12 Jan 2011 – Havoc Weathers

DownUnder in Australia, Brisbane 27S/153E, area 5,901 sqKm/2,279 sqMi, pop of slightly over 2mil. Workers evacuated after the Brisbane River burst its banks. Evacuation centers in Brisbane are filling up as Queensland’s capital braces for floods which have turned the state into a disaster zone. Ten people died in flooding Tuesday. To Denise, Kim, cousin ChoonLong and everyone in that area, please stay safe. Pix and info downloaded from BBC, CNN & ST

On the other side of the globe, snowfall in USA,Columbia, SC 34N/81W, area 346 sqKm/133 sqMi, pop 129,333 is also not a usual sight. Pictures credits to Linn and more credits to her for making the best of the situation. Enjoy the moment, but stay warm and safe.

Near the Arctic Norway, Oslo 59N/10E, area 454 sqKm/175 sqMi, pop 596,923, the winter is also colder than normal but they are used to the snow. May stay warm and safe, you will soon be in SIN to celebrate the CNY and to de-freeze! Pix: 2008 Norway trip/posting 31 Oct 2008-Winter Wonderland. The house belongs to Ellen HALD, L&M‘s paternal grandmother and is located on Nesøya/suburb of Oslo, where we lived from 1974-76.

By the equator here in SIN 1N/103E, area 710 sqKm/274 sqMi, pop nearly 5mil!!! it is comfortable without the air-conditioning in the apartment. Used to be a 3-room HDB, ie 2 bedrooms+1 hall, now converted into a studio apartment. The windows have been opened the past week and that also is not usual here! Enjoying the books, uploading pix and lazing around. Pix were taken as requested by John LIM as he has moved to a new place and liked the interior enough to ask for permission to decorate his living area similarly. Thank you to this talented architect for his compliment. Always a pleasure to be able to help.

Denise mentioned that she was not aware that SIN’s area is so limited to accommodate a pop of 5mil. Sharing some stats to try to understand how the pop and the weather can affect people’s behaviour and moods!

Who is wise? He that learns from everyone. Who is powerful? He that governs his passions. Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody –
Benjamin Franklin

11 Jan 2011 – 11-01-11!

Received a request from second daughter May got me out taking pix for an article about SIN’s transport system to be published in Norway in a small Norwegian magazine called Samferdsel.

MRT & stations (AngMoKio/AMK-MRT Station & BusInterchange; MRT to Eunos Station/with the protective glass doors stations), Light rail (sorry May, no pix), Bus (no13 from SimsAve to MarineCres), People in transit, People at bus stop (EunosBusStop with shade to MRT station), Taxis (will not take one if can avoid),  Cars on the road (SimsAve & MarineParadeRd).

May wanted anything that makes SIN look super advanced and ahead of the rest… not sure these pix will justify SIN public transport looking super advanced!!! Mostly satisfied with the public transport here except for rude taxi drivers. Traveling as a senior citizen is affordable on the buses and MRT as long as one can avoid the rush hours and weekends. Pix taken during a busy weekend, got her message Fri and deadline was yesterday, would not have ventured in those MRT stations in the weekends if not for her request!

The system is advance enough for finding out when the next bus is arriving at your bus stop to avoid unnecessary wait at the bus stops. There is even a number to dial on the mobile to get an SMS info for people like me who does not own an iPhone…  http://www.sbstransit.com.sg/iris/nextbus.aspx

This will certainly justify the advance system – no driver, all controlled from an Operations Room costing US$4.6B. Thanks Mica for the info… http://www.safeshare.tv/v/I6uwOiYzmMU

When no bus or MRT after midnight, walking is till the preference if not too hot! That is where HKG has a better system with certain bus routes running 24hrs.

There’s all these ways to instantly communicate – cars, computers, telephone and transportation – and even with all that, it’s so hard to find people and have an honest communication with them – Jason Schwartzman

9 Jan 2011 – Happy Bdays to Judy LAM & Lee Wang AMEEN

Sat: Appreciations to Garry for stopping by on transit to Bali. Safe onwards journey! Goods laughs and chats solving world’s problems in 6hrs over cocktails, dinner with wine and dessert with champagne. Thank you for the Veuve Clicquot. We seemed to have shared a bottle 6 months ago at his Bali house. Let’s hope that the next bottle will be consumed before the earth’s pole shift 🙂

Yulis Adam TEO, a beautiful charming young lady crossed life’s journey’s path 10yrs ago when we were working in H&H@Marine House. She was not even 21 then! Yesterday was her wedding ceremony with CHIEW and was celebrated@Fort Canning with a delicious Malay lunch. Tonight’s dinner@La Villa*** with Italian food and yummy home-made pineapples tarts from the mother of the bride and butter cake for the groom’s mother. Thank you Yulis & Chiew for including me on their most special day. Congratulations and the very best wishes to this lovely couple for their life ahead…

Of Marriage: You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.
You shall be together when white wings of death scatter your days.
Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another but make not a bond of love.
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together, yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow –
Kahlil Gibran

7 Jan 2011 – A Nice Gathering

Thanks to Les & Ivy for a wonderful evening with family and friends. As always, the food and wines are excellent. Good to see the CHUAS and the TRIBBES, was it already a year ago when I last saw Kiera…

The Tourist**** remake of a French movie, beautiful scenes of Venice, lifestyle of the rich and glamorous ie Angeline JOLIE & Johnny DEPP but entertaining with a curve-ball ending. Romance for the ladies, thriller for the guys and drama enough for all 🙂

A Better Tomorrow** a Korean remake. Well acted but too much violence for the eyes, more a guy flick with lots of actions where rejection, betrayal, revenge and mobster are concerned!

The Ghost Must Be Crazy** SIN flick, annual in-camp training meets a very on Commander. As they’re about to play a prank on the Commander as a form of revenge for all the rigorous training they had to put up with, a series of strange things happen.

Love and Other Drugs*** is based on Jamie Reidy’s memoir Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman. Maggie, an alluring free spirit who won’t let anyone – or anything – tie her down. Meets her match in Jamie, whose is a lady charmer. Maggie and Jamie’s evolving relationship takes them both by surprise, as they find themselves under the influence of the ultimate drug… love!

True love is like a ghost; everyone talks of it, but few have met it face to face –
La Rochefoucald

6 Jan 2011 – Happy Bday Cindy HALL

On the 12th Day of Christmas my true love gave to me Twelve Drummers drumming… and Christmas decorations all packed. The meaning of 12 Days of Christmas, if it has any, has yet to be satisfactorily explained. According to The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, suggestions that the gifts have significance representing the food or sport for each month of the year. Nevertheless, whatever the ultimate origin of the chant, it seems the lines that survived today both in England and France are merely an irreligious travesty.

A sign outside PS. Cafe’s Ang Siang Hill Park outlet stating its no-child policy. The chain said the outlet’s city location and shophouse space make it inappropriate for kids. — ST PHOTO: NURIA LING

THE ban on children at restaurants here is extending its reach from fine-dining establishments to include even casual restaurants. Such eateries cite the same reason their more upscale brethren do – to avoid rowdy behaviour that disturbs other guests.

Who do you think are responsible for these children and young people? When parents priorities are in the rat-race, the future society result in rats. It is too late to recall the pipe-piper, the 11 day of Christmas was yesterday when there were 11 pipers piping! Perhaps there is still a few hours of hope due to the time-zone difference 🙂

The major responsibilities of parenting are NOT of the grandparents, other family members, house-helps or society. Please don’t have children if you are unable to even help them build a foundation or stability to life, ie loving them enough to raise and discipline them into decent well-beings otherwise the whole society will suffer as we are seeing and experiencing in today’s society!

Congratulations to PS Cafe, will certainly make a visit there before returning to Norway.

Your children need your presence more than your presents – Jesse Jackson

5 Jan 2011 – The Mayans

On the 11th Day of Christmas my true love gave to me Eleven Pipers piping… Happy Bday Leonard and tonight all Christmas decorations will be taken down!

With the world in wash cycle and thanks to Denise’s queries, thoughts of the Maya civilization surface again! During Florida days, the fascination was enough for a driving trip/Sep 1990 to the Yucatan. Maya, a Mesoamerican civilization/2000BC-230AD noted for the only known fully developed written language of the pre-Columbian Americas also had an amazingly advance astronomical system. Surprising the Mayans were violent and barbaric in other ways and being actually there and aware of the past did create uneasy feelings… advance or intelligent are not = to compassion or wisdom!

Maya cities reached their highest state of development during the Classic period/app 250-900AD and continued throughout the Post-Classic period until the arrival of the Spanish. The Maya centers of the southern lowlands went into decline during the 8th and 9th centuries and were abandoned shortly thereafter. This decline was coupled with a cessation of monumental inscriptions and large-scale architectural construction. There is no universally accepted theory to explain this collapse but there are many questions without answers.

The Mayan Calendar is not just a system to mark off the passage of time but it helps to understand the movements of the solar system. It does NOT predict the end of the world in 2012 but their astronomy was so advanced that they were able to document up to the 2012 Winter Solstice. Today known as the Galactic Alignment, where scientific researchers have worked on the movements of planet earth’s position and her axis and pole in relationship with the galaxy for 21 Dec 2012. Read with an open mind the scientific and objective researches about this if you wish to know more.

Some are speculating world’s end but comparing that planet Earth is app 4.5 billion years with the life span of computers & PCs, then time is certainly relative! When your time is up, no matter where when or how, your world will end!! So live a good decent full life from the heart with a smile 🙂 when planet Earth is still in existence…

NB: pix are taken from old pix thus on the blurry side, apologies no scanner!

The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization –
Ralph Waldo Emerson

4 Jan 2011 – Happy Bday cousin Desmond LAM

On the 9th Day of Christmas my true love gave to me Nine Ladies dancing… Thank you to Jo, Jane & Pat for dinner company.

On the 10th Day of Christmas my true love gave to me Ten Lords a-leaping…

The worst winter with snowfalls crippling and closing airports and now the floods. What is happening… can this really be due to the early stages to the earth changes of the pole shifting?????????
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/ends-of-the-earth-pole-shift-1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Lhs7VR52Bg

The earth will be in exact alignment with the sun and the center of the milky galaxy on 21 Dec 2012/Winter Solstice or Galactic Alignment. This happens every 25,800yrs, so NO one knows what happened then and NO one will know what will happen on 21 Dec 2012. How could such an ancient culture like the Mayan calculate to the exact date of this alignment? So many questions and so few answers.

USA/Arkansas: ‎5,000 blackbirds falling from the sky and 10,000 drum fish dead to start 2011. Keith Stephens, a spokesman for the commission, said the birds showed evidence of trauma in the breast tissue, with blood clots in the body cavity and a lot of internal bleeding. All major organs were normal… In a seemingly separate incident, some 500 red-winged blackbirds, starlings and grackles were found dead in southern Louisiana in Labarre.

All pictures today are downloaded from different sites. The titling of earth’s axis has been a slow on-going thing for a long while and it is NO science fiction. Reading these scientific materials is not easy but when a few good researchers lay them down in objective plain layman language, it is most interesting. So is it inevitable that there will be a geological or axial shift, or only the shift of the magnetic poles, and what if both happen at the same time?  What then when and if this happens…

Every 5,200 years we come to this point when the planet Earth becomes dark for 60 or 70 hours. We cannot see the sun. Why? Because the science of the Mayan astronomers learned that Earth was always going around the sun, but now we are getting closer until we enter the central magnetic axis – Don Alejandro

2 Jan 2011 – Happy Bday grand-nephew Darryl NEO

On the 8th Day of Christmas my true love gave to me Eight Maids a-milking… The usual issue for every Jan is to focus that a new year has began and to remember which year! Appreciations to AudreyW for the company and for toasting  2011 in, now the challenge is the diet. After a month of socializing and yummy food, there is NO way the this can continue if healthy and happy are to be achieved. In addition, no new clothes in bigger sizes, so will have to stay healthy & happy both in body & mind but wealthy only in the mind!! Promised Leonard that there will be none of this nakedness on my side… which has been on-going in SIN recently and thank goodness SIN has a tropical climate 🙂

http://singaporedissident.blogspot.com/2010/12/singaporeans-going-nude-step-in-right.html

Deliberately going out in public naked, I think, is a form of protest against the government’s excesses and repression. And if my thinking is correct on this, it should be welcome because protesting this way, would very probably lead to the real thing, protesting openly for their rights, with their clothes on this time. That I hope is the case here – Gopalan Nair

David left back for HI via Thailand today and Terminal 1 Row 11/Air Asia@Changi Airport/SIN is like a human zoo in a concrete jungle! Hopefully there will be improvements when the upgrading with the new facelift is completed! That is the major reason for not traveling during holidays and high seasons, but easier said than done, especially when one has to work or attend school.

Thank you for delightful company Richard from NZ. Good to catch up and ring the 2011 in thoroughly!

Under normal conditions, in their natural habitats, wild animals do not mutilate themselves, masturbate, attack their offspring, develop stomach ulcers, become fetishists, suffer from obesity, form homosexual pair-bonds, or commit murder. Among human city dwellers, needless to say, all of these things occur –
Desmond Morris

1 Jan 2011

A Happy, Healthy & Wealthy 2011

Sásta, Sláintiúil & saibhir 2011

En lykkelig, sunt og rik 2011

Bahagi, Sehat & Kaya 2011

一個快樂，健康和富有2011

एक खुश, स्वस्थ और धनी 2011

سعيدة ، صحية والغنية

Best wishes from
Amy LAM in SIN and her family
May in Norway
Linn & Jeff and their family in USA Katy, Ellie, JohnW & Sophie 

Jan Special Dates

On the 6th Day of Christmas my true love gave to me Six geese a-laying…  on the 7th Day, Seven swans a-swimming…

2 – Happy Bday Darryl NEO

3- Happy Bday Richard TANN

4 – Happy Bday Desmond LAM

5 – Happy Bday Leonard SHOH

6 – Happy Bday Cindy HALL

9 – Happy Bdays Judy LAM & Lee Wang AMEEN

10 – Happy Bday ANG Kee Yang

15 – Happy Bdays Angie SOSA & me!

18 – Happy Bday Isabelle AMEEN

19 – Happy Bday Kari HEGGELUND

22 – Happy Bday Katy HALL

24 – Happy Bday Ole Kristian HUSTAD

Good bye 2010. It is going to be another exciting and interesting new year ahead with plans to travel to HKG, China, Kuching, Brunei, Sabah and Malaysia during Spring and back to Norway by 17 May/National Day. Looking very much forward to seeing family, meeting of old & new friends. Thus this life journey will continue to cheerfully step into the 6th decade of the welcoming 2011 doors 🙂

30 Dec 2010 – On the 5th day of Christmas

On the 4th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me Four Calling Birds… Another social day with Peggy & Pat, introducing them to the second branch Food for Thought****8 Queen St. David, the chef and owner is his usual attentive and smiley self. Wishing him every success and my favourite pizza is@North Bridge Rd branch. Thanks Peggy for a lovely get-together lunch.

To my delight, also discovered that the sports store Campers Corner Outdoor Outfitters is now relocated from Stamford Rd to 51 Waterloo St where Chacos sandals can be bought. The pair on the feet has lasted for nearly 5yrs and it is time to look for a new pair. Hopefully their new stock will have what is in the mind…

On the 5th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me Five Gold Rings… A day of reflections and dinner@Pearl Bank with cousin David, Mica&Mun. Cousin heads back to HI via Thailand this Sunday.

23 Jan posting: Washington IRVING said that after a man passes 60, his mischief is mainly in his head, so thank goodness I am a woman/USA.

4 Feb posting: A tribute to Luciano PAVAROTTI.

12 Mar posting: Jack NEO’s affair exposed on the release of Being Human***

20 Apr posting: Taxi driver from SIN not HELL!

29 May posting: SIN & SEX…

7 Jun posting: Land of Smiles/Thailand.

14 Jul posting: SIN Garden Festival/SGF.

23 Aug posting: Wedding at Trollheimen/Norway+a month of travels from Spain to Norway.

18 Sep posting: Croatia + another month of traveling from Montenegro to UK.

26 Oct posting: In Memory of Auntie Elise in Vancouver/Canada+travels in SC & HI/USA and the recuse of the Chilean miners.

10 Nov posting: Visitors from Canada & Ireland+voices from the past/long-lost cousins.

17 Dec posting: Illusions & Delusions!

A million thanks to each & everyone for your wonderful beings by enriching this Life’s Journey and for crossing my path in 2010.