Random Solitary Thoughts

Friday, September 28, 2001

And it has been a long while since I actually wrote here... the reason being the pathetic network provided by our campus...thanks a lot... either that or the inconsiderate @!#%#@'s who downloaded all sort of junk from the net, clogging up the bandwidth and jamming up the lines! Or maybe both...

Anyway.. here's the fourth day..

Day Four: Shopping... oh... what horrors...

Yesh... the day after... we went out to buy bus tickets home for Kotak's sis and her friend. Then.. onwards to shopping... shopping.. shopping... oh.. the horrors of shopping...every guys nightmare...[with the exception of a few queer ones... no names mentioned here...] Covered most of Orchard Road... and went to this big cool bookstore.. Borders! Had a really great burger at Burger King... some cool turkey thinghy that can't be found in Malaysia.Then all the way underground to misc shopping places.. where many women battle and many men fall from exhaustion! Sigh... the shopping spree begins... about the only places that made me turn my head was Borders and Takashimaya where they had this gigantic toy sale thinghy. Cool stuff going cheap!!! Yesh... finished off the day by getting lost... somehow somewhere.. I got lost... yup.. went to the loo.. and couldn't find anyone after that... shucks... But somewhere, somehow, I managed to find my way back to Kotak's aunt's place. Got a bit of a scare.. but otherwise... everybody arrived home safely...:D.

Went for a nice swim later that night... discovered something really interesting... if you jumped out of the pool all of a sudden... and pretend to look like you've seen something in the water... everybody jumps out in a wave of panic! Go figure...:D Another day bites the dust...

Friday, September 14, 2001

Day Three: The Zu

Yes... the Zoo. The place where they place animals and creatures and charge you money to see them when you can practically find the same thing for free in MMU... sheesh.. go figure! Anyway, this was a day when the Emptybox, her sis, her sis's friend, and her cousins and yours truly, went to the Zoo. How exciting....I'm practically jumping for joy...[ said in a very monotonous tone].

And so, after a quick breakfast and a quick ride to the nearest MRT station, we were on our way. Waiting for a bus never seemed this interesting as a near accident had us all in a state of shock... for a while anyway as I slipped and almost fell while after taking a shot from a weird angle. The best part was, I was using someone else's camera...:D Lucky thing I didn't drop it...

And finally, we arrived at the zoo. Wow, makes you wonder how cool narration is... all it took was a matter of seconds to bring you to the destination when it took us almost an hour to get there in actuality. Anyway, we started off by visiting the primates. Rather interesting looking at these funny creatures moving around, doing really strange things to get attention and speaking in a very strange tongue. And the colors they have to attract a mate really makes one think. It's no wonder these creatures are the dominant species on the planet. Oh, did you think I was talking about monkeys? Sorry... was talking about the tourists... Moving on, the next item on our agenda was monkeys! Monkeys.. gibbons... everybody knows what they are, and if they don't, the Cambridge dictionary can be purchased at RM 30 at all popular bookstores, thank you.

Next was.. lemme see... I need some help here... ah heck.. nevermind. I'll just write whatever I can remember. Let's see now... I do remember watching the pygmy hippos. Judging by their name, one would probably think that they're pretty small. Yeah right! They're huge enough for me. About the size of a man. Roughly 1.5 metres long. Maybe not that huge, but huge enough. Wait till you see the actual hippos... those are even larger... and comparitively, yes... they do deserve the right to be called pygmies...

Some of the animals worth mentioning are of course, the sealions. How could we forget them, we were up front on the first row for their show. Yes... there were animal shows at different times of the day. Anyway, we got splashed, [naturally] but the show was interesting... short but interesting. I really admired the sealions. Their bodies are practically this huge piece of muscle. Really strong animals... And then there's the giant arapaima, reputated to be the worlds biggest freshwater fish. The one we saw was around 2.5 metres long while the ones in the wild can grow up to 4 metres long. Now that's BIG!!! Luckily, this giant is found only in the amazon rivers... hate to bump into one of these in the Malaysian rivers.

And now... the cats. Actually I wrote another version earlier, but somehow it didn't get published... I should have saved it on a text file first.. shucks... my mistake. Anyway, the white tigers were of course an interesting sight to behold. Not much different from our regular orange tigers, but their color makes them look more majestic...[hmmm.. does white make one look more majestic?]. The lions were mating.. er.. making a lot of noise... [we thought they were mating till we saw them fighting for food.. shucks... they ain't no fun.... but who can blame them? Would you wanna do it with everybody watching?] The cheetah was cool.. long muscular slender body... made to track down it's prey and kill it. Here's a thought... can you 'spot' the difference between a leopard and a jaguar?

The crocs were of course one of the coolest animals at the zoo. These monsters were HUGE!!! I hate to imagine meeting one of their prehistoric ancestors in a dark alley anywhere. Infact, the reptiles were the coolest in the zoo. But let's get back to the crocs. These buggers were salt water crocs... so they were no doubt bigger than the common river dwellers that we heard of from time to time. The snakes were equally cool. We saw two cobras, and when they were face to face their hoods spread out in an aggressive approach. Plus, the python was cool as well... huge... Big reptiles.

Anyway, the whole trip was cool. An interesting insight into the animal realm... oh, and they do scratch their vitals from time to time... just like humans...

Wednesday, September 12, 2001

Day two: Miss Saigon

The day started out with breakfast, something I'm not quite accustomed to due to my pathetic campus life and my lack of will power to whip out two slices of bread and some spread... voluntarily. But who am I to complain? The breakfast was lovely and maybe it's because of my lack of experience [eating breakfast that is...] but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Okay, enough of eating. Basically we went downtown and managed to sample Singapore's famous beef noodles which came in BIG portions!!! Before that we visited this museum thinghy at Raffles Court. It's apparently some sort of hotel but doesn't really look like one. Maybe it's the colonial building. Anyway it wasn't really interesting or anything, so I'll skip that and go back to the food. Like I said, the beef noodles were delicious and came in BIG portions. Worth the six Sing dollars I paid for it... [dunno if it's six bucks or less... confused here..:D maybe round four bucks...hmm...]

Later, we had a little difficulty looking for the Kallang Theatre, but thanks to the friendly Singaporeans we were able to find the place after all. From a distance we could see the crowd gathering as we stepped off the bus. As we gathered in the waiting area, we could feel the anticipation of the people.... we could sense the suspense... we could taste the kiasuness of the people waiting to barge in like dogs infected with rabies [which sadly didn't happen due to the extremely good conduct portrayed by the Singaporeans which Malaysians heavily lacked]! Anyway we took a look at the souveniors for sale and then took two steps back as we saw the outrageous prices of the stuff they had there. Think of outrageous Malaysian prices... priced in Sing Dollars... nuff said. Soon it was time for us to go our seperate ways... yes... due to the late purchase of my ticket, I had to be placed somewhere else and had to seperated from the group. But needless to say, I totally enjoyed the show! We came out about two hours later, all wrapped up in awe and wonder as we head to the Lavendar MRT station to purchase bus tickets for the Emptybox's sister and her friend.

Dinnertime found us wandering around Holland Village, a place much like our local Bangsar, but of course, way cleaner and much more organized. Had this really huge bowl of laksa, with tons of prawns and cut up noodles which we had to scoop up with only a spoon. Great curry soup, rich in santan, and it cost us only 3 Sing Dollars a bowl. Very very worth it... plus the fact that I had three helpings of clams due to the fact that the Emptybox and her sis does not eat them. Felt a bit allergic to clams after that... will stay off char kuew teow until further notice... After that, we had some mudpies at this place called.. NYDC! Good mudpies... nuff said. Decided to walk to a nearby supermarket which was supposingly down the road. Halfway through, we realized that we weren't making any progress and proceeded to catch a bus. As the bus rounded a bend and down a hill about 300 metres from where we caught it, we saw the supermarket.

A few minutes later, we were back at the apartments and getting ready for bed. Now what mischief lies ahead the next day...?

Tuesday, September 11, 2001

And it has been more than a week... almost two or more... since I last updated my blog with something other than pure gibberish. The reason? I went to Singapore for a little more than a week! The rest of the time was spent condemning the campus administration for shutting down the network. Sheesh... Now that the network is up, I shall now proceed to write about my misadventures in the land where everything is just so "fine".

Day one: Arrival in a foreign land.

The day was hot, and the bus driver and conductor are grouchy... sheesh. Woke up feeling dizzy... looked around and followed everyone out like sheep. Looked around at my unfamiliar surroundings and realized... yes... I'm definitely NOT in Malaysia anymore. The first tell-tale signs of a foreign country are the signboards. no more misleading ugly and outdated signboards written in Bahasa Malaysia. No more stupid names such as Jalan Silikon or Jalan Germanium. Buses do NOT discharge black smoke... less cars... efficient public transport system... less smoke... clean streets... trash cans where you need them... overhead bridges with PEOPLE actually using them... and people being more polite and helpful. ...wow...

Anyway the reason I came down to Singapore was to watch Miss Saigon at the Kallang theatre. The Play was the next day so basically the Emptybox and I went in search of the respective public transport that would take us to her aunt's apartments where I will be staying for the next few days. The MRT basically shames the LRT of Malaysia, but what surprised me most was the fact that Singaporeans actually gave up their seats to the elderly and to those who need it more than they do, something which is rather rare in Malaysia.

Hoping onto a bus and getting to our destination was rather easy. The bus drivers are friendly and helpful which is more than I can say for our Malaysian counterparts. Oh ya... the escalators are three times faster than those in Malaysia... in fact, everything moves faster there... and if we do bump into slow moving organisms... they're almost always Malaysians on holiday!!! Anyway, that more or less wraps up my first day in Singaore... had a really heavy dinner that night. Some western food place with REALLY BIG portions... and BIG meatballs... Heck, the fish and chips for kids was big enough for the average Malaysian. I had the 'normal' fish and chips... which was huge beyond all reason.... and a rib to boot. And one of the things that I was about to discover soon was the huge portions of food that are served, well worth the exchange rate for the amount that we have to pay...:P Now that really wraps up my first day.

Thursday, September 06, 2001

No time to write... actually lotsa times... but I wanna wait till I have absolutely nothing to do before I write... so there... bluergh! Ho ho ho!!! :D

Sunday, September 02, 2001

Life is long and hard... life is also short and soft, and many more shapes and sizes to go... you know what I mean... and those of you who dont' can forget what I just said. I had a very extensive biological study today at a creature exhibition at some place other than boring old cyberlala land. Took some shots as well... hope they come out well as I found it rather hard to focus with my contacts on. Yes, for those of you who don't know, I have contacts now. Tis a long story, and maybe I shall illustrate it to you when I have the time... probably over a drink... on you!:) Now I have to go... a lot has happened... shall write when the time is right...