End of an era

On January 10 2007..i ended my love affair with the game known as World Of Warcrack

It was only a question of when i was gonna quit..i had planned on quitting when uni started, but having to buy the new expansion, and train to lvl 70 again to experience "end-game again"...just didnt' make sense to me.

Why i loved the game

I picked up the game at a low point in my life. I had already resigned myself to seeing my 2 years of army life as a craptacular waste of time. Silly i know. Many people have done a lot more with much lesser. I wasn't that kinda person though. So i thought i could fill it up with something fun.

And fun it was. Much has been said about how addictive the game is, i guess i don't need to elaborate further. Morever I had the joy of being inducted in a guild with clearly defined goals, a clear sense of direction of where it was headed and a great group of people to play with. I was made the druid honcho, they didn't have a choice really LOL. Quickly we became the horde side PVP guild to beat all the way to level 60...but then being one of the younger and more outgeared guilds we switched quickly to PVE. We surpassed guilds that had been there for far longer..and in the long run we proved that we were the strongest guild to emerge, sticking together relatively drama free while other guilds crashed/burned/merged. And we did it while having fun. But all that accomplisment came at a price.

Why i'm quitting.

I came to the realisation that every hour i put into these little avatars, these little offshoots of mine, accomplishing their goals and objectives, was one less hour for me to achieve my own goals and objectives for the real life living and breathing me.

These pictures illustrate the amount of time i put into 2 of my most played characters, Kiliah and Konno. Total time played 54 day 13 hours. not counting the time spent also on misc characters. Thats not 54 days including sleeping like in your regular day thats 54 days purely spent in front of the computer. Thats slightly over 1300 hours. Pretty sure entire diplomas have been build around the same amout of time in coursework.

So thats it i guess. Time to move forward. On to bigger and better things.

Then he spontaneously reaches out to stroke a furry pink cat sewn on my blouse
and exclaims in sing-song, dulcet tones which have a hint of a British accent
about them: 'Oh, you've got a little kitty, how cute!'

The two-hour
interview with him is a somewhat bizarre combination of making small talk with a
gracious society hostess over tea, swapping gossip with a girlfriend and
attending like an office-girl to a snobby boss.

The last comes about
when, at one point during our chat, he asks dramatically - like a woman fighting
back collapse - for water because 'Oh, Clah-rah, I'm so very thirsty'.

- guess who. An absolute 10 on the gaydar meter! A true example of nuture vs nature...poor kid read Chinese fashion novels and his mother's Her World magazines. HER WORLD!!!

to the person who should know who you are and the slightest remotest chance you read this:

Stop throwing a hissy fit. Your 20 for goodness sakes act like it (21 for all i know)...

i read the chat logs you were wrong you misunderstood

how dare you come around and cast aspersions on us

maybe thats how you managed to piss people off...

Was in a Panadol Induced Stupor for monday and tuesday ...high fever body aches, you feel your body radiating heat and its all chilly...breaking out in cold sweat throughout the night and you can't sleep..not a very good feeling.

Managed to watch 10 episodes of prison break...was pretty good. thought the main actor was a bit retarded. Until they revealed that the character had a disorder : Low Latent Inhibition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latent_inhibition. Which sorta make him psycho in a creative genius kinda way. Which makes the actor really really good..

I'm also locking myself up at home now for my own good.

i don't ask for much. just lots and lots of hugs. and sex. and cuddles after sex. and someone to talk to at night. and someone to eat breakfast/lunch/dinner with. and someone who understands my little eccencitries and not only isn't put off by them but is actually attracted to them. Mostly though i just want someone to cuddle with.

Signed up for a jap elementary 1 course....my main worry is not whether the class will be good or not..it whether i have the money to continue it in future. I like japanese culture and i wanna be able to read it, but lets face it...between tuition fees, and things like electricity bills... somethings gotta give. And i have the feeling the victim will be the "lets make good understand of each other!" course. Ah but why worry now about stuff in the future when you have things to worry about now =P.

My enthusiasm for outings has now waned. They aren't a good way at all of nurturing relationships. They are good for making sure you don't forget the other persons faces. And they drain money. Sometimes though when the other persons spends a good part of the time overseas its all you can do i guess.

I love it when you call
I love it when you call
I love it when you call
But you never call at all
So what's the complication it's only conversation
I love it when you call
But you never call at all


Hm shouldn't it be the other way around??

From Top : Arab street, Marina Bay bbq, Singapore Skyline from Mount Faber, Cloudy White Balance + Light Reflection = Nice Sepia Effect, Our Nicely Packed Bikes, Vivocity At Night, The Gothenberg.

So these pictures are from the rest of the outings i had. Thats about 300/400 plus wiped out in less than 2 weeks. Kinda freaky. Most of the money went to little stuff like lunch/dinner/transport rather then let say ..big ticket items. And everybody knows how hard it is to give a shit about the little stuff..

Went a bit crazy with the photo-taking. I did learn several things though. If your going to take photos, do it quickly. Take many at a time. Play with the white balance. Don't use flash (It makes for lousy printouts but its great for web/thumbnails).

So from top: Jr, TK Me, Ame Becky and Yiling went to the hip district of Arab Street. Which in reality is just another tourist trap. Along the way though we spotted this purple colored building with a matching purple colored van! Groovy.. had bryani for lunch and played Munchkin! after at MOS while drinking milk, milk tea and milkshakes. Hey if the place doesn't deliver make your own entertainment right?

Eh second picture is that of a marina bay bbq/steamboat with ORD personnel. They are all also very very gay.

Final series is of a night bike trail with sec npcc guys. From east coast --> esplanade--> st james --> mount faber--> sentosa --> palawan beach --> sentosa --> vivocity --> geylang (for food for food!)---> and back to east coast. Singapore looks beautiful at night. Its also a aweful waste of electricity =P. i never really undestood the allure of secluded places like mount faber and misc beaches and carparks for assorted stages of love making...but i must say if you own a car..more power to you! Mount faber was a whore to climb (with bike) and we ended up all sweaty and bitchy but once we reached the top ..hey it wasn't so bad. Theres just something about looking down on singapore with a nice chilly breeze caressing your face amid a zen like tree on top of hill atmosphere and warm soft light shining from below...that really wants to make you fuck like bunnies. hur hur hur. Really nice place to be though. Thats why i love the night. Totally different atmosphere from oh lets say..the day? hard to convey in words..hope the pictures do it justice. They are very yellowey i know..on purpose wan.

oh hoho : " You fall in love at the drop of a hat..." thats certainly true

Sunday

Top : beverley morata of singapore idol fame performing in the band "SYRA"

Bottom : my jubei guild mate david's gf "moochelle" holding an apple martini

Sunday woke up rushed home was out of the house double quick time to meet the class guys at PS for lunch at 12. We started eatin at 2 lol. For some reason i don't have photos, and i can't remember why. I was quite trigger happy these few days. We ended up playing dota and countersrike. I suck i know..only racked up kills when i was using sniper. still not bad lol, i last played the game at 6.20 against A.I

And now to the meat of this post... the countdown party! It was held at Shangri-la Orchard..which i must say is a very uloo place.. tickets were at 80 apiece. Which i must say i bought only becos i was assured that there were ppl going and also cos i was wanted a glimpse of how the elite in singapore were doing :) Otherwise i would have settled for an ordinary beach party or some club..

Well so yea entertainment was provided courtesy of guest DJ glenn ong who to my surprise provided very little commentary none of them particularly witty But all was forgiven when he brought his hawt wife onstage to dance onstage with another hawt girl who i did not recognise. Way to save your own ass buddy. Live band "SYRA" provided a mix of comtemporary favourites and feel good funky tunes, which was fronted by lead singer beverly morata. And boy can the girl move. Long before the dance floor was packed shes was dancing onstage to her own tune never missing a tune. Must have taken a lot of practice cos if she's a natural..she deserves a lot better than where she is now.

Girl in photo is michelle who i hope does not mind me publishing her photo lol. I really have no others...could have sworn i had more. My chances of getting photos from the rest are almost nil though, i'm still waiting on the holland V ones. Anyway yes thats what they provided..some lame feather cap. The guy version was a sparkly wide rim cowboy hat. Which went well with what most of my group wore, a black jacket over a shirt.

The SPGS were out in full force tonight. From what i could see 50 percent of the couples were of the hot asian girl with not very hot caucasian guy type. To each her own i guess. i used to think very badly of them, but now i can see why they choose this path. I dont' believe its for money even...its just that not so hot cacausian guy speaks well, understands them, and hey is generally better than the lot that they can get local.

Survived a half glass of whisky a martini and a cocktail..which really surprised me :) Came home after 2 days..crashed. My schedule didnt't allow me to burn yet though cos theres still...

Saturday

Top - What better way to digest 40 dolars worth of food consumed in a time span of 2 hour then a hard level sudoku puzzle? 4 people done in 7 mins

Middle - kt and thong

Bottom - umm..forgot to take the food before it was eaten..so here it is after

me jun and kt took thong out for lunch at kunshin bo. Nice japanese buffet at the regular price of 19.80. At 33.20(new year's special price!) though...not so hehehehe. We had sushi, cold soba noodles, teppanyaki, teriyaki sticks and a hot plate, and also ate a fuckload of chawanmushi and barbecued stuff. i feel like going there again..any takers?

After that crashed jun's house, watched NODAME till late. best jdrama this year, considering that goong the k drama is reigning supreme right now and there's not much competition from japanese dramas which brings me to ...

Friday

Watched curse of the golden flower. Highly recommended. Zhang Yi mou is an expert at combining the best of hollywood and chinese sword fighting flicks even if that combination doesn't always work so well. For example i loathed Crounching Tiger, Hidden Dragon , finding it to be bland. Here however he uses the source material to great effect, creating opulent sets worthy even of the most radical interpretations. Noteworthy too was the script; itself engaging and lucid, one of my favourite lines being "wo yao bi ni shi" ( i want to force you to die) as said by the empress. No doubt it will win lots of awards but i can't help feeling as if it was made for hollywood. the imagery was grand, colorful and gratuitous but it hardly left a longing impression. The film held you through every twist and development and in that sense i wished there were more to it, more for the viewer to find. Rather than what it is , a grand and epic film that under the hood is really very simple, even if it is enjoyable.

something happened after that left an unplesant aftertaste. even if i did aggravate it. but i guess its just the way i'm wired to behave. the matter got bured so thats it i guess..

Thursday

Top: me and shi-fu. glomps shi-fu! Unfortunately she speaks english as well as i do chinese.

Bottom: my colleagues at work on their best dressed day.

So thursday was my work place's dinner and dance which basically translates to a buffett dinner lots of oldie music and absolutely no dancing watsoever. yes there were performances and a lucky draw...but i didn't win anything so it sucked.

Since i didnt have anything to wear my colleagues and i headed out to vivo to look for something retro to wear.. grabbed the golf cap at hob-nob and the shirt at esprit. Which i love. A lot. For stocking the first slim fit S-size male polo t-shirt i have ever seen. So i grabbed it ..and what do you know when i asked for one not from the shelf i was told it was the only one they had. Huh.

damm you esprit. for being so expensive.

This is the scandalous picture

been a really busy week for me...am also now broke..ah the price to pay for fun.

the madness started on christmas eve, spent it with hc revat and laura ....their appearances have all changed so much cept laura, wats funny is that on the flip side revat and hc's personalites seem the same, while laura's seems to have deviated? can't find the right word
anyway went tcc nice milkshake.. went lau pa sat for food, went to a morrocan pub with indian music and had a drink , walked a fair bit, ended up the night on the beach talking.

christmas day spent lazing around emo-ing, then hopped off to see death note 2. Like the ending better than the manga, would have been worth the money if the projectionist didn't screw up and reeled in the wrong part of the film, we ended up watching the climax b4 the build up, luckily the ending was left intact.

took half day off on 26th, went to celb thongs with becky and ame birthday.. had a nice japanese lunch..

wednesday was the only free day i had....and the internet had to be down! i have this habit of opening digg and selecting links to open tabs with... and after the 15th or so tab i realised something was very wrong, wat a waste of a good day..

oops gotta run brb tmr.

http://www.globalorgasm.org/

A project to fill the world with the largest possible surge of human energy , a synchronised global orgasm, on 22 dec 2006, at the time of your choosing , using whatever gets you off, to effect possible change in the energy field of the earth.

Wheres the automatic one click categorise all posts with photos wih the tag "photo"?

Why does it jump back to the first page with 50 posts after you are done applying a tag to the 148th post??

Why can't you change the names of labels???

Does it always have to refresh after every label is applied??

Guess thats why its stil in beta

labels are coming out...as you can already see from the numbers next to the labels..

1) I'm lazy.
2) I like to look through the looking glass darkly.
3) Daily Life = Crap
4) Army = Lots Of Daily Life Posts
5) Army = Crap
6) Labels are so hard to apply someone please fuck me gently with a chainsaw.

Blessed are the forgetful, for they get the better even of their blunders

How happy is the blameless Vestal's lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot: Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each prayer accepted, and each wish resign'd

-Alexander pope

I'm sorry ...i'm in a nostalgic mood right now....

blogger just updated their software...you can now update your posts with tags which used to be a feature of wordpress only and tabulas i'm gonna go through all the posts and retag them...and then i realise omfg i have a lot of posts...but i still treasure all of them

I have rebooted my journals like what 3/4 times? I was blogging even before blogging became popular..anyone remember livejournal? Hell that was way back in 2000, blogger was barely a baby in 2001, how things have changed.

this blog remains about my only tangible link to the past....many times i have thought of deleting it...twice i have stopped for lack of interest in blogging/life, but hopefully i never reach the stage of deleting it. I wish now i had my livejournals preserved..if only to see how stupid and ignorant i was..

A few things you should have realised about me - I'm not a nice person. I have the appearance of being nice, i have nice "reactions" and generally speaking i don't fuck around....but i'm not a nice person. Nice people donate to charity willingly nice people give their seats up to elderly, nice people don't hurt their friends nice people don't make use of them. I'm not a nice person. I'm sensitive yea...and being sensitive you would think i would be just that little bit more sensitive to other people...but most of the time i'm only being sensitive to myself. and i hate that. i really do.. i hate hate hate hate hate this part of me thats really not very nice. i'm so very very sorry ...

Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind (2004) - Get it from me. Go watch it. This is as good as it gets.

i'm about to introduce to you ..the most secretive game in the world ever.

the people who have solved this game, are sworn to never reveal the answer to anyone , other than the hints that were given to them.

the game is petal around the roses. http://vincentwoo.com/files/petals/

Bil Gates took 40 mins to solve this. I took slightly under half an hour. My les sister got it in 5 mins.

Hint 1 : the name is signifcant
Hint 2: the answer is always even or 0

forgive the avalance of posts i don't want to touch wow-crack now. and the spelling. and the vocabulary. army's fault.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Pompeo - plays meredith grey on Grey's Anatomy- Do you know shes 37? Yet she's a perfect example of timelessness in beauty. her skin is not perfect, her hair kinda sucks. yet the way she smiles with that twinkle in her eye at once sexy and flirtatious

I'll try to grab a screen cap when shes doing it. But its hard to capture pure magic.

I'm a wannbe lesbian.

makes perfect sense.

2nd entry made at the same time but now with more fruitiness!

So i have been doing my fair bit of surfing...not at work cos i haven't figured out how to hack net access yet, and have added a few links.

laura: i have no idea what shes rambling about...but umm..more power anyways?

people who are overseas: you have to realise that we poor lot in singapore..have no tools at our discretion to imagine the experiences your describing. which is why photos are nice yes. nudity is always a bonus. and theres a thing called youtube now, no?

sigh seriously though why do i even bother

digg: this is a website when people submit stories....and viewers vote whether they like it or not.

Typically the stories that get the most "diggs" are listed here in order of popularity : Celebrity Sex Videos/Nude Shots, Any News About PS3/XBOX360/WII (it attracts the fanboys), US POLITICS, Some Technological Marvel"

Best thing about this website- its good for a 10 min dose of entertainment... its updated by the min but usually viewers will already have filter out the junk each day..leaving you with 10 mins of pure ROFLific laughter. Its at least a bookmark, if not a daily visit.

Jon-Stewart: Funniest guy on american tv now. His gig "The Daily Show" pokes fun at the absurdities of the american politcal system and for now at least the war in iraq. he has archives of the past week show and sometimes i search the archives in youtube for more. His humour is usualy of the deadpan sarcasm variety- the sort i love, but sometimes when the pickings are slim, he resorts to frat boy sexist jokes. Still funny if you take it at face level for what is.

One of his gems:

Leader of the evangelical network of america resigns as he admits to sex with gay and trying drugs: "You know you have sunk to a new low...when you lose the moral high ground... to the gay drug-dealing hooker" Priceless

having mixed feelings about my work...started off really slack and boring but thankfully they have scaled it up for me. and i'm sticking to all lower caps for now....more on that later

for the first one week i was just inputing company name and registration numbers into one excel file, for 8 hours a day. managed to rack up at least 400 entries a day.....they weren't kidding when they said data entry. came across some funny names too... one of them starts with " **** hong kong wife cake" i was like "dude wtf". Another company was called "kaki nang pte ltd". and then there are so many derivatives of " " that after a while they just all merged and i was operating on autopilot (a damm good one at that). So if you wanna start a company, ditch the family pride and stick to monosyllables. Or dialect variants. For the good of all data entry clerks worldwide. and another thing i hate caps. yea sure having to upper case the first alphabet of a sentence is fine and dandy, but not when you have to uppercase the first alphabet of every word. can't count the number of times i had to delete an entire word and input it again just cos i forgot to caps. lowercase all the way for the win

found a few entries on forms which i feedbacked to get brownie points, and to you know let them know i'm working...boss was surprised at how slow i was ....which if you just punch the numbers its like one entry every 60 seconds, but after a few days i was still hitting 400 entries a day, yet having more and more stuff piled on me ..so its ok i guess. gotta double check the forms too while i'm at it. and every hour i have to grab a free cup of drink at the company vending machine and nature calls...can't sit still for more than 45 mins.

have nagging strains at the base of my neck and the curve of my shoulders. been trying to adjust what i suspect to be the problem - the height of the chair relative to my keyboard but nothing has worked in the long term. what has worked though..are breaks. just great my body has to work together with my ADD. it peaks near noon and keeps climbing all the way thru afternooon -during which i just power my way thru to work end.

am gaining weight fast..work environment is horrendously bad for your health. every hour someone will offer you food which you will gladly accept just to turn your neck away from the position you have fixed it in for the past hour (love the snap it makes) , during lunch everybody chips in to buy food in addition to the main course your having. can't see my own damm ribs anymore awwwww.

so anyway this thing...this snippet of inquisite insightfulness dawned on me. do we really grow up? saw this sec school fella while applying for my job ...didn't register in his memory, but he looked exactly how i remembered him to be. Girl i have been eyeing 2 cubicles over, can't decide if she just got out of school or is already married. Auntie next cubicle...big rain and korean soap fan, giggles like a school girl, looks like shes nearing retirement age. My colleague, 29, married with a kid, could pass for my schoolmate. And of course ME age 20 - "working during my school holidays fancy that" And then i realise that i'm in the period when only the extremes matter. From now til 35 - you could drift through life with your graduation just yesterday, your to do list still unfulfilled, working in a menial job till one day you wake up and realise your dick no longer stands, your boobs sag, you have grey hair, you never really loved the person your sleeping with and your getting OLD gasp. then you start having mid-life crisis. Because from here on out..its going to be one long ski ramp.

The motherload of all mothers centers around my workplace. Mothers of all ages everywhere i turn they are discussing recipes....talking about their kids planning their year end holidays sharing food they make...then they start calling me "xiaodi" and "ah boy" and i go hmmm....what the hell their grandchildren are probably older then me..so i bear with it for a while...

I fail@life

My sister has a girlfriend and i don't

/wrist

p.s No. I'm not really emo.

But for now a toast
To short term employment And
Money for presents

For I know yet not
The horrors the day may bring
But the pay is good.

i prepare myself
for a day of working in
stuffy office gear

ORD!

Huh. Hasn't been that long and i'm bored already. Decided to take a break after ORD to clear backlog of movies and stuff, reorganise my things. Worked for 2 weeks beforehand to boost my cash bank a little, purely illegal. In the meantime while packing, i received a brand new computer table which is now sitting snugly in a corner. Finally my keyboard isn't on my lap.

Impressions of some movies i watched :

Chronicles of Narnia: Ugliest kids ever. 2/10
Signs: Lame-O ending. 7/10
Sixth Sense: V.Good 9/10
Team America: KIM-CHI! -2 for disgusting sex scene 6/10
My Sassy Girl: Needs nudity from Jun Ji-hyun 9/10
Last Samurai: American Guy teaches Japanese Samurai how to fight. Right. 6/10
SharkskinMan and Peach Hip Girl: Quirky Arty Low Budget Film. Nice Dialogue though. 8/10

Signed up with this agency recruit express. Looks like they are the go to people for admin/clerical jobs. Sitting tight while they send me for interviews and stuff. So far 3 days and no success. Played Ninja Gaiden Black to completion..don't think i have the heart or the strength to try hard or very hard mode. Also levelling an ally mage on server barthilas till level 60 and beyond.

I need another goal :( . A longer term goal so that my days don't seem like i'm bumming thru them. With army, every day seemed to have a meaning because every passed day meant a day closer to release from bondage and melodrama and shit, but now i'm stranded in no man's land. Every passed day is just a wasted day where i don't earn income, because whether i do anything or not the end result will be the same, i'll go into university next year. Thats not a goal its just a period in time where i'm scheduled to be doing something.

Basically i need a job fast or i'll go crazy.

memento is seriously twisted.

ORD

I only ever truely realised how soon ORD was when i was invited to a ORD function this thursday. Minus my off leave and weekends..i have 35 workdays left. Due to a new stupid rule i can't plan all my off and leave in the last month so it'll have to be spread out between now and november.

its also got me reflecting much about my army days and what i wanna do in the future. Before i came to army i had quite a few goals. self improvement - pick up some skills, a veritable egg basket by the time i leave, and hmm well not much else. Sadly those goals have not been fulfilled. The egg basket stands at $650 and the skills; well don't come to me with your car. true to my media whore nature...my collections of movies and music have increased by the terabyte.

that said though ..my ns life has been somewhat more or less fulfilling. yes there have been extremely hairy patches...but it hasn't been as bad as i thought it'd be. Surprisngly though ....if you were to ask me which part i would miss most, it wouldn't be the current period: slack workload, jc colleagues, stay out. I miss the NS of a year ago, the LRI period, the hokkien ping people, the stay in sessions. I feel like i can leave now without any attachements. I'm ready to be taken, take me!

Whats next in store? half a year of part time work, and not much else i expect other then what i'm doing. when you fail to plan you plan to fail. but when you don't follow the plan why plan at all?

tired

My legs are well and truely dead.

Ran the half marathon in 2hrs 20mins yesterday..got my medal. Was faster than my other colleagues....but the lack of training shows...my right leg started cramping all the way from the 18 km mark. you can only get so far on willpower alone.

WoW is geting stale..theres only so much you can do individually till you reach 60....raids are very fun and downing a new boss a new high for everyone but sometimes you just wanan chill out ...so i started another mage character. other than that though i have come to realise how well designed the game is. There are several things they have fucked up, like how the pvp is a honour grind accesible to only those who play 20 hours a day to be able to achieve anything of relative value, how most of the reputation rewards are a mob killing grind, but the depth of movement and the amount of flexibility you get with your characters is amazing.

damm left stripe 

me trying to look fierce. guy in the middle is from predator 

taking it a step at a time

This was a long time coming -comment moderation. But it seems to come too late for this guy - http://www.kingrichard86.blogspot.com/. Anyway making a moves to tabulas soon blogspot has become too complacent for its own good.

btw angel i'm lvl 42 now , and only because i have been PVPing lots :) You know getting the rank rewards and stuff :). no blackwing lair at the moment for me now :(

lvl 38 :)

turns out its for both ndp and saf day parade. i'm joining the contingent that runs arnd in smart 4 and sbo and forms the word 2006. very lame. next 4 months of my life are gone -_-"

anyways qh let me dl the last ep finish first shld be done by monday or tuesday will sms you den

lvl 37 :)

<>

been nominated by default for saf day parade. which sucks definitely..bye bye saturdays....

and qh i am finally finishing desperate housewifes season 1 time to bring that hdd over ^^

OFFICIALLY DEAD

YES UNEQUiVOCALLY OFFICIALLY DEAD.

Blogging just doesnt hold any attractions for me anymore. maybe i really was like the rest of those attention seeking bastards. or maybe it doesn't provide me the soothing answers to my messed up life anymore. mebbe its cos i'm too busy with WoW. mebbe its cos i have reduced my life to a simple automatic routine.

R.I.P dear bloggie

might convert it to a listing of my ever growing collection of movies. omg i have to watch movies just to rem how to live life. anyway memento, walk the line, city of god, supersize me and the notebook are some of my eh hem recent acquistions. or revive it when i can act feel my bloody toes again.

Well the dreaded letters never did materialise..cos one person reversed a stupid decision, circumstances changed for another and for the last..well he was just too happy for me to do anything...

Anyway i can't be bothered by these stuff anymore...been playing a lot of World of Warcraft lately that and 'm almost done with lost..about time..need new eps...

My hands are feeling itchy again...so thats why i'll be sending out letters over the next week or so...some of them will be posted straight to this blog others will be emailed. Look forward to it :)

I swear i'm gonna fucking lose it sooner or later...i really can't take it anymore....

i'm talking of course of the army, wonderful piece of shit that it is.

6 months into the army wasn't so bad, cos you were doing different things and learning lots of stuff...but now that i've hit the 1 year mark...with more than a year to the end in sight and the sheer monotony of it sets in...i say screw defending the country.

its slowly but surely sucking the life and creative juices out of me. cause i feel myself growing stupider by the minute. just because i'm wasting 1 year of my life here. No retraining opportunites, no chance to jump ship to another department, no performance based wage increments..its like slaving in a white collar cubicle. except the cubicle walls are 5 metres high. With no windows.

I mean day after day after day the same old boring routine sets in, Just how do people even live like that? Is that what that real adult world is going to be like? if it is i rather go back into my little hiding hole and never ever come out... Imean give me abreak. Ship me to combat even just so that i can appreciate warm food again if thats what it takes. No things to look forward to on weekends, nothing to look forward when i go home...just the sheer realisation that tmr..i have to wake up early and do the same fucking thing that i do every fucking morning and which i just did this fucking afternoon...

And i just heard my warrant officer say he was a private for 6 years of old skool pre3G army...and just because of that he earns my respect for the moment. Cause anybody who goes through that much shit deserves a better life.

"somebody kill me please
I'm on my knees
pretty pretty please
kill me...
I want to dieeee
Put a bullet in my headdddddddd"

"happiness is a long weekend" amen to that.

patrick! 

playin gvo0lleyball 

i luv this pic lol 

mermen..and ooh babes at 2 am! 

at subway after sentosa 

what i did over the past week or so
Saturday 24- mad rush to buy prezzies
sunday 25- spent christmas at home with family watching honey
monday 26- went thongs house
tuesday 27- went back to camp
wednesday 28- went sentosa. pics and stuff coming up later
thursday 29 - went thongs house. william came over and taught me dota.
friday 30 -played dota
sat 31- played dota and went expo for countdown party
sunday 01 - city harvest and slepp.
monday 02- went out with becky and weiteen.

in the process i slept less than 5 hours a day, left a lot of unfinished business and spend myself broke. And i'm still short of new year resolutions.

so my new year resolution will be to : use tuesday and wednesday to do my annual stocktake.

Winamp tweaks

Ever tried playing japanese or chinese songs your friends give you in winamp but seeing only this ???? - ???? or worse this ‚Ç‚¤‚µ‚Ä‚±‚ñ‚È - ‚ƒ`ƒƒƒCƒ€? Theres a way to fix that! Only works for winxp cos thats the only thing i have now.

First you have to go to date, time, language and regional options in WinXp and select Regional And Language Options. Click on the Advanced Tab and under the language for non-unicode programs option select Japanese, which provides the option of seeing the jap/chinese song title on the taskbar since japanese has kanji (chinese chars) too

By now your media library shld be able to display the jap and chinese titles. Some ??? will still appear occasionally since not all of the chinese chars are available in the japanese char set but you can still play them. the playlist editor uses a diff font from the media library however and for that you have to go to preferences < playlist under there you shld find the option "Use skin or language pack font". Unselect that and under font select Lucida Sans Unicode or any other unicode font and walla! chinese/japanese support. The only thing left remaing is the scroling song title in the main window, but since i couldn't find a tweak for that and i dun really stare at that already.

Now why am i putting this down here? Cause i searched for a frigging long time and found no site that provides this information in a an easily inaccessible form. Plus i'm going thru my mp3 collection and putting proper unicode ID3 tags on them.

Ginji's site of the Month: proudly brought to you by Ginji. YaY! CLAP CLAP.

www.pandora.com - the best thing since sliced bread. and then some. basically it takes in the name of an artist you like and then plays you back other music from artists that have the same musical qualities as the artist you like, from this musical database called the MUSIC GENOME PROJECT, which classifies songs according to the "genes" they have, like "melodic phrasing", "minor key tonalities", For eg i fed in m2m, my fav most underrated band and got back music from delta goodrem, aimee mann and meredith brooks(i feel vinicated) . I tried britney spears and got back trash from jump5 , christina aguilera, janet jackson and myra(?). So yea this site gets my two thumbs up, way up! Sadly it only has english artists inside. Oh and you have to input a valid US zip code for it to work (search online).

this has no relavance whatsoever...but i couldn't resist....sayumi and charmy 4ever! (charmy is the one whose back is towards us) 

finally someone gets it right(not me though) 

cursing bcos i can't use the k750i part2 

cursing bcos i can't use the k750i properly 

bluetooth jacking 101 for dummies (really.) 

holding a thermometer and rapping 

er what is joel doing? 

group shot 

cooking with mum 

rolranie ouy liwl eb iin my rdames niteot

Just got my first real break in 2 weeks after having church camp and chirstmas parties over the last 2 weekend...got somepics to post..

looked at the crowd at orchard over the weekend and at tampines...makes you wonder where all the singaporeans hide the rest of the year...

new com just came in...anybody wants to name it? Only condition- must be female. Japanese and english names are acceptable as long as i can add a -chan to it...(bad eg. jennifer-chan).
Specs: 256 mb ram imnetgrated video and sound running windows xp. oh and it has 3 hard drives, one 40 gb internal, one 80 gb internal and one 40 gb external.

Official Sudokulist :)

Ok i have a new online addiction: Sudoku!http://www.mousebreaker.com/games/sudoku/play.php

Its this brutal japanese puzzler thats eats your brain cells for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The thing is on easy difficulty it starts off quite simple enough but as the difficulty ramps up you have to use your own logic to solve through the puzzles...and sudoku forces you to develop your own techniques as you go along. You literally learn how to fill in the blanks yourself. As the difficulty ramps up the numbers they give you get lesser and lesser, they get more similar and the areas for guesswork gets bigger and bigger. I started off having to use a lot of guesswork cos i would reach a point where there were 2 possible numbers and i'll just follow the path of one of the numbers until it eventually falls apart but those situations are getting lesser and lesser :)

Its supposedly quite popular worldwide but hey i'm still a n00bie..

i just tried out this new bittorrent client called µtorrent and man this thing is wacked out! it is only 100+kb in size but it is a full feature client in the same vein as azureus and bitcomet. Unfortunately singapore users should currently still stick with bitcomet beacuse of two important features - nat transversal and packet encryption. i'm not sure about other service providers but starhub has this transparent proxy on the server site which messes up the connections to certain trackers. nat transversal punches this hole through and allows two people behind firewalls and proxies to connect to each other. packet encryption disguises bittorrent traffic and allows it to bypass some (not all) university filters.

my download speed on bitcomet is currently 4x as high as those i get on µtorrent but once µtorrent adds these features its gonna be my default client. my sis is always complaining that my downloads are slowing her msn and internet surfing, which is quite true but while using µtorrent i didn't notice any slowdown. average memory usage by bitcomet can reach as high as 15mb but µtorrent only reached 5mb which is a lot considering i only have 96 mb of ram...

Army boys's nights out

Friday - Half day at Big Splash, followed by Sitex. As usual skipped all the big corporate stores, headed to the backlanes, found nothing there, then wandered around looking for stuff for my hands to fondle. Found the ipod nano, played around with it and tossed it aside. Definitely not worth $438. The creative zen vision was much better but at $799, in the immortal words of Neo: Whoa. Pass! Also tried out the creative x-fi demo. The much vaunted Crystallizer technology which restores mp3s to original studio recordings sounds like just a very powerful Dynamic Bass Boost but much clearer, but the one that takes the prize must be the headphone 3d surround technology. Imagine - 7.1 surround sound with just a pair of headphones. Might be looking to get one soundcard next year in place of 5.1 speakers. Just one minor caveat though sometimes i can't tell whether the sound is going behind me or in front of me...

Saturday - just got back from shopping in johore with army buddies yesterday, wah was quite fun 6 ppl went in 5 ppl came out w/ 5 pairs of shoes (and one stuck at immigration claiming his lost passport)

other things i bought - a nightmare before christmas hp pouch, a belt and lotsa and lotsa of chewing gum! enuff to last me abt 5 days i think and those durian cake thingys. Would have spent more but didn't bri8ng much money in... also ate at sushi king. Oh and william and i tailgated this cute girl in a dress like rabid fanboys...but she was really cute and feminine!


Sunday - Accompanied Jr to sitex to close the deal with the guy who wants to buy the starhub laptop that comes with the maxonline bundle. He wants to sell the laptop to get an ipod nano, and at the same time pass me samurai champloo. So there we were waiting in line when Jr hits a snag - he doesn't noe whether he has a cable point at home or not. And hes gonna shift to a new house in a few months time which means he might not have a cable point there. After jumping out of the queue and jumping back in, pestering many flustered salegirls to check his cable signal and finally reaching the counter...the salegirl tells him that soem ppl in punggol have been waiting up till a month w/o any signal. And they couldn't cancel their contract. So Jr decided to pull out and deliver the bad news to the guy. Barely 10 mins later he gets a call from starhub customer relations that assures him that the new flat will have a cable point and an activated signal, at which we try to contact the guy again, only to find that he has confirmed with someone else already! After which, xian and tired(but not hungry, cos i make jr lend me money to get a burger) we make out way home and on the bus... jr pulls out the ipod nano skin which he bought in anticipation, and lo and behold the guy sitting next to us asks us whether we are looking for an ipod nano....

So bottom line- jr gets his ipod nano, i wasted my sunday morning, but hey - at least i get a burger and samurai champloo.

Merger with 3DSMB - Discuss.

B: Since its national-all-lazy-bloggers-make-a-post-week ginji-kun will now make a brief reappearance to discuss something thats close to our hearts. He will also attempt to justify the salary that hes drawing when konno and I have been doing all the work, falling in which he will be terminated....

G:!

B:errr...i meant job will be terminated. hehe sorry about that. Freudian slip.

G:!!!

G:ermmm...right. Ok lets get the ball rolling started shall we..

See olde friends again... GOOD
See Phua again....BAD
Have another section stationed at our camp ....GOOD.
Have that section do nothing except sit in our recreation room and play risk while we dismantle radiator............BAD
We get a bigger recreation room.....GOOD
With no tv, dvd player, projector AND which might be taken up by section ICs? .. VERY BAD
We get to stay out everyday!!!!! VERY GOOD
I live in Marine Parade ....BAD
Say bye bye to OPS Gong Gong and Robot.... GOOD
Say hello to "what do you think" Maj Socrates and Ah boon...BAD
No need to go down to Ayer Rajah for life activities ..... GOOD
Need to go down to Boon Lay for life activities .... STILL UNDECIDED. MIGHT BE BAD...

CONCLUSION: I don't noe! Give me some more time to see m'kay? Can I go now?

B:In the next edition: The-million-dollar-question....will he touch that layout? he'd better

Brief Report on Statement of Accounts (Consolidated) for the Third Quarter FY 2005

Apparetly they didn't consider their present situation "carefully" enough....because after paying back the mortgage loan, plus the sum that remains locked in my mother's cpf account... it has become somewhat apparent that the money my father can take out is pathetic, pitiful and not worth mentioning. Sorry to disappoint you Mr. Agent.

So now they are still holding out for 3 months to pass before they can put that lovely signature of theirs to the piece of paper that says "lease extended" and then hoodwink some sucker(because suckers are born every minute!) into renting that sad excuse of a stall. What dipshits.

I'm now convinced that the only way to for them to realise their sorry state of affairs is if i stop giving them bailout money(which they used to buy 20 packets of instant pasta and lots of cartons of brands essences of chicken among other useless items) and just leave them cold turkey for a while. It'll certainly be very ugly, but hey if they want to play this game i can certainly play along. I noticed that they have paid for the shops utilities bill this month but not the house utitlites...do they expect us to pay it this time around again? hmmm...

For those of your all who share warm, wonderful, caring and loving relationships, with your parents, well by all means please continue to do so. Just don't expect me to. I'm still trying to remember if i ever did.

-banchan

PORRRRRR liao lor...my passport expired like dunno how many months ago...my parents didn't even tell me when they sent a reminder to get a new passport dunno what they doing sia...hong gan cannot go overseas...

Gah this week was really one of those weeks where you wonder where it went too..

and as off today i have 0 days off and o days leave 0_o...and i didn't even take anyway during last week!! Which means i supposedly only have tues and thursday free..but i dun remember what i did! Oh gawd i'm too young to have alzheimer....

and its official i'm now so poor..that i can't go out because i can't afford the bus fare!

...and as a matter of personal emergency and at the expense of my own pride had to ask my mother for money and go through another one of her lectures just so that i could show face to my superior by attending his birthday celebration at marina square...at least i didn't have to buy him a present....

november 10 never looked so far away...

underconstruction

eh gonna fix this place up a bit since theres a long holiday (punctuated with a lot of one-shot workdays)...add an ord counter, hopefully add music to it...and more pictures definitely...

until then, accept to see a lot of misalinged elements, haven't got css positioning down pat yet...

sianz they postphoned the merger to like the end of the year...guess you won't be seeing me on weekdays for quite a while yet...

After careful consideration, my parents decided to sell our house and rent a flat. the shop will be sold too and the money used to setle our debts... its not going to be much since our present flat hasn't been paid in full, but its a considerable sum...

wah i'm feeling very nua now...haven't been to camp proper for like one and a half weeks...been clearing off and having extra activities ....dun feel like going back to army on monday -_-

Not absolutely exactly in a good mood, somewhat

LRI inspection passed with flying colors, we got 3 days off for our weekends burned but nothing else, its back to slack time, and i'm now clearing 2 days of my off to create a long weekend....so why am i not happy?

Cos my fucking useless piece-of-shit of a father had to go and spoil my mood with a $530.71 holy m**th-f**cking-thats-humongus power utilities bill. Thats been unpaid for 4 OMG WTF WERE THEY DOING months.

So here i was happily surveying my newly bought Samuel and Kelvin© shirt and jeans when suddenly my mother asks whether she can borrow some money. So i say yea sure why not, cos ya noe i'm not a entirely bad person (at least i pretty much think i'm not), plus these here folks did a pretty good job of raising me up most of my life. I ask them how much they want to borrow, and her reply is that she wants to take a look at my bank book first. So i say ok, you gotta find it cos it must be here somewhere, and i'm playing fire emblem so leave me alone for a few hours kae... Oh stupid stupid shawn that shld have set you off immediately...

barely 30 mins later (and i'm not kidding bout this) this nice guy stands at our door(cos its not closed see) with a clipboard in hand. So here i am thinking that he's one of those dengue checking ppl so i ask him nicely wat he wants. Kudos to the guy for coming straight to the point:"I'm here to cut your power supply"

I stand there dumbfounded while my mum rushes forward to try and psycho this guy. And i keep thinking theres no way this is hapening you noe....this happens to single parents with 4 kids living in 2 room flats who bathe at public toilets, not to a family with 2 working adults, 2 working teennagers and one brawling adolescent who don't draw any money from their parents and in fact pay for their bills themselves. For eg i pay my father's and i phone bill, my transport cost my clothes and my groceries while my sister does the same. Sometimes i even chip in to pay the cable bill. And to put things into perspective that home utilities bill comes from them cooking all their food stuff at home...so bascially its all my parents expenses.

After the electricity guy leaves ( he demands full restitution within 2 days) my sister and i sit down to discuss options...and then we proceed to turn the place upside down to find what else they are hiding from us. and heres what i find another 500 plus in misc red bills. Now we are really, really pissed. We just proceed to fuck our poor mother upside down, who still keeps pleading us to give her money so that she can settle the amount and prevent our electricity from being cut. thank god my sister still had some savings left so she chips in a majority stake while i add in a fewhundred more... in the end we manage to pay for 650 worth of red bills...

Since then i've been combing thru our house and sorting thru the stuff and the more i find the more pissed i get. From the looks of it, since i last blew up with them about three months ago over unpaid bills, the situation hasn't improved one bit...they only paid like one or two months and let the rest snowball till this stage....I mean like wtf are they working for? They only need to support themselves and one kid is that so hard? i look at the bills and i discover it looks like they can't even cover their operating expenses! then why for god's sake are they even working from 7-2 am evrynight? i mean are they f**cking blind or what? or just plaind dumb stupid? jesus christ i feel like firebombing the stupid shop to ashes...

to be Continued ...

LRI period is just next week...exhausted but relieved that its finally coming to an end.. Hope we don't fail it...or else there will be a reinspection on a later date..DIE!

Good news ahead 23 September is when my company is returning back to 3dsmb...stayout!

The Mystery of Michelangelo's 'Creation of Adam'

While i was reading this book called "Secrets of Angels and Demons" , i came across this passage in the book which highlighted similarities in the painting of the Creation of Adam and the cross section of the human brain. Turns out that Michelangelo frequently dissected human bodies and was quite familiar with the anatomy of the human brain.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A681680
http://luciano.stanford.edu/~fred/trip/Rome/s1.jpg

The rest of the book highlights the conflicts between religion and science (predominantly the Catholic Church, the largest organised religion). However it also talks about how Dan Brown bullshits his way through the technology in the book (and some of it is really quite perposterous), and how little of what he says is really true...

eh ok first things first I'm a corporal now! I only got wind of it a month after they promoted me so they back-paid me 50 bucks. Now with 420 i get to save at least a bit each month....

second of all i'm thinkin of picking up a class 2b license and a bike cos i'm tired of waiting for buses and trains and personally i feel that public transport is a big waste of time. it becomes really apparent when you take 2 hours to reach camp. My company is moving to a new unit in a few months time but our workplace will remain the same, its all admin. But the new unit's policy is for all its technicians to stay out, which is actually really good, but its currently not really uh feasible.

i've started accumulating a buffer in my bank account in anticipation of all the money that its gonna take. In other words no more movies, no more 15 dollar lunches and dinners, no more staying out on weekends, no more mp3 players, no ipod, imac mini, psp gba or nintendo ds. I'm looking at a Vespa but i've been told that spare parts are expensive and that the engine is located on one side so its a bit unbalanced when riding. So in the end i may just settle for a run of the mill sports bike...

I'm still quite busy but it has kinda settled into a routine for me, so much so that when i go back for the weekends i end up planning for the weekdays instead and i don't really know what to do on weekends. I think i pretty much succeeded in severing contact with everyone else other than my army buddies and the inner circle, although not intentionally, so in essence well, its official, my life revolves around the army. In fact i brought my xbox to camp for a while, but it seems to be a grey area and nobody knows whether i'm allowed to bring it in....and it just so happened that a week after MSD came down, and they started conducting hundred percent bag checks at the entrance so i brought it back home to give me peace of mind...

Actually I kinda like it there. there's only one computer there and its mainly used by people who surf porn, chat up secondary school girls ( we are talking 25 year old guys here) and who fish around sites like Friendster and WhoLivesNearYou so i dun really get to use it unless i stay up really late, but i find that i get a lot of free time to do other stuff. And it makes me confront this deep dark secret of mine that i refused to acknowledged for the longest time...I'm actually a computer addict. I'm not toking about dropping dead after 50 hours of gaming or anything of that sort, but its sort of undeniable that if i have some free time, i would be found in front of the computer. I can actually spend the whole day surfing till my eyes pop, and once i experienced what can only be described as "eye seizures" after which was scared enuff to stay away for a while, but not long enuff.

So in fact in camp i feel more liberated than i do at home. isn't that like the bizzarest thing? heres a list of things i do in camp that i dun actually remember doing at home:

I go running and go gym.
I read.
I watch TV.
I listen to radio.
I talk to people.
I get 7 hours of sleep.

So i actually kinda enjoy army life. The people here aren't too bad too. Granted some of them are internet perverts but they are all quite nice ppl. The kind of ppl you see everyday and dun feel like punching their faces in. The kind of ppl you bitch about commanders with. Even the hokkien pings aren't half bad. granted they speak in hokkien and i can't understand them, but at least they dun try to eat you. so i guess i've had it at least better than my peers. Hey everyone has f**ked up commanders but with frens like these army's a breeze...

P.S Anyone else notice the sign in on blogspot dissappeared on army computers? i wun update in camp but my frens do....

for example what i did over the last two weeks

11 july monday - battalion block leave
12 and 13 april tuesday and wednesday- carpark attending at chevrons for warrant officers dinner
14 july thursday - guard
15 - maintenance in morning, AHM training in afternoon.

18 july - maintenance
19 july - Company Orderly Specialist (COS). rest of battalion: battalion safety seminar.
20 july - maintenance overtime. night kenna activated for COS again
21 july thursday - battalion photo taking at HQ. ippt in afternoon.
22 july - IMT in morning. AHM in afternoon.

next week forecast

25 26 july - ATP (range)
27 july - maintenance
28 july- vetting at marina. Guard duty in afternoon.
29 july - guard rest in morning. AHM in afternoon.(!)

and i'm considered lucky, cos operators have to do ndp rehersals on sat.

hmm for some reason our CO decided that our whole battalion shld run the 21 km half marathon.

As far as i know most first year soldiers in combat units, won't even go near the 21 km marathon. And we are a service unit.

So every friday i run an avg of 10 km and above at east coast park with my size XL shirt and size XL pants zhao geng-ing everywhere. Its actually kinda fun u noe. and since we are gonna run 21 km i was thinking of joining the 21 km competitive run. for 12 bucks they give you a finishers medal and a cert with your printed time. Now i noe i'm not gonna even go anywhere near the top runners (last year someone won the open category in an hour. make your own calculations) but i feel ok about meeting my battalions competitive run standard, which is 2 1/2 hours. Plus i get to tuang if i go for intensive AHM training (right now i'm only doing my battalions minimum standard of training). Any other takers? My best timing is about 1 hour 2 1/2 minutes for 11km, but i have been shaving off 2 mins every week from my timing.

My 2.4 has improved as a result also. its now 10 mins 25 secs, down from 11 mins 20 from bmt. 40 more secs to go....

Now i noe why my battalion is so f**ked up. As a general rule 60 percent of our time is supposed to be spent on real work while 40 percent on extra activities like pt, talks and saikang(for other companies) and all, but in reality our time table is on the reverse. We do our maintenace work very fast but we spent so much time on saf events that we just end up overworking ourselves.