August 29, 2005 Archives

If you are in Hong Kong for a while and wanted to go somewhere relatively urban, and cheaper than Japan... then Singapore could be a great stop for you too. The ticket cost me something like 1100HKD with all taxes included (roughly 185CAD), and a youth hostel is about 18SGD (14CAD) per night.

Was in S'pore in end of May, beginning of June. Was so hot, unbelievable hot. Not sure if Singapore is a sunnier town than HK, but it was mostly on the sunshine side most of the days I was in the Malaysian peninsula. Had not posted many pics after the first day, so here we are.

Bunk bed at my youth hostel in Singapore, the Betel Nut.

Finest xiao long bao skins ever, at the Singapore branch of famous Chinese dining chain from Taiwan, Din Tai Fung.

Me, enjoying a not-oversweet-like-in-North-America lime juice, from Old chang Kee, a famous counter 小吃 (xiao chi) chain in Singapore.

Feet of me and K, my guide in S'pore. ^^;

Kaya toasts must be enjoyed with runny and wet eggs... (Ced: "Hmm, not so bad, maybe I should order one for myself lah")

Eggs, runny and wet, with soya sauce, the Singapore-style (Ced: "Hmm, maybe I'll settle with my okonomiyaki then...")

It's not an impression... We spent the whole day eating. :D This is a so-called "hawker centre", an organized outdoor food court selling street-side-ish foods, another particularity of Singapore (and variants can be found elsewhere in the Malaysian peninsula, I guess, but surely not as organized, with the scoring system, as in S'pore...).

Smoking kills. :P

MRT station at Ang Mo Kio, one of the most well-known new towns of Singapore.

Durian is a public threat in any Southeast Asian country.

The National University of Singapore (NUS) is probably (on par with HKU, I think) one of the top universities in Asia. A nice campus (in a tropical country - so that kicks our McGill campus good for only 3 months a year, in the ass) southwest of central Singapore.

Tastes like Pocari Sweat, but isn't Pocari Sweat. It's 100-Plus, one of Singapore/Malaysia's home brew (and distributed by Coca-Cola).

Chicken rice from the Makansutra Gluttons Bay venue on the Esplanade (aka The Durian, see two pics down). And some sort of Indian-style pain-doré with ground meat...

Spicy noodles wrapped in banana (?) leaves. Huge lineup to that particular stand, had time to ponder about getting chicken rice, get it, and get the Indian bread, eat both, before K arrived with them noodles (and they would've been better if I weren't complaining of heat-related sickness of too-much-food, bleh).

Beautiful Esplanade at night from the bridge to the Merlion.

A statue of a giant overweight pigeon (if you see what I see), near the United Overseas Bank Centre on Boat Quay.

Hmm! Merlion chocolates!

Joo Chiat Avenue, on which the hostel was located. Famous, picturesque street of southeast Singapore quarter by day, what seems to be a red-light district by night.

Another one of those hawker centres.

Rows of colourful houses.

More houses (and the guy living behind where I stood came to ask what I was doing on a Thursday morning taking pictures of private houses like that...).

The Katong/Joo Chiat neighborhood is home to members of several cultures found in Singapore, including the Hindu one.

Warning sign, to be understood by everyone...

My plane leaving Changi Airport, flying above the rows of ships supplying/transiting by Singapore.

Food unboard the Cathay Pacific flight taking me back to Hong Kong, my temporary home.

If only skies could be as beautiful over here...

Of course, it takes two to tango, or to anything-anything. But abruptly, the lights in the house flickered, and first thing I notice is that the streetlights are out (but a few lights outside our house, and the neighbors, are still working), and the neighborhood looks a suburb saving on electricity (of course, we are in Montreal, where energy is of hydroelectric origin, thus popularly thought to be free). It's prettier that way, nonetheless.

I'm going to post pics of Singapore and Hong Kong in a sec. Yay, so much free time to slay...

For the good reason that I almost slept 12 hours, but at least slightly intercepted twice or thrice by random noises in the house (like father + brother going to work at 8AM and mother going to work at 9AM). I do a good job repressing. What usually upsets me in real life, instead comes to upset me in dream life. So this is all good, b/c dreaming something upsetting and then waking up, is somewhat better than dreaming something that you like and realizing all along that it was a dream. And then I guess it's like contemplating that picture of Mount Fuji with some sakura branches in the foreground; or that empty field in the middle of nowhere/Iwate; or that impossible certainly Photoshopped view of the Pyramids (b/c you don't see tourists, nor city of Cairo blocking the view). I do a good job repressing. It's a change in attitude that I need/needed. You know, things are never as bad, and you're the only one who can make it worse (by consciously thinking about it in a bad way).

Sleeping 12 hours is always a bit strange, like a special thing that only happens once or twice a year (although it must've happened several times already this year). There was no particular reason why I was going to sleep 12 hours, just that I felt extremely bleh all the way from Ile Ste-Helene to home. I might have slept 6-7 hours the nights before, but I'm not making an effort to do anything hard during my days. In the end of this, I'd like to find some job that I like and can spend entire days on.

In the "letting go" category, I've stopped answering daily affairs issues on the CTF mailing list... That must've been a realization made somewhere during my stayaway in Asia. I only reply to various occasional geekish, joke-ish stuff that passes on the list, even if once in a while I feel like saying how little tech-g33kness there's left in that group.

The trip in Asia lasted four months and a half (19 weeks and a half), including a 3-week hiatus in Egypt, of all places. It gave me that much time leaving behind Montreal and everything else that the change in the landscape/weather would be the best imagery to describe what it felt like (departing as the city was covered in white, but starting to melt, as per the not-so-cold temperature, and then coming back home when we're well into the beginning of the end, with everyone in town wearing shorts, and our house A/C'ed to the max).