23 more days to leave Bangalore...

Just got to learn about this new local movie in Singapore called "881". This is the theme song "一人一半". I find that the song is really nice and sincere. It has spurred on my interest to view the other mtvs of the movie on Youtube and I would also like to reccomend this other one.

It is called "代替". I feel that these songs have very nice lyrics and will definitely brings out the mood of the story in the movie. I hope this movie will be still showing in the cinemas when I go back Singapore soon. =) Looking forward to buy the soundtrack too.

Read many good reviews from the net about the movie. I alwiz liked local productions when I can relate to the story and characters easily. It is also very interesting that how hokkien songs are being brought to the main stream by this daring young director. Thumbs up!

Go-karting

Hi all,

Finally, I'm back on this long neglected blog of mine. Time flies... In another 3 weeks time, it will be the 1 year anniversary of my overseas posting in Bangalore. Nope, I will not be celebrating the anniversary in Bangalore. I'd be at the Land of the Rising Sun. =)

Well, things have been pretty boring and uninteresting for the past few months and thus I've been lacking in materials or subjects to post over here. However, the recent trip to try out Gokarting in Bangalore does give me some new photos to put up.



This the Gokarting track which I went to. It is a pretty small circuit. Takes abt 40-50 seconds to complete one lap. The corners are not that challenging as I would imagine. Well, I should be grateful that they have such things here in the first place. The karts are quite ok and the cost is rather affordable. About S$4.80 every 6 laps.




Well, I can't help it but to comment on the driving of the locals. Unlike those hell drivers on the real roads where they can manovure and wingle among the total chaos of vehicles and human, I am surprised at the way the few locals drive on the track. Crashing all over. No offense to lady drivers, there was a local lady who just drove right up a small island in the middle of the track too. And looking at this photo, it is a good example of Indians.... alwiz arguing... one blaming the other of causing the crash... they just never blame themselves.

On the side tracks, there is also a perfect example of how ridiculous and inconsiderate some locals are. Almost everyone don't know what is the meaning of queueing. Some even gave nonsense reasons like "Oh.. we need to go off by 4.30pm, we need to go on the tracks first." Duh.... I can also say "I forgot to switch off my light at home, let me go first so I can go home earlier to switch off the light."

Besides the bad experience of the irritating people crowding all around the gate, there was another unfortunate incident. My nokia phone's LCD cracked internally. I think it only happpened during my last 6 laps. I do not understand how come it will crack internally when it is in a protective cover and the cover and the external of the phone did not crack. Suay lar... Or mebbe I drove too fast? The phone not built to withstand the G force? Hahaha...

Maybe it broke for a reason too. Anyway, gotta look for a new phone soon...

My Housewarming Gathering ...

Held my housewarming gathering on the 7th January 2007, invited the usual group of Singaloreans to my place to have dinner. It was the first time since I moved in the first week of October 2006 that my apartment has so many people. It was also the first time for me to prepare food for so many people. Planning has to start way back at the beginning of the week… plan on what the menu should be… where to buy the ingredients… drinks…. how to prepare the food… utensils… yup… not easy.

I remember the last time I cooked for some gathering it was a Black pepper crab meal for a bunch of frends quite sometime back. Black pepper crab was relatively easy to prepare especially the black pepper sauce is readily available at the stores. However, there are no fresh live crabs in Bangalore. Therefore I can only fall back on the few other dishes which I know – Stir-fried beef slices, Chicken chops, simple Bai Cai with shrimps and Bak Kut Teh (using ready-made sachets).

Preparing those food can really be challenging as I need to “programme” exactly what I should do starting from having to thaw every kind of meat in the morning. Oh ya… they don’t sell deboned chicken drumsticks here so I had to debone the drumsticks by myself… 15 of them. Washing and cutting the vegetables and peeling the garlic is also time consuming, not to mention the neck ache I got from the prolonged position of looking down as I cut the stuffs.

After the meat is marinated while I cut the vegetables, I started frying my chicken chops. Having small pans, I had to fry the chicken concurrently using 2 pans and had to do it twice to fry all the chicken. Challenging huh? Hehe… as I was frying inside my kitchen, I even almost didn’t hear my doorbells ringing as the first few guests arrive. Not exactly as I planned as I had to continue my cooking in the kitchen instead of entertain the guests.

Next was frying the beef. I was thinking if I could shortcut the “frying two pans at the same time “ thing as beef usually get cooked very fast so I put all the beef in the bigger pan to fry it once… bad choice… I think there were just too much beef for the pan capacity thus it doesn’t necessary heat for all the meat. Moreover, the beef were giving out water that I had to keep draining the water. I think the beef was cooked abit too long in that process and wasn’t as tender as it usually should be.
After the not so successful beef, I reverted back to 2 pans at same time for the vegetable. Once again, I think the pans were too small that after frying all the vegetable leaves, there ain’t space to put in the cut stems.

Nevertheless, all the food are brought out on the dining table and somehow, 10 of us managed to squeeze around the round table for dinner. With additional contribution of food from Margaret, Raymond and Sam, there is enough food to fill everyone’s stomach. After dinner, it’s time to catch an exciting FA cup tie featuring Man Utd vs Aston Villa which Man Utd managed to conjure a win in the injury time through their ever-supersub Solskjaer and to enjoy a nice dessert contributed by Sharon.

As I was busy preparing food and no time to take good photos, I have to refer you people again =) Photos taken by CK.
http://singalore.blogspot.com/2007/01/kah-mings-housewarming.html

NYE...

We had a small gathering at Ternasser's place with the few Singaporeans left in Bangalore as most of them has returned to Singapore over the holidays. Though smaller crowd, we still had fun with Mahjong and good food prepared by Ternasser.

After the clock struck 12am, we decided to go and set some fireworks (bought since deepavali)which I have brought. We tried to access the rooftop where it would be safer to play but it was locked up. So we went downstairs to the swimming pool area to try out the fireworks and crackers. It's the first time for many of us playing with such prohibited stuffs back in Singapore.

It was hell fun and loud time!

Started off with the crackers (those CNY kind). Just light the fuse and throw to the driveway area... Early celebrations for CNY... =)

Hock Lum seemed to be the most experienced one dealing with these crackers. He took initiative to try out all of those different kinds of cracker, fireworks, bombs... Chris helped to light the fuse most of the time as he had his lighter and most of us were not brave enough to light those short fuses.

Its a swinging sparkle... after swinging for awhile HL swinged it into the empty swimming pool... and oops... it left some burnt mark on the swimming pool mosaic tiles. Hopefully it can be cleaned off. Hehe... or the resident here may be in trouble.

The most fun fireworks are the rockets. HL and Raymond found suitable "launching pads" amongst the branches of the plants and we launch the rockets from there.

These rockets can fly as high as 7-8 storeys. Luckily they are mostly vertical flyers and don't end up in other residents' balconies. =)

We also tried those big bursts of sparkles....

There were also others such as snakes (will fly around randomly), Peacocks (small bang sound), Hydrogen Bombs (really big bangs) and many others... HL was once almost hit by a flying cracker.. luckily the column he hid behind at saved him...

At the end of the "Cracking" session, we did suffer some casualties.. Chris and Raymond's thumbs were slightly burnt when they were lighting fuses... Hope it doesn't hurt that much and will recover real soon. Thanks for their sacrifices. =)

Lastly, let's end with another of HL's silhouette photo...

Brand new post for the brand new year.

Yup... I know its been another long time since my last post. Been really busy and too lazy to post. Moreover, not much new photos to put up too. However, I will still do a quick summary of what has happened over the month of december.

Throughout the month of Decemember since my last post, I have been busy with work. One of the amusing thing which I have encountered is that one of my local colleagues actually assumed helicopter landing pads to be found on the ground floor of a residential development. There should be 1 pad for each cluster of connected blocks, where to find so much space to have helipads on the ground? Well, it was surprising to me but I have to forgive them for their knowledge as there isn't that many skycrapers in India for them to know that helipads for tall buildings are meant to be at the rooftops. Then again, they should have watched movies or tv advertisements which have shown helipads in the roofs... eg. Independent Day. Ok... shalln't argue further.

Then comes Christmas!...

This is the Christmas decorations at the Bangalore office. Erm... I have sent this photo to some friends previously and they all laughed... hehe.. well... this is a real tree... not a fake one.

Christmas is actually celebrated in Bangalore as well. There are many christians around too. Besides the churches, the people acutally do organise some christmas parties themselves. The residential block beside our office held a family fun and games party on their rooftop on one of those nights nearing to Christmas.

For us, the Singaporeans here, we had a Christmas gathering party at the Chia's house. It was good fun and good food! Plentiful spread of nice home-cooked food. I had contributed my sambal prawns.

We had a gift exchange thingy for Christmas spirit. I've got a black addidas cap. Thank you to the person who bought that. =)

Good party and some of them stayed back to play Mahjong till wee hours in the morning. U can view this entry for a better description and photos of this gathering. http://singalore.blogspot.com/2006/12/christmas-party-2006.html

I called taxi to fetch me back. It was another confusing process. Called one operator, he told me he has no cabs around my area so I called the other company. After talking for a long time to tell him the address, I thought he understood... in the end, I got a call from a cab driver asking for directions again. Duh... Never mind, then another cab driver called me ... he is from the 1st operator I have called. So confusing... dunno how these people work. Anyway, I did managed to get back home safe and sound.

For Christmas itself, I din really go out as I was quite tired with all the rush work in office and also the thought of trying to get transport (telling drivers directions etc) makes me totally sian. Had a good rest at home and played WoW.

Some of my home cooked food...








Sambal prawns...

Bak Kut Teh... Yummy =Þ

Some more "Uniquely India" photos for your viewing pleasure...



Ever seen such long fire extinguisher? Not me...

This photo is taken from Grand Ashok hotel where I went for the Branded clothes sales about 3 weeks back. Really good warehouse sales... armani exchange, zara, D&G, FCUK, DKNY etc... all originals... I guess they are surplus from exporting goods...
Very good deals... one long sleeve or short sleeve shirt/Tshirt for only S$15-20. I bought so many... I think I don't need to shop for the next year already. Oh ya... also bought a Gucci pants for S$60... can't imagine myself buying Gucci in my life if it's at the normal prices.

1st December, I think this is the world's Aids Day. I didn't know about it till I see long line of people walking along the roads... as if they are on a demostration (luckily its a peaceful one)...

Finally got the time to blog again...

You guys must have been wondering what has happened to me. =) Well, I'm still well and kicking here in Bangalore. Like what people always say... "you will get to open your eyes when you go abroad... you will experience new things that you never knew..." Very true indeed in every aspect. However, more importantly, its how you handle such experiences that matters. Sometimes, you got to just change the way you see things to suit the new environment.

Talking about new environment... Let's get on the the minibus to go to Nandi Hills... let me show you the short day trip, I made together with the fellow singaporeans in Bangalore on 26th November (ya... I know... can almost considered as outdated news liao)...

It is a relatively small hill 1,478 meters above sea level, 65km away from the Bangalore city. The bus journey took about 1.5-2hrs.

When we reached the hilltop after the numerous turns and passed a really narrow entrance gate, we decided to find a cooling place with nice view to have our lunch as we came prepared with lotsa delicious food like fried mee hoon, curry chicken, apple pie and bread etc. No humans can resist such delicacies, not to mention our distant cousins - monkeys!







It was really quite scary to lunch when you got the whole family of hungry monkeys staring at your food. Luckily some dogs came along... also eyeing at our food... but at least they helped to chase away the monkeys. We did give these dogs some food for their effort.

Tried to do a pananormic view of the place but the photos did not stitch up that well (click on it to get enlarged view)... haha.. partly also because I took the left side in the afternoon and the nice sunset in the evening. =Þ

Basically its juz this kind of view, very steep vertical cliffs on the perimeter of the hill. Weather not that cooling up there because it is of higher ground. It's only until the evening time when the winds start to blow and the usual cool (cold) evening temperature drops in.

Here are some more of the photos...

Wonder how does this cow get here on the hill?!

And my favourite (love this kind of background sky)...

Please do visit the other blog for another entry where u get much better photos...

http://singalore.blogspot.com/2006/11/nandi-hills.html

adopt your own virtual pet!

Hmm... Just tot this was cute to add in my blog. Have fun playing with Nekkie!