A short trip to JB ....

An impromptu decision on Saturday to make our way to JB for good seafood ... and novelty in shopping and soon we found ourselves stuck at the Singapore Customs and Excise Checkpoint at Woodlands at 3plus 4pm on a Cooling rainy Saturday afternoon..

It was a mad rush for the queue at Singapore Customs as everyone struggled to keep in line to clear the customs ... Would recommend Singaporeans to try out the Biometrics Scanner on the left hand side of the checkpoint.

NO Pictures to show of the area as Photography is restricted. Some dumb ass Singaporean defied the No photography sign , took photos of his girlfriend in the area and promptly got screwed by the security personnel.

The queues for the buses snaked out into messy lines that were absolutely confusing ...but we took little time to figure out that all the buses went straight to JB customs and that was all we wanted ..

Surprisingly .. reached JB customs only to find out that there was a very short queue ! We cleared JB customs in less than 10 minutes.. What a pleasant surprise to the start of our trip ..

Went to City Square to shop around ... much more shops and more variety in shopping items .. accompanied the gals around to shop for shoes , clothes , but I ended up being the 1st one to buy and ended up buying 2 polo tees ...

An incident worthy to note : Saw a competition at City Square , organised by NEW STRAITS TIMES , some SuDoku Challenge.. The time came for the Champion and First runnerup to be announced. And a Chinese man and a Malay man both Malaysians .. got called up to the front of the stage.

In front of me was an elder malay man with his wife. When the chinese man's name got announced .. the malay man booed loudly , much to his wife's "amusement" or astonishment. His wife asked him what was that for , and he sort of mentioned that they should support their own race.

When the malay guy's name got announced , the malay encik cheered loudly.. This little incident sort of left me in deep thoughts ..quite bothered to know that there were such sentiments existing .. Not that I dun know it exists .. or rather to see it squarely in the face , is thought provoking.

** Race , Religion and Nationality are always sensitive issues , especially between Singapore and Malaysia... I am not trying to play any nationality or racial issues here .. just saw something that I thought I would wanna share here ...

Ended the day with our favourite seafood at Taman Sri Tebrau , at our usual stall ... Ordered Chilli Crabs , Deepfried BB SQuids , sambal Kangkong , StingRay , CrayFish and Fried buns for Dinner ... But Not before having Auntie Annie's Cinnamon rolls , Shihlin Deepfried Cutlets and Tempura at City Square...

The Food this time was a little disappointing ... The Chilli Crab was still good ... The Crayfish have shrunk in size .. The Stingray was bloody Charred and badly burnt .. Had a good mind to reject the stingrays .. but the girls reminded me that it was JB and Not Singapore ..

Well , I would believe in talking with reason .. I believe that if we asked politely as customers for them to replace the badly burnt stingrays .. any honourable restaurant would and should gladly replace the obviously burnt Stingray ...

Saw a handicapped uncle selling tissue for RM$1 ... We sort of rejected him .. but soon regretted it .. He left 2 packets of tissue for us to "consider" and we soon decided that we should help him out as a gesture of goodwill ... Personally I felt that the money wouldnt mean anything much to us but could possibly help him in a small way ... And he was making an honest living.

BUT ALAS ... somehow the uncle forgot about the tissue and We waited in vain. I tried looking around for him .. but to no avail. ** On a side note , a little contribution was made to another handicapped uncle in Singapore to "compensate" for the lack of help for the Uncle we met at Tebrau..

Overall , it was a good trip to JB , glad to be back to visit JB for some good food .. good visit .. and no hostility .. Looking forward to visiting the JohoR Go-karting park again ! If Only I could visit JB more often without feeling worried about safety and other issues ... Wouldnt it be nice ?

Mambo XMG out