This author is currently on hiatus for the ignoble cause of mugging. The public is advised to remain calm, as this routine protocol has been shown to have no effect on one's violent tendencies in 96% of cases.
| Tuesday, December 12, 2006 |
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Finally returned to Singapore shores at about 10 pm yesterday. The driuve down from Genting took about 7 to 8 hours, which were unsurprisingly boring and uneventful. I ended up fiddling with a Rubix cube (that toy with coloured square faces which you can twist and turn to sort similarly coloured squares on each of the 9 sides.) Since its something only incredibly stupid or incredibly smart people who can complete it in a minute would waste their time on, unless they're aiming for a place in the Guinness Book of Records (which is even dumber), it just shows how plain bored i was. But at least its less silly than spending the time playing scissors-paper-stone or pepsi-cola. Sadly, the cube was a cheap $1 version and soon enough, one of the small cubes broke off and the cubes starting dropping out. And it was extremely hard to twist the sides. Obviously i did not manage to complete the puzzle, but at least i tried. :P One thing about the stuff up there is that its extremely expensive. When we arrived on the first night, we went for dinner/supper, and the bill came up to be RM150. One plate of Kway Teow was about RM16; satay was RM10 for a half-dozen; and their Ice Longan lived up to its name - One small glass of about 6 longans with lots of ice and some sweetish syrup, at a price of RM4.50. Luckily my uncle had about over 1k Genting points, with each point having a value of 1 ringgit, so the meal was technically free. But if he were the pay in cash, the exchange rate is about SGD$1 to RM2.3, which equals a lot of cash down the drain. But i guess one reason for the exorbitant bill was because it was the supper menu, where prices tend to be a tad on the high side (service charges, heh). However, i didn't think the holiday was really much of a vacation, largely because of my cousin, Leonard. He is totally addicted to Monopoly® (the property trading game) so every single time he sees me, he will want to play the game a few times. When he first started on this craze, it was still rather fun winning him almost every time, but then repeatability took its toll and i steadily grew sian of it. But he never seems tired of it, and ive had to play it so much that now i can almost memorise the rents to be paid for every single property. And the same thing happened up on Genting. A typical schedule for the day would be: 12pm to 1pm - Wake up, perform routine morning procedures like pushing cousin off the bed and getting dressed 1pm to 2pm - Lunch 2pm to 2.30 pm - Uncle goes off to "do his business" (i.e. indulge in the casino.) Aunt brings the two littl'uns to theme park. Leonard and I hang around for a bit, watching them run comically in and out of the bumpers cars again and again. Leonard gets a bit restless and makes noise about returning to hotel room. I give in reluctantly. 2.30pm to 3pm - Walk back to room. I try to drag time along as slow as possible, stopping ever so often to comment about the weather. 3pm to 3.10pm - Arrive back in room. Leonard immediately perks up and asks, "So, shall we?" I know what he wants (no, not gay sex), groan in my heart and excuse myself to the loo. 3.10pm to 5pm - Stepping out of toilet, i find that Leonard has already set up the game and is all ready for me. We start the game and the only sounds heard are the rolling of dice, counting of steps and useless banter. I win in the end. 5pm to 7pm - Leonard wants to play yet another game of Monopoly. I doggedly refuse, insisting on reading books instead. After a stand-off, Leonard finally agrees. We pack the game and spend the time lying on the bed reading. 7pm to 8pm - Dinner 8pm to 10pm - Uncle goes off to do his business again. Aunt brings the littl'uns to the theme park (the indoor one doesn't close until 1 am.) I persuade Leonard to go to the arcade, where we end up playing some weird shooting game called "L.A. Machineguns". One thing to note: the driving simulators there call drifting "power slide". Leonard starts getting noisy again. 10pm to 12am - Return to room. After bathing, yet another game of Monopoly. 12am to 1am - Leonard wants to play another game, but i refuse. End up watching Asian Games and LOLing at some unheard-of Korean player who keeps on winking at the camera. 1am to 2am - Uncle, Aunt and littl'uns return with fast food from McDonald's. Eat supper, perform routine night procedures and go to sleep. Probably the most exciting activity that I did there was going to the arcade (and blowing about RM40 on it), since Leonard and I didn't go to the theme park (Monopoly is funner, Leonard claims) and i need to be 21 to enter the casino. But then again, if i wasn't on such good terms with my cousin (after countless reluctant rounds of Monpoly), then his family probably wouldn't have brought me up to Genting FOC in the first place. Uncle's Genting points before the trip: ~1,400 Uncle's Genting points after the trip: 1,249.20 Genting points actually spent: ~500 At this rate, he will never run out of points, since every time he goes up there, he visits the casino and earns even more points to cover the expenses. And he had to cater for 6 people this time round. Imagine if he went up there alone (as he often does.) The cost would be almost 6 times cheaper! Talk about free holidays. And ill be off again from tomorrow morning (7.30 am to be precise) until next wednesday (19/12/06), on a holiday to Beijing (this time paid for by my parents, sadly by cheque with no points whatsoever.) Can't even enjoy SCO for a straight couple of days :( The temperature there's gonna be about a chilling -2 degrees celcius - we saw it on the weather report today. That's gonna take at least 3 layers of clothing to keep warm. Brrr! Anyway, to end off this post, here's a few photos from up at Genting which i took using my father's Nokia 7610 (they're not very clear):  Amazing scenery from the hotel room ...until the thick mist clouds everything My younger brother, who had just about the sense of a blind dingbat to wear a singlet in the 15 degrees fog, and was clawing desperately for warth from cousin Melissa Him later in the hotel, being carried by Melissa. Those two seem to have some sort of bond. Temperature and Relative Humidity inside Hotel Highlands at approximately 1pm, 11/12/06 |
'Twas teh winnar at 11:52 pm.
