Friday, February 29, 2008

Shuk's wedding - morning tea ceremony

Don't think I (we) wanna wait any longer. I think it's about time I do a post on Shuk's wedding.


The sad thing is this:
It seems none of the cheemuis took any pictures of the most interesting bits of the morning tea reception where we tortured the groom and his hengtais. Darn!

Guess everyone was too engrossed with the games and the torturing bits.

You see, only we cheemuis, the groom and his hengtais were allowed outside. I gave strict orders to everyone from the Lee's side to not come in/out of the house as soon as the groom arrives.

I put Tyrone in charged of opening the door (once we cheemuis are satisfied with the punishments and the payment, we'll allow them in), and he's to only recognise my voice and no one else.

As for me, being the head honcho, I had to question the groom and his troops, therefore I handed my camera to Mich. But in the midst of things, she left the camera in her bag.

So sorry I'm not gonna be able to upload those pix. Will have to wait till May gets back from her holiday in Bangkok and ChiangMai (probably in 2 weeks' time) or wait for the photographer to return from China in a month's time.

This is one of the reasons why I'm reluctant to blog about it. I was kinda hoping someone would miraculously produce those piccies for me.





Wedding morning


Was at Shuk's place around 7:15am. Gotta be early to prepare the ingredients for the torturous games we're gonna put the guys through. kekeke.

Thank God for my troopers, we were super efficient and got everything cut, mixed, and ready within minutes.

The groom was due to arrive around 8am and we're not sure how many hengtais will be coming. Shuk has given me firm warning not to do anything that'll upset her hubby's stomach. She said, "Ven, i'll kill you if he gets tummy ache".

Scary!!

You'll now understand why our punishments were so mild. Cos the groom has already "pakat" with the bride you see. :P


Managed to grab a photo with Shuk before the groom arrives.







San was appointed to stay with Shuk. She'll open the door upon hearing me saying "All clear. San, you can open the door now". That's when the groom has successfully gone through all the tasks for Stage 3 and has given us cheemuis a well-deserved angpow.


The rest of the of us went down to face the guys.





Okay, there are no piccies at the moment, but i'm sure you can imagine..

The groom and his entourage arrived around 8:15am blaring the honks of their Beemers so loud that I'm sure the entire neighbourhood was awaken very early that fateful morning.

And then, we saw so many of them (more than 10, less than 15).

And they were only 6 of us to face them. uh-oh....

Anyway, it wasn't gonna be difficult I told them (cheemuis)...I've done this before many times. (yups, I had to put on a brave front).


Stage 1 - negotiation by the gate.

To enter, Hsien Yu would have to entice us with the amount he has in store for us in the angpow. We received 2 angpows and were quite OK with the amount (after getting the second one).

So, I got Tyrone to open the electric gate to allow them in for Level 2.


Stage 2 - Q & A

"How much do you know your wife?...if you don't, it's time to walk out the door dude!"

Asked him a couple of questions:
Q: What's her fave hawker food combination?
HY's answer: Prawn mee + Char Kuey Teow.
Damn he got it right! Continue asking till he gets it wrong..

Q: Where did you go and what did you do on your 1st date?
HY's answer: One Utama to watch a movie.
Carrie: Which movie?
HY: Constantine..

C: What else did you do?
HY: errr...we had dinner.
C: Where?
HY: err...so long ago, cannot remember.
C: Wrong answer! Finish this plate of banana for us please. We've prepared this healthy breakfast just for you.

More and more drilling till we've finished up all our ingredients.


The funniest part was this..
Q: How many pairs of shoes does SY own?
HY: errr...about 150.
C: wrong! (actually I didn't have the right answer cos Shuk wasn't sure either. She told me 40).
HY: Then...how many shoes does she own la?
C: less than that la! Anyway, go finish this plate of bittergourd for us! (The bittergourd pieces were laced with coffee powder.




What I was impressed with..
HY actually got the last 4 digits of Shuk's ID no correctly. Not bad not bad.

But shame on you HY for not being able to recognise your wife's lips. :P
For that, you guys had to gulp down the entire cup of apple cider vinegar. ughh..



The highlight for Stage 2 was the grapes of course!!!

I was cracking my head a few days before the big day thinking of how best to torture HY without getting anyone offended.

Mum gave me this idea to tie a bunch of grapes on his belt, so that the grapes rest on his crotch. Then we'll have to get the hengtais to bite off the grapes and they're NOT allowed to use their hands to touch the grapes.

The hengtais were all pretty good sport and finished up (almost) the entire bunch.

Then came the easy part where HY had to select 3 friends. These 3 guys had to put on lippy and kiss HY seductively.

Stage 2 was cleared with another angpow. Girls, we're gonna be rich!!

Tyrone, our doorkeeper opened the door for the groom to proceed to Stage 3.



Stage 3 - pleasing the bride...

Tyrone, our dedicated doorkeeper ran upstairs and stationed himself in front of Shuk's room like a bouncer. He was good! (yes, that was my plan b, we needed a guy to help us withstand the hengtai in case they get rowdy)

Thanks for doing such a great job Tyrone! I'm so proud of you. :)

Stage 3 was pretty easy.

We've only got 3 tasks left for him to complete (yes, we had to finish the games by 8:50am as the tea ceremony had to start soon).

1st task: To serenade Shuk with a love song.
They sang a really lousy rendition of 'Only you'.

This is best view from the video, will upload it here as soon as I get it from the photographer. (1 month later, k?)

2nd task: To say 'i love you' in 7 different languages, dialects not included!
They amazed us by saying i love you in Vietnamese, which was totally unexpected. For that, we asked them to give us another bonus 'i love you'.

Thanks to an uncle, they managed to accomplish this task.


3rd task: HY to persuade his wife to allow him in the room.
This guy was really smart, he bribed his bride with promises of Coach bags, LV bags and other goodies she likes. But she didn't budge, saying "I can buy these myself also!" :P

Good one Shuk. ;)

Can't remember exactly what happened next. Eventually he managed to win his bride's heart enough for her to let him in.


Together at last! :)
Without wasting any time at all, HY entered the room to claim his bride.




Tea Ceremony

Shuk's parents been waiting for a long time to taste such sweet tea.








Shuk's parents gave her a diamond pendant + necklace, and a diamante bracelet.








This is Aunt Esther, Shuk's aunt (in yellow/greenish batik print kaftan). She is one of the coolest aunts around. She said this to us the other night, "Auntie has seen you girls from young. Now you are all big girls already. And tomorrow is Shuk Yee's big day. I am so excited".

In fact, she revealed that she was so excited she didn't get proper shut eye.

In her own words, "this cup of tea is especially sweet".:)






The newly weds have received enough angpows, now it's time for them to give out angpows.
Also, it was quite timely cos they were thirsty. The tea was no doubt a pretty expensive one. :P

1st to receive was Shuk's bro, Chung Yen (who came back all the way from Bermuda).

CY: "Jie Fu (bro-in-law) yumcha".
Could see HY's shiok face. LOL!






They were quite shiok giving away angpows.






Stole this pix from Reuben's facebook album.





May (Shuk's cousin) who came all the way from Melby to "cham cha".




This young girl is Lydia (the girl who donated her kisses for the lippy chart). She was following Reuben the entire day ....and night. Reuben refers to her as his date. Lucky you Reubs!





Family portrait





One with the cheemuis. Mich was missing as she had to rush off to her cousin's wedding in Ampang.





Eve, me, Shuk, Ching, San.




Cutting the pretty cake made by her mum.





Chung Yen feeding sweet "tong yuen" to Shuk and HY. This was to signify a sweet sweet life together.





Siblings affection.





HY thanking his hengtai for all the wasabi durian ice cream, apple cider vinegar, bittergourd and grapes they had to endure.



The ratio of hengtais to cheemui was 2:1.
Eventhough we were outnumbered, we did well girls!






Time to head over to the groom's pad.









Shuk's m-i-l looking very happy.





Mr and Mrs Ooi looking resplendent in Chinese gears.






I was in charged of holding her bouquet while she attended to the tea ceremony.





In their room...

Their got their nephew to jump on their virgin bed. Apparently, the Chinese believes that getting a young boy to jump on the newly weds' bed would help to produce a boy as their first born.





Awww...




Him removing her veil






Her removing his jacket



The above 2 pictures looked as if they're gonna retire. Nah, you're wrong. We actually proceeded to nurse our tummies straight after.





Pre-dinner preparation

Mich and I rushed over to Shawn Cutler, Bangsar for our hair appointment as soon as we were done with the morning events.

We were a little late as Mich got a bit tied up at her cousin's lunch reception.

Shawn was taking forever to set my hair for me. Mainly cos he was so sought after, he was actually attending to a few customers at the same time. Talk about booking in advance....there was no difference.


My hair in the midst of being blow dried by a young stylist. Yes, this isn't a flattering shot :P. I know i know.





Mich getting curls for the first time. It'll be a nice change :)




Hmm..big curls are pretty nice too huh?



Mich has already started styling her hair, while mine was still in the midst of blow drying. And Shawn was no where in sight. Gonna be so late for my rehearsal.




It was already 4pm when Shawn started on my hair. We were supposed to leave at 4pm (his advice - just in case the traffic goes wonky. He actually told me to come over at 2pm, the earlier the better). He made me wait 4ever eventhough he knew I was in a hurry. He was quite the bitch!

I was due at the hotel at 5pm to shower, change and get my make up done. Rehearsal and briefing were due to start at 6pm.





Bitchy or not, he did a great job on my hair.
No wonder I can never stay angry at him for long.
I'm such a sucker...








I was kinda stressed out as CS needed to do a trial run and sound checks with me. There's no time to screw up.




Mich's curls.


To be continued.....

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Amazing Bangkok - Day 4

Yups, our final day in Bangkok.

Am finally feeling much better cos my toilet visits have reduced significantly. Oh, what a relief!




Pratunam market - the area where lotsa tuk tuks hang out.




Helping this auntie sell corns and sweet potatoes.






I think this cured my tummy ache. I had a huge bottle of this Betagen the night before. It tasted exactly like Yakult only it's mega size. And it's so darn cheap 38 baht.

I bought another bottle to drink on this very morning.






So happy that I could start eating like normal. Couldn't resist buying these mangoes. They're my favourites too!





This kinda reminded us of pulut/lemang.






Wonder what those black-ish stuff are...black beans?
Is this sweet or savoury?





Spotted a huge red packet outside Big C




The aviator glasses gang





Crossing the overhead bridge towards CentralWorld. We took this picture on purpose to capture those workers lazing around in the carpark.






See see? There were so many of them. This is just partially.






Gonna have an early lunch before leaving for the airport.







Managed to sneakily take some pictures of CentralWorld. I like this place.





There was an area decorated with lotsa white flowers and we were wondering what it was all about.




There was a showcase exhibiting HRH Princess Galyani Vadhana's contributions towards the Thais. She was the elder sister to the current king.





We found the very first MOS burger outlet in Thailand. Was so happy as we miss Mos burger so much. We used to have an outlet in KLCC but it has liquidated ages ago.




Cheap right?





Introducing the healthiest, finest Japanese burger around!





I ordered Takokatsu rice burger. It's basically pieces of squids ala katsu (fried cutlet).





Claudine's teriyaki chicken rice burger - which is always a safe bet!





Caryn's ginger pork burger.





This is the place we had dinner 2 night's ago. It's a must try.




Some art exhibition going on..





We went to Mcker's to tapau some taro pies and burgers so that we can have those in the airport. Yup, Suvarnabumi airport does not have Mckers..only BK!






Is it my imagination or what? But their Mcker's seems more refined.






Check out their Choc Banana pie! Only RM2.5





As I was leaving Mcker's, I saw this cafe. Damn, should have eaten here, I like the decor! I couldn't check out this place as we had to rush back to the hotel. Our cab was due to arrive.





Back at Suvarnabumi again....





The bellboy and our cab driver was shocked at the amount of bags we had.




Initially, we were informed that our return flight would delay for 1 hr 10 mins, 2 days before we left Msia. When we arrived at the airport, we were further that there's further delay. All in, 2 hours plus of extra waiting time! Damn AirAsia!


I was so tired, I got Claudine to push the trolley I was sitting on. Whee!




Hanging out at Ken's favourite coffee place...Starbucks!




We were reimbursed for the delay. Only 100 baht, not much.





Super bored





Claudine and I hoped over to Caffe Nero/Black Canyon as I wanted to eat their sweet tong yuen (glutinous rice balls).




Not long after ordering, there was a 'brown out'. The waitress asked me if I could wait for the food as they won't be able to use the microwave. I told her no to worry. But after waiting for like another 30 mins, I gave up. Apparently, she wasn't keen to serve us in this chaos.

And..the brown out only happened in their place, the other cafes were perfectly fine.




About time to go...




Killing 2 birds with 1 stone. Ken pushing Claudine pushing the trolley.




Sure beats walking!




We found a tuktuk to camwhore! heeheh





I bought a bottle of this limited edition Absolut Disco. Damn chio right?




Arrived home closed to 12am. Guess who was the happiest? Bebe of cos! He happily jumped onto Cocoa's new bed.

Yes, my dog is super messy after 4 days of non-grooming. :P

Thus end our adventure in Bangkok. :)

I feel as if I haven't had enough of holidaying as I'm writing this. Impulsively, I bought a ticket to Shanghai. Will be going with some colleagues this coming June. Can't wait!