A reminder to self to be more sensitive and to take neither people nor things (especially people) for granted.
I've been in a daze socially for awhile now, not sure how that's gonna change in the future but the last thing I can afford to do is let myself become even more calloused than I've already become.
The heart needs to come from somewhere, amidst these days that blend one into another, so easy to get lost in time.
A pretty meh if not painful CNY this time round, shan't go into the details but I really should have known better, I need to just be able to 看得开 and let some things slide without getting myself so worked up over them. It's always a fine line we tread, you don't always want to let things go when you could potentially affect them for the better, yet it's definitely pointless and tortuous (oh how the meaning of that word has changed since entering LKC) to care too much when you can't. Maybe knowing when is in itself a kind of wisdom.
Ah and time, how cruel thou art. I could carry on in this vein and wax lyrical albeit stereotypically about how no soul can escape it's grasp, how even the mightiest are wrought to dust and memories becoming just that, memories, no more, no less, to fade furthermore with its relentless passage. And I guess I have, to some extent, but to romanticize it would be to distance myself from the perception of its effects, it's tempting, I must admit but no. It just sucks, you know. To come to the stark and painful realization that some things are gone, and that all I'm able to do is regret, that I never adequately cherished them while I had the chance. I once wrote about the human capability to adapt, cockroaches (well not quite) that we are, and perhaps I will, the thought itself, that I could come to find it acceptable is repulsive to my mind, yet I know I will; it still sucks though, truly.
Not the most coherent of posts, and for that you must forgive me, stuff to get off my chest and in truth I just came on to write the first sentence, and the rest just came flowing out, whether in a wave of eloquence spilling forth, rolling off the tip of my tongue or a splatter of verbal diarrhea coming out the other end I'll leave you guys to judge. Do post a comment or something, anything in the box-like thingy to the left, I'd love to know if anyone I've lost touch with still sees fit to follow this more-than-half dead blog of mine. Till then~
Showing posts with label Family stuff. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Family stuff. Show all posts
Sunday, March 1, 2015
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
Days
I guess I could be making more productive use of my time but I'm not too ashamed with what I've been doing with my new-found freedom as I'm pretty aware of what awaits me once the school term starts. So, some chill time, gladly appreciated, C'est la vie.
Two Sundays back I found myself along with my family aboard a super luxury yacht (at least it seemed luxurious from my limited worldview xP), 3 rooms below deck, a saloon in the cabin and a viewing gallery above, complete with a kayak and speedboat onboard; all courtesy of my dad's friend (who chartered it, not so rich that he'd own one). It's an amazing way to spend the afternoon if the weather's forgiving, a 2 hour cruise out to the smaller islands littered around Singapore, with a short stopover at Kusu Island before heading back. I'm a horrible writer so I shan't mention over-used cliches such as having the sun on my face, wind in my hair etc, it just felt wonderfully serene to sit on the front deck and feel the waves go by, to stand at the bow, clenching tightly onto the railing, fearful that I'd be taken away by the wind and the waves, yet at the same time unable to resist the thrill involved, and to yes, imitate that Titanic pose xP Great chance to unleash the inner camwhore too~
And I guess KH's incessant attempts to capture an "artistic" shot of some waterway yielded some nice pics as well~
The evening was occupied with a leisurely stroll along the boardwalk towards Labrador Park for dinner, taking in the sunset over the hill in the distance, the play of light across the water with the boardwalk sinuous, extending on...heck I'll just let the photos speak their thousand words.
All this accompanied by the not totally unwelcome chatter of my siblings, walking on. I do appreciate a good ambience.
Monday, SAF day, (my official disruption day btw XP) a casual meetup with Amos at AMK to take advantage of the various offers around for NSmen, unfortunately, and more than a little irritatingly, Fish & Co (and yes I'm singling them out) required us to be in Long 4 to benefit from the discount, which was baffling - shouldn't the 11B suffice as identification - and perhaps a little ironic: Who'd have guessed that in order to recognize the contributions of our NSmen you'd have to literally recognize and be able to single them out as well? Perhaps a misguided attempt to improve the image of the uniform, amidst the repeated STOMPing by the media. So we boycotted them for Pepper Lunch before heading to Bishan library, chilled a little before catching World War Z (more on that later) and departing.
I was supposed to go down to the medical centre at NTU for my checkup Tuesday afternoon but left the house too late (slight miscalculation on my part, 2 hours from home, really?) and ended up meeting my mum for lunch at Serangoon Gardens instead. Oh how little we actually speak, you and I. Your company no less welcome, very much loved. Why do we find communication so difficult?
Wednesday down to NTU for my medical, went down especially early to beat the crowds, ran into Soon Hong and a couple of future coursemates, spotted by virtue of those who had the yellow immunization form, conversation was haltingly awkward, as was the same for the more organized meetup on Thursday at Tiong Bahru, but thankfully NS has left us loads of common ground to cover, introductions to be made "Oh I was from 38 SCE, you know where Sungei Gedong is? Yeah, armored engineer, how bout you?" I guess it'll all work out somehow. I realize though that when I meet new people though I'm now a lot less reticient and reluctant to open up, I have this tendency to be overwhelmed/crowded out by the shall-we-say more outspoken and boistrous of those you'd find in a group. Suffice to say I prefer my interactions to be on a more personal and intimate level, something which I find lacking in larger group interactions; in which I feel intimacy and perhaps even sincerity may have to be sacrificed in the interest of being inclusive, which is very much a skill in and as of itself, but I just don't seem to have the energy! Alvin kept quoting from that book of his that while we may be able to adapt to various social situations, those we find ourselves most comfortable with are indicative of our personalities (a bit duh but hey wth). I guess I'm an introvert way inside, not much of a surprise, that, I just lack the high-ness to thrive in big group situations, they're often mentally taxing and I often find myself feeling drained after the event, though I'll admit to having enjoyed myself a fair bit.
Saturday, received a call around 12.10 at home from Kang Hui's bandmate, asking whether she "was around", thinking she wasn't at home, I replied that she wasn't till Kang Yan corrected me; she was still sleeping. Cue shock from her friend, cause apparently KH was supposed to meet with her section for rehearsals for the matinee performance of her concert not much later on. She was so hysterical when woken up that I actually felt sorry for her (which makes me sound worse than I am, honest) so I calmed her down before walking her out, fortunately for her she got a lift from my aunt and uncle, so she wasn't too late. It really was quite amusing to watch her hysterics though! Speaking of missed calls turns out I got shortlisted for the student union camp, many applicants, very few slots so evidently I was quite lucky. I, however, didn't pick up the original call from my would-be facil - sister turned my phone to silent mode when I left it to charge... - and when he called back later, he at first wasted a lot of time trolling me by saying he was from the Med faculty and had to review my application cause they'd taken in too many people (yeah right...) before asking me to sing him a song. It should have struck me that it was basic ragging and that I should have played along a lot better, but sad to say I phailed very badly (I mean it shouldn't be that hard to think of a song and just sing it however badly on the spot, right?) and then had to hang up on him mid-call to attend the aforesaid concert; horrible timing by all accounts, he actually called right when I was about to enter the concert hall and they were about to close the doors for the performances to begin, and when I smsed him asking whether I could call back the next day, apparently they were done selecting people for the camp, so missed opportunity there perhaps... More time to myself before school begins, then.
I've been watching a shitload of movies lately, and that in addition to loads of time spent trawling the depths of Youtube, I'll leave that for another post.
And the days roll by. Without the continuous rhythm of book ins and outs to mark the passage of time I've been finding myself quite lost to be honest. Every day's a Friday. TGIF~
Two Sundays back I found myself along with my family aboard a super luxury yacht (at least it seemed luxurious from my limited worldview xP), 3 rooms below deck, a saloon in the cabin and a viewing gallery above, complete with a kayak and speedboat onboard; all courtesy of my dad's friend (who chartered it, not so rich that he'd own one). It's an amazing way to spend the afternoon if the weather's forgiving, a 2 hour cruise out to the smaller islands littered around Singapore, with a short stopover at Kusu Island before heading back. I'm a horrible writer so I shan't mention over-used cliches such as having the sun on my face, wind in my hair etc, it just felt wonderfully serene to sit on the front deck and feel the waves go by, to stand at the bow, clenching tightly onto the railing, fearful that I'd be taken away by the wind and the waves, yet at the same time unable to resist the thrill involved, and to yes, imitate that Titanic pose xP Great chance to unleash the inner camwhore too~
The evening was occupied with a leisurely stroll along the boardwalk towards Labrador Park for dinner, taking in the sunset over the hill in the distance, the play of light across the water with the boardwalk sinuous, extending on...heck I'll just let the photos speak their thousand words.
Monday, SAF day, (my official disruption day btw XP) a casual meetup with Amos at AMK to take advantage of the various offers around for NSmen, unfortunately, and more than a little irritatingly, Fish & Co (and yes I'm singling them out) required us to be in Long 4 to benefit from the discount, which was baffling - shouldn't the 11B suffice as identification - and perhaps a little ironic: Who'd have guessed that in order to recognize the contributions of our NSmen you'd have to literally recognize and be able to single them out as well? Perhaps a misguided attempt to improve the image of the uniform, amidst the repeated STOMPing by the media. So we boycotted them for Pepper Lunch before heading to Bishan library, chilled a little before catching World War Z (more on that later) and departing.
I was supposed to go down to the medical centre at NTU for my checkup Tuesday afternoon but left the house too late (slight miscalculation on my part, 2 hours from home, really?) and ended up meeting my mum for lunch at Serangoon Gardens instead. Oh how little we actually speak, you and I. Your company no less welcome, very much loved. Why do we find communication so difficult?
Wednesday down to NTU for my medical, went down especially early to beat the crowds, ran into Soon Hong and a couple of future coursemates, spotted by virtue of those who had the yellow immunization form, conversation was haltingly awkward, as was the same for the more organized meetup on Thursday at Tiong Bahru, but thankfully NS has left us loads of common ground to cover, introductions to be made "Oh I was from 38 SCE, you know where Sungei Gedong is? Yeah, armored engineer, how bout you?" I guess it'll all work out somehow. I realize though that when I meet new people though I'm now a lot less reticient and reluctant to open up, I have this tendency to be overwhelmed/crowded out by the shall-we-say more outspoken and boistrous of those you'd find in a group. Suffice to say I prefer my interactions to be on a more personal and intimate level, something which I find lacking in larger group interactions; in which I feel intimacy and perhaps even sincerity may have to be sacrificed in the interest of being inclusive, which is very much a skill in and as of itself, but I just don't seem to have the energy! Alvin kept quoting from that book of his that while we may be able to adapt to various social situations, those we find ourselves most comfortable with are indicative of our personalities (a bit duh but hey wth). I guess I'm an introvert way inside, not much of a surprise, that, I just lack the high-ness to thrive in big group situations, they're often mentally taxing and I often find myself feeling drained after the event, though I'll admit to having enjoyed myself a fair bit.
Saturday, received a call around 12.10 at home from Kang Hui's bandmate, asking whether she "was around", thinking she wasn't at home, I replied that she wasn't till Kang Yan corrected me; she was still sleeping. Cue shock from her friend, cause apparently KH was supposed to meet with her section for rehearsals for the matinee performance of her concert not much later on. She was so hysterical when woken up that I actually felt sorry for her (which makes me sound worse than I am, honest) so I calmed her down before walking her out, fortunately for her she got a lift from my aunt and uncle, so she wasn't too late. It really was quite amusing to watch her hysterics though! Speaking of missed calls turns out I got shortlisted for the student union camp, many applicants, very few slots so evidently I was quite lucky. I, however, didn't pick up the original call from my would-be facil - sister turned my phone to silent mode when I left it to charge... - and when he called back later, he at first wasted a lot of time trolling me by saying he was from the Med faculty and had to review my application cause they'd taken in too many people (yeah right...) before asking me to sing him a song. It should have struck me that it was basic ragging and that I should have played along a lot better, but sad to say I phailed very badly (I mean it shouldn't be that hard to think of a song and just sing it however badly on the spot, right?) and then had to hang up on him mid-call to attend the aforesaid concert; horrible timing by all accounts, he actually called right when I was about to enter the concert hall and they were about to close the doors for the performances to begin, and when I smsed him asking whether I could call back the next day, apparently they were done selecting people for the camp, so missed opportunity there perhaps... More time to myself before school begins, then.
I've been watching a shitload of movies lately, and that in addition to loads of time spent trawling the depths of Youtube, I'll leave that for another post.
And the days roll by. Without the continuous rhythm of book ins and outs to mark the passage of time I've been finding myself quite lost to be honest. Every day's a Friday. TGIF~
Sunday, April 21, 2013
Well I've been pretty occupied the past week or so, not to mention Blogger has been deleting some of the drafts I type out in camp so that's the reason for the paucity of posts >< and somehow I guess my writing and expressive ability has been somewhat impaired over the course of the past year. Anyhow, here we go.
My prime occupation had been in preparation for yesterday's interview at NTU, the buildup to it was a little pressurizing for me, and I have to admit my patience did wear thin a couple of times at the perceived over-interference of my parents, hiring an interview coach/personal motivator, getting my uncle involved, and also my dad closing his clinic both on Friday afternoon and night to pick me up from camp and grill me, as well as on Saturday morning to send me for the interview. And yet after those transient moments steaming in the car, and feeling a little pissed off, what I do feel most strongly is the care and concern that they've showered me with, and it's something I don't want to take for-granted. Care, to me, is simply doing something for another person that you don't strictly have to do, even to the point of inconveniencing yourself at times, and that's precisely what they have done. So yes, I'm a little shocked by how on my dad was about the whole thing, even moreso than myself I daresay, making the effort to end work early during the weekdays to call me at night and speak about certain questions and issues, and sending loads of stuff to me on whatsapp, things he'd researched about till 4am, and lots more, and sometimes I find it a bother, but what I realized is that when people show you such care, the least you could do is accept it with an open heart, no matter what form it comes in, because yes, we all express our care for others in different ways. Another instance, my uncle, an awesome cardiologist who regales us with stories of the various different countries he travels to - sponsored of course - to attend conferences, having spent the whole day chairing a meeting, still volunteered to pick me up to go over to his house and address any questions I may have, though we eventually ended up simply eating this heavenly-tasting chilli crab which he'd brought back from the conference. So you know, sometimes I get really frustrated with my family, we often have trouble communicating well with each other and that sometimes leads to misunderstandings and arguments but from the bottom of my heart I'm thankful that they've allowed me to grow up not knowing what it's like to be loved, and to have a desire to care for others as well.
I find it strange, too, that despite how I torment myself wondering about the purpose and meaning of words, that my thoughts and intentions could be so crystallized, directed and focused, through simply vocalizing them. Over the past week I've spoken extensively and quite freely about my motivations and desire to be a doctor, and call it brainwashing if you will, doing so has somehow tied all the loose strands together, I'm no longer confused about what I want to do, and it somehow seems a logical result of the narrative up till now. I really think I performed a lot better for the interviews this time around, hopefully things turn out well xP
Onto another topic, my bunkmate who been attached for 4 years started talking about how he can't stop thinking about another girl and how he feels that this may show he doesn't love his girlfriend that much, or that he's together with her because of the history behind their relationship and all that she's done for him and not because he loves her, or that there may be someone who comes along who he may potentially love even more. Rather than talk about whether this is right, or whether he's being an asshole or whatever, I'd rather segue right on into relationships in general. I've often pondered about what it is that keeps people together, either romantically, or maybe even as friends. Like for example if someone asks you just what is it that you like about your friend, you may say that they're caring, generous, fun to be with etcetc, but what you must notice is that there are certainly people out there who are more so, than them, so assuming that we can only maintain close relationships with some few or at least a limited number of people, are we then compromising/settling? If you say that ok, that may be so, but what keeps us together is rather the experiences we've shared, the times that we had, our shared history basically, what then happens when we're pulled apart by circumstances not within either of our control? It's pretty likely that you'd meet someone, eventually, with similar attributes, and whom you get to spend more time with, and eventually become closer to. Do we then "move on" so to speak? It's quite a depressing subject to think about, all things considered. Or maybe relationships are sustained in such cases when both parties put effort into doing so, however this means that should one side suddenly decide to disengage, having found someone else, then the entire thing falls apart. I don't like the idea that people are substitutable, but something about humans is this innate drive to carry on with life, though loss we may experience, and after awhile the wounds heal over, scars fade, and we move on, though what we find may not be an exact fit, we carry on.
So what does this mean? I have no idea, actually, but what I do know is that I'll treasure those relationships and friends that I have, knowing that they could fade away in the future, but rather than cause for despair, I suppose this is an even more compelling reason to treasure them while I still can. And should they one day vanish, I'd rather not grieve over them, but hold those memories even closer to heart.
Sunday, April 7, 2013
The place for you~
So, seeing as how the 3 bowls of milk pudding I made with my sis a week ago didn't give me diarrhea or anything like that, I've decided that it's time to post a little about my HK trip XD nothing pedantic or whatever here, simply in a very narrative sense, I may get tired of it halfway through so look out for future updates :)
The photos only start from the second day onwards, cause I only really woke up from there, which is quite a pity :/
The dim sum is awesum. Seriously. It's pretty much a staple to any mainstream HK family-oriented drama, you see them making reservations at the place for some dim sum with the whole family. It's really important to go early (or in our case late) if you want to avoid the queues to just get in. Placing our orders was a pain as they don't take your orders directly (the servers are way too busy) and instead get you to check them off on some menus. Which was a problem as the dishes are spread out among various different menus and in the end they only collect that single sheet of paper, thus missing out some of our orders in the process, which kinda sucks, and we couldn't be bothered to correct them, seeing the inordinately long amount of time they took to start serving our dishes. Really delicious though, especially siu mai in the bottom left as well as everything else, really :P
The next day we hopped onto a ferry to Macau, around an hour's journey from the HK ferry terminal. We were I suppose fortunate in that we managed to charter a van at the Macau terminal to bring us around to the more scenic places which tourists frequent, saving loads of walking and also cause we hadn't done much prior research. It worked out pretty nicely for me as I'm a scenery kinda guy.
Fisherman's Wharf, some kind of themed attraction done up in a um...coliseum style? I'm not sure myself, but it was quite cool and prompted a spree of gratuitous photo-taking, tourist style which I'll admit is decidedly uncool x.x
Wiki tells me these are the ruins of St. Paul's Cathedral, it looks nice from the front and back but it's pretty much a 2D free-standing facade. Loads of people taking photos of it too, as you can see, and behind me were a few streets of shops too, selling the famous Portuguese Egg Tarts and some apparently well known pork chop bun. I was pretty sick and tired of the ubiquitous Polo (Pineapple) bun as we'd bought a whole bunch of them while exploring the streets of HK the night before, no pics unfortunately, and since the rest of my family didn't feel like eating them after they turned cold, it fell to me and my bro to finish them off. urgh but this pork chop variation wasn't bad at all, and the Portugues Egg Tarts are freaking awesome. No words to describe them, oh how badly I'd suck as a food critic xD
Me seen here posing which the sign which points at the (purportedly) authentic store, among tons of others. I have one of my sis too but decided against putting that one up.
A cursory view of the Macau streets and shophouses I saw while walking around, pretty interesting style, not that I'm an expert or anything, and there was even this Primary school squeezed in-between some shophouses too, not something you'd see in Singapore.
We had a pretty good view of Macau Tower and the harbour below from up high. The tower actually doubles as a bungee jumping platform, I actually managed to spy some people jumping off and dangling from the bungee cord before being lowered to the ground. There's also apparently a skywalk where they let you walk around the outer circumference of the topmost portion of the viewing deck; unfortunately we didn't give it a try.
A visit to The Venetian, a luxury hotel cum casino had me overawed by the bling on display. Pretty darn opulent. I decided against attempting to set foot into the casino portion (minimum age 21) though I suppose I may have been able to fake my way in. The long hallway leading to the casino seems pretty reminiscent of a chapel I've seen somewhere, except in this case dedicated to the worship of indulgence and wealth.
With a name such as "The Venetian" it's pretty expected that they'd have a street of shops done up to look like a facsimile of Venice within the building itself. Believe it or not, the photos below were taken entirely indoors, under perennially unchanging skies, or rather a ceiling painted to look like the sky. Such is the hubris of Man. It's pretty similar to the one you'd see at MBS but on a much grander scale, and with a much more pleasant ambiance. The boaters regale you with song, you have costumed street performers roaming around to entertain patrons, and it's an undeniably pretty sight AND yet another great photo-taking opportunity, apparently it's featured in some Korean drama too, probably one on a tight budget.
Me and my brother looking especially bemused after a pretty interesting episode in ShenZhen. We'd taken a train ride (yet another hour spent traveling) to ShenZhen, whereupon we took a supposedly free shuttle bus to this place called Maya City on my uncle's recommendation, with him saying it was a good place to relax and shop. Famished from the trip and eager to get some lunch, we approached reception to ask whether there was anywhere to eat nearby, only to be given the band which you see around my hand and told that in order to be allowed to go to the restaurant upstairs, we first had to take a bath and have a change of clothes. We did feel like stepping away, but there was something menacing in the way the rest of the staff were closing around us so we did as they said, going to our respective changing rooms. I don't know what the female one was like obviously, but at ours we were chaperoned by crew cut middle-aged men dressed in what suspiciously looked like prison garb, with horizontal orange stripes, who instructed us, without ceremony to strip and put our stuff in the lockers provided. It was all very sudden, and kinda shell-shocked, we complied in bemused fashion, showering in cubicles without doors, where other guys walked around naked, and found ourselves attired as above. After a surprisingly decent lunch, we were persuaded into getting a full-body massage each, I'm still not quite sure how the chain of events led to that. Regardless it was pretty good, though I found it a little....strange to say the least. Elaborate I shall not. Anyways after that we were finally able to extricate ourselves from that place and went on to our next objective. Honestly though, it'd have been relaxing in another set of circumstances, and if we hadn't gone there totally not knowing what to expect, so I suppose I'd consider going back some day.
Next was a trip via cab to Dafen Oil Painting Village, quite an interesting place dedicated to the export of reproductions of masterpieces. My dad wanted to get a couple of paintings for his clinic and our house as well, which was our primary reason for making the trip to ShenZhen in the firstplace, from which we'd been unfortunately sidetracked. It was amazing to see the number of artists who had set up shop there to sell their works; cheaply, in the case of the smaller paintings, of which I got a few for around $5 SGD each, and also pretty cheap for the larger paintings as well, now that I think about it. I found it quite strange to grapple with the concept of mass-produced art; lying around were stacks of canvas, paintings which had yet to be mounted on a frame, often stacks of the same painting, reproduced many times over. At the store we finally settled on, the owner had a computer where he would google various famous artists to allow my dad to pick from their works to commission a reproduction of, much like shopping from an online catalog. It's testament to their skill that they can reproduce almost anything, and I suppose some of the works on display were originals too; it was a very eye-opening experience. As I walked the streets whilst my parents were finalizing the details, I even stumbled upon an artist in a small studio along a side-alley, painting a copy of the Mona Lisa with his back faced to me. Curious, I watched him for awhile as he worked. He had a small printout of the original clipped to the side of his easel and that alone was sufficient for him to make his own reproduction as he carefully applied the layers of oil to form the hand and filling in the black to define the fingers. I was pretty interested in a couple of landscapes to hang above my bed but skinflint that I am, finally decided not to go in for them afterall.
A highlight of our nightly roams around the HK streets would be whenever we gleefully stumbled over yet another dessert shop, these above look nice I suppose, but they weren't the best that I got to try, more later!
I enjoyed our trip to Ocean Park immensely, I didn't take any photos of the entrance though! Take note that outside food is prohibited, as I found out to my detriment when I had to part with some choice snacks stowed in my bag. First was this underwater world kinda attraction, very well presented, with a lot of educational displays set up, and of course with a gigantic, well-occupied aquarium with well-placed viewing windows and all that.
Next was a cable car ride to the other half of the park. It's quite interesting cause when you first step in the part looks good, but still pretty small, it's only when you realize that there's another half of it hidden on the other side of the mountain that you start to appreciate how immense it is. The ride was awesome. Breathtaking scenery, my pictures can't begin to do it justice; it was quite foggy, and a nice cool wind permeating the cabin.
As with any good amusement park, Ocean Park has some pretty neat rides as well. We (me and my bro, cause the rest of my family didn't dare to) took The Hair-raiser first; it's the maniacal clown face in the background of this picture, followed by The Flash, The Abyss drop and the Viking Ship. Strangely enough, the scariest was the Viking, even though The Hair-raiser turned us upside down, The Flash turned us 360 degrees and The Abyss was just shit-in-my-pants inducing, probably because they were all too short, and nothing induces that lurching feeling that feels like your viscera are about to pop out of your chest like the Viking. After that was an amazing sea animal show, much more impressive than the one I remember seeing at Sentosa a long time ago.
The crappy part of the park being in 2 halves though, was that it rained. Heavily. Cable cars are obviously a sub-optimal way of ferrying large amounts of people across a mountain in the shortest time possible, and with the long queues, we ended up walking; taking escalator after escalator down the mountain in order to get onto a shuttle bus to bring us back to the entrance.
Wet and starving (we had little for lunch as food inside is so freaking expensive, all part of the corporate plan obviously) we were in need of good food. My mum called ahead to make a reservation at some place famous for it's roasted and cured meat, the name eludes me currently, and it was goood (Y) The roast duck was amazing, so was the veggies with century and salted eggs, the pigeon not so much, a little too salty and tough for my liking.
These hygiene stations dispense alcohol for sanitary purposes and are common in shopping centres and such, an exemplary practice imo!
The HK harbour area looks very impressive, it probably edges our Marina area by just a bit xP The occasional junks you see sailing by and a nice touch too! My parents insisted on walking down the Avenue of Stars, which basically has these concrete and metal plates inserted into the floor with impressions of famous actors/actresses along with their signatures. I originally looked for this guy's print cause I thought it was Jackie Chan only to realize that it was someone else completely. After googling it I now realize how horribly wrong I was. Sigh. Still makes a pretty good illustration I guess so I'm keeping the picture.
I didn't actually visit the Andy Warhol exhibit at the HK art museum but they had this interesting thing setup downstairs inline with the 15 minutes of fame theme. They basically allow you to take pics of yourself and run it through a program to convert it into an "Andy Warhol" style photo, which they would then display on a wall for a couple of minutes. Being the creative guy that I am, I soon stumbled upon the idea of putting my phone's screen in front of the camera to create some of people who weren't physically there, resulting in this:
Lol. I wanted to do the same for each of you but there were too many people queuing up and we had to go ><
Pretty much the best milk pudding in town. Super delicious. I'd totally recommend this place to anyone visiting HK for the milk pudding alone.
More food. HK milk tea is a lot better than Singapore's and this meal actually came with some toast too.
A simple illustration of how foggy it was on the day we left. The topless towers of HK? xP We took a ferry across HK bay to HK island, then took a bus up to Victoria Peak. It was um...cool I suppose to be actually entering the fog as we climbed up the mountain, didn't do wonders for the view unfortunately. We had initially considered taking the footpath further up but ultimately decided it wasn't worth it with the limited time and the fog would have obscured our view anyway so we stayed there for awhile before making our way down once more.
And that was it. Afterwards was a trip to the airport, clearing customs, landing at Changi, purchasing as much duty free liquor as we could, and the trip home. HK was certainly an enjoyable place to spend the week, an apt description of it would be "similar to Singapore but not quite". The developed areas, with shopping centres and branded goods occupying pole position in windows could be a carbon copy of what you'd see while walking along Orchard Road, but the less modern areas are a different creature altogether. Night markets where I almost got fleeced by some vendor while buying a couple of gifts, as well as those unruly streets which twist and turn and branch abruptly, something you certainly wouldn't observe in Singapore, yet which lend the place an organically vibrant feel.
The photos only start from the second day onwards, cause I only really woke up from there, which is quite a pity :/
The dim sum is awesum. Seriously. It's pretty much a staple to any mainstream HK family-oriented drama, you see them making reservations at the place for some dim sum with the whole family. It's really important to go early (or in our case late) if you want to avoid the queues to just get in. Placing our orders was a pain as they don't take your orders directly (the servers are way too busy) and instead get you to check them off on some menus. Which was a problem as the dishes are spread out among various different menus and in the end they only collect that single sheet of paper, thus missing out some of our orders in the process, which kinda sucks, and we couldn't be bothered to correct them, seeing the inordinately long amount of time they took to start serving our dishes. Really delicious though, especially siu mai in the bottom left as well as everything else, really :P
The next day we hopped onto a ferry to Macau, around an hour's journey from the HK ferry terminal. We were I suppose fortunate in that we managed to charter a van at the Macau terminal to bring us around to the more scenic places which tourists frequent, saving loads of walking and also cause we hadn't done much prior research. It worked out pretty nicely for me as I'm a scenery kinda guy.
Fisherman's Wharf, some kind of themed attraction done up in a um...coliseum style? I'm not sure myself, but it was quite cool and prompted a spree of gratuitous photo-taking, tourist style which I'll admit is decidedly uncool x.x
Wiki tells me these are the ruins of St. Paul's Cathedral, it looks nice from the front and back but it's pretty much a 2D free-standing facade. Loads of people taking photos of it too, as you can see, and behind me were a few streets of shops too, selling the famous Portuguese Egg Tarts and some apparently well known pork chop bun. I was pretty sick and tired of the ubiquitous Polo (Pineapple) bun as we'd bought a whole bunch of them while exploring the streets of HK the night before, no pics unfortunately, and since the rest of my family didn't feel like eating them after they turned cold, it fell to me and my bro to finish them off. urgh but this pork chop variation wasn't bad at all, and the Portugues Egg Tarts are freaking awesome. No words to describe them, oh how badly I'd suck as a food critic xD
Me seen here posing which the sign which points at the (purportedly) authentic store, among tons of others. I have one of my sis too but decided against putting that one up.
A cursory view of the Macau streets and shophouses I saw while walking around, pretty interesting style, not that I'm an expert or anything, and there was even this Primary school squeezed in-between some shophouses too, not something you'd see in Singapore.
We had a pretty good view of Macau Tower and the harbour below from up high. The tower actually doubles as a bungee jumping platform, I actually managed to spy some people jumping off and dangling from the bungee cord before being lowered to the ground. There's also apparently a skywalk where they let you walk around the outer circumference of the topmost portion of the viewing deck; unfortunately we didn't give it a try.
A visit to The Venetian, a luxury hotel cum casino had me overawed by the bling on display. Pretty darn opulent. I decided against attempting to set foot into the casino portion (minimum age 21) though I suppose I may have been able to fake my way in. The long hallway leading to the casino seems pretty reminiscent of a chapel I've seen somewhere, except in this case dedicated to the worship of indulgence and wealth.
. With a name such as "The Venetian" it's pretty expected that they'd have a street of shops done up to look like a facsimile of Venice within the building itself. Believe it or not, the photos below were taken entirely indoors, under perennially unchanging skies, or rather a ceiling painted to look like the sky. Such is the hubris of Man. It's pretty similar to the one you'd see at MBS but on a much grander scale, and with a much more pleasant ambiance. The boaters regale you with song, you have costumed street performers roaming around to entertain patrons, and it's an undeniably pretty sight AND yet another great photo-taking opportunity, apparently it's featured in some Korean drama too, probably one on a tight budget.
Me and my brother looking especially bemused after a pretty interesting episode in ShenZhen. We'd taken a train ride (yet another hour spent traveling) to ShenZhen, whereupon we took a supposedly free shuttle bus to this place called Maya City on my uncle's recommendation, with him saying it was a good place to relax and shop. Famished from the trip and eager to get some lunch, we approached reception to ask whether there was anywhere to eat nearby, only to be given the band which you see around my hand and told that in order to be allowed to go to the restaurant upstairs, we first had to take a bath and have a change of clothes. We did feel like stepping away, but there was something menacing in the way the rest of the staff were closing around us so we did as they said, going to our respective changing rooms. I don't know what the female one was like obviously, but at ours we were chaperoned by crew cut middle-aged men dressed in what suspiciously looked like prison garb, with horizontal orange stripes, who instructed us, without ceremony to strip and put our stuff in the lockers provided. It was all very sudden, and kinda shell-shocked, we complied in bemused fashion, showering in cubicles without doors, where other guys walked around naked, and found ourselves attired as above. After a surprisingly decent lunch, we were persuaded into getting a full-body massage each, I'm still not quite sure how the chain of events led to that. Regardless it was pretty good, though I found it a little....strange to say the least. Elaborate I shall not. Anyways after that we were finally able to extricate ourselves from that place and went on to our next objective. Honestly though, it'd have been relaxing in another set of circumstances, and if we hadn't gone there totally not knowing what to expect, so I suppose I'd consider going back some day.
Next was a trip via cab to Dafen Oil Painting Village, quite an interesting place dedicated to the export of reproductions of masterpieces. My dad wanted to get a couple of paintings for his clinic and our house as well, which was our primary reason for making the trip to ShenZhen in the firstplace, from which we'd been unfortunately sidetracked. It was amazing to see the number of artists who had set up shop there to sell their works; cheaply, in the case of the smaller paintings, of which I got a few for around $5 SGD each, and also pretty cheap for the larger paintings as well, now that I think about it. I found it quite strange to grapple with the concept of mass-produced art; lying around were stacks of canvas, paintings which had yet to be mounted on a frame, often stacks of the same painting, reproduced many times over. At the store we finally settled on, the owner had a computer where he would google various famous artists to allow my dad to pick from their works to commission a reproduction of, much like shopping from an online catalog. It's testament to their skill that they can reproduce almost anything, and I suppose some of the works on display were originals too; it was a very eye-opening experience. As I walked the streets whilst my parents were finalizing the details, I even stumbled upon an artist in a small studio along a side-alley, painting a copy of the Mona Lisa with his back faced to me. Curious, I watched him for awhile as he worked. He had a small printout of the original clipped to the side of his easel and that alone was sufficient for him to make his own reproduction as he carefully applied the layers of oil to form the hand and filling in the black to define the fingers. I was pretty interested in a couple of landscapes to hang above my bed but skinflint that I am, finally decided not to go in for them afterall.
A highlight of our nightly roams around the HK streets would be whenever we gleefully stumbled over yet another dessert shop, these above look nice I suppose, but they weren't the best that I got to try, more later!
I enjoyed our trip to Ocean Park immensely, I didn't take any photos of the entrance though! Take note that outside food is prohibited, as I found out to my detriment when I had to part with some choice snacks stowed in my bag. First was this underwater world kinda attraction, very well presented, with a lot of educational displays set up, and of course with a gigantic, well-occupied aquarium with well-placed viewing windows and all that.
Jellyfish!
Next was a cable car ride to the other half of the park. It's quite interesting cause when you first step in the part looks good, but still pretty small, it's only when you realize that there's another half of it hidden on the other side of the mountain that you start to appreciate how immense it is. The ride was awesome. Breathtaking scenery, my pictures can't begin to do it justice; it was quite foggy, and a nice cool wind permeating the cabin.
As with any good amusement park, Ocean Park has some pretty neat rides as well. We (me and my bro, cause the rest of my family didn't dare to) took The Hair-raiser first; it's the maniacal clown face in the background of this picture, followed by The Flash, The Abyss drop and the Viking Ship. Strangely enough, the scariest was the Viking, even though The Hair-raiser turned us upside down, The Flash turned us 360 degrees and The Abyss was just shit-in-my-pants inducing, probably because they were all too short, and nothing induces that lurching feeling that feels like your viscera are about to pop out of your chest like the Viking. After that was an amazing sea animal show, much more impressive than the one I remember seeing at Sentosa a long time ago.
The crappy part of the park being in 2 halves though, was that it rained. Heavily. Cable cars are obviously a sub-optimal way of ferrying large amounts of people across a mountain in the shortest time possible, and with the long queues, we ended up walking; taking escalator after escalator down the mountain in order to get onto a shuttle bus to bring us back to the entrance.
Wet and starving (we had little for lunch as food inside is so freaking expensive, all part of the corporate plan obviously) we were in need of good food. My mum called ahead to make a reservation at some place famous for it's roasted and cured meat, the name eludes me currently, and it was goood (Y) The roast duck was amazing, so was the veggies with century and salted eggs, the pigeon not so much, a little too salty and tough for my liking.
These hygiene stations dispense alcohol for sanitary purposes and are common in shopping centres and such, an exemplary practice imo!
The HK harbour area looks very impressive, it probably edges our Marina area by just a bit xP The occasional junks you see sailing by and a nice touch too! My parents insisted on walking down the Avenue of Stars, which basically has these concrete and metal plates inserted into the floor with impressions of famous actors/actresses along with their signatures. I originally looked for this guy's print cause I thought it was Jackie Chan only to realize that it was someone else completely. After googling it I now realize how horribly wrong I was. Sigh. Still makes a pretty good illustration I guess so I'm keeping the picture.
Lol. I wanted to do the same for each of you but there were too many people queuing up and we had to go ><
Pretty much the best milk pudding in town. Super delicious. I'd totally recommend this place to anyone visiting HK for the milk pudding alone.
More food. HK milk tea is a lot better than Singapore's and this meal actually came with some toast too.
A simple illustration of how foggy it was on the day we left. The topless towers of HK? xP We took a ferry across HK bay to HK island, then took a bus up to Victoria Peak. It was um...cool I suppose to be actually entering the fog as we climbed up the mountain, didn't do wonders for the view unfortunately. We had initially considered taking the footpath further up but ultimately decided it wasn't worth it with the limited time and the fog would have obscured our view anyway so we stayed there for awhile before making our way down once more.
And that was it. Afterwards was a trip to the airport, clearing customs, landing at Changi, purchasing as much duty free liquor as we could, and the trip home. HK was certainly an enjoyable place to spend the week, an apt description of it would be "similar to Singapore but not quite". The developed areas, with shopping centres and branded goods occupying pole position in windows could be a carbon copy of what you'd see while walking along Orchard Road, but the less modern areas are a different creature altogether. Night markets where I almost got fleeced by some vendor while buying a couple of gifts, as well as those unruly streets which twist and turn and branch abruptly, something you certainly wouldn't observe in Singapore, yet which lend the place an organically vibrant feel.
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