Day 2 was spent visiting their famous... erm "shopping" areas, mainly Chatuchak market, Chinatown and Memorial Bridge Night Market. Probably walked for almost the whole day and all of us were totally exhausted by the day that there was no bonding activity at all. Arghh... I almost thought maggot-eating will make a very good forfeit. But nevertheless, everybody took a bite (right?)

Start the day right by eating Fried Rice

mil call this the "Rattatouille" station

the very rare mixed rice photo

Victory Monument that we never got the chance to visit

a "small" portion of the "very big" Chatuchak Market

luckily for us, we managed to find transport in this CTC market

of course, we are not stuck in a jam like this (but almost close since there are too many people around)

a girl's favourite shoe shop - they draw the designs on the shoes, not print them

Guess what are these? see below for answers

OMG! an entire shop selling knives, swords of all sizes

coke bottles of different shapes

zhiqin wanted to buy one of these back for bathing

all of us were fascinated at this roast duck

upclose at this "fake duck" that is made of clay?

busking on the streets

1 pot of shark fin soup at 350bht

Look at their huge shark fins

famous pork floss shop in thai

chinatown at night

i was having so much fun at this foot massage shop

Memorial Bridge Night Market

Fried maggots, crickets, worms

tons of wholesale flowers at their night market

xia says 100 roses are sold for only S$2

Day 3 was all about shopping once more. But at different malls this time. It'll be super boring if we visit the same places more than twice. (Oops... I forgot we went Platinium Mall almost 4 times. haha)

There isn't really much photos today because I don't have a camera yet. My birthday's coming in 5 more days so I'll be extremely elated if some "camera" pop up as a big surprise. lol. We spent our 3rd day roaming MBK, Zen Central World etc. to buy all the shopping stuff. I can't remember what I bought (maybe nothing) but I do remember ZQ spending 1 hour choosing sunglasses with xia's brother. The shop owner and I waited until our faces changed.

Photos taken from xia's blog.

This is super memorable- yellow shirt thais heading out for a protest. We too wanted to join in the fun but shopping's more important

Lunch at Fuji Japanese restaurant (as recommended in the forums)

As the girls went for their manicure & pedicure at 29 Plaza, we headed out to change money and out came this heavy rain that trapped us in the money changer's outlet. We watched a tiny bit of Euro2008 there before we headed out back into the heavy rain to pass them the money. Girls, those are hard-to-get money. Erm... I forgot where we had dinner but I think all of us are too engrossed shopping that we forgotten to eat.

If I'm not wrong, we had dinner back at our hotel. This is where ZQ and delon were so engrossed trying to solve our puzzle pieces. It's a long story how these puzzles came about. Melodie and I started this bet that each of us buy a "level 6" IQ puzzle (which is the hardest level) and whoever solves the opponent's puzzle first shall pay for the cost of both puzzles. So we ended up buying them and playing over dinner.

Their super expensive 10bht per 5 min internet service

ZQ acting hero and trying to solve the puzzle

delon joining in the fun with his mathematical/logic calculations

On a side note, that puzzle of mine is still at home collecting dust. My whole family had tried but none of us could solve it , either by logic or chance. We are still wondering whether there is in fact any solution to it, since there is no answer sheet when we bought them. arghh...

Day 4 was about sightseeing (finally). Supposed to visit the "famous" floating market and we saw something that "resembles" it. The day started off as the "trying-hard-to-get-lost" day, we didn't get lost but fortunately we did experience that sense of loss when we ended up somewhere which we don't even know. Fortunately for us, heroic ZQ came to our rescue and led us out to meet the rest.

At the jetty before our floating market tour

I still don't know the name of this bridge

Or the name of this statue

On board the boat to the floating market

random pictures of the scenery

random pictures again

one of the floating market vendors

HDB in thailand??

Smiling face that convinced us to buy singha beer for the boatman

rural life by the river

their fishes are like the length of my arms

a rare picture of the boatman who specially sail slowly because of that singha beer treat

Grand Palace from the other side of the river

one very small portion of the Grand Palace

Ministry of Defence? (i forgotten the place)

In the end, it was a fun trip just walking and eating.

Everytime we have to experience the adrenaline rush of missing our flight back. I don't know whether this is good or not, but it's so EXCITING. Really suits our mixedrice theme song. Somehow even when we managed to book the night flight back (learning from experience never to choose early flight because we are always late), accidents like this still happen.

The flight was supposed to be at 8pm, we thought we had lots of time left after we checked out at 12, so we went to Let's Relax for foot massage again. But then, by the time we are done, it was already 5.30pm and we remembered the airport counter opens 2 hours before departure. All of us had a big shock and rushed our way to the airport.

But there were traffic jams everywhere because it was the peak period. We almost thought we couldn't make it and started planning for contingency plans. Fortunately for us we ended up on time.

Let's Relax - just like the one in Phuket

I wouldn't be laughing so happily then if we missed our flight again

9 people squeezing into 1 cab after realising we are super late

traffic jams like this always cause us lots of troubles, we even thought of implementing ERP there if we are the government

fortunately for us we managed to check in our luggages on time because the flight was delayed

But our nightmare didn't end here, after we successfully checked in our luggages. We thought there was still time left so we wandered about in the airport. But bad things always happen. We coincidentally decided to walk to the furthest end of the airport, and decided to have our dinner.

Just as we finished ordering, delon said, "erm... do you know what time we have to be at the departure area?"

Me:" Ya la. By the check in time lo. The plane leaves at 8.40pm what."

Delon:" I thought we have to reach there 1/2 hour before departure?" takes out the boarding pass and saw this instruction labelled in it. "what time is it now?"

Me (horrified face):" 8.10pm!"

We immediately paid the money without eating and ran almost 1km back, with fear in our eyes. Imagine the din we caused when 9 of us rushed out of the restaurant without eating, and running like mad. Everyone was like staring at us but we didn't care. We don't want to miss our flight this time. Especially without our luggages and empty pockets. We almost couldn't make it back.

exhausted faces after running that mini-sprint

We did get back safely this time. But ZQ kept complaining about the mango sticky rice that he so wanted to bring back to singapore. Oh well, that should serve a lesson for all of us : Time Management.

That's all for our another exciting MR siblings edition bangkok trip. Looking forward to next time.

I'm back from the OMG! camp at PGP. It's been a pretty good experience getting to learn how to handle secondary school kids and I'm so exhausted that I could do with some more sleep.

To the organising committee, I want to see the photos quick! haha

I'm doing the post for the mixedrice bankok trip currently, it'll be up soon when I'm not that busy and have enough sleep.

Till then.

I'm off to to the Outstanding Mindful Generation (OMG) Camp organised by the CDAC from 27-29 June.

Will update when I'm back.

I'm so busy after the bangkok trip that I neither have the time to blog nor view the bangkok photos on facebook.

I shall keep it short. Working at the Mango Sale at Shaw for two days and its super tiring (maybe I've been slacking around too much beforehand). Other than work (which occupies almost everyday of the week), I'm preparing for the OMG camp next friday to sunday, so I'll be away too.

I'll blog about the rest when I'm free. I haven't even unpacked my luggage yet. arghh...

Away to Bangkok 14-18th June

I don't know if you guys like economics jokes, but I do enjoyed them very much. This three jokes are super funny, The stock market illustrated, This is how business is done and Marketing Concepts.

I can't stop laughing everytime I read them. If anyone has more jokes to share, please send me the links.

Credits to oikonomia for these fantastic posts. It's 3 more days to mixedrice trip (bangkok), and I'm getting so excited.

Even this test shows that Psychology/Sociology is destined to be the path I must take. Too bad it doesn't differentiate between psychology and sociology. That way, I'll be more firm with sticking around with psychology. Arghh... no wonder maths is my arch enemy (13%). LOL.

WHAT MAJOR IS RIGHT FOR YOU? created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Psychology/Sociology You should strongly consider majoring (or minoring) in Psychology, Sociology, or related majors (e.g., Counseling, Industrial-Organizational (I-O) Psychology, Social Work, or other social science majors). It is possible that the best major for you is your 2nd, 3rd, or even 5th listed category, so be sure to consider ALL majors in your OTHER high scoring categories (below). You may score high in a category you didnt think you would--it is possible that a great major for you is something you once dismissed as not for you. The right major for you will be something 1) you love and enjoy and 2) are really great at it. Consider adding a minor or double majoring to make yourself standout and to combine your interests. Psychology and Sociology are both great minors to add to any major. Please post your results in your myspace/blog/journal. Psychology/Sociology 88% HR/BusinessManagement 81% History/Anthropology/LiberalArts 75% Education/Counseling 75% English/Journalism/Comm 75% Visual&PerformingArts 69% PoliticalScience/Philosophy 69% French/Spanish/OtherLanguage 69% Biology/Chemistry/Geology 69% Nursing/AthleticTraining/Health 63% Accounting/Finance/Marketing 63% Religion/Theology 56% Physics/Engineering/Computer 50% Mathematics/Statistics 13%

credits to weelun for discovering this test on the net.

It's a joyous occassion yesterday.

Attended another wedding ceremony of my JI/PJ friend, amanda at the People's Bible Church yesterday. I must first congratulate Amanda & Aaron for inviting me to their wedding, and I sincerely wished them marital happiness.

Anyway, it was the first Christian wedding that I attended in real life. In the past, my only impression of a church wedding came from the numerous television shows I watched. I couldn't feel what it is like to be there someday. Yesterday was the first, and definitely not the last, more to come soon (I hope). The atmosphere of joy and blessings is indeed magnificant and wonderful, as everyone prayed for happiness for these two individuals who have joined together in holy matrimony.

It's definitely much better than the registering the marriage at the ROM. Photos will be up when I get them.

Friends appear to be getting married soon in these few years, so I'm expecting church bells to start ringing again in the near future.

I decided to do something interesting (or maybe a waste of time).

I'm currently looking for writer wannabes/bloggers to help me kickstart this new blog Project X. This is my first attempt into doing something novel like this. Apparently, I decided to experiment this online story writing where everyone can contribute a paragraph or more into this story. I don't know how it will end up, maybe if there is too much spam, I'll just close it or set it private.

But firstly I need some supporters to start off this activity.

Let's see how much creative talents we have around this blogsphere.

It suddenly dawned onto me that the things I have been chasing all my life (paper certificates, the newest mp3, the nicest clothes, most interactive online games, lots of money, unlimited wants) are material possessions and these will eventually disappear someday.

What is this emptiness that I feel sometimes? It's almost like entering into a trance-like state and waking up suddenly and wonder if life has been worthwhile.

What is it that I want to achieve in this short lifespan? Happiness, like most people. But where can I find this happiness?

I'm sure it is somewhere. It has to be somewhere.

Someone must have achieved that "happiness" that I'm looking for, otherwise this term should be non-existent. If it can be conceived, it must have existed somehow.

I'm still quite vague about the kind of happiness I'm seeking. But I can be sure that it is not the kind that people always see in the television - happiness that comes when they have a loving family, job satisfaction, beautiful girlfriend, religion, self-indulgement etc.

I'm looking for an even higher-ordered happiness. And I shall continue reflecting till I find what I seek.