Wee! I'm in for RMIT University!

Finally! The day that I have been waiting has arrived!

I have gotten my letter of acceptance from the Singapore Institute of Management (SIM) that I have successfully get in to my course at RMIT University.

The course that I will be taking is Bachelor of Business (Management) and I managed to get the Pathway C, which means that I can complete my degree in 18 months, provided I study hard and pass everything! =D

So if everything goes well, I could graduate by the end of next year! That sounds so fast! Oh my. I'm getting so excited that my mind is kind of a whirlpool right now.

The utmost concern for me is the payment of the cost of study. I wondering if I should take up some finance loans but I am so blur with all those finance stuffs. Anyway I have got to submit my reply to SIM by 27 May 2009 in order to secure my place in the course. Oh man. That's only like a few weeks away.

With any luck, I should be able to start school by 1 July 2009. Hopefully everything will go well for me. Oh man. Even though I couldn't get into my first choice of university (that would be the University of Manchester), RMIT university isn't that bad either and it's an Australian university too.

All right. So I have to start pulling up my socks and get into it. Otherwise it would be money going down the drain, eh?

Heehee... I am so happy! Wee!!! I still can't believe my luck that I got into the course. With my lousy scores, I thought I was a goner.

PS. Today is actually Selina's birthday, I wonder did any of her luck came to me? Hmmm.... I am thinking too much. XD

Happy Birthday, Ronald Weasley!

Today is Ronald Bilius Weasley's birthday. He is one of the main characters in J K Rowling's famous Harry Potter book series. He is the best friend of Harry Potter and is the second youngest Weasley, just in front of Ginny Weasley.

In the movie adaptation, he is played by Rupert Grint. Some pictures of the actor are shown below:

Rupert Grint

Rupert Grint with Daniel Radcliffe in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

From left to right: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint

Hmmm, they always seem to be standing in the same order, don't they?

Well, actually Daniel Radcliffe is my favourite actor out of the 3. But his birthday is in July so I have to wait till then before I can gush about him. Anyway I found some pictures that are backdated to 2001, when they first appeared in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone:

From left to right: Rupert, Daniel and Emma

From left to right: Daniel, Rupert and Emma

They are so cute, aren't they? Now they have grown up so fast and by the time Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince arrive this July, they would have been adults, in western terms. Man, I can't wait for the movie to arrive!!! Warner Bros better not delay the movie again. Grrr...

My Lo Hei Dinner for Ox Year

Tonight I went for a lo hei session with mayi and maomao at Suntec City's Crystal Jade Kitchen. Xin wasn't able to attend as she had made other appointments for the night.

Well, frankly speaking, somehow I don't really feel the mood for any celebration this year. Be it birthdays, wedding dinners or even the lunar new year celebrations did not get me into a happy mood.

I guess too many bad news on the economic front has gotten to my brain and heart. Nonetheless tonight I tried to put unhappy news out of the way. Yet I also found myself talking, or rather grumbling, about my work. The sad thing is I don't have any good things to look forward to there as well. *sighs*

Anyway, here's a picture that was taken at Crystal Jade. Our plate of Lo Hei yusheng. The flash function was turned off when this picture was taken, it looks more yellowish due to the lighting there. See how we posed our chopsticks as if we were preparing to toss the dish as soon as the camera went off. *grin*

Lo Hei Yu Sheng @ Crystal Jade Crystal

So me & maomao ended up late for our dinner. Maomao arrived the latest at 6.30 pm even though we supposed to meet at 5.30pm. Last year, we also went to Crystal Jade for lo hei and maomao wasn't around to meet up with us.

Besides the lo hei dish,we also ordered some other foods which I had neglected to take pictures. I was rather engrossed in my eating.

After we finished our dinner, we went window-shopping for a short while before we came across a sale at Levis Strauss Signature. Two bottoms were going for $99.90 and so I promptly bought one straight cut and one bootleg cut. Thus I saved around $31 due to the promotion, which is quite okay.

Well, that's just about it for the day. Pretty boring eh? Hopefully the new year will bring some good luck for me.

Cheers!

Wow! It's the Year of the Cow

Time passes by so quickly and before I know it, it's time to usher in the Year of the Ox and send away the Year of the Rat in the Chinese lunar horoscope.

The Rat year has not been very good and it's all the same usual stuffs like the Sichuan earthquake, Mumbai bombings, Myanmar tsunamis, global economic crisis, tainted milk crisis and many more. It seems to be more happening than any other years.

Be it the English year or the lunar year, it's all the same. Disasters one after another, never stopping to give us a breather in life.

Will the new year usher in a change of fortune? For the Singapore Flyer, it seems to be the case. News reported that the Singapore Flyer, which had been closed for a month due to technical fault, has been reopened today, just in time for the lunar new year.

As for me, so far nothing significant has happened and it's quite a disappointment. This year I decided not to take the initiative to approach Moonie and Queenie to go out on the first day of the lunar new year, as was the case in previous years. I want to see if they would approach me instead. Yet I was disappointed when they truly did not bother to contact me. Guess our friendship is nothing more than just words. *sighs*

So I went to pay house visits to my mum's relatives, though I was hoping that I could stay at home for the whole day. I have no mood to go anywhere this year. My mum can be quite a kancheong queen sometimes. Most of my relatives don't pop in for visits very early, except for one of my coousins.

My mum wanted to catch this cousin in order to see her daughter, so she woke me up rather early. Me being me, naturally I dragged and lazed about in my bed to avoid getting up. Still, sometimes mothers' powers can be hard to block out. *grins*

In any case, we didn't manage to see that cousin in time. The travelling alone took up quite some time as I lived in the east and my relatives live in the north.

Frankly speaking, my holidays are usually quite boring and I don't have many exciting stuffs happening. But today I almost came face to face with a guy that I never want to see in my life again.

My mum forced me to do house visit to this particular aunt and her son had once did something very bad to me. Hence I had never wanted to see him again. The past few times that I went to her house, he wasn't around as he had been either put away in a boys' home or in jail.

However, today he's no longer in jail and didn't even went out with his stupid girlfriend. Instead he stayed at home and slept. Well I wished that he could go on sleeping without waking up but my mum's super loud voice had woken him up.

It was a good thing that I felt bored and had tuned in to my iPod to watch one of the InuYasha's movie. So my hair had hidden my face and thus, I won't have to see that guy, even if he's standing close. It was an unbearable time, waiting for my mum to finish whatever chitchat she had and that we could quickly head home. It certainly felt like hours to me.

During the whole time, I never turned my head in his direction and never llifted up my head even though my shoulders were aching. When my mum finally decided to leave, it was such a huge relief and I quickly stepped out of the house to get my shoes and leave.

Phew. I am glad that I didn't get to see his face so that I won't get nightmares. Hmmm, probably it wouldn't hurt to see how he looks like after all those years in jail. I heard from my mum that he was once caned 14 times for drug trafficking offences. Oh whatever. This guy gives me the chills.

So I managed to survive my first lunar day without any problems. Time to get back to my InuYasha.

See ya!

And a Happy Chinese New Year.

Merry X'mas!

Merry X'mas and happy holidays! I went to celebrate X'mas with my friend and just got back home. I will do an update post of my x'mas gifts later. Well, not that I have received a lot of gifts but then, at least its better than nothing.

Cheers!!!

Celebrating my mum's birthday

This year I celebrated my mum's birthday right on the dot at midnight.

I bought a birthday cake from Four Leaves at Tampines Mall and it's a mango cake. See the picture below for illustration:




I made my mum ate the cake before she goes to bed and she was happy with the cake. Mango is one of her favourite fruits, you see.

I am also happy with the cake as it's very soft and creamy. The mango taste is not too overwhelming but I don't recommend eating the mango bits on the top. They are too sour for my liking. Yucks!

Other than that, this cake is worth the buck and most important, my mum enjoyed the cake.

Cheers!!!

=D

MSI Wind is Product of the Year

According to MSIWind.Net, pocket-lint has announced the winners of the Vodafone Pocket-lint Gadget Awards and the MSI Wind walked away with both the Best Laptop/Netbook award as well as the Product of the Year award.

The awards are decided by the UK's top technology and gadget journalists from online and print and MSIWind.Net has stated that it is one of the more reputable sites around.

I'm feeling so proud of my MSI Wind's achievements and the fact that I am an owner of a MSI Wind makes me dazzled. LOL. I don't know much about technology but I do follow the trends going on in the technology world.

It's a wonder for the MSI Wind to take the Product of the Year award straight right from under Apple's iPhone 3G. After all, you can't deny the fact that the iPhone has redefined the boundaries of the mobile phone world. Just like the way ASUS's eeepc single-handedly created a market of its own: Netbooks.

Besides, both the MSI Wind and the eeepc come from the Asian people, not those elite engineers from Silicon Valley, mind you. This make their achievements in the technology world much, much more significant.

In any case, I'm delighted to have my MSI Wind with me and hope it will last me for some time to come.

Right now, being part of the MSI wind users, I'm savouring its victory in the Gadgets awards slowly. Ahhh...

Barack Obama Wins the USA Presidential 2008 Race

History has just been written into the books of USA. Yesterday's race for a new US president resulted in an expected win for Democratic candidate, Barack Obama.

Hundreds of thousands of American who had been yearning to see a shift change in the political scene casted their vote behind the man who would become America's first black president. In addition, they also showed through their voting that support for the Republicans is rapidly waning. Many Americans are very unhappy with President George Bush, who kept waging wars endlessly for the past five years and often with many fatalities that left families broken.

To add salt to the wound, the current economic crisis is proving too much for the US government, and the public, to handle. Thus loss of confidence from both investors and citizens might have contributed hugely to the Republicans' loss. And more specifically, to John McCain.

For me, I am hoping that Obama will not follow in the footsteps of that damn Bushfire and start waging fires wars on Afghanistan again. It's time to pool precious wood resources into other areas, more specifically the US economy.

With the lousy US economy crisis, everywhere else in the world is also feeling and getting the pinch. Here in Singapore, prices of essentials like rice, oil and water have gone up largely due to the US economic crisis.

Furthermore, we are still facing the onslaught of tainted food from damn China and that has definitely NOT help us a single bit. Most of our products are currently sourced or made in China and many people are worried about getting food poisoning from eating such stuffs.

Well, I'm not surprised by that. C for China. C for Corrupt. China and Corruption comes hand in hand. All right, I may sound very harsh here but that's just the way the officials work in China. No money no gain. So the China people are quite a bunch of practical and intelligent species. You can't doubt that.

Every small little thing can transform into a poorly made China product. From Louis Vuitton to Hermes to toothpaste to soaps to biscuits to drinks. You name it, they already re-make it. It's interesting how these China brains work so fast and seize a money-making opportunity.

Between the US and China now, I really don't know who is the greater evil. Both countries' economies have major impact on Singapore's economy and God knows that we can't afford to have either one of them being belly up. That would be a disaster. If both economies go belly up, then we are in deep shit man. No joke.

When that happens, I want to find my Edward Cullen a.ka. twinkie in cleolinda language quickly and get him to whisk me off to some obsure places where I can escape from the impending calamity. I would swear on my grave, if I had one, of course.

In really extreme cases where survival is at stake, i.e. I can't afford to buy staples like rice, bread or even potatoes, then I would get my twinkie to give me that special love bite so that I can feast on bears instead. Lions are welcome too. Or penguins. Hmmm penguins are so so so cute. Oh all right. I will spare them on the account that they are nearing extinction now. Then when I had my fill, I would dance with my twinkie under the stars on the arctic ice. Won't that be so romantic? Plus I won't even need a winter jacket since I'm supposed to be dead and get as cold as the ice. Wee!

Ok ok ok . Enough of my dream talk. I'm sure it's gonna disgust some people. Wahahaha! That would have been my goal. You are tricked! Ok, I think my sanity might be at stake here. Hmmm...

No matter what, I am definitely looking forward to see the changes as promised by Obama and see a transformed US. Otherwise, it will be just like another round of suffering like the one bestowed on us by that Bushfire. In that case, I will grab and activate my twinkie!!! Muawahahaha!

Meanwhile, Obama looks forward to his victory celebration before eventually settling down to his new office. Well, he better celebrate and enjoy his victory to the fullest because after that, a daunting task is awaiting him back in office. Hint: Economic Crisis.

I won't envy his position right now. It would be a big challenge to tackle the economy successfully and it might just make or break his presidential seat. Will he prevail? Only time will tell.

Celebration with DBS

It's yet another fantastic lunch from mum today and she cooked 2 thick slices of pork chop for me. It's very yummy and I posted the pork chops picture below for remembrance's sake.




After I finished the pork chops, I headed off to meet Queenie and Moonie. It's been a very long time ever since the last time we met. That was way back in June, when we were celebrating Queenie's birthday.

Today, they are going to celebrate my birthday even though it's now considered belated. At least it's better late than never, don't you think so?

Once again, I received a black bag as my birthday gift. This year is truly a year of bags for me and I'm very happy with it. As you can see, I'm a bags person and the more compartments the bag has, the better. I posted the birthday bag below for reference:




After having dinner at Swensons', we headed to McDonald's so as to get a seating space for our chitchat session.

Once again, it's a very simple celebration and life is good for me now.

^.^

My Special Day

Today is such a lovely day, except for the fact that I had to spend half a day in the office as I couldn't get a full day off.

Nonetheless, I had a fantastic lunch with my colleague at Carnivore Restaurant at Vivo City earlier in the day. It was a very meaty affair with beef and pork ruling the day.

In case you don't know, today's my birthday and that's my birthday lunch. I liked it the way it was, a simple meal with lots of chitchat in between. My colleague given me a small gift as a way of celebrating my birthday. The picture is posted below:




It's a small black tote bag with an unusual design of the top catch. Simple and elegant. After the lunch, we parted for home as she had another appointment with her boyfriend, who coincidentally shared the same birthday as me. There are so many coincidences in this world that it's truly amazing. Once, I had a classmate who not only shared the exact same birth date and year with me, he also had the same surname as me. Too bad we never kept in touch with each other after graduation as we were not that close.

Oh well, at least tonight I have a birthday cake to keep me happy. It's a long long time ever since my mum bought a cake to celebrate my birthday. It's a chocolate cake and the picture is attached below as well:




Overall, I have a good birthday today and it's nice to have a special day all for myself. Cool, isn't it? How I wish this day will never end!

=)

Ruthless Lee Bee Wah!

I had the misfortune of coming across a very unpleasant news in the newspapers today.

It was reported that the manager and the coach of Team Singapore Table Tennis had been sacked, days just before they were due to return to Singapore to celebrate their victory at winning the Olympic silver medal in Beijing.

This decision was revealed to be made by the President of Table Tennis Association, Lee Bee Wah, who had just been at the post for around a month.

This damn woman had blamed the defeat of Singapore's top paddler Gao Ning to a Croatian player on the coach as well as the manager. Just because the actual coach for Gao Ning, Chen Jian, had fallen sick, and there was no one else by his side during the match doesn't mean that the coach had to be dismissed in such a way.

At the very least, she should investigate the cause of the problem and then meted out punishment accordingly. However, no checks seemed to have been conducted before the public dismissal of the coach and manager. That is a very bad example for the rest of Singapore to learn from.

It shows that there is zero tolerance for mistakes committed in this society, which had prided itself as a modern city with open thinking concept.

I don't really know who this Lee Bee Wah is but judging from the news reports, she appears to be a very harsh woman and that reflects badly on the majority of women here. The table tennis team had not yet returned to Singapore and their homes when they were slapped with such depressing news. No matter what, they did helped Singapore to clinch a silver medal to do us proud. Isn't that enough to redeem them at the very least?

Is there a high standard being set for the sports arena in Singapore? If so, it should be reviewed immediately lest future young players are discouraged by such cruel standards. I doubt the sports stars of China are subjected to such torture and humiliation, in public no less.

In addition, it was obvious that the coach's and the manager's feelings weren't taken into consideration. There they were in Beijing, anticipating their return to Singapore to celebrate their team's win at the Olympics Games. Then all of a sudden, the earth came crashing down on them, bearing terrible tidings for them from home. No more celebrations. No more jobs. No more glory. Everything's gone. Oh how fickle-minded fate can turn out to be.

They are supposed to return home as heroes. Now they are returning home with disgrace. Is that their reward for bringing the silver medal to Singaporeans? Don't they deserve a properly conducted and thorough investigation for this? Don't they deserve an explanation for this?

If not, then the whole of Singapore deserve a thorough and proper explanation from Lee Bee Wah. Just because she's the MP for Ang Mo Kio doesn't mean that she can dismiss her responsibility with a "let's move on" statement in the press. I doubt that is the way Lee Hsien Loong would want his charge to behave.

Let's hope the tide will turn in this saga and for Singapore to advance forward on to great success, with a great team in tow.

It's 10 Years Since...

It was 10 years ago when Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was first published to worldwide fame.

Now Scholastic is celebrating the 10th anniversary for the first Harry Potter book. Time truly flies and even I didn't realise that it's been 10 long years ever since the series was first started by J K Rowling.

Too bad I can't join in the celebration as I don't live in New York city, the headquarters of Scholastic.

Nonetheless I am happy that the Harry Potter series has come so far in its journey and even though the last book has been released, I still can't bear to let go of the series and the fantasy world which Rowling has created.

Everything about the Harry Potter universe has been so wonderful and for me, I will treasure my Harry Potter books no matter what.

Long live Harry Potter and J K Rowling!

=D

A fantastic night for Beijing

At last, good things have to come to an end and the Beijing Olympics 2008 is no exception. I had just watched the live telecast of the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics 2008 on Starhub and every single bit of the show made me felt so proud of being a Chinese although after a while, that feeling abandoned me as I realised that I'm not a true blue China Chinese.

I'm a Singaporean Chinese but watching the Beijing Olympics has made me feel as though I'm teleported to China. The whole ceremony was so cool and beautiful. International stars such as Wang Lee Hom, Jackie Chan, Andy Lau and even David Beckham came to the ceremony.

FYI, Beckham came with the contigent for Great Britain as it will be the host for the next Olympics Games, which is to be held in 2012 in London. This shall be the third time that London has hosted the Olympics Games and the world waits in anticipation on what it will bring, especially after the unexpected tremendous success of the Beijing Games.

Tonight truly belongs to the Chinese people and it will be remembered forever as having the best Games in history of the modern era. Several world records and olympics records were broken throughout the 16 days of glory.

1 man shall be remembered as the greatest olympian: Michael Phelps with his 8 golds haul.

1 country shall be remembered as the greatest gold medals holder: China with 51 golds to boot.

1 team shall be remembered as the second best in table tennis: Team Singapore, which won a silver medal in 48 years.

Everything about the Olympics 2008 has been nothing short of fantastic and everybody knows it. It shows a brand new China to the world. Now it's up to the world to embrace the new China of the modern day.

For remembrance sake, I had taken pictures of the ceremony showing on TV. Go to this album for the shots. They aren't great but at least I'm happy that I have got something to show for the next generation. That I've got a piece of history with me.

Enjoy... Cherish.

And now, onwards to London 2012.

=D

Dinner Celebration

Tonight, we had a dinner celebration by our fellow colleagues who had gotten promotion earlier this month. My boss had also gotten a promotion along with Doris and Ismie. So they decided to treat the whole department to dinner as a way of sharing their joy. Heee.... When there's good food, you can count on me to be around. Yum!!!

The restaurant that we went to was Bali Thai at IMM Building. Overall, the food was ok but it seems to be a popular restaurant among the people who live in the western part of the country. All of us had fun talking and eating through our dinner.

There was a mini-celebration of Veron's birthday and we took a picture of it as well.




We ended the night with full stomachs and headed straight for home. Since Sean lived in the eastern part of Singapore as me and Peishi, he drove us back home. Yeah, you read that right. We live in the east yet we went all the way to the west for dinner. It's a strange world but we'll make do with it.

See ya!

NDP 08 Preview Fireworks Video

All right, I finally got one of my fireworks files to upload onto my blog. Hope it works.

This video clip is just a short portion of the total fireworks display. My other bigger file is simply too big for any websites to upload, with its size tipping the scales at 278 MB.

Yep. It's a very big file due to its longer duration of 3 minutes and 50 seconds. That is truly awesome with lots of fireworks exploding in the night air, with the financial business district in the background to complete the picture.

Hope this small video is able to share some of the nationalistic atmosphere to the reader.

Happy National Day! Cheers! =)

My National Day 2008 Preview

Finally the day has arrived!

The day where I will be catching the National Day Parade live for the 1st time in my life as an audience. My effort in balloting for the NDP 08 Preview tickets for the 1st time yielded good results.

And so, I went to the preview with my friend, Mayi aka Angeline Chew yesterday. We met up early in order to go the venue early so that we can get the best seats possible. From our viewpoint, we figured that we got quite a good seating area as we could see the stage in whole and we were able to get good shots of the stage.

It was a long wait before we could get some relief from the hot weather. The sun shone non-stop during our wait and it was hard to get comfortable in a cramp seat for long period of time. Furthermore the girl sitting on my right kept poking her umbrella onto my shoulder which hurt a lot. I can tell you that it was truly a test of my patience when the girl just refused to be considerate when using her umbrella. I really felt like committing a murder there and then. Damn her....

I took loads of photos during the preview and posted them onto my Facebook Photo albums, which can be accessed by public. My photography skills are not quite up to scratch and my Casio Exilim EX-70 is not an excellent camera for long shots so some of the photos don't turn out quite nice. So sad sia...

When the Comex comes at the end of this month, I'm gonna invest in a good superzoom camera which is also able to take good shots in dim light conditions. That's for sure.

All right. The urls for the public albums are listed below:

Part 1

Part 2

Yup. I also took videos of the fireworks which are the main highlights of the show. I'm still uploading the videos onto my web pages and it's taking forever to finish uploading, at the rate it's going.

Nonetheless, the fireworks was simply amazing. They took my breath away, literally. I was so awed by the beauty of the fireworks that I wish that I could set off my own fireworks. If only fireworks are legalised in Singapore, that would be a totally different story altogether. *sighs*

Anyways, once the preview had ended, both mayi and I went for dinner at Sushi Tei at Raffles City. I still prefer the outlet at Vivo City as the food and service are much better than this Raffles City outlet.

I didn't ate that much as mayi's mum was around and I wasn't exactly comfortable with her. Not totally, you know what I mean? Hmmm....

So, after the dinner, I went on to meet Veron and my other colleagues at Party World KTV at Shenton Way for a singing session, though I didn't sing that much. Having sung so many national day songs earlier on had sorta tired me out. Heehee...

Yep. That's all for the day. Enough rabbling. I'll post my fireworks videos as soon as I can get them up. See ya!!!

=)

Wee! I got the tix to NDP Preview!

Yippee! I am very happy today. I received a call from the NDP 2008 people that I managed to get a pair of tickets to the preview at Marina Bay!

It's the first time that I am watching the National Day parade live at the scene. Too bad I didn't manage to catch any parades at the old grand dame, the National Stadium. That would have been so memorable since the National Stadium is going to make way for the new Sports Hub soon. *sighs*

With the NDP shifted to its new home at the Marina Bay, getting the tickets has become more difficult as there are lesser seats for allotment than the National Stadium. So I am very, very lucky to be able to get these preview tickets.

Well, on hindsight, it was a good thing that I applied for the preview tickets instead of the actual day tickets as those would have been much more difficult to obtain.

Man, I can't wait for June 13 to come so that I can go down to Marina Bay and collect my tickets! Wee!!!

So happy! =D