I am so glad to be finished with the Singapore Pharmacy Forensic (Law) exam and also with the NUH Pharmacist yearly competency exam… but I am exhausted as well. I think you don’t realize how tired you really are until you finally get a minute to sit down and rest.

So let me see where I left off… I don’t have pictures to post for Thanksgiving so I’ll move on first to other days.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 2007

Twice yearly, INSEAD throws a big dinner and dance party. Tonight’s was held on the Sentosa Spa & Resort and called the “Monsoon Ball”. The student govt chartered buses to take us to the island so we wouldn’t have to worry about hailing taxis and wrinkling or dirtying our nice clothes. I rushed home from work and only had about 40 minutes to get ready before the bus was go come pick us up at 7:15pm.

It was so nice to see everyone dressed up in their evening attire, all the guys in suits and the ladies in beautiful gowns and shoes! They had a lovely champagne pre-party on the patio before serving dinner. The service for dinner was a bit slow and not quite enough food… someone at our table doesn’t eat fish and dinner was a salmon appetizer and seabass main course. The food was pretty tasty but for some reason, we were all craving for more.

After dinner they had a little performance since the theme of the party was “007” like James Bond… but instead it was “Zero Coupon Bond“, a business term the students had learned recently.

There was also a Fashion Show by the graduating class and dancing. We skipped out on the after-party party at Zouk because I was already tired from a long day at work and I had meet up with my friend Joyce to study the next day.

Here are some photos to share with you (or click here):

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2007

It was time for another International Week at INSEAD, this week was Desi Week, meaning something like South Asian people. The plan for the week included a dinner on Tuesday and Bar of the Week at the Rupee Room. Because of studying, Ron and I only went to have dinner on Tuesday.

The dinner was located close by, on Science Park Drive, at Khansama Tandoori Restaurant. This dinner was supported by Merrill Lynch so for $10 per person, we had this large buffet and one alcoholic drink per person.

The menu consisted of:
Vegetable Pakoras
Samosas
Chicken Tikka
Daal Makhani
Palak Paneer
Alu Gobi
Butter Chicken
Mutton Rogan Josh
Mix Raita

They had interesting serving dishes and the food overall was pretty good. The only thing I did not like was the paneer, it was very “tough” for cheese.

Some photos to share (or click here):

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2007

At my workplace, they have a yearly gathering for a “Secret Santa”-like gift exchange. About 2 weeks ago, we were each asked to write down 3 wishes on a piece of paper and these wishes were distributed so that we were to purchase as many on the list as we could. We didn’t know who we were buying for as everyone was given a number only so it was a “double blind” gift exchange. Only one person knew who was giving to who.

So my 3 wishes were: a handphone strap, a handphone pouch, and handphone accessories (cute! cute!) as written by the wisher. Oh, handphone or HP is what they call cellular or mobile phones here in Singapore. So of course I thought the gift was for one of the girls so I picked really cute looking ones and wrapped it up really prettily.

To my surprise and to everyone else’s, it really ended up being for a guy!! It was wrapped in a Hello Kitty bag too 😛 But everyone got a good laugh. We were at Sakura International Buffet at Orchard Shopping Center and being really loud. It’s too bad I was kind of stressed so couldn’t enjoy it as much since my law exam was the next afternoon.

The food was decent though, I wouldn’t say spectacular or anything. The salmon sashimi was the best and the mini Oreo-like mousse cake was yummy.

For some pictures see below or click here:

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 1, 2007

The exam was from 1-3:30pm held at the Ministry of Health College of Medicine Building. Joyce and I were both taking the exam so we’ve been motivating each other this week to study hard and to stay up all night to study. We both stayed up till around 3am and woke up early to study more. Yes, a bit crazy but we were stressed. I’m glad we did stay up and cram though because for this type of exam, it’s necessary. It’s mainly memorization and writing down all you remember from the law. My hand was cramping from all the writing and because the AC was on really high. It was such a relief to be over.

I went home to nap then we started our celebration. First thing was dinner at Tonkichi at Takashimaya. It’s this restaurant that always has a long line (because they don’t take reservations) but they have all types of pork cutlets and other fried foods. It was REALLY good 😛 See the pictures! 🙂

We walked around a bit to enjoy the holiday decorations although it was a bit weird walking around in a summer clothes with the Christmas season around the corner.

After walking off some of our dinner, we took the MRT to Clarke Quay to check out the bar called The Clinic. I’ve always wanted to go there for the novelty of it because they have drinks served in plastic syringes and IV infusion bags. I know, a bit nerdy, but I’m a nerd. It was funny but the drinks were not very strong.

We stopped off at one more place in Clarke Quay called The Arena since there was no cover charge. It has live music part of the time and they were playing songs from when we were in college. Reminded us of the good ol’ days but kind of old school too. The staff there also wasn’t very good in that we ordered a few types of drinks and they came back a few minutes later saying one wasn’t available. So we said fine, we don’t want that one, we’ll get another one. Then she comes back another 5 minutes later saying they didn’t have another drink so we just cancelled that one. Then she wanted us to pay the bill and the price was different than stated on the menu. She didn’t know how to explain it to us so she went to get the manager. He finally explained it by simply saying the price we say was the “happy hour” price and it was no longer “happy hour”. How simple was that? It was a rather frustrating encounter with the waitress so I was eager to get out of there and find some food. After all the sweet drinks, I wanted something salty to eat.

Alex took us to this great place called Spize World, The Makan Place on River Valley Road. “Makan” means “to eat” in Malay. We had some great drinks, available as Horlicks or Milo, as a “Dinosaur” or “Godzilla”. Dinosaur is the drink with a HUGE mound of the powder drink on top and Godzilla is the same PLUS ice cream! It was so yummy.

But after that I was ready for sleep. We’d had very little sleep the last few days and now that we’d had alcoholic drinks and a full stomach, it was time to go home.

Photos from the night (or click here):

This is happiness.

No more exams for a long long while…