Here are the list of events for me to go or gatecrash this New year’s Eve… Mmm decisions, decisions.

- Ministry of Sound with DJ Darren Emerson (Clark Quay)

- Siloso NYE Splash (Siloso Beach, Sentosa) (Banner)

- Funk Out Dance Party (Ngee Ann City)

- NYE Mambo Jumbo @ EXPO

- Chijmes New Year’s Eve Countdown Party

- SG Runner’s Year End Chalet

- Hang out on the Esplanade bridge with friends for fireworks

- Save money & stay at home

12/27/05
Woke up at 9am, never had a good long sleep of 7 1/2 hours long in a row. Breakfast was the same at the hotel 1st floor café, but had more fruits this time & the buffet closed at 10.30am allowing us to finsh breakfast at a rather comfortable pace. Raided the hotel room for a change & wash before checking out at noon. With less than 3 hours to spare before our expressbus arrives, so what else can we do but catch up on last minute shopping. Got myself a new pair of leather shoes at isetan, while Sheena purchased some foodstuffs for her friends. Lunch was at last night’s old dinner area coffeeshops, where we had wanton mee coupled with soybean drink we brought separately. The bus was already in front of the hotel when we arrived, a short check in, goodbye & we are off on our way to back to Singapore. The bus is the standard 16-steater vip coach we always take, the one with the red trimmings & seats wide enough to be compared to the business class seats found on airliners. The bus trip had a short stop at longton, Johor where we had dinner before landing in Singapore at 9.30pm where we made our way home for a well deserved rest & late night supper thereafter.
(end KL blog)

12/26/05
Wokeup at 9am for a relatively late breakfast at the hotel coffeehouse. Its the usual american breakfast for 4 with a moderate spread. Made our way to berjaya timesquare taking the backlane route we took last night. The size of times square never fail to impress me till now even being my second visit. Not to mention the number of Starbucks cafes within the square kilometer or so, like 4-5 I say? Me wonders why don’t we convert our orchard road’s Nee Ann City to something like that, with IMAX theaters, A disfunct (yet cool) 48 lane bowling alley, Cinemas, A theme park & almost 14 levels of shops. Brought myself 2 nic shirts from nicole with compliments from mum, (whats more its going like 10SGD for one? whahaha spurge spurge spurge) before heading into the theme park with Sheena for the day priced at 25RM per head for adult entry, its definately more worth its than the 23RM indoor themepark entry cost for genting.

Cosmo	Themepark	City night life

All the rides are operating this time, so was DNA mixer this time. The highlights in the park would definately be the Intamin indoor roller, called supersonic odyssey. & man do I love the bumper cars in this park they do go fast - mu liking! Other than that rode on serveral flat rides such as space attack, izzy dizzy, the spinining tower thingie & DNA mixer which was one hell of a nausea machine, even worst than the 360 degree spinning space shot, its like taking a ride in a washing machine non-stop!

We left the theme park around 4pm for Lunch at the foodcourt, situated on upper floors of the building. Had some fried rice, some rest before continuing shopping aroung the area. & man do alot of shops are closed in Berjaya today, a rent hike? Maybe. Locked ourselves back in the theme park for the rest of the afternoon-early evening to catch up on un-rided-rides before linking up with mum & dad again for dinner…

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12/25/05 On the way to KL
The morning call didn’t wake us, so was the phone call from mum. But dad at the door did. Checked out at 8am for breakfast at the themepark hotel happy valley mini cafe before heading to the Cable cars for the connecting bus trip to KL (10.30am). There is a short break at the usual tour shop near the batu caves, then it towards swiss garden where we are the first to alight again from our bus. As the only family too!

KL Swissgarden
One room was ready by then so we checked in to dump our bags before heading for lunch. The room is what a basic five star should be. With proper tv position, bathtub, unlike our so claimed ‘5′ star hotel in genting. There’s even a connecting door between rooms, usually not looked upon & found in older hotels & this one has it! The lift works like the one in berjaya too- requiring access keys to access guess floor levels- all for security.

KL city after 5 months since last visit
Nothing much has changed.

We’re somewhere in there!	KL City	Putra KLCC

We started walking in search of the putra mrt station to KLCC petronas only to find it in some old abandoned-like structure under construction. We went in favor of the free shuttle service provided by the hotel & went for lunch at a nearby backlane hawker to eat & pass the time till 2pm, the shuttle timing. Our total orders of 5 dishes for 4 (as usual I had more of a little more) costed not more than 15RM- the price of 2 single scoop icecream we had the day before. Brought some potato bread for a snack together with a slurpee at the nearby 7-eleven before heading back to hotel for the free shuttle…
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Holiday Trip to Genting 7 KL, Life Update. The travel journal, for now. Click on Read more at the bottom of the post to read more.

Trip to KL, Day 1 12/23/05 nite
We started off taking 961 to beach rd konsortium to catch our direct bus to genting, later do we know we have to take a sg reg bus to the checkpt because of a jam at the causeway.

12/24/05 early morning journey
The bus we took is not a konsortium bus,but another green/white vip 22 seater bus with no toilet, the thing is that there were 2 stops, one at a the usual public toilet &other at a bp petrol kiosk, but no supper stop! Grrrrr,

12/24/05 day
Had breakfast at 6+am, first world plaza macs. As it was the only outlet open besides starbucks, which was strangely open so early too.
1st world hotel, 1st ever hotel in my life where we have to queue up with queue no to be served at the counter before getting our keys, even with pre booking! No 266. The lobby is big, so is the walkways & the building itself, but the rms are packed like sardines, like 1000 rms I heard, even theres no place for the tv in front of the beds! 5 star my ass!

1st World Queue	The plaza	Aerial view

Rested in the room till 11am (from 6am where we arrived & had dinner at 24hr macs before concussing at the hotel lobby to wait for our checking in our room at 10am. We had lunch at the lao di fang ‘foodcourt’ before checking out the theme park for the day. Alot of youngsters checked in too by the numbers for a christmas party or so, very distinct from the distant noises they make from their rooms, (pity those stayong beside them) & the amount of rubbish they produce,not to mention the tell-tale digns of cup noodle moddle fragments littered at the common hot water dispenser. It like a chalet for them. Goog thing we ae staying about 5rooms plus from any of these groups… inline

Its time of the year again for a class outing & they nominees were - trekking at pulau ubin, day at wild wild wet or ice-skating at fuji ice palace. Apparently, not too many were in favor of going for a public fat-exposure-parade at downtown east, nor would any appreciate nature on the tracks, so the Ice-skating option was the most sort after option, thus landing us today at Fuji Ice Palace, Jurong!

I had not ice-skated before, but being a inline-skater myself, I can say that ice skating is so much easier than inlines, you can really pick up speeds faster, turn & change direction faster without much resistance, not to mention being easier and not as tiring on a whole, considering having ice-skated continuously for 5 hours in a row - a feat I’ve not yet accomplished on inlines yet, even on ABEC-7 bearings.

Many in my group however, were virgin skaters & greeted the cold & occasionally wet ice more than the number of digits you have to count. & man yes were they wet. But it’s not uncommon though, the all familiar “Thud” is always evident in the ring, the spectacular ones being the “Domino Flop” where a bunch of learners fall together as a group (& all you need is one to fall in order start the chain reaction) yes very spectacular indeed… For me, I was glad to be dry throughout the whole skate session, now wet dark patches on my jeans at all, considering having almost 10 years of skating experience on my back… though I don’t really skate very often either, only very very occasionally.

This naturally put the experienced ones as teachers to the group, having not only act as supports while they make their first “baby strides” on ice but the frequent need to catch/tame their frantic waving arms whenever they lose their balance or fetch them whenever seem to be heading in one direction without stopping. Overall by mid-day, all of them are able to skate, (though awkwardly) without any assistance. A rewarding feat for most of us there before calling it a day with dinner at Long John Silvers.

It came first as a call to dell yesterday morning as I got too fed up with the online technical support getting me nowhere, except the default answers like “please upgrade your operating ROM to the latest version & try again, thank you”. After getting through like 5 layers of call menus & such, I finally managed to SPEAK to a human being! whoa technology! I explained the problem I was having to the operator, who was commendabley kind & professional in her job, namely the booting up problems & for the last time, the HARDWARE problem I was having with the PDA’s headphone jack. With that she kindly (& promptly) suggested sending in a replacement unit within 2-3 working days - A BRAND NEW replacement unit for my aged & serverely beaten, discoloured & tarnished 1 year old Dell axim X50V PDA, (well partly its still under warranty duh, with like almost like 22 days left duh). The interesting thing was a phone call from their dispatch department later yesterday stating that delivery coulb be done the very NEXT DAY, whoa! Call today, new PDA tomorrow! whee!

The PDA just arrived from a dell dispatch, the hardware revision of the PDA is version A07! yea upgrade! Contray to my old PDA being the pioneering version A01. Too bad they didn’t sent in the x51v.. darn then that would be a REAL upgrade! Everything works fine, the OS, old trusty WM2003, the headphone jack, now only I could get the hardware buttons to work.. DARN!

With our own private transport, very much spent the last night on a search of the up & coming delsey chill-out area, just around the outskirts of town near the Botantic gardens. The place was actually an old CMPB adminitrative army camp, with most of its land area, transformed, including its parade square into a few pub & cafe establishments. A very isolated area, but otherwise a good secret place to chill out for a cup of coffee, beer or wine, you name it. The late night was spent past Orchard which was too crowded for the night & finally found our way to Holland Village, where we further chilled out with Sheena at Brekos till late.

Today
Did some site maintainance for the day, at the same time checked out the site statistics for the month of november: 12665 unique visitors & 879040 hits for the month of november, averaging 29301 hits a day. Judging from the numbers, I can conclude most of my visitors are return visitors.

Went on to check out one of the very very long lost pages of the site - the long forgotten guestbook. It a simple script I got up early this year, but have not actually found time to customise it. To my astonishment, it has grown with 1700 guestbook entries! oh man, actually I thought it was spam or so, but after going thru a few pages, every post is uniquely interesting to read. Man do I really love to read guestbook entries as I do enjoy recieving christmas cards at this time of the year… (Thanks all!) Man I do really have to find some time going through all of them!

Monday tomorrow.. darn!
Would be driving to school tomorrow.. early for breakfast that is.. class starts at 8am so I guess an early breakfast with coffee at foodcourt 4 is a good way to start the day. There will be materials test tomorrow afternoon, after lunch… duh thats when all our energy be devoted to the stomach & not the brain… “aka the zombie hour” thats gonna be bad… bad… oh well wish me luck for the test then.

My horoscope calls for a social meeting or so coming soon. Where someone will open up on their social life.. Mmm interesting….

Today is the day where my parents are flying off for their intended break/holiday with grans. They would be away for 5 days & back early thursday morning. With that, its only sis & me in the house, duh! Not to mention, having to do house chores & stuffs… grrr especially looking after dad’s plant collection! huhuh, well at least I have his car all to myself now… hehehe. Cousin Gordon, accompanied with his mum arrived at our house in their “boggie van” to give us & particularly the luggage a lift to the airport. Good thing they have a van though, so its like a large space for even 8 people seated comfortably even with gran’s 3 giant luggage cases at the back!

We all chilled out @ a kopitiam cafe in the airport, (contray to Starbucks to suit Granny’s taste) after checking the bulk luggage in at the departure counter. We had a hearty talk, coupled with either the standard coffee, tea & timsum before its time to start departure. (Partly because mum couldn’t get enough of duty free goods, she just have to get in the departures early to shop!)

Executive business granny on the mobile…	Excited Mum & Dad.	Off to the departures!

Now if only granny know how to use Skype, then our international calling costs would definately be so much lower!

Cous Gordon’s family invited us to dinner at their house thereafter where hung out for the rest of the day. Re-knowned is his mum’s fabulous cooking which I’ve always missed & loved since primary school. & she had a 6 course meal to prove it! With that, got to know that Gordon actualy re-signed from his previous job at Microsoft, as he felt the job offered no career advancement opportunities & is looking into the customer/public relations industry for his next job.

The Funny thing is that though this is a holiday short trip my parents are having, this sudden sub-led of “freedom” is kinda interesting. Though independent living is not new to me, considering that I actually did easily spend like 5-6 days to even weeks in a row away from home when I was in the army. This felt different though, kinda unreal.

Update: Just got an sms update from mum that they’ve arrived at their destination safety. Wish them all the best in enjoyment & safety in their trip!

Geoff’s back in Melbourne now, on a flight last tuesday. But I didn’t actually found time to update (because of tests & such) on the gathering last Saturday:

Its the time of the year again when my old classmate Geoffery come through thousands of kilometers back to Singapore to meet up & catch up on time as old JC classmates. The old 5 muskeeteers of St Andrews. The day started with an invitation, the usual gang, Shup, Yingxian, Zongjie & me to Geoff’s pad in celebration of his niece’s 1st month birthday. & everyone’s invited. A mini buffet was held at the corridoor together with lots of fast food (which I could never consume due to my sorethroat & cough) . We ended up booking tickets for Harry Potter through Geoff’s home only to find out how slow & disorganised Golden Village online bookings can be if we were to add additional seats at the last minute. With that saw a change in plans & a cancellation of the resevation at merchant court (our intened place for dinner). Which is too a good thing as it was expensive anyway! In place was the movie & dinner at Marina Square Swensens thereafter.

& man! did Marina Square change alot. But any old timer to the place will instinctively know that its actually still built on the old floor layout, with some minor touch ups, openings & coverings here & there, & did I mention the air-conditioning is like super-new? & brrrr cold too? We had a good chat, not only at dinner but amazingly at the end of everything when we even found a nice camping spot to talk on standing for like 30mins or so before calling it a day due to “last buses” (it was late anyway!). Till then through next year, we will meet again.

Located near Zion road is where the Boys Brigade (BB) HQ is. The class pretty much spend the whole friday afternoon there. Part of the CIP hours programme thingie, most of our time packing boxes clothing, toiletries, foodstuff & toys collected/donated into the Sharity Gift Box 2005 onto pallets going out to various homes such as the Singapore Christian home, Centre for exceptional Children & the Hougang Care Centre. All for a good course of course! We even got 5 CIP hours in return, with very good working altitude in the remarks! whee! Good thing the place is also near my home, so I very much know the best eating places around the vincity for lunch & breaks. Good thing we were there to help out today as they were really shorthanded on manpower & volunteers to cope with the Christmas donation & giving efforts, guess will be dropping by again to help in fortnight or so.

With that, here are some eye candy!

Packed stuff	A salty situation	Thats 4 pallets for the day!

If you would wish to contribute & helpout for a good course for the Sharity Gift box/warehouse this december before christmas, feel free to check out the Singapore Boy Brigade website for details or call 6737 0377. The BB HQ address is 105 Ganges Avenue, Singapore 169695.