Bora Bora - The Most Beautiful Island In The World

I received a good news from my Brasilian friend, Roy and Tania. After so many months of preparation, this couple got married in March. Too bad, I was not in Brasil to attend their wedding but had already prepared a little wedding present (together with my Singapore colleagues) for them long time ago.

And the most wonderful thing is the island they went for their honeymoon, Bora Bora.

Bora Bora (16°26′40″S, 151°45′5″WCoordinates: 16°26′40″S, 151°45′5″W) is an island in the Leeward group of the Society Islands of French Polynesia, an overseas territory of France in the Pacific Ocean. The island, located about 260 km southwest of Papeete is surrounded by a lagoon and a fringing reef. In the center of the island are the remnants of an extinct volcano, rising to two peaks, Mt. Pahia, and the highest point, Mount Otemanu, reaching 727 meters (2,385ft.).
The island is administratively part of the commune (municipality) of Bora-Bora, itself in the administrative subdivision of the Leeward Islands.
As of 2002, the population was about 7,250 people. The major settlement, Vaitape is on the western side of the island, opposite the main channel into the lagoon.
The original name in the Tahitian language might be better rendered as Pora Pora, meaning "First Born".
The products of the island are mostly limited to what can be obtained from the sea and coconut trees, which were historically of economic importance for copra.

Got their permission to publish some of the photos to show how beautiful this island is. I love it so much!

Complain

Searched from Internet dictionary, complain means to say that something is wrong or not satisfactory.

Often we might be dealing / facing thing that are wrong or not satisfactory. When a person is telling you the details of what is happening to him/her, of how he/she feels about the current situation. Perhaps repeating telling the same thing might become complain to the listener (even thought he/she is in the same situation everyday, that’s why he/she is telling almost the same thing). In that the case, does that means we are complaining everyday???? Now with some of the reactions received, I began to wonder am I ‘complaining’ too much?

So how do you define a person is complaining (too much)?

Fruity Day

Today is our company Fruity Day and each employee was given an green apple. See what's the benefit of an green apple can give you.

Green Apple is a good source of potassiumm , folic acid and Vitamin C. It is fat, sodium and cholestrol free.

Green Apple is easy to digest and it contains malic and tartaric acids that inhibit fermentation in the intestines. It also contains pectin, a soluble fibre that encourages the growth of beneficial bacteria in the digestive tract. Green apple also acts as a liver and gall bladder cleanser and may aid in softening gallstones.

Unpeeled green apple provides its most plentiful nutrients just under the skin. To prevent browning, rub the cut surfaces with a mixture of lemon juice and water.

Benefits of Green Apple

Cleans teeth and strengthens gum. Eating 2 apples a day will reduce cholesterol level up to 10%
Has an antiviral property and detoxifies the body. Prevents constipation because it helps digestion
· Improves immune function and prevents heart disease and some cancers

· Due to its high level content, apple is cooling and moistening and aids in reducing fever

· Grated apple when mixed with live yogurt may be helpful in cases of diarrhoea

· Steamed apple sweetened with honey is beneficial for a dry cough and may help to remove mucous from the lungs

Never Did I Expect

Standing in front of the multi-purpose functions photocopy machine at Engineering Dept, I was waiting for the print out drawing which were sent out from Autocad2006. Then out of sudden, I began to smile to myself as I had never expect that one day I will be working (or attaching in this case) in Engineering Dept. Going through their process of work scope and 'figuring' the Autocad etc.

Then I start to look back at my life and realised, life is indeed a learning curve as there were so many unexpected things happened. "It is not the result that matters but the process that made you grown", always people said so which this is nothing but the true. At least, all the unexpectation had made me a little grown up adult (hmmm, I know I am no longer young, hee hee).

So, looking back that ............
Never did I expect I will have the chance to go to Brasil (wow, really so far away from home) for 2 years assignment, to make so many friends and travel around.
Never did I expect I will be working in this Marine Industry which really explored my world wider and still exploring.
Never did I expect I will change my career from admin assistant to buyer. A good turning point for me.
Never did I expect I will work in a book store, but hey, I love to read sometime, but mostly magazine, hee hee.
Never did I expect I will work in Hotel industry as part time chamber maid (to help my sister's cleaning service company at that time) when I was still schooling. There is when I began to become more mature.
..........too manys never did I expect.
But life is good to me after all, thanks God!

So did your "Never did I expect" make a better world to you too?

Finally I Am Stepping On The Treadmill

Yes.......I went to Nee Ann Poly Gym (my friend's friend is a member) to run on treadmill, which fulfill my exercise promise to my friend. I didnt do much exercise except for 30mins of running and some stretching exercise.

This is a good start and I hope I can do it more often. Have to check what public transport go there from my work place and back home. If not convenient, how to go there? (Ha ha excuse again). Ok, ok, I must think of a good location to start my exercise planning.

Public Transport – Bus

Every morning (except for Sunday, thanks goodness that I can have at least a day in a week to wake up late) I will take the second earliest shuttle bus no. 804, around 5.40am to Yishun Bus Interchange to catch up my company bus. Most of the time, the air-con of the bus seems to be on full power that made Singapore, a sudden winter. Perhaps not many people are taking that bus ride. Some time, I regretted for not wearing my sweater, just for the sake of this bus ride.

Every evening I will take the same bus number 804 (or 806 which operate everyday except Sun & PH) back home. And most of the time, the air-con of the bus seems like running out of power, cause you can only feel nothing else but the humans’ heat all around you. Perhaps too many people are taking the ride this time. Some time, I really feel like “Hey, are you trying to test my tolerance towards this heat in this unclosed bus?”

So I wonder, could it be just the ‘un-adjustable’ air-con that results the situation of ‘too cold’ or ‘too hot’ for our bus ride. Or simply that the bus drive sitting in front is not able to feel the coldness or hotness on the bus.

Public Transport - TAXI – The Auto-Door

Courtesy photo from www.istockphoto.com/.../517/5/517578/Taxi.html

I remembered the first time I saw the auto-door of the taxi, was from the Japanese Drama series. Seeing the lady lead raised her hand to hire a taxi, the door was opened when the taxi stopped for her to aboard.

Then, it happened in Singapore too, which only part of it. Now, we can see almost every taxi will have an “Auto-door” sticker sticks on the door but never did I
experience a single time that it really open automatically (perhaps I am not lucky enough to see that happen to me). Not even when my hands were full of bags.

Of course, I doesn’t mean that every single passenger will need the taxi to activate the auto-door cos we are still so used to open it ourselves. But under what situation will they help to ‘open’ the door, I wonder sometime?????? I believe there must be someone there who had experience the ‘open sesame’. Quick, share with me. Let me believe their auto-doors do functioning and not only with the sticker on it.

The Phantom Of The Opera

Andrew Lloyd Webber's THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA - the musical already seen by more than 80 million people throughout the world is now opening at the Esplanade Theatre from 23 March 2007 for a strictly limited season.

THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA is the heart-wrenching story of the mysterious "Angel of Music" who lives beneath the Paris Opera House. The hideously disfigured Phantom falls in love with the young singer Christine, devoting himself to creating a new opera star while exercising a reign of terror over the Opera House's occupants. With 130 cast, crew and orchestra members, spectacular sets and more than 230 costumes, THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA contains some of Andrew Lloyd Webber's most famous and stirring music, including "The Phantom of the Opera" and "Music of the Night".

I watched this musical 12 years ago when they were here in Singapore. Loving it so much that I booked ticket online in Brasil when I first knew they are performing soon. Waited for few months (in fact it's few months), I was quite excited. So afraid that I will fall sick again when my cough is back recently. Luckily I managed to watch it without needing to cought much.

But frankly speaking, I think I prefer to watch the crew which performed 12 years ago. So my excitment did not long last after the show began not long after. Over all, they are still good or perhaps the songs still so touching.

Anyone up there going to watch too or had already watched?


After that, I walked down Marina bay and realised there is this Makansutra Gluttons Bay. My friend was hungry so ordered a pkt of prawn noodle (of cos I have nothing to eat up there except toast but not at that hour). Who knows, while waiting for the food, it rains suddenly. Looking at all people running for shelter with their food. What a luck!

Modern Japanese Food

Seldom do I go to Japanese Restaurant for meal, as I do not really favor Japanese food. Yesterday, my kakis decided to go Waraku Japanese Resturant at Marina Square for their Japanese ‘steamboat’. I joined them and ended up had salad and some side orders there. Took a lot of photos of their choices of food (which is not vegetarian). I believe this restaurant serve modern Japanese food as there are a lot of fried food to chose from. One of my colleagues brought his two years old daughter with him; she is so cute and active too. I like her a lot and took a lot of photos for her. Too bad the photos are not clear enough, what a pity!

Talk About Brasil in Singapore

My Ex-Brasilian colleague is in town for his work assignment. Luiz was here two months ago but too bad I wasn't back yet. Good thing he is back again and we managed to have dinner this round.

We talked about those old days in Brasil and his little boy, Eric too. Showing me his recent boy photo, wow, already grew so tall. I remembered it was only not long ago that I carried and played with him during the boat ride.

Luiz said I should feel proud of my country cos Singapore is a beautiful, clean and safe country. I always agree with that! But we shall all continue to play our role and part to let all these remains.

How Can A Lazy Person Start To Exercise

I promise to go for regular exercise once back in Singapore. A day passed, a week passed and even one month has gone and coming to the second month, but nothing is in progress for exercising.

Aiyo, I must admit that I am a super lazy person, especially when talking about exercise. I know I must do something to maintain my weight, when age is catching up day by day. But on the other hand, I keep using all excuses to stop myself. Busy with appointment, here pain there pain, too tire (but never tire for shopping) etc.

But here, at (very) least there is something I can do. I will climb more stairs instead of taking life in daily life. Office at level 3 and Engineering at level 5, I need to go up and down a few times each day. Back home, I will climb up to level 8 to ease off a little of my guilt for being not exercising since day one.

I believe I will go for exercise one day. :p

Monday Blue

Spent the whole Sunday doing nothing, thought of getting some rest and be relax at home so that I can have full power to begin my week at work.

Who knows………. I am getting serious ‘Monday blue’, but the sky is not blue at all. Raining dogs and cats right now.

Rain, rain, rain, hoping you can wash away my blue, blue, blue. I have to Jia You, jia you!!!!

Vegetarian Indian Lunch At Little India

On saturday afternoon..............

RefreshING Life

I am having a "refreshing" life now.

At work, I am in the piping world. From commercial transfer to engineering dept - piping section and is giving a great opportunity to learn from the ground. I know nothing about technical piping, so now I am trying my best to survive in all different systems of piping needed for each project.

At life, my SCM course just began. My last touch of textbook was 3 years ago, and now with little memory of being a part-time student, I am once experiencing the busy life for studying again.

So far so good. Just hoping my dark circle doesn’t stick on with me again.

Primeval - Inspired By True Story

Watch this movie cause it was inspired by true story. Just want to know things happened in the another part of the world. After all, the world is so big, there is too little that we know.

PRIMEVAL is the story of an American news crew sent to Burundi, Africa, by its network chief to hunt and capture the legendary crocodile Gustave, who stalks a local river in search of human prey. The small crew consisting of embattled producer Tim Manfrey (Dominic Purcell), reporter Aviva Masters (Brooke Langton), and their cameraman Steven Johnson (Orlando Jones) are joined by two animal experts: one a Steve Irwin-style croc hunter, the other a local named JoJo.
Director By: Michael Katleman

My Rating: ***

I feel...... I don't expect a lot of excitment in this movie as it's showing the true story. But I find myself lucky but sad when seeing how people live in the 3rd world country. Although this story is focus on the legendary crocodile, at the same time they also shown how much their lives worth in that country.

The most prolific serial killer in history, I think is human beings' greed and annoyance which are more terrifying than this huge crocodile. Because of selfishness, one can do more harmful and scary things to its own kind. In this movie, this action can be seen too. Go to the trail of this movie, you can also see the Interactive Blood Trail of human. Worst!

Waiting - A Test For Your Patience

I hardly slept well last night, and thanks a lot to my bad cough. Been so terrible that I couldn't wake up at 5.00am to go work, so I decided to visit the doctor again which I knew I need to go one more round of waiting process in Polyclinic.

If not because my company can only accept MC from Polyclinic (or our company doctor), I don't think I will want to go there ever. This round, instead I could go home earlier since I arrived there early, I reach home almost noon, hungily and restless.

8.11am - Pre-registration

8.14am - Got my 2080 number at the registration counter.

8.15am - I sat outside the room, waiting for my number to appear. At this time, the computer system show "The averagely waiting time for a patient to see a doc is 29mins". I was quite satisfied then.

9.00am - Saw the "next door" doctor already seen two patients, my doc still seeing one patient. I though maybe this doc is very detailed one, need more time. And now "The averagely.....is 1hr". I felt, well this is norm.

9.30am - "The averagely ........... is 1hr 30mins". A bit impatient but I tell myself to cool down cos I should have expected.

10.10am - "The averagely...........is 1 hr 50mins"..... until "....2hrs" when I found myself getting weaker and hopeless. I almost wanted to go off and just go back office to apply annunal leave. Talked to the staff there to check what happened, but she just nodded her head and do nothing. Maybe this is really norm to her too.

10.45am - Finally my turn, took this young doc less than 5 mins to decript my medicine and MC.

10.50am - Got 1052 number at the Phamarcy counter and waited for 30mins to get my medicine. I almost fainted due to hunger or anger, prehaps.

11.40am - Reach home and wondering.............have I been to a war just now. I felt so tire. I dozed off after taking some food and medicine.

We Are In Ao Dai

Me and Zeon went to help on for one of our project naming ceremony. and we went in Ao Dai as our client is Vietnamese.

When The World Feels Shaking

Finally, I lost to the virus attack. I felt sick in the morning, so I went to Polyclinic (cos my company can only accept Polyclinic Medicial Cert) to visit Doc.

My last visit to Polyclinic was like two years ago. I can see there are improvement done although the waiting time from my registration to collecting medicine remains the same, averagely two hours. Now they are using barcoding system for every counter which save the time to key in your particular data. The doctor will type the medicine decription into the computer instead of writing. Most important part is (which I find it a bi crazy too) the MC that the doctor issued will not be valid till we got a stamp on it. It will only be done when we paid for the treatment. I was told they do so cos a lot of people did not go and collect their medicine after taking the MC, which their whole idea is to get the MC only.

From 9.20am to 11.20am, I feel so tire then.

When I reach home around noon, I was preparing myself a sandwich that I felt shaking, a sudden giddy too. My niece feels the same too. Immediately I guess there must be something happenning to our neighbour country. True enough, a strong earthquake of magnitude 6.3 shook Indonesia's Sumatra island. As a result, many parts of Singapore and Malaysia feel the tremors.

This was the first time I feels the tremor. My heart beats faster and so afraid something will happen to us. This little tremor is enough to scare people, I can't imagine how people feel over at Indonesia.

Then again, around 2 plus I feels the tremor again. This time immediatley I prays, not for me but for those up there who might be more scare than I do.

Jen's Birthday

In Singapore, we are not so keen of having party for birthday celebration (like what we had in Brasil or overseas). For Jen and I, normally we will just go for a meal on our birthday. That's what we do today.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PAL!

Another Changes - The Traffic

Today was my first day to begin my part-time degree SCM course. Estimated my traveling time but at the end, the feeder bus took longer than I had expected. So I had left no choice but to take cab.

Since my return, I saw and feel a lot chances in homeland. Another change is the increasing of the vehicles, due to the main reason of lower COE which let more people able to afford to buy a car. So since then, no matter what time I passes by the expressway like CTE (most of the time on the cab), the journey will definitely slowed down. The speed is very much different as compared, perhaps two years ago. Sometime I felt myself back in Brazil (they do have this problem during peak hour) or Bangkok. The vehicle can only travel around 40 to 50km/h on expressway, and many red lights (decelerating speed) ahead can be seen.

I know there have few new fly-overs and public transport like CCL is building now. Hopefully this can ease off the pressure of heavy traffic.

P.S For your info, the longest jam I ever had is in Rio, took 3 hrs to travel 13km (the Niteroi bridge) and I do not wish to break any of this record again.
And......course start = assignment

The Pursuit Of Happyness

I saw the interview of Christopher Gardner from Reader’s Digest on Jan issue, and thought this movie inspired on this story will be a good show.

My rating: ***

I feel…………. It is always very motivated after watching movie like this. Seeing how people fight for their future, their happiness. Of course, not everyone can be as fortunate as Chris, but at least we can stay positive like him, to work hard for better future (although we can’t have multi-million-dollar brokerage firm).

I believe our future is in our hands.

The Technology For Younger Look

Yesterday I went to Toa Payoh Central to do my facial. While walking towards the beauty salon, I realized there are at least five or six (quite well-known) beauty salons at that whole stretch.

My god! No wonder the men always said it is so easy to earn women’s money. (And I always said it is so easy to spend men’s money too ) Looking at all the shops, I can imagine how much we are ‘investing’ in order to look young, fresh, slim and perhaps confidant too. But needless to admit, a lot of people (just look at those Today celebrities) really look much better with the help of this technology.

In the olden days you can’t do much to your winkles or to slim down a lot in a short period. But now you can slow down the winkles so that you can look young for at least a few years more. You can get help (or medicine too) to go on diet.

Well, well, of course there is no free lunch in this world. Everything will cost you something to achieve certain things.

For me, I just hope that I could maintain (while I still can afford) to look good and young, hee hee. At least for a few years more ha ha.