A long weekend...

The weekend began on Friday night. Jasmine had organised a farewell dinner for Hannah. I had volunteered to buy a bouquet of flowers so I left the house well in advance so I could go to Holland Village and get to the dinner venue on time. As it turned out, I had plenty of time. I even had time to get myself a refreshing cool drink of rockmelon juice. It was a really hot and dry Friday. Anyway, I bought the flowers and took a bus to Orchard. Come to think of it, I didn't feel too weird holding the flowers in my hand while standing up all the whole journey. It did make it a little difficult to use my handphone, but I managed to do all that with my arm wrapped around a grabpole.

Dinner was at Waraku, a Japanese restaurant at Starhub Centre. I was 5 minutes early and the first to arrive. Over the next forty-five minutes, the rest of the dinner party arrived, and it was 8 when we were ready to order. Anyhow, the food was fine, but we weren't there for the food. After dinner, we presented Hannah with the flowers, then I cheekily asked her to give a speech. She had no idea what to say, so I suggested that she just say one thing that she would miss about each of the people at the dinner. She found that difficult too, so Nat, who was also there, asked each of us to say something we would miss about Hannah. We managed that alright, and soon enough, Hannah managed to compose herself to say something about us. It was nice to hear what she thought of us, and at some points it got quite emotional. All in all, it was a good time that we had.

The next day, sis and I celebrated mum's birthday. Mum's birthday was actually on Friday, but I asked if we could postpone the celebration so I could attend Hannah's farewell. Anyway, we spent the morning at the Botanic Gardens. So much has changed there since my last visit, which I think was in my days with the old YF. There's an underground carpark now! After lunch at the foodcourt, we went for a walk in the gardens. As it was a very humid day, it was quite hard going walking around. But it was nice to see the old and new parts of the Botanic Gardens.

After that, I dropped mum and sis in town so they could go shopping. I came home to rest before picking them up later in the day. After picking them up, and after we had all taken a short rest at home, we went out for dinner. Dinner was at Sin Hoi Sai at Tiong Bahru. We drove around for a while before we managed to find a parking space. That done, we walked quite a long way to the restaurant.

I like Sin Hoi Sai. Apart from the nice chilli crab they serve, that place holds some nice memories for me, and though it has been renovated, I could still remember those days when I was younger. Oh well. We sat at a table under the open sky. Since it was just the three of us, we didn't order too many things, just one chilli crab, pai guat wong, sambal kangkong, and something called hei zou, some kind of prawn cake. The crab was nice, as was the pork and the vegetable. I didn't quite like the prawn cake. Anyway, we had a good time at dinner.

My mood was further improved by the news that Liverpool was leading Arsenal by 2 goals to nil. Back home, I watched the rest of the game and was happy that Liverpool won 4-1 in the end.

I spent the rest of the evening preparing for my mission trip sharing which I was due to give the next day at all the services. I had prepared a short visual presentation which brought up two important lessons for me. Firstly, be sure that I have enough appropriate photos so that I can be more selective, and secondly, use a higher bitrate if I am editing music to put into the presentation.

The next day, I went to church as usual. At the end of the 7:30 service, I went up for my first sharing. It was a cold morning and it was also unusually cold in the sanctuary. I rather fluffed my lines which was rather embarrassing. Oh well. Before the next sharing was due, I had written out a short base text which would give me a basis from which to share from. The next two sharings went a lot better.

After church, I did some finance admin stuff with Brenda for Santiphap Church Singapore. I then waited till 2:30 to play soccer with Roy, Stanley, and some of the youth. There were fewer of us there this time, so we played 6 a side. As we had only two teams, it meant that we got tired quicker. We had fun anyway, and I did a bit more running this time. I feel my fitness coming back again.

After that, I washed up back at church then taught English, before having dinner, and rushing out the Thai accounts. Then surprise surprise, Christina had gone to Donut Factory and bought a box of 12 donuts. She queued 2 hours for them! Anyway, some of the people like Jasmine, Candice, and Christina, who were in church for the Easter Convention choir rehearsal, had a good time trying the donuts.

Yesterday (Monday the 2nd of April) was the 10th anniversary of my enlistment into National Service. I commemorated it with an express lunch at Pizza Hut. Haha.