Moo’s post today had me reminiscing..I never thought I would be one of the first amongst my friends to tie the knot.Heck, three years ago I was going around telling everyone I was never going to get married.And I meant that as well…hoping to get angpows from them every single year, spending my life on a tropical island and runaway trips to different places every year.

Then disaster strike.Love finds you in the most unusual situation.I’ve always been the practitioner of ‘you don’t eat and shit at the same place’ and have been cautious of the relationships that I keep at work, always making sure that they are at arm’s length – something I’ve learnt through my short corporate career. Having being screwed up for being close friends with collegues,I’d figured it’s better to play outside the office. Then one day I heard an insane laughter tinkling through from the other side of the 3rd floor. A chuckle that sounds like it should be comming out from an insane cartoon show.Who is it I wonder?

We got thrown together by an audit that I was conducting on his section…and somehow or rather we started flirting big time over the keyboard. Everyday. I remember dreybee told me one day when I was updating her on the non-existent progress of the fishing expedition; ” You are like a cat, fishing every day waiting for a bite. Meow”. Good analogy, because we were both fishing but with no idea of:

a) if we can catch the fish
b) if we even want the fish
c) what are we going to do if the fish is caught?

This fishing expedition went on for more than two months..by which I had already started to reel my fishing line back due to the emergence of other fishes in the sea…hey, it gets boring after a while if it’s not going anywhere.The day after I decided to let the fish go, I felt a bite. And so I had to make up my mind if I wanted to reel this fish in or continue juggling the other fishes in the sea.

Even up to our first date, it was still quite undecided what do I do now that the fish has bitten. So crazily enough, I brought maggie along for our first dinner, because he wanted to bring a friend of his along for dinner. A GIRL. I know I am good in seeking out food, but what do you think I am, walking talking guidebook? And A GIRL at that.Wah LAU.

Anyway, he didn’t end up bringing THE GIRL, and maggie left us after dinner to our own devices. Which one thing lead to another and two weeks later we were off on our first holiday.Three weeks later he insisted that he wanted to meet my parents…which my parents were quite reluctant to have lunch with a white hairy stranger. Due to my battilion of male friends, they think of me as quite the playgirl (which of course, I wasn’t, at that time I had been single for more than 2 years!). So thinking that this was another notch on the bedpost, we all had dim sum in the elegant settings of the marriott hotel in clipped tones.

And then a month later we were off to Bali. Oh Bali. Where I was sick the first 6 days and he was sick the last 6 days. As in violently sickeningly sick. With fever and vomiting and the such. Wasn’t a very pretty sight for either of us but we trudged on exploring bali by feet and bouncing buses.Where as he laid vomiting in bed, I was picked up by another man by the swimming pool.Who kept calling my room and slamming down the phone when Bacon picked up.

A month later and all too soon it was time for him to leave for good. So before he leaves, we decided that we were going to go for another adventure trip, this time hitting penang-langkawi-bangkok. Day 3 at Penang, the tsunami strike and we had to run down 28 floors down from my parents’ seafront apartment. At 9am. I remember being asleep, and he waking me up screaming that the apartment is shaking. I asked him to shut up, until I noticed that the hangers were doing a jiggling act otherwise unnatural. And so we ran.

After the whole experienced died down, we crawled back into bed,getting ready for our boatride to langkawi later that afternoon. On the way to the jetty, the waves were so huge it splashed over our taxi to the other side fo the road. And I mentioned it was perfect weather for surfing, not knowing that the huge waves had swept away civilization in phuket.

We celebrated the dawn of 2005 together trying to get into Poppy,and he left me on the second day of the new year…not knowing when will we see each other again.

A little more than a month later, he came back to me for 20 hours, and we made a trip to Tiffany’s. I was asked to pick out a diamond, any diamond. Due to the whole surrealism of the situation, I did not realize what happened,until he rang his mom telling her that he’s bought me a special diamond. And the next day, we parted ways at KLIA again, with me heading off to Penang to conduct one last round of angpow collection.And again, I did not know when was I going to see him again.

We’ve come a long way baby.

shorttalk: Spelling mistakes on top form today- revised at 4.15pm

In commemorating my 200th post on Blogger, wedding posts are on hold whilst I look back at my short blogging career. Its funny how so many things happen within a year.But amongst all, I had decided that this entry shall be about nofate.com; my partner in crime – moo.

I remember how we stumbled across each other in cyberspace…through some obscure blogger who was just starting out as well and had linked to us both.We used to comment on his blog..until he dissapeared and then we started commenting on each other’s blog.And I don’t know what happened, but we started pimping each other on our blogs.

We have very strange msn/gtalk conversations about travels, friends, relationships, family, other bloggers,raves…and even one crazy virtual drinking session. I did not start out blogging to make virtual friends, but moohad been a constant support in so many ways…including helping to download songs for my wedding and (incidentally) paying for the wedding bubbles that made my husband cry. We also wanted to form a political party (don’t remember why) ,share a domain name(I was too slow in making my mind up) and be in-laws. Well, I wanted to be in-laws, Moo was quite reluctant to be related to me.

But alas, we are not fated to meet and laugh together like hyenas. Moo arrived in KL a few weeks after I moved to Leeds. Then this year, in the true fashion of star-crossed lovers, I will be in Australia just as he is wrapping up work preparing to conquer SG/KL/PG again..and I will leave KL the day before he arrives. Nofate.com is so ironic. We shall remain beautiful strangers, you and I. Until we meet in Ibiza, dancing on white sandy beaches getting drunk on submarines and vodka redbull.

small talk: Shit, just realized that this is post 191 not post 200.Potong stim.Oh well.

….is buy one get one free on all clothings.Only in the Zara factory outlet, which means tops are as low as £4 or in this case,2 for £4.

How to not DIE?

Must control.Must go Australia. Must save up for a tokidoki bag.Must visit Pammy in London.Must buy new house.Cannot panic.Breathe in.Breathe out.Sit down.Dont go.Stay home.

(but how when a top is cheaper than an floor rag?!)

Shorttalk: I wish I can photoshop the pictures..most of it is just frankly horrible pictures.Yes, I mistakenly saved on a cheapo photographer – my bad. The good pictures are all taken by my friends. But I had just put in a request through to Dreymer….it will be up to her whether she sends me a photoshop CD or not!!

After a drunken night’s sleep, I was happily woken up by ‘The One from Redang’s’ txt message at 7.35 that he has arrived and smelt like last night’s vomit…and can he have the hotel’s name please. After txting the name of the hotel back to him, I tried going back to sleep, but without much hope. So i prodded dreymer up at 8.15am…and we had an eyemask session since it was too early for breakfast either.

View in the morning

After nearly falling asleep again, The One from Redang rang from reception with pleas of a shower.So we headed on to reception, passed him the keys, and continued on to pig out on nasi lemak, eggs and pancakes.Too tired to take pictures and still reeking of yesterday’s smoke and alcohol binge, we were a sullen group…especially if you compared us to Bacon’s bunch who were in bed early and were up bright and shiny at breakfast, ready to attack the sun and the sea again with a happy shiny smile. Bleah…

Serves us right for having so much fun.

With the makeup/hair lady arriving at 11pm, we tried to head back to the room for a short snooze,but with three of us in the bed, it dont make sense, so I started packing whilst dreymer puts on her lovely face courtesy of SK2 and snoozes up with The One from Redang

she is so gonna kill me..

With barely enough time for me to have a quick shower and scrub, the makeup lady was knocking on the door already.Seeing that we had to move to the suite and check out of the current room, I left her at the suite unpacking her goodies whilst I continue to rush upwards and downwards moving things here and there.Then realizing that I did not have a shirt I could put on so to not smudge my makeup whilst putting on the dress, I snatched Bacon’s ugly shirt to slip on.So viewers beware…ugly top ahead.

Work in progress

Letting someone fuss over you is hard work ok, coffee breaks are essential

So are pseudo photoshoots to see whether the makeup is too heavy or just right

Checking up on his wife

Bacon was so so quiet that I did not realize he was in the suite, at the next room preparing his speech for the night…we ordered in KFC and I did not even share it with him, thinking that he was out playing in the sun. Oh what a wonderful wife I am..:))

We all had fake shu uemura eyelashes installed.I mean glued on.Yes, I’m a geek,so what.

It was such a long process..I did not actually realize I was sat there for the better part of 3 hours.Strange fact; apparently your veil is to be placed on your hair by an old lady who have had many children….thus she was reluctant to fix it up for me. Bizzare. But she did it anyway..and after me refusing for her to place it under my bun (which would’ve effectively made my hair bunned up like a samurai’s topknot), she twsited and turned it around into a flower-like shape.

tada!

At 2.35pm, I started to panic.Having to move downstairs to my parents’ room, grab my dress from the mil’s room where it was being ironed, change,prepare for pictures, make sure all my chi-muis are ready…I had at last started to panic. And proper panic. Some of them were missing…one was rushing in from singapore, another one was slowly taking her own sweet time from Taiping and two others were out hunting for my favourite food to suprise me, all oblivious to the fact that I was panicking like crazy…..and they were rewarded with me bossing everyone around like crazy when they eventually arrive…most of them at 3pm.

The crazy ones.

The parents helping out

The spanning dress

Four there, two more to go!

The upside down obi belt…OoOps.We took it off and put it on again at night.

Its hard being a brideslave;sighs dreymer

I flew all the way from Singapore for this??? pouts mandy

Hahah…err,yes?

Next up: The moment of truth…will Bacon get past the chi muis from hell? (Actually they were too damned nice to him)

PS: Not all pictures are properly uploaded yet – bear with me if your pics are not here…I dont love you any less!

What was a tradition in the US have in recent years making an appearance here in the UK. Cyber Monday is the competitior for the traditional super sales on the friday after thanksgiving in the US, where all shops throw open their doors early in the morning for shoppers to work off their turkey dinner. It is shopping with a twist, discounts on online shops rather than the regular bricks and mortar shops. It is also the day where retaillers traditionally get back into the black for the year