Marina Bay. Marina Bay.

I spot myself in the Marin Bay area for the last 2 weekends. Nothing wrong with it, I guess - just funny how I keep popping up in the same places these days :)

 

Was at the DBS Marina Regatta last Sunday - such a hot and bright day! The picture (see below)  I posted in Instagram got me an invite to the DBS Marina Regatta Story 2013 Awards. A pity I could not attend but still HAPPY :) I only started on Instagram lately and it has been fun so far! Follow me @ ILOVELONGVACATION and see the other pictures that I posted on the DBS Marina Regatta and of course the occasional stories of my life!

 

Focused. On. The. Race

Also visited the Blueprint Emporium at Pit Building on the same day :) Happen to read about it in the newspaper last Saturday so I decided to pop by since I'm in the area. Always like attending such events to see what the designers in the region are up to and try to get something special :) 

Always like attending events at the Pit Building...Can feel the vibe in the air :)

 

Food is a kind of fashion these days too. Nice to see Tiong Bahru Bakery setting up shop here. Reminds me of the weekend markets in Sydney :) 

 

Excited beings heading to the fitting room to try the stuff they eyed on...



Pop-up stores  in their own ways!

 

My take-away :) A pair of crafted earrings from Tulola Jewelery (designed and made in Bali) and a ring of the same series...The ring is still on the way from Bali via DHL as my ring size was 5.5 and they had to tailor-craft it for me (and it was free, a privilege extended to all Blueprint Emporium customers :)

I must say that was a HAPPY Sunday! :)

Sydney in a Dropbox

Went to Sydney with the girls in April. As usual, tons of photos were taken. Usually we will share the pictures by:
1) Saving them into a thumb drive each
2) Meeting up
3) Transfer them to a laptop
4) Re-transferring to the thumb drive again.

This time, we decided to use the Dropbox which I must say is more efficient. Each of us just upload the pictures into Dropbox and then download the pictures we want - from 4 steps to 2 steps! The only drawback is probably space not enough as all of us are given 2GB free for a start.

If you have not gotten Dropbox and want to try, click here! If you join and install Dropbox from this link, both you and I will get 500MB of bonus space! :)

Enough said about Dropbox :P Although here's a group photo of us taken at Sydney Tower Eye that I just downloaded from Dropbox...

Us and fireworks over the Sydney Harbour Bridge! :)

I must say Sydney is really good at creating experiences and making money at the same time. Haha. At the entrance of major attractions, there was a photo stop where a crew member took a photo of us and then superimposed it onto beautiful backgrounds which were almost impossible for us to take on our own. At the end of our visit, we were asked if we wanted to buy the photos which were put into a nice album of the attraction. Being the laid back Australians, they were never pushy and yet we ended up buying 2 albums - one at Sydney Tower (see above - nice, right?) and another at the Sydney Opera House (see below :))

We took the essential tour! Sydney Opera House is gorgeous, I must say. Will definitely be dedicating a post to share my thoughts about it :)

I really like this fireworks picture. It kind of reminded me of our dinner at Cockle Bay Wharf where we also enjoyed a splendid display of fireworks which I captured in a video. Visit ilovelongvacation to watch it :)

Any plans for the weekend? Looking forward to it - I'm going to watch The Great Gatsby today (Saturday) and off to the Marina Regatta on Sunday!

At the close of a long vacation...

By the time you read this, I will be in Sydney where I will spend the last week or so of my long vacation. Come to think of it, I am glad that the first and last leg of this vacation is a trip overseas :)

I have not figured out how to mobile-blog on blogger yet and I will try to update my wordpress blog ilovelongvacation, twitter (@ilovelongvacatn) and instagram (@ilovelongvcation), so do check them if you like to know how I am sydneyING :P Meanwhile, I might schedule and post some long overdue posts of the last few weeks.

While it is a cliche to say that time flies, it is true that 6 months have raced past for me, especially in the last few weeks or so - I felt an urgency to do more as I count down to the final days and also look forward to new career challenges very soon.

By then, this long vacation would have lasted exactly 191 days (yes I decided to do a count :p). I know I am lucky to have been able to take a break of more than half a year, a 'luxury' that excludes many because this is LIFE - the life they wanted, the life they think they should live, the life they have to live. Such is life.

While I do not have much to show for my professional life for the last few months, I would like to think that I have more to show for my personal life.

• Travelled to Scandinavia (partly solo, partly with my brother) and visited Stockholm (Sweden), Helsinki (Finland), Oslo (Norway), Copenhagen (Denmark) and Reykjavik (Iceland). Glad I have travelled alone more than once in my life! So agree with Huff Post Travel post: Why Every Woman Should Travel Alone (At Least Once in Her Life)  :)

At Unesco site, Suomenlinna in Helsinki, Finland. Read more at Suomenlinna Story.

• Blogged more. In this blog, the total number of views was 4746 and last month alone saw 568 views! In the other blog, the number of followers have grown from under 10 since it started in late 2011 to over 50 today! Happy to share my stories and thoughts with more people.

• Learnt more about social media and became more active! I twittered more @ilovelongvacatn @chan5013 and joined Pinterest @ilovelongvacatn and Instagram @ilovelongvcation.

• Reaffirmed what I want to do professionally. Communications is still close to my heart. I really want to use my strength/experience in this area to make a bigger difference. Taking various courses and talking to career coaches have definitely given me a clearer direction. I have also learnt from people I met in the course of it all.

• Explored the backyard and learnt to enjoy life more at home. There are so many places in Singapore I have not been to for a long time - it was good to revisit them. There are so many places in Singapore I have never been to - it was good to discover them. There are so many new and interesting places to chill out - it was nice to be able to continue to FIKA(coffee/tea break in Sweden) after coming back from Stockholm.

I cycled from East Coast Park to Changi Beach Park. Read about my Weekly Photo Challenge: A Day in My Life l Cycle.

• Jogged more. Walked more. Swam more.

Rediscovered swimming - it is a luxury to swim at the public pool on weekdays (I am going to miss doing so :( ).

• Volunteered again. Not sure about the cause I am truly passionate about yet but I am definitely going to try to find that cause in the days to come.

• Bonded more with my brother (in Scandinavia) and my sister (in Singapore) Need I say more?

My brother and I in Þingvellir National Park, Iceland. Read more about Þingvellir!

And many more that are difficult to put into words. For example, I had more time to reflect more and meet more new people. Somehow I wished I had done more e.g. read more, travel more... However I know I only had so much time and I wanted to follow my heart. So this was the life I chose to live in this long vacation. While I felt uncertain at times, I tell myself to enjoy it while I can because I really don't know when will be the next one...

I want to close this vacation with an extract from the movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button that has been inspiring:
Benjamin Button: [Voice over; letter to his daughter] For what it's worth: it's never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There's no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you're proud of. If you find that you're not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.

ilovelongvacation

I was inspired to start a new blog in wordpress to share my travel tales - ilovelongvacation recently. Come to think of it, it's quite funny because I started to spend more time in this blog instead :P Gonna try to keep both blogs going :)

Renaissance Rome

It was surreal to wander through the palaces in the Vatican City which housed the popes and where artists like Michelangelo and Raphael left their beautiful marks. Although the trough of people made it difficult to really sit back and appreciate their work, the magnitude of their commissioned works both amazed and touched me.

Rainy Rome

It was raining all day when we went to the Colosseum yesterday. It was such a cold cold day. In the end, we skipped the Roman Forum and surrounding attractions around the area and went shopping at Spagna - the infamous spanish steps instead. We weaved in and out of the branded shops like LV, Gucci etc. It was amazing to see so many chinese around - its like the bags were free!
Leaving the room in a few minutes to the Vatican City. Hope Rome is no more rainy today!

BLOG on the GO

It works! :)

Facebook

Was invited to join Facebook recently. Think I'm the first mover amongst my close friends. Usually the last to pick up the new techie stuff :P When blog was the fad, I told my friend that i don't have the 'xian qin' to blog. She was quite upset with me. Cos' it makes her and fellow bloggers sound bad (like they got nothing better to do). Now that I am catching on, I wander if this shows my current state of mind.

Like Friendster, Facebook allows you to be connected to people. Friends. Friends of friends. Friends of friends of friends. Friends of friends of friends of friends. Click on any profile and you may be able to see another side of the friends. Was reading an article recently about how this may make people appear like e-stalker as they prowl through the friends' facebook.

 

It is kind of ironic, I think. We probably have the number of the friends in the handphone. Otherwise, we could have easily obtain them. The friends are but a call away. But we chose to make them a click away. Not truly connecting. Just virtually connected. Are we really able to close the gap with help from the technology? Or are we still as far apart, just that we thought we had shorten the distance...