My New Hairstyle

I got me a new haircut this past weekend. New hairstyle rather.. so exciting. Something new. It’s been years since I had a change of hairstyle, not counting the free one in the army la. The big floppy hair thing has been pretty overdue.. and so now maybe a change is good. Rather refreshing I’d say. =) got it on Saturday from SuperCuts, while waiting to watch a movie.. the cool part was that this lady who attended to me (I think her name was Jess or Jenn or something like that), she was pregnant. And I mean PREGNANT.. think basketball-under-the-clothes sized pregnant. Her tummy was HUGE! And that stylo-milo belt that they wear to keep the scissors and clips was just hanging off the tummy.. so amazing. Too bad I didn’t get a shot of her.. maybe if dar goes back next week then I might get a picture. Haha.. HUGE tummy.. *faints* right, back to my hair.. it’ll take some getting used to.. nice? =)

Anyway, so last week happened to be the Nanyang Business School week. So they had the stage and booths and events and wat-nots. The best part.. Free Ramly burgers. Haha.. free food is always a welcome. *hint* well, there was actually some buffet thing too and more giveaways, but I think those were entitled to students from the business school, so I ain’t got my share.. oh and there was this magic show thing too.. quite silly.. it’s a rip off I think. Seriously.


That's the magician on the left. Kenny caught him slipping a piece of a rope (which he magically cut and re-combined) into his pocket. I caught him reaching into his pocket and pulling out a card under his palm. boo.. haha *so evil*

My tummy’s still a little rumbly from yesterday’s thai food.. the Basil Chicken has got to be my favourite dish from thai-express.. I’d highly recommend it to anyone who is as crazy over minced meat and rice as me.. nice and spicy and very very tasty. So my tummy was complaining the whole of today, but hey.. I’m not. Hah. Great World City is a nice place to be on a Sunday. There’s no one there (since it's so out of the way) and you pretty much get to roam around freely and you can definitely find a place to sit in coffee bean. Something you’d never ever dream of when you’re down in orchard on a Sunday evening. Hah. Speaking of which, I’m tempted. I think the next time I bake me some cookies, I’ll use the chocolate powder from coffee bean, instead of milo. I seriously think it’ll kick up the taste a notch. It’s expensive though, one tub costs more than 15 bucks. Urgh. Sigh, the price of good cookies.. uh wells..


Double Happiness. heh..


TOP: Melvin and Kenny feeling the force..
BOTTOM: One of kenny's many Hard Rock Cafe pin collection that i like..

Finding Beepo

-RESTRICTED-

Department of Justice
KVKL Marshals Service

MOST WANTED

Name: Yvonne YAP
Known alias: BEEPO.


Description:

Sex: FEMALE
Race: CHINESE
Date of Birth: -withheld for publisher’s own security reasons-
Place of Birth: SINGAPORE
Height: -withheld for publisher’s own security reasons-
Weight: -withheld for publisher’s own security reasons-
Eyes: HAZEL
Hair: BROWN
Scars/tattoos: NONE KNOWN


Wanted For: ILLEGAL HARVESTING OF COOKIES – FIRST DEGREE THEFT OF COOKIE.


Warrant Issued: EASTERN DISTRICT OF KVKL
Date of Warrant: DECEMBER 8, 2006
Warrant Number: W547146357

===ARMED AND DANGEROUS===

BEEPO is wanted by the KVKL Marshals for Illegal Harvesting of natural resources required to manufacture cookies. BEEPO jumped bond after her arrest by the KVKL state county police for 3 counts of cookie consumption in the First Degree. BEEPO is also wanted by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the illegal production and distribution of cookies.

BEEPO is a former undercover CIA agent sent to retrieve vital cookie information. She is well-versed in firearms, explosives and tactical training. She is a bodybuilder whose weight and muscularity varies. The KVKL-MS is offering a reward of up to 250,000 tonnes of cookies for information directly leading to her arrest.

NOTICE: Before arrest, verify warrant through the KVKL Crime Information Center (KCIC). If arrested or whereabouts known, contact the nearest KVKL Marshals Service office or the KVKL Marshals Service Headquarters at 1800-266-5437 (1800-COOKIES)

-RESTRICTED-

3rd week

Snails.. I hate snails. If there’s something I hate more than a snail, it’s gotta be 2 snails. Hah. Don’t ask me why, I’m not sure. Maybe when I was smaller I got traumatized by some snail that crawled over me, or maybe I shouldn’t have watched SLUGS last time. Wateva the case, I’m not liking them and I don’t intend to do so anytime soon. Snails are good away from me. The further the better.. *wimp* =P

So, it’s already the 3rd week of school and I’m starting to feel lethargic. Looking forward to weekends more often now just like in the army. And just like in the army, I dread every Sunday night.. Last week was some EEE-week thing on campus, with the Nanyang Arts Festival happening at the same time too.. quite cool. Some of the performances quite solid.. Too bad my rechargeable battery died and I couldn’t get any pictures during the performances.. (read A Final Farewell for more details on the death). So anyway, I resorted to alkaline and got nice and trigger happy and took some shots around school. School’s actually a great place to shoot, with many nice scenes, if only I’d know how to compose it properly.. quite a pity.. and photography lessons don’t come cheap.. sponsor anyone?


NAF: Nanyang Arts Festival

The weekend’s quite cool. A rather eventful one too actually, cos had quite abit of things to do and ended up waking real early on Sunday morning.. (early morning = more daylight hours = do more things = longer day.. in my world. Yes.. hi. Welcome to my world) I got to eat at Holland. It’s gotta be like a looong time since I ate there. Ok, so not that long actually, went there with beeps and ben after aaron’s wedding.. more like it’s been a long time since I went to NYDC. Ya, that sounds more like it.. NYDC. They serve great pasta and I just realized that they actually don’t serve any steak or fishNchips kinda thing.. how interesting. Must be doing very well from all that cheese cake.. oh and I’m up for duty again next week. So fast. *shrug* oh oh and I’m beginning to like my contacts so much. It’s really comfortable actually. And it’s so convenient not having to wear specs.. these 2 weeks have got to be the longest period that I’ve worn them at a go. beautiful invention.


Great Place, Great Food, Great Company. =)

Oh, and Melvin was nice enough to source out and pass to me all 6 episodes of Star Wars! How cool is that, I finally get to watch Episode III and see how he becomes Darth Vader.. Haha.. you start speaking strangely and doing stupid stuff after watching them. Heh. “Cranky, you will be..”


Left: Feel The Force..
Right: Kenny up to his mischief. There was a barrier lying around and we wondered if anyone would climb all the way down, see the barrier and go back up. Hey, at least we didn't put it at the top of the stairs. =P

A Final Farewell

Ladies and Gentlemen, we are gathered here today in remembrance of him, and I would like to take this opportunity to say a few words in memory of him..

I will miss the countless trips that we made together, all the wonderful places that we have traveled to and breathtaking sights we have beheld together. The countless hours spent with him will always be cherished. I will miss the inspiring moments that he has given to me and I will definitely miss his uncanny ability to let me realize my music potential to the fullest. He was always there for me when I needed advice. He was always able to provide my ears with that soulful explanation and soothing tone throughout my entire life as a student in the polytechnic. Just when I would think that he was about to fail me, there would always be the comforting knowledge in the fact that he always had spares around. And no matter how drained he was.. after a mere 24 hours, he would be rejuvenated and back to normal, good as new, like how I always knew him to be..

Amongst that, he was also kind, always willing to help someone out. Even though he knew where his sense of belonging was, he was ever willing to be called upon should someone ever needed a boost. His sense of selflessness has touched and helped a great many people. He belonged to the group of people that some would call "A few Good Men".

Today I stand before everyone and profoundly express my most sincere gratitude to him. Him who has served loyally, honorably and who meant the world to me. The strong everlasting relationship we shared, both in good times and bad, will always leave a deep impression in my heart.

Good bye to you my friend.. my SONY rechargeable batteries..


The Four Musketeers who have brought hours of joy on my discman to me. Today they stand proudly before you as they are retired and honourably relieved of their duties.

Tripod + Photoshop = FUN!

"Why you like that?"
"Ya la! How could you have done that?"
"What? What did i do?"

I just love that picture. Heh..

Tutorials, sigh.. today will mark the day of the first tutorial for me in 2007. And it has to be maths. Of all things, of all the modules that I’m taking, the first tutorial has to be maths. Of all things, amongst all of them, my first paper this semester has to be math.. I can run, but I can’t hide.. darn. Seems like I’m just fated to be with this math thing, thank God I didn’t get a C for math in the previous exam. (I got 1 stupid C last sem) I’m hoping not to get any more Cs but somehow I don’t think that’s all too possible.. *shrug* uh well..

So anyway, this past weekend, I got me a set of bi-weekly contacts. Free! Acuvue Advanced kinda thing.. From dear eric at Paris Miki. I’ve been wanting to try the bi-weekly ones and decided to be thick-skinned and ask them for a pair to try. Don’t ask Don’t get. Heh =) Actually I tried the monthly ones but it’s pretty uncomfortable.. she said it’s ‘thicker’ than the daily ones that’s why it’s a little more uncomfortable, so in the end I happily walked out with a pair of bi-weeklies in my eyes and a complementary bottle of solution in my bag.

Along with that I got me a tripod too.. it’s fun actually, I’m amazed at the things I did with my tripod to entertain myself (as you can tell from above and below). Heh.. finally I can take pictures of me and stuff that I could never have taken cos my hands aren’t as steady as I’d like them to be.. Thank you mr tripod and photoshop.

The stars were taken from my room, Aperture setting 8.0 and shutter speed at 15 secs. They're the glow-in-the-dark kind that's pasted on the wall.. and with the tripod, they turn out REALLY well..
The panoramic picture is just a sign of boredom and cheap thrills that i indulge in. =)

I’m up for duty this week, gonna be stationed in G1 so I’ll be playing there. Quite exciting.. it’s been a while since I officially belonged to a team, rather than being on loan to any team that needed a guitarist. =) Wednesday ought to be fun, I’ll keep u updated.

The silly external harddisk that dar bought from funan on Saturday didn’t work. And somehow it doesn’t like my notebook either.. so I can’t format it and nothing works at all. I almost tore my hair out. So then I decided to go down to funan to sort it out since I have a 7-day grace period and when I got there, I tore my hair out. Right there, in front of me, he plugged it in and hit the format button and IT WORKED! Crap! I could just almost see the harddisk smiling and sticking out its little tongue at me. I’ve never felt that stupefied over a gadget before.. my jaw dropped and I figured that no matter how hard I’d try to explain to the fella at the shop, he’s gonna think I’m just some silly low-tech wannabe who can’t sort a simple matter out. Right.. thanks. *glare at the harddisk*

So I’m totally beat now, I traveled half-way across Singapore only to travel back. *yawn*

Oh, and I just earned me $5.20 for putting up an advertisement on my blog (you’d see it below the firefox thing, it’s some home insurance thingy. Yes, just by putting up a text link, this fella paid me. How cool is that la.. the thing is, I’m supposed to put it up for a year. (?!?) But he happily said that once the link is up, he’ll pay me the money. And he did. Hmm, maybe that’s why it’s only $5.20..

Quote of the month.. Despair. Utter despair..

IT'S ALIVE!!!

It Works!! It finally works! I can finally post something from school. I don't know if it's something i did or didn't do or even so, i'm not sure what happened. But now i can finally post something. Ok, so maybe someone from NTU read the post and decided to do something abt it.. *wishfulthinking*

Was doing the laundry the other day.. The common practice is that you remove the clothes in the machine (when it's ready and the owner has not collected it) and place it on the top. So there i was using this empty machine when i noticed a furcoat on the machine next to mine. All snuggled up was a huge cat happily sleeping amidst the bundle of fluffy towels and clothes..
Lesson Learnt: If you ever find fur on ur towels after the laundry, WASH THEM AGAIN!!

My Last Weekend

Ok, this post is WAAYYY overdue. I can't seem to upload anything from school. Either NTU doesn't like their students blogging (i'd bet) or Blogger.com just doesn't like NTU students. Either how, i'm at a losing end. If you're reading this post, that means that somehow, it got upload after trying endlessly.. you'd be amazed at how many things i've tried, just to get this post up. And they say we have the best technology.. BAAH!

Anyway..

It’s back to school this week sadly. 1st 2 lectures of the semester and I feel lost already. And the fact that the silly timetable looks so ugly doesn’t seem to help, but that’s another story. Later..

So my last weekend, before school starts, just ended yesterday. Wasn’t too bad, was quite fulfilling. I managed to go out and do touristy stuff and take funny pictures and do stuff that I prob won’t be able to do once school starts. At least, I’ll be having other things to worry abt then.

We went to make new specs for dar on sat. She’s prob one of the few that I know who still has near perfect eyesight.. well, not for long. Ha. Went down to Eric’s place and tested her eyesight again and it was the same as before, 50 on the right, 25 on the left, really low.



Then we went to the bus-stop to get a bus and stumbled upon some old Armenian church. We decided to get all touristy. Quite a cool place, for one, it’s really nice and quiet and peaceful inside. It’s got this nice lovely interior and the outside spots this nice garden-like area. Some pretty cool statues and tombstones (morbid I know) too..


That's the sign at the entrance of the church which attracted her. 'WELCOMES ALL VISITORS' heh..


that's the altar of the church. It's got a nice peaceful quietness about it, a stark contrast with the busy road just infront of the building. Beautiful interior..



There's quite a fascinating garden just by the back of the church, with really interesting statues and a mini grave-yard. My favourite's the one with the cross on Jesus.. you can just feel the agony coming from the scene..

Then we headed up this trail that was provided, some see-the-history-of-singapore kinda trail. It led us to the Freemason’s building and on to the stamp archive. Stamp museum rather.. I refused to pay $5 to enter to see stamps and more so cos I can’t take any pictures in it.. if I’d ever own a museum, I’ll allow photography inside. And then I realized that beep’s got complimentary tickets to the Singapore museum. It was abt 4pm by then and the last entry into the museum was 5.30pm. Cut the long story short, we walked to PS to meet her to get the tickets. Ohoh, and we bypassed Timbre along the way. Nice looking place just that it wasn’t open. But still nice.. would like to go there when it’s open sometime.


That's the stamp museum on the left and the freemason's building on the right.

Dar’s not the walking type so getting to PS was a feat by itself, and no, we didn’t make it to the museum cos if we’d walk back to the museum, I’d have to carry her home. =P in the end we went to kovan to buy food for the barbecue. I got too lazy to take any pictures during dinner cos my hands were greasy and all, although it’s prob gonna be the last barbecue I have in a long time.. anyway, this one tasted abit different. The crabsticks weren’t tasting right and the prawns had a little too much juice in the head.. thankfully the chicken marinated with A LOT of stuff turned out well. Or maybe it’s just the fact that school’s starting soon that made my tastebuds go whacky. Then again, I think it’s NTUC. I’ll go back to bishan’s one if I’d ever have to buy anymore food for a barbecue. It’s ridiculous, the one at hougang is HUGE. So much space, but so much empty space. Really little variety. Pity.. good waste of space..

Alright, so that was Saturday. Sunday evening was spent at Holland. Nice place. It’s changed so much though and café rosso wasn’t open. Sad. Next to Baker’s Inn (Bakerzin wateva) I think they serve the nicest Warm Chocolate cake. They were having this Chinese Opera thing at the amphi-theatre next to Holland V. For the first time in my life i sat and watched abit of it. I’ve got no idea how the residents in the adjacent blocks put up with the noise.. and there was a flea market there too with ppl selling everything from pink Calvin Klein undies to pokemon cards to shoes and what-nots. Then there was a quick drink at deli-france. First time I got to a deli-france that’s dine-in. So you don’t have to pay at the cashier when ordering, they take ur order just like any restaurants/diners. Nice..



Opera anyone? The guy in black (some drunken master thing) apparently kills the other fella or something like that.. i'm not too sure. hah. oh wells..

What a ride.. and now, it’s back to school. 64 more days *yawn*

ARGHH!!!

ok, i'm so irritated. this has got to be the dunno-how-many-time i'm trying to post something on blogspot. Something seems to be wrong. i can't seem to post or upload any pictures.

ok so anyway, i stumbled upon this site called blogsvertise. apparently it would pay be some amount of money for posting an entry about a given website. Like they would give you an URL and tell you to write up abt the site. something of abt a couple of paragraphs and abt 100 words. and i apparently have to link to the site's URL (in this case it's blogsvertise) at least 3 times.. and then they would check it and send the payment. something like that. ok, i'm not too sure how it'll work., stuff like that never seems to work out. but what the heck right? just give it a try la.. at the most if it doesn't work out i'll prob remove this post anyway..

now the only problem i have is sorting out the connection to blogger.com. i can't seem to connect. i don't know if it's gotta do with the NTU server (maybe, ntu's so cranky anyway) or is it my notebook, or is it blogger's problem. argh.

ok, so about blogsvertise, i'll let you know again if it works out..

Does Santa Exist?

Alright, I know that it’s way past Christmas, and even counting the 12 days of Christmas, it’s still way over. But I just have to post this entry. I remember seeing this article on Xing Wen’s website (yes, there was a time when personal websites were the in-thing) once. And after sooo many years, I’m proud to say I’ve found the article off google again.. haha.. enjoy..

-Is There A Santa Claus?-

No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeers which only Santa has ever seen.

There are 2 billion children in the world. BUT since Santa doesn't appear to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children that reduces the workload to 15% of the total - a mere 380 million children according to the Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes, one presumes there's at least one good child in each!

Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of out calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75-1/2 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding and etc.

This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For the purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second - a conventional can run, tops, 15 miles per hour!

The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized Lego set (2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting the "flying reindeer" (see point #1) could pull TEN TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload - not even counting the weight of the sleigh - to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison - this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth ship.

353,000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second! Each! In short, they will burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporised within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500,061 times greater than gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.

In conclusion - If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's dead now!

Happy Long Weekend

Happy New Year everyone!! It’s finally 2007.

This time I stuck to my word. =) New Year’s Eve was not spent in some mosh pit while I try to squeeze thru orchard. No, this time it was spend in the nice comfortable and spacious setting of a chalet. Coasta Sands.. I pretty much had 3 choices, there was WatchNight to attend, going-to-marina-to-see-fireworks and kenny’s chalet. I went with the latter. Kenny and Melvin were nice enough to invite me to their gathering. Supposed to be a ‘biomed’ gathering, but since I knew most of them, he invited me anyhow.

Quite a nice feeling to be able to spend new year’s eve outside of the army. Finally, now I can sit and enjoy a drink and take in the new year’s eve air. =) simple food, simple games.


That's Kenny in blue. The rest proceeded to play Initial D. And yes, "Don't drink and drive" applies to computer games too..

One of the few barbecues i had with really simple food. Just sausages, crabsticks and chicken wings.. Beehoon pre-cooked. Simple but it ends up with no food wastage. Very Good idea.. oh and by the way, i just found out that BARBECUE is spelled with a C not a Q. goodness me..

Tried to take a picture of the coals but it came out pink.. haha. Reminds me of something u'd find in Superman with the glowing crystals and rocks and what-nots..

Everyone takes a card without seeing it and stick it on his forehead. You hope that you're not holding on to the biggest card and pour whatever nonsense u want (from chilli sauce to lemon juice..) into a cup. Loser is then revealed after everyone has his turn to put in the nonsense.. and yes, Kenny with the biggest smiles.. well.. he drank it up.

Tuesday was spent at aaron’s wedding. CONGRATULATIONS!! Bright and early in the morning. So fast, he’s married.. and *gasp* she’s my age.. wonder how my folks will react if I tell them I wanna get married now. Haha.. aiyah, but also good la. Get married younger = probably have more kids = help the garmen = get a lot of bonuses in return. Heh.. sounds good eh?

Meet mr and mrs Aaron Tan. Some say she's got Bambi eyes, so he must be Thumper.

daddyyap, mummyyap, thumpertan, bambitan, alvinyap, beepoyap =)

After the wedding we went down to breko.. lovely place. Settler’s café had waay to much ppl and there was no space for us. So landed up at breko.. they used to serve cards if u requested. Playing cards. But they don’t seem to anymore.. maybe change of management.. Ben had to go 7-11 to get a new deck.. very nice cards. Very smooth.. and very hard to shuffle.. (think cards splattering everywhere) =P

beeps and ben, me and dar.

From Top: Beeps=short chubby tongue. Me=no, it won't fit into the nostrils.
Ben=God of Gamblers (aura included) Dar=NO! DON'T EAT ME! heh, i especially like ben's one, somehow the camera clicked and took such a wierd picture.

VERY good chicken.. *drool*

Top: More evidence that they don't serve cards, resorting to self-entertainment. Bottom: No, she just won't trust me when we play Bluff. she just won't trust me.. just won't..

And my time table’s confirmed.. for the new semester. Really really really bad.. sucky. It’s such a hard-to-use system. Trying to register for the modules is like playing the fastest fingers first kinda game. He who has the fastest internet connection and fastest mouse-clicking finger wins. I think I’m suffering from an overflow of adrenaline.. urgh. Great way to start the new semester..

Happy New Year Everyone!