Busy Birthday ...

This must be the busiest birthday ever. After working through the weekend and pulling an all nighter ON my birthday on Monday, we finally submitted our tender proposal on Tuesday. Hopefully these 3 months of hard work will pay off.

Needless to say, I was zombified after nearly 30 hours without sleep. Went home and KO from 5:00pm on Tuesday till 8:30am on Wednesday! Luckily wifey was understanding enough to voluntarily stay over at MIL place for another night so I can get my continuous 15 hours of sleep ... :-D

Anyway, Wednesday came and I was rewarded with a birthday gift as well as a lunch at Equinox. It's been ages since I was up at the 69th floor at Raffles City. The last time I was there it was still called Compass Rose!!

Overall, the lunch ambience on a weekday is great. Just the place for a quiet lunch for two, with a great view and of course free flow of foie gras ...

Flickr Videos

Flickr provides an alternative platform to YouTube for uploading videos. So far, the experience has been very good. The uploads are fast, processing for each video is fast and you can upload multiple videos at one time. Also, the video quality seems to be better than YouTube!

Here are 3 examples!

Happy New Year 2009

Instead of the usual New Year's Countdown spent at the comfort of home by the TV, this year, we decided to go down to Marina Bay to watch the live fireworks. The only reason why we did so was that our cousin had an apartment on the 21st storey at The Sail @ Marina Bay.

We left about 9:45 pm, picked up Dad and another cousin at 10:30pm. The nightmare started when we reached the Marina Bay area. Traffic was pretty jammed up and we could not find a place to park. The Sail's limited visitor lots were all taken up and we had to look elsewhere. Later, I learnt that even residents at The Sail had to ballot and pay $200+ per month for parking lots as the number of lots is less than the number of units!

Anyway, we finally managed to park at Market Street carpark (which surprisingly still had plenty of lots) and walk over to The Sail. This is where part 2 started. Apparently lots of residents also invited their guests to their apartments and the whole lift lobby was jammed up with people. We had to queue up to take the lift up to the apartments.

When we finally reached the 21st floor apartment, it was already 11:45 pm, just in time to setup the camera for the fireworks.



The apartment itself was pretty small (not furnished yet). Other than the view of the bay, it was somehow not really impressive. The finishings were pretty basic and does not feel top quality. I guess most people who can afford to buy such a unit will mind as they won't be staying there but will probably be renting it out.

Going home was also tough as everyone jammed the lifts again to get down. Overall it was a tiring but enjoyable evening.