shutterbugISm

Wow...

I didn't realised that my last post was more than a month ago..... October and November have been just crazy with lotsa assignments coming in from all directions and in addition to that, we were also going away for our much-anticipated (and this time round, a very much needed) vacation to Japan for a good part of November for the 3rd year consecutive.

The appeal of Japan in Autumn will always be our mainstay as we can't think of any other places that we wanna spend autumn in - we had our 1st foray into Japan to celebrate our engagement in 07', took our PreWedding photos there in '08 and in our 3rd visit, we just chill (literally) and celebrate the joy of togetherness with each other. Clearly the joy were all over our faces and showed in the photos we took :)

Anyway.. lotsa post will be coming up I promised. TO start it off, here's some of the places we went to for makan after coming back to Singapore:

Labels: Food, Friends, Greetings, Images, Inspirations, Local, Photography, Ranting, RICOH GrD, Thoughts

Posted by ShutterBug at 01:11 | Permalink | Comments 3

Looking through the folders of images shot @ Miyajima, I am at a loss on how to present them on this blog coz' the beauty of the place is simply just too overwhelming. I can't do the place enough justice with my photography, try as I might... the light is just so beautiful and the colors of the leaves (if you are thinking these colors are enhanced, they are not. It's as accurate as it is shown..) Breathtaking yeah? :D

Both ms Clover and I were totally captivated by the tranquility as well as the beauty of this park (we took a nice & slow 2 hours trek in it) and agreed unanimously that it's the perfect place to shoot an entire pre-wedding in this setting... much to the bemused stares and foreign well-wishes of the park visitors :p

The following are just my humble attempts on the 5D to show you what Autumn is like @ Momijidani Park.. enjoy! :)

Labels: Brides, Clover, Food, Greetings, Grooms, Images, Inspirations, Japan, overseas weddings, Photography, PreWeddings, Thoughts, Travel, Us

Posted by ShutterBug at 02:43 | Permalink | Comments 13

Labels: Business, Design, Friends, Greetings, Photography, Weddings

Posted by ShutterBug at 20:30 | Permalink | Comments 11

I love their Tsukemen!!! Slurp!!!

Labels: Friends, Golf, Greetings, Humor, Local, Thoughts

Posted by ShutterBug at 21:51 | Permalink | Comments 5

Wow... can't believe I kinda missed blogging. I know I have been lazy the past 2 months to blog anything substantial but here's one to make it all up (or at least some of it)

* Pardon me if I get spelling errors coz I am experiencing a little reeling from the cocktail of alcohol I had just now in Char Siu Bao's place... (I never knew a welcome roulette of 1 shot of Vodka neat, 1 glass of red wine, 1 small glass of Hennessey Blue and 1 shot of hazelnut favored vodka can be that potent after 1 hour..)

So where do I begin....

Well, the past month I have been in buried under the mountain of backlogs, self-doubts and headaches. I am glad and blessed to have friends that I can talk to for advice as well as for emotional support when I really needed them. Some things really needed to be viewed from the sideline to see the silverlining I guess. Well, like in my previous post here, I will pray for God's timing and guidance for the solution and then the wisdom to take the right actions when He prompts.

So the happier stuff have been plentiful this beginning of the Lunar New Year. First off was the gathering of 4 babies @ Yveon's loft. Actually the plan was to meet dR and the adorable lil' Sniffles, before their big move to USA, somewhere in town but since it's really difficult for a mummy to have to carry so many things and looking after a baby as well as the inconvenient lack of nursing rooms in town areas, we decided to meet up @ Yveon's loft since the 2 lil' babies (dun forget about Lil' Nat) had a playtime gathering there the other time. This time round, I got along Su Ling, Vitali & lil' Vera as well as Sparkletots and lil' Jayden to make it a wholesome gathering.


I was rather amused at myself for organising this gathering coz it's just so coincidental that I know all 4 mummies (mainly through photography) and all 4 of them have babies around the same age group... so it was a 2 lil' girls and 2 lil' boys' playdate while the parents ate and got to know each other better thru the evening. Overall, it was a good networking session for everyone and I want to thank Lil Miss Snooze and TehPeng for graciously hosting the dinner @ their loft as well as to everyone who came :)

This year's reunion dinner with both side families were earlier than usual: my side had it on the 5th Feb night while Ms Clover's side was on the 6th Feb afternoon BUT it was held at the same place: One*15 Marina's Imperial Treasure restaurant. So you can imagine both Ms Clover and me ate almost the same dishes just 18 hours apart! :D

I'm definitely not complaining coz the food is really EXCELLENT! Service is, of coz', top-notch but the delicate cantonese styled cooking makes a lot of difference compared to eating at other restaurants. Sorry, I didn't take any photos coz I was too busy with the food but here's one to share:

CNY celebrations this years marked a significant milestone for both Ms Clover and myself coz this is, afterall, the 1st year we celebrate CNY as a state-recognised 'married' couple (why I used the term 'state-recognised' is that I feel that it's still not really complete without the customary, then I'm really finished....... j/king :p)

As usual, I stayed up the whole night on the eve of CNY to 'shou swee' or 守岁 which is a custom to me every year during CNY. Visitation only started @ 1pm on Day 1 with my parents then to Ms Clover's place where I spent the rest of the afternoon and night with their relatives and playing mahjong.. Seems that this year's not really my year on the gambling side coz I am down by $70 plus after 3 nights of mahjong and Texas Hold'em.. sianz... the tiles that came along were atrociously bad and even after I managed to make them good, I was constantly 'robbed' of the chance to game by someone else...

Must eat more cheese to attract the mouse liao...

Went over to Ms Clover's boss's home also... really nice place set in the quiet surrounds of Yio Chu Kang road's private housing district. Was introduced to her working colleagues and we had a grand time exploring their place which was decorated in a East Asian Contemporary style. Ohh, the well-travelled hostress introduced us to this fantastic gourmet wholesaler called Foodedge Gourmet where they have this really YUMZ tasting choco brownies! The brownies are not overpoweringly sweet and have a healthy dose of orange peel zest to give it a very different texture to the taste palate.. very worth trying! I would recommend also the ice cream selections from Melvados there also! Combine them together and you are on the way to cloud 9!

So back to today's event. We spent Sunday afternoon @ Char Siu Bao's place in the East, together with Xiao Long Bao, Martini and family and long-time-no-see K and her Aussie boyfriend, A.... and my dear friend welcomed me with a refreshing but lethal neat shot of Absolut Vodka (the rest of the drinks are @ the top of the blog entry) coz we were really late as we had a last minute visitor over @ Ms Clover's.

Played with lil' Siu Mai who has really grown up a lot and now can babble words and run around and recognise pictures with their meanings and pronunciations.... and so this 'Unker' Shutterbug played with her almost the whole duration of our visitation while 'Yiyi' Clover sat amused by her other half's silly antics and baby talk while sharing travel tips to Bali with Mrs Lian Rong Bao.

Well, think I have written enough, almost condensing 1 month worth of blogging into a short entry here.

Here's wishing everyone Gong Hei Fatt Choy, Blessed Prosperity and Good health during this festive season and for the year of the cute mouse :D

Huat ahh!! :D

Labels: Celebrations, Clover, Family, Food, Friends, Greetings, Images, Inspirations, Local, Photography, RICOH GrD, Thoughts, Us

Posted by ShutterBug at 19:58 | Permalink | Comments 9

Labels: Celebrations, Greetings

Posted by ShutterBug at 12:45 | Permalink | Comments 6

from WS's funny post -

maybe we had too much wine... but here's a prelude to the Christmas cheer!

Labels: Greetings, Humor, Us

Posted by ShutterBug at 06:14 | Permalink | Comments 4

Lil Nathaniel is here!

I was just speculating, after I got Teh Peng's sms this afternoon informing that they are @ Mt A, if it's a coincidence or it's just my mental fulfilment that :

1) Liverpool (Teh Peng's fav soccer team) just scored a 8-0 victory in their recent match

2) that today's the 8th Nov

if so, will Lil Nat will be out by 8pm tonight? Well, it is a very close call, 7.40pm :D

Congratulations to you guys! We are very happy for you trio! ^.^

* from the MMS pic, lil Nat looks like the daddy! hahaha.... will see if I can get some shots to show otherwise.

Labels: Celebrations, Friends, Greetings, Thoughts

Posted by ShutterBug at 19:48 | Permalink | Comments 0

we find ourselves, sipping coffee and tea in Terminal 1 and awaiting our gate to Japan to open... @ 5am....

The past 2 days have been a whirlwind of activities and celebrations. So much so that we often find oursleves looking at each other and asking "what just happened? Did we get ROMed or what?"

hahaha... yes, maybe it's a state of blissful denial but we felt that it's never complete without the customary wedding :)

The party on Sat was really amazing and we were really blessed by our guests who came all the way down to Sentosa Cove's One*15 Marina Club to witness and share in our engagement joy. More than that, it's a relaxed, casual and intimate affair where we all renewed ties as old friends and made new ones. We were so blessed that the event went well without a hitch and with strong support staff from the Marina Club, that we practically just have to play host.

And it's good fun as bloggers get to meet in real life (now you guys can add each other in Facebook and Superpoke all you want!)...

Regrettably, we didn't have the chance to talk to all our guests as we were fluttering here and there (can't imagine the customary scenerio) and we have only about 40 guests this time! Felt really bad coz we would like to thank everyone personally for gracing our little party.


Well, will organise a series of coffee sessions after our trip to meet up with everyone! For now, we just wanna thank everyone once again for coming to our event!

Cheerz,

Ron & Serene
)Gate opening liao. time to run! Will blog more in when we reach Japan!

Labels: Celebrations, Clover, Friends, Greetings, Thoughts, Travel, Us

Posted by ShutterBug at 04:40 | Permalink | Comments 7

No no.. we haven't disappeared from the face of the Earth... just that coming back home from such a lovely holiday just kinda make you spaced out a little.... (for us, it's thru' the weekend)

Well, we din do a lot on the last day of the trip.. just spending the morning in the pool, swimming and tanning. Having breakfast on the sundeck is really quite an experience - the breeze blowing, the blue skies and of coz, a growing dread that we have to leave all these behind when we check out later... sigh.. well, at least we have alot of good memories and experience here .. hehehe...

After we arranged for the late check-out and making sure our luggage were been taken care of, we hired a car to go Central Festival. It isn't very big but the important thing, that we always must have whenever we come to Thailand, is to go and have a meal in Fuji Japanese restaurant. hahah... yeah, we are quite fanatic over the cheap and good Japanese food we can over here... a pity that lobsters weren't in the season so we can't have our usual lobster dishes but the rest still tasted just as good.


Not much shopping to be done here coz we ain't in the shopping mood... so just milling around, looking at window displays and contemplating over an impulse to fly from Phuket to Bangkok instead of returning home to Singapore...

yes, we have that thought since the night before and we did our sums, it's all budgetly viable but becoz' of the upcoming event in October, we decided to just let it be coz in late Oct, we will be heading off to somewhere for a getaway :)

Oh, I must share this funny story and a little advice: Always tag your luggage.

We were on the late night flight back from Phuket and arrival's around 12.40am in Singaland. My dear Ms Clover was in a hurry to grab our luggages while I was q-ing @ the DFS to get some champagnes and guess what? she took the wrong luggage!

Can't blame her coz the luggage she took was exactly the same pattern and make from OP (Ocean Pacific), only difference was the size. We didn't notice this diff until we were happily @ home and was about to unpack when Ms C realised that her key didn't fit. A quick check revealed the terrible blunder (that's about 1.50am already)... argh!!!

We immediately called up the Budget Terminal's Lost & Found luggage dept and was very relieved that the other person who took our luggage made a report also when she realised her own blunder (she came out earlier than us and took the wrong luggage also) and so @ 2.45am, we finally met up and exchanged luggages in the Budget Terminal... yes... it happens so lesson learnt!

And that's really the end of the trip for us and a new beginning. Thank you all very much who have sent congratulations thru' the blog and smses, it's very touching and heartfelt in sharing our joys :)



Will update this blog again later this week coz work's waiting... :D

Labels: Clover, Greetings, Images, Photography, RICOH GrD, Thoughts, Us

Posted by ShutterBug at 02:31 | Permalink | Comments 7

Updating from the extremely comfortable bed in Phuket Pavillions... :)

We arrived rather early to the Pavillions and have been treated to a very hospitable welcome by the staff right from the airport.. As Ms Snooze has already blogged on some of the creature comforts such as the incense-infused wet towels and cold bottled water for the short 20 mins journey from the airport to the Pavilions (a definite welcome coz we can hardly open our sleep-laden eyes when we arrived), we get a little taste of how the current weather in Phuket can be as beautiful as it can be unpredictable: we were informed that as we arrived, it has rained non-stop the day before and yet, the sun was shining bright now. In the distance beyond the fields of crops and undeveloped land as we zoomed thru' the traffic enroute to the Pavillions (which is situated on top of a hill btw), we caught glimpses of darken skies here and there... we really thanked God for giving us merciful journey and the wonderful weather when we arrived.

the following pictures will tell a little more about the Pavillions:



The pictures speak for themselves :)

We spent the day just doing nothing (took naps, read magazines we got from the airport, watch lotsa TV and the episodes of Hustle, swam...etc). On and off, we got light showers also but it's okie, we are holed up in the comforts of the pavilion. Came evening, we decided to go up to the 360 (restaurant in Pavillions) for our dinner (will blog with pics tomorrow) and finished off with more tele-watching. Ohh yeah, the downtempo and house music they provided in the iPod is great!

Righty, will sign off here coz the Zzzz monster is calling again.. more exciting entries tomorrow! *hint hint*

A sneak preview: we'll be checking out this restaurant (discovered by Ms Snooze) tomorrow evening.

Labels: Celebrations, Clover, Greetings, Images, Inspirations, Photography, Thoughts, Travel, Us, vacation

Posted by ShutterBug at 01:44 | Permalink | Comments 9

The Zzzzz monster beckons.....

just saying "Hi!" from the budget terminal. Another 15 minutes to the boarding gates opening for our flight to Phuket....


Excited...

Will blog more tonight

Labels: Greetings, Thoughts, Travel

Posted by ShutterBug at 06:15 | Permalink | Comments 2

linked to the previous post on Gastronomic Sunday...

my very good friend, Char Siu Bao's birthday celebration @ Ema's Diner (Greenwood Ave), together with the rest of the gang and now, with little Siu Mai as well!! Hahaha... the little girl has grown so much and now @ 12 months, she's simply adorable and cute!!!

Ahh.. the celebration for this buddy of 10 over years is a simple and heartwarming one where we would just have good food, good wine, relax and talk about anything under the sun. Like the trip to Krabi back in May where I celebrated my birthday (opps.. no time to edit photos yet), it's really a great fellowship between good friends.

As a birthday gift, Xiao Long Bao sang a very emotional (and tearful) Birthday song by Corrinne May and the words in the song are just so beautifully created for the occasion. We all have known each other for over a decade and the friendship is still growing strong and steadfast so when the words of the song was sang, the emotions and meaning just came through the lyrics. Well done XLB for holding the tears in (at least till the last 2 lines)!

Okie, by now you would be wondering why my friends got such strange and funny nicks like Char Siu bao or Xiao Long Bao... well, the story goes like this: Char Siu Bao was so named because on his wedding day in 2001, we both made a pre-wedding video production together where he has to eat (stuff is a better word) a few char siu baos as part of the script... so from then on, it's 'char siu bao' for my man :D

As for the rest of the monikers, that's a story for another time :p


(click for larger version) - Ms Clover, Lian Rong Bao, Siu Mai, Char Siu bao, Martini, Xiao Long Bao


(click for larger version) - 'Mummy's talking! But we are not listening!'


(click for larger version) - Singing Corrinne May's The Birthday Song


(click for larger version) - Emotional....

Happy Birthday mate!

Labels: Celebrations, Food, Friends, Greetings, Humor, Images, RICOH GrD, Thoughts, Us

Posted by ShutterBug at 02:21 | Permalink | Comments 2

I've not been productive at all for the past 2 weeks. Main reason being my pwrbook was in the servicing center to fix the LCD screen. Now that it's back, I will have to catch up on work that has been pending since donkey months ago.

Recently I have not been posting much coz I'm kinda caught up in a state of limbo. I have taken a look at my financial standings and sad to say, not quite the health level I'm expecting so it's back onto the drawing board as well as putting out more action for cause.

During this radio silence, I will still be reading up all the updates from my blogging list coz they are always an interest to me.

so ciao.. for now :)

Labels: Greetings, Thoughts

Posted by ShutterBug at 14:49 | Permalink | Comments 1

Hehehe.. since most bloggers had done it, I shall hop onto the bandwagon as well :)

Cya guys round... will be updating with details of our trip on and off from Taipei!

Labels: Greetings, Ranting, Travel, vacation

Posted by ShutterBug at 11:00 | Permalink | Comments 1

Happy Lunar New Year to everyone! :) how has the festive season been for everyone?

I think once in a while, I just wanna be the happy snappy apart from shooting what I have been shooting so here's some happy snaps from yesterday :)

After meeting a client in town, I was quite bored so I called Ms Xiao Long Bao out for company and after a failed attempt @ Shaw House to secure movie tixs for Protege, we decided to loiter around Orchard road and ending back @ Wheelock place to makan at Big O's. In the midst, we decided to drop by our good friends (Char Siu Bao & Lian Rong Bao)'s new place.. hehehe ^.^


(click for larger version) - Here's little Siu Mai


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Later in the evening, it was a gathering with WS, Ead, Kuang and Joho


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HUAT! HUAT! HUAT!

Labels: Celebrations, Friends, Greetings, Images, Local, RICOH GrD

Posted by ShutterBug at 09:01 | Permalink | Comments 4