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Sexy two wheelers at the Bike Asia 2008

The first thing on my mind when I was there was, “I’m in two wheeler heaven!”

On the 12th of April, I was at the Singapore Expo to see the different displays of motorcycles (and a couple of bicycles) at the Bike Asia 2008 event. This event was jointly organized by the Italian festival 2008, which would explain why there were a lot of Italian brands there.

I was supposed to meet the Vesporeans but in the end, after not being able to spot any members, I decided to enter the hall by myself. There were already a large queue forming at the ticketing booth.

It costs about $8.50 per entry and when I was just about ready to pay for my ticket, the lady at the ticketing booth said, “Ladies enter for free today 11am – 3pm”

It was such a pleasant surprise.

And the first display that I headed to was the Piaggio display where the Vespas were being displayed. There were a number of upcoming models like this LXV 125. This model was physically different from the LX 150 that I was used to seeing mainly because of the handlebar.

The entire front was much smaller. Aesthetically, I think that it will take some adjusting for those who are used to the GT and the LX, as shown below.

Moving around the back of the Piaggio display, I saw a couple of Gilera scooters.

This scooter was 3 wheeler, giving it that unusual look. I’ve seen 4 wheeled motorcycle on the road before and this feature is probably useful to have as it wont topple during those wet and slippery days. But the design reminds me of the Brain Bug from Starship Troopers.

Not all of the bikes had an overly unusual look to them. This one looked as if it was going to transform into a robot.

There were most certainly many Italian motorcycles from what I can see. Like this moto guzzi two wheeler, as posed by this cute kid below.

Other Italian bikes that I saw was a large number of Ducati – which is a rather sexy machine.

Man, look at that body. So sexy.


“We are the Ducati Avengers – protectors of evil”

This is the Aprilia

This is the Cagiva

And this is the Husqvarna

While they do look really sexy, the style is a little too fierce for me personally as I prefer something a little more conservative.

There were also a number of non Italian two wheelers like this adorable Yamaha Fino. I saw this bike for the first time about last year and thought that it was superbly cute. This was something that I would own, but one thing that I didn’t like about it, is that the storage compartment was really small.

There was also a scooter that I noticed and I just cant help gushing at how adorable it was. I would not mind cruising down the road with this little cutie!

This is the Demak Beetle which at first glance, made me thought that it was the Fino. But upon close examination, there were some subtle differences in them. Both Beetle and the Fino are both made in Asia –  I’m guessing that these are quite affordable.

And there was the one motorcycle to rule them all.

This is official Singapore traffic police motorcycle – complete with a siren! This motorcycle is even more powerful than some cars and small enough to squeeze through traffic and to catch offenders. You’d better drive carefully if you spot one of these one the road!

Apart from motorcycles, there was also some bicycles being displayed.

This is a rodalink display with a simulated screen – probably for the next generation of the Wii.

After gawking at the different two wheelers, I found myself at the stage area looking at two men practicing on their motorcycles. They were doing bike stunts.

These two guys, Sergio and Fergo(?) are from Italy and they called their team “Motorlife”. It was quite exciting to watch them doing their stunts, which would be impossible to do on a regular bike.

Here is a short clip of the stunts :

All in all, I thought the event was quite interesting as I could admire the different motorcycles. But I prefer events such as the vivo vespa and the Bike Bike Festival as not only I could admire the two wheelers, I could talk to the owner of the motorcycles, which makes it more personalised and interactive. Nevertheless, I still had fun 🙂

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Taj Samudra – Affordable Indian Food

I’ve always enjoyed eating Indian food. So when Daphne suggested a ping outing to Taj Samudra last Sunday, I just could not pass it off.

The Place

Getting here was quite a cinch as I’m familiar with the area – it was in the same main road as my favourite Indian Restaurants like Ananda Bhavan and Komala Villas. With the restaurant being close to Mustafa Center, makes it very easy to spot – especially with its distinctive orange signboard.

But being on a Sunday, the area was extremely crowded and the roads can be quite scary with the vehicles squeezing and honking. Trying to get parking can be quite of a challenge – I had to risk parking illegally next to the already fully occupied motorcycle lot.

I entered the restaurant and I liked the cosy environment. On the walls were some interesting looking decorative tiles and there were some attractive hanging chandeliers. There were modern glass tables and chairs. The entire combination made the place appear quite classy.

Unfortunately for us, the air-conditioning was not working on that day and we had to suffer in the heat.

The Service

The entire affair was pretty much a self service as it was a buffet. There were two tables with food that you could help yourself to unlimited amounts of food.

The staff were pretty friendly and full of smiles when we were dining there. However, they need to be more attentive. Ironicgamer had to wait for 30 mins for his drink to arrive and I noticed that the staff tends not to notice Malique and Chillycrap‘s request. Personally for me, I did not have any problems and the staff were very attentive to me.

The Food

Can you believe that you can have unlimited Indian food for about $12? This was most impressive to me. Here are just some of the foods that I had. I’m not very familiar with the names, my apologies if I got the names wrong :

Briyani Rice – Wonderfully flavourful and fluffy rice

Mixed Vegetable

I guess this is the special vegetable?

Daal – I prefer if it was thicker, but this was good too

Rasam

Mysore mutton

Masala Chicken

Sweet and sour fish – I like this one a lot! Tasty!

Papadam

Payasam

Thats a lot of food for $12 right? Where else in Singapore can you get this much food at that price? My only qualm is with most of the food is that its a tad salty for my taste and I’ve had better Indian food than this. The rest of the group seemed to like it very much though.

Here is a quick video of what pingsters think of the restaurant :

In a nutshell

Very affordable Indian Food Buffet

Taj Samudra Restaurant
117 Syed Alwi Road
Singapore 207685

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Sidenote : My voice is still raspy in the video as I’m still recovering from my sore throat.

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How I spent April Fools day

I went for a check up at the clinic on Monday. I was healthy, fit and fine.

The next day, I find myself with a fever and sore throat. Turns out, I picked up a bug at the clinic and I had to go to the doctors again.

rinaz and her drugs

This must be life’s little ironies. April fool indeed 😛

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Yebber first birthday bash at the Mint Museum

There were so much fun, smiles and laughter that made it so memorable 🙂

After fighting the traffic during the mad after work rush, I arrived at the Mint museum where the Yebber first birthday bash was held – I haven’t been a yebber member for too long, but I’ve always enjoyed reading reviews about different services. Thus I was pleasantly surprised to be cordially invited by Claudia to grace the event.

One of the first people that I saw was the pretty trio – Zihui, Bobo and Trumpat at the reception. Though I met them for the first time,  they were extremely amiable. They handed me a set of clicky toy, a set of bingo card as well as a namecard for me to stick on.

I proceeded to enter the Mint Museum and there I met a few friends who were already there. Chillicraps, Sheylara, Sylvia and even Daphne, whom I thought was not coming according to her twitter.

Proud of my black and white dress, I proceeded to show it off by swishing it around 😀

As we had some time before the event officially started, together with CC, and Sylv, we proceeded to explore the museum :

On the first floor where the mint shop was located, it was interesting enough for us to get behind the counter to take a closer look at the different toys for sale. One of them was a metal chicken that laid eggs as well as a futurama looking metal robots. I bet that on normal days, we probably wont be allowed to enter the area!

The second floor was where the collectibles were located. It was interesting to see similar looking toys coming from all parts of the world. One of the things that came to mind was how similar the museum was with the Museum of Shanghai Toys that I visited last year. But the difference was that the Mint Museum focused on toys world wide.

A Beatles action figure.

What is a “Flip your wig” game?

I think I used to play with one of these pillow dolls when I was a kid.

Retro looking Donald Duck.

Charlie Chaplin action figures.

The original Matchbox figures.

Remote control toy peacock.

The third level was where the Childhood favourites collection was held. There I saw a couple of freaky but interesting looking toys.

I love golliwogs! They are so cute and are always smiling 🙂

We could not see more though as the announcement for the event to start was starting so we missed out on seeing the ‘Characters’ and ‘Outerspace’ segments.

After writing down in the guestbook, I was in time to watch the opening ceremony by Leonard and Polarbear

They explained about Yebber – how it started, who are the people behind it and what was it all about.

But before too long, it was already time to eat!

Kudos to the Mint Cafe! All the food that I had were  extremely tasty! I had yummy calamari, scallops, breaded shrimp and my crabmeat linguini. I especially loved the tomato bruschetta that I had. It was crunchy and had the right ingredients put into it.

P.s Its spelled and pronounced as  Bruschetta (brus-ket-ta). NOT brushetta (bru-shet-ta)

Later on, the organizers started the bingo game which was surprisingly a lot of fun!

The host called out some number at random and then we’d push out the number. As each person has a different card, the results will be different for everyone. The person wins when a full row or column was pushed out.

Not long after that, it was time for the cake cutting ceremony.

And then it was the time that a lot of people were waiting for – the lucky draw! There were a number of items from Creative that were put up as prizes, but I was eyeing on the Creative Zen.

I didn’t manage to win it. Nevertheless, I had a lot of fun and I got to meet a number of interesting people. One of them was Lai Chow, whose long hair was what made her distinguishable and stood out from the rest of the people. You probably cant see it from this picture, but her hair went all the way to her hips!

I also met Bernice which was an interesting encounter. She was sitting comfortably on the sofa, surrounded by her entourage and one of the first things that she said to me was, “Nice Glasses”

Thank you Yebber Organizers and Mint Museum for such a lovely time. I really did enjoy myself. And happy birthday!

Here is a quick video clip of a couple of yebbers :

Bonus! A couple of bloopers vid 😀

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Whats the big deal about interracial relationships?

I first saw this clip from Hillary and later on, I found out from Mintea that the clip was directed by Yasmin Ahmad – an acclaimed film director. She also told me that Yasmin Ahmad directed the Petronas ads that never fails to make me feel so sappy in the end.

Seeing how easygoing their innocent love for each other made me ponder if we as adults putting in too much emphasis on race?

Here in Singapore we would have our annual Racial Harmony Day each July 21st which is supposed to make us more appreciative of each other’s races.

Racial Harmony Day
Racial Harmony Day 2007

But somehow along the line, this seems to have backfired as it has made each other more aware of their differences and ironically now, people would rather stick to their own. Its odd as time ago, before the implementation of racial harmony day, we were already mixing around naturally, happily.

For me, I believe that people should mix around with the people that they enjoy being with, rather than focusing on their skin difference.

Like the little girl in the video clip, I had a best friend back in primary school. His name was Micheal and he was a Chinese. Being in the same class as well as neighbours, we’d always roam around the neighbourhood together.

Moon over Lakeside, Singapore

And I remember the first time when I celebrated Lantern Festival with him, holding candle lit lanterns in the playground and then eventually a group of Malay girls came up and chided, “You’re not a Chinese. You shouldn’t be playing with Lanterns!”

I was lucky in the sense that mum was open minded about letting me celebrate the mid-autumn festival and I’m glad that I didn’t listened to those group of girls and continued  to befriend Michael. I didn’t care that we were of different races, he was a nice friend and most importantly we had fun together.

So how on earth did race become such a big deal?

I can still remember a section in my geography book that I read at 14 about population on how there are countries that has a homogeneous population like Italy and Japan. But we know that it is not true in today’s context as we see so many once homogeneous countries now teeming with migrants from all over the world.

This is inevitable. And as the world advances, naturally it is so much easier to socialise with different people. Even interracial-relationships isn’t something new. On a micro level, I read through blogs and printouts, and hear from friends at how they are involved with someone of a different race.

rinaz and cart

Truth be told, before I met Cartcart, I’ve always assumed that I’d end up having a serious relationship with a Malay guy and settle down here in Singapore – same race marriages makes it all the easier and more convenient.

Interracial-relationships does has its own problems. But regardless of race, doesn’t all relationships have its own problems? A better judgement on how your partner is suitable for you is when you ask yourself :

Does he make you feel safe? And does he makes you smile and does his presence alone lifts your spirits?

To me, the most important part is the person’s character rather than his race.

 

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Interesthink @ The POD National Library

Having already attended various talks such as the Nexus 2007 as well as the E27 Unconference, and finding it interesting, I was most keen in participating in the Interesthink event.

It was promoted as a local version of TED which I am enamoured with as TED conferences revolves about ‘Ideas worth spreading’. One such presentation that left me floored was the one done by Marjora Carter, where she talks about how to create a sustainable environment.

I arrived at the National Library early Saturday morning and went up to the elevator into the POD where the most spectacular view of the city can be seen. From the glass panels, you could see various landmarks like the Shaw Towers, Suntec City and the Esplanade.

I met a couple of blogger friends who were already there – Farinelli, NTT and joined by DK, Claudia, Preetam as well as several other attendees.

In due time, the event was declared opened by  the organizers and the speakers stepped up to the podium.

The first person to do his presentation was Dr. Larry Francis who presented about ‘Malay culture, musical practices and Islam of the Malay world’. He asked the audience why it was that music seemed to be discouraged in Islam currently when there were so many musical instruments in the Islamic Golden age.

[audio:1.mp3]

Next was Mr Grant Pereira – an enigmatic man who was extremely passionate in environmentalism. He talked about his work in Greenpeace and how there were many things that were happening in Singapore that was hurtful for the environment. One of them being the issue of land space for housing and yet there were many golf courses being built.

[audio:2.mp3]

The next speaker was Mr Alex Au who spoke about the pros and cons of prostitution. His was a rather strange presentation, with him walking here and there. Personally for me, the topic was not something new. And I found out that there are a number of the audience were still not comfortable about the issue of prostitution.

[audio:4.mp3]

Next up was Ms Lim Choo Hin who is a cancer survivor. She talked about the issues that she faced while having cancer and candidly showed some pictures with patients who lost one or both sides of their breasts to cancer and finally she closed by saying, “If you feel defeated, life is over”

[audio:5.mp3]

And one of the final speakers was Mr Kan Lume, an acclaimed filmmaker. At the first glance, it was interesting for me to notice his right hand. It had the words ‘Film Maker’ in black ink and I realised later that it was actually a tattoo. It was to remind and motivate himself in the path that he has chosen. He narrated a story about his childhood and how it inspired him to become what he is today.

[audio:6.mp3]

All in all, I thought that the event was a good way to spend a Saturday, getting to listen to a number of fascinating speakers, surrounded by friends in a beautiful location. Here is a quick video snippets of the event :

Amazingly, at the end of the event, I felt mentally drained out trying to absorb all of the information that I heard today. There were many other people who felt the same way too! It was kind of like the same feeling doing maths sum for an hour straight 😛

In the end, the Interesthink event isn’t exactly like TED, but it was still a pretty good start. I enjoy talks such as these and the interesting side to it is that, for some reason, it reminded me so much of a Secondlife event – meeting other avatars, listening to the speaker, in a nice environment.


Sidenote : Come and join me this saturday for the Social Media Breakfast as well as the Web 2.0 – Emerging Industry Series. Both of them are held at the same time though. Can I clone myself into two?

Links :

And huge credits to the wonderful NTT for recording the audio of the event 🙂

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Bloggers first impressions of the LG-KS20

Last week, I was invited to the launch of the new LG KS20 thanks to Sabrina as well as the PR Company, Fleishman-Hillard.

After the successful bloggers meet with Phillips in December, I was definitely interested in attending this event to have first hand experience of LG’s new smart phone. Personally, I think that it is great that companies are opening up to bloggers as this allows regular people to have a feel of a product in real life situation.

I arrived at Corduroy Cafe, relatively early. One of the first person that I recognized from the crowd was the beautiful Sheylara, whom I’ve respect for, for her artistic talents. We chatted over dinner and one by one, fellow bloggers streamed in – Claudia, slightly flustered due to the after-office rush hour madness aggravated by the drizzle, DK, who was celebrating his first day of freedom, and finally the ever charming Farinelli.

At long last, the event started. The emcee did a quick warm up and then a stoutly man started an introduction on the features of the KS20. It was a little hard for me to hear over the din. I did not remember him introducing himself and I kept wondering who he was and he ended his presentation rather abruptly, perhaps to let us have more time to try the phone out.

The emcee then introduced a bevy of LG models, one of them I recognized as Peggy Heng – another fellow blogger! That’s her in the middle. What a surprising encounter.

The LG models then went around the different tables and started to demonstrate and after which, let us have a hands on try out on the phone.

This was Nicole, one of the LG models on her demo rounds. For me, I think that she stood out from the pack with her friendly demeanor and her personality. Smilingly and without losing a nerve, she answered our questions.

I watched the phone being passed around and being played with, excitedly. Everyone seemed to hog the phone that without anything else to do, I started to video each person’s reaction. All of a sudden I had the phone in my hands and I started to fiddle with it.

At first glance, it was a very beautiful phone and I loved how sleek it was. The functions looked clear cut, with large buttons that one can touch to get to the various functions.

But most importantly (to me that is) it can connect to wifi. Already I was envisioning how convenient it would be connecting to wireless@SG.

Regardless, it was unanimous that we all found that it was a very attractive phone, personally for me however, as I only had first hand encounter with the phone for less than 15 minutes, it is very hard for me to give a proper review.

Here is a short video of our first impressions of the KS20 :

And that was when I finally noticed the other bloggers. One the sofa, I saw Jayden, Nadnut, Iz,Ice Angel and Princessa conglomerating together. I went over to have a quick chat with them. Jayden, whom I’ve met previously from the Phillips event went about his friendly, affable self while Ice Angel seemed a little shy. Princessa was very friendly though she was busy at the same time, flying here and there.

This was the first time for me, meeting Iz – a fellow competitor in the 2007 Weblog Awards. Cheekily, I asked him, “So how does it feel to get your ass kicked by me?” Momentarily he was flustered, but after a chat with him made me see that he was a cool and a passionate person. And Nadnut! If I thought she was adorable in her blog, she was even more adorable in real life! I could just squeeze her and eat her up!

At back of the room, was the lovely Estee, nearly hidden away by the small crowd around her. It was she who noticed and called me out first! Quickly she interrogated me about my upcoming wedding, about Cartcart, as well as Secondlife, where we first get to know each other. It was such a lively discussion that Farinelli and DK came over and we proceeded to debate about the metaverses.

Being a blogger, naturally I took out the camera to have a snapshot. Quickly I reviewed the pictures. I was in disappointment as I realised that I was surrounded by younger and more attractive people and I felt so inadequate.

I could probably Photoshop myself to perfection but covering my face with a paper bag is much faster.


Me and the youthful bunch of Nadnut, Jayden, Sheylara and Ice Angel


Me with the very beautiful Estee


Me and the handsome geek Nicholas Aaron Khoo


Me with IZ, DK and Sabrina who is looking super hot here.

I felt fat and unattractive and I felt wierded out.

But that was when dear Farinelli sent me a picture he took of me and instantly I cheered up.

It was one of those moments when I was relaxed and at ease and had a natural smile. I like this picture so much that instantly I changed my avatar on msn, facebook and vimeo.

Recently, I saw this ad in the digital life newspaper :

I think they should consider running with this one :

Sidenote : First she awarded me the Slackiest Latecomer award and now she awards me the Most Insane Award. Sheylara must really love me. 😛

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