Dinner With Sonia

Sonia just came back form Shanghai and we decided to meet for dinner...  At the same time, it was also Becky's birthday.  We were invited for the daytime celebration but Amanda could not make it because of her various enrichment class, so we thought that we were just meeting for a casual dinner...  At the same time, Amanda decided to give Becky a small gift just for fun as well as some souvenirs from Melbourne for Rachel & Becky... 

We were not aware that we were celebrating her birthday dinner tonight as we usually go on Dutch when we dine, so when Jeff told us they had 8 pax with them, we were shocked!  In the end when Sonia and Jeff paid for the entire bill, we felt really bad about it.... but dinner was great and it was a good time to catch up with them....

The pictures below were all taken were by new DSLR...  using it for the very first time....  Coincidentally, when Sonia arrvied, she also whipped out a Canon 550D....  Great minds think alike huh?!  HAHAHA!!!!

We had dinner at this restaurant, Hua Yu Wee, along East Coast Road (suggested by Sonia)...

very nice old bungalow...  food was really good...  by the way, the restaurant and car park was full house...

amanda and the birthday girl

trying out macro function

everybody was busy fiddling with their mobile phones...

i couldn't remember why i took this plate of veg

amanda's dessert

rachel fiddling with her mummy's new toy

look at the mess on our table....  lol....

my herbal jelly dessert.... and sonia volunteering to scoop out the jelly to make the picture look better...  hahaha!!!

playing with the camera...  i managed to get 2 different effects eventhough the fan was spinning at top speed...

It was a great time catching up for the adults and as for the young ladies, they had a lot to share about their schools too.....  :)) 

My New Toy... a DSLR!!

Finally had time to get my DSLR....  After much consideration between Nikon and Canon, we finally decided to get the Canon 550D since it comes with 18 megapixels...  But we decided not to get the usual Kit 1 or Kit 2 lens.  Instead, we got the Tamron 18-200mm Zoom Lens as we use the zoom lens quite a fair bit and also, Tamron lens can be folded 3 times which means it is not so bulky yet it gives the effect of the 200mm zoom....  I have made a comparison, my 18-200mm lens is about the same length as the Canon Kit 2 lens (18-135mm)....  Hmmm...  so with this, we hesitated no more.... 

she seems more excited than i do...

behaving like a pro already....

lens before zoom

full length after zooming...

amanda enjoys using my new dslr...  hmm...  i wonder whose toy is this... 

hers or mine?  hahaha!!!

PHPPS Mid Autumn Festival 2010

How time flies...  It's Mid Autumn Festival in Amanda's school once again...  We decided to purchase the tickets again this year, since she is still quite young and may enjoy the various activities...  However, throughout the festival, she felt quite bored as most of her friends were not there!  So most likely we're not gonna get the tickets next year....  but we'll see how it goes, it's still another year ahead, and things may change....  :)

we saw the principal, mrs foo, when we arrived and she stopped over for a group photo...  we felt quite bad as the vip was waiting for her in the lift, while we were taking photos using our camera, the school's official photographer and then mrs foo whipped out her camera for another photo (can you see her camera in her hand?)...  very paiseh to keep the vip waiting....  heehee...

posing for father and child photo, which was complimentary

this is really so meaningful...

 fixing her lantern

gripping the tea cup with a pair of chopsticks

amanda with 大头娃娃

the stage

amanda and her classmate karine...  oh may, amanda is half a head shorter than her!...  even karine's mummy made a remark "alamak, how come half a head difference?!"...  hahaha.... 

later amanda got bored and she went with karine to play at the games stall...  i gave her s$10 for the games but she came back with drinks and toys...  i asked her "did you win all these?"... she said "no, i played 1 game and used the rest of the money to buy things"...  i asked why...  she said "because games after you play, you don't get anything, but when i buy things, i can see it and play with it"....  haha....

she bought this top...  we took a few pictures of it as i was playing with the flash to test out the effects...

We went out for supper with Janie and family after the Mid-Autumn Festival... but we couldn't decide where to go; moreover it was quite late around 10pm...  so we ended up at Bt Timah Market...

look at the girls so engrossed with the iphone...  kids these days are really so different from our times...  back then we were playing electronic games such as "popeye", "helmut", "octopus", "brickgames" etc...  lol!