January 2020

Finally I can start posting my 2020 scheduler. It is 9-Feb now as I write this. January 2020 has been an adventure by itself as you can see from my schedule. To select the top three highlight itself was quite a challenge. But I've managed to filter them to what is important to me, and that is family and friends. As usual, there is every intention to post each event in details in the near future, and since I've given up travelling as part of my job, 2020 should be a more promising year for blogging as I get down to earth about my life. 

To start off, I spend almost 3 weeks traveling in the month of January. I didn't want to carry my diary everywhere with me, so I planned out daily Hello Kitty sheet for me to record my spending, my daily activities and food journal. Above are some of the entries during my 14 days cruise around South East Asia. Pretty neat right? It's gonna be a thick diary this year, but it's ok. Thick means eventful, and so much to be grateful for!

January is always filled with birthday celebration for me. Me and my husband are both born in January. I took the above photo in East Coast Park on my husband's birthday! It was such a perfect timing shot, cause when we went back to the same spot, it was gone. 

This year marks  my 43 years of age on this earth, and I am still wondering why on earth am I not yet retired at this age! In fact, I've just decided to rejoin one of my ex-company to pick a slower pace of life starting 2020. For my birthday, two special friend helped me celebrate by treating me to lunch and dinner and two beautiful places. We had lunch at the iconic Alkaff Mansion Wildhoney cafe. The food was delicious, and so were the cake. It was a private celebration, and we had dinner at Greenwich Seafood Market at Quayside Isle. They serve one of my favourite Fish & Chips in Singapore! At SGD30 per plate, I would say it is priced ridiculously, but I would frequent the place cause they serve me ice cold water, and fresh bread with vinegar and olive oil. Plus the breaded Fish & Chip is really lovely! Thank you so much to my beautiful friends who brought me there to celebrate me growing old. Sometimes friendship is not about the length of time we know each other, but the quality of time. 

My actual birthday was celebrated in my hometown Penang. I can't remember when was the last time I had my birthday here. But so much has happened through the years, that I decided to spend it at home this year with my Mum and my husband. We had a nice Dim Sum breakfast, followed by Ding Tai Fung lunch, and James Foo Western Food for dinner. I also met up with my cousin brother, cousin sister and aunty while I was back. We even celebrated my cousin Helen's birthday there, another January baby. I got my first Kebaya tops for myself, a milestone as I've always wanted to get one after I turn 40.  It doesn't look half bad on me either!

When I got back to Singapore after all the celebration, me and my husband took off on a 2 weeks cruise on the Celebrity Millennium X. We travelled to Kota Kinabalu, Boracay, Manila, Hong Kong, Nha Trang and Ba Ria HCM Vietnam. It was amazing to be on a cruise so long. I do enjoy it as it was such a relaxing trip. When we started, my worst fear was the Taal Volcano erupting while we were nearby. When we reach Hong Kong, our worst wear was the Caronovirus spreading in China, and Hong Kong. When we finally reached home, it has spread to Singapore, and I was constantly monitoring my temperature after that. It has been two weeks since we left Hong Kong, and I have not developed a fever, so I think I should be clear now. 

As January ends, and February begin, I need to planned out my goals for 2020:

• I have my investment goal to achieve, but with the start of a new job, I am thinking to switch it to automatic investment since I can't monitor it as per what I did previously. It's gonna be a challenge to reach my goal, but let's see how it goes.
• I have my health goals to achieve, which is to maintain a below 60kg weight and exercise 3 times a week. With the gym so near my office now, there is really no excuse not to go. I've gotta be discipline about this. I've also started my instangram posting to record down my own food journal, focusing mainly on healthy fresh cooked meals. 
• Lastly, in terms of travelling, I do have a Gold Coast trip coming up in March, and I plan to drop by Japan before my Krisflyer Gold expires in end August. I would also probably go back to Penang more often. Mainly that's all that I've planned for 2020. I wanted to slowly wine down, cut my expenses and geared into retirement mode in 2 to 3 years time. 

That's all for now. I will try to blog more often since I don't have to spend so much time commuting to work anymore. Happy 2020!