Swissotel Vertical Marathon 2012

It's the Swissotel Vertical Marathon once again! And this time it's the Silver anniversary of the race, with an intricately designed medal. Lazy to take picture of it hahaha! There was a record 2116 people taking part in the 25th season of the race. Even got myself a Niu Niu cow plushie at $15, with the proceeds going to Swissotel's adopted charities.

This year was the second time I joined the SVM, with my virgin race in 2010 after being asked by Hongming to take part with him. This time round I jioed him instead, as well as Kenneth. Chian San joined for the 4th time, together with another friend of his. And together, the 5 of us raced up the 73 floors, together. I was the deadweight after halfway through and CS kept pushing and encouraging all of us to ascend together. He seemed to be enjoying and not breaking a sweat at all, whereas I was about to faint hahaha!

After an unknown timing (to be revealed soon), we emerged out of the rooftop of Swissotel The Stamford, the helipad area. Staff were there to place the medals around our necks and giving out mineral water. After catching my breath, the Caucasian who dressed up as The Flash also reached the top. I proceeded to take a picture with him hahaha.

Didn't really spend much time on the rooftop admiring the landscape of Singapore cos it was rather foggy. We took some pix and then took the lift back down where Kenneth, HM and I went to Mac to have breakfast. I drank 3 whole bottles of Aquarius from the drinks station lol. Super dehydrated. We hung around for the Men's Open category to start before we made a move. There were 3 competitive Caucasians who came specially to compete in this race and were therefore given the chance to start first. In the end it was an Australian who won at 7 mins plus! Wacauz. He play cheat is it!?

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Momorange 2nd Anniversary

Time really flies when you're having fun. It seems just like yesterday that we got together lol. We cleared leave together for this memorable day and we started off with breakfast downstairs at the market, followed by two rounds of bowling at SAFRA. Must have been my worst performance at bowling, cos I scored less than 100 for round one zzZZzz... After that, we went to queue for the 1-for-1 Subway promotion. Yummy! Then we went back to Dear's home where she baked some cupcakes. First time see Dear preparing cupcakes hehe. Almost did not go for the chocolate buffet since it was raining quite heavily in the afternoon, but eventually we decided to go for it.

Long wanted to try this chocolate buffet at The Club at Marina Bay Sands, therefore brought Dear to this restaurant. All I can say is, the service was awesome. From the phone reservation to the reception and to the waiting of the waitresses at The Club, I'm very impressed by their high level of service. They asked if it was for some event and they actually prepared a small cupcake for our anniversary celebration upon knowing about it when I called to make a reservation. Really excited to visit the SkyPark at MBS cos of all the hype and hearing all the stuff about the magnificent views from there. We got our reservation card from the reception at the first floor of MBS and proceeded to the 57th floor whereby we were greeted with a spectacular panoramic view of Singapore. What's more it's a great view of the citylights of the Marina Bay area and the new Gardens By The Bay, which looked like little toy structures.

The Club, which features 57 different types of food either made of chocolate, or contains chocolate, is situated somewhere in the middle of the Sands SkyPark. It's rather small, probably enough for less than 100 guests, and the food area is just about the size of a bus, maybe smaller. As for the food, well... I guess we shouldn't try such "specialized" buffet ever again, just like durian buffets. It gets really sick after a while, cos it's nothing but chocolate lol. But they really have some interesting stuff made of chocolate, like the Banana Steamed Chocolate, which even came in a traditional bamboo dim sum steamer. Overall it's a rather refreshing experience. Coupled with the entry into the SkyPark, it's definitely worth a try, at least, for all Singaporeans, since there should have been more foreigners than locals having had experienced such an indulgence.

Last of all, Happy 2nd Anniverary to Momorange!

Where's my food!?

Chocolate goodies!!! How to resist?!?

Cookie Monster was not allowed into The Club.

Round 1

Looks more like gold nuggets to me. $_$

A chef was stationed at the ice-cream and donuts station. He looks very bored. Nothing much to do.

Many interesting powder flavours to put on your donuts. There's black pepper some more.

Fruits for chocolate fondue.

They prepared a small cupcake knowing that it was for our anniversary. So cool!

Coffee, tea or hot chocolate? Hot chocolate of course! We're at a chocolate buffet!

Happy anniversary!

This ice-cream looks and tastes like a Magnum.

Dear enjoying her round 2 or 3.

This looks like one of those scented candles.

I found a Dragonball!

Chocolate Caramel Apple Cake

Chocolate Torte

Banana Steamed Chocolate

Cheesecake Lollipop

This mini cone contains chocolate of course, as well as those tiny sweets which pop in your mouth.

This Momo contains chocolate too, as well as those huge cutie eyes which brightens up your day. =D

The bowl is salivating chocolate when it sees these succulent fruits. I would too.

Free champagne when paid using UOB credit cards. How cool is that?

A toast for our anniversary!

The food area is actually quite small. How did they squeeze 57 types of chocolate food there?

My camera lens got fogged once we left the restaurant, which produced this blurred effect.

Dear prefers the blurred picture to this. Hmm...

Gardens By The Bay looks so different from such a height. Looks more like some futuristic homes.

We finally witnessed the Infinity Pool right before our eyes!

Nice background for a pic.

Would like to swim there next time.

Momorange on the top of the world (Singapore).

How often do you get such views in Singapore?

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Updates! It's Been A Long Time...

Finally finished up the travel blog post of our trip to Bangkok back in April. Forgot most of the details already but tried my best to recall as much as I could lol. I wanna go travel again soon!

Not only that, also included several other older posts like our hotel stay at Ritz-Carlton for Dear's birthday, Sentosa trip etc. So go back and scan for them if you're interested lol.

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ICT Over Soon. Holiday Over Soon!

Yeah man. Every ICT feels like a long holiday. A well-deserved break from the normal routine at work. 3 weeks just flew past so quickly. Don't really feel like going back to work argh!!!

Today was the cardinal event. No more NE tours. We went back to Tampines SAFRA for bowling event from 10-12pm. Played 2 rounds. Woot got 161 and 135 points.

Then as suggested by Heng Yong, we went to this Ssikkek Korean BBQ buffet restaurant at Tampines 1 for lunch. 12 big burly and hungry men just out from a grueling and tiring 2D1N exercise on Mon to Tue can really whack a whole truckload of food. There wasn't much variety of meat to choose from, mainly pork belly bacon and some other marinated pork, chicken and beef, plus some sweetcorn dessert, vermicelli, some seaweed soup, kimchi soup and watermelons as fruits. There were bottles of Dasani mineral water for each table as well. We also ordered some soju as well and in the end our bill ended up as $240.11 for 12 people, so roughly about $20 each. Pretty worth it if you ask me.

Some of the guys went for Part 2 of the day's program. Won't go into details lol. I went home to sleep cos was feeling so lethargic. Somehow I think I still need to sleep more due to the lack of sleep during the 2D1N outfield exercise on Mon and Tue. That was really super siong sia. Someone even slept for 17 hours after the exercise lol.

Raphael as usual was quite an entertainment for us during this ICT.

The 8th batch guys (our xinjiaos) were very creative with their names.

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Time To Serve The Nation Again!

It's my 6th cycle for reservist already. How fast? And this time round we started on a Tuesday. So weird? Usually we start on a Wednesday. No idea why, but it sure is a loooong break from work, with a total of 14 workdays eaten up by this ICT lol.

It's the same old people, but A-shift guys only got Zhangjing, Wei Siong and me. The rest were the usual B/C-shift guys. Even our officers were the same, including Sgt Adrian, but Sgt Foo deferred as he was having his wedding during this period.

And what do you know? The usual routine was to go to the canteen outside the spec mess and have breakfast, BUT the prata stall was gone! And it closed down just on the previous Friday!! HOLY SHIT! There goes our morale lol...

This time it's a 2D1N outfield exercise, as compared to the 3D2N last year. So it shouldn't be too siong for us lol. Happy ICT!

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