Someone send hate mail to Nagaru-san, please...

Today there was a Chuangyi warehouse sale near my workplace... Chiang Wee told me about it and since I haven't bought manga for quite a long time, I decided that it's time to refresh myself about new developments in the manga stories I've been following.

Initial D was available up to volume 35, and Pokemon up to 25. It was quite hard to tell whether the girl on the cover of Ini D 35 was Mika or Natsuki making a comeback... on a closer look, it was indeed Mika. Maybe.

Vol. 1 Natsuki: I had something to look forward to, until Shigeno changed his pen and ruined Natsuki's hair

I've decided to go for School Rumble. I was hoping it was going to be a genuinely funny series as I will love funny high school stories a lot. Moreover, Nicholas told me it was good. Let's just hope it's not the Haruhi kind of "humour" (I mean, goodness, you call that "humour"?) 'cause I've had reservations on recommendations from manga fans ever since Haruhi.

Pokemon. The manga doesn't follow anime storyline, and that means huge relief from Rocket clowns. I do hope the Fire Red Leaf Green storyline can make more sense than the Ruby Sapphire one (which featured 2 terrorist groups with equally lost causes).

This evening I had a wonderful Tim Sum dinner with, erm, "Chick" Chong (tired of telling you which Kelvin I'm talking about) after which we met Jiansheng on the train (small world!).

A little more weight

I needed a weighted keybed, somehow.

I couldn't get a stage piano (closest to piano weighting) as that would be too expensive... so I just got a Midi controller instead. Now I've really run out of power sockets...

The weighting of the keys wasn't as shiok as I tried it the last time (raised expectations, maybe) but it sure beats my X-50 keys.

Matsu

I was talking to Kai Guan about the Hero movie... and the topic subsequently moved to Matsu Takako (she starred as Amamiya in Hero), and *poof!* pasted on the dialogue was a link to Matsu's Wikipedia entry.

... that was fast, man - I mean, bus-man!

Below are some excerpts which got me LOL

Argh I'm so jealous of her... I want to be born a Japanese too!!!

When I first saw her on Long Vacation she made an impression on me 'cause... her beauty is... ok what's the Chinese word... 脱俗.

Ah that's it. Even her music is also quite different from the others... not exactly modern-sounding (even in her latest album launched this year), but soothing I'd say.

Shinnosuke~!

That Edmund...

Now he wants to write a song about Crayon Shin-Chan 'cause it sounds like quite a nice theme... but he hasn't watched Shin-Chan before... neither have I!

Well... here comes Youtube!

Some of the episodes are really funny... you see Shin-Chan holding the flower with his butt cleavage and waving it around... haha and there's this episode about the Japanese expression "mendou kusai" (which means something like embarassing)...

Kusai means smelly. That's why.

To add to the fun, the videos had no subtitles.

HERO

The Hero movie followed the tradition of the drama... the introduction (good thing there's no more of that awkward right-left scanning shot) the whole theme of that story, and Kuryu's "there's no case too small" attitude.

It's just that those who haven't watched the drama before (yes I'm also talking about Korean Drama fans who will be watching the show because of Lee Byung Hun's special appearance) probably won't find the movie that nice.

Lee could have gotten more screen time, though.

And the ending was sure abrupt!

In quietness

Amidst the wave of "free", unreserved, "on fire", vocal, graphical, loud, screaming, freak-you-guys-out kind of worship, I shall hold on to the tiny little Bible verse which says,

"In quietness and confidence shall be your strength"

I was talking to Peng (as I always do) about my worries over Charismaticism scaring people away... I've been through it, I have people close to me involved in it... but it just gives me a very unsettled feeling even now.

What to do but trust God?

To me, perhaps I can never associate the acts of Charismatics with intimacy. Even when I was once told to do so.

Anyway, I'm in this very shitty situation right now and it's all my fault, and my faith is put to the test, or rather, what's put to the test is what I can do with my faith.

I've always thought I was humble. But I found out I'm only selectively so.

HO Chalet 2007

The farewell for Sec 4 members this year took place at Aranda. I heard Edmund say that place was quite shiok but never got to go in one of their chalets. So this year when they invited us there I was quite delighted.

Kelvin (Heng) and I (along with the usual alumni) went for the whole thing... farewell and barbecue (that happened on the 2nd day) and all... they're still a fun bunch and Mr Chen is still the Teacher I/C (he lives in Tampines too haha!).

We were initially feeling quite awkward when we got there, but there were people to talk to and we managed to "locate" our juniors (from sections like 1st Chromatica and Octave).

The organising members prepared the food for day 1 by themselves! And the gifts exchanged between the outgoing and incoming Exco members were quite impressive too.

Members of Octave spanning n generations

They watched lots of movies on the first night, including Jay Chou's Secret. It was then when I realised some of his songs from his latest album (like "Pu Gong Yin De Yue Ding") originated from the Secret soundtrack.

Zzzzz...

On the 2nd day we had cycling with some of the Sec 2's... all the way from Pasir Ris to Fengshan 85! Too bad I didn't manage to take any shots from the trip...

Along with barbecue came bloopers like Wenrong's 2-sided Satay (one side was totally charred)... and there was this cat loitering around the pits, and some of us were figuring out what the cat would eat, trying to feed it all kinds of food items (picky cat, huh). I sort of recalled feeding sausages to cats a few years back, and this time round it worked too! It's still quite creepy feeding it off my hand, though.

Lucky cat... found the "Promised Land" overflowing with mlik and honey unfinished BBQ food.

From left: Wenrong, me, Kelvin and Wenjun. Pardon the lighting (not my cam phone anyway haha)

Indian Poker on the 2nd night was quite, erm, action-packed. Originally the penalty was pulling off a strand of hair, but somehow we've decided that for guys, a kick in the ass will suffice. I mean, try pulling out hair this short... Ouch!

It eventually evolved into whacking-ass using 1L bottles! Double ouch!

---

Every year when I go for HO chalet I'll learn something new. Last year was cycling and this year it was mahjong! On the first night I tried to play a bit and managed to win 1 or 2 games. No match for Kelvin the mahjong king, of course.

Kelvin's "Qing Yi Se".

In the end it was nice that they appreciated our presence. Now I'm even more excited about the combined performance. Be seeing them soon again!

Advert attack

When Kelvin (Chong) showed me this brochure at Timbre I was totally LOL.

Hangover

I really had too much to drink.

Goodness Bailey's was good man, but I drank so much that I could hear my heart beat after getting home...

My head's gonna burst... hangover tomorrow I suppose... hope not.

Keh Kiang

We Hokkiens have a saying, "Kiang teo hoh, mai keh kiang".

So what's Keh Kiang?

It's when you think you can play basketball barefooted, and you really do it. Then when blisters started appearing, it's all to late.

That's Keh Kiang.

Deepavali

Happy Deepavali!

Somehow a public holiday within a work week is always welcome!

DE-fferent

Last Friday there was no basketball; instead there was some Cap's ball and soccer with your provision shop $1.50 ball. Kind of brought me back to the days of primary school soccer which was one of the root causes of my near-autistic childhood... they scolded me everytime I played with them...

"STOP!"

Well, after that we met up at Downtown East to do some recce for the upcoming CPC chalet. The whole carpark at the front became a -

...multi-storey carpark. I was quite upset as the old carpark at night time used to be one of the memories I held dearly of DE... memories of cabbing home with Mom 'cause I couldn't stay overnight...

Tsk. Getting emo all of a sudden.

The carpark looked quite impressive, though, from the chalet area. At night.

Touring round the chalet area, Edmund and Kai Guan were remeniscing about their stays here n years ago... and kept expressing their amazement at how they managed to squeeze Wild Wild Wet into the space between DE and Aranda.

OK they haven't been there for a really long time. Everytime HO has a chalet at DE, it wouldn't be complete without WWW.

Well, it really won't be too nice if the only thing we can swim in is Poo, would it?

The chalet is decided! We would be taking the Christmas holiday package. A bit expensive but it's worth the holiday mood. So we thought.

Unexpected

We went to Wala Wala again on Saturday to watch the Unexpected Band... we had to wait a bit due to some technical difficulties, but once they started there was no more questions about why we came!

I took a photo of Jon in sepia effect... kind of liked it.

ORD

It's difficult not to think of ORD. And even more so when landmarks are chanting the 3 letters in your face.

Ord Bridge. It was apparently named after some official of old by the surname of Ord, but... what a nice surname to have!

Even less easier it becomes, when magazines entitled NSMan start appearing in your pile of subscribed magazines!

Until you discover they're actually June/July issues, kept by your Dad who thought you ain't going to read it anyway.

Operation Katong

Kelvin, Jon and I (we're really going out quite often huh) went for lunch at Aston's at Katong... the steak was good! I ordered this Prime Ribeye Extra cut, for the quantity and for my emotional attachment to that "E" word. The subsequent trip to Cold Storage was almost equally protein-charged.

After that we went for pool. It's really quite stressful, playing with Kelvin. Haha.

Kelvin was full of praises for Jon's posture... well...

Kelvin in action! I Kind of liked the white ball "caught in motion"

Following that was a shopping spree at Parkway. Thirst probably got to us so much that we decided to buy this budget fruit juice drink, 1 litre each. I was initially a bit repulsed by the bottle 'cause the transparency sort of gave me this "detergent" feel, but the mango flavoured one caught my attention, so, Cheers!

P.S. Feeling a bit nostalgic now, watching GTO...