Rewind (Continued..)

-19 years ago-

7 years old - Primary 1

Just when i was about to get comfy with my kindergarten life, things got changed again. However, it's for the worse. I had a new school, and it was no longer around the corner of the next street. All my friends which i had worked so hard to gain their trust were gone. I was introduced to something new, something i didn't like; school buses. New uniform, new shoes, new books. I was back to square one. Everything seems so strange to me.

Of course, once again i was accompanied by my mum to the school on my first day. I was shocked to see that the school was so much bigger, even the class itself was 'huge', there were even more people. As usual, i started showing the usual sign, threatening to make a 'scene' if my she were to leave me. I was in the class, there were so much chatter, and yet, i was focused only on one thing; my mum outside overlooking through the windows, smiling as usual and waving at me, hinting that i was going to be alright.

I wasn't. And for that moment, i thought i was the only person in the entire class who cried like there were no tomorrow. Everybody stared at me, and it didn't helped. My mum came in, and consoled me, i insisted that she stayed. She said that i would make new friends and that she couldn't be there for me the entire days. It took a little convincing before i finally sort of settled down, yet still on the verge of bursting into tears if i were upset, like a ticking timebomb.

Eventually, she left. First lesson this time was coloring lesson. I confidently whipped out my shining new Staedtler Luna 12 color pencils. There was a coloring book, and i kind of painted everything in brown, the chairs, cupboard, the skies, cloud, and even the people. I didn't quite understand why but i thought i was having some sort of mental breakdown. My teacher walked past through me, surprised and told me that it could more colorful than that, and that i should try to seek for help from my friends.

I turned to my side, there was this another kid who was painting effortlessly with his brand new Luna color pencils as well, only that it was a 36 color set! Wow, i thought! That's a lot of colors, i looked again at my own Luna 12, feeling slightly inferior now, not so confident anymore. I could already felt that the time bomb is ticking quicker. I was green with envy. I asked if i could use some of his color pencils (which i didn't have) to help with my coloring. Guess what? He refused! That's it! I exploded, almost literally. What an arrogant piece of $@#()$*!)@$*.

Win










Lose




It was pretty chaotic for a while, with my classroom teacher trying to calm me down. My mum wasn't there anymore. I was pretty sure that arrogant brat felt really guilty after what he did to me, and decided to lend me a hand in the end. At the end of the day, we became friends :)

Rewind

All of a sudden, my mind drifted back to my good old childhood days. While i tried to recall as many of those fond (and some not so fond) memories as possible, without realizing it, i found that I'm smiling to myself as those thought filled my mind thinking how sweet yet silly it really was back then.

-20 years ago-

6 years old - Kindergarten


Oh no, today is the day i have to leave and be away from home for the very first time for school. I do not like this at all, not even one bit! How far was my school then, one would ask? Well, it is just at one of those houses in the next street around the corner. Yes, it's just some 10mins walk away, maybe 5. My mum even promised to send me to the school that morning and would be back on time to pick me up at noon, not one minute late! Still, i am not convinced, my body and my feet felt heavy as i dragged myself onto the back of the bicycle, ready to be "chauffeured" to the school by my mum. Even the brand spanking new uniform feels like everything else except comfortable.

Will i be able to make new friends?

Will i see ever my mum again?

Can i ever go home again?

What if....?

All these thought flooded my already stressed out little brain. I started to sob as i entered through the gate, refused to let go of my mum. She reassured me, but it only made the situation worse. I started to cry, wanting to be pampered and told that everything is gonna be alright. After a few pushes, i finally gave in.

I saw many other cheerful kids who were around my age at that time. Everybody seems to have their own circle of friends, except me. I felt really left out since i was kind of shy and do not usually approach other kids to make friends. I remember very vividly that my very first "lesson" was clay shaping, also more fondly known as the plasticine class. That's when i would loosened up a little bit and became less paranoid because it was a so fun i wish every period would be the same. Of course, it wasn't.

I finally made some friends towards the end of first day and to my surprise, i found that the boys and the girls had their respective groups and does not really get along with each other. This was when the infamous "hmph, i don wan fren you" threat was first encountered. I often find myself getting distracted and depressed after getting those remarks and soon i found myself working really hard to gain recognition and acceptance from the others. I was worried that nobody wanted to befriend me, and that i would end up being left alone. Everything seems.... so fragile. There were even once that i went and literally beg them not "outcast" me and yes, i cried when they refused to listen to my plead. It went on for a few days when they finally "accepted" me into their group. Yes, it might sounds trivial now, but trust me, it wasn't the case for me, or any other kids of my age for that matter. It was that bad :(

Of course, eventually i grew adapted to the new environment and since then, there have been so many events (most of which i couldn't remember) took place. The sport day, ABC classes, the mandarin classes with homeworks involving unending repetition of chinese characters writing, math,recess time (where i brought sandwiches made by my mum in a little squarish tupperwares, it was pretty decent), occasionally envious of other who got better homemade breakfast.

While i've enjoyed the better most of my kindergarten days, i must say that the thing that I had always look forward to the most everyday was for my mum to show up, smiling at the gate to fetch me home. I would always charge at her energetically like a mad bull whenever i see her. Best of all, she had never failed to show up on time! Early, sometimes. Late, never once.


to be continued...

Four Hungry Mobs (one noob) vs Manhattan Fish Market

People say that a hungry mob is an angry mob. However, there were four of us and yet none of us were angry as far as i can see (albeit a bit pissed off that our food came a little "late"). This was what happened when 4 hungry mobs (i'm one of them) stormed into The Manhattan Fish Market. Well, I can only say that i felt sorry for the fish, squids, prawns and mushiesss and even the lemons.

Before...

2x Manhattan's Fisherman Fried Platter

15mins later...
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after....

Seriously, i swore there's nothing more satisfying than this. Omnomnomnomnomnomnmnnom...

and the cost???

Totally made my day!

Yes, a very random video which i found in the scrapyard (was shot during good old uni days when we had nothing better to do and decided to pull some pranks on one of our beloved housemate) and is at least 4 years old now. But hey, it totally made my day watching this! Simply priceless!

Location : Home
Time : Unknown

Credits goes to :
gh3yliam (Cameraman/Producer)
Myself (Co-producer)
"Mother"(Victim)

p/s - if the Victim happened to drop by and see this, i hope you'll accept it with an open mind. Otherwise, please let me know to have it removed if it offended you in any way:P

See ya' later flying, Hello ground duties

Been to and back from Maroochydore (MCY), or more fondly known as the Sunshine Coast, it marked the end of the training in Australia and i am finally back to Singapore again for good. During the 3 months i was in MCY, i have been taught how to fly a jet (specifically a Learjet 45), yes a huge leap from the GA Cessna 172 where the speeds are mostly quadrupled in all areas. Hey, but that's also where the excitement is :) I find the learning curve is pretty steep initially despite having 2 crew members now in the cockpit to help each other out. It did eventually flatten out however and i find it much easier to fly. I even managed to fly to a higher altitude than anyone have ever been (yes, that's including commercial pilots) at a whopping 47,000 ft. Others who could have flown higher than this are probably the military pilots and of course, the astronauts :P

Recorded at 47,000ft!

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Can't see what is happening?=================> Here, let me make it easy for you :P

Ye, the Earth does seems rounder at an altitude, especially this high! Also notice how the sky color gradient changes from light blue and becoming darker above, i'm hitting outer space soon! lol!

Okay, back to reality, as of now, i'm doing crappy job in office, miles away from the skies, nuff said :( and it's going to continue for a while.

Also, im cutting my blog short and try to split it into smaller parts instead of a big chunk of updates and changing style into a more casual way, i hope!

Reminiscence

Been 2 months in Singapore, so far i have been doing irrelevant jobs, attending induction courses or any ground courses you can think of. Just a few weeks ago, i have been given the opportunity to visit SIA Engineering hangar and later, the more interesting one; SATS Kitchen where the airlines catered food is prepared. It was pretty enlightening to see how various mouth-watering food were being cooked, how food sanitation were kept, be it an economy class food, the business class or the first class food. The last event was to visit a mock-up cabin where cabin crews are *obviously* being trained to serve the food and to manage the passengers. Unfortunately, it's only expected that no photography were allowed in these area so i could not provide you guys with any pictures of those. Sorry!

Last Saturday itself, i've been to the Night Safari , and although we came as early as we could (the safari opens at 7.30pm daily), we ended up starting our actual journey at around 8.30pm due dinner and owing to a huge amount of visitors, delaying our ticket purchase and eventually the tram ride itself. Overall, it was a fun and entertaining experience especially the "Creatures of the Night" performance but personally i felt that the night duration was too short to truly enjoy the entire collection of animals in the safari. Although the safari's official closing time is at 12midnight, i felt that our walk were kinda rushed and we found that many walking path were already blocked off by 11.30pm and we were told to return to the entrance due to the approaching closing hour and therefore not risking ourselves getting locked inside and spend the night over with the lions and hyenas :P. As for the photos, there aren't many being taken because most of the scenes are very dark and our camera were of very limited use, but i'll post them when i get them soon. If you are interested to visit the night safari, i would suggest visiting it during the weekdays as you will get more out of your visit. You can click here for more information as well.

Finally, it has come to my attention that i have left out my OBS journey at Day 11 and that i should finish whatever i began, no matter how long it takes :P Again, i'll provide you with the link to all my previous OBS entries in case you felt lost after reading Day 12.

Day : I | II | III | IV | V | VI| VII | VIII| IX| X & XI

Day 12 (Sailing expedition - Day 3)

Yesterday's night was horrible. We were told to sleep on the boat there were 15 of us, as opposed to the ship capacity of 10 people. Of course, it was nice to be able to watch the stars all night but trust me, the sleeping experience was nothing close to it. It was so cramped and i could only sleep on a narrow bench with no space to roll or rest my arm. I folded my arm to sleep and found out it was tangled the next morning. It was so much pain just trying to stretch and straighten my arm again. Boat was rocky like hell and i thought we were hit by a tsunami in a few occasion, where i felt like i was about to be thrown overboard. Almost everyone had a bad sleep that night including myself. One couldn't even sleep at all. I felt sorry for him. Body aching all over, stupid sea breeze that was so damn cold and yet you get a very damp and sticky sensation after you were hit by it. Fking uncomfortable if you get what i mean.

I have never wished the time to move anymore slower than this since the beginning of this course but the time really seemed to h ave halted on this boat. Just this boat. It's an agony to wait just for the morning to arrive.

Ahhhh...morning came! I'm saved!

To add salt to the wound, today was even worse than yesterday. It was totally windless for the whole day. In the end we rowed all the way back under the scorching sun for 4 hours. I think i had a first-degree burnt myself.

Rowing the sailboat again...sigh..

Reached the campground at around 1pm and by the time we finished washing the equipments/rapes and the boats, it was already 3pm. So no lunch for us, everyone was so damn hungry yet we were only left with the spare ration we had for the expedition yesterday. Well, crappy lunch is better than nothing at all.

Back home finally!



Cleaning up !

and best of all a FRESH shower!!!

To add even more salt to the wound, we had to run again in the evening, 5.5km. I gave up, and i walked almost half of the distance and only slowly jog for the rest. In my mind, i was thinking about 3 things:

1. Dinner
2. Dinner and;
3. Dinner

briefing for the next 2 days activity; solo camp!

Dinner came and again it was great as usual. I ate so much that i got bloated soon after. There were a briefing later that night about our next expedition starting tomorrow which is the solo camp! Woohooo! 3 days 2 nights again!

Days Left : 9
Mood : Tired

My Newborn "Baby" Nokia N97

What else can i say? Love it so very very very very very muchieee <3!! (what a geek)