It was just two lovers Sittin’ in the car, listening to Blonde Fallin’ for each other Pink and orange skies, feelin’ super childish No Donald Glover Missed call from my mother Like, “Where you at tonight?” Got no alibi
I was all alone with the love of my life She’s got glitter for skin My radiant beam in the night I don’t need no light to see you
Shine It’s your golden hour (oh) You slow down time In your golden hour (oh)
We were just two lovers Feet up on the dash, drivin’ nowhere fast Burnin’ through the summer Radio on blast, make the moment last She got solar power Minutes feel like hours She knew she was the baddest, can you even imagine Fallin’ like I did?
For the love of my life She’s got glow on her face A glorious look in her eyes My angel of light
I was all alone with the love of my life She’s got glitter for skin My radiant beam in the night I don’t need no light to see you
Shine It’s your golden hour (oh) You slow down time In your golden hour (oh)
As a Singaporean we are truly blessed. Our country is an anomaly on our planet. The safety, the peace, the prosperity, the multicultural integration, comparatively to the rest of the world it’s utopia.
However, within our society there are still those we struggle, those with needs. Our intellectually disabled, our homeless, our dysfunctional families, our lower income families who still have to battle with health and putting food on the table.
Me as auctioneer explaining the minimum wage in Singapore
2 years ago, with a bunch of friends we started LittleRedDrop a non-commercial wine community and now we have > 450 members and many are meeting up regularly to share wine and enjoy time friendship.
One of our members Kenneth felt as a community we are truly blessed and came up with the idea to run a charity drive within our community. After months of planning and several meetings with a small working committee including Angela, Bee Leng and myself, we pulled it off last night at 8.8 LRD Gives Back event at Porters Restaurant & Bar.
Everyone who came donated at least a bottle of wine and some even donated an entire case of wine. 27 came for the charity auction dinner and bided for the wines. Our target was $40,000 and since it was Singapore’s 57th National Day, we thought a stretched target of $57,000 would be nice.
We tried to take a group photo but to fit 27 people was kinda hardEveryone had a good timeHandsome dudesBeautiesCharming guysCHEERS!CHEERS!
With the generosity of the community we managed to donate on the spot through Giving.sg to several Charities in Singapore and donated $64,355. The morning after we had a few more donations and we landed at a final number of $65,050!!! How nice as Singapore is +65 and our independence was 1965.
Table 1Table 2Table 3Table 4
We donated to Singapore National Eye Centre, Autism Resource Centre, Movement for the Intellectually Disabled of Singapore, Babes Pregnancy Crisis Support, Animal Concerns Research & Education Society, Transient Workers Count Too, Clarity Singapore, Cancer Research, Epworth Community Services, World Vision, HealthServe, New Hope Community Services, TOUCH Community Services and more.
Auctioning an Italian 1970 Borgogno
It was such a meaningful way to celebrate Singapore by giving back to the needy amongst us. I’m truly blown away by our small wine community and their generosity. All I can say is a big thank you to all our generous donors.
At the end of the night there was simple too many empty bottles. lol.Work mode. I can’t even remember what I drank. I know my table did blind tastings but I can’t remember anything. The focus was on driving the number up.Final tally of donations amount
So Singapore Happy Birthday. Happy National Day. Maybe, just maybe 2023 we will do it again. Cheers! ðŸ·
My wife is a great cook and for her special day this year, I decided that I needed to make it real special. She always cook for the family and also for lots of our friends as we love to host so I engaged Elizaa from sugarwhim and shared with her my desire to have a really special cake that really represents my wife Pearl.
After sharing with Eliza from sugarwhim about the favourite brand my wife loves in the kitchen, she got to work.
The outcome was SPECTACULAR! The attention to detail, the gradients, the rustic-ness really made it look like a real cast iron pot and the decorations around it was made of white chocolate and fondant.
That night I also surprised my wife as I secretly invited our close neighbours to come and celebrate this special day and mini party with her. But because of the government regulations of only being able to have 5 guests, I could not get a few more of our close friends to join us that night to share in the fun and celebration. Everyone loved the cake. It was Earl Grey and Honey, not too sweet and have a good texture when you eat it.
My wife’s birthday is a month long and she have received MANY cakes over the past week, I’m just glad the cake I got for her really stood out amongst the other cakes. lol…
The pandemic came fast and furious. Next thing we knew, all of us were on lock down and had nowhere to go. Then came the Zoom wine sessions. My close friends who got me into wine drinking became my social group after we knocked off from our work from home arrangements. From weekends it became close to something like four times a week.
We talked ALOT about wine and when we ran out of topics, we started looking at wine price lists and then came the group bulk order of wine and it was at the time when the currencies were in our favour. What did you expect us to do. Lol.
It occurred to me that we had a beautiful thing going on. No pretense, no ego, no facade, everyone was comfortable with who they are and what they liked. Everyone exchanged knowledge about wine and was all eager to learn. I thought to myself, there must be public groups out there that allow people in Singapore who love wine to connect and I started my search.
Wine Groups in Singapore on Facebook
There were a few Facebook groups about wine in Singapore, some a few thousand members strong, but when I looked at their content, it was all either filled with promos and deals or it was just one person posting in a broadcast way. There must be a group where people come together just to get to know one another properly without the constant bombardment of posts by wine merchants. Alas, there was no such group. I think there is a need for one, so I discussed with my wine friends and I decided to create a group on Facebook, a non-commercial Facebook group where people shared their wine adventures and also got to know one another not just virtually, but in real life, sharing good bottles of wine over good conversation and friendship.
We needed a name and after quite a few ideas, Desmond who got me into wine back in 2015 suggested a great name and Little Red Drop was born on 28th April 2020.
The current LRD logo is just a simple modern “lrd” type. Did away with the original cursive French Château looking fonts.
It started slow as we had only a small handful of members, then I shared content from LRD to other wine Facebook groups and slowly other wine lovers in Singapore started taking notice and started joining our group.
I welcomed new members almost weekly and encouraged them to introduce themselves as this was the main purpose of the group, for people to get to know one another. From bankers to doctors, from divers to cabin crew, from people in the trade to your everyday working class and even a guy who is still in the Army as a NSF. I seriously got to know alot of new people because of LRD.
The first Intro postAs of April 2021, we welcomed our 270th member
Desmond also made a good point that no one will join if there is no content, so I started making content series and scheduling them. I curated content about Italian wines, notable wine people and even asked people about their favourite wines. Here are some thumbnails of the published Facebook posts. Each series I did a roundup, then shared it on the larger Facebook groups.
Wine WebsitesTypes of Italian WinesNotable Wine PeopleFave Wine?
But what was fun was not just content about wine, but content about the people in the group and I started to try and do some interviews with some of the members that joined very early on. There was Liko Kheh who was a student then Micheal Juya who is in banking. Fun conversation over chats, then crafted the posts accordingly. I should do more.
Then I became adventurous and thought, hey, why not a video interview. And then I got to know Charine Tan who happen to be a Singaporean working in Croatia and in the wine business too interesting. Some hiccups on the FB Live stream at the start, so had to re upload the video and lost the comments on the live stream.
Slowly but surely, we welcomed our 100th member Christine Sou and then 200th member Shermaine Ang just before the end of 2020. Today as of April 2021, we have crossed 270 members.
Then came the main event. Without any prompting or nudging, the very first in real life meetup which I would like to call LRD#0 happened organically. Dibbs and Felix meetup and that made history.
LRD#3: 30 Oct 2020 @ Communal Bistro Delicacy (Bordeaux vs Bordeaux Inspired)
LRD#4: 28 Nov 2020 @ Kam’s Roast Pacific Plaza (Pinot Noir Evening)
LRD#5: 17 Dec 2020 @ Empire Nee Ann City (Xmas Blend 3 grapes or more)
LRD#6: 29 Jan 2021 @ Wah Lok (Rhone Night)
LRD#7: 19 Feb 2021 @ Wee’s Family Coffeeshop (No IAFU Italian, Australian, French, USA)
LRD#8: 18 Mar 2021 @ Po Restaurant (OldisGoldOldWorld > 10 years)
LRD#9: Whole of April 2021 @ Anywhere (Horizontal or Vertical)
1 Apr 2021 @ Homeground Grill & Bar (09 Horizontal, Bordeaux vs Tuscany vs Burgundy)
2 Apr 2021 @ David’s place (Bordeaux 2nd Growth not really Horizontal but still fierce)
more to come…
The amazing thing is I did not arrange all of them. Instead it was the community that arranged most of it. I thank Shirley, Darric, Angela and Sylvia for helping to organise all the events and coordinating with their own small groups. And the best part is there are alot more unofficial LRD meetups as members started making friends and started hanging out separately! This is EXACTLY the purpose of this group and I’m so so so glad it took just about 1 year for this to happen.
Initially my wife did not join me in the events as she is quite an introvert, but she did join me at LRD#5 and that changed everything for her. She found the people really nice and easy to get along and is super supportive of my doing this LRD thing.
I personally got to know alot of new friends. People from all walks of life and I’m so happy to have setup this group. Even if I quit and stop LRD today, some of these new friends will be for the long haul.
So we started to host at our place for some of the friends we knew from LRD. First session was in honour of Charine Tan as she came back from Croatia for a bit during CNY period so we had to share a few bottles. :)
Then we organised a 90s themed night where we all brought bottles from the 90s, dressed up in 90s fashion and also listened to 90s pop all night. Super fun night. My bottle was the year my wife and I started dating and my wife’s bottle was the year we got married, I’ll let you guess which is which.
To more good friends, good wine and good times. If you wanna join us, join Little Red Drop on Facebook an I hope to share a bottle or more with you. If you have been in this group for a while, I would love to get any feedback so that we can make this group even more awesome.
There is just so much knowledge around wine and it is hard not to keep reading up about them. So here are a few books that I came across that is really useful.
Wine Folly: Magnum Edition: The Master Guide
I have to say this is one of the most beautiful wine books out there and dare I say one of the better Infographics ever done for wine. Pages and pages worth of just enough info to get a novice up to speed and also lots of references to varietals and regions. Buy Wine Folly: Magnum Edition from Amazon here.
Wine Folly: Magnum Edition: The Master GuideThe beautiful inside pages
The World Atlas of Wine 8th Edition
One of the world’s most celebrated wine Critic Jancis Robinson together with Hugh Johnson created the atlas of wine. Its filled with details down to the specific vineyard, geography, the climate and more. Super technical and fascinating. Buy The World Atlas of Wine 8th Edition from Amazon here.
The World Atlas of Wine 8th Edition
And here is a little video of the book from the authors themselves.
Adventures on the Wine Route: A Wine Buyer’s Tour of France
Adventures on the Wine Route: A Wine Buyer’s Tour of France
I’ve not read this one yet, but I comes highly recommended by a fellow wine aficionado. Apparently It will change your perception and give you a deeper understanding of buying wines from France.
I’ve not read this one yet, but highly recommended by someone whom I seriously respect and have even published a few books herself on wine. I’ll strive to read this.
