Screw A Penguin

My remembrance trinket from Phillip Island. It's called a finger puppet.

Let your imagination run wicked.

Road Trip: Phillip Island

Great trip. I'm sure there's lot to gush about but i'm not the gushing kind so... Just kinda rekindle the will to learn to drive. There's a much bigger reason to DRIVE in Aus than in S'pore. Yea... try to make some plan on that.

Experienced fog. Or rather driving through fog. Wish I managed to shoot at least one picture of it, the field where the cows were grazing would have been beautiful. Another cool pic would have been the incandescent lamps on the freeway. Tall tall lamp poles totally fogged leaving only a series of orange lights seemingly floating in the air.

I'm not sure if my other pictures came out good. Usually I do some reading up to refresh techniques. This time I just went ahead and just shot on instinct. I don't have bad instinct, much of the time it looks good. Hell, I'll see.

Prolly got more to say when I get back the results. In the meanwhile, here's a gd chance to intro a friend of mine I met here, Jam In The Head, who was also the driver of the trip. I'm sure she has plenty to say when she gets back from Sydney.

We are not Spielberg

Hmm... birth of another temptation. Video. I remember the old 8mm film cameras, silent movie type. Kinda cool u'know, especially when you go on a (road) trip or something, 'cept there's no sound recording so that kinda sucks too.

Well anyway, final project worked out just fine. One team created a MTV, another a comedic superheroine caper, ours was a bank robbery planning gone bad. Ours was the best of the lot. It had to.

Another good day at the studio. Might change tmr, gotta shoot a full short clip as final project. We don't have any ideas, so let's just see what turns up.
This course has taught me the value of the editing team. Never understood before why editing warrented an oscar award. Why doesn't the director do editing too? How the hell does editing know what he wants? Is that why directors always complain of footage cut off?



I suspect the same people who leave trash at lift lobbies are the same who never learn from setting off smoke detector alarms at nights. Every night. morons.

Director For A Week

Had side-spliting good fun today in Video Production class. The exercise was to make a short clip of 1-2mins to incorporate a storyline within a journey from one location to another with the techniques we've (Boon, Kin, Michael, Me) learnt so far.

Result's pretty good. Plot is about this guy losing his wallet and not realising it till the end. Genre is sick comedy. Gotta make a copy for myself.

Friggin' KNN Shit-Eaters

I refer to the people who live on my floor. Not all the people 'cos I am an acquaintance to some. Unless they are resonsible, then they can burn in hell.

Let me rant on these stupid shit-eaters who have no civic-mindedness, in fact, no brain period.

This morning I got up for class, and when I reached the lift lobby, was greated by this wonderful smell of garbage. (Stench's a little mild, but definitely present.) Really brighten up my day I tell you. Indeed, quite colourfully... KNNCCB... Those arse-holes left like 10+ bags of trash outside the rubbish chute because it was out-of-order. Come'on... where's the common sense??? Are you all stupid? Apparently you all study to become doctors and lawyers and engineers but fail on simple logic.

WHEN you leave badly tied garbage bags containing the remains of last night's dinner in a poorly ventilated room. What the fuckin' hell do you think is going to happen, huh? You Stupid Shit-Eaters. You didn't want to stink up your apt so you decide to stink up the lift lobby and spoil everybody else's day instead. Frickin' mother-fuckers.

That was at 9am. When I got back at around 4~pm, the trash was gone and the carpet washed with a faint smell of detergent in the air.

May I please shoot them. I will dispose the trash properly.

Flight occupies 1 shelf place. (28rd Mar 04)

I wish I could fly. Flight is such a fantasy. The joy of soaring above everything and everyone else has got to be unbeatable.

Remember when you were young and the Youth Flying Club sent a newsletter of such inviting membership? My dad said then it was too far to go for something so irrelavant and silly. I agreed too it was far. Dad could also possibly have snorted, "Oh ah-boy, you think they'll let you fly a plane?"

Convincing myself that all one would ever do there was to build model air-planes, collect flight magazines (Tailored to sucker children. You know the kind, "every month a different model featured!!"), and if we were lucky, a trip out to the flight line to touch a real trainer and whiff JP fumes.

I consoled myself that I wasn't missing anything. Only maybe to be able to learn flying one day, surely a youth flying club member had more 'right' to learn flying compared to a nobody. Aye?

While I wished to fly, my sis wished to ride. She had the notion of learning horse riding one time so very long ago. Why these two siblings have such desires is just in the blood I guess. Who from? I have no idea. Dad is strictly practical. "Horse Riding? Where? For what? Where in Singapore are you going to ride a horse?!" "It's too expensive. And not practical."

Expensive to fly I agree. But one can still dream. What do I dream? Hmm.

1) A Flight License.

2) Own ONE sea-plane (four-seater max) painted as the Singapore Flag. Red White complete with crescent and stars. Like the Black Knights (Singapore's aerobatic flight team) 'cos I am so knn patriotic.

3) Own ONE (open-cockpit, two seater) bi-plane. Painted in bright colours with bombastic body art. Maybe a Jolly Rogers on the tail rudder. Gawd! I saw a yellow bi-plane flew overhead a couple of months ago!! Damn Aus is a great place.

Big dreams, anyone with lobang?

Massive Black Out 29th June 2004 2200hrs ~ 0000hrs

It's a strange feeling of having the rug pulled from your feet in less time it takes to utter wtf.

At first, I thought it was some electrical trip, happened once a month or so back. Amidst the cries of surprise from family members, I silently berated myself for procrastinating in not replacing my multiple-socket-outlet-thingy-watchacallit to a surge-trip-proof model. Basically, it's something from the 1990s and doesn't reflect confidence and reliability in its crummy looks.

Shit, this time's my fault lah... Then came the brief relief "Hey, there ain't any lights across the street either."

Newsflash: Some serious shit has happened to Singaporeans. Well, to me actually, 'cos I've never been personally in a civilian crisis before. Military snafus aren't worth mentioning, heh.

Rummage in the dark for my laughable mini-torch, then went downstairs to help mum search for candles. Lit a few, and my sis comes down with her big-ass emergency fluorescent lamp which would beat any yellow-beamed torch into submission. My family then proceeded to have a laugh over how we can show off our LIGHT by placing the lamp at our front door instead. Grinz, what a lovely dig~

By this time we were hanging out downstairs instead of in our individual rooms. Mom & Sis was complaining of the heat, no electricity to run the fans mah. Dad was fanning himself with Singtel's annual report, me? "Xin Jin Zi Ran Liang", which would translate to "peace mind natural cool" ...should be lah. Later the household pitched in to liberate Sis's pint of Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia from melting a horrible death in the fridge. =P

So it was in many a household in the country, children spend rare family time with their parents only in hours of such. The computer-dependent generation are suddenly left without a spark, wandering room to room staring dumbly at silent 42" boxes. (Me included.)

At my house, Dad recounted ghost stories from his kampong days; in turn I recalled my brownie war in Tekong, when Sis mentioned that the 'IN' thing in aroma candles was not of lavender or peppermint but of pineapple tarts and of brownies... Augh~. (I'm so utterly out of fashion.)

2 hours in candlelight and little to no natural breeze can be a long wait. But I feel 2 hours for power to be restored fully is no small task. It happening at 2200 meant only the night shift was around. The night manager probably had a frantic 5-15mins of phone-calling while his best night shift engineers try to revive the turbines. Probably have higher tier managers & chief engineers streaming in from all over. Notice they might have had to pass through blackout-ed areas along the way, remember that the traffic lights are affected too. So they have to be extra careful. Some districts had power restored by 45mins, to an hour, and finally 2 hours for mine. 2 hrs is reasonable, in fact, quite well done.

So to hear Singaporeans moaning and groaning away was... Wah, you people are too spoilt lah. (Actually, the elderly manage better than most. With their experience in during WWII & the Japanese Occupation, blackouts are nothing.) I was already quite relieved to hear it wasn't a terrorist strike or something equally serious. It being a pipeline problem, shouldn't people be more relieved instead? Even American city(s) has power shortages, dun recall how many hours affected though. You wanna compare?

We can hold the expectation that Singapore is no 3rd world country and the government has planned for everything if not most. But when the shit hits the fan and the first thing you utter is "I can't believe this!", that to me is you speaking from your arse. Some people with better education and wider exposure can certainly provide better feedback to the media rather than some irresponsible remark.

Are you for the republic or behind the republic? I'm not pro-PAP, I'm just realistic. They made it here, and they are making it for the future. If you're not going to back them when things happen, then why don't you just run off to another country now and be a 2nd class citizen there?

Fact or fiction, it's hard to tell 9th Apr 2004

LONDON - The Cold War never happened but the Battle of Helms Deep did. Adolf Hitler and Winston Churchill are fictitious characters but Conan the Barbarian is for real.

A poll in Britain recently revealed a scant knowledge of history muddled with fiction propagated by Hollywood, said the Independent.

Researchers, who interviewed more than 2,000 people, found that close to a third thought the Cold War was not real while 6 per cent believed The War Of The Worlds, H G Wells' fictional account of a Martian invasion, did happen.

More than 60 respondents said the Battle of Helms Deep, from The Lord Of The Ring's trilogy, actually took place.

There was similar confusion about characters from history and fiction. Five per cent thought that Conan the Barbarian, the warrior played by Arnold Schwarzenegger in a 1982 film, used to stalk the planet.

Almost one in two believe William Wallace, the 13th-century Scottish resistance leader played by Mel Gibson in his film Braveheart, was a fictitious character invented by Hollywood.

I've decided to cut my original short. I sounded as dumb as the 60 respondents.

It All Starts Somewhere 21 June 2005

I should really have done this sooner, but I was just plain lazy. So finally, 6 months after setting roots at melbourne and getting mini-inspired by a friend's blog, I continue my seldomly updated blog here. Nothing spectacular. Just writing to satisfy my ego when I think someone out there has nothing better to do than to read this.

I'll transfer my old crap over. One big reason I still prefer an independent website is I can have a menu bar. I don't think I can slot a java-script in here. Having an IT background is such a curse sometimes. You expect yourself to make head and tails out of a program/langauge, but end up not to. And that feels really dumb, heck to think I used to eat this for breakfast.

I am really lazy to fiddle with this template. My brain doesn't make sense, is this the bare minimum or not? Apparently....

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