It comes back in a full Circle

19th April 2010, Monday

17th April 2010 proved to be a real eventful day for the sleepy town of Singapore...
The preceding evening was well soaked in the torrential showers that spitefully arrived every single day during knock off time.
I did made it to Salon de Uno earlier than my stipulated appointment, and managed to get my highly active follicles well groomed by 7.30pm when the missus came to find me straight off work with no appointment planned.
She was to accompany to CS' place after dinner as a rather last minute gaming session was coined with PL's dinner appointment gave her husband some lee time to hang around with his gaming buddies on a Friday evening.

Thought it might be a great session to banter about unraveling the mystery behind "Heavy Rain" but TW's intention was to indulge in PES as usual which we did.
It was well fine but just become slightly too repetitive while a sudden phone-in interview for the host definitely hindered the progress.
At least the missus found her own form of entertainment but I felt bad putting her, who was still recovering from her chronic cough, through this despite it was her choice.

Saturday began not so bright nor early but one could sense the entire neighborhood roasting up for the grand reopening of the Hindu temple across the road which spelt road closures around our place.
It was crucial to start with a hearty breakfast and that was what we had at Starbucks as we were both bought by the strong aroma of freshly brewed Java.

The long awaited 3rd phase of the Circle Line was in operation on that fateful day.
Of course it should cut the traveling time to La Tendo, 19 minutes to be exact as indicated at the route inidcation board before Chan and I took our maiden ride from Bishan Station.
In the end with umpteen prolonged halts (notably at Paya Lebar), it added up to around 25 min which is around the same time we usually waited for that godforsaken Bus 16 in town on Saturday anyway.

Love the Noah's Ark style architecture for the Stadium station though with the ganrty at only one end does not make much sense.
The cement on the footpath to Kalleng Leisure Park was barely dried when we got there, highlighting what a hush hush job it had been.

The opening of the train station surely saw a stark improvement in the human traffic as the store was swarmed almost 80% of the time we were there.
Of course they held a 20% storewide sales helped matters too but the 2 concerts from Taiwanese acts certainly played their part to bring in the crowd.
Like my merchandise-crazed wife who spent close to 300 bucks on the increasingly stale 5 men Taiwanese band, it was easy to spot the hordes of concert-goers with their sparkling new official T shirts on.
The downpour in the afternoon nearly jeopardized the open air concert.

Closing to the final hour of operation, Karen made her appearance after going very quiet on the net and in appearance lately.
She would be getting her working visa in a few days time and the flight to Seoul is imminent.
The crew had intended to catch "Kick Ass!" which Chan had been raving about though my utmost intention was to catch the Manchester derby live with TW.

My buddy who was in the midst of a nice dinner with his missus had thought the match would be at around 9-ish when in actual fact the kickoff was around 7.45pm.
He did say it was likely to catch the Chelsea-Spurs game which kicked off after midnight.
Therefore the plan altered as the movie kind of fell with sprawling interest.
Left for AMK for dinner with yet another meal at Popeye's fried chicken, certainly look to abstain from it for at least a few months.
Bryan was gloomy for most of the day. Made to slave on a Saturday, drenched from the shower and then perturbed by the price of the Macross F Ichibankuji that he felt was not justifiable despite a strong desire to own the figurines.
I wonder if the deep fried chicken could do much to help 'cos the score at City of Manchester Stadium certainly couldn't as his beloved Poo's archrivals looked on course for a possible 19th league title after a Paul Scholes' injury time header deflated the host in laser blue.

As TW mentioned during our journey to his place after dropping PL at her Dad's in Bishan,
"When I heard GOOOALLLL! I knew there would only be one team who had scored as Man City has no fan in Singapore."
Great words indeed.

There was a filler known as "Blacburn vs Everton" to keep us preoccupied before the big one at White Hart's Lane.
Seemingly a scrappy game at first but Blackburn scored a couple of screamer including one from TW's fave player now at least because of the sheer flair of his name, Steven Nzonzi, yet end up losing to lucky Toffees.

Prior to keepoff of the big match, the missus arrived with a seemingly sore throat and high from the adrenaline rush of the live concert.
It was really nice of her to chaperon me for the 2nd night in succession when she would be bore to tears with the proceedings, plus the match would likely ending by 2.30 in the morning.

So the game ensued as we built up with our undying loathe for the likes of Terry and Cashley Cole.
It was befitting that Spurs was the team on form and the star man was defender turn winger Gareth Bale.
The Welshman had transformed his form of late since the days of Spurs-will-lose-when Bale-starts.
After Jermain Defoe hit a powerful spotkick off public enemy's No.1 John Terry's handball, we were celebrating like teenage morons.
Spurs were dominating play the entire first half and deservedly go 2-0 up before half time, from our fave Spurs player now Bale.

Second half was even more exhilarating for us with Drogba cramping his groin muscles before kick off then by my mouth of voodooism, John Terry actually got sent off for 2 yellow cards.
Chelsea was in the doldrums and we were basking in their plight till a late rally which saw Lampard reducing the arrears when we had our hearts in our throats.

Definitely a great night if you are Man United fans (esp when fellow title chaser Arsenal also lost on Sun) but Spurs under Redknapp is definitely dazzling and truly hope they make it into the Champions League.

So a wonderful Saturday ended on a great note as we sort of rekindled the interest in the EPL as the season runs in... Everything like karma will comes back in one full circle, John Terry oughta know..heehee

Japanese word of the day: 円(Circle) Life though cannot keep spinning in circles

Age is just a Number

13th April 2010, Tuesday

With the missus out of town, managed to beckon the guys for some sort of a meet up despite time constraint.
Lili had a hair appointment surprisingly just a stone throw away from my place which warrant CS a few hours to hang out with me and TW who distinctly indicated that he would be available for the whole of Sunday than originally penned on Saturday.

My nostalgic weekend began on Saturday evening when I was tracking some old friends on Facebook.
Despite being a staunch advocate to ban such networking tool because of the evil tales which crept out of the closet, it was afterall great to catch up with old friends or acquaintances.
Managed to join a group for my secondary school which I had good memories of unlike my junior college years and even finally caught hold of my first real puppy crush though I was resistant to request for a friend addition.

The day began at 10-ish when TW as scheduled albeit hastily over the phone mentioned that he would drop by around 10.
I was barely nibbling my tasty cookie (milk chocolate and macadamia) when he made the house call.

It was apparent that CS would only reach an hour later, so we did the next best thing than merely doing the waiting game: play Pro Evo Soccer on the PS.
We tried to emulate the FA Cup semi final for that night between Spurs and Pompey (which the latter amazingly snitched it despite problem off the pitch) before CS made a much earlier entrance.

Off we swooshed to AMK for lunch and it's fun just cruising with my buddies, only if CS could curb his volatile reception to lady drivers.
Lunch was at Popeye's Chicken which was rather steep a price for fast food but the quality in terms of the fried chicken and other side dishes like their marsh potato definitely is a breathe of fresh air from that offered by Col. Sanders.

CS kept us hanging with something brewing from work while TW filled us in with a rather cringeworthy ploy by a female student of his, on playing the heart of a fellow student to produce work for her.

After wiping clean the tasty chicken and spilling jam on pants for some, the burgeoning crowd in the joint was getting rowdy and we decided to head to Funz Center.
The objective was to source for a new game for yours truly and Quantic Dream's "Heavy Rain", a suspense thriller looked like the prime choice as I told CS that i was more into adventure with a good spin in plot these days than RPG.

Didn't lingered long at AMK Hub and left for my place as Lili was on the verge of finishing her styling appointment, meaning CS could not stay for long.
It was indeed the case as we were a few yards from reaching my place yet we still get to see the awkward control of Heavy Rain while hearing the rest of the scoop of sleaze off CS in the end... Good Times.

After the Pepsiman left to pick up his lass, TW stayed for a tournament on PES, using the uber powerful Spanish squad which we both reckon would do good in the World Cup.
It was midway when TW got a call from CS, claiming that I had dropped by relic of a mobile phone in his car and he would make a return trip from Jurong after sending Lili back, just to return it to me.
I thought it was just an excuse to just catch up which did not transpired.

What was more bizarre was that beside my mobile, TW had dropped his car keys in the passenger seat of CS' car as well which was verified by the latter.
They claimed it was voodoo when I mentioned the name of "the Big O" as we kicked off the day and it came back to haunt us.

TW had intended to hitch a cab ride to fetch his key until I offered him the missus' Ford Focus as a the alternative, meaning at least he would save on the cab fare.
It turned out to be a cool ride as we started speaking about how time had just flew by (with some real classic on Class 95 really helped orchestrate the mood).
In the end despite heading towards the fourth decade of our existence, a good 22 years since we became friends, we still very much remained the same pair of goof balls as age and what not would not deter us off the way we wanna lead our lives.

Despite not granted a longer time than expected, I felt it was real nice to catch up with them again as the havoc we can create when we are all in attendance.

Surely at my age, you would not think one would take urgent leave with the excuse to look after an ailing wife but spend the day finishing up a newly bought console game... yah age is afterall a number as the mindset remains.

Japanese word of the day: 年齢 (Age) The body does tell the real age somehow

Gathering of the Titans

6th April 2010, Tuesday

In what supposed to be the final La Tendo clique outing before Karen departs for Seoul, it was simply a fine day out.

It's been a long while since we worked those rackets on the badminton courts but the profuse perspiration showed that it was a great workout despite not able to hit the shuttle corks in high frequency.

The food court at the underground carpark of HDB Hub was renovated with the useless artificial birds' chirping, well enough to warrant a 50% hike in food.
And the famous rojak without the queue toteboard saw an immense beeline for a plate of it which made us cringed at the thought of joining that queue.

The rain made its arrival as we rode to La Tendo where a new shipment certainly clusterfucked the limited space available.
With the Circle Line making its way come 2 weeks time, the management surely hopes for better crowd than it was for a Saturday.
The human traffic was so listless that the attendants at the mega electrical appliances store gave us a sour face when asking him to test a digital photo frame.
The frame didn't work and of course we shun off from buying.

It was still drizzling in town when we made our way to ION Orchard as some of them had an insatiable desire to check out the One Piece T shirt available at Uniqlo, in the end only Karen bought it.
Speaking of insatiable desire, the missus had been eyeing on the self-claimed Hokkaido style ramen booth at the food alley in the Basement 2 of ION for a while; the main obstacle is how costly a bowl
I actually was willing to accommodate on her request while the rest can seek cheaper alternatives.
In the end everyone had ramen and the supposedly owner of the joint was zealous in pushing for his product to the whole load of us and even gave us each half a hard boiled egg.
The noodles ain't half bad but still a gulf to cross to match the quality to be found in motherland but the price certainly is overly inflated.

It's been a long while since we caught a movie at Lido but the ageless cineplex still can garner quite a crowd on Saturday evening and the auditorium style Lido 1 boasts such a massive silver screen seemingly good enough to catch a movie like "Clash of the Titans" in.
However the likes of Karen and Chan sitting just behind me commented our bulbous heads blocked their views and the seats from the previous century definitely is not as comfy as those state of the art theaters we have now.

The movie remake of Ray Harryhausen's 1981 epic was not as bad as everyone proclaims though it was a bit hasty to end especially with the slaughtering of the fearsome Kraken rather meek.
Sam Worthington has now been typecast whether he likes it or not while Ralph Fiennes just has that Valdemort aura as Hades.

As we bode everyone farewell, one wonders when would be the next time the entire clique could come out for a movie again.

Japanese word of the day: タイタン(Titans) Sometime my clique seems like Titans in our own way.