Birds of Geylang!!!

I’m not referring to those “birds” at even-numbered streets at Geylang. I am referring to the actual birds that hover the streets of Geylang.

A crow

A pigeon

A flying egret

A walking egret

And of course if there are birds in Geylang there are also cats

My Take on the Singapore Fashion Festival

First, the booking system sucks big time, it was written in ASP, and
it shows trivial SQL Exceptions making it vulnerable to SQL injections.
Know what I mean, so I ignored the whole Ngee Ann City affair with all
that booking crap and decided to go elsewhere where booking is not
important. Who cares if you got something like this.

 

These models won't mind smiling for you. They're not the "feeling celebrity"
types who just went upramp for an hour of fame and they thought they
are the greatest gift in their respective industry. Anyway, it's a fashion
fever in Singapore right now and it will run for a week.

 

The
show was a good way to practice one of my lonely hobby, I am not really
into photography, I am just a guy who has camera with a couple of lens
and that's it.

I hate rules that's why I love shooting my own way, my own rules. Because in the end, rules doesn't really matter.

 

 

The Jakarta Takedown

It’s my second time in Jakarta and only now is the time I can tell something about it from the comfort of my hotel room which I’m currently staying as of this writing. I have a couple of long days now and the flight was terrible, the most violent air pocket I have ever experienced so violent I was awaked and in my dream I thought I grabbed the oxygen mask that dropped before me but the vibration was indeed violent as if it will tear the Boeing 777 apart. And calmness came, lo and behold!

So I got down to business, that I can’t discuss here in my blog, my apologies. One of my contacts in Jakarta thought that I am a Malay from Singapore and I said no I am a Filipino and their reaction; “Filipino ha? Coup d’ etat? Coup d’ etat?” My eyelids dropped halfway close then I brought back my composure again and said “Relax, it’s over”. As an overseas worker it’s my duty to project the positive. So positive it has became. Dinner time, what did I got? I went down to the hotel lobby and to a Lebanese restaurant as per recommendation, order a shish kebab of lamb of course, four pita breads, one mutabal and a surprise.

Jakarta and Manila has a lot of commonalities for example the word “five” in Bahasa is “lima” which is the same with Tagalog, “anak” is child, by the way Freddie Aguilar and his masterpiece “Anak” is still a memorable favorite there. Other commonalities are the Toyota Kijang the Philippine version is the Toyota Tamaraw FX, “Kijang” means deer but “Tamaraw” is a wild bull of sort more vicious than those in Spain. So if we have an “FX Terminal” they have their own “Kijang” Terminal.

I think the right-hand-drive version of the Filipino FX drivers are these Kijang drivers, they alight and take passengers in the middle of the road, very slow in an open road very fast in a congested traffic.

There was one time we were in an intersection and the Police (Polisi) caught a motorist beating the red light, the motorist was pulled over, the procedure should be as simple as citing the violation and issuing a ticket but from the looks of it we realized that they’re having a lengthy discussion. So our designated drivers looked back to me and asked “Manila police corrupt or no?”, I didn’t got him at first and he means are the cops in Manila(maybe referring not only to Manila) corrupt or not. I just shook my shoulders and said “Ah just the same but not all, they’re[the Polisi and the nut] talking too long already it’s obvious”. I can’t lie that some of the Philippine cops are not corrupt unless they prove us wrong. That’s another thing we have in common, it contributes to why our people and theirs are like this.

And our designated driver once again told me he has friends in Mindanao and Cebu, that’s pretty cool. In fact, we’re allies since the 60’s. Jakarta’s ambiance is very close to the Metropolitan Manila. The roads, the traffic jams, the people and so forth. Pondering onwards, I think parts of Mindanao can be developed like Jakarta.