From Lonely Planet 2010:

- Phuket high season's around Xmas, NY eve & CNY, so do book a room at least 3 weeks before during such periods.

- Check agoda.com for last-min deals & availability.

Useful websites:
Phuket.com
jamie-monk.com
bangkokpost.com or nationmultimedia.com

Read Alex Garland's The Beach.

Stock up on sunblock which is expensive in Phuket

Phuket finally!

Such is the mystique, allure and reputation of the place that I had made it my choice as retirement abode just based on the pictures in the glossy mags alone. But that was washed out by the tsunami of 2004, which I avoided thanks to the monsoon alert my geog teacher friend gave me.

8 yrs later I finally went there with my mum. On the way to the return flight to Singpore via Phuket Airport T2 (a temp terminal with better furnished interiors than the Indonesian airports I've been to), the friendly Mr Preecha from Holiday Republic told me many nuggets of life in Phuket, starting with information about the tsunami.

1) the Novotel Phuket resort was not affected (good to know after seeing signs for evacuation and cutesy looking map on the back of the door that seems more like a child's guide to exploring the resort).

2) the waves devastated patong, ko phi phi (flat land) and Khao Lak.At Patong, it reached 150m inland, and reached 20m high.

3) the patong stretch is entirely new... I am not sure if it has learnt its lesson though. Well I was not on the lookout for warning signs and alert systems. Even if there are, they would be obscured by the weaponry of assault on the senses posed by the glittery Thai assorted periphernalia of bikinis, silk flowy pants and seafood with seawater still giving the dead fishes a shiny glint off the afternoon sun. The endless rows of shops that run parallel to the traffic-jammed road, just 10m thereof away from the beach, could hardly prove to be solid arnament against the crashing waves.

4) that a BMW costs USD15k there, but most prefer Toyota and Nissan which have factories in Thailand. The former especially was sighted everywhile. Just look around you when you are trapped in one of the ubiquitous traffic jams (not just limited to Patong!) . Japanese cars are favoured as the have service centres here and spares are easier to obtain. Even a car tyre for European makes is difficult to get.





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Preparing for Macau trip

Forbes Travel Guide (National Library 915.12504)


For backpackers who want to plan their walking routes, the best of course is getting information from travellers who've been there, and get their maps.. If not, remember to get one strategically placed at the Macau airport on the way out. That should be a good indication of where the exit is. The airport is so small we missed the exit and almost got 'out' by queueing at another immigration counter!

Language Play - Punning

From Language Play by David Crystal:





A pun's the lowest form of wit;


it does not tax the brain a bit;


one merely takes a word that's plain


and picks one out that sounds the same.

7 Deadly Sins - Gluttony

Funny how even my Saggitarian mind still marvels at my capricious emotions... A whimsical trip to my Blackboard out of boredom from surfing Faceboooook profiles turned into intense anticipation as the announcement screamed out of the screen "Results ...now available". Those were not exact words of course since my brain had effectively blanked out everything else as I fumbled to get to the right site for my Semester 1 results...

And after the umpteenth try....tada...

Discourse Studies A-
Teaching Written Discourse A-
Corpora Linguistics B- !!!

The last was a God-send (I did stop in my tracks to wonder why I suddenly recognised a higher being up there when I hasn't been for the greater part of my existence, sans the desperate moments). After sacrificing the last subject, a technology-scourged one where I spent most of the lessons struggling to keep pace with the technology, for the other two, it was truly a Zen-like bliss to see I had successfully negotiated out of the pithole of getting a C - which probably was more proportional to the effort I had put in.....

(to be continued....)

Goh Keng Swee

With solemn demeanours and still more sober posture haunched over ceremonial swords, the guards kept the veil of sadness looming in the vast column of emptiness above Goh Keng Swee's casket. While waiting in lines of 5 or 6

What I want for my funeral (many years down the road)

This is nothing morbid, just triggered when I attended my uncle's funeral on Good Friday, and by one of those pesky MSN pop-ups writing about Jeanette Aw's views about her new show on funeral directors or whatever..

Anyway, this is what I want for mine (long live Shirley Tham!):

1) A Buddhist funeral.

I was impressed by how quietly dignified the Buddhist funeral is, as opposed to the Taoist ones I attended for my great/grandfathers/mothers'. Although they all died before I turned 12, my enduring and non-too-endearing impressions of the funerals were: NOISY! The cymbals and what-nots gave me a real headache, in addition to ear trauma.

I can only tolerate such loud noise for lion dance.

2) Lion dance (Southern lions)

Strange? But it's a very interesting aspect of Chinese culture, isn't it? And after being claimed by the Bataks in Sumatra and Dayaks in Sarawak, I would like to pronounce to the world once and for all that I'm 100% Chinese-Cantonese (as far as I know).

And the southern lions are especially cute - them with the expressive, flirtatious eyes. They'll be a feast for the eyes for bored visitors. At least I'm not asking for dragon dances - they would be really over-the-top.

3) Music

The prerequisite 'Nam mo o me tuo fo' is a must, of course, and I quite like the song, really. It's the definitive Buddhist chant and only one I know, actually. But I think playing it 24/7 ad nauseum will literally induce nausea, so I'd like it interspersed with
* Mozart's divertimentoes, Chopin's etudes, Tchaikovsky's less 'emo' pieces like Nutcracker suite, Liszt's one-and-only-hit-whose-title-I-can't-remember
* William So Yong Kang's sentimental hits, all the songs from David Tao's eponymous album (his first and best), Sandy Lam, Karen Mok and
... I'll add on this list...
(No Beethoven though - so loud and dramatic people will wonder if I'll rise from the coffin.)

4) Miscellaneous music

I thought the updated 'Nam o' chant played during my uncle's send-off was really pleasant with the bird songs incorporated before the repetitive chant began (btw, no funeral march for me, no wailing or calling my name, and 2 nights at the void deck is more than enough, thank you.) The remix is a welcome change from the traditional version. That reminds me - bird songs from my 'Singapore birds' CD will do well as a balm for grieving souls - from the elusive straw-headed bulbuls, ioras, the much-heard-but-unseen gerygones....

That's all for the time being for a morbid topic... let me scooter off to touch some wood....