Jenny’s Farewell

When my team mate Jenny resigned and left Singapore last month, we came up with something for her send-off. I thought that since she was going to be a housewife when she goes back home, we could make a cookbook-themed scrapbook for her. I gathered recipes from my team mates and gave them colorful scraps of paper to write down their messages and stick their pictures on, then glued everything into a pretty sparkly notebook I bought from my favorite stationery store in Tampines.

A-scrapping we will go

Left: first page; Right: Joc’s recipe for Jenny

I was happily surprised to see how creative some people were with their scrapbook pages!

Left: Tinay’s, Right: mine

Left: Camille’s, Right: Jen’s (a different Jen)

While I was busy preparing the scrapbook, my team mate Mei Ling organized a team farewell dinner for Jen at Chili’s in Tanglin Mall. We went on the Monday night of Jen’s final week in the office. On the way there, we split into two cars, and we had so much fun laughing and talking during the drive. It’s the first time we ever bonded like that because we’ve actually never went on a team dinner before. By the time we got to the venue, we all had a bout of the giggles which continued all throughout dinner. It was really fun, and all the food was really delicious too! And the best part was that our manager didn’t ask me to pay because of my effort for the scrapbook. Being creative has its perks! 🙂

Team dinner

Jen with the boys

The girls in our team

The next day, Jen surprised us with a giant bar of Hershey’s chocolate. And by giant, I mean GIANT. Take a look at it below! It was so huge not just across but in thickness as well! It was hard to break off chunks to eat because whenever you did, you’d end up with a bigger portion than you bargained for. It took us days to finish the whole thing.

I took this opportunity to have a group pic. I was just looking for an excuse to take more pictures for Jen’s scrapbook!

My team

On Jen’s last day, July 26, we gave her a cake, the scrapbook, and, in line with the cookbook theme, an apron. Some of my teammates also gave her some daisies with little notes attached to them, one of which said: “Jen, why you no hug me? :(”  So cute and sweet!

Jen also gave us cupcakes, so it was sugar overload for everyone that day. 😮

We miss her and we’re sad that she had to leave, but the silver lining is, her leaving left something good in its wake – we are now a more bonded team! We now joke around more often than we used to and just a couple of Fridays ago, we all went out together for drinks at Bar on Five, even though there was no occasion. We had so much fun playing drinking games with whiskey, and I liked the laid-back atmosphere of that bar. It wasn’t a dance place so you could actually sit down, and the music was not too loud (#signsofaging). I don’t really like the taste of pure whiskey, so mine was watered down with lots of ice as well as water, ginger ale, green tea or coke. The best mix was ginger ale. I learned a lot of things about people thanks to the questions game, and while we finished 3 bottles of whiskey, nobody got so drunk that they did something stupid or embarrassing. The worst of it was that someone accidentally broke a glass and I screamed when the contents splashed on my leg. LOL.

I’m looking forward to our next group date – seafood lunch in Malaysia to celebrate Camille’s promotion! 😀