Yoyo's Travels

Trip Pictures

2008-09-08T10:49:00.001-07:00

http://picasaweb.google.com/yoyothesheep/200808SEAsiaTrip?authkey=mCP-ZLXy6dw#

Kuching, East Malaysia (Aug 28 - Aug 31) and Singapore (Aug 31 - Sept 2)

2008-09-07T22:06:00.000-07:00

The final leg of our trip was to East Malaysia (better known to some people as Malaysian Borneo). We finally got there after a 2 hour delay (because AirAsia said that the bad weather conditions at Kuching prevented our landing and we got diverted to Sibu), but when we got to Kuching later and asked the locals they said it had been nice weather all day! We secretly suspect there was a problem with the AirAsia plan of course, but thank goodness we got there safe and sound!

Aug 29th - We had booked a 1 day guided trip to Bako National Park, but it was raining heavily today! So we went to the jetty, and waited 20min, then decided to try again tomorrow, so that we'd have a better chance of seeing wildlife and not slip and fall on the muddy tracks.

We decided to go to the Sarawak Cultural Village instead, which was kind of an Epcot center were we saw dance performances of the different ethnic groups in Sarawak and replicas of traditional houses. The Orang Ulu are really interesting cuz they used blow guns, which were incredibly accurate. The performer was popping balloons in the auditorium ceiling, which were maybe 20-30feet away! It was also funny to look up and see the auditorium ceiling full of blow darts... Guess they never figured out a way to get those darts back down again..

We also got multiple mosquito bites as part of the authenticity of the village. These were mean bites which swelled like they were poisonous, and stayed for almost a week.. Lovely.

In the afternoon we tried to catch the Natural History museum and Muslim museum downtown. They were really interesting, and then we went to the Aquarium, in the same complex. But I guess the Kuching Aquarium was actually just a building with lots of fish aquariums. Poor fish! Feel like they're in a HK seafood restaurant!

Which is why we went to Top Spot Food Court for dinner I guess. It's the local favorite in seafood hawkers, where you choose from fresh fish and vegetables, tell them how u want it to be cooked. We got 1 lb of prawns and a grouper, plus a soup and veggie, all for 70RM (less than $20 US).. YUMMMY Loved the young coconut juice and sugar cane juices too!

Aug 30th - We went to Bako for real today! And we were so lucky, saw Silver Haired Monkeys and Proboscis Monkeys right off the boat! The rest of the hike, we saw 3 types of pitcher plants, more Proboscises, weird symbiotic plants, vipers, and wild boars. The locals call proboscis monkeys "the Dutch ppl" = "orang beladan" cuz they have big noses and big bellies. Ha!

At night we went to Top Spot again :P We got king prawns, lobsters, and a fish and a veggie, all for 120RM (less than $40US) not bad again :)

Aug 31st - Since it's our last day, we walked around the city, enjoyed some local breakfast at a famous coffee shop, and went to Semenggoh Orangutan Rehabilitation Center, where we saw some orangutans eating fruits :P

Then we took the evening flight back to Singapore. Actually we flew back to Johor Bahru then went across the causeway cuz it saved us about $70 US, but I didn't realize how horrible traffic would be cuz it's Sunday AND Merdeka Day for Malaysia (independence day). We were packed like sardines crossing the causeway. WHY won't Singapore and Malaysia just work together for the common good and finish that new Causeway? SHEESH!

Sept 1st + 2nd - Back in civilization! Stayed at Cindy + Olivier's place and played with their two sons and hanged out at their pool.. Life is soooo good!! Ran some errands - closed my OCBC bank account and wired the money back to Wamu, had Peranakan food for lunch, visited I2R again.. what a great way to end the trip :)

Matthias and Lucas are so much bigger now - haven't seen them in 2 years. They are so adorable! And becoming quite talkative too! They fight over the same toys and say cute things like "I look like an engineer!" funny what kids pick up :)

Kuta/Seminyak, Bali (Aug 25-28)

2008-09-05T11:08:00.000-07:00

Once again, a few chill days just hanging out by the beach..

Aug 25th - Perama all the way! I'd consider them next time I go somewhere in Indonesia, they offer a lot of convenient transportation (buses, boats) all over different islands. Anyways, got off the Perama bus station at Kuta and walked to find a hotel. We decided to get a cheap room for only $10US a night, then just walked around town to get situated. Yes, visited Hard Rock Hotel again - I have to reiterate, still the nicest hotel pool complex I've ever seen!

Aug 26th - After a nightmare-ish evening of mosquitoes, in which we slept under the blankets but somehow still got bitten THROUGH it, we decided to move hotels. Serves us right for trying to be cheap huh? We took a cab up to Seminyak and got a room at Su's Cottage 2, nice swimming pool and much cleaner room, still less than $30US a night!

We visited the Club Double Six - just to check out the clubs during the day - it's got a bungee jump right into their pool! Then we came back late at night (after midnight), and discovered that the customers are all Europeans and Aussies, they played a mix of Electronic music, and the drinks were American prices!

In the afternoon, we also took our cabbie to Uluwatu, and had seafood at Jimbaran right on the white sand beach. It was a full day!

Aug 27th - Jason attempted to surf at Seminyak today. Well, the waves at Kuta were a lot better. At Seminyak (which was only 500m down on the same beach), the waves break all at the same time, and break pretty fast. He did some body boarding too, and did a lot better at that..

Aug 28th - our 8am flight got changed to 6am! Yes you read that right. We had to wake up at 4am to go to the airport, to go to Kuching (East Malaysia). As a farewell gift, Indonesia charged each person Rp150,000 (about $16 USD) to leave the country. We weren't prepared for that at all, so the KIND bill collector said, oh no problem, other currencies can! In fact, you can mix currencies. So we had to give him a mix of Rupiah, Ringgit, and US Dollars, at horrendous exchange rates of course! Since he didn't have change.

Well, thanks for the memories Indonesia!

Nusa Lembongan, Bali (Aug 21 - 25)

2008-08-29T03:29:00.000-07:00

Chillin for 4 days at Nusa Lembongan is our Corona Moment of the trip (In this case, Beer Bintang moment). We got off the Perama boat and found a nice bungalow for USD$30+ a night, and it had a nice little restaurant too - where the food was simple but very home cooking like. The chicken noodle soup is just like chinese noodle soup, I got that 3 days in a row!

Aug 21 - got off the boat, and I slept a lot all day, cuz I was sick from Ubud. The rain and damp room there didnt help too much, thank goodness we're now on a sunny, dry, beachy island to recover!

Aug 22 - I felt a lot better cuz I sweated out the cold last night. So we rented a motorbike and drove around the island in 1 hour (it's a pretty small island). There wasn't much to see, except all the seaweed farming that the locals engage in. It actually gives them a good income, so they are all pretty well off, and don't sit around heckling tourists for spare change at all, not like the touristy parts of Bali.

In the afternoon, we went to see some cock fighting :P It was my first time, but not Jason's, and he explained the WHOLE process to me, at least how they do it in the Philippines, cuz I guess here in Bali it's much less efficient, cuz they don't cock fight as often, due to it being illegal.

So there's a whole weighing process, pairing up the fighters first. Then, the chickens are shown the to the crowd, then the crowd bets (finds somebody else in the audience to pair up their bet), and then the fight usually only lasts 1-3 minutes. Then the loser chicken (who loses by dying), is unceremoniously dumped, and the process begins anew.

It was smokey and full of tattoed local men, but kinda fun and shocking to watch! Later that night, we were walking to dinner on the beach, and we saw a group of grown, 40+ year old men, sitting on the sand looking at the sunset, each of them cradling a rooster in their arms. I think some of them must love those roosters more than their family :P

Aug 23 - snorkel trip today. First snorkel out in front of the beach was super cold, cuz i guess this is directly above a drop off to one of the deepest channels around. The 2nd snorkel was the northern coast, which had a huge current, but it became a drift snorkel. That was super fun cuz we saw tons of fishes, (tons of unicorn and pipe fish), and we just floated along for the ride.

Then, we relaxed in the afternoon.

Aug 24 - I had 2 dives today. We started out late, at 11am, because of the tide and we didn't want too strong of currents.

First dive was north of Nusa Penida, really nice corals + fish, no pelagics though, and at the end of the dive the current was terrible!! I was floating away, unable to stop myself, and the divemaster grabbed me and deposited me on a rock, where I held on with both hands for dear life, hoping the current doesn't sweep away my mask, until we just ascended slowly and didn't stop for the safety stop.

2nd dive was called Blue Corner, basically in front of the Lembongan beach, and rather near the break where the surfers are. Less current cuz it was afternoon. We saw a giant moray right at the base of our descent, and halfway through the dive - we saw a MOLA-MOLA!! YEAH!! I'm waiting for pictures from my dive buddy. It was such a chill fish, just hanging out, getting cleaned, not moving much. I feel really lucky and we had a great divemaster who's a local and knew the conditions, especially as there were no other dive groups when we were there.

Aug 25th - took the early boat off the island. Only had 2 dives this entire trip, but it was worth it!

Ubud, Bali (Aug 15-21)

2008-08-26T22:51:00.002-07:00

We ended up chillin for 6 days in Ubud, partly cuz we were sick and tired of travelling so much! And partly cuz we ran into Galugan, their biggest festival of the year, on Aug 20th, so couldn't make a get-away to Nusa Lembongan like we planned..

Aug 15 - found a nice hotel, Ketut's place, bout 500 m north of Ubud palace. Luckily for us, the hotel, run by Ketut's family who also lives in the compound we enter through to get to our room, was having their bi-weekly Balinese buffet. We tried all sorts of yummy Balinese food like smoked duck, jackfruit salad, tempeh manis, rice wine... Ketut introduced us to a lot of Balinese customs and culture before we ate too. Picture: Our really nice room!

Aug 16th - We just walked around Ubud all day. The 7km walking tour listed on Lonely Planet somehow turned into an all day affair cuz we got totally lost and also stopped for lunch and other random shopping. We passed the Four Seasons Hotel and had a drink at their pool bar, and then hurried back as night fell.

Also - we originally wanted to go to Nusa Lembongan on Aug 19th, but due to Galungan, we couldn't get a ferry out until August 21st. :(

Aug 17th - we took a super nice cycling tour through Ubud - the van picked us up for breakfast overlooking Gunung Batur, then we rode downhill for 2 hrs through villages and rice paddies, and ended up at a family compound for home-made lunch. Really nice! Along the way we saw this family collecting rice - I guess the family was 20+ people and everybody was helping to harvest.
It was here that we started getting tired of Indonesian food too! Had Japanese tonight..

Aug 18th - Spent half the day at Venezia day spa, getting the traditional Balinese Boreh massage and scrub, and also a facial. It cost 460,000 Rp for 2 people, for almost 3 hrs of massage and treatment! $51 US Dollars!

The rest of the day, we were just desperate for news from the outside world (starting to get a bit tired of vacation :P ), so we got the Jakarta Post, which is a very interesting and liberal newspaper. They had a lot of articles pointing to corruption at various levels in the Indonesian government. I'm impressed by the free speech here!

There were also silly pictures of various ppl celebrating Independance day (Aug 17th), by playing musical chairs, or climbing poles. Also, 5000+ prisoners were released from jail early due to national day sentence remissions... That's mind boggling!

Aug 19th - Slow day of eating, chilling, walking around :) I did learn what all those balinese dogs were doing, when they stand in the middle of the street with their butts rubbing against each other.. . *EHEM*! Balinese doggy style!

Aug 20th - We just visited Monkey forest. It's been kinda drizzing/raining the last 2 days, and Jason and I have both been kinda sick :(

Today's Galugan though, and every body is dressed very nice and are visiting temples with offerings. There are also Penjors up in front of every household.

Aug 21st - early van pickup - Nusa Lembongan here we come!

East Java, Indonesia (Aug 13-15)

2008-08-15T20:00:00.000-07:00

Aug 13 - 8am pickup, for a 11hr bus ride to Mount Bromo! Oooohhhh here we go.. our mini bus picked up 3 other couples, and our daredevil driver started off towards the East. We almost had heart attacks sometimes, seeing how he tried to pass other cars on a 1 lane road with incoming traffic. We also had to applaud his audacity sometimes, and we drove around particularly slow trucks by driving onto the dirt sidewalk. Here's a picture of us following a truck that's passing another truck. *GULP*

When we got to Yoschi's hotel, it was 7pm, it was dark, and we didn't have a bathroom in our room. The shared bathroom was your typical Indonesia toilet - squat toilet next to a basin of water. We used our bottled water to wash face and brush teeth. Cuz I swear I saw a leech in that basin.

Google Map: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=gunung+bromo,+indonesia&sll=-7.798079,110.368652&sspn=3.939511,4.921875&ie=UTF8&z=7

Aug 14 - It's only 4am!! Here we go driving up to Cemoro Lawang, which is the edge of the crater.

Mount Bromo is basically one of 3 volcanoes which arose out of a gigantic crater, which we guess used to be another volcano long long ago? It's still active, so it's steaming. We walked down the large crater in the dead of night and dense fog, across a "sand sea" of grey volcanic powder. Had a little adventure getting there - this obnoxious German couple was walking super fast trying to ignore the locals who was offering rides on horseback and got us lost "this is the wrong way! They just want to get us lost so we have to pay them!" Geez, get a little cultural sensitivity guys.

In the end I negotiated one of the locals (we called them tourist vultures, waiting until tourists got lost, then asking for $ to help us) to guide us back to the mountain (it was so foggy we couldn't see anything). Of course, the German couple turned around and followed us, and kept saying "this is the wrong way!" but walking besides us. When we finally got there, they didn't pay our guide, and just went along merrily their way.

The volcano was amazing, but the steam coming out was sulfur fumes, so we had to cover our mouths with our clothes. We then walked around the crater a bit, making sure not to look down!!

Coming back down, we walked past a lot of farmers' houses. The earth here is black - it's so fertile. No wonder the farmers brave the volcano to live here.

Back on the mini van, let's see, the 6hr drive to Ijen plateau became 8 hrs on the road. aiyayay!

We got to the Catimor Hotel, at the base of the mountain and with a hot spring by the pool. We also had yummy Java coffee. Before dinner we wandered around, right into the coffee processing plant behind the hotel. The coffee skinners waved us over cuz Jason looks Indonesian, and took some mugshots with us :) We then got a tour of the factory and got our feet into the coffee drying hut.

Google map: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Ijen+Plateau,+indonesia&sll=-7.798079,110.368652&sspn=7.874457,9.84375&ie=UTF8&ll=-5.856475,112.225342&spn=7.906372,9.84375&z=7&iwloc=A

Aug 15th - Not too bad, only woke up at 4:30am. I was super excited cuz I had seen this film at the Singapore Film Festival a few years ago, and the sulfer harvesters of Kawah Ijen was one of the stories.

http://movies.nytimes.com/2006/02/24/movies/24deat.html

Kawah Ijen is a volcanoe with a turqoise lake in the center, colored by the sulfur. It also bubbles up liquid sulfur, which dries into a yellow deposit that these workers then chip away and carry down the mountain in bamboo baskets. The sulfur fumes are so overwhelming going down, we were wearing wet bandanas to cover our mouths, but it still stung our throat, sometimes we couldnt even breath. One of the French ladies following us panicked at one point and almost went hysterical because the fumes were so bad. I think it crossed everyone's minds at one point or another that we don't wanna die here :P

Anyways! Here's pix - Kawah Ijen's probably the highlight of my trip :)

Back down, drive to the Ferry terminal of Ketapan, taking a public non-AC bus to the ferry - crossing over to Gilimanuk, Bali, then continuing to Denpasar, then getting a cab to Ubud. Took 9.5 hours!!!

NO MORE BUSING!! I think maybe we'll skip Flores and Mt Kelimutu. The lonely planet mentioned road rage for travellers there!

PS. We're staying at Ketut's place in Ubud. It's beautiful, and 1km away from Ubud center, which looked like Europe right now. There must be 10,000 European tourists here, on the streets, in the shops, riding scooters. I almost hyperventilated as we drove by in our taxi. Note to self - don't go to Bali in August!

Yogyakarta, Java Island (Aug 10-12)

2008-08-15T19:38:00.000-07:00

Google Map link: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geoco de=&q=yogyakarta,+indonesia&ie=UTF8&ll=-7.798079,110.368652&spn=3.939511,4.921875&z=8&iwloc=addr

Aug 10 - The first half day in Yogya, we didn't venture very far from our "safety area" around the hotel. Ate at a very average restaurant and booked a becak (kind of like a trishaw) driver to take us around the city tomorrow.

Aug 11 - Barry was waiting right outside when we finished breakfast. First, to the Sultan Palace, AKA Kraton in the middle of the city. It was Rp 12,500/pax and another Rp 1,000 for our camera. That even gave us our private English speaking tourguide, cheap!

There were some interesting info, like everybody in the sultan family had a different batik pattern that nobody else could wear. The sultan earned money from being an MP and also a business man. Tickets to the Kraton only supported the Kraton's upkeep.
Previous sultans had multiple wives - the 7th sultan had 21 wives and 70 children. See his family tree here.

So all during the tour, the nice old lady peppered in comments about her son, who's doing his THIRD college degree, and her husband who died 20 years ago. At the end of our tour, she smiled and said quietly "you have to pay..". Me and Jason were kinda flustered so offered her Rp 5,000. She looked and chuckled and said, "five thousand not enough", and stepped back again, chuckling. I then handed her a Rp 10,000, and she said "ten thousand ok" then left. (see pix of Kraton to the left)

Ok - eating story now - Barry took us 1km outside the center to this Warung Makan roadside cafe where the locals eat. You take rice and scoop from the veggies/meats that you want, and it was the most delicious food! I don't know what any of their names are, except the fried chicken and Ayam Pagar, which I'm eating here.

After lunch, we went to the Water Temple (Taman Sari) and bought some wayang kulit (leather wayang puppet) and batiks, then ended at the crazy crazy bird market. They sell everything from bats to owls to birds to maggots to feed the birds. SHUDDER....

Aug 12 - Get ready to be templed out! We went to Borobudur (largest buddhist temple complex in SE Asia) for sunrise and Prambanan (another huge Hindu complex) after. Both were build during the 7th-9th centuries (Prambanan being mostly in the 9th).

Borobudur is supposed to be Java's largest tourist attraction but it was relatively quiet. Nothing compared to Angkor Wat.

Prambanan unfortunately was still showing damage from the earthquake of 2006. The largest temple had scaffoldings all over, and was undergoing construction. The others were still not worked on - stones were out of place or fallen down. They looked like a house of cards ready to crumble at the slightest push.

If u ever go to Yogya - the best restaurant for tourists that we found was Asri's Resto. Cheap, yummy Gado-Gado, and spacious and breezy.

Finally - we tried to change money at the hotel for our onward trip. We had 3 $100 bills, and they found faults with all of them! One had a tiny rip. One was printed in 1996. One's number started with CB (they don't like CB, CL, and some other series) so they could only give us a lower rate. UGH!!! We had to go across to the travel agent and managed to change 2 bills.

Tomorrow - 8am pick up for a 3 day 2 night trip to Mt Bromo and Ijen Plateau. Then, onwards to Bali!

KL Trip - Aug 8 to 10

2008-08-10T05:10:00.001-07:00

Aug 8 - This is the way to fly! We took Aeroline bus to KL. Highly recommended - 5 hrs from Harbourfront to KLCC (Corus Hotel).

However, after getting there, it took us a hell of a long time to get to our hotel - the pretty Heritage Station Hotel in the old train station. It took abandoning one driver who didn't understand our english or where we were going and negotiating w/ 2 diff cab drivers to get the right price. Ahh welcome back to Asia.

Our hotel was right by the old train station/KTM Kommuter line, and also walking distance from Pasar Seni and Chinatown. We walked around Jalan Petaling a bit, and went back to catch the last half of the opening ceremony of the Olympics.. Sniff.. It was really beautiful :)

Aug 9th - with the full sun bearing down on us, we did the hot walking tour of KL downtown, Masjid Jamek, and then caught a movie in the KLCC GV theater - Shaolin Girl (a japanese flick produced by Stephen Chow) - don't see it!!! It was horribly cheesy in the way only a Japanese kung fu movie about shaolin can be..

We also tried to go up the Petronas Towers but they gave out all 1640 tickets for that day already (note to self to look up significance of 1640).

PS - the pix are from our hotel balcony, Masjid Jamek, and some nice graffiti on the river embankment by the Masjid.

Aug 10th - saw the 400m men's freestyle in the morning, and China won the silver! Then we gave ourselves almost 3 hrs to navigate our way to LCCT (low cost carrier terminal) at KLIA. We took the KLIA Ekspress and then another bus from KLIA to the LCCT, which was really slow and operated on Malaysia time. LCCT was very impressive though, it was basically a big temporary air hangar for all the Air Asia flights, but the hangar was bumpin! There were tons of ppl and flights flying out of there. I'm really impressed by Sri Dato Tony Fernandes, whom I read an article about during our trip.

Arriving in Yogyakarta, I was SWEATING because my passport had run out of pages for the visa on arrival. Visions of corrupt custom officers floated through my mind all trip, but I was surprised to discover how nice everybody at the tiny airport was. The guy just stuck the visa on the Amendments page, whew! Funny note, the airport was so small that people from our flight had to wait outside the airport because the lobby only fit about 50 people.

The theme of the whole trip - try not to get ripped off! We took a fixed price cab from the airport, and was nervous we paid way too much (55,000 rp) - lucky the cab driver metered also, so we saw that the trip to our hotel cost about 40k rp, so we weren't TOO ripped off :P

The Prambanan Guest House was cute, but it's peak season and showing up w/o a reservation wasn't the best idea. We have to switch rooms each day we're here :P But the first day was the aircon room right by the swimming pool. Then, walk around the town, buy some necessities, and we got a Becak driver to take us around the town all day tomorrow. Onwards!

Day 2 in SG

2008-08-10T04:44:00.000-07:00

Aug 7 - One of the highlights of the day had to be doing laundry with Mary's old school 2-barrel washing machine. (In SG all clothes are hung to dry so no dryer there). The machine is all manual - you decide how much water to add, wash for 15, drain and rinse again, then move over to the 2nd barrel for the spin. She actually bought the machine last year so it's the latest in 2-barrel.

Then we continued to wrap up all the touristy attractions by going to the Bird Park, then coming back to the CBD for lunch w/ Manoj and the gang. In the afternoon I sent Jason off to Sentosa by himself on a tour package (don't laugh) - which included cable car, dolphin show, underwater world, 3d cinemax, and a 4d something. Jason said the rides were basically out of the 1990's, and Singapore shouldn't be touting itself as the hub of any sort of entertainment/creativity industry. The 3d ride was just unpleasant, including the seat throwing him around and spraying water in his face and blasting loud sounds in his ear.

I on the other had had more fun seeing the brand-new Fusionopolis and visiting the Speech group of I2R. Haizhou and most of the old folks are still there. The building isn't even finished and I2R was forced to move in, ahead of the lunar ghost month. (Yeah ppl are superstious). When I got there Tongrong was really excited to introduce us to their kitchen cuz it was the first day they had running water (they had been there 10 days).

Finally, met up w/ Social Committee folks and tabao'ed tons of delicious SG food back to Mary's house for dinner. We had some lovely D24 durian too, not too meaty and a bit bitter-sweet tasting.

Settling In

2008-08-06T09:36:00.001-07:00

Days 1 in Singapore - thanks to Mary for lending her place to crash at! And oh that Ozzy keeps wanting attention and walking on my feet! Darn pug :)

We've been enjoying the high-tech comforts of travel. Got a 2GB SD card from the Best Buy vending machine in SFO airport, and held myself back from getting that PSP for the long flight. Good thing too, with over 200 movies/tv shows/games/radio stations on the Singapore Airlines on-flight entertainment system, who could even sleep a wink?

Changi Airport's Terminal 3 was dreamy too - waterfalls over the baggage claims, glass walls everywhere, it looked like a night club in vegas!

Thanks to Mary + Didi for picking us up at the airport too! After chatting late into the night, day 1 has just been experiencing the hawker centers + Annalakshmi, and catching up on the jetlag before the Night Safari. We tried explaining the different social and political structures of Singapore to Jason, and so far his most memorable experience in this country is...
the escalators here move super fast! They're dangerous!

Itinerary

2008-07-31T01:37:00.000-07:00

Utopy Alumni Association

2008-07-30T11:42:00.001-07:00

First of all, we had a great InAugural UAA meeting last night - started off with some Popol Vuh and ended with a little Double Play. Thanks to the Double Play bartender (who musta seen many Seals games in his days), who offered "there's some chicken in the kitchen, why don't you go back there and make yourself a sandwich. Do you know what a kitchen looks like?"

Let's keep the alumni network strong!

I also found out I'm a YouTube neophyte - can we all post the latest YouTube links somewhere so I'm not a year behind?

Here's a few good ones from yesterday - feel free to add more!
- ottoman hump/satisfaktion (must be over 18)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k98bRUOb4g
- eli porter
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKKxPtP6XjQ
- Buffalo Lion Safari
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM

Kudos to Singapore's Efficient Government!!

2008-07-02T12:07:00.000-07:00

I never thought it'd come around, but I am SERIOUSLY impressed by how fast, efficient, and organized Singapore's Government agencies work.

I wanna withdraw my CPF (enforced savings scheme similar to 401K).

Day 1: Call Consulate. Ask how to renounce my now-expired Singaporean PR. Found this can be done at the consulate in SF, or at ICA (same day!).
Day 2: Call/Email CPF Board. Talked to agent. I can withdraw money remotely, and receive it either into my SG bank account or into my Wamu/BofA account within 2-3 weeks.

That's it! Same day response, same day processing, or I can do it all remotely! ! Ka-ching! Thank you Singaporean Government :) How did I ever take you for granted!
.

First Post

2008-07-01T14:48:00.001-07:00

Last big trip : 四川省甘孜县, August 2006

http://yoyothesheep.spaces.live.com/photos/cns!C68746227C12BF81!633/