Life's simple things.....

Good Morning Paris!

2011-08-21T22:42:00.009+08:00

Long over due photos.

Finally have some time (and energy) to edit these photos from 3 years ago.

Our plan for our first day in Paris was simple...just walk.

After waking up, we went down to the front desk, asked for a map and decided to take a stroll around Paris to soak in the sights. We didn't want to jump straight into the whole sight seeing, queuing up to enter museums/churches etc...so with a map and nothing else, we started our journey around Paris.

They say "Paris starts the moment you step out of your door."

And it's true....

Here was our first morning in Paris=)

A small bakery located right next to our hotel. We made it a point to buy a little pastry for breakfast here every morning.

Coincidentally, there was a farmer's market on that exact day. Which, just as coincidentally, was situated under the train tracks right outside our hotel=)

Walking down just another street in Paris. =)

Eiffel tower during the day

Lead the way, scotty.

Eiffel=) It's nice being in a place where everyone is happy.

Bike hockey....it looked really fun actually.

Parisians at play.

You just gotta love the architecture.

arc de triomphe

Av. de Champs Elysees.

We were approached by some Hong Kong people, who actually gave us 2000 dollars to shop in Louis Vuitton. Very bizarre.

And so we shopped.... It was definitely an interesting experience shopping in Louis Vuitton.

Obelix

Some Chinese wedding.

Jardin des Tuileres

The Louvre. (Which we decided to visit the next day, photos coming up soon)

Even the grafitti in Paris was of a different class.

The famous Notre Dame Cathedral.

Walking down quaint little streets

Bowls on display along one of the shop houses.

Beautiful sunset in Paris...

Water-way along Notre Dame cathedral. Do you see that little gathering of people near the bottom left hand corner of the picture? They were actually made up of musicians and buskers who came together to play=)

and so...we decided to pay them a visit.

It was just awesome.... random people would walk by and dance to the music. Imagine sitting along the canal, watching the sunset with Notre Dame and the rest of Paris as your backdrop, listening to musicians playing and random strangers dancing. No words can describe the feeling. The atmosphere was indescribable.

A random stranger who was sitting nearby, wrote a card and handed it over to li...simply because li was sitting next to her on this beautiful evening.

As the night came....we decided to continue our stroll to the next and last tourist attraction

The Pantheon

And as darkness set, we started our journey back to our hotel...

It was a beautiful first day in Paris=)

Our first night in Paris=)

2010-10-18T16:16:00.000+08:00

And so we said our bittersweet goodbyes to Edinburgh for yet another adventure.

Early on a saturday morning, we all trooped out of Edinburgh and flew to London, where we made a quick pit stop at Bayswater duck rice! Possibly the best duck rice in the world....seriously. Serious.

After which it was on to the Eurorail for Paris=)

Bayswater Duck Rice. It's an attraction in London by itself..I swear.

We reached France in the late afternoon, and by the grace of li's awesome french we found our way to our quaint little hotel called "Tourisme Hotel"

There are tons of similar hotels around Paris--cheap and awesome. But this was a stone's throw from the Eiffel tower. Moreover, from where I was standing to take the photo., it was practically the entrance of the metro=).

After a quick dinner round the corner, where li once again amused the owner with her french, we decided to take a quick walk to the Eiffel tower.

And this was what we saw after walking for 5 min/400 metres. sigh=)

=)

We took a slow walk in the cool evening air towards the Eiffel tower.....making numerous stops just to stare and take photos.

It's really strange how the sight of this (honestly) horrendous structure is actually quite romantic and beautiful at the same time=).

It's a good start to Paris=)

Beltane's Annual Fire Festival

2010-10-17T15:15:00.004+08:00

A brief intro before the bizzare photos coming up later.....

--taken from Beltane fire society website--

"Edinburgh’s Beltane festival traditionally takes place on the 30th of April every year on Calton Hill.

Edinburgh’s Beltane festival originates in the Scottish and Irish Gaelic pre-Christian festival of the same name.

The name itself is thought to have derived from a Gaelic-Celtic word meaning ‘bright/sacred fire’. It was held to mark and celebrate the blossoming of spring, and coincided with the ancient pastoral event of moving livestock to their summer grazing. It did not occur on any fixed solar date (the tradition of solstices and equinoxes is later in origin) but tended to be held on the first full moon after the modern 1st of May. Some sources suggest that the blooming of the Hawthorn was the primary signal for the event before the development of centralised calendars.

It was a celebration of the fertility of the land and their animals. The main traditional element which was common to all Beltane festivals was the fire which gave it its name. All the fires of the community would be extinguished and a new, sacred ‘Need Fire’ was lit by either the village head or spiritual leader. From this source one or two bonfires were lit, and the animals of the community would be driven through or between them. It was believed that the smoke and flame of the fires would purify the herd, protecting them in the year to come and ensuring a good number of offspring. The inhabitants of the village would then take pieces of the fire to their homes and relight their hearths, and dance clockwise around the bonfires to ensure good portents for them and their families."

Alright...now that you get an idea of what the Beltane festival is for....here are the photos. However, I still have no idea how the events and proceedings of the evening have anything to do with whatever the supposed "intent" of the ritual as described above. But it was a bizzare and interesting watch nonetheless....very much enjoyed it...haha.

The evening of 30th April 2009 one of the last nights in our beautiful apartment.

We were wondering if we should take the bus to the location, but just as we were walking to the main road, we saw a bunch of weirdly dressed people and decided that they must have been on their way to the same thing. So we just followed them=)

Beautiful Edinburgh evening..

Making our way up Calton hill---overseeing the beautiful skyline of Edinburgh city.

=)

Travel companions

Random bizzarely dressed people were a sign of things to come...

=)

If you think it looks obscene.....it probably is.

And it starts...

It was packed like sardines.

By the way, it was pretty cold and windy up on that hill. I swear those guys were either high on alcohol or drugs.

Yes...they (including girls) were in varying states of nudity.

Up till today I still don't know what was happening...haha. Apparently some battle between the white robed people and the naked red people.

Cropped so that certain parts are left out.

Honestly, despite the randomness and total mind-boggling state of events, it was a thoroughly enjoyable evening=) Had a lot of fun and the atmosphere was amazing. Am actually also surprised at the photos I managed to take considering the pitch-black darkness of the area coupled with blindingly bright fire..not to mention packed-like-sardines crowd. All in all, it was an awesome evening=)

The road back home...

Just before I left Edinburgh, I went back to RIE to take a photo with the wonderful doctors who showed me around and whom I shadowed during the past 4 weeks=).

Our last dinner in our apartment...

Packing up..

Awesome room which I stayed in for 4 weeks---once again, thanks to li for finding the wonderful apartment.

After that night, it was onto our next adventure---Paris=) Photos coming soon.

Last few days in Edinburgh..

2010-10-10T11:14:00.004+08:00

Really delayed photos....But since it's the start of my break, I decided to go through my library of photos.=)

Here are some photos from Edinburgh. If I remember correctly, these were taken during the last week that we were there.

Here we are on our way to visit Edinburgh's botanical gardens=)

Wide spaces of nothing....for people to do nothing but just sit and enjoy.

Kids on a school trip---visiting the royal mile.

"wild" animals of the garden...

fierce squirrel....

Our beautiful apartment...still miss this place even though it's been 2 years alrdy.

English Weekend (Last day)

2010-07-29T14:04:00.000+08:00

Sunday--Our last day of our English get-away. But we still had a long day planned ahead before we made our journey back to Edinburgh.

Back to the town for our last breakfast...and as luck would have it, there was some market fair and even a marching bad was present to send us off=)

Do you spot us int he picture above?

We finally got our wish of rowing a boat.

Poor little duck following behind a couple.

rowing the boat was a crazy affair...we ended p going in circles most of the time..and it got quite wet, cold and tiring after awhile...but it was still a damn fun nonetheless. haha.

Sigh =)

Happy to work those muscles...

See that little black sheep? We ended up chasing that poor kid round the field for a good 15 min.....just cuz we had to touch a sheep before we left. Sadly, we failed.

If I'm not wrong we had some pretty awesome beef stew at this bar just before we left for Edinburgh.

Shit tasting jelly beans...literally.

A toast to good health! (it was during the period of the swine flu btw)

English Weekend Day2 (Part 2)

2010-07-27T13:28:00.001+08:00

Cherry Blossoms!

About a 10 min walk away from the lake was this hill that was lined with the most beautiful "cherry-blossom" trees! And they were in full bloom!

Words don't do this place justice...but just imagine the blue-est skies, bright shining sun, whitest-clouds, green-est grass, cool dry air, a nice breeze, with blue waters in the horizon.....just picture that...and at least you have a start to just how beautiful that place was....

=)

My wonderful travel companions.

in response to the pigs....

>.<

I don't know what came over us...but we all had this sudden urge to just roll down the hill...

Honestly, it was damn fun....and strangely therapeutic...

I must have been quite happy....o.O

Fish!

And to top it all off...we had dinner at this rather nice English pub that came heavily recommended.

English Weekend Day2 (Part 1)

2010-07-26T12:44:00.001+08:00

On a side note...editing these photos one year later really brings back fond memories. And strangely, even though it has been many months ago, it seems like I was just there yesterday. Sigh.)
Anyway, we woke up bright and early the next day to make full use of the weekend. First on our list was to visit the nearby town market and grab some breakfast.

Cute old folks buying books and little what-nots.....=)

Our breakfast.

After which, we were back on the road to visit some of the sites of the English countryside.

First on the list, was a historical stone-structure sort of site---something like the stone-henge.

=D

Someone was really in the mood for posing....

Working it...

The girls really wanted to experience horse riding...and after missing the chance to go for one in isle of skye, we just had to drop by for a ride here.

The scenery was just amazing....

The little rabbit museum=)

English breakfast..complete with tea and scones!

a cute little girl in her little red shoes and red hairband.

Cuz we couldn't row our row-boat and, hence, had some time to spare, we ended up sitting on a cruise round one of the larger lakes.

=)

Yes, it was cold and the wind was pretty strong...

I remember thinking to myself how great it wld be to live there....with the blue skies, wonderful weather, a nice boat and a lake-side house.....sigh.

God-like sky.

sailboats.=) one day...?

one of the towns found along the shores of the lake. If I am not wrong, this particular lake was the biggest one in the region. Can't remember the name though.

The 5 of us! We should meet up soon sometime.
Decided to stop here for this post...cuz the next set are of wonderful "cherry blossoms". Coming soon....

English weekend get-away

2010-07-24T23:41:00.004+08:00

During the third weekend of our stay in Edinburgh, the group of us decided to go for a nice drive down the English countryside (of sorts). Kah Hua also came along for the trip.

Here we are at the famous fish and chips shop for a quick brunch before we started on our journey. Strangely, I didn't take any photos of the fish and chips...hmmm.

The world famous Rose chapel--made famous by the Da Vinci Code.

We stayed in this quaint little terrace-like cottage. With creaky floor-boards and a sky-light that can be opened revealing the millions of stars in the sky....while letting in the cool night air that would immediately form small clouds of fog inside our room. =)

Hunting for dinner....

After dinner, we retired back into our little cottage....read some guide books and planned a bit. After which it was off to bed=)

2010-07-19T22:49:00.002+08:00

Finally got around to editing and uploading the second batch of photos from my sister's wedding=)---he actual wedding day itself. Here are some of the pictures from the morning of the wedding.

Just a little intro....these are photos from the bride's side, where everyone gathered at my sister's house all bright and early to get ready for the church wedding=)

The next batch of photos will either be of Edinburgh again..or maybe the actual church wedding photos of my sister. cheers!=)

2010-07-19T17:10:00.000+08:00

About a week after visiting glasgow, where kind Ambika played hosts to us, she came by our apartment for a bbq get-together=). The weather was perfect...bright, cool and slightly chilly....One of the only times we had a bbq without smelling of smoke and sweat.

Our make-shift bbq stand made on the balcony of our apartment.

They sold these rather ingenious bbq-pits at their local supermarkets. All you need to do is to throw a lighted match onto the paper on the top, and once it catches fire, the rest will be taken care of...and you're ready to cook=)

=)

I just realised I have yet to edit my sister's wedding photos.....will do that next.

Isle of Skye--the last night and the journey back home=)

2010-07-18T22:04:00.004+08:00

Some long overdue photos from my trip to Edinburgh. From more than a year ago=) Am finally getting into the hang of things, with work, life and the whole new sleep-wake hours. And after tweaking my blog, it's back up again.

Fairy tops.

This little pier is directly across our B&B. Directly across this lake is the little white house which we stayed in.

Our beautifully quaint Bed and Breakfast. Owned by an extremely hospitable couple=)

And their neighbour's three legged dog.

Just cuz the sun was shining brightly, they decided to have a little chit chat out in the sun---with some whisky, of course.

The setting sun gives the house an amazing colour....

Took some pics of the setting sun while we were driving to our dinner place.

Loch Bay---a small family-owned seafood restaurant located right in front of the sea. A MUST-GO-TO dinner experience according to the locals of skye.

As expected, dinner was just speechless.

And after a good night's rest....it was time to finally make our long journey back to Edinburgh.

With some pit stops to visit some of the remaining sights we missed during our drive down.

Imagine driving along roads like these......=)

Isle of Skye Day 2 (PArt 2)

2010-07-17T11:52:00.000+08:00

*backdated post that somehow didn't get published*

Was supposed to go for floorball today, but it got canceled last minute, so I was left with some spare time. Decided to edit some photos from Edinburgh once again. Got too engrossed in it and ended up spending the whole Saturday editing photos (with minimal revision).

Anyway, here are the rest of of photos from the second day in Isle of Skye=) I can't stop telling myself what a beautiful place it is...sigh=)Editing these photos really brought back a lot of good memories.

As continued from previously, here is our boat arriving to take us on a ride around the lake.

A family joins us in our boat.

Lazy seals=)

They kinda look like giant sea slugs...

Once out of the water, their flippers become totally useless, they wriggle around and wobble about to move around.

sun-tanning sausages..

Sleeping Beauty's castle

On our way to our next destination, which was a walk along coral beach. We got stopped by a mother and child heiland coo (highland cow), so we decided to take the opportunity and snap some photos of the cows right outside our car.=)

Here's the mother and child safely on the not-as green-other-side.

The scenery from one of our pit stops during our drive...

Just us alone on the road in front and behind....=)

The thing about isle of skye is you have to walk around to get to the tourist destinations. Unlike other places where u can drive up to the beach/mountain etc, over here, u have to park ur car at a designated place and carry on walking from there. There are tons of these walk-abouts in Skye. We were recommended a book at our B&B that had hundreds of walks in Skye. We picked the more popular "Easy" and "Moderate" walks (Yeah...they graded the difficulty of the walks.=P).

So here we are walking towards coral beach=)

First a Rock beach...

Climbing up a hill to reach the other side=)

=)=)

A dog and his owner play on the beach=) Just in case you are wondering, this whole beach is is filled with small corals and shells! Or broken pieces of them=) Hence Coral beach.

Well, we just had to go for a dip in the water=) The pictures look deceivingly warm and sunny. In actual fact, the place there was cold and windy! But nonetheless, it was a wonderful experience...

At first it was shockingly cold, then it became numbingly cold. After awhile, we started feeling warm and tingly. Maybe our nerves were dying off.

=)=)

The view of Coral beach from the hill seen in the earlier picture with the dog and his owner playing=)

Making our way down the hill from another way=) It was quite fun going for these walk-abouts because it was like a giant playground and there was no fixed road/path. We could follow the main path, venture onto smaller detours or make our own. (Which we did most of the time, esp during the climb up old man of stor! omg..but that is a story for another time----during the 3rd day of Skye.)

A freshwater stream...

One of my wishes was to wade barefooted along a stream...Li reminded me tt we had to do it=)

She went first=)

It was refreshingly cold and awesome...i would do anything to be able to do that again! sigh=)

Sunning our feet=) I know it was a small stream, but it was something I always wanted to do...and it felt good finally experiencing it. Got to tick off another thing from my list of things I must experience in my life....

During our walk back, it was like we were at a different place altogether, cuz now we were facing in the opposite direction, so the scenery was totally different. After reaching our car, we managed drive to another location and go for another short walk-about before it started getting dark.

We got back to our car and went to another location. The time was about 5 pm, which meant that the sun was setting soon. So we decided to go to this place that supposedly had the BEST sunset in Skye (according to the massive book of walk-abouts)

And so we hopped back onto our betsy and drove to the next destination...

Sceneries like these really make u wonder if time had forgotten about this place. May this place remain this way forever..... and may they NOT build bigger roads and NOT build an airport. And may certain nationalities not visit this place too---esp the noisy/littering/spitting kind.

We came to this nice look-out which had a really nice view. We were all set to enjoy the view....when I heard this weird sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss sound. If I was in Singapore, i would have totally not heard it. Then again, even if I heard it I might have dismissed it as "background" noise. But thank goodness I heard it, cuz it was a stone that had pierced our right rear tyre---and air was leaking out of it.

So we took a few photos and started going thru our options..=P But damn...the view was really beautiful=)

So here we are--stuck in the middle of land-before-time in a car that I was not sure contained all the necessary equimpent to change a tyre. here were our options:
1) Call the rental number for help/tow.
2) try and change the tyre right there and then
3) Drive to the nearest civilisation before attempting option 2 or 3. Or die trying....

So recalling BCLS logic of never pulling out the stone (as it might make the leakage worse) we decided to go with option 3=) Cuz even if we called for help, it wld take at least 2 hours for them to reach us (IF THEY CAN FIND US). And option 2 was retarded cuz the last thing we would ever want was to be stranded in the middle of nowhere in the dark with a half un-screwed tyre that is un-usable...

So we decided to drive to our dinner reservation. Must admit that we were strangely excited and happy with this whole punctured tyre saga. Don't know why...=P

We parked outside our quaint little restaurant and proceeded to change the tyre. We were done in about 10-15 min? After which, we decided wash up and have an early dinner.

Here's a pic of betsy's new tyre. My cam only had the finished product, Li's cam contains photos of the process and also of the funny incidents. My hands were too dirty to touch my cam.

Too much excitement for Li....=P

=)

The only photo of me in my cam....so I had to try and salvage this photo.

The Old School Restaurant---which came recommended by our B&B owners.

While waiting for our dinner to be served, we went out to see the sunset=)

The sky really kept changing every few minutes....=)

After it got a bit chilly, we decided to go back in. In time for our dinner, which was just being served.

The food was really good=) the ambience was wonderful...arhh..whatever..the whole setting was just perfect!

come on...even the walk to our car was great!

After reaching our B&B, I decided to take out my tripod (one of the few times I used it) and take some pictures of the last few minutes of sunlight.

"Eggs for sale!"

It was a good day.....=)

I am really happy for the juniors who are going to Edinburgh for their electives next year....hope they get to experience all this and more when they visit Skye!

The next set of photos will be of our third day in Skye=) Which will not be up anytime soon.

Happy New Year!=)

2010-01-02T17:27:00.004+08:00

May 2010 be a wonderful year for everyone! Here's wishing everyone peace, health, success, love, friendship, safety and warmth.

May the new year be devoted to peace, rights, dignity, brotherhood, friendship, saving the world and action-more-than-silence.

As for my new year resolutions, they are...
1) Study hard
2) Sleep before 1.30am unless studying
3) Try to be more punctual
4) Exercise at least once a week
5) Always try to be a better person

My new year wish?
1) Pass MBBS
2) Be a better person

happy new year everyone!

Isle of Skye Day 3 (Part 1)

2009-12-25T19:33:00.019+08:00

The 3rd day of Isle of Skye--a beautiful sunny Saturday!=) Apparently, we were unbelievably lucky. Our B&B owners said no one would believe us if they saw our photos that we were in Isle of Skye, because it's usually raining everyday in Skye.=)

For our third day in Skye, we woke up early once again, ate a heavy home-cooked breakfast and was soon out of the house. First on the agenda, was a hike up Old Man of Storr. According to the B&B owners, we HAD to visit this place. And according to the book on all the walk-abouts, the old man of storr was ranked as one of the most popular "moderate" level walks. (moderate in terms of physical requirements).

So here are some photos of our journey up the "hill"

It started out nice and simple...with lush trees and nice cooling shade.

Here are the same pictures enlarged..

The walk was beautiful. The colours were amazing. Maybe it was because it was spring, so everything had this golden brown colour to them, with new shoots of bright green leaves lining the edges of the trees.

After a while, the trees started thinning and the gradient started becoming steeper...

Our little hike was getting a bit more "upward-bound" (Take note of our plastic bags and barang that we are carrying up)

Although the thinning of the trees meant less shade, it also meant we were now able to see beyond the treeline into the horizon.....which was whao....

look at that....In all honesty, photos don't do it justice.

=)

We would frequently venture off the track and onto random cliffs/mounds to take photos of the surroundings...

Venturing off the trail...=) The colours were this awesome...

As usual, we decided not to follow the main path, and the crowd, and decided to climb the old man ourselves=) As you can see, the gradient just kept getting steeper and steeper....

Those rocks in the distance were our destination. Not sure if you could appreciate the magnitude and the distance, so I blew up this picture. Can you see those tiny human dots on the top of the greenery in the distance? They re just somewhere near the base of Old Man of Storr.

Meanwhile, we took our time, turning back with almost every other step to look at the scenery....

The "crowd"--which wasn't very much...=P

At this stage, we were a bit apprehensive, because this was our first "moderate" walk. We thought moderate was like "ok la, unless you are 80 and above, u shld be fine" kind of standard. But then on the way up, we saw all these pple in hiking boots, carrying backpacks, and using climbing poles etc etc. Whereas Li and I were in our sports shoes, carrying plastic bags plus our camera bags and lugging our 2 giant cameras over our necks...hmm..

Luckily the weather was awesome---it was cool and dry, so we were pretty much enjoying the walk despite it being a sunny day. Otherwise, the distance might have seemed too daunting...=P

After a while, the crowd started thinning even more, cuz we went up from a different path...

Note: Look at vigorous headband, hiking boots and serious climbing poles around Li.

It started dawning on us that their definition of "moderate" was different from ours....haha. But it was fun nonetheless and the photo opportunities were amazing!

After climbing up to the top, we bumped into Hui lin and Lawrence once again. (We bumped into them lower down, but we kept stopping to take photos and detouring around to sit etc, so they went on first. Apparently, they came from a separate path which was much faster and less "hazardous" to health/life...=P.

After finding a nice spot, we took out our little snacks from our plastic bags=). (Obviously, we didn't carry a bunch of plastic bags up a rock for nothing...)

Land before time....

Looking at the photos, everything seems so small and out of proportion. In reality, those "little" rocks lying in the valley (in the middle of the photo) are bigger than a human on average.

After eating/resting/enjoying the scenery/catching our breaths, it was time to make our way down. We decided to go by a different way from how we came up. The photo above was the route we took. Yeah, it was quite slippery. After a while, li decided to just slide down the slope on her bum.

Moments like this, you find yourself questioning your purpose in life and whether it is worth running the rat-races back home when there is so much simple beauty in places like this. Puts things into perspective....

Sliding, while protecting her camera.

Sigh=)

Btw, that is the old man. The obvious looking protrusion. (No vignetting or selective boosting done here. The old man just stands out naturally...seriously.)

After that initial rocky descend, the rest of the journey down was via nice paths=) P.S If you're unsure of the magnitude of this place, do take note of the little human dots further down the path.

It wasn't long before we got back into the trees and back into our car=)

Well, that's just the morning of our 3rd day. More photos coming up documenting the remainder of our 3rd day. Might take a while again. In fact, might not even be anytime soon, cuz my pro flickr account expired today (it was li's christmas present to me last yr), and I don't feel like renewing it now as it won't be fully maximised. So I might only be renewing it after my MBBS. We'll see.

Merry Christmas Everyone! Have a wonderful and peaceful Christmas and new year!

Christmas Party at Huilin's House

2009-12-23T12:43:00.005+08:00

Our Christmas party cum Joshua's bday celebration at Huilin's house! Here we are after our Singhealth residency talk.

Peace from the miss Zen.

BEAN!=)

After flashing 4 times, I finally got a nice pic of zj=)

It was a night of cooking talents! My arteries are gonna clog up and thrombose after yest night and tonight. Went to Ian's house yesterday, but forgot to bring my camera so didn't take many photos, except thru my hp camera, but there were tons of photo coverage anw. My goodness, the amount of tasty home-cooked food was awesome! Then again, home-cooked food is healthier (supposedly). So all's good!

Marcus' non-dry turkey!

Mirriam's fried-rice and celene's shepard pie which i kept eating the whole night..

Huilin's dessert (i forgot the name again) which I got the honors of putting the whip cream on.

=P

Joshua...

....this is somewhat disturbing....

CATAN!

Happy birthday Joshua!=)

Zen zen looks disturbed...

Happy Birthday Joshua=)

happy+++....=)

Li's log cake! success++=)

Merry Christmas everyone!=) I think I'll be sleeping for the next few days to digest the past 2 days' dinners. Hopefully, I'll wake up in time for Christmas.

Isle of Skye--Day 2 (Part 1)

2009-12-06T21:51:00.007+08:00

Decided to continue uploading some photos from our electives. Way way way overdue.=P Sighs...but can't be helped with the upcoming MBBS.

Brings back happy memories just looking at all these photos=) Looking forward to graduating and, hopefully, going for a Graduation trip! Meanwhile, here are photos from our weekend trip to Isle of Skye. This is the first set of photos of Day 2 at IoS. Beautiful place!

Our beautiful breakfast room=)

Breakfast at the B&B was awesome. We had a choice of 4 kinds of breakfast, which we had to indicate the night before. For the first morning, I ate some salmon and egg breakfast. I think Li ate the same thing too? There was cereal, milk, yoghurt, fresh milk, juice, fruits etc also=)

Just breathtaking! Imagine waking up to this everyday....Btw, this was the reading room. sighs.

The view from one of our bedroom window.

Immediately after breakfast, it was onto the road with our little Betsy=)

We drove onto a castle (something, I can't remember....Can someone help?) which we drove past on our way to isle of ske, but had no time to stop by because it was too late.

It was a beautiful place=)

"Sheltered" walkways

The castle was surrounded by tons of gardens and even had a giant lake next to it.

Happy=)

ever wondered how those gravel walkways always seem so straight? It is because of this guy! he
used this giant pair of shears and clipped away. It's amazing how he manages to do it so straight!

Accurate sun-dial!

The secret garden...

We decided to stop here for a nice lunch break while waiting for the next boat ride onto the lake. the view was so serene and beautiful. Sighs....=) =)

Our little lunch break=) Sandwiches and chips..with a nice little book to pass the time.

And before we knew it, it was time for the next boat ride. More photos coming up soon. The boat ride brought us up close to tons of seals and sealions. I was expecting to see a few, but it was flooded with tons of seals!

More photos coming up! (Not so soon though...=P)

YES, we are the batch of adversity!

2009-11-25T01:14:00.014+08:00

To the batch of 1986, born on the year the chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded,

The batch who grew up during a time...

When it was mandatory for our names to follow the chinese han-yu-pin-yin,

When we witnessed the rise and fall of the pager and the birth of the first brick handphone,

When we grew up first using the "floppy disk"(from the black 8-inch, to the 5¼-inch and, finally, to the multi-coloured 3½-inch floppy disks that had just enough memory space for pokemon volleyball and liero), to ZIP drive, then CDs and DVD, and now thumbdrives & Blu-ray.

When we used to sit on the cement floors of the classroom reciting off giant PETS textbooks,

When teachers used to carry feather dusters and parents would punish us even more when teachers scolded us,

When there was EM1, EM2 and EM3,

When we used to collect Little Scientist badges,

When we saw the birth of the internet, and grew up on ICQ, IRC, Yahoo, MSN etc.

When the first MRT line was built. From East-West Line, to North-South line, to NEL and now Circle Line.

When Extra-curricular activities became Co-curricular activities,

When we all went for National Day parades at the dear old National stadium.

When there was streaming practically every year--and there was only one road--PSLE, O'levels and A-levels.

When Social Studies first became a compulsory O-level test subject,

When we saw the alternating banning of various meat---from mad cows, to bird flus, to mad sheep, to pigs etc.

When project work was first added into the A-level curriculum,

When we saw the birth of terrorism and witnessed terrorists on our shores,

When SARS came and left, and now H1N1,

When we used to watch micheal jackson on our living room tv and see girls screaming, fainting and being stretcher-ed out off the crowd.

When we first had walkmans, then cassette players, then CD players and now iPods,

When the ERP was first set up just as we started to drive,

When Sentosa used to have fantasy island,

When Marina bay used to be water,

When, now, both of them are going to become integrated resorts.

When NS first became 2 years,

When our world used to be a peaceful place, but has gradually gotten hotter, with earthquakes, tornadoes, floods, fire etc now also becoming a daily affair.

When so many changes happened (more than can be mentioned in a small post)

To the batch who has gone through all this and more....

We may not notice it but we are a batch born to a life of never-ending changes....
And we have not just gotten used to this life, we kick ass at it!

All the best for our MBBS and for whatever the future may hold, including residency=)

Not only have we experienced change but we have also created change and started some good in our surroundings, including Medicine school.

As our medical student life comes to an end, let's remember that one of the changes we have created was to foster a stronger spirit and culture in medicine. No matter how sub-conscious or small it was.

Looking at our juniors, it is obvious that the medicine faculty is slowly changing. They are more cohesive, batch T-shirts are a norm, senior-junior interaction is a casual affair and there are less barriers, winning Rag-and Flag seems like an annual affair and an actual possibility, intra-faculty events now involve all the years, Playhouse is a major production, community services are rampant and on-going, sharing of resources across batches is now a norm. Not to mention, through our feedback/input/complaints, they now have a new curriculum with an even more streamlined syllabus.

At the end of the day, change is gradual.

If we foster the correct spirit and culture, everything is possible with time.

We sometimes cannot change others, but we can definitely be the change we wanted.

An authoritarian society cannot be changed overnight. The simple question we have to ask ourselves is whether we truly want to involve our juniors and are willing to extend a hand and welcome those immediately above and below us.

Only when this open culture and spirit of equality is created can a society based on mutual trust and understanding be created.

And this was not started by our batch..... We are but just a domino in the chain of events. We just have to make sure that we play our role in becoming good people/juniors/seniors/friends/doctors AND to nurture the next generation of juniors.

As we graduate, we no longer just live the life of change, we also become the people who are steering the next stage of change. Now, we have the power to define the kind of change our juniors will live through.

We have to aim to be constantly inspired and to continue to inspire.

Hey Jude

2009-10-29T19:44:00.004+08:00

~Cover by Hugh Laurie (The Beatles)

My 1000th post=) Logged onto blogger to realise tt the number was 999. So I just had to post something today!=)

Have a great day everyone!

My Sister's Wedding--Part 1

2009-10-14T14:09:00.007+08:00

Here are my first batch of photos of my sister's wedding in Melbourne. This set of photos are of the day before the actual wedding.

Due to my postings, I only reached Melbourne on Friday morning.

Our flight landed at around 5. So after reaching the service apartment, I promptly fell asleep. Only to wake up to an empty house because everyone had already left. So here are some shots taken during my walk from the service apartment to my sister's house.

Cute little cottages.

More cute little cottages.

MY church=)

Stephen boy and his favourite iggle piggle.

deep in concentration (watching tv)

Joanna--the maid of honour=) She was very helpful and useful=) She even made all the corsages and bouquets.

The wedding car. Apparently, wedding cars in Australia only have 2 strips.

After everything was more or less settled. I managed to squeeze out some time to catch up with Shu-en!=) She brought me to this quaint little spanish cafe which had really awesome food=)

Hot chocolate...=)

CHURROS!

Nice friendly shop-owners who were part spanish too! They were sisters..

Thank you Shu-en! It was so nice of you to come meet me despite your heavy schedule.

A cute old man reading his storybook in the cafe.

After which, Su-en brought me to the shophouse next door to see something cool.

It was an open-air restaurant on the second storey of the shophouse. It was actually a normal shophouse with all 4 walls surrounding the place, but the roof was missing. In place there numerous colorful lanterns floating from beams tt filled the sky above.

It was really enchanting=)

After the short catch up, miss shu-en drove me home..

Thank you!

Back at my sister's house.

As the night progressed, more and more relatives started dropping by for some chit chat and makan=)

Meanwhile, I also had to repair the lock on the toilet door, so that it could close properly.

Come here, stephen!!=)

=)

run away!

The girls + Stephen.

More photos of the actual wedding day coming up next!=) Am slowly editing them now. See you...

Isle of Skye (D1)--The drive down

2009-09-30T15:22:00.003+08:00

For the second week in Edinburgh, we planned a short getaway to the famous Isle of Skye. A rural and well-preserved island located north of Edinburgh. It was a 7 hour drive from Edinburgh, which seems kind of long, but on hind-sight, it was a rather comfortable and fun road-trip=)

It was geat fun driving down to Isle of Skye in our little betsy. We also made several stops along the way which actually made the trip much more enjoyable and scenic.

The place was breathtaking-ly beautiful.

And here are the photos from Day 1 of our road trip---journey to isle of skye=)

For our first stopped by this giant lake that had a boat house and a bistro.

We saw a lot of cute ang-moh kids=) Glistening blonde-haired kids in their colourful sweaters=)

The Bistro.

Despite the sun shining brightly, it was an extremely windy day. Luckily we were all nicely bundled up=)

The lake was quite massive and they had boat rides which brought tourists to some castle ruins located across the lake. We decided not to go cuz we were going to see tons more ruins and there was a long journey ahead. Besides, we were having a good time enjoying the scenery already.

Li=) She was my navigator for the whole trip. We were supposed to use a GPS initially, but ended up using paper maps in the end. It turned out to be a blessing, cuz we were able to plan our routes much easier and could easily make pit-stops whenever we wanted to=) Plus, we actually got to know the area better and had a better orientation around.

Kids in their multi-colored sweaters playing with stones.

One of the sandwiches that we packed for our road trip=) The hot chocolate came from the bistro...yum!

Some random kid that appeared out of the forest trail alone...haha.

After a short break, we were back on the road continuing on ur journey. We planned the route such that we would drive pass the major lakes including Loch Ness (above). In fact, most of our journey was spent driving beside these lakes.

The place was just massive. And pictures simply does not do any justice to the atmosphere and wonder of that place. The place was strangely calm yet eery.
It was no surprise that people could imagine up stuff like the loch ness monster and stuff.

Anyway, we made a lot of pit-stops along the road to take photos and to see the sights. On one of them, we came across a sign that said "beach". We followed it and lo and behold, there was a staircase that led down to the shores of Loch Ness!=) So not only did we see Loch Ness, we also touched it.=)

The place was just beautiful. It was enchanting. And somewhat un-nerving. There were times I actually expected some creature to appear above the water-surface or have some monster walk up from the shoreline.

The vast waters stretching into the horizon just added to the whole mystery of the place.

Our warm and comfortable Betsy. It was an awesome feeling coming back to a heated car!

Loch Ness and our little Betsy.

Our reliable little Betsy!
In any case, if any of you are intending to rent a car in scotland, do rent them from Arnold Clark. They are the most reliable and affordable car rental company there. Plus most of their cars are new! We got this 5 seater, 2 door-hatchback for really cheap. And we also managed to get a liabilty waiver too. Which meant tt we could wreck the car or get it stolen and we wouldn't need to pay an extra cent too. (Luckily we got that waiver, cuz we actually burst one of the tyres in the forgotten lands of Skye)

Our sustainence for the roadtrip---Wine gums, chocalate and Walker chips!

My navigator throughout the 7 hr journey.

Quaint little brick cottages and their nicely groomed gardens..

Just imagine driving along scenic roads like these....=)

Just as we crossed the suspension bridge to Isle of Skye, the sun started to set....just in time!

We barely lasted a few minutes out in the cold and wind. We quickly took some shots and immediately rushed back into our car.

This scenery was just a taste of what's to come=)=) And this was taken with the sun almost gone.

The first town in Isle of Skye was Portsmouth. From there it was another 1.5 hours to our B&B.

We drove to a nice scottish pub for dinner, that had a really kind and friendly bar-owner=) Where we saw drinking scots singing and watching soccer=) The food was pretty good too.

As night time came, the whole place became totally pitch black! This whole place was really rural, there weren't any street lamps. The only light was from our headlights.

In fact, we made a wrong turn (one turn too early from our house) and actually drove poor betsy off a cliff and almost had her marooned on a cliff cuz the wheels weren't touching the floor.

Luckily it was a small "cliff" and and we decided to release the brakes and just "fall" off the cliff. =)

We did draw some weird/concerned stares from the owners of the house whose land we were on.=P

But we made it safe and sound to our B&B.

More photos to come soon.

Quintfac Bash 2009

2009-09-29T18:03:00.004+08:00

And here are the photos from Qunitfac bash 2009!

Performance by the M2s

Some Roman dude from Pharmacy.

Li=)

=)

M1s (I think)

Nursing Performance

OMG, Im wearing a canon strap....=S

Backrow heroes!

The judges for the night.

Dance performance from Medicine.

Made up solely of M5s.

AROM==> 0-180
PROM==> 0->180
Full ROM

You gals were awesome!

Preparation for Quintfac Bash 2009

2009-09-29T01:14:00.004+08:00

This year's inaugural QUINT-fac (inaugural because DUKE-NUS joins in the fun as the 5th member) bash was held at Zouk once again.

Here are some photos of the pre-event rehearsals/dry runs/preparations. More photos coming up of the event proper soon.

Back row heroes---Jonk, Kelvin and Benjamin

The Backrow Heroes---Paul, Jonk, Kelvin, Benjamin

Li=)

The Medicine girls hard at work practicing their dance moves.

Lynette!

Concentrate...

The girls from M5

Yiuming

=)

More photos coming up of the event itself.
(Too many to upload all at one shot, so I decided to split the photos into 2 sets=)..)

Glasgow Part 2=)

2009-09-27T23:15:00.003+08:00

And...here is the second set of photos of our Glasgow trip!

University of Glasgow

Flower Buddies!=)

The flower that turned behind...

=) imagine having a view like this in our school.

Ams and me.

hahahaa!

i would walk home if it meant being able to walk thru this.

Red buddies...=)

So cool! Like Zero Kelvin!

Our travelling group

Li goes hunting for her flower shots.

Fields of purple and blue...

=)

The rest take a breather while li goes flower shooting...

I wanna grow old, wear a jacket, sit on a park bench in cool weather and take a nice long nap...sigh.

I actually remember thinking to myself what a beautiful day it was when i took this photo.

There's supposed to be a trolley down there somewhere.=P

Playground.

Some cool museum that Ambika brought us to.

Am's cosy hall room.

Marcus' stare of death

Thank you Sarah and Ambika for the wonderful dinner in a quaint little restaurant. (where the waiters wore kilts)

Really miss the UK...

More photos coming up soon. This time of our road trip to the isle of Skye!

Glasgow Part 1=)

2009-09-14T20:33:00.003+08:00

Finally, my computer is built=) And I am able to start editing my huge backlog of photos that have been stored in my com.

Here are some photos from our Edinburgh Electives. This set is from our weekend getaway to Glasgow, where we met up with Ambika, who kindly brought us around Glasgow to see the sights=)

It was such a beautiful place...sigh. Missing the UK...

Imagine walking down this street..

Marky, Ams and Li..

Walking behind Li....

=)

Ambika brought us to a place called Mussel Inn, where they served awesome mussels at affordable prices.

Ams and Li=)

Huilin and Marcus..=)

Giant pot of mussels!

After lunch, Ambika brought us to see her medical school.

Thank you Ambika!

Welcome to Hogwart's!

Seriously, this was where Harry Potter was filmed.

Arches of Hogwart's!

I really loved the architecture.....

=)=)=)

!!!!

=)!!!

Floating arches

Walking into the light...

Marcus and Ambika walking into the light..

Sigh....=)

Potions classes on second level.

Defence against the dark arts down the aisle...

VW <3

More photos from Glasgow coming up soon..am slowly editing photos over the weekend...more to come=)

Candleburn

2009-08-05T12:33:00.003+08:00

~Dishwalla

One of my favourite songs from a long time ago.....hidden in my abyss of i-tunes.

Haven't been editing much photos cuz my laptop is slowly dying on me. Need to build my PC soon. On another note, I've actually shifted into hall..=)

Happy m5s everyone! Take care and let's get through this patch together. HO/MO/Residency seems to be a question mark...a very big question mark. With so many pertinent questions raised, it makes one wonder if there will be satisfying answers.

One of the major questions that should be answered is, "Why the change to Residency?"

ie..What was lacking in the HO/MO model that the new residency model is supposed to fix.

Maybe the right way to approach this would be to explain the necessity in revamping the HO/MO model. After explaining that Residency is the only way to go, the next step would be to bring everyone on board and make this new residency programme work. (I think no matter how difficult the truth may be to swallow, as long as we can see the undeniable fact that the HO/MO model is failing in some aspects which only the Residency model can fix, most of the people will be understanding enough to make it work).

Everyone needs to be patient and understanding. A new model will not be perfect, and will definitely have a lot of kinks that need to be ironed out.

But if the ones in charge beat around the bush, or fail to bring across the true necessity of this change, then there will be a major question/source of frustration lingering in everyone's mind----Why can't we keep the HO/MO model since the Residency programme is so problematic?

Bro's outing..=)

2009-07-20T01:56:00.003+08:00

Yingheng's back....time for another get-together=)

We had dinner at some vietnamese buffet restaurant, which was pretty cheap and good.

(I just realised how different the colours of the photos actually are....hmmm. I used to edit the photos on my laptop, which has a colour-calibrated screen. But it's been getting too slow these days, so I decided to edit the photos on the new family com. The colours seem pretty ok on the screen downstairs, but looking at them from my laptop, the white balance looks really different. =S)

After dinner, we went to Ben&Jerry's for some ice-cream.

We actually chose b&j cuz we thot its be nice and quiet, so we could talk. But turns out, this dude was performing, and we had to be seated right under the speakers..... (...)

Di, li and me..=)

2009-07-19T16:19:00.003+08:00

Happy Father's Day

2009-07-19T15:49:00.003+08:00

Happy Father's Day Dad!=) Thanks for everything!
Went to Lei Garden at Orchard road. The whole place recently underwent renovation and a change of management. So the food wasn't as good and I actually had a migraine sitting there. heh.

Causes of migraine: Think of a chinese restaurant.-----Loud noise, bright lights, smells, msg, etc etc...

Mum and Dad.

Little Stephen boy. He's gorwing up fast!

Brunch with Dr Lee=)

2009-07-12T15:17:00.004+08:00

Brunch with Dr Lee at NYDC, where we all shared our electives experiences and funny stories overseas...=)

(Photos straight from camera---maybe I'll edit the white balance another time)

Dr Lee and his stories=)

Listening to good advice.....=)

Sending Yansheng Off=)

2009-07-12T15:04:00.002+08:00

....and Yansheng goes of to Germany for a conference and a holiday....=) Take care!

And we all come home.....=)

2009-07-12T14:55:00.004+08:00

Here we are meeting up after our various electives from all around the world. Really missed "home-cooked" food...=)

So nice to see everyone and hear all the interesting stories from all around the world. Come to think of it..I still have tons of photos from my elective to edit....sighs!

mmmm.....

=)

=)

Ningyan's rugged look...=)

Some yummy ice cream at far east.....I forgot what the name of the shop is. It's quite tasty=) It's a mix of sorbet, ice cream and ice shavings.

Arts Festival Closing Ceremony

2009-07-12T14:24:00.003+08:00

Read in the newspaper about the Arts festival Closing Ceremony having some massive pyrotechnic display, so we decided to go down and see=)

It was held at Yishun, in the open field next to Yishun MRT station. It was quite an interesting layout....the pyrotechnics were arranged in a circle surrounding the open field (where we are supposed to stand. In the middle of this circle space is a central stage/structure where more "stuff" was supposed to happen too. So the spectators were right in the middle of the show=)

We went down on the first night, so it wasn't so crowded. I heard that the second night rained a bit and also had some technical glitches with the sound system. Thankfully it was more of a fireworks display than anything, so it didn't matter?

This is the central structure that popped up from the ground. It served as a stage later, with some lady climbing up and stripping off her clothes...heh. Seriously.

The stripping lady....=P

Massive fireworks!

At some points, it was so bright, we could just turn around and see everyone as though it was day-time.

After the performance .....

Li, Hayat and me=)

Bikram!!!

2009-06-30T23:48:00.004+08:00

I have a new "goal" and it is to exercise at least once a week. heh.

After hearing yansheng's experience at Bikram, lynette and I decided to join in too. This was despite ys telling us that he fell "sick" after his first session---malaise, tired etc etc. haha. And from a cg outing, lynette's sister, li and li's sister all decided to join in too=)

At Pacific Plaza.

REALLY HOT!

After the Bikram session---feeling really satisfied (and thirsty).

New found respect for all you toga pple...

NUH research mates...=)

Photos from some of the matches...

2009-06-29T12:14:00.002+08:00

Cute Dutch Kids supporting their brothers..=)

Gooo!

those eyes...

passion!

Father-son bonding.=)

Cute kids that kept on waving the flag whenever my camera turned towards the crowd.

Just too cute...Grandma and gransdon in blue=)

So close!

!!!

Goal!!

Goal!

And in goes the ball...

Ball: haha...fake both of you.

Tending to the singapore captain after being smashed in the face.

He actually managed to get out of this!

Hockey!!!

Yeap, he managed to stop the ball.

Come on ref!

Foul!

v\

Korean supporters and their gongs=)

Effort! Australia's goal scoring effort.