Universal Studios Singapore

Last weekend, Ming dragged us all over to Resort's World Sentosa. We were going all going to visit the newly opened Universal Studios Singapore. Ming was really generous, he put us all up at Capella which was such a great resort but I'll save that for another entry.

Let me show you my day at Universal Studios in pictures.

1) This is Ming and I at Festive Hotel. One of the hotels at the integrated resort.

Ming was damn kiasu. He wanted to go for Universal Studios the minute it opened so he got us all to meet there at 9AM. Pierre though was late. His GPS seemed like it was taking the day off as well and he ended up being guided to somewhere in Woodlands rather than Sentosa.

About an hour later though, Mr and Mrs Pierre Pang and Mr and Mrs Kah Seong arrived safely at Sentosa.

2) Princess and I at the entrance of Universal Studios.

The big globe kinda reminds me of Disney Sea.

It's actually not my first time at Universal Studios. It's my 3rd. I've been to the one in the USA and the one in Japan once before on family trips. Still... I was excited.

3) Princess and Mrs Bossming at what I keep calling the "Main Street USA" of Universal Studios.

4) Pierre, Ming and me starting our day at Universal Studios.

5) Oh and did I mention Lyndi and Kah Seong who came along too.

We saw this big pop corn truck and thought it was a prop. Didn't realize that you could actually really buy popcorn off it until we got much nearer to it. And just because of that... someone insisted that they take a picture in front of it.

6) We ate breakfast at this really 60s looking cafe.

It ain't a 60s looking cafe without a jukebox!

So while the rest of the group who often acted grown up and all sat down and had breakfast. Princess and I went about camwhoring.

With the jukebox, among other things.

7) After dinner we saw this group of dancers in colourful shirts dancing outside to all kinds of music.

8) Watched it for a while then we went to watch a musical performance called "Monster Rock".

It was a really fun performance! You could tell that all the actors and actresses were all from overseas but they did whatever they could to localize their performance. At one point they broke out singing "Gei wo yi ge wen" and "Nobody nobody but you *clap* *clap*". That is of course, amongst the other rock songs they sang like It's My Life and all.

9) Walked along the streets and saw yet another performance.

This one a breakdancing one. My sister would've loved it. Have I ever mentioned that my sister is a great street dancer. Maybe I'll share her videos up here one day (with her permission).

10) I love rollercoasters.... and I was really looking forward to this one but just a few days before my trip I was disappointed to hear that the police shut down the ride temporarily for safety reasons.

So when I was there at Universal Studios, the ride was closed.

11) Ming however was happy.

Ming is a really tough soldier kind of guy but not a rollercoaster kind of person. He doesn't enjoy it and I understand it. I used to be like that. I used to think... why go through all that shit just to scare yourself?

That was of course until I learned to scream and shout when I'm on a rollercoaster. Once you do that, it's like you let everything lose and it suddenly becomes... actually fun.

So now I love rollercoasters. The faster the better. I've been on all sorts now.

Back to Ming, his favourite ride at Disneyland is the 'tea cup ride'. You know the one where you sit in a tea cup and you can turn a big dial in the middle of the tea cup to spin it round and round?

Well at Universal Studios, their version of the tea-cup ride is this...

something they call the Accelerator.

Princess and I hopped into one 'cup' ourselves while Ming, Kah Seong and the rest went into their own cups.

This is Princess posing and pretending to look as if she's scared of the ride.

And this is Princess genuinely scared of the ride.

She was getting dizzy and was afraid that she might throw up... on me.

12) The next ride we went for was the Mummy ride.

Pierre and the rest had invested a lot of their earlier time telling Ming that it was a fun ride. Not scary at all. Not much of a rollercoaster. So we managed to trick Ming to go for it with us.

It wasn't easy to be honest. While queuing up for the ride there were many warnings signs that said "Warning, Mummy ride (or whatever it was called) is a ride that involves sharp turns, drops and etc etc...".

Each time we passed one of those signs, one of us took our queue to distract Ming from looking at it.

When Ming finally realized, he was already strapped into his seat.

The next 5 minutes was really funny for us... but not funny for Ming.

I ended up buying the picture that they took of all of us on the rollercoaster because it was so funny. Ming's reaction (along with everyone else's) was hilarious.

But Ming banned me from posting that picture online. So I shan't... for fear of losing my business partner.

13) We went to watch Waterworld after that.

This is again my 3rd time watching Waterworld. I don't understand why the real movie was a box office flop though. I read all these bad reviews about it online but I remember growing up watching the movie and actually really liking it.

It was also, one of the most expensive movies ever made.

Me, Ming and Mrs Bossming waiting for the show to start.

14) Here's Princess and I at Far Far Away Land.

Princess said she likes this picture very much.

15) Me and the Friar !

16) The ladies shopping for Universal Studios merchandise.

We ended up buying a lot of these little stuffed Gingerbread Men. You know the one in Shrek with the high-pitched voice.

I didn't buy the little stuffed Gingerbread Men but what I did end up buying was this pillow.

For the office. Hehehe.. nais leh!

17) Saw the penguins from Madagascar as well. We wanted to take a picture with them but there were too many people queuing up for that same opportunity.

So we only managed to get a picture of their backs.

18) This is us at the Jurassic Park part of Universal Studios.

Princess and I decided to each do some pose with the big dinosaur we saw.

I went for the stupid look.

And Princess went for the cute one that just makes everyone wanna go.. Awwww....

19) And a last picture to end with.

This was taken at the Hershey store outside Universal Studios.

Me looking stupid again.

I had fun at Universal Studios.

Thanks for dragging us there Ming. And for the tickets.

Princess and I thank you!

I shall end this blog entry with......
"NOBODY NOBODY BUT YOU .... *CLAP* *CLAP*"

HAHA! NOW THAT SONG IS ALWAYS GOING TO BE STUCK IN YOUR HEAD!

Do you believe in ghosts?

My sister is moving down to KL to work. As a result of that, I find myself having to move out of the room or actually the apartment I used to stay in and move into another one right across the hall from it.

This new apartment I'm living in how has been empty for years. I used to live in one of the rooms in this new apartment more than 3 years ago but ever since I moved out it has had only one other tenant who moved out a couple of years ago. As a result the apartment has been empty for two years.

The minute Princess walked into the new room with me she started feeling very depressed and sad and grumpy. I asked her what's wrong and she shared that there was something not right about the room. She didn't know how to explain it but she said something about it made her feel uneasy and depressed. She said she thought there might be a spirit living in here.

I calmed her down. I'm a God fearing person. I believe in God and while I believe that there are spirits among us sometimes, call me optimistic but I somehow believe that spirits don't want to harm us... short of us doing anything evil or something.

Princess then went on to tell me a story her parents had told her before. Her parents used to share a home with 2 other couples. The couple who lived in the master bedroom of the house used to fight a lot. One day they finally moved out of the room and the other couple moved in. The second couple then started having a lot of fights. So her parents always believed that there was something wrong with that room.

Well I hope it isn't the same for this room. It is after all a room I've once lived in for a while.

Princess and I decided to try it out for one night. Hope it all goes well.

Do you guys believe in ghosts or things like that?

Philippines in Pictures

Hi everyone,

I'm in Singapore now. Staying at Capella in Sentosa. It's a really really nice place. Have taken lots of pictures and will blog about it soon but in the mean time here is the rest of the things I did in the Philippines... in pictures.

1) This is the lobby of the hotel I was staying in. I stayed in Peninsula at Makati. Great hotel.

I actually witnessed my first earthquake in this hotel. On the last day of my stay in Manila, we were in the room when Ming suddenly said "Do you feel the hotel shaking?"

I didn't know how to confirm it at first. I did a Google News Search and didn't manage to find anything about an earthquake in Manila so I did a Twitter search and voila, everyone was talking about how a 6.0 magnitude quake just hit Manila.

Ahh the power of Twitter.

2) Picture of taken during the Board meeting of Nuffnang Philippines Inc.

Haha for some reason some people seem to think that I was in Manila on a holiday or something because all they see are my dinners and all.

Well here's what I do during the day. Go to the office :)

A picture of all the people at the Board meeting.

The Board meeting is where the heads of the company meet together and get updates on how the company is doing and make any major decisions moving forward.

3) Had a chance to meet the Country Manager of Yahoo Philippines as well.

We met up with him for lunch. Eric brought us to this place called Mamou.

It had really great steak.

4) Here's a picture of one of the hosts at Mag.Net's Rockoke night. He was a great host. Really funny as well.

On one of my other days at Manila, Ming and I bumped into him in the lobby of our hotel all dressed up in work clothes.

He laughed and said "This is my day job".

I hear he runs some private equity fund. Big job!

5) Speaking of Rockoke night at Mag.net, here's a picture of the some of the Nuffnangers there singing Wannabe on stage.

Spice girl fans.

6) Picture of Jay, Eric, Ming and I at a dinner on the first night we were there.

Having Mexican food!

7) Here's a random picture of Ming taken right outside Greenbelt.

Being his first trip to the Philippines, I wasn't sure if Ming would like it but at the end of the trip he decided he liked Manila too. Just like me. I love coming to Manila :)

8) And I'm going to end off with a picture of the team in Nuffnang Philippines.

Can't imagine how it has grown. It used to only have like a couple of people in the team, now there are so many more.

I enjoyed Manila very much but it was really all thanks to the great company I had there. Thanks for hosting us guys (that means Nuffies, Nuffnangers and Eric/Jay) :)

Looking forward to another trip soon :)

Dinner Party with Nuffnang Philippines

Last night which was my last night in Manila, the Nuffies from Nuffnang Philippines put together a great night out. We had a really nice dinner party at the beautiful home of one of our partners there: Jay.

The PH Nuffies did a really great job in setting everything up. Everything from the finger food, drinks, food and settings. About 30-40 of us were there and we all had name tags with fixed seating arrangements so everyone knew where to go.

And as a surprise, they even arranged for Heny Sison and some of her apprentices to cook for us that night.

Now Heny Sison is probably a new name to us but according to all the Filipinos I talked to there, she's a really really famous chef that does cook shows on TV.

Jay described her as the "Filipino Martha Stewart". Cooking for private functions like this is not something that she does at all. She just agreed to it because she was a family friend of Carlos our PH Nuffie.

She cooked some of the food but she even gave a bit of a cooking class to teach us how to make Pizza. So we all put on our Chef hats and aprons and tried to follow.

Man I never knew it was so much work just to make the dough.

This is how you do it.

First you put a mixture of some things yeast just like Jay here.

Then you put some flour in with the yeast in a mixer. Just like how I was doing here. See ? I helpful! :)

Then you're supposed to knead the dough.

And once the dough settles after 40 minutes or so it looks like this.

Then you're supposed to take bits of it and roll it until it becomes a flat pizza thing and you can put all your toppings on it to put it in the oven.

And voila... pizza is made.

Everyone was just having fun watching the others work.

Look at Ming laughing so loud! *evil laugh.

Thank you Chef Heny for the nice cooking lesson.

For the rest of the night we had our dinner, some dessert and a lot of great conversations.

Here are some pictures from the night.

Everyone crowding around listening to Eric (our other partner in Nuffnang Philippines) give an opening speech to the night.

The chefs then explaining what each food they made was all about.

Some of the Nuffies and Nuffnangers chat over dinner. All look like they're having some deep conversation.

Me and PH Nuffie Patty here.

Ming having a conversation with Nuffnanger Jane.

Pam and Joy. The bubbly wives of our partners :)

One of the desserts we had that night.

Picture with some of the Nuffies and Nuffnangers that night.

Judd camwhoring with my camera.

Hannah and me.

Hannah is a Filipino blogger who reads lots of Malaysian blogs. She said she's a big fan of Nuffnang even before Nuffnang came to the Philippines.

And I first knew of her when I blogged about coming to Manila once before and she left a comment welcoming me or something. I checked out her blog then because I didn't think then that I would have many people from the Philippines reading my blog. That was a long time ago.

Now we're all friends.

Jay and Ming having a good man to man talk.

The Buffet table with all the food.

Nuffie Maki here having dinner with Jehz!

Jehz if you remember was one of the finalists for Most Influential Blogger in the Nuffnang Asia-Pacific Blog Awards. (Notice Ming in the background taking some pictures of the food with his "beast").

By the end of the night, this is how I looked. Red as a lobster all because of the man in the picture.

His name is Gerard. He was getting everyone to drink plenty all night long.

Thanks for coming everyone. And thanks to the Nuffies for putting the whole party together! I thought they did a great job.

Oh and thanks to Jay for letting us host it at his place.

I had so much fun. Just halfway throughout the night I told Ming "You know, these are one of the nights where I'm going to have a memory of forever". I will always remember that night.

What a way to end our trip to Manila.