Where am I heading to next: Tips on Trip Planning within a group of people

Whoa after three months of intense planning and finalizing ALL our flight and accomodation details, everything all seems so surreal that I'm really going to be on a plane without any parental/teacher supervision to South Korea with my junior Min and her classmate Liying! I'm immensely nervous yet so excited to seeing how this 2 weeks ++ trip will turn out to be as we spent so long planning the itinerary and sourcing for accomodation. Min painstakingly monitored the air ticket prices almost every single day and we. finally. got. SQ. seats. today. at. a. whopping. price. AT LESS THAN SGD700.

Like wow. I didn't even get a chance to pray about this and such a deal just landed right in front of us. How God provides ^^

Hence with me in a reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally good mood, let me share some tips on how to facilitate trip planning within a group of people!

1. Use Google Docs

Google Docs. Google Docs EVERY SINGLE THING. I swear Google Docs is the BEST INVENTION EVER like it's just the best. We have our itinerary, to-do list, shopping list, grocery list, budget, e.t.c all in ONE file, just that they are under different tabs, or sheets.
Any edits by anyone are seen live by others viewing the spreadsheet and you can even edit/comment on whatever that's written there.

How it helped us: All three of us are currently working part-time to earn our trip expenditure, hence we are only free on weekends to meet. Google Docs is really a great platform to help us consolidate our ideas, organize them properly and then formulate a final itinerary via the spreadsheets option! Now, we only have to keep our meet-ups once a month max to pass each other hard copies of important information or travel pamphlets for reference-use. Since we get most of our travel information online. we can easily leave comments to notify each other of new attractions or eating places that we can go to while we are there. Just copy and paste the name, address and phone number of the place and the rest of us can go Google it up!

2. Try renting an apartment instead of booking a hotel room

There's way more variety for breakfast than just the usual, sometimes even bad, hotel breakfast. Renting an apartment is sometimes, or most of the time more worth it than putting up at a hotel! My mum and I almost went to Seoul last year for the June holidays and booked a hotel. It costed two of us SGD900++ for a week alone, and that did not even cover breakfast. Whereas, the total cost for our accommodation this trip is SGD 573 for each person, and that is for more than two weeks of apartment-living in South Korea! $573 for two different loft apartments in South Korea for more than two weeks is already a really good deal. Mind you, the apartments that we booked are not at all shabby-looking. In fact, they are chic-looking loft apartments housed in new buildings! There's free wifi, washing machine, stove, kitchen utensils, two queen sized beds, tv, you name it they have it.

These apartments definitely did not drop down from the sky as we booked them through airbnb.com! The website has thousands, or maybe even millions of room/apartment/house listings from all over the world. Be it London, Paris, Seoul, even people in Singapore are renting out their spaces to tourists on airbnb. A tip while choosing the apartment is to firstly check out the reviews after reading the description that the host gave. If you are really interested in booking, contact the host via this built-in messaging system that airbnb provides! It's really convenient though. You do everything through airbnb, even the payment is processed through their system.

How it helped us: It helped us save hundreds of dollars!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Of course I would definitely recommend this to my friends or readers who are intending to go on budget trips with their homiez ;)

3. Look out for Airline Sales

How it helped us: It helped us laugh at the price quotes from Scoot/Malaysian Airlines when the SQ tickets we purchased were even cheaper than their tickets. Ridiculous, isn't it?

MY FRIENDS THERE IS NO NEED TO TAKE BUDGET AIR ALL THE TIME WHEN YOU FLY! Because as proven, sometimes the more premium airlines might be even cheaper than flying budget. And really, budget ain't very budget as you still have to pay for extra check-in baggage, add-on meals, add-on drinks, add-on this, add-on that. After all the add-ons your ticket will cost twice as much as what you intended to pay.

It is always good to plan for your trips few months beforehand so that all of you can start looking out for airline sales and bite at the best chance for the best pricing ticket! Min used Skyscanner ($0 service fee) to monitor the ticket prices and we booked the tickets via SIA website so there's no shady website or middleman involved in this heavy transaction.

4. Split the work

You will go crazy having to juggle monitoring ticket prices, trip research, booking, itinerary planning, e.t.c all by yourself while holding a 9-6 job. Hence it is always good to have a To-do list to split the work out. Set deadlines and remember to complete the tasks before that day arrives! Min and I were the only ones going on this trip but she managed to rope in Li Ying few weeks ago so now there's three of us! We're all really enthusiastic and meticulous people thus making the whole process so much more smoother and efficient. I really thank God for both of them and my parents too, for agreeing to pay for our airfare and accommodation first before we reimburse them with our monthly salaries T.T (there goes our money)

5. Use NAVER maps if you are travelling to Korea, instead of Google Maps.

The greatest joy while planning this trip is 1. Knowing how to read Korean, 2. Using my abilities to search for directions on NAVER (even though it might take forever cos I take super long to read but still works)
NAVER maps is the best thing that happened to me. It will suggest routes, tell you specifically which bus to take and which train station you should alight. It even tells you the cab fare if you want to cab from place to place. Such a great buddy for my budgeting job, I'll strongly recommend people to use it especially if they are heading to Korea for a holiday. If I'm not wrong, they also provide Japan maps. But I did my Japan trip routings last year via Google maps and it was pretty okay, so well it's all up to you! But NAVER maps for Korea, wangjjang daebak.

Yup and that's about it. Always remember to have good communication within your trip buddies. Nothing can't be worked out with the willingness to listen and accommodate! Here's to an amazing trip wherever you guys plan to go.

xx,
Ming Rui L.

Lately I've been...

Pretty happy with my life. Even though working life has not always been perfect, I'm still pretty much happy with what I'm doing in the office everyday, the people I meet everyday and also plenty of time to spend with my loved ones and my friends on the weekends, and lastly, time for myself at night. 

This whole time in my job felt like a lesson from God every single day. It's like as if he was giving me a chance to experience life in sales, accounts and a design job. All are not easy, especially if you are doing a design for an official business. The stress is also there if you can't get the task done in time..... or most of the time when I'm just adding more stress to myself because I set crazy deadlines for my work. My colleagues are also the NICEST colleagues you'll ever meet as they are always there being their super funny and entertaining selfs. I meet different people everyday as I'm seated right next to the HR dept, so YES PERFECT PEOPLE WATCHING SPOT but hey I finish my work before I go home everyday.

Though getting to my workplace IS a very pissing activity (Lakeside to Woodlands then take a feeder bus, if there's a train fault GG, if Woodlands interchange decides to pms and go on strike, also GG), I still enjoy my job very much. I have been working here coming to two full months and I'm surviving pretty well, still on good terms with my bosses, still on good terms with my colleagues. My office is also a super casual place (WE CAN WEAR FLIP FLOPS AROUND) and yeah everything's just awesome.

I like how my life is running now. With a time to occupy my days waiting to go to Uni doing something productive everyday and time spent with God during lunch breaks and the weekends. If only I could continue this till end April before I leave for Korea but NO results just has to come and whack me in the ass next Monday.

I'm pretty sure this set of results will be something life-defining as I'm really not sure if it will bring me to greater heights or throw me even deeper down into hell. Hopefully it will be what my dad says "If one is at his/her lowest point in life, they can only rise to something higher, not go even lower." I AM definitely nervous and I've had countless, totally random mental breakdowns at random timings (e.g. at work, after cell, before I sleep) and it's really affecting my mental health tbh. It's very worrying to know what this set of results is and can do to me in the future ksgnmsdklmfsakfmpoawragkosdpgksdobksdobks

I'm comforted to know that there's a Higher One up there who has already drafted out my beautiful life perfectly. But what if Mr Higher One wants me to do science all over again, or do the mundane study of math, english, blah blah blah, all over again. I almost had to drag myself for a depression check last year while retaking my A's as I was just struggling to stay alive and not have the urge to go kill myself or do something silly as the process was just too painful to go through again. 

I have no idea what my results are going to be like. The last time I thought they were gonna turn out well since I worked so hard for it, but they turned out crappy. This time, some papers were honestly smoothly completed, some are just gonna bring me down to hell again, but I HAVE SERIOUSLY NO IDEA WHAT IM GONNA GET. URGH I AM SO STRESSED.

Time to get back to work and thank God this afternoon's work is just design design design design design aka doing something I enjoy and hopefully it will take my mind off this.

Toodles!

                                                                                                 

Baking Tokyo Bananas!

Okay the cover photo of this post shows us using the bananas for a totally wrong purpose.

Hi guys! It has been a while since I last blogged about my life and here I am doing it now. The official Chinese New Year visiting season is just over and I'm supposed to be back at work yesterday. However, the flu bug in the family FINALLY bit me in the butt and I caught a serious flu on Saturday onwards and it was so bad the doc gave me two days break. Felt really rested after an extra two days of break, thank God.

My cousin and I being huge fans of Tokyo Bananas decided to joint forces and bake it following this recipe uploaded on Youtube!

Sorry for the low quality pictures as we can't possibly be shooting on a dslr while we are really busy!

The most important ingredient!!!!!!!!

Laying baking paper on the tray

Stirring the banana custard filling on the stove. We did not follow the instructions on the video and heated the filling over a saucepan with hot water instead :X IT STILL WORKED THOUGH.

This is how the Banana Custard Filling turned out.

 My cousin and I taking turns to beat the sponge cake batter.

And our batter is ready!

Me posing very very veRY VERY happily with our pretty sponge cake.

The spongy texture of the insides is exactly the texture of the original Tokyo Banana!

Filling in the filling. Does this caption even make grammatical sense?

More relatives arrived at my place and coincidentally we had to bake more sponge cake. (Extra help mehehe)

My Godaunt aka the super baker trying to save our final sponge cake (It turned out horribly)

The last sponge cake turned out horribly as we added too much flour and the flour wasn't fully mixed into the batter and there were still remaining flour bits left when we cut the sponge cake into half! :( Thus we could only make 8-10 successful Tokyo Bananas that afternoon and they were all snapped up before I could take a picture of them. But they turned out as what the product in the video looked like!

Overall, I found this recipe possible as there were some really successful Tokyo Bananas we made and the banana custard filling tasted really good, even on plain white bread! However in every recipe lies a challenge and the challenge to make this lies within the sponge cake. It's super hard to separate the layer from the baking paper and you'll have to use the right baking pan to make the cake. Aaaaaarghhhhhhhhh I still can't get over how the final cake turned out but at least everyone present at my place that day had a homemade Tokyo Banana to take home!

Would definitely keep this baking activity up as a family or more like cousin bonding activity in the future and invite more of my cousins down hehehehehe.

Thanks for the help^^

ITS THE YEAR OF THE UNICORNNNNNN (in my own imaginary, magical world).

Resolutions

The usual habit at the end of every year would be to list down a long list of new year resolutions. However at the end of last year, the days leading up to the new year were extremely tiring and occupying as I was busy with either trip planning, rehearsals, performances, gatherings or church activities almost everyday. The time that I had to myself was also mainly spent on watching my new favourite korean drama: Heirs.

Anyway back to my resolutions. So my resolution for 2014 is to have no resolutions. 

No resolutions doesn't mean leading an aimless life, to me it means to be not bound by any goals or what not but to do whatever I want freely. But I guess my biggest hope is to get into uni finally, and do something I like for the rest of my life. 

Fine, I shall give myself a resolution then, it's to be happy and rejoice in the love that Christ blessed me with. Short and simple. Till next time guys! ^^