25thapril.blogspot.com

back to work

2011-06-22T21:46:00.001+08:00

it was a great break. we took a trip to Maldives (you can read about it here).

i finally get to dive after so long, joyce finally got a taste of diving. unfortunately, all good things come to an end and it was back to reality.

at least it was done in style.

heaps to stuff to settle at home for the wedding:

a new bed	just ordered, coming this friday
curtains	just settled
wardrobe	gotta wait for the bed

there is also a sudden overseas working trip which means we have to defer our wedding gown appointment with Yvonne.

general elections 2011– dislikes

2011-05-04T16:59:00.001+08:00

the three things i dislike about elections

loudhailers

yes, despite the advent of technology and the proliferation of new media, we are still stuck in the 1960s style of renting a lorry and zhng some loud hailer on it.

erm, we don’t live in ‘sua teng’ (mountain top) anymore, we have tv, radio, internet, phones, newspapers, and uncles/aunties at the coffeeshop. so i’m sure you would have gotten a wind of things to come.

so, please phase out those loudhailers – they are a public nuisance and more often than not, it goes like … ‘ vote pap for a betterrr...’ and the wp lorry comes along .. ‘ first world parliaaaaa…’

awful speeches/analogies

this year, we already got a couple of analogies. after a while, i gave up reading about them because the candidates kept harping on it and gave counter analogies. perhaps the schools can borrow some idea:

in no more than 200 words, compose an essay using all of the below helping words. you may begin your story with ‘one day i was driving… ‘

driver co-driver rojak chiku mushroom ruminating cows koyok tiger mountain spare tyre dorothy tinman scarecrow lion wife-who-cannot-cook

someone used the wizard of oz (i nv read it before) example and told me to vote with my head, and then he told me to vote with my heart, errr… right. the only thing that made sense was to tell me to vote without fear.

then there were a few who were better off not talking at all. like the one who threatened all of aljunied as if we were gonna be banished like that. unfortunately, he probably only helped to speed up aljunied voters’ decision making.

then there was the really poor cheerleader who ran out of things to say and started to punch his fist into the air and shouted almost every candidate’s name every time he did that. he must have been a poor orientation group leader.

mrbrown did better with the starfish analogy

mah bow tan

err… can we do something about this guy already?

room makeover

2011-05-03T14:01:00.001+08:00

the state of my current room will not accommodate 2 people when joyce moves in, plus the colour really … yucks.

the Gallant desk has got to make way so we can fit a queen size.

the current bookshelf/tv console will be shifted to the other side of the room, to create a partition between the bed and work area. the standing book shelf will be flipped to become the new tv console by adding capita legs from ikea.

the new work desk will extend from the bookshelf using the extension desk expedit series. unfortunately, because the desk was not meant to connect to the bookshelf in the horizontal orientation, we would need another L bracket to hold the desk onto the bookshelf.

then there was the paint job, which was a pain because of the rockstone surface.

but it was well worth it, we got the outcome we wanted. now thats left is to add drawers and wall decor. and to build a new wardrobe.

the lion king musical

2011-04-22T13:57:00.000+08:00

life was getting too boring and we needed something to look forward to.

hence we created an event to look forward to. at $140 (after staff discount), it still cost more than what we paid for chicago. i was sceptical but the prospects of watching a musical at a new theatre was too appealing.

it was a mad rush since joyce ended school late and i just got off work in the same morning. we reached mbs nearing 8pm and were close to having the doors shut in our face.

surprisingly, they weren’t too strict on the timing. i wished the ushers could do more when we got off the lift, no one was there to guide us until we found the door ourselves.

evidently, we had plenty of time to spare.

maybe because it was a mass appeal musical, they weren’t too strict on photography either. the fella next to could still whip out his tripod mounted dslr and took his time to shoot. the same action in esplanade would have triggered a code red emergency response team.

costing approx $1 per minute, it was an expensive show. considering we paid a cheaper price for a cat one seat for chicago. story wise was alright (i for one, have never seen lion king cartoon before, but the story wasn’t appealing).

however, the visual spectacle was fantastic. the use of props was clever, and mechanisms on the costume was ingenious. it did not take a lot of brainworks to figure out which animal was which.

overall, i think it was money well spent considering the stage set up and music. and yes, it will also go down well with first time musical goers. but you do have to put up with a bit of sound from the audience during the show, since it is also a show catered to kids.

in my opinion, the characters timon and the bird scored. great vocals. the lead seem to struggle a fair bit with their voice.

of course, it was also a good break for norman and cab… away from parenthood for 3 hours.

dinner @ hosted on the patio

2011-04-15T13:40:00.000+08:00

late night dinner on friday night.

i would think many people would have known about this place by now. it is actually across the road from psa building within the cluster of low rise that houses deutche bank and ema.

norman and cab came down to join us from faraway land.

it was a friday night, so there was a live band playing. the set up of the restaurant is simple and that gives the rustic feel. service staff was attentive and they made a point to take note of who ordered what.

the lamb shank was soft and easy on the teeth. the gravy was made out of some wine i presume. overall it was alright i guess.

norman’s spare ribs was also on the soft side, which makes me wonder if this is the chef’s style of cooking. taste quite similar to our canned pig trotters.

the girls had the pasta with duck meat. not too creamy and was actually pretty good.

the dessert here was excellent. i felt that more people came here to chill than for a full meal, hence a wide selection of drinks and snacks. the marble cake serving was pretty generous and was really good.

and so was the lava cake.

overall, hosted on the patio is great for a night out chillax session. it gets a little stuffy outside though – so do consider the weather.

they’ve got a pool table tucked on the corner of the patio but it would be great if they cleared the mess there. it’s impossible to play with the chairs stacked and because it is in one corner, it gets a little too stuffy.

running

2011-02-23T13:27:00.001+08:00

after much inertia, i have decided that i should start running again. considering how much inactive i have been, it is a long shot.

looking at my past running stats, i will be amazed if i could do that again.

i could sustain 7.9 km/hr for the first 8 km? haha. that was 2007

fast forward to today…

1km down and pfffft

long way to go. as such, i have decided to go with runkeeper to keep the motivation (if any) up and hit some targets along the way.

Comfort Citycab Fail

2011-02-02T00:21:00.001+08:00

Hi,

Earlier today at 2145hrs, my wife and I were at Ion Orchard. Due to the crowd at the taxi stand, we decided to make a booking for a taxi through the iPhone App using both her phone and mine.

Despite multiple attempts, we were unsuccessful in getting a booking. As such, we turned to calling the hotline.

Unfortunately, the line was engaged and when we did get through, we had to hold the line for as long 5 to 7 minutes each time only to be informed that our booking was unsuccessful.

By 2245hrs, I made a final call to the hotline and informed the customer service officer that we had been trying to book a cab for the past hour and that we require a cab urgently. She then informed me that she will process the booking together with the remarks indicating our urgency and that an SMS will be forwarded to me to inform me of the outcome. She also informed me that there was no available cabs in the area I was in.

In the end, there was no cab, and I had to resort to commute via MRT which got me home at 2345hrs. I had essentially been robbed of my time.

1. I would think that a company like yours would have a certain service standard to meet, and that the same customer had to attempt to book a cab unsuccessfully for one hour is definitely not acceptable.

In that time, I had received no less than 6 SMS to tell me that taxi was not available. This is excluding the recorded messages I heard on the phone on the occasions I managed to get through, and excluding the calls/bookings my wife made.

Pls explain to me, what is the service standard (if any) that your company is practising pertaining to taxi bookings and of course, how far a radius is the broadcast sent out.

2. I find the remarks that 'no available cabs in my area' disturbing because, more often than not, there will be empty cabs zipping around but not picking up fare. Of course this is the individual behaviour of the driver which is of course not within your control. However, given that your HQ knows that there is a shortage of cabs in an area, was there an effort to dispatch more cabs there?

How much is the company doing in terms of assigning cabs to hotspots? It is very frustrating seeing empty cabs around the area not wanting to turn into the taxi stand and also just as frustrating for cabbies not knowing where to pick up fares. This is happening amidst the talk about push for productivity.

In this case, even a booking fee of $3.50 and $3.00 city charge does not guarantee the commuter a cab - if the driver is indifferent to the offerings of extra fare, we should do away with ridiculously expensive booking fee and the city fee.

3. I find that the customer service is hardly a two-way channel. When I informed the customer service officer of my predicament, all she could do was to try to put in a remark, proceeded with my order and left it as that. No attempt was made to check if I had gotten a cab and I had to wait for an SMS to tell me if I was sucessful before I could decide that I should not wait any longer. That was hardly customer service.

4. I hope that you are able to clarify the points with me before the next working day. After which, I will lodge an official complaint with LTA as clearly, there is a service failure here. Do understand that I'm not writing based on this isolated case but it was clearly the last straw.

marina bay sands – goodbye 2010

2011-01-01T11:09:00.000+08:00

thankfully i was on standby and took leave for 1st jan (my first new year since joining the company). norman invited us to marina bay sands since they had a room there.

the view was great except that we were on the wrong side of the hotel.

the room… was like any other hotel room – i thought pathumwan princess in bangkok did better in terms of interior design.

the bathroom was fantastically big though with a slider door (read: no lock).

because it was new year’s eve, almost the entire singapore was there. much of the skypark was cordoned off due to private parties...

… parties for people with money to burn. $300 a pop for a party? who are these people?!

of course, with the preferred high society crowd, the mbs staff were less polite to us – the tee shirt and berms breed.

‘can we go ther …’ – no! that was a quickest response since we stepped in.

yea, and of course, the party people got the best view since they could get to the protruding end of skypark. we got half the wheel…

then again, they should really block off the pool area to the public. if i were a guest, i wouldn’t like to be stared at by paying public. anyway, with so little to explore, we holed up in the room waiting for the fireworks and managed to find a quiet corner at the lift lobby outside our room with a view of the city centre.

the fireworks was nothing to shout about but we were really close to the bursts. interestingly, our room offered a lightshow from the vessels in the anchorage – they fired flares and sounded their horns.

if there wasn’t a room, i wouldnt even venture into town and this is why...

happy new year.

the wedding chronicles – married!

2010-12-26T22:44:00.000+08:00

and so we are legally married.

not too many photos at this point because i only have shots from my own camera.

it was a lovely afternoon hanging out with friends and mingling with long lost ones – just the way we wanted it to be.

the guys at goodwood park hotel did a great job with our requests. we had a lovely room (with breakfast, which was unexpected) and an intimate layout for lunch in the tudor ballroom.

watch this space for the photos.

brunch @ yum cha

2010-12-23T11:05:00.000+08:00

many things happened since the last entry.

1. we went to taiwan and you can read about it here.

2. we have settled our attire for ROM at goodwood park hotel and basically settled all the admin stuff for the rom

3. been on leave and back to work and now back on leave again… life is good.

we also made time to yum cha amidst our busy schedule settling the banquet stuff for our actual day – the venue has not been set.

as usual, the girls settled the orders:

siew mai

more siew mai of a different kind

curry puff?

con jee

yam cake

and 17 other items…

decided to try the serangoon gardens country club branch.

no crowd! damn shiok. now we’ve got a $30 return voucher but we will not have dim sum any time soon.

the wedding chronicles–wedding bands

2010-11-25T08:06:00.001+08:00

we finally collected our wedding bands.

less the engraving because couldn’t think of anything to engrave. i was thinking of my address, in case i lose the ring.

so i guess we will put that off after our solemnization. ha. bloody slackers.

the wedding chronicles – invitation cards

2010-11-15T16:05:00.001+08:00

we finally got down to doing the invitation after slacking for a while. it is like about a month to go, and after subtracting the time we will be away from singapore, it is like weeks left to prepare.

so we’d better strike one item off the checklist and the easiest was the invitation. the card, inserts and envelope were complimentary of goodwood park hotel.

with so many examples off the web, it was darn easy but we made it hard caz we decided to write our own nonsense in it. the usual stuff’s on the left and the right presented the day’s proceedings in the form of a menu. and of course, watermarked with our monogram.

we decided to personalise each card with guests’ names printed on the inserts instead of written – wasn’t so difficult with the mail merge function.

took it another step to do it on the envelope as well. and since the envelope was plain white, we watermarked it too.

bmw world 2010

2010-11-15T11:37:00.001+08:00

we took some time off preparing for the solemnization for a second visit to marina bay sands, this time round for the bmw world show.

for some reason, casinos have this distinctive smell. the missus brought to my attention that it is the smell of cigarettes – aren’t these things banned indoors? why should a casino enjoy concession when night clubs have already banned it?

nothing but cars and more cars, i was hoping for a greater focus on the technology. nevertheless, we earned ourselves a free lanyard as consolation.

the biggest draw is of course the concept car – gina. it doesn’t look very much like a car with the smooth curves and the fact that it is stretchable. apparently the missus knew more about this car than i do caz she saw it on discovery.

the rear looked like a afterburner on the f22.

at least the wheels are still decently round.

overall, with the looks that kills. if it is ever made, i’m pretty sure it is only for the immortally rich people.

while we can only take away pictures of it. and we leave you with a friend note from the people of bmw:

yes that’s right, money buys you joy.

dinner @ your woul korean restaurant

2010-11-12T23:42:00.001+08:00

monthly gathering with the girls and guys took us to somewhere near liying’s new workplace. the good thing about the novena area was that the dinner options were all around and we chanced upon this korean joint – your woul.

we didn’t know what to eat so we opted for the chapalang pot of stuff… and of course, korean pancake.

surprisingly, the two dishes fed 4 of us pretty well. the hotpot was so-so. the chapalang included sausages, spam, ramen, mushrooms, kimchi, cucumber and rice cakes. pretty much what i would cook outfield.

but hey, the company made up for the lapse in the taste department. great to hear the latest going-ons and what everyone’s up to.

fujifilm instax mini 25

2010-11-09T12:28:00.001+08:00

it has finally arrived.

yes, i ended up buying two sets by accident.

gonna spend the next few days pondering if i should sell the additional set.

on a sidenote, i simply do not understand why people are so willing to buy from the ppl at gmarket or those little girls selling on their blogs. it is way cheaper to just get it off amazon yourself – and yes, delivered to doorstep.

the wedding chronicles – table name cards 2

2010-11-09T11:06:00.001+08:00

we collected our name cards from the printer’s a week back and it turned out pretty ok.

the original intention was to hand write the names of the guests on the dotted line with calligraphy pens but our handwriting was somewhat inconsistent.

thought over it for a while and realised that maybe, just maybe we could adjust the margins on ms word such that we could print the names just above the dotted line – and it worked! we threw in 4 cards worth of prototype (for font size, positioning etc) and then it was to mass production… all in 10 mins.

have a list of guests' names on ms excel
create a mail merge to ms word and hit it
slap in all 70 over cards to the printer
print it

then it is the painful task of actually folding it into halves. on hindsight, should have asked the printer’s if the cards came with pre-fold. now we need to manually carve a line across to make sure that it folds without much creases.

we also made a point a print a few special edition versions too.

chill @ city space

2010-11-07T11:01:00.001+08:00

we’ve always toyed with the idea of going to equinox but whenever we were around, i was never appropriately dressed.

the opportunity came when we finished dinner at prego’s, we did not know where else to head to and for the first time in many months, i actually have a pair of shoes on for the weekend. so, off to the 70th floor we went.

slightly different from what i imagined. i was expecting a big open space with full panel windows 360 degrees all around. it was in fact, a pretty intimate setting with plush seats.

seating was limited for bigger groups. since we were there to check out the view, we got a seat with the city view…

… and it came with a surcharge of $20. i guessed it would be waived if you spent like more than $60 or something. talking about claiming credit – as if you deliberately constructed the cityscape so that your bar had the view to kill.

would have been better if the bar was facing the other side of singapore – we were looking at clarke quay area on the left…

… and orchard/selegie on the right. it was interesting for the first 15 minutes or so, then we ran out of things to look at. partly because fort canning park took up much of the real estate (read: unlit portions), oh, and the istana too (also unlit). we should asked for discount off the $20. other things to note:

the furthest recognizable building goes to holiday inn (the one near zouk).
orchard road actually uses a different coloured street lights
the roof on the clarke quay blocks actually lits up in a flashing fashion.
there’s a giant screen on orchard central.

great experience though. live jazz musician who seemed to be able to play any song thrown at her . we almost wanted to test her with a song dedication, ‘american idiot’, to see if she could pull it off.

dinner @ prego’s

2010-11-06T11:41:00.001+08:00

it’s the missus’s birthday and running out of ideas, we headed to prego’s after shopping for some cold wear at raffles city.

the good thing about having late dinner is that you need not jostle with everyone else for tables, and it’s quieter.

even after the first outing here, i’m still quite fascinated with the olive oil/vinegar jar.

the bread is as usual, a big draw too. nice warm and soft, served with some pasta sauce. this time round, she decided to go for the vongole.

while i went for the skinny pizza. this one’s served with mozzarella and parma ham, with the yucking rockets which i always made a point not to eat.

on the sides, we went for caesar salad – which was quite a filler for a starter.

we decided to top off the dinner with tiramisu. it seemed like they kept replenishing the tiramisu so it must be pretty good. i’m no fan of tiramisu so it tasted like any other desserts.

dining experience at prego’s has always been a pleasure – the ambience is always like a sunday brunch feel no matter the time of the day. or perhaps it is just the impression that it is a place for sunday brunch that sticks.

we should try out the supper promotion one of these days – there’s like a one for one pizza promo.

the wedding chronicles – table name cards

2010-10-30T15:56:00.001+08:00

because the solemnization is going to be a rather private affair, we thought it should also be highly personalized. and so, we decided to go along with the idea of table name cards for the seating arrangements.

the idea was to use business name cards with our wedding monogram printed on. then it dawned on us that, there are actually folded name cards on the market. so we conjured a design on photoshop and brought it to the printer’s at peace centre.

because of the low quantity, we were charged $40 for a box of 100. tmd. but there was no bargaining chip. if it turns out well, it should look like this from the front with the guest’s name written (budget).

the back will bear the wedding monogram and date (which i accidentally removed while making this 3d image).

the next big thing is to sort out the guestbook. so we are not that slack after all.

the wedding chronicles – somes thoughts

2010-10-30T10:17:00.001+08:00

getting married in singapore is a bitch. for a solemnization ceremony to take place… it seems like you must either be getting a flat from hdb soon, or you got pregnant, or it must be on your actual wedding day.

we did none of the above. we have no flat of our own, she isn’t pregnant and yet, we are holding a separate solemnization ceremony.

weddings in singapore has taken a whole new meaning and it revolves around pragmatic motivations. people propose with the lady already knowing that he will propose because they’ve already secured a flat and will have to register their marriage or lose the flat.

we were sure we did not want to tread this path. i proposed without her having any expectations. we are getting married (from a legal point of view) this december, because we want to. we really could not think of any other reasons for us to do so nor any reasons for us not to.

having said that, there’s a stiff competition amongst couples when it comes to commodities like wedding venues. inquiry for wedding dinner venues for 2011 indicated that most of the dates for november have been taken. this is a practice which i find the most stupid because if you head down to the forums online, many people are giving up their packages too.

of course this frenzy pre-booking is driving up the costs of everything and the hotels have no reason not to increase the prices every year.

seriously, unless you have started planning, there isn’t much of a point to secure a place. you pre-book because you were afraid the prices will rocket but you are the very factor that will eventually drive the costs up.

dinner @ porn’s

2010-10-25T23:30:00.001+08:00

countdown to our rom and we were shopping for… jeans. yeah it’s not even on the wedding agenda but when u grow fat, u need new jeans. so it was top priority.

it hit us when we realised it was dinner and we knew we needed thai food. since the whole world’s hyped over pornsak’s restaurant and we were around the corner, it was worth checking out.

fortunately, it was a monday so there were seats for us. wouldn’t say the restaurant is the type that you will hang around after a meal because the ambience just doesn’t cut it and with the door opened, the aircon probably couldn’t cope.

decor focuses on minimalist with the centrepiece being a mural of thailand’s topographic map…

… which kept joyce occupied for quite a while. so much so that i did not see her face for a good 5 mins.

we ordered the usual stuff and service was prompt.

the ribena-ish drink caz there wasn’t lime juice.

tom yam goong… they could have done better if they kept the flame running a little longer. simply put, warm tom yam soup < hot tom yam soup. i liked it for it sourness.

prawn paste thingy, which tasted the same as other establishments.

mince pork with basil. a little too salty and not as spicy as i thought. be sure to save your rice for this.

generally, it’s just a simple restaurant with simple thai fare. reminds me of what we got from the streets of thailand. service was prompt and if there’s something that the restaurant did right, it has to be the range of items in the menu – not a lot to choose from, but sufficient for variety. i would like to try nakhon kitchen for comparison though.

price-wise, we spent $40+. so you be the judge.

canon 24-105mm

2010-10-25T14:25:00.001+08:00

oops, says my wallet.

nice red curves. and i have recently revisited photoshop to maintain some currency. i must say i have gotten lazier and resorted to preloaded actions – work smart, not hard.

can’t wait to fully exploit this on my taiwan trip.

the wedding chronicles – story so far

2010-10-23T11:14:00.000+08:00

our solemnization ceremony is this 26th dec and it was supposed to be a least-of-my-worries affairs (c’mon, i’ve done bigger events than this) but it’s turning out to be full of roadblocks and catch-22 situations – cannot settle this stuff until we decide on the other stuff and yet the other stuff is waiting for this stuff to be settled.

here’s a rundown of what we have ~~accomplished~~ yet to accomplish with two months to go:

Venue:	hit a snag, in the midst of changing venue.
justice of peace:	informed but yet to throw in the shocker about the change in venue. btw, we changed the timing once alr. pending venue, we have yet to e-file.
photographer:	the easiest bit, settled by her dad.
wedding bands:	almost didn’t make it in time but settled. thankfully we had the urge to just pop down to the jewellers’ one fine day to snoop around.
bride’s dress:	the latest stuff to be settled. thanks to the ‘mai tu liao’ mentality that we are adopting now. lucky for that caz the dress required 2 months to be ready.
groom’s attire:	hmmm not done. they should be able to churn out one within weeks rite? so that can wait rite?
flowers:	apparently her dad will settle… i think.

and that’s about it. at least we think that’s it but i’m sure there are still the tiniest details which we overlooked. but hey, at least we settled the dress:

just imagine it in tifanny’s blue and a lot more fitting than this.

we are probably the least kan chiong wedding couple ever… but hey, at least we heard the alarm bells. speaking of which, we also realised we are quite late in sourcing for hotels for our customary next year end.

what is wrong with singaporean couples and their advance bookings man?! even the ceo’s secretary cannot plan 1 yr in advance and you can.

canon 50d

2010-09-21T09:24:00.001+08:00

after much deliberation, i have decided to ditch the 1000D for the 50d. actually i’m not sure if i have really outgrown the 1000d considering the utilization but the 50d’s body feels more solid and balanced.

of coz i didn’t have the money to get a new one, so i settled for a second hand one from clubsnap. that set me back to about $1050 for a 5 month old body. i have yet to find any cosmetic fault with it.

now that i got it cheap, i think i afford to sell my 1000d cheap too. yeah, i’ve been looking at getting a 24-105mm f/4 l for some time already.

promoted

2010-07-21T23:13:00.001+08:00

after 2 years.

time to take stock and review where to go from now.

why i chose the black carrot cake?

2010-07-07T22:12:00.001+08:00

i went for a haircut the other day despite having an appointment in the afternoon. to compound the already tight situation, i felt a hunger pang along the way home and decided that i should eat something.

the first stall was the carrot cake stall. and in case you have not realised, ordering a carrot cake is not as simple as just ordering a carrot cake.

if the americans have starbucks, we have the usual hawker fair. when you walk into starbucks, you easily make 3 to 4 decisions – tall or grande, with whip cream or without, to go or in a mug? likewise, for our hawker fare – chilli or not, tur kwa or not, etc.

when i ordered that plate of carrot cake, a string of analysis went through my head and 5 seconds later, i decided that it was the black carrot cake that would save my appointment as opposed to the white.

you see, white carrot cake is usually crispy and the black is not. of course some white carrot cakes are not crispy and this is dependent on how much pride the hawker has in his culinary pursuit.

analysis: if that guy happens to have a lot of pride in his crispy carrot cake, it will waste my time. since i were the only person in the queue, there was no incentive for him to make a lousy carrot cake, he would therefore cook the crispiest carrot cake ever since there was no loss to him. however, to me, it would be an utter waste of time since i only wanted to fill my stomach and i didn’t care if it was the best carrot cake, it only had to be passable.

hence, my friends, save time and take black.

twilight: eclipse

2010-07-05T22:19:00.001+08:00

i recently caught the twilight: eclipse and even though there is still 6 months to go till the end of 2010, i think this movie has safely clinched the top spot for the worst movie of the year.

someone should just kill off belle or bella – it was torturous to endure 2 hours of indecisiveness and oh-please-change-me. the twilight should be rated W21 (restricted to women below 21) because it is bad education.

it teaches you that you should ditch common sense and rationale thoughts to become a lovelorn and make your life revolve around a man (or in this case, an anaemic one). it also teaches you that friends are not important and that you should be thick-skinned to hang around people that are obviously not your kind (u can take this literally).

on a serious note, we should really ban young girls from watching it. it encourages teens to act beyond reasonable sense and that they can negate everything else if they met a nice white boy.

it was probably one of the worst movie experience this year. easily 50% of dialogue doesn’t contribute to the plot and they keep harping over the fact that the dog din like the bat. almost everyone was mumbling in the show. the constant indecisiveness of the girl was a drag – she should just be killed off. and the girl next to me could not help telling her friend what the next scene was.

to end off the ultimate movie disaster, there was a M Night Shyamalan trailer for the airbender. this guy is probably the only guy in the world who thinks that his movies are good.

gian bhng – part 2

2010-06-23T20:21:00.001+08:00

i was browsing thru the edition of the malaysian paper, the star, and saw the below letter written to the forum section.

i couldn’t help laughing at this fella who actually submitted ‘shipload of entries’ and was ‘disappointed that he did not win’. c’mon, did you just take such contests so seriously? nobody gives two hoots about such contests, much less worry about if there were actual winners.

when was the last time you bought a pack of twisties and actually won something?

away from office

2010-06-11T23:08:00.000+08:00

on vacation in malaysia!

do check out the updates from here.

pulau ubin

2010-05-29T23:56:00.001+08:00

as the title suggests, we went to pulau ubin because there was no where else to go.

little did we know that the rest of singapore also had the same problem and ended up there too.

thankfully the weather did her part that i did not even need my shades. anyway, most of the tracks were shaded so it wasn’t much of an issue. after a short refresher on the art of balancing for joyce, we set off on a short cycling route comprising road and trail.

quite a feat to conquer the trails despite her poor bike handling skills. thankfully zero injuries except mozzie bites.

we spent much of the 2 hours cycling down slope and carrying the bike upslope. very little opportunity to capture shots here and there.

in any case, bike rental was only for 2 hours – although i vaguely remembered we paid the same price for full day on a weekday. but might as well since we planned to eat dinner there anyway.

for about $100, we had the you tiao which came in rather small portion…

the kangkong is what you usually expect…

with norman around, we needed to have shellfish and oyster omelette it was…

and lastly, a chilli crab and a black pepper crab. personally i like black pepper crab but was a bit disappointed when it came with the black pepper sauce (most restaurants do these days). i prefer those with grounded pepper fried with butter etc. nevertheless it was pretty good.

the chilli crab sauce had a special addition of ikan bilis in it which gives the sauce more oomph compared to those with purely tomato/chilli paste.

with dinner done, and so was the queue at the jetty.

the weather was horribly humid and stuffy. seriously what have we done to deserve this weather.

that aside, it was time to head home, shower and what a way to end vesak day with a game of mahjong - 阿弥陀佛.

how to say stupid things?

2010-05-09T21:23:00.000+08:00

singtel on the latest world cup broadcast rights.

When you say $66 is high, let me just be clear that they pay about a dollar a game to watch in the comfort of their homes. I think it is reasonable. I think they can afford it. It is less than a cup of coffee

hmmm… 4 years back i paid like 20 bucks to watch the world cup, so that works out to 30 cents per match and i guess that’s the price i pay for a pack of tissue paper. i think i use enough tissue packs these days to know that i still pay 30 cents for a pack of tissue paper. so what has changed?

to put things in perspective, we should examine the cpi and hmm, the price we paid for things 4 year back is like 91% of today’s price. zooming into communication services, it is like 98% of today’s price.

so if you paid 98 bucks for internet plan then, you are paying 100 bucks today – just 2 bucks more, not 3 times more.

so kids, even if you say stupid things, you can still become the chief of some department.

p.s. all 64 matches? you have to be kidding, will you watch kim jong il’s merry men fight it out against ivory coast?

laborious weekend

2010-05-03T09:18:00.001+08:00

all i wanted to do was to fix up a rack/tray to hold the multiplug under my desk instead of it being on the floor. it was getting unsightly and makes sweeping difficult.

so we set off to ikea to get one of these to screw onto the underside of the desk.

btw, i like how ikea always make u buy more stuff than needed. we only needed that $10 thing but picked up another $10 worth of stuff. and then when you are leaving, they make sure you part with a dollar or two on the drinks/hotdogs. shrewd.

what was meant to be a 10min job transpired into a 30min one. not easy to work try to hold a screwdriver and a screw while trying to wrestle with gravity.

i swear i’ll get an impact driver when i get my own place.

dinner @ arbite

2010-05-01T01:38:00.000+08:00

it’s the may day long weekend with 2 highly anticipated movies to look forward to. Given the short three days we have (china gets like five?), we’d better start early on friday nite.

decided to kill off ip man first but everywhere was booked, so we settled for amk cathay where the seats are further from screen – no issue with the 3rd row seats. it’s been a long time since we’ve been to serangoon gardens and the proximity seemed like a good excuse.

we took our chance with arbite, this fairly new restaurant that opened probably a few months back. yes, yet another pasta place in serangoon gardens.

you probably have to know where it is before you find it, there’s no shop front since it is located on the second floor. thankfully, it is so darn obvious since it sits right in front of the bus stop. the stairs will take you to a minimalistic themed restaurant that is decked with ikea-ish furnishing.

menu is not extensive but the quality of food was good. at least you dun have to think too much. soup was either mushroom (contains 4 types) or clam chowder. we whacked both.

according to the menu, the pasta is hand made everyday so the wife took the seafood Tagliatelle. in four words – seafood good, pasta thick – which translates to good ingredients but the pasta’s too thick ala ban mian.

i took the prawns with spaghetti (yes, thats the name of the dish). overall i think it is good but that’s caz i like garlic, so if you dun, stay away from this. Would prefer if they were not so generous with the oil.

dessert was shared between us – this cake called my wife’s chocolate cake. it’s like mud pie served with a scoop of ice cream. of course we didn’t really want to eat dessert but we had time to kill… and an earl grey to finish.

for some reason, she has this recent crave for earl grey where ever we went.

i would think this is not a bad place to hang out – at least it was a quiet place to hide on a friday night. looks like much thought had been given to the theme of the restaurant though i’m not quite sure who’s their target group in mind. pricing was reasonable, ok i lied – i forgot how much we paid but it is definitely nowhere near the price of ristorante de parma down the road.

i noticed the place was cooled by 4 or 5 regular air con units (like the ones you and i have in our bedrooms). i wonder if it can take the stress at full house – it was alright when the restaurant had 6 ppl but 30-40 ppl looks like another story.

zhng my pc – part 2

2010-04-25T21:14:00.001+08:00

my new pc is finally up and running!

with a new 22in wide screen monitor, i no longer have to side scroll and man, huge screen is shiok!

the pc guy came on saturday to fix up the stuff and he magically transformed the parts into a pc in less than an hour.

these should be powerful enough to last me 3 years?

thankfully the old Ram i sold off paid for my new wireless keyboard and mouse – i really hate wires. and thankfully, my bro got a set of sonic gear speakers with subwoofer sitting somewhere (read: white elephant). and a very nice razer destructor mousepad given by my ~~girlfriend~~ wife-to-be.

zhng my pc – part 1

2010-04-20T21:23:00.001+08:00

ordered a monitor from dell last saturday.

didn’t know it had to be assembled and then ship. so dell also adopts just-in-time operations concept? hmmm lean ops eh.

anyway, the pc guy is coming down with the parts this sat to assemble the stuff. but looks like i have to make do with the old monitor first. zzz.

gian bhng

2010-04-11T00:48:00.001+08:00

read a piece of interesting news this morning. it was about how the ppl in china staged a sit-in at kfc outlets in protest over some coupons that was not endorsed.

Angry customers mobbed two Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets this week, in Beijing and Shanghai, in anger over a coupon promotion gone awry, state media reported.

The trouble flared Tuesday as the restaurant launched a promotion in which coupons downloaded from the Internet could be exchanged for food at KFC outlets.

Customers became angry after staff refused to accept some coupons, saying they were fake.

Angry coupon-holders in Beijing flipped over chairs and tables and had to be dispersed by police, the Global Times said. Crowds also gathered at a Shanghai outlet.

like what for? it is just a chicken and not as if you could not afford it at its regular price.

this reminded me of an incident while dining at Manhattan fish market (yucks) a week back. this lady settled into her seat at the restaurant. being a savvy singaporean, she asked if she was allowed to use her 10% coupon before ordering. because it was a public holiday, the staff kindly reminded her it was not admissible for dining on public hols. she then of course asked to see the manager.

the manager came and also insisted that it was not possible to use the coupon. at this stage, the lady was super pissed and went on to criticize how lousy the restaurant was, etc. she also insisted that she had used the same coupon at another branch on a sunday. the bigger shocker was that she told manager sundays were also considered public holidays (which part of singapore she came from man?) and therefore if another branch allowed the coupon, this branch should also honour it. the fiasco ended in a deadlock with the lady walking away and declaring loudly she would never dine there again.

i wondered why the lady even bothered. at the end of the day, 10% is like what – probably $5 off a $50 meal for two. i didn’t think it was worth it to fight till the end over this, it was not as if she could not afford the meal. having said all that, the final score was… manager 1 – 0 lady.

life goes on for the manager and the restaurant (they weren’t wrong anyway) but for the lady, she probably rant on and on about it for the rest of the night. of course, it was a crowded night and she would probably find it hard to even find another restaurant to settle into for a decent meal. her poor husband probably had to put up with a black face and hunger pang (he did look hungry and was rather happy to find a seat at the restaurant). a mere 10% discount coupon probably ruined her day – why? because she gian-bhng.

but at least she was right about one thing – never return to the restaurant again. the food is simply cannot make it (i knew but i itchy backside want to eat some fish and chips can?)

why i hate match days

2010-04-03T13:32:00.000+08:00

the big match is on today. and i do not give a flying fark. i wished it was on 1st april so i can wear a nice man utd jersey to the pub and jump up to cheer whenever chelsea scores. sadly it isn’t 1st april and the last man utd shirt in my closet still bear the word ‘sharp’.

many years ago, i have concluded that televised soccer matches are

1.	expensive
2.	highly anti-social activities

well, i used to like them (err back in ‘94). i started watching the likes of abbas saad and steven tan trashing the crap out of our northern friends. and then got acquainted with the premier league caz i liked to spend late saturday nights watch ryan giggs teach soccer. thanks to him, i got to know gary pallister and the rest of the man utd gang.

then in the recent years, i found these matches a turn-off. i personally found ppl too emotionally attached to their teams. i could not understand the bias-ness against the opposition even if they well deserved to score that goal. it became irritating when people start to fault everything the opposition does (read: drogba). i was quite sure there was some good in him.

when cristiano ronaldo quit the team, you called him a traitor. but when u quit your current job, you say it’s career progression and change of environment. yup he was a money grubber was willing to switch sides to get what he wanted but hey, you succumbed and subscribed to that stinktel’s mio didn’t you?

post-match will see my facebook flooded with ppl taunting one another over how the match went and how their team will come back. seriously, write all you want but u are just another sorry whiner like the supporter of the opposition team who taunted you. do you realise it is just as irritating as how people are broadcasting what they’ve farmed, or what they’ve cooked or that they need help to slay some farking dragon?!

when big matches come, every social activity revolves around the match. dinners have to be re-scheduled, ppl have to miss family functions, dinner venues have to be near pubs etc. this is the time of year where 80% of singaporeans actually put others before themselves – for that 2 straight hours.

so, why are we man utd / chelsea / arsenal / liverpool fans? we’ve got no roots there and neither is steven tan nor abbas saad playing for them. i can understand if we support ajax but epl teams? well, i was a little man utd fan caz ryan giggs taught me football - 饮水思源 u know. however as a pri 4 kid, my friends did not know who was ryan giggs nor cared if he was the youngest to represent at world cup. they were interested in abbas saad and steven tan then. they would have hated the sunday morning slots on tv12 that showed epl highlights for hours straight.

so i guess, peer pressure drove them to appreciate epl later on (after the demise of malaysian cup). except that they took on a more… hmmm… extremist view of the whole epl-thingy.

i now content myself with playing football management games. sunday soccers got boring caz during half-time or rest time, everyone talked about soccer. i didn’t think you need to be a soccer fan to like playing soccer – like who’s fergie? isnt that the hot girl from black eyed peas? tennis and badminton are better sports these days, i don’t see my friends talking about lin dan or how pete sampras is balding.

to my soccer loving friends, i hope this doesn’t ruin our friendship – to each our own eh. having said that, i’m looking forward to a night out to dinner and then soccer match – gonna suggest paulaner’s.

supper @ wild honey

2010-04-01T08:55:00.000+08:00

we found this place during our attempt to dine at ippudo some weeks back. made a mental note and we were back.

we had a full day’s worth of catered buffet and wasn’t that hungry by the time 9pm came so we thought of this place. it looked like a nice quiet place to hang out and away from the crowd.

the set up is rather homely, nice couches and dim lighting.

there is no menu and everything is chalked down on a blackboard. food items were named after countries – we ordered a belgium which was waffles with grilled mango and a bread basket.

the waffle is pretty good stuff for a night snack – thick, slight crisp with the charred taste – the nice type of charred.

the bread’s served with regular jam and butter and honey. from my understanding, it is one of the more popular orders. should serve 2 ppl and it’s really good. not sure if they provide olive oil and vinegar.

i’m not sure if the place’s specialty is the honey because they did not really say anything about it and all honey taste the same to me. there was honey for everything they serve with including the bread.

however, i’m pretty sure hot chocolate and rose tea is definitely not their specialty. overall, pretty neat place to hang out for coffee or something.

go fly kite la!

2010-03-29T23:07:00.001+08:00

looks like kite-flying is the latest in thing to do in town these days. of course we didn’t want to lag too far behind the rest of the society and decided to join in too.

we got off to a bad start last week due to inclement weather and i remember telling numa to ‘go fly kite’ when he asked if it was still on. he said he wanted to do a benjamin franklin.

this weekend however, was hot and dry and more importantly, windy.

getting the kite up wasn’t quite a big deal. but our dumb kite was a right drifter and had this evil thought to entangle with other ppl’s line for some reason. surprisingly, the general kite flying population was nice and not too bothered if lines got tangled. no one got pissed or anything like that.

we wished we could bring the kite higher – the aim was to use up the line but the entanglement was quite bad that we had to pull it back. the smaller kite did hit the max though.

on another note, the 7-eleven at anchorvale should really relook their kite design. fierce ah beng looking with dragons and eagles design doesn’t really sell well. and so does cheap looking dunno-wtf-cartoon that’s made in china one. just stock generic plain designs will do – we appreciate that.

i need a ride

2010-03-27T10:26:00.001+08:00

the temptation of getting a car is getting stronger but the coe (*certificate of entitlement – see below) will kill.

i dun exactly need it for work except for the occasional meetings at faraway land (read: pasir panjang), and that the shuttle bus out of office leaves at odd timing.

i do want it for recreational purposes, like on weekends. i cannot name specifics but it’s a plus.

why do these thoughts always coincide with the peak pricing? i think the gah men will like me, i always coincide my purchases at the peak.

*basically, our good gah men thinks that something is an entitlement only if u paid good money for it. so we started the initiative with cars and will soon cover pencil cases and such.

housing woes

2010-03-16T20:36:00.001+08:00

new build-to-order released! 5 room flats! rejoice, not.

simply cannot understand how hdb works. on one hand, the reports almost always declare overwhelming response for these new flats. on the other, we are releasing 2 parcels at a time. i thought there are a lot of flats in the pipeline.

lim swee say says we have to be cheaper, better and faster. and so does my ceo. but it looks like hdb is heading in the wrong direction.

maybe mr lim wasn’t one of mr mah’s best lunch buddies back in politics. it’s alrite mr lim, i dun like him much either.

so joyce and i are still undecided whether to sacrifice $10 worth of disappointment fees.

aztech homeplug

2010-03-14T10:39:00.001+08:00

Ever since bro decided to revamp his room around the new mio set top box, our router got pushed further deeper into the room. for some reason, this created a dead zone whenever i tried to connect to the wlan in my room.

we were presented with a few options including repositioning the router to my room but that could mean a dead zone in my bro’s room too. this, gave me a much justifiable reason to get the aztech homeplug. ok, so i might have wanted it since some time back but this time, it was on promo (even more justifiable). just $169 for one regular plug and one that is wireless enabled.

set-up was a piece of cake, even i could do it in a groggy state – like 5 mins after i woke up. just plug both in, press a button so both the plugs know that they are supposed to mate with each other, viola!

hmmm… this will be in the shopping list for my new home in future.

Apple iphone

2010-02-09T22:32:00.001+08:00

and so i succumbed to peer pressure. hmm, or rather i psycho-ed joyce into getting an iphone so i have a more compelling reason to get one too.

two days from now will mark the 12-month milestone of my mobile contract which entitles me an equipment upgrade option with a loanshark penalty of s$100. yes, either the person i talked was a powerless temp or this 100 bucks is such a major source of the company’s revenue that they refused to waive it. despite that, i managed to negotiate into me getting my re-contract 2 weeks before it even ended.

i even ordered a belkin leather holster off amazon before i got the phone to time it with the purchase.

so far, i like it. i like how i can sync the calendar on the phone to my google calendar which is sync-ed to my mozilla email / lightning. i like the fact that i now have stuff to read on the train/toiletbowl. i like the fact i can check which bus is arriving so i can decide to take cab or not. i like the fact that when adam or joyce asks me where i am, i can share my location with them thru whatsapp without having to type so much.

i wished the battery could last longer and that it came with a longer usb wire. i would like to thank the people who influenced me to get the phone.

we shall get back to this post one year from now and see if i hate the phone so much that i trashed it somewhere for another android phone.

complaint letter

2010-01-20T21:30:00.001+08:00

in singapore, it is a well known fact that if you are in a position to make demands (i.e. when you are a customer), you seize every opportunity to bite the service provider.

the question i always ponder… if the provider is not keen to receive feedback, why provide the feedback channel? because it really pisses ppl off when you patronise them with your standard replies.

i wrote:

Since a few weeks back, my ez-link card seemed to exhibit intermittent functionality - there were only random successes when I tried to pass through the gantries at the MRT station. I have tried to highlight to the control staff many times, but they insisted that my card was working.

Today, when I tried to top up the card at the GTM @ harborfront at around 8.20pm, it could not read my card. Thinking it was the machine's fault, I had to rejoin the line to try at another machine which failed as well. Hence, I tried to use the machine at Kovan station where I alighted. It did not work either - i had tried the GTMs at both ends of the station. When I approached the staff at control office, she highlighted that the card's chip was a goner and that I had to use one trip tickets or replace card at ticketing office.

The ticketing office was obviously not opened and not found at all stations (for reasons i cannot comprehend).

I needed to continue my journey on the feeder bus but the control office does not sell ez-link cards (something which i also cannot comprehend since there was an exchange exercise for the older cards not too far from my memory).

I did not have coins, and certainly it did not make sense for me to use $10 bills to pay for a bus trip lasting 4 stops. This whole episode caused me much distress with all the queuing and walking around to try to top up my card. On top of that, I had to deal with embarrassing moments the past few weeks when my card failed at the gantry, causing momentary stop to the human traffic.

Now I need to find time to just to visit the ticketing office just to change my card since i end work late and start work early. I think this is serious service failure, especially so for a newly launched card.

I demand explanation as to why only the ticketing office may sell the ez-link card? is there a function test for ez-link cards? why is that only until today, could a staff inform me that my card was faulty despite approaching the control office many times? is ez-link going to bear the cost of my taxi ride home since there were no other options for me to continue my journey? i look forward to your reply. thanks.

And their reply?

We refer to your email dated 19th Jan 2010.

We would like to express our sincere apology with regards to the inconvenience you have experienced with our ezlink cards. We appreciate your feedback.

We value every feedback as we aim to continually enhance our services to increase the satisfaction level of our users. Do keep the feedbacks coming in as we constantly seek to meet the changing needs of the consumer markets.

at no point did it answer my any of my query. and no, of course i didn’t think they would compensate my taxi fare but at least… you should not patronise me and give me some cut and paste replies.

they will hear from me again.

do i really need a $280 alarm clock?

2010-01-18T22:48:00.001+08:00

i was browsing thru the ces roundup and this came up…

the sony dash. never been a fan of sony ever since i held onto the mini disc player eons ago. the only other sony stuff i had was the ps2.

this is one of those gadgets which i dun really need but feel like buying knowing i will live to regret if i did.

dinner @ nan hua chong fish steamboat

2010-01-17T23:46:00.001+08:00

one of the perks of working normal hours, it is so darn easy to get everyone together for dinner. finally there is such a thing call weekend dinners, so we threw the ball in cuicai’s court and got him to scout for possible locations. we settled for fish head steamboat instead of nakhon kitchen (hougang st 21) because the latter’s bound to have long que.

if there’s something common among all the fish head steamboat places, it is the lack of parking + lack of seats.

the place was packed but by some stroke of luck, we got seats pretty quickly. and no, it was not first come first served. it was a matter of who eyeballed the right tables.

service was barely adequate but singaporeans, being suckers, would rather bow down to bad service for good food. the table was empty as we talked – it felt like we were done eating. the trick here is to get someone to order first, while the rest searched for parking space – something we learnt from the old birds.

the signature oyster omelete. which was ravaged even before the rice came. thankfully, the rest of the food were served in steady intervals – which probably explained the long wait.

the marmite chicken chop was something new… otherwise it would have been har jiong kai (prawn paste chicken) on the table.

ahh… kai lan. the regular feature on the dinner table, from singapore to bangkok.

the highlight of the day. this is no food blog, so i shall not describe in rainbow language how good or bad the thing was. overall, it was good with more than sufficient flavour which all fish head steamboat should exhibit. a point to note was that the amount cabbage in the soup was very generous.

in retrospect, we should have opted for the pomfret. our reservation for not choosing so was that, pomfret is usually served in small quantity. hence the choice of the traditionally chunkier ‘ang goh li’ but it had more bones than meat. my mum was telling me this place’s serving of pomfret is rather generous.

if you are fussy over service, don’t come here. i wouldn’t rate it good nor was it really bad. the place is always packed and the staff seemed to have very specific roles – only this guy could take order and some seemed like they were only in charge of serving the steamboat. they serve table by table, so rest assured by the time your first dish arrives, the rest will follow soon.

desserts @ 1 caramel

2010-01-10T21:04:00.000+08:00

i was still rather irritated by the fact that cathay did not grant me my immediate redemption of citibank points for the chipmunks movie ‘due to technical issue’ – well that cost me $16. not wanting to admit defeat, we tried our luck again at the cathay for ‘have you heard about the morgans’. yes, we are targeting movies not worth spending cash on.

of course that was not the real reason. we went to check out city square but obviously the novelty was only enough to last us 2 hrs. so quick dinner and then off to cathay. with too much time on hand, it was off to 1 caramel – which i heard about during ict when my senior/then instructor raved about

- how good the cakes

- that it was opened by his gf

- how they linked up with one rochester group

- how they managed to get good rental rates at the location

- other biz/personal short stories which i shall not share

obviously it was reverse psychology at work – make it sound incredible and so the skeptic side of human nature will make us check it out… - i fell victim despite walking past so many times.

we just had dinner so something fruity was the logical choice - Mango Mascarpone and strawberry shortcake.

i think enough reviews have been written so i shall not go on to comment. though i wish to point out… the hot choc doesn’t go well with the cake – it was too strong.

opt for the Charlemagne Tea instead… it is light and has a tinge of orange flavour which gives a refreshing aftertaste.

so did i get a discount? no. the boss doesn’t know me.

who’s the boss? the only lady that doesn’t wear uniform.

is city square worth the visit? just stay at home if u think about visiting the place

major changes

2010-01-06T22:06:00.001+08:00

the boss dropped a bomb yesterday. no more shift work for me, so it’s normal office hours. this took away some privileges and added some perks.

after more than a year, i can finally taste the true flavour of a long weekend. i can wake at 7, that is i can see daylight. i can also finally re-tune my bio-clock (i think i have some mild sleep disorder).

of course, i now have less free time and have to jostle with weekend crowd. and effectively, my pay is less by $200 since i will lose my night shift incentive.

net gain or net loss, cannot tell.

Bangkok 2009 – The Breakfast Table

2009-12-24T09:41:00.001+08:00

I really like these hotel breakfasts that came together with the room package for two reasons. The first being able to wake up late and still be sure that there will be food laid out just downstairs for you – no need to crack head or drag yourself elsewhere in the wee hours of the morning. Secondly, being able to enter the breakfast cafe brands you with certain exclusivity. Haha.

This time round, the spread is decent. Of course it degrades over the course of your stay since you will be eating the same stuff permutated differently. Nevertheless, there’s variety from breads, to cereal, Jap food, Chinese food, wafers, french toast, omelete and eggs on demand.

Another thing about breakfast affair is that it is the only time you see the people you are actually staying with. Over a few days, you will start to learn which family is which, who’s partner is who, who’s hot and who’s not, and who looked like they had sex etc. Most importantly, it was fun to see human behaviour exhibited by the different nationalities.

Our hotel had a great majority of Singaporeans and Ang Mohs. Surprisingly, the Singaporeans were pretty gracious and well behaved but the See Ang Mohs (loosely translated, 死红毛) or Sam (Samantha for the female version) are the culprits. In my opinion, the Europeans are generally ok but the Americans… tsk tsk tsk.

There was this Sam who was more or less done with breakfast and was just sitting there scribbling on his shopping list. Then, he conveniently stretched his arm over to the next table occupied by a Singaporean family to reach for an empty coffee cup.

Err Mr Sam, I thought that thing in front of you looked like a cup too. Anyway, Mr Sam retracted his arm when the Singaporean dad told him that the cup belonged to his table. Mr Sam then feigned ignorance and went back to his shopping list without feeling a bit apologetic or whatsoever. Americans…

Another time, we saw this Sam kena owned by 2 Asians – a Thai and Singaporean – at the pool. This Sam was horseplaying with his son at the pool. Now usually horseplaying is acceptable in the pool but this pool was meant for swimming, hence there were demarcated lanes for people who did not wish to swim.

So this Sam kena slapped with comments like ‘Get over to the otherside’ from the Thai. From the straightforward Singaporean, ‘Are you illiterate? Cannot read?’. Sam was stunned and left the pool altogether. Well, at least he looked ashamed. Once again, Americans… no wonder the world doesn’t like you.

Off to bangkok

2009-12-16T07:00:00.000+08:00

we are off to bangkok for annual vacation.

will keep everyone posted via our travel log.

While flipping the newspaper on the plane, we saw this article. although some of us knew about this quite some time back, it’s quite sad to see it make it to the news. of course, the exact details may not be as reported given that ‘officers are the countersigning officials’ so naturally the responsibility is on them.

trust me, i’ve worked with one of them and have heard many good things about one of them – they are definitely men of integrity. well, saf’s loss then.

whatever they are doing now, i hope they are doing fine.

strange encounter

2009-12-15T22:59:00.001+08:00

today, i was trying to hail a cab to joyce’s place when a bus stopped in front of me and it obstructed an empty cab from stopping. yes, a bus as in the big long coach-like buses.

out came the bus driver and approached me.

你要去哪里？sengkang ah? 我顺路，可以载。

stunned, i politely declined.

i wondered: he offered out of goodwill? or he was that desperate to pick up a fare? or other ill intentions?

nevertheless, it doesn’t pay to be kind in singapore. ppl will assume u have other motives. haha

x’mas dinner @ The vines

2009-12-15T09:05:00.001+08:00

a simple dinner with a simple challenge.

that is, the dinner was also a gift exchange session. to ensure fairness, it was only made known on the day itself. by sheer coincidence, everyone only started shopping for them at 5pm when dinner’s at 7.30pm @ the vines (opposite novena church)

in the end, everyone got something intimate for everyone else.

me:	some cow prints briefs
dan:	levi’s boxers
joyce:	camisole with panties
char:	la senza

talk about being creative.

facebook week

2009-12-06T11:00:00.001+08:00

one week to vacation leave!

we are getting our AWS after all. and it’s time to grapple with the decision to spend or save. i would very much like to buy a desktop (as an interim solution until we get our own place to put a spanking new imac) or … a ps3.

i ~~need~~ want a desktop for photoshop/games. i also want a ps3 caz it has got awesome games and i dun wanna waste my lcd tv. i also think that i have plenty of excuses.

speaking of games, the facebook games are driving me crazy. managing 3 different games is c.r.a.z.y. no thanks to joyce being out of town for a week and i have to stand in to ‘make sure things are in order’. that means preserving the wealth accumulated thus far, not antagonizing customers and making sure that crops dun die out. i decided to do neither of those and revamped her entire white tiled restaurant.

yeah man! beat that, joyce! i’m a better cafe owner than u. hahaha. pls come back soon and take over everything.

worcell battery

2009-11-25T13:35:00.001+08:00

in view of the fact that joyce will be going to oz with our s90, we thought that it would be a good idea to purchase an additional battery for the camera as a 100% backup.

i seriously have no idea where to get official canon batteries and even if i did, i’m pretty sure they are expensive. from my experience with joyce’s camera, third party batteries seem to last longer than OEM ones. (yes, i did not even bother to get one for my dslr)

so there goes $21.80 and took the plunge with a third party version from worcell.

ordered it yesterday and got it thru my mail today. efficient!

May explode if disposed in fire

err… doesn’t that happen to all batteries? well, if it makes me feel any better, they claimed that it’s made in japan and there’s 1-yr warranty too.

we’re going to chicago

2009-11-23T11:02:00.001+08:00

since we had too much time on hand, we strolled to esplanade in hope of getting tickets for chicago next year. bad experience suggests that if we procrastinated, we would live to regret – either with the bad seats or the prospects of not even having one.

the online booking didn’t cut either because the seats were chosen by the damned system (which insists that the corner seat was the ‘best seat’). anyhoo, we thought it would be better to talk to a live person at the box office who could probably overwrite the system assignment.

been a long time since we walked this underground gallery. they had this interesting exhibits where everything is cut out from paper. of course, it was a good time to take the s90 for a real testdrive

this is damn tiny but it worked well using macro mode. nice warm lighting but i decided not to adjust the white balance for warm ‘feel’.

so the guys at the box office can work wonders. given the option of the ground floor foyer seats and the circle seats, we settled for the latter albeit second row. what a pity that the first row circle seat were only left with the corner ones – that’s pretty fast.

so 10% discount and 100+ bucks poorer (including the unnecessary $3 ticketing fee)… but i had it coming all along.

sunday brunch @ prego’s

2009-11-22T23:37:00.000+08:00

nothing beats a long weekend in the midst of a long month. no thanks to my grand plan of conserving leave.

as a reward, we decided to go for a sunday brunch at prego’s every other lunch plans failed to materialize.

well, they still serve bread but the whole loaf of it. i vaguely remember they used to serve breadsticks instead.

i do find the olive oil bottle interesting because not only does it contain the olive oil, there’s a vial within it that holds the vinegar as well.

she had the marinara.

and i had the vongole, as usual. btw, only the light menu was available caz the sunday brunch buffet was still ongoing.

i guess we should do this more often. things going slowly and simply hanging out somewhere is oh-so-therapeutic – i hate weekday lunches at work. i dun even remember the last time i chewed on food for more than 5 seconds.

polaroid pogo printer

2009-11-17T14:28:00.001+08:00

got myself this new toy together with 100 pieces of photo paper. the idea is to print the best and most memorable shots esp. for travelling – scarcity makes you less trigger happy. this neat device prints on demand either by pict bridge or bluetooth.

just load it up, let it read the barcode that comes with the paper and we are good to go.

i have decided to pict bridge it since i dun have any good photos in my phone to try the bluetooth function. i highly doubt the quality from handphone would be any good. i tried to bluetooth from my pc but it doesn’t seem to work – suspect it only works with mobile phones. shucks.

the print quality is not fantastic but alright. i think will fare better with outdoor shot, with less obvious noise. would be fun to bring it along to the next gathering or something… but the paper is $$. :(

delivered!

2009-11-16T11:31:00.001+08:00

yet another delivery has arrived this morning! 4 days from usa caz of weekend.

of course, the bigger box belongs to charlene with her ‘toys’ from bewild.com (oooh…) and mine’s from amazon.

i would really appreciate if amazon could use a smaller box since the contents required only half the box space, i could save loads on shipping.

delighting you always

2009-11-10T15:19:00.001+08:00

ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner! got the sms from canon yesterday so i thought might as well go collect my camera today. i’m now a happier but poorer man. thumbs up for the nice carrier, and also for the pretty lady who attended to me, better than the one last week.

here are some shots of the powershot s90. form factor is pretty good, now that i had a good look at it. definitely better that the previous powershots. so ixus users might wanna consider the swtich. the ring around the lens is for users to configure i.e. zoom, iso, white balance and so on…

the lcd screen is really big in my opinion. this is of course important when reviewing photos and of course, something’s gotta give… which is the lack of view finder. that’s pretty fine caz we dun really use it anyway.

the rotating dial at the right side is also configurable. personally, i like it despite some comments saying that it is too loose. using Av mode, its faster to adjust the aperture that way compared to the rotating ring which clicks with every stop you turn.

the flash pops up on the left hand side once u select flash, and retracts once u disable the flash. i’m not too sure if you can push it down, dun dare risk it anyway. but its more intuitive to push it down than to access some menu to retract it. one thing i noticed is that, with a pns camera, u hold the edges on either sides. if you activate the flash, it will pop up where your fingers are holding… so i guess some caution is required.

sometimes, i mix up the ring function button and the on/off button. the shutter release is depressed i.e. slightly recessed and loose (haven’t had issues with half-pressing yet though) as well. a bigger, protruding button would have been good.

overall, the performance is great. for dslr users, i think its a good companion leh. and who says pns cannot get nice bokeh? this is taken at wide, 28mm f/2.0. oh yea, the performance under poor light is also quite good, din on the lights or whatsoever even though the skies were gloomy.

the next shot is take at its longest, at f/4.9. in my opinion, foodies will like this camera under the macro mode. can get nice bokeh, the white balance is also adjustable and shots are sharp. and yes, the live view will show the effects of your adjustments real time. that means to say, your shots are unlikely to go wrong as you can almost always get the correct f-stop or shutter or white balance.

the camera comes with a strap, case, battery and a 8gb SDHC card. for some reason, its not lexar this time round, some malaysian brand (i think) called ‘pen drive’. the strap is not adjustable either, cannot fit to wrist.

you can see a demo video here . hmmm… looks like roy’s in it or did i see wrongly?

and all that jazz

2009-11-09T22:21:00.001+08:00

got this in my mail today. missed it once caz of ‘a’ levels (i think)… but never again! we are so gonna book it and catch it…

… and it’s the only legit way to watch ladies prancing around in lingerie, with your gf’s full approval. sounds a bit early to book but i’m afraid these things get sold out pretty fast. book it here.

s90, here i come

2009-11-05T15:42:00.001+08:00

two weeks and counting… to a new camera!

so i went down to canon with an old-but-functional ixus 40 and bull crapped about how the screen is scratched and how it will mysteriously blank out intermittently… and ~~conned~~ persuaded them to allow me buy a new camera thru the Privilege purchase price (which is actually meant for spoilt cameras which is too ex to repair).

ok. actually it din take much convincing, from her straight face she knew i was a lying, swindling jerk who just wanted a discount for a new camera. i’m pretty sure 23,304 ppl before have already done that considering how few questions were asked (in fact, none). surprisingly, it seemed like part of her everyday routine to handle this. so for those of u wondering, yea guess it works with working cameras as well.

so, i got a 21% discount off the retail price of s$749 which works out to s$595. that’s about 80 bucks off the street price (s$680). huge savings.

i heard some people actually went to sungei road to purchase a $5 old film camera just to effect this privilege… hmmm.

the canon S90

2009-11-02T11:19:00.001+08:00

what can i say? yummy…

lugging a dslr around is not an option sometimes with the weight and bulk. compact cameras just cannot make it so i guess this will be a great solution. the lx3’s good too, but it is bigger than this.

never been a fan of powershot because of the ugly design, but this time its looking pretty sleek. we went down to test drive the s90 at song brothers (yea, of all places rite?) which was the only shop at funan with a demo set. man i like the rotating ring! someone mentioned that the dial at the back is too loose but i din think that bothered me. of coz the biggest draw is the f/2.0 at the wide end which i would like to explore.

i think i’m gonna get this soon before my year end trip and review it again. too bad this isn’t in the canon trade in list yet, otherwise i would have saved a few tens of dollars. retails between s$680 to s$690, dun let them rip u off.

check out ken rockwell’s review.

i’ve got a new mouse

2009-10-26T19:39:00.001+08:00

the logitech v450 cordless LASer mouse – yes, l.a.s.e.r. and cordless.

been wanting to get a cordless pointer since i got my msi wind. it’s such a compact and mobile machine (read: long batt life, no ac power needed mostly), so it’s quite a sorry scene to see the user limit his workspace the length of his wired mouse.

so far it’s good. i like the feel – the grooved rubbery grip along the sides makes it great to hold on to. the size is pretty generous even for big hands like mine – i did not have to bend my fingers excessively to click the mouse; unlike those mini mouse given free by most laptop sellers. the resistance on the mouse button is just right, not too rigid nor too loose. movement is crisp and accurate on most surfaces, works pretty well on reflective ones as well.

the damage was us$29 from amazon, which works out to around s$49 inclusive of shipping using borderlinx (actually i bought the mouse on impulse, since i needed to combine shipment for joyce’s birthday gift).

we are looking forward to the next shipment which will be combined with charlene’s boots. though i’m still hunting for stuff to buy.

Windows writer

2009-10-23T13:56:00.000+08:00

with a resurrected blog, i have switched to using windows writer so i can do everything offline. i must say this is pretty cool stuff and very functional.

in fact, i think this will keep me wanting to blog. then there’s the plug-ins, some of which are stuff which i have been looking for ages ago. Like the polaroid picture plugin which automatically puts ur photo in a polaroid frame. no more photoshop required.

i’m still exploring and hopefully, i keep blogging.

Reset

2009-10-03T11:06:00.002+08:00

Unhappy with the contents, i am resetting the blog. hopefully there's time to blog.