Yes! Finally, after 9 weeks of labour we can 'rest' well. This week's post at a glance: Went to Woodgrove Sec for D&T conference on Monday. Chemistry & Vivo on Tuesday. Malaysia Trip for Wednesday & Thursday. In other news, The 2008 Formula 1 Season starts off this Sunday at Melbourne, Australia. Cant wait for it! Waited 5 months for this day and listen up people, Ferrari is going to dominate this season!
Monday: D&T conference at Woodgrove Secondary School. Mr Teo, Ms Kaur & Mr Chia went with us. There was about 11 students going. Remember last week when I talked about Mr Chia giving us a ride in his Impreza WRX? With 11 people, I don't think its going to happen. But hey, there are 3 teachers and all 3 of them have their own cars, I still stand a chance of riding the WRX. But all the hype shattered when we boarded this extremely noisy and old bus. Even Mr Teo complained about how much vibration the bus's engine is producing. He regretted not driving to the conference. Good thing he did not drive to Woodgrove. Why? Because he don't even know where Woodgrove is located at. Woodgrove is located at Woodlands Ave 12. He proclaimed proudly that the bus driver took the wrong exit and should have exited at Kranji Turf Club at BKE. Contary to Mr Teo's belief, the shortest and the most straightforward route is to exit at Woodlands Ave 12 at SLE. Even Mr Chia don't know where Woodgrove is. Its a good thing that they did not drive after all.
Upon reaching the school, we were greeted with an army of NCC and NPCC cadets guarding the school compound. They must be helping the Police to spot Mas Selamat as he may attend the conference to design something that can take over S'pore. It was also obvious that the school is much bigger that ours. I overheard Ms Kaur saying that she was "not surprised that the school is bigger than Queensway as we have the smallest school in S'pore". I don't know if that's true or not but I don't remember seeing a smaller school than ours. So we ate breakfast before arriving at the hall to collect our goodie bags. It contains several books & brochures about design but best of all, it contained this wooden sculpture that I saw Ryan bring to school last week.
The wooden sculpture
Upon reaching the school, we were greeted with an army of NCC and NPCC cadets guarding the school compound. They must be helping the Police to spot Mas Selamat as he may attend the conference to design something that can take over S'pore. It was also obvious that the school is much bigger that ours. I overheard Ms Kaur saying that she was "not surprised that the school is bigger than Queensway as we have the smallest school in S'pore". I don't know if that's true or not but I don't remember seeing a smaller school than ours. So we ate breakfast before arriving at the hall to collect our goodie bags. It contains several books & brochures about design but best of all, it contained this wooden sculpture that I saw Ryan bring to school last week.
The wooden sculpture
The talk was extremely boring. It is worst than Cecilia Lim talking because the speaker is monotonous and nobody can hear what the heck he is talking. So I entertained myself during that 2 hour talk by playing Tower Bloxx and watching videos on my phone. After that agonising talk, it's lunch time! Wow Wow Wow! The food is quite appetizing for a school event. Spaghetti for westerners, Fried rice, chicken, fish for anorexic people and fruits and fruit punch for fat people. With so many food available, nobody would ever go hungry! I ate only the Spaghetti & chicken. Went to attend 2 classes after that. Their classrooms were very nicely laid out and decorated. Every classroom has a different colour theme. The celling is very high which gives the impression of vast open space - the perfect environment for learning!Their tables though old, are not vandalised! This shows how disciplined the students in the school are. Sadly, the same can't be said for Queensway. The only gripe I have about the classes are that the doors are too small! I have difficulties walking in, I can't imagine how Kuok Loon will attend class with doors of this size!Woodgrove Sec School classrooms. I like their colour scheme where by every classroom has different colours. Note the sparkling clean table and the high celling!
Another picture of a classroom. Note the different colour scheme.
Then, it was tea break! I think we came here for a feast instead of a conference. 5 hours and 3 meals. I hope I don't grow fat after this conference. I was disappointed to find out that chocolate puffs were all taken as i really love chocolates. Have to settle for cream puffs instead - which isn't bad either, but chocolate is still best! Then after tea break, it was another 2 lessons while Asraf & Shafiq went to attend sketching classes which only a few selected must attend. I really want to attend that course, too bad I'm not the alone with such thoughts as the course was fully booked. It got even worse when they came out of the class with this really nice looking and supposedly expensive Sketching book. Worst of all, the book contains A LOT of car and trucks and train pictures. What the heck! So many nice vehicle pictures and I don't get to admire them. I scanned through Shafiq's book and found out there was sketches of Audi R8, BMW Z9 concept car, BMW 6 series, DAF trucks, Scania Trucks, Maglev trains and many more. I almost got emo after returning the book to Shafiq. This is so NOT FAIR! I left the school knowing that I'll never see that book again, the gloomy skies did not help lift my mood either. It was kind of depressing end to the day.
Cy3lx later sent me a very contradictory picture of Sharifa which I can't post due to copyright restrictions.
Tuesday: Chemistry group study this morning. Came to school a little late as I was at my house starring at the mayhem that is going on at the road. You see, my area is under going lift upgrading and they are transporting components and machinery every now and then. It got even worse today when they closed the road so that they could transport parts of this very huge "300 Tonnes" crane. I will post the picture of the completed crane in my next post as they haven't finished assembling the crane. But by looking at the parts, its going to be one hell of a huge crane! They have to close the whole stretch of road and the car park for this incredible transportation mission. Horns were blaring from both sides as motorist tried making illegal 3 point turn to get out of the massive jam. Workers took half an hour going about their job. 5 public buses were stuck waiting for the road to be reopened. So sad for the people waiting at the bus stops after the closed stretch of road.
The flat bed truck (on the right) and trucks carrying the huge crane's component (on the left) blocking the road on both sides
During chemistry, some weird things happen as usual. Here's the pictures you've been waiting for.Cy3lx getting back rubbed by Mr Wong. Shiok right?
Mr Wong wearing this Jersey with a very cool name -
Nadya dancing happily
Went to VivoCity with Cy3lx after Chem and went to eat Carl Jnr. I like the music they played that day as most of it contains the good old 80s/90s oldies and sentimental songs. Haikal joined us soon after and we went to Best Denki to play xbox. As usual, only one game interests me and that is Forza Motorsports 2. Too bad this 4o year old guy is hogging the console even though he keeps crashing and going off the track. Have to wait an agonising 8 minutes for him to leave. I played for a while, going off the track twice on my first lap! I don't usually go off the track, maybe I'm not used to the game yet as I last played the game last year on the Sentosa trip with Ryan and friends. Haikal soon joined me only to find out that the 2nd controller was in horrible state. He gave up playing and Cy3lx wanted to try out the game. It is clear that Cy3lx does not know how to play driving games as he keeps going off the track. I guess driving games are not everyone's cup of tea. But it's certainly my cup of coffee!
We were super bored later and went to Giant so that Haikal could buy food for his little kittys. He still loves them even though they attacked him countless of times already. I think his love for cats is the same as my love for cars. It works the same way, I don't understand his love for cats and people don't understand my love for cars. Whatever, talking about cars, I spotted this week's 8 Days magazine and guess what? They are featuring 10 Mediacorp artiste's cars. So cool. I learnt that Felicia Chin has a Mitsubitshi Clot Plus, Tay Ping Hui has a Mercedes C350 and Dick Lee has a wonderful Porsche Cayane! We also went to this DIY shop to play air hockey, "foolsball" and billiards. Air hockey was very fun. Won several rounds but lost some too. Haikal left later to feed his cats and its now Cy3lx and me left. We toured the huge mall and went into Toys R Us to find that the music that is being played is very cocky. It's kind of racist if translated to our version. I'll let Cy3lx do the dirty job.
We went to this "PageOne" bookshop that I never knew existed. Yes, I bought the 8 Days magazine and the March issue of Top Gear. I told myself before going Vivo not to buy any Top Gear magazines. But one solitary reason made me break that vow. What made me crumble under the pressure was the fact that they are featuring a 20+ page special about beautiful, exotic cars in TOKYO!!! I love Tokyo. I love their people, built up environment but most importantly, I love their extremely complex maze of roads. Its amazing how they can built such road systems. Now I know why almost all Japanese cars have GPS system built in. You could never memorise all the roads there. You have 4 levels of traffic consisting of a tunnel, a road at ground level and 2 bridges stacked up above them. Whats even more amazing is that their roads are extremely smooth and the bridges are all built to withstand strong earthquakes. I really take off my hat to those Japanese engineers! In short, I love Japan! That article also reminded me of the good old days when I was at Japan. I really want to visit Japan again! The school is planning a trip to Japan this June but due to the O levels, I don't think I'm allowed to go. What a waste!
Malaysia Trip
Wednesday: Yeah! Finally I can leave the country. Terence said in the morning that we are leaving to M'sia via the Causeway. Great! The jams there is going to be massive (I love jams) and I can enjoy watching other people's agony. Much to my disappointment, we endded up at Tuas checkpoint instead. The only saving grace was the 20 minute jam at Tuas. There are 2 buses in this trip and the Sec 4s are in bus number 2. We changed from a S'pore registered bus to a M'sia registered bus at the M'sia side of the checkpoint. The M'sia bus has really nice number plates. Both of our buses have the same number - 6969. Bus 1 was "AGG 6969" while Bus 2 was "BJT 6969". There was also a tour guide surprisingly.
Varun! Here are pictures of buses specially taken for you - Enjoy!
Bus 1 taken at M'sia checkpoint "AGG6969"
Bus 2 taken at AFamosa "BJT6969"
We went to this town called Gelang Patah in Johor for breakfast. First thing on the 'to do list'- Buy chewing gums! Then the sec 4 abandoned the rest and went to to have cheap and good Roti Prata. I ordered 2 eggs prata and 1 iced milo for only RM 4.50 which is around $2 in S'pore. Thats cheap! I found out that Yacub went to smoke before coming for breakfast. He showed us a pack of cirgrattes. I really wonder, what's so nice about smoking? He planned to finish all 12 sticks by tomorrow morning which I doubt he can. So whatever, went back to the bus. The long ride on the North South expressway tire out almost everybody on the bus. 1 hour into the trip, I can see that ALL sec 4s are asleep, except me of course. I'm am still starring out of the window praying to spot a Ferrari or 2. I chewed on gum and ate Toblerone to keep myself awake. I'm so addicted to Toblerone! By the end of the trip, cars spotted are (most number on top, least at the bottom):1) Protons, Protons, Protons! Tons of Protons! ARGGGG! I hate Protons! 7 out of 10 cars I saw was a Proton! (Proton is M'sian national car brand)
2) Perodua (Another M'sian made car)
3) Toyota Wish (mostly S'pore registered)
The only interesting cars I saw was a Porsche Caynane. Yes THATS ALL! So much for the hype of seeing beautiful cars in M'sia. I guess the place to spot cars in M'sia is at Kuala Lumpur.
So we went to Tampin town for lunch at KFC only to find the "Restroan" packed. Chng told us we could eat on the bus so I ordered Zinger Meal take away. I like what they include in their meal. For RM 8.50 (about SGD$4) you get a Zinger Burger, cheese wedges (nice!) small fries and regular coke. Fast food in M'sia is cheap and good! The Zinger tasted better in M'sia than in S'pore which makes spending money more worth it.
We went to Giant later and I stocked up on my food supplies. Bought 6 Toblerones - Yes, 6! Crazy ain't I? A pack of large Famous Amos chocolate chip cookie - Yummy! Finally, some chocolate cookies. As you can see, I'm a hardcore chocoholic. Chocolate rocks!
Some "not so bad" cars spotted
Honda Stream with huge rims!
Proton Pedranca with modified bumpers and big rims.
Reached Afamosa Resort at about 4pm and checked in to our Condo Style apartment hotel. It has a big living room, 3 bed rooms, a kitchen, a bar and a storeroom. Ms Flora Lee & Lim Soo Ling took the master bedroom. Loser, 2 people sleep so big room. The rest of us have to squeeze - 6 people on 2 queen size bed.
The condo from the outside
We went to Cowboy town soon after and played bowling. Same as last year, the counting system at Afamosa SUCKS big time! For example, you missed all pins by rolling through the gutter, but, the system displays that you've got a strike! Whats worse is that my lane has only 9 pins out of the proper 10. Damn the bowling. I got so bored with it I went to play pools and air hockey. Many others soon followed. The air hockey was fun! The table was really smooth(when you feed the machine with money that is). Even without air, its still playable.
Asfraf & Ching Keat playing Air Hockey
Asraf playing some ball games
Ching Keat following Hari to be a jailbird nun wannabe :D
3) Toyota Wish (mostly S'pore registered)
The only interesting cars I saw was a Porsche Caynane. Yes THATS ALL! So much for the hype of seeing beautiful cars in M'sia. I guess the place to spot cars in M'sia is at Kuala Lumpur.
So we went to Tampin town for lunch at KFC only to find the "Restroan" packed. Chng told us we could eat on the bus so I ordered Zinger Meal take away. I like what they include in their meal. For RM 8.50 (about SGD$4) you get a Zinger Burger, cheese wedges (nice!) small fries and regular coke. Fast food in M'sia is cheap and good! The Zinger tasted better in M'sia than in S'pore which makes spending money more worth it.
We went to Giant later and I stocked up on my food supplies. Bought 6 Toblerones - Yes, 6! Crazy ain't I? A pack of large Famous Amos chocolate chip cookie - Yummy! Finally, some chocolate cookies. As you can see, I'm a hardcore chocoholic. Chocolate rocks!
Some "not so bad" cars spotted
Honda Stream with huge rims!
Proton Pedranca with modified bumpers and big rims.
Reached Afamosa Resort at about 4pm and checked in to our Condo Style apartment hotel. It has a big living room, 3 bed rooms, a kitchen, a bar and a storeroom. Ms Flora Lee & Lim Soo Ling took the master bedroom. Loser, 2 people sleep so big room. The rest of us have to squeeze - 6 people on 2 queen size bed.
The condo from the outside
We went to Cowboy town soon after and played bowling. Same as last year, the counting system at Afamosa SUCKS big time! For example, you missed all pins by rolling through the gutter, but, the system displays that you've got a strike! Whats worse is that my lane has only 9 pins out of the proper 10. Damn the bowling. I got so bored with it I went to play pools and air hockey. Many others soon followed. The air hockey was fun! The table was really smooth(when you feed the machine with money that is). Even without air, its still playable.
Asfraf & Ching Keat playing Air Hockey
Asraf playing some ball games
Ching Keat following Hari to be a jailbird nun wannabe :D
We ate at this chinese "Restroan" for dinner. The food as ok, not very nice but not bad either.
After that we had our free time. There was a carnival at 8.30pm which I cant be bothered to watch. So me, Ck and Mahd went to play pools. Yes, I suck at pools so I naturally lost to both of them. I did sink 4 balls though. Got bored with losing so I went to play Air Hockey again! So fun. We played till 10pm where we are supposed to meet at the entrance. Guess what, no teachers were there. Our bus was blocking the road and the driver was very angry when told that the teachers are not ready. He had to park his bus somewhere else until those bastard teachers came. Stupid them, tell us meet at 10pm, but they came at 10.20pm. Sorry bus uncle, we know that you are on time but what to do with those bastards when they are late? They are teachers after all and if they decide to be late, we cant scold them or punish them. We have to accept that they are losers and they don't keep promises but expect everything done correctly from us.
After that agonising wait in the rain for the bastards to arrive, we soon got back to our hotel. We played PSP. I found this really nice game called Ridge Racer. Its a racing game (as usual) and its fun drifting through the city. Daud was desperate for girls and begged the teachers to let the girls join us. They agreed and Daud played some games with them. After the girls left, Daud came up with this phrase "Smack that horny butt" and started smacking people's butt. Horny Daud! -.-" Before the trip, we made a deal that all of us would not sleep. However, by 4am, only 3 out of 11 us were awake. Those awake were Asraf, me and Muhd. We entertained ourself by playing PSP till 5am when I went to take a longggg shower.
Thursday:
The view at 7.30 am was beautiful. Take a look
We went to the Clubhouse where we had buffet breakfast. The food there is average. The only thing I liked about the breakfast was the ommlete and pepper hot dogs.
Yacub trying to 'protect' his eyes from the glarring morning sun
We later went to the Animal Safari World. First up, a truck ride through the forest where animals and humans bond together as one, errr well, sort of. The truck was caged up for our safety
The truck from the outside view
First animal we met was Horses! Yeah Cy3lx, you must be delighted!
Mama Horsey!
Next, the truck went down a very steep slope. Its very fun as it felt like being on a roller coaster ride!
The truck decending a steep slope
Cross breed of Mama Horsey and Seetah :D
Husband and Wife taking a romantic stroll at the park
Grisly bear receiving food from the driver
Grisly bear enjoying his meal - So cute!
Elephant doing some stunts
Elephant molesting some woman's butt
Yacub getting his crotch crushed by the big heavy elephant. Ouch!
Yacub riding an elephant
Lim Soo Ling got randy with an elephant!
She seems to be loving it
Emo monkey who kept banging his head against the cage!
Omg! Donkey having an erection (Circled in red) Horny Donkey!
Racoons! They sure look cute!
Ah Meng Jrn playing golf!
Lunch was the eky tasting chicken rice. So many bones and the rice has no taste. I had a hard time chewing the chicken. I eventually gave up eating and threw whats remaining.
We left Afamosa resort for Meleka town. I thought they would bring us to the old town but no! Instead, they brought us to this hypermarket named Tesco.
Exterior of the hypermarket Tesco
James May's Honda Jazz (circled in yellow)
Entrance to Tesco
There was nothing much for me to buy in there as I have done all my shopping at Giant the day before. So I just walked around and took some pictures.
The huge interior, look at how high the celling is!
Lots of banners displayed
I found out something shocking later. While we were all enjoying our time in the shopping mall, Daud, Helmi and some other sec 2 guy got locked up in the bus. They were sleeping and the driver just locked the door leaving them inside the bus. I remembered Mahd and me waking Daud up, I guessed he must have fallen asleep after that. They got stuck in the bus for 40 mins until some people walked passed. The 3 of them climbed through the driver's window with the help of 2 passer bys. Poor things! The driver should check his bus before locking the door next time. I also saw this amazing traffic light at Meleka. It has a timer on it indicating how much green time is left before the light turns red. It also tells how much red time is left before the light turns green. S'pore did have this system in the past but was abolished because the authrorities saw motorist practicing unsafe driving to beat the timer. I hope S'pore implements this amazing system on all our traffic lights soon!
A traffic light with a timer on it. 47 seconds left before light turns green.
The trip on the bus was incredibly boring. It didn't help that my phone's mp3 ran out of batt. I tried to keep myself awake by chewing on gums and eating Toblerone. As far as I can see, everybody else were sleeping soundly except me. The abundance of Proton cars are getting on my nerves. The fact that I did not sleep the previous night did not do anything to keep me awake. I endured the ride all the way to Tg Kupang checkpoint where the bus missed the checkpoint exit for buses and have to reverse back against oncoming traffic. Thats the only interesting 'event' that happened during the bus ride back. Oh ya, it was raining heavily on the way back and I saw a car slamming into a tree by the expressway. I hope the driver is all right as the car does not look to be too badly damaged. The bus was speeding all the way through the ride too! The speed is what kept me awake.
Anyway, we have to change back to a S'pore registered bus at Tg Kupang checkpoint. The bus came 30mins late and we have to wait in the cold pouring rain for the bus to arrive. There was a huge jam on the S'pore side towards M'sia. It stretched for about 3km. Poor people who got stuck in jams. At Tuas checkpoint, the immigration officers did not check our bags for chewing gums. Wasted! Could have brought a box of chewing gums home. I guess they are too interested in finding Mas Selemat to bother about gums. They should have done that long ago. The bus sent us back to Commonwealth MRT station where I joined Daud and some others for dinner at Long John Silvers. Went home after that.
As you can see, the M'sia trip was nothing special save for a few gay moments. Formula 1 this Sunday at Melbourne Australia, be sure to catch it 'Live' on Starhub cable TV ch 24. I hope Ferrari wins but in F1, anything can happen. With this, I'll end my longest post yet! Bless Ferrari on their quest to become the champions of the F1 2008 season. Till then, enjoy your holidays while you can!
