Bintan Getaway!

It's amazing what little conversations in life do for you. I was just randomly chatting with Vivian 1-2 weeks ago, and she invited me along for a 2D1N Bintan trip with a few others from church. Woohoo! Mini getaway!

We stayed at Nirwana Resorts Hotel, which was quite pricey ($60/pax/night)  but it's good because all the activities are basically around where we stayed, and the service overall was very good. So we paid more for convenience and service I guess.

I don't know what is it about the trees but it somehow looks very nice and islandy? (See the distant trees in the background). The long stretchy trunks and how they lean in a very specific arrangement.

The building behind me is the Activities Centre, which is basically a 5 minute walk from the main building where our rooms were. The range of activities here were bowling, tabletennis, elephant riding, horse riding, archery, air rifle, flying fox, kayaking, bodyboarding, etc. (All of the above for free if you buy the all in pass at SGD$40++)

There was even an area called the 'mini Zoo', which was basically a short walkway with a range of animals along the side, such as pythons, some fish, some birds, guinea pigs (yes, in the wild. super cute, those little balls). No payment to walk through it.

Can't really tell but this is me Bodyboarding!!

Bodyboarding turned out much more fun than I expected. You take this board, go out into the ocean, and try to catch a wave to ride it towards the shore.  It's hard to explain how it is done, and all of us could only do it like 50% of the time, but you have to jump at the perfect timing to catch the wave, otherwise you'll only move forward a bit and not coast quickly forward a long distance.

(Ok I initially wanted to attach a bodyboarding video here but realized it was way too pro compared to what we did. We rode waves that were much noober (tho much much stronger and higher than Singapore's waves))

We had dinner at The Kelong Restaurant,which is basically an al fresco restaurant on stilts overlooking the water! It has a super romantic ambience and great!

There's this nice boardwalk which you can walk down from the restaurant. We got to watch the sunset! Really pretty :)

We ordered 2 crabs, one veg, one calamari, one large plate of fried rice, and a fish, and our bill came up to SGD$33 / pax. Not sure if that's reasonable price but it was quite filling and tasty! Crabs were meaty too (though it could have been because we had 2 crab experts with us who picked the crabs for us ^^ )


Included in our room package was a breakfast buffet, which had a decent spread of both western and asian stuff, such as sausages, eggs, crossaints(sp?), noodles/rice, fruits, juice, milk, cereal, toast, nasi lemak ingredients + porridge, etc.

After that we went kayaking, which turned out not as fun as bodyboarding because it's pretty hard to stay out in the sea with the waves constantly bashing us back, and ... kayaking is so much more tiring and less fun than bodyboarding :(

In the afternoon, we did more activities (part of our all-in pass)

I really like vivian and my poses here! I told her we look like tributes from the same District lolol. #hungergamesreferenceyo

I kinda sucked at archery, shooting all around the bullseye and hitting it only once (the yellow zone). Plus it was really tiring as it takes considerable effort to draw the arrow back each time you fire.

I was much better at shooting heh. Shot down many targets. BANG BANG.

We also went on an elephant ride - one short 5 minutes ride around this area. It was so painful! There wasn't a seat on the elephant so I basically sat on its back which was quite pointy. But ok the rider with me was nice to chat with so it took my mind off the discomfort. He has been doing this for 20 years! That's crazy. Can't imagine such a simple life... riding elephants everyday.

The cool trees I was talking about.


Overall a pretty fun and chill trip - we chilled a lot on the beach (and thus I became super black and abit burnt), and it was a very relaxing time there - just sitting on the soft sand (like, really soft) and letting water run by underneath me.
It was good company too, everyone was fun and could get along. Wish I could have more of these getaways with such company :)

Two sweet fruits

Imagine this.

In my village, there are some ancient fruits that have been hidden in the temple (e.g. Fruit A and Fruit B). After waiting for 12 years, I've been told that I can finally eat one of them - Fruit A - if I want to. But that would mean I can't eat Fruit B or other Fruits.

I can't see either of them, but I've heard things about them.

I heard Fruit A is the biggest fruit among the fruits of its type. How big exactly I'm not sure yet, though I've heard rumors it's about 4000 cm3. How does it taste? I've no idea, haven't heard much about it.

Fruit B is smaller than Fruit A, maybe about 3300-3500 cm3 in volume, and is it is known to be sweet too. But I can't really describe it, since I haven't actually tasted it nor Fruit A before.

The problem with Fruit A is that it's protected with a very hard shell, inpenetrable by human teeth! I've tried to bite it, and was left with an aching jaw and not much for my effort. If I try to eat it, I may lose my teeth which will make me really sad in the long run!

The large size of Fruit A make me want to ignore this problem of the hard shell. Hey, maybe I'll get used to biting through this hard shell and I won't be that sad. Maybe no teeth is alright? But many other people seem to complain that having no teeth is horrible and really  major source of unhappiness!

Now suddenly the gods-to-be said I can choose Fruit B. This complicates matter a bit. Fruit B is a bit smaller, but does not have the shell. In fact, it's only surrounded by a mildly tough membrane! Easily penetrable.

But wait! A legendary monk from the temple descends upon me, and tells me as much as he could about Fruit A. He described it as sweet too. But what kind of sweet? Chocolate sweet? Sugar sweet? Sour sweet? I have no idea. I haven't tasted it or other fruits before, so I don't know which I will like more!

So do I like Fruit B more than Fruit A? I don't know! I haven't even seen it, much less tasted it. I think I may like both the same. After all, all I want is a nice fruit to eat that will sustain me in the long run.


THEN. Suddenly another legendary monk appears and passes me this tool - a fruit-splitting device. It can split the toughest of shells - including that of Fruit A. Suddenly, I can easily get to eat Fruit A without the inpenetrable shell.

So now what do I do? Should I choose Fruit A or Fruit B?

Flappy Bird - A game of oneupmanship

Oneupmanship

: The art of outdoing or showing up a rival or competitor

It all began with an innocent taunt from my sbff, Eri Sasaki. At that time, I had never even heard of the game before. In fact, I didn't even know what she was showing me.

I had almost no reaction to this yet - I didn't even know the game's name, much less heard of the game. So I casually asked:

Before the '2 points? dying?' texts it was just a very very mild almost non-existent interest in the game, I didn't really intend to play it just wanted to know what it was called. But this was a direct challenge to me. It became a game of oneupmanship.

I am fairly competitive, and love challenges like this. So when she set out this challenge for me, I went to download the game and try it out.

I have to admit, at first, it was quite challenging. It wasn't as intuitive as the classic 'keep your character up by pressing a button' as a button press actually made you leap, not just go up. But after a while (and by a while I mean 5 minutes), I got the hang of it.

Ok fine I took 15 minutes (according to the time stamp) to beat her score.

Feeling very satisfied, I went to bed.

--

The next day I met my bestie Christabel for lunch, so I was texting her.

The red-circled text is foreshadowing something.

She annoyed me with her next text, where she said she just played and got a high score of 40. What! So I went to have a go and within 5 mins...

Done. Beat her score. I can rest in peace now. 43 is pretty good right?

--

So I went on with my life, without touching this simple annoying game. Then I saw a Facebook post about it, and had to go and ask:

What! His score was 64! That's crazy. And one tier up from mine. I have to beat that now.

I went to have a few goes at it... and beat it! I sent it to my sbff now, the original challenger, to let her know her hopes of beating my score (of what she thought was 48) was snuffed.

She clearly gave up here. But I had to rub it in the next day:

The red circled text is foreshadowing again

Indeed, on my very first try that session I hit a new high score of 72. Ten minutes later...

LOL HUNDRED. WHAT.

I think I was quite stunned when I finally died too. I knew I had gone past 3 digits (one important thing to do well is to avoid looking at your score, but having it change from 2 to 3 digits is quite obvious and distracting), but  wow. Didn't expect this.

..

And just today... I was waiting for my turn in a Hearthstone tournament so I got bored and opened up the silly game again.

And...

LOL 151.


So yup, that's my current score right now. Some people asked me how long it took... and I have NO CLUE. The only thing on my mind while in the run is to maintain a good bouncing rhythm, and avoid the damn pipes. Time perception isn't high on my cognitive list.

Will I stop now? Maybe. Until someone else challenges me. Then a new game of oneupmanship begins.

------


Random tips for Flappy bird

• Sit in a comfortable position. After you clear about 50-70 you'll start to realize parts of your body going numb if you were in a poor posture to begin with. And you can't adjust. Because that distracts you.
• The safest rhythm to achieve is when you bounce up directly above the bottom pipe (rather than bounce up from before the pipe). (meaning you bounce up one bounce away from the pipe, then bounce up again from directly above the pipe. If anyone wants pictures I'll upload it.)
• I found this the safest to avoid bumping the front or back of the pipe by accident. If you lose this rhythm, try to get it back on a subsequent dive/climb
• Practice your dips and dive while your score is low. You need to be accustomed to dropping 3/4 a screen to the bottom pipe, and climbing back up to a height with multiple bounces. You can even practice this before your first pipe - just start from the top of the screen and clear the first pipe accordingly
• Avoid looking at the score. Try to fixate on the right of the screen
• Look at the height of the next pipe and be very clear of what you have to do. Same height = maintain rhythm of bouncing. Climb = multiple taps (not too many!) Dip = slightly slow down taps, or dip entirely

And ultimately, concentrate. Flappy Bird is a game of concentration. I think after a certain level of practice (+ innate ability), everyone attains the same level of skill. What sets the high score then is one's ability to maintain this skill for as long as possible, without mistakes. 

Good luck and happy flapping/bouncing!