Scenes from a BBQ obsessed Birthday

Needless to say, but the time we finished the chalet, we were pretty much done with BBQ. Having ate through the piles of grocery we overdid on the first day *winks*.

First day god awful dinner

Burnt everything. We started at 7pm, cooked by moonlight. The next door man kept coming out to smoke with his "pai kia" looking son and chatting about how to be a man (according to B1 who overheard).

Last Day Lunch

2nd day dinner

This was when we were watching the younger man next door marry his China bride. Oh. Interesting. She is incredibly hot. And everyone in that family smokes, even Mommy dearest. We wondered why everyone dressed so well for BBQ, when we realized it was a ROM party! Amazingly for a family who ate huge prawns the night before (and had some leftover, based on what I saw the cleaning lady clear out the day after the wedding), they were REALLY STINGY with the buffet dinner. No kidding. Only four dishes. But tons of alcohol. Even had a swinging Martell and everything. Their poor guests had to buy KFC to feel full, and the man apologized to his wife's friends for being a poor host. I should think so.

Didn't know you could still get married at chalets. Since you have to have the marriage location imprinted on the marriage cert, don't know how weird it looks to have X-X Costa Sands Resort printed on your cert...These clams were done using beer and butter, ala Brussels (the Belgian eatery at East Coast Park - now to think about it, I never got around to upping those pics) style.

B1 and I became very expert in raising fires. We had an awful time with our late start on the first day.

My personal fave =D

I thought this photo looked pretty professional, even though I might have killed the chicken a bit much. This was the 2nd day dinner on a plate.

Butter roll, grilled to a crisp. Yum yum.

Gooey on the inside, crispy on the outside. Me Likes!!

We changed grille every night because..... sparklers!!!

Ah my youth so fleeting like the sparklers...

I now have a family in CoH

Disturbing relationships always form when I play CoH. I think Assault is a game where the teammates are very important (other people might say that's the case for ALL Operations games, but I find that particularly so for Assault, which is my new obsession. I hate PK, and stonewall I think I can play fairly well as a team or by myself so I don't really care so much). 

Yesterday I acquired myself a Daddy and Mommy. I suspect that that guy is a smurf. He's level 1 but he doesn't play like one. He sure acts like he knows me, and keeps calling himself my Mommy. My other friend, who was a smurf and turns out to be a person who used to play against me in Assault (but I shall not pursue the issue) then declared himself as my Daddy.

So now I am Baby Bear, with my own Daddy and french-speaking Mommy in Assault. Eat your heart out, Schnappi.

Bought this from Typo after dinner

Went for dinner with Boob Bro, after Vater emo and didn't want to cook dinner. =P

Our latest fad place was Sho Teppan, where you can have teppanyaki, shabu shabu, sukiyaki in a metal bowl over a very expensive induction surface. I wanted to go Kinokuniya but it was closed. WTF. Art Friends' closing time is irritating enough, now Kino too? But I was to discover that later after I hit Typo on my way there. I was initially attracted by the stretched canvases they had. So expensive!!! I set the canvas back hurriedly after seeing the price. I also noticed that they were selling little Japanese shades, so cute. 

The best part had to be the 3 for S$10 section though. They were selling a lot of letters in black, white and red. Very ApartmentTherapy-like. Unfortunately, only the red letter can be hung up. Sucked. So I bought these two pics for my bathroom and the @ was supposed to be for my computer room. Now it is used for my kitchen *haha*

Because I think I can multi-task

Well, if I thought I didn't have enough on my plate. Nightmare apartment, horrifying work, the PP (plasticine penis) also wants to plan the Hanoi Itinerary. Yes, the office gang is now heading to Hanoi + Sapa + Halong Bay (which is the pièce de résistance for me ever since I saw it on Top Gear) this September. Yes, goodbye Deutschland, hello Vietnam.

Of course the bloody Teletubby has to accuse me of putting langewelig activities, so I am planning to give him a separate itinerary, especially since I had observed that he loves to wander off from the group even when traveling together. Boring huh, maybe I should let him eat at the dog meat restaurant or drink a pint at a gay bar *evil wink*

So I have been interrogating Duck during steinwall, as well as reading up on the usual travel guides ( my fav combi - Frommers and Lonely Planet). If you are from Vietnam or have travelled there before, do drop by with some advice =D. Much appreciated.

This has been an awesomely terrible week @ work

I have been doing OT non-stop this week. It's terrible, really, because our *censored*. Sigh. So anyway after threatening *censored* that we will *censored* them, suddenly they have the solution to the problem. 

The important thing is that the thing is resolved. Phew. After almost 2 weeks. Not Phew.

Thought that I could go home relatively early today to paint my goddamn furniture (I am still torn between apple white, sea green or tiffany blue for my table, any ideas anyone?), but it was B1's turn to have *censored* happen to him too. Needless to say, I was stuck in the library waiting for him until almost closing time *panick*. 

I was pissed and said he should have told me to go home first. In the end, I wanted to eat something expensive to punish him. But because of our property virgin stupidity, I realized I now have to think at least 3 times before I can decide what to eat. We walked rounds around Holland Ville. I wanted to eat at the *shit I cannot remember the name* but it was opposite Hansang and had $43.80++ as much as you can eat OZ beef. But because I hesitated, we ended up at Hansang, where I realized that I have forgotten that beef served there is even lesser and more expensive.

So we tried something neu. Usually we eat Galbi, but today, we ate Hotpot!!! 

 First they served us some refreshing Japanese-style salad, you know with the sesame vinaigrette.

 Then some kimchi, and the hotpot. Initially B1 complained that the soup was tasteless, but that's the beauty of the Korean hotpot. By dumping in the noodles, the starch in the noodles thickened the soup and the beef and other ingredients made it savory. 

You know how Chinese I can be sometimes, I couldn't resist asking for an egg to put into the pot. The waitress said she would consult the chef, and I was worried the Korean man was going to say I bastardised his Korean roots =D. Thank god, no. He let us have an egg (now I wonder if he charged us for it. Hmm must check with B1 tomorrow when he is lucid).

By the end, the soup was very salty. Had to get a glass of water.

 Yummy bibimbap with the crispy crusty bits of rice.

The bill came out to be quite ex, thanks to B1 drinking himself silly with soju. He just went home by cab, not before making me rob Russia to give him some spare $$.

Pedo Rilakkuma strikes!

Ever since B1 won me a Rilakkuma, I have been very obsessed with UFO catchers, reading up as obsessively as I would intellectual material. Yesterday I asked B1 to drive me to East Coast Park which was one of the places I researched as a "friendly" UFO catcher place. Supposedly it was above Burger King but when we drove past it looked more like a Korean BBQ restaurant.  Now on retrospect, the info I read was 2009. 

Which was also why, the other place where we researched, i.e. Illuma sucked shit. Illuma is one dead mall. On my first visit one or two years back, it was new and wasn't fully occupied. Now when I visited it, its shop occupancy is even worse! Anyway I strongly suspect that we mistook the arcade (don't go there it is a con job), which had MANY UFO catchers as the recommended place which was likely closed down. We should have known seeing that no one was playing any of the machines, and the prizes were pretty shit. However because we were on a high and since we were already there, we decided to try our luck and sank in S$20. After spending around ~$12, we realized that it was a con, and went to play the new Harley Davidson motorbike game. We were tempted by the 2 tokens to continue (4 tokens to play) and tapped 6 tokens in immediately. Stupid, considering how often I play at the arcade. In the end, after my first game, the machine ate up my extra 2 tokens and had the audacity to ask me to pay more. INFURIATED.

So we decided to try our luck at the Prize Station @Junction 8 again, since I like Rilakkuma so much. I named the one I had as Tobi, the druggie Relax Bear. I sank in S$5 for 6 tries (usually S$1 a try) and B1 and I took turns. On the fourth turn, I flipped the bear by accident so that her head landed on the window and her legs where her head had been. We had the lady in charge reposition the bear each time beforehand. Given this unfavorable position, B1 told me to get the lady to reposition again but I was adamant that I wanted to try it. Guess what? I read online that each machine sets a counter on the number of tries, and somehow I must have hit max counter because the catcher could actually catch the bear by the leg and drag her to the slot. We were so shocked, even the lady in charge! I was praying very hard as I saw the machine drag her along, head beating on the floor. Don't drop beforehand! Don't drop beforehand!

Prize Station was also giving away free coin banks with every win (they didn't have that last week when B1 won). Anyway B1 also nearly made it was the last try, but since I was already very high on the win, I didn't ask him to try a second time following from the new location. Stupid. =D

I thought for a long time what bear I wanted. I initially wanted the white sister bear of the same design I had. But in the end, I chose the bear who was wearing a 肚兜. I was very curious what he was wearing underneath *winks*. He was also carrying a shopping bag. Strangely the lady didn't go to the back of the shop to get me a new bear but just gave me the one from the machine. *huh*?

Mu neu Family

Now that I look closely at the bear, I regret not getting the white sister. Sigh. Just because I thought a white bear would be hard to keep clean. The bear I got is scruffy and kind of lumpy. Not neu I think. Unique design though...and perfect for my deviant behaviour...

Tobi pulling at the apron string

Updated!!!
I was looking at the shopping bag. Kichijoji. Thought that was a place in Japan, Googled it and discovered. Ye, my bear is a unique design for the Kichijoji branch of Rilakkuma specialty shop. Check out the black apron design (image source: mytokyodream.blogspot.com)

Thank You Cards

I had thought rather hard about what to show my appreciation to the office buddies who gave me birthday $$ (which I didn't expect). I had thought of cooking something, or buying some food (which is easy and appropriate for the recipients, since most of us OT). But in the end, while I was buying the stuff for decorating the walls, I spent a lot of time thinking of what to make for everyone. I was torn between buying these pretty Japanese cards and drawing on them or making cute door signs that they could use. But when I discovered that the signs were made of foam, I went ahead with the Japanese cards.

My birthday was over by like 11 days, and I was still drawing until 3 am last night. Oops going to be 12 days already, man, and I still hadn't bought the 0.3 pen, so in the end I used a ballpoint pen with many colors haha. This morning I sprayed on some fixature to hold the colors and brought them to work.

The stupid thing was that I left the camera in B1's car yesterday. So I had to use the really shit ass Android phone. Didn't do my pics justice. *Annoyed* But I had to give the cards out anyway, otherwise rather insincere. Where got people return thanks so late one?!!!

After I took this pic, I sat down and decided who to get what. Considerations: those who are more likely to keep the cards for a long time, and those who will treat them like flyers, keep for a while and then throw. B1 said I was nuts, why go to the effort to draw?

My faves were the one I drew first, which was the bottom right, and the top left (which was the last one I drew).

Berliner Bilder von Schnappi

Krass. =D Some lovely pics from the adorable stoned Schnappi. Amazing right? He took this while walking and using a Kodak EasyShare Digicam, not a pro-level SLR, as I expected looking at these amazing scenery.

I love this fantastisch architecture. Sigh.Ich liebe Berlin!!!

As for me, I am laying low, busy doing something. Will post later...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Copy, Cut, Paste - How I might have missed the point entirely again

I went to Art Friends very early today (because I always get lights out *literal, because they are closing*  whenever I go there at night), tried to buy some stuff for the walls (part 2, part 1 was buying ceramic paint to cover the damage that occurred when we removed the Onkel's cabinets and built higher and shorter ones). I had seen some ideas done by others like ApartmentTherapy, and even blogs. I saw that the lady from The Children's Nest made some really cute animal silhouettes to frame in her kids' room.

[Source: The Children's Nest]

I became somewhat obsessed with that, and tried to do something different. I wanted something more grown up and sophisticated (I was aspiring to ApartmentTherapy level *winks*) so I bought some eye-wateringly expensive Japanese paper at Art Friends. I wanted to use it against my even more expensive and well-kept (well it is pretty impressive for someone as messy as me) rice paper. Unfortunately... when I got to the new place, I realized my booboo. I had been visualizing my old bedroom wall when I bought the paper. The paper does not match my new bedroom, which was like a lemon yellow. The almost orange in the paper will not match that kind of yellow. Scheiss.

But I still tried, reasoning that maybe I could use it in the living room. Oops. My bear paw swiped too hard at the delicate rice paper against the drawing pad (I sacrificed one of my precious drawing sheets because the spare drawing pad was only A5. It tore. So sad. Had to throw away the paper, which ironically matched my wall color. Sigh.

Expensive!!!

Staring at the Japanese paper. It was black with red and almost orange balls *sounds wrong*. I could either paint the background orange, which I have, or get red... which I don't have. So after B1 won the impressive Rilakkuma at the UFO catcher, we bought some red construction paper, and made this. 

Great. Now I need to figure out where to put this. I didn't plan to have a red theme or overtures anywhere in the house. Fuck.

Now to think of it... what is that between his legs?

B1 thinks I missed the point again. He said that my weinerdog looks pissed. And the loud pattern distracts the viewer from recognizing the dog. So much for sophistication.

Wah... B1 strikes Beary good Luck

While we were at the chalet, I told B1 that one of the things I always wanted to do was to just take S$10 to play the UFO catcher game. I am a pretty thrifty person, so doing such things seem like decadence to me, especially since there is no guarantee you would win. 

He gave me S$10 bucks to try at the stupid X Zone arcade, but other than nullifying all my hard-earned points, it also had some really unfriendly UFO catchers. First the damn things are very weak, couldn't even lift up the toys, let alone flinging it any old how (as it is supposed to - the luck element). Second of all, most of them cost an eye-popping S$2 a try.

I tried the S$1 ones. Total snoozefest. After a futile S$4, I told B1 to forget it (he also changed S$10 to play), that we should save the money and try at those actual UFO catcher shops like the ones at Junction 8 and Marina Square. He said ok, and we wasted some money at those machines on the third floor, where you turn and turn and a toy falls out, just to get a R2D2 and a Darth Vader (which he wanted) handphone straps.

So just now after dinner at the House of Seafood (they gave us a cute Cancer handphone strap *how appropriate =D), I asked B1 if we could go to Junction 8 since it was still early. He agreed, so we drove there, and started trying our luck. I tried for a Winnie the Pooh, and the bunny head toy, but to no avail. B1 was bored watching me try so he tried for the Rilakkuma, which I thought was too heavy for the catcher. 

Ohmigod! He got it on the first try!!! I stared disbelievingly, mid-gloat, as the toy tumbled head in into the bin. Needless to say, the second time I tried, it didn't work. The girl let me chose one of the toy designs in the machine and went to grab a new one for me. She said that luck and skill were the important elements of the game. 

I think I am more impressed by the plastic bag than the bear. I am NEVER using the plastic bag!!!

To me, the important part was that, we still managed to get it within the $$ we spent trying. B1 said I missed the point of the whole game. Anyway we saw that another version of the toy (smaller size)  was retailing at S$35 plus. Wow *eye pop*!!! 

I finally get to experience the exhilaration a chick gets when her guy catches her a toy at a fair. *thumbs up* Though the competitive part in me wishes it had been me who won...

Der Bär ist sehr Gross!!!

Saturday Munchies 24 - Make your own Sandwich Day

I stayed at really late on Freitag playing COH, so I only woke up at about noon. Apparently B1 had been frantically calling me (I didn't hear no phone ringing), so he claimed extreme hunger by the time he came in. However I was still abit dopey after just waking up (I swear the man treats me like a walking restaurant). So I defrosted and fried a Arabiki sausage and eggs, made some quick Vietnamese pickles (on the right), while B1 whinged as he heated up a canned soup, some natto (because he was hungry) and sardines.

Then we set about assembling our own sandwiches. I supposed B1 was pretty starved, since he actually made 2, when usually one would suffice. I thought the first one he made was a bit gross. Natto- sardine - sausage-pickle sandwich. I went for a more conservative, egg-sausage-tomato-lettuce sandwich with a bit of pickle on the side. I was too lazy to make a sauce, but I think I should make a sauce and freeze it for such emergency sandwich making events in the future. Hmm. Subway's SOS (Sweet Onion Sauce)...

Eww. What kind of fusion sandwich is this?

 

Road of no Return - Lorena Bobbit + garbage disposal = Even Angrier Woman

Yesterday I nearly died laughing when I was reading gawker.com and read that this lady did a Lorena Bobbit on her husband's penis and fed it to the garbage disposal. This was something I always threatened B1, if he ever cheated on me, except in my threat, a blender will be used for the grisly action of turning a man into a transformer (since we don't have garbage disposals here).

The story also appeared in today's newspapers, where I realized that due to cultural or lifestyle differences, my colleagues did not understand what happens to a  penis in a garbage disposal. Miss Piggy thought garbage disposal == garbage bag.


Most funny of all, the lady has since been arrested on Aggravated Mayhem? WTF is that...

I am actually seriously gleeful about the whole thing is because I am still licking my wounds from my stupid Company of Heroes Assault matches from yesterday. Some asshole called weewillywinky (he had another penis related nick) really pissed me off.

Happy Birthday to me

I have a yearly tradition of carrying out a blitzkreig of posts on my blogs on my birthday. The usual goal is 24 for every hour of my birthday, which I usually get stuck and quit by post 15. But due to a sudden uplevelling of maturity (due to my old age) and the fact that I was at a chalet with B1 (uneventful birthday with exciting events happening around us), meant that while I had somewhat internet access (through his iPhone),  I wasn't very inclined to do the same thing this year.

And just to prove how unlucky I continue to be, I was super duper horrified to see that I had missed the deadline for claiming my ZoneX (arcade) points by June 2011 because I had avoided the arcade during the June holidays because of all the kids. Shit. 4000 over points, I can get some really cool stuff for that. FUCK SHIT. All because the stupid Toa Payoh branch (since closed) ran out of XBOX games by the time I accumulated the necessary 3600 points. So I just haplessly continued to accumulate points...to 0.

Joining the dark side (Part III) - from Google's Android to Apple's iOS development?

B1 wants to give me a iMac for my birthday, as a sort of weird ass encouragement to stop developing Android apps and move to developing for iPhone and iPad.

"Don't bother," he said, "Android market is full of malware, especially those free apps (I hope he is not referring to BurgerStacko, even though it is now labelled as a junky app. Hey at only ~160KB, don't expect miracles!). Those evil China developers steal apps off the market and trojanize them."

I have to agree on that point. Some months ago, I wrote a super scathing email response to this Chinese website which had the bloody cheek to tell me that they had taken my app off the market and stored it somewhere on their site and do I want to register a developer account with them?!

WTF. Seriously.

"I don't know Objective-C." I replied as I continued to play his "Hanging with Friends". That game is seriously addictive. Now and again, I kick myself for not thinking of this game first.

"Maybe if you build the games with me, then I might consider changing platforms."

"No. I know your pattern. You will say you have an idea, and then make me do all the coding."

This man must be seriously traumatized from all the coding work I chucked at him during our uni days. Don't know what is his problem, I have always been Project Manager material *I vomit a little in my mouth*.

"Fine. Then you buy yourself the iMac and build an iOS version of BurgerStacko (it's only logical, since the images and code are already available). Then I will join iOS development."

Wait a second. Did I just agree to him buying an Apple product again? Damn. Anyway I don't like Google very much anymore (not since the Google Ad nonsense) but I have detested Apple because of the pretentious, "holier-than-thou" impression their users imagine that they project.

Updated!!!
I wish the stupid Android SDK is a human so I can slap it sometimes. Why is it so difficult to update? And then on top of that, the stupid Eclipse says I never set the stupid SDK. Wtf seriously. You think I so keh kiang go and move the damn thing around meh? Maybe I should get that stupid Android icon as a stuffed toy for my birthday, so I can stomp my fat foot on it whenever I have problems with the SDK.

The importance of a Changes.txt

Damn, it's been such a long time since I last coded that I have to search around the desktop for the Eclipse folder. It does not help that my desktop is cluttered.

Since I was very annoyed by people leaving bitchy comments instead of constructive comments on the game, I have stopped maintaining the app, not even after I patched the game for the South Korean release. However since it's been one whole year, and it's time to restart the engine. I do have some stupid stuff that I was building. Now a quick glance told me that I had 8 projects other than Burgerstacko! Winz.Should bring them to market.

Probably the driving factor is that I don't intend to charge $ for the games I build. Since I am from the school of thought "Why pay more, or even, pay at all?", I can't really expect others to pay me. And all my nonsense with Nuffnang and Google Ads, it's even funnier to expect ad money from a free app. But I am still toying with the idea.

Anyway, I must highlight the importance of changes.txt. Even though I constantly curse out Company of Heroes for changing stuff on me (like dropping my rank), changes.txt is very important because they tell me where did I last left off?

Hmm, last change was Jan 2011. Not that bad, but that was the South Korean version. Oops