Beach(ing) About Fun

Finally its Friday! The weekend officially starts after I turned of the office PC this evening.

The short work-week was a crunch instead as work was rather hectic due to backlog and the need to prepare for the coming early March audit. I was just too tired to face my home PC to blog-surf, much less write about anything.

I felt like a stranger to my own blog when I stopped for several days! Funny feeling.

Now that with the last item in my to-do list at work has been strike-off, I can enjoy the weekend and blog! Sweet!

The long weekend-cum-holiday was good, not as great as I had planned or hoped to be, but nonetheless good. I am thankful that the long break gave me back my energy and the long forgotten zest to do my work and complete it well and in record time too.

Let me see now, how did our long break turned out...

PLANNED: Saturday night to Chinatown for the light-up and fireworks as the Chinese usher in the new year. Meet Wifey at Bugis as all shops, including ours were closing as early as 5:30pm.

ACTUAL: Cancelled. Wifey was too tired to face the large crowd after what was a very brisk sale for her today. Instead she was sweet enough to meet my son and I for dinner outside at one of our favourite old haunts - Bedok Market at Old Bedok Walk.

The food there tasted great. I even enjoyed the bus rides to and fro on double-decker Service 10. Must be the mood I was in. Everything looked, felt and tasted... dandy!

PLANNED: Sunday morning to leave for Sentosa Island Resort and be amazed with the glory of flowers blooming as a Chinese celebration of "spring" in Singapore at Sentosa Flowers 2007 festival called "Rhyme In Bloom." After that, get some excitement to be whisked-up to Imbiah Lookout on a Skyride and zip down in a Luge Cart before heading to Palawan Beach for a swim.

ACTUAL: Cancelled. Wifey was not feeling well after we delayed till after lunch time. Sigh.

We watched a DVD movie "The Devil Wears Prada." Understandably, our son was not pleased at all, locked himself in his room and played PC games with his online friends instead. I did some gardening to kill time. Double sigh.


PLANNED: Monday afternoon to camp and overnight at Changi Beach Park. Spend the whole Tuesday swimming, getting tanned... just relax and soak in the tranquility of sea.

ACTUAL: Modified. Since Wifey was not felling too well, we decided to just have a picnic at the beach; swimming... and a much needed tanning for me especially.

We had our lunch of Nasi Penyet, a Javanese version of Chicken Rice... a nice version of it I thought as I liked the chili sauce and the salad. Set our mat on the beach when the day was looking dreary... ran off back to Changi Village Hawker Centre 10 minutes later when it started to pour and poured really heavy. Sigh.

We ended-up sitting at the hawker centre drinking Teh Tarik or Indian Tea and chewing on ground nuts to wait out the rain. It did not about to stop though, so we headed back home. IT was a bummer, but you cannot blame mother nature. It was hot the whole weekdays and mother nature had to "water the plants and trees" on the weekends. Oh well, tomorrow then.

CONTINGENCY PLAN: Tuesday morning to Changi Beach Park again to swim, tan and relax. Get energized again for work. PLEASE!

ACTUAL: Yes! Successfully blissful, even without Wifey as she wanted to open the shop after a two-day lull. As it turned out, none of the other shops were opened, so she headed back home instead of meeting us at the beach as planned. I guess she needed her time alone doing nothing but just and catch-up on the recent movie releases on DVDs I bought for her.

I had a good tan. I was like a human sun-dial for a bit, while my son started off picking-up seashells and other unfortunate marine life off the beach and into his bucket.

We eat Nasi Lemak together, we talked about lots of things, joked and reenacted lots of funny movie scenes and swam, swam and swam until we both got quite a sunburn on our noses especially.


The pictures I took using my Dopod C800 PDA camera did not do much justice, but we had a wonderful time at the beach anyway. I was all charged-up to go to work the next day.

On top of that, I can now see more muscle definitions on my body with a darker tan. Sweet! Wifey liked it too... like Austin Powers, I say... Yeah baby, yeah!

A good break for me I felt... yeah literally, the next couple of days when the sunburn on my shoulders cracked and painful to the touch. My son was spared somehow... guess I have old skin, the repeated sunblock I put on did not seem to work well for me.

I am very familiar with the phrase "No pain, no gain" doing my weight training, but never expect the other phrase, "beauty is pain" applies to me too. Ouch!