Sunday 30th March 2008

social dancing

Took up social dancing and body toning this month with vii. Body toning wasn't that great i guess. Lots of hand leg coordination which looked rather silly. We both bought the rubber bands which are supposedly for toning our muscles. I guess the part which sort of dampen the fun for the class is the instructor herself. I have always had the illusion (or delusion perhaps?) that people who exercise often should be slim, mascular and generally fit. Although our instructor was mascular, and extremely energetic, she had very huge arms and a shockingly round tummy. So, please understand why i hesitate to do most of her stomach related exercises.

Social dancing was fun too, but I felt abit bad having vii to dance the male part, hehe, especially when I am towering over pretty much everyone else in the class. We learnt Latin dance, or was it Latin cha-cha? I'm not sure. The instructor, Peter, is a professional dancer, and he and his wife are pretty good teachers. We enjoyed ourselves very much and only skipped the very last one, which is a pretty good record. I'm afraid i've forgotten most of the moves involved, but those i remember, i'll write down here...

The girl part:

1) Right leg back, front cha-cha
2) Left leg front, back cha-cha
3) Right leg back, front cha-cha
4) Left leg front, right angle, turn to right, right foot forward, turn around, back cha-cha
5) Right foot back, front cha-cha
6) Clock wise turn, right hand hold on to partner's left
7) Hand-to-hand x3
8) Turn
9) Diagonal cha-cha
10) Circle around partner cha-cha
11) Right foot back, cha-cha
12) same as (4)
13) same as (5)
14) left foot forward, right foot forward, anti-clockwise turn
15) New York x3
16) Turn while still holding one hand
17) ... FORGOT!
18) side cha-cha
19) Cross steps left right (left foot back first)
20) Turn
21) Repeat fm (1)

Yikes, so me to forget such things after awhile. Mayb vii can enlighten...

Saturday 8th March 2008

IT fair

I've been living in this country for over 8 years, and yet, this is the first time I am visiting the IT fair which they hold once (or was it twice?) every year.

The crowd was big. Though a tad smaller than I imagined. I was thinking more of new year countdown that sort of crowd, but this is more like, subway cram at the worst times. I bought a 2G thumbdrive coz it was so cheap, and cute too. And I bought a cheap optical mouse, and a cheap earphones. Notice, I was only interested in the cheap stuff. One thing i regretted not buying is a cheap laptop cooler to replace mine which is extremely fickle minded and always decide to stop fanning when the wires are not pulled just right. Lousy thing.

Anyways, when we finally got down to have a look at the SLR cameras they had, I've gotten abit disillusioned with the whole fair. Sure, some stuff are cheap. But they are so many people around, u can't really think straight and make good decisions/purchases. The sales people there hardly have time to give us the after sales help or discussion we'd need in abundance. We decided to go back to Steve to get our cameras instead.

What hv i learnt at this IT fair? It's a good idea to buy only cheap stuff and thumbdrives here. So, unless u have a long list of stuff to buy, stick to normal shops.

A few weeks after the fair, I lost my thumbdrive. *Lament* Stev (the other one) forgot to return both my thumbdrives (a 1G one which I lent him also) before his trip to europe with L. He left one of his bags in one of the trains, they never did find it back and I bid a sad farewell to my new little blue thumbdrive and reliable old one. *sniff sniff*

So anyways, he bought a 4G thumbdrive back for me since then, so i don't really begrudge him. He lost alot of omiyage which he bought and stuffed in the bag as well, poor guy, not mentioning his mobile phone and ipod too.

Friday 7th March 2008

busy month(s)

This month my boss gave us all an ultimatum. Finish our dissertation between May and August. And after all the delaying and procrastinating I've been up to, I think it's finally time I try to get it done. Which is why I had not been updating this blog of mine for a couple of months.

*long silence. Deciding wat to write about my thesis progress. Finally decided better not to talk about that subject here.*

So anyways, hope I can finish within that time frame, and at the same time not abandon other stuff.

If only grim determination will get stuff done...

Thursday 6th March 2008

shokudo fare

Ru & I went around SLSquare today to look at cameras. We've decided to get a DSLR each, to take more pretty pictures and improve our meagre skills. We met a nice sales person, Steven who helped show us many cameras and lenses but we decided to wait abit and look around before deciding since there was an IT fair a few days later.

So, instead of buying a camera, I bought an Ipod instead. And since then, I had been a busy bee getting all my cds into iTunes, and downloading all the nice album covers to make the player a prettier toy. I also put in some psych dramas in it and totally love watching it in the subway on my way home fm outings. I've also put many japanesepod101.com podcasts inside, and it is way fun, listening to them and scrolling down all the hiragana which is also included for free, when I am not too lazy.

Oh, when we ended our trip that day with a visit to shokudo -which means canteen in japanese, hehe, another jap word learnt - even though it was too late for lunch and too early for dinner. We decided to order 'light' but seeing all those cute stalls, we once again ordered more than intended. The first thing i aim for is always sakae (salmon). The sashimi here is quite ok. Not the best i've had, but not the worst either. Their fried mushroom was quite ok. The omu (omelette) was nice too. The tempura mix wasn't too great. We had another 2 dishes which I forgot to take pics of. One was the stick skewers with different type of stuff, quail eggs, bacon, beef, asparagus... and another is some sort of japanese soap and stuffed vege, beancurd and other stuff. So, even though we had lots of stuff, and the place is very nice, I'd say that the food there would get a 6.5 stars out of 10.

Wednesday 5th March 2008

Rabbit tails

EL & I hv decided to go visit vii at her new abode. Finally, I got to met the famous rabbits of hers. They were bigger that I imagined. Haha, I guess vii was not kidding when she said that they were big eaters. I wouldn't say they r fat though, coz they felt quite firm and lean. Just big. haha...reminded me very much of those fancy furry tissue boxes, coz they sat so still on the sofa.

"Watcha' lookin' at?"

"Don't u dare pull a tissue out of us."

"Enough pics oreadi. Give me s'thin to chew"

"Leave"

We had some pizzas, potatoes wedges and garlic bread. Then vii brought us to look around her place, which is very cool, inside her apartment and out of it. Would love to soak in one of those cozy jacuzzi one of these days. So anyways, we then ambled our way towards the subway. End of tales and tails.

Tuesday 4th March 2008

Crystal Jade & K-Box

5 of us cousins-maybe i should just coin a term for us. Cuzs Unata perhaps? CUnata for short. haha... oops, cannot, sounds too vulgar huh?- gathered for a nite of dinner and singing to celebrate the b'day of 2 of us.

The food we had was great as usual. The braised beef noodles we had was so good, I quickly input it in my list of fav food in fav places.

During our karaoke session in our personal box, I had great fun singing and listening to all the new K-box favs. Jay-Chou seemed to be a hot fav. The songs sounded so nice, I went to the HMV to grab the latest CD of his (On the Run) right after. And soon after, came my short Jay Chou craze, fuelled by my new housemate EL's great interest in the guy. She proudly claim that she can listen to one of his songs for 3 days straight, driving everyone else in her office insane. I've always admired such crazy obsessions, haha.

So anyways, Ru cuz whipped out her ipod to find the name of songs that would interest her to sing, and that started a spark of interest in me for that little mp3 gadget. C tales of it later in the month...

Monday 3rd March 2008

quotable movie/drama quotes

"When I die, I become the sky..."

That was fm the Jap movie, Sky of Love (I think the jap title was s'thin' zora?)

"If I could become like the willow tree, a willow tree whose roots cannot be easily uprooted...."

This one here was fm a Jap drama, Nobuta wo Produce.

Saturday 1st March 2008

toilets, lifts and a reliable flush

Didn't really wanna start my bloggin' days again with such a smelly topic but I guess it's hardly avoidable huh? Afterall, u can plug ur ears and not hear, stab ur eyes and not c but can hardly kill off ur sense of smell by not breathing.

Come to think of it, smell is a pretty fantastic thing huh? They say u can't smell when u dream, so next time u wanna know whether u r in one, instead of pinching urself silly, u should try taking a sniff.

So anyways, thnx to my occasional analness, i've always been sniffing out lifts, which is a sort of disgusting thing, especially if the lift is filled with some nasty substance. I love lifts with ventilation, or at least, cool air. That way u don't get that choke-in feeling. I've had the unlucky encounter with some Malboro-smoking chap, traveling many a floor with the guy holding his disgusting cigarette in an enclosed lift which left me blue in the face thnx to all the holding breath business. Like if u wanna smoke, at least hv to decency to smoke a nice brand with less stink. I especially hate those cigarettes which are brownish looking and smell as foul as ammonia.

So after sniffing out lifts, I decided that only toilet stink can surpass dirty lifts. I can never understand why some people refuse to flush properly. Especially if the flush is working perfectly fine. It's just gross, why anyone would wanna leave left over toilet paper floating in the toilet with disregard of the next user. Is it that difficult to press the flush button and hold on just a little longer to keep the place clean? And talking about flush, don't u just hate those automatic ones that loves going off in the middle of your business? Man, I totally hate those stuff? Who is the lousy inventor anyways?

Phew, nice to flush out all these grumbles and wash 'em all away. So, here's to wishing for more considerate citizens who don't pee in lifts and throw their dirty stuff everywhere.

Currently reading: Percy Jackson & * by Rick Riordan - A set of books about Percy, the half-blood (half human, half god) battling all the Greek mythologies.

Just finished reading: Afterlife by Douglass Clegg & Always by Jude Deveraux