An initial tour

Ok, so I got the house keys last Sunday. Here's the floor plan of the place; the major change to it is probably my plan to tear down the kitchen toilet so that the kitchen will be bigger.


Here's the living area with the balcony. The place doesn't get any glaring sun directly in the day, so it's nice in that way.


This storage under the staircase has got to go. It separates the dining and living area and makes the place feels small because you can't see the whole place from either end.


The rusty handrail at the balcony is pretty much reflective of the condition of the whole place. Everything has really got to go, leaving only the bare walls. Anything metal like door and window frames have all been corroded, and even the main door has to be changed (looks like a dog chewed on it regularly).


The stairs starts from the dining area, and the table probably would have to be nicely placed so that the staircase wouldn't be blocked. I doubt we'll have much meals sitting there too anyway.


The entrance to the utility room is just beside the door, and it's a pretty big space for all my gear. Think the shoe cabinet will have to go in there too, a bit strange to cramp that into the dining area.


The kitchen entrance definitely have to be expanded, more hacking here.


The long wooden cabinet hides a pipe behind it. There are a few of these in the house, here and upstairs too, very unsightly. To specifically build something over to mask it might make the obstruction stand out even more...what to do about it?


Up the stairs - gonna change the railings too, and give it wooden steps.


Here's the ugly pipe just outside the toilet upstairs. This common toilet is long and narrow, thank goodness for the bedroom toilet. Guests will have to bear with it :p

The best part of the place - the view. It's just low building and the big blue sky in front of us from the balcony. To make it even better, we want to build a wooden platform to elevate the balcony floor. Enjoy!

Sarah Palin - The Great Pretender

She came from nowhere and tried to impress stupid Americans with her power dressing and vitriolic words against things like global warming and abortion and gun ownership and hunting and wildlife conservation. Now she's being exposed for being the ignorant fool that she is after the insult-hurling start of her campaign was over. I didn't knew how bad she was till I saw this on Mr Brown's site. What a cringe-worthy video, when you consider the fact that this person is trying to be the vice-president of the most powerful country in the world.



Smart Americans should be ashamed of people like her...

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Here's a dumb blond trying to be the Vice-President being interviewed on her reading habits...

Couric: And when it comes to establishing your worldview, I was curious, what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this to stay informed and to understand the world?

Palin: I’ve read most of them, again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media.

Couric: What, specifically?

Palin: Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me all these years.

Couric: Can you name a few?

Palin: I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news, too. Alaska isn’t a foreign country, where it’s kind of suggested, “Wow, how could you keep in touch with what the rest of Washington, D.C., may be thinking when you live up there in Alaska?” Believe me, Alaska is like a microcosm of America.

If she really is "the New Energy" of America, God bless the world...

More from the paddling world...

Got a mail from a fellow paddler that the paddling DVD This is the Sea 4 is out already - do visit to tkae a look at the trailers.

More interestingly, from there I stumbled upon this Paddling Instructor website, which has much informative content that actually have much that is new to me (I don't think I know that much, but it's just that new knowledge is hard to find). If you're a paddling coach, do pay the site a visit, and register to get some of its resources.

Writing shorts?

I have been teaching my Sec 1 literature class how to do Unseen Prose this term, and had shown/taught them this story called Stone the Crows. Recently, during a PE period which I have to hold the class in the classroom because PE has ended, I showed the story to a class which I do not teach, read it to them and gave them some food for thought. After that, somehow I mentioned that I got the story online, and one of the kids said "Har teacher I thought you wrote this yourself!"

Don't know whether that is meant to be a compliment hm... maybe the brevity of it makes it seems likely that I am its author. They probably don't realise that writing short stories is an exacting craft. But that gives me a thought...maybe I can start writing stories for them! They'll be the perfect (captive) audience for me ha.

Not that I feel the need to express myself creatively in this manner. This blog is enough to satisfy my crave for expressive writing. I only need time to type out more of my thoughts here.

Designing the house

I'm getting the keys to my new place next Wednesday!

Well actually that doesn't mean anything much, because we're still too busy to try do anything to it. I probably wouldn't start finding a contractor for renovations until after the exams. Meanwhile, will need to drop by there another time to take pictures and measurements of the place for the floorplan too (Yup, apparently HDB sells floorplans with inaccurate measurements).

Anyway, I have had fun reading interior design magazines every month, and it's quite interesting to see both the nice and weird things. Having a feature wall to hang your flatscreen TV on is the 'in' thing to do nowadays, as well as having kitchen islands/open concept kitchens and light boxes on the ceiling. Actually, in quite a few pictures of apartments and houses overseas, people don't even make the TV the focal point of the house! This dispensed with the need to build feature walls of course.

Which makes food for though - what else can be the focal point of a place? Just a cluster of sofa chairs and the coffee table? A full bookcase?

Maybe I should just display my boats, paddles and bike. I can admire them endlessly anyway. But I think somebody else wouldn't be as interested in that...

(Postscript - It just seems wrong for a modern day family to make the focal point of their home the idiot box. Terribly impersonal, don't you think? I mean, watching TV together might be nice, but then isn't there more interactive activities around?)

Paddling diary

Playboating
Well it's good that the Waterfest event gave us playboaters a venue to play together for a month or so. I still have some way to go before I can floop in my boat, and I want to be steady in things like changing into bow and stern stall. Can't pack in much practice though, because my muscles will give up with 2 hours of training.

Polo-ing
It's amazing how things fall in place when you think of the next possible step. My former teammate has a plan to develop a private polo playing ground, and to set up the old PC team again. If things go through, that's where I'll be in future. The important thing is to be in a team with like-minded people, who has the same training philosopy, ideals and dreams. I make sure that I'll train up to be good enough to be in the team, now that I have been down for so long.

Sea Touring
Am slowly slowly planning my trip to paddle round Langkawi. There's lots of information gaps, like which part of the island offers accomodation, and which nearby islands should be visited. Currently, Google Earth is my main help, and looks like I'll have to trust my GPS on the trip. Anyone with information to share about Langkawi do let me know!

Playboating show

Occasion: Waterfest Singapore 2008
Event: Playboating Performance
Date: 13th September Saturday (not sure other days have or not)
Venue: Bottle Tree Park at Khatib
Time: 10am - 10.15am
Fees: Free

I'm gonna be there to take part in the performance. I hope the watching public will be satisfied by it, cos it's quite hard to do choreographed playboating action. Firstly, I have been out of practice, and secondly I still can't do my best in my own boat. And also, I think only paddlers can appreciate the difficulty of attempting the moves; non-paddlers might raise their eyebrows but then not think much of it after a few tricks. Man, I assure you every move we do takes at least a month to nail (from the basic forward handroll), and most takes more than that!

So, hope that we can pull off a 5-minute synchronised routine, and then be successful when we try our own trick! I'm feeling the performance anxiety even as I type now *shudder*...

Paddling far away

It is really something different to do a kayak camping trip.

When doing long extended paddles, your sense of time really gets warped. The paddling will be tiring but the time will just slip away easily as if the waves on the vast expanse of water carries it along. Your worries follows too. The mind goes into an easy and curious state, very very clear and yet ready to cogitate and consider anything that you want to consciously think about. Your body, meanwhile, pretty much go on autopilot, but then again, you can think about it too, the feeling of self-propulsion, the goal of achieving a clean entry of the blades, et cetera.

It takes a few days to get into a pure adventure mode when I'm doing long treks, the kind of feeling which make you forget about work and urbanity and communication devices entirely, when all you think about each morning is the route ahead. In contrast, it only takes a day to get into this mode on paddling trips.

You paddle the day away, cook a nice meal slowly and spend the rest of the night continue dreaming under the stars. You wake up to the sound of waves and the chilly air. And in the day, you just marvel endlessly at the landscape from afar and the colours of the sea, or even admire its denizens from the surface!

I wouldn't mind seeing nobody en route on a trip like this, and that's a real possibility depending on your route. That's a holiday hard to beat, don't you think?

A peek into the future...

The flyer didn't take off

All teachers were given unlimited complimentary passes to take trip on the Flyer this week, but it was really a really poor experience. Advice first, in case you don't want to read the rest - Try it if you are really dying to do so, but it is really not worth the money.

Pickup

• Bus stop at Coleman street was crowded with people waiting for the shuttle bus there. When it came, we managed to go up on it, and after all the seats are taken, this stupid girl who was the attendant on board asked all standing passengers to disembark because no one is supposed to stand when the bus is moving! That means that each trip the bus only carried 30 people. The reason was that it is supposed to be an open roof bus (which has this huge piece of plastic over it), and have no railings (which is not true). I don't think anyone appreciate the open-roof concept at all too.

At the Flyer

• We went a small round to find the ticket booth, and turned out that it was just a small discreet office with a glass door at the place where we got off the bus. It was so small inside, the spontaneous queue had to snake out of it and the glass door have to be held open. There was only 2 counters, and it wasn't efficient.
• They made all of us take photos before boarding, so that they can try persuading you to buy souvenir photos after the trip. What the hell. (luckily they didn't resort to pushy sales tactics after that).
• It seriously wasn't impressive la. It was really boring. We sat down and stone after it went pass the highest point.
• It isn't nice to be trapped in a capsule for half an hour with loud kids running around
  
• The shops there are a wierd mix.
  

Back to the bus

• The bus just happened to arrive, but we didn't managed to get a seat, so again, the girl drove people like us down. She's really stupid. Couldn't she just do a headcount instead of driving people off the bus every single time?
• Apparently they only have one bus which goes round and round. It was the same bus, driver and attendant the next time round, 30 minutes later. I could have reached City Hall in that time by walking.
  

How can this be a good attraction when it becomes the world's second tallest observation wheel?

A bloody affair

A sterile and cold place.

I was prepared. Eyes are masked, and then I was enveloped in blinding light. Shadows hovered around, moving in and out of my dreamscape.

Sharps of piercing pain, shrill screams of tools rattling to the core. Blunt prying forceps leveraging crushing force.

Pressure, pain, loss. I have to swallow it all.

I'm sure I deserve more than a week's MC for the ordeal of my wisdom tooth extraction.

Perhaps, this is it...

It was a terrible polo competition for me this year.

My team joined the competition with very few sessions (two or three?) of playing together, and we told each other we'll just go and have fun without bearing any expectations or goals. But as it turns out, I'm never one to take competition lightly. We lost two out of three games in the group stage, and only win the weakest team on the island by a solitary goal. For the first time in a few years, somehow I caught myself committing mistakes due to a lack of awareness that leads to 2 goals being scored. It was just terrible.

It's time to decide my polo future. My teammate is going overseas for a year and I think that's the end of my team. If I want to go on playing, I want to train hard and regularly with another team. Will I join my junior team? Or should I try to join another club?

Do I really want to take polo that seriously?