After Singapore

I would walk 500 miles and I would walk 500 more

Author: pascal

  • Johor Trip 2009: The Zon

    The clock showed 10.40 am, and I was sitting inside the examination room at NUS. I was doing the last exam of this semester, for the subject “Network Security and Management”. I saw several people had come out, it seemed easy. Myself, I’ve answered all questions, but was not having 100% assurance they would satisfy the professor. Ah the heck, if I stayed there 5 more minutes, I would be forced to wait until 11 sharp, as the rule says nobody can go out of the room in the last 15 minutes, even if he has finished the exam.

    Then I made up my mind, I called the professor and asked his permission to go out, and start the getaway journey to Johor Bahru! Call me lousy, but I prefer Johor to other fancy destinations in Malaysia for its proximity to Singapore as well as cheap prices.

    I spent about 30 minutes in Clementi before going to Johor to open a new bank account (yet it’s out of the scope of this story ;P). Therefore I started going about half past eleven. Because the day before was a public holiday, and the next day was Sunday, I was hoping it wouldn’t be crowded in the immigration. It was true that on the Singapore part, it was a breeze. In Kranji MRT station, the SBS bus even had to wait a few minutes to wait until the bus is full. Yet in the Johor side, the road to immigration was slightly jammed by private cars. The immigration clearance was smooth, though.

    (Psst, here’s a dirty little secret: my birthday was coming up, and rather than spending more money to treat my friends in Singapore, I’d rather spend more on my time to take them to Johor for half-priced food. But that’s what I call sacrifice! Oh yes, so for that reason, I would like to survey the place I have found at the internet: The Zon, a duty-free shopping mall). Therefore, when I arrived there at 1.15PM, I started to look for a transport to the Zon, which (according to the map) is close to Ferry terminal to Batam/Bintan.

    At first I tried to go there by bus, as I’ve researched the numbers of buses going towards Zon. Alas, I couldn’t find where those buses stop. With my belly already screaming for calories, I finally decided to take a cab anyway. There was a taxi counter, where for each trip the passenger is required to buy a certain printed ticket, mostly to prevent the driver from overcharging the passengers. The trip was a breeze 10 minutes, but just enough time for me to chat with the driver, a guy in his 50s. I couldn’t speak Chinese, and he couldn’t speak English. So we tried to speak with Malay/Bahasa and he started to blame me that I couldn’t speak Chinese although I’m a Indonesian-born Chinese. And as usual, I played it safe by blaming Mr. Soeharto.

    About 13.30, I reached Zon, but sad to say that it was below my expectation. There are only few shops, mostly selling liquors or pubs that open at night. There was no food court and the McDonald’s stall only sells ice cream (but there was a Starbucks stall, though – weird!). Then I just went into a pub-style pizza restaurant, with most of the people inside were smoking. D’oh! Luckily I could find a seat that was far from them. I ordered a smoked salmon and an orange juice. After wandering around for an hour, I came into conclusion that the place is not worthy enough to spend time with my friends. Then I decided to go back to civilization: The City Square, another shopping mall near the immigration.

    I started walking outside to find some mode of transportation. Don’t want to give up the experience of taking a bus, I tried to search for a bus stop outside the shopping mall. It was interesting to see around, where there are traditional markets, hawker-style food stalls and the beach. Across the strait you could see Singapore main island, specially the Senoko power plant. After a few more meters of walking, I heard a loud noise of drums being played. It turned out to be a traditional Chinese drum practice by high school students in a Chinese school named “Foon Yew”. And where there is school, there should be delicious-yet-high-in-additives food! So I stopped by a rujak stall to taste some. I also bought a drink named “special teh-c”, which basically is a mix of tea, condensed milk and cendols. And yes, it is good, better than the Singapore ones.

    I spent a few minutes sitting in a bus stop before giving up as for almost half an hour, only one bus passed, and it didn’t seem to stop at a place I know. In the end, I decided to take a cab instead to go back to City Square mall. I spent few hours in the City Square, and another few in Kotaraya Plaza, hoping to be able to wait until 6 pm, since I wanted to try riding the Malaysian train back to Singapore. Based on the schedule, the train departs from Johor Baru at 7 pm, and tickets are sold only one hour before departure. The last time I tried to take the same train, it was delayed by one hour, forcing me to take the bus instead. I was hoping the train wouldn’t delayed again this time.

    So I spent another few hours wandering around in City Square, since it is just across the station. I wanted to have dinner there, but since I was still full from the rujak and teh-c, I decided to buy a take away food instead. Only few minutes before six, I bought a grilled chicken rice pack, and rushed to the station to buy the ticket; hoping that I could eat my dinner at the station’s waiting room. Unfortunately, this time again, the tickets were sold out. Disappointed, I got out of the station and find a place to eat my dinner. I couldn’t bring it back to Singapore since there is a restriction on importing poultry products.

    The trip back to Singapore was not so interesting, may be because I’ve lost interest on the trip due to the train delay. However, I am still grateful for the mini-backpacker experience, and some half-priced music CDs and food I bought from a local store!

    To go to Johor Bahru, you can take train to Kranji MRT, followed by SBS bus 160 or 170 bus from there. If you go from the west side, there will be announcements to take bus from Woodlands instead, but I wouldn’t recommend it since there are less buses departing from Woodlands.

    You can see few pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/pascalalfadian/JohorTrip2009

  • SCC Rugby 7s, Part 2 (2009)

    After a year has passed, the SCC Rugby 7s is held again (see last year). Similar to last year event, it was held in Padang, few minutes walk from City Hall MRT. But unlike the previous one, sadly this year even has not been as entertaining as before. Why? Please bear with me.

    The price of this year event has increased to $25 from previously $20. A reason for this could be of that they have extended the event by one day into a 3-day event, with the first day being a tournament for schools and colleges. However, since it was held on Friday, it’s practically useless for me. The bad news? I couldn’t just pay $20 for the 2-day event. The other part of the monies might also have gone to rent a big screen projector to show the score and replays (oh, and there’s also a big tower to record the game from the top of it). One thumb up (only) for the technologies.

    However, it still did not satisfy my hunger for a good atmosphere of the games, though. On this year event, the supporters could have only less interaction with the players. In last year arrangement, it was easy for us from the benches to get into the field. Therefore during the victory (or goodbye-losing) lap, we could go down and greet the players. In this year tournament, fences separating the benches and the grass field. If one wants to go past the fence, he has to turn around from the back stairs and walk quite a distance.

    Okay, enough about the rantings and let’s go to the real business. Remember that last year, Indonesia Barbarians managed to win the Bowl cup. It was a very good and unexpected achievement for a newcomer. Unfortunately, the teams that they’ve beaten last year didn’t come again this year, so it’s far more difficult to compete this year.

    On the first day games, bad luck has gone into them, since they didn’t manage to score even a single try (in football term: goal). In the second day games, they managed to score few trues, but the enemies were still too tough, and they have to suffer bitter defeats, failing to come home with a trophy this year. However, it is to be noted that they have fought their best, and no one is to blame.

    All in all, with all the drawbacks, the event was still good to watch. Congratulations too, for the organizer to hold such a big event in this tiny country!

    Photos and videos are available in http://picasaweb.google.com/pascalalfadian/SCCRugby7s2009 (do check out the war dances!)

  • Troubled with Budget Airlines? Try Call the Right Person!

    My vacation to Bali with friends from college was planned nicely for February 2010. They’ve booked promotional tickets from Air Asia few months ago, long time before the actual flight date. Though I didn’t get the promotional price (I will depart from Singapore, while they will be in Bandung), I also booked the flight for myself early.

    The schedule was just nice: the plane will take off at 10 AM, and reach Bali at 12.30 PM. Then I only need to wait few hours for my friends to come from Bandung. But then for some unexplained purpose, I was informed that my flight would be moved to 4.45 PM. It’s way beyond my friends arrival time! By the way, after the change, there was another Air Asia flight with the same route departing at 10 AM (seems that after my flight has been moved, they want to sell again the “prime time” schedule).

    To be honest, at first I merely accepted the change as this is a risk of taking budget airlines. Although I can easily reschedule it through the website, but it will cost me another $40 plus the difference between the new price and the old one. In that case, my flight wouldn’t be a budget one anymore. But then came a news from Rika that she’s managed to change the flight at no cost at the airport counter, so I decided to give it a try on a Saturday morning. The return trip from my place to airport takes 2 hours (and $3.34), so I don’t want to fail.
    Unfortunately, when I was there and asked to change the flight, the lady who served me refused to do it. She said that I have to wait until 2 months before departure date to be able change it. Wait a minute.., I don’t want to waste my 2 hours for nothing! So I argued her that if I delay the change, the seat might have been already full at that time.

    “At the moment the seats are all empty, sir!” she replied.

    “Yes, but this is promotion flight, it will be full soon!” I argued.

    “Then you should call the call center”, sir!” she replied again while giving me a name card containing phone numbers of several call centers.

    I gave up, then I tried to call it anyway. But alas, the Singapore call center couldn’t be reached. Probably there were too many people wanting to change their flight, too. so I came back again to see the lady and complain that I couldn’t connect to the call center.

    “Try the Malaysia number, Sir!”

    “But that’s international call!”

    “Yes sir, but if you call Singapore number, it’ll be redirected to Malaysia office anyway!”

    “Arrgh! Yes, but it’s local call for me!” (this one was only in my mind, I don’t want to show my kiasu-ness to her). Instead I just asked “may I have your [office] phone to call the Malaysia number?”. And you’re right, she didn’t allow me to do it.

    Then, when all hopes were fading, I decided to call an international number anyway. But rather, I would call the Indonesia number. It’s for two reasons: (1) The flight to Bali is in fact managed by Air Asia Indonesia, not by the main company itself; and (2) I speak Bahasa fluently, and the operator must be, too – it should help me a lot.

    Surprisingly, the call was very smooth, even smoother than I thought. The guy allowed me to change the schedule back to 10 AM at no cost. And even more surprising when I checked my call log, it only took 5 minutes of call! The price? 64 cents using StarHub’s HomeConnect budget call. If only I know I could do that earlier! Now the only thing I need to hope is that they won’t change my flight again. But in that case, I know who to talk to now 🙂

    In summary, here’s your choices on rescheduling your flight:

    Time Cost Remark
    Website ~ 15 mins $40 minimum N.A.
    Sales Counter (wrong person) ~ 30 mins ~ $3 max 2 months before departure.
    Phone (the right person) ~ 5 mins < $1 calling is easy, finding out who to call may be difficult.

    Image taken from Wikipedia

  • Lau Pa Sat

    Sorry for not posting lately, I’ve been busy with school. I did try to write some reports, but most of the time interrupted with my assignments. In the end, I was already bored or forgot the details of the event so I just discard them. Here’s an article on culinary spot. I’ll try to keep it short.

    It was Saturday afternoon, and I’ve been in my campus’ lab for few hours, and expected to spend few more hours there. Not wanting to stay with the computer to spend the weekend night, I contacted some friends from Indonesia, asking them to give Lau Pa Sat a try for its infamous satay for dinner (some, including me, have had dinner there before, anyway). For those who don’t know, Lau Pa Sat is a Victorian style medium-class hawker center in the Singapore CBD area. What makes it interesting, other than live bands on weekends, is the Boon Tat street next to it . After sunset, this road is closed for vehicles and turned into a satay food stalls area. There are about ten satay stalls, in which I personally don’t really know the different other than they are identified with different integer numbers.

    I’ve managed to invite 4 friends, and we were to meet at 7 PM.

    When the clock showed 5 PM, I saved my work and quickly took bus to the MRT (train) station. Since I have plenty of time, I decided to go to City Hall first, to find some supplements my dad asked me to look for. Even after that, I still have almost one hour before 7. So I decided to buy an ice green tea at nearby JCo outlet to let me sit there for few minutes.

    About 15 minutes to 7, Handy called and said he’s already in Raffles Place MRT station (the nearest station to Lau Pa Sat) so I went there and met him. It was his first time to Lau Pa Sat, so he asked me “is the satay good?”. I’ve gone here and eat the satay for several times, but as far as I remember the taste is more or less standard. Even not much different than the satay I ate the day before at a small hawker near my place. So I explained to him that it might be the ambient that makes this place famous.

    While waiting the others to come, we ordered a “fried fritter” from a nearby seafood stall. It was the name that tickled us to order. As far as I know, neither “fried” nor “fritter” is a seafood. Only when we ask to the seller, we knew it was squid covered with fritters then deep fried.

    After the others came, we started to order the satays and eat. Yet after eating them, I felt a bit disappointed. The satays were smaller and too sweet compared to the ones I bought in Commonwealth. And it’s also $0.10/stick more expensive, too. So that supports my theory that it’s only the ambient that makes this place popular. Moreover, when we finished eating, the live band started to play with some good music. So that where the $0.10 goes to.

    Take Exit I from Raffles Place MRT station to go to Lau Pa Sat.

  • Asian Civilizations Museum

    I’ve just received an email from NUS recently, saying that as a student I am entitled to enter 5 NHB museums for free. Asian Civilizations Museum is one of them.

    Finding a friend to go along was not very easy, since the entry fee of $5 could be too expensive for such a not-so-cool venue. Luckily, Richson has keen interest on this kind of stuff and we both decided to go there around 2PM, just when the free guided tour should start.

    We arrived there few minutes after two, and the receptionist asked us to wait down the lobby for the guide to come. But after waiting for +/- 10 minutes, we didn’t find any guide. Instead, we saw the receptionist approached other tourists and said something I didn’t know but made the tourists just went upstairs to start their tour immediately without a guide. We thought that the guide was not available or we were late, so we went upstairs too, anyway.

    The first exhibition was Singapore River, which tells us about the history of Singapore since centuries ago, and how the Singapore River played role in it. It was the major hub for market and Singapore. When it was widely used, the river was full of thrashes. Until one day the prime minister decided to start a $200 million project to clean the river in 10 years. The cleaning was successful, resulting as what we see today. Yet in one article, the writer complained about the unique characteristic of the river has lost due to the cleaning.

    Next part of the exhibition showed us how curators analyze antiques. For example, a painting would be seen under UV light, showing the pencil sketches the painter had drawn to understand the background and intention of the painter.

    The other exhibitions were divided into 4 groups: Southeast Asia, China, West Asia and South Asia. I’m not sure why they exclude other West Asian countries like Japan and Korea. There were also a special exhibition “Hunters and Collectors” where it shows works of explorers from western countries in Asia. It took about 2 hours for us to cover everything except South Asia part. We started at level 2 and continued to level 3, but were to tired to see the last exhibition South Asia at level 1.

    One interesting part when we visit the Southeast Asia, there were a small room with sitting mats. There were also books about stories for children from various countries. We sat there and I took a look on one storybook from Bali. It tells a story about a big, ugly frog named Gobrag. He is nasty and likes to sing (reminds me of the character Giant from Doraemon movie). He sings so badly the other smaller frogs were disturbed. But even they told Gobrag to silence, Gobrag never listen. So one day the small frogs sent three of them to find out another place good enough to live, without disturbance of Gobrag. After walking for some distance, those three frog came to an island. Suddenly the island was moving, and it turned to be a big monster. The three frog went back to their home and told the story to everyone, including Gobrag. But Gobrag didn’t believe.

    “Is it nastier than me?” ask Gobrag

    “Of course!” they answer.

    “Not possible, I am the nastiest! Is it uglier than me?”

    “Yes!”

    “Impossible! Bigger than me?”

    “Absolutely!”

    (At this point I thought Gobrag would come by himself to the island and got killed by the monster. But this story has a very good twist…)

    What Gobrag did was, he blew himself up and ask them again, “Is it bigger than this?”

    “Yes, it is still bigger than you!”

    Then he tried to blow himself again. But still they thought the monster is bigger than Gobrag. Gobrag blew up again, but up to the point it was too much for him. He exploded and died. And the rest of the frogs lived happily ever after.

    —

    Sorry I told the story more than the museum itself, but I found it more interesting than the artifacts and other history lessons. You can read more stories there at the museum, anyway.

    Asian Civilizations Museum is located at N° 1 Empress Place, Singapore 179555.

  • Free Dinner cum Dialogue with Mr. Boediono

    According to his source, more than 80% Indonesian voters in Singapore voted SBY-Boediono in the presidential election. That what makes Vice President-elect Boediono chose Indonesia Embassy in Singapore as the first embassy to visit and make a dialogue session, in addition to his visit to Rajaratnam School as a guest lecture.

    I arrived at the embassy with Handy around 7.15 PM. There were no sign of Mr. Boediono, but we saw a long queue to another room instead. In my mind, there were only two possibilities: either these people queued to greet and have their picture taken with Mr. Boediono, or, dinner. Hoping that the latter would be the case, we joined the queue.

    And it turned to be correct, the dinner session preceded the dialogue session. Unlike other events held in KBRI, the menu for the day was quite lavish: chicken soup, roasted chicken, beef rendang, fried gurame fish, gado-gado, plus some cakes and fruit juices. Yummy. Too bad I need to stick to my diet, so I had to forgo some food.

    Around 8.00 PM, Mr. Boediono came with the Indonesia ambassador for Singapore Mr. Wardana, and all visitor voluntarily stood up to pay respect. After that, Mr. Wardana gave a short opening speech for about 15 minutes. Followed by the speech by Mr. Boediono itself. In the 30-minute speech, he explained about the focus in the economic side of their (SBY-Boediono) plan. It consists of three main points: [1] developing “hard” infrastructure (transportation, electricity, etc…), [2] “soft” infrastructure (cut red tapes, single identity, etc…) and helping the people who are behind to catch up (i.e. helping on the poor). It was ended with Q&A session, which is the longest session among others (+/- 1 hour).

    Notable question was from a PLRT, who was asking about possibility to consider PLRT as PNS (thanks to bear with me with all these acronyms 🙂). It was not about the question, but her introduction. She started with “Hello, my name is ***. Recently I received a message in facebook…” and she was interrupted with big laughs from the audience. Even Mr. Boediono jumped from his chair. This PLRT surely know how to use technology!

    There was also another question from a woman who works as informal education coordinator for PLRTs working in Singapore. She described how she works, how she travel from Batam island and back, how her hard work is, etc, etc. I almost dead of boredom after 10 minutes she spoke nothing but bragging herself, when Mr. Wardana interrupted her to speak to the point. Thank God.

    But that when he started his own bragging of KBRI involvement in building up school for Indonesians in Singapore for another 10 minutes, without anyone could interrupt.

    Even with so many people eager to ask, the Q&A must be ended at 10PM, as “Mr. Boediono will have another event tomorrow morning”. While everyone headed to the front to take pictures with Mr. Boediono, I and Handy slipped outside, leaving out opportunity to get easy money by taking people pictures with Mr. Boediono and sell them for $10 each.

    Glossary:

    • KBRI: Kedutaan Besar Republik Indonesia, Embassy of Republic of Indonesia
    • PLRT: Penata Laksana Rumah Tangga, formal name for domestic worker
    • PNS: Pegawai Negri Sipil, civil servant
    • SBY: Soesilo Bambang Yoedhoyono, president and president-elect of Republic of Indonesia

    Bonus Story: Alert reader may notice that this post lack picture of Mr. Handsome on ground zero. It is because my camera-powered mobile has some problem recently. The sensor for “OK” button has stopped responding, making it practically unusable. I can still make and receive calls with the green “call” button, but it stupidly disable this button to replace “OK” for reading and sending SMS, or even merely enter the menu. I even had to call my colleague just to ask what message she just sent to me 5 minutes earlier.
    Therefore now I’m stick with this low-end phone, which in turn has smarter design because I can send SMSes with both OK and green button.

  • Escape Theme Park

    Summer is the time for fun! After the team building few weeks before, the Gemalto rec-club is now taking the turn to put back fun to function! The club organized a fun day for all Singapore employee in Escape Theme Park. Since the event was held inside the theme park, we had the option to participate in the games or merely trying out the attractions there.

    However, the team games were too much for us after the last team building event. Therefore, I and my friends decided to ride on attractions instead.

    The first attraction we tried was the haunted house. The LCD screen installed at the entrance –which shows the do’s and don’ts on the attraction– makes me a bit de-scared, though. And yes, when we went inside, there were no spooky smells or disgusting liquids. There were only robots, trying to surprise us with sudden movements. I was surprised yes, but not that scary. Amudi was laughing to the tricks already and trying to mock Rika, who was in front of him and behind me. The result, she grabbed my backpack very tightly for few times. Hmm, at least my backpack got haunted.

    The next one was Pirate Ship, or more commonly known as “Kora-Kora” in Indonesian. We sat on a big ship-like platform, and swung back and forth in half-circle rotation. The most thrilling moment is when you’re at the maximum height, your body facing downwards; then it comes down at a very high speed, giving you tickling sensation in some parts of your body.

    Next attraction was called Flipper, where you are spun horizontally only in a bowl-like platform. Well, sometimes you are rotated 45° vertically. It’s not that fun, though. The spin was only about 5 minutes. But we had to wait 15 minutes inside the bowl before it’s running because the operator wanted to check all safety belts are properly tightened one by one before he started the machine.

    Just before lunch, we tried the roller coaster. The name of the attraction is family coaster, in which I should realized before. It’s a family ride. There were no 360° loops nor steep and that-quick descents. Or, should I say, it’s Singapore-style family ride, fully certified by the national heart foundation as safe for even the weakest person to suffer from heart attack by riding this coaster.

    Then we went back to Gemalto booth to take our lunch.

    After lunch, we tried the best attraction in this tiny theme park: the Go-Kart. We had to queue for about an hour before we could ride this attraction. But it was quite worth the wait to ride a mini-F1 with the Bajaj engine. My turn was next to Amudi and he recommended me to choose the car he just used, as it was most powerful compared to others. And yes, as I started pushing the gas, the car roared and ran pretty fast. For the three laps, I wasn’t even got passed by and secured the first place. The track was quite thrilling, where the first part of the track is a spiral-like shape to climb up to about 3 levels high. Just after the climb, there’s the steep descent. It has a lot of “slow” signs to warn drivers to stop pushing the gas. At first I ignored then sign. But after my car start descending, it was shaking very hard; only then I started to brake. And only after the descent, I started to push the gas again. Well, it’s quite a good 10-minute ride.

    After the Go-Kart, we headed to Wet and Wild. It’s an attraction where you ride a small boat of two people, lifted to few stories high, then descend very fast into the water and get splashed all over the body. Most of us joined the queue, but when we realized it will be veeery wet, some people canceled, including me. So it left only Richson and Rika continuing the queue and ride on the attraction. Meanwhile, the others were just playing with Imam’s little baby.

    The Go-Kart summed up our trip to Escape Theme Park. Some of us were to tired and decided to go home. I with some friends preferred to continue to Changi Beach since we are already in the east side of Singapore. The story is not included here, but you can see some pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/pascalalfadian/GemaltoFunDayAndChangiBeach

    Escape Theme Park is located at N° 1 Pasir Ris Close, Singapore 519599
    Nearest MRT is Pasir Ris MRT, and there is hourly shuttle bus service for free.

  • Gemalto Team Building 2009

    The team building was held last Friday, and as it took working day, to not taking part would be considered as leave. Yet since it’s a chance to get paid for playing games, why not?

    So I got off from home around 8 in the morning to the office to join people taking the company bus to Singapore Botanic Garden (SBG). I wore red shirt as ordered by the organizer, to divide us in team of different colors. Since the bus left at 9, I spent some time inside office to set up my auto-reply, filled up my bottle, and printed a map of SBG. 9 o’clock, I went down to take the bus.

    We arrived at SBG about half an hour later, and gathered near the “Joy” sculpture. Couldn’t stand with the nature call, I looked for nearby restroom. Unfortunately, to go to the nearest I needed to walk about 200m. When I came back from the restroom, everyone has already grouped in colors, including my team. And as joined the latest, the team easily appointed me as the team leader. Well, okay.

    After marking the attendances, we started the ice-breaking game, where we had to order ourselves according to our names alphabetically without talking at all. It was easy, and we talked anyway. The second round is to sort alphabetically too, but this time to sort based on manager’s last name in reversed order. We failed to do that, but oh well, it was not counted in the overall score.

    Then the first real game was the three-legged hand ball. We played in pairs, where one of our leg will be tied to our partner. I was the goal keeper and the rest of players need to pass me the ball instead of shooting towards the enemy’s line. Unfortunately we lose this game at the early stage. Hmm, not good for a beginning, but there’s still more games.

    The second game was to build the tallest tower out of one edition of local newspaper. Building tower out of paper? Seems impossible, but we managed to erect +/- 3m tall tower that could stand on it’s own! The committee asked us to move the tower so all towers stand next to each other for easier measurement. But I didn’t want to risk destroying our tower, so I (and other leaders) tried to argue to not do it. Finally, they agreed to measure them on the spot, and we secured the 2nd place on this game. Good!

    Next is, lunch: the moment we’ve waiting for! We’ve all got halal food, where some people had preferred to take vegetarian meal. The meal was quite good for me: having 3 meats and 1 veggie, it must be at least $4 in hawker center. But some of my Indian friend said the vegetarian food was not that nice. Well of course, they gave Chinese vegetarian food to them (you know, the one with the “fake” meat).

    After lunch, the committee wanted us to play amazing-race like game. We needed to run to three posts and played a game in each post. God knows running after meal is unhealthy, so He made one committee carelessly made 11 copies of race map, lack one from the 12 teams playing. So we had to wait about half an hour before the game can start.

    The first post for our team was to blow a balloon to a size of a soccer ball, tie it with a +/- 15cm string, and let all 15 team members grab (or, touch) the string. We managed to do it swiftly and quickly ran to the second post. At second post, two teams were already there and unfortunately we had to wait at least one of them to finish. We had to guess two out of three zoomed-in photos in this post. One was a power plug, and the other one was a paper binder. The third one, we don’t know. So we ran again to the last post, where we were asked to solve a jigsaw puzzle. We did it quickly too, and ran to the base camp to finish the race. And yeah, we managed to get the second place again!

    Next game was charade down the line, a variant of charades where were lined up of 8 people, all facing forward. The committee would give a secret profession name to the last person in the line, that person taps the next person’s shoulder and start acting the profession without saying a word. The acting continues to the front-most person. After the front-most person knows the profession, he should run back to the committee to answer the profession in question. We didn’t do well in this game, and the result placed us in the 3rd rank overall.

    Then the last game, longest line! This game is exactly the same as last year’s one, to make the longest line out of everything you have in your body. And that includes your shoelaces, belt, shirt, everything. One person even put some of his bills to make the line. We didn’t know who had the longest line, but even with the last game our team was still in the 3rd position.

    The prize awarding ceremony summed up the whole event. The prize for our team was a transformer-style reading light. You press the button, the small block will transform (open) to a turned on light with a clipper to clip in a book. Know what? The exact same prizes were also given for other teams. It’s not about the prize, it’s about the fun!

  • Singapore Botanic Gardens

    Due to its huge size, it may be difficult to find out how to go there. At least that what happened to me and delayed me from visiting this beautiful park. The official website provides me only the bus numbers without departing and alighting points, as well as recommended starting point to walk. However, I finally decided to go there anyway. Oh, by the way, it’s easiest to go there from the entrance near Gleneagles Hospital (take bus 105 towards the east from Commonwealth MRT, about 5 bus stops away).

    So I went there with my friend Handy around lunch time. We didn’t have lunch before, since we were planning to take it in “Taman Serasi Food Center”, whereas according to local map is just next to Botanic Gardens’ main gate. Unfortunately when we reached there, we couldn’t find one. All we saw around were private houses. So we had to walked a bit to nearby Tanglin Mall and had our lunch there.

    After lunch, we came back to the gate to start the journey. Looking at the map, it’s half impossible to explore all spots in the garden. Therefore, we just walked along the west side of the park, towards the north, passing three big lakes as our checkpoints.

    The first one is the Swan Lake, where… well, swans, live there. Seeing this lake and the swans made me remember the Tchaikovsky’s (did I spell it right?) “Swan Lake” symphony. It surprised me how the swans move very smoothly on the water. And apparently it surprised my friend, too. Initially we saw them from distance and he thought they were robots (you know, it’s Singapore…). But after examining them closely, I realized that they in fact don’t swim rushy like us human being. They just “row” with their feet once in a while and let their streamlined body flows swiftly.

    Next stop was the Ginger Garden. I don’t know what it has to do with ginger, but there was a beautiful-man-made-mini-waterfall. So, why not take some pictures? You can see myself behind a waterfall. Thanks to Handy he could take my picture when I was inside the cave (Now he’s a bit handy on this occasion). Nearby was the Orchid garden, but to enter I need to pay some fee. Not interested.

    We walked again and got into the second lake: Symphony Lake. Part of the lake is meant to be used as a performance stage, but most likely for calm, classic ones. Water is separating the stage and the audience area, so I can’t imagine this stage to be used by pop/rock bands (where the performers usually jumps to the crowd, it’s too far here).

    Next interesting spot is the Evolution garden. Well, not really that interesting. It’s a man made one, explaining how how living creatures evolved. Maybe for kids, yes.

    Walking again, I felt “back to Singapore” again. In the distance I saw cranes and tall buildings, and at the left of the pathway I took is the construction of the new Circle Line MRT Station. There was a sign attached, promising the benefits of new new station to be ready on 2010, blah blah blah.

    Then there were the Eco Lake inside Eco Garden, translated to Malay “Taman Eko”; in which if translated back from Bahasa (Indonesian) to English becomes “Eko’s Garden” whereas “Eko” is a common name for Indonesians. Not so much thing to see, only some turtles I can took picture of.

    We were tired already, so we had to find a way out. From inside we could see the Bukit Timah Road. But alas, it was closed with fences and a small sign told us we do can’t get to the road through here. So we had to turn around and quit through Jacob Ballas Children’s Garden, in which we were not very interested to see because, uh, it’s for children. The exit gate led us to NUS Bukit Timah campus, and consequently Bukit Timah Road. From here you can take bus N° 186 to go to the nearest MRT, Queenstown. And that conclude our journey.

    But a bit of tip: don’t go to northern side, it’s not really worth it.

    Singapore Botanic Gardens has two entrances, but the easiest is to locate the Gleneagles Hospital at N° 4 Napier Road, Singapore 258498.

    More pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/pascalalfadian/BotanicGarden

  • One North Park

    There are two ways to go back home from my office. One is to take bus N°198. It usually takes about 30 minutes to go home, including the time required to cross the street, waiting the bus, and walk a bit. The other is to walk all the way. It by average takes 30 minutes as well if I take shortcuts (that includes crossing the KTM railway). Normally would walk home only if I can go back early.

    But this day was different. I needed to finish something at the office until 7.30 PM, and I’ve skipped several exercise sessions for past few days. So I decided to walk home to replace my sessions. I grab a dinner first at Fusionopolis, then stayed a bit there to let my tummy calm down first. Afterward, I started walking home with about the same route – in the dark.

    Was walking in the dark, I was a bit “lost” in a sense that I didn’t take the shortest route I usually take. But it led me to a new park I’ve never seen before (at night – in fact I’ve seen it during the day, but I didn’t know it’s a national park). I arrived at One North Park. Not sure which part is the Biopolis, and which is One North Park, but somewhere there is an amusement object where you can clap your hands between two big dishes and hear your clap echoing. Other than that, there’s not much you can see there. Especially at night, where the pathway is not lit by garden lamps.

    For girls, it is not recommended to walk alone. Boys, just be careful of homosexuals.

    The park itself is not very big, so I passed it after only 5 minutes. Then it comes to the KTM shortcut. But this time I wouldn’t dare to cross it. It’s even darker than One North Park, and there is no pathway, only railway and grass. You wouldn’t know what you will step into. Moreover, there’s a small abandoned house nearby, a perfect supplement for Singapore Ghost Story (I should upload the photo someday..)

    One North Park is located next to Biopolis area, near Buona Vista MRT.