I got a check from Germany. It is the tax refund from all the shopping that I did back in Europe.

The amount is US$76. I went to bank-in the check at my local bank, POSB Bank. I didn’t know how to cash-in the check as I’ve done it only once in my life. Therefore I asked the teller and she told me this.

There will be a S$10 Service Charge and a S$4 Postage Charge since my check is in US currency and it stated that it was from the Bank of New York. Therefore they had to send the check there for verification and after, they will use the current exchange rate and deliver it to my account. For that, they will charge me a US$5 Service Charge over there.

The whole procedure will take a minimum of 21 days. Now that made me wonder if it was worth it for a meager sum that I’ve received.

First stop, Munich Airport ( Germany)
Restless flight as the excitement builds up plus seating beside a huge but nice old German dude makes the whole journey an interesting one.
First thought on arrival? I’m gonna die! Frozen!
Eventhough it was summer, the temperature was not what someone like me could handle… ( my body needs to absorb heat, it does not generate any on it’s own… I’ll be a reptile if I was an animal…)
Second thought on arrival? If I die here, at least it’s a beautiful place.
Yup. It really was a beautiful place. ( no other words to describe it, simply beautiful)
Next, we got our packs and head out to meet the other 2 groupies. Got on the train to the city and find our hostel which we booked way ahead at hostelworld.com. ( actually it was about 2 months before. Actually That was considered late…)

The hostel was not bad. The room was mostly occupied by us so, security on belongings (eventhough they provided lockers) and our own safety was quite assured. Like they say, safety in numbers!
We spent about 3 days there. Went around to the shopping district to find lunch and take some photos. There was the cathedral which was at the center of the town area. It played some kind of music at certain hours and had these statues that would move. Everyone would just stand there watching in amazement. ( I mean really, even the locals were mesmerized by it!)
Munich was totally different from the stressed atmosphere in Singapore. Everyone and everything (even the trees) were very calm and just chilling out, dude. It was dry and cold though so, remember to drink lots of water or use moisturizer, folks. ( my skin was peeling… Told ya I am a reptile. )

Next we went to the museum. It displayed all of the royalties funiture and stuff. Took us about 3 hours to complete the whole tour. You can take pictures but no flash is allowed. I had my wonderful Sony DSC50 camera, semi-pro so, no flash? No problem. Good quality pictures! ( most of us had either a pro or a semi, hehe)
Reason for the no flash pictures is because the items displayed had gold so, light from the flash would cause the gold to oxidize. It’s like drinking too much coke would cause your teeth to rot. Same thing.
The second day we went to visit the castle Neuschwanstein. Took the train there. The trip took the whole day. The train went by the countryside. There were beautiful cottages and houses and horses and cows and goats and green fields and gold colored fields full of flowers and mountains and trees and and ……. ( it was too much to take in, my mind is still trying to process the images)
The castle was near a town located at the final stop of the train ride. We had to take a bus from the train station to the foot of a mountain and walk up ( or you could take a bus or a coach there) to the castle.
It was quite high up but the road was a gentle and gradual slope. Even the elderly walked. It did start to drizzle but that only adds on to the serene and peaceful atmosphere.

It took us about 35 minutes to reach the top. There were 2 castle but we only choose one. ( the more beautiful one I’d say) Castle Neuschwanstein!
It was magnificent! Just like in the story books! But the castle wasn’t complete due to some complications in the king’s life which ended tragically. After the 1 hour guided tour, we went to the bridge behind the castle. It was freakingly high up. ( yes, I looked down…Don’t ask me what happened… It’s just that some of us didn’t make it to the center of the bridge )
Hungry and weary from all the sightseeing, we decided to have dinner in town near the train station. But before that, we got some postcards from the castle to send back home. The small little town was very serene. I loved it there but we had to move on!
Next stop, Amsterdam!

We began our trip to Europe on 17 May 2009.
This trip was planned about a year ago. The idea for this trip was introduced by Arif ( a buddy of more than a decade). Reason for the trip was to visit his friend in Paris. From a trip to just one country became a 3 weeks vacation to 4 different places.
We went to Munich( Germany), Amsterdam( Netherlands), Paris( France) and Barcelona( Spain).
A group of 7 people on a journey of stress reducing fun!
Main things we did before moving off was book the hostels at hostelworld.com, plan the places of interest we wanna visit ( which got amended constantly), get the eurail pass (it’s free at some countries but others that you have to make reservations for, gets you discounted price ), change currency, pack our bags ( important stuff like passport, extra cash, reservation papers are to be kept somewhere safe).

We set off from Changi Airport 17 May 2009 at about 11pm.
A lot of family and relatives came to send us off. 2 members of the crew went a few days ahead as the tickets were not bought together due to last minute crewmate additions. ( Original plan was for only 4… I’m the only person who didn’t invite anyone along, hehe)
I had a little trouble with my ticket… I bought it online but when I got there they said that the system could not find my reservation even with the refrence number I provided… But all is well since there were not much people flying to Munich ( thank God! )
So we were off! 5 people, 4 destination , 3 weeks…
The flight took 14 hours…

GeoTagged, [N1.44625, W103.80759]

In the new age of mankind, daily everyday life is changed. Chores of every kind is made easier and some, can even be done on the go. Inventions of various kinds now helped us through the day and sad to say, makes some, if not most of us, lazy and weak.

Humans grow more dependable on such things which was made to better us. Yet some of us takes things for granted. An example would be that most of us are not able to leave home without our mobile phones. Yes! It is a wonderful invention! But other then just it’s basic usage of communication, the other functions that are now implemented into the mobile phones are what some of us can’t live without.

If you guys are wondering if I am the better human, the answer is…

That is what these things are made for! It is to distract and entertain. I mean, sometimes you need some kind of distraction to pull yourself away from all the stress at work and later, would perform better. I love my iPhone! Alot of things can be done with it. Entertainment and information are some of the things that I can get from the applications available. Even blogging can be done on the move. In this case, this blog was done on my iPhone at work! ( During break time… )

But still you got to admit that there are bad factors to having this much of ‘power’. But to me, it’s about not abusing what there is and apreciating what we could achieve. And so, I’d say cheers to inventions. ( Especially iPhone! Hahaha)

Dear readers of my blog,

It seems that I have been busy with… honestly I don’t even recall the weeks… I’ve been wanting to post my EUROPE TRIP!!! But…(there’s always an excuse, hehe)… I have been busy with trying to get my life back in order after I came back. (Please ignore the protected posts…that’s for me to say a few somethings when none of my buddies are available… Really busy people, they are )

This is just to tell ya guys that SOON, I will try and organise and post the long awaited holiday trip, HAHAHA. (I didn’t know I had any readers actually until I received comments on previous posts, hehe)

Thank you for having read my posts! (ok…times up, back to work…crammit)

Location : Asahan, Melaka

Height   : 1276 metres

Group    : Monkey D Luffy Crew

On 20 March 2009, Friday, my crew decided to go on an adventure to Mount Ophir. We, Monkey D Luffy Crew consisted of the usual four (me, Shajudeen, Khairil, Ariffian) and another 3 ladies, Ariffian’s colleagues. (Why Monkey D Luffy? Well, it’s just so cool to be them…plus I was wearing a straw hat!)

Anyway, why Mount Ophir? Someone suggested to go there and the rest of us being long time adventurers, just blindly agreed. (I found out that 2 of the crew didn’t know what Mount Ophir was…I’m one of the 2…)

We went there by train after meeting up at Chinatown where Sanji (Ariffian the cook) was working. Most of the crew was either working or studying or was in intensive gaming. It was a rush getting there as we needed to buy some last minute equipment like gloves and …gloves. (Which I didn’t use throughout the whole trip cause I bought a pair meant for washing the dishes…)

Getting on the train was easy but later we found out that someone bought a pair of tickets that would land 2 of the crew a station short of the destination, Segamat. It just so happen that me and Tony Tony Chopper (Shajudeen the student) volunteered to be refugees on the train for that one station. We decided to hide at the cafeteria and was lucky enough to have met a nice conductor that let us off for that journey. We were saved.

After arriving at the destined station, we took a cab to Gunung Ledang Resort. Arriving at the resort, the nice receptionist was actually waiting for us eventhough it was late and she wanted to go home. We reached there at around 2230hrs. The plan was for us to pack for the next day’s hike then sleep…Well this and that and a whole lot of nonsense was the night’s activity.

When we got to the mountain the next day, after a whole lot of last minute arrangements and clearing up done by Sanji, we got a guide and went up. The guide was nice and patient enough with the crew. A whole lot of things happened. Having to clear 8 checkpoints to reach the summit, we left the girls at no.5 due to the strenuous remaining journey up. It was a beautiful place where nature lovers would definitely enjoy the atmosphere and appreciate the landscape and untouched nature.

After we left the girls at the stream at no.5, we climbed and almost vertical cliff while questioning ourselves why did we go on… The remaining journey was really tough. It took us about 6 hrs to reach the summit from the bottom. A lot things happened too like a near death situtation for Usopp (Khairil) and leg cramps for Chopper and me. Having to deal with dehydration, exhaustion and hunger, we carried on to the peak and was rewarded with a beautiful scenery. Resting and taking in the view at the summit, Sanji gave Chopper his birthday present there. Chopper was really surprised! It was really worth the suffering once you reach the summit. We thanked God for letting us do this.

Going back down took us about 3-4 hrs. It was geeting dark and something happened along the way. Chopper was too exhausted and having complications of previous knee and foot injuries slowed us down. It was a desperate attempt to reach the safety of the base camp before it gets dark. Everybody pitched in to help. Fighting for survival, we managed to get down before it was completely dark. Why fighting for survival? Well a few sightings and a certain smell got me and Chopper, being the last 2 crew members, down in a rush, hehe.

It was really a good hike! We got back to the resort and had a big celebration with food from almost the whole menu that they provide! We have conquered a mountain!

Now back at home, with aching bodies, the crew is ready for another adventure!             MONKEY D LUFFY!!!!

Yesterday…We had another fun activity! Khairil, Deen and me went on a car trip around the east side of Singapore.

In the beginning, Khairil asked us to plan something…anything… Well, sitting with Deen at the library, we discussed about what to do that evening. Movies? No. Gaming? No. Then Deen asked if we wanted to get a car cause he has this car coop thingy with NTUC. We agreed. Better then walking aimlessly.

Well we got the car. Deen drove and I was the communications officer. Had Khairil on MSN to ask about the evenings’ plans and the loaction of his office while getting directions on Google map to navigate the car was my duty. (in the end we still had to use Deen’s GPS…)

When we finally picked up Khairil, we head over to the airport’s Terminal 3 for dinner. Popeye’s Chicken and Biscuits was the evenings exquisite meal. We had to wait for a while to get seats there. For some reason, Popeye’s seems to be the preferred choice of fine dining for many locals. What can I say, it was a damn good meal.

After that, we took a walk around Terminal 3 and arrived at the Candy Empire. I don’t know why but being there, we were laughing out socks off for reasons that I can’t remember. But it was fun! We spent quite a long time there. Again we don’t know why but that place seems to have quite a hold on us. After we finally were able to decide on what to get our hands on, with the acquired chocolates we left for east coast for some ice cream at McDonalds drive thru. Directions was given by Khairil who had a good sense and knowledge of the east side.

Oh yes. Before we head for east coast, we met Deen’s elder brother at some carpark. The meeting seemed almost like a secret transaction with Khairil on the look out for ‘we don’t what’ and me ready to transfer to money using a connectionless, shut downed Netbook. Well, the brother discussed about family stuff actually. After the ’secret deal’ was deemed successful, we went ahead with operation drive thru…

Buying from an annoyed McDonalds personal, (she was annoyed due to the fact that we ordered ice cream only at a drive thru…we guessed…) we parked the car and went on to sit by the beach and had ice cream and the usual discussion about life, memories and of course…women.

We had a great time! Would have enjoyed it more if Ariffian was around. We’re planning on doing it again someday.

Whokay people!

The week has been fun for me. Alot of things for me to do. From meeting my friends’ newest addition to his family to a car trip around the east side of Singapore. What made it even better is my newly acquired “Acer Aspire One”!

This 8.9 inch NetBook is small, light and met the requirements of my daily needs from a computer. (Don’t know about you people out there but my needs from a computer are quite minimal. Getting to my favourite sites….ehem…..and doing my projects are all I need.) 

So far I have been testing it out for a few days and…. I love it! Now it is one of my tools of destruction! I keep valuable information like ‘how to block incoming attacks in an arm wrestling competition’ or ‘101 ways of making love to your pillow’.

Now I’m sure nobody wanna hear why I bought it but I’m gonna tell anyway. It’s due to computer hogging by my brothers. I only have one desktop. Another is in the making and due completion by 2020 so, to satisfy my craving for something to do…(I can’t rephrase this sentence so I’m just gonna leave it hanging… I bet you guys know what I’m saying here )

The only drawback to it is the speed which I would very much like to get it to 2GB RAM and the multicard reader….They have one slot for all memory cards. I placed my memory stick PRO duo and it got stuck inside. I had to use two paper clips to get it out. II then realised that I had to use the memory card adapter. Okay, my bad.

All in all, it is a good piece of equipment. Now I’m gonna bring it everywhere I go. (not really… cause if I brought it to go clubs or swimming, that would be stupid…hehe)

On Friday night, 27 Feb 2009, I was out with 2 of my posse. If ya know me well enough you would probably guessed who they are. Khairil and Deen…hehe

We met at around 8pm at Beach Road to have dinner… ( Me and Deen were late therefore Khairil walked around aimlessly for about 1 hr, hehe)

When ordered food, (me, I just ate at home…it was a last minute call up) we began talking and joking around. The thing is the jokes were never ending. From Beach Road, we went to ‘Mr. Bean’. Still joking around and laughing at senseless things. This carried on untill about 1 am at some shop that I can’t remember on Arab Street where we have mint tea.

It was a truely crazy night. We laughed till all of us were exhausted, had chest pains and simply stoned. After that, we walked all the way to the Esplanade. A favourite spot for us to chill and play some tunes on my Maestro guitar till early in the morning.

Truly a senseless and enjoyable night. Khairil said that he laughed more that night then in a whole month, hehe.