12th July 2007

Nothing special abt the date itself but this is a date where Karen and I met up to go to East Coast's Shi Nai Cafe.

The first shot we took when we got off the bus.

The sky was in a shade of purplish pink.
very nice.

Karen wanted to take a picture.
I could only manage a potrait shot since on the right there's all the buildings and construction planes spoiling the view.



somemore the streetlights lended some magic to the picture.

i'm glad we took this shot tho.
it's pretty sweet and for the fact that after we walked everywhere else, the sky was back to the usual dull blue hue.

it's less crowded today at the cafe.

we didn't have to queue up for seats hehehe

ordered quite a number of stuff and my drinks were the usuals.


my favourite po luo baaaaaaao!!!!

i ordered the vegetarian (means plain) po luo bao.
po luo technically means pineapple but the bun doesnt taste very pineapple-lish to begin with.

everytime i come to this cafe, the po luo bao is a sure order.

i dun fancy the char siew stuffing ones.

Karen ordered minced beef cheese baked rice.
i had this before.
it's very good.


minced beef cheese baked rice

the sauce is generous enough to not have your rice end up being too cold and dry.
the cheese is hot and chewy. so you basically don't get the cold hardened cheese on your rice.


karen with her baked rice

I actually ordered pork ribs (dim sum) but i forgot to take a shot of it.
surprisingly, karen never tried it before.
but nvm, i havent tried it till recently as well but my first taste of it was in geylang.
i didn't like the taste of the ones i ordered in shi nai but karen tot they tasted great.

my main course was porkchop rice with curry.

the curry sauce wasn't really spicy but i guess it tasted alright.
shld've asked them for more sauce.

the meat was a little to hard and i was surprised when i saw that my porkchop was not cut into pieces beforehand. i struggled a lil with my fork and knife haha..


pork chop rice with curry

later that night karen came over to my hse and had me paint her nails for her.
lol

Hokkaido Food Fair!

The food fair lasted only for two weeks.
Today's the last day but I've already visited the stalls earlier this week.

Once was with my colleagues and the next day with Wilson (when we watched Transformers in GV Tampines that night).

It's quite a sight and all the stall vendors (those who are cooking) are japanese and it's quite interesting hearing them shout in the typically japanese vendor way except i doubt all the aunties flooding the area understood a single word.

i avoided the seafood sections as much as possible and nearly died when there was a human jam at the ramen area. the overpowering stench smell coming from the pot of soup base with all the squids inside invaded my nostrils and my god. i thought i was gonna faint on the spot.

i'm not a fan for seafood.

the process of seeing them cook the fishes were quite a sight but the smell.. i tak boleh tahan (cannot take it).

Yee Lin and myself squeezed through the crowd to take a peek at everything.

the tako balls are huge! like ping pongs! and they made it look so tasty.
selling at six for $5.50, i think the price is alright.

our local takopachi is sold at 3 for $2.20 now.

a dollar more for better tasting stuff, why not?

but i cant eat squid. got allergy. bah!

spend $1.90 buying a coroke.
is that how you spell it?

i tried our local coro-chan once.
eurgh.
i vaguely remember commenting that i don't fancy how it tasted.

mustered up some courage to buy this and prayin that it tastes as good as it looks.


coroke (don't know how to spell)
basically it's just fried potato

damn well it did!

it's crispy but not too oily on the outside and super soft and creamy on the inside.
imagine potato made to taste creamy. heavenly!

click on the picture if you want a better view on the food items yea.
i took it in macro mode.


japanese rice cake covered with herbs

Yee Lin say the taste in undescribable.. or issit indescribable?
aiya wadever.
anyway, this thing cost $2. I kinda forgot that it's herbs. Thought it was seaweed.
Yee Lin was saying how un-herb like it tasted.

There were 3 flavours mainly.

1. seaweed
2. herb
3. black seseame

i bought dango!!!!!!!
*smack lips*

taste damn nice lar!

$2 also.

takashimaya there sell @ $1.80 BUT... they pale in comparison in terms of size lah.


japanese rice cake - green tea dango with red beans
*fifty cent coin for size reference*

saw my coin in the pic right?
paiseh i stupidly showed the wrong side of the coin.
shld having the 50 cents part facing up.
anyway, this dango is huge.
the ones in taka is like at the most, a fifty-cent-coin size.

there were others that i was interested in but i guess my cash quite limited and the stuff on sale ain't exactly cheap.

- butter manju cake
- sweet potato cake
- ice cream
- ramen

*drools*

UWAAAAAAAAAAAA

natsukashi!!!!!

the last time i saw these MVs were like years and years ago man..





been surfing around some blogs and got to know that yesterday (Jul 4th) so happens to be GACKT's bdae haha.

Clarke Quay Riverside

the picture was taken after we attended my editor's wedding dinner at peony-jade restaurant.
stupid taxi driver dropped us off at the wrong location.

the food at the restaurant wasn't too bad.
it was my second visit there. first time was for burger's brother's wedding and we had really bad seats. it's all the way at the back and practically could not see a single thing and was seated with a bunch of old men. boring like mad. then we decided that should we ever end up as seat fillers again, we won't attend the wedding.

this time round it wasn't that bad and i was seated amidst all my colleagues and thus the familiar faces.


At the Riverside

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we went to novena's velocity shopping centre where gu picked up his running kit for the marathon he signed up for.

somehow there's tons of korean based shops around and i spotted this!!!

KOREAN RICE CAKES! with chilli paste!!

my favourite lah!


Hankook Rice Cake House

This bowl cost around $3 but it's damn nice lah!!!!!!!!!!!
pretty spicy and serving quite generous.


Rice Cake in Chilli Paste!!! Yummy!
pls give it a try when u go there the nxt time

there's this korean mini-mart nxt to it.
all the instant noodles! bwahahhaa

i randomly bought some clay (korean light-weight clay) to make clay bunnies

damn cute lah the results.
the end result was super light.

The Pika(s) are too damn cute

Soft Paws!!

Saves your furniture and floorings from being scratched by your pet dogs and cats.
thought this was pretty cool.

They have various colours. To check out the website, Click Here


Photo first seen in CuteOverload

chocolates bars from NY (new york)!!

my boss is back from a workin trip to new york and brought back with her a plastic bag full of chocolate bars that sent some of our colleagues into quite a frenzy and even those from the "far-away" desks dropped by to steal some choco bars from us.

i'm not a fan for sweet stuff esp milk chocs so i had only one piece (not the whole bar).


choco bars!

while i was randomly laying out the chocobars on the table for the fun of it, i realized something...



Everything is "King Sized"!

uwa.......

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went to chill out with kor previously in Ice Cold Beer.
it's quite a noisy bar in terms of music but still, a nice place to hang around at.

when kor n i reached the place there was hardly any seats and the waiter/waitresses weren't too enthusiastic in helping you find a seat or rather, shld i say, too distracted and often say yes to you but soon after forgets what you asked and moved on to serve customers.

maybe cos i'm not ang moh.

quite frustrating.

anyway, we did find a seat outside eventually.

over the weekends i ended up bringing wilson over to Ice Cold Beer (when he booked out from his reservist on sat) at night.


Ice Cold Beer

Starting the day with a photo! wahahaha



we were meeting up with Zhiwei and his gf to chill out cos the chicken wings in this bar is gooooood. i read from kor's blog. the chicky wings were marinated with shrimp pasted and then deep fried. so i guess i can't let chingling eat those chicky wings cos she's allergic to seafood.



guess wot? there's two airheads (woman) sitting on the table nxt to us. why airhead? cos of their behaviour. they r kinda in their mid thirties or something and they both ordered only one cup of drink and shared it, (ok so that's not the main issue), then they wanted to play pool so they wrote their name on the chalkboard to queue for their turn. normally at such places, it's winner stay. but they don't know how to play but they either wan to play together (since both cant play so takes forever) or they keep asking the other men who is around to play/teach them. O_o" sorry if i'm prejudiced. i just don't like how it looked. then soon after... they just left.

wad the heck!?

see my gugu so dark in the picture (albeit the lighting) cos poor boy kena toasted under hot sun during his 2 out of 3 weeks in reservist.


candid snapshot by zhiwei's mischevious gf

i actually bumped into kor again that night! hahahah quite happy to see him. he brought two friends along with him that night and right after the airheads left, kor took up the seats and so we're all happily seated together YAY it's the only sofa seats around and we stole them all!!! muahahaha

CGOverdrive 2007

I'm kinda excited today. I'm really glad that after much deliberation (for stupid personal reason), I've finally decided to step out of my comfort zone and just accompany JH (or rather, tag along) to EXPO for her shoot.

In the name of "work", we're headin there to interview some high profile CG designers.
There's four of them.


As a coordinator, my work are mainly behind-the-scenes, which in another words means, administrative end.

So what I did was basically to arrange the interviews by liasing with the CGOverdrive PR exec and followed by hiring freelancing crewmen to help us out with the production. It's a pretty rushed job considering the fact that I was informed about the need for all these 2 days prior to the actual shoot. (or need to shoot.) bah!

woke up damn early in the morning to travel to expo first. surprisingly, the train station is pretty packed and as i walked along from the train station to expo, there are huge boards all over shouting out the multiple events held and here's s shot of the board for CGOverdrive.


CGOverdrive 2007 (Click photo to enlarge)
Along the pathway from MRT Station to EXPO

Being there that early means the place is still pretty quiet with little people around.
Most of them are either the staff or the speakers and you get to see lotsa foreign speakers with all their suitcases and blazers walking around.


Banner of kawaii-ko hanging up above

We started the shoot at 10 and the crew was super punctual. they were asked to meet us at 10am and at exactly 10 am they called to say they reached. 10:00am exactly!

whoa... hahahahaha

anyway,
a few hiccups here and there but that sorta added to the experience of being where I was and knowing what are the kind of variable circumstances and hiccups a shoot can face.

we couldn't find a good enough area to conduct the interviews since there wasn't one prepare by the organizers so we just had to find a spot which we thought was the quietest and least disruptive.

the speaker's lounge wasn't enclosed so sounds could probably echo in. bad choice so we skipped that. the most headache part was that there was this software clinic nearby which a huge speaker? hahahah every 5 mins or so the host would start talking and his voice will boom thro the external speakers and we'll be all wide-eyed and have to cease filming immediately to wait for him to stop talking. eventually we unplugged the external speakers wahahahha but then there is this conference hall nearby and once the various workshop ends, hoards and hoards of ppl would come out and gosh all the chittering and chatterings!?!? but actually, they weren't TOO noisy so we continued with the shoot. occasionally when the girls or people nearby start talking or giggling too loudly, i'll be the one running about asking them to tone down their volume.

we finished some of our interviews earlier than what was planned.

oh yes one screw with the tapes. i guess i won't divulge too much but it was too damn funny.

the directors and co-directors and staff creating Final Fantasy was there! hehehehe

we intereviewed one of them.

also the CG designer of Transformers and SL from Imaginery Friends.


Car motiff by Imaginery Friends

All in all everything else went smoothly. we even had our lunch covered (free!!!) cos they had buffet style catering for the speakers and media staff hehehehe

we finished shooting at around 3pm in the afternoon and i had to head back to office and when i got back there... tons of work was piling up and waiting for me. *cry*

i wanted to post the pictures i took of our interviewees but after much consideration, i kinda thought perhaps it might not be too good an idea to do so.

there was displays of some submitted digital art works and there was a couple that i liked quite a lot and too picture of but i can't post their pics here since it's not my work and i haven't gotten their permission.. so. yeah hahaha

all in all i learnt much from that trip and was quite happy to be at least out of the office once in awhile.

Heard from my boss that i might even get to go with my producer during his shoot for WCG (World Cyber Games) Asian Championship 2007 that's to be held in Suntec City in August!!

Here's a lil PR:

Animax is the principal partner for WCG Asian Championship 2007!!!

Date MMS received from Lloyd: 26th June 2007, 12:22AM



MUSHROOM BABIES!!!!
this just in...!!!!
Mushroom with 3 baby kittens!!! and they're just 3 days old!

OMG LAH! (bad lloyd! kept this secret from me and surprise me with an mms!)

they look so... squishy!
i'm so gonna equip myself with my digicam and go invade his house lah!
they havent even opened up their eyes yet!

Date MMS received from Lloyd: 26th June 2007, 12:36AM


bundle (literally) of joy!

omg they are like.. all tangled up!!

Date MMS received from Lloyd: 26th June 2007, 12:43AM


*sprawl* ehn.. where's mom?

Lloyd's gonna giveaway two kittens when they are old enough.
He's fave is the black one (it has white belly and paws!)
I like that one best too!
Will be it's self-proclaimed human god-ma and haress it lots!

can't wait! will surprise khim with the news tml and start planning when to invade Lloyd's hse.

Was surfing the web randomly and found this video on Yahoo! that's really interesting.

Learn something new today!

How to make a star-shapped ribbon

The vid teaches you how to make a star shapped ribbon, especially useful for gift wrapping, and it's surpisingly simple but the end result is very nice.



Have fun trying.

Packed like a can of sardines... Literally!

Went to Bugis Village after work with YL.

I wanted to shop for some earrings and random stuff and since we took a train to Bugis junction first, having to walked through the shopping mall we passed by a fish exhibition.

There were displays of several types of fishes for sale as well as their accompany products such as food, tanks etc etc. Took up quite a big area.

as we happily looked around at the fishes i saw a seriously funny yet weird sight.


(Click to Enlarge)

Check out the fishes! the entire tank is so damn empty and i was wondering where all the fishes went to and realised they were all hiding under the log. it's a seriously weird sight cos besides just hiding, a couple was swimming around frantically and the rest was busy stuffing themselves into the log like the above picture... it's like so..aligned.

damn funny sight.

p.s i still think goldfish looks freaky.

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Shopping in Bugis Village has gd returns.

muahaha..

$2 per earring, I bought 2.
Cheap aye?


(Click to enlarge)

I liked the combination of a black strawberry with gold spots.
The metal "fairy" can swimg on it's own hehehe tot it was cute.

Two cute dollies shopping.

Sneak Preview

hehehe

I'm up to something again!



shall not disclose what it is first.
Will post up the final result soon! I promise it'll be something that's really cute.

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As you can see, in my office there's a fair share of rather interesting people around.

Especially from my dept.

For some reason, a really super afro wig was dugged out from our cabinets amidst all the items meant for props... (we have a stash somewhere with tons of random stuff.. parang included *gulps*) and yea so someone eventually decides to put it on. Ms Goh challenged him to wear the wig over to Telepark while offering herself as his 'bodyguard' by accompanying him over and he amicably accepts the idea. in fact, i thought he kinda looked more excited than Ms. Goh to put on the wig.


Yo yo check it out!

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My "twin" at work.
hurhur

YL changed her spectacle frame (it's Red now!).
Here's a snap shot.

remind me never to sign up for anything using the same email add for separate accounts.

fuck man.

fuck youtube.

i'm too shocked and kinda devastated knowing what on earth just happened as i sat n stoned for a few seconds trying to numb myself from my emotions.

2 of my youtube accounts got disabled.
for 1 of them, i accept the reason.
but i forgot. they share the same email thus my second account (totally innocent) was permanently disabled. there goes all my links and favourites!!!!!!!

i have shiteload of favourites saved under that account with tons of vids i love to watch.

fucked up.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAHAHHAHAA...

What maketh of the picture you see below? with all the tiny dusty lil paw prints of our neighbourhood kittehs trampling over wilson's new leather seat.

assuming that the newly cushioned-padded seat with new leather is too irrestible and comfortable for the bed seeking kittehs.

wilson's face is exactly like how the lil animation on the bottom left of the picture depicts.



and the trail continues...



even the box got trampled over.

we shall tie that garfield (saw it hanging ard the area last night) and fry it!

thank god they didn't scratch the seat or something if not i swear wilson will flip.
we spend saturday going around places running errands and i ordered yet another figurine. will show it when it comes... in SEPT. hohoho

we bought new helmets and added extra sponge and new leather cover on the seat.
ahhhhhhhhhhh our butts are happy now.

i think i overspent. haiz.

sunday was roxy square for lunch and we hung around parkway for a while; doing some random shopping and i was in the fish supermart and saw this.

it's those boxes you buy with the miniature food figurines but what you get is based on pure randomness and i got seafood nabe. not cheap but it looks really nice. the soup looks rather realistic. at this point in time, wilson sneaked to the toilet to put on his new tshirt bought from topman. hur. vain pot *hee...* XD



i've been looking around for black coloured earrings of late cos i realised i don't have any to match my clothes with (i have no black earrings) and found this cute neko earring at bugis village for two bucks! cheap!



i think it's damn cute.

wilson wanted to get stickers for his bike but the shop he was looking for wasn't there anymore and he got abit grouchy while i was being attacked by the manicure shop auntie from china.

we arranged to meet burger in chinatown/maxwell to go to tea chapter for tea and food and before burger arrived, wilson n i parked our bike in the carpark just right beside maxwell food centre and realised the construction of a huge temple just across the road has been completed.

i didn't bring my digicam out with me so here's some shots taken with my hp.
edited a lil with photoshop to bring out the colour.


front view (Click to Enlarge)


45 degree side view (Click to Enlarge)

coincidentally while i was standing around admiring the view and taking a shot a woman (not young) walked past and made a stupid comment (to herself but aloud for all to hear).

"why so many people stand around!"
"ceh stand around then the door will open meh!?"

wah kao. pls lor AUNTIE.

ppl stand ard their business right?

CHRONICLE OF THE WINGS

this is a 3D paper stand that I've made while I was in office.
It turned out pretty well and pretty much satisfied with the results.


(click to enlarge)

it's kinda fun to engage in such projects every once in awhile. =)
it's almost brainless and all i need to do is to just concentrate on using the pen knife to cut out the figures. the only difficulty i faced was probably that it's the first time for me to create such a stand and the instructions are all in japanese. i had my colleague help translate for me most of the instructions but to know exactly what to do, i guess i'm on my own. *sweat drops*

before i started work,
it basically came in a form of a brochure like manner.


chronicle of the wings paper craft

it consists of a few pages and then there were subsequently the cut out designs on each and every page. frankly speaking, i thought it was pretty well designed. the cutting out of areas like the hair and the more intricate parts are slightly more challenging. my pen knife can't do curved cutting all that well and every time i face a "hair" cut-out, i fear slicing out the hair and screwing things up. anyway, all in all, everything went well and it just so happened that i have paper craft glue with me muahahaha

oh. realised that i forgot to mention where i got this paper craft booklet from. i didn't buy it yea. a colleague handed it to me since they know i'm pretty much a handicraft person. *happy* and so they await the result to wow at the cuteness of it while leaving all the 'work' to me. not that i have anything to complain about anyway since i enjoy doing such stuff.

maybe if i'm in luck, i'll get another booklet of my favourite animes? hehehe i'm not exactly fond of chronicle of the wings.

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on labour day, which is a holiday (duh!), wilson and i decided to ask some friends out for dinner.
we've decided for it to be a anti-bike day so we spent the whole day travelling on public transport.. which plaintively means - the bus. muahaha.

NO MORE WEARIN OF HELMETS!

but...! there's inconveniences as well. using ezlink is not all that cheap and it's much more time consuming when you're not on a bike... but AIYAH! hekki dayo hekki!

wilson and i took our time going places and finally we ended up in toa payoh to have botak jones. we were supposed to meet up with his friends there but when we got there, i sensed something not being too right about the place. as in, it's kinda "dead". then i realised that the entire eating house got a day-off cos it's labour day. DAMN. shld've guessed. it's located right next to SPH and a industrial area.

since wilson's friends were already in the area, we decided to wait out for them to arrive to them drop the "bombshell" on them. they were quite stoned haha. anyway we hitched a ride on their van and drove to AMK together to try out the other botak jones outlet.

my god lah.

the entire place packed until siao. the queue was ridiculously long!
wilson's gang not adventurous one!! *grumbles*

all either ordered same as us (which is cajun chicken) or fish and chips.
i thought at least someone might've tried the burgers or hotdogs or wadever. ceh.

i ordered cajun chicken and chilli con carne to share with wilson.


cajun chicken


chilli con carne

this is like a mix of beef and stuff and it taste pretty much like the toppings u get on chilli hotdogs. quite nice. wo xi huan (i like)!

oh yea. and our india office colleagues came to town last week.
*cough* good thing helen wasn't around. i couldn't find the parang.

they gave us a backpack with animax logo. i must say, it doesnt look all the bad and it's huge. pretty heavy too.



the next "present" i got was a bunch of tapes and DVDs. more work with crazy deadlines.
damn.

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shoppings!!

i saw this bag from ESPRIT (brown; left) and went crazy and chiong home to steal my mom's membercard. nice eh? then subsequently bought a small bag from MUJI (green; right).



let me share with you my woes.

the stupid cashier forgot to remove the sensor tag from my MUJI bag. i realised it only at night.
i wanted to go back the next day, along with the receipt, to have them remove the tag but to my horror... my mom chucked the receipt that very morning while cleaning up the room. OMG LA. then she started panicking after having known that and launched multiple attacks at me to dissuade me from going back to the shop in case they suspect me of stealin things. *slap head* i swear i was so frustrated i nearly smashed something.. whatever's within reach. anyway, tks to karen i remembered that i could actually do a printout of my transaction summary via dbs online banking. so i did. made a call to the store before heading down.

guess what?

they did remove the tag for me. but they didn't ask to check for receipt.

WTH. oh well.

bought this magazine from MPH. $12+. quite cheap
it's about beadworks. some of the stuff are really nice.
will try out someday.



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ching invited us over to her us to makan cha soba with herbal chicken soup.
kinda weird combination. we even bought chicken wings to add to the lot.
then there was noodles made by ching's mom. wah lau.

then when we got to her place i was a lil shocked.
plenty of people around.
and the baby that's uber chubby and good to huggle.
wilson's abit scared of carrying babies but we threw the baby onto him to carry anyway.
he didn't score too badly!
think he'll be a good dad.
i liked the look on his face when he played with the baby.
he just needs time to open up and love someone.

while he sits infront of the pc i came up from behind to snap a shot.



i think my gu looks quite handsome here *wahahahahaha* (自high)

test shot with new digicam (fujifilm finepix F31d)