one island, 2 worlds' difference

On my first visit to Legoland, I was surprised by how they actually built more stuff about Singapore than other places. this picture show some of the locales in Singapore which most should find familiar, the Singapore Flyer, the city areas, the Singapore River and the Keppel Harbour at the back. they had some more Singapore related stuff on the other side, but I couldn't capture all in one picture. it's interesting and funny at the same time, i actually find it contradicting to the actual condition in Singapore. though they got the structures correct, it seems way too peaceful compared to the reality, I'm almost envious. how so?? just look at the traffic and the Lego people. if only Singapore isn't as hectic as this, they probably got this part right too.

silent night

In the fire stations, we have a "guardhouse" known as the sentry post, the one in our station is only a little bigger than a telephone booth. The sentry duties are divided among NSF fire fighters for day and night, each last up to 2 hours. The main job is to operate the gates and recording visits mostly, and if there's a call the fire fighter must already have his equipments on standby. I usually leave mine on the appliance, so when i open the gates i can just wait for the vehicle to pick me up from here. on some nights, it can be really quiet like the picture, had to make friend with a baby lizard to keep myself awake.

set rain to the fire

Before that start of every shift, we need to warm-up all our appliances to make sure it's in working order. on this particular morning was kinda different as you can see... why would anyone try to warm up the equipments in the rain and taking pictures while at it??? well... it wasn't raining, there's actually a new pump ladder in the house, and we were getting to know more about the new fire truck. The new fire truck has got a new remote controlled jet monitor mounted on it, which it can rotate 360 degrees, its jet reaching a maximum length of 60m (up to 8+ storeys), and it can switch between spray and jet. in the picture is the spray mode, which look like its raining when its not.

one couple 2 wedding

This is a picture of me attending a wedding of my god-sister. the god-sister thing is actually unofficial, but we went through alot of s*** back in the sales line, we took care of one another among our working crew and i knew her for about 5 years now. it was her most important day, and im honoured to be there for her. The wedding wasn't like the usual malay wedding because my "god- bro in law" over here is not a malay guy. so actually the wedding span for 2 days to cater to both sides of the family(because the extended family from her side stretches quite far). i really admire the courage of my "bro in law" because he has to convert to marry my god-sister, because i know not many guys are willing to go that far. but i guess that also means that she really found someone who loves her. im so glad for them.

whose idea was this???

on certain shifts as the LF crew (previously mentioned), we go out for hydrant testing to check on the physical condition and the pressure. A fire hydrant is usually located behind the HDB buildings for most neighbourhood areas, and its usually on the grass patch or the near the bushes and plants. but this... this is probably the most flawed, worst chosen location to place a fire hydrant ever. it could have been there first before the carpark was built. either way... someone has been a real 'genius'. problem for this is that if there's a fire on either of these 2 blocks, it will be too hard to access this particular hydrant and we'll end up using another hydrant which is hundreds metres away. also, the water and hoses would either cause damage or smudge the residents cars which causes unwanted and unnecessary complains. for the same reason we couldn't test this hydrant.

night outing of doom...

On a particular night during august, went out with a few buddies for a drink. Ok many drinks... went to town first for the so called "warm-up" while waiting for another friend. When he arrived, we head over to Clarke Quay for part 2. The outing was a mini gathering and catching up, plus a certain occasion. It was my birthday... so the guys was out to destroy me with "birthday drinks". I might be exaggerating, but that's how I've celebrating my birthdays in recent years that I'm almost fearing it now. Though I survived, I can't remember the place any more. The bar/pub had a huge menu of cocktails, hard liqueur and mostly shots. they also had some of them on the table, 'wheel of fortune' style.

Though it was just 2D images, it manage to make us want to try something from the table. I guessed it saves the hassle, from asking for the menu again and the extra delay when you can just point and there... Or it could have been used for games for higher stakes, whereby one spins a bottle or something of a pointer, where it lands means you're getting that drink. Either way it worked like some sorcery... it was creatively designed but wicked...

If I could choose where I was born

Just a random thought...

Awhile ago, was talking to one of my friend about how Singapore has been more and more crowded, and there's nothing much we can do about it. That's when I started the topic... if we can choose where we were born instead of Singapore, where would it be???

Well...

And I would wanna be a farm-boy who won't ever worry about going hungry, rising prices and rush hour. anyway I'm digressing... ok sorry.

Why? though I'm not an expert in the language or history for the matter, I've always been intrigued by anything Italian. Firstly, the food... ahhh yes! pastas and pizzas with a fair dose of cheese and wine. although I don't get to have Italian cuisine very often, I can't seem to say no to it... ever. One thing about Italian cooks is that they take the the quality of the ingredients very seriously, and it pretty much decides if they're going to cook something or not. Sadly I have not tried authentic Italian cuisine. but someday I will! someday... 

secondly, their buildings! odd... and yes, their architectural styles has been marvelled at for centuries, namely the Renaissance movement. Call it weird, I have this goal of wanting to climb one of their buildings before I die.

I could be wrong but I really think life would be much simple than in Singapore...

here, lemme end it off with a picture of a Tuscan farm.

http://www.beachcomberpete.com/travelogue/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Rolling-Hills-and-Tuscany-Vineyard-San-Gimignano-Italy.jpg

back in the days when i was serving my national service as a fire fighter, we had vehicles that we call appliances, every personnel is assigned to their appliances respectively as turnouts. so, for this particular shift me and my fellow firemen were turning out as LFAV(Light fire attack vehicle), we are known as LF crew for short. this turnout has got 4 crew members which consist of a section commander(sergeant), a pump operator/driver, and 2 fire fighters. on the way to the firepost, we came across what seemed like a distress. whereby an auntie was picking up fallen items and limping her way to the side of the road. as it turns out, she had tripped and fell while crossing the road. we responded to the situation to see if she's ok. 

 so we helped her to move away from the road for safety, gathered her stuff and checked on her condition. i remembered she said she felt that her leg was kinda weird and a little painful, and her head's dizzy from the heat. My SC checked on her feet, and called for an ambulance for her. The sun was up and she was sitting on the ground in a bit of a awkward position, might have been a back problem i guessed. So while waiting, i and my other fire fighter was thinking how to make things slightly better for her. As the sun was still shining and that little shade didn't helped, we came out with the idea of shading her with her umbrella. Then i took out our rescue toolbox for her to sit, which i thought can keep her slightly elevated to ease up on her back and feet condition. After awhile the ambulance came and even though she wasn't smiling(probably cos of the pain of her feet), she showed gratitude thanking us all the way into the ambulance. although we are not suppose to take pictures during operations/calls, in fact we actually need to prevent the public from taking pictures too. but i thought this is something nice to share about, not about being heroes, more of helping another when they need it. i feel that this is a picture worth keeping for me, as it can serve as a reminder of what we do.

You know what some research that went viral, saying people who takes pictures of their food and post it on social media, are potentially insane. Well... I don't usually do it but I guess that there will be times where people just can't resist snapping a few pics of your favourite food. Yes, as you can see it's pizza! who doesn't love pizza right? anyway, it was a birthday celebration held at Spizza(an Italian restaurant), but it wasn't my birthday though. So the place's got a promotion going on, which is splitting the flavours on a huge pizza at a price(I can't remember the price any more). we ordered 2 huge ones and this picture shows only the one closer to me, it was half mushroom/ham and half rucola salad/ham. they smelled so delicious I couldn't keep my hands off(my hand photo-bombing the pic). Something interesting about Spizza is that they named their pizzas according to girls names, specifically Italian girls if I'm not wrong. So this one is Isabella and Pamela, the other one is Olivia and Juliana. They're so beautiful... we ate them all.

Last Christmas, me and my friends had a gathering/reunion at Marina Bay Sands. One of my friends had gotten a room, for us to just hang out and chill. It may sound random that we decided to choose MBS as our meet-up venue, as it could've been expensive. Apparently his dad's got a membership or a point collection system thing, and he had more than enough points, that's why we got the room for free. So, we got our beers, drinks and stuff. But the hotel room's fridge is small and filled with the non-complimentary drinks, and we've got no icebox. so we decided to use the bathtub as our replacement icebox. I like the idea of how we reacted to the situation, and I still think it was a quite creative solution.