After we ended our undergraduate career, next up on our agenda: 1-yr of work back in Singapore. Both FM and I applied to different labs in the Institute of Medical Biology, and his lab happened to be directly downstairs of mine. It was nice to finally be together physically for each other at all times: meeting at the MRT station in the mornings (if timings matched), going for lunches together, going home (together for half the trip before FM switches to the North-bound train) or going out after a day’s work. Perhaps, even a little too much of each other! Haha…

Besides work, weekends were spent meeting up with friends/family, having a good dinner outside and chilling out just by ourselves. After 3 years of disappearing off the radar of most of our friends, this one year was the time to reconnect with everyone!

Some of the local highlights of the one year back in Singapore:

• 3rd anniversary – back to the Esplanade, our favorite dating haunt, for a good dinner by the river.
• Fireworks – this year’s NDP parade was the special one held in Marina Bay area, and so the fireworks were set off right at the bay of the Esplanade. We took this opportunity to go catch a good look during one of the previews/rehearsals. Nice!
• On a separate occasion, we also caught one of the display sessions of the fancy foreign countries’ fireworks.
• A*STAR’s NSTA awards dinner – our first dinner date together! Darling took this opportunity to go tailor a full suit for himself for any future use, and I saw a pretty dress and bought it too!
• The perfect proposal by FM, of course.
• Graduation portraits – After procrastinating the matter for eons, we finally found a good day for everyone. Both our families went down together to save the trouble of us going down multiple times. The portraits turned out great! (though it’s REALLY expensive) Studio we went to was Serangoon Broadway. It especially specializes in family/graduation portraits.

We also had some opportunities to travel overseas as well, for various purposes. Although it burnt out our entire work leave!!!

1. Sweden
Courtesy of A*STAR and Karolinska Institute, a group of us got to visit KI as a prospective university for graduate school and at the same time, attend the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine announcement in person! On top of this, a few of us also extended the trip by a few days to roam around Sweden ourselves.

Stockholm was pretty OK. Its Old Town is nice and quaint, lined with little shops and many restaurants. We also went to the Vasa Museum, and had a COLD hangout at the Vodka Icebar!

The rest of Sweden though, was kinda boring. There was nothing much to see, and it was ridiculously expensive too. We went to Uppsala and Gavle, and they were all tiny cities. Or perhaps we went to the wrong places! Nevertheless, at least we could say that we’ve been to Sweden and tried their Swedish meatballs! ^_^

2. Graduate school interview weekends in the States

October-December 2007 was a hectic time. We were mugging hard for our GREs and taking the tests, followed by a frantic rush to decide on the schools to apply to, write the personal statements and submit the applications before the deadline (we submitted every single application just before the deadlines!!)

The response turned out better than we expected, and we were scheduled to visit multiple schools for their interview/recruitment weekends. While hopping around the different universities, we managed to squeeze in a little bit of time to travel around, visit some friends and chill out a bit! =D

3. Spring trip to Japan

From all the flying to and from the States, FM and I had accumulated quite a bit of Krisflyer miles. My mum had flown to visit me couple of times and had lotsa mileage too. Thus, we decided to exchange our mileage for return tickets to Japan in March: perfect timing to catch the Sakura season!

Japan was really great, one of the top destinations to return for a 2nd trip!
Tokyo -> Nikko (day trip) -> Hakone -> Himeji (day trip) -> Kyoto -> Tokyo