10 Random Facts... (completed)...

Well... I had the mis good-fortune of getting tagged by x. "Give me 10 random facts about yourself"... *sigh* here I go...

Random Fact #1... My MSN Buddy is in S'pore

Meet Jacq ;) She's great. Born in Sabah, working in Jurong East, Singapore... she keeps me company before I go to sleep every night :p. I always look forward to our daily MSN conversations =) She always brings humor to my drab, monotonous days.
I'm finally going to be able to meet her when I go to Singapore!

Random Fact #2... I love D.I.S.C.O.!!!

What's wrong with DISCO? It's great! I think everyone just decided to hate on it because DISCO'ers had so much style! :p Yes, it was an era of Sex & Drugs... hmm, sounds like the precursor for modernday RAVES. Both were underground, and both are associated with drugs and long hours on the dancefloor. DISCO rawks! Dont' let anyone tell you otherwise =) They even have DISCO in Singapore :p

Random Fact #3... My Chinese name is a Girl's name...

That's right... I have a girl's name. Those of you who don't already know it, too bad. If I told you I'd have to kill you :p. Yes, my family has a curse, and the firstborn son is sought after by the demons... that is how I ended up with my girly name <_< >_>. You may have heard of my story, I believe they made a movie of it but they replaced me with someone else... ;) Really though, it's true... the bit about my name anyways :p. Damn, I really need to do something about that hair...


Random Fact #4... I am 5'7.75" (172cm)...

Yes that's right.. I'm not quite 5'8". But most people think I'm taller because I always wear my boots and they give me about 1.5". Being almost 5'8" I am the tallest in my family as well. To tell you the truth, I wish I were about 2 inches taller... actually, more like 2.25" taller, 5'10" would be nice =)

BTW... This lovely picture was provided by Jacq! :D I love it :P

Random Fact #5... I don't like Heights...

That's right folks I have a fear of heights. It's a sort of double-edged sword because I love the view from high places. You can bring me to high places and I'll go, but but it's not to say that my heart rate doesn't spike and my knees don't get weak. Most people don't know that I have a fear of heights because I'm not one of those people who freak out and freeze :p

Random Fact #6... I used to have long hair (sk8r style)...

Yes, that's right. As embarassing is it may be, I used to sport long hair *runs and hides in a corner*. That's me on the left in the black, white & red Cross Colour hoodie with the huge ass Cross Color Jeans. I'm not sure what I was thinking, but I'm sure it was somewhere along the lines of 'Leave me alone, I'm being fashionable / original'. Boy was I wrong. Why didn't anyone slap me? Hmm.. I know... it's that family curse again... uh yeah. Long hair to protect myself from the demons... So they couldn't tell that I'm a guy :p

Random Fact #7... I'm in the wrong industry (I love Graphics)...

Yeah... I'm not sure how I ended up in the tech industry. I'm more of a visual person than anything. Actually, I DO know how I ended up here... My portfolio was too half-assed :p so I didn't make the cut to get into the Graphic Design program I applied to :/ Then I applied to Tech college.. and ended up graduating from Technical Programming (?) WTH, talk about 180. Oh well... Maybe I can take what I learn in the IT industry and apply it with my visual skills and come up with something (?) One can hope :)

Random Fact #8... There's Always Something Playing When I Go To Sleep...

I'm not sure where I picked up this habit, but there has always got to be something playing (on the tube) when I go to sleep. If the TV isn't on in the background it takes longer for me to crash. Since I don't didn't have cable running to my room I usually pop in a DVD and pass out to that :p I can't count how many times I've fallen asleep to 'Snatch', keke. Now that I have the cable, my choice is usually Discovery or A&E... This week there hasn't been anything interesting on so the DVDs of choice were StarWars Trilogy!

Random Fact #9... I Am A Dork...

I'm blogging no word of a lie :p Here's a snap of the PaperCraft motorcycle that I put together last year, it took over 80 hours to complete. You can't get much Dorkier than that. Actually, you can, but still... this is pretty Dorky. This particular one is the Yamaha YZF-R1. It consisted of 14 pages of 170 parts. This papercraft even goes so far as to recreate the frame structure. Get it, and other PaperCraft here.

Random Fact #10... My Dad Is A Klepto...

I remember when I was young. Everytime we'd go out to a Japanese restaurant my mom would always end up with something in her purse :D It's kinda funny if you think about it :p. He has since stopped this little habit but we have a little shrine with the stuff that he skillfully acquired from before ;) I remember us having more artifacts than that... maybe someone thiefed them from us?

There, I'm finally done!... damn u x! :p

Tag:
carolyn
nx2c

Friends of OCF - CNY Celebration...

Last night I attended a 'Friends of OCF (Overseas Christian Fellowship) CNY Celebration'. I actually wasn't expecting to stay the whole night hence the lack of pictures. This took place at Cascade Gospel Chapel, the Church that I grew up attending. I feel very out of place everytime I step in there... I haven't attended Church in a good 10 years. That being said, it's a surprise I don't burst into flames everytime I set foot in there :p.

The night began with the emcee welcoming everyone there and then going into some of the tales behind CNY and the zodiac, then he continued on with a few 'dog' jokes. All I remember was the last one, it went something like this.

There was a minister that was invited over to some person's house, now, this particular person wasn't exactly known to be the greatest house keeper. He went in and made himself comfortable then proceeded to walk over to the dinner table. The minister sits himself down and looks at the setting, there was something peculiar with the whole thing. "Do you clean these dishes?" He says.
"As clean as soap and water can get them..." She replies.

Satisfied with her answer, the minister relaxes and partakes of the meal with her. Upon completion of the meal the woman gets up and, to his surprise, walks past the sink and out onto the patio. "Here Soap! Here Water!"

Ya... I remember the joke because all I heard after the punchline was... CRICKETS!

They then proceeded to draw lots to determine which tables would get to line up first... my table was first, table #16. There was actually quite a bit of food to choose from (mostly malaysian/singaporean dishes) but unfortunately I ate before I went to the celebration.

After dinner there was in interesting play :D It was more amusing than anything because it reminded me of one of those old english dubbed movies. They had pre-recorded the track because they couldn't fit everyone with a mic, they wanted to be sure that everyone could be heard. Bad thing was, everyone's timing was waaaay off, so the lips weren't synched :p


That's my Dad on the far-right
After the play a minister from one of the North Vancouver Churches gave a testemony. It began with a great joke:

A Japanese businessman (in Malaysia) got into a Cab (Proton Saga: Malaysian-made car) "Quick, take me to the airport."
The cab driver is on the highway and the Japanese man notices that there are cars flying past them!

A Toyota Camry blows past and he exclaims, "Toyota Camry! Very good car, very fast, very fast! Made in Japan!"
Next a Nissan flys by, "Nissan! Very good car, very fast, very fast! Made in Japan!"
Another car goes by, "Honda Accord! Very good car, very fast, very fast! Made in Japan!"

Finally they arrive at the airport. "How much?" Asks the business man.
"RM 200" says the cab driver.
"Wah, why so expensive?!"

...

"Taxi Meter... Made in Japan! Very fast, VERY FAST!"

After the testemony there was dessert... our table was second (table 6 :p) hehe, I had moved since the beginning of the dinner ;). All in all, the night was alright, it was nice to see the familiar faces of the elders that surrounded me when I was growing up. Cheers, happy CNY.

Wow... This Is What A Honda Feels Like...

My cousin sent me this link... neat stuff ;)
Just click on the pic

Miguel's Last Day...

Well it was Miguel's last day with us at IBM today, so a few of us decided to go have a small farewell for her. This is the informal farewell dinner. I beleive there will be a formal one this coming Tuesday. Here's some footage of her Farewell gift from the 3 of us... a shot of Bacardi 151 Rum :p I love her reaction! It was taken via AS' Mobile phone... hence the low quality.

Ghetto Timmy Ho's...

Hmm... I'm not sure what happened here.. and what went wrong where... but I sure hope someone got fired over this business decision :p

Was on the way over to Boston Pizza with AK and found this in the place of the REAL Timmy Ho's and no... Timmy Ho's isn't a Won Ton House :D it's short for Tim Horton's obviously. We don't dare step into this portable and can't imagine what sort of weak selection they could be offering in that shack. What's amusing is, if you look closer, you can see and 'Enter' and 'Exit' sign on the doors too. You know... for the high volume days when they get more than 5 people at once!

Really though, this isn't a joke... it's been setup temporarily while they perform renovations on the main building. Most places just close up shop until the renos are done... not sure what they were thinking. It probably costs more to rent that thing than the amount they'll make off the feeble donut sales from there.

*** Aww, now those BCIT'ers have to find somewhere else to pull their overnighters =p keke.

BTW... Random Fact #8 has been posted =)

Fire Snake :D...

I was clicking around reading blogs and stumbled upon this one: squishthefatcat.blogspot.com

She had an interesting post about her horoscope so I decided to visit that site and look mine up :) Here's what I found:

FIRE SNAKE Horoscope
Jan 23, 1917 to Feb 10, 1918
Feb 18, 1977 to Feb 6, 1978

Snake people enter a room and there is Music, Music, Joy! Everyone dances! Such high spirit! The Snake is so intense and passionate, just as likely to take out the castanets as to climb mountains of snow. Snake year people are charming and romantic, often planning delightful hideaway surprises. Possessing tremendous wisdom, they are deep, quiet thinkers, calm by nature, but most intense. They often get involved in great causes, bigger than life, and often serve as mentors to the young. To paraphrase Confucius, they have a kind of inner beauty that arises, hovers, then comes to nest. They will have an abundance of good fortune and a long and prosperous life.

Sharkfin Soup and Chinese Cabbage are among keys to good health!! <-- lol, I don't understand it, but I think they throw these random lines into all of them :p

The Fire Snake is like a meteor in the sky, brilliant and alive. With spellbinding eloquence, the Snake converses with conviction on a broad range of topics, but realizes that good conversation lies as much in the listening as the talking. The Snake does both very well, raising communication to a very high and elegant art. People love to be in the company of this very graceful Fire Snake, who is always pleasant, provocative, humorous, and quick witted. With split second reflexes, they are constantly conceiving new ideas and coming up with new schemes. This entrepreneurial spirit makes headlines and the Fire Snake is much admired. Because of their ambition, perseverance, and infinite patience, and wise financial moves made early in life, their fortunes grow steadily. By the time middle age arrives, financial fortune is truly theirs. Relationships follow the same path, through faithfulness, perseverance, and willingness to make relationships really work, the future is always bright.

Famous Snake People: Mao Tse-tong, Mahatma Gandhi, Indira Gandhi, Ferdinand Marcos, Abraham Lincoln, Lady Pamela Mountbatten, Martin Luther King, Grace Kelly, Jacqueline Kennedy, Edgar Allen Poe, Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bob Dylan

What's your horoscope? Find out here.

MSN licks arse...

I was chatting with Jacq on the weekend and my home network + MSN decided to act like arse... wtf! I was able to view/send webcam but not able to send messages... to ANYONE!!! This resulted in a rather silly method of 'MSN' communicating...

Ya... this is no joke, you can see by the "The following message could not be delivered to all recipients" message that I was trying, and failing miserably, to send messages to her. WTF... I had to break out the lined paper and a pen...


So our 'conversation' went on like this for (easily) over 1/2 hour when I got fed up and tried to send messages to random people on my list... No dice, it was the same for everyone :'( BTW handwritten messages weren't sending either... makes sense, no?


By the end of it I did what I should have done to begin with... reset the router =p my cousin might have lost all his downloads, but meh =) after all, what's more important a harddisk full of pr0n Chinese Dramas / hentai Anime or camming with Jacq? keke. Sorry Jeff :D

Happy Belated CNY!!!

Hello all and Happy Chow Yun Fat! .. Er... Gong Hay Fat Choy... or Xing Nian Kuai Le :p Take your pick ;)

CNY for us was not such a huge affair this year and it seems that every year it's getting less and less festive :( Is it just me? This year I didn't even go to ChinaTown to watch the parades, I just sat at home and chatted with Miss Thien :). Perhaps it was the rain that also took away from the festivities. Or the fact that our skies weren't lit with fireworks that make all those wonderful sounds... As Kenny Sia so tactfully put it, "Peeeewwwww-la-la-la-BOM!!!"

We had a small family gathering, HOTPOT! With waaaaaaaay too much food! Wow! As you can see we had two pots going. The soup base was a simple chicken broth but one of the tastiest I've had in awile! Our choices consisted of: Beef, pork, chicken, fish, fish ball, octopus ball, tofu, tofu stuffed with mushrooms, enoki mushrooms, button mushrooms, some other mushroom :p, artificial crab, shrimp, spinach, sprouts, kale, and... some other stuff :p forgot what it's called. Our dinner lasted for the better portion of 2 hours possibly longer... It's a little bit of a blur as I got so stuffed from the food. Really got stuffed that night, I'm pretty sure I was done after the 1 hour mark... but it was so good I couldn't stop! By the end of it, we hadn't even finished EVERYTHING... there was waaaay too much, easily enough for 15 people :D

Ah well, with dinner done I headed downstairs to chat w/ Jacq again. The rest of the family wound down by watching some TV (Can't remember what was playing... some Jacky Chan movie). Oh, for those of you who are dorks like me and use the ZSNES emulator... have you ever wondered what zsKnight looks like? You're in luck :D he's married to my cousin :p and there he is on the couch! :D I've temporarily mosiac'd his face pending his approval ;)

During the wind-down period we also wound up playing with a Gov't issued spared-no-expense polaroid camera (Sis works for the Gov't) and for the life of us couldn't figure out how to get the flash going (?) WTH. It doesn't look too complicated, right? Ya... no. Looks can be decieving. This this is waaaay too technologically advanced for us... meh. We ended up taking a bunch of photos w/o the flash... most of them ended up looking a little disturbing.. Almost like spirits in the photos. The backgrounds were so dark and the only things you could see were our blurry faces :p. (I'll post a pic soon)

Well, we finally got to the DDR portion of the night and spent a good hour playing! Great fun! as long as you weren't sitting downstairs while we were playing :P You see, here in Canada, (when not made of snow) our houses are made of cardboard... as a result, anything that happens upstairs is amplified and sounds like a herd of elephants trampling overhead. No pictures or footage of DDR, sorry folks. Damn.. have to still post the other footage :(

Time to call it a night! Take care and may you all have a happy and prosperous New Year! Bow wow!

1000!!!...

Woo I've finally hit over 1,000 hits :D It took a little over a month but it happened! Woo Hoo! I'd say it's a pretty good start to the Chinese New Year!

One thing I have to do is to keep my updates more consistent! I've been so tired from work and stuff... haiz. Oh well.. I'll try to keep it up :p

Malaysia Here I Come!...

Hellz yea! My vacation request finally got approved! :D MALAYSIA HERE I COME :D Wow I can't wait! The last time I went back was 6 years ago... time to hit up the mamak and get fat :p (that last trip I put on about 10lbs in 2 weeks)

Hmm.. what do I plan to do when I'm there?
1. Eat lots of Roti Canai and Char Kuey Teow
2. Visit Petronas Towers again
3. Go to Genting Highlands ? (last time went to Cameron Highlands)
4. Go to Kuantan ? (Such a nice place, went last time too)
5. Find Kenny Sia =p
6. Buy stuff... don't know what I want to buy yet... but yea.. buy stuff.
... wah, so many things I want to do... I'll list more later.

Friends' requests. Bring back:
1. Ipoh girl
2. Roti Canai

no, really... Ipoh girl =p

Me: u want anything from there?
S.T.: mmmm not really
Me: where's the kampung w/ the pretty girls? during CNY
S.T.: ipoh?
Me: ya.. I'll bring one of them back for you ****
S.T.: uh.... if I really wanted someone like that, I'd wear my green card around my neck like bling
Me: LOL
S.T.: when are you leaving/coming back
S.T.: ?
Me: March 6 - 20something
Me: 23rd I think.. don't remember..
S.T.: ah...
S.T.: psh.. that's not CNY
Me: ya I know.. maybe I'll be able to catch some of the stragglers
S.T: ....
Me: some scraps for you =p
Me: LMAO.. shh
S.T.: i don't believe in seconds....
Me: what about thirds then?
Me: O.o
S.T.: uh... what about "no"
Me: damn
Me: why are you making this so difficult?
S.T.: =.=;;

**yes I know Ipoh is not a Kampung **
Ok, fine... he didn't really request it... and just ignore that 'no'... yar, Ipoh girl.
Are they really supposed to be that pretty? Well... there's Michelle Yeoh, but she doesn't count anymore, she's too old :p

BTW... added 2 more posts in Arts section. Click here.

Saturday stuff...

Saturday was not too eventful, went to the mall with some friends... it was packed as hell. Dunno if it was even worth it :p I came back with the Star Wars Trilogy but one of the cases is cracked :@. Must go back to exchange it.

Then went out for dinner w/ AK :) Original Tandoori Kitchen. Read about it here

Night at the Cac...

Hmm, yesterday was an interesting day. I woke up to find that it had been snowing during the night. I remember going out for a smoke last night and freezing my ass off in the process, but it didn't seem cold enough for snow. Then again.. what do I know? All I know is that it's been pissing rain for the last 4 weeks.

For the most part my day was like any other day during the week. I'm still adjusting to my new schedule which means that my body decides to go to sleep when it feel like it... which in turn means that I end up taking those stupid naps and waking up cranky.

Last night was different. I didn't get the chance to fall asleep because I didn't go home right after work. I ended up getting dropped off at Gilmore Skytrain Station and training it downtown. Wow, it's been a loooooooooooong time since I last took public transit. To tell you the truth, I don't miss it. AND the price just keeps going up.

I made it downtown and met up with JM at the Cactus Club on Robson... our old 2nd home. The occasion was his wife's 2nd ultrasound. They're having twins!!! Which means that I'm going to be godfather to twins! Crazy stuff :/ Where has all the time gone? I've known JM since grade 6... Imagine that, over 17 years...

Our night began at about 5:30pm which is fairly early by anyone's standards. But, beggars can't be choosers, and we don't often get the chance to see each other these days. Anytime that we can take just to chell together is welcome. The pair of us were already pretty tired from long days... I wasn't sure how long we were going to last :p JM was already sitting at the bar by the time I arrived, we weren't expecting to stay too long so we decided to just stay seated there.During our time at the bar it also occurred to me that I hadn't seen AK in almost 2 weeks. It had been quite awhile since JM had seen him as well so I called AK on my mobile to try to persuade him to come out. Our conversation ended with him informing me that he was going to remain at home because he had just come back from the gym and was spent. I filled JM in and he insisted that I dial AK back and, after using his powers of persuasion AK ended up at the bar with us :D.

It was nice to be able to sit around and catch up with each others' lives. We don't spend nearly as much time together as we would like to these days, it's rather disappointing. Also, since this is JM's old place of work, he was able to catch up with some of his old co-workers. That in itself is highly amusing for anyone who's fortunate enough to witness it (as you can see by the picture on the left). I's scared to imagine what went on when he used to work here :p

Of course, no night with JM is complete without at least one shot. We all gathered 'round and Kevo poured out 4 shots of Drambuie (if memory serves me right), yumm. I still can't get over the amount of alcohol JM is able to consume. That day wasn't like some of the other days that I had met up with him. On occasion JM has been on his 9^th-12^th beer by the time I've met up with him. Alcohol for blood? :P Here's a shot of JM speaking with AK, explaining that he wants to start doing more physical activity again, hehe. That's all well-and-good, but here's how some of the conversation went, "So, I'll start going to the gym with you guys, but you'll have to drag me..." How convincing is that? lol. We'll be all worn out BEFORE we even hit the gym! Anyway, JM, we have proof of your proposal ;).

As usual, our night ended with a shot. This time it was something nice and fruity (Hpnotiq and Alize, if there's a name for it, I don't know it :p).


JM left with his wife while AK and I took a stroll down Robson towards Burger King. Apparently alcohol to AK is like marijuana to everyone else :p he got the munchies LOL. On the way there we came across this (not sure what to make of it... it had a fountain... WTF):


Welcome to Vancouver! :p

Ctrl+A is fun... (only in Internet Explorer)

Hmm... I'm just wondering how many people will figure out how to read this post, hehe.

Anyways, ya, so I'm sitting here at work doing training with my work buddy and I decide I'm going to start taking some calls today. Surprise, surprise... I get 2 of the crappiest calls of the day :p oh well.

Blah blah.. I'll write more later :) BTW if you DO end up reading this, leave a comment ;) Cheers

Chicken Tracks...

I decided to finally add a Writings section to share some of my own works. I haven't written anything in ages, but I'm hoping that this will be excuse enough for me to start again.

Check it out here

Oh yeah, I know this comes a little bit late, but we missed the record for consecutive days of rain by 1 day. That day the sun decided to pop it's head out for a bit just to tease us all. Not to my surprise, it's been pissing rain again since then.

Laptops hate me...

Those who know me also know that I am plagued with a curse when it comes to laptops. When I was attending BCIT I enrolled in the laptop program which meant that each person in my 'set' was issued a laptop and we had access to a private 'lab' complete with a network drop for each of us. That year we were given a batch of IBM ThinkPad T30 (I think) and lucky for us we got a whole batch of defective MotherBoards too. Something to do with the video memory... way to go IBM! Now look, I work in the Services division for IBM... wth... must be some sort of punishment for something I did in a past life.

So anyway, out of roughly 20 laptops I get the LEMON (read: an artifact (especially an automobile) that is defective or unsatisfactory [syn: stinker]) of the bunch... there's got to be a better word than that. How 'bout: Shitty-useless-giant-6lb-MoBo replacement x6-paperweight. Ya, that doesn't even cover everything but it'll suffice for now. You see, it's not that I don't like IBM, in fact I think they make some nice looking reliable products that aren't waaaaaay overpriced.

So, you have been warned, be wary when I am around and your laptop is nearby :p. If I touch it... it's game over.

My Toshiba Satellite is slowly dying as well, I'm very happy with it overall, but the curse is still with me. From Day one, the OS would randomly freeze up. Not so frequent, but enough that it prompted me to send it back in while still under warranty. Upon return the problem seemed to go away.. for about a week :@ then came back. Meh... I lived with it.

Woo hoo! Successfully booted!
Now it's a different problem alltogether. The HardDrive motor seems to be dying :'( which means that I'll have to go out and look for a new one. *sigh* I've been too lazy to go look for one, and I'm not exactly up-to-date with computer stuffy stuff :$. Ah well. I first realized that the drive was dying when data xfers would be displaying the status.. and the estimated times were going up :/... you know there's something wrong when something that should take 1 minute to xfer starts counting up to over 200 minutes and there's not scan/other cpu activity going on in the background. Another hint that things are going wrong would be ... BSOD 3 times in 3 attempts to start the OS.


** OUCH **
Today I managed to backup the last of my data :p the 7.2 GB of songs that I had on my drive... and whatever other entertainment I had as well. I was quite pleased as I didn't have to hold the laptop at a funny angle to make sure the drive would keep spinning. It was, however, still doing some funny stuff albeit not as often as before... who cares I suppose :p I managed to get everything xferred before it crapped out again! I was expecting BSOD again.. but nope.. it just locked up and looked like Vid Mem went... uh... crap. This post wasn't about my Video Memory going.. was it? Shit.

BTW... ignore the name of the file that's being xferred in the picture O.o... it's uh... not mine? :p

I hate naps!...

Argh! Yes... I hate naps! I don't know how people do it, take a cat nap everyday, it's beyond me.

Everytime I take a nap I feel like crap when I get up. Today when I got home I felt like the sandman had taken his bag of sand emptied half into my eyes and then proceeded to empty the rest into my throat. Yeah, I know, that doesn't make much sense... but ya. Fek. My throat hurts. I'm so parched and I think Im sure it's because I joined a friend of mine for some fine dining at the local McDonald's =p and they decided to secretly replace my fries with a box of saltlick. For some reason, at that time it didn't occur to me that I could have just walked back downstairs to the counter and ordered a fresh batch with less salt. For a short time I used to order McDick's fries with no salt (I like taking them alone anyway w/o condiments) this also ensures that you get a fresh batch (as they're guaranteed NOT to have fries with NO salt in the bin. Blah blah blah, I'm tired and I'm rambling... here are some fun facts:

It's rather curious how the Trans Fat row has nothing in it...

Where do they come up with this stuff?... :D

Had to post this just cuz it had me busting a gut :p funny shit...

Triumphant! Petronas Conquered...

Finally... I'm done with the Puzz 3D Petronas Towers!

I don't recall exactly how many hours I spent but I'm positive that it was over 13 hours of sitting on my ass tring to figure out what went where. If you want to see pictures of different stages during the building process, you can check them in the original (updated) blog entry here.

Below are some shots of the finished Puzzle ;) Enjoy!