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Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams. - Yeats

UPDATED: Tong Yao Film & TV guide 28/05/2023

Saturday, December 15, 2007

Bintan Indonesia Day 3.

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Bintan Indonesia Day 3. It's our third day in Bintan and it's time to go back. Yesterday after pasar oleh oleh, we went to an outlet shop to do some shopping. I found quite a few things that i liked and bought them. Then we went back to the hotel where my friends went swimming and i stayed in the hotel to study my japanese cuz i caught a cold and couldn't swim. :-) ok, later. :-)

- This blog was updated through my M1 mobile phone.

Friday, December 14, 2007

Bintan indonesia day 2.

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Bintan indonesia day 2. Today, after breakfast, we decided to do some sightseeing and shopping. Our first stop was pasar oleh oleh. It's a little compound made up of several little traditional wooden houses. The shopping here isn't great as it's really tourisy and not really that dirt cheap. We walked around for a bit and bought snacks for our respective colleagues then left the place to go to an outlet clothings place near the ferry terminal. Later. :-)

- This blog was updated through my M1 mobile phone.

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Bintan day 1 part 2.

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Bintan day 1 part 2. The weather was really very good today and after we checked into our rooms and freshened up we went swimming. The pool is kinda cool. It's by the beach and when one looks across towards the beach water from the pool looks as though it's flowing towards the sea. I'm back in the hotel now. It's after dinner and time for tv. I put a bunch of videos on my creative zen so time to watch them. :-) btw the photo above is a photo of the view from my room. Very nature nature right? :-)

- This blog was updated through my M1 mobile phone.

Bintan, indonesia Day 1.

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Bintan, indonesia Day 1. We've arrived at the island resort of Bintan. The sea was relatively calm today and i fell asleep on the ferry. We just had lunch and just am waiting for the rooms to be ready for us to enter. Later. :-)

- This blog was updated through my M1 mobile phone.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Rain, rain, go away.

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Rain, rain, go away. It's been raining for days and it's actually feels kinda cold some nights in Singapore. Haven't blogged for a while. Work has been awfully busy. But am on leave today and will be going to Bintan, Indonesia for some well deserved rest and relax tomorrow. :-) Might do some mobile blogging while i'm there but may not. We'll see. I'm actually only going to be bringing my small fuji camera as i'm really there to kick back and rest after what has been a hectic year. :-) later. :-)

- This blog was updated through my M1 mobile phone.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Cult Cameras


Fuji V10 - on the left is the Fisheye 2, on the right is the pinhole camera, excuse the hideous pink background but that was least cluttered background I had at that point in time. =)

Hi guys, before I go to bed, I thought I just write a quick entry and put up a photo of the latest addition to my collection of cameras. =)

As you may very well have noticed by now, I have an interest in cult cameras and alternative photography. I have experimented with cross-processing and love its effect and have used the Holga and various cheap plastic cameras in the past. Earlier this year, I also added a Lomo to my collection.

My latest addition is the Fisheye2 and a built-it-yourself pinhole camera from the Gakken Otona no Kagaku magazine. I've used the Fisheye2 and will try and put up more photos in the next day or two. I've yet to use the pinhole but must say it was loads of fun putting it together. One of my friends also bought this magazine and when I help her put it together, I'll try and take more photos of the process itself. It's actually not that hard to put together even though the instructions are all in Japanese. If you've put Gundam kits together before, you shouldn't have any problems.

Okay, that's it from me. Am tired and tomorrow will be a very long day at work. Have two jobs and will most likely only be home in the wee hours of the morning so will need to get some shut-eye now.

Good night. =)

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Mushroom Park


SE k750i - mushroom hotpot

I love mushrooms. I don't just love them because they make Mario big and strong (you'll have to know your video games to get this one =) ) but also because I like the taste of mushrooms. My favourite varieties of mushrooms are the Shitake mushrooms, the Monkeyhead Mushrooms (especially the ones preped with Wasabi sauce the way they do it at Jiang Nan Chun at the Four Seasons Hotel) and dried black Chinese mushrooms.

My first taste of a Mushroom Hotpot meal was actually in Chengdu, Sichuan, China. It was during my trip to Jiuzhaigou earlier this year and it was one of the optional things that was offered and accepted by the tour group. This meal was also my favourite meal during my trip to Sichuan. I think in the end, if you want good food in China, you really must be willing to pay more because the standard of their regular fare is simply sub-par. And oh yes, I do know that I was ridiculously behind in putting up my entries on Guizhou, Sichuan and Vietnam. =P

So when my mum suggested going to Mushroom Park in Serangoon Gardens, I was more than willing to go. So last night we went to Mushroom Park and I must say it was quite delicious.

At Mushroom Park, each person must select a set which includes a variety of mushrooms, two types of meat, an assortment of leafy vegetables, rice or mantous, a desert, an appetizer and rose tea. The rose buds in the rose tea that they serve is of a high quality and the tea is light and fragrant and is, in my opinion, a good tea to go with a mushroom meal in light broth.

When the pot of soup is first brought over and placed on the small stove in the middle of the table, the waitress will first pour each person a half bowl of soup to let you taste the goodness and purity of the stock first. The stock is sweet and full of flavour without being overwhelming and no MSG is used. After that, the waitress will introduce each variety of mushroom before scooping it into the pot to let it cook for seven minutes. At small time, a small appetizer made up of cold succulent mushrooms served with a dipping sauce made of wasabi and soy sauce is provided to keep you somewhat occupied while waiting for the mushrooms to cook.


SE k750i - mushroom rice

After the little timer announces that the seven minutes are up, the waitress will bring by their special mushroom steam rice to go with your mushroom hotpot. Now this rice is really awesome. I don't normally eat that much rice but I asked and we paid for a second bowl for my dad and I. Now I don't know what kind of rice they used but I believe it's a variety of brown rice mixed with mushrooms and steamed till each grain is plumb and fluffy... perfection.

The kinds of mushrooms one gets depends on how expensive your set is and their more expensive sets boast of many varieties that I've either not tasted before, seen before or heard about before. Some were light brown, others darker brown and one variety was even red. They all tasted different. Some of them have a rather earthy taste and others have a natural sweetness. All of them were very tasty.

At the end of the meal, you've got a choice of green tea jelly or milk pudding and I thoroughly recommend the green tea jelly, especially if you like green tea. This one taste home-made and the flavour of green tea is strong and fragrant. It's not one of those too sweet, green tea syruup flavoured things. This green tea jelly is the real deal.

If you guys like mushrooms as much as I do and if you don't mind spending a bit of money on good food, I say check out this restaurant in Serangoon Gardens. It's near the Standard Chartered Bank and if you have been to Tip Top Restaurant when they were still around, then you should have no trouble finding Mushroom Park because it is located in the very unit vacated by Tip Top Restaurant.

enjoy =)

The Creative Zen


image courtesy of Creative Technology

Not too long ago, maybe about a month or two ago, Creative Technology released a new mp3 player called the Zen. This little player is about the size of a credit card and is light and quite sleek looking. When I first set my eyes on it, I already loved the look and so I did some research on the specs and read as many reviews as I could get my hands on and when my mum got one, I played with it extensively and really liked it tons. The audio on the Zen is also really good even on the average earphones that come bundled with the player.

Sadly, some of the reviews by reputable gadget websites were obviously Apple biased. One or two of them actually said the Zen's GUI was confusing which is definitely nonsense. My mum is in her 60s and not the most technology savvy person in the world and she had no problem making sense of the GUI. I didn't even need to help her with it and she was zipping though it like Woody Wood Pecker.


SE k750i - Dohby Ghaut MRT Station, 2007, Creative Zen Ad Banner

Okay, rant over. =) Let's get to the player. The reason why I'm talking about the player now is because while clearing out the photos on my SE k750i phone, I came across a photo I took sometime back and I thought I'll put it up in the blog because I think Creative fans might enjoy seeing it if they should chance upon it and also because I hope to get my hands on an 8gig Zen by the end of this week.


SE k750i - my banged up Creative Zen Neeon

My current player is a really banged up Creative Neeon. It's banged up only because it's been through tons of heavy duty usage... heh heh... I'm not always that careful with my gadgets. =) My Neeon is a 5gig player and I don't have it filled so an 8gig Zen would be more than sufficient for my needs. While my Neeon is still chugging along, I've come to the conclusion that I would like an upgrade because my Neeon is a hard drive player and would sometimes crash when I shake it too much while chasing after the bus or the train. The Zen, however, is a flash drive player and so chances of it crashing while I chase after buses. trains or bees in the bonnet aren't really that likely. =)

Moreover, a bonus is that the screen on this beautiful gadget is 16 million colours and video playback looks quite awesome. It is not likely that I'll be carrying too much video around on it though because I also own a Zen Vision 30gig and a Zen Vision W 60gig. As to why I own both... it's a long story and not that interesting anyway. =) But on the off-chance that I would like to carry some video, I could always put it on a SD card and pop it into the build-in SD card slot in the Zen. Yup, the Zen comes with a SD card slot, hence, unlimited expandability in a sense. You're only limited by the size of the SD cards that are available or that you're willing to buy.

Creative's latest warehouse sale is from the 16th-18th Nov which is the end of this week. I'm quite tempted to go even though I'm quite adverse to crowds, especially crowds of bargain hunters, but there are several Creative products I kind of like and if I get lucky, I could get a 16gig Zen at a very good price... well, will see. =)

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Bats and Zelda.

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Bats and Zelda. Hi all. I've been kind of busy lately. Have picked up two new projects which will keep me pretty busy till middle of dec. Still, i've found the time to play zelda phantom hourglass on my Nintendo DS. So when i saw this tiny bat taking a midday snooze in broad daylight, i had to shoot a pix of it cuz it really complements my zelda obsession right now. For those who have played anyone of the zelda titles before, you'll know that bats are a mainstay in the games. Usually they're annoying little buggers in the game but this little fellow on the ceiling has a very cute face and isn't one bit scary at all. Ok. Gotta go. Was killing time but now have to dash. Later. :-)

- This blog was updated through my M1 mobile phone.

Sunday, November 11, 2007

Fisheye photography


Fisheye2 - Marina Centre

Hi hi... just a short entry to let you guys know what I'm up to. Aside from being busy at work and playing Zelda on my NDS =D , I also got myself two new cameras. One is a fisheye camera and the other is a pinhole camera. I've shot a roll of film on the fisheye but haven't had time to use the pinhole camera yet. Will post up photos of my new cameras when I have the time.

Meanwhile, the above photo is just to give you a taste of how fun the fisheye camera can be.

Till next time... cheers =)

Sunday, October 28, 2007

TVB - Steps (舞動全城 )




I know I said I was going to write part 2 of my afterthoughts on my trip to Beijing but that'll have to wait as I now feel like writing a comment on the latest TVB series that I'm currently watching.

As usual, I won't go into details with the sypnosis of the series as you can read about it here in English and here in Chinese.

I must say that this really isn't a very good series at all and if I ever wondered just how little tolerance I have for fluffy romances, I think I've no doubts now that I have very little tolerance for TVB series that are light on drama and story. This series seems like a vehicle to promote the younger TVB fadans and I guess qualifies more like a typical idol series packed full of good looking people and virtually no story.


Bernice Liu dancing, unfortunately, the story is less about dancing and more about herbal tea... grrrr.

The series did start of well enough and I enjoyed the first two episodes and the series did setup most of the relationships and the potential conflicts well and I was genuinely interested in how some of it was going to play out. The English title isn't very elegant but unlike many of TVB's English title, this title actually makes some sense, although sadly not much else makes sense in this series. The series' Chinese title "舞動全城" can be loosely translated as "the whole city dances", hence "steps", as in dance steps. The opening MTV sequence is also entirely about dance, so forgive me if I sound somewhat annoyed when I say that the series is more about $&%*#@&*#@# herbal tea and dumb generic romances than it is about dancing of any kind at all. While I admit that I've not yet finished the series but I'm at ep13 which is more than half-way through the series and the dance portions are quite peripheral to the main story.

The characters are mostly stereotypical and painted in broad strokes of good and bad. The good guys are very good, forgiving, nice and gracious. The bad guys or the characters which aren't the main characters are spoilt, bratty, petty etc. and have few redeeming qualities. But that's not the worst of it. Aside from being shallow, these characters' basic nature seem to change whenever the script needs them to change.


Stephen Hyunh and Chen Fala

What made me mad enough to write this entry is what they did to Chen Fala's character, Ching Ka-man. Strangely enough, I actually found this minor character to be the most interesting of all the characters in this series and I think that's because all the main characters were so damn bland. The main characters, Ching Ka-tsun (Steven Ma), Li Sum-ying (Bernice Liu) and Yeung Sze-man (Kate Tsui) are nice, smart and almost flawless and therefore often boring and sometimes worse, good to the point of nauseating. In contrast, Ka-man is spoilt, angry and self-destructive. Her backstory also gives her even more depth. When she was rather young, her father died and her mother found herself unable to grief, work and care for her two young children all by herself. So she placed Ka-man in the care of the child's grand-mother and sent her son Ka-tsun to boarding school and the family barely saw each other, if at all, and certainly didn't live as a family till Ka-man was in high school. As a result she's deeply insecure, highly emotional, needy and resentful. She's a time-bomb, filled with anger, a sense of abandonment and a desperate need to feel loved, especially from her mother. Her brother, Ka-tsun, is apparently and unrealistically unaffected by this childhood trauma because he's not only older but also because he chose and forced his mother to send him away, unlike Ka-man who didn't have a choice.

At the beginning of the series, it seemed as though they were going to make Ka-man Sum-ying's main adversary. Ka-man takes an instant dislike to her and exhibits fits of jealous rage because she thinks that her mother likes Sum-ying more than herself and Ka-man would go out of her way to set Sum-ying up. While I wished that the script had made Ka-man's antics more intelligent, since the character didn't seem to be set up to be a stupid one, still I was glad that there was some conflict in the dance arena instead of in the herbal tea company.

Then suddenly, in the middle of the series, Ka-man in one of her drunken rages accidentally hurts someone and everyone rallies around her to try and help her out. Suddenly, in a blink of an eye, Ka-man becomes a docile, understanding, loving daughter and sister.

Oh boy.... I was sooooooo pissed. This was by far the most interesting character in the series till ep13 at least. I was hoping that they would develope her and her family a lot more because they have an unsusal and relationship which seemed always in danger of breaking up. But nooooooo..... because Chen Fala isn't one of the more important actresses in this series, they abruptly change her character so that they can drop her storyline midway and give us all the inane, boring and generic romantic blah-blah crap between Ka-tsun and Sum-ying, Sze-man and Dickson (Matthew Ko), Li Lik-keung (Sum-ying's brother, played by Wayne Lai) and Yao Lum-lum (Claire Yiu). Dancing was also abandoned and the herbal tea company's business conflicts took centre-stage.


Pix 1: Wayne Lai, Steven Ma, Pix 2: Bernice Liu, Kate Tsui, Pix 3: Matthew Ko, Wu Fung

Thankfully the performances in general are okay and Steven Ma and Bernice Liu are very watchable. Wayne Lai maintains his usual standard even though his character makes an abrupt and annoying change in the second quarter of the series. Regular B-lister Claire Yiu is also fine. Kate Tsui isn't fantastic but she's not terrible although I do find the quality of her voice to be lacking. I'm also still decidedly unimpressed with Stephen Wong, his horrible enunciation and his slightly wooden acting.


Chen Fala with Steven Hyunh in pix 1. Chen Fala in the centre, Bernice Liu on the right.

The person I actually found myself liking, surprisingly enough, is Chen Fala. For an inexperienced actress, I think she acquitted herself well enough and even though she was saddled with a very unlikeable character, she played her well enough that I found this character less annoying than sad and troubled and hence, sympathetic. It helps too that I do find Chen Fala rather good-looking and like her smile. :)


Pix 1: Steven Ma with the some of the support cast and on his left is the unfortunately Akina Hong Wah who gets yet another thankless role. Pix 2: Bernice Liu and Steven Ma with Claire Yiu who gets one of her rare more important roles in a TVB series.

Bottomline is, don't rent this series unless you really like the stars and I mean REALLY like them or unless you like fluffy romances which don't stimulate the mind. If you like drama and if you like your characters and plot to progress logically, then save your money and go rent something else. Unless a major miracle happens from ep13 till ep20, I'm unlikely to change my assessment of this series.

PART 2 - added 29th Oct 2007

Okay, I've just finished this series and it's official, this series is absolute trash and if it wasn't because I was working and wanted some tv on and if it wasn't because I actually wanted to know what happens to Ka-man, I would have dropped this series at ep13. There was no miracle, there was only disaster as all the characters, especially the so called good guys, managed to become even more unbearable than before.

All I can say is, no wonder Ka-man turned out so screwed up. Not only did she have a really horrid childhood, she got a mother who really didn't know how to help her obviously troubled daughter and a brother who's idea of showing concern is to think that things will work out by themselves and a future sister-in-law who's such a good person she's probably not even homo sapien, no wonder Ka-man turned to the first person who pays her some real attention. Never mind that this woman is so obviously nasty. Ka-man is so desperate for anyone to be the mother she never knew that even this totally I'm-so-bad-it-is-oozing-out-of-my-pores woman would do. It helped poor Ka-man even less that the script also decided to screw her over by abruptly changing her into turn-over-new-leaf daughter just so as to abruptly change her yet again into vengeful, hate-filled, self-destructive daughter. Really, it would have made so much more sense and taken just as little amount of effort to show that Ka-man hasn't exorcised the demons from her childhood. Seriously, I can't really blame her either, her family continues to pay her as little attention when she's good as when she was bad and hey, since it's more fun being bad, can anyone blame Ka-man for becoming bad again?!?!?!? I certainly can't. Fact is, she's simply the most comprehensible character in this series. From the very beginning till the end, Ka-man has always been a lost little girl who's self-destructive tendencies were really her way of crying out for help and all this stems from her feelings of abandonment and loneliness. I really did feel for this character in the end because her mother really did treat Sum-ying better, you never get the feeling any time in the series, except for when Ka-man got into trouble, that her mother even cared about her. Guess that explains why Ka-man got into so much trouble, even though I doubt if the script-writers intended it to be this deep given how shallow the rest of the script and characters are.

Seriously, the script should have shifted the focus of this series to Ka-man and her family. They would have been so much more fascinating, what a bloody waste. Another advantage of making the Ching family the focus of the story would be that the dance would be at the centre of this series as it should have been from the very beginning.

And really, one must give newcomer Chen Fala a ton of credit. She really did play this character relatively well because she is one of the reasons this character worked for me in spite of the inconsistent scripting.

Okay, that's enough ranting from me. I've wasted enough time and brain cells over this pointless and lazily scripted series. =(

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Beijing Afterthoughts 1.

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Beijing After Thoughts 1. It's back to work after 8 days in Beijing. In spite of a few less than happy experiences, i really did have a good time in China. Beijing is so far the most crowded place i've visited ever and sadly the magnitude and awe of some of the historical sites are marred by just how many people there are. Mainland Chinese also have a very long way to go in terms of courtesy and consideration. While most of the people who reside in Beijing itself were nice enough and are even nicer than those in Shanghai, it was many out of town mainland visitors who took a little getting used to. Anyway, i hope to post more tonight when i get back from work. For now, take care. :-)

- This blog was updated through my M1 mobile phone.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Beijing Day 8 Part 3.

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Beijing Day 8 Part 3. We're at the airport now. About to leave Beijing. Lot's of photos and lot's of experiences. See you all when I get back. :-)

- This blog was updated through my M1 mobile phone.

Beijing Day 8 Part 2.

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Beijing Day 8 Part 2. The second place we visited today is the Big Bell Temple. The temple serves as a museum of many ancient bells and if you're there at the right time, they even have a life performance. Unfortunately, we didn't get to see the performance. I quite like this place. It's quiet and has lots of trees and flowers. The weather was also nice and cool and added to the experience and made this visit feel like a quiet walk in a small park. The bells were really cool too. Some were really big and all of them looked really rather old of course. :-)

- This blog was updated through my M1 mobile phone.

Beijing Day 8 Part 1.

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Beijing Day 8 Part 1. This is our last day in Beijing before we return to Singapore. Our flight is in the late afternoon so we will do some sight seeing today. We got up early this morning and made our way to the Lugou Bridge which has a long history dating back to the days of imperial glory. It's also got some significance in the Sino-Japanese War. I couldn't catch it all so will need to go read up. Next stop a museum. Later. :-)

- This blog was updated through my M1 mobile phone.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Beijing Day 7 Part 3.

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Beijing Day 7 Part 3. After lunch, it was another two hours to Tianjin. By the time we reached the city it was about 3pm and the first place we visited was WenHua Street. It's a street that they built in the old qing style. The shops were filled with all kinds of cultural items and tourist souvenirs. After that we visited Snack Street and had dinner before we returned to Beijing. The hotel we're booked to stay the night in is really nice and the best we've had all trip. K. Am off to enjoy my stay in this hotel. :-)

- This blog was updated through my M1 mobile phone.

Beijing Day 7 Part 2.

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Beijing Day 7 Part 2. Before we reached Tianjin today, we made a stop in Beijing for lunch. It was in a restaurant that specialized in Shanxi food. The dish you see in the photo above is called Dao Xiao Mian and it's a kind of noodle made by the chef shaving bits of dough into a boiling pot of water. We also had other Shanxi specialities like their salad which was really heavy on vinegar and a egg white sweet corn dish which was sweet and quiet good. I'll tell you about Tianjin later. :-)

- This blog was updated through my M1 mobile phone.

Beijing Day 7 Part 1.

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Beijing Day 7 Part 1. We leave the city of Chengde today to visit Tianjin. I like what I saw of Chengde. There is a large river that runs through the city and at night, when all the buildings are lit, it reminds me a little of Shanghai by the banks of the Huangpu River. I took a few shots but they're in my other camera. It is quite cold in Chengde and the temperature varies vastly between the day and night. Yesterday afternoon it was about 19 or so degrees but by nightfall it was 0 degrees. It was still rather cold this morning too and we hustled onto the bus to get out of the cold. The photo above was taken from the bus as we made our way out of the city to Tianjin via Beijing. This is a 7 hour bus-ride so i'm of to get some shut-eye as we had to get up rather early this norm. Later. :-)

- This blog was updated through my M1 mobile phone.

Monday, October 15, 2007

Beijing Day 6.

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Beijing Day 6. This morning we woke up really early to start our journey to Chengde. It's about 5 hours from Beijing by bus. The city is much smaller than Beijing and it's also at a higher altitude, hence colder. We visited 3 places in Chengde. The first place we visited was a temple which housed a huge 1000 hands1000 eyes Guanyin. We also visited the Small Potala and the Qing Emperors' Mountain Resort. I really like the resort. It's really huge and has a beautiful lake, a hot spring, large plains etc. It's lovely and I think part of the reason why we liked it so much was cuz the place has far fewer people than the places we visited in Beijing. We've got to be up early in the morning to make our way to tianjin. good night. :-)

- This blog was updated through my M1 mobile phone.

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Beijing Day 5 Part 2.

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Beijing Day 5 Part 2. Today was a relatively relaxing day. After our visit to the Temple of Heaven we made our way to the Yuexiu Market to have lunch. This was everyone's favourite lunch to date. We had mini-hotpot for lunch. All our meals before this was oily and salty except for this meal. We cooked our own food in little pots of boiling water and my friend and i ate mostly vegetables. Yummy! The rest of the afternoon was filled with shopping before our early dinner and return to our hotel. K. That's it. Good night. :-)

- This blog was updated through my M1 mobile phone.

Beijing Day 5 Part 1.

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Beijing Day 5 Part 1. Today we woke up to a beautiful and warm day, the perfect day to visit the Temple of Heaven. When we first entered the park, we saw a lot of locals singing, dancing, playing musical instruments etc everywhere, including along the entire stretch of the Long Corridor. This is quiet a lovely place and I rather liked the history and culture that made this place. The buildings are really gorgeous. Unfortunately, there are just way too many people and that spoiled the experience somewhat. :-(

- This blog was updated through my M1 mobile phone.

Saturday, October 13, 2007

Beijing Day 4 Part 2.

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Beijing Day 4 Part 2. After lunch we visited the Yonghe Palace Lamasary. I think it's the largest in beijing or maybe even China. The temple is really big and houses many gods. Right at the end there is a large buddha that is carved out of a single tree. Kinda cool.

- This blog was updated through my M1 mobile phone.

Beijing Day 4 Part 2.

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Beijing Day 4 Part 2. After our little ride through the Hutong, we made our way to the beihai park and we visited a small mansion which have a lovely rock garden and pond in the middle of the house. Then we took a walk along the bank of beihai and stopped to look at the jiulongbi, the nine dragon screen. The above is a picture of that. Ok later time to get off the bus. :-)

- This blog was updated through my M1 mobile phone.

Beijing Day 4 Part 1.

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Beijing Day 4 Part 1. It's day 4 in beijing and the first place we visited in the morning is a medical hall called tong ren tang. This modern building was built on the site of the old imperial doctors building. Next we took a trishaw ride to visit the Hutong and to make dumplings. The ride itself was very pleasant but i don't think the Hutong we saw was particularly authentic, a bit like the feeling of visiting chinatown of Singapore of today. :-(

- This blog was updated through my M1 mobile phone.

Friday, October 12, 2007

Beijing Day 3 Part 3.

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Beijing Day 3 Part 3. Hi guys, this is my last post of the day. After we visited the Ming Tombs we went to an orchard nearby to pick apples. Okay if you live in a country with lots of farm land and fruit orchards, you might not find this fun. But we found it fun cuz we live in Singapore and picking fruit off trees isn't something most of us can do easily theses days. When i was a kid, i lived in ulu sembawang and i used to climb trees and pluck fruits and leaves and just shove them in my mouth on the spot. So this trip to the orchard held a tinge of nostalgia for me. Ok, that's it for me, good night. :-)

- This blog was updated through my M1 mobile phone.

Beijing Day 3 Part 2.

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Beijing Day 3 Part 2. After the walk at the Great Wall, we went to a factory that made jintailan pottery and decorative pieces. After that we had lunch there before proceeding to the Ming Tombs. The tombs are surrounded by a very tranquil and serene park and the air was very fresh. The tomb that we saw is way underground and there was more staircase climbing today for us. :-) The tomb itself was impressive in its size but they spruced it up a bit and it doesn't look or feel as old as they actually are. K. That's it for now. Later. :-)

- This blog was updated through my M1 mobile phone.

Beijing Day 3 Part 1.

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Beijing Day 3 Part 1. We woke up at 630am this morning to go climb the Great Wall today. It's a little drive away from the city. When i got there i was quite blown away with the magnitude of the wall. It's really amazing and quite beauty. The climb up was really taxing but they've installed hand rails so it made the climb easier although it was still really steep and awfully tiring. We didn't make it to the top, just 3 quarters of the way up. The climb down was even worse as some of the steps were quite high and there were a lot of steps. I loved it though. I've always wanted to see the Great Wall and now i have. :-)

- This blog was updated through my M1 mobile phone.

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Beijing Day Two Part 2.

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Beijing Day Two Part 2. Am back and resting in the hotel room now. Tired but it was a good day. :-) In the afternoon we had lunch in a small restaurant in the Summer Palace. The photo above was taken in the palace after lunch. I really like the Summer Palace. It's very pretty and quite tranquil. In the evening we watched a rather good acrobatic performance and after dinner we went to Wangfujing Street, a major shopping area in Beijing. K. Time for bed. Tomorrow we climb the Great Wall. :-)

- This blog was updated through my M1 mobile phone.

Beijing Day Two Part 1.

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Beijing Day Two Part 1. Today we went to Tiananmen and the Forbidden Palace in the morning. There were tons of people there which made sight seeing a little difficult at times. Parts of the palace are still under renovation which is a pity but still it doesn't take away from the grandeur of the palace. Later. :-)

- This blog was updated through my M1 mobile phone.

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Beijing Day 1 Part 2

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Due to the need to juggle the schedules somewhat, what was suppose to be our free and easy day on the last day became today. But as we were still tired from the flight, not prepared to be explorer today and that our hotel is located in not the best of locations meant that our first day here really isn't v event filled. My friend and i walked the area a bit and went to a mall and had kfc for lunch. I picked a chicken wrap that's probably a china only thing. They put hoisin sauce and cucumbers with the chicken and it was like a combo peking duck plus western chicken wrap thing. Rather tasty. :-) now am watching Face to Fate, a tvb series i put on the zen vision. So over and out for today. :-)

- This blog was updated through my M1 mobile phone.

Beijing Day One Part 1

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Beijing Day One. Hi all. This is the first pic i shot in beijing today. That was taken at the airport. It's approximately 11 degrees so not too cold. It's not very sunny though. It's so cool to be in beijing. :-)

- This blog was updated through my M1 mobile phone.

Monday, October 08, 2007

Flowers by the road.

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Flowers by the road. Each morning I wake up early to swim or cycle as i'm working towards going for a trek next year. And each morning that i do cycle i always pass by patches of wild yellow flowers by the road side. I love these pretty flowers and i know i'm not the only one who likes them. Everytime the grass cutters come, the grass will be crop short by the time they leave but the flowers still remain. :-)

- This blog was updated through my M1 mobile phone.

Saturday, October 06, 2007

Mid autumn festival.

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Mid autumn festival. Another test. Still trying to get the title and body text separation correct without going into my dashboard. Anyway this photo was taken at the clarke quay area on the day of mid-autumn's itself. Enjoy. :-)

Update: hmmm... still didn't quite work. I still keep having to go in to my dashboard to fix the title of each entry. Ah... well... this will just have to do and I'll just have to go online and fix them when I get a chance.

- This blog was updated through my M1 mobile phone.

The experiment continues.

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The experiment continues. I'm thinking of trying to mobile blog a little when I travel to beijing next week. And so am still working out all the quirks of mobile blog, hence another short nothing kind of entry. Anyway. Here is a picture of the sun through some trees. I exercise every morning and it was particularly pretty today and thought i'd share a little bit of sunshine with you. Have a great weekend guys. Cheers. :-)

- This blog was updated through my M1 mobile phone.

Tuesday, October 02, 2007

Modern Beauty - Ada Choi

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I'm currently in McDonald's waiting for a friend. My other friend has borrowed my ds and so i'm some what bored. So decided to do some blogging. Above is a not terribly well shot photo of one of the Modern Beauty salons in Singapore. Not sure if you can make out that Ada Choi is those posters. She's the spokes-person for this salon. I'm not into these things but figured you tvb series loving fans might get a kick out of it. Recently i've seen a few tvb series and have been thinking of writing capsule reviews as a full length review may be too time consuming. I'll be off to beijing next week for another vacation. Will try and write them before that. Ok. That's it for now.

cheers


- This blog was updated through my M1 mobile phone.

Monday, September 24, 2007

Mid-Autumn's Festival

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Tomorrow is mid-autumn's festival. You can't quite tell by this photo but the moon is almost full. Going to get my fill of snowskin mooncakes and tea tonight, in early celebration of the festival. Tomorrow i'm suppose to have beer, a decidedly un-traditional thing to do on a very chinese festival but that is the modern chinese world for you. :)

- This blog was updated through my M1 mobile phone.

Sunday, September 23, 2007

Test 2 - Mobile Blogging

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This is another test.


In the previous entry, I updated the blog using my mum's Sony Ericsson K810i which has a feature for mobile blogging. That was really easy and it made me curious about whether I could update the blog using my Sony Ericsson K750i. The setup was more complicated than the K810i which only required a push of a button after the photo was selected and the text was inserted. I needed to register at M1 and link a flickr account before I could do the same using the K750i which isn't a 3G phone.

Mobile blogging is quite interesting and gives the blogging experience a whole new dimension. Unfortunately, it isn't free, as I know I'll be charged MMS charges. Still I do find this a useful and fun feature.

Okay, now I really must stop messing with mobile blogging and get down to work. :)

cheers


This blog was updated through my M1 mobile phone.

Test - mobile blogging


Test


This is just a test photo that I took with my mum's new Sony Ericsson k810i phone. There is a feature in there to send a photo with some accompanying text to a mobile blog and I just wanted to test it out.

It works. Kinda cool actually. :)

Okay, have to keep this short unfortunately. Lots of work to do even though it's a Sunday. :(

cheers