MERRY CHRSITMAS & HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Hey Everyone,

Just wanna wish all of you a joyous Christmas & a fruitful New Year ahead! I hope all of u have list down all ur NEW + OLD resolutions... Start working on the resolutions ok! Everyone, GANBATTE!!!

Cheers to All,

35th SSEAYP

Bowling Competition Cum Welcome Ceremony!!!

21st Dec marks e day where our starbowlers show their bowling skills at Kallang Leisure Park~ For 35th Batch, we are represented by Tuty, Cecilia, Nim & Rezal. Apparently, they have to come sooo early in the morning to do all e registration etc. Hahaz.. So pitiful BUT all in the name of having fun yet at the same trying to win a trophy! =)

Cecilia with her big grin~

Nimales who forever requires constant reminder abt his turn to bowl! =.="

Master Wugui trying hard to focus to roll e ball & not roll himself in! wahaha.. =P


For e 3 games played, Nim & Cecilia been doing great by getting Turkey & Spares. Oh wells, Tuty & Rezal are doing good too despite Rezal's wrist injured and Tuty's losing her focus due to tranferring of photos.. Wahaha.. Nevertheless, all e 4 of them are doing good. BUT they did better with e rest of SPY's cheering them from behind! Go Nim! Go Cecilia! Go Tuty! Go Rezal! The only lacking is the pom poms.. Just too bad~

Score board for our team.. THE YOUNG ONE 08!!

Though its just supposed to be pure fun, but the pressure to walk away with medal simply push them to perform even better. But thanks to Rezal's last throw which eventually did not hit any pin, we managed to get 4th instead of 3rd! We lost to the third position by a SINGLE pin *everyone stares at Rezal* How could this be possible?! OMG!!!

Nimales, Winnie (representing Rezal), William, Cecilia & Tuty with their trophies! =)

SPY's taking photo with the starbowlers!

But it's ok, we were still happy coz 4th position also walked away with trophy! To make things better, Cecilia managed to do us proud by bagging 2 trophies... GOOD JOB EVERYONE!!!

Cecilia with her trophies~

If you know you can't win ANY trophy, just pose and act like a real winner. =P

That's the update for now folks.. I'll let the photos speaks for itself... Charmaine & Queen (who came confidently in WHITE i/o Black SPY Tee)

boon kian with his 'WOW' hairstyle for the day & Wendy looking at some discreet photos?! hmm!

tuty who keeps running everywhere & not focusing on her bowling game!!!!

asilah, hanzhi & boon kian tried to lelong e SPY shirt but not much buyers.. =(

e SPYs who were there to support the bowlers!

SPYs 08 Rocks~

To top it all, Environmentalists Unite~

WOW! Environment~ WOW! WOW! Environment~

35th SSEAYP Farewell Festival Photoslide @ Dolphin Hall, Nippon Maru

Here's finally the end of our sailing days... To celebrate its end and the start of a new beginning... The SG 'P' (Press PYs) came together to share some photos... Enjoy... Copyright@PressPYs2008.

TOOK super long to choose the darn photos, finally gave up and randomised everything...hahah...

Oh yes... the photo.... Here's some of the belated ones...

This is the first... Ops... need to go off... time to explore Philippines... Will be back with more... Yup... Minutes from one of the Press Peeps... aka Tuty... so is the rest of the previous 3 entries....

Safe in a Crazy World

Hey, I'm back online... and Safe in a Crazy World... This song pops into my head as I read and updated myself with the recent news coverage over the world... It's in a sad state and how protected I felt being in Nippon Maru with almost without any worry besides how much to change in each port and if you can get up on time for assembly... Wanted to blog about today... but things changes as I read of the Singaporean who was killed in the Mumbai blast... Sigh... and the thought of YL stuck in Cambodia without any flight back... The demonstrations in Bangkok... Just look at the news today, it's a sad, sad state... It's been awhile since I last read the news...

Here's a shoutout to everyone reading from SG and Vietnam, we are safe as of erm our homestay... Well, I'm safe and at least NL is celebrating another NL's birthday... enjoying the wireless here... And I hope everyone else is safe over at Vietnam.

Tonight is the last night in Vietnam and I went groceries shopping, hahah... See I remembered to get drinks... Ayano-chan got a SIM card at a super reduced price and we had trouble finishing that up!! WE called Japan and Singapore and Vietnam and tried calling all our SG-mates number... Hahah... It's quite hilarious...And learned that someone had to go back to the ship tonight from my SG. Alright, SG C...4 people down... no more from the rest!! Wow, my sg is taking up alot of cabin in the first floor!

This is just a random post while waiting for Ayano-chan to finish bathing... Need to pack my stuff to head to Nippon Maru...

Adios!! Will be too busy to blog tomorrow... till we meet again at the next port of call!!!

And I'm back... online...

The 28th today... Hahah... I must have gotten the dates wrong the previous time... and I'm back online and not to rushed to finish blogging... Wireless here in Vietnam in my District 3 is FREE, only on the second floor that is!! So here I am blogging and regretting leaving my HDD on the ship...

The homestay in Vietnam is different from the rest of my homestay... In Thailand, I stayed like I was on vacation as I had a well-to-do family where I went to spa on the first day and stayed in a condo apartment...

My Vietnamese house is an interesting 3-storey shophouse-looking one with no shop but technically, you can have a shop there and it's all fine. I shared a room with Ayano-chan, but luckily that I have the chance to have like different homestay and this time shared alot of laughters. BUT I got to really show you the room ... I'm staying on the first floor, the whole room is just below the living room and looked as if it's just attached to the bottom of second floor. But the most fun part and interesting is the way it's constructed... Hahah... I way too tall for my room, the height of my room is really 1.7m and I'm like 8cm taller than that... Hahah... Think Vietnam presents the most opportunities to see new things... Simply because, I'm staying with an average family... with unfamiliar environment... The shops are different than those in Thailand, and those who think that I shopped for random and interesting stuff might be disappointed... Having too much fun soaking the differences and ambience... Made me want to read Vietnam history, it seems that it has loads of historical places... Maybe I was influenced by this book I'm currently reading, a historical triller novel set in Germany (Yup, because I felt like reading up German history and going to Germany next... and I've just read the prologue of the book)...

Like I said earlier, me staying in District 3, we just came back from visiting the REunification Palace and treated with the presidential room and furniture and loads of other PYs and oh... our NLs as well... Hahah... Even when walking to the Notre Dame Cathederal... and the Post Office... I think Vietnam is the place I missed my camera the most...I've always been fascinated by buildings not to mention colonial and renaissance ones... the architecture of the community weaved through times... And to think I'm a chem kid... Hahah...

Me and Ayano-chan had lunch at home... Since I don't eat pork nor other meats to make things earlier for them, they always use a separate wok to cook for me... I had some kind of vietnamese salad crepes called ban-sell (I have no how to spell but it sounds like that!)... A rolled up salad veg with crepe, prawns, tauge, leek and some bean (i think it's pilaf)... Super full... and I didn't know "chomp-chomp" here means rambutan... I was trying to get Ayano-chan to describe to be me but it was kinda futile....

We are going shopping later at the small shop and night market later... Should really avoid the touristy places, not as much fun... Even when I was in Thailand, I didn't go the all the touristy places... hahah... and I shopped as much!!

Hmmmm... it's less that 2 weeks before we depart from Japan... Sigh... oh my, I'll be away for 52 days then... I'll miss the people... and this is going to end soon... sigh... sigh... boo hoo... Time to make the best of the time left... hmmm... and maybe I'll be back online tonight... See ya till then!!

GOOD MORNING, VIETNAM!!

The SPYs arrived Vietnam the morning of 27 Nov 08, after spending a day floating over the blue, blue sea... All safe and sound as we departed from Thailand... News had it that there's been a travel advisary to Bangkok, due to the travel situation... Lucky us, imagine if our YL got stuck in Cambodia and can't fly back to Thailand... Maybe we might an extra night... Sorry, no photos this time... My HDD is on the ship and happily hidden away...

Like always, the day we arrived at the port-of-call is welcomed by welcoming ceremony and port of call... And with an unforgetable dinner as well in a Cantonese Restaurant that had half the SPYs having instant noodles and smuggled sushi (Thanks to Mr Postman & Gang), way past the 11pm curfew...with all the stories of course...

Soon, 12 pm came, and I've yet to pack my things for home... After 4 homestays, I'm getting better and faster at packing my things albeit it's always a little on the heavy side. So I packed my things and then head off to my usual room, yup... room 441 (that's not my room)... For the first time, all of the 441 roomies were in 443... It has became an almost a nightly thing, the getting together that part to share the daily snippets of life onboard...

The morning of 28th, we huddled all our belongings for a 2 night stay in Vietnam. Yup, yup... and I have since taken a stance if I forget anything, i'll just buy... We had an intitutional visit to Bemark ( ops, i might spell wrongly here) and a lunch hosted by them... Way, way better than the dinner the night before... before heading to visit the Tyre company...

The visit to the tyre was company and I was impressed at how "Tuas" the place looked in terms of vast space and the manufacturing ambience and yup at how closely it looked like my company outlook in Sg... But too bad, I was disappointed by the fact that the visit was only 20mins of looking... Sigh, how short my expectation plummeted! And there's no like proper introduction of the manufacturing process, we could do with some diagrams...

Sigh... that was quite a disappointment... Anyway, next was the homematching ceremony... which took quite long...
Anyway, that's wasn't much to say but I super like my Vietnam house!! eSP MY ROOM!! it's 1.7m talll... hahahh...darm... need to go off already... will continue soon...