3 Years of Running

Because of Facebook's what happen on this day feature, it reminded me that I started my running journey 3 years ago. Happy 3 Years of running to me!  

Throughout these 3 years of running journey, I won't say I went through alot (as compared to those long term runners) but I've been through quite a number of up and down moments. However, all these are precious life lessons which will follow me for a very long time.  

It was the first race which got me started back in 2013. Reading back my very own blogspot, I do realise I was so unfit back then. I was aiming to just do 3km run and then probably walk the rest if it's really so cmi. Since I narrowed it down to 3 m instead of the scary word 5km), it does sounds very manageable and that's how I took the first leap of faith back then.

It was a CHALLENGE to run for long, anything more than 2km is hard. It's never easy but if you don't try you'll never know. 

Hereby sharing some of the life lessons I've learned during these 3 years.

1. Not every run is the same run

There are days when your pace is much slower than usual and there are days when you feel 'lighter' and you can go faster. Listen to your body and decide the mileage for that day. If it just isn't a good run, make it a point to go again the following day then. 

Many a times, it's due to the weather and also what you ate before the run that can cause your pace to get slower. Do not be dishearten because there's always another time :) 

In our day to day life, not everyday is the same.  Take cooking for example, I never for once felt that the same dish I cooked on separate occasion taste the same or look the same. There are bad days and we probably can't do much about it other than to move on

2. Injuries  

This is probably one of the top few most sian moments for a runner. The recovery time can take from weeks to months. 

There is no point forcing yourself to go ahead because it might worsen your injuries. 

I kept getting injured in the past. I've had all kinds of injuries when I first started. My feet(ankle) hurts badly because of the sudden increase in mileage per week if not it's due to 'too long never run'. My running posture was bad too and the technique was wrong.  

It took me quite sometime to overcome it and not forgetting there was once when I tripped at workplace. It resulted in me resting for a month plus before I get back to pounding the pavement once again.

Hence lesson learn: To always listen to your body and do not 'gek kiang' because it leads you to nowhere good.

3. Perseverance

Easier said than done. Everyone runs for a different reason, be it for a fitter them, slimmer self and etc but when one doesn't see the results they get from running, they tend to give up. 

However, results only comes when there's time and effort put into it to achieve it. 

There's no easy way out other than to persevere and hang on. I used to run at a really slow pace for a start and I did find myself finding each km getting easier and also getting it done at a faster pace as times goes by. 

With that, I proceed to running longer distance for every routine run and at a faster pace than before. Pushing myself to yet another level every now and then is a small achievement in life because you will be amaze by how strong your body is actually is. Comparing myself from when I first started and 3 years later, with much determination and self discipline, I did see results. 

Remember this: It doesn't gets easier, you just get stronger :)

Ending off this post with a favourite picture of mine throughout these 3 years of running..

Cheers to many more years of runing! 

Hafeez and Vanessa's Wedding

Shortly after Vanessa's hens night , it was her actual day wedding. 

Got to wake up at 5 plus am to get ready to head to the west for gate crash. She stays just a 5 mins walk from my parents place though, too bad I've already moved out of the west :( That morning Esther came over to fetch me so I'm very thankful for that, no worries for not being able to find a cab and getting late for preparing the gate crash. 

#selfie while in the lift going down to get breakfast for the ladies and at the same time wait for Esther to arrive :)

Yes it's team Fiona(from shrek) for us that day (hence the plaited hair lol) because of the bridesmaid dress that look so much like what Princess Fiona wore. -_-'  

Breakfast for the ladies.. 

We reached Vanessa's place and had our breakfast before starting to prepare for the gate crash.. 

The usual sour, sweet, bitter and spicy station all ready..

#welfie before the groom and brothers arrive 

We waited quite awhile for the groom and brothers to arrive because there was some miscommunication. We didnt even know they arrived because we can't hear the car horn. They were slightly late due to that hence we were behind schedule. In the end, ee had to rush through the games.

Them challenging the first station. It looks like a buffet spread for them though lol.

This is the 2nd game and I totally forgot what word they trying to form already haha! It was quite chaotic as there were quite a number of them squeezing at that limited space..

Alright the last station before the groom go in to fetch his bride.. That is to sign the 10 promises requested by the bride. 

A group pic before we set off to the hotel

After the gate crash, we proceed to the hotel for their Nikah Ceremony. We went to set up the reception area first. It didn't take us too long since it's a simple decoration.

All done within 10 mins with 4 pairs of hands. 

We went up to find the bride while she's getting ready for the Nikah Ceremony. We had sometime to rest/washup before going down for the ceremony.  Before she left, we took another photo again.

The Nikah Ceremony starts around 11am (can't really remember the exact timing) and lasted for probably for half hour.

Officially man and wife now :)

We had a chance to take a full #ootd shot in our princess Fiona dress haha! It's like one of the highlights of the wedding is us wearing this dress lol.

A group shot with the couple before they go up to change again to welcome the guests. By then guests(from the groom side) have already start arriving.

We never fail to have this classic photo for all our weddings! 

One last photo before we go home to get ready for the wedding dinner..

I manage to have a quick nap of 1/2 hour before getting ready to go out again. We have to help out for the tea ceremony hence all of us got to reach earlier. 

No more princess fiona look haha! #finally

Loving the lace details of the dress 

#OOTD taken with this nice swimming pool background. Photo credits to Esther 

The wedding cake that Jase from Sugar By J made 

The couple took photo with the beautiful cake before the tea ceremony commence.

Anyway the wedding dinner started around 7 plus. It's a buffet event so when the emcee cue the guests to take their food, they may proceed.

The first march in

The 2nd march in

One last group photo before we left.

All of us have lots of feedback for the hotel which we eventually asked Vanessa to feedback to her hotel coordinator.

Here are what I could remember after 4 months..

1) The hotel coordinator was mostly nowhere to be found. No idea where he is, but it seems like he's helping out at the hotel buffet restaurant instead. 

2) The last minute change of table arrangement which resulted in us(bridesmaid) redo-ing the seating arrangement

3) We have to placed the table number on the table ourselves, they only bring to us after we requeste -_-" 

4) There were no knife provided during the cake cutting ceremony and 1 of the bridesmaid have to dash out to find the waiter for it. (Why can't they just place it by the side of the cake?)

5) There were not much waiter/waitress situated inside the banquet hall. So if you were to look for help, one have to walk out to where the food is. 

6) The worse part is, we have to be the door ushers to 'open' the door for the couple to walk in. Hotel coordinator and everywhere else is no where to be found.

7) In short, we are 'bao-ka-liao' for this wedding. For the 2nd march in, the emcee (which is our friend too) cue us to cue the couple to walk in. They were waiting outside so once the video is almost done playing and the 2nd march in song is playing, we (who so just nice sit so near to the door) cue the couple to walk in. Aren't all this suppose to be done by the hotel coordinator? 

To be honest, I think none of us attended such a bad service wedding event. Glad that we brace through it despite the N number of hiccups. The wedding ended around 9 plus which was early for a wedding dinner so all of us could get home to rest for work the very next day.

Ending this post with a meaningful photo..

One by one walking down the aisle as we have found our life time partner :) 

Hereby wishing Vanessa a life time of happiness with Hafeez and a blissful marriage ahead! 

Dinner @ Monochrome Bristro

The once in a blue moon meetup with the colis happened at Monochrome Bristro. 

This meetup dinner was somewhat discussed over my wedding lunch though lol.  No idea what triggered it but anyway, it's been a really long while since everyone gather together. 

But anyway, yay to visiting yet another cafe! Totally didn't know this cafe exists until 1 of them found this place and booked it since there weren't any objections from the rest of us. 

Yup, reservation can be made through their website and it's highly recommended to do so because the cafe couldn not house so many people at a time. We were there on a Friday night and they were full house. Glad that reservation was made by the coli so we need not wait at all.:) 

Snap a few pictures of the menu..

The story behind the cafe..

More pics of the menu..

The cafe's counter. Basically everything is in monochrome color.

So there were 5 of us and we ordered 4 mains, 1 side dish and desserts to share among us :) 

Country Chicken Pizza - $20

Bacon Cabonara - $18

We were given the option whether we would like to have some truffle oil to go with it. Anyway it's free of charge so we went ahead. No regrets because anything truffle is nice!

The Bonding - $16

This was our side dish. So there's a total of 9 wings, 3 of each flavour. The flavours are: Honey Oat. Chilli Crab and Thai Chilli Sauce. Very interesting flavours for chicken wings I must say. They were all yummy but I can't really taste much difference between the Chilli Crab and Thai Chilli chicken wings though. 

Squid Ink Risotto - $24

It was one of their signature/chef's recommendation. I reckon I'm not a squid ink risotto kind of person so I can't really appreciate it. Still prefer the normal type of risotto though. 

Chilli Crab Linguini - $22

Yet another chef's recommendation that we ordered. Enough said, it was good! *thumbs up*

And it's dessert time after trying the various mains and side dish.

Monochrome Churoffles - $$12 

We ordered 2 churoffles to share and 2 different flavours of ice cream on top of them. Basically it's churros that comes in the shape of waffle. It's the first time I've eat this and they are more dense in terms of texture as compared to normal waffle. Other than that, I can't seems to taste any difference but overall it still taste good. 

A group pic with the colis before we left..

I had a great time catching up with the colis and I must say, Monochrome Bistro is a nice place for a date with your other half or simply friends gathering with yummy food :)

Monochrome Fusion Bistro

291 South Bridge Rd, Singapore 058836

Pre-Wedding Photos by The Louvre Bridal & Coffee from Dreamzcoffee Photography

As promised in my post on my pre-wedding shoot experience that I'll share the whole series of the pre-wedding shoot photos, so here I am, keeping to the promise :) 

Just a heads up, our photos were taken with 4 outfits and a total of 4 different stories for each series. 

1) Maplestory - This series of photos will show how we met, and yup we met in the game Maplestory. 

No doubt we enjoyed this part of the wedding shoot the most because we get to mimick our character in the game. Even though we have to painstakingly DIY most of the props to achieve the effect we wanted, it was all worthwhile after we saw how the photos turn out to be. 

We were glad the photographer did photoshop the 'effects' (which we provided by doing some research on our own) from the game into our photos so well. 

One of my favourite because this look very much similar to us when we are in game (our body gesture and outfit).

And so Derp kissed me without asking haha! 

Here I am, planning my revenge lol. 

Haha! We always find the 'ghost' is kind of cute whenever our character 'died' in game. 

This make it to the album cover. Something different from the cliche kind of wedding photos. 

2) Dating (Pak Tor) Days - This was the casual shoot we had and it was the first shoot that took place on that very day.

We chose to had the shoot at The Cathay simply because we hang out at that place almost every other day during our dating days. We used to catch 2-3 movies on a weekday (during our school holidays) so we were there the whole day haha! If I never remember wrongly, we celebrated our first, second and third year anniversaries all at that place lol. 

It was not easy to arrange a shoot in a shopping mall because of the permission needed and likewise for the movie theater too. So do your homework well if you intend to have any indoor premises photoshoot :) 

Heading to our favourite hangout place, the cinema! 

We love to sit on this chairs, yes it was this specific one while we wait to enter the movie theater. 

3) The proposal - It was a pity we didn't manage to get the permission to have a photoshoot inside Raffles City Shopping Center because that's the actual place the proposal was being held. No idea what's the reason behind rejecting us because it will be perfect to reminiscence the moment once again at the actual place.

In the end, we make do by doing 'the proposal' shoot at Punggol Settlement (by right Punggol Waterway but we lost our way, you can read all about it on the pre wedding photoshoot experience post)

By then, the night is falling so this shoot was done in the shortest possible time. 

The big-ass ring prop provided by the bridal studio lol.

Glad that there's still some sunset at the background..

Twirling the gown around because it's light!

One of my favourite from this series..

4) The finale - Enough said, this is the happily-ever-after theme photos, in my white gown and suit to symbolize we are getting married. As usual, we had photos shoot with our props and some normal poses. 

The photographer think these 2 are the cutest one so he chose them out haha! They dont really have any meaning on us because they weren't our favourite character in the game though..

Love this photos too even though it's just simple standing there to pose..

Chose this as our 床头照 :) Love the vibrant colors. 

As the back of the album, we had to choose 1 photo to be printed in thumb nail size. We selected this photo from the Maplestory series..

Oh well, I do remember clearly both of us were quite puzzled when the photographer asked us to just keep walking.

Totally no idea what he's trying to achieve but after we saw this photo, we reckon this photo could not be any better for the back of the album to symbolize us walking hand in hand towards our future together :)

Questions you may asked:

1) Did we top up for any photos? Yes we did. We had a total of 45 photos instead of the original 35 photos in the package. As we wanted the story to 'flow' when people flip through our photo album, so topping up for the essential photos is necessary.

2) Price for photo top up - I can't remember exactly but there was a promo going on at top up for 8 photos and we are given free 2 photos. So it's like 10 for the price of 8 photos. The amount didn't went up to a 4 digit figure.

3) Topping up for soft copy returns instead of print out - Okay they did did quote a price for returning of all the few hundred photos in soft copy (without edit) for a minimal sum. They calculated and the top up fee came up to few hundred bucks. It was affordable as far as I could remember but we didn't opt for it in the end too because while we were scanning through the few hundred photos, we eliminate out quite many of them. I guess we stayed quite objective throughout the photos selection.

4) Other additional charges - We top up a slight amount for the cover of the album to be a glass cover instead of the normal ones and that would mean the weight of the photo album increased too.

For more information of my experience with Louvre Bridal or any other pre-wedding related stuffs, you may refer to the below links.

1) ROM Gown Fitting: http://firstlove88.blogspot.sg/2014/03/rom-gown-fitting-louvre-bridal.html

2) Solmenization Ceremony: http://firstlove88.blogspot.sg/2014/04/23rd-february-2014-rom-ceremony-lunch.html (most of my stuff were provided by Louvre Bridal) 

3) Photoshoot gown Fitting: http://firstlove88.blogspot.sg/2014/06/photoshoot-gown-fitting-louvre-bridal.html

4) Pre-wedding Photoshoot feature on 新明日报: http://firstlove88.blogspot.sg/2014/07/once-in-lifetime-memories.html

5) Pre-wedding photoshoot feature on Singapore Brides: https://singaporebrides.com/articles/2014/11/maple-love-story/

6) Pre-wedding photoshoot experience: http://firstlove88.blogspot.sg/2016/04/pre-wedding-photoshoot-experience-with.html

That's all for the pre-wedding photoshoot. Shall work on the Actual Day wedding preparation details soon enough. Hope you have enjoyed viewing the photos as much as I do and it does brought back lots of memories even though it has been a good 2 years since then :)