Monday, November 20, 2006

I'm still alive... kinda.

To all my faithful (har har.. yeah right) readers. Apologies for the dearth of relevant postings, or really any postings in the last few months. Things have ambled along fine with:
  • A visit from Marcel who came bearing 300 centi-litres of fine Ypioca brand Cachaça, thats a whopping 200 centi-litres more than "allowed". This man has a future in smuggling! The Cachaça remaining now is probably just over 200 centi-litres, for shame, I need to drink more!
  • Moving on to a new project, am on the same team with Chad once again and finally doing some long awaited development work!
  • My first cross-dressing experience, in a damn sexy yellow skirt, which also led me to my finest haggling experience! (down from $20 to $5!).
  • Have unfortunately succumbed to the plague (also known as flu of the non bird kind) in Singapore after a record year long stint without illness, damn food technicians coughing over my fried rice!
Thats it for now, most of you will get to see me in person in less than a month's time. I am forecasting feasts, drunkeness and lunging aplenty during my hopefully triumphant return!

Photographic evidence of aforementioned cross-dressing and seksy skirt as follows:

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Why Cricket Sucks in 2006 (In Malaysia)

So I spent RM202 on the tickets, SGD47 on the bus ride there, RM107.5 for one night's accomodation, and RM35 for the return tickets to learn why cricket sucks in 2006 in Malaysia. I've vowed to never go to another cricket game in the Asian tropics, you're too worried about keeping cool in the 35 degree heat to cheer for your team!

The ground was substandard, the food was poor, 400% markup on water, it was so hot that I didn't even want to drink alcohol. To top it all off, Katich faced 30 deliveries to get past single figures and Morton bested that effort in the Windies innings by scoring the world's slowest duck (0 from facing 31 deliveries)!

The only good thing about the whole trip was drinking and hookah (no, thats not hooker, or lady boys) with Neal the night before, and then catching up with Rob the irishman.


For those that don't know I'm returing to NZ during mid-December -> early January. Boxing day 20/20 at the cake tin should be a winner! I miss cricket in NZ, the atmosphere, my blonde hair, telling Brett Lee that he's a wanker, Jared's incompetency with gin and water, my fellow SWIS members, hotties. :'(

And finally, Jared this is all the sentimentality that you'll get out of me on the interweb. I can't have everyone know about my true feelings for you. You should be happy though, its still more sentimentality than anyone else has received, despite your formative years in that east coast backwater :P

DLF Cup
Sep 22, 2006 - 16 Photos

Sunday, September 10, 2006

A day at the golf

So over the weekend they had some people that like to play with balls and holes over in Singapore. Lucky for us the event was sponsored by Barclays since we have waay too much money. So on a hot sunny Singapore Saturday a few of us set out to watch the most boring and ridiculous game in the world as we had nothing else to do.

The journey to Sentosa was plagued with misdirection, construction and miscommuniction, the group consensus was that we'd never actually make it there. A few piccies below, see if you can spot any famous golfers :)

Barclay's Open
Sep 9, 2006 - 32 Photos

Sunday, August 27, 2006

I've decided that I'm immature

Despite all my pretenses at being 22 and all grown up, on Saturday, Hollywood had invariably stripped me bare and exposed me for the immature 16 year old I really am :)

Yes, its Muthafuckin' Snakes on a Muthafuckin' Plane! Before the movie, I thought I was going to dread watching almost 2 hrs of snakes in various poses ready to prey on their unsuspecting human prey. However, I discovered that there is no way I can stop myself from giggling at snakes attacking and attaching themselves to mammaries, phalluses, posteriors, small children, dogs and annoying pompous brits ON A PLANE!

A++ will watch again :D

Friday, August 18, 2006

International Cricket in Malaysia! :(

Double dose of bad news :(, the Black Caps aren't playing in the tri-series, and all the games have been moved to KL!

Surely they can't have better grounds in Malaysia? The professional cricket players in both countries are close to zero :D, and Singapore has much better infrastucture and services!

Ah well, it still looks like that I'm heading to KL for the final between Australia and India (yep, I'm that sure about the outcome) with Chad and an Aussie from work. The Warney shirt should be on its way from NZ in the next few days (thanks Masty, you're a champ). I s'pose I should find out where to get tickets now...

To random cricket fans in S.E. Asia that read this blog, http://www.axcess.com.my/index2.asp is supposedly where you get the tickets. They aren't available on the interweb yet, you'll probably have to call.

Sunday, August 06, 2006

Retards

Karma strikes Ian in the behind again. After laughing at the misfortune of Marcel a few posts back about his inability to see DJ Shadow play in Wellington. I myself also did not have the fortune of seeing DJ Shadow live in Singapore. :(

Why the hell weren't any of the tickets sold before hand? Why weren't they jacked up to a premium price? Every man and his dog is going to go if you keep it at $30 with 2 free drinks.

Did the heat drain the logic and rationality from the organizer's heads? Or more likely they probably just didn't give a shit and wanted to cram as many people in as possible.

Is it really all about the bottom line here? Retards...

Yes, I agree I could've got there at 8 just to get in, but then if they had presales problem solved!

Tards

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

International Cricket in Singapore!

http://content-usa.cricinfo.com/westindies/content/story/255109.html
YUSS! Apparently there's a Tri-Series played here and in KL in September. Currently involving India, Australia and the West Indies. There is doubt at whether the West Indies will be able to play given that they haven't consulted their players yet. Sri Lanka and New Zealand are on stand-by if the Windies can't sort their shit out.

Hopefully the Windies stay home and I can catch the Black Caps here! Regardless, it'll still be the sporting event of the year!

First three games in Singapore and last four games in KL. It's gonna be a grand time, chopping back beers, hurling abuse at Australians, general larrakinism under the sun. I'm definitely taking time off work for this!

My only regret is that the Warney shirt is in NZ and I have now lost all traces of my blondness... sad times.

Monday, July 24, 2006

Malaysia... yet again!

I think I'm getting OCD!, but hey the country is close, not a complete dump, and some places are genuinely lovely.

Due to the advent of Miss Hart's visit to Singapore, the Chad, Miss Hart and I enjoyed a lovely weekend in Sarawak, with a brief interlude of a few hours in uninspiring Johor Bahru spent transiting and waiting in traffic jams (please don't flame me JB residents) .

I learnt that Asian budget airlines were not designed with Asians like me in mind, there was bugger all leg room, the other two had a better time of it all, being distinctly more Asian in stature than I :D.

I like Kuching, its fairly compact (at least the interesting bits are), we spent Saturday wandering around Kuching visiting museums, doing all the touristy things and terrorising the locals with enthusiastic Asian-ness (the hand thing in photos) and having Chad either thrust at me, or at attractions in the manner of Hard Gay (HAADO GEIIII.. FUUUU!!!). Note however that "Hard Gay in Kuching" was not any of us. We're not that crazy.

With all the crazy silly touristness out of us by Sunday we proceeded to check out Kubah National Park, lotsa nice jungly nature things, and you get rewarded with a dip in a small pool created by the waterfall at the end of the trek. What I found interesting was that you can actually drink from the waterfall in Sarawak, its New Zealand and its crazy farming that causes all its rivers and streams to be rife with Giardia and Chryptosporidium (according to Chad... he seemed to know what he was talking about... and I haven't got the runs... yet).

Photos this time are courtesy of the Chad and Miss Hart. They went on to Tioman, so expect them in a few days time. (YAYZ they are up http://picasaweb.google.com/klatchy/Sarawak and http://picasaweb.google.com/voiceinsideyou/KuchingPulauTiomanMalaysia/)

I think I might try and tackle Mount Kinabalu next, probably have to start exercising and shed a few kilos first ;)

Thursday, July 20, 2006

A Special Post just for Marcel!

I hear that due to a mix up in the tour dates, Wellington has been completely left off the DJ Shadow tour :P. Shadow's tour dates confirm this, can you confirm this Mr. Cordes?

Did you journey up to Auckland like a die hard fan? If so I am very impressed.

We get him in Singapore on Aug 5, my minions have reported that he was "O for Awesome" when he played in Auckland ;).

I might give you a call on Aug 5 once he comes on, just so you don't feel like you're missing out :P.

Incidentally, any +65ers reading this blog goin' to DJ Shadow?

Thursday, July 13, 2006

Malaysia... again :P

Mum has just left after a weeklong holiday here, to make sure she didn't get too bored I took her around Malaysia, KL again, then up to Bukit Fraser (Fraser's Hill) for some good old fashion NZ trekking, and finally a couple of days in Tioman.

Photos are up at http://picasaweb.google.com/klatchy

Sunday, July 02, 2006

The interweb distresses me

So I got myself a google analytics account after having read about it on Kim's Blog, pretty easy to set up and I've left it to gather stats on visitors to this blog over the last week.

One of the reports it provides is based on what key words people use on search engines to get to your site. These were the search queries:

"lake karakul religion" (Google)
"stuff racoon" (Google)
" ian ren" (Google)
"free photos of asian women wet & messy looks" (Yahoo)

Googling the first three queries all resulted in my blog being the first or second results. As expected when I Yahoo'd the last query I got a whole bunch of porn sites

It probably says more about Yahoo's crazy search algorithms than anything else...

In other news, Google Web Albums is great! Much more intuitive than hello, and you can actually do batch uploads properly, unlike bebo and flickr. The free account only gives you 250MB though :(

Thursday, June 22, 2006

Kuala Lumpur - Sin City

A few weeks back we decided to visit our dear Irish friend Rob in KL, oh what a trip! Drunkeness, near death experiences, tall buildings, 50 year old women pimping out young men that look like women, street fights, dodgy taxi driver pimps... oh and 5 star luxury :D

The trip started out harmlessly enough with the arduous task of getting a cab in Singapore in the rain, luck fortunately was with us this time and we didn't miss our luxury double decker bus to KL. (Exhibit A below)


Exhibit A

Outta Singapore in a flash, and across the border to the outskirts of Johor Bahru(JB), our bus took the new crossing and we weren't stuck in a throng of people. We were on our way soon again after immigration.

We were greeted by the distant sights of the Petronas Towers around about 3 in the afternoon, and it took another half an hour for the bus to finally drop us off. To our excitement our hotel was just across the road, then... to our dismay we learned that the road was virtually uncrossable, high speed traffic, scooters and motorbikes that were bent on killing you, I had the additional burden of having Catherine Zeta Jones with me, so that added another 5 minutes onto the crossing at least. 5 near misses with motorbikes later, I was across the road and in the hotel.


Biker Gang ^_^ similar to what we faced getting across the road

It was ridiculous, for only 215 Malaysian Ringgits per night (less than $SGD100/$NZD100) you get 5 star treatment, admittedly we weren't staying in the presidential suite... or even the club level, but hey allow this bumpkin some excitement over his first stay in a luxury hotel. Oh, and this was the view from our room :P


GO PETRONAS TWIN TOWERS!!!111

We went on a wander, our original destination was to go down Jalan Sultan Ismail (which we later found out was perpendicular to our street), except due to Chad's inquisitveness and unique sense of direction we ended up on the opposite side of the city... :) We ended our misguided tour about 3 hours later having explore much more of the city than we'd anticipated (although we'd still not gone down Jalan Sultan Ismail). I was happy though, and my emotions are perfectly captured by the following photo:

The night ended outside Zouk (yay they have one in KL!!) watching the Germany vs. Costa Rica game and imbibing some cheap beer for a change. I had free flutter courtesy of the bar, but didn't manage to get any free drinks :(.

The next morning, we were sorely disappointed by the Petronas Towers, free entry to the Petronas Towers dictated that we would not be going up the towers, most people line up for tickets at 8 in the morning, I was still contemplating whether to get out of bed at 11:30.

All was not lost, as we ventured on to Menara KL (KL Tower, a broadcast tower thingamee)
, the view is much better and they have a lame culture show at the bottom :P. Snapped a few pics, and Chad tried to get some dodgy perspective shots in.



Met up with Rob at about 7 in the evening, and the night of debauchery began..., having been subject to harsh Singaporean liqour taxes for the past two months, it was time to loosen the purse strings (no I don't actually have a purse :P) and indulge in some good old fashioned NZ styled binge drinking!! After picking up some of Rob's friends we made our way to Passion nice wanky little club in the middle of KL's party area (JP Ramlee), massive main room playing RnB and party hip hop and the top floor / mezzanine playing prog. Great club, nice setting and we got very very drunk, drunk enough to lose two hot Swedish girls that Rob's friend found earlier in the night :'(.

Abruptly, things ended at 4, we were ushered out of passion and onto the streets. Soon a street fight involved when I witnessed the Fastest Indian In the World! Some Indian fella got in a fight with a bunch of people, was soon outnumbered, had a few punches landed on him and then promptly ran for his life. Scary? YES! Amusing? Also Yes :), I'm such a bastard.

Karma came and kicked me on the arse soon after for laughing at other's misfortunes when I was accosted by a ladyboy, I'd mistakenly made eye contact in my drunken state with someone who I thought was an incredibly beautiful GIRL, as she/he walked close, I realised that he/she was much taller than me and had certain manly features, I smiled sheepishly, broke off eye contact and walked away as fast as I could. I was drunk... but I wasn't THAAT drunk!!
A few hundred metres down the road, an old lady (must've been 50+) tried pimping out another ladyboy to me! Grabbed me on the arm and even resorting to speaking Mandarin with me to get me to spend what she described as a night of bliss with this um... person! :O

Somewhat sober now by the previous sobering experience, I got her to remove her hands and contemplated on telling her I was gay, then decided that it may have potentially worse repercussions, I made some excuses and began running back to the hotel. O Karma, I will never laugh at another's misfortune again!

As expected, Sunday was totally written off, visited Rob's palatial residence in the evening, and back to the hotel for some much needed rest.

Finally did some more sightseeing further afield at the Batu Caves on Monday, numerous Macaques and Hindu sculptures provided an afternoon of entertainment. Back on the bus by 6:00pm, safe and sound in Singapore away from all the scary encounters by midnight monday. Its good to be home :D

Friday, June 02, 2006

Settling down

Well... no exciting excursions to report, but I am getting back into some of my old habits.

Finally found a place to learn Spanish again, stumbled across this school www.laslilasschool.com on the interweb one day. I enquired, applied, sat and exam and got in :), the best part of it all is that the school's across the road from my condo! To top it off my broken Spanish and incorrect verbs got me exempt from the beginners classes and some of the elementary ones! Go ME!! Makes me feel so much better after failing my Finance Exam.

Will be likely to take up Salsa lessons again, checking out this place with about 15 others from work tomorrow. If the instructors aren't incompetent, and they have constant air con, I guess I'll be signing up.

Still have to get a credit card... hopefully I won't get rejected again. I'll be so friggin angry if they still reject me :-/, me bomb and bank comes to mind :P (I'll probably get sent to jail for this comment ^_^).

And finally.. Malaysia next week... maybe... probably... if I get tickets and places sorted. I've booked leave already :O.

Monday, May 22, 2006

Small Asian boy found near Merapi

Nah, I didn't actually go and see the volcano, but I did goto Indonesia over the weekend.

Pulau Bintan is great!

We hurriedly left work on Friday so that I could get home and pack as much useless stuff into Catherine Zeta Jones (watch The Terminal if you have no idea what I'm ranting on about), hopped onto the MRT and hoped like hell we would make the ferry across to Bintan. After much queue waiting and general cussing we got through customs and onto the ferry with about 15 minutes to spare.

After about an hour on the choppy waves between Singapore and Indonesia, we reached Bintan, was pretty dark already so much of the scenery en route was lost to us. The first order of business was to find food and beverages, we lingered on beverages until midnight, then decided that a romantic moonlit walk on the beach was in order :P, the romantic atmosphere was dashed however as Chad had the tendency to stub his toes one every twenty seconds.

I attempted windsurfing the next day, it was a dismal failure... not really due to my incompetence, more so the lack of wind... in any direction. But hey, at least i know how to position myself and balance myself for less than 5 seconds on the board :D... I'm keen to go back and have another crack at it though...

Final day was good despite the set backs the weather provided. We had intended on this five hr trek, however due to the incredibly risk averse nature of the Singaporeans that ran the operation, they deem the conditions too wet and thus too dangerous... like WTF wet and dangerous is when Kiwis go tramping. We substituted the trekking with a few hours of snorkeling, which I was competent at for a change :), mucho tropical fishies and coral to look at, would've continued for longer if my feet didn't get so tired from kicking.

After lunch we decided to give the upper body a bit of a workout, hired an ocean kayak and generally kayaked around the bay, we got quite a ways away from the shore and both decided it was a good idea to leave the kayak and go for a swim... getting back on was quite difficult :D.

I don't have any photos alas, Chad was the photographer of the trip since I stupidly forgot to charge my camera before the trip :-/... next time eh?

Sunday, May 14, 2006

Child molesting snake















The snake looks so dodgy in this pic. Posted by Picasa

An interesting specimen















Some white people we saw at the zoo... LOLZ Posted by Picasa

Racoon?















I think its a racoon..., I'm useless at zoos not reading any of the information signs. Posted by Picasa

Chad turns Asian















Yeah... sorry guys, he's now asian. Excitable and posing with that bloody hand thing. Posted by Picasa

Singapore Zoo















Some little critters we found at the Singapore zoo. One of the more active animals, compared to the Polar Bear they had, yes... thats right, a polar bear at the equator!! Posted by Picasa

boring and slightly messy lounge

 Posted by Picasa

View #2















And now... the other half of the pool, plus the twin jacuzzis, and interesting bits of foliage dotted here and there. Posted by Picasa

View #1















Here is the view from my bedroom window, half of the pool and all of the tennis court. Tennis racquet is on the list of things to purchase. Posted by Picasa

Friday, May 12, 2006

OK... so its been a month

Since my last post. I apologise for my general uselessness, but hey, its not like anyone reads this :P, and I've always said that I'd only put photos up here (which hasn't happened either).

Anyway...

During the last month, I have:

* Been sweaty every morning as I walk to work.
* Been getting to work earlier than in NZ, and going home later.
* Jaywalked!!!
* Purchased a new laptop :D
* Found a swanky apartment (sorry... condo)
* Applied and got denied for a credit card, I don't know why, I thought I was supposed to be one of these "rich expat types".
* Began speaking mandarin to the locals.
* Cooked twice :D

Loving the fact that:
* I feel tall (so does Chad... strangely)
* Food is cheap
* Am living like a rich capitalist :D
* Spending less due to lack of drinking
* There are DnB gigs here!!
* Most beers come in crate bottles

Angry about:
* Lack of boozing culture here (I miss getting on the piss with you all!!).
* Retarded banks declining my credit card applications.
* Retarded banks not accepting each other's cards (Its like NZ in the mid 90s!!).
* Retarded merchants only accepting cash.
* Retarded pedestrians that get in your way.
* People that don't understand me even when I speak Mandarin :(.
* Overpolitness of the general populace :-/

Work has been OK, I'm less stressed than Chad, but then again he does actual development, I'm just doing support for now :-/, hopefully we should be getting some development work in the next couple of months. The people in the team are pretty cool, and we're probably the loudest team in the entire floor.

Now that I'm settled, I'll prosbably utilise my weekends better and actually run around S.E Asia a fair bit more. In the next couple of weeks, a trip is planned to Pulau Bintan with Chad, its an Indonesian island thats not too far from Singapore, kinda wanky and touristy, but its a start. Malaysia and Vietnam are on the list as well, especially since Chandima couldn't stop talking about it after he visited.

Probably thinking of taking up diving as well, my team lead showed me some amazing pics of a dive she went on recently, so many Nemos floating around Malaysia!!!

Otherwise just business as usual, watch out for a photo blog in the weekend where I will showcase my wanky surrounds :)

Sunday, April 09, 2006

Sing Day 2

I managed to do a surprising number of things today, firstly with Chad incapacitated due to heavy drinking the night before, I was forced to take matters into my own hands and decide on what sights to see today. Reception provided me with a tourists map of Singapore and my eyes quickly found the Singapore Cricket Club :)

Backpack, map and camera in tow I began trekking in the general direction, I found the place after 10 sweaty minutes, proceeded to sit down and watch 4 or 5 overs of cricket ^_^!! Unfortunately the level of talent wasn't that great, the heat and boredom forced me to leave after about half an hour.

Raffles' landing site wasn't too far away from the SCC, I decided to head there, only to find out upon arrival that I'd already seen it 5 years ago :-/, I was by the river and decided that Chinatown on the other side would be quite interesting, the main streets were fairly boring, but the back alleys were awesome! Each building has like at least 7 air con units hanging out the back, the alley's were narrow, rubbish was overflowing, the air was so nauseatingly pungent that I actually thought I was smelling durian fruits :D

After returning to the hotel, Chad had woken up and nursed his hangover, we proceeded to head to an IT mall and purchased the Sony VAIO that I'm typing on now :). The best buy of the day however was at dinner, I got a crate bottle of Tiger for S$4.50 at a food court ^_^!! That place is on the itinerary if any of your come and visit me in Sing!

Saturday, April 08, 2006

I'm in Singapore lah!

I'm here! It's bloody hot and humid!

Business class was actually really underwhelming, apart from nice free booze and better food it wasn't really that exciting :-/. Got through 3 movies, and stayed away from Super Mario Bros the whole time :)

Got through customs with minimal hassles, the pornogami book is still with me ^_^!!

Had the obligatory Singapore Sling at the Long Bar, was expecting some one to mix it up on the spot, but they had it mass produced and just poured it from a jug :O, it wasn't that nice to boot either :P

Sunday, March 26, 2006


i wish she'd come to singapore with me :D Posted by Picasa

do i really look that frightening side on craig? Posted by Picasa

i'm so not interested in the photo being taken here, i think i might be focussing on zara's chest :P Posted by Picasa

craig and zara Posted by Picasa

i accessorise with laura's help Posted by Picasa

mmm cleavage Posted by Picasa

marcel's crotch, thanks dude i'll need this for those lonely nights in singapore Posted by Picasa

try and show some interest andrey... we're not that boring are we? :P Posted by Picasa

andrey also works as a male underwear model and has had enough photographs for the day Posted by Picasa

amish trying to go for the same look as marcel Posted by Picasa

quintessentially m. cordes Posted by Picasa

why is this man in soo many photos! Posted by Picasa

an interesting specimen... the back of amish's head Posted by Picasa