mauritius day 5, 10th sept 2009, thursday

its very rare that i have a free day, so before i complete the tonnes of assignments that i owed, i shall carry on blogging abt my mauritius trip. haha.

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day 5 was purely a sight-see cum shopping day. for the sight-see part, we went to a church, where i confessed to god the sins that i had atoned in the past, seeking his forgiveness, although i am a buddhist, but we din go to chinese temples so i shall make do with the church. ok this is meant to be funny, so for the devoted christians pls dun condemn me.

next we went to the queen of peace monument, where we took nice jump shots and group photos. its great that we have wang da around, because he is light and he is flexible, so can take very nice group shots with him as the centre of attraction.

the third place is a sugar plantation. first we took a choo choo train ride around the plantation.

and then we took a horse carriage ride to somewhere inside the plantation to "enjoy" a traditional mauritius dance performance called SEGA (i wondered why is it not called nintendo or playstation). the reason for putting the inverted commas on the word enjoy is because the dancers seemed a bit buay3 gan1 muan3 to dance, particularly this overweight lady, which make her thoughts known on her face, and quoting from dear mr nzj, these words can be written clearly on her face:"我为什么会在这里跳舞给你们看..."

i think the feelings were mutual, because most of us were thinking:"我们为什么会在这里看你跳舞..."

ok nvm, after the entertaining performance, we were brought to see how sugar was made from sugarcane, and then we went to see a sugar museum, and each of us was given a small cup of rum to try, and then we walked around the plantation where the tour guide introduced to us the different spices, plucking out the leaves to let us smell the fragrance of the spices. we smelt curry, pepper, coriander and parsley. mosquitos were biting us and enjoying our sweet blood, and the tour guide took some aloe vera, and tell us to apply the aloe vera chap on our bites, and miraculously the itching stopped!

the highlight of this sugar plantation is that we danced the "大四排"!!! :)

(most of the singing was done by me and xuehong hahahahahaha)

after lunch we went shopping! din shop much, because the prices of the adidas sports apparel were around the same as singapore. but i still bought a purple color tshirt for myself, and a pair of very nice sandals for darling. :)

while walking back to our mini bus, we saw the mauritius ministry of education!

too bad xuehong, zhimin and yeelian were not with us.

in the evening we went back to the CCC again, where we had a short exchange program with the mauritian chinese dancers. the chinese dance instructor happens to noe ding laoshi, when both of them were dancers at beijing dance academy. wat a small world.

a dance workshop was conducted by wang da for the dancers. i must say that the dancers have very good technique, and very flexible! anyway they belong to the A class. hahahaha. so after the workshop, we performed two items for them, which is Beyond, and wang da's solo item. they also performed two items for us, which is a 苗族 dance, and one girl performed the SEGA dance. this girl was definitely one thousand times better than the overweight dancer at the sugar plantation. the way she shake her hips is so full of energy, and the smile on her face when she dance is very attractive.

ok let me show you wang da's solo item. watch it 100 times also wun get sick of watching it. and look out for the trademark move at 2 min 16 s! cheng cheng cheng cheng! u can see this trademark move in quite a few pics.

we had the third round of 11-course dinner! this time the dinner was treated by the organising committee of the 60th anniversary celebrations. it was really fun. we ate, drank, chit chatted and even had a singing session. we had sort of a PK 赛: the singaporeans vs the mauritians. hahaha. we sang 关怀方式，细水长流，小人物的心声. the mauritan chinese sang theresa teng songs. and while singing, some of us were using chopsticks to hit on the wineglass to generate background music, and dunno who is so champion that hit the wineglass so hard until the wineglass broke. hahahahaha. very very memorable. :)

and we appeared on the papers again! haha.

ok that's the end of day 5!!! when we went back to our hotel we still continued drinking by the pool because its our last night at casa florida.

水袖 and the sleeves (behind the scenes #2)

addition of one video clip and a few more pics:

its really good to have a sinseh in the dance troupe. hoho.

the conclusion of a successful performance:

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i noe this is a bit random, but i have a very interesting neighbour...

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i must declare that i am not a pervert, and i am not interested in stealing lingerie.

水袖 and the sleeves (behind the scenes)

before and during this performance, we had a long injury list.

first, it started with peiyi walking down the stairs, she missed a step and sprained her ankle.

second, zhunian did a pdd jump with liang bin, she landed awkwardly and also sprained her ankle.

third, it was me, when i dunno wat i did which caused me to have a lower back injury after last friday's dance practise. liang bin said that most likely i nv warm up properly then when i was jumping and landing on the floor, the lower back muscles got strained.

4th, wang da's old back injury occured.

5th, zhimin's ankle injury.

6th, huizhi's hip injury.

7th, jianwu's knee injury.

liang bin, who happened to learn 中医推拿, had a super busy time.

so did i miss out any more injuries? i think laoshi and fengjun had a torrid time sweating over our injuries. hoho.

before the actual performance we went to the dance studio to warm up, and also took some pics. and i used my camera again for the jump shots!

(the two of us had been doing this pose for dr07, dr08, and wood)

(mummy had a happy time taking pics with everyone)

post-performance pics:

(bought bak kwa for everyone to eat knowing that our packed dinner will be quite screwed up. but amazingly the packed dinner was quite good, but still the bak kwa was even better hahahaha)

(ex dance partners. felt that something was missing and i realised that chio outdoor enthusiast and gorgeous grace were not around)

(the malaysians)

(my wonderful darling who watched the show with my mother and sister)

and i forgot to take pictures with my family! forgot to take with mel! argghhhh...

ok finally performances are over. now i got another big thing to look forward to, which is the handball tournament with the other three universities in sg. no prizes for guessing correctly wat poistion i am playing in. haha.

the 水袖 and the sleeves

i think it is very wassup when i nv forget any steps and there is nothing wrong with my costume throughout all the dance practises and rehearsals on stage, but on the actual performance, my mind went blank and forgot one of the steps, and my 水袖 started to come off. i think i deserved my retribution for 鸟-ing ah liang when he forgot his dance steps even dancing that particular item for 16 times. when it happens, it just happen and you cant give any explanation for it.

my individual cock-ups spoilt the whole dance, and spoilt ding laoshi's wonderful choreography, and i must really apologise to the whole troupe, and to her.

its quite a pity that the performance is only on one night. if its on two nights at least i can make amends on the second night.

but anyway! the performance is over, so i shall try not to dwell on it much further. although i will remember this 遗憾 throughout my whole life.

thanks to everyone who came to watch! my mum, my sis, my darling, my pe classmate mel and her bf, the mauritius gang (effort! energy!), and the other nuscd dancers! thanks for the little gifts and flowers! my fridge is full of lollipops and chocolates. haha.

my mum said that she loved sy_ _ _ gy the most, and nuscd came in 2nd, and i _ _ _ _ n dance was a bit too long. hoho. i must also admit that i love watching sy_ _ _ gy's item, and i love the slow song for the first part of the dance! anybody noes the title of that song?

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3 cheers for all the dancers! eep eep eep, hurray!

selemat hari raya~

here's wishing all my muslim friends selemat hari raya! you guys no need to fast anymore!

i have been slacking like mad throughout the long weekend, nv do anything productive. if there is one thing i can seek consolation, it is that i finished the 1500 word essay! hoho. yes finally, after so much procrastination.

my lower back still feels a bit sore. i think i will heed chio outdoor enthusiast's advice, which is to stop exercising for this whole week, then on friday night i whack one whole can of salon pas and dance.

rehearsals will be everyday from tomorrow onwards, from 5 pm to 11 pm! woo hoo how exciting.

ok i got some performance photos that were taken by the mauritius pple, thank you yunevee for sending us these pictures!

(see if you can spot how different i am from the rest in one or two pics)

and this has to be the ultimate:

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(WHY NO ONE TOLD ME I AM NOT SUPPOSED TO LIFT UP MY ARM??!! WHY WHY WHY??!!)

a trip to where the president of sg stays

read the papers on friday and found out that the istana will be open on sunday 20th september! so i decided to go there with darling on this special day - 20/09/2009.

upon reaching the entrance of istana, there is quite a long queue, but the queue is moving quite fast. once we passed the gate, there is a long queue again at the security check counter, where we must scan our bags and our own body, just like the similar procedure at the airport.

the istana is very very big. before reaching the main building, we have to walk through a large golf course.

ok we finally reached the main building, where the president has his meals, meetings and press conferences. we need to pay two dollars per person to get inside, where the money will be donated to community chest. the building inside is fully air conditioned. only the first level is open. sadded that we cant go upstairs to see the bedrooms and other stuff. haha.

so the first room that we went to is the dining hall. very grand. then next we went to a room which has all the gifts from the different countries, which i think is given to the president by other countries' presidents. the gifts really look very exquisite, interesting, beautiful, which i think if i break them, not only i have to pay millions of dollars, my whole family also will have to go to jail. ok kidding abt the jail part. and the final room is the place where the president entertain the VIPs from other countries. recognised the room immediately cos got see footages of it before on the news.

so we went out and took photos with the white building as the background. and guessed wat! we saw the president in person!

(his excellency sitting on the buggy)

and let me present to u, the nicest pic of the day:

i must say the photographer's skill is very good! really love this pic to the max. :)

before leaving the place, darling took a pic with the RP standing guard at the gate of istana. i really pity them. first, they have to wear number one, which is so bloody hot especially in sg's screwed up hot weather. second, they must stand still and cant even move or fidget for like dunno how long. its really a battle of the mind. if i stand there like that for just ten to fifteen minutes i will go crazy. so i really respect these soldiers.

ok my back is getting a bit better. maybe the aqua titanium necklace helps, because i have been wearing it all the time, even when i am sleeping. hahahahaha.

now i can proudly say that i have been to the president's house as a singaporean! but it will be better if i got the chance to go there to receive an award. ok talk cock only, in my wildest dreams. :p

happy birthday to my little sis

sat was my little sis 20th birthday. so my little sis chose a very atas place to have her birthday dinner - Azur @ Crowne Plaza Hotel. if u dunno where is crowne plaza hotel it is the hotel at changi airport terminal 3.

45+++ per pax on a saturday night. many food varieties. got western cuisine, chinese cuisine, jap cuisine and even indian cuisine! i was a bit surprised when i saw the indian rojak. the service was really good, and the waiters/waitresses are very fast in clearing our empty plates, and they were always smiling. i give them 9 out of 10 for their service. cannot give full marks because no matter how good they are there is always room for improvement.

wat i like most is the chilled seafood section. mussels, oysters, LOBSTERS, and crabs, all arranged nicely on a bed of ice cubes. the seafood is very very fresh. the lobster meat is very succulent, and you can see the red lobster roe inside the meat. i ate 3 lobsters! wah biang very sinful. the lobster meat is so fresh that it can be easily peeled off from the shell using a fork.

the drunken prawn is very nice too. they throw live prawns into the soup. that's why the prawns taste so fresh and sweet. and u must drink the soup. it is pure delicacy.

i love the desserts. they have different cakes and puddings, and they come in small servings so you can try almost everything. they even have nyonya kueh and chocolate fondue. but the most ultimate is they serve haagen daz ice cream. very very very sinful. hoho.

after the full dinner we walk around terminal 3 and took some photos.

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i hurt my lower back during friday night's dance practise. i din feel the effect during the whole practise. but when i got back and finished bathing, i felt a pain at my lower back, and i walked like a duck, and when i sleep on the bed i cant sleep sideways. i can only lie flat on my back. :'(

and i still went to n-eye-e on sat morning to play a friendly handball match with SMU. i think i am crazy, but i am a fighter. if my back still cant recover on friday night for the performance, i will just spray one whole tube of salonpas on my back, and dance the hell out of my life.

ok lah choy, i hope i will recover quickly. went to see sinseh on sunday morning, and i felt much better after getting his tui-na. and then at night when i went for dance liang bin tui-na for me again. wed morning i will go and see the sinseh again before going to sch for lessons.

haiz wat a bad time to get injured. in future i will do lots of warm up before any physical activity.

mauritius day 4, 9th sept 2009, wednesday

this morning the rest went out to sight-see, but ah liang and i chose to stay in our hotel room to nua. i wanted to clear my assignments (including the 1500 words motivation essay), and ah liang wanted to sleep. i thought that i should at least write half the essay, but ah liang wants to sun-tan by the pool, so we spent the whole morning sun-tanning, swimming and talking cock, which both of us think is very shiok just to laze the whole morning away. hahaha.

we finished sun-tanning at around 12 noon and went to bathe. i finished bathing and waited for ah liang. he has a reputation for bathing super long, so i started on my motivation essay. after waiting for quite a while i am very hungry and buay tahan already, so i shouted to ah liang and he said he is still bathing! omg. -.-'''

we ate lunch at the same restaurant where we had breakfast every morning. ah liang ordered a chinese dish called "magic bowl". its actually rice with gravy, egg, vegetables, chinese sausage and chicken. something like our claypot rice, just that the whole dish is not in a claypot but is covered with a big bowl. i ordered fish and chips, the fish is very fresh, and the garlic butter sauce is damn good!

(the resident red bird paid us a visit again)

took a nap after that and continued on my essay, while waiting for the rest to come back. we were invited to fen's cousin's wedding, so is a second round of 11-course dinner! i think we will definitely put on weight after the trip.

introducing the menu and the food:

all of us were very well-dressed for the wedding, except for one or two who wore sports shoes or sneakers. hahahahaha. *stirring shit again*

after the whole dinner, some of the tables and chairs were cleared to have an empty space, utilised as a dance floor! that is something different from our chinese weddings in sg. everyone started dancing to slow music, and then later on we performed winter solstice, and finally fast music was played and it became like a disco. very fun!

(wat is hz doing??!!)

(my trademark angry umbrella pose. btw everytime when i stormed angrily into the stage i will always attract loud *WAHHHH* from the audience. hahahahaha.)

and this is my 900th post! wow its kinda amazing that i had blogged for such a long time.