hello from Japan

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Am now in the land of vending machines and oolong cha. HAHAHA…it is Japan lahz. Using the computer at the place I am staying. And damn I hate the keyboard.

So far so good…saw some nice shoes at Harajuku. Not sure if I want to get them but they are relatively cheap. 3900 yen. Saw a lot of cosplayers too. Oh and shops selling lolita dresses…so cool…

Alrighty, shall not park my butt at the computer here too long. Even though the internet is free but not too nice to use so long right?

getting ready to go go go

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It’s a mad rush around the house everytime we’re going off on a holiday. Grabbing this and that, stuffing them into the bags. Lots of frowning, getting frustrated that nothing must be left out. And here I am trying my best to keep calm and not get influenced by the other members of the family.

I guess getting annoyed and frustrated will not help the situation. You’re only bound to forget more things. Our family also always end up looking like we’re going on a 5 month vacation when we’re only going to be away for 3 weeks. Ok, I’m exaggerating a little but the number and size of our bags always don’t quite match up with the number of days our trip is. Ah, but that’s just my family.

With my clothing and toiletries taken care of by Mum, meaning that all those stuff goes into the huge suitcases, my own bag usually contains my other personal necessities and entertainment. Which I’m also careful not to pack in too much coz I need the space when I’m coming home. Need to pack in all the things bought there! :laugh:

So there. I’ll be away for some time which also means that there’s going to be no update till I come home. Duh. Well, I’m going to miss the finals of SuperBand AND National Day. Speaking of which, I haven’t visited the website for NDP 2006.

getting emotional at the movies

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Watched “Helen The Baby Fox” this afternoon with Sis. It’s a Japanese movie about a boy and his special bond with a blind and deaf baby fox. I’m not going to spill the contents of the movie. If you wanna know more, go watch it. It’s definitely worth it…especially if you’re an animal lover.

I expected myself to tear as usual but this time I actually cried. First time crying while watching a movie. I could feel tears coming to my eyes. Expected it to just stop at there. Next moment I knew, 3 pairs of steady teardrops rolling down my cheeks. All for one scene in the movie.

Rushed down to town to meet 7ners. Celebration for Per’s 21st. Just a small one – dinner at NYDC. After which, we chilled out awhile at the tables on the 9th floor of Cine. Heh…actually we went there coz I had to collect some stuff for Sis at Mise.

Nad was holding my bag of mags when she walked out of the mrt at her stop. Didn’t even realise until she turned back and called out for me. That’s not the only thing I forgot. Just now when I opened my bag to get my digicam out, I saw the tiara still sitting in my bag. SHUCKS! I forgot about it. And I was damn happy I remembered to bring it out unlike for Nad’s birthday celebration. Even when Sof asked where it was, I happily told her it was in my bag. *sigh* And I had to forget about it later…

The tiara’s supposed to be passed on to the next 7ner celebrating her 21st. So why is it still stuck with me?! I have bad memory…*wails*

killing the spam

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Another bout of spam comments. Don’t know whether to say it’s gone worse or it’s just as bad as the last time. Although there are considerably less spam comments than the last round, this time some have actually passed off as approved comments instead of getting filtered out for moderation. So I thought heck, it’s time to get a spam filter.

Yep, got it installed so now you’ll have to fill out this extra field when you wanna post a comment. Nothing too difficult. 🙂

We met Huishan (台湾妹) to chill out at TCC in Citylink. Then later met Jiemin for dinner and a movie, The Lake House. The movie’s supposed to be a remake of the Korean film, Il Mare. I think it was a good movie especially the last part which got everyone excited and going “oh~~~”. Alright, no spoilers. Go catch the movie.

Ending this entry off with a photo I took of the sky yesterday evening. The sun was setting and casting this pink glow in the clouds. The sky was a nice shade of light blue which complimented the pink.

 

be like me

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Late night entry. Supposed to post up the little pic I did for Shinya’s 23rd but I don’t want to lump it with my thoughts below. Just doesn’t seem right to. I’ll post up the pic later.

I read friends’ blogs saying that they’re so confused coz they are still single but they don’t wanna be. Else, they’re in love with someone but it’s sort of turning to be one-sided and well, they’re down in the dumps.

Seriously speaking, I’m kinda numb about love now. Before this, I couldn’t bring myself to tell people that I’ve been rejected before when they asked. It seemed too embarassing. But hell, so what? It happened twice. Yes, you read it right. TWICE.

After that, I told myself to stop believing in fairytales coz fuck manz, this is REALITY. No matter how you denied that looks didn’t matter, somehow they did. We live in a pick n’ choose world whether you like it or not.

I’m not ruling out the fact that I’m still attracted to certain guys. But the point is not to hope for much. Coz the more you hope, when rejection comes, it will cut deeper. I’m tired of feeling all torn up inside. So, the moment I feel myself summoning up those emotions, the next moment I’ll be blocking some out.

If it happens then well, I’ll just count myself lucky. Else, damnit…just move on. And don’t try to tell me, it’ll happen soon. How do you expect me to believe in that? *rolls eyes* For goodness sake, I’m already 21. Are you trying to gloat about it?

So to all my girl friends who are already attached, you lucky bitches. To my other girl friends who are and have been single (so far), take my advice…be like me, the disillusioned freak.

per and the sexy osaka man

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Yesterday was Per’s birthday. I already sent her some 迷路兵 photos which can be considered as birthday present part 1. So here’s part 2…you get to “pose” with the self-proclaimed “Sexy Osaka Man”. お誕生日おめでとう!!!

(Ok…birthday girl requested not to post the photo just like that…so follow the link to see it.)

Actually I already wished her the moment it reached 23rd. We had a video conference.

We were having so much fun clowning around. I was trying to mock-whack Sis but she said it didn’t look like I was whacking her. Then she tried throwing a punch slow-mo at me. As her fist hit the screen, I decided to “catch” that blow. Started waving my arms about and moving backwards as if I got hit and am losing my balance. And it ended with laughing fits from both sides. :rofl:

We had dinner together – Sis, Per and I. Uma Uma Men (again). And we had some birthday cake!

23rd is also Mysty’s birthday. Mysty-chan お誕生日おめでとう!!! Hope you’re having a good time in Virginia with David. 🙂

And as you can see from my little calendar in the sidebar. Today’s Fumihiko’s birthday. お誕生日おめでとう!!! In case you’re wondering who’s the guy, Fumihiko came to visit TP with his schoolmates. I was paired up with him for the self-introduction session. We wrote messages for each other on boards. Knowing that the Japanese students had a difficulty with English, I told him to write his message in Japanese and I’ll write mine in English. And we can both go figure out each other’s message somehow. With my close-to-nil knowledge of Japanese language, I took time to read his message, half guessing the kanji. But I’m proud to say I more or less understood what he was trying to say.

performances and all

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I was too tired to blog on Saturday or yesterday.

Saturday, we were supposed to watch Lucify perform at the *scape event. But both of us overslept so gave it a miss. We still went down later and managed to catch the appearance of the 10 finalists of Singapore Idol 2. Not that I wanted to see them. Sis wanted to see Jonathan Leong. Please tell me what’s so good about him?

We were supposed to meet Carol but we had to leave coz Mum called to say that grandpa had a fall and has been sent to the hospital. Went to the hospital. Waited around. Got hungry. Bought toast from the machine – the same one found at Mediacorp. Quite tasty. Waited some more. Managed to see grandpa before they found a room for him to get warded into. 

Pardon my bad memory but my memory of grandpa sort of stops at the time when I was a kid. The photo on the fridge magnet on the refrigerator. Perhaps that’s what the mind does best, block out all the bad stuff and only leave the good memories behind. I think that was the time when we were closest to our grandparents. As we grew up, we sort of drifted apart. So when I saw him lying on the bed, looking all thin and frail, I couldn’t help but wonder when did he become like that? He hardly responds. We wonder whether he even recognises us coz he has dementia. So sometimes he registers, sometimes he’s off.

After the hospital visit, we rushed down for 静爆乐团’s performance at Telok Ayer CC. I never knew the speaker’s corner looked so grand. All along I thought it just consisted of a signpost to mark out the area. The speaker will have to bring his own chair to stand on. Building a damn speaker’s corner is so blardee ironic. Talk about freedom of speech. Haha…by the time you get to the end of the rules and regulations, you can crush up your paper filled with the points to rant and rave about. Just pack up and go home.

Ah, but I have digressed. So I suppose the speaker’s corner is now used as a stage for performances like the one we were there to watch. 静爆 sang “Wake Up (拼了)” AGAIN. I’m sorry lahz, but I CANNOT STAND them singing it. *jumps up and down, hands covering ears* If you STILL don’t know what I’m talking about, check out one of the older entries. And guess what? I actually took a video clip of them singing it. Till now I can’t understand why I took that clip. *shakes head in denial*

Yesterday, Sis being all sore that we missed Lucify’s performance the day before, made sure we didn’t miss their appearance at Bishan J8. Haha…but they didn’t perform. All they did was pose for photos and answer a few questions about how they felt being in the grand finals. Is this some sort of promotion for the grand finals?

So, the 4 groups had to pose for photos. Cuifang decided to make them pose ala neoprint 16-shot style. Except they only had to pose 4 times, each pose lasting for 5 seconds. 迷路兵’s 4 poses were so original. :laugh: Who would have thought of that? Didn’t take photos of J3. Sorry manz, I don’t really like them. Too many photos so click to see each set.

  1. Lucify
  2. Soul
  3. 迷路兵

At night after shopping, we went to watch Defuse perform at Youth Park. It wasn’t the best performance as Leonard announced that they would be taking a break after that performance. Sort of like on hiatus. Reason being his vocals have been affected by all the smoking so he needs the time to heal. His words could have made you go all teary if you were a big fan of theirs (I’m not lahz) but the way he said it, somehow I got this very very bad feeling that they might disappear after going on hiatus.

You hear those words, you expect him to have finally understood how his band members felt about his smoking habit. Saying all those stuff about him realising that his smoking has affected his vocals and sort of regret not listening to his band members advice. The next minute, he’s at the corner lighting a cigarette. -_-||| What’s the point then?

 

Anyway, Leonard’s Hello Kitty guitar is cute. :laugh:

windows live messenger

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I remember Pwen asking whether anyone has tried the new Windows Live Messenger. Not that she directly asked me, it was part of her MSN nick. :rofl: At that moment, I was thinking it’s just a new IM, MSN works fine for me so why should I download another program? I used to think, the more the better so I had almost every IM…ICQ, IRC, Yahoo Messenger, until I realised everything just took up space and I hardly even talked to the people in my friend lists.

Just yesterday, I was desperate for reading material in the loo so I just picked up a copy of Digital Life on the floor. It’s kinda ironic, I study IT stuff, decide that I’ll probably not go into the IT line but still opt IT stuff as my reading material. Anyway, that’s not the point. There was an article about Windows Live Messenger in the newspaper. I found out from the article that Windows Live Messenger is just an upgrade of both Yahoo Messenger and MSN. So it’s actually MSN Messenger 8.0. And this is supposed to link both IMs together…

“The tie-up means users of Yahoo Messenger and Microsoft Live Messenger (an upgrade for MSN Messenger) can now see and chat with one another across the two instant messenger (IM) networks.” – The Straits Times, Digital Life 18 July 2006

Before you rejoice, here’s the catch. Yes, haven’t you been warned to read the fine print before?

“Both users must have the latest versions of the software. Otherwise, you will find yourself adding contacts who seem to be perpetually offline (even though they are available).”

Not like I care anyway since almost all my friends use MSN. This upgrade boasts to have better features…

  1. Nicer background colours and you can change the colour scheme quickly.
  2. Drag-and-drop file-sharing folder.
  3. Able to send offline messages.

Alright, I admit point 1 is like “wow!” to me. But doesn’t MSN Plus already do that for me? And is there going to be a conflict of programs when I install the new upgrade? Point 2 is just blah. What they meant I guess is something like sharing files between computers on the same network. So, you won’t need to request and wait for acceptance of files. Well, I haven’t explored that bit and I think the usual method works fine so yea… Point 3 is a good one. With ICQ, you’re able to do that but not with the current MSN. And trust me, it comes in handy at times.

So, I was telling Nad that I was worried about the conflict of programs but there I was downloading the installer for the upgrade already. Haha. Guess I’ll just install first and rant later if anything goes wrong. :rofl:

Installed. Got any difference mehz? Other than the colourful background (which you can change the colour of it) of the main window, there’s not much difference. For a minute, the upgrade shocked me coz I couldn’t see my MSN Plus options on the chat window. Don’t tell me the dreaded has happened? After some exploring around, I finally found out that my current version of MSN Plus doesn’t work on this upgrade. Which means, I have to upgrade my version of MSN Plus as well. Upgrade done. Yea, NOW I’m happy. 🙂

Nad wanted to see how my MSN windows looked with the upgrade. So I took a screenshot and sent it to her.

She replied saying that she was happy with the current look of her MSN windows coz they were cool. Was puzzled by her statement. How could the normal MSN windows look cool? Asked her to send a screenshot.

Ah…so she’s using some skin for her MSN. That’s when I saw it. She was having video conferencing with JW (who’s now in Australia) and he looked kinda nerdy with his specs. Laughing, I told her about it. The next moment, she sent another screenshot.

This time, both were smiling. Ah…she told him about it. Hahaha… Thought it would end here. But no…coz the next moment, she sent another screenshot.

*pengz* Can’t believe they are so eng to do this. Yea…*waves back*