Little Chinatown

GONG XI FA CAI! Chinese New Year is around the corner again and everyone is busy shopping for CNY goodies and decoration for this important festival!

We took a little walk around the Bencoolen/Rochor/Bugis area known as "Si Bei Lor" or Forth Street. This place is always buzzing with activities during this period! There's an interesting mix of local and touristy fare. It's not as big as Chinatown but it's equally colourful.

and.. GREAT bargains to be had!!


Click photo to see what the arrow is pointing at :




It's auspicious to deck the house up in RED dingly danglies!!!




The coming year is the Year of the Rat and look at all the cute decorations!


Does Disney know about this??


WHOA!!! This us my kind of store!! You're never too big or too small!!


SMILE like a tourist, Mag!! :)


Rainbow connection - interesting alley somewhere at the back of Bugis..




Big buns everywhere!




Watch it now... You better enjoy with your eyes and not with your mouth!

Chinese New Year Buzz

Watch the hustle and bustle at Takashimaya!!!! Crowds of people shopping for Chinese New Year goodies... although I think the best bargains are to be found near Bugis! But shhh.... don't tell them :P

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My Nokia N80 Mobilephone

All photos in this post were taken with my Nokia N80 Handphone.

On a little street in Singapore... Actually, our roads are rather pretty, when you're in the right frame of mind - you just have to slow down and forget the troubles at work, close your eyes and imagine cool weather and pretend that you're on holiday..
Doesn't this look like the Winter Sonata picture? Just add snow and the pretty boy Bae Yong Jun and there you have it! Haha..
This photo was taken in a moving car along Changi Coast Road, on our way to Pulau Ubin.

Finally managed to send photos from my N80 to my PC via Bluetooth (蓝牙). When I started to do this a week ago, the bluetooth dongle did something to my PC and it froze(!) and I had to restore some previous backup. Thankfully nothing was lost!

The pictures look fine on the phone because of the small screen but then when they are transferred onto the PC, they look a little too blur for my liking and too pixelated. So I had to use Photoshop to reduce the size and sometimes sharpen them. So much for the 3 megapixel lens.

The first photo I took with my N80 was this cute one with legs sticking out from a trash bin. Saw this funny sight during lunch near Banquet at Clifford Centre. The message was clear - upgrade yourself or you get trashed!

The Vivo traffic police posed for me when he saw me aiming my handphone at him! And nearby... Instant New Pron? ;)


I wanna buy this for Chewieeee!! But then it would be too warm here..


Taken using Night mode without flash, hence lagi not sharp!

A few of my colleagues and I attended HSBC's CSR night (Corporate Social Responsibility) at the Ritz Carlton the other night. It was a nice sit-down dinner with award presentation for outstanding volunteers and performance by Janani. I was even interviewed by TV12 (again! SIGH...) which was quite embarassing because I wanted to sign a sentence and I had 2 NG's before I could spell "HSBC" correctly with my pathetic sign language skill!! (what skill???)

At Bugis Junction, we saw them setting up the Soo Kee Diamond/Crystal Christmas tree. The star on top has >20,000 diamonds and worth $1.55million! Top that! If you're thinking about swiping something, think again! There will be security guards and surveillance cameras, so unless you think you're Mr Freeze or some diamond thief, I suggest you just look and don't touch! But you could win a diamond necklace, worth $298 though! Just guess the number of diamonds on the star. For more details, visit the Soo Kee Website.

Sunday Shopping

Had some last minute shopping to do before my Shanghai trip, so I headed for Tangs hoping to grab something local or something nice for the home of my Shanghai hosts. I didn't find anything I liked except for a RISIS vanda pendant. I like the modern design and really interesting double-strand cable.


For the longest time, I've always wanted to get some of these cute little Bodum thermo glasses. So I thought this might be a good gift for the house. The large tea glasses came as a set with stirrers and fruit tea. They are mouth-blown and heat resistant. The double-walls insulate the heat of hot drinks (u won't burn your fingers) and keep cold drinks cold without messy condensation! And yes, I bought myself a pair of the little espresso glasses - they're so cuuuuute!!




Other stuff bought today : a black woollen jacket, packet tissue paper, mints, tooth brush heads for my electric toothbrush, hand lotion, and chocolate fondant from Beard Papa.

Retail Therapy Day :-)

Oh, and in front of Ngee Ann City, the Subaru Challenge was going on - where car-mad crazy people put their hands on Subaru cars in the hope of winning one. Tonight was their second night at it. Some of them look really tired. They started out with 7 cars and 280 contestants but now there are only 63 contestants left! They're only allowed 5-minute breaks at 1pm, 7pm, 1am and 7am each day. All the best to them!!

Check out the mediacorp website for more photos and webcams.

New shoes

My trainer has been commenting about how loose my gym shoes are! Not the pair that I bought back in August 2005 but another pair of Nike's with no laces. Sigh... Guess it's time for a new pair. My cupboard has no space, so a pair in means a pair out! Out goes my old Nike, in a new Adidas Xanthos II. I've never tried Adidas before but this one caught my eye because of its cool design and the fact that it has no arch bothering my flat feet!


The interesting bit about the design is the heel support. I must say Adidas puts in a lot of effort in research and design. These little bumps around the sides of the heel look like boob support or maximizers but they are meant to prevent injury during training sessions.


Look at this! It's a shoe meant for geocaching too! Geofit! Yeah, like I'm going to go trooping down Bukit Timah Hill in my new gym shoes... ;)

I can't wait to put these shoes to the test at the gym on Tuesday. Maybe my PT would stop complaining about my shoes! haha...