So while my wife and the boys cycled, I skated along.
We passed by Big Splash which looked more like Big Smash now.
We stopped by at Ski 360. The skiers seemed to be getting younger nowadays. We thought that this kid of no more than 10 years' old skied very well:
Until we saw another kid of about the same age skiing without a rope!
Actually, she was about to end her skiing session and had just let go of the rope. Haha, did I manage to trick you there for a moment?
To my colleagues MGC and THY - if 10-year-olds can ski like that, what are the 2 of you waiting for, huh? Come on, take up the challenge man! Relax okay? I am not asking the 2 of you to ski like this:
We moved on to the food centre where we saw some beautiful bicycles:
This one was obviously owned by someone with a great sense of humour:
Then we were entertained by a busker, Ms Low Geok Lan 49, who played a harmonica. She was a former taxi driver.
She also showed us what must be the world's smallest working harmonica:
She not only played the harmonica very well, she had also written a Chinese book titled "Why I Never Regret That I Am Not Beautiful".
Someone even produced a DVD of her teaching her students how to play the harmonica:
I proceeded towards Bedok Jetty while my family stayed around castle area. It was quite crowded at the jetty:
There I saw a lighted kerosene lamp which I had not seen for a while:
The owner would probably be hanging it just above the sea surface at jetty later. Can you guess why?
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16 comments:
Sounds like a good outing. Big Splash has not been attracting crowds. Time they did something abt it. I love the Seafood International there but they have now "relocated". I've seen similar small harmonica in a Taiwanese variety shor....it does wonders :)
I saw the water ski-ing in the night the other day (or night). Feel like trying, but might have weak knees.
Tigerfish - Now there is a Wild Wild Wet in Downtown East (Pasir Ris) which offers much more than what Big Splash had to offer. No wonder Big Splash suffered diminishing patronage. Besides, that place is more than 30 years' old. High time for rejuvenation.
Keropok man - The Ski 360 offers kneeling boards for the amateurs. Looks quite easy. I think even those with weak knees can try that one, haha.
A friend of mine is a member of the Book Worm (reading) club and helping to promote the book by this lady Xiao Luo. I bought a copy. It's a series of essays mostly about her exprience working as a taxi driver in TIBS experience.
It is commendable that she's using all her skills to earn a living. It must be quite tough.
I think that lantern might be used to help catch some sort of fish - prawns maybe?
Lots of things happening in those photos Victor.
Ms Soup
Ms Soup - Yours is the first guess and it is close enough.
Ms Soup - It's time to reveal the answer to my little quiz. I saw people catching squids that way. Since you cook alphabet-soup, it might interest you that here, the squid is commonly called sotong, a Malay word. Sotong also means "blur" colloquially. Hence someone who is "blur like a sotong" means he/she is "always lost and doesn't know what to do". Old-timers like us use this phrase quite often when we are in the army. Nowadays, I think our youngsters like to use WOLS to describe people who are SLOW. (WOLS is SLOW in reverse, if you noticed.)
Maybe a squid's vision is really blur. That could be why it is attracted to strong light - so that it could see better, haha. A squid swimming under the light seems to be mesmerized and it could be scooped up quite easily by the guy standing on the jetty using a large round net attached to a long pole.
Yes, the lighted kerosene lamp is used to attract squids to the surface of the sea so that it is easier to scoop them up in the net.
Always remember to scoop them from
the rear of the squids as their quick escape in the face of danger is to dart backwards to confuse the uninitiated.
S. Foo - Thanks for the tip. I'll remember it if I go squiding (if there's such a word) next time.
BTW, some people say that the phrase "blur like a sotong" came about because a sotong ejects black ink when frightened, thereby blurring the predator's vision. Don't know how true, i.e. the origin of the saying, not the "black ink" part, haha.
Looks like you and your family had a swell time at East Coast Park recently.... Reminds me that it is timely to bring my small brood there for a trip soon. ;)
I like the post on the lady who played the harmonica, wrote a book and was formerly a taxi driver. There is some sense of a bitter sweet feel to it, with a melancholic harmonica tune thrown in. Life is like that sometimes I guess.
Cool Insider - The important thing is to be happy in what one is doing. After speaking to Ms Low for only a short while, I got the impression that she was very happy and passionate in what she was doing.
Of course, the other important thing is to spend time with your loved ones. Hope to bump into you in ECP (the park, not the expressway) some time soon.
Victor, seems like you are enjoying your outing. It's sad to see the Big Splash finally gone.
Victor, are you using a phone camera?
Laokokok - No, I am using a pocket-size Samsung L50 (5mp) camera but I mostly use VGA setting (640 x 480 pixels) for taking blog photos. At this setting, most of my photos are only about 140kb - good enough for posting on the web.
This camera model has been discontinued. Why did you ask? My photos are not so clear hor? Because this camera got no anti-shake wan (and people above 50 sure have very shaky hands, haha).
I have a better camera - Panasonic FZ-20 with anti-shake. However this is a more bulky camera to lug around and I use it only when I want to take better photos.
Hi Victor, yes the photos are not so sharp if you are using a camera instead of phone camera of my 'era' hehe. BTW, I too have shaky hands but I usually prefer to use fast speed to avoid blur photo. I'm using my wife's Pana Lumix 1 and I usually set to Scenery mode. The camera nowadays are so simple to use that there isn't much setting for me to do...
I'm still using a very old handphone model.
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