Sentosa – Part 2

We went to the Universal Studios on Monday. The queue stretched a long way, expected yet dreaded. The good thing was that it moved unexpectedly fast.

Upon entering the gates of Universal Studios, we were greeted by the great Hollywood boulevard lined with shops in Hollywood style. Just reminds me of Hong Kong Disneyland, with the exception that the weather is a ton hotter here in Singapore. Not very relaxing.

   

We moved on to the land of Madagascar, where a gigantic ship awaited. It turns out that other than the safari merry-go-round, no other attractions were available.

We proceeded to the land of Far-far-away, where we queued for the ‘4-D’ show. It was not a very long wait, due to the theatrical nature of the attraction being able to host many visitors at a time.

When the doors opened, we were forced into a hall, where we listened to a squire’s ranting about the rules and regulations of the show, in fairy-tale language, which was pretty lame.

I was sitting at the corner, thus some of the 3-D images were not very well projected into my vision. Simply, it was short 3-D Shrek movie with lots of chair-rocking, air streams shooting out from headrests and water squirting. I would have preferred Disneyland’s idea of a 4-D movie more, which cleverly utilized its surround sound system to make the characters sound like they were really moving around the theatre. To me this was just a rather irritating 3-D movie.

Attraction Rating: 5/10

After the show, my two youngest brothers, my Dad and I went onto the tiny indoor ferris well just by the exit of the theatre. The thing about this ferris wheel which sets it apart from any other that I have ridden, is that this wheel has such a small radius that I could feel the forces of acceleration acting upon me, which made it, shall we say, a tiny-bit roller coaster like.

Attraction Rating: 6.5/10

Next, my youngest brother, dad and I went for a ride on the Enchanted Airways. This is a mini roller coaster, with more twist and turns than Escape Theme Park’s family coaster. Just the right thing to ride on if you are looking for a bit of adrenaline, but not yet ready for the full course yet. Especially interesting was the way Pinnochio’s nose grew longer as the coaster passes his hut, accompanied by a sliding-up sound. It is funny, I don’t know why. It just is.

Attraction Rating: 7.5/10

 

We went to have lunch. I find it excellent that the management have labelled the outlets which serve vegetarian food on their park map. What I find funny at the same time, is that all of the outlets have the vegetarian label. But the stalls does not explicitly label on their menus, what vegetarian food they serve, which makes it quite a pain to queue up and do all the waiting, only to find out what the vegetarian food is when you ask the service man, because I might not like it at all. Finally we settled at Friars, where they served wraps. Wrapped in green dough, filled with huge chunks of vegetables, served with a side of tapioca fries.

The tapioca fries were good, and the wrap was too initially. Only when I ate deeper into the wrap did I realise that most of the composition of the wrap was capsicum and peppers, giving me a rather sore and bitter throat after I finished the wrap. Nice glass panes on the interior though.

We split up quite a bit after that. My brother took me to the Revenge of the Mummy roller coaster. The land of Ancient Egypt was carved out with huge rocks and statues, which I fear might topple anytime. The roller coaster was built in a gigantic, approximately eight-storey tall pyramid, with a shockingly long queuing area. It was quite a great safety concern for me. How will the visitors be able to evacuate this big tomb fast in the case of an emergency?

Upon going pass the entrance of the Revenge of the Mummy, we had to walk back and forth, following the guidance of the fences which took us spiralling a few rounds. Then the path led us into an open corridor. In total I suspect that the ride entrance was not less than 150 metres from the building entrance. The building was dark, only lit by a few lamps. The queue progressed slowly but surely. The queue led up to the second storey. After a long wait of around an hour, it was our turn.

The cart had passenger seats arranged in a 4 by 4 matrix. I was rather nervous when I stepped into the cart. It was going to be a dark. dark. dark ride. I felt my pulse racing.

The cart navigated a slow turn into darkness, with bloody messages imprinted into the walls of the ride.

The robots were rather realistic, although I wouldn’t say the same thing for their actions. Passing by the masked man which sucked out the dummy’s ‘sou’l, the cart moved into a spacious chamber, seemingly comfortable. But I felt that such comfort isn’t induced without a reason, the next moment balls of fire illuminated and the room with heat searing across my skin, and four fierce warriors jumped out screaming. That is the worst scare I had in the ride. The cart coasted back into darkness and crashed into a wall. The cart rolled downwards, backwards and actually I would have preferred this part of the ride to last longer, because it was the most relaxing part, feeling the wind behind you. It was supposed to be frightening though, I assume. It fell onto a turntable, afterwhich it shot upwards into a blast off, unlike many other coasters I have ridden which are dragged up slowly by chains. Just before an instantaneous feeling of weightlessness at the top of this track, it zoomed through a projection of a black-hole like thing which was pretty shocking considering the speed. Then it fell into darkness, with ghostly projections and G-forces adding to the thrill.

Going in and out of another fiery room, smoke shrouded the path ahead. The cart just crashed through that wall of eerie and cooling smoke which sent a chill across my body and fell into a series of twist and turns once again, and the ride came to an abrupt end.

The atmosphere of the ride was very well created, though the speed was not at all scary. But together, it synthesized a heart-racing experience. One which I will fear, no matter how many times I take it. In contrast to space mountain from Disneyland, the psychological aspect of the Revenge of the Mummy was much greater than the physical.

Attraction Rating: 9/10 (No perfect score due to the possibility of nightmares seeping into the unconscious mind after too many rides)

Following that, my brother, maid and I went to visit ‘the land of the future’ which only had two rides, the Accelerator and Battlestar Galactica. The latter is as we all know in malfunction, leaving only one ride. This is rather ironic, as I associate ‘the future’ with ‘many high-tech rides’

‘Artist’s’ Impression of the Battlestar Galactica – A tangling of blue and red cotton threads

The closure is rather disappointing, with it being one of the biggest attractions in Universal Studios Singapore.

The Accelerator is very well named. It is simply the spinning tea cup ride, decorated with blinding, oscillating coloured lights, painted in the ‘radioactive’ colours – black and yellow. It threw us back and forth like a rollercoaster, only that the accelerative forces only acted horizontally. Quite dizzy, but the ride was very futuristic like.

Attraction Rating: 7.5/10

My whole family then visited the Lost World. Some of them went to ride the Pterosaurs, but not me. Queue is far too long for a more extreme version of a merry-go-round.

That above, is the Canopy Flyer

 

 

We went  to take the Rapid Raft Adventure, which was a tour around the Jurassic Park, a must-go. We could tell, by the 80 minute long queue.

We stepped onto a conveyor belt, which carried the circular yellow rafts. The ride was initially calm, with herbivorous dinosaurs occasionally growling and wagging their tails. The surrounding environment, composed of trees and big rocks, isolated us quite a lot from the park, which made it feel like we were in a river.

Then, the raft is ‘diverted’ through a broken fencing into ‘restricted area’ where carnivores roamed. First it was fierce robots staring at you with contorted faces, next were a few dinosaurs jumping out behind rocks and screeching at you. The raft got washed down the rapids, bumping into rocks, jerking back and forth. The motion was more nauseating than the thrill.

The raft proceeds into a large hydro-electric dam, with roaring noises of dinosaurs all around. Soon, we were shrouded in total darkness. The only sound was the lonely sound of flowing water. A lamp then illuminated a side of the wall like a lightning strike all out of a sudden, revealing a realistic T-rex trapped behind bars. It shook about violently in its cage and made horrible noises. It was as if it was ready to break out of its cage anytime and chase us. It was nerve-wrecking despite the knowledge that it was fake.

The raft drifted pass ominous looking danger sirens and sophisticated flashing controls. It drifted onto an elevator. It lifted us up. Directly above was a huge T-rex head whose size was astounding up close, I didn’t feel much like staring at it right in the face. The raft was washed down a slide, out of the dam, back into daylight. What a relief.

Attraction Rating: 9/10

My Mum, maid and younger brothers left the park. My Dad, brother and I went onto the Canopy Flyer, which is a seat hanging from a track – a very slow flying fox. The queue was not worth waiting for 1 minute of such a ride.

Attraction Rating: 6/10

We went quite a few more times on the Revenge of the Mummy, as the queue was now drastically shortened. We also rode the Treasure Hunters Ride, a track around archaelogical landscape which they claim you can drive your own car, but in reality the driving is heavily constrained by a central guiding bar. Very jerky motion. This is exactly the same as the electric cars in Hong Kong Disneyland. If only Singapore could combine the smoothness and cleanliness of such electric cars, and the freedom of driving, such as in the Daytona Go Kart, it will be wonderful. True, the Luge employs such ‘technology’, but the Skyride is irritating.

It was quite a mundane archaelogical landscape

Attraction Rating: 6/10

Then we left. In summary, the attractions in Universal Studios are quite lacking, compared to other theme parks. Revenge of the Mummy and Rapids Adventure are the best attractions though.

To cut a short story shorter, we went to the foodcourt at Palawan beach for dinner, went back to our room to watch television. The next day we went to Imbiah and took the new desperadoes show and the extreme log ride, both being a waste of money.

The end. I’m so glad to have my own bed, pillows and blankets back.

Sentosa - Part 1

I just returned from Sentosa on Tuesday.

I like the old sentosa much better; the Sentosa during the time when I was a little kid. It felt much more adventurous, more spacious, more clean, and fun was much of its emphasis.

First there was the monorail system, a good and systematic way to get around. It is easy for one to get off station by station to explore the island. Now, it is destroyed and replaced with head spinning bus and tram rides.

I also remember that there used to be nature always by my side in Sentosa. Now Sentosa is just a gigantic construction yard.

Most importantly, there used to be a sense of cohesiveness among the attractions of Sentosa last time. There was ambience on the island. Now, it feels like every attraction is just 'plopped' here and there. like placing dots on a computer game map. For example, walking along the road of the beach, there is now a coffee house with water attractions every now and then. It feels as if everyone manages their own business in the business compounds, and everything outside their doors has absolutely nothing to do with them.

I'm not sure how to describe this, but I think this will do. Imagine trying to create a jigsaw puzzle. The right way would be, get a big picture, and slice out the different pieces. However, what the current Sentosa now is like this:

Beaches carve their own jigsaw pieces, Resorts and Accomodation try to carve theirs, Shops try to carve theirs, same for Transportation and other attractions, while Resort Worlds Sentosa come up with their own puzzle frame and squeeze all their pieces into the frame.

To be direct I will compare the new Sentosa with Escape 'Theme' Park.

The main attraction of the island seems to have turned into shopping and dining, a place for tourists to burn their cash, rather than a place for family fun. Especially with the advent of Resort World Sentosa, money spending has turned into a theme.

The shattered remnants of old Sentosa reside in my memory. I used to have a wish to go down every monorail stop and visit their attractions, especially volcano land (which my parents told me that I visited it when I was even younger but I was too scared to open my eyes) , but I never had the time to. No more monorail.

I also recall wanting to fly by tying myself to helium balloons. When I realised I could not fly with one balloon, my dad somehow got the whole bunch of balloons from the balloon man and we brought them home.

Where has Fantasy Island gone too???

Everything that I mentioned happened when I was quite young, so I only had one impression of fantasy island before it was gone. It goes something like this:


Just imagine the brown stuff are cliffs and the river is filled with lots of families and children in floats.

***

Seeing how construction roamed the island and how money-centered Sentosa has become on Sunday, my mood was off to quite a bad start. My family and I took a tram down to Costa Sands Resort in front of Siloso beach. We booked a small room with one bed, and a kampong hut. From the moment I stepped into the hut, stale and wooden air wafted into my lungs. This was not very good.

I can't bear to put too much effort into this picture. It is too dull in reality. Those two things at the sides are double-decked beds.

We then moved on the other room, whose main composition was concrete, rather than wood. Other than being more spacious, and having a little more furniture, it was not much more comfortable. The floor was tiled (This statement might have more meaning if I added that the floor was not carpetted).

Tiled = Dirty Resort

Carpet = Hotel

One thing I like about a carpetted floor is that it shields your sight from dirt and dust on the ground, and your feet, because the floor feels furry no matter what. So it feels less disgusting living with it, unless it gets wet of course.

After settling our bags down for a while, my dad, my brother and I went to visit the Luge and Skyride.

The sentosa luge requires not fuel to run at all. It simply zooms down an inclined track, which I like because unlike the Daytona Go Kart at Escape Theme Park, it does not vibrate up and down and it is free of nausea inducing exhaust. Although it is rather expensive, 12 dollars per ride should one buy a single ride, I like driving (in games at least, not that I can drive a real car anyway).

The dreadful part of it is the Skyride. One can purchase a Skyride ticket without going for the Luge, but not the other way round. If one wants to take the Luge, one has to take the Skyride back up. One can, however, take the liberty to walk back up the slope on foot, but then he will still have to pay the fee for a skyride ticket.

Dangling above the treetops, exposed to the scorching sun, we could not wait to get off the Skyride each time we took it. The scenery didn't alleviate the tormenting wait, because it refused to change so we eventually got bored of looking at the same things.

At night, we immersed ourselves in the comforting chill of the evening water of the swimming pool at the resort. I immersed my head in the water, saw nothing but patches of blurred balls of lights at the walls. The water was ridiculously murky, and it was only when I rose I felt the sting in my eyes. The floor was scattered with dirt, and thus we eventually moved to the 2 metre end of the pool to avoid our feet from touching the floor.

After bathing, my family and I settled to watch some television, and my mum, my brothey, my maid and I moved to the kampong hut to sleep.

Horrible. The bed was horrible. The pillow was horrible. The air was horrible. I lay on the bed wrapped up in the furry blanket, occasionally adjusting its coverage over my body for maximal mosquito blocking to ventilation efficiency. But the hard bed and lousy pillow remained a problem; my neck ached severely from sleeping on them. In cruel collaboration with the poor ventilation of the hut, I had headaches, and could not sleep for 2 hours. I got one more pillow stacked on the first pillow for more neck support, afterwhich I managed to drift off to sleep.

I dreamt that it was once again a school day, and I was going to school on the bus with the usual person.

I woke up the next day, and my family and I prepared to set off for the Universal Studios.

Regarding the Mode of Chinese Assessment here

My English grades are probably worse than my chinese grades, but I resent the latter more. For one reason - when I look at the mistakes and inadequete standards I meet in english, I feel that I deserve it. Thus I accept this without qualms.

When I review why my answers are insufficient to answer a comprehension question, I can see for myself that there is a lack of logical flow. I can see that my essays lack developed vocabulary and organized structure. This is strange, but I feel a lot happier with my english grades than my chinese grades(which a probably slightly higher)

The mode of assessment of chinese here is rigid. I will not forget the time when I had a real good laugh upon reading a letter to the newspaper. It complained about the rigidity of science marking in the country in this era, by flashing an example in which a question, "What is the difference in the rate of evaporation of water in A and B?", was posed. A student, giving the answer: "B will evaporate faster because A has a smaller surface area", was marked wrong!

The "Model" answer was something along the lines of A will evaporate slower because B had a larger surface area et cetera. This is a rather extreme case.

Anyway, in chinese letter writing, the assessment is such that content marks are allocated based on how many points one writes down. i.e the paragraph count. It does not matter how well developed each idea is, how much elaboration and explanation it contains. It does not even matter how much it stands out an important and crucial point that no one else had though of.

One point just mean one content mark. Three reasons and three ways to solve the problem is required. Just two is not an option, no matter how good they are like I mentioned. And its letter writing, not a proposal of advocacy or analysis report.

This method of assessment destroys the fair advantage critical thinkers have over those who do plain memory work and 'mind-readers' (Those who writes what the teachers want to see).

That is only one issue. Another thing I feel uneasy about is the open-ended comprehension passages. Contrary to English assessment, where marks are scored, when one answers the question to the point, has the correct answer with a logical structure, in chinese this requires unnecessary elaboration which is irrelavant.

Take for example a standard 4 mark question. Should you just answer the question, the most you will obtain is two marks. The other two comes from the elaboration that revolves around the main answer. So it almost always ends up with a lot of ctrl-c ctrl v s from the passage.

There are times when elaboration is not needed and 4-5 marks are awarded straight for a one line answer. Yet the differences between them are almost impossible to tell.

Life is indeed unpredictable.

However the central problem lies in the choice of comprehension passage. Many times they just love to give passages that teach the reader some moral, or a lesson. Most of the time they are illogical and look as if they are written by a child. (Verified by trusted source) One can argue that my standard of comprehension is probably not high enough to attain the level of 'mind-reader', but again it is not so low as to be able to stoop down to their level and think from the writer's point of view. As such, I can't comprehend such passages.

Let me translate one such passage.

"Distance" brings about beauty. But why do we destroy such a dream? Humans, with their selfish desires, have destroyed the beauty of "distance, and have started to possess others by force. No longer now is the forest quiet, but it rings with the sound of gunshots, tigers face extinction. Never again will we see birds soaring in the air, or the fluffy white sheep roaming in the plains. But the humans feel that this distance must not be maintained, and they pick up their axes and saws, and start deforestating, destroying the 'distance' ,destroying their beautiful home...

...

The beauty of literature requires distance too. Have it not been for the long time that has passed since they have been written, will ancient poems still spark the endless imagination of mankind?....

...

But today, our fast paced society will destroy all the beauty of distance. Fast food culture has taken over the distance humans have always been longing in their hearts. Authors no longer pen classics, rather they mass produce hasty works, works that are not worth passing on for generations...

Yes, my translation is horrible, but thats approximately the idea of what kind of passages I get

I really hope that the setters of paper use news articles or articles regarding governmental policies to test us, rather than these sort of 'moral-instilling anecdotes'.

It is difficult to comprehend, and I do not mean that in a good way. Let's put it this way, when I do a difficult English comprehension question, I think hard, because I know an answer is there somewhere, waiting to be found. But here, it's like it can never be found.

Music Scores

Today my Dad took me to Gramercy music to get some violin scores for ABRSM Diploma. The scores were all catalogued by composer, which is rather impressive, because truthfully, I have never been there before. The prices of music scores is simply shocking. Fortunately they were having a sale.

They way some shoppers just moving around with a stack of sheet music in their arms are terrifying. It was as if they were librarians, just that they were going to buy all of them. One stack, at a glance can easily be seen to be worth at least 500, and will even have a possibility of shooting into the thousands range.

This makes me think of a really frustrating thought, why are all these music scores set at such a high price? Many classical pieces are already in the free domain, so downloading them from sites such as IMSLP or Mutopia is not illegal. But examination boards require that the candidate buys an original copy from a renown publisher, and that is what professional performers are seeming to always do too, carrying nicely bounded cover pages, with the glittering letter of the publisher and piece title embedded into it, around.

I only needed the Scherzo, the last 4 pages from Brahms Sonaten, but they just don't sell them alone


$74.80 for three pieces, inclusive of piano part.