Oooh Fishies ...

Here's what I have been up to. After some prompting by Jeff and Yin, including a visit to an aquarium shop in Muar, we started our fish tank about a week ago. And just last weekend, we got ourselves 10 Neon Tetras to be the pioneer batch of inhabitants.

Here are more shots.

Weekend trip to the capital city

Causeway Bridge walk. 2:30am Puduraya. Indomee Goreng supper @ SS2. Nonya food lunch at the Curve. Sour kidney beans episode. Sales at Padini. Full Car Park at Westin. Box of chocolates wedding favour. Pauline and Kian Hoe enters. Say cheese! Hellos and goodbyes. Photo Editing at 3am. Breakfast at Hong Kee Dim Sum. Pudu again. Back in the Lion City.

Well that basically sums up the weeknd we spent in KL. Thanks to our friends in KL for taking good care of us!

Pimp my Ride - the Transformers edition (Part 2)

MB : Hey it’s me Michael Bay again. I’m back for part two and just in time for the release of the movie tomorrow.

In today’s episode, we ‘pimp’ the bad boys. We are talking about the Decepticons here, the guys who love to cause mayhem with the earth folks, and who always find the pesky Autobots in their way of more ‘Energon Cubes’.

You’ll love what we did to Megatron, the former son of a gun (literally that is). He now doesn’t need Soundwave (too bad he’s not in the movie) or Starscream (the plotting usurper) to pull his trigger. We also ugli-fied him, okay, the rest of them too, so that they will ooze terror and menace, and so that the earth folks can eventually differentiate the good and the bad.

Let’s not waste anymore time, here goes…

Bonecrusher

Before : Bonecrusher, one of the Constructicons, who forms the left arm of Devastator

After : Bonecrusher (background) in a scene with Optimus Prime (foreground)

After : And he transform into this ... err...whatever that is.

Blackout

Before : Blackout, one of the Combaticons who forms Bruticus.


After : He still transforms into a helicopter but with a much cooler exterior

Frenzy

Before : Frenzy, One of the cassettes of Soundwave


After : He is all bones now :). Takes over the role of Soundwave and Laserbeak as a Decepticon spy

Scorponok

Before : The giant scorpian which also transforms into a defence base


After : Still a scorpian but much smaller in size


Brawl

Before : Brawl, one of the combaticons, as a tank. He's the left leg of Bruticus.


After : He's now a Ford Mustang Police Car. No surprises that this Ford was cast opposite the GM Chevrolet.

Starscream

Before : The second in command, modelled after the F-15.


After : After removing all the colour and he is still a jet.


Megatron

Before : The proud Decepticon commander who transform into a gun


After : The new mean monster


After : He transforms into a modern spacecraft.

MB : Well, what you're waiting for? Go book those cinema tickets now. You'll just love (or hate) my newly pimped robots.

Signing off ...
Michael Bay

Saturday Kick Around

It was another Saturday afternoon but with hardcourt soccer lined up at 3pm. Yes, at 3pm, under the relentless sweltering heat, with aged bodies and spare tubes around the waist. It was an old ritual we started right after graduation in 2000. We were young and fresh then, terribly missing our daily evening games routine from our hall days and eager to test our meagre skills on a sport we hardly played but greatly enjoy following. But after time, make that 7 years, the ritual soon came to a standstill. Occasionally making a rare appearance when we were able to find 8 people to spare time on a saturday amidst increasingly busy schedules and commitments.

Back to the present, or yesterday; we finally decided to have a game inspite of poor numbers. We were back in Raffles Hall, all seven of us in our sports gear. Our bodies toiled and struggled to keep up with the ball and to find the stamina to last the session. Every ball kicked out of bounds was a chance for us to catch our breath and find respite from the unbearable afternoon sun. Luckily, as the afternoon progressed, the weather started to cool down and we started to enjoy the kick around. We even had a fellow resident join us to even out the number.

That evening we had dinner at the Holland Village XO Noodle shop followed by Swensens Ice cream for dessert as we enjoyed a rare occasion to catch up and reminisce about the good old days.

Random shots of Block 5 Quadrangle. Used to stay in this block in my 1st and 2nd year in the hall.

Up the Eastern Shores

Here’s a write up about the short weekend trip to Kuantan last week.

We, that is Wee Loong, Ge Hau & Wife, plus myself, headed up to Kuantan last Saturday in two cars. Our journey started from Singapore before noon. The skies were overcast and sporadic rain accompanied us throughout our way up.

Our first pit stop was in JB; Taman Sentosa to be more specific. The rain was pouring by then, and we decided to have an early lunch at the popular ‘Bak Kut Teh’ shop. We were soon on our way towards Mersing, which was on the eastern end of Johor. The road there was not too particularly busy, as it passes through numerous oil palm plantations. The slightly winding and hilly double-lane roads make easy driving, save for the occasional need to overtake slow lorries, tank trucks and cars cruising at incredibly slow speeds.

Arriving at Mersing, we made our way towards the jetty, the gateway to Tioman Island. Somehow we guys decided that we were a little hungry and settled for some local fare. Once recharged, we were headed off again, determined to reach our hotel before evening. This time, I was at the wheel of Wee Loong’s white Mazda 3.

This part of our journey took us through the Rompin district, which is where the Taman Negara (National Park) is located. We then hit a lovely stretch of road after passing Nenasi in Pahang. Lovely because the scenery here had tall pine trees lining up the road instead of more oil palms, with the shoreline visible on our right and almost no other vehicles in sight.

We soon reached the old royal town of Pekan which was only about 40km from Kuantan. Here we passed a row of old Chinese shophouses, a white mosque, and the river with the large words ‘PEKAN BANDAR DIRAJA – INDAH DAN MAKMUR’ on the opposite bank. Not having much time to spare, we drove on towards Kuantan.

The traffic was busier on the road to the capital of Pahang. We managed to read the right road signs that got us through the city and towards Swiss Garden hotel, located about 10km north of the city. We almost missed the hotel signage but fortunately Ge Hau spotted it in time or else we would have been lost further down Beserah Road.

The hotel had a nice beach front that faced the South China Sea. We quickly settled in and found time to visit the beach before nightfall. We found the softest sand which was so comfortable to the feet. Almost powdery like. I believe it would be nice just lying on the soft sand, but unfortunately I did not have time to test it out.

Ok, enough words. I'm a bad narrator, so the rest of this post will be accompanied by pictures.

The rest of the road trip gang

From top left (CW) : Mersing stop, Passing Pekan, Dinner at Pak Su, Shophouses in Pekan

We had a late dinner on Saturday night. The original plan was to go over to Kuantan for a bite followed by a visit to the Night Market. However we didn't expect the rain to throw a spanner into our plan. After experiencing the bad traffic in the wet town centre, we decided to head back and have dinner at the Pak Su seafood restaurant which seemed to be quite popular with tourists. The curry fish that we had did not quite match up to expectation though.

The next morning, I thought of waking up early for a bit of morning sunrise photography. But I probably slept through my alarm as I woke up after 7am.

From top left (CW) : Sunrise, more Sunrise, Swiss Garden in the morning glow, Crab creature hiding under a shell

Our plan on Sunday was basically to visit the beaches along the coastline especially the renowned Cherating beach. The beach was located not too far away from where we were staying. However what we found was an almost empty stretch of beach with many run-down kampung styled huts (they call themselves resorts) lining up the beach. Where are the tourists? After a quick nasi campur lunch we headed towards Pantai Chendor, further north. There we found that Club Med was out of bounds to the public and an empty Turtle Sanctuary.

Heading back south we paid a short visit to Tanjung Lumpur Fishing Village and Pantai Batu Hitam (Black Stone Beach) before heading back to the hotel.

From top left (CW) : Food Stall on Cherating beach, An empty stretch on Cherating beach, Pantai Batu Hitam (Black Stone Beach), Tanjung Lumpur fishing village.


That's me engaging in a bit of kite flying at Pantai Batu Hitam.

The next day, we made our way back to JB. We made a short pit stop at the nice scenic spot that we spotted on the way up.

Posing with the cars during our pit stop.