A very nice Boxing Day

An outing with my best is always really relaxing and totally no-holds barred. I cannot ever recall one that wasn't. Perhaps some in our more formative years but those never affected anything, I'm sure.

Dispensing with the philosophical verbiage, I went out with her today for breakfast and lunch (if you can even call it that). I met up with her - late - at AMK station. Sorry best I thought I could make it in time but in the end I had to cab there which cost me a whopper. Anyhow I got there and we took the train down to Suntec where the first place we headed to was the carpark. Yes the clever woman thought going down this particular flight of stairs led to the Fountain Atrium but no, it led to the carpark at B2. Smarty.

We shared breakfast at Subway which involved a hearty helping of exactly half a tiny bun with even half a smaller egg inside with the works, in Subway-speak. Can't complain - it was good. Looking over and seeing Carl's Jr open, we promptly shifted our asses over where we ordered a box of beef fries and set about destroying their serviette dispenser. After that we walked around for a bit while we decided whether to makan at Tony Roma's, (what's that other place with ribs?) and Carrefour. Yes.

Here comes the fun part. We went to Carrefour and after some deep deliberation which involved detailed calculation about how much face we would lose while eating, we decided to get some ribs. Bad choice. We didn't know where to eat them and in the end headed to the nearby Starbucks, bypassing our original plan of eating at the Esplanade. We had to order something in order not to get kicked out of Starbucks so Amy got us to share passionfruit tea which was sour as hell. Then we headed out to prevent XtR3me eMB4rrA5m3n+ from eating our ribs. I mean the ones we bought. Suffice to say that while chowing down we felt supremely uncomfortable, more like lions munching their latest kill than proper civilised humans having lunch. Unfortunately we had to hurry because she had some study time with her friend so we had to cut short our outing. You owe me 2 hours, woman ;). Gosh, the fun we had.



To digress, in recent months I think I've undergone something of a revolution in friendship. I've known more pals, gotten to know some of my old friends much better and for all intents and purposes have made friends with them all over again. Call it discovery? I could name a few like S, J, L, A, Y whom I'm grateful to know and be friends with. Without alienating the others in any way I think I should make a special mention about J. J's been a friend of mine for some time now but I've never really talked to her. Recently I've been spending some time with her and I think she is one fantastic person whom I regret not knowing better before. She's a good ear, understands you well and has the ability to brighten your day no matter how dark it was. Her friend S is one nice character too. I am getting to know her better now but I think she'll be just as engaging a pal as J.

Seems like 2007 is going to end on a good note.

Highly accurate translations

A picture speaks a thousand words, and so I shall let the ones below do the talking.

Enjoy =D


What, now we're policing them?



And the hall of sadness and sorrows too



Nike, eat your heart out



LOL!


I'm sure enzymes and primary school kids make a fantastic couple


talk about health and safety warnings


you can't beat the Chinese now


Indeed!


Imagine that, one whole district gone







and for the kicker...

seriously now!

Merry Xmas y'all!

It's that time of the year again, where a certain Monsieur Claus and his merry band of reindeer send gifts to deserving (where the hell is mine) children around the world and who gets to eat cookies and drink milk at every port of call. Fat bastard.

Anyway, Merry Christmas!

Nothing beats the Christmas atmosphere this time of year. It's an indescribable feeling that just gives you a sense of well-being and joy. Of course the presents play an important role too :P. But somehow this year, things look a little different for me. In the past I've always wanted to spend this day with friends, going out to party with them and make merry. It's strange then that this year I would have liked to spend it with a certain someone. I'm not referring to any particular person but I do have someone in mind. Nah, I'm just fantasising. It'll probably not come true anyway, even though she's the first girl in a long time whom I've felt so strongly for and for whom I willing to do anything. Not exactly anything, a wee bit more than what a normal friend would do.

Maybe, just maybe.

Well enough of the sentimentality and Merry Christmas once again and a Happy New Year!

Back in the USSR

Aiya wanted to type an abstract and typically verbose post about my trip to China and my thoughts on it but my mind isn't allowing me to.

Anyway, I'm back!

Landed at about 1730 today after much delay at both the Chinese and Singapore side. Man, you have no idea how is it like to be able to breathe fresh air again and ride in taxis that are Rolls-Royces in quality and ride comfort. The drivers here are angels compared to those maniacs over in Zhongshan. Of course give me a week or two and the grumbles will come back, but hey it's an improvement. I'll never look at Singapore the same way again.

As for those quintessential pictures of those rubbish English translations you all crave...heh heh heh. Let's just say they're coming ;)

A little bit of Monica on my mind...

So I went back to the place where my mum's dad was born, which was a good 3 hour journey from Zhongshan and its environs. It was a pretty uplifting and insightful journey, perhaps the most meaningful in all my time here (besides eating and getting fat. I've just gained 3kg. Honest.) I took quite a number of pictures of the house that my granddad used to stay in. We met up with a few of my mum's cousins too, who were all - quite honestly - pretty ancient but damned active people. The mum of my mum's 7th cousin is 88 and she's still walking around like some kind of Olympic pro. Fantastic stuff.

Actually what I really wanted to talk about was something that happened during dinner. My parents and I walked into this upscale restaurant next to my hotel because we had no idea where to go makan. Honest to god we didn't expect that it'd be so expensive because duh we hadn't stepped in before. First thing that greeted us on the menu was abalone: 600 yuan. Tea (some special kickass kind): 12000 yuan PER CUP. Yes that's right. My dad nearly fell out of his chair. But nevertheless they had some cheaper dishes and we ordered those.

Well to cut the long story short, the waitress who was serving us tea was a fine specimen of a female as any. Oh my lord she was as fine as a hot cup of tea and a good book on a rainy day. She was so demure and sweet, had the cutest dimples, the most beautiful face and had features which were a perfect blend of aquiline and subtle. A face so enchantingly hypnotic that it takes the phrase "her bewitching beauty" to a whole new level. And oh she had a body to die for too. If your friends have told you that they've seen the most beautiful girl on earth they're talking complete rubbish because I have. She made everyone else in the room look like Cruella even though they all were pretty too. But this girl, goodness. She wasn't just pretty - she was beautiful. She just lit up the room in the brightest sense of the word. Truth be told I wanted to have her number so badly I devised at least 5 ways to go about it while my parents argued about some inane thing over the table. Here are a few.

(Stay behind while parents pay the bill, grab number, go.)
(Pretend to go to toilet, grab number, go.)
(Ask from one of the other waitresses, grab number, go.)
(Ask in front of parents, grab number, and die.)
(Obviously there were more ways I devised but they cannot be mentioned here due to graphic content. Just kidding.)

I cannot even begin to fully describe her enchanting countenance. It was so spellbinding that it left me looking at her almost every chance I got. Which I thought was a good thing until she started looking at me too, with which my inflated ego took to mean that we had something going. Hardly, I think. Oh well, she smiled at me too.

You gotta have a dream.

The Venetian. (Hint: it's really nice!)

Oh and just to inform you guys again that I cannot see my own posts and hence can't see my tagboard....

...and hence cannot see the looks on your faces when you hear that I've just been to The Venetian (read: newest and most elaborate casino in Macau).

Ain't I evil, ain't I evil.

Suffice to say The Venetian is so, so beautiful. It's massive too. At a staggering 3000 rooms, it's one of the largest hotels in Veni-, sorry, Macau. On the bus heading to the hotel, I caught sight of it from a distance and the awesome sight of it just bowled me over. Pictures don't do it justice and neither do my ridiculous descriptions, so I'll leave you to your imagination and Google to discover just how ginormous it really is.

Inside, it's no different. A simple hotel-style entrance greets you with a front desk and concierge, but that's just a facade, a prelude to a whole world of opulence and ZOMG money. Yeah sorry for the lack of a proper superlative. You go up a flight of escalators and you come into a shopping arcade, full of upscale brands like Franck Mueller, Massimo Dutti and others which I can't remember. Then, in the distance, you spot an incredible sight. A sight so astounding it just makes you stare: a casino so large it spans nearly one football field, if not two. Baccarat tables are spread out like jam on toast and slot machines are liberally sprinkled around the floor. Walking around it just makes you stare at the sheer size of the place. Incredible la.

I've obviously saved the best for last. On the way back to the hotel, we took a cab because all the buses had ceased operation for the day. The ride could only be described with one word: petrifying. The taxi driver was nonchalantly eating melon seeds and even had the time to throw them out the open window while gunning his Volkswagen Jetta down the arrow-straight highway at 130km/h with three terrified passengers inside. I think I gripped the door handle so hard it deformed. And that wasn't even the half of it. He dashed across two reds and took corners at a full 100km/h despite the ancientness of his vehicle.

Don't ever complain about Singapore taxi drivers ever again.

China day 3

Ok so I didn't update yesterday cos I was too busy talking online to friends.

Really really.

Not flirting with China girls.

Really really.

Anyway, today wasn't much fun at all (and it still isn't). The only bright spot is that I made it out of the hotel (more on that later) and that I didn't get killed by some taxi driver hell-bent on usurping Michael Schumacher's record 7 F1 World Championships. The taxi rides today were quite sedate to say the least, and I made it to wherever I was going safely and comfortably in one piece. Oh and best is in Hong Kong now so I might get to see her (and Janis) when I go there. Hope so.

Stupid mum got pissed at me today simply because I didn't wake up at 0700 and 00 secs so she screamed at me and that pretty much set the mood for the rest of the day. Safe to say I'm still not talking to her. She refused to come out of the room in the morning when we were supposed to go to Macau and instead left me and my dad in the hotel restaurant each nursing a cup of coffee with me stuffing my face with continental breakfast.

What's new.

I went to the (quote) Former Residence of Sun Yat-Sen (unquote) which is in some godforsaken place with some equally godforsaken name in China. Doesn't matter about the location because it is the only one of its kind in China. It's a pretty sprawling place, with replicas of several objects Monsieur SYS (nice name) used to use. For the uninitiated - and trust me, I was one too until I was done with this place - Sun Yat-Sen is the founder of the modern Republic of China. He overthrew the Qing dynasty and set about building up his version of democracy and equal rights for all, with the soon-to-be infamous General Chiang Kai-Shek as his right-hand man. To cut the long story short, his little Bohemia of freedom and equality to which he strived so hard to build was royally screwed after he died, when a certain man called Mao Zedong and his merry band of Communists wrested power from Chiang Kai-Shek (who acceeded to the throne of power after SYS died). CKS was forced to run - together with his party the Kuomintang, or KMT - to Taiwan, where he still is today. Not really 'cos the fella's dead now, but you can imagine what it's doing to cross-strait relations in the present.

Should be going to Macau tomorrow if mum lightens up. I hate it when she pulls one of her damned ridiculous tantrums for no freaking reason at all and just gives everyone hell. Sometimes I have absolutely no idea what the hell's wrong with her. It seems like she WANTS people to get angry just so to spoil the happy mood of the holiday. I don't care man, I'm gonna do my own things and she can keep on getting angry till the cows come home. Wanna talk, fine. Don't wanna talk, even better.




Can't stop thinking about it. It stuck with me the whole day today and I just can't get it out of my head. And boy is it a good thing.

In China

The strangest thing about here is that I can access blogspot's Dashboard page and type all this out but I cannot access my blog or any others themselves. Strange, maybe China blocked them. Stranger still that they didn't block the Dashboard page. Hmm.

One thing I've learned - no in fact, the FIRST thing I learned - while in China is to fear for your life while crossing roads. In Singapore, you have errant taxi drivers and mad pedestrians. In Guangzhou, you have ERRANT taxi drivers and MAD pedestrians. Gettit? Here, it's a free-for-all on the roads. To help you see a clearer picture of the daily traffic situation, imagine a street scene with all the rules about pedestrian safety, overtaking and basic road courtesy all thrown out the window. Replace them with utter havoc where all road markings are completely and delightfully ignored and you have yourself a typical Guangzhou road. It is that mind-bogglingly chaotic.

Today was pretty sedate. We didn't do much and we ended up just going to the hotel, grabbing lunch, walking around outside and then having dinner and then back to the hotel in which I'm typing this now. GZ's pretty chilly around this time of year, with temperatures ranging from the mid-20s to the mid-10s. It's no bad thing - I could do with some cold after all that nonsense weather back home. Tomorrow should be a more exciting read.

Love all :)

@ Where planes live

Yes, a very inane post indeed. I'm sitting at T1's Coffee Bean drinking an ice blend. Flight's at 0810 and I'm going to the gate just about soon. It's SQ805 to Guangzhou (yes yes I'm going to Hong Kong after that) and for those aviation buffs out there, it's a B777-200. Short range plane, nothing to crow about, but since the flight's only a coupla hours long I don't think that matters.

What's on my mind now is something that might seem rather morbid to some of you, but it's quite relevant. For AMMP these past few weeks our lecturer has been showing us video clips from Air Crash Investigation on the National Geographic channel and it's quite shocking in the least to see the final moments of a plane's final struggle and its plunge toward certain death. For once, I actually have a slight fear of flying. But I guess it's quite unfounded: the aviation industry has one of the, if not THE highest standards of safety to be found anywhere. It's just media hype that plays up the severity of aviation-related incidents and also that same hype that plays down the severely stringent (to the point of anal) safety and maintenance procedures the industry has to undergo.

It's 100% safety out here.

Silly me, really

The stupidest person award has to go to me.

I had just bought a pen from Popular and was holding my change of a dollar and receipt in my hand. I walked out of the shop and proceeded to fold my receipt and throw it in the dustbin outside.......


.......together with the dollar.

The minute my hand moved toward the dustbin my brain immediately lit up and screamed at me "WHERE THE FUCK IS YOUR DOLLAR YOU $^^@%#$". Too late. You know those instances where your hand muscles simply move faster than your nerve conduction velocity? This is it. The second I heard the coin clink against the steel wall of the dustbin I knew I had just thrown money away, literally.

On a lighter note, I'm heading to HK and Guangzhou this Saturday so I probably won't be blogging unless I find a decent internet connection. Flight's in the morning so I'll have to wake up real early.

Who wants presents, last call for sucking up.

Coming up...

Haven't blogged for a while so a nice short entry here would do justice to all you starving readers out there who want to suck every living juice outta my private life :D.

Went out with best for lunch yesterday. I was feeling kinda generous since I hadn't seen her for so long so I treated her to lunch at Swenson's. Shan't talk about it here because I'd dilute the quintessential fun and laughter that always accompanies our meetings so I'll direct you to read it at her blog. And she definitely captures the moment better than I would have.

For the first time in a long time - in fact, for the first time - I have been party to a PR event. Ogilvy International had invited two of us down for their 'champagne and strawberries' informal media PR night and NTT and I got the lucky seats.

Exiting Raffles Place station, I realised that not only did it have like a million exits all pointing towards different directions, I also had completely forgotten to download the map of the area into my phone. Cue aimless walking and fruitless searching for damn near 15 minutes before I had a brainwave and followed the numbers on the buildings to 35 Robinson Road, The Ogilvy Centre.

Lest you people think this was some boring event with equally boring people sitting around doing nothing but talking tech, you're right. It was really full of people talking tech, but I honestly can say it wasn't in the least bit boring. I personally met the co-founder of Nuffnang ads Cheo Ming Shen or Ming for short - a fast talking and highly engaging guy, Brian Koh, Ogilvy's resident Digital Influencer (god I love that job title), DK from ping.sg who also attended Tech65's 50th bash and a host of other people whom I'm glad to have met. They were all highly engaging and sincerely interesting to talk to. Despite my age gap I surprisingly found it easy to talk to them, held my own well as I did. It wasn't easy at first, being the youngest there and having these IT professionals sitting around with glasses of champagne (I drank 2 btw) and having discussions about stuff so deep it made the Mariana Trench look like a wading pool. Slowly I made it into the conversation and I did manage to eke out a response or two.

By the end of the second glass I was really quite tired and knocked out from the long day and my eyes began closing. Luckily we ended our discussions and long debates at 9ish and headed home, but not before taking a tour around the fantabulously well-appointed Ogilvy offices. Damn it was a fun time, honest.

On a more jovial tone, I'm going to Hong Kong! Yes, on the 15th I shall be boarding a flight to HK and Guangzhou for fun and sun in the uh.........polluted air of HK whatever. Anyway point is I'm gonna have my first proper holiday in a long, long time. I'm going to visit my sister there and I'm also gonna have some fun myself. So don't miss me for I'll be back on the 23rd for some more fun.

Who wants a present this Christmas from me from HK better start sucking up now.

Thoughts 2

As you can see this entry is rather short. But how short it is is nothing compared to how long my previous one was before I deleted it and replaced it with these few lines. The original post stretched into 5 paragraphs each the length of the Mississippi and was full of emotion. Perhaps a bit too much :P. Nevertheless I decided that I wasn't ready for such an emotional declaration and hence decided it best not to be said.

Riddle

A closed shell I lie,
An opened one I usually am.
I know of no boundaries,
for I explore with ease.
I have lived many years in the shadow of accomplishments,
unheralded,
but forever faithful to serve should need be.
Knowledge and information are my watchwords,
which I manipulate with ease,
Never tiring, never ceasing.
Power is everything,
without it, I am nothing.





What am I?

Thoughts

The rain.
Who'd have ever thought it could be so relaxing to feel it, so therapeutic to walk through, so conducive to sedate thoughts and pedantic steps? Whenever I'm walking through rain, I always think of myself as some sort of army special forces person. You know in those military-themed movies, they invariably contain a scene where those blackened-face, menacing army special forces heroes are crouching in the jungle, eyes down the barrels of their weapons, sweeping their surroundings, rain pouring down on them, but never flinching, primed and ready to attack some target. They're always all muscular and deeply tanned, conditioned after years of mental and physical training. Besides being in rain as they are, the sad truth is that I have nothing else in common with them. The notion that I'm as fit or clever as them is completely rubbish. I'm about as far away from being a special forces soldier as George Bush is from being eloquent.

As they said, you've gotta have a dream.

Quickie

Hooray! Tech65 has officially turned 50! No not that old you blithering idiot, 50 as in podcast episode 50. To be quite honest there was no real and absolute sense of elation or ecstasy for me, possibly due to the fact that I wasn't in from the beginning like Jerrick and Daniel and that it was a Saturday like any other. We had our 50th megacast at our beloved Geek Terminal and boy were there plenty of people who turned up to listen to us spout our typical Saturday drivel. Naturally I knew damn near none of them there except for my group and Mike Cheng who previously was on an episode of 65Bits. Whatever the case, we had great fun there and were given an insight into the world of entrepreneurship by Bernard Leong, chair of the NUS Entrepreneurship Society and a guy with a lot on his plate, and I mean that in the nicest way possible. Cheers, team, here's to many more returns of the day. Next up, 100th!

If you were wondering why I have not yet done a new post is because I had been waiting for the arrival of my new laptop which literally arrived at the last minute on Friday night, just in time for Saturday's podcast. A big, hearty thank-you to all who have expressed concern over the demise of my ex-electronic wife, whose innards are probably being destroyed as we speak. Once your wife dies it's hard to remarry, but in this case I beg to differ. My new one is literally the all-powerful. It's the Acer 4920G. Google that and I'm sure you'll agree with me that this iz da bomb, babehh. It's running on Vista and it's far smoother than I had anticipated. The only real qualm I have is about Acer (again). Acer's engineering division has always had a penchant for overlaying their proprietary interface over a completely proper, WORKING Windows interace, especially in the areas of power management and wireless connectivity. The thing is that you have to set both the Acer's and Window's system to exactly the right values so that they don't clash and give you a goddamn headache every single time you boot. I now have the wireless cutting out every time I boot when it's originally connected, which means I have to double-tap the wireless toggle button to get it back every time. What a complete annoyance.

Oh well school's back in full force and so are the projects. The next one up is my GEMS project, already underway in fact. Suffice to say I need to call upon the powers of Mr. Coffee and Adobe Premier Pro to get it all done before this Wednesday comes.

Give me strength.