goodbye 2009, hello 2010

Instead of doing my usual "year in reflection" type post, I'm going to use this entry to thank everyone who helped me through 2009.

Whether it was listening to me whine on, giving me well wishes and encouragement, or just being good company....thankyou.

I am especially thankful to the very special people (including my family) who helped me through the end of last year. To have friends that are willing to sacrifice their time and attention, despite their own commitments, is truly invaluable. Thank you for not being judgmental of my sometimes illogical antics, and for your advice (which I have since turned into a new year's resolution). I wouldn't be where I am now, if it wasn't for your help. So yes, in response to comments from you guys, I am lucky, "excessively lucky" in fact - to have such people to depend on.

2009 left a very deep impression on me, bringing with it some of my saddest and happiest moments of my 21 years, and thus will be remembered.

Happy 2010 everyone. Stay healthy, be safe, and smile more this year.

xo

Shioking Singapore Trip

It's Sunday morning, and that means obligatory post update!  
I think this has been put off long enough, so without further ado, I'm going to regurgitate the things that happened in Singapore over the three days we were there. We only spent three days there, but thanks to our amazing tour guides, we were able to fit about a weeks worth of stuff in, leaving us uber tired, but happy chappys at the end of it. And when I say amazing tour guides, they really were, giving us a run down on the history and story behind every statue/building/tree/structure/person/blade of grass we passed. Special mention to Kenneth and Marlom for their non stop social commentary, which was sometimes excessive at times, but amusing nonetheless. We learnt everything from the founding of Singapore to the curious subculture of ah-bengs and aliens (the equivalent to our bogans).

When in S'pore, do as the S'poreans do...

Some of our awesome tour guides.

If  there was a word to sum up the three days, it would without a doubt be: food. Wonton noodles, Pop-eyes, crepes, curry, Burger King, sushi, dimsum, cakes, chicken rice, pasta...and that was just at the airport! My first authentic Singaporean meal was one of the most memorable. Kenneth, Yan Yan and Marlom took me to a place with many hawker stalls for afternoon tea. Or rather, "afternoon tea". About six or seven dishes of it. There was stingray somewhere amongst that mountain of food, which surprisingly or unsurprisingly, tasted like chicken!

In an effort to get us to try everything, we ended up having 5-6 meals a day. Which my mind was very open to, but my stomach was rather unprepared for. I felt like hobbit (in more ways than one), being spoiled with second breakfasts and third lunches. Some of the other delicacies I managed to squeeze in were; frogs legs (also tasted like chicken), massive crab, kaya toast, laksa, and of course, chicken rice. One of the nights at about 1am in the morning we even ordered McDonald's over the phone! But what shocked me more than the availability of food, was how Singaporeans managed to stay so lean! I'm thinking the skinny gene must be a dominant trait over there *jealous*.

Team Little Explorer

This picture has a lot of story behind it. On the second day we went to visit the world renown Singapore Zoo, where said picture was taken. To be honest, I'm not much of an animal person..heck, I haven't even visited Perth Zoo in my 21 years of living here. But Singapore Zoo is worth checking out if you ever have the chance to. It's so big, and we never had the intention of checking everything out in the 30C humid weather, but as things turned out, we ended up doing just that.

The group I was in (Team Little Explorer), initially wanted to just ride the elephants and wait for the other group to come back. But as we strolled around, we came across two monkeys. They were hanging about 20 metres or so on vines that hung across the road, and from where we were standing, it looked like one of them was trying to save the other from falling. As we stared upwards, other people naturally came to see what was wrong, who attracted even more people, and eventually causing a bit of commotion, with people shouting at the monkey not to jump (somehow the monkey became suicidal). Thankfully (from the encouragement by the audience?), the monkey didn't jump. And we moved on. But little did we know that we were actually getting lost, and 1.5 hours and 20 phonecalls later we would be desperately asking for directions, following a ridiculous cartoonized map, and having the other group wait for us instead. In retrospect it was pretty funny, and ironic that we saw just about everything except for the elephants. But I'm probably too faint hearted to try anything like that again haha.

Surprisingly, I didn't do much shopping at Singapore. But that was given the limited time we had, rather than the lack of places to shop of course. In fact, whilst mum was in transit, we took the MRT to check out Orchard Road. Unaware that the long strip of massive shops we were on was Orchard Road, we went into one of the shopping centres, with me asking one of the cleaners for directions there. I was met with an expression of disbelief/confusion/whathecrazygirl and "I don't understand". We eventually worked it out afterwards, but not after several people correcting my pronounciation of "Orchard" from or-kid to or-chard.

Weather, food, zoo, shopping. I think I've covered the main bases. There was a lot more stuff of course, but I think I'm in danger of boring you all silly so I'll stop now. I'll just say that Singapore is a very nice place, with everything so conveniently placed close by. It's worth taking the time to explore other stuff outside the airport (it is a very nice airport), and stretch your stomach out in preparation before you go.

Many thanks to Kenneth, Yan Yan, Marlom, Lip Yong, Ash, Brady, Zhiren, Qi'en, Caleb, Pravin and Justin for their SHIOK hospitality, and making it such a fun trip- there were a lot of memories in there :)

i'm ba-ck...again.

Sorry peeps. I realise I haven't been updating in like forever, but things came up in the last few weeks which have kept me from sharing my fantastical experiences with y'all. Anyway, I don't even know where I'm going to begin. So, so, so much has happened (dejavu?). And yes, after re-reading my last entry, I realise I was being really unfair for leaving a teaser from the Singapore episode, and then disappearing for a month! Don't you hate it when they do that with season finale episodes? Cliff-hanger ending FTL. Although, I'm probably being slightly pretentious by comparing my last entry to a cliffhanger -haha. The fact that I managed to verbal diarrhoea a whole entry on weather (of all the things I did) is beyond me. *Shakes head at past-self*. Anyway, rest assured because I now have the time to share just as exciting updates to rock your world- or anticlimax it.