A Walk to Forget: Bishan to Kallang

Are you guys excited for the yearly Nasile-mak post? I know I promised to update the blog more regularly to pen down my thoughts and views about life in general but I couldn't find an interesting to talk about unless you guys are into getting rugged by Crypto lenders.

So the back story about this 'Walk to Forget' started back in September where I met up with the boys Reynold and Limpin to feast on some Middle Eastern cuisine. We went to a quite famous (and also expensive) restaurant at Kampong Glam called Cappadocia.

I definitely didn't take the photo above and I should have known that it was going to be expensive when you see the restaurant name in 4 different languages on their shop banner. 

Anyways the food was great and we really had quite a good meal there so kudos to them and check them out here: https://cappasg.com/nw/ (Sorry no affiliate code for you to use)

You must be thinking why am I not flaming them? Because this is the new revamped Nasile-mak where we only share positive vibes and thoughts. I cannot simply just come out and say that their Turkish Coffee was so small I could've finished it in one mouth right. That would just be plain rude and we should refrain from such behavior in an already toxic online environment.

Anyways, we started talking about how we have a lack of physical activities in our life and we were pretty much living a sedentary life. I know we have an army regular amongst the midst of us and could easily pull off a 11 mins 2.4km run. But take note that this guy used to be able to run it in just less than 8 minutes. 

Yes you don't need to re-read the previous statement, this guy used to run 2.4km in 8 minutes.

And a few kebabs later we all agreed that we should probably do some physical activity together for the sake of a long life so we can actually enjoy our CPF money. We spoke about urban trekking as covered by Esquire where we just walk from one point in the city to another. The concept is pretty cool and the distance isn't that far where anyone could do it easily while absorbing in the sights and sounds.

But Reynold pointed out that it may be quite difficult for complete newbies like me which I agreed so we decided to walk the park connector instead. We suggested a couple of routes and being the lazy bums we are Rey decide to suggest somewhere near his house and proposed us walking from Bishan all the way to Kallang. I thought that he was just kidding but there was actually a park connector that ran all the way from Bishan to Kallang.

Above is a snippet of the route and when you zoom in, you will be able to see how there were green lines that were park connectors. And aiyo I not asking you to zoom in on the image above hor, I have provided a nice recording of how it looks like below.

The distance on Google Maps was 7.6km in total and we all felt that it was doable. So we marked the faithful date on our calendar and extended the invite out to Shameer, Zuhair and Vivi. Howeverone of them was pretending to be busy on the day itself and avoided replying us 🌚

Okay la he replied us in the end but he was busy "working".

So fast forward to the faithful date of 1st October where we finally started on...

A Walk to Remember Forget

We all agreed to meet at Bishan Mcdonalds at 9am and to nobody's surprise, nobody was early. I was pretty sure I was last to reach as Limpin was already standing outside Macs waiting impatiently and flaming us. Reynold was once again up to his shenanigans as he wanted to pee before the walk. The small bladder man emerged from the shop shortly and told us that he could not relieve his business as the queue for the toilet was too long. I was quite sure he just got kicked out as he looked like a non-paying customer trying to take advantage of the store's facilities.

We started our walk as the occifer briefed us on today's plans. He told us that we will be mainly following the park connector but we will need to first make an emergency pit stop for a toilet break soon. We told him to do his business just within some random bushes of Bishan park and he accused us of  头脑进水. This was rather rude response on his end to our superb and constructive feedback. This is why Singaporeans very hard to work with. Give them some suggestions and they shit on your idea smh.

On the way to the stadium we found Reynold's lookalike. As it was a weekend morning, the park connector was filled with people jogging and walking their dogs. We were quite lucky as the clouds were out so the sun didn't directly shine upon us. It made the walk really enjoyable as we gradually reached the starting point of our trek.

As we stood at the traffic light, we could also see that there were many cyclists along this path.

Interestingly, the path wasn't divided to walking and cycling path and both kind of commuters were haphazardously riding and walking trying to avoid each other. It became a game of pacman where you avoid getting eaten by those on the bike. It was then when our dear mr small bladder said that we should make a tourist stop at Bishan stadium.

I haven't been to the stadium for a long time and it reminded me of how Home United has rebranded into the Lion City Sailors. They even sealed up the seats to prevent kaypoh people like me from sitting on it.

Surprisingly, there weren't many people in the stadium track and I assume that people probably preferred the park connector with a changing scenery. But jokes on them as if they run 3km and enjoy 3km of scenery, they would have to walk 3km back in the opposite direction don't they?

And after relieving himself, Mr Heng reminded us to hydrate ourselves as it's going to be a long walk. I just reminded him that if he drinks more water we probably will need to have a second dehydration break along the way. We went back on track and continued on our walk along the Bishan MRT depot. It amazed me at how big the whole depot was as the scenery wasn't really changing with the depot stretching across the entire pathway that we were walking on.

Halfway through we spotted a few people attempting to do something along the river. They seemed to be rather enjoying whatever activity they were doing and I wish I could say it was the same for me after Limpin cracked his fourth lame joke of the day as we continued our walk.

We took our first break along the Kallang River and mr siao on Reynold decided that it would be good to just have a short 10 minutes rest. What he failed to inform us was that our 10 minutes started 5 minutes ago as just after a short 5 minutes he was ushering us to continue walking so that we can ride on the momentum. And at that moment, the only thing I wanted to ride was probably a grab to Kallang.

A Path Walked by Many

We were gradually making progress as we were nearing Braddell. This was when we met our first obstacle. 

As seen from the image above, the usual path that normal humans would take be to walk along the park connector. However, being the army man he is Reynold suggested another path along that I drew in red. I told him that I have just finished my yearly reservist and I had enough of the jungle for the year. However, I suspect that Limpin may have 头脑进水 as he agreed with Reynold's suggestion of a yolo walk through the grass.

Got path to walk don't want to walk

That pretty much summed up our decision on walking through a random grass patch versus along the nice pristine concrete path connector. In case you didn't watch the video above, I have uploaded the gif version of it below.

It was quite funny also because there was indeed a pathway that the students from St Andrews probably used on a daily basis as they walked to school. 

As you can see there's a clear dirt path that has been walked by many. It made me wonder how many batches of students have walked along the same path and jump the school gates to avoid the discipline master when they were late. 

You can also clearly see the bridge that connected both the secondary school and junior college campus of St Andrews. It would really have been an amazing 6 years of those students' lives.

After walking past St Andrews, we were met with a slightly small issue. Because we deviated from the path, what we saw was an expressway blocking our path. That's right, we weren't following the path on Google Maps from now on and just based on our pure gut instincts. On hindsight, that probably wasn't the best idea 🌚

We were on the other side of St Andrews when we spotted a path that we could take to go under the expressway.

We weren't really talking much at this point, not because of tiredness but rather the sound of car rushing past us was just overwhelming. But this just goes to show how the design of the park connectors was rather efficient too as it allow users to cross expressways. As you can see in the photo above, the park connector routes were marked with red dotted lines on both sides. So if you are ever lost, just follow the dotted red lines and you will probably reach civilisation. 

And after crossing the expressway and a short distance away, we reached Jalan Besar. We could see the welcome banner with 5 smiling faces welcoming us after our trek from Kallang. It was at this point where we deviated again from the path as Reynold started saying that he was hungry. 

As we settled down for our second and final rest stop of the day, we were presented with a dilemma. Do we stop for a short food break at a place and continue our walk, or do we trudge forward and just finish our walk before eating at the hawker center? What do you think? Did you think that we were weaklings who would succumb to hunger and not push forward for our final goal which is the upper boon keng food centre?

Mak, Han Ren. Reynold and his house. Photo. 29 in x 36.25 in.

To Walk or Not to Walk?

Being the sensible people we were, we decided to have the walk before the meal instead of walking after the meal. We continued our walk to remember and even though it was almost 11am, the weather was still really good. 

If you're keen eyed, you can see that it was still shady and the cloudy weather was really great for walking. As we were nearing the Kolam Ayer bridge, we spotted a nice vegetable by the community and I was asking the guys if we wanted to pluck some chilli for our lunch later. The other two boys just ignored my comment and walked along as if they couldn't hear me. I was thinking why were they ignoring me until I spotted that glorious pussy.

Limpin was the first to play with the pussy and he was really entranced by it. I was just surprised the cat didn't give Limpin a scratch to remember by.

And right here we can see the pussy hunter in his natural environment as he stalks his prey. He first let the tabby sniffs his hand to make him get familiar with his scent before going in for the pet. The cat was smart and sensed danger as he ran away from the hunter.

Things were going too smoothly and that's where unfortunate incident number two happened - part of the park connector was under construction. This meant that we had to make a detour to reach our target (pretty sure we walked more than 8km in total).

We walked along some shady private property that was fenced up as we could see Geylang West Community club just right ahead. Our legs were getting wobbly and we were simply overjoyed when we caught a glimpse of the food center.

And suddenly their weariness was gone as they picked up the pace to enjoy our well deserved lunch.

And that was the end of our 8km route march. We settled down for lunch and none of us wanted to get up to order our food. We can see that Reynold was really hungry as he devoured whatever noodles he ordered and went ahead to buy another plate of carrot cake. He asked to share with us but I was sure he demolished 3/4 of the plate by himself.

I was googling what was famous in the food court and tried the Char Kway Teow. Unfortunately, it wasn't as good as I thought it would be probably from the wok being not hot enough since it was still morning. If I had ordered in the afternoon the ingredient would probably be fried to perfection.

Thoughts

And there you have it lads, the completion of the walk from Bishan to Kallang. My personal thoughts was that after completing this physical activity, I really felt a sense of accomplishment. This was no competition but I felt like I won a battle against myself. I would be lying if I said I didn't feel tired during this walk. Even though it was just 8km it was still a 2 hour walk in our concrete jungle so it was rather challenging. As I mentioned earlier, this walk was just a precursor towards walking more urban treks in our CBD area. 

It was really fun so do stay tuned to Nasile-mak for our future escapades!

I Went On The Sheng Siong Show And Came Home With Record Breaking Winnings

Wow I can't believe that it's been almost 17 months since I last updated Nasile-mak. Since my last post, Singapore has entered, exited, re-entered, exited and upgraded their lockdown measures across the past 1.5 years. Many things have happened in 2020 such as me leaving ZGM and entering Crypto marketing in 2021, but I will share more about that in a future post. Instead today I am going to share the most exciting and embarrassing event of 2021 for yours truly - getting invited onto the Sheng Siong show.

How Did I Get Invited Onto The Sheng Siong Show?

For those who live under a rock and don't know about the Sheng Siong show, here's a simple breakdown of how it works. During certain periods of the year, when you spend a large enough sum of money you will be given a chance to write your name and contact number on that particular receipt and throw it into a box of dreams. The names in the dream box will then be randomly chosen, where the Mediacorp staff will then call you up and ask you if you want to participate in the live show to win some money.

So what happened was that my Mum was on a durian buying spree back in June. As you know it was durian season and everything was going cheaply. And when things are cheap you know what Singaporeans do... they buy. And boy did my Mum buy a lot of durians. We were eating durians after almost every dinner every day. But back to the topic, after purchasing some durians one fine day, my Mum suddenly had the epiphany to submit her particulars into the sacred box of names.

And a few days after submitting her name, she was notified on her chance to participate in the show. At first when the staff rang her up she was skeptical and thought it was a scam. She actually hung up on them a few times before the staff assured her that they were legitimately from Mediacorp and she was officially being invited onto the show. She was asked to bring along her partner and participate in the 'Snakes & Ladders' section of the show.

Yes, you didn't read it wrongly, she was asked to bring along her PARTNER to the show. So how did I come into the picture?

Well evidently, her partner (my dad) rejected her offer and said that he was too old for that shit. She even asked my elder brother as he was at home then and he said that he wasn't free during that day. After being rejected twice by them, she then asked me if I wanted to join her on the show when I came home. And my answer?

Fuck Yeah.

I wasn't even aware of what game we were going to play there but I wasn't going to pass up an opportunity to earn some additional money. And the second reason why I was so confident was because I didn't know that the show was recorded LIVE. I thought these segments were all pre-recorded so we just have to go there, jump a few times and if we NG we can simply retake the scene.

And once I was informed about the show being live and all, I was having second thoughts about going onto the show. I mean it's one thing to go onto a game show, but it was a totally different thing to be on national television LIVE. But a promise is a promise so I had to shake off my nerves and prepare to be jump my heart out live on Singapore television.

In the post title I mentioned that we broke the winnings record of the game we played and that was by no means completely dumb luck. It was 50% due to the hard work and research we did before going onto the show. I mean if I was going to embarrass myself live on TV, I might as well be bringing home the highest amount of dough available to us. You know what they say...

Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories

Up till this date, I have no idea why my Mum called the game 'Snakes and Ladder' because when I went to YouTube this shit, it wasn't even remotely close to being a snakes and ladder game. This was the exact video I watched to figure out what the hell I was getting myself into.

An excerpt of the game segment

So here's how the general breakdown of how the 'Dice & Jump' game works:

• Player A will be asked to roll the dice
• Host will announce the number
• Player B will jump the announced number of times
• Host will announce:
• If the particular blog had any special effect (move forward/move back)
• If no effect, he will announce the Prize money earned
• Repeat Steps 1-4 until finishing the entire course
• The total duration of the game is 45 seconds

Feel free to skip ahead to the next section as I will be going through the nitty-gritty stuff of how I plan to game the system

After learning the rules of the game, I was moving to the next step of figuring out how to game the system if that is possible. And possible it was.

As you can see from the board above, landing on the white spaces will give you the prize money written while landing on the chinese characters will land you $1,000 each. So the ideal scenario would be to land on all the chinese characters and you can go home possibly 10k richer. However, my Mum then informed me that the max amount people gotten from this game was $4,800. 

This was certainly possible as the mean of a dice roll was 3-4, which meant that if everything went according to the mean of rolling 3 then 4, you will end up with $4,700. But of course things don't always go by the average when you roll the dice because the dice rolling part was all up to luck. So how would it be possible to game the system? You just gotta go fast and slow at the same time.

From watching a couple of videos of the 'Sheng Siong' Show, I saw that people were always throwing high numbers which led to them completing the board rather quickly and not enjoying the perks of landing on the chinese characters. So the way to go would be to have multiple small numbers, thus increasing the number of times you can roll the dice and the jumper needs to go HAM when it's his turn to jump.

Game Day

It was soon July and the fated day has arrived where we will be going to participate on the show. We arrived at the studio slightly late and other participants were already there. We were then brought into the resting area near the studio where we were briefed on the day's schedule. Here's a breakdown of the schedule if memory serves me right:

• 3.30pm - Report
• 4.00pm - Dress up
• 4.30pm - Rehearsal
• 5.30pm - Dinner
• 6.30pm - Makeup
• 9.00pm - Live Show

Yes, you may be curious how we look in our costumes but the lack of photos is due to the restriction on photo taking within the studio. Mediacorp is rather strict to not letting anyone leak anything from the studio because when we were in the rest area, there was drama being filmed nearby and I guess they don't want some random aunty leaking their latest blockbuster to the public. So enjoy how I look in the costume courtesy of the ZZ Crew.

The dress code was completely ridiculous as we had to jump around in that bright yellow safety vest. And that said, we were also wearing the mic on our faces which made it rather uncomfortable with a cap on and all. During our rehearsal, we weren't able to achieve as great results as we thought and only came out with $3,400. My Mum threw rather high numbers and were only landed on the board 4/5 times instead of 5/6 that we should be aiming for.

After downing some Char Siew rice and resting for a while, we were then ushered to the makeup room to make us look as pale as possible. This was also when my mum bumped into Kym Ng and struck up a conversation with her. The gist was the conversation was my Mum insisting that Kym used to live nearby and have a black car or something. But Kym was like umMMMmmmmmm my car is white? 

So awkward conversation aside, we were all set for the Live Show. And I thought I was totally ready because we went through with the rehearsal and all. But the 2.5 hours wait was starting to make not just me but all the participants feel like we were on the edge. There were multiple games being played that night and 4 groups of people were selected to play in this game. And the sequence of events was team A, team B, me and my Mum then team D. So even after A entered the studio to play their game, we were still pacing around the resting area trying to calm ourselves down.

Game Time

Now it was finally our turn to enter the studio and wow were the lights even brighter than this afternoon during the rehearsal. After getting briefed by the floor director, we went ahead to our places to play the game. And instead of me typing out how the event transpired, how about you watch this amazing video instead. Just note that there will be tons of screaming and laughing as my friends recorded this for me.

The general gist is that we were able to roll the dice 7 times in total and we landed on the chinese characters 5 times in total! I was pleasantly surprised that we won $5,600 and completely crushed their record. All in all, it was an amazing experience and definitely not an embarrassing one xd

And now the question on everyone's mind is...

What Did You Do With The Winnings?

Not gonna lie, I was pretty excited to have an additional $2,800 to spend on stuff. I was already googling how I could upgrade my desktop and make it go from being a 2k PC to becoming a true 5k PC. However, my Mum had other thoughts and actually donated the bulk of the winnings to her brothers. 

You see, her brother was a proud owner of a noodle factory and COVID-19 has hit his business like a truck. Even with the government support and help, business was really going down because people weren't returning to offices in the CBDs and were cooking more at home in general. This meant a reduction of business within hawker centers and thus a reduction in the amount of noodles being ordered from them on a daily basis.

I really respected her decision and it was a proud son moment because my Mum were putting others ahead of herself. I guess I should strive to become a better human being like my Mum and always be looking out for other people - especially those that are close to you. And for the remainder of the winnings, it's still in my Mum's bank account and I won't be asking for any of it. Because I know that she will be putting it to good use, for the betterment of the people around her. And also because she has recently been talking about renovating our drainage system so we won't have flash floods whenever it rains 😂

And so that's it, the most happening event of 2021 for me. Getting invited on a game show, researching how we can game the system, breaking the winnings record for the game and ended up donating the money to a good cause. I truly don't think anything can top this for me this year unless Ethereum goes to $8,000. 

That being said, I hope you had a good time laughing at me embarrassing myself live on television. Remember to always keep smiling, breathe and slowly push on. Stay safe and game on!

Video Game Testing: Can You Actually Make Money From It?

After learning that you can't make money from captioning & transcribing videos last week, I started getting targeted by 'side hustle' ads everywhere.

When I scroll through Instagram, there will be ads asking me to sign up as an online tutor. And when I scroll Facebook, there are ads asking me to be a part-time customer support help desk.

And that was when this ad really caught my attention

It was an ad trying to get people to sign up as a game tester and it got me thinking...

Since I loved playing video games so much, I might as well be making money from it!

So I hurriedly went to the page and signed myself up for some video game testing

You have to admit this site looked pretty cool and that's what really prompted me to sign up with them.

Fill in your username, email & password...

And a few clicks later, you're ready to become a professional video game tester

As you see on the right hand side, you actually have to complete your "Game Profile"

This profile is similar to those typical beer money sites like SwagBucks or Rakuten where they require basic demographic information to match you with the ideal survey and in this case, the ideal game.

However, sadly there was no game available for testing at the moment in time so I had to stop my investigation

But luckily a few days later, they sent me and email telling me that they had a test available for me!

Okay, so the reason why the game is blurred out is because I had to agree to some T&C and after screening through it I figured out that I could feature the site but not the I was testing.

But since I don't have a Degree in Law and if I'm wrong please don't sue my poor ass

Moving on, clicking on the button actually sends you to the test page which looked like this

There's pretty detailed instructions which basically states that I would need to play until I reach level 30 before I got rewarded for my efforts.

But there's just one problem..

I don't own an android device!

Fortunately, there's a simple solution...

A solution I used to grind my way to top 100 in Maplestory M when it was just released...

Meet BlueStacks!

BlueStacks is basically an android gaming emulator for the PC.

So after downloading it I booted up the APK file that they sent me and I was ready to start testing the game!

Han Ren's Foray into Video Game Testing

Candy Crush + Anime = Game I was Testing

Yes, the concept was that simple.

It was just one of the many candy crush saga duplicates out there but with a twist.

They decided to add in some anime characters that apparently is based on a real anime (I didn't even heard of it before)

As I cruised through the first few levels, it did get slightly more tricky.

But even though they mentioned that it would take on average around 90 minutes to reach level 30.

I crushed that timing and reached level 30 in less than 45 minutes.

How was this possible you ask?

Because I'm a god gamer.

(Plus I play way too much games for my own good)

After reaching level 30, the developer will be automatically notified and you will unlock your rewards as seen from the top right hand corner.

And before you get to claim your coins (it's literally called that),

You will be required to a short survey about your experience with the game

And after finishing the survey you finally get access to you g...

Wait a minute, what the heck is this

So apparently they want you to send them a photo of you holding your IC or some sort to prove that you're a human being and not a bot.

That was quite a big red flag for me as who knows what these companies will do with your info.

I decided to skip out on the rewards but it was an overall fun experience

The Verdict: Yay or Nay? 

Privacy issues aside, this was how much time it actually took me to make that 4.4 coins which translated to 4.84 USD which is around $7 SGD.

Game testing time: 45 minutes

Survey time: 10 minutes

Total time taken: 55 minutes

Making $7 an hour from a super remote desktop job is actually pretty reasonable given the current stay home situation.

And I'm sure there are many video game testing companies out there that will not require your personal info and reimburse you via paypal directly.

So do your proper research, and you can add professional video game tester to your resume soon enough.

Till next time.

Stay home & Stay safe!