Saturday, October 20, 2007
The Great Escape

This weekend was very promising.. I had an array of activities planned out in front of me, and yeah, it really felt as if I have ORDed..!

It started off right at the start of the weekends. My family were planning for their own mini trip over at Pulau Ubin to celebrate the end of my brother's PSLE and my mum's last job of coaching the sons of the Yeo family in their PSLE(with the exception of the eldest cos he was more independent on his own :P). So I had to wake up earlier in the morning to send them off. It was a relief that the jetty was at Marina Country Club since it was nearer, and had more time for my later activities as well.

Marina Country Club is situated off the Punggol 21 vicinity, along a deserted stretch of narrow roads, with big private estates and a failed LRT project. The Marina Country Club was not in any good shape either, and to pay $3.21(quite a cute figure dont u think?) for a day's entry was quite ironic for the lack of customers and illegal parkings happening outside of the country club. But let us not assume that Marina Country Club is a failure. It has attracted many people who chance upon (cheaper) wave boarding and jet skiing, and the legendary Punggol seafood.

Alright, starting from this post onwards, there will be a new rating system! It is called "Smell the toilet!" Adapted from my camp buddy, Yi Shan, who views toilets as a sacred place, ought to be rated for the cleanliness, comfort, environment, uniqueness and most of all, feasibility's of doing a chocolatey business there. But in order not to be too technical with the terms used, I will just do a simple rating with a reasoning attached to it. An example would be as follows

Marina County Club
Rating: 2/5
Reason: Although it is dry and looks "presentable", there is a smell of cigarette in the air and there is a suspicious layer of water on the toilet seat. A definite no no for chocolate business..!



After dropping my family over at Marina Country Club, I headed down to nearby Seng Kang and picked Plin up. We were on our way to Esther's CONCERT AT LA-SELLE. Located in the outskirts of town, La-selle has recently shifted its campus, such that from a run down set of buildings into a gigantic ant farms with glass enclosures, a turf of green synthetic plastic known as grass and a harry potter bridge sticking out of nowhere. We had our lunch at sunshine plaza, my beloved place with printing services, comics and good food... :D Plin and I had the famous 1-ton Mee, with its mouth-watering fried dumplings and home-made chestnut drink before going over to Esther's school at 1pm.

Esther's performances was really good..! Her band which consists of a drummer, 2 guitarists, a bass, a percussionist and 2 keyboardists (including herself). Together they form "Healthy Living" It certainly was healthy as the music was soothing to the ear and was making me drowsy.. but dont get me wrong. All other songs besides pop and rock will make me drowsy as well.

We sat on the green artificial grass throughout her whole performance till just when Esther was about to finish her concert, ZH came down from camp. We spent the remaining time exploring the rest of the ant farms, spying on her practice rooms and browsing through random books in the library. It was much later before we headed back to Sunshine Plaza where this time it was ZH's turn to eat his very heavy noodles(1 ton?) Also, We had a special treat from Esther, who felt that it was right to treat us muffins. They were indeed splendid, with a hint of orange peel on one of them and a whiff of apple and raisin on e other.

Sunshine Plaza
Rating: 3/5
Reason: Perhaps it was overuse and dimly light, otherwise, it was reasonably clean.




We still had about 2 hours before the finale at pastor's house, so we decided to hang around in town. I had to get some arts materials for my brother's crazy project, Esther wanted to get some jazz books. So we decided to head down Bras Basah and get our goods, and to kill more time, to hang around at Raffles City Shopping Mall. Yes, after the failure of getting the felt Puma Shoes, which was vulnerable to wet conditions, I decided to get a new pair, this time from New Balances. Behold, the marvel New Balance has to offer.. Its Shake 320! My eyes are on the black and yellow pair (Plin says its blue, but then again, we're still debating whether if pigs are pink or beige, but thats another story altogether) So hopefully, my conscious will tell me that it's worth the monry to invest in that pair of shoes.. next month.


Before going to pastor's house, we decided to make one last stop at Ikea, Tampines to munch on a little something. We had wings, daim cake and cups of coffee. Okay, so we were a little filled but still craving for more food..! Went over to Giants shortly after that to buy ice-cream and cream puff for the feast.

Finally, we arrived at pastor's house at 7pm. Jeff(sorry pal, forgot to tell you about the change in timing..!! >.<) and Jessica were already there, and soon dinner was ready. There was meat loaf, prawns with cheese fillings, Buffalo wings, egg salad, potato jacket, cocktail apricot and a nice bottle of red wine at the end of it. The food was great as it has an American touch to it. Plus, there was a lot of tender, love and care together The company was also fantastic. We spent our time toasting to each other's success and sharing stories with one another and it drifted into deep conversations throughout the whole night.

When I got back to my car, I was fined $30 for not putting the coupons on. Silly and still, a wonderful day nevertheless. What a day indeed.