A visit down south

Recently, I made a trip to Singapore with a few friends, including my girlfriend CaTz. I had a few objectives to achieve during the trip. Firstly, to attend ADEX 2009. Secondly, to go sight seeing. Thirdly, to buy some big boys toys.

Food was not a problem as there was this nice food court nearby. They had almost everything, Soto, Nasi Ayam, Briyani, Hot Plate, various types of soup, different types of beverages...at affordable price. One thing they didn't have though was tissue paper or serviettes. Hmmm...I wonder why that is...

Transportation was also not a problem. We mainly use the MRT to travel as its cheap, convenient and fast. We were amazed how clean the MRT coaches were...wish we could have the same back home. No graffiti, no vandalism, no rubbish.

As I had expected, ADEX was not as attractive as before. There were no interesting seminars or trainings. I paid a short visit, was a bit disappointed and proceeded to objective 2 & 3. Thus, no pictures or write ups as a sign of protest...haha.

Sight seeing was more in the form of window shopping. Our main place for sight seeing was around Harbour Front area, namely Vivo City. Its such a huge mall, with endless streams of people. Here are some of the pictures....


Hmmm, I have been asked by some of you what sort of big boys toys did I bought. Some thought that it has to do with a visit to a sex shop. Hello, if you are a 'big boy' then you wont have to make such visits, do you? Haha. Well, to put your minds at ease, here are a brief introduction to my new toys...

An Ipod Hip case
Hmm...simply to replace my old case which was not that 'hip' looking.

A Submersible PTT and Battery Pack for my Yaesu VX6R
An important addition to my handy. Since the VX6R is waterproof (submersible 30 minutes of submersion at depth of 3 feet) and extremely rugged, its makes sense to also buy the equivalently submersible PTT. Its a bit big though, but it should serve its purpose well. Now I can bring a radio during flood rescue or drowning body recovery without having to worry about getting it wet.

A Yaesu FT-8800R, a Dual Bander Mobile
A popular dual bander, with detachable front. It features a dual display, showing you 2 sets of frequency readings. The FT-8800R features Yaesu's ARTS™ Auto-Range Transponder System, important in search-and-rescue applications. Another great feature is it has Cross Band Repeat. I lost mine to a fried circuit board mishap 2 years back.

An Icom IC2200H
A good, cheap basic amateur radio which triggers a high transmit power of 65W (although MCMC only allows 50W). Its a single bander, rough but stylish radio. The LCD panel can change either green or amber. It doesn't have a fan but its built with a heat sink design. I lost mine when my 'anak gajah' 4WD was stolen.

2 unit of Garmin 60CSx GPS
One of the best GPS I had ever used. High sensitivity receiver chip, which is important especially if you plan to go jungle tracking. Our Malaysian jungle has a very shady tree canopy that makes it hard sometimes for less sensitive GPS to get a lock on the satellites. Plus its as rugged a GPS as you could get for the price I paid for it.

A bad experience I had during the trip was..upon my arrival in Singapore, I discovered that my 019 line was barred (in my excitement I forgot to pay my bill on time). When I tried using my Maxis line, I could not. So using CaTz's phone I called Maxis. I didn't activate my International Roaming and the girl told me that to activate it, I have to do it in Malaysia. Hmmm...what a bummer. Hello miss, I am a POSTPAID customer, not a prepaid customer. I could not see the rational of it and was on the line giving her a piece of my mind (which later cost CaTz about RM35 for just that call).

Moral of the story...if its just not your day, the odds are against you, even if you have 2 telephone lines, you could be rendered hopeless in a different country.


And where were we after all that shopping? Tired but happy. After all, it was a holiday.