my hometown series: my favorite cove in tabogon

when i go home and i take the longer route, my senses come alive with inner peace and gratification while i marvel at this huge cove even if i only have a few minutes to gaze at its yonder expanse. by the time the mini-bus takes its sharp turn along the winding road in this area and with some deafening pop song in the mix, i eagerly extend my neck towards the window and let the sea breeze caress my face. there are times that i have to forcefully open a frequently stuck window or that makeshift window made of ply board just to get my nose in the open air.

it's a different feeling that comes over me and for how weird i sometimes become, i'm not really sure if another soul also similarly shares this profound rush like mine.

[singapore] a date with charlie brown

let me tell you about charlie brown. no, not about who he is because he is already quite deserving for his own wiki entry here. oh, this recent news suddenly crossed my mind. the ever dependable britannica encyclopedia has decided to stop its print edition and in order to keep up with the times, they're now fully shifted towards the digital age. i know, this is so random but those a-z hard-bound books that i saw back then in someone else's bookshelf tinged my thoughts with sadness. my parents couldn't afford the whole lot and as consolation, we only had that big blue hard-bound dictionary along with a few english grammar books. i'm not sure if that dictionary is merriam webster's but i can remember the bundles of my hair and my siblings' in between some of its pages. it was said to make us brilliant according to my mother but obviously, that didn't help my memory.

on to charles which is the real name of charlie. i haven't been closely interested with him and i only even knew first his cutesy dog, snoopy that had been dubbed as the favorite cartoon character by many of my classmates in high school. i watched in awe to their things with snoopy prints all over. i simply couldn't relate. gosh, i even had to cook up a story that my favorite character was tweety bird! it was the first thing that probably came to mind that instant. because my childhood years were spent in a nice remote place with only one tv channel available, i never took fancy of cartoon characters early on. although now, i enjoy some good animated films like the ones made by pixar.

so what happens to charlie brown? i have more realized his presence when i accidentally found myself in the midst of a snoopy fair in mitsukoshi department store in ginza, tokyo. the snoopy fair became a comfort in contrast to the exuberant prices of everything there. well, the only thing that i braved to check was the price of burberry hankies that i was considering buying but eventually dropped the idea for the clumsy me would just lose it.

Mitsukoshi Department Store, Ginza, Tokyo

malacca river cruise

we were still on our half day in malacca and yet, it felt like we had already covered a lot of places. although, we merely passed by a few house-turned-museums,  interesting shops and some local dining scenes. however, looking at the brighter side, the chinese new year holidays spared us some time since we didn't have to stop by at these museums and shops for they were apparently closed. as what my project leader at work told me, malacca deserves twice the visit, during the chinese new year and during regular days, when everything is normally buzzing with daily activities.

well moving on, for the tourists that we were, one of the most important activities that we had to do was the malacca river cruise. daytime and nighttime river cruises both have equal bearing and each has its own beauty to offer. daytime river cruise affords you the view of the colorful paintings on malacca's traditional houses along the river and other things that may catch your fancy. on the other hand, during nighttime, serene calmness engulfs you while you get mesmerized with the night lights.

so, i was thinking that breinn and i had to do it during dusk. it had to be a perfect time for the remaining rays of the setting sun would still lit up malacca and eventually for our return trip, darkness would step in. yes, i was the one who most of the time did the thinking for i only had to drag breinn's arse and he would then give me that excited and giddy look. it felt like i was a tourist guide without a fee!

Malacca River Cruise Ticket Counter