Princess and I have a little plan. We’ve both decided to write our Uniquely Singapore post for our Nuffnang Asia-Pacific Blog Awards in a bit of a different way. Instead of writing about things that I wanna see in Singapore, I’m going to write about 3 places that Princess will want to go to in Singapore and why.

What it is?

Housed in the grand Empress Place Building, the ACM features more than 1,500 artefacts displayed over 14,000 square metres of gallery space. The museum’s growing collection traces the cultural roots of Singaporeans through its focus on Southeast Asia, South Asia, China and the Islamic world of West Asia – (Source – Visit Singapore website)

Why she would go for it?

Princess studied Asian Studies at Mount Holyoke. That’s right, while most of us studied things like law, accounting, economics, she studied Asian Studies. So somehow she has a rather curious interest in Asian history.

2) Ma Maison in Central

What it is?

This really quaint Japanese restaurant in Central where they serve really different kind of Japanese food. Food that Princess used to eat quite a bit while she was studying in Japan.

Why?

Princess spent a year studying in Japan. She speaks fluent Japanese and also has a thing for Japanese food. It’s not just the usual Japanese sushi and stuff that she’s crazy about. She tells me that people in Japan don’t really eat sushi on a daily basis. They eat other stuff too, like the food you find in Ma Maison sometimes. She loves it there.
Ming brought us once there and she loved it. Think she’ll probably wanna go there again.

1) Far East Plaza

What it is?

Shopping mall which is a bit of a Singaporean version of Sungai Wang. You can find really cheap hair extensions there (according to her) and the kind of clothes shops where you will only find one type of one top. She likes stuff like that. Not clothes from a typical brand but one of a kind or two of a kind type of clothes which are also cheap. This is a recent dress she bought from Far-East.

Why?

Princess spent the afternoon today shopping at Sungai Wang. Need I really explain further?

Check out Princess’ version of this post here where she guesses the places that I would go for.

This week started off with a fun grocery shopping trip with Princess on Sunday.

I love grocery shopping. I don’t know what I love about it but I think it’s because of the memories I had growing up. I remember following my parents grocery shopping and very often I would wish they would buy me some of the chocolates on the aisles we past by but they often said no.

Now that I’m all grown up and all though I feel so powerful. I cart down the aisle and load up my trolley with as much goodies as possible… well that and household essentials.

I also decided for the first time to try Nutrigen (instead of buying loads of Yakult like I normally do). Will tell you guys how that goes.

I drag Princess along with me. She hates grocery shopping… but she often agrees to follow me anyway 🙂 *sayang*

When I was in Melbourne with Ming and Princess like a month ago, Pinky brought us to her place.

She was sharing a flat with a few of her flatmates and she brought us in for a little tour.

The place really brought back memories of what my student life was like and what I had as a student.

1) Messy living room with leftover empty booze bottles from house parties lined up on the bar.

CHECK!

2) Big loaf of bread for breakfast and for mid-night supper.

CHECK!

3) Year long supply of instant noodles from Malaysia for other hungry moments when you don’t feel like eating bread.

CHECK!

4) Microwave to cook instant noodles in

5) Fridge with some basic cooking essentials. With eggs, pasta sauce, etc etc.

CHECK!

6) Broadband modem and wireless router for everybody (everyone’s main source of entertainment)

CHECK!

7) Unwashed pots and plates left in the kitchen sink.

CHECK!

8) Take-out menus and fast food delivery numbers on fridge for times when you’re too lazy to cook.

CHECK!

9) Simple bed room with just a bed and study table at the end.

CHECK!

10) Rubbish bin that badly needs to be emptied.

CHECK!

11) Pinky furry handcuffs…

Uhhh…

So here’s something for you guys to watch on a lazy Sunday.

And that was the end of Fourfeetnine aka Princess 🙂

After Princess was Nicolekiss. Now Nicole was a blogger that Michael (the producer of the show), really wanted to feature because she was a travel blogger who had documented a lot of her travel experiences in videos.

When Ming first watched it in the studio, he said

I defended my gf of course! But I thought Nicole’s episodes were really interesting. Particularly like the episode about Cambodia.

I also liked the way the first episode started off. Nicole wasn’t in there.. but I liked the way it started off. Very different from the typical starting episode.

Anyway, here they are.

This should keep your Sunday busy 🙂

Okay to avoid putting too many videos on my blog. If you’d like to see the rest, and also Redmummy’s that is coming out throughout this week click here.

Have a great Sunday everyone!

I’m off to Klang for BKT now 🙂

It’s a week before Princess and me’s first anniversary together!

Oh no… what do I do what do I do…

Done taking her for a short trip.

Done surprising her with a shopping experience

Done giving her a new phone she really needed when her old phone started to fail.

Done doing a video for her

Done having romantic dinners

Done cooking dinner with her (and later on getting food poisoning)

Done giving her balloons

Done surprising her with flowers

Done giving her a big stuffed toys.

Done writing her love letters.

Done it all..

Maybe we’ll just have a “romantic” steamboat dinner. Haven’t done that yet.

Ok baby?

Last Sunday, I went with Pierre and Ming for the Singapore F1. I’ve never been for an F1 race before. Can’t say it was something I was interested in at first but with all the hype over it and after watching it on TV last year I decided to go to Singapore to watch the night race this year.

The three of us got the walk-a-bout pass which only cost like SGD100 each. I think it’s like the cheapest ticket there. The other tickets can cost like SGD 300 onwards.

The bad thing about the walk-a-bout passes is that there’s no fixed place to sit with a good view. The good thing though is that you get to walk around along the entire track and get to stand right next to where the cars are driving past.

We spent the whole night walking around and stopped by the river at some point to have some drinks and Mister Potato, enjoying the view of the city.

Took a picture of Pierre too.

If you’re wondering why my pictures are so dark. It’s because all these pictures were taken with my iPhone camera. Princess took my real camera with her that weekend.

Later in the night we found ourselves in some part of the tracks where you had emergency teams waiting in place in case an accident were to happen. There was like a fire truck all waiting full of fire extinguishers at the back along with an ambulance all with people already inside them waiting to drive out the minute something went wrong.

It’s like they weren’t going to waste a minute by even standing outside the cars.

Funny thing though was that the next day we watched parts of the race again on TV and realized that there were a lot of things that happened on the race that we missed because we were at the wrong side of the tracks to see it. You know, car banging one another and all.

I mean it’s one thing watching the cars from an aerial view on TV. It’s another thing altogether standing right next to the track when they drive past. It’s really loud when they go past, so loud that we all had to buy these little ear plugs to put in our ears whenever we were near the track.

In the midst of buying the ear plugs, Ming also bought a Singapore F1 cap for all three of us.

It cost SGD55 each… something I thought was waaaay overpriced but Ming decided that it was worth it for the memory. Ming is like that sometimes. He has a slightly different view of life than a lot of people have (including myself).

Like if I were going to spend RM100, I would evaluate to see if this material thing I was getting was worth it or not. In this case for example, I would ask myself if the cap is really worth that much.

Ming on the other hand would value something not merely for its material worth but for the memories it brings. So in the case of the cap, the cap probably wasn’t worth SGD 55 but the memory of the 3 of us being there was… at least to him.

So in the hope of capturing the memory of it all in the photos we took, we all made sure we wore the caps the whole night.

I really really enjoyed the night. It was good fun walking around the track and watching the cars go by even if we could only see a car for like a few seconds before it zoomed right past us. I tried taking some pictures of the cars driving past but couldn’t manage to get any good shots with my iPhone camera.

So I ended up taking a video.

Here it is guys.

Cool huh?

I think I’ll go again next year 🙂

Last Friday I went to watch the Black Eyed Peas at their Arthur’s Day performance in Sunway Lagoon Surf Beach.

The Black Eyed Peas has gotta be one of my favourite groups of all time. You know they’re good when you’re asked to name one good song they have and you can’t help but think of too many.

My Singaporean friend sent me this e-mail just a few days ago.

At the end of the e-mail she asked “Is this true?”

Well.. I’ve never heard of it and I think it’s fake judging by how airbrushed the pictures are and how the lighting is so perfect. Hardly looks candid at all.

But my fellow Malaysians let me ask you guys. Is this true?

Sorry if I haven’t been able to reply comments or update lately. I’ve been sick again in the past 2 days. Food poisoning from some food that I had back in Penang. Funny thing is that my whole family who had that same dinner was totally okay. I was the only one hit by food poisoning.

There used to be a time where I seldom got food poisoning or seldom got sick. I would get sick literally about twice a year, normally not more than that. These few recent years though have been really bad for me. In 2009 so far, I think I’ve been sick some 4 times. That’s almost like once every 2 months! 

I don’t know what’s wrong with me. My body resistance seems to be a lot weaker these days than it used to be. My mum attributes it to stress though. My mum says that she can see it in me sometimes. How my mind is often very occupied by work. 

Princess sees it too. The other day we were lying around my room just talking when she turned to me and said “I miss you...”

I gave her a really confused look and at the point really started wondering that maybe men really were from Mars and women from Venus

I crept closer to her then and cuddled her for a while 

At that moment, I had defeated it. I had taken my mind off work for just a few minutes but I failed to keep that discipline any longer than that. Before I knew it I was thinking about work again. 

I don’t know how I got to be like this. When it first started off, I related it to passion. Passion about a company that I couldn’t get my mind off. Now though I think it has grown from a passion to an obsession. I try to take it easy these days. Try not to stay in the office too late but I know it doesn’t work. 

I may leave the office at 7.00PM but I never fail to bring back my work with me. Maybe that’s why I keep falling sick. Maybe it’s because my mind is never at peace. I never just really sit down and relax for a few days and not think about work. 

Not having the urge to check my e-mails or to call someone to make sure everything is ok. This is something that I think I eventually have to find in myself to get over. Ming on the other hand is good at drawing this line. He knows how to stop thinking about work when the time comes for him to relax.

I need to start to learn that too. 

I remember a time when life was a lot simpler. When I had a lot less to think about and all I had to worry about was silly coursework, 

exams at the end of the year and where we should all go for lunch next.

To think I was just a simple university student 5 years ago. 

I can’t complain about the life I have now. It turned out better than I thought it would be.

I do however reminisce on how simple life was back then… as a student.

So I’m back in my hometown Penang after a very long time. It never fails. Every time I come home I look at the things on my study table, the things in its drawers, the things that lie around my room and memories come back to me. 

All these little things are little keys to memories stored in my mind.

 So while Princess was sitting on my bed blogging away, I took some time in the afternoon and I took out a few old things in my room and started thinking how I got that and what I had went through with it.

When I was in primary school I had an alarm clock that beeped but I grew to love sleep even more as I grew older. So by the time I was in secondary school, I got this alarm clock that let out a very loud ringing sound. It was so loud that sometimes I get a shock and I jump out of bed right away trying to figure out what the hell just happened.

That couldn’t have been good for my young heart at the time, but it worked. By the time I realized that the loud ringing sound was coming from my alarm clock, I would be wide awake!

2) This was some handcraft that I bought from some students from a girl school in Penang. 

I can’t remember which school or who were the girls selling it but what I do remember is that it was for a charity drive.

I think I had a small crush on one of the girls who were selling it so I ended up buying one. It cost me like RM20 or something. A lot of money back then for a secondary school student.

I do think it was worth it though. I mean think of the creativity it took to make this out of matchboxes, marbles, satay sticks and other random materials you find around the house.

Yes I still did like playing remote control cars back then. In fact, if I had the chance to play one now I might still enjoy it. Nothing like being able to control a little toy car from a distance.

The Casio calculator watches that had everything inside. You name it, world clock, calculator, scheduler, teleporter… you name it. I remember when I managed to successfully beg my Dad to buy me one in Standard 6 because most of my friends in school had it too. When I wore it to school the next day, it felt like I was in some ELITE club. I felt POWER… I felt like THE MAN, that was until G-Shock became the craze and my calculator watch started to look a little lame. Damn fast moving trends!!!

The girls didn’t pay much attention to my calculator watch or the G-Shock though. They probably thought it was an ugly watch.

And now, looking back at it… I can’t say they were wrong.

Some 13 years later I’m wearing a watch that does nothing more than tell the time. 

No.. it doesn’t even beam me up to my spaceship in orbit.

5) Since we’re talking about technology now, lets talk about my mobile phones. 

My parents were the kind who always wanted to know where I was. I guess knowing that I always got in trouble in school, they wanted to make sure I didn’t get myself in trouble anywhere OUTSIDE school. So the first mobile phone I used was an Ericsson phone that came out right after that famous Motorola brick phone with the flap. I remember how everyone also had to bring out like 2-3 spare batteries with the phone so that you could keep using it the whole day.

It wasn’t like “my phone” in the sense that I kept it with me all the time. It was just one of those phones that we had in the house and if I were going out alone, I was supposed to take it with me in case my parents wanted to reach me. 

So I ended up mostly with Ericsson phones until one day I started getting worried about all the talk on radiation from mobile phones causing brain tumours and all that. So I started doing some research on which phones don’t emit a lot of radiation and somehow word was that this Siemens phone had low radiation.

I eventually ended up getting one of these.

While all my other friends had the cooler phones like the Nokia “Butterfly”. Remember how cool those were back then? They were like the hottest phone around.

Many years later when I got into college though, my Godparents gave me a present. Probably the first and last time they spoilt me. (Ever since then my parents told them not to give me anything like that anymore) 

They bought me this Nokia 8310 which was at the time one of the coolest phones around.

I mean back then it was like the THE phone to have! It could just have these little ringtones, send SMS and make calls but yet it was like… one of the best phones around then. Don’t even talk about having a camera or accessing the internet, all that stuff didn’t exist commercially yet.

Fast forward today and I’m still one of those geeky guys crazy about phones. So I’m on an iPhone which can do everything my old Nokia 8310 can do but like 10,000 things more. 

How technology changes in such a short time.

The Nokia 8310 though was probably one of the most reliable phones I’ve ever had. Never failed me.

Yes it’s true. I had a table tennis teacher who was taught me to play the Harmonica every week. I started off with this beginner one 

and he eventually bought me a better one.

It’s not too difficult though. But today I think I can only remember to play 1-2 songs. And they’re really old songs like Red River Valley or something.

There is one more thing that I was thinking of sharing here. Something I found in my room. The thing that inspired me to become an entrepreneur but I think I’ll write about that in the next entry. This entry is long enough.

Hope you guys are having a great holiday 🙂