S'pore F1 GP raceday

Got to go to the S'pore F1 GP raceday using my cousin's ticket... Very last minute because I had planned to study my polymer tech quiz on my Sunday! But still the urge to go took over me, studies can wait haha!

Spinning cars at the pre-F1 support race, think is some Porsche Asian Carrera Cup or something... this was the most exciting race moment that had occurred at the place where I was standing... Turn 14 just after the Esplanade bridge and the cars had to brake from high speeds to take a 90 degree right-hander corner~

Lewis Hamilton on the pre-race salute!

Hamilton too fast for my digicam!

There were Brazilian fans, Filipino fans, Spanish/Alonso fans, English Hamilton fans, S'porean Hamilton fans all right beside me!

For Kimi fans!

Hamilton!

Race winner Alonso waving to the people~

Hamilton after the race... he was also waving to the crowd despite only a 3rd place finish~!



Padang straight~

F1 Friday night practice

McLaren's car with headlamps haha! Joke only lah... from TopGear.com

Man I wasn't impressed by Channel 5's F1 commentator... On screen Mark Webber's Red Bull RB4 car was bottoming out on a bumpy section of the track and the commentator was actually saying things like Webber's having a big electrical problem and he's going to retire very soon... Wao kaoz~! Why get somebody who doesn't know about cars, somebody who doesn't know about F1 and racing to do live commentary on the first time live telecast of an F1 race on national TV? Not a good education for those many first time F1 converts... Those sparks are just due to the car's bottom scratching on the peaks of bumps on the road, that's all! What electrical problem? Probably the only wiring problem is the one within this commentator's head hahaha~! Luckily there's Starhub channel 24 for me... much better commentary from here~

But from what can be seen on TV, the views of the track and the surrounding was really quite beautiful, certainly a damn good introduction of S'pore to the world, and probably would do a great deal to helping those ang mohs remember that S'pore isn't a province in a part of China hahas!

Williams F1 team website has a video of Nico Rosberg on a simulator lap of the S'pore track, quite realistic, damn cool, really a good view of what the drivers actually see while driving on the track... Williams F1 S'pore GP simulator video

But Lewis Hamilton has only gained even more respect from me after watching his practice 2 fastest run... man this guy's has better feel through his feet than many people with their hands! Just watch him power slide his 800bhp McLaren through the tighter corners! Many people have problems even just braking smoothly on a bicycle and this boy's playing with the throttle power-sliding an F1 car! Go Lewis! Win the championship~!

Nonsense...

On the last train home... checked liao got no other faces in the reflections~ =p

Big big yummy burger! Carl's Jr, not Fish Burger ah Mas... haha~!

Trying out the new Google Chrome Beta web browser... interesting for a change, but a little frustrating at times since I'm a long time IE user, save for a short period with Firefox... Why didn't Chrome's developers include the Favorites button on the Menu bar? But main good thing's is... Chrome's really much much faster...

Next week will be my 'xiong' week... Got a difficult Polymer Tech quiz and Professional Communication presentation both on Monday, and must submit this Engineer & Society essay by Friday... not to mention if I get mobilized for my recall manning anytime during the week...

Light the joss sticks oops~!

Light the Passion, share the dream... with three red Olympic torches lined in parallel... Don't the three torches resemble three joss sticks? Lucky the three torches weren't lit and smoking hahahah~! Buay tahan man~!

Found this special looking unidentified pitcher plant on my bike ride in a "cannot-be-disclosed" location... Long, slender, lime-green with a little pink/red, it's really pretty~! Haven't been cycling for so long, I really feel much less comfortable being on the bike, and my legs don't really feel like the same anymore...~

Went to Molly Malone's Irish Pub with my army D2 guys, it's a really nice place! Good and cheap and huge portion of fish and chips (5 pieces of fish for 1 serving ley!), wide variety of booze, 42" TV showing soccer (Chelsea vs Man U!)... I'll definitely be back for more! More of the good food of course~!

ZW and YY, with YY doing an Edison Chen "don't film me!" pose haha! Yeah, ZW don't really look like this usually, he's suffering from lack of sleep after a night out officiating some bike race event at NUS...~

YY and Marshal, YY being the camera-guru to Marshal regarding autofocus haha~!

Thanks to the D2 guys for treating me to dinner... Actually so nice to see us still meeting for dinners after 4 long years since ORD...~

The Fish Express

Took the "Fish Express" over to Malaysia over the weekend, for Fish's Today's Valentine's Day album promo events... "Fish Express" covered like 250km in 2 days? This is her at Plaza Pelangi~

Fish at Batu Pahat The Summit mall, "huge" place, "huge" stage hahah~! At least we got to see her act here, cute, worth it~

Mas and Wei, happy on the stage while waiting for their turn to autograph and shake hands for the 3rd time in 2 days haha~!

Sunrise at Batu Pahat, from the tallest building in the area that is our hotel~

Happy Birthday to me haha~! From Fish~ =)

Fish at Bugis Junction

Fish's 今天情人節 promo event at Bugis Junction... First time my new camera is brought into the thick of action, cest la vie~

Birthday eve...

It's the eve of my 24th birthday, and I'm in a limp tired heap of throbbing veins in my head and sore red eyes and sharkskin rough throat... And still need to clear some of my notes for my Polymer Synthesis quiz next week so that I can enjoy my weekend with Fish and gang... Yay, Happy birthday to me =_= ~

My birthday present from the FD guys (Mas, Wei and Jason): An autographed limited edition Fish's Taiwan stadium concert 2 DVD + 1 CD, No. 2825 of 2998~! I was very calm when Thomas passed it to me early early on a Saturday morning, until I went home and opened it up and put the discs into my desktop (my laptop is dead...) and pressed Play... on Dopamine-high~ Having Fish for breakfast is good for health hahaha~! And Cindy's seems to be everywhere that Fish goes... On Fish's webpage, newspapers, now she's appeared in the photo-booklet in the package! Almost like the suckerfish on a whale or shark =p

Thanks so much you guys (Mas, Wei and Jason)~! And also thanks to FD's husband / wife combo Darren and Sherry for the Taiwan concert poster~!

Went back to the old PJC grounds at Jurong East with my NTU ex-PJC guys... It is now occupied by Infomatics, but it largely still unchanged, at least for the toilets, although the area where the gym used to stand, where I used to sweat out and grunt out chin-ups has been changed into a paradise, for food haha~!

Birthday boy TKY at the Science Centre after our birthday dinner treat... he just couldn't resist being one-up on the big bad scary T-rex~!

The safety equipment for my DC plasma spray machine has arrived, as part of my school's safety 'revolution'... Man it is a joke! It's straight out of Star Wars, a blue version of Storm Troopers' gear~!

'Handsum' in blue haha~!

Was bored sitting at my desk at home after school, and started to play with some leftover waste cardboard, and presto, an artistic namecard holder tadah~!

What a nice weekend haha!

"Zhng-ed" my bike with a seatpost rack, got the slightly more budget version from IMM Giant... Now I can put my shoes and clothes in a shoebag and tie it to the rack, not like in the past few weeks where I had to squeeze everything into my backpack machiam BMT-times where I had to sit and step on my full-pack just to make sure the cover could be closed properly lol~! No more having to play sardines in cans on morning and evening bus/mrt rides~!

I now have my own digital camera yay! All thanks to my IPPT silver and $200 hehe! Found the Panasonic Lumix series to be the most attractive among all the brands, due to its pretty useful IA mode, good image quality, shell design that I really like and its very fast responses... Also the Leica lens and brand logo made me that little more biased to Panasonic, because Fish uses a Leica camera too~! =p

Went to Comex with my mum, aunts and 2 cousins. It was more crowded than any beehive or ants nest! Kept stepping on other people's shoes, and having mine stepped by other people too lol! Jumped from camera show stand to show stand, played with so many cameras, test-snapping at everywhere - people, at the dark shadows under showtables, at the ceiling hahaha! My shutterbug aunt said this is the best way to test whether the camera would perform in all situations, and it was quite fun to be able to play with so many cameras, without fear of spoiling them hehe!

Blur me, but I only just noticed that to get IPPT gold, I don't have to run below 9.45 mins! Below 10.40 would be sufficient provided I get 5 points for 3 stations! So nice... because I would be considered Cat Y just 2 weeks later muahaha! Dreaming already... $400 would smell so so so nice =p.....

Fireworks Show 2008~

Went to watch fireworks with the firework kaki gang cum FD gang... many thanks to Mas (sheltering from the rain under his 7-11 brollie~) who sponsored me his old Minolta camera that devours AA batteries for fun with every click of its shutter... hmmm still I'll be ponying up for my own compact digicam that I can bring along for my bike rides and outings, and one that won't be as hungry for batteries~ =p

Golden Shower for good luck~! Helps that it also sounded like firecrackers too~!

Playing around with the camera settings during the whole fireworks show, these are some of the more usable pictures... however not as busy as Mas who had to answer a certain phonecall from a certain "Mr. Emo-boy" halfway through the show~ =p



Some droplets of rain on the lens =(

Grey-ness~

Caught in the rain on my Sunday afternoon trail ride... with little "rivers" streaming down the trail~ Pictures taken with the new Nokia 6500 phone that my dad brought home, swopped with my SE K770i "Cybershot" which has stinky camera and video qualities... The pics are still somewhat greyish and dull in general, but they do come out much sharper than the K770i, even though both are 3.2Mp cams. Nokia's autofocus, autoflash and shutter speed is also much better. Nokia's user interface stinks as compared to SE's, but I like the stronger vibration motor, louder ringtone speaker, and of course the much better camera and video recorder, if only the camera has a built-in cover~

Found a pair of metal tire valve caps while pumping at the Shell petrol station, one gold and one red, probably lost by some absent-minded motorcyclist... Washed them and put them onto my bike for some added Mat-Rempit racer bling-bling coolness haha!

Sam and Poh Tin treated us student helpers to farewell lunch at Swenson's today, really appreciated it. I really don't think that we have done much to warrant such a big treat, but they were really nice people, especially Sam, which was a big reason why I chose to do my FYP in his lab. I hate "farewell"-themed events of any kind, kind of depressing everytime without fail~

NDP Parade

Went to watch the NDP parade air-show and fireworks with my mum, her first time watching the NDP live. It was sunny when we left home for Marina, but it were these dark rain clouds, and a slight persistent drizzle that greeted us over there... Had to respect those parachuters who did their show amid rain and strong winds~

The strong winds and dark clouds in the sky made the air-show a little less beautiful as compared to the rehearsal last week, especially that the heart-shaped smoke didn't come out that nicely at all, and the winds blew it apart within seconds, the dimming natural light also didn't help at all...~



A faint rainbow appeared towards the end of the air-show... Sign of good luck to come?

First blast of fireworks, the crowd was starting to getting to get worse and worse, especially around this poor family in front of us who brought laptops to watch the NDP live over Wifi, and found themselves jammed-packed surrounded by foreign workers, smoking and talking loudly (mainly the China ones) watching the show with them~

Then the smoke came... The strong winds spoiled the air-show earlier, and ironically, the lack of winds spoiled the fireworks show later in the evening... Mother Nature still rules~



After Shine Singapore, it was the Haze Singapore... hahaha~!!

I got my free Creative Ep-630 in-ear earphones from Sim Lim Square, after signing up for the Wireless@Sg promo last month... finally I can listen to my Mp3s without having to leave that ugly "hairband" impression on my hair as I'll get when using my Sennheiser headphones. Sound quality wise, I find that the Creative earphones were pretty good, perhaps because so much of ambient noise is filtered out. I also found that I would have to turn off the EQ and any Bass Boost features in my MP3 player because it would result in the best and clearest sound quality. It's definitely much better than the Sony in-ear earpieces that came with my old W800i. But for the guitar and piano sounds, I still feel that my Sennheisers have a slightly fuller, warmer and more natural sounding effect. I'd still use my Sennheisers at home, where I don't care about my hair~

Commuted to school today by bicycle for the first time, after being frustrated by endless jams and delays and waiting and squeezing on MRTs and buses for the past few mornings. I left home as usual, and still managed to reach school almost 30 minutes earlier than by public transport! I'm still early after taking time off to change shoes, dry myself, change my shirt and keeping my stuff in my cabinet drawer... Only trouble being the weather, when it drizzled slightly on the home-bound journey, and some rude and inconsiderate drivers hungering for some after-work on-road entertainment via some of my "non-verbal communication skills"...~

NDP last full-rehearsal~

Cycled to watch the NDP full dress rehearsal at Marina on my own, because my poor FD kakis were all either stuck at work, or having exams, or busy with some other stuff... Watched with a couple of people who were there alone too, so it wasn't quite so bad... Got to see the stuff that I'd missed 2 weeks ago due to an untimely toilet break, like the Red Lions paratroopers, and the National flag / Chinook / Apache fly-by, and the first of the F16 fly-by... Not easy to take pictures with my handphone camera because the lag between pressing the shutter button and the actual picture being taken, and the lag after taking each picture due to saving the picture to the memory card... have to aim off in front of the fast-flying planes just to make sure that they'll appear in the middle of each picture... much like what I'd learnt in army when shooting aircraft using my M-16 rifles and GPMG haha... quite frustrating~







Mas, I have my own 9-11 picture now too lol~!

Smiley eyes...?

No... It's a big heart~

Signing off with a five-pronged "hand" to wave bye bye... should have taken this picture in Potrait instead of Landscape...~

Fireworks~