Entries by Joel
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Wednesday, 17 June 2009 - Durian Durian!
It's the durian season now! Wai Seng helped us buy 2 durians from his in-laws' fruit stall. A bitter one ($8) for me and a sweeter one ($5) for Lydia!



The durian flesh color didn't look impressive but the moment you savour it, it was good! We ate one each and at the end of the durian meal, we were truly satisfied. Yummy!

Well, Lydia had one complaint though. Her durian seeds were way bigger than my durian's tiny seeds!


What a big difference in size!


Sunday, 14 June 2009 - Guri Guri (Green Green)
Was watching this Japanese anime titled Green Green. Hilarious anime, haha!

An all girls school visits an all boys school situated in the countryside for a month as an experiment to evaluate the possibility of going co-ed. Yuusuke, the nice guy, tries his best to make it a success, but his perverted friends Bacchi-Guu, Tenjin and Ichiban-Boshi are crazy over the girls. Are Midori and Yuusuke destined to be together or will Futaba, Sanae and the other girls fall for the nice guy too?


Green Green! It's M18, by the way


Thursday, 11 June 2009 - Feast @ Adam Road FC
We brought Stevan to Adam Road Food Centre to eat our favorite nasi lemak and ordered satay as well. Stevan liked the nasi lemak, especially the otah. Even ordered an additional otah set for him, hehheh! Boy, he sure can eat alot when he likes the food!

Padang satay or Singapore satay better? Stevan preferred Padang. For me, Padang satay got two kinds; one with the thick brown sauce with fried buffalo skin, which is very different and very nice. Cannot compare. The other more "Chinese" one, that one I still prefer Singapore satay. :)


Sunday, 7 June 2009 - It's Alive!
After yesterday's full day activities, we were so dead tired that we overslept and missed church! :P

Lunch was at Liang Court at Marutama Ra-men, where we had the really awesome-ly delicious yaki cha siew, together with ramen (of course).Stevan went for the more conventional marutama ramen (chicken-based soup) while I've grown a strong fondness for the unique aka ramen (7-kinds-of-nuts-based soup).
Oishi!!


Nothing like my aka ramen

We dropped by the gothic outlet at Liang Court after our lunch, as Stevan had taken a fancy to gothic. Man, the clothes ain't cheap, starting from slightly below a $100. We didn't buy anything though we spent about half an hour in there while he tried out the clothes, as the clothes were too small (or was he too "big"?). Well, I've no complaints cos if it weren't for Stevan, I wouldn't have the guts to step into the shop myself and explore all the strange things of the gothic world!

In the evening, Lydia, Stevan and I spend a good hour plus washing my car, heehee! Ok, Lydia was more of like supervising and guiding Stevan on my perculiar and fussy way of washing. Grabbing the sponge and starting at the boot is a no-no. There's a sequence and area of responsibility. That's me. :P

After dinner, at Stevan's request, we went to watch Angels & Demons! It's a bit of a strange feeling to be watching on a Sunday night, haha. But well, it was fun and the show's pretty good! I thoroughly enjoyed the show! As I'm not a Catholic, there weren't anything in the film that disturbed me also. Easily the best movie so far in 2009!


Action, suspense, touching... fantastic!

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My computer has been resurrected and is alive again! Thank God! Secured the temporary motherboard onto the chasis, plugged in all the components, uttered a quick prayer as I pushed the power button and the sweet "beep" sound filled the air. Never has a single beep tone bring such joy to me. Simply music to the ears!


The mobo resurrection


Saturday, 6 June 2009 - A Furry of Activities
In the morning, I brought my dead Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 motherboard to the distributor CBL at Commonwealth, hoping against hope that the tech guy could revive it. He fiddled with the jumpers for a while. Finally he shock his head and said those dreaded words, "Cannot, gotto send back to supplier."

My heart literally sank cos it meant an agonising 6 weeks wait, plus cost of shipment.
"How to survive without my computer for 6 weeks?", I muttered aloud.

And then the miracle happened. He offered to loan me a temporary motherboard! Same model, except with normal capacitors instead of solid-state capacitors. Nevermind if you don't know what the hell I'm talking about, but after testing that the temporary board is working fine, I signed the paperwork and I walked out of there a happy man with a temporary motherboard under my arm! No need to buy another motherboard and my computer can be revived again!

But first, there's futsal at Turf City with my friends. I was really worried about the ferocious sun bearing all its afternoon powers on the boot of my black car, where the motherboard was kept. 2 hours later, the board was indeed hot to the touch. It's going to be super idiotic if the board has been damaged by the sun.

Lunch was at Beo Crescent, to allow Stevan to sample the yummy curry rice. Wow, he totally loved it! He single-handedly finished 2 1/2 plates of rice! Even ordered an extra serving of "ba pak", which he liked very much. :)

In the evening, we dropped Stevan off at Lydia's Guardian's (Priscilla) place at Pandan Valley before going to Andrew and San San's baby girl's (Faith) 1 yr-old birthday party! It's been a looong time since I went to Birdman's home in Lim Chu Kang, where his bird farm is. Reminds me of the good old NTU days, heehee!

As I entered his "game room", I was in total awe! On one wall stands multiple full height IKEA compartment shelves full of his Lego collections! Awesome! Each compartment was theme-labelled and held his vast collection which he had assembled and dis-assembled and zip-locked. It was really a sight to behold, but just a pity that it is "non-displayable". I still prefer to have a glass display wall cabinet for my new home. :)

In the courtyard, we all gathered to chit chat and join in the feast that was layed before us. It was a really impressive spread of food... Indonesian food! Really enjoyed the meal and chatting with the friends.


Relaxing at the courtyard


What a feast!


Table 2 also!


Birthday cake + kiddy lollipops


Faith & Andrew. Cute!

Unfortunately we had to leave after the cake-cutting as we had to pick up Stevan. We ended up spending about 2 hours at Priscilla's condo, Mount Sinai. She gave us a tour of her new place and we sat in the large balcony area and chatted. Fantastic place. With a cool price tag!


Friday, 5 June 2009 - Feeling Young Again
Stevan wanted to buy some accessories, so I brought him to Far East Plaza. Gee, this place is full of teenagers! Teenagers here, there, everywhere. These people are like almost 1/2 my age, haha! It felt a little weird stepping into the likes of 77th Street, heehee! But anyways, I accompanied him to buy his ring and necklace and we had dinner at Pepper Lunch.

Did I see anything that I liked? Nah... haha! But it was still a fascinating trip. :)


Thursday, 4 June 2009 - Loy Kee Chicken Rice
No trip to Singapore is completed without sampling the local's favorite food, chicken rice! We went to Loy Kee @ Balestier and ordered a roast chicken with water-crest soup. Though it's a bit more expensive here, I like their fragrant rice and the soup. Stevan had 2 bowls of rice, hehheh! But unfortunately he doesn't eat vegetables, so Lydia and I had to finish the large pot of water-crest soup!


Chicken rice dinner @ Loy Kee Balestier

J & Fenny came over at night to pick up the assembled computer. Glad that he likes it! Passed him some computer games too, much to Fenny's dismay, haha!


The internal components with the huge nVidia GeForce GTS 250 card!


The CoolerMaster Elite 310 chassis with see-thru side panel

I know this is silly, but I was a bit sad to handover the computer to J, haha. Well, it was probably cos I had personally selected its components, put them together, brought it life, and then now I have to hand it over to someone else. Silly ol' me....


Wednesday, 3 June 2009 - Faulty PSU
I'm really down on my luck with computers these days. After killing my PC's motherboard, I discovered that J's new system has a problem: The power supply unit (PSU) is making intermittent buzzing sound! Even when the PSU is off, the sound can be heard. After contemplating for a few days whether to bring it in for a 1-1 exchange or keep quiet and hope that J's hearing is not as sensitive as mine, I decided that I shouldn't be so mean to my brother. :P

So during lunch time, I took a bus to VideoPro @ Sim Lim Square and got a 1-to-1 exchange for the AcBel 520W PSU. Had bak cho mee at SLS too. :)

Back home, I took apart all the components of my computer but dang, even a 520W PSU couldn't "jolt" the motherboard to life. :/


An empty shell... sigh


Monday, 1 June 2009 - First Day of School & a Dead Computer!
Today's Stevan's first day of school at Lorna Whiston @ United Square. Our 14 yr-old nephew is here on a 1-month course for the school's preparatory programme for foreign students. Not that he's intending to enrol into Singapore school soon, but his parents wanted to immerse him in the school programme here, where he will study English. Maths and Science. It's also to broaden his horizons, get him to interact more in English, and instill responsibility, independence and ambition into him.

We took leave to accompany him to his first day of school. How exciting ya?

 
First day of school! Excited or butterflies?     Lydia showing Stevan how to take the MRT


On the MRT to Novena Square. Remember to change at Raffles Place!

After dropping him off at the school at 9am, we went to McDonalds for a nice morning breakfast. We sat there and chit chat and discussed about our ID selection.


A nice breakfast meal at McDonalds: Hotcakes and Big Breakfast

As lunch time approaches, we packed up and went up to look for Stevan. Who knows the brave boy already made new friends and had made his way to McDonalds for lunch! After checking that he's settling down fine in his new school, we headed back home for a brief rest.

After a couple of hours of rest, I went back to United Square to pick him up while Lydia went for her dental appointment. We then went to Vivocity for dinner at Carl's Junior and to shop for more clothes for Stevan. He didn't bring a lot of clothes to Singapore!


The beef chilli cheese fries is simply good!


Steve enjoying his fast food dinner at Carl's Junior

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My home computer is dead! D.E.A.D!! It was a series of stupid catastrophe events that lead to it's disasterous death:

1) I was installing a new operating system for J's new system and there was a large application installer that I had to copy out of my own PC. My external hard drive was too full and so I decided to format it to free up the disk space. However, it kept telling me that disk drive in use and cannot be formatted. Irritated, I kept selecting the external H drive and kept trying to format it. In my 5th-6th attempt, I accidentally selected my D drive instead, which is my secondary internal hard drive.

2) Lo and behold, the formatting process started and the brief smile on my lasted for a mere second, no longer than a 7200rpm spin on the hard disk, when the horrors dawned on me and I quickly cancelled the format! Alas, it was too late. The drive could not be read!

3) I cursed my own stupidity, took a deep breathe and began to think rationally, like the "IT Expert" that I am. A formatted hard disk is no big deal. The data can still be recovered. But I need another hard disk to store the recovered data as my C drive is bursting at the limit. No problem, I've got my spanking new WD 1TB Caviar Green hard disk!

4) 1TB of luxurious space... no sweat man. I easily connected the 1TB hard disk to the open chasis of my PC and powered it up. What the?? The OS only detected 32MB! There must be some serious mistake. It's a 1TB hard disk! 1000GB!! 1000000MB!!! Not a puny 32MB hard disk! I searched the Internet and it shed some light on this. Apprently, the 32MB cache of my almighty 1TB Caviar Green hard disk can lead to some manufacturers recognising the cache size instead, what with reservation disk space and some crap.

5) Ok, that means I should update my motherboard's Bios to the latest version so that it can detect correctly. I downloaded the latest bios version from Gigabyte for my P965-DS3 motherboard rev 1, loaded it into a floppy disk, rebooted and successfully flashed the bios to the latest version via QFlash.

6) I rebooted the computer. Blank screen. Force power off and rebooted again. Still blank screen. Huh?? Cannot be, it said the bios update was successful! Many reboots later, it was still a blank screen with zero beeping sound. My worse fears were realised:

"Honey, I just screwed the motherboard."


Sunday, 31 May 2009 - 33 Already! :P
I'm 33 year's old today! I don't feel so old, haha! :P

Well, I suppose after hitting the magical 30 three years ago, 33 is nothing. It's just +3 to 30 that's all. Probably when I'm approaching 40, I will feel something.

There ain't gonna be any romantic outings or dinner, cos Stevan is with us, hehheh! We went to Modestos @ Orchard for lunch. Lydia has never eaten at Modestos before, heehee. So kampong.... :P

We had spaghette alla carbonara, bolognese pizza and quattro formaggi pizza. The pizza portion is pretty large and really struggled to finish them all! The food's not too bad, but the pizza is not really hot. Pizza Hut's pizza come out hotter! Well, it's good to try out new place sometimes.


Pizzas and pasta at Modestos

After lunch, we went shopping at Centrepoint before going to Sim Lim Square where I helped my brother J buy a new Core2Quad computer system for only $1072! Bought myself a 1TB (terabyte) Western Digital Caviar Green hard disk too! My first terabyte hard disk, woohoo!!

Well, I guess for someone who had played computer games off 5 1/4" floppy disks (not 3 1/2"), 1TB is indeed a big milestone. The first computer game I played was Dig Dug, way back in the early 1980s, on a Sherry computer with a CGA monitor, 16 colors only!


I'm older than DigDug!

33 years... it is indeed a long time on Earth.


Saturday, 30 May 2009 - Stevan in Singapore
Stevan's coming to Singapore for a month to study. His flight will arrive about 3pm, which gives me sufficient time for.... morning futsal! :P

Again, no goals scored so far in my new futsal shoes. Sigh...

After picking Stevan from the Budget Terminal, we dropped off some goodies at Lydia's guardian's shop at Turf City, rested a while at home before going to St. Andrew's Cathedral to catch a special screening of Creation Ministries International's Darwin film, "The Voyage That Shook The World".



Taken from the website:
The documentary is intended to be a thoughtful exploration, a crossover product to seek to influence the "mainstream" to "think again" about Darwin. Structured around Darwin's famous HMS Beagle voyage, it features stunning wildlife photography, period re-enactments and interviews with leading authorities from around the world.

The documentary wasn't too bad. It stayed as neutral as possible and simply presented facts that gently seeks to urge you to reconsider if Darwin's theories were right. Well, it was a little too neutral for me, haha. So it didn't have the "kick" that I thought it would have. But I suppose if this is meant for mainstream documentary broadcast, then it has done a good job.

We dropped by Raffles City for a while after the show. This being my birthday week, my wife was being generous and bought me a Lego! The Indiana Jones classic set, Shanghai Chase! This set brings back fond childhood memories of the Indiana Jones movie!


Indiana Jones LEGO set 7782: Shanghai Chase

As per tradition, at the stroke of midnight, we have a cake! The blackforest cake was specially ordered by Lydia's mum from Padang and brought over by Stevan. :)

 
Making a birthday wish                               Cutting the cake with Stevan looking on


Cross-section of the blackforest cake


Friday, 29 May 2009 - Company IT Event & Terminator Salvation!
It's my company's IT staff mid year event this evening! Venue: LilliPutt at Playground @ Big Splash, followed by dinner at the seafood restaurant at the vicinity.

LilliPutt is a Singapore-themed mini golf course. We broke up into 6 teams of 5-6 players and had fun putting our way through the 18-holes. As the "grass" is more like carpet, it was difficult to gauge the distance the golfball will roll, plus the many tricky obstacles in the way. But it was still fun and very interesting to see all the unique structures of Singapore's attractions. My team came in 3rd and we won a LilliPutt towel.

After the event and dinner, Lydia came to pick me up and we went home for a short rest before catching the midnight movie of Terminator Salvation at Shaw Lido 1! Watching a movie in Lido 1 is just very special and grand, cos it's the the biggest cinema in Singapore! The sound, and the especially the bass, we could literally felt it through out feet!



The show was good for its action scene and it was great watching another movie of the Terminator series, especially in post Judgement Day. But storyline-wise, I felt it left me feeling a little "disappointed". I guess the lack of a grand finale was the reason, as the movie ends on a note that allows for further development into the Terminator series.


Thursday, 28 May 2009 - Early Birthday Dinner with Family
I had a early birthday celebration with my parents and J&F at Jumbo @ Dempsey Hill! It's been a long time since I ate Sri Lankan crabs! :D

We ordered the usual stuffs: crispy baby squids, scallop wrapped in yam ring, sambal kang kong, salted fish fried rice and.... *drumroll*.... a 1.5kg Sri Lankan black pepper crab and a 1.3kg Sri Lankan chilli crab! *slurp!*

Oooh, the black pepper crab was simply humongous! The biggest I ever ate at 1.5kg! The meat was really solid!

The service at this outlet is fantastic too, much better than the other outlets. The atmosphere is good too!


Kang kong and scallop in yam ring. Wished I had a better camera


My compact camera doing no justice to the crispy baby squid


Black pepper chilli crab! Look at the size of the claws!!


Chilli crab! Best with fried buns!!


My parents and Jason & Fenny


Photo of just the two of us


Crab attack!


Lydia poses sweetly with the crab


A Bakerzin tiramisu birthday cake on the house!


Wednesday, 27 May 2009 - First Flu Case in Singapore
It was bound to happen, sooner or later. Singapore confirmed its first case of the H1N1 flu virus, a SMU student who had returned from New York.

With a first case on our shore, more will surely follow. So should we all stay at home? Wear face mask when going out? Well, the swine flu is turning out to be a new strain of a seasonal flu. Unless you have some serious underlying medical conditions, it should come and go like a normal flu.

But of course, no one wants to catch it and be the "super infector" or something like that and cause others to be infected.

With the flu scare, after work, I still go down to NUS to play futsal with the office colleagues. Oh man, playing on hard court is a whole new playing surface. Think 10x more friction!! It was a lousy game for me. Hope not to play on hard court again!


Sunday, 24 May 2009 - Meet Hebe
We went to visit George and Corrine at their home in Jurong to see their little bundle of joy, Hebe! The baby girl was born on 15 May. She has a very good temper! The father teased and disturbed her but she still doesn't cry!


Sound asleep


Father and baby moment


Auntie Lydia and Hebe


Saturday, 23 May 2009 - Cherry Avenue & Futsal Shoes Test
After weeks of playing futsal at 11am to 1pm,just for today, it's back to 4pm to 6pm. That saves me $20 on the weekend coupon.

Today's the first time I'm taking to the field in my new futsal shoes. It felt... awkward. Is it too tight? How come got gap there? How come it is not very flexible? Hm, am I getting cold feet? Haha!

I guess it just needed to be "seasoned". After a good 2 hours workout, at the end of it, no blisters at all! I still need some more time adjusting to the new shoes. It's zero goals today, though there were some good shots on target that the goalie saved.

After the game, we went with the guys to a little enclave eating place at Cherry Avenue. I was surprised to see quite a number of Caucasians there! It's like an cosy alfresco, laid-back, ang moh bar-cum-coffeeshop kinda place. Cool! There are a couple of stalls selling different food, from the Indian stall to the western food stall and to a Thai stall.

After waiting for a while for available seats, we found ourselves sitting comfortably outside on wooden benches and tables. We went for the Indian food, with the naan and tandoori chicken and fish. The price was ex, but the food was simply superb! Fantastic!

We ordered some fries and calamari as finger food from the western food stall, and the fish and chips that Boon Teck and Novita had looks good also. But the French onion soup was a bit weak though.

Overall, this looks like a real gem of a place and the Indian food is a definite must-try! We'll definitely be back again! Parking is a little tricky, but it's a lovely cosy place!


Friday, 22 May 2009 - A Trip to the Abyss
Despite my best effort to procastinate and resist, I was soon dragged to DFS @ Orchard by my wife. She wanted to check out some wristlet bag, or something like that.

What's a wristlet bag? A bag that hangs on the wrist. Now, a bag that hangs on the wrist can't be too big, else it will cause some wrist injury to the lady's arm/wrist. So the bag gotto be small. But if the bag is too small, it will not be able to fit in a lady's (read: my wife's) typical stuffs: mobile phone, umbrella, wallet, card wallet, pen, tissue paper, coin pouch... and sometimes just a bit of my stuffs; 2 mobile phones and my wallet, that's all...

So despite us walking dangerously into LV, Prada, Gucci and God knows where else, we came out empty-handed!

Three cheers for indecisiveness!


Thursday, 21 May 2009 - Finally, Snip Snip!
My hair has been getting quite hard to manage since the last haircut on 25 March. Too long, so harder to make it spikey, heehee. And gotto spend more time in front of the mirror getting ready too. :P

So it was a great relief that we finally went to Headquarters Salon to have our hair cut by Ann. I skipped the coloring cos DIY is much cheaper, kekeke. Besides, I got my personal coloring specialist at home anyway. :D


Tuesday, 19 May 2009 - Dieting at Botak Jones
Sigh, I've begun to put on more weight now. :/

And where did I decide to go for dinner? Botak Jones @ Depot Road...
What better way to lose weight than to have a fish & chips with chilli fries and cheese potato salad huh? Lydia had a Botak burger with coleslaw and cheese potato salad.

Dang!!


Sunday, 17 May 2009 - Goodbye Auntie Pauline
Auntie Pauline, my mum's sister, passed away on the night of 13 Dec. The past few days, we've been going down to the wake at Admiralty, staying up till 4am last Friday to accompany Chueng so that he could catch some sleep.

Affectionately known as Ziyi (2nd auntie in Hokkien) to us, she has fought a good hard fight with cancer before God finally took her away from her suffering. She was always a energetic out-spoken auntie who's never afraid to speak her mind and never liked to impose on others.

Even when her health was deteriorating, she still travelled all the way from Admiralty to Hougang to attend the wake of her eldest sis who passed away in Jun 2008. Every night when we offer to send her home, she would refuse to trouble us and only relented after we insisted. She was a real fighter, especially with her red bandana on her head. How many aunties have you come across that wears a red bandana? It just goes to show her fiesty spirit.

Today, as all of us turned around and faced away from the coffin as they closed the cover forever, tears of sadness rolled down my mum's eyes as I stood beside her. I put my arm around her shoulder to comfort her. To lose both her sisters in less than a year must be devastating.

According to Ziyi's wishes, her body was cremated at the Mandai Crematorium before her ashes were laid to rest in the sea.

We will miss her very much.


Saturday, 16 May 2009 - Manchester United & Blackburn wins!
Manchester United takes the 2008/2009 Premier League championship title with 1 game to spare! It was one of the tightest title race ever, with Liverpool putting on a good fight.


Better luck next time, Liverpool!

But the best news of the season is that Blackburn is safe from relegation! In free-fall under the reins of Paul Ince, Sam Allardyce slowly and steadfastly pulled the team out of the relegation zone and ensure top flight status again for the next season! Yeah!


Saving Blackburn's Ass: Sam Allardyce in Dec'08


Thursday, 14 May 2009 - My New Futsal Shoes!
During lunch time, dragged Desmond and Min Hui to Peninsula Plaza to buy a new pair of futsal street soccer shoes, heehee!

We went to Desmond's regular shop, Weston Corporation. After browsing around, I set my sights on the Nike Total90 Shoot II IC. What a long complicated name, haha! The design is quite nice and it fits well also. Most importantly, it didn't cost me an arm and a leg! $60, instead of the usual price of $72.

I bought it, of course. :)


Cool!!

   

   

   



My old street soccer shoes, back in Jun 2006


Condition now after almost 3 years


Damage report I


Damage report II


Damage report III


Wednesday, 13 May 2009 - Futsal with my Office Colleagues
After work, a bunch of us went down to NUS to play futsal! Wow, the place was crowded! Ain't these students supposed to be studying for their exams?

One thing good about playing here is that it is FOC. The bad things are: 1) The courts are occupied 2) Hard court instead of artificial turf. My good old futsal shoes which were already beginning to show some wear and tear on the soles simply couldn't withstand the pounding on the hard court. The side "mouth" got bigger and bigger...

Well, blaming my futsal shoes is just the prelude to say that I played badly today, haha. Discounting the hard court, poor shoes and super sticky new size 5 ball, I felt like a toad on concrete!

No more hard courts for me, man! :P


Monday, 11 May 2009 - Off Day on Monday!
It's an off-in-lieu day for me due to Vesak Day and Lydia took leave also so that we can spend some time together. :)

In the morning, we went to Tiong Bahru Food Centre but surprisingly, lots of the stalls were closed, including my favorite glutinous rice stall. :( We ended up eating chui kway, which was actually very tasty! I like chui kway, but just that Lydia doesn't like it, so we hardly eat it.


Chui kway with a generous dose of chai po topping!

Next stop is Marina Barrage! The place is very interesting and we took a walk up to the roof to see the grass-covered roof. With the blazing sun over our head, it wasn't long before the little princess started complaining about the heat and dragged me back into the shade again below.

 
"Soooo hot here, deeear!"


Posing under the blazing sun


Nice green lawn with the city in the backdrop


The little princess heads for the shelter in front


The dam below


After some persuasion, we made it to the dam


In case you didn't know, we are at the Marina Barrage


Auditions for the Marina Barrage mascot is now open


Who's cuter?

After a good baking in the sun, we went to Crytal Jade Korean Restaurant @ Centrepoint for lunch. The set lunch menu was pretty worth it and we ordered the bibimbap and the Monday special ginseng chicken soup! Very good, and very full!


Korean ginseng chicken soup and assorted side dishes


Bibimbap: before and after!


A Korean feast

After lunch, we dropped by Home Guide to have another round of discussion with Lance. Hmm, it's not easy to decide between the 3 IDs that we've checked out so far.


Sunday, 10 May 2009 - Chong Pang Nasi Lemak & Mas Selamat
After church, we drove down to Chong Pang for their famous nasi lemak, together with my mum. Haven't been there before and needed some directions from my cousin, Chueng. Apparently there's 2 outlets and the original one only opens in the late evening. Nonethless, we managed to get to the 2nd outlet, located at Blk 101 Yishun Avenue 5, opposite Chong Pang Camp. The food's not too bad and cheap too. Three of us with 3 items added each, only came up to less than $10. Compared to Chong Pang at Vivocity where just me alone cost me $5!

We dropped by to visit Ziyi for a while before sending my mum home.

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In other news, Mas Selemat have been captured! Apparently he has spent a good few days hiding in Singapore before crossing the waters using an improvised floatation device to get to Skudai, Johor Bahru. Like all good mysteries, I'm glad that it has been solved. But I wonder:

1) How did he manage to slip past the massive manhunt and tight border security?
2) How in the first place could he miraculously escaped from Whitley Road Detention Centre? It was so incredible that that were rumours that he is dead and it was a coverup.
3) Why the bombastic word "Improvised floatation device"? To emphasis on his unique stealthy method of crossing the waters so that it doesn't sound too bad that he wasn't detected?

Well, in any case, I'm glad that he is caught and the truth is out. Seeing that he'd probably be locked up in prision for a longer time, the prison should give him a bike to practice. The next time he tries another prison break, he'll then be able to do a triathlon: Cycle, swim and run!


Saturday, 9 May 2009 - Futsal & Mother's Day
Today being Vesak Day, a public holiday, I get to drive out my weekend car without needing to use the weekend coupon!

After picking up Tzin Mein from his home, we stopped by Simply Bread @ Sixth Avenue to buy their yummy range of cinnamon bread, before heading to The Pitch @ Turf City for our morning futsal game.

This time round, I've got my regular socks back on and coincidentally, scored two goals today, as well as having a goal disallowed for supposedly scoring from inside the box.

The first goal was nicely taken, after intercepting a pass from the last defender. I had time to look up and see which area of the goalpost has the biggest gap (top left hand corner) and then blasted the ball with my left foot past Andrew's uncle (the goalkeeper), hitting the exact spot where I had wanted. Cool.

With like 23 futsal crazy guys today, the next goal took a long time coming. Most games ended in dull draw-mates, sending both teams crashing out. But as the minutes ticked away, I was grouped together with a bunch of guys who were also in white jerseys also and wow, we broke the dull draws and went on a 3-4 match winning spree! The 2nd goal was from a corner kick on the right. With no one picking me up as I ran in from deep towards the taker, he passed the ball perfectly into my path just outside the box and I hit the ball fully and firmly with the centre of my right foot. It was delightful to see the ball fly straight and low and nest nicely into the bottom left hand corner of the goalpost. :)

There were also a few wasted golden opoprtunities. :P But it was a fun game today, especially after my white team routed the rest, heehee! :P

We bumped into Priscilla (Lydia's guardian when she first arrived in Singapore) at her shop in Turf City. Ended up having a long chat and missed the lunch with my friends. :P

In the evening, we went over to my parent's place to celebrate Mother's Day. Potluck dinner was the theme! J&F brought along a pot of watercrest soup with pork ribs, we brought along our grilled plate with black pepper seasoned beef, chicken and cheese hotdogs, my mum prepared ngo hiang and potatoes, plus pork and fish for the grill. It was fun to eat grill food again and chit chat with all of them.


Yummy!

Here's Elvis, the adopted stray cat that my mum took in. :) He was really skinny and scrawny when my parent's took him in and now, he's got such a rich coat of fur and have put on a good amount of weight! What a vast difference! With his blue eyes and brown coat of fur, he looks like a siamese cat! He probably is!

He's also more friendly and less afraid of people now. He was in my neighbour's backyard when I called him. He came to the fence and then jumped onto the neighbour's backyard kitchen sink, up the fence, onto the toilet's window ledge, down to the floor and came over to me! Good kitty!!


Elvis is in the house!


Sunday, 3 May 2009 - Dinner at Jurong Point
After more than a month, we finally washed the car again. The dirt on the rims were hard to remove though. But it's so nice to see the car clean again! It has been like coated with dust for a while!

We met up with George and Corrine at Jurong Point to hear their opinion on the renovation and IDs. We had our dinner at Bakerzin, which is quiet and condusive for chit chats and discussions. George really had a talent for planning his own renovation and he shared lotsa useful info with us. Wow, we chatted till 10plus!


Corrine's tummy is really getting bigger and bigger!


Saturday, 2 May 2009 - Where's My Lucky Socks?
Morning futsal with my friends at Turf City again! Yay!

But dDidn't score any goals today though. Must be cos I wasn't wearing my lucky socks... yeah, was at the car park when I realised I forgot to bring my socks and my wife just grabbed the first pair she could find.

After the game, we had chicken briyani at the Indian stall near my parent's place before popping over to U-Home for the 2nd round of discussion. And again, we spent like 3 hours there, haha! U Home was very nice, as they even showed us the 3D drawings, unlike most IDs which would have required a deposit or design fees first.

Dinner was at Alexandra Village's bak kut teh, after Lydia firmly insisted that there be no fish or chicken for dinner!


Friday, 1 May 2009 - Trip to the Zoo!
On this Labour Day public holiday, we're off to the zoo with Chueng, Veron, Vannis and Kenzie!

We arrived at the zoo at about 11am and boy, the car park is almost full, all the way to the back! Very surprised, cos considering that MOH just announced a code Orange for the swine flu yesterday, I thought everyone's going to avoid public places and stay safe.

Lots of the people here are families with kids, heehee! Lydia and I are like the rare few kid-less couple, haha. Well, the 2 girls didn't take long to warm up to us, especially with Lydia.


"Family" photo with Kenzie and Vannis

It's a blazing hot day as we explored around the zoo. Haven't been here since Jan 2007. I think it hasn't change much. But this is the first time we're here with the 2 little girls and it was quite an interesting and fun experience. :)


Careful! The zoo is afterall a habitat for wild animals

 
The alligator just below Kenzie's shoes        Read and learn @ the Zoo


"Sleeping tigers, hidden zookeepers"


The majestic cat


Can pass off as our daughter? Heehee...


The sleeping "swine" warthogs and the cute pygmy hippo


After all the walking, Lydia's carrying Kenzie


Spoiling her now, with ice cream!


Lunch time at the elephant viewing theatre. Finally there's a photo of the girls' parents!


Did the elephant caught a wiff of our Chong Pang nasi lemak?


What a large crowd!


Cute furry creatures! :)


Leopard cat! I love cats! :D


Love this shot of the green tree snake


The girls perked up immediately on arriving here


The fascinating water playground! A huge bucket load of water crashes down at intervals! Wheee!


The girls having fun on the slide


A trip's not completed without the iconic orang utans


Until next time! Was fun!!


Wednesday, 29 Apr 2009 - ID Meeting With Chew Interior
We met up with Carmen from Chew Interior after work. For this 2nd meeting, she provided us with the quotation for the proposed work. Well, it wasn't the cheapest but there's a sense of feeling that their finishing quality can be assured. Their ideas are good too and she's much warmer compared to the first visit. Only thing is we have to put down a deposit of $2K before they will do 3D drawings.

Well, there's plenty of time and we'll evaluate all our choices, options and requirements.

After the meeting, we dropped by the duck stall near my my parents place for kuay chap dinner before snipping off some pandan leaves from my parent's garden, heehee. We blended the pandan leaves later to obtain their essence extract so that Lydia can finally bake her pandan chiffon cake! It looks good. And hopefully it tastes good too! :P


Tuesday, 28 Apr 2009 - 50% Discount at Tampopo!
Lydia's colleague had a 50% Tampopo discount "chop" card which expires today and she couldn't make it, so she gave it to us! Yippee!!

We ordered the black pig tonkatsu which is really heavenly with the marbled pork. The card also came with a free drink and zaru soba. The "fried chicken aka chicken karrage" was a bit strange, cos it didn't taste like the usual karrage, haha. Unfortunately, the strawberry scoop shortcake was sold out, and we ordered the salmon sashimi instead, which was really firm and delicious.

It was really tempting to order more, cos with the 50% discount, everything was like half price! The 5 slices of salmon sashimi which would have cost $10 became $5 only! We started going "Eh, 50% discount leh! Want or not?", hahaha!


Monday, 27 Apr 2009 - Bowling on a Weekday Afternoon :)
On leave today, yay! Woke up past 11am, rested at home, and then took a bus to SAFRA Mount Faber for bowling! The last time I bowled was on... 30 June 2007! I sure hope I don't play badly and I certainly hope my dusty bowling shoes won't do a split of its own!

Wow, SuperBowl sure is quiet on a weekday afternoon, heehee. It was so hard to get a lane on Friday nite.


At the bowling alley

Gee... on the first throw, I injured my left thumb already. Too long never bowl? Not sure why, but the nail was causing the flesh to bruise. Even cutting the nail didn't help much. In the end, I had to alter my style of throwing and cut back on the spin. Surprisingly, I started to throw better! Without bothering about spinning the ball, it was more accurate and I found that just a bit of spin is just enough. ;)

We played 3 games and the final score is:
Joel: 136 153 175
Lydia: 56, 71, 121


Bowling scoreboard for our 3rd game

Wah, very happy that after such a long layoff and an injured thumb, I can actually hit 175, plus a turkey to boot! And Lydia's 121 is a very good achievement after her first two games, heehee!


My thumb!


Sunday, 26 Apr 2009 - Lunch with Seng Seng
After church, we went down to Vivocity and met Wai Seng and Elaine for lunch at Food Republic, Vivocity. Lydia was craving for Korean food, so she had the bibimbap. Me... I don't have a favorite food here and settled for Chomp Pang nasi lemak. Wah, add one chicken wing, otah and fishcake and it cost me $5!

We went grocery shopping at Giant later and by the time we're done, it was like 4pm! How on earth did the time past by so quickly?

I always wanted to visit the National Geographic store at Vivocity, but time and again, I've always been thwarted by my wife! Previously, she said we'll visit after lunch and I forgot about it. And another time, she distracted me till I got to the car park. This time round, with so many grocery plastic bags in our hands, it was quite impossible to be ladened with all these weight and visit the National Geographic store. :(

"I'll be back!"


Saturday, 25 Apr 2009 - An Evening with Our Europe Tourmates
How time flies since our Europe honeymoon trip in Nov 2005! After 3 1/2 years, we're still in contact with 2 of the lovely couples whom we got to know on the trip! :)

We met up for dinner at Hooked!, a fish speciality restaurant at Rail Mall. The food's not too bad, though I think Greenwood Fish Bistro is still the best we've ever had. In Singapore, that is. Nothing beats the fish and chips in Australia.... slurp...

Anyway! We had a good time catching up with George & Corrine and Holy & Weiling. We usually meet about once a year, or more often when possible. Corrine's now like 8 months pregnant!


My fish and chips


Lydia's deep fried seabass with sambal chilli


The roses...


...and the thorns hunks

After dinner, we popped over to Coffee Bean for another round of chit chat, this time with ice blended drinks and cakes on the table. We shared with them our Pinnacle floorplan too and got some very useful feedback from them. Must catch up again, you guys!


Group photo at CoffeeBean


Flashback to Nov 2005 @ La Taverne, Paris! Our plateau de fruits de mer!


Friday, 24 Apr 2009 - Satisfying My Craving
After work, we discussed where we should go for... dinner! Adam Road's nasi lemak? Been there this Wednesday. Chicken? Lydia's had enough of chicken and fish from her company meals.

Beef noodles! The only place I know that has nice beef noodles is at Food Republic @ Wisma Atria, haha! So we drove into Orchard just to eat beef noodles, heehee! And it was really worth it, cos the thick sauce was really good and the beef was very tender and tasty. Yummy!!

We caught a midnight show at GV Tiong Bahru. Taken, a movie about a dad who single-handedly tracked down his kidnapped daughter to save her from the bad guys. Realistic at first , though it started to border on extreme as it moves on. Overall it was still a very enjoyable action thriller show.


Wednesday, 22 Apr 2009 - My DVD-writer Mistake
During lunchtime, I went down to Sim Lim Square with some of the guys for some "window shopping", but instead, I ended up buying a Samsung 22x SATA DVD double-layer writer! The Samsung SH-223F @ $33. Well, the purpose of buying it was because I wanted to be able to burn double layer DVDs, which the current DVD writer is not capable of.

Or so I thought! Imagine my surprise when I see the lettering DVD+R DL on my existing DVD writer! Doh!!! Oh well, at least I upgraded from a PATA writer to a SATA.

Oooh!!! Double layer DVD media is very expensive though! 10 pieces of Verbatim DVD+R DL cost me $39!! Crazy!! That's like $4 a piece. A normal DVD media is about $0.50 a piece only. Ouch!!


Sunday, 19 Apr 2009 - Something about S Factor
After hearing all the hoohaa about Channel 5 new reality TV show, S Factor, we (meaning, my wife and I) were curious and thus tuned on to the show to see what it's all about.

Well... it's about a bunch of female contestants vying in various contests to be the final winner of the top prize of $10,000 and land on the cover of FHM magazine. :)


S-factor. S is for....?

Some people complained that it is a demeaning show, an insult to women and blah blah blah. But hey, this is not Miss Universe, Amazing Race, or "I'm not smarter than a fifth grader". Brains are useful, but that's not going to be the main criteria for FHM. I'd say it's a mix between "America's Next Top Model" and some cheesy Japanese/Taiwanese game show. And maybe a bit of Wrestlemania.

But of course if my wife wants to take part, it would be over my dead body.


Saturday, 18 Apr 2009 - Are there Aliens and UFOs?
Am I glad to have another week of futsal with my friends again at Turf City! Only 1 goal scored, but it was alrite. The weather was very hot and it was pretty tiring!

We rushed off after the game and picked up my parents before going to church for a special Saturday session. The topic: Aliens & UFOs!

I'm really looking forward to hearing what the speaker has to say about aliens and UFOs (unidentified flying objects) and to see what's the Christian angle on it. I regularly watch UFO Hunters on The History Channel and in my old bedroom back at my parent's home, on the wall hung the X-Files poster, "I want to believe".


The "I want to believe" poster

With an open mind, it turned out to be a really intriguing 3 hours long session, with a break in between! The first half was talking about Evolution and dinosaurs, I think, which was interesting enough for me to sign up for the quarterly magazine subscription to the speaker's organisation, Creation Ministries International. It was really amazing and fascinating to see things from the Christian and Bible's perspective. Is Darwin's evolution theory really true? Is it scientifically true? There's a whole lot of questions and answers which really stirs and excite the mind!

But the 2nd half was what I was really, really interested in, which is the topic on UFOs. Do they exist? After removing all the hoaxes and explainable natural phenomena, the answer is.... yes! My eyes lighted up. But what are they? Where do they come from? Along these lines though, my "hopes" were dashed. They are not from outer space, which is the commonly held belief that they are extra terrestrials aliens that lived in faraway distant planets. Discounting the theory of wormhole space travel, it is scientifically impossible for spaceships to travel such vast distance that takes thousands of years even at light-speed. Even if light-speed was even possible, a collision at light-speed with any object, even a small dust particle, would generate a tremendous impact due to the massive kinetic energy created by light-speed.

Instead, they are from within Earth. Huh? Really? And even more surprising, believing that aliens are from outer space would be contradicting the Bible, which I didn't realise it, and was quite a shocking revelation to me. The Bible says that everything is created by God. In His image, man was created and Jesus died for our human sins due to Adam's first sin. If aliens were indeed created by God, Jesus only died for mankind but not alien-kind. So must God send Jesus (which is impossible) to save them, or otherwise these alien blokes are gonna be eternally condemned through no fault of theirs (it's Adam's fault!) when Judgement Day comes? Man also is to have dominion over all the creatures of the world. If aliens exist, then their technological superiority would mean they can have dominion over man.

So what are aliens and UFOs then?
The dark forces of evil spirits and demons. What?? That... is not easy to accept. Well, that's why I bought the book and the DVDs. This shift in thinking will take some time to absorb and digest. For one thing, it certainly shook my long-held desire and hope that there are aliens in outer space. Goodbye SETI!


Alien Intrusion: UFOs and the evolution connection, by Gary Bates

Does it mean I'll stop watching UFO Hunters? No. I'll still watch it. But I'll try to understand it from the Christian angle also and see if it makes sense and adds up. Don't just take my word for it, or what speaker has said. Find out more yourself, make sense of the info and discover your own belief.

To know more, goto Alien Intrusion.

I still want to believe. in the truth.


Thursday, 16 Apr 2009 - Meeting with Home Guide
After work, we rushed down to Home Guide to meet our ID for the 2nd time. He made some modifications to the layout to meet our requirements. Hmm, his ideas and concepts are quite interesting.

And then, the moment of truth: Quotation! As he ran through the itemized works (masonry, carpentry, etc), the costs just ran higher and higher, especially for our "Super 4"! I shan't reveal the final cost now, but to put it mildy, I lost my dinner appetite after that.

He assured us that that was the highest possible cost after including everything and putting in the high-quality stuffs. Glass, he emphasized, is expensive.

Hmm... we gave him our budget and he'll revise them before calling for the next meeting.

Ouch.


Sunday, 12 Apr 2009 - Easter Sunday
I always wondered why is the Sunday following Good Friday called "Easter" Sunday? How did Easter rabbits and eggs came into play on a date that commemorated Jesus' resurrection?

After digging through the Internet all over, turns out that Easter is simply... Easter, an annual Christian festival in commemoration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, observed on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox.

The what vernal equinox? That's when the tilt of the Earth's axis inclined neither away from nor towards the sun, when day and night is evenly balanced, typically around 20-21 Mar. Factoring in wait time for the full moon, Easter will fall between 22 Mar and 25 Apr.

Phew! Information overload.... Well, about Easter rabbits and eggs, I'll leave it to next year to dig for the info!

After having lunch at Carl's Junior @ Vivocity, as went to Wai Seng's home to check out his renovation works so that we have a better understanding of the works involved and what Home Guide has done for him. Well, it's still a long way to go till our place is ready, but it's good to start early so that we have plenty of time and can afford to wait and check out more IDs.


Saturday, 11 Apr 2009 - A Fun Saturday!
I haven't been playing futsal since.... 10 Jan! Wow, more than 3 months! Blame it on my friends shifting the timing to Saturday morning! Heh, it wasn't entirely their doings. Was busy on a couple of Saturdays too.

But today I will be joining them at 11am! We made use of the weekend coupon and drove to Toa Payoh for breakfast as well as to renew our HDB rental. It was a struggle to get out of bed so early on a Saturday, haha! Running late, I somehow forgotten that we're now playing at Turf City instead of East Coast Park! From Toa Payoh, I headed down all the way till Fort Road before realising the stupid mistake. D'oh!!

Arrived at The Pitch (formerly known as The Premier Pitch) about 11.30am and quickly changed and joined them. It was really fun and nice to be back playing on the artificial turf, heehee! Really enjoyed myself even though was gasping for breathe and stamina at times. After a long lay-off, managed to score 2 goals and also had a shot/cross that was going wide until the defender stuck out a foot and diverted it into the net. One of the goals was pretty memorable: chesting down a high ball before striking it with my right foot to score between the legs of the advancing goalkeeper. :)

We joined the group for lunch later at Turf City. It was fun chatting with these group of friends and very glad that Lydia didn't feel left out or something. We gave Tzin Mein a ride home and had a good rest before going out with Wai Seng and Elaine for dinner a Taiwanese restaurant at Liang Seah Street.

We had Taiwanese beef noodles plus some other side orders. Hmm, maybe I'm not used to the taste, but I think I prefer Singapore-style sticky beef noodles better!


Elaine and Lydia enjoying their Taiwanese beef noodles


My bowl of Taiwanese beef "potato noodles"


Friday, 10 Apr 2009 - Good Friday Outings
After the morning Good Friday service, we went to Upper Thomson Road for lunch at the famous ampang yong tau foo with my parents. It was nice to eat here again after a long break and wow, the place was really very crowded!

After lunch, we met up with my ex-colleague who's now with EA, and she passed me like 10 EA games and didn't wanna take a cent! For charity, she said and asked me to accept. Thanks!! Wahahaha! How to finish so many games?? Need For Speed, LOTR, Medal of Honour.... :D

Dinner time and we decided to be adventurous and ventured to Botak Jones @ Depot Road! We ordered the The Massive and Fish & Chips. Yum yum!


The Massive! Pity there isn't any cheese.


Good ol' fish n chips

On the way back, we detoured to Telok Blangah Hill Park and embarked on a romantic stroll along Forest Walk, an elevated metal walkway that meanders through the forest. It really is nice walking hand-in-hand together in the night under the full moon, along the dimly lited path surrounded by trees below, above and from the sides.


Illuminated elevated walkways


Under the bright moonlight


It's very rare for my wife to walk so much outside of shopping centres


Thursday, 9 Apr 2009 - Chicken Rice Talk
It's the long weekend coming up! We decided to venture a bit further for dinner and drove down to Balestier to eat at Loy Kee. I liked their chicken rice cos the rice is very fragrant and soft! The chicken is also tender and nice. Some people's decision is solely based on the chilli sauce, but I think that's a bit strange. Maybe cos I ain't that a crazy chicken rice chilli lover. The condiments are there to enhance the food.

Well, unless you're talking about BBQ stingray, then the sambal chilli plays a much vital role. There ain't many ways of bbqing a stingray, so what differentiates a good bbq stingray from a mediocre one is the sambal chilli. And for this, I like it wet and hot. :)


Sunday, 5 Apr 2009 - Qing Ming
It's that time of the year again for the annual visit to pay our respect to our departed loved ones. We dropped by Chua Chu Kang in the evening to visit the graves of my grandparents from my mum's side. It was raining but still quite crowded! My grandfather is buried in the Chinese cemetery while my grandmother is buried in the Christian cemetery.

Is Qing Ming a conflict to a Christian's belief? Is it a Chinese custom, or does it have any religious inclination? Thankfully, my pastor confirmed my belief that there is nothing wrong in paying respect to our ancestors. But there shouldn't be any offering of food, burning paper money or offering of joss sticks, of course.

As per our tradition, after the trip for the tomb sweeping day, all of us would adjourned for drinks and food. We went to a friend's Korean restaurant for dinner at Pandan Valley and really enjoyed the food. Had a good time catching up with all the relatives. :)


Satursay, 4 Apr 2009 - Having Fun after Work!
Of all the days that I had to go back to the office to work on a Saturday, my friends gotto choose this day also to hold a triple birthday celebration dinner....

Well, I ain't gonna rant or rat about my work, so... basically, by the time I'm finished, it was about 9pm! My friends were still at Robertson Quay having dinner, but I still went home as Lydia was at home. A couple of SMSes with my beloved friends later, we were soon heading back to The Pier @ Robertson again, this time to meet them for drinks at Tasting Notes!

Hey, hey! Andrew "birdman" Quek is here too! Together with San San, as well as Tzin Mein, Eric Yong, Boon Teck, Novita, Cheng How, Andrew "Ah Beng" Woon, Kian Pang and Boon Chong! Lydia had a Shirley's Temple while I had a Japanese beer which Andrew Woon recommended, Yebisu Premium. On a "high" after my Blackburn beat Andrew Woon's Tottenham with 2 goals in the last 10 minutes, I treated Andrew to his drink, hehheh!


The merry men from my JC/NTU days


Gosh... I certainly turn red easily


Interesting view from the top of the glass, literally :)

Well, the drinks ain't the main attraction here. The fun was having a good laugh and a good chat with the guys! Like birdman Andrew, I haven't seen him for ages! And these bunch of friends surely have a fondness for iPhones and showed me all the cool games they have! I think only 3 of us are non-iPhone users!


School excursion's over, boys and girls!

Really had fun drinking and chatting with them! I really miss these bunch of jokers ever since they shifted the futsal playtime to Saturday morning!


Friday, 3 Apr 2009 - From Beef Noodles to Sushi
After a hectic work week, we usually go out for dinner on Friday. This time round we chose the beef noodles shop @ China Street, near our Sunday's Ya Kun shop. But lo and behold, when we got there, it was closing! Dang!

After walking around the restaurants at China Square, we ended up back at Sushi Tei. The outlet here is remarkably more interesting and like more classy too! Really enjoyed our food! My crab fried rice was very unusual and interesting, heehee!


Wednesday, 1 Apr 2009 - ID Meetup & Good News for Gamers!
After work, we went down to another ID company called Home Guide, which Wai Seng had engaged. Though the company was located in Leng Kee, the interior layout and design of the company was rather impressive! We sat down and had a good chat with the interior designer, who had quite a lot of good ideas and designs too. Pretty impressed by him! Only thing is he's strong in Mandarin and weak in English. So to allow him to express his ideas better, we had a rojak conversation of English-Mandarin!

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All ye gamers rejoice! Hear ye, hear ye!! Gaming actually improves your vision!!

according to a findings published in NAture Neuroscience and reported in ChannelNewsAsia, fast action first person shooter games provide excellent training for contrast sensitivity, which is critical to everyday activities.

This is excellent news!! My wife can no longer nag at me for playing too long lest it spoils my eyesight. Bookworm spectacle kids may actually be forced to play games by their parents, hahaha!

But seriously, my eyesight had actually improved over the tears! In my JC days, I had sub-100 degrees and now, I'm actually 6/6 on the myopia scale! Serious! But I've got astig though at sub-100 level. But in eye chart examination, doctors has recently been certifying me as perfect eyesight, with one even certifying that I had better than 6/6 vision. :P


Sunday, 29 March 2009 - Curry Rice & a Japanese DVD drama
It's been a long time since we had curry rice and so today after church, we went to the famous stall at Beo Crescent. The trick to avoid having to queue for 20-30 minutes is to arrive slightly before 2pm. Come too early and you fight with the normal lunch crowd. Come too late and you fight with late eaters like us!

We only had ko lei chai and bak pa and it was very nice and cheap!

After getting home after lunch, my wife got me hooked on her Japanese drama series. Yup... she has now expanded her range of drama series from Korean to Hong Kong and now Japanese. Our Starhub Hubstation had so many pre-recorded series scheduled everyday that I had to seek her clearance before attempting to make any ad-hoc recording. If there's a conflict in recording, she'd deftly press a couple of the red, green and blue buttons here and there on the remote controller, pull up the schedule for the next couple of days, press a few more buttons with techie-nerd-like efficiency and swiftly re-scheduled her conflict series to make way for mine. This accountant wife of mine is better than me in operating the Hubstation remote controller!

Anyway! We caught the Japanese drama series, The Negotiator (also known as Koshonin) on DVD, which her colleague had loaned to her. It's a light 8-episode (I think) series about a young lady who joined the male-dominated Police negotiation team, proofing her worth to win the team over, and defuse the hostage situations that they are called upon, and at the same time, to uncover the truth behind her dad's death.


Usa Reiko, the female negotiator

I'd say it was a pretty good Japanese police series! Lotsa action, some level of suspense and a decent storyline. Best of all, it's not draggy and too unbelievable that makes my head scream in disbelief, like some Taiwanese/Hong Kong dramas.


Friday, 27 March 2009 - Day 2 of ID hunt!
Ah... it's so nice to be on leave. But there isn't time to sleep in late. Our schedule today is packed too!

First stop was to grab two packets of nasi lemak with otah at the famous Katong coffeeshop, more popular for its laksa. We then went to East Coast Park, found a shaded stone bench and had our breakfast by the beach. So refreshing and relaxing, heehee!


Nice to have someone "peel" the fish for you. :)


Breakfast by the beach... ahhhh

After spending about 45 minutes at the beach, the next stop was supposed to be Singapore Expo for the Lifestyle exhibition. But lo and behold, Lydia got an SMS from her office colleague about something that got her all excited: Luxury Sale at Changi Airport T3!

Hah? I thought we're on a ID hunt? Goodness! Must focus on our priorities, Piggy....

15 minutes later, we were in the car park of Terminal 3....

We headed to the Chengal Ballroom at Crowne Plaza Hotel, where a big signboard says "up to 70% off". Cool. But there was a signage that says to produce airport pass also and got us worried. Thankfully, VISA card members were allowed in also.


Is there an ID company here?

Wow, there was a small crowd already in the ballroom about the size of a futsal court. Mostly tai tais and young fashionable, non-need-to-work ladies. The discount was pretty real, though the original price tag was quite unreal too. In the midst of the jostle, my wife soon spied and set her sights on a white Salvatore Ferragamo bag at 60% off! After a couple of not-so-subtle hints of "I always wanted a white bag....", I finally agreed to her request to bag that bag.

Well, it would be a pity if I left the place without anything to show after more than an hour. Hugo Boss wallets were going for 60% off and after some hesitation, I got one too! :)

Okay! Must focus and backtrack to our original destination! Singapore Expo!

Eh? There's a Robinsons' Sale happening at the next Hall...

We ended up spending like 1 1/2 hours shopping in there, haha! Ok, must be productive in the correct way now. After having lunch at the Expo, we finally stepped into the Lifestyle exhibition. There were bed mattresses booths, furniture booths, ID booths as well as showflats. We spent some time talking to Simmons (bed mattresses), to a couple of IDs (collected their booklets, yeah!) and visited the showflats.
Last stop was at Sealy. For our bed mattresses, it came down to a a choice between Simmons (pocket springs rules!) or Sealy (Posturepedic). I liked pocket springs more, very cool how the movement doesn't disturb the other areas and it was comfy too. But my wife somehow fancied Sealy more and really wanted it. Well.... a man should never have an unhappy woman in bed, so she wins lor and gave in to her!

As the fair was having a special promo of a free upgrade (ie. get a queen's size bed at super single price) and the sales people also produced proof that their price was even cheaper than Robinsons' mattresses at 20% off + rebate + cash discount, we locked in our order. Got a few freebies like pillows and mattress protectors thrown in too! :)


Where we bought our Sealy bed mattress for our new flat!

By the time we left Expo, it was almost 5pm, haha! Apart from the expo fair IDs, we haven't had a deep discussion with any ID company yet. So to complete our day, we headed to Chew Interior @ Changi Road. And boy, we were impressed by the sales consultant. Yep, she's not a designer. Most big IDs have sales team. She was the only one who took out her working tools: pencilbox with rulers, pencils and eraser. With her pencil and rulers, she precisely measured and calculated what could fit into our floorplan and gave a fascinating array of layout options and ideas that other IDs before did not thought of, and even we ourselves didn't think of. I must say we are indeed impress by Chew Interior!

Oh boy, we finished the session about 8pm! My dad haven't ate yet, so we picked him up and went to his favorite fishball noodles stall at Toa Payoh Food Centre at Lorong 5 Block 75. We also ordered rojak and char kuay tiao. Wah, the food here is cheap and nice! Fishball noodles at $2.50, char kuay tiao at $2, and rojak at $3!


Good stuff man! Mee Pok was soft and firm, so too the balls!


Just tau pok and you char kuay :)


Char kuay tiao... nice and only $2!


Enjoying a nice meal with good ol' dad :)

Well, today and yesterday have indeed been a very productive and fruitful day! We have learnt so much about Interior Design companies, the process, the works and got a better estimation on the costs. 2 days ago, we didn't even know a hoot about all these, and now we've gained a lot more knowledge and experience. Very satisfying and happy indeed!


Thursday, 26 March 2009 - Two Days Leave for ID hunt!
We're on two days leave, hurray!! Work was a madness these past weeks and it is really nice to have 2 days of rest.

Not that we will get much rest these 2 days, haha, cos the schedule is totally packed! We're on a reno ID (interior design) hunt!

First stop was prata breakfast at the excellent Indian mama stall behind my parent's place at MacPherson Road. The laid-back backlane simply puts one in a nice relaxing breakfast mood. My dad was at home and he joined us for breakfast too.

We chatted till we were late for our appointment with HC-Interior @ Balestier at 11am! The rain started to pour too! Rushed there and got there about 11.20am. Walked into the office, asked for the designer and... huh? He's not in? What the? The guy's partner tried to call the dude but no answer. We tried to call and no answer also. The guy told us maybe he went for coffee or something and went back to looking busy at his laptop, leaving us standing there like idiots.

What the hell? If this is the attitude of HC Interior on the first visit, I can't imagine having them as my interior designer. It's a pity cos their designs were quite appealing.

We walked out of the office and went back to our car. What a start to our ID hunt, haha. Scratch one. Next on the list is U-Home. We easily got the appointment pushed forward and headed to their office at Upper Paya Lebar Road. Hey, their office is very near my parent's home and along the route that I used to walk when going to my secondary school, Bartley Sec School! Brings back fond memories, haha!

Wow, their showroom/showflat is big! The guy who attended to us was very patient. He deduced that this was our first ID visit and patiently explained a whole lot of things to us, from the kitchen top, cabinet hinges, drawers, bathroom overlays, lightings, materials, ID firms... the whole works man. We sat down with him with the floorplan and told him what we want, our ideas, and such. He noted them down and will get back to us on the 3D design and quotation for the next visit. By the time we're done, it was like 3 hours later! Gosh! Really thankful for the patience and expertise of U-Home. Even if we do not engage them, they have left a very good impression on us!

With a hungry stomach, we headed to.... the same Indian mama stall again, haha! Hey, it's close by, and the food is really good. We ordered mee goreng and fried chicken briyani. Nice!!


Lydia with her new hairstyle at the Indian mama stall


The best briyani in Singapore, really!


Mee goreng with egg

After a hearty meal, we went home to rest for a while as my nose was acting up also. At about 5plus, we set off again, this time to ID Creation @ East Coast Road. ID Creation is a small ID company, with 2 partners only. The guy's young and friendly, but he didn't seem to be as meticulous as U-Home in gathering our requests. No intro on ID stuffs and what to expect also, so it was really a good thing we had that 3-hour talk with U-Home prior to coming over here. Else we would be totally lost! But it would be interesting to see what a 2-man ID firm can produce compared to a big ID firm. Cost is one thing, the other thing is dealing with the interior designer himself compared to the salesman/salesgirl.

We headed over to Furniture Mall about 7plus so as to get a better gauge of the cost of furniture and to see what is available and what has to be custom-made. It was an eye-opener popping into so many shops and checking our their range of furniture, mainly sofa, dining table, coffee table, single bed and bed frames.

After 2 rounds of local (Indian) food, we die die had to go junkie on western fast food, haha! Carl's Junior, it is, at Marina Square. Their special Angus beef was good! Even added an extra patty and we shared that burger, heehee. And of course with our regular beef chilli cheese fries.

And that wraps up Day 1 of our ID hunt, cum preparation for our new flat! Very fulfilling and have gained a lot of knowledge!


Wednesday, 25 March 2009 - A Speed Walk for a Hair Cut!
Had a haircut appointment at Raffles Hotel at 7.30pm but by the time I finished my work and hit the ground lobby, it was already 7.19pm! Had to rush! I walked from UE Square to Raffles Hotel in 16 crazy minutes! My legs were really aching, boy!

My regular hairstylist took one look at my hair and said, "This style not cut by me one." Haha! She's right. Had a haircut in Padang then. Well, Padang haircut is cheaper, but though the hairstylist there is good, the style is just different and not the same standard. My spikey hair for the last few weeks had to put in great effort to be spikey, haha!

As for my wife, I thought there weren't any surprises today in her haircut. Everything looks normal from the side view. But after the hairstylist twirled her around *shock*! Well, as long as I don't see a red head one day, I think I can still recover. We did coloring as well and by the time we're done, it was almost 10pm! Last customers! The people at HeadQuarters Salon were very nice and didn't pull a black face. :P

Dinner was at the duck stall along Liang Seah Street. Very long never eat duck... nice!


Sunday, 22 March 2009 - Car Wash & Nasi Lemak
Today gotto wash the car, cos 1 month never wash already! We drove to the other multi-story car park nearby cos the timer on the water tap has double the time of a normal tap, heehee! 2 pails per 20 cents! :)

All tired from the car wash, we quickly bathed and changed and met up with Wai Seng and went to Adam Road's Food Centre for nasi lemak! Was feeling very hungry and ordered 2 chicken wings instead! After that feel very satisfied, but guilty, haha!


Saturday, 21 March 2009 - A Fantastic Boat Trip!
On a nice Saturday sunny morning, we're off to a boat trip! Yay!

After picking up Wai Seng, we picked up Adeline Soh from Clementi before going to Jurong West for breakfast at McDonalds. Desmond joined us later, together with their vendor-cum-friend Pauline. We stopped by briefly at the NTUC Fairprice 24-hours hypermart to grab some stuffs before making our way to Raffles Marina at 10am.

It's great to be back at Raffles Marina lagoon berth again. We made our way through the berths to the Tetra Pak boat, Bric-a-Brac II and soon cast off! We're "sailing" again!


At Raffles Marina lagoon berth


Our trusty wooden boat, Bric a Brac II


Passing the lighthouse on the way out to sea!

As we've booked the boat for the whole day, the skipper headed towards the southern part of Singapore to Pulau Hantu. Before long, we were up on the roof top of the boat for some sun and breeze!


Someone didn't like the sun, heehee!


Enjoying the scenery on the boat's roof top


The 6 of us!


My wide-angle compact camera is very "wide angle" indeed!

The late morning sun was proving to be a bit too hot for some and we down to the lower deck after a while, where we played some dice game before stopping for a tea break.


The sun-adverse girls...


Dunno what you call this dice game...


Tea time on the lower desk

After like 3 hours, we finally arrived at our destination! Desmond soon jumped into the waters and made his way to a shallow sand bank and literally stood up, like he was standing on water, heehee! It was really a sight to behold, haha! Adeline and Pauline couldn't resist and went into the water also and joined him at the sand bank.


At the edge of the boat


A) Desmond bringing another damsel over        B) The 3 of them standing on water!

We decided to stay on board the boat, together with Wai Seng. Time for some more sun-tanning!

 
A model posing on the boat...                    Close up pix of the model


The lucky guy :P


Lydia's back to hiding under the black shawl...


... while the 3 out there have some fun with a visiting jetski

After about 2 hours or so frolicking under the sun, we were all getting hungry. It's time for BBQ! The skipper was very nice to help us barbeque the food. We ate until very full and there were still a good portion left! So we went back to the top deck and played cards. Loser has to eat the food, heehee!


Chicken, sausages, beef, bacon, garlic bread... yummy!


Lydia cringing upon hearing the rules of the game


The food to be consumed by the losers



Ready... set.... card up!

 
Another one bites the dust...                      Dust approaches...  

The game finished when we cleared all the food, haha! Adeline's going to remember garlic bread for a veeeery long time, hahaha! The timing was perfect also, cos the sunset scenery was really a sight to behold! We started taking photos and wow, it's amazing what you can see out in the sea and in Singapore!


Juz the girls only


Juz Lydia & Joel


The silhouette of a kelong against the setting sun


A tugboat cruises by in the sunset


Closer shot of the tugboat as it approaches the setting sun


A sight like this really completes the fun boat trip

It was really beautiful capturing all the sunset scenery at sea. Unfortunately, my compact camera battery died on me after I took more than 300 shots! The next shot I had wanted to take was the tug boat tugging the 3 sand pyramids on a sand barrage! Oh man... that would have been really one breath-taking picture. Instead, I can only cherish the sight in my memory. And also that of two rainbows streaking across the mainland. Urgh!!

But oh well! This is still one boat trip to remember for ages!


Friday, 20 March 2009 - You Can Ring My Bell
It's 7.10pm and I just got into the office lift, expecting the arrival of my wife who's driving over to pick me up. Instead, I got a worried call from her. The car alarm is screeching in the background. The spare key is not working!

The unlock button did not have any response, so my wife decided to try her luck and open the door manually. Bad choice, cos the whole car park was soon filled with the screeching alarm. Thankfully she said it stopped by itself after a while, but the car door cannot be locked. I hurried down by cab which cost me $8, but I'm glad she's (and my car too) okay, just a little shaken.

We went down to Orchard after that for dinner at Pepper Lunch and did some shopping at Espirit and Zara. Got another shirt to add to my office wear. :)


Wednesday, 18 March 2009 - Pay More for Fishy Fish
Having a craving for fish and chips, we decided to go to Fishermen's Wharf @ New Bridge Road as Lydia wanted to do some shopping at The Central. The dory fish was going at a $7.50 special and I was planning to order 2 dory fish when we caught sight of the chalkboard promoting the seabass at $10.50.

Seabass sounds cooler ya? So we ordered 1 dory and 1 seabass instead. When the food arrived, the dory fish was huge! Well, the batter was huge, at least, but the portion was pretty big. The fish meat.... well, I thought it tasted better in my earlier trips. Today, it was like breaking up and disintegrating at the jab of the fork. Or maybe it was so fresh that it disintegrate...

But that was the highlight. The seabass, on the other hand.... it looks solid while coated in batter and came in a chunky cutting. But my goodness, it is damn fishy! My fishy tolerance is pretty low one, so it was really overwhelming man. My wife was really nice to eat the seabass while I ate the dory fish. But as per her dining custom, she pass me 1/2 a portion of her food, so I still get half a seabass. The only way to decently mask the smell was to dip it in generous portion of tartar sauce and chilli!

We actually asked the waiter if it was meant to be so fishy and he said yes. O... kay....


Saturday, 14 March 2009 - Celebrating Dad's Birthday
The plan was to have a dinner picnic at East Coast Park with my parents and J&F, but the erratic rainy weather spoiled the plans. So we went to my parent's place instead and had BBQ and food at the yard outside. My mum prepared most of the the food. We had bee hoon, ngoh hiang, cuttlefish balls, curry chicken, bread... and barbequed prawns, fish and slabs of beef steaks that my mum's colleague brought from Australia. Very filling!

J&F bought a NYDC chocolate cake and we got Dad to blow out the single candle. Too many candles may tire him out, heehee!

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The evening went very well, but unfortunately, the same can't be said about tonite's Premier League games. Manchester United crashed 1-4 at home against Liverpool, and having taken the lead somemore! Apart from Liverpool's freekick goal, the rest were bad defensive blunders which I would be ashamed of if they were committed by me. Vidic had the worst game ever probably in his entire career.

Hmm, I wonder what's the atmosphere like in Gabriel and Valentine's home? One's a Liverpool supporter while the other is a ManU supporter!


Vidic: Failed to clear & Torres scored, got sent off & Liverpool scored from the freekick

To compound the miserable night, Blackburn lost 0-4 away to Arsenal. The good news though is that the other clubs fighting relegation did not fare well either and so Blackburn remains free from the relegation zone. The relegation fight is proving to be a very tightly-fought contest this season with so few points separating the bottom half of the league.


Blackburn's on their backside again this season...


Monday, 9 March 2009 - Computer Games causes Violent Behaviour?!?!
What?!?! What nonsense is this?? The Straits Times reported that playing violent video games can cause people to think and act more aggressively!

I'm angry! I play a lot of violent computer games and I enjoy cutting down monsters and super mutants, but no way I'm violent or aggressive!! You hear me??? *Grrrr!!*

Oh! I'm so mad!! Now I have to go unwind and go kill more monsters in Fallout3 to calm myself down. The nerve of these people!


Laying waste to the scums from Talon Company (Fallout3). Die!!!

ps: You do get my drift, don't you? I would hate to think that only gamers have a sense of humour!


Sunday, 8 March 2009 - Weishun's Baby is 1 Year Old!
Wow, Sophie is one year old already? So fast! It seems not too long ago when Kylie gave birth and my amazing JC friend cum Uni classmate cum hostel roommate became a daddy!

One year down the road, he still looks the same, and still so skinny! I thought all married men will put on weight? He's the exception, haha!!

The function room at their condo at Far Horizon Gardens was very cosy, and with the helium-filled balloons filling the ceiling, it was really like entering a kid's party, heehee! The food was really excellent too. But most important of all, we had a good time chatting and catching up with this old pal of mine and his wife. It's a pity Brian "I'm on the way" Leong arrived late... just 3 1/2 hours late, and we didn't get to catch up with him.


Weishun, Sophie, Kylie, Lydia, Joel


Saturday, 7 March 2009 - 6 Married Years with Little Piggy
Today's our ROM anniversary! That's not to be confused with the customary wedding anniversary, which is on 5 Nov, heehee!

The above two dates are easy to remember. The year.... erm, it gets a little tricky. :P Which is why it is a good thing to have the date engraved on the wedding ring! Whenever I forget, I'll just take off my ring and check the date engraved inside: 7.3.03. :D

After a mad work week where I slept at 2-3am for 4 consecutive days rushing reports, we really sleep-in today and woke up past 12 noon! It's nice to recharge all the batteries again!

We decided to do away with any present exchange and instead went for a yummy dinner at our favorite restaurant, Gyu Kaku @ Chijmes!

Starters:
Caesar salad
Ishiyaki bibimba

Meats:
Karubi (short rib)
Grilled shabu-shabu
US kurobuta collar (pork)
P-toro (pork)
Lamb neck fillet
Wagyu karubi (oyster blade)
Wagyu Nakaochi (intercostals cube cut)


Fresh meat on the table: pork, lamb, beef and wagyu beef!

We skipped the set menu and headed straight to selecting different choices of meat that we did not get to try onour previous trip. This time round, we were wiser and started off with the normal meat before finishing with the wagyu beef, heehee! Save the best for last! Oh boy, tThe Wagyu karubi oyster blade simply melts in the mouth!! Yummy!


There's nothing better than charcoal-grilled meat....


Photo outside the chapel @ Chijmes


Monday, 2 March 2009 - NTU Stabbing Incident
Oh my goodness.

A final-year NTU EEE student stabbed his project supervisor before slitting his wrists and fatally jumped off the building. It's quite shocking that such a thing will happen in Singapore. Even worse, from the same University that I came from.

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/412478/1/.html

What would have pushed the 21 yr-old final-year student to do something so crazy and throw his future and life away, when it's only a matter of months before he will graduate? He must have been totally driven off the edge.

To all the students out there, please take it easy. Grades isn't everything. Life is precious. The most important thing is to just do your best, and let God take care of the rest. Why, even a BDD "A" level student like me could get into NTU Computer Engineering. And with a string of Es and Fs and lecturers who loved me so much that they made me stay back another year, I thoroughly enjoyed my uni & hostel life, before grudgingly graduating and landed my first job within a month of graduation.


Sunday, 22 February 2009 - Lunchtime Madness @ Ikea
You'd think that Ikea is a popular Swedish furniture megamall with its own restaurant. But today, I start to doubt if it was the other way round!

The lunch crowd was huge! We barely found counter seats around a kid's playground. The queue started from like 3/4 the length of the restaurant! I must have queued for like 20-30 minutes to get my free drinks, the Swedish meatballs and fried chicken wings.

With business as good as this, one really wonders if there's an economy recession or what?


Saturday, 21 February 2009 - Loyal Employee
Oh no! Few days ago, Sotong told me that Bricksworld at Novena Square is closing! I like that shop.... used to go there after church (at the old premises). Sotong also said there's a 20% closing down sale. Must go check it out today!

But first, there's Kenzie's birthday party to attend first in the evening. The little girl turned 3 this year and yesterday, we went down to Toys R' Us and bought a nice big present for her. Hope she likes it! We had a good time catching up with Veron also and met up with the rest of the relatives.

We dropped by Novena Square (Velocity) after the party to check out Bricksworld as well as to do some grocery shopping. Wow, this place is crowded on a Saturday night! Never seen this place so crowded before!

After spending some time examing the truly storewide 20% discounted items, it would be a crime to leave without buying. Erm... gotto help them clear stocks, and most of all, to show my support to my company who's a major sponsor of the Ferrari F1 team!

The Ferrari F1 1:9 is now part of my Lego collection, woohoo!!


The 1:9 scale Ferrari F1 Lego model (Item: 8157)

Dear... I'm just showing my loyalty support to Shell okie? :D


Saturday, 14 February 2009 - Happy Valentine's Day!
Happy Valentine's Day!

You know what's the best thing about being married?
1. You no longer need to worry about whether you're going to be dateless on this ill-fated day, or practicise in front of the mirror what you're going to say or do when you're on the date with her.
2. You no longer need to buy flowers and carry that bouquet of stalks as inconspiciously as possible while trying to appear as cool as possible.

But some things never change even after you're married, and I still have to make some plans for the day. For Valentine's Day 2009, it's the home edition special! That's right, we're gonna celebrate at home with a nice dinner.

In the evening, we went to Orchard for a walk walk to experience the Valentine's Day atmosphere and the crowd. I like watching the crowd during Valentine's Day; to see couples together, who's got flowers, which guy carrying flowers, which girl's got a big teddy bear, the long queue outside restaurants.... basically, it makes me smile to see so many people with love or positive feelings in their mind.

We got our groceries shopping done and headed home to prepare our dinner. The menu for the day is:

Swiss cheese fondue with assorted dippings:
- virginia ham
- green peppers & mushrooms
- crusted bread
- potatoes
- green apples
- green grapes

+ a bottle of Monkey Bay's dessert wine
+ a slice of Canele's triple chocolate cheesecake
+ chocolate truffles from Awfully Chocolate


It took us a little bit of time to prepare the assorted dippings and the pre-mixed cheese fondue but the end result was indeed very satisfying and quite a colorful sight! We also got to put to good use our fondue set that was purchased in Switzerland during our honeymoon in 2005. :)


Our Valentine's Day cheese fondue dinner!


The button mushroom dipping into the yummy cheese fondue


Canele's triple chocolate cheesecake; I like it, Lydia doesn't


Chocolate truffles from Awfully Chocolate; she likes it, but not me

The cheese fondue was very good with a tinge of white wine flavouring. The green peppers were a bit too strong for me, but Lydia likes it very much. The rest of the dips went very well with the cheese fondue and we cleaned out the whole pot! The dessert wine adds a a nice romantic touch to the dinner, though I found the wine a little too sweet. Plus it makes my face blush!

For the dessert, I very much liked the triple chocolate cheesecake, but not Lydia. When it comes to cheesecakes, we make a very good cheesecake benchmark index. If I like it, it means the cheesecake is mild and pleasant to the taste. If Lydia likes it, it means it is strong and overwhelming, haha!

After having the delicious cheesecake from Canele and a heavy dinner, the chocolate truffles was well, alrite.

But all in all, it was a very enjoyable and interesting Valentine's Day dinner! No lobster again for you this year, dear!

Oh! And we caught a midnight show at Tiong Bahru Plaza as well. New in Town, a light, sweet movie about a girl in a new place, finding love amidst all the uncertainty.


Thursday, 12 February 2009 - 11000km Clocked
My 1 yr 4 mths weekend Lancer car finally went for its 11000km check today. Being a weekend car, we had to wake up really early in the morning and have the car driven into Mitsubishi service centre by 7am. Oh man, having to wake up at 6am reminds me of my old days in Tetra Pak, haha!

After dropping the car off, we took a bus to Liang Court where we had a nice breakfast at McDonalds', having a morning chit chat over scrambled eggs, hash brown, tea and muffin. Once in a while, I guess it's nice to wake up early and start the day early. Makes you feel like you've got more time.

I picked up the car later after 7pm and yay, they gave the car a free car wash too! Well, the standard is not up to my washing standard, but I ain't gonna complain too much! The engine's mineral oil was changed to Shell's synthetic oil, supposedly good for the car. There were also some filters replacement and tyres rotation as well. I ain't no car mechanic, so whatever they say, I have to take their word for it.

Makes me wonder, if I'm a computer newbie sending my computer for repairs/servicing, would I also be just as clueless as when they say, "Bro, we've replaced your PATA 80GB harddisk with a SATA2 1TB harddisk due to bad sectors, upgraded your RAM to a 4GB DDR2 800MHz for better performance, and replaced your PSU as its power output is degrading. There will be an additional cost for the SATA cable and oh, a service fee of $10 for testing that your motherboard's CMOS lithium battery is in good order."


Sunday, 8 February 2009 - Lost in the World of Fallout 3
My apologies for the lack of updates recently.

One reason could be that my life is utterly boring and nothing interesting ever happen during the weekdays.

The other reason could be that I'm totally absorbed into the world of Fallout3!

In the post apocalypse world, one is given the absolute freedom to roam the huge, vast, post-nuclear terrain, affectionally known as the wasteland. Every action you make has an influence on the future and the characters around you. Discover new locations, take on new quests, play in 1st person perspective or 3rd-person perspective. Choose to be good and help the weak, or be evil and kill the helpless. This is one deeply immensive interactive and exploration game!

With a rating of 9.0 on Gamespot, you know this is one kick-ass game!


The heavily-armored Brotherhood of Steel soldier in the background


There's no time to get cosy with the bikini-clad female Raider


Yikes! A gargantuan Super Mutant Behemoth!!

It's a good thing my wife has her Hong Kong and Korean drama serials to keep her occupied. :P


Saturday, 7 February 2009 - Quality Time with my Car
Today, I spent like a total of 3 hours or so driving on the road in the car!

Firstly was a trip to City Harvest to attend my office colleague's (Leslie) wedding. And after that, my dear wife asked me to pick her up at her friend's condo at..... *drum roll...* .....Pasir Ris! Goodness!! That's one end of Singapore to the other!

From central to the West and then to the East, we then went south to the central area to Vivocity to pick up a birthday cake for Ah Jack, our dear Sotong's hubby. Since we're on the road already, we decided to just head up north to Ang Mo Kio to deliver the cake before coming back down again and back home!

Wow, when we finally got back to our homeground car park and I stepped out of the car, my legs really needed a stretch! In a matter of hours, I've covered the AYE, PIE, BKE, TPE, ECP and CTE!!


Sunday, 1 February 2009 - Lunch with JC Friends
The last time we met up was like 2 CNYs ago and wow, a lot has changed for my JC friends! Christina just gave birth to a baby girl (Faith) one month ago, and her little boy, Christian is so big already. Victor really pumped up his mass with gym workout and from his Facebook photos, he certainly is enjoying himself. It's a pity Cindy couldn't join us though.

 
Chris & Pat with their adorable kids              The part-time babysitters

We had a really good time chit chatting through the lunch and catching up with each other. Christian's a really adorable and intelligent boy and the young parents certainly had a big part to play, haha! Well, we should catch up again, instead of just annually!


Friends since 1993/4!


Saturday, 31 January 2009 - Lo Hei!
This year's CNY2009 lo hei dinner is at.... Jurong Country Club! My goodness... so far!!

Since we're heading to the "Far West", we decided to drop by Jurong Point for a lookie. Heard that there has been lots of changes and new extensions since our NTU days in 2001. Wow, the car park is certainly much bigger. And the new extension, JP2, is pretty cool! Funnily, the design is an exact replicate of JP1... I suppose it is done on purpose huh.

We met up with the rest of the relatives at Fu Lin Men Chinese restaurant @ Jurong Country Club. The food's so so and at $538++ per table, I think it is rather expensive. Well, what to do, it's a once a year affair and Chinese restaurants know that too.


The married couples table


Parents & cousins

Veron's parents coincidentally are regulars at the country club and opened bottles of wine for our tables and also invited us for a karaoke session later. To my surprise, the whole lot of us actually headed down to the karaoke room after dinner!

I don't do karaoke one leh! I rather go home play Fallout3, haha!! But cannot be a spoilsport, so followed along also and watch the rest sing. My dad chose a couple of Beatles songs and made me and J sing with him too, haha!

Well, though I don't really fancy karaoke, it was still quite fun doing it in a large group. For one thing, it certainly helps to improve and practice my chinese, heehee!


Karaoke session with relatives!


White theme it is, for today


Friday, 30 January 2009 - A Moment of LV Madness
"Let's go to the LV shop for a look to check out the price", she said. Ok, look look only...

We went to the LV shop at DFS @ Orchard after work as it is not too crowded there and they probably are still open at 9pm.

The little princess had a fun time looking through the range of LV bags and before long, she set her eyes on a small little torpedo-looking bag, called the Papillon 26. With a price tag of $1070.

And then, she said that I owed her a Kate Spade bag, last year's Christmas present, and a gift exchange for the Lego Town Plan that she bought me a week or so ago... all these add up together to exchange for the Papillon 26. ??!!?!?

Sigh. There are some things that money can't buy. For everything else, there's nothing like making your wife delightfully happy.


Louis Vuitton Papillon 26 (Product ID: N51304)

Hey, this little damier bag is about the same price as the high-tech computer desktop that we just got for my wife's sister! Where's the logic eh?


Tuesday, 27 January 2009 - Farewell Padang, Hello Singapore (Day 4: Padang)
A mere 4D/3N in Padang and this morning, we're on the plane back to Singapore already! With this trip coinciding with Chinese New Year and the short duration, I missed out on a lot of food! I miss all my soto food leh... heehee. :P


On the 50min TigerAirways flight back to Singapore


No pimple breakout surprisingly, just a silly hairstyle. :P

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And we came back in time for a CNY dinner at Uncle Nick's place too! As per my mum's side tradition, the day time is usually spent visiting each other and dinner is always at Uncle Nick's place.


Everyone's ready to do the yu sheng!


The traditional yellow fat noodle with curry... love it!


And Auntie Helen's kueh pati is our annual CNY favorite too!


Monday, 26 January 2009 - Happy Niu Year! (Day 3: Padang)
Happy Chinese New Year! Or in this year of the Ox, Happy Niu Year!!

As per Lydia's family tradition here, the whole family went over to the parent's place early in the morning to wish "gongxi gongxi" to the parents. When the formality is done, ang paos are handed out and everyone gets one, even the married ones (from the parents)!


This baby is naturally gifted in reaching out for ang paos!


Lydia's siblings, brother-in-laws and nieces & nephews

We went on a house visit before playing games with the niece and newphews and resting at home. Dinner was ta-paoed and we had it at home.


Yummy satay, Padang style

All too soon, it's our last night in Padang! This sure is a fast trip!


Sunday, 25 January 2009 - Rest & Relax (Day 2: Padang)
After breakfast, Esther took us to another hair salon where we had a really fantastic hair spa. The lady who attended to me had really strong arms and oooh, it just hits all the right spots on my head, my neck, and even includes the arms and the back especially. My back and hands were aching from Friday's spring cleaning exertions.

Lunch was.... curry fish head! My all-star favorite!!


A cluttered table means a hearty meal!


Fish head with tapioca leaves... simply heavenly


Throw in the rakik (ie. keropok), there truly isn't anything better


And it ain't at some fancy restaurant. No frills good food!

In the evening, we all gathered for the reunion dinner at home. We brought over japanese mushrooms, cuttlefish balls and fishballs for the steamboat.


Everybody wants a photo with the baby!


Fun to play with, when there's no strings attached, heehee


Saturday, 24 January 2009 - Day 1 in Padang!
We're in Padang! By God's grace, we managed to bring in a 22" LCD and a whole computer desktop without running into any issues with the custom officers! What a relief!!

I'll worry later about whether the delicate components survived the trip in the aircraft cargo hold, but for now, it's lunch time, nasi padang style! Miss the food here!


Lydia & I ate 4 fish in a single seating! Will never happen in Singapore!

After lunch, the lack of sleep was really killing me and I dozed off in the front passenger seat, waking up to find that we're at a mangosteen supplier shop. The hour long journey back again put me in slumber. :P

After getting home, Lydia's brother-in-law took me to the foot massage palour nearby. It was really nice and relaxing, though I think that their standard has dropped.

Next stop was for Es Durian, together with the family! Esther's baby is really chubby and adorable! You can't imagine that he is only 7 months!


Es Durian, a must-eat when in Padang


Esther & Calvin. Really chubby and cute!


Lydia with 2 mothers & her niece

Lydia's niece, Josephine, really liked her new hairstyle and wanted the same hairstyle, and so we went to the hairsalon. I decided to get a haircut here also since it is cheaper. Well... the style certainly turned out different...


Josephine getting her new haircut

In the evening, I checked on the computer and thankfully, it powered up fine. Yeah! The LCD gave us a scare when it couldn't power on. Turns out the power cable wasn't fully inserted, hehheh.


Friday, 23 January 2009 - Maid for a Day
With an early morning flight to Padang tomorrow morning, I took leave today for the annual spring cleaning of the home. How much work can it be to clean a 3-room flat huh?

Oh man, how wrong was I! From the moment I woke up at 9plus, I spent the whole day cleaning up the place! The shelves, the furnitures, the 2 fans which were so caked with dust that it took me an hour to clean both, the outside window panels, especially the ones under the corridor light, must have literally wiped off like a hundred dead bugs segments... Cleaned the car all by myself too. And after picking up Lydia for dinner, continued wiping away those pesky lizard droppings that lined the edge of the walls and finally vacumned and mopped the whole place.

At the end of the day, my hands were totally aching and sore! By the time we're finished packing for the trip, we slept at 3.30am! Totally dazed and tired!!


Thursday, 22 January 2009 - A Core2Quad DIY machine!
Lydia's sister and brother-in-law wanted to get a DIY machine from me, from Singapore, instead of from their local computer shop! Goodness... it's been ages since I assembled a PC and have lost touch with the latest info on computer parts. But after reading up Hardwarezone and its forums, doing my own research from the vendors' website and price and shops comparision, I came up with a list and costs of the items. And they wanted it! Even factoring the cost of transporting the heavy casing, insurance and lack of warranty, they trust my selection so much. :P

So after work, I rushed down to Sim Lim Square and popped into VideoPro to get the items:

Intel Core2Quad Q9550 (2.83GHz) CPU
Asus P5Q P45 chipset motherboard
Kingston 4GB (2x 2GB) DDR2 800MHz RAM
Western Digital Black Cavier 500GB SATA2 harddisk
XFX nVidia 9500GT 512MB PCIe graphics card
Asus DRW-22B1ST 22x SATA DVD writer
CoolerMaster 460W PSU
CoolerMaster Elite 335 casing

Total cost: $1067

Very value for money, I'd say, for a high-end Core2Quad machine! And VideoPro saved me the trouble of assembling the machine by assembling it for me, for free! Of course, there's nothing like the thrill of assembling it myself, but time is not a luxury I have as we'd be flying back to Padang very soon!

Oh, and I help them buy a Samsung 22" LCD (21.5" actually, model no: 2233SW) too, at only $248. LCD monitors sure are cheap nowadays!


Wednesday, 21 January 2009 - Once in a Blue Moon
3 days ago, my wife sprung a surprise of the year: she bought me a big Lego set outta the blue! Our chit chat with Soo Kee last Saturday must have brought out some sentimental feelings out of her from our early courtship days, heehee! :P

Unfortunately, she bought me the Republic Cruiser, which I already have! I'm sure I already told her before that I had bought it from Toy's R Us, when there was a 30% sale. :P

So today, we went down to BricksWorld @ Marina Square to exchange it for something else. It was quite fun shopping around for $190 worth of Lego present. Only problem is, the items that I really want are not available. In the end, I got the Town Plan, a 50th anniversary special edition set which I had planned to get in the near future.


Lego Town Plan (Item no: 10184)

Thanks dear!


Sunday, 18 January 2009 - Cinderella @ Esplanade Theatre
At my princess wife's request, we are off to the Esplanade Theatre to catch Cinderella; the girlie cutie fairy tale show. Well, once in a while, I don't mind going to the theatre to catch a theatre performance. Makes me feel more "arty-inclined", haha!

We were seated at the stall seats, so that my sweet wife can have a wonderful experience at the theatre. The performance was not too bad. It's a slight twist to the original Cinderella story. It was mesmerizing to see the actors in their colorful and fanciful costumes. At the end of the performance, my wife bought a cute little tee shirt with an imprint of the glass slipper in front. A fairy tale night I hope it was for her. :)


Awaiting the " glass slipper" curtains to rise


Saturday, 17 January 2009 - Tricked by My Wife
It was a perfect day and a perfect of perfect days for football. My futsal gears were packed and all ready for the 4pm game with my friends at East Coast Park. While I'm playing, my wife will visit her friend, Adeline Soh, who had just given birth and living in Joo Chiat area. Isn't that a lovely win-win situation...

The damsel soon remarked that Joo Chiat's roads were too complicated for her to drive on her own if she were to drop me off first at ECP. And she didn't want me to drop her off and intrude on the newly parents for 2 hours, no mdm...

Just a quick stop-over and we'll be on our way, she said. Ok. 15 minutes ought to be enough I thought. I pulled on my football jersey and a bermudas over my football shorts and we headed out at 3.30pm. We arrived at Sunshine Regency about 3.50pm and there was Adeline and Adrian with their cute little baby girl named.... gee, I forgot what's her name. Half my mind were thinking of my friends playing futsal now. :P


Adeline & Adrian's baby girl

I came to be very fascinated by the big, white clock in their living room and watch the time ticked by, with every second ebbing away my futsal playtime. Bumping my wife's knees with my knees only resulted in her asking to see more baby's photos!

Finally, she said that we better get going. It was 4.50pm. I thought about rushing down and playing for the last 1 hour. But lately our group has been getting larger and I'd at most get 2 play time on the pitch. At an average cost-sharing of $10 for the session, that would be $5 each time my futsal shoes gets on the pitch! What's more, we're picking up Soo Kee from the airport at 7.30pm.

Considering the limited play time, the cost, the inconvenience of washing up and then rushing to pick Soo Kee.... Forget it, I said. I'm not playing today. I can only blame myself for being tricked by my wife!

We ended up exploring Tanjong Katong area for a while and buying some stuffs before rushing home and then heading to the airport to pick Soo Kee. He smsed me this morning to say he wanted to eat the famous Geylang beef hor fun, and if I can pick him up, heehee. Sure, what are friends for... :)

On our way to Geylang Lorong 9 where the beef hor fun stall is, we (Soo Kee showed the way!) took a shortcut through Geylang Lorong 8 and oh my, there were lots of young chinese "girls" lining up along the narrow street in broad moonlight. It's only 8plus and they're out already and there's lots of guys wandering around also. Soo Kee... how you know these small roads so well....

We found a place to park near Lor 9, ordered the beef kway teow (hor fun), coffee pork ribs and toufu, and chit chat till 10pm or so before giving him a ride home to Jurong! Almost like going to Tuas, haha!



Sunday, 11 January 2009 - Early Reunion Dinner
We had an early Chinese New Year "reunion" dinner today, as Jason had to go for a leg operation next week, and we will also be in Padang this year for CNY.

My dad suggested this steamboat place in Golden Mile Tower, called Golden Mile Thien Kee Steamboat Restaurant. First time I'm in this building, haha! Oh my goodness, the car park.... the car park was one hell of an adventure! The passage way was narrow, the layout was like a labyrinth, and there are pillars everywhere in the middle of nowhere! Lydia was telling me to concentrate as I was laughing with amusement, heehee!

The restaurant was at the basement and wow, it is huge and packed! So many people down here! It's a pity the steamboat isn't a buffet. The food's so so. I'm so used to eating steamboat at my parent's home, where there's a nice abundance of quality food. But the satay was good. Better than Lau Pa Sat!


Jason & Fenny and my parents


Just the two of us


Saturday, 10 January 2009 - An Eventful Saturday
Poor Lydia. She's gotto do OT on a Saturday. We went for breakfast at Tiong Bahru Food Centre first before she went to work while I went home and played Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3! Some missions are easy, especially with the co-op play with an AI. But some missions are very tough and always on the defensive..

I have to pull myself off the seat to quickly bathe, pack and head to Sports Planet @ East Coast Park for the 3pm futsal session with my friends! Well, it turned out to be a disappointing session as my team lost all games, except for 2 wins. 2 sessions without a goal now, for me. Maybe cos I was playing in a more defensive position. Oh well.

After rushing home and bathing again, I quickly head out to pick Lydia from the office before coming home again (for her to bathe) and going out again to Gillman Village, where we finally have the chance to meet George and Corrine for dinner!

Dinner's at Little Bali Seafood Restaurant at Gillman Village, a remote cluster of restaurants off Alexandra Road. The laid-back atmosphere is quite nice and surprisingly, it was quite crowded. We had pumpkin prawns, braised pork, salted crab and vege. The prawns were very nice! You can be sure they're really good, cos I ain't no prawn lover and I still liked it! The braised pork was a heavenly delight, the meat (and fat) simply dissolve in your mouth. The crab was very unique and tasty with its batter, but I think I still like to eat solid crab meat.


Pumpkin prawns! Superb!!


Corrine & George


The two of us

The food aside, it was really good meeting up with the two of them again. We had a really good time chit chatting with them and later even drove down (they just got a new car too!) to McDonalds' at West Coast Park to continue with our chit chat until 11pm!


Thursday, 8 January 2009 - Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Today's my last day of reservist and it's back to the office desk job again from tomorrow.

During my last reservist, I finish watching 4 seasons of the drama series, 24, heehee. This time round, I finish watching season 1 and 2 of the new drama series: Terminator, The Sarah Connor Chronicles!

If you're a fan of the Terminator movies, this is a must-watch. Season 1 picks up after Terminator 2: Judgement Day. Sarah and John Connor must evade Cromartie, a T-888 Terminator sent to kill him. Fortunately, they have Cameron Phillips, a female Terminator sent back to protect them. Together, they must put together the missing puzzles and destroy Skynet before Judgement Day arrives.


John Connor, Cameron Philips and Sarah Connor

Season 3 goes on air in the US on 13 Feb! Can't wait for it to be available!
By the way, 24, season 7 goes on air on 11 Jan too! Woo hoo!!


Thursday, 1 January 2009 - Happy New Year!
Happy New Year!

Wow, it is the year 2009 already.

In 2004, we applied for our Pinnacle flat.
In 2005, we got married.
In 2006, we experienced what Christmas was like in Sweden & Denmark.
In 2007, we got our first car, and experienced snow for the first time in Hokkaido.
In 2008, I watched a Champion's League match "live", Lydia colored her hair.

I thought of making a new year resolution, but I realise, out of my 5 new year resolutions for 2008, I probably only fulfilled 2 of them. Besides, we're now told new year's resolutions can be bad for you.

Hmm, what shall I say for 2009?

Life is short. Every year, it passes by and you grow 1 year older. 10 years ago, the world was worried about the Millenium bug. 10 years has since passed.

What have you done in this 10 years? What have I done in this 10 years?

Fight? Quarrel? Get angry? Get upset? Hurt someone? Be miserable?
Smile? Laugh? Love someone? Forgive? Be happy?

God gave us life and we should cherish it. No matter the doom and gloom forcasted for 2009, I will strive to make it a happy year for myself, and for the love ones around me.

Which is why we say, happy new year!


Wednesday, 31 December 2008 - New Year Eve Countdown!
It's the last day of 2008! Time really flies by in the blink of an eye.

We met up for lunch with Soo Kee for pork chop curry rice @ Yong Siak Street, located in the narrow streets of Tiong Bahru. I didn't even know this place existed until he took us here, haha. The food is pretty good! The curry was spicy (but SK and Lydia said no...), and the pork chop with curry and potatoes were very nice. The price was a bit on the high side, for a coffeeshop lunch. Including drinks, 3 elcairs and fried toufu with minced meat, it came up to $32. Nonetheless, I think we'll eat here once in a while cos it really is nice. Heh, Soo Kee said he misses the Tiong Bahru area...


Pork chop curry rice! Yummy!

We went back to our home later as Soo Kee needed to get online to take his PMP (Project Management Professional) exam by end of 2008... which is today, haha! By the time he was done, it was time for our dinner appointment with the rest of our TP friends. Venue: Coca Restaurant @ International Building (Orchard).

Hmm, some of the guys couldn't make it and in the end, it was us, Soo Kee, Desmond and Sherry. Ironically, the one who suggested to have steamboat dinner followed by karaoke isn't here! Anyway, we still had a good time eating and chatting and enjoying steamboat cooking.


Steamboat dinner! The soup was very tasty!


Fellowship of the Steamboat...

After dinner, now that there's only 4 of us (Desmond left earlier), I managed to persuade Soo Kee to go watch fireworks instead of karaoke, heehee! We parked at Riverwalk before making our way to The Central for ice cream, and then to Boat Quay and finally to Marina Boulevard's open field. where it was less crowded (thousands still...) and provided an excellent and unobstructed view of Marina Bay, where the fireworks will be. Only minus point is the dusty ground which we gingerly thread through and found ourselves a good spot.


Soo Kee, Sherry, Lydia, Joel

At the stroke of midnight, the skies above Marina Bay were illuminated by a dazzling array of fireworks of all colors and "patterns"! It was really beautiful and awesome!! Woo hoo!! Happy New Year!!!


"The skies over Marina Bay have been illuminated..."


Awesome fireworks for NYE2008!


Watching the dust of 2008 and the dawn of 2009!


Sunday, 28 December 2008 - A Good Weekend @ Sentosa
It's always nice to sleep on fluffy white hotel pillows and bedsheets, and of course the bed. :)

We dragged outselves off the bed and had breakfast at 10am. The hotel had a splendid landscaped swimming pool, but it's a pity we didn't have the time to dip in there or to go for another round in the jacuzzi, as we have to check out at 12pm. Late checkout was denied. Hmph. Oh well, it has been a really nice weekend getaway! Sayonara!



 


Saturday, 27 December 2008 - 2D/1N @ Sentosa!
Today's my department team building outing at Sentosa! Barely made it just in time to utilise the budget for 2008, heehee! I "volunteered" to organise the event after I asked my boss if we would be having one this year, haha.


Bridge to Southern Most Point @ Sentosa

Meeting time was 10.30am and the first event was the LaserTag combat skirmish shootout! The organisers (Combat Skirmish Singapore) laid out all the weapons on the sandy beach and briefed us on the use of the weapons and the weapon tracking system. Very cool! The kids took the light-weight 400g Elipse pistol, while the older ones have the choice of the Talon, XM22 or the Charger (3kg!).


The future elite female soldier?

We were divided into 4 teams and pitted against each other, hiding behind bushes, rocks and coconut trees! Each session lasted only 20 minutes, but it was pretty tiring! Gotto run, duck, hide, stoop, squat... what a workout but very fun!

The team with the most kills wins, but individual scores were unfortunately not tracked. The whole event ended about 1 1/2 hours later. My team won both sessions with a narrow margin. :)


Let the fun begins!

Lunch was at Samundar, an Indian restaurant located along Palawan Beach. The air-con provided a cool relief to the afternoon sun! We ordered chicken briyani and mutton naan, which unfortunately was quite a disappointment. Though the price was not too ex, the portion was totally measly! 4 tiny chicken cubes, and the chicken wasn't very tasty also. But at least the naan was nice.

We checked into Siloso Beach Resort at 3pm and into our Roof Garden suite! The room was small but cosy, with romantic nettings over the bed.The main highlight is the private stairways that lead up to the open air private jacuzzi upstairs! Cool! Unfortunately, it is not totally private, as one can still peer over the edge and look across into the neighbour's area (Gabriel will attest to that, haha!). So, no hanky panky allowed upstairs... :P


Level 1 of the Roof Garden Suite @ Siloso Beach Resort


Level 2, where the private jacuzzi is!


A squirrel with its corn, against the evening sun rays

Our group gathered again at 4pm, intending to go on the Luge and Skyride, but the queue was horrendous and we aborted the idea. We had ice cream instead before breaking up and went free and easy.

Dinner was at 6pm at Trapizza, an Italian alfresco restaurant located at Siloso Beach, near Rasa Sentosa. We ordered 10 pizzas, 8 pastas & a salad, at the first order, and shared and passed the food around. Quite fun! It was very nice dining by the beach definitely!


Pizza & pasta foodfest!


Group photo at the beach

After dinner, it was time for a soak in the jacuzzi! Under the clear open night sky above, it was indeed a very wonderful and relaxing experience.


Night view from our suite, Cafe del Mar in foreground


Thursday, 25 December 2008 - Christmas with Lydia's Mum
Merry Christmas!

We didn't go to church today as gotto pick Lydia's mum from the airport. She would be staying in Singapore for one night before going to Vietnam with her friends for holiday.

Whenever Lydia's family are in Singapore, they ain't interested in sight-seeing. It's either shopping or eating, haha. We went to a money changer in Chinatown to get Vietnamese Dong, before going to Marina Square for Kenny Rogers, with its yummy cheese macaroni and corn muffin.

For dinner, we went to Two Chefs Eating Place @ Commonwealth, a zi char stall which is just a short distance down from our favorite beehoon-mee chicken wing stall. It's my first time here, though Lydia has been here with her colleagues before. It was actually featured in the newspaper some time ago also. We ordered black pepper deer meat (tender, but a bit too sweet), deep fried yam stick (nice, but too starchy when eating with rice) and fu yong "dan" (very nice, I even ate most of the prawns).

This year, we didn't have any Christmas ham or turkey. It felt a bit strange. Due to my reservist duty, I don't have the holiday-feeling at all, as it doesn't matter whether it's a public holiday, weekday or weekend.

Let's hope they don't call me back in Dec again next year! I had to forgo a business trip to Dubai even because of my reservist...


Wednesday, 24 December 2008 - Christmas Eve Countdown
Oh great... 12 months in a year and I get called back for reservist over Christmas and New Year. And I'm duty today lor... sianz...

Soo Kee and the gang are all heading to Dragonfly for the countdown. By the time I'm done with my duty, it was close to 9pm already. Tired and hungry also, we decided not to join them. After picking Lydia up, we headed to The Central for dinner at Marutama Ramen. This is still our favorite ramen restaurant, with its superb char siew and authentic ramen.


Char siew that melts in your mouth. Heavenly!

After dinner, we went walking along the Singapore River and to Clarke Quay, where there were thousands of Christmas revellers too! It was quite fun being in the midst of the joyful atmosphere!


Along Singapore River with Clarke Quay in background


At Clarke Quay fountain

We left the place about 11pm and didn't wait for any countdown celebration. Well, we have each other to do our own celebration at home. :)

Merry Christmas!!


Monday, 22 December 2008 - Is there Six Sense?
The coincidence is remarkable.

Yesterday night, out of the blue, I suddenly thought to myself that it's been a long time since a flying cockcroach invaded our home. It must have been at least a year when that cockcroach flew in through the kitchen window, got so disoriented that it smacked itself twice against the wall and landed flat on the floor upside down.

And tonite... Lydia and I were watching TV in the living room when I heard the distinct buzzing sound of a flying cockcroach. Lo and behold, I caught a glimpse of it behind the living room window curtains before it headed to the ground. I peered below the TV table and there it was, one big, ugly, cockcroach. Only this time, it wasn't upside down.

To cut the story short, thank God for Baygon!

But it was fascinating to think about the coincidence. Was it just pure coincidence? Or was it an extrasensory preception (ESP) experience? A precognition...


Sunday, 21 December 2008 - Playing Santa Claus
We're loaded up with 4 big presents but none of them is for me, boo hoo! Oh wait... I already got my 22" LCD as my Christmas present from my wife. :P For her, she didn't want the shoes, didn't want a Coach bag or a Blue Label bag. She wanna save the "ticket" for a "big ticket" purchase next year!

Anyway, we got Sok Fung and Jack a present each as they've been really nice. A pop-corn machine and a set of cutie walkie-talkies. For my nieces Vannis and Kenzie, we met up with Cheung and Veron for lunch at Causeway Point (Oh my! Very far flung place! :P) and passed them the presents. Lydia had chosen a sticker machine and err.... some pink box present which little girls like.

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And in the evening, we went to Gabriel & Valentine's Christmas potluck BBQ, with our load of Sunshine garlic bread. Andrew Woon, Dennis, Boon Chong, Cheng How, Boon Teck & Novita, and G&V's family were there as well. It was great catching up with them again, but we couldn't stay long as tomorrow's my first day of reservist. 3 weeks no need to think about office work loh, heehee!


Saturday, 20 December 2008 - Color Me Brown
After almost 3 decades of rich black hair, Lydia decided to color her hair!

We went to our Ann Ng, our regular hairstylist at Head-Quarters Salon @ Raffles Hotel and she was thrilled to see us again, heehee. We haven't been there for like 6 months, haha. I got my hair cut and colored also as I'd be on reservist for the next 3 weeks.

After like 2 1/2 hours, I got a different hairstyle which I wonder if I would be able to restyle it myself at home, haha. But more importantly.... who's that girl grinning and smiling at me, haha!! What a radical change to my wife! The hair was overall colored a dark shade of brown, and then highlighted in different lighter shades of brown for the top half for her to get accustomed to the new color. I think it looks great, but I'm still reeling from the shock of the new color, and to add on to that, her new Japanese-like hairstyle and look! Heehee!

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In the evening, we had a Christmas gathering at Kuan Han's home. Wai Seng & Elaine, Adeline Loh & boyfriend, Desmond, Sherry, Kelvin, Ying Kiat, hubby & boy boy and Chuen Kiat were there. And Soo Kee too, who's back from Sweden!


Lazing around in Kuan Han's home...


Lydia in her new hair color!

It was fun catching up with the people again, as almost everyone were Tetra Pak or ex Tetra Pak staff, heehee. We also had a $10 gift exchange just for fun!

Soo Kee was craving for durian and some of us accompanied him to Geylang to fulfill his craving. It's a pity it's not the durian season now, so the durians weren't very good.

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On another note, Blackburn now has a new manager! Sam Allardyce! And in his first game in charge, Blackburn won 3-0 against Stoke! It's the first victory since 27 Sep! Woohoo!


Friday, 19 December 2008 - IT Christmas Dinner
It's my company's IT departments Christmas dinner party today! Somehow, I was "volunteered" to be the representative for Trading IT and for the past 2 weeks, our committee worked together to plan this event, for the venue and the games. Venue: RedDot Brewhouse @ Dempsey Hill.

We arrived at Red Dot about 6.30pm to get ready for the event. Unfortunately, it has rained in the late afternoon and they had decided to house us indoors rather than the private outdoor area on the 2nd level.

The 30+ guests started arriving about 7pm, consisting of staff from my department, as well as Chemicals, Marine and a few retirees. The owner of the brewhouse gave us a tour of the brewery also and explain the process of beer making! Interesting!

Dinner was a special buffet, consisting of mostly finger "class" food, but it was still not too bad. With all of us seated in three long tables, it was a chance to mingle and talk to other people.

Game time! The first game we played was Taboo, where a player had to describe a word or phase without using any of the 5 "taboo" words and the team mates had to guess it correctly. It was quite fun as 2 teams crowded around a table and squared off, heehee! The winning team got a small present of course.

The 2nd game is to decorate a Christmas tree, using the decorations provided. Separated into 3 teams, my team decided to convert the beer tower on a round table into a Christmas tree, haha. Mohan also used the leftover decos to dress himself up as Santa Claus! The other teams had a male and female colleague decorated into a Christmas tree! The winner was... the female Christmas tree!

The last event was the gift exchange, where everyone brought along a gift valued around $20. I bought a 4GB thumbdrive for the gift exchange, and in return, I had a... some sort of a glass container, its purpose I couldn't really figure out.

The event came to a close around 10plus and from the response, I think we did a fairly good job and everyone was in jolly and happy mood! Yay! Well, I certainly enjoyed myself and also for being part of the organising commitee! Merry Christmas in advance!!

*Will pose photos if I ever do get my hands on them!*


Thursday, 18 December 2008 - The Hunt for the Botak Jones
With a $5 Botak Jones voucher expiring in a few days time, we roped in my dad for dinner at Botak Jones (minimum spent of $25 required). After picking him up (my mum had something on already), we went to an unknown outlet at Toa Payoh. As usual, my Samsung Omnia's GPS failed me after a while, but no matter, the route that was etched in my head was sufficient to navigate me to 970A Toa Payoh North. It was located in a canteen of an industrial area.

We ordered the cajun chicken, the ribeye steak and the sirloin steak. The portion was massive as usual, but most important of all, the food was good! Service was great too. It's not too crowded here also. Can come here again next time!


Wednesday, 17 December 2008 - Blackburn Manager Sacked
Under the astounding leadership of Paul Ince, Blackburn was on a run of 3 wins in 17 matches, topping the table in the reverse-order.... 2nd from bottom!

It was with a huge sigh of relief when they finally sacked him. The club was going no where under him. Now let's turn the ship around like what Newcastle and Tottenham has done!

"We're too good to go down!"


Sunday, 14 December 2008 - Legoland in Malaysia!
Hey! Legoland is coming to a place close to home! In Johor Bahru, Malaysia! According to The Straits Times, the theme park will be ready in 2013! Cool!!

The Legoland theme park will be in the Iskandar development zone, an ambitious plan that will turn JB into a hip residential, entertainment and industrial zone.

Well, I dunno whether the Malaysian government will be successful in this mega project, but I sure hope Legoland will open its doors in 2013! I'll definitely be among the first to be there!

Come on, Malaysia! Malaysia boleh!


Sunday, 7 December 2008 - JB Trip with the Sotongs!
It's been a long time since we went to JB and definitely the first time that we're going there with Sok Fung and Jack! My wife actually made me sleep early yesterday to conserve my energy for today's trip, haha!

Arranging to meet at 10.30am at Kranji MRT, we drove down and made our way to the Singapore Turf Club. Well, the Singapore Turf Club's website had stated that parking is $5 per entry. But as I approached the pay booths, I was worried that it might not be opened yet! Thankfully, one single lane was lighted with a green light and to our relief, there is someone in there to collect payment and we got in.

This is the first time we're in Singapore Turf Club actually, haha! As Christians, how can go turf club, heeheehee! Hey, some more on a Sunday morning, hahaha! Well, we're not skipping church, cos church service today is cancelled as the congregation has gone for a church camp in Malaysia.

After figuring out our way out of the turf club, we met up with Sok Fung and Jack at the Kranji MRT station, tested our 2-way walkie talkie sets (they wanted it, heehee!), and then hopped onto SBS bus 170 to cross the causeway.

The ride was fast and smooth. We cleared Singapore immigration fairly quickly. But at Malaysia immigration, there was a shocking long queue! We got stuck there for like 1 1/2 hours! It was such a relief when we finally cleared the area. I thought the car jam was horrendous, but this surely takes the cake.

City Square was our first stop, where we had lunch at Sushi King. I felt like eating sushi and thought the food in JB would be cheaper. It wasn't really cheaper actually. Salmon sushi costs RM4, which works out to be almost the same in Singapore, the most just a bit cheaper. Moreover, the quality wasn't as good as Sakae Sushi. But nonetheless, having not eaten sushi for months, it still was satisfying for me.


Jack & Sok Fung at Sushi King, shooting a Yacult commercial...

We roamed the shops in City Square for a while before splitting up to continue roaming while Sok Fung and Jack took a breather at Starbucks. The cute, yellow walkie talkies came in handy when we used it to communicate and locate each other, heehee! Saves us money on mobile roaming charges!

We took a taxi to... Holiday Plaza (of coz...!)!! This is a really great place to.... erm, buy.... erm... well, we had kaya toast and teh at the groundfloor coffeeshop! That's it! I can assure you that there is nothing illegal in my bag. Of coz... :)

After shopping, we wanted to bring them to Taman sri terbau where there's the fantastic rundown hawker centre that serves great zi cha BBQ stingray and stuffs. But the two fellows were quite tired and also not hungry yet. So... in the end, we quickly zipped back to Singapore and had dinner at Botak Jones @ Ang Mo Kio! Hahaha!!

It was Lydia's first time eating at Botak Jones (so kampong... her...) and she really liked her Botak Burger. I had the special catch of the day, which I think was an Alaskan fillet or something. The servings were very generous and the fries were good, though it could do with more seasoning.


My Alaskan fillet, I think


The yummy Botak burger

Overall, it was a great dinner meal to wrap up the fun day we had today! Must have another Sotong outing again someday!


Friday, 5 December 2008 - Dinner with Seng Seng
Even though Wai Seng and Elaine live a few minutes walk away from us, it has always been difficult to meet up for dinner!

Today, we waylaid him few days in advanced and booked a dinner date with him (his wife got away, alas...). Dinner's at Adam Road Food Centre's nasi lemak! Well, he haven't tried it before, so we made sure he didn't miss out on this simple pleasure in life. :D Hopefully he likes it!

After dinner we went to the Redhill Food Centre for the Mickey Mouse dessert stall. Wai Seng said the stall is always closed when he goes. We've been very lucky so far and behold! The luck is with us today also, haha! He finally got to eat the cheng tung!


Sunday, 30 November 2008 - 22" of Pure Ecstasy
The first time I saw it, it captivated my heart. No others came close. And it was on a special offer. With its sleek black glossy frame, it was simply too much to resist and I grabbed it!

The Samsung 2253LW 22" widescreen LCD monitor is simply a beauty! At only $290!

Resolution: 1680 x 1050
Brightness: 300 cd/m²
Contrast ratio: 8000:1
Response time: 2ms
Dimension: 513.7 x 400.3 x 219mm




I moved aside my old 17" LCD which had been giving me resolution problems and laid down the 22" on my desk. Oh boy, the width of the screen filled up 3/4 of the width of my desk! It was massive! From a resolution of 1024 x 768, it jumped right up to 1680 x 1050! In an instant, my desktop icons which were almost filling the whole wallpaper suddenly took up a tiny 1/3 of the screen only!

Actually, I used to have reservation about wide-screen LCDs. I thought it would distort the pictures but it looks fine. Conventional screens are more costly also. My old 17" cost me $600 back in Nov 2004!!

The best thing is, this is my early Christmas present from my wife! Yay! :D


Saturday, 29 November 2008 - A Trip to Autobacs
Autobacs.... oh man, it's the shopping haven for car motorists! It took me more than a year sine I got my car to make the trip though, haha!

We went to the Autobacs store at Ubi View. It's a bit ulu, nested in the middle of the Ubi industrial area and in the vicinity of the Traffic Police headquarters. But wow, what you find inside is anything but ulu. They stock a huge variety of car stuffs, from car accessories to car tyres.

We were there shopping for a suitable wheel cleaner (yes... I clean my wheels too. Tyres and wheels are not the same, btw), a sticky mat for the dashboard (so that my 2 mobile phones dun fly away when I bank too sharply) and... LED lights for the car interior. :D Cool mah!

Unfortunately, they were out of stock of blue LED lights, so Mitsu's not going to get his night reading lights installed tonite. But still, it sure was a very fun trip to Autobacs. :)


Sunday, 23 November 2008 - No Payne, No Game
Another game completed! Max Payne 2! Well, after completing Company of Heroes on 24 Oct, I did have a few weeks of rest, okay... installed the game on 17 Nov, and completed it within the week, heehee. :D

May Payne's a great game. The first game had my dad frowning on the disturbing and haunting baby's cries. But it is and still is the only game that features the signature slow-motion, bullet time game play. May Payne 2 carried on from the adventures from the 1st game. Expect comic book style intros (ie. Sin City), sleek and cool game play and dialogues, mafia characters, enemy SWAT teams, plot twists... basically, get ready for some non-stop action!


Max Payne & Mona Sax


Comic book humor intros


No one touches my Lego toys, you hear?


Saturday, 22 November 2008 - Football Mania!
We headed early in the morning to UberSports futsal arena at East Coast Park before 9am... for the Shell Club futsal competition! Join for fun only lah. :P

Was quite a large turnout, with like 20 teams! We had two teams, and in my team were Gabriel, Kelvin, Rahim and Jason. The first game we won 2-1. Unfortunately, the next game we lost 4-0. Well, our opponent had a walkover and the referee refused to give us a rest and made us play immediately. The 3rd game we lost 3-1. I was playing as the goalie for the 2nd half and couldn't keep out the 3rd goal which packs so much power that though I got a block on it, it still went into the net. My finger feels sprained and I'm probably going to suffer more in days to come.

The last game was quite hilarious. We knew we were out of the qualifying, and our opposing team were out also. They weren't very good and so we thought they would be easy meat. Let's just have a fun game, we told them. Letting our guards down and everyone pushing into attack, we were shell-shocked to find ourselves 3-0 down! Fortunately, our pride and determination crawled us back and when the final whistle blew, it was 3-3, haha!

Our 2nd team fared much better, topping their group. We learnt much later that they actually went on and won the competition!! Steady!!! Wow, they beat the likes of the fearsome Bukom teams, who turned up in coordinated jerseys and had group warm-up exercises...

With the weekend coupon utilised already, it would be a waste to head home. We went to the popular Karu's Indian Banana Leaf restaurant at Bukit Gombak, opposite MINDEF. It's been such a long time since Lydia ate here, when she was working in MINDEF. The food was good! Very interesting and a unique dining experience. Price is a little high but once in a while, it's alrite. Plus there's free flow of briyani rice and papdam!


Excellent stuff at Karu's Indian Banana Leaf restaurant

Next stop is at The Premier Pitch @ Turf City.... for more futsal fun with my friends, heehee! Hardcore ya, haha! :P

First time here actually. The pitch is shorter in length, but wider in width. Makes it quite a strange playing area, not really used to it. But the pitch itself is very good. Unfortunately, under the hot sun at 2pm, the white canvas roof simply couldn't keep out the heat and it was like an oven in there. I managed to score one goal for the team, latching on to a through pass before dispatching it into the net with a right footed shot past Boon Chong. But other then that, our team were quite lazy in moving about, in contrast to the spirited challenges of Tzin Mein, and Cheng How, who easily was the top scorer today!


Boy, it's hot watching the uncles play!


Saturday, 15 November 2008 - Weekend Getaway
10 days after our wedding anniversary, we're still celebrating the event, heehee!

In the afternoon, we checked into Orchard Hotel, which is one of the hotels chains that Lydia's company owns. As a staff benefit, the room was ours for $60++ only! Best of all, we got a room in the new wing too!


Room 704 at Orchard Hotel. Nice!


A bathtub-bedroom view. Kinky!

In the evening, we went to Black Angus Steakhouse just across the road at Orchard Parade Hotel, where we had a very hearty meal of sirloin steak and ribeye steak. The restaurant was very crowded with Eurasians/tourists, haha. Well, maybe that's why there's no free starter bread here, but in any case, we were glad we didn't waste our stomach space eating bread cos the steaks were yummy!


It's nice to see my skinny wife enjoying her steak


My Black Angus ribeye steak


Christmas light-up at Orchard!

Wrapping up our day, we caught a late night movie, Tropic Thunder, at Shaw Centre. Oh man, this is one hilarious action-packed movie, haha! With Ben Stiller and company in cast, it was non-stop action and laughter. Most notably of all, catch Tom Cruise in his role as Les Grossman, the studio bigshot. His acting is so totally real, and funny!


Sunday, 9 November 2008 - Starship Troopers Disappointment
I'm a great fan of the original movie. Loved the patriotism, the cheesy dialogue, the one liners and the casts.

With the Saturday blown away as I had to go back to work, I thought what better way to unwind on a Sunday by installing and playing Starship Troopers, the PC game (2005). The reviews sounded bad but I thought my love for the movie and will be sufficient to sustain me through.

I couldn't have been more dead wrong.

The graphics was simply horrendous, but I gritted my teeth and mouse and stuck through. But just two missions into the game, I simply gave up. I could bear with the poor graphics. But it was too much to tolerate the absolutely moronic engineer (that I was assigned to protect) who charged head-on into hordes and hordes of bugs. Against all sanity and curses, I charged in after him with weaponry that's good enough to take out a small group of bugs at distance, but totally ineffective at sardines-in-a-can mass orgy distance. The outcome was either I died surrounded by slashing bugs while covering the engineer, or the engineer died while I protect my own ass.

I have never, ever, given up playing a computer game before, so it really had to be something to make me give up.

How am I to recover from the damages that the stupid game has done to my Starship Troopers? Starhub TV coincidentally is releasing Starship Troopers 2 & 3 on DemandTV... :)


Wednesday, 5 November 2008 - 3rd Year Wedding Anniversary!
Oh wow! We're married for 3 years already!

To my wife, for the wonderful years we've spent together, thank you for your love in understanding my:

Insensitivity - Blur like sotong sometimes, me...

Laziness - The dishes don't need to be soaked that long actually
Untidiness - Even Luke Skywalker and Optimus Prime are getting crowded out of my computer desktop
Vroom vroom - I'll try to be a safety driver again (but could you ask the uncle to drive a tad faster?)

Yodeling - Sleep "yodeling", that is. You can always give me a poke... :P
Odd sleeping hours - I'm an owl person, but... 11pm to bed! Got it! ;)
Unyielding love - For my computer, my Lego, and of course, you!

------------------------------------

After work, we went to Gyu-Kaku @ Chijmes for dinner to celebrate our anniversary. We ordered one plate of wagyu karubi (oyster blade), wagyu rump cap, wagyu nakaochi, ro-su, karubi, harami, buta karubi, a small bibimbap, caesar's salad and a bowl of rice! Woo! That's 3 plates of wagyu beef, 3 plates of normal beef and 1 plate of pork belly!

Ooh... it's really yummy and heavenly!


The wagyu karubi and wagyu rump cap. Superb!


Nothing like fresh raw meat on the charcoal grill


Celebrating our anniversary at Gyu-Kaku

The normal beef ($6.90 - $11.90 a plate) were totally no match for the delectable wagyu beef ($17.90 - $20.90 a plate). After such a splendid and thorough feast where we tried out so many variety of the beef, we really have a good knowledge of how each weird-sounding name tastes like and its worth! I'm really glad we didn't opt for the Set meal, heehee. We'll definitely go ala-carte again next time. :)

Damage: $130+

It was worth the celebration and treat! :D


Friday, 31 October 2008 - Our Halloween Celebration
I was tempted to celebrate Halloween at the Night Safari, where they had a Halloween theme. But the price tag of $50/pax was a quite an effective scare factor and we decided to celebrate it by.... buying popcorns from Golden Village and watching a DVD horror flick at home! Heehee!

I excitedly dug through my "bought already but no time to watch" DVD collections and after careful consideration, I presented the following movies to my wife to choose:

1) The Village - an isolated village with spooky creatures in the surrounding woods
2) Constantine - yes, the one with Keanu Reeves. I haven't watched the beginning yet...
3) Silent Hill - the frightening town of Silent Hill awaits the next victim, in this game movie
4) Hostel 2 - Lust lures the victims to a horrifying death in Hostel 1. There's no free ride, guys...
5) Saw - I know Saw 5 is out already, but I haven't watched a single one yet!

My wife went through the list as I gave my brief synopsis of each movie and explained to her of what frightful horrors awaits in each movie. After a long deliberation, she chose.....

Harold & Kumar: Escape From Guantanamo Bay

???!!

Oh well... Guantanamo Bay is quite a scary place for the 2 guys.
Especially the cockmeat sandwich! *shivers!*


Saturday, 25 October 2008 - Boon Teck & Novita's Wedding!
If the Singapore football federation was anywhere as sincere and determined as Boon Teck, we would have had a football team soccer in World Cup 2010. As it was, Goal2010 came 2 years early for Boon Teck as the wedding bells rang for Novita and him today!

The wedding dinner was held at Hyatt Hotel and we had fun catching up with some "lost" friends. There was Andrew (aka Birdman) & San San (yes, the baby do exists!), Weishun, Kylie & a terror baby, Brian, Cheok Kai, Eric Yong, Louis.... it was great to catch up with them again!


Our table of friends from JC to Uni


My hostel roommate's a daddy! With his adorable little baby!


With my beautiful wife... the babyless couple

After the dinner, we hung around and then gategrashed the bridal's suite! It's a pity there ain't no sabo session, like what he did at our wedding!


The groom's guys and the bride's girls


Aww... this is sooo sweet!


The bridal suite gatecrashers!


A totally cool photo of the bride and groom with their wedding cake


Lots of laughter... at the expense of Boon Chong, heehee!


Friday, 24 October 2008 - Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts!
I was on leave for 2 days after coming back from Bali. It's always nice to take at least a day's rest to re-adjust to life after holiday. Perfect for me to play computer games, muhahaha!

I completed all 17 missions of Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts, heehee! I would say it's not as easy as the original game, but the tank battles were fantastic! The Germans with the King Tiger tank and the Jagpanther packs a tremendous amount of armour firepower and rolled over anything in my way. Needless to say, when I had to play the British forces and pitted my Sherman tanks against the almighty German tanks in the final mission, they were lambs to the slaughter literally! My tin-can tanks were blown apart with just 2 shots from the enemy!


Lead the fight with the British Commandoes!


The Sherman Firefly tanks face-off with a German Jagpanther


A damaged Sherman tank plays hide-and-seek with the Tiger tank


The men ran for their lives when these two counter-attacked

Hmm, now that I'm done and dusted with Company of Heroes..... what's next? :)
Say, Max Payne is screening on the big screen now.... :P


Wednesday, 22 October 2008 - Bali Holiday! Day 5
Our last day in Bali! This has been a really fantastic holiday so far. Very relax, free and easy! We get to see everything from the sun and the beach, the buzz of Kuta, and the sunsets and attractions of Bali. Food is not too bad either!

With an afternoon flight to catch, we decided to spend the morning at the resort itself and explore Legian Beach.


Paradise on Legian Beach


No place to suntan here

Opting not to pay for the deck chairs on the beach, we went back to our resort compound and found a nice spot facing the beach to do some suntanning. I was enjoying the morning sun but my sun-adverse wife soon turned turtle and flipped over on her back, complaining "hot... hot...".


Ahh... this is life


Photo our balcony before checking out

The driver picked us up at 11am and our final destination in Bali was eat the local babi guling (suckling pig) food, which is a must-try in Bali. At Lydia's 2nd sister recommendation to skip the tourist-popular stall, we ventured to another stall which is... wow, really non-touristy.


Is this the babi guling stall?


You pig head, you!


Our babi guling special

I like pork, but... there were some stuffs that I wonder what they are, haha! The pork meat, roasted skin pig and vege were nice, though cold. The fish satay stick was ok. The rest of the food, which I suspect are "lap cheong", fried pig skin and some intestine-stuff, we didn't really touch them. The chilli was super power though, and I enjoyed it very much, given that most Balinese food was lacking in chilli power.


Finding out what we had eaten, after we ate, of course...

We bid farewell to Paolo at the airport and thanked him for his excellent service during our stay in Bali. Though he doesn't talk much, (which is what I like instead of having to entertain the driver, haha), there's sincerity and honesty in him, like when he advised us to avoid certain places, to be careful of, and where admission charges can be waived or chargeable at domestic fares only. Thanks dude!

Farewell Bali! We certainly have very fond memory of our stay here!


Our SQ Boeing 777 plane waiting to take us home

 
The evening sky                                       Lydia engrossed in the in-flight entertainment


Another lovely sunset, this time from the plane!


Our Bali souvenirs and stuffs!


Tuesday, 21 October 2008 - Bali Holiday! Day 4
Today's another long day on the road! The common misconception is, what's there to see in Bali besides the beach? Actually, there is plenty! Destination: Lake Bratan @ Bedugul, located north of our resort hotel in the centre of Bali island and high up in the mountains.

Along the way, we dropped by at the Bali bombing memorial. Six years have passed since it happened on 12 Oct 2002. A huge star on the road which we drove over marked the exact location of the first car bomb. Apart from the memorial site and an empty plot of land, the surrounding area has been rebuilt and life and tourism now goes on as normal.


The Bali Bombing memorial


Quick stop at a rice terrace scenery along the way

We arrived at Lake Bratan around lunch time. At more than 1200m above sea level, it's a really lovely place with a cool climate. The Pura Ulun Danu lakeside temple was central to the attraction.

 
The familiar sight of the columns entrance   Lovely shot of the temple


The often-photographed temple's twin towers

After having our lunch nearby, next destination was Gitgit Waterfall. The route took us through steep winding roads through the mountain that forced Lydia to close her eyes or risk puking out her lunch. It was thus a great relief when we arrived with no incidents and got the chance to stand on solid, non-moving ground again.

The relief soon faded away when we realised we have to trek 350m down and up the slopes to get to the 60m-high waterfall. In my orange flipflops, I grit my teeth and followed behind Paolo and Lydia. Thankfully, the stalls along the way and the beautiful rice paddy fields provided some distraction. There was of course the harassing of the "$1 only..." kid peddling his wares, which helped spur me to walk faster to make an escape.

 
Art painting stalls along the way                 Fantastic scenery along the way too

 
At our destination finally, at Gitgit waterfall!

And it was down those steep winding road again and a long ride as we head southwest towards Tanah Lot. The mountain region turned the sky a misty grey and we experienced a little rain. But once we broke through the mountain region, it was the good old hot sun again.

Our planning was right on track as we arrived at Tanah Lot Temple around 5plus, giving us sufficient time to explore this hugely popular attraction, to do some shopping and take photos before the sun goes down at 6.30pm.


At the shores of Tanah Lot Temple


Beautiful overview of the temple below


We were trying out some new photo shots... heehee

 
View from the ground shoreline...                and view of the other side from a cliff...

 
A spectacular sight of the temple outpost    The cat actually strolled by and stopped for me!

It's a pity the dark clouds blocked the sun when it was getting low on the horizon, so we missed the actual sunset. But the view and scenery was nonetheless very beautiful. We quickly set off after a while past 6.30pm to avoid the crowd of tourists, and also because it will get dark very fast. We stopped by one of the stalls outside and bought some clothes for like S$4 a piece! It's really handy to have Lydia do the bargaining in bahasa Indonesia, heehee! :)

We dropped by McDonalds' at Kuta Beach and tapao back to our hotel for dinner at our room's balcony. We stayed outside at the balcony for like a minute before retreating inside for the comfort of the aircon and the bed, hehheh!


Monday, 20 October 2008 - Bali Holiday! Day 3
Road trip in Bali!

As usual, our driver picked us up at 9.30am from the hotel. Paolo's his name and our transport is a comfy Suzuki APV (a budget MPV).

On our way to Ubud, we stopped by a number of local production factories/shops, like batik, gold & silver smith, art paintings and wood carvings. It was interesting, but we didn't buy anything as nothing caught our fancy.


Balinese craftsmanship: batik, silver, paintings, wood carvings

Lunch was at Bebek Bengil (dirty duck diner) restaurant, famed for its crispy duck. The restaurant is a huge open eatery with an open garden in the middle and rice fields at the back! Cool! The crispy duck was very good! Very tender and soft! The potato sautee was amazingly fabulous, which had me in a puzzled delight, haha!


The famous crispy duck


In the backyard of Bebek Bengil restaurant


Lydia hiding behind the rice paddy

After lunch, we happened to pass by Ubud Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary and decided to stop and check it out. The monkeys at the entrance to the sanctuary were no thieves like their cousins from Ulu Watu Temple, but they were a bit too aggressive for Lydia's comfort, so we decided not to go in.


At a safe distance from Ubud Monkey Forest


Where's my banana?

Next stop was the rice terraces at Tegallalang Village. The idyllic green pastures of the rice terraces were simply smoothing to our eyes which were so used to urban landscape.

 
Shophouses lined the top of the slopes       The padi cafe below


Lush greenery of the rice terraces

We headed further up north of Bali and higher and higher we go until we arrived at Mount Batur Volcano in the Kintamani district! The majestic volcano with a height of 1717m had me in awe, as this is the first time I saw a volcano! It surely is awesome. My dreams of hiking into the mouth of a volcano will have to wait, but this will suffice for now. :)


View of Mount Batur Volcano


Close up shot of the volcano


And on the right is Butur lake

Contented and satisfied, we began our long journey back to the Southwest of Bali, stopping along the way to buy some fruits from a roadside stall, and to visit a cocoa plantation.


2 green mangoes for S$4, with 3 oranges thrown in :)


Fruit temptation!

It was almost 1 1/2 hours later before we arrive at Kuta, where we abandoned the vehicle and our driver and roamed around the city and the beach for a good few hours and settled our dinner at A&W, heehee!


Street peddlers in Kuta region


The sunset again, this time at Kuta Beach


The shopping district of Kuta

It was dark already by the time the driver picked us up about 8.30pm. We dropped off about 1km from our hotel and continued on foot to explore the shops and experience the nightlife along the narrow streets leading to our hotel. Oh boy, It's been a long day!


Sunday, 19 October 2008 - Bali Holiday! Day 2
On a sunny Sunday morning in Bali, first thing we do is to go shopping! :P

We set off at 9.30am after breakfast, when our driver picked us up from the hotel and drove us to the list of shopping destinations which Lydia had came up with, recommended by her sister who goes to Bali frequently.

First stop was at KriSNA, a large souvenir shop which caters more for local Indonesian tourists. This means the price is fixed, cheap and not marked-up for the ang-moh tourists. Titiles was next, a shop recommended for pork lovers, with items like bak kua, fried pig skin, etc. Amazingly, the shop has tigers and lions in the backyard!


Bali's private zoo!

Next stop was at the famous Kuta Beach, where we checked out the Hard Rock Cafe (pity the shotglass is out of stock!) and took a stroll on the beach under the blazing sun. There were people sun-tanning, surfing, local vendors selling their wares... really buzzing with activities!

We were happily basking in the atmosphere and strolling hand-in-hand when all of a sudden, my wife yanked me to the right and said, "Ok, enough, quick, U-turn!" We agreed to walk to the row of flags just ahead, I protested. "Topless girl ahead!", she hissed and pulled me away! What?? Where??? :P


At Kuta beach. Notice the flags in the background?

Lunch was at Malioboro, a pretty nice ayam (*chicken*) restaurant.


Love the deep-fried pressed chicken!


You wouldn't believe what is this...... it's actually a fish!

After lunch, we went to Nusa Dua beach. Nusa Dua is a more exclusive area of Bali, where resorts have their own private beaches. I had the opportunity to stay at one of the beach resorts during my previous company's team building trip. The resort was nice, but the beach just somehow felt different being so private and small. It was lacking the "happenin" factor of human activities and the grandness.

 
At the public area of Nusa Dua Beach          There's something smaller than the little girl

We went to Ulu Watu Temple after that. Had to wear sarongs before we enter the premises, heehee. This place is inhabited by fearless monkeys that would try to snatch anything from you that's not nailed down. Despite being warned, in the brief 20 minutes or so that we were there, there were about 5 occassions that other tourists had their hairclips, spectacles or whatever, being snatched away by the monkeys. A local man and a boy would then retrieve the item (by bribing the monkey with an egg) and ask for US$1-2 from the owner.

Looking left, right and over our shoulders always, we nonetheless explored this beautiful place, where the Indian ocean crashes its waves at the bottom of the cliff, and where the famous temple stands at the edge of the cliff.

 
Peering over the edge of the cliff                The landmark of Ulu Watu Temple


A monkey lurks nearby

Our next destination was the Cultural Park, which was the venue for the opening ceremony of the 1st Asian Beach Games in Bali, that coincidentally runs from 18-26 Oct!

 
Plaza Wisnu, in the Cultural Park                A Balinese Barong spotted in the park


Amazing how the cultural park was carved out of these hills

Wrapping up the evening, we stopped at Jimbaran Beach, where it is famous for its sunset dining. Rows and rows of seafood restaurants lined the beach, awaiting the beckoning of the setting sun. Our driver dropped us off at Bali Sea Cafe, where we reserved a front-row table on the beach, before taking the opportunity to explore the beach while waiting for the sun to go down. In the distant, there were fishermen setting out to sea. The beautiful rays of the setting sun colored the surrounding sky in a rich hue of golden brown.

We ordered a BBQ crab, a BBQ red snapper and fried calamari. And two coconuts. It was really nice watching the sunset together while seated at a table on a beach. Food was served once the sun went down.

The food from this restaurant wasn't that fantastic, but for about S$50 for the dinner and the romantic atmosphere, it definitely was worth the experience!


Our table (closest) along Jimbaran Beach and its restaurants

 
A hungry doggie wants some!                     A fisherwoman-wannabe?


Catching the dusk of the sun

 
The fishing boats set out to sea                 Oh, what a sight to behold!


Watching the sunset together


Our sunset seafood dinner at the beach!


Twilight approaches


Saturday, 18 October 2008 - Bali Holiday! Day 1
Oh yes! A vacation trip finally, this time to Bali! Looking forward to doing some local sightseeing, the sun and the beach!


Our afternoon flight on SQ, courtesy of mileage redemption

Upon touchdown, our place of stay for the coming week, The Jayakarta Bali, arranged for a guy to picked us up. As expected, Bali is hot, haha.

After about 30 minutes, we arrived at our hotel, which is located right at the doorsteps of Legian Beach. Fantastic! It was just what I had wanted; a resort with a pool that is a stone's throw from the beach! And there were lots of Eurasian tourists basking around under the sun too!


Excellent! The beach is just beyond the background trees


View of Jayakarta Bali from the other end of the pool

With such a happy expectation and atmosphere, imagine our surprise though, when the reception told us that our room is not at the resort area and they brought us to a 6-storey building within the hotel compound. Huh? Aren't we going to stay at one of these cosy resort rooms?

Turns out we are staying at the newly renovated hotel building, but is deep within the compound. The room facilities is great, with a living room and small kitchen area, but.... this isn't what I expected. It felt isolated from the beach and the buzz... :(


My goodness, where's the swimming pool or beach view?

After a while of trying to psycho ourselves that it ain't that bad, we gave up and called the reception and asked if we could change to a resort room that has a nice swimming pool view. And what luck, they have! Just have to wait for the guest to check out at 7pm. That's fine! :D

We went out to Legian Beach and wow, it was a sight to behold! It's gotto be the biggest beach I ever seen and it just stretches on and on for miles! Even the width of the beach is huge, and there were people everywhere, some strolling, some locals playing football, and some just admiring the sunset.


The vast stretches of Legian Beach


The sunset reflecting on our faces

 
A football rolls past against the sunset        A shot of Lydia from a low angle


Isn't it a beauty? The sunset and of course, the model... :)


The fading glow of the round orange ball

After the sun went down at 6.30pm, it soon got dark really fast and we made our way back to the hotel. After getting some rest, we got our room changed! Yeah! And oh boy, it was one of the best rooms in, I'd say! Directly above the lobby on the 2nd floor, with a full view of the swimming pool and the beach!


Our balcony view now, yeah!

Now I can sleep happy and eagerly await a full day in Bali tomorrow. :)


Friday, 17 October 2008 - Valencia's One
Valencia's 1 years old today and the parents organised a birthday party for her at their new condo at Haig Court. Coincidentally, Cheng How is staying at the same condo too!


All the uncles

We turned up accordingly to the pink theme and had fun chit chatting with the guys till late at night. As much as we would have liked to stay longer, have to call it an early night as tomorrow we're going to Bali! :)


Saturday, 11 October 2008 - Mission Accomplished!
The relentless Krauts attacked with waves after waves of heavy tanks and infantry, but after 15 gruelling missions spanning over 12 days (since 1 Oct), I have completed Company of Heroes! Against all odds in the final mission against the mighty German Tiger tanks, the Allies are victories!!

This is one tough game to play, especially with the population cap and the need to garner resources. There's no such thing as tank-rush. Charging blindly into enemy territory usually means instant destruction. There's a constant look out to secure your sectors to prevent the enemy from sneaking past undetected. Most missions therefore took time to establish a strong force to secure the base and defensive line before one could venture forward.


Mission 13, Hill 192: Victorious Allied forces claimed the hill


The devastating Howitzer fires into the ruined town of St. Lo


The Sherman tank takes on a Panzer tank...


...and blasts it into a smouldering wreck!

And now... for the expansion pack, Opposing Fronts! :D

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Oh, took the car out in the morning to ICA at Paya Lebar to pay taxes for an imported LV bag shipment, had nasi lemak breakfast at Katong, explored the many interesting eateries at Katong, then in the afternoon played futsal at ECP. It sure is a fun Saturday!


Saturday, 4 October 2008 - No Stamina!
Futsal @ ECP!

The last game I played was on 9 August, haha! Was really looking forward to the game today, though fearing what 2 months of lay-off would do to my body and skills. :P

The bad news is, I was totally drained out of stamina! The last 10 minutes of the 2-hour session, I could barely muster a decent effort of defending and my legs didn't want to move anymore. Though if it was an attacking opportunity, the legs somehow found renewed strength, haha! Ball control was not too good either.

The good news is, I still manage to score two goals today. One was an opportunistic follow up shot after Kian Pang could only parry the ball directly into my path. The 2nd goal was a real beauty to cherish for a long time though! From the middle of the opponent half on the right side, I was watching the activities happening on the left when the ball rebounded off a defender and rolled into my path. I took a few steps forward and hit the ball perfectly with my right foot. The ball screamed towards the top left hand corner in a really straight and rising flight and nested into the side netting! The guys went "wah!!" while I grinned and raised my hands up in celebration and gave my team a couple of high-fives! :D

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Oh! Corrine's back from US and we dropped by her place to pick up some stuffs.

The item I was waiting for has arrived! The Lego Starwars Luke Skywalker Pilot Maquette! At 6" high, this will be one fun collectable display item for my new home in 2010!


The Force is strong, my dear Skywalker


Wednesday, 1 October 2008 - No Place to Park in a Park
Every once in a blue moon, my wife does the unexpected thing. Today (actually yesterday) was one of them, where she suggested to go to a park! No picnic-mat-type of park, she clarified, just walk walk. It was still a good offer and so we headed to botanic gardens in the late morning.

But horror of horrors, the botanic gardens car park is full! Didn't everybody go to the East Coast Park instead? Sigh. After a while, we gave up and headed to Turf City instead. Car lots aplenty over there.

With an afternoon to kill, I decided to play my new computer game that I just bought few days ago! Company of Heroes (gold edition, with expansion pack Opposing Fronts)! Desmond is the one who psycho me to buy lah, saying CoH was the game of the year in 2006, and it only cost $19.90!


The men of Able company

This WWII RTS (real-time strategy) game is fun, though it requires serious strategic planning, very unlike Command and Conquer, where unlimited quantities of units can be produced. You have to fight to gain every inch of enemy territory!