Chingay Fiesta @ Tampines

No I didn't go to the actual festival at Central; the floats went past my house and there was a carnival opposite!

[ Apologies for poorly taken photos. Please don't click on the photos :( ]


Way before the floats came a small crowd was already forming at the junction.


Mata came to direct traffic!


Floats lai liao!


The floats stopped! The MPs dropped by the carnival, thus the entire possession stopped for a good 10 minutes.


Problem was that I didn't know that until they have stopped for quite a good while, thus I quickly chiong-ed downstairs to get a good look and hopefully some good photos [which didn't materialise unfortunately].


Many residents, like me, chiong-ed downstairs armed with cameras too.


My first of photoshopped photos. I'm beginning to like high contrast photos.






NUS float!


The Singapore Pools float which was so long, it had difficulty turning.




Celebrating 50 years of public housing by suggesting 14-storey flats to be built right in front of 13-storey flats!








The unsung heroes following behind the floats, which included an ambulance, a lorry full of spare tyres, and a recovery vehicle.


The crowd after the possession.


Since I was already downstairs I decided to stop by the carnival for a bit.


Magic!


While I was there...

spam

回家。







Random structures.








Last but not least,



Ti Gong po pi new year huat big big ah!

overheard at my house II

Actually its seen rather than heard.

The newspaper delivery boy serving my area delivers newspapers barefooted!

nothing special on the special day

Chinese New Year 2010 will go down in history as the most un-CNY CNY I ever had yet.

1) While the reunion dinner stopped being 'reunion' for many years, the 'dinner' was usually the dinner because of the ridiculous amount of food on the table. This year, however, apparently a decision was made to keep everything simple, including the dinner.

2) There was the 'tradition' of buying a banana cake before CNY and intending it as breakfast for Day One and Day Two, where most eateries would be closed. This year for some reason there was no cake, and I woke up on Day One to 叉烧包. Thankfully another 'tradition', porridge with bwa gua, was still around.

3) A makeshift altar in the form of a table would usually be set up on CNY Eve facing the window, where we would pray to ti gong at the stroke of midnight; after that I would accompany my mother downstairs to burn the incense paper. The two big candles on the makeshift altar would burn through the night to the following morning, thus the table would be left untouched till then.

This year, the table was still there, but my mother decided to burn the incense paper just outside the house instead of going downstairs. And the entire table was cleared and kept within two hours after midnight.

4) My routine for the CNY Day One used to be rather standard: my aunt's house three blocks away. This year, she went on a cruise with my cousin, her boyfriend, and my brother, reaching home on noon of Day One, whereby she told me [and my brother, haha how weird] not to visit her on that day because she wanted to rest. So the entire Day One was spent at home.

5) The routine of CNY Day Two used to be staying at home, because the next house visiting would usually be together with other cousins. This year, there was an original plan to go house visitng, but in the end one thing led to another, I stayed at home the entire day again.

So much after all the woes.

I was still asking my mother whether the CNY goodies we have are enough. Now that I see, 99% of them will eventually end up in our stomachs. Haha.

MediaCorp's CNY 'specials' were far from special, so I found alternative entertainment in the form of Data Structures and Algorithm Analysis in Java classic games! Had alot of fun replaying Tiberian Sun, just like the primary school days, only without the need to play hide-and-seek with my mother hahaha. Too bad these days hardly any game comes close to Tiberian Sun in terms of the fun I had.

Let's hope that this will be the worst I can ever get!

Overheard at my house

Early morning on the first day of Chinese New Year, someone set off his car alarm, which was a long continuous stream of the horn.

Someone, somewhere: OOoooiieee K** P** la!

chinese new year woes

Do-Re-Mi!

The refrigerator is probably the most 'difficult' electronic appliance to buy. Let me explain.

Years back, the original fridge my family was using broke down one fine day all of a sudden.


Don't pray pray. This National fridge is, now was, older than me.

With all the raw food inside there was a need to get a replacement immediately. Unfortunately the electronic appliance shop near my house only had small sized ones from LG available for immediate delivery. No choice, we had to accept it. But the fridge was small, so my father repaired the old one, and for a long time we had two fridges running in the house.

Fast forward to now:


Chinese New Year ma.

This year my parents decided to increase the capacity of our cold storage. Unfortunately, due to miscommunication between my parents, as always, two fridges turned up at my house. The small one is a old Toshiba from my aunt, who was throwing that away for a new one, while the new, bigger one, is a Sharp purchased by my father.

The final decision is to use the big Sharp and the small Toshiba fridges, selling off the LG replacement we bought years back, and of course, throwing the green National away.

Interestingly when I opened up the freezer compartment of the Sharp,


Chinese New Year ma.

I think space is like money; no one will complain they have too much of it.

*****************************************

Today I was tasked to wash the corridor outside the house. The idea was to connect two water hoses together from inside, spray, and scrub. Unfortunately I did not tighten the connection between the two water hoses, because I thought they were tight enough. The water pressure caused the two to separate, and the house was wetter than the corridor at one point.

Well my mother was at work, and people don't like others to label them 越帮越忙, so I had to clear up all the water inside the house before my mother returned home in half an hour.

With a mop, some strength [because I couldn't find the 'mop squeezer' so I did it by hand], and an unlikely helper...


The troublemaker and the saviour.

...job done, both inside and outside!


The only hints in my house that its Chinese New Year. But alas the advertisement came at the wrong time.

Happy Tiger Year to all!

bwg

Which is worse, complain without knowing the full story, or buy a new plasma television then cry when someone takes your old cathode ray tube away because he needs one?

even the birds can't take it

热阿！