Trip to Cold Lake Part 2

We were cheated by being sold a fucked up car, not even legal to be on the roads, so we went up to cold lake again to settle the insurance..

Just look at that! A half frozen lake! How much nicer can it get...


Until the temperature went up above 0 the nxt day. Wierd weather.



The 7 hours long drive (we clocked about 1300km on the ODO meter, on a rented car from National) was made quick with this!

Winter survival

We had our winter survival today. We stood in the cold for 1 hour.. that was all.. my hands were frozen.. but i've got to say the rest of my body is ok.. What i really wonder is "why are my hands cold when they are tucked into my pocket of my jacket?

Anyway, the only reason i felt confortable is cos i was wearing this terrorist mask.. haha i'll get the photo from the danes..

By the way, here in moose jaw, at this time of the year, i'm practically living in the climate of singapore.. Temperature ranges this morning was -25 to -33. hmmm doesn't it look like singaporean weather?

My dream baby!

Can't stop dreaming of the day... wahhhaaaa... can't wait to go home!!!!!

Just another day at work

So... what is the current Metar(Meteo Report aka weather report). Call the Meteo office? nope... Look out of this window.


Yeah the metar is just about right. Its snow covered.


Look at this. So what does it tell? It tell you the number of Hawks there are. It writes "1". Yes only one Hawk is servicable. Out of errr.. well... less than 10.



So who is the lucky one to take the ONLY hawk? No clue? Look at the row with my name (there are 2 of my names up there, look at the one which says "FIT" nxt to my name.

So did i fly? Nope. I had to call the A/C unservicable after starting up the A/C.

Yup just another day.

Just another graduation dinner

Its the time of the year again! Another Hawk Course has graduated, all foreigners (non canadians) are moving on to cold lake for the nxt phase! Some Canadians stay here to be instuctors, some move on!

The grad dinner cum party started off well, everybody totally sober.

On MY right is Peter Horvath and left is Viktor from Hungary.

Still sober.

A little drunk. Oh by the way, this is Matt Maurice, a great buddy, and a Canadian moving on to Cold Lake!

And this is me and sober gerald, and Joshua (half of his face), our course mate.

And before end of the day (Literally, photo was taken at 2300hr on that day), this was whats left of Gerald. Yes he is drunk. Totally Drunk. Totally unable to walk, or even stand, or even open his own eyes.

(Picture has been sensored)

Morton and me had to drag Gerald's ass back to his room, which was pretty far away, and in a temperature of below zero.

Singapore a Civilization?

OK for this post, I refer you to the official website of the world famous game, Civilization 4.

http://www.2kgames.com/civ4/

Look at the Main Flash Animation on the page you land on. Well, thats the picture u will find on the box and the manual of the game.

Anyway, so yes on the left we have the Egyptian buildings, and the Roman theatre, and the great light house blah blah. Look further infront. Does the modern skyline look familiar?

No? Don't you see the UOB building? The May Bank building? The smaller UOB tower? No? Ok your blind.

The pic below might ring a bell?

Well, just thought its pretty interesting Singapore made it onto a game, though how insignificant it is.

So what is this game all about? Its a game that has captured me since the times of 386 computers. Don't remember wat is that? Nvm. And in a nut shell, you build one of the world's oldest civilization up from nothing, thru the "stone age" up till the "future". Interested in more? Visit the website.

Why i love this job

This is why.

Most F***ed Up shipping company

The most F**ked Up shipping company in the entire world.

http://www.purolator.com/

What? What? I don't understand?

Canadians, Hungarians, Danish, English, Italians and Singporeans, perfect ingredients for communication problems!

Here is an example.

I ran into my coursemate, Josh in the gym, and half hour into my gym, he tells me "Hey Pe Hon, I'm going for supper now see you!"

I Just stared at him trying to process what he just said. He stood there puzzled at why I'm showing him that expression.

Than it came to me. "OH! Dinner! Ok see you Josh!"

Yup just one of the many misunderstandings we have here.

The day i almost died

I know some of you out there are thinking "Damn! Why didn't he die?", just like what Gerald said. Cos he wanted my IPod Nano. Well, all i've got to say is, toooo bad.

(and oh did I say i had a Nano?)

Well, today I flew to 2 international Airports, not the Changi Airport volume, but airports where medium sized jets land, and take off. THey are Regina and Saskatoon.

And so I went to Regina and i took off and at 300 kts i saw something ahead of me, than at 350 kts, i was able to make out what the hell was it and instinctively i PUSHED my stick down and VROOOOM! a bunch of large geese flew just past my canopy. My instructor told me he was reading something on his kneeboard, and the next moment he was hanging by the straps and saw the geese in reach distance.

So birds so what? Well, birds are the most dangerous objects for a pilot. Imagine this. 350kts*1.8=630km/h=6.3*10^5 m/s. So when a bird hit, assume deceleration to zero at 0.5 seconds. So acceleration forces would be 1.26*10^6m/s-2. So the weight of a geese might be 5kg? so Using newton's law, F=ma, F= 5*1.26*10^6= 6.3*10^6 Newtons.

Well u get the idea. Thats alot of force.

What i've been up to!

Long lay off from blogging? Too busy? More like too much time. I was waiting for Gerald to upload some photos so i can put it in. Here is it!
Yes its been a long long time and i've finally went solo! Great feeling. I couldn't bring my big bulky Cannon G5 up to the flight, but I'll bring Gerald's cam up the nxt solo i go! Which happens to be tmrw!

And I've traveled to my first foreign airport away from home airfield in a commercial pilot fashion. More to go to! In fact we do flights to Big International Airports like Edmonton (???!??! its a big city by the way. Just google that!)





Anyway, been playing alot of golf. Play with the Danes, namely Jensen (pronounced as Yansen), Canadians namely Matty Maurice, Hungarians namely Viktor (victor) and Peter Horvath and the Singaporean instructors!

Winter is creeping in onto us. So no more golf from now on. Last weekend was the last golf week. =( So am i good? Nope my handicapp is probably 36-40, if there was even such a thing. So the next few photos are from our golf campaign!


The Hungarians and us!


My less than perfect golf swing


Deer valley. Amazing course. Canada's 3rd best hold (a par 3) was found here and i am glad to say I had a bogey! What, wasn't good enough?


And i was looking thru Gerald's photo collection and i found this photo below, taken during god knows when, probably at some drinking party. Anyway, there was a time when I was skinner, more tan! Oh nO! NOT that i'm fat now. But there was a time where i was fitter. Ok thats it. You're gonna see me on the threadmill everyday!

Its starting to be cold

Stand by for photos of my first real snow experience! ITs starting to be cold, and right now its 0 degrees outside. Errr well i didn't have some experience in Australia when i was really young, but it wasn't falling snow. Well, although the Canadians dread this day, I'm looking forward to that!

Cool Facts For Today

FACT: A chicken will lay bigger stronger eggs if the lighting is changed so that it thinks the day is 28 hours long.

FACT: The closest living relative to the T-Rex is the chicken.

FACT: Laid head to claw, KFC chickens consumed worldwide would stretch some 275,094 miles. They would circle the Earth at the equator eleven times or stretch from the Earth about 50,094 miles past the moon.

Cost of Living

Here's a photo taken at the Alberta saskatchewan border, on our way back from Edmonton during one of our long weekends.

By the way, Edmonton is a city with 10 million people on it. Most haven't heard about it, but i think its one of the major cities in the world. But anyway, there is one distinct difference between the two Provinces. Alberta is an oil producing province. Things that u buy there are only charged 7% GST. You heartlanders might think this is expensive! Wait till i tell u that Saskatchewan charges another 7% on top of that, known as PST. Province Service Tax. Why so much u might ask? My best guess would be their social support programs.

Single mothers here are given an allowance to support their child. So they basically get paid for being moms. People who retire get more money. People who are jobless get some more money. Who pays for these, THE PEOPLE, and of course foreigners. Thank god Singapore has a better system, known as the CPF. I'm very glad to say that our government hasn't resorted to "vote incentives" like social security programs like what they have here. Our government has the courage to make the right decisions over popular decisions.

And of course I'm wondering why is standard of living in Singapore rated as one of the highest in the world. My guess would be course of the prices of Houses and Cars (BTW, COE is another good policy they implemented). Other than that, food and transport and movies and entertainment and alcohol and tabacoo and many other things are way cheaper than many other countries! I can only get a decent meal here for at least $8 (not forgeting their service tax here is 14%), tabacoo i think is actually more expensive as well.

Oh by the way, i heard in France, the price of gas is Euro$1.80+ nope, not per gallons, but per Litres. That equates to about S$3.60 a litre if you were a Singaporean.

Be glad you are living in Singapore.

MOOSE JAW NFTC!!!

After almost 21 hours of being on an airplane, and spending 8 hours in transit in Minneapolis (all together 29 freaking hours!), I finally arrived in Regina! That photo was taken when i was in Minneapolis. Visited America's largest mall, The Mall Of America. Nope its not the largest in the world! The biggest mall is in Edmonton, Canada, its 10 hours drive from Moose Jaw (where i am) and 2 hours from Cold Lake (where i will be in 6 months time).


And so we had our first mess session and we were invited to this bar hopping trip where the canadians hired a coach that will take us to Regina (1 hour away) and club. So on the way, people were checking out the scenery on top of the bus, while it was travelling at 100+km/h on the highway. When we arrived at Regina, this Canadian guy was like "Singaporeans! Come!" "Singaporean 1 go up!" and Singaporean 1 happened to be me. I climbed up and he continued "Singaporean 1, Go forward!" And so i ended up at the front of the bus. It wasn't that scary cos the bus was probably travelling at 20-40 km/h. And the picture below will xplain what happened to Gerald. Picture kindly donated by KwanYi

And this photo was taken before we went to the Casino. Still smiling before casino by the way.


But really, people should look at Casino as a form of entertainment. Like i gave myself 50dollar limit at the Casino, and i went up at my peak +100 dollars. However, though at the end i went to 0 dollars, meaning losing 50, i dun feel the pinch cos i actually felt i paid for good entertainment. If everyone thought of it this way, there wil not be social problems associated with gambling!


So what do the foreigners think of us?

1 British Guy "I love Singaporeans! When they can really really be trusted. " and he goes on about how he asked this 2 previous singaporean students here to go Edmonton (10 hours away remember). When he called them they were already there and stuff. "Unlike people who i know back home, singaporeans will say truthfully what their intentions are. if they go, they will so yes. If they don't want to go, they will say No."

Another Canadian "I love singapore! The city never sleeps" well. cos shops close early here.

"I'm amazed. A country so small having such a big airforce. Reminds me of Israel."

Bet the Queen didn't see this coming.

Google Earth

I accidently stumbled upon this super cool website.

http://earth.google.com/

U can feel like a spy for once.

as the name suggests, its actually a virtual earth right on ur computer. Its basically a series of satellite photo graphs taken and put together on this program, that u can download for free!

Its a broadband program, which means u need to have a fast enough internet access to have a good access to the globe. None of the maps are stored on your computer. The program streams the map onto your computer while u are actually scrolling around.

So what have i seen over the last few hours on this?

I "went" to Regina and Moose Jaw both in Canada, and i could zoom in up to car level. Yes thats right. I could see cars on the street. And i even saw the canadian aircraft parked at the apron.

And so i found regina airport and the moose jaw airbase, and i clicked on the "how to get there" function, and the map started highlighting roads i caould use to get to my destination.

Not only that, it also highlights what ever i search. For example, i typed "car" and it started marking out places where car dealers and rental were located, and some even had the contact number!

And so i went to Australia Pearce airbase, and although i could not see any S211s around, i did see our cars parked nxt to our bunks, no not nice cars but lousy daewoo kalos.

And so i was bored, tried finding the great wall of china and pyramids, but the countries were too big for me to even attempt to find it. Well, if anyone finds it, please tell me the lats and long of these places.

U can't really see anything in singapore. I think they scientists in google can't be bothered to zoom in deep enough into singapore for a good view. Never the less u can see details up to buildings level.

Go check this out!

NDP

Over the weekend, i kinda accidently stumbled upon the national day parade rehearsals, or maybe it was the preview. Almost everyone in the stands were kids.






Pictures of the flag parties. There were 3 flags flying circling around the CBD right from the start!













Army and navy flaunting their stuff.










The airforce! The airshows were too fast to be captured on camera.....











A night shot!

How kwanyi and kahsian, Look at the flight suit name tag! Nice right.






Alot of people wonder what aircraft are we flying in Canada. Do we have a Singaporean detachment there? here is the aircraft we are flying and nope, we are not flying a singaporean aircraft.











Anyway, petrol prices just went up again. Pretty depressed. At this rate, after i come back from canada, the petrol prices will be $2 a litres, and i won't be able to afford to maintain the RX-8 i've always been so crazy about buying. So are alot of people. Petrol prices are gonna be astronomical it won't be funny.

I've another 12 days in Singapore. Its been a very very eventful 1 1/2 months spent here in Singapore. All the shopping sprees, all the spending on food, all the splurging on stuff i always wanted, but the high light of it all is meeting Belle. =) u reading this? Another story for another day.

And so after all that spending, its time to come back down to earth! its time to think about the money i need to bring over to Canada. God help me!

Crappy blog entry again. What ever la its my blog. byebye!

Its been a while since i blogged!

So whats happened since i last blogged?

I'm posted to NFTC, my dream posting. So whats that? It stands for NATO Flight Training Center. Where? In Canada, Moose Jaw. With who? Fly with bunch of instructors from all round the world. Fly what? Fly the BAE Hawk, a lead-in fighter trainer.

I returned from Pearce.

I rented a Galant 2.0 for 2 months, for $3400++.

I spent $6000+ xcluding the car.

I picked up golf, and today, hit my all time best! 150m on a 7IRON!!! yahoooooooooo!! and its only my 4th time at the driving range. hahaha

Anyway, thats all. Have a good friday everyone!

Ok, we had a stay out recently, i think it was last week. What did we do? well, one highlight is this MG! I rented this Convertible and it was damn cool! very imspired to get one back home.