The birthday weekend

First let me show the gifts I got.
My mum and dad got me a ...dry box! Now I have my own...umm...dry box. To keep stuff dry. I put all my game cd's and DVDs inside along with a token camera.



Agnes bought me a watch. It took us 2 days of shopping to finally find one I liked. It is a metallic black watch with a red face. Like I mentioned it matches my new glasses with the same black & white theme...



Hasli got me yet another mug.

That is about it as far as gifts go.

Sunday
Met up with Agnes and we went to watch April Snow at GV Bishan.
After that we went to meet Yew Kwang and Lyn at Suntec Swensen's. They wanted to meet for lunch or dinner but everyone had something on at the time so we had to settle for tea. We ordered a regular Earthquake. Was nice.
After that we went home.



Saturday
We had wanted to watch April Snow but they did not have any afternoon or evening shows.

Monday
I had wanted to go to the HSBC Tree Top Walk at MacRitchie. Problem was they close on Mondays for maintainance and research. So we had to can that idea. I picked Agnes up from her place. Our first stop was The Johore Battery at Cosford Road. I had read and seen pictures of the place but never actually seen the actual gun. In fact the gun on display is not one from WW2, but a replica of the actual one. There are also tunnels below the gun which are inaccesible to the public but you can see the layout from above.

Excerpts: "Built by the British in 1939 for the defence of Singapore, the Johore Battery is a gun emplacement site consisting of a labyrinth of tunnels. The tunnels were used to store ammunition to support three monster guns that could fire 15-inch shells.

The guns were the largest installed outside Britain during World War II. They were destroyed before the surrender of the British army and the tunnels were sealed up after the war. The location remained a secret until the Singapore Prisons Department rediscovered them in April 1991.

Today, replicas of the monster gun and 15-inch shell sit at the Johore Battery. "


The place was rather quiet, we were the only ones there, and no one was attending to it. Quite a pity.

After that we dropped in to the nearby Changi Chapel & Museum. I managed to take some pictures. I did not realise that cameras were not allowed until the curator ticked me off about it. :( I really did not know. Did not see the signs at the entrance mah . :'(

Anyway these are some of the pictures I manage to steal...



To see the full set of Changi Chapel & Museum go here.

After that we headed to Bukit Batok Nature Park. I been there only once and it was only for a while, so I relished the opportunity to go there and take some pictures.



The full set of Bukit Batok Nature Park can be viewed here.

After that we headed home to rest and get ready for dinner. We had dinner at the Jack's Place at Ang Mo Kio before heading home for the traditional cake-cutting ceremony.

Tuesday
Finally got to go to HSBC Tree Top Walk. We parked at Venus Drive and walked in via the new path. Along the way we spied an old grave stone. Not sure to whom it belonged. I heard that there are some Japanese graves in MacRitchie. Maybe that was one of them. The weather was hot and did us no favours. The walk in was ardous and it was also rather crowded with it being a public holiday and all.Being so crowded it was not possible to spend as much time as I had wanted on the suspension bridge as I would have liked. The worst part of the journey though was getting back to the car park after the bridge. The path back was long,windy and full of stairs upways and downways. Sometimes I question the logic of spending so much time to get to and return back just for less than 10 minutes on the actual bridge, but like they say life is a journey not a destination. I could think of a few other analogies but this is a PG-rated blog. I managed to also climb atop the Jelutong tower! Yayyy....good on me. The view from up there was not half bad. Too bad I had no one to share it with. Agnes opted to wait for me below...

See...








And the full set can be viewed here. Tree Top Walk