Aviator’s Christmas

‘Twas the night before Christmas, and out on the ramp,
Not an airplane was stirring, not even a Champ.
The aircraft was fastened to tie downs with care,
In hopes that comming morning, they would all be there.

The fuel trucks were nestled, all snug in their spots,
With gusts from two-forty at 39 knots.
I slumped at the fuel desk, now finally caught up,
And settled down comfortably, resting my butt.

When the radio lit up with noise and chatter,
I turned up the scanner to see what was the matter.
A voice clearly heard over static and snow,
Called for clearance to land at the airport below.

He barked his transmission so lively and quick,
I’d have sworn that the call sign he used was ¨St. Nick¨.
I ran to the panel to turn up the lights,
The better to welcome this magical flight.

He called his position, no room for denial,
¨St. Nicholas One, turnin’ left onto final.¨
And what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a Rutan-built sleigh, with eight Rotax Reindeer !

With vectors to final, down the glideslope he came,
As he passed all the fixes, he called them by name:
¨Now Ringo! Now Tolga! Now Trini! and Bacun!
On Comet! On Cupid!¨ What pills was he takin’?

While controllers were sittin’, and scratchin’ their head,
They phoned to my office, and I heard it with dread,
The message they left was both urgent and dour:
¨When Santa pulls in, have him please call the tower.¨

He landed like silk, with the sled runners sparking.
Then I heard ¨Left at Charlie,¨and ¨Taxi to parking.¨
He slowed to a taxi, turned off of three-oh
And stopped on the ramp with a ¨Ho, ho-ho-ho…..¨

He stepped out of the sleigh, but before he could talk,
I ran out to meet him with my best set of chocks.
His red helmet and goggles were covered with frost
And his beard was all blackened from reindeer exhaust.

His breath smelled like peppermint, gone slightly stale,
And he puffed on a pipe, but he didn’t inhale.
His cheeks were all rosy and jiggled like jelly,
His boots were as black as a cropduster’s belly.

He was chubby and plump, in his suit of bright red,
And he asked me to ¨Fill it, with hundred low-lead.¨
He came dashing in from the snow-covered pump,
I knew he was anxious for drainin’ the sump.

I spoke not a word, but went straight to my work,
And I filled up the sleigh, but I spilled like a jerk.
He came out of the restroom, and sighed in relief,
Then he picked up a phone for a Flight Service Brief.

And I thought as I silently scribed in his log,
These reindeer could land in an eight-mile fog.
He completed his pre-flight, from the front to the rear,
Then he put on his headset, and I heard him yell, ¨Clear!¨

And laying a finger on his push-to-talk,
He called up the tower for clearance and squawk.
¨Take taxiway Charlie, the southbound direction,
Turn right three-two-zero at pilot’s discretion¨

He sped down the runway, the best of the best,
¨Your traffic’s a Grumman, inbound from the west.¨
Then I heard him proclaim, as he climbed thru the night,
¨Merry Christmas to all! I have traffic in sight.”

(sighted fr a friend’s blog.. )

back again…

aft reading fr xue’s blog… i was so compelled to write abt myself and the things ard me again.
“love blogging for two reasons. It helps in the thinking process and when you look back at ur entries, you can feel the feelings behind each entry. it feels like i get to relive my past”

the last time i blogged was juz after e prelims. Now, As are over, Prom is over and i’m beginning to find a part time job…

I’m gg to relive e memories of my past…

ulu ubin trail…

Ytd, was my first visit to Pulau Ubin with Ken, yq and Pau. We started off the morning with me, first boarding 59, followed by the rest.
Pau and I had carrot cake, yq and ken had wanton mee.. we were deciding whether or not to bring add. water, but decided at the end, wad we had was sufficient.

I’m sure the residents there have lots of competition in renting bikes. There are at least 6 stalls renting bikes. Bike rental is super cheap.. $5 for e entire day! (can u ever get this price in ECP/ pasir ris?)

Touring ubin on a bike, isn’t as easy as it seems. The road is rather bumpy and we gotta go upslope and downslope too. Gg upslope was extremely tedious. The gals, thanks to lack of testosterone lvs, gotta push, push, push… our bikes all the way up. Phew! Ea time we go down slope, i felt it was a gamble, the speed is rather fast, u gotta break break break..ea time, otherwise u’ll simply ram into the trees.

The houses there were scattered all over e island, while travelling on e ‘main road’ u see this hse here.. and travelling further u see another there.. hahas.. (i seriously wonder how can they live in isolation, w/o neighbours ard?) Oh ya.. there was this hse tt had a big Cookie Monster.. u noe, the Mcdonald near Mac at ECP? sth like tt…

The following part might be abit eerie…(depending how well i described it here.. hahas)
Ominous Sign 1:There r alot of temples in e island too. We stopped at 1 Buddhist temple, Pau prayed, while we waited for her outside. Aft Pau prayed, she mounted her bike, but fell.

Ominous Sign2:Our next destination was this beach..there was an aunty wif her lorry selling drinks. Acc to her, accidents happened everyday, fatals one is likely too. We bought a coconut, which was really sweet, fr her. She was extremely friendly, telling us abt rjc students, RI, nyjc how gd e students are and said tt mjc teachers and pricipal r gd.. well.. she didnt’ mentioned anything abt tpj. 😦

Ominous Sign 3: Aft e coconut drink, we travelled to ‘adventurous’ route. It’s a narrow rocky pathway, wif rows of tall foilage trees on its sides. The trees are extremely tall, such tt there was little sunlight penetrating thru it. It was quiet, the only noise made was e cricking sound made by the insects. Occasionally, u hear rustle of leaves among the trees, u noe sth is moving but cant’ see it. I didn’t feel gd while travelling there…

Ominous Sign 4: We passed by a Malay cemetry along tt ‘adventurous’ route.

Finally, it was somewhere there where i fell. Fortunately i only escaped wif a very minor abrasion on a right knee.
Eventually, we left the ‘adventurous’ route and  reached the ‘mainroad’. 🙂 we finally saw e light!

Coincidentally, Pau, Ken and I had a dream abt e area where e cemetry is. When i realised we all had a dream related to tt place, it did spooked me a little. I dreamt i fell, but the injury was much worse, Pau dreamt she fell, and Ken’s dream was rather complicated.. hahas..

Pulau Ubin, is a nice place. The ppl are friendly, but it’s impt to have at least a guy wif u. Guys can read maps better and able to shoo dogs away fr us.. haha.. It’s much safer to not go wif a gp of gals.. trust me.
The expereince was rather spooky, but the adventure itself was beyond words.

p.s : be prepared to apply lots of yoko yoko / salonpas / tiger balm aft e trip. Plus, do bring insect repellent, mosquito cream there.. and DO NOT drink fr e tap water there. It’s not drinkable!

pics.. will be uploaded soon at http://candicesin.multiply.com/photos soon

Food.. more food!

It’s nv fail tt in every hnc outing, there’ll be food, talks and laughter. (where can u find a grp of friends tt could indulge in food all the time?! lol!)

I really enjoyed every single moment with them, we talked abt almost everything and most imptly we respect ea other opinion and give everyone a chance to talk….. having such company, makes me feel really blessed. (how much can u actually share wif ur classmates?)

Things to lood fwd to aft prelims:
1) Pariss Lunch
2) Changi V stingray, nasi lemak, sugar cane w/o sugarcane hahas…
3) K-box??
4) 1 day of shopping indulgence?
5) MOST IMPTLY, STUDY STUDY HARDER…

haiz…

haven been updating for a super long time alrdy.
lots of things happened throughout this month. Ups, downs, joy, worries, etc..there’s simply too much to share. Thankfully, i can always find an outlet to let all these out.

The prelims are ongoing right now. It’s the worst examination i’ve prepared myself for. Last min rush, (which i dunno y, despite consistency). Well, no point thinking abt it…the prelims aren’t impt, it’s the As tt i shld really work hard for it.

I need a super nice env, to study aft prelims…

boring

this weekend has been boring for me. First, was this family bbq wif my parent’s friends’ families.
The food was great but the company was dull. Fortunately, scooter was wif me, otherwise i couldn’t find any reason for me there. I hate these family gatherings, where the adults talk, the children stone in front of the tv. I bet, during x’mas eve, they’ll have one of these things again, and i’ll definitly perhaps not go.
I was shopping today wif my family. But well, this shopping was weird. My sis and i didn’t talk to my father. We juz can’t stand his horrible MCP attitude. I hate all MCPs. The thing is, he doesn’t knows how to talk to us. He pulls a black face in front of us and is easily irritated by simple things.Worse still, he uses vulgarties in front of me and my younger sis. Wat the hell is he teaching us! (he can’t blame me if i use tt on him one day…) But when he is wif his friends, it’s a totally different story.
Despite my father’s horrible attitude, we managed to get some clothes and a pair of sunglass for me. 🙂 We juz ignored his presence, and took our time to choose our clothes. He looked extremely pissed, wif his arms folded and his eyes tells us everything. But, since u want to bring us out, and it has been time since we went out to shop as a family, why do this??
Looking forward to wed… 😀

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it’s august and we’re in our last 3 mths of our time in tpjc. it seems only ytd tt we were right here in tpjc. Aft this 3 mths, i’ll prob will not see my classmates tt often. We’ll go on our separate ways. If we are lucky, we meet, if not, tt’s the last time we’ll see ea other.
Taking sec sch for e.g, do u still keep in contacts wif all ur friends? For me, not much, at least i do still talk to suqing, xuelin n sam. The rest on my msn contact list are idling. It’s difficult to talk to those u rarely talk to as compared to those u seldom meet. I’m v. grateful tt i do still have some contacts wif my sec friends.
Jc could be v. different. My closest friends are those fr hnc. My classmates, prob juz hf and jm. Perhaps, aft my 2 yrs in jc, i’ll only keep in contact wif these few. And i should cherish watever remaining time left wif those tt i’m unlikely to meet in e future.

How sad life can be, when the friends u make come and go?

ndp preview

This year’s ndp is gg to be great. Trust me. In everyshow segment, there are fireworks. Perhaps, the only boring part during the show as e wushu segment. The pre-parade segment was fantastic, wif Deyi Sec Sch’s display band performing, MCs doing the flying fox to get to the stadium and all those things the MCs did to get us ‘high’.. hahas…But wait… wat are the Volvos supposed to do during the pre-parade segment? 10 cars gg ard the track, supposed to make us feel excited.  

This year, there are more Red Lions doing the freefall. A total of 15 of them i think.  More aircraft displays and the new Apache helicopter. Beautiful…
The only sad thing was that the whole show ended very quickly. It ended at 8.10pm. We took pics till ard 8.50pm. The stench of the toilets in the National Stadium is unbearable, we had to walk all the way to kallang theatre to use the toilets. But well, the toilets were choked there. I didn’t get to a toilet till i was home.

We made many wrong turns till we reached the Frog porridge stall. We couldn’t understand wat the waitress was saying in chinese.. we gotta admit tt our chinese was bad. hahas… The order took 30mins to arrive, by the time we had our dinner it was 10.30pm. lol…

93

tt’s the no. of days remaining to the dreadful As. Revision has been bad so far. How i wish i was given more tests, more tests and more tests. Test is the only thing tt keeps me focus, helps me to org. my rev. schedule. But where it is! Some fortunate classes have test.. but why is my class so unfortunate? No test, simply tutorials… and we are already lagging very far behind.

fly…

I received a mail fr my gp tutor, reminding us there is abt 5 wks left to prelims and we are nowhere to passing. And I juz read a post in xue lin’s blog sth abt we are juz left wif 24 hrs to study for ea subj. All these simply meant, the prelims are drawing near.

Once again, my rev. has barely taken off. It’s juz like the plane, taxiing on e runway, waiting for some signal fr the control tower for a take off clearance. I want to be airborne, I want to have my airspeed and altitude up, I want to study. Yet, the control tower is not clearing me for some unknown reasons.

My flight-plans are drawn, my route plotted, weather is fine, but wat’s wrong? The oil tank is filled, my flaps are steady, my engines are working. I think the problem lies wif the person sitting at the cockpit, there is sth wrong wif my identity tt’s why i don’t get cleared.

Why don’t i get my wings this time?
The game remains the same, but the players have changed.