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day tripper
Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Went out with the other twin yesterday, visited Ann Siang Hill and the Marang Trail at the Southern Ridges.

No pictures, I didn't bring my camera along for this one. It'd be nothing compared to his DSLR, he was snapping away. Ann Siang Hill, just off Tanjong Pagar's Amoy Street food centre, was some artsy street with boutique outlets here and there. Was looking out for BooksActually, and came across some other shop, Woods in the Books. All ready botique-ish, fancy and of course, expensive.

Some robot that Cheryl bought at Mint Museum of Toys for $12 or 15 was $22 there, didn't feel like buying anything else after comparing Cavallini & Co. They've got really nice products, but they all retail at high prices ):

Marang Trail was off Harbourfront MRT, and all the teens heading to Sentosa en route were kinda intoxicating. Felt like flaming the lot of them. I hate Sentosa for some reason.

If Joseph's not gonna be uploading the photos, I will. Hmm. Gonna ask him now.

There we go.



the burnt tip of a fan blade. We went into this abandoned house at the back alley of Ann Siang Hill. Kinda cool, these places are unique since you get so few of them in Singapore. Broad daylight, but the place was still kinda creepy. There was feacal matter all over this room, its like someone came here and had a dumping party. All in various stages of decay.



cracked, rusted, creaky.



SEE, that dude could've taken a dump in here not the living room of that house. Dumb hobo.



Wonder what this was here for, didn't look like it was gonna undergo renovation anytime soon.



the rooftop. had quite a view, but in the afternoon sun,w as nothing spectacular.



I wouldn't trust me feet on that, rusty old ladder.



Heh, wonder how that even started growing. But made a really nice photo, would've been better close up.



up to the second part of the roof. Gonna have dinner there someday, heh was thinking of packing some food from nearby and eating up there, sunset over the CBD.



Ann Siang Hill, with these rich looking people all about, ang mohs here and there, made me feel outta place. Joseph said it looked like some pseudo artsy fartsy place, kinda agree with him on
hindsight.





Some structure of some Marine restaurant thingy. Looked so dilapidated, wonder when was the last time someone patronized this restaurant.



So I went around to the back to see if I could climb in. With the proper shoes I could, somewhere with those air-conditioning condensers to give a base, but ah I didn't wanna dirty my Von Dutch's. Gotta send it for cleaning already.



It was humid in there man. Just wanted to get out. And we really needed some exercise, heh. Just some 'hiking' and we were tired already. I was dying for some air-conditioning. Dang NS.



So this is the last of em, some construction works on the way to Vivocity to get my air-con fix and head home. Interesting trip, would've been better had I been more prepared with a bottle. And the other pair o' shoes.

Nothing on for new year, I'm gonna be home. Cheers to y'all out there :D

penned by joel at 8:22 PM

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Werk

Oh right, and I got a job! $5.50/hour job at Parkway, some salesperson/cashier, ah not really too sure, but it starts on the 1st of January, 12 to 9pm (ugh) but I need to put back all that cash I withdrew ah ):

Enlistment will be somewhere in April, CMPB has yet to confirm my vocation. No SCDF PLEASE!

penned by joel at 12:39 AM

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Japan 09
Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Malaysia and back, prom, then off to Japan with the family. Hectic three weeks of December, but all that jam packed stuff was kinda fun, never a dull moment. Had a potluck the day after Prom, for Jun De's enlistment. (haven't gotten my notification nor my PES status :\) SQ618 outta terminal 3 on a Wednesday morning at 1am, dang.

I caught All About Steve and two other movies that I'm too lazy to recall. Should've slept like the rest of them, but I just don't like sleeping on vehicles. Nope to coaches, cars, planes.. Hmm never bene on a cruise yet. They make me drool, and I wake up feeling even more tired than refreshed.

Sunrise on the flight there. Dang Joseph with his DSLR, made my digital cam seem like some lousy polariod. I'm guessing he's updated his blog with the pictures..



6 and a half hour flight catching the sunrise on the Pacific.





Sunrise frozen in time.



So we got to the hotel kinda early, being a morning flight, so the rooms weren't ready yet. We decided to head out to the Osaka aquarium, world famous apparently. There was this Ferris wheel nearby that reminded me of my previous trip to Japan with the school, where they had this really colourful one, against a clear blue sky.



The main building of the aquarium.



Very first display to get you interested. Always wanted a picture like this, taken from below, of fist swimming above and the light shining through. But ah this isn't exactly how I'd want it to be.



5 Storey high escalator that ascended at quite a steep angle. Go up to the top of the aquarium and the tour led down.



Sea otters! But my camera ain't fast enough to capture the movements, heh they were really cute. Furry, and they swam incredibly fast.



That's Joseph there in his white parka. KNEEL! heh heh



One of the divers was probably made to wear this, hilarious when he swam by, I waved to him. He was swimming in a huge multi storey tank with sharks and all.



This little kid here, digging into the bin. Where're his parents man.





Squishy and spineless oc. I kinda like these two pictures. Dang the octopus looked really gross, the skin was saggy and wrinkled like some bag of scrot-



Kingler. Or whatever that pokemon was called. This crab was tall mind you, easily half a metre.



Took a break at the cafe inside the aquarium, I had cold milk there. Heh. Like Meiji. Then took a look out the window, apparently it was situated near port, and I'm to lazy to zoom in on this image, but that ship in the bottom centre of this image above looks like a landing ship. Higgins boat or whatchamacallit.



The end of the tour was really brilliant. Saving the best for the last, hordes of jelly fish of all species. Ah I'm gonna continue this post on another day again. wayy behind on the blogging, wanted to talk a bit about the ex council outing, tomorrow's gonna be the potluck for Shermaine's departure and Brandon's birthday. Ah shucks it's late though, had a long day today. Stoppin for now..

Back. So the jellies, man they were mesmerizing. I'd probably be there for much longer if it weren't for the fatigue and the runny nose. They purposely darkened the rooms and set in these lightings that glowed with the Jellyfish.



Couldn't take a lot of still shots, in fact all of them are blurry cuz my camera just doesn't have that kind of shutter speed (at least that's what I think I need)





This one had reallyyy long tentacles that were kinda wispy.



Imma see if I can make a ribbon outta paper with this pattern, kinda nice.



Forgot what this animal's called, but its unique to Japan if I'm not wrong, cuz they had plush toys and all sorts of knick knacks with this animal on it. Funny looking, frankly, looks like a cross of a bunch of animals together. Huge head too.



Never seen anything like it before. Make some funny snorting noise too.



Ah, forgot the name of this penguin too. they had this petting zoo of something, somewhere in that room. Got to touch sting rays, tiger sharks and some other marine creatures, man they felt creepy. They were either really slimey, veltvety or rough and dry. Rough and dry was the odd one, it's in water, so having that kinda outer cover seems misplaced.



Heh heh, stupid KFC, can't escape. If it's not after some class activity, it's somewhere else. Didn't get anything there though. We stopped by the neighbouring building after the aquarium (where that Ferris wheel was) to look for a bit of food and souvenirs. Nothing much there though.

But we did see cheap BB guns, but if you were gonna smuggle it into Singapore then might as well go all the way, Tokyo Marui, baby!







Couldn't see anyone in the cabins, as far as the eye could see. Not very well used :\ wonder if the running costs justify it. Looks like an expensive structure to build.



On the way back we saw this European looking building, kinda had this french vibe for some reason. The Japanese seem fascinated by French stuff. The goods they sell, the shops they name, lotsa things seem to have French influence.





Joseph's butt and a purple flower. Enchanting stuff there.



Ferris wheel in the distance on the subway back. Napped on the way back, resulting in my drooling. Charming.



I went looking around the hotel area for a bit, and saw this bar, and on the outside there was this lamp. Looked creepy to me for some reason, when I took it in B&W.

We headed for the BB gun shop that Joseph looked out for on the internet prior to leaving. FIRST airsoft, carried ranges of brands, and it was our first trip to an airsoft shop too. Racks upon racks of assault rifles, handguns, shotguns, sub machine guns, rifles, and accessories. The G3's not in view, but damn it's a bigass assault rifle. Modified P90s in the left side of the picture down there.



Haven there. Packs and packs of 6mm pellets waiting to be sold. Their firepower's usually underestimated by those who think these are kiddy stuff. Should link that video of the target practice with a whole watermelon.

So anyway, here's Joseph's eye candy for the weeks leading up to the trip. It was on discount, so it came up to about $200, he deliberated for wayy too long.





Prettiest thing I've seen in a while. Tried the rifle range there, using a M16 carbine and some other weapon of which name I've forgotten. Awesome stuff, made my day.

We headed back later that night, stopping by at some non-descript restaurant that turned out to have the best udon on the trip, among a bunch of other dishes.

Osaka castle, visited on the next day. Nothing much to see, it was refurbished and all, making it kinda cold and more a museum than a castle.



Yeah that's it. Subway.. Augh I've been dragging this blog post for too long already.



Off to see the Todai-Ji temple, one of the UN world heritage sites.





Ohana



So the guide at the tourist booth told us we'd be better off getting a taxi to our destination than the bus. The sums worked out, so we hopped into a cab (which are aplenty in Japan, cuz hardly anyone pays the exorbitant charges for em) and the flag down rate was S$10+ already



Do the sums if you're interested, kinda tired to bother to look up the conversion rate. The taxis there are all pretty much willing to take 5 persons though.



Muh pop.



Heh heh, silly. So anyway there were deer roaming about there, that's what this place was famous for. Free roaming domestic deer, Roku-chan, was the mascot. Roku, of course, meaning deer. They got kinda agressive when they saw the deer biscuits though. They'd chiong to ya.



Got out of the taxi and there were deer just outside already. The males have their horns trimmed off. reminds me of that animated movie, open season.



Deer poop looks like cat poop. Interesting insights.



There's Isaac.



And again.



There, see his horns? Or whatever's left of it. One kept following me, without me knowing, until I stopped and it bumped into my rear :o



Free range venison!



Finally entering the Todai-Ji temple, with one of the most impressive Bhudda statues, or so it said, I've no clue.



Saw this on the large doors, tilted at an angle, obviously not meant to be a heart but took it anyway. So then we walked around, nothing much, bought one of those charm things and it said I'm a person with half luck. I gotta wait for my luck to come, it's not immediate, gotta wait kidna long, and I'll have to sacrifice along the way, or something like that.



oo spooky. reminds me of the happening. Lousy movie man, that one, really dipshit plot.



hanging lanterns as we headed for the main shrine. Or something like that. This is what you get when you do your posts late. You kinda forget alot of stuff, damn.





So you're supposed to tie up your charms like that on tree branches. Dunno what the belief is to doing that though.



That ain't mine. I kept mine, souvenir.

Some multi level pagoda. Man I've got nothing much to say about all this holy stuff, sorry.



Heh heh heh funn santa. Wanted to try an make him for christmas cards, but by the time I got back from Japan, I hadn't time for Christmas cards..



Took the Shinkansen to Himeiji the next day, to see the castle, and dang was it a grand one. We've been to castle dotted across Europe before, but this was the icing above all castles we've been. Interestingly, this castle was so well fortified or formidable that it had never undergone attack in the centuries that it stood guarding Hemeiji, and the Osaka region.







Me, dad, mom, Isaac and Ming Yuan.



Castle grounds.



I like the artifical lighting I put in this one, kinda makes it a bit mysterious. No?



I told em to go stand there, it'll look nice. They didn't really think so, but I still do. Like the contrast. But should've zoomed in more.



Ta-dah. Himeiji castle. Had little holes in the wall structure every now and then, that was used as bunker holes to shoot from or throw stuff down to. Of course, there were the proper defensive positions too, but these holes all about made it such that any one place could still have some minor defensive vantage points. Just look at that steep wall scarp.







Ok overkill I think. So then we left around 5, when it was supposed to close. No lights around the castle area so they couldn't keep it up all night.



Went around the shopping streets, bought some stuff and took the Shinkansen back. Never realised how fast it really was until we saw one go by while waiting, passing the station as an express. dang, there was this little shockwave like thing as it came by, then it was a friggin fast blur and it was gone in seconds. Curious, wonder what the speed of it is in comparison to an aeroplane.



Some really famous shopping street with lotsa food stuff, dang forgot the name of it. Lousy memory. Anyway dammit I'm tired and thank goodness I'm at the end of the post. Gonna update regularly as much as time permits, promise, but for now, no more man. this took what, 9 days after to complete. Hmm, not as bad as the Australia one I think.



Maybe it has to be done there then it won't be so badly finished. Here, some walkway in that shopping street that had photo frames hung all over, save the floor. Interesting stuff. Vintage pictures of what the place used to be like decades back.





DONE. sigh. Sorry!

penned by joel at 10:08 AM

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