a walk around town

i forgot all about the morning rush hour traffic as i was inevitably stuck in that sticky situation again. getting rubbed shoulder to shoulder, jammed in an mrt train bound for the city.

my intended visit to the canadian high commission was the 2nd time in 2 days. i was there yesterday too, only unaware of something called an "easter monday" for which the high commission had kindly decided to shut its doors to the general public.

don't be fooled by the seemingly intimidating name of a high commission. it's really just a leased space in an office building with 1 counter and 2 police guarding it, much to my surprise/dismay. i would have thought such a vast country like canada could have afforded to fork out some money to at least get their own little building.

and i saw this extremely funny framed poster on the wall. it's entitled "picture perfect", with what i suppose is the french translation underneath it. can't really remember how it's spelt, i can only imagine it'll be something like "lé picturé pérfrénchzsúçkz". anyways it shows various right and wrong examples of passport photos of random people. i can see obviously why some of those are deemed unacceptable: people wearing beanies, sporting sunglasses, head tilted sideways, weird coloured backgrounds, underexposed photos, etc.

and so one of the examples really made my day: it shows this nice lady in a perfectly proportioned photo that looks pleasing to the eye. so i asked myself "what's wrong with this one?" then i looked at the correct example beside it. the only visible difference i can spot is that in the wrong one she's got a gentle smile on and in the correct example she's got this retarded stern shit-face look. puzzled as i was, i read the caption of the photo that explains to you what's the problem. and get this: it says "non neutral expression". i almost laughed out loud. how stupid can these regulations get. i mean so what if you smile on your passport photo? it's not like they can hope to pick out potential terror threats by judging who looks the most shit-faced while looking "neutral". i so wanted to take a picture of it but then i realised they took my phone and mp3 player away before they let me in. only if i had one of those mp3 player embedded t-shirts, i'd love to see how they would try to take that away from me and leave a half naked man running around in the high commission.

but anyways just some random photos:

the elevator in the building is really cool. it glows red for going down, and green for going up! and a cool ceiling to boot!

a water feature outside the building, i thought it was cool as the water is flush with the sides without overflowing so it looks like a huge piece of glass

this is the building where the high commission is at: one george street (that's the actual name of the building and it's also its street address)

so this is what we see from afar that makes up the skyline of downtown

another water feature outside the OCBC building, it also looks a lot cooler in real life

a very cozy street called market street. it really reminds me of the days in hong kong. there's also a great many restaurants along the street, shall go try some before i leave here

i was bored and didn't want to go home so i went to sit by the river. it's really tranquil in the morning because there's virtually no one besides a handful of tourists

clarke quay and its many shophouses

the sun shining right over fullerton hotel

after a while i decided to walk all the way to cityhall because it seemed like a nice sunny morning for a walk. oh boy was i wrong. the sun was absolutely scorching but never mind that, i discovered something really interesting:

here's the shot i took at the padang of the cityhall area:


and here is the official johnny wilkinson desktop wallpaper taken from the adidas website:



now compare the two side by side:

can you say: "WOW"

doesn't it look REALLY similar minus and wide-angle lens and difference in angles? when did johnny wilkinson come to singapore? oh well...


+listening to: another kind of green by john mayer