Monday, January 04, 2010

in the air again

So many memories still seem fresh from our socjot trip 6 months ago. huddling with kenny in the cold brunei jungle at night, trying to sleep in wet uniform in the freezing night, learning the lyrics of hallelujah from fabriz...and now i'm returning to the forsaken place to lead new cadets. with melvin. at least there's that consolation knowing that melvin will be with me :)

guess it just sucks coz we're not going together with lots of friends and have to rough it up on our own. sigh. goodbye. off to the gate.

life is tough. miss everyone already....

whizzer; 12:55:00 am

Saturday, January 02, 2010

1st of 2010!

Hullo! Here are some recollection of happy things in the days running up to the new year for me to remember and be happy when I come across them in my future archive scannings!


Christmas Day mini-outing

Invited Kai Jun and Kev to church for Christmas service. Had Pizza Hut and KFC food for light Christmas lunch in church before we left for Vivo to catch Fabz and Kenny. Wandered around and shopped for a while (actually I was looking for a bag and the 2 Ks were helping me look haha) while waiting for Fabz to de-ship from his 3 day family cruise aboard the Superstar Virgo. I think it was the Superstar Virgo. Maybe it was the Superstar Libra. BUT I'M PRETTY SURE IT WAS THE SUPERSTAR VIRGO. yeah. Eventually we met up with him and explored the Duolos (or the outside of it) seeing that it was docked at the port. It was the last time it'd be here since its going to be decommissioned. Sigh. Too bad it wasn't open for touring. A short while later Kenny arrived, and we walked around aimlessly, unfortunately chancing upon PageOne where everyone but me rushed into. Me. The intellectual blackhole according to my wonderful friends 8-) so we lamented for a long while inside (or rather I did) and finally got everyone out to proceed to the Pacific Coffee Company to lounge around and drink coffee. Whereupon the following photos were excitedly taken. Or not so excitedly.

The chocolate powder going into my latte.


More chocolate powder going into my latte. It kinda became mocha after that.


Kevin and Kenny were obviously amused by the chocolate powder.


Yes I knew that was a stirrer. BUT there's something interesting about drinking through the hollow tubes that make up the stirrer.


Kenny! (:


Group shot 1. With my camera being balanced on something like 2 library books and what not on timed mode.


Group shot 2. Yay happiness =)


Thereafter we dispersed for home. Our respective homes that is. Went to Aunty Grace's house for our usual extended family dinner. Uncle Thomas and family came too, along with his sister and her husband. Ran over to Uncle Ray's house after dinner with cuzzes to play Guitar Hero. I mean to pwnzzzz at Guitar Hero heh :p Happy presents-opening time after that.





Boxing Day Excitement

Long day. Met Kia, Weiren, Yong Feng, Joash for lunch as Astons near Parkway Parade. It's been a long time since we've been able to meet up with Weiren. Anyway had a good time catching up a bit and having good old laughs like we used to. After that, we left for PP, where Weiren went home, and Kia, Yf and Joash went to Kia's house to pick up the food for the Chorale gathering later that night. Meanwhile, I walked around PP 5000000 times looking for nice/not too expensive log cakes to bring for my 2 parties at night. Settled on Fudgy Gooey Chewy Brownies from the Brownie Factory (which turned out to be nice. Very nice.). Then walked around to look at stuff and bought a Christmas present and a t-shirt for myself. Occasionally, I decided to walk past the Famous Amos shop to sniff the heavenly scent of freshly-baked cookies. Mmmmm. A million years later, linked up with Sabby after her Sec 4 class outing to take a bus to Jarrod's place for 3M Christmas party!

We finally reached his house after my amazing navigation skills and Jarrod's lousy directions (and much complaining and abuse by SABBY LAU). Played his Wii a bit with the guys who were there already while others streamed in, and Sabby, Guo Zhong and others played Mahjong. Helped Alicia, Joyce, Rui Yi and can't remember who else to prepare the stuffing for the turkey that Alicia brought and spent forever trying to reduce the stuffing so that it didn't look like mushroom soup. In the end we decided to just put it in a separate bowl instead of stuffing the turkey because it was taking too long haha. Although we found that it was reduced enough to stuff when we poured it out. Had a nice feast of turkey with delicious stuffing and cranberry sauce on the side, Old Chang Kee curry puffs and fishballs (courtesy of Jarrod), fried rice from some hawker stall, potato salad (made by Alicia with lots of help from her brother!), fruit salad (by Eric) and my brownies! And of course the ubiquitous soft drinks, which we never seem to be able to finish at any party. I think that was all the food we had. We all felt super stuffed after eating not a whole lot of food though. Must have been the turkey stuffing haha :) It was so good that I ended up eating it on its own hahaha :p

Throughout dinner, we had a great time playing Raving Rabbits/Bunnies (I can't remember the name of the game) on the Wii and other Wii sports games. I totally pwned at the mini-game where you're supposed to drown the diver bunnies with carrot juice before they reach the shore HAHAHAHA super fun. Boxing was highly entertaining too, with Siang Huat providing much of the physical entertainment through his hilarious movements while playing with people. Ended up staying longer than expected, and we soon had our gift exchange. I randomly got a pair of Bonia sunglasses from Joyce haha. Sadly, they were for ladies. Lol but everyone was amused with their presents and had fun laughing at me wearing my new shades. Here they are!


MY BONIA SUNGLASSES HAHA!


And here are the photos we took before I had to leave for Chorale party, which I was already super late for :(

Intra-class best budd Eric! with Terence :)


UK girls Luvy and Geena with Officer CADET Soh XD


Beloved JC class 3M <3


3M girls (most of them anyways) Mah Sistahs hee :) :)


When I finally managed to pull myself away from my best and most loved class of all time, I had to take a cab down to Joash's house. Got there at almost 10pm. Everyone was kinda lounging around at that time. And Quan's ice cream was gone :( :( Anyway, soon after we started to sing, as at every other Chorale outing/gathering. Mostly carols that we sang last year, and others like our all time favourite, Irish Blessing. Lots of nice musical moments, considering we've not sung together in a while. Too bad I missed the Skype session with the overseas girls argghh :( Miss Suet and Gen and the other Chorale girls studying overseas a lot sigh...hopefully June 2010 will arrive quickly and we'll get to meet up and have stayovers! :D Chilled some more around Joash's living room and left around 11.45pm because some people wanted to take public transport, so had to catch our last trains/buses. Took the bus to Tanah Merah MRT with Quan, Fried and Isaac, then we slowly lost Fried and Isaac at their respective MRT stops until it was just Quan and I. On the MRT, some Malaysian girl came up to ask us for directions and advice on how to get home (CCK) and we somehow chatted with her all the way until we had to get off at Bishan (even when we had to change trains, we resumed our conversation on the NS train haha). Had an interesting chat, just the 3 of us (the friend she was with went to sleep in one of the seats on the train), and found her to be very friendly and full of praise for Singapore. Like the cleanliness and what not. Just that everything was expensive when she converted it to Ringgit, and she thought our MRT system ran for 24/7 haha. One of the rare nice comfortable chats I've ever had with a stranger. We made it to Bishan Circle Line station soon (travelling time didn't seem so long when we spent the whole time talking to each other and to our new Malaysian friend) and as part of our Christmas tradition which has been running for the past 3 years, Quan gave me George at the Bishan Circle Line Station as we were leaving for home on opposite sides of the station. This is George:
Doesn't he look delectable (:

Fantastically enjoyable day all in all.





SOL Cohesion Day

SOL 37th Anniversary Cohesion Day! Had to attend even though I was on leave -.- Assembled at Eastpoint Mall (AT SIMEI! where NO ONE ever goes to) at 0800hrs, so had to wake up really early to take the train there. The really really long train ride. Eventually we were given our groups and I ended up with Arvin, WO Rajan and Das, and CPL Neo. Amazing Race with 4 checkpoints near MRT stations, all the way to Harbour Front from Simei. Aim was the find all 4 checkpoints and return the earliest, and taking a photo at each checkpoint with all your team members and a member of the public would earn the team bonus points. 1WO Rajan and 1WO Das were amazing in recognising where the checkpoints were by simply looking at the photo printouts. So if not for our morning tea break at Banquet just oustide Vivocity where Rajan treated us to black carrot cake (which was delicious!) and we had tea and coffee and what not, we probably would have gotten first place. But where's the fun in chionging all the way? After all we were cohesing over food and drink :DD Along the way, we just missed the train 4 times. Like we arrived at the platform as the train doors were closing. How frustrating is that. And 2nd last time, LTA Wang and team were gloating at us from inside the train doors as we just missed the train for the 3rd time. Zzz. Met their team again on the train returning to Simei after finding our last checkpoint. Our team got 3rd out of the 4 teams haha. It was great fun anyway and I got to know those in my team a lot better. Not to mention I had a stitch almost throughout the race laughing at Rajan's random nonsense and his interaction with Arvin haha super duper funny. Here's a photo we took outside Vivocity at our 3rd checkpoint with a random person for the bonus points (the guy in orange):




When Amazing Race ended, we had a sumptuous buffet lunch at Hans River Restaurant in Eastpoint Mall. Seoul Garden style. Lots and lots and lots of different kinds of beef, chicken (like char siew chicken), fish, mutton, seafood, steamboat food, veg, and I even tried frying rice with eggs and garlic haha. Turned out quite nice I think :p Had prize presentation and souvenirs for Cohesion Day were given out. I got an SOL shoe bag, a bar of Grouse (whiskey) chocolate, an Adidas water bottle, a pair of Reebok socks, and a Reebok wristband for my Amazing Race prize. Cool stuff for Army souvenirs huh? Dispersed after we had dessert, whereupon I left for Somerset to meet Gerald, Ben Low and Yisheng at 313 to spend the afternoon with.

Met Gerald, then Ben Low (who came from Chorale workshop), then Yi Sheng at 313 after exploring the place and wandering around Zara for about half an hour. Spent some time at the corner of the 2nd floor railing chatting about lots of stuff and laughing at things. Occasionally some shoppers gave us strange looks when we suddenly burst out laughing or when we tried to differentiate between Ben's falsetto, gay voice, and normal voice, and tried to imitate lol. Yi Sheng's still the same old funny blur boy haha. Moved on to sit at Food Republic to have tea of dough fritters and hot soya bean when we got tired of standing at the railing. Chatted some more, then Fabz called me from work and I walked around talking to him for a bit, sometimes returning to our table to try to communicate with the 3 of them using hand signals which they apparently thought were extremely amusing. When we got tired of that, we walked around looking in shops and moved on to take several very long escalators to the rooftop garden at the top of Central. It was fun to enjoy the breeze and the view and see what shapes/letters we could decipher from the formation of trees many stories below next to the skate park. Walked around Central some more and took a break at the bridge outside the Crumpler shop, where Ben tried to do some tuck jumps in school pants after we gave him some tips on how to improve at NAPFA hahaha. Funny people. As it got dark, we left for Cineleisure with the intention of watching a movie, but since I couldn't stay out too late (and Did You Hear About The Morgans only started at 7.30pm), we gave it up and went to Billy Bomber's for dinner. Spent the rest of out outing time there eating and reminiscing and catching up more about what was going on in our respective lives and sharing stuff about army and what not to give Yi Sheng an idea of what to expect. It was a fantastic outing and felt great to hang out with these guys again. We finally left around 9.30pm with the promise of having a stayover sometime next year if we could spare the time. Took the train back to Bishan and bus-ed back home with Gerald.





ALTI Family Day

ALTI Family Day! Another burnt day of leave since I was forced to attend. Met Kenneth and Aaron at Yishun MRT at 7.40am to walk to SAFRA Yishun. Found our way there soon and saw lots of army people already there. Met up with Chian Fern and registered and went to slack around by the swimming pool while waiting for the day's activities to begin. I sat out for the water telematch while Aaron, Kenneth and Chian Fern formed their team with other ALTI people and went on to win the games, with much excitement during the course of the games. Meanwhile I stood by the side with Matthias and Joe (8th LOCC, who I know from my OJT at STC during specialisation in Pro term) and took photos for the guys. When that was over, we went to take part in the bowling competition. 4 of us formed a team with another 2LT from ALTI also called Joe. Our first game was more like a warm-up round and we didn't do so well, but our 2nd game was great! Anyway we enjoyed ourselves immensely, I did anyway, since I haven't bowled in a really really long time. Theses are some of the shots we captured of ourselves bowling:

Aaron


Chian Fern


Kenneth


ME! Look at that posture. WOW.


ME AGAIN! Look at that, look at that. ABSOLUTELY WONDERFUL POSTURE. haha XD


This is Joe. The super pro bowler. He got 6 strikes in a row (double turkey?) for our 2nd game. Very very pro.


And here's our final scores for the 2nd round:

WOOT! :D :D :D


We managed to squeeze in half a game after our 2nd round, but got cut off a few frames before we ended. More like a "for fun" round. Anyway then we had prize presentation, and our team won bowling! So we each got a medal! Yay! (:




In the end, Aaron, Kenneth and Chian Fern each got 2 medals (because they won the water games too), and our YELLOW TEAM won overall champion, so we took a photo with the huge trophy haha. Don't have the photo with me though. Then we had a nice buffet in the bowling alley, during which there was an extremely noisy magic show going on for the kids in attendance, and we were cringing at the noise from the very loud mic the magician was using. He pulled a really cute rabbit out of some cylinder though haha. After everything ended, we left to go home. Walked back to Yishun MRT with Kenneth and Aaron. Kenneth left, and I waited with Aaron for his mum to pick him up. Was finally alone by 12.50pm and I crossed the road to Northpoint shopping centre to hang out and walk around 100000 times while waiting for Fab. Spent the time walking through every aisle in Cold Storage and looking out for stuff I could buy to bring to Brunei. Then walked around the whole place some more. More like window shopped. Walked and walked and walked. And walked a lot more. And messaged Seth and Wayne. Fab called around 3.40pm and arrived at 4.10pm thereabouts. Spent most of the time with him in the library talking about stuff and looking at books. Hung out some more and left around 6pm for the MRT where we left in opposite directions. Sigh I always seem to be going home in the opposite direction from my friends. Overall, quite a memorable day. Especially since I got to meet up with Fabz :)



Aaaand that's all for now. I'll find another post to squeeze in comms ball photos and first 2 weeks at work after commissioning if possible. Back to bro's birthday celebrations! ciao (:

whizzer; 5:35:00 pm