Category: Life

Each minute passes I get more nervous and and scared. This is not like any other Boys’ Brigade training camp or a long chalet at sentosa. I could easily give up half way and still have a place called home where I can walk back to regardless the distance. But now, I’m going to a place so far it’s about 14 hours of plane flight. There will be no turning back and no place I can go to when things turn bad.

So I’m bringing with me, a manga, Vol 2 of Record of Lodoss War which I haven’t finished reading, and some minidiscs holding some songs which bring back lots of memories since the day I owned an MD player. New to my collection is a minidisc I had requested from a friend to record from mp3s for me. Inside are the following songs which I hope will comfort me when I’m in a faraway land, homeless.

1. Main theme of Final Fantasy VII – Piano


2. Origa – Rise (Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2ng gig)


3. Kimiko Itou – Follow Me (Main theme of Ghost in the Shell: Innocence)


4. The Barnabys – Suki Mami Mai Tai (OP Song of Mezzo TV)


5. The Barnabys – Mitsu (ED Song of Mezzo TV)


6. L’Arc en Ciel – Ready Steady Go (OP Song of Full Metal Alchemist)


7. Raiko – Alive (?th ED Song of Naruto)


8. Mikio Sakai – Dive in the Sky (OP Song of PlanetES)


9. Ali Project – Gesshoku Grand Guignol (OP Song of Avenger)


10. Ali Project – Mirai no Eve (ED Song of Avenger)


11. Angela – The End of the World


12. Utada Hikaru – Kettobase!


13. The Delgados – The light before we land (OP song of Gunslinger Girl)


14. The Delgados – Woke from dreaming


15. Lineage 2 music


16. The Pillows – Energy

Will be taking a plane to Bangkok and then transfer to another plane to Paris. The hotel I’m staying in is about 3 kilometres away from the Eiffel tower.

My next blog will most probably be when I have access to a computer with an internet connection. Wish me luck! [:)]

This is bad. I’m feeling a little feverish. [:(]

I’ve bought most the stuff I would need for the trip to Paris. I heard the weather will be dry to the point my lips will crack so I was advised to get lip gloss and skin moisturizing cream. But I think I’ll take the risk and buy it there when I need it because it’s only 6 days. Another concern of mine would be if I could successfully adapt myself. The GMT over there is +1, which would be 7 hours behind Singapore time.

I love to sleep yet hate it because it’s a waste of time… [X(]

Not because of too much work. In fact, the more the merrier~ Hahaha, but not too much to the extent I need to work overtime. Having difficulties understanding what my boss wants. He talks faster than I can understand each sentence. And I have problems expressing my views and telling him how much I understand. I’ve landed myself in a job with huge responsibilities which I did not expect. I didn’t have the chance to start from a lower position and slowly learn things. Need to get my mindset reprogrammed.

<geekStory>
I’ve given up the idea of running Linux OS on my Pentium2. Sure, I got RedHat up and running. Even found out how easy it was to compile Apache from source. But there’s too many incompatibilities and I can’t get used to it. Worse thing is I can’t get the display resolution up to 1152×864. If I force it in the config files, KDE would refuse to start. RedHat handled it well and I was able to easily resolve the problem and get everything back running again.

Instead, I installed Windows 2003 Web Edition Server on it. I’m surprised it ran well and didn’t take too much time to boot up compared to Windows 2000 Advanced Server. Seems like Win2K3 does not have the audio drivers for my antique Creative AWE64 ISA soundcard so I downloaded and installed WinNT drivers for it. The OS immediately auto rebooted 10 seconds after I logged in. Hah! I easily rendered a fresh installation of Win2K3 useless. Problem was easily solved by using the Repair option when I booted up using the installation CD. It basically reinstalled everything and my settings were preserved.
</geekStory>

Had a bad night trying to sleep. Woke up a few times in the middle of the night. Then I had a dream about cockroaches and spiders. This was when I gave up sleeping and went to play Lineage2, watch anime and have a nice cup of tom yam instant noodles. Still managing well at work. Coffee was there to keep me going.

When I spend a lot of time in manga or anime, and I do mean a lot, I get myself so indulged into the world of whatever I was watching/reading that I feel depressed when I come to the last episode. Same goes for games. This feeling of depression comes mixed with a little bit of happiness if it was a happy ending. My first and worse case of such indulgence would be Neon Genesis Evangelion. I remembered skipping lectures one day just to go home and watch the anime. Various shocking scenes together with dramatic symphonic orchestra music put me into a state of moodiness for a few weeks.

The sunset scene with Kanon by Pachelbel playing in the background was burned into my memories.

Plans have been confirmed, boss is taking me to Paris with him on the 4th of April [:D]. I’m excited about the trip. It will be the first time travelling to an European country and my first time going to some place far away from home. Alas, this is not a vacation but a trip to meet the developers behind fastbooking.com, my company’s business partner. Boss has yet briefed me on what I will be doing there. I have a feeling I need to learn XML. Darn, I still have not started. My fears of meeting the developers would be the language barrier, they do speak english but I assume there will be a heavy french accent. Plus, with my slight hearing disability, it’s going to make communication a lot more difficult. Sigh… I hope I don’t irritate them. [:(]

Yesterday’s trip to Desaru was nice. The most enjoyable part was sitting in the car, chatting and laughing away with my friends and looking at the beautiful scenery. The beach we went to was deserted. The sand is fine and nice to walk on. The sea is clean and the view of the beach was spectacular. There was a constant strong wind blowing in from the South China Sea. I’m going to post pics as soon as my friend sets up an account for me to upload images to his webhosting server.

We only spent an hour exploring the place and taking pictures before we left back to Johor Bahru. There was a light drizzle. Had some seafood for dinner. The stingray was very cheap! Costs only around 4.50 Singapore dollars but in Singapore, it costs up to 11 SGD.