another birthday celebration

Ds, our beloved classmate from S3a just had his 21st birthday celebration yesterday. The turnout from our class was quite good, even those people rarely seen attended. They went off so early that I didn't even have much chance to talk with them. It was a good gathering nonetheless.

Johnny and marc were their usual self, cracking jokes at free will. Just plain listening to johnny can make you laugh, that shows how good he is. Meanwhile, john was eating like some guy that have been starving for years. No wonder he is in the top 3 yaogui list. Surprisingly sf was on a food rampage last night, perharps she is thinking of upstarting the present incumbents in the yaoguis' list. Adelene only had one serving though, probably saving her stomach for the other birthday celebration she attending. Adelene even said about yaoguis taking a picture together, but it came all to none.

Anyway back to the celebration, there was catering and he even thought of games after the meal. Quite good, instead of the run of the mill, makan-cut cake-go home routine. But he looked tired though, hoped he enjoyed himself.

And where are the pics?

Happy 21st birthday ds . . . in 3 days time.

les

The Fringe Benefits Of Failure And The Importance Of Imagination

I thought I should post this, I first read this in the newspapers. It's a speech made by J K Rowling, author of Harry Potter if you do not know. She made this speech at the graduation ceremony at Harvard University.

I thought it was a very insightful and thought provoking one, very unlike those normal, run of the mill speech one made at a school graduation ceremony.

There's one particular line, "You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success."

I thought in this society when failure cannot be tolerated, most people in school or work probably are driven by a fear of failure.

The Fringe Benefits Of Failure And The Importance Of Imagination

les

Wet Sunday Morning

I woke up and found the skies outside dark and raining. Great, bball session flopped, went back to sleep again and woke up at 850am and saw john's confirmation sms. Strangely I felt rather refreshed though i slept like 1am. I guessed squadron probably trained me well.

Work is ending one week later, 5 more days of mundane work and freedom awaits. And when is my hard earned cash going to come? The money in my account is dropping at an alarmingly fast rate. And the prospect of getting in debt even before my 21st birthday is certainly very exciting. Tuition fees, textbooks, living expenses . . . think I should start living like a monk. Frugal.

Last two days were kind of action packed. We had an impromptu dinner at kim gary, vivocity. The turnout wasn't too bad, zc john, lim, quek sf. We had to wait for like 15minutes for seats, food was decent, though I felt my pork ribs mushroom rice was somewhat salty.

Saturday, I went bugis, with the same 4 guys. I thought the Saturday crowd was seemingly lesser. After dinner, we then went to orchard and after some shopping we settled at starbucks. My caramel frappuccino was too sweet for my liking, argh bad choice.

First thing I woke up I checked soccernet, team oranje lost . . . sian, and is quek going to chop off his head?

And now, Sunday noon, 12pm, what's next?

les

Firefox 3

Firefox 3 is out, it may be slightly wols now to blog about this especially when it was encouraging the public to participate in this record breaking moment to clock the most number of downloads for any software in 24hours.

Firefox 3 has managed to clocked more than 8 millions downloads within the first 24hours of release. That's cool.

Support firefox and dump that IE now.




les

Life of a 9-5 office worker

So what's is life of an office worker like? Let me give you an hour by hour account.

0700, you woke up, feeling tired, eyes semi-opened and longing for some nice sleep under the cozy blanket. But the alarm keeps ringing and you frustratingly shut it off ten minutes later. You finally get out of bed with a groan and dragged yourself to the toilet. You have a simple breakfast and then quickly have a change of clothes and rush out of the house.

0800, you finally got on the bus, just barely, the bus is packed to the brim. What a great way to start your day. Minutes later you reach the MRT, its full of fellow office workers like you, all walking quickly to the platform, in a zombie-like manner. The MRT pulls into the station and you again try to squeeze into the packed MRT, if you are unluckily then you just got to wait for the next train.

0900, as you chat with your colleagues on the walk to the office, your day brightens, slightly, but tons of mundane work still hangs in the back of your mind.

1000, you go out of office for a well deserved break, to visit the toilet, to stretch yourself or just to take in some fresh air.

1100, your stomach just groaned, getting very restless, and you keep looking at your watch, wondering if its lunch time yet.

1200, its finally lunch. Hurray! As you reached your favourite food outlet, another problem crop up, you got to compete with the overwhelming lunch crowd for seats.

1300, with food finally in your stomach you walked back to the office under the intense hot sun.

1400, drowsiness seems to have defeated you. The heavy lunch is making you hard to concentrate.

1500, finally some productive work is coming out of you.

1600, your eyes is getting tired after staring on the computer for the whole day and as you stare into the scenery outside, you ponder about what to do after work.

1700, the countdown begins! You can't wait to get out of this place.

1800, the clock strikes, and you pack your stuffs and quickly rush to the bus stop before the peak hour crowd gets crazy.

1900, after an entire hour of standing and squeezing in the packed mrt and bus, sometimes even with practically no air-con at all, you finally got your ass back home. What a long day.

2000, dinner and tv takes centre stage.

2100, you starts to get somewhat sleepy and the thought of back in office in mere hours just put you off.

2200, you are sleepy but you just want to catch that favourite tv show.

2400, you cannot take it anymore and proceeds to sleep. The cycle repeats itself 7hours later.

les

WORKING is BORING.

Prince Caspian

I went to cathay last thursday to catch Prince caspian with my NS friends (colin,kmh,khooty) and had dinner with yf and yk joining us. Its been some time when we last had some meeting of sorts.

And back to prince caspian, while walking towards e exit after the show, two guys behind me were commenting that the show sucks. But I thought the movie was'nt that bad. Of course its a movie for kids, no blood and gore. Well the story was written for children in mind. And its definitely not Lord of the Rings.

But I thought the battle scence was quite creative, not the usual "battle to the death at the field" concept, the first one being in night, an air drop right into the enemy castle, ala paratroopers. And there's comic relief too, in the mould of a sword slashing mouse who prides itself as a fighter and not some cute animal.

Quite worth the ticket price in my opinion.

And there's this nice song from the soundtrack, called "The Call" by Regina Spektor.



It started out as a feeling
Which then grew into a hope
Which then turned into a quiet thought
Which then turned into a quiet word

And then that word grew louder and louder
Til it was a battle cry

I'll come back
When you call me
No need to say goodbye

Just because everything's changing
Doesn't mean it's never
Been this way before

All you can do is try to know
Who your friends are
As you head off to the war

Pick a star on the dark horizon
And follow the light

You'll come back
When it's over
No need to say good bye

You'll come back
When it's over
No need to say good bye..

Now we're back to the beginning
It's just a feeling and no one knows yet
But just because they can't feel it too
Doesn't mean that you have to forget

Let your memories grow stronger and stronger
Til they're before your eyes

You'll come back
When they call you
No need to say good bye

You'll come back
When they call you
No need to say good bye..

les