Woah. Interestingly after the official episodes for season 3 are over, we had some more adventures that were really fun and also arty. I’m going to put that in Random Encounters. Pluuuus, there’s something that I’m going to be posting about to after this series. So while the episodes for Sarah Does Singapore is over for season 3, heh heh heh, watch out for more ridiculous things. Something else is taking over for Mondays. Still adventure but a lot more weird things.

And now the play list!

The Playlist (season 3)

• Tomorrow Never Knows by Carla Azar (season 2 opener)
• C’mon N’ Ride it by Quad City DJ’s (Tanjong Pagar Railway Station)
• Written in the Stars by Tinie Tempah feat. Eric Turner (Asian Children’s Writers and Illustrator’s Conference)
• Rolling in the Deep by Adele (Velocity Urban Attack)
• Like a Stone by Audioslave (Marina Bay Sand’s Arts & Science museum feat. Salvador Dali)
• Perfect by Pink (Pink Dot Day)
• Reflection by Christina Aguilera (Cosfest X.1)
• I Believe I Can Fly by R Kelly (iFly Singapore, indoor skydiving at Sentosa)
• The Resurrection Stone from Harry Potter Deathly Hallows Part 2 Official Soundtrack (Harry Potter finale party)
• Black or White by Michael Jackson (Ode to Penguin books exhibition)
• The Scientist by Coldplay (Science fest at Suntec by the Science Centre)
• From Out of Nowhere by Apocalyptica (Mini comic art exhibition)
• Harder, Better, Stronger, Faster by Daft Punk (Ceramic mug making)
• Through the Fire and the Flames by Dragonforce (Game of Thrones HBO screening private event)
• Here It Goes Again by OK Go (Singapore Toys Games Comics Convention 2011)
• Letters to You by Finch (Singapore Philatelic Museum aka the stamp museum)
• Waiting for the End by Linkin Park (The end of Borders in Singapore)
• Frozen by Madonna (Terracotta warriors at the Asian Civilization Museum)
• Speeding Cars by Imogen Heap (Go-karting at *scape)
• Fire by 2NE1 (Waterfire at Bedok Reservoir park’s festival)
• Take on Me by A-Ha (Comics Xchange conference)
• Yellow by Coldplay (Opening of the circle line, or rather the rest of the stations on it)
• Ice Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice (Ben & Jerry’s Chunkfest at Marina Bay’s promontory)
• My Baby Loves A Bunch Of Authors by Moxy Fruvous (Nanowrimo Singapore’s kick-off party)
• Trogdor by Strong Bad (Singapore Writers Festival)

So that’s it for season 3.

Funnest discovery of the season is the Tanjong Pagar Railway Station episode. The one that made most of us go “GAAAASP, WHAT IS THAT?” in a Lara Croft/Indiana Jones manner. It was kind of a lead up from our random encounter expedition through the Bukit Timah tracks. It was the bit of going there, checking things out and also learning the history of the place and knowing that wiki or the archives was… wrong.

Going on the Velocity Urban Attack was the splashiest and fun since there was a lot of falling. NEXT YEAR. Next year perhaps I will get through all the stages or at least half of it. They always cange it so we’d never know what’s the obstacles would be like.

Another fun one? Expensive compared to the rest but it’s freaking indoor skydiving at the iFly in Sentosa. That day was fun since besides iFlying, there were places to go there like the luge and checking out the shops at Resorts World Sentosa.

Seems like season 3 is more action packed along with more arty stuff. No idea how season 4 will turn out or when it will start. What we learned in season 3? We like to make our own stuff and investigate things like woah. In the meantime, we still haven’t gone to the birdpark yet and tons more places. See you guys in my random encounters!

Jo and I got invited to the opening of the Singapore Writers Festival. Since it was evening and we could make it, well, we decided to go! As we approached the tent, we glimpsed Dave Chua of Gone Case but ALAS, he disappeared as we entered for that evening was also the opening of an exhibition by Sonny Liew elsewhere which I didn’t know and also the launch of the Gone Case 2, the graphic novel.

NO MATTER, so we bust into the tent like the writers we are.

Which is to say we pushed opened the doors and pretty much walked in after saying our names at the sign in area.

In the corner of the festival pavillion (that part is free for anyone to come) was an exhibit on Kuo Pao Kun’s lifetime achievements while the middle-ish part had black and white leather benches in front of a mini stage. The perimeter of the whole pavillion was pretty much a bookshop so there were shelves of local and non-local books. As usual, it is le literary people who are there. We recognized faces but we are shy girls not really so we just decided to check out the spread.

We are but PEASANTS for out of the whole affair, we liked the vegetables, salad and potatoes best. POTATOES AND VEGETABLES. Such simple tastes we have! The other dishes were too sweet for us even if it was sea perch soup, fish and Jo tried the chicken. It’s… sweet which was kinda weird. NO MATTER, we scoped out the people there while we stood around with our plates.

For those who didn’t know, there was a dresscode in the invitation to SWF. It was “literary chic”. There had been a lot of questions on Twitter by others who had this invite too. I decided that “literary chic” meant to dress up like a writer but not a hobo writer. It worked and as you can see from the pictures, everyone pretty much just wore whatever the heck they wanted.

We saw the NAC people too! They were busy so we didn’t want to disturb the people so we just shovelled more potatoes and enjoyed the air con there. So yes. We just spent the opening eating potatoes and vegetables before we decided to scram since well, everyone had their own person to mingle or speak literary chic and it was getting late for us. It was a preview night after all and there would be panels and such the next day.

I purchase my festival pass via Sistic when it had the early bird special so it just cost me $11 then. The thing is that you were supposed to exchange it at the festival pavillion to get your swanky proper pass! A lot of people were confused about this bit and eh, this was the first time the Singapore Writers Festival is being charged. Hopefully the next one would be less tedious.

For one thing, the ticketed events like workshops and stuff, you needed to buy via Sistic first since it was separate from the festival pass. And the festival pass was for everything else. Mostly, people were also confused on where to exchange your Sistic festival pass into the red plastic one since it wasn’t really obvious at the counter of the festival pavillion (it was said to be Info counter and was sharing with the bookstore’s cashier).

As Jo and I waited (we went to the fest the next day, so imagine a time lapse here instead of us camping in the festival) for the launch of Ceriph’s issue 4, we found this! Bubble G.U.M and Happiness at the End of the World was available! So was an Irish Tour of Singapore which you could buy it all at Two Trees too!

Plus, it amused me that Low Kay Hwa’s book that I bought a week or so before the fest was there since I was corresponding to him currently. That meant that they didn’t just stock the literary stuff at the festival bookstore.

Also, we found a book that was going to be launched the following week there. I had to buy it because the first line was:

Tara first met him at the Singapore Arts Festival in Moscow.

You have no idea how many people picked up that book there, stared at that line, looked around and back to it again. Worry not. I will read out parts of the book and reveal to you what it is since it is queued in my bunch of books to be reviewed.

Meanwhile, it was time for the launch for Ceriph issue 4. This issue is divided into different paper types and if you want to hear her reading, just click the video below since I would rather let her explain it herself!

One of my favourite stories in this issue is titled $trategic KPI + %Synergy% = Love by Mary-Jane Leo. I refuse to believe the ending. I believe that it was AMBIGUOUS, SINCE it was just merely a squashing. MERELY. It’s just a squash. You can get this issue and the previous ones at Kinokuniya, Books Actually or just check their website on where to get it.

After that, we went to the panel on Adoring Fans and Stalkers: Relating to my Readers, featuring Randy Taguchi and Fira Basuki. It was a super engaging and fun session. Very informative too on what fans they got and how they related to them or handled the really extreme ones. This was in the transaction pavillion which is to the left of the festival pavillion and needed the pass.

Before this session though, Jo did attend another panel and considering the layout of the tent, there was a distracting spider involved? The place is a bit dark too.

After that fan panel, we left to eat prata since there was quite a bit of prata talk somehow. Meanwhile, Vertical Submarine were responsible for these. Hahah, I always like Vertical Submarine stuff. It’s a mysterious case and another is called the UnderWriter’s Table. Yes, the book there says “How to write a blank cheque”.

Time lapse to the next weekend! It was getting quieter and the white board was getting more insane with art. You could get free fans too. Hah! Fans. I don’t think the bears at the info counter were for sale but they had mini versions of the festival’s programme. Anyway, it was a super hot day and I headed into the festival pavillion since the session I wanted to go was an hour away.

I must say that it was really quiet. There was also half hour readings and besides me and the bookstore staff and some of the NAC people, there wasn’t much visitors at the pavillion (unless they were buying books). I found out from my friend (not Jo. Check out the 1st prize winner for the Malay short story for Golden Point award, that is him) that the panel he was interested in was pretty quiet too, like around 5 or so people including him and the writer.

I think most of us attributed it to the fact of the festival being spread out in 3 places instead of The Arts House in which it made everything feel livelier. Plus, I didn’t know there was such thing as half hour readings at the pavillion. So sad for authors being slotted in the timings then.

Meanwhile, I was going to Is Facebook killing the Blog? Featuring: Pat Law, Gilbert Koh, Yu-Mei Balasingamchow at The Salon of the National Museum before I met my friend to find all this out. This panel was talking about finding your voice and write what you want to. Plus, more insight on how the panelists blog or intergrate facebook by linking to their blogs.

Their take away point was that if you are a serious writer who wants to write articles etc, choose a blog. Facebook is too spammy and your words might disappear if FB keeps changing. At least you will have an archive somewhere if you have your own blog.

The reason I met my friend cause HOHOHOHOHOH, I got a ticket to Joe Haldeman’s science fiction workshop. He had bought his before the start of the festival and I got mine in the last minute cause another friend of mine couldn’t make it and so I bought it off from her.

Heh, heh, heh.

As we bought headed to SMU, there was a performances, Words in Motion by breakdancing crews and other dancers. The whole thing was organized by Soul Theory Studios and there you can see Sheik Haikal being the emcee for it all. He was certainly entertaining for what brief time I was there.

And the last ticketed event for the evening was Building Other Worlds – The Fundamentals of Writing Science Fiction Featuring: Joe Haldeman. Mostly we got to listen stories from him, how he wrote his books and I did get to learn the difference of the types of science fiction written.

Not really sure how to explain it but okay, I did get to learn quite a bit and that it is tough to write science fiction nowadays.

It was certainly a sold out workshop and it was overrun a little bit since we wanted to listen to him more.

Lastly, my friend and I managed to listen to the LAST argument for the  Closing Debate: This House Would Trade English for Singlish at the transaction pavillion.

The well-acclaimed SWF Closing Debate is back! This time, the two teams of mystery speakers will debate on the motion: “This House would trade English for Singlish.” Singlish, Singapore’s colloquial English, has always provoked much controversy in a country torn between its commitment to a global and a national identity. Now who will make the most kilat (polished) argument for or against it? Who will conversely kena whack jialat-jialat (get trounced) for talking too much rubbish? Hopefully, all of them! Join us for a session of side-splitting, nose-bloodied, rowdy fun that will bring this festival to its irreverent close!

Members of the public could comment and well… WOW.

Singlish versus English debate

Although I’m sure there were official videographers, I know that footage won’t be used in… official videos or anything like that. No point for me to put up a video of the last arguments since it was really THAT packed. The audio’s good enough for you to listen.

Choice quote from the English camp:

In a nutshell the Singaporean identiy is about the acquisition of personal material wealth.Thank goodness our ministers are not like that.

There’s more leading to that but you got to listen to it, hahahaha.

Choice quote from the Singlish camp:

These days ah, we are told to speak English cause they are powerful international language, correct? But then ah, government also tell you nowadays you must speak Chinese because Chinese now very powerful. Right? I can guarantee ten years time they tell you to speak some Indian language because India also powerful. But you think ah, ok? English, Chinese, Indian, when put together Singlish already what.Correct? We are already in the future!

And that’s the end of the SWF. It was judged by how loud you clapped and thus both won. Hahahah, that kind of ending. In any case, that was great. In summary, SWF was fun. The venue needs to be worked out a little more since a lot of people have commented on not being able to switch rooms if they’re not interested in the panel and the ticketing needs to be a bit more clearly. That and the scheduling of panels. There was quite a lot of clashes with hot topic panels at the same time.

We’ll see how it is next year. For now, I’m going to keep my pass since it’s the first pass ever for a paid SWF here. COLLECTOR’S ITEM GET!

The kick off for Nanowrimo in Singapore was at the multipurpose room of the National Library. Somehow even though it was to be on at 6.30pm, there were a lot of early comers filling up the seats in the front and it didn’t take long for other people to stream in too.

Yes. This year’s cake.

As you can see after the programme ended, there was cake, cookies and whatnot. We didn’t have much goodie bags this year since we didn’t have a grant or anything like that but we did have the stickers from Nanowrimo’s HQ aka Office of Light and Letters and free notebooks from the Speak Good English movement cause I had a bag of the given to me on one of the events. Prizes were included like a toy squishy banana for the Awkward Banana Award by entering late into the room.

Everyone seemed to be at various part of the room discussing different things but it was still generally fun. I don’t have much to say cause the pictures pretty much are descriptive. Just imagine them talking about Harry Potter or gasping about Star Wars.

And then after we asked the people to help us move the chairs away, everyone sat on the floor? Heh, we still had time there so we could have a little game which started out of nowhere. It’s spin the bottle but with no kissing and more questions about what you’re going to write for Nano. Questions like what genre, how does your main character look like etc was asked!

The library would be closing in thirty minutes and it was time to shoo them off. There was an after party meet too since everyone decided to get McD’s. It’s the only place where it was close by and had space or easy/cheap to take away. So that’s it. The Thank Goodness It’s Over Party will be on 3 December, same place. Plus, it will also be the launch of our steampunk anthology then! It’ll be called the Steampowered Globe.

More pics of the kick off, at the flikr stream here.

In a land of blue skies and floating platform, a fair was to be had upon the lush greenery. That fair was in fact… Ben & Jerry’s Chunk Fest at Marina Bay’s Promontory!

It’s nearer to get to if you drop off at Raffles Place MRT than if you were to do so at Marina Bay station.

Such was the entrance for you had to queue to get in! Also, you got a red band on your wrist once you entered. Perhaps this is to make sure there is crowd control for it does have a limited amount of space there. It’s large but you know, just in case.

You receive a paper cowbell to be a Chunkpion. If you managed to get signatures/stamps for every square at the back of it, you will win a… NOTEPAD!

Yeah.

I think that was what the prize was. However, at some of the stations you do get stuff for doing the activities so you won’t technically just win a notepad.

Meanwhile, real monies was not used at the fair, you needed to change them into fair coins! The exchange rate was equal to our money so in Chunk Fest land, a yellow 1 coin was equal to our $1.

We did calculations after touring the place since 6 coins = 1 ice cream scoop (1 ice cream scoop however, didn’t look like just ONE, it was kinda big) and 1 coin = 1 game at some stations.

What evaaah shall we do? By the way, it looks so green here but the grass was rather muddy from the previous day’s rain. Most of the staff were going footwearless since it was just that messy if you had to run around.

Moo went the cow. It was a cute moo too, I think the one dressing up inside was a girl. She went, “Moo. Mooooo”. You can take a picture with Woody the cow and then get the signature/stamp at the main Ben & Jerry’s booth where they were selling merchandise like cups, thumbdrives and everything else.

There were bands playing on the main stage there and other competitions too. According to the papers, I think that’s also where the main ice cream eating contest was held too, the Vermont or so I heard.

Pin the pint! Chunk digger, where you dig for puzzle pieces and also the dunking tank! There were other games like toe wrestling too. They pretty much just cost 1 fair coin. I did the dunking one but my soccer ball ONLY HIT IT BUT DIDN’T HAVE ENOUGH FORCE TO PUSH THE LEVER DOWN. BAAAAAAAAAH!

The main tent for the ice cream was pretty popular. It’s when the exclusive ice cream flavours were available too. The queue wasn’t that long even if it looked like there were a lot of people.

Ok, we had strategized with our coins. We were going to do the Merlionster. It costs us 30 coins for 6 scoops of ice cream, toppings of bananas, brownie bits and pretty much a lot of things and that was still cheaper than a scoop on our own at the main tents. When we went there, no one managed to finish it in 1 minute.

And so we did it… AND DID NOT SUCCEED. NOoooooooooooooo! We only got it halfway through. No matter, the ladies gave us extra spoons at the end so that our other friend could eat it with us too. It’s a two player game, you see.

STILL, I got a nifty badge! So yay! Ok, so maybe I did just try it cause I wanted the badge. GOT TO CATCH ‘EM ALL!

Ice cream, give it to us. Yes.

Holland Village! At the beginning of this whole series, I wanted to ride the MRT just so I could. Like the whole red/green/purple/grey and now yellow line. The circle line is now complete!

Sort of.

I know there’ll be more stations in the future but for now, the other stations are open.

I was five or six, there abouts when the MRT was first completed. Just the red and green lines. When the green line actually ended at Jurong East and not Joo Koon. In the time when you had to insert a plastic card into the gantry and could collect them cause they were cheap.

Or were they cheap cause the fares were cheap back then? Hmmmmmm!

This is boring. I mean, those things are boring machines. Athena and Artemis the boring machines! How ironically fun. We’ll see more of them boring machines when there’s going to be a new line too. Not sure what they’ll call it since it’s the town line or something like that and what colour it would be.

You know, when they first built the green and red line, the train stations could be used for bomb shelters. You might notice the bomb shelter sign on them too if you can hunt around for it. I don’t know if the new lines are designed to do that.

Since it’s the opening of the other half of the yellow line which makes it now full circle (HAH!), the underground shops are having deals and some freebies with coupons or whatever. I can’t remember anything of this sort when the lines opened in the 90s. Considering we didn’t have that many underground malls and such, if any celebrations were to be had, it probably was above ground.

Interestingly, at the time of this post… The train line is having fault delays. Prior to the grand opening, they had tests on it to check if it’s ok. Weird, it’s only these few years that the trains are dying with delays and it’s getting reliable in its unreliability.

Why? WHY? WHYYYYY?

Oh trains, you used to be so on time and not so crowded and stuff!

Meanwhile, Roz from 987FM is the emcee for the show at Holland Village station!

Sooooo, with the opening of the new station, there were lots of people like woah! I don’t know how a regular night in the Holland Village area is like but I am sure it wouldn’t be this crowded usually.

Now, in theory that means going to all these places will be easier! As long as the trains run anyway. A lot of the stations are at fun places like near the botanic gardens which had been a pretty difficult place to get to. So hurray for that. Alright, strike taking the MRT on my list. Finally got to attend one train station opening event at least since the next one would be some years away. Now, if only we can check out the boring machines in real life…

I went for the seminar instead of the workshops since I didn’t really need those. So yes, to sum it up, it was fun and super informative! This is also the first time the event is held and from what I heard from the organizer, she might be doing smaller versions, just some of the talks on its own in the future besides just the main event?

Alright, there are a variety of speakers. The first was William from Epsilon Mobile and he talked about applications and the business of how Apple and Amazon might work. So far no one does combo selling, like the digital and the hard copy version as a sale together. That’s where his company comes in. Reminds me of how Japanese visual novels are though! The method that is.

The second speaker was Joyce! She’s there doing her impression of being stuck in a box.

Ok no, she’s not.

She was sharing us the do-s and don’t-s in querying for publishers and whatnot!

It’s a stubborn process as always, meanwhile you can buy her book too or check out her other fiction here.

Hey it’s Michele of the National Arts Council! She gave a short talk about literary grants we could apply to them. For the really much dosh given out to write a story, you need to have a track record at least of being someone who really writes a lot and contributes to the society etc.

Interesting fact is that, digital ebooks are considered in the publishing grant so that’s good. It wasn’t before but now digital book stuff are considered under the literary side. If you have questions on the grant though, you can always email them!

Here’s one of the organizers of the event! Luthiea! That’s her online name anyway. Check her webby out for she has online fiction and has links to other writers etc.

Break time and I went to the bazaar.

When I looked up, I saw a big ass fan. It was really huge and I was wondering what brand it was. Anyway, the bazaar was cool since it had snacks, comics and even temporary sparkly tattoo booths.

Lunch was provided if you signed up for the seminar or workshops. Meanwhile, 24 Hours Comics Day was being held in some of the rooms at Goodman Arts Centre. Oh yes, the artists got to get the food too so they weren’t going to starve while they drew their stuff. LET US ENTER…

So, it was a quiet room while everyone drew on… COMPUTERS?! I know it’s usual for us to do Nanowrimo on ipads/phones/computers/etc but I was going ooh cause it seemed everyone brought their laptops and wacom tablets besides their pen and papers! Traditional artforms like watercolours/pencils are there but yeah, I forgot that going digital was available when there were powerpoints for everyone!

Not shown in the picture is a table full of biscuits, tea, coffee and candy.

Lunch time over and it’s time for the rest of the talks! Got to learn more about the comic scene and that really, it goes for everyone that you need to find your own voice in writing. The last panel had the speakers there for a question and answer session.

Alright, goodies! I got a goodie bag which you can see what stuff I had. Bag sponsored by Cold Wear, comics, 14:59 newspaper (this is a good paper for students who like to read/write since it has stories and poetry! It likes to encourage students to show their creativity), Coco magazine, a Green Lantern mini figurine and a brochure from iFly.

Yes, they were a sponsor and had a session where they informed how they got the iFly into Singapore because it really was interesting to know that it was freaking hard to get it done here due to it being the first in Asia and the rules here.

WELP! Let’s see if Luthiea organizes mini talks since those should be good for those who couldn’t attend this seminar!

I can’t remember if there were park festivals before this year but I knew about this year from an emailer I got since they were having a WaterFire® art installation at Bedok Reservoir on the 24th and 25th September!

Main programme starts around 6pm onwards but the people of Temasek Polytechnic were setting things up around the reservoir.

The hosts of the programme were from TP too and it’s cause this year they decided to have their Global Community Day to be outdoors instead of just in school and to do it with Nparks cause the school’s just across the reservoir anyway.

It starts off with a musical performance by the Temple of Fine Arts.

Then a some songs and dances by the Filipino community. They did sing the “Anak” by Freddie Aguilar too which I think a lot of people would know since there’s so many translations and versions of this song.

The Malay dancers from TP also performed and if I can remember, they do win competitions since they’re really good.

Yes, there were a lot of people there watching the performances and waiting for the main WaterFire® event too so everyone sat across the floating platform stage area.

After that Temasek Poly and their international students put out a performance of five movements with the theme of water and fire. This one was around twenty or so minutes so I’m not puting the videos of it up.

Well, except for the first one which I liked since it was like Avatar: The last air bender in terms of water and fire since it was a combo of Chinese and Indian dance!

Plus the last one where it got everyone all excited since it was kinda like one of those mass Bollywood dances and fun to watch.

Before the lightning of WaterFire® commenced for the night, a dance group called the Fireflys did their thing which the emcees of the night did warn the audience to soooo totally not do it since it is dangerous if you aren’t practiced in it.

Video is 14 minutes but when you’re there you could tell everyone was entranced by their skills and flaming torches!

Then it was time to light the burners set in the water all around the floating platform! Barnaby Evans was there along with the other guests of honour which I can’t remember but I think they were from TP and Nparks. Anyway, since that was Sunday, after it would all end at around 10pm (I didn’t stick around that long), they would “send back” the flame via skype from where it started.

Also, the dragonboat guys helped to light up the various floating burners all around while groovy music played on. Yeah, groovy cause it sounded just so… groovy.

You can walk along the walkway since they’d open the entrance for it. You had to queue up though since there were a lot of people who wanted to do so.

Meanwhile, the art installation is not the only thing on that evening. Remember the bikes earlier on? Well the students of TP plugged it to some light sculpture thing. Cycle fast and you can get the lights all running! Lots of kids like to do this too since it’s fun seeing the lights go on only when you cycled fast.

There were “international villages” in tents since it’s Global Community Day and they gave out free stickers (Venezuela), pens (sponsored by Etihad for Dubai etc) and Finland was showcasing itself by showing off Angry Birds since it came from there.

There was cosplay at Japan’s booth and Switzerland gave out cheese. I wonder how they cut it since it was melted (heated knife?), you could smell the cheese easily since woaah, that’s some strong cheese. A long line for it too but I’m not sure if everyone acquired the taste for it. Nparks had a little area where they did a little environmental thingy too so yes, they were there since it’s a park festival too.

The park festival seems to be a yearly thing and not just for Bedok Reservoir. Perhaps next year I’ll get to check out the other parks and their programmes too.

It’s F1 season in Singapore. Hence the roads near the city have gates built up and roads are being diverted when the actual race is on. Before the week when the races were on, there were activities to hype up the event.

Like bands and stuff. I think that is a car/shoe hybrid of some sort considering it is in front of one of those fancy shops.

Uh huh, well I was interested in go-karting! Hohohohoho. Yes, they actually made a whole track at *scape. There was a deal on deal.sg and thus I knew there was going to be go-kart racing there for the weekend. There were preview pictures and people thought it was a small track… HAH!

It wasn’t.

There were two types of go-karts there. The Swiss Hutless or the Viper. The Viper is the more fancy one with more speed. It was also the more expensive one thus, I went with the Swiss Hutless.

The ones with the black bumper rims thingies were the vipers and in any case, it is so fun to be speeding around on the track!

We got ten minutes worth and you could speed around as much as you want then. Turning on corners is thrilling cause you might skid and do something like Tokyo Drift or something.  Also, if you really put your accelerator on, you totally had to steer the wheel hard considering this is a go-kart and hence no power steering or whatever. If you let go, you might accidentally crash into the barriers or into other people!

It is totally like Mario Kart but without the banana peels and stuff on this track since the ground is smooth.

And yess, if you actually want to see us zooming around for 11.14 minutes, you can watch it here. But basically if you have the chance to go-kart, TAKE IT. There are a few go-kart places in the western side of Singapore, we might try that one day since they have the tarmac tracks there.

Ps. Sebastian Vettel (Red Bull) won first in the F1 race on the 25th September 2011 here, second place goes to Jenson Button (McLaren) and third to Mark Webber (Red Bull).

Terracotta Warriors: The First Emperor and His Legacy finishes it run on 16 October 2011 so you still have time to visit it before the “end of run rush” comes in. It is at the Asian Civilizations Museum which is just a short walk from City Hall MRT. Lots of museums are around in the area anyway.

I went to the exhibition on a weekday with Avarielle! Plus, since it was a weekday, there were school students on an excursion to the museum.

Before you enter the gallery (you can enter the permanent exhibits too but they don’t have this thing) go ahead and download the app if you have an iphone. Yes, it’s only developed for the iphone. You can try it out on this blog post if you’re not there, I guess.

Just download it from the app store by searching ACM Terracotta Warriors and select the View 3D Warriors Through Your Iphone Camera. I think my picture should be clear enough for you to see something through your phone’s camera.

If you’re not familiar with the layout of ACM, be sure to listen to the counter/ticket lady on the first floor as you will have to go up the stairs (or take the lift) that go about in some turns where you can see the permanent exhibits about South East Asia.

Before you enter though, there are two warriors standing guard near the door. Hahah you can play with them in a way that you can place the puzzle pieces back on them to get them looking in their original state!

There are some items for display, mostly sculptures outside of the gallery if you didn’t buy the ticket to enter this exhibit but only for the rest. I’m not sure why you wouldn’t but yeah, there’s still stuff outside.

Ah, the gallery of the Terracotta Warriors are pretty extensive! Not only you get said warriors, you get other artefacts from the tombs too. Such were the times when objects were handcrafted with ridiculous amount of detail.

The chariot is a replica for it was too fragile to bring it over. The other artefacts were real and thus behind glass cases. There were a lot of those symbols so that if you did download the app, you could read or see something.

Note the clothes of the soldiers. Each had their own role to play, either they led the horses, were guides or wore armour so they could fight.

The archers and other people in the squad! On the other side of these soldiers were also terracotta versions of atheletes and those were built more robust!

This is a carved stone doorway from a tomb in eastern Han dynasty. If you’ve gone through my previous adventures or to any of the museums here yourselves (OR play games like Assassin’s Creed), you might notice this is fascinating! As quoted from the info there:

From Baijiashan village, Suide county, Shaanxi

Aristocratic tombs of the Han dynasty often contained stone blocks carved with scenes in low relief. The lintel shows a hunting scene; the stones flanking the doorway offer views of domestic life. People climb stairs to store goods, a few play musical instruments, and perhaps a wrestling match is underway. Depictions of everyday life mix with fantasy. The roofs are surmounted by large birds, perhaps mythical creatures. Remains of red paint decorate the raised surfaces.

Now… Let’s go back to my episode in Pompeii. I might not have posted a lot of the pictures from that exhibit but it is pretty amazing that in the times before internet or planes and such, you can still see that architecture is nearly similar in terms of style for tombs.

This is a tomb brick from western Han dynasty, 2nd century BCE from Yangling.

Stylised geese and trees decorate this hollow brick, which was found within the Han Emperor Jing’s tomb complex. Ceremonies were conducted in aristocratic tombs in the Han dynasty, which were therefore elaborately decorated. Hollow bricks were widely used, as they were effective insulators against sound and changes in temperature.

If not for the different motifs of geese and the type of tree, I’d think this belonged to the bricks of Egypt!

Engraved pictorial stones were popular in eastern Han dynasty (25-220CE) since they began to replace the tomb figurines in portraying the afterlife, which I guess took up a lot of space or something.

Go check it out while the exhibit is still on. Besides scaled to life terracotta people (and animals), they had smaller ones that had moveable arms or cloth clothes on. The parts may have decomposed, leaving only the bodies without the wooden arms and yeah…

Those are kinda creeptastic especially the ones with their legs apart. They were originally sitting on horse figurines which are gone now.

And that’s it!

Plus, they fixed the information machine thingy. The one for the permanent SEA exhibits! I wonder who the girl is though and if she ever visits the museum for fun and would people go “GASP! It’s the girl from the machine!”.

There was a lot of queuing for that week of 3 September.

H&M had a freaking long queue that spanned the streets of Somerset since they just opened a branch in Singapore. While the people were stuck in line, McD’s were being totally awesome in having promoters and witty sandwichboards.

Has the Adventure Crew gone fashionable like woah suddenly?

No. No we did not.

We were going off to another destination but passed by the immense queue. I’m not even sure why some uncles and aunties were queuing up when it didn’t look like what they’d want to buy. In the other side of town, or City Hall, there was also Comex, the IT fair.

We didn’t go to that one either.

Nonetheless, what we did queue up for was this…

The Borders sale at the other end of Singapore! It was at Expo hall 4b. Also, we went on the second day of the sale.

The hall was full of people sifting through stacks and the Adventure Crew went “Ahhhh, ahhh!” as we entered the hall and then making a break for it so that we could all search for our own books in the different sections.

No, the train station wasn’t in the expo hall. I took that picture of the Borders bag when we were out of there. Anyway you can see besides books they did bring in all the odd items that had been in stock at Wheelock. There were more than a few disembodied hands that were used as paper weights or something too.

I managed to get my fiction books since it was all sectioned in alphabetical order!

Now, what’s up with this sale? This is due to the closure of the Wheelock branch. After this, there’s only the Borders at Parkway Parade. We decided we should support the sale since it’s books and really. There had been so many events at the Borders at Wheelock including all the Harry Potter release parties that it is so sad that it’s closed down now.

So this is goodbye to Wheelock Borders in a way.

Even though the queue was long, circling around the perimeter of the hall, it was pretty fast! From what I learned of my friends that went on the first day, they had to queue for at least three hours!

There were empty boxes available for people who had a lot of books or items they wanted to buy. Past a plastic fence, there were still more boxes wrapped up with dates on them. From what I heard on the first day, there wasn’t a fence to separate people from those wrapped boxes. People climbed them like some tower and ripped them apart to get the books inside even if the main floor had books.

The first day was pretty chaotic.

I took only twenty five minutes to get to the cashier. From there, the ones that I handed over my goodies had taken to singing to me. I think they had quite a shift so yeah. My purchases were scanned and sung out and wooh, I bid them good bye and convened with the rest so that we could get out of there!

$137.85 for Avariel since she bought space stuff like planets, $70.17 for Raven and $52.30 for me!

Goodbye Wheelock Borders! There’s still the Parkway one…

For now.