Singapore Bay Run

I participated in this year Bay Run on Sunday, this being my 2nd attempt.
The run formerly known as Safra Sheares Bridge Run was better organised compared to last year. This time, three and a half lanes on the ECP stretch of the Sheares Bridge were reserved for the run, leaving one half passable for on-going traffic. Last year quite pathetic, just one lane for the runners and everybody had a hard time finding space to run.

I signed up for the Non Competitive 12km run, not competing with time, just hoping to complete the run as this is my first time trying to cover this distance. The most I have covered was 10km in the StanChart run. My time was about 90mins, quite slow, mine is more like a jog :) I clocked 40mins for 6km, by the time I reached 10km, time taken was about 1hr 15mins liao. Last 2km duno why took so long, so tempted to just walk but managed to perservere and reached the finishing line.

Later that night, was abit shocked to hear from the news about the death of a young army officer during his 21km run. He passed out after completing the race. A sad case indeed, may he rest in peace.

HK's storm alert 'outdated'

From yesterday's news, like what I wrote in my earlier blog, we felt it was a false alarm as well, maybe the authorities just playing safe:

Storm alert system out of date: Observatory chief
Aug 19, 2007

The typhoon warning system is decades out of date and requires an overhaul to avoid the chaotic scenes that followed the hoisting of the No8 signal on August 10, says the Observatory, which is responsible for issuing the signal.

HONG Kong needs to overhaul how it deals with severe storms, the head of the Hong Kong Observatory (HKO) said yesterday.

The territory hoisted its No. 8 signal - the first there this year - on Aug 10 after Typhoon Pabuk U-turned and passed across the city.

The signal led to the early closure of the stock market, government offices and businesses. Tens of thousands of workers scrambled to get home, resulting in chaos at train stations, bus stops and ferry terminals.

Mr Lam Chiu Ying, director of the HKO, which issues the warnings, said rules for dealing with severe weather were outdated and many workers could have remained in their offices as no law insists business must cease, and most people do not need to catch ferries.

Mr Lam said that responding to a No. 8 by shutting down the city originated at a time when there were no road or rail links between Hong Kong island and Kowloon and the city had many substandard buildings.

Pabuk caused only minor damage to the city and no flights were cancelled. The central business district endured only minor rains and winds.

881

I brought my dad to watch this local movie 881 today. This is a show about Hokkien getai (opera) and the story revolves around two girls who dreams to become getai stars.

I know some of you might be put off by alot of factors in going to see the show
- Hokkien show, obiang
- local production not worth of the $
- getai, so old, unglam
- ...

Forget about these reservations and do yourself a favour to watch it. The movie really brings the essence of getai to the mass, there were alot of old folks in the cinema and when the movie breaks into a Hokkien tune, you can hear some of them humming to it :) Bring your parents if possible, I'm sure they will enjoy it.

Look out for actress Liu Ling Ling, who steals the show with her comical Hokkien dialogue, which she delievers effortlessly with a straight face!

This is the theme song from the movie, take a listen, really nice!

一人一半 (Solo version)



一人一半 (Duet version)

Nice feel-good DVD to recommend

A friend asked me to help order this DVD from the internet and before we passed it to her, wife and I sat down on Friday night to watch it.

The movie is adapted from a book, titled "The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio: How My Mother Raised 10 Kids on 25 Words or Less" by Terry Ryan. It stars one of my favourite actress Julianne Moore as the mother. The movie was produced in 2005 but somehow didnt make it to our shores.

We were not aware of this book and the movie till my friend recommended it. We enjoyed the show very much. The show is about this family of 12 and the ups and downs and how they get by. The father, played by Woody Harrelson, supposedly the breadwinner of the family, did not bring home enough money to feed everyone due to his drinking addiction. Luckily the mother, Everlyn Ryan has a flair with words and poetry and she would join jingles contests and a whole lot of others and win household items for the family. The story is set back in the 50s, so you can imagine how much these prizes were to them.

If you want a feel-good movie, this is it. Julianne Moore did a very good job in portraying the character of the mother, so positive that you just like her. Her smile, her mannerism, her ability to diffuse anger is something that we should all learn.

This movie is adapted from a true story, from the eyes of the daughter's Terry Ryan who wrote the memoir. You get to see the real life kids (old adults now) making an appearance towards the end of the movie. Having watched the film version, I will try to get hold of the book and read to know more about the Ryan family.

Pretty Signs

Things were back to normal the next day, no exceptional crowd at the MTR. There was a long queue though up the escalator and I took the stairs and saw these nice signs, part of a "climb the stairs" campaign:





.

Bless the Typhoon

Typhoon hit signal number 8 on Friday!

An extract from the hotel typhoon alert information phamplet:
Signal number 8:
"
When signal number 8 is hoisted, we strongly recommend that you stay indoors. Offices, shops, banks and schools will close. Public transport services will be suspended any time, although the Harbour Tunnels and MTR wll still provide safe, easy crossing from Kowloon to HK and vice versa. For your own safety, you should stay in the hotel, draw the curtains in your room and stay away from all windows
"

I had lunch with my customer at about 12pm+ that day, we went back to the customer office at about 2pm. As we were preparing to start the training, one of the customer told us that there is a government typhoon alert at 4pm! So exciting right? 1st thing that came across my mind is: can go back or not? :) The customer then checked with their boss and we were told to quickly pack up and go back. Great!

Taxis were not available, we can see alot people on the streets waiting for buses and others were heading towards the nearest MTR. As the customer site is quite far from our hotel, we decided to take MTR back.

What a mad crowd it was at the MTR, I captured some pics to share:















Everyone was packed like sardines and for me to reach near to the door, it took like 45 mins! Can't believe I actually stood there for so long, it was getting very stuffy and you see people perspire and you see sweat beads on everyone's face ...















Finally got into the train:















So glad to exit from the MTR station and make my way back to the hotel.















Somehow at Causeway Bay where I stayed, I don't experience strong winds at all, maybe its blocked by the tall buildings around this area. We were wondering if its a false alarm or expecting the typhoon to hit later in the night.

When I reached the hotel at about 5pm, alot of shops and restaurants have closed, wife decided to ta bao some cup noodles for dinner. The news interviewed some folks and alot were quite happy to be able to leave office early and when asked what they intend to do, some of them said they will go to karaoke lounges with friends or rent DVDs and watched at home.

You must be wondering why I bless the typhoon, for me, I was supposed to be at customer site at 2am that very night for some upgrade work. So it was good news for me when I learnt from customer that the night work has been cancelled and postponed to a week later. By then someone from the local team will take over so I no need to worry about that anymore! Yipee!

At around 7pm+, wifey and I decided to go out and take a look to see if there are any shops that remains opened. It was a ghost town, the MTR were so empty , when we boarded the subway train, we were like the only 2 persons in that cabin! Wife managed to contact her friends (Singaporeans working in HK) and we decided to visit them. Her friends stayed in a flat, looks like condo, and it was on the 50th floor. While making our way to the building lobby, we have to brace the strong winds and hold the umbrella tightly in case we get blown away :) Once up there, we can really feel the strong winds and there were light rains as well. That was probably the strongest winds we felt that day.

We brought the cup noodles there, chit chat and had dinner. Quite a cosy evening spent.

Typhoon Alert

Last few days have been quite stressful for me. Even though it is supposed to be training but I got pulled left right center to help them troubleshoot other problems that they have raised to us. Every night since Monday, I only get to leave the customer site only at 8, 9pm and then have to be in the conference call with customer as well as with my US teams. The calls were usually late, 10, 11pm and after following up and did some updates, I only managed to crawl into bed at 1am+. So sian :(

There was a typhoon alert yesterday (Tuesday), signal number 3 to be exact. Customer told me that if it goes up to number 8, then everyone has to leave the office. Good news to me, then can eat snake don't have to work mah , haha, that's the immediate thought that came to my mind.

Early this morning (Wednesday), the hotel distributes typhoon notice as well to all hotel guests informing us on the different signal levels and advice on what to do.

Extracted from the typhoon notice:
"
Signal number 3 - When this signal is hosited, Hong Kong may be enjoying what seems to be a perfect day, but the strength of the approaching winds can change very quickly. Air, sea and land transportation services might be affected
"
So we went to customer site as usual cos still at number 3 and outside its becoming rainy, didnt get any strong winds though. No changes to the signal level throughout the day.

Wife touched down in the evening, and we walked around the hotel area and had dessert.

Off to HK again

This trip is 10 days long, wifey will join me during the National Day holiday break.

Gonna give training to customer together with my US colleague, hopefully not too stressful, considering the customer has been giving us so many problems.

I just had my soon kwey from the Bengawan Solo outlet :)
Going to check-in now ...

Team Building

Sorry I haven't been updating my blog. Since I came back from my HK trip, my last work week was filled with training and meetings, leaving my blog unblogged for like almost 2 weeks :(

My team had a team building event last week, together with our china and japan colleagues and our US boss, there were like 15 of us.

It was a one day event last thursday, the programmes include a morning trek at Macritchie Reservoir followed by brunch at a prata place and then a cooking event in the afternoon at SunRice Academy. Nothing exciting right? In fact, the few of us have proposed for a trip to Mt Kinabalu to climb mountain but due to budget constraint, the idea was being dropped.

My boss even came up with some fancy names for the events, the morning walk is called "Awaken" , the prata brunch is called "Refresh" and the cooking session as "Indulge".

We gathered at the reservoir at about 8am, weather was abit gloomy when I stepped out of the house. The morning trek idea came from one of the angmo boss who has stayed in Singapore for like 6+ years and apparently nobody tell the other angmo including my boss what to expect cos my boss and some others came in jeans and pants. I was thinking to myself "Good luck man!" I used to trek here 2 years ago every Saturday morning and even with shorts, you will bound to perspire and the trek is like 10km, how to substain wearing pants or worse jeans!

Anyhow, about 2km into the trek, we were "awakened" by thunder! Yes downpour! None of the Singapore team brought umbrellas but our japan and china colleagues did, hehe so we had to share the umbrellas like 3 to 1 kind. We stayed rooted for like 20 minutes and the rain didnt appear it's going to lighten so we waited waited and when it didnt subside after 30 minutes, we have to do a kebelakang pusing (Malay for turning back).

We next headed to the prata place for an early breakfast at 9am, talk about waking up early for a good exercise, followed up with an unhealthy breakfast of fried and oily stuff :) Ordered teh halia, prata and mee hoon goreng. Ate and chatted till about 11am, the makan session took longer than the intended walk, haha.

Went home to take a nap before meeting the rest again at SunRice, the cooking Academy at Fort Canning Center. We drew lots and were grouped into teams named after spices, mine was Onion, others were called Lime, Pepper, Tumeric. Had a tour round the Spice Garden where you see lots of planted spices like laksa leaves, panda leaves, lemon grass, ginger, pepper, basil etc. This garden is apparently opened to public but didnt know it existed till that day, and it is just a short walk from the Registry of Marriage. Each team was given a map to identify where the different spices can be found and my team which consists of the big boss came in last, haha, we were more like enjoying the view rather than looking around for the answers.

The lesson were taught by a Thai chef but no we are not cooking TomYam soup, we had a East Meet West fusion kind of menu. On the recipe, we are supposed to cook a roast chicken and paper wrapped spring rolls (like those Vietnamese kind). The chicken dish is not that difficult to do, the main thing is the spices. We have to chop onions, garlic, basil, lemongrass and other assorted spices and then mix it with the whole chicken, massae it and put it in the oven. Sounds simple right? Ya not too difficult. The springroll item need some practise, we each took our turns to do one and each turns out in different sizes, some long some short :) We also need to decorate the springroll dish to compete with other teams to see who can come out with the best design and layout. Each team were given a tomato and a cucumber and together with the springrolls that we have made, we need to decorate it.















Quite yucky right? Haha we really scored low on creativity compared to what the other teams come up with.

We wrapped up the teambuilding event with dinner, we ate what we cooked, and so far, didnt hear anyone reported sick due to the cooking :)

I'm off to Hong Kong again, this is like 2 trips in 2 weeks. A short one, will be back on Friday night. This time, I am travelling on my own, boss not coming along, so thats good, at least I can take my time and don't feel so rushed :)

I am there to give customer training on our product and they have high expectations, which customer don't right, I hear you ask, haha. The Hong Kong-ers or at least my customers are very on the ball kind. They have been feeding me with inputs, topics to cover, issues to discuss and go through etc. Hence my schedule is filled to the brim, with night work included as well :(

In fact, feel abit stressed over the last week over the prepartion of the training slides and materials. That explains why I have been quite slag with my blogging, no mood lah, will catch up whenever I can, ok?

Crossing my fingers, hope they don't give me a hard time.

Wish me luck!

Watched the Dim Sum Dollies on Thursday premiere night. I must say this is one of their best! The show runs from 5th - 15th July at the Esplanade Theatres.


These are some of the skits played as part of the Singapore history theme of this show:

- the sea sick Sang Nila Utama

- Samsui women

- Ricksaw pullers kena summoned by our ever hardworking parking wardens for parking on double yellow lines

- Japanese kamikaze soldiers singing "My Way" karaoke style while strangled with their parachutes in the jungle due to premature eject from their fighter jets. Can you see the joke within? Heehee

- The Cantonese ma-jie (servant) who curse and swear when her tai tai owner who speaks with an English accent asks her to make "tui-na" sandwich, haha see if you can catch the joke.

By far, this is one of my 'siong' trip. Long hours at customer site , worked till the wee hours, didnt even have time to shop/sight-see though I stayed at the heart of Hong Kong island at Causeway Bay.

Luckily I managed to arrange to meet my long time Pri Sch friend CL upon touched down. If I have scheduled it on another night, it would have not been possible. We went to one of those HK cafe for dinner, chatted and filled each other with updates. If you are reading this my friend, it was really nice catching up with you!

Travelling with boss is not easy. You have to know your boss character and personality well. My boss happens to be those 'on-the-dot' kind of person so he was first at the passport control counter, waited for me at the luggage claim area, waited for me at hotel checkout etc, I wasn't late ok, he was always earlier than me :) During the flight from SIN - HKG, boss was quite surpised when he asked me where I'm seated and I told him I'm seated right at the back. He was like "why would anyone want to sit at the back?"

Well thats me lah :)

Off to Hong Kong

Another last minute notice. Was told by boss last Friday that there may be a possibility to go to HK with him to meet customer coming week. Confirmation was given yesterday and here I am, at the airport lounge now, waiting for my flight.

Will be in HK for just 3 days, back on Friday, so short hor. No fun also , travel with boss, hopefully night time I dont have to go dinner with him, can go jalan jalan, look see look see. My last trip to HK was back in 2002, that was a lesiure trip.

5 years on, dunno how much HK has changed. Hope to take some pics to share with you.

Smitten

I have been smitten by the music of this Japanese singer Oda Kazumasa 小田和正 recently and I shall reserved this space to rave about him.
You might not know him or heard of his songs before but I was ignorant of his works few years back too.

My good friend KL said that he introduced this artiste to me ages ago but I think I was too caught up in my own world of 80s music and oldies so not open to all the other genre of music that I'm not familiar with. Thou shall bear the consequences and make up for lost time and try to get to know more about this great singer.


I happened to chat to my japanese colleague sometime back as he is coming to Singapore to attend training and I asked for his help to get a japanese cd for my friend KL. My jap colleague sent me a youtube link and recommend me the song by Oda. It's a concert clip and later I got to know from KL and my sister that Oda came down to Singapore to hold a concert early 2000/1. KL and friend, my sister and BIL all went and enjoyed it, the one night concert was sold out by the way! Oda was a member from the group Off Course during the 70s and later carved out his solo career in the 80s and if you like a comparison, you can liken him to Sting from the group The Police. He is 60 years old but his vocals still sound so crisp and young.

Here is the youtube link that I would like to share. The song is titled "Sayonara さよなら" and I would like to dedicate this to my friend JP who will be going for an overseas posting later this month:

Last week I was so happy when I found a copy of Oda's greatest hits compilation on Yahoo auction! Yes this is what music can do to me, I can simply go ga-ga and will go hunt for CDs and start collecting :)
















Besides the song Sayonara, track 6 "Kotoba Ni Dekinai" 言葉にできない from the CD is simply awesome! Take a listen:

No Music No Life

Nothing much to blog so decided to blog about the CDs that I bought lately. My friend KL has a monthly update on what CDs he bought and he blog it under the post as "No Music No Life" which is taken from Tower Records tagline :)

I haven't bought any CDs for quite some time already. I have been trying to clear off lots of olds CDs on Yahoo auctions to make way for new ones. Here is a list of what I bought:

Hilary Stagg - Feather Light. Bought this from Yahoo auction. This completes my collection of albums released by the late electronic harp musician. Sadly, Stagg's life was cut short in 1999.





Babel soundtrack, 2CD collection, bought it new. I enjoyed the movie and was mesmerised by its haunting guitar pieces. Some notable tracks that I like: Tazarine, Bibo no Aozora/Endless Flight/Babel (a 3 part song performed by Ryuichi Sakamoto, Jaques Morelenbaum & Everton Nelson and then (the last two movements) by Gustavo Santaolalla, Breathing Soul, Look Inside and Desert Bus Ride.

Dave Koz - At the Movies. Bought this mainly for the Cinema Paradiso theme. A very easy listening album but I was abit disappointed with Anita Baker version of Somewhere from West Side Story. Anita Baker is one of my favourite soul singer but her renedition of this song seems to fall short especially at the chorus part where the "Somewhere" portion seems to just die out.




All The Seasons Of George Winston: Piano Solos, bought it new as well but have not listened to it yet. This is a greatest hits collection, he has so many albums so I have to sample this compilation first before deciding if I'm going to collect all his other individual albums.



This is an oldie for the mouldy me, haha. I think I have 5 of his albums so far. Though his duo partner Paul Simon is more acclaimed, I much prefer Art Garfunkel's vocals. Bought this cheap from Yahoo auction and specially for the track "I Believe (When I Fall In Love It Will Be For Ever)". Didnt know that it was penned by Stevie Wonder! Besides Art's renedition, other artistes like Michael Mcdonald, George Michael and the group Mike and the Mechanics also covered it. Good stuff!

Cute Advertisments

I was in KL for a few days to give customer training. On the way to customer office, I have to pass through KLCC and there is this big advertisment by Maybank that I find it cute. The bank latest product offerings allows customer to do Interbank Funds Transfer globally and this is what they come out with:















Here, you have this Japanese yen cartoon symbol making its way from KL Twin Towers to the other end which is the Tokyo Tower. I didnt bring my camera along for this short trip so can't snap the whole advertisment which include the pictures of the towers on both ends, have to make do with a close up shot of this cute symbol.















Over here is a US $ symbol. On one end is another KL iconic building the KL tower and the other end is the Empire State building. I would have prefer to get a close up picture of the symbol but there is a car park tunnel barrier and my phone camera can't do zoom so make do with this shot :(















and the last one we have here is the Euro symbol, connecting to the Effiel Tower.

Cute or not?

Useless Naming

Front page news on today's newpapers - S'pore's Terminal 3 to open on Jan 9, 2008, wah so nice right, but wait, they have come up with a new name for the airport skytrain system - People Mover System (PMS) !

Excerpt:
"The Changi Airport People Mover System (PMS) is part of the new Terminal 3 expansion project that will accommodate substantial growth in air passenger traffic at the Changi airport in the coming decades. The PMS project is scheduled for passenger service in June 2006, coincident with the opening of Terminal 3. The PMS represents a firm commitment by Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore to assure that the Singapore Changi airport continues to be among the world's best airports."

What crap name is that? Ok maybe they can't call it ASS (airport skytrain system) so next option is PMS, hmm, how creative right! It's another classic smart aleck example of naming exercise. Why do they need to name the system anyway? Those who are familiar with Changi Airport will know there is a train/rail for you to commute between T1 and T2, and I think it is simply called Skytrain, quite nice what, why go and rename it and worst, call it PMS!

I can just picture these scenes at the airport information counter:

Scene 1

Tourist: May I know how can I get to T3 from T1 ?
Information counter staff: Skytrain. You can take the skytrain at lobby 1.

Scene 2

Tourist: May I know how can I get to T3 from T1 ?
Information counter staff: PMS. You can take PMS ...
Angry Tourist: Wait, what did you just say! You said I got PMS?! How rude! I want to complain!
Confused Tourist: What is PMS?
Corny Tourist: Haha PMS!

That's not all. Imagine next time u step into the train and what greets you will be something like "Ding Dong, welcome to PMS. You are in PMS right now, hope you enjoy the PMS ride." We will be the laughing stock of tourists and our overseas friends, they will probably laugh at how "creative" we are at coming out with acronyms and churning out stupid sounding ones too.

Whats with the authorities with these acronyms and lame attempts at coming out with fanciful names ? This is something which I don't understand. They have shown, in the past few years, that they have failed to be creative but yet many times bitten but still not shy. Here are some classic examples:

Marina Bay - Authorities wanted a more glamorous name for the marina bay area since it will be the site for integrated resorts and other high class developments. They hired some branding consultants, spent lots of money and in the end, they can't find a better name and eventually stick to Marina Bay.

Budget Terminal - A contest was held and the public submit the desired names they want for our new budget terminal. In the end, among the many entries, they chose "Budget Terminal" as the winning entry.

This last example simply takes the cake! Recently, I was flipping through some communities newsletter/magazine at a cafe and read that, in the government's bid to turn Singapore into a city of gardens and waters, they have come out with yet another acronym, a no brainer one someone, called ABC Waters Programme.

Excerpt of the meaning behind it:
"
This is what we aim to achieve with the ABC Waters programme. There are three broad elements in the programme.

- First, “A” for Active, so that Singaporeans can enjoy a wide range of water-based activities, from canoeing and sailing to dragon-boat racing.

- Second, ‘B’ for Beautiful, because we want to transform our waterways into beautiful streams, rivers and lakes that enhance our living environment.

- Third, ‘C’ for Clean, so that whatever we do with our water bodies, they will continue to be kept litter- and pollution-free.
"

Call me cynical, but I seriously think we can do without all these. At the end of the day, if people understand what is a budget terminal, what is a skytrain, monorail or whatever then let it be. What for go and draw snake with legs. As you can see, those attempts to beautify it simply falls flat!

This beautiful quote comes in handy again and to the authorities "If you want to do something, do it nicely else do not do it at all" :)

Anamorphic Street Art

Passed by Raffles City the other day and spotted this street art. I snapped this picture with my trusty phone. The artist, Julian Beaver was commissioned by Nokia to come out with this piece of anamorphic chalk drawing featuring mobile phones. Simple, nice but nothing compared to his other works he did elsewhere.





I googled it on the internet and found some really impressive ones. I like these two:


























The two pictures are taken from Julian Beaver's website, you can checkout more of his works at this link

Sunrise

If you go to Bali, you will probably be staying in these places, Nusa Dua on the east coast, Jimbaran, Seminyak, Kuta on the west coast or Ubud, in the center but no beach.

I woke up diligently every morning at around 6am to catch the sunrise near the hotel beach. First day no luck, very gloomy and started to rain. Second day, abit cloudy and on my check out day, my lucky star answered my prayers :)

I have never worked my camera so hard before. From the moment I stepped out of the beach front, I kept snapping away, the whole session lasted for like an hour. Alas towards last few moments when the sun started to crack out of the clouds, I run out of space on my memory card! Didnt want to waste time to go back to hotel room to get my backup memory card so have to quickly delete some of the not so nice shots took earlier.

Still got alot to learn about how to compose pictures cos took so many sunrise shots but only like a few of them and some didnt turn out as well as I have expected.

Uluwatu - Kuta - Tanat Lot

We started off the day to Pura Luhur Uluwatu, one of bali most important sea temples. The 11th century temple stands on a tiny promontory 70m above crashing waves of the Indian ocean. The scenery on top of the cliff is simply breathtaking! Look out for those mischeivous monkeys who are known to snatch specs, sunglasses, caps from tourists. At the entrance, we also overheard tour guides telling people to be wary of those monkeys in case they strike on you.

The small temple you see in the background is Uluwatu temple.















Monkey busy eating, so didnt come and bother us.





























I read from somewhere, the scenery is being compared to Australia's Great Ocean Road.




Next stop - Kuta, the surfer's beach, the prime tourist area. Nothing much to do there actually, the shops were more or less selling the same stuff, keep seeing Polo Ralph shops and you have Hard Rock cafe, Starbucks.








Tanot Lot - the most famous of the sea temples. The sanctuary temple is 15th century old and sits along the bali south coast, one of the must-see sights in Bali. Everyone usually come here to see the sunset, its a pity my other shots didnt turn out well, so only this one to show.












We rounded up the night with a seafood dinner at Jimbaran. We ordered squid, prawns and seabass. The grilled seabass was nice but the prawns and squid so-so, abit pricey though. However the nice experience of dining on the beach, acccompanied by the sound of waves brushing through the shores, more than makes up for it.