Wednesday 29 October 2008

Geocaching

Darren will post!

Since I was lamenting the fact that we had become terribly boring people, and that there's nothing to do in Singapore, Jonathan suggested that we go "Geocaching"

So in a matter of an hour, we were all set..to head off early in the morning!

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Me in back seat...Cal on the left and Jon on the right! Onward!! Roadtrip! A trip to the north...oooooh! The north! What wonders await us?!! Beautiful natives? Exotic sights and smells? Bacwkard plumbing? AH! The excitement, mystery and wonder that was promised was truly intoxicating! (Well actually, the place where we had lunch...*puke*...that whiff of fecundity still lingers on the palette....)

Anyways, we entered the co-ordinates into this little thing-a-ma-jig and off we went! To Admiralty Park (next to Republic Polytechnic!)

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An antiquated but rather cool GPS system. WHAT?! NO MAP?! Anyways, we soon found ourselves at Admiralty Park, next to Republic Polytechnic!

I was secretly groaning when the 'puzzle' called for some mathematical brain dexterity.. ugh...and even some Amazing Race type scenarios....

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Guess what we were doing?

And worse still...bashing into the jungle is one thing..but MUDDY jungle?! Heavens! The humanity! But Jon figured it out soon enough.

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But 'luck' was not on our side and 45mins later, we surrendered. We just couldnt find it!

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ARGGHHH!!! I stepped on something!

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But at least there were somethings to see...

And a bubbling volcanic pond!!!
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AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! Well at least I hoped it was...I really don't want to know if it was polluted and some poor animal was drowning in that stinky cesspit.

The Second Mission was simpler. We arrived somewhere in Sembawang, somewhere near Pakistan Road and Canada Road (no idea? use this.. The poor man's GPS/Road directory... Sky pigeon!) with some gorgeous old and somewhat different looking Black and Whites. we found the 'whatever' we were supposed to find.......

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Well....yeah...It was only half of the co-ordinates!

However, after battling ants...



and rummaging through a huge tree, we totally creamed the next task! !!

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Jonathan touched it... I was NOT GOING TO TOUCH IT.

It was already lunchtime, but still we soldiered on. Well, more like dragging feet - I was having a terrible headache (I've been trying to wean off the caffeine see, but as I found out, I was just dehydrated!).

So we stopped for a bit of lunch, before setting off to another mission. We couldn't find the thing again, but the area itself was the 'treasure'


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And this! We climbed to the top of course! But at the top..... Jon started getting static electrical attacks from the railings and ....

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Urm..guys...do you hear thunder? RUN!!!

Oh yes! And there were monkeys! Lots of them!


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We then met Tshush (who accompanied us on another TWO failed mission around Serangoon Gardens! No more caches by kids!) and Desmond for a quick pre-dinner snack. Before embarking on YET ANOTHER MISSION. Hardcore hor?

By now, I was very tired (and hungry) but the plaec was quite something. Never knew such a place existed.

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And that's all! I'm wondering if I should post the portraits of all the culprits!

Tuesday 28 October 2008

If music be the food of love, play on!

From Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, 1601:

DUKE ORSINO:
If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again! it had a dying fall:
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour! Enough; no more:
'Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
O spirit of love! how quick and fresh art thou,
That, notwithstanding thy capacity
Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,
Of what validity and pitch soe'er,
But falls into abatement and low price,
Even in a minute: so full of shapes is fancy
That it alone is high fantastical.

Thursday 16 October 2008

Bi-annual 'musings'?

Yo peeeps!

As you can see, I have updated the blog to match with 2008 standards... yes, Blogger HAS been steadily improving functionality and ease-of-use even though we (meaning YOU busy busy people) have ceased to notice!

Nevertheless...

CHANGELOG (16th Oct 2008) in L.A.ACSWO 2.0:
  1. OLD CODE IS HEREBY INVALID (and super messy btw) and cannot be recovered (actually, it is possible, but let's move FORWARD ok?)

  2. Changed Template to support 'Gadgets' (Widgets is what the universal term is). So now, adding code should be done by "adding gadgets" instead of hard-coding the template. Although I had a problem with the 'techno line.gif' and therefore wrote it into the template instead.

  3. Changed Colour theme and font theme and post format.

  4. Added Techno-line.gif graphic into header. (This is probably done wrong. Some expert coder please check the code in the template under the CSS style "header".) Note: Some formatting errors to be solved as I checked how it looked in IE7 and FF3.0.3, and it looks slightly different in IE7.

  5. Added 'Poll' on changes. Please vote! Or add your own!

  6. Added 'Shoutbox' for you guys to bitch! Old shoutbox removed.. can't tell whose id 175909 belongs to! Sorry!

  7. Added 'imeem music stream' gadget using my account and an impromptu CHEESEEEY (but GREAT!) 80s playlist. Anyone who has an 'imeem playlist' can add a music stream to the site too! Just add your own "HTML/Javascript" gadget and put in the embed code given by imeem and remove the old one.

  8. Added 'Recent Comments' gadget. Destroyed old code for recent comments as Blogger now has their own easy-to-use version.

  9. Added 'World Clock' gadget to reflect the globe-trotting exploits of fellow ACSWO-ians.

  10. Added 'LED Text Scroller' at bottom of page. Highly imposing and should be kept below. Will be removed if I receive enough complaints! Heh!


TO BE UPDATED (by anyone!):
  1. Cascading comments is GONE! Someone put it back? HAHAHA!

  2. Any other requests by non-contributors. Contributors can add/remove gadgets as you like!

  3. Personal Blog 'Link Graphics' which are outdated.


Some interesting points to note:
  • There are 19 contributors on this blog, but we have an average of 2 posts per year (for the past 2 years - Hence my post title!)! At least there is a draft sitting pretty in the "posting" section since 16th June this year (*cough* Lemming! *cough*)!

  • Now all graphics uploaded directly to your post will go to your PERSONAL 'Picasa Web Album' (It's like Flickr, etc) which all Gmail members should have. You have a 1GB space limit however.

  • I decided not to have a slideshow gadget (at this point in time), as personal albums should go to personal blogs. What I'm suggesting (since we're so bored on weekends anyway) is to gather all our pics and select a hundred or so to scan them into a general Flickr/Picasa account.

  • Finally, I made the music stream 'autoplay' just to irritate you all. HAHAHA!


So that's it from this update! We've taken the plunge, and there's no going back!

Rickrolled,
-Cal-