racha-yai giant leap underwater

Phuket vacation : Prequel

WE ended up taking a stroll along patong beach during sunset. this may sound romantic but our actual purpose, well, at least my friend's actual purpose was to ask the owners of the various boats along the beach if we could hire a boat to nearby islands. me? i was just tagging along.

it turned out, the boats were not very cheap. man, these people are bunch of blood-suckers, aren't they? blame us for competing with those euro-paying tourists.

there were still people jet-skiing and para-gliding at the beach. i guess it gives them a different experience doing those in that dim lit redish sky. more sentimental perhaps?

patong beach goes all golden at sunset

one thing about the westerners is they are very easy to strike conversation with. plus, they are on holiday here, so everybody is in a good mood.

this may sound silly but i found this similar like when i was in las vegas, in united states. both places are full of tourists so you get this party vibe all over. everybody is vacationing, you don't see locals hurrying up to work or doing daily routine chores. it feels just like disneyland, minus the rides and of course, mickey mouse.

one of them ended up talking to us while we strolled on the beach. he's an iranian enjoying the freedom in thailand. ok maybe he's not a westerner but still very chatty. then my friend somehow joined some australian guys playing takraw. i didn't play as i suck at takraw and didn't want to make a fool of myself in front of strangers. they said they would be in phuket for another 3 weeks. now that's what i call life. and we have to be back home in.. (what?) few more days...

ok let's not think about that just yet.


Phuket vacation : Part 2
o1 Feb '09


it was 6 months ago when i got my diving license, and this was my first dive apart from my diving teacher. so naturally, when i got my tank strapped behind my back and a big blue sea with god-knows-what's-undernearth just one big giant leap away, i got a bit of adrenaline flowing in a negative way.

me doing the giant leap while going 'oh god oh god oh god...'

that was why when the mask on my face started leaking in water again and again, i got panicked and surfaced up barely 5m down. i know this is a big violation in my diving class but to my defense, this was a case of a defective gear. you don't fail a driving test student just because the tyre got punctured half way, do you?

a change of mask later, i started descending again and slowly my heartbeat frequency returned to normal. all the excitement of exploring underwater world came rushing back in. my dive master, holger, led me and my friend while taking our photos and videos along the way. i think that was one of a few time when i didn't really care how i would look inside the photos because with a diving gear, you could do lunges and still look cool...

do we look cool? haha.. ok the fishes definitely are..

other than those butterfly fishes, we got to see a giant morray eel lurking from between the rocks (my friend got a photo with it. damn!) and there was also this bearded scorpionfish that the dive master quickly signalled dangerous (he meant don't go near or you'd cry all the trip back bearing the pain).

the other good thing about this diving trip was, the boat ride itself. it was a speed boat and they even had this cook that prepared us omellette for breakfast. the crepe she made tasted like heaven especially when i ate it at the opened boat deck after the dive. i remember thinking, god, this is what holidays should be like, and then, have i said this more than once already during this trip?

me and my dive master, holger from germany on the right. he's such a nice guy

australian open tennis final between rafael nadal and roger federer just started when i reached my hotel room that late afternoon. i was all tired from the whole day at sea so i watched the match from my bed but all the suspense was killing me. i have used all my adrenalin for today so i figured i should watch an hour later if nadal is leading the score. i decided to go out for a massage instead.

ok it turned out i took 2 massages in a row. can you blame me?



...ed

it ain't over till the fat lady sings

a week ago, elizabeth wong won't ring any bell inside my head, or any bell inside most of street malaysians' head.

but today, she is like a celebrity. you can go around and say, hey what's up with elizabeth wong?, and people know what you mean.

well at least, people in my office where i had actually given it a try :)

she even has this group supporting her in facebook and that says a lot. this morning, she was the face that greeted me from the front page of singapore's newspaper that i picked up from underneath my main door.

ok maybe i'm not totally impressed by that. news are lame here in singapore. barely anything happened in this country, making reading the newspaper here is like reading the textbook. boring.

plus, if they have 100 news, 99 of them is about the economy and how bad is it now. i mean, what's up with that? that's why people gets so phobia of spending here, pushing the economy further down south.

no wonder the newspaper guys have to go an extra mile to get juicy news from across the causeway.

ok back to elizabeth wong. i just want to say that i support her.

so her nude sleeping photo were exposed through e-mails and mms by her ex-boyfriend. big deal. yes, she would be embarrased but is that her fault? i think she has no reason to quit her post as selangor's state assemblywoman which she did yesterday.

the only problem is, she is a member of the opposition party in malaysia. so naturally she was under attack by the opposite party leaders.

they even made this case similar to that of their own branch party leader who was caught having sex in a hotel room some time ago. so they had pressured her to step down as well.

i say, how could it be the same? that guy is married. he was having sex with his mistress. hello, no matter how you look at it from the social norm point of view, that is just plain wrong.

elizabeth wong is a single lady. she was nude in her own bedroom and it's not like she was doing raunchy sex stuff for the camera. the photo was taken without her permission, and was distributed without her permission.

if you asked me, this smells thick of conspriracy to discredit her and her party.

i mean, how come nobody points finger to her ex-boyfriend whom i heard is a malay? if he is indeed a muslim, surely he broke the islamic syariah court law by being with a non-married woman and thus, could get himself in all sorts of complication. what's the merit of him exposing those photos then? either he is that stupid or he has other unknown benefits...

anyway, we can only speculate for now. the reality is, this is another news, yet another colourful news in another week in malaysian political scene.

the other day, i was talking with my friends and we agreed that with all that has been happening in malaysia's leadership front, hollywood could come out with one hell of a movie.

i mean, malaysia's political world has all the ingredients of an entertaining show. it has lies, deceptions, conspiracy, street protests, people missing, kidnapped, ambushed.. there are explosions, murder, sodomy, sex scandal and now nude photo exposure.

my other friend said, those are too many plots for a movie. maybe more suitable for a tv series, you know, ala 'lost' or 'heroes'. each week there will be a new episode, a new twist in the storyline, and people will just have to keep guessing.

and i'm like all the malaysians, are currently guessing who would be the next casualty after elizabeth wong because make no mistake, things seem to be very very far from over...



...ed

long lost encounter

god. i'm coughing coughing coughing...

it's been a week, hasn't it? my flu is better now but god, my throat itches like crazy. it feels very dry too inside there, which is weird because i swallow my slivers everytime.

wait, do we normally swallow our slivers?

anyway, cough or no cough, i'm still going for my tennis later. i might give reason not to swim before because my body is still weak, but i'm never gonna give any reason for not playing tennis.

even if nadal has lost his final against muray last night. god that was so irritating. i'm never gonna open any tennis site now for a few weeks.

ok what else should i write? hmm.. i guess this is part of the year when suddenly things become uneventful. except the suicide of our colleague last week of course but even that, nobody was talking anything about it in the office. like it's one big taboo now in our company.

gosh, why does everybody wanna keep things hush-hush? just now when i was busy doing my weekly report, few of my colleagues behind me got together and started whispering to each other. as if i cared what they were talking about. for all i know maybe they were discussing about work.

ok maybe i did care a bit.

at least one of my long lost friend suddenly dropped me a message today at work, just when i thought facebook has became so boring with no new notification for a long time ~gosh my contacts/friends are all so passive and boring~.

wow we haven't been in touch for.. close to 9 years! can you imagine? actually come to think about it, we tend to move through different stages of our lives and unintentionally dropped our friends along the way. such a waste huh?

ok me going to grab dinner (as usual, milo and oat biscuts again...)



...ed

flour pills and red sugar syrup

i woke up this morning with a painful dry throat and a running nose i had difficulty to keep still. i even have cough now.

now what did the company doctor gave me few days ago? flour pills and red sugar syrup? for all i know, i AM NOT getting better.

so i didn't bother to drive 12 km to my company and wait half a day to see the same doctor and get the same medicine and be expected to work after that. my cubicle mate already closed his nose whenever he came near me, which i don't blame him because he has a daughter who gets all the illnesses available all the time.

i went to this neighbourhood family clinic instead. the doctor is always this young chinese guy who always look as if he just won the lottery. well, considering the money he could get after every patients visit, he probably is.

i got some medicines, and to my surprise, they even include in vitamin C capsules. errr.. i do take vitamin C at home so do i really need this? but i couldn't make myself to stop them to include that in. oh well, at least my company will reimburse half of the cost.

so i am on MC today. YESSS!!! a whole day to rest and recuperate to get well just in time for the weekend. whole day of bedtime rest and i must remind myself, NOT to write blogs.



...ed

how many days in a week?

i had conference call early morning. after japan hang up their phone, and i was all alone with my boss, my boss asked me..

if, touch wood, the company were to implement 4-days a week scheme, which day would i prefer to be off?

dang! there we have it. i knew it would come to this finally. i mean, our japanese branch and our italian branch already implemented a shorter week work-time as a pay cut measure to get through this economic downturn. what are the chances that singapore won't get hit too?

i asked my boss, if this is for real? but of course he said that nothing has been confirmed yet, that he was asking just in case.

yeah right. if he was asking just in case, he would be asking about all sorts of other stuff, wouldn't he? like what if the government refused to reduce the transportation fare, or what if i won that 1 billion toto. see? but he didn't.

recession sucks. i tell you, never have i been in this period so gloomy, that everyone that i met, sighed during work. a big, loud sigh that sounded like, god i wish i were somewhere else.

but you know what? there's no place left to go during this downturn. i heard 2 of my ex bosses are now still unemployed since the expansion plant was shut down. and there are many people in the interview fighting for that few empty spots.

so if i think about it, still having a job is still a bless. the point is, there's always people that fare worse than you. at least i can still go to work and bitch about the conference call or the bosses at night.




...ed

romance of the full moon

ok i figured i must write this now. it was getting harder to write nowadays. i don't know, maybe because it was due to the holiday season from christmas last year all the way to the recent chinese new year, making me abandoned all my routines. then even after that i had to go through holiday withdrawal phase, or HWP as i called it, so awhile more after that until i could come back to my senses.

..like now. so.. what's up with me nowadays? well nothing's up, all down. nothing much really. work has been neither here nor there. but still, i have to wake up early tomorrow to attend this conference call with japanese branch at 8am. deep in my heart, i wonder, what's the use? we always communicate through e-mail anyway, and it's not like we have big issues to discuss. plus, it's a dinasour-period device i'm handling as far as i'm concern. what the conference call means to me, is that i will miss my daily breakfast in office canteen.

but i guess, the boss has his own means. so i will have to be there before 8am. which means i have to try to sleep early tonight. which is kinda impossible since i have to write this, and then watch star wars the clone wars new episode after that. before i knew it, it will already be 6.30am and i have to curse and swear to wake up for work.

at least, my body seem to be holding fine after tennis just now. like every monday, it was a tennis day today. the only thing different was, one of our usual partner was hit by flu, so my another friend asked her husband to join our session. the thing is, he was so good at playing tennis. he striked the ball with ease and he could do spins and stuff. i was in total awe. if you must know, 2 things that could get me drop dead envious, are people who can play guitar, and people who can play tennis. i mean, good tennis. because i'm so hopeless in those things. for all i know, i have 2 left hands when it comes to playing guitar or tennis. so in the court just now, i was a bit stressed-out.

by the way, have you seen the moon tonight? while i was in the office today, my colleague told me that the moon tonight is going to be the biggest viewed in about 50 years. i searched for that news in yahoo news but couldn't find it. he must have got it from some chinese news websites. he surfs the chinese news a lot. it's amazing things that he knows from reading those chinese sites. anyway, i already happened to know that tonight is a full-moon night. so when we were at the tennis court just now, we got the chance to have full view of the moon. it looks like this.

of course i didn't take this while i was on the court. after my friends went back after the game, i went up my house, took my camera and my tripod, came down and shot this using my telephoto lense. some people walking by must have thought that i'm a moron who never seen the full moon before. because for one thing, it didn't look that big to me. it looked pretty normal, i'm sure i've seen the moon bigger before. it was very bright than usual though. still i couldn't see chang-er from the photo. maybe she was at the other side of the moon.

ok it's already almost 1am. did i tell you the clock always tick faster after midnight? one glance it's 12am, and another glance it will be close to 1am. and i haven't even start watching my clone wars.

so later guys...




...ed