Monday 26th November 2007

reading speed

It's sort of a testament to my lack of inbred curiosity that I have only gotten round to roughly time myself for my own reading speed. By reading here, I am referring solely to fictional novels. Journals and textbooks are certainly not in the same page. One of my friends who constantly see me with my nose buried in books often ask me how long do I take to finish a book. I often thought it was quite a silly question since different books would attract different levels of interest and thus different type of reading speed. Plus, it's not like I don't do any other tasks aside fm reading. I have many dramas and tv to watch and internet to surf you know?

So, silliness and whatnots aside, I finally placed a clock in front of me while I read. Rounding it off by a page or two/ a minute or two, I'd say it's about 40 pages per hour. Since I usually spend about 2 hours plus a day reading, I'd take about 4-5 days to finish a novel which is 400~500 pages long. So there. Not very remarkable. But it's a research done and reported. How long do you take to read a book?

Saturday 17th November 2007

pasta, bowling and pizza

Another outing with vii, WY, TC, WY2&hubby. Vii and I ate at Pasta de Waraku. The pasta there all has wafu (fish paste soy sauce I'm guessing) and is pleasantly delicious. The oyster is abit too fishy tasting for me but the fettucini and sauce was yummy! Vii tackled a few of the vegetarian side dishes instead. They had some strange combi of tomato slice, cold tofu and cheese cream. A bit too weird for our taste buds. The fried tofu cubes were nice tho.

Bowling was great fun. haha... as usual, my record is a combi of continuous zeros and some lucky hits. I think my record was only about 50 plus. hehe... pai seh. But I love looking at everyone else bowl. Some of the neighbouring lanes had some really big-gestured players and it's such great pleasure to c the ball rolling at great speed right smack into the centre of the pins.

We were so concentrated on the game, we failed to notice WY's purse/bag had gone missing. She had to report the loss and such and did not join us for our pizza after the game. We had some sort of spicy seafood pizza with red chillies and fried anchovies. *eek* Not very nice. hehe... mayb coz I was still quite stuffed with my pasta. Food aside, the company was nice. Glad to c WY2&hubby after so many years. Ahh...everyone has grown up.

So there, an account of one of my more 'substantial' saturdays.

Sunday 13th November 2007

Linkin Park Concert

Darn it. Once again, my concert report is without some personal pictures. This time round, eventhough my camera was fully loaded, battery and memory wise, I had to reluctantly surrender it along with the light sticks which Ru bought for each of us and my bag of stuff. Sigh. So sad.

The concert started promptly at 9pm. They only made us squeeze like sardine for exactly 1 hour. Extremely considerate I say. We were standing behind some really tall people so most of the time, it was a rather blocked experience. Nevertheless, I think this was one of the cooler concerts we've gone to. Once again, I'm amazed by the fans' great enthusiasm and ability to sing along, jump, shake and show the rock sign all at once. Man, such energy. Poor Ru got stepped on many a times in her sandals. I was a tad concern that the person in front would sweat-rain on me and was relieved to see no visible dandruff on any shoulders. Phew...

I don't know the Linkin Park members very well but I totally loved the lead singer (Chester Bennington). His voice is a bit higher than I thought but he was grrreat. Pretty good to look at too. hehe... Another band member who easily attracted attention was the quieter Mike Shinoda who seems to love taking up many roles. He sang, he played the piano, he played the guitar, he rapped. Golly... who said rockers aren't over-achievers? Rob Bourdon the drummer is superbly cool. Well, coz I love drummers. Period. He could be a geek with braces or an ugly hulk and I'd still say the drummer is cool. The chinese guy, Joe Hahn was quite unimpressive. He hardly made the effort to grab attention. His most memorable action was a few shakes of the rock gesture. Both the guitarists were not very impressionable either. hehe... maybe I'd learn to admire them more when I finally get around to electric guitar playing.

So, although I only purchased 2 of the Linkin Park CDs (Meteora & Minutes to Midnight), most of the songs in the performance was familiar. I guess most of it came fm Minutes to Midnight. The whole concert was about 100 minutes or so. Ru and I found respective taxis and headed home to drink grateful gulps of cold water after all the dehydration. All in all, a very satisfying concert event. Go Linkin Park!

Thursday 25th October 2007

CY & SF's wedding

Of all (three) weddings I've attended, I gotta admit the 'bridegroom torturing' session this time round is the most well thought out. kudos to all the experienced sisters of SF's. If I'm not mistaken, the 8 of them had around 5 previous experiences together. Yes, I was working with the masters this time round. Imagine their dedication. They had brought along baby bitter gourds and a blender to the resort we stayed in, in order to give the groom a fresher bitter experience. They also had nice strips of cloth to blidefold all 8 of the groom's brothers and let them wear 8 mini paper panties which read 'I really really love u' in chinese characters. The groom was then requested to rearrange the characters in the right way. They also made a very nice thought out poster with a big heart at the centre to be filled with origami-hearts folded by the groom and brothers on the spot. Lastly, they gave all the brothers and groom a sweet experience by letting them pass a red cherry around, mouth-to-mouth. Such fine ladies, won't you say?

The wedding ceremony itself was the most traditional one too by far. Many horns blaring, fire-crackers and red packets everywhere. The bride turned back halfway to the lift to go back to the hotel room to symbolize the bride always returning home to her parents. So sweet.

During the wedding dinner, the guests were entertained with many Hokkien songs sung by the older generation. It was a wedding and karaoke rolled into one. Haha... definitely did not have that in the other 2 weddings. The food was quite nice. I loved the dessert. Yummy red bean paste in hot deep fried flour skin.

I think SF had about 4 changes of dresses that night. I loved the white lacy number and her wedding dress. The red chinese traditional dress was abit garish tho. Definitely eye catching tho. A very elaborate and memorable wedding.

Monday 5th November 2007

Vienna Boys Choir

At the rate that I am writing my blogs these days, maybe I have to consider renaming it as "Last Month" instead of My Life. Once again I have dragged until almost month end to start chronologically recording how I have lived my days these past few weeks.

Well, chatter aside. Ru had invited me to the Vienna Boys Choir and after a month long absence fm any music/concert scenes, I was quite excited. :) The boys are quite adorable. Both of us wanted very much to just grab one to keep as a pet or something. hehe. Singing wise, I guess they are way better than your average primary school choir. Nonetheless, if the age factor was not added in, I guess they were the usual slightly above average sort of choir. Like all snobbish choir members around, we love criticising till no end even if we ourselves sucketh.

Condescending interests aside, I totally admired the way they have all memorized the couple of dozen of songs in their repertoire. Golly, the great pain I went through in the past just to memorize a meagre few songs is absolutely shameful.

Tuesday 6th November 2007

pedometer

I made a trip to the mall solely to purchase a pedometer after vii had enticed me with her great achievements with hers last Sunday. I was so excited, I was already taking my new toy out of the box while I was walking back. Yes, it is not advisable to do such things. I ended up with my pedometer doing a few frog jumps on the concrete floor even before I had a chance to figure out whether it has battery provided. I had taken a dozen steps back to the mall before I found the battery and headed back towards the bus stop. Then, I saw that the battery cover was screwed on and once again considered making a walk back to the mall to buy myself a mini screwdriver. Luckily, my laziness prevailed and I found that the manufacturers had been considerate enough to provide the users with a metal plate that works as a screwdriver. Good job Omron.

So, armed with a new pedometer, I have indeed done more walking than usual. Instead of taking diagonal short cuts which I have always loved doing, these days, I try harder to take a few extra steps and make right angle turns, walk on the outer edge of a circular walkway and basically coming up with silliest ways to walk abit more. I also try to take the stairs (down) as often as my sensibility allows and has taken to doing manic dancing at night since great shaking is taken as a step as well with the little gadget.

Haha... the not so great result to all these extra workout is a symptom I think is called calories compensation. Yup, now I totally feel like I deserve another helping of dessert and many other self-congratulatory tit-bits. Sigh... So i end up with no weight loss at all.

Monday 1st November 2007

non-stop weddings

"Oh my god." Another quote fm another actress in another drama. In this case, it was Oh Dal Ja (Chae Rim) in the Korean drama Dal Ja's spring.

I share a tad of her sentiments. 4 weddings away fm the country in 4 months. And to be the sister entourage in all 4 of them. Dat is the highlight of my last months of 2007. *Big sigh (enough to blow some papers aways)* I mean, what are the odds, really?

I am declaring here: I shall not attend another oversea wedding for a year at least. [Sorry MI. S. Africa is abit too far for me. Unless I graduate before that.]

I guess like all things in life, these stuff come in stages. At this stage of my life, it's the wedding bells galore period. Wonder when it'll end?

Currently reading: Bestiary by Robert Masello - Carter Cox is a paleotologist at LA's La Brea Tar Pits. His wife is an art curator. They both became involved with a Bestiary (a book describing real and fabled animals popular between the 11th~14th century.) Very cool reading so far.

Just finished reading:
(i)The Ruby in the Smoke by Philip Pullman (Book 1 of the Sally Lockhart series) - I expected some simple detective story since this is a young reader's book. I was wrong. The book was good.
(ii) The Shadow in the North by Philip Pullman (Book 2 of the Sally Lockhart series) - 6 years later, Sally is now 23. This book is even better than the first. Unfortunately, Sally's love died and she is now pregnant.
(iii) Green Rider by Kristen Britain - A good book about a young lady bearing a message to a king and encountering amny magical stuff in between.
(iv)Tales from the Crib by Jennifer Coburn - An enjoyable chick-lit about a woman who lives with a husband who has suggested a divorce but they are still living together because she has finally gotten a baby after 4 miscarriages. The story is way funnier than i've summarized.