Tears

Tears, a powerful agent employed by the female anomaly, which at the very same time contains a lot of antibodies that are good for cleansing the eyes. When the female anomaly deployed it, I was at a loss even though I knew that I was not the cause of that action. But for some reasons, it will one way or another throw me into imbalanced. So what was the best way to avoid that kind of situations? Never even made a woman cry.

Cambodia - Day 5

Our final day in Siem Reap was finally here. After days of trekking and temple viewing, we decided to end the trip with a day of nua-ing, slowing down our paces. We woke up a little later after a night out of drinking. Had a late breakfast and then sat by the restaurant and watched the world pacing by.



We headed to a bicycle rental shop to complete a friend's desire to cycle around. We tried to cycle to this horse range farm but sort of losing our way, so half way through, we u-turned back to town. After more than 3 hours of cycling under the hot and humid weather, our tshirt was drenched with sweat. And very very dusty.



Did our final shopping at the old market for any souvenirs. Was at this place buying the last souvenirs when we saw this parade of vehicles by a political party for their election next month. Then head back to the guest house to clean up, preparing to attend a cambodia wedding. Got invited by the driver, asking us to go to his friend's wedding party. Only I went in the end. The rest did not feel quite "alright" with it.



This was probably the 1st time and the last time I got to attending a cambodia wedding. It was also the cheapest angpao I had ever given, and most under-dressed. Everyone dressed formerly. The men were mostly in shirts and pants and the ladies in what looked like their traditional wear of gown. I was in jeans and tshirt! Hey, I'm on vacation! It was quite an experience. They did not wait for everyone to arrive to start the dinner. Once the table was filled up, it would start on its own, so when everyone was done, they would leave. The bride and bridegroom were standing at the entrance the entired night. There were cans of soft drinks, beer and bottles of mineral water on the table, so guests could just drink whatever they wanted. Freeflow of all those drinks. There was even a bottle of Johnny Walker Red Label on every table! There were waitresses walking around, filling up the glasses with ice cube.



One did not prepared with the angpao. There were envelopes available on individual tables and each guest would then take out their wallets at the end of the dinner and put the moolah into it and dropped it into a box when the guests left. Even the bridemaids and brothers (I presumed) would stand at the entrance with the couple. When there was no guests arriving or departing, they would sit down.



Its a 7 dishes course dinner. The dishes however are geared more towards chinese style. Their tibits before the dinner consist of cashew nuts and this dried cuttlefish lookalike that tasted like pork floss. Nothing much fanciful for the food though their rice comes in the flavor of chinese style fried rice and plain rice. The rice was served together with a steamboat of chicken soup. For a moment, I was kind of surprised to see steamboat at a wedding. It truly was an experiences, a totally different kind of wedding from what I had seen in Sillypore.



After that, met the rest back at the guesthouse before heading to the Angkor Wat night market. Its a spot open specially to target tourist. Pricing was jacked up, which was to be expected. The whole place look like a very modern village, something that I had seen in Sillypore. Something like...errr.. let me try to recount... Asian village at Sentosa? After a quick look at the place, we walked back to the main old market streets and had a 2 hours long foot massage. I had a hard time trying not to doze off. Had an early flight to catch the next day.



Bye bye Angkor Wat. Bye bye Siem Reap. Bye bye Cambodia.

Cambodia - Day 4

Temple! Temple! More temples! I'm getting an overdosage of temple
ruins! But the irony was that we had yet to get a good walk in the
main attraction, Angkor Wat. Today was the last day of our 3-days
pass. No matter what, we had to do our re-visiting.

It was getting to the point of you-seen-it-once-you-seen-all. They
were either hinduism or buddhism temples. Common among the ruins were
stolen statue or carving heads. Collapsed roofs and walls.
Destructions by huge trees. Corrosion by the weather. Anyway today
will probably be our last day of temple visitation.

Preah Khan. Neak Pean. Ta Som. East Mebon. Angkor Wat. And goodbye
Angkor Wat. Finally end of our trip. After all the roosting and
sweating, we wanted to slow down our paces and moved around leisurely.
Decided to give ourselves a good treat at a not-too-cheap thai
restaurant. Then we hopped over to the famous pub, Angkor What. Did I
mentioned that the first thing the restaurant owner said to me when I
went into this beijing dumpling restaurant last night was "you are
very fat" in chinese -.-" What a great greeting.

We learnt to bribe children with sweets to smile at us for some
photos. However that might not work all the time. There would be a lot
of many others that will hassle you to buy things from them but some
of them were really cute and witty. It could really melt your hearts.

Cambodia - Day 3

Getting up at 4 in the morning was kind of straining myself. I
wondered if I'm here to enjoy or torture myself. By the time we got
there, there was quite a handful of people gathered in the darkness.
After making our way to a desired spot, we just setup tripod and wait.

I think I'm a little disappointed with the sunrise. Nothing exactly
spectacular. Then we moved off to our 1st destination. We planned for
an afternoon re-visit to Angkor Wat. Wanted a different sunlight. The
driver offered us 2 destinations that were off the central Angkor
area. Banteay Srey and Kbal Spean. The former was of hinduism religion
with structure made of red brick, unlike those of the buddhism which
utilized big stones. The latter was a waterfall site.

However there were extra charges to the locations due to the distances
traveled. Banteay Srey was about 37km from Siem Reap while Kbal Spean
was about 49km away. We agreed to the 1st location first, then would
decide 2nd destination after we were done. The site was a little
disappointing due to its small size. Being Sillyporeans, we had to do
some bargaining with the driver for the 2nd destination.

We did got our bargained price and off we went. You had to climb up
this hill(?) before reaching the river and waterfall. Again its a
disappointing sight though the hike up was kinda fun. After that, on
the way back we headed for another hinduism temple which along the
way. By this time, we overshot our schedule again, so we postponed the
re-visit of Angkor Wat to tomorrow.

After a late lunch, we headed for the famous Tomb Raider site, Ta
Prohm. This temple were almost in ruin, and had a lot of trees growing
into the wall. Interesting sites though. Finally headed for the final
destination of Banteay Kdel. All of these sites were not the hot
favorite, hence we saw far less crowd as opposed to 1st day.

We planned for some massge action tonight. Since we were too late for
it last night, we decided to do it tonight. I opted for the body
massage. Seem like a bad choice when you looked like a roosted
lobster. And our day was finally over.

Most of the cows/horses/dogs were skinny! But with all the jungles,
they ought to have plenty of fresh leaves to eat. I wonder.....

Cambodia - Day 2

The start of the temple-temple-temple viewing day. Amazing huge stone
hand-carried hand-crafted structures. As with all tourist attractions,
they were clustered with lotsa people, which in turn meant that your
photos would have a lot of unwanted strangers in them to spoil the
photos.

There was a huge man-made moat around the new world wonder, Angkor
Wat. The moat was something like 9km in diameter. We did not start
with it. We drove in further to this Angkor Thom Central.
Crowwwwwwded! Sighz. The driver let us alight at the entrance to the
city wall gates, and told us to walked in while he would wait for us
inside after crossing the bridge through the gate.

We really took our time to walk through and started our tons of
snapping photos. From this angle. From that angle. Portrait.
Landscape. After we were through, the driver drove us in and its quite
some distance! What are those ancient people thinking again? City
walls encompassing a jungle followed by royal palace and temples?

We spent the whole morning walking through this ancient city. Bayon.
Terrace of the Leper King. Phimeanakas. Baphuon. Prasats Suor Prat.
Imagine walking from orchard mrt to somerset and it was no straight
line. Lotsa steps to climb, with some of them that was almost
vertical! Imagine rock climbing with 1 hand holding the camera and NO
safety rope. How you got up was how you got down! A slip of footing
would sent you tumbling down, crashing your body like one saw in Mel
Gibson's Apocalypto. They had really really small stone steps. Did
those ancient people borned with size 1 feet?

Inside the place, you had child beggers asking for moolah, or tuk-tuk
driver asking if you want a ride, or children/teenagers asking you to
buy a local guide/history/photo book, or if you wanted cold drinks. We
break for a late lunch back in the city, avoiding paying tourist
priced food and to recharge batteries. My batteries were faulty and
another friend's digicam was not long lasting enough for our massive
snapping time.

By the time we got to Angkor Wat, its about 4, left with an hour and a
half to bash through Angkor Wat. After arriving there, passed through
security check only to realize I left my good charged battery in the
room. ARGH!!! Told the rest to continue while I grabbed a tuk-tuk back
to the guesthouse. Too bad I cannot find my driver and we left his
number in the room. The tuk-tuk ride was actually quite an experience
if not for the fact that I'm rushing for Angkor Wat and sunset, and
the really dusty environment.

We met the driver at the entrance to move off to the sunset view at
5.30pm. We did not complete Angkor Wat, so we were coming back again
tomorrow. We had to climb up a hill to reach the top. At the top was
an ancient structure and CLUSTERED with people. Look like back in
ancient time, they were already enjoying the view, and probably using
it to do their stargazing activities. Even the climb up the structure
was no simple task. Small steps at almost vertical inclination.

I guess this was the 1st time I'm catching the sunset. Did a bit of
shoot. When the sun was finally out of view, the guards were asking us
to descend from the place. I missed wondering around the structure to
have a good view of the surrounding. Was busy trying to find a good
spot for doing the shoot.

And our day was coming to an end with nightfall. We checked with the
driver if they had a red light district in Siem Reap. Apparently they
did, so we ask the driver to drive us there to take a look after we
went to check out our next lodging. Look ONLY. Exactly like our very
own geylang fish tank. The girls were seated inside the "fish tank''
for the patron to admire. We left after a quick look, then headed off
for dinner.

We decided to go for something more expensive. Had cambodia BBQ. Its
not buffet style, so had to order our meat for the BBQ. Snake meat was
offered as one of the dishes. The 3 of us looked at each other like
its some irony eating our own species. Snake meat taste nice except
for the fact that the meat was kind of chewy, almost impossible to
chew it through. Went for ice-cream after that, then did a little
shopping for tshirts and small souvenirs. And finally ended our night.
Had to postpone the massage session to tomorrow since its getting
late. Had to turn in early since we need to get up realllllly early
for sunrise.

Cambodia - Day 1

Had just 4 hours of sleep before waking up to catch the early flight
to Siem Reap. While doing my last minute packing then did I realized
that I had left my photos in the office. Sighz. Think gotta hunt
around the airport for those instant photo service. And they were no
longer available. With digicam and cheap photo printer, there was no
demand for such services anymore. Needed the photo for my multi-days
pass to Angkor Wat.

We arrived quite early, before 8. Its not the raining season yet but
apparently it rained the night before. Out of the blue! Even when we
were touching down, the sky was grey and drizzling. Nothing eventful
after that. Got out of airport. Met pick-up driver. Got us to this
irish pub-cum-guesthouse.

Since the previous guests of our room had yet to checked out, so we
went to recce the neighboring area, the Old Market. Spent about 2 hour
walking around the area. The ground was seriously muddy. Gotta do a
bit of leaping here and there. Other than a small concentrated area of
restaurants and lodge, the rest of the city was badly undeveloped.

Then we lazed around in the room to wait for our driver. Had an
arrangement with a driver to pick us up later in the afternoon for a
trip down to the Floating Village. Temple trips was going to start
tomorrow. Went lunchie just before the trip. Quite a good lunch. Cheap
and better than average.

The road to the Floating Village was bumpy and muddy. Quite a scene
along the way. Villagers who lived along the bank of the river. Their
one-room huts looked similar to those we saw on Pirates of the
Carribean: Dead Man Chest. Really nice for photo shoot but no photos
yet. Was rushing to get out to the sea(?) for the sunset shoot.

As we were about to board the boat, there was this girl taking photo
of us with a Sony camera. Its the high end model some more! And taking
us? I thought we were the tourists? The boat ride was filled with some
minor incidents but once it kicked into it gear, its a smooth and
worthy ride. A whole fleet on villagers living on water. Was a
disappointing sunset. No colorful sky with breathtaking cloud
formation.

And we were about to end the day with the return ride back to lodge.
After getting off the boat, we were persuaded to get this souvenirs of
plates with our photos printed on it! WOW! The first thing that went
through my mind was WHEN THE HELL WAS OUR PHOTO TAKEN? Then I recalled
about that girl with the Sony camera! WOW! That was fast! Too bad the
negotiator's determination not strong enough, so ended up buying them
but that was after some bit of bargaining.

By the time we got back to the guesthouse, it was dark. Seems like the
night over here set in faster than Sillypore. And we were amazed at
all the beautiful light up. Walk another round to enjoy the night
scene. Seem like our guesthouse was smacked in the middle of
concentrated area of nicely designed and well lit place, with police
guarding a few corners of it.

Have some beer at a rooftop bar, then simple dinner by the roadside
(hopefully no stomach upset) and we ended our adventures for today.

What a simple night

Meet up with some friends for some simple dinner, whom some just came back from their holidays in States. Since someone offered to drive down to my place to pick me up, so we decided to go try out this famous nasi lemak along Katong road. Frankly, I feel that its not worth the queuing, plus the fact that its not even that cheap. Must try then you know if its worth it, right? Words of mouth are not good enough to be judge in taste. After all, one man's meat could be another man's poison.



So after dinner, a couple left while me and another couple headed off a couple of shophouses down the road for some Rocher tau huey (梧槽豆花) action. And we hang around for some gossip talk for a while. Just when I was about to call it a night, I heard a huge bang before me. And I turned my head quickly, I was someone flew and landed on the road. Someone with a helmet. A motorist. No fark shit. I was a little stunned at that instant. Then I had to ask my friend if I should called 995 or 999. Hey, I dun have such experience hor, and I dun exactly care for much of it. Called 995 in the next second. Think that is more important the the police at that moment.



Then a lot of people started to gathered around. One fellow quickly approached the floored motorist and helped him into a better position. I won't know if its better, I just assumed. Slowly vehicles started to clustered the road and traffic slowed to a crawl. I started to take note to see how long did it take for the ambulance to arrive at the scene. The other driver was calling for witnesses but seems like no one was offering for the service. That same civilian who helped the motorist went to direct the traffic, to get things going. Good thinking, else I guessed the ambulance was going to have a seriously hard time getting to the injured.



I kept staring at the motorist on the ground. His helmet had been removed. He looked totally stunned, like he appeared dead. No shitting you, till I noticed that the chest was moving up and down then did I let out a breathe of relief for that fellow.



12 minutes later, a couple of people carrying 1st aid kit rushed to the scene to help out. At first I thought the ambulance was there, but I dun see any white van around. And then I realised that they really looked very near, and wearing this white t-shirt with a huge red cross at the back? Is that the new uniform for the nurses and paramedic??!? In the end, I figured they were with the Red Cross at TKGS. But where did they appeared from? Is there some new arrangement that will activate these students living nearby accident scene? I had no idea about that!



Another minute later, the big red van finally arrived. The damn crowd were still crowding around trying to catch some action. Idiots. With some help from the public, they finally got the injured up onto the stretcher and load him up the ambulance. And off they went. Then I was thinking, what was going to happened to that motorbike at the scene. Where were the traffic police?



They finally arrived a couple of minutes later. The TP looked kinda a little lost to me. One look like a reservist fellow and another a NSF. I believed that was going to be a poor combo. The TP finally decided what they were going to do. That civilian was still directing the traffic!!! The one that was not taking over the traffic control spoke to the crowd busybodies if anyone had witnessed the accident. No one responded. So he told me that the show was over, nothing left to see, everyone could be dismissed!



And yesh, I did finally called it a night.



ps - I not busybody horrrr... I not squeeze in to the front to see the action horrr. I remained seated at where I was having my tau huey. No, I dowan to be witness. I din really see much of accident, so I had no idea what truly entirely.

TREMOR!

Tremor in Singapore. I felt it! For the first time! Oh my god! For a moment, I thought I was feeling so hungry that I'm going to faint. Wait, cannot be. I'm not that hungry. Ok, which idiot was running so hard and fast in the office. Looking around, no one lehhhhh. Everyone was staring at everyone. Someone mention, leave now! Even my director came out and started to leave.

Overheard someone mention "shut down your pc". Shut my area lah. If it was going to collapse, what was there for you to shut down? Sighz. These people.

The one thing that was going through my mind, my backup, my configuration, my files! See, I'm so devoted to my work! :-P

Everyone evacuated from the building, to the main road. Most of us was like standing no more than 10m from the building. Yeah right. If the building came tumbling down, we would be covered in dust. I bet many would take out their camera phone and started snapping away. Some colleagues went to drive their car away. See, that was important. Heavy liability lor! My boss decided against that. To him, if it did collapsed, he would be waiting for a new car! How optimistic. Then he told me that it reminded him on the Hotel New World incident.

Everyone went for early lunch while I head back into the office for my siesta. If it did collapsed, I could at least said that I died in my sleep. Channelnewsasia was really really slow. I think the whole damn Sillypore was trying to access it. I guess everyone wanted to read this, to confirm their suspicion.

At about 1400, 2nd round of tremor visited us. Again everyone stared at each other. My boss quickly went to his car this time round! One department evacuated immediately. The rest of us just waiting for instructions and staring at each other. Me? RUSHING to backup my stuffs. Only one girl left the office of another office, starting instruction was passed down to stay put. What to do, she feared for her life. She got 3 children and waiting to take her driving license. When she came back, everyone applauded for her return.

Then there was this building announcement going on, trying to assure the tenants that everything was fine. Its just tremor in Sumatra. Sound machiam like passing shower lor. ....People, give way.. tremor passing thro'.....siam..... In the mist of all these, my HOD was distributing our annual increment letter. The first thing he told me was I dun think you can get your car. Sighz. See, I'm waiting for a fat increment to buy my new toy. Sighz.

What an exciting day. The last time my office was this excited was back when Nicole Highway incident. That one no tremor, only loss of power.

Vista

Vista - noun

1. a view or prospect, esp. one seen through a long, narrow avenue or passage, as between rows of trees or houses.
2. such an avenue or passage, esp. when formally planned.
3. a far-reaching mental view: vistas of the future.

[Courtesy of dictionary.com]

And yes, I'm only 10 minutes into the very very much delayed latest WOW Operating System from Micro$oft and its running me nuts. If you haven't watch this, go on and watch it. For the fun part, the anti-mac ads is here. That is so un-vista of the os. And yeah, like the video plays, that is your WOW OS. Whatever you tries to do, its kept asking for permission. Within seconds, its remind me like I'm working on my linux/unix box. Oh yeah, I'm fine with that, but hey, I do all that in command line. And I will su/sudo the command if needs be but no, the damn vista ask for my acknowledge non-stop. I tried creating a folder in this highly important place that existed since windows 95, the "Program Files" folder. And it already ask for my permission 4 times!!! ALLO! Once is fine, twice is acceptable, but NOT FOUR TIMES. If I'm the damn hacker, you can ask me 10 times and I will still click continue x 10.

And no, I doubt I will be keeping this OS. I'm just testing to see how it look like, since I just upgraded my PC. I havent bring up the new PC yet. Its been more than 2 weeks. I cannot decide what OS I wanna run on it. Linux? FreeBSD? Windows XP x64? Windows XP? Oh, did I mention that its kinda slow? Or maybe I haven't tweak it enough, and I'm running on 4G ram if you are going to tell me that I don't have enough RAM. And yeah, my graphic card comes with DDR3 memory. Vista is just so goddamn hungry for power.

Hmmmm... or is it because I'm running the Ultimate edition? scvhost.exe crash once right after a fresh installation upon booting up. Oh great.

ps - a lot of people was saying that I'm missing at my favourite salsa place. Now, this is one reason why.