Actually I was planning to countdown the new year by myself, alone, enjoying a super pot of steamboat filled with delicious yummy veges and meatballs~ Sounds desperate and lonely huh? I don’t think so lor~ Haha.. Quite enjoy geh~~ Haha.. 單身的自由啊～～

new year eve steamboat.. SGD59.90 per pax.. you want?

Suddenly Boon Earn called and obviously he was alone too (another half wasn’t around.. so he looked for me lor.. =.=), so the kind-hearted me invited him and hence crushing my lonely moment~~~ Hahaha.. What’s more? He asked me to go out to countdown and watch the fireworks!~~ *faint* So much of a peaceful night huh? lol..

Bo huat la~ So must go lor~~ and after the steamboat, 9pm.. so here we go! I’ll let the photos tell the story~

but of course i must paste his face big big out first.. the face of the one who crushed my lonely new year eve~~~ lol

walking to the bridge~~ so crowded!

on the bridge

suddenly.. Boooooooom!

yay! it's 2010!!

Happy New Year!! *i didn't bring my tripod..*

I should have brought my tripod to capture the moment… Great! Now I have to wait another year and get through all the crowded area all over again… =.=” How clever I am?!

bokeh firework!!

so beautiful right?

Happy 2010 everyone!! What are you wishes?? What are your new year resolutions?? I will tell more about mine in the coming posts. It’s the 3 main projects I’ll be having this year. How about you?

December Holidays!

Gonna finish posting up what happened in December holiday before moving on to 2010! Haha.. So much fun I had during the great month of December! Trip to HK, gatherings, meeting new friends and so on. So here comes the photos!

My primary + secondary schoolmate Jiunn Yeep came all the way down (with his friends) to Singapore to celebrate Christmas! Haha.. So I decided to go out and be his photographer for his group (for free! =.=”) Good chance to try my camera too. Ooooh.. Did I mention that I got my own DSLR at last?!! Haha… Will post more about my darling next time.

Guess where I met my friend!

Hohoho.. If you guess Chinatown you are right!!

They stayed in a backpacker lodge in Chinatown… Ooooh…

me and Jiunn Yeep

And great time to spend my Christmas eve.. meeting new friends..

nice meeting a bunch of new friends..

Trying out some shots that I always want to do.. like Bokeh.. hahaha..

Merry Christmas!

I hope it’s not too late to wish you “Merry Christmas”!!

But if you’re coming to Orchard, Singapore to celebrate Christmas eve next year… Don’t say I never warn you…

beware! Christmas in Orchard, Singapore will leave you "breatheless"!!

Hohohohohoho…..

I took the almost last train service to Changi Airpot, departed from my university at about 10.20pm. Finally reached the airport about 80 minutes later. Do remember that my university  is located at the far west on Singapore island while the airport is at the far east… numb… numb…

Then I walked around for about 1.5 hours from Terminal 1 to Terminal 2, terminal 2 to terminal 3 then from terminal 3 back to terminal 1. Just for the fun of it. My flight was scheduled at 7am. So I got whole bunch of times…

Their shuttle train service operating almost 24 hours other than 2.30am to 5am. So you can travel around the 3 terminals easily.

Being the best airport, I like Changi but there is one thing I really hate about.

Haha.. I brought my laptop with me and was thinking of doing some online surfing. But there is no power point! I asked around, there are few at the coffee shops but it was so limited and all was occupied.

In the end I gave up and chose McDonald’s. Where they provide internet usage that will log you out automatically every 15 minutes.

OOOooh… Many people catch red-eye !! (Red Eye = Last Flight of the day)

Quite a number of people waiting for their loved (or hatred) ones out from arrival hall. lol

To be honest, I have been to Changi Airport many times not because of taking flights but because of my working nature. I once worked as a event assistants and I need to pick up a whole group of visitors/students (mainly from China) to my university. Hahaha

I enjoyed the moment very much eh!! Haha… A bit like tour guide liao… Hahaha… Bringing them to bus, on the bus do some short introduction… On the way see HDB then explain HDB… lol … wakakakaka

So can you see my flight?

But then again, if possible, I won’t want to spend a night in airport ’cause it’s freezing… lol… But as a budget traveler I don’t have so much money to call for taxi pick-up early in the morning (with 35% surcharge) … Nah…

==================

Alvin is a friend of mine whose his birthday is today. And his girlfriend’s birthday happened to be the same day too!

But that’s not all. It’s his big day as he is trying to propose to his girlfriend ONLINE by telling everyone how important his another half is to him.

hmm.. How can I turn him down? Hahaha… Bro go go go!!

“Rachel, will you marry me? I am waiting for your answer at a secret location. To find me, you need to unlock a series of clues which showcase my five resolutions to you. The first clue is in a video posted on my blog. I will be waiting for you till you show up.”

Read his blog for more details. Wish Alvin all the best dude!!

I might be a little bit biased here because I don’t like watching horror type of movie. Well, you can say I’m a coward or whatsoever but paying 10 bucks to scare the shit out of yourself wasn’t a smart thing, at least to me.

Well, unfortunately Pandorum fell into that category and to be honest with you I still couldn’t find the real motivation to watch the movie. Perhaps I was too stressed and I was looking a way to de-stress? (when actually my adrenaline push kept me stress all the time while watching this movie) Not a bad horror film I can say, as much as I can comment that this sci-fi actually does a better job at scaring people compared to those horror movies…

I don’t want to spoil much here. But if you would like to know more about the story I can give you some idea of the whole movie.

Imagine you are a crew in a spaceship that had just woke up from your long hibernating condition, well, like few hundred years? So you are like drunk and you don’t know what’s happening before this. All you know is that you are now naked (almost) and is now trapped in a room with another guy called Lt. Payton. So you two decide to find a route out and to find out what had happened to the ship.

And when the story moves on, you find xxxxxx and scary xxxxxx on the way and you know that the only thing to survive is to xxxxxxxx. So along the way you discover even more xxxxxxxx and xxxxxxx.

And will you survive? (pay the 10 bucks to find out…)

So to be honest the storyline is kinda predicted in a way. But you are paying more for the backbone of the sciences (the concept of the story which will be revealed at the end of the movie) as well as the effects that you get, the thrill and the excitement. (i guess.. though i hate those)

I’m sorry but I was expecting more from this movie. Perhaps I was in a bad mood while watching the movie.

Pandorum (2009) opens in Singapore on October 15.

My rating? Hmm…  Scale: 5 out of 7, worth checking out if you are still a sci-fi newbie or looking for some horror twist and adrenaline push.

Just a quick explanation, a bunch of students, faking a bus stop in our university by adding on the SBS Bus Sign on our internal shuttle bus stop to check if SBS driver would really stop.

I found it quite amusing. Not to say very funny though, but it certainly drew some attention away frommy heavy workloads and homework and add some humor in the school, which is something really lacking in this society here.

And today, I received this email.

SUBJECT: CAUTION AGAINST TAMPERING WITH TRAFFIC SIGNS

Dear Students

A recent incident in the campus has been brought to our attention. This incident has consequences.

We request all students to be aware of the specific legislation concerning traffic signs within the campus ground.   We are concerned that some students may perceive, in general, that tampering with traffic signs is a mischievous but harmless act. It is anything but. We wish to draw attention to Section 119(8) of the Road Traffic Act, which states:

“Any person willfully and unlawfully damaging, moving, defacing, altering or otherwise interfering with, any traffic sign shall be guilty of an offence, and any police officer or the Registrar or any officer authorized in writing in that behalf by the Registrar on production of his authority may without warrant arrest any person found committing such offence.”

It would be helpful to note that, if such a statutory offence is reported to the police or any other authorities, the case will be dealt with directly by the enforcement agency concerned, which may involve court prosecution.

Thank you.

Dean of Students

Which made me think. I know it’s okay to repond in time for such matter, I wonder Singapore’s humor is that limited? You should laugh, and let it go. Just the nature of the people here that they like to ‘complain’ too much and usually they got too free and like to bring up some small things to the media just for the sake of fun.

Not sure what I’m talking about? Another news below.

Orientation activities have come under the spotlight…

STOMPer Kenneyboy46, a 29-year-old computer technician, submitted the photos after he chanced upon them in a friend’s album on social networking website Facebook.

When interviewed by Shin Min Daily News, Kenneyboy46 said the first thing that came to mind when he saw the photos was: ‘Why is this happening in Singapore? What’s more, these youths are from a reputable local university.’

On STOMP, Kenneyboy46 also questioned why universities continue to allow such acts to continue…

An NTU spokesman responded as such: ‘Freshmen Orientation Camps (FOC) organised by the various student organisations are screened by the university.

‘Any activity that causes embarrassment or loss of dignity or well being to another student is deemed as ‘ragging’ and the university will take action against students who commit this offence.’

The spokesman added that the university will be following up with the student organisers.

While some people would dismiss the act as nothing more than amusing, Kenneyboy46 thinks it is an erroneous way of thinking.

Source: Straits Times

Well. I think it’s totally fine. Some of you might find it offended, but hey! The act is just … simply … hmm … eating a banana in a awkward position and that’s all! Com’on!! I am against obscene acts but this… This is just too much when someone saw it on other’s facebook album, found it ‘over-the-limit’ and decided to LEAK it to the media and talk bad about it publicly.

Talk about privacy and manners. Hey!

I think the guy who leaked the photos to the media was so envy that he couldn’t do that in his life.

LOSER!

While most of my Singaporean friends are totally awasome and funny to hang out with, I simply couldn’t agree more that perhaps it’s the mentality of the local society here and got too sensitive over small matters. Perhaps one of the disadvantages when you have too limited entertainment in a small country huh?

Well then I guess I am very looking forward to the casinos next year. Hopefully by then it will improve a little bit.

With the rise of Air Asia in the region, Malaysians are happy to see chances to go for longer and better holidays to better location even with their limited budgets.

Destinations

To be honest, the three major budget airlines that I am going to discuss later has their own interesting points.

 Air Asia

Being one of the most successful Malaysian company in the world, I am definitely happy to promote Air Asia to you all. In fact, for all the 6 flights that I’ve taken in the  past 2 years, it’s all Air Asia. One of the major reasons I chose them was just because I am staying in KL and thus very near to take the flight there. 

Air Asia has definitely expanded huge enough now, with future flights to Taiwan and more China’s destinations are definitely a very interesting thing to see for a Malaysian like me! =P You know what’s the BEST thing here?! Flying to London now may cost you less than RM1500 for 2-way!! How amazing isn’t it?!

 Tiget Airways

Well Tiger Airways is quite similar to Jet Star so I would focus more there. =P

 JetStar

Another budget airline (Australian company based in Singapore) that actually served quite a lot of interesting places. Where else you can get two-way ticket from Singapore-Perth for only SGD178 all-inclusive???!! (That’s like RM400!!!) If you’re going to Australia for a fun holidays, I would recommend JetStar!!

By looking at the destinations that each airlines can offer, obviously Air Asia beat the other two by offering more choices to other places while Jetstar is concentrating on both Australia and New Zealand. But JetStar still need to work more on as those who stay in KL and Singapore still cannot access direct flight to New Zealand.

Air Asia, being the first budget airline in the region surely has an advantage in exploring new routes and thanks to their effort we can now fly to Europe and Beijing!!

So Air Asia wins the first round!!

Air Asia 1 - JetStar 0 – Tiger 0

KL – Singapore

I am going to focus on the air fares particularly on the route KL-Singapore on March 30 to make a comparison on their usual charges. There is no annouced promotion for any of the three budget airlines (Air Asia, Jet Star and Tiger Airways) thus far and I am just purely searching through for their ‘normal’ price and what they can offer me if I decided to go back suddenly from KL – Singapore (or vice versa) in a 2 week advanced notice.

First, their price.

i. Ticket ‘Base’ Price

I browsed through 3 airlines for a ticket from KL to Singapore on March 30 and chose roughly the same time for the lowest airfare that they can offer. Surprisingly all of them offer a very good and low price even there is no promotion! In fact both JetStar and Tigerairways offer ZERO-AIRFARE while Air Asia lost a little bit with RM1.00 price ticket just slightly lgging behind.

But… !!!

Air Asia

Tiger Airways

Jet Star

I bet you can see the difference now clearly. Though both JetStar and Tiger offer zero airfare, their admin charges and taxes are obviously higher than Air Asia. Eventually the air fares become…

Air Asia – RM48.50

Tiger – RM57.00

Jet Star – RM68

Airasia wins again this round by clear mile!! Followed by Tiger.

Ticket ‘Base’ Price: 

Air Asia 3 (+2) - JetStar 0 – Tiger 1 (+1)

ii. Food Menu

Again, I browsed through the 3 airlines for their food. To be honest with you, I’ve not tasted all three of them and so I cannot judge them by taste. But I searched through their menu and the results are …

Air Asia

Since last year they have revamped their menu and now it has quite a variety of food available from local delicacy like Nasi Lemak to Western Chicken Folicia. “Heavier” meal costs RM7 if you booked online together with your ticket and RM9 if you bought it onboard. Quite reasonable I can say.

Tiger

Surprisingly there is no “heavy” or hot food served onboard. I’m not sure whether it’s good or not but the price seemed reasonable for a Singaporean but much more expensive than the already-expensive-AirAsia’s food.

The only good thing is that… They serve liquor onboard while Air Asia don’t… (Air Asia X do serve liquors) But doesn’t matter as I’m not an alcoholic and I can live without alcohol for a simple few hours flight!!

JetStar

Tell you what. Their menu is so mysterious that I cannot find anything on what they served onboard (for short course) but based on the internet user review. Thumbs down! I give them a thumb down too for not disclosing anything on the internet!! Oh gosh?!! What era is this?? Is your food so mysterious that you want to keep it secret to surprise your passengers onboard?!!

Definitely go for Air Asia for their HOT FOOD and reasonable price!!

Air Asia 4  - JetStar 0 - Tiger 1

iii. Add-On Services

And there are lots of add-on services like seat selection, luggae add-on, insurance etc that just work the same way like your Telecommunication Company that plan to suck as much money from you as possible. Anyway I’m going to explain how it worked in these 3 airlines.

For all 3 airlines basically they worked roughly the same in Seat Selection where you select a seat that you like, pay a nominal fee and there you go!

Air Asia just introduced this system 1 or 2 months ago and this definitely relieved their passengers as I need not to walk faster or run or splint or jump or scream or whatever to get on the plane fast enough to get a window seat.(Anyway window seat isn’t any better either..) Simple enough, pay RM25 for ’special’ seat or RM5 for other seats.

Tiger charges the most expensive fee for seat selection. That’s RM12.50 for standard seat and RM62.50 for ‘HOT’ seat. Hot your head!!

For Jet Star, they only charge if you are choosing those ’special’ seat for RM45. It’s RM20 more expensive but what’s good about their system is that they don’t charge for all other normal seat that you choose. How good, aren’t they?! It’s like the dracula’s fangs have reached your neck so close that they just let you go ’cause they stok stok don’t want to suck your blood anymore. (maybe they suck somewhere else…)

Other add-on services offered by Air Asia are insurance that comes with the online booking system which allows you to suck the money back from them if they ever fuck mess up with your holiday schedule with plane delay, luggage trouble or etc. And the bus service from KL Sentral is a lot cheaper if you booked together in the online booking system for just RM6.50 (normal price RM9). 

Do you want to buy a medical box onboard?!

Air Asia just won’t let go of a chance to earn the money…

Really… Air Asia is my BIG CHOICE kicking the other 2 airlines’ asses so hard!!! Now I shall annouce the winner of this battle…

To be fair, all the data I’ve got are at the time of publication of this log post was made. If any of the marketing officer from the any other airlines that would like to make clarification or sponsorship or anything, you may do so via my email address that you can find on the top right corner of this blog.

Since Air Asia did not pay for this post. I cannot let them win so easily!!

*****Air Asia Marketing Officer can choose pay certain amount of premium to take down the section below*****

Try Malaysia Airlines too!! They are having promotion too!! Though the price is more expensive but what you get is totally different!!

I’ve checked. Air Asia ticket final price costs me RM55.50 w/ food w/o insurance. While the better service MALAYSIA AIRLINES offer you RM99 for all the comfort that you may get onboard. Choose yourself!!

Sorry for making your saliva dried this week with so many food comments. =/

Last Sunday, due to loneliness, me and Andrew decided to go on a date at IMM, Jurong East.

No lah!! You don’t seriously think I’m curved…

We then “shui-bian”-ly walked into one of the cafe and congratulations… My salary is donated to the profitable fund of Cafe Cartel…

Knowing that Cafe Cartel is one of the premium western cafe and restaurant in Singapore, my 2nd visit to this IMM branch was so-so. Especially the service, all I got was some cold look without a smile and most of the time I needed to exaggerate my actions to be noticed. 

OK. Into the topic of the day. The food is ok. Much better than New York New York in Jurong Point. Seriously I had my first ever Pork Ribs in New York New York, Jurong  Point and I was disgusted by it. 

But they are having promotion here in Cafe Cartel and each Pork Ribs meal costs only SGD13.80. Which is a bargain compared to other meal available on the menu. So I decided to give it a try again though in my mind I kept telling me DON’T!!

It turned out to be MUCH MUCH better! It saved my impression on Pork Ribs forever! =P

The sauce was good! The meat was good! Everything was upto standard and tell you that I never regret ordering this! Haha… The meat didn’t stick to the bones like what the New York New York did. And it was softer, much more softer compared to New York New York! Seriously, and the most important, IT DOESN’T GIVE YOU STOMACHACHE afterwards! (  you know what I meant.. )

Free-Flow-of-Bread provided with any order.. Taste Good too!

Then I think it’s almost the end of the day so they were having half-price promotion for their soup and the cakes!! Hohoho… it’s GREAT DEAL but at the same time it injured our wallet…

Soup of the Day… so-so… =/

Orea Cheese Cake ordered by my dear Andrew… so-so…

My Blueberry Cheese Cake… ok ok lor…

And guess what?! Today is MangoDay!! Both of us ordered Mango-related drinks… =.=” how lovely…

I hope you all won’t misunderstand anything after this post. T.T

I’m stuck in making a decision of which place to go for this coming Friday night!! It is much anticipated night for the week, after 5 days of working and of course I need to relax myself.

It all got down to 2 choices, namely the very famous “Wala Wala Bar” and the infamous “Geylang”.

(1) Wala Wala Bar

Introduced by Kenny Sia. (Amazingly a lot of my Singaporean friends doesn’t know about this place!! Makign it so mysterious that I must go down to have a look) Scored 8 out of 10  in many many Best Bar review. It is surely a gem that I want to try to have fun and relax in the great music that they offer each night.

Range between SGD15 – 25 of price per visit. It provides great finger food and pizzas for friends to gather and have fun with the rock music that you can’t simply resist! The service are so good that people keep coming back for more and some reviewers suggested that you come early or you won’t find any vacancy from 8.30pm onwards til midnight! What’s more?! If you order your drink before 9pm, it’s Happy Hour and you will get 1 more for free!!

Given so many priviledges and tasty looks. I seriously feel like giving them a visit!!

(2) Geylang

Giving the infamous name, “Geylang”, this is one red district place that you MUST VISIT in Singapore when you are here, not for the prostitutes but for its food at least.

This place is SO-LIKE Malaysia that sometimes I won’t realise that I am in the kiasuland. The street. The traffic. The shops. The people. And the food here is so like Malaysia that you might forget that you are not in Malaysia anymore!!

It is also a place where you can a good bargain of getting a durian for 50 cents!!! One of their most famous dishes here is the Frog Porridge. I’ve tasted it once here and seriously speaking, though I was afraid and hate the frog, the whole porridge tasted unexpectedly well to me! =)

There are so much that the streets can provide to you. Eventhough you are not on appetite, NO AFRAID as dessert are well served anytime at the corners of the streets!!

Eye-dessert served after meals =)

=======================

Seriously, I can’t make up my mind now. I’ve been to Geylang a few times before so I might not be so keen on going there but the traffic and the dynamic of the streets there will surely make a different experience if I ever go back again.

But the Wala Wala Bar is so decent and cool with relaxing music in the background while you chat with friends about anything along with the chilled beer served!! (some more buy 1 free 1!!! lol)

Why not you give me some advice?? Post your comment down below and I will post with my review of my Friday Night experience afterwards!! Yay!!

Just that when I came back from KL, I took AirAsia’s express bus called STARMART (NOW they want to make some profit from land transportation huh?) ’surprisingly’ caught on the “MASSAGE COUCH”. (my father bought it and I didn’t know about it) 

I was thrilled because I had never had a so called ‘luxurious’ trip between Singapore and KL before. All I took was usually no frill budget bus that is cheaper and sometimes I would run over to JB to take them.

So I was excited. And on the bus I discovered this 4-button panel.

I pressed the first one. It went,

“DUP DUP … … DUP DUP … … DUP DUP …”

I pressed the second one. It went,

“DUP DUP DUP … DUP DUP DUP … DUP DUP DUP …”

Weird… And out of curiousity, I pressed the third button…

“DUP DUP DUP DUP … DUP DUP DUP DUP … DUP DUP DUP DUP …”

Shoot… Just the rhythm different only lor… =.=” I slept all the way…

This bus cannot make it la … Spacious but that’s all.