To see a world in a grain of sand

I meet so many different people in so many different ways when I am traveling around. Some meetings are random, some are electrifying, some are awkward, some are mandatory, some are accidental, some are surprising, and some are so natural they must have snuck up on foggy little cat feet. Some people are mediocre, some are immature, some are entertaining, some are enviable, some are memorable, and some are so extraordinarily compatible Fate must have carefully fine-spun her silk web just for you.

All these different individuals span across my memory as jewels in an Indra's net. My mind is a vast white space expanding out in all dimensions infinitely, and my net is glittering below. I look in one jewel, and I see the convoluted crossroads that brought me to that meeting in time, and I see the reflections of all other jewels that were also affected, whether those are in the past or future of this one jewel matters not. The Indra's net of my memory holds no sense of time because "the pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory" (Bergson). The fine interdependencies of the jewels propel me mercilessly towards the edges of the net, so fast I barely have time to look back. The net is infinite like my mind and infinitely reflected within itself so there is no edge; as I am impelled forward by my life on Earth, new jewels materialize continuously at the horizon and more and more reflections shine brighter and brighter, casting their light towards the path of my destiny.


...so fast I barely have time to look back. People I never got to know, people I never saw again, people I never said apologized to, people I never tried hard enough with, and people I never forgot I shared a special connection with, a mutual understanding so inspiring it would have made the star-crossed lovers jealous. Can these people never be recaptured, are they truly lost to me forever? A crueler punishment than Tantalus' in Tartarus, is this the net that Fate cleverly wove for humans? No time for sadness, no time for nostalgia, no time for pity, definitely no time for regrets...... Oh but in my headlong plunge towards the ends of my universe I still try to turn back for a few glances, the tears flying out, droplets wavering in midair for a slow second... then crashing down as I finally summon my strength and move onwards pushing my boundaries, only glistening jewels upon glistening jewels of my memory remaining.

The weekend in stream of consciousness

Thursday night clubbing
bartender boy and lychee martinis
sketchy white wannabes with shades
awkwardness on the dance floor
crazy on the dance floor
taxi stand goodbyes
(All pictures courtesy of Gerald and Kathleen ^__^)

Saturday super street shopping
this-is-so-cute fashion
I-can't-wear-this-in-America fashion
earrings rings rings ings
black and purple
jumpin jumpers
off the shoulder, on the shoulder
quack quack ducktour
8888
who's scared of the ferris wheel

coming to Singapore to eat at Manhattan Fish Market
ahhhh more fish n chips

Bugis continued
chicken extract bus stop
over the streets and through the store, to Arab den we go
rose apple mango what
fire breathing dragon

Sunday walks
dim dim sum sum
"six more people??"
I spy Yalies
"Hey your Chinese is actually good"
walk
walk walk
travel agencies
Settler's Cafe
Taboooo
short creature in the UK - leprechaun
animal with two colors - zebra
Indiana has a lot of this - corn
my alarm clock makes this sound - beep beep beep...
walk
walk walk

Raffles

statue humping
picture posing
walk
walk walk
The Durian
walk
walk walk
The Esplanade
how big is the Merlion

walk
walk walk
Boat Quay
run forest run through a water fountain... and kill your cellphone
Julia gives the cellphone CPR
curry-bowl-3x-bigger-than-Arpun's-face
the missing $20

Tioman O Tioman! [Take 3]

Sunday morning we woke up early-ish because the thunderstorm had caused us to go to sleep early. We had a nice breakfast with fruit pancakes and then planned to do some hiking before leaving on the 1pm ferry....

It was an extremely bright, scorching hot day. We heard there was a hiking trail from Salang Beach to ABC Beach, so we started on it, but it was an intensely steep uphill climb and the three of us climbed very quickly at first and then I died very quickly >.< We took some nice pictures, and then decided to go back down instead of continuing because it looked like it was going to be steep uphill hell all the way. Sweat was pouring out of us like rivers, ewwwww. I knew I wasn't feeling well and couldn't have hiked further. Indeed, as soon as I forced myself to make it safely down, I promptly blacked out. Basically, I suck because I don't like drinking water. The whole day before when we were under the sun and I snorkeled into salt water, I almost did not drink any water. Kathleen and Arpun on the other hand drank like a hippo o.O So the sun gave me heatstroke and severe dehydration, which really killed me when I tried to run up a mountain as fast as possible and overexerted myself -_- Yea Julia loses. But no worries, Julia can still shoot you in the dead center with her .22 rifle ;-)

So after I laid down for a while, and Arpun made me drink lots of water (bleh! he kept forcing me to drink more water), I felt better. Also, A komodo dragon (monitor lizard!) came over next to me and really scared me. I recovered my sight and felt conscious, but when I tried to get up and continue walking, I saw dark spots in my eyes and blacked out again. It's super scary to walk when your sight and most of your senses and conscious are blacked out... your legs just kinda walk. Anyway, this walk-blackout-rest-walk-blackout-etc situation cycled repeatedly because we were trying to get back to our room, which wasn't even that far away. It got so bad that someone almost had to carry me, but I think the thought of that gave me enough energy to make it back to the room. There, we rested and I drank more water until time to check out. I felt much after resting in an A/Ced room, so finally, sadly, we said goodbye to Tioman and made our way to the 1pm ferry.

Transportation back, in short:
1:00pm Ferry from Tioman to Mersing
3:30 arrive at Mersing
4:30 Local Malaysian bus from Mersing to Kota Tinggi
6:00 arrive at Kota Tinggi
6:15 Local Malaysian bus from Kota Tinggi to Johor Bahru (JB) Larkin Bus Terminal
7:45 arrive at JB
8:00 Johor Bahru-Singapore Express Bus from JB to Singapore
- pass through Malaysia immigration departure
- pass through Singapore immigration entrance

The local bus rides back were actually quite comfortable, not hot either even without A/C because the windows were open and created a nice breeze. It gave us a good view of non-touristy Malaysian towns and way of life, kind of like a roadtrip. Finding the buses and changing buses went smoothly, except for an annoying hitch at the end when we were at the Singapore immigration Woodlands after officially entering Singapore, our express bus never came, so we ended up wasting time waiting then taking a taxi then MRT back home. But other than that last part, we were actually very lucky and had an extremely smooth trip. Plus, it was all for < USD$100!

[Album 1] Pictures are worth a thousand words
[Album 2] Pictures pictures pictures are never enough

I don't think I want or need to write some fancy thoughtful concluding summary of Tioman.

Tioman is amazing, The End.

Tioman O Tioman! [Take 2]

The famous 1958 film, "South Pacific," was filmed in Tioman (in the movie as Bali Hai), and Tioman was one of the world's most beautiful islands.

Continuing from the previous story, after we found our hotel, we wasted no time changing to swim gear and eating a quick lunch before setting off on a Coral Island Excursion (70RM) that took us to two snorkeling places and a beach. No one else was scheduled for the same time, so the three of us got the tour all to ourselves -- like we had a private speedboat and tourguide and everything :)

The locals who drive the speedboats really like to scare tourists by going super super fast and bouncing on the waves uncomfortably, and because there were only three of us, the ride was even rougher. Arpun was hanging on in the back with both his hands for dear life :D

We finally got to Coral Island and Arpun taught me how to snorkel for the first time. Oh my god the coral reefs there are indescribably beautiful. I had never been snorkeling before, but apparently the reefs in the Caribbean/Bahamas are far away and they are absolutely no comparison to how wonderfully alive and vibrant all the coral and fishes are in Tioman -- so close you can reach out and grasp the coral (but don't! it kills the coral), stand on them, and kiss the fishes. So colorful you realize everything you had ever seen up til then was pale and muted, that you never really ever understood color. Color was exploding in my eyes, utterly pounding my senses. My eyes darted from one place to another, there was so much detail to intake, I felt as if my vision had expanded and magnified the sea exponentially. Every little cubic centimeter was its own amazing microcosm I could spend hours observing. How this fish moved, that fish breathed, another fish ate, the sea anemone waved... swimming into the middle of great schools of fish and marveling at the precise way they all move at the same time in the correct direction and avoid me perfectly. Other fish unabashedly swam up to me and stared me in the eye, life's questions circling through its small brain. I was so awestruck I forgot several times to breathe correctly and choked on salt water.

I wish I had an underwater camera. The best I can do is find a picture of Tioman that someone else took for their blog, but still, it doesn't do nearly enough justice, even if a picture were worth a thousand words, an experience is worth a billion pictures.

Moving on... when we were tired, the speedboat took us to this gorgeous deserted white sand beach. We had the beach allllllllll to ourselves :-) Rested, played, suntanned, took pictures......


After we were all nicely baked and rested, the speedboat took us to another snorkeling location among large rocks. Here the water was really deep and scuba divers were also by us. The coral was further away, but there were interesting black sea urchins to see, and bigger fish, as well as a jellyfish somewhere around us that I avoided.

The whole excursion took three hours, then we came back and showered (no hot water, but not too necessary for one night), and then found a nice dinner place by the beach to watch the sunset. (Sidenote, oh my god allllll Tioman food is soooooo spicy gah!) Looking out of the restaurant porch over the beach and over the water at the sun and horizon, we felt the often-described island peace. A warm bath of goldenness that reminds us we are all humans on planet Earth, a type of reassurance that we will all be okay in the end.


After dinner, dark clouds began to gather quickly, and I was excited to see an island thunderstorm, like the books and movies all described. We ran to a bar with a covered patio area right before it started pouring and chilled around with cocktails, the perfect relaxing end to a long day. Kathleen and Arpun were talking, but I was lost in concentration, focused on opening every nerve in my body, to feel alive, to intake as much as possible, as fast as possible, grasping onto every little shred of reality, and to carefully store those sensations away in my memories. The sky was pitch black. The ocean was imperceptible in the distance, the shoreline nonexistent. Black black rain fell on blackness. The sound of the falling rain was so natural and soothing because the rain was not falling on tin roofs, cars, or concrete, but millions and millions of leaves -- many of them larger than my face if not my whole self. By the beach though, the rain was quiet. The sand sucked up the rain soundlessly, the sand swelling with water and blurring with the gentle ocean waves. Extraordinary. I stared out into the void, and the blackness that stared back was not Nietzsche's monster, but solace for the wandering heart.

Tioman O Tioman! [Take 1]

I'm going to write a nicely detailed account of the trip to Tioman this past weekend, because 1) I planned it with Kathleen exhaustively, and 2) We had such issues finding updated, detailed information, so this deserves to be recorded online for others who also want to go to Tioman :-)

For those who just want pictures,
[Album 1] Pictures are worth a thousand words
[Album 2] Pictures pictures pictures are never enough
(But not all of them are up yet -- namely, of the Komodo dragons (Update: correction, as per Larry's request, they are monitor lizards :P) and monkeys ^__^) (Update: both album links added)

From the beginning:

Planning -- in short, Kathleen and I stayed late at work a couple of times eating dinner and using the Internet and phone to call/look up/try to book stuff, and we definitely did not do much work that Friday before, figuring out every last detail, researching everyyyyything and compiling a nice guidebook for Tioman.

Transportation was a bitch to figure out because the direct express buses from Singapore to Tioman (there's only four companies I'm pretty sure: 5 Star, Transnational, Discovery, and Kai Ho) were alllllll booked like weeks in advance. To get to Tioman Is, Malaysia we needed to take a ferry at Mersing, so how to get to Mersing from Singapore (around 4 hrs away) without a direct bus? We were left with an almost infinite combination of train, taxi, local bus, and ferry.

Our original plan was to take the train from Singapore KTM to Malaysia Johor Bahru (JB), then negotiate a taxi to Mersing, or take the local buses. Well, after passing through Malaysia immigration and customs -- no problem at all -- we accidentally missed our JB stop :-(

We planned to get off at the next stop and find a local bus to somewhere that takes us to Mersing, or take a taxi back to JB because that's where the buses to Mersing are. A guy sitting next to us told us to take the train further to Kluang, where there are buses to Mersing, and plus Kluang is much closer to Mersing than JB, halfway. Our problem was, we hadn't exchanged currency yet and now we were in the middle of Malaysia with no Ringgits, and we needed to pay the difference in train fare. When the ticket conductor came around, the same guy next to me said some stuff that we couldn't understand and I tried to explain to him that we missed our stop. The conductor was let us pass, but it wasn't until later that a woman told us the guy next to us was actually another train agent and he convinced the ticket conductor to let us go for free. Plus the other people in the train were super nice and helped us because we kept freakin out thinking we missed our Kluang stop again. Then, when we got out the guy introduced us to a driver who took us to Mersing, 1.5hrs for 90 Ringgits, which is really good. The driver took us to a nice Chinese travel agency in Mersing that sold us ferry tickets at the correct price and explained to us all our options to get back, etc. super helpful. And off we were to the ferry to Tioman!

Saturday 6/14/08
5:50am - Train Singapore to Kluang
8:00am - arrive in Kluang
10:00 am - arrive by car to Mersing
10:30am - ferry to Tioman
1:00pm - arrive at Tioman

We got there around 3 hours before we thought we would, and caught the early 10:30am ferry just on time, sweeeeet.

Whew. Now for the fun parts!

We went to Salang Beach because it was popular, lively, and had lots of budget accommodations. We heard it might be super crowded and hard to get a room, so we frantically called at 7pm Friday night to find a place and reserved a few places. It wasn't that crowded when we got there, and we actually found available rooms for walk-in, but we stayed at Salang Inn where we had reserved an A/C 2 double bed, 1 single bed chalet with bathroom for 95RM, pretty good deal. The chalet wasn't right by the beach front, but it was in a nice sheltered area by the jungle, less than a few minutes walk to the beach.

Okay, to be continued!

Wednesday night escapade

Welcome to St. James Power Station, a new enormous bar/club complex by Vivo City. This houses like, nine separate bars/clubs? my god. And Wednesday night = Ladies Night = free cover to the whole complex + 10 free drinks. my god times two.

(Shamelessly taken from Wiki)

First stop, the Bellini Room.

It's a smooth jazz bar on the top floor with long long glass walls that overlook two different clubs. They have minimum age requirements of 18 for girls and 23 for guys, eeks o.O

The view from above

Pictures of us at the start of the night:

The whole group

The girls
P.S. Cool liquor bottle wall in the back

haha :D

P.S. No the girls did not each drink all of the 10 free drinks, we were nice and traded off getting free drinks for our boys, aren't they lucky :P Some wine, some cranberry vodka, gin and tonic, screwdriver...

After a bit of chilling we go to Powerhouse... and the night gets started

The Powerhouse tall ceilings make the club sooooo nice, and the DJ was freakin awesome.
(These pictures shamelessly grabbed from the Internet...)

Okay okay I'm not going to put up anyone's embarrassing pictures, here are nice ones :D

Whew.
Til next time.
;-)