"Toy" Story

Well it's been about a week now since I had my new "TOY". Getting used to it and have found certain interesting things about the new car. The driver compartment is much more spacious than my previous car, I should have added an armrest sooner in my former car. The dashboard with the instument panels all lighted up, I still can't understand why they put the outside air temperature reading for ? Afterall we all know Singapore has 6 weather conditions - Hot, Hotter, Hottest and Wet, Wetter, Wettest. The other readings really make you consious of how you drive especially the fuel economy reading. If the figures are to be believe than I guess it can help me be a more economical driver. The car comes with corner sensors as well as reverse sensors. Problem here is that when I want to reverse the rear sensors will go off and due to the proximity of other cars and objects the corner sensors will go off as well, so there's like a constant beeping noise going off. I think I will have to shutdown the corner sensors or I'll probably loose my sanity. Even when the missus walks round the car, the corner sensors go off. I guess the only good thing I can see from this is that no one will be able to sneak up on me :) I just sent the car for it's first car wash today. ya ya ya the lazy bum has decided to take it to the local car wash instead of doing it himself. Seems the car's too big that they had to bring out a 'mop' to get to the roof and cover the major areas. Later they even used a hand held 'blow dryer' to get the water off the car, I'm not sure if this is a new feature or only for big cars. Well I also found out that the normal $5 car wash does not apply any more, it's now $7 for a wash !

The "Interior"

Finally decided to take some pictures of the interior of my new 'Toy'. I'm not a fantastic photographer but here are some of my quick pictures of the interior I took today when I got home. It was a little dark at the time so I think some of the pictures might not be too clear. THE THRONE The main driver compartment, I ABSOLUTELY love the armrest and the spaciousness of the seats. THE CONSOLE Had another picture of the console but it was really blurry, so this was the best shot I have now. Someone's probably going to let me know which air freshner I am going to need. Dual aircon control, radio system which I am still trying to figure out :)

THE HUD (Heads Up Display)

or the Dashboard area as some people call it. Love the little information on the screens and I think can just make out that the outside Air Temperature is 28C, I've 427 km left before the tank runs dry, travelled 171.4 km and almost half tank gone !!! the fuel economy currently is 9.5 km/l guess too many red lights.

THE BACKSEAT DRIVERS

I think passengers will be pretty comfortable in the back. with head rest and adjustable seats to recline or not. Pull down central armrest or drinks try.

THE BOOTY

The boot compartment, not that spacious but has 3 levels, so the bottom is really safe from prying eyes. Have not really use the boot to carry stuff in yet but it really looks too nice to put anything in it.

I'M Mr COOL

Just thougth I would add this in for the fun of it. Camera phone went bonkers at this point as well so had to stop taking pictures.

*** New Wheels ***

I got the call yesterday and today is the day that I get to pick up my new set of wheels. Wooooo Hooooo ...... it's so exciting. The missus and I went down to the Alexander Honda Showroom to send in my old car and at the same time collect the new one this morning. I got all the necessary stuff to hand over to the agent incluing the spare keys, it was a surprise that I could actually find the second set of keys. We arrived at the Showroom at 11am, did some final paper work, was rather sad that the old Baby Blue Honda City was finally being replaced, she has served me well the last 4 years. Finally had my first look at the car. Wow it looked big, well since I've never driven an SUV before it did look huge. Did final inspections and was briefed on some of the features of the car before we could take it home. So by noon, I was driving out of the Showroom with my brand new Honda CRV.

Me and my Car

Did not travel much with it today but after checking out the new car manual and giving it a short spin around. I've found some rather interesting things about the car. Here's my top 3 points after 12 hours with the car. 1) Height It's a rather 'tall' car and getting in and out of the driver's compartment takes some getting used to. Feels like I need a ladder to get in !! 2) Dashboard Ah the dashboard is all digital now with some new features and displays that were new to me. One of those was this Tempertaure Reading which actually showed the outside temperture. Feels like some airplane that tells you what the outside temperature is. 3) Fuel The car came with about 20% of fuel (based on what I see on the electronic dashboard) so after we had my sister's birthday dinner at Novena, I drove to the petrol station to top up the car. It's the usual 'red one, full tank' instructions I give to the attendants. The usual walk around the kiosk area to see if anything interesting to buy. The usual waiting in line to pay the petrol. BUT the not so usual price of the petrol which came to ..... $80 !!! and that is not topping up of an empty tank even !!! I guess I'm now in the $100 Full Tank of Petrol club !!

Not THE ONE .....

Alas, it was not meant to be, another year, another Hong Bao draw and another disappointment. :( There goes the dream house, the dream car, the dream holiday, the dream retirement ...... until next year that is and the cycle of hope starts again. Hopefully sanity will return at the betting outlets after the last few days of massive queues. But it looks like this year not much was placed on the Hong Bao draw as the main prize was just over $10 million, considering I think in previous years there was significantly more prize money due to more people trying their luck. Well at least I am so glad that Singapore won the right to host the 2010 Youth Olympic Games (YOG) very pleased indeed. Which reminds me that I think I should be signing up for the Passion Run at East Coast soon and get the early bird discount.

The Mad Rush .......

Ah it's that time of year again where everyone hopes that they will be The ONE. No not the Jet Li Movie but the winner of the yearly $10 Million Hong Bao ToTo Draw which will be conducted tomorrow at the same time as the announcement of the host country for the Youth Olympics which Singapore is vying for. There were queues all over the island starting as early as 10am in the morning when I happen to pass by a ToTo booth, the queue was at least 30 to 40 people deep and that was just in the morning, by evening when most people start to head back home the queue's were even longer. The one near my place at least 100 people deep. As for me, I actually got my share on Monday so there was not a need for me to go join the hordes of people placing last minute bets, I guess it did not help that the Champions League was being played at this time as well. So to those who have your tickets, all the best and may the BEST TICKET WIN !!

Star Wars : The Clone Wars

Woo Hoo, new Star Wars movie coming out this year, it's called Star Wars : The Clone Wars. It's a feature length computer animation movie due to be release in the US on August 15th 2008. Mark that date down on your calenders. I know I will.

Busy Busy Busy

Busy Busy with the new year celebrations, just glad that it is coming to the end just one more weekend of visits and to host some friends who are coming over. Guess the last weekend of merry making. Busy Busy at work with all the datelines to meet. This is absolutely the first time that in 2 weeks from a guy with a fresh office email account to someone with a mailbox full account. Just really flooded with emails. And all it took to flood my mailbox was 14 days !! Busy Busy with going down to the car showroom to fill up the necessary final documentation and payments for the new car.

Valentine's Day

Once again Valentine's Day rolls around. I was in town in the evening and there was a huge traffic jam in town. I think everyone in the offices were leaving early to celebrate. But I guess Singapore Girls are rather conservative, those I saw carrying flowers either had them in plastic bags, some even double layer or were hiding the flowers behind bags and files - probably quishing them in the process. I would have thought that it would be better to just leave the flowers in the office instead of bringing them home. Anyways I did have to drop by the car agent today as I need to finalise some paper work and insurance. Likely the new car will be arriving sometime next week.

Office Lion Dance

The office had a Lion Dance today with the CEO around to present oranges to the staff but no 'Red Packet'. Great Performance. Lots of Oranges left over to take home, guess if it was Red Packets, there will not be any left overs ha ha ... I saw an amazing thing on TV last night. It was on the Cable Sports Channel, someting about World Championship Gaming. It was a show about 2 teams battling it out on computer games like Fifa, DOA, Counter Strike and Project Gotham Racing. When I switch to the channel it was the Counter Strike game going on between the 2 teams. Was watching it a while and then this guy did an amazing thing which they replayed. If you ever played those Counter Strike games it's about teams trying to take each other down, one being the terrorist who will plant the bomb and the other is the team that will try to stop them. There was this guy who actually threw his grenade against the wall and it bounce to the other side but before it reaches the ground it explores killing his opponent in the process with a grenade burst in the air. Amazing what these gamers can do !!

Post CNY

Well the festivities are almost over, the Year of the Rat is here, attended Chinese New Year mass and collected the blessed oranges from Church, all the visiting, paying your respects to the elders and hong bao giving is done -- well almost. All the yearly gambling ritual is completed, lady luck shines on me .... so far, still in the positives :) All the cookies and sweets and tarts and peanuts and cakes and love letters and oranges have been eaten, well actually most of it as there is still some visiting left since there is still one more weekend for friends to visit. So after all that it's time to get back to the serious business of getting rid of all that excess calories that was added over the last 4 days. Big job ahead for me ha ha. One of the must do things in recent years is to have 'Yu Sheng' or that tossed raw fish (usually salmon) with shredded veggies and peanuts and crackers and sauces. My Yu Sheng count so far is 3 which is ok, I'm not a big fan of Yu Sheng so the lower the count much better for me. I think the previous year I had quite a few more something like close to 8 if I remember correctly. Hopefully this year the count stays as such. Finally got to catch my first full loud loud drum beating, cymbol clashing, gong banging, orange peeling, lettuce throwing, high jumping, eye-lashes blinking, talisman waving, funking dancing Lion Dance of the year. And it was held at the Courts shop at Toa Payoh. Pretty neat stuff, love to watch those Lion and Dragon dances. But now it's back to work again after the 4 day holiday ........

Survivor Steamboat

<<< ... Out Eat ... Out Drink ... Out Last ... >>>

20 Relatives, 3 Steamboats and only 1 Survivor !! Welcome to another addition of .... SURVIVOR STEAMBOAT !

Had the reunion dinner at my in-law's today, my own family did ours over the last weekend as mentioned in my other post. It's really like a taping of an episode of survivor when we sit down for the Steamboat Reunion dinner. There's 20 of us and there was a need for a very very long table (combining 4 small tables) and 3 steamboat machines just to cater to everyone. As the night progresses one by one people will get 'eliminated' and start leaving the table. Soon the real serious challengers remain to battle it out to be the ULTIMATE sole survivor of Survivor Steamboat !! It was a tough fight this year and in the end after almost 2 hrs, it was a teen who won the title of Sole Survivor this year.

For the record I finished 4th this year :)

HAPPY LUNAR NEW YEAR

Like a friend said ... it's a rat race this year :)

Eve of the Eve

It's the eve of the eve of the Chinese New Year. We went to the market this evening to do some last minute shopping and man was it crowded. Decided to head on down to Whampoa Food Centre and Market to get some F & F ... Flowers and Food. It was really crowded with lots of people coming in to do their last minute shopping. We got some flowers for the house and managed to get something from the food centre to 'ta-pao' home for supper. I decided to do a last minute car wash figuring that it would be less crowded but surprise, surprise there was a line of cars that were waiting for the car wash. However I decided to stick with it knowing that tomorrow the line would probably be longer than today. But the people manning the car wash was really fast. They managed to get a lot of cars through in double quick time. Talking about cars, the Hamper from Honda was delivered today. A nice hamper but the service from Eu Yan San was not very good. Had to make 3 arrangements before they finally decided to send it after I got really pissed off after they said they would come but failed to turn up on 2 occassions.

Day 2 Surprise

Day 2 of the new job brought a surprise, when I arrived at work, I met up with an old colleague from like 8 years ago who was also there for an interview. That was a real surprise. I also got a call from my car agent today and the car's in town woo hooo.... but they still need to fix it up and do up the paper work, well at least it is here.

Spring Cleaning

It's that time of year again for the yearly spring cleaning ritual. The weekend was spent cleaning up the house and generally tidying up everything in preparation for the coming Lunar New Year and that also means you start coming across stuff you never knew you had and finding all those items you thought you lost or misplaced. It's like a treasure hunt at our house. Lots of little nuggets of 'gold' lying around. I don't really mind doing the cleaning just the 2 things I'm always a little apprehensive about cleaning are the lights and windows. Lights because I'll have to use a ladder to get up there and with all that glass and me being the clumsy guy, extra care has to be taken. But this year I have to say I did a good job with our living room lights as you can see had to individually clean each crystal bead after dismantling it first. ah so proud of myself :) It's the last weekend before the Lunar New Year and we also did the final round of shopping for food goodies and some decorations for the house. It was time to get some flowers and plants as well. You know the throw out the old and bring in the new. This year the eve of the Lunar New Year also happens to be Ash Wednesday. We used to have the reunion dinners on the eve but since the last few years it's come to a stage that it was just easier and more convenient to just have the reunion dinner earlier and have it done at a restaurant, families getting smaller most of the relatives are either in Australia or US/Canada as well so not a big dinner nowadays. This year was no exception and we have our small reunion dinner of my parents, sis and my brother-in-law and me and the missus on Saturday. My Kim Kim was invited since she came down to visit from Canada. She usually makes the trip down around this time of the year to visit her parents and family.

First Day at an Old Place

First Day at my new job. Reported for work this morning and wow so crowded, looks like a whole battalion of people were reporting to work. Got my cubicle, collected my stationary, drew my laptop and violah good as gold. Had some problem with my network and email accounts but got that sorted out. So first day some stuff to read, meet up with my new boss and the new team and it was down to work !! Started straight away, so much stuff to cover, first day OT already ha ha ... Just getting familiarise with the whole thing took some time. Of course getting to learn everyones name was another thing as well. I wasn't always good with remembering names. I never forget a face but a name is something else. Team has to come back tomorrow to finish up some outstanding task. I'll drop in to see how they are but can't help much yet except get them lunch if they need. I have to say overall an interesting first day.