Sanity… is for the Weak

Work never ceases, and so I’m off again to KL tomorrow (on a public holiday, no less ~ *grumble*). Anyhoo:

Had dinner at the Botanical Gardens last night, and the park feels very different by night ~ dim footpaths lit by isolated islands of light, the city lights reflected low in the sky just above the tree tops. Simply beautiful, and quietly serene.

The hightlight was the Shaw Foundation Symphony Stage ~ the lighting on it made it look ghostly and quite unreal, especially when reflected in the pond before it.

Dinner was at The Cafe by Les Amis. Although many people do tend to think of Au Jardin when we mention Les Amis at the Botanical Gardens, and the associated high-end fine dining, The Cafe over at the Visitor’s Centre actually serves very good food at not so astronomical prices (compared to Au Jardin, anyway).

Worth a try, but dinner menu is only available on Saturdays, Sundays and Public Holidays.

Haven’t been blogging lately, what with my current workload and all, but also it’s due to a new addiction:

Dungeons & Dragons Online

What can I say? I’m a gaming geek :p

Can’t blog… the game calls….

Just a little more
Just a little something we’ve been eating. The steamed buns were yesterday’s breakfast, and while colourful did look a little… obscene. Best was tonight’s dinner, Ginseng Herbal Chicken Soup. I left it in the slow cooker when we left for work and it smelled heavenly by the time we got back. Just great for a rainy evening!

It’s been a while, but we finally dusted off the DVD player and caught a few shows which were on our to-see list over the last few days.

First up was Herbie, which was sweet, funny, but a little too “kiddy” for us. We also caught The Longest Yard, yet another finnu football movie by comic, Adam Sandler - this turned out to be much better than his previous work, The Waterboy, and surprisingly wifey enjoyed it! Lastly, we also caught Aeon Flux, which was a bit of a let down. From a stylish work which originted on MTV, this turn out to be a mediocre B-Grade.

It’s late ~ off to bed.

Visual:Slave
In the DVD:
+Gunslinger Girl
+Gokusen
+Vandread: the Second Stage
+Initial D: 4th Stage
+Scrapped Princess
+Howl’s Moving Castle
+Aeon Flux
+Herbie: Fully Loaded
+The Longest Yard

Having gone for the flickr meetup yesterday, we indulged in our other hobby today: Diving.

Today is the last day of the ADEX show, so we went down for a look-see. Surprisingly, many of the local dive operators we expected to see were not there, and there were many more new and unheard of ones at this show. There were lots of very exciting dive packages up on offer for this show, but with both our work committments now, it’s a pretty bad idea to sign up for something now only to find that we can’t go in a few months time. Besides, we might get lucky and end up with a baby in the next few months…

Oh, well.

More pictures loaded into flickr from the meetup; slideshow >here<

And we had the first Singapore flickr meetup today, at Coffee Club Raffles Place.


Among the topics of interest were of course, Cameras. I estimated there’s probably more cameras gathered there in the Coffee Club than a Japanese tour group, among them the most interesting were Spacecake’s Lomos:

Glad to have met everyone, especially baby Ryan! Hope to see all of you again soon!

Date night last night, again courtesy of M1 sunperks points

Caught The Sentinel, which at first I though that I would be something like Clint Eastwood’s 1993 movie, In the Line of Fire. But we came out pleasantly surprised by a pretty good thriller. Of course with eye-candy in the form of Desperate Housewives‘ Eva Longoria, and a slightly older but no less beautiful Kim Basinger, there’s nothing to complain about.

Despite this, I was left wondering about the political… message (if one at all): Why would the now-defunct KGB want to assinate the U.S. president?

Do catch it: 4/5 Stars

Visual:Slave
In the DVD:
+Gunslinger Girl
+Gokusen
+Vandread: the Second Stage
+Initial D: 4th Stage
+Scrapped Princess
+Howl’s Moving Castle

Movies to Catch:
+Ice Age 2
+V for Vendetta
+Superman Returns
+The DaVinci Code
+Cars
+Mission: Impossible 3
+Pirates of the Carribean 2
+Miami Vice
+Tristan and Isolde
+Underworld: Evolution Looks like we may miss this one…
+X-Men 3
+Lord of War
+Open Season
+The Seninel

A little late in posting this, but we did find a rather nice Italian Muscatel the other day over at Paragon.

Sweet and slightly bubbly, this wine can easily pass as a dessert wine all by itself. Funny thing is, where you’d expct the vinyard’s product label pasted on the bottle, there is absolutely *nothing*. Just a little wax seal as you see in the picture and a little tag:

Villa Moscatel
Gianni Gagliando
2005

Rainy Days
Been raining almost daily for the past week. Great for napping… ZZzzzzzZZZZzzz

You Are an Excellent Cook

You’re a top cook, but you weren’t born that way. It’s taken a lot of practice, a lot of experimenting, and a lot of learning. It’s likely that you have what it takes to be a top chef, should you have the desire…

Well, now. Heh.

And here’s wishing all Christians a very Good Friday, and a wonderful Easter Sunday ahead.

Cheers!

Source: Apparel Search

Why the above? Given as most Singaporean guys don’t use a neck-tie, let alone a bow-tie on a regular basis, why the sudden interest? Simple enough ~ I just went to a dining-in last night. I think aside from the gala events which only the rich and famous attend, the only other occasion which calls for a bow-tie for guys here would have to be the military dining-in, which pretty much happens on an annual basis.

However, having spent the better part of four months in UK with the Royal Navy while on course there, I parted company with them with one notion firmly hammered into me ~ a gentleman should know how to tie a bow-tie. And I do agree; as the mess dress of our Armed Forces is not something that we wear very often, why do we have to settle for a cheap clip-on bow-tie? Isn’t it akin to wearing an expensive dress shirt but pairing it with sandals and shorts? Granted, it took me about 20 minutes just to get it just so, but I think it was worth it… and I was not alone as there was one other fellow who turned up with a self-tied bow as well!

Just a point to ponder.

Some pictures from the mess dinner I attended back in England:

Was surfing my daily news fix and came across this little gem:

The Time Is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Where New York Times columnist David Pogue latched onto this fascinating factoid, there’s no telling. But as randomly useless bits of trivia go, this is definitely worth noting.

Pogue writes: Late tonight — specifically, 123 seconds after 1:00 a.m. — the time and date, for the first time in all of humanity, will be 01:02:03 04/05/06.

And, Pogue points out, this moment will never come again.

Well, at least not exactly. In Europe, which renders the date before the month, this singular moment will occur next month, at 123 seconds past 1 a.m. on 4 May. And after that, it most definitely will never occur again.

Wherever you are, it might be just the right moment to find an all-night liquor store and buy that lottery ticket that forms the basis of your retirement plan.

Of course, as since we’re using the Europe system of DD:MM:YY, this will only occur next month. Just a little something to think about, neh?

Old games never die… at least not the truly outstanding ones ~ they just get ported over into the current generation of Operating Systems for fans, both new and old to enjoy.

Case in point - Star Control 2: The Ur-Quan Masters

This classic was released in 1992, and was way ahead of it’s time in terms of concept, gameplay and music. Indeed, the list of awards and accolades is almost too long to list, and is pretty much featured in every “Best Games Ever” list there is.

Ever since the creators, Toys for Bob released the game’s source code into the public domain in 2002, a team of private developers have been tirelessly converting this gem into a current-OS playable product that is still free-of-charge.

In addition, another team of musicians have been taking the original music from the game and have been re-mixing it, updating them and bringing these into the current edge of musical frontiers. And truly, the prodution qualities on these musical pieces are so good, they should not be regarded as simply “game” music, but commercially viable masterpieces… and all available for free.

So go ahead, if you’re an old fan and wish to re-live some of the nostalgia, or a new fan curious to see what the fuss is all about, surf by the Source Forge website and download the files and bring your Precursor flagship for a spin. You won’t be disappointed!

:Links:
Wiki
Source Forge (Game Downloads)
Precursors (Game Music - Remixed)
The Pages of Now and Forever (A SC2 Fan-Site)
Forum

As promised, here’s the niece!

All welcome little Zhi Hong, a tiny little thing that’s driving not only Sis & hubby, but my mum as well to utter exhaustion. Cute thing about her, is that she likes to smile just before she falls asleep. I guess that’s the sign of a happy baby?

I’m sooooo…. excited!

I’ve actually been approached by someone from m80 to promote a new anime, set to be released on 25th April 06. Is this cool or what?

Anyway, the sypnosis of the show could be described as thus:

Karas , (The Crow) is best described as Batman with a Samurai Sword or a Cyber-punk version of The Crow. Karas takes place in Tokyo , a city populated by both humans and ghostly beings. They exist in two dimensions; seen and unseen- spirits, apparitions and demons. Karas is the city’s guardian, and Tokyo is thrown into disarray as a former Karas named Eko attempts to seize power and bring order to the streets through force. An entity named Yurine, who represents the will of the people, stands in Eko’s way with her newly risen Karas. Now two Karas emerge to destroy either all of the demons or destroy all humanity. Which Karas will prevail?

Check it out!

Karas

Official Site
Official Press Release

And the tester told me: “Y.M.C.A…. You Must Come Again.”

*sigh*