Mission Accomplished

Tuesday, November 30, 2004

Yup. Music has been added. . WITHOUT the help of iWebMusic, thus meaning no virus popup ads troubling you, my dearest Audience.

Accompanied my mum to her friend's house just now. She drove over. As our car was backing out, I heard the familiar and unmistakable sound of Mr. Meow's bell.

Stupid precious princess slipped out again. She was chasing after some stray cat that seemed terrified of her and is escaping.

I spent the whole of today wandering around exploring CS maps because Xiang wasn't at home and there was no one I could play with. Public servers gave me a ping of 400, which means that other people would kill me before I even SEE them on my screen.

ZzZ. . .

By the way, I still hate the new phone. Give me my Almighty 6230 back! (uncle didn't reply to any messages. Calling him would only force me to hurl verbal abuse.)

CiiN Sniffed Her Pillow At 6:19 pm

Noob Dealer!

Monday, November 29, 2004

Why I hate going out?

Firstly, it's cos it rains whenever I do. .

and secondly. . .

Chubby paws in the cutest way possible at my legs whenever he 'feels' that I'm going out, cos I tend to sit in front of the mirror for quite some time, drying my hair and stuffs.. He then attempts to look REALLY SAD and stares at me with very very melancholic puppy eyes! Damn I hate that!

I made a solemn promise to him before, that once I get my driving license, I will bring him to go clubbing. But unfortunately, a cruel reality check reminded me that I am not Paris Hilton, and Chubby is not Tinkerbell, thus I do not have that kind of priviledge unless I get hold of Paris' bank account to book down the entire place just for my bros and sistas.

Today I went aimlessly wandering around Bugis Junction (take note: It's not termed as shopping) with Manda, Mei, Fang and of course, Xiang.

When we finished wandering around, and the girls decide to do real shopping, Xiang said it's about time we go home and try to repair my seemingly-beyond-hope-of-a-hell-laggy-cs.

Regarding the game, Xiang and I couldn't didn't do much. The end results? Let's just say my godly IT-inclined brother made a few of his miraculous 'clicks' on my computer to solve the problem. Let's just hope it works. I haven't tried it out yet.

While on the way home after heartlessly 'ditching' my R5 sisters at Bugis, we received an sms from the dealer I so unshamefully disgraced in my yesterday's blog entry.

Yes. The 'uncle'.

The 'uncle' sent Xiang an sms, expressing regret at having traded with us the phone, of which I don't see in what way did he have to regret about.

Allow me to quote from the sms "your phone is dusty and scratched". I was very very pissed when I saw what he typed. What a noob trader. Dusty? Hell, if you have a phone, and you leave the 'inside' parts alone, of course dust would gather in it.

Unless of course, maybe his house is a 'vacuum' and he has to carry an oxygen tank when he walks around in his own house, thus explains his complaint regarding the dust particles. Anyway, I didn't know I was supposed to 'DUST OUT' my phone and sweep and mop it or something before I traded it away.

Regarding the 'phone is scratched' part. So does HIS! Moreover, it doesn't take an idiot to see that a phone has scratches. Use your eyes to just look over the phone, you can already tell . Why on earth did he take ONE DAY to find the scratch really STUPIFIES me. What a Noob (with a capital 'N')!

This farking K700i LAGS when I pick up. LAGS when I try to do anything. Has such a UNSTABLE T9 SMS dictionary. I don't see what I had benefitted from dealing with him.

In fact I was telling Xiang to reply him back to ask if he wants to have his DARLING SE K700i back because I am willing to take back my Almighty 6230.

The K700i investment was purely because of my blog. I needed a better camera phone, and what I saw was K700i is a better choice. But what I didn't know was that photo quality SUCK BIG-TIME once you upload it to your computer (you can see for yourself with Chubby's photo that I uploaded above). Pales pathetically in comparison with the Almighty 6230.

Dang man. Those who go to HWZ to trade phone, please beware of noobs, who don't understand or CANNOT differentiate the term 'good condition' and 'scratchless' and 'brand new condition'. If I had used the second and third words to describe, then it is really my bad, but I hadn't and I didn't!

WHAT A NOOB! I'm so friggin' pissed. . . No, wait. I am going to have a B.F.!

Someone Insignificant: "What's a B.F.?"

Chubby: "Oh no! She's going to have a Bitch Fit! You'd better go!"

Cindy: "I am going to complain to your superior! NO! I am going to complain to the owner!"

*Takes a pen and paper*

Cindy: "No wait! I am GOING TO WRITE A LETTER! . . . 'Dear Mr. Royal Hampton"


Has anyone told you, you look like Denzel Washington?. . What a nice chocolate man.. Ha! ha! ha!


(Well, you won't get the above joke unless you've watched White Chicks.. Oh well. . )

CiiN Sniffed Her Pillow At 9:24 pm

I'm singing in the rain. .

Sunday, November 28, 2004

Ok. It might not sound very surprising to you but. . . well, I changed my phone again.

It's K700i right now. So far I'm loving it, but still trying to get use to the sms format since it's now # instead of 'zero' when you want to space the words apart.

So today, it was raining. Raining cats and dogs, just as the previous few days were.

I'm very popular among my friends because my weather reports are usually 99% accurate. All you have to do is to call me up and say "Eh Cin! You going out today or not?"

If answer is "Yes!". . then it will SO DEFINITELY rain that day.

It's life's way of entertaining me I guess. I have a blessed life. I'm contented with everything that I have. The only downside is that IT JUST HAS TO RAIN (sometimes) when I'm going out.

I was meeting the uncle for the K700i phone deal this afternoon. Mum refused to fetch me. Ok. So I'm 18 year old now. I decided to go to Toa Payoh ALL BY MYSELF.

I did. Holding my 6230 phone package, my handbag, and balancing an umbrella on ONE hand, while the other was talking on the phone with Xiang.

Dumb rain. Everything was going fine, until I when I was crossing the overhead bridge to the opposite side. While walking down, I slipped and fell on my butt.. and slipped FURTHER down the steps.

I was still talking on the phone then.

1.) Thank goodness I wasn't wearing a skirt (as such, I have decided to boycott skirts for one month just to play safe!).

2.) Thank goodness my 6230 wasn't scratched otherwise later very difficult to explain when dealing.

3.) Thank goodness did not dirty myself. I'm sure you've heard of stories of people falling down and got mud all over themselves.

4.) Thank goodness no scratches/bloods whatever.

& finally. . .
5.) THANK GOODNESS.. I fell down at the BOTTOM of the stairs. . and not from the TOP of the stairs, otherwise I would be 'butting' all the way down!

And when I finally reached the designated place to deal, I realised that the K700i has scratches. It wasn't VERY bad though. But Xiang, being the perfectionist that he is, was very perturbed by that fact that there are a few scratches on the phone, as well as feeling guilty since he was the one who found that deal.

Never mind. Turns out to be a rather friendly chap who dealed with us. Ok. Not chap. Is Uncle.. who, I must add, has a wife who wins my Cindy's Annual Snob Of The Year award.

She just gives me that impression. Sitting there ignoring the rest of the world while her hubby dealed with us. You know, you kinda feel Her Majesty's sitting on a throne waiting for someone to serve her.

Ok. She didn't offend me at all so I honestly shouldn't be speaking bad of her. But then few minutes later, she had to insult my (ex) phone, the Almighty 6230. The first (and only) time I heard her open her mouth was her commenting "This phone (my 6230) got scratches one!"

I said "HAHAHA lady! So do YOUR K700i! Your phone's scratched worse! We're doing a 1:1 trade. You're lucky my 6230 is not 100% perfect or else I'd take it back and go home already!

Just kidding. I didn't say that. I just bit my tongue, said that in my mind, and laughed it out to myself.

At this point in time, some of you (who don't know me well) might go, "Eee Ciin! You get 2ndhand phone ar?"

Well ladies & gentleman, for your information, I have only used 4 phones that are firsthand. Allow me to trace back my history of phones.

Philips Genie*
Nokia 3310
Nokia 6100
SE T610*
LG7100*
Z200 (blue/silver)
Z200 (white/red)
Nokia 7600*
Nokia 6230*
K700i*

*All above phones with this symbol* are 2ndhand phones... And let me know if I didn't add some here, cos I don't think I can recall the whole list.

These phones, I'm sure you've seen me with at least one of the 2ndhand ones, comes (most of the time) with unfilled warranty, and in near-to-perfect condition. So tell me, what's the problem with using 2ndhand phones? I have yet to send ANY of my phones to their Care Centres (yet).

So let's hope this K700i will not be the first, haha.

CiiN Sniffed Her Pillow At 9:58 pm

Ahma & Ahgong's birthday!

Saturday, November 27, 2004

We celebrated the birthday of my paternal grandparents today, since both are born at around the same time of the year.

My birthday greetings to them was to have a loooong life full of blessings and happiness.. just like my turtles. . .

Enjoying today's Sun-Tanning Day!

Not DIRECTLY sun-tanning of course. Half of the basin is in the shade. Helps them to shed those smaller shells much easier when sunlight is present.

The buffet that we ordered this evening was really great. It's by a company called Liang's Catering. We place our orders with them all the time, and as a result, the staffs also watched how Kilo 'grew up'. Physically of course. They came when Kilo was still a little baby puppy.

Guess what's new on the menu. Sushi.


I was delighted at the symmetric heart-shape of the sushi. Chubby was eagerly looking on. I think he's wishing that I drop it so that he can have a bite out of it.

Unknown to him, Mr. Meow was actually hiding under the buffet table already, sniffing around thinking that the food might even just fall THROUGH the table and land on the floor.

CiiN Sniffed Her Pillow At 10:13 pm

Dead boring

Friday, November 26, 2004

Typing away at work right now. Discreetly of course.

There's this shop I want to mention about in my blog today. It's located at Bugis Junction's The Edge. This shop is called Refugees or something. A real cool shop!

While Xiang was trying on clothes in the fitting room, the shop owner was pretty considerate to put A VERY VERY VERY nice bean bag in the corner of the shop for me to sit! Not exactly ME lah, but, for those who are waiting.

Its a quite NICE bean bag, with LV logos all over, like the LV's Multicolour pattern, if I'm not wrong.. you know.. the background is white, and the LV patterns are in multi-colours (as its name OBVIOUSLY suggests).

I plopped myself down on the bean bag comfortably to rest my oh-so-tired legs that flew from Toa Payoh to Bishan, Bencoolen, Bugis Village, and finally Bugis Junction.

I was facing the fitting room, so I stared real hard, to see if my eyes could penetrate the fitting room curtains that were made of some rather thin material. Thankfully, the material was quite dark in colour, so I didn't manage to peep at Xiang changing his shirt.

But however, at the corner of the fitting room, there was a gap cos the curtains could not close there properly.. and through that gap I saw something hanging on the wall. . .

It's a. . . . .



. . . . .


. . .a . . . .


CHICKEN!

Yea man! It really is! . . .

I have nothing but praises for the one who decorated that shop! Such a realistic rubber chicken hanging against the wall. I don't know if Xiang saw it, but if I were him, I would have freaked out. Speaking of which, NO WONDER the guy before him took such a long time inside the fitting room! Ha!

CiiN Sniffed Her Pillow At 4:23 pm

2nd year !

Thursday, November 25, 2004

Anyway peepz, if you've heard the music on my webpage yesterday. . Well, I've taken it off. It gives popup ads that contains virus, and I don't want anybody to blame me for it.

DO NOT SUPPORT IWEBMUSIC!
THEY SUPPORT VIRUS POPUP ADS! DAMN THEM RATS!

Today is 25th November. 2 years ago, under the most extraordinary circumstances, Xiang and I ended together (For those taking O'levels in 4E3 2 years ago, you will also notice that this is the blardy day that our O'levels ended too).



One of the most patient and quiet guy that I've ever known, Xiang was very easily remembered for being so SHY and QUIET. . . *ahem*. . . or so I thought, haha.

I don't want to go through the courtship details for fear that you might become very bored by it. Let's skip on to our two year.

It was very.. tough.. to stay together. We've been through fights and arguments. COUNTLESS fights and arguments. Sometimes there will be things 'flying across the room' at each other. Then there would be me scratching and biting him since I couldn't quite reach his face to give a slap, and to prevent me from doing so, he just puts a hand on my head to 'keep me away' from him.

Him, being a lonely child, and me, being so isolated from my brother, we kinda fight like siblings actually.

As all anniversaries, we exchanged our gifts . . .

Love the 599? K, let me talk about those shoes now. Jack Purcell's aka Converse. I bought it when I was in primary 6! I can still 'reluctantly' wear them though it's really small now (duh!!).

And I got this for him!!. . more like us. . .


That's it. I blew my entire savings. Have to go to work tomorrow. . . B.O.R.I.N.G..

CiiN Sniffed Her Pillow At 11:48 pm

PUH-LEASE!

Girls oh girls. . . YOU HAVE DONE ENOUGH DAMAGE as it is by voting and voting for Sylvester Sim!

You done your part, and the whole group of you have succeeded in your 'evilistic' mission of bringing him into the Idol Finals.

STOP.. I SAID STOP VOTING FOR HIM ALREADY!

Should I care to remind you? All winners of Idol competition will represent their respective countries to take part in World Idol.

SO WHAT if Sylvester's a rocker. SO WHAT if he's cute. I CANNOT SIT BACK AND DO NOTHING to see him representing US, SINGAPORE!

I shall vote for Taufik The Perserverer! In fact, let's ALL vote for Taufik now.

Sylvester The Unworthy has gone far enough to earn him a contract with a recording company, if spending money to buy his album is what you want.

Olinda deserves to represent us, yet you people. . I mean GIRLS, with your selfish reasons, treaded over the limit by voting non-stop for Sly and ousted Oli The Deserving!

I'm sick and tired of it! Damn!

CiiN Sniffed Her Pillow At 1:41 pm

There goes my beauty sleep :(

Wednesday, November 24, 2004

Blogspot couldn’t be accessed, so I’m actually typing this entry on Microsoft Words. Will have to take the trouble to save this document, and then cut paste back to the blog.

Was rudely awakened this morning by a call from this number 9750-****. If there is anything I hate a lot, then one of it has got to be being jerked awake by my phone.

It’s like my phone grew invisible hands, and slapped me non-stop, all the while wailing “WAKE UP CIN! WAKE UP CIN!” You have any idea how irritating is that?

Anyway, the caller is some weird lonely guy I assume. “Are you Cindy?”
(I don’t know why but somehow all my morning calls begin with that dumb question.)

“Yes, I am. You are?”

Ok, and he introduced himself, saying he is Name-Has-Been-Forgotten from India.

“So are you studying or working?”

I was shocked. He knew my name and number. I thought he was a friend or something, but he don’t even know I’m studying or working!?

Answering the question would be fatal. It would give him the clue that I am also a very desperately lonely old soul out there who appreciates his call.

“How did you get my number?” I banged the table and asked.

He chose not to answer my question and repeated “You studying now or working?”

After I repeated my question for 5 times, he finally admitted “I found it on a piece of paper.”

WTF!

If there’s someone out there who’s been writing my name and hp number on a piece of paper, and then throwing it all over the place like hell notes in those vampire shows, then you better not let me catch you, or I’d impale you on a stake and stick you in the middle of the concourse of TP.

If, however, in the very rare case that my name/number was indeed written on the paper, and you accidentally drop it, I would suggest you step out of living in those medieval times, and buy yourself a handphone! You can at least save telephone numbers in there instead of taking a stack of paper around like it’s your very own Yellow Pages or something.

School will be starting on 6th December, and I've found out that I'm in class 2M02! Same as Sharon, Shaozong and Jenn! WOOOTZ!! What can be better than being in the same class as your Sem 1.1 mates! Moreover Sharon and I are also in the same tutorial group for PSQ which means we are so gonna stick together like two lesbians throughout this semester, haha!

I'm looking forward to it!

But I'm not going to appreciate spending so much money on the dumb textbooks which we are 'not advised to sell' according to the lecturers. ZZZ.

And also, Man Utd won Lyon 2-1! I'm no longer the Man Utd fanatic that I was, but this is the 1000th game under the reigns of Sir Alex Ferguson, yup, the man who led United to win the treble in 98/99 (hope I got the years correct. I'm so old already)!

He deserves some recognition in the very least though, despite his foul tempers. Happy 1000th Game to you old man!

CiiN Sniffed Her Pillow At 5:32 pm

Those were the days, my friend. .

Tuesday, November 23, 2004

I suddenly really really missed those days in Bendemeer. (My couz, Jack had to remind me of it all when he asked about our co-hort's grad nite!)

Oh ya, by the way, congrats! The !@#$%ing O'levels are finally over!

*Ciin sighs and starts to sing a song. . . *

Once upon a time there was a tavern,
Where we used to raise a glass or two,
Remember how we laughed away the hours,
And dreamed of all the great things we would do?




Those were the days my friend,
We thought they'd never end,
We'd sing and dance forever and a day,
We'd live the life we choose, we'd fight and never lose,
For we were young, and sure to have our way.



Then the busy years went rushing by us
We lost our starry notions on the way,
If, by chance, I'd see you in the tavern,
We'd smile at one another and we'd say:

Those were the days my friend, we thought they'd never end
We'd sing and dance forever and a day,
We'd live the life we choose, we'd fight and never lose,
For we were young, and sure to have our way.

Just tonight, I stood before the tavern,
Nothing seemed the way it used to be,
In the glass, I saw a strange reflection,
Was that lonely fellow really me?

Those were the days my friend, we thought they'd never end
We'd sing and dance forever and a day, We'd live the life we choose, we'd fight and never lose, For we were young, and sure to have our way.

Through the door, there came familiar laughter,
I saw your face and heard you call my name
Oh, my friends, we're older but no wiser,
For, in our hearts, the dreams are still the same,



Those were the days my friend, we thought they'd never end
We'd sing and dance forever and a day, We'd live the life we choose, we'd fight and never lose, For we were young, and sure to have our way.

Song title: Those Were The Days
Words and Music by: Gene Raskin




Ok, end of song. Let's snap back to Grad Nite of 2002 Bendeemeer Secondary.

What I remembered of my Graduation Night? Of course there were the usual BLA BLA BLA by our then principal, Mrs Karen Oei, as well as BLA BLA BLA by the VIP, and then there was this buffet, with really little food. It's not only MISERABLE in terms of amount, but also in terms of taste.

For example the chicken wings. The best were taken, left for the miserable wings of what looked like baby pigeons! Not chickens but pigeons!

And then, we were 'forced' to watch the then vastly popular performance, Les Miserables, acted and casted by true-blood Bendemeerians. They did a great show!

I didn't stay on to watch, but I'm pretty sure they did a great show :)

With prefects stationed around all the entrance/exits of the school, they thought they could prevent us, the graduating seniors, from 'ponteng-ing' our graduation night. The brainless in-charge had no idea what Bendemeerians are made of. We relied on a few contacts among the prefectorial board, some smiles, some winks and the whole lot of us got away scot-free.

We ran out of school (actually it's walk). . and we never looked back. . . until the day where we had to go back to take results, of course!

Question: Run where? Home?

Answer: No way! To Parklane to play pool! The whole lot of us!

CiiN Sniffed Her Pillow At 8:27 pm

Hairy stuffs.

Monday, November 22, 2004

*More MORE photos of Jiu Zhai Gou, Chengdu, Meishan, Emei shan and Leshan have been uploaded at Webshots. Scroll down the above box (beside Pig pic) to Photos! link.*

I'm pretty sure one day, blogspot will start charging every one of us who have a blog here, and then we'd have to 'move out' in a flash before we get charged.

Or maybe the Hello prog that enables us to upload photos to our blogspots will start imposing photo limits (currently there are NO photo limits, so upload all you want!).

Now on to today's topic regarding hair. Well, I may not have hair nice or long enough to be the main star of a shampoo advertisement, but I think I have enough reasonable tips and advice gained from many many hair magazines, to put up here on today's blog.

1.) Use wooden combs. No static :) But don't use it when your hair is wet. Wood rots with moisture!

2.) Invest in a good hairbrush. I mean brush. Not comb. The world's most perfect (and expensive) combs, are made of animal hair. It may be expensive (like the way Anna Sui's hairbrush costs $68 or around there), but hey, you could use it for a lifetime.

3.) Always remember your hair is the weakest when wet. Don't comb it when wet. If you have to, especially since you have short hair (and need to find the parting), then use a WIDE-toothed brush. Minimal contact with your hair, so you damage it less..

4.) When drying your hair, since it's wet again, you have to remember it's weak. Drying roughly, such as rubbing hair together in towel with the strength of the Incredible Hulk will definitely cause split-ends, WHICH is disastrous for those of us with short hair (guys included). You have long hair, just trim it shorter. But for those with short hair, trim, and you'd be almost nearly bald.

5.) Don't dye your hair. Advice is given, but I doubt many of you would follow it since I don't, haha! Tips are Tips. Advice are advice. You read, and you know about it, but whether you will FOLLOW it is up to you :)

6.) When blow-drying your hair, use the 'cool air' option instead. Cooler air closes your hair cuticles something something. Helps prevent split-ends to a certain extent. If you're too lazy to blow-dry your hair, all the better. Let it just air-dry by itself.

7.) Similar to Advice 6, when bathing, rinse your hair with warm water. Shampoo it. Then rinse away the shampoo with warm water. Condition. Then wash away the hair conditioner with COOL water so as to seal the ends of our hair cuticles after it has absorbed the goodness of the conditioner.

8.) Out of all the advice, this has got to be the most optional option. Another main reason that Manda told me about, regarding how the hell we get so much split-ends, is because of our pillow. Yup. When we sleep, the ends of our hair rubs against the fabric of the pillow. She recommended using some satin cloth to put it over your pillow before you lie down, but I think silk would do. It's also much easier to find in the market. Oh. . wait a minute, I forgot I'm no longer in China.

Additional message: Have you ever wondered about Shampoo bottles? There are usually 3 types.

1) For Normal Hair
2) For Oily Hair
3) For Dry Hair

So let's say I have dry hair. I want my hair to be more oily right? So I should buy the 'For Oily Hair' one right? You get my meaning? I think they should explain themselves on the bottle a little more clearly!

CiiN Sniffed Her Pillow At 10:27 am

I'm still rattling about China~

Sunday, November 21, 2004

The good thing is that in Jiu Zhai Gou & Chengdu, the time zone was the same, so there was no jet lag when I went there, or came back.

Val, here's a picture of one of the very nice tofu dishes I had at the Tofu Banquet:


I was rudely awakened by Xiang, who claims that I called him at 1am this morning, so he thought I had something urgent to tell him.

This, my dear friends, is the very best demonstration of what they call "Karma"; what goes around, comes around. My 1am call to him was actually a nuisance call, trying to wake him up with the irritating shrilly rings of his handphone ringtone.

The bad thing was: He didn't wake up to pick up the phone (I shall adjust it to max volume the next time round). I became the victim instead.

I've been delaying and delaying my time, so right now, once and for all, I will upload all that I need to upload from China to end another historic episode of my life. Gawd, I hate the food!

Allow me to introduce the whole trip again. I went to Jiu Zhai Gou. 9 Zhai Gou.

The 9 stands for the 9 Tibetan tribes(Zhai) that used to stay there in the valley("Gou"). Thus, this very cool name emerged. A relatively 'young' (10 years old) place that was developed into a tourist attraction, this blardy ulu place takes almost more than 24 hours to travel there by bus. It took us 2 and a half days to get there since we have to spend the night sleeping in the different hotels.

An advise to all: When you visit China, choose the package that has more days, although it is more expensive. By doing so, you will not need to rush from place to place. We were one of the only 10 day group there, and were always the first to reach the hotel, and the last to leave. Less rushing = Less chances to fall sick.

I am the type of person who can fall asleep on the bus within 20 minutes, despite the constant bumps along the road. Road conditions are not very good most of the time. It's rainy, and muddy, and the direction of the road we traveled on was nearer to the edge. Our vehicle only need to be lightly 'kissed' by another to be sent tumbling down the mountain.

Our tour guides were very professional, doing all sorts of things to distract our attention such as playing movies, or karaokes of S.H.E in order to keep us from looking outside.

The worse thing was, weather was SO dry. My face was cracking like dry mud. The next worse thing was. . . you. . . well, can't drink alot of water. Not that you can't. It's best not to. China's toilet are. . . you know lahz. Um.. door-less. I wanted to take a photo to post on my blog of how their toilets look like. . but. . well, there were always people using the toilets, and I didn't want to be slapped by them since there was no door. Oh well, guess you don't have the luck to see it yet, haha.



Weishan the Terrorist, at the Red March War Memorial. According to our guide, the 'Red Army' marched up this mountain during some revolutionary period or something. I wasn't paying attention because I was too busy role-playing Santa Claus VS Terrorist with Weishan.

Aiya, to make a extremely long story short. . (but it is still considered long story anyway), we reached Jiu Zhai Gou after getting off our coach and hiking quite a distance, considering the air was quite thin and you pant quite easily.

Jiu Zhai Gou is a scenic place. They have like 10 over different lakes for you to view. Some lakes are big, some lakes are small. The most popular lakes, or rather, the only lakes whose names I can remember, is Five Colour Lake, Panda Lake, Panda's Bar Lake, and 2 baby lakes.

The baby lakes, whose name I can't recall, etches itself deep into my memory because they are the two smallest lakes in the whole Jiu Zhai Gou. Small, but DEEP. Approximately 100+ metres deep although they are only as big as 2 olympic sized swimming pools.


5 Colours Lake. Obviously, the name is gathered from the different colours in the water.

I won't add the photos of the other lakes, because I can't tell which is which. All are trees+water photos. Hard to tell the difference, haha.



Amanda, Yin etc etc thinks that I am going on a mass shopping trip there. Turned out I didn't. They even asked me to help them buy as many fake addidas as I can find. It's pretty hard to find those stuffs when you are stuck on a mountain in the middle of the winter season. In case they didn't believe me, here's a photo of the shops there:



And lastly, when it comes to mentioning about hotels, there is only ONE hotel worth mentioning. Jiu Zhai Tian Tang. Tian Tang means Paradise, and BOY does that hotel live up to its name! It's that hotel that has the lambourghini on rental.


The glass dome that covers the ancient city.


The site of Jiu Zhai Tian Tang, was a site where there used to be a war among these tribes, the Qiang tribe and another tribe, with old ancient buildings restored. They even had a glass dome build OVER the old buildings.




I was fascinated by anything ancient (except humans). It's one of my lifetime goal to go to Egypt at least once. But then on the last day, Qu Li, our tour guide, told us that within Chengdu itself, there were already 400++ ancient city sites. I didn't feel 'special' being there anymore.

Most of the hotels we went there were 2 stars or 3 stars, but Tian Tang is rated ULTRA 5 stars. Yup. We saw the plaque. There was the word ULTRA there. It houses an exhibition hall, its own shopping centre etc, and according to Qu Li, 2 days is not enough for you to explore the whole place.

We wasted alot of money to watch some performances, of which the performance was magnificient in terms of size, but the storyline was pretty crappy. Horses were running about on stage, and apparently, some even did their BIG business on stage itself.


But good thing was, we managed to party through the night with the tribes.

Not through the night. Actually, for 30 minutes, before they became electricity-bill-conscious, and decided to off all the lights after the music ended, repeatedly announcing audiences to get out through the fire exit. :)

One of the downside of the trip: It was 10 long days. I missed Xiang badly :(






The trip was tiring. But everyone remained quite cheerful ...


. . . despite the tough weather conditions.


Thankfully, none of us got really sick, except for the occasional symptons of food poisoning that I won't go into detail.

Tian Tang was such a high-class place, we sometimes even thought we were touring an European country!


There was another attraction that we went to, besides Jiu Zhai Gou. It's called Fairy Lake. Legend says that there were this two fairies who were sisters. The older sister snatched the boyfriend of the younger sister. Sad and lonely, the younger sister left Jiu Zhai Gou, determined to create a more beautiful place. Thus, Fairy Lake was created.


It took 3 hours to travel there. On the way, we felt like we were in heaven what with all the clouds around us. Mum and 1st Aunt weren't feeling too well so they didn't go.


Now, how could anyone claim to have visited China if you haven't seen their National Treasures, Changing Faces and Pandas!




Changing Faces was definitely entertaining. Although the performer didn't 'cover' his face properly, and I saw how it was changed, I still couldn't figure out how the hell it worked. Must have been velcro or something? Haha!

The Panda Zoo we went to was, well, full of pandas. We were really lucky to go in the morning because that is the time when they are most active.



Guangyuan would have LOVED to be there.

Another stroke of luck! There was a baby panda that was born around 20+ days ago that we managed to see!


Another new thing to learn. There is another breed of panda called the Red Panda. But my personal opinion was that a Fox had an affair with a Panda and a racoon.


Then of course, we went to Mount Emei. Wrong move. We almost froze to death over there. Either that, or we would have slipped and fell on the melting ice, and gone into a coma. My girlfriend, Zhiruo took this group photo for us, so she wasn't in the picture. Sorry GUYS. Bet many of you are disappointed.




It was really tough trying to make your way up and down the stairs without actually falling down. The next time I go to Mount Emei during winter, I am SO going to take a sleigh so that while the rest of the losers are holding on to the railings, I am going to slide down the snow, past all of them MUAHA.. MUAHA.. MUAHAHAHA *evil laughter*.

But the very best thing that had happened at Mount Emei. . was that Weishan and I made our first Snowman. He is small I know, but, well, the rest of the group was moving off to the gondola so we had to do a fast job. Behind us, is the peak of Mount Emei.



We also went to see the world's biggest carved in Buddha. A awesome man-made statue of the Si Jia Mo Ni Buddha carved into a mountain where the Min Jiang and 2 other rivers merged, making the waters there extremely choppy and dangerous. Since history, there were many boats that had overturned and sank in that area, thus a monk called Haitong decided to carve the statue there to hopefully calm the choppy waters.

It took him years and as he went around collecting donations to complete this holy task, the greedy and corrupted officials wanted to keep the great amount of money that he had collected. Of course Haitong did not agree, thus he said "I'd rather give you my eyes than let you have the money for the statue!"

The officials thought he was kidding until one day, they really received his eyeballs through the olden days' courier express, and from then on, (OBVIOUSLY) Haitong became blind, and relied on others to complete the Buddha.

Today, this statue is marketed as a tourist attraction known as Le Shan Da Fo (Buddha of Leshan), with people near and far coming to pray to it. And less than 300 metres away on the mountain, also stands a pagoda, where Haitong was buried (not included in photo). Restoration works are still underway.

CiiN Sniffed Her Pillow At 2:39 pm

China. . . phobia and mania.

Saturday, November 20, 2004

Everyone asked me how was my trip, so I am going to put the answer here, and don't ask me about it anymore because I am developing a phobia of it.

Question: How was your trip to China?

Answer: Bad. Hate the food and the weather. I am never going back unless I can bring a carton of instant noodles, and many bottles of Vitamin C.

But I have to admit, shopping was good.

I used to be crazy over Thailand. Everything's so cheap, it sometimes is hard to believe. But over the years, thanks to the loyal and fanatic patronage of Singaporeans like us rushing to book airtickets of those budget airlines, and then spending our hard-earned Singapore Dollar to buy their Thai Baht, their currency have risen and it is still rising as I speak... or type.

Now, I am no longer a Thai fanatic. I am a China shopping fanatic! You might argue it's the Made-In-China reason that caused the goods there to be so cheap. Quality sucks. But I don't see why I shouldn't buy the blouse. It costed a mere S$6. Even if it spoils after I wear it for the 30th time, I wouldn't consider it a waste of money.

China China China. Let's talk about Chinese. The language. I have a friend who constantly likes to correct us: "For gawd's sake people! We ARE Chinese, but we don't SPEAK Chinese! We speak MANDARIN!".

Ok. Next story.

I would really like to seriously start learning to play CS. In fact, other than the thousands of commands that Xiang has yet to teach me, I think I do pretty well walking and running and crawling around in the game! *CENSORED* (Let's leave out the buying weapons, shooting and accuracy part)



Right now I lack a CD key for me to play the game online. *Gives Darius a killer stare* Bro! When you gonna pass it to me!

CiiN Sniffed Her Pillow At 10:08 pm

Crazy Screaming People

Friday, November 19, 2004

Yup. Crazy screaming people. To be exact: Crazy screaming GIRLS . . who voted and voted non-stop and spent all their precious pocket money just to keep Sylvester in the Singapore Idol competition. They succeeded. Taufik, you're our only hope to show that Evil does not triumph over Good.

According to the weighing scales in China(they have them everywhere in every hotel we went), I had put on almost 5kg while I was there. Amazing right? But I seriously do not feel that I am any fatter, nor do I feel that I have any reason to be fat.

After all, I went to Szechuan, famous (but to me INfamous) for their vegetable dishes. EVERY OTHER DISH. . . is vegetables.



If you notice carefully from the wonderful photo taken by me, every other dish is GREEN. The best dish? No doubt, the fried omelette that has only a few pieces left.

It was the only thing I even touched. Imagine, non-stop, every lunch and dinner.. omelette rice. . omelette rice. . with the occasional soup added if it tasted edible enough. By Day 4, even the omelette tasted yucky to me. It was fried with GENEROUS amounts of oil. Not at all appetizing in the long term.

Another weird thing I found out in China was. . . they have extremely cheap beer. . . and extremely expensive carbonated drinks (Pepsi, Coke, etc). Every restaurant we dined in has two bottles of beer and one bottle of Pepsi per table.

If you decide not to have the beer, you can 'exchange' the two bottles for ONE Pepsi. Price is 2:1. We learn something new everyday.

The view on the way to Jiu Zhai Gou was magnificient. Incomparable. I felt at mercy at the powers of Mother Nature. A careless mistake may send a tour coach tumbling down the steep slopes of the mountain.



Traffic jam. Traffic police wouldn't let the buses through unless you had those 'snow chains' to tie around them tyres.




It wasn't a one-way trade for traveling through such danger. We were greatly rewarded with the incredible sights and sounds of the local tribes that we passed.


PS: Those are not the tribe people! Its my relatives who went together with me!!
From left: 2nd Aunt & Husband Uncle Philip, Me & Mum, 1st Aunt, her daughter Weishan, and Aunt's husband Uncle Anthony.



Another valuable lesson I learnt from the trip: Snow is FUN!!!!!!!!!





But only to a CERTAIN extent. With enough marketing theories to back it up, we, the consumers, are sick and tired of seeing snow within a few days that we don't even bother looking outside at the white world anymore.




But the worst part of the trip. . isn't the snow. It was the constant feeling of being out of breath that was being felt by everyone in the group. . The lack of oxygen in the thin air, at 3000++km above sea level, we had to be equipped not only with a bottle of oxygen, but also the most effective medicine that prevents and treats altitude problems/mountain sickness.. made from the Tibetan flower Hong Jing Tian (direct translation is "Red Shadow Sky") found only on high mountainous areas.

And one more piece of advice to those who have seen my photos and fallen head over heels in love with Jiu Zhai Tian Tang. . You'd better go there with a valid international driving license because they offer this for rental!


To Be Continued. . . .(On another day lah, of course)

CiiN Sniffed Her Pillow At 10:14 pm

Welcome me Back!

Yesh everybody, Cindy's home! Reached a few hours ago.

I did try to access blogspot from China. Unfortunately, I guess the creator of blogspot has offended them or something, because the I.E over there just REFUSED to open up any blogspot pages.

Who cares? :P I'm back in Singapore right now. . .

My digicam batteries died on me repeatedly because it was SO F****** COLD!! But very luckily, my very genius-y brain forced me to throw my precious and loyal 6230 as another backup equipment should a China robber fall in love with my digicam and rob it from me.

But. . . the worse is yet to come. I have just uploaded the photos (Xiangxiang tankute for ur bluetooth!! *blink blink smile smile*) and realised to my utmost horror...

WHY THE PHOTOS LOOK LIKE I CUT PASTE THERE ONE!!!

Very pissed. Remember I said before I bought a red jacket for easier identification among the crowd? Turns out that it made me stand out TOO much that I look like a fake object in the photos admidst the beautiful scenery. . .




Check this out!





Scenery nice nice right? Will upload more photos when I feel more refreshed. Right now, it's time for a well-deserved beauty sleep!

CiiN Sniffed Her Pillow At 3:32 am