met up with cher and company (celes, maxi, xiying) at marina to watch fireworks!! today's fireworks was by team new caledonia, which according to wikipedia, is some island thats a foreign territory of france. city hall mrt was crazeeeeee~ so smrt decided to play dumb messages like: "the station is crowded (we actually need announcements to tell us that), please leave if you're not taking the trains". pfft.

so we went to have dinner first at mini kam. but only cher, maxi, and i ate. the other two stared in space. eeh no, celes was in charge of eating the appetizer. then we went out to the open area facing esplande and whoa was it packed or what was kinda expecting the fireworks in front but yeah it ended up at the side with this huge air vent thingy disrupting my view. super cool 15 mins (actually slightly less than that but yeah.)

then we wanted to go to music live cafe to have a coffee and hear pple sing but yeah it was like a whopping $12.80 per entry. walk walk walk. ended up at chocz, where i ordered an iced shaken latte that tasted more like milo peng. cause i didn't realise it read ice shaken [chocolate] latte. but still, not a trace of coffee. its a chocolate place anyway ha. then i walked over to suntec to catch a ride home. three 10s in a row. i took the 3rd one, and subsequently overslept on my journey home. but yeah, here i am okay thats about it.

gee this is very expired. kind of slipped my mind to blog. so yeah ninth of august was a beautiful day in a really long while that i could wake up, look at the clock hit 1.15pm, and still smile. i was greeted with a lunch experiment that i don't remember having signed up for. home-cooked chicken rice. the chicken was cooked with the rice in a freaking rice cooker. it turned out all soggy and gross and urgh. and i stared in awe as dad and mum and sis actually gobbled it down delightfully. that makes me this household's extreme food critic #1.

so yeah, went online after that and found out everyone had something to do. ended up meeting jerry and kenneth (long time man) for coffee at tcc @ bugis. iced honey latté i prefer the seats at the microsoft or raffles exchange branches though. sat for a while and talked crap. a lot of reminiscing about the good 'ol days. heck this sounds like we're retiring or something. ha!

i watched half of ndp on tv mobile on the way back, then a bit more on 89.3FM on the walk home, and the rest of it on my couch. so now i can briefly compare and contrast every way of enjoying the parade: live at the stadium with [a] normal sector tickets, [b] vip sector tickets, and [c] from the teevee. basically [c] will give you the very best angle at all times but there is seriously no ambience. [b] will provide ambience but the angle is usually crap. watching formations from a 180° view is so not cool. thats why theres a bottle of medicated oil in this year's funpack. [a] is the overall best, but depending on the uh.. altitude of your seat, you might or might not be able to see everything. negative point about [a] is that the folks there are as good as dead. they do not scream, jump around, participate in any audience activities, or make any noise at all. [b] is the place to go cray-zeeee so yeah thats my review.

so after the parade ended, and after dad and mum managed to squeeze out of the crowd, we met up with them plus their two friends at suntec for dinner. sis drove. amazingly, suntec was deserted. we had tony roma's.. and after we finished ordering we were informed that that was the last order already so yeah. food was alright. dad sent his friends home, so we went back first. and yeah, pretty embarassing how many wrong routes we turned into. i think i need a GPS system in my ride. heh

happy national day everyone!!

so today i had nothing to do. no plans no nothing. everyone including my last minute kahki wasn't free. lots of people were chionging projects. others had stuff to attend to. and suddenly tianshun smsed me and said taihock had spare tickets to the ndp preview today. so like yeah, what the heck, might as well go since i won't be going for the actual one. lazy to write a full article. let the photos speak for themselves..

the ticket. at least this design changes every year..

the crowd was pretty crazy..

from here..

to here..

and here..

and finally here..

thats the other side..

people dropping from the skies!

this year they're doing precision landing on a 5m diameter target

the parade..

simulation of blood cells. or helium balloons flying away~

post parade party!

everyone getting out~

okay thats it

happy nineteen years of existence to me

election results were released in the midst of me reading happy birthday messages. my take on the results: whats new? PAP wins all but 2 seats, snagged by Chiam See Tong and Low Thia Khiang. opposition sees higher vote percentage this time round, so maybe PAP should be worried. and opposition quality does matter, judging from Khaw Boon Wan's 76.7% Sembawang win against Chee Soon Juan's sister vs George Yeo's 56.08% Aljunied win against Sylvia Lim. go figure. but end of the day, parliament looks exactly the same except for the new blood PAP has drawn in. life goes on~

saturday. dropped by the IT show at suntec. this time i decided not to go alone. not a very good bet. initially went with qinghui & her friends, whom i am not really familiar with. later met up with cherene as well. saw tianshun and susu there [working]. i only visited the consumer sections of the show, but i wanted to see the technical stuff instead. next time i'll bring a technical person after that we headed to ps. went to tea cosy for dinner, cause celes is working there. interesting menu. no discount though :x

sunday. thought i had another shot the show cause dad and mum wanted to see clocks at marina square [] in the end got stuck in the horrid jam there and decided otherwise.

monday. work. nothing very special. got to use a tiny fraction of brains today. played around with data extraction in excel and some exxon SAP application with an oracle backend

tuesday. supposed to be ultra early for alan's lotus user group meeting. i confirmed with ace that it was on the 19th floor, and i waited and waited feeling rather weird at the place. until i discovered i was on the right floor in the wrong building i was at microsoft at raffles place, and the rest were at comat's tanjong pagar office. by the time i got there, i had missed the first half, but it was just in time for refreshments the second half continued with some repetition of what we'd already heard at last thursday's meeting.. plus some other material.

alright that sums up

my flight is at noon tomorrow and i'll be back come tuesday. so heres wishing everyone in advance a happy prosperous chinese new year! 新年快乐! 万事如意! 心想事成!

seems in the recent weeks, updating is only done every friday plus following weekend since its the only time anything potentially bloggable can possibly happen. unless i'm going to bore the world with my whining and procrastination about school. which i will still continue to, no less! :x

today my timetable was supposedly blank. but msc made me go back to attend a "short meeting", i quote the sms. it was supposed to be a briefing of some sort about the campus launch. but it turned out to be some msc vs staff committee debate. geez not much of my concern. why do i even bother turning up for stuff like that? *shrugs* and since i already predicted my presence to be a waste of time, i brought along my ixus to snap some random stuff before the meeting

my elder sis is returning from sydney later. permanently. but we will might all be flying over to attend her grad ceremony or whatever you call it next april or so. and she was so hoping to fly back and move in to a new cosy abode. heh gonna pick her up at the airport later, then have dinner, then rush to ubi for my driving lesson at 8.. lalala~

the mystical fountain

and again

and yet again

the horseshoe from the back

graffiti in the canal!

bedok reservoir~

shots from tao~

fruit salad. with crabmeat on top.

prawn salad

my salad platter. 3 tiny cups filled with different salads.

fish soup in a teapot

mushroom soup

pumpkin soup

grilled mushroom

pork ribs

pan-fried sole fillet

my japanese stewed beef

another shot

my desert: crème brûlée

dad's sesame paste. it was actually quite hard lol

peach tea

close up of rose apple tea

these few days have been boring, uneventful, boring, and even more uneventful. the usual. long days. boring classes. buay-ta-han-able lectures mashed together. and the like~ wednesday is like own time own target. sit there for 4 hours and play with database queries. lecturer doesn't even need to talk. just follow instructions in the book. the rest of the day i spent stoning

today as usual, went driving in the morning. sky was gloomy and it started to drizzle on the way to ubi, which scared me a little. i dont appreciate a visibility drop while i'm still starting to familiarise myself with the road. luckily it was bright and shining by eleven. and after my lesson it started to drizzle again. heaven is looking out for me huh

reached eunos mrt. desperately needed a toilet. then there was this policeman standing in front of the gents, who told me in a perfectly robotic tone, "the toilet is closed. you may use this one *points to handicapped toilet*, but you will have to queue". there was already this malay dude in the line reading his new paper. and i was like.. okay.. these days policemen stand guard outside toilets to maintain the peace and order or something. and when it was the malay dude's turn, another policeman and two maintainence staff emerged from the gents. then the first policeman said "okay, you may now use the toilet". i was honestly trying not to laugh my head off

headed to tiong bahru afterwhich. had to go to the nets office to collect my personalised cashcard. its a anniversary gift to my folks with their photo on it. i know.. cheesy idea.. my little sis completes her "O" Levels today as well. whoa.. its been two years? we're all going to Tao later for dinner

lastly, happy 18th to chuok yue! what will we all do without friendster? :x