Day at Work 3...

Part of my job entails visiting roadshows to ensure things run smoothly...

Golden Mile
I tell you, this "Little Thailand" is actually a very interesting place to spend an afternoon at. You'll see all sorts of interesting stuffs you probably wun find anywhere else in Singapore... just keep your eyes sharp and "treasures" are abundant.

Can recognise this fella? He's hired to be the emcee at Golden Mile; you'll find him there every sunday, speaking Thai like nobody's business.

What that in my hand? Its a LG-KG271 handphone. Got it at a pretty sick price, no contract and anything. No camera lah~ only phone & sms; no frills phone ideal for army camp. Got it for my mum cuz she's still using an old Nokia phone with no colour.

Little India Arts Belt
(I have no idea how "Arts" come to be associated with Little India; I think "Cultural Belt" sounds more accurate...)

Zaman Centre is one of the few hotspots I will visit; here's the scene at 4:00pm...

Strolling along Kampong Kapor's streets, I chanced upon this little operation here near Clive Street... this group of people are busy dismantling lotsa equipment... smashing, ripping, cutting, tearing, unscrewing... I stood and watched for a while (they were so engrossed so they didn't notice my presence)...

...their dress-style looked China... and they were filtering out all the copper they can get from the old equipments... unsorted scrap-copper is worth approx. $6.50/KG as of 27th April '08. For updated prices on scrap metal, visit http://scrapmetalpricesandauctions.com/asia/

Weld Road (aka. Kek Tsng Kio)... is also a little interesting hunt along Jalan Besar... its about 5:30pm and this place is darn hot! Haven been here for a while already~

but the heat doesn't deter these fella from selling their wares... and these treasure-hunters

you'll find LAPTOPS even! I looked at the specs, pretty decent!Streets and streets of very interesting stuffs! Too bad I am low on cash already, or I would have bought an old map home...
didn't managed to cover all the stores... time to head back where I came from, collect my car, and be home in time for dinner~

Next week, gonna cover this side of the Kek Tsng Kio, and have a bowl of the famous 结霜桥 Laksa at the other end at Townshend Road...

Back at Zaman Centre... the scene here is 6:00pm... scary, no? I feel like a little white lamb there... I stood out... apparently... Oh, if you happened to be at Zaman Centre, be sure to head over the the left side of the building and try this local delicacy (yea rite...); only @ S$1.00. I bought one at S$2.00 before, and the quantity is exactly that of S$1.00. some crunchy rice-crackers, mixed with tomatoes, lettuces, nuts, beans, gravy, and misc other stuffs... see that blue pail there? Thats where the chef mixes the ingredients...

*Oh, by the way, on my way back towards the Zaman Centre area... I passed by Rowell Rd's HDB cluster and noticed some rather "vice-activity" looming in the area; not the "desker road" type, but more of the Geylang type... gonna confirm this next week, hopefully can snap some pictures...

as far as I am concern, its not safe in that area...

Distinction... AGAIN! 2

Attended class today and my lecturer distributed a note from Dr. Gabby Walters, our Monash Unit Coordinator for MKW 3444 International Marketing... the note generally praised some of the works of Singapore students, and for writing good English since it was a second language to us... (I laughed from within; in Singapore, to some people... its their ONLY language.)

The note also warned of some students who blatantly left out any forms of referencing; which is a serious plagiarism offense. I was thinking to myself: "Who will be so loose-screwed to not use referencing, considering this is already a 3rd year subject?"... during breaktime, I took the opportunity to hop over the office counter to collect back my assignment-one...
... and as I slowly read through the marker's comments, I arrived at the last page of my assignment to see this comment: "Reference list?"... HOLY COW! I searched through my entire assignment and true enough, my reference list was nowwhere to be found. And I remembered painstakingly typing and formatting all the references! I must have been so engrossed organizing my Appendices that I left out printing the Reference List!
Ha! Good thing my main text has the necessary citations and referencing, so its only a missing page for me. My end grade: "DISTINCTION"! Whoohoo!

Read previous distinction posts:

1) Celebrating Q's Mind 100th Post with Good News ;
2) Distinction... AGAIN!

Day at Work 2...

Nearly a month into my new job...

Here's my brand new table from VHIVE!
No more lousy plywood tables! This is clear glass, silver metal and chrome frame~ yippe. Also thanks to Jess for letting me have her pink chair ^__^

SS7273GT BARRYcomputer table
150 x 60-150 x 76cm UP $575.00 NOW $395.00

One aspect I like about my job is to watch the production team's job... this metallic stand (comes in orange and black) you will come to see at The Velocity is created from here...
Just the other day, I was happily watching my Production Director skillfully transfer such Velocity stickers onto the metallic stands... was an eye opener... Was pretty fun watching them peel off the stickers to unveil what they have underneath...
thanks to the CASMate program...
this store of all sorts of Oracle brand stickers...
and this amazing cutting machine...

My Production Direction was telling me the other day that the entire body splash design on his Honda Airwave was printed and done up from here. All the stickers on his car was D.I.Y. straight from our own production workshop!

Then he said I can go sketch out a design I like for my upcoming Honda Fit... get our in-house designer to help with the CASMate drawing, and I can have the entire car sticker printed out from here! Then they'll help me dress up my new car. WOW, it kept me up the whole night thinking up all sorts of designs! xD

Yep, my Production Director is a rather nice chap... I click rather well with him probably because we drive... we like [ 风云 ]... that he has this 1:1 scale replica of the [ 绝世好剑 ] atop his desk... of which I have witnessed how it was used by a production crew to chase another executive around the office floor...
... and he offered his entire Bowling set for me to use anytime I feel like! The blue ball is a 14.5 pounder hook ball worth over $300, while the black one is specially meant for the 10th-pin. Can't wait to try my hands on them!
Dang~ this gigantic Jimmy Neutron head was a prop for its event that has long ended... there are still many leftover notebooks of Jimmy Neutron in the office cabinets... My office location is rather ironic... or you can say in the "Twilight Zone"... because we're sandwiched between the IDAC (Independent Damage Assessment Centre)...
... and Hong Sin Motors...
SO~ the carpark directly in front of my office is filled with such wreaked cars... (I'll see different wrecked cars towed in EVERYDAY)...
... and these brand new cars (most of which has chalk markings on the windscreen of their OMV value, etc...).Driving between work and home has been a breeze thus far... I never have to worry about getting stuck in the morning peak hours since I only leave home for office at 9:50 am. The Kaki Bukit Flyover takes me point to point in 15mins flat - no jams!

*Caution: Do not attempt to take photos while driving at high speed; I am trained, you're not. =p

ZERO ZERO THREE

ZERO ZERO THREE
Was browsing through different countries' Yahoo! homepage when I arrived at Taiwan's version, and something caught my attention...


Ahem ahem....
OKAMOTO's 0.03 RF!
I didn't hesitate to click on the Flash advertisement; the animation, the bright orange color, the "Made in Japan" logo, and most importantly the hot babe~ (hurhurhurhur...)... how to resist?

Pretty interactive Flash site; it tells of the "evolution" of their products... there's even a zigsaw puzzle game and a link to download Okamoto hot babes (too bad the link is down...)

0.03mm... wow~ not even 1mm... and I saw another 0.02mm one in their list of products! To hell with Durex! hahaha~

Japan Trains

Japan Trains
Next time you curse under your breath while squeezing your ass into our SMRT trains during the evening peak hours at City Hall or Raffles Place... recall this video and heave a relief...

I remember being told before that in Japan, one of the duties of platform marshalls is to "give a helping hand" to commuters who have difficulties getting into trains...

Whoever watched the video and pity the ladies being squeezed this bad, I thank you 50% only for your compassion; men doesn't like to be squeezed amongst men as well (at least this is true for me), pls spare a thought for us men too.

A PITY...
A pity our SMRT trains doesn't come equipped with comfortable cushions like they do in Japan... so I am 100% sure we won't catch sleeping beauties in our local trains... haiz~~

DESPATCH 'EM SOLDIERS!!!

"MASTURBATION CUTS CANCER RISK"
Its official!
Men reduces the chance of prostate cancer through regular masturbation...
Researchers say that cancer-causing chemicals could build up in the prostate if men do not ejaculate regularly.

Full story at BBC News, via Dannychoo.

Ha! Finally have a good reason to share this lovely picture out...

TRUE TEARS

TRUE TEARS
[真实之泪]
Aired: 06.01.2008 till 30.03.2008
TV Series, 13 episodes
Genre: Daily life, High School, Love Polygon, Romance
Producers: Bandai Visual, Lantis
Official Page: http://www.truetears.jp/
Based on a game by Broccoli, Circus and GameCRAB.

Q: This is one sweet and romantic love story of a guy (Shinichiro) and three girls that crosses his highschool life. But after watching all 13 episodes, I only understand 80% of it, so I am gonna watch it all over again. The story has very deep plot and involves many matters-of-the-heart issues; I think girls will understand this anime more than guys do.

Below info taken off AnimeDB and edited according to my perspective:
Shinichiro's childhood friend, Yuasa Hiromi, has been living in his house for a year along with his family. Hiromi's father was a close friend of the family, and when he died, Shinichiro's family took her in. Hiromi is popular and well-liked in school, always smiling, and is talented in sports - but Shinichiro knows there must be tears inside her.

Having an artistic tendency, he draws pictures of her and thinks about wishing to ease her tears. Yet he cannot bring up the nerve to talk to her even in his own house. Hiromi, too, is quiet and withdrawn in their house, quite unlike at school.

Shinichiro is also distracted by the constant teasing from his buddy Miyokichi Nobuse, for watching Hiromi from afar; a curse of bad luck from an interesting girl named Isurugi Noe, and being forced to perform in the Mugiha dance. By helping Noe, Shinichiro hopes to ease his own problems, yet he seems to have difficulty helping himself.

Q: Lemme intro the girls... and of these three, which girl melts my heart... hee...

Yuasa Hiromi
Hiromi lives in Shinichiro's house, after her parents died. However, Shinichiro's mother kept giving her a hard time; deep in her heart, Shinichiro's mother doesn't welcome Hiromi. On the surface, they treated her like their own child, but women-to-women aside, Shinichiro's mother made it known to Hiromi that she is but a burden to the family. Deep within, a women's jealousy, fear, suspicion and love for her husband and son made Shinichiro's mother suspect that Hiromi could actually be Shinichiro's real sister. Hence Shinichiro's mother never likes to see both of them get on friendly terms. Hiromi has since been withdrawn and kept to herself all this while, not wanting to cause any trouble for the family for their hospitality.

Hiromi and Shinichiro are childhood friends, and they shared a very sweet Natsumatsuri memory of each other. Hiromi loves Shinichiro, but what Shinichiro's mother said to her made her hold back her feelings for Shinichiro.

Hiromi is a sweet girl, demure, talented and everything. You'll feel for her.

Isurugi Noe
Noe is a rather eccentric girl, one can say. By fate, Shinichiro found her high up on a tree gathering "food from the sky" for the chickens below. "I'm stuck and I can't get down" (this scene is captivating...) then she apparently jumped on him as a cushion. Noe feels that one of the chicken wants to fly, and feels sorry that its locked up in the cage, so she is feeding him food from somewhere high up. But she doesn't wanna feed the other chicken simply because it doesn't wants to fly (she just knew it), and she feels Shinichiro is just like the 2nd chicken - "doesn't want to fly". The conversation broke into a little quarrel and Noe puts a curse on him.

Noe doesn't cry; she gave away her tears because her grandma took to the heavens along with her tears. So Noe is on a mission to retrieve her tears, and for that, she need to choose someone to give her their tears.

Subsequent encounters with Noe mostly involves chicken, red seeds (chicken feed), and about "flying" and being close to the sky. However, I think what Noe means is about aiming high and having your dreams that you work towards for. Noe openly expresses her interest in Shinichiro and her outrageous behaviour has had the attention of the entire school over their relationship, including Hiromi.

Noe and Shinichiro fell for each other. Noe gave Shinichiro the drive to complete his picture book he was working on, and Shinichiro became Noe's first ever person she fell in love for.


Ando Aiko (aka. "Ai-Chan")
Ai-Chan is a year older than Shinichiro and is also his childhood friend, whom Shinichiro looked upon as an Onee-chan and frequently confides with her. She opens the Imagawayaki Store selling pancakes and beverages, which Shinichiro and his buddy Nobuse frequents for a bite and cola.

Ai-Chan in fact holds a candle for Shinichiro, but the blockhead simply doesn't notice it. Worst, Shinichiro introduces his buddy Miyokichi Nobuse and highly praises his buddy to her. Shinichiro eventually made Ai-Chan listen to Nobuse's confession to her and Ai-Chan relunctantly agrees with going out with Nobuse, for the sake of Shinichiro, in that tight situation. But this little situation concreted Nobuse and Ai-Chan's relationship and Shinichiro sees them as a couple from then on. Poor Ai-Chan is labeled as "Nobuse girlfriend" when Ai-Chan actually loves Shinichiro. Ai-Chan just treasured every single minute she has with Shinichiro.

Ai-Chan jumps on every single opportunity to be closer with Shinichiro and in fact did many little things that melts my heart. She lied about Nobuse being busy and managed to convince Shinichiro to go shopping with her in place of Nobuse; a chance so hard to came by.

She picked a plain and dull sweater, contrasting to her style, all because Shinichiro laid his attention on it amongst all the colorful sweaters she seeked Shinichiro's opinion about.

She quick-wittedly convinces Shinichiro to let her feed food to his mouth (on a romantic scale) when Shinichiro walks in on Nobuse eating off Ai-Chan's chopsticks (on another scale). She convinces Shinichiro to let her measure his shoulder width under the pretext that Nobuse shares the same shoulder width and she wants to knit him a sweater but doesn't know his size. However, Ai-Chan in fact hand-knitted Shinichiro a sweater (so sweet~!).

All this while, Ai-Chan could only do these sweet little things under the label of Nobuse's girlfriend, but the last straw came when Shinichiro relates of himself going out with Noe. Thats when Ai-Chan broke down and begs Shinichiro to "look at me too...". So heart-aching...

Finally...
Shinichiro finally understands that he was the one who avoided facing everything. The chicken made a choice not to fly, but Shinichiro didn't choose a single thing by himself; about the Mugiha dance, his picture book, Noe, and Hiromi. Shinichiro didn't want to dance not because he couldn't dance well, but because he didn't want to be compared to his father; he couldn't draw not because he didn't feel like doing it, but because he was afraid to know his own limitations...

And about Noe... and Hiromi... he has to make a choice... who will he choose and why?

(I still feel that Shinichiro made a wrong choice of Noe and Hiromi...)

Updates...

Of Work...
Work's been good so far. Official start time @ 10am, ends at 7pm. Unofficially, people only start to walk in by 11am; boss only arrive at 1130 or later. So I've started enjoy morning breakfast and coffee with my parents (this are family times I considered very important). I get to workplace around 10 plus and I'm still the first executive there; so sometimes I'd just go to the food centre across the road to buy the morning's newspaper.

Finally been assigned a whole new account today - Beach Festival @ Velocity. I am gonna fix up an entire beach volley court at Velocity, by end-May, then turn it around to become a beach football court, then turn it into a beach Tchoukball Court, then turn it back to the beach volleyball court again over a span of 2 months. What the hell is Tchoukball anyways?!!

Apart from this Beachy account, I'm also handling SingTel's project KISS prepaid card roadshows... so I'm to land my arse in Little India every sunday evenings to inspect the sites. Will post some pictures soon. Sigh, I dragged this part. Good thing I can claim transport and mileage.

Of Health...
HP: 65%; MP: 20%. Been sick last week and was literally a walking mucus container; choked with phelgm. Already completed my prescriptions of antibiotics and numerous other types of medication, but I am still having running nose and itchy throat, causing me to cough unvoluntarily. And this excessive coughing has made my head ache.

Seems like there is a virus passing around in the air, and its coming in strong. I am seldom sick for this long. Was surprised to see the newspaper reporting a hike in children's HFM diesease last week. I wonder if the virus has any adult variant or not.

Gargling salt water every morning, lotsa water by day, and Vitagen every night. Hope my body overcomes this virus soon. I always see falling sick as a evolution period of my body getting stronger AFTER I recover.

Of Personal...
Not much time for lotsa stuff. Need to do some shopping and I need a new pair of spectacles. Still contemplating if I should get that $390 leather jacket... And I have lotsa movies to catch. Bowling's been fun last week; now looking forward for PAIN ball. Am gonna dig out my army uniform for some actions.

Queuing up lotsa animes to watch. Apart from the ever so long-running Shippuuden and Bleach, I've cleared H20, Umishou, Lucky Star, School Days, Kekkaishi, REC, Rosario Vampire. Now collecting Mai Otome Sifer, To Love Ru, Wagaya no Oinari Sama, Nabari No Ou, Blassreiter, Aegis of Uruk, Blue Dragon, and Soul Eater. In the meantime, I still have 13 episodes of True Tears waiting for me.

Downgrading my Rav4 to a Honda Fit 2008 1.3-G skyroof; fuel price going up means I'd better get a car with superb fuel efficiency of 24km/litre; Rav4 was 10km/litre... now is the 3mths wait for my factory-indent...

Gonna get my hands on that Samsung i780 unless something else caught my eyes; gonna wait for 13 June for True Number Portability to kick start the price war. May the best promotion wins.

Learning English...

How they learn English in Japan...

Kureha by Kotobukiya

After work, family and friends, I finally had a little personal time to set up a little studio-shot session...

Need to let know that these pictures are taken using my digital Casio EX-Z600... Micro-mode (hereafter know as "Hana"-mode - think flower).
Had problems focusing the lens of my Pentax MZ-30; only expended a couple of films... will continue again once I go thru the manual...

limited equipment to work under - 1 yellow table lamp from IKEA and another old white lamp...
overall feel gave off the warm and cold effect... think lamp on the left and moonlite from the top right...
didn't regret getting this cutie despite already having the other Kureha; the pose and costume is fantastic!

Kureha: Next [Part 3]

Read "Kureha: Next" here, and "Kureha: Next [Part 2]" here.

1/8 scale of KUREHA, from Shining Wind x Tears, Manufactured by Kotobukiya.
Front view...
Right-side (design of the box is really nice~)
Rear-side...
Left-side...
Removed her from the box... still in the plastic casing...
Rear-view...Front plastic cover removed...
A closer look... she's all covered up with plastic to protect the paintworks and from abrasion...

This Kureha came already mounted with the circular stand below... I'd have to monitor it for rust... (stop peeking up her skirt!)
Next is to go thru the very delicate task of removing the protective plastics... the part of the plastic on the left sleeve trailing all the into her waist is the hardest; slight tugging of the plastic and her sleeve and hand moves... I was so afriad her hand will snap...
her delicate little bow...
Front view without her bow...
close-up...

rear-view with bow...

front-view with bow...
close-up...
and she goes onto my display shelf to join my 1/5 Mina Majikina and 1/7 Kureha... One last space for Elwyn...
Next: gonna step up my table-lamps and expend my remaining 25 films using my SLR on my figurines... (I still have no clue how to use my camera...)