31 December has come and gone.

It was a day full of fun, joy and surprises.

With Bernice, we went on a planned trip to P. Ubin. The agenda was to visit Chek Jawa, have a little picnic at one of the beaches and for me to bring her to the highest point in Ubin.

Ubin was packed that day! Loads of people were visiting Ubin too! (people mountain people sea, that sort of feeling) For a fleeting moment I thought our 'getaway' will be diluted. But the moment we got our bicycles and cycled away into the lost lands of Ubin (you think this is jurassic park?), we found ourselves surrounded by nature and God's creation. (if you look hard enough, u can see the tyrannosaurus lurking behind the bush....right.)

Wild boars, butterflies and iguna lizards (iguanas ARE already lizards, dear) made their special appearances. 'Crocodile' Hunter, Bernice Yeo, sneaked up to the creatures and tried to take pretty shots of them, though half of the time, she scares them away.

Finally we made it to Mamaam Beach. Salad was on the menu and we happy chomped our greens down. Though the waves were threatening to devour us, we bravely sat on the edge of the rocks, risking being soaking wet. Well, the not-so-brave 'Crocodile' hunter backed out and opted for a safer option because her socks were about to get wet and she doesn't like wet socks.

Talk about being a wet blanket.
(unless you, joel "braveheart' kuek, enjoys eating heavily-polluted-seawater seasoned salad and seeing our bags and shoes getting washed away by the waves, I'd say what i did was pretty smart. So there.)

ANYWAY, greens were really nice, prepared by Bernice. Probably the only time I'll eat so much greens. (of course la. there were two types of lettuce, ham cubes, fruits and nuts...)

NEXT STOP! Chek Jawa! We cycled our way in and it was a crazily crazy long route. Uphills, downhills and slopes of all sorts, we finally made it to the site. Parked our bikes and walked into the main reception counter.

It's HIGH TIDE!! Gosh. Kinda pointless to visit Chek Jawa when it's the high tide because all you see is the waves and that's about it.

So I brought her to the highest point of Ubin.

Pretty-licious place and it took her breath away. We set up the place, kicked off our shoes, socks and bags. Ready for a blasting great time when the heavens blasted too.

We could see that it was raining cows and donkeys on mainland. I was just joking with her that we can call our friends and tease them. Before I could stop laughing, the skies over Ubin turned dark and raindrops started dropping on our heads.

*irritated*

Did our mini rescue mission, and we nearly wanted to brave the rain and just hold our ground. But the torrential rain didn't stop. Made our way down the hill and the rain stopped.

How wonderful.

But it was quite a refreshing experience. The rain washed away our sweat and it felt like we took a nice shower. Our clothes were not exactly soaking wet because we covered ourselves with my army towel, our shoes and socks were still very dry.

Thank God!! It became like showers of blessings! Which I happily coined it.

Cycled back to the main ubin area and we had really fantastic coconuts. It was so sweet, that would be the taste of heaven's plain water. Totally went crazy drinking the coconut, not knowing that Bernice was setting up for a surprise in main land.

Travelled back home and I realized all the doors at home were closed. Sensing something was wrong, I went to my room and opened the door.

I saw a face, with a mask and a party popper pointed at me.

Slammed the door shut, held onto the door handle and told Bernice that there's someone inside. That very smart girl who played a part in planning this surprise simply laughed away. I could hear laughter in my room too.

After about 2 minutes, I opened the door and saw three partners in crime.

Charmaine, Jodie and Junxiang. They 'broke' into my house, decorated my room, gave my mom a scare and surprised me on my birthday.

Really touched by the efforts they had put in, organising everything and planning everything behind my back.

Just when I thought they're not celebrating my birthday because it's new year's eve. Lol.

Ok. Bernice's taking over now. Anyway, she's the one writing in all the ( )s.

-
Well, joel has left for to go to service and I'm left to tidy up after him- as usual. On the other hand, I get to fill in all the parts that he conveniently missed out - like the look of pure panic on his face (you could practically seeing his knees trembling) as he frantically yanked the door shut. And the way he bewilderedly told me " there are PEOPLE in my room...holding party poppers!" Yeah, like you'd expect to find bank robbers in your room on new year's eve, holding party poppers as their weapon of choice. SO manly, joel kuek si jun.
And even then, he STILL didn't realise who it was inside his room...until like, 5 minutes later. It was AWESOME.

After all the laughter and some birthday bashing (we were using him as target practice for some balloon tossing -if you managed to nail him on the head, you got 50 points, and so on), we made him hunt for his birthday present.

Now, for any of you who'd got him tagged as some supremo expert detective, Sherlock Holmes type of guy, what with him being in the security elites and all - you got it WRONG. He would've scored almost zero for detecting and analytical skills - which was totally adorable, in a Mr Bean-esque way. He'd searched the whole house, including the store room, before even deigning to look under his bed, on the grounds that he thought the area under his bed was too messy for people to hide stuff in it.

To put things in a nutshell, he got a lovely white leather belt with a big metal buckle from River Island. Thanks to Charmaine, Jodie, Liangkai and Junxiang (:
I got him Springfield sneakers, which made him look about 10 years younger, so he wouldn't look so much like apaedophile next to me. Just kidding!

Right, let's fast forward...(as you can tell, I'm not a very enthusiastic blogger and all)...hung out for a while, ordered pizza...blah blah...Liangkai and Jonathan came by...blah...Ardie popped in too, and promptly got kicked out with the rest of the gang to complete the rest of their new year's partying, while we went prawning with joel's family.

Went prawning, only caught 5 miserable prawns, was disappointed. Ended the night/day with a movie marathon, which we fell asleep in the middle of.

The end!