Singapore Fireworks Celebration Part 2

My friend and I didn’t manage to make it to the Merlion Park where the view was supposedly the best of the best.  The bridge as so crowded so we didn’t want to squeeze through.  Scarli get stuck in the middle when the event started how?  So we decdied to play safe and stopped at the Esplanade.  Nevertheless, the view from Esplanade was breath-taking too!!!!  In fact, I thought that it was better than when I was at the gallery the previous night cos it really had that falling down effect.  We managed to get a pretty good spot where the higher fireworks were launched from.  A tip for next year, stand where the photographers are at!!!hahahah….

I enjoyed last night show’s better too.. I thought there were more variety of fireworks and more colourful also… I didn’t take much ppics cos too memerized by the pretty sight.  But there was one IRRITATING guy who was “CLUCKING” with his tongue ALL the way and it was super duper loud!!… I nearly wanted to ask him to shut up if not for the fact that I didn’t want to spoil the moments…Maybe I should have just kicked him into the river…I know it was a fantastic show but no need to be like that right?I did have have my fair share of wows lah but only like a few mins?  Then I stayed quiet just like the rest of the people around me..   Don’t understand these pple lah.. The kids around us were funny and cute though cos they “wowed” every time a huge and high one appeared…Here’s a few shots I captured anyway.

Singapore Fireworks Celebration 2008

Got a chance to watch the fireworks event this year thanks to an ex-colleague.  Arigato! I didn’t manage to go for last year’s event and so this was the first time I went to the Marina Bay floating platform.  It was definitely crowded and I was a bit surprised that so many pple are willing to pay for the tickets cos most would choose to watch it for free at the various watching zones nearby.  The citylink area was packed with people man and they also had carnvals and foodstalls before the show started.  The chairs were pretty wet due to the showers in the late afternoon and in fact, there was a slight drizzle before the actual fireworks started.  I was just hoping that it would be a passing rain cloud and true to that, the drizzle stopped:)

The firworks started kind of late cos of the various performances which I couldn’t see properly cos I was too far away with the seating at the top gallery.  Ok.. enough of words, I shall post some pics I managed to capture for some of you who might stumble across this post.  Enjoy….

One thing I didn’t like about this event is that the fireworks didn’t exactly have a “falling on u” effects like the previous years especially when I was watching at Marina South in 2005/6.. can’t remember.  Dunno if it was due to the location or what.  I only realised that it was the French exhibits today at the end of the show. so tomorrow’s going to be from the South Koreans.   I will be going down to watch too though not from the platform so gotta beat the crowds to find a good spot!!

I have a new idol!!!!!

Ji Sung is so cute!!!!!!!!!!!!

I got my Wii Fit!!!!!!!

Wow! I got my Wii Fit today!! A nice ex-colleague helped me to buy when he was buying and I went to collect it form him this evening. I couldn’t wait to try out this new fitness station when I reached home as I opened up the box like a little kid opening up a birthday present. Let me just do a quick review of my first impression of it.

The set-up was relatively easy though there was a lot of talking and instructions. You basically go through the BMI measuring index and some balancing tests to determine your Wii Fit Age. Would they integrate this with your Wii Sports age in future? This I have no idea but My Wii Fit age is a freaking 40!!! My Wii Sports age is 28, just 1 yr older than myself. I think Nintendo has really changed the gaming world with Wii. It’s like having a mini arcade at home. You no longer use the standard console and just hit the buttons away. With Wii Fit, you move different parts of your body for the various exercises. Ok, moving on to the exercises, there’s a variety of them to choose from the 4 basic categories(Strength, Yoga, Balancing and Areobics) including running on the spot too! I tried going through all 4 categories and while some were easy,others like Strength Training was pretty tough(maybe cos I can’t do any pushups). You will unlock the games as you earn your credits. Wii Fit has also placed quite a bit of emphasis on maintaining balance and the center of your body. You’ll see how the center of your body moved after the exercise itself as u swayed to maintain your posture. While I’m not too sure if this would improve your posture in the long run, it would at least raise some awareness about your own body.

I think they should put in a reminder to ask people to take a drink at certain intervals of their exercises. I did perspire after 30 mins of strength training and yoga. Another thing was whether certain exercises would require you to close the gap between your feet or to stand with a shoulder-width apart stance. This would affect your balance and subsequently the readings too. It’s better to do the running on your spot with shoes too btw. For people who does yoga regularly the use of Wii Fit could be a little uncomfortable cos our normal stance is on a flat ground and for this you’ll have to step up to the “console” for certain poses like the Warrior. In fact when I got my niece to take over one exercise, they could detect the difference in weight! We’ll see how this goes in future.  So there’s pretty much my first impression of this machine. Very interesting and fun indeed.  While I’m don’t know if you can see if you can see any effects in the long run,  I’m sure it’s better than not doing anything.  At least it gets your butt moving with all the balancing going on.

I hope that there’s will be more games coming up to complement Wii Fit.

Here’s part of a more detailed review I found here:

“For the next hour I submit myself to a series of sometimes gruelling, sometimes exciting, often humiliating exertions. I try some skiing, first slalom, then a jump. Neither is successful. I turn into a ball and try to roll myself down a hole. I endeavour to keep one hula hoop in motion while attempting to catch others. It’s all about minute transfers of weight, rhythm, fluidity of the pelvis, such as dancing, essentially.I could feel my abdominal muscles taking the strain, so presumably it was doing some good. Improving core strength and stability is the order of the day. Nintendo is to ask Liverpool John Moores University to research the effects of Wii Fit, but anecdotally, I can confirm that you have to make an effort. Not as you would lifting weights or running, but similar to a beginners’ Pilates class, or some semi-serious stretching.I try walking a tightrope between skyscrapers
“How did I do?” I ask Sophie. “Well, your Mii just fell to his knees crying, so not good,” she replies. We move on to heading a football, where you have to bend and lean on the balance board to connect with incoming footballs. Occasionally, in a nod to Sir Alex Ferguson’s motivational techniques, a boot rather than a ball will smack you in the face unless you dodge it. My heading wasn’t bad. Then I try walking a tightrope slung between two skyscrapers and came back to earth with a bump. Yoga is next and I’m not bad at standing on one leg.

Finally, we arrive at the macho stuff, thigh bends, press-ups, stuff that requires brute strength rather than any finesse. I need a score and I get one: four stars out of four, polite oriental applause from the tutor. “Well done,” says Sophie as I collapse red-faced into an armchair.

That final discipline was properly difficult. Why not just do the press-ups on their own, without all the electronic wizardry? One answer is that the Wii provides a range of stats, personal targets, graphs and the like, which are a good incentive to keep going once the initial enthusiasm has worn off. Mostly though, all this wizardry simply makes mucking around making a chump of yourself even more fun than it is already, which is fine by me.”

EDIT: The Wii Fit does remind people to drink water and take break at intervals.  I had simply seen that reminder during my first session.

The Superheroes Movie

After watching One litre of tears, I was somehow feeling pretty down from all the emotions going through with each episode. I decided to have something light to cheer myself up and hence to watch Superheroes.

IT WAS SO LAME!!!!! But very funny lah. It’s practically a parody of Spiderman with some lame scenes from Batman and Xmen. The only spoiler was that a whole scene worth 3-5mins was suddenly cut near to the end which I think was due to the religious stuff they filmed.

Oh well, I did get an hour’s worth of laughing and it made me feel much better. First the guy gets bitten by some mutant dragonfly and becomes…TATA!!!the Dragonfly hero after discovering the stunts he could do. The scenes were mostly lifted from Spiderman except that the plots were given funny twists. There were also excellent impersonations of Stephen Hawkings, Tom Cruise and several other movie characters.

It’s a silly show no doubt and I wouldn’t spend my money watching it on a weekend(Ticket prices on a weekend is crazy!!). That’s why I chose to watch it on Tuesday with my GV membership. But it certainly lightened my mood for the week. It’s good to be goofy at times. We dun have to be so serious every moment.

Drama Review – One Litre of Tears

I had finished watching this Japanese drama-One Litre of Tears last week. It was based on a true story of a girl, Aya who had an incurable disease of spinocerebellar ataxia at the young age of 15. She had recorded in her diary the turn of events in her life from a normal teenager to someone who had to rely on family and friends for everything. This disease affected her motor skills, resulting in staggers while walking, speech impairments, the inability to write and eventually leaving her bedridden in the later stages. Her mental health would not be affected at all, meaning she could think properly like any other person but would not be able to lift her limbs or speak no matter how hard she tried. She had fought with the disease until the age of 25 and her diary was converted to a memoir. It was subsequently filmed into a movie and drama.

The drama series itself is fantastic. Please watch it yourself and you will understand why. It carefully illustrates the pain of Aya going through the turmoils that had been brought to her by this disease. At the end of each episode, photos of the real Aya and phrases from the diary itself were shown. I practically cried at each episode, something that has never happened before. The drama unfolds as she experienced a loss of control over her body progressively and shares her frustrations and sadness in the diary. Starting with falling down occasionally to staggering while trying to walk. Movements became a chore to her and changing to a special school made her realise that she could no longer be the same person. She wanted to hang on to all she had in life. In her diary, she wrote that during the last 4 days at her school before transfering to the special school, everyone was folding a thousand cranes for her. However, she was wishing that they would tell her not to go. Her life transformed and she had to adapt to a new learning environment in the special school and changing her outlook on life. The drama also showed how her family and friends rallied behind her but she feels apologetic for every little inconvenience they had to go through. However, she had actually become a source of motivation for her friends who watched her continue life with grit and determination even whiile her condition deteriorated. While the drama was filmed using fictionous names and additional love scenes, it stayed close to depicting Aya’s feelings as written in the diary. She had probably shed a litre of tears to be able to move on with life, hence the title of her memoir.

Through this drama, I have also come to realise that the physically disabled do not have a choice. They need to accept the condition of their body and move on. They would lose a certain degree of independence. A phrase from Aya’s diary was written as “I cannot accept what has happened to me or why the disease has chosen me. Even for the simple word called fate.” I was really touched by her few phrases shown in the series and am considering to get the book. Do know that that the events happened in the early 70s to 80s when people’s attitude towards the disabled were less acceptable.

I watched the movie after the drama series. The pace was much faster with exact scenes and names writiten from the diary. I prefer the drama personally and be forewarned that it is a major tearjerker. I shedded tears even when watching the second time:S

Do you have something to live for? What would you do if you knew that you would have nothing to look forward to? We are considered to be fortunate to be able to live, breathe and see the world. It’s so easy to take things for granted.

EVERYONE, GO WATCH THIS SHOW!!!!

Chappalang post

Spent the morning half running and walking in the reservoir again.  As usual I went down to the platform and this time I did my warm-downs and stretches there.  There were people fishing as usual but there wasn’t any frog nor tortoise in sight.  Guess what I saw?

我看见了一只老鹰在水池上的空中盘旋。起初我还以为那是个遥控飞机，但是它越飞越近，接着煽动了翅膀，才知道它的确是只老鹰。看着它那么自由自在的空中飞翔真叫人有点羡慕。可能它也是在做晨运吧！ 好像每次到那里都会有新发现，，新体验，还有一些感触。看来我可要变成常客了！

I just spent 4 hours in bed reading Shopaholic & Baby.  It’s a pretty easy-to-read book and I finished it at one go.   As usual, Becky’s life is revolved around shopping but somehow I think it has gotten a bit far-fetched this. Compared to her sprees in the first book which were still realistic, the shopping plot has somehow spiralled a little out of control to the point of irritating.  I remembered when I read the first book, I felt that I was reading about myself.  Now, this has become sort of a too-good-to-be-true shopping personality.  But I still like how the story goes!  There wasn’t a perfect ending so it was perfect.  Now that I’ve finished the book I’m wondering what to do with it since I’ve just bought it and it’s still in perfect condition. Auction it on eBay for 10 bucks?  Hmmm….

Planet and supernova

I’ll need to make the planet pop out more.  Heee… and add a black hole or 1 more planet to make it look more sci-fic

I’m on a roll!!!

Created these brushes for GIMP again.  They’re so simple to do actually. Especially with 2.2.4 when you can resize the brushes. I think I’m spending too much time on GIMP but I’m just amazed at the number of effects you can create with it.  Why pay for Photoshop?  GIMP is good enough for me.

Reflection using GIMP

Yeah! There I’ve done it!  Nice?