Found this article while surfing around...
"While Mr Xishun, 56, towers above everyone at an astonishing 7.9ft, 19-year-old Mr Pingping is a mere 2.4ft high."
Woah, the shorty looks like a toy while the tall guy looks like an alien. I am so glad that I am of "normal" height.
On friday, I psycho my sister successfully to forget about going to work OT for free, and go for the dragonboat practice at Kallang Water Sports Centre organised by MDS instead. Why bother to work extra when the bosses are not around to see ? According to my rules of engagement, this is a no-no situation especially when the work involved is never ending. And so today, instead of working so hard, she went to play hard.
Here is my sisters at Kallang Water Sports Centre. Met Hui Ling and Lay Ting from Power Seraya there too. They had came for the earlier time slot as part of the company sports event. Regina had left an hour earlier, so I missed her. Now I know who are the sporting ones at Power Seraya. 3 ladies and no guys. *cough cough*
At the boarding area, we saw some army guys in #4 doing some kind of rehearsal. There is a yellow balloon attached to each of the boats, possibly part of the national day programme. So watch out for it soon.
My sister is in group 11, with students from Bedok Secondary. Here is the safety and basic theory demonstration on dragon boat operation. Instead of starting at 1.30pm, it dragged and dragged to almost 2.30pm before the fun begins.
Fortunately my sister is not heavy, and I have practice lifting her. I loaded her onto the 4th position from the front of dragon boat faster than any of the other folks from MDS. And the water looks dirty to me. Yikes, I am not going to swim in this.
The fun stops after 1 hour on the dragon boat. Her my sister is holding the paddle for display purposes only. She just sat through the whole thing with the rest of the Bedok Secondary kids. After a quick goodbye, we decided to go Suntec for the rest of the day. We got lucky while trying to hail a cab at Oasis. It was a deserted place to begin with. A cab came from a distance away and saw us waving fanatically at him. Hence we saved $$$ because we did not have to call for a cab.
Found a defibrillator outside the toilet at Suntec Convention Hall. Did someone die of a heart attack to prompt the management to do this ?
Wearing socks with slippers surely look weird on me. Luckily, not for long though.
An exit that goes into another dimension.
A rather cheesy dinner at Pizza Hut. A curry chicken pizza with cheese fondue on top and cheese sticks. Woah sinful ! Along with another Aloha lover pizza, our dinner was settled.
While sniffing deals on the auction house in Ironforge (Alliance city in WoW), I was trying to confirm a price with the windows calculator. I punched in the following figures ...
me : 196 divide by 14 [ENTER]
windows calculator : *No response*
me : eh ? [Enter]
windows calculator : *returns result* -->> 1
I am not genius in maths, but 196 divided by 14 is NOT equal to 1. I repeated a few times and got the same result. Convinced that this is a bug in windows calculator, I tried the same calculations on my O2 Atom PDA running windows mobile 2003.
Alas, the same crap turned up.
I guess Microsoft programmers have something against 196 divided by 14. It will not yield the correct result. Don't rely too much on the Windows calculator. Who knows what else is affected.
Edit : I cock lah. 196 divided by 14 is 14 !! Early morning blur-ness.
A young chap standing next to me merlion-ed (aka puked) while the train was pulling into Ang Mo Kio MRT station. I dodged the stream of brownish liquid and avoided soiling my clothes. Before I can offer my pack of tissue to the merlion, he already managed to took out a pack of his own, with another 2 packs being offered by worried people around him.
Being the typical bor-chap Singaporean, I got off the train and walked passed the station control without informing the SMRT guys that they have a clean up job on their hands.
To many of us, TV is a form of entertainment. Many kids grew up watching day in day out. It's easy to satisfy a kid, just turn on the TV, and woahaha, no more troublesome kid to take care of.
However, there is a dark side to it. In fact, it can ruin lives. I didn't have to look very far to see a living example of that. My youngest sister is a perfect example of a TV addict who grew up learning all the wrong values from TV. The TV is her main source of information which eventually leads her to her very bad position in life.She couldn't tell what is correct or wrong on TV, mindlessly absorbing the foreign values that was burned into the images on the screens without weighing them and getting a skewed picture of life in general.
And behold, the longest dirty laundry washed in this blog's history.
It all started with my lazy parents who didn't want to take care of a crying baby girl when she was a couple of months old. So what my parents did is to show my youngest sister, TV programmes, in particular, advertisements. The addiction was so acute that advertisements were recorded on video tape, and replayed to the amusement of the baby girl.
So it went from advertisements, to power rangers, dramas, Taiwanese variety shows and recently reality TV. The unholy amount of time spent on TV was huge. There is always a price to pay, and she probably has to pay it for the rest of her life.
I am always known to be self-motivating, and can motivate people to progress in their life if I want to make an effort to. However, if a person refuses to admit that there is a problem(s), be willing to do whatever changes necessary to correct the situation and refuses to listen, I will pass. I strongly believe there is no way to help a person who is not willing to help themselves and lying to yourself is the worst thing you can do to yourself.
The American and Japan TV assaulting the younger generation did plenty of damage. My sister grew up with the idea that she is to be respected, and her ego was strong.
It didn't help with my parents who went soft on her, going by the my-child-is-my-friend approach imported wholesale from American culture.
I didn't buy it. My youngest sister is behaving like a brainless brat who didn't know what adulthood means by the age of 20. I told her that because her hearing is impaired in one of her ears, she has to swallow her pride and ask people to repeat themselves if she cannot catch our words. But due to her proud nature, instead of doing so, she will end up misunderstanding the entire conversation. She turned defensive and ended up offending everyone who is trying to help her. It didn't help with her poor general knowledge and bad decision making skills. She cannot hold a conversation at a reasonable level, looking like a complete fool in my eyes.
Of course she will hate me every time when I grilled her thoroughly after getting my statements verified with referees in the conversation. Her loose mouth will get her into trouble sooner or later, and her attitude it really terrible. What makes it worse is that she demands respect for who knows what.
I am so sorry. I am not a person who will give you respect because you demand it. You have to earn it. Last week, we had a big row when she tried avoid the question of what she is doing, what had she done so far and what is her plan for the future. It went on to a point where she complained that I have never respected her before. She accused me of bullying her and never thought about her feelings.
So I shot back at her.
Respect ? Yes I can respect you. But over what? What do you have that I can respect you for ? Can you name something ? Anything at all?
I knew she can't give me an answer. Because she has nothing to be proud of. No hard work, no achievements, no goals in life. In short, her ego was built on rapidly cooling hot air. It's sinking faster than the Titanic.
Then I went on saying that I shoot down her so-called ideals because they were based on faulty logic, and cannot be justified. Her limited general knowledge gives her a narrow view of situations and the whole big picture is completely lost. If an ideal make sense, and the merits out weighs the cost, I will never have to shoot them down.
If you are going to make a bad decision that will affect me, I will overwrite the decision no matter what it takes. My eldest sister is a complete contrast to my youngest. I do make bad calls, and I am very happy that my eldest sister can point them out to me.
Complaining that people is bullying you is childish. If you can stand your ground and fight with you abilities, you will realise that there is no such thing as bullying. It's your inability that is the cause of your problem. This fact doesn't change from childhood to adulthood. If I were to impose bullying tactics, she would have already been forced into a corner, broken.
That's the same thing with feelings. She kept saying that no one understands her and no one cares about her feelings. Come on, this is not a soap drama. This is real life. Nobody, saved for your significant other will bother about how you feel. Complaining that the whole world wronged you, misunderstood you and don't care about you is so childish. The world doesn't owe you a living, blaming others for your own failures is so damn lame and the failure to realise that your very existence is your chance to make good of your own life is so silly.
Having watched too much dramas, she started saying that this is her own life and she makes the decisions. Again, I shot back at her. Not friendly words, and certainly very bitter medicine. Yes she can make your own decisions, so long she can make good decisions on her own. But face it, she can't. Look at the state of her life. I call it a failure. Those guys screaming freedom in US at the age of 18 are living on their own outside their family. Here she is in a typical Asian family shouting freedom when she didn't have the means to. What a corny joke. Can't she see the difference?
Does she have a plan for her own future? A 1 year plan? 5 years? 10 years? Or do I have to tell her my predictions? It's seldom wrong, and it hits home so many times. At the rate she goes, she probably makes some terrible irreversible mistake that will ruin her life forever. I told her to forget bio-tech. It's not for her. The industry is not ready. The government makes it sounds too good to be true. Unlike the IT industy promoted previously, this is a highly specialised industry. Every firm can use an IT department but there is no use for a bio-tech department.
This means that good jobs are highly prized and hard to get. An ITE cert will not cut it. She is not degree material and she didn't even manage to get into a diploma programme of the field. And now, even a degree holder struggles not to be a salesman for some test kit. I don't see a future. I see a grim reality. I told her to switch to engineering instead but she refused. Now she had rotted for the 3rd month at home, refusing to look for work or studies.
She claimed she is under depression and thus, didn't look for jobs so far. But she didn't fit the description of a person under depression. She isn't certified to be a patient thus not under any treatment for it. From the looks of things, she is just slacking with a lousy excuse. I have seen how depressed people looked like, and this is certainly not.
How bad is bad? How about not putting effort to look for jobs at all? For 3 whole months, no resume was ever sent. And her last updated resume was 1 month old on a CDROM. She didn't know how and didn't want to be told how to. Sure, do let me know when ego can be eaten to fill my stomach. Atrocious. Appalling.
She is officially an embarrassment to me now. Every time someone asks me about my 2 sisters, I have nothing good to say about my youngest sister. Her poor working attitude, lack of commitment, interest and drive is seriously horrible. She can't do her chores nor a job without screwing things up. Give her a chance for more rewards and she will just waste it all. When things are given to her, she takes it as a entitlement and start being a ingrate not too soon after.
Even if there is a job opening, I will not bother to let her know about it. She probably screws it up and tarnish my reputation. My friends offered to teach her about real estate, but she let it slide. My other friends' siblings of the same age also didn't make a good start, but they made listened and went on to the right direction.
I tried talking to my parents many times over the years. But they paid only lip service. But hey, I have nothing to lose. Why should I even bother? Why am I more worried than my youngest sister or my parents? I told my parents that if I am going to bring her back to her senses, I will be taking over their role as her parents. And if that is to happen, they are not to interfere any further. Every time I says this, they will come up with more sorry excuses and leave the conversations. I do not understand why I must put in so much effort for negative returns.
Hey, I got better things to do than to waste my time on a useless loser. So there. Don't blame me. Ever. And yes. I blame the TV and lousy parenting for doing the damage to my sister.
I read a article on Straits Times on comfort food earlier this week. Well for those who didn't know the term, comfort food is food that you eat that makes you happy.
While comfort food can be anything edible, most of the time it's junk food with little nutrient value. Most of the comfort food came into being when we were just kids. When kids like something special, and probably was deprived of it for various reasons, the food can become a special food. Enter adulthood. Now that budget is not a concern, that special food can become a comfort food. Simply eating it triggers happiness and comfort, hence the term comfort food.
Before I go on, I must make this clear that comfort food and favorite food is very different. The "want" impulse from comfort food and the emotional high is way off the charts compared with your favorite food.
And so here is my list
#1 : Pokka Melon Milk
Super ultra rare in Singapore, despite being made in Singapore. No one in Singapore wants to stock this drink. Why ??? Why ??? Sell me PLEASE !
The Pokka sales rep didn't want to sell me because I am not a business and the last time anyone stock this in quantity was Suntec Carrefour more than 2 years ago. (I swept them all off the shelves and took a cab home)
It taste really sweet and obviously artificially favoured, since it tastes nowhere natural. When I was young, the nearest place to get it was a Pokka vending machine at Thomson Plaza . It cost $1.10 a shot then, which was bloody expensive 20 years ago. Right now, the only place to get it is a vending machine at Fuji Xerox tower. Recently at a Pokka warehouse sale, I bought 3 cartons of the soon-to-be-expired goodies. Oh, it's still $1.10 now.
#2 : Nasbisco Chicken in a Biskit
That's all for now. If there is anymore to add, I will update this post.
My main & only character is Icyspiker @ Runetotem.
That's a level 70 frost mage.
I didn't realise that the toon looked like a auntie until I leveled the character substantially. So here is auntie Icy frowning at the character selection screen, letting off a long sigh in anticipation of another long day grinding something.
I would have re-roll this auntie if I saw the face more often. While playing the game, the character's back faces me...crap. Too late. WoW should have cosmetic surgery as profession.
Woah I like the topic title in chinese, it seems to rhymes !
On Wednesday, I went to Ah Yat Abalone Restaurant at Turf City for lunch with some of the folks from my Power Seraya's Energy Market department. Having heard much of their advertisement bombarding the airwaves, i have high expectations of what they have to offer.
We bought the seafood from 奇怪 seafood market and went to Ah Yat for lunch. The restaurant isn't packed, but the service was slow. Compared with Owen restaurant next door, it's a painfully slow. We never have more than 1 dish on the table at once, which I find it unacceptable. Our orders were a beancurd cube dish, vegetable dish, a steamfish, bamboo clam, oat prawns and crayfish.
The best part is when the 6 crayfish was served. The crayfish was sliced in 1/2 in the middle from the head to the tail, so each of us grab 2 halves. To our surprise, Du Ying couldn't assemble a complete set. In short, we were served 5.5 crayfish. It doesn't take a genius to realise that we got 1/2 a missing crayfish.
As we summon the waitress, we exchange all sort of conspiracy theories such as the chef or some kitchen staff was hungry, someone ordered 1/2 a crayfish or 1/2 a crayfish went bad. After we explained the situation, the waitress went to the kitchen and told us that the missing 1/2 of left behind at the cutting board.
We accepted her tale and asked her to prepare it for Du Ying. 45 minutes later, we had finished our lunch and the crayfish was still missing in action. This time round, Lin Nan played bad girl and started on the guy in suit, apparently the manager while we were at the payment counter. At this point of time, not only they served us 5.5 crayfish, they also didn't serve us the balance after 45minutes because they have forgotten about us.
I will consider the handling of the matter as bad. Initially they offered to discount off the price of 1/2 a crayfish (that's $2.50), which makes us boil. Then they wanted to give us the crayfish in a Styrofoam box. who is going to eat the delicacy, cold, and from a Styrofoam box ? Nobody at Ah Yat seems to care at all.
Service Rating : 1/10
Fail. One point for having people to serve us at all. Bo chap manager, lost parts of a order, forgotten the re-order and slow service.
Food : 4/10
Small servings, some too salty, average taste. Nothing outstanding. The vegetable dish was over cooked.
Ambiance : 5/10
Nothing outstanding. Your average chinese seafood restaurant.
Verdict
Please avoid this restaurant, especially for your weddings. They can't handle a lunch time crowd, much less a wedding crowd. Normal undiscounted prices is too high to justify eating there at all.
Suggestions
Go Owen restaurant next door.
For those people who actually missed me uber long winded blog entries, I have been very busy for the past 4 weeks. Working like a dog on weekdays, doing DIY renovation work to my flat on weekends, and squeezing in a few hours at WoW whenever I can.
This time round, I am going to grumble about my parents.
I have always thought a couple should bond better as they goes by. But in my reality, the reverse seems to be true with my parents. As all parents go, they started to became less saintly, godly and intelligent over time.
It didn't take me too long to reach the stage where I found my parents at a point where At 17, I was wondering how they managed to survive for so long with their poor ethics and questionable problem solving skills. They started making bad decisions, odd choices, drag their feet and make unreasonable demands. The list goes on and on, and it is still not stopping.
While doing renovation work on our flat, there was so many instances of bad planning, mismanagement and miscommunication that it completely left me dumbfounded.
The plan was to go Bangkok this year but for obvious safety reasons, the plan was called off. I wish Thaksin is still around. After debating plans for a couple of months, Jia Lun came up with a new plan in March to visit Mount Bromo in Indonesia, which is situated in East Java. As he is familiar with the language and cultural aspect of the trip, I thought that it is a good chance to visit our neighboring largest Muslim Republic in the world.
Jia Lun came up with a draft plan one fine Monday afternoon while we were having sandwiches at Subway Harbourfront. The idea is to visit Surabaya, Indonesia's second largest city and Mount Bromo, a active volcano. Being guys, it didn't take long to decide. We started making bookings immediately after lunch.
Thursday, 19 June 2007
First Night
Friday , 20 June 2007
Day break
We took the LRT from Pudu station to KL Sentral station to get on the shuttle bus service to Kuala Lumpur Low Cost Carrier Terminal. KL Sentral is a interesting place. It has rail service to Singapore, KLIA and bus services to various destination.
We went for a MacDonalds big breakfast to kill our hunger before continuing the journey to KL LCCT. The coach that we took was way more comfortable than the express coach earlier.
Budget flying
Almost all the flights were dominated by Air Asia. Being a budget terminal has it's difference. As soon as our luggages were checked in at the counter, our luggages went straight out of the building after traveling 5 meters on the conveyor belt.
Air Asia do not have pre-determined seats for its flights, so we had to wait near the gates before boarding. As soon as the announcement to start boarding was made, everyone rushed forward to form 2 lines to the gates. In order to get a better seat, you have to be in front of the queue. Despite trying to do that, we got somewhere in the middle of the queue in the end.
Our flight was on a brand new Airbus A320-200, and I managed to get a window seat, albeit with the right wing included. I tried their Pak Nasser's Nasi Lemak. Not bad but the serving is so small. The rendang chicken started making that nice warm feeling in my stomach as i spent the 2 hours and 30 minutes flight watching the clouds as they rolled by. It sounds boring and not so me, but i did enjoy watching the clouds until we landed.
Surabaya
Our landing approach to Juanda International Airport took us from the north of East Java, from the Madusa Straits, towards the city and finally to the south of the city.
None of the horror Indonesia custom stories unfolded as we went through the customs. The stories of greedy and corrupted immigration officers who seek coffee money were nowhere in sight. That's a good sign. Either that they had cleaned up their act or we got lucky. What was in stored for us in the later part of the day was so much different.
Stop complaining at our transport operators !
We took a taxi to Bunurasih bus terminal in Surabaya city and things started to get interesting from there. The bus terminal requires a entrance fee of 500 rupiah (SGD $0.085) and the toilet in bad shape 1000 rupiah (SGD $0.17). A flood of touts greeted us as soon as we stepped into the terminal. We had to fight our way through a river of touts before we found a bus going to Probolinggo, a city 90km from Surabaya.
Unlike our familiar ezylink cards, and SBS-transit air-con buses, things are much less advance there. The buses are actually air-con coaches which does not start moving till the operators deemed that there are enough passengers for the trip. While waiting for the coach to start moving, many street vendors streamed into the coach to sell their wares.
"Tau hu Tau hu Tau hu Tau hu !!" - Fried bean curd vendors favorite tag line.
The street vendors sold things differently there. There are more aggressive to push through a sale. They will drop their merchandise on your lap and hope that you that you will be entice into making a purchase. After a couple of minutes, they will return to collect their unsold merchandise and go for the next round on another coach. For 1000 rupiah onwards, you can get stuff ranging from fried bean curd, fried peanuts, mineral water, pens, to newspapers. I also saw some Indonesia Idol wannabes who came in solo or in a band to busker and a man who according to my translator, works in a mosque seeking for donations.
It strike me on how far they will go to make a sale for 1000 rupiah (SGD $0.17) to 2000 rupiah. These guys are really broke. Fearing for our safety, I did not snap any photos nor took our my phone. I figured that it is not wise to show off too many high value items that have simply too many zeros in value. (approx 10,000,000 rupiah in value)
It wasn't long before a old man tried to light up on my right. Fortunately, the bus conductor told him to cut it out before it could trigger a migraine attack. Oh ya, we had to buy our tickets from a bus conductor. The stuffy 90km journey stretched for almost 3 hours before we found ourselves at Probolinggo.
Dishonest bastards
The coach dropped us off outside the Probolinggo bus terminal. Again, we paid the entrance fee of 500 rupiah (SGD $0.085) to get in. The security guy started to become overly-friendly. He started to try to guide us around the bus terminal. Tired of touts, and in this time, seemingly in the form of a security guy who had nothing better to do, we initially ignored him. As we looked around the bus terminal, we couldn't find a bus to Mount Bromo. Jia Lun decided to give the security guy a try and he led us to a corner of the bus terminal where a few passenger vans were parked.
A sign on top of a spot reads : Bromo. Bingo ! That's the one we were looking for. Jia Lun had spoke to the driver going to Mount Bromo and broke some bad news. Similar to the coach that we took earlier, they would want to want for a sufficient passenger load before moving off, and a passenger van had just left for Mount Bromo. They were asking for 200,000 rupiah to move off immediately for the two of us. This is obviously a rip off, but i agreed to it since we didn't have much of a choice as we were running late and I didn't want to fight over SGD$17 (each) and risk ruining everything else.
The supposedly 1 hour journey stretched to almost 2 hours due to rain. Upon reaching the Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park gate post, we were told to pay another 25,000 rupiah each as the entrance fee as written on the sign board. We handed over the cash to our drivers, who started talking to the men manning the post and soon, drove us to our destination : Lava View Lodge.
We went out for a walk around the area after dinner to aid digestion. While having dinner earlier, we realised that the passenger van driver didn't pass us any tickets for the national park despited that we had paid for it. We made our way to the national park gate post, suffered mild attitude sickness, and found the inconvenient truth. We had been had. The bastards took the money and ran. Being honest bastards, we decided to buy ourselves tickets again. Ouch.
Nightfall
So we went back to our room without seeing Mount Bromo since reaching the area. It was suppose to be nearby, but the heavy fog was a real killer.
I was thinking of having a nice cool view at the stars filled night (my imagination before coming) but that was written off because of the fog.
Things didn't turned out well either when we tried to take a bath. The heater is gas powered. Simply turning on the heater and tap didn't work. Turning the tap to much or too little will cause the flames which could be seen through a little window on the heater, to die off. If we turn up the heat too much or turn on the heater for too long, it would overheat and die off too. The heater was also leaking gas and we could smell gas in the air. We figured that using a pail to get our desired warm water was a better choice than to kept playing with the controls. That's because as we fought with the controls, the water on our body will turn cold rapidly and freeze us.
We went to sleep early as we had to wake up early for the trip to Mount Bromo (3am local time) for the sun rise.
Saturday, 21 June 2007
Mount Bromo
I opted for the horse ride since I didn't had a chance to do that in Singapore. The fog was still very thick as we walked to towards the restaurant to get try to get our horses. Before we knew it, 2 local Tenggerese men came out of the fog seemingly from nowhere with 2 horses to offer us their services. For 50,000 rupiah (SGD$8.50) each, we got ourselves a puru (horse) and a guide each. We didn't bargain any further as we were told the night before that the puru could cost 50,000 rupiah to 100,000 rupiah depending on how much we looked like 菜头。Either these guys were honest or we looked damn broke. Ok, I take it the honest guys explanation.
My first attempt to mount the horse ended in a total disaster. I pulled myself too fast up the horse from the left and fell off to the right. Nothing was broken, so I dusted off and made a second successful attempt to mount the horse.
The guides, armed with torch lights, begun the trip by leading our horses down a slope which we could not really see ahead for more than 3 meters. It wasn't long when Jia Lun started to regret not taking the jeep option. As the horses missed a couple of steps on the uneven rocky downslope road, I found out by trial and error that the correct way to balance myself on the beast of burden was to use the foot rests rather than the hand grip. By the time we reached a flat plateau, the hand grip was almost unnecessary. I was enjoying myself pretty much here. In the pitch dark night, we ride up what seems to be a hill after a long track. When I looked up into the heavens, a beautiful starry sky greeted me.
We were asked to dismount and climb a long flight of crumbling stairs. The stairs is made of concrete, but many sections were damaged and parts of the hand rail were missing. It wasn't tiring but exhausting due to the low level of oxygen in the air. At the end of the 232 steps, we found ourselves at the rim of the volcanic crater. I am so glad that I no longer have a fear of heights for the sense of vertigo would have surely overcame me. Ok, since I have tackled the flight of stairs successfully, it seems like I am ready to take on the Great Wall soon.
At 6am, many more tourist started to join us at the crater rim. Enterprising locals sold drinks, and food eagerly on the long staircase and the crater rim. That makes me felt so dumb for bring my bottled water along with me.
By the way, there isn't much safety features in place at the crater rim. Near the staircase to the base of the mountain, we had around 1 to 3 meters of space to walk before we fall off : into the volcano crater or back down the base of the mountain. There was only a short section with a badly corroded hand rail which didn't seem to be able to take much weight. A few Ang Mo were seen testing their luck by resting their bodies fully on the rail. I was half expecting the rail to give way, sending the goons into the volcanic crater but thankfully, I was so wrong.
It was another 1/2 hour later before Jia Lun completed his trek. He was worn out and swearing that he would never take the dangerous trek again. At hind sight, it's a dangerous trek to make. Several parts of the trek does not even have a walking path. He had to move on his hands and legs at several points. As it was getting warmer, we decided to make our way back.
Sunday to Tuesday, 22-24 June 2007
Surabaya City
On the bus journey to the Surabaya bus terminal, we saw the Sidoarjo mud flow, aka the mud volcano. For those who didn't know, on May 28 2006, a gas drilling operation went terribly wrong and mud instead of gas flowed out of the earth. The mud went on to flow and cover the immediate area which is only 14km away from Surabaya city.
For those people who complains about Singapore's public transportation system, please do yourself a favour and shut the hell up. It's cheap, safe, comfortable, clean and efficient. My experience with the Indonesian public transport tells me that.
I also observed that they are very few traffic lights in the city. I saw more traffic lights along Ang Mo Kio avenue 8 than in Surabaya city ! The traffic isn't as regulated as Singapore. There isn't any lane markers, jaywalkers everywhere, and everything was based on unspoken codes of conduct.
We got a late lunch at Texas fried chicken at a shopping mall near our hotel. As it was getting late, we didn't explore much. We went for a tour at the nearby submarine museum and our dinner at another shopping mall with a Carrefour hypermart, in which we spent the rest of the Sunday night. We didn't try the street food as they looked unhygienic and unappetising. We didn't want to risk getting stomach problems so we went for the food court instead.
On Monday, we went to the Chinatown area. The Chinatown area is strangely devoid of Chinese. I was speculating that many of them have flee when Suharto stepped down. Nothing much to see there so we tried to find our way to the museum instead. We gave up walking after a while and took a ride on the trishaw but to our disappointment, it was closed.
We spent the rest of the day at a upmarket shopping mall, the best they have to offer there. The upmarket shopping mall is very similar to Singapore's shopping mall. The prices are the same, the goods and services mirrors us, and the food is relatively cheaper. To my surprise, I found a free hotspot, so I eagerly pull out my PDA and started MSNing home. Their video arcade is relatively cheap, 10,000 ($1.70) rupiah per hour ! We had a buffet dinner and caught The Reaping at the movies before going back to the hotel for the night.
The extend of the poor-rich gap is staggering in Indonesia. I saw folks trying to make a living off 1000 rupiah sales and in the next moment, a upmarket shopping mall with free internet access. Many of the rich are Chinese, which makes it hard to wonder why they detest the chinese so much over there.
On Tuesday, we went to Giant in the morning and bought some edible "souvenirs" back home. We took our flight back to Singapore in the late afternoon which was on a Valuair Airbus A320-200 which completed the trip 20 minutes earlier than the first flight at 2 hours 10 minutes. Maybe Singapore planes are more kan chiong and hence faster. The free fried mee hoon provided wasn't great, but well, at least I didn't have to pay for it compared to the Air Asia flight. We went duty free shopping after landing and went straight home after that.
I dropped my stuff immediately when I reached home and went straight to Thomson hospital with my passport still in my pocket to see Helen and Arial Avrielle. In the morning, Helen had gave birth to Arial Avrielle and announced it via SMS.
That rounds up the trip. I would say the Mount Bromo part of the holiday was more enjoyable than the Surabaya city part, so if you plan on going for it, please allocate more time for that !
