Thursday, December 28, 2006

how's that for a screamer...

it's been a while since we've seen a really pretty goal from united. one of those goals that just makes you sit up and go 'ooooooh'. well, the wait is over for now.


drogba? essien? matty taylor? lampard? they can't hold a candle to the ginger prince from salford. as martin tyler said, that one tops the lot.

Sunday, December 24, 2006

christmas is here again...

i've seriously lost my sense of time this time around. it feels like yesterday that i was still in ntu, starting work at deloitte, deciding to quit ntu and then starting school again. it all seems like one huge blur. and even when december came, it still failed to register, as evidenced when sarah had to bring to my attention on monday that christmas was just one week away while i was under the illusion that it was some time in the middle of next week. well, as the saying goes, time flies when you're having fun.

christmas... what is it all about? church? christmas carols? christmas trees? parties? presents? you could say all of them, but there's so much more. watching the nativity story on tuesday reinforced that notion. there's so much more to the jesus story. what i love about movies like this is that it shows us the implications that might not be so obvious. mary's faith to say yes to being the mother of christ is always mentioned, but it takes a slightly more insightful mind to recognize the immense courage it took for a 16 year old girl, just betrothed, to be with child out of wedlock. and the humbling a man of joseph's reputation and stature it took when he obeyed the angel to take mary as his wife in her state. and yes, the baby jesus being born in a lowly manger that marked the start of a story that has had such widespread ramifications even till today.

so, what is this whole story all about? the answer is simple. gift. about being a gift to the people around you. the giving not of a physical gift but of oneself. in other words, loving the ones whom you hold dear.

merry christmas everyone.

Thursday, December 21, 2006

rant: disrespectful boyfriends

ugh. i've ranted about how a guy has the gall to say so many bad things about his girlfriend before. but at least the previous subject of my rant was doing it behind her back. this one takes the cake, and even though the girl didn't seem to mind, i seriously wonder how she tolerates it. and please don't tell me it's love, babe. frankly, it's outright disrepect.

i was waiting at the bus stop outside orchard emerald at 11 plus after spending the day studying (of course, i think the others would "venomously" dispute the term studying with me...) for the PR exam on friday. now, 14 is one heckuva bitchy bus service. sure, it pratically brings me to my door step from town, but the waiting times are insane. it doesn't help that the stupid service has a knack for being at the bus stop when i don't need it and the opposite when i wish to find my way home. whilst waiting and pacing around the bus stop, my roving eyes spied upon this couple waiting at the bus stop as well. initially they were standing, and the girl was eating out of a burger king bag. what peeved me big time was that her tubby boyfriend had his eyes glued on the screen of his psp while she was feeding him fries. honestly, the big lummox looked like a petulant little kid playing his gameboy while his momma fed him his dinner.

don't get me wrong - i'm all for portable gaming. i've grown up on and with my nintendo handhelds. and while i do indulge in the odd game or two whilst at family gathering, i don't think it's that appropriate to whip it out in front of my friends while on an outing, much more so if i were out on a date. it's blatant disrepect. it's spitting in the face of the other party. it's an outright failure to acknowledge the other person's presence.

i may not be the most communicative of persons when i'm around someone i care about deeply sometimes, and i cannot claim to be the most attentive person in the world. but i seriously don't condone such a behaviour in front of a lady. it's especially despicable when you act like a bloody little emperor having someone attend to you. i know the lass means well, and i applaud her understanding and lovingness. however, i would hate it for her if that occurred all too frequently on a date. even if you're bored, at least try to not look it...

Saturday, December 16, 2006

the lure of the sky


i've had a nostalgic appetite in terms of gaming lately. my romps on the NES emulator have been well documented, and i am definitely in the mood for more. imagine my surprise when i popped by an arcade one day and found an after burner climax machine sitting there in all its glory.

after burner is a classic. it harkens back to the days of tom cruise in top gun and the days when naval aviation dramas were all over the place. one of my favourite drama series of all time, JAG, had the main protagonist as a former F-14 tomcat pilot. and it didn't help that i was a plane nut when i was a kid - i loved planes. you could peer into the drawers of the plastic container where my mom keeps all our old toys and you could tell. the F-14 was one of my favourite jets for it had a cool name and it was a pretty looking plane. with a swing-wing design, it just looked so freakin' cool... anyway, before i lose myself rambling, after burner came at a time when air combat was cool. it doesn't get any better (if you're a kid or a mere mortal) than sitting in a simulated pilot chair that tilts and rolls as your on screen jet rolls and yaws around virtual air space.



climax is a gorgeous game. the visuals are crisp, with detailed aircraft models and luscious backgrounds. flying over active volcanoes and beautiful oceans whilst gunning down bogeys and evading missiles and enemy gunfire, it's a real adrenaline rush. i'm particularly in love with the level called the lure of the sky, which is the screenshot on the above left. the lovely tones of blue, jetting over the ice floes and the aurora in the distance just take my breath away, even if it is a virtual environment. it's a spectacle to behold, especially while racing across the sky, barrel rolling and gunning away while trying to lock onto enemy aircraft.



can't wait to get back in the pilot seat again and take to the skies...

images taken from sega's after burner climax website and 1up.com.

Friday, December 15, 2006

flash break!

need a break? need something to watch? check these flash animations out...

Cucumbers - this will drive you crazy. ask any of my classmates. hur hur. but hey, it's catchy, infectious and downright silly. you've been warned.

Letter to Santa - new foamy! if you haven't watched neurotically yours before, you can check out the other toons on the main site, ill will press. anyway, foamy is a fast-talking, squeaky-sounding, pissed off little squirrel. just listen to him rant. might take a while to adapt, but he's funny. ages 15 and up.

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

name game...

muahaha. thanks to nirwan's name generator, i've been given some pretty interesting new names... let's start with gregory shall we?...


General Robotic Entity Generated for Observation and Rational Yelling


Get Your Cyborg Name

rational yelling? that's a new one...


Grim, Ravenous, Explorer-Grabbing Ogre from the Ruined Yonder


Get Your Monster Name

beware... i are ravenous.

and then, here goes GrimlockX...


Grim, Ravenous, Investigator-Mangling, Livestock-Obliterating Creature Kindled by Xcess


Get Your Monster Name

keep your chickens and cows away from me. PIs beware as well. me Grimlock kick your ass.


General Robotic Individual Manufactured for Logical Observation, Calculation and Kamikaze Xenocide


logical observation? check. calculation? check. kamikaze xenocide? me likey biggie timey.

yep. i was bored during PR today. =P

Friday, December 08, 2006

meditation: deluge of thoughts

on tuesday, i had my monthly meditation session with the olps lectors. after a long day in school and hanging out with the freshies, so it was no surprise when i trudged into st mark's room at 8.20pm after cabbing down from town pretty darn tired. i even fell asleep in the cab just before i reached the church. even joe remarked that i was tired after the meditation was all done.

joe started with a few exercises, asking us to recall a person or persons who had given us love before and relive an experience in our minds. after that, we went into breathing exercises, where we regulated our diaphragmatic breathing in line with the word 'maranatha', which means 'the Lord has come'. surprisingly, it was quite an exertion, due to the variation of speeds to our breathing. my nostrils were burning and my chest felt noticeably strained, but otherwise i felt completely at ease and relaxed. what happened next is beyond me, but the feeling of it was extremely powerful and has been firmly etched in my mind.

joe then led us into a series of mental exercises. the strangest thing was that my head started to tilt up towards the ceiling, and at that moment, joe mentioned something along the line of the light of christ. and there, through the skin of my eyelids, was the light emanating from the ceiling lights. yet somehow, it felt brighter and whiter than one would expect. it felt like the light had completely penetrated and passed through my eyelids, and i became fixated on this light completely. i followed joe's instructions for a little while more, feeling the light run through my body and trying to view myself from outside my body before i lapsed into my own path. the strangest thing was that i could hear joe's voice, yet my consciousness was floating around and not deciphering what he was saying. i felt light and weightless, like i was floating on air, like a flower petal on a vast lake. i was fully awake, yet i was oblivious to my physical surroundings. my thoughts took on a natural state of flux and i just drifted between thoughts and memories, remembering none in particular but knowing i had visited a few regions of my mind. i felt energized as i moved from fluid thought to thought.

as the session drew to a close, i somehow managed to pick up joe talking about Christ, "who died on the cross out of love for us" as well as his instruction to slowly count to 10 and come out of the meditative state.

it felt like the whole thing lasted 5-10 minutes, but joe told us we had been like that for around 30 minutes.

considering i've fallen asleep on the past few attempts, this experience really had me excited. in a sense, i felt so awake, so aware of myself, yet i was asleep and oblivious to the world around me. thoughts just poured forth like a spring in a natural flow and fluidity. and it has me wanting to experience that calm once more.

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

recapping a good weekend...

well, it's been a really interesting weekend worth noting down... crappy feelings from a botched exam (at least from my point of view) and a horrible time flying around to settle the assignment for the module aside, it definitely can compare to the biennale weekend... and perhaps, maybe even better.

once the dust settled from the whole assignment debacle, i joined some of the others at sitex at the expo... nothing much, though it's always fun to hang out with friends. and thanks to conan wong the scandal monger, i've been slapped with a scandal of my own now. sigh.

since it was sam's birthday, dinner was at big fish... really excellent stuff. it's in the siglap area, a quaint little seafood joint with some really cool dishes. had the breaded brie cheese and prawns for an appetizer (which is absolutely lovely) and the ever delightful fish and chips for the main course. that, coupled with an attempt to make myself more photogenic (taking smiling lessons from sam... yeah, i can't smile for a photo for nuts. doh.), pretty much made it a great dinner... spending time and taking photos with jillian also made it very worthwhile.

<


saturday yielded one of my most interesting days in church for a long long long time. david pulled me in to help out with his ministry of expression workshop, which is basically an art ministry for the kids of the parish. watching over them was a real handful though, kids being kids. it was pretty fun interacting with some of them however, and i even got the chance to play around with the paints... which resulted in...


in touch with my artistic side i was. haha.

and immediately after that came mass, where i read the first reading. quite looking forward to my 6pm christmas mass reading... understanding and getting to know the bible can be really fun sometimes and it's really meaningful once you understand what's going on in those hallowed pages.

and like all good weekends, united made light work of middlesbrough despite some controversy about ronaldo diving again and boro equalising the resulting penalty. fortunately, united avoided dropping points and firmly pegged themselves at the top of the premiership summit through a darren fletcher header 2 minutes after the equaliser. and to be fair to ron, i don't think he dived per se. he just lost his balance and fell, though he definitely did dive for the freekick he won against boateng.

then came sunday - csa christmas party! i pretty much woke up in time to leave the house for the party since the united game was at 1 and ended at 3. initially intended to kill some time in town, but i changed my mind since i had nothing to do there and i was completely absorbed by my halo novel, ghosts of onyx, on the train and i missed city hall. after all the preparations were completed, the night kicked off with mass, where i read the first reading... again. heh.

after that came a first for me - emceeing the party. i was skeptical initially, cos i've never done such a thing before and i've never really fancied myself working well in front of crowds. but somehow, things just fell into place and i guess i didn't muck it up contrary to my fears. it was a really fun party and i think everyone enjoyed themselves. from the excellent jazz music from peter's jazz band, to the crazy, quirky games and the sweet sounds of the csa caroling team, i think the party was a real success. and bohemian rhapsody is one insanely fun song to try on ktv. hehehe. kudos to cheryl, van, iris, the SP subcomm and everyone else for making it a really, really smashing party. =D