Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Bamboo Pole Gets Stolen

A couple of weeks ago, i noticed one of the bamboo poles outside my corridoor was missing. I realised it had been stolen.


Ever since i started staying in Sengkang in 2002, a few items outside my unit had been stolen:
1. A piece of Byford underwear
2. A piece of G-string
3. A pair of new Ocean Pacific slippers
4. A bamboo pole

Damned thief.

Monday, July 23, 2007

Sunflowers At Changi Airport Terminal 2

Sunflowers at the Skytrain stop.
These 2 were taken with a Nokia 6233:


These 2 were taken with a Samsung S630:
(Colors are obviously much better, more vibrant.)

98% Discount!

This Residents' Committee's announcement at Block 701B Yishun Avenue 5 stated in English that members get a 2% discount. But in Chinese it says "98% discount"!
“百分之九十八的折扣!”

Crash, Boom, Bang!

One morning last week as i was about to enter my company's premises, a lorry was moving into the entrance and stopped there. I horned at it to move in so i could do likewise. Instead of moving in, it reversed. I pressed my horn continuously but the bugger still continued to reverse. Even my colleagues at the 4th floor of the building could hear my horn loud and clear. And "BAM!", his lorry rammed into the front of my car. I came out of my car to assess the damage. Some part of the front grille was scratched. The number plate was split into two halves.

When the lorry driver opened his door to come out, i heard his radio was turned on at full blast. No wonder he couldn't hear me. Later his sister, who's my colleague, whom he sends to work every morning, told me he coudn't see my car at all. Yeah, his Nissan Cabstar

very high and my Getz

is very low. Bloody hell.

I asked the driver, "Uncle, i kept horning at you and you didn't hear at all?"

He said, "Sorry."

I got the plate replaced the same day. $15. Got the money back from the driver's sister. Left the scratched grille as it is.

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix

Watched Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix last night.

Found it quite boring. I find all the quick successive flashbacks of Potter's life espeically irritating. I prefer The Goblet of Fire.

I espcially liked the part where the dragon chased Potter while he flew on his broom. The dragon even sent Potter crashing down onto the sloping roof of Hogwarts school. Cool.

I suspect The Half Blood Prince,

which is coming out in November 2008, might be similarly boring to watch as The Order of the Phoenix.

It feels like both the Order of the Phoenix and The Half Blood Prince are just written and made into movies just for the sake of filling up the gaps that lead to final climatic battle between Potter and Voldemort in The Deathly Hallows.

Deathly Hallows is scheduled to be realesed in 2010. By then my son, Shawn, would already be in Primary 1. Stage 1 of the Circle Line would be open by then too.

I dozed off years ago while watching The Chamber of Secrets.

Woke up near the end to find a giant serpent crawling around some dark tunnel.

I haven't even watched The Prisoner of Azkaban

where Sirius Black turned out to be Potter's godfather, one of the good guys, of course.

My, look how the 3 kids have grown since The Sorcerer's Stone.


Spoilers of Deathly Hallows:

1. Percy Weasley dies.

2. Ron is killed by Bellatrix.

3. Bellatrix in turn killed by Neville.

4. Lupin dies.

5. Dumbledore's death was pre-arranged with Snape. Snape only did it out of personal gain. Voldermort eventually kills Snape in frustration.

6. Voldemort dies after showdown in Department of Magic.

7. Harry becomes a freelance Auror.

8. Hermione goes to work for St. Mungo Hospital.

9. Neville becomes a herbology teacher.

10. McGonagall becomes new headmaster.

More spoilers.

Friday, July 13, 2007

Transformers and Die Hard 4.0

Caught both Transformers

and Die Hard 4.0

this week.

Transformers is wonderfully fantastic. The CGI behind all the vehicles transforming into robots is just so super detailed!

I have one quip though, everytime Optimus Prime transforms from trailer truck to robot, a close-up panning shot is always used. Making it hard to make out exactly how he transforms.

I love Die Hard 4.0 too. The action is simply breath-taking and fantastic. i love especially the part when the F-35 fighter jet

is used to take down Willis inside a trailer truck. In the process of doing so, the F-35 destroyed sections of a flyover! Super cool!

Maggie Q


is gorgeous. I love how Willis killed her though by ramming her down into an elevator shaft using an SUV. Just when she was about to shoot Willis with a gun inside the SUV, Willis jumped out of the SUV and clung on to a elevator cable. The SUV which Maggie Q was in, crashed to the ground and exploded. Awesome.
Die Hard 4.0 is the first major film appearance of an F-35B. The movie used a combination of a full-scale model and CGI to dramatise its hovering ability using its lift fan. STOVL (Short Take Off and Vertical Landing) aircraft, like the F-35B, are employed tactically in forward flight mode reserving usage of the lift fan for short takeoffs and vertical landings. However, the film depicts the aircraft hovering while engaging a ground target, the trailer truck driven by Willis. Also, the plane was incorrectly depicted as having two GAU-12/U 25 mm cannons mounted in the roots of its wings.

What Is It?

80% of kindergartners solved this riddle, but only 5% of Stanford graduates figured it out!

Can you answer the following question?

The answer is just one word.




1. This word has seven letters.
2. It precedes God.
3. It’s greater than God.
4. It’s more evil than the devil.
5. All poor people have it.
6. All wealthy people need it.
7. If you eat it, you will die!




Got it?

(If not, scroll down for answer.)















































Answer: NOTHING








NOTHING

NOTHING has 7 letters.
NOTHING precedes God.
NOTHING is greater than God.
NOTHING is more evil than the devil.
All poor people have NOTHING.
Wealthy people need NOTHING.
If you eat NOTHING, you will die!

Thursday, July 05, 2007

An Expensive Trip To A Car Accessories Shop

Wanted to get a CD player that can play MP3 files for my car. The beauty about MP3 files is you can store at least over a hundred songs onto one CD instead of the usual below 20 for normal CD audio files. This is accomplished by compressing normal CD audio files into about one-tenth of their original size. Thus playing 1 CD with 120 MP3 songs on it with such a player is equivalent to having a CD changer that plays 10 normal audio CDs.

Went to
Sung Beng Auto (Pte) Ltd
2A Eunos Cres
#01-2439
Singapore 401002
Tel : 6745-3266
Fax : 6745-3140

Got the Sony CDX-F7710 for $380 plus $30 for installation. Got the model because of its screensaver feature. Sony calls it the ID3Tag.

After the boss of Sung Beng opened the bonnet of my car and did some inspection. He noticed all the spark plugs and cables, etc. were worn out, so he changed the air-filter, air-con filter, spark plugs and cables. After all these changes, my car's acceleration and the air quality inside the car improved. When i first went inside the shop, I originally wanted to spend only around $300 on an MP3 CD player. In the end, i was made over a thousand dollars poorer when i left the shop.

Lesson learned: It's better to buy the stuff you really need at a car accessories shop and install them yourself than to expose your car to the boss or staff of such a shop. As these people are primarily out to get your money, they will go to great lengths to convince you of the need to change various parts of your car.

Death Proof

Caught Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof

last week. Not bad. It's more talk than action though. That's how a movie gets critically-acclaimed. A movie that has tons of talking with little or no action at all usually has better chances of being appreciated by the critics. If it's just a pure action movie like any of the Die Hard series, it usually gets belittled by the critics. Incidentally, Death Proof hasn't fared well on the cinema box office.

In Death Proof,

Kurt Russell

is psycopath Stuntman Mike who kills chicks with his car for fun. He managed to kill the first batch of 4 girls by the 1st half of the movie. He killed them by crashing his fortified Nova into their Civic. He survived of course. But after over a year, when he targets another group of 3 ladies while one is lying down on the bonnet, he almost killed her by using his Dodge Charger

to bump into their Dodge Challenger.

After the Challenger came to a stop and flung real life Kiwi stuntwoman, Zoe Bell,

off its bonnet, Zoe the Cat, as she is known in the movie, survived the plunge into some bushes.

Russell then came out of his car and told the ladies that was really fun.

The 3 ladies were so angered by Russell's crazy antic that one of them shot him in the arm. Russell panicked and drove off. The ladies decided to have their revenge by killing him. They chased him down, crashed into his car, caused it to flip over a few times. After Russell's Charger crahsed to a stop, Russell shrieked a very high-pitched "ARGH...!" in agony like a woman. The 3 ladies dragged him out of his car, took turns to rain punches and kicks on him until he died.

Lovely babe, Rose McGowan

had an unfortunate demise when she hitched a ride on Russell's Chevrolet Nova

.
McGowan sure did get a very bumpy, nasty and ultimately fatal ride inside Russel's Nova. She didn't even get to sit down on any proper car seat. She had to rest her butt on a metal plate with no back rest whatsoever. Russell killed her by just jerking the car sideways and jamming the car's brakes. As she wasn't restrained by any seat beat, she was flung around in all directions, hit her head against the metal and glass, bled and died. Poor thing. She had a better turn though, in the other Grindhouse feature, Planet Terror.

After one of her legs was mauled off by a bunch of zombies, she got a powerful gun attached to the stump and blew away her enemies with it.


The best-looking babe in the 2nd half of Death Proof was the cheerleader, Lee, played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead.




She was left out of the action though, as her 3 friends left her to keep the owner of the Dodge Challenger, played by Jonathan Loughran (right), occupied.