well yes, i went to the garden festival this year. not once, but twice. chengwei and i went to the “exhibition” on tuesday, and then i went again with my family on thursday, because my mum is the family green fingers.

i must say some of the displays were quite stunning, and some are just plain odd (this meditative piece by a singaporean artist was just dumbfounding). as expected, the whole place was swarming with photogs with their DSLRs, bodies contorted into odd angles, trying to get a good shot of some exotic flora. there was an uncle who brought his own LIGHTING.

it was quite enjoyable, being in nature (but in the comfort of airconditioning) but was quite disappointing coz most of the displays were out of bounds, even though there were paths through them which the designers clearly created for visitors to experience their creations.

ah well. anyway, the flower beauty shots are in the previous post http://lenneltan.com/?p=3845

some fantasy display with mirrors in it

very nice room display by japanese artists. rather zen… no?

record attempt for world’s largest bouquet. just another singaporean attempt at something that doesn’t matter…

part deux… with the family

i remember hearing or reading somewhere that you can tell how a guy views his love by the way he takes pictures of her. all the photos she chose to put on her blog are the “funnier” ones. in my defense, i take very nice pictures of her as well.

disclaimer: EVERYDAY should be a mother’s day. it should never have to come down to once a year to be nice to your mother. you hear that kids? it’s cool to be filial.

we managed to get my mum out for dinner after much persuasion and changes in plans. she wanted to go eat satay, then that became dinner at city square coz it’s nearby, but i had other plans. had always wanted to bring her for korean bbq, so we did just that. brought my mum to ju shin jung at ecp so that we can have dinner, then go walk along the beach and look at the sea (mummy loves the sea), and then go shopping at parkway parade. we were so stuffed and lethargic after dinner that we didn’t last long at the mall, so we headed home after a bit, but its always so nice and fun to go out together as a family.

so touristy…

watching people race RC cars because the restaurant wasn’t open yet…

we ordered a pork belly & chicken, spring onion pancake and a ginseng chicken soup… and it came with a million little plates of stuff… look how busy our table was…

love

mummy loves the sea… she found the ships a little too small

and she loved that “pretty” tree in the background too

awesome pre-birthday saturday

lots of food

birthday came early!

haji lane – lots of purple, birds, cats and cool stuff

opps, i did it again

well it’s not over yet coz we’re going to a special location for her birthday dinner this friday. i’m sure she’ll have lots of photos and stories to blog about. till then, here are some photos from this weekend…

mum and muffin at the gate… mum says he loves to pop his head out…

chengwei making her usual funny faces…

and sweet faces

here’s dennis/dellia’s son, elisha at our good friday event. his first i believe!

that’s auntie chin ling

and all the korkors fawning over elisha…

our intern joshua, who has since eaten up all our snacks and moved on to the next company to prey on unsuspecting graphic designers and their pantry…

one late night view outside the office while it was pouring, and i was waiting for artwork files to be approved by the client…

chengwei drove down to pick us up at 9-plus and, after a little weighing in of pros and cons, we all decided to drive into RWS instead of taking the train because it was more cost-effective. 4 of us (cw, me, my mum and sis) would have spent about 5 bucks each on MRT into RWS (not counting the return trip) and it was $20 bucks for a full day of parking in RWS. So away we went to Sentosa! (even though it was sooo early on a Sunday morning)

this was our first visit to RWS since it opened. The carpark is huge! it even has a tram service IN THE CARPARK to ferry people around…

here’s everyone that went… cw’s 2 brothers, her dad and mum, cw, me, my mum and sis

the little family

us and the madagascar animals!

here are the fellas from madagascar dancing LIVE!

penguins!

alex the lion!

we also went for the Shrek 4D show, which was quite exciting (got sprayed with donkey’s mucus, scared by spiders, and blasted by Farquard’s ghostly apparitions). no photography allowed, so we only have a photo of the QUEUE in the far far away castle…

the dinos at the jurassic park. we went for this rapid adventure and all got wet. very very short ride but took about 20mins of waiting. scariest part, of course, was when the boat dropped from a 2 storey height.

doing what the egyptians do…

my sister and cw went for the ride with her brothers. apparently it was very very good, but i passed. heh.

the waterworld set. the seats were zoned according to how wet you might get. the “soaked” zone was named so because the actors would actually pour buckets of water on you. we were seated at the LAST row of the MIGHT GET WET zone. safe.

quite an exciting show because they fired blanks, had a lot of action sequences, and tonnes of water everywhere. there are only 3 shows a day because the actors all looked totally drained after the show, and they had tonnes of props to reset – fallen towers, seaplanes, zip lines and such.

the cylon vs human battlestar galactica rides were down (phew) but the scifi city was very useful because of the mist and fans around it – cooling cooling cooling.

NEW YORK!

there was marilyn monroe (looking like a bad crossdresser)

the “subway”…

cute little stuff on the ground…

suspicious characters…

charlie chaplin (again, very odd looking)

HATS HATS HATS

betty boop and the police

AND VINTAGE CARS! here’s a Ford 1932 hot rod

a Chevy Impala

and Ford THUNDERBIRDDDDDD (we’ll sell it and buy ourselves an Audi A5 sportback in the future)

and another suspicious character…

WOODY WOODPECKER!

PO! (notice our awkward kungfu stance. certainly proves our sibling awkward gene.)

Shrek and Fiona! (who was a little pissed at a kid who kept running around her and ruining the photo opp for other visitors)

and the hershey’s store (which was outside the theme park)

a VERY VERY long but fun day at RWS, and I’ve yet to bring my mum around the rest of the island. On our way back, my mum and sis were so tired they fell asleep at the back of the van. I’m glad everyone had fun

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look at her loot from the hershey’s store!

and she got me a keychain from the mummy (didn’t show the other side because it looks a little scary…)

to avoid the weekend human traffic, we had to take the 545AM bus from singapore to JB, then another 730AM bus from larkin terminal to muar! you can guess how zombified we were…

here’s ally and her bf, chris-BEE, our very kind host and tour guides. i guess they’re used to the early morning trips back to malaysia. how could they look so fresh!?

the other zombies – jamie (ex-colleague), kelvin (dunno chatting with who at 530 in the morning) and shirley (who was out partying the night before and never slept)

we had wanton mee at larkin terminal, but some of them found that it was not that nice, so kelvin had a 2nd round of nasi lemak while waiting for the 730AM bus. for the record, i thought the noodle was quite nice. (food round 1 – breakfast)

we got single seats! so comfortable. and hence begins our 2hr coach ride back to the rustic town of muar…

kel and jamie got the “couple” seats instead. hahaha

when we got to muar, ally’s mum (here on left) came to pick us up in cars and we visited their very nice house. she was very hospitable and made us tea and served us pong piah. (food round 2 – snacks)

After that, we went over to the hotel and dumped our bags in the 1 room they could release to us (we checked in way earlier than the stipulated time) and headed to get massages done. The massage was quite good and i sort of  chickened out from a thai body massage and had my feet done instead. after the massage, we went to the coffeeshop opposite to wait for ally and her bf to arrive. kelvin felt peckish and had some pork soup while the rest had drinks. (food round 3 )

very fresh fruits from shop near our hotel. <click to enlarge>

here’s our hotel – streetview hotel near glutton street. nice little boutique hotel, clean and comfortable.

we all got our individual king-sized beds! and the shower was equally comfortable – good water pressure! (very very important)

after meeting up with ally and chris, we drove down to a nearby fishing village (by nearby, it’s about 20mins away) and we went to have a very nice seafood lunch.

It’s a REAL fishing village. People were cleaning fishes, and there were boats everywhere. <click to enlarge>

Does someone stay on the boat? <click to enlarge>

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Lunch! Sotong with prawns and petai / orh lua / assam fish / and tofu. All extremely delicious, and it’s only 2PM in the afternoon… (food round 4 – lunch)

jamie with 2 bags of huge guavas. I bought 2 bags full as well – that’s 7 guavas for 10ringgit (about S$4.40)

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after lunch, we drove directly up to melaka. Kelvin became our chaffeur instead, with ally as v-commander. it was quite fun, rather like a little road trip. well the scenery was just plants, plants and more plants…

melaka! we were parked near the river, so of course, it was time for photo-opp…

for the record, i didn’t ask them to do that. kelvin did…

quaint little cheng ho teahouse. more pictures further down.

i love the colours of this house. white-washed walls and dark wood. must take note for future house.

rustic streets of melaka. love the laidback feel. <click to enlarge>

this mosque is quite famous for it’s architecture. it’s muslim but has hindu influences in the building design. for example this minaret is not the usual one with the dome on top, but looks more like a pagoda. <click to enlarge>

we then headed into cheng ho tea house for some ‘kungfu tea’. it was such a serene little place where the people just drank and appreciated chinese tea, and the teahouse owner’s friends would come by and gather to drink tea and chit chat the afternoon away.  (food round 5 – snacks) <click to enlarge>

kelvin, being the tea connoisseur, decided to serve us the tea. quite skillful leh.

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one of the owner’s friends brought their new kitteh to the teahouse. she was so cute!

remember the little doorway to the teahouse above? it actually leads to this lane in between buildings, covered in plants. almost like a gateway into pan’s labyrinth or something… <click to enlarge>

VW minibus! <click to enlarge>

of course we went to the christ church area. they waited for me while i ran around shooting everything…

the famous christ church melaka <click to enlarge>

then we walked to palahwan to shop a little more and i bought tonnes of foodstuff, and we headed to A&W for some nostalgia. A&W rootbeer flat! (food round 6 – snacks)

after we headed back to muar (a very late and scary night drive away), we went to the nearby hawker centre for dinner. even more awesome food! we had char kway teow, fried seafood noodles, more orh lua, more otak, stingray, la la, satay, chee cheong fun and wanton mee, washed down with 8 treasure tea. completely stuffed (food round 7 – dinner)

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the next morning we just took it easy. woke at 9am and went around the area near the hotel and had breakfast, the prepared to go back to singapore on the 12noon coach…

the street where we stayed.

anyone else remember kelvinator?

another hawker centre opposite the hotel…

this char kway stall was in an alley next to the hotel. they were completely sold out by 11am!

i found this old-fashioned barber shop.

old Rex cinema turned into an appliance store…

this is ally’s primary school!

old cathay cinema turned into an apparels store

this was right opposite our hotel – a very beautiful peranakan style shophouse that’s 70 years old.

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so that was our little trip to malaysia! and i actually spent a lot less than i had budgeted. hehe. it was really quite fun, but would have been better if we could explore melaka at a more leisurely pace. i couldn’t believe i ate so much in 1 day, but the food were all awesome. i must have tried like at least 3 types of otak at 3 different locations (which muar is famous for), and all were excellent. seafood was fresh and the hawker foods were all very good. the shopping was boring, but i guess it’s more about eating than anything else!

my mum came down for the concert with me…