112281102464695728 Sunday, Jul 31 2005

sigh, the whole weekend is burnt just like that. made the wrong decision in signing up for the national day duty thing.

the initial plan was that being the so-called “bomb sweep squad” aka “saikang escort”, all we needed to do was to conduct cursory checks on the buses that were fetching red crossers and st johners to suntec, as well as identity and bag checks on random personnel. twice each time, once at 4 pm and another time at 10. it sounded really good. a 1 day off for this is really easy to get!

and then, the senior medic at a medical post requested that we stayed back between 4 to 10 as “security guards”, to prevent unwanted personnel, especially pesky photographers into the medical post. not that good after all, but okie, since we have already promised.. not very nice to back out. besides, a 1 day off for this is reasonable.

then, the admin instruction came out. it’s changed to between 2 to 10. now it’s not appealing anymore, but heck, we’ve promised.

but it’s the attitude of the people over there that irritates us. take the senior medic for example. the way he speaks and how he rudely brushed past me without a word of apology was a clear tell-tale sign of what’s to come. seeing that the situation was well under control with no one around us, anthony and i placed two chairs outside the medical tent, and sat on them. i swore we didn’t block more than 5% of the entrance to the tent, and the entrance was still fucking big. besides, if there’s a stretcher situation, we would be smart enough to see from far and give way on time.

but no, the senior medic came and in a very impatient tone he told us “don’t sit here lah! you’re blocking the whole entrance, how can stretcher go in?” ok, so we moved it further out a little. “eh still blocking the entrance you know that or not”… … only after we moved again was he satisfied and left.

and guess what? later in the evening, his own men took out a long bench and placed it right in front of the tent entrance, and three or four of them sat down happily. he came out, looked at them, smiled and left. grrrrrr. even if he’s in a stressful situation, he’s still being a fucker.

the medical officer in charge is equally mean. at the end of the day, we were supposed to “escort” the st johners back to their headquarters which is like a twenty minute walk from city hall mrt / lavender mrt. we didn’t exactly see the point of doing that, as did the st johners who even asked us why we were so suay to be ordered to do such pointless things. so, beng called up the officer, to ask if we could dismiss at the padang straight.

“hello? who’s this?”
“hi sir, this is cpl .. here.”
“who?”
“cpl …”
“ya. what?”
“i was wondering if we can dismiss at the padang straight..”
“no. you’ve to escort them back to their headquarters.”
“pardon me for asking, but may i know why?”
“i dunno. that’s just the procedure.”
“ok-” -click-

hopefully on national day itself, things won’t get this bad.

after the whole thing, me, beng and kelvin went to boat quay for some drinks cum heart to heart chatter. and by some drinks i mean each person around 5 housepours, 3 beers (mug), 3 tequila shots which we finished up within 1 minute and a strong albeit fake flaming lambourghini. we went chimney-mode throughout as well.. sharing two packs in a matter of four hours, to make us even higher.. to make things worse. i was ok all the way … until the lambourghini drink. after that, i was seriously testing the borders of my high threshold.

and then, i spent the afternoon today at my cousin’s house giving him tuition. really grateful that at least for today, my dad is free to fetch me to and fro, saving up to two hours of travelling time. still, this weekend really sucks for me.

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112256311954450717 Thursday, Jul 28 2005

i’m on my way to getting sacked by my student!

Me: do you know lenz’ law? -long explanation on how it works- blah blah oppose the change blah blah induced emf blah blah… right hand screw rule too complicated that’s why got fleming right hand rule etc…. -another long explanation on how its based on lenz law- remember, must memorise the definition okie? will come out in exam. it’s a very important concept..

(lasts about twenty minutes)

him: orh okie…

Me: can score you a lot of marks if you answer correctly -

him: hey, what’s that? (pointing at textbook) “lenz law is not in the syllabus.”

Me: -_-… err.. still need to know how it works la.. maybe noneed to memorise definition only…

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112161645676676036 Sunday, Jul 17 2005

On living costs. Perth has a very high living costs compared to what we have over here. sure the servings of food are greater, but the increase in serving isn’t exactly proportional to the increase in costs. but we still manage to economize on various stuff, esp. those breakfasts we have in the mornings, courtesy of guojie. we could find a huge carton of all-natural fruit juice for 1/3 price (because it’s one day to expiry anyway.) and then there’s those cheap pizzas and pies which we could easily grill and microwave, at a low cost..

On food. Maybe we haven’t been visiting enough, but there don’t seem to be much variety apart from fish n chips, pizzas and steak. the fish n chips are nice though, compared to the ones we have over here. and they are always prepared with large amounts of salt that you can see patches of them on the fish. probably that’s what makes it sooo tasty. only after a few meals of fish n chips you’ll suffer from overkill and vow not to touch fried fish for a longg time. and then there’s this soft drink, called LIFT, a kind of fizzy lemonade that is super tasty, and widely available over there, but not found in singapore. i wonder why…. the best meal is still, in my opinion, located at the Pontiferos Restaurant, which serves really, really, amazing seafood platters.

On people. THe people are generally very friendly, despite what we hear of australians being racists towards us. the people in perth city itself are less friendly, and we received some minor tauntings. but generally they’re a bunch of very nice people. “how’s it going, mate.” love ‘em all. haha…

On nightlife. One thing which i figure is the reason for the good-temper and friendliess of the citizens is probably the short working time. ok granted the sky turns dark at around six or so but that doesn’t mean the shops have to close at FIVE!!!! except for thursday where it’s “late night shopping” day, which means all shops will close at nine, we get the doors shut in front of us all the time. even the restaurants close early. even the AFTER HOURS clinic closes at ten. wow, that probably redefines “burning midnight oil” which will mean sleeping at ten pm for them. that doesn’t mean, however, that the clubs close early. though still earlier than singapore, at least the clubbing streets, e.g. North bridge, james street etc. are still bustling with young people at night. and the club houses always boast swanky designs, that those over here can’t hold a finger to.

On shopping. what else can i say? the shops do sell very nice designs, which albeit may be on the pricey side, but are still worth buying. the only major flaw is that they all close at five. which can really dampen the mood.

On roadkills. interesting… while in singapore we only very occasionally see stray dogs / cats making a dash across our roads, throughout our extensive road trips in australia, we have seen several kangaroos crossing roads, a few emus and even rabbits. though such encounters are potentially fatal to both the driver and the creature (as can be seen from the dead critters sprawled on the centre of the roads), it makes driving more interesting.. or at least for the passenger. heh…

ON things we could have done but didn’t.

Diving. water too cold. damn, was thinking of enjoying a view of a totally new set of marine life, but no. conditions ain’t right.

Snorkelling. same as diving. water was too freezing for us to dip in.

Clubbing. too tired, couldn’t afford to drive to and fro. and cab fare too ex. various various unforseen circumstances that prevented us from enjoying a night at “Rise” in James street.

Nude beaches. too cold for anyone to strip, LOL! wtf were we expecting?!

in conclusion, although we had fun, we certainly missed out on a huge lot. so, may visit perth again, in a few years summertime.

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112161526156974629 Sunday, Jul 17 2005

back from PERTH. it was… more like a nature / sightseeing visit than the action-packed one that i had been anticipating. but still quite an experience. haven’t been to such a cold country for a long time, since… 11 yrs? where i first went australia back then at around the same period.

just a brief description of the things that we did in perth.

Day 1, 12/07/05.
checked in at changi airport at around midnight, took the overnight plane to perth. and the moment we stepped out of the perth airport, for the first time, i see smoke coming out of my mouth as i speak! the temperature was almost zero degrees over there! checked in at our bungalow, rather satisfied with the conditions, slacked around for a short while before we set off.

first stop, Bell Tower. supposedly the largest “musical instrument” in the world. it’s basically a tower that consists of six (or is it seven?) huge bells, each can be controlled by a separate rope in the control room. the bells are really loud and you can hear it even at a far distance away. and also, the architecture is amazing; the tower is so high that my fear of heights resurfaced everytime i looked up at the roof from the first storey. we could access up to the sixth storey, and took plenty of pictures along the way.

King’s Park. a very popular nature park in perth that boasts a diverse flora variety. indeed, we saw many kinds of trees and flowers that we couldnt find in singapore. notable ones include the baobab tree, which is basically a thick artifical-looking smooth-bark tree that stores water in its trunk. but then again, i’m not exactly a plant person so i wasn’t feeling real excited over there. the scenery is good though.

Caversham Wildlife Park. probably the best place we’ve gone in day 1. unlike the singapore zoo, this pseudo zoo has many walk-in enclosures where we could come face to face with kangaroos, wombats, quokkas etc. spent a long time in the kangaroo enclosure.

didn’t do much at night because we were too tired lol.

Day 2, 13/07/05.

quite a stressful day. i was the ‘vehicle commander’ for the day, and my map reading skills are far far below average. in fact, according to kelvin, i am by far the worst v com he has ever seen. but at least he never lost his cool all these while, even though by several unforseen circumstances i keep navigating into the wrong roads. which i’m really grateful actually. cuz i was thinking, if he loses his cool, i’m gonna lose mine too, and that isn’t going to help either of us.

Rottnest Island. Now this is an impromptu decision. we have booked an air taxi to take us there the night before, but our friendly neighbours told us that rottnest island will be a terrible place to visit during winter time, esp if it’s raining. and it was supposed to rain on this day. we tried to call up the air taxi to cancel the flight but apparently it was too late. shortly after we left a message we got the organiser to call us asking us to pay a $50 administration fee.

we decided to go in the end though. but we didn’t go diving and snorkeling cuz the waters were too cold. we just cycled throughout the island. and even that was cold. met a lot of quokkas, but all ran at the sight of humans. and then there was one on the road side, which we played with and it didn’t resist much. i figured it was probably ill, but nonetheless we took pictures with it. it was only after that i saw a display saying it’s an offence to play with quokkas. oops…

adultshop.com. just some adult sex shop. went inside see see look look. saw a few teenage girls wowing over a men porn magazine and caressing the front cover guy… indeed a culture shock haha.

Burswood international Casino. it was cold during the walk into the casino since the car park was quite a long way from the entrance. the guy insisted on seeing all of our passports and asked a lot of stupid questions before letting us in. by some stroke of luck i managed to find 1 credit (20 cents) in a slot machine and used it to win $1. kelvin was even luckier. at some wheel-of-fortune-like game, he bet on a slide the wheel will stop at and won $10 for that. we wanted to go to the retro club called Ruby Room but it was closed. wtf…. good experience though.

Day 3, 14/07/05

Nambung Nature Reserve. now this is the longest “road trip” i’ve had. it’s like 3 to 4 hours drive of at least 110 km/h to reach the reserve from our bungalow. and that’s provided that we don’t lose our way. we almost did. upon reaching, we first visited the Pinnacles Desert. which is quite a beauty. i can’t help but notice that a lot of protruding sand looked like dickheads though. spent the whole journey trying to find a bobtail skinks which they say is very commonly located over there, but couldn’t find any. later visited the Jurien Bay and the Kangaroo Point. saw several kangaroos, rabbits, emus, and even a pelican on the sea. all these make the longggggg trip worthwhile.

meanwhile, on the car, we really tried our best to keep ourselves, esp. the driver awake. listening to blasting eurotechno for 5 rounds, stuffing our mouths with salt and vinegar flavoured chips and attempting to drive the car without a licence, on the grounds of “letting the main driver rest” (kelvin is the only one with the licence), did help prevent us from falling asleep, to some extent. ha…

Day 4, 15/07/05.

Crystal Cave at Yanchep National Park. the cave, with its stalactite-filled caverns was beautiful. so is the national park itself, where we saw a lot of different never-seen-before species of birds, and ducks. we rented a rowboat to row far into the centre of the lake, and me and yauhong almost couldn’t make it back after our boat got stuck on a marsh.

Margaret River chocolate factory. nothing much, just a huge shop with various chocolate assortments and merchandise to purchase. was expecting some “charlie and the chocolate factory” like tour.. but bah. the chocolates are tasty though.

Swan Valley. interesting place. it has a lot of wineries; most of them offered free wine tasting. we went to three of them and tasted until guojie and i looked like a red traffic light. (we both have the asian flush syndrome.) bought some wines from various stores, esp at the one with that chio shopkeeper.. just an uncanny coincidence heh.

Perth City. went for some shopping at perth city. never did i expect to find a shirt that i actually quite liked and bought it. the rest also bought some stuff, with yauhong buying a few shirts (i think), guojie bought a shirt, and kelvin bought a wallet. only edmond kept his wallet sealed all the while.

After everything, we decided to go to james street for club rise, after sending a few of us who did not want to club back to our bungalow. Fearing that kelvin may fall asleep while driving back, we decided to take a midnight stroll from our bungalow to the main road and flag a cab from there. we were shivering all the way, which was not unexpected since the temperature was somewhere between 0 to 5 degrees. but stupid as we were, we kept walking, and even took a detour into the dense trees which we did not even know where it led to (thankfully, as we found out later, just a residential area.) in the end, we reached the main road and managed to get a cab, only to ask the driver to drop us some few hundred metres or so away from where we first boarded it. the travelling cost was too expensive for any of us to afford. so then, stupidly went back to our bungalow to spend the rest of the night.

Day 5, 16/07/05

RAAF. Picked up kelvin’s friend, from the royal australian air force, and met up with yauhong’s friend, guofeng, who is also currently stationed there for his air force training.

Warehouse stores. bought a pair of moderately good looking adidas shoes.

Fremantle Market. we went there shortly before it closed. this reminded me of those crowded markets in bugis street, and those in bangkokg, thailand. nothing much really, just a few interesting souvenir shops, and some religious items for sale. the warehouse shopping centre was way better.

Fremantle Prison. quite a memorable visit to the now-defunct prison, where the tour guide gave us interesting snippets on prison trivia, such as the way of life over there, and the history of the prison. we visited the vegetable farm, where the prisoners were suposed to grow vegetables for their own consumption but later prevented from doing so because they were growing “other kinds of herbs” haha. we went to the punishment room, where suddenly i realised caning in singapore is rather humane, compared to how their whip the prisoners over there. we took a trip to the execution room, where several convicts had their necks broken, the last one being a notorious serial killer in australia. we were also shown the insides of some cells which are purposely kept intact for such visits.

Pontiferos’ Seafood Restaurant. where we had our BEST meal in the whole trip. the seafood platter was amazing! the squid rings tasted like heaven, with all the garnish on top. so are the fish, the mussels, (plenty of them soaked in heavenly tomato sauce) and oysters, and even the fries were like 100 times better than those we ate so far. together with the beer we ordered, we felt like royalty. the pizza was the best we’ve eaten as well. finally, the dessert was absolutely mouth-watering. we took a picture of that too.

Club X and Exotica. before we left, we decided to patronise the never-found in singapore strip clubs. according to yauhong’s friend, ths strip clubs are the most popular hangouts on weekend for the perth air force trainees, apart from the clubs at the mohamad sultan equivalent. the closest you can find in singapore are those lap sap “bars” in orchard towers. like the “naughty girl” club which featured the likes of busty nurses, wet t-shirts and panty schoolgirls. but this one is different. you pay $2 and a girl comes in front of you, strips and fingers herself. right in front of you, separated by a piece of glass. but only for a short while, and you need to top up payment to continue the “story”. we decided to skip the private lap dance and strip tease which cost way too much. bought a hard core magazine for my campmate at the adult shop over there.

and then… it was time to go back. what a memorable trip.

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112077433366103052 Friday, Jul 8 2005

had a throbbing headache yesterday. fortunately it’s gone already. must have been the stupid cos and the few arrows that were simultaneously released at around the same time. but things were nowhere as bad as last week, phew.

watched fantastic four in the evening with the my ex- superiors. thanks to wee beng who helped me cover my after hours cos and kelvin who drove me to amk mrt… i reached ps at 1815, still had time for a short dinner yay. due to fatigue i think i was sleeping at the first half hour before the drowsiness wore off, but didn’t think i missed much. it was an ok show…

now’s holiday mood for me! after today, will have one more day work when my boss comes back from reservice. then it’s perth! lots of things to do, and all well within our budget. especially the reef dive!!

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112038003160876267 Sunday, Jul 3 2005

i think i’m at the pinnacle of the so-called suaydom in the past few days. it all began after the night trapping on wednesday. that left me wondering.. it could be that because i shone torches at trees, or pissed in the forest without apologising… i hence could possibly become plagued by some not-so-friendly brothers, but hopefully not.

now for the latest updates on the stupid things that happened. my speaker spoilt yesterday because i accidentally tugged on the wire too hard. and then, the new speaker i bought was faulty as well. ah… should have known. $20 for two speakers and a subwoofer… that’s really , like, too good to be true. in the end had to buy the more expensive altec lansing one.. but at least it works now.

hopefully, everything will be smooth for the upcoming week. i still have my half day off to enjoy on monday! and more importantly, nothing will go wrong for the perth trip that i really look forward to next next tuesday.

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112024769902608619 Saturday, Jul 2 2005

having to look after a passed out drunk during a clubbing trip is very not fun. totally ruins the night.

realised i also lost all my movie money… my thirty bucks worth of tickets!! eventually had to pay $10 for war of the worlds when it could have costed me only $5.50…. argh!

never mind won’t let these spoil my weekend.

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