New Flat at Blk 113

since mika has already announce on her blog our new address (prob in jun/jul 09), i'll just show some pictures of the location..

first, the map view...

as you can see, we're near the MRT, so we can save time on travelling. also, and more importantly, we're near mika's parents place, so we can save on meals and laundry.. but... too bad for mika, the new place dun seem much nearer to her workplace.

next, the satellite view...

the arrows indicate where the windows face. so, yeah... we face the north and the south and so there's no evening sun. also, mika mentioned that it's breezy... well, cos the taller buildings do not block our windows... and also, the taller buildings are not in our view, and hence, we get this false sense of feeling of being q high up.. hee.

a good weekend

this weekend was a good one, where many unexpected good things (and a bad one) happened...

1. mika and i signed a bridal package with digio, and as usual as with other blog entries, pls refer to mika's blog for more details on the process... anyway, while we were contemplating on the location for the outdoor shoot, i was thinking of nus (for obvious reasons)... which mika is quite apprehensive (for obvious reasons too). hmmm. i did a search online and only found one pre-wedding shot (one photo to be exact) taken in nus, and it was at the forum... hmmm... and the only 'nice' location i could think of is old kr... cos most of the places in nus are already renovated le. sigh.. anyone got any suggestion.

2. mika and i are finally ending our search soon... i shall not specify wat this search is for... perhaps mika will write it in her private blog. i will announce it when we finally 'find the thing'

3. horrible thing - i did badly for my gre math subject test. at least by my own standards... sigh... i realised that my mind had rusted q a bit and many things that were at my finger tips are like so far away now... actually, during the test, i did contemplate shading the option to void the results of the test. but i dread to study the same thing again and am hoping that the rescaled score will be good (the final score is actually based on how well everyone fared and not the 'raw score')... even then, i'm quite sure i would have done better three years back... sob.

4. read a book called "a certain ambiguity" and it's a novel which talks about the 'certainty' of knowledge. it expounds a philosophy which is q close to mine... anyway, will blog about it when i'm less sleepy. hee.. oh, today sunday times talk about online shopping and yeah, i bought the book online too. it's not from amazon but from this site called, BetterWorld . I've gotten a number of books, which are hard to find, from here and the shipping is surprisingly cheap, 2.99 USD, per book. and they give a free bookmark with each book and this one is especially interesting:

america's next vp????

sigh... if u ever wonder why some americans are so stupid, just look at this vice-president candidate, ie running mate of mccain. at first, i thought she made a blunder when she said "russia's proximity to alaska make me experienced" (note: she's the governor of alaska). from this clip, she does certainly thinks so...



below is the transcript, from the above link,

COURIC: You've cited Alaska's proximity to Russia as part of your foreign policy experience. What did you mean by that?

PALIN: That Alaska has a very narrow maritime border between a foreign country, Russia, and on our other side, the land-- boundary that we have with-- Canada. It-- it's funny that a comment like that was-- kind of made to-- cari-- I don't know, you know? Reporters--

COURIC: Mock?

PALIN: Yeah, mocked, I guess that's the word, yeah.

COURIC: Explain to me why that enhances your foreign policy credentials.

PALIN: Well, it certainly does because our-- our next door neighbors are foreign countries. They're in the state that I am the executive of. And there in Russia--

COURIC: Have you ever been involved with any negotiations, for example, with the Russians?

PALIN: We have trade missions back and forth. We-- we do-- it's very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where-- where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border. It is-- from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to-- to our state.

another post after a long while

hmmm... just to share something which i dunno if mika notice.. most of her blog entries are usually posted when i'm sleeping over at her place..and she writes them when i'm asleep (which is q early lah..) and guess wat... she's taking a super super long afternoon nap (2hrs and counting) now while i'm posting an entry.

many thanks to crystal, kangliang n ivy (previous classmates from VJC) and xiaoyun n zhenhao (somehow they wished me almost at the same time at 1300h... hmmmm.....) for the birthday wishes.  n of cos big thank you to mika who brought me to LAWRY'S PRIME RIBS to celebrate my birthday yesterday... now... we're not rich ok... it just happened that mika got a one-for-one voucher from dbs.  anyway, think mika will blog about the food and ambience and service, so i shan't talk much about it.  but i must mention about this pleasant surprise we had. 

at the entrance of the restaurant, where ppl usually queue, there were many certs put on displayed. most are for best food, restaurant, etc etc. but one cert was placed at one side isolated from the rest. the cert was not-so-nice, not-so-professional, and was in this ugly blue... mika noticed it and guess wat? it had the CSC logo and it was a Certificate of Appreciation from Signature Love Project 2004, with bryan lee seng long's signature and his stamp. kinda surprised that such a classy restaurant actually bothered to display our cert. haha.

mika is still sleeping...

anyway, i was surfing and come upon this video on youtube.   it on this song called "New Math" performed by Tom Lehrer, a American song-writer cum mathematician.  He's NOT the guy in the video.  Basically, the song is about how math is taught nowadays and it really reminds me of the math homework mika gives to her students. 

a post after a long while

Actually i had no intention of posting until i visited the website which monitors the traffic on this blog (haha... bet u didnt know i was monitoring...)

Anyway, to my surprise, despite the long lull, there were actually visitors to this blog!!! ok... not many people la... only 13 last week (which is super pathetic compared to xiaxue, mrbrown, blah blah blah)

But it's not ZERO!!!!

Ok la.. some came by accident... like someone actually googled "mao of bali" (???) and so came to my entry on my trip to bali. others googled "csc spa bukit batok",  "white rose memorial munich", blah blah. And someone was probably looking for a solution to a puzzle, cos he/she googled "has 10 boxes each containing 10 marbles. One marble weighs 10 grams. But there is one box out of those 10 boxes which has the marbles weighing 9 grams each".  (??????)

Ok... This is really a boh-liao entry and the next entry will be..... dunno when. super busy with sailings, duties, blah blah blah. Dun ask why, cos it's sensitive. But i explained to my guys with a chinese saying and it goes "虎落平阳被犬欺"... Heh

A few pics at the Oriental Room at the Ultimate Spa in CSC@Bukit Batok

Service in Singapore

Finally i'm back on course at SAFTI MI. ie no more sailing, duties and unreasonable deadlines... haha. so got time to blog liao... had eaten out on three occasions at different restaurants and witnessed the dismal standard of service nowadays.

1. Lerk's Thai Restaurant, Marina Square Second Storey

was eating with mika after visiting it show. e waiters + waitresses were super inattentive even though it was off peak and there were virtually no customers. but it was within tolerable limits.

e incident: basically, the first waitress who took our order for drinks forgot to relay e info to e drinks counter or whoever. ok... so we asked for e same drinks again. so the drinks come lah. ok. so after the meal, we paid e bill and left. dunno why. i decide to check the bill again and i realised that they charged e drinks twice. ok. nvm... go back and checked e waitress.

wah. e waitress who took our order was simply indifferent. she signalled to the cashier to "settle us" and went on to do her job. e cashier just changed e bill and charged me accordingly with no apology and was not even apologetic about it.

2. Central Restaurant, Vivocity Basement One

was eating with colleagues this time around. two incidents..

incident 1: again, inattentive waitress took the wrong order. instead of 831, she recorded 813 and hence the wrong order was delivered. when we told the waiter who delivered it that the order was wrong, he returned to the kitchen with the dish. amazingly (this is really amazing) the waitress who took the wrong order returned with the wrong dish and confronted us. huh? is it necessary to confront us? luckily (for her) she didnt kick up a storm and just returned back to the kitchen. again, no apology and simply not apologetic.

incident 2: this is simply amazing. the waiter was clearing up the table and he had difficulties reaching a plate in the center. he asked for assistance but my friend wasnt paying attention. then he said "allo?" in a sarcastic manner and reached for the plate. i was simply amazed.

3. Muthu Curry, Suntec Basement 1

was eating with group 4 (actually, only got four of us...haha) ok. after the previous encounters, the service was not that horrible. just that, when i asked for water, they served me beer. i said no, and asked for water, but never come. asked for water again, but never come. asked for water again, but never come. last time, a bit smarter. saw a guy carrying glasses of water and i asked for water. basically, most of the time was spent repeating orders to different waiters for things to happen.

think i havent been dining out much. nv realised that service can be so horrible.