Hari Raya weekend at Bukit Timah for hiking and at Stadium Riverside for cycling.

First of all, I would like to wish to all my Muslim friends, Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri! I’m kinda jealous of Malaysia for having able to enjoy three days of public holiday (one extra day this year due to special announcement by Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim earlier) this year. They get to enjoy minimum of 4-days long break on this weekend while Singapore only grants one day public holiday for Hari Raya Aidilfitri celebration. As it is my office’s policy to grant one day of annual leave for public holiday that falls on Saturday, hence it is just a normal 2-days weekend for me.

(Image source: myweekendplan.asia)

Anyway, I’m still trying to make the most out of it. Before this, I do not know how to ride a bicycle. It is a very common skill or activity but none of my family members know how to cycle including me. My friend had previously taught me a couple of times in the past but I never been able to learn it. I had a poor sense of balance, constant fear of falling and hurting myself and my whole body always feel very rigid while trying to learn to cycle.

Recently, I decided to truly aim to learn this new skill so that I can have one extra hobby or thing to do during my leisure time. I even took a private adult cycling lesson for beginner. The lesson was very expensive (costs SGD90) and took an hour only. After the hour, I stayed there and practice myself for another hour until I successfully ride a bicycle. I did it! Finally! However, I was still in a very novice level and I couldn’t really control my ride including starting, stopping and turning.

It’s okay. Practice makes perfect. On yesterday’s evening which is usually reserved for time for an evening jog, I decided to go to the beautiful Stadium Riverside Walk area at Kallang and rent a bicycle to practice cycling myself. There’s a lot of vast open area with less people in the evening over there and are suitable for me to practice cycling. I slowly gets the hang of it. I still require a lot of practice in future to really be good and comfortable on riding a bicycle. At least for now, I can say that I finally know how to cycle! It feels good! I will make it a once-a-week routine from now on.

For today, I went to visit Bukit Timah Nature Reserve with a friend of mine in the late afternoon. The place is quite far though; it took me a little over an hour to reach there from my home. By the way, the weather has been extremely hot and humid these past few weeks. Sweating like mad after only a short walk nowadays. I have never visited Bukit Timah Nature Reserve before and the hill is actually the tallest peak in Singapore. It only stands at around 163 metres tall though (pretty short).

At the start of the hike to the summit of the hill, we saw a flying lemur attached to a tree close to the visitor centre that attracted a lot of attention of passers-by. Well, this is my first time seeing a flying lemur. It doesn’t move much and it has such a cute pair of round eyes. We then went for the short but intense 15 minutes hike across steep pathway and stairs to reach the summit of the hill. There’s quite a lot of people doing the same when we were there. Unfortunately, there isn’t any panoramic view to enjoy from the summit (all blocked by the trees and thick vegetation all around). We only get to take a picture with a rock marking the summit of the hill and then made our way down.

We then went over to the other side of the visitor centre where Hindhede Nature Park is. After a brief walk, we reach a lookout point overlooking the Hindhede Quarry lake. This is indeed a beautiful nature spot in Singapore. There’s some people feeding the tortoises at the lake and a large catfish appeared to join in too. There’s actually another quarry lake (called Singapore Quarry) which is quite a distance away. We didn’t go to that one though.

We then had a dinner nearby, had a great chat and call it a day. I’m ending my post here with a beautiful sunset view taken from my room few days earlier. The colours! What a view!

Hope you enjoy the rest of the weekend!

Finally! Sammi Cheng won her first best actress honor from Hong Kong Film Awards!

Finally! After 10 nominations in over 20 years, Sammi Cheng finally won her first ever best actress honor from the prestigious Hong Kong Film Awards. The 41st Hong Kong Film Awards which is often known as the Hong Kong equivalent to the American Academy Awards was held a moment ago (16th April 2023) to honor the best in Hong Kong films released last year (2022).

Those who knew me must have been well aware that I’m a fan of Sammi Cheng. She is my favourite idol. She enjoyed immense success in Hong Kong music industry from 1990s till now and is regarded as Cantopop queen/diva. However, the same success cannot be replicated for her involvement in acting industry as her acting in close to 40 films in nearly 3 decades do not appear to receive significant recognition.

All that changes this year with multiple local film awards honoring her with best actress honor from her performance in 2022 film ‘Lost Love’. In the film, she portrayed a grieving mother who lost her 3-year old son to illness and decided to devote herself to foster children with her husband. I watched the film last weekend when I was back in KL and I’m indeed moved by her performance.

After all the hard work switching from her signature early works in romance-comedy movies back in early 2000s to more drama films in later years, her effort finally paid off. For her impressive performance in this film, she had so far swept 4 best actress honors from Hong Kong Film Critics Society Awards, Hong Kong Directors’ Guild Awards, Hong Kong Online Film Critics Highlight Awards and the most recent 41st Hong Kong Film Awards in 2023.

She had been very emotional during her acceptance speech just now. She had waited over 20 years for this and it is finally in her hand. Also can feel her immense joy near the end of her speech. Very well deserved. She is now Hong Kong music queen and film queen. An astonishing feat! It is also a beautiful moment when she received this award from her frequent film co-star, Andy Lau who is the evening’s guest presenter for best actress award. What a nice arrangement for him to present this award to Sammi. She had also won ‘best original film song’ earlier at the awards ceremony for her song ‘Live a Life’ in the same film.

Well, I hope her film ‘Lost Love’ will be able to contend at Taiwan’s Golden Horse Awards near end of this year and also at next year’s Asian Film Awards so that she can go on a winning streak. What a good news for her and also for me. It gives me a much needed ‘feel good moment’ at this period of time when I was seriously feeling very down.

There are actually quite a number of past films where she delivered brilliant performances too but didn’t seem to have the luck to win major awards back then. Those films are ‘Wu Yen’, ‘My Left Eye Sees Ghost’, ‘Everlasting Regret’, ‘Blind Detective’, ‘Fatal Visit’, and ‘Fagara’. I also particularly enjoyed her funny light-hearted roles in ‘Love on a Diet’, ‘Needing You’, ‘Love for all Seasons’ and ‘Marry a Rich Man’. There is no doubt her acting isn’t always the best, sometimes feeling not natural and often her ‘superstar image’ sticks around her making audiences felt like she couldn’t able to dissolve into the characters. However, she had truly improved a lot over the years and is certainly overdue for a recognition. And her well deserved recognition finally comes today.

She will be holding her concert at Hong Kong’s Coliseum at this coming July. I do have a wish to watch it. I have watched her past concerts (I think twice) at Malaysia’s Genting Highlands but I have the desire to watch her performing at her home turf on 4-sided stage at Coliseum. It would be a wonderful experience.

(Images in this post are from various online sources)

Completed my first TVB series of the year. ‘The Invisibles’ is one of the better police action dramas in recent years.

It’s the middle of April. How I wish that this month would be gone sooner as this has been one of the toughest months in my life. Never expect year 2023 to turn out like this. Well, I believe there is always a reason my path is set out this way and will eventually lead me to the right direction. There’s a deep void in me, huge inner stubbornness in me, and plenty of self-reflecting in recent days and I’m glad I have really grown up from this.

While I will try my best to move on and stay positive, it is sometimes also okay to not be okay. After all, we are still human with emotions. Here are the two songs I would like to share that I love to listen to and the lyrics hit right to my feeling or thoughts now. Feel the sadness, cherish on the past memories, and then go on and focus on being the better self.

Alright. No more emotional stuff. I have recently completed my first Hong Kong TVB series of the year. It is ‘The Invisibles’, a 30-episodes police action drama that starred Kenneth Ma, Natalie Tong, Joel Chan, Tiffany Lau, Moon Lau, Alex Lam, Elena Kong, Jimmy Au, Ruco Chan, etc. I have to say that this is one of the much better police action TVB series in recent years especially after considering that this genre has been very common.

Excellent performances by the cast including those on supporting roles. It’s refreshing to see Ruco as the main villain (only appear in later half of the series as one of the supporting roles) here. Although it is not a main lead role, but Ruco nailed it flawlessly with brilliant acting. I am also impressed by Elena Kong’s turn as the head police officer with strict and cold personality yet with warm heart within. Kenneth Ma did well too especially during tense scenes but he flaunts too much of his signature ‘puppy-eyes’ during sad moments in this series (a bit too much!).

The series has a lot of gripping action scenes but also has too much of love storylines. I felt there’s a bit too much of romantic relationships featured in this series including those minor supporting characters (I haven’t even mention there are three main couples already in this series!). Out of 10 points, I rate ‘The Invisibles’ a total of 7.8. Still a pretty solid action drama with some forgettable flaws.

(Images in this post are from various online sources)

Back to KL on the past long weekend for Qing Ming Festival.

Traffic congestion were the only thing I experienced enormously on this past long weekend when I return to Kuala Lumpur for the Qing Ming Festival with my family. It’s a long weekend not because of this Chinese festival but due to the Good Friday that falls on last Friday (it’s observed here as public holiday in Singapore).

I then took one day leave today as I’m certain I want to avoid the expected massive congestion on the way back to Singapore from Johor yesterday for the entire day. With that one day leave, I can skip the crowd and come back to Singapore a day later instead. However, there were still quite a lot of cars and people at the immigration today as well, but definitely much lesser than yesterday.

This was my first time heading back home for the Qing Ming Festival (tomb sweeping day for the Chinese) since 2019. I wasn’t going back the previous years due to Covid-19 restrictions. I can’t remember though the reason I didn’t head back for last year’s Qing Ming.

Originally, I intend to take the bus on last Thursday’s evening for my trip back to KL. However, I’m well aware of the congestion that evening and hence I decided to leave on Friday’s morning instead. It was no better. Our bus went through the Tuas Link and then we were stuck for about 6 hours just on that stretch of road leading to the Malaysia’s side of the immigration building. 6 hours there! Long queue of buses that could only move 200m in an hour. That’s insane. I had no choice but to get down the bus and pee by the roadside along with many others there.

Once we were at the immigration building, the process was actually much faster than anticipated especially for the Malaysians. There’s just too many people crossing the border that day. We then finally got on the North-South Expressway to go to the Terminal Bersepadu Selatan (TBS) station at KL. The entire trip took me 13 hours including the travel time from my home in SG to the Golden Mile Tower where I took the express bus to bring me to KL and also my travel time from TBS station back to my home in KL. Freaking 13 hours! That’s a new record! With no traffic jam and congestion at the border, one could easily need only 5 hours to travel from SG to KL by bus (or vice versa).

My whole Friday is wasted on that travel alone. On Saturday, I watched a movie in the morning. The movie is titled ‘Lost Love’ and starred my favourite actress/singer, Sammi Cheng. It revolves on a couple taking on the role of foster care over the years. It’s an average film with a poorly executed ending but saved by Sammi’s critically acclaimed performance in the film. In fact, she had already won her three best actress awards (Hong Kong Film Critics Society Awards, Hong Kong Film Directors’ Guild Awards and Hong Kong Online Film Critics Highlight Awards) from her role here. I hope she will finally win her first best actress win at the upcoming 41st Hong Kong Film Awards too (and possibly at the Golden Horse Awards and Asian Film Awards later too).

I then went for a hair cut at my sister’s salon, played rummy with my family and head out for a steamboat dinner at Haidilao with my family as well in the evening. What a fulfilling Saturday (did so many things) especially after the very boring Friday stuck mostly in the bus.

Sunday (yesterday) gave me another nightmare on the road again. We woke up very early as we have to visit my grandparents’ and my mom’s graves today at the Semenyih’s Nirvana Memorial Park for the Qing Ming Festival (an annual traditional custom where we have to worship/pray/provide offerings to our ancestors and clean their graves). We were stuck in traffic congestion for about an hour going to the memorial park and another one and a half hour on the way back. A usual 5-hours trip including lunch in between in the previous years became 8 hours yesterday due to the traffic crawl.

Well, despite all these madness on the road over the past long weekend, I still find my trip back to KL this time worthwhile. I got to do many things and got to spend quality time with my family although it was just very brief. I also got to ‘meet’ my late mom after many years. Many asked me why I didn’t go for flight instead. The flight ticket is so expensive for these couple of days (the price was too unreasonable for me). Hence, that is not an option.

Time to reflect on myself and know this is all part of a learning process.

Hi there. How is it going? Things aren’t going well on my end though. I have been going through quite a pressing crisis recently. Things just don’t go well and are mostly driven by my poor mood and state of mind these couple of weeks. I have myself to blame and I would like to sincerely apologize to those who have been affected by me. Yes, I do find myself childish, emotional and act too spontaneously without thinking rationally at times. I fully realized all that especially after these few days of silence and reflection.

I admitted on my part and perhaps there is actually no right or wrong in such situation as everyone is different. Well, I just have to take this as part of a learning process for me to grow into a better person. Staying positive and enjoying life as it is are also at the top of my mind now too. Nothing’s more important than loving your own self. I’m not here to divulge further details as that would take up at least few thousand words. Haha…

To clear off my mind, I went for a walk around Singapore Sports Hub in the late afternoon just now. It is undeniable that it’s a great place for anyone to have a leisurely walk, catching in the views and watching other people enjoying on their various activities. Here are some of the shots I took:

For the rest of my weekend (the first weekend of April), I occupied the free time mostly by watching some new movies. I watched the ‘Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves’ and ‘Plane’ this weekend. They are both very engaging and entertaining films. As for the coming long weekend (due to Good Friday that falls on this Friday), I will be going back to KL for the Qing Ming Festival with my family.