desire

hmmm you know how there's an inkling or a tickling feeling in your chest, just below the neck and, well, not quite above the heart i guess. the feeling that says "hey, you want it". and i want it, i do.

the new samsung p2370 monitor beckons me. $295 worth of 23 inch goodness. *sigh*

i dun need it. walk away. i dun need it at all.

..and we're up to date

i went for hazel's 21st last nite at ymca, and the theme was "my secret fantasy". oh boy. i went as a naughty schoolboy and ys went as a strict teacher.. hilarity ensued ahaha..

before i over-share, i suppose i should get down to business, and recap then, on the things that happened since the start of the month...

i had the opportunity to help out with a symposium that's being organised by the company. on the 1st of october, one of the captains organizing the symposium brought me and my boss out for lunch at this australian restaurant at circular road called "moomba".. fantastic food at a decentish price.. capt even introduced us to the boss.. :)

we met up with with guy from IATA over lunch. he's gonna give a talk at the symposium and i suppose capt F wanted to give him an idea what the symposium's about. IATA dude's a pretty cool guy, and before he joined IATA, he flew the US vice president around on Air Force 2.. wow.

the 2nd was spent with ys - i picked her up from school and we went for dinner at one rochester.. we had the tomato soup, crab claw salad, pan seared seabass, accompanied by a couple glasses of voignier by langmeil.. om nom nomming that can totally be described as a gastronomic orgasm LOL.

i like that place.. ambience is nice, with the little tea lights and soft music. the carpark hosted the occasional ferrari, which did nothing to soothe my lancer's ego. oh well... cars *are* meant to be kar tak only mah.. :P

on the 3rd of october, my cousin - da ge - got himself married. i was roped in to help out as one of his brothers, and thus got to wear disposable undies superman style as well as get whipped cream licked off my face :x the solemization was a rather happening affair, and the cake was omg. it was more like an ice kachang than a cake.. umm.. decide for yourself..

the wedding banquet was held that evening at this place called "changi village hotel", and despite it's ulu locale, turned out to be a really cool place! i enjoyed standing at the balcony of the hotel room - it was jutting out of the room, so you get the ooh i'm standing on air kinda feeling.. you know what i mean :P

sunday 4th was spent sleeping in till late.. in the afternoon, i went shopping with ys's dad and mom (and ys, of coz) and then had dinner at her porpor's place.. :) met her cousins for the 1st time ahaha.. they're nice folks

monday and tuesday was sigh. i quit twitter.

wednesday i watched cloudy with a chance of meatballs with ys.. ahaha.. happening movie lei. in case anyone's wondering whether or not to catch it: catch it!!

friday, 9 oct 2009. my inaugural trip to the nite safari with the tickets courtesy of ling'er.. THANKS!!

we were all excited about the trip - ok at least I was.. ys had to psyche herself up 'cause she's been there a couple of times already ahaha.. the theme was halloween, and expectations (from me) were running high, probably on the back of my recent trips of universal studio japan as well as tokyo disneyland.

what can i say? nite safari is no universal studios/disneyland. let's just leave it as that..

and that just about brings this blog up to date.. i shall write more frequently. i suspect that i am starting to loose my grasp on my command of the language.. jeez.

the long post

okay i've been away far too long and neglected this blog for a whole season.. anyway - i'm back!

in the past 3 months, the more outstanding events were: my successful completion of my advanced training at brisbane and got my multi-engine, pressurised cabin, retractable under carriage, as well as my jet ratings.

after the brisbane phase, i've been posted back to training centre, where i'm currently helping out with various administrative matters while waiting for my 777 groundschool to commence on 23 november. that means i'll be mostly free to meet up with anyone who's interested :D

july..

after i got back from brissie, i went on an outing with ys to the singapore flyer on 8th july..

on the 25th of the same month, we went to the NDP rehearsal, courtesy of 四姨.. :)

i loved the "i want to be.." video segment, where the kid said he wants to be a 'PSP Helper' who "help people play their PSP lor!" ahaha :D

and then on the 26th, i went for the liverpool match at kallang stadium with 大哥 :)


august..

on the 2nd, i went to the istana open house with ys.. it was a crazy hot day as i can remember, but it was nice to finally take a lookie around the president's pad. interesting: citizens got in for free by showing our identity cards, while tourists had to pay an entrance fee, 100% of which went to the com chest. nice.

2nd of august marks our 9th months together too :)

25th of the month and we decided to go check out the inaugural singapore kite festival, hosted by ntuc income.. we went with haz and yh..

i remember a sky full of kites, a carpark full of cars, a macdonalds full of people, and a dead monitor lizard. i also remember a long walk, and beautiful sunset shared :)



september..

2/9 marks our 10th month together.. every now and then it'll occur to me how bad brisbane was, and i'm thankful that we survived that.. :)

we went for dinner at ma maison restaurant at central mall, and played 5 or 6 rounds of 'jan-ken-pon!' (scissors-paper-stone) with the owner before we won our japanese paper fans ahaha..

a long walk along the river down towards zouk and back, and we crossed every bridge we came across.. happy days indeed!

my birthday lunch was eaten the weekend before, at prima revolving restaurant near vivocity.. i've never been up there while it was open before, so it was quite a nice experience. the dessert was banana toffee, dipped in ice water just before service so as to add crunch to the piece.. interesting, but will *not* try again :P

birthday was spent with ys running all over.. she got robbed on monday, and tuesday the 8th was spent ferrying her to get her handphone replaced, and then off to school.. i spent sometime back at sheares with the guys and took a picture with mark, this freshman who bears a striking resemblance to me.. too weird..

after class, me and ys decided to go check out sunset way for ice cream, but we somehow managed to walk into zheng fa live seafood and had the scottish roe crabs instead :) certainly a 27th to remember..

the good news tho, is that the snatch-thief who accosted ys got caught in less than a week by the SPF.. fantastic stuff from the boys in blue.. singapore police force, the pride of the land indeed!

~~

i had my 1st jamming session with vinod and jon a couple weeks ago on the 19th at vin's place. his meinl box drum was the bomb!! i spent a little time getting used to it, but towards the end i think we got a rather decent recording :D still waiting for the recordings to be cleaned up tho.. *expectant*

and then on 21-26th, i went to japan with my sister.. you guys can check out my pics on fb.. here's one i particularly like tho!

this pic was taken from mt. hakone (tokyo-3 in evangelion), and in case you dun recognise it.. that's mt. fuji in the background :D

apparently, we were super lucky to catch mt. fuji on a really clear day.. the views were nothing short of spectacular! i'll let my pictures on fb do the talking then.. this post is pretty long already ahaha..

till next time!!

flying around in my little jet..

went for 4 flights now, and i'm left with just 4 flights and 3 sims to go (it says FIN on the 4th july.. independence day, how apt). flying the lear is much much cooler than flying a cessna, i'll tell you that. the cessna is fun to fly - more stick and rudder, so to speak, but the there's a world of "feel" in hand flying the lear too.

granted, the learning curve was virtually vertical when i started out.. it's all falling into place now. flight management certainly is a whole new ballgame as compared to tracking within the NDB approach's tolerances of 5 degrees either side. with the instrumentation on this plane, one could easily fly within 1 degree of a selected track inbound to a station!

yesterday was flight 4, and i suppose it's the most fun by far. outbound toward tamworth and cruising along at FL200, i spot traffic on the TCAS 40 miles out in the opposite direction. the computer churns the numbers and determine that the traffic is 1000 feet above us at FL210. the captain has a go at crunching the info (eavesdropping on ATC and other hints), and he declares that the cyan diamond on my TCAS is none other then company traffic heading from tamworth up north to brisbane.

i think back at the flight plan of my mates leaving at the same time as me, and vaguely remembering that they planned FL210 for brisbane off tamworth. "yup, i think it could be them" i declare. a few minutes later, TCAS says that they should pass straight over the top, off to the right hand side. i tilt my head up for a closer look. ZOOOOOM. 800knot closure and that sleek lear45 airframe 1000 feet above glides through the air and off to our rear.

i knew this plane was cool, but i didn't know it looked *this* cool!

on the way back to maroochy, we encountered some weather as well. clouds towering some 28000 feet gathered around our inbound track to the field. captain requests 10 miles to the left of track due weather, and off we go. it's like snaking a race car through orange cones. 1st left, then right. hole in the weather, in we go.. good stuff all around :D

the weather turned out to be a bit of a dog's breakfast though - clip the edges of the clouds and we were introduced to pretty severe turbulence. cabin signs on please.

i remembered yesterday vividly for another reason - at FL380, that skies are always blue on top, and clouds are always white below. the sun was shining and life was good. smooth, cold air fed the engines and they were a couple of happy campers. down into the weather and turbulence ahoy - clouds turn grey once they're above, and the sky is all obscured. the rain just makes everything gloomy..

i think there's a lesson in there somewhere. when life's seems all gloomy, the sun shines on above. it's there you know, you just can't feel it nor see it, but it's there. waiting for the clouds to clear, so that he can put some sunshine in your life again :D

almost there

been more than a month since my last update. things are going okay on the sunshine coast - the few who welcomed me when i arrived have since finished up their course and gone back to singapore.

over the last month i managed to see a little bit of the city tho, and also went down to surfer's paradise on the gold coast.. nice place ahaha.

i went for my 1st flight yesterday - a short hop up north to rockhampton airport for circuit training, and getting my 1st feel of the lear45.. such an amazing aircraft to fly. in between sims and flights i've got quite a bit of time in-between tho, and other than the time spent mugging up for the next flight, i spend some time cooking.. i baked a chocolate cake last weekend - that wasn't too shabby.. and today i made well.. i'd call it a veggie side dish ahaha. it's quite tasty so i'm pretty pleased with it.

experiments with food notwithstanding, i guess i spend my time just like how i would back home - reading, computer games and movies/videos on my trusty laptop. a certain photo bug has caught me somehow.. must be woo and his 40d.. ahhaa. maybe i'll start taking more pictures again, i dunno..

i've been away for just over 8 weeks now, and i think there are probably 5 more to go. more than 1/2 way there, but its starting to gnaw at me alot. i miss home, and i miss her. hais.. 5 more weeks to go.. hang in there!!!

running around

this week has been rather eventful so far, if you consider sunday the first day of the week. on sunday, I had to do my first duty driver duty. basically, due to the fact that the college is about 2km from PPR, the duty driver would have to drive every detail over to school and back if need be. the college does have a couple of cars tho so that's not so bad.. some folks will drive over on their own.

the worrying thing for me was the driving. see, the college has a couple of manual transmission cars that were none too easy to drive. coupled with that was the fact that I haven't. driven a manual in a couple of years now.. I was also rather apprehensive because the the space constraints in PPR meant that there was going to be alot of parallel and reverse parking involved.. zzz

in the end tho, I managed to survive to drive another day haha.. one days practice later and I reckon I'm pretty alright with the car.

I also went to the creek on the edge of PPR to try my hand at fishing. in the end, it was more of a photo shoot and beer drinking session coz all we did was to wet our lures in the water. the creek's filled with life, apparently. just not the kind that bite food that has hooks on them..

monday was my free day, so to speak. I had to put in a double shot of mugging tho, coz I decided to take it easy the day before. I received news from college that the house I am currently staying in is going to be returned to the resort, and that we're going to move to house 17 over thurs or friday..

the up shot of the big move is that Eugene Ewen and Jerry all stay over at 16, so we'll be neighbours after the move. the bad thing is that:
1. we got to move. there's just so much to move!! and,
2. the new house is gonna be a smaller abode. I can't imagine. the current room I stay in is way small; any smaller and I wouldn't even have space to put my coffee anymore.. boo

anyway, monday evening tony asked if I'd like to go for a jog. being the health nut that I am (haha) I decided to go along. we ran down mudjimba beach road towards the coast and then up north along some road whose name I had no idea. as we reached the end of that road (which was an eternity at about 2.2km) just before it turns in sharply into a residential area, my legs gave up the ghost and I begged tony to stop. from there, it was a 15sec walk down a sandy pathway to the glorious sight of the atlantic and her crazy surf. well ok, the surf wasn't all that crazy, but the waves were orders of magnitude bigger than what we got at east coast park, that's for sure :)

tony then looked at me and said "swim?". I didn't know why to say but "ok" lol..

top OFF
shoes and socks STOWED..
before swimming checks complete.

wearing my running shorts, I did the obvious and ran into the water. frigid. I think I almost freezed my toes off. it got better in a couple of minutes tho. there's nothing quite like jumping into the atlantic to cool off after a sweaty run, that much I'll tell ya.

after the badly thought out dip in the pond, I went over to the nearby washroom to shower off the salt and put my top and shoes back on. contrary to cooling off in the Atlantic after a run, there actually *is* something quite like running back home after a swim in the sea. it's called "underwear wet wet".. zzz..

interesting about these australian fellas tho. they're a friendly bunch.. on the run back, there was this kid, maybe 8 or 9, on his little skate scooter. as I ran past him, he raised his hand for a high 5 and I duly obliged :) it's these little things that make life that much nicer..

yesterday was pretty cool as well.. I had my 1st ever session in the simulator and seating in the flight deck of a jet is nothing quite like seating in an analogue old cessna.. ILS approach? too easy.. happy days. :D

oh I can't read tags

by the way, for the few of you who use my tagboard: I can't read tags, coz safari on the iphone dosen't come with built in flash reader.. you guys could comment on my posts instead..

cheers.

in a related note: the iPhone as my primary internet device just ain't good enough man!! but what to do.. *sighzzz*

arrival at mcy

hmm got here yesterday and the 2 hours difference on time zone is starting to mess around with my biological clock. I wonder how my body will cope with the rigors of flying full time across multiple tikezones in the future.. in the meantime, I think I better concentrate on the most pressing matter at hand - the LJ45

yesterday was pretty laid back tho. the weather is nice and cool, and we're just starting to get the winter weather over here. light drizzles and cloudy skies might prove to be marginal weather for vfr flying back in jandakot, but over here it's all ifr, so there shouldn't be much of a problem. anyway, flying will start only on about one and a half months' time, so that's that.

I arrived at 640am local (that's 440am fir you guts back in Singapore), and the sun was out already. I think I probably had about a couple hours sleep on the plane, so it's no surprise that I took a 3 hour nap in the day =)

I'm staying in house 83 and the place looks decently good. the rooms are definitely too small tho - 2 beds and a couple of bedside tables later, there's no more space for my lappy laptop. the living room is decent enough, and the house we stay in comes equipped with a washin machine, dryer, dishwasher, microwave, oven, coffeemaker, stove and ricecooker for cooking dinner in-house, and a few chefs lol..

while lunch yesterday was out at this local cafe called "soul foods", dinner was a homecooked affair of curry chicken, brocolli and omelettes made by kman, tony and edwin. good stuff lah.

ok today's going to be a long day of mugging I hope. I am too far behind the pace to feel comfortable about it all.. let's work hard together!!