Collin Ng's Blog

In Malay language, the older sibling in a family is respectfully addressed as 'abang' and the younger one is 'adik.  This is how it begins when abang and adik were once one big happy family.  Both brothers have grown up and adik decided to have his own family.  They went separate ways.  Adik settled for a smaller piece of the pie while his abang has the rest.  Among siblings and understandably too, they are always some arguments but each time, adik gave in because he advocates 'prosper-thy-neighbour' policy.  For the longest time, adik still has to depend on his abang's vast natural resources for some essentials to survive.  From time-to-time, wherever abang is not happy (or jealous with the rapid rise of adik's fortune), he will threaten to cut the essential supply.  Fortunately, this has remained a verbal threat which did not escalate to something catastrophic.   On the surface, abang and adik still remain very cordial to each othe...

It was still in the late 80s, I joined some of my friends to spend a short vacation in Batam.  Then, there were two resorts, namely Batam View Beach Resort and Turi Beach Beach Resort.. Both were quite pricey then, given there were not many good class resorts in the region and Bintan had yet to be developed as a tourist destination.   If I can remember well, a room night stay could have easily cost us around S$200 and it was in the late 80s where our wages were much lower then and competition was definitely less intense.  Batam View and Turi Beach were the only two good class resorts in the Nongsa area.  Finally, we chose Turi Beach, attracted by their standalone rustic wooden villas which has since been totally transformed into modern concrete blocks.  Batam View is a 5-storey building block which has commanding view of the South China Sea.  During our stay, we went to Batam View Beach Resort for their discotheque at the basement.  It was quite ...

If I can recall my first trip to Batam was either in 1985 or 1986.  I was still with KLM based at the airport.  A friend had suggested a weekend day trip to Batam which was already a ‘talked-about thingy’ in town.  One of the main attractions, if not the only attraction was the chance to purchase duty free items on the return.  I had no inkling on how this island so near Singapore was like and so, I joined the big wave of weekend crowd on one Sunday.  The departure was at Finger Pier Terminal in Tanjong Pagar.  The biggest ferry operator was Auto Batam (the company has changed few ownerships over the years and if I am not wrong, it is called Sindo now) and looking at the mad rush on weekends, they should be doing roaring business.  Personally, I will avoid big crowd if I can help it and I was in for a ‘rude shock’ when I arrived at Clifford Pier.  It was so packed like sardines and people were practically shoving each other to move in.  ...

Life was very simple when growing up in the 60s.  Our house was a no-frills type that came with no rooms and the common corridor was shared by rows of other households.  Our family of seven somehow managed to squeeze into this tiny house.  Our door was always open and so too for some of our neighbours.  As kids, the common corridor was our playground.  We chased after each other, we shouted at the top of our voice, we played 'masak masak' with the girls and we even managed to cycle along the narrow corridor without major collision.  Yep, some adults did not like our noise decibels and we were sometimes chased away. Dialects like Hokkien and Cantonese were commonly spoken and 'cursing' from the grown-ups was a common thingy.  We spoke Cantonese at home though we are Hokkien.  Communication with the other children was mostly in Hokkien too. I have had few childhood friends but we have lost contact completely when we moved out in the late 70s....

It is the last post that reflects on year 2017 before the clock strikes past midnight.  How has year 2017 been for me?  First off and with slight tinge of disappointment, some lofty targets set for the early part of the year were missed as we inched forward.  There was an ambitious plan to partner someone to launch a business proposal which I thought was was quite unique and definitely one of its kind here but the investors 'did not bite' despite our best presentation effort put forth.  Thus, the business idea has to put on back burner for now. 😞 On the event front, our signature run events like Run For Light and Urban Aquathlon were successfully launched.  While the bottomline was nothing to gloat about but I enjoyed the whole process for both events.  Run For Light and Urban Aquathlon will continue to be featured in year 2018 and of course, I am hoping for a better outing this time.  Though we initiated OCC 3Ten Run in 2015 but we decided not to...

Group pic on first day of ride in Balik Pulau  Time really flies and this was to be our 8th edition of our cycle cruise since our maiden trip in October 2013.  This time our adventure took us to Penang, Krabi and Phuket.  In our previous trips, we visited Penang and Phuket at least twice and Krabi was our first.  This trip was scheduled on 10 March where we flew with Silkair to Penang, cycled for 2 days and then joined Superstar Libra which will take us to sunny Krabi and Phuket to continue our cycling adventure. Beaten track with padi fields in between and mountains from a distance in Balik Pulau  We were supposed to have 32 of us including me as the tour leader but one had suddenly taken ill, thus 31 of us at last count.  There were few familiar faces in this trip.  Michelle and Aaron who did twice with us, Philip and his wife who did thrice and this time, they brought their younger daughter, Amanda along, Ronald, his wife an...