Powerful words from a powerful man. As fights go on between Israelis and Palestinians, let’s be reminded that…
No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”
— Nelson Mandela
Quite a bit has been going on but I’ll take my time to fill in the gap since my last post.
Since I made a status post on Facebook that I’ve perhaps found a new song to sing at KTV, I thought I’ll clear up some doubt on whether I memorise lyrics when I sing Japanese songs.
The truth is…no, I don’t. Apart from YUI’s “Goodbye Days“, ZONE’s “Secret Base ~君がくれたもの~” and Perfume’s “My Color“, I do not remember the lyrics to any other song. The only reason why I know the lyrics to these three songs by heart is coz of repeated listening and singing. So, I did not purposely memorise them.
When I want to try singing a song, I find the Japanese lyrics to the song. Not romanji, but the actual Japanese lyrics. I will only peek at the romanji for kanji that I can’t read. This helps me to keep up with my Japanese reading skills. Besides, there’s no romanji when you sing Japanese songs at KTV. This also explains why I sing rather slow tempo songs or songs with easy lyrics. I just can’t read Japanese as fast!
A good site I go to for lyrics is JpopAsia, which has the Japanese lyrics, romanji and translation of songs.
Trust me, it’s really no fun singing along with romanji lyrics in hand.
My blog was down for awhile coz it exceeded the 8GB bandwidth. I’m quite sure it was the doing of spam bots as I receive tons of spam comments and all my pictures and embedded videos are hosted elsewhere. As much as I like the sound of thousands of page views, I prefer if actual people are reading and not spam bots.
I had to upgrade my plan coz of this problem. Not that I really wanted to in the first place…boooo…
Any idea how to prevent them from even visiting my site?
I got my first birthday present of 2014 in the form of watching Alma Mater return to her pedestal via the very cool Alma Cam. She was taken down in 2012 for restoration.
After years of braving the rain and snow, she had obtained a shade of green. This was how she looked like when I graduated.
I began checking out Alma Cam on the morning of 9 April, but due to the time difference, all I saw were drunk people passing by. At about 7pm (8am there), I got excited coz I noticed someone taking measurements. The action only began around 9.30pm (10.30am there).
Note: I didn’t think of taking screen shots earlier, so I only grabbed some when they were beginning to return her to her pedestal.
Prepping to lift her…
And she’s in the air!
Putting her down gently…
I couldn’t watch the final adjustments coz it was already midnight and I had to turn in. I suppose there was some sort of ceremony as there is supposed to be a time capsule put in her to be opened in 10 year’s time.
And here’s what I saw this morning…
Alma’s back in business with a nice bronze shade!
Tolerance. Something that not everyone has. Sometimes I wonder why we allow society to shape how we think or act.
“The only thing wrong in this little girl’s world is the people who won’t accept her for who she is.”
Jazz was not allowed to play girl’s soccer coz she’s biologically a boy and they are afraid she’ll hurt the other girls. What bullshit! Look at her. She walks and talks like a girl! She is most definitely a girl.
Watching her swim in her homemade mermaid’s tail is just incredible and sad at the same time. She loves mermaids because they have nothing between their legs to define which gender they are.
I have nothing to say except that she is awesome and that she gives hope to transgender people. I also think her parents are awesome for not conforming to what society wants us to think or act.
We have booked the place for our wedding reception. Yay! Though I’m a little sad that I can’t get my ex-colleague to do a dessert table or even bake some cupcakes as wedding favours. I kind of knew that a dessert table was out of the question, but the place said “strictly no outside food”. Orz.
There aren’t many shops or places that I would strongly recommend for cupcakes (except for that place in New York), but Des bakes good stuff. I have high standards for desserts. They can’t be too sweet (such that they taste artificial). Twelve Cupcakes is good but mainstream, and I’m usually afraid of chain stores. They can be good, but once they start rapidly expanding, their quality goes down. Besides, Des has some stuff that is different and she doesn’t stinge on ingredients.
So, if you want a good cupcake, I’ll recommend Des’ business called Pretty Delish. As the name suggests, her cupcakes are pretty delicious. My favourite is her lychee rose cupcake.
I know Starbucks has been releasing their popular Sakura goods for quite a few years now, but newbie Starbucks fan here has got to make a post now.
The goods are so cute…and pink! My favourite colour! Here are some of the goods I like. *big hint*
I like the two pink hot water tumblers behind. I can’t decide which I like better…maybe the one with the flip top cap on the far right?
Then there’s the regular Starbucks mug on the left with the special Sakura print. 超きれい!
And this! I got the Christmas version of this during our office gift exchange, but it was the smaller one. I really wanted the larger one and now they have it with the Sakura print!
Of course, kaypoh me had to go check out what Japan and Korea Starbucks were offering for their Sakura goods.
*spazz*
Japan Starbucks didn’t really have nicer ones but they have this…
A set of glasses, one’s clear and the other’s frosted. The clear one has print that turns pink when cold liquid is poured into the glass. So cute!
And they have a special drink — Sakura Chocolate! Ah…now I really miss having Sakura-flavoured soft cream in Japan…
Korea Starbucks had quite a few cute pink Sakura print mugs too, but they have since taken down some of the pictures from their website. Guess those are sold out already.
Recently I decided to visit my much neglected blog. Went through my friends’ blogs and found (what I think is) a gem on Nad’s blog. She has this link to a scrapbooking site called Project Life by Becky Higgins. Didn’t think too much of it at first. I mean I know Nad is into scrapbooking, and I’m just clicking around being curious and all. But as I explored the site, I started to have ideas. I had no clue that the new age scrapbooking was that easy! There’s also Simple Stories and Echo Park Paper Co. Choices, choices…
Now, I’m thinking of starting a small project. To do up my own wedding album. I haven’t taken official photos yet, but when I do, I’ll rather document the event in my own way rather than pay for something which looks nice but will probably end up under the bed after a few months.
Me want! The white planner looks so chio!
