Ho ho ho

Guess who I met in Maple Story just now? Ha ha... couldn't have been more coincidental: Same Server, Channel and location - Jin Yu! So long haven't been in contact.

Maple Update:
Cleric (Level 36)
Archer (Level 11)
Rogue (Level 16)

The month long term break (recess, as they call it) is already a week old, and so far, much has been accomplished:

Monday
Went for the Waterways Watch Camp Enviro-Awareness 2005 (Camp 2) orientation (for faciliators). Yup, am no longer food IC... We tried dragon boating, and now I know why dragon boaters usually have HUGE muscles. Even though it ached considerable during the tenacious row, it was only after we went ashore that I realized one arm was inproportionately larger than the other. It could be the result of the rowing, but my theory was that it was simply swollen!

Tuesday
Attended a lunch session with President Howard Hunter of SMU for a rather candid and informal chat. Questions raised by a couple of late comers, however, were pretty formal and structured in tone, and hogged much of the second-half of the session. It ended up more like a press conference than an informal lunch.

After lunch, I zipped over the causeway to Malaysia for a two night stay in Johore. The main highlight of the night? A blackout! Whee... luckily we had candles, but couldn't find a lighter, so had to 'borrow light' from our neighbour. For five minutes, we relished in the candle-lit room. Then, to our dismay (after having acquired light merely minutes ago) and joy, the electricitywas back up again!

Started work on a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle.

Wednesday
Day 2 of my Johore retreat. Lunch and much of the afternoon was spent at The Store, one of the largest shopping complexes in the area. Everything's rather affordable (half the price of similar stuff over here) with the exception of electronics.

Dinner was at the hawker centre near Bestmart. We had a pretty awesome spread of zi char, including two house dishes: The rojak chicken (unfortunately, the prawn paste was quite strong) and the fruit platter fish (which has quite abit of vinegar, so just a kind warning here).

Thursday
Final day in Johore. We had to rush back in the morning as mummy had something to attend to. So yup, no shopping today.

Friday
Decided to meet up with JM and ZR after lunch for a trip down to Sim Lim Square. ZR commented that there was something about the atmosphere that was not quite the same. Prolly was the absence of a significant number of flyer distributors at the escalators (Only two pathetic souls were present on the third floor, usually one of the more crowded congregation spots for them).

We ended up hunting around the place for the lowest cost Win XP OEM (Fuwell's quite reasonable) and walking all the way to Sunshine Plaza for the Wanton Noodles (At 3 bucks, there is great value in the quantity and quality of fried and soup wantons! Recommended!).

We were comtemplating having tau huay (soya beancurd) after dinner, but eventually, convenience and rationale thinking took us to Foodmore instead, where I had the barley and ginko nuts dessert. Yummy and sweet ending to a hectic afternoon. Heh!