Went for NE trip yesterday to the newly opened Army Museum just next to Discovery Centre. Basically the museum shows the history of SAF and how it evolved over the years. Lots of exhibits, photos and interactives. The effects of the movie screening were amazing! Really feels like in the middle of warzone. There was 'CS' to play too haha. Saw a short movie clip (directed by Royston Tan) starring a familiar schoolmate. Those in Chinese High/Hwa Chong should know him...
After dismissal went to my Platoon Commander's house to play board game haha. His house is really big and spacious! How I wish I could live in a house like this. Anyway we played Caylus, which is known as the 3rd best board game in the world as well as the most complex board game. The game took very long but fun. Lots of strategy and calculation needed. No dice throwing, so there was no luck factor. Glad I could finish second out of 4. As expected, my PC, who is very pro in board games, got first but his points were far far ahead of mine. =p
Blog revamp coming up soon! The current skin is 1 year old already. Watch this space!
5 days more...
Friday, December 28, 2007
Monday, December 24, 2007
It's snowing! (IV)
In fact it's rather sunny right now haha. However it has been raining for the past few nights and afternoons. The ground seemed to be always wet. Not forgetting the rain that spoilt my ATP...
It's Christmas Eve but I'm very sian. Firstly I'm staying at home for the whole of today, and secondly I've guard duty tmr...zzz. Nevertheless I had a fair share of outings during this month. (and there are going to be more coming up after Christmas ^_^)
Went to my sergeant's baby 1-month celebration dinner on Saturday. Glad to see my ORD-ed seniors once again. Wah the house is really havoc. 2 mahjong tables, 2 gaming computers side by side on the same desk (aka control centre) and a home KTV system! Wah lau really power lah. Dunno how much he spent on the karaoke system. Tons of songs also, ranging from oldies to current pop hits. No wonder his whole family is 歌神!
So noisy yet the baby can still sleep so soundly haha.
Yesterday went to watch National Treasure 2. Very nice! Better than the first movie! Though I seem to have forgotten the first one almost completely haha.
9 days more! (not counting down to ORD lol)
It's Christmas Eve but I'm very sian. Firstly I'm staying at home for the whole of today, and secondly I've guard duty tmr...zzz. Nevertheless I had a fair share of outings during this month. (and there are going to be more coming up after Christmas ^_^)
Went to my sergeant's baby 1-month celebration dinner on Saturday. Glad to see my ORD-ed seniors once again. Wah the house is really havoc. 2 mahjong tables, 2 gaming computers side by side on the same desk (aka control centre) and a home KTV system! Wah lau really power lah. Dunno how much he spent on the karaoke system. Tons of songs also, ranging from oldies to current pop hits. No wonder his whole family is 歌神!
So noisy yet the baby can still sleep so soundly haha.
Yesterday went to watch National Treasure 2. Very nice! Better than the first movie! Though I seem to have forgotten the first one almost completely haha.
9 days more! (not counting down to ORD lol)
Saturday, December 22, 2007
黄金路之美女
Who's your favourite beauty in The Golden Path? Place your votes!
Hahahahahahaa.....
This show has been interesting so far. I recommend watching if you haven't =p.
Hahahahahahaa.....
This show has been interesting so far. I recommend watching if you haven't =p.
Monday, December 17, 2007
Star Awards 2007
Like watching Star Awards every year becos of the interesting and funny things those award presenters and winners will say on stage, as well as the shocking bao leng results haha. This year's was much better than last year's where it was held in St James, a small and squeezy location with dead atmosphere. No idea how Star Awards 2006 could win Best Variety Special. Not to forget the overrun was so bad that credits had to roll beside Bryan Wong's face. And unfortunately his name was placed last again this year, leaving him no time to present his speech lol.
IMO the 4 big awards winners(Best Supporting & Leading) were deserving. My predictions were correct except Male Supporting where I rooted for Brandon Wong to win, for his Ah Beng image in Homecoming. But Darren Lim is ok lah, he can act pretty well too. As for 'Xiao Mei' May Phua, her acting has improved through the years. Glad that Yvonne Lim's 10 years of effort paid off. Her Wanrou role is really superb. For Edmund Tay, it's like 苦尽甘来, several years in the industry and he finally gets recognised. Like he said, 40+ alr normally no chance to get such award. His wife Hong Huifang and 'daughter' Joanne Peh were so emotional when his name was announced haha. Anyway his kids got another toy to play liao lol.
Best drama...if Metamorphosis, the best Mediacorp drama in the recent years, dun get it, what could? As for Best Newcomer, Pornsak definitely deserves it! Though a Thai, his mandarin is fluent and hosting is natural. I think Dong Suhua shld give others a chance and stop being such a good newscaster haha.
The presenters were talking so much abt Mark Lee, and he really won it! Haha. He is the only one who won 2 awards yesterday. If counting his show 有话好好说, then it's 3. IIRC he went up to stage a total of 4 times (not counting the intro). Why can I rmb so clearly? Cos he always made his presence clear whenever he went up to stage haha. (eg. playing with Jeff Wang, joking with Xiao Zhu, kissing Fann Wong, etc) Mark Lee is undoubtedly the biggest winner in this year's Star Awards.
Now to Top 10: So many Top 10 male winners were/going to be Fann's husband haha. She was blushing red when Xiao Zhu asked if each winner is her husband lol. Quite shocked to see Gurmit on stage again, but this time he finally started on his mandarin course. 'Michael Jackson' was unexpected, is he really that popular?
Following Michelle Saram and Phyllis Quek, Michelle Chia is another kelong queen. Din have much works this year yet could get Top 10. At least Vivian Lai has a fanclub. Poor 7 princess...only 3 managed to squeeze in. When Shaowei said the last one was 2 words, almost everyone would have thought it was Jeanette Aw right? Haha. Jeanette fans must be so angry at Kym now...
Once again, the ceremony never never learns its lesson of overrunning. Why allocate so many commercial time? The last few awards were presented sooooo fast, and the winners must be having a heart attack.
Overall it was quite an enjoyable show. Much better than last year. Winners were more deserving too.
IMO the 4 big awards winners(Best Supporting & Leading) were deserving. My predictions were correct except Male Supporting where I rooted for Brandon Wong to win, for his Ah Beng image in Homecoming. But Darren Lim is ok lah, he can act pretty well too. As for 'Xiao Mei' May Phua, her acting has improved through the years. Glad that Yvonne Lim's 10 years of effort paid off. Her Wanrou role is really superb. For Edmund Tay, it's like 苦尽甘来, several years in the industry and he finally gets recognised. Like he said, 40+ alr normally no chance to get such award. His wife Hong Huifang and 'daughter' Joanne Peh were so emotional when his name was announced haha. Anyway his kids got another toy to play liao lol.
Best drama...if Metamorphosis, the best Mediacorp drama in the recent years, dun get it, what could? As for Best Newcomer, Pornsak definitely deserves it! Though a Thai, his mandarin is fluent and hosting is natural. I think Dong Suhua shld give others a chance and stop being such a good newscaster haha.
The presenters were talking so much abt Mark Lee, and he really won it! Haha. He is the only one who won 2 awards yesterday. If counting his show 有话好好说, then it's 3. IIRC he went up to stage a total of 4 times (not counting the intro). Why can I rmb so clearly? Cos he always made his presence clear whenever he went up to stage haha. (eg. playing with Jeff Wang, joking with Xiao Zhu, kissing Fann Wong, etc) Mark Lee is undoubtedly the biggest winner in this year's Star Awards.
Now to Top 10: So many Top 10 male winners were/going to be Fann's husband haha. She was blushing red when Xiao Zhu asked if each winner is her husband lol. Quite shocked to see Gurmit on stage again, but this time he finally started on his mandarin course. 'Michael Jackson' was unexpected, is he really that popular?
Following Michelle Saram and Phyllis Quek, Michelle Chia is another kelong queen. Din have much works this year yet could get Top 10. At least Vivian Lai has a fanclub. Poor 7 princess...only 3 managed to squeeze in. When Shaowei said the last one was 2 words, almost everyone would have thought it was Jeanette Aw right? Haha. Jeanette fans must be so angry at Kym now...
Once again, the ceremony never never learns its lesson of overrunning. Why allocate so many commercial time? The last few awards were presented sooooo fast, and the winners must be having a heart attack.
Overall it was quite an enjoyable show. Much better than last year. Winners were more deserving too.
Friday, December 14, 2007
Worst ATP
Though it was only my first time taking ATP, I felt it was already the worst it could ever get. Many agreed too, even those who have witnessed several ATPs. For those who dunno, ATP stands for Advance Trainfire Programme, basically a range shooting test.
Let's start my nightmare from Monday, when I took IMT. Once again for those who dunno it stands for Individual Marksmanship Training, simply put a computerised shooting practice aka arcade. Compared to my previous IMT experience in BMT, there weren't much spoonfeeding as we were expected to know how the practice works. Everything proceeded quite fast, in fact too fast till I hardly had time to position myself steadily for each round of shooting. In the end bobo-ed almost every shot haha. However zeroing seemed quite perfect for me =).
Because of my lousy score, I was called for a reshoot. This time I was more prepared but still unable to obtain a satisfactory score. Then I was called again for a re-reshoot haha, so malu. Due to time constrain, there was no re-re-reshoot for me fortunately.
Next day, we set off to the range for ATP. For some reason I was appointed as the ammo escort, basically to help out in collecting and distributing of ammo rounds. Had to set off earlier in the morning than the rest, in a lau pok rover while the rest took commercial buses. Complained at my luck in being appointed such a role...
After all the hassle in collecting the rounds, the ammo party finally reached the range. Was not allowed to rest or sleep like the rest as I had to constantly load the magazines with rounds. The entire morning was spent on zeroing. Lucky for me, I managed to obtain a perfect zero, hehe. However lots of ppl had to re-zero or even re-rezero. Make my life (as well as the officers') so difficult. Due to time constrain, we only had 15 minutes of rest before proceeding to the afternoon programme.
Following was day practice, which was conducted pretty quickly. Then the day shoot test came, which made me very nervous as I cannot handle random targets well. Very afraid that I would fail the test, and have to go through everything again next time. As I was worrying abt my bobo shooting, the real nightmare came: it started to rain...very heavily. (We know the weather these few days) So heavy that we had to delay the test as vision was obscured. So heavy that the grass patches became rice fields. Haiz...
After abt 45 minutes of waiting, the rain seemed to have become smaller so the test started. But shortly after the test began, it started to rain heavily again. Those who were shooting at that moment had no choice but to run and shoot in the heavy rain. As they came back to return the magazines to me, could see that they were totally drenched, poor thing. Some even complained abt losing their grip on their wet rifles, resulting in many missed shots.
During my turn, the rain became smaller (what an erratic weather) to my favour. Still being nervous, I missed 8 out of 12 shots. As I thought I was definitely going to fail, I managed to score a perfect 4 out of 4 for my last magazine. Yay, overall I just passed lol. Was so happy ^_^!
However there are lots who did not manage to make the passing score and they had to reshoot, though no chance of obtaining a marksman no matter how good was their second try. It seemed like the reshoot was of not much help to the reshooters. Most scored the same or even poorer. That only made my job busier as I had to load more rounds, zzz.
It was almost 6pm and the conducting officer was still pushing ppl for day test reshoot, in hope of them passing. Furthermore it was raining heavily and the sky was dark. It looked more like an evening shoot instead, haha. As the rain became too heavy halfway the reshoot, it was forced to be cancelled. Basically everyone's Day Shoot became Rain Shoot haha. Morale was rock bottom.
Had rest and dinner until the sky became completely dark. In BMT, my night shoot commenced before the sky was completely dark so it was pretty easy to aim. The bad thing is, night shoot requires proning on the grass. In our case, the thought of proning on the 'rice field' was extremely distasteful. Though groundsheets were available we still had to get wet.
Just when I was abt to take up position for my shoot, the test was halted due to some technical problems. Firstly, there was no indication of correctly landed shots, thus nobody knew how much they scored. Secondly, some targets were poorly illuminated, could hardly aim at all. Thirdly, some targets did not register any shots. (Everyone on those particular lanes scored 0) Lots of cursing and swearing haha. Fortunately my lane wasn't one of those.
Waited for a long time, which seemed like eons, for my turn to shoot. And that was when I was bitten everywhere around my body by 'commando mosquitoes'. Had no idea how those insects were able to get into my most covered body parts. Hands and legs kena the most...
To my dismay, everyone was called back to the shed after that long wait. Thought the night shoot was cancelled and all my efforts wasted. To my relief, the conducting officer only wanted to address the technical fault of the targets. After another long wait, I could finally get to shoot. However the technical problem was not resolved at all, still no indication. Haiz...
The conducting officer gave up and felt that any reshoot would not be of any help. Therefore the range officially ended at 11.30pm. Results were then announced. To my surprise, I score 8/12 for my night shoot, yay! In total my score is 16/28, PASSED!!! Can pass very happy liao, considering my eyesight is poor and I'm such a bobo shooter.
Being the ammo party, I had to return the rounds first. Waited for 1 hour+ before we are allowed entry into the ammo dump. Grrrr... So tired that I could even fall asleep in the rocky rover ride back to camp. Luckily the driver tried to keep himself awake by shouting haha. Finally reached camp past 2am and you can imagine what time I could get to bed after washing up...
There are other factors which made ppl think this is one of the worst ATP, but shall not mention here. The organisation and planning was also quite poor and imbalanced. Glad that it's all over. Dun ever want to experience another of such ATP.
Let's start my nightmare from Monday, when I took IMT. Once again for those who dunno it stands for Individual Marksmanship Training, simply put a computerised shooting practice aka arcade. Compared to my previous IMT experience in BMT, there weren't much spoonfeeding as we were expected to know how the practice works. Everything proceeded quite fast, in fact too fast till I hardly had time to position myself steadily for each round of shooting. In the end bobo-ed almost every shot haha. However zeroing seemed quite perfect for me =).
Because of my lousy score, I was called for a reshoot. This time I was more prepared but still unable to obtain a satisfactory score. Then I was called again for a re-reshoot haha, so malu. Due to time constrain, there was no re-re-reshoot for me fortunately.
Next day, we set off to the range for ATP. For some reason I was appointed as the ammo escort, basically to help out in collecting and distributing of ammo rounds. Had to set off earlier in the morning than the rest, in a lau pok rover while the rest took commercial buses. Complained at my luck in being appointed such a role...
After all the hassle in collecting the rounds, the ammo party finally reached the range. Was not allowed to rest or sleep like the rest as I had to constantly load the magazines with rounds. The entire morning was spent on zeroing. Lucky for me, I managed to obtain a perfect zero, hehe. However lots of ppl had to re-zero or even re-rezero. Make my life (as well as the officers') so difficult. Due to time constrain, we only had 15 minutes of rest before proceeding to the afternoon programme.
Following was day practice, which was conducted pretty quickly. Then the day shoot test came, which made me very nervous as I cannot handle random targets well. Very afraid that I would fail the test, and have to go through everything again next time. As I was worrying abt my bobo shooting, the real nightmare came: it started to rain...very heavily. (We know the weather these few days) So heavy that we had to delay the test as vision was obscured. So heavy that the grass patches became rice fields. Haiz...
After abt 45 minutes of waiting, the rain seemed to have become smaller so the test started. But shortly after the test began, it started to rain heavily again. Those who were shooting at that moment had no choice but to run and shoot in the heavy rain. As they came back to return the magazines to me, could see that they were totally drenched, poor thing. Some even complained abt losing their grip on their wet rifles, resulting in many missed shots.
During my turn, the rain became smaller (what an erratic weather) to my favour. Still being nervous, I missed 8 out of 12 shots. As I thought I was definitely going to fail, I managed to score a perfect 4 out of 4 for my last magazine. Yay, overall I just passed lol. Was so happy ^_^!
However there are lots who did not manage to make the passing score and they had to reshoot, though no chance of obtaining a marksman no matter how good was their second try. It seemed like the reshoot was of not much help to the reshooters. Most scored the same or even poorer. That only made my job busier as I had to load more rounds, zzz.
It was almost 6pm and the conducting officer was still pushing ppl for day test reshoot, in hope of them passing. Furthermore it was raining heavily and the sky was dark. It looked more like an evening shoot instead, haha. As the rain became too heavy halfway the reshoot, it was forced to be cancelled. Basically everyone's Day Shoot became Rain Shoot haha. Morale was rock bottom.
Had rest and dinner until the sky became completely dark. In BMT, my night shoot commenced before the sky was completely dark so it was pretty easy to aim. The bad thing is, night shoot requires proning on the grass. In our case, the thought of proning on the 'rice field' was extremely distasteful. Though groundsheets were available we still had to get wet.
Just when I was abt to take up position for my shoot, the test was halted due to some technical problems. Firstly, there was no indication of correctly landed shots, thus nobody knew how much they scored. Secondly, some targets were poorly illuminated, could hardly aim at all. Thirdly, some targets did not register any shots. (Everyone on those particular lanes scored 0) Lots of cursing and swearing haha. Fortunately my lane wasn't one of those.
Waited for a long time, which seemed like eons, for my turn to shoot. And that was when I was bitten everywhere around my body by 'commando mosquitoes'. Had no idea how those insects were able to get into my most covered body parts. Hands and legs kena the most...
To my dismay, everyone was called back to the shed after that long wait. Thought the night shoot was cancelled and all my efforts wasted. To my relief, the conducting officer only wanted to address the technical fault of the targets. After another long wait, I could finally get to shoot. However the technical problem was not resolved at all, still no indication. Haiz...
The conducting officer gave up and felt that any reshoot would not be of any help. Therefore the range officially ended at 11.30pm. Results were then announced. To my surprise, I score 8/12 for my night shoot, yay! In total my score is 16/28, PASSED!!! Can pass very happy liao, considering my eyesight is poor and I'm such a bobo shooter.
Being the ammo party, I had to return the rounds first. Waited for 1 hour+ before we are allowed entry into the ammo dump. Grrrr... So tired that I could even fall asleep in the rocky rover ride back to camp. Luckily the driver tried to keep himself awake by shouting haha. Finally reached camp past 2am and you can imagine what time I could get to bed after washing up...
There are other factors which made ppl think this is one of the worst ATP, but shall not mention here. The organisation and planning was also quite poor and imbalanced. Glad that it's all over. Dun ever want to experience another of such ATP.
Sunday, December 09, 2007
Birthday Treat
Finally 4 of us were able to get together, for one entire day. Outing is really hard to organise esp when all of us were serving NS. Now all ORD-ed except me, haiz.
Went Minds Cafe for the first time. Was lucky to get the last sofa seats. Thanks to YF for introducing some games to us. IMO the pirates strategy game was quite enjoyable, followed by Blokus. (can see the cover of the game from YF's blog) Time did not seem to be enough, and couldn't find those games recommended by others. If we were to go again next time, better do some research first haha.
Then went to watch The Golden Compass. This movie seems like Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Lord of the Rings combined haha. Found the front part a bit boring. Talking too much abt things I dun really understand. Not a very satisfying experience for me...
After the movie we proceeded with ZH anf JH birthday treat. So convenient for their birthdays to fall so close together haha. Really looking forward to the trip in January!
Went Minds Cafe for the first time. Was lucky to get the last sofa seats. Thanks to YF for introducing some games to us. IMO the pirates strategy game was quite enjoyable, followed by Blokus. (can see the cover of the game from YF's blog) Time did not seem to be enough, and couldn't find those games recommended by others. If we were to go again next time, better do some research first haha.
Then went to watch The Golden Compass. This movie seems like Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Lord of the Rings combined haha. Found the front part a bit boring. Talking too much abt things I dun really understand. Not a very satisfying experience for me...
After the movie we proceeded with ZH anf JH birthday treat. So convenient for their birthdays to fall so close together haha. Really looking forward to the trip in January!
Sunday, December 02, 2007
JLPT 3
Took the test at Changi this afternoon. This year I had friends to discuss the paper with during the breaks, compared to last year when I was all alone.
The paper's not so difficult. Probably because I'm strong in vocab/grammar/reading aspect. Whereas my listening still sucks, after spending lots of time practising, watching animes and Japanese dramas, haiz. And the qns were damn tricky. Luckily my ears healed in time, otherwise the experience might be even worse.
Still troubled by those qns that I was unable to answer or got wrong. But then looking back at the comments made during the PSLE Maths uproar, I guess it's impractical to expect everything to be correct. Btw JLPT has no moderation, just a pass/fail grade based on the absolute scores. If I could pass and get the certificate, the scores actually don't matter to others. However the absolute score does reflect on the level of proficiency of the individual, to differentiate between those who barely pass (60%) and those who pass with flying colours (close to 100%).
Shld be able to pass this test, unless I did really poorly for listening. But of course I don't want merely a pass, haha. Wonder if I have the capability to take JLPT 2 next year? JLPT 2 is meant for ppl whose language ability is sufficient to live and work in Japan. Am I too impatient? Lol.
Feeling very tired now. Used up lots of brain power alr. Still have to book in later...
The paper's not so difficult. Probably because I'm strong in vocab/grammar/reading aspect. Whereas my listening still sucks, after spending lots of time practising, watching animes and Japanese dramas, haiz. And the qns were damn tricky. Luckily my ears healed in time, otherwise the experience might be even worse.
Still troubled by those qns that I was unable to answer or got wrong. But then looking back at the comments made during the PSLE Maths uproar, I guess it's impractical to expect everything to be correct. Btw JLPT has no moderation, just a pass/fail grade based on the absolute scores. If I could pass and get the certificate, the scores actually don't matter to others. However the absolute score does reflect on the level of proficiency of the individual, to differentiate between those who barely pass (60%) and those who pass with flying colours (close to 100%).
Shld be able to pass this test, unless I did really poorly for listening. But of course I don't want merely a pass, haha. Wonder if I have the capability to take JLPT 2 next year? JLPT 2 is meant for ppl whose language ability is sufficient to live and work in Japan. Am I too impatient? Lol.
Feeling very tired now. Used up lots of brain power alr. Still have to book in later...
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