This is serious business

Hello everyone,

I need your help, seriously. It's time to get some input from everyone. You know how much I love traveling. You know how much I love to enjoy life. You know I'd go the distance for it, anything for the blog, like... ANYTHING. Most importantly, you know how passionate I am in this blogging business. 4 years..... after 4 years, I'm still trying to update regularly, like everyday.

You know I have a dream, a dream I never thought could come true but now, this dream could be possible. And I'm trying very very hard to make this dream of becoming a travel writer come true (even though chances are probably very very slim but no harm trying right?) .

I am going to take part in a competition to win a free, all expenses paid trip to Tokyo for 7 days, blog about my experiences for the whole entire time I'm there.

TOKYO!

We're talking bout the big flashy neon billboards!




We're talking bout watching these bunch of obese ppl live in action!





BUT this is not all, the most interesting part is the chance to get my 'work' featured in the 'Rough Guide' series!

God I swear I'm hyperventilating as I'm writing this.

You know what's ironic? Initially I was planning to go Japan end of this year, sometime in December to spend Christmas there but due to some personal reasons, I decided to back out and tada! a new opportunity presents itself for me to step my foot there for the first time!


To win myself this assignment to Japan, I have to write an essay, a 500 word essay based on a personal experience around one of the following themes of which I have narrowed down to 2;

a. 'A Journey that Changed Lives'

b. 'A Memorable Experience Involving Food in a Foreign Country'

I'm thinking of going with option A since I don't have much experiences involving food, oh wait.. there are a few now that I think bout it. I can think of so many things I could write about but I don't know where to start and I need your help/guidance/comment/critic. It could be my bad English, grammar, vagueness in details, anything!

Most importantly among all my travel entries (not that I have a lot to boast), which is one the one that you think I should write bout? Let me make it easier for you.


Some shortlisted entries :

Option A - Whaleshark sighting + The whole Philippine experience / or the summary of being in US alone for 6 weeks + Skydiving / or the summary of Europe travels (I'm forgetting a lot of it by now @_@)

Option B - Berlin dine-in-total-darkness experience + Eating SUPERSIZED meal / Eating balut

500 words! too short lor! -_-

There are more in this link. Help me choose!

Yes, I'm serious. This could be a one in a million opportunity for me. I admit I'm not the best blogger out there but I definitely want to give this a try. If I try, I have at least 0.0001% of winning this but if I don't, the chance is down to 0.

Appreciate every input I can get :)


Thank you~!

Closed case

The last entry has indeed sparked a lot of controversial comments. It was very intriguing to read what everyone had to say; some of which were very enlightening and well...thank god no blood was shed in the process (kidding!)

I supposed most of those who are with Obama with the whole bowing thing, we think it's only respectable of the great man to do so to show his respect to the Emperor of Japan. Now we're all just little minions in this society, rooted with the culture to bow is to show respect, and that's about it. Simple as that. Period.

Why do we have to go the distance to criticize each and every move made by an honorable respected man? As one of the readers had commented, Obama has proved himself time and time again, earning respect from civilians and leaders from all over the world. Is he such a perfect being that one has to find faults in the things he do?

*shrug*

Ok, maybe there is an international policy to how a leader should react when meeting with other leaders and maybe he broke it, yea big deal, but does this make the man a far less better person than he is now? No. Ok let's move on.

In any way, again it was really interesting to read the each and every one of the comment. Thank you to those who 'debated' their opinions, though I may not be politically up to date enough to voice out much, but I do appreciate reading and learning bits and pieces along the way.

In times like this, I do miss having someone to 'argue' things over with :)

When bowing means more than just respect

Since when one is criticized for bowing to a leader or an elderly person?












Since some retarded, ignorant, self centered Americans said so




If anything, Obama is the most respectful leader I've known and I just don't understand how bowing low to a country which observes bowing as a form of respect is perceived as a form degradation to US or even seen as 'groveling before a foreign leader'.

Use your brain dear 'katak di bawah tempurung' sheltered egocentric Americans, if all the problems in the world ie in this case; the economy, can be recovered just by the United States alone, why do you think President Obama is making trips to the Asia continent?

Read this and more in the comment sections from ireport

I feel disgusted just by reading how shallow some people can be. Really, do they really expect this pair of old couple to bow lower than Obama? What if they crack their bones in the process? Just saying you know.. AND.. what if the emperor is practicing what the Americans have been doing all along? Shake hands and not bow! How bout that?


I am sure the phrase 'When in Rome do as the Romans do' does not only apply in Rome and I'm sure as hell Obama knows that.

$you

$you = " ";


It was one of those days....or one of those nights...

One of those days.... or one of those nights... where $you are up for anything.

One of those moments when your friend calls $you up last minute and $you are ready to go.

Because $you are pathetic too free like that.

Because $you have nothing better to do.




$you is a variable that can be assigned to any constant value.





That night, $you = ME;


It was supposed to be a celebration party for a friend's friend. She is now officially a lawyer.

I agreed to go to the party after insisting that at least 2 or more people I know will be there. I needed some entertainment, he needed dancing kakis or someone who can make the party lively. It's a symbiotic relation, we're both happy.







That night, I met up with....



WAN YEEEEEEE! Who is so outdated about my life, cause we meet only like once or twice a year wtf but clicked so well when we see each other. We spent the whole night updating each other bout our lives; danced a bit, rest, tell a bit of each other's story and the cycle repeats heh


Host of the party, none other than Jared. I miss the four three of us hanging out together

please excuse and ignore the wet fugly woman in the center


I also met another important person in my emo buddy's life... Lili :)



Jared told me so much about her, and he told her so much bout me and now we finally met! I think what makes a man happy is the fact that his *cough* important girl *cough* can crap click well with one of his close buddies (or at least I hope he thinks I'm close enough to him :p)


Other new ppl I met that night

From left: TY, Wan Yee's Japanese boss Takahara san! the following 2 can be ignored

I should pose more like that, at least my arm looked shapely

From right : Allison (technically she's not new because we met each other before)




And other girls I swear I don't know all of their names @_@ One of them is the graduating lawyer for sure :p

This is a how-to-plump-up-your-face-in-picture shot (by leaning on your friend's shoulder)


We partied at Slippery Senoritas in Autocity, almost similar as the one Penang. They were such a fun bunch and we danced all night long, despite the bad mix of music. I had to take a lot of breaks in between to take a breather, I'm really getting too old to boogie :(

A picture of all of us



oh wait.. I think I missed someone else out.







And I'm sorry to say...he has to make an appearance in my blog in a very bad way BUT according to him (upon viewing the picture I am going to post up later), he's building UP his reputation and IF he said so I guess I have no qualms posting this up.









Everyone, say hi to the star of the night!









The man with the flashy nipple! He's actually my ex primary schoolmate (appeared in my birthday celebration in 2008)



Hey I gotta BLINGed up his nipple a bit to protect his dignity... or what's left of it :p


Another weekend gone....


$you = " ";

A lil strawberry topping

I wasn’t planning on writing this but I was chatting with a friend about the weekend and I was telling her how cool it was to be doing what I did on Saturday and then I thought, hey, since it was an effing cool experience (in my eyes anyway), why not blog about it?

If I haven’t bore you yet with my paddling stories, do read on.

Saturday, 430pm we had the usual physical training in Macallum St. before the paddling session. It was more like a warmup session where we had to jog 3 rounds, some pushups, jumping jacks and a bit of stretching before getting ready for the paddling session.

The weather got darker as we were finishing up the physical part and I thought ‘yay, great! it’s gonna rain, maybe they’ll cancel the paddle session!’ Yes I was secretly hoping that they’ll cancel the training, I was just feeling lazy that day. But I was dead wrong.

Everyone started walking back to the so called ‘headquarter’ (basically just a container storing all the paddle equipments). It had started to drizzle by then. I thought to myself ‘It’s raining, are we still doing this?’ but kept quiet since everyone seemed to be oblivious to the fact that it was raining.

Moments later, I found myself equipped with the usual glove I always use for paddling and a little bit more, a life jacket -_-“ I contemplated in the beginning whether to put it on or not but some guy told me ‘well if you want to stay save and you can’t swim well, I’ll advise you to do so’

I looked out from the container into the pouring rain, more dark clouds approaching, and the dangerous looking sea. Ok, point noted. Strapped on the jacket it is!

By the time we were all seated in the boat, we were half drenched from the rain. I was a little worried if the rain will make the vision poorer, as if getting sunblock into my eyes is not painful enough, I have to squint my eyes, worrying bout the sea water and the rain. Yes, at that moment, it felt like another FML day.

But whether I like it or not, the training will go on. And we paddled into the sea. It wasn’t as bad as I thought, in fact the rain felt like a blessing because it washed away the salt water we got onto our faces. I was beginning to enjoy paddling in the rain.

Being in the sea, drenched inside out under the pouring rain, thunders and lightnings so visible from where we were, the waves in the sea getting rougher by each passing minute and jellyfish sightings every now and then was actually kinda FUN FUN FUN!

picture for illustration purpose only

The most fun part was the part where the boat felt as if it was 'flying' when we paddled really hard and fast riding through the strong waves, I had to contain myself from shouting out loud in excitement yes I'm crazy like that oh think medium to hardcore water rafting perhaps?

The team too was very energetic, we had better more structured trainings lately with the competition nearing. The killer part was the 500m paddle nonstop, that's like ~300 strokes nonstop @_@ I was really really bad at that, I exhaust myself far too quickly, my stamina was bad, my arms gave up too soon :( as much as I really tried very hard not to stop too often and kept up with the speed. Sigh.. I think I need to drink the stamina powder the guys are drinking at the moment :p

The only part I regretted was putting on the life jacket, I didn't need it because it was hardly that dangerous and it restricted my movement. Nevertheless, it was one of the best paddling session I had, and I definitely want more of those!!!

Maybe my life is getting too mundane that I'm craving for some hardcore adrenaline rush excitement @_@ hence, the post was named as such.

5 reasons to love Chuck Bass

If you're a fan of Gossip Girl, this name should be familiar, in fact so familiar that some may even cringe at the name, well for those who hate him anyway.

I know a lot of girls go gaga over Nate Archibald, the pretty boy that makes one swoon with his deep blue eyes and charming smile or maybe even potentially make a straight guy go gay for him because he's just too cute.



I know.... whoever can resist that smile...


Thought Nate is unarguably the prettiest boy in the show, his character in the movie is just... bleh. Not as striking and appealing as Chuck Bass, the bad boy. Following the growth of Chuck Bass' character since Season 1 to now 3, I've grown fonder of this man and his character in the movie.

Here are the 5 reasons to love Chuck Bass, even more than Nate :p



1) Mysterious with good intentions (much evolved character)



2) Loyal,loves the same woman since the very start and is still very much deeply in love with her



3) Learns how to massage for his girl

4) Forgiving, even when betrayed by the woman he loves

5) Will do anything for her, even if that includes kissing a guy!



First he makes you hate him, then love him.



Yes Chuck Bass is confident, romantic, very ambitious driven and I find that very mysteriously seductive :D

Bleh

I'm feeling "bleh~" (don't exactly know how to describe my mood at the moment) to update. It's Friday and here I am stuck in the office working late AGAIN, only this time I hope I don't have to work till 2 am like last Friday.

Anyway, here's a short update of what I've been up to:


Air Asia's free flights promotion is going on at the moment and everyone is going crazy booking trips! This time, I jumped into the bandwagon just like everybody else.


First, I spent half an hour browsing the list of destinations going ??? on where to go.

I was soooooo tempted to book a ticket to London, I don't know why, perhaps Krispy Kreme just tastes better there and I just feel that there's so much more in London that I haven't do or see and pound is cheap now! Or I could fly cheaper to London then take some budget airline to some other countries in Europe, sounds like a plan isn't it?

I then realized I will not have enough time off for other places so I scrap that off my list, someday, someday.. I hope to go back.

Other destinations either sounded boring or half the world has been there and I wasn't really interested.

Started chatting with friends, crazy last minute trip plans just started appearing out of nowhere. Suddenly all the been-there-done-that destinations sounded more appealing.

Spent HOURS in front of the screen trying to book the cheapest tickets (no more FREE ones available FML).

Credit card was giving me problems with the booking and online transaction, spent more time calling AA to confirm my reservation, then the bank to check on the transactions.

4 failed online transactions and a WHOLE lot of frustrations later, finally found the easiest and cheaper way to book, with is direct payment through bank transfer. I wished I had found this out earlier.

For yesterday and today, a total damage of almost 1k was done just for flight tickets.

End results: 2 trips booked and confirmed for next year YAY!