20 km cycle

I cycled with Julia for 2 and a half hours. Solid. Only break twice, 5 minutes. During dinner, I couldn't be bothered to talk to her. Tiredness just oozes out of your body. It was a good ride though. We rode from bicycle shop located at the VJC bridge over ECP to Changi Beach, and back. We probably completed nearly 20 km! What a day.

The Bummer

With nothing but time on my hands, I've been bumming around lately. I've spent countless of hours on mysoju.com watching Shining Inheritance. Each episode is 1 hour and I've completed 28 episodes of that. Please don't watch it ok! It's addictive and many girls will lie to you and say it's good, but really it's not. It's so slow-moving, it's only saving grace is dramatic plot. The story is so twisted and dramatic that you can't help wonder how everything's going to unfold itself. When it finally did, it did not happen because the lead actors were smart or witty, it was just a string of coincidences that led to the ending. The are a couple of reasons why I bothered finishing them. First, I have a lot of time. Second, I kept hoping that the cute supporting Korean actor would succeed and become the lead actor. (It never happened)

If I were the director, there'll be many things I would change. After all, such Korean dramas serve to make you feel good. Watching Shining Inheritance is like eating average Ba Chor Mee.

On Sunday, I picked up a reserved book at the library - Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix. It's my first time reserving a book, do you know it costs $1.55? Previously I had only read Book 1-4, after watching the Harry Potter movie 6, i decided to fill in the gap by reading book 5. I must say that J K Rowling is really imaginative. However I felt that HP was pretty much just an angry boy for the first 3/4 of the book. Because the reader can only know what Harry knows, I felt quite bored reading it. For most part, HP was just an angry teen who felt that the adults were treating him unfairly.

From now on, I'm just gonna read books, take MacRitchie walks, study Finance and go to the gym. Sigh, just a few more weeks to school.

MacRitchie Reservoir walk

Clar and I walked for 3.5 hours today at MacRitchie Reservoir, covering more than 10km. And mind you, half of what we covered was done on earthy soil that had twisted roots coming out. There were plenty of slopes and steps. We sure worked out a sweat, oh poor legs.

The tree top bridge had a pretty good view of the forest and Upper Pierce Reservoir. As we walked along the boardwalk at MacRitchie, you can't help feeling that Singapore is really beautiful. Sure, you can't compare it to bigger countries which have far better breakthtaking views, but it's definitely a feat to see MacRitchie Reservoir in the city.

A feel-good day

I had a really awesome time yesterday. First, in the afternoon, I met Clarinda whom I've not seen for a year. The long-standing joke among us is, we're the close buddies that only meet once a year. She invited me to her gym at Fitness First, located at AMK Hub.

Oh, it's such a funky gym! I love the toilets best. It's got a sleek woody interior and large posters of handsome men. It's the best gym toilet I've seen. Anyway, we spend two hours at Fitness First. 2 hours! I usually do some cardio stuff for 30 minutes and then go. But Fitness First makes you want to stay. Ok, enough free marketing for them already.

In the evening, Clar, Indra and I met up at Crystal Jade. My first time there in a long while and I love Crystal Jade. So food was good, but company was way better. In the middle of our conversation, Indra suddenly asked, 'Clar, I wanna ask you, what's your cup size ah?' We talked about experiences of school, friends, romance and with that, heartbreaks, and just plain nonsense.

All in all, it was one of those feel-good days. 'I feel good!... '

No more bad driving

Remember a post sometime ago when I said I'm bad at driving? And I was trying to handle the latest manual car that my Dad acquired? Yeah, I've been driving it everyday alone. Abi asked me, 'Now that you can drive by yourself, do you feel empowered?' I said, 'Yeah, I REALLY do.'

A week ago, I took out the Aveo, the first time after coming back from Amsterdam and the first time I'm driving after 3 weeks.[note: I can be a really lousy driver.] At a steep slope, where I had to stop before turning because of oncoming traffic from the right, I braked and pulled the handbrake. Now's the difficult part: I had to balance the clutch and accelerator without stalling or rolling back. To my credit, I didn't stall, but definitely rolled back. And who's behind me? A nice, big Mercedes Benz! Anyway, the fella got scared and quickly went to the next lane. It was a bad experience.

Anyway, I'm fine now. I'm more or less ok with driving the Aveo. And I feel really good. Praise God!

Amsterdam VI (last)

Living in a hostel is not easy especially when you lead a pretty cushy life in Singapore. Mine was a 16-bedded room, all female. Oh yeah, that colourful bag is mine. Bought it for 12.5 Euros to help contain my shopping items. When I retrieved it from the luggage holding area, I saw a note stuck to my bag saying, 'Cool bag man!'
This is the street which leads to my hostel. Take a look at the short cylindrical metal structure in the centre of the foreground. There's also the traffic light-looking thing on the right. Those are signs to indicate the entrance of a red light district. Apparently, my hostel is located just right at the edge of it. 3 doors away from my hostel is a prostitute already, though we did not discover this until 4th day. (We had only turned left when leaving the hostel then)
This plain empty space is in front of the street where I stayed. A very beautiful fort (or part of it) that is now a restaurant situates there.
The traditional windmill located in Zaanse Schans.
Walking down the streets of Haarlem, though this is no special scene. Red bricked buildings are packed close to each other. In Amsterdam, there's always this summer feeling around. Living in Singapore, we don't really appreciate the sunny weather we have all year round. But everywhere we go, people are happy that it's summer. But that's pure guesswork on my part, maybe Amsterdammers are just happy people. :) Or maybe the weather in St. Petersburg was way colder and wetter (sometimes) so coming here was a good change.

Ok, no more posts on my recent travels anymore. Other pictures I have won't really tell you much. Sigh, when can I fly off again???

Amsterdam Part III

Cool wedding car!!!
The famous Vondel Park of Amsterdam. We cycled inside. It was so nice seeing families together having picnic there. What was especially heartening was seeing a lot of fathers spending time with their young children. I recall a man jogging in the park and pushing a baby pram at the same time!
We went to Heineken Brewery. The first Heineken brewery was in Amsterdam. It's more like a museum now. It cost 15 euros to get in but it comes with 2 free drinks! I highly recommend this place to anyone who will visit Amsterdam.
On a Sunday, we decided to cycle to Zaanse Schans, which is about 20 km away from Amsterdam, North of Holland. It was quite an adventure, we passed by many scenic areas like the one shown in the above. What a treat to see the sky all the way to its horizon. At Zaase Schans, you can see traditional windmills. Honestly, the place is overrated and only tourists go there. I didn't get good pictures of them. But you can always google them out right? :)
I rode this bike for 3 days. It's apparently a child bike cos the smallest adult bike was too big for me to handle. We biked a lot, so much that I had 7 bruises, a fall and a butt ache at the end of it. Traffic in the Netherlands flows on the right. Same for all cyclists, so it was rather hard to get used to it at first. Because 1 in 2 people's personal transport is biking in Amsterdam, you can imagine it's not a leisurely thing. It did get us from Point A to B fast though.