My Display Shelf

My dad recently drilled my shelf in, the one that I had in my old house but didn't want to drill in here immediately because 1) lazy and 2) there were spatial concerns with my old CRT monitor.

I've turned it into a display shelf to show off my latest collectibles, which indeed they are - only two items you'll see are practically useful, and one of them is temporary. Let's have a look.

Click to enlarge

I have to say I'm most proud of my Sephiroth figurine and lightsaber. They are, and some would argue by no accident, the two most expensive items on the shelf, and are, to some inexplicably, a pleasure to look at everytime I get home from army camp. Domo-kun and Darth Stewie are just there for the cute factor. And the two practical items I mentioned earlier are the wooden katana and the olive oil, of which the latter is the temporary one. The olive oil because I can anoint people or myself; the wooden katana because I can crack it on burglars' heads.

That is, of course, only because I haven't bought my metal katana. Yet.

So just a post to say hi and tell you that I'm still alive. If you read this blog, I can't imagine why you would come back often unless you're a relatively close friend, sorry that I haven't been posting much. I'm already so busy (lazy) without the army, and now that I have it I hardly find incentive anymore to blog.

Ok goodnight. Rachmaninov plays Rachmaninov best.

Just thought you might have wanted to know.

A Cosy Mid-Autumn

So now that we've got much more comfortable and chilloutable facilities, my parents decided that we should go down to the poolside for abit to celebrate Mid Autumn Festival. Even though we ended up only spending half an hour downstairs, it was still probably the best midautumn celebration... thingy we had going on.



And yes, you are wondering what's that blue glow in the pictures.

So there's my brother's lantern, which he got in school when he celebrated MAF a week ago in school, dunno why. And that's the mooncake with the knife, which we saved in the end for another time to savor. That is the durian flavor; the tiramisu flavor used to sit in the empty box. Then there's my phone, just in case, and oh look, what's that? X-Minimax portable speakers. Click the link if you don't already know about them, they're a fantastic local brand producing awesome quality and innovative products.

Mini speakers coupled with my ZEN playing... what else? Traditional Chinese music. I told my mother shamelessly, "Isn't it great? That you have a son so knowledgeable in both music and technology? How many families do you see having crisp Chinese music floating through the air while gazing at the pure white moon and eating tiramisu mooncake?"

Oh, and that pile of things that look like used tissue, that's just pomelo skin.

If you ahem want the album, the title is Meditations on China. Look it up yourself.

Happy Mid-Autumn Fest.

A New Hope

Hokay. So I've decided to wait it out.

While waiting for the Macbook refreshes, my dad's kindly offered to pay for a reasonably priced LCD screen. In the future this will be my secondary screen... probably my SMS (Social Monitor Screen).


As you can see, it's taking me abit of time to get used to relative expanse of space that inevitably comes with widescreen. But as a result of the flatscreen, as many have discovered to their joy as well, my table is suddenly much spacier and neater now.


Ok well not much, but it still is a great improvement.

The Trial of Getting a Mac

Probably the only one who can be blamed in all this is Time. I don't want anyone to mistake this for a lashout at you, because I know that you're all well-meaning, but I just gotta let this out.

Everytime I happily announce that I wanna get a new Mac, specifically my Macbook Pro, people tell me to wait.

First I was shifting house. Then BMT approached and I thought well it's gonna collect dust anyway, why not hang on abit?

But my desktop is giving me increasing problems that are irritating the bloody hell out of me. First the processor can't seem to handle more than 5 tasks without slowing to a crawl, and then now the monitor's fuzzing out on me. So I decided you know what, screw it, let's just get it done and over with, I'll get my Mac now.

But my dotcomrades said wait. There's an Apple event in September, hang on for that before you miss out on great stuff.

Turned out to be an iPod event. (Sleek shit btw the new Touch)

So well never mind, better than taking a risk.

Now my best dotcomrades are saying wait. Announcements due in October. Possibly November. Could be MacWorld '09.

OMFG HOW LONG MORE DO I HAVE TO WAIT???

At this rate I'll be getting my MBP after my ORD man!

D'ARGHH!

My BMTC Experience

So it's the end of BMT, and we were made to write a reflection about our time here, for I don't know what reason. Posterity I guess. Most of them just wrote it an hour before submission time, but I obediently typed and printed it out just like my sergeant instructed, so I thought I might as well share it with you.

Gosh one does have to be OMG careful when writing about the army.

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I can hardly remember 4 months in my life that had passed as fast as these 4 months in BMT have. It seemed like just yesterday that we were morosely anticipating our first book out, and now I have just returned from my second last book out.

In this time, I have accomplished, as many have before me, things I never would have even thought about doing. It has given me a rewarding sense of self-confidence and esteem, which I guess is one of the outcomes hoped for of our training here.

I was just telling my bunkmate the other day, after our final route march, that BMTC should consider changing its motto to “Step by Step”. To me, those three words form just about the entire essence of our training program. Whether the Jacob’s Ladder, grenade throwing, or more practically the route marches, step-by-step training has helped deeply in understanding the necessary techniques. More importantly, step-by-step perseverance has made the impossible possible. Hundreds of thousands have done it before us, but that doesn’t stop us from being immensely proud of ourselves, and of each other.

-Okay, I had to remove this paragraph because it says relatively not-nicer things about the SAF. Anyway it's not about me, so you aren't missing out. :)-

It has been an unforgettable experience in BMT, and I am truly indebted to all my commanders for it. Now we only need hot water showers to make it perfectly unforgettable.

Razerized

I had originally wanted to wait until I bought my Macbook Pro to get a Razer mouse, so that it would make an invincible couple. I'm still waiting to see when I'm allowed to book out often enough to justify the expensive purchase of a powerful laptop. But my old Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorer 3.0 got too cranky for me to take it anymore. For every click I execute on my left button, it sends two to three signals through, making it unable to drag and drop stuff without accidentally opening a file, which on my ageing Pentium 4 doesn't exactly happen in a snap. I got so fed up that I uncharacteristically agreed to meet a friend to go to Funan on a Sunday. Normally I just relax (rot beautifully) at home waiting for the time to get back to Pasir Ris for another adventure-filled week at sunny Pulau Tekong.

My bestie Ben wanted to get a Speck MBP hardshell case for his girlfriend (they dote on each other like that. Envious isn't it?) and I guessed, correctly as it turned out, that Funan would be his best bet. At the same time, I decided to go ahead and splash on a Razer, as well as an X-Minimax. I'm usually a Creative fan (still am actually), but the Minimax's size won my favor. As for the Razer, I looked the various models up and decided on the slightly higher ended Copperhead. I have to confess now - I bought it mainly because it has a glowing logo on it's back. I'm a sucker for glowers.

I chose Anarchy Red simply because it was the best looking color among red green and blue. Ben and I both have this thing for red-black combos. Or maybe I picked it up from him, I dunno. If what they say about the color red is true, then yes, I love a sense of danger and power.

More of power la actually. What danger is there in the face of power?

As for the Minimax, Ben uncharacteristically suggested I chose black over my initial guess of red.

"Red looks like......"
"Boobs?"
"Ha yeah."
"... ... black."

I came back and did an unboxing video of both items. I'll see when I can get it uploaded, starting with the Copperhead vid. The bill hurt my pocket quite abit (do the math yourself), but the moment I plugged it in, I knew every cent was worth it. Same for the X-minimax. Seriously powerful shit for its size. Imagine Guns 'n' Roses' Paradise City at full volume so loud it actually hurts, and no distortion at all.

Now all I have to do is let my Minimax finish its initial charge, restart my com, set my Copperhead profile settings, and transfer my pics and videos out from my memory card. Then it's back to camp for me.

Sigh.

POP in sight! Here's to me staying positive!

My Life So Far

Sit down. Take a blankie. Make a cup of hot choc. It's going to be a mindless heartfelt ramble.

Ever since I was extremely blessed to win the XBOX360, I had the gamer life that I often wanted. Even as a young adult with a little bit more cash to spend and swim around in, I hardly ever thought of buying a console. The financial weight of the console itself plus a few games to kick off would cripple me by one grand. Now at least I have more cash for my games. My dad just bought me 3 games. I think that's too much now haha, but well they are good games. Ace Combat is relatively old but the gameplay is absolutely absorbing. I'm excited to have Assassin's Creed but since it's the same genre as Ninja Gaiden, I don't wanna start another story without finishing one first. Granted, NG2 is getting pretty hard for my gaming-uninclined mind, so it might be a long time before I break the seal on the AC box, but we'll see... Still got Star Wars: Force Unleashed, Mirror's Edge, and Guitar Hero World Tour coming up. $$$ :'(

The end of BMT is in sight. You might want to call it indecisiveness, but till today, when someone asks me if I would like to become an officer, I still cannot provide a definitive answer. I wanted so much to get a perfect score for live range (shooting), but I was sorely disappointed at my own performance. No matter how much I knew I was wrong, I could not stop my nervousness from overtaking and making me pull the trigger a hair of a split-second too soon. 25/32. Some of you are cursing me right now because that's a dream score. And that's why I tried to stop myself from lamenting too much about it. My mates might not think too well of me. Is that self-censorship? Some say yes, most Chinese beg to point out that it's humility. Perhaps it's the culture of absolute obedience to the ancient emperors that Chinese like to insist that "they're right, I'm the one who is wrong".

Made a couple of great friends in camp, bonded by passions for various things. Filmmaking. Animation. Japanese culture. Humor (yes, humor). Social welfare. Can't stand a couple of people in camp. Inconsiderate. Troublemakers. Big talkers. I notice that the big talkers always have an aura of low self-esteem around them. You just have to look hard enough. And when you find it, it will shine brightly at you after, calling for help for it's owner, asking for a friend. I'm not made out to be that friend, no matter how kind I like to think I am. Maybe in a few years.

MacDelivery seems to find itself incomplete without screwing up. Ordered two McSpicys and a double cheeseburger meal, and can I have some mayo please, but they didn't have the mayo. 3 minutes later after I'd poked the straw in, laid my hands on the fries, and carressed the burger ready to mutilate it, a manager from the branch calls to say that they sent the wrong order, and he's sending the right one over now. I say the only thing I'm missing is mayo. And he says well ok, just take the mayo when the rider comes then. So he comes, and he wasn't even given clear instructions what to do. He left his cell to charge at the branch. We got a buy-1-get-1-free.

With mayo.

It's a good thing they didn't call back asking to have the package back to send to the right house. My dad was already heartily tucking into the second burger. Yeah right you're not hungry. I would have freaked out on the phone if they did that.

Red Cliff is awesome. I knew I was right not to watch it on my ZEN. The atmosphere is just not there. But I get home to a 19" monitor, a 2.1 sound system enhanced by a USB DAC, and Microsoft's TruBass and SRS WOW settings.

I couldn't peel my eyes away.

It was so good, I immediately went to scout (ahem) for traditional Chinese music. Qin music, like it was played in Hero and Red Cliff. Not the exact type, but good enough for me. It's generally very relaxing and meditative, traditional Chinese music. Also went to dig up some traditional Mongolian music. I've been acquiring alot of all these sleep-well music lately. Good for a Tekong lullaby, you know.

I miss my involvement in the new/social media scene, really. Miss the events, the excitement and anticipation of new products, no matter how reserved the attendees are on the outside. All bloody professional-looking masks. Most of all, miss meeting new people with similar interests. Cooking up ideas of collaborations and then moving on to make it reality. Miss that, really.

Last thing. NDP. I'll reserve the best of my compliments for private conversations, because I don't wanna get dragged into detention barracks by the military police. You know? The one with the big white helment and the bug-eyed shades, twirling the rifles while the SAF Band fluttered cute red fans for no apparent reason.

The parade was a disappointment... Perhaps it was the rain, one can clearly see even on a standard-definition TV that it was raining quite heavily. But that's really no excuse for not even being able to march in proper rank and file. I dunno what happened, but I would personally prefer to think that people have started looking into this first thing this morning. And the broadcast control this year was in shambles. The very year when we happily announce that the NDP will be broadcast live all over the world for Singaporeans overseas, you can have shots of cameras shaking, lens being wiped, and cameras pointing to nowhere. Makes the commentators' job just abit harder you know that? Steve Chia and the lovely lady whom I have no idea who you are so sorry about it did an excellent job of covering the asses of like, i dunno, 25 people?? Sharp improvisation with commentary.

The comedies after that though, Calefare and First Class, look promising. Especially Calefare. First Class is the same old, great-teacher-who-will-change-his-students-lives-forever story. But Calefare shows a different side of talent from both actors and scriptwriters, so it's promising I think. Hope to be able to catch it, although I have this bad feeling I will not.

Woops. NDP wasn't the last thing.

Stay afloat people. If I can, so can you. Trust me, it's not just because I'm fat.

Singapore Toy & Comic Convention 2008

Yesterday I managed to go to the inaugural STCC held at SICEC to take a look. When the news first started spreading around (I read it from spaceactionhero's blog), I think everyone expected it to be a huge event. For one I think alot of money has gone into the marketing, and it was done quite well I'd say. Nobody expected it to be on the same insane scale as US comicons (or whoever did can dream on for about 10 years), but the way they made it to be I thought it would be a pretty crazy event.

When I got there I realised that it was only ONE exhibition hall. Gee, I thought it would have at least covered an entire floor. Registration was up there, not downstairs. And for some funny reason, I guess they were sick of it or what, when I walked to the pre-registered queue the lady just gave me my stuff without even checking any of my details at all. So sticking the passband on, I walked in.

Let's just skip the boring parts shall we? I expected more Japanese stuff. More current figurines, more merchandise, instead of 'safe' products like shelves and shelves of Power Rangers and Gundams and FF7 figurines. You really that kiasu or what? And there was alot of emphasis on western and modern toy figurines. I can't exactly term it since I'm not really into that field, but it's a Stikfas type of thing. Loads and loads of it. Which I'm not really interested in.

Still, there were a couple of interesting things to be seen.

One-piece-only yo-yos.

Well this isn't anything new, but I still find the Yoda-Dooku figure uber cool.

And this. This is a movie chair that Animax was exhibiting. You know like those simulator rides where they shake you around for abit? Except this is for the home, I'm guessing. Not very hard shakes (or maybe you can program it). Limited to rumbles, mild crash shocks, lifts falls and horizontal tilts. They were playing FF7:AC (what else right) and I watched the hair-raising motorcycle chase scene, if you remember. I didn't feel very absorbed, but I'll give it to them because it was bloody noisy there and there was no way even the best 7.1 Surround system could completely engulf you into the movie. But I think it is a fantastic experience enhancement. Especially if you have a movie room. Because if you do, you probably have enough money to buy like 16 of these chairs. And just for trying it, they give you a cool Animax gridded sketchpad! Here's the video I took of the next pair who went after me.


Online Videos by Veoh.com

Catches.

I think I was so desperate to get something out of there that I didn't think much when I walked past a booth randomly offering Ninja Gaiden II for $74.90. Considering I usually pay $69.90 at Best Denki for most games, it's an alright price, even if it's marked up abit. I'll talk more about it when I've played it for abit more.

Anyway back to my catch. My second one was one that I'd eyed a couple of years ago. Yes it's an old product but I don't care because when you get a 15cm tall Sephiroth figurine with his Masamune sword as tall as him...

You don't care.

Like the pose I made him do? LIKE THE SWORD? OH MY GOD I CAN'T GET ENOUGH OF IT.

Ok. That's it for my catches. Just two. I wanted to get one of the yo-yos since I'm a collector of sorts, but the seller said it would only go on sale today, since "it just came in yesterday and we have to calculate the prices".

Sure.

Bu he estimated it to be anywhere from $20-50. And this is the good thing about being prevented from buying something you like, you get a chance to think about it.

And I think meh. Forget it.

Conclusion. For it's hype, the convention was disappointing. Too small, and quite a limited range of exhibitors. Were they hoping for too much when they put toys and comics together? Sure they are highly interweaved and interrelated, but they can stand very well on their own, and by putting these two together when you have next to no experience holding such conventions here, perhaps you're trying to mash a bit too many things together for a starter. But nevertheless I still applaud it. I think it's a great effort at least and I hope that the organizers will barrel through with future conventions.

This could be the start of something good.

How did NS change you?

It was my first book out two days ago, and already I'm preparing to return to camp later this evening. I thought I was suitably adjusted to military life after a week, and wondered whether in typical Singaporean kiasu fashion they just wanted to keep us in a whole other week just to be sure. Turns out I learnt much more during the second week, and gears started running even smoother.

This is of course talking about life in the military, barring all the lessons (close combat training, rifle stripping/cleaning, etc.). Those are things you learn to become an operational soldier, and should be distinguished from everyday life and military culture.

And so with an intensive two weeks dipped in army life, one is bound to have lost some of your civilian habits and picked some up from the army. The most obvious ones are biological and physical changes, especially sleeping and waking up early. Also, I seem to be sweating at the slightest instance of heat or stillness in the air. Which doesn't actually bother me, but it seems to disturb everyone around me. I hope it's not the smell, I don't think I sweat that much, but I seem to have perpetual water blobs crowning my head, and I seem to radiate heat like a recently shut-off engine or something.

And then there are also habits that you find are good and hope to take back with you, but you don't. One of mine for example is the water parade. Water parades alone can make up half or more of a day's total intake of water. One would think that it would inculcate an awareness of adequate hydration, with or without physical activities, and make you drink more water, but no leh! I keep forgetting to drink water, and then the next moment I notice the color of my pee and I freak out and gulp down two cups of water.

One habit I hope not to bring back is swearing. I don't think much explanation is needed when I say swearing in the army is more for humor and laughter than for anger. You just keep throwing things out everyday, every minute, and that makes you so apprehensive to open your mouth when you're at home, just in case you slip and go "G'd mornin', fuckface."

A habit I hope not to lose is what you're reading now - decent command and execution of the English language. I probably can count the number of people on one hand that I speak to with my atas English in the Army, the other 96.3% I speak to in Singlish, crude Hokkien crude Malay crude Cantonese Mandarin Yugoslavian Croatian... and so I'll want to keep it because I'll need it more than ever when I ORD and go into the workforce.

Now, what did you learn and/or lose while in NS?

Off to the Dusty Island

In an hour I will be leaving for Tekong, where my reluctant affair with the Singapore Armed Forces will begin.

Having acquired myself a 3.5G Nokia E51 (no camera version, thanks Daniel!), I will try to update whatever I feel is safe to update on my Twitter account. If you aren't already signed up to Twitter, you can just mark the page or subscribe to its RSS feed. If you are, be sure to follow me.

Now all that's left is for you to keep me in your prayers, so that I don't tear anything more than underwear, and my E51 or ZEN doesn't get stolen.


Recruit Wong, out.