Driving in the City

I travelled from Bukit Batok to Asian Civilisations Museum. I went through 2 ERPs and a total of $5 was deducted from my cashcard. I considered myself lucky to reach my destination smoothly despite the heavy traffic flow. Look, the ERP is supposed to cut down the number of cars but I am unsure if this works.

I could have paid even more if I made a wrong turn.

It was close to 8pm when I wanted to return. The ERP into Orchard Road was still in operations! I managed to detour and took a long route.

It is pretty expensive to drive into the city, even during the evening.

Try it unless you want the experience. Else, save that few dollars!

Vietnam celebrates her 63th National Day

I attended a dinner at Asian Civilisations Museum on 28 Aug 2008. It was hosted by Vietnam Embassy to celebrate her 63th National Day. A lot of foreign guests were invited.

Finding a parking space in the heart of a city needs lots of good luck. Luck was with me at that moment. A car happened to leave its lot and zoomed, my little car went in immediately. I can't believe that the parking is free!

Besides the delicious food which was an international spread to satisfy the appetite of multi-national guests, I liked the ambience of an evening at Asian Civilisations Museum. Imagine yourself holding a glass of wine or having a dinner, facing the Singapore River which has lots of eatlets, enjoying the night breeze. The backdrop was the lighted high-rise banks. It was rather quiet in the evening though we knew it would be a different story during the day.

There is an event going on at Asian Civilisations Museum.
http://www.acm.org.sg/exhibitions/eventdetail.asp?eventID=404

Since the one week school holiday is just round the corner, do consider making a trip to this beautiful place.

Mid-Autumn Festival

The lunar 7th month will be coming to an end and soon we will be celebrating mid-autumn festival or lantern festival or mooncake festival.

Have you tried any moon-cakes? This year, I am going for the "exotic" type; moon-cakes will fillings of sesame or some liquor ???

I will share my experience after eating them.

Yummy!

Beijing Olympics 2008 (last)

Finally after days of watching various competitions, this Game has come to an end on 24 Aug 2008. The closing ceremony at Bird Nest Stadium lasted about two hours. Again, we were able to watch spectacular firework displays, preformances and the handover to London 2012.

I can't help but feel sad because I will have to wait 4 years later to see the athletes to excel again, to see new World Records achieved, to share the joy and sorrow after a competition.

See you in London 2012.

Beijing Olympics part 3

I watched the table tennis final where Singapore played against China on 17 Aug 7.30pm.

The results were kind of expected; how can we expect to beat a big brother unless a miracle has occured?

I have mixed feelings. On 15 Aug, our team fought from 2.30pm till 6pm+ against South Korean team and finally won and got into the finals. Our players were armed with great determination and will to fight on till the last minute.

On 17 Aug, our team barely spent 2 hours and was already "booted out".

I learnt something from watching these games.

You can earn points (or marks) by 2 ways, namely (1) create chances to attack our opponents successfully and (2) creating chances for your opponents to make mistakes. Our players consistently made many mistakes and thus "giving" away points freely and easily to our opponents.

Our opponents did make some mistakes but being much more experienced and skillful than ours, they were able to minimize such occurrences. Thus our chances of getting points from their mistakes were greatly reduced.

Is our opponent such strong such that our flaws and weaknesses were all exposed?

I am not a table-tennis player. I merely shared my personal views.

Caterpillar part 3

I am sad to say that my caterpillars have died. They were not moving at all. They have yet to reach the pupa stage. Perhaps living in the plastic container was not good for them at all.

17 Aug 2008 - Beijing Olympics part 2

Today is a special day. Eli will be celebrating his 9th birthday. His parents decided to invite family members for his birthday party. But the party will be held earlier so that everybody can catch a special match in Beijing Olympics.

Yes, the women table-tennis final will be held at 7.30pm. Singapore will be meeting the unbeatable China. 

I read something interesting from yesterday's papers:

 "If the body tires, the brain pushes. If the impossible is to be achieved, the mind must be convinced. If you start believing, you are a step closer to winning."

"If they don't believe they can win, they have already lost".

The above phrases are very meaningful and is food for thought today.

Singapore is assured of an Olympic medal!!!

Singapore women's table-tennis finally cleared all hurdles and got into the finals. The team match against South Korea has just ended and we won! After 48 years without a medal, finally we see light.

I am at the top of the world!

Beijing Olympics 2008 part 1

The Beijing Olympics 2008 started with a loud bang which shook the whole world on 8th Aug 2008 8.08pm (Beijing's time).

I watched the live telecast from the tv at home.

Since then, I have been following some of the competitions, especially some swimming heats, weight-lifting, 3m springboard diving etc.

Michael Phelps continues into an uncharted zone where nobody has ever scored so many Gold medals in Olympics. He broke many World Records too. He swims better than a shark!

What amazed me was the weight-lifting! A woman of weight probably 70kg, could lift up weights of about 130 to 140kg. This is almost double her body weight. Look, only ants can live up things heavier than themselves.

The gymnastics competitions are also amazing too. The sportsmen or sportswomen are as agile as "monkeys" on the bars. Their body weights do not seem to be an issue to them at all.

For the 3m springboard diving, China sportswomen performed extremely well. They synchronized so well that I thought what I saw was split images of each other.

I see humans continue to challenge to the extremes. I can only say "AMAZING".

Are these eggs?

Are these eggs of the lime butterfly? We kept them for a few days and yet no hatching.

Caterpillar part 2

The caterpillars became green and hairy.

Caterpillar part 1

These were the caterpillars; look at their little spikes!

08-08-08

8th August 2008 is believed to be a very lucky day.

I shared a similar view. Let me explain why.

Remember my container of caterpillars? It was misplaced. Isa brought it to the school to show it to friends and teachers. Then in a rush to return home, left it behind. For the whole night (yesterday), we were quite moody.

Today (08-08-08), Isa found it outside the classroom. The creepy crawlies were still alive; still nibbling the leaves eagerly.

Today is also the school's Sports Day and this was the first time Isa won a medal in the races. Look, it was no ordinay medal; the team came in first and Isa got a "gold" medal from the Vice Principal.

I am very sure today will bring you lots of Good Luck too.

Lime Butterfly

I admit I have been quite crazy recently over butterflies. My neighbour bought 2 pots of lime plants. I found some "worms" which looked like bird droppings on the leaves. They are nibbling the leaves. I took a closer look and found that they were actually caterpillars. I examined the plants closely again and found something which looked like eggs (of a butterfly).

I have kept the creepy crawlies and the eggs separately. I have taken some photos on them. I will be uploading them soon.

Stay tuned if you are not afraid of these creepy crawlies.

OODA

Have you heard of OODA?
Observe, Orient, Decide and Act.

To find out more about OODA, please refer to
source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_Loop

National Day Preview 2

Look at these metal birds in the blue sky!

National Day Preview 1

2nd August was National Day Preview. I managed to capture some precious moments on that day.

Prawn Fishing

Do you know that you can actually fish a prawn in Singapore? There are a few places you can do so. I heard one place would be in Bishan. The other place thatwas at Yishun, called Bottle Tree Park.

A group of my friends went to Bottle Tree Park to fish prawns. We were each given a fishing rod and a small plate of bait which looked like bits of chicken liver. The bait was attached to the sharp hook and off we threw the hook into the pond. For half an hour, none of us caught anything. We began to feel impatient, partly due to the hot weather though we were under a shelter. We asked the owner if there were any prawns in the pond (yes, we were really naughty and hard to be pleased). The owner assured us there were prawns and even poured a big pail of live prawns into the pond.

We continued waiting patiently. Finally one of us caught a prawn and all of us cheered. Then more and more caught prawns of different sizes. The prawns were quite smart. We need to wait even if we knew that the prawns were already on our hooks because mostly they merely nibbled around the bait.

After a few hours, the prawns we caught were insufficient for a decent meal for all of us. We decided to have a good dinner together before parting. One of the dishes; of course - prawns!

Fair Weather

Did you notice that the recent hot and dry weather is driving you crazy?

It has been extremely hot and dry during the past few days. I don't feel like doing anything except full-blast the air-con and drink lots of icy soft drink to cool myself.

My utility bill will be going up again at the end of the month.