Bring The Beat Back

I've been bothered by morbid thoughts lately so I decided to go watch the sunrise. It's a miracle that happens everyday; something that we take for granted. I usually catch a glimpse of the amazing sight everyday on the way to work so I decided to check it out. I guess the sight was pretty worth sacrificing my sleep for!



I call it the huge-body-of-water-that-you-see-from-the-train-when-travelling-from-Khatib-to-YCK without actually realising that it's actually Lower Seletar Reservoir! It was quite a walk from Khatib MRT station, and more humid than expected.



The view was picturesque.



And the highlight of the entire trip is probably the jetty. I think it's really rare in Singapore to find a place where it's surrounded by lots of greenery and water and yet still relatively accessible. Okay, so it's not so appropriate but we went crazy camwhoring amidst the tranquil surroundings.



There was this bunch of Ah Bengs fishing all over the place and they managed to catch quite a few big fish! The way they dealt with the fish after that was a little cruel, but Man has always been like this since the beginning of time. Anyway, it was exciting to witness the fish being reeled in, hauled up, and then tossed onto the jetty.



I don't know how to explain this series of pictures. Don't ask. I just want to mention that that looks like a pretty weary smile on Pic #4. I think all the work has gotten to me more than I'd like to admit. I've realised I'm quite the workaholic. I like the fact that I'm driven and all, but I guess I just don't know my limits.



Ooh, I like this photo. I set the focus to infinite but it doesn't look good enough. But the idea is there.



For the life of me, I can't remember what these plants are called. It's been too long since I've played SimParks (one of my favourite games of all time), which was educational and entertaining at the same time. Animals, plants... the diversity of wildlife in the game was amazing. I should probably move off to some nature park to work in the future!



And everyone who knows Ryan knows of his obsession with Ni Guang and so I played around with the camera and got it to over-expose(?) the photo for this effect. Not bad right? Haha... Gosh I'm retarded. It was a welcomed break from all the mall-crawling and movie-watching. I love the outdoors and nature in general so it was a big treat for me.



We spotted a lizard and this huge army of ants crossing one of the paths. There were these tiny ants warring and outnumbering these bigger ants. They were obviously not friends. For every huge ant, there were 5 tiny ones stuck on their backs, trying to bring it down.

Mother Nature has its gruesome sights too.

After that we walked back to Khatib MRT and had breakfast at one of the many coffeeshops opposite. The food was really good. I think I'm addicted to Ba Chor Mee. Yummilicious! Haha... I headed back to Woodlands just in time to meet Wee Lee to get ourselves across the Causeway for a haircut and lunch. Such a pity that my usual hairstylist wasn't there. But Wee Lee commented that there was no difference in the hairstyle I got! So much for being original.

I'm going to hear a lot of comments about how short my hair is, again. But that's the way I like it!

More Advice

I went to Taipei earlier this month and stayed in Royal Castle Hotel (along Chengdu Rd) in XMD!

Places u muz go:

1. Shilin Night Market (makan & shopping!!)
2. Danshui (Old Street) (shop for native food & sight-seeing)
3. Lovers' bridge
4. Taipei 101
5. Museums & Memorial Halls (if u r interested)
6. Wu Fen Pu (shopping)
7. Yang Ming Shan (sight-seeing)
8. Xin Bei Tou (muz try its hot spring!)

Food that u MUZ try:

1. Shilin Night Mkt - Super big chicken cutlet, teppanyaki (the stall owned by married couple and their mother), chua bing, fen(3) yuan(2) (their ice kacang), basically all the food!! Lolz~

2. XMD - Ah Zhong Mian Xian (opp. a row of Nike, Adidas & Puma shops), Ba Fang Yun Ji's dumpling & gyoza (juz beside XMD MRT), bubble tea (much nicer than S'pore), Fei(1) Tian(1) Ma(2) La(4) steamboat, Ya(2) Rou(4) Bian(3)'s duck noodles.

3. Danshui - Ah(1) Gei(3)

For transport from the airport to hotel, there r a few private bus companies tt offer to transport u to the hotels. U can find them easily at the airport terminal. It's much more affordable than taking a cab! Dun ever try taking cab in Taipei! Very ex! The meter starts at S$3.50 and jumps very fast! MRT and buses are the best transport to get u around Taipei. Very convenient too! U can buy an Ez-link card for ard S$20 at any MRT control station and u can use it for many train n bus trips!

People - The ppl are definitely more friendly and helpful than S'poreans. Haha.. if u need directions, u can try asking them. They are really nice peeps! They'll tend to ask u where u are from as our accent does sound different from theirs. If u r shopping, I feel tt it's better not to let the shop owners know tt u r a S'porean coz they mite think S'poreans r filthy rich n hence charge a higher price. U can try to bargain price with them! Speak Mandarin! =)

- Kherray

Thanks a lot, seriously! I really appreciate all the information and I think it'll be of major help seeing that you've listed everything so clearly! Gosh... we'll definitely visit all the places you recommended, although I can't promise that I'll try all the food at Shilin Night Market! I think I ought to start practising my Mandarin now; I really do suck at it! I wonder where Lovers' Bridge is at, because I haven't came across it in any of the stuff I read.

On a side note, we need to have a class outing soon!

If anyone has any 2 cents worth of contribution to make for my up-coming trip in July, leave a tag! I'd like to hear from you, mainly because there's nothing better than first-person opinions.

Okay, and the fact that I'm just a little lazy to do my own research at the moment!

PS: Isn't asking for opinions part of the research too? =P

Meaning

The harder I try to look for it, the more lost I feel.

Play

I'm having a lot of fun recently. I guess getting a new job and a new schedule was really what I needed shake my life up a little bit. Having enough money to satisfy my needs helps too. I watched three movies last week (okay, Pirates twice) and played badminton with my colleagues on Friday. That was really cool because I haven't played such a great game in a long time. It's probably because Cindy and I are roughly the same standard and we didn't take it too seriously!

After teaching 5 students today, I'm freaking tired. I can't wait to slam into my bed and indulge in dreamless sleep. There never seems to be enough time to sleep. Hmm, I won't be home early for the rest of the week due to shopping, tuition and badminton! Ooh, and I'm going to Malaysia on Friday to get my hair cut!

As with everyone else, I'm freaking out about my uni life. I've no idea what to expect, and that should be frightening. However, I'm really looking forward to it. After being aimless for so long, to return to studies and a school life is really what I'm anticipating. It'd probably be one of the finest years of my life and I want to do everything right, to have something cool to look back on!

It's nerve-wrecking. I need to talk to someone to get me calm! Haha...

Ooh, and I've lost my abs, which don't seem to want to come back despite me doubling my efforts to exercise. Damn.

I watched Shrek 3 yesterday and it was pretty good. I used to hate Shrek so I avoided the movie like plague, but I had a chance to watch the third installment with Max, Terence and Daniel. One of the best parts has got to be hearing Justin voice Artie. The part where he was whining and crying to Merlin was hilarious. It's hard to imagine that's his voice. Max drove the point home by singing Sexyback when that scene was on! What contrast! Haha... The worst thing about the whole thing was that most of the audience was either too old or too young to have watched Snow White and Cinderella to remember it as clearly as our generation. The four of us were the only people breaking into laughter at various points in the movie. The rest of the audience were so silent in their cluelessness I could almost hear their hands scratching their heads! Anyway, I guess I've got to do some catching up and watch the other two Shrek movies!

Samuel popped by work yesterday to visit his old colleagues and to remind me that I owe him a treat for getting me the job. I'll become as broke as I started if that happens!

More More More

"I have an aunt, who whenever she poured anything for you, would say, 'say when'. My aunt would say say when and of course we never did. We don't say when because there's something about the possibility of more.

More tequila
More love
More anything
More is better

There's something to be said about a glass half full. About when to say when. I think it's a floating line, a barometer of need and desire. It's entirely up to the individual and depends on what's being poured. Sometimes all we want is a taste. Other times, there's no such thing as enough. The glass is bottomless. And all we want is more."
- Meredith Grey

I'm guilty of wanting more all the time. More money, more fun, more muscle, more time, more friends... It's a mentality that's bound to backfire as we pursue "more", simply because more is not always better.

Why do we ask for more? It's the fear of not having enough and not matching up to everyone's expectations. Unrealistic expectations. Working moms want more time, to be the perfect mom for their kids, to be the perfect wife for their husbands, and to be the perfect career woman in office. But for everything that you want badly, there's a price to pay for it in the end. Opportunity cost. We can never have it all.

One of the things that we go through our entire lives asking for more of, is money. To a point where we neglect the people around that we care about, our family and friends. We neglect the environment. We neglect social issues that seem too far away to affect us. We become selfish and self-centered, greedy and irresponsible.

I'm guilty of all the above. When I was younger I knew much better, but ever since I stepped out from school and into society, I'm just overwhelmed by everything that's out there, everything that there is to know and take care of, and everything that's out there for me to want more of. I think it's crazy that I work hard for my money, spend it on shopping just to make myself feel better, and the cycle never ends because the desire for more is just insatiable. More importantly, it's not what I really need, and thus it'll never satisfy that longing for more.

Because just sometimes, settling for less and being satisfied with what you've got gives you the time of day to stop and appreciate life instead of going through it grudgingly, monotonously, in the pursuit of more.

Stop exercising when your knee hurts. Stop drinking when you're that close to being used as a mop on the dancefloor. Stop working when you've got kids who're waiting for you at home. Stop gambling instead of lying to yourself that you'll get back your money on this last bet. Stop playing fucking DOTA when you should be studying.

At the end of the day, we need to focus on what we need instead of our insatiable desires. We need to sieve out the needs because we have limited resources at our disposal, and at the end of the day, you don't want to spend your life chasing things that aren't worth your time. Your life.

Soundaholic Presents...

Rihanna ft Jay-Z - Umbrella
When you're in the business of commenting on music, the first lesson is not to argue with popularity. As I mention last week, you're probably never going to win. Coming a close second would be to not to argue with a transatlantic hit. 19-year-old Rihanna's Umbrella is spending a second week at #1 in the UK and vaults #42-#1 on the Billboard Hot 100 this week. Unlike any other mere pop song you might hear on the radio, this one will definitely catch your attention with its distinct refrain of, "Umbrella-ella-ella-eh-eh-eh". She's a strange one because despite having huge hits (Pon de Replay, SOS, Unfaithful), she's not been a huge album seller. It's probably due to the fact that she releases her albums too damn soon after one another. I hated the song the first couple of times I heard it, but after repeated forced listens (it's everywhere) and her appearance on TRL, I'm sold. It's this summer's anthem. Miss out on this and it's your loss.



Good Charlotte - Dance Floor Anthem
I'm repulsed at how slowly it's been taking the public to warm up to Good Charlotte's current album. Keep Your Hands Off My Girl, which was supposed to an iconic single for the band, didn't quite take off because of the lack of support from punk rock fans in general. Lead singer Joel Madden revealed that the direction for the current album was slightly different, saying that, "We wanted to make it a little more dancey. I have been influenced by doing my DJ gigs, so I wanted to incorporate that energy. It is not a dance album at all, but it is a lot dancier." You can read the rest of the interview here. Dance Floor Anthem is the third single, and in my opinion, should do a pretty good job of getting fans of their previous hits like Girls and Boys, back. I love the track and it gets me hooked from beginning till the end. The video itself is nothing special though.



Linkin Park - What I've Done
If you've been to Lido anytime this week (and chances are that you'd have been because of Spiderman 3, Pirates of the Carribean and Shrek 3), you'll not be able to miss the fact that the huge screen which usually showcases trailers of up-and-coming movies is also plugging Linkin Park's latest single, What I've Done. It took quite some time for the song to grow on me, but what caught my attention the first time I saw the video was that it was highlighting some of the problems that the human race was facing - poverty, global warming and warfare. It's so rare nowadays for music to not be so self-centered. The lyrics are simple and therein lies it's magic.



Five - Closer To Me
If you've been into boybands in the past, surely you'd have heard of Five? They were never astoundingly huge in Asia (unlike a1) but still gave a slew of hits from When The Lights Go Out to We Will Rock You. My personal favourite however, has got to be the ballad Closer To Me, which was released after they decided to call disband in November 2001. It's one of the songs that can make me cry, for reasons I cannot fanthom. I remember being at a class chalet then and the radio was playing this song at 4 in the morning and we heard the song and someone asked me (naturally) who sang it, because it was really good. I broke the news and that guy was pretty stunned! Haha... can't believe I remember all that when it happened 6 years ago. Take a trip down memory lane here.