At age 23, I cooked a feast...

Invited my a few of my friends and celebrated my 19th 23rd birthday at my house. I was thinking a few months before May on what to do for this year birthday. Then I thought how about I invite a few friends and treat them and then I decided that cooking a feast meal for them will be very sincere and cool! And so, I cooked chili crab for them! :D

It was my first time cooking crab even though I did practice a few times before I actually treat them. It was definitely an awesome experience! But without my Dad and Mom, I think this birthday will be a failed one. Lol! Thank You Dad and Mom and of course my siblings!

Show you all pictures of the preparation.





Bought the crabs with Dad on that day morning and prepared until my friends arrived. Eh, actually the food was ready before they reached.


That is me peeling potato... My first time peeling potatoes! LOL!






Chef Daniel cooking!

Fried some finger food..






Dad cooked this...


Sambal Kang Kong but it was not spicy this time because I told my mom not to cook too spicy as a few of my friends can't take spiciness...

Actually I should have asked my Mom to cook two plates of it, one spicy and one not so spicy. Lol


Childhood friend Hagrid Jason reached early because I forgot to inform him about the change of timing and I thought he will arrived late as he come right after his class.


Me with the table of food!


Say cheese!


And Chef Daniel presenting the chili crabs!


Close up of the chili crabs!!

(Wah, as I blogging this I got feel to eat crab le!)

Friends reached and we started the dinner. Because my house was kinda small so only able to invite a few secondary school friends whom I am close with together with Jiahao and Thiamyue.






Jh & Ty. Keep taking pictures with them because it wasn't the best shot after few tries..


My birthday cake with my picture on it... Lol


Yanting actually went to custom make this cake for me. Thank you Yanting and Eileen!


Weiming and Meiteng with my cake.


Happyboy93 with his cake. HAHAHA!

Pictures with familes and friends!


With Sis and Mom. (Dad working, Bro BBQ-ing...)



With Childhood friend, Jason! 19 Years of friendship!


With BFFs, 10 Years of friendships!


With secondary schoolmates! 10 Years too!


With bitches! 5 years and counting!


Group photos!!!


Cutting the cake!




Thiam yue photo-bombing.


Polaroids!!!


Bought instax film from G-Market when it was on sales! And borrowed Ruoxuan's Polaroid camera. Thank you! Dear!

After the meal, we tried to play poker but I don't know what I happened in the end.. lol. There was liquor on that day too! And I was drunk actually... too happy and drank too over my limit I guess...



All right, thank you friends who were there on that day (Even though, two don't give face and try my crab...)

And I am really 23 years old... :(

Ending this post with Jiahao and Thiamyue! Meet up soon!

Project PACSA (Paint And Create A Study Area)

Do you enjoy volunteering work? Would you want to contribute and help people who is less fortunate than you?

Come join us & create a conducive home study environment for children from low income families, living in 1-room flats on 30 June 2012 from 930am - 6pm. Meeting place will be at Teck Ghee Community Centre.

This project objectives is to create or improve home study environment for children in low income families, whom may not have the resources to do so. And to give back to society by empowering children with a more conducive study environment at home, to encourage them to work harder academically. As we know that children at their age, will need a better study area so that they can do well and work hard for their study.

What we will be doing?

We will be repainting one-room flats, refurbishing a small study area with appropriate furniture (desk, chairs etc)

So we will need manpower to help us with this!

Do join us by signing up at here

More details is over at our official Facebook event page for Project PACSA.

You can also follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook.

Thank You and hope to see you there!

PS: Do spread the words around about this meaningful event! Thank You!

2 Years of Army

To be honest, I don't know how shall I start this. I want to pen down my thoughts and feelings I have towards my two years of service in the army but I think I will end up with long winded post and then nobody read it..

Then again, I shouldn't really care if anybody read this or not. I shall just write down and then few years down the road, I can come back and read it again.

My official ORD date is this coming Sunday but will be able to get my pink IC this Friday.
(Edit: Did this post few days back but I pro-crasti-nated and now already got my IC le!)

The feeling is kinda weird actually, two years seems long but not really long, fast but not exactly fast. During the period when I was clearing my stuff from my cupboard, I was like "It's seems just yesterday I got enlisted only.."

I enlisted two months early because I was in the PTP (Physical-Training-Phrase) batch, and believe it or not. I was very quiet throughout the PTP and BMT (Basic Military Training) period because I told myself I must lie low... don't attract too much attention. And I think I did so well that I wasn't really close with my section mates (At least that's what I feel..)

Maybe another reason was I judge the people I meet inside. It is like suddenly someone just took 6 people from different background, race, country etc and put together with me. That feeling...

I admit, I really dislike some of them when I first meet them. I was like "Why this guy this and that..."

But eventually, I have to live with it. Lol. Anyway, people whom I dislike in the first place now became my close friends (So army friends who happened to read this, I guess you all know who I am talking about. Only two people in this case lah...and no, not my buddy)

Then I made friends with people from other section and eventually became my good friend in army! Yes! It's Ting Heng! My hyung! Of course, Wei Lie and Alvin included.

BY THE WAY, the reason why you are able to see photos of me and my friends inside a camp was because I was given the permission to bring my camera to the camp on certain occasions (POP, ORD, AHM and training in Brunei) and able to take picture of it. So before you wondering why I can take picture inside my camp... this is why!

PTP & BMT.

During PTP, endless of physical training that made all of us shag. Then moving on to BMT, more "xiong" training awaits us. BCCT, SOC and lastly, the seven days of field camp was hell.

7 days out in the field, sleeping in shell scape and not able to bath with clean water. Not to forget the coldness in the night. Digging shell scape was the worst. But in the end, I pulled it through.

The memorable part about outfield was witnessing fireflies in the night. It was beautiful for some reasons and oh! Drinking coke too!

After which, our battalion was assigned to help out in Army Half Marathon. And this is a picture of my section mates! :D



Damn, all ugly botak!

Oh oh!! I got to say this! I don't think I would be able to make it without the sergeants! Especially Chen Jiaxiong! He is like the best Sgt in my company!


POP LOH!

EDIT: I realized I forgot to talk about 24KM route march... It was very tiring... we walked the whole of East Coast Park! But actually I think because of the constant training for this march, I was able to endure it to the end.

Passing Out Parade. Whole family was there on that day! Though what make me sian was they didn't get a clear picture of me. Even worse was they took pictures of other people and thinking that was me! -_-

I was told that my mom was "There! There that's ah boy" ask my father to snap *click click* After a while, my Dad realised that's not me and then say "Eh, no lah...this one not him... ah there, that one is ah boy! *click click*

-__________-

But hor, those unknown boys that they took kinda look like me too, just that they were a lot taller.

In the end, the much better picture of me is this...



Shall show you all some POP pictures if not all words very sian though I did blogged about POP before too...




With Wei Lie


With Ting Heng


With Cpt Fahmie


With my Platoon Sgt, Shaheeb!


GAIT

Then come GAIT (Guards Advanced Infantry Training ). Oh, have I mentioned I am from 1st Guards? In case, some of you do not know what does people from Guards do, you can check the Wikipedia here.

I start to become my real self during this time and eventually get close with the new guys from Tekong. GAIT is yet another one tough stage for me! Countless of outfields if I didn't remembered wrong which means attacked by mosquitoes which is one of the things I hate! And beside that, we have to go through repelling, 2KM coastal swim and 12KM road march to earn our Khaki beret!

Especially for repelling as I have serious height phobia! I actually teared up when I did my first repelling and DROPPED DOWN from the tower when I was on my Full Battle Order! It's scary shit for me! Though repelling from chopper wasn't that bad but still I do not want to experience it again!

Until this point, I kinda have no idea what else to write...

EDIT: Things we do during GAIT will be Beach Pt (which isn't that tough as what we heard, I think my CSM "put water") And also Reverse SOC right after a long march from Tekong to our camp! There is a name for this but I forgot, I think it's called ROP or something like that...we didn't get any sleep at all! It was shag to the max! One of the toughest moment in two years of my NS.

I think we had a block leave after GAIT, and it was my first oversea trip with my friends! Though the destination was KL but still it's awesome! Read KL post here!

It was with my army cliques! Will never forget the experience there!




Oversea Training: Brunei

During our rotation 3 (kinda lazy to explain but those who served army should know what I am talking about..) we went to Brunei for our oversea training.

And because I am from CRT (Company Recce Team) I have to go Brunei two days earlier than the main body. It was dreadful...

The food from their cookhouse was worse than my camp cookhouse or maybe I was not used to it, the weather is hotter than Singapore, though night is freezing...

Here is the picture of the food... this is one of the best actually..



For the CRT training, we have to go through the jungle to get used to it.  And just when I thought Singapore mosquito is the thing I hate...

BRUNEI MOSQUITOES ARE DINOSAUR HUGE!!!! They are so big sized that when you hit them, you can pluck their legs one by one out..

Then there was river crossing in one of their river which was infested with crocodiles! And because I am from CRT, my teammates and I have to swim across the river first!

You can imagine how scared I was... and there was one scene where we saw something moving and we were like "IS THAT CROCODILE?" but in the end it's just driftwood... LOL

Next was climbing Mount Biang and 7 knoll. This part is #$%#&$#@^$@^#@$

I cried when I climbed Mount Biang... because of the route and the load I have to carry! Really wanted to give up... It was so tiring and hard! But thanks to my CRT mates, I didn't and carry on with it (Then again, it's not like I can easier give up, given that I am in the middle of Brunei jungle! If I want to fall out, they might need to send a chopper to the jungle and fetch me out or something like that...)

Oh, we even have to drink river water to survive but cooking magi mee was the most awesome part at that point of time!


Picture of my army cliques



That's me with cicada! Yes! There are a lot of cicadas in Brunei! I actually find them cute! Especially the noise they made using their wings! During free time, I will go catch them and play with it instead of cleaning my rifle... Lol!

You will never see me without a Cicada in the Brunei camp.. to the point that I was given the name of Cicada Boy by other people from another company.


Cooking magi mee...


CRT Team after our last exercise if I am not wrong...



And finally, on the way to home. Missed Singapore damn much during the time in Brunei. It was about a month! CAN YOU IMAGINE THAT?? Hardly able to access to twitter and all! :(

EDIT: Okay, I realized I missed out alot of stuff and my Sir told me it was really a huge jump from Brunei to ORD Parade... though I really can't recall any key factor within this timeframe... cannot be I talk about NDP rehersal right? LOL

But okay lah, maybe I shall just talk abit about ATEC. THE FINAL OUTFIELD! To be honest, I don't really think ATEC is one of the tough outfield I ever had... (maybe because I was dead on both mission 1 and 2.. LOL)

It was at Yishun and sadly we didn't get to take chopper due to the bad weather. You probably can imagine how happy we were when we finished our ATEC! I mean, it's the last of

Writing about this remind me the time where I was caught when I was doing CRT. Will never forget how Xue Ru and me keep scolding the enemy and then found out that he is an officer from another company (But this officer is one stupid guy also *ahem*)

And then shouting "Save me! Save me!" when the main body arrived in the prison. hahaha!

ORD Parade

Okay, I should really just fast forward to ORD parade.

17 May 2012 was my ORD parade. We were damn lucky and get to wear Number 1 uniform for this parade... No.1 uniform is shuai de loh! hahahaha!




With my Section mates though some of them went missing... hmmm

And lastly, some pictures from ORD function at St.James










Love this picture


So that kinda sum up my whole two years of NS.

I don't know if NS really make me mature but I am very sure that going through NS has make me change my thinking towards things in life. Maybe because we have to deal with weapons that might kill you if you did not do it correctly so I was very "kia si" and then it make me feel that life is so fragile and that I really must treasure the people and things around me.

One thing I am kinda proud was my endurance level. I have never fall out or give up during any mission and sometimes I wondered why... I didn't even take ATT C before! (Should have try once at least!)

Not to mention, my two years of NS is very exciting, if you are my friends you should know what I mean...

All right, would like to type some message for my friends and people I meet for this past two years.

Ting Heng: HYUNG! Haahahaha! You have certainly become one of the good friends this two years! I will really never forget how you pass me your bottle of water when I was traumatized after my first repelling. I really appreciated that and I will never forget it!


Ting Heng Hyung!

Hong Kai: Chao ah beng! LOL! Thank you for the help when we were buddy during our PTP and BMT. And I am really serious when I said that I was very shock to see that my buddy back got "ang kong" (tattoo) Will never forget that time we always bicker... hahaha! AND ALSO THE BUS JOURNEY TO KL! Crazy thoughts that you and I have! Lol!


Hong Kai!

Sgt Chen Jia Xiong: JIA XIONG!! One of the best SGT I have know! I think it was really lucky of me to know you and have you as my section commander (though last part you were not able to chiong with us) I will miss the time you treat me lots of good food and buying food for me in the middle of the night.




With Jia Xiong

Ying Chao: To be honest lah, I really do not know what to say about you but I just would like to thank you for all the help you gave me for this two years!

Xue Ru: I guess I can said that you are next in line whenever I have things to share. My running buddy! Thank you for this 1 and half year! Maybe we shall meet up soon for running? LOL

And of course, the rest of my army cliques! Zhao Sheng, Nigel, Liang Jie and Chai Hock. Thank you guys! It was really awesome to know all of you! Though sometimes we might have disagreement and all... but I really enjoy the company with you guys!

Also thank you PS Shaheeb, CPT Fahmie and CPT Ang Wei. I am very lucky to have you guys as my commanders during my time in NS.








And my sections mates! Jason, Aliff and Najib! Thank you guys too for helping me. I know I hold the lightest load in the CRT team but without you guys I guess I will give up during one of the mission. Thank you for all the encouragemen.


Also,Yue Shun, Jeremy, Hao You and Wee Mun! You guys are the next awesome SGTs I ever met. Thank you guys for all the help!

Thank you to Major Kenneth and CPT Hoirul too. It's really nice to meet you and learning new things from you all...

OH OH WAIT! Lastly photo of my company and platoon! Though this was taken before GAIT so do not have the guys from Tekong..





Signing off.

Daniel Yao