OMG... the photos are taking soooooooo long to come out. I think none of these photographers blog so they dont have the urge to sort everything out fast to put it on social media. hahah. but kk was good enough to humor me with just ONE photo.

But this photo was without photoshop so my morning winkles and eyebags from 5 hours of sleep is showing. But netherless, I still love all photos of myself. Call it self love if you may. All i wished all photos with me inside are burned into a disk for me to relish over myself.

Me getting my hair done by yunwen. compliments to kk.

May all the photos hurry with great haste.

I think everyone else, esp Jinx is dying to see the photos

Funny how early in the morning and i've dropped Janelle, Mala and cc a msg on three separate issues. I was supposed to be on course and I literally spent the whole morning fixated on my iphone at the 6th row near the wall whatsapping away.

I was upset on one end, furious on the other, and laughing my socks off at the last one.

The funny one was the convo with cc, i spotted a certain person at the workshop i was at today and started whatsapping cc coz it brought back memories from a dinner we had two weeks ago. I was already grinning to myself when i spotted him. 3 rows front.

God, some people dont look the part and now that i have gained enlightened and see things better. And in a total different light.

I spend the whole morning whatsapping cc and there cc was on the other end talking to said person about shoes -_-



Smart enough that the speaker came to me during the tea break to ask what did i do. He was totally surprised that i did limnology before, as according to him, there are only 3 known persons in Singapore that specializes in limno research. 1 is him and the other two are in PUB. Almost wanted to ask him if Delf had a vacancy for me since PUB is not very interested in my after multi job applications there.

After lunch I was still half on whats app, half answering calls from LTA and half trying to do some doodle coz i was already very familiar with ups and downs of hydromorphology.

Part 2 of the gatecrash is out. It was damn freaking hard to cut this clip, coz everything is a long clip and so many things happened, so many bickering between the 兄弟姐妹. Too many people talking at the same time. So i took 3 hours of my time to cut here and there and most of the time was trying to get dialogue and the timing right.

I think there might be wrong Chinese characters in there, but who cares? not like this is being sent for competition. The clip is a little too long winded, but its ok i guess coz i got the gist of it, until my camera ran out of battery at the 辣, which was not caught on tape.

酸苦甜辣 is like the game with the most effort put in. Because Jinx had a long list of things that we could not do during gatecrash, we have played friendly and easy games so far. At least this managed to drag on for a little and really wasn't too easy.

Funny how the guys managed to do everything except the 甜. It was the sweet that killed them man.



I think I managed to do all the videos so fast because i have the super urge to blog it all out. Share the good stuff.  9 years of blogging dint fail me. I dont have a single decent quality photo coz i barely took my camera out. So have to resort to videos, which i thought was perfect for capturing all the funniest moments. Funny how photos dont fully capture that. Shall have videos at my own wedding (if i get married).

I think Im more excited to blog about it then jinx herself. Jinx ain't you glad I decided to be your videographer?

I think since videos and my handicam worked so well for the first, i think ill be carrying my trusted handicam around more often now, its small enough to fit anywhere and its lighter than my actual camera (LX3) by 40g. You guys now are obliged to talk to my handicam when its pointed at you.

Now I'm wondering how to juggle two cams at the same time. I still want my LX3 to shoot photos coz the color is good.


Cut all the left over clips into a video with way less effort. Just a simple video without dialogue ques and yet still entertaining. The first clip is done just for Janelle.



Too bad the jinx says the photographers will take one month to get back with the photos. I would have love to put them all up on blog.

Here is the next part of the videos that you have been waiting for. Its not as funny as the first one and super damn hard to edit coz the raw footage where long, there were too many people crapped out to have a clear line of sight, and it was also a little too dark in the stairway.

Plus i was too tired to listen out for the all the little conversations that was happening in the back. So probably missed out of all the funniest things. Short-cutted alot so people who weren't there would probably not understand anyway. It was hard to pick out quotes when there are too many people talking at the same time. Kept it about 5 mins a video to avoid hanging when uploading or converting. My mac is not that young lately, it cant keep up the speed.

I dont know why when i converted there were some text smaller, even though there are all the same size on the software. Weird.



I think I have enough footage to make one more video. Well... maybe I'll do it tonight. It takes me about 2 hours to sort 5 mins of video montage out.

3 hours with Janelle on skype. And we manage to dig up some old shit from way back in year one.

Remember this photo (below)? I managed to get the old files working again somehow. Some secret hidden video that we took years back when we looked so much younger and did things so much stupidier.

It really funny now that I have just watched it and relived the old days with just janelle.

Sorry. video cannot be aired. If it was then our reputation will die. If interested look for me and ill show you.

from facebook. an old screen shot for an old video

Janelle said that I must carry her secrets to my grave. I told her I'll need a bigger grave.

I just realized that my recording video settings on the handicam is not set in HD. So its a tad bit of lower quality and it got much worse after uploading up to youtube. I think even if we dint put on make up we could still look so drop dead pretty with pix-elated faces.

Should have double check the settings. too bad moments like these are not captured in high definition. Even the photos taken from the cam here abit off. Lucky got official photographer.

Jinx: hurry up collect photos from photographers (all 3). We want to see

Stupid video took me 2 hours to cut in the morning and put together and another 3 hours to convert and upload onto youtube. Spent so much time waiting and the quality still like freaking shit. wasted half a day.



There are some very funny and amazing moments. And some of the weirdest comments. 姐妹s are damn funny. I do wonder if stupid things like these happen at the 兄弟 side at QY house before he came over.

Isnt watching a video like this so much more fun and entertaining than seeing photos uploaded? more up soon. if i have the time to edit

Its amazing when half of hall turns up for your wedding and a good bunch of them are the 兄弟姐妹. I've got to say XDJM has good rapport through and through, conversations vary from the whatduh* to the absolutely-wanna-punch-your-face-and-roll-eye. Amazing bunch of people.

I had fun over yesterday and the week before during rehearsals, its amazing how all XDJM are equally full of rubbish.

It has been a long day yesterday with 4.30am morning alarm to 5.30am preperations, 7am gatecrash, 9am guys house, 10am girls house, 11.30am pasir ris park, 1pm home, 2pm work, 6am wedding dinner prep, 8pm wedding dinner and 11pm toast to XDJM.

Some people have the energy to facebook and I'll i did was crash into bed without even taking a shower.

Woke up this morning at 7am (cant seem to sleep anymore coz its my usual wake up time) when on Facebook and saw photos uploaded.

Seriously this is one of the cutest photos ever. There is another one that was used in the gatecrash montage which was even cuter.

compliments to KK

Its funny how everyone easily fell into pose in a minute. It reminded me of how Shireen and me were back in NZ days.

Ok. Sorting out my photos and videos right now. I have too many things on camera that it might take a few post to get everything up.

It was raining the whole morning and the rain got worse during lunch time and we were all stranded in the office. We were about to dapao Macs when none of us could take having one more meal of burgers so we sucked it up and ransacked the office cupboards for the huge box on poncho we had in store.

It comes into perfect use in times like these. Just roll up your pants, change into sandels and then you can take that 15 mins walk from the office in the heavy rain to the nearest coffee shop. Who cares when every one you walk past must be thinking - 'in this time and age still got people use raincoat' much less of yellow disposable raincoat on a Tuesday afternoon.

I love it that we are all so enthu when it comes to rubbish like these. Team bonding and chemistry. It reminded me of last months branch meeting where the theme is yellow. I think this month's branch meeting is checkered shirts as theme. LOVES IT.

I did these in 1 hour. Dont they look pretty? Dont think they really suit my personality. A little to bright, but i still think they are so pretty. Good enough job to look salon perfect. And I did them at home while watching weeds on Sunday morning.

Might do purple version for Jinx's wedding

We had a little pre-wedding rehearsal yesterday afternoon at novotel. First time as Jie Mei and the wedding is going to be a bomb. It a little kinda like hall all over again with the minute by minute, check lists, logistics lists, dance rehearsals and other arty farty rubbish and ideas we all have to pull together.

Everything is going to hit on this coming Saturday.

After the rehearsal, yw, pear, KelChoo and i headed off for dinner. In all attempt to avoid fish head curry at home (not a fan of fish head), I happily agreed for dinner. We made a 15 mins walk down Robertson quay for the well mused cafe/pub place called Merry Men.

I really love the walk down the river. Its relaxing and holds perfect solitude for me if I want to head off for alone time, hang around by the river and have a huge arse beer. Too bad this place I too damn far away from MRT and totally inaccessible by bus.


It was a row of old warehouses painted in a quint grayish black bkacdrop with orangery shutters. I love that shade of black on walls. Almost the same shade I have on my toes.

Jillian, lets hang around this area more often, harrys dont seem to cut it anymore. Only problem is the rare accessibility by public transport form Bishan. Can consider next time when we are not too lazy.


A little table for 4 outside. Seriously perfect place by the river for an emo pint of (not very cheap) beer. I would totally do me, myself and my sketch book here sometime.


By Yw's recommendation for dinning at the place. One of the highlights ordered were some tiny beef cheese patty burgers and truffle fries. I dint think the burgers were fantastic, but those truffle fries are to die for. First time in my life I am totally willing to have them without my favorite ketchup.

And that long platter of mushroom thingy was yummy.


We took turns on the cigarette. Me, Kelchoo and even Pear took a turn on this little huffy puffy toy. Water vapor cigarette with menthol toy thing that YunWen whipped out from her bag. Kelchoo wants one just for fun so that he can hang out and network with people.


I bumped into Jiemin and Auntie Katherine on the way to the bus stop. I spotted JieMin from the corner of my eye and then called out to auntie Katherine. I think I haven't seen any of the family for years and Auntie Katherine could not recognize me at all till I said I was "P's daughter".

Both Jiemin and JieWei (not there), grew up with me doing many many years of speech and drama classes and exams when I was still i primary school and totally eloquent and dramatic. Those were really childhood times.

I was looking through some of the video under 'my favourites' in youtube account. Found some old commercials. I love good commercials and short films. I think I have shared some of these before. But oh well. you can see them all again.



















Now to head off to work. Saturday and I'm working from 9 till 7

My head has been hurting for 2 days now. 2 whole afternoons. Throbbing in my frontal lobe. Yesterday it was bad but I still managed to sit in the office to clear the heap of work till the end of the day.

Today I spent the whole morning till 3pm stuck on my emails without lunch or a break (coz the rest of office pangseh me coz they where heading out in the afternoon). Then towards 2pm, my eyes could barely see the screen at the document i was collating as my vision blurred white. When I stood up, I felt like I was swaying.

Abit like still drunk but with a hang over.

Headed straight for the doctors in at 3.30pm to catch him before he leaves for the afternoon. He asked a whole lot of questions and told me that its 'non specific'. I was like 'huh?' Then he explained that it is hard to diagnose where a headache come from. Rather than 'non specific' it was 'non localized'.

Then he had a eureka moment and told me to start wearing my glasses when I go to work and read emails. Apparently, I've been spending too much time on the computer getting all my emails read and replied that its straining my eyes and my brain.

For a moment i wished he gave me a one week stay at home rest order.

I think I better go get my eyes check again, and mayb make myself a new pair of glasses.

One of the best things about this trip is that I was able to do some sketching. We did a little sight seeing at the grand palace just to kill an afternoon of time. I love it when I have all the time in the world to be left alone with my little sketch book and a tiny little corner where there are little human traffic.

I can only do this when I get time to myself, away from others. Its not very comforting to have eyes peeking over your shoulders, since i'm not pro. On this trip, I managed to get an hour and half away form Ron and his mom. 

I realized how much i love keeping a travel sketch journal when I am on holidays. It really slows down the pace of the hustle bustle of moving around and gives me a little time to seep in the atmosphere of the place.

There is something photos cannot capture, which is the mood of the place. And somehow each strock of my 0.4 pilot G-tec can give me a reminder of the feel of the place. Each image is deeply enblocked into memory because you spent that 30mins just sitting there on the steps or bench and trying to focus on each tiny detail.

Spend 30 mins sitting at on the steps at the back of the temple. Brought my trusted travel watercolor set out this trip and managed to do some paint work. This is the first time I'm doing paint work outdoors. usually I do my sketching on site and add color when i am back in the hotel.

Sketch of the Phra Siratana Chadi, the beautiful golden structure.

A lot of detailing and proportions where left out of this sketch. I only did this in 20 minutes and did a crappy job of the detailing. But then again, as a whole with arrows and colors, it really doesnt look too bad.

there are 6 of these in various colors. was rushed with time so dint do much on detailing.

Buddhist procedure of showering with holy water before entering the temple of the emerald Buddha or Wat Phra Kaeo.

did this standing up in front of the temple doors

If you look at the other post on the grand palace, you can totally see the rain clouds. We had to seek shelter from passing showers. So while waiting, I did a 10 mins sketch of the shelter we were sitting in. Or rather, the shelter next to the one we were sitting in.

one of the marble tiled shelters. it was raining and was stuck under on of it so just sat there and sketched.

I cant wait to make a long trip out next year. I love travel journaling, maybe I should take a short lone trip out somewhere like Taiwan or Japan or Paris or Shanghai. These are places where there are plenty to be immersed in paper.

Although we dint really intended to go sight seeing, we decided just to head over to the grand palace  just for one afternoon to kill some time. I've always thought that i have been here to the grand palace some very long time ago, but honestly, I barely remember how this place looked at all, just as if I have never been there.

Our trip here to Bangkok is practically at the end of the monsoon season, so out of the 4 days we were there, it was raining 3 of them. Not super heavy all the time, but to a little inconvenience when we are not in shopping centers.

As usual for all temple places in Thailand, we had to adhere to the dress code. The typical no shorts, no leggings and no 3/4s. And i have nothing in my suitcase but shorts and 3/4s. So we had to borrow a set of wrap skirt for 200 Bhat at the tourist information.

The lady at the counter gave me a soft yellow and blue wrap skirt. And it surprisingly suited my yellow shirt. It was so soft and I actually loved the print.

my borrowed skirt

Tickets into the palace was a steering 350 Bhat ($14), i thought that was expensive for a Thailand, but then again, its practically about that price for admission tickets to most tourist place all over the world. The taxi driver was telling Ron that he could possibly pass for a Thai and get free entry to the palace.

Photos taken weren't pretty coz the sky was over casted and the light was coming the wrong way. So no pretty pictures. Too bad coz these are practically the few pictures I took the entire trip to Bangkok.

front of the temple of the Emerald Buddha

The whole place is covered with gold, each corner of the palace was glistening in what was left of the sunshine from an overcast sky.

Me and my little black notebook (well you cant really see my notebook)

Each corner of the temple or Wat Phra Kaew had beautiful tiny details. Small chunks of gold cladded works and statues and tiny pieces that make up a whole wall.

tiny detailing of the palace grounds.

I sneaked a photo in the temple. We are not allowed to take photos inside, but they were doing restoration work inside and I thought it was interested. They were replacing the worn out shell designs on one of the doors. Each piece is sawed and cut by hand and each patch of design had a good 10 to 20 smaller pieces to be crafted out.

There were even repainting some of the paintings on the walls.

2 worker hand crafting tiny pieces to restore the faded door.

me and ron

us and our borrowed skirts.

They had those guards too.


We headed out for a short walk to the river pier. We dint really know where it was, so we asked the taxi driver if he could bring us there, and he dint want to charge by meter and asked for 100 Bhat. I thought that was crazy. We decided to take a short walk instead and ended up at a small eating market in front of the pier in 10 mins.

Then it poured like crazy and we rushed to hail a cab in the horrid rain. Ron and I were all drenched from head to toe despite having an umbrella.

During the cab ride back to the hotel, we stopped at one of the longest traffic light. I think the wait was something like 7 bearably long minutes per flash of less than a minute of green light. and we were in that little section of traffic for the longest time. still in half cold wet clothes.

Nope, it doesn't belong to me. Our new addition to the Macintosh family at home belongs to my mom. She won it over the weekend at her company's annual family day lucky draw. 3rd price in fact. I think 3rd price is the best anyone in my family has ever gotten for such lucky draws.

She has been wanting to buy one for the longest time so just that she can watch her '爱' reruns on xinmsn and listen to her 鄧麗君.

Yes. This is my mom’s latest toy. Just arrived today and apparently it’s my job to set it up for her. She claims she doesnt know how. She won it as 3rd price of her company’s family day lucky draw.

My mom came back happily and asked me to set it up for her. I accidentally registered it to my current apple account upon plugging it in to my macbook pro and now I dont know how to unregister to another account. My mom doesn't have an account to begin with so i guess it might be fine using my account for registration and another account for her apps and syncing of music.

I just accidentally registered the iPad with my account. Now I am clueless about multiple computer syncing and multiple apple accounts. Crap. If the iPad was mine it would have made everything from syncing to registering so much easier.

Honestly, I have never really thought iPad was useful to me.  I have a fancy Macbook Pro and an iPhone. Both devices are enough for portability (iPhone) and a functional laptop (Macbook Pro). Plus I dont know why she wanted an iPad2 to watch xinmsn, coz it probably wont work coz xinmsn runs on flash.

Of late, I haven't been watching any Korean dramas. Instead, I've been watching on Youtube the whole series on Extraordinary People Documentaries from the UK. When I was in the Loughborough 2 years back, I watched the current season (then) of extraordinary people which was shown on BBC.

Its one of the most amazing documentary series. It can be very inspiring and utter amazing how all these people lived. You should all watch it when you have the time. Some of the episodes are really mind goggling. There are really some very unique people all over the world.

I was just watching 'The fastest man on no legs'. I was thinking to myself the whole episode that Oscar Pistorius is one damn hot guy. He and his brother have good genes. Haha.

For the last two days, I have been trying out using tumblr. I saw Elizabeth's website (which runs from tumblr) a couple of days ago and I thought the layout was beautiful. It is perfect substitute to twitter and nonsense facebook updates. Everything pulled into one single site and its layout changes everything I add a post.

So I'm trying out my site as a test to see how long into the rest of year I'll be using it. For the lack of a name, I called it bits of paperweights just because I have nothing else at the top of my mind.

comments? Dontcha think the weblayout is nice

The way things are posted from the MacOS application, iphone app or website is pretty idiot proof, even so far more idiot proof and easier to use comparing to blogger.

I even tried importing my 7 years of blogger archives onto tumblr, only to see that its a major failure coz nothing is imported by date, which means everything is random, all the way back from 2003. The resulted in a pain of looking for my posts and i totally lost all my tags too. So i canceled that and decided that blogger is still going to be the main.

And one of the setback of using tumblr as a blogging tool is that i cant do multiple pictures into a single post (or at least i havent figured that out yet).

Tumblr allows multiple users to post. I think it really would be nice if more than one person posted on the website. anyone interested?

I was in Kie's car a couple of days ago and in the usual Bangkok jam. Then I realized that the word 'jam' has like super multiple meanings.

Jam:

1. 'Bangkok many many jam' - cars on road lined up for long long time (aka congestion)
2. 'Jam the door' - block 
3. 'Jam on bread' - preserved fruit thingy
4. 'Lets go jamming' - playing instruments in a sound proof room with your buddies
5. 'Jam the break' - stop car forcefully
6. 'He jammed the ball' - dunked
7. 'I jammed my finger' - bruised
8. 'Jammed my suitcase with things bought from bangkok' - filled

Jam is also a county in Iran and the title of Micheal Jackson song. And the short form of Jamaica on sports teeshirts.

Touched down 2 hours ago and I'm straight to blogging. You guys should award me for a speedy entry.

4 days 3 nights in Bangkok was spent with my camera in my bag the whole time. I really dont think my camera really has seen much light of Thailand this trip around. Too lazy to whip it out, and most of the time i actually forgotten i brought one. It was practically 500 g of deadweight in my bag.

The aim for the last 4 days were pure shopping and a simple city getaway from Singapore and also a small trip to celebrate Ron's birthday (although we really barely did any celebrating).

So sorry guys. Not much photos to share.
Maybe enough for another post.

We stayed at Baiyoke hotel right in the center of Bangkok. Its like the tallest hotel in Bangkok, and its really quite a view from the top everyday at breakfast, but honestly, I really dont think I'll really stay there again coz the hotel was so tall we had to go through 2 whole sets of lifts just to get to the room on the 25th floor. and 2 sets of lift to get to breakfast on the 78th floor.

But the room was huge, tv was decent and there were loads of things to do right down stairs. Winding streets of night shopping and a whole street of night street food.

view from the 78th floor on day 3 morning breakfast at hotel.

I really dont think I really hit my target for shopping this trip. Many of the clothes were a little too girly and too chiffony for my liking, much less talk about too small. Free size really isnt free size, since a size 10 like me can barely fit into anything thai sized. Think I only spent like about $250 on shopping.

Bulk of the buys where only like 4 pairs of cheepo flats and like 8 or 9 pieces of tops. Really abit sad. Next time I can probably make a trip here with the girls or Ron and do solid shopping.

If you have the time, do watch this. Its a pretty amazing documentary on the shark finning industry done by the Gordon Ramsay production people. Its amazing when you see the scale of it.

Finning = keeping the fins and throwing the carcas. Just because the body is not worth it. That is 95% of the shark wasted for 5%.



So what is worse? the Chinese shark fin industry, the Japanese whaling industry or the European Foire Gras industry?

Its a gadget feeding word right now. Everyone has broadband at home, everyone has a mobile phone and everyone has a laptop or personal computer. Everything now runs of electricity. You can surf the get easily almost everywhere in the world. Even my mom wants an ipad 2 just for fun.

Well, I was down at Suntec on Thursday evening for the IT fair just because I happen to be around there. It was 5.30pm before the office crowd came and the damn place was already shoulder to shoulder filled with staff and crowd.

I had a few things on my list of to-buys

• DLSR - just for fun coz recently I've been hooked to the office camera and want my own. I have been thinking of buying one for the longest time (maybe more than a year). Was looking at a mid range one with a 18-105 lens. Only problem is the damn weight, what is the point of that when you are on holiday?
• Handicam - They are lighter than the LSR, and can take HD movies. I can video edit and keep movie files of things that goes on with my life. But then again, do i really need a handicam when their photo quality is almost crap. Its always easier to put photos on this blog compared to a video.
• 1TB external hard drive - my current 500 MB is running out of space. And 1TB is really cheap, only $130 max.
• 8 GB thumb - heard they are going for $12 at Comex. But i recently got one for work so i dont really need it.
• PS3 Games - year after year there is always this store at the corner of Comex that sells games at reduced prices. Tempted to buy Guitar Hero, little big planet and GTA.

After walking I think I was pretty pissed with the crowd that i left after a short walk. Dint even see everything there. Decided not to buy anything on the list because Im already broke and technically I dont really need any of the above.  Maybe I should go down on Sunday when they decide to clear stuff at hopefully lower prices.

We cant resist cheap prices.