:: JR's Blog ::

happy birthday Herge!

2007-05-24T00:38:00.000+08:00

Happy birthday to Tintin's 'daddy'! Herge, the cartoonist who created THE thing i grew up on would've just turned 100 if he were alive, and let's celebrate this wonderful cartoonist's greatest achievement!

First seen in a French newspaper in 1929, the Belgian cartoonist's reporter hero and his wonderful companion Snowy brought humour into more sensitive political topics like the Soviet situation back then and through some imagination tranformed them into wonderful adventure stories suitable for children and adults alike. 23 comic books were released in total and yes, I've read them over and over and over again. By the way I've got the 75th Anniversary DVDs for the whole series! WOO HOO!!

Anyway, plans for making Tintin into a movie has finally gone underway and at least 3 Tintin adventures will be brought to the big screen by Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson. According to reports real people will actually not be used in the film to stay true to the Tintin characters' appearances. However it will still be made to be as realistic as possible. Can't wait to see that!Also, to commemorate 100 years since Herge's birth, a Herge museum will be built in Brussels Belgium, which is his birth place. Happy birthday Herge!

botak!

2007-05-01T08:30:00.000+08:00

For your information the following few entries should still all be backdated ones because I haven't updated this site for a long time...

Anyway! I finally got to see what the big deal Botak Jones was about. Turns out it wasn't that great a deal. Was at the Clementi outlet like a month ago for dinner, and boy the whole coffeeshop's business practically belong to them.

I forgot to take a picture of the ordering queue which was just outside the coffeeshop, but what I can tell you is that there are people perpetually queueing for the whole hour odd I was there. It takes roughly 10 mins to get your order in.

So the food arrives in another 20 mins and abit, and our Fish & Chips, which was supposed to be their 'signature' and the Double Botak Burger, which was in essence 2 pieces of bread, some veggie and 2 huge chunks of beef patties, were up.

First up for scrutiny, the Fish & Chips. Actually not fantastic, but as far as frozen dory goes it's fresh enough, as in the flesh is still white compared to some frozen fish where it starts to grey. All in all it was just an above average dish, but I love the tartar sauce!

Probably had some pepper or something inside, I thought it tasted really good with the fries, which I liked too. $6

Next up, Double Botak Burger! With 2 150 grams of beef patties, I thought I could've conquered this without breaking a sweat, but I was wrong.

It might be due to the fact that the meat wasn't soft enough or it got cold or I was just abit picky, but I don't think it was the last reason. Somehow it was difficult to finish all the meat. It got pretty dry as the dish cooled down, which wasn't exactly piping hot when it arrived. The beef feels like eating 2 chunks out of a meat loaf, which is supposed to be almost a meal in itself. But the first half of it was satisfying, so you could probably go for the single patty version. $9.50 for burger with fries, $1 extra for cheese.

year 1 ends

2007-04-26T22:27:00.000+08:00

So year 1 sort of ends for me while I walked out of the exam hall today afternoon. Why sort of? Because I freaking fell sick! And missed Physics 2. Which effectively means i da bao-ed it Again. Damn it.

Ok to hell with that, what I need to say is I realized what good friends there are around me. Thank you for putting up with my whining and half dead face and everything else. So thank you CK, GR, Darren, Huiyun, Britney! Whoever said that friends in uni were only on the surface? :)

Anyway to everyone whose exams have ended or ending soon by now, remember to say your prayers so you miraculously get a 5.0GPA and have yourselves a smashing time working and having fun for the 3 coming months! WOO HOO!!

it's gadget time!

2007-03-08T10:03:00.000+08:00

The IT show is back at Suntec City from today till Sunday, noon to 9pm!

I haven't been to the show yet of course because it's an hour before it actually starts, but let's look what good deals and nice stuff some companies have released to the press so far!

Notebooks
Lenovo N100 $1469
Great value entry level Vista notebook, with Core Duo processor, 80GB HDD and 1GB RAM.

Packard Bell BU45 $1998
Touted as the most affordable 12.1" laptop in the market, it's hardly the most eye catching. But if you don't need much style or the tablet form factor, this one gives you similar power to the HP tx1000 with $300 savings.

Asus A8Jr $2098
Headline specs include Core 2 Duo processor, new ATI Radeon X2300 graphics, 1.5GB RAM after free upgrade and freebies that include a tv tuner and Altec Lansing speakers. Effectively makes all their other models look ridiculously overpriced.

HP Pavilion tx1000 series $2298
Specs wise it's like a Pavilion dv2000 but in a tablet form and a 12.1" screen. Processing power comes from AMD Turion 64x2 instead of Intel's Core 2 Duo though. Comes with Vista Home Premium and a free 6 cell battery pack.

LCD Monitors & LCD TVs
Samsung 940NW $299
Viewsonic VA1912wb $299
BenQ FP92W $299
Hanns.G HW191 $299
19" widescreens, all but the Samsung model supports DVI input.

Akira 32" LCD TV $899
It's HD ready and based in Singapore!

Printers
Dell 926 AIO $99
HP F380 $99
Epson Stylus CX2900 $98
Brother DCP115C $88
Print, scan, copy. All for under $100. Dell should work out to be the most expensive overall because of the lack of third party compatible ink.

Samsung ML1610 $99
The cheapest mono laser printer out there, and yours truly bought one at the last show too. No duplex printing mind you, and printing on both sides is a pain in the ass. But it is so affordable, well built and quick.

Digital Cameras
Ricoh Caplio R5 $599
If I'm not wrong, the cheapest 7x optical zoom compact camera currently on sale.

Casio Exilim Z70 $399 (trade in any old digicam)
Save $100, and bag a rather stylish 7.2 megapixel slim shooter with 3x zoom. Casio's anti shake is rather useless, but it does feature in this model.

Fujifilm Finepix A610 $199 (student offer)
6.3 megapixels, 3x optical zoom, fully auto point and shoot. Accepts both xD and SD cards! Seriously anyone who uses xD cards on this camera is plain stupid or has too much money to spare.

Pentax Optio M20 $199
7 megapixels, 3x zoom, 2.5" screen. But I think the Finepix is a better choice as a digicam despite looking a tad hideous.

Portable media players
Creative Zen Vision M (3oGB) $399
Creative Zen Vision W (30GB) $499
Creative Zen V Plus (8GB) $299
Local, competitive with the best products in its class (Vision models) and well priced!

Archos 404 (30GB) $399
Wider and longer but slimmer than a Zen Vision M, its 3.5" screen makes it more a full media player competitor for the Vision W but without the widescreen display. Definitely worth checking out.

Others
Windows Vista Home Premium Upgrade / Office 2007 Home & Student Edition
$99
Limited copies!

Anyway look out for the Sony PS3 local launch ($799), Sony Cybershot T100 (the first in the series to have 5x optical zoom), Sony Vaio L Series laptop-desktop hybrid, Panasonic's 103" mammoth TV and Canon IXUS 70/75 that now comes in 2 colour options.

I seriously hope iriver and Cowon are there too. Desperate to play with their new players. Have fun at the show!

the day the skies opened

2007-03-04T16:44:00.000+08:00

Ok, the title is not totally true, because just 2 of the 3 pictures were taken on a rainy day, and they were taken on different rainy days. Get what I'm saying? Anyway, let's move on.

The heavens seriously wept and wailed on my last day at Al Dente, but unfortunately it was before operations so there was no 'ooh where on earth can we put our customers?' frantic show. The flood was worse than what the picture shows cos you could've covered your whole shoe in the water.

Lai ang ah! Yesterday saw a huge sea of red in the auditorium building as we were packing goodie bags for the openhouse coming Saturday. What you see here is probably 60-70% of the bags we packed (my camera couldn't fit everything in its frame). So thousands of people, you better come, cos packing these bags for you was a sucky job.

Finally as I always say, go to the expression board at the canteens to get your daily laughs. Winner of this issue's pick of the board: 7-9! A good jab at the 7-11 here that opens till 9pm on weekdays and closes during weekends, you win for yourself exposure in my blog! So congratulations to whoever you are.

红包拿来！

2007-02-21T12:21:00.000+08:00

各位好久不见了 ! 最近比较懒惰，所以没有在网站上增添新的内容。情人节本来打了一小段东西，可是因为没有上载照片在电脑里所以也没发表了。既然情人节也过了整整一个星期，那则应该可以删除了吧。

好，废话不多说，赶快进入正题! 大家因该在想，我这次怎么用华语啊？当然是因为现在是农历新年咯！先祝大家新年快乐吧！接着祝身体健康，学业进步，风调雨顺，国泰民安，年年有余，心想事成，万事如意，恭喜发财，风和日丽！哈哈哈！（请找出不恰当的贺词。哈哈！）

今年是猪年，就在这里也祝肖猪者的运气可以特别好！考试拿满分，买马票中头奖，下雨走路不要跌倒！哈哈哈！

到头来还是说了一大堆废话。咳！没关系，总之猪年大家旺旺旺！！

guess my favourite colour!

2007-02-10T12:12:00.000+08:00

In case you haven't noticed, I like to walk through carparks A and B when getting to tutorial rooms or lecture theatres and stop at the expression boards when going to canteen A or B because there's always something interesting (meaning funny, ridiculous or plain odd) to see.

This week's find is this white Mercedes C Class. Look a little closer and you'll find that it's not just the body of the car that's white, the rims are white (instead of metallic shade of silver) the seats are covered in white slip-ons (instead of the original fabric or leather) and there's a pair of white Dior shades sitting atop the dashboard. Talk about favourite colours. I don't think there's anyone who so clearly has a favourite colour.

Overly in love with white the owner may be, but think how easy it'd be to get him/her a birthday present! Just any crap that's white in colour will do.

Oh and another point, making a car That monochromatic clearly shows the difference between taste and money. HA!

what's the hype?

2007-02-04T20:53:00.000+08:00

Wow what's the newest queuing sensation in town, you say? You want to check out what everyone is queuing for too?

Wow what's the newest queuing sensation in town, you say? You want to check out what everyone is queuing for too? It's Donut Factory! People have had to queue upwards of an hour to get a donut so don't be surprised if the line takes double that time to reach you when the fad is in full blast. I mean, who buys just 1 donut when they've waited for more than an hour right? Anyway according to a relatively accurate source, it ain't worth that much of your time. Or maybe you'd like to check it out for yourself at Raffles City B1. Odd sounding flavours include wasabi cheese and kaya white chocolate. Of course there're some absolutely yummy sounding ones like apple cinammon, double chocolate and peanut butter glazed too. $10-$11 for a box of 12.

I'm sure by now alot of people already know the existence of St. James PowerStation at Habourfront by now. The old literal power station has been turned into a multi-themed nightspot which has been attracting attention from lots of party-goers. The launch of The Cannery at Clarke Quay did not seem to have bothered St James much, well probably because people have had enough of going to Clarke Quay every weekend night. Maybe the cool stone facade of the PowerStation has some draws too.

Whatever it is, like the Cannery, you pay one fee and gain entry to all its 9 bars, so there's no chance of not finding the type of music you want for a great night out.

i pierced my ear!

2007-02-01T21:43:00.000+08:00

As title says, I pierced my ear! And I just realized how much of a wuss I am coz I'm afraid of infections and everything! Haha.. WOO!!

nothing fascinating

2007-02-01T00:15:00.000+08:00

Nothing major has been happening so there hasn't been interesting posts, maybe I'll just do an update.

So GR came over to my house last weekend saying he wanted to do something special this birthday. Instead of him being treated nicely, he wanted to do something nice for his friends instead. Hence this white chocolate-almond cookie! Ok it's not super duper nice but it's pretty good for a first timer. Er GR, I still have a feeling you're reminding us your birthday is coming. HAHA!

Then I had some problem with my contact lenses and had to survive through the weekend with my NS glasses. Darn they were hideous! I walk into the store room of my workplace, my colleague walks in and exclaims 'Hey Harry Potter!' That was like.. Ok never mind. Anyhow I got over a day with sucky gel and sucky specs at work. Oh, and I walked around Orchard the next day dressed like that too. Luckily I didn't bump into anyone.

My weird sleeping habits (disorder?) is back again. I sleep at 1am+, wake up at 730, and feel like sleeping the next few hours during lectures. I come back to hall at 230pm, slack for awhile, and nap till 6. Gosh. Maybe I shall sign up for Guinness Records for the most number of hours slept in one sitting.

welcome to my $500000 mousehole

2007-01-25T02:04:00.000+08:00

Gotten off Yahoo's website.

This stunningly expensive apartment shows how reasonably priced properties in Singapore are. Welcome to London's Knightsbridge neighbourhood, where this 77sq ft former storage room (or roughly 1/15 of my 3 room flat) goes on sale for the equivalent of over S$510000! Yes, this mousehole which is narrow enough to have a person stretch his arms to his sides and touch the walls was sold for over half a million bucks.

Why so expensive? Because the apartment (or space, or hole) is within walking distance of Harrods and Hyde Park. So the psf price of S$6700 of this space without electricity is good value compared to recent sales in the area which hit $9000 psf. That's 10 times the price of a luxurious district 10,11 condominium in Singapore! And yes, London is home to the most expensive properties in the world.

la moda espanola

2007-01-24T17:01:00.000+08:00

I'm most probably going for a semester of Spanish lessons once I'm cleared for electives again, so let me start the Spanish culture learning going with their fashion brands! Believe it or not, there're more big Spanish fashion brands sold in Singapore than you thought.

Zara, Camper shoes, Massimo Dutti formal wear, Springfield, Pull And Bear casual wear, Mango MNG ladies' fave, women'secret lingerie, designer label Balenciaga and Punto Blanco men's innerwear are all from Spain! A little surprised? Now you know not all apparel brands come from the US, France or Italy.

week in pictures

2007-01-21T23:25:00.000+08:00

We spotted this cute little convertible in the North Spine carpark! Nope it doesn't belong to Darren.

So we all try to think of new fund-raising events, but SMRT's idea is pushing it a little. Pay $5 (if you're a student) or $10 (for organisations) each and you get to squeeze with numerous other people in a train, bus or cab for a transport sardine record! Good if you're squeezing with Christy Chung or Brad Pitt lookalikes but less so if the one right next to you is a sweaty middle-aged uncle!

Laundry disaster! Some may already know I caught a flu, so before throwing my berms into the wash I removed the piece of tissue paper in my right pocket. What I very unfortunately forgotten was there were 3 full packets of them in the left pocket. Results as shown. Advice? Always always ALWAYS check the pockets before throwing your clothes into the laundry.

picture time

2007-01-15T18:17:00.000+08:00

Create mini fireworks of your own! Ingredients: charcoal, fire starter, barbeque pit, and a strong hand fanning the growing fire. Cool eh?

I love pun! And if you haven't realized, they were trying to nick Nike's tagline. This photo was taken last week so if you look at the promo period it's high time they took it down too!

My aunt bought this cute little cup of "snack noodles" from Hong Kong! There's a Hello Kitty sticker inside (which i already threw away) and the dried fish cakes are shaped like little Kitty heads!

That's all for now. I shall consider whether to post a picture of Huiyun eating with no image in the next post. HAHA!!

do you care?

2007-01-11T22:35:00.000+08:00

Many a times one feels that your boyfriend/girlfriend/best friend doesn't do enough. They never seem to call you enough, never seem to ask you about your day as much as you'd have liked them to, doesn't ask you out as often as you want to see them and never appear to be springing any surprises. We therefore conclude that actually they don't really care that much after all. But is that true? Do they not give a damn or are they just poorer at expressing themselves?

Some people only take action when bigger cracks begin to show. Or when some other events take place that causes separation. Like a break-up threat. Like a long term overseas posting or education. Like when your other half stop bugging and expecting some stuff to come from you. Then when the orange light lights up or just a second before the red one lights up, they suddenly show that they might still care. The common conclusion is therefore this person only treasures something when it is on the verge of being lost. Or maybe not. Maybe these people just have too much pride, or simply have no idea what to do before. So just before D-day, they'll try triply hard to say how much they really care.

Sadly sometimes it becomes a case of too little, too late. But at least if you've chosen to let go, you at least understood and know you've always been loved, except it was not always shown.

welcome, 2007

2007-01-09T15:48:00.000+08:00

The first week of 2007 has already passed, which means a brand new year has started for everyone. Dreams of white Christmases and hordes of people pushing and shoving you to get a better view of the New Year's Eve fireworks have just ended. So of course it's a time for everyone to have brand new hopes and resolutions for the 365 days ahead.

I would like to:
be healthier,
get fitter,
dramatically improve this semester's lackluster GPA,
make some friends in hall,
learn Spanish,
be happy everyday,
and hope the same for everyone else.
*Beams* Ain't I a nice person?

I would not like to:
see Britney Spears without panties again when she's looking her current state,
fail physics again,
squash a snail unknowingly,
spoil my Puma bag or any of my gadgets,
be unable to buy everything I want during the HK trip cos I don't have enough cash,
listen to another Jessica Simpson song,
and hope the same for everyone else.
Again, ain't I nice?

Speaking of being a nice person, I just remembered what GR said today. He's nothing but a nice person. I think I am too. No special talents or whatever. But hey at least we're nice! So we rock!

Ok, end of my side tracking, if 2006 was sucky for you, let's hope '07 will be better! Good luck!

more than 5 senses?

2006-12-29T11:16:00.000+08:00

This 6th sense talk has been going on forever and I'm inclined to believe humans may have a sort of 6th sense. One that I call 'consciousness in sleep'. Have you ever woke up like a few minutes before the alarm clock is supposed to go off? Or have you fell asleep in the bus then suddenly woke up to realize you're pulling into your stop? Because I have. And it's strange because you're not supposed to be able to see the time or where the bus is going when you're asleep. But I have to say it's not Always accurate because I do have times when I wake up a stop after mine. Or a couple of times way past my stop. Whatever the case, I'd like to think we do indeed have some sort of a 6th sense. A consciousness of our surroundings.

tech style awards 2006

2006-12-25T17:43:00.000+08:00

It's time to honour the best and best designs in the gadget world!

Mobilephone of the Year
Sony Ericsson K800i

All bow to the phone of the year! It looks pretty good, has everything you'd ever need in a mobile unless you're a power-exec, and it doesn't even cost much now! $198 with 2 year contract at M1. The only downside is its ubiquity and thickness. However as with the K750i, the masses got it right. 3 megapixels, 3G, Bluetooth, M2 card expansion slot, 262k colours 240x320 pixels display.

MP3 Player of the Year
iriver Clix

Applause for MP3 player of the year! The Clix is actually a pumped up U10 launched last year. Check out the phyiscally buttonless interface (you press the sides to control it), the design, the display to device size ratio and sound quality and be blown away! 2 downs: the price is still a tad steep and the max memory size is 2GB for now.

Digicam of the Year
Canon Ixus 850 IS

Sorry Fujifilm, great as the F30 and F31d are, they look too plain. Like there can be a better compact point and shoot. This time it comes with 7 megapixels, 4x zoom, and optical image stabilizer. If only they could squeeze all it's internals into the tiny perfectly angular (and gorgeous) Ixus 60 body. Not very cheap at over $700 though.

Notebook of the Year
Apple Macbook

Mac fans will rejoice at this choice for notebook of the year, but now with Boot Camp, PC users get to enjoy it too! It's thin, looks great, is good value for the specs and Windows compatible! Apple design is no longer mutually exclusive with 'cheap' and 'compatibility'. Don't bother getting the black version, cos it's a $200 paint job even after you spec up the white one.

Significant Others
Samsung Ultra Edition 6.9 (X820)

This product has been featured here before, and makes this year end list simply because it's the slimmest phone in the world. It's a little longer and wider than a regular candybar, but packs enough features for a midrange phone. Another 1.5mm thickness gets you the Z370, a 3G-fied and microSD slot-ted version of the X820.

Motorola KRZR K1

Ok, I know I wasn't particularly impressed with the KRZR except the tv ad when it just came out. I eat my words. It's officially the most attractive clamshell phone of 2006. Packing whatever the V3i has with a better camera, it's girth goes down from size 6 to size 0. Still a fingerprint magnet and quite overpriced though.

LG Chocolate (KG800)

Gorgeous phones can be rubbish to use, and here's proof. Ok, it's not that bad, it's just that the touch sensitive controls are not the best solution on a mobile phone. Other than that it satisfy users who want something stylish and low-ish specced. Was way overpriced at launch, the asking price is more sane now.

Nokia 8800 Sirocco

My biasness towards Nokia didn't stop me from gawking at the 8800 Sirocco. I don't exactly know why people want platinum and diamonds in their phone cos this is pretty damn luxurious enough. At $1300 it's not cheap, but then you can't expect it to be when it's crafted out of stainless steel and scratch proof glass for the display. Now comes with a 2 megapixel camera.

Sony Ericsson M600i

No way another smartphone could be the award winner for style this year, heck, did you even realize it doesnt have conventional navigation buttons? The jog dial is back! Although it'll be much easier to navigate if the usual buttons were included too. All it lacks is wifi and a version with the K750i's camera. Include those and I'll buy one tomorrow.

Motorola W220

Nobody should sacrifice every ounce of street cred he had come enlistment and Motorola knows just that. Here's a bare bones phone that looks great. FM radio is a good extra feature, and it costs around $150 without a contract. Sweet! Also available in silver/black combination.

Sony NW-S203F

It's here for introducing an innovative form factor: the light saber. It's expensive and only has a one line display, but it's unique. Sound quality is expected to be above average, as is battery life, without a power sapping colour display.

Samsung Yepp Z5F

iPod nano is beaten! This thing looks cool with all it's sharp edges, sounds good, is about the same size, has a bigger screen, asks for similar amount of dollars, and at least sounds as good. Throw in FM and line-in recording too, and it'll surely make you think twice about getting the default nano.

iPod 6th Gen

Fending off iriver e10 (with its too low capacity) and the locally unavailable Toshiba Gigabeat S, the iPod reigns again in the hard disk memory media player category. Thinner than ever before and now costing just $428 for 30GB and $598 for 80GB, the case for getting iPod has hardly been stronger since it's introduction.

Creative Zen Vision: W

Best PMP, beating Archos 604 on price and Maxian T600 on aftersales support. Check out that display and you'll know what I'm saying. Supports a truckload of formats, easy to operate, and well priced against the competition too. It even looks classy! Not something Creative does everyday, mind you.

Samsung NV7 OPS

As you know I love retro-ish designs ala Leica, so it's no surprise this one makes the list. The NV7 also brings a new user interface for digicams with controls lined up against the display. Also comes with 7x optical zoom, full manual mode and optical image stabilization. Some encouragement for the first line of Samsung digicams with passable picture quality!

Kodak Easyshare V610

Sorry Panasonic, you're beaten as far as the slimmest 10x optical zoom digicam is concerned. This is done through a unique dual lens system, which provides ultra wide angle zoom. It looks good (rare for a Kodak) and doesn't cost that much to boot. Nice achievement from the totally forgotten Kodak.

Sony Vaio SZ Series

Thin, light, feature packed and looking darn sleek, one can't ask for much more from a single product. It's got the Fujitsu S Series well and truly beaten, so will 8Flags please sell this instead of the Fujitsu in school please! If you have $2999 to $3999, get this machine. All models feature dedicated graphics. Close to perfect if not for the price.

Sony Vaio TX Series

Fujitsu's Q2010 may be the lightest notebook if you discount the UMPCs, but again Sony trounces the Fujitsu rival. For the road warrior, the ULV processor gives a long battery life, has a built in DVD-RW drive and external media controls which the Fujitsu doesn't have. Oh, did I mention it turns heads too? At $3500, only deep pockets need apply.

Compaq Presario V3000 Series

I felt inclined to include the V3000 in this list. Because like Jolin Tsai, it's the most successful transformation in it's market. Look at one to know what I'm talking about. The downside is its thicker than usual chassis. Available in many configurations, from AMD to Intel processors.

Nintendo Wii

The underdog wins console of the year! Why so? The Xbox and especially the PS3 are simply too advanced for their own good. This thing looks fantastic, costs the right money and does its primary job just fine. Throw in standard DVD movies playback and HDMI support and it'd be the ideal gaming console.

ASUS PW201 LCD

Yes, a LCD made it here. Look at it and drool first. Done? Ok, it's a 20-inch widescreen, has a built in webcam, adjusts positions in more ways than Madonna after yoga, has various inputs on the LCD itself to connect direct to your game console for example and has touch sensitive controls. You may now drool again.

watch me grow!

2006-12-24T02:03:00.000+08:00

Hi! I'm 21! YAY!

interesting news

2006-12-23T11:27:00.000+08:00

The Asian Games ended a week ago, but it's sure not over. Controversy surrounds practically any major sporting event, and Doha contributes by having a he-she medal winner! Woot! He-she's news definitely trounced the couple of dead athletes at the Games.

does indeed look like a man, doesn't 'she'?
What's the deal then? Santhi Soundarajan won a silver medal in the women's 800m race, but after the Games ended Indian Olympics Association chief announced that 'she' was actually a 'he'. After tests were conducted, he-she was stripped of the silver medal. So the heroine becomes a laughing stock. Double embarrassment, because as a 'he', Santhi still didn't manage to clinch the gold medal. Hmm.

Anyway gender tests, unlike drug tests, are not compulsory for competitors, and the last time a competitor's gender was in question was like 20 years ago. So there.

the best on tv

2006-12-21T23:39:00.000+08:00

I'm guessing most people will not disagree with me when I say Desperate Housewives and Grey's Anatomy are among the best shows on TV today. If you don't agree, watching these 2 episodes may change your mind. And also, if you didn't sniff up a teeny bit at all after watching these 2 episodes, you might wanna check if you're dead inside.

Desperate Housewives Season 3, Episode 7: Bang
A hopping mad wife holds shoppers hostage in the supermarket because her husband cheated on her. One of the Housewives was inside.

Grey's Anatomy Season 2, Episode 6: Into You Like A Train
Painful decisions to be made as the hospital goes through a long night saving casualties from a major train accident in the city.

Watch them! I guarantee you wouldn't waste that hour and a half.

listen to these!

2006-12-20T00:39:00.000+08:00

2006 is ending! Let's do a review! Starting with music!

I couldn't get enough of these 20 songs this year!

1. Ciara feat. Chamillionaire - Get Up
2. Justin Timberlake - SexyBack
3. Jamelia - Beware Of The Dog
4. KT Tunstall - Suddenly I See
5. Keyshia Cole - Love
6. Scissor Sisters - I Don't Feel Like Dancin'
7. Beyonce - Irreplaceable
8. Justin Timberlake - What Goes Around Comes Around
9. Snow Patrol - Chasing Cars
10. Natasha Bedingfield - Unwritten
11. Mary J Blige - Be Without You
12. 范逸臣 - Love Story
13. 范逸臣 - 醉青楼
14. 梁静茹 - 亲亲
15. 周杰伦 - 退后
16. SHE - 触电
17. 曹格 - Superwoman
18. FIR - 天天夜夜
19. 王力宏 - Kiss Goodbye
20. 范玮琪 - 一个像夏天一个像秋天

Listen to them if you haven't! WOOT!

the blog ain't dead

2006-12-17T00:21:00.000+08:00

Visit this small shop that sells fantastic muffins and chicken pie at Sunshine Plaza (near Paradiz Centre)! Can't remember the name of the shop but it's on level 1 beside Parklane Fried Wanton Mee shop! Try the banana walnut muffin and chicken pie! Everything is made on the day itself and each batch isn't very big so it's always fresh!

People in NTU do not only post classified ads on our notice boards and imall, they also paste it on the back windown of their car. Hyundai Santa Fe anyone?

Children look away now, I present to you the ugliest face of the year, the front of this Ssangyong i-dunno-what-name! The equally ugly Rodius from the same company and designed by former head of the automotive design course at the Royal College of Art in London, can be seen bashing on our roads as the largest taxis.

Lastly for lovers of the traditional motorcycle ice cream, come to Bugis! Er, it's near the Kwan In temple/ OG building and all the motorcycle ice cream is at 50cents for the cone or cup and 80 for the biscuit or bread! Rocks!!

Oh by the way, I didn't know but freaking Samsung didn't give me the USB cable for the laser printer. A look at the manual says the USB cable may not be available in packages of some countries. Since when did people stop packaging essential accessories with things that they sell?

i duno how to title this

2006-11-16T18:25:00.000+08:00

If there were people who actually came here regularly to check if I update my blog, my apologies for not having updated it for like 2 weeks.
But if you thought I didn't update it 'cos I was busy mugging, you're wrong. Yes, I met friends to study sometimes. But I waste 90% of the time away. Staring at my laptop for no good reason, staring blankly at my notes, chit chatting away, or just plain daydreaming.

I DON'T WANT TO STUDY.
but i don't know what to do then

I DON'T WANT TO STUDY ENGINEERING.
my a levels sucked so much that i don't exactly have an option

I DON'T WANT TO STUDY ENGINEERING COS THERE'S MATH AND PHYSICS AND COMPUTING.
probably im just plain lazy to practise or just plain stupid

It's awfully disappointing. To just stare at some math questions and be completely clueless on how to solve it. Same for physics and computing.
This is bloody frustrating. I don't feel like I can pull off my last minute thing any further.

I HATE TO STUDY.

I HATE TO STUDY ENGINEERING.

I HATE TO STUDY ENGINEERING COS I SCREWED UP THE 'A's MYSELF AND ENDED UP WITH NO OPTION.

I want to give up.
But I can't.

Fuck.

best mp3 players in the world

2006-11-01T12:48:00.000+08:00

(I think)

Anyway, check these two players out if you're sick of the defacto iPod which doesn't actually perform fantastically and the Zen Vision:M which performs great but is just too bulky to be cool.

Toshiba Gigabeat S Available in 30GB (white) or 60GB (black)

The main thing about the Gigabeat S is that it runs on an interface much like Microsoft XP Media Center Edition, because it Is designed by Microsoft. Beautifully crafted, 2.4" 240x320 pixels colour screen supporting 65k colours, more playable video formats, FM radio, and even freaking smaller than the iPod (bar depth)!! All reviews have incidentally commented that it sounds great too. Battery life ain't too good though, it's rated similar to iPod levels.
I want this thing! But I'll need (1)a US friend who'll help me buy it from Amazon.com or HiDefLifestyle.com then send it over to me to save shipping charges and (2)pray hard that it doesn't screw up till I decide to change a player. It's bloody not officially available in Singapore. But check out the price! If you're not tempted by a US$250 (S$450) 60GB player that's smaller and better than the iPod, I don't know what will.

iRiver Clix Available in 2GB only

This gorgeous thing swots the nano right out of the ballcourt! Cool interface if you've checked out the recent (also fantastic) e10, and it includes FM, video playback on a 2.2" 240x320 pixels screen and of course sounds great. Which means it's everything the nano is unable to offer. Navigation is done by pressing the edges of the player (as in the frame). 20 hour audio playback battery life! Unfortunately though small it's not exactly wafer-thin.
Have I mentioned this thing is uber cool yet? Looks like ailing iRiver is producing the best small-capacity players on the market now, so keep it alive! This is available in Singapore, although I'm not sure of the price. Don't expect it to cost less than a nano though, iRivers aren't the cheapest players around.
the black unit is a 4GB version of the Clix is already announced by iRiver, but release details are as yet unknown

One more contender reaching soon.. Microsoft Zune! 3 inch colour display. Woo. Looks great. Double Woo. But somehow I think we shouldn't hold our breaths too much for it, 'cos there might be a big minus somewhere. Nobody creates a perfect gadget anyway.

deal of the week!

2006-10-31T11:53:00.000+08:00

Alot of you probably already know since the promo started like half a month ago, but for the benefit of the rest of you, Creative's website is selling the 1st generation Zen Neeon 6GB @ $149! Available in red, purple and grey.

Of course you can already tell from the picture that you can't view photos or play videos in this, but it does have FM radio, line-in recording and a voice recorder.

Creative's constant iPod-poking was present at the Zen Neeon product site.
Life's never black or white - why should your player be any different?
Presumably attacking the previous generation nano. Maybe they should change it to life's more than just 5 colours, since the Neeon was produced in 10 colours.

one week update

2006-10-30T18:52:00.000+08:00

It's my first time to Vivocity since it opened! If I'm not wrong it's developers are touting it as a refreshing shopping experience, and in some ways that is true. For starters the new Sentosa Rail thingy that replaces the monorail will have a stop in Vivocity.
There are shops that you don't get to see in every other mall, like the not quite fully stocked up Candy Empire,

Pull and Bear, and the shockingly expensive GAP (check out their bags to know what I mean). There's also some oddly named and very cheena looking restaurant cum lounge slash bar. Interesting.
Vivocity's designers must've taken a page off the California style board walks coz you'll find wooden plank lined walkways by the break water. Oh, incidentally the Pacific Coffee on the 2nd level along the board walk looks pretty nicely decor-ed too.
Finally there are those er.. friendly helpers who assist you should you get lost in the big new mall.

Much like a higher class version of the Carrefour bladers, they move around in Segway Human Transporters which costs like US$4k. Yea, just so you won't get lost in the mall. Uh, you might also think the 2 of them are so cheerful that it borders on the creepy. Haha..
Anyhow, I've got to say that I wasn't entirely thrilled by Vivocity. Maybe I haven't got to see all the shops yet, or maybe very soon the hype will die down and more people will agree with me that it's just an exercise of trying quite hard to be different.

We've got Little India, Little Thailand, etc. Now there's a little Malaysia! Go to Boon Lay Place and you'll know. Stepping into the complex is like any other er.. complex in JB for instance. Without the need for a passport! It's a nice old neighbourhood actually and you won't believe you'll find a super crowded hawker centre in such an ulu (to most people) place.
Many many handphone shops, many travel agencies like the ones you find in Chinatown, some old provision shops and even a shop that still sells LDs (or the ginormous predecessor of the VCD/DVD)! Go look for the overhead bridge and I swear the last time you saw one like that was in the '80s. It's still a warm feeling kampung place! Nice~

bet you've never seen cakes sold in slabs like this confectionery shop @ boon lay place does

Finally I show you our gross students. This picture was taken at er.. 1am at canteen A. Uni students! Thinking there are maids in the canteen! Super embarrassing. Again, like the pee-ers-who-don't-put-the-toilet-seat-up people.. Shame on you!

more on hari raya

2006-10-26T15:32:00.000+08:00

Neoprints we took during my break time! This machine kinda sucked. The one with BX and SX at Far East was nicer!

HAHA! I love the last one. I Luuurrrrvvvveee spastic pictures as much as nice ones. WOO!!

First visit to New York New York after that! Food is typical, well at least it didnt taste bad. The pasta sauce was creamy enough for my liking, the roasted mushroom cuppacino is taste like watered down Marche cream of mushroom (which I love!) with froth on top. Prices are typical for the NYDC/Cartel class. Nice decor, I like wide and open places! And of course the cabin seats attract attention too. Uniform of the staff was gross though. HAHA!

menu fun!

i only realized it was candy floss all around my plate after i sat down at the table and looked at it. my water had candy floss mixed inside while i was in the toilet too

bubbye tcc!

2006-10-25T22:30:00.000+08:00

Yesterday was my last day at TCC! In memory of my 5 months there.

my name tag.. see? still in perfect condition

last day working, and yet moving so quickly that the camera sees me as a blur! woo!

goodbye to some colleagues

and my last customers sx and hy! who by the way refused to pass me the bill

and the door closes for me and tcc cineleisure

WOO thank you everybody in TCC CNL! It was nice! From the time I refused to be transferred from Peranakan Place till now, gotta say I had quite a blast!

Mass R(IP) Transit

2006-10-19T12:12:00.000+08:00

You should have guessed from the 3 pictures above. Yes, someone was killed again after being hit by an MRT. Chinese Garden was the site of the unfortunate incident this time round. According to sources, police are still investigating that matter.

Seems like the MRT track has been the choice site for suicide and murder or anything in between nowadays. Killing yourself or other people is well.. frowned upon. But it happens. What is annoying is when people create accidents on the MRT track. Potential murderers and suicide attempt-ers, please realize that everytime someone dies on the track it affects thousands of people. People get nervous as to why the train stopped suddenly in the middle of nowhere, they run late for appointments and SMRT has to arranged buses to ferry people between affected stations. All because you wanted to kill yourself or someone else. It's stupid!

So please find other places to kill. Unless you're trying to show SMRT the importance of screen doors even in above ground stations. Ha!

Disclaimer: This entry does not encourage the public to commit suicide or kill other individuals regardless of location.

i love bad english

2006-10-18T21:40:00.000+08:00

Yes, I love to complain about ridiculous English. And today Great Eastern has given me something to laugh about! Ok, the mistakes I picked out aren't all. There are others like the missing hyphen in All-Women Run, but I think all of you see my point. Whoever typed this: atrocious English!

People should get people who at least don't make basic grammatical errors to type stuff that's linked to their own corporate website. This really doesn't reflect terribly well on the organization.

Anyway, I love NTU tutorial rooms. They're now open 24 hours to provide students an air conditioned revision place! Rocks. And if you want to practise your presentations, you can set up everything in here too! Uber cool. Ok, I'm back to my work. Woo!

wc woes

2006-10-17T00:04:00.000+08:00

Don't call me sick for posting this picture but I was kinda surprised at how much stains this person got in the toilet bowl.

Haha! And there was this joke thing on the cubicle wall that says that poopie that leaves alot of skidmarks are those u get on the morning you wake up from alot of alcohol! Wonder if that's true.

Anyway talking about toilet bowls, I just can't understand why people cannot lift up the toilet seat when they pee in it. The guys here are like supposedly highly educated Undergrads and at least 20 years old, but they don't have any sense of social conscience! You know how to put down the toilet seat when you shit, but when it's time to pee you can't lift the seat up. Shame! So to those people, why not shit without putting down the toilet seat next time?

running rocks

2006-10-03T23:48:00.000+08:00

Woot! Running rocks. If the NTU website is to be trusted, I just ran 5km! But I doubt it was that long. Cos bus B route is supposed to be according to the site is already 3.5km. I don't believe! But whatever it is, damn shiok la! Makes me awake and gives me good mood! WOOT!
Why should I be so high when it's just a run? Well for starters it's been dog ages since I last ran 5km. Plus the fact that I attempted to push myself abit. Okok not going to kid you, I've never participated in any long distance runs or whatever. Aiya, I'm just happy that I didn't give up and blah blah blah.. It's good to have a goal and achieve it.

Good day! Next step, try as hard to do my tutorials. That will be the real challenge. Heh.
And I shall stop penguin-clapping.

cheaters, or honest dudes?

2006-10-01T00:54:00.000+08:00

Was flipping through Straits Times today morning and there was an article on some poll conducted by some University on its students. The survey asks if they've cheated before.

And the survey results were: Business students were the biggest cheaterbugs, followed closely by Engineering undergrads. Both had over 50% of them admitting to have cheated before. The 'saintly' ones were the Arts and Social Sciences students, figure being 30 odd %.

Well you may think, yea, business and engineering students suck cos so many of them cheat, but then again, why wouldn't you say we're honest and admitted to have cheated?

Oh yea, you should probably know I'm an honest engineering student. :)

something new

2006-09-30T10:14:00.000+08:00

The medical term for picking one's nose is rhinotillexis and eating the boogers is called mucophagy.

still alive

2006-09-29T00:22:00.000+08:00

OK I'M STILL ALIVE!

2 months plus of fitting into the Uni, well I wouldn't say I'm fully primed for whatever uni can hurl at me, but at least I've made some nice friends and all. E GROUP ROX! WOO HOO~ Yea this stands although it feels like I'm going back to 18 years old. So now the way I look and how I behave are both at 18. No wonder no one believes I'm turning 21 in a few months.

Alright, since everyone knows I'm still alive, I'll end here. But before that let's count down my 3 ugliest pictures caught on film over the FOC! (Yea, again I know it's chronically late but at least it's something different, not like showing you just the nice ones you'd probably have seen a thousand times) Laugh to your hearts' content!

#3 : Daniel talking to Mr Creepy

yea, i think i was trying to make a cute-ish face. and no, i ain't no child molestor

#2 : My crooked teeth in all its GLORY!

could be a tough fight between this and #1, but saved by my nice-ish clothes and miss uoc

#1 : Mouth spasm

i was talking to huiyun and got this snapped! shit. it's damn gross. but yea, i found it funny too. u may laugh

Will update again soon!
#1 :

botanic gardens

2006-07-12T23:50:00.000+08:00

No idea when was the last time I went to the Botanic Gardens, but I did today. The most obvious entrance at the Napier Rd-Cluny Rd junction is not up yet. Anyway I was a little disappointed by the variety of flowers in the Gardens. Obviously I thought it be full of colours, but it isn't, and you have to pay to get into the Orchid Garden.

Anyway here are some of the pictures.

taken at the tree lined Holland Rd just outside the Gardens too. it doesn't really show anything i know, i just wanted the blue sky backdrop.

these 2 must've been the proudest moments of today. check out that bee in the one with the red flower!

the swan lake had a grand total of 3 swans.

watch out! incoming swan straight ahead.

look closely on the right side of the picture and u see a hand feeding the swans with bread. swan: gimme my bread!

swan: ah.. there it is.

then i spotted this odd star shaped plant. anyone care to venture a name for it?

and there's this 5-petal flower that grows out like ixoras.

wonders of science: dispersion of light! (did i use the right term?)

i thought people who need wheelchairs already have one. who's going to loan one?

so now you've seen the rule, please follow eh? do not be a nuisance in the Gardens. hah. and well, u can actually bring your other pets to poo all over the place.

this shall be the parting shot. the heliconia.

new releases this week

2006-07-08T13:35:00.000+08:00

Ok, sorry for yet another mobile phone entry, but these are 3 pretty widely anticipated models for now.

Sony Ericsson K610i

This is one of the smallest and lightest 3G phones to date. Compared to the K600i, the camera is now upgraded to 2 megapixels and a M2 Memory Stick Micro slot is now included. Cons: FM radio is dropped, M2 card format is new and will be very expensive, and the 2 megapixel camera is not the same one found in K750i/W800i. There is no autofocus. Launch price: $498 with 2 year contract at all telcos, also $498 without. Expect the with contract price to drop very soon.

Samsung X820

First in Samsung's Ultra Edition super slim phones arrives. The world's slimmest phone packs an average 2 megapixel camera, bluetooth and part fibreglass body. Note though that the orientation of the display is, like the P300 'calculator phone', landscape. Launch price: $498 with 2 year contract, $538 without. Surprisingly low, considering the extremely aggresive launch price of the P300.

Samsung E900C

Samsung's riposte to LG's Chocolate may not look at good, but if you're looking for something that's got the admittedly slightly gimmicky touch sensitive controls, this is the answer. You get a much sharper screen, 2 megapixel camera with flash, and a MicroSD card slot. $598 with 2 year contract, $638 without.

ditch that N80

2006-07-06T12:29:00.000+08:00

As you have known I'm not too much of a Nokia-phile, as much as I'm impressed with all the features crammed into the N70 and N80 and the superbly functional 6131 (which I think is the forgotten star of the current range). Anyway, for 2 more days still, you have a perfectly good reason to not consider an N80.

I hear boo-boos from people already. True, the Dell Axim x51v doesn't have a GSM radio or a built-in camera. But as far as being 'smart', being a excellent mobile entertainment device with built-in wi-fi, this is what you should own. Why, aren't there many PDAs that come equipped with wi-fi (which is all the hoo-ha about the N80, by the way) you say? Because it costs only $439 on Dell's online store promotion. I can't even describe how fantastic the value is. 624MHz processor, Windows Mobile 5.0 OS, 3.7" VGA resolution display. Beat that power, Nokia.

So if you want a mobile surfing and entertaining digital organizer and a top notch mobile phone in your palm, do yourself a favour and get the Dell Axim X51v and Sony Ericsson K750i. They're without a doubt the best-value and most functional mobile devices in the market right now. Sorry, Nokia, but credit for making a valiant attempt at an all-in-one convergent device.

*Note: Since the posting of this entry, I've realized that Nokia's E61 has already arrived in Singapore. 2.8" TFT screen displaying 16 million colours, Symbian S60, QWERTY keyboard, no camera, $668 without contract. Excellent value too.

macbook

2006-07-06T11:51:00.000+08:00

By now most of us would've probably heard of Apple's switch to Intel processors and that they've replaced the iBook and Powerbook with the new MacBook and MacBook Pro models. However you should also know that the new MacBook actually is pretty good value, as long as you're not looking for a gaming machine.

A visit to the online Apple Store lists the most usefully specced model at $2112.60. Basic rundown of what it has:
2GHz Core Duo processor (with 1.66 or 1.83GHz being more common at this price level)
13.3" widescreen display
2x256MB DDR2 SDRAM
60GB SATA hard disk
SuperDrive (which in Apple talk is a DVD writer)
built in iSight webcam
brilliant iLife software
remote control and FrontRow software (much like a non-OS version of Windows Media Center)
bluetooth
and unfortunately, just 2 USB ports

So pretty much sufficient for someone who doesn't require a graphics card. Perfect schooling and entertainment non-professional laptop. An upgrade to 1GB RAM (2x512MB) and 80GB hard drive brings the price to $2346.75. Download BootCamp and you can run your Windows programmes immediately too! Asus' lighter 14" A8 is the most closely matched competitor, which gets you a dedicated graphics card but a slower processor and slightly less style at $2298.

Admittedly good value and stylish as it is, there was always a 'but' with Apple products. This time round it's the plastics that get discoloured within a month of usage. And all you iPod users should know how it feels when your beloved with gadget gets its first scratch.

This is what I got from the CNET website, and apparently it does look pretty bad and it's not an isolated case. This discolouration apparently happens to the commonly touch areas like the touchpad button and wrist rest area. Looks like the colour they used on the plastic isn't of a high grade. Also, I've been saying I don't quite like the feel of the keyboard. So think twice before rushing out to buy this thing. And please do not plonk for the black version 'cos you're paying over $200 more for the black paint.

superman returns

2006-06-30T02:25:00.000+08:00

Yes, I've caught Superman Returns. Despite the underwhelming trailers (bar the bullet-doesn't-penetrate-his-eyeball-part), it was a watchable movie as a whole. It is the superhero movie with more heart than most. And of course alot of people will comment on the hotness of Superman.

So watch it if you're remotely interested in the movie at all, cos it's enjoyable enough. Do watch out for Superboy.

blur cock

2006-06-29T00:37:00.000+08:00

Yesterday morning i woke up and found the flourescent light in my room wouldn't light up. As in the corners lit up abit but most of the tube didn't. After another couple of failed attempts to illuminate my room by turning it off and on again, I decided it was time to change the light. I came back from breakfast, it still didn't work, so I turned on the table lamp instead. After awhile it was nap time, so I concussed for an hour plus.

Wakey, it was time to prepare for my hunt-a-present afternoon. As anybody who knows me will be aware by now, I somehow like to rush abit when preparing to go out; even when I wasn't supposed to meet anyone. Haha.. Don't ask me why, think I'm just too used to trying to reach 10mins after the arranged time. Anyway, I was walking in and out of my room to shower, put on contact lenses, drink half a cup of water (my little quirk everytime I'm preparing), wax my hair.

'Eh? Fixed your lamp already?' aunt said.
'Nope, I have to ask get a new fluorescent tube' said I.
'Huh?'
Impatiently, 'No more extra tubes at home, I gotta go to the DIY store to get one before I can change it what.'
'Buy what? Look at your room. There is light!'
'EH?! OOhhhh.....'

Yes, that was how blur and out of the situation I was and can be. Amidst my rushing, I never realized the light was turned on all the time when I was preparing. Kept thinking I had to get a new fluorescent tube to replace it later. How embarrassing!

And for everyone else, it also shows how naturally some things happen that we often don't realize those things have always been there. And people become unappreciative of what they have, treating every good thing as a given to them.
Also, it doesn't mean things aren't happening just because you aren't aware.

Let's all wake up our ideas. :)

workaholic in charge

2006-06-22T01:45:00.000+08:00

Yes, sorry for not bitching about anything for the past 2 weeks. It's just that the workaholic in me is taking charge this season. And yes, I see shocked faces. Junrong a workaholic? I can be one.

Anyway, just one thing to say. Coffee Club serves tap water now!!! *applause*

a touch of love

2006-06-07T11:05:00.000+08:00

A career-minded woman who needs a life of her own with her husband and her own ideals rises to the occasion to take care of her mother-in-law who's just been diagnosed with Alzheimer's.

A maid who is paid a paltry several hundred dollars to keep the house in proper condition in addition to to taking care of the wheelchair bound granny even when they're totally unrelated.

They didn't even feel like it was a strong obligation for them to do it. Because if they did, they wouldn't have looked as happy as they were doing it.

The power of love is great. And at times you just don't realize how much love you're showing, or how much love is given to you.

laptops at PC show

2006-06-02T13:38:00.000+08:00

The PC Show at Suntec wasn't fabulous, but for all the university students to-be, if you don't want to get a Fujitsu or Acer or iBook from school, check these out. I've only put down the better deals of the more mainstream 14" models, which is a good compromise between size, price and performance.

For those who want their laptops to be built like a brick

HP Compaq nx6320, $2399 (fully black chassis)
Core Duo T2400 processor (1.83GHz)
XP Pro
15" XGA screen
512MB RAM
80GB HDD
DVD burner
Fingerprint sensor
Bluetooth, multi format card reader
Expresscard slot
2.6kg
1 year warranty
* add $99 for mouse, keyboard, docking station and notebook stand. add a further $99 to extend warranty to 3 years (local carry in)
Note: The closest you can get to the tough looks of the ThinkPad if you don't have that much cash to spend

For those who want to train their shoulder muscles

Acer Travelmate 4152, $1698 (typical Acer silver)
Pentium M 740 1.73GHz processor
XP Home
512MB RAM + 512MB additional free
80GB HDD
15" XGA screen
nVidia GeForce Go 6200 128MB VRAM dedicated graphics
DVD burner
Bluetooth, multi format card reader
Expresscard slot
built-in 0.35 megapixel webcam
2.84kg
1 year warranty
Note: The price is so low for a model with dedicated graphics because this model has recently been discontinued

For those who are design whores

Sony Vaio FJ67, $1999 (yes the price is right but the specs are low) (fully white chassis and keyboard)
Pentium M 750 1.86GHz processor
XP Pro
512MB RAM + 512MB additional free
60GB HDD
CD-RW/DVD combo drive
14.1" WXGA (widescreen)
Memory Stick reader only
built in 310000 pixels webcam
external media player controls
2.4kg
1 year warranty
* freebies: Vaio laptop case, wireless mouse, 1GB thumbdrive
Note: The definition of stunning design, but is sure to get dirty very soon

For those who want maximum value for money

Dell Inspiron 640m, $1599 (silver chassis, black keyboard)
Core Duo T2300 processor (1.66GHz)
XP Home
512MB RAM + 512MB additional free
80GB HDD
DVD burner
14.1" WXGA screen (widescreen)
multi format card reader
external media player controls
2.4kg
1 year warranty
Note: I still think it looks hideous

For those who want to be different

Samsung X11, $2499 (silver chassis, black keyboard)
Core Duo T2300 processor (1.66GHz)
XP Home
512MB RAM + 512MB additional free
80GB HDD
DVD burner
14.1" WXGA screen (widescreen)
nVidia GeForce Go 7400 256MB VRAM dedicated graphics
Bluetooth, multi format card reader
2.17kg
3 years local warranty
* free mini speakers, mouse, notebook case
Note: The hinge on the test unit felt under damped, making it feel fragile. Samsung's AVS now works like a 'lite' edition of Windows Media Center Edition.

For those who want trouble-free computing

Toshiba Satellite M100, $2399 (peacock blue top cover, silver keyboard surround, black keyboard)
Core Duo T2300 processor (1.66GHz)
XP Home
512MB RAM + 512MB additional free
80GB HDD
DVD burner
14" WXGA (widescreen)
harmon/kardon speakers
Bluetooth, multi format card reader
2.26kg
2 years international warranty
Note: The top cover feels very hardy, and why doesn't anyone else does a straightforward volume control dial like Toshiba now? Keyboard is spill resistant

For those who needs maximum security for their data

Toshiba Tecra A6, $2699 (titanium silver chassis)
Basic specs as of Satellite M100, but with XP Pro instead.
3 years international warranty
Toshiba Easyguard system that features shock protection, TPM chip, one-touch data backup utility, Toshiba ConfigFree, fingerprint reader

For those who want a great all rounder but doesn't mind not getting a fantastic Fair deal

Asus A8J, $2298 (titanium grey chassis)
Core Duo T2300 processor (1.66GHz)
XP Home
512MB RAM + 512MB additional free
80GB HDD
DVD burner
14.1" WXGA (widescreen)
nVidia GeForce Go 7300 256MB VRAM dedicated graphics
Bluetooth, multi format card reader
built in 0.35 megapixel webcam
2 years international warranty
* free notebook case, mouse
Note: Asus is a main OEM manufacturer for many notebooks, so they're definitely trustworthy.

don't go there

2006-06-02T01:39:00.000+08:00

It's after a visit to this place that I know how bad the service of a place can be. Anyway, you should know that I'm already freaking tired but I just can't get to sleep without doing this.

Place: Wang Jiao Hong Kong Cafe or something like that
Venue: Marina Square level 1, where Han's used to be

My friend and I stepped into the place at around 810pm and ordered 10 minutes later. Har Gao, Guo Tie, a drink, and our main courses. 10 minutes later, our Har Gao, Guo Tie and drink came. Didn't taste good, but that's besides to point. And so we wait for our main courses to come.

About 20 minutes to half an hour later, they hadn't came yet. My friend asks one of the waiters if our food is coming. He said 'hang on please', went off for a minute then came back saying 'oh, there's a long list of orders today'. Fine, we 'oh ok-ed' and waited. All was fine until the table next to us came in around 20 minutes later than us and got their food. So alright, I gave them 10 more minutes just in case they in fact did miss out on our order and was preparing it immediately. Tick tock, our food didn't come.

Getting fed up, I got out of my seat to approach a woman (pardon me but I don't think the service crew of this place needs any form of respect at all) who appears to be the captain or manager of the restaurant. I told her, 'excuse me, our 2 main courses never came. please check what's going on.' She gave me a look of disbelief or confusion, as if she didn't expect someone to be coming up to her to tell her that an order has taken 45 minutes and hasn't arrived. 'ok, i'll check with the kitchen' was what she could muster.

So ok, we were hungry so waited for awhile more. I mean, after such a long waiting time you'd expect our food to be coming soon. Nope. That woman never showed up after 5 minutes, so we decided to finish the drink and leave. I was at the cashier paying for whatever we've eaten (I still don't understand why I even bothered paying at all for the kind of utter rubbish I was getting) and cancelled the order. And here comes the fucking lame part. She said 'ok, sorry about it'. Full stop. HUH?!! You tell me just that when we've just waited like an hour for our food? She's gotta be fucking kidding me. And the stupidest part is here. I actually paid for it and said 'never mind'. Wow, There must've been some angel right beside me stopping me from creating a scene there and then.

That was that. A few points I want to make though. The 'service' of that place is total bullshit. I'd much rather give the money to a fake beggar than to pay the 10% service charge for this. At least the fake beggar is trying. You people? Not a chance.
The waiter who came in the middle to tell us that our food was coming. I bet he didn't actually go to the kitchen to check if our order was missed. Get this, you were either just plain lazy to check or just didn't want a customer to complain to you about a mistake the kitchen or whoever made. Like come on, get a life. 'Fess up, apologise, and get the kitchen to hurry the order. Maybe your little brain tells you otherwise, but that's what I do.
Woman. You were wearing something different from the service crew, so I'm guessing your voice means something in that place. Do not be lame. You gave me a doubting look when I told you my order never came. Instead of asking someone else to take over the cashier for 5 minutes and explain to us what could've happened that requires an hour to prepare (I dunno, maybe the milk that's used to make the cheese hasn't been squeezed from the cow yet), you chose to never get back to 2 obviously already hungry and irritated customers. And what sort of an apology was that? A 3 year old can do better after accidentally dropped something onto the floor.
Management of that place. Did you even interview those idiots working in that place? I wonder how with that kind of attitude and service standard you can survive. And please, the place is rather large. Employ a couple more people. Employ a couple more useful people.

To the relevant authorities or something, I honestly hope there's a way to deal with those people who are in the service line but offer ridiculous 'service'.

And to the rest of the staff, if you happen to have read this, I'm not even sorry for you. Blame your useless and idiotic colleagues for this. If you think I've insulted you and you deserve better, quit and get another job.

That's the end. People who read this, if you ever encounter this sort of situation, please don't be like me. It is NOT ok. Please make a fuss or walk out of that damn place. Get the manager, whatever. Just don't let them get away with it.

Junrong signs off.

change

2006-05-31T01:28:00.000+08:00

I watch the shutters go down. For quite some time yet or maybe for the last time ever.

Change is something not very welcome by many. Change is something that people will pray so hard will never happen especially when they're happy in the state they're in. It is however inevitable that it will happen. What matters is the joy, the laughter, the shared experiences that came before.

Because there is no choice than to accept change, people move on. From the places they used to like to work in, from great hawker stalls they used to patronise, from people they used to care with all their heart, from objects they used to love so dearly as children.

I have to move on, but I'll never forget how things were before they had to change.

6131

2006-05-30T12:40:00.000+08:00

Ok, I'm just a little tired of using any brain juices for any sensible entries but I'm guessing some of u friends come here to look at what I have to say about some phones, so here goes.

Nokia seems to be picking up form again, with the release of 6021, 6820 and N80 within the past year or so. They've just released the 6131 clamshell, which may be good for people wanting something in between the camera-less 6021 and the 2 megapixel 6820 smartphone.

Highlights:
-240x320 pixel 2.2" 16 million colours internal display, 262k colours external display. don't be fooled to think there's a gigantic difference between 16M and 262k, cos you may not be able to tell it. the resolution will be great though.
-microSD memory expansion (hot-swappable, but back cover must be opened to access slot)
-1.3 megapixel camera, 8x digital zoom, no flash
-speedy series 40 interface
-quad-band (usable almost anywhere even if you're on holiday or work trips)
-button on right side of hinge to open flip (panasonic style)
-FM, MP3 player
-speakerphone
-large, simple keypad for easy sms-ing
-GPRS, EDGE (not in singapore), bluetooth, java, infrared, push to talk (available in all nokia phones from mid level up)
-flight mode that switches off GSM radio but allows other features like MP3 players to be used in places where it is recommended that phones should not be turned on
-92 x 48 x 20 mm, 102grams
-$475 without contract (could go down soon)

So it's more expensive than a Sony Ericsson K750i now and the camera should be some way off, but it's not like anyone uses the phone as a proper digital camera. Anyway, the display is what you look at much more often, and this is where the 6131 excels. So for SE refuseniks who think the K750i has been on shelves too long already, this could soon make a good alternative.

slim pickings

2006-05-20T20:51:00.000+08:00

The Motorola RAZR V3 really started something in 2004. Being the oldest phone still on the shelves now, the one with the most dramatic price drop since launch (the special first edition packages cost over $1.4k then), and the one that started Motorola's current one model in many different colours strategy, it has inspired a slew of other slim phones that will flood the market this year. Below are some of the more significant ones.

Slimmest phone in the world
Redefine anorexic. If 66 grams and 2 megapixel camera haven't amazed you yet, the thickness of this thing is just 6.9mm. And except for the lack of memory expansion options, packs as much features as any other Samsung mobile phone now. Ladies, start saving up.

Slimmest 3G phone
This one should see the daylight. Samsung's Z150 measures 117 by 46 by 9.8mm and comes packed with a VGA camera, bluetooth, and 1.9" 18 bit screen.

Slimmest with QWERTY keyboard
Fans of mobile email will have slim choices very soon. The Samsung i320 and Motorola Q will show that 'busy executive' and 'sexy gadget' aren't mutually exclusive anymore. The i320 and Q both measure 11.5mm at the depth, and both comes with the new Windows Mobile 5 OS. Throw in a 1.3megapixel camera as well. Overall the Samsung is shorter and skinnier. There is however no guarantee that both will reach our shores. Samsung has a habit of not releasing much of its show phones, and the Motorola hasn't confirmed a version for GSM markets yet.

Slimmest 4 megapixel camera phone
VK Mobile may be unheard of in Singapore but until quite recently they had the slimmest phone in production. Now the tiny 2200 comes packed with a huge punch: 4 megapixel camera. 97.8 by 49.5 by 12.5mm, weighs 74g, has 128MB non expandable memory and 260k colour TFT display. Interested? Hop over to Malaysia to get one when it's launched in a few months.

Shortest slim phone
I've covered the Samsung P300 before and yes, it is still the slimmest production phone at 8.9mm thick. So owners who shelled out big money for this oh-so-cool looking device, don't worry, you still have a few months of bragging rights before the X820 arrives. But even till then, you can still argue that at 86mm long, it is still the shortest production phone available in Singapore.

Skinniest slim phone
Many slim phones have girths hovering around 50mm, but BenQ-Siemens' S68 and Nokia's E50 refuses the follow the trend at 44mm around the waist. The BenQ-Siemens is a basic but classy looking mobile that comes without a camera, while the Nokia's model, aimed at executives will ship with 1.3 megapixel camera, Symbian OS and quadband compatibility. The S68 is at 13.2mm thick, while E50 comes in at 15.5mm.

Slimmest rugged phone
At 18mm thick it may be pushing it a little to call it really slim, but for one that protects its innards from water splashes and dust, that figure is quite impressive. The Nokia 5500 Sport is finished in stainless steel and rubber grips. Other features include a 2 megapixel camera, microSD card slot and Symbian smartphone OS. Should arrive next quarter.

Slimmest music player-phone hybrid
Yes, I can't do any feature without mentioning Sony Ericsson. But if you think about it, 4GB in a phone 15mm thick is pretty amazing. It doesn't come with a camera, but the Walkman interface now supports album art like a proper MP3 player, uses more stable flash memory instead of a hard disk, can be touchscreen operated and is a Symbian smartphone. Sony Ericsson W950 will ship by next quarter.

Slimmest clamshell phone
NEC's n412i was launched several months ago. It remains the thinnest clamshell of all at 11.9mm thick. The battery may be non removable like an iPod, but it does have nice features like bluetooth, 1.3 megapixel camera and imode. Available at Starhub shops.

Cheapest slim phone
Motorola's L series candybars comes in 3 specs. L2 comes with a (poor by today's standards) CSTN 65k colour display, java (standard feature in almost all phones by now) and bluetooth. Other than that it's a basic call and sms device. L6 throws in a VGA camera module on top of the L2 feature set. The flagship L7 features a metallic body, 262k colour TFT display, transflash memory expansion but still a VGA camera. All measure 113 by 49 by 11mm. The L7 is priced at $88 with a 2 year contract at Singtel this week.

Other notable slim phones

Samsung Z540: slimmest 3G handset in Singapore (14.9mm), 1.3 megapixel camera, available now
Samsung D520: 15.9mm thick version of the fatter D500, available now
BenQ-Siemens EL71: 16.5mm slim slider, 240x320 pixel 18bit colour display (by far the best any Siemens user has ever seen), micoSD memory expansion, available from next month
BenQ-Siemens EF81: 15.9mm slim 3G clamshell, 2 megapixel camera, microSD memory expansion, 2.2 inch version of EL71 display, available now
BenQ-Siemens S81: 13mm slim 3G candybar, 1.3 megapixel camera, microSD memory expansion, coming soon
Motorola V3i: 98 x 53 x 13.9mm, 1.23 megapixel camera, iTunes, transflash memory expansion, available now
LG KG800 Chocolate: 15.2mm thick, Olympus m:robe style touch sensitive scrolling, 1.3 megapixel camera, should come soon
LG KG320: 95 x 46 x 9.9mm, 73 grams, 1.3 megapixel camera, 128MB memory (KG800 also), status unknown
Sony Ericsson M600: 15mm thick, touchscreen, QWERTY keyboard, symbian os, coming soon

Samsung's D820 was left out on purpose. Cos it's ugly. Ha.

blew cash on loo

2006-05-14T20:59:00.000+08:00

Was in KL over the weekend for a short getaway, and just when I thought there would be nothing too interesting to note in another city area just several kilometers away, I found something.

Behold, the entrance to ground level toilets in Suria KLCC (the mall adjacent to Petronas Twin Towers) costs RM2! Although my initial thoughts were 'are you nuts?', I just wanted to see what kind of washroom charges almost $1 per entry.

You pay, and will be given this wet tissue and an 'admission ticket'. I'm actually still rather curious about the point of the ticket. Well anyhows it's not especially roomy. An attendant greets you upon entry. The urinals and WCs had automated flush systems (it should be noted that less than half of the loos I visited there were manual ones, so that's something to shout about). The sink area had 2 big scented candles, body mist and body lotion from Body Shop and automatic sensor equipped taps that requires you to go near the sensor both for beginning and ending of operation, which is unlike the ones in Singapore that runs as long as your hands within range of the sensor.

Cool thing, but a little more opulence in the decor will reflect the price better. Anyway it's a fantastic move. Every new visitor to the mall will be curious to visit a toilet that costs RM2 per entry just to check it out.

appointment? what appointment?

2006-05-06T00:12:00.000+08:00

Last week I made an appointment at the medical centre to have my er.. checkup before ORD. I wanted to wait on that day but they wanted to have my name written on specific date and time. So I did.

So today morning I made my way to Tuas. They gave me a number, asked me to sit down and wait. I waited for an hour! I'm sorry but have they taken a look in the dictionary to see what the word 'appointment' meant? It definitely does not mean 'date to come back and wait all over again'. What is the point of making me arrange a date and time, Then make me wait an hour? Can they not have made me wait when I stepped in last week so that I could've saved almost $5 to travel to and from Tuas? It's freaking dumb.

IT's FREAKING DUMB.

don't have to try

2006-05-03T20:44:00.000+08:00

Nanxiang Steamed Bun Restaurant

Location: Parco Bugis Junction Level 2

Competitors: Crystal Jade La Mian & Xiao Long Bao, Ding Tai Fung, Ma Lan La Mian

Décor: 6
Typical Chinese restaurant design. Not tremendously spacious as well.

Service: 2
Most of the servers looked tired, worn, whatever. And if you've never seen a service staff drag his feet, go see how sloppy it is for yourself. We were not exactly shown to our seats too. The 'captain' (I so assumed cos he was wearing something different from everyone else) simply said 'inside please'. No other waiter took over to show us our table. Horrible.

Food: 5
Most important thing, the Xiao Long Bao. The regular one wasn't too good, but throw some crab into the equation and it turns good. Slightly interesting dish in the form of toufu and a teeny bit of crab roe in deep fried spring roll skin. Unfortunately, it didn't taste any better than average. Shanghainese Spicy & Sour Soup was not spicy at all, and it's way too watery. Shanghainese Fried Rice was quite pathetic. Plainly rice fried with egg.

Value: 5.5
Half a dozen Xiao Long Baos cost $6. Half a dozen of the crab-fied version sets you back an extra 3 bucks. Horrible soup, around $6. Poor fried rice at $7. Granted not excessively expensive, but for that quality, poor value.

In essence, don't bother. Admittedly, it's main dish the Xiao Long Bao is better than the worst of the varying standards of Crystal Jade outlets but at the end of the day the name is simply too under-established to be offering sub-standard food.

open your arms to sins

2006-04-25T17:24:00.000+08:00

Human behaviour is strange. They throw crazy hissy fits, they smash things on the wall, they spew out words that shouldn’t have come out, they hatch evil plots, and indulge in sinful pleasures. So people do things that they will think were totally ridiculous after they’ve done it. Why then do they still do it knowing they are going to slap their head and say ‘shit, what have I done’ in retrospect?

It all probably boils down to the fact that we are all irrational. Fine, that sounds like too sweeping a statement. We all have moments of irrationality. Somehow our minds just go loose sometimes and a moment of madness finds its way out of our shells however Stepford we normally are.

Then we get angry at ourselves, we plead for forgiveness from God, from family, friends and even the angel in ourselves. After a short period of probably very tough self control, we suffer from withdrawal symptoms of not able to do our crazy habits and start all over again. So yes, resistance if futile when it comes to sins.

Sometimes though, they really want to change. Their habits of gossiping, showing their bad tempers, sleeping around, eating too much junk food… The people around those who want to change should try to give them support. Well maybe not all are worth extra chances, but let the effort do the talking. Sinful habits and practices will never be totally wiped out, but it’s always worth accepting a much smaller extent of it.

And wow, we are one screwed up species.

good line

2006-04-25T01:11:00.000+08:00

The dialogue in Desperate Housewives are well written, I think.

Bree: But I just want you to happy.
Danielle: Don't just want it, make it happen!

One of my favourite TV shows.

tech update

2006-04-22T12:49:00.000+08:00

The proper MP3 player-mobile phones hybrids, with 4GB hard disks, land in Singapore.
Samsung's i300X comes with a 2" QVGA resolution screen and costs $1088 w/o contract. Runs on Windows Mobile 2003 (which means Windows Media Player present), has 1.3megapixel camera, has smaller but sharper screen than N91. SRS WOW effects, dual speakers and a Transflash card slot also feature.
The Nokia N91's launch price is $988 with a 2-yr contract. Symbian S60 is the choice of OS instead, and the camera is a 2megapixel one. Wi-Fi allows you to surf wirelessly at hotspots, but it weighs 40g more and is much wider than the Samsung. FM radio included. No memory expansion.
The battle is on once the W950 arrives. No camera, but it features shock resistant flash memory instead of hard disk memory. Also, Samsung already has a i310 model with a 2megapixel camera and 8GB memory.

2 more interesting Samsung launches, the P300 and P850 are the slimmest and first with a 3megapixel camera respectively (in the local market at least). P300's features are largely like the D500, with its display in a landscape orientation. It's constructed in stainless steel. $498 with 2 year contract. P850 looks like a fine pre-emptive strike to SE's K790i, but is thicker due to clamshell form factor. Sharp remains as the only phones in the GSM market to feature optical zoom. $838 with 2 year contract.

Dopod's 585 model gives a new lease of life to the O2 Xphone IIm. Pluses like lightweight, design, smartphone platform and multimedia features remain, while adding built in Chinese language support and a 1.3megapixel camera. The $138 price with 2-yr contract puts many un-smart phones to shame.

Nokia's 6280 may be ugly, but with 3G, 2megapixel camera, miniSD expansion, nice sharp display and speedier and more stable interface (compared to the S60 smartphone OS which half of us don't need). And for that, Nokia-philes may be happy to know that their ideal phone costs a reasonable $298 with contract.

Moving on to digital cameras,

the Samsung Digimax i6 may look like a fine convergent device on paper, with the marriage of a digicam and portable media player, but on closer scrutiny it doesn't play either role well. Image quality is not as good as Canons and as a media player it fails by not having sufficient built in memory.

Sony unleashes its gorgeous new T30 as a replacement for the T9. Sensor is bumped up further to 7.2 megapixels, display up to 3" too (but not touchscreen like Sony's own N1). 3x optical zoom remain and image stabilization remain. 58MB built-in memory, expand with MS Duo cards. Expect it to cost at least $799 at launch.

Sony seems to have realized that Samsung has been eating up chunks of its business and have decided to drop prices for their products. More reasonably priced Vaio notebooks have appeared and the NW-A1000 (6GB) and NW-A3000 MP3 players are next. Prices are down $100 to $299 and $399 respectively. Fine sounding and good value if you don't need the video-viewing capabilities of the Zen Vision M, Samsung J70 and iPod Video.

follow up

2006-04-20T23:50:00.000+08:00

I was feeling cocky today, because what I said yesterday in the post regarding the JC kid who committed suicide due to self-imagined poor endowment came out in the papers today. Doctors think what drove him to suicide might have been stress from being in a high ranking school (and other factors) that led to depression. This depression could've came in the form of BDD (read previous post) when he thought his penis wasn't big enough.

After digesting the whole article, I felt that the reporter who came up with yesterday's article stating misinformation during sex education in schools clearly didn't think deep enough or didn't watch The Opera Show. Anyway, some easy thinking will bring a question to his/her claims. When has sexual education ever covered anything with regards to the size of one's private parts? It was just plain weird.

I thank Oprah for letting me be cocky for one day, and shall resolve to watch the show whenever I have the time to.

i hate bad english on public signs

2006-04-20T00:12:00.000+08:00

today's ST

2006-04-19T23:26:00.000+08:00

Finally an update.

Anyway, I was told by a friend today about an article in today's Straits Times. On the front page of the Home section, headlines read 'JC student kills himself because he thought his private parts were too small'. When I was told the headlines, I couldn't help but broke into hilarious laughter. Like, how can anyone even be so stupid to commit suicide because he thought he wasn't well endowed? It sounded quite ridiculous.

After some thought however, I started to feel abit of pity for the boy who killed himself. From an episode of Oprah I watched earlier, she had these people who suffered from Body Dysmorphic Disorder. It is basically a psychiatric condition that makes the patient imagine there is a serious defect in their appearance. They are excessively concerned about the way they look. Her guests included a woman who had over 20 plastic surgeries in the past decade and a man who would take hours to prepare to go out and yet still worry he doesnt look perfect enough. I thought his case could be linked to this disorder, instead of misinformation of sexual education in schools as the paper suggested.
Or he just watched too much porn and thought he wasn't well endowed enough compared to the male porn stars. Hah.

Further in the report, it appears that a doctor he seeked told the boy that his 'willy' was of an average size of an asian male, but he was still convinced that he didn't have enough 'mojo'. No point telling him this now, but for those who think that their sexual organs are not as 'wow' as porn stars, it is the ability to make their partner feel good that matters instead of how big everything is.

Also, while most of us didn't come from the same gene pool as Brad Pitt or Heidi Klum, physical appearance alone is not enough to judge whether one is a good person or not. Hot hunks can still be jerks, and gorgeous babes can still be bitches.

amusing

2006-03-17T17:31:00.000+08:00

IT Show 2006

2006-03-09T23:49:00.000+08:00

Presenting to you some of the better hardware deals at the IT Show. No pictures due to time constraint. Look at this and check them out by Sunday if you're interested!

Location: Suntec City Levels 3,4,6. Level 3 is crap.
Time: Till 12 March. Noon to 9pm.

[Notebooks]
Samsung Q30. The anorexic 1.1kg red notebook is back with a $1000 price slash. Flyer says original price was $3999 but I think $3799 is more correct. Anyway the show price is $2799 and it comes with an additional 6 cell battery. Finally good enough value.
Samsung X60. Samsung introduces its dual core notebooks with a reasonably priced one. 15.4" display, DVD writer, 80GB, 512MB RAM, remote control, slim for its size, 2.48kg, $2499. Worth checking out if you've always wanted a Samsung lappy but found them chronically overpriced. Both Samsungs comes with free mouse and carrying case.
Samsung R50, X20 and X1 also at a better than usual price.
MSI Megabook S452B. At $2099 with a 14" widescreen display, 512MB ram, 80GB HDD, DVD writer, GeForce Go6200 gfx card and XP Pro, this is too good value for money to be ignore.

[Digicams]
Nikon Coolpix S1. Slim, relatively stylish and armed with a 5 megapixel camera. An older model, but you can definitely do worse than this. At a $349 clearance price, it's hard to ignore as well.
Fuji FinePix F460. This 5 megapixel shooter with 3x optical zoom and 2.5" display is priced at $399 and comes with 256MB xD card and extra battery among other freebies.
Olympus FE-150. 5 megapixel, 2.5" display, 3x optical zoom and lightweight. Priced $349, with free 512MB xD card and more.
Casio Z600. 6 megapixels, Anti-shake, 2.7" LCD, 3x optical zoom. $649, with 512MB SD card, Siemens DECT phone, leather carrying case and more.

[MP3 players]
Samsung YH-820. Outgoing model that plays MP3 and WMA formats. FM, line in recorder and JPEG viewer also features. Free Sennheiser headphones. $299 for 4GB storage and colour display. Good value.
Creative. Many of Creative's players are receiving a free set of its speakers (worth $69) or earphones (worth $39). But check out Samsung's YP-T55 if you're thinking of going MuVo. It sounds better.

[LCD monitors]
Acer AL1916W. 19", widescreen, $399. Very limited sets left.
But for something of higher quality, you may want to check out BenQ FP91G+ and ViewSonic VA912/B at $469 and $455 respectively. Both comes with free DVI cable, not available in the Acer. I personally prefer the ViewSonic.

[Printers and AIOs]
As usual, many good deals. Check out your preferred brand. All have some decent offers.

Gourmet Plus

2006-03-07T23:06:00.000+08:00

Gourmet Plus, along Frankel Avenue.

So this was the first time I patronised this cosy little restaurant near Siglap area. Wouldnt call the decor fantastic but I liked the setting. Surroundings were peaceful, restaurant was peaceful enough. A polite waiter greets as I enter.

Anyway today was celebration for a friend's birthday, and out comes my I-S restaurant guide and ta-da! We end up at Frankel Avenue. Food time!

First up, escargots as a starter! For those who haven't tasted escargot, it actually tastes quite like shellfish. Something like... mussels? Yea. But with the herbs, saltier and more.. garlic-ky.

My main course, Chicken Truffle. A rather lean piece (i.e quite healthy) of chicken breast meat topped with creamy truffle sauce, with pan-fried cauliflower, boiled french beans and fried potato cubes. Oh, and a cherry tomato too.

Friend's main course, Squid Ink Seafood Risotto. If you can't tell from the picture, the serving portion is actually rather filling, due to the cheese and rice. Oh, if you don't see the seafood, it's all hidden under the rice. But you won't be able to see much of it even if it's not anyway, cos everything's black.

All in all a not bad place, with a deli corner beside the cashier. Menu also includes other European fare like foie gras, pork knuckles, pasta and bratwurst sausages. Main courses cost around $18-$25.

Sony Ericsson 2006

2006-03-06T17:57:00.000+08:00

The next wave of Sony Ericsson products has been released over the month of February, with 2 additions to the quickly expanding Walkman family, a replacement for their lukewarm clamshell model (not featured here) a basic dial n sms phone (not featured here), upgrades of 3 K-series models (not featured), a replacement for 2005's coolest 3G candybar (which I own. heh.) and a new-ish concept executive smart phone.

First up, the successor to 2005's hottest, brand new Cybershot sub-branded K790i / K800i.

Features include :
- 3G (K800i)
- 2" 240x320 pixels 262k colour TFT display
- 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus, 16x digital zoom, image editor, image stabiliser function, xenon flash, Cybershot interface and a Sony T7 digicam style lens cover.
- 64MB internal memory, Memory Stick Micro (new format) card slot
- FM with RDS
- 105x47x22mm, 115g

Entry level Walkman model W300i

Features include :
- Quadband
- 1.8" 128x160 pixels 262k TFT display, orange-on-black external display
- VGA camera with 4x digital zoom
- Walkman interface
- FM radio with RDS
- 20MB internal memory, MS Micro card slot
- 90x47x24mm, 94g

Retro-cool 3G candy goes sleek in K610i

Features include
- 1.9" 176x220 pixels 262k TFT display
- 2 megapixel camera with 2x digital zoom
- info on internal memory and FM radio not in press release, but 32MB and FM with RDS expected
- MS Micro card slot
- 102x45x17mm, 92g

Smart, sexy and slim M600

- 3G
- 2.6" 240x320 pixels 262k colour TFT touchscreen display
- Symbian v9.1 Smartphone platform
- Blackberry style QWERTY keyboard
- Opera 8 browser, MS office editor and Adobe PDF viewer
- Email friendly features like next word prediction, auto word correction and handwriting recognition
- 80MB internal memory, MS micro card slot
- 107x57x15mm, 112g
- And yes, you didnt miss it, there's no camera on this phone.

King of the Walkman hill, W950i

- 3G
- 2.6" 240x320 pixels 262k colour TFT touchscreen display
- Symbian v9.1 Smartphone platform
- Album art support for music player
- Opera 8 browser
- Email friendly features like next word prediction, auto word correction and handwriting recognition
- 4GB hard drive
- FM radio with RDS
- 106x54x15mm, 112g
- And yup, the king of Walkmans has no snapper(camera, not fish) too

All models listed here features Bluetooth and a MP3-AAC-MPEG4 compatible media player, with the Walkman models also supporting AAC+ and WAV formats. This trend shows that almost all Sony Ericsson phones from now on will feature Bluetooth for wireless data transfer technology. Also, Sony uses the new mobile devices to introduce the new Memory Stick Micro (M2) format, which is the size of microSD cards. Lastly, applaud the return of the jog-dial control (notice left flanks of M600 & W950)!

Other Sony Ericssons announced in Feb.
- Z530i clamshell that looks like a W300i without the Walkman logo. Basically an upgrade of the current Z520i clamshell with a Memory Stick Micro card slot.
- Together with the low end K310i model, Sony Ericsson introduces a new UBC (ultra bright colour) screen type that slots in below its TFT screen models. K310i is basically a K300i with bluetooth.
- K510i will be essentially be a curent K600i model with a lower resolution screen and without 3G.
- Right at the bottom of the scale is the J100i, a basic phone and sms device.

All looks quite wonderful with Sony Ericsson's improving design and integration of Bluetooth in all bar lowest end phones, but one cant stop nitpicking. And for those people, yes, 16M colour screens are still not available half a year after Panasonic VS series' launch and the imminent arrival of Nokia's E60/E61/N92. Also, for those looking for optical zoom in their phones, you'll still have to turn to Sharp phones usable but unavailable officially in this part of the world.

ready, jetset, go

2006-03-03T23:38:00.000+08:00

Inspired by a trip to the airport today.

The airport is a place full of emotions. One may say you can actually get enough footage to create an entire drama series if you stayed at the airport for a day or two. Oh, by the way, I just want to say that Changi Airport and Singapore Airlines offer some of the best facilities and services in the world.

Airports are sometimes happy places. At the arrival hall, people wait eagerly outside the gates even before the "landed" status of a flight is indicated. There are some who are carrying flowers, some boards with names, and some even babies. All these people only have one thing in mind, and that is to wait for the arrival of their loved ones abroad. Huge smiles, big hugs, warm kisses, excited chatter and even tears of joy; these are what we can all observe at the arrival hall.

We move a level up to the departure hall, and things may look a little less cheerful. Sure, those going on holidays will be happy, but there are others who've come to send off friends and family away, probably for work, probably for studies. Whatever the reason, they're saying goodbye and are going to miss the other party for awhile. I saw a lady crying quite terribly when I stepped into the departure hall earlier. People give a final hug for a few days, weeks or months to come, and they let go unwillingly right outside the check in gates.

Airports can be places of hope and joy or places of frustration during different instances. Although I myself do not have much of airport drama to share, I did ever wait for the 'departed' sign to appear on screen before leaving the airport when sending someone off, and I have also secretly went to the airport just to see if someone has come out from the gates to know that someone has landed safely.

There is no real point of this post, just that for those of you who've just sent someone home, fret not, because sooner or later, another of those flying turbines will soon bring those close to your heart through the arrival gates again.

fallen

2006-02-28T19:30:00.000+08:00

Babies fall when they learn to walk. Children fall when they learn to ride a bicycle. Teenagers fall when they get an 'F' grade for a paper. Adults fall when they see their children being sent to a rehab centre. Whether literally or metaphorically, all of us fall down umpteen times in our lives.

Whatever the case though, the 'f' word is used to describe negative actions, low points in our lives. Its effect on different people however, may be for the better or for worse. Some find strength in failing or in meeting obstacles. They work harder, strive to get to their destination and may well succeed. But for some, especially those on their first failure or those already with multiple setbacks, it may well be the fatal shot for them.

Part of the point of a blog is for others to know the blog owner better. Be it the owners' experiences, tastes or opinions. So although not proud of it, I have to confess it's been more of a giving-up effect than booster for me. Why so? I could've had a perfectly invisible life. Mid-low income family, but only child so that there's sufficient cash to go around, no connections with hooligans, mid-ranking student who's got a place in the University and no huge exposure to the public. But as readers of this blog, you should by now know that I lead an alternative lifestyle. Right, so you're different, but that can be an asset, you say. It was more difficult than I ever thought.

Especially when it comes to other people. Being that and a single child, opinions from other people always mattered to me. Be it 'you're short' or 'buck teeth', it shouldn't matter by now, but sometimes it somehow did.
Of course it's even worse when it comes to matters of the heart. I'm hopeless. I fell, and fell. I have slowly become too scary to get involved with, and definitely not proud of that.

How do I pull myself up for good? I want to have a happy life, although in the real world there's no one person who has it all. For all of you who have fell and fallen deeply, I wish we can all eventually find a friend, a love and a place where we can pick ourselves up and brave all the tribulations.

roll your way

2006-02-27T22:34:00.000+08:00

To make the place more wheelchair friendly, the government have come up with ramps in housing estates, ramps in buses, and more lifts. This is all good. But is there a little bit of design failure in some of these wheel-friendly facilities?

I came across this today. This is the newly built access lift from the ground level, to station control, to station platform lifts that are being erected across Singapore's entire MRT system now.

The ramp that leads up to the lift is too long, and the angle is not exactly tiny either. So when you come out from the lift, one has to do a sharp turn, the go all the way down the little slop. All very easy for most of us. But what about those that the facilities were mainly built for?

Going down may be easy as they will have gravity to help them. It's an altogether different story on the way up. If no one pushes the wheelchair-bound up, it's going to be a quite physical workout for them. Moreover, chances are locals are not extremely likely to lend a helping hand to a stranger, even if that stranger has got disabilities.

If you can tell from the picture, the ramp is not exactly very wide either. So if there is a group of people walking up, the disabled may have to wait, or take the other path down (shown on the right of the pic). This 2nd option is however, unavailable to them. Because if you can see, there's a street lamp right in the middle of that path.

So the government's move to make the wheelchair-bound live as easily as their standing counterparts is commendable. In fact, it is great that they make such a considerate move to make public transport accessible to them so that they can blend into the society. However the truth remains that while the move is admirable, the execution in some places needs more thinking.

Oh, and by the way, I always hear that the facilities are for the wheelchair-bound. Why doesnt anyone mention parents with prams? They have a really hard time travelling with the baby too.

hog

2006-02-27T21:55:00.000+08:00

(noun)
(a)A self-indulgent, gluttonous, or filthy person.
(b)One that uses too much of something.

I wanted to use a 'C' word and use 'hog' as the definition 'cos it's just too commonly used a word. And I thought this meaning of hog was slang, but apparently it was in dictionary.com.

The temptation to put up pictures of hoggers was present today, but when I spotted them I was alone, so to risk being beaten up by some people, I refrained. Will post some hogger pictures up when I get the chance to snap them down. So as you can tell, I don't like hoggers.

Following is a list of types of hoggers I can think of.
1. Phone hoggers.
Always seen when I'm away on duty. Yes, I know you want to talk to your girlfriend, wife, mother or dog. But it's not like I don't have anyone I want to talk to while away. Let others have a chance!

2. Road hoggers.
Sometimes you find that people who walk slowly and are in a group always like to spread their people out in a fashion that will block the whole freaking way. And when poor me (or you) is walking in the opposite direction, they'll act as if you're invisible and not give way. Idiots.

3. Seat hoggers.
More evident on buses, there are many people (middle aged aunties and uncles especially) who like to sit on the outer aisle seat. That's fine, but they often also like to either put their butt in a position that will not exactly be able to fit another person. Or they'll use their not-even-that-big shopping bags to take up the whole bench.

OK, this post is just yak yak yak without any pictures. Pictures will definitely be out soon. And in the meantime, I still hate hoggers. MUAHAHA.

long time no see

2006-02-26T19:53:00.000+08:00

Hello everyone. So I've practically not posted anything this month, due to serious degeneration of brain cells.

Anyway I had wanted to post something a few days back, but was too lazy to do so. Before that, I'd maybe share my incredibly dumb day.

I waited for a bus for almost 40minutes and it never turned up (blame SBS for this), totally forgot about going to support a friend in the Danceworks competition, got onto a faulty bus, had some kind of a conflict with someone and witnessed my parents throwing tantrums at each other (with my dad slamming the door of the room).

Largely crappy I'd say. So I won't post what I wanted to post for now. Maybe later tonight or tomorrow. But thanks Darren for keeping me company in the afternoon. Or I'll hardly have smiled today.

Another posting soon.

for you and all of you

2006-02-02T22:46:00.000+08:00

A little questionnaire requested by a friend. Some questions are a little stupid (oops), but it's for you and the rest of you to know a little JR trivia.

Three Names You Go By
Junrong, Shorty, Jurong

Three Screen Names You Have Had
crappy, exige, exige85

Three Things You Like About Yourself
uh huh.. this is easy.. cos i can easily name 300! muahaha..
ok. my eyes (when they're not sleepy), my sense of humour and my name

Three Physical Things You Don't Like About Yourself
-empty-
ah.. for those who know it's a lie, u know me well! :D
height, teeth, ass, hair, thigh, oops. overshot.

Three Things That Scare You
ok, i know all of you just want to hear this.. fine, cockroaches freak me out. 2, no more gadgets in the world. 3, losing my friends

Three of Your Everyday Essentials
im inclined to think along the lines of toothbrush, mobile phone and jokes.

Three Things You Are Wearing Right Now
army tee, navy shorts and specs.
yes, no underwear u hum sup king/queen!

Three of Your Favourite Bands or Music Artists
cant i name more? if u insist on 3, Lee Hom (mandopop), Rong Zu Er (cantopop), Mariah Carey (english pop)

Three of Your Favourite Songs
well this is tough.. 1. Damien Rice - The Blower's Daughter
2. David Tao - Fei Ji Chang De 10:30
3. Mariah Carey - Butterfly

Three of Your Favourite Movies
Chicago, Big Fish, Love Actually

Three Things You Want in a Relationship
communication, sensitivity, small bickerings

Two Truths and a Lie
i love cars, i think nose picking is fun, i can run 2.4km in 8mins (figure which is the lie yourself)

Three Physical Things About The Preferred Sex That Appeal to You
hmm.. physically.. eyes, smile and healthy build

Three of Your Favourite Hobbies
for some reason my computer is always on so i guess one of hobbies is to press the power button of my PC. devouring nice food is fun too. as is cycling.

Three Things You Want to do Really Badly Right Now
play the bloody piano, learn salsa, get nice teeth.

Three Careers You've Considered or are Considering
sound dubber for ads and stuff, teacher (childhood thing. many students will die if i go into teaching), product planner or engineer for mobile phone company

Three Places You Want to go to for Vacation
UK (so dying to go), Vietman, Italy

Three Kid Names You Like
this is too difficult. i may not give my children (if any) english names.

Three Things You Want to do Before You Die
stay in Fullerton Hotel, visit Europe, sky-dive (or any 1 thing involving heights)

Three Ways That You're Stereotypically a Boy
smart-ass attitude, easy-going, bloody lazy

Three Ways That You're Stereotypically a Girl
can't stand horrible handwriting, like shoes and bags, cant stop talking

let's talk about sex

2006-02-01T21:24:00.000+08:00

I will have to burst the bubble right now by saying this entry is not even remotely close to something like 'Karma Sutra 101'. Right, just to make sure, in case the hot-blooded men and ladies out there get too excited about this.
By now most people should already know what heterosexual, homosexual and bisexual means, so let's focus on some of the -sexuals that were coined by people instead of words you'll find in Oxford's dictionary. Think you know all about sex?

Transsexual
Actually a proper word, a transsexual is a male of female who wished he or she was born of the opposite gender.

Metrosexual
Coined by Mark Simpson in the 90s. A metrosexual is a man who embraces the aesthetics. He is believes in good taste be it style, food or the arts. This is the urban 'image male'. Wordspy.com defines a metrosexual as a straight man who embraces the homosexual lifestyle. Which also loosely means straight men know nothing at all about style and aesthetics.

Ubersexual
Uber is German for super, but an ubersexual does not mean a man with superhero powers. This term that's barely a year old basically means a metrosexual who displays overtly masculine traits like confidence. I'd say Rob Thomas and Clive Owen make good examples.

Technosexual
The rise and rise of gadgets gave birth to the term in 2004. A technosexual is a man who is both tech savvy and style savvy. To make a slightly exaggerated example, a technosexual can be a man donning an Ermenegildo Zegna suit who carries a Dopod 818 Pro smartphone, Sony Vaio TX17 laptop and iPod nano with Bang & Olufsen earphones.

Pomosexual
The prefix pomo actually stands for post-modern, so as you'd expect this term was coined in the late nineties. What's a pomosexual, you say? He/she is a person who shuns labels such as heterosexual and homosexual that define individuals by their sexual preferences.

Retrosexual
Again coined by Mark Simpson in the noughties who made up metrosexual, a retrosexual is basically an antonym of M-sexual. Girls, use it to describe that boyfriend of yours who simply can't be bothered to spend money or time in his appearance and lifestyle. Save them, and unleash their potential, but don't make them nancy boys.

Pansexual
A person who will have sex with anybody. Basically horny with no sense of taste whatsoever.

That's all I have for sex. And I shall be nice and mention the definitions are courtesy of wordspy.com and urbandictonary.com.

bountiful

2006-01-29T01:56:00.000+08:00

(adj) Marked by abundance; plentiful.

Firstly it's the beginning of a new Lunar New Year! So here's wishing all a bountiful, prosperous and joyous new year. All those who're collecting red packets, collect as many as you can! Those who're giving them out, thank you very much.

What else do we have plenty of? Variants of Motorola's Razr V3! Arriving roughly 5 quarters of a year ago, we now have 11(!) different variants of what was the most posh and currently most copied phone around.

(from left) Original V3 silver, V3 black, limited edition V3 blue

V3 pink, V3 cosmic blue, V3c (CDMA network edition not available in S'pore)

V3i gunmetal silver, limited edition D&G V3i gold (1000 pieces worldwide).
upgraded versions of original V3 with 1.23megapixel camera and Transflash card slot

V3x silver, V3x black, V3x navy blue (all unavailable in S'pore as yet)
full featured V3 with 3G, 2megapixel camera and Transflash card slot

six centimetres under

2006-01-27T15:12:00.000+08:00

Six feet under means a person is dead and buried in a coffin under the ground. 'Six centimetres under' has got nothing to do with death except I wanted the title of this post to sound just a tad more interesting. My coining of this expression is supposed to mean 'under one's skin', which means looking beneath the surface, because there are so many things and people cannot be deciphered just by looking on the outside.

There was a guy. The best words to describe him were 'a ball of energy', 'noisy', 'amusing companion' and other words along thie line. One would naturally think this is a description of a popular person. Well-loved among friends, gets invitations to parties, is hardly ever home for dinner and stuff like that. To an extent, that was the truth. Under the layer of excitement and laughter lies another one of extreme insecurity.

'Why so?' you would question. A person who is popular has got nothing to worry about as far as people is concerned. As it turned out, he grew up in an environment where he thinks it is of utmost importance what others thought of him. He was afraid of not pleasing the people he liked, he was afraid of losing the people who are now classified as friends.

He would call, he would text and he would write to those whom he liked or treasured. And when he got their responses, it gave him great relieve to know that he stil those people with him. However, he did not know how to play it good. Soon, he would appear to message too much, call too much, and these people started to back away because they were afraid this guy was getting possessive. He tried to explain himself, tried to assure those people who were getting unsure if they should just ignore this guy for good, but as he tried to do so, he always kind-of scared them even more.

For a long time, he lived like this. He hated himself, for he was worried if people will all be repelled by him this way. It hurt him so when the people he loved saw him as something to be wary against. Till today, he lives the life of a person whom many still regard to be one of a rather popular person, but fails so miserably when it came to those who actually meant more to him. And someday, he hopes, there will be a happy ending, be it with one person who really matters, or alone.

2006 tech watch

2006-01-21T13:48:00.000+08:00

The awaited new Windows OS, Vista, will be hitting shelves by the end of the year (which is roughly the time Mac OS X 10.5 will be out). Let's now take a brief look of what you can expect.

Interesting features include Windows Sideshow which basically adds a small display on the external of your notebook computer for example, for quick and easy access to your schedules and phonebook without having to boot up the computer.
The Sidebar feature which incorporates date, time, weather, calculator, Media Player controls, etc in one single window permanently on the desktop is also very useful for quick access to commonly used tools and information. Wonderful idea formerly only available as a 3rd party download, it is now incorporated into Vista.
Another step in home IT technology is the incorporation of Home Entertainment in a computer device. Look out for new entertainment features including the ability for the Xbox 360 to work with your PC to bring and share all media files wherever you are. The Media Centre edition of Vista is definitely one to look out for.
The Search function will also be much improved this time round, and as expected with every incarnation, the design will improve too. For full details of how Vista will work, hold your breath till somewhere in November, when it is expected to ship.

Moving on to Intel, 2 pieces of news have being making headlines.

One is the most idiosyncratic computer manufacturer in the world, Apple, will produce iMacs with Intel processors from now. And by the end of 2006, all Macs will use Intel chips, marking the end of an era for the PowerPC-based Macs. Major improvements in terms of performance are promised. For a titbit, 32 million iPods were sold in 2005.

Second, and this also concerns the Intel-Macs, is the introduction of the Core-Duo chip. It basically is a chip for notebook computers which enables the users to perform multiple demanding tasks simultaneously while sipping on less power than the current chip. Acer will be the first to launch the new chip on their notebooks, which is right about now.

Next, as entertainment and media convergence continues to hit various gadgets, hard-disk based MP3 player-mobile phones will finally hit the market. Memory moves from Sony Ericsson W900i's 470MB into the GB territory.

Samsung has introduced the i300x in the market, and it comes with a 4GB microdrive, 1.3 megapixel camera, 256k colour screen and runs on a Windows Mobile edition smartphone platform.
Nokia's offering, the N91 is like a N70 (meaning stuffed full of features) with a 4GB microdrive. It runs on Symbian platform. Its size and heft may stop it from beating the Samsung.

In other mobile phone news, the Benq-Siemens mobile phone division is officially formed and 3 models have already been announced for the newly energised Taiwan-German mobile company. All 3 models seem to signal the company moving towards a design language where slim and minimalist takes the front seat.

The S68 is an entry level phone that comes with 256k colour screen, bluetooth and no camera.
S88 (black) throws in MP3 player, 2 megapixel camera with video, microSD card slot and upcoming mobile gadgets screen technology, OLED for its display.
EF81 is basically a S88 in a clamshell with 3G. It also comes with a high resolution display. No prizes for guessing it if it's aiming right at Moto's upcoming V3x , Samsung's Z500 replacement and LG U880.

A new alliance is completed but an old one dies. Konica Minolta has announced closure of its camera and imaging business, but current Konica Minolta users fret not, Sony will service the cameras for you now as KM has transferred a portion of its camera business assets to them. Hmm. Jacelyn Tay will lose one endorsement deal then.

Hard Disk storage will creep closer and closer to the terabyte territory (yes, that's 1000GB), as storage continues to escalate and prices tumble. Also, with more high-definition and what-have-you file formats now, one will need more storage than ever before. A 1TB storage solution is already available on the market at $1399.
2.5 inch drives, which are commonly seen in MP3 players iRiver H10 20GB or iPod G5, are also achieving capacity of up to 160GB. That would make a real iPod Video viable.

And lastly, Blu-ray should hit Singapore in a few months time as the buzz slowly fizzes out on the ultimate optical media.

the mass transit anecdotes

2006-01-20T00:14:00.000+08:00

A couple of days ago I wrote about an evil bitch (whom i'm still cursing will miss every bus she runs after) pointing and laughing at a lady who made attempted to run after a bus in vain. Incident fresh in my head, I'm always looking out for amusing happenings in the MRT or bus.

-The seat-hoppers
I have no idea why, but some people (middle-aged and more-than middle-aged women especially) simply love to hop from seat to seat along one bus ride. They may start somewhere like 3/4 through the length of the bus, shift to an empty bench nearer to the rear door, shift to the empty bench right behind the rear door, then to one that' in the front half of the bus. Attention Deficient Disorder like kids?

-The wrigglers
Then there are those who can't seem to stop shifting in their seats. Throughout the journey, you'll see them shifting front and back, left and right, legs crossed, uncrossed, blah blah blah. Do they find the seats of our buses and trains too uncomfortable, or are they itching somewhere in the ass or groin area, or are they actually controlling their poo and pee? Not too sure.

-The humpty dumptys
Some love take the oppurtunity of the 1 hour journey to catch some sleep (or fake it so as to not make themselves guilty for not giving up a seat to pregnant women). Ok, I sleep on long journeys too, and have woken up to find myself drooling a little (ew). But what I want to talk about are those who are amazingly stable as they rock from side to side. If you notice, many seem to come close enough to just miss resting their heads on your shoulder. That's not the most impressive. I ever saw a lady having her entire upper torso at like around 40 degrees to the ground and managing to stick her butt on the seat. Now beat that.

-The let's-let-the-whole-bus-hear-us conversationalists
Those who want to talk or are hard of hearing take note. Stick close together on the bus or train! Many people are more interested in minding their own business or looking at the passing scenery rather than being sandwiched in between some people who are talking about the prices of fish at the market today or if Ah Beng got punished because he put a nail on Ah Seng's chair in class.

-The glitzy / too raggy dressers
Alright, I'm not going to be ridiculous to say that there should be a dress code in public transport. But to those who really dress too sloppily (I'm talking stained and kind of torn white ah pek singlets and worn out slippers here) , are you sure you should be going out like that? To those who're wearing a big pretty dress or tuxedo: I think you should just spend that little bit more to at least share a cab to get to your obviously important event, judging from the dressing.

Just a few types of people I noticed on our public transport. Watch out for your fellow commuters and identify them for yourselves. Meanwhile, happy riding.

lamborghini

2006-01-19T12:38:00.000+08:00

Automobili Lamborghini produces cars that hardly anyone can afford, and now under Audi ownership, the cars that they churn out are ever more stunning. Following an illustrious line of vehicles including the Countach, Jalpa, Miura and Diablo, their current line of 2 models, the Gallardo and Murcielago have become one of the most-seen pin ups of any guys' bedroom walls (other than girls in sexy lingerie).

Fantasize about these sexy Lamborghinis!

Lamborghini Gallardo

Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder

Lamborghini Gallardo SE special edition, where only 250 units will be available worldwide. It's got special wheels and has a Ferrari style see through engine cover panel.

Lamborghini Gallardo GT3 by Rieter Engineering

Lamborghini Murcielago

Lamborghini Murcielago

Lamborghini Murcielago Roadster

Start drooling!

idol strikes back

2006-01-18T11:08:00.001+08:00

A new wave of American Idol mania is set to hit the globe starting tonight, with the airing of the opening episode of season 5. 4 whole years have passed since Kelly Clarkson was crowned as the first American Idol, and all winners and runner ups of the past 4 seasons have released their albums. It seems however, that the original Idol is the only one to have made it so far.

Kelly Clarkson's 2004 release (yes, it's been more than a year) Breakaway has turned into the #3 selling album of 2005, shifting over 4 million copies in the US. For your information, Breakaway is still in top 10 position according to Billboard. Clarkson also swept 11 #1s on Billboard's year end recaps. Do not drop your jaw too much though, because Billboard has created too many categories. Some #1s she got from Billboard in 2005 were Top Pop Artist, Top Pop Single for 'Since U Been Gone' and top for the Adult Contemporary Chart (title track). Impressive eh? Only Miss Mariah bimbo Carey's amazing comeback album and Green Day's American Idiot stopped her from dominating all sales charts in 2005.

Looking at other previous Idols, their combined results hardly sparkle as much as Clarkson. Ruben and Clay Aiken had a good run for a short while but lost steam. Their 2nd albums (i'm not considering holiday albums here) have yet to see the daylight. Fantasia and Diana DeGarmo were the poorest selling finalists so far and this is unacceptable because I love Fantasia, and Carrie Underwood and Bo Bice's albums are still too new to see how well they can sell. One thing to take of though is that Carrie has already managed to sell over 2 million copies of Some Hearts in the US. Remember when Simon Cowell claimed that Carrie Underwood will be the most successful Idol of all time? We'll see if she can beat Kelly. Simon Cowell's claim however, is not without reason. Because Shania Twain has currently the 7th best selling album of all time now. Come On Over sold over 20 million copies in the US.

Ok. Enough of figures. We'll see who reigns supreme in a few years' time. Meanwhile, let's all enjoy Idol Season 5.

new stuff

2006-01-17T23:37:00.000+08:00

+ new stuff +

New stuff will be coming up on Junrong's blog, which the first such post you've already just seen. Also, I am thinking of changing the design of the blog again cos some of you have experienced a little bit of trouble viewing it due to the optimum resolution for this design is i think 800x600. Probably be switching back to one of the preset designs that blogger provides so look out for it!

Will try my best to post stuff that're more interesting to read.

Happy 2006 to all!

abhorrence

2006-01-17T23:21:00.000+08:00

+ abhorrence +

(n) A feeling of repugnance or loathing.

A woman sat beside her husband (or something) on the bus. It was pulling into the bus stop opposite Fairfield Methodist School along Dover Road. A lady was running frantically, probably hoping to get onto the bus in front of ours. The lady wasn't running in the most glamourous fashion because she was carrying a handbag and a small paper bag. That woman saw it, and pointed at the lady. In her exact words, she said 'hahaha, look at her, chase bus chase until like that' in mandarin. The passenger behind her shifted in his seat, disapproving of her comment.

And she taps on her husband who was trying to read the paper. 'Look look, run until like that.' Again, translated directly from mandarin using the exact words she said. The passenger behind her starts to make a face behind her back. Never mind, the woman probably found the way she ran slightly amusing.

The bus pulls out of the bus stop, and the lady didn't catch up to the bus in front eventually. The woman on the bus makes another comment pointing at her 'haha, still cannot catch the bus'. Now the passenger behind her is fed up. Like how retarded can this woman be? He calls her an evil bitch in his mind and hopes that she misses every bus she runs after in future.

In the third instance the woman laughed at the bus-chasing lady, what the passenger behind was feeling was abhorrence.

The passenger behind was me.

wala wala

2006-01-08T15:37:00.000+08:00

+ wala wala +

After a disgusting and totally unglam puking moment after 2 drinks yesterday, I am now officially the worst drinker on earth.

But anyway, here are 2 pictures when I was still awake.

Not a bad place, with a live band. But do try not to sit to near the speakers. It gets rather loud.

Peace out.

singapore zoological gardens

2006-01-08T14:41:00.000+08:00

+ singapore zoological gardens +

(Note: this entry was supposed to be up on wednesday. apologies for being late.)

Can't remember when exactly was the last time you visited the zoo? Well neither could I.

Modes of transportation, 5. The fifth being walking on your own legs.

Disclaimer: No animals were beheaded in the making of this sign.

We caught the first show.

Flamingo 1: Hmm, I could've sworn there's an imposter among us..
Flamingo 2: Don't be silly, just keep drinking.

This picture is solely for Lin JunJie fans.

Peacocks only open up when they want to impress a female specie.

Barbary sheep: Darn, what's the weird smell up my arse?

Elephant 1: Whee, this log is fun!!
Elephant 2: Yea, whatever, you dork.

The black little primate that was stealing attention from the elephant enclosure.

Rudolph off-duty.

And yes, it's man made.

Can't remember what these furballs are called, but they sure like to cuddle around. Er, maybe they're called 'rugby mice'?

Miss Diana Ross was happy to see so many people still liked her music.

Cute. And the small children just hangs on to mama.

It was raining, so we had to buy ponchos. Please do not be mistaken, we did not purposely want to look like ducklings.

Sheba, 30 and Inuka, 16. Time to study for your 'O's, Inuka!

Yes, that's something I never knew too.

The giraffe was kinda sulky cos he was short for his specie, like I am compared to mine.

White Tiger, pussyfied. Oh by the way, there are NO tigers in Africa.

Again, forgot the name to this glowing, chicken-ish creature.

Snakes gives me the creeps.

And introducing, the Ostrich, king of eggs!

Was this a mutt or a fox? Can't quite remember, but he sure is handsome. And quirky, cos he walks round and round in circles, then poses for 5 seconds.

Last picture, the prairie dog. If you want to see a little dance the furball does, email me.

That was it. First visit to the zoo in 10 years. For those now interested to relive their childhood, you can do so pay getting ready $15, finding a day with good sunny weather and taking 927 from Choa Chu Kang or 138 from Ang Mo Kio.

the boy turns 20!

2005-12-24T01:16:00.000+08:00

+ the boy turns 20! +

HAHAHAHA...

Junrong turns 20! The digit 2 in front! :D

Of course I won't be so stupid to say 'I'm no longer a kid!', coz that'll be admitting I was one before. I'll just say 'so happy to move to decade number 3 of my life!'!.

Thanks for the birthday wishes and I hope everyone will have a fantastic Christmas!
Of course I also wish for many more better years to come for myself. :)

Cheers!

to vincent

2005-12-17T23:01:00.000+08:00

+ to vincent +

To my pal, I love you! Well, not in That sense, but yea you get my point. You're one of the very few people who will make me smile without even have to do anything. Of course, the smiling part does not refer to you having a goofy face or what. Haha.. You're a great friend, you're da man!
Well erm, in case anyone starts to speculate anything, I once again emphasise that this is just an ode to a great friend. :)

Ok, time to change topic.. My wish list has been altered.. The pouch is settled and I've got 2 new additions. (heh.. I'm so greedy) They are The Sims 1 Expansion Collection Volumes 2 & 3, available at $19.90 each at Challenger. Haha..
So come come people who have to much money to spare, get Junrong a present for his twentieth! :p

I'm feeling very happy, duno why. Heh.

mobile update

2005-12-17T11:40:00.000+08:00

+ mobile update +

The spotlight falls on 3 "-est" handsets this weekend.

First up, the thinnest clamshell phone in the world. Yes, the mighty V3 is well and beaten, with NEC taking a pre-emptive strike at the upcoming V3i.

The NEC N412i comes with bluetooth, a 1.3 megapixel camera, and i-mode. All it lacks is a memory expansion slot. Well, maybe it is too thin to fit one in. The length is slightly longer while the width is down compared to the V3. Amazing, nonetheless. Costing $488 with a 2 year contract at Starhub only.

Next is the costliest phone bar Vertu in the local market.

The Dopod 900 comes with full PDA functions, runs on Windows Mobile 5.0, has Wifi, a huge 3.6" display with VGA resolution (that's 640x480, double that of Samsung D600), a QWERTY keyboard and 3G. So it has everything. And it's also huge. At close the size of 3 Samsung E630s and the weight of 3 V3s, everything about this mobile warrior is excessive. And now to the main point: the asking price of the ultimate PDA-phone hybrid is a cool $1658 with a 2 year contract.

Finally the Sony Ericsson K700i, at over 1.5 years old is the longest running model in the local market right now. Singtel has given an incentive for buyers looking for a little bit of nostalgia. It is now free with a 2 year contract. Practical users should get this instead of a newer low end camera phone. It's got bluetooth, MP3 ringtones and a not too bad screen.

little update

2005-12-16T22:51:00.000+08:00

+ little update +

It's a little more than one whole week to Christmas, and retailers and STB are pulling out the stops to make people know that. Glittery lighting that stretches from Orchard Road to Marina City area were lit up at the turn of the month, extended shopping hours are in, sales, floats in Orchard, various performances and a very crowded town area are all signs of the imminent holiday!

While walking down Orchard I realise there's no stopping to Crystal Jade's expansion. Two more outlets of the franchise have opened up, Crystal Jade Ginseng Chicken in Centrepoint and C-Jade Express takes over McDonald's in the basement of Wisma Atria. This is actually the first time I see a Mac's outlet close down. Haha..

Lastly it is 8 days to my birthday. Friends who are reading this, you may buy me something if you've got too much money to spend. I've got a little wish list. Heh..
-Pump Up Bhangra CD
-White in ear bud type earphones
-Hard iPod G4 case
-Small coin pouch (I freaking lost the one bought in BKK)
-Not too big waist pouch

Of course, I always like hand-made cards and a call to wish me happy not-a-teenager-anymore day to me. :)

Bangkok

2005-12-15T18:47:00.000+08:00

+ bangkok! +

After 5 days in Bangkok, I've seen the friendliness of the Thai people, the sheer number of taxis in the City of Angels, and the excellent skills of the drivers in the city too. Time to share some pictures!

8am on Friday morning.. There's our flight!

And we take off.. Image courtesy of Violet.

My room.. Yes, it's big and affordable.

This is meal number 1.. actually the worst we've had. the portions were tiny, the food was too salty and the drink was wayyyy to sweet! *gulp*

A 5 minute ride away, MBK is the best mall in Bangkok!

Suffice to say that the traffic in Bangkok is not the smoothest-flowing in the world..

Chatuchak Market! It's massive and a tip to those who're going, do bring a mini fan cos u're gonna need it to shop in that place for a whole day..

Our favourite dessert, Mango with Glutinous Rice.

I realised that every restaurant or food court we visited, there'll be a tissue box on the table. Great.

Smile!

Death Railway day was the worst time I've ever spent on transportation.. We travelled 100 odd km on the train and shook violently on half the trip.. Well the journey was arduous but at least I took a couple of nice pictures. And it was also a way to not spend too much too fast on shopping. Despite the horribly long and bumpy ride, we had a little adventure. Being blocked by people that we couldn't alight at our station and jumping off the next which was half an hour's ride away, which by the way has nothing.

We arrive at Thonburi Station at 7 in the morning.

Holding the tickets like they were lottery tickets. And grinning from ear to ear. (that's before the journey)

The train that will shake our butts for more than 6 hours for the return journey!

Cute doggy at the station.

And we embark on our journey..

..passing through old houses..

..lush green fields..

..farms..

..and small towns.

And after our little train-jumping adventure, we arrive at our destination.

We take a walk down memory lane looking at a part of the terrible history of Occupation..

..risk being killed on the track..

..saw beautiful scenery..

..saw the biggest toilet sign ever..

..and took home a piece of history home with us.
*Pictures of our faces of the return journey was not shown due to horrific nature.*

Candid time..

We waited hours for the return train and therefore decided to play with the camera!

Ok. There are more at the railway, but I shall spare all of you.
Silly faces series.

They say I look like one of the mannequins we came across at the mall in the last one.

We next move on to the beautiful Grand Palace and Temple of Emerald Buddha..

Next to the tallest building in Thailand, the Baiyoke Sky Hotel.

200B entry ticket up the 84-storey high tower includes a free drink that costs up to 200B. So in essence you're actually paying for the drink.

The most complicated highway interchange in the world?

And that's our hotel from wayyy up there!

River cruise!

We rented a boat for 200B per person for a 1 hour cruise down the famous Chao Phraya River!

There are many bridges across the river..

..including the most rusty one I've ever seen.

Besides using bridges to cross the river, people also travel across by river taxis like this one.

We also pass by many houses (it does make me feel lucky to be staying where I am)..

..people selling some goods on sampans..

..the construction of a giant Buddha statue..

..fish-feeding at one of the stops..

..and of course various temples.

Soon 5 days have passed and we're heading back home.. We got a big 7 seater cab to the airport and I volunteered to be in row 3 buried in all the luggage!

We're at the departure hall of Don Muang Airport!

And by 11.15pm local time, we arrive back in Changi Airport..

..with all my luggage.

And this officially concludes my first visit to Thailand.. Will be there again!

mobile gadget awards '05 (3)

2005-12-05T10:08:00.000+08:00

+ mobile gadget awards '05 (3) +

PORTABLE ENTERTAINMENT DEVICES

Flash Memory MP3 Player
Best: iRiver U10

Comes in 512MB or 1GB sizes, this compact MP3 player is stylish and packs lots of features, including FM and a cool video-enabled coloured screen. And of course, any iRiver plays music beautifully. A better all rounder than the iPod nano.
Design: iPod nano

Just look at it, I still find it hard to believe something this thin actually has 2 or 4GB of memory. Still beats the rest in a class of gadgets full of beautiful designs.

Hard Disk Memory MP3 Player
Best: iRiver H10

Excellent audio quality, FM radio, coloured screen to view photos, pretty nice design. Only slightly high-ish price prevents it from being a major hit.
Design: iPod G5

The iPod is now in its 5th iteration, and it looks better than ever. Crippled video playback ability and still no FM. At least its colour LCD is now the biggest in an MP3 player. And it's still wayyyy cool.

Portable Media Player
Best / Design: Creative Zen Vision

Next attempt after the failed Creative PMC, the Zen Vision narrowly beats the Archos AV500 to nab double honours. Classily designed and packed with a high resolution 3.7" display, what the Zen Vision lacks now is direct recording to the player. And unlike the iPod, this is a proper video player that plays several codecs. Of course, there's a teeny patriotic side of me to the Creative's win too.

Portable Gaming Device
Best / Design: Sony Playstation Portable

Gaming device, video player, music player, fashion statement. Enough said.

That marks the end of my 3 part self selected mobile gadgets of the year! And if you haven't realised, I love my gadgets in black. *hint*

mobile gadget awards '05 (2)

2005-12-04T11:50:00.000+08:00

+ mobile gadget awards '05 (2) +

MOBILE PHONES

Non Camera Phones
Best: Nokia 6021

As much as I dislike Nokia, they're still the strongest at the low end of the market because of their simplicity. Something extra for 6021: comes with bluetooth. Technically 9300 also falls into this category, but the point for non-camera phones now should be simplicity and ease of use.
Design: Nokia 6060

The external antenna, although pocket unfriendly, is what exactly makes this and the 6101 stand out in the clamshell market. Looks luxurious for such a basic phone, especially in black.

Mainstream Phones
Best: Sony Ericsson K750i / W800i

Obviously The phones of 2005, these 2 mobiles are still the best camera phones available almost half a year after launch. If you don't need 3G, these are nigh on perfect. W800i throws in a sportier design and a dedicated MP3 player function that renders your flash memory based MP3 players useless. Looks great, works great, sounds great. And the price is coming down too.
Design: Motorola PEBL U6 / Samsung E760

All hail the most stylish phone to arrive in time for Christmas. Brushed metallic rounded outer casing, V3 style flat keypad. Motorola proves that it can deliver in the style department after the ghastly ROKR.
Samsung's avant garde E760 also wins honours this time round. The round outer display offset to the top right corner just makes it different from most other phones. Why not D600 you say? Cos it looks like a cross between the E630 and D500.
Interesting: Motorola L7

The features are actually bog standard V3, but it gains interest from being now the slimmest phone in the local market. Still impressive, when 11mm can hold a VGA camera and bluetooth module. What's more, it's wonderfully cheap.
Special Mention: Panasonic VS6

The VS series is a massive improvement over the crap X series, and Panasonic returns to form (finally) after the GD88. Glorious screen, decent camera, elegant looks, bluetooth and user friendly. Very good. Reasonably priced too. VS6 edges VS7 for its more compact size.

Smart / PDA Phones
Best: BenQ P50

What a smart phone should be - chock full of features, running on Windows Mobile Edition, built in keyboard. To top it off, it's elegantly designed too. Beats the Treo 650 for the absence of an external antenna.
Design: O2 XDA II Mini

Chosen because it performs most of the P50's party tricks but in a clean, compact brushed metal body.

Multimedia Phone
Best: Motorola E680i

Huge screen, powerful speakers, support up to 2GB SD cards. A decent megapixel camera and slightly simpler operation would make it even better.
Design: Sony Ericsson W800i

The Walkman ranks second in this category for its smaller screen size, but it's still mighty powerful as an all rounder, with great sporty looks to boot.

3G Phones
Best: Nokia N70

Again, I hate to give Nokia a 'Best Of', but this model's features list is simply so long that I have to be impressed. Still not a fan of its design though.
Design: Samsung Z500 / Sony Ericsson K600i

Samsung's Z500 still reeks of more than 2-year-old E700, but just look at how elegant the basic design of that model is.
Sony Ericsson's ultra retro-cool candy-bar makes it a tie.

mobile gadget awards '05 (1)

2005-12-04T02:16:00.000+08:00

+ mobile gadget awards '05 (1)+

Cut off date 1 Dec 2005, here comes Junrong's gadget picks of the year!

DIGITAL CAMERAS

Ultracompact Cameras
Best: Panasonic Lumix FX-9

6 megapixels, 2.5" high resolution display, good image quality, image stabiliser chip, good looks. Battery life is however slightly down from FX8
Design: Sony Cybershot T7 / T9

Prosumer Cameras
Best: Canon Powershot S80

Compact for it's class and features, this 8 megapixel shooter takes great photographs.
Design / Interesting: Panasonic LX-1

First 16:9 wide aspect ratio consumer camera in the world. 8.4 megapixels and full manual mode. Noise in pictures is a slight problem though.

Megazoom Cameras
Best: Canon Powershot S2 IS

12x optical zoom, image stabiliser, video with zoom, great quality pictures and relatively stylish.
Design: Panasonic Lumix FZ-5

Class competitive photos, good features, metallic-ish plastic body, smallest in megazoom class.

a difficult job

2005-12-04T00:53:00.000+08:00

+ a difficult job +

Parents. It's the most difficult title anyone can hold in the world. At least it seems like that to me. Maybe I'm just too much of a terror to handle.

They never seem to control us (the kids) the correct amount. Too much, and it's kinda stifling and feels like a pair of eyes are watching you whatever you're doing. Too little, and we blame them when we become idiots in future. It's almost too hard to pull the string with optimal tautness, if there's such a level in the first place.

I just.. I wouldn't say throw a tantrum, but more like a display of my unhappiness to show that I hate to be tracked down past midnight to be asked where I was and to be told not to come home too late. It was rude and probably broke her heart, but I really hate it. I mean, I don't need this kind of talk anymore. And it's really not necessary to sit out there to wait on the door till past 1am when she's tired before giving up and turning in. When I said 'I'm going out', it means I'm going out, and it's not like I'll stay out for the night without informing them!

Ya, I know the 'however old you are you're still kids in your parents eyes' thing. Whatever. To me, I'm already old enough to just say 'I'm going out' and for courtesy's and for their hearts' sake, inform if I won't be home. That's enough.

And that's displaying my Single Child Syndrome.

kiasu?

2005-11-26T18:38:00.000+08:00

+ kiasu? +

For those who think Singaporeans are the most 'kiasu' human beings in the world, please tune in to today's news. Various stores in the US were holding big sales and resulted in people rushing, pushing and shoving to get what was on discount.

So for those who still think our own people are 'ugly' because of the way we queue for good deals, open your eyes big and see. It's the same everywhere. Just to make a point, those who miss a good deal when they see one are bloody idiots.

Stop putting your own people down.

attitude

2005-11-25T15:06:00.000+08:00

+ attitude +

Humans are a funny bunch. We behave in different ways in front of different people. And sometimes it's to an extent that it's laughable.

Take guys for example. Many tend to think they need to prove their masculinity in front of other men, so an F word or various vulgarities are somewhere in every sentence. It's as if the crude language is punctuation or the only way to tell the other guy that he's the tough one.
Put him in front of a pretty girl however, and he'll suddenly become someone who speaks very gently, like he wouldn't even kill an ant.

I don't really blame these people, but I'm starting to think this has something to do with the insecurity of certain people with themselves. They may not have a manual knob selector that switches when placed in front of certain people, the change in attitude feels natural. And this subconscious change of behaviour, I guess, is because that particular person doesn't feel secure with himself/herself in front of another party.

Well it happens to me too, though not to a very great extent. So, I have to sort out my insecurities and be comfortable and myself in front of everyone.

Of course, for those who purposely act like an absolute angel just to attract the other party first is frowned upon. Cos it's kinda cheap. Hahah.. And it's just a bigger disappointment when the true colours show.

car spotlight: renault megane

2005-11-21T12:20:00.000+08:00

+ car spotlight: renault megane +

Two generations of the Renault Megane have been launched, the first in 1996, and the second generation in 2002. Two charisterics have too been synonymous with the range also. One is a wide choice of body styles available, and the other, design. Each generation had a total of 6 body styles, namely 3 door hatchback (dubbed a coupe in gen 1), 5 door hatchback, saloon, wagon, convertible (which goes metal instead of fabric in gen 2) and MPV (in Scenic guise). And I loved both generations. Bar the saloons, all versions looked very stylish at the time of their launch.

The above is Gen 1 which ran from '96 to '02. Clockwise from top left, we have saloon, convertible, Scenic MPV, coupe, 5 dr hatch and wagon. Rewind back to 1996 and the coupe should be one of the coolest family cars on the roads.

Gen 2 which started production late in '02 has that huge butt in the hatchback versions which I totally adore. In fact, if I were to buy a car right now, the Megane 3 dr will definitely be on my shortlist among the Subaru Legacy GT, Mini Cooper S and BMW 530i. It's still the most stylish family car on the roads in my opinion. Clockwise from top left, 5dr hatch, 3dr hatch, wagon, Scenic, coupe-convertible and saloon.

carl's jr

2005-11-21T11:06:00.000+08:00

+ carl's jr +

So I had my Carl's Jr experience v1.0 at Marina Square yesterday.

One big difference from the other fast food outlets is the self service drinks dispenser (ok, i know u can find this at Lido's KFC too), the also self service condiments bar (with chili, tomato and salsa sauces) and a tissue box with salt and pepper shaker on each table. Personally I like the idea, but you know our people. Alot tend to have a "since it's free, just take; doesnt matter if we're actually gonna eat it" kind of mentality, so they should be looking at a fair bit of wastage there.

The burgers are priced at the $6+ to $7+ level, and combos with a BK's regular sized drink and fries cost.. $9 and a little bit to $10.50. So you're looking at a 50% more expensive price than Mc's, KFC and Burger King.

Next, staff attitude. Good and polite enough. I got a cheerful 'sure!' upon request of a service staff to clear the table for me. Definitely miles better than KFC's lacklustre performance in this aspect.

Anyhow, I tried the Western Bacon Cheeseburger.

If you can't already tell from the picture, it IS a large burger. I reckon BK's burgers are roughly two-thirds the size of this. So it contains a charboiled beef patty, bacon, a couple of real onion onion rings (more on that in awhile)and BBQ sauce that's not BK-salty topped with sesame buns. Good stuff.
And why do i mention 'real onion onion rings'? Because a strip of onion is what you see when you sink your teeth through one. How long have we been tolerating 'onion rings' which contains more flour than anything else? This is the real thing. Fries are fine too, but not massively better than Mc's on a good day. And they should really tell the other fast food chains how chili sauce should taste like, it's not as sweet as the rest. I shall exclude Mc's garlic chili sauce out of this comparison because it's a different type of sauce.

There it is, my very first Carl's Jr experience. A pretty good one, I'd say. The only fast food chain I patronised on a fairly regular basis (read: probably once in a mth or two) used to be Burger King. Now I'll add another to the list.

Score: 8/10

ben and jerry's!

2005-11-18T23:49:00.000+08:00

+ ben and jerry's! +

Wowee! Had Ben and Jerry's a couple of days ago.. Wonderful.. Heh.
Try Dublin Mudslide! It's wonderful. The staff is young, bubbly, polite, eat-kantang type (meaning fluent in english) and predominantly female. So lechers out there can go have a feast for both your tastebuds and eyes. Anyway, B&J's design reminds me of NYDC. No qualms with its graphics being colourful and loud. Even the serviettes and leaflets (both shown in the pictures) look different from everything else out there. Great ice cream, great service staff, great corporate design. Kudos to B&J's!

P.S. 'pint is pronounced like 'pine' with a T ending, not 'pin' with a T ending. i said pin-T over and over again and was corrected. now i'll pronounce it right for the rest of my life.

congratulations

2005-11-16T22:54:00.000+08:00

+ congratulations +

Congratulations to Gracia (my cousin) and KC again for becoming officially man and wife, I wish you guys many many blissful years ahead! The wedding dinner was held at Raffles Hotel Ballroom. Here are the pictures!

the exterior of Raffles Hotel done up for the holidays

and that's why we are all here!

nice centrepiece, blurry because i took it in 'twilight' mode (slow shutter w/o flash)

table setting befitting of a posh hotel

every guest had this i think salt n pepper shaker set. put them together and they'll be hugging

me, parents and uncle

cake cutting ceremony! again blurry due to twilight mode

the couple and my aunts and mom

those at our table, and family of the newly weds

and finally, me and irene ang! she was hired as the emcee of the dinner. a little star-struck. haha..

phone bought, picture time

2005-11-13T01:10:00.000+08:00

+ phone bought, picture time +

So I've gotten the phone.. E730. Poll over!
Time for pictures.

So in chronological order..

The Christmas lighting along Orchard and Marina area is already up by now, but this was taken 2 weeks ago at Ngee Ann City where they erect the giant Christmas tree again. Don't know how many years they've been putting up the tree now, but it's pretty nicely done up by now. It's about 4 storeys high. And yes you know this is coming.. All the Xmas decorations being put up means my birthday is coming! Woo hoo.. Well actually nothing to really get so excited about, it's just another day. It just happened to fall on a date that's easier to remember. Heh.

Me at the ATM, very common sight. Somehow the dollars can never stay in quite long in my account. It goes in, it goes out. Simple as that. Maybe my account isn't very hospitable to the dollars. Or maybe it's me.

Kinda freaky thing outside a shop that sells kids stuff (i think)in Suntec City. This weird thing is supposed to attract the kids to take a second look. Sure they made more than just the kids take a second look, cos it looks.. let's just say not universally cute. And it shakes too. Come take a look, it's pretty hideous.

Given to me after having dessert at TCC. The camera didn't manage to capture the glittery finish very well, but it's very nicely designed. It's supposed to be a TCC's membership card which one can sign up for with a minimum $88 purchase.

Courts show their marketing prowess and the amount of money they have by having a full 8-page ad campaign in today's Straits Times. The Xmas season is coming and retailers are pulling out all stops to grab whatever cash they can from consumers' pockets, apparently. I suppose this officially launches the end-of-year spree for all the other shops.

My cousin's wedding dinner on Tuesday gave me a perfect reason to buy something new and nice. Not bad eh? They're from Pedro, a men's shoes outlet (finally!) which is now open at Citylink Mall. Go check it out. Aldo style for two-thirds the price. Check it out!

poll!

2005-11-09T23:17:00.000+08:00

+ poll! +

Ok, I need help! My mobile contract is up so it's time to get a new phone! I've narrowed my choices to these few models so I won't go into details of their functions. The thing is I'm undecided between the designs. So give me an opinion!

Panasonic VS6. $538 for 2 year plan currently.

Samsung E530C. $228-298 for 2 year plan.

Samsung E730C. $398 for 2 year plan.

Samsung E760. $598 for 2 year plan currently.

living life

2005-11-02T00:27:00.000+08:00

+ living life +

I've found something to make my life a little more.. productive and fulfilling. At least a large portion of my rotting away time has been taken away, and that is good. Rotting makes people stupid, and I think I've already fallen victim to it. But now with more things to occupy my time, I dun feel so dead, just dead tired.

Yes, better late than never, I wouldn't want to go back to bumming again. Time to build up some momentum for the real world, and earn a little extra pocket money while at it. If only my hunched back didnt give me a problem. Always feels sore after standing for too long.

Well, a price to pay for a bigger number in my bank account.

2005-11-02T00:24:00.000+08:00

My blog is worth $5,080.86.
How much is your blog worth?

picture time

2005-10-27T17:24:00.000+08:00

+ picture time +

The view out of our National Library! I think this was at level 7 or 8. You should go up to level 13. It's got a pretty good view out of the Rochor and Little India area.

My mom put this er light thing out on Guan Yin's day a few days ago. Looks as if the deities are coming eh?

Yesterday's dinner. I reckon this would cost $4 or more at a food court.. Ah, how sweet to have dinner at home. (if it is good)

stay the same

2005-10-23T22:10:00.000+08:00

+ stay the same +

Don't you ever wish you were someone else,
you were meant to be the way you are exactly.
Don't you ever say you don't like the way you are,
when you learn to love yourself,
you're better off by far.

Those are the lyrics taken out of Joey McIntyre's song, back when I was in secondary school, I think. So it's not a new song, but it's lyrics were taken out for a reason.

Now thing is, I want to be someone else. I want to be different from who I am now. People always say, you're not yourself if something's changed. I disagree, because we all are changing, be it knowingly or subconsciously. Come on, admit it, nobody was as innocent and thinks the world is all good as we thought it was when we were still little kids. No one was slutty when he/she was 6. No one calls anyone else 'fat ass' in their kindergarten times. So you get my drift.

I don't exactly like who and what I am. I want to be taller, more handsome, without those buck teeth, better built, smarter, richer, adept with musical instruments like the piano and violin, able to speak 5 languages, run faster, play more sports, speak with more conviction, be more artistic and be more decisive, to name some things. In short, I wished I was almost perfect.

That ain't gonna happen. No one's perfect. But definitely, if someone were to dedicate that song to me one day, I'm not agreeing with it. Because we all change, and I don't want to stay in this present form forever. Of course, I don't despise myself, but obviously, I'm not too happy either.

So I'll change, but deep down inside, I'm still me, so don't be alarmed.

Ok, time to stop this. I'm using too many I's and me's in this post.