TWO work trips coming up in may. maybe if i say it more frequently on my blog, the trips will not take place and i'll get to stay home with my huggable (new term coined by the sister).

what a great holiday. we took many walks (along avenue des champs-elysees, the amsterdam canals and bridges, river isar), enjoyed the spring sunshine and flowers, took long train rides across the countryside (rolling hills and farms and faraway church spires), and had good food along the way. loved the broad boulevards and well-maintained parks everywhere in paris, the sun-drenched scully wing of the louvre (where all the sculptures were on display), the weekend market at bastille where we bought random cheeses for lunch, the schweinhaxen and weisswurst (with mustard) in munich, the sweet smell of chocolate that pulls one into almost every chocolate store in brussels, the neat rows of canal houses and superb "colours of the night" exhibition at the van gogh museum in amsterdam.
somehow, even though there are hoards of tourists and people in the streets of all the european cities we visited, i didn't get that sense of claustrophobia that hits me everytime i walk along orchard road (or that underpass linking orchard mrt station to isetan). maybe the pavements are wider, the buildings don't crowd out the sky and the air is fresher. maybe it's because we were on holiday and didn't mind the crowds as much. :D
us-time in large quantities is always lovely. we both needed a break from work and it was good to just kick back and enjoy being together and doing stuff together (including completing all the marble game levels on my handphone and having a very hard time with ONE sudoku puzzle in the guardian newspaper). bliss. we could do with one such holiday every year.
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there's a certain dullness in the heart when it comes to work matters. i wish we could go back to the days when we could just get our work done without having to tiptoe around broken glass left (intentionally) everywhere. land-mine country is not fun to navigate and is such a complete waste of time. i'm glad the division is still holding together as one quite cohesive unit ... i'm thankful that we still get along rather well. that makes work still bearable. otherwise, i would want out, like NOW.
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68.7km, although i probably walked for about 40% of the 5km distance because the weather was uncomfortably warm and i just couldn't push myself to keep jogging (the long holiday did wonders to my stamina). never mind ... i will slowly but surely pull myself out of this rut.
also, was doing some weights (leg lifts) at one of the hotel gyms during the holiday and my right knee made really scary creaking noises. it was also quite painful to do the leg lifts with more than a 5kg weight. i think i will have to shelf my running ambitions (i.e. completing a full marathon) somewhere in the near future. don't want to have a knee replacement operation staring me in the face before i turn 30 (or 50 for that matter)!

those (aside from the ducks), my friends, are rows upon colourful rows of tulips. even the gloomy grey skies didn't dull the brightly-coloured flowers. the holiday was good!

experienced one of the most painful, yet personally most rewarding round of talks recently. it was a combination of tedious explanations on technicalities as well as the use of the english language. really an energy-sapping, brain-draining session that lasted till past 2am on our first day. good training for me though, because i had to explain every nitty gritty to our counterparts and get their buy-in. it was also a chance to put my knowledge to test in real-time (and with little room for mistakes). at the end of the day, there was quite a great sense of satisfaction seeing the final product signed. never mind that i screamed many silent screams throughout the whole process ... especially when we were just starting out and got stuck at very non-controversial stuff. in my head i was going, oh no, hundreds of sentences more to plough through, how am i going to survive?
ah well, one real battle scar to show. i guess there'll be more to collect along the way.
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microsoft word should have a function that highlights sentences with 30 words or more. long, rambly sentences don't make for easy reading and understanding, but some people just don't get it.

the F1 season has started again, and as a result, i now spend more hours glued to the tv on weekends. never mind the practice runs on fridays, but there are the qualifying races that take up at least an hour on saturdays and the 2.5 hour full race on sundays.
virgin seems to be slowly conquering the world ... first music, airlines and now sponsoring the former honda-now brawn GP team that just swept the 1st and 2nd positions in the action-filled australian GP. and thanks to technical failures, unnecessary crashes and time penalties, hamilton came from last spot on the starting grid to clinch 3rd spot. YAY!
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redpolkadot is resigned to the fact that she has to explain word-related jokes (like this!) to her hubby, which takes away a lot of the enjoyment and makes the whole situation kind of sad. *cries*
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63.7km after a most hurried treadmill run on friday evening.

60.7km on the treadmill, and my ipod's centre button is not working! this means that i can't clock my runs and my ipod mini is currently dying a horrible death.
unimaginable at the moment, but we are really less than 2 weeks' away from the much anticipated long holiday in faraway lands! R&R is just around the corner. whee! :D i will just have to get through the next 9 working days alive.

the escape route from the fray was open for less than a day! and by the time i had made up my mind to up and leave, it was closed closed CLOSED. a quicker reaction on my part wouldn't have made any difference, but still, to be able to see some light and then have that light go out was rather depressing. to ask "so do i have a choice now?" and to be told "actually, no" was also quite a let-down. perhaps i got my hopes up too early ... i should know from past experience that nothing is fixed in stone until the last minute. and yes, organisational interests over personal ones as usual.
i thought it was going to be a good friday today. at least the last hour at work was fun, trying to figure out with d what our designations should be. empress, raj, warrior princess. heh. 470 days!

yay, finally some free time to do random useless stuff, like this couple meme.

How long have you been together?
a decade and counting.

How long did you know each other before you started dating?
about 9 months, although i could never remember his name in the first 3-4 months that we were in the same ECA.

Who asked whom out?
he did. i don't ask guys out.

How old are each of you?
27 until june. the same applies to him. our birthdays are 4 days apart! :D

Whose siblings do you see the most?
his, because we go over to his place more often.

Which situation is the hardest on you as a couple?
it's difficult to think of something off-hand. maybe our starkly different levels of enthusiasm when it comes to golf? heh.

Did you go to the same school?
yes.

Are you from the same home town?
no. a causeway separates our place of birth, but now we both call singapore home.

Who is smarter?
definitely him, and i like it that way. it's one of the things that attracted me to him - his brainy brains!!

Who is the most sensitive?
we're quite attuned to each other's moods.

Where do you eat out most as a couple?
weekend roti prata at d'rubinah's.

Where is the furthest you two have traveled together as a couple?
i guess the US is further from singapore than europe is.

Who has the craziest exes?
errr, he better not be hiding an ex somewhere!

Who has the worst temper?
i have the more frequent temper flares. apparently my mother warned him about my temper before he married me. heh. he is all zen most of the time, but when he blows, he really BLOWS his top.

Who does the cooking?
i am the chef, he is the dish washer.

Who is the neat-freak?
i am, since i do the housework. i also have this very bad habit of spotting strands of hair / specks of dust and dirt on the floor and being obsessed about cleaning these up! although i must say that when he gets into a clean-freak mood, he really does make our home really tidy.

Who is more stubborn?
it's hard to say. we're not really the stubborn type.

Who hogs the bed?
the pillows and bolsters.

Who wakes up earlier?
he is my alarm clock. i'm not a morning person.

Where was your first date?
cavana chicken at marina square (it was not where it is right now 10 years ago though).

Who is more jealous?
it'll probably be me, although i don't really sweat the small stuff.

How long did it take to get serious?
i think we were quite serious from the start (yeah, we were rather mature 17 year olds), and it just got seriouser and seriouser (is there such a word?) ...

Who eats more?
most of the time, he does. but i eat faster and he cannot beat my potato chips appetite when i'm stressed.

Who does the laundry?
refer to neat-freak answer. when i'm really worn out, he sometimes helps by putting the dirty laundry into the washer.

Who's better with the computer?
who has the computer engineering degree?

Who drives when you are together?
he does, and i'm glad. i never really liked driving, and reverse parking still scares me.

it just struck me that i spent 3 full days (72 hours) away from singapore and only had 1 night's sleep (5 hours?) in a proper bed. sure, it was a 5* hotel bed, but still ...