Marina Bay Sands gears up for April 27

On the 28 Jul 2009, construction of the three towers. (the hotel tower)

Massive construction going on, workers working on 2 shifts. Probably the convention centres...

National Day parade on the floating platform. With the IR at the background.

Working round the clock...

Marina Bay Sands in Singapore to Open Its Doors on April 27, 2010

Grand Opening Celebration, Including the Unveiling of the Extraordinary Sands SkyPark, to Follow on June 23

Last year on the 28 July, I attended the national day parade preview at the floating platform.

I captured a few shoots of Marina Bay Sands during construction. Coming April, Singapore's second Integrated Resort (IR), prefer to call the second casino will be in operation. Unlike Resorts World Sentosa which targets leisure travellers, Marina Bay Sands has said its focus is on high-end business travellers as well as the meetings and convention sectors. In the coming week, I will be travelling down to the city to capture some pictures of the new attraction, so stay tune, for more pictures here.

Resort World Sentosa ---> HUAT AH?

Resort World Sentosa..

With the Resort World Sentosa opened recently... the social ills that comes with gambling addictions, depression, divorce, suicide and high crime rate will rise for sure. Our MM Lee Kuan Yew, had mentioned earlier, punters will not win in the casino..

CNA 19 Feb

With a laugh, Mr Lee said: "They want to gamble. I don’t understand why they want to lose. You surely will not win."

In reference to Resorts World Sentosa, which opened its casino on Sunday, Mr Lee said "the boss counted S$3.5 million" on the first day and S$3.7 million on the second day.

Here are some of the familiar Singaporean behaviour seen at the Resorts World Sentosa. Reported on Sunday Times.

CHOPE - that's my seats

Seats are a premium in the over-crowded casino, and some middle aged female patrons have been spotted leaving packets of tissue paper on the tables to "chope" -or reseve - their seats. Others who need a toilet break get friends to fend off other patrons keen to take their seat.

Those who have visited Singapore food centers will be familiar with this sight, which is uniquely Singapore. This is an ugly habit, what we can do is just simply telling our friends to make his/her purchase first while we waited at the seats.

Chope my seats! In one of the food centers in Singapore, during office lunch breaks.


Shout Out Loud

Punters are loud and animated bunch.

Shouts of "huat ah" (prosperity) are frequently heard throughout the hall.

"Picture, Picture" is another oft-heard phrase at the poker and baccarat tables. It refers to the king, queen and jack cards in a poker deck.

In fact, the more crowded and loud an activity is the better it seems. The tables with the most "action", draw the biggest crowds. Some players will joke loudly with the dealers as if they are old friends.

"Why get so worked up? They think if they shout louder, they will win? If that's the case, the casino would have closed down a long time ago." a retiree who was observing them.

Made yourself at home

Spotted at the casino: people taking off their shoes and sandles as they parked themselves at the jackpot machines. Others slept on the sofas in the rest corners for precious shut-eye time before waking up refreshed for yet another round at the machines.

At the end of the day.. as a Singaporean, I will not fork out S$100 just to go in and gamble.

Blog Review for Feb

After restart, as of today, there are 50 different countries visit in less than 2 months, with more interesting countries flags.


A friend from Seychelles visited the blog, I have the opportunity to read up more about her country, wow..it has a population of just 87k plus people. Seychelles is a paradise indeed.

Oman, another middle east countries visited the blog.

On 24 Dec blog post, I mentioned about accidentally removing the flag counter during editing. In less than 2 months, the blog managed to attract higher traffic & visitors from all over the world.

On my earlier posts, I started with articles on cartoons and travel, came to realise that I can't keep on writting on the same topics, that will boring to some of the readers. This year I won't be travelling that much, so in order to keep the blog interesting, there will just be more posts on Singapore & the interesting stuff happening around me.

As there is a saying:

"什么都略懂一点, 生活会多彩一点" (in Mandarin)
"know a bit of everything, so that our life will be interesting".

Hopefully readers can gain something useful here, or at least enjoyed themselves, be it just 3-5 mins. See you, more interesting articles coming up next.

Chinese New Year Singapore 2010

Stepping out of Chinatown MRT station. It will be more crowded on New Year Eve itself..

On the streets of Chinatown, hawkers selling their new year goodies, foodstuff, clothes and others. Normally the crowd will make their purchase only on the last 2 days to new year eve, as hawkers started slashing their prices to clear the goods. The crowd was just out to catch the festival atmosphere.

All ready for Chinese New Year Celebration! A stage was set up for performance.

The God of Fortune, balloon :)

Japanese Fortune Cats on sale..



Happy CNY from Singapore. Welcome the year of the Tiger!

Pictures taken on 12 Feb in Chinatown.

Being Happy...

Came across this article today.. share it here with everyone.

Man gives all $7 million of his wealth away
12 Feb. The New Paper, Singapore

A millionaire is giving up his £3 million ($7 million) fortune because he said they never made him happy.

Austrian Karl Rabeder, who made his riches from his household accessories and furnishings business, said the sale of his luxurious villas and cars, among other things, will go to charities he had set up in Central and Latin America.

He had already sold his business in 2004.

The 47-year-old told the Daily Telegraph: “My idea is to have nothing left. Absolutely nothing. Money is counterproductive – it prevents happiness from coming.”

He added: “For a long time, I believed that more wealth and luxury automatically meant more happiness.”

But over time, a conflicting feeling nagged at him.

He said: “More and more I heard the words: ‘Stop what you are doing now – all this luxury and consumerism – and start your real life.’

I had the feeling I was working as a slave for things that I did not wish for or need.”

But it took him several years before he acted on it as he admitted he was not “brave” enough to give up all the trappings of his comfortable existence instantly.

The turning point came during a three-week holiday in Hawaii with his former wife.

He said: “It was the biggest shock in my life, when I realised how horrible, soulless and without feeling the five-star lifestyle is.

“In those three weeks, we spent all the money you could possibly spend. But in all that time, we had the feeling we hadn’t met a single real person – that we were all just actors.

“The staff played the role of being friendly and the guests played the role of being important and nobody was real.”

Felt guilty

He had similar feelings of guilt while on gliding trips in South America and Africa.

He said: “I increasingly got the sensation that there is a connection between our wealth and their poverty.”

Mr Rabeder thought “if I don’t do it now, I won’t do it for the rest of my life”.

So he made an announcement on Austrian television and said he would be selling his luxury 3,455 sq ft villa with lake and sauna over the Alps, valued at £1.4 million.

Also up for sale is a 17-hectare old stone farmhouse in Provence for £613,000.

Mr Rabeder has already sold his collection of six gliders valued at £350,000 and a luxury Audi A8, worth around £44,000.

He said all the money will go into his microcredit charity, which offers small loans to Latin America and builds development aid strategies to self-employed people in El Salvador, Honduras, Bolivia, Peru, Argentina and Chile.

Since selling his belongings, Mr Rabeder felt “free, the opposite of heavy”.

Now divorced, he lives in a two-room flat in Innsbruck.

He added: “The worst that can happen to me is that I have to take a small job to get by.

“I was just listening to the voice of my heart and soul.”

Zoo World on Facebook

Last week, i added the zoo world application on facebook. For 3 days, i was on facebook most of the time..

Now this zoo game seems to be pretty addictive (with 3.4 million players signed up for the game) probably because of the cute animals cartoons and players would want to collect 'em all. In this post i have a couple of tips to guide you smoothly to level 20 of the game. There are a total of 42 levels to complete.

Tips (For Level 1 to 20)

1. For Level 15, you are required to get 5 reptiles, just purchase 5 reptiles from the shop, even if they are of the same kind. (as long as you owned a total of 5 reptiles).

2. For Level 18, you are required to get 5 insects, so just purchase 4 butterflies in the shop to make it a total of 5. It was almost impossible to have 5 different insects at this point in time.

3. For Level 20, you can just breed any 4 animals of (Difficulty: Medium), no problem if it is the same animal, i was just breeding Great-Horned Owl as it takes less time 24 hrs, and that was the fastest animal to breed (medium). Start your breeding program as soon as you can too.

4. Train your bald eagle & swift to do tricks by starting earlier, it was a boring process.. so finish it fast as it gets more and more expensive and tedious (increasing 1% per click on your 5th trick). With a total of 12 tricks to learn!

5. To get more cash, you can just visit your friend's zoo, shake your friends' trees to get cash or search for the hidden treasure in your friend's zoo, simply by clicking on their animals. By having more animals in your zoo, visitors will increase, in return generate more needed cash.

6. To collect more animals, use the "send gift" to send unlimited animals & exchange them with your friends.

Just have fun...

Sporting legend gets a final send-off

The Straits Times, 4 February - Terrence Voon

About 200 people turned up at the Church of the Holy Spirit to bid farewell to former national hurdler and Olympian Tan Eng Yoon yesterday.

It was not just VIPs and ministers who came to pay their respects when the wake for Singapore's late sporting icon Tan Eng Yoon was held earlier this week.

One former student drove from house to house behind Thomson Plaza searching for Tan's home, while a former athlete drove to every church in the Bishan area looking for the wake.

These touching stories were related by Tan's daughter Sabrina, 39, when the former Olympian was laid to rest yesterday.

"Dad was the embodiment of the Olympic spirit." she recounted in her eulogy to her father.

" He strongly believed that it wasn't about winning the gold medal, but rather having travelled the Olympic journey, and do it the right way."

Tan, 82, died after he was knocked down by a car last Saturday morning along Upper Thomson Road.

He had just attended the morning mass at the nearby Church of the Holy Spirit - the same place where his funeral service was held yesterday.

About 200 people turned up to bid a final farewell to him, including former athletes like sprinter C.Kunalan, hockey's Anwarul Haque, former national rugby coach Natahar Bava and Malaysia's sprint king M. Jegathesan.

After the hour-long service, Tan was cremated at the Mandai Crematorium.

Said Sabrina:"To us, as a family, we are not looking at how his life ended, but rather the journey that his life took.

"We see a life filled with family, friends, love for God, passion for sports and always reaching out to give a helping hand. We see him as a simple man who achieved extraordinary things. That is his legacy."

My late coach was an Olympian....

Former Singapore Olympian Tan Eng Yoon dies in road accident By Dylan Loh,
Channel NewsAsia | Posted: 30 January 2010 1550 hrs SINGAPORE :

Former Singapore sprinter Tan Eng Yoon died in a road accident on Saturday morning. He was 82. The President of the Singapore Olympians Association helped oversee the National Stadium's construction as a sports administrator. Mr Tan was General Secretary of the Football Association of Singapore in the 1990s. He represented the country at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics in the triple jump and 100-metre sprint. In 1959, he won Singapore's first medal, in the 400-metre hurdles, at the inaugural South-East Asian Peninsular Games, the pre-cursor to the present-day SEA Games. He also won the triple jump gold and his national record for this event stood for 32 years. As National Track and Field coach in the 1960s and 1970s, Mr Tan also nurtured athletes like sprint king C Kunalan.

Full Report


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I remember this gentleman, it was back in 1993 or 94, can't remember the exact year. Back then, I was doing my diploma at Ngee Ann Polytechnic, once there was a track & field trial run conducted by Mr Tan himself on the campus stadium. I took part in a couple of runs, in 100M and probably 200M. Of course, I was not selected.... I am not a talented runner, lacking both strength and speed, was never a sprinter.

In the late evening after training, the small group will stay in a room with Mr Tan watching video tapes on running tactics, ways to improve and become a better runner, he will brief us after the show ends. I attended a few lessons both on the running track and in the TV room for the next couple of weeks until the lesson plan ended, I guess he didn't find the talent he was looking for in the polytechnic. He left a deep impression on me - a well-manner, sincere, kind and patience man. Even we were not selected, he had coached us for a short period.

I never met him again after I finished my diploma and was enlisted for national service, graduated and started working. It was only when he passed away in an accident, I learnt about his background. He was a humble man - an Olympian and a real champion.

Sports Hero - Mr Tan Eng Yoon

Started running a few years after finishing my National Service, signed up for the 10km run in 2003 (started medal collection). 7 years later, I'm still running, and intended to participate in a few races every year. Thank you Mr Tan, you are my first coach.

4 full marathon medals