For you a thousand times over

That's a line from the book 'The Kite Runner'. Two thumbs up from me. It got me excited on reading again.

Khaled Hosseini writes like a true story teller. He got me hooked right at the start, especially the scenes of old Afghanistan, and his very real but flawed characters. It’s a story about family, friendship, loyalty, betrayal and redemption, all rolled into one hot piping Naan.

P.S : Borrowed ‘Kite Runner’ from Jurong West Library which was carrying at least 10 of it.

*******

“I know,” he said, breaking our embrace. “Inshallah, we’ll celebrate later. Right now, I’m going to run that blue kite for you,” he said. He dropped the spool and took off running, the hem of his green charpan dragging in the snow behind him.

“Hassan!” I called. “Come back with it!”

He was already turning the street corner, his rubber boots kicking up snow. He stopped, turned. He cupped his hands around his mouth. “For you a thousand times over!” he said. Then he smiled his Hassan smile and disappeared around the corner.

Steven’s Big Day

I was up in KL last Friday for Steven’s wedding. It was a long hectic day with the customary bride-fetching in the morning followed by the Church Wedding before noon and dinner in the evening. It didn’t help that I arrived in Puduraya at 1am and slept for all 2 ½ hours before setting out for the day.

Childhood Chums
I have known Steven for a very long time now. Can’t pinpoint the exact moment we first met as my early childhood memory escapes me. We were together in Convent Kindergarten, then later as classmates in St.Andrew’s Primary and Secondary school. Staying just a street apart in the same Taman (housing estate) meant that we spent countless hours outside school exploring the small roads in our housing area on our bicycles, playing childhood games in the back lanes and discussing our favourite cartoon programmes.

then ... (primary one)

now ... (23 years later)

As we grew up, I was the more quiet and reserved one, while Steven was the more outspoken and fun-loving type. This was the perfect foil for me as our friendship meant that I was not left out from the popular activities. Steven grew up to be quite a talented musician and performer, honing his skills on the guitar in church and in numerous school performances.

Wedding to Remember
Back to the wedding. Yes, the dinner was a perfect event to close the memorable day. If you were an outsider, you might just think that there was a concert taking place on in the ballroom. No, we did not have one of those increasingly popular Karaoke sessions that are favourite among the elderly Chinese, instead we were treated to a night filled with song tributes by friends of the couple.

It started off unconventionally, not the usual grand entrance by the wedded couple, instead when the band started playing, Steven surprised everyone by emerging on stage crooning a love song as he slowly made his way to the main door to welcome in his bride. It was one of the most romantic sight and wedding entrance I had ever witness. It set the tone for the night, as close friends took turns to perform songs on stage. It helped too that we had a great band to accompany the singers. The guests were all well entertained and could be forgiven if they mistakenly think that they were part of the audience in a ‘Wedding Singer Idol competition’. In fact some were still singing when all the other guests had left.

steven, with the bride and a song on his lips

Another bachelor bites the dust
Reality only dawns on me after all the pomp and fanfare has subsided that another one of my close friends had taken the plunge into marriage life. Sigh … the pool of single friends are dwindling but life goes on.

The Bag is Back

They finally found my ‘AWOL’ bag. The Swissport officer called me last Thursday night to inform the news. She even had the cheek to tell me that it had been sitting in their store room since end May and asked me to come collect it. I promptly reminded her that they had lost it in the first place and that it was their responsibility to send it over to me. So they had it delivered to me the same night.

Must be like what Helen Hunt felt when her long lost Tom ‘Castaway’ Hanks was finally found. Nah … couldn’t be. I had long given up on finding the bag and was just hoping to get the compensation. Had already bought new toiletries, clothes, shoes, battery charges, so on and so forth; so now what do I do with another set of personal items? The only plus point is that I can finally return the bag to my friend who has been quite patient with the whole situation.

Here are my take on the guilty parties :

1) Tiger Airways : Total hands-off approach. Pushes responsibility to airport handler and loss adjusters. You can forget about any upfront compensation.

2) Swissport : Bumbled with my luggage in the first place and again when they left it in the store room for two weeks until they were asked to check. Only redeeming quality is the customer service which is well manned, though not with the most efficient people.

3) CTC Services, the Loss Adjusters : Just took too long to work on the case and to reply my mails.

I will however still press on for partial compensation from the guilty parties for having to buy replacements and for disposing my jeans and shoes as they reeked of 2 months long mud stains (courtesy of Sa Pa).

Quotable Quotes from the Wetlands

The Tanjung Piai Park Folks had imaginitively put up some interesting quotes around the park. They knew that a dose of cleverly stringed words could do wonders to the reflective soul. Here are some of them.

Quotes that remind you to follow your heart...

Quotes that lament the complexity of men...

Quotes that remind us of the value of the wetlands...

And quotes that … er .. well guess there was one cwazy football fan among the park folks that got carried away.

Surviving without World Cup Cable TV

Since the advent of Cable TV in Singapore, it has been a challenge for the non-subscriber to catch live action on TV. With the serious amounts of money TV Stations are paying for live coverage, the ordinary Joe with just the basic Mediacorp channels are only granted 4 matches on TV. Four, that’s just sad.

Now you can’t even watch the matches on the basic Cable TV Sports Group channels, you have to subscribe to the pay-per-view World Cup Package at $15.75. That’s day-light robbery!

Well, you can always get around it if you invite yourself over to a accommodating friend’s pad or drop into a pub showing live action, but there are always limits to friendship and your budget for alcohol.

The next best thing - coffee shops and even a few selected Mc Donalds. Yes, if you ever saw the crowds at the coffee shops and Mc Donalds outlet in Clementi on Saturday, you’ll probably wonder whether there was a special dinner promotion that you were missing out. There were just so many people during the England-Paraguay match that there wasn’t even much standing room available. I managed to squeeze in between the local punters, foreign workers and young football fans to enjoy half of the match. But as most of us were just taking advantage of the free live coverage, the only business boom that the coffee shop was enjoying was probably that of the few beer drinking uncles.

The other option to get free live coverage is to get yourself one of those living room antennas and pray that your home is within range of the Malaysian and Indonesian TV signals. Knowing the TV schedules of those stations also does help. From my 19^th floor room, I am able to receive both NTV7 and TV2 from Malaysia. These two stations alone will probably telecast half of the matches. But dang, TV1 signal does not seem to reach my antenna. Fortunately though, Indonesia is close enough and SCTV happen to beam right up to my TV. The reception from SCTV is a little poor, but with all 64 matches being screened, I can’t complain. Funny, I thought SCTV was a private broadcaster that charges for these live broadcasts.

Now I can watch live action from the comfort of my bed. Life is good …

Mornings will never be the same

Yes, it’s the end of the four year wait. A sporting event like no other awaits men who are patiently anticipating the day, clearing off all sleep debts, and busy accompanying their partners shopping in the previous weeks to earn enough credits for some personal time.

Yes, it’s a spectacle that reduces men to passive slaves that rise in the dead of the night to sit in the glow of their chosen altar in order to worship the gods of the beautiful game.

Yes, when the first whistle is blown in Munich on 9^th June 2006 at 6:00pm, the world will let off a collected sigh and the month long festivities of beer, betting and football will finally begin.

Yes, the underground bookies and the legal betting firms will gladly fan this football passion that promises many new converts and attract old hands who are too easily ensnared into the betting frenzy.

Yes, for the next month, I will be welcoming the nights and dreading the mornings. Ooh, if only companies here will allow one month sabbaticals, I’m sure many football fans will welcome this policy. On the flip side, productivity will definitely be at the receiving end.

Yes, the day is here and mornings will never be the same …

Journey to the end of Asia

Last weekend, I and a group of adventurous friends went off in search for the southernmost tip of Mainland Asia.

Ok, before you think that we were off to some remote Siberia-like corner of the world. Some facts …

Fact 1 : Southernmost tip of Mainland Asia is at Tanjung Piai, South- Eastern tip of Johor. About 75km away from JB city centre.

Fact 2 : Adventurous is an overstatement. Just follow the road signs and you’ll get there. No need to go off on some beaten track, its tarred roads all the way.

Map of Tanjung Piai

Along the way, we took a short detour in Pekan Nenas to admire their pineapple monument. Though it is just located next to the main road, sadly it is easily missed. Next, we stopped at Pontian Kechil to taste the famous Wan Tan Mee and to visit one of their local landmarks, Hotel Pontian. Kukup was our next pitstop as we decided to pay the local tourist information office a visit.

We finally arrived at Tanjung Piai around 3:30am. After a quick tour of the rooms available at Tanjung Piai Resort, we settled on two standard rooms (RM150 each, the price for air con and comfort).

Resort rooms on stilts

After securing berths for the night, we proceeded to make our way to the national park. Entrance was RM5 for locals. The Park basically covers a mangrove swamp area which overlooks the Tebrau Straits on one side and the Straits of Malacca on the other. A network of wooden boardwalk allows visitors to roam around the place without getting their feet in mud.

The Boardwalk

The main attractions here beside the unique mangrove ecosystem on show are the southernmost point (with a giant plastic globe landmark) and the jetty that provides a vantage point of the magnificent sunsets.

Southernmost point landmark

Calling it a day

The place though short of night-time entertainment is close enough to Kukup for a seafood feast. And after dinner, we chose not to indulge in Karoake (yes, available at resort) but instead decided to search for the famed fireflies. We managed to get a glimpse of a few random flickering insects, not the ‘Christmas-light’ swarm that we had hoped for. Yes, wishful thinking.