Collin Ng's Blog

It is the time of the year where I will post my last entry before the clock strikes past midnight into the new year.  In the first quarter of the year, I have decided to quit my full time job and go with my passion.  Having crossed half a century mark, it is a risk I must say and I should know better.  I have faced business failures and I won't want to be caught in a tight financial situation again.  Fear not, I told myself.  All I need is to manage my expectation and I should be fine. I like to organise outdoor events and this is my passion.  It is also my livelihood now.  With times on my side, I have had organised quite a number of cycling and hiking tours in the one year period.  Thanks to Sandy, I am pleased that I have the opportunity to collaborate with Star Cruises where we launched our first ever cruise and cycle tour which brought us to Phuket and Langkawi in October this year.  Following our successive maiden run, our second cr...

Note from me: On the eve of the New Year, this contribution is from a good friend of mine who prefers to stay anonymous and I am pleased to post it on my blog.   Quote A bespectacled old lady walked up to me and thrust a packet of dried herbs under my nose, and without waiting for any response from me, pointed at a date and said, “what’s this?” (in mandarin). In a flash, I looked at what I was wearing – a purple and pink sweater – and wondered if she could have considered me an NTUC staff. “Cannot be what,” I thought to myself. But then since the packet was still under my nose and her forefinger was still poking at “Nov” and she was still asking me, “what’s this ah?” I decided to heck it and told her (in mandarin) that it means the month of November 2014. She didn’t say a word of thanks and just shuffled away. I also walked on my way but I was surprised at my subsequent thoughts. Initially, I was irritated at such an ungrateful and rude woman. Golly, do such uncouth p...

The recent ‘Little India’ incident is a wake-up call and it shows that we can never take things for granted no matter how secure and safe our city is.  We must always be vigilant and be prepared.  Ours is a not a perfect place, definitely not but I won’t swoop this place with another place in any part of the world.  If I hope to land a perfect place, it can only appear in my dream.  I remember I was 20 and was serving NS.  We were sent to Australia for a month or so training stint.  That year was 1982.  In between training, we had one day rest & recreation (R&R) in this small town called Rockhampton.  My army buddies and I were happily roaming the town.  We walked past a pub and few white men who had a drink too much suddenly barged out.  We did not even provoke them but they started to call us “names” and even challenged us to a fight.  We were on foreign soil and we were definitely out-numbered.  We just kept q...

I should be among the disgruntled lot but when I dug deeper, I did not.  It was tough growing up in the 60s and 70s with 4 other siblings.  Our parents are illiterate and birth control was never their agenda as we popped up one or two years apart of each other.  I am the second in the family.  We were not taught values from day one as life was a struggle for us.  The neighbourhood we were in was shady where gang fights were norm.  I remember I was bullied by a teenage gangster who threw cigarette into my singlet for no rhyme or reason.  I was about ten then.  That gangster still lives around the neighbourhood but he is an old man now.  I still see him on few occasions.  One can forgive but will never forget.  The flat we were living in was one-hall type with a common corridor shared by all.  Even a fart can be heard from far.  There is no room for privacy, we slept in the hall and sometimes my brothers and I slept in the...

After our run, me on left, Catherine, Dora, Howie and CK It is the biggest marathon event in Singapore, probably in the region too.  I first ran my first Standard Chartered Marathon Singapore event (SCMS) in 2007 where I participated in the 10 km run and since then, it has been a yearly ritual for me.  It was my third half marathon run with SCMS.  My first was in 2009 where I clocked 1 hr 56 mins, second was last year where I paced Winnie and this year's run was to be my third.  I did 2 full marathons at SCMS too.  I was hoping to clock my personal best for this event and if possible, go under 1 hour 50 mins - a tall order to say the least.  To prepare for that, I had been doing more runs with my run kakis.     SCMS 2013 was scheduled on 1 Dec 2013, Sunday and as expected, participants were over 50,000 strong.  The 21 km event attracted 12,000 runners and the flag off was at the bridge that will lead us to Sentosa.  The 21 km rou...

Group picture before rolling off If I can count correctly, this was to be my 5th cycling trip to Bintan.  After our 'Ride For Rations 2013' cycling event which took us from Malacca to Singapore, our GP Riders captain, Tomas had been asking me to organise a cycling tour to Bintan for our cycling kakis.  So, the date 16 Nov, Saturday was fixed and we were to stay one night at a resort.  I had all along been staying at the idyllic Ocean Bay Resort at Trikora Beach but this time, I decided to change to another resort just for the experience.  Febry who used to work for Ocean Bay but now she is running her own travel company in Batam will be my contact person. Some of us donning "Ride For Rations 2013" jerseys on day one We aimed to get 20 cyclists for this cycling tour and this time, we also extended invitation to another cycling group, Hougang Slow Riders (HSR).  Most of the cyclists are regular and many will be bringing their road bikes.  And fo...

                                                          Group photo at the resort This capped another fun-filled weekend cycling event with a group of gregarious outdoor seekers on 9 Nov, Saturday- all 13 of us. We were to meet at Outram MRT station for our coach and prior to that, everyone had been informed to arrive by 0630 hrs.  Only Elaine will meet the rest of us at Woodlands Immigration.  I managed to arrange with my operator, Prima Sierra Holidays to rent bikes for some of us, thus saving the hassle of bringing their own bikes over from Singapore and in the end, only seven brought their own bikes.  We left for Woodlands at little over 0700 hrs. The familiar faces in the group were Kevin, Jai, Elaine, Richard, Fenny and Karyn.  It was my first time meeting up with Jen who brought her friend, Cara, Sebestian, Ve...

John (in forefront) took this picture when we were taking our lunch We were classmates at MacPherson Secondary School from 1977 to 1978.  Looking back, it has been more than 30 years and time really flies.  We are now in our early 50s.  Lucian (Tong Hai, always on the plump side and still is) and Don (Teck King aka Johnny Walker) and I used to meet up at Alan's (Mong Kwang) place on every Chinese New Year.  It has become a ritual of sorts to us for good many years after leaving school.  Alan used to live at Haig Road, moved to Bedok and finally Pasir Ris when he settled down.  We were always there on Chinese New Year until the recent years. I have lost contact with Ragu until we are connected some years ago.  Through Ragu, I managed to get re-connected with our form teacher, Mr Samuel, who unfortunately passed away last year.  John (Joo Chai), our class monitor lives near me and we have always been in touch. Then, there is Daniel (Wing ...

Group Pic at Langkawi Port I have to admit being active on social media platform like Facebook does help me to secure collaboration of sorts with Star Cruises when they were planning to launch their first ever 'Cruise and Cycle' program.  Their VP (Sales), Sandy is on my FB's friend list and she has been reading many of our outdoor events organised by me.  This impression has somehow been 'imprinted' on her mind I think and she told me the first person she thought of to get this started was me.  Of course, I do feel honoured and I told myself I cannot disappoint.  This was where we got started which was sometime in June this year.  I then roped in Pek Ya to co-partner me.  Pek Ya is a professional coach whereas I see myself more an event organiser and together, we can have much synergy tapping on each other strength.  After our preliminary discussion and on 30 June this year we went on a familiarisation cruise onboard Superstar Virgo to Phuket a...

Our 'Ride For Rations 2013' (14 to 15 Sep 2013) may have ended on the high following our recent 'post-ride thank you' dinner get-together at Aranda Country Club.  While our adrenalin rush has yet to fade away anytime soon, ambitious plan is already underway for 2014.  This is our third consecutive year organised by Bike-Aid Singapore where 'Ride For Rations' remains symbolic and indeed, I am honoured to be part of the organising committee for this year.  This fund raising cycling project attracted some 140 participants with more than 100 cyclists and the rest providing vital support along the cycling route.  Thanks to many supporters, the event received overwhelming support from many private organisations.  Many cyclists who joined in the last two years signed up again and there were even more who joined for the first time when they heard about the event through word-of-mouth and social media platforms.  This year recorded the highest number of cyclists a...

Mr Samuel was my form teacher when I was in secondary three and he taught us English and Commerce for two years.  That year was 1977.  He was a big man who sported a thick moustache that curled on both ends.  To start with, we were not brilliant students and most of us come from dialect speaking families.  Half the time during his lesson I had some difficulty understanding him.  He hailed from Sri Lanka but educated in Malaysia.  He spoke quite fast and with some Indian slang.  Sheepishly, his lesson was quite boring. What was unique of Mr Samuel?  He was the most generous of teacher that I have ever met.  Many of us were poor.  Our parents cannot afford any form of luxury other than sending us to school.  We had just formed our class football team to compete in the school championship and we were excited about it.  I used to idolise the legendary Kevin Keegan and so much so I earned a nickname from my classmates who called m...

I am born in the 'dinosaurs' era and the word, 'computer' was not found in any dictionary yet.  In the 80s, I was already fascinated with fax machine when it was introduced.  I was wondering how could a whole text be transmitted over and via a telephone line.  It was simply magical.   I started work at Changi Airport in 1982 handling passenger check-in, arrival & departure and manifestations.  Computerisation for check-in at airport was already put in place but not for the company that I worked for.  We were still doing manual check-in for passengers.  Imagine a Boeing 747 full flight which can carry more than 300 passengers, we had to type the name of all the passengers on a passenger manifest which will be used for our check-in at the counters.  If we had 6 check-in staff, we had to print more than 6 sets of passenger manifests.  Preparation works prior to each departure were normally done a day before.  Frankly, typical human e...

This is another encounter when I was with KLM in the late 80s.  I was supervising at the check-in counter which was handled by our ground handling agent, CIAS.  It was another of our usual evening departure to Europe via Amsterdam.  I noticed a check-in staff was taking longer than usual to check on a passport, she was flipping from page to page.  I then walked over to see if I can be of any help.  At the check-in counter, the staff must ensure validity of our passenger's passport must be more than six months to expiry and depending on his final destination, we have to check for the visa too.  In those days, we have to refer to our hard manual if we are not sure if some nationals need visa for the country they are visiting.  Human error is inevitable.  Failure to check all these will sometimes land the airline into trouble with the authority concerned.  It is therefore safe to say that some authorities will simply push the problem back to t...

Somewhere near the rest house on the way up, it was more than 3,000 metres high It is my fourth consecutive climb to Mt Kinabalu climb and barring any unforeseeable, I should be doing my fifth climb next year.  I do not organise many trekking events but Mt Kinabalu is always close to my heart.  It has been an annual ritual of sorts to pay homage, something words can't describe.  Last year, I led a group of 20 and this year, I had 14 comprising a motley group of outdoor enthusiasts, eight men and six ladies from The Philippines, Myanmar, Belgium, India and Singapore.  The oldest member is close to 60, Jimmy who is a friend of mine and he is joining me for the first time.  I must admit the ladies were surprised when they learnt of his age.  Further, he does not look anywhere near 60 age range, one even guessed he is in his 30s.  He even proved that look age aside, he has the fitness and physical strength to reach the summit.  I am impressed, I...