Today is my colleague's weekly soccer. I am sick today. Cough and sneezing. My manager was telling me that I shouldn't go for the soccer session. It's dangerous. May die. But I thought otherwise. In the past, when I am down with cough, sneeze or slight fever, and I go exercise, I feel better during the exercise. I thought the adrenalin did me some good. Of course, I don't want to die. I would have stop immediately if I feel not up to it. And I am no doctor either. So my theory could be and is probably wrong. Nevertheless, I went for the session and is now tired out. And my muscles are aching.

Just now, a friend, not exactly a friend, more like an acquaintance, messaged me. The following is our MSN conversation reconstructed from my memories. It may not be word for word, but it's accurate enough.

I'll call my friend Val.

Val: Are you Tym?
Me: Yep.
Val: I found you in my block list. Strange. I can't seem to remember blocking you. Worse, I can't even remember ever adding you.
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Talk cock
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Talk cock
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Me: I was on the road the other day when I see a vehicle with a license plate of 4444. Immediately I thought of you. It's in my blog.
Val: Haha! Cool.
Me: Here's the URL.
Val: Stupid Genius? How come in stupid genius blog??

That's when I realise he thought I am Tym.
So I reply: Now you know why you blocked me in the 1st place.

I've always have a feeling that that group of friends don't like me. I don't know why. Am I being too sensitive? Or have I done something unknowingly that pisses them off?

Shrugs.

I sent my phone for repairs recently. On reaching the service center, I thought I've stepped into a time-sharing presentation. There were a number of reps sitting around the reception area. When I tell the receptionist I had problems with my phone, they told me to fill my particulars in a form and wait for someone to serve me. A lady then came along and bring me to a meeting room to talk. I almost want to ask her am I in a time-sharing presentation. Anyway, I described my problems to her and she wrote it down and keep my phone and tell me that they'll contact me in 3-5 days about my phone. She also say that I HAVE to bring along my receipt to proof that I purchased it within 1 year so that I will not be charged for servicing. I asked her can't she check it thru other means? My experience with a previous brand tells me it's possible. She said no. Today, when I go collect my phone, I forgot my receipt. The guy then say he'll check the time that my set is sent to the reseller. So I don't have to bring the receipt after all...

Link

Nice

I've been playing this recently. My highest score has been about 13k. The highest score from the rest of the world is close to 300k. It's a big chasm there. After reading this, I changed my strategy.


It's very troublesome. I have to squeeze a lot of cannons. And it's not easy placing them so close to each other. And sometimes, no matter how many times I tried, I just can't seem to place it in a particular position. Grr.


Anyway, now I can get 140k. Still some way from the highest score, but at least, it's much nearer now.

Lilin didn't exactly leave us. She just changed department, but we had a sort of farewell lunch with her anyway. We had a $10 voucher with the Cathay Restaurant at The Cathay which we end up not using because they gave more discount when you sign your bill using a particular credit card. the food is decent though.

Recently, my Dopod 838 been going bonkers. I called the service center and they advise me to do a reset to factory settings and see if things improve before going to the service center.

And that's what I did. The problem is still there. Worse, now it keep connecting to my GPRS, most of the time without me knowing and I discovered it only 1 or more hours later. I wondered how much data charge I've incurred.

Anyway, since the problem is not solved, I reset to factory settings again. Both problems are still there. This time I comb through all the settings to see where is it that prompt my phone to keep connecting to internet. I can't find it until a couple of days later.



There's this Microsoft Direct Push thing that is activated. I never activate it. It must be activated on default when I reset to factory settings. !@#$%$%^&*

Parry gave me this:



Link

Finally managed to catch Protégé. I heard quite a lot about it. They took 5 years to research on drugs before completing the story. It's quite a documentary on the drugs industry. The storyline is straight forward, but the acting is good. They use an undercover cop trying to crack the drug industry as the backbone of the story. When the cop discovers more about his boss and the way things are run, so do we. And of course, finally, the boss is caught. I may write it like it's an average movie, but the protrayal of the characters by both the actors and the script is very good. As I say, it's a good documentary.

I had a meeting with ex 933 DJ Huisi today. I was late but she was busy trying to handle a crisis in her office. I think she is a nice person. When she realise I had been waiting for sometime, she is apologetic and dropped what's she doing to come talk to me. She was very co-operative when I explain the stuff to her and everything went on smoothly. Too bad I forgot to request to take a picture with her when I left. I've always liked her programs back when she was still a DJ.

Just saw this lorry on the road. Reminds me of this.

I was sitting on my bed when I decide to take a pic of the left hand side of my room...

I was at the newly completed AMK Hub. I was sitting on the parapet waiting for my friend. In front of me is the trolley park. The position of this trolley park is a bi stupid. They are arranged in 2 rows, and a lot of people chose to park their trolley on the left row such that it extends much into the walkway making the walkway half the width that it is. I thought this is quite dangerous, but nobody did anything with it. I also did nothing. A security passed by and tried to push the trolleys closer, but it did not make much difference. Another lady also come and chased me from the parapet, but the trolleys are still there.

I was playing with my Olympus SP550UZ again. These are the pictures I took. I swear I am not trying to peep at people changing. I am just playing with the zoom.


This picture is taken from my window at the block opposite.


This is when I use the optical zoom on 1 unit.


This is when I use the digital zoom as well. I know it's pointless using the digital zoom. I can achieve the same purpose using any picture imaging software. I just want to see how much I can zoom.

I arranged to meet Bel and her friend for KTV today at 2pm. Fanny supposed to come as well, but she SMS-ed me in the morning to tell me she can't make it. I forgot to tell Bel, and she made a reservation for 4. At 1:55pm, she SMS-ed me and ask me to confirm Fanny's attendance. I did not see the message until 2:05pm. When I told her, her friend has already checked in the room. K Box staff has entered us as 4 person and said that it's not possible to change. Personally, I think it's stupid. If I am there, I would kick up a big fuss. We had barely arrived, and we want to reduce the number of person and they don't let us. I would have just leave. It's ridiculous to make us pay for 1 person extra when we inform so early. But, Bel and friend are more nice than me. So we have to pay the extra. I can sense that Bel is not too happy about this, so I offered to pay Fanny's share. I don't think the fault is solely mine. I shouldn't have to pay, but well, as a form of good will, I did.


I quite like the room. The sound system is nice. And they have 2 TV, 1 at normal level, the other nearer to the ceiling. When I sing, sometimes I like to tilt my head up. And it's nice to be able to read the words even then.

I am on half day off today. I leave my office at 3pm. Hardworking? Loogi? Actually I was watching TV. A TV series I was following is repeats at 2pm to 3pm. :P

Anyway, I head down to Sim Lim Square to look at digital cameras. My Panasonic FZ-1 was going gonkers, and I am thinking of getting a new 1. I am considering between the Panasonic FZ-8 and the Olympus SP550UZ. In the end, I get this:


In the rest of this post, I am going to post some pictures taken with this new toy, but my article not meant to be a proper review of this camera. If you are interested in finding more about this camera, try this and this.

After gotten the camera, I walked to Stamford Court to drink tea with Kian. After that I walked to Chinatown and Capital Square to settle some credit card bills. Then, I walk to City Hall MRT to meet Fanny for dinner. Along the way, I took this picture:

Nice? Can use as wallpaper? :P

I decided to play with the zoom a bit, and took this:

Pretty cool? The above 2 pictures are taken standing at the same spot.


We went to NYDC at Sutnec for dinner. If you find the name Fanny familiar, and seems to remember reading somewhere about her in my blog, she is not this Fanny.


This is a picture taken while I play with the macro function.

After dinner, we walk over to Esplanade. There are some displays, and I took pictures 2 of them:



Then we took a walk to Fullerton 1, and took these:


Nice? Wallpaper again? :P

Then we went to East Coast Park with Alex and Bel. Alex brought along some expired red wine and Baileys. I have stomach upsets the next day. I wonder if it's due to this.


Then Alex brought us to this Hong Kong style cafe near Eunos. He say the food here are very nice. There are a lot of such cafes in Singapore nowadays. I ordered an ice cream + red bean desert. It's decent.


I ordered a peanut butter+condensed milk toast as well. It's horrible not nice. I didn't finish it. The above picture is what's left of it.

After that, we go back home.

I went to see the movie 300 yesterday. The movie is quite nice. It's about the gigantic Persian army attempting to conquer Greece. They were steamrolling everyone until they came up against the Spartans. King Leonidas refused to surrender to the Persian and wanted to fight them but politics prevented him from sending an army against them. He only managed to get 300 good soldiers with him on his quest to stop the Persians. Fortunately, he had with him 6700 allies. Even then, they were outnumberd tremendously. They managed to hold the Persian army off the first 2 days due to good tactics and superior fighting powers. They were eventually outflanked and killed, but their actions galvanized the rest of Greece, and 1 year later, an alliance led by the Spartans drove the Persians away.


There is 1 cock up while at the theatre. Alex bought the tickets and passed to me as he wanted to visit the Gents. As I made my way to my seat, Another couple approached the same seat. On examining our tickets, we realize that our tickets are indeed for the same seat. We were puzzled and look at the theatre number. Maybe 1 of us came to the wrong theatre, but it's correct. Then I realise that their tickets is for Tuesday while mine is for Wednesday. I wanted to tell them they've got yesterday's ticket when I realise it's Tuesday. It's my ticket that is the wrong date! I left the theatre and went to look for Alex, and we went to the counter to change the tickets.

Orr... They spell Michael Owen's name wrongly...

Original Amazon url
My screenshot (in case they have corrected their mistake)

My hair has grown a bit and it's time to trim them. And with my ICT already over, I can also have my hair dyed. so I asked Sharon and Thiery to go JB today.

It's a long queue at the custom, we took quite a while to clear it. On reaching JB, we head straight to City Square and booked the movie tickets for Haunted Spirits. It's about a Thai girl who know black magic but broke some rules and hell turn loose. An average movie. It's not even scary.

The movie was for 3:30pm. We got the tickets at about 1+pm, so that leaves us 2 hours. I head for the hair saloon to have my hair done. I thought 1 hour should do it, but they took more than 2 hours and I have to miss the 1st 10 minutes of the show. Luckily it's not rally important. Anyway, here's how I look now.


After the movie, is dinner time. I've always wanted to try good rabbit meat. My colleague Desmond told me to try Megaria and Permas Jaya. They are seafood places, but they might have rabbit dishes. For today, we decide on Permas Java as it's nearer.


This is the restaurant we went to.


This is the whole restaurant from the front.


This is the whole restaurant from the back.


It overooks a fishing pond.


They don't serve rabbits, so we have to make do with seafood. We ordered venison, fish, prawns and crabs. They are decent. Not fantastic though. The venison is too sweet for our liking. We forgot to check our wallets when we came. We have only about RM$200 with us. so we were quite apprehensive while ordering. But on hearing that they accepts credit card, we were more relaxed. We didn't overshot our cash though.

After dinner, we get a taxi back. As this place is far from town, it took a vrey long time for us to get a taxi. By the time the taxi came, it's way past 9:30pm. It's another jam at the custom and it was past 11pm when we reach Jurong East. Half the objective is achieved. We have to hope that they serve rabbit in Megaria.

My company has a weekly Macritchie Reservoir walk-a-jog. We engaged a fitness specialist to conduct the walk-a-jog every week. Recently, they decides to do away with the fitness specialist. Instead, they arranged for a bunch of us to take up basic fitness instructor courses so that we can conduct the walk-a-jog sessions ourselves. The course is very basic, it certainly doesn't qualify us as fitness instructors, but it was still pretty interesting. It's a 1.5 days course.

At the end of the course, on the 2nd day, we went for a walk in Macritchie Reservoir. I've not been there in a long long time. I've never joined them for the walk-a-jog session. The last time I've been to Macritchie Reservoir is during secondary school times, for our x-country race. It's a long long time ago.

The view is quite scenic. The old paths are still the same although there were some additions. There is now pathways along the banks, and there were monkeys running around. Maybe 1 of these days, I'll go for the treetop walk.

The Cowboy Bar organised an outing to the Asian Civilisation Museum (ACM) today. It's been ages since I've last sat foot into a Museum in Singapore. The last museum I've been to is in Taipei in November last year. Night In the Museum doesn't count of course.

We met at the Big Bird near UOB building. On reaching, I realise those that came are all couples. Except for 2 others who are good friends. So it was pretty boring.


On the way to the museum, we saw this uncle showing of his catch of the day. It's quite a big fish, and passer-bys are taking pictures of him and his fish.


The museum is divided into quite a few parts. I can remember the names of only a few. China, East Asia and Mystery Men. Mystery Men is specially set up recently. I think it's not going to be permanent in the ACM. The lighting is not very good in the museum and though taking pictures is allowed, we are not allowed to use flash. This statue of buddha is 1 of the exhibits that I managed to take pictures of.


This page of Quran is another exhibit with favourable lighting. From the parchment used and the script used to write this Quran, the experts can tell that it's very very ancient.


It was long accepted that China civilisation started at the Yellow River Basin. An archaelogical discovery near Guanghan city, in Sichuan Province challenges this belief. 2 sacrificial pits filled with over 4,000 objects were discovered. Bronze masks, elephant tusks, ceremonial jades, cowrie shells and gold were in the pits. They were burned and broken, which suggests it's part of a sacrifice ritual. if I remember correctly, the 2 bis are quite near to each other but there is a difference of about 1 century in age. This seems to be a very major sacrifice which suggests an imminent disaster. They were fashioned in a style previously unseen in any part of China. There was another archaelogical discovery in China, Anyang I think, of bronze artifacts that belongs to the Shang dynasty. But this Guanghan discovery has a very different style. And for the Shang dynasty, there is at least records of the it in the Zhou dynasty documents, though it's authenticity was challenged. The Anyang discovery confirms their existence. But the Guanghan discovery opens a whole new chapter in China's history.


This toilet is not an exhibit of course! I took its picture because it is very big. Double the size of the other toilets. Big enough to be an handicap toilet, but I don't think the handicap can use it easily. They should change it to a seated bowl.

June 2006 seems to be a good time for making babies. I have 2 friends, Yokey and Benson having a child born last week. I have at least 3 more friends with babies due soon.


his princess here is Xiuqian, Yokey's first daughter. she's 4 days old at the time this picture is taken.


This hunk here is Renfred, Benson's 2nd son. He's 1 day old only.

I went to see them yesterday. They are so cute.



PS: This is not about the 2 babies. FK gave me a ride back in his car after we left the hospital where Benson is at. Xingyuan, his wife, graciously asks me to sit in the front seat. Normally I sit in the rear and the mistress of the car sits in front. It's can be a bit boring. I am ok with that, but it's nice of SY to make the offer.

This year's Ang Bao Draw results are:
5 6 16 17 28 35 - 14
I bought 6 system 7 and 12 system 6. The most I got is 3 numbers. No early retirement for me.

I still have 1 more chance. I pooled $20 with my colleagues also. I wonder how is the result over there. But there are 9 of us to share the winnings. So if we really do win, the amount will not be enough for retirement...

Update: We won group 3. Which is about $30 to be shared by the 9 of us...

Reservist 06/07

My CO told us that our next ICT will be on March 08, and that it will be our last ICT before we go into Mindef reserves. If we did not missed any ICT in the past 10 yrs. I missed 1...

Anyway, this ICT is quite different from my previous ICTs. There's no tank this time. It's a team shooting tests using our new rifles. We formed in groups of 5-7 and are given 20 targets in the day and 20 targets in the night. We have to hit 80% of them in limited time in order to earn an incentive of $200 each. I score full marks for the day, but only 4 for the night due to some problem with my weapon. Luckily my teammates are able to make up for my low score and we still managed to hit 80%.

It's a tiring day. We have to wake up very early at 5am to prepare for the shoot. And it rained the whole day making the feeling very moody in the range. By the time everything ends and we are back to camp, it's already 3am. But the feeling is still good knowing that we earned the incentive and the next day is the last day of the ICT.