60km Overnight cycling

Our overnight cycling is a success! Many of us turned up and we had a great time. But most importantly everyone is back safe and sound.

About a month ago my friend Terrence and me set up an event on Facebook inviting friends to come to our overnight cycling. A number of them responded quite quickly. A total of 18 of us turned up for the cycling and they are Terrence, me, Hydon, Joseph, Gerald, his friend Wong, Suresh, Tedmund, Jerome, Chuen Rong, Shi Rong, Zhen Ye, his cousin Wei Jun, Rachel, Charmaine, Shawn, Uncle Albert and Uncle Seah Ho.

Last night we met at church at 9.30pm. By the time everyone gathered and settled down for our briefing it was 10.30pm. For a big group you always got to give extra time. Terrence briefed us on the map of our cycling route, safety procedures, our groupings, methods on cycling past traffic junctions, contact numbers of everyone, etc. By 11pm the briefing ended and we distrbuted the bicycle backlights and lightsticks that they had ordered earlier. After that we all gathered at the carpark to check everyone's bicycles, to make sure they were all fully working.

By 11.30pm we were ready to leave! Before that we said a prayer first to ask God to keep us safe. The roads were still a little busy at this timing, probably because its a Saturday night. We broke into groups of 6. Terrence's group was first, followed by Uncle Albert his father, and then mine. I was the sweeper (the last man) almost the whole time. So I made sure my light was easy to see and had put light sticks all over behind me on my bag and bicycle.

So from our starting point at Yio Chu Kang Road, we headed towards Serangoon. Then through Aljunied and down to Geylang Lorong 22, the infamous red light district. While cycling through the very "busy" district Suresh was cycling beside me and he suddenly said to me, "I give you cheap cheap!" Omg that was kinda disturbing.

In the photo below I think you'll be able to see a hooker in red on the left side lol.

On the way to East Coast Park. All 18 of us stopped at one junction in one long line.

After Geylang we headed to Marina Cove at East Coast Park where we had our first rest point. Went to the washroom at MacDonalds to relief ourselves. Surprisingly Uncle Lam Kiong, Auntie Linda and Auntie Annie had followed us there in their car! They came with drinks haha. Almost exactly like a pit stop. And I gotta say they escorted us all the way throughout our whole cycling journey and provided real helpful assistance like food + drinks + bike repairing service.

This is Uncle Lam Kiong and Auntie Linda providing us drinks.

Uncle Lam Kiong's car also helped to transport cyclists who were tired. Then you may wonder, what happens to the cyclist's bicycle when they wanted to rest. Well we had 1 less bicycle compared to the number of riders. Thats because at East Coast Park, Shawn's bicycle broke down. The contact between the rear wheel and the rear gear had broken, also known as the 'hub'. So no matter how much he peddles the wheel won't turn. Uncle Lam Kiong's car came to the rescue and he arrived with his real big toolbox. We dismantled his 2 wheels and put it in the car boot. Then the rest of us cyclists continued our journey while Shawn followed us in the car. Later in the journey Chuen Rong got tired and Shawn cycled for him. Shawn was desperate to cycle someone's bike anyways haha.

After the East Coast Park rest stop we continued our journey west towards the Singapore Flyer, where we had our next stop. Along Nicoll Highway Suresh, Gerald and Wong were all singing SCDF songs. I don't know what. But then we were passing by this group of guys who looked like NS men. Suresh shouted "ORD OH" to them and they "ORD OH-ed" us back. Haha. And we continued our journey. Somewhere on the way we passed by a police car where 3 policemen were about to go into their car for some reason. Then later Suresh was like saying that one of the police said,"Wah they got light sticks some more sia." Lol.

I saw the racing car track that I saw before on television and I went to drift on it!

Some of them were getting a little tired already.

After the break at Singapore Flyer we headed towards Vivo City where the water fountain is and where we had another rest stop. Somewhere between these 2 rest points we cycled past this club. Then there were some guys quarreling with each other. Some guy was about to hit the other guy. Then that other guy started running across the road like he was in some marathon. Arghh I wanted to watch but had to follow the group. Lol.

A security guard at Vivo told us we were not allowed to put our bicycles there but then on taking a closer look at our bicycles he ended up talking about BMX bicycles to some of us lol. Anyway we politely agreed to pull out our bicycles and continued on our journey.

Vivo City to West Coast Park was quite a boring journey. The environment around was all industrial and there's nothing much to see. There were heavy vehicles wheezing past us now and then. Furthermore there was this group of ah bengs creating all sorts of noisy turbo sounds at one junction we stopped at. They were revving their engines and once it was green light they sped off like cheetahs. Their exhaust fumes were darn smelly. Some people just have nothing else to do but make stupid noises and pollute the air in the middle of the morning.

We finally reached the MacDonalds at West Coast Park! My craving for fish filet was finally met.

Coincidentally at the mac I met 2 of my friends. First met them in Aikido club back in Singapore Poly. We rested at the mac for about an hour. Terrence and Gerald discussed on the shortest and easiest route back to church, as everyone was getting considerably tired.

The rest sat inside the aircon area.

Home Sweet Home! 226 Yio Chu Kang Road. We reached church at 6.30am. Most of us were shagged but I felt that 60km wasn't enough for me. Maybe I wasn't cycling as fast as I could.

We had some food and drinks while slacking at church for a while until the sun rose. Then all of us went back home to have a very good shower and a very good sleep.

This was roughly the route we cycled.

Distance cycled: 63km
Total time: 7 hours (including many rests)

Combined Youth Meeting & Discovery Centre

It was finally 28 February and we were gonna have our Seventh-Day Adventist combined youth meeting at Botanical Gardens! Its actually a youth outing where the youth from all the 7 Adventist churches in Singapore are involved in. All of us went there by chartered buses which is sponsored by the church. This is the first time our youth is taking actually booking a chartered bus all to ourselves! Lol. 20 of us showed up this time.

Chuan Hoe Church youth was I think the earliest at Botanical Gardens. We reached there around 2.40pm. The meeting was gonna start at 3pm. So we kinda lazed around first. But then it started to drizzle! But it just continued to drizzle.

I tried to touch this swan but was scared it would bite me fingers =x

Even when our song service started at about 3.15pm the sky was REALLY REALLY dark, and getting even darker. It was like one big alien spaceship floating over us.

After the song service we played some games. And at about 3.45pm it started to pour like the Niagara Falls. So we all rushed to the shelter nearby and continued our program there. But omg it was really messy. I think around 80++ of us had to squeeze inside that small shelter with water sipping in through the roof at certain spots. Everyone was quite wet and probably felt uneasy. The place was echoey so whenever anyone tried to talk he/she had to race against the sound of the rain and people talking here and there.

The talk session lasted until about 5pm. Then after that the rain got lighter. The meeting ended and everyone started to disperse. But the Chuan Hoe youth stayed behind. We were going out for dinner! Our youth group photo below.

For this round's youth outing, the Chuan Hoe youth were in charged of the food. So we bought all sorts of things like the muffins you see below, donuts, curry puffs, koropok, etc.

And today we went to Discovery Centre! Outing after outing hehe. Seriously Discovery Centre isn't THAT interesting, as I kinda expected. I went before but that was like during primary school. The place ain't that big, there aren't crowds on a Sunday for some reason, and there isn't really a lot of things to discover, if you actually compare it with the Singapore Science Centre. It mainly consists of games that a group of people can play together. There's dancing, puzzle solving games, simple computer games, etc.

At least our $15 tickets came with 2 movies to watch. One was some pointless cartoon, another one was about mummies in Egypt which at least we did learnt quite a lot of things from that.

We were all so hungry. All bought hotdogs!

3D animated movie. The expression on that caucasian girl's face is priceless.

There's this small lake outside the Discovery Centre and with $2 you can have a 15 minute boat rental. After getting onto it we started banging into each other's boats. Rofl...

This was on the way back from Discovery Centre to Jurong Point. Hydon dozed off within minutes!

We had lunch at Jurong Point at the Kopitiam. After that we walked around a little and accompanied Hydon to his Andersons icecream stall. Half of us bought icecreams. I ate about 2/3 of my chocolate icecream and gave the rest to Chuen Rong. Omg felt like I was gonna have diabetes right at that moment. Too sweet already! And yeah the rain was pouring madly at that time. After that it was home sweet home.

Our next gathering will be our coming church chalet from 13 to 16 March at Aloha Changi!! =D

Chuan Hoe Seventh-Day Adventist Church Retreat

You, yes YOU, are invited to our church retreat aka chalet! If you have Facebook, click this link to go straight to our event. If not, here's all the info:

Date: 13 to 16 March 2009 (Friday to Monday)
Location: Aloha Changi, Fairy Point Chalet 4 (see map for details)
Check-in: 3pm (Friday)
Check-out: 10.30am (Monday)
Contact: Frank @ 90307981

Facilities: Double-storey chalet with 6 fully air-conditioned bedrooms, BBQ pit and fully equipped kitchen, TV, Games table, etc.

Main objectives of this camp:
- Get to make more friends
- And then, have a fun time together!

Theme: Candle In The Dark

Itinerary includes:
- Lots of free time
- Singing songs
- Social games
- Morning Taiji
- Nature walk
- Movie night
- Interaction
- Cycling
- Talks
- Naps
- BBQ
- etc!

Click to enlarge.

Happy Valentines Day!

Just like my birthday, Valentines Day is just another typical day. But it definitely wasn't a typical day at church. The youth did have a mini valentine celebration by giving out chocolates to everyone. The girls also thought of an idea where everyone would take a few blank paper hearts and then they will write a short letter to anyone they want to. In the end our big notice board on the wall ran out of space. So we had to paste all the hearts on our glass wall! Danielle, our newest youth, got the most hearts.

Badminton

Church service yesterday morning was per normal. But in the afternoon this time we went visiting! We made about 25 of the boxes below. Have sold about 8 of them. And we gave about 10 away while doing the vistations. We visited mostly old church members and visitors who have come to our church before. Had quite a number of people to visit so we split into 2 groups. I hope we can make pineapple tarts again! Its really quite a good business lol. Only downside is that it will take 2 full Sundays to make both the pineapple paste and the actual tarts.

And at night we went for badminton! I think this time I kinda booked too many courts. We had 4 courts for the first hour and 6 courts for the second hour. End up in the second hour we were only using 5 courts, and a bit of the 6th. Lol. Some were playing double. Most of us got to play almost non-stop instead of waiting for our turn. About 25 people turned up this time.

A few Thomson Church members came to join us, including the usual Linus and Hong Qi.

At 9.55pm the alert sounded for us that it was almost time to go. Lights started to turn off. So we packed up and left.

Our next official Chuan Hoe program will be our church retreat from 13 to 16 March at Changi. ^^

Singapore Night Safari

On Saturday morning at church we had a group of singers from Australia. 3 of them are siblings. My pastor at the very last minute knew that they were coming to Singapore. So he invited them to our church for special music.

Johnathan, Sarah & Melissa. Their mom's a Malaysian and dad's a German. Hence the surname Otto.

Their website.

Video of them singing at our church. Nice eh? They've even made their own CDs.

And in the afternoon we began our usual activites. After lunch a few of the girls had their bible study. Then after that they joined us older youth for our weekly Bible study. We went through Genesis chapters 5 to 8 that day. Really gain many new insights about the beginning of the Bible.
After Bible study we went to let out all our energy by singing. Haha. Just very casual singing. I'm not sure why or how we started singing quite a while ago. I think it started by Hydon and Olivine singing and playing the piano respectively. Then slowly I joined in, then followed by the rest of the youth, then the adults joined in. And now we're singing hymns and praises like every Sabbath afternoon.

And this is Jerome emo-ing away for who knows what reason while we're singing. Ok he claims he wasn't =P

We had dinner at church and a few of us cooked different dishes. I fried the puffs. As you can see a few of the puffs below are burnt haha.

At night, we went to night safari! This is an activity which has been planned for months already. And finally its here. Initially we only planned it to be a only-youth outing. But slowly we were thinking, why not invite the adults too, since some of them haven't even been there before and some of them for a very long time. In the end Tiffany's family turned up too. The more the merrier.

I didn't take many photos as the only bright places in the night safari were the eateries. At the animal closures the lights were very dim. My camera ain't that powerful. The creatures of the night show was really good! Although the owl showed attitude and decided to fly to some tree away from the audience, other cute cuddly animals made up for it.

The night safari was so dark that the only animal I could capture clearly with my digicam was this porcupine below.

For the rest of the night safari trail, quite a number of the animals are either sleeping or hiding somewhere in their enclosures, away from sight. So we didn't see much action at all. But there were some very cute otters who kept whining away to us wanting food haha. Yeah I shall stop talking about the night safari here as its already 1am and I have camp tomorrow!

On Sunday today we went to church again at around 9am. This time to make pineapple tarts! We're making some to give friends, buy for ourselves, and to old church members who haven't come to church for a long time. About 12 of us turned up. Did from 8am all the way until like 5pm+! There was enough of us to form a factory chain.

Pineapple paste.

Look at these dough cuttings below made by me.

More and more tarts...

Used egg yoke to "tarnish" the surface of the tarts. So they would have a very nice golden brown surface when out from the oven.

Just out from the oven... So warm, so fragant, SO YUMMY TO EAT!!!!

*drools*

The last step was to pack all the cooled pineapple tarts into the boxes. And this coming Saturday, visitation starts!

Badminton on 17 January

Badminton is coming!

Genesis chapters 5 to 8

Hi everyone,

For this week's Bible study, we will be reading Genesis chapters 5 to 8. We will then have the discussion at church this coming Saturday afternoon (10 January). Please raise questions if you have any.

Questions for discussion
1) Read Gen.4:17-18 and 5:18, 25. Are the same persons being referred to in both chapters?
2) Look at the dimensions of the ark which Noah built. How large was the ark in modern measurements?
3) How many years had it been from the time of Creation to the time God called Noah to build the ark?
4) Why did God wish to destroy man from the face of the earth? What does this tell us about the situation of the world in the time of Noah?
5) Why were more 'clean' animals taken into the ark than 'unclean' animals? What can we learn from this distinction?
6) What is the significance of Noah's offering to God after coming out of the ark? Is there anything we can learn from it?
7) Why do you think Paul referred to Noah as being one of the great fathers of faith?

Night Safari on 10 January

Night Safari is coming!

(click to enlarge)

Countdown Celebration at Orielle's

Everyone arrived at Orielle's home at about 7pm. We were gonna have the countdown celebration there. About 20 church members showed up. The delicious dinner started shortly after.

After dinner we played quite a number of games.
1. Guess The Person - where we each have to write down 10 famous names on 10 different pieces of paper. We then put all the papers into 1 box. From there, 3 teams will take turns to describe the person in Round 1. In Round 2, the teams will only have to say 1 word about the person. And in Round 3, the teams will act that person out! Haha. It was super funny.

2. R-O-C-K Rock - where a person will start clapping, the others follow, then that person will say a theme, for example "MRT stations". Then the next person will have to continue naming MRT stations and everyone continues until someone is unable think of any. Lol.

3. The clapping game - one person would go into the room. The group chooses the leader. The leader will start doing hand actions and the others follow. The person comes out and will have to guess who the leader is.

4. UNO (from what you can see in the photo below)

5. Heart attack! - everyone starts with 4 playing cards. We must keep picking a card, put on the floor, then everyone passes it to the next player at the same time. Once a player has all 4 cards of the same kind, he will then shout "heart attack" and place his hand on the floor. Everyone else will have to place one of their hands on his hand. Then he will use his other hand to slam the last hand on top.

5 MINUTES TO COUNTDOWN!

4.... 3.... 2.... 1....

Jerome sleeping!

All of us left around 2am. Thanks Auntie Phyllisity (Orielle's mum) for opening up your house for us!