Dance people, Dance!

For admiring every now and then...

2009-07-28T09:47:00.003-04:00

The large lion statues outside the Art Institute of Chicago Museum.

So a friend of mine just got accepted into the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for his Masters in film. Extremely thrilled and happy I was for him at his accomplishment, but I would be lying through my teeth if I said I did not feel any other less chivalrous emotion. Yes, I'm not afraid to say that the green eyed monster possessed me for a while there, all because I once tried, though not as valiantly, to pursue a path not too divergent from his.

Getting into a good art & design school is in itself a gargantuan achievement, but the thing that I admire and respect most is the dedication and perseverance in hanging on to the passion and the dream that spurred it all.

I had applied to Rhode Island School of Design once, right after my A levels, thinking that I might want to pursue a career in industrial design. However, given that I only tried applying to one school and that my portfolio was haphazardly put together in 2 weeks, the decision to pursue design overseas was made when I was informed that "there are(were) many talented applicants like you(me) but we (they) only have(had) places for a few". So I set my sights on the rather reputable industrial design course in NUS but that too was relegated to the back seat when I thought, 'why not pursue it as a Minor while I pursue a more practical Business finance degree?'. After all, I did enjoy economics and I imagined myself leaving Business faculty for the School of Design & Environment if I could not cope.

Well, we all know how that turned out - inertia is one helluva force to deal with.

Maybe I was stupid to apply only to one school, maybe there were too many applications, or maybe I lack the talent to see me through the gates of a design school - there are a multitude of reasons for me not having entered the design and art arena. However, one reason has bugged me the most - maybe I was too flippant to want it as much as my friend does. I love design, I love aesthetics, and www.core77.com is read right after bbcnews.com and bloomberg (sometimes before). However, at that time, I remember being half hearted in my application: 'design can wait, I just need to get a high paying job first' was something I often repeated to myself. Well, yes LY. Design will wait. It will wait till you're 80 with one foot in the grave.

I have a problem with making important decisions and that constant state of wavering, I'm sure, might just force me to fold up my dreams (and now, I don't only mean pursuing design), wrap it in 3 feet thick of excuses, and hide it somewhere far in the crevices of my mind. My friend's perseverence is something I admire greatly and I am sure he will have no trouble answering to himself in the future. It is one thing to have a calling or a dream, and another to pursue it. That is something I need to keep close to my heart if not, I will find my future self constantly taking those dusty old dreams, unwrapping them and admiring them only every now and then.

I wish my friend all the best, and I'm sure he will have a whole lot of fun. A whole. lot. of. fun. =)

Convo.

2009-07-09T11:14:00.002-04:00

Me: Goh, I don't want to grow up anymore.

GZY: nvm its ok. u look like a childish old man. so you have your wish.

Me: wtf.

I <3 my friends.

Tropical thunderstorms & train delays.

2009-07-01T10:33:00.006-04:00

Today I got stranded twice:

1) Tropical thunderstorms.

Tropical thunderstorms are always a sight to behold. I love them to bits, especially so when they're in the mornings - the sound & smell of rain always does funny happy things to me.

Anyways, so yes. It decided to rain today just as I had to go to work! So there I was, stranded at Tanjong Pagar MRT station without an umbrella to cross the road. It was so freaking heavy that even people with umbrellas decided to camp in the shelter of the MRT station. Stepping out with a flimsy foldable umbrella meant immediate drenching. So I was stuck there for about 45 mins and even as I left, the rain had only eased very slightly.

That was stranding incident 1.

2) Train Delays.

My utmost faith in the MRT system took a heavy blow today when surprise, surprise, I experienced the first MRT delay in my lifetime!!!!

I had left office at 6:30pm for Tanjong Pagar MRT station where as usual, I'd get on the train that comes by once every 2 mins towards Pasir Ris and Changi. So when I entered the station, everything was as per-normal - people were messing around with their ipods or busily thumbing on their blackberries as they waited for the train. Yes, they were waiting and so, I joined them in the waiting.

We waited.

and waited.

and waited.

The electronic signs that displayed the arrival times kept updating themselves.

"Arriving in 3 mins".

After 3 mins...

"Arriving in 4 mins". So on and so forth.

The platform was getting really crowded , the most crowded I had EVER seen it :
so obviously, people were getting frustrated and impatient and just as some were leaving, a very strong singlish-accented announcement was made regarding the delay:

"Train slurvees will be slidely delayed. We applaulegize for inconvenience caused. Tdankew"

The professionalism of the announcement, just like the delay, was a far cry from the usual 'Train approaching, please mind the gap' tape recordings that people are so familiar with. Well... truth be told, at that point I think most people were just so thankful to have been updated with something that the accent hardly mattered! Disclaimer: I LOVE the singlish accent. I speak it , I practise it, I preach it. Just that, well, a corporate image IS a corporate image! ok. so im being an ass here. hahaha. ok la, it WASN'T that bad. sheesh! Im just picky!

Well, so after about 30 mins, the train arrived and my gosh, it was the most crowded ever.

Ok , so THAT was stranding incident 2. I'm wondering what happened. Someone jumped onto the tracks? A train had a malfunction? hmmm. wondering if I'll see it on the news tomorrow....

HA.

ok..now just some random photos from my time in Singapore so far:

Zheyi and gang at Orchard Central. New malls are popping up EVERYWHERE in Singapore.
We should just be ONE BIG MALL.
Singapore mall.

The beginning of the 400 or so balloon sculptures that we had to make for the kids that came for my bank's 'Bring your kids to work' day event. ha.

Kids are cute. But some are cuter than others.

So this was a while back. My room still looks just as messy.
Do you see Mount Yuanmess in the middle?

Alright, so one day after gym in Seletar with Zheyi, we went to a hawker centre and lo and behold, this nice lady was having lunch with her parrot!

Guess how old he is. He's 21 years old. Older than me, older than you.
Must be some SKII .

Ok. Im becoming lame.
Going to sleep now!

BYEEEEEEE.

In preparation.

2009-06-17T12:19:00.006-04:00

I feel like I need to inform the 10 or so people who read my blog daily about the perils of choosing a career solely for the monetary benefits. I don't mean to say that money is not important in choosing a job - it has its obvious pros (think fully-paid-for-house, flash-car, leather-shoes, don't ask me why I'm going in reverse order of value ) - but puh-lease, NEVER CHOOSE A JOB ONLY FOR THE MONEY. NEVER. NEV-AHHHHHHHHHH.

WHY?

COS THIS IS HOW YOUR AWESOME DAY WILL LOOK LIKE:

7:00 am - Wake up and be really grouchy cos you only slept 6 hours.

7:45 am - Squeeze onto bloody irritating crowded MRT with a thousand other zombies. Some zombies actually smell nice. hmmm.

8:00am - 12 pm : Count down to lunch. Literally. COUNT DOWN TO LUNCH.

12 pm- 2pm : HIGHLIGHT OF THE DAY! Lunch with so and so at XXX restaurant/hawker center.

2pm - 630 pm or later: COUNT DOWN TO GOING HOME, again, literally.

630pm or later: HIGHLIGHT 2 OF THE DAY! going home or meet friends to chillax, SURF FACEBOOK.

Gosh, do you guys spot anything nice about the workday? Yup! 12 pm - 2 pm : Lunch! and 630 pm or later - going home to chillax/surf facebook! [ because today facebook had site maintenance, my highlight 2 was sadly not a highlight at all! :( ]

Wow ! What an amazing day you say. When you're 30+ and you have your fully-paid-for-house/flash-car/leather-shoes, and your child asks you, "Daddy/Mommy, did you enjoy your youth" (ok, Like they will ask such a retard question, but these are insightful kids), you be ready to say with conviction, "YES! I had XXXX lunches and XXXX chillax sessions! And look! I now have a fully-paid-for-house/flash-car/leather-shoes! I totally enjoyed my youth!".

When the people around you say, "Do what you like and you will excel", THEY ARE NOT LYING. Gosh, there's so much sense in that but somehow, I have no idea why I did not heed the advice of all those people. Those people know who they are and they probably are thinking, "I told you so." and yes, I know you told me so. Hmph. In all defense, it's not like I TOTALLY hate what I'm learning/studying/doing- there's some interest in it okay!

I think many people have fallen into the same trap as me and some discover it too late in life to change, and I don't mean to be horrid/sarcastic really, but at the very least, they can seek solace in their fully-paid-for-house/flash-car/leather-shoes! I hope they are sane at the end of it all though! (Disclaimer: again, I mean it SINCERELY OKAY!)

Then again I can't speak for everyone. Obviously, people exist in different circumstances so yea...whatever floats your boat I say! Just, just, please make sure at the end of it all you're happy. I'm very sure people know in their gut what makes them happy- the thing is, it just takes quite a bit (Ok maybe ALOT ALOT) of courage to actually do it.

At a cafe near the office where I'm working at is this several meter poster that spans the entire length of the inside of the floor-to-ceiling glass wall. It reads on it in a scrawly hand written font: "HAVE THE COURAGE TO LIVE A CRAZY LIFE!"

Yup. Go forth my little blog readers and be happy! I shall live vicariously through all of you. =)

(I will take a pic of that poster and put it on my blog soon ! )

For the sake of my cousins...

2009-06-12T13:19:00.006-04:00

... I shall blog... Yi & En, I haven't seen you guys in so long I think I've forgotten how you all look like. heh.

Work: to exert oneself for a purpose or out of necessity.

What happens if you're exerting yourself for neither purpose nor necessity? What do we make out of that? Well, it simply means you're just wasting your time. *ho ho ho hum, ho ho ho hum, hoo ho, ho hum (in the tune of the Chim Chiminey song)*. And time is precious for we have not many years on this planet. Even the tortoises have more years than us - they can work for 40 years and still have a 100 more for retirement. We will NEVER have such luxury.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124450268338295907.html

Go read it now.

I feel happy for those people above and yet I worry for them. Their hearts and minds will be stuffed with fulfillment, probably even overflowing with that highly coveted feeling, but their pockets will almost certainly always be half full. Over-flowing hearts & minds and half full pockets, or over-flowing pockets and helf empty hearts & minds? *ho ho ho hum, ho ho ho hum, ho ho, ho hum* Then again, our pockets are ALWAYS half empty.

I don't think my excerpt above made sense, but yea, that's what work does to you. It mushes your brain and leaves you with nothing.

On another note, I brought Steph kHoo on a gastronomic tour of Singapore's hawker fare. That girl's size is so not proportionate to her appetite. Like Napoleon Bornaparte, she conquered her food swiftly and efficiently:

Hor fun with lard pieces
Ok so the photos are not the actual ones, but they look sorta the same la. Just that the ones we ate were SO MUCH MORE AWESOME.

Fried chicken (including ALL THE SKIN! =O )

Prata bomb

and Milo godzilla.

Enough calories/energy to keep a town lighted for 5 years. Glad she satisfied her craving for hawker fare while in Singapore. Martin/Pascal/Choeun/Ben/Dave/whoever who reads this, if ever you come to Singapore I will definitely bring you to all those places to eat and you will have to beat Steph's record.

Below is the route we took to get to the area where all the food were:

So yes, I just dropped her off at the airport and now she's probably somewhere over the sea on her way back to Ozzy land.

Steph in rain boots. WHY you ask.
Well, cos they were too heavy to be in her already bursting-at-the-zipper luggages.

Bye Steph! Hope you had funnnn..

SEE YOU SOON!

:)

Paris on a Segway...

2009-05-20T18:04:00.014-04:00

.. is gorgeous, efficient and exhilarating!!! It would probably make some people's blood boil to know that I had signed up for the Paris City Segway Tour mostly for the Segway than the city. Yes, I'm that type of tourist so yea, my priorities are plebeian and purely experiential. but who cares its SO DAMN FUN. I'm telling you, the Segway has to be the funnest human transporter ever. Serious. Try one if you can. Also, when you're on a Segway, you automatically become a celebrity. People look at you and gawk. HA! OK, so maybe they gawk at the Segway and not you, but by association, they're also gawking at you! :)

Take a look at the pics and the videos

This was on the way to the Eiffel (the start point). Saw this old-ass Porsche. I think it's so cute. soooo cute horrrr. like a Mini.

Aha! The grand dame.

So this was my Segway - the Seginator. Ok, they had lamer and funnier names like :

Segosaurus.
Segs on the beach.
and the best...
...
..
Nicholas Segcozy!

Everyone trying out their personal Segways.

This was me trying to film my reflection. Hmmmmm.

So off we went! That lady is not wearing some fashionable outterwear, its just a rain coat. Quite funky actually, seeing it billowing in the wind.

At les invalides.From wiki: Les Invalides in Paris, France, is a complex of buildings in the city's 7th arrondissement containing museums and monuments, all relating to the military history of France, as well as a hospital and a retirement home for war veterans, the building's original purpose.

Ok , i think this was the view as we approached les invalides. Not too sure, but yea. I'm trying very hard to keep the photos and the videos in chronological order.

This is in front of Les Invalides.

The procession as we left the invalids.

This was when we were travelling to the Pont Alexander III bridge. From Wiki: Pont Alexandre III is an arch bridge that spans the Seine, connecting the Champs-Élysées quarter and the Invalides and Eiffel Tower quarter, widely regarded as the most ornate, extravagant bridge in Paris^[1] ^[2].

This is the tour guide! Billy from the States. He studied in Texas so he has like a rather thick Texan Drawl. He has such an enthusiastic and warm personality, really fun guy. Like the way he simplifies all his explanations too. hehe.

'Yallllll' according to him is efficient - 'You all' is just too long.

Also, in Billy's words: "the Pont Alexandre is just France's way of telling the whole world that if they bomb russia, they're bombing France." Yea... hokayyyyyyy. LOL.

Do you see the photoshoot in the distance? ahhhh it was really gorgeous. The model and the photographers and all.

So next, we headed to place de la concorde:

That place was the site of many executions during the French revolution. As the tour guide said in his texan drawl: "Like many people were slaughtered here ya know, and like for months after, the horses and cows refused to enter because of the smell of blood. Ya know, the animals, they geddit, they geddit. " Hmmmm. yeaaaa, they geddit. I geddit too. We all geddit. Anyways, so I have learnt MUCH about the French revolution while I was here, and well... it was a tragic past I guess.

So next, we went to the tuileries gardens. From wiki: The Tuileries Garden covers about 63 acres (25 hectares) and still closely follows a design laid out by landscape architect Andre Le Notre in 1664. His spacious formal garden plan drew out the perspective from the reflecting pools one to the other in an unbroken vista along a central axis from the west façade, which has been extended as the Axe historique.

Gorgeous garden, very relaxed, laid back, BUT ! we had to push our segways through it because that place does not allow bicycle riding or any riding thing. I realised after that the Segways are actually quite heavy.

Had a little Parisian break while we were there. This lady, upon seeing the huge ass sandwiches that were served, commented, " Everything in France is so fancy. But I'm still looking out for the small portions!". I haven't seen any either but that's only probably seen in fine french dining and given that I'm not exactly a fan of fine dining, well, I don't think I'll be seeing any small portions any time soon!

Just before leaving the tuileries. Still pushing, still pushing.

This fat pigeon was sunning itself in the middle of a busy path way. Pigeons really are stupid. They look stupid and act stupid. Stupid pigeons.

This was us leaving the tuileries. On the left is the Louvre. Went back there the next day and had my brains smushed from all the information. I will blog about that soon, but not now, cos this is a looongggg looonggggg post.

So after the Louvre, we sort of made a beeline back to the shop. Was great cos we got to go FAST on the segway. And i mean fast. Lovely. If you have played the vids, you'd notice that the segway makes a nice whirrrr whirrrr sound. Quite therepeutic.

On one of the bridges on the way back.

Views of the Seine on the way back.

I REALLY didn't want to return the Segway. Ho hum. We should ask Pa to get one for himself then we can play with it. I have a strategy: "This is really a great tool for transportation. I think it's really great on large expanses of land, like on a golf course. Wait, Pa, you golf right??! You should get one!" Good strategy, good strategy. Now I just need to ask my brother to implement it.

We ended right where we started - the Eiffel. Was a great day cos the sun was at its brightest, the weather was excellent and well, the company was fun.

ok, will be blogging about the Louvre, the Centre Pompidou & going up the Eiffel tomorrow!

By the way, I will be in London tomorrow, so see you all in London!

再见/ Au revoir!

Why is 再见 and Au revoir the same meaning, but 'Good bye' isn't? Hmmmm. Or maybe it is. Hmmm. What does 'Bye' mean anyways. hmmm ok side tracking. Ciao!

Sacré-Cœur

2009-05-19T20:24:00.007-04:00

Sacre Coeur has to be the most beautiful place in Paris. Ok maybe that's cos I haven't really seen much of Paris, but Sacre Coeur has to be one of the top 5 at least! I didn't really look forward to going there because it involved a rather long walk and it was after all just a Cathedral (I don't intend to be blasphemous, but there are Cathedrals everywhere aren't there!). But now , after seeing that place, man am I glad I did.

Before we start, from wiki: The Sacré-Cœur Basilica Roman Catholic basilica is a popular landmark in Paris, France, dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The basilica is located at the summit of the butte Montmartre, the highest point in the city.

Will just let you guys see some photos:

It's very charming how from between the alleys, you can see SacreCoeur looming up in the distance. Very majestic, very gorgeous, very awe inducing. Totally not what I had expected. I mean, I had travelled to SacreCoeur on google earth (ok some of u will slap me for saying that) so I didn't think it would be as nice as it was la! I mean, Google earth's 3d Buildings are very realistic okay.

In the alley leading up to Sacre Coeur. You can see the iconic carousal at the end of the alley.

At the base of the Cathedral

Just midway up and the view is already splendid. Of course it does help that all the buildings within Paris are made to be low. (La defense, their CBD, has high rise towers but that is not within Paris, it is in zone 3)
I like how the people just lie on the sloped lawn enjoying the gorgeous summer day. Wanted to do that myself but oh well, not in my Singaporean mentality. ^^

I felt this was a nice angled shot. haha. Wadever.

I took a shot of the Eiffel from the back of Sacre Coeur, thought it was quite nice so I edited it on photoshop. Scary how it looks old and antiquated but I like how the tree branches frame the Eiffel nicely.

The doors into Sacre Coeur which are not used. The entrace is by the side of these 2 doors.

LETS REMIX!!!! From the very top of Sacre Coeur, you can see almost the whole of Paris, all the way to La Defense.

Sacre Coeur and the masses. Ok I didn't like that there was a guy standing in the middle of all that people , singing hippie english songs on his guitar with loudspeakers. And people actually CLAPPED after each song. *puke*

I mean, it's like a French Cathedral and so people are there for the French experience. At least sing FRENCH folksy songs with an accordion la! I just came from New York, so I don't really need any more English, poppish, pseudo-emo/emo/wadever songs thank you vrai much.

AND. he also HAD to sing R.E.M.'s 'Losing my religion' with lyrics like this:

"That's me in the corner
That's me in the spotlight, I'm
Losing my religion"

I mean, it's a nice song and all and I'm not religious, but IF YOU WANT TO LOSE YOUR RELIGION, GO SOMEWHERE ELSE TO LOSE IT.
Freaking irritating.

Ok. Irritation aside. I need to think of nice things. I need to think of nice things:
WOW, LOOK AT HOW GORGEOUS THE VIEW IS:

The slopes are actually quite steep as you can see from here. But , nice to lie on! A natural recliner. heh.

The iconic carousel.

Ok so Si has been buying these little glass bottles of goodness, just wanted to let u guys see. ha. cost about 5 sing bucks each! but so very very good.

Okies. Done with Sacre Coeur.
I will continue blogging tomorrow on the SEGWAY TOUR I HAD AROUND PARIS.
The Segway has to be the FUNNEST thing EVER.

Nightey Nights.

Good bye Big apple, Salut City of lights.

2009-05-17T18:22:00.017-04:00

if you're wondering why im blogging on facebook, I'm not! This is appearing in facebook because I just linked it to 'notes in facebook'. amazing facebook!

So now I'm blogging after a 16 hour nap and a great day with Si, but my journey to the City of lights (very gorgeous) was not smooth sailing. NOT smooth sailing at all.

It all started with a 45 minute delay for the New York - Washington flight from La Garbage that decided to morph into a full fledged 4 hour wait (fog here, fog that, fog whatever) and ultimately ended with the murdering of my connecting flight from Washington Dulles to Paris CDG. So that saw me heading back to Manhattan, crashing at Yihan's place for one night, and returning to La Garbage at 8 am in the morning. Alot of $ and alot of time wasted. Ho hum.

The good thing about that rescheduled flight was that I was definitely going to get a connecting flight from Washington to Paris. No fog, no godzilla, no nothing could beat a 6 hour lay over in between. But hmmm. 6 hour lay over you say. Ho hum hum.

So when I reached Paris, I was greeted with 1) a half hour wait to the customs, and 2) a 50 min wait for the CDG-Paris shuttle. Ho hum hum hum. In all honesty, that wasn't too bad considering what I had been through actually.

So anyways, my nerves aside, I arrived in Paree safe and sound. :)

Paris is gorgeous, both in the day and in the night. Just really quite absolutely stunning. It's clean, nice, and the roads, surprise surprise, have NO POTHOLES! whee. The first thing that strikes you is that the architecture is all really quite similar and just very pretty. The second thing is that the buildings are all not taller than 6 storeys! The third is that there's alot of art in this city. The shuttle to Si's place saw me pass by 2 roundabouts (dunno what they are) with gorgeous sculptures in the middle. Really nice to have such fantastic art dotted all around the city.

The city of Paris is in erm, zone 1 and the concentric circles around paris are like zone 2, 3, so on and so forth. It's like zone 1 and 2 are Manhattan, zone 3 onwards is Brookyln/Queens sort of. Or in Singapore, then well, maybe erm, the whole of Singapore is Zone 1 , 2 and 3. ha. I don't really quite get it, but yes thats how it is. I'm like, "Isn't zone 4 Paris?" but no, its not really. hmmm.

So upon reaching Si's place, she decided to bring me out of Paris, to its suburbs in zone 5 for a BBQ held by a Singaporean family. Though the trip there took like 1.5 hours (a trauma considering that I just had a 7 hour flight), it was real worth it because the company was great, the food was awesome, and well, I got to see more of Grande-Paris (thats what si says all the zones are called together)!

Train out to the suburbs.

Si and I.

introducing my new friends, the trains Vick and Sara. Lara is bitchy so she's not my friend.

Ok, I know what you're thinking but no, the suburbs are not like rural. This is just one way to get to a great gorgeous lake near the place of the Singaporean couple's place. In fact, the suburb we went to was really quite gorgeous. Clean and neat, think of Wisteria lane in despo housewives. haha.

Sara, Lara, Hara, Fara and Zara.

Some Architecture by a famous architect in the middle of the lake.

The man in the black jacket in the middle is Mr Chandran Nair, one of the hosts of the gathering.
As I rip from online: Chandran Nair is a Singaporean poet and retired Director and Mediator of UNESCO in Paris. Impressive huh. and he paints as well. amazing. The Lady on the right is Aurora's Mom and she works at the Singaporean Embassy in France.

Mr Chandran Nair's daughter on the left, Rika. She's been born and raised in Paris though, so I think she's more Parisian than Singaporean!

Mr Nair's wife, Ivy. She had cooked and prepared the whole sumptuous feast. That above is just the desserts. AMAZZZZINGGGGGGG.

Jevon and Si having a good laugh.

This was the next day, after a 16 hour nap. YUMMMM.

One of the unis in Paris.

BY THE WAY.
I STRONGLY ADVOCATE FOR A SINGAPOREAN TRAM SERVICE!!! it would be GREAT if singapore had a tram service plying the down town area. They should get trams and have as few buses as possible. The trams in Paris are cute, airconditioned, and make futuristic whirring noises. There's this tram thing called the 'worm' and in between the tracks is GRASS! A brilliant touch there. It looks great (grass looks so MUCH better than concrete/gravel) and is environmentally friendly!
Singapore really should have a tram service. I heard rumours that LTA is looking into having one downtown and I really hope that plan materializes.

Talking about environmental friendliness, there's this bicycle renting system in Paris where u can get a bike and ride it all around Paris and then park it at any of the designated spots.

Louvre.

Man dunno picking what at the Louvre (coins i suppose)

You can see the L'arc the triomphe within that nearer arc. SEE IT? If you don't see it, don't fret. You're just far sighted.

This is the entrance to Sorbonne- the Uni that Si goes to. It's the oldest Uni in France (think like 800 freaking years old!!!!!!!!!!) and very prestigious. There's like a strike going on now so notice the board at the bottom? they're posters FOR the strike and AGAINST the strike. haha. funny.

More bicycles glowing eerily green outside Sorbonne.

And now for my masterpiece, NOTRE DAME PHOTOSHOP STITCHED TOGETHER!!:

Because I did not have a DSLR I could not capture the whole of the Notre Dame with my cam, so I took a few pics and stitched it together using photoshop. Just had to capture the beauty of that place for you guys.

Hmmmmm. yes.

So anyways, tomorrow I should be headed to the museums and then if everything goes well, on Tuesday I should be going for a SEGWAY TOUR OF PARIS!

G'night!

Mad Rush

2009-05-14T04:44:00.006-04:00

As I type this, my room is screaming out to be packed. It looks like this:

Scary huh.

Ok , lucky that's not my room.
If you didn't already notice, my room dos not look that ugly.
So yea, this is how it looks like:

Not too bad but it's still a headache!!

Thank fully, xiaofeng (who has been staying over) was nice enough to help me pack my stuff.
But she's sleeping now, and I'm all alone wallowing in my misery while Mr goh is sun tanning, dedrick is probably photographing/saxaphoning/performing surgery somewhere.

Bleagh.

In less than 24 hours, I'll be in Paris
(Weird pic with weird sky and grotesque moon that popped up on google. I'm too tired to find nice pics so yea, we'll make do.)

and in 1.5 weeks, I'll be back in Singapore!!!!!

Gosh, I really miss Singapore. It's amazing because I used to be so adamant that Singapore was sucky this , sucky that, but I guess we never know what we've got till it's gone(for a while that is).

And it's 4:50 am now. Hmm. And I'm blogging when there's a shit load of stuff to pack.
The taxi is picking me up at 10 30 and well, that's 5.5 hours away.

FREAKKKK. out.

Ciao.

See you in Paris.

DONE!

2009-05-13T02:29:00.002-04:00

IM DONE!!! WITH EVERYTHING!!! LAST FINALS WERE TODAY!!!!!

New York suddenly looks nicer, cleaner, brighter. Too bad I only have 1 more day to savour this fresh new feel of New York! :(

Will update more soon! ha.

Lady Haha + 2 down, 2 to Paris.

2009-05-07T15:35:00.008-04:00

Notice that my blog titles are merging? Thats because I'm lumping them together. Economies of scale. You know. yeaaaa.

Everytime I encounter something interesting, I think, "Damn, I need to get this on my blog." Soon however, I stumble upon something else that is more interesting and I think, " No no, I need to get this on my blog. " But guess what happens? I procrastinate and gradually, I forget about both. I'm trying my darndest hardest now to remember what I wanted to blog about, but it doesn't help that my brain just got smushed in the morning by my financial management finals.

And that. That. That FM finals. That finals I'm very sure, was to remind us that professors are and always will be in total control of your grades. ha. I'm not sure what professors are thinking when they know they've set a bitchy final, and they pan across the class room looking at all the poor little fidgety twerbs, some twirling their hair with fingers, some scrunching up their faces in dismay, and most with the look of 'wtf' on their faces. hmmmmmm. I'm very sure there's a little bit of schadenfruede in that. But, that Prof is a good and really nice Prof, so yea, he's ok. hahha..

So last saturday we went for the Lady Gaga(Lady Haha as I would prefer to call her) concert and yea, a concert is a concert, what more is there to say? 'IT WAS AWESOME' or 'IT WAS A BLAST' or 'I HAD SO MUCH FUN'. ho hum. I think I'm growing too old, too fast. It was just a concert.......... But then again, going out with the others is priceless. So here're the pics:

Quite funny.
But zero for originality.

I actually like how she's framed by the hands of someone taking a pic.
I <3 it.

I liked her dress though!
Ha, wouldn't mind bursting all those bubbles!

The above pictures are all nice and dandy righto? Like I'm so up close and personal with Lady haha no?

Noooooo.

There was this huge huge, immovable lump in front of me, and because I'm short, i couldn't exactly see over his shoulders. There was this other short girl behind me, and we were saying how they should have a short person area. ha.

The shadow of the immovable lump.

The place was 3 stories high.

Some random guy who put his friend onto his shoulders.
The poor guy was small, he looked like he was going to collapse any time.
I'm very sure he was thinking, "I cannot fall. I must not fall. If I fall, very paiseh"

Steph being squished by horse hair.

Pascal saying 'byeeeeeeee!' (he's left for Canada already!)

Look what popped into my mail box today.

2009-05-02T20:38:00.002-04:00

Saw these being sold online last week and promptly bought them.

Chrome clubman letterings !!

No more such conversations:

"Is the car a cooper?"
"yep, it's the clubman.."
"but.. so its a clubman, it's not a cooper?"
" er. it's still a cooper, its a clubman-cooper."
"But the letterings call it a cooper? Where's the clubman?"
" Er, whatever. "

Got an 'ACTUAL SIZE' sticker to paste somewhere.

Central Park

2009-05-02T20:05:00.004-04:00

This was a week ago. As you can see, there's been a lag in my postings. One word to explain it all - EXAMS! Thus, I shall keep this a short picture post. (But I guess I've ONLY had picture posts. Ha. Except for my car one. that was a documentary. )

So this outing to central park happened last sunday. It was a nice 28degrees Celsius and my gosh, Central park was really beautiful. However, it it seemed to me that the people of New York have been sorta sun-deprived - They were suntanning in beach wear in the middle of a city park!

Fashion on the streets of New York.

Martin, Steph and Pascal posing on a road divider. Don't blame us , the road divider was in full bloom!
I'd definitely miss hanging out with them once I go back to Singapore.
Pascal's leaving this wednesday (even before my exams have ended!) so it's gonna be bon voyage soon!

Can you see Yoga man? I think he was doing yoga, or maybe he was just doing headstands. But he kept going into weird balancing positions. Hmmm.

Beached-whales.

Steph & I.
The funny thing is, steph and pascal both brought work to do in the park.

Convo

2009-05-01T16:41:00.002-04:00

So I had a convo with steph that went like that:

steph MSN 4:34
you're gonna have to come up with a better argument than that!

Liangyuan- 玫瑰玫瑰我愛你MSN4:35
:D

stephMSN4:35
smiling doesn't cut it

Liangyuan- 玫瑰玫瑰我愛你MSN4:37
:(

stephMSN4:38
awww dont be sad

Liangyuan- 玫瑰玫瑰我愛你MSN4:38
:D

stephMSN4:38
this is a pointless argument -_-

------

Note I didn't say anything at all! :D

Mini Cooper Roadster

2009-04-29T01:00:00.003-04:00

So rumours are that the following MINI variant will actually become a reality:

MINI Cooper Roadster

Exciting times lie ahead for MINI lovers...

A blog post long overdue.

2009-04-26T00:00:00.007-04:00

So we all know Spring has arrived and the weather has just been nothing but fantastic over here. Today, it was actually 29 degrees - very much like in Singapore! yum.

Anyways, these are shots of west village (somewhere near NYU) - one of the nicer parts of Manhattan (CLEAN AND GREEN)

I like this pic. Can u smell the foot?

"Knit and be happy"

LOVE the white tree and the shop.

That's the door to Alice's wonderland.

Americans love their dogs. And i love them too.

Not the rat ones though. Those small dogs that have been bred to become the size of rats.
ratty dogs.

Outside Magnolia Bakery.....

That's dave there and his friends. Hi dave.
"Hi!"

Finally in the shop after queuing for hmm. 15 mins or so.

That above on the left is an example of a rat dog.
But do u see the Parrot?

The man is walking a parrot.

hmmmmmm.

Think it'd be cooler if the parrot was flying on a leash.

Yi.

2009-04-20T00:38:00.038-04:00

So.
I shall list out a few things about my dear cousin Yi that I've discovered while here.

1) She loves cow tongues. Alot.
She can eat 10 cow tongues at one go.

2) she LOVES manhattan. Alot more than I do.
"OMG. Manhattan!!! (after 3 hours in brooklyn, cue arms raised in praise)"

3) but still, she adores Singapore.

4) She wants to work in the Finance field.

5) but doesn't know which part of finance to work in. Like me.
(finance, are u ser-ious? yes yes yes!)

6) she enjoys her vintage,
7) her prawn mee,

8) and the very, superbly, extremely occasional,
once in a blue moon sip of wine (cough*booze).

9) She has many best friends, 2 of whom I have met.

Elizabeth (hi Elizabeth):

10) and Amanda (Hi Amanda) :

11) she's not too good at multi-tasking,

12) but holds quite a few jobs (or used to)

13) She HATES the injustice that exists in the world

14) and really hopes that something could be done about it.

15) She's good at drawing,

16) fantastic at shopping,

17) and GREAT at interpersonal skills.

18) she loves her leather boots and bags,

19)but not as much as her friends and family.

(sorry if I've missed people out, this is just REPRESENTATIONAL)
(for a FULL listing, go to facebook.com and search for li wong)

20) and finally......... she just turned 20.

HAPPY 20th YI.

Turning 20 on the 20th.
Momentous.

(not really. but for now, yes. )

You're finally as old as I am.
I am forever 20.

But beware, once you're 20,

you're 25.

Then you're 30

and then 55.

But, we have to focus on happy things.
H - A - P - P - Y Things.
:) :) :) ;) :) :) :)

If you were wondering why everything was in pink,
it's cos (if u haven't already figured it out) this is a
Happy Birthday Dedication.

So I can't stop saying HOW GREAT Yi has been while I've been here, bringing me all around NY and revisiting places she's already been to.

There's something about her disposition that just well, makes people happy.

ALL THE BEST and HAPPY 20th !

Enjoy it while it lasts. :)

AND I HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN YOUR KENZO!!!!

Pratt Draw-a-thon (12 hrs but we only stayed for 3!)

2009-04-18T04:47:00.005-04:00

Pratt Art Institute (In Brooklyn) organized its annual Draw-a-thon today and Yuki had invited both Yi and I to join, so we did! But we only stayed for 3 hours. hmmm. Not much of a drawathon right.

But I must say it was really liberating to be able to draw after such a long artistic drought! Finance can really get to your head when you're an artsy person.

The concept was that there would be a few studios open and each studio would feature a few nude models who would change poses every 10 mins, 1 hour or 3 hour depending on which studio you were in. We being impatient little brats decided to go for the 10 min one. It was fun actually, getting to draw all these weird-ass poses. Hmmmm. But I'm not exactly a fan of figure drawing, and so is Yi. Oh well! Here're some photos:

Yi's friend Amanda, Yi and Yuki

Drawathon!

Amanda 'drawing'. That well, was Yi's pad. She was just posing. heh.
Amanda's from Bermuda. If you don't know where that is, go googlemaps it. heh.

Yi, this is a GREAT pic of you.

2 of my 10 min sketches:

Amazing gorgeous pretty Spring flowers.
The trees here now are all in shades of White, Pink and Purple.
Amazing.
Come to New York only from mid May onwards people. Never in winter. Ha.

Me kissing a really gorgeous sculpture.

On the way out.

Ciao!

Amazing 3D Experience

2009-04-17T16:26:00.003-04:00

Amazing 3D immersion technology from IDEO Labs on Vimeo.

Watch the above. Watch when the guy is placed on the ledge at 00:48. He acts like he's going to fall because of what he sees, when in reality he's on a flat surface. Hilarious.

Can you imagine when they have all of this available for consumers off the shelf? Imagine playing DOTA in that ! Amazing.

Pratt's Draw-a-thon

2009-04-17T01:10:00.003-04:00

So Yuki (Yi's friend) who is in Pratt studying Interior design, invited us to Pratt's Draw-a-thon. I've been looking forward to it the WHOLE WEEK and FINALLY, ITS TOMORROW! AHHHHHHH.

Here's what it's about:

Pratt Institute will hold its 21st Annual Draw-a-thon on Friday,
4th Floor on 200 Willoughby Avenue between Classon Avenue and Hall Street in Brooklyn.
Admission is $10 in advance and $15 at the door. 12 Hours of Drawing/ painting/ sculpting from the figure, plus : Pizza, fruit, coffee

Throughout the evening and into the night, 18 models circulate throughout
the drawing studios. Specific studios are dedicated to poses ranging
from the energy and frenzy of fast action poses, to sessions of five
minutes, twenty minutes and one-hour duration. There is also the
opportunity to work from extended poses of three and six hours.

One of the unique aspects of this event is the opportunity it provides
both students and art professionals to work from groups of models posing
together. There will also be a studio devoted to costume modeling, a very
popular recent addition. The marathon culminates in a grand finale in
which all of the models pose together in continuous slow motion on the
same model stand to the accompaniment of live African drum music.

Pratt will also award prizes at the end of the Draw-A-Thon that are
generously donated by area art stores. In addition, art supplies donated
by the Prattstore will be handed out during the event.

VOILA! CANT WAIT. Will post pictures tomorrow! It lasts from 7 pm to 7 am. Don't think I'll last that long though!
ha.

Meet ups ( and my super short hair)

2009-04-12T22:29:00.004-04:00

Today was quite an eventful day - met up with Miss Heng (my ex geog teacher from RI) and a few other friends, and then later went to Flushing with Yi and En.... So yea, Not much narrative, just photos!

Seng arrived slightly later so we had to retake our group photo -
I like how Ms Heng popped her head out from the side!

Later, I met up with Yi and En and we went to Flushing where we had some great dimsum, a massage and bubble tea!

I have no idea what possessed me to act like the bubble tea poster models.
This is a FIRST for me.
We were looking at all the posters around the place, and I said we had to take a photo where we were acting like that. So, we posed, my hand went up, En snapped the pic, and I was like , "OH CRAP. What did I just do!"

Yea, but, it does look not that bad la!

En who'll be joining NYU this coming fall.
Good luck En!

I ain't a tough guy but I know I ain't little.

2009-04-10T00:22:00.003-04:00

See the title up there?

I was queuing up at Walgreens at 1130pm to buy water when this obviously mad and irritating man came up, giggled and said that to me. Then he chuckled/snorted and walked on into one of the aisles, probably harassing people as he went along.

I'm not sure if he was trying to be friendly or if he was just mad, but in my brain I was just thinking "GET AWAY FROM ME NOW. GET AWAY FROM ME YOU DIRTY DIRTY MAN! "

Mini Cross over spy pics!

2009-04-08T17:40:00.004-04:00

Ok, the following photos are taken from globalmotors.net but, yes, as I've said before, MINI is gonna release their version of a CROSSOVER pretty soon, so these are the spy pics that have just recently been leaked. The real car will be unveiled at the Frankfurt motorshow this September.

It actually seems like they took the blueprint of an original MINI, pressed 'shift' and enlarged it with the proportions kept the same. Quite cool huh! It didn't seem to turn out as bad as I thought it would!

The back looks similar to the Clubman - with double doors and similar rear lights:

I think my mom will love this car because its a combi of her favourites - the MINI and an SUV-ish hatch back car! Ma, if you're reading this, you should check out more pics at globalmotors.net!

The Hair Cut to End it all.

2009-04-06T15:00:00.006-04:00

Never close your eyes in a hairstylist's chair. NEVER. Especially so when the hairstylist does not speak the same language as you.

So 2 days before, I went back to the same Japanese hairstylist at St. Mark's - St. Mark's is little Jap town so there are alot of funky Jap salons there. The first time round that he cut my hair, I came away rather satisfied. Considering that I had told him what I wanted via a translator - a translator who also seemed to be second guessing what I was saying in English - the outcome was quite palatable. I actually liked it.

Thus, this time round I thought that just by saying 'Same as last time', he would have known what I wanted. So as the guy proceeded to work on my hair, I closed my eyes and took a short rest. That was the biggest mistake that I could have made that day.

When I opened my eyes and put on my glasses, what I saw almost gave me an instantaneous panic attack. My hair at the side was completely gone and I had something like a mushroom cloud at the top of my head. The hair at the back, which previously had a subtle undercut, was now a full fledged, muscle flexing punk's undercut. I felt like I was going to suffer a heart attack right in the hairstylist's char.

"This time round, I give you, cut , MORE Fashion-able" the hairstylist said in his Japanese accented English, while smiling to himself and gesturing around my rock-punk of a head. My gosh. Yes, it was fashionable, but also extremely not 'Same as Last time'? I touched my hair at the sides, agonizing at the amount of hair that was sheared off. It didn't help that I didn't know how to tell him how to fix it - because of both the language barrier and the fact that I didn't even know if there was any more hair left to be fixed!

Without knowing how to fix it, I left the place after he had done all his waxing (After the wax, the haircut looked sort of ok, but my my, the haircut WITHOUT any gel would have just been horrendous) and went home to mope at my weird-ass hair.

This is how the hair looked like at the back.
DAMN WEIRD RIGHT????
Like a tuft of hair sticking out of nowhere.

So Liangyi met me the next day before we had dinner with Yuki, and that horrid, unfeeling cousin of mine said I looked like I had some sort of disease, with hair dropping off in patches all over my head.

"Do I know you? What did you do with my cousin?" were her words when she met me at the lobby of Palladium.

So upon her insistence, we went back to that place to get it fixed.

Lucky for me, the previous hairstylist was on off and an african-american guy attended to me.
Ahhhh. This time round I sorta knew I was in good hands because the guy pinpointed what he thought I had wanted prior to the haircut before. While gesturing at the back of my head in a V shape, he said, "You wanted a soft mohawk, fitted in at the back right?". Touche! Exactly what I was thinking of the first time I went to the salon.

So yes, he started working on my hair , 'traditionalizing' and 'normalizing' it with quick cuts here and there. When the 'Surgery' (as he had called it himself) was all over, my hair, though superbly short, was more acceptable by my standards. Nothing too 'Fasiona-able' and nothing too radical.

Though it still has a weird shape because of how the guy cut it previously, at least I dont have to worry about having to wax my hair everyday before I step out to at least look normal!

Do you see how short the sides have become?
It's an out-of-army haircut now.
Back to square one.

Ciao!

Singapore Car Prices Afterthought and Pattie Maes on TED.

2009-04-03T23:42:00.005-04:00

By the way, I was still thinking about car prices - If the government wants to use the taxes to control the number of cars on the roads, instead of imposing an ad volerem tax like the ARF (100% of OMV), shouldn't they just allow cars which have an OMV value above say the minimum list price now to enter Singapore?

Think of it as a scale. Right now, the cars in Singapore mostly range from above SGD$50 000 to infinity, if you shift the scale by reducing the tax, but limiting the prices from say above SGD$50,000, you will still have all the cars ranging from the price of SGD$50,000, so in essence, the prices are still a deterrent for owning a car!
Just that now, the cars available for sale would be the nicer ones! :)
Because now, all the uglier cars have fallen below the SGD$50,000 range, and thus, are not available for sale in Singapore!

Think about it another way: what's happening now is that people who are willing to fork out say, SGD$75,000 for one honda civic, can actually use that same money and get a nice BMW 5 series. It's not like they're going to buy ANOTHER car just because the nicer cars are now cheaper? They will still use that SGD75,000 to buy a car, just that now they can buy a BMW 5 series instead of a Honda Civic!
Wouldn't the whole of Singapore look alot better with BMWs or Mercs or Lexus on the roads instead of say Hondas or Toyotas or Chevrolets (I have nothing against Hondas or Toyotas, but you gotta admit BMWs and Mercs and Lexus beat them all hands down) ? Doesnt the govt want Singapore to be like the Monaco of Asia?

Another idea is, the govt should just impose say a SGD$45 000 tax on each car, so , that in effect acts as a deterrent but doesnt at the same time increase substantially the price of the nicer cars!
You will have a Honda Civic costing around its actual list price now, but a BMW 5 series costing only SGD 100,000! much less than its list price right now!

The effect is that people will still stick to the number of cars they originially wanted, but now, be induced or be able to buy the nicer ones!

Tada!

Problem solved!
And now, the govt will have less money (they already have more than enough), but Singapore's roads would only be filed with the snazzy, pazzy, gorgeous cars.

YUM.

SOMEONE SUGGEST THIS TO THE LTA!
hohoho.

~

I've always enjoyed the talks on TED ever since they came out I think a decade ago...

This following one just blew my mind away:

Amazing isn't it. The endless possibilities.

Breakdown of Singapore Car Prices via their OMV

2009-04-01T18:16:00.042-04:00

I have always been very interested in finding out exactly how much more people in Singapore were actually hemorrhaging for their cars, but needless to say, I have never actually gotten down to doing my homework - UNTIL NOW (wow it took me quite a while to get this all sorted out!)

Well well, the results have really quite surprised me. I knew that we were always paying in excess, but I didn't know we were actually paying that much more in comparison to our counterparts in other countries! The drawbacks of living on a small red dot on the map.

For the benefit of those who are interested to know (especially people who cannot live without cars like Mr Goh), I shall teach you how the prices are derived.

So basically, this is how the costs are broken down in Singapore:

Open Market Value (approx. the price to buy & get the car from the car manufacturer to Singapore shores, excluding singapore tax. I quote from the Land Transport Authority website:
"OMV price includes purchase price, freight, insurance and all other charges incidental to the sale and delivery of the car to Singapore." . I think it is approx the price outside of Singapore and probably slightly lower than what they call MSRP *manufacturer suggested retail price* in the U.S. )

+ Customs Duty (20% of OMV)
+ Government Service Tax (7% of OMV)
+ Additional Registration Fee (100% of OMV! <-- :( :( :( ) + Registration Fee ($140) + Certificate of Entitlement ($5000)

= Basic Cost

+ Premium (25%-50% OF Basic Cost) [Insurance & Dealer commission mostly, with radio license and car plate but these are miniscule in comparison]

= Singapore List Price.

In equation form, assuming premium is 45% of Basic cost:

Singapore List Price
= 1.45 [ OMV + 0.2 OMV + 0.07 OMV + 1.0 OMV +140 +5000 ]
= 1.45 [OMV + 1.27 OMV + 5140 ] <- Govt taxes $ (1.27OMV + 5140)
= 3.3 OMV + 5140 <--- We pay 3.3 times of OMV approximately.

The basic cost is called that because it's the cost that an agent has to incur to bring the car into Singapore. Basically it's OMV + Amount that government imposes as tax (CD/GST/ARF/RF/COE)

So as we can see, depending largely on the Premium(can vary between 25%-50% OF basic cost), the amount that the government takes can vary around 30% to 50% of the list price.

The Premium's bulk is from dealer's commission & insurance(insurance is based on type of car; 2 door, 4 door, how fast , age of driver etc - higher risk of accident, higher insurance)

In my eagerness to see if it all added up, I went to calculate the Singapore list prices starting from the OMVs - and guess what, they tally quite well!

Here are some with Pie charts to illustrate (all prices in SGD$):

The BMW 740i starts with a relatively high OMV so it's funny that COE only consitutes 2% of the List price. Here, the dealer is greedy or insurance is high so the premium is rather steep.
Government taxes consitute around 39% of the list price.
(Areas in blue except for OMV 2+29+2+6 = 39 )

~

I was amazed by the low premium of the Honda Civic.
22%!
So in this case, because of the low premium, the Government taxes consituted 50% of the list price!

~

And lastly, for the 556, I realized I made 爸 give 40% of the list price to the Gah-men.
erps.

~

In Conclusion, we're paying approximately
3 times the OMV(or MSRP)

If you buy a Honda Civic (List price(sgcarmart.com): SGD$71,300) in Singapore, you can use that same amount of money and buy a BMW 5 Series (528i) (List Price(MSRP from edmnuds.com) : SGD$68,892.35 or US$45,800) quite comfortably in the United States.
=
~

If you buy a Mercedes Benz S350L (List price(sgcarmart): SGD$320,888 = USD$212,000) in Singapore, you can use that same amount of money and buy a 2009 Bentley Continental GT (List price(edmunds): SGD$296,477 = USD$197,100) quite comfortably in the United States.
=

~

If you buy a 2009 Bentley Continental GT (List Price(SGcarmart): SGD$730,000 = USD$485,307) in Singapore, you can use that same amount of money and buy a 2009 Rolls-Royce Phantom Drophead Coupe ( List Price(Edmunds): SGD$652,822 = USD$434,000) quite comfortably in the United States.
=

~

And I know alot of car loving guys probably want to know,
what is the equivalent (in terms of price) in Singapore of a
Lamborghini Murcielago in the United states?:
An Aston Martin!

If you buy an Aston Martin V8 Vantage 4.7 Coupe (List Price(SGcarmart): SGD$549,000 = USD$365,000) in Singapore, you can use that same amount of money and buy a 2009 Lamborghini Murcielago LP640 ( List Price(Edmunds): SGD$532,480 = USD$354,000) quite comfortably in the United States.
=

(The 2009 Aston Martin V8 Vantage in the U.S. (SGD$179,751 = USD$119,500) costs the equivalent of a BMW 1 Series Coupe (135i) in Singapore (SGD$179,800 = USD$119,531) )

Ok , that was just the most heart breaking:
With the cash you use to buy a pudgy looking BMW 1 Series Coupe in Singapore, you can purchase an ASTON MARTIN in the States?
Hmmmmm............
=
This just doesn't make sense. Ha.

~

Alas, don't be sad Car Loving Guys!
It might not be much consolation , but we do get cheap food ;)

Thus, after my long long long research,
I hope you guys have been enlightened about the black hole that is Car prices in Singapore.

I've realized that the gah-men gets alot of tax money out of cars.

SO they BETTER, BETTER, BETTER
keep the roads smooth and pothole free,
manicure the plants nicely so that when we drive by we feel good,
maybe have like neon coloured road separators,
maybe also make the roads coloured,
maybe give us free GPS systems (thousand plus only la!)
or set up free car wash areas so that all the cars in Singapore look nice and clean.

They better not use the money to put more speed cameras to fine us more!

Mini Chameleon

2009-04-01T16:54:00.003-04:00

My heart skipped a beat when I read this:
"MINI Chameleon - a MINI that changes colour based on the ambient temperature and weather" gosh, MINI has outdone itself again!!!

It will make its Asian Debut in Singapore this coming June but I doubt it will be on sale. It will however be available for viewing at the MINI Habitat!

Uppety.

2009-03-28T22:50:00.007-04:00

So tengkok the uppety eater decided to book a lunch table at Jean Georges (a 3 michelin star restaurant) for our mini reunion. He activated quite a number of flights to get the peeps in - Kaicheng from Duke, Hongwan from Cornell and Waikeong from Chicago. Sadly, Dedrick couldn't make it due to unforeseen circumstances - Ded if u're reading this, we missed you!

Anyways, tengkok is quite something. He travelled to NY just to eat. and I mean, EAT. He had a list of good and well rated restaurants that he went to for lunch and dinner - steak, donuts, burgers, everything.

Nothing beats old friends.

I am perfectly fine with simple and nice hawker fare like CHICKEN RICE(yum) and Ice kacang.
But this dish was quite something.
YES TENGKOK, I CONCEDE, IT WAS EXCELLENT AND WELL WORTH IT OK?????? heh. :)

The colour is scary right? heh.
It was kinda nice, but I actually prefer the wasabi prawns in Peach Garden.
I felt the peach and the carrot broth didn't really quite go with the prawns.
But since it's some super rated restaurant, I suppose it was supposed to complement each other?

Oh well, I do have a desensitized tongue.

Halibut

After lunch, we crossed the street to central park to meet some of sengteck's friends.
Turns out I actually know 2 of them - Pui san and Shafa.

Spring has arrived!

More Spring!

Columbus Circle

We then made our way to brooklyn bridge because Puisan and Sengteck wanted to walk across.
It was my first time anyways, so it was fun as well.
Yihan (who also knows puisan) met us at the bridge after his pscyh lab sessions (WITH CHIMPANZEES! AND IM NOT JOKING!) so it was quite a large group walking across.
What a reunion - sorta!

Pui on the left, Seng, Shafa

Random shot, but, exactly the same car!
By the way , the cars here are SUPER much less than the cars in Singapore.
I'll have a blog post breaking down the costs of the cars later. I did my homework and was absolutely shocked at how much cars are marked up in Singapore! I always knew they were marked up, but I didn't know by quite this much. heh.

Lucky we have cheap food. heh.

So after we crossed the bridge, we went to this quaint famous ice cream place.

Brooklyn bridge at dusk.
Man eating ice cream.

So Hongwan arrived at night and we met up with him.
After scouring the whole of jap town for a restaurant with seats, we ended up at a Sichuan Restaurant. Hilarious.

Culprit!
See the dish on the top right? Yes, the chillis in there were INSANE.
I chewed up one and almost died.
Kaicheng will aggree with that - he was also owned by one.

The NYFD outside the restaurant.
Someone called the firefighters cos Kaicheng's mouth was on fire. No. Really.

Ciao !

2009-03-26T02:38:00.002-04:00

Some ramblings after I managed to recover from my endless bouts of laughter after watching the above:

1) Is it me or did anyone get uncontrollable bouts of laughter when he/she heard about this? Or maybe it's just because, like my brother, I laugh at things I'm not supposed to laugh at.

2) The voice of the chinese newscaster immediately brings into mind the image of 公公 and 婆婆 sitting in front of the telly watching the nightly 10 o clock news. Hm mm, absence makes the heart grow fonder.

3) I love the use of "兴致勃勃" in describing the tourists and locals who came to take pictures of the merlion under repair. 我们兴致勃勃地到了动物园。我们兴致勃勃地到了海滩。我们兴致勃勃地去看闪电击中过的鱼尾狮。

4) There must be something in the art of fengshui that states that nothing sharp should be protruding out of someone/something's head. How then should they attach the lightning rod to the merlion? Sticking out of its side like a broken-off arrow? hmm. Or maybe technology allows for a lightning conductor without a lightning rod.

5) I wished they had a video of the actual thing happening － apparently it sounded like a bomb exploded. the poor merlion.

Mangosteen in Chocolate

2009-03-23T16:43:00.002-04:00

Tengkok housed me when I went to Chicago, and now , I'm housing him in my room in New York.

Anyways, tengkok says that in some really ATAS (high class) chocolates, there's an initial taste of fruit followed by the chocolate taste (duh) and then some I-dunno-what after taste.

Ok, I think my tongue has been desensitized or something, but I have no idea what he's talking about at all.

I tried his chocolate and I tried as hard as I could , pressing the chocolate onto the roof of my mouth with my tongue, but alas, no flavorful fruity outburst! Personally, I'M SURE IT'S A WHOLE LOAD OF CRAP! hahhaha. ok. joking. I might have incurred the wrath of some people there, but, haha - don't blame me for having a desensitized tongue!

Right now, I'm having some chocolates, and I'm getting some initial taste of durian, some mangosteen and quite a tad bit of Avocado. Get your cadbury and you might get a hint of ba-chor-mee in it !

BACK IN NYC!!!

2009-03-22T03:01:00.004-04:00

WHEEEEEE. IM BACK IN NYC! AFTER 8 days, 6 flights and 3 radically different American cities, I'm back in NYC!!! ahhhhhhh. Though it was awesome fun, I'm so glad to be back !!!!

I know I have not posted pictures of the third leg of the trip - Chicago - but I have to blog about my harrowing harrowing disgusting horrible yucky nerve wrecking flight + subway ride back from Chicago O'hare's airport first! Need to rant! rrrrawwwrrrrr!!

Disclaimer: Below is super bitchy talk. If you don't want to be irritated, don't read it!

So maybe it was my fault - I did not know that the ziplock bag for liquids on your carry - ons had to be a quart (Like I use the metric system so dont quart me gallon that hokay!) so when I reached the security, the guy said:

"Do you know what the rules are for the carryon aerosols and liquids? "

"hmm, the liquid bottles have to be less than 100 ml?" I said, with full confidence that what I said was correct.

"any more?"

"erm... not more than one bag?"

"how big must that bag be?"

"I'm not sure !" I said. I was getting impatient cos my flight was departing in 20 mins and I was getting flustered. I had arrived late cos well, I left late for the airport from tengkok's place. NEVER EVER LEAVE LATE FOR THE AIRPORT. EVER. (ok , so maybe my fault, but still! BUT STILL!)

And then, he slowly gestured with my gallon ziplock bag, cutting it in half with his hand : "It has to be around a quart. I'm sorry, but you will have to check your luggage in. "

So I immediately asked the lady in front of me if she had another ziplock bag. She said: "I'm so sorry, I have none, but you should have come prepared!"

you know, WTH. I just felt like wringing her kneck, taking her and dumping her into the X ray machines to get X rayed. Bloody irritating reply can!

So anyways, yes, that was the beginning of my harrowing experience. The stupid guard said I couldn't go through, so I had to exit the security area, rush to the check in counter, and try to check in my bag when my plane was leaving in 10 mins (leaving, not boarding!)

But guess what! when I reached the counter, the lady said
"I'm sorry but it's too late, we can't check in your bag! You have to make the decision of dumping your toiletries to catch your flight, or you might not catch it at all!"

So yes, guess what I did? I went around BEGGING people for ziplock bags! I mean, inside my ziplock bag was easily more than SGD$150 worth of toiletries. I was in NO WAY gonna dump them away.

LUCKILY, this nice lady had a proper sized ziplock bag which she used to house some peanuts - she threw the peanuts away and gave me the bag . I was SO glad she had one , an absolute lifesaver. Whereever she is, she knows she got some good karma!

ANYWAYS.

Yes, so the second horrible thing to happen to me was that when I boarded the plane, there was no place left for carryons in the over head compartments.

That's alright, I mean , the air steward said he would take the cabin bag and I could get it later after I left the plane - they do this all the time for the smaller aircraft - ie, you leave the carry ons on plane side and you collect it from plane side after that. It's not the same as checking in the luggage. You dont need to collect it from baggage claim.

BUT GUESS WHAT! Upon arrival at washington's Dulles (I had a connecting flight from washington to NYC), the air steward said that he had sent my luggage into check in and that I can only get it from baggage claim!

HO . HO. HO.

TO get to baggage claim, I had to take one of their shuttles to get to the main terminal. Ok, so I did that. BUT GUESS WHAT AGAIN!

AFTER GOING TO BAGGAGE CLAIM, I HAD TO GO THROUGH ANOTHER SECURITY CHECK TO GO BACK INTO THE TERMINAL FOR MY BLOODY CONNECTING FLIGHT TO NYC ! AND. THE STUPID TERMINAL WAS ANOTHER SHUTTLE AWAY!

RAWRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

So I reached the terminal's security area. Well, I took the ziplock bag of liquids out of my bag, and placed it in another tray to be screened just as how it has to be done.

You know what happened again? My moisturizer had fallen out into my bag and I hadnt noticed, so when my bag went through, the security guard had to go through my bag again. He took it out and said I shouldnt have left my moisturizer in my bag. Then he sent my bag in through for screeining again without the moisturizer.

I was like. WTH. FIRSTLY , I WOULDNT HAVE HAD TO GO THROUGH THE STUPID SCREENING IF THEY HADN'T CHECKED IN MY CARRYON . SECONDLY, CAN THEY STOP CHECKING MY BAG OVER AND OVER AGAIN! IT'S ONLY MOISTURIZER! ARGHHHHHHH.

Ok, so after that, it was a sorta ok flight back to JFK. Nice small aircraft with nice air stewardess.

But well, hohoho, after I got off I took the wrong airtrain which landed me at the wrong subway stop! I have NO idea why so many bad things happen at the same time!

BUT!

THAT WAS NOT ALL!

After getting onto the correct subway, THERE WAS A BLOODY GANG FIGHT ON THE STUPID SUBWAY!

STUPID GANG GIRLS AND THEIR STUPID FEUDS.
EURGH! SO ABSOLUTELY CHILDISH!

Well, so I was in the subway carriage and as the train was still at a trainstop, the door connecting the carraiges suddenly opened (its not the same here as in Singapore, where its like one long tube, the subways here have carriages and linking doors) and people started rushing in from the carriage behind ours. Some came in to sit down, and others went forward to the other carriages.

Soon after, these 2 girls came in swearing at I-dunno-who, and one was red and scratched up and obviously beaten up. They were like "I need my handphone back! We have to get it back!" They were both dressed in some punk attire. They were shouting "F*** F***" all the time.

So I asked the person who sat next to me in a soft voice " What happened?"

"they just started attacking her!"

There was alot of commotion in the other carriage and people were shouting loudly on the platform. I could hear the train master say "Please get off the train now." In a very unpolite sort of voice. Well, half the time I was really worried that some knife wielding young punk would come in and start slashing at me.

Oh well, Whatever.

Harrowing. Urgh.

Bad trip back from an otherwise lovely whirlwind American tour.

Urgh.

Will update photos of chicago soon! Thanks TK for showing me ard! See u in NYC in 24 hrs!

Spring Break - Las Vegas Leg Part (II)

2009-03-20T21:10:00.017-04:00

So the next day I had to check out of the hotel and check into Planet Hollywood at around 1, and with all my luggage I was not intending to hike there. So I took the monorail which plies the road parallel to the strip.

The monorail reminds me of the one on Sentosa- all touristy and sightseeing-y. What makes it interesting is that as it goes along, there's a recording of funny but informative comments about Las Vegas which is looped.

Below is a video of one such comment:

the monorail track

It's interesting cos on the right of the monorail, you have the strip and all its tall buildings, but once u turn ur head to the left, its nothing but a wide expanse of land with small unglam buildings.

Elvis. Nuff said.

"Hello all!"

PLANET HOLLYWOOD RESORT AND CASINO!

To get into the Planet Hollywood hotel lobby, you have to walk through their casino and the experience is just absolutely exhilarating.
That casino I tell you is more like a dance club than a casino. Even in the day time it felt like it was a fully functioning dance club - all the changing coloured lights and deep bass club music.

I'm guessin that if I enjoyed gambling, I'd have loved that place.
But sadly, just as good food is wasted on me, a nice casino doesnt mean much to me.
I think if Uncle Edward and Jun were here, they'd have thoroughly enjoyed themselves!!!
ha.

Below is a video of the casino:

So after walking through the casino, you have to take an escalator down to the hotel lobby.
Suspended above the escalator is this GINORMOUS lighted ball that changes colour.

Talk about BLING BLING man.
Here's a video of that entrance:

The lifts are also another piece of art la.
Embedded into the ceiling of all the lifts are HUGE plasma screens.
Again, with the piped clubbing music and the visuals from the plasma scree, it feels nothing short of a mini club. I was rather impressed!

Here's a vid of the interior of the lift:

Lift Lobby of the 35th Floor.

Corridor to the rooms

Needless to say, the room itself was DAMN COOL CAN!

The music that you hear from the video is from my ipod. They even had one of those ipod dock cum speakers!

My trusty mac!

The uber huge bath room.

I don't usually take pics of myself in the mirror, but this time round I cut myself some slack . :)

Alladin lamp shaped tap which I thought was really nice.

A side table with some I-dunno-wad-movie artifact.

Because the room was on the 35th floor, and the nice lady at the counter gave me a Strip facing room, I got a GORGEOUS view.
the Bellagio.

The southern part of the strip - you can see MGM, New York New York as well as Luxor and the Mandalay.

here is another view from the room - at night !!!

Ok, so enough raving of the hotel.
Right after I put down my bags, I went to walk about. at that time I only had half a day left in Las Vegas so I was determined to see as much as I could!
And so the hike up and down the strip began once again:

I must say that although you can see more of Las Vegas in the day, it is prettier at night as you will see.

This is the bellagio in the day time.

The MASSIVE pool.

The pool in action

Here's a vid of the fountain. The funny thing is that while I was filming, I noticed a duck and got distracted by it:

The mist created after the show was over.
I loved it when the mist floated over and enveloped us in cool air.
yum.

A little video of my walk-about.

Ok, so the ironic thing was that when I was walking about, there were these 2 guys wearing 'Believe in Jesus' shirts who were carrying large loud hailers and they were basically telling people to live fulfilling lives. Hmmm. The funny thing was that opposite of them was like a whole row of guys handing out cards of pictures of naked women and call-girl numbers.

I wanted to film it down but felt bad about pointing my camera at the 2 guys, so I just took some random vid of some random thing just to get the audio: if you play the video, you can hear them in the back ground:

After my walkabout, I received a phone call from my friends saying they had arrived. So I took a bus up to Fremont strip which is downtown Las Vegas.

The person took the photo with the camera upside down. ha.

I actually thought downtown Las Vegas would be something like clarke quay - afterall, they did call it the 'Fremont Experience'. But no, it's more like Toa Payoh or erm, Jurong East. I mean, seriously, look! It's how ugly and unglam! I was just dying to go back to the glitz and glamour of the Strip. hehe.

The bus back to the strip took 1 hour to come. And yes , you read it correctly - ONE HOUR. It's supposed to take only 6 mins, but this time round someone or something screwed up and it took 1 hour.
So before it reached, we decided to walk down first. ( I know it makes no logical sense to walk down cos the bus will still pass you by, but yea, it was better than sitting around and doing nothing)

My first time seeing a blimp with advertising on it. Like a huge-ass Digital coloured screen on the blimp with messages on it. A-maz-ing.

This is a view looking south, with the Stratosphere in the distance. The stratosphere marks the beginning of the Strip which extends further south from it. So yes, as you can see it is really quite far, so we abandoned the hike and waited for the bus. heh.

By the time we reached the strip, it was already night time. We did some quick sightseeing and then proceeded to Chocolate Factory in Caesar's palace for dinner.

Treasure Island.

The nice thing about the more expensive hotels along the strip is that they have like half hourly or hourly automated performances.
Below is the one in front of the Mirage.

A little video of that performance:

The entrance to Caesar's Palace's shopping arm.

Some opulent sculpture inside the mall.

Random scultpures.

More random scultpures.

Even more random sculptures.

A bloody trojan horse in the mall.
WTH right.

An atlantis themed aquarium, a-la Wisma Atria but 10 times bigger.

So there was a pond with sculptures in them within the mall wing of Caesar's palace.
The amazing thing was that THOSE SCULPTURES COULD MOVE!

After dinner at Caesar's we headed to the Bellagio to watch the legendary fountain that I was telling you about.
You guys MUST MUST watch these videos. the fountain is AMAZING. I was telling tengkok how wonderful if they could build something like that in the middle of the Singapore river, infront of the fullerton or something. At such a scale, it would be breathtaking. Oh wells, fantasies, fantasies.

Mist appearing on the lake just before each quarter hour performance.

Fountains dancing to 'Time to say goodbye' by Sarah brightman and Andrea Bocelli:

The fountains shoot up SO FREAKING HIGH and the sound that is produced is reminiscent of live firing. ha.

Fountains dancing to 'My heart will go on':

Alrighty, so right after the Bellajio, my friends decided to head across the road to my room to have a look at the view.

And that was all for Las Vegas!

The next day I was headed for a 3.5 hour flight to Chicago where I currently am!
And thats more blogging to do for another time!

Hope you guys liked the videos!
(YOU BETTER DO COS IT TOOK ME FREAKING LONG TO UPLOAD + RESIZE + TYPE OUT EVERYTHING! RAWR)

Spring Break - Las Vegas Leg Part (I)

2009-03-20T00:55:00.010-04:00

As I'm typing this, I'm lying on tengkok's inflatable bed in his room along 55th street and Hyde park boulevard in Chicago. But I still have yet to update you guys about my 2 day 2 night trip to Las Vegas, so here goes.

Right after the country-ish and ulu-ness of the Park City mountains, I took a 1hr 24 min flight to nearby Nevada, Las Vegas.

Las Vegas didn't disappoint at all, but neither did it overwhelm. It was just as I had imagined it to be - glitzy, glamourous and opulent, however, the glamourous part of Las Vegas was not as big as I had hoped it to be. Some parts were actually quite lacklustre. But still, the experience was great- many things I loved about it, includingthe stay in the Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino! yum.

This is a view from the plane (I'm doing alot of sightseening on the planes! Wadaya expect, I have 6 flights in 8 days. heh!) of the hoover dam in the Grand Canyon. I was actually meant to meet up with some other Singaporean exchange friends in Las Vegas and go on a day tour with them to the Grand Canyon, but their retard tour agency shuffled their itinerary and they ended up arriving in Las Vegas one day later. Hence, I had no day trip to the hoover dam (which actually was a blessing in disguise!) but it didn't matter cos I got to see it from the plane! ha.

Touchdown at the Mccarren Airport in Las Vegas!
That there, where the pyramid thing is, is the beginning of the famous Las Vegas Strip - a strip of casinos, opulent hotels and shopping malls.

The jackpot thinggies ( I have no idea what they're called) already set the mood of the STRIP right in the airport itself.

Weird turtle sculpture. Cute hor.

Welcome to Las Vegas!
Because I was there alone, I had to ask strangers to help me take photographs whenever I wanted to be in a picture. So ma fan!

"Excuse me, could you help me take a photograph?"
"Pardon?"
"could you help me take a photograph please?"
"Oh! sure, what do I do?"
"Press this button here please!"
*pose*
"This alright? It looks abit dark though"
*preview photo*
"Ahh ... hmm... sure, another one would be good!"
"Ok, no problem"
*pose*
"is this better?"
"yup! Thanks so much !"

and repeat.
and repeat.
and repeat.

So yea, I don't have alot of photos with myself in it on the first night in Las Vegas.
The following pics are taken from the shuttle from the airport to the Hilton hotel. It went through the strip so it gave me a good preview of what was to come.

They should have one called 'THAThotel'

There is alot of construction going on in Las Vegas, this is just a sample. heh.

This was the first time in a REALLY long time that I saw so much greenery. I was thus VERY happy and excited. Ha. This was in front of the Caesar's palace.

So yea, I checked into my hotel, the Las Vegas Hilton and I'm glad I only booked it for the first night! It's the start of the strip, but it's not exactly near all the action. So when I went to take a walk around the main area (Bellagio, Venetian etc) , I almost died of exhaustion when I reaced back.
It was like a freakin 6 km hike can!

The view from my hotel room. You can see the main part of the strip in the distance. That track there is the monorail that plies the road parallel to the Strip.

The hotel room is LARGE. and nice, but it was a tat too big that I had to leave the lights on at night cos I was actually scared. Hmmmmm. And it didn't help that Zheyi kept telling me that there might have been someone else in the room with me. YOU SUCK CANNNNN. heh. joking. The casino at the lobby of the Hilton

So after putting down my bags, I headed out for that 6 km hike I told you guys about.

This is the Wynn, a really gorgeous hotel . Love it, love it.
If I ever do go back to Vegas, I shall want to stay there.

The venetian, another famous hotel.

Harrah's.

Below is a video of a part of my 'hike'

As I was walking down the boulevard, there was this group of people standing around looking at some stall. So I went to take a look and I was very surprised to see a guy painting only with spray cans. He's obviously so talented. good for him, and nice hair do too. heh.

I was lucky cos that night that I arrived happened to be Saint Pat's Day. It's some Irish thing that I haven't yet wiki-ed about. ha. So basically everyone was wearing green and getting drunk. Hmmm. Have no idea what that has to do with St. Pat's.

Paris Hotel : GORGEOUS.

Across the road of the Paris is the Bellagio Hotel.
Ok, so I MUST rave about Bellagio.

Do you remember the magical fountain on sentosa?
OK , imagine a fountain 10 times ( and I mean 10 times) bigger than that.
Yes, that was in front of the Bellagio and the fountain 'danced' to a different tune every half hour.
AMAZING.
Below is what I saw from across the road. I'll post more vids that I took of the fountain on the second day later.

Below are pictures of the Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino.

When I took these pictures, I had no idea that I would be staying in that hotel the next day. The updates for the second day will be for the next blog post, but beware , I will be going gaga over that hotel in that post. ha.

So yea, that was the end of my strip trip, and I headed back for the hilton. It was another really long hike back. oh wells! (and no points for guessing how retarded I felt when I discovered on the next day that they had a shuttle plying the strip. ho ho ho).

UPDATE!

2009-03-18T04:10:00.006-04:00

ZOMG ZOMG ZOMG ZOMG ZOMG!

I LOVE price line!

Basically what happens is you specify an area, give your debit/credit card number, the rating of the hotel that you want to stay in, and u select 'buy my hotel'. The system will match whatever hotel that agrees to your price and if you get matched, you are charged that random hotel within that area. If they cant match anything, you're not charged. The amazing thing is you can put as low a price as you want!

So I was just trying my luck and what I did was just random a '4 or 5 star hotel' along the Las vegas strip (where all the action is at! The hilton i'm in now is north of the strip, so must walk quite a bit) for a price which I thought I'd never get, and I ended up actually getting PLANET HOLLYWOOD RESORT AND CASINO! OMG! ITS RIGHT OPPOSITE THE BELLAGIO (the one with the fountain!)

I got it at 60% off the price on orbitz!! I think it's got to do with the fact that I'm booking it on the day itself (now it's the booking day already).

Some pictures of planet hollywood resort & casino ( I walked past it just now and didn't think I'd get to stay in it!!!) :

This is the version of the room I'm going to get ! wheeeee!

Pa, I'm way way below my own budget for accomodation!! (but way way above for other things, heh)

Salt Lake City, day 2 & Las Vegas

2009-03-18T02:58:00.012-04:00

As I type this, I'm sitting alone in the hilton hotel in Las Vegas waiting for my friends to arrive tomorrow (their irritating tour agency changed the schedule so they arrived one day later). The amazing thing is that I got the room tonight for only USD$49 on priceline - thanks to tengkok who told me about it! It was too good a deal so I booked it even though it's only for one night. So, I have yet to book tomorrow's hotel room and am looking out for another good deal. But Las Vegas is another story for another blog post- I still have to tell you all about my second (and last) day of snowboarding!

The second day started off with Zach and I warming up again on the small ski slope called 'Sweet Pea' and guess what, there were many little kids learning skiing and they were insanely adorable!!!!

The conquerors have arrived.
This is like one of those pictures of soldiers coming across the hill top and looking down at the town that they're going to colonize. ha. Though I have no right to critique given my lack of photography skills, I do personally think this is a fantastic photo in terms of composition, subject, placement. The light was fantastic so everything was picture perfect.
Too bad I only had a point and shoot camera - think I'll get a DSLR soon cos the more I wait, the more I regret. There're so many moments that I could have captured better with a good camera.

Look at the little boy. OMG right. And the girl behind him seems to be hanging on with her dear life to the lift that drags them up the slope. Ha. so cute.
I love how he's in baby blue, and she's in baby pink.

Below are videos of the little kids!!! you MUST watch them, really. They're like only 10 secs long.

So cute the way he stopped right! Zach's commentary is timely. Funny!

The little girl was so adorable! She seemed to be so terrified, like, "ahhhh, what's happening, ahhhh, I just learnt to walk and now I'm skiing! ahhhhh!!!!"

So after some warming up, we headed over to a more slopy slope called high meadows. Below is another video of me trying to ski down. ha.

The view from atop high meadows is gorgeous:

A close up of the picture above shows a mountain with the letters 'PC' ingrained into the sides.
PC stands for Park City, or according to Zach 'Politically Correct'.

It is really quite tiring having to snowboard and snowboard and snowboard, so one time, while I was trying to rest my tired knees and butt (from all the falling!), I laid down and was really pleasantly surprised by the view I got:

From the bottom of the 'High Meadows' Lift.

Some nicely phrased adverts. ha.

Around the high meadows slope are a few boards with cartoon characters. It's made to appeal to the children I suppose since it's a very beginner's slope, but I was so amused by them! Wanted to take pics with all of them, but too bad Zach was like, 'Are you serious...??' lol.
Lucky I got a pic with one!

And guess what, he's wearing the same colour as me!
ha! (and he's wearing specs too!)

So Zach got tired of taking normal pics, so he asked for an emo one. ha.

This is a sign for advanced skiiers who are joining the merged lane with High meadows and their slope.
I just had to take a picture with it. Ha.
Again, Zach was like "Are you serious....??" heh.

Thats the top of the high meadow's ski lift.

This is a view from the gondola that brings you down to the base camp.
You can either ski down or take the gondola down - if we were to have snow boarded down, I think we'd have either taken the whole day to crawl down or we'd have rolled down in like 5 mins.
So yea. heh.

Salt Lake City, Utah.

2009-03-16T00:24:00.011-04:00

I did promise photos from my Spring break trip, so the following are those from my 1st and 2nd day(snowboarding,ouch.) of my 8-day sorta whirlwind trip across the whole of USA. I'll be spending the first 3 days in Salt Lake City, Utah, following which I would be headed to Vegas for 2 days and then I'll be going to Chicago to visit Tengkok for the last 3 days.

This was my suitcase all packed and ready to go on the morning of my flight.
I'm so glad mommy told me to bring a cabin trolley instead of a handcarry (which I sort of was insisting to bring) because if I did not have this, I'd had to have checked in my large large baggage.

Goes to show your parent's advice is always correct! ;)

I was also very lucky because the pants that Pa told me to bring to the states (he said they were nice to sleep in !) turned out to be Ski Pants! Aha, so I didn't have to waste $ get any over here..

Also, Si, thank you SO much for your molton brown shampoo and body wash. ha. They're just the right size to bring on the trip cos I didn't have any travel size shampoo and body wash!

Ok, hmm, weird start to the blog entry.

JFK terminal 2 from which I took the delta flight out.

This is Dulles airport in Washington D.C. - the first stopover before I caught a connecting flight to SLC.

The funny thing is that when I was boarding the flight from JFK to Dulles, the attendant who was collecting the boarding pass said to me "Are you headed to Duh-less?"
I thought he was saying, Dallas, which is in Texas, so I was like, "er... nope? I'm headed to Washington D.C.". I had NO idea that DULLES was pronounced as 'DUH-LESS' - I always thought it was 'DUE-LES' or something.
Imagine my embarrasment.

Random Burger. Whatever.

That's the main terminal behind

So while I was in Dulles, I saw this air officer who had a german shepherd with him. From this picture, you can't really tell the size of the dog.

I went up to chat to the airport officer and he was all friendly, and he said
"Well, we didn't expect him to grow to be so big!"

Well, that dog I tell you, is one huge-ass german Shepherd.
Even Mei jie's queenie was no match at all.

Look how big that dog is compared to the officer.
AMAZING.

When the dog stood up to stretch (you can see it yawning there), it was phenomenal.
The dog's height reached up to his waist. And that officer is not a short guy at all.

Wow.
Zheyi, get a huge dog like that.
But it would stink big time in Singapore.
hmmm.

The flight to Salt Lake City was long.
And tiring.
But as we reached SLC, my gosh, nothing can describe how
AMAZINGLY BEAUTIFUL
the sight was.

These pictures do not do justice to the view.
People in the plane were all just craning their necks to get a glimpse of the view.
I was seated at the window but it was in a weird position, so yea, I too almost had a cramp just to get a good gorgeous complete view.

Look at those mountain ranges man.
Gorgeous.

Passengers looking out.
The sun was seeting from the other side of the plane so the whole cabin was tinged orange.
It was such an amazing experience.

See the shadows of the mountains?
The setting sun cast all shades of pink, orange and purple on the mountains.
It was breath taking.

To land, the plane circled the airport for quite a bit. So I also got a view of the setting sun.

Salt Lake City Airport. Landed!

An advertisement at the airport for the Ski resort area where I was headed.

Ok, so for these 3 days that I'm in Utah, I'll be spending them with Zach who is Wei Kor's friend, and we'll be staying at Zach's other friend, Michael's place.

It was really really really nice of Michael to let me stay there, and his place is SO amazingly beautiful and opulent.

Icecles forming. It's actually not really cold here, around 2-3 degress celcius, so I'm quite amazed that there's still so much snow to ski/snowboard on. But it makes for comfortable snowboarding though!

This is in Michael's apartment's kitche. I thought it was a cupboard , until,

tada! It's a camouflaged fridge!

Now guess what this is.

Tada! A dish washer!

So this is the bedroom where Zach and I are sleeping in.
I sleep on the bed on the right..

This is the living area, with a super huge, but superbly awkwardly positioned TV.
I was telling Zach maybe it's cos it maximizes the length from the TV - it's diagonal so you won't spoil your eyes! Lame la me.

The TV above the Fire place.

This is the kitchen area... very country.

The morning of the second day. The green thing in the middle , that's one of the ski lifts.
We didn't take this one though.

Zach and Michael at an info booth.

Apparently SLC is one of the best places to go ski in the US, so it's no surprise that the Canyons is one huge ass ski resort.

There are a few hotel developments within the resort, and it has one humongous sorta theme parkish ski area, with a main gondola which brings u up to the sort-of a base area, and then a network of ski lifts bringing you up to several ski slopes of various standards.
Very fun and huge place.

On the main gondola.

This was our Snowboard instructor, Kristi.
Zach and I decided to sign up for a snowboard lesson because we really had no idea how to snow board at all. Michael had gone off to ski and we were sorta stuck with rented snowboards, snow shoes and with no idea of how to use them at all. The rest of the day would have been wasted if we did not at least know the basics.
That lesson however, was freakingly expensive! It was US72.50 per person (SGD$111.59 , wtf, the USD is back to 1.54! :( ) for an hour , even more ex than like piano lessons. oh well.
Necessary evil.

Miniature snow man that I made (about 3 cm. ha)

This was a prelude to the amount of falling down that I had to do for the day.
heh.

The ski lift up to the supposed beginner slope. heh.
We should have suspected something cos it was so high up!

Random, but we had our lunch on the top of the mountain! there was like one lone hut there with this really nice restaurant. Amazing.

The view is gorgeous right?
But guess what! that cliff like thing there, that's the beginnig of a ski slope.
S-C-A-R-Y.
Didn't even dare go too near it least I drop down.

This was supposed to be like a beginner slope, but it proved too difficult for us.
It was really scary cos it's easy to fall over on the board, and if you can't control it, well, you fall into like a valley. LOL. ok, maybe not a valley but yea, some steep slope.

So u see how Zach is sitting? yes, that's about how we got through about 3/4 of the ski slope. Moving down on all fours! hahaha. But yea, I tried to snow board properly and fell so many times while doing that. My tailbone now is superbly painful. The falls are no joke man, u fall backwards and ur tail bone gets hit, and the pain just almost goes right up to your head.

The gorgeous view from the gondola on the way back.

Tomorrow, I'M GOING TO OWN THE SLOPE ( yeaaaaaaaaa. )

Seeya!

Missing everyone at home !

Salt Lake City, Utah.

2009-03-15T02:24:00.002-04:00

When I decided on going to Utah, I was at first thinking that I'd be going to the middle of nowhere -just like snow, snow and more snow. But what I did not know was the fact that it is breathtakingly BEAUTIFUL. Also, contrary to what I thought,the salt lake city isn't small- it is large and sprawling. Still, downtown is not what I look forward to - the mountain ranges are what makes this place so unique and gorgeous.

I was lucky to have flown into SLC at sunset - the view from the plane was absolutely breathtaking. I have a few pictures but right now I'm way too tired to resize them and add them. Will update this blog asap tmr.

Meanwhile, gonna crash!

5 Hour trip - New Brunswick - Princeton

2009-03-12T23:15:00.011-04:00

"Hey liangyuan, I can't make it to dinner tonight because I have loads of work to do and since I'm flying off to Florida tomorrow at 12pm, I need to pack. But as I will be leaving my car unmoved for a few weeks, I am going down to Princeton today to drive it around, so would you wanna come? You can take the train to New Brunswick and I'll pick you up from there. The train leaves for New Jersey at 4:01pm"

So that was what Jared Feiger told me at 3:45 pm today - I had come out of class to listen to his voicemail and upon hearing that he couldn't make our pre-arranged dinner, I had called him back to find out more. I looked at my watch, 3:46:45 .. 3:46:46..3:46:47 .. time was running out and I had to decide - an evening trip to Princeton or Advertising management class. Well, since it was officially the last class before Spring break, my brain did some quick cost-benefit analysis and the next thing I knew I was running to the subway station.

And my my, what a fantastic decision that was.

Princeton and New Brunswick aren't exactly near to Manhattan- it's not the same as saying "hey liangyuan, do u want to go to East coast park for a jog? " or "hey liangyuan, do you want to go to Newton for dinner?". It's more like saying "hey liangyuan, Do you want to go to Bintan for a swim?"

Yes, princeton is the same distance from Manhattan as Singapore is from Bintan (that's what the measuring tool in Google told me and for the non Singaporeans who read this blog, Bintan is an island in Indonesia) , so to give someone 20 mins to decide if he wants to go to Princeton from Manhattan isn't exactly quite normal! Ok, maybe it might be to some certain extent, 'normal' in the States, but it is definitely not normal in Singapore!

But having made that decision, I must say that although the tickets to NJ and back cost me US$22.25 (SGD$35: ok I didn't know it was that much then!) and that I only spent a mere 3.5 hours between New Brunswick & Princeton, I did enjoy every single second of that short-lived trip.

And I mean EVERY SINGLE SECOND because Jared had us making use of EVERY SINGLE SECOND! ( I say 'us' because Jared also had a friend , Stacy, along. She's one amazing person who left a very brilliant first impression - firstly because she looks like she either drinks from the fountain of youth or has some elixir of life and secondly because she's terribly intelligent and has such a great sense of humour! ) It seemed like I was on some Amazing Race of sorts - running to the subway to get to Penn station by 4:01 , running to buy the tickets for the 4:28 NJ transit train because I missed the 4:01 one by a few mins , running to the train station at night to catch the 9:20pm train back into manhattan. There was alot of running to do!

Both Stacy and Jared do this alot- the last minute impromptu trips, the running about to catch planes/trains/taxis and all. Just last week, the 2 of them decided within a few days to go over to Paris for the weekend! I had queried Jared on the costs, but he said "Liangyuan, I only go for good deals. (cue business man-ish wink)". You might all think impromptu trips are tiring and bothersome, but now I see why they love it all so much. :) haha.

Also, another highlight of the 'trip' was that while we were driving all around New Brunswick / Princeton, Jared was driving us in his almost brand new BMW M3 (not the normal 3 series ok!) which he had financed on his own! The guy is superbly entrepreneurial and resourceful I must say.

The M3 is a real luxury, so to get to sit in one is sheer pleasure. When Jared stepped on the pedals, I could really feel myself lurch back into the seats - and the thing is, Jared did not flex the muscles of the car to its fullest! The roads had too many potholes so he didn't want to damage his suspension by hurtling over them at I-dont-know-how-many km/hr. Can't wait till Jared gets out to somewhere smoother and gets to show the car's power in full force.

This is how the car looks like, but his was in a Black-blue metallic colour. Some 'Jervis' Blue or something which when he first said, sounded like 'Jared's Blue' and I was like, wow... custom colour? haha. Stupid of me right. I know.

I don't have pictures of his actual car because my handphone ran out of battery!
Arghhhh..! I think I shall put the camera into my bag from now on, regardless of whether I intend to sight see or not!

The following are a few pictures I managed to take while on the train there. These were all that the phone could manage!

Some random station.

Sad that these were the only 2 photos I managed to take before the phone went phttttt.

Luckily, Stacy had her black berry with her so I did manage to take some pictures of me in Princeton (yes, princeton the town and princeton the uni) but these will only be uploaded when she emails me those pictures!

Now I need to go settle some major stuff before getting a well deserved night's rest. heh.

Till then, see you and have fun!

The next time you hear from me I'll probably be in Salt Lake City!

:)

Cars & Barbie's house.

2009-03-11T23:20:00.005-04:00

Finally, Midterms are over ! Now I need to settle loads of stuff before I leave for salt lake city. Hmm, that's like in 2 days so I'm really kinda in knee deep shit.

And, I don't mean to gush, but Prof Carpenter is amazing. Today I went to consult her for some of the mid term questions ( we can't bring the paper back at all, hence the need for consultation, so no Xingyan, I wasn't sucking up to her ;) ) and I ended up staying there for like an hour cos she was so nice to talk to!

We chatted about Chinese, Cantonese, Singapore, Ethnicity, Nationality and so on. And when she was talking about Singapore, I mentioned that it was like living in barbie doll's house and she erupted in laughter, nodding her head in agreement. Ha.. Oh I miss barbie doll's house. Someone I know (and whom I think is a really great person) said that living in Singapore is like living in a container wrapped with cellophane wrap - it's clean and cling wrapped, but mighty stifling. I'm like, whatever. hahaha. I love cleanliness, and living in barbie's house is fine with me. I used to comb her hair :S

Ok, so onto cars that I found while surfing the pics from the Geneva 09 motor show: Some cars I'd LOVE to have.

Some funny Italian Car - Ok not exactly that nice but very lambo-ish.

This my dear friends, is a Mazda. I actually like mazda's design direction: alot of their newer cars follow closely to the concepts.

Greatest surprise of all! This is a citroen ! A citroen GT Concept
It's freaking gorgeous and it's sitting on my desktop now. ha.

OK, this is the Merc SLR.
All my choices so far have been either concepts or are too expensive, so i'll just choose something more down to earth:

The Audi R8!
Ha.

Ciao!

Soooo Simp-errrrrrrrr

2009-03-10T20:38:00.002-04:00

So simp-errrr la . Life is so simp-er. Don't need to stress. Just en-joy, just en-joy!

Ok, I have no idea where the above came from - I just felt like saying simp-errrrrrrr.

Anyways, so for debt instruments video today, the prof showed us a video of her doing some aeriel thing. She's the one on the left and she is kinda good! She's probably the most interesting person I've met in NYU. hmmmmm.

Anyways, SPRING BREAK IS ALMOST HERE! SALT LAKE CITY/ LAS VEGAS / CHICAGO HERE I COME!

One more midterm tmr and that's that. HA.

6 am

2009-03-08T06:39:00.005-04:00

It is 6 am here as I'm writing this. And the bloody sun has already risen. And I have yet to sleep.

Why?

Because the 2009 International Furniture Fair starts tomorrow in Singapore and I bloody bloody cannot finish updating the galleries!!!!! hmmm actually IFFS is really quite fun. Zheyi u should know wad i mean, all the marble fairs and shit that u've been to. quite fun right.

And I have like 2 midterms next week! !! !!!!!!!!! ARRGHHGGHGHGHGHGH(*&(&^*%^%&%^&*%&*&*(&%

But, I have to sleep. At least now all the relevant info has been updated and 2 of the major galleries have already been updated with some nifty flash thinggie.

Ahhh. so proud of myself ! But I was horribly inefficient. Can you imagine doing websites without learning html? Like bloody going to trek in the alaskan snow dunes or whatever sand dunes without knowing how to use the compass or the GPS or iphone. Even had to bother poor steph with some XML/HTML shit. heh. Thanks steph !

Anyways, come here to see the nifty flash shit ! :
Embowood sofa gallery
Embowood chair gallery

Ciao!

Pa, hopefully you like the website better now. The previous galleries weren't that good. too small, could only see like 2 sofas each time. hope now it's better , and nicer!

Ok i realised i used alot of shit. sorry , try not to read the shits. pretend it says flowers or something.

Oops.

2009-03-06T22:53:00.005-05:00

You know how in those korean/taiwanese soap dramas, you have the girlfriend who offends some random old lady on the street and that random old lady later turns out to be the boyfriend's mother? Yes, that kind of uncanny coincidence does happen to people in real life, and I sorta encountered a similar incident today. Well ok, so what happened to me wasn't exactly the same thing and it wasn't as drama-mama, but it was in the same spirit. HEH.

Kangwei, whom I got to know through the internship at ABN-AMRO, was visiting from Boston with his girlfriend (he and his girlfriend are SMU students on exchange in Boston) and I was going to have dinner with him and a few other people. So we arranged to meet at Madison Square Garden's Borders and when I arrived, he was already there with his girlfriend.

"Hey Kangwei! How have you been!", I said as I approached the two of them. It had already been a year since our internship and this was the first time I had seen him since then. Kangwei, who had already spotted me as I was entering borders, raised his hand for a handshake and his girlfriend, who had been casually flipping through some books, looked up and smiled. At that point in time, let's just say that my brain wasn't exactly registering anything so all I did was to return the smile.

"I've been great! How've you been yourself?" Kangwei replied while shaking my hand.

"Great , I've been good, New York has been fun so far!(ok, so maybe this is not the conversation, but it is close la) So, this is your girlfriend?" I said, and gestured towards his girlfriend.

"I suppose you know her?" Kangwei responded. Since I had seen her as I was entering Borders, and given that I did not recognize her then, I did not expect to recognize her again so although I should have picked up on the implications of 'I suppose you know her', my brain, which appears to be running much slower here than in Singapore, did not register anything. So I just assumed he was going to introduce her and I cordially raised my hand to get a handshake.

"Hi, I'm Liangyuan, you're ... ?"

My hand was already in mid-air but it was not receiving a handshake. I noticed the delay and I looked at her again. At that time, this person did begin to look familiar (maybe like 5%) but I thought, 'Nahh, I don't think it's the same person and I shouldn't be meeting her here especially in these circumstances', so I left my hand extended.

"I'm Yuxi la! haha. " the girlfriend replied.

Ahh... Then it dawned on me. My brain started chugging, I connected the dots and I immediately withdrew my hand in embarrassment.

"Oh ya ! OMG , how've you been? Ahh I'm so sorry.. blah blah blah"
You could JUST imagine me trying desperately to wriggle out of the situation.
.
.
.

So the history is as such: Yuxi happens to have been the girlfriend of a friend of Zheyi, and we have met a few times at social gatherings. I did hear that she had since broken up and that she was now attached to some other person, but trust me, I totally did not expect her to be attached to anyone I knew. And less so would I have expected to meet her in such circumstances !
.
.
.

You know Singapore is too small when these things happen to you. Too small, too small. heh.
.
.
.
So yea, We had a nice Korean dinner with some other people - 2 Ecuadorians (Nicolas and Anahi!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ), 1 Texan- Sam, as well as Yuxi's other Singaporean friend- Kaywee (I think that's how it's spelt) who happens to be a senior from RJC.

It was an amazing group of people and an extraordinary dinner. And do you know, both the Ecuadorians and Sam can speak Chinese fluently-with a good accent too! Very impressive no?

Yuxi and Anahi !!!!!!!!

Yuxi and Anahi again.

Left to right:
Nicolas, Me, Kangwei, Anahi, Yuxi, Kay wee, Sam.

Yuxi and I!
I thought that after she broke up with Zheyi's friend, I wouldn't be seeing her again - guess we are fated to remain in each other's social circles!

Yuxi, if you do visit this blog, I'm sooo sorry for not recognizing you immediately!
lol.
I blame the cold.
heh.

Subway Closed off

2009-03-06T03:44:00.003-05:00

So the subway was cordoned off, with many police vans/men surrounding the area.

Apparently, there was some bomb scare at Union Square. According to the Amore's Pizza man. Ha.

Not sure what it is but I'm avoiding the Subway for now ! Yihan has the pictures - my trusty handphone sadly ran out off batt. Ironic. ha.

Winter Wonderland (II)

2009-03-03T00:28:00.003-05:00

You know you are taking exchange way too seriously when you treat washing dishes as a break from studying. Someone please remind me that I'm on pass/fail and that whatever grades I get here won't have any impact whatsoever on my life. Then again, I have always treated Uni as something which is extremely transient and insignificant (a wrong view to have I know, but, I'm suffering from a quarter life crisis so don't rub it in.) . Hmmm.

So in between studying all about interest rate swaps and no arbitrage pricing of derivatives ( It's all really seriously interesting, but I mean if I had to do that for work, I'd rather just go feed some chickens for a living), I have found some time to blog!

Today I woke up to a snowstorm (and I think this is just as big a snow storm as the one we had previously. You remember the chng-teng water post? ) and thought, "shit, shit , shit, bloody shit shit shit". I wasn't intending to get into a situation like last time ( soggy, wet shoes throughout class) so this time round I ruffed up enough and put on my (ugly but) extremely good water proof shoes and stepped out bravely into the winter wonderland.

And my my, what a difference it all made!

Everything seemed so much nicer- the snow, the ice, the wind, even the chng-teng water. I didn't have to worry about getting wet feet, nor did I have to worry about cold fingers - everything was just quite fine.

It also dawned upon me that the snowstorm might actually be the last snow storm that I was going to experience in New York this year (shit, I had some trouble with the agreement of the tenses back there.hoho.don't mock me.if it's still wrong, write the version in the tag board.)! So I whipped out my handphone ( ahh, that trusty, 2.5 year old 3.2 megapixel Sony erricsson ( I mean, 3.2 is way enough!)) and started snapping things as I was going to school.

The Memories! Ahhh. I think I'm actually going to miss winter in NY. BUT whatever, Sun sand & beach is way better. + clean MRT + nice cheap hawker fare + family!

This time round I actually had fun slushing through all of the snow (water proof shoes!)

Gorgeous ain't it.

I think someone is going to enjoy snowboarding !

Zai Jian!

Colour Schemes

2009-02-27T23:14:00.006-05:00

So I was on the way back from dinner with Dione and while we were passing by the dimly lit 12th street, I caught a glimpse of a Mini parked demurely along the side of the road. My heart skipped a beat as I quickly recognized that it was a cooper clubman and the same cream-white as the 556 at home.

I rushed forward to embrace the car as though it were my long lost friend, but as I neared it, it began looking weird and awkward to me. You know how in clubs everyone looks great cos it's so dark? Yea, that was the same thing happening to the Mini. As I neared it, I realized that it had not a black roof, but a silver one!

Let me just say that White, together with a Silver roof JUST doesn't cut it. The poor car looked horribly mismatched, with no colour contrast or coordination at all.

Always remember! Dark on Light or Light on Dark, never Light on Light!

Don't you think the poor car looks weird? The owners should go spray paint the body some darker colour to match the silver roof.
AND:
It is so dirty!
I have experience with streak stains like that on the 556, so yes, the owners need to go do some serious cleaning because stains show up much more easily on white cars.
I hope the 556 is NOT in the same state now.
if it is, my heart will be so broken. ha

so drama.

And when I said that the owners should go spray paint the body a darker colour to match the silver roof ( or they could paint the roof black like the 556!), I meant something like that:
or
That's so much more like it!

Okies, Back to doing work.

Fugly New Fish

2009-02-27T21:32:00.005-05:00

Ok, so some scientists discovered this new species of frog fish.

It's damn UGLY !!!!!!
lol.

Also, try to spot the glass bottle on the sea bed.
Horrible human pollution.

FINALLY!

2009-02-27T02:32:00.005-05:00

PHEW.

AFTER 6 LABOUROUS HOURS,
I FINALLY booked ALL my SPRING BREAK FLIGHTS !!!!!!

Here are the 4 flights ( Ok, with 2 stopovers, that makes it 6 FLIGHTS OMG!) which cost me a FREAKING $518 USD in total.
YIKES!
I did look around for the cheapest flights/cheapest times etc. so dont worry, it's money well spent!

NYC - Washington (stopover) - Salt Lake City!!

4 days 3 Nights

Will be spending 4 days in SLC, GOING THERE TO SNOW BOARD!

Salt Lake City - Las Vegas!!!!!!
2 days 2 nights
Will travel to Sin City alone but will meet up with the other exchange students there!
Will be visiting the Grand Canyon. wheee.
2 days 2 nights there.

Las Vegas - Chicago
To Meet Tengkok in his little native land. that little native monkey.
Will be spending 3 days 2 nights there !!

Chicago - Washington(stopover) - New York
Back To New York!

Ah.

I feel a sense of accomplishment.
let me brag abit :
Can you see how nicely everything fits in?

I go to SLC to snow board, and then meet up with the exchange students (who are doing a Los Angeles- Las Vegas tour, and since I've already been to LA, I dont need to go there again) and then, fly to Chicago on the 19th, the day AFTER the kok finishes his exams. ahhh.

Parfait !

Aahhahahahaa.

But right, Looking at the map now already makes me tired.
Thats QUITE alot of travelling under 8 days.
Hmmmmmmmmmm.

YI! I know I said Ill go travel with you back home! but , I shall discuss with u and we'll go up there over a weekend ok???????? Cos the snowboarding and vegas things wont be happening on any other date. my 2 different groups of friends wont be there on any other date!

Thanks for understanding! Mucks!

haha.
Ciao!

生日快乐

2009-02-27T02:20:00.003-05:00

生日快乐爸！
我没忘记!
祝您身体健康，心想事成，万事如意!
爸越来越老了
。
。
。
。
。
。
可是还不可以退休啊！
要继续工作！
哈哈哈

叫你三个掌上明珠把生日照片给我啊！
想吃妈煮的好料！

Wonderful Nights

2009-02-25T03:18:00.003-05:00

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PASCAL!

had a wonderful night - Will post pics from happy endings soon !!!

Meanwhile, on the way back, I saw a
PIGEON AWAKE AT 3 AM !
MAD PIGEON!
IDENTITY CRISIS!
YOU'RE NOT AN OWL!

YOU SHOULD BE SLEEPING!

Nothing (II)

2009-02-24T18:09:00.004-05:00

I feel I'm letting this blog down - it's probably feeling abandoned, lonely and depressed.
Cheer up blog. I will have more soon.

Meanwhile, this is how a hicky looks like:

I DO NOT THINK THAT WHAT I HAVE LOOKS REMOTELY LIKE A HICKY!

so tank-eh-you reef and yinghui for your colourful imagination.
hur. hur.
hope things are fine in Singaporeeeeeeee.

Ouch.

2009-02-22T00:36:00.009-05:00

AND

GIVES YOU:

So I went paintballing in Queens today.

You have to know how paintball works.
Basically, those paintballs (which get shot out of an air pressure gun) have a plastic casing which explode upon impact and splatter you with paint.

They EXPLODE on impact so yea, you can imagine the force at which those thinggies hit you - and one of them hit me on the NECK!

NOW TO TURN MY HEAD, I HAVE TO TURN MY WHOLE TORSO!

WTH!!!
DAMMMMNNNNNNNN PAIN!

Paintballing gets you
1) Oily ( It should be called Oilballing instead)
2) Bruised
3) Injured
4) Tired
5) and your clothes FREAKING STAINED.

BUT IT IS FUN!
But I think I shall abstain for a while.
Least I find I want more kisses on my neck.

HEH.

To get to the painballing place, we had to take the subway to Queens. The subway in Queens is above ground, much like how the MRT goes from underground to above ground.
But here, the aboveground subways dont go underground, so u have to change from an underground subway to an aboveground one.

So many little nuggets of goodness!

My team, AFTER the few games!
hahahaha.

Look at those pants!
I'm still soaking those pants but the oil smell won't come off!!!

.
.
.
.
.
.

On another note, I was being a masseuse to Yi today, the girl had so many knots in her neck.
And she's like me: you can knead as hard as you want, it wont feel painful.
HA!

Awwww. What an awesome cousin I am.
RIGHT YI????????

:)

I need a massage for myself too.
Bleagh.
On my bruise.

:(

OK, CIAO!!!!!!!!!! GOOD NIGHT!

U.N. & Old friends.

2009-02-20T22:39:00.004-05:00

Today the OISS (Office of International Students Something) organized a trip to the UN with a guided tour. Ok pardon me, but I'm super tired so I shall just post pictures and comment on them. After which, I shall go sleep and sleep and sleep!!!!!! Tomorrow's gonna be a fun day so yea, I will blog more about it when I come back.

Real One.

Fake One.

This was on the exhibit on disarmament - this land mine is designed to look like a yoyo so that children will pick it up.

WHAT KIND OF MORBID MIND CREATED SUCH A DISASTROUS HEINOUS OBJECT???

Me looking visibly tired in the UN General Assembly Hall.

A LARGE GIANORMOUS persian rug - a gift from IRAN to the UN.
We should get one this size and stuff it into our living room AND dining room.
Heh.

Ok this one was seriously amazing - a super intricate ivory carving from China
Don't worry - the guide reassured us that when this was created, ivory was still legal.
heh.
12 freaking elephants contributed their tusks to this thing.

The carving is AMAZING though.
just LOOK AT THAT DETAIL!
.
.
.
.
.
Well, yes, so for lunch I met up with Huifang who was visiting from Princeton.
I love love lunches with old friends. So comforting.

in the SUPER LARGE restaurant.
It was funny cos the entrace on the ground level was really small, u know, like one of those shophouses in Chinatown. Yet, when we entered, the place was HUGE.

Like HARRY POTTER's Quidditch tents.
HA!

Huifang looking happy.
It's her birthday tomorrow and she got to eat dimsum that's why!
Ok maybe not, but anything la.

Ahh...

.
.
.
.
Ok, so for dinner met up with En and Yi again!

The mad girl.
haha.

Alright! So I'm done with my 'So today I did this and today I did that' blog post. heh.
Well, Ok, so i admit most of my blog posts are like that(Unless of course i didn't do anything that day during which I would provide interesting nuggets of info !) , but that's what a blog is for!Right??? Dun need to be so fancy pancy la.

Wan An!

Itsy Bitsy Ennie.

2009-02-19T23:44:00.003-05:00

En(nie) came to visit me today. She's gonna be here for the whole weekend. :)
Immensely sweet of her !
Thank you En!

Doncha think En looks mature/lady like here!
And NOO I DONT MEAN IT IN A BAD WAY!

Yi trying to disfigure her lips.
She was complaining about her whole week, how she was snapping at everyone and blah blah.
I wanna snap at people too.
SNAP SNAP.

Even though I've been to the restaurant a gazillion times, I didn't notice the 'Niang Re' on the wall!!
Ha!

Gaza

2009-02-18T20:55:00.004-05:00

Just a thought as I was browsing BBC:

We all know about the recent Israeli offensive into Gaza ( they say in response to rocket fire which undoubtedly have been on-going over the years from Hamas, and whether or not the size of the offensive was appropriate is still being debated) and we are all aware of the number of civilians killed - more than a thousand and many of them children.

What I found happening to me as I followed the conflict over the course of the offensive was that the news seemed to became more and more depressing till after a while, I just stopped clicking on all Gaza related news.

This was until I glimpsed the news title: "Bleak Outlook for Bombed Gaza Zoo"

If you click on the link above, you will see that the zoo occupies only the first 1/3 of the article. The rest is about the conflict and the devastation that was caused as well as the suffering that the Gaza people are facing.

I don't exactly have a major point, but I guess that it's sad that I (and I'm sure I'm not the only one) went to the site only because the word 'zoo' piqued my interest in the article - an article about a conflict between humans and in which humans are suffering the most.

I think many of us just want to turn a blind eye towards all the horrible events going on in the world - we refuse to face the fact that so many people are dying in useless conflicts out there - and I guess this is the best way to remind people to not overlook the intense suffering that still goes on elsewhere.

hmmmmm. Oh wells.

Ok, back to Financial statement anaylsis! (what irony!)

Nothing.

2009-02-18T09:48:00.004-05:00

Ok, so I am now inundated with work, hence, hence.
(can you imagine, im awake at 9 to start doing my work BEFORE I leave for school? what the?And it's not like I'm exactly enjoying what I'm learning. Hrmphrhrh.)

MY LIFE IS OFFICIALLY BORING NOW.

I shall thus look forward to the weekend. The weekends sustain me. En is supposed to be visiting and I have 2 other events awaiting me. heeeee heeeeee.

meanwhile, I also have a website to update/revamp, gym to go to, laundry to do, groceries to shop for.... ahhhhhhhhhhh the life of a semi - independent soul.

To prevent this place from becoming too depressing, I have a few nice renderings by this renderer, Norio Fujikawa to keep you guys entertained while my boring life picks up the pieces:

Impressive, no?

GZY- I hope ur essay turned out wellllll!!!!

Yay! Finally.

2009-02-17T09:56:00.005-05:00

Hello,

Ok, before I bundle up my stuff and rush off to school in about 15 mins, just wanted to share this just hot off the press news with all of you:

(mostly for all those non-bbc readers and don't worry, I ignored all the depressing 'American Economy is facing intense recession/ Bail Out won't work etc sort of news)

.
.
.
.
.

Finally, the phone companies are banding together to create a
UNIVERSAL PHONE CHARGER!

Ahhhhhhhh.
Bliss !

No more
"Hey, do you have a Nokia/Sony Ericsson Charger?"
"No? Wait, that charger, can it fit?"
"Damn!!! Now my phone is flat!"

_______________________________________

Universal Charger for Phones Plan (BBC)

There are dozens of different cable chargers for phones

The world's biggest mobile phone makers and network operators have backed plans to create a universal phone recharger.

Most manufacturers now produce chargers which work only with their own devices.

The re-charger will consume 50% less stand-by energy than today's cables, the GSM Association (GSMA), an umbrella group for the industry, said.

Firms to back the plan include Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, LG, T-Mobile, Orange, 3, AT&T and Vodafone.

The majority of new handsets will support the re-charger by 2012.

"This is a broad agreement that will move the industry to a single, energy-efficient charger for all mobile phones," said Michael O'Hara, marketing director for the GSMA.

In a statement, Mitti Storckovius, director of environment, devices at Nokia said: "By supporting this industry initiative on common charging solutions, and enabling consumers to choose if they need a charger with every new device or can re-use existing ones, we can contribute further in improving the industry's environmental footprint."

The micro-USB connector will be used as the common charging interface.

Manufacturers had been under pressure from the European Commission to produce a standardised charger.

EU Industry Commissioner Guenter Verheugen told German radio station Deutsche Welle last week that there were more than 30 different kinds of charger in use across the 27-nation European Union.

The GSMA estimates the new charger will mean the potential elimination of up to 51,000 tonnes of duplicate chargers.

_________________________________________________

The Unique & the Ubiquitous

2009-02-15T22:41:00.017-05:00

Before I go on to talk about the unique & the ubiquitous, let me just say that I'm so proud of myself because I have sewn my first ever button! I couldn't wear a jacket for the longest time ever because a button had popped out, leaving the epaulet hanging lifelessly by the side.

And surprisingly, it's not that difficult. ha!

Tada!
The jacket can now be worn!
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

Ok, now on to more serious things.
Today, we decided to go visit IKEA in Brooklyn.

Now now, don't be hasty and judgemental and think to yourselves
"nothing better to do is it! Go and visit IKEA for what?"

Well, if you didn't already know, the IKEA in brooklyn is the world's first IKEA to have a dedicated Ferry Service to transport customers to their store! The service transports customers from Pier 11 on Manhattan, to Brooklyn, where their Store is not near any convenient public transport.

Apparently, when this free service first came out, they marketed it as a 'Cruise and a Dinner' for 6.99.
Cruise (free) + Dinner at IKEA (6.99) . ha!

With such ingenuity, it's no wonder IKEA remains one of the largest furniture retailers in the world.

So, to get to Pier 11, which is near the tip of the of that piece of land that is Manhattan on your right, we had to alight at Wall Street station and walk down.

This my friends, is Wall Street - Not quite as glam/swanky as I thought it would be. Maybe perhaps because it was a Sunday.
Where the Blue arrow is pointing is our destination - Pier 11!

NYSE

This is the iconic image of NYSE. (see my head there?)
This is where they had the demonstrations against the bail-out plan.

An image that I koped from somewhere else.

I think this dog was the glammest thing I saw on wall street that day

As it was a Sunday, the whole place was filled with tourists.
See everyone taking pictures?

I somehow had this image in mind that this would be how it will be like 1000 years later, when Wallstreet is crumbling and old, and tourists would come, visit and gawk at the ancient ruins, much like the Egyptian Pyramids now.

HA!
.
.

Ok, the following is ironic, given the current Financial Crisis:

So............What needs repair?

The Wall Street Bull! (it was in the same display)
.
.
We reached pier 11 after some walking, and there was this couple who were feeding the seagulls.
I remembered that incident in San Frans a gazillion years ago when the seagull stole my fish, and my first thought upon seeing the couple was, "mistake, mistake!"

Well, yea, unsurprisingly, she got swamped! ha!

Brooklyn bridge.

The dedicated Water Taxi Service!

The Ubiquitous Blue and Yellow!

Some weird-ass metal sculpture.
They might have made it with scrap metal left overs after they finished the building!
ha.

This was the view from the IKEA restaurant -
a SHITLOAD of buses.
Has anyone seen these kinda buses in Singapore?
I don't think so right?

Shufen and Martin digging in.
.
.
.
Ok, so now let me introduce my new friend :

MR CLOWN!

Well, so he was the balloon sculptor and he was going around making little kids happy, when he decided to come ka-chiao me.

APPARENTLY...
He said my HAIR was TOO SPIKEY or something that I did not catch, but yea,
he therefore

1) used the air pump to fluff it

2) used a balloon to flatten it EVEN MORE

3) and eventually just leaned on my hair and Shufen promptly took a photo.

Awwwwwwwww.
Nice guy .
.
.
.
.

Ok, how many times must I say that we are so lucky?
In D.C., we saw the memorial on a beautiful sunset- without intending to.

Today, on the water taxi back, we were JUST AS FORTUNATE
It was sun set and my my, it was GORGEOUS.

This was taken by me: too bad I didn't have an SLR to take a nice photo :(
I LOVE the ferry in front.

This was taken with Shufen's Prosumer cam.
Gorgeous ain't it.

Here's a video from the ferry (to create some atmosphere on the blog. LOL):

The flag at the back of the Ferry. (wow, my face doesn't look fat here!)
.
.
.
.
.
So on the way back to the metro, we decided to visit the Bull (that needs Repair! =P)

The many many many security cameras at the subway.
This was the cleanest subway I had ever seen in Manhattan.
Finally something neat and clean !
.
.
.
Ok, that's all folks.

See ya soon :)