nikon or canon. canon or nikon. DSLRs are getting so cheap nowadays. you can get a pretty good catch with just $1080. plus, the PC show is here again. how could i resist? i just cant decide on the model to grab now. if you know about SLRs, we could have a conversation soon perhaps?

yes i know my S3 is only a year old. i'm not saying that it's a lousy camera or i regret buying it at all just so because yuan says she's now getting a replacement. S3 is a fantastic camera! the shops are selling it for $699. so think about this: a $100 drop in price for an electronics over a span of one year? thats pretty amazing. now you see, how strong S3 stood in the market.

but high-end digital cameras and SLRs? it's a different picture altogether.



enough about cameras. i'd probably bored the majority out there.

was just flipping through the old photo albums and sorry, i gawked at how girly i used to be. and how, smelly boys ALWAYS pull my hair and insert my name into stupid songs. (you can click on the photo to enlarge and gawk too)

now the only girly thing i do is ballet. apart from my relative long hair, boobs, and skirts that i sometimes wear, i'm no different from those smelly boys who are more interested in gadgets and (insert other stuffs). thank god i passed the stage where i was immensely into NBA.

it's ok. i still take pride in being a woman.

this is what i pictured. stickman is quite difficult to draw. =/



















it's 2:27am now. i freaking cant sleep. why cant everyone just update their blogs more so i can have more stuffs to yawn at at this hour.
the morning birds are singing.

work starts tomorrow. booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

i'm going malaysia NOW because my mom's friend was robbed there and couldnt come back because her passport's gone as well. #$%@ stupid malaysian muggers.
all thanks to them i'm missing another fiddle lesson. thats already the 5th one in a row!

“Sometimes the most important reason we click with a person is that we feel a sense of safety with that person,” says Hamburg. “While we may not be compatible with them in some ways, we have a deep certainty that they want to make sure we always have the emotional supplies we most need.”

the arts festival opening was pretty smashing. the photos i have here were the two highlights. the fireworks didnt turn out on my handphone camera.

shopping with raymond and karliang can be so fun, while our maria waits at one dark corner with our bags of buys. to illustrate my point, they were still encouraging me to try on a piece that they thought was nice though our maria was complaning how poo-ed out he was (so were we). they snapped at him in digust and waved me off to the changing room. much of yesterday's itenerary was impromptu. the food fair at expo, the book fair at suntec which we didnt exactly step into, the arts fest, and midnight shopping. we're shopping together again next week. did i hear our maria groan? haha.

i'll probably whine about this even more. so far, i've run to my mummy like a little girl who had just scrapped her knee. crying, "nus burst my bubble!".

judging from how an A in econs modules comes so naturally for me like a fly to dung, i might as well just fake a sad goodbye to business and hug economics (which probably will take me as a good son.) i had been bringing up this topic about switching course so many times that i guess even my friends are sick of hearing me talk about it (just that they never complained). but they're probably reading this line, and rolling their eyes, and thinking, "heh. you actually realised that?! please just spare my ears."

it's been more than 3 months already and i'm still trying to let go.
the song sings my whats-on-mind exactly. thats why i love it.

也不是真的不要关心 也不是真的不曾介意
可偏我也不是真的拒绝这一切 只留下自己
也不是全都不理不听 也不是真的无从继续
可每一次我都试著坚强 都成了不得已的哭泣

也不是真的不要关心 也不是真的想尽办法任性
而你懂不懂我 懂不懂 其实我心里都珍惜
也不是全都不理不听 也不是硬要颠反事理
可每一次我的试著靠近 都成了你看见的抗议



咳！还是来张照片，想想发生过的开心事，开心一下吧。

那个夏天，小顺是这么对靖儿说的，“我心里一直有很多秘密不知该怎么对你说。”
“你说吧。我听着。”

“就是啊..哪个...我...我...看还是改天再说好了..”

小顺到底怎么了？

there were struggles between the scanner and i the day before and finally, for once, my beloved gave in to me.

心情有点闷。唉！

小顺昨天被板子k到，头肿了个大包。今天不想抛投露面。对不起啦！

他叫小顺。今年十七。是个哑巴。

losing your front tooth in your thirties is probably one of the men's worse nightmares (apart from balding and your-thing now only "stands" on vigra).

christopher refused to see me today because he lost his front tooth and i thought that's hilarious.

anyway, maroon 5's album's out.

顺子想起靖儿， 他又哭了

look, i even drew those teeth like fries. good grief!

smart asses will make their way here, and the dumb ones can stay out. it may be puzzling. but then again the act itself might not be at all incomprehensible. plate and the crumbling crisps needs a parallel and sour-ness doesnt seem to pass.

today marks the end of sour-pack.

i've been trying to decode this for days, "XBA'G NBARELGHhLGP iP QBE MPNBiTARGSP NSLTEiLA. c'i fHFG GSP NSTPQ QTEP SjOELAG." YEAPFGB
XE. YNNB iLj SLIP FHRRPFGTBAF QBE L JLhgTAR GBHE. WBiP CEPCLEPO.

and still clueless

i guess i really miss them.

and right now my summer's looking good again. lets work till end june, and go for a good holiday in july. i'm considering dropping by 桂林, 大理 because they look so beautiful.

anyway if you guys need a job, do let me know. we need about 18 pax. $60/Day. 9-6pm. 5 day work week.

life's a bit like this right now. so carefree.

out of the 501 must-visit destinations, i have only been to 9. surprisingly, penang hill and taman negara made it to the 501 list.

i dont have 492 more years to live. neither do i have 246. not even 123. what about 61.5? heh. i dont think at age 82 i can still travel 8 places a year. i guess it's a shame living and dying on a planet you never explored.

considering the technology today, Earth should be my home. 连自己的家都不懂， 那成合体统？

grr. my stomach's calling again. why did i not finish my rice. i'm looking forward to a barbeque party, so who is going to organise one for me?

almost 2 years ago, we'd been there together once. i still remember how my bike's chain went out of place, how i fell off my bike, and how i fell sick one month later (my doctor blamed it on the mosquito bite i got from there). 2 years later much of ubin remains the same. still fun.

here's one of my personal favourites.

all i want to do this holiday is to get fully rested and recharged. what have i just done?

while waiting for brokeback mountain to load, i finished 6th may's entry. here's another photo of orang asli's settlement.




































i slept till 5pm today. how pig's that.
it bothers me that i dont exactly have a plan this summer. should i just leave for another holiday in china?

wrapped around with layers of prickly heat powder. i'm all white now.

bad rash.

6th May - Taman Negara

the extreme cold morning shower woke me up for the day's challenge. even the guys were surprised that i actually bathed.

it's a habit i cant change. i just have to bathe in the morning no matter what.

canopy walk. it's said to be the longest walk of its kind. built by the natives and the foreign engineers entirely by hand. it's a walk on wooden planks paved on ladders. fully netted. but you swing up and down up there. and they're somewhat slanted.





































i would say it's relatively safe up there. and the fact that you cant exactly see the height because of all the greens covering the earth really made this walk very friendly.

Trekking to Teresek hill was a horror. it's 334m in height. short huh, but not really. it's a more than 2km hike upwards. a test of preserverance. hallelujah to the four limbs again and the trees along the way. i would give it a difficulty level of 3, out of 5.

honestly at the first rest point (1.2km into the hike) i felt like giving up already. not because i'm weak. our bottle of water had only a quarter left and i felt really dehydrated. plus, there wasnt exactly anything in particular about the hill that's worthy for me to conquer (we didnt get to see much animals. not even monkeys along the way.)
and blisters were forming.

but still, we moved on.


taken at the peak. water left only a mouthful.



the trek down hill was challenging. a number of them slipped a couple of times. some had abrasions and cuts. one had an leech attack. it's a 60 degree hike up and down but i remember a particular point wheere it was almost a perpendicular (slightly more than 70) down hill which i "absailed" down.



conquering bukit terisek was another personal accomplishment. someday i will work on a mountain.


back at the floating restaurant, i gulped down 12 cups of chilled orange-tasting water. the rest had only 5-6. that was how dehydrated i was in comparison.

the worst was over. we conquered the bats cave, bukit terisek. and then we got to enjoy the boat ride against the 7 rapids.

we were soaked. not because the boat ride was ah so bumpy. the guide and the boys on board were extremely naughty. he used paddle to splash water at us. but it was heaven, if not for the fact that i'd to worry about soaking my camera as well.



at Aboriginee village settlement.



all of us were soaking wet. except for the guide.




































an Orang Asli demonstrating how they make fire.






































one of the girls, who's another laughing bug like me, with the kids. they're a shy bunch.


and us playing around with the orang asli's hunting weapons.



orang asli is the only group of people that the malaysian government gave permission to live and hunt (for a living) in the protected Taman Negara.
this group of people speak their own tongue, and they know a little bit of malay because of the visitors they interact with.
they believe in spirits. the interesting thing is that once someone in the family dies, they pack up and move to another spot in the forest to settle down. to them, the believe that death of a family member is an omen that this place's not for them.

5th May - Jerantut
we reached jerantut at about 2, 3 am in the morning. most of us were zonked out when we reached the hostel.

early morning we discovered that the place was almost out of water (not completely if you consider the "leaking" tap a water source). so the dirty us didnt bathe.

while waiting for the boat ride to taman negara,






here's the boat that pulled some 27 of us. 2 to 3 hours of ride, at more than 30km/h. do your math and you know how big taman negara is.

most of them slept, after an hour into the ride.

































there was a bit of time to rest and settle before we set out for the Gua Telinga exploration.

and hello, it isnt at all a lime cave with snails. we all thought, ok, great we are going into cave walk the constructed steps and scare the snails.



but guess what. Gua Telinga is a bats' cave (you know how much i dislike batman for no reason) full of bats, bat shit. it's wet, and completely dark. we had to move around with our 4 limbs (there was so much climbing to do and the cave's really slippery), and do leopard crawl.



we were saying it's so dangerous inside that if you miss your footing, you probably fall and hit yourself unconscious.


next time if you have the chance to go on a adventure like that, dont wear jeans. you really have to lift your legs to reach every climbable stone.









this is what i mean. torn jeans. look at how dirty we got.
but the amazing thing is all 27 of us survived the raid. fat, short, skinny, tall. size doesnt matter.

and i have to say, i'm really proud of myself. when my pants tore i really felt so much like crying.
i knew i had to finish the raid. i was stuck in the middle what.
the darkness and the dirt didnt really get to me. i was, like most others, threatened by how slippery the rocks were. thank god we have 4 limbs. and individuals who shone the torches for us. all we had to do was to scream i cant see anything, and there was light.

we spent more than an hour in the cave. and it wasnt exactly huge. thats how challenging it was for us.

and that night we have our night jungle walk. we saw many different species of inserts, glow in the dark leaves and mushrooms. and got frightened by spiders that actually fake dead.

same goes. i'll update according to dates. and, thanks to the itinerary, it's really going to save me loads of jabbing on the keyboard.

4th May - Malaysia, Johor Bahru
before the train ride we had almost 2 hours of do-whatever-you-want-time, so we hopped around for yum yums.


the ride to Jerantut was my third time on the malaysia's KTM train. i enjoyed my virgin ride, and i liked the third as well.
train rides aint exactly thrilling but you get to get bumped around and get irritated by the lousy annoucement system. it's air conditioned. you've your own bed and if you try hard enough, you'll fall asleep eventually anyway. i love hopping from cabins to cabins, to locate the cafeteria. eating on the train, that's something you'll never get to experience in our little country.


nobody will honk at you even if you step beyond the yellow line. so we dared each other to run into the track way.



so many of them couldnt sleep on the train





































but like i said, you'll fall asleep eventually. somehow. when we came back from my supper at the cafeteria, all's left were rows of abandoned shoes.

i'm hoping that taman is just as nice as this.

ack. when you travel, there's hell lot of packing to do. i'm so good at speed packing that am keeping the best part to tomorrow morning.
right in front of me sits my passport and nintendo ds which has got my handprints all over. and i really suck at it that i think i'll probably take half a year to finish all the levels in sonic rush.






















here's what i'll be doing, if it interests you.

4th May 2007 (Friday)

03:30pm – Gather at Kranji MRT and travel to Johor Bahru, Malaysia. Travel time will take approximately 1 hour (without traffic jam); around 2 hours if we are caught in traffic jam.
06:15pm – Gather at Johor Bahru KTM train station.
07:15pm – Train departs from Johor Bahru to Jerantut.



5th May 2007 (Saturday)

02:00 am – Train arrives at Jerantut station.
§ There will be free transport available from Jerantut KTM station to the fan hostels provided in Jerantut town.
§ Breakfast will be on your own.
There are lots of food stalls along the street so it will be nice to try J
08:30am – Boat ride to enter Taman Negara. The boat ride will take approximately 2 hours.
12:00pm – Check in to hostels in Taman Negara. Lunch will be at Tahan corner floating restaurant.
03:00pm - Ear Cave (Gua Telinga) Exploration.
Ear Cave is a limestone cave carved by a stream, another fine example of nature ingenuity. More than 130 flora species are found in the limestone outcrops of Malaysia and no where else in the world. It is also a habitat for snails which used calcium to grow their shells. More than 76 species of snails have been recorded and can be found only in Malaysia. Most of the limestone outcrops are endangered and so does the flora & fauna.
07:00pm - Dinner at Tahan corner floating restaurant.
09:00pm - Night jungle walk. Please bring along a torch light.
This is a nocturnal activity worth the effort. There are six hides scattered around the Park. Within the relative safety of these hides, overlooking the salt licks and clearings, visitors get a chance to observe the plant-eating animals as they come to lick up the water and soil for essential salts for their body. Even though sometimes, no animal can be sighted, the atmosphere of being there and the sounds of the jungle insects are worth every penny.

Meals provided: Lunch and dinner


6th May 2007 (Sunday)

08:00am - Breakfast at Tahan corner floating restaurant.

Activities for the day:
Before lunch:
§ Canopy walkway
That's a walk across a 400 meter man-made bridge, suspended 25 to 40 meters above the ground. It's the longest canopy walk of its kind. The canopy walk gives you the opportunity to view the rich and diverse flora and fauna at the very summit of the forest, eg: birds, monkey, squirrels etc.

§ Trekking to Teresek hill.
Teresek hill is 334m in height. Along the way you can observe some interesting tree species.

Come back for lunch and a short rest.

After lunch:
§ Boat ride against the 7 rapids.
Journey passes through the 7 powerful rapids of Sungai Tembeling. The 9.1km ride takes about 45 minutes. Hand on tight to your seat and be prepared to get drenched!

§ Visit to the Aboriginee village settlement.
The Orang Asli are shy and gentile natives and they can usually be found along some of the forest trails or by the river. A settlement has about 10 "houses". If something serious happens, like death, they move to another place and build another settlement. Building a new "house" takes 2 hours. When the Orang Asli men don't hunt or fish, the lay in their "houses" or make rapids.

Dinner will be at Tahan corner floating restaurant.

After dinner:
§ Free for the night. You can plan your own activities J Activities suggested: Star gazing

Meals provided: Breakfast, lunch and dinner


7th May 2007 (Monday)

08:00am – Breakfast at Tahan corner floating restaurant.
09.00am – Free at leisure. You can walk around and explore Taman Negara on your own.
12.00pm – Lunch at Tahan corner floating restaurant.
02:00pm – Boat ride to leave Taman Negara. Transport to the fan hostels in Jerantut town.

Afternoon: Self-exploration at Jerantut town. Dinner will be on your own expenses.
Take this opportunity to savor the various local delicacies!

Meals provided: Breakfast and lunch.


8th May 2007 (Tuesday)

12:00am – Transport from hostels to Jerantut railway station.
02:00am – Train departs from Jerantut to Singapore.



goodbye! i'll be back on the 8th.

anyway that is china.

i'm happy today because i bought new bras for myself. and dawn bought us those cute bear brooches. :)

2 days to taman negara.

and i've almost forgotten that i've been to beautiful places like this. it's 'bout time i count my blessings.


i'm ready to move on and be strong.

i wish one day i can stop thinking about you. it's been really difficult.