jermrocktheboat: 02/01/2010

LET THE GAMES BEGIN!

WE, THE TIGER BABIES OF 1986,
pledge ourselves as one HUAT people,
regardless of ban luck, mahjong or texas,
to build ban ban, 13 wonders and pockets aces,
based on our godlike fingers,
so as to achieve happiness, prosperity and
progress for our wallets.

(Lim, Sarah H Y 2010)

DAY 1 @ 47 JALAN SIMPANG BEDOK

Ok just realised I like to publicise my house a lot eh? Even single thing is 47 Jalan Simpang Bedok. One day, I will be robbed of all my possessions very badly.

Everyone came over to my humble abode!

Wasted no time and we turned my place into a casino!

Cousins galore.

My cousin Reuben is going to London for studies this May and he's gonna get season tickets to Newcastle 2010/2011 season. JEALOUS X 1000 LAH. Wah seriously, on my deathbed I'll probably be the only Newcastle fan yet to visit St. James park.

Day 1 of the tiger year and it's nothing but HUAT HUAT HUAT. If not, how can you explain how I effortlessly arranged this?

And it came on the very last round, bei feng bei. And self picked! That was easily $60 in the bag - and I was already the big winner by then. A grand total of $130 on day 1 mahjong! HUAT AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

As Sarah said, JERMAINE IS A LEGEND. Don't play play ok.

DAY 2 @ 47 JALAN SIMPANG BEDOK

Did I mention before that I have this uncanny habit of advertising my address? Ok this has to stop!

Buddy gang outing! It was a complete games night!

First game - TABOO

Of course, no money was involved. Good ol' Taboo and to celebrate Chinese New Year, it was Taboo, The Singapore version!

Second game - TEXAS

Again, Lady Luck decides to shine on me. No win and no lose here for me despite betting recklessly almost every round, somehow I survived!

Third game - BAN LUCK

A $6 deficit here and it was the usual Sarah/Furong pairing as bankers. I can never become a banker! Way too nervy for me!

Fourth game - MAHJONG

As with Texas, somehow I just can't seem to lose on that day. Despite throwing almost all the winning tiles, I still ended up breaking even. So all in all I didn't lose at mahjong this year and I can vouch that it's a first!

All of us!

Electric blue is the theme for this year!

Spot the odd one out!

From boys...

to men!

SCANDALOUS.

DAY 3 @ VIVOCITY

Movie + dinner with F4 and farewell for Hannah and Tong.

Budak Pantai madness!

My first time listening to the band and I have to admit they are seriosuly infectious! Very creative songs in both English and Chinese!

DAY 6 @ PIT STOP CAFE

Our zoukers CNY gathering and it was non-stop games at Pit Stop!

We are the true experts in Taboo. Every word has an association with a song! So we'll just mumble some song lyrics and ta da! We have the word! Not bad not bad. We finished the entire game in an hour!

Some movies during CNY! There's no Jack Neo movie this year eh. Everyone would have bet their house that Jack Neo would make a movie about CNY and Valentine's Day. Thankfully, he didn't. Save us the trauma.

VALENTINE'S DAY

The most anticipated movie of the year. It was a very hugely publicised movie in the US with so many stars, but sadly, I think this is by far one of the worst movies I have watched. Extremely cliche, way too much talking, and no love. FAIL.

too-many-broken-hearts-o-meter: 0/5

THE BLIND SIDE

Another hot movie back in the States with Sandra Bullock scooping many awards, this one doesn't disappoint, although I did find Invictus much better with their similar storylines.

touchdown-o-meter: 4/5

14 BLADES

Way too many Chinese flooding the theatres this CNY and I caught this one, which turned out to be pretty good. One of the better Chinese films I have seen, simple and engaging. That's all I need. Although Qi Yi Wu should seriously quit acting. He can't act with those gigantic eyes of his that never blink. I shall buy him a Blink 182 CD.

bus-fourteen-o-meter: 4/5

PART 2 OF BUDDIES GATHERING TO BE UP SOON.

PS - Back to work after 3 weeks of leave! And my first stop is to Melbourne to take my annual refresher test! Which means I have to spend my whole Monday mugging away! Really don't think I can remember much from my days in training. And so far, nothing really dramatic from my flying to experience anything. No decompression, no fire, no emergency landing, no evacuation - yes my theme song is I Should Be So Lucky. Oh well let's hope I pass with flying colours, really need to get this out of the way!

PS - Gosh I just realised owning a car would be so freaking expensive. With my aunty out of town, I had the car for 6 days and it's almost $100 just for petrol and cash card. But plans to buy a GPS is now shelved because the iPhone's GPS is way too awesome! Simple, easy-to-use navigation and brings me from place to place. Although it's kinda dangerous holding your phone in one hand to drive and look at the map. I need a full-time vehicle commander!

HAPPY YEAR OF THE TIGER.

To all my beloved 1986 bitches, this is our year! Let's party like a rock star, work hard, play hard like a tiger (but don't play like Tiger Woods)

So it's been a very crazy 45 days since the dawn of 2010. I've since set foot on 9 different cities in the space of 1 1/2 months and trust me, it isn't entirely much of a celebration. My whole body clock is so screwed up, I don't think I can really differentiate between night and day. My body's just screaming and crying STOP JERMAINE! WHERE AM I NOW AND WHAT TIME IS IT! I'M BLOODY CONFUSED! Haha well body, just suck it and shut up! You only have one job for me this week and that's to give me a set of eyes that can see through cards and mahjong tiles!

Alright so here's the low down on my US tour! There's hell lot of photos in here so pardon me while I let the pictures come alive and dance right through your heart.

SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH

After a gruelling 24 hour journey (Singapore-Narita-Chicago-Salt Lake City), I finally set foot in Utah! My first time in this lovely city and it was a blast spending one week up in the freezing resort!

Met my aunts and uncle there and we all holed up in this 3 room apartment!

When's there snow, you obviously make use of such opportunities to go skiing. It's my second time after Korea 2002 with the volleyball team but I couldn't remember much from those days, so it was pretty exciting to do it again!

The only down side? It's an extremely expensive sport, and it's not as easy as it seems.

The first of two mountains - Deer Valley

After skiing down every slope, we had to take the ski lift back up the mountain and it was the most amazing and gorgeous view you could ever imagine!

With my aunt, who's an intermediate skiier! She can take on the blue zones effortlessly while I can barely complete the green zones!

The weather, needless to say, was blistering cold. It was so cold that I had to buy extra jackets from Walmart. The gloves that Damian bought for me from St James Park could only keep me warm till sub-zero temperatures, so those were pretty useless. I had frost bites just from holding the skis. All in all, it was so cold that even a snowman would freeze to death.

The legendary Temple of the Mormons in Utah!

Utah was the venue for the 2002 Winter Olympics and we took a trip up to the site!

The teams were also training for the ongoing 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver and we managed to catch some of them in action! Really exciting stuff!

US team

And the French team. I hope they are not planning to cheat.

Some of the training sites of the ski sledge.

Look at how steep the slope is! It's almost 90 degrees! And yet, the US team trains children as young as 10 to train on such slopes! Amazing! There's no way I would go down that route. I will slide down and fly from Utah all the way to China.

Skiing games!

What's snow without a snowball fight?

Some of the food that we ate!

Hawaiian barbeque, which was not as great as the authentic one in Hawaii.

Good ol' American fare

Gigantic onion rings!

BBQ wings!

'

Fried tomatoes!

And who can forget, MY BEST FRIEND.

Someone, anyone, bring it to Singapore and close down all the other tasteless donut shops!

Hearty breakfast!

The Sundance Film Festival was also underway!

Managed to attend one of the many hundreds of screening and it was a film starring Ben Affleck called Company Men. Apparently it earned rave reviews during the festival but personally, I didn't enjoy it. (What's new right? I hate movies that everyone enjoys) If it's any consolation, my aunt didn't like it too. Well when it finally hit the screens, you judge for yourself.

LAS VEGAS

One hour from Utah was the city that really never sleeps, Las Vegas! From here on it was only my brother and myself for the next one week.

First stop was Rainforest Cafe.

There's actually a Rainforest Cafe that opened in Liang Court way back in the year 2000 but it closed down. I really like this restaurant a lot! It's set in a rainforest and when you're eating, the whole restaurant suddenly turns dark and it starts to 'rain' with all the animals growling! Exciting stuff!

And not to mention, awesome food!

The first of three shows that I caught over there - Cirque Du Soliel's Zumanity!

Wasn't the show that I wanted to see. There's another Cirque Du Soliel about martial arts but that was sold out, so had to settle for this. Zumanity explores the very sensual side of the circus and it was extremely well done! Enjoyed myself thoroughly!

Here's the famous Las Vegas strip.

The Venetian

Treasure Island

Fountains of Bellagio

This was the highlight of my entire trip - watching One Republic perform live! Saw a huge banner of them holding a mini concert in Arias Hotel and I didn't budge.

Was pretty packed inside and their performance area was quite small so these were the best pictures.

Here's the thing though - it was a damm good concert but the night was marred by the organisers, which left me very pissed. There you are, advertising the concert at 10.30pm at the club and after that, all patrons can party the night away. I arrived at 10pm and One Republic only performed at... 2am in the morning.

That's four hours, alone in the packed club, waiting for the superstars to come out. (My younger brother couldn't come as the minimum age was 21) That's not all - After a four hour wait, our dearest One Republic came out and performed a paltry THREE songs (Apologise, Crazy, Tyrant) and left.

In between the long wait which seemed like eternity, I asked three different bouncers what time the concert would start and no one would budge. I don't get it! Are they afraid that people would just pay to watch the concert and not club after that? That's why you advertised a 10.30pm concert to hole everyone up in there till you finally feel like it's worth it to bring them up? I think that's atrocious marketing. I'm never ever going to such events in the US anymore. Bloody scam.

Next day was off to Madame Tussads wax museum! I'm sure most of you would have been to either the one in Hong Kong, London, or even here in Singapore when it was staged briefly.

See if you can identify who's who!

Year of the tiger with tiger.

If you haven't already heard, Simon will be leaving American Idol.

Do you recognise a certain person called...erm...Madonna?

Last stop is The Mandalay Bay for The Lion King!

You'd probably have seen the show and cringe at John Elton's theme song, but couldn't remember much of it as it was a long time ago. Still, it was an excellent play, 2.5 hours long so very much worth every cent.

(Except for the fact that I find it very weird seeing people dressed with animal heads over their own). Then again, it's animals, right?)

NEW YORK

Alright this is gonna sound very surprising and I didn't expect myself to say this too.

I HATE NEW YORK.

Like my Dad warned me, New York is a gangster city and I have to say, even that was an understatement. The people there are so unfriendly and rude as compared to most other cities.

Right from the moment I stepped into the departure, I approached a customer service counter to find a shuttle and the girl there was so ignorant! After finally getting a shuttle, the driver refused to help me with my luggage. Well, I certainly didn't tip him and he gave me THAT look. Too bad brudder!

Back at the hotel, the receptionist said my room wasn't ready and I'll have to come back later, not even giving me a specific time. Right, so I have to freeze out there in the snow until I have a gut feeling when my room will be ready?

Anyway, just when I deposited my bag and was ready to head out with a map, he finally relented and gave me my room. WHAT?! In the space of 5 minutes, no one checked out and you told me there's no room and now a room magically appears? Wasting my bloody time.

The last day when we planned to go to the factory outlets, it was snowing so the ticket counter salesperson had to check for buses. Finally, she said we can't go and I asked why. Then she became bloody sarcastic and said "You can go if you want to, but we have no buses to bring you back. If you want to go, you must book a hotel and stay there. You can book the Holiday Inn there and stay there." Felt like slapping her sia! I'm just asking why we can't go and you give me all these grandmother story for what? Just say it's snowing, period! Wanna be so sarcastic for what? Madness!

Getting around is another big problem. The subway system is so complicated, I think even the Narita one in Japanese is easier to read. Here, the system stops at almost every street and the map connects the whole New York in this complex interchange system. I boarded the wrong train on so many occassions. The stations don't indicate where the future stations are, just that the train is travelling uptown or downtown. Righttttt. So it's my first time in New York and I'm supposed to know what's uptown and downtown. Nice. I think even Harry Potter would get lost looking for platform 3 3/4.

This whole city is also money minded about tipping. I refused to tip on many occassions because the service is so damm bad! While eating at Hard Rock, we got the bill with the server writing her big name at the top of the check and a thank you note at the bottom for dining there. Why so desperate for a tip that you have to be so fake? If I'm happy with your service, I will tip. You don't have to write me messages on my check! It's extremely stupid! Suffice to say, I gave a small tip.

On the last day, when the airport was closed due to snow and many flights were cancelled, I asked the hotel to check my flight and they said they don't provide such services. I had to use their crappy and slow wi-fi to twitter, facebook and msn my aunt in Kentucky, Iz in Canberra and James in Singapore to triple check my flight details. (Thank you guys!) Even after calling JFK airport, I was put to a voice operator which instructed me to contact my airline directly for flight status. OH, LIKE I DON'T ALREADY KNOW THAT? THANK YOU JFK FOR INSULTING MY INTELLIGENCE. I FEEL EXTREMELY STUPID THAT A FREQUENT TRAVLLER WOULD NOT CONTACT HIS AIRLINE FIRST. THANKS.

Anyway, a whole host of other bad experiences and I'm quite adament I won't be going back to New York too soon.

This is the September 11 site.