I’ll post the pictures from Xian’s birthday party once I have sufficient time on my hand, mainly away from work, to put up a proper entry.
For now, see if this interests you: A Thousand Days At Sea. I, for one, had been following their updates rather avidly. Incredible people, don’t you think?
Classic High-Cut Converse in black leather, and embellished with Sailor Jerry's Tattoo Art...Fierce sia!.jpg)
Even the sole has great details! Definitely collector's item!
Perched on my left shoulder like Aladdin's monkey, and gibbering in excitement, is Keong the Profligate:"WOARH SIBEH SUI! BUY IT! QUICK GO BUY! WE MUST HAVE THIS!"
Seated on my other shoulder with perfect poise, but equally emotional when disputing his counterpart, is Keong the Prudent:"OI YOU DIAM LA! ARE YOU MAD? IT'S $169!!"
Damn, I just can't reach a final decision with that kind of internal strife haha.
First, go here: http://www.basicinstructions.net/
Now, keep your index finger and thumb on the Tab and Alt keys respectively, ready to trigger at the first sign of intrusion into your workspace (e.g. approaching footfalls, doors opening, or the uneasy feeling that your supervisor is sneaking up on you).
In a critical situation where your senses failed to alert you of danger till the very last instant, (especially if your boss, like mine, moves as stealthily as a Red Indian) for you to execute a seamless split second shift from skiving on the job to looking like an assiduous worker concentrating on the glorious advancement of the company, will of course be much more challenging. However despair not, aspiring skiver, a bit of practice ought to take care of that.
Lastly, keep in mind that there’s nothing more subversively gratifying than being paid by the government to read comics.
This one's for you! Everyone was having drinks at Blu Jaz, and so we did an impromptu video to wish you Happy Birthday :) I don't have to say much here, you just have to go watch the videos, like NOW
Here we have Branchel Tian Tian De, Hamsome Towkay (GQ) and his harem of concubines (XY, Aliah and Helaine), Sonia (in red), and my chirpy girlfriend! And of cos, it's me behind the camera la...
"乾杯!没乾就没懒趴!"
Aliah had to go off early, so she has her own individual segment taken by my darling.
One more time now in Hokkien, and remember, with heart, "我没醉,我没醉,我没醉!"
By the way Sam, we really tried. But upon landing at 上海浦东国际机场 like canned sardines in the biggest box DHL could find us, we were sniffed out by the airport's detector dogs, and were immediately deported..back in the same box haha.
We used my camera's recording function, so there was nothing I could do about the lack of lighting at the place. You might want to tweak your monitor's brightness and contrast settings to see us better. Aiyah if all else fails, just max the volume and listen to us can liao la! Haha
Sixteen hours of fishing, divided between two days back to back = enough fix to satisfy the habit for a little while longer :)
However, having said that, the first day was a major disappointment. To tell it in a nutshell, we were royally scammed by the PRP management thieves, for $80 per rod and shit in the pond (ok, not literally. But then again, if we're talking about fish excrement...) At the end of the day 1, all I got was an uneven tan (Hooray for a new shade of brown!), and also this anti-social tortoise I had scooped out of the pond with a kind of triumph seen only in the desperate.
When Life gives you turtles, you make turtle soup.
Day 2: This Catch 'n' Release Pond at Farmway 3 was recommended by Ah Boon after he and Paul had a good run the previous week. The resident freshwater fishes at the quaint little place will happily gobble up your bait for just $30 a day. Bungsamran it is not, but it's still a nice change from the occasional tromp through untamed parts of reservoirs in search of secret spots, and definitely much better than the rest of the lack lustre local payponds.
Total score at the end of day 2 was 11 - 5 Patins, and er, 6 Tilapias..haha
First blood belonged to Paul,
then ZS,
and then dad... (for the record, Ah Boon got one too)
It was Patins all around! My first Patin - a feisty fellow, and very fun on a light tackle :)
Oh Darling, have I told you lately just how much I love and adore you? ;)
You are my favorite food-hunt companion!
When I'm with you, things will never get dull or dreary, because you are ever so bubbly and brimming with zest :)
You once commented that we eat non-stop when we are together, and reckoned I'm trying to feed you rounder so nobody else but me, will like you...
...But you so cute, how can I not be possessive? Forgive me for my unscrupulous methods my darling, heh heh heh :D
We went fishing at PRP today. Four of us this time - Dad, Ah Boy, Ah Boon and myself, each armed with a rod.
It definitely wasn't a good day for fishing. All day it was an overcast sky with intermittent showers which only subsided near dusk time. The number of fishes released into the pond must have been curtailed too, in the wake of the hefty fine slapped on the pond management over the recent Dengue violations. Bite rates were poor all around the pond, and it was also by no coincidence, the lowest turn out of anglers at PRP I've ever seen.
Of course we weren't spared the ill luck which seemed to have blanketed the whole place in a kind of an angler's curse. 4 rods, 9 hours and only 4 fishes to account for. Though I really don't have the rights to whine, because I got to fight two medium GTs and a small "Ang Gueh". But at the end of the day, our overall catch simply just don't justify the amount of money we had paid to fish. In fact, this was what had prompted Boon Chong to come up with the analogy which I'm about to share with you. In his own words:
"Going to a pay pond and not catching anything is just wrong. It's like going to a prostitute and not being able to come."
Damn right.
I have stumbled upon a universal truth (while surfing the internet at work)!
In the pictures which follow, you will discover that good old Jesus, he is actually very righteous about how the children of god, epitomized here by He-Man the indisputable Alpha-Male of Humankind, should NOT be denied the abundant rewards that can be reaped from a nice little hemp joint!
Can't get enough out of the condensed version? Go see the original extended set on Flickr, here: All God's Children Do Weed
Well… What story is there to a simple Batam trip?
Over the course of those 3 days, we didn't visit a single touristy landmark, because there were absolutely none to begin with. Nor did we trek through any exciting Indonesian nature spots, because our surrounding lands were desolate as far as my squinted eyes could perceive. We even eschewed the idea of trawling for bargains in vast malls and bazaars, plainly because the city district was too far out of the way for us. And your impatient question now, marked by an incredulous face, must be what exactly did we do there all this time???
We feasted, and we gorged, then we snacked some more. I remembered once remarking how stuffed I still felt from the last meal, but my mind was already picturing the next, and all this while my hand dipped ceaselessly into a bag of chips like a vulture's beak picking at carcass haha.
This may not be Hara Bagus, but it's Dim Sum Sedap nonetheless!
We found this bastard child of the Pizza and a Curry Puff here, which turned out to be indeed quite tasty.
She always complains I'm feeding her to become rounder and rounder, but see how wide she grins when the Teppanyaki chef served! :)
Each of those dumplings has two succulent prawns wrapped up inside them, just look, it's as large as her cheek! :D
And when we aren't stuffing ourselves silly, we look to the buzzing itinerary we had planned. Which, as you might have guessed, is mostly centered around doing nothing haha.
Reading leisurely by the poolside under a pleasantly toasty sun... 
...then taking long afternoon naps, followed by sumptuous dinner spreads. That's resort life :)
This picture always makes me uneasy, then one day it dawned on me that pairing hairy legs and fingernail painting together in a picture has triggered off the subconcious response similar to that of seeing a Changi Bapok.
We drew on each other two very hardy animals to symbolise the stable and enduring love we share, something like the Branchel's pair of couple watches if you will. Though I do admit that a crudely drawn tortoise and cockroach aren't the best of representations...haha.
Ok, so us lads had benefited (A euphemism for freeload haha) from the generosity of the Liu Brothers for a long time now.
Sheng’s very own humble little bar is the birthplace of countless cocktails, and our dear bartender, a metaphorical midwife, always so eager to refill our glasses with new and fabulous concoctions. And his big brother, Xian is ever the one to “delight” us with his repertoire of bad jokes delivered with frightening spontaneity, which he follows up with a display of not-so-nimble dodging between flung chairs and other assorted projectiles. And whenever we gather at their place for a night of gaiety, all of us will be seated around having Sex on the Beach, smiling and winking at one another…oh wait that sounds rather wrong haha.
What I meant to say was, plenty of the memories the boys shared together in the last decade, had been firmly planted in the settings of Xian’s house, draped across his couches and around the porch. Be it birthdays and other important occasions, or just warm nights with nowhere to go and nothing better to do than to talk cock with a drink in hand, Xian’s place was the choice place.
And now, there finally is a deserving tribute to this faithful old haunt, already a second home for the guys. What better way, than to drink some more of course, meaning also to mark the “official” opening of Sheng’s Bar (What really happened was Sheng just bought a couple more new bartending accessories, invited everyone over, and declared his bar open despite already serving up for months. Suppose he was just excited about his newly completed collection of drinks mixing gizmos eh? Well nobody minded, because we aren’t here to ask the questions, we just dutifully drink up haha.)
And as usual, the imps of mischief always manifest themselves after we’ve knocked back a few glasses. The photos are proof.
No one is safe from Andrew's practical jokes, especially his good friends, as Tay soon found out.
Anal Tay meekly poses for a trophy shot with the bounty hunters.
KH's signature maniacal laughing face, and Andrew's kinky swimming trunks masquerading as a headrest cover - A vision from hell haha.
Jerry never suspected a thing. Before the picture was taken, he was rubbing the back of his head against those spandex trunks with a smile of the blissfully ignorant. hehehe
This is perhaps the best time for a windfall of fortune to befall me.
Nope, I don’t covet a million bucks, a flashy car, or even designer threads. I’m only asking for a few simple things, which practical worth actually matches their price tags.
1. A Fender 4 string beauty which I have been eyeing for a long time now. Because it pays off to invest in quality equipment early on.
2. A pair of Ray-Bans when I’m fishing, to ward off the blinding glare of the relentless afternoon sun. I’m not going to settle for a shoddy imitation, and risk contracting eye cataracts at forty.
3. Even my phone has turned rebelliously unreliable, and I’m already looking to replace the mutinous bastard. Arrr!
There’s no way in hell my measly allowance is going to allow me that kind of expenditure. Besides, I’m not going to fritter away a couple thousands from my savings, because I’ve promised Jolyn we’ll see Hong Kong at the end of this year. :)
And so, in a typical display of the true Singaporean spirit of optimistic doggedness, I had tacked my Toto ticket for Thursday onto my work desk CPU, and written in black bold ink to better catch Cai Shen Ye’s attention (I hope he reads blogs), are the words:
I’m almost done with an excellent travelogue, Riders to The Midnight Sun, written by a Marc Llewellyn. The book is based on his journey with his girlfriend, across the former Soviet Union, all 4500 kilometers of the straight line from one end in Ukraine, across the Baltic States, to another end in Russia. The amazing thing was they accomplished all of this on bicycles, hence the title of the book.
Marc’s first hand accounts offered much insight into the lives of the people in each individual country after the dissolution of the USSR. The many colorful characters and incredible incidents he runs, or rather, rides into, sums up to a pretty interesting read, and more importantly, has dug up some quite thought provoking subjects for both the author and the readers themselves. He even contributes some of his existentialism philosophy, which are scattered all about inside the book, and I have extracted my favorite bit out to share with you:
“..Life is a process of dying and renewing yourself, and there are certain circumstances that allow you to do that; and the best of them is travel. The journey is one of those frequent opportunities in life to take stock and to renew. Remove yourself from your normal occupations and you are free of them; you can shed your old skin and become anyone you want to be. You can try on a different personality. No-one will ever see you’ve changed, except when you come back, of course. It’s like falling in love, when your personality thaws a little, and allows for a little change in shape, before it refreezes again.
But you can’t change, of course, without reflection. The real traveler is active, not passive. He moves about but actively reflects on life and what is happening to him and lives each moment as it arrives. So many tourists go away and let new experiences wash over them like plankton in the sea, without grasping them and allowing their imagination to flower – you can travel down to the end of your street, and experience it differently every time, as long as you are aware, and have new eyes to see. And you must be there, in the present, like the Buddhists who close their eyes and walk all day barefoot on the warm ground just to feel it under their feet and know they are alive.”
Man, I’m itching to throw everything down and go backpacking right this very instant haha.
It’s been almost 2 weeks since my last post, for lately I’ve been inundated with work during this peak period at the office. The mind numbing drudgery of office work, made even more distasteful by the mediocre nature of an assistant’s job, has stripped me of all my writing inspiration at the end of every daily race. And to break this spell of inertia, I’m going to start with the pictures taken on the Genting trip with the 8+2 Gang. Rather long overdue, but I had little time to pick the best out of the combined hoard of photographs accumulated from all of the 3 cameras tirelessly snapping away during the trip. So after several stops and starts, I finally finished the post, and here goes!
The 8+2 Gang 
That's everyone at the theme park. We're just 2 more pieces short to complete the whole jigsaw picture haha.
On this side of the train: Peishi, Derrick, Jolyn and myself
And on the other side: Xiuwen, Jun An, Xiao Jing and Alex
Pa Di Xiong & Jolly Bean
She's a jolly bean because she's always zippy! :)
We were posing for Xiaojing's camera, when I panicked over the impending flash, and instinctively did the first thing that came to mind - The Chinese Kungfu's Deadly Five Finger Crane Style Pointed Strike.
Even our toiletries complement their other half so well. :)
We tossed a coin, and she got to be the ship's skipper, while I was the humble first mate haha.
There's our fearsome pirate ship, all aboard aye!
The 1 last one before we returned to Singapore, and reality.
Mad About Her
My girlfriend loves late mornings, and not even the persistent sun peeking through curtains gaps can interfere with her beauty sleep.
When she wakes up, she's the girl with the boundless energy all of her friends are familiar with. On a sidenote, I HAD to name this picture "My Deer", I couldn't resist it!.
And sometimes when she takes her afternoon naps, you might just miss her if you don't look close enough haha.
Here she is, back to her ways of endearing antics, and I think surely only she can pull off looking cute when making such a hideous ghost face!
Haha she looks like this every night during bedtime, burrowed deep to be comfortably snug under the quilt. She's just simply oh-so adorable to me. :)
And finally, thank you darling, you made the Genting trip fun for me. I'm looking forward to our next vacation, one with just the two of us. ;)
