bintan trip (part 3)

Good time fly fast indeed , it’s the third day at the resort. I only manage to wake up around 0730 hours, didn’t make it in time to see the sun rise (none of my colleagues made it as well.

In the morning, I done some packing before going for breakfast. After that, few of my colleagues and myself went to play golf and archery. For archery, I was late in registering myself (and pay money), thus missing the chance to play the game. But then, the staff was very friendly and give me some spare arrow for me to shoot for free.

As for the golf, one of my colleagues bought 3 basket of balls to be played by all of us. Someone paid for it, but I do not know who he is. But probably he decides to play the host so I should thank him for it. The game is fun, but since I had never learn golf before, my few attempts never flew pass 50 meters. But then it is a good learning experience

Around 11am we went back to the chalet to pack up. By 12midday, we check out of the chalet and left for the harbor. There wasn’t any lunch provided, but I managed to buy myself an ice cream (40k). the cruise are set to leave at 1pm , but some technical issue occurs and the cruise took a u turn 15 minutes after departure , and we stayed stranded at bintan for another half an hour . Fortunately, the boat didn’t have major problems and restarted as soon as possible

We reached Singapore around 4pm (the boat is speeding very fast). It’s the end of the bintan trip. Looking backwards, I spent 206K (49+69+17+40+31(keep the change), leaving around 294k left. the question is , would I still visit bintan again. Probably not, I might still visit other parts of Indonesia but not bintan. Simple reasons might just be the food, as vegetarian wasn’t common there and probably not as clean. I would try to change the rest of the rupiah with my colleagues going on to the next trip

Looking forward, I should not be travelling (other than Malaysia) for the rest of the year. I hope I can save up a bit, no matter if I can visit japan next year or sometime in the further future. But then saving is always good.

Today is my birthday, happened that haze worsen here, I should celebrate with myself and my mum.

God bless all the time

一個人也要很開心

Trip to Bintan (part 2) 2015

In the morning, I managed to wake up around 515am to watch the sun rise. Around 4 colleagues also came along. The sun supposed to rise at 0550 hours, but sea moist (or haze?) has covered most of the sky, and we can only see the sun almost 15 minutes after it rises (no much luck this time)

After that, we went back chalet to take a rest before catching breakfast at 0830 hours. For breakfast, there were no specific indication on whether any food is of vegetarian origin, thus I could only eat plain porridge and some simple cake (better play safe), and after all eating cake can also be full.

After breakfast, there is a planned bonding activity at FOCUS. We took a bus there and spent most of the day there. The activities were very interesting, fun and challenging at times. Theory took up less those 5 minutes (1 slide only). For a note our boss, Mr. Patrick pop in to give us some encouragement

After lunch came the challenge of the day, the pyramid challenge. We are supposed to climb and overcome a 7th storey high of pyramid mainly made up of metal ropes. We need to overcome 10 obstacles, walking across ropes, climbing walls etc. By just looking from the bottom, it seems almost impossible to do it. with 20 pax joining this activities, 2 drop out (“Nai” and “Badong”) from the start, leaving 18 people in the challenge. later Alan drops out after climbing the first stairs and “Grace” back out after seeing people in front “suffering” (dropping to 16 people). Mr. goh, Mr. Ng (from workshop), Calvin, Woo, Benie and another guy (unknown) drop after the 4th obstacle.

For my part, I was pretty stretched after the first obstacles, and probably I would have also dropped out of the challenge after the 4th obstacle if not the encouragement from my colleagues. The height wasn’t too scary, but rather my hand was numb after a while. the next scary part is the “leap of faith” at obstacle 9. ha-ha, I jumped without thinking much, and in a spit second, t was thru. finally after almost 2 hours of hard work, I made it to the top with 9 of my colleagues (and enjoy the thrill of sliding down)

For the rest of the day, I was almost dead tired to be able to do much thing. I tried playing some beach balls but give up after a while. There was virtually no place where I could spend my rupiah to buy things. The only thing I can spent money is on drinks (where I bought some coconut juice (49K) and watermelon (69K)

At night, we went to the beach to see fireworks, and returned to chalet at 10pm. Finally, we ended the day by playing some cards. Since I found it difficult to spent the rupiah, I think is ok to lose some, and indeed I lost around 17K after 2 hours of playing

Should stop for now , Continue later

God bless all the time

BINTAN TOUR SEPT 15 PART 1

On the 18th of sept, I went to Bintan Island on a company trip. This is the second time of my lifetime that I manage to visit the neighboring country. In the morning, I went to office to catch the bus that fetches us to Tanah merah terminal. There are total of 20 people taking part in the trip (18 guys and 2 gals).

I managed to change a total of 50 sing dollars for 500K of Indonesian rupiah, thinking that I might have the chance to buy some local products. We waited at the terminal patiently until 0845 hours before boarding the cruise. The boat left around 9m and we reached bintan around 2 hours later. The local time was one hour behind Singapore (so the timing showed 1010am instead

We walked towards the main building, and waited for 15 minutes before chauffeured to our chalets. All of us has been split into 3 groups, and I was being allocated to chalet 2 ( with 6 guys )( Liping , pin hong , alan, jia jun, Chinthaka and pradeep ). I ended up sharing a double bed with Alan

As the chalet was pretty big, we were given a buggy (per chalet) to travel around. It was very interesting initially to drive the vehicle, but the interests gradually die down as the buggy was travelling relatively slow (and safe I supposed)

After lunch, we had our free time. There are various games to be played at the leisure center. I managed to play some table tennis and pool. There were also some Nintendo games in the aircon room for us to play. I played some boxing game with ah nai ( and end up sweating more in the aircon room .

In the evening , we went to the beach to play beach balls. The beach was relatively cleaner than the one’s I see at East Coast Park and the sand finer. We played beach balls for over an hour, my Indian colleagues played a much better game while I found relatively hard to touch the ball. In simple words, I probably good only serving balls and my hands ended up swollen after serving a few times. My colleague “grace” had enjoyed the game as well.

At night , I managed to do a short swim at the chalet swimming pool . It was the place that we had our dinner , and it was a BBQ. There were vegetarian meals but more than half of them contain garlic which makes it impossible for me to consume . I reflect to ah nai , but there’s nothing he could help . I end up eating some white rice and a plate of broccoli ( hope it’s clean enough)

Finally , I settle down to watch TV while some of my colleagues gamble on cards,. I didn’t play so I just sit around and see them play. I rested at around 1120am ( Indonesian local time) and it’s the end of the first day in bintan . I stop now and continue later

GOD bless

huitai

運氣不好的日子 ( 2015年9月)

近来，运气不是很好，星期五晚上，在停车场，我的车一出停车位，就被一辆罗厘，撞坏了前面右大灯的玻璃，还好大灯还在，车还可以走。因为那辆罗厘是走直路的，也不清楚是谁的错。反正那辆罗厘也没事，只能说，算了。如果追究起来，自已错的机会也比较大吧。

车等了两天，今天才拿去成发那里修理，去掉了230元 ( 好贵) ，但又能如何呢？乐观一点，幸好没有去台湾，就把(花) 这笔钱当做去过台湾了。也可以说，是破财消灾吧。和自已说，没有过不了的日子，学会看开，接下来的日子，要多省一点钱，没有必要的，都不要去买。

近来的雾非常的利害，这星期五的公司会影响吗？到现在都没有下文，公司的人也没讲要不要换钱(印尼钱)，就不换了，尽量不要买东西，走走一下就好。

说回来，上一次去到工人党的集会，被报纸拍到 (上报了)。这辈子，大概只有这一次，写一下，让自已有开心的理由

我生日又要到了，朋友们都忙。拿了假，就为自已庆祝，晚上和母亲庆祝。今年，不会有多余的愿望。只希望单身久久(不会谈恋爱的，一个人也一定会很开心)，有时候就多看书，多运动，多和自已讲话，希望减少口吃的毛病。

一个人也可以很开心

GOD BLESS ALL THE TIME

慧臺

Pro election thought

A nine day campaign for general election 2015 passes thru in a blink, with all the political parties doing whatever they can. After one day of cooling day, here comes the polling day where 2.4million eligible voters decide on the better teams.

After a day of voting, the polling closes at 8 pm and counting starts shortly after that. Sampling results started to come in after 945 pm. The results were very different from the media, newspapers or internet. It seems that majority of the votes have gone to PAP. Even areas contested by the worker’s party were not being spared. Other that Hougang which were traditional stronghold for workers party (which managed to get 58% the sampling results), aljunied lead by the slim 4 percent and ponggul east got 48%, the remaining areas simply unable to get more than 40%. Area like ang mo kio, jurong, tanjong pagar, pap even lead the race with votes as high as 78 percent. This is something unheard of during the last election

Finally the results were unveiled around 2 am. As accurately as the sample results, pap was returned to power after winning 83 seats, having an overall vote’s percentage of 69.8 percent. Even potong pasir which used to be a strong hold for Mr. Chiam see tong seen at vote swing of 16.5 percentage against them. Fortunately, the worker’s managed to withhold the national swing and hold on the aljunied by then thin margin of 1.95 percent. With 6 seats won by workers party, it somehow even out to the same number of seats won by opposition during the 2011 election.

Hours after the results came out; it left me pondering on the result for such a freak outcome. Even prime minister admitted that the results exceed his expectation. I was surprised not because the amount of seats won by the opposition, but rather the percentage of the votes won by pap. How can the percentage swing as much as 9 percent when nowadays, we still see a lot of problem around us?

I took a long while to guess, and looking backwards at kind of campaigns pap and the opposition are doing. Probably I believe parties are not on the same playing field. Pap has the whole systems of civil service and pa to help them. no matter buildings built by HDB, shopping centres built by URA or even roads built by LTA, at the end of the day , pap are the one to claim all the credits . Days before elections. I got booklets showing how many facilities built by all the government sectors and pap are the one’s we need to be thankful for. On the other hand, opposition can only promise, since they would never have to chance to prove themselves.

Furthermore, 2015 is the year of jubilee (50 years of Singapore). Our government suddenly become very generous giving out all kinds of sg50 gifts, helping all the people in Singapore (including foreigners). And they also reverse a lot of their policies, started to give money to those elderly particularly the pioneer generations (those age 65 years old counting from 2014). These kinds of policies as I remember, was shot down by pap years ago. during few years ago they didn’t; believe welfare is necessary , and citizen must learn to take care of themselves .but today , our ministers took a 180 degree changes and started to emphasize that citizens cannot be left to stand alone , government would need to help them. Thus I believe there are significant voters who only look at short term gains when they do their voting, and pap must have won over several senior citizens votes with their PGP (pioneer generation packages)

Next, our previous Prime Minister Lee kuan yew unfortunately has passed. Pap has used the opportunity to tell people the need to remember the greatness of LKY , and how we should be honour him by voting pap to power , these part is what I believe would be one of the major reasons why pap won big.

The third reason which I believe is due to the AHPETC town council issue by the worker’s party. Workers party was unable to pass the annual audits. Pap see’s it as a good chance to pull down worker’s party and had spent several days in parliament house over these issues. Although AHPETC has improved its audit from 13 issues in the year 2013 / 2014 to only 3 issues the following year. But PAP is still not satisfied. I believe PAP is holding an early election so that the town council would not have the time to solve the problem they face. Seriously I think, if the elections would to be held next year, worker party might have cleared the issues with qualified report and thus will be able to perform much better then the results we see yesterday.

From the above reasons, I believe it is indeed very clever of Pm lee to place an early poll, and his gamble pays him good dividends. Looking ahead, it is indeed a sad day of the oppositions as a whole, and probably some years backwards toward two party systems. But on the other hand, it might be not so bad news for worker’s party as they retain aljunied and they were given chance to rectify the mistake they make in the town councils. If they are able to have a good town council record with years down the road, I am sure they will come back strongly in the next general election.

As for the other opposition parties, I seriously think they should just come together and form a big opposition party, small parties prove no fight against the mighty PAP. For the next election, I wish those small or new parties would just stay away from GE and spent effort to do other things.

And for the ruling party, there were rumours that policies will get worse years down the road, and we might see 6 million people in the island before the year 2020(which is the next election held). We do not know if it would be true. But even if all these ever come true, there’s nothing we can do since the citizens has given government the blank cheque (or mandate). All we can do is pray that pm lee does the right thing, or else we need to tahan until the next GE

God bless all the time

Hweetoi

Election period (Sept 2015) ( blog 2)

On the 6th of sept, I was supposed to go out with my mum. But she decided it would be better to stay at home to watch the Taiwan soap drama, and I reckon that it might be the last night of the week I am free to visit election rallies. I chose to go all the way to simei to hear worker’s party rally

My friend, Alan wanting to go again, and I drive to fetch him at kembangan MRT. One of his friend (or customer I think) Sim came along as well. I drove to Simei Avenue 1 hoping to find a parking lot but fail to find any. Car parks were either full or reserved, all driving 2 rounds, we decide that it will be fruitless to hope for any parking lots and we went to park at tampines instead. From there we took MRT for one station and walk towards the open field.

We reached the place around 0840 hours; the crowd was bigger compared to the one I saw at yishun stadium. We tried to squeeze to the front row before we can clearly see the speakers, by then majority of the speakers had completed their talks. I didn’t see ms he ( reason unknown) , but I managed to hear from Mr. Png , Mr Low and Ms Sylvia Lim

The rally ended at 2145hours ( 15 minutes before time ) and we took our time to slowly walk out of the stadium. we took a selfie before leaving the place. On the way out , we managed to talk to an aunty from ( aljunied GRC) and she mention that whole of her family would be voting for worker’s party ) which I think it’s a good thing .

we also managed to see the worker’s party (optimus prime) logo truck , I didn’t managed to take photo, can only download the picture from internet I sent my friends back and went home , the second election rally that I visited came to an end.

Today is the last day of the 9 day campaign for GE15 Looking backwards, I believe that probably I had no luck to meet up with any politicians near my area, be it whether in my house, shopping centers or MRT stations. They didn’t came to my house ( and probably when they came , I wasn’t around )

With GE coming to an end , I would like to pen down some performance by the various parties( and probably I could only pen down a few percent of the most significant ones)

1)PAP – if a few words is to round up the PAP campaign , it would be 3 parts, LKY glorified past, the carrots to all kind of upgrading and those threatens that says Singapore would “die” if PAP loses more seats ( than the present 7). I seriously doubt if PAP will ever wake up from their mistake. Ministers making weird comments are making my blood boils at times ( Like Mr Lim Swee Say talking about “Heng “ for not being a Chinese or Malaysian” , and Mr Goh proudly defended his parliament record of only speaking ONE time throughout the 4 year term as mp (IMPACT sia) . I wonder if marine parade resident have had to repent over the last 4 years?. There are much more of these blunders but I don’t think I should write too long a blog.

2)WP, a not bad party with quite good candidates , I was pretty disappointed that only 28 seats has been contested. With the lineup , it’s seem they are bent in winning East coast and Marine parade (with their A teams). The sub A team at Jalan Besar might stand a chance also, but the B team at Nee soon might not be able to win (my personal view ). So 23 seats to the Workers party could be one of the best scenario I can imagine

3)SDP – I used to have bad impression on Dr chee , but over the years the challenges he met , I think he had changed a lot . personally I do not know if these changes came just during election periods and would they last? But then looking at his performance and his team at bukit timah , to believe that they can overcome the 10.1 percent deficit votes from the last election might be possible ( aided by the weird statements and personal attacks by Vivian and Sim Ann), just wish 4 seats could be won by The SDP for a start

4)SPP/DPP- there were mainly centered on Chiam See Tong’s effect ( although he didn’t run for any seats.) the candidates especially Mrs. chaim would have to work harder to be known to the voters around them for them to have real chance of winning. But I still hope 6 seats ( 5 in toa payoh and 1 in potong pasir) to be given to them

5)The other parties ( particular MR tan jee say from singfirst , Kenneth for the the reform party and HHH from independent ) were very hardworking , but chances were pretty low ( I want to exclude tanjong pagar since there has been no election for 24 years , unknown of what kind of voting pattern would there be ).Just hope in case they loses, they can still practice the (打死不跑) and come back the next election

Finally the best results would be 33 seats to the opposition , plus 5 seats if miracle comes true in tanjong pagar (which is really an unlikely miracle ). But on the other hand , I think its necessary to be mentally prepared for the worst results ( all seats won by PAP ) and hope PM lee does good to his promises.

So much for election fever, I hope I can cool down in the coming week and start concentrating on other things

God bless every time , any time,all the time

一個人也要很開心

電腦展之行

在九月5日，我终于找到时间去到电脑展，为自已买一台新的电脑。家里的旧电脑已经是超过五年了，而自从去年一月取消冈络也有20个月的时间了。或许也是时候，申请新的网络吧。

中午，我和我的表哥(和他一个朋友)便搭地铁到新达城去。到那里已经是1300分了。那里什麽都有，看得有点眼花缭乱。到底那一个比较好呢？开始我们去看纲络。开始以为 MY REPUBLIC 的网络很便宜，当讯问了一下，才发现按装费不便宜。之后也问了STARHUB , M1和SINGTEL 。最后还是拿了SINGTEL (只因为有免费五个月)

之后有看自已的电脑，没想要买贵的电脑，所以desktop 不在自已的考虑范围，只能买NOTEBOOK，看了几个摊位之后，一眼看上了HP 的NOTEBOOK (299元)之后才发现 harddisk 只有32GB, 小得可怜，但和自已讲好了，只要能打字就可以了，不准备拿在打游戏用。I我表哥有说，会不会太冲动了呢？只能见人见智吧，我心里想，反正也没有后悔的机会了。

其他时间，在里面走走看看。我没有想买的，都没有特别去看，我表哥的朋友本来要买ear piece ，但看了很多摊位，都拿不定主意，结果一个都买不到。

到四点的时候，我们才到六楼去看电脑的_ 件，在那里，很快就买到了portable disk (红色的)(89元)。之后，我便没有买其他东西了，我表哥和他的朋友还不想回，就这样走到1945分。自已走到脚睃，有两次都跑到外面坐下来休息，到2000分才回。

今天共花了388元(299+89元)，还不错吧，希望东西会保持久一点。反正十月份去台湾没了，表哥拿不到假。和自已说，有幻想的空间也是好事。现在可以想明年一月去日本的幻想。

晚上太晚了，也没去到任何大选集会，只希望明天可以去在四美的工人党的群众大会

写到这里

慧台

election fever ( blog 1) sept 2015

Today is the 7th of sept, and 9days of election has gone through the half way mark. On the nomination day, things went pretty smooth as all 89 seats were being contested. Only 3 SMC’s see a three way fight , mainly Macpherson ( by NSP), radin mas and bukit batok smc ( by independents). A few days before nomination had seen more than 10 independents collecting nominations forms, but most dropped out on the eleventh hour (for various reasons or so). At least we don’t see unnecessary 3 way fight, giving slighter higher chance for opposition party to win something

Talking first on my area (jurong GRC’s ), I have yet to see any political parties ( PAP or Singfirst) plying for votes around the area , pretty quiet compared to the last election. I didn’t; see tharman or the grassroots working around meaning sure win for PAP? Or SingFirst not coming as an indication of limited resources , thus they are more willing to set their priorities towards tanjong pagar GRC ? There were a lot of thing unknown, but I just hope I could see them coming in the next 3 days

This few days is activity free for my part, I decided to spent time visiting the worker’s party rally (some place far away from my area). The first rally I managed to visit is the one at Nee Soon . Fortunately , one of my friends ( Alan ) managed to find time to see the rally with me . We met up at khatib MRT at 1930 ( which he was late by 20 minutes ).

We spent 10 minutes walking to the site . There was a lot of people ( should be in the 10-15k region ). I managed to buy a newspaper (5 dollars ) and a flag (2 dollars) before joining the rally .

Initially I stand rather behind , but I was unable to see the speakers in front , but I managed to squeezed into the front gradually to have a better view and photo taking, I was a little disappointed that Ms He ( 何廷儒) didn’t speak on any topics , as she was the 司儀 for the night . But then Mr. Low was still the main attraction, and the others had also done pretty well. Overall tonight’s topic touches on issues on AHPETC (which I wasn’t expert in trying to understand all the details) Hope the rally on the coming few days would reduce the weightage on this particular topic and spent more time on national matters (such as white paper policies)

The rally ends at 2155 (5 minutes from the mandatory 2200 hours). We waited for a while before walking back to khatib MRT

I should stop now and continue later

一個人也要很開心

慧台

馬六甲半日游

在八月21日，我终于拿出了两天时间，赶回马六甲，看我的外公。本来想放了工，坐1930的车回，想想不懂会不会太赶了，就干粹拿半天假，这样会比较好吧

到马六甲，已是1945分了，汉忠过来载自已去吃饭，外公的身体看来还不错，只是听说外公肾不好，大小便有时来的时候，忍不到厕所便”大”到裤子里了，二姨要花比较多时间洗他的裤子。其他都还好吗。

汉忠第二天没有作生意，我们便到”红屋”走，那里已经很像旅行的地方了，只有一些地还没做好。也有船可以做，当因为我能安排的时间不多，再加上对点贵，结果没坐成。

走了两个小时，便改到附近的旅游展。大半的时候，只是看看而已，因为近来马币跌了不少，可以出国的机会，也比较少吗，明年去韩国的机会，看样子是没希望了。

到了1430分去吃饭，在二姨的家呆到1645分才回到车站，搭巴士回新加坡。这一次的旅行又告一段落了。下次回马六甲，大概是明年头了。

讲到未来，国会才8月25日已经解散了，九月一日提名日，九月11日大选。这一次，不论是政府或是反对党，都提早讲推出后选人和要竟选的区。共有10个反对党(真 得好多)，来争89个议席。虽然这么多党，但没有任何反对党竟选超过一半的议席，连最大的工人党也只竟选了28个议席，就算赢到完，也很难换政府(或许换政府的时间还没到吧)

为了希望新加坡有更好的未来，我希望反对党能赢超过30个议席。工人党赢24议席)，民主联盟 ( sdp)赢 5个议席，和 spp / dpp 赢 6 个议席。加起来有35个议席吧。其他的党胜算还相当低。写下来，到大选之后，才拿来对一下，看自已有多准吧。

近來都在省錢，希望來臨的電腦展，可以買到新電腦。只能看一步，走一步了

努力就好，一個人也要很開心。

慧台