Wednesday, May 30, 2007

The Longest Break - 2 - Camera!
After the experience of taking pictures with a not so new, not so powerful camera, I was resolved to buy a new one to replace my stolen one.
We went to Sim Lim Towers' Alan's Photo and came back with Fuji S6500 for me and Olympus FE-230 for Esmond.







To read all about Fujifilm's S6500, click here.





To read all about Olympus FE-230, click here.




My Fuji camera is a prosumer with 10.7 x zoom (300mm). If I have had this camera during the Aviva Open, I would have been able to take clear pictures of the players (and can even see if he / she has any pimples on their faces!).


Night view from my in-law's place in Toa Payoh.







Day view...




















Singapore's CBD skyline can be seen from the balcony.


The power of 10.7x zoom.... yeah!!!







As Esmond didn't want to lug my "tua leng gong" around, he got himself a tiny camera with 3x zoom. It can be carried around in the pocket to anywhere, any time with ease. It takes good pictures too!
For a tiny camera, it has quite a number of functions. Its 'scenes' function includes night & portrait, cuisine, in the window, candlelight, etc in addition to the usual portrait, scenery, sports etc etc...











Some of the photos taken using Olympus FE-230...
In the end, we spent half a day at Alan's Photo and close to SGD$1,000 for 2 cameras. But we feel that it's money well spent because, these will be our tools to capture "moments" for our reminiscense in our later years.....
The Longest Break......


Hi all, so sorry as I've not been updating my blog for the past few weeks. You see, we've been on a LONG break from work and we had totally enjoyed ourselves. What break you ask? Well, we were on 5 weeks leave from work and we had returned to Singapore and Malaysia for the duration. (Shiok right?.... how many employers allow their workers on such a long leave, especially when I've just completed my 6 months probation?... haha )

We left Brisbane in the afternoon of 21 April 2007, and spent the first week in Singapore and the second week back in Batu Pahat, Johor, Malaysia. As my camera was stolen, I didn't have any pictures taken for these first two weeks.

Technically, they were spent catching up with family, relatives, friends and ex-colleagues. We had also spent a fair bit of our time shopping! After 10 months away from Singapore, we now truly believe that Singapore is a shopping haven. We just couldn't peel our eyes away from the clothes, shoes, knick knacks and brick bracks right before our eyes.

When we got back from Malaysia, our first destination was the Indoor Stadium. Why? Because of the Aviva Open, a world class badminton tournament participated by world class badminton players! We bought two season tickets to premiers seats for SGD$52 each. It was well worth it! We were seating close to the courts and could see the players clearly.












The view from our premier seats.







The tournaments were so exciting that it got all the spectators so worked up, rooting for their players, shouting, clapping, drumming (yes, I'm serious. Somebody brought a small drum, a few brought kompangs - signature of Malaysia's supporters).

Malaysia' bus load of supporters, armed with uniforms, flags, kompangs and whistles...




The fans of various countries have their own characteristics. Malaysia's for example, will unite (regardless of race of players) and cheer with all their heart, bringing along their kompangs and chants of "Malaysia Boleh!". Indonesia's supporters are mostly students, with 1 big Indonesia flag and chants of "In-do-ne-sia! clap! clap! clap! clap!". Where as China's, they have powerful vocal cords that are so sharp and clear you can hear them from across the stadium even if there were only a few of them. They came with 1 big flag and chant of "中国队加油!"
When there are no Malaysian players playing, the Malaysian supporters will root for their neighbouring countries and especially the host nation - Singapore. The Indonesia supporters never roots for China. And they also jeered at Singapore's Ronald Susilo as "import" and asked him to "Go Home" as he was originally from Indonesia.
Not only did we get to witness world class badminton standards, there were also bargains to grab! Yonex, one of the sponsor of Aviva Open, had their badminton goods on display. After every match, the booths were packed with badminton fans, selecting sporting outfits, badminton racquets, shoes, bags, magazines, etc etc... Not only the spectators frequent the booths, but the players as well. And we met Peter Gade, defending champion of Aviva Open's Men's Singles. Unfortunately, Peter Gade lost to China's Chen Yu (the eventual runner-up).













Above: Esmond with Denmark's Peter Gade. Right: Peter Gade vs Taufik Hidayat (Indonesia) who's famous for his backhand smash, which didn't get to materialise because Peter played in such a way that he doesn't have any chance to "出招".

The finals was held on Sunday, 6 May 2007. We arrived an hour early to "chop" seats. The turn out was very good. There were 5 final matches: the men's singles, women's singles, men's double, women's double and mixed doubles. Out of all 5 matches, the most exciting match is the last match of the tournament - the men's doubles. It was China against Malaysia. The crowd were divided into two factions, each rooting for their players. Whenever they score, they celebrate with cheers and claps so loud that it thunders across the whole indoor stadium. After 3 heart stopping games, China won. Malaysia was so close to winning but alas, it was not meant to be.


















Top: Malaysia's veteran players Choong Tan Fook and Lee Wan Wah vs Tony Gunawan and Chandra (Indonesia) in the semi finals.
Bottom: The winner (China) and runner up (Malaysia) of men's doubles.

Actually, this year's Aviva Open went to the underdogs. Heavy weights who were expected to proceed to the finals were eliminated as early as the preliminary rounds. Lee Chong Wei, Peter Gade, Lin Dan (Top 5 players in the world), Taufik Hidayat all didn't make it to the finals. Instead and unseeded Thailand player won the men's singles - Boonsak Ponsana. He beat world no. 1 - Lin Dan and went on the fight Singapore's Ronald Susilo in the semi-finals.

Thailand's Boonsak Ponsana with his coach after his victory against Singapore's Ronald Susilo.







Why the sudden interest in badminton you ask? Actually, I was hooked onto badminton back in 1990s when Malaysia hosted and won the Thomas Cup. After secondary school, the interest waned and was only rekindled when I'm in Brisbane as we've been participating in weekly badminton sessions with some friends.



We hope to watch Aviva Open LIVE again in June next year!
(And that international badminton tournaments will be held in Brisbane!)

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Easter 2007 - Houseboat Day 5

09 April 2007, Monday - Final day...

After last night's adrenalin rush, we were all so tired that we slept till well past 8am in the morning... (during the trip, we usually woke around 6+ - 7+). But for Rachel, she slept like a log because she took 2 travel pills before bed so that she won't wake in the middle of the night in rough seas... In the end, she had no idea how choppy the water was the night before...

This morning's breakfast was leftovers of sorts. We had salads, BBQ meat, chicken wings, bacon, prata.... Rachel came up with bacon and cheese prata, which was snapped up by the crew...

After breakfast, we set sail for Ephraim Island and Sovereign Island. This is Esmond's request as he wanted to see what he termed as "architecture disaster houses" which he saw from some brochures. He couldn't understand why those houses do not maximise their space and had to leave voids here and there. It's just not practical...

The journey to the island take a good hour or so. On the way there, traffic was pretty heavy. There were speed boats, luxury boats going past us - fast! One of them caused such a commotion that the wave following it threw everyone off their feet! Glasses, cups, bowls, plates, pots, bottles were "flying" off their places. Shy "flew" to save a bottle of red wine from falling off the table and knocked himself in the tummy. (Great save Shy!)

Pei, Yan Ngoh (Kareen), Haw and Jit had another round of Monopoly while Shy and Pearl took to their beds.

Pei: "Yay! I finally managed to buy some property!" (Pei didn't managed to buy much in her first round of Monopoly on Day 2






We had a near miss at getting grounded a third time. All of a sudden, we seem to be stationery at one spot. So some of us ran to the back where the motor was to check things out. And we saw the propeller churning out sand!!! We thought "Oh no... Not again! And on our last day too! If we get grounded here, we will surely not make it back to Brisbane today and in time for work the next day!". So Roger made the engine "huff and puff", churning more sand by the minute. We prayed that some miracle forces will give us a slight nudge and dislodge us from the sand bank. Our prayers were answered and we were "free"!!! Thank God! (Thanks to Roger who reminded me of this little excerpt!)
When we got to the island, the architects (Heng Onn, Christina, Pei, Haw, Shy) started explaining to Esmond about the logic behind the designs. Esmond took interest and had learnt a new "archi" term - light well. It's a tower / open space with windows allowing natural light to filter into the house.

Ephraim Island and the "architecture failure" apartments...







After admiring million dollar water front properties (apparently, there's a security gate at the entrance of Sovereign Island and only residence with passwords / remote are allowed entry!), we started our journey back to the pier at Coomera.









We admired the water front properties along the way. We also said that we'll do another houseboat trip in 10 years time - a reunion. We'll rent the most luxurious houseboat and bring our family along. We'll probably need to hire two houseboats by then, if we were all "productive".









Roger and Ian tried their hands at steering the boat from the upper deck while Heng Onn, Christina, Esmond and Rach chatted...


When we reached the pier, we contemplated if we want to have lunch on the houseboat. But because most of us are still full from breakfast, we decided to dock and go ashore. The leasor saw us coming into the pier and checked if we are returning the houseboat. He came in 15 minutes time. By then, we were almost done with our packing.

The man was so skilled that he "parked" the houseboat with minor bumps! We didn't feel it at all!

Once docked, we unloaded our stuff and took group photos with the houseboat to commemorate our memorable trip together.

We loaded our luggage and leftover food into our respective cars and headed back for SunnyBank. We had an early dinner since we skipped lunch - Endless Noodless at Pinelands, after which we left for Esmond and Rachel's home so that she could copy down all photos taken, consolidate it and re-distribute it to all.

At around 7pm, our Easter holiday was officially over. We returned to our respective homes and crashed!

Thank you all, for such a memorable trip.


p/s:
The whole trip cost each person slightly less than AU$400 each (inclusive of rental of houseboat, food, games, petrol, mileage)

A few of us were actually still swaying when we went back to work the next day. Ian, our captain, who flew back to Malaysia on the same night, said that he will never do flying after boating because he didn't know if he was sick from the boat or from the flight!

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Easter 2007 - Houseboat Day 4

08 April 2007, Sunday - Highlight of our trip~!

Instinctively, the first thing that all of us did when we woke was check out our surroundings. After last night’s episode, we just wanted to make sure that we are still where we are and that we had not floated into the middle of the ocean.

Fortunately, we were still anchored and secured. Unfortunately, we were too secured… to the point of being grounded. Yes, we had run aground. Of all spots, we landed on this one – 10m to the left of deeper waters!

When we woke up, it was slightly less than 1m deep. After breakfast (mushroom and spinach omelette, bacon, hashbrowns, salads), the water was less than 1m deep...








Since we were grounded, we decided to do some rowing. So Esmond, Roger, Pearl, Kareen and Rachel climbed into the orange dinghy. All the girls tried their hands at rowing and even scored themselves a few blisters. Ian and Heng Onn went on the inflatable dinghy and both boats competed to reach the nearest sandbank. The inexperienced female rowers had the dinghy turning round in circles and doing s-courses. Needless to say, Ian and Heng Onn had paddled to the sandbank and back to the houseboat, while the girls were still struggling to keep their boat heading in a straight fashion. Roger and Esmond were getting pretty impatient, telling the girls what to do while sitting back and looking on helplessly.









At one point, Haw and Shy had walked from the houseboat towards our dinghy and lent a hand by pulling us towards the sand bank. Finally, Pearl and Kareen was able to bring all 5 safe and sound back to the houseboat while Jit and Pei continued with their swimming lessons.
Since we were grounded and it was forecasted that wind speed would be between 20 – 30 knots in the evening, we decided to have the BBQ for lunch rather than having it in the evening.









We brought all BBQ food stuff up onto the upper deck, while Roger and Shy worked on the BBQ burner. With wind gusts of 20 – 30 knots, it was almost an impossible affair to get the gas BBQ burner going. But they finally got it going when Esmond and Shy formed a human wall, sitting upwind of the BBQ to block off the wind. But the burner was too slow and we were starving! So we carted some chicken wings and Taiwanese sausages back down to the kitchen and have them grilled in the oven. Which is just as well, because shortly after, it started pouring! We packed up and ran in a frenzy, back into the lower deck and have “bbq” in the oven.







Christina had also whipped up a nasty Malibu cocktail, which all of us had some. And you know what alcohol can do to people… we went cuckoo / nuts / bonkers / “siao” / off our rockers… you name it, we had it… well, most of us did anyway… we did something that someone may regret it in the future….

And the story goes….

Take a guess...
Whose beautiful eye is this?




Roger was feeling dozy from the late night’s sleep, the morning’s activities and the booze. So he dozed off on the couch. Pei came to “disturb” him and suddenly “ding!”, she came back armed with a lipstick! She tried putting lipsticks on Roger’s pouty lips! But Roger was aware and he woke and tried to struggle free. This was when 4 girls (Pei, Christina, Pearl and Rachel) pounced on him to hold him down. He was trapped! He had no where to go and we had forcefully ‘made him up’. Then, Christina and Pearl went back to their bags and brought back more make ups!







Upon seeing this, Roger again tried to struggle free but was held down again. He subsequently resigned to his fate and sat quietly on the couch, “enjoying” the make up session. So he had some eye shadows put on, blusher and his eye lines drawn. He was so, so pretty, that he paraded in a catwalk and posed for some very raunchy photos!


Phew-weet...(wolf whistle....)









But seeing him in his T-shirt, sweater and shorts with his make up on didn’t really match up. So Rachel went into her room and came back out with a wrap around skirt. The girls went into a frenzy again and nearly tore off Roger’s clothes from his body. We even enhanced his figure and put in some implants for him! (Originally was two oranges, which we decided wasn’t big enough… so we settled with two rolled up t-shirts!). And this is his final look.


Wow... well endowed.....









All these while, the girls were having the time of their lives. The screech of laughter could be heard from afar. They were laughing so hard that they couldn’t stand straight! While the girls were having fun, Esmond just looked on and Haw and Kareen were busy taking pictures, recording the whole event. Heng Onn, Ian, Shy and Jit were out helping other people pushing boats into deeper water.

Esmond shouted for them to come back for a show. When they saw Roger, they couldn’t believe their eyes! And Shy (who was Roger’s ‘hubby’) even……












When the girls were done with Roger, they eyed a new victim. The sleepy Esmond! After some minor persuasion (he had already resigned to the fact that he’ll be one of the ‘models’ when the girls made Roger do it…), he too was made up. To a further extent compared to Roger. Esmond had his eyelashes curled and was given some mascara as well! And he had beautiful, curly lashes! The girls were all so jealous! And because Esmond was bigger in size, the girls had a hard time trying to find a costume for him, but had settled for the wrap around skirt, in a different fashion. Esmond looked like a Mamasan!

Ha ha... you were laughing at me right?
Now's your turn...







Oh my... mamasan!







Next came Ian! He was reluctant but after some persuasion from the girls (and the two new ‘chicks’) he was also made up! He has a different style compared to the other two. He’s onto the “kawaii” / cute image! Rachel whipped out a cute set of costume for Ian. Look how cute he looks!


Kawaii~! (so cute!!!)









Last but not least, Shy. With 7 people going after him, he didn’t have much choice. Pearl designed his costume from a scarf. Isn’t he sexy?











When they were all done, the girls came to the conclusion that when a guy has a pretty sister, he’ll be pretty when he has make up on! All looked a little more similar to their sisters after having cosmetics on.

Originally, the girls wanted to do it to all 7 guys. But Haw and Kareen had disappeared to their room after Roger’s stint, Heng Onn too had gone to bed after Roger, Jit had hurt himself while helping people with their boat.

Unsatisfied, the girls got the 4 new ‘chicks’ to pose for photos….










(see how the "new chicks" are enjoying the photo shoot? The girls didn't have to use force at all!)

After all this, it was back to more serious matters (as the alcohol had worn out….). After the lunch and make up sessions, our situation turned from bad to worse. There were no water surrounding us as all! We were practically on dry ground!










What the?!

The crew was thinking of ways to dislodge the boat from the sand. Roger suggested digging the sands out from both sides of the boat so that it’ll be easier to float when the tide comes in. Esmond thought otherwise.

Then, Pearl (thanks Roger for correcting me) suggested having the anchor moved to a different position so that when the tide comes in, we will be led to deeper waters and away from the shore. We agreed, and the crew put their backs to it.












Once the anchor is out, it was carried 8m to the right of the ship, towards deeper waters and was set down. To ensure that it was firmly embedded into the seabed, Heng Onn reached down into the muddy water. He felt something and thought it was a shoe, but he immediately flung the ‘object’ down upon seeing it. 5 seconds later, he realised that that ‘object’ was a sea cucumber (a fine asian delicacy) and reached into the waters groping for it again. When he got it, he flung it towards the sand bank and it landed with a thud. It was a fat, big, long sea cucumber – about 6 inches in length. But it was not a pretty sight as it started spewing “gooey shit” out of one of its end. This turned us off and we left it where it was… (some Asian aunty would have ‘ta bao’ it home for claypot sea cucumber….)


Oh no! We're stuck! Help!








It's all his fault!!!
He picked the spot!





Suddenly, it began to pour, causing us to run helter skelter back to the houseboat for cover. The rain continued till dinner and past dinner, on and off and the wind was howling. Our wish was that the rain would bring in a higher tide faster because it was forecasted that the highest tide would be at about midnight.

That night, we had baked rice and Chick Kut Teh (bak kut teh with chicken meat) - thanks to Esmond and Christina.

We didn't have our Pictionary - charade competition that night. We were all tired and felt that we had somewhat become "expert" and cleverer in trying to deliver our acts. So we sat down and "talk cock, sing song, play guitar"....

As we were aground, the toilet wasn't able to pump up water to flush so we had to get sea water from outside. Braving the rain, Esmond played hero and braved the rain to get water. Luckily he went outside to get water because the rain was so heavy, our dinghy was filling out with water. His years at a naval base came in handy because he knew we had to bail water out from that dinghy otherwise we'd have another problem - a sunken boat!

Past 10pm, the tide came in and was pushing and tugging at the houseboat. The familiar swaying feeling came back. We were elated and continued to pray for more tide so that our boat could loosen itself from the sand bed and do what ships do - float!

Come 11pm, our houseboat had started floating! So everybody was activated and posted back to their positions on the various decks as Roger ignited the engine and steered us to deeper waters. We anchored and monitored for half an hour to ensure that we were secure and was not drifting. As we were in deeper waters and in a wider, busier canal, the seas were rougher and the houseboat was bobbing up and down more violently than ever.



Luckily, Rachel bought some travel pills during the emergency shopping on Day 2. The girls took them and went to bed.

Aren't they beautiful? (It's as if it's taken in a studio~!)