with really dead body, i snuggled into the welcoming embrace of my bed. ZZZZZzzzzzz.........

after a really super great night of sleeping, thanks to the really comfy bed and nice cold air-con and a great sleeping partner who sleeps even earlier than i, we woke up refreshed to welcome the 1st day of screening. the beauty of the first morning is captured by ah wee and some guys. i used to boast over my 8 megapixel hp cam. but i was ruthlessly humbled when they brought out their toys. well, might as well just'koop' from them at the end of the trip.


our humble abode.


2 really awesomely tall coco trees


ivory


after breakfast and omelette with assorted ingredients by the 'egg-man', we made our way to herald for our first group of students.





mother lek


weiling, jessie and guan kai as pointer


huishan as translater


master sok hong and me as one of the ret people. she's really creative and she managed to find a way to overcome the lack of pointer problem. she blue-tagged a piece of A4 size paper onto the target so the Px knows exactly which line to read when she's doing +/-0.25 challenge on the patient.


one of the rare times i'm finally doing sth


may the force be with you


girl with heterochromic iritis


me and master


gold standard and i


marybrown's mascot


extinct bear inspore with tze siang and peiwen


feast!!!


post-meal workout


big tripod, small tripod


last light at batam time 1815hrs


act of defying gravitation


nightview of the nongsa resort


fellow camwhores


well-deserved dinner

after a week's break from the break in genting with the good old homies from dopt, it's turn for vision screening with the UM folks and the yr 3 babes. well, i could call them babes cos there's no guys around from yr 3 who's going for the batam. haiz... this makes it really hard for me to find excuses to approach the gals. haha! yea... kidding. cmon, i'm no casanova...


and for goodness's sake, pls dun ask me wad's the meaning of memeriksa mata... i only know mata is eyes. the first day, after sai kang from SP with guan kai, kiat wee, tze siang, ms lek, miss sharon and i, we waited for the rests at the tanah merah ferry terminal where we'll take a ferry straight to the ferry that's near the nongsa marina point or sth.


basically, we din do any screening on the 1st day. most of it was setting up and the sun sets real early and we had to bring in those super lights to lit up the whole place. probably due to its proximity to the coast, we got real sticky and warm easily.

with compliments from the conscientious efforts of kiat wee and other good people of the screening, i shall let the pics do the talking!

group photo taken at the tanah merah ferry terminal





back: tze siang and me front from left: qingli, merlyn and kaiting



from left: tze siang, guankai (pronounced as yuan kai), pei boon, sok hong and i



ma'am (aka jiajia), partner (aka ailing) and gold standard (aka gold standard)



weiling, sokhong, stella, ailing peiwen and jessie


on board the batam fast, Gold Raider. showcasing the pandan flavour mooncake i bought from last Genting trip. intended to eat it but well, ended up bringing it for a tour instead...


guankai and kiat wee


ailing trying to act fierce





at the batam ferry terminal after 30-40min


cmon... it's just going to be a 10min bus ride from ferry terminal to nongsa marina


oops... that's ms lek behind


so thristy... a weird mix of lime juice and dunno dunno wad... even gold standard can't tell


drink people's water must try to act busy


erm ailing... are the children supposed to tilt their heads to read the LogMAR chart?



gals at work


revising my phonetics


and coincidentally, 28th sept is fangmei's bday! so we had a celebration with her with ailing's homebaked muffins. thank goodness she din use the queer mixture of raisin with chocolate chips but used pure choc chips instead this time round. much more delectable:) hope fangmei enjoyed this batam bday celebration!

went to accompany haishan for her final medical follow-up on her acute anterior uveitis last thursday. it was a super long wait and to my relief, they were showing cooking programmes on TV at their waiting area so it din felt long at all.

since i had nothing else to do, i decided to pay the toilets a visit and took pictures of these really interesting stuffs that was pinned to the wall just above the urinals. i wonder wad would they have pasted in the ladies'. hmm...






after dat, we went for lunch at ikea. probably due to the higher living expenses with compliments from inflation, i suddenly find the ikea food cheaper than it used to be though the price appears to be the same. when haishan and i reached, it was very much empty. and i once thought the price dipped cos of the pathetic crowd.

but i was proven drastically wrong. a couple of minutes after we happily settled into our table, people were already asking us for seats. it was only den did i realise the place had instantaneously been filled with people! wow. we were so fortunate!

the temptuous spread as shown below are their famous swedish meatballs with the ultimate complement of the sauce and strawberry jam; blueberry cheesecake and; local dish of just $5.5 with fried chix, fish, cabbage/lettuce and spiced fish cake. awesome!



and it looks so nice even after we had finished the plate. the pattern of the gravy was coincidental. we simply placed the green stuff (ok i gorgot wad's that called) on top. the rest is up to your imagination!

ok. better blog about today b4 i forget. yes, almost certainly this day is a day not to be forgotten. a pity the 03 guys can't join us. if not it'd certainly be great. during the genting trip, we chanced upon a nike store and when we saw the basketball, we thought why not have a bball session when we are back in spore?

so here we were, met at 11am when we were supposed to meet at 930am. can't help it. even i had difficulty waking up. only jerome the only hope managed to reach on time. after having found his wallet, feilou and i met and went together. when we reached, xiong-ge yunchong and jerome were alr chilling out at macs. and andrew woke up at 11am plusand reached after we finished a match of bball and half a match of soccer.

by then the sun was already endearingly hot. ok... damn hot. it only got shrouded by clouds when we break for rest. and the sun happily reappears when we went back to our game. though real tired esp by the heat, it was nonetheless great fun!

after that we went to clementi's de coders for a boardgame: shadow hunters. in the middle of the game, i felt my temp rising feverishly. i guess most prob must be due to the sun during the basketball and soccer. that's why i decided to head back home instead of prayer meeting.

gosh. hope i'll get well soon man.... gotta meet pastor shuling tmr and work and meet a friend. herald for the impt day yoh!!!

oh man... i really shouldn't have procrastinated uploading these pics man. almost forgotten wad happened b4 these pics were taken. suddenly realised the horror of losing one's memory man. ain't wanna lose memory of who i am, who are my mum and dad, great things that happened to me, and those whom i love yada yada... ok you get the gist.

so according to my calender, i should have worked on sat but woke up with terrible pain at my throat. and the most probable reason was from all the screaming and shouting during the genting trip. be it trying to fake being scared during the rifes, or trying to reach the seemingly unreachable high keys during karaoke. anyways, i took this time to nap 80% of the time from 10am till around 4pm. really shiok man. now i know how andrew and feilou felt.

after that, i was glad nonetheless to struggle out of bed to church for cell. had there been no cell, i would most certainly have rotted at home the whole day.

then i took bus 26 (this is the major clue that led me to rmb where i was b4 the supper) FROM toa payoh after cell dinner to aljunied mrt to meet the guys. initially i had my reservations of eating dim sum. i had a misconception of dim sum being only siew mai and buns. but just one look at the menu and i knew this place was the place i'm meant to be at.

just look at the range of food we had... all the snacks were freshly fried. and the aroma plus the musical crisp of the fried tau kee and the unbeatable fresh ingredients makes this dish my favourite.


this chix wing is nth speacial. just another poor wing deep-fried at high temp.


i like the crisp on the outside. but can't really figure out wad's in the filling. never had any infatuation with 5 spices anyways...


andrew and i


feilou during his feeding frenzy



huiling and lilin


xiong-ge and pui


haojing and the Photogenic One

the genting trip with my ex-dopt mates are indeed long awaited for. though i missed the chance of joining them the previous time, i was glad that this time i managed to go and enjoy a really hands free vacation. of course, gambling is not my cup of tea and i'd rather much prefer a cup of dark mocha frap in my hand. therefore, despite having been an asshole (during asshole dai di) for 3 rounds till around 4am the previous night, i sought to struggle myself to starbucks at least on the final day b4i met the guys to buy mooncakes and den to checkout thereafter.





so let's start from day 0. feilou and i had a private date with each other prior to the gang's rendezvous at 10.30pm at goldenmile. we went for dinner at the hip diner's den watched Gamer. a real cool show. though morally controversial with the plot about using real human lives for computer games, i bet it's a wonderful deterrant factor and makes people think thrice b4 committing crimes.



the ride was long and eventful. but it was nothing that i had never met. i was momentarily 'detained' by the msian customs for bringing sparklers in. well, acty i should have thought better but some part of me just wanna try my luck. after the stopover at yong peng, we headed off to the long journey of genting highlands.

we reached at around 5.30am and were homeless as we weren't able to check in yet. but being bored is never one of our intentions so the guys happily entertained ourselves and our never-expending energy by basking ourselves in the chilly atmospehre outside the comfort of the hotel. we raced upslope and practised our Force push/pull on one another.

when it was finally 7, we went for breakfast buffet and subsequently checked in.


some pics around the place.









when we finally got to wake up from our post-trip slumber at around 4, we hanged around and went to scare ourselves with places like the haunted house. this guys got really broken teeths and i wonder if that's the reason why he got the job. hehe.




peiyik trying to brace herself b4 she plunges into the mercy of the 'human ghosts'.


andrew with wad it had been his distant relative.


another classic example of family reunion. maybe that's why they called it: Ripley's believe it or not.


on day 3, we geared ourselves for a series of fun-packed rides. we met for breakfast at around 9am in kfc and swiftly moved our way to buying the all day pass for most of the rides.


the first ride of the day was actually bumper car (i think) den we went to try out the 4D motion ride where random jets of air were blown into our face for no apparent reason.


inside the ride


den we shifted camp outdoors to try on the superman-flying ride thingy at an additional cost of 10RM. it looked real scary as onlookers but when you are in the seat itself, you'd be more horrified at the stench of the cushioning pad where you had to lean your head against than the actual ride itself. i dun wanna know wad actually stained the pad b4 the ride man. erm no pics for this one. but below is a pic that we took just beside the ride. which is a bit weird really.


below is the thrilling ride of which its level of thrill is underestimated by us, especially the guys. the gals are perpetually thrilled of everything. so they din have any problem with that.







probably the hottest pick of the day was go-kart. though some of us were wearing slippers, the ppl der were kind enough to indent shoes for us so we can go for the ride.





as you can see... we were getting real bored waiting for the queue.


after the 1st half of the rides at outdoors, we could no longer resist the turns that now are inside our stomachs. so we went to kenny rogers for lunch without any delay. apparently it's a good deal compared to spore. mine was around 37RM++ for a half chix, 3 sides and a softdrink with free refill. so it's slightly less than 20 bucks in SGD.








we had to concede defeat by the meal and decided uanimously that we can't take anymore fast rides lest we returned the kenny rogers in its favour. so the slackest thing that came to our mind was undoubtedly ferris wheel. and here, you gotta admit yuntheng's really photogenic man. for once, and i repeat, for once, someone beat me to it.


after that, we decided to pull some strings. not the ones that usually comes to mind. but the ones that legolas would pull most of the time. and man... the sport is basically a neck-wrecking process man! below are my results. not the best amongst the guys i would say, but good enough to bring down the elephants at Helm's Deep.


and when we mix huiling and peiyik together, we get karaoke. and so, we had the mandatory, customary activity as one of our last events of the day b4 we ventured into the hospitality of xiong-ge and yunchong's room for a round of asshole dai di.



on the day we head back, the last lunch that we had at genting hotel with the last 270RM of our 'public fund'. i had initially thought that there wouldn't be enough for this last meal and we had to actually top-up. so i conserved the remaing RM i had in my wallet and kept to only buying 9 pieces of mooncakes:) apparently we still had leftovers. thanks to the ingenious finance-handling skills of the gals.




and off we go as we head back home... where the night of L4D just began!