A few days before, I asked my brother in KL to buy a bus ticket for me from KL to Singapore. This he did by proxy, and soon enough, a ticket was procured for eight o’clock on the Sunday.

On Sunday, my father woke up at 6am to get ready to go to Klang Valley for business. My mother and I accompanied him. We reached at around 930am after enjoying a tasty breakfast at 7am near our house. We then took my brother’s Vios to our second meal of the day, our bak kut teh brunch. It was there when my brother passed me my Aeroline ticket for eight o’clock.

The day passes rather non spectacularly (except for a huge incident in the afternoon which I will not divulge here) and it ends for my parents with their departure back to Sitiawan. My day was still far from over however. We lounged around for a while before we took the car at 7pm to go to mu bus’ departure area. When we reached there, I noticed something funny: the receptionist office was closed! On a hunch, I checked the bus ticket on me again. Sure enough, Murphy strikes again. Instead of 2000hrs as the time for 8pm, I saw typed there in neat little print “0800HRS”!! Eight o’clock in the morning! My brother and I were stunned speechless.

Feeling the “Oh, SHIT!” moment, we jumped on the car and raced down several highways towards the closest express bus terminal in KL; at Pudu Raya. We also almost got reamed by a car in the rear, lucky the car stopped in time, else, my brother and I would be dead.

Now, doubts clouds my brother’s mind as to whether Pudu Raya Station is the correct destination. Not feeling so confidant myself, I called up to inquire about it from my friend, and it turns out there is no express bus service going to Singapore from Pudu Raya. All bus services to Singapore has shifted operation to a new express bus terminal at Tasik Selatan called the Terminal Pengangkutan Bersepadu Bandar Tasik Selatan. It was big. It was new, and it’s my next best hope for a bus back to Singapore.

I got a ticket for Causeway Link bus departing at 9pm for RM31. The bus departed ten minutes after scheduled time because we waited for some last minute passengers.

It was an uneventful journey except for the smelly passenger sitting next to me. He was so smelly his stink stayed with me even after I got off the bus at 1230am at Larkin Station.  Now, here lies the rub; there is no more available bus or taxi services to Singapore in the wee hour of the morning.What am I to do but to pay a taxi driver RM20 (which is touting, and it’s expensive, but one got to pay what I got to pay) to take me to JB’s custom complex.

There, I inquired about possible transportation options into Singapore, and was informed that there are several private cars plying the route for a small premium. I thought nothing of it until I heard the premium. Premium, I feel is a misnomer because the price quoted can be considered a small fortune; SGD50 to go past Singapore’s custom complex, and an additional SGD10 to bring us to my desired destination.

Seeing the time, and after an ineffectual bargaining (it’s hard to bargain when the drivers covers for each other in their lies and scams), I relented and agreed to the steep SGD60 to take me to my destination in Tampines.

I reached home at around 2am, and couldn’t sleep until 3am. The tiring thought was, I have to wake up at 615am to got to work…

So all in all, I spent around SGD150 to go from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore. It would be cheaper, and faster if I just went to the airport and catch a plane, but hindsight is, as always, perfect.

It is a specialist hobby that until the advent of cheap specialized tooling and kits where it became more popular. Now any lay person can go to one of the numerous online hobby portals or shops, buy a model to his or her tastes, get some basic tooling and accessories, and just start building, with minimal skills (which for most basic skills, the tutorial videos of which can be found online).

The exhilaration of watching, sometimes hundreds, of parts come together to form the final model is addictive. You will have to wear many hats for this hobby. You will have to be a master planner; to plan when and where a part is to be glued or painted. You will have to be a surgeon; for when you work with small parts, which is most of the time, with a steady hand- to glue, to sand, to align. You will have to be a master craftsman; to correct a misshapen part, to fabricate repairs, news parts or just filling in a crack. You will have to be a master artist; to design the color schemes that will make your model to stand out. You will have to be a photographer to document your work in progress, and the finished product. You will have to be a landscaper to create beautiful diorama displays into which your model will reside. And finally, you will have to be a Zen master to have the patience of seeing the often hundreds of  parts come together into the final product through sometimes, hundreds of hours of hard, tedious work.

But it all boils down to one thing; a hobby is what someone does to bring about a feeling of accomplishments outside of his or her primary adrenalin source.

Imagine, any adult human came from only 2 human cells; an ovum and a sperm. Imagine, a global spanning multinational corporation starts from a humble beginning as a one man retail business. Achieving 99.99% of light speed with small acceleration over a long period of time.

The reason this has not being done for much is because as a race, we humans have become accustomed to getting things done as fast as possible. There is more finesse. No style. No sense of tradition. No ancient memories. Even things that happened merely100 years ago got clogged up in the annals of forgotten history. How could that happen when our sole preoccupation seems to be immortalizing our every thoughts and actions? That would be a topic in another time.

My point this time around is; by not doing things, small things, over a long period of time with little or negligible investments, big stuffs will not happen to us. What small things that we can do today that will benefit us in the future then? For starters, you know those space elevators that scientists talked about? Well, using the current tech carbon nano tubes as base, a small quantity over time can be made to build the first of the elevator’s tower. Over time, as technology level increases, better materials will be available, and using the newly available materials, build over the nano tubes, incrementally, over years, decades, even years if need be to keep the cost low. It is surely within our capability, and financial balance sheet, and yet, why aren’t we’re doing it?

You tell me.

Why would anyone want to throw their money away like that, I do not know.

The place is famous for its various level of spicy hot buffalo wings; from Level 0 to up to 35! Yesterday, the faithful day, my friend, Iris and I decided to try the Level 30 wings, after we had each consumed two Level 5 wings. For the Level 5 wings, the spiciness can still be overcome easily. The taste of the original pieces can still be tasted easily. Overall experience of the Level 5 wings is, it’s good. I like it.

The came the Level 30 wings. Let me tell you that when I say that it’s hot, it means it’s hot. Really hot. My first bite send streams of sweat down my head, and I’m sitting right beside a fan aimed at me! That’s how hot it was. But one bite is not enough a good man make. That’s why I need to finish the whole wing.

But the first bite took out a lot of me. I had to cool down by drinking gulps of hastily drank milk. Then, on to the second bite. It was every bit as bad as the first. More drinks of milk and cold fruit juice. I head the lactose in milk and the fructose in fruit juices will block off the pain receptors that gives us the characteristic “hotness”. Therefore, I conclude that the only way to finish this is to finish all at one go. The reasoning is I will feel the pain only one time, instead of spreading it over several agonizing minutes.

So onto my third and last bite, a big bite. Mopped it off, and as a result, pour down a whole glass of milk and cold juice. Even when my mouth has subsided in pain, the ordeal my stomach had to go through is gut wrenching!

I do not know how I survive the experience, but survive it I did, with a certificate to proof that I did. See here. Hehe.

I can proudly say that, I DID IT!!!

Something I took over the weekend some time ago in Singapore’s Central Business District. The skyline of the CBD itself is copyrighted (why, I do not know), but the constituent buildings and sights are not.

It’s been a long time since I do any shooting. My skill’s draining out my ears even as I type now. There are so many things to shoot, in so many ways and can be processed in so many number of ways that the act of actually going out to shoot terrifies me. What if I did not capture the best image? What if I lose the best light? The best angle?

And then there’s the processing. So many ways there is. So little I’ve learned. Photography is indeed deep. On another thought, I think my 24-105mm lens is dirty…on the inside. All it’s images were consistently foggy…something like OOF. My 50mm does not suffer from it. Hmm, lens defect or did I just got a defective copy when I brought it second hand years ago?

Are they the same thing? Or are they two very different things to mean the same thing?

In a way, strategic sense is when you basically thinks thing through in the long term; what will happen 2 years from now given the conditions now, or what can I do after being presented with such and such a condition now. That’s long term.

Now, tactical sense is a kind of short term thinking that deals with the things that will happen almost immediately. Like the day to day operations of a company perhaps.

Why do I bring this up? It seems that there are many people, including people in positions of power or leadership can be simply classified into two basic thinking types: The Strategic Thinker, and the Tactical Thinker.

The Strategic thinker takes the position that since the future (one or two years later) is basically unknowable, it is best to think of it as being fluid, and make any decisions about said period with flexibility. Make a decision, thus imprinting the future into the present; ergo, by making that decision, the thinker is basically determining the future, thus making plans for the future (something very hard to do) much easier to do, since he only has to fill in the blanks up until the decision date.

Compare that with the Tactical Thinker. This thinker only thinks what will happen tomorrow, based on detailed plans already prepared for him by the Strategic Thinker. Based on this vague sense of planning, this thinker will go out of his way to make sure the plans is put into actions, disregarding anything else; not even the possibility that the plan he used may be wrong.

Thus, I want to point out that usually the head of department in a company should be a Strategic Thinker; he needs to direct the department into the future, by predicting what’s in the future, and make plans to meet them. However, unfortunately, there are some department head that is as un-enlightened as Britney Spears on a morality campaign. When faced with a decision about the future, he starts to drags his feet, and throwing all kinds of nonsense about not knowing the schedule of work or some other bullshit.

In conclusion, it can be surmised that this particular department head is in fact a Tactical Thinker, and not a very good one at that. Thus, how can anyone be expected to believe that this department will pull through any situation with its head held high and an obvious crack is leading them?

On the other hand, Hell’s Kitchen is well worth the watch.