloured walls for our living room and master bedroom, but thankfully the colours turned out right for us.
The wife and our first coat for our living room!
The real hiccup in our renovation journey was the curtains. We almost didn’t have curtains in our home when we moved in – most curtains only came in the day before moving in (after ‘unexpected’ delays by the vendor)… in fact the master bedroom curtains only showed up on the actual day of moving in! We got a cheap ‘group buy’ from some Malaysian curtain vendor which honestly quoted a real cheap price for the whole unit (all curtains – including day and night curtains for all rooms – and blinds around $1200). Thankfully a lot of persuasion, some anger, and frustration ultimately led to us having most things installed for our home, curtain-wise. (We still have blinds that are not installed yet in our utility room…)
One week before our scheduled move-in date, we have most of our furniture delivered. ‘Most’ being furniture in our living and dining room. After a lot of window shopping all over the place, we ultimately put most of our eggs in one basket and opted for Castlery for our dining and living room needs. In the end we got a dining set, sofa, coffee table, and TV console (plus some poufs) from them. After mounting our new TV on the wall, we considered our living and dining room done for now.
The then-completed look
Moving our bed on 15 September officially marked our move in to our new nest. Moving the bed from my parents’ place to our new home on our own was no easy task. My dad had to rent a truck and got some of his workers to assist in the move. Cling-wrapping the king-sized mattress, bed frame, and then transporting them gingerly to CCK was quite a tiring experience. We celebrated our first night at home with champagne and spicy cup noodles, hahaha…
Tired but happy!
Now that we have moved, the journey to complete our home is not done. In fact it’s never done – there’s always things to buy, improve, change, throw out, and so on. For instance our entire study room is purchased from Ikea and installed by ourselves, a process that took a few weekends and weekday nights.
Study table installation in progress
The completed look… small and simple
Of course, everything that we have been doing is to build a nest that we feel right at home, and considering that it has been our third weekend here since moving in, it really feels like home. After all, I’ve inspected every tile together with my wife, cooked my first ever dishes, cleaned every corner, and saw it come to shape. I’ve grown up in my parents’ (and grandparents’) place since I was born, and (almost) 27 years on, I’ve finally moved out, with my wife, to a place I can call my own*.
* after I pay back the loans, of course…
It’s a different feeling, the knowledge that you are responsible for our own place. If something is spoilt, and you do nothing about it, it remains spoilt. Or dirty. Or untidy. Or wrinkled. It’s a huge shift, but with it, comes with the freedom to do whatever we like in our space. Sometimes I think about the days living back in my parents’ place. After all, 27 years is a long time. But more often I think about the people that I share that home with – my parents, grandparents and my siblings, and I wonder how that place feels like for them, without me living there. Of course I go back and visit – I try to do so at least twice a week – but I think it’s still different. My brother tells me that my grandmother asks my mum whether I’m coming home for dinner every day. While I never really talked or interacted much directly with my grandma, it is evident that my sheer presence made a difference at home, so I wonder how she (along with my parents) is coping with her grandson leaving the nest for a new one.
Now that myself and Chels, husband and wife, are living together in our own home (instead of my parents’ place in my old room), our marriage yet again feels fresh and new, despite us almost hitting the 10-month mark. We certainly didn’t think it would take this long for us to get here, but I still feel it’s worth the wait. 🙂
Wow – the last update to this blog was in March?! Amazing.
The period between this post and the last really just flew past. A big part of it was actually work-related; it was the peak period for the financial statements audit from April to June, and my agency has a leave embargo in effect for the three months. My peak was in some ways worse than expected, having the ‘opportunity’ (nice way to put it) to work on more things than I think is expected of a “newish” officer like me. But regardless, I had no choice, and I somehow made it through…
The highlight of the whole period was of course, continuing from the last post, getting the keys to our home! Our block was among the last to be scheduled for key collection (sucks!) so by the time we got our keys on 25 June there were families living there already. But I guess the good thing is by the time we move in, there will be barely any renovation left.
25 June was a bonus date for us because we were originally scheduled for 7 July, which would have been our 7th monthsary. But an empty slot popped up when I was checking the MCL Land online portal every day (or rather, every other hour) and we seized it immediately.
On the afternoon of 25 June, Chels and I finally got the keys to our first nest. Even though it’s more than a month since we got the keys, I can still remember how excited we were to finally see how our unit looks like. There are many units like ours, but ours is still ours. Which made it very special for us!
Key collection was honestly quite a fast process. The MCL Land guy who processed our key collection was probably bored out of his mind doing this repetitive process multiple times a day for a few months… greeting homeowners, paperwork, safety video, see people roll pineapple, inventory checks… and repeat.
Our parents were there to witness the big moment with us as we finally have a place to call our own!
Just before entering our new nest!
Hello!
View from above
Freebies from the developer
Of course the excitement soon gave way to the painful reality of defects checking, which revealed that the workmanship of the unit (and units in this EC in general) is pretty lacking, especially for the floors – slightly uneven floor tiles in the living and dining rooms, and bad hollow flooring and poor sealage for the laminate flooring in all the bedrooms. We could literally crack the floor open by stepping close to the edge where the wall meets the floor.
It was disappointing to say the least.
That weekend was filled with a lot of work marking out the defects that we found, painstakingly logging each one into the phone app that the developer uses to track defects. We spent so many hours inside that weekend just tapping tiles, running our fingers on tiles, and tearing blue tape.
This is what getting a new home is like, I suppose! I wouldn’t trade it for anything else.
The whole bedroom floor is condemned!
Blue tape, defect by defect
The developers have one month to fix the defect from the day of logging (which is actually tomorrow), but in the meantime we have been trying to source for contractors to do some simple renovation such as false ceilings and lighting works… We have also looked at (a lot) of furniture shops trying to find the right stuff for our home. Not engaging an interior designer means trying to fit the pieces ourselves, into something that we both can accept, from the size of the TV console, to the types of lights used. It was not an easy process, and it is still ongoing, but I think we have made much progress since the day of key collection.
Many more can be said – and typed – but honestly I’m too tired to type further at this late hour. Maybe I will find the inspiration to type another post soon… 😛
Exactly one year ago, on 1st March, Chelsea and I bought our first home together. For some reason or another, I didn’t blog about it. Strange because it was the one thing that catalysed the changes in 2017 that made my life what it is now – married with the love of my life.
The days leading up to the purchase of our new home (Sol Acres in Choa Chu Kang) were quite hectic. I still remember spending hours in my parents’ bedroom, trying to figure out the perfect unit. It was all very rushed because we had this thought that if we were to buy it, it has to be a good unit, and there were not many good units left (the project launched in 2015 so the units remaining were really not that many).
When we finally did decide, and when we finally went down to the showflat on the evening of 1st March 2017, I could remember me didn’t really believing what was going to happen. The downpayment was made, the unit was assigned – to me and Chelsea (what!) – and soon photos were taken.
Living area
Masterbedroom
Can’t believe this was one year ago
Site progress as at 3 March 2017
Because we knew that the EC was slated for TOP (aka completion) in the first quarter of 2018, we knew that we had to get married soon. After considering various factors such as work and timing issues we decided to say ‘yes’ to each other in December.
Things were going pretty exciting for the EC – we had a group chat and so on, and there were even awesome ‘spy’ shots taken by fellow residents. One of them was a subcontractor for the project so he had shared a great number of exciting shots from inside the condo. It was really exciting to see things inch towards completion.
Somewhere in the second half of last year we received a letter from our lawyers that told us that the developer was expecting the TOP to be in December or January. It got us *really* excited because it could mean that we could move in to our new house earlier than expected. Of course, as things would have it, we are still waiting for the TOP announcement today.
But at least the developer did share that the place is *almost* ready.
Enough teasing already!
Looks good huh? Taken (supposedly) today
Even though I knew that things would progress quickly after we received the option to purchase, at that point we were still in a typical relationship… I barely started working, and had close to nothing in my CPF account. We weren’t even engaged – and we didn’t even think that we would get engaged soon (my own plan was to surprise Chelsea in July last year). Now? Engaged, went through the wedding prep process, wedded my wife, went on honeymoon, even gave our first red packets during Chinese New Year. What a change.
Can’t imagine how life would be like one year from now.
But I’m pretty sure I’ll be living in my new home with my lovely wife!
Chinese New Year had just ended, with the last bit of visiting completed earlier this afternoon (yeah I have quite a big extended family). For me, the last ten years of CNY was really more-or-less the same, programme-wise. The same rituals, the same visits, the same sequence of home visiting, from CNY Eve to whichever-day-our-visiting-is-complete. And of course, not forgetting the other customary stuff like receiving red packets.
One year ago Chelsea and I had no clue that that would have been our final year receiving red packets from our older relatives. If we had known, I think I may have relished the experience a bit more (hahah!).
This year has been really different, and CNY this year was really something that hit me (again) that I am now married and live a somewhat different life. The transition to married life is a little disjointed for me in some ways, because I’m still living with my parents, in the same house. In many ways things have not changed. Of course I’m living happily with my wife now, and it’s really a blessing to see her every day (instead of once a week last time when we were dating).
But CNY was an occasion that hits me that I no longer have the “family” that I’ve grown accustomed to (my paternal side and my maternal side). Rather it’s now “my side” and “your side” (i.e., my in-laws). Chelsea has a much smaller extended family than mine but that doesn’t make it any less important. And that, really, is the tricky part because CNY is only that long, and we want to visit as many relatives as we can… but scarcity would come into the picture and we really need to prioritise and see what is more important than others.
This also meant that CNY was particularly exhausting for both of us this year… whatever free time I had on my side, it would likely be visiting Chelsea’s family. At some points I wonder how we could keep this up in the years to come.
But of course, there’s nothing that implies that we can’t achieve a healthy balance… just that the process to get to that balance may not be so easy and clear-cut. After all there is no right-or-wrong answer, and we may take a few tries before we know what works for us.
Well I would be an optimist and say that it would be exciting to find out, and really, it is part-and-parcel of how newlyweds find a way to begin anew as a new family. Before long some kind of routine would form and this feeling of exploration, of trying, may slowly fizzle out. Better to enjoy the bubbles when they’re still around! 😛
It’s the last day of 2017, and like last year I always like to take a little look back at the last 365 days and think about how much has changed.
This year is probably a year with the most change.
Entering 2017 on January 1, I embarked on a solo trip to Hong Kong. It was my first real solo trip and it was a refreshing change to see how I see the world, and how I feel about travelling solo. The short conclusion was: it’s nice, but sometimes having someone to cherish those memories with you is even nicer.
And then I entered the workforce for realz on 9th January, my first day at work. Just like that, a year has passed and I was recently confirmed (yay no more probation) and also promoted (it comes with the confirmation). But a year at the job also seemed to fly, considering that there were so many other things that happened this year. I’m thankful for a smooth first year at work, and so far work has been fun and enriching 🙂
My relationship with Chelsea has leapfrogged over the past year. In 2016 we celebrated our fourth anniversary as a couple together, which was definitely a big milestone, but that has shrunk considering the changes this year. From becoming homeowners in March, to getting engaged in May, and finally getting married earlier this month, this alone makes the year one of the most significant years in my life yet.
It’s a profound change. Till now I’m still wrapping my idea that I will spend the rest of my life – everyday – with the love of my life. Just last year we were still seeing each other on average once a week, and now getting to see her and spend time with her everyday is a real treat.
Thinking about the wedding day just gives me a nice, warm feeling inside. It was so smooth, and we are very thankful for how well the whole thing went. Considering we were amongst the first of our friends to get married, it was amazing how much we could accomplish at the end of it all, since we did not even know what we don’t know. All the small details for the wedding day were thankfully resolved in time, and everything happened pretty much on schedule, and our guests seemed very happy at the reception. The memory of that day will be treasured for a long, long, long time.
And of course, seeing the world with her is always a pleasure. This year after my solo trip to Hong Kong we travelled to Krabi, Bali (with Xixi and Paul) and New Zealand (what a trip!) for our honeymoon.
Of course there were many nice moments this year too, getting to meet my friends – especially a big bunch of them who graciously attended our wedding banquet, having fun and laughter, and just enjoying each day and making the most of it.
Next year will be a big year for me and Chelsea as we move into our new home. Of course, life throws surprises along the way, some good, some bad, but we just got to go with the flow and wish for the best.
And for 2017? It’s been great, and I’m filled with gratitude for my wife, family, and friends for the awesome memories formed.
It has been a week since my commencement ceremony. A week ago, I donned my mortarboard, put on my graduation gown, and went on stage to get an empty scroll from one of the NUS pro-chancellors. Empty, because it is symbolic.
Symbolic, especially since I’ve been working for six months already. Going back to school felt distant, strange, yet familiar. As I told a friend, it’s probably because I had thrown the “student” identity away over the six months in the workplace. The fact that I had “commenced” and moved on from formal education had already set in.
But of course, it was not symbolically represented. And I wanted a memory of a big milestone in my life. So I took leave (along with a 5-day holiday to Krabi with my fiancée) to attend my Commencement, a year later from my batch thanks to the double-degree programme.
Oh yes, the double degree… it was during Commencement that I was reminded again that I had successfully completed this programme. In the Class of 2017 BBA (Accountancy) batch, there were only three of us who finished the double degree programme. Everyone else seemed to have dropped out of the DDP. Interestingly (yet logically enough), there are more people who completed a concurrent degree programme (i.e., one masters and one bachelor’s degree) than a double degree programme.
It’s clearly a sign of not just the troublesomeness of juggling two degrees, but also how impractical having two degrees is, at least in the sense of job hunting for Accountancy graduates. Still, I’m glad I finished the programme with a high-enough CAP for nice Honours in accountancy.
What makes me really happy is that my entire family (including my future wife) was there to witness my (and my sister’s) graduation. I owe a debt of gratitude to my parents who have been there every step of my education journey, from a failed ballot for Nanyang Primary School (which I think is a blessing in disguise), to the PSLE, to an successful appeal to Nan Hua High School (which is a blessing too). Of course, with the tuition in secondary school, the concern over my ‘O’ and ‘A’ levels during my teenage years, and ultimately doing well enough to enter NUS on a scholarship… my parents were there supporting me the whole way — attempts to tutor during primary school, paying for tutors in secondary school, and giving moral and financial support during my JC and uni days. I would not have been where I am without them, and I’m glad that they secured VIP seats (thanks to my award-winning sister) to see us graduate.
I’m also immensely thankful that my grandparents were able to make it for the ceremony. There were many health scares in the past years as my grandparents hit (very) old age, so the fact that my grandparents are able to witness our graduation up front – at the age of 90 and 89 – makes me immensely thankful for their good health. I remember a period in my final semesters where I would go to NUH before and after classes to visit when they were hospitalised. They were slightly amused at the fact that I could pop by because school was so nearby… and I think we have made them very proud to have graduated with great results.
With that simple gesture of going on stage, my formal education has come to a symbolic end. Yet, nothing really changes. The act of learning continues in the workplace. The learning never stops. In fact, after getting used to formal education for decades in Singapore’s highly structured educational pathway, learning to learn “organically” is an interesting experience. The road ends here, and the search for the trail begins.
It’s a happy Wednesday ‘cos it’s Vesak Day! Gonna take a bit of time to update this blog.
In the Punggol cycling post earlier this year I mentioned about how 2017 was already a significant year for Chelsea and I. But in a way it’s finally “formalised” because I proposed to Chelsea last Friday (5th May; our 53rd month together)… and she said yes!
To be honest, it was a simple proposal. Many things have happened this year – such as the purchase of our first house, the booking of our wedding venue, booking of bridal studio – that everything was in the “wrong” order. Yep – we have settled on a wedding date, venue and bridal studio even before she has a ring on her finger!
Of course, this was all unexpected – my plan was to propose to her during our upcoming Krabi trip in July – but because of all the progress in our journey as future husband and wife, I wanted to give her a surprise for the proposal. Since everything is already “set” in stone, at least the proposal can be something that she didn’t see coming!
(Turns out she also guessed that I would propose during the Krabi trip!)
So I got in touch with her close friends, who decided to use a simple post-work dinner at Prive (at Asian Civilisation Museum) as a cover for the actual event of the night… the proposal. But that’s the easy part.
The hard part is probably everything else… how I’m going to do it, where I’m going to do it, and of course getting the ring.
Place
While I wanted to make the proposal a surprise, I thought it was important that it was heartfelt and sincere. There are so many proposals online that are bombastic and flashy but those proposals are just not… me. They are very social-media worthy but I could never really sense the sincerity of it all. So I wanted something simple, set somewhere nice and quiet, with her close friends and perhaps her parents. No gimmicks, no over-the-top book-the-whole-restaurant kind of stuff. Always thought that there are other ways to touch a girl’s heart.
So during one of the Running Dept runs, as we walked past Victoria Concert Hall, it was immediately the place I wanted the proposal to be. There were many other contenders (like the MBS Skypark) but given Chelsea’s preference for somewhere less crowded I thought it fit the bill.
I also got some inspiration from the birthday present she gave me last year, which was a jar of LED lights and photos – this gift sits in front of me every night and I thought it was beautiful. So off I went to get fairy lights off Lazada (during some fairy light promotion – I kid you not) and thankfully my cousin has quite a few fairy lights. The big lesson I learnt was that… you cannot have too many! I thought there was too much but after the proposal I really wished I had more.
Trial run at home
Ring
The ring was frankly a big headache for me. She has made her preference for a diamond ring known to me – and I wanted to get a nice one. But I was also constrained by the amount of money I have, which is frankly not a lot given that I only started working in January, and we also had to start saving up for our wedding preparations. (The woes of getting married very early)
But I still needed to get something nice. I asked some of my friends for recommendations and they all recommended Jann Paul. So on 31 March, I went and got the ring for her! To be honest, I thought she would like a diamond that scored higher on clarity and colour than size (well if I were a girl, I would! Hahaha)
The ring on my finger
After the ring was settled I was honestly quite relieved. It took a month for it to be ready and when I saw it, I thought she would like it! But being the simpler (sort of) unromantic type, I always felt that my feelings for someone go beyond the size of a diamond ring (evidently “gifts” is my least important love language). I would rather spend the money on a holiday creating memories with my beloved. While it is true that it is a symbol of “love”, I think it is just that – symbolic – and just covers love on a surface level.
The Gift
The thing that was more important to me was frankly a gift (beyond the diamond ring) for her. I’ve never been the type of guy who gives (many) flowers or bombastic gifts, and I thought it was always nice to do something handcrafted… the time invested is more important than the money spent. So while I did get flowers, I did not get like 99 roses.
I initially ordered a card from Apple but I realised that it was too lousy (in terms of its “handcrafted” level) so in the days leading up to the actual event I went to craft something on a corkboard that turned out to be a lot nicer than I had imagined it to be… with fairy lights in the shape of a heart and the words “Will you marry me?”
The metal wires are the fairy lights that are operated from the back of the board!
The Event
The night before 5 May, I was getting bored at home and started to browse blogs for other people’s proposals and how they were carried out. I then chanced upon one that had a video of a failed proposal (where the girl ran away) and I started getting a little nervous.
What if it failed?
(By right, it shouldn’t fail, considering that we have a wedding date and future house waiting for us, but…)
That nervousness carried on for the rest of Friday. Thankfully I was busy enough to keep those thoughts away from my head, but as the evening loomed I felt pretty excited again.
After a quick dinner at home, my siblings and I went to get the bouquet from Star Vista and then off we went towards Victoria Concert Hall. Some of my friends (Heather and Rachael) and her friends will be there. Her parents will also be there so it was quite nerve-wrecking – cannot screw it up!
Thankfully the weather was beautiful for the whole evening, so everything started off well. My brother and sister helped with the fairy lights (arranging them in a heart shape and so on) while the Whatsapp group between me and her friends was buzzing with updates. Mostly along the lines of “we are getting the bill soon”, “she is not suspicious at all” etc.
8:30pm was the time we had arranged for her to reach Victoria Concert Hall, and the plan was for her friends to bring her to the grass patch outside VCH where I will surprise them from the back. I had (wrongly) assumed that they would reach the grass patch via the promenade next to the Singapore River. It turned out that they were coming from the side of ACM – where I was waiting! Thankfully Cheryl (one of her close friends) quickly notified me and I was able to move out of my initial hiding area.
My photo of the bouquet I was holding before I surprised her!
Soon I saw them walking on the grass patch, clearly looking oblivious (I think her friends were wondering where I was popping out from). I quickly sneaked behind them… and Chels did not realise I was behind them for a while. But she finally turned and saw me with the bouquet!
The surprise!
This was the moment I thought she would be surprised – and then would probably start to tear. Boy, was I so wrong. She was surprised – and then she laughed. Her friends quickly took her bag off and she said something like “my hair is in a mess”. As I walked her to the heart shape my bro played one of her fave songs from the Goblin OST and she laughed even louder.
Clearly not very romantic, I thought to myself. But it was funny as she laughed all the way to the heart formation on the floor.
Then I made a little speech to her, with thoughts and feelings that came from my heart. I had a script prepared (written behind the corkboard) but I was so nervous that I probably mentioned only half of the things I wanted to say. At this point, she was smiling but I wasn’t sure if she’s listening or not (the blog posts I read indicated a high percentage of “I didn’t catch what he was talking about…”).
Then I turned on the lights on the corkboard, and asked her to remove the paper that covered the 4 magical words…
And then I got down on one knee (never rehearse before… facepalm) and asked if she would marry me.
She nodded.
Then I was like “say something!” And we laughed.
Then she said “I will!”
(Which meant my prediction that she would say “Yes” was a little off)
Then I put the ring on her finger – which fit perfectly – and shared a kiss and a hug.
Then PHOTO TIME.
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The entire time she didn’t cry, which surprised me a little because I was always saw her as the more emotional type. She only started to cry after she saw her parents, who approached us after the whole thing was over (they watched from afar).
Then more photos – group photos, and some pretty awkward poses as suggested by her future bridesmaids – before we called it a night with dessert.
And that marked the end of 2 years where we were pseudo-fiance/fiancee (‘cos we applied for a BTO for the first time in May 2015). I finally put a ring on it!
Thinking back, I am always incredibly thankful to have met my future wife on my first day of school. My first girlfriend is my fiancee after 4 years 5 months… I never thought I would be this lucky to have met the One.
(And I’m her first boyfriend too so I guess it works both ways, hahaha! #selfpraise)
Now that this is settled probably can blog a bit more about our wedding prep and our future home! 🙂
To me, the new year never really sets in until Chinese New Year is over. Sure, there will be the excitement that accompanies the passing of a year – the countdown, the fireworks, or even just seeing the date on your phone skip a year. But it’s always too short for it to sink in. To me, the period between January 1 and the first day of Chinese New Year always feels as though the year is on some provisional appointment, waiting to be confirmed.
(That being said, January 1 this year was a little bit more exceptional than the others, largely due to my Hong Kong trip starting on that day)
Chinese New Year on the other hand? At least for my family, two to three full days of doing something (if the word ‘celebrating’ is too cliche) to commemorate a new lunar year. All the visiting, all the goodies, and the occasional game of blackjack. The gathering of family… the small, the large, the extended. Visiting houses that you only see once a year. Meeting cousins. Playing with the new additions to the extended family.
That is how commemorating the passing of a new year should feel like. While it feels like Chinese New Year has become awfully predictable, the older I get, the more I treasure these moments. I know that while they seem routine and boring and predictable, they are not permanent. Chinese New Year this year will be different 10 years from now, just like how it was (somehow) different 10 years ago. And for that I treasure every moment.
The latest iteration of a family tradition that started around five years ago
No fireworks this year, just a simple visit to my grandma’s in the morning (as usual) and a simple saturdate with my dearest Chelsea at Gardens by the Bay.
Much has happened this year – exciting things that rocked the world, and smaller things in my life that remind me to count each day – and make each day count – and be thankful for the little things I have.
Started off the year with new eyes (post-Lasik)… knowing that it will be my final year in school, and ended school on a high note, with good results and a job secured long before graduation. My relationship with Chelsea keeps on getting better. My running year started off not knowing what to do, then deciding to try out pacing and giving back to the running community… Somehow as the year progressed, I broke my personal bests in almost all categories I can think of – from the 5k to the marathon (yes finally!). And managed to cover 2,000 km in between. More importantly though, I joined Running Department, and met a whole new bunch of people and made quite a few running buddies.
I’m extremely thankful for my family and friends who are there every step of the way. Life was tough at some points, for instance, when deadlines converge during my final semester, or when I did not know whether my grandma would recover from her stroke. When I was facing a running injury, or when I doubted my ability to succeed…
Every year as I look back, the memories may be blurry. Some may be more distinct than others. But when I think back I’m always filled with a deep sense of gratitude.
Swee Life 