My Spontaneous Valentine’s Day Adventure

It was just my luck that Valentine’s Day fell on a weekend this year and I have no classes on Fridays (don’t hate me!), so I decided to spend it with Chee Kiang this year. This would be the first time in 6 years since we’ve spent Valentine’s Day together and that’s the amount of years since we’ve left school. We used to buy each other gifts from our respective clubs (Interact and Leo, which happened to rival ‘charity’ clubs) and deemed it as a tradition between the both of us. But even a blind person can see that it was two young kids flirting with each other and the ‘friendly tradition’ was just an excuse to shower each other with affection./

So yeah! I decided to spend Vday with Chee Kiang this year.

The thing is, he wouldn’t know until about 5 hours before Valentine’s Day.

The 13th was supposed to be a long day for him, with a test in the afternoon after an entire night of cramming and his evening was spent at Media Corp recording for a radio show (my boyfriend’s a DJ! More on this in another post!) for this radio channel called Lush Fm and then his day would end with dinner at Fish n Co with Jon, Karthik and Yen.

A Malacca trip was ‘planned’ for him and the ‘plan’ was to leave at 7am the next day, so his stomach was set to Durian Cendol mode. Poor thing. He first told me about his Malacca trip when he came over to help me peel vegetables for my CNY reunion dinner. I immediately texted Jon and begged him to change the dates as I wanted to surprise him for Valentine’s Day! I  know I’m not creative at all… he pulled this one on me too for my 21st birthday! But I still think it’s fun.

Jon said, “It’s so that he would keep his weekend free for you!” What geniuses!! I was so grateful!

I told Leong Hui, Jon and Chun Leen about my plans and had meant to tell more people, but procrastinated and they did more of the planning for me. I’m so lucky!

The funniest thing was when Chun Leen texted me with such urgency, “Jolene, we have a situation. Call me. ” Panicking, I called him, fearing the worst.

He was all, “We’re going to Malacca the weekend that you’re here.” Haih, so kancheong~! Poor guy was not briefed about their master plan.

As for me, my journey started on the 12th of February! After my morning patient, I immediately hopped onto a bus and made my way down to KL and upon reaching Pudu at sunset, I joined the sweaty masses jostling and tumbling in the LRT and the KTM all the way back to Subang. As I wasn’t sure if my parents fully approved of my tiny adventure, I decided to be the independent daughter (as opposed to my usual troublesome daughter role) and saved them the traffic jam stress along the Federal.

Gotta love my iPod nano. Also, after watching Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist during my bus ride, I felt COOL listening to songs on my iPod while walking through the city. Don’t ask me why, I also don’t know why I’m pretentious like that.

Went home, offered to wash the dishes, talked tons about the latest going ons back at dental school to distract my dad from asking and then nagging me about my spontaneous trip, I made it through the night without much fanfare.

The next morning at 9am, mum dropped me off at Pyramid where I boarded the Aeroline and summoned enough courage to plop my butt down onto the plushy plushy OHH so plushy lounge area, where there were three other guys already making themselves at home. Kept looking up at this middle aged high ranking malay uncle who kept shouting into his phone, “Miss Lai?? Can I speak to Miss Lai???” Was quite distracted by that.

Decided to be cool again (sigh) and brought out my laptop from my bag. Thought about whether it would be embarrassing or fun to be seen with my super blinged pink laptop in a tiny area filled with men but decided to be proud of the person that I am and watched an episode of Gem of Life before I curled up in a ball and fell asleep.

Woke up and saw that my tube had rode a quarter way down and my green bra was showing, so thought it would be best that I move away from there before I humiliate myself further.

Was really proud that I managed to sleep right through the entire journey! When I opened my eyes, I had already arrive at the immigration!

Since I had a few hours to kill before the big surprise, I had lunch at Vivocity and freshened up at the toilet there.

1) Lunch was a bowl of Loh Mee and it SUCKS. I would go hungry and die in Singapore if my salary is only sufficient for hawker food. Western food in Singapore is so damn good though. Let me tell you about Esther’s Singapore hawker food experience. She was alarmed when the Wantan Mee uncle started pouring tomato sauce into her Wantan Mee. I’ve been to Singapore so many times and only rarely, VERY rarely, can I finish a bowl of noodles/plate of something from a hawker stall. Most of the time I couldn’t go through with it. The food there just tastes different, somehow. I remember staring in horror at the clear Bak Kut Teh soup as I was walking pass some hawker stalls. Bak Kut Teh soup is supposed to be brown!!

But to be politically correct, Chee Kiang has done his part and brought me to places which can satiate my salty malaysian tastebuds, such as this awesome Chicken Rice Stall at a place called Ginza and the one and only Prata Shop that all NUS students throng, making that mamak fella a millionaire (really, came out in the papers and all that), with my fav mutton nasi briyani that is not so much my fav anymore since the spiciness has gone up a few notches. *fans tongue*

2) The toilets are clean enough for me to pee sitting down, place my backpack on the floor and do my make up at the same time. Yes, I can pee standing up. *cue to clap

After cleverly boarding Bus No. 30 to NUS from Vivo, I made my way up to Jon’s room where I got ready and then later all of us went into the city, ready for the surprise!

Riding into town. L-r: Karthik, Yen, Jon and Myself.

Jon and Karthik waited inside Fish n Co for Chee Kiang while Yen and I walked around a mall nearby. Possibly the most boring mall ever. It only sells furnitures and art paintings. We had to wait for like an hour and almost died from boredom and hunger. Thanks Yen for being so nice to accompany me. 🙂

When Chee Kiang finally arrived, Jon smsed us to make our grand entrance. The restaurant was packed to the brim with people!

Yen sat down first and from outside the restaurant, I could see Chee Kiang’s hand moving about in frustration, complementing an angsty rant about his day. I snaked around the tables and tried my best to stay out of sight till the last minute.

I then snuck up on him and waved.

This was after an entire day’s worth of text messages about how I would be in Penang at night, dining with my classmates or maybe shopping.

He just looked at me, stunned! LOL. After staring at me for a long time he then stood up and said, “WHY?! HOW?!”. Haha..and he hugged me ever so tightly. It made the entire thing really worth the effort!

Anyway, I took a video to re-enact the scene since Jon’s camera’s battery died. Sigh.

The first part of the video was of me trying to get Chee Kiang to do his ‘stunned’ face. Which is also his tulan face when waiters serve him poorly. In the second video, I painfully record myself talking about the entire thing. Gah. And I have eyeshadow on so that I don’t look too haggard in the video. :X

L-r: Jon, Yen, Myself

I’m glad his reaction was more happy than troubled, in case I was cramping his weekend or something.

Karthik’s tulan-ed face, as he was pushed away in the first photo by Chee Kiang.

Made a new friend, Angeline! And that’s Chun Leen, who is not a new friend. <3

Angeline and Karthik, when we went to Loof, a roof top bar. I can’t believe the amount of people there were at Loof. I guess the only way to save the economy is to spend!

Karthik and Yen, like their at a premier.

l-r: jon, Chun Leen and Angeline.

It was quite warm where we were which totally defeated the purpose of a bar, but we managed to find somewhere else to sit which was less of an oven. The walls were too warm to lean against as right behind it was the aircon’s compressor.

I must remind myself to never be experimental – Cucumber martini. Ughh.

Karthik’s holding The Loof Life which was supposed to be a specialty but apparently it did not have enough alcohol.

Everyone had a Loof Life.

I can’t remember what Chun Leen had but there was veggie in it. Bleh!

Boyfriends are for finishing sucky drinks.

There were some fun alcoves with padded seats for people to just chill at.

And for shameless couples to frolick.

Eng Hooi dropped by for drinks after a play with her boyfriend, Samuel.

For over a week, Chee Kiang has been gushing about the awesome additions to the balcony he shares with his floor mates on the 6th floor of his block at Sheares Hall. A senior donated a tub to them and they’ve been having tub sessions for many days now. Chee Kiang said that they would all get into their swimming togs and sit in the tub and eat longan.

The tub!

His floormates had asked him if I would be coming down for Valentine’s Day and if so, they offered butler services and they would serve the two of us as we soaked. Their charges are more expensive on Valentine’s Day too, apparently. Super wtf.

Each block was allocated SGD2000 and they got themself some tables, chairs and even a little koi pond.

Enjoying life.

This is their ‘fish spa’. They bought a lot of baby carps and started freaking out when they increased in size after a couple of weeks. LOL. What with the tiny pond.

Not long term planners, these boys.

Uni life is so fun, right?

I totally cracked up when I saw this!

Why are they so cheeky?? Hahahahaha.

Fish spa.. -_- Chee Kiang was telling me that they placed a few unfortunate carps inside the tub to act as fishes for their fish spa and the poor fishes didn’t make it. 🙁

Remember the Rag event which Chee Kiang took part in 2007? The one with the awesome float? As times are bad, companies have refused to sponsor scrap materials and hence they’ve taken to collecting empty cans to build their float. This is going to take a loooong time.

HAHAHAHA damn stupid.

And to wrap up our Valentine’s Day weekend, here are some photos of us spending some well deserved time together on Valentine’s Day.

And for the first time ever, I flew all by myself! I know it’s no big deal, but to me it is. Furthermore, I paid for the ticket with my own money. It’s not much but it’s something! 🙂 Gotta love AirAsia for finally collaborating with Maybank2u, best move ever!

The captain said something about flying over Genting Highlands but I couldn’t see it! Damn.

Flying in an aeroplane never gets old!

It was really interesting to see the patterns below. Almost every inch of our country has been developed in someway or other. If it’s not a city, it is used for agriculture.

And here I am, flying into Penang.

It’s a little hard to believe that I saved myself 10 hours on the bus. Flying is so convenient.. sorry I’m quite jakun.

Despite coming back to Sungai Petani to crash before lunch until dinner time, I’m still deprived of sleep. Shall turn in now. 🙂 I’m really glad I did this. It was convenient, it was fun and it made me happy that he was happy. 🙂