~ zomg! school's starting! ALREADY?!~

hah. thursday's my orientation liao. cant believe my post ord life just zoom past so quickly. i use to dream about it everyday when i was in NS. haha. and its over just like that. In the blink of an eye.

I've still been feeling uncertain bout my decision to go laselle. Have i told anyone? lol. don't get me wrong, im definitely gonna give it my best shot. or shots if i have to. Just that its still kinda scary that im not following the mainstream path. Seeing my friends going off for their orientations and what not, just makes me feel kinda... left out? haha. cos its a pretty solo adventure for me. and even if i do find treasure, right now, theres no one to share it with.

In many things in life i prefer the unorthodox path to the tried and true method. So what the hell? you may ask. Shouldn this be what you are looking for. YES. it is what i am looking for, but as much as i'll enjoy it, theres still that bit of me thats afraid something's gonna go wrong.

Cos if it does go wrong. Im gonna get some "i told you so" looks. haha.

Life is gamble. Guess this is why it feels abit scary to me - cos i just upped the stakes.

(and i CANNOT find that impt letter which im suppose to bring for my thurs orientation. =x)

~ Batam. Where 30 + 30 = 80~

Woah. This is a long post! With pics and vids! hahaha. Enjoy...

waha. Shall blog bout my batam trip now. started off the day at tiong bahru plaza. Bought some stuff to bring over. Had lunch, and headed off to tanah merah to catch the ferry. dunoe why its not at harbour front. Alvin's mom's company arrange one. haha.




After that, we boarded a bus and headed for the ferry terminal at changi. There was some confusion with some of our boarding passes.

Wong Yong Xun became Bong Yong Kuix. hahaha. we had a good laugh out of that.


So we boarded the ferry after the problems with the boarding passes were resolved.

There were helpful signs in the ferry telling us about the amenities available.


Finally we arrived at batam. The place we alighted at was totally dead. We were not even sure if we had to put our bags through the scanners. haha.

Took the resort transport provided to the place. Not before stopping by the "duty free shop" to get scammed into buying prawn crackes at $3.50 sing/ pack.

So, here we are at the chalet!







There was even a spiral staircase leading to the second floor/attic







Pretty low ceiling on the spiral staircase, but other than that i think its a nice staircase. haha.

Slacked around abit...


Before we headed out to explore.










(the above image was edited with curves to make it look more pleasant. hahaha)

Heres the group pic we took at the pathway by the sea!


Went over to the resort beside ours as all the sea sports and activities were supposedly found there. Turned out they were taking the off peak season to renovate the place and alot of the things previously available were now temporarily unavailable. I can understand why. There were only one or two other groups in the whole area who are also on holiday there like us. Anyway here are some photos i took of the place.








OK. i must admit. That doesn say much about the place... haha. Anyway it wasn where i was staying at what... so... who cares. lol.

After we enquired bout the activities that were available for us to do the day after, we headed back. This time we decided to take a different trail. But OMG, was it a long trail...


When we reached the chalet, we started to find things to do. We decided on mahjong and after some time playing, dinner was ready. Prepared by Alvin's mom. Yea she came along to help settle some administrative procedures. Then she decided to cook too, cos she said she liked cooking. Must thank her for the wonderful meals she prepared for us there.

Alvin's mom also brought little snacks for us to bite on... Among the things were these little chocolate wafers called "Beng Beng"

We saw the name and immediately took a liking to it. We pronounced it as Beng(3) Beng(2). Then we saw the words below the name and laughed even harder...

MILLIONS OF FREE BENG BENG TO BE WON!! omg! Not a car, not a trip to hawaii, but you get to win more Beng Beng with your one Beng Beng! WOW! LOL.

After dinner and cleaning up, we continued with mahjong. Not long after, we heard some snoring coming from the sofa behind us. OMG, Bob(a.k.a Yong Kuix) had decided to lie down on the sofa and take a nap after dinner. Not something you would do at a chalet right? Sleeping right after dinner is not even something i would do normally. haha. Well, he was quite a sound sleeper... So, when we decided to take a group pic, we decided not to wake him up...


Continued to play some other games like taboo and saboteur till about 2. Then we decided to catch some Zs...

Woke up the next morning at 6.30 to catch the sunrise...

It was a pretty cloudy day... So didn manage to get good pictures. Decided to go back and catch some more shut eye.

Woke up a second time to a breakfast of triple egg porridge. Courtesy of Alvin's mom again. It was a nice meal but we couldn finish it all.

Headed for the neighbouring resort again to do our sea sports. Wanted to do some kayaking and snorkling. However the sea sports guy say this time of yr water not clear, cant see anything. so not point. =( we did do kayaking though. Even aimlessly kayaking around for awhile was pretty fun... hahaha. Sorry no pictures for this part of the trip as i cant possibly bring my camera with me to do watersports.

Had lunch at the neighboring resort's ONLY restaurant. The food was pretty ok, i'd say 7-8 for taste. It was about pricey though. But aye, resort restaurant, guess its supposed to be like that.

Headed back to our place after lunch. Most of them felt sian after awhile and went to take afternoon nap. Godwin and I decided to give the beach a go and see what we could find.

Heres a view of the beach we were at.


At first, we only found things like broken shells and broken porcelain...







As we got bored, we started finding more interesting things.





The thing in our hands was actually a hermit crab. Small one, but still a hermit crab...

After awhile... We made a shocking discovery.

THE WHOLE SHORELINE WAS LITTRED WITH HERMIT CRABS!!!

Then, we found more interesting finds.


A flower crab. When we found it, it was upside down. But we were unsure if it was dead or alive. haha.

Then we found a crab that was alive for sure!


There were lots of sand-burying crabs around. We followed one back to it's nest and it didn run anymore.


Took a picture of our footsteps in the sand as well.


When it was almost time to go, we gathered all our non-living finds on the beach and took a photo!


Went back to the chalet as it was time for the van to pick us up to send us to batam centre. On the way there we went past the town where the people there actually lived in. It was really quite run down. Pity i couldn get any shots as i was in the van and it was moving fast. But there was really a big difference between the developed area and the undeveloped over there.

Had dinner there at this cafe called "godiva coffee". Turns out it had absolutely no relation with Godiva. Prolly a rip-off of the name. haha. But the food was still quite good la. And cheap too. So i've no complaints in that regard.

Shopped around and we headed for a familiar fast food joint.\



haha. VEEEERY long since i've seen an A&W. I doubt it exists anymore in SG.


Look at that delicious and frothy chilled mug of root beer float. Wow. Although its not something thats authentically Batam. Its something you cant find in SG anymore.

Headed back to chalet in the van. After we alighted there were problems with payment. We could not communicate with the driver at all as he doesn speak english. And alvin's parents went back already. GREAT. so i went to find the security guards and waddya know? They dont speak english as well! So we sign languaged for awhile and the driver pulls out a piece of paper and wrote "100 dolar" (Most things were paid for in Sing over there) We were shocked. Initially what we were told was $30 for 3 hours. We didn even take 5 hours. So max is wad, $60? So the guy pulls out his handphone and finally we got to talk to someone who speaks A LITTLE english. He told us $80. -_-

It was totally not the kinda charges we were informed of. So we asked why. So they said ohhh, every subsequent extra hour is $13. Fine. $13. We did our math and it still didn add up. Suddenly the amount changed to every extra hour is $15. ... Like wth. ITS STILL NOT 80. So my friend literally did the math out for the guy.

"First 3 hours. How much. $30? Ok. Extra hour how much? $15? Ok. 1 hour $15, 2 hour how much? $30. So $30 + $30 how much?"

"80"

-_- we were totally pissed off by then. But somehow the situation semi worked out into settle the bill the next day. So fine. we took back the $60 we initially gave and went back to our chalet. PISSED.

Ahhh bloody whatever. We decided to forget the incident, at least for the night and not affect our mood for... Drinking games!


After a few rounds, godwin lost quite abit and he got abit tipsy from the drinks...


hahaha. Here are some clips of what happen when he got drunk... "VERY HOT LEHHH"











It was pretty funny to see godwin drunk. He did all the random and stupid things. lol. Apparently he even woke up in the middle of the night and poked shang wei...

*Godwin sits up and starts prodding shang*
Shang: What you doing...
Godwin: HEEEHEEHEEHEEHEEE!!!
Shang: Crazy. Go back to sleep la.

LOL. wth la. hahaha.

In the morning we managed to get the transport fees sorted out. Apparently there was some price increase and the base charge was no longer 30 for 3 hrs but 50 for 3 hours... Well since it was all printed out in black and white and given to us by the reception at our chalet we decided to just pay them. But 100 dolar was defintely wrong.

Miraculously everyone managed to wake up by 9+. Though we were still experiencing the effects of the previous night. Godwin made french toast as he promised. But his first one was a failure. Square piece of bread that soaked up all the butter. hahaha. Subsequently bob and shang taught him bout triangles and frying more than one at the same time. haha. We also had some doughnuts that we bought from J.CO the previous night. Doughnuts there are pretty cheap, bout less than one dollar for one? haha. Compare that to the J.CO here in SG man. Quite a diff. heh.

My camera battery was drained by the 3rd day and i didn bring my spare... so no more pictures liao. haha. After we checked out we headed for the docks and took the ferry back to SG. Had lunch at Dallas Chicken in chinatown. Quite a nice place, the boss is this young Indian guy with a Thick aussy slang. Think he is still trying to work out what prices he should put on his menu... haha.

So thats bout it for my batam trip. I think overall there were many things we did and saw in a short span of 3 days and 2 nights. Batam is a beautiful place, if you're in the right area. haha. But if you're going there, do be careful of scams... lol.

~ BACK!! ~

wahaha. im back from batam! will do another post of it with pictures and captions later. now, some photos from wan's bday. seno still haven send me his bday photos...

I was making a pinata for wan's bday. just thought it would be a fun lil proj to do. Can you tell what kinda charc i was trying to make?









ok. so heres the answer.

wahaha. yea. its a totoro pinata!

The pinata wacking process...




blindfolded. and ready to whack!!



Totoro, busted open.




Pouring out the guts!



Guts spilled on the floor! Candy anyone?

Wahaha. hmmmm, although she eventually manage to bust open the totoro, initially the baton was not doing any damage to the pinata at all. Think my paper mache layer was too thick. haha. But anyways i doubt i'm making another pinata again. So leh cheyy... lol. Well maybe it was my fault that making it became so tiring. I had the whole week but i procrastinated to friday before i started making. And sunday was the celebration. AND saturday evening was seno's bday party. hahaha. so yea... The rushing part made the making of the pinata more tiring.

K. thats it for now. I've uploaded the pictures of batam already but dont feel like blogging bout it now. If you're bored can go see the captionless photos on my facebook album. =]

~ OMG AN UPDATE! ~

haha. im going to batam till wednesday! hoho. so for all you losers hardworking sluggers out there still in their offices/camps. This post will attempt to keep you entertained for the short time you are reading it. waha

was at seno's party yesterday. today went out to celebrate wan's bday. will upload some shots i took from seno's bday. more pictures coming in when i get them. waha.

so he had his party at this relaxing little retreat called villa bali. best part of it is that its somewhere behind old SAJC. which means it was SUPER near my place. haha.

so 2 shots(almost the same) of what it looks like.

Then the host made us play a rather common game in such functions. Take funny props and pretend to be in a band while the music plays... So out of my group, these 4 were chose.





After that "game" they got the kids in the group to go on stage to dance. And i must say i was really impressed. especially with this boy:



He's got da moves man! haha. can see a clubber in him. lol.

Then the younger boy in white. well he's just there. Being ABSOLUTELY oblivious to his surroundings. haha. daaam cute.

Left the party at 11.30 heh. must say it was quite the party. hopefully can get the group photos from him soon. then i'll post.


Went out today for jap lesson and after that went to celebrate wan's bday. haha. will elaborate more when i get back and get the photos. lol.