all I can say is THANK GOD FOR SHOPPING!

Seriously, retail therapy is my best friend!

AND christmas shopping is THE BEST!

good night.

A GAME of travel scrabble on the bus ride home.

And the thing about travel scrabble is that we can fold the board into two mid-game to resume at another time.

Ingenious.

The score so far:  132-112, him in the lead.

booo….

IT’S BEEN a while since I last blogged and without even knowing it, we’ll already in December, my favourite month of the year, other than October.

This is the part of December I love best, where everyone is busy preparing for Christmas and there’s just this certain lightness in the air and in people in general.

This is the part I try to savour the most, with all the Christmas music in the air, and the rushing around to buy gifts.

Then before you know it, christmas will come and go, and that’s the part I hate.

But I suppose I’ll let that slide this year, because there’ll be alot of exciting things happening next year too with us getting married and hopefully getting our place

Things have been on a general downtrend at work; with two wonderful supervisors I had leaving in Oct and Nov. And their replacements, well, actually one of them, has been really causing me a lot of grief. I’m a pretty vocal person (I’m talking about voicing out when I’m not happy) but unfortunately I can’t say a lot of things to the people who can change the situation. So I guess sometimes I really feel  kinda… trapped.

Well, anyway, enuff of the doom and gloom. It’s just work anyway, and I still love the actual job I do, just hate the way I’m being handled, and how things are being run.

My Christmas wish this year, just as in the words of the serenity prayer is  -

For God to grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.

Take care now, until we meet again. xx

IT’S good to keep lists, and not all of them have to be on facebook.

1) Pride and prejudice by Jane Austen

2) Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

3)  What I talk about when I talk about running by Haruki Murakami

4) The brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

5) Molly Fox’s birthday by Dierdre Madden

6) Love in the time of cholera by Gabriel García Márquez

7) Eat, pray, love by Elizabeth Gilbert

8 ) Life of Pi by Yaan Martel

9) The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

10) Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro

11) Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murukami

Note to self: Must  read more and faster

Whenever I see your smiling face, I have to smile myself, because I love you.

A SIDE effect of me exercising more these days (by my standards, that is) is that I have bulked up.  I don’t look fat but I just don’t look like those waif-like girls you see at almost every turn in town.

My heart sinks a little whenever I go on the weighing machine at the gym because my weight never goes down; it either stays the same or moves up by a bit.

And my appetite is not helping either. more exercise= more food for the body.

I really really want to lose say, about 5kg, by next year.

Short of starving myself or stapling my tummy, I really wonder what else I could do.

Depressing post over and out.

I’VE come to watch your flowers growing

It’s raining hard outside now but I’m warm and toasty in my room and feeling groovy!

LET’S see, I’ve been to Bangkok four times in the last four years – twice this year. And I really enjoyed this trip the most!

Maybe it’s because Keat was such a good shopping buddy (read: he helped me to carry the bags!) and we found ourselves a really nice service apartment at a relatively cheap price and near a BTS station.

Here are some pictures of us in Bangkok, just two weeks ago. We din’t take many photos because we were too busy vegging, pigging and shopping our (actually my) brains out. So everything else took a backseat, including photo taking.

So this is me having the first meal of our trip at A &W’s!!! I really miss A&W’s so much, too bad they didn’t have coney dogs in the Siam Square outlet we went to.

A trip to Bangkok would not be complete without a visit to Chatuchak!!! He’s wearing a singlet I bought for him from Laos (wonderful place too!). But back to Chatuchak … well, we were there for the entire afternoon and it was, as usual, packed to the brim, and we got lost in the maze of stores and our legs ached massively at the end of the day. Verdict: we actually loved Platinum better! Something to do with the aircon there, and better organisation of the goods.

Bright lights, big city.

Yay, this was our wonderful apartment!

Us at a food court in Siam Paragon.

FOR some reason, Keat and I travelled to Thailand twice in two months – one a planned beach holiday, another a unplanned city getaway that sprung out of a work trip (mine).

Well, we’re not complaining – we really do love the country so – barring red shirts, yellow shirts , protests, and what nots.

Here are some pictures we took on both holidays, firstly with Krabi in June:

This is the resort we stayed at with our own private beach. The resort was about 15 to 20 minutes by van from Ao Nang, the main town in Krabi, so it wasn’t on the main tourist stretch. It wasn’t the best beach ever, but it was quiet. The service at the resort though was excellent.

Our wonderful and very comfy bed for two.

He always loved to accessorise.

We took the van to Ao Nang and one of the views that we caught that evening: long tailed boats on the beach.

The next day, we went island-hopping via speedboat.

And I created this on the beach where they shot the movie The Beach. It had the most pristine of waters and softest sand. Unfortunately, it was crawling with tourists. We tried to keep the tourists out of our shots.

And I forgot about the waves.

We took dips in the resort pool. Lovely.

A very sunburnt me on the private beach just outside the resort.

Here’s some of the food we ate on the trip. Above: Doesn’t look like it, but this was Tom Yam Soup from the resort’s  Thai restaurant. A more upmarket version, and less spicy too, I suppose, to suit the Western palate.

The resort’s Italian restaurant made very lovely gelatos and sorbets. This was Mango sorbet I think.

ANOTHER 10 KM run completed today, but it was much more painful and tiring than the first. Thank God for Keat who did the run with me, if not I might not have been able to complete it.

First there was the terrible morning sun, and worse, there was  hardly any breeze!

Then the tight sports bra I wore certainly did not make breathing easy.

Adding on to the madness was  the horde of sweaty army boys I was running alongside with.

And, oh yes, there’s also the very ample two hours of sleep I had.

All in all, it was a recipe for disaster, if not for Keat pushing me, and the cups of 100 plus I downed along the way.

Not surprisingly, my timing was about 15 minutes more than the previous run, but, oh well,  I am glad I got through.