Eastern Europe here I come!

flying off to eastern europe on my 13D11N tour (by ASA) later this evening. feeling kinda excited about this trip. it would be my first time going for a winter holiday. however, this trip cost a big bomb in my pocket even before I took off!

had to get alot of winter clothes as there aren't many in the house. thankfully for the arrival of uniqlo, i bought most of my winter tops from there. the prices are reasonable and the material is good. had to purchase some stuff for my camera as well, including a new cam bag and a spare cam batt.

feeling a little stressed to get good shots since it's my first time bringing my d90 so far away. hopefully it won't conk out on me due to the low temp. alot of things to take note of when bringing dslr in winter. headache!

prior to the trip, i took a flu jab on the recommendation of the tour guide during the briefing. honestly i felt that it had weakened my immnunity. i caught a flu over the last weekend! wat a bad timing rite?? now it's turning into a cough and i'm afraid i would bother pple on the long flight. think i better go pack some cough mixture along.

yesterday, the tour guide called us to remind us about check in time and the weather. seems like it's rather windy (though no rain no snow so far). the day temp would drop to around 1-2 degrees by the time we get to poland (which is this coming weekend). made a last min decision to rush down to the new uniqlo megastore at 313 somerset in a bid to grab the down feather jacket. thankfully there was still sizes available and in the colour i wanted.

so i'm almost all packed up and ready to go. gonna hv my dinner soon and i'll change into my clothes. hope it's gonna be a nice and smooth sailing trip!

10 months later

someone recently reminded me that i've not updated my blog for the longest time. when i logged in, i was surprised that i didn't touch this blog for 10months! gosh, it has been a very long time indeed. i guess i've stopped ranting about life and work. well, that's supposed to be something good rite?

honestly this yr seems to fly by very quickly. it's also the year which i turn 30! yes, i know, the big 3 0! sounds soooo old!!! in view of this, i've finally bought myself a dslr which i've been saving a long long time for. (it's actually an excuse to buy an expensive gadget, hiak hiak) got my nikon d90 with 18-105mm kit lens in may. loving it more and more each day.

must admit that it's not easy to get used to the dslr initially. in fact till now, i've not fully utilised every single button and feature on the camera. there's just too many things to learn. since may, i've added an ultra wide angle lens (tokina 11-16mm) and a speedlight SB900 to my collection. it's the BBB virus! now saving for my prime lens sigma 30mm f1.4 and my whole collection would be complete. yeah!!

lately been busy with lotsa activities happening. this yr has been very very bad for my company due to the poor economy and the strong yen. it's killing all of the japanese car brands including honda and toyota. the car sales went to kia who recently launched the all new kia cerato forte and koup. good for them but bad for us. :( just hope that things will start to pick up in 2010, else we're really dead meat.

am so looking forward to my eastern europe trip with my uni frens in dec. it's hard to arrange to go on a tour together esp with our different schedules. it's gonna be freezing cold and hopefully i wont turn into a frozen block on ice.

2 more months till end of the year, lets hope for the best! will try my best to update stuff soon. somehow still too lazy to post photos in my blog, perhaps that would make things more lively. hahahaa!

post US trip write up

been a really really long time since i last blogged. main reason: laziness. hahaha..what else? i went for a 13 day US west coast trip from 17-29nov earlier on. my trip took me from San Franciso to Las Vegas and finally Los Angeles. we flew from SIN - ICN - SFO (around 18hrs+) and back from LAX - NRT - SIN (20hrs+) on SQ.

the trip was generally ok but i was a bit disappointed. y? coz US was not as great or grand as i had expected. hollywood does a great job in creating a good image of US. also, chan bros (the tour agency) didn't cater for alot of meals, hence we had to spend quite a fair bit of our cash on meals.

shopping at US was really GREAT! a pity i didn't dare to spend soo much and i'm not familiar with the branded stuff. regretted not buying enough when i was there. local brands such as coach, levis, kiehls were much cheaper than in sg. i'm not a person who buys super branded stuff like coach but everyone in my tour group was saying that i would regret if i don't buy. i bought a sling bag from their retail store for USD$128 (exchange rate is around 1.48) and sg is selling the same thing for SGD$305!!! OMG!!!

besides shopping, the cool weather was fantastic. the disappointment was that i didn't feel that i was in US. prob coz i stayed in perth for sometime before, hence i felt that i was in OZ. of coz there were a number of homeless people and blacks on the streets. had to make an effort to avoid them while walking along the streets. as it's near winter, the sky turned dark around 4.30pm and u can literally see the whole bunch of them coming out and roaming the streets.

las vegas was fun but too bad we only stayed 1 night there. i made USD $40 on the first night playing a 1cent slot machine. my cost price? USD $5. i was amazed...! wanted to kill time as the night was young but ended up sitting at the same machine for a good 1.5hrs.

grand canyon was well....grand? anyway, no special feeling of awe while i was there. just huge rocks and mountain formation. i didn't dare to stand near the ledge as it was very low and one push would result in a 7sec fatal fall to the bottom of the canyon. some of the photos were taken by my fren as i was shaking too badly to be able to hold my camera steady.

took a whole bunch of rides at disneyland and universal studios. i'm not a rides person but the tour guide just pushed the whole group onto various rides while he took us around the parks. screaming and closed my eyes most of the time on roller coasters and whatever scary places. didn't have the chance to take photos with the characters as the Q was super long.

i had a 2 day extension in hollywood. my fren and i joined a local day tour which brought us to the celebrities' homes in mulholland drive. whoa!! their houses are damn bloody HUGE! i think huge is an understatement. gigantic? enormous? they are really filthy rich lo...... the tour took us to the famous rodeo drive where all the stores have their individual bouncers, opps, i mean security guards standing at the door. apparently, there're no price tags on the items. if you have to ask for the price, you prob cant afford it.

throughout the whole trip, i only had 1 ice cream from baskin robbins at USD $1.89. i tot ben & jerrys would be dirt cheap since it's their local brand but i was wrong! it was around USD$3.50 (if i didn't rem wrongly)....around SGD$5++. i might as well eat in sg. no diff...

overall it was a good break for me, having been away for 13 days. made some friends on the tour. would i go to US again? probably not. the flight is torturous (even tho it was on SQ direct). where would i wanna go next? prob hokkaido...seems like a nice place to visit. good chance to take photos too. meanwhile, time to start saving again.