Ah, Miss Singapore World has quit at last. Seriously, was it that difficult? I see no reason why she had to hold on so tightly to something that she didn't deserve in the first place.
Now I know why she won - birds of a feather. The people at ERM are just as unapologetic as her. "With her good performance and beauty, she excelled in the competition."
Erm. Beauty? Take a look at her predecessor in 2007: Or in 2008:
I honestly, honestly do not think she is in any way beautiful. Heavily-photoshopped, yes. But not beautiful.
And there's more: "The incident was a one-time interview which misled the Singapore public to believe she spoke English poorly" Seriously people, it takes just 1 blip for your reputation to go crashing. It's no excuse. I don't see Miss Universe 2008 stuttering in any interview, period.
"So perhaps her spoken English could also be an effect from her Bipolar disorder." WHA- ?!? That's a new one. Bipolar causes lousy English. Perhaps my teacher friends should send all their students who fare poorly in English to the psychiatrist. "Please assess for bipolar disorder and start on anti-psychotics, in view of poor command of english. Signed, concerned English teacher."
"Ris Low committed this offence as a young offender ..." "... the treatment would be different if she was over 21 years of age" True, she was a minor under legal definition. So maybe join a beauty pageant when you are more mature, perhaps? (which I think will take a lot of work. Boomz indeed!)
I've been having a waning interest in my specialty of choice over the last 6 months especially, and also doesn't help that incidences and people have been tempting me to go over to the dark side instead. Oh well. I sat in during a clinic with my boss today, and somehow found a little spark again - the same feeling I used to get about this subject. We'll see.
Anyway, I found myself amazed by this song, sung by none other than the King himself.
Celine recently did a duet using this very same clip, and it was amazing!
Yikes, the weekend just flew past again! The passage of time is getting quite alarming - just the other day, I was going through facebook while on call. This time, I didn't just browse the first page when you log in; that's what I have been doing for ages. I actually clicked on individual friends' pages, looked through their photographs, and hit the stark realisation that everyone's grown up. Some have families, some have the most interesting jobs, some .. well some just seem to spend all their time bitching or playing flash-based games.
There're quite a few things I am trying to settle right now, outside of work.
1. Anniversary trip - gotta get this one sorted out before the end of the year, we both need and deserve a break. But before that, we've got to get ourselves certified for the advanced open water course, in particular the deep diving and night diving stuff. While leads to ...
2. Advanced open water. Dive season for the east malaysian coast is drawing to a close, so I need to move fast. We've entertained the possibility of doing it locally, but from what I've read, it's not a good idea at all. Poor visibility, unpredictable currents - basically, a scary combination. We could also do it as part of the anniversary trip, but we both wanted to do recreational dives during that time, rather than being on a course. And there's still the issue of funding the trip(s).
3. Still looking for a small fibreglass pond to place on the balcony. My turtle is actually getting very, very large (he's currently a tad bigger than my 13" MacBook), and even the largest of RubberMaid containers isn't going to keep him happy for long. The next best thing to do, I suppose, is to get one of those fibreglass boxes that people use for their "water features", and do up some sort of makeshift pond with it.
*** Singaporean photographers are nasty ***
I usually browse the local photography forum, but just the other day while on call, I discovered a nice international forum. Oh dear, what a stark difference in the attitude! If anyone ever dared to ask some question on the local forum that had been answered before, they usually get rebuked with "There's such a thing called a search button." or some other generic you-are-so-dumb answer like "It's been discussed many, many, MANY times before." Whoa. What a nice and pleasant place. On this other forum I found, although people *still* get annoyed when repeat questions are asked, they still oblige with an answer, or - better yet - say "it's been discussed before, look at these threads" and proceed to provide hyperlinks.
Perhaps it's got to do with the differing levels of professionalism between the 2. The bulk of people on the local forum are simply hobbyists, while I see a large portion of professional wildlife photographers or photojournalists on the other forum. Of course, for both forums, there's the occasional name-calling which is tends to happen when people start discussing things they are really passionate about.
Just an observation, and I'm glad there's a more pleasant avenue to read about stuff. =)
This is one of those weeks that don't seem to want to pass peacefully. =(
As usual, I'm struggling to juggle several things at once, and work keeps coming my way. I'm sure everyone feels this way from time to time, so I'm trying to make the best use of the situation and try to see if I can sort things out.
Planning a weekend getaway isn't easy, I just found out. This is why being a student is one of the best things that can happen to you - you can just skive off school without a care in the world.
Oh yeah, and I'm getting increasingly irritated with Citibank. It's the only bank that calls to harass customers to get you to sign up with their many schemes - loans, insurance, you name it. And their telemarketers don't seem to understand English. Like yesterday, when someone called me and I told her firmly yet politely that I'm not interested, she went on with a "but ...". That really did it - it's like an invitation to get snapped at. Lady, exactly which parts of the 3 words "I'm not interested" do you not understand? Do you want me to email you the words so that you can look them up in the dictionary? Or should I enroll you in prep school again?
Just learnt from first-hand experience, that inviting your boss to the wedding is an inevitable but very nasty thing to do. Had quite a grueling time at a friend's wedding, sitting on the same table as my boss.
I have found something interesting to keep me occupied for a couple of days! We went to the Butterfly Park at Sentosa to break in Yx's new compact camera, and I found a lovely pig-nosed turtle there. I wonder if I can get any of these now. They used to come in really small sizes at $40 apiece. During my search, I found this whole forum dealing with freshwater stingrays. Granted, I've seen them for sale commonly in local aquariums for the longest time, but somehow they never did interest me. Maybe it's the fact that they are so large, and correspondingly need a large aquarium. But they seriously do look nice. Hmmm nevermind. I do not have the space, or the time, for them at this point in time.
Woke up intending to run, but once again I procrastinated.
1. I came across this site - Atmospheric optics - while doing a Google search. It's really very entertaining and educational, worth a look!
2. Yx and I got ourselves a nice compact camera yesterday! =) It's a Canon G10, 2nd hand in mint condition. Very objectively, the Panasonic Lumix LX3 has way better performance and looks, but I really can't justify dishing out thousands of dollars just for a 3rd party underwater housing (compared to canon's $200+ housing). More to come later!
3. Fresh Italian autumn truffles are here!! At S$800/kg though, and with my indecent pay right now, I shall have to pass and make do with truffle oil at $30 per bottle which lasts indefinitely.
4. Itching to go on a dive holiday. Been 9 months since we've had compressed air!
Greenwood Fish Market & Bistro A review of their crabmeat spaghetti vongole
After doing up that spaghetti vongole the other day, I had the chance of going out for lunch with the guys at Greenwood Fish Market. I think you probably know about them for their fish & chips (which, personally, I do not find spectacular).
The portion size was good, even for a glutton like me. The pasta was cooked al-dente, which was a nice surprise. Number of clams included was good too, and the shredded crabmeat (tinned, no doubt) added a nice touch.
However, there was plenty of grit in the clams. I'm not talking about fine sand (which, strictly-speaking, shouldn't even be there) - there were 3-4mm pieces of grit in the stuff. Not good eh.
Just had my first session last evening, and it was good. Just that the children were inevitable. Still trying to get used to writing strangely and using alternative names.
Anyway, I must admit that I chickened out of the EPS. Called in to cancel it yesterday afternoon, and I'm expecting a call from my doc today. Maybe I should call him first to inform him, out of courtesy. It's just too harrowing to deal with the risks, and Yx agrees too. I'm ashamed of myself. It's almost as bad as last November's very complicated episode of affairs. It's never easy to do things like this, but sometimes it's necessary.
It's been quite a while since I last blogged! (has it?) Anyway, I'm now kinda stuck with a few sticky situations, and it's quite annoying when things don't really work out. Some stuff I managed to do:
1. Got my car serviced! I hate it when the salespeople look at me in that way when they learn that it's done 15,000km since the last servicing. But anyway, I pampered the damn thing today by getting new spark plugs, new fog lamps, air-con coil decontamination treatment, fuel injector cleaning and whatnot. And of course, I got the main problem settled - the squeaky noise during start-up from a loose belt.
2. Made spaghetti vongole Yeah I did it today, from a sudden stroke of inspiration while walking around the fish market and seeing nice clams. It was well-received! And mom ended up teaching dad to mop up all the juices with bread, lol.
3. Mopped the house Sigh. Had to clear up some of my studio equipment today and mop the dust-magnet of a house, as dad's having friends over.
5. Did some edits Thanks to a colleague, I finally managed to get my paws on Lightroom 2. It's just one of those things that makes you wonder how you could have ever done without it. It makes sorting, categorising and editing of photos such a breeze! Check out the belated Bali trip photos on my facebook. I'm working on our ROM photos, which in itself is quite a PITA - mostly cos unlike the Bali photos, I simply cannot ruin them.
Found this Wikipedia page that actually provided me with hours of entertainment last night! Go look some some internet memes. It's actually quite interesting. A further look at "Loituma Girl" got me this video of Finnish group Loituma singing, which frankly is quite amazing.
The day to my electrophysiology starts looming, and feeling a little jittery.
It's been quite a sullen evening for me, even though I did do a bit of shopping at Clementi central. I dunno .. maybe it's all coming from extreme boredom and thinking too much. I'm starting to diet now - one of those umpteen times I'm doing it, to be honest. It's not extreme, just staying off silly things like snacks. I wonder if I should just go mad and get some pills or something, if they even work!
Anyway, Yx managed to find me quite a good deal on lenses! So now I'm pondering and deliberating over whether to get one or not.
Haha .. ok, some things first. Canon finally released their much-anticipated 1 Sept announcement of new cameras and lenses, and wow, the 7D seems really exciting. Some weirdos have been doing strange things to youtube videos too, here's one related to Canon's release:
Hitler banned from Wikipedia ...
Hitler scammed on ebay ...
He finds out MJ died ...
He wants a Burger King ...
And finally, he finds out everyone's making fun of him on youtube ...
