Seoul Korea Day 2

Seoul, South Korea
Day 2 (27th November 2010)

Today's itinerary is one that I am so looking forward to for the entire trip as we are heading to Namdaemun, Myeong Dong and Noryangjin. Many of you have heard of the former two places as it is famous for flea marketing and the younger & modern shopping street. You may be thinking, what is Noryangjin and might be hitting the Google bar to see what it is. Just to give you a head up, it is a wet market in Seoul whereby you will definitely love if you cook &/or love seafood but may not like it so much otherwise.

How to Get There

You can take the subway line 9 or line 1 and stop at Noryangjin station. If you are taking line 9, once you've reached, look for the exit towards line 1 and once out of the station, look for a flyover. You will see a flight of stairs up to Line 1 subway station. Take the flight of stairs and don't stop at the station at the top, there is another flight of stairs up. Keep going up and you will see this looooong walkway. Take the walkway and walk all the way to the other end whereby you will see a car park and you will be greeted by, depending on each individual, a whiff or an overwhelming fish smell. At the car park, look for an exit and take the staircase to go down to Noryangjin wet market!

[Tips: If all else fail, ask someone for the location of Noryangjin su san shi jang]

Seoul Korea in 3 Days (Day 1)

Seoul, South Korea
Day 1 (25 - 26 November 2010)

It has been months ever since I last blogged a proper entry and I suppose it is about time otherwise I will lost track of all the events that has happened for the past few months. I last left off in September and one of the things that I would like to share is about my virgin voyage to Seoul, South Korea. The reason for the trip is simply to recce Seoul prior to the annual trip with my tenants and family. Autumn is about to end during that period but thank God we managed to savor what's left of it and yet, it is still a beauty to behold.

We stayed in Renaissance Hotel located in between Seoul Leung and Yeoksam MRT. It is not exactly the most convenient place and in fact, it is quite far from most of the main attractions but heck, most of the big names are too E.g. Ritz Carlton, JW Marriott and what not.

Our room in Renaissance Hotel. Comfortable enough and considering
that you'll not be staying in it for most of the days, its good.

Its been a long time..

What Happened?

These 3 months has been truly a hectic period for me. From selling to buying of my house, renovation, buying of new fittings and furniture, year end, Christmas & new year, church musical cantata, financial planning, adjusting to new working environment, CNY.. the list just goes on and on I barely had time to even breathe!

For those that are concerned, I am OK and still kicking but be busy doing up my new place and preparing for CNY as well as house-warming. There are lots of postings that are due but am not able to post it as I've yet to have time to sit down and arrange my thoughts. Some of those exciting posts that I'm so looking forward to share with you are my Seoul Korea trip, Grace Baptist Ministries' musical cantata and my house renovation.

As teasers, here are some of the photos for the posts that are due:

Korea would not be Korea without the Kimchi!
I've had so much kimchi that I breathed kimchi!

Alex ~♥~Rachel Wedding

18th Sept 2010

Alex and Rachel are a lovely couple that I got to know through my wife for quite sometime already. It is truly an honor to me that they would invite me to be their secondary photographer and not wanting to miss out the opportunity to shoot wedding event photos, I agreed. The problem is I have returned my brother in law's dSLR and now have nothing to shoot with. Thank God I could rent the gear from Rent-A-Camera. I got a Nikon D300 and Nikkor 35mm 1.8/f lens from them and couple it with a Nikkor 28-80mm 3.5-5.6/f lens (Left behind by my late brother) for the job. I know its not the best of lens but well, just have to make do with what I limited stuff I have. Although I do regret that I am not able to do a better job and wished that l knew more about wedding photography, it is with great pleasure to be able to be a part of Alex & Rachel's wedding team. As a result, I gained more experience and hopefully, would do a better job down the road.

Hope you enjoy the photos as much as me taking them. 

No Photos

Its been long since I posted any photos in here and neither are there anything interesting enough to be blogged about or should I say, nothing interesting to be blogged without a photo so to say. Ever since I returned the D40 to my brother in law, I have not taken much photos except with my Samsung Omnia phone which is really not that impressive although I do agree that its the photographer's skills that matter to a certain degree.

I have been looking around for a budget dSLR ever since and have contemplated the D90. I have checked online and friends in Hong Kong on the price of a D90 complete with the 18-105mm lens and surprisingly they are much much cheaper compared to Singapore. To add salt to injury, one of my friend has a contact who have ventured into the digital camera business and has been making a bomb since, which also allows him to "retire" from doing anything constructive to the society (Sorry) so can you imagine the kind of filthy margin they made?

Anyway, I've read that Nikon is launching a new beginners dSLR D3100 complete with the stuffs that I wanted in a D90 with extra stuffs thrown in E.g. auto-focus video mode, now that is sweet! The price for online camera stores like Adorama and Amazon are around US$699 which works out to be approx S$945 (US$ is at a low of US$1 = S$1.34 now). For more info on the D3100, you may wanna check out Ken Rockwell's website for more info. Fingers crossed, hope I'll be able to get hold of it before new year.

Till then, I guess the posts will be pretty boring unless I squeeze some creative juice into my writings. God bless!

Various uses of household products

Its amazing what our everyday household products could do, which are not only cheap and efficient but also environmentally friendly but yet many of us may or may not know of. Recently while browsing on Yahoo!'s news homepage, I read about the many uses of salt and am very impressed by such a humble ingredient that I so often taken for granted. The blog disclaimed that the infos are sourced from the Salt Institute and some from his personal experience and I personally find it a good and beneficial read. A brief surprising use for salt are as follow and for a full range use, please refer to the SALT INSTITUTE:

Washing mouth - Mix equal parts of salt and baking soda as a mouth wash that sweetens the breath (I'm doing this now. Hopefully it helps with the breath)
Peeling eggs - Boiling eggs in salted water will make eggs peel easily. (As I made egg mayo sandwiches very often, I will be doing this in future)
Poaching eggs - Poaching eggs over salted water helps set the egg whites. (Has been doing it without realising so)

Business trip to Jakarta

Its been long since I last posted anything work-related since there's nothing interesting to post about work anyway, aye? This time is slightly different though as something uncommon happened during the flight from Singapore to Jakarta and I will show you why...


Not sure what it is? Notice those dangling thingy?

A case of mistaken identity or Sabotage?

Just to keep those of you who are reading this blog updated, I am selling my HDB housing at Serangoon North and will be moving to Potong Pasir comes November 2010 (Just in time for a pre-Christmas house warming). Truly excited about this new place as it is nearer to the MRT (800m), bigger and comes complete with full marble flooring. The best thing about this new unit however, is that I will be able to have a bigger master-bedroom with attached study room, a walk-in wardrobe and twin sharing basin.

Well, to stay relevant to the topic, my front gate was splashed with black paint on Sunday morning. Yes... paint splashed by Loan Sharks (LS) or what the locals here call Ah Long. Why am I questioning whether it being a case of mistaken identity or sabotage? The circumstantial evidence gave me the reason to be suspicious. To provide all of you some information that I have gathered via a CSI investigation, please see the info below:

Hong Kong Revisited: A Gastronomic Vacation

22nd - 26th May 2010

Hong Kong. Whenever that name comes to my mind it will always reminds me of their reputation as the Hollywood of Asia, the food and more importantly for the fairer sex, shopping! We managed to purchase a 2-for-1 return flight on JetStar from Singapore to Hong Kong for a bargain of S$350 net and a couple of friends P and C is joining us for the trip. My goal and the goal of the ladies are clear and so I have to compromise a little, besides, one couldn't eat 24 hours running, right?

In order to make it more pleasurable to read, I will blog instead of what I have done rather than a day to day journal in this posting. Let's start with accommodation first. Throughout the 5D4N trip, my wife and I have stayed in 3 hotels... the reason being, we couldn't get a room for all 4 nights in the Marriott Hotel in Admiralty. Since we only have 2 nights in Marriott for night 2 and 3, we put up in Wesley Hotel in Wancai, which is within 3 minutes walk away from the Marriott Hotel itself on night 1 and the Royal Pacific Hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui on night 4. Needless to say, the Marriott is the best and I feel so upset that we couldn't get all 4 nights. Wesley Hotel is pretty clean and convenient if you don't mind walking a little to take the MTR in either Admiralty or Wancai. The food around the hotel is pretty good and like most other hotels in Hong Kong Island, the room is small but at a rate of HK$600 per night, I guess I wouldn't complain much. The Royal Pacific Hotel is average although the rates they charge is slightly higher than the other hotels at HK$765 per night for a Premier room. Disappointed with the room in the Royal Pacific because the furnishing are old and the bed, not comfortable at all and if you are making your decision based on the hotel website, do not be deceived! The only thing good about this hotel is its location which is situated near to the Kowloon Park.

Gem Island for 3 Days 2 Nights

28-30^th May 2010

I am back again to Gem Island or Gemia Island, which is situated in the East Coast of Peninsular Malaysia’s Dungun town in the state of Terengganu and if you have read my posting on my first visit to this island in September 2009, you will have most of the details to this island.

The difference between my first trip to this island and the current one is that this time round, we will be heading there on the Malaysian school holiday period, which means crowd. The reason I am heading back to this place is due to 2 reasons. Firstly, to organize a long overdue island trip for my church pastor in Singapore, which eventually became an 18 people group. Secondly, due to the heavy traffic during this school holiday period, all other resorts in other islands are either fully booked or does not have the capacity to house 18 of us. Initially, I was planning to head to Lang Tengah Island where I got married in but as mentioned, due to heavy traffic we have to consider other options. Don’t get me wrong by having the impression that just because we could get an 18 pax group in Gem Island while the others are fully booked means that Gem Island is a crappy place/resort and is not a destination of choice. While your impression might be true in some situations, Gem Island fortunately lives up to its name… Gem and gems are by no means cheap and crappy.