Days of Delirium

Erine, Shikin, Melvin and Zetty: The kookies As part of our training course in the Financial Sector Talent Enrichment Programme (FSTEP) under the Institute of Banks in Malaysia or IBBM, we had to undergo a one-month intensive English course with the British Council. Some people beamed with delight upon hearing that and told me how lucky I was to get a chance participating in such programme by the British Council. Yeah, maybe. But all I could think of was how dreadfully boring it would be - learning grammar, vocabulary etc all over again. Anyway, we were divided into five groups according to our level of proficiency - lower intermediate, intermediate, upper intermediate and two classes of advanced students. I won't tell you which class I belonged to *winks*. True, we had to learn the basic things in English - pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, tenses etc. Besides that, there were also writing skills session, presentations (individual & group), group discussions, communication a...

Unabashedly, I admit that I've never gone to Singapore. I know, most people will be very generous with snark response to that - saying things like 'Eh, first time in Singapore? LOL'. I'm going to take it with a pinch of salt and shake it off since that's not important - at least now I've been there. Since both of us hadn't taken the train in the longest time, Ayi and I agreed to board one from KL to Singapore's Keppel Road Station (a.k.a Tanjong Pagar Station). It took us eight hours and needless to say, our butt was sore from the long journey. The most striking thing about this Lion City was its lush greenery. Despite having a minuscule land size for everything, environmental part was still a major priority. You could see huge trees and shady walkways, up from Woodlands in the north to Jurong in the south. All of the residential buildings looked so livable, be it the flats, condos or the bungalows. I gave my biggest thumb up ever for this. Our trip here...