ThE NooB UnIoN

2012-01-15T02:24:00.000+08:00

Hate it when you think the day is going by seemingly fine and then someone just have to pass an insensitive comment to drag your spirits down. If only people can be more empathising and less judgmental.

2012-01-05T03:13:00.000+08:00

Felt like eating chicken rice today so went to the nearby hawker center. That particular hawker center has 2 rival chicken rice stalls; stall A has been around for almost half a century and has many loyal customers while stall B has been around for decades but nonetheless has a steadily growing customer base.

Stall A's chicken rice costs a whopping $34 per plate :o The most expensive chicken rice I've ever eaten in SG cost about $5 so I have always wondered if eating stall A's chicken rice can help one to attain immortality or what, for it to warrant a price tag of $34? However many of the residents who live nearby seem to not mind the hefty price; they might complain about it being more expensive than other stalls' but their reasoning is that as long as the chicken rice is tasty and delicious, the $34 is worth it, better than paying $3.40 for a plate of cheap chicken rice for which you don't know if it tastes as good.

Six months ago, some of stall A's customers complained of food poisoning after eating their chicken rice and thereafter swore not to ever patronise stall A again because not only is their chicken rice no longer as scrumptious as before, rats and cockroaches can also be seen scurrying around in their stall. Previously there were already numerous complaints and urges for them to be more hygienic but it fell upon deaf ears. However, this food poisoning incident perhaps did give them a slight wake up call because the usually arrogant stallholder actually apologised to affected customers and also promised to pay more attention to the sanitary conditions of his stall. Due to the recent food poisoning incident on top of their pricey chicken rice, quite a number of customers have flocked over to stall B instead, so I guess stall A is finally feeling the heat from their competitor and is aware that they must do something to retain their customers.

So today when I went to the hawker center, I passed by stall A and realised that they have slashed their price by 36% to $22. Amid the snaking queue at the stall, a couple were sort of quarreling. Apparently they were victims of the previous food poisoning case so the husband was adamant about boycotting stall A for life, but his wife kept trying to persuade him to give stall A another chance because after all they have reduced the price of their chicken rice from $34 to $22 which is quite a lot, and also, the owner of stall A is obviously not selling chicken rice for profit, he just sincerely wants to share his delicious chicken rice with the people. If he was truly in it for the profits, he would have set up his chicken rice stall in holland village where the affluent live, rather than in a neighbourhood area right? When the husband retorted that at $22, the chicken rice is still too over-priced, his wife gave him a tongue-lashing and said that he is really hard to please, give discount already still not satisfied.

Hmm... so this has got me thinking; why is it that some people are so easily deceived? Market rate for chicken rice elsewhere is only $5 at most even for the most heavenly-tasting ones, so no matter how much discount a stall gives, as long as the chicken rice cost more than $5, it is still considered expensive okay? End of story, kthxbye :s

China Trip (Beijing - Chengde - Tianjin) 24 Oct 2011 to 1 Nov 2011 [Part 3]

2011-12-07T16:57:00.000+08:00

Day 6, Sat (29 Oct)
Finally an international buffet breakfast with much much more palatable food, so much so that it was really the best meal for me throughout the whole China trip. A pity that we were only staying there for one day; how nice if that was the breakfast for each morning.

It was time to return to Beijing, but on the way, we stopped by at the Shi Family Mansion (石家大院), which used to be the residence of one of the eight great families of Tianjin. The driver didn't really know his way around and had to keep getting off the coach to ask passersby for directions -_-"

Model of the mansion

Garden area

One of the Shi family members who became a famous actor (I think)

lol, didn't know people from more than half a century ago can look even more hip than the people of today. Still got wear eye liner sia :s

Miniature models of the various shops during olden times

Butcher :o

Cloth shop

Wool shop

Some opera performance in one of the rooms

Overall, Shi family mansion was one of the more interesting attractions as you can actually go into each of the rooms and the furniture and items actually remained intact, as compared to places like the Forbidden City where you can only view the outside of the structures and there are no longer any furniture in the rooms :s

Next, we continued the drive back to Beijing then had dumplings for lunch. There were various types of dumplings such as deep-fried ones and steamed ones with different fillings inside. They also served rice and other dishes, but we mostly ate the dumplings cos it's like finally something different to eat. Anyway something super funny happened. There was a staff and a manager behind my youngest aunt, and she wanted to call the staff to ask for something, so she said,"xiao jie, give me ... " The thing is in China, you shouldn't call the waitresses xiao jie because over there it's a derogatory term that means prostitute, but then some of my aunts keep forgetting that and always call them xiao jie :s

So when I heard her saying xiao jie, I was like :O and then said, "又叫小姐 :s". Then my aunt corrected herself and said "oh, 美女, give me ..." So it was then that I turned to look at the "waitress'" face to see what was "her" reaction, and guess what, it wasn't a waitress behind, it was actually a waiter! LOL! I think the poor waiter was very shocked to be called 美女 and even the manager was laughing and joked that the waiter must have looked too pretty.

After lunch, we were free to shop at Xiu Shui plaza, but actually there's nothing much. The shops on each floor more or less sell the same stuff as each other (all those fake branded goods), but the people there are significantly more pushy than those in Zhuhai (e.g. pulling your arm and refusing to let go). One rude man even said "if you didn't want to buy, why did you come in for" when we just went into his shop to look around and left. Oh, so every customer who walks into his shop is obliged to buy something? -_- The worse thing is, he even have the cheek to ask us to go into his shop to have another look when we later walk passed again *roll eyes*.

What irks me most is how dishonest most of the shopkeepers are, such as quoting you a price of 380yuan (~$76) just for a simple long-sleeve t-shirt. Ridiculous! I know it's part of the plan to quote you a high price and from there the customer bargain, but it's atrocious to have such an outrageous opening price. At some other shops, they can even have opening prices of 2000-3000yuan (~$400-$600) just for a fake branded jacket /facepalm. Please lor, that jacket is not even worth 10% of your opening price >:( Maybe should have just trolled them back and offer 2yuan for their stuff.

Anyway my cousin and I walked around on our own and we were done with the whole place within the 2.5hrs time limit we had. I just don't understand why my mum and aunts can spend such a long time at each shop, sigh :s

Before going for dinner, we stopped by at a place called The place (lol), which consist of 2 shopping malls with a huge LED screen in between them.

One of the shopping malls

The very long LED screen

After some photo-taking at The Place, it was dinner time. It's one of the very few restaurants with nicer ambiance (and cleaner toilets) :s

I have a weird fascination with chandeliers *_*

Day 7, Sun (30 Oct)

The last day of our sight-seeing itinerary, although not the last day of the trip. Went to the Summer Palace and the weather was quite foggy that day. First, we took a boat ride and I almost fell asleep. Not saying that it's boring, there's quite a nice view and all but somehow just felt very sleepy :s After that it's just walking around and taking a few more boat rides in between.

The type of boat we sat on

The bridge with a "hump". There's a story behind why a bridge of such shape was built but I can't rmb :P

The bridge with 17 arches

The marble boat

Part of the Long Corridor which is famous for its length and painted decoration

After that we went for lunch, then to a place for tea-tasting. We were led into a room and given a tiny cup to sample the various types of tea. Meanwhile, one of the girls working there explained to us what the different teas were good for etc. She mentioned that she was from Yunnan and told us some interesting trivial:

All women in Yunnan can climb trees, even the elderly ones
Yunnan women are the ones who go out to work while their husband stay at home to look after the children
Yunnan women are allowed to have more than one husband :O

Quite astounded to hear that because while I know Yunnan is a province in China, I didn't know it was so different. Of course after spending much time pouring tea for us to sample as well as all the talking, it was to be expected that they'll try to make you buy some of their teas, and because the poor girl was really quite nice and earnest, my aunts ended up buying some tea from them since the girl kept making herself sound so pitiful such as her manager would think she didn't do a good job if we just left w/o buying anything :s

After leaving that place, we went to YaXiu market for shopping. Basically, it's just like XiuShiu Plaza and sells mostly the same kind of stuff. Anyway while at that place, I was feeling unwell, most probably had a fever but then no thermometer to take temperature. Felt like sitting down but also no places to rest :(

Day 8, Mon (31 Oct)
The last day of the trip. Actually the previous day was supposed to be the last day, but we extended one more day for free-and-easy shopping. They went back to XiuShiu Plaza for shopping but I decided to just stay in the hotel room cos not feeling well, plus the other day already walked through the whole of XiuShiu Plaza already, also nothing else to buy liao, just that dunno why my aunts and mum always spend soooo much time at each store that's why they couldn't cover the whole place -_-

I just spent the day watching TV and sleeping :P In the evening, they finally returned from shopping then started repacking luggage to stuff in the things they bought. lol, they even bought an extra luggage :P After that went to MacDonald for dinner and finally to the airport.

Okay actually still got some more incidents that happened on the plane such as an irritating kaypoh old man who needs to mind his own business and this uncultured China woman who even cuts queue for plane toilet, but I'm lazy to continue liao so that's the end, kthxbye :D

China Trip (Beijing - Chengde - Tianjin) 24 Oct 2011 to 1 Nov 2011 [Part 2]

2011-11-09T01:19:00.000+08:00

Day 4, Thurs (27 Oct)
Had breakfast at the Mcdonald near our hotel instead of the hotel buffet breakfast cos we were really sick of the food there. Ordered our breakfast sets as a group order, but the service there was really slow. In fact it would have been faster had we ordered individually. Anyway I really dunno what's wrong with the staff there, but we ordered 7 hot drinks yet they only gave us 1 creamer and 2 packets of sugar -_-". After requesting for more creamer and sugar, she placed another creamer and 2 more packets of sugar on the tray.

Either that or the Mcdonalds there are very stingy. One of my aunts went to buy some cakes and cupcakes at the McCafe for us cos today we'll be travelling at least 3.5hrs on the road to Chengde, so better to have something to eat on the way. So anyway it was just a simple order yet they couldn't even get it right. Really can't imagine how a non-Mandarin speaker would survive there if they cannot even get simple orders correct.

After breakfast, we boarded the coach but this time it's a bigger one cos we requested for it. The previous one was way too cramped and would be extremely uncomfortable for long journeys. As a result, the driver was also a different one. En route to Chengde, we stopped by at the Aifeibao Winery. Very lovely place that resembles more like Europe (not that I've been there before lah :s).

The winery which looks more like a European castle *_*

Inside the winery. A giant bottle of wine :o

I P Man? :s

Followed a very pretty guide to tour around the inside, where we were shown the wine bottling process and then she led us down a flight of stairs to the wine cellar below and gave some explanations. After that, climbed up several more flights of stairs to a gallery area. However, as we were rushing for time, the tour guide kept rushing her (lol) and so we didn't spend long there. Finally went into a very elegant and exquisite looking room for some wine tasting. They pour one glass of white and one glass of red wine for us to taste, but our peasant tongues were not trained to appreciate such finer things in life :( er... what I meant is, it doesn't taste nice to me as it has a bitter taste. Maybe the taste of wine is an acquire taste where the more you drink the more you learn to like it?

After that went back to another section of the winery compound cos my aunts wanted to buy some souvenirs as well as to use the washroom.

Wine bottles disguised as tin men

Yet another Chinglish poster. "Keep a safety protection consciousness during your visiting and have a safe journey in Beijing." By the way the picture in that poster is the Temple of Heaven that we had visited :P

Towels made to look like dogs. So cute :D

After the stopover at the winery, it was time to continue the rest of the journey to Chengde. Once we reached there, the Chengde guide came on board the coach and started introducing herself and all and then it was soon time for lunch.

After filling our stomachs, we went to see the Putuozongsheng Temple and the Temple of Sumeru Happiness and Longevity. Actually that place wasn't really interesting, just keep walking and climbing stairs upwards etc. :s

One lone deer spotted :s

We were too tired to climb all the way to the top :s

Next place we went to was the Imperial Summer Resort (避暑山庄), the place where the royalty go to escape from the summer heat. Lots of korean schoolgirls there probably on school trips, and they were quite noisy -_-.

Map of the whole area, that's how vast it is.

Some weird water plants? :P

烟雨楼, the place where the first Huan Zhu Ge Ge series was filmed. And the Chengde guide liked to keep talking about Huan Zhu Ge Ge, lol.

Mongolian Tents

Along the way we rented this vehicle to drive us cos if we were to walk by foot, it'll take a much longer time plus we've had enough of walking. It was also getting quite dark already by then, so after that we went back to hotel. We had the chance to choose what to eat for dinner that day, but decided to eat in the hotel instead so that we could rest earlier.

Among the 3 hotels we stayed at throughout the trip, I'd rank this as the worst. The room looks shabby, is small and only has the bare minimum furniture like beds, cupboard, tv and dressing table. Usually hotels have other additions like bedside tables, fridge, safe, sofa chairs etc but not this, and the Chengde guide still dare to say this is the best hotel in Chengde :s Even though the bathroom is quite big, the layout is very bad; the shower area is tiny when they could have made use of the amount of space to at least make it bigger or even install a bathtub. Tap makes a noisy sound when the water is running, and the worst thing is, after bathing, the bathroom floor is all wet (due to poor drainage again), so we had to call the staff to dry up the floor twice -_-" Had to tread around carefully and I almost slipped several times. Thankfully we were only staying there for one night.

Day 5, Fri (28 Oct)
Had buffet breakfast at the Chengde hotel and while the food were not very nice also, at least it was something different from the one in the Beijing hotel. After that it was another long journey to Tianjin.

When we finally reached Tianjin, it was time for lunch first. The toilet at that restaurant was rather special, cos it consist of two squatting toilets side by side in the only cubicle :o I guess the people in China are really open about such things. Which is also why cleanliness and privacy freaks should not go to China cos they'll most probably freak out from all the (toilet) culture shocks :s

One of the shops near the restaurant. The brown curled thingy is some kind of specialty there I think, but I forgot the name. The nice tour guide again forked out some money of his own to buy a few for us to try *touched*

After lunch, we went to a place called Five Avenues for a horse-carriage ride. The ride was mainly for viewing of the European architecture and there was a guide on the carriage with us specifically to elaborate on the history of those architecture.

How the horse-carriage looks like

Starting point of the ride and also area for purchasing the tickets.

After the ride of around 10mins, we headed off to the Music Square and Italian Concessions Area. Many couples were there to have their wedding shoot due to the beautiful background and surroundings.

The Music Square, but there was no music :(

The start of a stretch of road along the Italian Concessions Area.

Map of the area

lol, just took this for fun. Angry birds and One piece O_O

Some people playing music.

er, no need to explain why this pic was taken right? :P

Towards the end of the Italian Concessions Area...

Afterwards it was just some more walking to view the scenery and for photo-taking as well.

Quite a number of people fishing there, and one or two even swimming (in such cold weather!)

Since we were ahead of schedule and it was too early for dinner, the tour guide brought us to an area for shopping but then the things sold there were not of our interest. It's the kind of things you see people selling in SG's Chinatown, the kind my father would be interested in, lol. Then there was this man selling small little thingys (like those toys for pets) and the gimmick was that when you say "jump" or other action words, those thingys actually start moving and jumping, and when you say "stop", they really stop. It was really cute and seems fun, but of course it sounds too good to be true right. I thought it was battery operated or something that responds to sound, but the man says no batteries required. Anyway, thinking it would make a good toy for my kitten, we bought 3 of it for 10 yuan. Then after some more walking, we decided to try out those thingys and of cos they refused to start jumping >:( Turns out it's actually operated by a fish string which you have to manually maneuver to make it look convincing. Argh.. feel so gullible to be "cheated" :s

Finally it's dinner time and then to the Tianjin hotel.

Ceiling of the hotel.

Hotel lobby

A "warmly notice" by the hotel bathroom

Of the hotels in the 3 cities we stayed in, this is probably the best, because the extra bed is not just merely like a piece of plank with bedsheets, and the shower area actually has both a fixed and detachable shower head :D The weird thing though is that each of the 3 rooms we booked have a different layout. One of the double rooms has 2 king size beds and a bathtub, while the other double room is more or less like our triple room. Really strange... shouldn't the triple room have the king size beds and bathtub instead since it cost more? :s

Of course the hotel room is not without it's flaws; there is not separation between the toilet bowl and the shower area, so it's inevitable that the whole area will be wet after bathing >:( Also, there is no Hunan Weishi channel! That was the only night I was unable to watch 千山暮雪 :( hmm.. but at least can finally have 8 hours of sleep that night :P

China Trip (Beijing - Chengde - Tianjin) 24 Oct 2011 to 1 Nov 2011 [Part 1]

2011-11-04T15:38:00.005+08:00

Day 1, Mon (24 Oct)
Woke up at 5.50am to get ready and then a van came to pick us up and drive us to the airport. After checking in our luggage, we wanted to have breakfast at mcdonald but the terminal we were at didn't have mcdonald, so had to settle for burger king :s Not only is burger king more expensive, but their meal only consist of the burger and a drink, so if you want the mini hashbrowns you have to top up 90cents for it which we didn't know at first.

After eating, walked around the airport shops a bit then went to board the plane. Within a short while of taking off, they started serving drinks, and just around 10mins later, they started serving lunch -_-" Which is a really stupid idea, cos after serving the lunch trays they go round offering drinks again; like, why do we need to drink so much within a short period of time? The serving of drinks and lunch should have been more spread out. Obviously I didn't eat much since still feeling full from the BK breakfast, plus the food wasn't very appetizing either. I just ate the bread and the fruits that came with it. The flight was around 6hrs long, but it seemed like a long time before we finally reached our destination. The plane touched down at around 3.30 to 4pm I think? Then queued up at immigration to get our passports stamped and after that had to take the skytrain to another area to claim our luggage, then went out to look for our tour guide :P

Apparently the mode of transport is just a van, barely enough to contain our luggage and the seats were pretty cramped too :s Since there was still time, we went to some places first rather than straight to the hotel. First stop was to watch an acrobatics performance. It was simple amazing and one of the best shows I've ever watched, plus certain parts were quite humourous too. Really got to admire and respect the acrobats, the amount of effort and hard work they must have put in to perfect their act, plus it's also dangerous to execute such stunts :s

After that, en route to the dinner place, we stopped by to have an outlook of the 2008 Olympics Stadium (Bird Nest) and the National Aquatic Centre from the RuYi Bridge.

National Aquatic Centre

2008 Olympic Stadium

With that, it's finally time for dinner. By then we were all hungry cos lunch on the plane was served way too early. However, despite the large number of dishes and huge quantity of food for each dish, most of the dishes were bordering on "meh" to "eeww.." :s On average there were around 8 to 10 dishes, and among them maybe 3 to 4 dishes are vegetables. Most of the time I end up eating the leafy vegetables with rice and fruits lor. The fruit for every meal is almost always watermelon, but luckily that's my favourite fruit :D And one thing is that they always serve the dishes super fast, like within 5mins all the dishes can appear on the table already, and when there's not enough space they just stack up the plates -_-.

Pretty chandelier at the dinner place *_*

After dinner it's finally back to hotel. For all the nights we spent in Beijing, we stayed at Zhong Yi Peng Ao Hotel.

The revolving door

Hotel ceiling lights in the form of roses

Hotel lobby

The hotel is generally okay, however, because there were 7 of us, we had to split into 3 rooms of 2-2-3. So my mum, cousin and I shared the triple room. The extra bed was terrible. Barely any cushioning and was hard; it's just those type of lousy foldable bed lor. My cousin slept on it for the first 3 nights while I slept on it the last 2 nights :s But oh well, when you're tired and sleepy, any bed will do cos once you fall asleep you don't even notice anything :P

Another grouse is the toilet shower area. The drainage hole was probably choked and water couldn't flow through, resulting in "flooding" :s Also, I hate it when the hotel shower heads are fixed and not those movable type, very hard to bathe properly >:(

The hotel TV has many channels, but all are those China channels :s I don't think there's even a single foreign channel. But anyway there is this Hunan Weishi channel that has some pretty nice dramas, such as 千山暮雪 that airs every day from 10pm to 12am. I was quite hooked onto that show from the first night I watched it and so every night for the duration of the trip I've been staying up till 12am :s And it doesn't help that we have to wake up very early at around 6am each morning :'( Okay, 6am is for me, I wake up the latest, lol!

Day 2, Tues (25 Oct)
Complimentary buffet breakfast at the hotel but it's really terrible. Mostly just ate bread and watermelon :( My aunts also didn't like the food but they said compared to decades ago, the current food is already considered a huge improvement, so you can imagine how bad the food in the past really was :o *cringes*

After breakfast, went to the Tiananmen Square. Behind it is the Forbidden City and the grounds are really quite extensive.

Statue of an Emperor and 2 consorts

I know some pictures look quite dark at certain parts but that's because I took those using my hp camera which doesn't have auto-flash >:( After a pretty long walk through the forbidden city,we went for lunch at a place called 全聚德 for peking duck! It may not be the nicest peking duck and the sauce was quite salty, but still one of the better meals so it's considered quite good already. After that it's time to head off to the New Capital Museum.

Actually no photography allowed but who cares many others were busy snapping away as well :s Quite a boring place, so left not long after. Then we went to the Temple of Heaven, also known as "Tian Tan".

Nothing much to see as well cos we couldn't actually go into that round structure, and could only catch glimpses of the (very dark) inside which is not easy as well cos there were other tourists around too -_-.

After that we went to this place to catch an ice-skating acrobatics show and had to walk quite a long distance from the entrance cos it's quite deep inside. The performance was as spectacular as the previous day's and what's even more impressive is that the performers are actually wearing very little, like either a leotard and some thin material clothing and some of the male performers even top naked :o Imagine in this cold weather where we feel cold even when wearing several layers of clothing, how can they not shiver and their performance affected by the cold? Really incredible.

One thing I noticed is that each time just as a performance is coming to an end, the China people will start getting up from their seats already and quickly make their make out. Talk about kiasuism :s Anyway the walk back to the coach was equally long plus it was super cold by then, maybe just a few degrees above zero. One thing I noticed is that I think we were the only group to wear gloves, never saw any other people around wearing :s

Day 3, Wed (26 Oct)

Went to the Ming Tomb after breakfast, where 13 of the Ming dynasty Emperors were buried there.

At the entrance :P

Silk burner, read the pic below on what's its use

er, one of the emperors ba, dunno who and don't care, but there are many notes in front of his statue :P

The emperor who usurped the throne from his nephew :o The HK drama 洪武三十二 is about this story and Joe Ma was the actor for the role of Zhu Di. Looks like period dramas are quite useful for inculcating an interest in history :D

Another no-idea-who emperor, lol.

With that, it was time to head to the great wall of China. By the time we reached there though, it was drizzling slightly which is very very bad. How to climb the steps if it's wet and slippery? But thankfully it subsided soon. However the climbing of the great wall was not really how I envisioned it to be and I also dunno how to describe :s The steps were very high and steep and frankly speaking, kids and elderly shouldn't attempt it lor cos it's really dangerous. Which is why you don't see children there cos their legs are probably not long enough to even reach the next step. Even for youngsters like us after climbing up till a certain height, when you look down it's quite scary. I think anyone who accidentally slips and roll down is GG liao, lol.

Chinglish is cute and funny :D

Downward view from after climbing maybe 1/3 of the steps? Or maybe it's an exaggeration :(

The aunts gave up very early on. My cousin, mum and I persevered slightly more but after a certain part, it's just like steps all the way :s It's time they build an escalator :P I don't mind going down the steps but climbing up is just too tiring. So after that we descended and rejoined the others, then decided to sit down and order hot drinks instead. Stupid drinks were soooooooo ex. It's just like coffee shop kind of place but the prices are even more ex than starbucks lor. Like 45yuan (~$9) for a small cup of hot chocolate? >:(

After that, went for lunch, then if I'm not wrong, stopped by at a sort of shopping mall for a little bit of shopping, but the time given was insufficient and very soon it was time to go already. Went for a tricycle hutong tour, with 2 person to one tricycle. Not bad, I like this kind of rides :D

Some of the views along the tricycle route.

After the short tricycle ride of maybe 10mins, we went to the Donghuamen Night Market, where it's like our pasar malam kind of stalls but here they only sell food.

These are the "bing tang hu lu", fruits (I think) coated in malt sugar

The kind tour guide bought 2 sticks of it for us to try, but it's really too big and many! On each stick got about 6 of it and even with the 7 of us, we couldn't finish it :s (plus have to save stomach for dinner mah)

Those purplish slimy things look.. :s pay me I also dare not eat :s Something like squid like that I think.

The whole stretch of stalls is quite long, and while walking along it we managed to try the bing tang hu lu and stinky toufu, and I really don't understand what is with some people's fascination with stinky toufu. It is as its name says, literally stinky (the gravy), and the toufu itself also nothing special. After that we crossed the road to Wangfujing street and just basically walk along that street.

At the junction of the crossroad

The start of Wangfujing street

Okay that's all for part 1 :P

2011-11-02T18:27:00.000+08:00

Just got back to Singapore from China early yesterday morning at around 6.30am and actually felt quite relief about it. Usually when you go on holidays, you'll feel sad and reluctant to return to your country as the end of the trip approaches, but this time I think the duration of the trip is just fine, any longer and I would have been dying to be back in Sg :s It's partly also because on the 2nd last day of the trip, towards the late afternoon, I suddenly felt unwell; had fever and stomach felt a bit queasy, plus the cold weather doesn't help too :(

Anyway the first thing I noticed when we reached home was that my neighbour has a new dog, a husky O_O lol.. like so sudden like that. Not sure about the previous dog.. so far haven't seen it. Maybe no longer around? :s I think a husky puppy would be much cuter though, but so far their dogs always come as an adult.

So once I reached home, I immediately went to sleep. Woke up awhile at around 12pm and my left arm felt very painful (probably pulled a muscle) and the area around my heart also felt very uncomfortable :( Had a hard time trying to fall asleep again. In the end slept until 5pm then woke up to bathe. So for that whole day, I actually only ate one meal, which was dinner :O After that my mum and I went to see doctor, cos both of us not feeling well and if you see a doctor within 2 days, can claim insurance :P Didn't have much appetite these few days. So far only ate chee cheong fun for breakfast today and later on vomited it out -_-" But luckily the fever has subsided.

Sigh.. now that the trip has ended, looks like it's time to start job-hunting again :( Still wondering if I should pursue what I really want instead of something that's more stable...

2011-10-12T22:06:00.000+08:00

Was reading the latest issue of 8days and this is what was published on the "Mail" page where readers write in to 8days (lazy to scan cos printer not connected to laptop so I'll just type out the contents):

"I was happy to read Jason Hahn's column praising Singapore. As a permanent resident who's lived here for the past 15 years, I'm appalled by Singaporeans who complain incessantly about the government. This country works well and isn't corrupt. Many other people in this region would love to be in your shoes. I was taken aback when Orchard Road flooded and people complained that the government should do something about it. A flood is an act of nature. Most other people would be grateful that they still had a roof over their heads after a flood. In comparison, what happened here was a minor toe-wetting. Singaporeans also love to complain about public transport. I've had friends from Australia who were thrilled that the MRT train comes every couple of minutes. And having personally experienced the constant delays on the London Tube where stations frequently shut down or [its workers] go on strike, I find the trains here wonderful. So what if it's crowded? So are the trains in other countries.

-- Josephine Huang (A Patriotic Non-Singaporean)"

Oh, and this letter was chosen as the best letter of the week -_-". Can't help but shake my head.. almost every line or so that I read made me go Full of selective comparisons, reminiscent to what a particular group of people always does.

And wth is "a patriotic non-Singaporean"?? You can only be patriotic to your own country so if you're not a Singaporean, how can you call yourself patriotic? And if you really want to declare yourself patriotic to a country that's not yours, does that make you disloyal to your own country? Either get yourself converted to a Singapore citizen then come and criticise or keep your superfluous comments to yourself >:(

2011-10-10T18:27:00.000+08:00

Sigh.. hate it when I'm feeling tired and decide to go to bed early (for once :o), but after sleeping for a few hours I just somehow wake up and then can't get back to sleep until a few hours later and it messes up my plans for the next day :( Anyway I had a strange dream last night which is more like a nightmare :s Dreamt that somehow my laptop and hp got hacked into and someone was remote accessing it O_o. lol.. I know, this is like a totally weird and out of the blue dream, but I feel that dreams somehow make our lives slightly more interesting and less mundane, even if it is a bad dream.

Hmm.. anyway not really feeling well today, have a small ulcer at the back of the throat but luckily it doesn't hurt as badly as ulcers usually do. Also woke up with a cold probably because of the interrupted sleep last night :(

2011-10-05T19:15:00.000+08:00

Currently watching 紫禁驚雷 (The Life And Times Of A Sentinel) and 潛行狙擊 (Lives Of Omission) and both are not bad, at least much more interesting than Tuan Yuan :s

紫禁驚雷:
- Has my favourite actor Steven Ma :D

- Seems like recently, Kenneth Ma keeps getting roles as a villain. This is already the 3rd consecutive villain role I've seen him in, but got to say he's quite versatile be it acting as a good guy or baddie.

潛行狙擊:
- Another police show yet again. All the modern day dramas that TVB churns out are like mostly either family-oriented, vying for inheritance/family business, lawyer or police shows :s

- I dunno why so many people seem to like the role of "laughing kor". Okay maybe it's because he's not the typical righteous kind of police, and he often crosses the boundaries of what is acceptable for a policeman, but then I'm really sick of Michael Tse always getting this kind of roles. All the roles I've seen him take on in these past few years are as if he's just playing the very same character that exudes cockiness, and although he is able to take on such roles well, it's like he's just acting out the same role over and over and it definitely doesn't showcase his versatility.

- I'm starting to quite like Fala Chen, and her hairstyle in this show is quite nice :D It's actually the type I like but too bad I don't have super straight hair :( Anyway I was reading this HK drama forum and people kept commenting on Fala's accent, which I totally don't get. What accent?? I asked my mum as well and she said she also can't detect any accent in Fala's cantonese. I mean for a China-born actress to be able to speak cantonese as this level is already considered very good already (especially when you compare her to the other China-born actresses who can't even string together a proper accentless sentence coherently), and to me it's already like native level and sounds quite natural, so what's the problem? :s Also, if I'm not wrong, I think majority of those in that forum are probably not HKers themselves so as to why they like to nitpick on such things which are barely noticeable is beyond me.

- Sigh. Kate Tsui is once again in this show and as usual, her acting is really very expressionless. Maybe I'm just biased against her, but it's like she's unable to emote well and her acting is very unconvincing, especially when she is supposedly one of the more experienced actresses who usually get lead roles, and I feel that there are many supporting actresses around who can act much better than her -_-

What I dislike most is when a show has a good script and plot, yet it's marred by actors/ actresses I dislike (namely Kate Tsui, Linda Chung and maybe Charmaine Sheh) :p

Okay another thing I don't understand is why they like to cast China-born actresses who are not at all fluent in Cantonese in HK dramas. At least send them for speech classes first! The main thing is their acting is usually not even good so I don't understand why they even want to cast them in the show when there are many others who are much better and more suited for the role. In fact it's a waste of time and resources as well especially if you have to dub their lines -_- I totally can't think of any benefits there might be to cast them leh.. I mean like even though Jessica Hsuan recently starred in this Ch8 drama despite her not-too-fluent-Mandarin (from what I read lah, I didn't watch the show), at least she is considered a big star in HK so her presence alone might pull up ratings, but for those "nobody" newbie China-born actresses, what benefits do casting them bring about? :s

2011-10-04T18:14:00.000+08:00

Came across some nice and meaningful quotes :o

1.
There are things
that we don't want to happen
but have to accept,
things we don't want to know
but have to learn,
and people we can't live without
but have to let go.

2.
There are certain people who are not meant to fit in your life,
no matter how much you want them to be.

3.
When my absence doesn't alter your life,
then my presence has no meaning in it.

2011-09-26T00:34:00.002+08:00

Was reading some rage comics and this about sums up what I'm feeling now, lol!

Another one, this one is funny :P

see more Rage Comics

Actually I can imagine how frustrating it must be for those technical support staff, especially when the person calling in doesn't follow instructions properly and then they will be wondering what went wrong :s

2011-09-23T16:32:00.000+08:00

Why keep thinking about it knowing that nothing good will come out of it? Is it human nature to be so cynical or did I just read too much into it? It's probably only because no one has ever done such things before. As much as I dislike the present, I don't wish to go back to the past.

Pink 3DS :o

2011-09-18T01:40:00.000+08:00

Just read that they're going to release a pink colour version of 3DS O_O And the pink looks so pretty!

Although it's not fully pink, but I think the black looks good with the metallic pink (since black is also another of my favourite colour) :D So I've decided, if I'm ever going to buy a 3DS, I'll be getting this one, but as I've mentioned before, I'll wait for at least the 2nd generation of 3DS and even then it depends on the library of games and whether flash carts are available or not :x

2011-09-16T01:28:00.001+08:00

Feeling bored now so I shall update the blog a little :P Almost a month has passed since I went to register for JLPT, and while I haven't been studying diligently everyday (or even anything close to that), I think I've at least made some progress. And guess what, knowing Chinese is really one of the most helpful thing in learning Japanese. It's like already half the battle won cos even though you may not know the reading, it does help when you're trying to guess the meaning since most of the time the meanings are the same or pretty similar although there are some exceptions.

Shall list down some of those kanjis that I've come across that don't mean the same as its Chinese counterpart, as I think it's quite interesting (actual meaning in white, highlight to see :P):

* 走る - you'd think it has something to do with walking right?
but it actually means "to run"
* 手紙 - means toilet paper in Chinese
but it's actually "letter"
* 謝る - looks like something about thanking?
but it actually means "to apologise", totally contradictory! :s
* 青い - means green in Chinese
but it's blue in Japanese :s
* 紅茶 - okay this one means the same thing in Chinese & Japanese, and I've always thought it means red tea.
Only recently then I knew it's black tea -_-"

Okay and a final one:
This is the title of a Japanese song: "上海ハニー". Totally looks like a chinese title right? At first I thought the title was something like "Shanghai 821", until later then I realised the "ハニー" is actually not kanji, but katakana, and should be read as "Shanghai Honey", lol. That's why we should never judge a Japanese word from it's Chinese meaning (er.. something like never judge a book by it's cover) /badattempt. :P

团圆

2011-09-09T15:49:00.000+08:00

Have been watching Tuan Yuan (Wax & Wane) for a while now, about halfway through already, yet my opinion of the show remains unchanged since the start: BORING!! :s

1) None of the characters are very likeable or what, and I don't particularly like Kate Tsui (as an actress) :s And while I'm neutral towards Ron Ng, I find that he and Kate's relationship is very bland and uninteresting. It's like not much backstory on how they got together and then they just decided on their own to become the "peace-making" ambassadors between their two families :s

2) I thought this show would be like those usual fighting-over-family-fortune kind of drama, but so far there just isn't much epic squabbles (or rather none). It just consist of petty quarrels over the tiniest bit of things, like when Kate's character went to Ron's family house for dinner, her father and brother got so worked up over it and stomped over immediately just to pick a quarrel -_-" Please leh, Kate how old already, go bf's house for dinner also cannot meh. really wth lah :s

3) Dislike shows that tend to give their characters weird nicknames just to give them "more life and character" or to make them more endearing but provide no explanation whatsoever about how that nickname came about. What the hell is "dai fung sau" and "dai moon goon"?? Maybe it does mean something in cantonese but till now I've no idea how the nicknames came about. And why is Kate called "fu gwai mui" (a.k.a rich gal) when she's not a rich gal in the show? ~_~ Maybe if they say she dreams of being rich or being a tai tai and hence the nickname, at least that would make a little bit of sense, but to just randomly give the characters meaningless nicknames is quite ridiculous.

4) Maybe the scriptwriters really lack new ideas or what, but to repeat the same scenarios? Such as Kate being stabbed with a knife by Roger Kwok's delusional and mentally-unstable ex-gf, and then later on, Ron also got stabbed with a knife as well by Kate's similarly delusional and mentally-unstable ex-bf. Where is the creativity man? -_-"

Sigh.. I really find that this show has nothing much worth watching for, yet it's quite a waste if I just stop watching after already watching half the episodes. Why is it that the better and more interesting shows have only 20 episodes yet lame draggy shows like these have 30 episodes?? :(

2011-08-31T02:35:00.001+08:00

Recently felt like playing some old games again like Sim Theme Park or The Sims 2 but then some problems arised; for Sim Theme Park, it's an old game of more than 10 years old and it wouldn't work on Windows 7. Can install and all, but when I double click on the game to run it, it just wouldn't start up. Also tried changing the compatibility but doesn't work as well :( As for The Sims 2, I only have 3 of the disks (out of 4) so can't install I guess :(

Seems like Windows 7 is really not compatible with most of the old games, like Theme Hospital also (which is another great game), but for Theme Hospital I managed to dl a version from online which enables it to run on Windows 7 except that the graphics are slightly glitched :o

Actually wanted to dl The Sims 3 but it's quite hard to find a trusted torrent that doesn't have virus or what :s Finally found one which seems quite "safe", but the dl speed totally cmi, like only a few kb/s and at this rate I think it will take more than a month to dl finish, so I deleted it -_- Hmm.. wonder if popular sells it. If it's not too ex, $50 or less, I might consider buying :P Just suddenly have an urge to play sims, lol. Like to create houses from scratch and furnish the rooms all that :D

PE 2011

2011-08-28T17:42:00.000+08:00

What a pity that TCB lost to TT by only 0.34% of the votes :( It's like deja vu all over again as with the case of Joo Chiat and Potong Pasir, losing by just a razon thin margin. What is ironic is that it is actually possible to be a president even though you do not have the mandate of majority of the voters, but oh well that's the drawback of the first past the post system.

What would be an ideal voting system would be that after a first past the post voting, the 2 best candidates should once again compete in an absolute majority election and only then can we safely and confidently say that the final winner does actually have the mandate of the electorate. If it was just TCB vs TT in a one-on-one fight, I dare say TT would never have won. Logically speaking, TJS and TKL voters would very likely never have voted for TT so it's safe to assume that their votes would be transferred to TCB.

Anyway, I suppose the results are probably like a slap to a certain party and TT's face because even with so many unions endorsing him, employment of fear-mongering tactics via the SBF as well as having a total number of posters placed adding up to even more than that of the other 3 candidates' combined, he only received slightly more than 1/3 of the votes, narrowly beating TCB only. Shameful or what? /trollface.

I believe that even if they were to put a donkey up for elections, as long as it's endorsed by "you-know-what", there will still surely be people who'll vote for it. If you'd bothered to do your homework in finding out more about the candidates' "track record", it's not hard to notice a blatant conflict in interest, yet many people still vote for frivolous reasons like "oh, he's the only one I recognise", "since he was a DPM, he's definitely the best man for the job", "he has the looks of a president" etc etc /facepalm.

2011-08-26T00:15:00.000+08:00

Actually planned to wake up around 10 to 10.30am today cos need to go out, but last night after going to bed, I felt hungry so had to wake up to eat supper -_- In the end slept quite late around 3.30am, thus couldn't wake up early, so finally woke up at 11+ :s Turned on laptop to play MSA then surf net a bit to read about the latest updates on the presidential elections, then went to eat breakfast (or rather, lunch :s) After that still got to hang clothes :( In the end by the time I went to bathe and get ready, it was 2pm+ when I left home, lol.

Went to the ATM at Tanah Merah first cos had to transfer money to my friend, then wanted to activate the fund transfer for ibanking. All the while I thought that once you'd signed up for ibanking, you can straight away do fund transfer, but turns out you still have to activate fund transfer first. Since I signed up for ibanking which is linked to my DBS debit card, I thought it's better to use that card to activate; there were many options under "more services" so I wasn't exactly sure which option to choose, and tried pressing whichever I thought was the right one, but each time the machine said it couldn't be transacted or something, which is quite frustrating. Luckily there was no one else in the queue if not will feel quite paiseh for holding up the queue :P Plus, they now have an additional ATM there when previously there was only one.

Anyway I was wondering why I just couldn't successfully activate the fund transfer, so decided to try inserting my usual ATM card instead (both cards are linked to the same account actually so I thought whichever one I chose to use doesn't matter), and turns out this time I could activate it :s

After that took the train to Simei first cos need to take passport-sized photo, and my cousin and friend had confirmed that just outside the Simei station there's an instant photo booth, thus I went there. $7 for 4 passport-sized photos, and it's quite good. The machine gives you 2 takes and after that you can choose which one you prefer, but then when they print out the photo, it's not already in passport-size, it comes in a sheet and from there you have to cut out the photo yourself, lol.

The photo-taking was done quite quickly and after that took the train to Bugis. As to why I needed the passport-sized photo and why I went to Bugis.... it's because I wanted to sign up for the JLPT exam in Dec :P I just feel that taking the JLPT would be a good gauge of my progress, since I study at my own pace.

Had to find the Japanese Cultural Society of Singapore (JCSS) which is near the national library. I didn't take down the exact address though cos I had a mini map image in my hp and thought that that alone would suffice, but turns out finding the place was a nightmare :s It's supposed to be between the national library and bank of china (not along the same street but diagonal to it), so I thought the building I was walking around was the correct one (actually it IS the correct building but I just couldn't find it), but after walking one round around the whole building, I didn't see any sign stating JCSS or anything. So I started wondering if that was the correct building. Plus I think the mini map was probably an old un-updated version because it didn't show Iluma.

Anyway I went to the street behind this building and realised it was already the back entrance of Iluma, so it couldn't be there. Hence, went back to that first building again and loitered around. Then decided to go into one of the doors and ask the security guard there, but he wasn't sure as well. Seems like he never heard of JCSS, but he asked if it's a school, to which I said it was. Then he directed me to the next street which is just directly opposite the bank of china. I think that building is called midlink plaza or something. Went inside and glanced at the directory but no sign of JCSS as well, then asked the security guard there and he pointed me back to the first building again -_- haha.. but this security guard seemed more confident that he knows what he's saying lah, so once again I went back to the previous street. This time finally noticed an opaque glass door and went in and voila, finally saw JCSS on the directory :D (I didn't really notice this door the first time round because it wasn't a clear, see-through glass, so I didn't think of going in).

Sigh. In the end I think I spent half an hour walking around looking for the JCSS lor. Had to pay $2 for the application form, and the stupid form was quite complicated sia, it even comes with an instruction booklet O_O Anyway they asked quite a number of wu liao questions like why you want to take the JLPT, through what activities do you come into contact with the Japanese language, what level of education are you studying etc, all of which I think is none of their business :P so kaypoh about people for what. After that have to paste 2 passport-sized photos on the form and they'll return one copy (know as the "voucher") to you as acknowledgement. Had to pay $45 as well for the exam. Anyway the exam is like 3 months later, so still have plenty of time for revision.

People always ask me why I want to study Japanese, and they assume it's because now it's the "IN" thing that's why (which is true, seems like a lot of youngsters are now interested in learning foreign languages like Japanese or Korean), but my interest in the language started way before all these Japanese/Korean drama craze. Actually I also dunno how it started, maybe it was after I started playing Bomberman Online? Maybe that sparked my interest, and then one fine day I just decided I'll learn Japanese myself through online resources, and started by memorising katakana and hiragana. Anyway, right now, my ultimate aim as well as life-long wish is to be able to be proficient at a level where I can read raw mangas and play those awesome Japanese games that are never translated :D Whether or not I can achieve that remains to be seen though, since I'm not exactly the most hardworking person around and I always end up forgetting all the grammar I've learnt which brings me back to the starting point :(

MapleStory Adventures

2011-08-21T02:52:00.001+08:00

Have been playing Maple Story Adventures (MSA) on fb recently and found it quite fun. However, character control in MSA is wholly through usage of mouse only, which makes me wonder why they didn't make MSA to be played with keyboard instead; I think should be quite possible and probably more fun :P

What I like about MSA is that:

1) It doesn't lag. Most other games on fb tend to lag especially as you gain more levels and expand your restaurant/cafe/city etc which leads to longer loading times.

2) Your character can finally wear cash-shop equips w/o spending A-Cash! Obviously the number of cash-shop equips that are purchasable with in-game currency is very limited, but at least they still bother to cater to cheapskate people (like me) who will never spend a single cent on online games :P Plus you can also attain more non-standard equips through completing quests or trading in collections or even through treasure boxes although the last option is the hardest as the "randomness" is rigged. On the surface it looks like it has a 1 in 5 chance of landing you the equip but in reality it's far from that :s

3) Although the max energy is pretty limited at 100+ depending on your level, the regeneration rate is 1 energy per min which I think is considered quite okay as it means you can come back to your game every 2 hours and it'll be full again.

4) You can even enchant your equips with an enchant scroll to give them abilities at no risk, although there is a chance to fail but at least it doesn't destroy your equip or something.

5) There is nothing compelling you to tend to your game at a certain time just to prevent what you are concocting in the cauldron from spoiling as with most fb games (e.g in cafe world you have to collect the food you've cooked within a certain time limit if not the food will go bad).
In MSA, it doesn't matter what time you collect your item, even if you collect it one year later it doesn't go bad or what :P

As for the cons of MSA, it's the same as with ALL fb games, i.e having to "beg" your friends to help you with quests which you'd otherwise be unable to complete on your own, and getting them to send you skill permits in order to level up your skills -_- What's worse is I think MSA is sort of buggy right now and even though your friends send you stuff and you accept it, it might not appear in your inventory :(

What I hope will be implemented in future:

- The usual 10/30/60/70% scrolls to strengthen wpns and equips with atk.

- Being able to gift friends with wpns or equips that you find while killing monsters.

- Maybe a free market system where you can set up a shop and sell your old equips or even collection items to other players, that'll be great :D

That's about it for now. Obviously MSA lacks the vast amount of content available in the actual MS plus you can't really "utilise" your skills since it's all just about clicking, but somehow I find it more enjoyable (for now). I think it's probably cos it's less tedious as you can just click many monsters at one go, then change tab and go surf net or something then come back later to collect drops and rinse and repeat so it doesn't really take up much time and doesn't feel as boring.

2011-07-07T03:05:00.000+08:00

Totally hate it when people decide they want to come to my house uninvited just because they happen to be in the area nearby. It's okay if you want to come, but at least inform me a few hours beforehand or something, and not just decide you wanna drop by as and when! Anyone who does that, I'd just say I'm not free, or worse, if they happen to be right at the gate already, I'd just pretend nobody's home >:( I think it's just basic courtesy to inform people in advance lor.

Also hate it when people know they are going to be really late (like more than an hour), yet don't have the decency to even drop you an sms to inform you, until you ask where they are at, then they sheepishly say they are still at home -_-.

Also dislike it when people ask me out at the very last min. Please at least ask the night before, I dislike it when I wake up (usually in the afternoon) to find people asking me to meet up when I've already planned to spend the day lazing at home doing my own things, yet I'd feel obliged to agree since I'm really free that day. I just don't like making up excuses to reject people :(

2011-05-18T04:29:00.000+08:00

I know GE 2011 has been over since like 1.5 weeks ago and I have been meaning to write about my thoughts on the GE, but it's just that I had 2 papers last week plus I had just too many thoughts regarding this topic that I didn't really know where I should start with.

Okay, so I shall just limit the topic to Aljunied GRC. It seems to me that many people have suddenly jumped onto the bandwagon of pitying George Yeo and lamenting what a great loss it is for us to have lost a foreign minister. Why am I using the words "jumped onto the bandwagon"? Simply because I'm pretty sure most of those who say they are sad to see GY leave the cabinet are those who have never even come into contact with him personally before, and when you ask them what contributions GY has made, they can't even list out 3 things without referring to wikipedia or they just resort to using the more generic reply that he has been a good foreign minister. To me, the only "positive" thing about GY is that he is probably one of the few ministers who did not keep saying the wrong things and incur the wrath of the citizens, and that he has done a fairly good job, but then again, he is paid millions to do this, so I wouldn't expect any less from him. When it comes to the "negative" things he has done, of course like the other ministers, he has his fair share of it too, the most notable one being that he was the one who came up with the suggestion to build casinos. Hmmm...

So anyway, if you want to blame anyone for the loss of GY, blame it on the ruling party for creating the GRC system, and not WP. They thought that the GRC system would serve to their advantage, but similarly, it can backfire on them too, like it did at GE 2011.

What irks me most is whenever I come across comments by those brainwashed or just plain dumb PAP-supporters who say things like "those who voted for WP in aljunied will have 5 years to repent", "those who voted for opposition are ungrateful", or saying that they can't understand why people would rather vote for a team with no proven track record and no plans, rather than the team with 2 ministers that has served them well. I am really flabbergasted by these ignorant, selfish, self-centred and myopic people. To them, it's like for the sake of one GY, they would rather forsake democracy and just leave everything to the ruling party to decide for them, and the saddest thing is they don't see what's wrong with doing so, thinking that life has been going very well under their governance. They don't read or watch beyond the straits times, the newpaper or channel news asia and just take everything at face value. They probably don't even know that our mainstream media is ranked 154th, and obviously for a good reason.

Just some things I'd like to point out:
* Losing a foreign minister and a minister w/o portfolio (now known as minister in PMO) is no big deal, especially the latter which is really an unnecessary post which serves to do nothing except suck up more of taxpayers' money. Unless you really think that the whole of our country will just collapse and cannot function without GY as foreign minister. If that's the case, then it's really sad, because what are we going to do should such "talented" ministers retire in the future, or if anything untoward were to happen to them? Or should we just scrap elections since every GRC is helmed by a minister, and since these ministers are too great to lose, everyone should vote for the sake of retaining the ministers, then what's the point of holding elections?

* WP a team with no track record? How about LTK having been the MP of Hougang for decades? And guess what, our MM LKY himself was also once an opposition w/o a track record too, and look where he is now. Going by the theory of having no track record = can't get things done, I think we can all stop schooling already. Imagine graduating and then applying for jobs, but all your applications are rejected because you have no work experience. Of course everyone starts with zero experience, duh. The important thing is to give people a chance. If they can do a good job, good for them, if not, you can always vote them out 5 years later.

* Also, I fail to see how WP's A-team is not comparable if not better than the aljunied pap team. Previously, people used to complain that the opposition's credentials are not good enough. Now we have people like CSM, a Rhodes scholar with a string of degrees from Stanford, Harvard and Oxford, plus LTK and Sylvia Lim who both have experience as MP and NCMP respectively. Is that still not good enough?

* And once again, it has nothing to do with being grateful or not. No one is discrediting them for what they have done since independence, but that is not reason to overlook the mistakes make in recent times, especially the past 5 years. And stop using cliched phrases like "everyone makes mistakes". Yes, everyone makes mistakes, but if you want to run Singapore like a company and benchmark your pay to top earners in private sector, then be prepared to take responsibilities as well. When it comes to the Japanese, there is really no comparison. When they make mistakes, they graciously step down on their own accord and that is responsibility. Responsibility is not just saying "I admit my mistake, I have taken responsibility" and then think that is accountability. Not only that, in light of the recent disaster, the Japanese PM has offered to take a pay cut until things are going well again, and the Japanese Emperor and Empress even travelled to the affected parts of Japan just to comfort and give strength to the people. Would we ever see such things from our leaders? Maybe when elections are looming round the corner.

I'm relieved that 54% of the people in Aljunied are clear-headed enough to see the need for opposition, but unfortunately, there will always remain a group who are unable to weigh the consequences or just too self-absorbed with their own welfare only and there's no way to reason with them :s

2011-05-05T18:00:00.002+08:00

Have been flipping through the newspaper's GE section for the past 2 weeks just for the daily dose of humour and came to an understanding of how campaigning works (not in chronological order):

Self-praise. Keep harping on your own "track record", and pointing out that your opponent doesn't have any "track record", never mind that your own newbie candidates doesn't have any so-called "track record" as well.
Call for a "clean fight".
Repeatedly assure the people that you are not "out of touch" with them.
Question your opponent's manifesto slogan. Challenge them to cite an example of which country is it which they based their slogan on.
Smear and cast a bad light on your opponents, doesn't matter if it didn't really happen or is untrue.
Cry on national tv.
Question your opponents' motives and intentions day after day, even when newspapers have already published an article addressing that issue.
Arrange buses to ferry old folks and aunties to your own rallies by luring them with free food and drinks.
Announce upgrading, healthcare, education etc plans.
Hand out money to the people through the form of a "Grow and Share" package to make them happy.
Tell the people how their area will become slums and value of their HDB will drop if their constituency falls into oppositions' hands.
Challenge your opponents to come up with detailed plans and how they are going to carry it out.
The moment your opponents come up with the plans, shoot them down and say that everything is infeasible.
Alternatively, accuse their housing-related suggestion of being tantamount to "raiding our reserves".
Insist that public housing is "affordable", because relative to your own salary, it is of course more than affordable. Can afford a few units a year too!
Disregard your own previous call for a "clean fight" and proceed to make your former subordinate out to sound like some sort of failure.
When your opponents come up with some witty and meaningful analogies, try to come up with a different version of the analogy as well, never mind that it makes no sense and sounds stupid.
Accuse your opponent of not keeping proper accounts and insinuate that he has not been doing a proper job or has something to hide.
When your opponent fires back at you the next day, innocuously brush it aside and claim that you didn't mean any harm and was just being concerned on behalf of the people who are not even in your constituency.
Apologise to the citizens and claim you'll take responsibility for the mistakes you have made in the past.
Clarify on your group's FB page that the libel against you that has been spreading online is not true. When netizens provide link of proof in the form of a newspaper article, keep quiet.
Cry again during rally.
Accuse your opponents of planting their own supporters during their walkabouts.
Promote the idea of NCMP.
Threaten the people and tell them to "live and repent" for the next 5 years should the outcome not be in your favour.
Back-stab your colleague and suggest that he should be voted out instead of another colleague.
When you trespass private residents' property during your walkabout and get scolded, call the police over this small little matter.
Express regret over your callous comment made in the past.
Insist that you never encourage the citizens to be unfilial to their aged parents and explain that it was just a suggestion and that your opponent had twisted your words.
Remind the people that your country still needs 900,000 foreign workers on work permit, despite the unhappiness already brewing over the influx of foreigners.
Ask the people to judge you based on the past few decades and not just the past 5 years.
Make sure an article of how you rescued some citizen while on your walkabout is published.
Comment that majority of the people are not concerned about the obscene amount of salary you and your colleagues get annually.
Insist that your past mistake resulting in an over-budget for an event has brought benefits to the country.

Just repeat any of the above points when you have run out of ideas, it may really work in your favour. After all many Singaporeans are just that gullible :)

Problems with maids and their employers

2011-04-28T04:16:00.006+08:00

A tale of two maid agencies – writer needs your advice

I think the main problem actually lies with the employers though, and they can be divided into a few groups:

1) Those employers who live in the past, only remembers how the maid's mother did an excellent job previously, and because of that gratitude, no matter what mistakes the maid or her mother make, these employers will still continue employing their services, failing to see the bigger picture of how their [the employers'] children will suffer in the future and no longer feel at home even though the house rightfully belongs to them. The maid goes as far as to suggest to the employers' children to send their parents to JB nursing homes, and when confronted about it, the maid turns around and start accusing the children of twisting her words. Unfortunately, these employers still strongly believe in their maid and will unreservedly continue to renew her 5-year contract each time it's due, till the day they find themselves in a JB nursing home.

2) Employers with a hack-care attitude, do not know what is going on in the house and let their maid do as they please, and at the end of the day, still feel that the maid has done a superb job while being totally oblivious to what has really transpired. They might also prefer that their maids come with a life-long contract just to save themselves the "hassle" of going down to the maid agency every 5 years to sign the renewal contract. Yet at times when the agency call to inform them that the maid's employment contract has already been renewed by the agency and that the employer need not do anything, these very same employers start to complain about how come they as employers have no say in deciding if the maid warrants a contract renewal?

3) Employers who day in, day out, complain incessantly of how tardy and lazy the maid is and keep threatening to terminate her employment, yet at the end of the 5-year employment contract, they strangely still prefer to extend her contract yet again.

4) Employers who are quite neutral about their maid, but just one week before the day they make the decision to keep or change the current maid, she suddenly serves them abalone porridge for breakfast, grilled lobster for lunch, foie gras for dinner and birds' nest for supper, plus she also promises to re-paint their room walls (of course that happens only if they re-new her contract). Sadly, there are employers who do get enticed and take the bait, without realising that all those expensive meals and cost of the paint jobs actually come out of their own pockets. However, soon after these employers have renewed the contract, the maid returns to serving only plain porridge for meals, and at times even skipping a meal. When the employer gently reminds the maid about it, she coldly retorts, "do you want 3 meals in a hawker center, food court or restaurant?", to which the employer is shocked beyond words.

5) Employers who although thought of changing maids, are afraid that if they change to a maid from another agency, their current maid might out of spite report them to the police and accuse them of abuse. Succumbing to the pressure of their unjustified and irrational fear, against their own conscience, they end up re-newing their maid's contract.

6) Employers who are seriously fed up with the current maid and decided they will give other maid agencies a chance. After all, it couldn't get any worse than this already. Plus, the maids from the other agencies seriously seem genuinely sincere and capable, so why not?

I urge all maid employers to seriously think about whether to change maid or not. Please don't be deceived and brainwashed by your current maid (who apparently likes to bad-mouth other maids) that maids from other agencies don't have the "proven" track record that she has. If you paid attention to the on-goings at home, you would know that your current maid's "track record" is really nothing as good as she claims. How are you to know other agencies' maids are not as capable if you don't even give them a chance in the first place? What makes you think that the other junior maids that comes together as a team with your current maid are able to do the job well also? After all, these junior maids too are new to the job and do not have any "proven track record" as well, plus their motives are very questionable.

Also, remember that these maids are paid to do their job. They are not doing it for free, so they should be judged on their performance. If she is doing your housework and taking care of your children for free, of course we should not be so harsh on her, but when she demands a high salary in order to keep her honest and not change employer, then we should cut her no slack. You want high salary, you got to work for it, simple as that.

The best thing to do is to hire a part-time maid from another agency alongside with your current maid. This will ensure that your current maid stops being complacent and will buck up. Furthermore, if that part-time maid does not perform up to standard, you can always terminate her employment, but I'm sure this part-time maid will not fail you :D

2011-04-07T03:20:00.001+08:00

Quite often when I'm practising on the piano, I'd wish there was some sort of invention where maybe you place your scores on this special stand with dividers and near the pedals, there's this extra button (which is linked to the dividers) where you can use your foot to press when you want to turn the pages of the scores. Or maybe they can invent an electronic piano with 2 A4 sized screens for the piano scores display, and where you can also change the pages of the scores easily without using your hands. That's because for songs with high tempo and no breaks during the duration where you need to flip the page, it's almost impossible to play the song smoothly. Often, I'd have to pause for a while in order to quickly arrange the scores -_-

In the past I dealt with this problem by placing 5 pages of score side by side on the stand but it's not very wise actually because I'd make lots of mistakes since it's hard to play accurately especially when your eyes are looking at the 5th page (to the far right) and your hands are at the lower octaves O_O. erm.. so I realised it's very tedious as well and I can reduce the number of mistakes I make when I place 2-3 sheets of scores on the stand only :P

I think people usually overcome this problem by memorising the bars of notes near the part where you need to flip the page, but then I hate memorising, and also it still doesn't work when the whole page requires constant use of 2 hands :(

Anyway quite a while ago I found this website (in chinese) where you can "play the piano" using just your keyboard :) It's quite fun and you don't need to know how to read a score, just need to press the string of letters that's shown on the screen and according to the right tempo of course, and the sound that comes out will be just like that of a piano's. Recommended only for those who can type without looking at the keyboard, because otherwise there's no way you can keep up with the tempo of the song.

rakuten shopping

2011-04-06T17:38:00.001+08:00

Yay, seems like Kitty (my older cat) is getting used to Mochi (the new kitten) by now. Previously, she will hiss or growl at Mochi whenever it gets too near her, but today, Kitty actually went near Mochi (nose touching nose) without hissing :D But later on Kitty was swinging her tail and Mochi kept trying to paw at Kitty's tail, maybe thinking it's some play thing -_- (really bueh zai si :P) Haha.. anyway it's really fun and relaxing to watch cats, especially playful kittens who seem to have boundless energy.

Anyway yesterday I was surfing Rakuten and ordered some hair accessories from one of the stores :) I think I ordered 2 hairbands, 1 hair pin, 3 scrunchies, 1 hair rubber band and 1 necklace. I only bought the cheaper items or those on sale, but for some stuff that I was interested in, the colour I wanted was out of stock :( Total price is around 3000 yen I think, excluding shipping, which I hope won't be too ex .

Anyway Rakuten has really nice and good quality stuff and what I like is that they mostly have quite a number of large size images to show you exactly how the product looks like, and for products with colours to choose from, they usually have images of the products in all the various colours so you can see which colour you like best. However, Rakuten is actually a conglomerate of various individual stores, so if you're planning to buy something, it's best to choose items from the same store, because otherwise, you'll have to pay shipping fees for each different store you purchase from! (and the shipping is really super ex, not really worth it unless you're really buying many items from the same store so the shipping costs will even out.)

You can also sign up as a member for free but I don't really see much benefits actually other than them storing your credit card info and shipping address for future reference (so that you don't have to key in again the next time you make a purchase) and that you'll get rakuten points for each item you purchase, but guess what, the points you get is roughly only 1% of the selling price of the item, which is far too little for me (or anyone) to care.

Sigh. If only the shipping fee is not that costly, and if only you can order from different stores and they can somehow coordinate with one another and pack the items together then send to you, then I don't mind ordering from there more often. Meanwhile... I shall wait for a reply from the store I ordered from and pray that they don't shock me with the shipping fees :P

------
edit: the store just sent me an email (that's fast o_o) and turns out that this time the shipping fees is only 900 yen, which is just about right. The previous time when I bought from a store called Tripod they charged me 1600 yen iirc, which I didn't understand why cos according to the EMS website, for items below 300g, it should be 900 yen, and the stuff I bought from Tripod is definitely less than 300g as well so it should be 900 yen only, dunno how come they charged me extra >:(

2011-04-01T15:23:00.001+08:00

Changed the blog background again and I think it looks nicer this time, got a very "neoprint" feel to it :P Downloaded 2 photo editing apps on my phone yesterday and was tinkering around with them. One is Photofunia and the other is Picsin.

The app I used to make the blog background is Picsin though, it's really fun. I like the collage option, where you can choose a few pictures from your phone to make into a collage, plus you can choose what background to use, types of frames and borders (even adjusting the width of the border), add little stuff (called stickers) like hearts, butterflies etc, change the photo effects and add texts among other things. So I made a few collages of my Rilakkuma soft toys' pictures and this is how it turns out:

This is the one I used for the blog background

Lol, this one is Kitty :P Went a bit overboard with all the stickers :s

An effect added with Photofunia. I quite like this effect though.

However, Photofunia can only be used when you're connected the the internet :( As for Picsin, you have to connect to the internet when you first use it. Each time you select a sticker to add to your picture for example, that sticker will be downloaded so that even when you're offline later on, you can still add that sticker :) However, this only works for stickers that you've used before (while online). Actually Photofunia and Picsin are both very different apps for different use, but I like Picsin more since it can be used offline and has much more customization :D

new rilakkuma layout :P

2011-03-30T20:35:00.002+08:00

As anyone would have noticed, I changed the blog layout! That's because I decided to try changing to the "advance" version of template design and found out that it offers more customization now, hence I decided to experiment around with it.... which eventually led to adding Rilakkuma images here and there although I know it doesn't look good actually. I think the pink on the sides of the blog are too bright, would have preferred a lighter pink.

Tried changing to a lighter shade of pink by using the "paint" program to do some (what I had thought was minor) adjustments and to my surprise, I just realised that microsoft has even changed the layout of "paint"! Maybe the change happened quite long ago or something just that I didn't notice, but what I'm referring to is how they made the layout similar to microsoft office, whereby you now have multiple tabs for each category of tools etc. Personally, till date, I still find it extremely hard to get used to. Each time I want to change the font colour or crop an image or add tables for example, I have to click each and every tab there is till I find the option because I just can't remember which tab the colour palettes are under nor where the crop tool is! argh. As a result, even simple editing can now take a long time (for me).

Okay, back to story of how come I didn't change the pink colour to a lighter shade: it's because I cropped the Rilakkuma from somewhere and it originally came with that bright pink colour, so I thought to use the "fill colour" tool with a lighter shade of pink, but apparently the original background colour was not really consistent, meaning when I use the "fill colour" tool, not all of the background was changed to a lighter pink and therefore I decided that it was too much work if I have to "colour" the remaining parts myself. Hence, that's how the blog ended up looking so kiddish and pinkish :(

Anyway, it seems like I somehow managed to blog 3 posts on a single day :O (after neglecting this blog for ages). haha.. it just depends on my mood I guess. Currently procrastinating a lot on my revision so maybe blogging is just an excuse :s

basic apps phones need to come pre-installed with

2011-03-30T17:30:00.000+08:00

Recently updated my phone (Sony Ericsson Xperia X10) and now it supports the pinch-to-zoom function. Previously, to zoom in on a webpage, you just double tap on the screen, but now you can do both, but I find that I still prefer the double-tapping method. Maybe I'm used to it already, but it also seems more convenient as well as faster way of zooming, especially when you're holding the phone with just one hand.

Along with the update came this app called Neoreader, which you can use to scan barcodes and websites on products with your phone's camera and then search for the product on google. Quite fun and it's really accurate too, haha.

I've heard of another similar app called Google Goggles in which you take a picture of what you want to search for and Google will search for similar pictures on the internet, but apparent it sucks. Okay I only tried a couple of times on my Rilakkuma soft toy (chose it since it's such a popular character and I thought it will be easy to generate an accurate search result, but apparently not) and all the search results were utter nonsense, resembling NOTHING like my Rilakkuma! -_- Hence, the app was promptly deleted.

Anyway I've been wondering: while technology has been advancing and phones get more and more functions, why is it that the SE Xperia X10 doesn't even come with some basic apps such as:

memo pad - for jotting down small notes quickly
voice recorder
birthday calendar - something which I've always wanted in a phone so that I can be reminded of upcoming birthdays. Yet, the phone instead comes with an over-complicated calendar which I have not much use for (maybe other people will find it useful though..) I know you can manually key in birthdays, but what I want is a dedicated "birthday reminder" function.
Auto-flash for camera - what's the use of an 8.1mp camera when you have to MANUALLY switch on and off the "spot light" (mind you, it's not even really a flash! just a beam of light, argh -_-)
SMS / Calls counter
Currency / Units converter
Stopwatch / Timer
% indication of battery life on the notification bar

I mean these are just some basic apps which one would expect current phones to come pre-installed with, yet they would rather put all those useless apps on your phone like what moxier mail, AMPed etc -_- Why take a step forward then go two steps back? In the end, I had to dl those apps from the android market instead, but I have yet to find a suitable and reliable birthday reminder and voice recorder app :(

Nintendo 3DS

2011-03-30T16:48:00.000+08:00

The 3DS is already out and it does seem quite amazing and is evidently an improvement over the current DS Lite that I have, but I'm definitely not getting it right now because:

1) The launch games are not enticing enough.
2) There are still games on the DS waiting for me to play
3) Retail price of S$399 in Singapore is far too high! I mean it's almost double the price at which I paid for my DS Lite last time :'(
4) Will probably wait till the 2nd generation of 3DS before I get it and by then the library of games available should suffice. Plus the available colours right now are so limited. I want a pink one :P Really hope to see an improvement over the battery life as well.
5) Most importantly, waiting for a workable flashcart, lol. No way am I going to pay ~$60 for a game, no matter how great it is.

Plus, hopefully people can come up with a flashcart that can bypass the region-lock. I mean, region-locking is the stupidest thing ever Nintendo came up with. Why are they stopping people from playing games from other regions? Especially those great rhythm games from Japan that never make it to the US. It's bad enough that we can't play those rhythm games in English, but it's worse when now they don't even let us play it in Japanese >:(

Right now I'm still not convince on whether I should get a 3DS in future, and that will depend on what games will be available on it next time. It's also very likely that there won't be a price drop for the 3DS, but by the time the 2nd generation is out, I'd probably be working already (erm.. hopefully?) so I think I can afford it.

Zhuhai Trip (21 March '11 to 26 March '11)

2011-03-28T18:54:00.002+08:00

Came back from my Zhuhai trip on Saturday afternoon, feeling really tired. In fact, I was already having backaches since the first day of the trip (21 March, Mon) from walking and standing around too much. I'm not sure if it's normal or it's a sign of getting old :(, since my mum and aunts didn't complain of having backaches. Seems to happen whenever I have stood for long periods of time, but once I sit down, the ache will ease but within 10mins of standing again, it'll be back :( Doesn't even help after a night of sleep. It'll only go away after I've really rested and avoided standing too much for a few days.

Took Tiger airways there, first time taking a budget plane and the leg space on the plane is really too narrow! Whenever I want to go to the toilet, my mum who's seated by the aisle will have to get up as well so that I can go out :s Luckily it's just a short flight of 3.5-4 hrs, but they don't provide food or drinks although you can pay for those if you're hungry / thirsty.

Anyway we stayed at a 3 star hotel called YongTong Hotel and it's quite good. Only complaint is that the water pressure from the shower head is quite weak, so it takes longer than usual to bathe plus the water temperature adjustment is quite irritating; sometimes it'll be too hot and when you adjust it, you'll have to wait a while before it actually changes -_- The weather there was nice, it's cooling and average temperatures are maybe 16 to 20 degrees. Only the first day was slightly hot but the days after that were just nice :D

Spent 6 days and 5 nights there (not really 6 full days though since we departed from Zhuhai on Saturday early morning) mainly shopping at this huge mall called Port Plaza and sometimes at Lian Hua Lu. Port Plaza is really huge, with many many shops there despite having only 1 level plus a basement. However, there's only 1 toilet in the whole mall despite it being so huge. I guess we Singaporeans are really spoilt in that sense since we have toilets on EVERY FLOOR of a shopping mall :s Many of the shops there sell the same things, mainly fake branded goods like LV, Gucci, agnes b. etc. Most of the prices of the items are not fixed, and the store keepers will quote you a (normally) high starting price so you'll have to bargain with them. They speak Mandarin and Cantonese, but it seems like neither their Mandarin nor Cantonese are accurate :s Sometimes I find that they're really out to rip you off as they might quote you an initial selling price and when you slash their price by half, they're still willing to let go of the item, which means they are still earning a profit! So it'll really be your loss if you don't bargain. The things there are generally cheap I guess.. the best bargains were probably at this 10yuan (~S$2) stall where they sell a myriad of accessories and hp charms etc all at 10yuan each. I think the accessories were really a good bargain since some are really nice and if it were sold in Singapore, I think it'll be at least $15.

Also, quite often you'll hear the sound of shutters coming down because at times there are policemen coming to raid the stores that sell fake branded goods, although till now I still don't understand what's really going on. Some store keepers will be scared and quickly close their store temporarily, yet there are other store keepers also selling fake goods who are not the least perturbed (my mum says they probably already paid the police some "fees" :P) Actually if the police are really interested in raiding those stores, I think 70% of the stores there will be shut down already. On one particular day though, they actually did raid a store, but within 1 hour the store was up and open again ?_?

Also the food there are cheap as well. Usually we have our meals at this Chinese restaurant near our hotel and the bill only comes up to 100+yuan for 7 person! This means it's only roughly $3 -$4 per person O_O Sometimes we'll go to this cafe which is also nearby for our meals. Anyway on a particular day there was a little incident; we were having lunch there and one of my aunts ordered "pork chop rice" by pointing to the picture on the menu, since the pictures don't have a number corresponding to the name of the dish (which is really stupid on the cafe's part -_-). Furthermore, the menu is in Chinese which we're not used to, so naturally we won't know what the name of the dish in the picture is. So when the waitress repeated the order and asked if it's "baked rice with pork chop" (all names in Chinese), we didn't correct her since in the first place, we didn't know what's the name of the dish in that picture and naturally we assumed that's the correct order. Plus my aunt asked if that dish has gravy and she said no.

So anyway my aunt's dish came last and when it finally came, it was "baked rice with pork chop" which was not what she wanted. Plus, it has gravy! So my aunt was saying that's not the correct order and the waitress kept insisting that's what she ordered. Then later on this fatty guy hereby referred to as sei fei zai by my aunt (lol) came to kaypoh and the conversation went something like this:

sei fei zai: You ordered "baked rice with pork chop" right?
aunt: I pointed to the picture and said I wanted that
sei fei zai: Then why didn't you tell the waitress it's the wrong order when she repeated your order and said "baked rice with pork chop"? You should have told her you wanted "pork chop rice"
aunt: How would I know what's the name of that dish in the picture in the first place. you don't understand what the situation was about
sei fei zai: No, no... I do understand what's going on.

And he kept insisting he understood what's going on when obviously he has no idea -_- In the end they changed the dish for my aunt. Anyway the service by the waitresses there (all young girls of around 18?) are really atrocious, except for one of them who is a more senior waitress. Another of my aunt ordered pork chop but parts of the pork chop were not cooked properly and when she told the waitress that, the waitress just said "oh it's like that one" w/o even taking a look at the pork chop!

Also, traffic conditions there are bad, they don't really have traffic lights and the drivers don't stop for pedestrians even at zebra crossings. It's quite dangerous cos you have to jaywalk and the vehicles approach from both directions.

On the morning of the 2nd day, we went to this 6 star hotel for dim sum. What I wanted to rave about is their toilet :P It's really nice smelling and high-tech! The toilet seats have a plastic cover and you just put your hand near this sensor on the wall to change the seat covers, so innovative. Sure, toilets in Japan also usually provide toilet seat covers but so far all the toilets I've been to in Japan require you to manually change the toilet seat covers iirc, but this one is automatic! (I'm sure some toilets in Japan also probably have this technology though, just that I've not come across it) Didn't know China can be so high-tech too. Really makes Singapore seem quite backwards and not up-to-date :s They even want to charge you 20cents if you were to buy a sheet of plastic toilet seat cover in Singapore, how dare they >:(

Anyway as I said, it's really quite worth shopping in Zhuhai :D I probably spent only S$200-$250 in total, even though I bought quite a number of things though it's not as much as what my aunts and mum bought :s For e.g, socks there cost 10yuan ($2) for 3 pairs only! In Singapore the cheapest is only $10 for 3 pairs lor. Also there's this brand called 镜 (hope I didn't type the wrong character, it means mirror) that's also available in BHG, but over in Zhuhai, the clothes in that shop are really cheap, about 40yuan ($8) only! *_* I also managed to buy quite a number of Rilakkuma items hehe :D Pardon the poor quality of the pics cos my phone camera sux despite being a 8mp camera :'(

Card stickers (2 missing cos I pasted 1 on my mum's ez-link and 1 on my own)

12 stickers for only 10yuan!!

How it looks like after pasting on ez-link. Yeah.. can still see the word "ez-link" at the corner though.

Ez-link card holder. With an albino korilakkuma :O

How the back looks like

korilakkuma drawstring pouch, so soft :D

Rilakkuma wall scroll with pockets

a set of hp charms

a set of rilakkuma and korilakkuma plushies wearing winter hats and scarves. Bought for 35 yuan I think. There're other designs as well but no space in luggage to buy too many plushies :s

On Saturday, we had to get up really early since our flight check-in time was at 8am and we have to cross the border to Macau first then take a cab to the Macau airport for our flight since there's no direct flight to Singapore from Zhuhai I think. Had to queue up at the Zhuhai immigration point (not sure what it's called :s) which only opens at 7am. Dunno why their counters are not 24hours. Luckily we arrived early cos later on the queue gets really long since many of the Zhuhai citizens go to Macau for work. Anyway many of them were cutting queues by climbing over the metal rails -_- When one of my aunt scolded this man by asking him not to cut queue, he said "but your luggage bag so big" -_- which is like no link? what has our big luggage bags got to do with his cutting of queue??? It's not as if if we didn't have luaggage bags with us, he would not have cut queue right? Want to find excuses for cutting queue also find a more relevant one lah -_-

Overall the trip was quite enjoyable, shopping is great when the stuff are cheap :D

2011-03-16T15:54:00.000+08:00

Sigh.. I wonder how many more years I'll have to wait before I can finally read volume 5 of the Twelve Kingdoms novel, Tonan no Tsubasa :( I've been waiting for it to be translated since 2-3 years ago when it was first announced that TokyoPop will be translating the novels and releasing one volume every year, so by right, the 5th volume should have been released in March 2011. To my dismay, I found out a few weeks ago that Kodansha, which holds the rights to Twelve Kingdoms, has taken back the rights or something from TokyoPop -_-

Super pissed off, since it's not as if they have already decided that they'll be translating the novels from now on, yet they want to take back the rights. If you're not gonna do it, just let TokyoPop continue with the translations! grrr..

Anyway, it got me wondering about how come the Chinese community always seem to translate everything faster than the English community. I mean in terms of games, manga, novels etc. Like for DS games, they seem to have this faithful group of translators that somehow manage to translate all the latest games from Japanese to Chinese very quickly, while Japanese-to-English fan-translated games take like at least 1 year for the job to be fully done, and in many cases they eventually drop the project. I wonder if those Japanese-to-Chinese translators get paid or not O_O And I wonder why games are not officially translated to Chinese as well, as in for retail, since surely with the large Chinese community, Nintendo will be able to earn more from the sales of Chinese DS games? Also how are the people in China (for e.g) able to play DS games since all games are either released officially only in Japanese or English, since I assume most of the PRCs can only read Chinese? Does this mean almost all of them will have to rely on the unofficial Chinese translated roms in order to play?

9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors

2011-01-04T03:20:00.000+08:00

Have been playing this DS game titled 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors for the past few days, and the story really hooked me. It's about 9 people who were kidnapped to take part in a "Nonary Game" and they have only 9 hours to try to escape through 9 different doors, whereby it's up to them to decide which door and with whom they want to go through it with. Of course there are a number of rules they have to abide by.

Anyway, the plot is super suspenseful, and there are a total of 6 different endings which you can get, depending on which doors you pick. Normally for games with multiple endings, I'd only play through it once and that's it, time to go on to the next game, cos I don't like wasting time have to play through it again just to get a maybe slightly different ending, but not for this game. Simple because you need a minimum of 2-3 play-throughs to fully get the picture of what's going on, and with each different door you choose to go through, you reach a new room and get to solve different puzzles and learn of totally new information, plus the game lets you skip through dialogues / scenes that you've already read and seen, so it doesn't feel that much of a chore going through the game again.

Erm, anyway long story cut short, I don't want to type so much to describe the game :P Just want to say that this is one of the best DS games. In fact, all the visual novel games that I've played on the DS have really fantastic storylines, such as this game, Time Hollow and the Phoenix Wright / Apollo Justice / Miles Edgeworth series. These games just really make you think a lot, as in when having to solve puzzles, and also when you have to "connect the dots" and try to piece everything together to make sense of it. I truly adore such brain-stimulating games, where it makes you ponder over the plot even after you have completed the game.

2010-05-23T05:12:00.000+08:00

Exams have been over since Wed, so feel very relieved and carefree now :D Went to kinokuniya with my cousin on Thurs, and realised that the 4th book of Twelve Kingdoms is out already, but I didn't buy it as it was in hard cover, which is just as well because I just read some reviews that said the translation seemed very rushed with a lot of mistakes, and they even missed out translating some parts! :O I rather they take the time to do a more thorough and up-to-standard work than rushing to meet the one book a year deadline. Anyway I guess I shall only buy the 4th book if they release a 2nd edition with the mistakes edited and so on, and even then I will buy only the paperback version since it's cheaper :P Also can't wait for next year when the 5th book, Tonan no Tsubasa, is translated. Been dying to read it! At first I was worried that Tokyopop might only intend to translate the first 3 books, but since now the 4th book is out, it means they'll most likely be translating all the books :D

Anyway lately, I've been trying to sleep early and wake up early, but it seems really hard to do so :( If I wake up early, I find it hard to endure an entire day without taking a nap, but if I take a nap, I'd most likely be unable to fall asleep early, sigh.

Mother Tongue weighting in PSLE could be cut

2010-04-25T03:52:00.001+08:00

As mentioned in this article, there might be changes to the weighting of Mother Tongue when calculating the PSLE T-score. Seems like another dumb and unneeded change to me. Reason given by our Education Minister is that, "The worry is whether it could exclude someone from progressing in his educational pathway even if he did well in other subjects."

Personally I have always been an advocate of the importance of language subjects, more so than all those maths, science and art subjects. It has more practical use and is beneficial to us throughout our lifetime, since it is used in our everyday lives and also helps to break down the language barrier when in other countries where the people can speak our Mother Tongue. On the other hand, those art and science subjects will most likely only be used in your schooling years, and after that highly likely to be forgotten once you step into the corporate world, especially when it has no relation to your field of work.

What then is the message that the Education Ministry is trying to bring across? That Mother Tongue is not important? That it is now okay to not do well in Mother Tongue because it will not affect your overall score that much anymore? It is ridiculous to suggest that Mother Tongue will be the bane of someone who is not proficient in it, and that it will be a hinder to his educational advancement. If you are not good at your Mother Tongue be it for whatever reason, that is just too bad and it goes to show that you are not an "all-rounder". Students who are weak in their Mother Tongue should work on brushing it up, and MOE should not be catering to, or rather, favour them and change the weighting just to "help" them, which is in fact NOT helping them at all.

Also, why Mother Tongue? For those who are not good at other subjects, like say maths, should they complain to MOE and demand that they lower the weighting in maths so that it would not pull down their overall score? Also, by doing so, is it fair to those who are strong in their Mother Tongue? What has been their strong subject will now be a less important subject, as well as potentially lowering their overall score, so is it not unfair to them too?
It is ironic when on the other hand, the government had years ago launched a Speak Mandarin Campaign, and yet now they are trying to lower the weighting of Mother Tongue, effectively contradicting themselves. If the push for lowering the weighting of Mother Tongue goes through, we can just expect the younger generation to become increasingly weak in their Mother Tongue, with many of them unable to even string together a simple sentence in Chinese, and even worse, look down on and think of it as uncool, as some already seem to be doing. They even go as far as to totally shun the language and pretend that they are only well-versed in English alone, because they have been influenced to think of speaking Mandarin as inferior, although until now I am still unable to fully comprehend why they would feel that way.

We should be proud that we are effectively bilingual in both English and Chinese. Even people of other race are already picking up Chinese because they have the foresight and realise Chinese will only become increasingly important as China has been touted as the next super power, so why are we ironically the ones shunning Chinese instead? I am not expecting students to be highly proficient in Chinese or what, just reaching the level of being able to engage in daily conversations, and watching Chinese dramas without subtitles etc. will suffice.

I feel that it was already a bad move when they decided to introduce the Chinese B syllabus catered for the weaker students, but now it seems that they are taking it even further. Are we really that bad at languages that we are incapable of handling just 2? If that is what they wish to carry out, I hope they do not lament next time when they realise Singaporean youngsters cannot communicate in Mandarin. How then are they going to communicate with the numerous PRCs in Singapore especially when the government is issuing PR status and citizenships to them like people handing out fliers on the streets? :P

Should JC students deserve priority?

2010-04-23T09:30:00.003+08:00

Just last week, there was a post / letter (?) by a certain Mr Lee Beng Tat saying that JC students deserve priority in university admission, and it seems that he has incurred the wrath of many poly students with what he wrote.

Actually I feel that what he wrote is justifiable and I'm of a similar view, though he could perhaps have worded it more tactfully. I know people feel that poly and JC students should have admission into the government universities based on meritocracy, and that is why poly students are complaining that it is unfair for JC students to have priority over them (with only roughly the top 15% of poly students being applicable for govt unis).

But then again, why is it that JC students get priority in the first place? It is simply because the JC route is made in preparations for students who wish to eventually matriculate into university. For the unfortunate JC students whose grades do not meet the cut for govt uni, what can they do with just an A-level certificate which is practically useless on its own? At least poly students who do not make it to uni have a diploma to fall back on, and a diploma definitely commands a higher pay than just an A-level certificate.

Besides, all secondary school students know that the % of poly students being qualified for uni is only 15%, so why complain when you are not part of that 15% and unable to get a place in the govt unis, when you KNEW BEFOREHAND how tough the competition is, and yet still persisted in taking the poly route? If you really want to get into govt uni, you would have chosen the JC route simply because there is priority for JC students. To put it bluntly (and more harshly), it is not as if someone pointed a gun at your head and forced you to go to poly right? Surely there must be a trade-off somewhere. You may have chosen to go to poly because you like the specialised courses, the freedom to wear whatever you like, the more relax timetable etc, while JC students choose to go to JC because... they like the rigorous course syllabus which consist of mugging and more mugging?? I really can't think of any reason other than simply because they know the JC route is the more assured way of getting a place in govt uni. That is the opportunity cost; if you willingly chose to enter poly, work hard to ensure you are part of that top 15% if you really want to go into uni that much. You can't have the best of both world.

Furthermore, comparing JC with poly is kind of like comparing apples to oranges; the benchmark is different and there is no way to determine if say, the top 10% of poly students are as equally academically-inclined as their top 10% of JC counterparts. How fair is fair? Do poly students really want to push for it until the number of JC students : Poly students applicable for uni ratio is 50 : 50 before they consider it fair? What I'm saying is that generally, the L1R5 / L1R4 aggregate score for JC students tend to be better than poly students, so the competition among JC students vying for a place in uni will surely be tougher than that in poly, so I don't see what's wrong with giving JC students priority.

Also, imagine if the % of top poly students applicable for uni is further increased, to say 50% (I use this number since then it will be so-called "fair"). Will anyone even want to enter JC anymore? Surely everyone will be flocking to polys, and then what's the point of having JCs?

I just wish that those poly students who complain that it's unfair for JC students to have priority in uni admission are willing to put themselves in the shoes of JC students. Not being able to qualify for govt uni does not mean it is the end of the world. There are plenty of private unis in Singapore, so JC or poly students who do not qualify for govt uni can always fall back on those; the school fees for private unis are not that much more expensive than govt unis, in fact it might be around the same, given the recent increase in govt uni school fees. Another alternative is that if you are rich enough, you can always choose to go overseas and have a more enriching and eye-opening education. And for those who can't get into govt uni and yet look down on private unis with the view that they are just 3rd rate universities, those are truly the ones with an "elitist" mindset.

陌生人 (Riding the Storm)

2010-04-23T07:43:00.006+08:00

Recently, I've been watching 陌生人 (Riding the Storm), which is an old tcs drama that is finally being re-aired every weekday night at 12am. I didn't know it was being re-aired until my cousin informed me about it, hence I only started watching it from the 4th episode onwards. It feels really nostalgic to see all the familiar and super young-looking faces of long-time actors and actresses like Chen Li Ping, Christopher Lee, Chew Chor Ming, Pan Ling Ling etc, and some mostly forgotten ones who're no longer on the acting scene such as Amanda Ho. Maybe the quality of recent dramas have really gone down the drain, as it seems that it's the old dramas that are more interesting to watch than the current ones. However, one gripe I've always had with old dramas is the lack of subtitles, as it can be hard to catch what they are saying at times, especially when watching it at midnight and having to keep the volume at a low level so as not to disturb my parents' sleep :s

Another thing that's most memorable about the show is the theme song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3NoXQKG4DM

The title of the song is 看不清 by 动力火车. Until now I can still remember the lyrics by heart :D

I like the last part of the song lyrics which goes:

你可曾真心付出 (Have you ever truly given it your all)

看清楚再说结束 (See clearly before saying it's the end)

Not sure if my translations are accurate, nor do I really understand what it's referring to but I just find that it sounds nice and sort of touching, lol. Anyway I was very lucky to be able to find a midi version of the song consisting only of a 2-part piano solo years ago, so with the help of a music program it was easy to convert it to piano score, plus it sounds just like the real thing and is perfectly playable.

It'd be good if only Mediacorp produces the more popular old dramas as vcds (preferably with subtitles). I think from now on, maybe every week I should glance through the 8days shows' timeslot pages to check whatever old dramas are being re-aired, though unfortunately, they sometimes choose to air it at unearthly hours like 3,4am :(

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P.S: Anyway I'm getting annoyed with the blogspot post editor; I keep having problems with the non-uniform line spacing and font size recently, plus it doesn't help that I'm quite noob at editing all the html stuff -_- So yeah, this post looks very off with the different font colour cos I copied and pasted it in microsoft word before copying and pasting it once more back onto blogspot in order to have all the right amount of line spacing, lol.

list of gripes with rpgs

2010-03-26T01:33:00.002+08:00

Recently I've been playing this Sci-fi rpg called Infinite Space, and it's definitely one of the best rpgs on the ds. I've never been a fan of sci-fi / mecha stuff and generally try to avoid anything within those categories, but I'm really glad I decided to give Infinite Space a try mainly because I love rpgs and that the game contains characters in anime style which I like, and also because of all the rave about the game after it was released in Japan. It's super fun and addictive, with an engaging and deep story to boot; in fact I'd say it has the best story among all the ds rpgs I've played :D

Anyway, after having played so many rpgs, I've decided to write down a list of gripes I have in general with rpgs (which are all just imo):

RPGs with lots of side quests but just don't have a quest log, which means you either have to remember where you're supposed to go and what you're supposed to do, or write it down somewhere lest you forget.

RPGs with lots of side quests which involve going back to the same area, but you can only take on one quest at a time, and therefore means having to make multiple trips to and fro. Why can't they just let us multi-task? -_-

No warp spell / items which means each time you want to travel to a different town, you have to go by foot.

Having no skills / items description, i.e you'd have no idea what the skill / item does until you use it to see the effects for yourself, and thereafter have to remember what it does.

Weapon / armour shops menu which does not show exactly how much your atk / def increases by should you choose to upgrade your equipment. Even worse is those that does not even show if your stats increases / decreases.

No sound adjustment option, especially when the background music or voice-overs are eclipsed by horrendous sound effects.

No skip / fast-forward option for dialogues, cut-scenes or spells, which sucks when you get a game-over and have to re-watch an entire scene again, or in the latter case, having to waste like 1 minute each time you cast that spell. I mean, sure, it's nice to see beautifully animated spells once or twice, but not each time you cast it!

Having to hold on to a button for more than 10s if you choose to escape from battle. Worse still, your "escape" fails and you have to wait for all the enemy attacks to be over before you can try escaping again. All escape attempts should just be immediate and always successful!

Ultra-high encounter rates. By that, I mean battles every 3 steps you take. Just.. plain.. annoying.

No quick save option. Hate it when you have to go for dinner or something but just can't find a save point. I know you can just put the ds on sleep mode or something but I just don't like it :P Furthermore, quick save options should always auto-delete once the quick save file is loaded. It's frustrating when you can't remember if the last save you did was on a quick save slot or the normal save slot.

No in-game clock to show how long you've played it. Just cos I like to know how much time I've spent on the game. And sometimes, because there's no time stated in the save files, it's hard to know which is the latest save file you've saved over.

No world / dungeon maps. Just have to wander around and get lost for hours until you get to the next point... Or pause your game every once in a while to switch on the computer and then search for a walkthrough.

Lack of subtle hints at what you're supposed to do next. I mean I don't need the game to spoon-feed me and tell me explicitly what to do next, but it'll be good to at least have some NPCs around to remind you what you're supposed to do. Especially useful if you pick up the game after a few days of not playing, or just for forgetful people like me who can even forget what I'm supposed to do after just a few hours of not playing :(

Having lots of elements like earth, fire, ice, water, wind, thunder, dark, holy etc... but then you have no idea what the monsters are weak / strong against other than through trial and error.

Slow battles. It just makes the game feels draggy and tedious, especially when you typically spend 50% of your gaming time on battles.

Having too many path branches in dungeons, plus the inability to backtrack to open certain chests that you might have missed once you unknowingly reach the cut-scene point. Maybe it's only me but I'd rather have pretty linear dungeons so that I know I didn't miss anything of value :P

Item packs with really limited space / quantity space, resulting in having to wreck your brains on deciding which items to discard after every few battles.

No option to retry once you get a game over, and that means you've wasted all the time you spent after your last save. I mean at least just transport my character back to the last town or something with all the experience intact, while just deducting maybe 50% of the gold I have would be more ideal.

Okay that's about all I can think of at the moment :P Sometimes you really have to wonder if the people who made the game even tried playing through their own game or not, sigh.

Arigatou (by Kokia)

2010-02-26T15:47:00.002+08:00

So happy that I've finally managed to find the piano score for Kokia's Arigatou piano solo :D :D Cos recently I've been trying to find scores for songs that I like to learn, but to no avail as I either can't find the score, or I manage to find one but then it's not to my liking. sigh

Anyway here's the link to the above youtube video of Kokia's Arigatou where I found the score, with the piano score's link on the right: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YvwgmfrfkI

Anyway these are some songs whose piano score I'm looking for (and really dying to have :D) so if anyone has it please let me know:

Can You Keep A Secret (by Utada Hikaru)
Cao Cao (by Lin Jun Jie) I know there's a score out there somewhere but I'm actually looking for another version, such as the one on Musicnet.com. I would buy the piano book if only I could find it in Yamaha, but since it's quite old, I guess maybe it's out of print already :(
Namida (by Ishikawa Chiaki) even just the midi file would be nice.. :(
Blue Moon Sea (from Pop'n Music 9 by N.A.R.D feat Lala moore)
Fuyu no Hanabi (from Bleach Beat Collection by Ichimaru feat Matsumoto) er.. actually I don't think there's a score for this, seeing as how there's no piano version on youtube even though Bleach is so popular and this is one of the nicest songs from Bleach, but hopefully someone will eventually transcript it?

Actually any other nice song recommendations would be nice too; I generally prefer "sad" songs :P

Bleach theme for r4ds

2010-01-25T00:13:00.008+08:00

I just made a new theme for my r4 yesterday! Decided to make one myself cos I've been using the same theme for a long time and wanted to change to a Bleach theme, but just couldn't find one that I like from ndsthemes.com. Took me quite a few hours doing it, mainly due to the searching for nice images to use cos those images will have to "fit" together so it won't look odd. I totally love this new theme :D It's a bleach theme, consisting of my favourite couple Gin and Rangiku. Here it is:

Actually the reason I started reading Bleach was after playing Bleach: The 3rd Phantom (a ds srpg game). Found the story quite interesting so I went to read the characters' wiki and it piqued my curiousity in Gin and Rangiku's enigmatic relationship, thus I'm reading the Bleach manga mainly for their story :P

Oh btw their duet in the Bleach Beat Collection is super nice! The title of the song is "Fuyu no Hanabi" (Winter fireworks). The lyrics are very touching too, mostly from scenes that happened in the manga.

Hokkaido Trip :D (Part 1)

2009-12-03T21:31:00.017+08:00

Came back from Hokkaido last Tues evening actually, but have been procrastinating about blogging about the trip due to laziness, although I did have the intention to blog about it so that in future can read about it and recall the wonderful memories :D

Anyway it was a 7-day holiday, from 18 Nov '09 (Wed) - 24 Nov '09 (Tues), which I went on with my mum and 5 aunties. However, since I have a poor memory, I'll try my best to write in chronological order (with the aid of the tour itinerary) cos sometimes really can't remember what we did on which day and when, all that.

Shall split the post into Part 1 (days 1-3) & Part 2 (days 4-7).

P.S This time got some pictures to accompany the wall of text :D

Day 1 (18 Nov,Wed)

Woke up early in the morning at around 5.15am to get ready and go to the airport. I had a hard time falling asleep despite going to bed only at around 2am+, maybe cos too excited :P Anyway there's plenty of time to sleep on the plane so it's okay. Had Mcdonald breakfast then went onboard the plane.

I think we arrived at Narita International Airport (Tokyo) in the evening (Japan time was 1hr ahead of Sg), then had to take the domestic flight to Hokkaido. Saw a pokemon plane while on the shuttle bus to the plane O_O. By the time we reached Hokkaido, it was already pretty late, like 9pm I think.

One thing about Japan is that it's really hi-tech, especially the toilets. The toilets are so clean, and their toilet bowls all have those special buttons like making the flushing sound to mask any undesirable sounds, washing your butt etc., although I personally dare not try pressing any of those buttons, lol. At that particular airport, they even have this trash bin with sensor, so you just place your hand above the sensor and the lid will open on it's own! Such a great idea lah, and very

hygienic too cos you don't have to come into contact with the bin. However, the thing is that the flush button/ handle of their toilet bowls are all over the place! As in every different toilet you go to, the flush button can be at a different spot, like on the left of the cistern, right of the cistern, on top of the cistern, and in one particular hotel room, by the sink O_O (had a hard time finding the flush button for this one! haha), and at a particular mall, you had to place your hand over a sensor by the wall to trigger the flush. Quite a number of the toilets even provide you with this paper seat cover for free (unlike in sg where you have to pay 20cents for it? -_-)

Anyway we had dinner at the hotel then went to our rooms. The hotel is in the airport itself :P

Day 2 (19 Nov, Thurs)

Went to the Shiraoi Ainu Village to get a glimpse at their culture.

Giant statue near the entrance

There were 4 caged bears where you can buy biscuits to feed them by putting the biscuits through a long tube where the bears will place their opened mouths there ready to catch the biscuits. There were also a few adorable Ainu dogs in cages.

Later on, we went into one of the houses where there's a little performance by the Ainu people. There was a row of Japanese kids sitting in front of us and they were so adorable! I dunno why, but there's just something different about Japanese kids; they just look different from other Asian kids. Not being a Japanophile, but Japanese kids really are much cuter, lol.

After that, went for lunch where we had a huge snow crab! The rather fun thing about the meals is that you can sort of "cook" your own food, either through putting the meat on a hotplate, steamboat or teppanyaki etc. So fun :D

Huge snow crab for 11,000yen (~SG$170 :s) Of course it's shared by all 7 of us lah, not each one one crab hor -_-

After lunch, went to the Rera Chitose Outlet Mall for shopping. There're lots of shops, but didn't buy anything cos too expensive! (;_;) They have a lot of pretty stuff but it's not really worth the price lah.

After that, it's time to head back to the hotel. Btw, we stay at a different hotel every night, cos each day we're travelling to different parts of Hokkaido. Damn sian to have to unpack your luggage each night and then re-pack everything again each morning. Anyway the hotel for day 2 is Japanese-style, which means sleeping on the tatami (or on the floor, if you want). It's not really as uncomfortable as you think. In fact, can't really feel the difference between sleeping on a bed and on the tatami. But I love the thick blanket that comes with the futon (the "bed" that's placed on the tatami) :D

This hotel has an onsen, which we went to. After that, went for dinner and then to bed.

Btw their meals always make use of so many bowls, plates, saucers, pots etc. On average there will be at least 10 items to wash after dinner per person. Lol, like that wash until siao lor.

See what I mean?

Day 3 (Fri)

Breakfast each day is always buffet, but it's mostly the same variety of food. After breakfast, we went to the Jigokudani (Hell Valley) where there're craters with steam rising from it. It was snowing there; my first time seeing snow :D So we have to put on our caps or use umbrella if not your hair will get wet.

After that, we went to Otaru which is famous for it's glasswork shops. There is the Otaru Music Box Museum which has a lot of pretty (and pricey :s) things.

1st floor of the Music Box Museum

After that, we stopped at the Shiroi Koibito factory (it's the biscuit with a layer of chocolate in between that's only sold in Hokkaido) for a while for photo-taking.

Tree House

Clock Tower

After that it's dinner and then back to hotel.

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Part 2 coming up soon! (although the word "soon" is subjective, lol)

facebook games

2009-10-10T23:02:00.002+08:00

Recently I've been playing facebook games and I find them quite fun, although it might be a little boring :P Just starting playing cafe world, and it's quite similar to restaurant city. At first I thought it was just some lesser rip-off of restaurant city, so I stopped playing within a few minutes cos I generally dislike games that require you to manually add neighbours unlike playfish games which automatically acquire neighbours for you.

However, just a few days ago, I decided to give cafe world another try and found that I like it :D The one thing I like about cafe world more than restaurant city (r.c) is that when you don't open r.c in your browser, the maximum number of coins you can earn is only $2000, but in cafe world, as long as you have prepared enough food before you close the game, you can earn as much money as though you've been running the game in your browser. Another good thing is that you don't have to feed your employees! (lol, sounds like ill-treating :s)

In cafe world though, you have to decide and "time" the dishes that you're going to prepare, cos if you know you're not going to be at home the whole day (meaning you can't check on your cafe), then you'll have to prepare a dish that takes maybe 12hours or 1day to be done, if not by the time you log in to cafe world the next time, your dish will most likely be spoilt and wasted :(

Anyway I've a major problem with these facebook games like r.c, pet society, cafe world, country story etc. Each time I spend more than a few minutes with any of those games running in the browser, the cpu usage will inevitably shoot up to like 50% and above, causing the cpu fan to make some noise and it's super irritating. However, if I just leave the game running in the background and open another tab, then it'll be okay. I don't think it's the computer problem cos it's not that old, but I wonder if other people have this problem as well.

2009-09-14T01:33:00.002+08:00

Just chose my timetable on Sat. As usual and as expected, the school server lags (and sux) bigtime and kept having errors -_- Couldn't manage to get a 2day-week, but nonetheless, a 3day-week is still okay. Unfortunately, my lessons all start either at 12pm or 3.30pm; I would've preferred morning lessons so that my father can send me to school and also, I'll have more time to do other things after lessons end. So right now, I've lessons on Tue (3.30 - 6.30pm), Wed (12 - 3pm) and Fri (12 - 6.30pm).

Anyway recently I've got a very strong urge to learn guitar! Maybe it's because of playing guitar hero on ds :s I think electric guitars are cooler though, but then I think it might be too noisy, and it's super heavy man. Went to Yamaha the other day to take a look with my cousin, and could barely lift it up with only one hand O_O

But I think I'll most probably start off with an acoustic guitar ba.. though I'm thinking maybe I should try out on a friend's guitar first to see if I really want to learn it. Also not sure if my fingers might be too short to reach the notes comfortably, or fast enough to change notes smoothly :( And I also dunno what to look out for when buying a guitar, sigh.

2009-09-09T02:37:00.003+08:00

Have been too lazy to post anything here recently :P Hmm, anyway when I tried to log into blogger.com just now, I got redirected to a page and they kept saying my pw is incorrect even though I'm pretty sure it's correct. So anyway I decided to request for pw to be sent to my email, and here comes the irritating part; you have to type in your email address and then they'll ask you to type out the letters shown in a picture (probably for security reasons?) but the thing is the letters in the picture are so jumbled up and almost indecipherable that I had to try like 5 times before I got it right -_- Quite many websites have this feature which is so annoying! And I don't think it has to do with my bad eyesight :s I believe other people would've experienced this before too.

Anyway when I checked my email there wasn't any email sent yet, so I decided to try logging in using IE this time instead of google chrome. Surprisingly though, this time I managed to log in O_O so I tried using chrome and it was successful too, which is so weird because I'm sure I didn't type my pw wrongly on the first and subsequent tries.

Anyway, I was reading 8days just now and they have this "The Annoying List" and I found 2 of them to be really funny (in my opinion) so I shall be nice and share it :D

No. 20:
Nosey relatives who bug you about when you're getting attached / married / pregnant / a better job.

Do we ask you when you're hitting menopause?

No. 31:
Conversations with an air stewardess which go like this:

"Good evening, Miss, would you like the fish or chicken?"
"Fish, please."
"I'm sorry, we only have chicken left"

Actually I think I know why only got chicken left :s Hope the chickens will reflect on why nobody wants to eat them.

Oh and the twits actually got me a guitar hero grip for the ds as part of my bday present, lol. So unexpected but it's a nice surprise cos previously I did wanted to try it out cos it looks fun. However, the buttons are a little hard to press; it would be better if they made the buttons softer. So far I've only tried some songs on the first ds guitar hero game, and the song list don't really excite me :( It's all those English songs which I'm not really a fan of. Would've very much preferred it to consist of Chinese or Japanese songs :P

maple rant

2009-08-17T04:54:00.003+08:00

One thing I hate about buying stuff from people in maple is that most sellers will always ask you to offer a price. I mean, if you're selling something, by right you should be the one stating a price and not the buyer, because only you yourself will know what price you're looking for.

I totally hate being asked to make an offer when I'm the buyer. It's like going into 7-eleven and wanting to buy a slurpee, only to have the cashier asking you to offer a price, then proceeding to kick you out of the shop if the offer is too low. As the seller, you should be the one putting a price tag on the item you want to sell instead of the customer, regardless of who initiates the trade.

Having to offer a price will most likely put the buyer at a disadvantage because you can't offer too high or else you'll end up paying more for something that's worth less, but you can't offer too low either otherwise the seller will just cancel trade on you. This brings about the second grouse I have; most people don't seem to know that the word "negotiation" exists. If the offer you made is not up to their expectation, they don't even give a counter-offer and just straightaway cancel trade -_-

In that case why can't sellers just simple STATE A PRICE? Only ask people to offer a price if you really have no idea how much the item is worth. I believe that most people would've done some research before they sell an item and so will roughly know the selling price of it, yet they want to be greedy and ask people to offer and are willing to let go of the item only to the highest offer they get.

If it's some godly-scrolled item, then it's understandable that you will want to hold an auction for it and sell to the highest bidder, but don't tell me you want to hold an auction even for common stuff like scrolls? That's so pointless.

Sigh. And it's quite tiring trying to sell scrolls in the fm by shouting. I've already done research and base the scroll prices on a price range list from the forum, and always state a selling price that's towards the lower end, yet most people just cancel trade when they see the price. If you feel that the price is too high just jolly well negotiate by stating a counter-offer lah. It's like, only 1/10 people even bothers to counter-offer.

back to maple :P

2009-07-12T18:49:00.004+08:00

Recently just started playing maple story again, lol. There are so many new places to explore and tons of quests to do. Anyway when I finally installed the client and logged in (surprisingly I still rmbed the username and pw, haha), I knew my account got hacked again when I saw that my fighter wasn't wearing any equipment :( True enough, all my meso were gone (the "kind" hacker left me 700+ meso on each character!) as well as equipment and scrolls. But I still find it quite strange, cos the equipment on my cleric was left intact. Plus I had some level 50 and 60 equipment and certain scrolls untouched, so I was wondering why the hacker didn't just take those equipment as well or just simply sell it to shop and get the meso. Actually I'm not so sure if I'd given my account to a friend or something after I've quit maple previously, cos I really can't recall, but then I know if I did give my account to someone, I would've told the person not to touch the equipment on my fighter, hence I'm quite sure my account was hacked instead. Sigh, the worst thing is not to have any equipment left cos it's quite hard to recoup your losses without proper equipment and weapon to train.

Anyway I wasn't so affected by it since I've not been playing for so long. Plus, knight of cygnus just recently came out so I might as well move to bootes server and create another character since my cousin plays on that server. Tried out the pirate class, but find that it sux, lol. Not sure if it gets better at the higher level, but then I feel that it's not suitable for me cos the attack is very weak plus you can't attack monsters from close range. So I decided to make my knight of cygnus character a warrior as well just like my previous character in aquila.

It's quite a good thing that there're so many new quests now cos it definitely makes leveling easier, and the experience required to level has also decreased :) And the best thing is that you can have a whole map to yourself now; no more worrying about pesky ks-ers.

Btw I wanted to change my pw since my account was hacked, but unfortunately the website says my account is suspended :( So I've emailed them about it but until now they still haven't replied. They didn't even send any automated email reply to acknowledge that they've receive my email and will investigate or something lah -_-

Oh and on another note, the other day I just went to return my one-week overdue library book and they charge a 20cent fine per day of overdue!! So expensive lah, I thought it was cheaper last time? Plus a 5cent fine per day would be more appropriate. I mean since they now let people re-new loans for free (I think) why must the fine be so heavy -_-

2009-06-19T22:53:00.010+08:00

Accompanied Loh all the way to Woodlands yesterday evening to buy a wii, and on the way back, saw this shop selling those handicraft stuff and so I bought this pig thingy which you have to D.I.Y but of course the materials and instructions are provided. What's more, it cost only $1!! Thus, spent last night and a few hours today making the little pig keychain for my mum's birthday which is tomorrow. Hmm, quite proud of it, cos spent a lot of effort making it mah, so must show it off, lol :P

The other presents I got for her are also pigs and very cute too.

Pen holder

Small bolster

Lol. Couldn't resist doing this.

2009-06-05T08:58:00.002+08:00

I just went jogging just now! (finally) Hmm, actually I planned to jog up and down the path outside my house 6 times, but in the end I was quite out of stamina already so only did so 4 times, plus lots of walking in between, lol :( No idea what's the total distance I jogged, but still, I guess it's a good start. Luckily my mum told me to jog earlier cos just when I was about to return home, the weather suddenly became very sunny.

Went tamp1 with my cousin yesterday, and bought quite a number of things, including a pair of sneakers for jogging which I wore today, although I think sneakers are actually not really suitable for jogging... but then proper sports shoes are too ex haha. Went Yamakawa Super again to stock up on jap snacks, but unfortunately 2 of the snacks I bought the previous time seem to be out of stock, so bought more of other snacks instead. Spent about $17 there ;_; really ex lah.. but it's delicious so it's worth it. I'm so glad there's finally a place that sells these kind of snacks, cos usually quite hard to find. NTUC does sell some but the variety is very little.

2009-06-03T02:13:00.002+08:00

sigh, stupid weather is so hot nowadays. Wish it'll rain heavily everyday :( If only we can have semi-winter season the whole year round... just around 18 degree celcius will do.

Before exams ended, I felt as if there were many many things I want to do once the exams were over, but now that it's finally over, I feel as if each day just passes by so quickly while I've done nothing productive at all.

pbf exam

2009-05-14T17:22:00.002+08:00

Just came back from my pbf paper. Hmm, section a of the paper was bad as almost all the questions I'd never seen before, so I only did the minimum of 1 question from that section. Section b was quite okay, but the calculation questions were really minimal! Only worth around 15 marks in total for the 3 questions I did lor. tmd. Somemore this year they reduced the number of questions from 10 to 8! :( It's like when you compare the questions in this year and last year's paper to those in the past, the pbf standard has really gone up by a lot. In the '06 and '07 papers, section b is really mostly calculation questions and the weightage for calculation questions is quite high, but in recent years they focus more on theory -_-

Anyway I was quite annoyed, cos usually I just check my seat number and don't bother writing down somewhere. So today, after putting my bag at the back of the hall and walking all the way to the front where my seat is, I realised someone was already seated there. So I thought I must've memorised the number wrongly or something because my memory really can't be trusted, lol. So I walked all the way out to check my seat number again and turns out I did remember the correct seat number. So I went in and wanted to walk by the front, but the stupid invigilator refused to let me do so, saying everyone has to walk by the side to the back of the hall -__- so I was quite pissed off lah cos that means I have to walk one big round back to my seat again! No thanks to the girl who sat wrongly at my desk :P Plus this is not the first time this happened. Last year, another girl also sat wrongly at my desk making me go through the trouble of checking my seat number again. sigh.

Hmm, at least I can now finally have one week of rest before the next 3 consecutive papers :(

macro exam

2009-05-13T16:00:00.004+08:00

Just woke up from a nap which I took after I came home from my macro paper. Hmm, not sure if can pass or not though, but at least it's not as bad as I'd expected. Cos yesterday I skimmed through the prelim paper and realised I couldn't even do a single question! But for today's paper, I managed to do 80marks worth of questions (did only 4/8 qns in section a, haha) although for many of the questions I think I wrote nonsense that does not make sense. But at least there's a slight glimmer of hope for me. Hopefully a miracle will happen again and let me pass macro! I really don't want to retake it next year since the syllabus will have changes made.

Anyway I still got pbf paper tomorrow, sigh. This one really must pass cos fail once already, lol.

Oh and I can't believe how careless I was. I actually left my house key in the key hole when I left home today! I didn't even realise it until I came home from exam and saw the key hanging there and got a shock. Luckily no chicken burger, oops, I mean chicken burglar came by.

Btw I actually slept quite early last night (cos I'd sort of given up on macro) considering the next day I had a paper. Usually I'll be burning midnight oil sometimes till as late as 5am, haha, but I slept at 1.30am last night. Lo and behold, my mind was far too active due to all the studying, and I couldn't fall asleep until around 5am despite actually feeling very tired already :( sigh, this always happens especially at a time when I really need the sleep.

final fantasy music performance

2009-05-03T01:17:00.002+08:00

omg I just found out that there's going to be a Final Fantasy music performance at the Esplanade in May, but by now the tickets are all sold out already :'( sigh, if I knew about it earlier I would have quickly bought the ticket, plus the ticket prices are really reasonable, from $20-$80. Somemore it's premiering on the 22-23may which would have been just nice to celebrate the end of my exams, but oh well.. So disappointing :(

bridge complaint

2009-04-22T11:33:00.003+08:00

Just now I was playing bridge again and this was roughly what happened:

The bid was 4 diamonds. Initially I had 3 trumps but 2 of it got drained by the bidder already, so I was left with a small trump. Between my partner and I, we both won 1 set each already, so we need 2 more sets to win the game. Anyway this was our seating position:

my partner -> me -> bidder -> bidder's partner.

So my partner went to put Q hearts, which I trumped (cos at that time only Ace hearts has come out so far). Then my unreasonable partner started saying things like "wtf" and called me a noob just because I trumped her. Eventually it turns out that the K hearts was with her too, but how was I to know that earlier on?

Still, I don't think I was wrong to trump her. I did so precisely because K hearts wasn't out at that time, and she's the noob who should have put her K hearts out instead of Q hearts if she didn't want me to trump her. Besides, for what should I keep my small trump? Keep until Christmas time issit? It will most likely be drained by the bidder eventually, so of course I should just use it when the opportunity arises.

Eventually we did win that game but she still continued to kpkb and so I scolded her. I mean, she should know her place lor; she's only level 9 with roughly 500 games played, yet she proceeds to call someone who's more than twice her level, and thus more experienced, a noob. If I indeed made a mistake, I would admit it, but not when someone who can't see the bigger picture berates me when I did nothing wrong.

It's bad enough that you scold someone who's at fault just because you lost the game, worse when you scold someone who's not at fault just because you lost the game, and the worst when you scold someone who's not at fault even though you eventually won the game.

Table of Glory 乒乓圆

2009-04-10T01:39:00.007+08:00

Recently I've been regularly watching the ch8 9pm show, Table of Glory (乒乓圆), which I think is a rather interesting show and I enjoyed watching it so far. Anyway, just a few random comments about the show:

* In the show, both Mai Xiao Fen (Teresa Tseng) and Ma Li'An are 19 year-olds but they certainly don't look the same age to me. Ma Li'An looks more like in her early twenties while Xiao Fen still looks like some secondary school kid, and the same goes for He Sheng Wu (Joshua Ang) and the guy acting as Xiao Fen's older brother -_-

* I'm pretty sure there'll be a love square between Xiao Fen, Sheng Wu, Jia Jun and Zhang Zi Yi (btw I wonder why they have to name her as such :P), but as I said before, Xiao Fen and Sheng Wu look far too young to even look compatible with Jia Jun or Zhang Zi Yi respectively.

* Kym Ng and Zheng Ge Ping's characters in the show are quite funny :P Especially the part when Kym Ng blurts out that Zheng Ge Ping's character's actual name is He Mei Mei, lol. No wonder he went to change his name to He Ying Xiong. Btw I think Zheng Ge Ping's acting is really good.

* I've nothing against Teresa Tseng, but then I can't really stand Mai Xiao Fen's character; typical of those shoujo manga heroines, and what's with the over-reliance on her horoscope book, her frequent display of lack of confidence (at one point refusing to attend a competition until Jia Jun talked some sense into her) and constant harping about her 4th position curse. Oh, and she needs to go for vocal-training class; like Jeanette Aw, her voice gets on my nerves at times, especially when she's talking to Jia Jun and suddenly the voice starts getting "cutesy".

* Although Sheng Wu's character is supposed to be like a block of wood in the show, he's unintentionally funny sometimes; when his father found him with his head submerged in a barrel of water, he kept saying, "我明白了! 我明白了!" His father then asks him, "你明白什么?", to which he replies, "我明白了. 乒乓球是圆的", and his father went like ".........................". lol, that really cracked me up. The second funny scene was when he had to play a match with Roy, then he takes out his rubber-less shabby-looking ping pong paddle only to be ridiculed by Roy asking what the hell is that :P

* I've no idea who's the actress acting as Zhang Zi Yi, but I think that she's really pretty and sweet-looking.

* Why on earth do Kym Ng and Zheng Ge Ping's characters not lock up the door of their shop-houses, especially at night??? Ridiculous!

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Okay, some additional comments after watching more episodes:

* Totally can't stand Mai Xiao Fen now. Zhang Zi Yi was so right in scolding her and saying that Xiao Fen has no right to be Ah Wu's friend. How dare Xiao Fen claim to be Ah Wu's best friend when she doesn't believe in nor recognise his talent in playing table tennis, going as far as to calling him juvenile for thinking that he can play table tennis when she is the one who is behaving like a juvenile love-obsessed little twit whenever she sees Jia Jun.

* Jia Jun is also getting on my nerves, especially ever since he started picking on Ah Wu after thinking that Ah Wu dumped his shirt away on purpose, when obviously it was an accident! Who in his right mind will pick up the shirt from the rubbish bag for you and then ask if it is yours if he was indeed the one who dumped it on purpose? -_- And then stupid Xiao Fen sides with Jia Jun and chides Ah Wu for doing such a thing. What a good and supportive friend man. Xiao Fen can get together with Jia Jun for all I care and then they can both annoy the hell out of each other.

* Ma Li'An seems to be always using the same expression of sticking out her chin and raising her eyebrows (many times somemore!) to portray her anger or snobbishness. A bit annoying and very distracting.

* Somehow I have a feeling that Xiao Fen will get first place in the open tournament for the girls' match, but that will be totally unrealistic. Her skills seem so-so and I don't see her practising hard, as least not as hard as Liu Yu, plus she is known to have low confidence so it'll really be quite unbelievable if she manages to clinch the first place.

* I mentioned this before, but I just have to say it again; Zheng Ge Ping is really funny and likeable acting as He Ying Xiong, and he looks really good for his age too.

Okay, anyway I was surfing a forum and it seems like quite many people feel that this show isn't good and not comparable to TVB shows, to which I feel otherwise :( Most of the time I watch hk dramas with my mum and have not been watching mediacorp dramas for the longest time but this show definitely caught my eye. I think people need to stop looking down on mediacorp dramas and think that hk dramas are always better. There are some really good hk dramas, but likewise, some lame ones as well which are a waste of time watching. On the other hand, Table of Glory is a captivating show with many funny moments that made me chuckle a lot while watching it so I feel that it is weird that this show seems to be receiving so much criticisms.

2009-04-03T02:01:00.004+08:00

I never thought I'd actually cry while reading any manga, least of all Gintama (reason being is that the main genre is comedy), but I actually did today while reading chapters 207-209.

Those chapters were about an old man and his pet dog Kintarou, who've been together for the past 18 years. Anyway, due to old age, both the old man and Kintarou are very sick currently and everyone thinks that it is because the old man and Kintarou were really close to each other with neither of them wanting to outlive the other, so they fell ill one after the other.

But... in reality, Kintarou says he actually hates the old man and wants his freedom. (Yes, Kintarou can actually talk cos he's an alien dog, lol). Old man and Kintarou have this daily routine of talking a walk together at the park. Shockingly enough, while the old man is lying on the hospital bed, he manages to summon enough strength to get up and decide that it's time for the daily walk.

Meanwhile, Kintarou has escaped from the vet and is at the park with Kagura (one of the main characters), relating to her what happened between him and the old man; after the old man's wife kicked the bucket, the old man told Kintarou that he has grown tired of seeing so many of his loved ones and friends pass away before him and that it's saddening for him, so the old man says that he'll selfishly request for Kintarou to not go before him. However, Kintarou felt that it was actually a competition to see who can outlive the other and in a way it motivated the two of them to carry on living.

Suddenly, the old man appeared at the park with a leash in hand; he'd actually travelled all the way from the hospital to the park for the sake of their daily walk together. Kintarou is also very surprised to see that the old man came all the way for the daily walk, so he decided to go for the walk with old man.

A flashback of the past is shown again, whereby after the old man requested that Kintarou not die before him, he says this to Kintarou, "live a good long life without any worries about me or anyone else. And if it turns out you can't quite do it, I'll wet my eyes one more time for you and only you."

Back in the present, Kintarou realises that he wants to outlive the old man because he actually doesn't want to make the old man cry. But because Kintarou is very weak and too tired to continue with the walk already, in his heart, he keeps telling the old man to faster croak, lol. Well, the old man eventually can't go any further, but before he passes on, he said "Kintarou... looks like you win...looks like you're the one who's gonna have to cry like a baby." Shortly after that, Kintarou passes away too.

The above is just a really brief summary but I think that story is really super touching and thought-provoking. Although the stubborn dog keeps saying that he hates the old man, he actually loves the old man the same way the old man loves him. Also, the part about the old man requesting for Kintarou to not die before him as it's very saddening is very relatable. I often think about this as well that's why I wouldn't want to live too long because eventually you'll outlive the people around you and feel really lonely. Maybe that's why I was so emotionally stirred by these chapters.. and that's also why the occasional transcendent chapters are definitely worth reading.

bridge

2009-04-02T00:48:00.004+08:00

Started playing bridge on viwawa again recently after a 1 year hiatus , since I was feeling quite bored from using the computer and having nothing to do while on it. Anyway the first thing I noticed was the huge decrease in number of players; less than 100 players online each time. Second thing was, most rooms seem to require a minimum bid of 4, which I thought was quite dumb at first, until I was eventually decided to try it out and then understood what was up with the new fad.

Actually it's quite fun, although slightly tedious as it usually involves many rounds of re-shuffling of cards until any one person is satisfied and confident with bidding 4 or more. It's like even if you have bad cards, you won't feel THAT disheartened about ever winning that game, cos you and your partner need just 4 sets to win (although it's not that easy either, lol), but as long as you have 1 or 2 ace or king / manage to trump and the same goes for your partner, it's actually manageble.

Compare that scenario to one without the minimum bid (a.k.a normal bridge), if you get bad cards you really don't have much choice.

Choice 1: just keep passing and if your eventual partner doesn't bother to help raise the bid if his cards enables him to do so, then it'll be too bad cos there'll be a high chance of losing.

Choice 2: try your luck by raising the bid with no intention of winning it, which takes some guts cos if the other bidder doesn't continue raising the bid, you'll end up winning the bid and since your cards are bad, you'll most likely lose the game and your partner may blame / scold you :(

So what I'm trying to say is that I think playing with the minimum bid of 4 is advantageous in a way as even if your cards are bad, you still got some hopes of winning. The down side is that it's very unforgiving with little room for mistakes, so got to really pay close attention.

Okay, time to complain about this particular game I had. I won the bid and we were seated in this way: (P for Player)

P1 - P2 - P3 - Me

P1 threw a 2 hearts, P2 threw a 3 hearts, P3 threw a Q hearts, to which I ate with my Ace hearts. That was the first time the hearts suit was played, so naturally I was 99% sure p3 is not my partner cos if he is, he wouldn't waste his Q nor try to waste my Ace (unless it so happens that the Q hearts is his only hearts card). He should just put his smallest heart card right?

Okay, so I played hearts the next round, and turns out the Q hearts was not P3's only hearts and he definitely had smaller heart cards in his hand. Anyway later on, it turns out that P3 is actually my partner and I was like so shocked cos I'd long ruled him out as my partner. We did win the game in the end but what he did was perplexing and I couldn't think of a reason to explain why he would do that. I mean, there's nothing wrong with misleading the bidder into thinking that you're his partner when you're not, but why on earth would you want to make the bidder think that you're not his partner when in fact you are? Doesn't make sense right? lol, I need to be enlightened.

Gintama

2009-03-27T15:39:00.003+08:00

Yeah! I finally managed to get into the mood to study again after procrastinating for a few weeks. Managed to sort of read and summarise 2 chapters of CF (and intend to do 2 more chapters later :P) Sigh.. left about 2 more weeks before revision classes starts, so really got to make use of the 2 weeks to study cos once revision class starts, I dunno if there's enough time to study or not. Hmm.. last night I kept yawning and was feeling sleepy, so I went to bed at 11pm, but couldn't fall asleep until past 1am I think :( In the end I woke up at 12pm the next day.. which means I slept 13hours -_- haiz.. I go to bed early hoping to be able to wake up in the morning but it always turns out like this :(

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Anyway recently I've been busy reading Gintama manga and watching the anime and it's really good. Maybe when you read the first few chapters, you might find it quite boring, but then the first few chapters is mainly for the introduction of the main and recurring characters. Once you get past those chapters, that's when the greatness starts. I think it's the funniest manga I've ever read so far :D

I don't usually read shounen manga and Gintama is a shounen manga actually and the humour is at times crude but it's really damn hilarious. There're many idiotic characters in the manga who tend to do dumb things even in life-and-death situations and that's what makes it so funny :P

One of my favourite arcs is the OwEe Arc, a parody on Wii. Watch it, if you don't find it funny means you've no sense of humour :P (but then I think you need to know the general relationships of the main characters first in order to fully appreciate the humour lah..) Oh, and it's okay to skip the starting part about Ginpachi sensei -_-

OwEe arc is from episode 98-99 which can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiFyEcD0Yeg

2009-03-18T14:47:00.003+08:00

Recently this really cool looking otome game called Bakumatsu Renka Shinsengumi just came out for the DS.

Needless to say, what attracted me to this game was the drool-worthy graphics, but unfortunately, as with all cool looking games with anime-like graphics, it's released in Japanese only and I do know there's absolutely 0% chance of it ever being released in English (unless there are fans kind enough to make an English patch), so the only thing I can hope for now is a Chinese version :( Actually I did dl the Jpn version to try out but of course I skipped through most of the dialogues and randomly picked options when presented lol, and I managed to get through Okita Souji's (the bluish-silver haired guy) path in about 2hours. It'd definitely be more fun if I could actually understand the dialogues :(

Okay so anyway I went to youtube trying to search for trailers of the game and happened on chance upon this anime called Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto (what a tongue-twister-like title :P). This anime is nothing to do with the previously mentioned DS game although they took place in the same era I think. So I went to check up on the anime and it sounded quite interesting so I thought of watching it, but unfortunately the subtitles' font for the first episode was horrendous and it sort of put me off from watching any further. However I read that the fight between the two main characters, Akizuki and Kakunojou, in the last episode was interesting so I jumped straight to watch that :P

This is the later part of the fight and I think this scene is really touching plus the insert song is really great!! One of the best songs I've heard in a long time :D The apt song really helps in bringing out the heart-rending scene.

It seems Kakunojou was possessed by the red head and she's struggling with herself to avoid killing Akizuki. Although Akizuki's sword skills are better than hers, he just sat there looking quite stunned when he could have just easily knocked the sword away or something. I think it's because he wanted to see if Kakunojou is strong-willed enough to hold herself back? Anyway I really like this scene (and the song) a lot.

Btw the song is Namida by Ishikawa Chiaki. I'm really dying to get the piano score for this but I don't think anyone has transcribed it and I couldn't find the midi either :( I'm sure it'll sound very nice and melancholic on the piano and it sounds like it'll be fun to play too. This is the full version of the song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWFn6NdciQk&NR=1

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On Sunday, had a class gathering with my JC friends at Tampines Safra. Was supposed to meet at 6pm, but almost everyone was late, lol. Okay lah I was the last to reach at maybe 7.30pm? But it's really not my fault lor. I reached the bus stop at 5.40pm to wait for bus 10, and guess what time the bus came? 7pm!! WTF!! It took a good 1hr 20mins before the bus finally arrived! Even if the bus broke down or something, it still shouldn't take THAT long for the next bus to arrive right? In the span of 1hr 20mins, on average 6 bus 10s should have come by already! I waited until I was quite pissed off lor. And when bus 10 finally came after what seemed like an eternity, another bus 10 was trailing behind -_- I was feeling pissed off already so when I boarded the bus I refused to tap my ez-link :P Plus the bus was very crowded so why should I pay after they wasted more than an hour of my time resulting in my lateness?

So yesterday night I went to the SBS transit website and filled up a complaint form and ended with this sarcastic sentence: "I seriously urge SBS transit to increase the frequency of their buses rather than that of bus fare hikes." :P So far they only sent a computer-generated email to acknowledge that they've received the complaint, but I shall wait and see how they explain the atrociously long waiting time >:(

Anyway, because it was already 7.30pm by the time we met at Tampines Safra, we decided to have dinner at Sakura first. Actually I wasn't feeling hungry since I had quite a late lunch; think I only ate $10 worth of food, lol. Chicken on the other hand took all the durian puffs again and ate at least $100 worth of food.

After that, we went to play 2 sets of bowling. I think it's quite funny cos normally friends will be encouraging each other like when people's ball goes into the longkang, your friend should be saying "oh don't worry lah do your best" that kind of thing, but we were all laughing at each other when the ball goes into the longkang -_- lol.. what kind of friends are these :P

Hmm anyway I got a blue-black on my ankle after accidentally knocking the bowling ball against my ankle. I thought blue-blacks usually appear after a few days, but this time my ankle turned blue-blackish immediately :S

By the time we finished the 2nd set, it was very late already, almost 11.30pm. Had to walk quite a distance to the bus stop and by the time we reached the bus stop, it was already past the time for the last bus for bus 10 and 31, so I had no choice but to take bus 168 (I think) to Bedok interchange. When I reached the Bedok bus stop I called my father to pick me up from there. Wah.. the dust bins there were overflowing with rubbish and even spilling onto the floor, and to my horror I saw 3 huge rats scurrying around :O damn disgusting lah.. it's unlike the small cute little mice that my little cat occasionally catches. First time I've seen rats in public places.. maybe they only appear at night?

trip to kinokuniya

2009-03-13T17:25:00.003+08:00

Went out with my cousin to the Orchard Kinokuniya yesterday. While walking around, I happened to chance upon the Twelve Kingdoms Manga :O I didn't know they have the manga for that series, but then I think the manga is based on the anime which was in turn based on the novel. Quite unusual, cos usually animes are based on manga I think, so this one is the other way round. Anyway the manga is in Japanese so there's no way I can ever read it unless they decide to translate it into English. And it costs $20+ just for one volume!! Damn expensive.. but then again the whole manga is in coloured pages, hence the expensive price tag I guess.

Anyway these are what I bought in the end:
- The 2nd book of Twelve Kingdoms titled Sea of Wind, for $13+ which is cheaper than what I expected cos the website said it's $16+ :D
- The complete 3 volumes of a manga titled Kimi ga Suki which I was really glad to have found cos I didn't think there'll be a chinese version. Actually I already read the 1st 2 volumes on mangafox but then since it's only 3 volumes long, I thought I should just buy all 3 to make it a complete set :P
- 2 tarepanda files

On the way home, we were lucky to find seats on the train cos I was really quite tired. So we proceeded to read our newly bought mangas :D Managed to read 1 chapter before alighting, then proceeded to finish reading the remainding chapters when I reached home. It's a good manga with nice artwork, but a pity it's too short :(

After dinner, I started reading the Twelve Kingdoms novel. It might seem strange that I start reading from the 2nd novel rather than the 1st, but then the stories are such that they can be read in any order and it'll still be understandable. Hmm, but then again I think that watching the anime first before reading the novel did help me a lot in understanding what's going on, and also there're quite a number of Japanese terms in the novel that you've got to remember by heart otherwise when the terms appear again later on, you might not know what it means.

However, what I dislike about the translation is the way they romanize some of the terms and names, such as "Sanshi" being spelt as "Sansi", "Shirei" as "Sirei", "Gyousou" as "Gyoso" etc. For the last one it's still reluctantly acceptable since it's still pronounced the same way in English, but when you read the first two without the "h" it just sounds wrong. I would prefer that they romanize it exactly the way as it's spelt in Japanese.

Anyway it's a really good read although I don't think it's suitable for just anyone cos some people might not have the interest in this kind of stories, but what I really like about Twelve Kingdoms are the character developments and not so much the politcal stuff. It's 300+ pages long, but by 3am I was only up till page 270 and since it was quite late, I decided to sleep first and continue reading the next day. Sigh.. and I only woke up at 2.30pm the next day. It seems that the anime followed very closely the the novel, so actually while reading the novel, I already knew what was going to happen next, lol.

2009-03-12T02:09:00.002+08:00

Couldn't really get to fall asleep yesterday night, so I decided to tidy up my wardrobe again and throw away some clothes since there's barely any space left. Then I realised that I've quite a few shorts / jeans that I can't fit into anymore simply because it's too tight (or rather my waist is really getting thicker) ;_;

I think from now on I can only fit into M or L sizes for bottom wear lor :( It probably started a few months ago where I was just so lazy that everytime after I ate something I just plunk onto bed to play ds or sleep straightaway. Then one day I went to weigh myself and to my horror, found that I've gained 2-4kg, something which has been unprecedented for a few years. I mean I don't really mind gaining weight, but it's sad to know that all the weight I've gained has actually gone to my waist / tummy :(

So I've decided I shall try doing sit ups everyday :P Actually I really hate sit ups lor.. Had to resort to cheating last time during napfa test wahahah.. oops. But for the sake of not looking pregnant, I shall try to make some sacrifices. I've also really been wanting to go jogging as well, but then I dunno where I should go to jog.. sigh. Okay I shall just try out the sit ups for a few weeks first and see if it works ba.

Twelve Kingdoms Novel

2009-03-09T02:39:00.003+08:00

I remember that I first watched the Twelve Kingdoms (Junni Kokuki) anime on the now defunct arts central back during the secondary school days, but at that time I did not finished watching it. Then a few years later, I started re-watching it from the beginning on youtube and the story, albeit incomplete, was so fascinating and engaging that I finished all 45 episodes in a few days.

Anyway, just yesterday I found out that there's actually an English translation of Twelve Kingdoms released as a novel! Actually the first volume of the English novel came out in March 2007 and subsequent volumes will be published annually, for at least the first 3 volumes. I also went to the kinokuniya website to check and the price for each paperback volume is about $16, which is fairly priced so I think I'll be buying it :D So maybe someday when I'm free I'll drop by kino to get the Twelve Kingdoms novel as well as to check out whether they have some manga series I'm looking for or not.

I was also wondering what took them so long to finally decide on translating Twelve Kingdoms into English, and worse still, I think publishing at one volume a year is pretty slow but then at least that's better than nothing. Actually if you search on google, you can actually find non-official English translations of the novel as well and the translations are really awesome and I believe it should be as good as the official one. Unfortunately the volume I was really interested in reading was the fifth one, Tonan no Tsubasa (The Aspired Wings), but the only website I could find with a translation of it is only partially translated, and the owner of that website seems to have slowed down in updating with more chapters, like 1 chapter in 6 months?(;_;)

Anyway I hope they don't stop publishing the English version at volume 3, but rather, continue as far as till where the Japanese version is currently at. Sigh. And if only they would continue with the anime, which had stopped at 45 episodes without some sort of properly wrapped-up ending, although that's very unlikely :(

On a side note, I'm quite glad that I've found something to read since I've not read a proper book for ages (manga doesn't count, lol)

LBO eprelim

2009-03-05T19:00:00.003+08:00

Phew, I just finished my LBO (Law of Business Organisations) eprelim exam just now. eprelim means that we don't have to do the paper in school; just log onto the student portal and type out the answer but there's a time limit of 3 hours as well. Hmm, they did have a notice saying reference to notes is not allowed, but who cares, lol :D I do think the eprelim is quite a good idea, especially for theory-based units. I mean it gives us the flexibility of just typing out the answers at home, hence saving time and money on not needing to commute to school just to sit for the prelim paper. It's definitely not the same as under exam conditions, but I think prelims shouldn't be taken seriously since it's just a rough gauge and sort of like a practice on a mock exam paper.

Anyway I was feeling very guilty these few days cos it's prelim week already but I've not done any studying at all (other than 1 hour of reading through 3/4 of CF chapter 2 and 1 hour trying to summarise Macro notes but to no avail -_-) I did intend to at least briefly browse through my LBO notes first before attempting the eprelim, but well... in the end I spent all my time reading manga online ;_;

Actually we were given a period of 4 days to attempt the LBO eprelim, from mon to thurs, and as usual I always do everything at the last minute :( Anyway halfway through, I was feeling super hungry and I think it's because of all the sneezing today (due to a cold) which sapped away my energy, sigh. So I went for a tea break for about 15-20mins then continued with the rest of the questions. Unfortunately there's no pause button so I did waste 15-20mins, and as a result I couldn't finish part c of the last question, but it's okay. I just hope I can pass the LBO prelim, cos afterall I did it while referring to you-know-what, cos there's just far too much stuff to memorise. Wah if like that I also can't pass I think I can die for the actual exam already lor. Plus I can type much faster than if I write out using pen, so I'm afraid I might not be able to complete the paper if I were to write it out :(

Anyway after the timer stopped, I went to re-read my answers, only to find that there were a couple of typos since there wasn't enough time to finish the paper, let alone check through my answers -_- Hope they don't penalise marks just because of some spelling mistakes :P