Categories
Diary

A Lovely Quiet Six Days of Holiday

Our friend TK's office

These days I am addicted to taking pictures of what my friends’ surrounding working environments look like.  Like my sister’s and mine.  I find it odd that I think I know that someone so much but have no clue what he or her daily life is like.  The picture you see here was taken when Cynthia and I visited our good buddy TK.  At a location far far away from where we live, from where we work.  For those who are new to Singapore, Jurong is at the west side of the island.  An industrial area that many International and local companies set up their headquarters at.  Cynthia once worked for a pharmaceutical client at Jurong, near where TK’s office is; I once worked for clients inside the military bases at Jurong.  Our little road trip to TK’s office did bring back sweet memories.

My holiday started from Good Friday till today.  Initially wanted to go for a short road trip to Malaysia.  But since the first half of the holiday has been devoted to Church and Masses (it’s a Holy period after all) and our band, and Tuesday is our Spanish class, we have decided to stay in town.  Watch a movie, discovered a peranakan restaurant near our home, and play our online game.

Play our online game?  It is probably hard for some of you to relate.  Let’s just say, it is good for couples to spend time solving non-real life puzzles together, strategizing the game tactics, laugh and cry at some bizarre moments inside the game, and for better or worse, just spend time with each other.  We love to play World of Warcraft.  And now we got our friend Darkspore back into the game too.  Ha!  Note to Darkspore: For the Horde first … and we can For the Alliance later.

All things in moderation, I wish I could say to same for my recent obsession in ripping my music collection into a lossless format.  Ever since I have bought a network attached server at the IT Show last month, I have been ripping CDs non-stop.  Day after day, night after night.  I still have much to go.  But right now, I am partially enjoying the fruit of my effort with my digital jukebox finally arrived from US.  And that was one of the reasons why we visited our friend TK at Jurong yesterday.  To collect the shipment.

A lovely quiet six days of holiday.  Back to office tomorrow for 2 days, and then the weekend.

Categories
Action & Thriller Movie Reviews

Fast & Furious 4 – So Vin Diesel is Back

Fast & Furious

I have no clue what the rest of the Movie Review Squad like about the Fast and the Furious franchise.  To me, it is the fast cars and the hot babes.  Again, what’s the story about?  Who cares when the car scenes are that hot?

Though time and time again I have been saying that (1) I don’t like Vivocity Mall if not for Cynthia’s facial appointments and (2) I don’t like Golden Village that forces us to watch 20 minutes of ads prior to the show, I welcome a change of the routine (ironically this periodic visit to Vivocity is a routine of some sort).  As always, in this momentary of being alone, in Vivocity, I tried to find a place to sit, and read my book.  And I chanced upon this French café.  10 bucks for a cup of drink and dessert.  Like the Parisian style, I found a table facing the sea, watching people passing by.  The sky went from sunny to cloudy to sunny to heavy downpour.  Didn’t get to read my book, I wrote a blog entry using my phone instead, the SMS style.

Except the first installment, I can hardly recall what the “2 Fast 2 Furious” and “Tokyo Drift” were about.  The rest of the squad don’t like these two films.  But, it is hard not to admit that “Tokyo Drift” has popularized the drifting driving technique.  The same way that the phrase fast and furious has become a pop culture.  I love to drive.  And some of these techniques, if you were to put yourself behind the actors, are pretty darn cool.  Like the bumper-to-bumper racing scene inside the tunnel that involves crashing and burning, gosh, it is so darn hard to do in real life.  And yes, that speed booster button works just like the new KERS of F1.  I squeezed Cynthia’s hand so hard for some of those breathtaking scenes.

OK.  We are not suppose to do that in real life.  I got that.

Did you know that the eye candy (Gal Gadot) who didn’t quite get the heart of Vin Diesel’s character is a 2004 Miss Israel?  I have no clue what Vin Diesel’s character was thinking.  But like the pockets of scenes that don’t quite make sense, let’s stick with the fast cars, and the hot babes.

In “Tokyo Drift”, director Justin Lin introduces us to drifting.  This time, it is about nitromethane – a fuel that power racing cars, planes, and rockets.  Now, I want some of that in my engine!

Categories
Jamming Session

Talents Are Made Of This: Our Drummer Plays the Tiny Drum Machine Like a Video Game

Sound, or rather our music, in wave form ...

After the morning Good Friday Mass, our drummer Wieke and I were talking about the popular video game “Guitar Hero” and the Stand Alone Drums that you can buy and play it like a pro.  For our jamming session right after the Mass that Cynthia, Wieke , and I have attended, our guitarist Jason has brought along a tiny drum machine to experiment at my humble home studio.  If you are curious about how it looks like, here is one.

Both Jason and I were quite skeptical on what this tiny machine can do.  Here is our dilemma: Recording at my home studio allows us to have a much better control over the sound quality but there’s no drum kit; jamming at a rented standard studio comes with drums but the recording is lousy.  Besides, my home studio is a more conducive environment to discuss and experiment on the different song arrangements.  And here is another dilemma.  It seems hard to get a live gig that provides a drum set.  Like an upcoming performance that I’ll share more once the detail is finalized.  Jason and I have talked about the possibility of using a drum machine for years but somehow, neither of us has managed to pull it off.  I don’t have the talent.  He doesn’t have the time.

I wish I could share the video our band manager Selrol has recorded as we witnessed the magic fingers of Wieke dancing over the tiny key pads live.  While the band played our usual set, she fed us with the beats that if I were to close my eyes, I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the way she plays a real drum set and this tiny drum machine (note: sound-wise, of course I can).  All of us were speechless. Not in a million years can I the songwriter be able do that.  I would love to have that talent though.  I shall start with “Guitar Hero”.  Maybe talents are made of this.  The kind of effortlessness.  My personal thought is that if we put time into nurturing what our talents are, we may be able to do something great.

So all of a sudden, recording a decent demo album at my home studio can be a reality; performing live with live drum beats without a drum set can also be a reality.  I’m excited, on what we can potentially do in a very near future.  We, or rather I, tend to be over optimistic right after our jamming sessions.  Having said that, I have a good feel on this.

Categories
Snippet of My Life

Snippet Of My Life Episode 18 – It’s Business Time

My working place looks like this (taken using Nokia N96)

It is as though our tiny little island has been engulfed by a thick blanket of sleepiness, most I talk to are feeling kind of tired, myself included.  Maybe recession has taken a toll on our energy level, maybe Good Friday is so close yet so far.

“I’m paid as a writer,” all of a sudden I said to Cynthia this morning.  Last night, my very good old friend from Hong Kong suggested that I shall write a book.  Gosh!  And I was toying with the fantasy of making a living out of writing for the entire evening.  Then this morning it hits me, I am paid as a writer.  In the day time, I write business papers, I write business emails, I write business minutes, and if someone was to sell me a $1,000 titanium stylish business keyboard, I would buy one.  I can’t make a living without a keyboard.  And throw in a titanium stylish business mouse too, please.

Beautiful sun, this lunch time.  One lovely colleague – my good friend – invited me to join her.  So I did.  So I followed.  Asia Civilizations Museum we went.  “Why are we going there for lunch?” I asked.  She said there was a corporate talk on strategy.  Haven’t I told you?

Zzzz.

I nearly did, fall asleep, with my empty stomach.  Then came the punch line: It is when companies stray away from the strategy they meet failure.  If you chew onto this piece of wisdom, it makes sense.

Biodegradable plates, cups, and utensils using corn and yam?!  Who would have thought?  After the talk, food was served, and I marveled at the dull brown plate that I was holding.  I took a sniff, it didn’t smell like corn nor yam.  I chewed onto it, it felt like plastic.  Amazing.

The last time Coffee Bean increased the price of the muffins, I stopped ordering them.  This week, I realized that they have changed the menu and increased the price of the coffee.  Fine.  No more Coffee Bean coffee for me then.  I am very price sensitive.  When electricity price went up, I started the habit of powering down all appliances from the mains.  When transport price went up, I started the habit of walking instead of taking a train within the city radius.  When petrol price went up, I …

OK, I still drive.

These days I am curious on the number of days in advance notice you need to give to your boss when you want to take leave.  Back in my days of being a consultant, applying for leave was just a text message away.  I mean, life can be spontaneous right?  If I suddenly want to take leave and drive to Malacca for a dinner, on my birthday, I should be able to, right?  So I turned to my friend in a Spanish Class, asked just that.  He told me that in his shipping business, his leave is planned in a quarterly basis.  OK.  No working in the shipping business for me.

One evening, I had an interesting conversation with Cynthia, on why some people can have relatively good bosses throughout their career while some are quite the opposite.  She pondered for a moment and replied, “Maybe there is something God want that someone to learn [from the tough bosses] but he or she is still not getting it yet?”

If you chew onto this piece of wisdom, it too makes sense.

PS. I seldom write a back-to-back entry on the same series.  But I thought this and my previous one bring out the contrast between my work area and my sister’s.  And the photograph was taken using my Nokia N96 a while ago.

Categories
Snippet of My Life

Snippet Of My Life Episode 17- Duality of the Little Things I Observe

This is where my sister works at ...

This morning, I entered the lift, a limping man was in front of me; I was wondering if that is permanent.  This morning, I sat down at my work desk, greeted by a leave request that was pending for my approval.  My colleague in his late fifties came by, told me that his brother-in-law passed away last Sunday.  And he needed time off, it’s an emergency.  Certainly, everything OK?  It was a peaceful death, in a sleep, he told me.  One topic led to another, and he shared with me some of the last moments of his loved ones, in the past.  His eyes went moist.  It is always the last moments of everything that we are holding dear to, aren’t we?  Life is fragile, he said.  If we want to say that something to that someone [such as I love you], do so today, I concluded.

One ex-colleague of Cynthia has recently passed away, in his sleep.  Last weekend, she showed me his Facebook page, heartfelt messages pouring in from all corners of the world.  How Internet has changed the way we interact.  Years ago, one World of Warcraft online gamer passed away.  Her guild organized an online funeral, within the game.  Many players turned up, to mourn.  Another opposing fraction too turned up, crashed the funeral, and mass slaughtered the mourners, within the online game.  Some cried for compassion; some said it’s a game.  Some people are just, not nice.  Like that driver who tailgated me, on the highway, high-beamed me while I was at my speed limit, overtaking.  Having cars on my left I had nowhere to go.  I am not going to pick up a speeding ticket just because someone is inches away from my back.  No sir.

This morning, I rethought my priorities in life.  I seldom see my little sister, though we are now living in the same country.  So I picked up my phone, called if she was available for lunch.  I envy her work location (see photo above).  Such serenity, away from the city center.  It was a lovely drive, bright and sunny.  What do brothers and sisters usually talk about?  I don’t know.  I need more practice.  Of course we talked about her honeymoon at New Zealand and my upcoming trip to Spain; and we talked about our parents in Hong Kong.  Yes, they miss us a lot.  My mom would call my sister out-of-nowhere just for a chat.  Then she would immediately call me.  And my mind would wander off halfway through our conversation.  Some movies are thought provoking.  In “Gran Torino”, Clint Eastwood called his son out-of-nowhere, and his son was too busy to talk.  OK, that hits me.  It is time to reprioritize.  My mom told my sister that half a month feels like half a year in Hong Kong.

On my way back, the sky was dark.  A sudden downpour and I thought of the Formula One match during the weekend.  My head was stuffed, still is, and I missed the highway exit.  Life is fragile, time to reprioritize, say what’s in my heart out, today.  I was drenched in rain, even with my golf umbrella, as I walked from the car park to my office.

This afternoon, I returned to my office building, after a lovely lunch with my little sister.  In front of me, the same limping man, walking towards me. And I wondered, is that permanent?

Categories
Action & Thriller Movie Reviews

Gran Torino – Ah, So It’s A Car

Gran Torino

I am inspired.  If I do get to 78, I wish to have Clint Eastwood’s energy, passion, and creativity (and success too!).  It must have been quite a while since we’ve watched our last movie.  Life has been hectic lately.  When TK proposed to catch a movie this weekend, the Movie Review Squad unanimously picked “Gran Torino”.

Cynthia needed to take the car out to attend a social event; I needed to stay home to watch the F1 qualifying round; TK was kind enough to drop by and pick me up.  Lovely.  We watched Button as he yet again took the pole position for today’s match.  For those who get to appreciate the different aspects of the sport, it is more than go-karting (erm … that’s how Cynthia sees it), it is more than cars going round and round in circuits, and it is certainly more than waiting for the next accident or drama to occur.

“Gran Torino” is a dark movie.  A bitter old man (played by Clint Eastwood) – a war veteran – living alone in the neighborhood of Hmong Americans.  The film has explored many different concepts, from minority groups in American, mobs, violence, human relationship, to religion.  In fact, looking at one of the symbolic ending scenes, I would see religion as one of the key themes.

If “Gran Torino” is indeed a film that explores the meaning of life and death, I can certainly see the power of one’s death, and the life it brings forth.

OK, enough of thoughts for sharing.  F1 is starting 1n 10 minutes.  Go Brawn go!

Categories
Announcement

Sup, Man? – Of Bad Jokes, Nokia OVI, Earth Hour, Spanish, World of Warcraft, and My Band

Yep, those are my sleepy eyes ...

My original intend of this post is to pen down two quick and rather short announcements for my regular readers – you.  Then my mind wanders, as always.  And I think I do have this whole bag of mundane little insignificant what-I-have-been-up-to updates that I too wish to share.  Besides, if you are a regular, you must have a very high tolerance of a long wall of text, loving the pain of reading so many words from an Internet browser.  And I must not disappoint with just 2 bullet points.  Yes?  Si!

On Website Contents Sales: OK, part one of my previous post was meant to be an April Fool joke (and part two was a real life account of one that played onto me).  I do have people coming up to me concerned about my mental health.  Oh well.  I suck at making jokes, period.  To be clear, between you and me, I am not going to deliver the DVD or Blu-ray disc to you on April Fool’s day, next year.

On Nokia OVI: You all know how much I love to use Nokia OVI to jazz up my website.  They have rolled out a new version (codename Fishbowl?).  It’s very pretty.  In fact, if you are using Microsoft Internet Explorer, you can check out this particular post.  The not-so-good news is that this new Fishbowl has caused quite a disruption to all my previous (and future) posts as most of them are not working.  As of today, I have about 40 blog entries that use the old Nokia OVI slideshow flash player displaying close to 1,000 photos.  Redoing the entries and re-uploading the photos in reverse order (don’t ask) seems like a lot of work.  Let’s see which one of these events happens first: Nokia OVI gets fixed or an alternative comes out from nowhere.

On Earth Hour: Some are curious on what I did during the Earth Hour.  Yes, light was off, candlelight was out, and if it was a girl, I would name her … OK, jokes aside.  I was at home.  Everything was off except my refrigerator.  And time flew by so quickly that before I knew it, it was 9.30pm.  The stars were so beautiful.

On Spanish:  Yes, Cynthia and I are still going strong on learning Spanish.  Our teacher is stunningly attractive, vividly chatty.  At the end of the last lesson, she asked, “Have I been using enough Spanish during the class?”  To be honest, with her strong accent, I couldn’t tell if she was speaking Spanish or English.  Either way, I don’t understand.  Either way, she sounds lovely.

On Holiday: Paris or Barcelona?  We are still contemplating.  I know Paris inside out and the airfare is much cheaper.  Then again, we’ve learned Spanish so wouldn’t it good to try it out in real life?

On the Band: Ever since our public performance at The Heeren, everyone in our band seems to have run out of steam.  So, what’s up this year?  Apparently our band manager has sourced out an opportunity to perform inside a rather posh restaurant.  And because of this, we have an urgent band meeting this Easter to brainstorm on what we should be playing for this event.  I reckon song lyrics like “this raging heart, this fire in my soul, you hurt my preciousness I erase your face” probably won’t fly in a restaurant.  So I propose to rewrite my own lyrics to “this pounding heart, this fire in my pants, you are my preciousness I adore your face”.  What do you think?

On Gaming: Yes, once a gamer, always a gamer.  These days, Cynthia and I have spent more time inside the World of Warcraft than a Cathay Cineplex.  And I got Mark (or Darkspore) back into the game too, after his 2 years of hiatus.  All of a sudden, our guild is growing, ahead of the stock market recovery (I often think that gaming industry is recession-proof).  People ask if I feel bored playing the same game for years, since 2004.  Well, it is like a game of basketball or football, it’s more than just passing the balls around.

On Digital Jukebox: Besides going into dungeons and slaying dragons, much of my evenings and weekends I spend time on ripping my audio CDs into a lossless format (flac) and store them into my brand new network-attached storage device.  All thanks to Mat and TK and their irresistible temptation.  I am hopeless when it comes to technology and I am lost when it comes to audio formats.  TK introduced me to EAC (Exact Audio Copy) and as the name suggests, it is a pretty neat tool to create an exact copy from a CD.  But 15 minutes per CD?!  TK is a perfectionist.  I just want to get over and done with ripping my 800+ music albums.  I think I must have ripped more than 100 albums as of today, using Media Monkey (3 minutes per disc).  And the last piece of the jigsaw puzzle for the completion of my dream digital jukebox is on its way from US (time for me to tempt TK to spend $$).  I am excited.

On …

Categories
Diary

Ah Ha! Time for a Change / Mi Cara Muy Bonita ¡Si!

this is me ...

Yes, for many years, my friends have been telling me that I shall be making $$ from this website of mine.  For all I know, I could be sitting on a gold mine.  Right?  Imagine, I just need to spend an hour or two a day to blog, and $$ goes to my PayPal account 24×7.  ¡La vida loca!  Before I know it, I’d have enough $$ to travel to Spain every so often.  No need to monitor the airfare daily seeing the price for 2 swinging from the low 2k to the mid 3k and then back to the high 2k.  Shall I buy?  Shall I not buy?

So I am selling everything you see in here and more.  For $14.99 per year, you will get to keep my yearly blog entries on DVD delivered to your doorstep every year today.  For a very affordable lifetime membership fee of $1,499, you will get to own everything I write since 1996 recorded on Blu-ray format!  OK.  I’ll have to figure out how to set up a PayPal account.  Stay tuned.

My workplace has been going crazy.  Really.  No one knows if we will still have a job tomorrow.  So, whenever bosses call for a departmental meeting, people do get freaked out.  And my colleague was summoned – together with his three other colleagues – into his boss’s room, this morning.  I know his boss.  I’ve worked with his boss.  A pretty senior guy.  So, another department bites the dust?  And here was the announcement …

Apparently, as the story unfold, because the stock prices of companies in general have come down quite a bit, everything seems pretty affordable.  We have finally managed to buy a big entity somewhere in the Central Asia.  Cool thing!  And his boss is mobilizing the entire team including the boss himself to take on the integration work.  Of course, everyone in the room was excited, including my friend.  Then his boss dropped the bomb: the entire department is relocating this coming weekend.  “For how long?” I asked anxiously.  “2 years,” my friend answered.  “Where are you heading?”  “Kazakhstan.”

“Kazakhstan?!” I screamed, “Is that the country featured in that movie …”  “Borat,” my friend completed my sentence.

Wow … how would I feel if I was in his position?

We paused.  I didn’t know what to say.  Then he continued, “My boss burst into laughter and asked why everyone was so serious.”

OK.  His boss got him and he got me.  Happy April Fool’s Day!

Categories
I See I Write

TRUE BLOOD – Watch it at MAX – 09.04.2009 9pm

Our very own TRUE BLOOD poster!

I was inspired to make my own “True Blood” poster after receiving our very own framed mini-posters at the end of the HBO blogger event that look just like that.  Except, my mugshot is not appetizing.  And Cynthia had tilted her head a bit too much.  This evening, both of us were examining the original poster in detail and tried our best to replicate.  OK, one thing I’ve discovered about Cynthia: she doesn’t have bright red lipstick!  I thought all girls have those.  Apparently not so.  So, here is Cynthia, on a poster, made by me.

Starring Anna Paquin (Golden Globe winner) in this new HBO series created by Alan Ball (of “Six Feet Under”).  “Anna who?” I asked quietly during the event.  “Rogue, Rogue!  In X-Men!” answered Cynthia discreetly.  Honestly speaking, I can seldom remember actresses or actors’ names.  Till today, I still cannot spell the name of the dude who plays Neo in “The Matrix” (I bet my movie partner TK must be laughing when he reads this).

“True Blood” is truly mind blowing.  Not just the bizarre sex scenes, of course, but the concept.  A young woman with telepathy ability, vampires that feed on made-in-Japan synthetic blood (I think), humans that feed on vampire blood to gain that out-of-the-world-Viagra-like ability, humans and vampires coexist in one society, and much more.  Knowing HBO, “True Blood” is not one of those typical vampire series.  I think there must be a slice of our society they wish to portray.  That’s what I gathered after watching the super long trailer as well as the first episode during the event.  There are 12 episodes in total, so I was told (note: I wonder if some parts get censored here in Singapore).

The event was fun.  The barman at Ink Club Bar @ Fairmont Singapore has created a concoction called True Blood.  I took the virgin one (since I have not drank a single drop of alcohol for more than a year) while Cynthia took the authentic True Blood.  Maybe that’s why I didn’t get the intended Viagra-like effect …

… ahem … too much details.

According to the lovely communications team at HBO Asia, MAX (a.k.a. Cinemax) is more male-skewed because one study shows that we men are more loyal to TV channels.  That could be true, at least for me.  Man, I’d love to subscribe to MAX, for “True Blood”.  But what the study may not have showed is that although men love to stay loyal to the channels we love, women are the ones who control the cable subscription plan.  At least, that’s how our household works.  One day I returned home, Cynthia looked at me in her extraordinary tender eyes and she said, “I have reconfigured our cable subscription plan.”  “Uh-huh,” replied I, in my usual style.  “I have dropped [your] Channel V, streamlined our movie channels, and I have subscribed to [my] sport channels.”

Keeping my fingers crossed for my “True Blood” application form.  Meanwhile, below are some of the pictures we took during the event.  See if you can read that secret recipe of “True Blood”.  Results may vary.  Mix it at your own risk!

Related External Link: True Blood

Categories
Photography Travel Blog

My Early Photography Work on Fraser’s Hill

Our (day 1) hotel room at The Smokehouse

Of the few highlands in Malaysia, Fraser’s Hill holds a special place in our hearts.  It is tranquil, it is serene.  November 2008 seems so distant.  It was cloudy, rained most of the time.  The same month when 2008 Formula 1 reached its finale.  And this afternoon, I was glued to my TV watching the 1 hour qualifying rounds held in Melbourne.  Season opening for the 2009 Formula 1.

Back in last November, when F1 was still fresh in our mind, I was racing my 2 litre Honda car – within safety limit of course – through the winding wet road of Fraser’s Hill.  Heightened concentration on the road, for the more than 1 hour drive.  Why?  The final 8 kilometers road connection between the top of the hill and its nearest town is a one-way street.  Odd hours up, even hours down, and we were running late.  Lots of braking, acceleration, and overtaking.  One 4WD overtook me.  It must have made it to the gate in time.  We fell short for just a couple of minutes.  That’s life.  We did our best.  One too many slow moving vehicles that didn’t give way.  And that was one hour’s wait.  We drove somewhere else to kill time.

Back in last November, I was still trying to understand how dSLR works.  The results are less than impressive.  Pretty bad, I think.  Cynthia called for a re-shoot.  I agree.  Nevertheless I put together a little album for memory’s sake.  The Smokehouse is a lovely hotel.  We always go back to the same hotel.  A special thanks to Henry, Bala, Hanif, and Nural for giving us such a memorable stay at The Smokehouse.  Hope to see y’all again the next time we visit Fraser’s Hill.

Related Link: Extra photos in high resolution format (87 items)