Thursday, June 29, 2006

Another meme

Was tagged by Rational Neurotic for this meme:

3 blogs because of their pictures.


  1. Chuwen - Its your men's magazine online, thats what his title says. Fashion, food, his cute rabbit and most importantly, Hot bloggers of the week! The last one pretty much sums it up actually. Heh. =)

  2. Pandemonium - His new camera is the source of many of our platoon gatherings, high quality photos. Some cool physics toys are also worth a look.

  3. Jevon - Student in Paris with pics of the beautiful scenery of Paris and other parts of Europe he visited, like Italy, London.


3 blogs because they really makes you think or seek information.

  1. Tomorrow.sg - for featured articles

  2. LancerLord - for his links

  3. Pandemonium - for his interesting articles: Physics, Philosophy, Politics.


3 blogs because they make you laugh

  1. Mr Brown - Cool funny shit.

  2. Siu Hang - Creative and funny. Finalist of the creative section of blogfest 2006 wor.

  3. NinjaLZG - Funny at times. Actually, reading his tagboard alone is a great entertainment liaoz. =)


And tag 3 blogs!

  1. NinjaLZG

  2. Pandemonium

  3. Jevon



Alright, its done. Now, pass it on. Heh.

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Of the lack of post and platoon gathering

Yes yes it has been pretty long since I last blog and having multiple entries in one go nor producing a super long entry is not going to be able to make up for that long period of void. And no, it’s not the world cup that robbed me of all my time for blogging. Just because I recommended the football streaming software, doesn’t mean I will be watching every single match. Heh. As a matter of fact, I haven’t been watching a lot of the matches, certainly not the religiously-stick-to-the-TV-every-single-night- to-watch-every-match-till-5am type. I do follow the matches of a few teams and try to watch them, yet I kept them to a minimum as I have other commitments like work, self-studying, gatherings and doing my own stuff basically like gaming, practicing on my keyboard, runs, swims, cycling. Ah yes cycling, that’s what the next part of my entry is going to be about.





Mini
Platoon gathering

It was supposed to be a cycling trip at pulau ubin. But somehow, due to the ulu-ness of the place (an offshore island at the northern east side of Singapore in case you dunno...), most people requested for a change to the East Coast Park instead. Well so be it. Nevertheless, we still managed to have loads of fun in the park and the activities that follow.

Only SiQi and I brought our own bike, so the rest had to rent theirs from the bike store. That’s with the exception of Jian Cheng and Wei Heng who went on with their roller blading session. Wait I mean lesson, Weiheng teaching Jian Cheng how to blade, while the rest of us, ZhiGuo, Jevon, SiQi, Chang Tai, Yi Cai and myself, raced down along the track towards the east direction.


Before U-turning and heading back to relief Weiheng from his boredom (teaching a beginner how to stake can be really pain in the ass and being a MOE scholar aka teacher to be, I believe he had thrown in his bestest effort), we just had to drop by Bedok camp’s 10km starting point for reminiscence sake. Nothing much has changed there, just an additional vending machine, which I dun believe there’s any during our time. And for some reasons, Jevon and ZhiGuo were extraordinarily slow and were way behind us most of the time, must have got something to do with their extraordinary relationship. (Recalled that ZhiGuo is different from the rest of the male population, he declared it at Don’s ROM remember? Heh.)


After lunch was roller blading for me and we set out to the other side of the park. This time the cyclist went slower so that the skaters (Me and Weiheng) could catch up. It surprises me that I still remember how to blade although the initial few steps were a bit jumpy but gradually got back my composure after a while. It has been like 7 years since I last bladed, with a good friend back then in secondary school. Heh, those were the days man.


The traffic lights of the day. lol


Settlers

Dinner was at hawker near parkway and by then Yi Cai and Weiheng were already gone, the former went off to find his “girlfriend” and the other one home. Following that, we shifted our heavy asses to Katong and search for the new settler’s cafĂ© branch Chang Tai spoke of. Indeed there’s a new branch there and we had a game of taboo and the miners & saboteurs game for 2 hours. Truly a great place for board games and gatherings. Do check it out if you wana plan some activities for your friends, its a great alternative to the usual ktv/movies/pool/lan gaming/yada yada. Other games i would recommend are: Munchkin, Jenga truth or dare!, Acquire, Settlers Catan and many others. Check out their hugh list of boardgames at their website. Again, link here


Finally, the last stop of the day was at Jing Xi’s house where we happily made ourselves at home and showered, rested, ate Pringles (Jevon gobbled down half of it and still wanted more, luckily we stopped him or he will finished everything unknowingly =p), had coffee, played Ninja turtles on PS2 while waiting for the soccer matches to kick off. It was 2 great matches last night. Brazil vs Ghana and Spain vs France.


The first one was somewhat predictable but I was hoping for Ghana to win. That is one team I have pretty much been following as I thought they were rather strong. They do have their weakness which was their defense and their opponents managed to break the offside trap on many occasions. Yet, they certainly put up a great fight against the Brazilians and they will be able to leave the world cup with pride with such a battling performance.



As for the second one, when David Villa kicked the ball into the back of the French net in the penalty shot, we thought it was the end for France. Yet we were so darn wrong. The experienced old men knew exactly what they were doing and remained calm in the enthralling battle this morning. They turned the table around and scored 3 against the Spanish team, 3 wonderful goals that send the French team into the quarters. They shall meet Brazil in the quarters and it should be an interesting match to watch.


Slept till 12 noon and had brunch at Jing Xi’s house. After which I cycled home with an awful ache in my thigh which resulted from the cycling session. It was around 30km I cycled for the entire journey since I left home the day before. Woah!

Of funny condom ads




Friday, June 16, 2006

Of watching world cup


World cup 2006 is now here and everyone else is catching every single match since Germany thrashed Coasta Rica in the opening match, while you missed out all the actions since then. What a darn pity that you do not subscribe to cable TV and channel 5 dun do any telecast till semifinals (wtf?!). And going out or bunking in someone else’s house for every single match is just not very feasible. Now now, sure there are other options available to watch them all.




Firdooze and Siu Hang have their way of tuning in by means of an antenna to tap into our neighboring country’s.

“Just get an unused antena and plug it into the tv to get wireless radio connection. Switch the channels to RTM 1 and RTM2 (Malaysian channels) and wala'!”
- Firdooze



I don't have Cable and if you are wondering how I watch World Cup, there is something known as the antenna. Please, I'm from engin fac.”
- Sui Hang


But then what if (I hear you ask..) you are not an engineer just not that savvy in such technical stuff. So how?





I have other alternatives.

TvuPlayer

Download the software, install and run it, click on ESPN or ESPN2 and Woahoo you can now watch it all live on the internet!

The streams work pretty well with my 512kbps ADSL broadband connection. Quality varies from channel to channel, but ESPN2 runs very smoothly on my machine and that’s all I need!

Yes some channels can be jumpy at times, re-buffering once in a while. But hey, it’s free. So don’t complain. Heh.

Download it here!


Multi-tasking at its best!




Another: TVAnts

A similar software off a chinese site, search for CCTV5.

Check out this site for a guide to set up the software.

This one takes a while for the initial loading, but after that its quite smooth streaming.
Pretty good quality as well.







Even now as this entry is being created, the above match is playing on my player and Argentina just scored against Serbia & Montenegro at the 6th minute! Cool stuff.


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Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Of sore throat

Down with sore throat due to the excessive 4 hrs almost-non-stop singing in ktv plus my irresistible temptation for tidbits and the overly concentrated lime in my last gulp of vodka..

Although 8 person went for the ktv session in party world orchard yesterday, me and Jing Xi was in possession of the mike most of the time.. due to the shy nature of a certain Mr Nai aka Kodakku, Ah Guan, the wussy Ninja who can sing well but somehow has a phobia of singing into the mike, Si Qi and Karken (last 2 claim that they dun know how to sing but was the most talented among us all). And before you get away with the idea that currytan sings very well, let me correct that. I sux in it. Its just that I had to keep the session running by volunteering to sing while the above mentioned shy away from the mike (at least for the 1st part when ppl are still warming up).

The tidbits part is self-explanatory. Not sure why no one grabbed those tibits (unlike my other group of friends), so i was happily munching away most of the time unknowingly.

The vodka lime part was crap lar. I did not stir my drink well and the last gulp of it was very concentrated lime which burned my throat as if I had taken in a whiff of burning air.

In all, the ktv session was really fun (all thanks to my 4 hrs free voucher, heh) and i was hoping for another one when our "foreign scholars" come back. In the meantime, perhaps we can go to east coast park or something.

Saturday, June 10, 2006

1st In-Camp Training


It was slack, very slack. It was so slack that i dare say that the ippt (individual physical proficiency test) was the most siong activity during the 5 days ict.

Even the platoon mission exercise(PME) was so slack i wouldn't call it an outfield exercise. And to be frank, i think most of us did not even sweat during the exercise as there was not much physical activity involved. Crap, we hardly even walk 100 meters with our full load. (Read: SBO + signal set(940)) Also, the supposed overnight exercise was reduced to only a half day sit-down-and-practise-voice-procedure excerise and furthermore the night training became a talk cock session discussion session of our roles during the battalion missions. Somehow, we managed to get the best platoon in support company; our trainer must be so darn impressed by our voice procedure. lol

Of course, it was so slack because it was only our very 1st low key ict. The next one is going to be a high key one lasting 12 days with a battalion mission excerise smiliar to our ATEC, possibly lasting 3 days with a heli-insertion, dawn attack, hasty defense and hasty attack. Rumor has it that its going to be December 2007 and that one is going to be hell..


Sunday, June 04, 2006

Away for reservist

Alright, its time for me to go for my reservist very soon, around 30 hrs time, heh. While some started panicking packing their stuff for this adventure camp like 2 weeks back, currytan only opened up his ali baba bag, for the first time since ord (read: 21st march 05), only like 3 days ago. Imagine the pungent aroma that blasted out of the shit that turned my enthusiasm into a face of horror..


Nothing much for now, just some stuff to make up for my absence.









Of a relating topic to army/national service, I present to you "zo peng" or serving army in chinese. A short film which cast girls as nsf to complain and reflect about their ns life in typical nsf lingo. Some of the issues discussed were so similar to mine that i had to nod in agreement.








Next up, some
outrageous news bloopers:







Check out this mouse. With a dimension of only 2.3 by 2.7cm, this is attached to one finger and the user can just use the thumb to click on the buttons or scroll.


mouse

Cool but not that desirable, i am happy with my current mouse..

(Via TechEBlog)





Lastly,
Swarm the dot com via LancerLord

"Swarm is a useful tool for browsing the web, not searching it. You need to come here with an open mind and you may find some really cool stuff."


swarm

Start swarming here!