Category: My Good Life

Categories
Diary

Avril Lavigne Live in Singapore!

Avril’s “The Best Damn Tour” is here!  And the 10% early bird discount ends today.  So grab the tickets (S$75-165) now if you so intend to watch.  We are at the 16th row.  See you there!

OK.  I was about to switch off my computer after writing more than one week worth of blog entries.  It suddenly struck me that the early bird discount closes today.  I so love Avril.  A few years ago, I was at the SunTech concert hall when she first visited Singapore.  To say that Cynthia and I felt ridiculous to be surrounded by so many youngsters is a massively super understatement.  But hey hey you you, it is Avril Lavigne and frankly speaking, I care less.

I love her “Best Damn Thing” album despite what others may say.  Now, one crazily embarrassing newsflash is that I have lost her CD.  Yes, I have.  Damn!  Where the heck have I put it?!  I have this bad habit of mixing the CDs into the wrong covers.  To go through the hundreds of CDs of mine to hunt for Avril’s “Best Damn Thing” seems like a daunting task.

Good thing is, I have till September to find it and to memorize the songs!  A piece of cake that is.

Hey hey you you, what are you waiting for?  Go go go and get the tickets now!

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Linguistic My Hobbies

¡Hola! ¿Cómo Te … Erm … What? – Our First Spanish Lesson at Las LiLas School

You didn’t think I was joking when I said Cynthia is going to learn Spanish after Fernando Torres scored the goal that won Spain the UEFA Cup 2008, did you?  So I join her, under one condition.  Stay tuned and you may hear about it in September this year.

To learn Spanish is one of Cynthia’s childhood dreams.  I honestly have no special love for the language, the music, or the food but I do love to fulfill the dreams of others if I can.  Learning a language is absolutely not my strength and it is utterly one of the 10 things I fear most.  I am not exaggerating.

Exactly what I am going to do with this new skill, I have no clue.  However I am a strong believer that whatever you learn today opens up options you may have in the future.  Besides, I have this impression that Spanish is widely spoken in the Americas and I just learned from a Filipino friend of mine that his country was under the Spaniards for 400 years!  If this new experience hasn’t opened up new options for me yet, it has certainly opened up new conversation topics.  Did you know that Spanish is the world’s second most-spoken language by native speakers after Mandarin Chinese?

I told my boss that I have a Wednesday class in town so that any travel plan in the near future can hopefully be scheduled according to my constraint; I told my team that I am learning Spanish so that they know I have a life and won’t expect me to OT on work that never ends.  My boss sounded supportive and he told me that learning a new language is good to give our brain cells a good workout.  Great!  I think my first lesson was more than a workout.  I was exhaustively euphoric.

Anna is an interpreter by day, Spanish teacher by night and she is a fun person full of laughter.  Las LiLas School specializes in teaching Spanish language at various levels and the learning environment is OK.  I wish the classroom could be more colorful.  Having some refreshments inside the room would have been nice.  Next time I shall bring along my bottle of water and some snacks as well.

I guess all good language lessons begin with hi-how-are-you, what’s-your-name, and I’m-so-and-so.  Spanish language seems to have three extra alphabets ll, ch, and ñ, which is pretty funky.  Cynthia’s mother tongue is Bahasa Indonesia – a language with a certain level of Dutch influence – and she didn’t find the i-pronounced-as-e and e-pronounced-as-a confusing.  That alone confuses the heck out of me.  Fortunately, I am trained in pronouncing the tongue rolling ”˜R’ sound of the Indonesian and the throat vibrating ”˜R’ sound of the French, I am doing OK with the Spanish ”˜G’, ‘J’, and ”˜R’ that utilize both techniques.  ”˜Y’ in Spanish is pronounced as ”˜Y Griega’ (literally means letter Y from the Greek).  Some of these alphabets sound almost like a word to me.  When I was asked to spell out my name, I flipped.  The alphabet ”˜W’ is pronounced as ”˜Uve Doble’.  Although I seem to be able to get the rest of the tough alphabets right, ”˜Uve Doble’ is one tough nut for me.  You know the Spanish dance genre Paso Doble?  It is the same ”˜Doble’.  Why English calls ”˜W’ double-U?  I don’t know.  Spanish calls it double-V.

Ah … all these confusions.  Thanks to the Tower of Babel.

Oops, exceeded 500 word count for this entry.  Stay tuned for more stories on How I Flunk My Spanish Test.

Categories
Travel Blog

Speed Touring Chennai Pt 1 – Pictures from the City

A montage from my short Chennai trip - pictures from the city

If there is such a term as ”˜speed reading’ or ”˜speed dating’, I guess my trip to Chennai is speed touring in the finest. I have written two articles for my two days visit. Click onto the link below to view.

To recap, out of the blue, my bosses asked me to join them for their ‘VIP visit’. Fine. I have not been to India before. And besides, since I was not in the project’s travel plan, I shouldn’t be doing much besides making coffee and writing notes right?

OK. That picture I had in my head was far from the reality. There were questions flying left, right, center, pointing towards me in a room so full of people including all my bosses and more, for 2 days. Certainly not a good time to screw up or look stupid. Oh well, I really should consider writing a song titled “So I Did My Best”.

So I did my best. Work aside, I managed to squeeze out time in my 2 days trip to Chennai and took some pretty good pictures during the day. At one point, I was so excited that I winded down the window of car and started to take pictures. Everyone inside was screaming as though I have committed the silliest mistake in life.

And I did. No one in India sticks out any part of their bodies from within the moving vehicles that are often inches away from each other. Gosh!

I hope you will enjoy some of the pictures I have posted in the next two articles. If I was to have a bit more time, I would love to hit the beach. Maybe next time.

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Diary

Chennai Here I Come

Oh God, I don’t even know where to start.

I am a small fry at work.  The VIP fly out for business trips, not me.  I make good coffee and I write well.  I make sure that everything is recorded, which is kind of important to the bosses.  When I think of my job, I think of show biz.  To make sure that everyone look good, I prep them on what to say, what’s going to happen, and if disasters shall fall, I am here to do damage control.

It’s show biz.

Last week, inside a small meeting room, my boss and my director – whose next role is probably going to be a country CEO – freshly back from their long compliance leave and there I was giving them a run down of all-good-news.

The next in the agenda was their “VIP visit” to India.  OK, all the ground works have be done.  They just need to turn up, hope and pray that the team there has no screw-up, and if everything follow my script, everyone should look good.  They can travel.  And I’d love to stay where the good sun is – Singapore.

The director paused at the end of my briefing, looked at my direction, raised his eyebrow, and asked my boss, “Is Wilfrid coming with us?”

Uh-oh.

Before I even get my hands onto the Indian Visa, my teammates from the other side of the ocean have already called me and said, “Welcome to India”.

So I guess, Chennai here I come?  Time to give my dear friend Jann a call for a survival guide on my way to the airport tonight.

PS. I’ve written a whole week worth of blog materials over the weekend so it will be business-as-usual for my website.

Related Posts: Speed Touring Chennai Pt 1 – Pictures from the City

Categories
For the Geeks

It is Diablo III – So the Wait is Over?

I seldom blog about video gaming but this one is big.  The Diablo franchise has a new installment, and from one video I have watched, it’s a quantum leap.  The graphic is jaw dropping and we can now realistically interact with the environment such as the collapse of the structures as we battle.  The control for the battle seems engaging.  Check out one boss fight and I bet you have not quit seen something of that scale before.

I always try to seek a balance when I blog, a little something for everybody.  From the business point of view, Blizzard Entertainment – a division of French Vivendi Games – is one gaming company that I admire deeply.  Why?  They don’t have many games and they only have three major franchises – Starcraft, Warcraft, and Diablo.  They are not inventive but they enhance and implement the genre so well that all that they create are legendary, a huge gap for the rest of the companies to close.  Starcraft is a 10 years old game and it is still played today.  Recently, it is announced that Starcraft II is on its way.  Warcraft has gone through a cycle of 3 installments and the MMORPG spin off (massively multi-player online role playing game) is a worldwide success taking the genre to a height that never has seen before.  10 million worldwide subscribers (Cynthia and I included) and it is a four years old game still going strong.

Another great thing I admire about Blizzard Entertainment is that unlike other gaming companies that are pressurized to release games even when the games are not ready for the shelves, Blizzard has the reputation of non-committing release dates.  They will only release the games when they are ready.  On top of that, they are not hesitate to can a project (like the venturing into the console gaming platform) if it doesn’t turn out right.

There is a pending merge of Vivendi Games (1 billion in revenue) with yet another giant Activision (3 billion in revenue) and the new entity is going to be called Activision Blizzard Inc.  Now, I do want to own some of their shares.

Below is the cinematic teaser and if you like what you see, don’t miss the video that demonstrates the actual game play (click here and then click onto “Play Gameplay Vidoe” on the right).

Categories
Diary

Gearing Up for Sunday Jamming Session

I don’t do any team sport.  I wonder what players would do one day before, say, a football practice.  My guitarist Jason wants to check out my new toy.  Not just any guitar amp and effect processor but one that comes with a – hold your breath – VOX Valve Reactor.  So he suggested a Sunday jamming session at my humble home studio.  I brainstormed with my bassist Cynthia as we both want to do something different.  And we suggested a retro theme.  Not the eighties retro but rather dig up some of the old materials we were used to play back in 2004.

So one day before the jamming session, I started the day asking my band mates what their personal favorites are.  Interestingly, none of us picks up the same song.  Jason picks “Broken” and “A Little Bit of Love”.  Good choices they are.  “Broken” is a ballad with lots of space for Jason’s guitar solo to shine and “A Little of Love” has some nice tune.  Cynthia picks “Dark Cloud”.  I know she likes the song’s dark theme.  It’s about humanity in desperation.  I wrote that song during the Iraq War.  As for me, it has to be “The Sweetest Thing” – a song written after my dinner trip to the red light district feeling melancholy that girls so pretty have to go down that path – and “Not Today”, a favorite pick from Jeremy – one of our ex-founding band member.

This new toy of mine – VOX ToneLab LE – comes with so much functionality.  I spent the entire morning attempting to narrow down a set of preset programs that suit my song style.  I could of course spend another 1,400 words just to describe the physics behind that sturdy processor.  But I’d rather not.

The rest of the day, I spent much time finding the right key, rewriting the songs into radio edit version.  Radio edit?  You may ask.  Well, you know how it’s like.  Think Pink Floyd back in 1975.  The song “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” has a total duration of 26 minutes.  It’s a whole world of difference between then and their last studio album “The Division Bell” (1994).  When our band first recording our signature song “Jealousy” at my home back in 2005, the song was close to 17 minutes.  Subsequently, we progressively trim it down and today, we have a radio edit version that is kept below 4 minutes.  Personally, I still prefer the 17 minutes version.

And perhaps I shall apply the same philosophy to my own blog entries.

By the time I normalized the volume of the different preset programs from my VOX ToneLab LE, it was close to midnight (without normalization would mean a tougher time during the recording session).  What a way to spend Saturday.  Now, I have a football match to watch.  Or rather, Cynthia has a football match to watch while I accompany her.

Categories
Diary

My Harvest at the Great Singapore Sales (So Far)

Call me whatever you like but I simply love the teal color flower petal lookalike tiny thingies that produce beautiful sound.  When I took them out of the box, Cynthia went oooorrhh sooo cute …  and at that moment, I know, girls love that design too.  In fact, I think girls love this design this color more than men do.  Then why did I buy them?

Don’t ask, don’t think too deep.

Not sure why, these days my shopping decisions are largely based on aesthetic values.  Like that pair of pointy shoes.  I looked at those lines, the shape, and I was in love.  Besides, I am no long a size 9 but a 7.  The salesgirl told me that it was due to the cutting.  Now imagine how a girl would feel when the dress size drops by two.  Cynthia calls me a Peter Pan or an elf.  Call me whatever you like but I simply love those pointy shoes …

Except, they were not that entirely comfortable to wear.  Far from that, it was pretty painful to wear.  I used muscles that I didn’t know they existed before.  How do girls walk with shoes like these?  Fortunately these pointy shoes of mine are not high-heeled.  And after a week, I walk like a pro, with these pointy shoes.

And no, contrary to the myths I have heard from some of my friends, I don’t topple and I don’t find it hard to walk up the stairs.

I think I am a hybrid shopper, a type AB.  I do shop with prioritized objectives in mind and I do take forever to make a decision.  You can’t really blame me deriving joy from getting a good bargain and to leave no ground uncovered, no items untested.

You may not have realized this: Imagine you want to buy a pair of speakers for your iPod or computer, most shops have speakers on display powered up, ready for demonstration except for the source of music.  The sales persons more often than not would scramble to look for something to play.

Fear not, with my wonderful wireless phone, all I have to do is to jack in the speaker cable and voilà!  Music on demand.  Since by now, I must have listened to that song by YUI for like 5,000 times (I ain’t joking), it has become my yardstick to determine which speaker model is the best.

And I picked the best looking one in the end (see picture above).

When I told my buddy Robert Let’s Go PC Show, his first response was It’ll be Too Crowded Let’s Not Do It.  I said Fine, I’ll Go There First and We’ll Meet for Lunch An Hour Later.  As the doors of the exhibition hall opened at noon sharp, OK, there was a crowd.  But same place, years ago when Cynthia and I watched Avril Lavigne’s concert, it was a whole lot more crowded than this.

Once in a blue moon, you get yourself into some surreal situations and suddenly, whatever you hear sounds really strange.

Somewhere inside the PC Show exhibition hall, one pair of earphones, close to S$700.  My.  Jaw.  Dropped.  This girl at the Shure booth was very keen to show me what she has got.  “You’ve got to try these,” she smiled.  I looked at the earphones dangling in front of her, for lack of a better word, chest.  I have no idea why she was wearing the most expensive earphones over her neck.  Hesitated for a bit, I gave it a go.   Unplugging my Sennheiser earphones from my wireless phone, I was all ready to be blown away.

“Is this your first time?” she asked.  I presumed she referred to the first time wearing the Shure earphones.  “You’ve got to go from behind,” she demonstrated as she was trying to help me with it.  But it just couldn’t get in.  “Yours is a bit small.  It keeps slipping out,” she giggled.

Huh?  “Let me do it,” I said.  And it went in OK, the other side as well.

The sound is pretty good.  But S$700 for that is kind of out of this world.

So what did I buy at the PC Show?  Well, I supported our local industry and bought something from Creative.  Back in the office when I showed one friend of mine what I was going to get, he was shocked at how fast I made my decision out of so many models Creative have offered.  He probed deeper into my wisdom and I said …

“Look!  It says, ‘Hear your enemies before they find you’.  And I want just that.”

I love making decisions when the marketing jargon and killer designs have taken care of them all.  And I am looking forward to my next round of shopping.

Categories
Coincidence Diary

The Coincidental Encounters and the Incidental Chain of Events That Leads to This – My First V-blog (Prelude) Episode 2

I don’t want to sound too much like a rip off from Haruki Murakami’s short story “Chance Traveler” but I too have my share of coincidental encounters to share.  Totally random of course but interestingly, these coincidences happened in the span of three consecutive days.  And outside this three-day window, puff, my days have become as ordinary as they have always been no matter how hard I observe.

What are the odds to meet the same person in the morning queuing just one spot in front of you at your favorite coffee joint two days in a roll?  And the queue was otherwise empty, just you and him.  And if you think that I always have the same timing every morning, I don’t.  I have not seen him since then.

How about the same colleague whom enters a lift with you when you head out for lunch, both of you have your own lunch plan, and you see her taking the same lift with you when you are done with your lunch?  In my case, I wasn’t even observing the lunch hours.  And apparently, neither was she.

One morning at ten, I was at the lift lobby and with me was the cleaning lady who was done with the day.  We chatted and I learned that she starts work at six every morning.  The following morning at ten twenty, I was at the same lift lobby, patiently waiting for a lift, and with me, the same cleaning lady.  She was late because there was more trash to attend to.  This time, I learned that after she has finished with the cleaning work at our office, she heads over to another office.  And she lamented that we only pay her S$350 a month for that 4 hours of work a day.

All these lift encounters can’t beat this particular one.  I often carry with me a cup of freshly brewed coffee to work every morning.  The lift was crowded and at one floor, the door opened.  Just when it was about to close, one guy from behind jerked into action and pushed through the crowd as he dashed towards the closing door.  He knocked onto me and I spilt the hot coffee onto a huge fellow in front of me.  How embarrassing!  But it was not as embarrassing as meeting the same huge fellow in the same lift the next morning with me holding another cup of hot coffee.  I so wanted to dig a hole and hide inside.

*          *          *          *

While the above encounters that happened in the span of three consecutive days may sound random, the incidental chain of events that leads to my wanting to create a video blog is all but.

I don’t get to have lunch with my good buddy Choong Yoong often.  We both know about it though we both deny it.  We meet once a year, usually due to some last minute arrangements.  It is just the way how we operate, I guess.  Every time we meet, I am always delighted by the variety of topics he has.  Mostly out of the world kind of ideas or news or theories or gossips, it is hard not to be enchanted by this precious lunch appointment that rarely occurs.  So out of the blue, I suggested that he should set up a podcast and I will be his faithful subscriber.  He laughed and told me that he has tried making an episode, and that was hard.  He then turned to me and said: You should have your own podcast instead!  I asked why and he pointed out that I have a dynamic voice to keep the audience interested (or something like that since that event happened quite a while ago).

Podcast and me, you have got to the kidding right?

But ideas are strange little fellows.  They stick to your head and refuse to go away.  And I parked this little idea in my head for months.

Another idea comes from the limitation I feel about blogging.  Don’t get me wrong.  Blogging is great; it is spontaneous; and I can write about anything and everything to my heart content.  Almost.  Except the invisible word count restriction that hangs on my neck all the time.  I have to try very hard to keep my blog entries within 500 to 1,000 word count.  Occasionally I hit 1,500 words and I have to remind myself not to do that often for I do treasure my own little crowd of online readers.  It is said that an average adult reads prose text at 250 to 300 words per minute.  In that sense, perhaps even a 500 words entry is still too much for the my precious audience to take.

And because of that, I have got another idea – to have a series of blog entries with a related theme and a time table to adhere to.  I often wonder what the online readers would feel if there is a sense of anticipation, like a TV series.  And even if this little experiment doesn’t take off, I would have published a 10,000 words entry that is broken down into ten little pieces.

Finally, I have always fantasized with the idea of making a little video using 100% original materials.  Can this be done?  How far can I stretch myself?  Connecting all these three little ideas prompts me wanting to just do it.

So, do it I shall.  A v-blog it will be.

My 1st v-Blog Mini-Series:

Categories
Comedy Diary Movie Reviews Romance

If the Birthday Girl Wants Made of Honour, the Birthday Girl Gets Made of Honour

Couple of weeks ago, my friendly boss dropped by my workplace – like he always does in an intraday manner to go through a checklist of 101 items with me – and he talked about “Made of Honour” instead.  He even gave a two thumbs up on that movie.  That was scary.  Was I being Googled and he learned that I love watching movies?

Perhaps not.  Hopefully not.

This week has been an eventful week for me, or rather for Cynthia and I.  Besides the one thing that now is not a good time to share (I will, I promise), my work has been action packed (though I still managed to keep it within 9 to 5, thank god for that) and Cynthia has just started working in a new environment so I needed to hunt for another precious parking lot within CBD.  The good news is that my good old friend RC passes me his tenant lot because he has decided not to drive a few years ago.  The not so good news?  Well, the car park at Prudential Tower is probably the most scary car park I have seen in Singapore.  RC joked that I shall practice my Tokyo Drift technique at those tight corners and curves.

Very funny.

Fortunately, by now I can go up and down of the Tower with one eye closed.  In fact, an entertainment I genuinely look forward to every day.

And Friday was Cynthia’s birthday too.  How amazing!  Since my credit card has intercepted hers during her first purchase at the Great Singapore Sales just a few days ago, the birthday gift is settled.  Hooray!  I know she has been talking about “Made of Honour” a while back, “Made of Honour” it is then.

When the main actor first appeared on the big screen, I whispered to Cynthia, “Who is this guy?!”.  “He is Patrick Dempsey,” Cynthia replied.  “What damp sea?” I inquired as the name didn’t ring a bell.  “The movie ‘Enchanted’?” she replied.

Ah … OK, I still couldn’t remember.  When the main actress (Michelle Monaghan) appeared, I whispered, “I know this girl!”  “Who is she?” Cynthia’s turn to ask me.  “I don’t know,” I said and I continued, “but I remember seeing her on TV.”

OK,  I may not have seen her on TV.  But she does have that TV soap opera kind of look and indeed she was involved in the TV series “Boston Public” as I found out later.  In fact, Patrick Dempsey is also from a TV series, “Grey’s Anatomy”.

In fact, the second main actor has also acted in a TV series that I love – a HDO Original Series.  When the Scottish actor actor Kevin McKidd first appeared, I nearly screamed, “I know this guy!”  Cynthia replied knowing that I didn’t really know who this guy was, “Ya, the ‘Rome’ guy”.

I don’t think I have laughed so hard this year.  OK, it’s not about the story and we all know about that.  I would probably forget the whole story before this weekend ends.  However, with such an eventful week, a good laughter is all I need right now.  I will definitely catch this movie again on cable to have a good laugh about it.  Not sure if some sexual references would be censored though.

Perhaps not.  Hopefully not.

Categories
For the Geeks

My New Toy and a Whirlwind of Technology

I have promised to post the details of my new toy and here we are.  But before we get to that, I wish to share a little story with you all.  I used to think that talking about the climate of the technology world bore people.  Recently, I have the privilege to meet people who have little passion or knowledge on what goes on behind the press of a button, set aside the companies and driving forces behind.  Perhaps it was the way I tell the stories, they did genuinely want to read more after hearing what I said.  It was a humbling revelation.  If a good singer can sing anything from a phonebook, maybe a good storyteller should be able to tell a story on even the most unglamorous topic?

So here it goes.  I mean, here I try. 

Click here to read more.