Healthy dinner guests

Liv has been out of the country for the past few weeks, so our usual Sunday night dinners were put on hold while she worked her way around office and holidays in Europe before a week in the Philippines too, just for good measure!

            She finally returned to us this Sunday evening, and so by Tuesday none of us were very surprised to learn that she was back on a healthy eating kick, and that she was willing to accept a feeding if possible.

            Following on from my less than impressive performance celebrating Easter this weekend (chocolate, treats and a brunch really didn’t help me on my way!) I am also really trying to be a lot stricter again this week (the scales haven’t crept back up, but for all my good behaviour during the week they didn’t drop down at all either). So dinner plans were made, and Liv was welcomed to our flat to celebrate being back in Singapore with a dinner of spicy chicken and veggies, wrapped in lettuce leaves with water and tea on the side.

            It wasn’t exactly the most exciting dinner in the world, but it ticked all the good behaviour boxes, and hopefully it will be enough to power me through the weekend (which looks set to be another naughty one for food and treats!)

It's all about the greens

This weekend was not a great few days for my good behaviour efforts. I won’t say that I have undone all the good work, but the best intentions certainly took a bit of a whack. So in an effort to get back on track and minimise the impact of the damage this week is going to have to be very heavy on the veggies.

            This Friday and Saturday are likely to be relatively naughty again, as we’re staying away from the flat for both nights. With dinner at Marina Bay Sands on Friday and a picnic train dinner on Saturday night, I highly doubt that it’s going to be a salad type of occasion on either day.

            Still, Monday to Friday on good behaviour will help at least a bit, so I shall start the week as I mean to go on (for as long as possible). There was broccoli for lunch and a veggie soup for dinner. That’s a good strong start, now let’s just see if I can maintain it for the next few days…

A very Good Friday

In Singapore we get the best of most worlds, and therefore get to celebrate numerous public holidays, gathered from British, Chinese and Indian traditions, as well as a few local Singaporean ones too.

            Thankfully, although we don’t get the pleasure of a full four-day weekend over Easter, we do get to enjoy Good Friday without the pressures of work, or most of us do at least. In an attempt to earn back some much needed holidays days Nick is having to work most public holidays this year, so having woken up at my normal early time, I made him a hot cross bun for breakfast (that’s right, I found them on sale again, and I bought as many as I could carry) and packed him off to work.

All the hot cross buns I could get my hands on

For the rest of my morning I spent most of my time in the gym, before having an unplanned skype call with my utterly beautiful niece and sister. 

I did have high hopes for a really productive day with Nick out of the way and so many potential plans ready to be explored, but as it was nearly lunchtime already when I hung up my call, instead I made my way straight into town to meet Nick for lunch. He was the only one in the office and was in desperate need of human contact for an hour or so. 

 The rest of my day was then spent shopping and gathering bits and pieces for a proper Good Friday celebration. Nick had returned from the office the day before with a beautiful little white chocolate Easter bunny for me, which will be living in the fridge until Sunday, when it will have to be scoffed in one day - the bad last bad behaviour day for a while - so that I can final stop thinking about it and get back onto the good behaviour bandwagon! In the meantime, I would need supplies to make our house as spring and Easter themed as possible. 

I wasn’t able to find any daffodils or tulips in Singapore as it’s just too hot, so I got the next best thing, which were just the most cheerful looking yellow flowers that I could find. One of the things that I miss most about living in the UK are the seasons. Perpetual summer (and a scorching hot summer at that) is frustrating and over-whelming sometimes. There is often nothing I would love more than a good, clear English day, either spring or autumn. Just clear, crisp and slightly drizzly. Ideal! 

Happy yellow flowers to welcome 'spring' 

The rest of my day then passed in a lovely flurry of baking, cooking, and chatting to both my parents and the lovely Miss Morgan.

Good Friday fish supper

By the end of my super active session in the kitchen we had a traditional Good Friday fish supper and chocolate Easter nests for pudding, like the children we are.

            It’s always pretty interesting cooking fish out here. The only recognisable fish that you can buy here is salmon and tuna, everything else is unrecognisable and often unpronounceable, but it’s always fun trying to mix and match my limited fish knowledge with the broken English of the men at the wet market. Tonight we had steaks from something known locally as batang. It was random and very meaty, but it worked well for the dish, so thankfully this fish experience was a relatively positive one!

Well it is Easter after all!

Our KL adventure

Other than Nick’s recent trip over to Thailand it has been a while since we have been on any Asian adventures, and whilst we did agree to limit our travel this year (both to save money and to limit the temptation of bad behaviour when you’re in a new, exciting city), there are only so many weekends that I can spend in Singapore back-to-back without going crazy.

            As such, we have extended our already exciting plan for next weekend to make it into a bit more of an adventure, to tick another item of my 30-Before-30 List, and to get another city under our belts for our wedding table plan. When you’re killing so many birds with just one stone, there’s really no excuse not to!

            Next Friday night I had already booked myself and Nick into the Marina Bay Sands Hotel. This is the hotel nestled in the impressive ship building, that has amazing restaurants and a swimming pool of dreams that you can only gain access to if you’re staying at the hotel.

            After a night of luxury there, we’re then going to be jumping on a six hour train from Singapore, up through Malaysia, past jungle views and rubber / palm plantations, right the way up to Kuala Lumpur. We will stay for one night in a lovely hotel up there, having a look at the incredible views and checking out some of the well known shopping, before flying back after a late lunch on Sunday.

            It might not sound like the best plan for some people, but I am incredibly excited about the train ride up through the countryside, and it means that I am one step closer to completing my 30-Before-30 List too! 

Farewell Phu!

We have known that our MD would be leaving our company for a while now, but I didn’t think that the time would come around so very quickly!

            After what feels like just a week or so of planning and adjusting, this week was Phu’s last week in the office, with his leaving drinks last night, and his very last day at his desk today.

            As the Cultural Ambassador for our office, I was in charge of the farewell celebrations, and so for the past week or so I have been putting plans in place for industry drinks at a lovely rooftop bar with a beautiful city view, and our person team farewell too.

Drinks with a view

The drinks were a huge success, with around 80 people showing up throughout the night to wish him well in his move to Bangkok. With good behaviour still front of mind, I was at the event from 6-9:30, during with time I drank two incredibly watered down wine spritzers (to avoid pressure from people when they saw an empty glass), and then I slipped home just as it was starting to kick off.

            On my way home that night I stopped into one of the local bakeries that would be closed in the morning, to stock up on a croissant breakfast that would be laid out and ready to welcome the team to their desks the following day.

Breakfast to mark the end of an era

As well as breakfast I also arranged some Singapore leaving gifts and a late Mexican lunch on Thursday to round off the day.

Farewell Phu! 

With gifts offered, breakfast picked at (and the remains smuggled away to be made into a bread-and-butter pudding) and lunch demolished, there was nothing to do but send Phu on his merry way and head home for a long weekend of relaxation before work really starts to kick in from next Monday. It’s going to be strange to be leaderless in our office, but as everyone has been telling me, hopefully this will just be another amazing opportunity, and another great note to add to my steadily lengthening CV.