Transitional

Oh the tragedy. To return home and chuck a CD into the drive only to find out that it's broken/cracked. I have no idea how it happened since it was ok before I left for home. But as you can see from the pic, it's somehow got a really big, bad and ugly crack. Suffice to say, I got a replacement cheap, but it won't arrive for a few days yet.

Guess this means Frozen Throne has got to wait for a few more days...

On the plus side, I've been cleaning up the room, and some stuff that's been lying here ever for a few years have finally been sorted out. Now they're all lying in the bins downstairs. But you know what? Somehow, it doesn't make a huge amount of difference. The room still looks cluttered up somehow. No, I think more cleaning is necessary for me to feel some peace of mind here. Between this and Ipod music documentation, it's some useful occupation for me at least so the time isn't totally wasted. Now I understand the importance of making sure that everything is cleaned up constantly. I'd take a pic to show you, but I'm kinda embarassed by the current transitional mess.

Test Post

Again I'm having some problems with Blogger, so this is another test post.

This is wierd. Why does my blog look ok in Firefox but not on IE? Totally wierd :/

The Flight Back

On the flight back, I saw a couple of movies. I mean, for something lasting around 13 hours, it's enough time for around 7 standard length movies if you should choose not to sleep. However, being the sleepyhead that I am and love to be, I tend to put sleep at a premium - not a bad thing when the plane is only half full, or half empty for the purists of definition out there.

Some movies seen were The devil wears Prada - a very very good film with Meryl Streep being totally EBIL, and Anne Hathaway - I think she looks great in the dresses, but then again, the dresses here, the fashion accessories...... especially the boots!!! are great. Don't ask me why, but a woman in a good set of boots always attracts me. Bad thing in the tropics is that most women don't wear them - not that I can blame them considering the humidity, and fungus loves leather in that climate. Watch Anne get glammed up in this movie, but for me, the showstealer is Stanley Tucci...... he's just great. I think he's got the best one liners in the show. I'd recommend this as a must-see if only for the nice feel-good factor in the end and for the clothes. 8/10, 9/10, it comes close. :D

Another one was Cars from Pixar. Not too bad, seeing that they've stuck to a tried and tested formula, but while this is ok, it's nowhere near Finding Nemo. I still think Nemo is up there among some of the best movies made, not just in terms of acting/voicing, but also in the area of character/fish/shellfish/sealife/dinner table food development. I'd throw this out as 6/10 in my book.

Finally, I saw Poseidon. I've never seen the original, mind you, but frankly, this movie felt like a letdown if only for one main factor. That damn irritating kid. If you thought Anakin and Jarjar were bad, this kid beats them almost hands down by himself. Any self respecting person, if caught in that sort of situation would just let the stupid kid die. Hell, I would. I mean, it is cliche probably, but everytime there's a need to have an emergency, or to move the plot along, or to give some sort of urgency, the kid conveniently disappears/gets trapped/gets stuck on a piano/is too scared to move/has a perpetual botox-ed blur "is this shite happening to me" kinda look on his face/Add your own description here, etc. Hell, that kid just deserves to go down with the ship. Let me put it another way, the entire cast couldn't save the movie thanks to the kid they put in there. Total yucks. This could almost be worse than Alien vs. Predator. Almost since, the only nice spot I found in the movie was when Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas got onstage to sing during the beginning portions. Now that was good. Too bad it lasted only like 3 mins tops. :(

Overall I'd give it 2/10. Next time, kill the kid. Make it a gruesome death. The worse the better. ^^

Ok, now back to wedding planning dum de dummmmm....

The Important Things in Life

You all know about SIA's movie on demand thing on flights. Well, I found another *commodity* that can be *purchased* on demand too.... check it out. Click me....

Ritual

Life is made up of patterns. No matter how we try to get away from them, we all have little patterns of our own. Whenever I get back home, I visit my friends, see what's new, taste food I've missed out on the entire year, and shop till I drop. This time was no different, but at least for some freshness, there were some changes. Many might disagree but at least girls won't disagree with this picture to the sadness of some guys.



Anyhow, the last night was spent on the Esplanade after a nice meal at Makansutra's glutton bay in the romantic haze. You get quite a nice atmosphere there, with gentle seaside breezes, the view of the city skyline, food, and much more. Here's a pic of wifey, but it's a little shaky because of the damn night exposure without using a stand....

At night on the Esplanade

I did my fair share of shopping, and other than the assorted clothes and knick knacks, I got a bunch of CDs and VCDs thanks to the lower pricing in asia. A partial list would be......

Evanescence's latest album Open Door, Kingdom of Heaven soundtrack, Jars of Clay's latest CD, Silent Hill the movie, Fast and the Furious Tokyo Drift - a personal favourite but hey I like racing and I like japanese cars, so it all fits. Drifiting seems taken from initial D but that's ok since I liked that anime a lot. And finally, my ipod! I've waited a long time to get one, but now I've finally got my own ipod. I'm so happeeeeee :D 30gigs is going to take some time to fill up, but I'll get to work on it. This should give me an excuse to clean up my room now since I have to reorganize my music. Just in time before London too, which is good.

Finally! An Ipod to call my very own! Whoo hooo!

The parents are going to be coming by in 2 weeks' time so I better get everything prepped up and sparkling clean. Wedding preparations are going to be sorted out as the date approaches, but well, no problem, been there done that. Shoudn't be too difficult.

Back Again

I'm back in Europe at last after 3 nice weeks. Am still a little woozy after the flight and stresses of travelling 18 hours non stop so I'm going to get a shower and then save the unpacking for tomorrow.

Then back to sorting out stuff for film school. Ciao for now!

3 weeks ago and now.....

3 weeks sure fly by in the blink of an eye when you're busy running about sorting out stuff. I wish I could have called it a holiday, but it's been so much more than that. Every trip back home is a trip down my life, some good memories, some bad ones. Nonetheless, we did all that we came here to do, objective wise, sans one last item. I still need to pick up an MP3 player.

So one more trip back to Funan after Suntec City tomorrow, to check out some shops for either the iPod or Zen. Being a singaporean, I could be nationalistic and just support Zen. Or I could go with the crowd and go iPod. Zen has more functionality, iPod looks sleek. Zen can record voices and sounds, so it has the upper hand there, iPod just looks erm, good. Argh....... it's going to be a hard choice either way. I wish it could have been a hybrid of both, but well, we'll see how it goes. Sometimes I think I need more information to process before the correct conclusion can be made. Life's funny like that somehow.

There are some thoughts in my head still, but I do hope as with time, they get sorted out in their own way. First things first, if all these ramblings come out as a blur, it's because I am a blur at the moment. Mind is tired, keyboard is screwed, and so many 'what ifs' hang in the air that sometimes I don't know if it's good to be awake at this ungodly hour. I'm still supposed to take those pics of the shoes for the blog, but somehow wifey's packed them somewhere else and I don't want to mess it up right now while she's asleep. Guess I'll have to reschedule it for tomorrow then when the big pack up starts.

Home. It's been a hectic 3 weeks, but I wouldn't have missed any of it for anything else.

Macbook Pro Prices = Daylight Robbery

I've been really busy the last couple of days running about town looking for a Macbook Pro for Film school. It's amazing how quickly my objectives and supposed target can change in a matter of days. At first I thought I would need a PC since PCs seem to be easier to use - this coming from a guy who's never touched a MAC - and secondly, a PC is cheaper than a MAC. But conversions from one format to another and back would give me problems, and as Vincent nicely pointed out and demonstrated on his brand new Macbook Pro, the MAC OS ain't so bad.

So I decided in favour of the Macbook Pro. I went hunting for the price, and lo and behold, it costs a hefty 4300 Sing dollars, double the price of a standard PC notebook. *Gulp* After discussing the issue a little more with my old classmate Jonathan, who's married to another of my classmates - yes, I know what you're all thinking, the world is small and just *how* many classmates do you have? - I realized that the software application would have to be bought seperately and would take up a hefty 43 Gigs of space. Note that I haven't mentioned that the Final Cut Studio would cost me 2500 Sing dollars and the update 1250 Sing dollars on top of the 4300 SGD macbook pro. This comes with an additional 1 GB ram update for smooth visual on the fly processing for another 1000 SGD and external hard drive for I don't want to know how much. If you readers think I'm whining about the price, you're right, I am. How is a student supposed to afford all this you ask? My answer is that either you're loaded, your parents are loaded, you just robbed a bank, or you're great at shoplifting such that no one even saw you conveniently "taking" the aforementioned equipment. Student discount is set at 6% here. Yucks. Bleah.....

Thus, it comes to need and want. I need a notebook, but not that urgently. I've no idea what sort of editing I'll do next year and how much of the final cut studio I'll actually learn. I want a notebook if only to make sure I save myself the 1200 SGD next year if I do buy it in the UK but on hindsight, even if I bought that notebook now and save the 1200 SGD, if I don't really get to use the software after graduation, I'll be much poorer. So I guess the notebook gets to live another day in the shop. Strangely enough, I feel less burdened by the decision to buy or not to buy, and therefore happier. So I went out and got wifey 2 pairs of summer shoes and a 1 pair of boots out of genuine leather from Japan for just 33 Euros. Beat that! Hrhrhr. I'll link a pics of the shoes here later after I've got some beauty sleep and worked my way through my nonya dumplings.

Ciao for now..... :P

Dim Sum Heaven!

I had some problems getting into Blogger 2 days ago, so I'll try again today. Hopefully it'll work out better. Last Sunday I had time to meet up with a couple of friends from home for some great Dim Sum at Yum Cha in Chinatown. Here's a pic of Joan and Jan with Jan's new baby boy. Isn't he cute? :D



After the Dim sum, we headed off to Vivocity, the new shopping mall located opposite Sentosa. You can access it directly via Harbour Front. It's nicely done, but just 2 problems. First, we got lost in there because there only seems to be one exit, and secondly, the taxi stand is all the way across at the Harbour Pavillion building which is quite a walk away from the Vivocity exit. Otherwise, it seems cool, with a Cineplex and more shops, Starbucks, etc. Add to that walking and shopping next to the sea with Starbucks in hand and it's great. Just make sure not to choose a humid, hazy day like us, Hrhr.

I took this pic of the view of harbour cranes in the port. I thought they looked romantic in the haze. My friend Vincent - who's currently teaching at my Alma mater at Barker Road - thinks it's more a scene of post nuclear apocalypse. Frankly, if you're into nuclear fallout and view it as poetic justice of man's endless quest for power, then yes, it is romantic as you and your beloved view it with your highly toxic irridiated skin. Anyone recall the ghouls from Fallout 2?

The view of the PSA docks from Vivocity with just a simple flash

Shaky picture, but try holding it still without a stand for exposure...

1 Night's Dream

You know, I've given up on time and trying to catch up on my blog for the last week or so mainly because it's not easy trying to update a periphery of one's life when one is trying hard to pull together disparate strings in the real world. Granted that the blog is a record of these attempts, I should keep it up more often.

So let's dust off the old and bring in the newly minted past. We got a nice night's stay at the Mandarin Oriental thanks to our voucher from last year's wedding celebrations. I have to say that we got a nice room with another great view of the harbour. I don't know how to put it, but there's something romantic about great views and hotel rooms and a pretty girl at your side *hint hint*. Here are some pics from last week when we spent some time there.


Night View from the Oriental


Another pic of the room


Another night pic - nice isn't it?

Anyhow, the timing of the room was great however we had a little problem after bible study at Suntec City because most of the shops were closed so we couldn't get any dinner. After walking round quickly, it was about 10.15pm on a Thursday already, we finally decided on Paulaner's Brauhaus. Not a good choice, but we didn't want to be going to bed hungry, but the bill came up to like 45 Sing dollars. Yucks...... I can get 3 times the amount of beer in Germany from Paulaner than from the Singapore branch - moneysuckers all of them.

After returning to the hotel room, we both felt kind of disatisfied. You know, the feeling you get when everything seems to be fine on the surface, yet you're totally disatisfied inside, like when there's something deep inside you stirring and telling you that there's something more to life, there's something more than just this existence on earth, and that there's something more than the night that will make it truly special.

Even though it was past midnight, we decided to walk out and find a place to eat, I knew one 24 hour place about 20 mins away around CHIJMES, but to walk in the haze and the humidity - yucks.... but you know, God is good. It took a real life example to show me how faith actually works. Sometimes, the answers are in front of our eyes but we do not see them for the obstacles.

I planned to walked 20 mins to get food, but around the corner at the Esplanade, there was a hawker area which was blocked by another building. The location was just across the road from the hotel but since it was blocked by the building opposite, we could not see it from our room. It took us to decide to get off our butts, and walk outside the hotel. We turned the first curve and we saw it, right next to the seaside. We really couldn't believe our eyes that the answer was right next to us, but if we didn't step out, we would never have seen it.

So we spent the night next to the beach talking till 3am eating chye tow kuey AKA carrot cake. Something mediocre turned into something great when some faith was placed into the situation. My most vivid recollection of the situation was when wifey just was happily saying "we're so blessed!" God is good.

Seeing Green

I do apologize again for the lack of updates but applying for certain official documents are a pain in the ass especially when the organization in question does not properly specify the documents in question.

Anyhow, usually seeing green is a sign of envy which does not translate well for most people. However, bear in mind that this post was supposed to have taken place last Thursday. Yes, it's been that long since I updated the blog. I guess it comes with the territory of trying to juggle meeting friends, sorting out one's life and maintaining a regular - now, not-so-regular blog updates - and working through my list of foods. So, back to the topic, last Thursday I decided to go green. I'm not the most environmentally friendly guy, so don't get your hopes up on that point. What I mean is, that I got to eat nice yummy GREEN pandan cake, and drink a nice yummy GREEN tea frap from Starbuck's. Oh, and I got myself a little pack of muah chee as well. Don't know how to translate muah chee into english, so muah chee will have to do. Here's some pics after church on Thursday at Suntec City.

Pandan Cake time!!! I finished almost 2 by myself :D

Starbucks Green Tea Frap - Why the heck does Europe not have this flavour???

For those that want to know more about Muah Chee, it's basically a dough made from glutinous rice flour that's kept warm in a pan and rolled in ground peanut and sugar and preferably taken warm to get the most out of the taste. Wifey liked it mainly because of the peanuts. I like it because of the inherent squishyness of the rice flour. The peanuts are just an added bonus.

Today - Oct 11 - we went shopping at Far East Shopping Center and saw a shop called named "THE GIVE SHOP". I didn't want to take a piccy because I figured the owner might come out and harangue me but the name did intrigue me. So do they give you free bags and products? (Their main trade seems to be bags) It wouldn't be a bad deal for me if that's the case. You can find them at the basement level.

Oh, and check out Phuture London around Scotts shopping center I think, the prices are around Mango / Zara standards but the fashion is really good with nice fabrics, cuts and colours. I got wifey a cute dark brown mini skirt. I'll see if I can get a pic of it in the near future and transfer it over to the blog.

Ok, time to get ready for bed and go again to the British Embassy for the visa application. I hope it goes smoother this time round.

Ciao for now.

Singapore Day 3 Continued

Ok, here are the pictures I promised from the last post. So, with crossed fingers and a prayer on the wind, I'll click and hope.

Yes! It worked!!!1111oneoneone............ top pic was my dinner that night, and bottom pic is the ACJC 1994 class of 2AA1. Damn, time flies. And wifey was there since I didn't want to leave her on her lonesome at home.

Good thing I got my Jars of Clay CD to enjoy now. Got it at at least half price here than if I bought it from Europe. Satisfaction at saving money on a good sale, priceless!!! Eat that Mastercard!!!

Singapore Days 1 to 3

Ok, time to deal with this horror of a kezboard. Get used to it because you're going to be seeing lots of y's and z's misplaced from their current positions in the english waz of doing things. If there's one who loves bastardiying languages it would be me. You don't want to know what I've done to German in the 4 zears I've learnt the language.

Anyhow, here's a pic of the train station and the train we took. It's great getting to Frankfurt Airport in 35 mins even though it's close to 200 km away because this train goes around 250 km/h. The ICE Trains - Ultra Sleek, Ultra Fast, and totally useless when the air-conditioning doesn't work in summer. And the bottom picture, two of my favourite things. My girl and the food machine, useful when you're starving.




Anyhow, we finally got to Singapore after a very good flight on SQ 325. Note that I'll only ever take Singapore Airlines back home. We tried it a while back with Thai airlines, and it sucked. Let's just say their air crew had eyes but were effectively blind as they could not see what was outside their peripheral vision when they were serving their food and drinks. Also, Bangkok airport is a mess when it comes to transiting. Conclusion - Avoid Thai Airways at ALL COSTS. You've been warned.

We touched down on Monday morning and were greeted by the humidity, and worse of all, the horrible Haze that was sweeping over the island from forest cutters in Indonesia. Sometimes, you wonder why these people keep chopping down trees even though it destroys the fragile ecosystem that is earth. Oh zeah, it's because China doesn't want to use up its own resources so it buys up other countries' resources and burns up the world. Conspiracy theory, sure, but who knows the truth eh? The haze sucks, period. Try staring into smoke for 3 hours while trying to shop with contacts on. It *is* EBIL. Oh wait, I don't wear contacts. Muhahahaha.

On wednesday night, I met up with my college class and we all talked about old times, good times, bad times, and who was doing what with whom and with what, etc. Basic catching up 101 on all whom we knew. Here's a pic of my dish that night in the Japanese restaurant in Wheelock Place. I think it was Japanese rice with minced pork overlaid with fried plums. Very spicy and very good. Oh, and a pic of my classmates. How time flies. It's been 12 years and we've all moved on in different directions. Interesting lives.

Somehow the pictures don't seem to want to be uploaded which is wierd. Don't blame me, blame Blogger. I'll do another post and upload them.

Damn these different kezboards!

Hi all, I've finally got the chance to type something in the blog as it's been a busy two days for me ever since I've gotten home. First thing though, is the need for keyboard standardization. The Y and Z keys on my keyboards are reversed. Thus, you get Y when I want Z and vice versa. If you see certain words not tzped correctlz as this, then it's because I'm too stoned at 4am in the morning to correct it. I blame jet lag for the inability to fall asleep and I am not going to be arsed to correct everz Y and Z mistake. I trust zour command of english is good enough to know when a Y is a Y and not a Z. Seriously, they should get some standardization on certain key points, like miles and kilometers, inches and centimeters, pounds and kilograms or stones..... The main point is that it all leads to confusion and frustration.

I'll update more when I'm not so tired and in a mood to deal with this stupid kezboard. ARGH......... now off to bed while the tiredness feeling has hit me. If you want to blame anything for this non update of an update, blame the kezboard.