Every road leads to Rome..

*yawn*

Bueno Sera..

i just got back from Rome abt an hour ago..

damn.. i spent the entire few days being deaf in one ear.. seriously.. i think i lost abt 90% of my hearing in my left ear.. and coz i strained my right ear trying to listen, it hurts..

now i understand how the deaf suffers..

but if u had never had experienced something, would u realise the loss of it?

those who were born deaf, would think that life without sound is normal mah.. and same goes for those who were born blind i guess.. but if u lost it halfway thru ur life, i guess itz gonna hard to let go..

the main things that went thru my mind.. firstly.. i'd lose my job..

where got such thing as a deaf flight attendant..

and the fact that i would never be able to play drums anymore.. i dont think itz possible to do so if i lose my hearing in one ear.. coz no matter how good u are.. u'd never be able to hear the small details in the music.. and a lost of balance if u lose ur hearing...

in fact.. i was more paranoid abt it then i allowed it to show..

i still went thru the rituals of the flight and the daily affairs.. and pretended as if nothing had happened.. just that when i arrived in Rome, i couldnt hide it anymore coz i really couldnt hear anything on my left.. so anyone who wanted to talk to me had better be on my right side..

i called in a doctor to the hotel coz the pain was getting unbearable.. and he reassured me that i wont lose my sense of hearing..

yey!

heh.. in fact.. he told me that i was getting flu and i had inflammation in my throat which affected the lymph nodes and therefore blocking the passage that connects to the ear..

and i got a jab in the butt and a painkiller tablet and he told me that i should be better in the morning.

he lied.

in fact.. i suffered thru the flight too.. and the pain was really really bad when we were landing into Singapore this morning..

and this time.. my right ear got affected..

so i pinched my nose and blew as hard as i can to relieve the pressure on the ear drums..

and POP!

my left ear is OKAY!!

yey..

but now my right ear cant hear that well.. lol.. dammit.. one ear after another.. but since i can hear clearly on my left ear.. i'm relieved that itz not a permanent damage..

okay.. anyway.. i think it should be ok by tonite.. i hope so lah.. this Sat i have a jamming session with the band so it BETTER be ok.. the only jamming session before the Skafest..

anyway.. i'm gawddamed tired now..

when i got home, Nafisa was asleep still.. and i gave her abt 15 mins before i woke her up coz i missed her like crazy..

Sis is in KL now.. so my mom is sending Nafisa to my cousin's place to take care of her in the day..

u cant trust guys with babies.. we just play with them till they cry and look for a woman to take the burden of doing whatever they know to pacify the kid..

and what happens when the baby soil her diapers?

oh god.. i think i'ld call SOS..



ah.. here's my little Stewardess.. with her birthday present that i got for her just a few hours before i left for Rome..

ok.. backtrackking time..

lemme mention for the first time ever abt my flight..

i had a Knight travelling on board.. and as i had told him.. he was the first real life knight that i've met..

of course i see Sir Alex Ferguson's face in the papers every day..

and the gay knight, Sir Elton John.. can u imagine what happens if Elton John was born abt 500 years ago?

he'd be wearing lipstick under that face plate..

and he's be clutching a Prada instead of a sword..

ok.. anyway.. Sir Ward, an Irishman, and his wife, Lady Pucci, an Italian lady were one of the most pleasant ppl i had ever met.. and they had even lived in Singapore in the 70s.. in Bukit Timah..

ok.. thatz it abt them..

arrived in Rome, at Aeroporte Leonardo da Vinci, on Friday morning, and slept thru the day till abt 6pm..

woke up feeling hungry.. called the rest of the crew but none of them seemed to have the energy to get up.. so i had dinner alone in the hotel restaurant..

after reading John Grisham's The Broker recently.. i wanted to see whether what he said were true abt the Italians..

the Italians are fashion-concious ppl.. image means everything to them.. and to be able to dress up properly in Italy is a MUST..

those scrappy looking ppl are the tourists..

and when u are in Rome, do what the Romans do.. so u'd better look nice..

itz true in a way.. even those Italians whoz not in their Armanis and would be wearing jeans and t-shirts look presentable..

and btw.. before i forget.. Italian women are BEAAAAAUUTTTTTTIIIIIFFFFFUUUULLLLLL..

after dinner, i went back to the room and slacked till i fell asleep at abt 4am..

in the morning.. had a buffet breakfast with the crew in the same restaurant.. and left the hotel at 10am to start our sightseeing trip..

i went out with Wei Ling, Paulin and a pilot, Chye..

same thing.. i had been to Rome numerous times.. but each time itz different.. and normally i spend my time at the vicinity around Piazza di Spagna.. or better known among the non-Italians, the Spanish Steps.. where u get a lot of branded stuffs.. like Prada, Gucci, Louis Vuitton.. but on this trip.. i dont feel a need to get anything..

so we started off by going down to the Sistine Chapel, or Cappella Sistina.. which is located next to the Vatican City.. and the chapel is now called the Museum Vatica as well..

itz really a beautiful place.. and u get paintings by Michelangelo and Raphael and a lot of other reknowned artists.. just that i dunno any of their names except for those named in Teenage Mutants Ninja Turtle..



along the entrance to the Sistine Chapel.. most of the beautiful paintings are on the ceiling..



the famous painting by Michelangelo.. also on the ceiling..

i wonder whether are their necks insured or not.. how to paint like that without neck cramps and migraines?



painting of the Prophets.. therez several of them.. and this is Zacharia.. or Nabi Zakaria..

but of course they are just paintings from the minds of the artists.. not depicting the real looks of the prophets..

after going around the chapel, which took abt 2 hours.. we went to the Vatican City.. which is next door..

Vatican City, or also known as The Holy See, is the smallest state in the world.. and the unique fact abt it is that itz a State within a City in a State..



Wei Ling, Me and Paulin in front of the St Peters Basilica



Entrance to the Vatican City

Vatican is a State inside the city of Rome, which is inside Italy.

u dont need a passport to get in.. just a ticket price of 7 bucks.. in Euro, that is..

Vatican is the centre of the Roman Catholic faith.. just like Mecca for the Muslims, the Golden Temple for the Sikhs, and Planet Uranus for Tom Cruise and the Scientologists smartasses..

first stop was the Dome of Michelangelo.. we took a lift halfway.. and the remaining journey to the top was by a small stairway..

small in width BUT GAWDDAMNED HIGH LIKE DUNNO WHAT..

goodness..



see?

i almost died of asthma.. just that i didnt have any asthma..

i think itz equivalent to abt 15 to 20 floors high.. and since we went up halfway.. itz abt 10 floors.. and u cant see the next level as u climb up.. so u just go up and up and up and pant and up and up and pant.. and very close to falling down dead..

by the time we reached the top of the dome, we dont wanna get down coz itz really exhausting getting up.. nothing is worth the pain man..



at the top of the Dome, with the city of Rome in the background..

after going around Vatican, we left and headed down to the other parts of the city..



this is how a typical Roman alley looks like.. i dunno why u would be interested to look at an alley.. but i took the pic already.. so u see..



most of the roads in Rome are tiled rather than paved.. thatz what i noticed..



another pic with no good reason.. a phonebooth.. but looks nice rite..



Chye, Paulin and Me..



at Piazza Navona..



the hustle and bustle of artists at Navona..



we came across a demonstration for Gay Rights and Abortion Rights.. being a Roman Catholic state, abortion is highly illegal.. yeah rite.. heh.. they sell condoms in machines on the roadside..

u can tell ur son to get u a pack of flavoured condom from the machine on his way back from school if u want to..

had dinner at a nice, small restaurant before we headed down to the Colloseum..



the Colloseum..



Chye, Wei Lin, Paulin and Me in front of the Colloseum..

it was already dark.. and the Colloseum was closed.. so we just took pics outside it before we made our way to the pick up point for the hotel shuttle bus..

the Colloseum is like a big stadium.. where they used to have sick battle fights with men and lion like in Gladiator..

it should be more than 2000 yrz old..



at Corso Vittiorio Emmanuel. this is like in the middle of the City..



i dunno what this is.. but it looked ancient anyway.. so i took the pic..

had to wait for abt half an hour and we met some crew from Emirates, a Singaporean guy named Rashid, and two Malaysian girls, a Malay girl named Yang, and a Chinese girl named Carol..

Rashid was the one who approached us coz he recognised the Singlish slang.. so we chatted for a while before their bus came..

basically.. that's it for the trip.. got back to the hotel, and chilled out with the rest of the crew till midnight and went to sleep afterwards..

now to concentrate on popping my right ear..

Grazie...

Arrivederci!

Yeyyyyyyyyy.. The Princess Is Back!

my niece is finally here!!!!

yeyyyy...

and she arrived yesterday with my sis in law.. at 3am, right on her 2nd birthday.. was so excited that i couldnt sleep..

so i chatted on msn and did some programming till 3am, and left to the airport with my mom and dad..

they finally came out at abt 3.30..



there she is... grouchy at 3.30am..

but she overcame her grouchiness and gave Caca a kiss right after that.. :)

went home.. played with her till abt 6am.. and went to sleep..

woke up at 1pm coz i had to go to work.. did Bali turnaround just now.. and met my teammates after abt 3 months not seeing them coz i was rostered for other flights..

managed to snap this pic of my family's princess before i went off to work..



cute kannnnn!!!!!!!!!!!

i dont care what u guys think.. she's my niece and i think she's cute.. now.. shoo..

anyway, it seems like itz not a good time to go to Bali now too.. coz itz cloudy and seems like itz gonna rain there too.. just not as bad as here..

24 degrees in Singapore? damn.. soon enough we'll have snow..

got home at abt 11pm.. and spent time on msn..

i'll be heading to Rome tonite.. and some of my teammates had suggested taking a trip down to Florence.. which would be quite interesting..

but i'm not really enthusiastic abt going for flight tonite.. coz i'll miss Nafisa badly.. she's here at home and i'll be away till 16th.. how sad..

and i miss the 4 boys back in Sydney.. and my brother too..

oh well.. but still have to work mah.. and i think i have a more interesting life that a lot of ppl out there..

till then..

arrivederci..

Colourful Japan

ah. i just got back from Fukuoka, Japan, abt an hour ago.. and here i am blogging..

ok.. anyway.. i'm not really feeling well.. i think i'm going down with flu now.. and my left ear had been blocked since yesterday and it hurt like hell when we were descending into Fukuoka, and just now into Singapore..

it was abt 2 degrees when we landed in Fukuoka.. and it was a bright sunny day.. heh.. just imagine the temperature on a cloudy day.. erkz..

so far, this is like one of the most favourite flights for us.. the hotel in Fukuoka is fantastic.. i took some pics of it before i messed it up..



thatz the room.. East Meets West.. nice Japanese decor with modern setting..

but the best part of the room would be the toilet..



herez the bathtub..

and whatz nice to do while taking a bath?



watching TV on an LCD screen facing the tub, of course..

ok.. herez another weird stuff abt Japan.. sometimes u can even get this at public toilets..

presenting.. the toilet bowl..



press some buttons and the toilet will clean u up.. and therez a seat warmer button too..

girls.. dont sit too long there.. u'll be addicted to it..



and herez a closer look at the controls..

and girls.. dont play with Bidet and Oscilliating at the same time k.. u'll end up sitting there for a longggg time..



herez a view from my room.. facing Sega World..

ok.. anyway.. slept for a few hours before meeting the crew at 2pm.. went for lunch at the mall next to the hotel, Grand Canal.. and i had unagi.. yey... so far i think itz one of the cheapest unagi meal that i had.. 850 Yen.. abt $10.. on average it normally cost abt 1000 Yen..

after lunch, headed down to Hakata Station.. which is the train station nearby coz they have the biggest 100 Yen shop there..



at the Hakata Station.. see the number of bicycles? itz a common sight in Japan..



what the hell?

but it seems that no one follows this rule... Japanese are known to be heavy smokers..

anyway.. if u ever go down to Japan, shop at 100 Yen stores.. everything else everywhere is so expensive.. so might as well get stuffs here.. itz abt $1.40 per item.. and their items are normally good..



there it is.. source of fun and pleasure.. and lots of things u'll buy and end up not using..



remember when i said abt cute and ugly girls in extremely short skirts? now.. see the schoolgirls..

left the store at abt 6pm... and at abt -3 degrees outside.. and it was already dark.. and i am heavily insulated from the cold :)

headed down to the other train station.. called Tenjin.. where one of the girls wanted to check out the Blue Label Burberry items in Daimaru..



outside Daimaru.. with Huey Yin, Lina and Joey..

this series of Burberry is only available in Japan.. and the price turned me off.. just imagine.. $300 for a stewpid cap?!?! gosh..



Hyatt.. where we stay in.. from across the river..



itz real snow.. but it wasnt snowing the day i was there anyway..



damn.. i love the blue lights..



lightings at Grand Canal mall.. this is just outside the hotel entrance..

we went for dinner at Grand City Canal again.. went to AM/PM convenience store.. and headed back to the hotel after that..



therez a coin operated photocopy machine in AM/PM.. at almost every outlet..



and see how cute their ATM machines are..

i'm going out for sheesha at El Sheikh with Alwi.. called Wily but he might be bz so i'll sms him later..

thatz it for today folks.. just pics.. no whinings..

anyway.. Mistaken Pirates will be playing at the Skafest on 28th January at Planet Paradigm.. check the Pirate's blog for details..

Skavoovie!

Peugeot, Carousels and Everything French..

Happy New Year to all.. maaf zahir batin..

yeah.. ok.. anyway.. why do we always seems to get excited for new year when no one really feels excited abt it? just that coz everyone else is partying for a public holiday? coz therez another excuse in getting drunk and pop the champagne?

Happy New Calendar to each and everyone of my friends.. thatz more like it..

dont get me wrong.. i'm not being an ass abt other ppl celebrating.. just that i had never truly been bothered abt a new year..

anyway... greetings from Paris..

i just found out a few hours ago that i have free internet access in my room.. so here i am blogging before i forget what i did..

arrived in Paris in the early morning on 31st Dec 2005.. which is actually yesterday.. not really as cold for a winter morning as i expected.. at 7am, it was at a nice 7 degrees.. which gave hope for a nice afternoon..

slept for a couple of hours.. really.. just 2 hours.. before being woken up for lunch by the crew..

after lunch at our favourite Vietnamese restaurant here.. headed down to Champs Elysees with the set of crew.. in which the senior crew left to allow the rest of us enough time to walk around and stop at every shop.. so it was left with me, Ahmad, Shanling, Lay Li and Stephanie..



with Shanling along Champs Elysees



ok.. this store is probably like the biggest cosmetic store in the world.. so i've heard.. called Sephora.. girls would sure to love this place.. and inside.. u get model-like store assistants... gays.. and makeovers and ppl shooting pictures like those photo-shoots kinda scenes..

Champs Elysees is basically the shopping street of Paris.. where u can get all the branded items that ppl always talk abt.. and if u wanna do serious shopping in Paris.. this is one of the major places to go.. the other would be at Galleries LaFayette and Printemps.. which i didnt go to this trip..

at the beginning of Champs Elysees.. or end.. depending on how u start ur shopping spree.. is the Arc de Triomphe.. this arc was built ages back to commemorate a certain victory in war.. i think by Napoleon.. dunno.. go check up ur history books if u wanna know..



me at the Arc de Triomphe



along Champs Elysees, with Arc de Triomphe in the background..

but the really nice and strange thing abt this arc is the road surrounding it.. a roundabout..

there are abt 12 roads leading to this roundabout.. without the aid of traffic lights.. and therez no freaking congestion..

anyway... u get really good drivers over here in Europe.. reminds me of one particular time in Zurich, Switzerland.. when i was about to cross a small road.. so i was waiting for the very few cars that were nearby to pass before i cross.. in the middle of the road.. not like i was at a junction or what..

but the car that was passing thru stopped and let me and my friends cross.. and so did the other driver at the other side of the road..

if it was Singapore, none of us would even do that.. for Singaporeans to achieve the same kind of mentality like the Europeans.. no way..

we think too much of ourselves.. drivers in Europe are more conscious abt other road users.. and they dont need freaking laws and freaking signboards and freaking fines or demerit points to remind them of courtesy.. but they still do it..

i dont think we can do that here in a million years..

we went to several stores.. and checked out the Peugeot on display.. all the cars inside this store are concept cars.. which means that they might not go on production..



a single-driver concept car..



itz more of a covered motorbike, doncha think? the handle replaced the steering.. and it has 4 wheels.. more of a motorbike-automobile hybrid..



this looks like a Formula-1 car.. the engine, size and wheels are like F1.. just that therez double seats and itz plush inside.. itz really A FREAKING BEAUTIFUL CAR.

i wonder how it runs..



and i'm sure u guys would love this place.. the Louis Vuitton superstore.. but the queue was too freaking long.. and they tend to limit the amount of items that u can buy.. but they dont really need ur money, u know that?

anyway.. after going to the end of Champs Elysees, we walked back, and stopped for coffee at a cafe here..

a typical French cafe would have seats facing the street.. the French are obsessed with this.. they would sit out there and watch the ppl go by.. which is really cool.. but coz this is winter, no one is that silly to do that..

itz abt 10 degrees i think.. in the afternoon.. which is unusually warm.. but it got colder in the evening.. dropped to somewhere around 3 to 5 degrees..

got back to the room at abt 6pm.. it gets dark in winter at abt 5pm.. so itz basically nite.. and i took several hours nap..

at abt 8pm, went down to Julian's room.. and most of the crew in the set came down to have our New Year's Eve congregation.. we always find reasons to congregate anyway..

we decided not to go out for the countdown coz it was too cold at that time.. so we just hangout together and counted down in ENGLISH till 2006..

heared some shoutings from the streets from those drunks outside.. who counted down to 2006 without sobering up.. and heard some sounds of the fireworks from the nearby celebrations at Arc de Triomphe..

and so.. yeah.. we crossed over to 2006, 7 hours after Singapore..

today.. woke up at 11am, and met the crew for lunch.. after which me, and the 2 other crew, Shanling and Lay Li, went out for sightseeing..



inside the Metro train station near to the hotel, Porte Maillot..

i dunno how many times i had gone around Paris.. but i did it again..

first stop was at the Cathedral of Notre Dame.. in which u get the famous story of the Hunchback Of Notre Dame... but sorry.. no monsters here this time.. i think he died ages back..



Rivoli.. like most of the buildings in France and most of Europe, i should think that itz dated like a hundred years back.. if not longer..



a carousel near to Notre Damn.. somehow the Parisians are obsessed with Carousels..



me at the river near to Notre Dame..



the Notre Dame Cathedral

the queue was too long for us to get in, so we decided to move on to the next stop.. Monmartre..



the stairway leading to Monmartre..

Monmartre is actually located on top of a hill.. so u end up going thru a long stretch of stairway out of the Metro station, and this stairway up the hill..



the alley leading to Monmartre..

anyway.. i had been to these places several times.. and whenever i go around Paris.. it reminds me of my trip here with my mom.. one of my best trips..

Monmarte has this place called the Artist Village.. i dunno the actual name for it coz i dont speak French.. and this is where u get the famous theatre Moulin Rouge..

itz a very beautiful place.. and if any of u decide to visit Paris.. dont skip this place..



at Monmartre, with the city of Paris in the background..



thatz the church, i think.. up the hill of Monmartre..

we headed down to Eiffel Tower not long after that.. coz we had to make sure that we get back to the hotel by 7pm for a New Year's celebration dinner..



the Eiffel Tower in the background.. like as if u wont know that..



beautiful, isnt it?



a public toilet near to Eiffel.. out of nowhere.. there are several of these kinda coin-slots pay toilets in Paris.. along the pathways..



and again.. the Parisians and their obsession with Carousels..

the Eiffel Tower is beautiful by night.. nothing much but a tower by day.. and for a few minutes every hour, it will light up in glitters..

it dropped to abt 3 degrees at this time.. but i got myself fully insulated from the cold so it wasnt that bad..

Paris, on this trip.. had changed my perspective from the previous trips that i had.. itz cleaner now.. coz they decided to place rubbish bins.. in the form of transparent plastic bags..

previously, u might need to walk back to the hotel to get to throw ur rubbish.. bins were non-existant.. so ppl end up throwing things everywhere..

the French are known to be snobbish and hates anyone who speaks English.. coz of a feud that they had with the English for hundreds of years..

but surprisingly, we came across a lot of French ppl who were nice and attempted to speak English to us.. in fact, they are all polite to us and very approachable..

and the French girls.. ermz.. wow..

just that summer would be very much appreciated.. i hate rain and snow and hail and anything cold..

we got back to the hotel by 7.. and got ready for the dinner..



at the New Year Dinner at the hotel..

finished our dinner and celebration at abt 10.30pm.. and got back to the room..

and here i am..

i'm going back tmrw morning.. so dont miss me too much yah.. i'll be back to haunt soon enough..