eevon.sg

I’ve always been fascinated by mega structures and oil rigs is definitely one of them. Ken invited me to go for the christening of the oil rig project he was working on with Ensco. Yup the same peeps who hosted the NYE yacht-party.

So there. Ensco 8052. His baby. It is so huge, my lens is simply not wide enough.

The christening of an oil rigs is very much similar to how a newborn baby is baptised in a church. Similarly, a baby’s christening is also known as the naming ceremony. So on that day, Ensco 8052 was officially named.

That was the pastor giving his blessings to Ensco 8052. A short heartening prayer was offered. Wondered if other religious man will be engaged if the client is not American.

Anyway a highlight of the christening was when the very important lady, Ms Cambria Reinsborough pressed a button and a champagne bottle was smashed onto the hull of the rig signifying the start of a glorious for this vessel. Ah this ritual is very important because apparently maritime superstition held that a ship that wasn’t properly christened would be considered unlucky and a champagne bottle that didn’t break was a particularly bad omen. Anyway all went well and with the most enthusiastic round of applause and a brief shower of rainbow confetti, Ensco 8052 is off to a good start!

Can you spot the champagne bottle? By the way, when I told Ken that using a button to smash the champagne bottle seemed to spoil the fun. I felt that the ceremony will be more kick-ass if the lady smashed the bottle manually. Then he told me about the Curse of Camilla. Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall was the honored lady who christened a passenger ship in 2007 and the bottle didn’t break. Turned out the first few cruises were marred by a vomiting bug which afflicted passengers. Hor hor. He also mentioned that the infamous Titanic was launched without a christening ceremony. Ok point taken.

Ah I can’t stop admiring this mighty rig. Isn’t that magnificent? Woah my eyes practically gaped in amazement. I was so fascinated by the super huge structure! Fyi those slender columns you see will be submerged under water when Ensco 8052 start drilling the seabeds for oil/gas. The idea of these columns supporting a platform deck at a significant height above the sea surface is kinda freaky to me.

Felt so tiny when I stand next to that humongous rig. Even the ropes I saw was monstrous.

And I was told to be wary of the thruster. lol.

Ben, pls. I know what you’re thinking. No. Not hard gay. The thruster I meant works just like a propeller. It pushes the vessel and is meant to keep the rig in a fixed position when the environment condition becomes extreme. According to wiki, an oil rig is used to house workers and machinery needed to drill wells in the ocean bed, extract oil and/or natural gas, process the produced fluids, and ship or pipe them to shore. That’s a mouthful isn’t it?

Oil rig 101.

Ensco 8052 is a Semi Submersible rig which floats and stay upright. I guess this type of platform is good for urgent projects because it could drill a hole in the seabed then quickly moves to the next location. If you are interested to know more about oil rigs, check out this wiki entry on oil platforms. Personally, I think the jack-up rig is pretty interesting.

After the ceremony, came the tour which I am so excited about! Personally, climbing up the stairs was a scary enough. The horrifying wire cage elevator was worst. It jerks unexpectedly and I almost thought I’m going to fly out of it just like how Charlie flew out of Willy Wonka’s glass elevator.

After surviving the terrifying elevator ride, I landed on a large deck. Everything was perfectly fine until I looked up. I was a little perturbed by the steel beams. Ok maybe perturbed is an understatement.

Getting more and more paranoid that this thing will land on me, I escaped to the control room. Couldn’t make sense of the buttons though it looked simpler than those dashboards we normally see on spaceships in sci-fi movies. Coolness.

Goofing around at the living quarters. Guess what, there’s also a gym and a TV room with a huge LCD TV on board!

Popped by the pantry for drinks and muffins. Finally I could take off the helmet.

That’s the end of the indoor tour and we were directed out to the open again. Wacky photo moment with me and darling Sok Hui.

Ting-ling-ling lunch is ready! Lol. I’m pretty sure that’s not the purpose of this bell. We also shared some fun moments at the helipad. Especially when Timmy decided to propose! So sweet!

Haha It was just for fun! He already proposed to Nic, his lovely fiancé weeks ago I think.  But nonetheless, it was still laudable act. Haha. Just like a typical scene from some Mediacorp drama. If you recall, Keppel did ran a drama series on Channel 8 featuring Christopher Lee with hideous white hair.

Before I end my post, I want to say that I’m proud of Ken being part of this project. Silly-billy looked very happy in the following picture.

Though the science behind how you guys put this astounding thing together still baffles me, I’m aware of the loads of man hours took to build this. This explained the extra hours/OT you needed to put in. All is forgiven. (:

At times, Cablenazi have to go offshore for couple days to run checks on the equipments and I wish I can get him to smuggle me into the cabin! Can’t whine to him for couple of days is quite torturous. I heard that one of his friends is involve in a floatel project! A floating hotel! Would you like to spend a night at a floatel? Could you imagine the excitement and drama of the oil adventure, life on board an oil rig? Honestly, I don’t mind the experience! Sounds fun! Imagine wearing the white telly-tubby overall and walking around pretending to be an engineer for a day. lol. I’ll probably drive my colleagues crazy.

Though interesting to the uninitiated, the nature of an oil rig’s operation — extraction of volatile substances sometimes under extreme pressure in a hostile environment — means risk, accidents, and tragedies occasionally occur. Now it seems pretty scary isn’t it?

(:

Thanks Ken for the invite and all the guides on the tour for your sharing. Well done folks for the successful delivery.

Was invited by Ivy, Singtel to the launch of Motorola’s first Android-powered phone. Thanks! (:

It’ s been a while since we last heard any news from Motorola. Well gotta give them credit for trying. What caught my eye when I saw this phone was the conversation bubbles all over the home screen. Woah. Conversation threads, friend updates, stories, links, photos and more are automatically delivered to live widgets on the home screen. Interesting. Widgets.

What you think? The bubbles looked pretty cute right? But will you be distracted by the real-time updates on the embedded widgets which link directly to Facebook and Twitter? One thing for sure, those who don’t mind will be pleased with the smooth integration Motorola DEXT offers with MOTOBLUR.

What’s MOTOBLUR? In a techie noob terms, its a useful system designed for blur people like me. MOTOBLUR combines various social networking portals such as Facebook and Twitter all in one place without the need of logging into each service separately. This means I can post a status update to one or multiple accounts at once. That explains the ‘everything else is anti-social’ tagline.

Trying to psycho Ken to get an iPhone too when his plan expires but he is still looking around for one with a QWERTY keyboard. DEXT should be ok and it even comes with a pretty responsive touchscreen, but I think it is a tad bulky at 15.6mm thick. Not very handbag friendly. Honestly, it is not very sexy so there’s nothing much on the form factor for me to elaborate further.

I guess this phone is more function than style. So for a techie review, check out what Joe thinks of the Motorola DEXT.

As for the launch event at Helipad, it rocked because the bloggers were awesome as usual. Enjoyed the after-launch at the rooftop lounge! That’s me with sunshine Sidney. His caption: Kiddies on the loose. Eh how old are we again? *giggles*

Mus, Yin and I. Taken with his DSLR. Mus has sturdy arms. Lol. Oh must thank Kelvin for the champagne.  Yum yum!

When an ex-girlfriend pulled the plug on our much treasured group of 7, I fled to the Great Wall in my dreams. This trip came unexpectedly and was not meant to be. I needed a dose of serenity and prayed that the strong winds would blow her far away from us. Thankfully everything still looked the same up here. Changes could be so excruciating.

Grand. Arresting. Towering.

Scaling the wall’s steep, crumbling steps now brings new meaning after I withstood the pangs of adversity with my girlfriends. That was nothing we’ve ever encountered throughout our years of friendship.

It was shocking how much similarity our decade-old friendship share with the Great Wall’s history of more than 2000 years. Though some of the wall’s sections are now in ruins or have disappeared, it is still so appealing and attractive. It all boils down to its historical significance. Much the same, our history is priceless.

I was at Badaling. Thrown with an option of going either left or right, I took the route on my left which offers a more challenging hike up the wall and kept walking until it was not possible to walk any further. I thought that the steep mountain slope and torturous roads were awesome because it was these features that made it a stronghold. Yeah we are flawed and that made our journey steep and torturous as well. But what’s our weakness when our strengths could easily support and protected each other from harm.

Win was right. We’ve gone through obstacles together, not in person, but in our hearts. Our love proved bigger than any obstacle and dearest, I am so honoured and proud of this too!

(:

Building this great wall is not an easy feat nor it was done in a day. Though it is easy to take pleasure of each other’s company, we never had any difficulty seeing the point of considering friendship in terms of common moral commitments. Ling reminded me that though we are far away in distance, yet we commit ourselves to be always be close at heart. Friends are VERY HARD to come by. Good ones, even harder. Best friends for more than 10 years, fucking miracle!

I think best friends comes with an eager readiness, and an absence of hesitation. We shall have the courage to give advice with candour. With that common understanding, we can conquer any walls together.

Aristotle told me.

“such friendships are rare is natural, because men of this kind are few. And in addition they need time and intimacy; for as the saying goes, you cannot get to know each other until you have eaten the proverbial quantity of salt together. Nor can one man accept another, or the two become friends, until each has proved to the other that he is worthy of love, and so won his trust. Those who are quick to make friendly advances to each other have the desire to be friends, but they are not unless they are worthy of love and know it. The wish for friendship develops rapidly, but friendship does not.”

Point taken. Her unworthy reasons for departure has brought to mind a memory. Someone once told me that in friendship and relationship, those who possess any superiority must put themselves on an equal footing with those who are less fortunate, so these latter must not be annoyed at being surpassed in genius, fortune, or rank. As women, we were held to be more articulate and emotionally accomplished. Clearly, we must had been too overwhelming.

My hazy romantic visions has turned into a vivid reality just as the chilling winds wailed alarmingly. The Great Wall transformed into a red dragon, winding its way along the mountain ranges. The blustery sky cleared. I now have great better visibility and that’s going to make the climbing, even the steep parts, easier. I’m no longer dreaming.

We all are happy once again. Without her, things still won’t change. We are who we are and that’s what we love about each other.

I quote from Win “we will stand together, even more, even stronger than before. we’ve done it for over a decade. we can do it for another decade, and the next, and the next…. and so on.” and yes Elaine, you are my life too. I will make sure all your kids laugh over our silly escapades.

My ladies, cheers to infinity and beyond!

Many thanks to Amanda, Daniel, Sidney, Nicole, Marcky, Nic, David, Lina, Dom, Mel and Chiang Wey for the support. Y0u peeps are angels.

Ken and I popped by Macau before we explored Hong Kong and if we did not splurge on fine dining and excessive shopping, I would say that it is possible to explore the city on a show-string! Shall do a post on the expensive Portuguese restaurant next but now I shall share on how to have an inexpensive yet fun-filled day for two in Macau.

Well, Macau is a safe city, perfect for those who don’t mind walking. Before trying to embark on our adventure at Macau, we put on comfortable walking shoes and picked up a free map at the MGTO info counters at the ferry terminal or airport. We know that if we planned well, we can actually travel around Macau for free simply by hopping on and off the complimentary shuttle buses operated by all major casinos and hotels! Then again, I still prefer walking around the city. That’s still the best way to get around Macau.

Our day started with some famous Portuguese egg tarts at Margaret’s Cafe e Nata (Gum Loi Building Rua Alm. Costa Cabral, Macaubefore) before take a relaxing stroll through history at Senado Square, the heart of Macau where there’s lots of opportunity to camwhore. Hehe.

Apparently this cafe bakes the freshest, most crispy and tastiest baked Portuguese egg tarts on the island. True? You know the answer. My contented face explains everything.

Oh my the custard filling was super smooth, soft and rich in flavour. I could still recall how much I loved the burnt caramelised bits and the flaky puff! We paid MOP$1.25 for each egg tart. Breakfast was just about MOP$10.

Feeling kinda full from breakfast, we decided to use the map and walked over to Senado Square. Well, everyone must visit Senado Square because it is like a must-visit site. Check out the lovely wave-patterned mosaic of coloured cobble stones on its pavement. That place feels new. Not very comfortable. I prefer old places.

I can’t seem to find any interesting pictures of us here. Probably we didn’t really care much about the square while we were there because we were distracted by this particular shop! That shop which sells steamed milk! We did some research online and was advised to look out for Yee Shun Milk Company when we visit Senado because that particular outlet at Senado Square is the main branch. You can’t miss it. It’s exterior is pink.

We ordered a bowl of steamed milk pudding (MOP$14) and steamed egg custard (MOP$14). Yummy! If you are looking for that famous chain from Macau specialising in milk and custard based dessert, there’s no other than Yee Shun Milk Company. And it is true that the steamed milk and egg custard taste better in Macau than their branches in Hong Kong. Plus it is slightly more expensive in Hong Kong.

After satisfying the dessert cravings, we attempted to unfold history at some old churches around Senado Square. I think we covered the Cathedral Church (1622), the Church of St Anthony (1560) and Church of St Dominic (1587). Entrance to the attractions mentioned above are all free! Oh look. I played pretend and it was fun to provoke exasperated facial expressions from him.

I wanted to confess all my evil-doings at the St. Dominic’s Church. But the priest was off-duty. Probably another day then. Anyway the most awesome architecture in Macau is definitely the St. Paul Ruins.

Beautiful structure but can’t get enough of it because all that’s left was just the southern stone façade. This site once stood the largest Catholic Church in Asia at one time before it was destroyed by a fire during a typhoon. Sad right? And we didn’t know that it is customary to throw coins into the top window of the ruins from the stairs, for luck. Wiki said that.

Well well, the fact that we were in the Las Vegas of Asia means we cannot escape these casinos. Have to at least step into one to get a feel of it. Since we don’t gamble, we just gawked at the gaudy/grand decorations, ordered a drink and indulge in the free, non-stop entertainment shows in the casino lounge. It was pretty boring. Oh if I’m not mistaken, the Venetian perhaps the biggest hotel in the world but Cablenazi and I did not have the chance to check the Venetian out previously when we were here. We were lazy. Just want to chill, relax, hold hands and explore the old city. Lunch was pork chop buns from a local shop we chanced upon! Not bad.

Getting lost is in a quaint place like Macau is a simple pleasure itself. I like the sight of old, crumbling architecture of the past. I like the rough stale feel of old bricks. We also chanced upon spots that were lest touristy. Such as this breezy park somewhere in Macau. Lol. We bought ice cream from a cart and people-watched. Also realised how much I enjoy his company.

No idea how we managed to walked back to a familiar lane that brought us back to the vicinity of our hostel. Then it is time for dinner! We decided to try something exotic for dinner that is unavailable in Malaysia/Singapore. Fresh Duck Blood Cake! We found it at a local roasted meat shop right opposite our hostel. Look at that bowl of protein.

Dinner was cheap. Roughly MOP30/SGD6 per person.

To end the day, we bought 2 cans of Macau beer each from 7-11 and chilled out in at a romantic garden. It was an  impromptu decision! So we ended up in a random garden near Senado Square. Actually with proper planning, you can consider visiting the Camoes Grotto, a garden with ancient pagoda trees and winding paths. That’s the oldest and biggest public park in Macau!

By the way, the Macau beer is a lightly flavoured brew suitable for ladies! I’m a fan of its grassy, pungent green apple skin-like flavour. Nice!

What we missed: Museum Hopping

Often misunderstood as the oriental Las Vegas, a sin city for big-time gamblers and playboy tycoons, Macau actually offers more than just that kind of entertainment. For history buffs like me, I wanted to museum hop as there are museums that are really worth visiting in Macau! But we had no time! In fact, there were so many interesting museums that we really have a tough time short listing the ones to visit. But if time permits, the one not-to-be-missed would be the Macau Wine Museum.

Wine sampling at a museum? Perfect excuse to get high.

4 naughty peeps pulled a great surprise on me!

Stank is gonna love this post because I cried on MY birthday! Was cheated by Cablenazi as usual. Oh he does that very well. Whisked me away to Kim Choo Kitchen, a pretty peranakan restaurant right in the Peranakan enclave of Joo Chiat and kept me wondering what is he up to.

At Kim Choo Kitchen,  the colourful patterned tiles and attractive floral porcelain dining ware caught my eye. Beautiful. Totally embodies the distinctive Asian culture of Peranakan culture. This place really gave me the vibe of a humble Peranakan home.

Just when I was admiring the decor, he almost gaveaway his act when the waitress mentioned ‘table for 5 right?’ and when I was about to tweet about his suspicious behavious, Winnie popped into the seat next to him without a sound. The next second when I lifted up my head, I was extremely shocked! But what comes after made my nose turned red. Never expected Stank and Elaine to appear from the stairs! Shockers!

lol. And here are my two lovely ladies.

A ghastly face Stank pulled.

And this, the smug-looking sly mastermind.

Of course will cry la . Never expect Cablenazi to surprise me with these three unexpected guests during dinner! Stank, Winnz and Elaine! Oh my goodness. They actually came all the way from JB for me? Such sweeties! After all the drama, We enjoyed peranakan food at a restaurant and mm the Kueh Chang was very very good. Yum yum. Must eat while its still warm!

Here’s some pictures of the peranakan fare we had that evening. Well, food was passable probably because I’ve tasted better peranakan food. Remember Restoran Nyonya Suan? Anyway what you must-try here is definately the Kueh Chang, beef/chicken rendang and probably the cendol.

Anyway good food is just secondary. The company is what that matters and this year was perfect! Don’t you love surprises! I do!  Especially when it happens on 8 Jan. Definately a birthday I will never forget.

Thanks loves. xoxo, C