happy 26th wedding anniversary to dad and mum!
happy 19th to clarissa too!

yeah yeah.. we went to space to eat. literally. heres proof:

anything with glass + lighting = cool

its at esplanade, and its the cheaper cousin of the restaurant next door. the lighting was quite bad so the food photos turned out awful. posh places with dim ambiences always do crap to cameras..

the pillar has the menu inscribed on it~

and the utensils are unique..

esplanade had an exhibition of art made with wire mesh. heres a dude..

heres another dude. there were a whole load of them. pretty pretty artsy..

the classic family portrait to end the day..

after the student partners meeting at microsoft (where my partner status is now recognised and i got to snag a partner-branded laptop sling bag and a thumb drive ), i dropped by susu's birthday party at the NS recreational country club at some ulu tanah merah place. so.. whats worse than turning up at someone's birthday party empty handed? probably doing so plus enjoying a free dinner and walking off with a personalised takeaway. a written note plus two royce chocolates for each invited guest:

damn i gotta get her something :x lucky her actual birthday is on monday and not today

two days late due to the reasons below but, happy birthday sabby! (i'm still waiting to pass you your gift?)

okay i've been reeeeallllyyyy laaaazyyyy these few weeks. damn its hard to work for yourself. tremendous amount of self-discipline required. waking up at atrocious hours (read: 5pm) isn't really good. so for the past 4 vacations when i whine about how work sucks, i was actually leading quite a healthy bioclock. now its all screwed. can't wait for school to start again.

so these few weeks i had a few things up my sleeve. firstly, continued development on my web design project.. its becoming more web application than website considering the amount of functionality i manually wrote into it. but i lost quite a lot of development time, especially when i oversleep 7 hours or something :x

secondly, a lot of microsoft/tech events recently. this week alone had three. the usual SgDotNet user group meetings, the big big MSDN TechTalks event (big event = good food), and Innovationation @ Expo, which celebrates 25 years of infocomm in Singapore, but apparently spellcheck isn't popular yet (refer to snapshot).

thirdly, more on a sideline now, nic training and material. i think i'm getting the hang of it. lets hope all goes well on the 9th of Dec..

and yepp thats about it.. last week of holidays.. woohoo.. (:

-- Edit: right after i posted this entry i watch CNA and i see this

someone tell me what a santion is..

happy 19th to shijin (:

happy 18th birthday jess!

was at microsoft on saturday for student partners meeting. it was a back to basics session about every minute technicality of .net (including all the stuff that no one seriously cares about). xbox session. halo 2 on the original and ridge racer on the 360. free pizza as usual. and drafting plans for our events in the next few months. thats about it.

been driving a bit in both rides. honestly, there is a super huge difference between having an L plate (or two Ls) and a triangle. the feel is totally different. of course the ride matters a lot. a manual city/sunny versus an auto merc/jazz. and obviously you don't normally park between 4 poles and have stickers stuck to the windscreen to hint you anymore. i bet it'll still be quite some time until i get used to the real world.

saturday. pool addiction is back. got yukwai to visit my classic hangout and since twos lonely, got jinkai to join along (actually i think he came because he wanted my vista dvd), who dragged jinbao too. so like yeah. played for uh.. too long. once you start losing focus you should close the table then the three of them crashed my place and tested my subwoofers with a not so legal clear copy of Tokyo Drift, while burning a vista dvd behind.

saturday evening. family of five went to crystal jade jiang nan @ taka for mum's birthday dinner. nice nice ambience. nice food. nice price. i paid..


décor

egg white with shrimp

fishy fish fish

beef cubes with peppers and mango

went to coffee club for uh.. coffee and had this apple ice cream whatever thingy

then we went to walk around and ended up walking outside the street where the pasar malam-ish stuff were. and when we decided to go home, we found that the lifts weren't working. took the escalators (which weren't on) down and found the exit locked too. i bet everyone in that building was going to take a train home. but this giordano staff told us to walk all the freaking way to the other end of the building, and there it was: the only set of working lifts to the carpark! gee. and it was jammed all the way home anyway. makes me so not wanna drive to town when i get my license.

sunday morning. pimp my ride. not. okay i'm back on track to a satisfying driving experience now. last week was totally screwed. and i.hate.screwing.up. so yeah cool. and i had cholestrol plus caffeine for breakfast. heres what it looks like:

this is a leaf. @ grandma's place. the two shots above this sentence are the only two sharp ones as of late. my k750i's camera is totally $#%&@ without good lighting (decent ain't enough. its gotta be goooood) and stability i'll probably try to use the ixus more

happy 19th to vanessa

so june is gone already. happy fourth of july to jerry, who turns nineteen!

its week eleven of twelve of mp. i have scheduled a meeting this friday. and sadly during the interim period between now and that meeting, i have more or less absolutely nothing to do. why do i hate my project sometimes.. grr..

nothing much has happened since the last post till now.. other than rotting.. brazil being ousted from the cup.. my team mate wiping out the wrong hard drive (i had to reinstall solaris and reconfigure everything).. and more rotting.. which is why i'm really really sick of mp already. can't wait to be over and done with it.. pffft

these days i'm too lazy to blog and after some time seeing this place outdate itself, i decide to update it with info thats already outdated. confusing or ironic? my mind isn't thinking very well these days anyway.

so last saturday i was at microsoft for a mini event: the SgDotNet.Student user group's revival meeting (or whatever they call it). steven lee (ifc/i.HUB lecturer) wanted some of his students to have a "visit to microsoft" so we borrowed SgDotNet's event to get them in. technically accomplished agenda. except people were more looking forward to looking around the place rather than sitting in the audi listening to some pros talk about atlas and sharepoint. plus none of them have an idea what .net is, so like why show them code? @_@ okay irrelevant issue.

after the event and refreshments (thats what we're there for maybe), headed for high tea (elder sista's idea) at goodwood park hotel. almost got lost trying to get there -.-" not the town-kinda person. anyways, food was great. it was english-style.. so they have those intricate pastries and scones and mini sandwiches with caviar and fondue and stuff. the crémé brulée was damn cute. not that pricey either, but limited variety. and we were rather out of place.. the only family sitting around cliques of japanese taitais. so yeah thats another saturday..

today ends mp/sip week 8. 4 weeks to completion. the first evaluation is in a fortnight (i think). today we finally managed to get peng liang (from sun) to come down. i was hoping he'd be able to sit there and iron out all the YR implementation issues bugs so that the entire thing will look more presentable. we found out he was unfortunately more of the application development side rather than the architecture side, so he couldn't help but he seemed satisfied with our (read: my) current work and gave us a few more recommendations to wrap up the project. he was damn impressed with JCreator though.. *shakes*head* oh well, sh!t happens when you live in unix for too long.

on a sidenote, i initially gave sun an open date as to when someone wanted to come by and talk. but my supervisor insisted 10am today so that he could join in. so my emails got more aggresive and last night when peng liang confirmed the meeting to be 9.30am, i 好心 sms my supervisor. ½ hour difference and he immediately responded saying he wasn't free. today peng was late. (whats new?) he only arrived at 10+ and my freaking supervisor hung up on my call and didn't follow up. damn fed up at his attitude. hes supposed to drop by regularly just like the other supervisors do to check on our progress. but we have to literally plead him to drop by to sign our logbooks. neither does he offer suggestions or comments or assistance or anything with regard to the project. just my luck. pfffffffft

and yeah.. happy 19th to benny (last saturday), 24th to zac (tuesday), 21st to eileen (yesterday), and 19th to josh (tomorrow)

had mother's day lunch at roxy mercure hotel. the buffet was not bad actually it was a rather dull lunch cause we sat in a long row instead of a round table and it was hard to talk across. plus my uncle who asks the most questions is somewhere in india.

after that we went home to rot. cause we planned dinner later on, and there were only a few hours in between, so i don't think i could have done anything productive in the meantime. plus these days.. my mood is rather off (mp/sip sucks) so i can't be bothered to get out..

so dinner it was.. at wheelock place.. this place called Sun With Moon Japanese Dining & Café. very cool ambience. pix pix pix~

avocado & soft shell crab roll

sashimi

mum's nabe (not anything close to its hokkien equivalent)

elder sista's salmon don

dad's oyster gratin

the kamameshi before opening. had to wait a minute and stare at the hour glass

my unagi & asari kamameshi

lil sis' tori kamameshi

mochi

sesame icecream

and lastly, thanks to the following super nice people who remembered today in chrono order as usual~

imelda
clarissa
tian shun
sabby
benny
qinghui
cherene
celes
clare
vanessa
shijin
fueifong
hanmei
yahui
jess
wanjun
cindy