A Weekend Down South

Headed down south to the most notorious city last weekend for a short getaway.

Thanks to CK, it's all paid for! We checked into Thistle, Johor Bahru; which was formerly Hyatt.

One can expect lots from the service and deco if it's something from Thistle, and they sure do know how to impress their guests.

Classy-simplicity is what I would label this hotel .

Lobby@Thistle

The next day, a friend took me out galavanting JB City and later, I went to check out the most happening place on a Saturday afternoon.

Well, though some say it's City Square, but I'd say it's City Harvest Outreach JB that's happenin' !

Joining Jon and his friends there, the service was simply amazing as it has all the excellence traits from the City Harvest family.

Empowering message by Ps.Chee Kiang

Cell members of JB-4





Later that nite, I was made a VIP guest of a Freedom event, which Calvin and his team put together at Disc0very, Holiday Inn Plaza

DJ Soul T from Australia spinning tunes from the genre of Hard-Trance

Some dancer also from Down Under which costs a whopping $20k



Though I'm not really into clubbing, what's coming up next really impressed me.

See those lines that is being 'drawn' across the board?

It's something new in the lighting arena called, Mapped Projection.


Controlled via software, the projection areas were mapped before hand and thus the image accuracy

Happy clubbers showing off their dance moves



The man behind it all, my long-time buddy, band mate, school mate, church mate, Calvin.

The brains behind events like these, Calvin, who works for JTI is responsible in the marketing sector of things.





Managed to take our first ever public bus ride from Larkin Bus Station into Singapore the next day, we ended up having brunch in Paragon Mall at Orchard.

Some dim sum and siew-loong-pau

Don't let this pix fool you, the food SUCKS! I can only taste nothing but flour in that bite.



Anyway, we headed to Swee Lee Music; The MOST important place in our itinerary this weekend.

I would call this place the Toys 'R' Us for every musician.

Check out all the synthesizers and stage piano's

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

Calvin's a happy man after splurging over $1.4k on the stomp box and case which comes with power adaptors and other necessary input/outputs.



We then met up with Josie, another long time friend who is now working for SIA

Josie took us to this nice Jap restaurant at Raffles City Mall for dinner.

Only here that they serve..well...food that actually HAS some flavor to it.



As usual, Josie's talk of a short-walk became like an hour on foot around the city.


Seen here is the Singapore F1 race track along Nicoll Highway






The annual Vertical Marathon is held in the building on the left:

Very true!




We walked and walked till we end up at Clarke Quay

More on Clarke Quay's happenings when we're back here to celebrate our birthdays in October!