Being Kind and Thoughtful to a Girl May Not Help You when Wooing Her

Upon reading back on my earlier entries on BGR, I realised one particular landmine in the rocky road to a budding romance.

So a while back, my male colleagues declared that they would be especially nice to the girl they are interested in (refer to Points 1 and 2 especially). But unless you are usually a big arschloch to the womankind (I have been privy before to the intriguing rehabilitation of a misogynistic geek to the charms of a beautiful programmer. Sad to say, it did not end well.), it may not be immediately obvious to the girl, leading to chaotic consequences; (1) She thinks you are a nice guy, i.e. hell would freeze over before she ends up with you, unless all the bad and exciting men have died somewhere somehow. But she will find you when the latest bad man in her life treats her like crap, which will be pretty frequent. (2) she thinks you are nice to everyone (but she doesn't like you more than as a friend) and mistakenly tries to introduce you to her single friends who will also favour a bad man over you. (3) A vulnerable, fragile she falls head over heels in love with you, or thinks that she is, leading to a very bad ending where she will either fall out of love with you, or her husband/lover/ boyfriend/ current bad man will kill you. This is a especially scary situation if you don't like her. (4) She thinks you are gay (especially easily misunderstood for metrosexual and very SNAGGY guys) (5) she is already open to having a relationship with you => your success rate using this method can reap potentially significant gains.

Notice my final point. The assumption is that she has to be already interested in you or is open to having a romance (could be anyone at this point), in order for your being kind and thoughtful to work. Oh yeah, I digress here a bit, if you have been a super shy guy or nasty piece of work to all of womankind, it will also be very hard for you to get her. Note: being bad to your girl is ok *hate to say it but treat them mean, keep them keen does work most of the time*, being bad to every girl is not ok, you will gain a nasty reputation and women are gossipy.

I  feel for the extroverted guy who is nice to everyone. Because he is fair to all, acts of particular kindness will be taken for granted by the target because she and everyone else expects that of him.  Worse still, if he is successful and gains a girlfriend, she will (1) forbid him to be nice to other girls to prevent scenarios 3 and/ or 5, as mentioned earlier, because she will never feel secure in the relationship (2) quarrel with him all the time, also because of the same reason, leading to a very short-lived romance (3) be the nice to everyone kind of girl, and he will have to beat other guys off with a stick.

Goodbye Mininova (and SceneTorrents)

Starting from today, only approved publishers are allowed to upload files to Mininova. Thanks to a Dutch court ruling that Mininova has to remove all links to ahem torrents within 3 months and face the consequences.

I would like to offer my appreciation and thanks to the Mininova team for the excellent work they put in for the last five years (Thank you for doing so up until the very last day of the three month deadline). To the courts persecuting Mininova, Pirate Bay and the rest of the torrent sites,  I say... I love the challenge. I guess there is finally a advantage to being slightly multilingual.

Saturday Munchies 12 - Fun with Sushi

Remember that I got a child-friendly sushi maker at the AFA09?

Well,  yesterday being Saturday and all, I decided to make sushi. Not before making the hapless Town Mouse chase all over NTUC looking for my slighly more exotic sushi ingredients, jelly fish, chuka hotate, crab stick, zucchini (dear boy bought me organic zucchini, because he couldn't find the usual GM kind *haha*), pickled radish and stuff, while I burnt my pot of carefully prepared rice (because I was too lazy to watch the fire, and went back to play the no-brainer yet addictive Delicious - Emily's Holiday Season).

I made some miso soup with radish and kelp, in case the sushi turned out to be disgusting.

The first roll made by my sushi maker.

Despite the mishap, there was plenty of rice left, unfortunately Town Mouse didn't want to eat much because he was so starved he ate Vater's leftover chicken (from his chicken puff pie endeavour the previous day) before I could finish cutting everything. So there was a lot of rice left, so I made some pressed fried rice. Haha, I call it pressed fried rice, because I actually stacked up everything in the bento box then remembered that I hadn't taken a photo yet... Please ignore the disgusting piece of seaweed lying like a carcase on the rice. It insults my sense of aesthetic, but was dumped on by Mutter who couldn't stand waste. If it had been me, I would have made a lovely .i. shape of it. Keke.

This reminds me, I bought some udon noodles for my breakfast, and I haven't used it yet!!!

Backdated Ancient Nihonjin Porn Article - More on the Ole Hero Shigeo Tokuda

This geriatic Japanese pehpeh, Shigeo Tokuda, was previously featured in Tail Chasers. I couldn't leave my old man behind. So here is the article again, with even more fun pictures from other sites such as Nippon Sekai, Weird Asia News etc.

The story is that the retired salaryman wanted to indulge in porn (that specialised in kissing??? Is it...) twenty years ago, since his wife and him are leading increasingly separate lives.While he was fascinated with the plot (yes, Japanese porn actually has slightly better constructs than its American counterpart.), he was too embarrassed to buy it off the shelf, so he went to the source itself (not the porn actresses, but the production company). Because he was such a frequent visitor *keke*, he made friends with a director, who saw the increasing demand for ancient nihonjin porn, and invited him to star in one two years later...

Now 75 years old (one year on from that article), he is still happily pounding away on  young chicks and old ladies alike or ordering the former to have sex with other men. The kind of life many men would love to live. I know I would (but not the latter act, cos that would be stupid). (The best part of it all, his wife and grown daughter love to do the Japanese polite Ignorance-Is-Bliss tactic. To them and everyone else, Daddy is a part-time actor... *grin*)

Vater's Munchies @ My Destructive Hand - Chicken Puff Pie Becomes Bun

Vater was making chicken puff pies on Friday, when I walked into the kitchen for a drink. Being my usual destructive self, I decided I wanted to make my own version (see bottom right of picture, the one with the satay-stick-holed heart. Vater's are the three on the bigger plate). Instead of making many thin layers to simulate puff layers, I was lazy and just flattened the pastry out into a very thin layer which I used to envelop the chicken + onion and celery+carrot+potato mixtures Vater had prepared earlier.

Viola! My Chicken Puff Pie turned out to be Chicken Bun. 挂羊头卖狗肉!!!

The Latest Obama Girl

I deliberated for a while whether to spread this viral hit, especially since this latest Obama girl is so adamant on her blog that she doesn't want the attention that international media is given her. Btw she became well-known after she attended Obama's town hall session at Shanghai Science and Technology Museum.

Well in that case, she shouldn't have worn such a teasing red coat and sexy black number and sat in such a way that accentuated her curves. Methinks the lady doth protest too much.

The best part is when she said in her blog that " I never wanted to go into the entertainment circle, therefore I rejected many TV stations' offers and contracts."

Haha, of course not, she probably wants to venture out of China. Maybe nail a rich old media mogul and be settled for life. Check out chinahush (it has even more scintillating shots of her).

Updated!!!
Her name is Wang Zifei (click name to see blog url)

Maid Momoko offers her penciled Love

I was inspired by my rewrite on the maid cafe experience that the moment I woke up I drew a new little girl in pink. This is the second time I am drawing in pencil after Gordon the Gopher. I was told by one of my colleagues when I showed her my earlier version (as seen above in the header, and was drawn in Microsoft Paint) that she wasn't emoting enough like those real Japanese drawing >.<. But as typical as beginners go, I realized my booboo after I finished that I should have drawn from left to right to spare the pencil mark smudging...Anyway I decided to upload her before I start coloring.

Isn't it so coincidental that I decided to name my little girl as Momoko, when pink in Japanese means Momoiro, 桃色? Keke.

Updated!!!

I realised stupidly after staring at the picture more closely that Momoko's arms seems long, almost reaching her feet. While it would be desirable for sit-and-reach, she probably resembles an Orang Utan...An especially bad idea since I am not trying to dedicate to our beloved Ah Meng.

Japanese Maid Cafe - This is How we Love to be Served

@Home Cafe maid cafe is one of the most popular maid cafes in Japan. They have two branches at Akihabara. But they were too crowded, with long snaking queues, no joke when we were in the dead of the winter and we were exposed to the elements. The other branch is located inside the Level 5 Don Quixote.

 The map I used to go there is not updated. Sigh. And worse still, I forgot to use landmarks. I ended up going around asking "Kokowa doko desu ka?"

We ended up at the Cos-cafe. I thought the food was good when I visited the site that's why we went there. It was quite empty. The food was hahaha, an experience. So was the encounter with the pretty maid. Btw you cannot take photos of or with the maids (exception seems to be given to Caucasians), you have to buy a copy.

Speaking of the maid, she welcomed us in a super cute voice, but since our Japanese is crap, we were like "huh?" Three attempts later, she then spoke in surprisingly guttural English "Come here." Like Igor donned a pretty girl suit. =D

I have to give her points for trying. She always tried three times in cute Japanese before doing the Igor. But sadly we did not get to have the maid experience much, unlike the pehpeh next to us. Using one cup of 600yen tea, he managed to get three maids to SQUAT (with their legs closed demurely together) near his feet next to the table talking sweetly to him, at different times for about 30 minutes each (I timed them). We spent 3000 yen and had some really bizarre dishes, which I will upload later.

The three cafes below are @Home, St Grace Court (defunct), and Cos-Cafe.
2012 edition (much improved):

2009 edition:

Updated!!! (6th Feb 2012) Use this site to search for maid cafes in the region you are visiting. maidsan-i (with BBS)

System Error 1058 has occurred. The service cannot be started.

System Error 1058 has occurred. The service cannot be started, either because it is disabled or because it has no enabled devices associated with it.

It means close your Services Terminal (services.msc). You have it open, that's why your Tomcat cannot start a new Tomcat.

Note: This happens when you are trying to reinstall Tomcat and you didn't clean it up good the last time. Also read Project Dream.

月亮代表我的心小提琴五线谱 Moon Represents My Heart Violin Score

就由了老师所说的，用中国网站下载小提琴五线谱真方便！=D 我不知道为何心血来朝而下载了《月亮代表我的心〉〉的小提琴五线谱的。我们来分享吧。

原站
另外网站

Updated!!!

Amateurs, pls also check out Dr Hsu's site for more unique modern-day musical scores.

Twitter Twitter 1 - Hellish Exercise this morning

Violin case + Bag full of 4 library books, 1 15" laptop, breakfast, water bottle and a music book + kitten heels + 8 min before the bus comes and it is on the opposite side of the overhead bridge and I am still at home== bloody horrible running episode. Talk about jiggling the fats.

I almost snapped my ankle when dashing after the bus. Felt the impact shoot up my leg. And then I realised I forgot my laptop charger...

The German Kitty says "Miau"/ Die Deutscher Katze sagt "Miao"

While searching for my S$15 book, City Mouse managed to find me a S$5.95 German children book at Kinokuniya. *Jaw Drop*

Fantastic. Anyway in a bid to encourage everyone to learn languages, here is a link to Goethe's Book2 website which supposedly lets you download 100 mp3s per language? But you have to buy the complementary books.

Nibblezware's Fav Links this Week!

What we bought at the Festival

As I was saying, I was quite undecided about buying the Lucky Star figurines, but that we did buy one or two items?

This is what we bought.  I bought him a cute little doll which is supposed to nod or shake her head at whatever we say. Haha, just check out the written description. "Unazukin is a forest fairy who loves listening to the talk of other peoples." Doesn't it look like it's describing a busybody who loves gossip? The kind of girlfriend I like. Keke.

B1 bought me the sushi maker set (of course being high-maintenance, I hit him up for the  bigger one, which is more expensive by S$10 and can make even more fun sushi shapes. Those Japanese think of everything. => )

The 85% Good, the 5% Bad, and the 10% Fugly Cosplayers @ AFA2009

No worries, only the best of Anime Festival 09 made it here, either because of their memorable outfits or their sensational looks. I know what my audience wants... but I decided to even it out to keep you reading to the end. Just to tantalise, there is 1 pretty girl-next-door kind, 3 rather sexy and the rest. In any case, I admire their courage and sometimes ingenuity in wearing and making these outfits respectively.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The B team visits Anime Festival Asia 2009

The Beets were at the AFA 2009, checking the best of the Otakus at Suntec. It costs S$15 to get in for adults and I was horrifically torn between deciding to buying my favourite Lucky Star figurines and saving my money. Unfortunately I worship the Dollar more (never mind I can always go back tomorrow, if I do change my mind). Never mind, we did buy one or two items, which I will upload tomorrow.

 
Because we arrived there late in the afternoon and I had a wedding dinner to attend at night, we missed most of the fun events. The only thing we managed to catch was Danny Choo in action (I cannot believe later, that no one at my table knew who is Danny Choo *scream in frustration*)

What is even more maddening is the dummkopf blocking my shot of Danny Choo with the two fine babes. Now I have to upload two photos of Danny Choo (first one: focus on Danny Choo and the first pretty girl, second is to look at the girls cos half of Danny Choo's head is gone).

Here are some of his figurine collections:

Simply Irresistible 6 ~ - Leighton Meester

Personally, I prefer her softer shots. I don't like hard-looking faces. Check out the rest @ The Superficial.com

Simply Irresistible 5 ~ - Rosie Huntington -Whiteley

 

My Favourite Victoria's Secret Model. Watch out for Victoria's Secret 2009 in this space soon! In the meantime, view the rest of the shots at Daily Mail.

NIBBLEZWARE 16 Nov 2009 Issue

From today onwards, B2's favourite links for the week will be presented in magazine style. For thy reading *leering* pleasure, here is this week's issue:

Top Twelve Signs A Guy Likes You

This survey result took 4 guys and leftover pizza. This is my own response to my "Top Eight Signs A Girl Likes you" (time to check myself into the loony bin, talking to myself *haha*)

1. He buys you little gifts and/or makes little gestures that makes you feel special in comparison to other girls. He'd already found  out what she likes and dislikes.
2. He makes sure that you get across the road safely when jaywalking together. It's a great excuse for him to hold your hand. *wow, we were impressed when one of the guys said this.*
3. He makes you laugh by telling you jokes (this is very ambiguous, I feel).
4. He SMSes, calls you and make comments on your Facebook posts.
   
5. When out at a group event, you find that you are always in some sort of an intimate tête-à-tête with him, away from the others.  Or he is always trying to end up sitting next to you.
   
6. He tries to help you analyse your problems, when she talks about them He's a great listening ear, soothing and comforting. much appreciated when we girls just need a sounding board and outlet.
7. He offers to help you in your homework or projects. Lots of time will be spent together. This method always works *snicker*
   
8. He gives you as much eye contact as possible (I think guys have no problems in this aspect, because being visual creatures, they will always check out their target.)
9. He offers to teach you something, a new skill or hobby. *Haha, this is very true, I have had offers to learn swimming, ice-skating, playing the flute. On this note, I say ice-skating is the best, not too much skin touching to scare her off  yet it's intimate, and you can hold her hand the entire time...*
10. He brings an umbrella in the hopes to offering you shelter from the rain.
    
11. He asks you out on a date. *Duh*
    
12. He tries to provoke you so that you will notice him. *This is based on my own observation and is usually utilised by younger guys* Note: if he does this to everyone, then he is just an arschloch to the womankind.
    

if (interested_in_girl) return well_groomed; else return high_maintenance;

Some guys have such double standards. They like to chase after elegant, sophisticated well-groomed women yet after getting one, they sometimes grouse about having to pay for her makeup, dresses and shoes. Why?

A gorgeous woman is like a well-maintained lawn. She is beautiful because a lot of work goes into ensuring she is watered, fertilised regularly with plenty of sun. And if you buy such a lovely lawn, should or shouldn't you have to pay towards its upkeep?

Nope, then why when a guy dump the girl he claims it's because she is high-maintenance? Nah, it's just that he is no longer interested in you. And he is a hypocrite for saying that in the first place.

A Possessive Man != A Progressive Man

Was reading this blog out of extreme boredom (when I should be reading the eighteen books I checked out of the library. I note that being a speed reader is no use when you don't have the luxury of time to read in the first place), when I read that she didn't want to talk to her boyfriend because she was suddenly afraid that he would beat her or kill her?

I find this rather disturbing. What kind of relationship is this when you cannot trust that the other party to not lay a hand on you just because he is jealous of you spending the whole day (working) with your 40-something boss when he had wanted to spend the whole day with you after checking out of NS for the weekend.

To her I say, kick him behind the knees when he has his back towards you and when he least expects it (I am a dirty fighter).

I bring up this point because B1 is quite a possessive puppy as well. In fact almost 99% of heterosexual men would be too, towards their women (the remaining 1% being saints who trust their spouses implicitly, have huge egos or have married women who recently escaped convents with twelve-foot walls. Men who haven't had girlfriends yet but claim to be progressive, shouldn't throw stones at glass houses until they start living in them.). An excellent example that crazy bastard of a nut job in AMK who killed his kiddies, set his flat on fire then leapt off the 12th floor because he didn't want them to call another man "Daddy"? Well before things reached such a deplorable state, he should not have kept accusing his wife of cheating on him (it's rather unfathomable to me as to how a 28 year old woman with two young children can find the time to cheat when she has to work to help pay for her stupid husband's gambling habit?), spending so much money on 4D and living beyond his means that he was declared a bankrupt! (Note: I refer to juicy details I read in the Chinese newspapers, but my Mandarin stinks too much for me to translate, and I am too tired) But then again, as B1 says, as well as some of my male colleagues, his wife is pretty hot.

Then don't marry a beautiful woman, if your fragile sensibilities cannot handle other men being attracted to her as well. Sometimes I think men are their own victims. When they go to a matchmaking session, every guy beelines for the prettiest lady at the joint. I have witnessed that myself when I was having dinner and there was a strange singles dinner event at the next table. Even the saddest looking and the geeky looking guys had their heads tilted towards to the pretty girl no matter how far they were sitting, as if desperate to hear the words of honey drip from her lips. Morons.

I was pointing out that day at lunch, that my male colleagues should choose a fat chick over a skinny chick any day (note: in my rather unbelievable rhetorical context, both ladies have the same features except one has thicker ones) because at least the fat one will make sure you are fed. While they agreed with me, none of them was open to the idea of dating a fat chick when they could have the skinny one...

B1 pointed out that it could be due to health considerations. I could roll my eyes in my head so much I would resemble a jackpot machine. Since statistically women seem to live longer than men, wouldn't that be just nice? (Ok, he may have a point, but I am always right, or I must always win *thick-skinned*) Then what about a fat man? I seem to see more fat men with girlfriends than fat women with boyfriends. Isn't it unfair?

I myself pick brains over looks any day. Therefore my preference for the scrawny, bookish, reserved geek (who preferably can argue intelligently in at least three languages in 7 topics, e.g. religion, politics, finance, etc) over the human beefsteaks and weirdoes I used to attract. (On this note: have you noticed how quiet guys are much more perverted/horny/hentai/open-minded than other guys? Talk about still waters running deep. I had enjoyed many fascinating and memorable conversations with such persons.) I can feed his tummy and he can feed my mind.

Turns out he can also feed my anger. Irrational possessiveness can diminish a woman's respect for her man. So if you are ever in a relationship, beware turning into a jealous ass. Because trying to accommodate your immaturity gets tiring after a while, and then one day, she may tire of you.

Twelve ways for a girl to identify being half of a couple

I came up with this list, based on what little I have observed. I can hear B1's grumbling already. Haha. Which makes true #1 in the list:

1. You say whatever you want without fear that he will reject you.
   
2. You expel bodily sounds *haha* in his presence without wincing. In fact, it becomes fun to do so (but then again it may only be my twisted self who thinks so *snicker*).
   
3. You develop a more sophisticated sense of humor, i.e. you no longer laugh at all his jokes.
4. You now celebrate anniversaries annually, instead of the "three months since we first locked lips" shit.
5. You can name his favourites at least 10 11 out of 10. Women always make it a point to better understand the men they are interested in. By the time they start a relationship, they already know how many moles the man has on his inner thigh. In fact, they can tell him what he likes, therefore at least 11.
   
6. Flowers become boring presents, and you start to either cajole for more expensive stuff (if you are a mercenary bitch) or nag at him for wasting money (if you are a stupid bitch, cos he will never buy you anything else ever again unless he did something bad. Or until you nag at him for not buying you flowers for a really long time already).
7. You start comparing him to other men or your current relationship to your previous or friends' relationships.
   
8. You pick fights about really stupid things because you are bored or have run out of things to say. Cos sometimes you train him so well to be a good listener, that he seldom speaks anymore (note: this can also be intepreted as he maybe ignoring you or already cheating on you).
   
9. You no longer try so hard to please him, though you know what makes him happy and only try when you want to get something. (That is not true for me, I swear *haha*)
   
10. You want to stab anyone who insults/is mean to him but it is perfectly ok for you to talk trash about him to your friends and family.
11. You expect him to do the things you want without realising that he may not know what you want. Then when he doesn't do anything you want, you stealthly begin the what I call the "emasculate him into a SNAG" training (be careful, you may end up with a metrosexual, if you overdo it). If he's smart, he will do them when he wants to get something.
12. He knows all your female tricks. Damn.
    

Go Google's Gordon the Gopher

When I excitedly showed this to B1 after my class, he said, "where is the Penguin?!"

Oh.

In any case, I took a cursory look at Go's tutorial, and I don't agree with the other guys (I note that the number of members is climbing!). It's obviously Java/C sharp masquerading as C++. Ewwww.

Super Fun Time, to quote Eric Cartman

Visit SilverArcade.com which hosts free Silverlight games. You will need silverlight of course.

Watch this space for my long due Silverlight game tutorial. I am determined to initiate myself and my gang into the joys of improving ourselves technically.

Red Dot (again) for some moolicious dinner.

Went back to Red Dot again (well technically it was July 2009, and this is a outdated draft), this time with B1 in tow. Red Dot is nice at night. I preferred to sit indoors with the lights on, instead of sitting al fresco and eating a fly or two with only the faint flickering glow from the BBQ. The lighting is pretty shit still, cos the lights were still pretty dim (therefore the inconsistent lighting in the photos, sorry since this used to be a draft, I don't have the originals to photoshop anymore), but least I will be able to spot a flying ant or housefly basking my gravy.

We ordered capasante salad (S$15, feeding 2), grilled marbled steak and wagyu steak (S$27 each), molten chocolate cake (S$15, also feeding 2). The marbled tasted better than the wagyu. It had a melt-in-the-mouth yet smoky quality. B1 had some bizarre AIDS-preventing(???) beer called Monster Green, I think...the beer is cheap, chilled and not bad. Fantastic for chillout. The molten chocolate cake was rather dry and crisp(??) *haha* on the outside, but with lovely chocolate sauce in the middle of the cake.

I was delighted with the excellent service this time. Friendly, yet not overly fawning. Not like the other time, where I could see the waitress roll her eyes while we were ordering (think we were changing orders midway then).

Go Go Away

Google, already the world's biggest Open Source provider, is continuously moving away from relying on other platforms by either buying them (E.G. Google Voice) or building their own (E.G. Chrome). In fact, why won't Google? With so many servers and talented programmers (who have to spend 20% of their time coming up with new initiatives), it would be a matter of time before they do so anyway, better and faster. Especially since Oracle has acquired Sun Java and MySQL (is Google going to come up with its own relational DB???).

So now, surprise, surprise, they come up with a new programming language called Go. Complete with a buck-toothed gopher called Gordon... haha. He is very cute, even if the name, its mascot and his name, are very predictable. Gordon looks like he is sneaking off somewhere doesn't he? A slacker after my heart. Hahah.

Hey Google, while you are at it, could you build a development toolset for Go as well? I have been too pampered by Eclipse.

Advantages include multicore processing (i.e. running many tasks in //), tighter garbage collection with a supposedly very fast compilation time. It's supposed to be similar to C and C++ *puke*.

Witness Go's compilation in motion:

I wouldn't be surprised if one day Google intends to build its own version of Facebook. Oh wait, that's Google Wave. I only pray that they don't change Android from Java platform to entirely Go. Faint. Think I better have a look before they switch...