my my... it's been a long while since i blogged... the last time i was here i just finised a tour of phuket and had returned to the reality of a mad mad world of work, school and church...

now i am again going away... this time to escape the haze... now i think the psi is around 100 and i have been having this cough for the longest time... hopefully the air in perth is much much better... am in need of this trip so badly to get away from it all...

so i booked a flight there on impulse and here i am... in the DBS Asia Treasures lounge in Terminal 2, enjoying a nice supper and drinking a nice Coke Light as i write this in the exclusive lounge. it was recently opened by our bank for our super rich customers... you have to have at least 3 million to be a member... not that i am one but being a nice staff member has its priviledge... the inside of the lounge is really kewl... soooo much better than the Krisflyer Raffles Class lounge... but the chairs can definitely improve in the comfort level... at least the ones next door in the KF lounge is cushioned... the ones here are not exactly soft...

i took a self pic on one of the 4 iMacs that we have in the lounge... here it is showing me alone in the lounge close to midnight having the nice staff pampering me like a king...

sigh... the picture could not be uploaded...

but anyway... i am signing off now... going to do a spot of shopping in the nice shops below and then make my very very slow walk to the second last gate to board my flight...

next message will be hopefully from perth...

i had a realy interesting day off from work this 4th of august... heh... not that i was lazy but i really wanted a break from the office and this is quite an opportune time in terms of scheduling... i got up late after a night of karaokeing with some really cool people... celebrities (current and iminent ones) and their manager and lawyer... i think singing is really not one of my gifts...

in any case i woke up thinking... oh what the devil am i going to do this free day??? i wrestled with 3 options... i wanted to do something to get myself bathed in the harmful rays of the sun so it came down to these options:
a) to visit the Tree Top Walk at McRitchie Reservoir...
b) to visit Pulau Ubin...
or c) to visit The Retreat at Changi Village Hotel, a spa (which of course is an indoor activity but anyway...)
so i was surfing the net... looking out for weather reports and cost of spa treatments and in the end... i fell asleep again on my much missed bed and before i knew it... i was awake and watching season 2 episodes of star trek the next generation that i rented from gramaphone cd shop...

well... then 4pm came and that's it... i had to do something outdoors or my day off work will be wasted... eventually, i packed my beach towel and grabbed the latest asia spa magazine (yes... i am bitten by the spa bug...) and the latest michael crichton book which i bought for my phuket trip and never got to read past he first 5% together with my iPod and headed for... gasp... Changi Beach... i felt the intense urge to go plane watching and being the aviation whore that i am... i began wondering why i had not done this any sooner...

so i spent the late afternoon, a good 2.5 hours at least strolling along the changi beach promenade and watched the planes land at changi, strange sea vessels plying the east part of the straits of johore, fast crafts shuttling army boys to and from tekong, a really really sweet middle aged man who brought his aged and immobile mother for a whiff of the sea air and some vitamin D from the sun (this really touched me as i realised that i should have done this for my own grandmother when i had the chance when she was alive... kicking myself hard for not having done this), a mother and her daughter and her daughter playing by the grass area, strange looking foreign men skiving from their day's work, an odd japanese pair of men who are clearly tourists and clearly loved their planes...

all in all i had a great afternoon of mua time... nothing to worry about... just fantasising about the places that were featured in the spa mag that i finished reading... fantasising about the places that i could visit on the planes that landed... and just thinking about oh... nothing that stresses me out like school or work... forgetting about the fact of being alone and all...

right now as i recall the planes that i saw... i remember these airlines: Singapore Airlines, Malaysia Airlines, Air France, DHL, Fed Ex, Garuda, Jet Star, Tiger Airways, Emirates, Japan Airlines, FinnAir, a private jet, Philipine Airlines, Silkair, Qantas, British Airways, Valuair... wondering who might be on them... where did they depart from... when can i fly again... it was extremely therapeutic and relaxing to say the least... i am definitely going to do it again soon... maybe the next time earlier in the day with more sun rays for that much desired tan... :P

and yes... i did end off the day with the lake house (a hollywood remake of the korean romantic comedy)... which was a really good movie and it got me thinking really hard... why did i not pursue my childhood ambition of becoming an architect??? i remembered clearly that i had wanted to be one really bad when i was growing up before the glamour of becoming a conductor got to me and made me forget that i had always wanted to design buildings... this is one of the very very few tinges of regret i have ever felt in my entire life... seeing the Keanu Reeves / brother / father characters all playing successful architects made me truly reflect on who i was and what i had wanted to be and most importantly... what i am going to do with the rest of my life...

lots of thoughts squeezed into a friday... and none of which had to do with school or work... most satisfying... and did i mention that i had 2 portions of dinner today??? :P

WTF!!!

i've been out of action for a week... not because i was too busy... oh that also but more because there's just too many things going on in my mind and i do not know what to pen down... almost every aspect and focus in my life is put into high warp this past week and there's just too much intermix going on up there... church, school, personal life, family, work... not sure whether to sigh... to moan... to grumble... or to simply assign a word to describe how it feels... i am not angst or frustrated or anything... i'm just feeling a simple plain vanilla "ergh!"... not with three consecutive exclamation marks but just one to express a tinge of disillusionment and a dash of WTF is going on with the world and some of its inhabitants??? bleah... some reassurances please... perhaps from someone divine???

this evening was spent again on sentosa... originally we throttled to the island to hear an all girl jazz group sing contemporary jazz... as advertised... which was quite a disappointment cause in the end, they did not exactly sing any contemporary jazz... not even along the broad lines late 20th century with the likes of the very safe coltrane, miles davis, pizzarelli... or even a marsalis or harry connick jr... let alone the modern improvs of neo jazz - chill out fashion... everythings fixed and rehearsed... safety first... no spontaneity... and definitely no improvs... to be fair, we only heard them sing one or two RnBish songs at the beginning and another tunes at the end... one of them called spain bears some semblecce to tango as they claimed... which strictly speaking is hardly a style of jazz... an aside: jamie cullum by the way is NOT JAZZ... jazz influenced yes... pop infused yes... but definitely not classified as jazz... the fundamentalists will tell you that...

ultimately the only song that we heard that they rendered in a true jazz style was this chinese delight called ye3 lai2 xiang1 or literally "night come scented" translated, sung swung... quite shanghai in the thirties combined with the electric nuances of the new millenium with the synthesizer accompaniment... so if one expects to hear acid, fusion or free jazz will be disappointed... they are just a good or average jane all girl band... period... that happens to be individually talented but when put together, not quite there yet... but they are trying hard and i think they do entertain and kudos for putting up live sets to a crowd... but to pay them to hear them live again at UCC for their concert in august... hmmmm... hardly a move i'll make... i kinda like the bassist though... few females i see bass that well or even play it at all for that matter... so it is quite refreshing... makes me want to really pick it up and learn it...

KM8 on tanjong beach is a nice chillout place... despite the fact that it's a little dark cause it is only ambiently lit save for the compulsory flame holder in the middle... but the food's reasonable and not to overly priced... music's fine for chill out... makes you wanna sleep when one has concluded dinner... but go only with a vehicle and park there cause it is at the edge of tanjong beach which is at one corner of the south sentosa shoreline that is connected via the beach road... a pity i did not get to see tanjong beach in the day for i've heard how lovely that little bay is in bright sunshine... i must return soon to catch the sun there... and to ascertain that it is indeed that lovely...

Nice shot of the waves crashing onto Mai Khao... you can almost hear it if you stare at it long enough...

Beautiful sun setting over the horizon on Mai Khao Beach, Phuket

Poor jelly fish stuck on Mai Khao Beach...

Beautiful landscaped pool at the Marriott Resort

sammie rowed the boat ashore... alleluia!!!

woohoo... just had my room painted in bright tangerine and faint apricot... the former turned out to be a little less luminating than i thought from what i could discern from the sample pantone thingy from nippon paint... the apricot a tad too pinkish... so i have quite a confused room now... how??? actually i kinda like it. now it is not so boringly sunshine yellow as before...

one good thing that came out of this massive repaint is that i get a chance to do some serious packing for my room and to throw away a lot of old stuff... things that i hoarded over the years and which i should have discarded long time ago...

other than a new room with weird smell to return home to, i spent the night in school for the first lesson of my final semester... today was prof. francis koh delivering his first lecture on corporate finance... he is one of the better pedagogues in SMU and easily one of the nicest gentlemen in town... i actually met him 2 years before in an interesting setting prior to my joining of this post grad course... 2 novembers ago, i had visitors from melbourne, australia... 2 theology students whom i brought to the bar and billard room at the raffles hotel to try out the singapore sling and to play a round of billard. there was prof koh and his family who were there to celebrate his birthday... his son, a young teenage chap was eyeing our billard table as we were playing our rounds... and us, being the friendly ones, offered to let his son play a game with us... being the sociable one, i took the opportunity to strike up a conversation with prof francis koh and in the end, i found out that he is an academic at biz school, SMU and so coincidentally, he is lecturing in the post grad programme that i had planned to take at that point in time... he actually gave me his name card at that time as a contact if i needed more help in the programme... little did he know that i would eventually end up as his student!!! a small world singapore is...

i did not get the opportunity to find out if he remembers meeting me this evening though... come saturday, i shall ask him if he remembers his son being offered a game of billard at the raffles two novembers ago... he is a really good teacher... and i am sure i will miss him once these 5 sessions are up with his module...

looking "cool" on phi phi island, phang na bay, thailand

sunset view from the infinity edge lap pool at the jw marriott resort

Olympic champion michele low and the rays of the sun and the lovely lap pool of marriott...

self run bath infused with lavender oils, complete with rubber duckie and the aromatherapy jar... to soothe the end of a lovely day in phuket

i realised that i have not blogged for a WHOLE WEEK... sigh... and i thought I could keep up the good diligent work of sharing my daily improvs...

anyway... i have quite a bad 2 days cause i fell sick... again... i could not stop throwing up since monday morning... where i had to puke when i woke up and then later in the day when i was in the middle of a 4 hour meeting after lunch... and then once more when i returned home before dinner... i thought all was well when i slept early and took some gastric antacids - veregel... but when i woke up on tuesday, i felt drowsy but i pulled myself together to go to work... cause i know my boss will be on PM off today... don't wanna have only one member of my team remaining in the office... in the end... after the most rocky bus journey to the interchange, i had to turn back cause i was almost ready to puke again... so i immediately hailed a taxi home, ran to my toilet bowl and out came stuff... nothing gross... just water i guess cause i have not had anything to eat... ultimately, i pulled myself to go to the doctor's and then again i threw up there... that's round 5 i think... doctor said it was nothing more than a serious bout of gastric flu hence the churning and the throwing up and the belching...

okay... this really freaked me out... not because of what he said... but what my colleague told me on monday about the brother of another colleague... she said he was throwing up for no reason for 3 whole days before finally ended up in SGH... and the medical officers there diagnose a mere gastric problem... in the end the puking did not stop and then went to Raffles Hospital for a second opinion... that was where they found out that he had a gall bladder infection which was serious enough to be operated on...

so this notion that the puking might mean a larger problem really scared me... what if i had more than a serious bout of gastric flu??? and my seemingly unstoppable throwing up sessions seem to not come to an end... even this morning on day 3 i had a little belching and i was feeling drowsy and drugged... in the end i pulled myself to work and asked my boss to let me off in the afternoon so that i could rest... thank God i did that... i'm feeling better now and hopefully i will be at my best tomorrow... missed out on a lot already being away from work for 1.5 days...

tomorrow i am having my room painted... in tones of tangerine and apricot... so it'll be orangey hues... i did not get to choose the colours but i did not violently object so the colours stay... it should turn out well i'd reckon... so i was busy packing my room of stuff and discovered that i have hoarded a lot of rubbish throughout the years... i must seriously do some rethinking about what i should keep and what to throw when the room's done...

oh well... stay tuned for more improvs from sammie... have a lot to fill in about my phuket trip...