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Exhaustive Weekend

The last weekend was a physically and mentally tiring one. On Saturday morning, I woke up at 730am to renew my licence to a permanent Singapore Driving Licence. Then, met up with the rest at Balestier Road to rent a pick-up truck to well, help Chee Lim, Kah Hon and Susan move house.

Oh, we really travelled the whole of Singapore ex-East. Jit-Vern drove, I was the navigator, Kah Hon and Ian was the banglas and Chee Lim the supervisor. The timing was really bad.. We had to make multiple rounds from Sengkang/Bishan, to Bukit Batok.. The worse was people behind the truck where they had to endure the scorching sun and small droplets of rain. I had my fair of being at the back of the truck for a few trips.. Of course, we had a good laughs as well. When we were transporting two cupboard behind the truck, there literally wasn’t any seat space. JV volunteered to sit/sleep in the cupboard. hahah

jv-wardrobe jv-ian-wardrobe

And girls really do have A LOT Of stuff! Kah Hon only has a couple of bags to carry over.. Chee Lim and Susan had tonnes of stuff here.. I don’t know how they accumulated so many things. I remember when I was shifting my place, me, Ian, Jit Vern and Yee Weng only needed one truck in a single trip to Hougang.. hahaha

Yvonne came back to SG to visit us. She brought back a lot of face masks to be distributed around. We gathered everyone at night for dinner and chill out at their new place. The new tenants were so-kind of treating us all our meals (including the sumptuous Botak Jones) as a gratitude for their banglas’ sweat and blood. (yes, some of us bled). Ian and I almost treated the pick-up truck as our ‘home’ cause we spent a good old 16 hours on it.

So the whole of Saturday was all about carrying, hoisting, driving, sweating and tanning. When you have such an eventful Saturday, you’d think that any sane person would have rested on a Sunday.

But alas, we promised a dear friend to attend her boyfriend’s birthday celebration at Sentosa. Pity Chin Zwen though, she got stuck in Amsterdam due to the Iceland Volcanic Eruption and she couldn’t come back for her boyfriend’s birthday celebration. She had it all planned out but the party must go on without her. To make matters worse, the boyfriend is leaving to US a few days after that for a month and I don’t think they are able to see each other till after that.

Anyway, birthday celebration at Sentosa. It was only a small group of us. Me, Ian, Jit-Vern, Mel and Yvonne. Yin Sin and Yee Weng had to study at home. (though YW joined later). We watched and enjoyed looking at people play in the new wavepool, we took another person’s volleyball to play, and we had BBQ for dinner!

 

surf-wave wipe-out

The hot chick got wiped out in the artificial wave pool… *ouch*

The main thing was the BBQ actually. Most of the people there are his friends (~duh, his birthday party~) and it felt a bit weird at first. But after a while, we just kinda blend in and enjoy ourselves there.

james-bbq

We bought his cake and I think he’s kinda surprised with the cake… =)

james-birthday

But I think it’s quite sad cause his gf wasn’t there and she prepared all these for him. He also made a (I think) sad remark where he said that seeing us makes him feel his gf’s presence.
Guess we can just hope the airports will reopen soon and the two love birds can get back together.

I think I’m getting old. Those two nights really made me feel exhausted. For the first time, I slept at about 11 on Monday. Oh, I did a little project in the house on Monday night. Shall talk about that next time.

Universal Studios Singapore

Sometimes, it’s good to be working in a big corporate company. SingTel has managed to get a 3-night pass (from 30th Mar to 1st Apr) to Universal Studios Singapore at a subsidized rate of $20 per person with a $10 meal voucher. The normal ticket rate is $66 but that’s from 9am to 6pm. This $20 ticket is only valid from 7pm-11pm.

USS tickets The rate can only be extended to one staff and another person. Naturally, I brought Yin Sin there. We were at Vivo at 6pm to explore around the place since neither of us has even been or knows how to get there.. The Universal Studios (USS) is located in Sentosa, the first monorail stop (Waterfront Station).

Universal studios gantry 

You can see this big globe of universal studio landmark there… The queue to go in was very long…. Everyone’s excited to enter..USS Globe

Upon entering

There are 7 different theme sets altogether in USS. They are:

  1. Hollywood
    Hollywood1 Hollywood Star
  2. Madagascar
    madagascar1 madagascar2
  3. Far Far Away
    farfarawayland1 far-far-away-castle
  4. The Lost World
    t-rex
     
  5. Ancient Egypt
    egyptian pharoah ancient egypt 
  6. Sci-fi World
    scifi-1 battlestar galactica entrance
    robot bay
  7. New York
    newyork1  newyork2

But because it’s only $20 and we only have 4 hours… we only get to sit a limited number of rides. The 3 main attractions are the following:

Waterworld Show, which is presented by SingTel (the main reason why we get this exclusive entry). I find the show is really worth watching. It’s like watching a show in a a movie setting. With lots of actions, explosions, and getting wet.waterworld

The stage area have a few zones. Soak zone (where you really get drenched with water. There are people selling ponchos there.)

soakzone

Then, there’s the splash zone where you’ll most likely get wet. Yin Sin and I sat right behind the soak zone, in the splash zone region. Have a very good view right in the middle. The actors/actresses were very interactive as well. It’s a very action-packed show and there was a point in time, I just took away my camera to enjoy the show..

Here are some few ‘screenshots’ of the Waterworld show

ww1 ww2

ww3 ww4
ww5

 

ww6 ww7

Then, there’s the Shrek in 4D.

Shrek 4D

I actually find it quite entertaining. Started off with a magic mirror and some imprisoned pigs.. haha.. It’s quite interactive. Oh, and the 4D is actually a 3D movie (not bad by the way) with the motion master effects. You can feel water splashing towards you, spider crawling over yet, wind blowing across your face, etc.

Then lastly, there’s the “Revenge of the Mummy”

 

 mummy1 mummy2

It’s an indoor roller coaster ride. Quite fun I would say. Yin Sin really enjoyed herself. She shouted and closed her eyes for the entire ride. Haha.. Effects are quite good where you can feel the warmth from the burning fire. I was impressed with their locker system. You don’t need to have a key for the lockers. All you need to do is to fill in your birth date and your fav color and the system will choose a locker for you..

At first, there’s supposed to be the big roller coaster ride as well. But it was closed down due to some technical glitch.

battlestar galactica

Anyway, I find the trip was really worth while. The setting was really very nice… It’s like being there for each setting. I think I love the “New York” set the best. Followed by “scifi world”. The sci-fi world makes you feel like you’re in a real-life MMORPG. By the way, forgot to mention that the food there is really expensive. Minimum spend for a simple meal is about $10 per pax. But they have snack carts all around.. Can buy pop-corns, ice-cream, drinks while on the go..

Really enjoyed myself and I think I’ll wait when all the rides are fully opened before my next visit. Or perhaps, when there’s a request when somebody comes to Singapore and wants to go there, I don’t mind going there again. =) Need to see what it’s like in daytime. Till then…

Bi Shan’s 25th Birthday Celebration

It all started with a 2kg Snoopy Cake… But end up, the Snoopy Cake wasn’t there at all..

Here’s the story:

facebook-event-invitation

Bi Shan threw herself a birthday party cause Deon ordered a 2KG Snoopy Birthday Cake for her… The both of them can’t finish the 2KG cake all by themselves so, she invited her friends in SG and even ordered extra stuffs for us – KFC, Pizza Hut, Canadian Pizza, Pastamania, Dessert Wine, etc.

 

fastfood

So, in her party, there are basically two groups of people.. One, more towards Bishan’s friends. Another one, more towards Deon’s friends

 

bishan's-friends Actually for me, I know most of Deon’s friends cause they were from NTU – my seniors. But they are closer to my sister though, Grace, as they were her juniors. haha..

 IMG_1468

Anyway, we just mingled, chatted and eat the food we see in her house while Deon and his friends played board games.

IMG_1487 He has this big collection of board games! He even has a starcraft board game… OMG.. lol. Apparently, it was so complicated that it became a display set.. Haha..

Then finally, the birthday cake! Well, the Snoopy Cake didn’t turn up cause the cake shop just didn’t do them.. Maybe it was too complicated?? But the thing is, they didn’t even inform that they are not going to prepare the 2KG Snoopy Cake for them. End up, there’s a 2 X 1Kg Ice Cream Cake from Swensen’s.

birthday-cakes And tada! Surprise!!

surprise Okay fine.. There isn’t really much of a surprise since she threw herself her own party. She even put the candles on the cake herself… We’re quite bad guests actually.. We keep demanding her to prepare drinks for us.. Haha..

Anyhow, she still enjoyed herself.. Can see from her happy face…

IMG_1498The cake was quite good. Did I mention that her place is very nice too?

All the girls at her place…

girls

And all the guys..

guys

Double Farewell Celebrations

Two farewell celebrations in a day, two seafood meals in a day… Luckily it’s not the same restaurant.

Friday became a farewell day for me as during lunch, had a farewell/welcome/teambuilding session with my department people at Jumbo near Indoor Stadium. Jumbo almost became the default place for any of my deparment’s outing.. Even though we always call for a vote each time there’s an outing. Ate the set meal which consists of several main course dishes. Of course, the main delicacy there are crabs, which wasn’t very nice in my opinion.

Mobile VAS Planning Jumbo

Then at night, had another farewell dinner for Yvonne at Melbann Seafood Restaurant. She’ll be flying off to Korea for the next 6 months after finishing her ‘6 months-shift’ here in Singapore. Again, had crabs again but ate more crabs here than Jumbo. But this time round, as most of us were there, we had a round of lou sang first. First lou sang of CNY. Okay, actually not really counted as it’s not CNY yet.. haha..

 

lou sang

Then, had the usual crab meals and the stir-fried dishes. Was a very filling meal. Some came late as there was work to do but everyone was there by end of the day.

group 1 Out first batch of meal Chee Lim, Chin Zwen and James aren’t here yet.

group 2 When we were leaving and everyone was there

Later after that, they continued their night with drinks at a bar but too bad, Kah Hon and I couldn’t join them. Had to wake up early the next morning for other matters. Anyway, was a great night and hope Yvonne will do great in Korea. =)

I am a Singapore PR

I’ve gotten my Singapore PR Approval! After waiting for 3 months+, I now have a Singapore IC number and have all the privileges close to a Singapore citizen.

I can buy property, apply for credit cards, get government funding… And can use the fast lane at the immigration check point. haha

Hmm.. I’m sure I can think of more benefits of becoming a PR….

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