The Bangkok trip that was meant to be... (yeah, you didn't read this wrongly)

Well well well... I've been feeling off-colour all week. I managed to battle off a sore throat at the start of this week but was defeated by the flu bug which has been bugging me since Wed and has not buzz off. I had to do a presentation yesterday breathing via my mouth and speaking with a nasal voice as my fellow colleague puts it. However, good stuff comes at the end or when you least expected it I guess. So the story begins...

I totally forgot I signed up for the a*star d&d (held yesterday on a Fri) and was reminded to go for it by an email which arrived on Thu (not that I saw it till midnight). This d&d ain't my company's d&d. The latter was held in Jan earlier this year. The reason why we were invited was because we were their scholars. Anyhow, we only had to pay 5 dollars each. However, if we didn't turn up, we had to pay 85 bucks which is the full cost according to the Thu email... *sheesh* here was I feeling all under the weather... needless to say, I was less than enthusiastic. However, the good things started to happen from here onwards...firstly, I didn't have to work a full day. Technically a half day because they wanted to see the scholars at 4 plus before the d&d so I excused myself from office happily....but when Nayu (one of my good friend from ntu...XR might remember her) & I got there, it appeared no one really turned up for that appointment. *lol* Since the dining venue was at Meritus Mandarin (the one at Orchard), no prizes for guessing what we did next. We had a good time shopping at Taka, followed by coffee at coffee club before hopping back to the hotel's ballroom. The 8-course food they served was surprisingly yummy. I kinda like the herbal duck and dessert which was red bean soup with tangyuan. My companions at the table were pretty good company though the whole night's attention was on Phillip Yeo since he's the outgoing chairman. Here comes my personal highlight of the evening: the lucky draw because I actually won something. Can you believe that? Here I was eating my tangyuan, the next min my no. 0224 was called out. The miraculous thing is that I did not win anything stupid or useless...if you know what I mean...I don't really want to go into what people give away for lucky draw here but I actually got 2 return tickets to bangkok (bkk) from jet-star which seriously isn't too bad! My 5 dollar investment yield pretty good returns - half-day leave, good food and airtix. To think I almost didn't go!

Anyway, my parents happened to be going bkk in April. They got their trip settled much earlier. I thought I will give it a miss this time...but what do you know, fate beckons, I'm going to bkk after all with them (and my lucky brother). Cheers to the family trip and here's to shopping and phat thai!