Stardust

For some of you who have yet to watch the movie Stardust, GO WATCH IT NOW !!! If you like lots of magick, spells and a bit of fairy tale, this is a MUST watch! UJJ gives this movie a 9/10!

Oh...check out the offical site for hilarious games and many many more! http://www.stardustmovie.com/

OCIP... R&R.

Lao is a predominantly Buddhist country. Most of her people follows the Theraveda Buddhism, similar to countries like Thailand, Cambodia and Myanmar in the region.


In this temple lies one of the 3 legendary Buddha statues. One of the trio is none other than the Jade Buddha in Bangkok for whom the King of Thailand changes clothes for every season with much pomp. The final of the trio is lost beneath the Mekong River during the war. The legend goes that the 3 statues together will bring great prosperity to the country that owns them. For the longest time, many countries have been trying to lay their hands on them. I wonder if modern technology will actually help locate the missing statue under the murky waters of the Mekong River. According to the tour guide, this statue was made entirely of gold!


Statues...


Erm.. statue too.


Painting on the wall of a temple depicting the life of the Buddha. Reminds me of the Sistine Chaple in Vatican City.


More beautiful paintings.


Along Mekong River.


Here we arrive at a cave along the Mekong River where the locals kept their precious Buddhist artefacts during the war.


Giant flower!


Our fabulous host in Lao. This is Daniel, he is from Nagaland. Nagaland is by right part of India but if you look it up on the map, it's actually very far from the Indian Peninsula. According to Daniel, it's only recently that India included Nagaland to be under the adminstration of the Department of Internal Affairs. A sign that shows that the Indian government is trying to exert political control over that region. Before this, I never knew Nagaland existed. So ignorant!


A beautiful sight on our last morning there. These monks set off every morning around 4-5am to collect alms and along the roads, you'll see locals sitting crosslegged on the roadside, offering alms to the monks. The monks here eat meat because they are not suppose to be choosy of what people have to offer them. I think I've read this somewhere before.


Home sweet home!

Through the eyes of the Blueberry Mobil

Caught this while waiting at the lights the other day. Dark, gloomy and depressing. Got me into a thinking mood (again). :S

OCIP... (The days after day 2...)

I got tired of editing the hundreds of pics from the OCIP...so I've decided to post one more time about the 'service' part of the trip. After this, I'll be posting some of the pics from the R&R. :D


Having converted some of the service funds into KIP, the local currency, I turned into a millionaire suddenly! You can imagine my shock when Emily passed me the stack of money. :o


Dinner @ 'next door'. Throughout our stay there, we had numerous meals at this little shop beside the guesthouse. The owners were all women and were very nice to us. They gave in to the demands of our little singaporean princesses without any grumble. Thankfully, some of the princesses turned out to be gems and offered help to them on some days.



Houserules. Need I say more? I so need to have one of these in my lab next year. My favourite rule is rule #7: NO SCREAMING! The design group really did a good job in drawing this on the spot. We pasted this on the wall of the hall of the guesthouse.


Also done by the design group. The other groups were very enthusiastic when signing for their duties. We were all very heartened by this!


Sporty peeps!


Lunch @ Santhiphap!


Lunch came together with some performance put together by both schools. Here, our students taught their students how to play recorder! There were other performances like cultural dance etc. I was particularly impressed by how willing their students were to come out to show their talents. I'm sure those who were there will remember the guy who volunteered to play the keyboard and sang along with it. He went on singing even as we left for ARDA.


Our fabulous painters! They really did a fine job with the place and working till very late. By the time we walked back to the guesthouse, it was already pretty dark.


This is the place where they served endless springrolls. Scary.


Trying very hard to smile after eating so many springrolls.

OCIP Lao (29th Oct - 5th Nov) Day 2

Day 2 started off with everyone getting excited. Although we've been told that we'll be entering the classroom to teach the students basic English, we really didn't know what to expect. So, off we walked to Santhiphap High School from our guesthouse. The walk was a short ten minutes but the entire convoy attracted quite a bit of attention. Whether unwanted or not, I can't tell for sure. Along the way, we saw many streetside hawkers selling roasted BANANAS!!

We met up with the Principal of the school thatvery morning and almost immediately, the girls set off to work! As this was the first day, many of them looked inadequate in the classrooms. And to make matters worse, quite a fair bit of the classes had students who could speak pretty good English already. It was heartening to see how the girls fumbled but eventually managed to modify their lessons accordingly.

Towards the end of the day, everyone was looking pretty drained from the excitment of the day. We walked back from the school back to the guesthouse. Along the way, many things were running through my mind. I wonder what were the thoughts on these young minds. I wondered if they felt like giving up and yearn to return to the comforts of Singapore. I wondered if this trip would makea difference to their minds. How about those students we met today, are we going to make a difference in their lives? What is our purpose here in Lao? While these thoughts whizzed about in my head, we had dinner and had our debrief. I went to bed tired but still thinking...

To Be Continued...

OCIP Lao (29th Oct - 5th Nov)

Just came back from Lao last night. Very tired but I have to say that it's been an unforgettable experience. We arrive in Lao via Bangkok on Lao Aviation. It's my first time on a propeller jet. The airport is small even by Rockhampton standards and the air is fresh. Numerous hills loomed over the horizon, surrounding the airport completely.


We dumped our stuff at the guesthouse and immediately set out to orientate ourselves to service site. So we went to the school first. The sun was setting and the temperature was dropping. We were told that temperature could drop below 18 degrees and it did!


The classrooms were small, full of graffiti (see this is what happens when people damage public property!!), dusty without any lights nor fans.


To be continued... :D