Mummy with Tattoo!

Spotted this lady at Las Vegas Hard Rock Cafe during my tour there. Just look at the myriad of tattoos on her body! She is the living walking art museum. A 45 years old lady, mum of 3 with the eldest son at 20yrs old. She said she did her tattoo long before her kids was born and they grown up getting use to mum artistic taste. I guess it will take lots of acceptance for her if she was in Singapore but I think we live in the age of Americanization and MacDonalds, Nike and Reeboks. People of my age are already father and mother of son and daughters, I think acceptance is easier right now compare to our father mother generation who consider tattoo as taboo, as gangsterism. She will make a really cool grandmother too! Just give her a shotgun and a sunglass to complete the image.

I can't take a Tattoo on my armpit...will die from tickle. Kudos to her.

Next up, what if Terminator was send back 2007 years ago to protect Jesus?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qnq7N6X4x84

Grand Canyon Photo

My Grand Canyon 2007 Photo Album

Click on the above link to access my online Grand Canyon Photo Album. Enjoy the wacky pictures in nature settings.

Camera Man for Soccer game

Later on, I will be heading out to support our PP Detachment soccer team in their second match of the season and will also be their camera cum video man for the day. Unfortunately I make the mistake of missing the registration for the team and thus have to watch the game from the side lines instead of running down the flank, cutting through the defense and scoring a goals. Even so, I am going to do a good photo and video job for the game. Will post some pictures and video right here next time.

900cc difference, S$10 000 Difference, Same old Varadero

To be frank, I find driving so so boring and so so confine. Since I started driving to work in US, it have been nothing but a boring morning and evening routine. Maybe I should consider changing my car to a Mazda Miata MX5, Honda Integra or a Corvette or something to spice up the life a bit. Not that my Eclipse is a problematic car or something, just that I am a guy who get bored easily with the same thing after sometime. Even so, my driving taste get short lived quickly with any new cars. Ok put it straight, I don't really love to drive and only drive for point A to B or C to D purpose

HOWEVER!!! One thing that does not bored me is riding bike! More in touch with the element and so much more exciting! Of course I don't mean the meat (or buttock) to the metal (the road) kind of in touch but you know, the element of risk and danger excite a man. Love the wind in the face feeling, the ability to beat any traffic jams just by riding in between car and the oppurtunity to ride any where either on or off road that a car might find it just too tight to squeeze through. Riding a bike is much much more harder than driving as proven by my experience going through the riding course prior to taking the license exam. Think bout it, children knew how to drive bumper car in amusement park easily by themselves but have to hurt their butt when learning how to ride a bicycle. Till now there are some adults who don't even know how to balance on a bicycle but could handle a car with just a few short teaching.

I am teaching my friend driving now, he got zero experience with driving and don't even know the big pedal down there is the brake and the small pedal is the accelerator but he pick up within a day. Not so for Motorbikes I am sure, for unlike a car which only need two hands and two legs coordination (two hands and 1 leg coordination for auto), riding a bike needs the full coordination of two hands, two legs, the body for balance, the head for orientation (where you see is where your bike head into) and lots of confidence.

Will be riding bike when I head back to Singapore. With the savings I accumulate, I should be getting a Varadero XL125V to start with and Upgrade to Varadero XL1000V when I get the ultimate Class 2A license in Singapore.

Small 125cc V Twin Engine on a big frame. The best looking beginner bike in Singapore.

Bigger brother of Varadero 125, the 1000cc V Twin engine, twice the size and twice the fun.

Always wanted to get Varadero XL125V in the past but go no vitamin M for it. Even though I could have went for a Honda Super4 with my Class2A license, I decided to complete my life goal by riding the Varadero XL125V first. Considering that I will have lost touch with riding for 2 years since coming to US, its a good bike to get back some of those lost riding experience. Ultimately it will be the 1000cc monster once I save up more. Hmm, maybe a second US trip in the future will fund for it?

Back to Singapore! My Flight Itinerary

I will be heading back to my home country Singapore next Friday. After 10 months of adventure in United States, its time to head back for all year summer, great kopitiam food and back to my home in Yishun. Mmmm...I could almost smell the Meepok, Chay Kway Teow, Roti Prata and my favourite Chilli Crab. Finally, they are within my grasp.

Will be flying out of Dallas on Friday 2nd of March at 6.42pm US Central time. Taking United Airlines Flight 0555 which is a AIRBUS A319 JET. Never took an AIRBUS Jet before so this is the first time.

At 8.31pm Pacific time, if there is not flight delay or hiccups, I will reach San Francisco for a transfer flight to SINGAPORE AIRLINES Flight SQ001. At last, something Singapore to preview even before reaching our shores. Kinda miss my last experience on a SQ flight and after so many month, I probably will be drooling and eyes wide open when I see our flight stewardess. American airlines flight stewardess are either auntie type or just could not match the elegance and beauty of the Singapore Girl.

Unfortunately, I got to wait 4 hours before the plane depart San Francisco at 12.05am, Sat Mar 3. Its gonna be a long 14hrs flight across the Pacific Ocean to stop over at Hong Kong for refuel on 4th of March Sunday, 6.55am Singapore time before going on a final 4 hours flight all the way to Singapore. Arrival time at Changi Airport, with no delays, will be 12pm in the afternoon.

Video MTV of my Grand Canyon 2007 trip

Just a short video clip made by me using "Friendly" version of Ulead Video Studio.

Main Song: Starship Jefferson-Nothing Gonna Stop Us Now
Ending Song: KISS- Beth



Somehow I don't know what happen. All of a sudden we are quiet to each other. I wonder is it all just a dream for the past few months? I choose to be the quiet one now, I thought she need time and space for herself. I choose to loosen my grip for a while, I feel her heart is still with someone else. I guess loving someone sometimes is about letting go. I hope I could make things all right when I get hope. I told myself never to have a long distance emotional attachment when I got to US but I dive myself into the warmness of love at first which freezes in winter. Something happen on that Friday when she stop taking my call and stop calling back. No... I am not blaming her, I am not blaming myself...Love is unexplainable and unreasonable. It mysteriously came and goes. Its hard to hold on to the Candle in the cold rain. Life still goes on.... ... Whatever it is, things got to start all over again. I hope everything goes well this time round...

Wish you Happy Chinese New Year

For the first time in my life, I am not able to celebrate Chinese New Year with my friends and family in Singapore. Well...what to do, work commitment and there got to be people back in our Base right here in USA. People like me. Anyway, here my Chinese New Year Greetings to all my friends, family and relative back in Singapore

MC for CNY Dinner

Just got arrowed on Monday to be the MC for our Base Chinese New Year Dinner which will be happening tomorrow. I was pretty busy with night shift work and by the time I got home, was too tired to make any preparation for it since its already early in the morning 4am. Only got the time to make preparation for tomorrow MC speech just today. In any case, its all about improvisation tomorrow on the stage and I hope the years of talk cock skills I built up and "Not afraid to loss face" attitude will help me survive through the whole process.

Got to not only ensure the smooth flow of the Dinner program but also to do some cultural and heritage sharing of the CNY with our fellow Ang Mo colleague. I really got to introduce them on the most important GOD of Chinese New Year, the GOD OF FORTUNE...

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Riccardo: Hey Beck, this is 财神爷，the GOD OF FORTUNE.

Beck: ????

Riccardo: Hmmm...maybe you will understand with this picture.

Beck: Oh!! I see now...
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A US 100 Dollar bill should do the trick. Anyway, just gonna share with them what we do before Chinese New Year which is Spring Cleaning , Chinese New Year shopping and buying new clothes. The meaning of Reunion Dinner on Chinese New Year eve. The auspicious words of greetings on Chinese New Year, the Mandarin Orange use during Chinese New Year, the Ang Bao given by the elderly and the married couples to Children and Single. Why do we 鱼生 "Yu Sheng"? And the prayers and offerings on the 9th Day of CNY.

Seriously, I have not done a lot of research yet I just hope there will not be a sudden spell of cold silence while I am on the stage.

Great Deals, Coupons and Freebies at Spoofee,com

Unfortunately Spoofee.com offered fellow bloggers like me a deal that is totally irresistible, a free Bungee Rocket simply by blogging about the website.

So I gonna write something about it right now. In today world of Information technology and high speed broadband, more and more people have turn to online and let their finger do the shopping, the UPS and Fedex man to do the delivery and their wallet to save the money. Regualr shopping center are almost a dying breed as they continue to fight against rising rental cost, utility bills and taxes. THATS OVERHEAD and with online store like Amazon.com, Buy.com, Discovery Store etc etc... since their store front is right on your screen, no physical space taken...they have lower overhead and can therefore offer shoppers a great deal compared to the regular retail outlets.

2GB Thumbdrive rebates for free, LCD Monitor that are 30% cheaper than retail, Nintendo DS Lite going for US$90 after rebates. With so many online shopping website, you probably have spinning heads and twisted fingers just by searching for the best deal online. Admit it, it still physically demanding even with "Finger Shopping" and thats where Spoofee.com comes in.

The best deals, freebies and coupon posted and updated daily right here in this website. Star ratings by visitors and comments give you a heads up if its a Buring Hot Deal or its just a fair deal. Hot link points you directly to the online Merchant for purchase and alas there is a forum in it for other deals that could not make it to the front page. Better check it out before the deals are gone my friend...

Back from Grand Canyon and Las Vegas

I came to Las Vegas with my lucky T-Shirt.

The serenity and vastness of the Grand Canyon, The lure of the Casino and colorful lightings of Las Vegas, just 4 days of tour in both location can be sum up as eye opener, "can't get enough" and fatigue as our group tried to cover as much places as possible within a short span of time.

Ah Chan...Ah Chan...come play Wheel Of Fortune. The temptation is just too much for my dear friend to resist.

The Grand Canyon is so big that we can only use our eyes to do the exploring the view of the Canyon from the South Rim Grand Canyon Village instead of stepping into the Canyon itself through a Day hike. Las Vegas have so much places to explore along the "Strip" that we literally walk till our leg ache. I sure hope we got 2 weeks for the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas so we could explore the places of interest at a more comfortable pace. Just too much places to go with too little time. This trip turn out to be a preview for me and I definitely like to revisit again.

New York city smack right into Las Vegas, brought to you by NewYork NewYork Hotel.

Thanks to our photographer Garfield, we took tons of photo during the tour in both Grand Canyon and Las Vegas. I have not get a hold of the pictures yet as we all got back to Dallas early in morning at 4am on Monday and got to start work at 6pm. Will be getting the 2.5GB worth of photos from him this weekend and will be doing a photo blog of our tour in Grand Canyon and Las Vegas. As for myself, I decided not to take much photo and enjoy the view with my eyes while Garfield see the world through his US$2500 Canon Camera and lenses. Took really wonderful pictures at the lost of his Fujifilm FinePix compact digital camera which was damaged by the Grand Canyon rocks when he got too excited about the view and dropped it.

Garfield, our field photographer for the trip. Very dangerous man when armed...with a camera.

Well thats all folks. Will be back with more pictures and story telling of my tour in Grand Canyon and Las Vegas. I really need to picture to bring back the memories of my trip and write in down in this blog. Its 4.00am right now and my eyes are tired.....

King Aerospace, KACC

The King Aerospace facility right here is huge! Big Hanger and Big Runway. Our servicing was smooth as vanilla today and our Chinook looks sparkling new with its new paint work. After speaking to Johnny, one of the spray painter right at the facilities, I learn that this was the first time King Aerospace ever did a aircraft painting job for a helicopter and whats even surprising was that our Chinook was their first military helicopter project. F-4 Phantom, F-5 Tiger, P-3 Orion...numerous US fighter jets but never a helicopter before, according to Johnny and also another guy at the facility.





After 15 gallons of paint and primer and some really professional decal and detailing work on those tons of black lettering scattered all around the aircraft, our bird now looks like its just roll out of a BOEING assembly line. Still, our guys still need to inspect every detail of the paint job and highlight any mistake or missing detailing to the project manager for his guys to do a follow up. Adding to our challenge are the preparation of our bird for the safe flight back to our home base.



Haven't got a chance to tour around the facility at the moment but we did have lunch at one of the cafe right here called "BLUE PIG BBQ". Ordered the rib basket for lunch and although those pork ribs feel a bit fatty and oily compared to what I have in the past, it nonetheless taste really good. Adding to the great taste of the food is the nice atmosphere in the cafeteria, wall lined with military arm badges from different Air Force,Navy and Army aviation squadron of the USA and some from foreign millitary. All nicely frame up on the wall around the restauraunt. Manage to catch the sight of our Peace Prairie Detachment Squadron badge in one of the frame. WOnder which generous soul leave it there.



A big world map right in the center of the cafeteria serve to remind all patrons that whatever their nationality, they are all welcome. Looks like this is the hotspot for private pilots to park their planes and have breakfast, lunch or dinner right here before walking a short distance back to the runway for their flights. You could catch the sight of patrons walking out of the cafeteria, to their planes just 30m away, starting up and taxing off to the runways.

Heading to Oklahoma tomorrow

I just got a last minute call from Boss to pack up and leave for Oklahoma State tomorrow morning. Will be heading there to do some aircraft work for our Chinook that have completed aircraft spray painting at KING AEROSPACE. I will be out of Dallas from Monday till Wednesday evening. Look like the entire of this week will be spend outside Texas, first Oklahoma than to Las Vegas early Thursday morning. Feel like a 1 long week of holiday to me.

A Dinner of appreciation and reflection

Welcome to HOOTERS...RT man favorite chill outs...

It was suppose to be our RT section regular HOOTERS dinner outing today initiated by our dear supervisor Encik Ravi. Since his arrival, we have been bombarded by lots of work and rectification thus our Encik organized a dinner outing today to reward ourselves for a job well done and mission accomplishment.

We have a couple of beers and soon Encik Ravi got a bit high and you know when a man get high on beer he started to pour out his heart and emotion. Thats when all of us learn a lesson about giving credit and appreciating your man or subordinates. When a man is high, his words and emotion cannot be masked, scripted....it will be dead honest and out from the heart.... no filtering.

Encik Ravi, right in front of our Dear Boss Maj Wong gave credit to each and everyone of us. Each and everyone of our role and contribution was entirely pour out of his heart in very sincere appreciation. And he kept on repeating it again and again, making sure that we heard and receive his words. This is not pretentious for you can see it in his eyes, a nearly 20 years Air Force experience guys, the gratefulness and sincere appreciation for our contribution. I think I saw him rubbing away his tears in the middle of a speech. My god.... he is so emotional that he actually cried?

Somehow he boosted my morale and motivated me to contribute more at work when he credited me for always been the only one running to and fro aircraft, getting the tools, the spares and stuff. What even touches me more was when he mention that he was worried that I will slip on the oil stains on the floor accidentally and thus every morning, he clean up the stains he found. To be honest, I have actually tone down my pace a bit but his words today is like N.O.S in an engine....my RPM goes up already. Damn...where to find this kind of "FOR THE MAN" Supervisor? Somehow or rather he remember me telling him I got BIG LUNGS thats why I always run to and fro from point to point and brought that up today. Ha ha...now everyone will nickname me BIG LUNGS and I better live up to that name with proper running training.

Of course its not only me....he pick on every one of his man and gave credit right in front of boss. I have all along knew that RT section was the most well knit section in PP Det , our guys have a long tradition of good team work and going through thick and thin. When other section have less than desirable working partners, the unprofessional and worthless, our section have little to none of those trouble. It was not until today that I realise how thankful Encik Ravi was for our guys. He mention we are not the bottle neck, we always achieve our mission for the organization, sometime our guys have to take the shit of others secondary appointment (obviously not our section) and make it right, we take the pain all the time for others mistake....

We could have just drink today, talk cock, go Baby Doll see the strippers and learn nothing. But here it is a passionate RSAF Encik, very Care for soldier and professional telling us all the good things about us when we are actually not really up there yet. It some how make me reflect on myself and my own performance so far...do I deserve such praises? I think somehow its kind of a motivation to praise than perform later in my case. Somehow when the appreciation and credit comes it, it nudges me forward to put in more effort.

I think I see the meaning of leadership today, its not only leading in work...the planning and the delegation. Its also about thanking you guys for their work and crediting them, in details of their contribution. Take two hands to clap... the man doing the hard work, the boss showing gratitude and appreciation...the man work even harder....I never forget todays speech.

Elmo have reached Puberty

After so many years as the little, sweet voiced character in Sesame Street, Elmo have grown up and truly appreciate the joy and laughter of jerking off himself. Elmo have reached puberty....

http://www.buy.com/prod/tmx_elmo/q/loc/14982/203122184.html

And for just US$39.90 from Buy.com, you could experience his teenage life, high on drugs, hysterical laughter and suggestive hand movement all in the comfort of your living room...

End of day report

Got a call from my Encik today that due to weather its a no work day again. So its free and easy for me today and a good time to watch some of the movies and downloaded in the past but just got no time to watch it.



"GOOD MORNING VIETNAM" starring Robin Williams. The entire film could be summarized, "Censorship of radio broadcast means you just hear all the good news and doing things out of the normal program can be really refreshing and entertaining ". Sometimes there are tragedy happening just around us but we are so oblivious to it for the powerful media play down the incident and hid it under the carpet. In the movie, the general population and US soldiers in the movie were listening to radio station with censorship all around blocking news of the communist intrusion into South Vietnam city, false sense of peace in this case. In one of the scene Robin Williams character, Adrain ( a radio jockey) , witness and was nearly killed when a bomb exploded inside a bar. He got back to the radio station and was stopped by his officer from reporting the news through his radio station. Hilariously, he went on and spoke through the radio,

"In Saigon today, according to official sources nothing actually happen. One thing that officially did not happen is a bomb that exploded and unofficially destroyed "Jimmy Ai" Cafe". 3 man were unofficially wounded, 2 man identity was still unknown this time. The fire department responded which was believe to be unofficial at the moment.... (radio was cut off)".

That was some really good way of putting the words to the public.

Did some photography after the movie...

Hmm... maybe I should add a banana into the equation...

And for lunch, I add a whole pint of Ben and Jerry Ice Cream, "Phish Food" flavour. This thing cost like S$8 dollars in Singapore but just S$3 in US. Love those chocolate fishes in it. Call me crazy or something. I got craving for ice cream even during winter...

Fishing time!!! Mmm...Chocolate and Vanilla

Seems to be something hard in the ice cream

Ahhh!!!! A Fish! First catch of the day.

Spend the rest of the night after dinner assembling my RC Helicopter which I have stripped to its bare minimum few days ago while concurrently MSNing my friends in Singapore. Have just replaced the broken landing gear. Those screws are so small compare to what I encounter daily on a real helicopter that its sometime so darn frustrating to put them right back to the holes they belong to.

Gonna watch another movie before I sleep. Plan for tomorrow is to get back to my books and study for my FAA certification. Good Night Singapore...Good Night Dallas....