Since I'm not married, here're a pair of virtual hongbaos! What's inside - well, chocolate gold coins are what I can offer.
Gong Xi Fa Cai! It's the year of the Rat, the start of the whole Zodiac Calendar, and let me wish you all:
Ping An Ru Shi: Safety through the year and the situations they bring.
Nian Nian You Yu: Surpluses and excessive bounty in every year.
Xin/Meng Xiang Shi Chen: The realization of your heart's/mind's wishes.
Sheng Ti Jian Kang: A healthy and strong body.
- The Epic Critics Club experienced a sudden jumpstart. Now, it's lagging because I haven't touched it. Yet. I will - once the week's over!
- There're two weeks left of the school term and my time as a second-year student. Ack, the assignments are killing me! I've an avant-garde piece to create out of home recordings, a business to launch and an online portfolio to boot up before the end of the term.
- I'm nervous about my internship placement. It may not have been a wise idea to leave it
If any would recall this entry, I had a nasty encounter with an insect at the outer reaches of my room, where the last I saw of the culprit was its feet going over the staircase directly to the first floor.
9:30pm, after a boring Christmas dinner at a parent's friend's home, and I had just put down my bag - and noticed something brown scuttle on the edge on my bed and disappear behind the blankets.
There was only one thing that was brown, scuttled and preferred hiding places.
I had to
I'm only in here for a breath, because I forgot remembered what special time of the year it was.
To all who do chance upon this (I'd say all BZPers, to all the how-many-thousand-or-million, yet I know that in reality, I can't shout loud enough to so many ears!),
*takes a deep breath*
Happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy...
Happy (belated) Christmas, Boxing Day, and Birthday to all members born on those dates!
And, in the non-distant future,
Hap
School hasn't been lenient on me. It's the start of a two-week break - and a heavy mugging with 7 assignments due when I return!!
Yet, I really do miss doing all the stuff I did on BZP. Blogging's one of them, and it's been sporadic. Writing - I haven't touched a thing for two months. I've a record of only one critic review for the past 2 months.
So... rather than stuffing myself to death with the assignments, I plan to do a little visit and actually do something here. Sometime soon. When
I received an SMS from Kevin - right after my Grade 8 exam - about him having a free pair of movie tickets for that night, two days ago.
It was an apt time for him to send that message over - the exam had killed my mood for the day. Imagine having to adapt a piano score to an organ score on the spot - something I've never done before - and receiving your first aural test as a 5/4 piece. It was daylight murder.
And along came a chance of saving the day from being a poorly one.
I may not
When the doctor mentioned the awful words, I couldn't help but look at him with alarm.
I was sick again - the morning in school went fine, but when I got queasy in the afternoon, it demanded medical attention.
And, lo behold, the doctor thought I need a blood test.
I have a really nice phobia of needles. Hated those things ever since I saw something long, thin, silver and pointy poke me when I was young. That memory never died.
When the doctor further elaborated, with the words
It so happened that my school campus was laid out on terrain that was anything but flat. There were buildings that were more-or-less level in height, but there was that one building which everyone has constantly described as being 'on top of the hill'.
And who knew that the location of my school had, in the end, proved to be a lovely way for a flu to spread.
I believe it started with one or two people who were ill - from the info-tech course, I bet. The spread was inevitable - everyone c
So that guy who liked me and I have been together for a while as friends. Times together were good, times together weren't so sweet at certain periods, but it has come to the point where he popped the question to me.
I knew that this phase in life would come upon me, but I actually hadn't expected it to be so soon! I supposed that I'd get my first boyfriend in university, if you can believe it.
And now this happened.
We've been shooting questions back and forth since then: What are yo
Intellectual Property - the laws of copyright and moral rights - should never be taken lightly. My 'Business of Music' lecturer made sure we knew that - by giving us our toughest assignment yet.
He made everyone in Never-Ever Land downright criminals, stealing the melody motif (Mi Re Do) of 'Three Blind Mice'. It somehow got so twisted that at least 3 songs have been produced out of it: 'Gold From Straws', 'Gold-i-locks', 'Climb These Locks', and all the planned cover versions of those songs,
Jamiroquai is some old band that has risen from the dead. No, I'd say that of the band if it hadn't been for a funk-infused classmate who is spreading the Jamiroquai-love around the class.
And it was infectious.
With an outspoken singer (Jay Kay, with) who had vibes and hats to match his eccentric style on stage and a grooving band, it had lived through the late 1990s till now. Their style is all about groove - and really, it is their style that has remarkably kept going.
And, out of b
Right now, I'm considering of doing something of a fair trade- for my two sisters' sake.
One of them will enter her big high-school-leaving-exams tomorrow. (She's studying right now - more like getting a whole load of Math ravings from my elder sis.)
The other one is going to enter her big junior-college-leaving-exams a week from now. (She's the one doing the raving.)
Both have the same reaction, even though they're sniggering at each other and gaping at all the careless mistakes - th
When my mother invited her visiting friends from the U.S. to a seafood dinner, I couldn't let the chance of having something different for dinner pass me by.
The seafood was great - it was a pity that there was no fish.
However, they did have wine.
Now, drinking isn't good, but wine is something different. I may have sworn myself to stay off alcohol, but it didn't mean that I was curious about it.
And I was with parents - that meant that it'll be safe.
My mother allowed me - s
I'm toying with the idea to start replacing some of the hardware on my laptop, maybe even software if I feel like it.
Currently, my laptop is - to quote from friends - the slowest they've seen. They claim that even dragging the mouse across the screen showed a lag in the computer's speed.
I then started the disk cleaning, defragmentation, and moved surprisingly old and unused files to an external hard drive. I had cleared up the computer to get it from a meagre 7% to 22% free disk space.
Imagine a mocking bird in the snowy woods mocking at a wolf that led a dying pack, and the wolf heeds it and drives itself without rest till it collapses.
I just realised that this situation could very-well happen in my newly-formed group.
We have a really fun assignment lined up for us - we're going to make our own MTV. An original song from our previous assignment will be used as the MTV's main idea, and then the video is slapped on top of it. Duh.
Our group was planned as it was, w
Well, not quite. It's just that the Chinese have turned it into cake.
If you all know what a mooncake is, then good. If not, go to Wikipedia. At least the information there is quite valid.
This past tool of war - haha - is now a token part of the Mid-Autumn Festival, also known as the Lantern Festival, and the Mooncake Festival. (I don't know if there're any more names for this.)
But, what Wiki didn't say was that another way to participate in the festivities is to make mooncakes and le
Do you ever wonder why cats hate dogs, and vice versa?
That question ran past my head when my dog displayed the most bizarre reaction to the television - something he ignored on an everyday basis.
My sister and I were watching an animal documentary about cats - a colony of cats that lived in Rome. They were all so fluffy and cute, especially the kittens. Lucky didn't find them so appealing. He laid in my lap, relaxed and breathing softly.
Suddenly, his ears pricked up and became agita
Ironically, I'm not referring to the little clownfish that everyone adores, but the song by goth-metal band Nightwish (And, for those in the know, before they changed their lead singer). I can also be referring to the fish.
The holidays are coming to an end. I look forward to school and, ironically, work. I want a nice load of assignments to busy myself with, instead of lying on my bed and letting my RPG game run on autopilot. I don't even touch the game anymore.
And to think that this wa
So, I came back from USA. Old news - maybe not to those who haven't me back (in black) at the Epics.
But, I feel like some memories would be nice to share:
- Down at the front of the infamous Kodak Theatre, 'Johh Hancock' was in full swing of production, with its main actor right in the limelight - and attending to the crowd of screaming fan girls and I do exclude myself from that fray.
But, I did see Will Smith - in the flesh.
- We visited Apple's Campus - the mothership of everythi
The performance went all-right. The mistakes I made weren't too obvious, thank goodness. The teacher-singer I had enlisted as my partner in crime did a splendid rendition of 'Girl From Ipanema' to 'Boy From Ipanema' in English and Portugese.
But, that aside, I'm heading to the US on Monday - and arriving on Northwest-American soil on Monday. No thanks to the Greenwich line and the Median line (My geography is rusty), I may suffer from serious jetlag when I return (next Wednesday), and I fores
1) Against the Machine
Today was a big day for me (What a way to start a blog post. ); I was going horseriding! In a place of scarce land and resources, owning a horse was a real luxury. Furthermore, it was really expensive to get the horse itself. I used to go riding for a while, but when my favourite horse died and the prices escalated, I stopped and forgot about it.
So when a holiday course, subsidised to a fair amount by the polytechnic, was offered, I hopped at the chance.
But fir
I was sick of having canned or prepared food at home. I was opening packets of things to eat, and some of them did not taste so great.
So I decided to try something cooked from scratch - something that every Chinese-bred Asian should be able to cook: fried rice.
Don't start jumping yet. I realised how tough it was to make it. I knew that my grandmother was the absolute head of the cooking matters of home, granted with years of expertise and much more of experience. Her fried rice is strang
The idiosyncratic mannerism of nail-biting often means that the person doing this dirty act is either nervous or has a bad habit to kick. (I'm not in any way being nasty to Dr. Bionicle - He is breaking the habit. Go go!)
I'm nervous. There's a private function I'm to perform at, next (or this) Friday! Egads and eek, and the night's repertoire is still slightly flawed. I've been drilling - but to a point of exhaustion. I realised this, of course, and took a break. I don't know when I'll get b
