Dinner and Dance 2012

The dinner and dance last night didn't go too badly.  I wore a lace dress that I had been specially saving for this occasion, and I wore boots.  I even painted my nails with the red colour that I had been saving all along.  And then I trotted out of the house.

I got to the dinner and dance way too early, as usual, but it turns out that they had nail and hair counters at the dinner and dance.  Thinking that I might as well do something with my hair, I told the hair dresser to do what she liked.  What she liked turned out to be tying part of my hair back, but not in one solid piece.  Instead, she layered and teased my hair such that the tied up portion was an intricately woven mass of curls.  I really like it!

Naturally, I got teased by Little Boy M, who had already teased me beforehand about taking leave to do up my hair. (For the record, I took leave to stay home and sleep.)  They were rather impressed with the hair dresser's styling.  I got quite a few compliments on my hair the whole night.

I also took a lot of photos.  I have 5 printed photos, a few on my phone, and a few more on other people's cameras.  Given that most of the dinner and dances I spent sitting around and eating and chatting, this was the dinner and dance with the most photos, apart from the dinner and dance that I organised in my first year.

Unfortunately, that meant that I didn't get to chat much with any single person.  Instead, I bounced around a lot and chatted to people here and there.  I think my team felt rather neglected, because they all left without me.  We didn't even take a group photo of everyone who was there, though we did have a small group photo of our table.

This year's MC was genuinely funny, and the performance items were quite nice too.  It went much better than the other time we used an external MC.

All in all, as I said, not bad!

Ramen and Bubble Tea

I realise that I write less on this blog, but I'd like to say that what I write is truer to myself.  I was reading this post that I wrote on Flight or roots that I found especially apt now.  But I'm not going to write about it right now when I'm at work and full and happy.

On the last two points, I am full and happy because of very good food.  Here's where I try to make up names for the people in my team! It usually doesn't go well because even if I use initials, many people share the same initials, and if I use nicknames, I forget who I'm referring to.  But anyway, all you need to know is that I went out with L, XY, T and her boyfriend to eat at Ramen Champion.

Ramen Champion is a very curious thing.  It's a challenge where this company brought in about 6 different ramen chains from Japan for Singaporeans to try, and the one who wins gets to set up a chain in Singapore with the company that arranged the challenge.

I've been to the Ramen Champion shop about 4 times already, all with friends so I think I've just about covered the entire Ramen Champion!  At last check, I only have 2 stores left to try - Gantetsu (Hokkaido corn ramen) and Tai-sho-ken (the other dipping store ramen).  I will never try Bario personally - too much beansprouts.

Of the other 3, I dislike Menya Iroha.  It takes like soya sauce to me.  But I LOVE the other two.  I'm a soup person - give me thick and strong broth, and I'm all over it.  For Tetsu, the broth is exceptionally thick because it's meant for dipping, and I love it that way!  Ikkousha has good balance of a soup base that's just nice and pork that is chewy and nice.

The Ramen Champion is in this shopping centre called iluma.  It's undergoing some renovation now, which makes it even quieter than it was originally, but that's not a bad idea when you have a big group of friends who just want to sit somewhere and talk.

Another good point about iluma is that it has BUBBLE TEA.  I'm a big fan of bubble tea.  My favourite to date is Gong Cha's Earl Grey Milk Tea with Pearls, but Koi's Oolong Milk Tea with Grass Jelly can give that drink a run for its money.  And that's what I had today.

So all in all, I'm pretty happy and I'm going to enjoy the rest of my day at work. =D

How to copy only the folders in an Outlook mailbox

I realised that I do quite a lot of extraordinary things on a regular basis, but don't write them down for posterity.  Take today for instance.  My colleagues asked me a question "I have organised my folders nicely, and I want to copy just the folders to my archives, without any emails. How do I do that?"

A quick Google search revealed that no one had managed to just copy the folders alone.  One method was close, but it required deleting all the emails after that. What a bore! So I looked at the self-help out there, and came up with this brilliant method, for use in Outlook 2007:

1) Find out what is the date of the oldest email in the Outlook mailbox/archive you want to copy.

2) Go to File -> Archive

3) Select the radio button for "Archive this folder and all subfolders"

4) Select the Outlook mailbox/archive you want to copy

5) Just below the white box with all the Outlook mailbox/archives, there should be the option to "Archive all emails older than".  Select a date before the date of the oldest email in the Outlook mailbox/archive you want to copy.

6) Click OK

7) If all goes well, you should have a new archive with only the folders inside!

The best part about this is that you can now share your folder structure with other people by copying the .pst file you've created.

I feel like such a genius =D

Times are a-changing

(Edited to remove work stuff)
In other news, my exercise regime appears to be starting to pay off - while my weight still fluctuates like crazy, now it's fluctuating in the 2 kg range.  If I keep this up I might be able to get to my ideal weight and fluctuate around that instead! *wavy arms of glee*  One of the best things that I started was hip hop classes - I work up a good sweat each lesson (something that even the more vigorous PE class was rarely able to do without having a run, and I HATE running) and I get to dance!  How cool is that!  I'm looking forward to more lessons and actually hope that I can sign up for more classes, if possible.  (Plus it's cheap.  But don't let the teacher know I told you that =D )

However, there's one thing that bugs me - my teacher had a really cool mash up of Dev's Bass Down Low with Usher's DJ Got Us Falling In Love.  Unfortunately, I can't find the darn mashup.  >_< Guess I just have to keep looking.