DOPT NOOB

cell night cycling

2010-01-15T16:45:00.010+08:00

kinda forgotten where i was b4 the night cycling. i simply remembered i came from somehwere. well... nevermind. probably too tired to think now after typing 4 entries non-stop now... got locked outside my house as my key was with my mum and dad, who're still in church. feel like eating jack's place again. or maybe i should have went to taka now instead and see how i can utilise my taka vouchers which i got from purchasing a policy from prudential. oh, by the way, i'm using the com in the bukit panjang lib. pathetic huh? well, at least it's better than nth, though i have to pay like 3 cents per minute. end up, 3 cents times 60 min, $1.80 per hour... ok la. haha!

ok, time to stop digressing and back to the topic. and so i took a bus, oh, from school, i remember now, i think. i haphazardly alighted along the upper east coast road, not nowing exatly which section of the road to alight at. "feel the Force, Luke", and so i depended on my gut feeling and alighted at some random stop. i remembered a drain/canal connecting that part of the road to the East Coast Park (ECP) but no matter how i walked that day, i can't find the canal. well, heck, trust the Force. so i walked in the direction of wad i felt is towards the ECP after i hit the CHIJ and saw a bridge that connects to the ECP.

den i walked down along ECP and managed to ask one bicycle rental staff where's the Mac, which is our cell's rendezvous point. thanks goodness i didn't have to walk far, though most certainly, i must have overshot the bus stop and is now backtracking. along the way, since i'm early, and the tripod was alr set up for the prev pic, i might as well took the opportunity to take a shot of ECP's sunset.

apparently, i was WAAAYYYYY too early and i had to wait for about one hour b4 i saw anyone. ended up cheri just came from her new house inspection, so she's real tired all over, cheryn was sick so couldn't make it, seamus was having dinner outside so not joining us for dinner just yet and will meet us later. and esther and sarah also will eat dinner elsewhere. cindy had sth on, claudia went back to penang and adel just finished her work at her attachment in the hospice. so i had to kinda wait indefinitely for someone to appear. thank goodness i had with me the da-bao version of turkey and ham and was munching non-stop inside mccafe. AHHH!!!! now i remember where i came from. we had a SPUMER's very own xmas gathering at T132 in SP earlier on.

ok, so when they all arrived, we rode shortly to i dunno where and had some light snack at mac and played monopoly deal and citadel.

the sisters: esther (left) and sarah (right)

seamus at the background

cheri and shumin

after we had enough of card games, we cycled to esplanade and took a couple of really nice photos there.

Fullerton Hotel

at lau pa sat

at ion orchard

shot of the building in progress IR from the marina barrage

of the Spore Flyer from the marina barrage

en route on the painful buttocks ride back

back at ECP with the welcoming sunrise

sony xmas shoot

2010-01-15T16:22:00.007+08:00

so thrilled when i first received an email from sony to invite me for a christmas shoot! this is great as i get to experience my new alpha with a group of like-minded people, all eager to share their knowledge and experience. it was on sat and i was supposed to have cell that day. oops...

day out wif dudes after an ang-moh lecture

2010-01-15T15:57:00.008+08:00

a presentation by philip morgan. apparently a lot of other dua pais of the industry showed up. wow, though i was late, but ws glad that i went anyways.

tzesiang, peiwen and guankai posing for the camera after the lecture

all of us posing for the picture, using my newly acquired alpha 230. thank goodness io happened to be going out afterwards and brought along my tripod. wow, i'm so proud of my wife!!!

after that, i went to raffles city to wait for joshua and weiling, to have a lunch with our first export-bride-to-be! as usual, i'm early (not exactly doing joshua justice by saying this...) and decided to snap some pics, playing around with my telephoto 200mm lens.

actually i kinda like the perspective and realised that cross-junctions can make great shooting locations too!

group photo with bride to be. well, sorry ah the photo is lopsided...

all smiles on her face. the beauty of marriage.

spaghetti from cedele

after we departed, i went to meet up with ah pui and andrew, to eat again. this time at mad jack, paradiz.

then we walked around to take some pics. i chanced upon this part of the sky when i wanted to take an architectural pic of CHIJMES. when i looked more closely, oh my gosh, it's a clear presentation of ORION!!! notice the all-famous belt of Orion and its accompanying stars.

the old fire station opposite peninsula plaza.

a nightscape of the CBD

nat's birthday

2010-01-15T15:43:00.005+08:00

so it was my cousin's, natalie's (ah girl) 21st birthday! her mum, who is my auntie (duh...) seems to be excited in an out of proportion way, like she's the 21st year old! haha! yea, what does age matter when what really matters is how young your heart is? it all boils down to perspective...

i thought i was all ready and geared up to finally meet up with our mega family again when suddenly, just before i reached the chalet itself, my auntie received a call from my dad, asking for directions once again. haha!!! well, i immediately knew that it's time to put on my battle gear and answer my call as the sai kang warrior!

to my surprise though, my dad switched from the green mini van to this white van, with a opunctured front, rigth tyre which he and the rest of the staffs conveniently ignored. oh my gosh, how did my dad managed to drive all the way to pasir ris with a van in that state!? pro.

i was told to stand watch over the priceless rundown vehicle while my dad, aunt and some other volunteers helped to carry the food to and fro. felt a little weird since i should be the one doing the running around. well, anyways... i stood guard. being really bored, i started taking out my 8 megapixel LG handphone cam (i hvn gotten my DSLR then...) and stared taking pics. the sky was really nice and i managed to take a couple of shots.

i and realised my face was pretty nice too (hey, i'm also a creation of God, made in His image k!!!), so well, so here i go again.

a pic of me and my lovely cousins who went: kenneth (gor gor), aldris, hilary and i

a really cute toddler who clings like a koala. so super cute!!!

a sour cheese cream cake. tastes really weird...

family portraitn of the bday girl!

hilary, me and prayer bear

me and gor

sunrise... sunrise!

2010-01-15T15:38:00.003+08:00

the below are some pics i took from my kitchen window, overlooking some of the nearby HDB landscapes, and of course, the sky. someytmes you just can't help but awe at these awesomely awesome creations! very humbling experience when we realise how much we are at the mercy of the vastness of nature.

hari raya eve

2010-01-13T16:40:00.006+08:00

i'm not exactly sure which one comes first, the GLS, or this hari raya eve. but anyways...

i brought my new wife (alpha 230) on this trip again. this time, aspiring to be a food journalist, which reminds me that i still owe the auntie-chef her pics! oops... we decided to have lunch b4 we watch a movie and after watching the mediacorp food recommendation programme, my heart was set on trying out the Siang Hee restaurant at tiong bahru, simply around 10min bus ride from tong bahru mrt and alight at the BB HQ. while waiting for the food the arrive, i whopped out my cam and started taking pics. huiling tried her hand on the alpha too. haha! i bet she must be regrettig for not buying a DSLR instead of LX3, despite her not so convincing proclaimation that she still prefers her LX3. haha!!!

portrait of andrew

xiong ge

the traces of time have left insidious lines on this face, which tells of many untold stories that its life has seen....... well, the auntie is just eating fishball noodles unsuspectingly while i took this shot of her.

the famous pork knuckle. wow!!! fabulous-nei!!!

this is the pic that i owe the auntie.

after the meal and the movie, we went to kill some zombies. and these are some of the pics of the survivors in action!

yunting

huiling (foreground) and xiong-ge (background)

feilou (very much of the foreground) and huiling (very little left of the background)

some shots we took afterward that night

GLS

2010-01-13T16:13:00.004+08:00

with my newly purchased sony dslr alpha 230, i brought my 2 to 3 days old baby to the global leader's summit, held at the riverlife church near downtown east. it was pretty far, yeah. it's a 3 day seminar, if i'm not wrong, teaching church leaders how to lead the church according to God's Will in the context of the world. it really provided new and interesting perspectives, especially hearing the dialogues of different church leaders from different denominations.

senior pastor hock chye

angie, joanne and cheryn (sihui)

some macro shot i ried to take in the backyard opp the church. the backyard reminisces a piece of kampong culture left on Spore.

some shots i took during the intercession. i particularly like the pic right below. the play with foreground, and blue sky in the back ground. love the perspective:)

met my old time friend from renewal, merrill, and his mum, judy. really nice to see them again. oh my, merrill is so suave now!!!

nub's enlistment

2010-01-13T16:08:00.006+08:00

not too long after linjian's bday, the new lease of life for our classmates, esp the guys, soon begun. and i wonder who set the inhumane timing of around 8am. how do you expect 'westerners' like me to go there on time siol?

thanks goodness feilous' parents still remembered me from kamen's bday celebration and feilou asked me if i wanted to join their taxi there. we met at 615am, i remember. and at close to 630, we left in a cab. obviously, feiloui invited his new begginning warmly with a nice and cosy sleep on the cab along the way. i wonder if he really got any sleep in the first place. or if he did, how did he managed to. i on the other hand. can't help but be amazed at the rising sun as we approach the place where the recruits-to-be were supposed to rendezvous. the way the clouds interweave under the chilling morning breeze, and how the first light of the day breaks the darkness in indescribable.

soon after, we arrived and later yunting and huiling arriverd shortly afterwards.

after we sent ah pui on his way to the point of no return, we walked back, contemplating which move to watch at tampines mall while we wait for andrew's turn to be sent off. to my surprised, i saw leonard, togetehr with chanel and poh huat walkng towards the interchange! that day was really sending people off into the nation's cause like nobody's business... haha!!! below: poh huat, leonard and i.

leonard and chanel

after watching the movie, we went along with andrew and his dad into tekong. going through the orientation and watching the new recruits reciting the pledge most certanily brngs back sense of nostalgia.

yunting and i

after their fateful enlistment, we met soon after their confinement, which wasn't much of a confinement at all due to public hol, and they were let off simply after a week, instead of 2 weeks. below are some pics of them showing off their new trendy hairstyles...

andrew

feilou

xiong ge

linjian's birthday

2010-01-13T16:03:00.002+08:00

after kamen's birthday, we celebrated linjian's birthday in the same month. the class list stated her birthday to be 24th sept, but her actual bday is in fact 23rd oct. i forgot which one we followed for the oct version, the lunar or the gregorian calender.

we kickstarted off the celebration at mind's cafe, prinsep street. the one opposite paradiz that is. those present include huimin, lilin, haojin, sheryl, deir, xiaoyuan i think, huiling, sihui, and of course, the bday gal, plus myself. if i can still rmb, we were slightly late for its promo hour which starts at 2.30pm.

in this pic is deir, sihui and sheryl (aka gold standard)

we played till the full measure given unti 6 or 630pm then headed to xinwang at ps for dinner. where more alliance coalesced.

lilin, haojin, linjian and xiaoyuan

huiling and i

the bday gal conducting cake-biopsy

kamen's birthday

2010-01-13T15:49:00.003+08:00

in retrospect, the nest earliest event after the batam vision screening will be feilou's birthday. if my memories are not failing me yet so quickly still, the below accounts should still bear some historical credibility.

as mentioned, it's feilou's birthday. and he surprised us by cordially inviting us to his house to celebrate. it's uncommon for guys to celebrate his bdays with a group of friends. but for feilou, to ask his friend, esp the girls along, to his house: that, is a watershed in the chapters of human history.

after 'coolecting' all the ppl from all parts of spore, we finally amassed enough ka kiaz in bukit panjang part of the island.

after cutting cakes and singing songs at feilou's house and the company of his hospitable and welcoming family, we took some pics at his home and then went downstairs for our lantern festival eve programme.with andrew commencing the event with his awe-inspiring guitar skills. well, you have to read between the lines for this one.

undaunted by their impending 'doom' in NS, the guys decided to put their biceps to the test. it look like biceps are not the only muscles they are deprived of. i heard someone say brain is actually muscle. is that true?

our friendly neighbour shows what he's got and generously posing for the Bugles magazine.

after a round of walking with retro lanterns, sihui, deir and i went off first around 1am i think, and i sent them to the taxi-stand. till the next meeting folks!

updates

2010-01-12T20:56:00.005+08:00

realised i've really not updated this blog for a really long while. well, just like my blog, i'm pretty lost during this period of time. very bulk of it is due to studies which has been really compiling itself and everyday seems like an never-ending, futile effort keep up with an avalanche of schoolwork that comes at you ravenously.

of course, schoolwork is nonetheless a sign of temporally delaying the onset of realistic work life that can ever easily get mundane and meaningless once you lose hold of your vision. so, i'm still grateful for the fact that i'm in UM, still. HAHA!

in retrospect from my last entry till now, mid jan, i realise that there is more to life than life itself may seem to be able to offer. though i've recently crossed an uneventful milestone in interpersonal relationship and interacting with people, i thankHim for the lessons learnt. it taught me to be more appreciative of the people and the things around me.

basically the festivities are pretty remote from my way of life as it is now. xmas down, new year down, and the almost too certain prospect of exams after cny sealed my fate of leading a moody cny. with the guys serving the nation, there's barely anyone that i can be crazy, and be myself to. God, pls help me to tide over this stressful period manz.

will post some pics in sch when i'm free tmr. this laptop never fails to fail me. haha! that's all.

batam day 3

2009-10-09T14:42:00.012+08:00

start of the second day of screeing. apparently, the locals helped us to readjust the banners which were hanging too low when we ourselves tried to tie them the first time round. feels a bit paiseh man. actually, the locals were so nice that they made us felt paiseh for many times. there was once when we break for lunch in the middle of the screening after the morning batch left. i din knew the afternoon batch had already arrived sometime while we were having our lunch until i went out to check why there's no one having their eyes checked yet. turned out they, the great bunch of kids and their teachers were waiting outside incessantly for a handful of us to finish our lunch.

i remembered telling one junior how paiseh i felt for making them wait. then her response shocked me: 'they are only children mah. let them wait loh!' i felt so indignant for them and told her that there's no difference between us and them. they are humans as well! they may very well be better than us in many ways such as humility and sense of joy and satisfaction. at least she din try to argue back... and figured out she had said the wrong thing accidentally.

kiat wee at VA station

shi-en at ret station

liqing at VA station

fangmei being floater

kiat wee and i with our child

tze siang

ms lek and a really reluctant local kid

the screening team and the local organizers

wow... many kids

your friendly neighbourhood....

waste rice...

another waste rice...

merlyn

aiyoh... no space for me to be as cool as them

fangmei revealing her motherly side

ms lek, gold standard and yiling

yiling and her target

boy with corneal opacification

me offering a helping hand

due to the powerpacked 9 VA stations, we managed to filter off many kids who dun require glasses and so really sped up the work. by around 3pm we had nothing else but time on our hands. so we jio-ed our neighbouring bunks and went to turi beach for a round of photographing session.

the water is sooo clear that i had to get my feet into it.

a fuzzy of jumpers

gold standard and her new-found sister in UM

those present

we see the stars...

as beautiful the 'stars' may be, i had to straddle my feet back to out place where the inevitable hosting of games is soon to dawn. though seriously tiring and a severe sapping of my already limited energy constrained by my age, the results were great. though i din really find it exceptionally fun la, but was really appreciative that everyone, EVERYONE, made an effort to enjoy themselves. when i look back at these photos, a sense of warm consolation radiates from my heart:)

with really dead body, i snuggled into the welcoming embrace of my bed. ZZZZZzzzzzz.........

batam trip day 2

2009-10-09T13:37:00.015+08:00

after a really super great night of sleeping, thanks to the really comfy bed and nice cold air-con and a great sleeping partner who sleeps even earlier than i, we woke up refreshed to welcome the 1st day of screening. the beauty of the first morning is captured by ah wee and some guys. i used to boast over my 8 megapixel hp cam. but i was ruthlessly humbled when they brought out their toys. well, might as well just'koop' from them at the end of the trip.

our humble abode.

2 really awesomely tall coco trees

ivory

after breakfast and omelette with assorted ingredients by the 'egg-man', we made our way to herald for our first group of students.

mother lek

weiling, jessie and guan kai as pointer

huishan as translater

master sok hong and me as one of the ret people. she's really creative and she managed to find a way to overcome the lack of pointer problem. she blue-tagged a piece of A4 size paper onto the target so the Px knows exactly which line to read when she's doing +/-0.25 challenge on the patient.

one of the rare times i'm finally doing sth

may the force be with you

girl with heterochromic iritis

me and master

gold standard and i

feigning attentive

the fellowship of the ring and our respective weaponry

'laptop in hand' (from Red Alert 3-China)

all geared up for trip to batam city. yayyy!!!

marybrown's mascot

extinct bear inspore with tze siang and peiwen

feast!!!

post-meal workout

big tripod, small tripod

last light at batam time 1815hrs

act of defying gravitation

nightview of the nongsa resort

fellow camwhores

well-deserved dinner

batam vision screening day 1 2009

2009-10-03T23:18:00.019+08:00

after a week's break from the break in genting with the good old homies from dopt, it's turn for vision screening with the UM folks and the yr 3 babes. well, i could call them babes cos there's no guys around from yr 3 who's going for the batam. haiz... this makes it really hard for me to find excuses to approach the gals. haha! yea... kidding. cmon, i'm no casanova...

and for goodness's sake, pls dun ask me wad's the meaning of memeriksa mata... i only know mata is eyes. the first day, after sai kang from SP with guan kai, kiat wee, tze siang, ms lek, miss sharon and i, we waited for the rests at the tanah merah ferry terminal where we'll take a ferry straight to the ferry that's near the nongsa marina point or sth.

basically, we din do any screening on the 1st day. most of it was setting up and the sun sets real early and we had to bring in those super lights to lit up the whole place. probably due to its proximity to the coast, we got real sticky and warm easily.

with compliments from the conscientious efforts of kiat wee and other good people of the screening, i shall let the pics do the talking!

group photo taken at the tanah merah ferry terminal

back: tze siang and me front from left: qingli, merlyn and kaiting

from left: tze siang, guankai (pronounced as yuan kai), pei boon, sok hong and i

ma'am (aka jiajia), partner (aka ailing) and gold standard (aka gold standard)

weiling, sokhong, stella, ailing peiwen and jessie

on board the batam fast, Gold Raider. showcasing the pandan flavour mooncake i bought from last Genting trip. intended to eat it but well, ended up bringing it for a tour instead...

guankai and kiat wee

ailing trying to act fierce

at the batam ferry terminal after 30-40min

cmon... it's just going to be a 10min bus ride from ferry terminal to nongsa marina

oops... that's ms lek behind

so thristy... a weird mix of lime juice and dunno dunno wad... even gold standard can't tell

drink people's water must try to act busy

erm ailing... are the children supposed to tilt their heads to read the LogMAR chart?

gals at work

revising my phonetics

and coincidentally, 28th sept is fangmei's bday! so we had a celebration with her with ailing's homebaked muffins. thank goodness she din use the queer mixture of raisin with chocolate chips but used pure choc chips instead this time round. much more delectable:) hope fangmei enjoyed this batam bday celebration!

just another day

2009-09-27T21:57:00.004+08:00

went to accompany haishan for her final medical follow-up on her acute anterior uveitis last thursday. it was a super long wait and to my relief, they were showing cooking programmes on TV at their waiting area so it din felt long at all.

since i had nothing else to do, i decided to pay the toilets a visit and took pictures of these really interesting stuffs that was pinned to the wall just above the urinals. i wonder wad would they have pasted in the ladies'. hmm...

after dat, we went for lunch at ikea. probably due to the higher living expenses with compliments from inflation, i suddenly find the ikea food cheaper than it used to be though the price appears to be the same. when haishan and i reached, it was very much empty. and i once thought the price dipped cos of the pathetic crowd.

but i was proven drastically wrong. a couple of minutes after we happily settled into our table, people were already asking us for seats. it was only den did i realise the place had instantaneously been filled with people! wow. we were so fortunate!

the temptuous spread as shown below are their famous swedish meatballs with the ultimate complement of the sauce and strawberry jam; blueberry cheesecake and; local dish of just $5.5 with fried chix, fish, cabbage/lettuce and spiced fish cake. awesome!

and it looks so nice even after we had finished the plate. the pattern of the gravy was coincidental. we simply placed the green stuff (ok i gorgot wad's that called) on top. the rest is up to your imagination!

chao tar day

2009-09-22T21:43:00.002+08:00

ok. better blog about today b4 i forget. yes, almost certainly this day is a day not to be forgotten. a pity the 03 guys can't join us. if not it'd certainly be great. during the genting trip, we chanced upon a nike store and when we saw the basketball, we thought why not have a bball session when we are back in spore?

so here we were, met at 11am when we were supposed to meet at 930am. can't help it. even i had difficulty waking up. only jerome the only hope managed to reach on time. after having found his wallet, feilou and i met and went together. when we reached, xiong-ge yunchong and jerome were alr chilling out at macs. and andrew woke up at 11am plusand reached after we finished a match of bball and half a match of soccer.

by then the sun was already endearingly hot. ok... damn hot. it only got shrouded by clouds when we break for rest. and the sun happily reappears when we went back to our game. though real tired esp by the heat, it was nonetheless great fun!

after that we went to clementi's de coders for a boardgame: shadow hunters. in the middle of the game, i felt my temp rising feverishly. i guess most prob must be due to the sun during the basketball and soccer. that's why i decided to head back home instead of prayer meeting.

gosh. hope i'll get well soon man.... gotta meet pastor shuling tmr and work and meet a friend. herald for the impt day yoh!!!

dim sum day

2009-09-22T21:07:00.005+08:00

oh man... i really shouldn't have procrastinated uploading these pics man. almost forgotten wad happened b4 these pics were taken. suddenly realised the horror of losing one's memory man. ain't wanna lose memory of who i am, who are my mum and dad, great things that happened to me, and those whom i love yada yada... ok you get the gist.

so according to my calender, i should have worked on sat but woke up with terrible pain at my throat. and the most probable reason was from all the screaming and shouting during the genting trip. be it trying to fake being scared during the rifes, or trying to reach the seemingly unreachable high keys during karaoke. anyways, i took this time to nap 80% of the time from 10am till around 4pm. really shiok man. now i know how andrew and feilou felt.

after that, i was glad nonetheless to struggle out of bed to church for cell. had there been no cell, i would most certainly have rotted at home the whole day.

then i took bus 26 (this is the major clue that led me to rmb where i was b4 the supper) FROM toa payoh after cell dinner to aljunied mrt to meet the guys. initially i had my reservations of eating dim sum. i had a misconception of dim sum being only siew mai and buns. but just one look at the menu and i knew this place was the place i'm meant to be at.

just look at the range of food we had... all the snacks were freshly fried. and the aroma plus the musical crisp of the fried tau kee and the unbeatable fresh ingredients makes this dish my favourite.

this chix wing is nth speacial. just another poor wing deep-fried at high temp.

i like the crisp on the outside. but can't really figure out wad's in the filling. never had any infatuation with 5 spices anyways...

andrew and i

feilou during his feeding frenzy

huiling and lilin

xiong-ge and pui

haojing and the Photogenic One

genting trip

2009-09-18T14:55:00.010+08:00

the genting trip with my ex-dopt mates are indeed long awaited for. though i missed the chance of joining them the previous time, i was glad that this time i managed to go and enjoy a really hands free vacation. of course, gambling is not my cup of tea and i'd rather much prefer a cup of dark mocha frap in my hand. therefore, despite having been an asshole (during asshole dai di) for 3 rounds till around 4am the previous night, i sought to struggle myself to starbucks at least on the final day b4i met the guys to buy mooncakes and den to checkout thereafter.

so let's start from day 0. feilou and i had a private date with each other prior to the gang's rendezvous at 10.30pm at goldenmile. we went for dinner at the hip diner's den watched Gamer. a real cool show. though morally controversial with the plot about using real human lives for computer games, i bet it's a wonderful deterrant factor and makes people think thrice b4 committing crimes.

the ride was long and eventful. but it was nothing that i had never met. i was momentarily 'detained' by the msian customs for bringing sparklers in. well, acty i should have thought better but some part of me just wanna try my luck. after the stopover at yong peng, we headed off to the long journey of genting highlands.

we reached at around 5.30am and were homeless as we weren't able to check in yet. but being bored is never one of our intentions so the guys happily entertained ourselves and our never-expending energy by basking ourselves in the chilly atmospehre outside the comfort of the hotel. we raced upslope and practised our Force push/pull on one another.

when it was finally 7, we went for breakfast buffet and subsequently checked in.

some pics around the place.

when we finally got to wake up from our post-trip slumber at around 4, we hanged around and went to scare ourselves with places like the haunted house. this guys got really broken teeths and i wonder if that's the reason why he got the job. hehe.

peiyik trying to brace herself b4 she plunges into the mercy of the 'human ghosts'.

andrew with wad it had been his distant relative.

another classic example of family reunion. maybe that's why they called it: Ripley's believe it or not.

on day 3, we geared ourselves for a series of fun-packed rides. we met for breakfast at around 9am in kfc and swiftly moved our way to buying the all day pass for most of the rides.

the first ride of the day was actually bumper car (i think) den we went to try out the 4D motion ride where random jets of air were blown into our face for no apparent reason.

inside the ride

den we shifted camp outdoors to try on the superman-flying ride thingy at an additional cost of 10RM. it looked real scary as onlookers but when you are in the seat itself, you'd be more horrified at the stench of the cushioning pad where you had to lean your head against than the actual ride itself. i dun wanna know wad actually stained the pad b4 the ride man. erm no pics for this one. but below is a pic that we took just beside the ride. which is a bit weird really.

below is the thrilling ride of which its level of thrill is underestimated by us, especially the guys. the gals are perpetually thrilled of everything. so they din have any problem with that.

probably the hottest pick of the day was go-kart. though some of us were wearing slippers, the ppl der were kind enough to indent shoes for us so we can go for the ride.

as you can see... we were getting real bored waiting for the queue.

after the 1st half of the rides at outdoors, we could no longer resist the turns that now are inside our stomachs. so we went to kenny rogers for lunch without any delay. apparently it's a good deal compared to spore. mine was around 37RM++ for a half chix, 3 sides and a softdrink with free refill. so it's slightly less than 20 bucks in SGD.

we had to concede defeat by the meal and decided uanimously that we can't take anymore fast rides lest we returned the kenny rogers in its favour. so the slackest thing that came to our mind was undoubtedly ferris wheel. and here, you gotta admit yuntheng's really photogenic man. for once, and i repeat, for once, someone beat me to it.

after that, we decided to pull some strings. not the ones that usually comes to mind. but the ones that legolas would pull most of the time. and man... the sport is basically a neck-wrecking process man! below are my results. not the best amongst the guys i would say, but good enough to bring down the elephants at Helm's Deep.

and when we mix huiling and peiyik together, we get karaoke. and so, we had the mandatory, customary activity as one of our last events of the day b4 we ventured into the hospitality of xiong-ge and yunchong's room for a round of asshole dai di.

on the day we head back, the last lunch that we had at genting hotel with the last 270RM of our 'public fund'. i had initially thought that there wouldn't be enough for this last meal and we had to actually top-up. so i conserved the remaing RM i had in my wallet and kept to only buying 9 pieces of mooncakes:) apparently we still had leftovers. thanks to the ingenious finance-handling skills of the gals.

and off we go as we head back home... where the night of L4D just began!

food escapade

2009-09-01T11:03:00.005+08:00

i must admit that the 'high-life' culture which has been incorporated into us (gold, xt, qinghui, hao jung, sihui, szeyee and i) by raymond has really rejuvenated my love and passion for good food. however, good food dun always necessarily come with high prices. as the conversation that i had with the photocopying auntie just 30min ago, we both agreed that sometimes the simplest, and humble food, can be the nicest of food that we will ever have. reason being: ex-food makes you feel rich, not necessarily happier, nor healthier. but simple food can also be food for the soul and bring you in harmony with nature as you appreciate it not with just your palates, but with your heart.

that's what i've been trying to attempt (yea ok... just ignore my double usage of 2 words with synonymous definition over here... can you just concentrate on what i'm trying to express?) when i idly walked down the ntuc fariprice near my home and chanced upon a really rare promotion that they had for portobello mushrooms. the nutritional benefits of one of these can never be overemphasized. just their antioxidants alone is enough to leave you screaming in... erm... excitement.

so after adding a few accessories like a dash of freshly grounded pepper, chopped red onions, single slice of my favourite tomato (another powerful source of antioxidants), sprinkles of oregano and basil leaves, and a generous shower of mozarella cheese, not to mention coating the plate with slightly salted butter, i placed the beautiful, sexy-looking thing into a pre-heated oven.

in this instance, the temperature and heat-exposure time is crucial. it is very important that the oven is pre-heated so that the moment you place the mushroom inside, it gets warmed up evenly and not chao tar on top and soggy below. after the direct heat of 175 degrees celcius for a minute (no hard and fast rule... as long as it's moderate, and not blazing hot), the mushroom is left in the deactivated, but still powerfully warm oven for another 5 minutes or until the cheese is browned. if you happen to have colour deficiency, you can always depend on your chao-tar proof olfactory senses to sniff for the doneness of the mushroom.

so this is how it looked like before...

and after exposure to heat radiation... nice right? great... i'm making myself really hungry man.

ok... here is an example of unhealthy food which i assure i did absolutely nothing to have any part in it. it's a close to 40 bucks worth of ice-cream bucket where 5 of them tried to share and finish this seemingly impossible venture

it's at one of those jap-fusioned-with-western shop at the entrance of iluma. it's caleed bentien bento or something

and this is just one of those adventures that i had in search of traditional, handmade food. and the obvious place to go to is definitely chinatown.

when i passed by the shop-space of 2 shops, i'm deeply touched. 1 of the shop-spaces is dedicated to the handmade process of their buns and other pastries. the multi-layered 'phenomenon' that you witnessed here is really one-of-kind man. fascinating!

let me tell you another thing that touched me and motivated me to pay for a single meal that costs around 9 bucks. i must say, i had no regrets at all. and in fact, i thought that i had actually got a great bargain. this shop spans a total of 3 shop spaces. 2 of it is dedicated to the roasting process and it's where 'what-you-see-is-what-you-get' takes on a literal meaning. you can actually see the whole roasting process and everything that they did. another factor that caught my attention is that the stall owners are really old. and as the saying goes, wisdom and experience comes with age. and if they have been around for this amount of time, they sure know by now what they are doing and how to be really good at it.

what's really amazing is that they give you a can of gravy to go with and you can add in any portions you want. and i realised that if you add it to the rice, it'll accentuate the fragrance of the rice with the incopration of the essence of the gravy. simply heavenly and you can simply eat the rice with sauce on its own. i was initially worried that the roasted skin would be soggy but to my contrary belief, it's as crsipy, and as fresh tasting as it could get. with the yellow beans as part of its traditional trait, you can be sure that you can't go wrong with this dish if you're looking for authentic, great-tasting duck drumstick rice.

gosh... my tummy's groaning in protest already. gotta go! cya! oh and for those who're probably cursing me for not specifying the shop, i'm truly sorry i din really get the place. all i know is it's at the food center beside the peopl'e park complex and simply look for the shop with its roasting ovens and all. you can't miss it.

deir's bday

2009-09-01T09:44:00.007+08:00

my re-emergence to the dimension of the broadband, matrix world of erm... blogspot(?) is an evidence of the commensuration of my first semestral exams! which leaves me 3/4 more to go!!!! hooray! well, though having the exams, nothing could keep even exam fanatics like gold standard (sheryl), hao jung (peiyik) and chenragorn (me) from giving our best wishes to the prized mascot of our class... miss ugly (with compliments from feilou)!!! well, not to mention all those who are still able to, and willing to come down after work to offer her a piece of simple yet invaluabe wishes.

to start off with the celebration, after the psychophysics exam on mon, i went straight to clarke quay to recce for a nice and decent place where we weary travellers of middle Earth can rest our foot for an evening of well-deserved celebration. well, it MERELY took me around 2 hours b4 i'm finally happy to find somewhere where pete dun have to borrow money, feilou doesn't have to share food, bird can eat whatever tons of food he wants for his next training, and i can avoid my bank account from hitting a single digit. as for the guys, i'm sure xiong-ge is the only one who dun complain about everything and anything except for that time when some legendary figure called ji-chou gui kept missing our fyp meeting sessions. as for the gals, i seriously dun understand the culture of Venus so let's just assume that they are all happy. sometimes in experiments and calculations, assumptions have to be made for a conclusion to be reached anyways:p

and that place is King Satay. apparently i honestly dun know my way there very well. firt, although i'm the guy who receed for 2 hours, and still i could lead them out from the wrong mrt exit which ends us up like 3 streets away from the actual place, and second, i almost got them to another shop to eat instead. i think someone should really conduct a study on the relationship between night vision and directional perceptibility.

and so when we finally reached the place in one piece (after receiving a call from the staff asking where we were and i replied... erm, 15min more...), we began a frenzy of making indecisive decisions on wad to order and of course, taking pics.

dier the MAN of the day, aikleng and layhoon

sihui, huimin and ruth

pinghan and the 2 counterfeits (look at wad are they even TRYING to become... A BIT WEIRD i must say...)

deir, aikleng, chanel (euivalent to the independent variable: layhoon), qinghui, and gold standard (constant proportion to the name: sheryl)

chio bu (i'm already hearing groans of dissentment...)

gandalf the white (with a over-tanned face) and me

especially the girls

especially the guys (i'm still deciding between being a girl or guy... so just go ahead and leave me out...)

especially us (factor of ambiguity is eliminated)

c'mon, it's only counting money... again... haha thanks aik leng for the under-appreciated labourious responsibility:)

the quadruplet just b4 we left the king satay

post-dopt version of: The Proposal

a very fantastic performance by deir to pei he my video cam

ok boys and girls, so... when's the next?

thoughts on UP

2009-08-13T14:17:00.002+08:00

wonder if it's due to stress from preparing for the exams, or is it due to someone being nice pang-seh and downloaded the movies when we were supposed to go watch together, when i watched this movie, UP, i had a multiple surges of emotional upheavals.

when i saw the scene when he hit the construction guy's (or whoever he is)head after his mailbox was knocked down, i think the house that the old man had is a metaphor for our hearts. sometimes when things happen, and when we lack the courage to face them, we like to close our hearts and draw up the curtains, hoping that the 'invasive' world will respect this tiny territory that we have carved out for ourselves.

another metaphorical scene that shows the house as a heart, is when the helium ballons were almost out and the old man has to remove all the furnitures that is has been weighing the house down. sometimes there's too much burdens in our hearts. these 'burdens' could be things that we hold dear to, and we treasure them so much that it impedes us from moving UP. and i think that's maybe one of the reasons why this movies is entitled 'UP'. it is not until we realise the importance of casting these burdens, that we enable ourselves to soar to higher grounds. this however, does not mean we are heartless and simply place all the wonderful things behind us. but rather, i see this as embracing the good things that has happened in the past and carrying them forward from the past into the present. why carry these burdens and make yourself feel sad, when these memories are supposed to be the ones that make you happy? only when one learns to cast these burdens, can one really claim to appreciate the past.

then the death of Ellie, his wife, struck me too. it reminds us that people that we see will not always be in our lives. if we make any promises to them, we dun wait till they are gone then start reminiscing them. even when we fulfill the promises after thy are dead, the meaning is of little significance.

when the old man opened Ellie's adventure book right after the boy scout, Russell, went off on his own to save 'Kenvin' the bird, it taught me something too. sometimes adventures in life will not always turn out to be the things that we hope for. sometimes the greatest adventures, are the ones that we are living in now. dun always hope for an adventure that has not yet happened, or does not exist. enjoy simply, the adventure that you are breathing through every single day. that is the adventure that is unique to your own and nobody else will have. treasure your today. everyday.

so whatever it may be, or what happens, life moves on. even when you get presbyopic, simply put on your progressives and keep counting the red and blue cars that are in your life.

ndp 2009

2009-08-11T15:18:00.007+08:00

if you were wondering who were the 42,000 lucky souls who managed to clinch the tics to the ndp, well, i'm one of them. with courtesy from the undying kiasu spirit of my dad:) he was extremely 'well-informed' by his colleagues and conscientiously went online to ballot for the tics and he managed to get 2 tics. it was a pity though that mum din managed to get it. i think however she would very much had preferred staying in the comfort of home and slacked than stay under the sun.

had a great sleep that day and i rendezvous wif my folks in church that morning. after waiting for my mum to finish some sunday school stuffs, we finally decided to to head to tampines safra for the sakura buffet on the taxi itself. well... not that we were difficult passengers. but the place we wanted to go to was cordoned off due to the ndp preparations.

the first time round i went there, i had to rush off to work so i din really managed to enjoy the 'high-life'. but this time, we took our time and really enjoyed the buffet. partly because we now knew better wad food to get and wad not too. we also knew the limits of our stomachs and managed to keep food wastage to a minimal. den we took train towards the place: ndp stadium!

the 'free' cake that i got with compliments from sakura for my bday. when i could actually get 10 plates of it from the dessert section myself. it was really cute though. haha!

my folks and i

my dad and i (before the weird tattoo stuffs)

my dad and i(after... and we were mistook as a bunch of gypsies on the ride home)

my dad wif his new erm... prada headwear

posterior view

the crowd at 'light blue' section

'singa-pura': Lion city

naval showcase

chapter 3 of the show: our parade

red cross forever!!!

paratroopers!!!

fireworks!

birthday celebration with ex-dopt folks and little round

2009-08-11T13:51:00.008+08:00

to all the inhabitants of Middle Earth regardless of dwarves, humans, hobbits, orcs, goblins, elves and wizards, thanks for celebrating with us our birthdays! ours? yup. that goes to andrew, jianxiong and me.

the first half of the day was really uneventful though. after school ended at 12, i went to orchard with carl jung (haojin) on different agendas though. she wanted to meet little round (xiaoyuan) and i wanted to be an emo kiaz and watch hangover alone. but en route, we decided to pay the candy sisters, aikleng and lay hoon a visit and also ask them whether they can join us for the steamboat at the end of the day. glad they could come! but not without telling us how Gae enlightened them and made them feel ashamed as an optom. to be precise, we all felt the same shame man. looks like the infantile optometric industry in spore still has lots to progress! well, that's a good thing. at least we won't become complacent but will instead keep finding ways for improvement.

after that, i emo-ded my way to ps and managed to get the tickets just b4 it started. woa super heng. honestly, i think the movie is a bit over-rated. yea no doubt it's funny. but i think the characters look a bit too serious. i love the supporting roles though:) after the movie, i went to book, and deposit for the tian tian huo guo place which is at the end of liang seah street.

den being a good student, i went to the nlb's Hans and TRIED to do some work while actually having at it on my apple crumble pie. feilou called and decided to meet me earlier to have a game of L4D b4 the feast begins. well, the genius apparently dun no the way to nlb. and wad's more, he accidentally alighted 2 stops b4 bugis junction. i seriously begin to suspect that he's of a korean origin... after pinghan reached, we went to play l4d.

to my surprise, the gals were early at the tian tian huo guo and they alr found seats by the time the BP trios reached.

yuntheng and i. you have to admit she can look real charming at times... though i also have to admit... i gotta do sth about my small lid aperture...

lilin, huimin, huiling, sihui (hope the Force of the huis shall unite once more!)

blurry guys...

chanel the chef, and aik leng the cashier (both equally disastrous at their respective responsibilities... haha! okok kidding! dun kill me!)

pseudo-forest fire. real cake fire.

birthday boys: xiong-ge, bandrew, and me

waxed cake

carbonized hotplate

the participants of world oxidising campaign

my first emo shot (taken by huiling)

xiong and i

ph and i

pui and i

bird and i

voodoo master

workplace fetish

2009-08-11T13:39:00.003+08:00

ok... i must admit on many accounts that this title sounds very controversial. basically this is one of the many miracles that is taking place in the lab behind an unseen corner of the optical shop which i work at. over here, you are actually looking at the only guy in singapore who tries to manually cut a lens shape so that it'll fit into a nike sunglass frame which has interchangeable lens. and this great guy who took over my job is chester.

well aware of the risks of flying fragments of the lens, i took a nearby sunglass and used it as a safety goggle. (ok, that was just 50% of the real reason. you know the other 50% why i took a pic of myself...)

great thanks

2009-07-25T23:41:00.002+08:00

had already published the previous post and was wondering sth was missing. and i realised is this: the manys and manys of people who extended their well-wishes. sometimes (or most of the times for the really suay peoples), shit happens. and the only thing that is certain regardless of who you are, shit still happens. shit doesn't look at your face one day and decides you are not worthy enough to be shitted on. so, shit is fair.

however, bad things dun always come alone. it comes in a package. it comes along with an accessory. and that accessory is sometimes not so obvious. but if you do notice the accessory package that comes with it, the bad things things may not seem too bad after all. one of these 'accessories', will be the well-wishes of your friends and relatives. that, i'd prefer to see it more as a pseudo-accessory. becomes good things are never too small. no matter how loner you thot you were, you'd be surprised at how many ppl will come forward and ask you a simple, yet profound question of great significance: how are you. it makes a 'blind' person 'see' things in a whole new perspective.

honestly man, that morning b4 i went to sch on fri, i felt really helpless as i was alone and my parents would only be back till this sunday and so i had to depend on myself to survive. my RE was hurting real bad back then and i could not open my left eye for more than 5 seconds either. that made me feel vulnerable. i'd rather stayed at home but i knew i had to step out of the door and at least go for prac and let the lecturers help me check my eye. i was really on the verge of breaking down. but with all the subsequent well-wishes and anaestetics and bandage CL and reassurances from dr Sachins and Anna yeo, i'm finding myself at a better capacity to pull thru these turmoils.

so to all those dwarves and elves and humans and halflings and wizards and even orcs out there, you know who you are. thanks for just asking how am i. just to show my appreciation, i'd like to rmb these ppl who have come to know my condition and expressed their concern: ws, feilou, xiong-ge, bandrew, xt, qh, carl jung, hui, lingz, partner, ms yeo (who laid down her tons of work to accompany me dat day at ah), burden chua, kiat wee (for asking me if i could still run for poly 50), raymond geh, haishan, paul, small des, aikleng (for 80% laughing over the phone, and only 20% really asking how was i), layhoon, dr zhu (for asking me why i came to her lecture only when she finished... well ok, she din know i nubshitted my own eyes den...), cheri, the nurses at ah (for asking: are you the harry potter guy?), chris (for telling anna yeo abt me after he heard it from xt), jess (who just msn-ed me b4 i was to publish this post), szeyee and many others who had (and i had forgotten) and who are to come. i thank God for all of 'em.

sure to hear another genre of 'concern' when my folks come back from korea this sunday. any good places to buy earplugs anyone?

expensive harry potter show

2009-07-25T21:59:00.007+08:00

my folks have gone to korea and it is home alone! while i thot finally i can try to be home late without any qualms, i was only half right. while the whole week was spent uneventfully, though it should have been given the absence of my parents, i spent my days trying to finish my reports and going for swimming with kaiyuan. on thurs, i finally got to go out with the BOA party for dinner and movie subsequently.

this is the pic that i deliberately took to document my one week old gucci sunglasses. it was taken b4 the dinner and xiong ge had his shang fang bao jian which he kindly stewarded for andrew i think. den we finally got to eat at the Phin's steak house which we'd passed by countless times for our ah chew's supper meetings. the doneness of the meat was up to my expectations and you could almost taste the medium-rare meat like the cow was just grazing the New Zealand pastures 5 min ago. i'm not really good at discerning freshness. but if you were to ask me, i'd say this is it. and the wild mushroom sauce was a pleasant surprise. its thick yellowish graving doesn't look all too flattering but a touch of it on your tastebuds and it'd bring you back to Fangorn (the hometown of Treebeard just at the backyard of Saruman's tower aka Isengard in LOTR. you can really TASTE mushrooms and it really doesn't taste like it's been processed at all. if they did, they really preserved the original flavour really well.

after huimin nice pang seh, huiling, yuntheng, siong-ge, andrew and i went for the harry potter, the haLf blood prince movie. perhaps being forewarned more than enough times of the sleep-inducing potency of the show (must be one of the spells...), i tried to keep my ears open for the storylines instead of anticipating any actions. and perhaps that was the reason which caused me to have an extreme low threshold to any actions-cum-suspense-cum-frightful scenes.

at the scene where bumbledor (forgive me if the spelling is wrong) brought frodo, oh erm... harry (dun you think he looks a little like frodo?) to collect fordomor's spirit item thingy inside this wrong-looking cave, when bumbledor just finished drinking the moquitoe larvae infested drink, i was compelled to place my hands close to my face as a promising scary scene is impending. then when those Smeagol-looking things came and grasped harry, i poked my finger into my right eye and cut my cornea. the immediate feeling was that of an everted eyelid. then the next thing i knew was that i was lacrimating non-stop. serious. it was so much that i felt dehydrated when i reached home. these happened on thurs. i had to act like a kung-fu master on the cab ride home and even direct the taxi-driver which route to take with my eyes closed most of the time. he would have missed the expressway exit had i not opend my eyes in time! scary...

then the next day, which was fri, i decided to skip dear Zhu's lesson and went in late when she just finished her lecture. wanted to return some notes to ailing and xt thought i purposely went back to let everybody see my eyes... erm, and that's the last thing i would have wanted to do actually. haha!

den i went to spoc and iryn happened to to be the one to be available at that point in time and checked my eyes. she took less than a minute on the SLE and decided that she dun want to seen me anymore but to go straight to A&E. honestly man, i'd have been devastateded to hear her say this under normal circumstances... but her sense of urgency really woke me up from my false optimism that only my eyelids were affected. so i called sihui to ask if she could be my eyes and bring me to hospital, since we were supposed to go oob to collect our cert at 4pm. i was surprised when the other gals turned up at mac where i was waiting for sihui. and xt even offered to drive me der. i was so relieved and really appreciated her doing so. cld really save me the trouble of getting a cab!

when i reached alexandra hospital, i actually wanted to take a pic of myself on the wheelchair. but decided it was too morbid so... maybe not. then anna yeo called me and wanted to accompany me to the eye clinic if the MO at the A&E decided it was serious enough for me to go and see the ophthal. i was really grateful that she got to know of my condition and called me. it's great having someone to accompany me (since sihui and xt had to go back for prac) and not blind my way around, and even better if that someone is an experienced optom with loads of connections in the eye clinic.

after a round of diagnosis by dr sachins, a cornea expert, and ms anna yeo, they decided that it's a sterile corneal abrasion that din hit the stroma. but they weren't sure if the BM were affected. if it was, it could cause recurrent epithelial erosion and the doc would have to do puncturing to deliberate scars to protect my cornea. this could only be done of the injury was off axis. if it's along the visual axis, it would be really tricky. after their descrition of my cornea, this is the one pic i found closest to their desrictions: a patch of staining paracentral to the corneal.

i had wanted to post a pic of my own eyes on the blog and realised better not... apart from the sapphire iris and high nose bridge, this is exactly wad i see in the mirror (ok... kamen... pls stop thinking about other things...): hyperemic conjunctiva, ipsilateral ptosis, and mild lid edema on the right eye.

and this is exactly wad i see when i compare my right eye (the problematic one)and left eye (the good one). in fact, my right eye is a little worse than that shown on the left. hope God will heal me and teach me how to appreciate good vision with 2 eyes... i want my stereopsis back!!!

Gonioscopy Prac

2009-07-23T13:03:00.002+08:00

it's been a really long time it seems since i last blogged. i think mainly because it's my reluctance to go through the hassle of plugging in my LG handphone to import the pics into the LG software installed into my laggy laptop. and also becos i have no confidence in my literary skills and decided it's better i distract you guys with the pics instead. grumble grumble... ok that's all side track.

anyways if that's the excuse for not blogging, i've run out of it. cos the pics you're going to see are exported directly from the lab com that's attached to the slit-lamp directly. this should help you guys see the structures better.

anyway gonioscopy is a way of assessing the anterior chamber depth quantitatively as you can see exactly the different structures as far as the AC depth allows us to see. some crash course for beginners: the more the structures of the eyes seen, the more open the angle it is, and therefore better. which mean liquid which is constantly being replenished in the eye can be diffused exteriorly, maintaining a balanced intraocular pressure.

but the lesser structures we can see, the worst it is. means the angle (ie the drainage system) is closed. that sucks. means you're refilling water into a balloon non-stop and the pressure just keeps going up. the pressure has no where else to go and so it just has to push backwards on the back of the eye: optic nerve head. which basically is the cause of acute angle closure glaucoma.

the pics below are some of those i had taken on peiyik's eyes. of course, 0.5% of proparacaine has to be instilled first before all these torture can take place.

using a 2-mirror gonio lens, the image on the right is in fact a mirror image on the left part of the eye. means if this is the left eye, then i'm actually looking at the nasal part. we are only interested in the 1st white band from the left of the pic. but if we look close enough at the white band, from the left, we can see a hint of greyish band which shows the ciliary body. this is followed by a really ambiguous streak of brighter white line which counts for the scleral spur. the adjacent brown, pigemented region which is the trabecular meshwork. and the white part is the scwhalbe's line. if you see the ciliary body, it means you've got great angle of grade 4. if you see only the scwalbe's line or nth at all, you're in grace danger, my apprentice.

another shot of the same thing, same place

reflected part of the superior angle

inferior

temporal

*bear in mind that these pics are on the left eye.

There can be miracles when you believe!

2009-07-14T18:30:00.002+08:00

there's something that i have been praying about for a long time. and i think it takes more than believing for it to happen. it requires faith, and actions. of course, not without the will of the great Buddy up there.

many times i have tried to give up, but many times He gave me hope. every time i look into the night sky, i know hope is still alive. Lord, if it is Your will, please let it be done!

tangkak trip 6-7 june09

2009-06-10T20:58:00.016+08:00

wow... it's been ages since i last touched my blog. ok so here it goes! a bit lazy to comment on the pics le. hope they are self-explanatory. okok... i'll try to label some.

r and r on the 1st day!

some pics taken b4 the most boring dinner ever. it's supposed to be commmendatory. so why are you keeping us from eating!?!?!?!? (as always...)

briefing by arion on sat night b4 the screening proper(thank goodness it wasn't held in our room...)

breaksfast we had on the last day. really cheap and yummy and oily.

briefing...

to the ka-kias....

arion with the local reps

very meaningful. on the philosophy of studies

on the ride home...

den... home sweet home!

graduation day 2009

2009-06-05T12:39:00.012+08:00

though it's passed for already more than a week, but the die-hard blogger-spirit in me never dies. the tests this week are finally over and the luxury of actually sitting down and blog has finally resumed. so... let us drive down memory lane (yea i know, it's only one week ago) and relish THE DAY.

after teaching popo and auntie sanmei piano in the morning, i went to paya lebar mrt to meet huiling and yingtheng where we proceeded to huiling's abode. i demonstrated my cooking prowess to kamen's miss ugly (i.e. deirdre) via msn video conferencing on ling's laptop. well, apparently i was too absorbed with showing off until a burnt smell reached my olfactory senses and stimulated an emergency response to save the chees omeltte. i really admire ling's mum for being able to cook food using the conventional wok. many eggs would have sacrificed in vain were i to own the wok in my house. oh, and did i forget to mention andrew was already waiting at eunos mrt while i was cooking lunch? not to mention eating the lunch, washing the dishes, waiting of huiling to bathe and me to finish my mini piano repertoire. by the time we reached, andrew must have waited for 1.5 hours at least. poor andrew...

den we went to find jianxiong and went to convention center with his mum. we did not forget to entertain ourselves on the way there... where, coincidentally, we met miss ugly as well...

couple photos...

and if you thought i was the gay one... you're quite wrong.

another group photo on the train

when we reached, kamen and i waited for andrew and pinghan to buy ties together. then they both went to SAA to buy their ties when it's sold at the convention center itself. so they came back together and bought the ties together. after lots of scuffling around with the robe, we finally settled down and asked a kind (but not too patient after us having tried her patience) year 2 gal from dunno which course to take a pic of the famed "Infamous 4" (assuming x=5-1, therefore x=4)

then inside, we begun taking photos frantically like there's no tmr. here's one with my ex-classmate cum current prac partner: peiyik

here's another one with the bud from 03, joshua lam, who readily helped me to make a minus 1 copy of josh groban's "who can say for certain", a favour i deeply appreciate. oh the weird girl behind is yalun:p

the "infamous 4" with "gold Standard" and "sylvia". oh, sylvia's her real name:p

the "3 burdens": "burden 1" me, "burden 2" joce and "burden 3" sab. actually they ain't as burdenful as me la. i owe them great debt for doing reports in current UM course. yup, i'm in the same group as them. fortunate right??? ya i know....

my dad. of whom 2% of him is found on me.

my mum, who generously accepts compliments from numerous saying she's too young for her age. and her actual age is.... ah ha! wait wait!!! give me money, and i'll tell you!

never fail to sleep. or rather, never fail to zi-pai.

andrew, sylvia, peiyik and me

ruth and sylvia

WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT???

as long as you bear the Ring, you shall have my sword, my arrow, my axe, my staff, and my umbrella.

various, randomized, disorderly arranged principal visual axes.

weesing and i

i wonder what's so funny...

my folks and i yo!

unrobed. and ugliness is unveiled. no wonder kamen's having this weird expression...

"infamous 4" and erm... "gorgeous 3"?

papa sim (not exactly how i'd call him...) and us

gold standard gang (chanel, aikleng and sheryl), gorgeous 3 (ms dawn, ms lek, and adeline), and 2 extras (anonymous)

The ShuHui and i. i lost another photo that another person took with Shuhui.

Post-ceremony, post-prata-supper chilling out at sunset way's 7-11. poor chanel and aikleng has to wait for us camwhores to finish taking pics with tons of people (including those whom we did not know) b4 we could make our way out of the school. ended out it was too late to go anywhere else after the prata so they had to nice pang-seh.

and that marks the end of the day.

hospital visit

2009-05-21T19:29:00.005+08:00

hey scooter (aka scuter)! sorry for the really late posting man. esp since the pics were taken like 2 mondays b4 right? i think you must be fit as a fiddle by now! haha! anyways the past is something for us to think about it and have a good laugh no matter how dire it may seem at that point of time, right? haha! excuses... yea, the pic below is truly a revolutionary patient-visitor regimen. wad do i mean? let me explain...

due to the H1N1 cat status that was 'orang-ey' then (according to my 'vivid-but-yet-not-all-too-reliable-memory'), the CGH has placed really strict rules, limiting only 2 visitors per patient. in the end, sheryl the Gold, Crystal the pretty, and me can't go up cos it appears scuter alr has 2 visitors. i initially thought they were his parents. when sheryl called scuter to say that we 3 were stuck downstairs, he came down to 'visit' us instead. and turned out the 2 visitors were alvin and junhui (hope i get the names right... nth personal if i got it wrong k?) and they were just a step earlier!

after that, i rushed down to bugis where i have a meeting with bingjin and tanglin on the upcoming mega sunday (nope, it's not over yet. see? i'm still pretty dilligent in updating my blog right?) and i dragged tanglin along to jidechi dessert shop with some of our lovely dopt folks: deirdre, huiling, andrew, yuntheng and jianxiong. it was really impromptu as i called andrew only when i reached bugis. impromptu, yes. fun, absolutely!

tanglin trying hard to build a collection of photos while she's still young.

recording

2009-05-18T16:43:00.002+08:00

this is a video of a mini recording. yea, i look and sound weird.... esp without the music that i'm hearing in the headset. yeayeayea... feel free to scrutinise and mock me...

desaru trip

2009-05-18T11:42:00.012+08:00

one week after the actual mother's day, our church something new: instead of having a parent's dinner in honour of the mother's day in church as we usually do, teacher lifang asked around and decided to hold the celebration beyond borders. i was pretty honoured when pastor junhui called me up and asked me if i would like to join the team. and without hesitating (yea rite...), i said ok. i must really thank God for His providence in the preparation and even during the whole trip. me and guorong were tasked to take the publicity and figure out the games to be done during the lunch there. publicity involved creating brochures, meaning suicidal mission for an aritistic-neuron-dead person like me. managed to asked esther for help and she did. she din expect anything anything in return, and i was eternally grateful to her (as long as my ingrate memory allows it...) and the games were easy feat, with inputs coming from all sides and copying from other games we played before.

the one-day trip started really early. i had to reach church by 6.30am and i thought i was going to take cabbie with all those gifts to church alone. but it so happens that my dad has his company van with him and so he volunteered to bring me there. wow! although i was a little disgruntled at having to go for the trip, seeing how God prepares the way for me, i guess i really should have no issues:)

and so we arrived at the spore custom and the pic below shows us waiting for some of the people who were still getting cross-examined by the customs.

this is a pic of great unity. a group of strong guys pushing a bus moving.

our local guide who seems to be really into organic food. she's been yakking all the way en route desaru for 2 over hours on food tips

some landmarks...oops... i forgot what was it already

jam... and i was worried if she would ever run out of topics. haha!

highway!!!

desaruy farm guide:"this place is the size of 400 football fields"

dragon fruit

"huh!? why this guy keeps zi-pai-ing one?"

jackfruit (duh...)

pineapple (like i dun know...)

xinhui's family

yi san

fishes

let's do some fruit talk!

ther honey lady

lunch

at jusco

binocular indirect ophthalmoscopy part 1

2009-05-18T11:33:00.005+08:00

finally, the famed technique of fundus examination has arrived!!! and a gym-muscle man who turned out to be the doctor who was to be teaching us was in charge. this week, is me being the guinea pig, and peiyik the examiner. well, at least you dun have something really funny poking your cornea this time as compared to GAT. but we still had to do some prelim tests like checking the VH angle, and GAT to assess suitability for dilation with tropicamide.

peiyik with her arsenal of SL, BIO lens (20D), mydriacyl and of course, slit lamp

90D lens for use during slit lamp funduscopy

evidence of a narcissistic side of mr ng (he's the one who told me how to capture this image...)

something close-up (jocelyn and examiner, and saboo as the px)

sth even close-up. nice... with compliments of joce.

mother's day

2009-05-11T08:50:00.012+08:00

well i know it's not exactly mother's day on 9th may, but we celebrated it two days ago on saturday anyways. the day was quite uneventful in the first half of the day. had to cook, handwash and sun clothes, and even go around collecting my pay:( but well, at least i had a nice chat with janice and that adds some meaning to the 1st half of the day:) when i reached home, my folks and i took bus to marina square, where my dad alighted one stop earlier to go and pick up my grandma and aunt.

my umm and i at the esplanade (well yes, zi-pai-ing...)

so in the meantime, me and my mum went gallivating around. we walked through marina square and crossed 'under' via the citylink to esplanade. my mum had originally wanted to just take photos at the bay, but good fortune found us and we came across a 'localmotion' performance by dawn fung and her band which starts in just 10min time. so we found a sit and listened to the performance.

if you heard it, nice right? my mum said it'll be great if i can find myself a wife like her. i agree! haha! she's got a very soothing voice and she could interpret the songs effortlessly (seemingly). apparently she's a christian too! i was recording a video of her singing the Lord's prayer halfway when my dad suddenly called and kept hearing me wrong. so irritating la! but well... on account that he's going to pay 250 odd dollars, i shall forgive him! haha!!!

some narcissistic pics that we took after the performance...

after which we went to proceed to feast! but when we reached there, we were 'half-surprised' not to find dad there as he had said. they were still at john little. and my mum and i had to wait for them to come up instead. which was in a way thankful though... it'd be very bad if it was grandma who has to wait for us:) though hungry, i still did not forget my life-long ambition of being a faithful blogger (as inspired by silly jack) and still managed to come up with some photos of UNTOUCHED food!

evidence of my grandma...

finishing all the food!!! (well you and i know this is pure exaggeration rite?)

after the meal, we took a couple of photos within the marina square itself...

then we decided to walk and relac wone korner at the bayside where my dad literally set up a camp over there as he not only took off hisshoes, he also took of his socks and hung them along the railings! oh my gosh!!! come to think of it, it looks like what i'll become 30 years down the road. so i think i better get used to it now!!! haha!!! i think this will effectively deter any future courtships:p

the ladies had a really nice and long chat and we missed our last bus from esplanade while waiting for dad to finish his toilet business. luckily we had Night Rider and we changed to 190 at somerset where we go off home sweet home!

food for thought....

2009-05-08T19:06:00.001+08:00

some things i came across that peiyik sent me. think it's really meaningful. so i supposed i'd share with you guys. great reminders for all of us...

job hunting

2009-05-08T18:05:00.005+08:00

after the prac ended at 12, i treaded on my way excitedly to dhoby ghaut mrt station control where i'm supposed to meet jabs the hutt, uncle ban and xiong-ge at 1pm. well... you guys might have alr caught sight of the word: supposed. when i reached, i asked jubs where he was. and surprisingly enough, he told me that i told him the outing was cancelled. only then i realised that i accidentally thought that he was with andrew, xiong and huiling for supper together the night before when i asked huiling to tell them our meeting time. which means he didn't know the confirmed timing. well... never mind then. then i asked uncle ban where was he. then he asked wad will we be doing. i told him most prob lan and asked him if he has any other suggestions. then he says he dun want to lan, and thus not joining us. bear in mind that it was already 1 when he told me that he decided not to come. that's really way early for telling someone that you can't make it for an appointment. guess if i even bother to ask the next time round...

well... God was merciful and yea despite the disappointment, the rest of the day was fantastic, save for a really boring and mundane tv-serial like movie which was rated M18 unnecessarily. xiong-ge and i had a lengthy but unfruitful discussion as to why it's rated M18.

anyways, b4 that, we decided to gay around and ate packed food from carrefour from plaza sing at kopitiam upstairs. we soon gossiped about old school days and my!!! was it enjoyable having spent time with him. and he still thinks that he can't talk or communicate with other people. my foot! he's one of the greatest buds i've ever known to talk to! no airs, not fussy about anything, indisputable... and the list goes on. well... except for the fact that anna yeo told me (well, actually to the 06/07 dopt batch in UM) to submit the abstract for NCOOC presentation.

after the heavy and decadent meal (meaning with dessert...), we decided to commence on our tour of job visiting the good ppl of dopt who are working in the town area. first target, we went to see huimin at mount e #07-04. we had to go thru temp checks and fill up the particular form at the entrance. wow... huimin sure is dua-pai! and when we peeked through the glass door outside her clinic, guess wad! she was doing her usual verbalization of her thoughts from her brocca's area! haha! funny. it all seems to have happened yesterday when in fact it's alr been a while ago. to see her talking again somehow makes everything feels normal again. like her every word and accentuation sets the rhythm for normality to keep breathing. well... i'm still irritated sometimes by her non-stop talking though. haha!

after that, we went to optics 2000 to visit aikleng. that place sure is comfy. with nice pay and generous off days with a weekend on every week. paradise! and a job opportunity presented itself. hope it'll be a green light for me soon:)

after the movie, huimin called me on my mobile using a public phone (who says public phones are dispensable?) and we met her beside the cineleisure's famous amos shop. she decided we go and find yingtheng at suntec and so we went. then along the way, i suggested going to visiting sylvia. all of us agreed and the shop was sooo big that her colleague has to usher us in and shout her name in order for us to locate her! we learnt that every optom has their own designated refraction room and hers belonged to irene gan's! wow!!! i would be ecstatic if i were sylvia la! irene gan.... wooo....

after that, we went to visit yingtheng at koolook and waited for her to knock off at 9.30 sitting at the little anne's. after which we went to have dessert at JI DE CHI, means 'remember to eat' in chinese. huiling joined us after her jamming session and at her proposal, we founded the Board of Avaira (BoA) where we'd be meeting biweekly and take turns to treat dessert:) the photo below are the 'founding fathers' of the board (no masochism intended...)

goldmann applanation tonometry

2009-05-03T17:33:00.004+08:00

it you were to ask me wad's the most representative of UM's academic life thus far, i would accredit it none other than to its practicals. the once-a-myth GOLD STANDARD technique of measuring the intraocular pressure, Goldmann cotnact tonometry is now as real as a stinging sensation on our cornea after the initial instillation of Alcaine 0.5%. here's a very generous demonstration by Dr yong of TTSH of using the not-so-gold astandard of perkins tonometry, which is the portable version of the Goldmann.

well trust me... i was taking the risk to take this shot for all you optometry-wannabes or wannanotbes. that's why i was tremendously relieved when miss anna yeo not only allowed me to take the video, but even asked me to send it to her. which reminds me now of course! haha!

as you can see, after the instillation of a local anaestetic (LA) which is not shown here, a cone-like probe which is flatted at its apex is being pressed onto the cornea. yes. PRESSED. below are some pics of our actual prac.

this one's showing the process of peiyik trying out on me, well. dun doubt. i took this pic myself while my cornea was on its stake.

this is Dr yong performing on sabrina. nice right? (i mean the technique...)

though ms ng wasn't around this week to chat with me on blogging ethics, mr chris ng and i expounded on the essence of JIU YANG SHEN GONG. his level 8 was indeed formidable. having mastered only up till the 7th level, i din know you could better contrast the mires by adjusting the background illumination of the slitlamp.

the desired mires for each reading. shot is taken from computer screen while the image is being freezed from the GAT.

the undesired effect of the contact tonometry (with courtesy of peiyik's cornea)

of course... the these horrific images were taken last week. this week... erm, we know better by having not to check our cornea health after the prac:) so... no images of damaged cornea this week!

strolling with the snail...

2009-05-03T17:31:00.006+08:00

went for pastor haoran's sermon last saturday on the 7th day (aka Sabbath day) and he read us a poem that his wife, Aili 'Shi-Mu' wrote. it's in chinese. but over here, i'll try to translate it from whatever amount of fragments is left in my brain. will try to capture the essence, but dun expect much of a poem being left of it...

HOLDING THE SNAIL'S HAND

one day, God spoke to me.
He wanted me to do something different.
Something i'd never had done,
Had God not told me to.
and that thing that He asked me to do,
is to hold a snail's hand.

well it's nothing difficult at all.
or so i thought...
just to hold the snail's hand,
and walk with him.
minutes had gone, and hours had passed.
and yet we have barely moved a single yard.

i grew impatient and started to ask him to move a little quicker.
just a little quicker.
but no matter how much i rebuked him, nudged him, kicked him and shoved him,
he did not speed up a single bit.

i wanted to simply give up and let go.
but i thought again and decided not to,
before i tried a second time.
so once again, i rebuked him, nudged him, kicked him and shoved him.
and this snail still remains oblivious to all my efforts.

however, the snail has already done all he could,
every inch a tremendous amount of energy being expended.

i decided that this is the final straw.
i would let go.

on my way back to my own life,
however,
i noticed something.
oh yes! there it is!
it's a flower.
oh yes! there it is!
look at how the clouds changes its shape
look at the canvas painted across the sky
look at the birds that flew by.
and why haven't i noticed them before?
i wondered.

then it came upon me.
God did not want me to hold the snail's hand.
he wanted the snail to hold mine.
i was the one who needed the stroll.

Thank you Father.

baiyeee... prince of contact lens!

2009-05-03T17:30:00.005+08:00

sorry for the really late postings... so let's go down memory lane together! it was the last week konda'll be with us that week as he'll be leaving for sydney for 3 yrs to pursue his phd on that thursday. i must say it's a coincidence that the strong wind that blew down trees caused massive traffic jams at different parts of the island. because of this, the Gold Standard was late (in her defense, it's only slightly la...dat very much depends on your definition of lateness!) and met konda on her way to t121. i must say, konda, will you bear to allow yourself to leave us without giving us a chance to bid you farewell?

still rmb the first day we had him as our lecturer. it was also his first in sp. we were apprehensive with the very fact that he's new, that's number one. and number too, he has this really strong india accent! number 3, the lecture notes were, an understatement if you were to say it's disorganised. but anyways, he improved by lots in a matter of weeks and we managed to find ourselves finding a common ground to communicate with him.

not to mention how he brought us through the india trip and being a nanny to all of us overgrown babies. well, mr konda, if you are reading, wishing you all the best in all of your adventures yay!

so here's the pics of our 'last supper' with konda. after which, the guys, namely xiong-ge, long-ge, pete, jubs dez huts (italiano version), uncle ban, jerome, yunchong, me, and of course konda the MAN, when on a wild trip to somewhere b4 deciding where to go. so in desperation, we decided to go and watch movie. and though xiong ge and me watched it b4 alr, we recommended Taken, which is still a great show though it was watched the second time. not to mention i was pre-empting the plot to andrew, which makes it even more enjoyable (for me). after the show, we had a short and brief supper over drinks, with courtesy of konda. though short, it was fortunate that we had that session. we managed to talk and had fun together, with courtesy of pinghan. thanks bro! haha! hope you dun feel offended.

wonder when will it be the next time we see him again... bon voyage, konda!!!

The MAN!!!

long-ge and henchman Rome

spread of food! yum yum dummy dum!!! did i forget to mention it was at Samy's curry?

The MAN, the Gold, and the Suave

you seldom see this guy actually being AWAKE in photos...

mr konda, sheryl and qinghui

my photos here are extremely under-representative of those others who went. sorry for the so little photos. more at jerome's facebook i suppose:)

watershed 2

2009-04-30T00:18:00.002+08:00

well... sometimes things dun turn out as well as it seems. but i believe that whichever circumstance that we are in, is exactly where God wants us to be, as wad Rev. fucai said last tue night.

sometimes He just wants to bring a point. and i think i know wad He intends to say. and i really thank Him for that. and for giving me friends to go out with me during these times of emotional turmoil.

thanks pete and xiong-ge. you guys might not have known but you guys really did me a favour today, just simply being around. for watching movie and killing all the nub bots in RA3! maybe that's wad we want ultimately in life. and tmr i'm gonna trash huiling, kamen, shanyong and xiong-ge etc with my olympic-class badminton skills! yeah! looking forward to that....

everything is transient. and things will come to pass. i only hope it will do so quickly.

Watershed

2009-04-26T01:30:00.004+08:00

thank you. this is the best evening i ever had. i think this song best fits wad i'm thinking right now. very cute arrangement. enjoy!

alpha steamboat

2009-04-24T01:03:00.002+08:00

was really really tired after my 5 hour plus straight of computer in library. and honestly, the only thing i wanted to do was to go home and sleep. sheryl and andrew kept asking but i had to only decline them. yea, i felt bad for wanting to nice pang seh, but i was pretty determined to close my eyes...

den i decided to leave the lib and was waiting for bus 74 when sheryl replied: terrible.. it's the last day of cell... then it dawned upon me that IT WAS THE LAST DAY! i had to go! ended up i was so tired that i mixed up the place and went to lavender instead of novena. i alr took bus to orchard and i went in the opposite direction instead! yea, was a little irritated but yet amused at the same time.

had a really simple but satisfying meal at michelles' place and we wrote our thoughts about everyone on a postcard. it was hilarious when you look at some of the comments! haha! ok, really gotta slp le.

goodnight younglings!

some memories back from school...

2009-04-23T17:11:00.006+08:00

as some might have already known, it's also found in our class blog, for the convenience who dun visit my blog. haha! will continue to feed in more pics when i have the the time. enjoy! let's begin the lacrimation process!!! MUAHAHAHAHAHA.....

remember the times when we used to pay attention in class...

remember the times we celebrate birthdays together...

remember the times we used to spent time studying in library...

remember the times we sunbathed together... but were too shy so we left most of our clothes on...

remember the times we spent our precious afternoons in prac room and weekends in clinic together...

remember the times when we had productive discussions...

crazy times we had (sorry for the head inclination required to view these photos!!!)...

some angels and mortals moments...

remember the times we shared at timbre...

remember the times when we get drunk...

and many many more. hope you still haven't alr yet run out of starbucks tissue:p

other things i do in the library...

2009-04-23T16:23:00.002+08:00

play company of heroes and getting caught by security when i was about to be declared victorious... shit.

first practical

2009-04-23T15:04:00.003+08:00

today is anna day! wad do i mean? basically we had miss yeo for the whole morning's worth of lessons today. she gave us lecture on the bionocular indirect ophthalmoscopy (BIO) and told us the relevance of degree optoms in singapore. well, i hope she's right about it! and she said with the usage of diagnostic drugs, our responsibilities have increased, like, exponentially. well, i hope she's wrong about it:)

den straight after, our prac group went to the prac room (duh...) and oh my gosh! it felt like i was in the millennium falcon! the equipments look so post modern with the galactic torture chair and the hyperspace maneuvering system! it was nice looking through the piloting goggles while plotting the ship's coordinates! oh erm i heard someone said translation? yea erm... the chair's just the chair which we'd be using esp for during BIO where we might have to adjust to a supine position; the maneuvering system is the computer keyboard and the numerous controls at the station. the piloting goggles are simply the slit-lamp and the monitor screen looks like a set of sophisticated gadgets. ok, i sound like a sua-gu excited kid.

i'm relieved that i managed to pair up with peyik for this afternoon. though the station was designated to me, she managed to take care of it more than i do! and yea, raymond the room ic, simply doesn't look nor act like a student. he seems to be doing the usual stuffs, asking us to place things back and etc etc...

like my usual diehard-blogger mode, i took out my 8 megapixel cam and started taking pics, regardless of whether miss yeo was just standing beside me. well, wad do i have to fear? i'm no longer in clinic now! haha! HOO-HA! PARATROOPERS! i'd have walked around and taken pics of others and teachers who were teaching-in-action if my level of boldness have allowed it!

and it was really fun too having miss dorothy assessing peiyik and i. we chatted over blogging etiquettes and gossiped over some other stuffs instead of asking questions on slit-lamp techniques! haha! didn't felt as much like a practical session though it was really helpful in revising some stuffs. i would say that this was a conducive learning environment:)

after which we went to eat at FC5 and wanted to eat subway until we saw the unbelievable queue. they should open up another foodcourt just for subway alone... and right now, i'm simply wasting my afternoon away completing the online elearning data analysis (ie boring biostats) assessment in the lib. that's my life! and i love it! (well.. as long it doesn't last forever...)

let's hope more exciting stuffs awaits!

dating guide

2009-04-22T16:22:00.003+08:00

very inspirational. i assure you it's worth the time watching it! rowan atkinson is a pro!!! it's non-stop pattaya laughing action siol.

1st day!!!

2009-04-21T01:28:00.003+08:00

the first day of schoo at UM ended as quickly as it has started. until today i still can't believe that i'm studying a degree in optom! i was so excited that i was trying to take pics and share with you guys. i must admit that it felt so sua-gu, that jess wanted to sit somewhere else, and sheryl gave me that 'cmon laochen... not again' look. haha!

the first ang-moh lecteurer from UM gave a typical ang-moh lecturer charisma and ease. but i think he tried really hard. everybody could tell he's still trying to recover from his hours of flight from england. poor dude. then like every comical addition to any great drama, the familiarity of chris ng and his lectures brought back pleasant nostalgia to the whole theatre. the whole group started to doubt chris's teachings when he din make sense. but as usual, he always managed to gain the uppoer hand and come out unscathed from us. and again, he literally memorised the whole lecture and delivered to us on whiteboard. how nice.

i tried to take a group pic during lunch but ended up taking pic myself again. haha! fate predetermines! it was really weird not having the guys around, really. it felt like having withdrawal syndromes and i was so grateful for the gals from our batch who tried to make me feel at home around with them. lucky some of gals from our ex 02 class can tahan some of my 'trademark antics' leftover from the previous 3 years. it's the only legacy i can bring back from my memories of the guys to this 99% feminine environment. really hate to admit it, but i really miss the guys man! shit. i'm actually lacrimating now... can't believe it... well... seems like our 3-year long friendship ran deeper than i thought. that's why i treasure particularly the times i still get to spend with them.

supposed to have a last minute meeting session with UM lecturers at 4.15pm. but i simply skipped it so i can go gaming with jianxiong and kamen. so glad that huiling joined us after her work too:) a pity the others like birdrew and pete and jerome and long-ge and yunchong etc couldn't join us. quite weird why we seem to always meet on and only on mondays... haha!

guess i should really sleep now...

sunday blues...

2009-04-19T21:42:00.005+08:00

this weekend is quite an agonizing one for me. knowing that i'll have to lead word for cell, do vocal for worship, and lead children missions sunday. certainly a hefty amount of cmmitments for a chronic slacker like me. the only way for me to overcome it is to look at it objectively and know that they are not exactly un-survivable and i'll certainly be able to pull through if i go with the flow. i know worse things (lots more commitments) could happen. though really a tiring weekend (i'm alr feeling super tired by 9pm), it's not without its rewards.

turned out i did not have to lead word cos cheri has already prepared the word. but i have to last minute take worship. which wasn't really better either. but really thank God for my benelovent (i think wrong usage here...) CG members who helpfully read out the lyrics and cheri for lifting the atmosphere. i think i'm a little too dead that day.

then today i had to struggle to wake up cos i had to lead the children mission team. compounding to my anxiety is our tradition for spontaneity (euphemism for last-minuteness)! well, we managed to turn out unscathed (as usual) on both level 1 and 2. we even managed to play around with a couple of kids!

heart saver, wrist killer!!!

2009-04-17T12:32:00.003+08:00

yesterday the first batch of trainees from the UM had our CPR training at the Red Cross HQ. years had passed since i last actively participated in their activities, but a queer sense of nostalgia overwhelmed me for a while when i reached with jess after our breakfast at the wangjiao.

i was kinda relieved after realising that our chief instructor of the day, thiru was a humourous guy. we had a really great time there. however, i felt really out of place as the people i knew there were the 03 gals: jess, cheryl leow, sabrina, mei geok amd jocelyn. i know them, yes, but not to the extent of being able to find a common topic. so i felt strangely out of place when i walked back from lunch with them. well, at least i met chun choon at the ps kopitiam which kinda alleviated my symptoms a bit. haha! well, there were guys there and it might have been great interacting with them. but since they were already talking among themselves already, then i thought, wad the heck. just let them continue with their own conversations and i just hang around with the gals. hope they dun find me xtra...

the practical was harder than we are thought. in the end, we all did the compressions till our hands got localised hyperemia and wrist edema. and still having to say the mnemonics of 1&2&3&4&5&1&2&3&4&10&1&........30, we became out of breath as much as little anne.

well, thank goodness that despite of our instructors-shaking-head-continuously performance, they still let us passed. when i asked thiru whether mine was acceptable, he just smiled at me and said 'it's better than nothing'. comforting.

little anne and instructor thiru

insight from the insides

head tilt chin lift

rescue breathing

30 compressions

workplace(s)

2009-04-15T17:31:00.004+08:00

been trying to justify for my holidays begore the divine-granted university entrance starts by working about 1% of the whome time. but it's a 1% well-spent i'd say. went to work at different places (actually only 3... quite great feat considering i've got only 1% to do it) and got to know really many new wonderful people.

after my trip from zhuhai cum batam, i went back to work at emperor lot 1 and had the honour of knowing this really adorable junior whom the colleagues affectionately called princess. and on her last day, i coincidentally went to the shop to get my vit M from mr yeo, shriley and i took a really cheesy pic with my newly bought red umbrella inside the shop. i swear ppl were looking at us when we were taking the shots! haha!

then after being almost starved by boredom, i decided to give christine a call and ask her of any availability in her shops. and thank God! i worked 2 days in point optical that week and got to know the really verbal jess (which she herself pronounced as zest) and yanni, who after jess description of her, reminds me of linjian... they're both quiet and speaks almost the same way! and even looks the same (maybe 20 years down the road?)! and guess what! lynn (which later i got to know was actually pin jing) was also working nearby, at the hdb hub, also under the same company!

yanni and i

jess and i

on sat, i was transferred to clementi and got to know the widely acclaimed (by jess) youjin. well, her beauty sure lived up to my expectations. but a pity i was more seduced by the hawker center at blk 448 (yup, the same place as the boon kee yun tun stall)and totally forgot about taking zi lian pics! the other good people i got to know there were fion and joannah.

day's out with class guys

2009-04-07T12:25:00.004+08:00

yesterday was a really fun day with the guys from dopt/02 before i embark on a relatively busy week this week. with credits to my menopausal but still very kind dad, i had a very sumptuous crayfish with cottage cheese for breakfast. oh my gosh! it's so nice i simply can't have enough of it!!!

after that i taught the perpetually late andrew ban piano. of course, not without getting back at him for being 30min late by slapping his hands at any erratic postures or asking him to replay the song zillions of times even though his fingers slipped just 1mm from where it should have been.

then we decided to go BPP for lunch and driven by my impetus for good food, we went to jack's place, which to my surpreese, bandrew and pete agreed. brothers-think-alike. then we ordered a 'family meal' while waiting for kamen the potato couch to arrive and order his favourite dish in jack's place: baked potato. and i honestly din knew they sell just potato in jack's place! and $4.50 is a good deal for a potato lover, i suppose:)

after the really decadent meal, andrew nice pang-seh-ed to meet scuter. her was supposed to meet him at city hall by 3pm, but ended up leaving jack's place by 315pm. and this is already the 2nd time we had caused him to be late for scuter's appt. the first time was last week when we played L4D at paradiz. gosh, devil's advocate!LOL.

then kk, pete and i went to school and had a chat with dawn tan and ling yeoh. ms lek passed by every now and then and gave her usual wad-are-you-guys-up-to-again type of look:p hate to admit but i really miss school and these lecturers!

the trio then went to paradiz and played red alert 3, and linggie joined us after work. the gal in our class who's ever so on! time flies and we din knew how long we played until we paid the bill and had to acty run to the bus stop to catch the last bus just in time:)

hey will upload pics of the vegan restaurant later. forgot to transfer my hp pics to hdd b4 i left home...

i like this song:)

2009-04-06T11:33:00.000+08:00

how i really got to know this song. love the spontaneity and the harmonising part. hoped there'll be more of it...

ok, here's the actual version of it...

and the lyrics...

All my bags are packed
Im ready to go
Im standin here outside your door
I hate to wake you up to say goodbye
But the dawn is breakin
Its early morn
The taxis waitin
Hes blowin his horn
Already Im so lonesome
I could die

So kiss me and smile for me
Tell me that youll wait for me
Hold me like youll never let me go
cause Im leavin on a jet plane
Dont know when Ill be back again
Oh babe, I hate to go

Theres so many times Ive let you down
So many times Ive played around
I tell you now, they dont mean a thing
Evry place I go, Ill think of you
Evry song I sing, Ill sing for you
When I come back, Ill bring your wedding ring

So kiss me and smile for me
Tell me that youll wait for me
Hold me like youll never let me go
cause Im leavin on a jet plane
Dont know when Ill be back again
Oh babe, I hate to go

Now the time has come to leave you
One more time
Let me kiss you
Then close your eyes
Ill be on my way
Dream about the days to come
When I wont have to leave alone
About the times, I wont have to say

Oh, kiss me and smile for me
Tell me that youll wait for me
Hold me like youll never let me go
cause Im leavin on a jet plane
Dont know when Ill be back again
Oh babe, I hate to go

But, Im leavin on a jet plane
Dont know when Ill be back again
Oh babe, I hate to go

Words and music by john denver

missions team leaders' gathering

2009-04-05T22:50:00.001+08:00

another tiring day for me again... and when i mean tiring... i refer to mummy-like-thousand-year-old-body-trying-to-be-alive type of tired. a miracle i managed to survive today.

had a meeting with teacher lifang and realised that i had to be in charge of sth (one of my major dislikes. haha!) and then i went to the msn gathering. initially i thought it was just a short and brief update on this year's prospectus. but ended up stretching up till 3.5 hours! trademark...

but despite of an empty stomach, myasthenia gravis, ciliary muscle spasm and torrential rain outside, i managed to hold it all together thanks to my magical team: tanglin, bingjin, binglian (once was, always will! haha!!!). it's quite funny having all 4 of us being stuck together whenever we attend msn gatherings. poor panda nad giraffe have to try ways and means to exfoliate us!

after the meeting, went to teach EnHui and PoPo (means grandma) piano immediately. my mood was further dampened when i learnt that Enhui has not been practising her piano. it's already her second last lesson with me already and can't she she put in her effort for these 2 lessons? disappointed and pissed. but how could you bring yourself to scold a quiet pri4 girl? so i just heck it, shut myself up, and just taught her another song without saying anything about the song she failed to practise. then when i taught popo, i was already super worn out and can't wait to end the lesson. argh...

but despite a really tired body (only had a chicken biryani to last me whole of today... hungry still...), i realised God's favour upon me. i mentioned rain, and yes. i din get wet though i din bring my umbrella. how? it rained whenever i stayed indoors and stopped whenever i'm outdoors. rained immediately again when i went indoors. cmon God, You can't get anymore obvious than this:) love Ya!

screening at suntec convention

2009-04-04T23:41:00.000+08:00

before the clock hits tmr, i think i had better finish a post on sth that's happened on the day itself. so... i think i'm kinda rushing here. jack! dun talk to me about my mistakes now k?

so basically, today is a pretty rushed day, you can say. kk pete and i rushed and met together and took 960, of which we missed a stop! well, that's cos me and Feilou (aka kk) were affectionately talking to each other on the bus while pinghan was busy listening to his headphone!thank goodness for andrew, or else we would not have been able to get the staples, staplets and alcohol swap.

then the bpp bb trio settled for a quick meal at food republic. and when i say it's ex, it's really ex. after i was served the beef brisket noodles, i had a sudden thot of stealing a chunk of beef from the pot when the chef went inside! oh my... God forgive me! but the meat portioned to me looked more like leftovers than anything else. but it's certainly no excuse for theft! tsk tsk...

after that, we made our way to the exhibition halls 403 and 405. our juniors were already getting briefed when we got there, and xiong-ge together wif yunchong reached at 830am (from xiong-ge's statement. i seriously doubt the credibility!)!and i thot 930am was too early a time for us to meet! well... lazy bones...

so in order to justify myself, i decided to take pics of myself contributing sth. and fenni was kind enough to help me take the shots:)

Feilou aka kk aka kamen aka carmen aka donut aka pui aka jabba the hutt aka jubs and me

me on the slit-lamp

proof that i'm not zi-pai-ing!

some gay/lesbian/couple shots...

black girls reflecting each other (shuhui and fenni)

andrew tan red mole and i. can you believe it, i have to aks him to bend down a little the 2nd time to get this pic. and no... i'm not going to insult myself by showing you the first attempt (oh ya, it's zipai again!)

xiong-ge (jianxiong) and i

let's get to work, people!

supervisor lim supervising (look at the air!!!)

andrew doing tonometry using an undersized table. then once again, which things aren't undersized for him?

shuhui on slit-lamp

shuhui on ophthalmoscopy

fenni doing ophthalmoscopy

wad are you guys thinking? he's just checking if there's any free slot for the next patient!

yea folks! thanks for all the hard work!

xian xin li on 29 march 2009

2009-04-03T12:44:00.000+08:00

haha! sorry guys. as i just managed to put this blog thing together, which of course to me is rocket science, the stuffs inside here are time warped. but i'll try my best (based on my definition of 'trying my best') not to confuse you guys.

so based on wad i could remember from that day... my mum woke us up really early, like 645am to prepare and we left house by 730am, and reached serene coffeeshop by 815am. ate breakfast till about 835am which was still awfully early. well, mum says it's once a year thingy and we shouldn't be late. but guess what! haha! tanglin ,and especially bingjin... you know the rest of the story la! haha!!!

ok so as requested by ah jin (except the blaming her for being late for 15min part), here are the pics we took. enjoy, you narcissistic freaks (me being the long tou lao da of all of them):)

hunting down the wanton!

2009-04-03T00:29:00.000+08:00

supposed to go and teach piano today, but when i saw my calender again... i just realised that it could be on fri instead! so i had to actually call up my student and ask her when was it supposed to be! yikes! so paiseh! well... since i already told my folks that i'll be going to teach piano, might as well. so instead of teaching piano, i decided to go to the school library to work on this blog. but before that, i had a problem... where was i to go to heed the call of my stomach? i remembered a food programme on channel u last night which recommended this boon kee wonton noodle stall in clementi. and since i've got so much spare time, why not? it was an interesting experience to wait and to interact with the people there... provided you have the luxury of time! initially the uncle who shared the same table as me seemed hostile to my approach. but i soon guessed that it must be the long wait which was agonizing him. cos when his noodles arrived, he couldn't stop talking about his life experiences. he almost recited his family tree, and told me how he escaped from China during the early jap attack to Spore, only to suffer the same fate 4 to 5 yrs later, when jap invaded Spore. quite funny, i must sadly admit! then he told me how he got to jail because of an unjust hearing (from his point of view) and how chinese were being biased during those times. pinch of salt.

afte the interesting meal, i went to lib to do my stuffs. then as i was heading back, i saw tan lilin! hmmm... wonder if it's the make-up or the fact that we graduated, she somehow looked better today! oh ya! that reminds me! now i can post all our class pics on this blog! call it a time capsule if you like. actually i'm a nostalgic person. and when it comes to reliving memories, there's a kinda clash of emotions. like you appreciate and loved the things that we went through together, good or bad. on the other hand, you miss them and can't help but sigh at the relentless speed of time.

last day of freedom for weeesing!

2009-04-03T00:04:00.000+08:00

after like almost 2 weeks of arrangements, weesing and i finally managed to meet up. coincidentally, the only day that she's free to meet is on 31st march, before she starts work on 1 apr! hmmm.... sounds ironic doesn't it? din really take a lot of photos with her... unfortunately. seems like i have to use Feilou's method: taking mental pictures. i certainly hope it lasts as long as my brain! haha! i managed to capture a pic of the shirt she gave me though. i find uncanny resemblance of the stickman to me! hey thanks ah sing!

last day in batam le... boohoohoos!!!

2009-04-02T23:51:00.013+08:00

very quickly, our bags are packed and we're ready to go. it's already the 4th day b4 we even realised it's begun. so very early in the morning, though we hate to go, we never fail to have fun and self-entertain (sometimes at the expense of others) while checking-out of the hotel.

dorothy and pui

dorothy and Mr. Universe

optom group photo (thanks raymond!)

novotel's special sevice: nostril-cleaning

ecks! donut!!!

mexican donut!!!

we loaded our bags up the buses and began our one-day tour in batam. our dear tour guide first brought us to the famous 7 bridges that links up few of the many islands that indonesia has.

driver's view

tour guide and me

cecilia and the bridge

huiying and the bridge

me and the bridge

more photos on the bridge (the bridge is just an excuse for us to take photos)...

last lunch together in batam...

on the ferry ride back home...

that's all guys! have a good rest!!!

batam day 3

2009-04-02T23:51:00.001+08:00

after a strenous massage session we headed back and prepared for the next day, but not without having a broken toe after playing catching with 10 ppl in a hotel room. haha! it was really crazy. we created such a din until the resident next door growled at us just as we were happening to go back to our rooms at 1.30am. we even terrorised our nxt door's henderson sec student by saying his teacher has an urgent meeting for them in the middle of the night. evil maybelline and her forfeit... poor arion had to play along and cancel the instructions.

with reference to day 2's highly efficient screening, our over-placed complacency gave us the luxury of sleeping in later and we allowed ourselves to meet at 10 instead of 9. so we had another round of breakfast buffets as we had the day before and tried to make our own pancakes. you can choose 101 ways of cooking an egg be it sunny-side up, omelette, scrambled, half-boiled or full-boiled. and you can always tell the chef how you wanted it to be done. they also have 2 table-long of ala-carte cooked dishes for anyone who prefers to have a heavier breakfast. usually, i'll go for cereal, eggs, and pancakes. very simple and yet rewarding. feilou never fails to grab a couple of fruits at the end of every meal.

after the breakfast we went onboard our minibus while the lovely and ant-like hardworking people of henderson sec dutifully loads the recycled specs onto their larger 40-seater bus. everyone of us were looking forward to this last screening and then we'd be able to have R and R all the way!

henderson sec at labour when we reached, feilou and i managed to try out the refraction station. it was quite tough considering the language barrier. there was this auntie who wanted her eyes checked but refused to respond verbally. she simply frowned and shook her hands all the time, despite of me asking her which lens she preferred. i thought it was a language barrier thing so i asked shevry to helped me translate. but end up, despite of conversing in foreign language for 10 whole minutes, the response was still the same. i'm pretty grateful for her helping me to do all the talking and excused the auntie from my station, so i end up not having to do anything! yea!!!

me having a hell of a time with local translator from global indo-asia international school, shevry (spelt sth like dat...). too bad she's attached. haha! but the experience was not always as unfruitful as this. i happened to get this uncle and whichever lens i placed in front of him, he still finds it blur. so i tried placing a pinhole, but ended up getting the same results. 6/48 was the best he could manage on his left eye. i was a bit disgruntled at first then i decided to just try and take a look at what's going on at his retina. at first i din notice anything on the left eye except there's no foveal reflex. so i checked the right eye, which had a comparably bright foveal reflex. so i went back to the left eye again and switched to a blank aperture from the bull's eye aperture and realised that there's a red circular patch right smack at the center of the macula. i deduced it as a macula hole. after having confirmed it with dorothy, we referred the patient to a local hospital. for case record, it looked something like this:

feilou giving the patient the hell of his life

trying really hard to get everyone in

trying very hard: attempt number 2

having thought it'd be fast initially, we ended up using too much time. we were supposed to be at the orphanage by 3pm but we were still handing out certificates of appreciation at 3. running behind time, we went to a local orphanage with some goodies cecilia, huiying, maybelline, feilou and me shared.

exterior look at the orphanage

kellie giving out gifts

cecillia and kids

arion and kids

vincent and kids

after the orphanage trip, we went back to novotel and relak oune korner siol. cecillia, went swimming i think with shunbiao and shandy. eugene and kellie went to the gym. after that, while kamen and i were happily slacking and watching tv (i reiterate: watching tv) in the room, we learnt that cecillia was locked outside her shared room with michael. and after she got the hotel attendant to open te door for her, turned out michael was happily sleeping inside. that caused her to be really late for the dinner. and feilou ingeniously suggested we wait in our room while waiting for the rests to get ready. not that i'm blaming feilou. in fact i'm grateful to him for the luxury of keep slacking in the room. in the meantime, the henderson sec ppl has already gone ahead to the dinner venue, and the others were alr waiting for us in the minibus.

when we boarded the bus, we learnt that some newcomers, including a father-and-son duo were disgruntled for waiting in the bus. but can't blame them really. we were late for slightly over 30mins! haha! anyways, when we reached, it turned out to be a regional Lions appreciation dinner. Lions association from indonesia, japan, Spore, etc took turns to talk. and oh my gosh... it's super tiring hearing them talk. (no offense!) so i guess we being late has no tangible effect on having a delayed meal:)

batam day 2

2009-04-02T23:50:00.002+08:00

the next day, we set off at 9am and went to this pri school. me and feilou were doing the same thing as we did before, dispensing. and helpful benjamin, as helpful as always gladly helped us to set up the computer booths. thanks ben! what i thought was a slack-behind-the-screen-office-boy-job turned up to be a thankless work. we had to scroll through hundreds of rows to look for a suitable prescription, which usually ended up being non-existent, or unsuitable. and the ironic thing is, the manual method aka scrolling is more effective than the auto aka 'Find' way. so... you can imagine the amount of accommodation and aesthenopia!

poster boys and girls

arion with his kids

huiying, cecilia and me stealing the background for a shot

transisions IV and me

Feilou the hero. suave is an understatement.

angela, her friend and i

some iconic shots taken with local beautiful children... (gosh, do i sound like someone famous?)

benjamin and i

cecilia and them

silvry, linda and i

this section is about us at work..,

kellie, michael and cecilia

not sleeping

kamen forcing someone to sleep

pointer (numerical target)

pointer (invisible target)

our dispensing task for this second trip is different from the first day. instead of looking for the appropriate degree on excel and calling out the reference number for a team of henderson sec students to search, feilou and i did dispensing-dispensing: fitting specs on faces and adjusting them. the whole thing was quite ok actually until feilou nubshittedly told raymond as matter-of-factly that i've got poorer skills and brought me down when i over-adjusted a frame and broke it accidentally. i refused to argue over the fact that whenever i commented on his skills, i never did it openly. and even when i did, it was in a jokingly manner so others wouldn't really notice. feilou, you better work on your sensitivity in relating to other people man... but, i still love him for who he was. that's why i din really bother of tearing his face down when he did that to me. i simply simmered in anger and pretended to walk away.

silvry and her mum (satisfied customer)

part-time optom models

part-time optom models (take 2)

full-time optom models and optoms

mass chilling at one korner with the only fan available

after a day's of work we finally managed to go back to novotel and slack around. as a matter of fact, we ended early before the projected time as we expected to do 2 times more the amount of people we did the previous day. most probable reason was that many of the pri school children passed the first stage at VA station and hence had no need to proceed wth other stations like refraction and dispensing.

upon going back to the hotel early, and having extra time on our hands, some of us sought out activities to do. the henderson sec horde chiong the miniature swimming pool insid ethe hotel, while dorothy, vincent and arion went for a massage. i had wanted to go too, but there were only 3 massuese available at that time. so i decided to go later, maybe with feilou. so the rest of us, including cecilia, shunbiao, shandy, huiying, maybelline, mr tay etc took our chartered bus and went to Batam Central Square (BCS) to do some shopping. oh my, do we feel rich! muahahahaha! everything there averaged around SGD1 from gatsby wax to cup noodles. energizer batteries C size costs around SGD4!

after that, we took the bus back and rendezvous at novotel where we headed for our sunset dinner. romantic huh! and we had a really fascinating chat at the same table with uncle ringo. oh my gosh, he's a natural stand-up man! pro! kudos!

after that, feilou and i wanted to try out the massage parlour we saw earlier on at the BCS. so we asked if anyone else wanted to come along. the rests however wanted to visit the DC mall, which was en route to the BCS. so we had uncle ringo and mr tay and jacky (the singing guy) and feilou and me to hunt for massage parlour.

uncle ringo brought us to the massage parlour he went before and over there, we had 2 hours str of javanese-bali massage. feilou was separated a curtain away from me and i could hear his moaning and whining when he said the maaseuse stepped all over his back. haha! funny! after that, someone foot the bill for the cab ride back to novotel.

back in Spore... to Batam! (Lions Vision Screening)

2009-04-02T23:50:00.001+08:00

the itinary in Spore: plane from macau landed in Spore on 330am. reached home by 430am and slept at 530am. woke up at 630am and took another luggage bag and off i go to meet Feilou (aka Kamen) at BPP to take 963 together to Harbourfront. talk about extreme travel man! haha! yea, it was tiring and on hindsight, it's definitely worth it. though at that point in time, i wasn't too sure if my delicate physique would be able to survive all these. haha!

i must applaud Arion for having implicit faith in us optoms for being on time when he first told us the meeting time. i initially thought he would give us a buffer of like 30min for ppl to be late. but no! thank goodness for it. at least it gave me an hour of luxurious sleep:) after packing everyone else into ready-to-leave-Spore state, we all boarded the jet and... yup... narcissistic time again!

dainty kamen

when we reached novotel hotel, we thought we could check in straight into our rooms and bunk in for a lazy start. but we (or at least i did)thought wrong! i think due to some admin hiccups, we had to first place all our bags in a hall and locked it up. within 30min, we were deployed to our first mission of the trip!

angelic angela

after the vision screening, we finally reached back to novotel. and after a long wait (illustrated below with feilou sleeping), we finally checked into our room. as feilou and i shared the same room, we quickly demarcated for ourselves our 'territories'. he was to control the tv, and me the remote. i wonder who's gonna win. i could choose the channel i wanted but he could very well unplug the tv. after some settling down in our new cosy home, we went with henderson sec and the lions ppl for dinner in seoul garden. cecilia and i bragged about our 'wisdom' (laziness rather) of not bathing after the screening since we'll get smoky again during dinner. well... the lazy folks will always find a way of self-justification!

couch potato

sofa-cum-tv potato

vincent and i

angela and i

dorothy and huiying

it was a little disappointing though to have eaten at seoul garden. the food wasn't very fantastic either. but hell, it's 'free' anyways and we get to get together and talk crap amongst the other optoms. so wad does it matter?