Hungry? Must Eat!

"Cousin-in-law" has a new camera and food blog. Check out his site:

http://hungrymusteat.blogspot.com

Singapore Street View

Google Maps has finally done street view for Singapore.

Here are a few of my favourite scenes:

Kranji Dam
KPE Tunnel
Benjamin Sheares Bridge
Mandai Road
Old Upper Thomson Road (No feeding the monkeys!)
Changi Coast Road
Lim Chu Kang Road a.k.a. "40 Tiang" (Watch out for highway patrol!)
Yishun Dam
Airport Blvd
Telok Paku @ Changi Beach
Kg Wak Hassan

Who knows, if you are lucky, you may spot yourself in the street view scene!

Farm Food

Recently, I've bookmarked these 3 eateries which were once purely agricultural places. They were all near our home so we decided to check them out.

Firstly, Vanilla Pod. This is the most classy of the 3 places. Nice classy restaurant with great view and ambience in the afternoon. See my previous blog entry here.


Petals and Leaves Bistro (click for slideshow)

Secondly, last week we went to the Petals and Leaves Bistro. Slightly further away in the Kranji area. The food choices were not as extensive as a normal restaurant but were quite adequate. Choices were mainly "western" dishes with some local selections.

They had a big pond for fishing (not sure what kind of fish though) and an activity corner for children. There is also an outdoor playground (although it is a bit run down). This place also has facilities for wedding/dinner receptions and farmstays. Overall, a nice place to have lunch or even stay for a quiet weekend.


Poison Ivy Bistro (click for slideshow)

Finally, this weekend we went to Poison Ivy. SIL saw our photos from Petals and Leaves so we decided to have a family outing to the Kranji area for lunch.

Compared to P&L, it was more "farm like". For $2 you can walk into their farm and see where they grow their organic veggies, which were also available for sale and for lunch. The food on their menu were all local dishes. We ordered quite a bit and the food tastes home cooked and quite nice. Price wasn't too expensive. We had healthy brown rice and quite a number of dishes and it cost us only about $10 per head.

We'll definitely be back to Kranji. Who knows, maybe farm hopping next time?

If you are interested, here's a LINK to google maps to get started. More info can also be found here: http://www.kranjicountryside.com/

It's been a while ...

4th October 2009, that was the last entry on this blog.

Things have been pretty crazy in October and November.

First of all, the bid which we have been working hard on over the past year has just been awarded. HURRAH! What that meant was a whole bunch of preparation work in mid-October, followed by a LONG (2 week) training trip up to San Diego.


Pacific Ocean Sunset, La Jolla, San Diego (Click for slideshow)

San Diego Trip
Many people say that San Diego has got one of the best climates in the world, and I couldn't agree more. It's nice, cool and dry all year round. Not much natural disasters and generally a nice, peaceful place to live in.

Anyway, our training here was pretty tiring as we had a continuous 10 days of training (Yes, INCLUDING weekends). This is because of the tight schedule and as such we cannot afford to delay the start of the project because of training. In spite of this, we still managed to go out in the evenings for dinner, some shopping and generally to soak in some of the evening sights.

All in all, it was a fruitful trip. Fruitful in the sense that both the official (i.e. training) and unofficial (i.e. shopping and eating) objectives were achieved. :D

Back Home
After the tiring trip, we had only 1 day of rest before work started. And work was full day meetings and discussions for almost 2 more continuous weeks! Nothing much exciting to blog here though.

Finally
Now that the initial stage of the project is done, we can finally take a short breather before the next phase starts in a week's time. (Just to let you know in case you do not see any more updates here, you know I am busy working. REALLY.)

-= SONDAMBI =-

What do you get when you put a Korean chio bu together with some others plus catchy/funky music? SONDAMBI!! And very entertaining MVs :-D

Updates

A friend told me that my blog has not been updated for some time now. My reply was that there was either nothing to blog about (totally unbelievable) or most of the recent events are more private and not suitable to be posted in a public blog. It is actually more the latter.

Anyhow, this is my first post after a long break (skipped the whole of September in fact), just to say that I am still around. :)

Orchard Central

Yesterday was wifey's facial appointment again. So I was a CentrePoint kid for an hour or so. Was a bit lazy so spent some time in the car listening to music before heading out to the mall to take a walk around. Didn't manage to buy anything during that half hour walk though.

After wifey was done, we went over to the new Orchard Central mall just across the road from CentrePoint. It was an interesting experience. Designed by DP Architects and developed by Far East Organisation, it is touted as Singapore's first "Vertical Mall" at Orchard. The building is narrow and tall. Even though not all the shops were open, you could get a feel of how it would be like when it is fully "operational".

The building has lots of steel and glass. Glass lifts and plenty of escalators. They even have a rock climbing area at the long and narrow atrium. Yesterday, they were playing jive music and some shoppers (not sure of they were really shoppers) were dancing the jive at the atrium!

The shopping area is divided into various clusters. There are 12 floors in total with about 8 floors of shopping. All the levels are longish in design. Some of the shops are "open concept" and you actually walk through them without knowing where is the actual "entrance". Most of the retail shops are fashion with some sports shops on the 4th and 5th level. Although the concept is refreshing, it could get a bit confusing trying to navigate through the shops.

The highlight of the day was the rooftop garden at the 11th and 12th floor. Although not officially ready, we managed to walk through the "construction area" and got to see the view from the top floor of OC, nice! I think the view would be much nicer at night. I am also guessing that there is going to be some restaurants on the roof garden when it is complete. Too bad I did't bring my camera along. Will definitely come back again to take a look next time.

Comparing Home Loans

If you are looking at financing (or re-financing) your property in Singapore to save $$$. Check out this website => SMARTLOANS.SG

Has a cool wizard to perform calculations for you, and you can see what the various banks are offering before contacting them for more details.

Sanctuary

Everybody has their little space in the world. Some find comfort in a little place at home, some at the poolside, at the beach or even (yes) in the bathroom.

Mine just happens to be in a little portable 1.5m x 2.5m space behind the steering wheel. Yes, it's the car.

It's where I spend 2 hours a day (or more), and I enjoy the time when I am driving alone on the way back home. Whether I'm sad, stressed, angry etc. a slow drive home with the appropriate music usually fixes things.

Even during the day, this little private sanctuary provides comfort during lunchtime or when I need a break from the office. Because it is portable, I can choose my environment and ambience depending on my mood.

Anyway, today was no exception. With several things on my mind, the usual 20 minute drive took me twice as long, and the music twice as loud. Surprisingly, I wasn't even bothered by all the inconsiderate drivers...

Imagine ...

Your Section had received orders to take this very important hill at all costs. Intel informed you that the area is lightly defended, so you take only what you need. When you arrived, you find yourself surrounded by a well entrenched platoon, supported by mortar fire. You press on ...

It was an uphill battle. One Section against so many enemy troops, you are outnumbered. Fighting for days, you grow tired. Reinforcements are badly needed, but none were in sight. You begin to wonder about the real importance of this hill ...

Suddenly, HQ radios in that reinforcements were available. They join in the fight. However, as they were engaging the enemy, some of your comrades are hit by their friendly fire ...

Through the smoke, you can see the objective at the top of the hill is now near. The battle is nearly over. In a hours time, you could be standing on top of the hill and planting your flag. However, even though the battle could be won, the war is not over.

Your troops are exhausted and some are wounded. You are still stuck with your reinforcements, and there is a high chance of an enemy counter attack. The question is, will you stay and defend because of that piece of land, or because you fought so hard for it?

Flock 2.5

Testing out posting a blog entry using Flock 2.5, the "Social" web browser ...

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Lost ...

Have you ever done something and later you realised that it's the dumbest thing you have ever done? That happened to me last Friday.

To keep a long story short, I basically left my wallet on top of the car. Moral of the story is not to leave anything OUTSIDE the car. If you have to leave something, dump it somewhere INSIDE (unless you want to lose it of course).

Being "Cool"

The boy is growing fast. It is amazing to see him develop his skills, especially his emotions. Luckily for us, being happy is something which he tends to show quite often. Soon, he will learn a host of other emotions, some desirable and others not, and these will be displayed freely.

Once upon a time, we were all like this, free with our emotions. I don't know when one starts to learn to put a "filter" on them. Different people learn different "filters" and I guess that partly contributes to the development of our personality.

I don't get called names often but the ones that I always hear are things like "Mr. Cool" or "Cool Man" etc. Why? I guess I may have too many "filters" in place. How did they get there? Maybe it's being the eldest in the family, or having to take on more responsibility and provide a good example to siblings. Well, no idea really.

How does one change then? I got a clue from last week's course on leadership. The trainer mentioned that the human mind consists of 10% consciousness and 90% unconsciousness. To get to the 90%, we have to go through that 10%. My guess is that all these filters are in that unconscious part of the brain and I will need to exercise a lot of practice through the conscious brain in order to effect a change.

So technically it seems one can change his or her personality, and it's really a matter of conscious re-learning.

A Tale of two House-cleaners

We have a house-cleaner which comes every alternate week to clean up the house. Recently, we had to change to another cos the previous one decided to do some food business.

Anyway, both are friends and they are from China. However, when it comes to working, one of them will spend 10% of the working time playing with the boy, and sometimes will take "urgent leave", resulting in us having to skip one week of cleaning or do it ourselves.

The other is very hardworking. She is here every week and even works to the extent of doing OT (overtime) for an extra half hour. Furthermore, she refused to accept payment for the OT saying that it was OK! What surprised us was that even though she is not making much, she gave the boy an Ang Pow for his birthday!

Luckily for us, this is our current house-cleaner. The next time she does OT we will insist on her getting paid. Where to find such attitude these days?

Numbers

As Wifey got out of the car with the boy, she suddenly stopped and stared. What's up, I asked. She told me to look at the cars in front ...



It's a sign. All the three cars parked in front of us had license plates with 2, 2, 3 & 4 in them. The first thing that came into our minds was "System Roll". Yeah, let's hope we get lucky.

Bad Day

Today reminded me of this song ...



Seriously, things didn't go well right from the start of the day. It rained heavily last night, so I sort of expected traffic to be heavy, but that was an understatement.

The first encounter was less than 3 minutes after I got onto the KJE. Usually, it is NEVER jammed, so when there was slow traffic, something really bad probably has happened. Something bad actually did. A Malaysian truck carrying loads of EGGS has overturned on the ramp from KJE to BKE(PIE). I was stuck in the ensuing jam, PLUS I had to drive over the raw eggs on the road to get past!

The next few encounters weren't so sensational, but all in all, there were 3 accidents and 2 vehicle breakdowns along the way to Commonwealth. After dropping of the boy more than an hour after I left the house, wifey declared that she forgot her office pass ... so back we went home to pick it up.

We have up going to office in the morning and took half-day leave. And oh, did I mention that I missed the exit home, had to do a short detour and got the car got splashed with muddy water at a U-turn? And what about the fact that I just washed the car yesterday night? :-(

Anyhow, after we had lunch, we set off again on the same route. Unfortunately, I did not realise that 3 hours later, they had TOTALLY CLOSED the KJE to BKE(PIE) exit and were still cleaning up the eggs! They were sweeping the eggs to one side and the raw egg juice was flowing all over the place! This meant another jam, long detour and driving across raw eggs AGAIN!

I finally reached the office at about 1pm for a meeting. It was then that I found out that the 1pm meeting didn't really need me, and the other 3pm meeting has been postponed to Wednesday. !@#$%

Obviously, the day ended with a much needed car wash and probably will be an early night. Will buy 4D tomorrow, "0405" System Roll ...

Exercise

My weight has been hovering 3kg above my "ideal" for many months now. This is mainly due to lack of exercise. So after several months of being a lazy ass, I finally went swimming on today!

Yeah, swimming, a couple of breadth-wise laps, then the kids swimming lessons started. The pool suddenly became infested with little pests and it was time to go.

Will try to find time (only time available is when the boy is asleep) to swim more or go to the gym. To get some motivation, I think it's time to start on ACV again. Will go buy some from NTUC next week.

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!

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 ...

Chinese New Year 2009

Another Chinese New Year has come and gone. This year we went visiting with 3 people instead of two. It is a chance for us to claw back some of the many ang baos that we have given away over the past years.

This year, because of the tender presentations that we had ON THE WEEK OF CHINESE NEW YEAR, I wasn't really in the mood for much celebrations. We kept things simple (didn't even bother to decorate my "bamboo tree" this year). 

Anyway, here are some photos to share of this much needed break in the middle of all hectic schedule at work.

Chinese New Year 2009 Photos