~Christmas gathering with 2/4 gals~

It is Christmas Eve today & it is a pretty wet day. it had been raining since last nite. hopefully the festive mood is not dampened by the wet weather. & hereby wishing everyone "Merry Christmas! have a lovely Xmas filled with joy, laughter and happiness~!!!"

yesterday i had a simple yet heart warming xmas celebration with the 2/4 gals. it was a celebration filled with laughter, fun and enjoyment. haha... of cos, not forgetting our usual practice of taking photos.. lots of photos with so many cameras! hahaha... there were 10 of us and it was a pretty good attendance. :) Yiling had to leave early to get back to work so she was not the group photo. poor girl had to get back to the hospital to standby for calls.

9 of us taking a group photo after the gift exchange.

basically the agenda for the nite was dinner @ Waraku @ the Hereen. as pple were late (i was one of the late comer, paiseh sia) so our dinner only started at abt 730pm. although we reserve a table for 10, our attendance during dinner was not FULL. haha.. kinda paiseh to hold up so many seats. there was a grp of pple nearby to us who shld be celebrating Xmas as well. they had such a large grp of pple and they had to occupy 2 rows of tables to accommodate all of them. as compared, our "zhen rong" seems smaller. haha... but tat did not mean we will have less laughter. we still had great fun, cracking jokes abt everything and anything, especially when our food were served, we had a good laugh over the size of the bowls.

close-up comparison of the bowl size. really 小巫见大巫... haha...

within the mega bowl... chey~ tat much of food only..

morale of story: dun be deceived by the exterior look, thinking tat there will be a big portion within the mega bowl. haha... in fact, there were lots of inconvenience with such mega bowl. shuwei had a hard time scooping up the udon and i tink at the end of the meal, her hands shld be aching. haha.. Yiling suggested tat such mega bowls were used as prevention for spladdering of the sauce while pple are eating the udon. the height of the mega bowl is juz nice to cover up. hmm.. if tat is really the use, is acually quite useful la but still, the mega bowl is a bit too big la. whahaha...

i tink tis size of bowl looks much better. at least more "user friendly"

after dinner, we made our way to Peranakan for a drink, chill out and for the gift exchange. while waiting for Shiying and Meibin to arrive, we decided to start our photo taking session. whahaha... at tat very moment, ALL cameras appeared. there were like 5 cameras flashing here and there. instead of reacting to Yiling's request to chit chat, we were busy taking photos. hahaha... she got kinda pek chek. paiseh la, Yiling.. there are always other opportunities to meet up and catch up and we will definitely allocate time for chit chatting and photo taking for our next gathering, k? hee hee...

when Shiying & Meibin finally reached, we had our gift exchange. instead of the usual drawing lots practice, we improvised with some different ideas. after much discussion, we finally decided on a method of something like "guess who" for the gift exchange. basically the person will do a lucky pick from the pile of folded papers written with our names and after which, she will need to ask some "yes or no" questions abt the person whose name is on the piece of folded paper and there is a time limit of 1 min. the rest of us will answer these questions accordingly and before time is up, the person need to guess the name on the folded paper correctly so tat she will be able to take the respective present brought along by the person. haha... sounds easy but it was not as easy as it seems to be when more rules were added along the way. the sequence of the game was according to our birth months. half way thru the gift exchange, we realised it was not challenging at all. so in addition to the initial rule of not asking any questions abt the person's attire for the night, we were not able to ask anything abt the person's general appearance, occupation & any questions within the same category. whahaha... i tink it was kinda tough but there were lots of fun and laughter. heehee... luckily i was among the 1st few to pick the present. so all i did was to try to add on more rules to make it difficult for the rest and at the same i tried to make them gan chiong with the countdown of time. whahaha... at the end of the whole exchange session, Shupei and Shuwei did not manage to guess the name correctly within the expected time frame so had to wait to pick up any remaining presents. of cos, everyone still get a present eventually. tis "guess who" game is juz for fun and laughter, juz to spice up the gift exchange. i guess it did work to a certain extend with everyone's active participation in giving some correct answers and some misleading and ambigious ones. hahaha... i am certainly looking forward to the gift exchange next yr with fresh and new ideas. & of cos i am definitely looking forward to meeting up with the gals for bday celebration next yr. hmmm... is gonna be our mid 20s bday celebration ah... how times flies sia...

display of all the presents... different shapes, sizes...

look who's eyeing in the presents even before the gift exchange starts... naughty ah...

after the challenging "guess who" game, finally we got our presents! woohoo~!!!

here's our presents... woooo...

"open, sesame!" let's see wat is hidden within the wrapper..

yeah~!!! Poh Lian's present was from me (peel-off & wash-off masks from Faceshop), Stella's present was from Wen Hui (Reebok's shop bag) & Wen Hui received a present from Poh Lian (Takashimaya voucher..)

check out on the other end of the table... Meibin's present was from Shupei (a notebook with a shiny cover) and Shiying's present was from Meibin (shower and body lotion from Crabtree & Evelyn)

Shupei's present was from Shuwei (jewellery box) while my present was from Yiling (silver accessories belt)

Jenny's present was from Shiying (shower and body lotion from Crabtree & Evelyn) & Shuwei's present was from Jenny (Cream & lotion from Bodyshop)

everyone went home happily with all the lovely gifts. i think all our gifts r very useful, thoughtful and meaningful. great choice of gifts, gals~!!!

before i end the entry, juz to share some artistic pics of the drinks and food we had at the bar... do all these pics look like those pics in advertisement? heehee...

last but not least,

MERRY CHRISTMAS to everyone!!!