Hi all. I'm back from India. Had a terrific trip in the Periyar Tiger Reserve.Did not manage to see a tiger but we certainly heard one attacking the elephants in the middle of the night . Eventually the herd of 7 elephants including a baby came into the open and was feeding just below the slope where I camped. It was a very special moment watching 7 elephants walking towards us.
I'm now in Malaysia with my daughter Kelly. We are on a bus trip to a few places and having good bonding session.
Julia is not on holiday, so I'm taking kelly first. I think not many fathers get to do a road trip of this nature with one kid at a time.I'm enjoying every minute of it.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Hi.
I was back in office recently to talk to Venkat about CitiPhone. Good to see all of you. Also good to see the green board. Nick was also having his birthday celebration. But as usual, I am never included in office parties. I had to crash it.
Thanks for your interests in the aunties' trip. Yes, alchohol can be included. Private arrangement. But at this moment, that trip is not possible due to rainy season. As for the enquiries on fishing.. Pat.. i dun throw up. Even if i do,
i swallow it back. Its all about pride!! And Jensen, I will let you know if the fishermen go again and if there is space on board. As you know, I dun organise fishing trips , so if I get invited to make up the numbers, I will let you know.
I was in Laos earlier this month with my wife. We visited a small town called Vang Vieng. Its beautiful. Our hotel which costs US50 a night overlooks the river and across the river, is an entire limestone karst landscape . Very scenic and relaxing.
Highlight in this place is to take a rubber tube and float down the river over a distance of 4km. and along the river are pubs where you can get off your rubber tyre tube to drink, get high, and do a tarzen swing/ flying fox into the river before continuing with your tubing journey. And the massages costs only between S$5-8 an hour.I even had my haircut there from a road side barber. other tourists took picture of me on the barber chair.
Next sunday i will be going to chennai to attend a friend's wedding. Therafter will do some trekking with long san at one of india's tiger conservation national park.
3D2N- good chance to meet a tiger. And since long san looks juicier than me, i know I will be safe. Do not worry for me.
I was back in office recently to talk to Venkat about CitiPhone. Good to see all of you. Also good to see the green board. Nick was also having his birthday celebration. But as usual, I am never included in office parties. I had to crash it.
Thanks for your interests in the aunties' trip. Yes, alchohol can be included. Private arrangement. But at this moment, that trip is not possible due to rainy season. As for the enquiries on fishing.. Pat.. i dun throw up. Even if i do,
i swallow it back. Its all about pride!! And Jensen, I will let you know if the fishermen go again and if there is space on board. As you know, I dun organise fishing trips , so if I get invited to make up the numbers, I will let you know.
I was in Laos earlier this month with my wife. We visited a small town called Vang Vieng. Its beautiful. Our hotel which costs US50 a night overlooks the river and across the river, is an entire limestone karst landscape . Very scenic and relaxing.
Highlight in this place is to take a rubber tube and float down the river over a distance of 4km. and along the river are pubs where you can get off your rubber tyre tube to drink, get high, and do a tarzen swing/ flying fox into the river before continuing with your tubing journey. And the massages costs only between S$5-8 an hour.I even had my haircut there from a road side barber. other tourists took picture of me on the barber chair.
Next sunday i will be going to chennai to attend a friend's wedding. Therafter will do some trekking with long san at one of india's tiger conservation national park.
3D2N- good chance to meet a tiger. And since long san looks juicier than me, i know I will be safe. Do not worry for me.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Monday, November 10, 2008
hi, good to see that many of you have read my update on the UAT trip and thanks for your comments. And yes claudine , I do have screen shots but the photo editor has been busy lately. He will update asap.
As for the aunties' who are interested in doing this trip, no problem. I can modify the program a bit to customise, no shopping still, but can throw in an asli cooking class for you all. Then go home can impress family with some asli dishes!!
Any way, in between the time i went to Laos in the first week of Nov, and the jungle trip, I also went for a 3 day 2 night deep sea fishing trip in the seas off bintan.i've never stayed on a boat for 3 full days and wanted to see how I can cope with a sedentary fishing life. also to understand how people like dylan can be so obsessed with fishing. well, i enjoyed it very much, we caught everything from squids to groupers, to rays to sharks and even the prized mackeral. i learnt alot about fishing techniques and practices. My only regret is not being able to land a dolphin. We saw them, but they only chased away all other fishes but did not take our bait. i was told they were too smart to be hooked. but being the optimistic person i am, I was hopeful right to the end.
As for the aunties' who are interested in doing this trip, no problem. I can modify the program a bit to customise, no shopping still, but can throw in an asli cooking class for you all. Then go home can impress family with some asli dishes!!
Any way, in between the time i went to Laos in the first week of Nov, and the jungle trip, I also went for a 3 day 2 night deep sea fishing trip in the seas off bintan.i've never stayed on a boat for 3 full days and wanted to see how I can cope with a sedentary fishing life. also to understand how people like dylan can be so obsessed with fishing. well, i enjoyed it very much, we caught everything from squids to groupers, to rays to sharks and even the prized mackeral. i learnt alot about fishing techniques and practices. My only regret is not being able to land a dolphin. We saw them, but they only chased away all other fishes but did not take our bait. i was told they were too smart to be hooked. but being the optimistic person i am, I was hopeful right to the end.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Some of you may have heard that on the weekend of Sep 27th, I went for a weekend trip to Endau Rompin national park in malaysia with some of the ex cpos. myself included. chee peng, sook, adel, aaron, lilian bok plus adel and lilians' husband made up the group together with my daughter kelly.
They volunteered to do this UAT for me. I wondered if i can bring people into the jungle starting saturday morning and coming back by 9pm sunday evening and pack in enough activities so that it would feel more than just a 2 day getaway.In the end, we enjoyed the trip. We took a train, malaysian railway, to kluang where we had the famous ya-kun equivalent railway kopi. then it was a ride on a 4 wheel truck followed by a 45 min boat ride into the middle of the national park.We reached there by lunch time. We had twin sharing chalets with attached toilets and fan for the night.
By mid afternoon, we were out trekking and spent time feeding river fishes, hanging out at waterfall and swimming and horsing around in a deep jungle dive pool.
Night was spent eating BBQ jungle style, skewers were made of bamboo poles. and chatting, and looking for nice place to sleep- ie for those who did not want to sleep in their respective rooms(adel and sook).
Next morning was a 3 hour kayak (downstream)and swimming in the river till lunch
time where we ate in an orang asli village . We ate asli food.hung around the village, took our showers and then made our way back to the railway station. i heard no one took leave the next day.so its not too tiring. only some leeches were quite irritating.
So if any of you need a weekend getaway, i can help arrange for you. 8-10 pax is ideal. But please dun take my word for it that its fun, check with the UAT testers first!!
I heard venkat , my successor, is already in office today. He will be starting work proper on monday.. please give him all your support!!I'm off to Laos tomorrow and will meet him when i get back. make sure he will only have nice things to say about all of you when i meet him!!
They volunteered to do this UAT for me. I wondered if i can bring people into the jungle starting saturday morning and coming back by 9pm sunday evening and pack in enough activities so that it would feel more than just a 2 day getaway.In the end, we enjoyed the trip. We took a train, malaysian railway, to kluang where we had the famous ya-kun equivalent railway kopi. then it was a ride on a 4 wheel truck followed by a 45 min boat ride into the middle of the national park.We reached there by lunch time. We had twin sharing chalets with attached toilets and fan for the night.
By mid afternoon, we were out trekking and spent time feeding river fishes, hanging out at waterfall and swimming and horsing around in a deep jungle dive pool.
Night was spent eating BBQ jungle style, skewers were made of bamboo poles. and chatting, and looking for nice place to sleep- ie for those who did not want to sleep in their respective rooms(adel and sook).
Next morning was a 3 hour kayak (downstream)and swimming in the river till lunch
time where we ate in an orang asli village . We ate asli food.hung around the village, took our showers and then made our way back to the railway station. i heard no one took leave the next day.so its not too tiring. only some leeches were quite irritating.
So if any of you need a weekend getaway, i can help arrange for you. 8-10 pax is ideal. But please dun take my word for it that its fun, check with the UAT testers first!!
I heard venkat , my successor, is already in office today. He will be starting work proper on monday.. please give him all your support!!I'm off to Laos tomorrow and will meet him when i get back. make sure he will only have nice things to say about all of you when i meet him!!
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
hi. I 've heard from some of you that you did read my updates on krakatau although no comments were posted.
In any case,I will briefly update you on the rest of my trip in java. climbing merapi, bromo and ijen.next update will be on my weekend trek with chee peng and
gang last month and then my 3 day fishing trip which was last weekend.
After krakatau, i went to jogjakarta and visited the famous borobodur . Did the mainstream tourist thing by hanging around the complex for both sun set and sun rise.
At sun rise, i could see merapi in the distant.Thats the next big active volcano
that i was going to climb.
Merapi is considered dangerous but the local guides convinced me its a safe period.
unfortunately, I had bad indigestion during the midnight climb . I was hoping to climb through the night and get to summit for sun rise.Must have been the satay i had for dinner. Too many flies on the meat before it was cooked . I stopped to take po chai pills but it didnt help. I continued and was then caught in thunderstorm.
It was dry season, no rain for 2 months. So I think the signs were telling me not to
go on. I aborted my climb.
Next was Bromo in east java. beautiful place with nice hotel overlooking the volcano. Most tourists goes there to see sun rise and then hurry off to Bali.
I stayed on to explore the villages and the crater after the tourists left. Its
beautiful.
Then I moved on to Ijen which is almost at eastern tip of java. This volcano is
active and have a sulphur mine inside the crater. Men will go into the crater to carry out basket full of sulphur plates.Each laod is about 70kg. hard work plus the sulphur fumes are certainly not good for health. sulpuhur dioxide(fumes from volcano)
+ H2O(saliva and tears)= sulphuric acid. think of what it did to my eyes and throat!Sobering experience to watch this people work.until I got a call on my hand phone on my way down.. it was one of our customers.. having problem with his internet banking. I politely told him to call june /jerry then realised that it was a saturday afternoon after I hang up!! I smsed june to contact CM. Think leonard
eventually reolved the issue.CM did not even thank me.. even though he knew i was overseas and i told him i left citi!!
The photos will be uploaded later.
wc
In any case,I will briefly update you on the rest of my trip in java. climbing merapi, bromo and ijen.next update will be on my weekend trek with chee peng and
gang last month and then my 3 day fishing trip which was last weekend.
After krakatau, i went to jogjakarta and visited the famous borobodur . Did the mainstream tourist thing by hanging around the complex for both sun set and sun rise.
At sun rise, i could see merapi in the distant.Thats the next big active volcano
that i was going to climb.
Merapi is considered dangerous but the local guides convinced me its a safe period.
unfortunately, I had bad indigestion during the midnight climb . I was hoping to climb through the night and get to summit for sun rise.Must have been the satay i had for dinner. Too many flies on the meat before it was cooked . I stopped to take po chai pills but it didnt help. I continued and was then caught in thunderstorm.
It was dry season, no rain for 2 months. So I think the signs were telling me not to
go on. I aborted my climb.
Next was Bromo in east java. beautiful place with nice hotel overlooking the volcano. Most tourists goes there to see sun rise and then hurry off to Bali.
I stayed on to explore the villages and the crater after the tourists left. Its
beautiful.
Then I moved on to Ijen which is almost at eastern tip of java. This volcano is
active and have a sulphur mine inside the crater. Men will go into the crater to carry out basket full of sulphur plates.Each laod is about 70kg. hard work plus the sulphur fumes are certainly not good for health. sulpuhur dioxide(fumes from volcano)
+ H2O(saliva and tears)= sulphuric acid. think of what it did to my eyes and throat!Sobering experience to watch this people work.until I got a call on my hand phone on my way down.. it was one of our customers.. having problem with his internet banking. I politely told him to call june /jerry then realised that it was a saturday afternoon after I hang up!! I smsed june to contact CM. Think leonard
eventually reolved the issue.CM did not even thank me.. even though he knew i was overseas and i told him i left citi!!
The photos will be uploaded later.
wc
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
hi everyone. I'm back from my trip to java and bali.
plan was to visit some of the volcanoes I have been and to see guides who were with me previously. like meeting old friends. and of course to climb some new volcanoes. In the 13 days,
i visited 6 volcanoes.
First on the list was to re visit krakatau in west java. I attempted to climb this volcano in 2004 after my knee operation and did not reach the top, even though its only a 1000ft high. its steep and very hot out there. i was determined to get to the top this time, but my guide did not allow as the volcano is now active and fairly unstable. He allowed me to go up to the ridge next to the dome and allowed me to go to the base of the 1000ft dome at most.
some background. krakatau registered one of the most devastating eruption in 1883. Even hollywood made a movie about it.. krakatau , east of java.. yup they got their facts wrong. its west, not east. The world had beautiful sunset for 3 yrs as a result of the ash thrown into the atmossphere. whats left of the original volcanoe now appear as islands in the middle of the sea and a baby volcano, called anak krakatau , emerged from the sea since the 1920s and its been growing . its now about a 1000 feet high.
so i climbed onto the volcanic island and hang around the ridge since i was not allowed to climb.
I was taking self portraits of myself against dome and the summit. And then anak puffed black smoke into the sky. I was at the base when it happened. There was no one else around. It was like godzilla coming to life and I'm standing at its feet. Its safe.. there was no lava or rocks thrown out, if it was, there would be rumbling sound before it happens. if its just puffing smoke, no sound , no warning but its safe at the base. Some of the pics will be posted soon. enjoy.
plan was to visit some of the volcanoes I have been and to see guides who were with me previously. like meeting old friends. and of course to climb some new volcanoes. In the 13 days,
i visited 6 volcanoes.
First on the list was to re visit krakatau in west java. I attempted to climb this volcano in 2004 after my knee operation and did not reach the top, even though its only a 1000ft high. its steep and very hot out there. i was determined to get to the top this time, but my guide did not allow as the volcano is now active and fairly unstable. He allowed me to go up to the ridge next to the dome and allowed me to go to the base of the 1000ft dome at most.
some background. krakatau registered one of the most devastating eruption in 1883. Even hollywood made a movie about it.. krakatau , east of java.. yup they got their facts wrong. its west, not east. The world had beautiful sunset for 3 yrs as a result of the ash thrown into the atmossphere. whats left of the original volcanoe now appear as islands in the middle of the sea and a baby volcano, called anak krakatau , emerged from the sea since the 1920s and its been growing . its now about a 1000 feet high.
so i climbed onto the volcanic island and hang around the ridge since i was not allowed to climb.
I was taking self portraits of myself against dome and the summit. And then anak puffed black smoke into the sky. I was at the base when it happened. There was no one else around. It was like godzilla coming to life and I'm standing at its feet. Its safe.. there was no lava or rocks thrown out, if it was, there would be rumbling sound before it happens. if its just puffing smoke, no sound , no warning but its safe at the base. Some of the pics will be posted soon. enjoy.
Monday, September 8, 2008
Sunday, August 31, 2008
It is a fresh water spring pool .. ..dug by the owner's father 30 yrs ago and it is feed by cold spring water. I stayed in the house next to it.
At the half way point on Mt Bulusan, its a plateau surrounded by mts. Hence decided to turn back cos of heavy rain and trail is too slippery. On the way down, leech went into my eye.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
I have finally officially left the bank.
I returned my black berry and surrendered by staff ID card. Andrew was with me till the end.. although it does look to some that Andrew is doing what Charly Ong would be doing, escorting a non citibanker out of the office!! I know Andrew will be deeply hurt to read this.. we all know andrew's dedciation to Citiphone and full support of me.. ... but man, i just have to say this.. he did a Charly Ong on me!!
It was hard saying the goodbyes to all of you yesterday. thanks for the many simple wishes that didnt make it harder for me. I was also told by some staff from CIU that i should not walk around the office to say my goodbyes cos i will make many staff cry. So it was mandated I sit in my office, and staff can come say goodbye if they wish. I did just that.
Felt my heart crumble a little when i was signing out of my email and my computer for the last time. I was surprised. If any of you leave in future and get this same feeling while signing out, please tell me. At least i know I'm not weird!!
Well, I'm still waiting for CP to upload my phillipines pics. Once he has done that i will pass him some pics from my official farewell. They are quite funny. So can you guys put some pressure on him to do his work for me? his excuse is that he has been sick lately.So no time to post my pics.
Next update will be from Java. Flying out on Sep 5th.
I returned my black berry and surrendered by staff ID card. Andrew was with me till the end.. although it does look to some that Andrew is doing what Charly Ong would be doing, escorting a non citibanker out of the office!! I know Andrew will be deeply hurt to read this.. we all know andrew's dedciation to Citiphone and full support of me.. ... but man, i just have to say this.. he did a Charly Ong on me!!
It was hard saying the goodbyes to all of you yesterday. thanks for the many simple wishes that didnt make it harder for me. I was also told by some staff from CIU that i should not walk around the office to say my goodbyes cos i will make many staff cry. So it was mandated I sit in my office, and staff can come say goodbye if they wish. I did just that.
Felt my heart crumble a little when i was signing out of my email and my computer for the last time. I was surprised. If any of you leave in future and get this same feeling while signing out, please tell me. At least i know I'm not weird!!
Well, I'm still waiting for CP to upload my phillipines pics. Once he has done that i will pass him some pics from my official farewell. They are quite funny. So can you guys put some pressure on him to do his work for me? his excuse is that he has been sick lately.So no time to post my pics.
Next update will be from Java. Flying out on Sep 5th.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
hi everyone.
I have one more week in office next week.
Its good to see the platform stailise, so many new faces, and the senior staff all taking on more roles and responsibilities. and congrats to winning the F1 challenge. thanks for this farewell gift!
I had some requests to post pics of my phillipinnes trip. To be honest, dunno how to. so next best thing is i will send to chee peng to post.
I was watching the dvd on my farewell party last night . Watched it with my family till 230 am. I want to tell all of you how much I appreciate and am moved by the turnout and the dedications.
Cannot ask for more in a farewell party.!
Last night was also my offiicial farewell party. The SMGs were there, Jonathan was there and they had many kind words for me. Think i feel appreciated enough for all my years of dedication to the organisation.
Time to move on.
If chee peng cooperates, there will be some pics from my previous trip. Otherwise I will update again when I am travelling across Java from Sep 5th.
I have one more week in office next week.
Its good to see the platform stailise, so many new faces, and the senior staff all taking on more roles and responsibilities. and congrats to winning the F1 challenge. thanks for this farewell gift!
I had some requests to post pics of my phillipinnes trip. To be honest, dunno how to. so next best thing is i will send to chee peng to post.
I was watching the dvd on my farewell party last night . Watched it with my family till 230 am. I want to tell all of you how much I appreciate and am moved by the turnout and the dedications.
Cannot ask for more in a farewell party.!
Last night was also my offiicial farewell party. The SMGs were there, Jonathan was there and they had many kind words for me. Think i feel appreciated enough for all my years of dedication to the organisation.
Time to move on.
If chee peng cooperates, there will be some pics from my previous trip. Otherwise I will update again when I am travelling across Java from Sep 5th.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Monday, August 18, 2008
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