Here comes Christmas...

Hmmm... not too sure what I'd be doing for Christmas apart from having my annual Christmas Eve dinner with relatives.

I was looking through all of the MTVs I burned onto CD when I was back in the US and they sure bring back memories. You somehow link up certain time periods to certain songs, for example, whenever I hear Britney Spear's - Lucky, my mind flashes back when I was JC 1 when the song first hit the airwaves. Yeah it's a silly song but it still brings back memories anyhow...

Was looking through a bunch of random pictures I've collected from the net and I came across this one. I just think this person's fashion style is pretty cool! A jacket and tie with military bermudas. Gotta hand it to Japanese street fashion as they dare to try whacky combinations... :D

Me and My Sister

You know... I think she's more photogenic than me......

I haven't even posted up the WORSE looking pics...



She looks like finding Nemo in this pic.

Back back!!!!

Whoopee! Back again after a 2 month hiatus. Basically been too lazy to blog or probably didn't wanna blog because nothing much has happened.

Anyways, in a blink of an eye Christmas is in a weeks time and everybody is out shopping like crazy thanks to the advertising hype. I too got caught up with the crazy buying and bought a bucket load of comics from Kinokuniya on Friday. It's been a really long time since I've read comics or watched any anime so I just decided to say "crap it" and forked out cash for them. Good stuff!


On Saturday, I followed mum to John Little to take advantage of the 20% storewide discount. Bought myself two pairs of formal pants and a shirt, then went to do my own stuff as my sister and mum went scouring for girls stuff. Saturday was pretty much a "chiong shopping" day. Muahhaha... I've come to realise that spending money is therapeutic... and don’t forget the evil ATM/Credit cards….

ORD is coming in a few months, the working world waits. I hope that I’d be able to land up with a decent paying job. And I must dye my hair once I get out of army, gotta do this at least once in my life man! Damn… how I wish I were back in university / poly. I should’ve done all this stuff earlier! What was I thinking?

Oh yes, if anybody is going to “chiong” on New Years Eve, do let me know. My past few New Years Eve’s have been pretty sad…

Back on the net again

Did quite a lot of stuff this weekend. I FINALLY got myself a decent phone after I left my T105 on the bus. My ancient T28s were too unreliable as they shut off for no reason whenever they please. So I finally managed to source for someone who was selling a T290i for $100. Met up with him on Saturday morning and I'm now happy with my phone. Yayyy! Phone timeline below!



Unfortunately over the weekend our ADSL modem decided to die on us. I gave the Singnet helpdesk a call and was put on hold forever before I finally managed to talk to someone. After checking a few things on his computer he suggested that maybe our modem was faulty. So a quick trip to Sim Lim later I am back online!!! Gosh man, it's scary how dependable we are on the internet these days.

Here Kitty Kitty!

Hahahah... today me, Leroy and JJ went to return some stuff to... guess who... Kitty! Heheheh... First time I've spoken to her before and actually stood so close. *Blush* Today was a good day. :P

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Wow, as I was typing the doorbell rang. It's 7.24pm and a postman came to my place to check on a parcel he delivered to my Dad in the afternoon. He said that he needed the serial number or something.... I didn't know they worked till so late. Tough job man...

Exams are finally over

Exams are over! I can breath again... the last one I did today didn't go too well... but ah what the heck.

I've been away from work since Friday last week. I somehow felt pretty odd walking to work after today's exam. It was as if I had been gone so long and was entering a strange place. Maybe it's the lack of sleep and the brain abuse I've been giving myself over the past few days.

Anyhow, the office was empty again because everyone is away for some exercise. Sadly, the whole bunch will be back tomorrow. I hope my boss doesn't go into a fit and throws me all the work that he wasn't able to arrow me for the past few days. Thank goodness the weekends are coming.

The Story Thus Far

Haro! Haro! Ahhaha it's been quite awhile since I last blogged. Dear me... so let me update you all on the story thus far..

1) 1 Oct 2005 (Sat) - Went with Leroy, Jun Jie and Joel for the HSBC treetop walk. JJ had warned me that it was a LONG walk to the bridge and I found that I had come overdressed for the event! Everybody was in running gear but I was in berms and t-shirt... arghh! Well, I figured that my berms would help against kamikaze dengue mosquitoes. Thank goodness Joel drove his Toyota Harrier over to get us to the entrance of the treetop walk. The Harrier is one sweet car... I'd call it the gentle giant because it's big yet extremely quiet on the inside... mmm...

After the whole event my feet were aching from the rugged terrain and everybody was drenched with sweat. I must agree that it was a nice view from the suspension bridge but the walk in would make you think twice about coming back again. I guess it's one option if you're totally sick of hanging out at shopping malls and watching movies. Enough... picture attack!!!







2) 3 Oct 2005 (Mon) - Went to catch Corpse Bride with my secondary school friends. It's a pretty standard show, no surprises regarding the plot but the animation was pretty good if you can appreciate Tim Burton's creations. His creations tend to be rather dark and gothic like Emily Strange... hmmm

3) 4 Oct 2005 (Tue) - Celebrated Jiahui's 21st birthday at some Thai restuarant at Marina Square. It was probably the 100th time she was celebrating her 21st birthday that month but it was still fun anyways. The food was really good though some dishes were too spicy for me.


I look stupid as usual... hey I just noticed that Leroy has the same type of jacket as JiaJia...


The birthday girl with her present... must show us what you bought ah!

Ok, I guess that's about all folks. My SIM exams are coming up in 1 week's time. I gotta get cracking...

Gomenasai

Urgh... haven't been blogging much as I didn't have the inspiration to do so. The past week has been this flurry of compiling reports and making presentations for my SIM classes. Creating powerpoints and editing reports is a lot more tedious and time consuming than I thought.

I must say that I'm eternally grateful to my Maam at the office for letting me use the colour printer, the binder etc... The officers have somehow also been kind enough to leave me to my project work as well. I guess they must've figured that I was busy with something judging from my frowns of concentration and my flurry of typing on the keyboard. Now that's all over, I have two weeks of NO class till my exams. In a way I'm happy that the semester is coming to a close. I'm pretty sick of religiously making my way to SIM three days a weak for the past 3 months. It's very draining...

I just wish I could be a wandering samurai. I will just drift from place to place till I finally decide to settle down or when I finally find a purpose in life.......

Gomenasai.........

Weekend plans

Did my group project presentation last night and I found out that having not done a presentation for so long I'm pretty rusty. Will make sure I'm more prepared for the other two presentations this coming week. It also kind of sucks being the LAST group to present because almost all the other groups had gone off, and the lecturer was tired and probably wasn't paying much attention.

Anwyay, I've jotted out a list of stuff to hopefully accomplish this weekend.

1) Pack up my room (It's in a sorry mess now)
2) Format my computer (Damn you spyware! DAMN YOU!)
3) Pack up my sister's room (It's also in a mess despite the fact she's not here!)
4) Continue with my room decoration... I abandoned it months ago...
5) Buy clothes? I really need new jeans & pants.

Woohoo! I love weekends! :D

The Exams Strike Back

Last week, I was given a copy of last semester's exam questions for my SIM Marketing course. I couldn't answer any of them.

It's been 1.5years since I've sat for any form of exams and now the alarm bells are ringing again. This Friday there's one presentation, next week two more and I've not done up the powerpoint slides yet! So much to study!! Arghh... Oh gosh... exam stress... it's all coming back to me now... the nightmares... everything... that same sick feeling. It's all gonna end mid-October. I might as well make it a good one.

Sleepy Saturday

It's 5.25pm now. I've effectively slept throughout my saturday. ARGHHHHH............ I feel like I've underachieved my weekend... gah...

Army Half Marathon

Alright, I figure I should blog about how the run went. To set things straight, me and One Star ran the 6km route while JJ and Mr Mak ran the full 21km route.

It was my first time participating in a such a large scale marathon before so I was overwhelmed by the crowd. According to the newspapers 60,000 people attended the run so the place was flooded with NSFs from every single army camp you can imagine and the public. It was like an ants nest moving house or something and the route got so choked up with people that we were even forced to walk for awhile.

My goal was to run from start to finish non-stop. I've been training so I was pretty confident that I could pull it off... but maybe it was the heat, or the sheer multitude of people or it was just not a good day. By the 4th km, or was it the 3rd km mark I had to stop. My sides were aching and I was exhausted... One Star kept on going... I lost him in the crowd. Gotta hand it to that guy as he basically didn't stop running.

After a few bouts of walking and running I was at the last 600m mark when I caught sight of One Star! I couldn't believe it so I sprinted the rest of the way and he arrived at the finish line shortly after. It was a pretty disappointing run anyhow... Well, gotta train harder for next years AHM!



If you strike 4D after buying my number don't forget to SHARE your winnings with me!!!

Scratch

To the idiot who scratched our car: I wish you luck and prosperity. Then, when someone scratches YOUR car you'd know how it feels. >:(

Was passing by Macritchie Reservoir today when we got into a bad jam. Further down the road we found out that the jam was caused by a pretty bad car accident. A new Mitsubishi Lancer somehow was lying upside down like turtle on its back with its windscreen smashed up. The abulance was there and the two girls who were driving the car seemed shaken but otherwise unhurt. Thank goodness they're alright...

Don't look back

I decided to go running after my SIM classes today. I planned out a route which I've never been to before and set off. The run basically takes me past Buona Vista MRT towards Singapore Poly.

On the map the route was pretty standard. A straight road all the way with no questions asked. Unfortunately things look different at night, very different. After running past Buona Vista MRT there was this very dense patch of "forest" next to the walking path. There was not a soul in sight and the road was strangely almost void of cars. As I ran further the foliage seemed to block out more and more of the light from the street lamps to the extent that some of the path was totally void of any light whatsoever.

I started to get this pretty errie feeling and the blackness of the foliage didn't help. I was half expecting this pair of arms to burst out and drag me kicking and screaming into the darkness. The "seventh month" isn't over yet is it?

I kept running. I think fear made me run faster. Don't think, just run... run faster..... I made sure I completed the route, turned back and ran as quickly as I could through the dark path till I finally got to a brighter lit area.

Time to look for another route.

Monday Blues

To be honest I didn't start Monday on a good note. I somehow felt pretty depressed and it being a Monday made it worse. I've probably been thinking of "life after NS" too much.

I managed to find some "itemising" to do for Mr Ng KC's documents before they're handed over to the MINDEF "shredding" department to be given a "proper burial." Well anyway, later on I was given the task of running down to some name card printing company to collect name cards for an officer. Unfortunately, the cards had to be collected today so I was asked to take a cab.

Call me weird but I have a phobia of taking cabs. It was all because when I was in secondary school I was most unfortunate to get one of those "veteran" (old) Chinese taxi drivers who...

1) Could NOT understand even simple English. (He didn't even understand "Turn Left, Turn Right")

2) Did not know where my secondary school was

Now, with my horrid standard of Chinese and not being good at road directions apart from knowing the road my school was on it was horrid. It went something like this...

Me: "Hello uncle, ACS (Barker) secondary school please."
Uncle: "Ha? Ni shuo she me? Ker yi jiang hua yi bi jiao hao." (Sorry, what're you saying? It'd be better if you could speak Chinese.)
Me: "Err... ker yi dai wo dao ACS (Barker) Rd? Err... Ying Hua Jong Xue?" (Err... can you take me to ACS (Barker Rd)? Err... (Name of my school in Chinese)
Uncle: "Na jai na li ah? She me lu?" (Where's that? Which road is it on?)
Me: "Errr... Dunern Road?"
Uncle: "Ha?? You mei you hua wen ming?" (What? What is the name of the road in Chinese?)
Me: "Err... wo bu ji dao" (Err... I don't know)

So anyway, it was a horrid journey of telling the poor uncle to turn left here, turn right here, go straight here with my horrid Chinese. By the time I finally got to school I was feeling pretty nauseous from hearing myself speak such crappy Chinese and the uncle probably had enough of trying to understand me. Well, to make the long story short I was late for my ECA and punished. I've had phobias of taking cabs ever since.

Ok, zipping back to present day I had my fingers crossed as I flagged down a cab. Someone up there must've heard my prayers as I got a driver who spoke English AND knew where the place was! Which was fantastic because the printing company was in the middle of an almost abandoned HDB estate. I even got to chat with the driver along the way and he told me about how the police set up speed traps and how the government purposely doesn't widen roads enough so the LTA could spend money and create jobs later on by expanding it when traffic outgrows the road. Sounds pretty weird but I've heard weirder stories from other cab drivers. Hahaha...

Alright, picked up the name cards, flagged down another cab and got back to MINDEF in one piece. I guess most cab drivers should know where MINDEF is so I wasn't too concerned about the return journey.

Later, me, Leroy and JJ had lunch with JiaJia at Aijsen Ramen to catch up on things. Really had an enjoyable time laughing myself silly during dinner! Ahhh such times must be treasured... Thanks for the enjoyable dinner guys. It was fun.... :)

New Orleans: Chaos brings more chaos

After hurricane Katrina, New Orleans lies in ruins. With dams damaged by the hurricane, 80% of the city lies submerged in water. Having personally been there back in 2003, pictures of the ruined streets strikes a cord.

What I cannot understand is the current state of anarchy it's in. With law enforcement busy tending to the injured and helping survivors get to dry ground, armed mobs have taken to looting, carjacking and killing for basic necessities such as petrol and water. Some of the mobs are even armed with guns pilfered from flooded gunstores!

Who in the right mind would want to profit from such a tragedy? People have lost their homes, and for some, even their loved ones. For heaven's sake people, I'm sure there's still some good conscience left in you.

Caught in the matrix

Whoa... I didn't blog for a few days because basically NOTHING eventful happened. I'm just caught up in my usual, work-class-sleep-computer cycle. It's pretty sad yes but it's reality and it'd probably get more drab after I ORD and find a job. I've always been seeing myself as becoming like Keanu Reeves in The Matrix, wearing a black suit and tie and hiding in my cubicle typing up dry reports day in day out. Just another drone in the system with no life till the weekend. Well lucky for Keanu Reeves he finds a way out of the matrix while I don't see my "Trinity" coming anytime soon.

Just a thought, why don't we convert to a 4 day work week? Two days of break is awfully short don't you think? Before you can catch your breath it's a Monday again and back to the grind. So in order to improve everybody's well being why don't we enact this system worldwide? Then we won't need to worry about people in Country X working harder than Country Y because they work 5 days a week while we only work 4. It would seriously save a lot of people from "death by overwork," reduce stress levels and improve the birthrate as people have more time for relaxation and raising families. Sure the latest handphone models won't get churned out as fast as they used to but I guess I can live with that.

The weekend nears people! Cheers!

Insert title here

Whoa boy, 8.33pm on a Sunday night and I'm feeling the Monday blues already. I went down to town to get my haircut and then went back home as mum's friends were coming over... uh... nothing much to say

Saturday Report

Alright I'm back. Had a group meeting with my SIM classmates and then went around shopping. It's pretty crazy how much nice looking clothes can cost, nonetheless I managed to find a good bargain and bought 2 new t-shirts. Orchard was as crowded as usual on a Saturday night so I decided to make a break home before the "heading home" crowd thickened. Hmmmm... I wonder what I can do for the rest of the night...

Microstuff Windows Headache!

You know, why can't Microsoft make updating windows easier? Everytime you wish to update windows, you have to use their windows update program which takes FOREVER to verify what updates your windows needs or whether the windows update PROGRAM itself is up to date! Pretty daft isn't it?

Now, presuming that you've survived the windows update verification stage, you can finally download the updates. But that is IF it works in the first place. Sometimes the update program hangs and you're stuck with a "preparing to download" message till you finally realise that all hopes of updating windows is lost.

So... in order to encourage more people to update windows regularly, Microsoft should follow in the footsteps of Symantec's Norton AntiVirus (NAV) software. NAV no doubt has their own autoupdate software but they also give you the option of downloading their latest virus definition updates on their website. So no matter how out of date your antivirus software is, all you need to do is download ONE file and it'd automatically equip you with the latest virus defnition updates. Simple isn't it? Microsoft should follow suit and it'd probably prevent thousands of computers from being hacked simply because people couldn't or were too lazy to patch their windows.

*Cough*

Alright, enough with the ranting! TGIF everybody!!!!!!! :D

Note: I've decided to reenable comments again after activating some security settings that prevent "bots" from posting. :D

I'm stumped

I was taking the bus home with my SIM classmate and she asked me a question that stumped me.

"So... what're your hobbies?"

Great gosh man... somehow in primary school I could say I collected stamps, phonecards or bottle caps but now I can't really consider myself having a serious hobby. Maybe it's because most of my time is spent in the office thus I lack free time to actually persue a hobby? Maybe I'm just lazy.. 0_o'''

Cyberstuff Training

Me, JJ and OneStar took a bus from Buona Vista MRT to Ayer Raja camp for the SAF Cybersmart training thing today. Ayer Raja camp turned out to be in some godforsaken place as most SAF camps are anyway. It's just pretty amazing how a camp seems to stay nicely hidden out of public view for so long. I guess you gotta hand it to the guy who thought of the location of the camp in the first place.

Anyway, after three hours of how to use Nortan AntiVirus, Adaware and firewalls, I'm finally back in office. It's surprising how I didn't freeze to death with the aircon in the computer lab on full blast despite the fact that it was pouring rain outside... Yeesh... will blog later...

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Time now is 12.14am, the Cyberstart training probably rubbed off some of its influence on me because I decided to install Nortan Antivirus. Hahha... yes I basically had NO antivirus software before that. 500 infected files later my computer is somewhat virus free... hope I haven't been responsible for spreading the "germs" around... Alright, must sleep..

The Near Accident

I was on the way to pick my parents up from Church when I nearly met with a potentially bad accident.

I was cruising downhill and wanted to make a left turn into a small one way street. There were cars parrallel parked along that street and this champagne coloured Nissan Sunny was reversing out of a lot. As I approach the turn he stops reversing and I presume that he saw that my turn signal was on. Then as I make the turn he suddenly accelerates right into my path! I jam on the brakes and narrowly miss smashing into him by about 1m or so.

Unfortunately before I could lean on the horn to give him a round of "applause," he gives me the "whoops, sorry!" hand wave and speeds off. Had I decided to make the turn any faster he could probably have to think of buying a new car...

Talk About Anything

Had dinner with my friends today at Suntec's Subway Sandwhich and talked till the stores started closing. It's times like this when time seems to fly by because you're just having so much fun. :)

Well, there goes my Saturday... booo!!!

Note: The "comments" function has been PERMANENTLY removed as I've been getting lots of "spam" comments.

Gimme 3 "Set As"

Woohooo I'm back! Feeling tired but feeling pretty satisfied for a Friday night out.

Since my parents were heading off to their own dinner function I decided to join Jeremy and his two friends for dinner. We dined at "Shimbashi Soba" at Paragon which was quite an upmarket restaurant which specialises in their handmade soba. Three of us decided to be adventuress and tried the "A set." Yes. 3 of the exact same sets.. lol!! XD while jeremy tried some cold soba noodles with stewed duck.

The "Set A" was basically a bowl of cold noodles, 3 slices of raw salmon and a few pieces of teriyaki chicken and some fried "fish patties." Having been prepared by authentic Japanese chefs the presentation of the meal looked like a work of art. I couldn't help but take a picture of the meal before tucking in. (Note: My phone camera sucks. This picture does not do the meal justice!)


Overall, you can certainly taste the quality of the food. The handmade noodles indeed taste very much fresher than the mass produced machine made soba noodles. I'd probably go back there again when I feel like giving myself a treat. Oh yeah, did I mention that they even provide you an "instruction menu" of how to fully immerse yourself into enjoying your soba?


Another fun point to note of the day: Certain drink machines accept ezlink cards for payment. So if you're out of coins, just tap your ezlink card and the drink is yours! Never die of thirst again!!

Debut Post

Greetings all! Welcome to my blog! It was after much deliberation before I finally decided to set up my own blog because I kept on asking myself, "What on earth can I write about?"

Well, then I figured that I should just start a blog anyway and see how everything went. So... here we are! Thanks for visiting!

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Another Thursday, another day at the office and two more days to the weekend. Thank goodness for that! The week has been not so tiring as SIM is currently having a one week break so NO CLASSES. Hahah.. So much for my debut post. Will blog more later as my mind is blank. :P

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Time now is 10.53pm and I'm getting ready for bed. I basically got back home and watched Project SuperStar for awhile and went upstairs. I find that I can no longer watch TV anymore due to the insane amount of adverts that are thrown at you after less than 10mins of programme. At least when you surf the net you can choose to "close" pop up boxes or not look at the adverts on websites.

Alrighty, guess I better go as my brain is kind of hazing up... :D