oofed!: June 2007

Day 4 to 6 here

Day 4:

Woke up early as usual, chicken fried rice for breakfast, problems waking up earlier, since the previous night we slept quite late, and there were people making a hell a lot of noise on the 5th floor. So we left early, started the 1 hour plus journey to the elephant conservation centre. I managed to sleep for the journey, but after a while, Vicks and Yang Jian started taking pics of me sleeping. Yeah so i was awaken, and for the revenge, started taking pics of Vicks with flash and without flash, and her sleep was disrupted, much to my pleasure. The mountain scenery was rather similar to that of the Malaysian highway. When we arrived, I used the toilet first, pretty revolting experience, and we took a shuttle bus for our elephant ride. It was nice ad bumpy. Elephants are rather scary when they climb up a semi hill and it was scary. Yang Jian and Fab wanted to film some funny documentary on the elephants, pretty funny, but never materialised. Time for the elephants to shower and we saw many apprentices getting the elephants to shower. The elephants were rather cute, blowing water all over the place and seeing the daughter helping her mother to bathe was an amusing sight. It was the elephant show next and it pained me to see the elephants like primary school kids, trunks to tails and in chains. But it was nice to see the elephant beating the drums using its trunk. During the show I bought an ice cream, and of course, the sawadee-kaaaaaaaaaaaaa (with a sexual tone) started from here. But I must say the elephants are rather talented artists and can really draw. We then left to see the young elephant and her mother at the hospital. Saw a infant naked baby girl. Not a pretty sight. I managed to acquire a glass sprite bottle, but broke it before it could even get to Singapore. Lunch at a restaurant run by a Singaporean, remarking to me that the black sauce in Singapore was much better than the 5 star black sauce in Thailand. He bought it from Ang Moh, a big mart that my family goes to every weekend. Mr Tham was saying that he ate there once a week because he missed Singapore food. Well then we went shopping at the Airport mall, everything overpriced, and nothing much. For a while, a group of us were considering to watch Pirates at the cinema, but wth, lack of response, so we went to the arcade where I played Pro Evo with Fab. Super boring place, so we just walked around, bought some cheap ice-cream from Dairy Cream, (and i managed to get my brother a Tasmanian Devil)then to KFC. Stupid dinner, not nice la... we were all full already. At night it was the Sunday Cultural Walk. Many stuff to buy. I was looking at some nice canvas pics but it was a bit too expensive for me at 500 Baht. But I managed to buy a model fender guitar and 2 nice fans. There were a lot of stuff to buy but did not have enough time to walk through, thanks to the people who said shop for 1 hour only... So then we went back to the hostel with all our buys... Zhang bought a canvas painting, then we went back to the hostel. It was really amusing to see Zhang pack. really. I broke that dammed Sprite bottle in the Hostel and I really loved it so much but... ohohoh!!!

Day 5:

So the not so enjoyable part comes, checking out of our comfortable ho(s)tel to the not-so-known log cabins. Like would it have a mama shop with nice toilets and mini-bar? For the 1st time in 5 days i am glad I brought my towel. I think I was one of the last to check out and I was stressed since I had 3 plastic bags in addition to all those to my 3 other bags to carry. Made it down 5 mins late for breakfast and realised that a lot of people had not come down just yet. After breakfast, more bridge, and it ended up with me winning some sets and losing a lot. Went to Wavee coffee to get some Kiwi ice boom, but arghhh@#$%!$$$!!! got wind in the stomach after that and for the first time in a long time, I was car/van sick. By the time we got to Freedom Wheelchairs, I severly regretted my decision to even try that dammed juice. We adjourn to a stuffy, hot upper level and that was not really helping. Thanks to Chong Wee for giving me the Poh Chai Yun, the pill to help stomache. And yes, I was still well enough to emphatise with those disabled people, and how it was a sort of social stigma around them. The wheelchair designer was really talented, and how he could make his own motorcycle to take him around wherever he needed to go. Then the staff showed us more about how to make a wheelchair, and sometimes we do not realise how poor some of these people are and they cannot even afford a wheelchair, so I was thankful that at least a portion of the funds could help the foundation to make more wheelchairs. Some of us then tried to sit in a wheelchair and move ourselves around. Quite fun. But I suppose your hands would ache after a while. Freedom of movement is not really an option in Chiangmai, with hardly any pedestrian crossings for the disabled or toilets or lifts. We then go for lunch, and I am glad that I was feeling much better since I had tried to stay in the shade for a while until I felt better and it was going to be a good lunch. Green curry with tang hoon all and a menu that varies no better where we go. Some of us sit in the swing next to the restaurant after lunch, and I attempt to play chess with Daryl, but times up, as I try to set up the pieces, it's goodbye. The mango with sticky rice was fantastic and so was the green curry, so I brought 3 packets of green curry home. We go back to the hostel for the very last time to load up our luggages, and using this last chance, I buy more potato chips and chewing gum. After loading up, we leave for the highlands. Try to get some sleep during this time but it was disrupted when we stopped by the Queen's shopping arena. Many were like @#$%@ (add your swear here) like so many stops. So i grab one strawberry ice cream and very tempted to buy tea leaves but I say, forget it. Like why would I want to get tea leaves. We then move on again, expecting to wake up only when we reach the destination. Crap. We stop at a waterfall and more swearing again, Wesely making his point about stupid Mike Hock and why we have to stop here but by the end I think most of us were converted as the waterfall was rather peaceful and it was nice for me to have a quick dip in water to bring back my sanity. I was still thinking about my sprite bottle and yeah, I tried rather stupidly to bring one back. But no. 10 baht does not include the bottle and so for the 3rd time this day, I was going @#$$%%#$$%%%%!!!!! Also caused everyone to wait for me, so I am really sorry, but please blame it on @#$%%$$##@#@!!! sprite bottle. So we make our move up the mountains and a rather bumpy journey. Everyone trying to get more sleep as a result of those interrupted sleep previously and I managed to get some before we arrived at the top. I see some very nice log cabins and pray that those would be the places that we would be sleeping in for the next 2 nights. Da chuo te chuo (big mistake special mistake) when literally translated. Girls sleeping 5 in a room then I am like going heng ah... until Mr Chiam says 19 boys in a room then I really freak out. Because first, people snore. Because 2nd, privacy is an issue. Move your own mattress + pillow. So stained I can really freak out. But the aunties there are understanding and as we sleep, the aunties help us to add bedspreads and pillow covers to lessen the shock of "Columbus- discovering- dirty- pillows" discovery. Thanks to them, I had 2 good sleeps during the time that we were there. Then we discovered the toilet, like "Columbus discovering dirty fly infested toilet". 1 shower hose. 3 standing cubicles. Nasty. So we thank the girls for generously sharing their toilet, like " Queen Isabella sharing her ******* with Columbus". Thanks to them, we live another day. And in the mean time, I play bridge with Mich and Yang Jian and the last person who I hopelessly forgot. 1 Club rules the day man!!! Like 1 Club! 7 sets only. Peanuts. The joke continues and we win like hands down because Yang Jian had the Ace and I had the King, Queen, Jack, 10, 9, 8 5, and 2. It was a real joke. Never had such a low bid before. But anyway, we adjorun for dinner and guess what, Mountain food is really good like you have kapao with egg and seaweed soup. Nice. Kapao rather hot and everyone cries like a slain goliath. Wonder why I am still pretty much ok? Start singing some parody songs about myself using hymms. Like Beethoven's 8th symphony glory glory we adore thee. And that night we start singing practice and I am playing with my fan a bit too often, saying something about boys replacing girls, and so Michelle my mother decides to hit me real hard using my fan and I start laughing like a retarded person. I dont think I slept too early that night since other people were still playing cards and I was really tired. So I slept with Jammies and short pants, new fashion which everyone stares at me and thinks I am a weirdo. Yes I am one. Sleep with a blindfold on as there is still light and I cant sleep with lights on... And i hug my jackets to sleep, without pulling up the blanket. So I wake up in the middle of the night, freezing cold, but still , just pulled up the blanket and everything was ok! Good sleep. No one snoring. Glad.

Day 6:

Second last day before we leave on Wednesday. I was quite sure that when we left the country, it would be a matter of hours before we missed the experience altogether. So I woke up, wanting to take a shower. Taking a shower with cold water in a cold morning in the girl's toilet was excruciating. Can't believe that I had to pour water from a bucket to bathe. So then we dress up and head over for a mountain breakfast, probably the first and the last we would have on this mountain. Mountain breakfast is really cool man. Like unlimited toast with sunny side up eggs with fruits and milo and coffee blah blah blah. We leave for the English camp soon later. I slept in the van and when I woke up, I realised the driver had dropped us in the wrong side of the school, the primary school side instead of the high school side. But we finally get our bearings right and we are dropped at a school that looks pretty much like any other school in Singapore, but the facilities not so modern. Students stare on as we make our entry into the lecture theatre of Prince's Royal College. It's just different in the way that we had to take our shoes out in the school building and I guess that many of us were not familiar with this, since we walk around our ACS campus with our shoes on. We await the arrival of the Thai students and at about 9 plus 10, they had all arrived, with the majority wearing track pants and only the PRC students wearing their full PRC uniform. We then start the briefing on the day's activity for the English camp with Daryl giving a rather short (the shortest I should say) speech for the activity, as I/C of the day. Intro speech by an ang moh, saying English is important because 90% of the world's knowledge is in English. I cannot help wondering what would have happened if the Cultural Revolution had not occurred and books not burnt or Cao Cao not burning medical books. Groups are defined according to their rows and Me, Kia and Fab took Group 5, a rather quiet group at first, but after we talked to them, starting talking more and more. We were glad and of course, for a group that we had met for just 10 minutes, this was a good sign for the hours to come. A group photo came first and we spent about 15 minutes to take a huge and large group picture. Tea time, and wth lah! Tea after like 20 minutes of briefing and what have you? or is this just a way for us to interact over a cup of red and green drink and pastries? Then we go to the IT lab in the school for our next activity, finding the answers to 14 questions on Singapore that we pose to them. The school IT lab is really like ours, with websites blocking my access to games online, leaving me cursing and swearing at the power of the firewall. It was really cool looking at Thai students trying to find out the answers to "Who is the first president of Singapore" with weird answers like "Zubir Said" or Ong Teng Cheong... blah blah blah. Then the Singapore netball team name? Weird answers. Then Rekha claims mooncake is our national food, and I really can't help but burst out laughing. No. Really. Next game is Oral Charades, and I leave the beautiful comfort of the freezing cold IT lab that ah... is really nice and spacious. Back to that @#$%%@!@% LT that is more like an aircon playroom for kids than an LT with tables blah. Oral charades (or Taboo as many of us would know it as) was pretty dammed fun since most of the Thai students could guess our words without using nouns or Thai blah and they found the words pretty easily. On to round 2. Much harder words like urinal and journalist and detergent that the students are stumped. Cannot answer. So my group gets 15 points, 1 point deducted for using Thai, and out of a total of 22 points, I think that was a rather decent score. blah. blah blah. Stupid free round of 5 points for spontaneous guessing of words, and my group loses the lead like Salmons getting lost in the water. @#$%@#$! Afterall my group was dammed good and the PRC students were quite pro in their English. Andrew! how the @#$%@ did that look like an astronaut???!!! but the Thai students too pro, can guess the correct answer. So like blah, we go down for lunch, and I try to encourage the group with cries of "We can do better!" Lunch with a kway teow frier and fried rice is a new experience. Sitting on rattan mats and eating is a funny experience. The School must have some fascination for feet without shoes, as we are required to take of our shoes while sitting on the mat. Wesely encourages us not to sit on the mats and look pretty (though we are and the PRC students in the classroom are staring at us as we eat lunch like wow we definitely must be pretty when we eat) and interact with the Thai students instead. So I find a table with Yang Jian and the students are so hospitable that they bring us a plate of fruit with the special salt and ask us to share the fruits. We finish eating and go back to the !@#$#@! LT. In the mean time, I break my fan by tossing it around. The demise was soon to come. Chong Wee tells me that this fan is held together by a string of super glue and the impact must have broke it. I was like "are you sure it's super glue" and he then changes his mind saying "forget what I just said" like lololololol!!! You know I love ice-cream and I could not resist going to the local canteen to search for colourful food. And I find ice-cream. I get some toffee flavour with choco chips and lime ice. 10 Baht! 50 cents! Scrabble is the next game and with the points available to them after the last round of games, they are supposed to form words using the points that they already have. 1 point for consonant and 2 for vowels. Along the way, the rule changes and it gets so complicated my group is lost. They form funny words like freezing, physics, lyrics, procrastinate and what have you. So the twist is that they have to form a story with the words they have and significantly, it was going to be hard. But my group really gave its best, and we as group leaders have to be proud. Tham with a good job acting as the boyfriend. Other groups put up funny performances, Andrew's group with some sort of funny spiderman performance and rescuing girls but even though there was a winner, everyone had done well. So the camp ends. Prize presentation and certificates, with Mr Mike Hock saying that the attendees could use these certificates to register for a lesson with them free, but they would have to go through a placement test first... so.... i hate tests. Mr Chiam somewhat a guest of honour, gets the honour of presenting the certificates to them. Bookshare and we give out our books to the Thai students, a moment to remember. Then follows the pin-share and I swap badges with Tham, surely one of the names that I would never forget, since Tong has that same name too. Performance and after almost one month of work, we could present our mass dance and our vocals to them following a performance. Han An's solo with Vic was really good, with Han An claiming before the performance that he forgot the moves. Yah right. I then swap badges with another Thai friend for a different looking badge, she looks apprehensive without an ACS badge, but I change with her and she definitely looked happier. Photo taking and where the hell is my group?! Everyone disappeared! But with the remainder, we attempt to register our emails to register a long-lasting friendship that I am sure everyone would remember. Try to interact with the remainder of the students, saying "I hope you enjoyed yourself" and flashing a nice smile. But I am glad that all of them had enjoyed themselves as they had answered yes, to the director's question of "Did you enjoy yourself today?" University introduction for us and the senior Y6 Thai students and Morgan and what's her name introduced where they studied and what they were doing. Fraser is not convinced by US universities superior to UK universities and starts questioning Mike on all sorts of universities. Mike says he would discuss over dinner, which of course, he never managed to do since there was a shortage of time. Thai PRC students give us copies of their newspaper and we admire it, since it's much better than Ink! which is full/foo of crap. Career opportunities test and I try to find a better name for it, as a result of my considerable distaste for something called tests. Quiz and we go down to the IT lab once again. Handed out pieces of paper that can fly away easily and I struggle to differentiate between a zero and an "O" on the piece of paper. Thai students also struggling. Quiz is like bullshit la... if someone makes up his mind what he wants for his future, then surely the test is biased beyond comparison. Daryl makes funny comments about politics and how his potential job might lead him to an ISD cell. Finish that 240 plus question quiz and then play games on the computer. I land up playing hearts and trying to fish for online games, which the server blocked. Get out of the IT lab for the Farewell Dinner, which I was sure was going to be unforgettable for many of us. That night we sang songs like never before, Chen Fye goes crazy when he sings Bohemian Rhapsody and starts dropping the hotel roses all over the place... and karaoke session. Mike stops the party and tells us that it was late. Singing all the way back to the cabins where most of us attempt to stay up late, but many fail terribly. I comment that it is not long before we go back to Singapore, and Daryl says that at least there are a few more hours. I learnt that trying to take a shower at 12 am in the morning is not a good idea. Eat cup noodles, last minute photos and bridge games... and finally, fall asleep. A very deep and good sleep that I have been deprived of for months.

Day 7:

Guess what, we never thought we would leave this beautiful place. But well, even the longest feast on earth comes to an end, so with farewells and more last minute photos and email collections, we leave. Customs officer comes just as we check in. Must be the first flight we are on. Airport security is bloody lax. Buy some iced chocolate from a boutigue coffee store and some of us check out the duty free shopping before our time was up. First time we met the other Thailand group in a week. They really look like dead people. Flight leaves for Bangkok, take more last minute photos, and we are off. Bangkok airport, 2 hours transit time, 1020 hours check in. Shop around, look for stuff to buy and I was convinced the only thing worth buying was choco and bananas, 3 times the price here in Bangkok airport. People buying stuff, and I check out a book called Thailand's last executioner. Andrew tries to buy stuff for his mom, enlists the help of Debs and Jia. So well.... I was broke, and did not buy anything. Debs tries to get a present for our generous donor of $3000 and struggles. I really cannot help.. Time to check in and we take some last pics with my Tasmaninan Devil and Vick(s) reindeer that Han An so generously bought for him. On board the plane, Han An really pisses me off telling me that I shouldn't buy that devil and I lash out really bad... He answers in a pretty stupid manner, making me even angrier. Lunch on board the plane was good. Plane was nice, Satay rice for lunch. Good service, free 2 packs of cards. Satay rice runs out and a few lucky guys get to eat business class food. Beef and potatoes. wow. Changi Airport, fast clearance and we are back on Singapore soil with Starhub reception. Family members waiting at the airport makes us feel unforgotten. It has been a fun 7 days. Really.

oofed!

Saturday, June 30, 2007

Friday, June 22, 2007

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Monday, June 18, 2007

Friday, June 08, 2007

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

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