Seoul-Family Trip (Part 1)

Back 2 Seoul - 19th~20th March 2011

As I have mentioned in my previous post, my trip to Seoul earlier is only a recce trip to familiarize myself with the geography, culture and economy of the city so that I would not be caught by surprise with a group of tourists whom were solely depending on me to know my stuffs and to ensure that they had a good time. The selection process is the most difficult when it comes to family trip as you have a dynamic mix of characters and preferences, what more this time around, I am bringing my housemates (PS, MM & WP) as a way to thank them for sticking with us through thick and thin.

WP is my sister and we have stayed together ever since I moved to Singapore. As the example set by my two brothers during their heydays in Singapore, I am convinced that although Singapore is small, if you don't stay together you will not see each other more than one time every month and perhaps not even once in a month! Thus, I have decided that its better for the two of us to stay together and share the rent. In the span of ten years, WP has shared rent with me and paid rent to me. She contributed to the house by cooking meals when I couldn't make it on time and currently supplying us with so much pastries that we are almost getting sick of another pastry... not there yet, but near.

Bali 3 Days 2 Nights Rejuvenation and Relaxation

Bali Rejuvenation

If you knew me or have read my blog for sometime, I am pretty sure (90% confidence level) that you will say "Bali again???" Well, what can I say? It is definitely the top choice in my list for a rejuvenating holiday away from the hectic Singapore lifestyle.

This time around, I took advantage of the promotion from the Pan Pacific Nirwana Bali Resort. This piece of property is previously managed by the Le Meridién Group but has since been taken over by Pan Pacific Group and is going through a major overhaul of the facilities and rooms. As such, they are offering their Villa at a bargain of USD220 per night! Some may say that striking the jackpot is a once in a lifetime event, well I would say to get such a low price for a Pan Pacific Villa is in itself a once in a lifetime event.

This trip will only span for a short 3D2N but due to our flight ticket, we have to make it 3D3N instead. Our flight reached around 2340 hour and due to the late arrival, we decided to just get a budget hotel to spend the night instead of wasting the one night in Pan Pac. This time round, I took the Singapore-Bali flight on my own and has booked a separate ticket for my wife as she is having an evening event that she has to attend to and could only take the later flight, so instead of taking AirAsia, she took Singapore Airlines. On my arrival, I was being greeted by a familiar face, Pak Made! He has always been of great service for car rental and IMO, he has one of the best rates in town! So if you need his service, you may visit the following, remember to quote me (Johnathan from Singapore) for better rate:

Seoul Korea in 3 Days (Day 3)

Day 3

Today marks the last day of my recce to Seoul and I have planned to take it slowly and enjoy Seoul one last time on this trip. So today is going to be a little all over the place i.e. impromptu. The only place that I have planned to visit is the last palace for the trip and that is Changgyeonggung but since today is Tuesday, it is closed! So please remember to avoid scheduling palace visits on Tuesday because most of them are closed for the week. You have been warned!

T-Money is used to pay for your public transportation in Seoul.Similar to EZ-Link card (Singapore), Octopus Card (Hong Kong)or Oyster card (London). This is the regular card and you canget more options at their 24-hour family mart E.g. Hello Kitty design.

Seoul Korea in 3 Days (Day 2)

It has been long since my last post and let me pick up what I have left wanting and also to pen it down before it eludes my memory.

After having our fill at Noryangjin Fish Market, the next destination is Changdeukgung (昌德宮) and as the same with all the palaces in Seoul, make special note that a good pair of walking shoes are a total MUST! Changdeukgung is second only to Gyeongbokgung in size and the need for a good pair of walking shoes are necessary here is due to the steepness of the trail in the garden and trust me, you wouldn’t want to bring your old folks here. You have been warned!

One a fair side, a walk in Changdeukgung is one to be remembered if you have plenty of time to kill. Oh, remember that the last tour is at 15:00hour and if you are late, you won’t be able to enter the garden at all as it is simply too big and the management has foresee people to either get lost in there or took forever to come out. Again, you have been warned! During the walking tour, the feeling is simple serene as you hear nothing from the city and I felt that I was there back in time. You see the giant magpies hopping around without a world’s care and the tranquillity on the surface of the pond (Well, its frozen, that’s why) just completes the picture of an unspoilt ancient civilisation. In fact, I could almost feel the concubines running and playing in this garden (Of course, its just my imagination). I know it sounded a little freakish but it sort of invoke this kind of feeling to me in a good way. Try it out and do it earlier in the day so that you have all the time to explore. Remember to NOT make any other plans following a visit to this palace for the day so that you will not be disappointed.

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)