Pandarific!!

You know that saying where people tell you "Life is like a rollercoaster, there's the ups and there's the downs," and yeah true, the upside downs and multi loops too depending on which type of rollercoaster you're talking about. So i was thinking about this one day and then i thought, "That's not really true, yeal visually it is," you look at the structure of the ride you're correct. But i thought, as a person taking the ride, i would be having a whole lot of FUN the whole time! Seriously, i love rollercoasters, i was laughing my head off from joy sitting in the universal studios ride that time. The lesson here? It's all about perspective, you can look at one thing in so many ways, you could come up with your own intepretation of it too. Isn't that lovely?

Instead of writing about what happened i'll just post a video to summerize it all. The place is of course singapore, the date 4th to 6th July 2011. We went all around singapore with out luggage with us! woots for trying to be heroes!
The places featured include, Bugis street, bugis junction, Marina bay sands, merlion, clark quay, universal studios singapore.

It was a good time of bonding with my college mates and we just had a fun time being independant travellers, oh i'm so proud of ourselves. hahahaha.

I've been so free that i've looked through pages and pages of art related stuff, so i hapened to stumble upon this website which gives you inspiration or ideas on how to wrap gifts! It's a good thing too because most of the time, the gift buying is pretty easy, but the wrapping, well i'm just left scratching my head. I think by looking at the pictures you can pretty much figure out how to wrap it in the same way, for me at least. So here's the website if you're interested/desperate for ideas hahahaha. It's under Papercrave but i'll link you straight to the weekly wrap page. http://papercrave.com/category/weekly-wrap/page/10/

Hope you enjoyed these pictures.

Yes i was thinking to myself today, when was the last time it rained and oh right, that was yesterday. See the weather is going in extreme's, on minute it's raining everywhere and the next it's as hot as the sahara. Somehow though yesterday there was no rain at a place called jalan imbi, cool eh. Yeah well, my college friend eng hoe invited A0907 to go play captainball at his church at jalan imbi, but then it turns out i was the only one who showed up,swt.

Went to his aunts house and finally got to go inside because normally i just fetch him there and leave. So then as we rode in the car, i got to know his brothers which well, we only get to hear about in college. Reached the church and lo and behold we were early, really early. So just sat down and talked to his bro about manga. And for your information, yeah manga is a good topic to talk to me about, we could go on all day especially if we read the same ones and are on the same page (literally). Met the church members and i tried making friends with the little girl andrea, it was so cute cause at first she was really scared of the ball, but after awhile she got the hang of it. Everyone was nice and just encouraged her not ot be scared, and they were all guys, so that's a nice change, haha.

The game started when more people came and i think in the end there were more girls than guys, all in all the mix was good and there was quite and equal spread of skills between the teams. I have to say this is the most fun i've had playing captainball because half the time we were laughing. See we have a mix of ages from 13 to 20 plus, so when the younger ones get the ball, give them chance la. The main point was to enjoy the game. And the laughing part, well all sorts of things happened and sometimes it was just plain playfulness. The field was small too so i didn't need to run much! yay for me because actually i didn't plan on playing for the whole 2 hours, as i didn't want to hurt myself (mom mentioned that i am clumsy and prone to hurting myself, evident from the sprain i had on both legs) because June is honestly packed with lots of things (yay finally!). But in the end i played all the rounds and it was a good, non streneous exercise. It's nice lah, just to have casual captainball games where everyone is not trying to be so competitive all the time. Competitions are different stories altogether.

After the game we went across the street from the church to this open area where hawkers set up their stalls. While eating i spotted su's dad and bro's, said hi to them and asked them where the famous song su yi was, oh turns out she was at home doing some work. ayohhh. And that was my saturday alright. Before that, i forgot to mention that i bought my sports shoes a few hours before the game. I really did need a pair as my old ones are fit to be put in the museum and put under special care as they're falling apart. And it's purple!! and i bought a purple bag to match too! Because well my backpack was also falling apart, so i needed a new one. Two lovely purple things in one day.

A very unoriginal title but absolutely necessary, because that is exactly what i did, ahahahahahaha. I got sick of the spammers/virus and the people who actually read my blog also commented about it. Honestly, i was on the verge of switching to wordpress because i just thought it would be cool, but that doesn't really solve the problem and it would be abandoning this little plot of space i have in the web realm. Forgive me if i speak weirdly, a daily dose of 'The Big Bang Theory' will do that to you. I think Sheldon cooper is rubbing off on me, ohhh dear.

I really hope this solves the problem of the viruses if not i really have to consider drastic measures. Good computer people out there, do you have a solution for me? no...? anybody? haha i sound like Julie from 'Julie and Julia' the cooking movie, she said something like this too. But then again, her blog turned into a hit and a book and a movie, and here is am...in my little plot of web space.

Anyway, i realised i am about 200 plus views away from 10000 visitors, that is exciting isn't it? Well for me it is...moving on. Ps. this post is random and i'll just talk about anything that pops into my head that has happened recently.

Boardgame Depot.
Facebook page
16A (1st Floor), Lorong Ara Kiri 3, Lucky Garden, Bangsar., 59100 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

My friends and i recently found this place called 'Boardgame Depot' in bangsar, really near bangsar village and so far i've only been there twice but i've had a very fun time already. You won't find the conventional games there because well i think the owner doesn't want to have mainstream boardgames there, meaning no chess, checkers, RISK (sad), monopoly, game of life, cluedo, etc. You get the picture. Instead there are all these cool games from overseas, europe if i'm not mistaken and don't worry, they're in english. The best part is the owner will just explain to you how to play the games, no need to read the instructions. You just have to go there, it's on the first floor by the way, kinda easy to miss so open your eyes, and then tell them like how many people you came with, say 2 or 5 then they'll show you the appropriate game for the number of people you have in your group. The first time i went there, we had 5 people all together and we were introduced to the game niagara.

It's a game where you're supposed to collect the pretty gems and avoid falling off the waterfall. It's a really good strategy game because you've got to think of how to use your cards at the appropriate time and also sabotage the other players like stealing their gems or trying to push them off the waterfall, all this while trying to collect as many gems as required. Funny thing is, i was actually playing it the wrong way and it wasn't till the end that we all realised that, anyway, the girl who couldn't really count actually won the game, ahahaha. Hope she doesn't read this.



The other game we played was red appled green apple, something that sounds like that, it's more of a debating/arguing game. Future lawyers who want to practise their debating skills should play this because you're supposed to select a card from your deck that best suits the card that is presented to everyone. Say the card that is presented says 'marriage' then you look at the cards you have and try to convince the judge why the card you picked is associated with 'marriage'.


The last game we played was 'Saboteur', just as the name suggests, that's what some people, the chosen, no, more like the those who get the 'saboteur' cards have to do. See we have the 'miners' who are supposed to mine and find the gold, the sabotuers are supposed to stop them. And you may think it's easy, but when you got friends who are good at bluffing then it gets real hard. This is one game that i would like to play again, if i get a chance.


The second time i visited this place it was just me and vic, so we started with Ubongo (Pics above), which is a little like tetris, you have to solve the puzzle then only do you get to collect the jewels, so the person with the most jewels of the same colour wins. And if you finish first you get to move 3 steps, finish after that and you only get to go 1 step.Then we met some random people who randomly came to find random people like us who want to paly board games, this guy, he brought his own boardgame called 'pompeii'. I was happy just because of its name. I loved the place, as i have blogged about it before. The rules were quite complicated at first but after playing a little i loved it. The rules are really complicated and it would be best if you heard it when you actually play the game so here are the highlights, if you know the history of pompeii, the city was covered whole by lava on 79 A.D. and there were the people in the city who didn't escape. So the game is centred around this fact. First you populate the place, then there's the first warning and if you get an omen card you get to throw a person into the volcano. When the second volcano card comes out you stop populating the place and you get out of the city. Yes so it's all about where you put your people, and how to get them out. Now you may be wondering, why populate so much, wouldn't it be easier to just have a few people and then get them all out. Well it's all pro's and con's, you see you win by having the most people out, so if you have just a handful and you do manage to get some out (It's really hard to get all out) then you might loose to someone who had many people and half of which got out (Which is more than you have in a whole). It all depends on your strategy really, yeah i love the strategy stuff in board games. Oh and did i mention, the lava has a mind of it's own, meaning you can sorta 'control' the lava to reach your opponents or block the exits, whichever is more convinient. The last game was 'The red dragon inn', four people play this game and it's all based on cards alone. The point is to get everyone else 'drunk' and be the last one sober. Seriously, i kid you not. Ok, drinking till you're drunk and black out is not cool but this game is lah. I got to be the warrior girl who has like magic too. You can gamble too and that...i was not good at. Kept on loosing money. Oh the other way to kick the others out of the game is to make them broke. That's how i lost, lost to the gambler, duh. The fun thing about this game is that every character has it's strength and weaknesses. Like the gambler, he's good at gambling but he gets drunk fast. I guess you'll have to really know the game to really know how to play it. Since it was our first time, we kept asking if we could use this card or how to use this card. Happens lah i guess when each card is so different.So that's all the games i've played so far, and i am looking for a board game kaki, to you know, play boardgames with me. It's RM4 an hour and it's really worth it because just one of these games costs a bomb, plus you get to meet other people who love board games too. Yeah i am so into this that i'm reading the boardgame community of malaysia blog. Here's the link if you're interested.hint hint. http://blog.boardgamecafe.net/category/events/

ok i think i should stop now. Hope you had fun and this is a good way to start after a hiatus.

Dawn came and the view from the hotel in Sorrento was wonderful as we were situated on top of the hill and you know you’re gonna get a nice view from heights like that. It was also good that the sky was clear, but just such a shame that we didn’t get to stay in Sorrento for long. Breakfast was simple and we met a group that came from Singapore that was kinda cool as we got to see some people from our side of the world for a while.

We had to leave early because we were going to the medieval town of sienna. And that was around 400 plus kilometres to travel in one day! Now skipping the very long journey, we reach our destination.

It is a nice little place where you’ve got lots of windy streets, and it’s on elevated ground so we have lanes that you can just run downhill or uphill, whichever way you’re coming from. This was also the first place we encountered toilets where you had to pay, yeah shocking because all the gas stop toilets were free and we were getting pretty used to that, haha.

The landmark we first went to was the square, which is kind of ironic because it is not a square, more like a circle really or a semicircle. But the point is, just imagine an amphitheatre semi circle, and you have it higher ground to lower ground. They have their major celebrations there which I imagine would be beautiful. The shops around the area were really nice as the restaurants have tables outside where the customers can just have their food and relax, chat and enjoy the ambience of the old town.

Right after that and some gelato, which I now regret not taking, we headed to the church. The unique thing about this church is that the walls are made of black and white marble. Normally churches just use white marble, the old one, but this was like a layered cake. The carvings on the front were absolutely detailed as usual. I tell you, I tried doing these carvings justice through my photos and videos but it is just not good enough, you need to see it for yourself, and I wish I could just touch it and look up close.

At the end of the day, we headed to our hotel, which is really an estate on the hills just 30 minutes away from Florence overlooking the vineyard and we stayed in apartments. This was a good change as we had been staying in typical hotel rooms for the past few days and this place just felt like a home. There was a kitchen, a living room, 2 bedrooms and it was really well furnished. We were also given the honour of dining with the owner of this estate and wow his house is so huge. The really Italian kind of home where you would see in period dramas. The whole dining experience was really good too as I’ve never done the whole formal dinner thing. I was a bit tired from all the travelling, but it was a really nice time. And that concludes day 4, nothing much compared to the other days because we spent so much time on the road. More to come on the day 5!

Although Rome was not built in a day, we had to tour it in one. So today we sadly left Rome, I admit I was a little surprised we spent so little time here after all I wanted to walk through the ancient forums, and I also did not check the itenary so that gave me a little surprise. As I said, I did not read the itenary and did not know we were going to visit Pompeii or how long it would take, when we reached Pompeii I was shocked as it looked pretty much intact. That was just the outside of the excavated area of course but being blur I didn’t know. As we walked to the entrance I could see more of it and got a better picture. Being tourists, we asked the guy if there were any discounts and to our surprise we got quite a good deal as certain age groups need not pay the full price. Can’t remember it right now but I know I just paid half price. The thing that surprised me was the tickets because there were prices for a 3 day pass and I was thinking, “Wow, why a three day pass, this is not Disneyland.”

The Fast Food Shop

I learnt later that you do need a three day pass if you a. went to every point of interest in the area. B. Wanted to read and really absorb all that was going on. C. A huge fan of the place (history lovers/ archaeologist enthusiasts, etc.) d. Did not figure out the map in the first few hours and thus wasted a lot of time getting lost (no I just made that one up). Seriously though, we thought we would just nee 1 hour, in the end we took 2 and a half hours and it was a good time for me because I just fell in love with the place. After a while you do get used to seeing just ruined buildings, but I felt it was just so magical and wonderful to walk down these streets where a whole bustling community was once situated. I tried to imagine how the buildings would look like when they weren’t destroyed and people actually walking around doing their daily chores and errands.

Note: Guide on how to get around in the Pompeii excavation area.

Another thing that I must mention is that it is really easy to get lost in this place, really really easy and it is harder to find the places of interest, all these are true if you do not figure out their mapping system. Ok show off time here, after some time of walking and almost getting lost trying to find the house of Faun I was feeling tired because there is a lot of walking. But I also noticed something on some ruins which was Italian words then IV or III. They are of course roman symbols for numbers then there were also these signs at certain areas that did not make sense to me as it was all in Italian. Ok don’t be scared yet, it’s really simple. The numbers represent the areas you’re in. Like zone 1, 2, and 3 and so on. And it is clearly labelled on the map they give you at the ticket area, make sure to get your free map and guide at the counter near the ticket area! Then the signs that I mentioned are like road sign boards, like Oxford Street something like that. So you figure out which area you’re in first, don’t worry the numbers are on most of the ruined buildings and then you find the street you’re on. Then please I hope you were paying attention during geography class, use north as your reference point and then figure out where you are or where you want to go. And yes, I am a girl and I figured it all by myself, so do not underestimate girls and maps.

A victim

After we left, we felt really tired, another thing I should mention is that there aren’t many toilets around and there is a mini cafeteria there in the site itself but if you wonder a bit too far and suddenly want to eat, you will just have to walk all the way back. And no, the ruined fast food places are not in operation. So take note, wanna go toilet or eat, do it when the facility is right in front of you.

And we had not eaten since breakfast, so desperate for food we ate at a restaurant in a hotel nearby, like just outside the site. It was 10 euro’s per person and that is really worth it because you get some really good spaghetti with clams and me being a non spaghetti fan just ate this one whole heartedly, then some friend squid and prawn, salad and dessert. I admit that some of the food was too salty but overall it was a good meal for the price we were paying.

By delaying our journey by almost 3 hours we had to rush into the van and get on to the amalfi coast. Before this I did not know what this whole Amalfi Coast thing was about, but that was soon history as we just saw miles and miles of road along the sea and how do I describe this? It’s like going up to genting highlands but instead you have the sea instead of trees and houses on the hills facing the sea, it’s just lovely and beautiful. Unfortunately we did not complete the whole thing as the sun set and it was dark. But even when it was, the lights from the houses made it really nice, like Christmas without the snow.

We reached the hotel we stayed in, a nice new place on top of the hills, with Sorrento just a 10 min ride away. Checked in and finally read my itenary, learnt my lesson by then. Found out that we would not be able to see the town in the morning as we had to leave so some of us took the shuttle to the town to explore all we could. Yes we were tired but it was so worth it. The places is not really big, you have many small lanes to explore and the shops are quite small too but have loads of interesting things to see. We stopped by at a random restaurant and ate pizza there. This is what I love about Italy, you don’t have to go to a certain place to eat good pizza, and it’s everywhere! And they don’t do thick crust like how it is done in America, it’s thin, crispy and you have the taste of the earthen oven in it. Well it was late and many of the shops were already closed once we left the restaurant. To sum up the place, I think it’s like a little village in a storybook. I’m sorry today I just not my day to describe things haha.

And that is my time in Pompeii and Sorrento.