We didn’t have any concrete plans to celebrate the new year until a few days before the new year.

We knew we wanted to hang out together and play board games but no one was urgently taking up the discussion of the where and the how.

So, finally, with just a couple of days to spare, Elyxia took matters into her own hands and booked us a room at Naumi Hotel, a luxury boutique hotel at Seah Street.

Only 10 storeys high with 40 rooms, it’s small but it’s beautiful.

The only problem was that they’ve got some disgusting scent in the lobby which gave me a headache and made my throat beg for air.

Actually, that wasn’t the only problem.

Elyxia had made an online booking but when she tried to check in, the staff realised that the hotel was overbooked and they couldn’t give us the corporate suite that we’d booked.

After waiting in the lobby for yonks, we were told we had to be downgraded to a Deluxe, instead.

Well, they did buy us a round of drinks to compensate for that, so I guess we weren’t too miffed.

The room is so cool!

It has a little kitchenette stocked with a bigass fridge, microwave oven, hot plate cooker, cutlery and plates of all sizes, crystal wine and liquor glasses of all types, and different size coffee cups!

It’s like a serviced apartment!

Sorry, I know my photo sucks especially with all the bags in there. I’m a lazy photographer. But I’ll try to do better next time!

Anyway it’s kinda hard to take photos of scenery when five other people are walking in and out of the scenery every other second, gawking at stuff!! You have no time to angle and dress up your shots!

See, first you get people walking all over your shot:

Then, even after the errant yokels clear out, you’ve got lazy bums still sitting there spoiling your scenery with their feet:

It’s a tough life, I tell you.

Then, I was going to move on to photograph the bed and what should happen but Wang Wang decides to choose the exact moment to pounce on the bed and squeal at its luxurious comfort.

I yelled at her to get off the bed but then it’s now rumpled.

That’s why many of my photos are anyhowly taken. I’d die of frustration if I cared too much.

I decided that, since the girls like to rumple the bed so much, we should do it officially:

It’s a really, really comfortable bed!

Probably the best part of the hotel is the rooftop bar with a swimming pool perched at the edge of the building.

It is too awesomely beautiful!

More people arrived in the evening and they started to watch TV.

I don’t know what it is with people. Why must people watch TV just because there is a TV?

It makes me frustrated!

But worst of all are people who like to leave the TV on the whole day and don’t even bother to watch. What is wrong with you people?!

Anyway, I interrupted everyone’s TV watching by asking them to move in for a timered group shot.

First shot fail, lol.

I was too late trying to get into the shot.

Second shot okay. One pair of eyes still staring at the TV.

After I okayed everyone and allowed them to go back to watching TV. No one moved an inch. They continued sitting where they were, squeezed in that group shot formation.

Hahahahahaha.

But they moved eventually because the room got really cold and the girls had to pull out the blankets.

We had to take another group shot later in the night when Morte arrived. The Goonfather wasn’t with us cos he had to work that night, poor thing!

With flash:

Final perfect one!

Self-timered group shots are really hard to take. Someone is always blocking someone or doing something illegal unbeknownst to everyone until you check the preview!

Like so:

Anyway, gawking at the hotel and taking group shots were probably the most exciting part of our new year celebration.

Cos we did nothing else the whole night but play Agricola and Runebound.

Agricola took us about three hours.

Runebound took us five hours and we weren’t even halfway complete but it was already 6 am and we were all dropping dead like lemmings.

So we abandoned our game and went to sleep, three girls sharing the oh-so-comfy bed while the poor guys took the couch and the floor.

Most of the time, I love being a girl!

Oh, we didn’t even do any countdown or anything, so engrossed were we in our board games. Haha.

We slept a few hours in the morning, then went out to eat and shop.

The hotel allowed us to checkout at 5 pm (woohoo) because of the inconvenience they caused us with the mix-up.

After dinner, we went to Kerr’s and Minou’s place to play more Agricola till the wee hours of the morning before we finally called our “celebration” quits.

(Everyone’s scared of Runebound now.)

Such is the life of gamers!