The Great Discovery... (Part 3 of my recent Singapore trip)

Now, where was I?

Oh, so dinner was done and over with and finally I got to my ex-boss mother's home. You see, my ex-boss has been living and working in Australia for quite awhile so she doesn't actually have her own place in Singapore. Her mom's apartment/condo is a 3 bedroom unit which has a rather huge dining area adjacent to the living area. Initially I expected myself to sleep in the hallway since my ex-boss did allude that her mom's place isn't all that big and only had 2 functioning bedrooms (the 3rd room, I noted, turned into a store room per se). Through sheer luck/kindness my ex-boss offered to sleep with her mom so that I didn't have to be 'tang cheong' (living room guard..:D).

Aside from the rather poor water pressure of the bathroom, the place was nice enough to give me a good night sleep for a day of adventure tomorrow. I believe the poor water pressure was down to the externally installed water heater, which IMHO has been known to reduce water pressures tremendously.

In any case, I woke up earlier than my host the next morning. After freshening up, I took their advise to stroll around the beach across the road (err, expressway..) The edge of the island was acutally about 1KM away from the apartment, so off I went for an extended early morning stroll. It was nice to see quite a number of people also having their walks, jogs and cycles early in the morning. before long I reached the beach.

To my surprise there were quite a number of camps all around the beach. The beach isn't all that good; Imagine a coastline next to a city and it being a public beach should give you an idea how 'nice' the beach is. Yet, there were easily 20 camps around that beach stretch and I could see even more along the coast. For a nation known for it's kiasu-ness (fear of losing), it's a wonder so many have atuned themselves to nature...What's left of it, at least, in a City like Singapore.

Unfortunately for me my stroll was shortlived as before I began turning back the sky decided it wasn't too happy I saw so many campers and decided to cry. So I ended up having my 2nd shower within an hour of each other. Soaked from tip to toe, I arrive back at the apartment having to bath again. luckily by then my ex-boss was awake and all that was left was for us to wait out the rain and then begin our road trip for....Singaporean Food!

While waiting for the rain to stop, I voiced my pleasure at seeing so many campers along the beach. My ex-boss then explained,"Those aren't campers. Those are squatters!"

:O :O :O

I mean, wha the f? So much for the people being close to nature and all that fluff. These blokes along the beach are the hardcore poor that you never see in the City. They camp around there, with their kids et all and use the public toilets to perform their natural hygene requirements. Explains why here were so many clothes hung out to dry..

Anyway, by the time my shock subsided, so did the rain and off we went for breakfast at Tiffan...Oops..Got carried away there...First stop was some hawker food court somewhere in the city (err, I'll confess I didn't take enough notes to recall where are the places that I went..). There were several suggested food to try, but in the end I decided to go with the crowd and ate wantan mee. There was a long queue for the food so I figured so many people couldn't be making such a big mistake. Unfortunately, the wantan mee was just so so. There was this porridge stall that was quite famous, unfortunately the hawker has gotten rather arrogant and weren't about to be bothered to hasten the orders. Refusing to wait, I skipped trying that as well. The good thing, however, was that I see Teh Tarik served in that food court. Looks like I'm really not that far away from home.. :D

After breakfast, we moved over to the middle of the city where a nice garden was keep sheltered from the bustling concrete jungle. It was actually quite a huge place and the walk around it was refreshingly green and polution free (to the levels that my limited senses could detect). Halfway through the garden it decided to rain again and we had to take shelter for almost half an hour. We weren't alone in that shelter. There was some other groups and one of them was a bunch of kids maybe 13-15 years old. It reminded me of the days when I joined such excursions in school. Ah, the good old days...

When the rain stopped we strolled around some more and hadsome close encounters with my close relatives.....Monkeys..As always, they knew not to mess with me since I'm clearly the BIGGER relative... :D

Before long it was lunch time and off we went to another food court. There I found what was my favourite meal throughout my weekend trip; Pig liver mee soup (something like that). The liver was cooked just about right leaving a little bit of rawness and tasting rather delicious. There was suppose to be some famous 'nasi lemak' thee as well but my ex-boss noted that it seems to have changed owners. Neverthless, she tried it anyway and found the food to be somewhat lacking.

By the time lunch was over we decided to walk around that area to see if we could find a nice place to sit around and have coffee/tea. While we didn't manage to find a suitable place, i did end up finding a bakery shop which sold almonds cheaper than Malaysia!! I get my almonds around RM 34 per KG and they were like selling them aroun SGD 11 per KG!! No surprise I took 2 KGs home with me.. I still haven't finished the first pack. Have to limit 1 KG a month or I will clearly overdose on almonds!

After which we decided to drive over to Dempsey Hill (ah, I remembered one!!) to have some tea. My ex-boss' stint in Australia has turned her into a coffee connoisseur of sorts where cafes served much better coffee at affordable prices. Starbucks? Junk coffee.. :D So at Dempsey Hill we decided to try one place where the name of the shop suggest it was Australian. I'm not so much of a coffee person, but I couldn't resist trying my childhood favourite drink...milkshake.. :D As always, the shake finished way ahead of the coffee. In any case the coffee was still not up to par, despite it being more expensive than Australian coffee. I'm just glad I haven't the need for coffee.

Now all this time I have my usual online commitments with webdota and I have been looking for an opportunity to get online. Unfortunately, my ex-boss mom's place isn't wired, so I don't get free access over there. Throughout the day we have been keeping an eye out for cybercafes, without much luck.

Dinner was nearby the apartment, opposite the local shopping complex. Yet another food court and this time I went for fried kuey teow. It was indeed yummy, though maybe too wet for many's taste. Unfortunately, either I've overkilled on 'bad' food or my tummy just didn't agree with the kuey teow, within an hour I had to purge. Luckily the shopping complex's washrooms were decent enough for the, erm, job.. :D
Oh, and no luck with cybercafe. Despite me knowing full well there are cybercafes in Singapore, unfortunately I was in the wrong parts of the island and asking a middle-aged female to help find a cybercafe especially when she's not been in the country for awhile was just looking for a needle in a haystack.

In response to that disappointment, I ended up buying myself 2 stacks of CDs; A collection of Betthoven's more popular piano sonatas and a collection of Mozart's better known compositions. The reason I bought the sonata CDs was because it had Waldstein, which I've been yearning to hear again ever since my cassette version was no longer playable. I still hear it's 3rd movement in my head everytime I brush my teeth. :D It also had some good sonatas, like Appasionata and Pastoral (unfortunately I'm not good enough to actual name the sonatas proper..) as well as the ever so famous Moonlight. Digressing a little bit. I can't imagine my piano teacher not knowing Moonlight's first movement even though I ccould only play the right hand!! It's so freakingly obvious! How could someone learn music upto diploma (I'm assuming she's properly qualified to teach, hehe..) and not have heard of it before???!!!!! Anyway, back to the CDs, the Mozart collection was bought mainly because it had Piano concerto no.20, a piece I've been hunting, too since my cassette versions broke apart. Funnily I stil find the cassette versions better than these new versions, for all the pieces I'm familiar with, despite the cassette versions being supposedly inferior recordings/technology. Could be the impression to a teenager that last much longer than it should..

So as much as I insisted on not buying anything during this trip, I failed to keep to my 'restriction'. After dinner and a should tour around the mall, back we went home to the apartment.

The next morning I didn't take another walk to the beach. Instead we walked to a nearby food court for breakfast and this time I had prawn mee. Unfortunately, I think prawn mee's in Malaysia are better. After breakfast and packing up, we headed to our last destination for an early lunch. Yet another food court, this time I had pork internals soup. I have to admit it's nice that pork is readily available, since it's sort of my second preferred meat (Beef steaks still takes the cake).

Then came time to return home. On the way to my last meal destination, I was somewhat instructed the way that should lead me home. However, poor memory and over reliance on my internal ability to find y way around led me to taking a long way around instead before getting to the correct highway that will lead to another expressway that leads to another expressway that eventually leads to the border..hehe..

I thought Iwould make good time since I arrived at customs around 12.30pm. Unfortunately, it seems like I wasn't the only person feeling like crossing the border at that time. An estimate of a couple thousands other drivers also thought the same. While exiting Singapore was quite a breeze, trying to get into Malaysia was another matter. It took me longer to get out of customs Malaysia than it took me to get from my food court in Singapore to the Malaysian border! With my anxiety that I've been offline from webdota too long and my eagerness to get home before dark, I nevertheless had even more trouble keeping to the speed limit.

Many a time I had to tell myself to slow down as on occasions Shrek was propelled upto 140 KM/H!! I'm sure Shrek had some joint pains after the drive. Having mentioned that, I arrive safely and intact (else how on earth do I write this??) by about 6.30pm. I drove almost 1000KM over that 3 days. Good fun. Should do more..

That concludes my somewhat elaborate retelling of my recent Singapore trip. Because my access card still has credit and I still have a couple of dollars worth of parking coupons, I'm probably going to drive down again the next time I visit Singapore, which would probably be next year. Hopefully next time I won't need to drive alone.

Nope, This Ain't....

part 3....

Will need to digress a little bit.

Just survived a trip to Kuala Kubu Baru for some white water rafting. Organised by my company's sports club, I essentially went for free.

A quick setup. I actually did my first white water rafting 4 years ago in Kota Kinabalu and frankly speaking, I recall I had such a torrid time I vowed never to do it again. I fear large body of waters and do not like adrenaline rushes. But for some unexplainable reasons, the moment my company anounced this event, I signed up without even a blink.

That I lived to write this meant that I survived the event. It was much easier this time, for many reasons. The main one was not because I was wiser (that term really escapes me...) but because (IMHO) my raftmates and I were so hopeless and out of sync the guide decided to get more help each time we were about to pass through the rapids. That, as well as this time us being allowed to 'sit in', which basically means enjoy the ride while the guides do all the hard work keeping us alive..

My raft had 6 participants and 1 guide. From the beginning of the ride, my guide was giving us quite a hard time as he tries to whip us into discipline to no success. Some rafts had 2 guides and no prizes for guessing there were some complaints as to why they get 2 while we only get 1. After going through a couple of rapids, at one point our guide were heard to be so disappointed with our workrate he said it 'embarasses the government' (spoken in malay).

This did not go down well with most of my raftmates and they continued to find fault with his attitude and delivery. They complain his technique and wanted to train him on how to motivate us better. They were basically to used to the positive encouragement methods employed by American companies. I tried to explain to them that this is the Asian way; If you suck, you suck. Period. No sugar coating. No anxiety over how we may fail to handle the humiliation of being told off. The truth, nothing less. Get over it.

Unfortunately, the rest of the 'crew' couldn't see the light of day and they had little good things to say about the guide. I pity him and them. Him because his good work isn't valued. Them because they can't handle the truth. By the time the whole thing was over, he finally explained why he as so hard on us at the beginning. Rafting is an activity that each raftsman (and woman) needed to contribute to ensure the safety of the raft. Without concerted efforts, the whole experience would either be lacking; the guides will chose to take us through easy rapids; or extremely dangerous if the guide decides to let us capsize. Them being the experts, surviving a capsize would be all in a minutes' work. But for people like us, who do this sport once a lifetime maybe, the whole thrown overboard experience can cripple a person...It can also kill...

Nevertheless, everyone of our 50+ participants lived to tell the horror stories of being thrown overboard, raft capsizing and all the bumpy rides over the rapids. As for me, I managed to stay inside the raft all the way though half of the crew did get thrown overboard...Which is cool...

I should do this again...Someday. Hopefully the next time it will be a good crew of raftsmen (and women) who will not be to frail to get a good whipping or two. Only then will the experience be one that is worth remembering for good...