Rental Cars

Been driving rentals for the past couple of trips. This last trip was the ultimate as I was one of the "official" drivers in Texas.

Chevy HHR
Drove this little car (well, not exactly little by Singapore standards) in California. Had no idea what it was when the lady asked me to choose between this and a Mazda 5. Heck, Chevy HHR it was.

I only drove it for an hour or two as we stayed in California for only 1 day. The car had pretty good insulation and soundproofing but was a letdown in the interior. The rear seats were small and the finishing felt plasticky. Also, the steering had no feel whatsoever. You can't feel the road and basically driving it felt like playing a video game (without force feedback!).



Ford Expedition
This was the BIGGEST car that I ever drove. Spent 4 days with it being one of the official chauffeurs. 5.4 litre V8, sounds impressive? Not so when plunked into this mini 3-tonner. It's huge, hard to park and performance isn't my cup of tea. That said, its reasonably comfortable and can seat 7-8 with still room for a couple of suitcases of luggage. Great for shopping and burning up earth's natural resources.

Home Sweet Home ...

Back for a couple of days now after an interesting week overseas (California and Texas). Nothing beats the humidity here. I think I prefer it to the cold dry weather in Texas.

Anyway, I'm currently still trying to recover from a case of sore throat / cough. And if you are wondering, no, it's not Swine Flu and there is no such thing as Swine Cough!

Noise Reduction

After approximately 20 hours of flight time, I am back in San Diego. The familiar streets and food was comforting. I am back in the same hotel (and maybe even the same room!)

Anyway, the flight this time was pretty comfortable as I was armed with my new Panasonic RP HC-31 active noise cancelling earbuds. If you travel by air a lot, I would recommend one of these. I prefer these to the over-the-ear type simply because they are lighter, smaller (i.e. easier to carry around), and does not clamp onto the sides of your head or mess up your hair.

With the earbuds on, I managed to watch 3 movies comfortably and put in about 4-5 hours of continuous sleep (with the noise-cancellation on and no audio) which I normally would not be able to do.



Anyway, I am now waiting for breakfast after a night of Tacos, Tortilla Chips, a Margarita and a HUGE dessert. Don't think I will be able to eat much this morning ...

"Standalone" Sushi Outlet

Being pretty busy with work over the past few week-ends, it was a luxury this week to be able to have dinner on a Saturday night with family. We wanted to go to IMM to do some shopping, but didn't want to fight with the crowd. And I remembered seeing a small Sakae Sushi "building" nearby IMM, so there we went to check it out.

Food is typical Sakae sushi, but the outlet was a "standalone" building by itself. Parking was free, and it reminded me of the restaurants in the US. Arriving there at 6pm, it wasn't that crowded we found the ambience to be pretty good. Even the boy was impressed (I think, cos he never really started whining and fidgeting).

Anyway, we had our fill before the crowd started arriving.

The Art of Walking (with two balls) ...

The boy has been practicing walking for the past month or so and I think he's got the hang of it. The walks started about 2-3 weeks ago from an independent step or two, to several metres now, including changing direction. Lately, he's also started to carry stuff around, like his favourite toy balls as well as a washbasin!

Anyway, what that means now is it's even more difficult to keep an eye on him as he could run off pretty quickly!

MIL's Birthday Dinner

We celebrated MIL's birthday with a small dinner at a restaurant called "Zi Ran", which is "Natural" if literally translated to English. It's a small Chinese restaurant located near Redhill MRT. Food is not bad and it seemed pretty popular. The sexy chopstick holders were a tad out of place though. See if you can spot them in the slideshow ... :-P

CHINON REVUENON 200mm f3.3

Stressful times at work call for retail therapy. And since there is no time to go for such therapy during the day or weekends, it can only then be done in front of the PC at night.

EBay, my favourite website for great online deals.

The latest "toy" is a CHINON REVUENON 200mm f3.3 manual prime lens. It's pretty fast for a 200mm (300mm equivalent in 35mm format). Will be trying to find some time to go to Sungei Buloh or somewhere to test out this fast telephoto. Stay tuned for some (hopefully) interesting shots!

Is it really over?

It's 2am in the morning and I just realised that I have totally neglected this blog for the past few weeks due to work. It is crazy, working long hours into the night and over the weekend too.

The past few days were especially tough, and it culminated in a "showdown" of two days of demonstration of our stuff to the customer (which ended today around 1 am!) I wonder if this is really over, or is it the beginning of something even more scary. The next few days would be spent rushing to put forth our official replies to questions raised during the demonstration so it would probably go by in a blur. I need time to recuperate, rest, snake, etc. and get ready for the next milestone.

Anyway, I haven't seen Wifey and the boy since Saturday afternoon, looking forward dinner with them tomorrow too ...