Thursday, March 26, 2009

Short break coming up

Been hearing some news of late from various sources .
With different sources pointing in the same direction with the same timeline, it seems like something is imminent.
Let's see what happens then.


In the meantime, I'll going for a short holiday with Dear to Penang + Phuket this coming weekend.
Good time to rest now after the last 3 crazy months, and my major projects coming to a conclusion soon.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Holiday Planning?

Let's plan a beach holiday to Philippines this summer.
Any takers?

Monday, March 09, 2009

Farm Day

I have finally made good my word and had a weekend well spent!
Brought along Dear, Derek & hx along for self drive half day farm visit!

Started the day with Breakfast at Jalan Kayu (somehow the prata sucks big time on sunday morning...), and then drove off to the first farm by following my GPS, driving through Neo Tiew Road, catching lots of countryside views along the way that we don't see in our everyday life.

Passed by the Kranji Dam along the way, but I think the Seletar Dam looks better even though I see it day in day out.

0930 - Reached our first stop of the day, Hay Dairies.
Though I visited this farm on many occasions, this is the first time that I managed to catch the milking session live.












Guess this is the first time that derek and hx is visiting this farm. Bought the fresh goat milk from the counter and wooo, hx was amazed by the taste of goat milk. Ha ha.
As the barns were closed for NEA inspection, we moved on to our next destination, but a missed turn has ended us up at the LCK Jetty. First time here though. Looks really rustic and feels so "Pulau Ubin"
LCK Jetty
After a few attempts, then we found out that the cow farm that we are trying to locate has closed down, so we moved on to the next farm that is nearest to us then.
Jurong BullFrog Farm (my first time here too!)
Its pretty noisy from the moment we stepped out from the car.
This farm has its interesting moments too. If you look closely enough at the below picture, you should be able to see a pair of mating frogs. (which was VERY obvious in the other ponds)
I thought this farm might smell a bit, but surprisingly, no odours at all.
Frogs don't stink...


We caught a few glimpse of a nice and big orchid along the way, so we turned back and went into the orchid, and asked the boss if we could just tour around the area, and the boss was nice enough to let us walk around freely. (it was pretty evident that this orchid was not designed for retail sales or educational tours, but more as wholesale orchid supplier to major florists and hotels, especially since there wasn't any other visitors and this orchid was not on any visitors brochure)
This place is huge!
Lots of different species of orchids!







Found some interesting and educational sights.
(Left)These are pre-planted trees, usually used for new built-up areas where there is no time for the trees to grow from small seedlings into big tall trees.
(Right)We suspect we will see these pre-planted palm trees at the IR next year...
We then went off to the Qian Hu Fish Farm for some fish therapy.
Its my second time here, but I still couldn't get used to the nimbling feeling when the spa fish bites on my feet, and kept fidgeting around... (no pictures taken, too ticklish for me to settle down...)
Dropped Derek off at the MRT after this as he had to go off for another appointment, then we went off to the FarmMart, which was rather disappointing for us. It was basically just a miniaturized version of all the farms which we had just visited, plus a lot of touristy stuff.
(it just pales in comparison as our earlier visits to the bigger farms really overshadows this place, but some of the stuff here could definitely be better...)
Ended our farm visiting day at FarmMart, as we proceeded to visit JurongPoint for lunch. We have not really been back to JP for a long time, especially after the place was upgraded. It was a pleasant surprise to see that JP has really been spruced up with all the new shops and stuffs.
Shokutsu 10 Japanese Food street
This is the infamous Jap food street of JP, but it was a bit short of the number of resident Jap restaurants. Nonetheless, good attempt by the JP management to give a theme to the place.
Spent some time walking around JP1 and JP2 (new extension), and we were flabbergasted by the sheer enormity of the place and shops. Too tired by that time to visit the shops one by one, so we just ended the day shortly after and went home.
Conclusion: A day well spent, visiting the places I like and seeing new stuff, and of course, the great company helps too. Made it feel like a Saturday to me and I thought so too, until the rest reminded me that it was a Sunday...
Must make it a point to make my weekends more memorable with stuff like this. At least the years won't pass us by so quickly this way. Life is not only about work work work (anyway, I'll touch more on this some time later)

Thursday, March 05, 2009

I'm tired

Feels a lot better after confiding in a few that I can trust totally.
My mind is set.
Waiting for 天变...

Sunday, March 01, 2009

Marley & Me!


Finally caught marley & me on saturday together with dear, after such a long wait.
The storyline in the show is almost a complete reproduction of the book, minus a few minor points which may be a bit excessive to put to film.
The dogs (puppy, adolscence, adult, old) are super adorable! And the scene depicted on this poster is really outstandingly cute!
Great show for fans of the book. Nice show for those have yet to read the book (the book gives a better depiction and explanation for some of the actions, which help you to appreciate better why they love Marley so much even though he is the "world's worst dog")
Go catch it anyway if you love dogs :)
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Issac just went for his first ever baby competition at the Community Centre this morning. First time for me, seeing so many babies and parents, grandparents, relatives, all crowding together in the CC's hall for baby competition.
Can tell that Sis and Bro-in-law enjoyed the event. But I guess mom was the most happy person of the day, being able to show off his grandson and take part in the competition as well (there was a grandparent+baby segment)
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Was facing serious work overloading this week, and there were many issues that I simply don't have the time to deal with. Confided in a select few on my thoughts, and I was already boiling mad by Friday at the amount of work I had to cover (and had to cover others as well), and the limited resources that I have at my disposal.
Boss caught me at a bad time when I was rushing some urgent stuff, and told me some stuff that I couldn't quite agree on.
After some short discussions and a few jibs, I snapped and felt that it was time to unlease all my pented up frustrations and thoughts. Dropped all my work at the moment, pulled boss into a meeting room for a closed door talk. It was quite a heated response from me, and caught boss offguard with my reaction and all the straight talking.
I emerged from the room feeling a lot more relieved after shooting off all the problems and issues that I see at the workplace. I had previously feedback some stuff to him, but did not quite get the response that I wanted, but this time, it seems like he has finally taken what I am telling him.
I believe that he should be mature enough to see where and why I pulled the skeletons out from.
Anyway, if I get chopped in the upcoming months, this may actually turn out to be the final nail in my coffin.
Buddies, help me keep a lookout for some good job lobangs ok...