Nagaoka Snowman Construction Pte Ltd

I used to have this image: December is the month where it is snowing and it is the coldest month of the year. But after experiencing my second winter in Japan, I was made to realised that it is not December, but January is the month where the temperature can drop below zero degree Celsius, and also the period when it snows heavily.

It has been snowing continuously throughout last week, but as if the weather knew that we had a plan in hand, the sky was bright last Saturday. No hailstorm nor sleet, no strong and cold winds, and it wasn't snowing, which allowed us to carry on with our plan.

The venue: Nagaoka Kosen tennis court.

The tennis courts are covered with snow as thick as half meter.

The tools: Two shovels and a pair of gloves for each of us.

Got these shovels from the dormitory's store room (without permission).

The cast: The three stooges of Nagaoka Kosen.

Wei Shen, Yan Kuang and the sleepy guy.

So, I'm quite sure everyone would be able to guess what our master plan was. This would be my second time constructing a snowman, and I wanted it to be as huge as possible. My first snowman was so short that it was not even one meter tall. Even though we would like to build a huge one, but time was against us because it was already 2 p.m. by then. During the winter season, the sky would start to get dark by 4 p.m. and we knew we had to work as fast as we could.

Without any unnecessary hesitations, we started our work almost immediately.

Scooping and scooping.

And shaping the giant snowball.

The first task is of course to work on the snowman's body. Yan Kuang and me were in-charged of scooping and accumulating the snow to the base of the snowman. On the other hand, Wei Shen used his arm and hands and whatever possible method to make the snow compact, while shaping it into a sphere. As we wanted it to be a huge one, it took us some time to do that. In fact, by the time we were done with its body, one hour had elapsed. That is how long it took us just to work on its body.

The scooping sounds like a simple job, but after doing it a while, it was quite tiring and we exchanged roles once in a while.

Collecting small snowballs and pasting them onto its head.

Next would be to construct the snowman's head. This job was a bit tricky and challenging compared to the body because we had to stretch our body until the tip of the head when we were shaping it. What's more when the snowman we were working on slowly began to get taller and taller, and I realised that I wasn't the tallest creature there anymore. That snowman had grown taller than me, and it was almost two meters high.

Slowly but surely, the shape of the snowman began to appear.

Like what I've mentioned above, it wasn't snowing, and that made our work very much easier because it would be hard to work on our snowman under the falling snowflakes, plus the wind, of course. This is also the first time that I get to use my pair of rubber boots I bought a year ago.

Still can camwhore even though we were busy with our task.

This time, no more time to look at the camera already.

Putting some final touch to the snowman to make sure it's really round.

Finally, after almost two hours of shaping the snowman, it is halfway done.

Tada! Our snowman, which has a orange nose. That's a carrot by the way.

The final task is to decorate the snowman. I went around to look for small branches and twigs to be used as its arms, while the rest continued to put the final touches on the snowman. I came back with two types of branches, one from a pine tree and another from a sakura tree. In the end, we decided to use the sakura twigs because the pine one was too hairy. We didn't want our snowman to be a hairy one, that's why.

We were wondering what should we use as the eyes of the snowman; I suggested to use either two round plates or our gloves, but it wasn't the smartest choice. So, after discussing among ourselves in a short meeting, we came out with the decision to look for stones, preferably, black colour stones.

Clearing the area around the snowman.

The decorating job began.

Here is the final result.

It's a happy snowman.

I would say this snowman looked very much better compared to what I made last year, which I called it an impaired snowman. I bet not everyone is able to build snowman even though you are in Japan, because it only snows at the northern region and we are lucky to get to experience snow every year. That doesn't mean I love snow and winter; in fact, it's the season I dislike most. There are exemptions though. One of them would be we get to build our own snowman anytime, anywhere we want. That is when I would turn so excited, just like a small kid.

Just in case anyone who wish to learn the skill of snowman building, Nagaoka Snowman Construction Pte Ltd is opened 24 hours throughout the year. Just call 755-25-25 and we would try to help you as much as possible so that you would get to build your own snowman as well.

The next thing to do is of course to camwhore with our masterpiece.

#1 - 1 person.

#2 - 2 person.

#3 - 3 person.

#4 - 4 person.

Wei Shen tried to climb on top of the poor snowman and although he did manage to reach the top, it was actually two of us standing behind supporting him.

Shah just needed one try and he was already on top. But the snowman wasn't very happy about it.

Then everybody started to climb onto its head.

Everybody succesfully conquered the snowman. It seems that Shah (top right) is the snowman's only enemy lol.

Nagaoka snowman contractors.

One last group shot.

After we were done with that, we thought of playing around a little bit in the snow. I threw my body onto the ground and the layer of snow acted as a supportive mattress because I didn't feel any pain at all.

However, what followed after that wasn't in our initial planning.

Hi! =)

Here comes the interesting part.

Yan Kuang and the rest began using the shoves, collect the snow around and bury me under the snow. I knew they would use the same old trick of making two boobs at my chest, but not the other one down there. And the size was so much bigger than usual ones, which came with two tennis-ball-sized balls as well.

People say picture tells a thousand of words. I say, this picture tells a million of words.

Does that make me a transvestite or what?

Anniversary Celebration Up In The Sky

What would you get if you happen to forget about an important day with your partner; say, like an anniversary, perhaps? Surely the girlfriend will give you a roasting and begin to sulk away, right? Fortunately for me, not only me, but Michelle totally forgot about our one-month-short-of-one-and-a-half-year anniversary as well; in fact, I only realised about it the next morning. More on that later.

First shot early in the morning at Melaka Sentral bus terminal. We were still half awake, blur blur like that, hence the blurry picture lol.

A few days after the wedding reception, we went up to Genting for a two-day-one-night trip. We woke up early in the morning at took a bus to KL from Melaka Sentral, in which the bus terminal is located. It was still the wee hours of Tuesday morning that not that many people were taking bus from there.

We then headed to KL Sentral to board the bus up to Genting, which took us approximately one hour before we reached the Genting Skyway cable car station.

Genting Skyway.

The last time I sat on a cable car was during my ski trip last winter. For a person who is afraid of height, I had butterflies in my stomach whenever the cable car go through steep areas. Since she is also scared of heights, I tried to shake the gondola left and right slightly and scare her a little bit, in which it worked. In return, I got a tight hug ^.^

The more I did, the hug I got slowly turned into pinches and hits on every possible section of my body =.=

A shot inside the cable car.

Showing her the giant panda feeding on bamboo leaves in the jungle.

The weather was rather fine that day, it was in between sunny and cloudy. We began to spot mist when we approached higher altitude and it continued to get thicker and thicker. The feeling was like we were being taken to some place where I didn't even know where it is. I called that place, The Neverland.

Thick mist.

Even thicker mist at the top station.

Michelle did the hotel room reservations and payment a couple of weeks earlier and when we reached there, we didn't have to go through all the hassle of going to the counter and make our room reservations. In fact, the check-in system for customers who had done their payment earlier impressed me; after registering at one counter, we just have to put in our identification card (eg: MyCard) and when we were done with the confirmation, we collected the room key from that same check-in machine.

Indirectly, we get to save some time queuing up there.

The room 761 we stayed in. It was not bad, just that the toilet is quite small.

Before coming here, we have been warned about the do's and don't's in the hotel room. You know what I mean; just in case we are unlucky and there is any spirit in that room who plans to have some hide-and-seek game with us. Among them were to knock the door before going in when we were first there as a sign of respect, not to leave the second bed empty by putting our stuff on it, and try not to let the room being too quiet by turning on the TV. I am not sure whether it was true, but we left the place without encountering things that we didn't want to.

One thing that surprised me was that we notice the wrappers of food we took up were filled up with so much air and looked as if it was going to burst. Same thing happened to Michelle's make-up stuff - the cream and liquid inside the bottle just flowed out when the cap was opened.

Mister Potato - BBQ flavour.

High 5 sardine bun and chocolate cream bun.

So, I came out with a theory - if you wish to slim down, just go up Genting and eat as much as you want, because when you get down from there, the air inside your body will be released and you shall look slim. I think my theory is quite a smart one.

Just in case you are wondering where we stayed, it was the First World Hotel, the colourful one and not the white one.

It was still school holiday then and the theme park was crowded with sea of humans. There wasn't a single ride where the queue was short, but I guess this sight is pretty common at any theme park. At the end of the day, the time we took to queue-up is much longer than taking on the rides itself.

The first ride we took was the Tea Cup, and she warned me from the very beginning not to spin the tea cup too much as she cannot take it. But the naughty me I made her so dizzy and in the end, both of us got down from that ride and ended up not talking for a while because she was mad at me.

Look how excited afraid she was on the spin, but not at the end of the ride.

She wasn't feeling well, so was I and we knew it wouldn't make us any better if we continue on the next ride. After all, it was late afternoon already and we haven't had our lunch yet. Everyone knows that the price of food in Genting is really crazy that all food are priced almost double of normal price. Eventually, after going around to survey for any cheap suitable food available, we opted for Kenny Rogers for lunch.

We felt very much better after that, so we continued on our rides; this time we went for the indoor rides.

Pictures taken before taking every rides. Clockwise from the left: Adult Bumper Car, Pirate Ship, Euro Express, Double Deck Carousel and Tea Cup.

After that, we went out and went for something more exciting - the Pirate Ship ride.

The Pirate Ship.

It didn't look that scary when we were lining up but when we sat on it, I can tell you it will send adrenaline flowing though your body. The worst part is when the ship goes up almost 90 degree to the ground and you will realised that your butt will make no contact with the seat.

Michelle was more busy telling me ways to make myself feel less scary by looking down at either sides of the ship. But instead of trying out those methods, I began making sound to scare her yet again. But after recalling the Tea Cup incident earlier of the day, I put a stop to my silly acts. There was this red-T-shirt aunty sitting right opposite us and she was screaming and closing her face throughout the ride. When I asked Michelle to look at that aunty, she started to laugh non-stop, even after we came down from the ride.

We later went for a stroll a while around the indoor theme park and took some pictures along the way.

There was this Mongolian fair held and that was a typical tent used by the Mongolians.

Inside Beryl's Chocolate Wonderland.

How I wish that the chocolate from the teapot is real one.

One of the thing we noticed there was that the dressing of the people at Genting. It wasn't really that cold, yet we could see people dressing up excessively. Okay, perhaps it got a little bit cold when the wind blows, but apart from that, I don't see any reason for wearing a snowcap, yet alone thick wool hand gloves. This is not winter, for goodness sake. But this is only a few places in Malaysia where you get to wear thick jackets and scarfs, so perhaps that is understandable.

The weather got worse after that, because it started to rain and everybody was rushing inside and the outdoor rides were closed temporarily.

The rides at the outdoor theme park were halted due to bad weather.

We were glad that we had taken most of the indoor rides earlier because it would be much crowded after it started raining. So, we continued walking inside the indoor theme park, while she did some window shopping around the shops there.

Christmas decorations were still there.

One section of First World Indoor Theme Park.

There were actually quite a few coincidences happened during our trip to Genting. It was our 17th month anniversary, in which we didn't know about it until the next day. But on that day, we wore our pink couple-tee that we got from Malacca one day earlier without even realising it. Then, it was our dinner and we were almost going to dine at McDonald's at first, but since the price of fast food restaurant and normal restaurant is almost the same, we chose to dine at a Chinese Restaurant - Shanghai 10.

Imagine how funny it would be if we went to have our anniversary dinner at McDonald's.

We had our dinner here.

Here comes the camwhoring moments.

Her, with the menu.

Ordering her favourite durian pancake.

The food there was neither too cheap or expensive, so we ordered three types of food and a drink. The three were "Peanut and Spicy Sauce La Mian", "Shanghai Double Boiled Soup Dumplings" and "Durian Pancake" as desert.

Here are the food we ordered.

Yummy.

The noodle was so hot that I had to blow it a while before eating.

Indulging on our durian pancake. It was so nice that we went for a second round of durian pancake at Sungai Wang in KL on the next day.

Although we only ordered three kinds of food, we felt really full after our dinner. So we decided to walk around the indoor theme park while doing another round of window shopping. This time, I gave up and joined the other guys who were sitting on the sofa provided in the shop. Well, girls will never get bored from shopping.

Another self-timer shot. I seriously think that we should get a tripod soon.

The weather on the next day was much better than the previous day, but too bad we had to leave already. She was cursing our luck because we didn't get to ride on the Corkscrew ride that she was so looking forward too. But no worries because I'm sure we will still have a lot of chances awaiting for us in the future.

Look how sunny it was =.=

Here are several pictures taken while we were getting ready before we left our room.

Taking a bite on her chocolate bread as her breakfast.

One last self-syiok shot in front of the mirror. Lol, my one day theme park ticket was still intact around my left wrist.

Inside the cable car on the way down. There were not many people and we didn't have to share our gondola with others.

Upon reaching the cable car station.

It was indeed a memorable anniversary trip for both of us.