delectable ambrosia

growing old

2007-11-11T23:23:00.000+08:00

and as quietly as it manifested it crept away, leaving no residue, giving only a preview of what was to come when it would return in full force. it lasted but a short week from the last october day of 2007, yet long enough to arouse a lifetime of regret of things forever out of reach.

oohlalaa

2007-10-23T09:34:00.000+08:00

http://forums.hardwarezone.com/showthread.php?t=1759836&page=1&pp=15

老板

2007-10-19T17:18:00.000+08:00

驾车回家时，广播台突然播 Israel Kamakawiwo'ole 的 Somewhere Over The Rainbow。过了一下子，在歌海在播放时，一辆 Lexus GS300 出现在我车前面。那首是我们替他做个 video相册时听腻了，而 GS300 是他曾经赞美和开过玩笑想买的车，不想起他才怪。

bike see-ings

2007-10-14T22:08:00.000+08:00

an UNCLE did CR today!! imagine TKY, but a bit older. this is shocking because he parked his e200 and stepped out with kneeguards already on! he's more enthusiastic about biking than i am! *pwned* too bad never see him during on the circuit time.

4 hours of CR is crazy.. normal 2 hour lesson is already very draining.. somemore i did mostly plank, e-brake, plank. that was my main route for the 4 hours. so my plank has improved, but not good enough yet. can mount the plank, can ride it through 85% of the time and about half of them were real slow. TP should have plank for car man.. go and put 2 planks, one for each side of the car then a firey pit beneath. =D

one time i fell coz of the plank.. lucky got one car instructor come and help me pick the bike up.. too bad his student not that chio.. maybe he see me more chio then come help me hahaa.. thank you mister! i hope your students all pass then you can get a big big bonus next year (= now i know why must wear gloves when riding.. then when fall time and use palm to break fall, won't have abrasion on fingers.

but my e-brake is fucking good now lol. i can do a 40-45km/h stop within 11m of a wet surface hahaa. 2b requirement is only 30km/h at 3rd gear, but i zhua 1st gear already hit 20 km/h.. how to maintain speed at only 30? by the time change 3rd gear won't be less than 40 lor.. dunno how he can e-brake until buang bike haiz.

and he's right.. the newer bikes are cranky. after happily biting and zhuaing in 1st gear, the engine can suddenly start choking, as if the 1st gear ratio can vary and go from low to high back to low. -__- then i change old bike after the fall killed one of the mirrors, the old bike more torquey than the new bike!! wtf man. then the old bike gear pedal also bloody sensitive, touch a bit then drop gear liao -__- but the old bike is cool. the speedometer glass is frosted, so you can't see what speed you're at (=

hee hee then at dinner time saw a convoy of vespas. think got 6 of them. all different colour.. damn cool. but i got no money to buy bike even after i pass. so sad.

also found a damn good spot at turf city to study yesterday; will become a hermit there when september ends. and today found out that sunshine plaza got shops selling anime merchandise; quite good variety too. one shop even had the noir OST1 from 6 years ago. those people staying at SMU residences are so lucky to have sunshine plaza so near to them. maybe i should up them one and find a sugar mommy/daddy staying in sunshine plaza itself hahaa.

elusive debit card

2007-10-05T18:17:00.000+08:00

Fairprice wants my original M1 bill, not some photocopy..

And OCBC ATM ate up my POSB debit card. You'd expect an ATM to reject an incompatible card at the beginning, not retain it just before dispensing cash.. silly eh.

Too bad I ain't 21 or earning 30k p.a., otherwise I could make use of that preapproved platinum credit card form that Amex sent.. then can don't care when ocbc atms eat up my debit cards.

psp bricked

2007-08-23T19:25:00.000+08:00

I have one of the sexiest bricks now.. it's gold, shines with gloss and looks utterly blissful.
I just.. forgot to play with it one night and this is what it smacks me with! -____-

I'm gonna just stick with my gameboy color that refuses to die after a decade and a lot of water.
pokemon yellow revive

nike sale

2007-07-31T09:07:00.000+08:00

from here

new phones

2007-07-28T23:19:00.000+08:00

see i'm such a nice person - i took on another line so my sis could get the k810i.
and my younger sis took up a student plan, was asked to choose between paying $100 for a choice number or buy a $42 k618i to get that number..
and sony phones are bloody hard to use.

almost like my colleague's case.. his laptop power brick died and tech support told him to pay $50 for a new one or get a whole new laptop from them.

be careful what you wish for

2007-07-28T09:10:00.000+08:00

Chris Daughtry - Home

...
Be careful what you wish for,
'Cause you just might get it all.
You just might get it all,
And then some you don't want.
Be careful what you wish for,
'Cause you just might get it all.
You just might get it all, yeah.
...

Most times, when I ask for something, I get it. Ask winston for a particular tile and i'll draw it next hand. Pray that they can get to washington and the air tickets sorted themselves out. Joke with glenn that i'll buang my bike and i did d= got a disgusting burn on my leg now. White.. like fats. And peeling in one corner. hmm.. can someone be my legal guardian and sign consent form for me to go learn diving? d=

Anyway, HP 8510w remains my favourite laptop for now. Not even the 2510p can win that in my books, even though 2510p has the slickest touchpad ever. The 1900X1200 screen's so incredible, it should be made standard on all laptops. Umm.. [i'm asking] can I have a 8510w, please?

lunch with colin wilson francis loong heng

2007-07-22T20:35:00.000+08:00

another backdated post ;)

met up with colin, wilson, francis and loong heng for lunch! haven't seen them since the last time we kayaked.. which would be last year? at least colin I saw in Feb this year.

colin so poor thing, getting worked to death on sundays.
loong heng looks very happy and rich
francis and wilson look pretty much the same as before
according to francis, my body stayed the same size
but face shrunk

harry potter and the deathly hallows

2007-07-17T06:34:00.000+08:00

and here is what happened!
this book is disturbingly sad..

what did girls play with?

2007-07-16T13:11:00.000+08:00

messing around with wilsoo is so fun!

me: what was the digital pet children played with 10 years ago?
wilsoo: ..
me: boys played with digimon, girls played with?
wilsoo: POKEMON

3 of us buang, then wilsoo still blur.

3n@sentosa

2007-07-14T23:42:00.000+08:00

backdated post ;)

3n @ sentosa on 14 July 2007
photos here: http://yilinnn.multiply.com/photos/album/62
i went late.. was sleeping after another demoralising bike lesson hahaa
joel and nigel were only interested in beo-ing some girl in the water
fiona and alvin were in their own world
the rest of us just died off on the sand

then dinner somewhere
and mahjong at mingkai's
we managed to finish 1 round!

sodagreen singer 吳青峰

2007-07-14T20:40:00.000+08:00

watch this man.. Winston says it's a guy but I don't believe him..if he's a guy then he's castrato -like already leh, wahlao sounds nicer than some girls' singing lor. unbelievable. the line between males and femails is greying. 吳青峰 should consider a 2nd niche career in coaching transsexuals to sounds like what they look. 蘇打綠, well done!

reunion at grace lim's house

2007-07-12T23:59:00.000+08:00

inez looks the same
caroline looks more grown up than ever
gracechew has good hair days
adeline looks set to become a punk rock singer
gracelim looks like an adorable fluffy chick that just hatched
kaiping looks haggard
john's sporting new oakleys
denisechoong looks like she has anorexia
stephanie would look fabulous with the victoria beckham bob

the food was actually yummy
thanks to grace & grace

photo here: http://jjneverdies.multiply.com/photos/album/18

gen gap

2007-07-11T05:52:00.000+08:00

The gals here are damn hot.. see see and only mingyou agrees with me..

The Blonde Kidnapper

2007-07-08T17:39:00.000+08:00

Best blonde joke in a while.. no offence to blondes though; I still think their hair is a gorgeous colour.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A blonde woman was having financial troubles so she decided to kidnap a child and demand a ransom. She went to a local park, grabbed a little boy, took him behind a tree and wrote a note.

"I have kidnapped your child. I am sorry to do this but I need the money. Leave $10,000 in a plain brown bag behind the big oak tree in the park at 7 AM."
Signed, "The Blonde."

She pinned the note inside the little boy's jacket and told him to go straight home.

The next morning, she returned to the park to find the $10,000 in a brown bag behind the big oak tree, just as she had instructed inside the bag with the cash was the following note....

"Here is your money. I cannot believe that one blonde would do this to another."

psp + bike

2007-06-24T17:18:00.000+08:00

I got my psp! And did daylight robbery on my bank account in the process. Go hong kong already spend about $1k on shopping alone, this psp cost $330, $16+$34 for 2gb flash memory, $30 for case, $35 for UMD. I'm almost flat-out broke! But it's pretty cool; it's gold after all. I'm playing street fighter again! And I get to play it on the train rides home from now on! Only that I suck at it because I forgot all the moves..but that's besides the point (=

And yesterday I had my first bike lesson. It's fun! The biting point is so easy to get, you wonder why it has to be harder for cars. And even if you anyhow play with the clutch, the engine can't seem to stall.. I only stalled 3 times and that's because I thought it was in neutral so I let go of the lever. It's fucking hard to get the bike in neutral though.. maybe it's just my bike or something since it was falling apart. Kick up slightly, no change in gear, kick a little more, 2nd gear engaged. >.< And after changing to 2nd gear, the instructors will yell to rest your foot on top of the gear shift lever and every time I did that, it would drop back into neutral even though the clutch is fully engaged...very dulan leh. When I don't want it to be neutral, it slips into neutral so easily, then when I want it in neutral I have to start from 1st gear about 5-6 times.

SSDC is also moving to Woodlands in a couple of years' time. I won't be able to complete my class 2 and maybe even 2A with them then. And my only viable option after that is CDC >.< Driving a car there is already bad enough with trailer trucks surrounding you, learning to ride a bigger bike there ought to be worthy of extra demerit point allowance.

low morale tuesday

2007-06-19T17:34:00.000+08:00

Today seriously wasn't good. The workshop ate up my morning, lunch and until 5pm. To add to that, annoying calls kept coming in. People seriously need to spend more time in kindergarten or primary 1. We should have a primary 1 refresher course for everyone, mandatory once every 5 years of work. Otherwise, suckers like me will have a disgusting time trying to decipher the symbols scribbled onto sheets of flipchart paper. People simply need to practise writing on a vertical surface again.

When that was done, d@ddy and grandd@ddy came back with more work to do! We stayed till almost 8 to re-copy out the taxonomy. I'm just so totally fucked hahaa.. got so much unfinished work that people will start chasing me for soon. Tomorrow's another bad day too, have more meetings and problems to troubleshoot. I hate these unforeseen scheduled problems. OT is about to become a very regular feature in my life; I just might bring that bottle of whiskey to my pantry.

I saw the aftermath of a motorbike accident on my way home. It almost seems too coincidental that I should see something like this only a few days before my first lesson. The man was lying on the road; I think the people from the 3 cars that stopped to help him didn't dare to move him too much. His helmet was shattered into fragments. I hope he lives and makes a full recovery. I want to know that is survivable..so that I can comfort myself with that thought if I end up in a similar position.

loot from hong kong

2007-06-18T19:25:00.000+08:00

I'm back! And poor again. In fact, I was so poor that I spent my final hours in Hong Kong at a wet market.. how's that for tourism hahaa. I don't know how I lost so much money along the way! I only bought 2 cowboy hats, 2 sling bags, 2 adidas sling bags (not for me >.<), 3 wristbands, 3 t-shirts, 1 pair of shorts, 2 pairs of adidas shoes, 3 pairs of dunks, 1 singlet and the rest are magazines! If you want to buy AV in privacy, go to Kwun Tung Plaza, top floor, it's almost like a small segment of one of the Penang malls. I'm a failure as a tourist.. I found Mong Kok boring and didn't even go to Sham Shui Po or tour Tsim Sum Tsui, where I stayed.

jj cannot take coffee anymore

2007-06-13T04:53:00.000+08:00

I bought an extra cup of coffee yesterday afternoon for KY and Wendy. But KY didn't want coffee so I ended up drinking it with Wilsoo. On the train home I could still sleep but then I couldn't sleep for the rest of the night )= And I'm still wide awake now..

dove refresh shower

2007-06-11T07:57:00.000+08:00

Germany is using QR code for their postage! When are we going to get cool mobile phones that do QR code like in Japan?

On a sadder note, I can't find the Dove Refresh Shower in stores anymore )= That's my favourite Dove flavour; it smells so good. Just like how my Lux Shampoo has gone extinct in stores too.

ssdc website

2007-06-10T16:31:00.000+08:00

SSDC's website is quite simply put, atrocious. They dare to allow payment without any form of security! There's very obviously no encryption involved anywhere in the payment process..Now this is one time I'd wish something was government-owned. At least the government is paranoid enough to make sure that its websites get decent security, I think. That's the vibe that I definitely feel from one of the ministries.

In any case, I have procured my helmet from some bike shop in Kelantan Lane. Took the train to Farrer Park and couldn't figure out which direction Serangoon Road lay, so I walked around aimlessly until I saw that Kelantan Lane shop opening for business. They have soooo many helmets! If I ever become rich and get a turbocharged bike, I'm definitely going to buy a whole collection of graphic helmets. But being poor and only starting out on the biking path, I got a Zeus 508 helmet. Not too shabby and definitely gives a better sense of security than those non-full face helmets that retail for as low as $28. But the PSBcert sticker is really a bitch.. the price of helmets increased exhorbitantly just because of that ridiculous shiny and sticky piece of nonsense. I could have bought the exact same helmet for $100, but each time I get caught for not having a sticker, I would be fined $70. And the sticker costs $50! I think the only thing sillier than that is a COE.

Anyway, had an argument with my sister in the car after dinner. Which is good since that made me book my practical lesson earlier than I expected to. See, I do know how to channel my wisps of aggression into more meaningful activities. And somehow, it seems that the Straits Times is siding with my dad. Tuesday they published an article about thie guy who got knocked off my a car and run over by another. Today they displayed the death rate of motorcyclists versus motorists. Well, I'm not afraid as long as that death rate doesn't apply to motorbike lessons and tests. If they did, oh my..

If I still have excess cash after Hong Kong, I might be able to start my class 3 lessons concurrently with my class 2B ones! Well, the pay increment in July would cover maybe 3 lessons, but perhaps I'll use that to blanja some shits instead (=

building up karma

2007-06-08T05:51:00.000+08:00

I'm slowing increasing my karma! Or rather, my karma is slowly increasing. In the beginning, my toto tickets wouldn't even have 1 number that opened. After seeing my tenacity at continuing to buy, my karma built up and now, I can get up to 2 numbers + the extra. Maybe in 2 weeks time, I can win $20! Quickpick ftw!

I need to start climbing out of this shellscrap called "boring" and get a life. My bike helmet shall lead the way!

disowned by 2B

2007-06-01T18:39:00.000+08:00

I just got disowned.. anybody wants to adopt me? pretty please?
On the bright side, I don't have to attend university anymore since no one's paying for it (=

Does anyone know where to get stylo helmets? I think I'd prefer to use my own helmet during practical lessons..

国际书展

2007-05-31T19:24:00.000+08:00

今天我去 Suntec 的国际书展，买了三本书。《白色巨塔》还有张小娴的《收不起的思念》和《我们都是公主》。这次残了，Peter Senge 的《The Fifth Discipline》我都还没读完，现在又买回更有吸引力的小说，唉，下个拜五大概无法谈谈系统学习对公司及团体的作用。张小娴的书又那么好读，每个故事只占一面半。。。

minutes on a weekend

2007-05-27T19:17:00.000+08:00

T_T I ended up writing my minutes on a saturday morning, which was totally a mood killer. You could tell that I was still in a minutes writing mood because I was still typing in past tense even though it no longer made sense to do so.

After lunch I just went mad because I worked on a weekend )= Siao liao.. crazily went to endure 80 laps of pure torture. Today did another 40 laps and I think I became 1% darker. I'm serious. I think I'm serious.

On an unrelated note, my dad has given up hope on buying a legacy! *applause* He's waiting for the EVO X to hit our shore (= Reason being the higher spec legacy only comes in manual xD How lucky for me, if everything works out I can say I've driven an EVO before I turn into a creature known as an "adult". wahahahahaa

i give up on diving... (till i turn 21)

2007-05-22T19:04:00.000+08:00

I have exhausted all avenues of reasoning with my dad. If I need his signature to go ahead with the diving course, it's just not going to happen. I practically threw everything at him, including not wanting to disturb university studies, won't dive after the lesson until I turn 21, will pay tons more to get a personal instructor. None of it worked.. I suppose I'll just have to find other ways of "killing" myself. Luckily I don't need his consent to get class 2A/2B/2 licence. But the motorbike lessons are going to cost so so much more than the diving course.. next month go Hong Kong cannot buy back anything already.. Must quickly ask mingU to introduce me to sugar mummies.

My daddy's adamant that since his friend found out all the things that could go wrong during a dive in a year long course, I will experience them for sure.. aie.. Some times, I feel that's the problem with some doctors, or highly educated people for that matter. They tend to dismiss all communication that comes from someone with an "inferior" level of "intellect". It's like I say this, but daddy says that his friend says that and he's smarter than you because he's a doctor who studied that, so you are definitely mistaken.

It's kinda not so nice when your daddy treats you like that.. I still remember when he found out I wasn't going to take physics in JC hahaa! He acted like I had no future because I wasn't doing triple science.. it was only after my aunts waxed lyrical about the finance industry that he got (slightly) excited.

Aiyar.. he should let me go diving lah.. after all, I think I'm already very well-behaved for a 19yo boy.. which other 19yo boy will drive below the speed limit in his car? He's just afraid for me to do things that he hasn't done, which is dumb because he will have to vicariously step out of his comfort zone too in terms of worrying. Call it over-protective if you will, but that over-protectiveness isn't manifesting into a car for me, who can't walk very far..

But at the end of all this, I can't deny that he's done a darn well job parenting. Arguably, the best measure of parenting success is how their children turn out and since I didn't end up taking (illegal) drugs, smoking, tattooed, pierced and still churned out decent grades (but atrocious, he probably did something right along the way. Yea. That's right.

i have hypertension

2007-05-16T12:34:00.000+08:00

I'm gonna die YOUNG!! Just look at that! Blood pressure of 154! Wahahahahahaa, wait till Cheok sees that! Must have something to do with my blood cholesterol levels rising over the past 2 years.. good good now I can tell my dad to let me go learn diving since I'm going to die young anyway. Maybe it was the botak jones outings. Aiyar.. like that exercise for what? Exercise still end up like this hahaa

But thankfully, the 2nd attempt wasn't so bad. Looks like I can live for another 10 or 11 years at this rate. (= well done, for jj never dies!

petrol consumption =S

2007-05-16T05:07:00.000+08:00

We stopped by Mobil to feed the car this morning and the hungry boy gobbled up 29 litres of petrol. After travelling 230km since the last fill-up, this puts his consumption at 7.9km/L. aie.. that's not a lot better than an rx-8. Imagine what a legacy GTturbo would eat for every meal.. (speaking of which, I saw one at Mobil last night! It looks sooooooo cool. My dad should hurry and buy one.)

And I'm driving him so cautiously! When I drive him, I usually don't rev enough for his turbo to kick in, so my limit's about 2.4-2.5k rpm. On expressways I'm almost like a road-hog so that I don't have to brake unnecessarily and lose momentum. I can almost bet that my dad goes to 7k rpm daily; there's just no other explanation for his huge appetite.

The state of things

2007-05-10T18:58:00.000+08:00

I feel sad. Chorale got silver for SYF, probably the first non gold in the last decade. On the other hand, Kwei's choirs seem to be lapping up all the Gold with honours. Hope nothing happens to Toh, since CJ got silver too )=

Right about now, they should go overseas to some obscure competition and get a bigger gold award to make up for it! At least that's what happened last time (= But minus the brian part.

记忆（Last Forever）_韩雪/中孝介

2007-05-10T16:17:00.000+08:00

歌曲名:记忆（Last Forever）_韩雪/中孝介
歌手:中孝介
歌曲名：记忆-Last Forever- feat.韩雪
演唱者：韩雪、中孝介
歌词编辑：:护雪使者

抬头仰望这片蓝天
此时此刻闭上双眼
熟悉的声音仿佛听见
你人在何方
傍晚海上风平浪静
怀念的面孔
浮现在水面
想起你
对我而言何等珍贵
你却已不在身边
远在天边（这份思念）
那一份回忆（连成一线）
传达出去
跨越无限
边界
La La Love is Forever
就算我们分开在两个世界
Your smile， yes I remember
I can't feel you in my heart
Stay together
与你共度那些岁月
从未有过担心畏怯
幸福的时光没有终点
我深信不变
很久以前的我俩
定下的承诺
在海角消失的
梦想的中途
你我之间相隔遥远
这份痛多么纠结
泪水（记忆涌现）
渗满的（化作泪水）
记忆
变成思念
爱恋
La La Love is Forever
不会褪色的思念
Your smile， yes I remember
I can't feel you in my heart
Stay together
盼你永远笑容永远不变
洋溢着幸福
Wish on a star
Wherever you are

La La Love is Forever
就算我们分开在两个世界
Your smile， yes I remember
I can't feel you in my heart
Stay together
Never forget you
Last forever

doodle

2007-05-09T09:30:00.000+08:00

Hahaa, here's the thing I doodled during group interview.

brain age tests

2007-05-01T21:34:00.000+08:00

Go test your brain age!

http://flashfabrica.com/f_learning/brain/brain.html
Enter your age, then click on the words below the box to start.
You have to click the numbers in ascending order.
http://flashfabrica.com/f_learning/brain2/brain02.html
Choose the correct operator!
http://flashfabrica.com/f_game/keisan.html
aaah this one is tough! Have to select the type of questions first I think, then choose how many questions you want.

retainers.. wearing them again hurts!

2007-04-29T22:54:00.000+08:00

Moral of the story: your retainers are your life.

--------------------------------------
^jinjie~ says:
har?
kpkpkp! says:
hello?
john says:
yes?
^jinjie~ says:
huh?
kpkpkp! says:
wassup
^jinjie~ says:
wouldn't it be nice if the world was cadbury
john says:
?
^jinjie~ says:
i want to ask about retainers
^jinjie~ says:
john.. please answer the question hor
kpkpkp! says:
haha what abt it
^jinjie~ says:
you know when you wear braces.. the back molars got a metal ring right?
john says:
yes
^jinjie~ says:
then when you take off the braces.. the gap remains there
john says:
my upper set broke
john says:
yes the gap remains
john says:
thats why i need to floss
john says:
and i havent made the other pair ye
^jinjie~ says:
then when i started wearing retainers only at night.. the gap closed
john says:
so its going out of shape
john says:
mine hasnt closed
^jinjie~ says:
then when i decided to wear it for a full weekend.. can feel the molars being pushed back
^jinjie~ says:
so.. are we supposed to let the gap close?
kpkpkp! says:
mine was really tight when e metal ring was there alr. it didnt need to close!
^jinjie~ says:
no no.. when you remove the ring there will be a gap
john says:
there is still a gap for mine
^jinjie~ says:
but my gap closed when i wore retainers less!
^jinjie~ says:
is that supposed to happen?
kpkpkp! says:
jj u shld consult ur dentist
^jinjie~ says:
coz it really hurts when i wear retainers for a full weekend now
kpkpkp! says:
yeah it iwll since its moving out of e shape of e retainer
^jinjie~ says:
and orthodontist so expensive... see one time i need to work for one week leh
kpkpkp! says:
give a call to him?
john says:
how long will you be wearing retainers fro?
john says:
kp?
^jinjie~ says:
it's so funny though.. i wore for a full day, then when i flossed.. it's like OH the gap is suddenly back
john says:
oh shit i wore it for less than a yr
kpkpkp! says:
for half a yr it will be 24/7
john says:
its going out. great, im having ocd
kpkpkp! says:
after tt i think its only at night
^jinjie~ says:
i wore mine 24/7 for a year
^jinjie~ says:
and even then i didn't feel safe
john says:
and you're still wearing them?
kpkpkp! says:
hahaha maybe ur gums are really flexible
^jinjie~ says:
john you totally stopped wearing?
john says:
my upper set broke
john says:
for 2 wks
^jinjie~ says:
err..
john says:
i havent gotten down to making a new set
kpkpkp! says:
err u better
^jinjie~ says:
that's too late to save..
^jinjie~ says:
2 hours is enough to shift from the original retainer position
john says:
oh really? my orthodontist is on maternity leave
john says:
what can i do?
kpkpkp! says:
yeah better safe than never
kpkpkp! says:
oh man
^jinjie~ says:
you can sue..
kpkpkp! says:
consult another orthodontist
john says:
okay thanks guys for the encouragement.
kpkpkp! says:
i mean surely she has someone to replace?
john says:
that my teeth will go out of shape

photo at joseph's house

2007-04-27T10:30:00.000+08:00

Woo hoo, one of my favourite photos of all time!
sgt, yuna, alinda, me & jeremy.

looking for free MRI

2007-04-26T10:45:00.000+08:00

Hey medical student from NUS.

If you have, as kp put it, been widely discussing my x-rays, please have a heart and schedule me a free MRI. I'd like to see the condition of the soft tissue in that area.

Thanks..

feisty fawn!

2007-04-22T10:10:00.001+08:00

I've installed feisty fawn on my PC! If I can make it play music and burn DVDs, then I'll never need to return to windows again! The installation was so quick! Painless compared to installing windows. And everything literally works out of the box. Hmm, then again, "everything" to me just means firefox.. hahaa oooh and can play videos right away! No need to install codecs!

LCD TV

2007-04-14T21:08:00.000+08:00

The LCD TV has become part of my room's furniture!! Muahahahahahahahhaaa!

2007-04-14T00:21:00.000+08:00

This was taken on 10 June 2004! Really bad x-ray.

And this was taken umm.. 7 April 2007! There's supposed to be some improvement, so I think that's good!

nutrifirst delivery

2007-04-13T23:37:00.000+08:00

nutritionpark was out of stock for a lot of things, so I went searching for an alternative online shop and found nutrifirst.net! They do things a little differently from nutritionpark.. For a start, they force you to become a VIP member because if you don't pay the $10 cover charge, you have to pay their listed price PLUS 15%. But to be fair.. they give you a $8 water bottle, $5 towel and $2.50 protein powder packet for that $10. Oh, not to forget a membership card too! Mine says i'm the 1188th member, it's quite a nice number! I hope they don't give 1188 to everyone though, I kind of like that number since it consists of 2 pairs.

But the real funny part was the delivery! They really do live up to their promise; I submitted my order at around 2200 on tuesday (just barely made it) and selected the earliest timeslot on wednesday for delivery. And it came! A lady who drove a colt plus in the same gunmetal grey colour as my mum's colt plus showed up! And tiger didn't bark because he thought it was my mum's car! That's so cute of her! Usually she can detect me from a road away and bark non-stop coz I don't smell the same all the time.

lcd screen in windows

2007-04-10T19:48:00.000+08:00

I finally found out what the windows in the Bukit Panjang LRT are made of! They have an LCD layer that when not electrically stimulated, appears opaque. But when a current is applied, the crystals disperse, making the panel transparent. See, you do learn from watching MTV's Pimp My Ride.

ipoh / penang to clean graves

2007-04-08T23:02:00.000+08:00

Returned from Ipoh today. Somewhere among all the egg tarts, dim sum, Mr Bean, Penanag, graves and more food, I bought a STi and an Evo! After mulling over it for an afternoon, it was better to get rid of the cash before spending even more time looking for models here.. They're really detailed! The STi even has the blue fabric on the doors! RM$389 each, STi had 10% off while the Evo had 25% off.

can it get any worse

2007-03-29T20:14:00.000+08:00

I'm honestly impressed with how bad things can turn out to be. This can only lead to interesting days at work..

ram for laptop

2007-03-26T20:46:00.000+08:00

I did the best thing to my laptop yesterday - balloon the RAM to 1 gig. I really should have done it sooner.. now it doesn't lag at all. Totally worth the monetary investment.

infra treat for jimmy and joycelyn

2007-03-23T21:46:00.000+08:00

Infra treated Jimmy and Joycelyn to lunch buffet at Sakura! The one near NUS.

20 laps

2007-03-22T22:32:00.000+08:00

I did it I did it I did it! without a break in between too!

brightsparks for NIS submitted!!

2007-03-18T21:56:00.000+08:00

Yes! Brightsparks finally submitted! Now I can get back to my life and not anguish over it any more. It's out of my life and I'll never ever associate with it ever again unless some stroke of coincidence occurs (=

good class bungalows

2007-03-18T19:54:00.000+08:00

Went for a drive around the Ford road area and I must say, the bungalows there are incredible. Especially those that are on a slope. There was this one with a huge circular house supported on 3 stories high of pillars with a huge swimming pool below. It's almost like there was too much space to know what to do with it. It's no wonder that these good class bungalows cost so much.. and seriously, living in one of them mandates either a car for every person living there or the hiring of a chauffeur.

Alright, back to waiting for my goals in life to hit me while listening to phantom on channel 5.

end fo 3 weeks of hell

2007-03-17T10:55:00.000+08:00

And so the past three weeks, which have been reminiscent of hell, have finally passed. From the retreat to moving to seminar-week to a record-breaking meeting, there was a short breather which we happily took at the end of it.

Up next: potential all-nighters in preparation for migration. Man, I'm starting to love this. And a vast increase in the scope of my other project.

But before that, brightsparks calls!

brightsparks

2007-03-13T22:08:00.000+08:00

I have 10 days left to complete the brightsparks application form for the NIS!! Gosh and they ask such hard questions.. what are your goals in life and how do you plan to achieve them? I suppose they'd ignore my application completely if I wrote something close to the truth like "laze around in the sun next to a pool of water. Can do now actually.. just get me out of NS". On the other hand, if I wrote something like "world peace!! through the integration of the human race made possible by the diffusion of IT globally!" it'd probably turn them off. Heck. I'm going to write the 2nd one. Don't you DARE copy my idea hahaa!

On a brighter note, the 2 hell weeks are about done.

And I've given up weights (heavy) in favour of learning to swim again!! Yippee! I can somehow manage 10 laps again. Now if I can figure out how to make my legs work, I can cut down on the ridiculously long time it takes to do one lap! =D

On future careers, investment banking seems totally scary. I'm halfway through "Monkey BUsiness: Swinging through the Wall Street Jungle" by John Rolfe and Peter Troob. The IBanking scene is like all the worst parts of a certain current employer's management taken out, magnified and exploded onto the minions 100 times. It almost makes me feel glad that I'm travelling to where I'm headed to for work tomorrow, instead of some bank's office on the top floor of a random skyscraper in a crowded area of Singapore. Oops, this could bite me in future if I ever decide to try for that. No harm, I guess. I bet no one will read this d=

car photos

2007-03-09T23:37:00.000+08:00

I finally finally got my photos out of the office laptop! Not through illegal means, I assure you. These are photos taken on Robin's D40 when I took it home for the weekend after a week of seminars. This is the machine that can't seem to interest my dad as much as it used too.. sigh.

look! so many people thought those were Brembos! I had no idea what brembos were! but now I now those are subaru brakes.. not brembos.

nicky on stomp

2007-02-25T22:39:00.000+08:00

http://singaporeseen.stomp.com.sg/viewPost2052.aspx

CNY eve

2007-02-20T14:42:00.000+08:00

My family had reunion dinner at SGCC. The food was good, but my stomach just rejected the 鱼生. Then my younger sister asked to keep the merlion statue made of salt that came with the 年糕 -___-

kayak to frog island

2007-02-11T14:29:00.000+08:00

I went kayaking on today!! Started at PRSSC, headed to some beach underneath the nice cliff, then to Changi village for lunch, then to frog island and then back to PRSSC. I'm fucking lousy after so long of not kayaking.. didn't dare to take dancer in the end, went with a slalom, which was a good thing because I could barely fit into the slalom. And I pretty much died on the return journey, arms and thighs were aching so much. Pretty pictures from frog island below!!

A beach that ends! frog island is REALLY tiny

rocks are the staple here. and the whole beach is strewn with seashells

more rocks..

even more rocks!

at frog island, we chanced upon some old men that the other kayakers knew. they went fishing for mussels! here they are! so many of them!

the pre-requisite vandalism that has to afflict every place of attraction hahaa

xavier scaling the big rock using a rope! i can't do that!

the rock in front is smiling! goodness!

heheh, nice place to hide from enemy fire.

More photos from louis' camera.

More photos from derek's camera.

visit to RJ to see chorale camp

2007-02-02T23:53:00.000+08:00

I went back to RJ today! Originally to see the chorale camp, but ended up as a tour of the RJ and RI campus. We stumbled upon the chorale people having dinner at the smaller canteen, saw Gerard and Chin Yi and Zhao Feng and a few more whose names I can't remember -__- It was really silly! Then soh ee met one of her juniors and the both of them were screaming their heads off hahaa! A bit sad though, since we effectively knew no one in chorale and no one in chorale knew us. The 2 teachers couldn't care less about us either.. Then they started on some treasure hunt in which they moved around in teams of 10(?), looking for pieces of paper taped to the weirdest places (such as on top of the hot water dispenser). The pieces of paper bore clues, which were very obviously written by some ex-RGS girl because only they can take a reasonably-sized piece of paper and scribble on it in minute font, completely ignoring the remaining space. Ruth was running around with a watergun and it was really silly because I think she chased a group into the toilet just so she could shoot at them. huh?? I thought the whole point was to run and shoot them rightaway, but I could be wrong. I'm not supposed to have rifle-combat knowledge of any sort anyway. d=

So we basically toured RJ and discovered that the classrooms are now air-conditioned! That's so bloody unfair! I remember dying of stuffiness in the mid-summer heat of May's afternoon, post-lunch GP lessons. And the sports hall in which I flunked my maths and chemistry papers is now adorned with, on one of its large four walls, huge blacks letters spelling out "Singapore Pools Indoor Sports Hall". How absolutely wonderful is that! I just donated $2 to the sports hall with my failed bid to increase my personal wealth by means of a windfall, literally!

The RJ lift still screws up!

The weirdest instrument known to mankind, pictured here to the right of a chinese instrument

RI presented the most shocking changes! The junior block field, which was essentially a wasteland as far as I was concerned, has now sprouted a 5-7 storey building and a lot of grass. The junior block now has a second storey linkway to the main RI building, while the RI canteen is gone. In its place is a 3 level CCA block, filled with tiny rooms meant for CCAs. I wonder why anyone would want such rooms, but heck. Then next to the CCA block is the canteen, which has Popular bookstore half a floor down and a LT on top of it. The track/field is gone, replaced with synthetic material so make a softball pitch? and a rugby pitch. There's really a lot more space without the old track..

And RI's road system is fucked up! Half the time I was driving against the direction arrows! But not as fucked up as my legs.. after touring RJ for 1.5 hours.. my foot just cramped when I wanted to drive off. The arch of my foot cramped.. that's just silly. That area isn't supposed to have any muscles right? How can it cramp? It's not supposed to be crampable!

no car..

2007-01-28T23:26:00.000+08:00

Saturday came and went by.. yesterday. And there was no new car sitting in the driveway. Someone like me will have to wait till after night duty before getting a chance to see it. If it were me, I'd tell them to screw the polishing and give me the car first. It'd better be one hell of a godly shine to make it worth the delay *grumbles*

And tomorrow's night duty night! How exciting! I'm so absolutely looking forward to it! Can you feel the enthusiasm in my tone already?! ahhhhhhhhhhhhh noooooooooo why me

mediacorp ignored me

2007-01-28T23:22:00.000+08:00

Tomorrow's the deadline that i originally set for Mediacorp! Gosh, I still bother to capitalise the "M" in Mediacorp! Anyway, I checked my email again to see if they replied again after that, but the only message was an out-of-office autoreply:

-----------------------------------
Thank you for your email. MOBTV Helpdesk will not be available due to the Festive Season holidays. Our helpdesk will reply to you at the shortest available time once we are back

Best Wishes,
The MOBTV Team
-----------------------------------

Looks like I'll have to send them a reminder tomorrow. Seems like they totally forgot about it.. oh well. But I won't (= I wonder if writing "Mediacorp sucks!" on many postcards in huge, bold letters and mailing them all over the world would work. I'll have to bet on gossipy postmen for that one!

weird parenting style

2007-01-26T08:45:00.000+08:00

I think I have weird parents. They never compliment me for anything.. even when I do something good. In fact, I always get scolded for the smallest things, especially when I'm driving. But in front of others, they show off their children's abilities like there's no tommorow...

MMI & NUS

2007-01-24T14:33:00.000+08:00

I went to MMI today to see the MO! -.- It's in the really spanking new DSO building that is surrounded by the squatter settlement of science/medicine canteens and lecture theatres. I won't say what I did at MMI in case that turns out to be classified and something that I shouldn't reveal online -.-" but I finished the MMI part right about when the medicine students finished their lecture.

So I managed to see derek choong, joel louis, kaiping, johnlee, yilin, jia lun, woon yang, stephhii, shaun lum, grace chew! So many of them! But just before that I was at the canteen and it was the freakiest canteen I've ever been in: people where either eating or studying. There was no one talking. How abnormal!!

up the betamethasone dosage again

2007-01-18T22:52:00.000+08:00

Haiz.. I think I'm developing resistance to the drug. Last time, taking it thrice a day would cause miracles to happen.. now it takes a week to return things to a decent condition. So I have to take higher dose for a longer period of time now. Not like that's going to matter anyway since everything will just come back when the dose is dropped. It's been 3 months! I'll need to be on this forever at this rate.. Damn. I'm really born defective. This, my leg and really horrid eyesight. And some say stupidity's included as well.

On a brighter note, I'm going kayaking this sunday! My dad's going to kill me coz he thinks that seawater will worsen my condition, but it's really the opposite! I feel so much smoother after seawater. I think the saltwater is isotonic to the skin or something, so the skin doesn't dry up versus if I stayed in air all the time.

And tomorrow might be the last time I drive a volvo! The car might be taken in by the second hand car dealer next monday or tuesday or earlier and I don't think I'll ever earn enough to afford my own volvo so, T.T I'll miss you!

big big phone bill from bangkok

2007-01-12T19:27:00.000+08:00

OWWWW! My roaming charges from Bangkok was $156.94 alone. *pain*

aie.. have to knock another huge hole in my bank account.. liddat I'll never save enough to buy anything that I want.. knn lah then at monday's concert also burn a huge hole already buying the DVD and CDs. Then still need to buy protein for next month T_T

And after all that, still got the pledge to fulfil. *dies*

the real group

2007-01-12T19:23:00.000+08:00

I went to watch The Real Group on 8th Jan! With thenise, yongping and bernie. They are just absolutely wonderful!!

The opening act was by umm.. some local acapella group. It was a shock seeing them come up at first, since we were expecting Swedish looking people but those looked pretty darn asian. Well, at least the real deal appeared soon enough.. almost made me think that they hired the local group to help them stall for time backstage -.-

The main VP guy is such a bastard! He was doing the intro for the next song, so he started by comparing the differences between a monkey baby and a human baby - monkey is physically superior. But by the age of 3, the human baby learns to talk in a language and this leaves the monkey in the dust. Then he went on and on about how important and beautiful language is, the words and etc etc. Now he mentions nonchalently, that his friend Peder (the old balding guy) had written a song without words. We laugh! And he continues! By saying that he would never dare insult his friend for that song -.-

Anyway, their CDs totally sold out.. even the M-Pact one. It's scary though.. they brought in 5 or 6 different albums PLUS DVD and all of that managed to sell out from the looks of sales during the intermission and post-concert frenzy. It's a pity that their choral piece, which was an encore, received a significantly smaller applause. Not their fault I guess, it's already hard to do a choral piece under normal rehearsal conditions and it really looked as if they haven't sung that choral style for some time. But it's probably due to the audience not appreciating choral tones as much.. aiez.

my reply to mediacorp reply 01

2006-12-30T01:19:00.000+08:00

Here's my reply to Mediacorp's offer of a 6 months voucher.

-----------------------------------
1. Thank you so much for terminating the subscription. Mediacorp is not a dismissive organisation; the proof being the same-day response to my email. In return, I will lay out certain points of my dissatisfaction and why your voucher does not and will not resolve this issue. I do not want the voucher. Please try to come up with better alternative solutions, if you wish to continue rejecting any notion of a refund, which is precisely what I'm after.

2. I am extremely dissatisfied with your explanation of the autorenewal. The videos that I downloaded stopped working after the 1st month expired. If there was a proper autorenewal, the DRM licences should not have stopped working. It's not like I was watching a really old programme anyway; I was watching an on-going drama serial at that time. Therefore, you calling this process "autorenewal" is illogical. To me, it's autorenewal for charging me, but forgetting the part about making my downloaded videoes work again. Until you can explain this, do not expect me to even consider accepting the voucher.

3. Also, please do not insult me by offering a voucher. Do you actually think that I am so naive to accept the 6 month voucher? What happens after 6 months? Will you conveniently forget to "autorenew" the licences again and still charge me for it? Any assurance you try to give me that this will not happen again is absolutely useless because it has already happened once. My trust in mobtv.sg has been betrayed utterly and a 6 months voucher is not a consolation, but a smack to my face.

4. I quote your email, "As MOBTV does not offer pro-rata refund".
If I'm speaking the same english language as you are, pro-rata refers to proportion. "Pro-rata refund" would refer to say, 10 days worth of MOBTV access if I only used 20 days for that month's subscription. In my case, I'm not asking for a pro-rata refund; I'm asking for a full refund of the monthly subscription, multiplied by five. Therefore, your policy does not apply to this and you can proceed to refund me what I've asked for.

5. I quote your email again, "As MOBTV does not offer pro-rata refund, we encourage you to continue using MOBTV."
You said "encourage", but your email actually leaves me with no other option but to accept the voucher and allow you to discreetly close the book on this incident. Let me assure you that I will not let this incident die quietly just because you decide to cite some random policy and offer a voucher which I find to be nothing short of comtemptible.

6. I reiterate, my aim is to get a monetary refund. In case our dictionaries differ in definition again, monetary refund here refers to money in the form of cash or cheque or any other liquid asset. Anything related to mobtv.sg as restitution is merely a further insult to me. Please assist in offering me a refund. If MOBTV does not offer pro-rata refund, then change that policy. Or add exceptions to it if need be; be creative in getting around the policy as I have shown you in paragraph 4 above.

7. Mediacorp has shown itself to be flexible in adapting to real world challenges, such as merging some operations with SPH to curb losses and introducing ChannelNewsAsia to gain a foothold in the region's television market. There is therefore no reason why it should continue to be rigid regarding things like refunds, refusing to budge from their preset FAQ-answer-scheme.

8. Once again, I thank you for your reply and eagerly await your next email.
-----------------------------------

mediacorp's reply 01

2006-12-30T01:17:00.000+08:00

Mediacorp replied!!

-----------------------------------
Hi,

Your original subscription to MOBTV was autorenewal basis and was indicated when you first sign up. However, I have terminated your autorenewal and your current subscription is from 11/12/06 till 10/01/07. You will not be billed again after 10/01/07. As MOBTV does not offer pro-rata refund, we encourage you to continue using MOBTV.
In return we can provide you a free voucher for 6 months MOBTV viewing to compensate for the other 5 months when you did not use MOBTV.

Regards,
MOBTV
-----------------------------------

beware of mediacorp mobtv.sg

2006-12-29T14:38:00.001+08:00

Everyone, please beware of mobtv.sg.
I signed up for a one-month mobtv.sg package in July 2006 and have been billed monthly since then. I don't know what dictionary mediacorp uses, but one month to me = 30 or 31 days. Somehow, mediacorp's definition of one month = 1 month X infinity.

I'm trying to get my money back now, just emailed them:

-----------------------------------
Good afternoon,

I am writing to you today because I have just realised that Mediacorp has been charging me for mobtv, which I did not request for.

Here's what happened:
I signed up for the 1 month subscription on 9th July 2006. I'm very confident that I selected the one month package as I merely wanted to test out mobtv.sg. A month later, the subscription expired and all the video files I downloaded did not work anymore as the DRM certificate was no longer valid.

As such, I assumed that was the end of my mobtv.sg affair. However, I just checked my bank statements and I've been charged for mobtv.sg access every single month since then. So effectively, I've been paying for mobtv, but not being able to watch any of the videos.

Here's what I want done:
1. Cancel my subscription to mobtv.
I should not have one right now since I only signed up for one month of it and I most certainly do not want to continue with it ever.
My username is:

2. Get a refund for 5 months of mobtv charges (aug-dec 2006). Or 6 months if I'm charged in Jan'07 as well.
I hardly think this is unreasonable as Mediacorp led me to believe that I no longer had any valid subscriptions to mobtv.sg when my video DRM licences stopped working and it's not like I actually used any of the mobtv.sg services for these 5 months. If you are unable to refund me for whatever reason, please put me in touch with the person who disapproved of it and let him/her engage me personally.

Proposed deadline for action
Seeing how Mediacorp is such an efficient business entity, I would not expect this issue to drag beyond a month. I hope to have all of this resolved by 29 January 2007. After which if there has not been any satisfactory response from Mediacorp, I will be forced to explore other means of restitution.

-----------------------------------

It was weird when I tried to call them though. I had to dig through the other mediacorp websites to get a phone number since the mobtv.sg didn't have any phone numbers on them. Then was given another phone number, which a guy picked up and said that the billing department wasn't back yet and to try again at 2pm. After 2pm, I called, this woman picked up and told me to email only.. You would think that from the first call, I would be able to speak to someone IN the billing department but no... Plus when I asked that woman if she was from the billing department, she actually had the audacity to ask me to email them. I mean, what kind of an answer is that? I'm expecting "yes" or "no" and she throws another question at me? Talk about trashy customer service and here's a prime example of one. At least she bothered to take down my details, just that now I'm wondering if she threw that slip of paper into the wastepaper basket or actually went to do something about my email.

Current monetary loss from this stands at 5 X $10.90, could rise to 6 X $10.90 if they still bill me in January 2007. Where are all my lawyer friends!! Why are they still studying!!

chorale gathering!

2006-12-29T11:53:00.000+08:00

There was a chorale gathering! We had 6 people! John & KP gave me the master baiter shirt from NUM while ade gave a box of choclates which are so yummy and fattening >.< Damn, as if I didn't look fat enough already in that photo *grumbles*

Anyway, they ate at this Japanese restaurant next to Billy Bombers in Marina Square.

chorale gathering 12/12/06

2006-12-22T21:37:00.001+08:00

Had a small gathering with the chorale pple tonight. It was shiok to see everyone again! Those guys ate at the holland V market then went to Settlers' to show me how smart they were. Damnit..

this is a cool picture! i don't know how I took it!

sitex

2006-12-01T22:11:00.000+08:00

Boss was so nice today! After the meeting at gombak, he let us go to SITEX if we didn't have work! Somemore I took his car there and deserted him after we found out that expo carpark was closed because it was too full.

I didn't buy anything at SITEX! I'm so proud of that man~ I bet everyone who talked to me was damn annoyed hahaa! No choice lah.. everything there still so expensive, though the price of blank DVDs hit a new low of 38 cents. What I need is a portable video player, one that can play anime, so that I'd actually not be bored when I start doing counter duty this month.

But the stuff at the John Little sale was so much more appealing! I nearly went mad at the crayola section. They have a crayon case in the shape of a shark's fin! How AWESOME is that?

japan trip! to kobe, kyoto and osaka (photos)

2006-11-26T21:32:00.001+08:00

Woo hoo went to Japan from 19-22 Nov!!
19 Nov 2006 (Sunday)
The plane landed in Kansai airport, which is on one of the two man-made islands of Kobe. That makes it the second most expensive airport in Japan, after Tokyo's Narita Airport.

The first place we went was to some suspension bridge that spans 3.9km and is the longest such bridge in Japan. It's not a bad place; really windy and nice to stare at from underneath. There's also a Sun Yat-Sen memorial cottage on one end of the bridge.

the bridge! and i think that's its name

entrance to the sun yat sen cottage. not free entry.

some other building nearby which looks not bad too!

map of the bridge area.

Then we left the bridge and headed to a sake factory! The "white-crane" tsuki-haru brand of sake. They showed a video of their history and how sake is made, the usual stuff that goes into videos produced by food companies. Then we had sake tasting! Not the best sake ever as it was rather bitter, but it really warmed me up. A pity the cups were sooooo small! I wanted to buy sake back, but there were so many different types to choose from and some of them even had the same name but different prices! So ended up not buying any. But it's really interesting; the factory makes sake jelly as well! I wonder if you can get drunk on that..

empty display barrels of sake

a big barrel used for dunno-what

postcards?

oops.. luckily i only tried 3 cups

the sake display building! and somewhat factory too, we're told

not sure what this means, but the STOP! is cool!

the tour bus looks nice next to the tree!

After that, I think we went shopping/lunch. The restaurant where we ate at couldn't accomodate all of us, so we split up into 2 groups. I went shopping first! Walked around the area (don't even know where I was), hit the train station and realised there was this long stretch of shops below the railway tracks! And that would have been shopping heaven if I actually had enough yen on me! That place is really incredible.. kind of like Bugis Village, but air-conditioned and with much more shops. There are shops that sell only boots! How cool is that?! And the boots aren't unreasonably priced either.. around 5000 yen only. I roamed around the area and found that I really like the disorder that's present in their buildings. Everything is so cluttered and not planned (=

this is the beef restaurant i stumbled across. looks waaay better than the one we eventually ate at

a temple in the middle of all the shops and buildings!

this is the shopping stretch under the railway track! so it goes on and on for a really long distance and they sell all the usual clothes/jackets/boots/accessories that'd make any gal happy

this is where we had our lunch!
lunch (=

some pub that's below the street level has a really nice sign!

After lunch we headed to the ropeway station at dunno-what mountain.

the view from the cable car! it's so high up if i fell down i'd take a pretty loooong time to hit the ground

At the top of the ropeway was this little village of sorts. It tries to look medieval = tourist spot = souvenir shop is really expensive.

Going further in, there's a museum of sorts! They have some chemist's set and a ncie doll house display!

Behind the museum was this nice garden! Which had a shed that looked absolutely lovely from the outside!

a trail into the mysterious forest!

some plants that are grown in the village..

the must-have spouting-water statue..

view of the Kobe station(for trains?) from the bottom of the ropeway.

Next up was a visit to some pearl boutique. A sales manager there showed us the technique used to create near-perfect pearls and even opened a live oyster and ripped it out to show us its individual parts. It's interesting, takes 3 years for the oyster to grow old enough, then another 3 years for it to make the pearl. And they can control the colour of the pearl as well! I wonder if the oyster can be re-used at the 6th year though..

doll dolled up in many pearls!

these are the crowns that belong on my head muahahahahahaa

We then had dinner at some steamboat buffet place, which was awesome because there was free flow of beef! And it was lean beef as well, so no guilt! And sake was merrily dished out (=

And finally, hotel! Rest for the night.

view from the hotel room

20 Nov 2006 (monday)
In the morning the doctors all had their conference, so they rest of us made our way to Harbourland. Our hotel was on a man-made island, so we look an "LRT" monorail to the JR line and took that to the Harbourland station. It was free and easy, so I took the ferris wheel. Put a 10k yen note into the machine and it churned out 9,400 yen as change! Thereafter I reasoned that the clothes would not work in Singapore's weather so I spent all my time walking around the area which was fun! I think I just like to walk around and see how life in another area is like. The sun was shining brightly too, so I didn't have to put on any jacket. There are policemen at every street corner and all of them are armed with the anti-riot shield! I wonder why that is so..

some hotel on the other side.

a lighthouse?

hourglass with no sand..

pony ride!

this plant looks so wrong in the chilly weather

a bridge of sorts.. don't know what's its significance

a round shiny thing! wonder what it stands for. someone translate the notice below!

Then I wandered around that area and found that they have no concept of urban planning at all. Seriously, who would put the MOE of that area right smack between shopping centres which form part of the tourist area and all this is next to the port. Then next door, there's a condo block and a primary school.

the primary school! the kids were having PE when I walked past.

the MOE of Kobe!

This extremely cheapo bento was bought from the basement of Hankyu department store. I really like the clothes in there but most of it is imported so it's ridiculously expensive!

also bought cheesecake for the office! but it had german words all over it, so not sure how japanese it really is..

In the afternoon I followed a trio of doctors to what was reputed as the electronics sector of Kobe. The stuff there wasn't exactly groundbreaking or anything, more like the local version of Harvey Norman. But the handphone shops there are insane! There were racks like those you put magazines on, only that handphones were there in place of the magazines! I was in a flipping phone frenzy! Pure heaven for me ^^

Eventually we ran out of time to shop, ahem, window shop and headed back to the hotel for our dinner buffet which had pasta, some noodle thing, fresh salmon, green & brown curry, beef, whiskey, white & red wine, green tea cake, fruits. Really nice!

21st Nov 2006 (tuesday)
We went to the Kiyomizu temple (清水寺) in Kyoto! There's a side track to the earth god temple where there are 2 rocks about 20 metres apart and if you can walk from one rock to the other with our eyes shut, it means your love life will be straightforward. Works as a test for fidelity in couples too, apparently!

a camera hanging from a hot air balloon! but it was swinging and rotating too wildly for any decent shots to be taken I think?

explanation of how the love stones work.

this is the 3 springs that you are supposed to choose 2 to drink from. there's one for wealth, health and fortune. not sure what's the difference between the 1st and 3rd -__-

a traditional looking monk?

lunch was tempura at some small hotel's restaurant which was damn anxious to serve us and get us out as they had other groups coming in for lunch I think.

We then went to some shopping centre to watch a kimono show. A complete kimono has 12 layers, but this includes layers such as the belt. Still, if the poor girl needs to relieve herself, it's going to be real troublesome..

After watching the Kimono show, we headed over to the Togetsu bridge, which is this long bridge across a really pretty river and is extremely touristy. They even have rickshaw pullers! Come on! Even Singapore's most backward tourist gimmick is trishaw. Then again, those rickshaw pullers look like they students working a part time job for the holidays.

have I mentioned how my camp seriously needs one of these in the canteen?

This is some temple of poems. Which draws taiwanese tourists to this togetsu area. The poor coach driver couldn't figure out why this weirdo Singaporean group decided to come here. Anyway, I didn't enter this temple but returned to the riverside to have my face caricaturised, which turned out decent.. i guess. There was a woman who was even more impressive, you know how if you fold a piece of paper and cut a triangle the open it, it's a square hole? She uses that technique to create "portraits" of people's faces!

this is the Kyoto Conference Hall, where the doctors had their last seminar. During which, the rest of us went shopping at some nearby mall, which would be like hougang mall standard in singapore terms = not touristy coz in suburbs = cheaper goods.

Our dinner was at some shabu-shabu place with it's own garden. We didn't get to try the restaurant's Kobe beef (below) though, what a pity.

22 Nov 2006 (tuesday)

This was our last morning and we spent it shopping in Osaka. They have this stretch of shops that's like Bugis Village, except that ti goes on forever. I'm serious! I was walking it for 2 hours and never found the start or end of it.self piercing cartridges!

well, this was the only thing I found interesting at the airport..

long save time

2006-11-15T10:06:00.000+08:00

The file on my work desktop has been saving for 30 minutes. That's right, it has been 30 minutes since it started saving the spreadsheet! And the end is still no where in sight. After this file saves, there are 2 more similar files to save! Ahhhhhhhh Alright I will not save the remaining 2 files or I'll never get to leave office by lunch.

Tonight's rockapella! I'm taking half day leave this afternoon to relax in the sauna since the sky looks like it's ready to pour at any given moment. And to get my camera, which I am banned from bringing to work.

Tomorrow, my sister will be free from the bondage of the O levels! And George Bush will be in Singapore! Which I find disturbing, really. If any nation really wanted his head, all they had to do is drop a nuclear bomb on Singapore during these 2 days and it's not like we can do anything to stop them.

maserati quattroporte

2006-11-13T23:30:00.000+08:00

There was a maserati quattroporte parked at the parade square today! It had a safti label, so probably the owner is some rich officer from there. It's HUGE! The driver must have some skill to have parked it between 2 other cars.

spectacle update

2006-11-07T15:40:00.000+08:00

The blue frame of my spectacles broke yesterday morning! I was washing them, then discovered that the left stick was cracked in the middle. My mummy brought it to the optical shop, where it completely broke off in the storeowners hands (= lucky right? Anyway, he replaced the frame, so it's old lens + new frame. The new frame is black and pink o.O coz they didn't have blue anymore. I'm not complaining though, since it seems like he did something to the lenses as well - the multi-coating that was partially scratched off is now perfect again; wonder if it's a new set of lens or if he merely polished it really well or reapplied the coating. When I went to collect the spectacles at night, I found this really gorgeous red and black pair. If my eyesight has changed drastically after the checkup next friday, then I can jio my parents to pay for a new pair of spectacles xD it should cost $135 only, which is dirt-cheap compared to the spectacles that people with astigamatism have to wear.

updates (CDs, postcards)

2006-11-07T14:48:00.000+08:00

Alright, I shall attempt to type more. I was going to type "write more", but realised that typing isn't strictly writing, which is done with a pen on paper! Since I'm effectively monolingual now, I should not let my last language slip away.

Over the past week I bought 5 CDs (= I heard Snow Patrol's "Chasing Cars" on my colleague's radio and had this irresistible urge to buy their album. This led me to call CD-Rama, Sembawang and MJ up to find out the album prices - CDRama was cheaper by 95 cents so I went to the Hougang Mall outlet and was very nearly disappointed because the salesgirl had yet to take the album out of their carton and display them. Then I bought 4 more CDs before service at Attributes. They were having this scheme where you could buy a red-marked CD with a silver-marked CD at $20. On top of that, they suddenly threw in an additional 10% discount as some hourly special while I was browsing, so each CD cost only $9! I got Chris Tomlin's Arriving, Relient K's MMHMM, Starfield's self-title album and The Afters' I wish we could all win. Not exactly the latest albums, but still good to listen to, especially considering that I gambled on the Starfield buy, having never heard of the band and relying utterly on a sticker that advertised them as the best newcomer band of Canada, or something to that effect.

Later, I'll go find a stamp and mail a postcard to Universal Music and maybe, if I'm lucky, they'll give me a Scissor Sisters CD!! It'll be wonderful if that happened.

Then I spent sunday afternoon at the poolside writing postcards. Actually I was hoping to write in air-conditioned comfort in the club's reading room, but it was swarming with students and the adjacent rooms were being used for some chess tournament. Aie.. this is what happens when I'm too lazy to clear up my own table - I'll just look for an uncluttered tabletop elsewhere, outside my home. And stamps for sending postcards overseas are unbelivably expensive. They cost $1 apiece! Even if they pop out from a S.A.M. they still look like my printer could print them if only I could bother to scan the image in and buy sticker paper to print on.

I'm incorporating more rest-pause training into my workouts. The concept behind it makes sense to me and if all goes well, I should see progress in a month's time. But it sure is weird to other people! They keep asking if I need a spotter and I'll have to explain that I'm resting between reps intentionally, then that'd make them feel awkward.

snow patrol - eyes open

2006-11-04T00:02:00.000+08:00

I bought the snow patrol album (= after making phone calls to Sembawang, CDRAMA and Music Junction, to find out that cdrama was selling it cheaper than the other 2 by 95cents.

ipoh trip 21-23 oct 2006

2006-10-24T23:23:00.000+08:00

I went to Ipoh with my dad over saturday-monday! He's so show-off, even though his car's timing belt is reaching the end of its recommended lifespan - accelerating to 190 just to tell a camry that his engine sucks hahaa. my top speed was achieved on the return journey, 145. which is already SOOOOO scary. the car was rattling!

on the trip there, we got caught in 2 major jams. the first was before rawang, where 3 lanes became 2 lanes. so the traffic slowed to a start-stop jam for 12 km. yes, TWELVE km. then before some stupid mountain with a "Steep" upslope, there was an 18km jam because people were cutting queue. which does not make any sense to me considering that there wouldn't be a queue if drivers didn't slow down to begin with.

luckily, my uncle called us to exit at the 2nd ipoh exit, otherwise we'd have been stuck in a third jam of 5km. after this.. jams don't exist in singapore man! at least you can see the end of jams in singapore..

on the trip back, i got a bit frustrated that people were driving so slowly.. so after a couple of hours my cruising speed rose to 120, then hitting 130 and 140 frequently to overtake slow cars. it's DAMN scary to have huge SUV grilles fill up your rear view mirror as they tailgate you on the right lane, then must quickly siam to the left lane.

also, there was this singapore beemer who overtook me, got stopped for speeding, caught up and overtook me, then took a rest, and overtook me again. so funny! i was laughing when he got pulled over on the road shoulder by the police.

driving on singapore roads isn't the same anymore.. the average speed feels so slow. my dad says i got amazing fuel efficiency, 36 miles per gallon. usually when i drive in singapore to work it's 22 miles per gallon. when he cruised at 200-240 on the last trip to penang, he only got 27 miles per gallon. now, miles and gallons don't make any sense to me, so i'd appreciate anyone converting those figures to km/litre for me =D thanks!

oops.. must make sure i didn't leave any ID information behind.. hahaa later get hauled up by police. dear reader, please don't report me thanks!

maman beach!

2006-09-25T08:01:00.000+08:00

Yay.. went on my first kayak trip over the weekend to Maman beach on Ubin. I was lucky to get a slalom with foot rests. We left Pasir Ris at about 230pm and reached there at 5pm. Then I slacked around while waiting for BH to cook dinner and tried to find a spot with starhub reception. There was beehoon, nuggets, fish fillet and carrot/corn/onion soup. Damian brought 2 mini BBQ pits with "special" charcoal and at least 30 chicken wings for the 16 of us. Plus small fish with tiny tiny bones. Slept on a groundsheet while trying to block out the old man's snores and totally regretted not bringing a sleeping bag when it became really cold at 5am when the fire died out.

Next morning paddled across the Chek Jawa flat. The water was so shallow that Louis and Alex got out and pulled their penguins hahaa so funny! We brought 15 2L jerry cans there and brought back about 7 or 8 full cans, coz BH said don't waste water.. stupid lor hahaa we reached back and used that water to rinse ourselves anyway.

updates - crab lunch + new tv

2006-07-23T09:10:00.000+08:00

I had lunch at Botanical Gardens last thursday and friday because the crab stall was ahaving a 50% discount. Thursday was a reconnaissance trip to find out if the crab was good before Mr.P treated the rest of the CITRMG on friday. We ate black pepper crab, crab with fried bee hoon, crab with e-fu noodle, fried rice with crab, rojak and fish head curry. The black pepper was sweet! More like black sugar. And the metal grill on which the ceramic pot containing the fish head curry still had its price tag on! So cute!

On friday, we had two black pepepr crabs, one sambal chilli crab, one cream cheese crab(actually crab with condensed milk), three plates of fried rice with crab and two plates of pork meat. The fried rice took an extremely long time to arrive and made everyone super annoyed, especially Mr.P who shouted at them "你们不要做生意啊！".

Then yesterday (saturday), my dad happened to walk into some electrical superstore and saw a 15" LCD TV going for $399 and he snapped it up. It looks really pretty! Think it's an Aquos and ahhhhhhhh pretty pretty. He was also pretty tempted by a 42" plasma at $1999, but I guess that must have been too big to carry home.

class outing on saturday

2006-07-18T15:06:00.000+08:00

WOW, we finally had a semi-successful class gathering last saturday (15 Jul 06). We were supposed to go to sentosa, but the turnout was so miserable that we couldn't go to sentosa. There was only cherie prof manfred marcus and me at harbourfront lah. So we decided to go to turf city instead to watch yilin and fiona play in the gals soccer tournament, to cherie's chagrin.

But we had dim dum lucnh at turf city before soccer. There was a 50% discount, so we ordered almost everything. The bill was $90+ then after discount it was only $50! Jia also joined us about halfway into lunch, with ChingYao as her chauffeur.

Then we went to play soccer.. part was rather boring so.. The only interesting part was that some of the gals did not look anything like gals and there was a team named "hot pink pussies"

Then we went to Jia's house after soccer to splash around in her pool and play with her pets. We ended up being late for the marina south steamboat dinner -__-

But anyway, the smoke at the normal outdoors steamboat was too bad so we walked to roadside stall hotpot steamboat restaurant and secured a $19 pax rate which included free flow of lime juice. We had 14 people at dinner - michelle, grace, eve, jing, fiona, derek, shaun, manfred, joel, mingkai, paula, marcus, me.

Then after dinner went to watch Pirates with marcus mingkai and cherie, but we forgot to buy a ticket for nigel -__-

lunch at melting pot cafe

2006-07-14T14:38:00.000+08:00

Whee~ Just had a wonderful lunch at Melting Pot Cafe, a farewell lunch for Paul and paid for by MY, JL and someone else's PBs. And more treats are on the way as the PBs this year are better, on average, than last year's!

chocolate peanut buttercup

2006-07-09T22:20:00.000+08:00

My 2nd aunt gave us a box of chocolate peanut buttercups today! I'm so happy just because of them *drool*

And I played Contra today! The NES game that I used to play when I was 5 or 6 years old. I found this website that allows you to play all of the classic NES games for free! Hahaa, I'm really lousy though.. had to use the cheat that gives 30 lives per attempt, then I will use all 30 lives to clear just one level. Whenever there's a difficult part I'll just die, resurrect and use the first 3 seconds of my new live, when I'm flashing and invulnerable, to quickly run past the obstacle hee hee~

Federer and Nadal face off at Wimbledon NOW! I want Federer to win! I think Federer or his girlfriend hired an image consultant for him; he's no longer wearing that neon green headband and shirt anymore. Plus, he actually looks not bad next to hsi girlfriend while in his suit. Much, much better hair when he's off-court. Anyway, Federer just trampled over Nadal to lead the second set 6-5. Hmm.. the 词语“蹂躏”用在这里好恰当喔！

other pple moving on

2006-07-05T16:55:00.000+08:00

Ewwww I'm feeling a tinge of envy that so many people are moving on with their lives - going to university. It's terrible to see people coming to collect their pink IC and I just feel like shoving them down the *censored*. And work is just.. boring and riddled with annoying people. This is the absolute worst way to spend what's left of my youth - all that you hear about the bonding and blah blah blah doesn't apply to about half of the NSFs and the other half get stomped upon so badly everyday, so what's the point in NS.

6510!

2006-06-25T23:01:00.000+08:00

I spent money again today! On a handphone that doesn't have a camera. I was looking at the 6100 and 6510 --> smaller size won! Though both phones are pretty outdated and I'm really p0k nowadays. But at least I won't have to worry about losing my phone to the RP tomorrow at Mandai Hill Camp! Or at any other camp for that matter.

Speaking of Mandai Hill camp, I drove there yesterday night. The car passed by Mandai camp first and I thought that was pretty neat; it reminded me of SAFTI MI. Okay, I've been to SAFTI a grand total of ONE time, so maybe it isn't fair for me to compare them. Then Mandai Hill camp appeared! It's really on a hill and looks like some extra large prison with towering gates and watchtowers. Kind of bleak and ugly in comparison to Mandai camp. The event should be at Mandai camp instead man; at least that place looks decent enough to invite VVIPs to. Hahaa, I'm not really if I'll be shot dead for saying what's going on at Mandai Hill Camp or why I'm going there, so I'm not saying =P.

merc cab

2006-06-21T20:15:00.000+08:00

I took a Merc cab home after badminton today! Ooooooh mercedes cars are so nice to ride in. And the cab is automatic! Meaning I can drive it if I ever have to become a taxi driver, just that I need to get hold of a merc cab. The cabin is really quiet too.. and comfy comfy seats.

full house at cmpb

2006-06-19T21:59:00.000+08:00

Today was a mad day at CMPB! It was full house, just absolutely overflowing with visitors, boys who came for their checkup, boys who came to do their pre-checkup routine and somehow, parents were included along the way. Even the receptionist was exasperated hahaa. It's weird how when one guy comes to CMPB, he seems to NEED to bring a bevy of people along which tend to include parents, siblings, girlfriends, multiple girlfriends, multiple boyfriends.. so strange and pointless. Come on, checkup is the best part of NS! It's all downhill from there!

espirit shopping spree

2006-06-17T23:57:00.000+08:00

I lost my June pay today! There was this Espirit store with a 10% storewide discount so I had to go in. Then I was told that with $150 spent, I could get the Espirit card! So I happily tried on stuff. And chose not enough to make the $150. So I dragged my mum and sister into this and my sister helped to top up! But she kind of overdid it.. so I spent over $200 instead. Never mind.. this is the fruit of my labour at work. Gosh everyone please pray for me. Next week's a tough week (boss is coming back + I got multiple arrows last friday damnit).

So.. whoever wants 10% discount at Espirit ;)
It's 20% in december!

2006-06-02T22:06:00.000+08:00

I still have $100 to spend this weekend!!!

SMU it is!

2006-05-29T23:01:00.000+08:00

Well, there is a definite difference between the SMU students and NUS students that I saw at their respective tea sessions. No matter how you look at it, the SMU students look, talk and act better than their NUS counterparts. Plus they smile! The NUS pple rarely smile when I was there for their tea. I hate to say it, but the NUS students who were there for the tea seemed to be there almost grudingly; perhaps they needed the points offered by hosting tea or something.

Now, if anybody can tell me how to find out my application number, I will be most grateful since I think I'll be needing it to get into SMU. Haiz.. either I'm dumb and stupid or majority of the people who don't face a problem accepting their universities are smart. Now all I need to do is raise money for.. GSS! I'm hopelessly broke and will go into massive debt during June and July! help me out if you work and earn .. 5 times of what I earn by donating to the "JJ's new clothes fund!" old clothes replaced during this period will be donated to the needy. I hope. Sheesh okay I shouldn't be so selfish, especially since people in Java are in dire straits. But then again it's not as if I can help them by not spending, right? aieeee....

bad day

2006-05-22T23:24:00.000+08:00

I had an absolutely bad day today.

First I forgot to bring my pass, so I had to exchagne my driver's licence for a visitor's pass.
Then the NSFs got the expectation/induction talk.

1. attitude
2. personal discipline - with emphasis on punctuality
3. mutual respect

The talk made me late for the meeting which resulted in a rather awkard situation.
Well, at least I haven't started trying to make sense of the 14 pages of notes I typed out during the 4 hour long meeting.
The gal in the room next door was nice enough to offer to lock up the meeting room for me though.
Then had a quick lunch at canteen.. had a dessert.

And after lunch was the bombshell. We needed to get pple to do their survey by tomorrow and they're not there at their desks or offices to pick up our calls! So tomorrow I'll be dying as well and yea.. if you don't see me ever again you know why. On the bright side, if I die tomorrow, I won't have to worry about which local U to choose.

NUS has the biggest baddes reputation and blah blah blah but the pple there aren't very pretty and seem to be rather non-english? Ugly....... buildings too. And the chance of meeting all those medicine whores hahaa. But can drive there if I don't get into the hostel lah. And that place is quite near holland V so can drive there for lunch often since I'm going to be a super slacker that will die and not get any honours.

NTU is .. the hardest for me to survive in solely because I won't be speaking the same language with everyone else there. On the other hand it's a 3 years programme, so it's only 3 years of suffering. I'll be .. carrying one of those reading aloud english-chinese dictionaries if I go there. Then conversing with any person from there will be absolutely hilarious hahaa!

SMU is.. the place which is supposed to have the prettiest people but has absolutely nothing to do after sch than go shopping or pubbing. Honestly.. there's no campus life to talk of when there's not even a field to boast of. But the SMU buildings are the best; they let in a lot of sunshine which is excellent. No driving though, but get to dress up with everyone else for lessons. The perfect excuse to go shopping for clothes every weekend!

So who's going where?

driving

2006-05-22T00:11:00.000+08:00

I love driving! Even though I get taken advantaged of so frequently..

update

2006-05-16T23:12:00.000+08:00

Gosh some of the calls I get at work simply showcase the best in human stupidity.. One of them even gave me the impression that lawyers have to be computer-illiterate. I mean, internet PC turns out to refer to a LAPTOP??. In what way does a notebook resemble a CPU+monitor+keyboard+mouse? Also, openoffice throws tantrums if it isn't installed on a branded enough laptop. I'm serious about this. There's no other way to explain it, unless maybe some programmer of openoffice has a grudge against certain laptop brands and insert some code to make it hate those laptops.

Today:

Preacher curl(20 ezcurl bar) - 12, 10, 8
Dumbbell bicep curl - 3 sets of 10

lean over on side thing - 2 sets each side (7.5), 1 set each side (5)
hanging leg curl - 3x10
lying weighted crunch - 15 of 2, 15 of 3, 20 of 4, 20 of 5.

photocard driving licence

2006-05-13T13:30:00.000+08:00

The photocard licence appeared in my mail today! I'm surprised because I thought that SingPost dies on saturdays and sundays and resurrects itself every monday. My wallet just grew one card fatter! And it's a very pretty card at that!

driving test pass!

2006-05-04T23:04:00.000+08:00

I passed my driving test! Even though I pissed off the tester at least 3 times. First was not stopping early enough when he wanted me to turn right across 2 lanes and stop at a tree right in front of me. Then I barely missed the side mirror of another car on the road. Last was not using my rear view mirror at all. But .. he still passed me! Every time he got mad I thought he was giving me an immediate fail but he only gave me 14 points in the end. I got off easy though.. easy test route MINUS left filter MINUS u-turn. I don't even know why he bothered to make me drive on the road.. but when he left out those 2 things I thought I failed for sure so YAYYY

Then I had to wait for 30mins to watch some "safety video" which was in reality, 2 accounts of people who survived car accidents and drink driving. Which did nothing to improve my safety in any way. But without watching the bukit.batok produced video, I wouldn't have gotten my temporary licence!

Bye bye toyota vios! I don't ever want to drive another of you again! Your air-con vent positions suck so bad that I don't understand how toyota actually managed to sell the vios. I want my toyota Previa! Some rich person sponsor me please! I'll pay for the ridiculously expensive petrol myself, but I need the car FOC hee hee =P

UK chick on the phone!

2006-04-23T23:39:00.000+08:00

Woah I discovered something! If you wanna speak with a heavy British accent, you can call the Toshiba helpline after office hours! To learn! They'll route you to the UK, where some chick with the heavy accent picks up and wonders why you're calling her from Singapore.

On a not so good note, my pocketPC's charger died. So I'll be losing my calendar when the battery runs flat tomorrow along with everyone's birthdays. So do remember to invite me to your b'dae parties cos' now I won't remember how old you are. Maybe I should one of those leather-bound paper organisers! Man, I'm devolving rapidly.

more updates

2006-04-22T09:53:00.000+08:00

HI, I woke up early and felt like writing hahaa.

I'm in MCIOO, which is the Mindef CIO Office. CIO = central information officer? I don't really know. But it's an IT department, so among the non-pecuniary benefits is internet access. Also, I get to junk my uniform in favour of normal office garb, which, though is rather boring, is still so much better than wearing the uniform.

Things that have happened so far are PRIDE day, my tekong quest, the workplan retreat =D.

PRIDE day is kind of like a science fair for a few departments. So they all go to the nice-looking Mindef auditorium in Gombak and see what everybody else is up to and get prizes for outstanding WITS things. I really liked the Nexus "Little red dot" project. Though it's aimed primarily at promoting the concepts of total defence, it's REALLY cute. I wanted to take their A3 books home but those weren't for sale, so go to the website and read it!

And I also had a polygraphy test done while all the people were getting their prizes inside the auditorium! The trained polygraphists(?) are really good.. I tried to fool them and got a really awkard graph but they saw through it. Like.. damn! Hahaa. I still have the sweat pad sensors somewhere in one of my bags as a souvenir!

My tekong quest was to retrieve my docket, which has my personal documents. I didn't get a visitor's pass at the ferry terminal because there wasn't anyone at the booth and it didn't seem pertinent to me. So I happily followed everyone through the gantry to the ferry. And still no one stopped me! Then at Tekong I didn't know which building I was supposed to go to, so I walked into the nearest one and went to the room number that I was supposed to go to. Some middle-aged guy opened the door and shooed me to the other corner of that floor. So I went there, everyone there was blur about dockets except this guy who was from the office that I was supposed to go to. We took the lift down, saw some big-shot in the lift, didnt' say anything and later he asked my why I didn't greet that . I was "wtf? I'm in CVs. I'm higher ranked than him! hahaa" And he took me to the canteen first coz he was hungry, then to the building next to the parade square. Plus he asked me why I didn't have a visitor's pass coz some times some of the big-shots mind. But luckily we didn't meet with any. I eventually went to a meeting room with MANY dockets lying around, got mine and went back to mainland =D. At least I wasted a whole morning, didn't have to work!

The workplan retreat was held at NSRCC this year. It's a day where people do presentations and argue and make my really confused but I don't really care. Lunch was at the poolside cafe where Poon ordered chilli crab and black pepper crab for everyone. Our main courses cost $145 in total for 20 people, the crabs came up to $205 AFTER a 10% discount or something. Then more presentations blah blah blah Somewhere in the middle of all that my younger sis messaged me that NTU wants me in business so YAY.

Then the bbq caterer came and gave us this whole load of FROZEN stuff. Like.. wtf. You can't bbq frozen-hard-as-a-rock food. But Robin taught me how to arrange the charcoal to start the fire so hmm I learnt something! I don't think we even finished half the food we ordered.

We ordered:
5 x 10 chicken wings
2 x 10 steak
about 40 satays
about40 prawns
nonya chicken curry for 20 people
about 40 sotong/stingray
more that I can't remember

So people ended up carrying curry home, still-frozen chicken wings home, cakes and cream puffs from the morning, it's really mad how you overbuy when you don't have to prepare the food yourself.

Then everyone left after their "financial risk management exercise" and I had the whole bungalow to myself! I took a walk along the beach hoping to see something interesting appear but nothing did. So I went back and toured the NSRCC buildings, saw the fish sleeping in the pond, found the wireless internet zone, found a lift for the disabled that refused to leave the first floor, the golfing area, Oriole rooms that were locked, the gambling rooms, the karaoke room, some Cockpit room, bowling alleys and then returned to my bungalow for TV!!! I wish I had that big sized TV to watch everyday instead of some sad 10" TV.

That's it for now!

glue on hands

2006-04-10T23:42:00.000+08:00

Today was the most fun day of my job so far! I got my hands on this small tin of glue that looks like honey. It smells great too. Then I somehow spilled it on my hands and I had two hands coated with glue! And it was REALLY REALLY fun trying to peel off the film of glue! It's like peeling off a second skin and not feeling any pain. ALso! It's really nice when the skin on your hands feel the air again!

Oh yea, if anyone got any lobang for samsung phones, please help me! I want to get a black samsung x300 so.. if you could help me get it at a discount I'd REALLY REALLY like you!

And.. if anyone also wishes to learn one-star canoe/kayak then tell me! We can go together and capsize our banana-shaped things and play bumper canoe! OF course it'd also be PERFECT if you had some lobang that lets me take the one-star for free/discounted rate (=

ord bridge

2006-03-24T19:00:00.000+08:00

Oooooh I got this from Singapore River Cruise.

Ord Bridge
Ord Bridge was constructed in 1886 and was dedicated to the
memory of the first governor of the Straits Settlement to be appointed
by the Colonial office in London, Sir Henry St. George Ord. It was also
known as Ordnance Bridge or Toddy Bridge because of neighbouring ordnance stores and liquor shops.
The bridge is simple in form with interesting details such as the
ornamental balustrades and girders.

So.. the bridge wasn't built for the NS guys, though it should have been!

light blows

2006-03-23T00:10:00.000+08:00

Oh, this is really funny! Right after I finished packing the things I need to send to the universities, the second of three lights in my room murdered itself! As if in anticipation of its retirement next week when I'll be in Tekong =)

rain clouds

2006-03-21T11:16:00.000+08:00

And the dark, dreary rain clouds are back, almost as if to prevent me from going to the pool. Maybe, if I finish all my university applications, the cloud goddess will be appeased and move on to annoy some kid in a faraway place instead! Hmm, change that to annoy the SMU admissions people until they accept me =D

revival

2006-03-11T00:07:00.000+08:00

woohoo blog revival~
Actually the real reason is that I need to practise writing coherent sentences as well as spelling again since university admission essays are looming in the shadow of april fools' day! After all, the last time I had to do something like this was way back in my econs or chemistry paper. Since this blog is presumed dead by the few who read it xD , I suppose I can be utterly shameless in whatever I write here.

I'm the epitome of laziness, tardiness and most other negative adjectives you can think of. Witness the atrocity of my vocabulary in the preceding sentence with the stingy number of examples of negative adjectives. I can't come up with more than two! But with the same luck that got me my Econs A, I should pull through..

And moving on to driving, it has been such a wonderful experience mixed with hatred. Navigating roads when there's heavy traffic is pleasant, totally unlike driving within the circuit which is plain torture. The circuit roads are made to strangle the car I drive, I swear! As if that wasn't bad enough, you'll learn that driving to pass is completely different from driving with a licence. Take parking for example. No sane driver would ever park using the perpendicular approach which is expected in the test. And the extent to which instructors go to ensure that their students perform well in parking is astonishing. There is a red sticker on the rear windscreen to tell you exactly when to turn! What nonsense is this! We'll never develop a good enough sense of the car at this rate, that much is certain.