when you stare at the abyss, the abyss stares back at you
social.therapy.mirror.search.random.space.Archive for August, 2007
1,128th visitor milestone; BKK tips anyone?; Where do you want to go?
1,128th visitor milestone
26 August – Singapore – When you stare at the abyss, the abyss stares back at you (WYSAASBY), somewhat socially acceptable blogsite, marks its notice of the 1,128th visitor to the blog since May 2007. WYSAASBY started earlier this year with a move from www.inspirethereal.blogspot.com and has grown into regular posts detailing Inspirethereal’s many overly cynical, critical and too analytical observations of life in the Garden State.
“This blog must be doing something somewhat acceptable to get repeat visits. In fact, I am really unsure how to react, this stroke of good fortune. I will seek to do my best to continue speaking about the inane, the gripes, Pool, tech and travel. Those will be the focus points in the next few months until we hit the next major milestone.”said Inspirethereal. “Maybe for the 2,257th visitor, I will consider giving away a Uniquely Singapore bookmark or something similar.” Inspirethereal added.
Marking the 1,128 visitor occasion, WYSAASBY has re-affirmed its commitment to posting semi-interesting entries, somewhat picturesque imagery of travels and from not-so-known “Singapore urban wanderings” and to also try to keep readers up to date on the daily “try not to yawn” life of Inspirethereal.
Readers can continue to recommend, RSS, bookmark, homepage WYSAASBY at www.inspirethereal.wordpress.com.
Enquires|Inspirethereal|Inspirethereal dot yahoo dot com dot sg
Seeking information
Inspirethereal is asking for tips to shopping at Bangkok, Thailand. Please provide address in comments.
1. Are there any places that do great men’s tailoring within 48 hours at reasonable prices?
2. Any recommendations on cool bars, chill-out funky pubs, etc.
3. Do we need to hire personal bodyguards coming from the Garden State? (No, really. OKAY. I was just kidding. No.There is no need to respond to qns 3. Yes, really.)
Website recommendation
Check out 43 Places in the blogroll. For the lazy ones, yes I can guess who you are, the URL is http://www.43places.com/. Like duh right?
Referee Styles dropped after Anfield shambles
Referees’ chief Keith Hackett has confirmed Rob Styles will not take charge of a match next weekend after his performance in the game between Liverpool and Chelsea at Anfield on Sunday.
The entire article can be read here.
And all that can be done by Styles is to apologise to Rafael. The two points that Pool lost that might matter 36 games down the road no longer matters. The fact that Chelsea is now second on the table and not 4th or 5th along with the psychological boost it gives the players for the next few games isn’t important anymore.
Oh well. What comes around goes around – maybe Chelsea will get karma somewhere around December.
Liverpool – Your Shot prize
Why can’t we have marketing promotions like this taking place in Singapore??
It has all the WOM elements of context, stickiness and using just a ‘few’ (but what a lucky few!!) to create buzz. Tell me which fan wouldn’t be thrilled to be part of such a memory. What an impact!
From Premierleague.com – “As part of The Premier League’s flagship community programme ‘Creating Chances’ you could be chairman for the day, or train with your team before a Barclays Premier League fixture. You could even follow your team out of the tunnel or meet the manager.”
*slow drawn out sigh of longing…*
UK Pool fans can find out more here. I want an EPL Community here too…
i miss the maldives
Man…i so miss the Maldives, being governed by mealtimes and being able to generally not have to be responsible for anything that’s happening in my world.
Fun shot of the view I had for a week…
And here’s the gripe, came back from a week of awesome slacking-ness and stumbled right into the “Nokia battery replacement” exercise. I seriously wish I was having another week out there staring at the Indian Ocean. GT, you are damn heng. =)
In other news, chanced upon this article in ChannelNewsAsia which spoke about the opening of a Designers’ area at Md. Sultan. Impressive, given that this will be privately-funded and not govt-supported. Also, the founder with the brainwave is actually a designer by training, so trust him to be able to understand the challenges his industry faces. You can read more here.
Btw, nice quote by Marcus Chiang. Marcus Chiang, Founder of Designed In Singapore, said: “There are a lot of design institutes and a lot of design graduates. At the end of the day, maybe 10 to 15 percent go on to practise design. What happens to the rest? They become bankers and real estate sales people.
The journey home…
[Written and timestamped for 10 August]
So the day arrives that we need to pack our bags and leave. Man, cliché as it sounds, I want like another week of staying on in Kuredu. It is more than just waking up to a awesome view or actually having the time of day to think about MY ideas and not having to work through someone else’s’ or even just not having to worry about work. The truth is that I liked the slower pace of the day (although time flew by really quickly tho) and the casualness of working with time to do all the activities I could fit in a day.
So we said our goodbyes to the people ‘assigned’ to us over the past few days, Nooh (guest relations), Amir (waiter), Mo (sangu chaffeur) and the room boy(can’t remember his name) and gave them their tips. The eyes didn’t shift and they didn’t spit at me when they saw the tip amount so I infer that it was within the correct range.
Took the sea plane back over all the islands and like Monday, it makes a person feel really small in the larger scheme of things. If flight was invented in order to humble humankind, it was doing a darn good job on that sea plane over the Maldives.
SQ flies only once a day so we ended up spending some time on the airport island’s only hotel. BTW, it’s main shareholder/owner is SATs. Singapore is everywhere!!I guess I should be kinda proud since National Day was just yesterday? Took the flight out of Maldives and back to Singapore for the remainder of the weekend.Have my gripes about the China Nationals who took the same plane as us but I’ll leave that for the next post.
I am already thinking of saving enough to go back to Kuredu…or another island?
Some fish, a spa that worked and another beautiful sunset
[Written and timestamped for 9 Aug]
Happy National Day Singapore! I didn’t carry a flag but I guess that’s fine – no one would have recognised it anyway. What matters is the thought carried in the heart no? An interesting observation I had was that Singaporeans when introducing themselves often think of Country-Race- Language as identifiers whereas other Asians tend to go the Race-Country-Language route. Probably the beginnings of real nationalistic pride perhaps?
Spent the day sun-tanning, collecting sea shells (did you know that they came in so many shapes and colours?) as well as going for a pampering at the spa where the treatment actually worked! Felt really good and didn’t mind the USD65 price tag at all.
Saw some fish swimming around the Villa and pier areas and since it was bright daylight, managed to get a few good shots.
And I can’t end a post without the sunset shots – they really completed the day.
Dolphins and lots of beer(not in that order)
[Written and timestamped for 8 Aug]
Here are a few shots that I managed to take inbetween another full day spent kayaking, snorkeling, sun-tanning and probably my 20th can of beer, only because they wouldn’t let me take glasses out of the bar into the villa.
But the real highlight of the day was the Sunset Cruise where we sighted dolphins!! And I remember yesterday that I thought the sunset from the Villa was great – well, it is- but check out the shots below. It’s Awesome!!!
And the objective of the cruise, before it got hijacked by the dolphins, was to view the sunset…and what a beautiful one it was.
This is another brilliant one that I had to share.
The journey to Kuredu…and the Indian Ocean Sunset
My resort has free WiFi!! That is so much like a breath of fresh air although I do not need it, it helps to have it. Like in this case…
Monday morning in Male was interesting. My friend Salmaan met us up and took some time off work to show us around the sights of Male – including the National Museum, the Fish Market, the Local Market as well as just general sights and sounds of the city.
Thanks also to Salmaan, we were able to make arrangements with Kuredu, the resort that I am staying at.
One of the guys that I was liaising with prior to my trip screwed up by not notifying the hotel that I was at about the sea-plane timing that I was supposed to be on. So the hotel guest relations person put us initially on the 9.15am flight which we missed, got our call, put us on the 1pm that was overloaded and secured the 3pm which got delayed. By the time we reached Kuredu, it was nearly 5+pm. Guess who got grouchy and upset? So I conveyed my displeasure in a very short and concise manner, and yet being still so nice about it (had to be, this guy had my next 5 days in his hand) and…he managed to get us a voucher for Francos, their pasta and steak place as well as a late check out on Friday. See what the power of standing up for yourself can do?
Anyways, enough of my trials for Monday. This place is AWESOME! I really do not want to go back to normal life. It was worthwhile shelling out the extra extra for a water villa and an all-inclusive package (that btw does not come with cocktails and hard liquer). I will let the pictures speak for themselves but the service we are getting is SWEET and the memories are so damn WICKED. See, I think I am listening to too many Brits in this place already…
I took a run this morning at 7am along the beach front. Everyone should see this sight at least once in their lives.
Will post more tomorrow if I feel like it. It is so relaxing NOT to have to watch the time and just let the day be run by whether it’s breakfast, lunch or dinner. *grin*
Check out this shot of the sunset along the Indian Ocean. There’s not a lot of sights that can match this.
I am in the Maldives!!
Well the day, or week rather has finally arrived! I have packed my bags (really hurriedly on sunday afternoon) and here we are, after a year of not travelling further than BKK. *grin* But that’s another story to tell, this year of “not spending”, which btw, does not include the house. That’s a different league of its own.
First thing I note in the Maldives happened at immigration. Go for the queues at the extreme ends; it is easier for them to open seperate queues there when they see that there are two many people. Don’t be an idiot like me and take the centre queue. The next hint. Get a baby that looks like he/she is about to fall off your arms and crack the head. They will move you to the front of queue.
The ferry ride to the main island of Male reminded me to Tekong Ferry Terminal…without the speedcraft. It was a bum boat that cost USD1 to get onto.
The hotel sent someone to pick us up at the bum boat terminal and the next thing I note as we are driving through small roads is that the people here have no freaking sense of safety!! They let the van get like within 20cm of their faces as they walk…against the traffic!! How smart is that?! So we arrive safely at the hotel, and check in. Think Hotel 81 or Asia Hotel in BKK complete with small alley ways and no-way-to-get-out-yourself syndrome.
Fantastic. I fly across Asia to get a taste of BKK and better yet, I see Nescafe adverts all over the place. Even here also Singapore got touch. jialat.
Central Hotel – here’s the first two shots I took in Male..of my hotel room and the view outside the balcony. More to come tomorrow.
This map rocks!!
And I hope that I will be in Asia in 2009 and 2016 for the total solar eclipses!! You can find the link to the site here.
And in the author’s own words: “In Asia, bands of darkness will travel across Indonesia on March 9, 2016, China, India, Eastern Nepal, Northern Bangladesh and the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan on July 2009 and China, Mongolia, the eastern tip of Kazakhstan and Siberia on August 8, 2008. That last one will culminate near the lands where the aboriginal Nenets tribe live. If you’re their shaman, you might want to note that date in your diary, and prepare a good speech.”
Heh. I always love a good shaman joke.
