Life – Page 8 – wyred dot nu

May 31, 2010

Bintan

Went to Bintan from the 8th to 10th May 2010 together with 4 other friends. Just a short getaway from the busy Singapore life.

We stayed at the Indra Maya villas of Nirwana Gardens. From what I understand, Nirwana Gardens consists of beach clubs, villas, resorts, and we chose to stay at the villas.

While my friends were checking in, I went out to the nearby beach. It’s the first time I’ve seen a blue sea. In Singapore, it’s a dirty green color.

At the beach, you can hear nothing but the sound of the waves. No children screaming, no cars, no boat motors. Very peaceful. We went during a non-holiday period so there’s not a lot of other people.

The waters are clear. If you try, you can see small fishes swimming around your feet.

This is where we stayed at, a private villa of our own.

With our own private pool!

And a buggy to drive around the place in! I had my turn to drive everyone around the place in this and it made me want to learn driving.

We ate, played in the pool, beaches, had karaoke, drank at a kelong style pub out in the middle of the ocean.

On the last day, we woke up early to go see the sunrise.

Each of us paid like SG$500 (USD$355. Includes food/transport) for the whole 3 days 2 nights trip. I feel it’s worth it.

There’s a few more photos in my flickr set here.

May 17, 2010May 17, 2010

5555

A friend of mine is pregnant.

She had a checkup at the hospital and was having her weight taken and it turned out to be 55.55kg. She seemed amused.

So one day during lunch, she told me about this and said she’s going to buy 4D for 5555.
(4D is a form of legal gambling in Singapore where you choose 4 digit numbers).

I said with a smile, “If you really win, I’ll give you another $10”. I didn’t sound like I was challenging her, or making fun of her choice of buying this number which has a very low chance of opening.

She said “Ok!” with a big grin.

I checked her ticket to see if she really bought it and she did.

I never thought of it as a stupid idea or a waste of money. I only found it surprising that she would really buy it.

One week later,

It was a small win, she won $50 for that number. Nevertheless, I kept my word.

March 29, 2010March 29, 2010

The Majority

When Microsoft became the biggest software company, many people began to hate them. Then they support Google.

When Apple’s iPhone became the most popular cellphone, many people began to despise it. And they support Google’s Android phones.

Now when Google becomes a huge company from dealing with web searches, email, videos, ads, etc, people started to hate Google.

From what I’ve been observing, everyone loves support the underdog. When it becomes successful, they move on to another.

Screw all of you.

Yes, I’m sick of people who hate the iPhone simply because a lot of people use it. If you don’t like it because it lacks certain features that you really need, I can accept that.

I get slightly annoyed when people say they like to hate things that are popular. Hold on, a lot of people like to hate things that are popular.

Maybe if I start an ad in the newspaper telling everyone that it’s popular thing to hate things that are popular, perhaps they will start to hate themselves and then kill themselves.

I did say before that I tend to avoid mainstream animes. It’s simply because I have limited time and I’d rather devote that limited time to watch non-mainstream animes which I seem to find more enjoyable than mainstream ones. It’s an excuse based on my personal preferences and not what the majority of people like to do.

In closing,

January 8, 2010

2010

On the last day of 2009, I lazed around the whole day. Lay down on my bed and read manga, played FF13. During the last few hours, I watched all 3 “Back to the Future” movies. Loved them back when I was a little boy.

On the first day of 2010, I lazed around too. Just didn’t felt like doing anything.

I’ve been looking forward to 2010. It has a cool futuristic feel to it. :D

Gah, just realized that back when I had a bad harddisk crash, my January 2009 entries went poof as well. Can’t recall what new year resolutions I’ve made and whether I’ve fulfilled them or not.

Since I’ve got my iPhone now, I’ve been contemplating getting a Mac mini just to learn how to write software for this phone. However, I am totally clueless on what software I should code out because there’s probably a software for everything, anything, out there on the app store already. It has to be something interesting enough to keep me going.

For career, all I can think of is finish up this CMS system I’m working on for my company. This should look good on my resume.

Acquiring a few more new skills are good too. Knowing lots of things broadens one’s opportunities. And by skills, I mean ones that can potentially help me in earning my bread and butter. Not like having the top driving skill at Initial D at the arcades.

Photography is an ongoing thing. I find that I’m bad at framing for portrait shots. That’s one area I need to brush up.

Japanese too, I’m still far from being able to have a proper normal conversation in Japanese. Although my previous Japanese teacher says there will be a lot of speaking in Pre-advance level, because my class has about 10~15 people, I only speak 1 or 2 lines each lesson. That’s fine. I can always do image training myself. :d

Ah yes, I’m going to try and get back into jogging now… Must make it a weekly thing!

December 21, 2009December 23, 2009

paintball and cranium

A friend organized a paintball game last Saturday at Red Dynasty. This would be my first time.

It was pretty fun. And I love how it was drizzling, adds on to the mood.

But getting shot at isn’t fun, lol

Someone shot me from the side. First shot slid off my chest but left a bruise. The next 2 shots hit my side and hell they hurt. I thought we would be provided with vests but they didn’t. I regret wearing just a thin T-shirt.

I was so sure I was in a safe place before I felt the pain. Yea, they should call this painball.

We had 12 so we were split into 3 teams of 4, each team gets to play twice. Each round didn’t last very long. The objective is to bring 2 pieces of items back to base while dodging the other team’s bullets and preventing them from doing the same.

I think my bullets got stuck a few times. Like out of 10 shots, I could only see 2 coming out.

There was one occasion I saw a bullet flying towards me and I managed to duck in time.

If there ever was going to be a next time, I’m definitely going to wear thicker clothing.

After that all of us went to this friend’s home for a early Christmas party.

We played Cranium, good party game. Some of the activities involved having to sculpt something out of dough to get your friends to guess what it is. I did most of the sculpting and drawing for my team.

Some of the things I sculpted, and managed to get my team to guess correctly was: rocking horse, solar system.

There was once I had to sculpt out “holy cow”, so I made a weird looking animal, and held a halo over it, hahaha. My team couldn’t guess but a rival team member got it.

For sketching, some of the cards require you to sketch blindly. I got a card that says “seasick”, so I quickly drew a boat and a simple face with wavy lines coming out of it’s mouth. My teammates got this pretty quickly.

The only hard category was the one which require you to act out characters and hum out songs. As this game was initially designed for the US market, a lot of the characters and songs have never been heard of by many of us.

Later that night, I opened a small bottle of Otard cognac that someone brought. Drank like half of the bottle without mixing. I wanted to get drunk as quickly as possible. I did end up comfortably drunk and it was all good.