sleepless in phuket

Phuket vacation : Part 1
30/31 Jan '09


WOW my body felt so wonderful. i just had this wonderful thai traditional body massage at C&N hotel and it costed only 200 baht. that's like, what? ..less than 10 singapore dollars for an hour of pure relaxation and joy.

i'm in phuket, thailand right now. we just landed a bit more than 24 hrs ago, and already life in singapore felt like in a galaxy far far away.

my first view of phuket from air asia plane window

we are staying at this 2 storey hotel called the beach safari hotel, just 50m from patong beach. the hotel is pretty ok, the service is quite good, the building is not shoddy and the amenities are what you could expect from a 3-star hotel, if not slightly better. plus, they have free internet access, provided you have your own laptop, even though the connection could be slow sometimes.

so i'm writing this while my buddies are outside enjoying the beach. i already went swimming in the beach this morning, and even fall asleep for awhile on that reclined plastic rest chair facing the sea, awakened by the slight havoc when the water line reached our chairs and i had to quickly grabbed our slippers before they got washed out into the sea.

it was very relaxing. with my rayban sunglass on, i could see people of all shapes, wearing swimming suits that mostly had to work extra hard to counter the gravity pulling effect. if not because of the tropic weather, i would think i was in some european cities judging from where most of the crowd was from.

patong beach: my view of a perfect vacation

there were people doing para-gliding, and man, i would love to try that. they would tie you up to the parachute and then pull you up using the speed boat. we checked the price and it costs 1000 baht, which should be about SGD40. not too bad, considering even cable skiing in east coast back home already costs SGD30 and that's crap. you just go round and round at the same place hoping some chicks walking pass by would gawp in awe admiring your skills. duh...

only that i just spend 3400 baht just now to book for a diving day trip tomorrow to racha yai island in south phuket, so i wouldn't want to spend more now just yet. so i chose to stay in my room when my friends asked me to join them.

plus, dinara safina was battling serena williams in australian open final on tv (they have sports cable here! o bless this hotel), so i was glued in front of the tv for awhile. until i realized serena was in annihilating mode, making the whole match unbearable to watch. there goes my hope of someone defeating serena. oh well, at least i could still hope for a nadal win tomorrow against federer in men's final.

before that, i have to wake up early morning tomorrow because they will pick us up from our hotel in patong tomorrow early morning, and then charter us to the harbour and then to the island for our 2 dives trip. i'm really excited, and a bit worried too because it was more than 6 months ago when i last did the diving. man, i better look out for some notes off the internet to refresh some of the skills. the good thing is, that island is supposedly suitable for beginners.

so i wouldn't want to venture the night that much tonight. last night, we roamed the bangla street until after midnight, which includes some UNO sessions somewhere on the street. i said somewhere because the streets transformed from relatively quite, innocent roads during daytime, to become lively, loud and bustling with activities streets at night. it was really like 2 different worlds out there.

innocent daytime bangla street's hell breaks lose and gets sleazy when the sun sets

you know what, now that i think about it, maybe it's a different beach now compared to this morning. maybe i'll go hit the beach for awhile, maybe check out the the sunset by the beach too. after all the day is still young, safina already lost and it's not like it costs any money.




...ed

OXpicious & PrOXperity

you know, in many years that i'm in singapore, every year i would still go to chinatown to submerge myself into the festive mood, and every time too i would act like a newly landed tourist who just discovered chinese.

so for this year, here are the photos...

this is the main CNY arch entrance. i felt like it was a bit toned down compared to last year. cost cutting? not very glittering and glamour but still, not too bad i guess. it's chinese new year, i'm sure they could do even with just a piece of red cloth.

unusual friend?

but to be fair, most of my friends are unusual anyway, in a unique way of course haha....

the final moment of that uncle...

..before he went home with his CNY goodies hahaha.. gotcha?

but seriously, pedestrians in singapore are notorious. they would ignore your car all the time. i guess they expect the government would grant them a new life if they got killed or something..

it's not the first time i see this kind of signboard but i'm still amused. like they say, low crime doesn't mean no crime and i applaud this effort.

malaysia should learn a thing or two on this. except, if they start to put this notice at every snatch theft spots, they would run out of boards in no time. in fact, i'm even convinced this board would get snatched off too.

tan in chinatown. i just love this photos, we have the main object, a curious auntie, some street shoppers, red lantern background to symbolized lunar new year celebration, old flat and an indian temple, all in one shot.

this one i took with the flash accidentally turned on. i think it captured the classic vibe of an old bustling chinatown.



they have performances in an outdoor stage in the heart of the shopping street, nearby the big temple. last time i watched a bit of opera here, and bunch of old hokkien songs performers. this year, there was some acrobatic show, which was truly impressive. i just sit by the stairs and blended in with the crowd, imagining myself in shanghai in 1950's.



this temple is called the buddha tooth relic temple. almost everytime i let someone know of the name, they would ask me, is buddha tooth really there? you know what? i don't know. what i know is, there are whole lots of activities inside there. i imagine if i look hard enough, maybe i could spot shaolin students too.. haha...



a repeat shot, this time to show the light up. hmm..

"HAPPY LUNAR NEW YEAR everybody!!!"



...ed

chronicles of the daily news

wow singapore headlines nowadays are full of recession news. they are the same news actually, only arranged in different words. the message are the same :- 'the economy screwed up, so save your ass suckerzzz...'

somehow singapore is the worst hit. i never heard any recession news from places like laos and cambodia. singapore news said that the GDP is expected to shrink by 2 to 5 percent this year. to tell you the truth, i don't even know what it actually means when people say negative growth. i mean, let's say we have negative growth over many years, do we eventually go back to stone age?

it's still not too bad for the singaporeans because the government will give them money through GST credits as announced in yesterday's 2009 budget, but what about us permanent residents? it's not like we pay less taxes and not contributing to the country at all. ok we don't don the army suits and walk around proudly as if we just came back from iraq but surely we play a large part in the country's growth too?

i heard some of the companies already opted a 4-days a week approach by making monday an off day so that they can cut the salary. drastic huh? but then, it's better they make an off day rather than cut your salary 20% and still expect you to work like normal. at least you can do something on that off day to make up for the money that you lost, you know, like working part-time, beg for money or something.

things are somehow grim in our company too. we can't help it. because when the first thing you read during the long morning breakfast in company cafeteria are grim news, it can hardly liven up your day, can't it? so most of us are just busy asking each other what to do during our 11-days long chinese new year break starting next week.

you see, we are forced to take days off in the next 2 weeks. they called it 'company slowdown'. in fact, many companies in our industry do the same thing. sounds bad? well, at least our shares don't dropped 69% in one day.

so i'll be flying off to kl on monday to spend a few days with my family. what better way to face this downturn than being in the company of our loved ones? when i called my father to tell him that i'm flying back home, he promptly asked, is everything ok? you're not affected by lay-offs or something in your company? you see, family is very understanding, although secretly i suspect that was because me coming back without any reason is just out of my norm.

and i'll be flying off to phuket after that for the remainder of the break. yaay!! ok i know it's recession and we are supposed to tightened our belt and eat boiled ubi kayu but what am i supposed to do during this unusual off days? stay rot at home? plus, everybody knows things are much cheaper in thailand due to the currency difference. i read in yahoo news that singapore is considering to lower its currency value to stay competitive in the market, so all the more i better spend my singapore dollar now when it's still worth a lot.

not only phuket, i actually have plans for april's good friday long weekend, and also may's labour day week. if it's inside my new year resolution to always plan ahead, i am so there and ready for 2010 resolutions. except it's not. i don't even remember what my resolutions for this year were. the only thing i know, things are not actually superb for my first few weeks in 2009.

but hey, everybody's not doing so great too. have you read the news?



...ed

thar she blows...

After lunch just now, my friend asked us where to buy a kite.

A kite!

I never thought of buying kite. ever. I mean, kite for me is those stuff the teacher made you do in primary school classroom.

Apparently not only me, even my other friends were dumbstrucked when we were asked that question. Where can we buy kite in singapore? One of us even wondered, do they sell kite in toy's r us?

In the end we found it in one of the variety shop in front of our company little shopping street. Wow, I never know. Probably because on my free time lately, instead of going out enjoying the recent strong wind flying kite, I has been staying indoor playing with my xbox 360.

Seriously, the wind is so strong recently. Last Monday when we played tennis, our balls made tricky spins as if we were roger federer and rafael nadal. They even have an article today in the news about the recent windy trend.

"Some feathers have certainly been ruffled by the winds in Singapore this week. In a country where the average wind speed is around 15 to 20 kilometres per hour, it has reached the time of the year when that figure goes up to 30 to 40 kmh.

Yesterday and on Wednesday, when this newspaper checked the National Environment Agency’s website, which lists a range of forecasts such as fair, cloudy and rain, there was only one outlook for all five districts and 45 town areas — windy."

So you see, maybe it's time to fly kite. Or for us engineers, to fly it with bunch of keys when the wind become a storm with lightnings. That would be fun. No wonder people long time ago was able to get all those interesting findings. They worked in such a fun environment.

Today at work, i spent the morning reading some analysis data done by my fellow team mate, and I just realized how I loved reading those technical stuff and tried to understand them. It was fun you know, like trying to solve clues in order to get to the final findings. In a way, it feels a bit like a perfect job for me.

Except, the analysis data is not for my device, and that team mate is not really my team mate. No longer anyway. Well, I used to be in the same team until I decided to leave and then found it impossible to get back in. So currently I'm just working on this matured, old technology device that nobody cares about.

Seriously, I don't know what am I doing. I couldn't even bring myself to look at the architecture because I don't feel the excitement. I bet benjamin franklin wouldn't be so intrigued if he were to be forced to find a vaccin for ebola instead in the lab, and just peeked at some other people flying kites outside the window.

In a way, I am like a soldier being trained for a land battle, and when the war finally comes, I am suddenly posted to the airforce department and have to start from learning how to fly the jet fighter. my land combat skills that I've learned in those years go down the drain.

Now tell me, will we win the war that way?

No wonder the company stocks go down faster than the world oil price. But hey, I'm not complaining. What do I know? I'm the worst decision maker in the world anyway.

If I were not, I would have bought the kite just now.



…ed

maverick hunter walkthrough

it's one of the time that make you feel so lost. i ended up doing things that i don't really like at work just because there is no vacancy left at my previous job scope. It just made me realize that I had my world almost on top of the mountain, only to be falling down hard face down in the deep valley. If I was in the cartoon, there would be human-shaped hole on the ground, with probably some stars and birds floating in circles on top of my head.

But I guess, that's life. You get some and you lose some. You just can't get everything, or else everybody will become Paris Hilton or Brad Pitt. But work is such a large part of our life that it gives a significant impact to our overall existance. So it matters whether we like our job or not. It kills me to see some other people doing my previous job that I believe I could be good at. The only thing that got me going is that at least I'm still in the company. With the economic turmoil outside, at least I have some buffer to shield myself from whatever crap there is going to come this year. That's why the least I can do is try to contribute to the company whichever way I can, just like Mr Noah Bennett in Heroes.

Except the assignment haven't really come yet. I have this big red button at my side with the word 'push' in big bold capital letters but no instruction. Nothing nada. So I'm just stalling around and just checking some other people's data. Which is a bit of a bummer if you asked me since I'm in a new year full-gear spirit. Add that with no money to spend and no tv series to wait out and I'm practically already having the knife half way closer to my wrist.

Only that there will be some gathering at my place this weekend! You see, at least things are not so bad outside work. My friend will come down all the way from malacca and we have plan to hang around drinking hot milo together. O man, that would be like heaven on earth. Plus, I already booked the tennis court and we are gonna roam about ubi roads to test drive cars!

Plus I finally found a perfect song for my sister's wedding video soundtrack. I'm so proud of myself. It's by.. Ermm.. Ok I'm gonna sensored it here and reveal when everything's been done. Let's just say it's a ballad and it's a duet and it's not by SM Salim and Rafeah Buang. I have been doing the editing for a week now, on and off, and still need some time to complete because the software apparently got some kind of bug and I had to arrange the photos so that it would flow in rhythm with the music.

Just like I hope my work will flow in rhythm with my life, so that I won't feel so lost anymore. If you watch the tv series Lost, even those stranded and lost in that mysterious island just finally got rescued. But then, that was after 3 years in living hell, and especially for my case, it's not like I can press fast forward anyay.

So to add some spice in my bland weekdays, and also add extra qualification, I'm seriously considering to enroll for a part time course. I just dropped them an e-mail asking if I could get away with the application without any TOEFL result, which is needed for me because I graduated from a non-english as medium instruction university. We'll see what they would say tomorrow.

In the meantime, I'm just gonna climb myself outta this hole.



…ed

if today was your first day

it's a new day at work today.

a new day because it's the first day at work after new year, and also the first day at work after i cancelled my USA transfer.

and i must say, things went not too bad, you know, except the fact that everyone who saw me today reacted as if watching george bush in white house after obama's inauguration. i felt like i've explained about the transfer a million times, i almost wished i had a t-shirt on that says 'yeah i'm back for good' at the front and "for more information, dial toll free number 1800-GET-A-LIFE" at the back.

ok maybe i should just cut them some slack. they were just concerned surely, even though the things most of them concerned for were my house and car (ok for athousandth times, i didn't sell my car yet so i still have my car but i did signed the rental agreement for my house with i had to break with 2 full-months compensation. it was a big bummer with a capital B').

except this colleague whom i worked with a lot last year. she was very good in solving technical issues and i had a weird feeling that she could solve me too. she said, knowing me, she could understand my decision. previously, rather than asking whether i've sold my car or rented my house before the trip like everybody else, she asked me whether i was ready to go 'at heart'.

which i so thought i did, but apparently her concern was spot on. i wasn't ready in the end and i learned that in a painful way. she also said she would have guessed i would prefer to pay big money to keep my house rather than thinking about saving money, which was spot on part 2. she probably could read my mind from the thought bubbles hovering on top of my head. so you see, i have a feeling i could learn so much about myself from this girl. maybe i should, you know, learn from her. just like yoda.

but first, i have to learn and find out what to do now at work since someone has already replaced me. so i had a personal, intimate discussion with my boss the first thing in the morning. to my surprise, he said one of our group member has just quitted and me coming back is just the right timing because then i could take over his job.

you see, this is so meant to be.

in fact, come to think about it, all the signs around me were as if saying something about the transfer. like for instance, during my way back from office just now, n-sync sang in the radio, "..bye bye bye bye bye", just like i byebye-ed the transfer. then britney followed, "oops i did it again..", just like i did the big oops for not taking the transfer. spooky right? even tony braxton claimed, "...he wasn't man enough for me".. ermm.. ok maybe this one is not related.

since the colleague who quitted wasn't ready to do the pass-down because it's monday, i ended up with nothing to do the whole day. so i changed back my correspondence address for my great eastern policies and starhub accounts to my current (old) address. then i called IRAS so they would adjust back my property tax to enjoy owner-stay rebate. i even browsed through qantas website to find ticket to australia.

it was actually during lunchtime when my colleague brought to my attention that we would have 12 days off during the chinese new year break plus our plant slowdown. 12 days! that's almost twice the time that God made the earth, right? i wasn't ready to just let those days go by just converting oxygen to carbon dioxide on my bed, so i figured i could probably go to melbourne and watch australian open tennis.

except, after calling the ticketing agents and worked out all the possible expenses, i found out it could totalled up to more than SGD2000.

the thing is, i have used quite a lot of money recently. first, i told you about the compensation i had to pay to break my house rental agreement, right? that was about >SGD4000. then, i would have to pay the company for my pre-transfer trip to USA since i cancelled the transfer, inclusive of the actual transfer plane tickets that they could not cancel, which should summed up to be about SGD7000.

so you see, i'm nowhere in the ability to spend further big money in near future. in fact, it would be some time before i'm able to purchase any island again. that australian trip i could still afford to pay though, but that would not be so appropriate surely? this kind of harsh decision needs some retributions.

plus, i'm sure my Yoda-girl would not approve of it. or would she? she was the one who said i would not jeoperdize my lifestyle just to save money.

o gosh.. maybe i should think harder and search the force to find the answer. yeah, i would do that at work tomorrow, you know, on top of converting oxygen to carbon dioxide.


...ed

NY2009 ~our silver lining

before we knew it, it's the year 2009.

as always, we wanted to welcome the new year with a bang. last year we had quite a number of friends gathered together and had fun but this year, i just managed to get 2 of them.

oh well.

we celebrated at (where else) marina bay. last year we were here too, but there were lots of construction going on and we had a bit of nightmare going out of that place.

this year, things were more proper, they even had tickets seating ($25 and $18 sections) and the first time ever new year concert in marina bay! ok at least there are something different.

they set up this stage at the arena. pretty impressive ensemble for an outdoor settings. we chose to seat a bit higher on the stands so that we could get beter view of the fireworks later, you know, rather than gurmit singh and barbarella posh beckham.

this was the man behind the stage. ermm ok he was on the stage all the time, but only in between the live telecast. when the advertisement kicks in, he would tell us what to do, when to cheer and do the kallang wave, and well, tried to make us go wild and crazy.

but this is singapore. we prefer to just sit and watch hehehe..

we had performances by taufik, hady, fiona xie, gurmit singh, band group ash, phillipines band etc etc. if you are not into singapore music scenes, just enjoy the live music. oh yeah, they had that MTV VJ Utt too.

i quite like the sound system, it made our heart felt like dropping, you know, despite being outdoor. and that multiple display panels making the screen behind the stage there were pretty cool.

this is one of the participants who stick with me to greet 2009. Mr Tan.

notice the singapore flyer on the background? it was still closed to public after the incidents few weeks back, but at least it was still in its full lightings glory.

and this is cikgu bedah from anak manja hehehe.. ok this is nora, she came straight from work today ok. give her a big round of applause.

what's impressive is her workplace is among these skyscrappers buildings! waa very the metropolitan girl hahahaha..

anyway, this is our view of the marina bay from out seats.

sharp at 12 midnight, the fireworks began. the firework this year was in rhythm with music, which btw sounded a lot like deepavali music.









engrossed looking at the fireworks display, i didn't notice when they had this balloon up.

we are already in 2009!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone!!

wooohoooo...

(though another year means another birthday... oh well..)

some other photos..

this was with the lights on after the events. see the green field behind the stage? that is the floating platform, they were supposed to have after-midnight party after the countdown there but it was cancelled few days ago, i don't know, maybe due to security reasons.

it took awhile for us to get out but at least the crowd moved in order. we avoided esplanade area and straight away headed to marina square so it was not at all chaotic like last year. i guess people learned from experience haha..

the end of a new beginning. may year 2009 brings us love, health properity and happiness.



...ed