Incoherent Thoughts

BT walk

Hello, folks! I went to Bukit Timah Nature Reserve today and did some steep slopes. I'm really bad at doing steep climbs because I easily lose my breath, and when this happens I have to stop. You can see how this is kind of bothersome if I were walking with a group. And this is why I would much rather walk steep climbs by myself so I don't hold anyone back. Walking with the Wandergruppe is great - I now know some of the areas in Singapore that are good for walking. I know where to go if I want to challenge myself and the places that are best if I want to walk and daydream. Did I ever mention that as a youngling I used to create love stories in my head while in the car with the fam headed for the province? My dad liked to play Kenny G music. If you're familiar with the Pinoy series Young Love, Sweet Love, then you know they liked to use Kenny G's music. They were particularly fond of the soundtrack from Dying Young. Whenever my dad put this on, I would immediately launch into la-la land... dreaming about actors like Romnick Sarmenta (good lord!) and weaving tales of a budding romance between him and me (can you say yuck?). There I go again, talking about something that isn't the least bit related to whatever I started talking about. *eyes roll* Anyway, I don't know how many calories I burned because I did not turn on the app on my phone. Here are some photos (these are also up on FB):

Harbourfront to Colbar

I ended up attending the hike yesterday, and I'm glad I did because the three people (who were bringing people with them) who RSVP'd bailed out 2 hours before the meeting time. Shameless. Balach, Heiko, and I were the ones that continued on, and if it weren't for Balach telling us that he'd checked the website for the meeting time and seen the cancellations, we would not have thought to check on it! No one sent Heiko a message or called him up that they wouldn't be going. Sigh. Now I understand how frustrating it is (for Heiko and Ann, two of the members who usually lead hikes) to do something for a group of people and have them bail at the last minute. The weather was just perfect - cloudy, grey, and a little chilly (for me) - and lots of trees to be seen. Pictures are up in Facebook.

Pulau Ubin

I was sort of excited to blog about the hike in Pulau Ubin today, and blog about the first time I was in Pulau Ubin. But my connection to our wireless network is iffy. I waited a darn long time for the connection to get to the point where my site would actually load. And now that the site's loaded (I have no idea how long it will take to publish this), I'm too tired and sleepy to blog. Effffffff. I intend for this to be a placeholder just to remind myself that I need to write. I have to write to commit this memory to the Intarwebs. I realize that creating drafts doesn't work for me. You won't believe how many drafts I have. I've probably forgotten what I wanted to write then so those drafts are just going to have to stay in limbo. Okay, let's begin. I showed you pics of my first time in Pulau Ubin, right? If I haven't, well, remind me. I know I showed you guys the video of the wild boar that kept coming closer - turns out it was me who kept going closer to the boar. Hahaha! I realized how idiotic I must have been taking that vid and saying the boar is coming closer when all the while it was me that kept walking closer to it. I must have been on drugs that day. Or it could have been the sun beating down my head, my neck, my arms... affecting my thinking. That day was super sunshiney. I remember walking along the boardwalk and marveling at the breeze and how calm and peaceful it made me feel to sit there and listen to the waves as they crashed against the rocks. Truth be told, I could have kept sitting there forever. But I was with someone who would have probably died of boredom if I sat there till forever. He would either die of boredom or just plain leave. Hahaha! Both prospects didn't sound good to me so I made us get up and continue walking. At least I think it was me who made us continue walking. This is starting to sound like a dream because I know in the past I would have chosen to be left alone than to continue walking in the hot, sweltering sun. Damn the sun. I swear it's my arch enemy. At one point during the walk, we chanced on a quarry. That, I have to say, was beautiful. It was like a lake with clear and still blue waters. Seeing as it was so hot, I considered chucking my clothes and heading straight for the water. Seriously. Never mind that there was a huge red sign saying we're not allowed to set foot in that area. It never happened, don't worry. No one lost their sense of sight because sanity returned and I did not strip. :-) Someday I might. And someday you might read about it here. Eeep. And someday I might lose what little readership I have here. I managed to get out of Pulau Ubin (it's a small island off northeastern Singapore, I think) without getting my skin burned off. I enjoyed the walk very much. Who knew I would even consider walking at noon?! I tell you, I was on drugs. So today I find myself in Pulau Ubin again. I wasn't sure what made me suggest Pulau Ubin. I'm not even sure why we were going to check out Celestial Resort. That's what we did. The fun started with someone having this very bright idea of getting off at Punggol MRT and taking a bus or cab from there. First let me say that the first time we went to Pulau Ubin, we took separate buses from our places to Changi Village, the meeting place. I'm not sure where Punggol is because I'm just lousy at geography, but I know that first time I was on a bus on the eastern part of town. We decided to meet in Little India today to have a breakfast of masala dhosai, which is always a treat for me. You know, it really surprises me to find myself eating Indian food. Filipinos who have never had real Indian food have absurd preconceptions about it. I remember getting into short discussions with my family about how it's spicy and how it makes you stink so bad. It was that kind of talk that contributed to my prejudice about Indian food. I seriously never thought I would eat it someday. The very idea then would turn my stomach. Okay, now where was I? Good gawd, I hate it when all these thoughts run in my head, wanting to be said. I keep going one way and then the other. What was I talking about? Oh yeah, from Little India we took the train to Punggol station because of someone's "very bright" idea. It turns out Punggol is in some godforsaken area of Singapore where cabs are endangered vehicles. I don't know how many minutes we wasted looking for cabs and hailing ones that would not acknowledge our existence. Never mind the interminably long wait for the bus, which we finally boarded to get to Changi Village. And so we reached Pulau Ubin sometime noon. Again. I wonder if I'll ever walk this area when it isn't so abominably hot. :-) Hey, it rained sometime in the afternoon, which was okay, but certainly made the flies come out after the downpour. Ugh. Mosquitoes love me and I hate them with all my heart. So... Celestial Resort isn't that far a walk from the jetty. It wasn't spectacular (sorry, no pics), but it's not bad considering the kind of place Pulau Ubin is. We had a late lunch of sambal kangkong and curry chicken. The curry chicken was dry, so unlike the curry chicken I had at Queensway Shopping Center last night - you know, the one I raved that was so good? Hahaha. I know, I must have been really hungry then. I still stand by my word though. I'll just make sure to have that kind of curry chicken when I'm extremely hungry so it will always taste good. Hey, when I say the curry chicken was dry, I didn't mean the chicken meat was dry. It means it wasn't soupy/saucey. It was pretty good. The sambal kangkong was a huge serving, which of course pleased me to no end. The more kangkong, the better, I say. I thought the food was good. I even said that if my favorite place in Kembangan, where I go to get sambal kangkong, ever closed, I would go all this way just to get my sambal kangkong fix. Hehe. Exagg, I know. The food was so good that I finished off the rice - all of it. That's significant because I have been cutting down on rice. We then made our way back to the jetty, but like the last time, we saw something nice - a hornbill! H says this bird is rarely seen anymore because there's not a lot of them left. H doesn't know why this is so. We actually saw hornbills twice, but the first time I really couldn't make it out. The second occasion was better because I could clearly see its shape and form. It's a beautiful bird. It looks cartoonish - seriously. It really did look like someone drew it out of thin air because its features seem exaggerated - to me, okay? I'm not a bird person so when I saw it clearly for the first time, what came to mind was, "Hey, this is something I would see in cartoons!" After the walk, I had planned on going to Mustafa to check out some backpacks that I could use for work. But I was too lazy to take the time to walk there when I was already on the train home. Besides, I felt too sticky and uncomfortable - I just wanted to go home. So here I am, typing away thinking this will be a draft and that I would continue writing tomorrow. I guess I wasn't that sleepy. I might as well publish this already and forget about adding anything. Maybe. Hahaha. I have this habit of going back to posts and editing or adding some other things I'd forgotten.

Upper Peirce Reservoir Park to Bukit Timah Nature Reserve

Today I made good on my mission to finish a four-hour hike from Upper Peirce Reservoir Park to Bukit Timah Nature Reserve. But before I continue to tell you about the hike/walk, I must say the way they spell Peirce is so weird. What looks more natural to me is 'i' before 'e' --- PIERCE. Peirce just looks too weird --- and so wrong. Anyway, I hope this is not the name of an actual person because if it were, I'd like to smack his parents. Or her, if this Peirce with the oddly spelled name is a woman. Moving on... I was sort of late meeting the group. Meeting time was at 8:15, leave by 8:30. The organizer of the walk, Ann, is German. And you know how Germans are... I really did cut it close though. I made it just in time although I would have liked to have been there early. I should have known that getting breakfast (McNasty) would end up in the bathroom for a quick #2. Haha. TMI, I know. Just grin and bear it because this is my story. It is my pleasantly surprised pleasure to tell you that I enjoyed the hike --- really muddy trails, crossing wide pools of water, and all. Anyone who knows me, and I mean really knows me, knows that I have this thing about feet. Okay, maybe it's not really relevant information in this situation because my thing about feet is only really important when it comes to being in bed and sleeping. I think I blogged about this before, I'll look up the link to the post. So, what no one probably knows is that I have this thing about shoes. And my feet in the shoes. While I dislike getting my feet wet, what I dislike even more is getting mud on my shoes! I would like to think I'm the type of person who knows how to take care of her shoes. I take care of my shoes quite well that they last me years --- even the cheapy ones, I'll have you know. In this hike, I really did a number on my shoes. My shoes are in such bad shape right now that I am not even going to attempt to clean it, I think. (Might change my mind about this.) Even before we got through half of the trail, my feet were soaked. They felt like they were prunes inside my shoes. I went through mud (it wasn't real muddy, but it was mud all the same), soaked my feet in a bit of water while crossing wide pools (of water), and once I almost landed on my rear while walking as it was too slippery because of the --- you guessed it --- mud. The first time I stepped on the bloody mud, there was no going back. There was no use complaining because most of the trail in Upper Peirce was bloody muddy. I just didn't care about my shoes anymore. I forged ahead and just enjoyed the walk. I loved the soft ground. In some parts of the trail, there were these sand-like things. I liked hearing the crunchy sound as I made my way through it. It felt like being on the beach with stupid running shoes on. Okay, a beach with sand that's a bit coarser than real sand. These things must have been something like ground pebbles. It was very nice to walk on them actually. I prefer slushy leaves and soft, muddy ground than a path with sharp, jagged rocks strewn all over it. We made it out of Upper Peirce fine. But by the time we got to the start of the walk in an area in Bukit Timah Nature Reserve, we were quite tired. Or at least I was. You know me, I tire very easily. It also didn't help that we encountered a lot of these stupid hardcore bikers. These guys go very fast sometimes that you have to be very alert so you can immediately jump to the side to avoid a head-on collision. Seriously, I don't know what kind of drugs these guys are on but they are just really out of their minds. The trail we followed (the biking trail) was strewn with branches --- not twigs, branches --- and some were just impassable by bike (to my mind) because the path was blocked with huge trunks, one on top of the other. But guess what, the idiots still go over it. We even encountered two cyclists on unicycles! Australians --- they're something else. First it's their weird version of soccer, and now it's unicycling on a non-plain path. At a time when it was pouring real hard. Un-freaking-believable. Hoooooookaaaaay, I'm going off track now. But I gotta tell you about this first. These two Aussies that were on unicycles were really crazy. They tried to do some foolish things on slippery, steep ground. One of the guys fell twice, the second fall was quite bad I would say. I felt real bad for him. He could have done some major, major damage to a very important part of his anatomy. Of course if he didn't care to have kids or disliked sex very much, I suppose it would have been okay. Hahaha! Well, the long and short of the Bukit Timah part was that we made it out. We were maybe halfway through the trail going to the Visitor's Center when it started pouring REALLY HARD. And I mean REALLY HARD.  We were soaked! My panties, my sports bra, my shirt, my shorts WERE SOAKED. It's a miracle my iPhone wasn't damaged as I had it in my front pocket. I also did something I never would have done were I not soaked to my boobies --- I peed in... okay it wasn't even behind a bush, it was behind Heiko, with him looking out for pervs. To my back were a bunch of plants, and to my left and right were nothing but open space and grass. People could just walk by or cycle by and see me peeing. Hahaha! But pee I did because I didn't think I could hold it in all the way to the Visitor's Center. And when you're really soaked to your balun-balunan (what is this in English?!), you don't really care anymore where you do your business. I think if I had to #2, I would have been able to do it. Yes - I really believe I would have been able to. :-P What I did not like about the Bukit Timah portion was the rock-strewn trail. It did a number on my knees and feet. My feet hurt so bad Heiko had to tell the rest of the group not to wait for us anymore because I was really going to have to take it slow. And I mean S.........L..............O................WWWWW. Yes, SLOW. We exited Bukit Timah through another road --- we didn't go to the Visitor's Center anymore. Then we took a freezing long-ass ride on the bus. Heiko, the poor thing, froze his ass off in the bus. He didn't change his shirt, which was soaked, not to mention his pants, equally soaked. I got out of my wet shirt (I stripped to my sports bra in the middle of the road) and changed into a dry one. Thank God I did because I don't know if I could have survived that bus ride to Little India. We thought we'd get Masala Dhosai at Little India but I really was in too much pain to walk the distance to this place we usually get it from. There was a place near the MRT station but he says the service there is incredibly slow. It was already about 2 in the afternoon when we got there and we decided we wouldn't be able to stand the long wait. We just went to Serangoon and had McNasty barjers and fries (ugh, twice in a day McNasty for me). It was a wonderful day that started great and ended even better --- even if I am in a little bit of pain right now. I've probably been sitting here a good 30 minutes typing this entry. You can bet that when I get off my ass to get my laundry from the drier, I'm going to be hobbling worse than a lola (grandma) with arthritis. My muscles have frozen in place and they won't like it if I unfreeze them. :-) For photos, please check my Facebook. I'll be putting them up there.

Bukit Brown to Tawandang German Brewery

On October 2, we (me with a couple of expats) walked from Bukit Brown to the Tawandang German Brewery in Dempsey Hill, passing through the Singapore Botanical Garden and the rainforest within. I put up the pictures in Facebook so I'm sure some of you might have seen the album. I really enjoyed this walk and got a chance to meet the other members of the walking group. The first time I joined there were only 5 of us who hiked/walked. This time we were about 13 people. There were several Singaporeans,  a couple of Germans, a French girl, an Indian (Saj), and me. I like the group because it's so easy to hang out with them. I don't feel like I have to be entertaining or engaging. There's an easy camaraderie among us and it's just really nice. We ended up at the Tawandang German Brewery and had a light dinner and a few drinks. I finally got my first taste of the mojito. I loved it! Next time I'll always order a mojito if the establishment offers it. I believe next weekend, October 16, the group will be walking through Mac Ritchie Reservoir. Heiko's got it all planned. After the walk we'll try out nasi lemak (a local dish)  at a food center along Adam Road.

1946

It's the botanic gardens this afternoon for me and the wandergruppe. :-D We'll end the hike at Tawandang German Brewery at Dempsey Hill. Should I try beer? Hmm, we'll see.

Mt. Faber Park

On Tuesday late afternoon, Heiko took me through the Southern Ridges of Singapore. We walked for 3 hours. We started at the trail quite near to HarbourFront. We went through Mt. Faber Park and talked about lots of stuff while walking. I have to say that this was the easiest walk I've been on. The one I did two Saturdays ago was the worst. Haha. We encountered a bunch of people who were jogging. I also saw an uncle (they call old men uncles) walking faster than me and it really made me feel bad. I am resolving to straighten myself out so uncles don't whizz past me. I took some pictures of some sites during our walk. The quality isn't so good as I had to adjust them manually because it came out so dark. I took the pics with the light in front of me. This view was when we'd reached the top --- the first part of the hike and the only difficult one (for me). I easily run out of breath, which means I'm obviously out of shape. I had to make two stops to catch my breath even when it was only a short climb. Tsk tsk. I think Heiko said this was Chinatown. It sort of reminds me of Hong Kong, just because everything seems so close together and there's a LOT of buildings. Then we reached the bridge that connects the start of the trail to... I don't know where. Haha. Sorry. I thought the Henderson Waves looked pretty cool. Not sure why they were made like that, if they had any purpose. I took a photo of the description though so just read. :-P After going through maybe 75% of the Southern Ridges, we ended up walking (and taking a short bus ride) to Holland Village where we got drinks to cap off the jaunt --- I'd really rather call it the beginning of the campaign to get Jen active but it's such a mouthful. On Friday, since I have no work, Heiko and I are going to Pulau Ubin, an island off the northeastern part of Singapore, to cycle. It's going to be a whole day affair. I have to buy a hat tomorrow. I hope it doesn't rain and that it isn't too hot. It's going to be a pain this time because we have to bring our own food. He told me they don't have establishments on the island that sell food or drinks.

Activities this week

Oh my goodness. I ate so much roast pork today. I had it for late lunch and then again for dinner. Ugh. I'm so fattied up! There's no soda in the house so I'm making do with decaf coffee. The oiliness is making me dizzy. Hehe. This is what I get for being such a piggy. I completed the last requirement of the new workplace and this is the pre-employment checkup. I'm sure there's nothing wrong with me so I should be good to go. Just have to wait for them to tell me when I should go to MOM to collect my employment pass. Tomorrow I'll be showing up at work for about an hour or two and then I'm meeting Heiko at 4:30 at Harbourfront. We're walking somewhere thereabouts. I hope it doesn't rain around the time we go walking coz it would suck! I also plan to meet with him again on Thursday and Friday for another walking spree. Then on Saturday the Wandergruppe (read: Hiking Group) is taking a late afternoon/early evening walk near the Singapore Botanical Garden. The walk will end somewhere near a German brewery in Dempsey Hill. I'm not sure I'll be joining them for after-walk drinks because I promised my friend I'd go swimming with her again.  Heiko is the German guy I'm crushing on. Yes, he's married. So what?! So that's about it this week for me. Not sure what else is going to happen. Oh. We're having our exit interviews on Thursday so I'm going to turn up at work for that.

1900

I still plan to write about the hike. Goodness knows I'm getting hoarse recounting the details to some friends. I'm just too lazy right now because I know I'll be "talking" my hands off. It was a hilarious and exhausting experience. I'd do it again!

I survived to pollute the interwebs another day

So this is where I went today.

It doesn't cover the first part because I forgot to turn on Runkeeper. It was only when I took off a different path because I just didn't have the energy to make the steep climb that I managed to turn it on. I was left on my own then and liked it because it gave me the chance to catch my breath. I really thought I was going to collapse! My breaths were coming in short, sharp gasps as I tried to keep enough oxygen in my body. Tell you more about it later. Right now I just want to relax, eat something (I had popiah and teh peng to tide me over on the hour-long ride home), and when I've rested a bit I will take a shower and go out and watch a movie.