vietnam day 3

headed back to saigon, back to red sun and got a day room at ground floor (which would prove devastating later) slept all the way til noon since the da lat saigon night bus was not a sleeper bus. went out, z dom and chun got stuff tailored while i just tagged along. didnt plan to get any of those anyways tho the shirt designs look cool.

ming was at the hotel by the time we reached back. quite a lazy day cuz of the bus trip and the rain so we stayed in the room. but the rain got heavier and heavier til. the drainage couldnt take it anymore.

the toilet drainage burst its banks and water(read: sewagey water) started streaming in. a couple of dead cockroaches, wet bags and some screams from us later, the lady boss came over and she was shocked herself. fortunately she made quick work of clearing it up and we were soon off for a short walk along the ankle deep waters outside the hotel.

there was one lady who was ladleing water out of her home in a futile attempt to salvage her furniture from the flood along the street outside our hotel. then, there was one ang moh lady who came by and asked her, can i have a photo?

what insensitivity. she thought that it was something interesting. i thought otherwise. should have told her off there and then.

dinner at bi saigon was alright. ambient and cozy.

next post - nha trang (vietnam day 4-5)

vietnam day 2

night bus the day before to da lat, a hilly region 1500m above sea level. walked out of the bus, and it was really cold at 5am. most of us were in shorts and berms. spent 30mins at the tour office wondering what we should do and decided on going on to peace cafe ( how communist can such names get?)

with a sense of gung ho and a map on tow. da lat proved surprisingly ok to navigate.

pic: view from peace cafe. the lady boss ushered us in for bfast and intro-ed a slew of day tours. knowing that we were around only during the day, she offered us bag drop and showering facilities at no price =3. so we duly ordered more food.

just some nicer photos to check out. this place is called valley d'amor . something like a botanical gardens for couples to pak tor. gotta pay for entrance tho, but scenery was fantastic. too bad we could only spend 45 mins there. still kicking myself for not buying the grilled sweet potato at the entrance.

this place is called crazy house - a hotel in da lat, consisting a series of thematic rooms modelled after animals, insects etc. really weird, but cool.

hcm city 20th july

first day in hcm city. i must conclude at the end of it all that it was all a blur. reached hcm early, started with trying to find a night bus to da lat. quite efficient actually. when we were still wondering what to do for the day since our bus trip was at 11 plus. we decided to pop by our hotel where we wil lstay on the 25th and 26th. the lady boss was really great, providing us with maps, information, and list of where to go to.
left our bags at the hotel and we were off in a walking tour. went to ben thanh market, reunification place, notre dame, post office (pay our respects to uncle ho =3). diamond plaza, russian market, army supplies market, back to ben thanh for dinner.
here i am, on the bus writing down this entry on a phone for blogging later in the days and if there is 1 word to describe it - 'overkill'.
last time round was so much more carefree haah
seems district 1 is fully walked already.
sleeper bus = normal tour bus. wonder how i can survive the next 5 hours on it.
no photos yet. pls be patient.

random postings

watched the dark knight this afternoon at the grand cathay.
seats were really good
'dense' is the word to describe it

never have i seen someone defining a villian so well
albeit a new class of it even
a villian who is such not because of greed, power and all that
but because he is a villian, as simple as that
give that man an oscar

vietnam tomorrow
not sure what to expect
but i cant wait

holiday season

bro just left for hk this morning. pretty much a spur of the moment thing. prolly he realised that its his last chance for a breather before he begins work in the civil service. maybe hes just sian seeing the rest of the family go off here and there in these few weeks and feels left out if he didnt as well haha.

quite a lot of things to do today. settle my travel insurance, meet up for a movie, daiso to buy last min travel supplies, then to pay for o week and decide if i wanna go pray in church.

it's interesting going on holiday with a bunch of friends that you have been really close to before but have been kinda going on seperate ways for the past few years. ns, overseas education and all. but somehow old bonds are renewed, new links form and it has all culminated in a trip together. kudos to chun and z for planning the trip tho' i actually have gone to viet before but just feel too unbothered to liaise and contact the others.

gotta try maintain this space in the next 8 days. i just need internet cafes with bluetooth access

muses

Jenny was a poor girl
Living in a rich world
Named her baby
Hope when she was just 14
She was hoping for a better world
For this little girl
But the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree
Well she gets that call
Hope's too far gone
Her baby's on the way
But nothing left inside
Together we cry!

Together we cry... Together we cry...
Theres so much sad gunna flood the ocean
all the tears from a world thats broken
Together we cry... oh.. we cry we cry oh.. we cry

excerpts from 'we cry' by the script, an irish band (cue U2)

new wave of socially conscious songs,
a la runaway love, one of the biggest hits in recent years
all the pomp and paegeantry in one earth, 46664, band aid etc.
feel good factor is there in songs, lyrics, concerts, campaigns.
but,
has anything changed?
if not, can we do anything about it in this lifetime?

eradicate poverty in 2015? seems very far off
but we can pray about it.

nostalgia and emptiness

feeling bouts of it recently. starting with this.

this is actually my blanket which i have been using since i was like 4 years old. been with me from hk to sg and survived numerous times in the laundry; til sometime 6 months back. the edges started tearing, one frayed end bore another and soon it became hard to even fold properly. i threw it away just a few days back and this was my only pic of it. fortunately my mum bought another one to replace it when she was back in hk last week. but still, things will never be the same again.

to the more serious things.

with my mum in hk and my bro set to be there on sat, and my dad going there 2 weeks later; i have been thinking about my relationship with my relatives in hk. its sad really, being away for the past 16 years, coming back once in a year or two to say hi and knowing so little about what they actually do, i must say that this is one of my biggest regrets coming over to sg. yeah sg is good, but the friends that i make here, the cousins that i have in sg as well, can never replicate that same feeling that i have forgone building up that relationship with my grannies, uncles etc.. its a pity actually, there would be a high likelihood that if i walked on the streets of hk and bumped into melody(thats the name of one of my hk cousins, but i have no idea how she looks, and prob. the same goes for her) i would have no idea i am related to her. in a way i feel that i have missed out on a certain part of an extended family life.

its not a situation a lot of people will find themselves to be in, and even so, its not something that they will feel the way that i do. but i always imagine, if my grannies were to pass away in hk one day and i was to receive that news, what would my emotions be like?

i cant even bear to imagine.

i m not being emo here. theres are huge line seperating emoness and being emotional. but i guess not everyone will understand.

acting sophisticated

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leafs a flower,
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Robert Frost (1923)

morning musings

having a phone next to me as i sleep is kinda interesting. been doing that for the past month or so already. with the wifi on i get to check fb and jimmyr, and also once in a while, record my dreams. no matter what people say about them being a valuable recess of what you hold dear, i still regard it as nothing more than a amalgam of the mish mash of the things that i see/hear/do the day before.

namie amuro pd for fass bash?, o school, phoon, bash, fop.
its weird - namie amuro and phoon are siblings? (phoon is my ns-mate and he's learning dance in o school (which i read about yest). last song on my playlist before i slept - marionette, ayumi hamasaki). popped by for fop precamp yest.

i m trying to find links here

sometimes, i wonder if i had really slept. maybe its the radiation.

commencement 2008

really cool seeing my cousin graduate.
kinda imagining my own graduation in time to come.



commencement 2011 checklist
plan of who/where/how to meet and take photos
smuggle coco under my cloak
photographer (prob beg a junior to do it for me)
vrooming a convertable, throwing my hat into the air, driving round nus and shouting 'ord lo', erm nope i mean 'graduate lo'
and a zany madcap idea of looking stupid and cool at the same time.



as my bro said
you will always be forgiven for anything in commencement.













once again, congrats on your 1st class honours!

sunday muses

'He can get drunk in a drag race or dancing without ever getting near alcohol. In our neighborhood it's rare to find a kid who doesn't drink once in a while. But Soda never touches a drop--he doesn't need to. He gets drunk on just plain living....'
S.E Hinton -the Outsiders- (1967)
-written in reference to a character in the book-

ultimately, the question is
what really satisfies in such a way that everything else is doesnt matter?

was offered a glimpse of that today.

random summer break activity

was in school just now to meet sharon for lunch and to get a grad. bear for my cousin whose commencement will be on monday. not typically me to leave it till so late to settle such stuff but i was too lazy for the past few days to travel all the way to school.

the table(where the bear sits on) seems to be rather messy.

fortunately, its not my table. hah

after vietnam, i shall see if my acc. could reach -$17.15 a la the movie wanted, where the guy realised there was this much in his account at the movie's end.

just got a msg from mindef, a generous payout of $112 makes my day. yippie!!! (this actually makes the disastrous(read:broke) state of affairs i m in now even more obvious)

module planning

its a challenge this sem planning for modules.
the time has come where pre-requisites for modules actually start taking into effect whether i can get all my module mates in the same mod or not. ec2102 is a huge barrier it seems
cant seem to let go of my ec2373 even with numerous potential clashes.
its the psychological barrier of seeing the only lvl 2000 econs mod left

and if i do not take it now. i will not be able to take it in year 3 since i could potentially be away on sep.
hmm, but then i can take it in year 4 as well.

5 more days to settle this, but i want to get it done sooner than later.

heard arts 0-week pre-camp is next mon and tues. cousin's graduatin' on mon and mom's coming back, so i prob give mon a miss tho' i could pop by looking stupid in formal attire. see what transpires over the weekend.

wei2, thanks for ur backpack. wonder how yellow its gonna be. but oh well, i will be it hcm, no one would bother.

dreams

just remembered 2 dreams from last night
they both sound weird. but i have weird dreams

first dream:
i found 30+ bucks in my old wallet.

second dream:
its really too stupid and unbelieveable to be written down.

then i woke up.
checked my wallet.
no such good news.
damn.

rantings

its hard to maintain a blog when one is undergoing a 1 month period of absolute sedation.
and even harder when one cant even remember what he/she has done the day before.

i m the one.

now, let me try to remember what i did yesterday.
.
.

damn i cant. (maybe i can refer to my blog)

perhaps i haven't done anything much yesterday, thats why.
maybe i shall talk about what i did today.

.
.

Oh man, what did i do today?

03s13 dinner

one of the most overdue dinners in a very long time.
10 of us (relatively good number) chatted and had dinner at cartel (dun really like the place but oh well )
we were reminded of
one sentence that will always remain in every one of us

你要反省为什么那只狗要咬你

did some random planning for vietnam with z and chun, yeah haha with z its always very random(read: spontaneous). and we realised that our itinerary didnt plan for any bathing opportunities since we will not have lodging for a couple of days. that is gonna be a little hiccup in our 'special' company of 5. z suggested going to some strangers house to bathe and i almost wanted to bash him lol.

some things just don't change.

new dawns?

third time that i have been restarting my blog. wondering to myself what went through my mind when i last deleted the old blogs and i cant remember why.
sad. i do not have a particularly good memory. sometimes.
especially when i usually do not think that online blogs/diaries actually serve its purpose like personal written diaries. deleting it seems to much easier.
but oh well.
after 1 month of hibernation (may) and 1 month of running ragged (june),
maybe this month i will continue with my blog.

whether i will just chuck this blog away in one corner in time to come? time will tell.


been catching up with various groups of diff people recently. last night, we had a fass house bbq in east coast, spontaneously started playing charades with another og, told some people its kinda random, but it was really good. i m a strong advocator of good clean fun. (seen from arts camp first night games)

looking forward to an 8 day vietnam trip on the 20th. 8 days are you nuts? gees, i cant explain why too. just that my friend planned it this way. what are you gonna do in ho chi minh for 8 days? i cant answer also. sometimes in life, there is no need to explain/ask/plan too much. too much rationalization and logical explanations. just go. dont question, dont doubt, once you hear the call? just do it. sounds like a sermon message? perhaps

'Dear children, let's not merely say we love each other; let us show the truth by our actions'
1 john 3:18