Batam 8-9 March 2014

I had always wanted to go Batam because it's pretty near Singapore and seemed like a rather inexpensive place for a short getaway. The feel of wanting to go overseas only intensified after settling my grandmother's funeral stuff and I told Ivan about it. As usual, the reply he gave me was "soon". Before I got together with him, the idea I had of "soon" was really soon, like within hours for small matters and few days for bigger ones. After some time, I have gotten accustomed to his idea of "soon" instead, which is almost equivalent to "you just wait, for months maybe..". So I just waited for that "soon" to come and gradually forgot about it.

This time, the "soon" took about 1 month to come and it surprised me when he told me about it. Initially, he wanted us to go on 2-3 March so it would be an anniversary celebration, but I've got Sociology prelim the following Monday. In the end, we had a post anniversary celebration instead and all were paid for by him.

On that day, we had to wake up very early and I only had 2 hours of sleep due to my body clock. The lack of sleep really made me felt cranky at the start, but slowly, the feeling disappeared as the tour began.

We visited the Ralph Lauren Polo Store first. The tour guide said that the Ralph Lauren stuff there are authentic and one polo tee costs about 50SGD only, however as we only brought about 200SGD worth of rupiah, 50SGD is considered a lot. We also bought some food from their factory outlet and local snacks store. Kueh lapis is also considered as their specialty so we each bought 1/2kg of the mocha flavoured one.

We visited the temple too. Aren't the statues cute?

A seafood lunch was also included in the package, but the food was just so-so. They served flower crabs, super small crayfish, very strong veggie-taste veggie, fish and some other things which I don't eat. We also went to the BSC or BCS mall but there's nothing much there as the tour guide explained to us that all the goods there are imported from Bugis Street so it will be cheaper to buy at Bugis Street instead. We chose to skip the massage so we had to stay in that mall for an hour. While waiting for the rest, we came to this cafe and ordered a drink. Just like what the tour guide has said, the locals like to drink sweet stuff, so the frappe we ordered ended up being very sweet too.    

The tour ended at about 4-5pm (Batam time is one hour behind Singapore time) and we arrived at the Nongsa Point Resort. It's a much nicer place to take pictures as compared to the places we had visited throughout the tour. 

  

The next day was just packing up, had breakfast and coming back to Singapore..That's the end of our 2nd overseas trip together..

Goodbye ~ My Dear Ah Po

I had always thought about it and mentally prepared myself for this, but in fact, no amount of mental preparation has helped to lessen my grief.

My grandmother passed away on 29th Jan 2014... 1 day before our Reunion Dinner, 1 day before eve of Chinese New Year. She passed away on the day we were going back to Malaysia, and we didn't make it in time to see her for the last time. She suffered a mild stroke on that Friday. Everyone thought that she would recover, even the doctor said so. She could be discharged a few days after but her blood pressure and sugar level was high thus the doctor recommended not to discharged her first. We were expecting her to be discharged from the hospital on the day we were going back, but her condition turned for the worst suddenly on the very same day. She suffered a second stroke in the afternoon and slipped into coma from then onwards...

The news came when we were about 2 hours away from Ipoh and my heart turned cold the moment I heard the news. My aunt kept calling us to check our location as she said that the staff wanted to move her to the mortuary already. When we reached the hospital, we saw that she was already being wrapped up. My uncle unwrapped it and let us see her for the last time. All blood seemed to have drained from her face and made it turned yellowish. That totally didn't look like the grandma I had always known.

That night, my siblings and I went to my cousin's house to sleep over for the night. Although I was very tired, it still took me quite long to fall asleep. Memories with her kept on coming back. I'd try to distract myself from it but it didn't work. The phone conversation we had 2 weeks before she passed away also kept repeating in my mind. 

Our phone conversation was something along this line (we conversed in Hakka and it's impossible to direct translate it, so I just put it into a more comprehensible form):
Grandma: 阿婆没用了咯，现在走一下就觉得累，累了又去睡一下。
Me: 那你走累了去休息也好啊，起码有做点运动，好过一直躺着。你觉得累了就要休息。
Grandma: 对咯，在老屋的时候我收拾一点，累了就到房里睡，睡醒了又继续收拾。
Me: 是咯，这样好嘛。。你慢慢一点一点做, 到我们回去就刚刚好。
Grandma: 那你们几时回？
Me: 星期3。那天我有上课，下午放课后就回去了。。
Grandma: 哦，那好。。 就这样咯。
Me:喔，byebye, 你早点睡。

That was just a normal conversation we had almost every other month, but I didn't expect it to be the last...

Recalling everything about her and typing this post still hurts..but I will still continue to post more though... I want to use this to note down as much things as possible so that when I look back in the future, I will still remember the times we had together.



...Not being able to see her for the last time before she passed away will always remain as a regret for the rest of my life... 

Gardens by the Bay 2

I visited Gardens by the Bay with Ivan for the 2nd time on 9th Feb (Sun) as he had 2 free tickets to the domes and it was expiring soon. During the first time we went, we only walked around the garden cos we didn't want to pay to enter the domes. This time, we only visited the domes and didn't really walk around the Gardens cos it was scorching hot in the afternoon. Basically, we just spent our time camping inside the air-conditioned domes for hours until it was time for dinner.

Not walking around the Gardens doesn't make this trip a boring one. In fact, all the beautiful things are hidden inside the domes. Firstly, we visited the Flower Dome first. The inside of it was manifested with colours of the spring and seeing horse sculptures everywhere enhanced  the Chinese New Year ambience. 

Sharing some photos we took in the Flower Dome

 

There are many seats available inside the dome for you to take a rest or chill. As we had a lot of time to spare before dinner, we took one of those seats available and sat there for quite awhile. As we were sitting there, chatting, my Starbucks craving decided to bring itself to my attention, so I got no choice but to bring it to Ivan's attention. I tried to make him guess what I want through sign language but he failed quite badly at it. I was doing a heart shape and the gesture which stands for $ with my hands. I even hinted him to translate "heart" into mandarin first. And when he finally got it, it ended up that there wasn't any Starbucks outlet @ The Shoppes, so I had to make do with Gong Cha instead. 

After enjoying a cup of Gong Cha together, we headed back to Gardens again to enter the Cloud Forest. We were greeted with a large waterfall feature at the entrance. In the picture below, we were actually standing quite far away from it. It was already quite cold inside, I didn't want to run the risk of getting wet.   

We explored the entire place, walking on the "treetop" walkway, watching a clip about how human are harming the environment etc..Finally, it was time for DINNER @ Satay by the Bay!!

I bought a Steamboat Buffet coupon for 2 pax on Deals.com.sg for this occasion. Kind of treated it as a ORD treat for him too. 

I literally had someone to serve me without the need of giving service charge. He was the one bbq-ing the meat and peeling off the shell of those seafood while I sat there happily eating. The variety of the food was so-so and crayfish seemed to be the only seafood worth eating. They had flower crabs as well but it was so small and not worth the time cooking, peeling off the shell and eating the pathetic amount of meat it had. When we were done, each of us took a potong ice cream and left the place.

While walking to the MRT station, I told him more of my grandmother stuff, which I was unable to give him a detailed account previously... and that will also be what my next post is about...

Overall, I enjoyed this outing and the steamboat. And thanks for being my servant XD 

2 Degree Ice Exhibition

My blog entries are lagging badly! I will try to catch up with updating about several things I had done in Dec 2013. This blog post will be about the 2 Degree Ice Exhibition I went on 14 Dec.

I went back to the office one day and saw that there was corporate discount offered at $24/tix to the company for the 2 Degree Ice Exhibition. I kinda wanted to go there but the regular ticket price really deters me from going. So with the discount, I activated the whole family (just nice my aunt and her family would be in Singapore for holiday) and asked them if there were interested to go. In a rush, I managed to get confirmation from them and gave my order for the tickets on the very same day.

We rented the coat at $5/coat and took a picture together.

The original looks like this:

And it came out like that:

 

We bought the photos for memorial purpose since it's rare that we go out together in such a big group. 

It was really cold inside the big fridge. The personnel outside told us that it was -15 degrees inside but none of us believed it. It felt like 2 degrees at most.

Some sculptures that were displayed in the exhibition:

We went to the exhibition quite early so there wasn't many people around. It would have been embarrassing to try out the slides if it were dominated by kids.

My aunts suggested my sis's bf to kiss the sculpture, literally. But he replied saying that his lips would be stuck there. (if you tried eating ice right after taking it out from the fridge, you would know what I'm saying)

The whole exhibition area was quite small though. We finished the first round within 20 mins and we just spent the rest of the time at the playground and taking pictures around. Some of my relatives and cousins wore shorts and slippers there, so they didn't stay around for too long as their feet would turn numb. As re-entry was permitted, we came out for a short break to "defrost" ourselves first before heading back again for more pictures and fun with the slides.

In total, each of us had to pay $29 for the exhibition and I didn't think that it was worth the price. Nevertheless, it was an one-of-a-kind experience and it's still considered a cheap thrill for something you can only experience in Har Bin (China).

Zoo~ See you 10 years later

7 Dec 2013: Saturday

Ivan happened to see that Safra was offering a promotion at $13/adult ticket for zoo, so he came to Toa Payoh Safra to queue early in the morning. That was why we decided to visit the zoo anyway. 1) Discounted tickets  2) Got nowhere to go  3) Haven't been there for a long time.

We met at AMK and took the bus to zoo. The bus ride didn't feel long and soon we reached zoo at about 11 or 12 plus. Basically the whole trip only involved walking around, taking pictures and resting. You know you are getting old when you need to take many stops of rest when you're in the zoo.

The KFC seemed to be the most suitable place for us to have lunch, but it's just exploitation. The price of their 2-piece chicken meal is about $1+ to $2+ more that any KFC elsewhere. So my advice is, bring your own food if you want to go there, unless you don't mind being exploited.

*Look closely* I caught the Cheetah/Leopard peeing in the public.

Ending this post with an unglam picture of....