BTT – Back To Training

It’s been about 3 months since I went for my last run. I took some time off to heal up my knee after the 2 runs in 2 weeks, a 25km followed by a Half Marathon, the knees really took it’s toll. After I had rested I then caught a bug and was coughing quite badly. Took about a month to recover from that but finally am back to running only got 2 weeks to get up to speed for the Half Marathon. Probably will have to take it slow and aim for a 3hr finish for that.

During my sickness went to the doctor’s three to get medication. Was on MC for a while, not good as I had to wear a mask at home since I did not want to let the kids catch the bug but to no avail. My little girl started coughing and had to see the doctor then one of my helpers got it before my boy got it and finally my other helper got it, But I think all are recovering now. My little boy got it worst when the doctor examine him he had some fluid in his lungs had to use a Neubilzer or whatever it’s called, It’s one of those things that gives off steam (with medication in it) and you had to wear a mask. Little boy obviously did not like that and cried while the mask was on which was about 5 to 10 minutes every 4 hours. Luckily on his second visit his passage way cleared up and he was recovering.

My missus decided to buy the equipment, you could rent it from the hospital but we figured maybe used later and anyway a 2 day rental was actually the cost of the equipment I guess to help the kids it was shaped as a penguin.

The little “instrument of dread” which my son was not too keen on having the mask on his face !

Microstars Worldstars

I’ve been collecting the little microstar football figures which you can find at 7-11 in those little packs, The promotion is more or less ending currently and some stores have sold out or return their items as the world cup is over. There were 40 figures to collect from this set which is actually the 19th in the series. The figures also come in 7 different coloured bases from Green the easiest to get to Red, Blue, White, Silver and Gold and the last ultra rare Black Base figures, essentially its the same figure just that you had different base colour but these can be used in game play as well and the rarer the base the higher and stronger the player. I was just really only interested in the Liverpool figures (the other teams were Arsenal, Barcelona, Chelsea, Everton, Manchester City and Manchester United)  and this set had the most 8 in all, they were Aquilani, Agger, Babel, Gerrard, Kuyt, Torres, Skrtel and Mascherano. I started out just picking packs and then I came across a guy who help me get my Skrtel which I needed at that time as I did not have a single Skrtel and he could feel the figure. He did mention he could not get it right always but he probably could find any figure you need about 80% to 90% of the time. I was quite happy to get at least 1 of each figure at that time but then I decided to go on a quest to get all the colours of each Liverpool player. That was tough I was just randomly buying a pack here and there and then I decided to try to feel the figures was not very successful at first but now I think I can feel for any of the 8 Liverpool players. I’m about 90% accurate maybe once in a while I may get it wrong but not often anyway I finally managed to complete my set and here it is my pride and joy. All 8 Liverpool Figures in the 6 bases colours or Green, Red, Blue, White, Silver and Gold. Of course the ultra rare gold colour ones I am still short of 4 (Aquilani, Bable, Gerrard and Agger)

This was completed with help from trading and selling some of my spares, ended up with a fairly large amount of spares due to my random picking days. Was also scouring the island for 7-11 shops to try and find the figures I needed. I made friends with some of the 7-11 owners and managed to get them to sell me the display case as well for me to showcase my figures.

The last figure that I had to collect was the very elusive Blue Base Steven Gerrard shown below.

It took me a while to get this figure I finally found him at a Shell Station 7-11 shop in Loyang. I almost wanted to give the station a miss but then just decided to pull in and park there to see if they had the microstars figures and they did and managed to get Gerrard in there. Well I’m happy now that the collection is complete but I do stillhave the 4 Black Bases to look out for.

IF ANYONE READING THIS HAS THE ANY OF THE 4 BLACK BASE FIGURES (AQUILANI, BABEL, AGGER, GERRARD) DROP ME A COMMENT AND CONTACT HERE AND I AM WILLING TO BUY FROM YOU OR TRADE FOR SOME OTHER FIGURES THAT I HAVE.

YOG is in town

The Youth Olympic Games have arrived. I've notice the last few days since it has started that everywhere I go I would see someone in the purple YOG uniform. There sure are a lot of volunteers helping out at the various venues. There are dedicated lanes for the buses and other YOG vehicles to travel on, the mascot Lyo and Merly are pratically everywhere and of course the YOG theme song is blazing on the TV. Basically it's a nice song sung by 5 young people representing the different continents. And than there is the YOG cheer. Now that really sucks. I am not a fan of it, and it got dished in the papers and online forums etc. etc. sung by JJ Lin or someone like that and has that rather silly hand movement with the 'yeah, yeah, yeah ho' stuff. Definately not a fan but I showed it once to my 2 7 month old kids and they started laughing !!! They think it is funny and so daddy now has to do that silly hand sign and "yeah yeah yeah" bit just to keep them entertained.

Makan Places : Lost and Found

A long long long time ago ……. when I was just a wee lad, we used to stay at the Oxley Road area. It was a time when the current cuppage centre had a wet market on the ground floor and a food court on the second floor. There were 2 beef noodle stores there but I preferred the one near the corner. Could not remember the name of the stall but it was run by this elderly couple and their 3 kids, my family would frequent the stall every time we go there for dinner. During school holidays I would bring a tiffin carrier to take away the beef noodles. The owners would usually know our order where mine is always beef kway teow dry (sometimes I would take soup) Their chilli was absolutely the best. I learn to take chilli from this stall I think. Then came the redevelopment of Cuppage Centre and they had to move out. We never knew where they went and that was like 25 years ago. A couple of years ago I bump into them at the Maxwell food centre. It was now run by the son and daughter. Their parents had retired. They still know me and when I placed my order I still get the extra chilli that I always used to get. Its great that I found them again after all these years. I even told my parents who went to visit them. Their food remains the same the chilli is still the best ever !!! I would always have a bowl whenever I am in the area.

Another recent case was during my college days we were now staying in Bedok and there used to be this coffee shop which sold Chicken Rice and Wanton Mee. I used to frequent it as it was near where we stayed along Bedok South Ave 3. I would order a pack of Chicken Rice and wanton soup just the wanton only. The place was run by a couple and they were very nice. I remembered once on my way home I stop by the place to get my meal when it started to rain heavily. The lady was kin enough to give me her umbrella and told me no rush to return it. It was a very nice gesture. We moved out of Bedok and I heard there was some renovations going on at that area and they had to leave. What a surprise for me when after almost 15 to 20 years I found their stall again at the Food Court near the Marine Parade NTUC. The great thing about it was they still remember me but they were much older now and its still just the 2 of them manning the stall. There does not seem to be a successor for them. It’s quite sad to think that both the Chicken Rice and Beef Noodle stores would not have anyone to carry on the business.

I recently found out that a stall at Maxwell which sold wanton noodles had closed down. Me and the missus would sometimes eat there. It was a good Wanton Noodle store. We were wondering what happen to eat when we saw that it was closed. Later we found out that the cook had passed away and there was no one to take over the business. I wonder will the other 2 stores have the same fate once the current hawkers retire ?

A Nation Celebrates – 45 Years

It’s our Nation’s Birthday again. (Coincidentally it falls together with a friends Birthday and one of my helpers Birthday as well) It has been 45 of independence and the Theme this year is “ Live Our Dreams and Fly Our Flag “ I decided to google to find out what the past 10 years theme’s have been and came up with the following :-

2009 – Come Together _ Reaching Out, Reaching Up

2008 – Celebrating the Singapore Spirit

2007 – City of Possibilities

2006 – Our Global City, Our Home

2005 – 40 years of Nation Building

2004 – A Progressive Society

2003 – A Cohesive Society

2002 – A Caring Nation

2001 – Knowledge and Creativity.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SINGAPORE

Ben Ten Cafe

Me and the missus decided to try the Ben Ten Cafe at Illuma recently and it had like the biggest dessert bowl ever !! Never seen one this big before I think it could easily fill 10 people, can’t remember the name of it but it reminded me of that Earthquake Ice-Cream dessert you get at Swensens long long ago, do they still have it now ?

Anyway we had some fusion japanese western food and a simple chocolate dessert which we shared.

What the missus had.

Our Dessert.

I’m SOLD

I had recently (about 2 months ago) signed up on Hardwarezone, it was basically to trade for some football figures which I was collecting, those you can find in the local 7-11 stores. Wanted to complete my Liverpool collection, well I have done it, maybe will post those pictures up another time. Anyway they actually sent out the regular updates and one of the updates was for this new auction site called www.sold.sg it’s a local site where you can buy tokens which cost $0.75 and use these to bid for items and each bid the cost of the item will increase by $0.15. I decided to try it out and bought about $250 worth of tokens.

There were items for bid ranging from Playstations to the latest iPAD. Other items included Cameras, Wii, Jewellery, Speakers, iTouch, Vounchers and many many items more. I tried out with the iPAD but was not too lucky with it. Was also trying to get used to the bidding system wasted about 20 tokens on that, the auto-bidding function confused me for a while but figured that out as well.

I figured I will give it 1 full short and go all out to bid for a camera the Nikon D3000. I was rather lucky it took me 26 bids to win the D3000 and it cost me $137 !!! I was elated way cool, more or less covered the cost of my tokens. The following day I tried for another camera the Sony Cyber-shot and since I had quite a number of tokens left I decided to go all out for this as well and finish off my tokens. After 6 hours and 143 tokens later I managed to actually win it but it cost me $228 for it, more than the D3000. Anyway I was happy, 2 cameras which normally retails at $888 (Nikon D3000) and $650 (Sony Cyber-shot) I paid about $600 for them.

They even delivered to my house for free and personal delivery within 3 days !! I love their service. Everything came in perfect condition. Well have not been lucky with other bids so far. But still I am happy just finishing off my spare tokens and maybe come back later for more !! 

Little Nat’s Visit to the Doctor

Took Natalie to the doctor today had to take an urgent child care leave. Her eye’s were getting swollen and red dots appeared around her left eye and seem to be spreading to her right eye. Her right nose looked like it has a sore on it which could be from her scratching, which she has a habit of doing. The missus was very worried about her little girl wanted to sent her down yesterday but I told her to wait and see. It got worst so made an urgent appointment with the doctor. Luckily there was a slot else we would have to go to another doctor.

The doctor took one look at her and told me her nose looks like {some fancy medical term which I can’t pronounce and probably can’t spell} but it was a viral infection that much I gather and it seems it’s likely to have caused both the nose and eyes and the doctor mention sometimes it can spread to the body. It can be contagious and the doctor did warn to keep Nigel away from his sister for a day or 2 at least to avoid saliva contact.

We got some medication cream for her, 2 different types since 1 was near the eye doctor recommended a cream that will not hurt the eye in the event it accidentally goes in and another for the nose. Hopefully all will be well in a couple of days. Poor little girl was upset the last few nights maybe because of the irritation of the infection.