Filed under: Ramblings
I met up with my OG yesterday at AMK Hub to buy some groceries with the intent of making ourselves dinner that night at Helena’s house, which I wish was mine because it’s so huge! The living room even has a nice patio-like extension at the side with a pool table, making the entire set-up look like part of a country club. Really posh.
So we spent the time between lunch and dinner preparing for dinner, which wasn’t exactly what I had in mind for an afternoon out with friends. Ok, I didn’t do a lot, since I’m slightly challenged when it comes to doing things in the kitchen. But if there’s one thing I learnt that day, it’s that Nick (Lee) can really cook. Even Helena’s domestic helper nicknamed him “head chef”. He had this recipe for a pasta dish that involved spaghetti, nuts, and laksa leaves. Talk about fusion. He even tried to make apple crumble, but that plan kinda crumbled (pardon the pun, hurhur…). Shareen decided to make sheperd’s pie, and both the pasta and the pie turned out to be pretty tasty. And the best part is that I didn’t have diarrhea today…
So we spent the day playing pool and mahjong. They played mahjong, I was watching, but not after hogging the pool table with Raymond. And boy, can he play. I can never pot ball with so much power with his kind of accuracy, but he didn’t win much (Hahaha…), and neither did Kelvin nor Lyanna. So at the end of it, I was feeling really guilty about not letting anyone win. Maybe I should play Raymond on a 9-foot pool table someday. I think Helena’s table was an 8-foot table. Put me on a regulation table and I’ll truly be at sea.
Dinner was a really homey affair. It was almost like some kind of family-reunion type of thing we do during Chinese New Year. It just felt like as if we were really a big family. Or maybe it’s just the effect of sitting around a round table which was a bit too small to accomodate all 12 of us comfortably. Nonetheless, it was really cosy. So we spent the time after that playing orientation-camp type of games, and after this modified “Heart-attack” game that we had, everyone nearly made Joyce and I consume the disaster that were the long beans Nick (Lee) had made (as a forfeit for losing the game). Earlier that day, while preparing for dinner, he cut the long beans and put them in a bowl of dark soya sauce and let them sit for, I don’t know, 5 to 7 hours I think, so they ended up tasting really, REALLY salty. It went with the pasta, and a few of us found it to be a bit wierd. You gotta give him credit though, ‘cos the pasta (bar the long beans) was so good. But anyway, everybody gradually forgot about that forfeit thanks to a sudden onset of amnesia, and more games.
And so, the day ended at midnight. But then again, what day doesn’t end at midnight? Anyway, everybody left one by one, and at 0210h this morning, 6 of us remained. 4 playing mahjong, 1 spectator (myself), and 1 seriously tired head chef, who had a slight tendency to talk in his sleep. I never thought a person smiling and whispering in his sleep could look so creepy until I saw him fall asleep on the couch, which made me wonder if I do that in my sleep as well. At 0220h, we said goodbye and parted ways, and as I headed over to my car, now covered with early morning dew, I felt something that I had never felt before for the last few years;
I felt sad that the day had ended.
And I’m not talking about Cascading Style Sheets here. I came back from the NUS Catholic Students’ Society Freshmen Orientation Camp a few days ago, and it was pretty sweet. And as Nick Lee rightly said to me yesterday when we went out with our group, I can really feel my “social development index” drop after getting involved with the Army, and also after that long period of slacking that I’ve been through (not that I mind slacking for months at a time), but it was still good. I have a really nice group, and we’re starting to go out together a lot, which is something I’m gonna have to get used to after all these months of nothing-ness, but I really don’t mind.
One bad thing about the camp though – it was totally draining. We only had about 10 hours of sleep over 3 nights, with only 1 hour on the last night, but that was mainly because we had to rehearse for the skit, which was kick-ass by the way. It’s a curious thing – I used to be able to survive on very little sleep. Maybe I’m getting old… Anyway, the little group outing on Monday and the lack of sleep meant I had to sleep early on Sunday night, which meant I missed the US Grand Prix! Argh! Them blasted time zones! Now I have to wait till Saturday to watch the highlights.
Which means that right now, I’m probably the only Formula 1 fan on the planet who doesn’t know the US GP results yet.
Filed under: Music
And it cost me $40!
And I keep wondering where all my money is going…
It was worth it though. The stick response on the drum pad is great, loads better than the mesh drumheads on my drum kit. The mesh heads are good for normal practice on a drum set, and surprisingly durable, but the rebound tends to feel a little bit retarded – the rebound is good, but no matter how tightly you tune the drumheads, the stick sinks into the mesh too much when you strike it, so when you’re practicing drum rudiments, it feels a bit funny. They do their job, but they don’t quite feel like real drumheads. So why don’t I fit real drumheads onto the drums? Because I live in an apartment and I’m a very considerate person (Ha!).
I guess I feel kind of retarded as well, getting my first practice pad only after playing drums for so long. But as the saying goes; it’s better late than never. Anyway, it’s a 6″ “RealFeel” practice pad from HQ Percussion, and the bottom could use a tackier surface to grip a tabletop better, but I guess I can live with this.
Filed under: Ramblings
So I woke up in bed 2 nights ago and found myself in the middle of a sneezing fit. Not that I was sneezing while having an epileptic fit, because that would just be messy, and I don’t suffer from epilepsy, but I was just sneezing a lot. So after one particular sneeze, I started feeling a sharp pain behind my neck, and worried myself back to sleep.
When I woke up in that morning, I had the most wicked neckache in the history of the world. It would hurt if I moved my neck in any direction, which makes checking blindspots – while driving - a real pain in the neck (Ha, geddit?). It’s gotten a bit better since then, but right now, it still hurts a bit.
Who knew you could sprain your neck by sneezing…
After numerous delays with the window tinting and rustproofing, our new car has finally arrived! The Nissan Latio, as driven by Hiro Nakamura, or rather, by his accomplice, Ando Masahashi, in the American TV series, Heroes (which really rocks, by the way). Except in America, it’s known as a Nissan Versa and has a bigger engine, and Hiro’s car is black.
Why can’t they just market the car as the Versa here too? It sounds so much nicer than “Latio”…
But this is just as well. You can really feel the improvement in the amount of power the gas pedal is controlling, probably due to the CVT (continuously variable transmission), which also makes this car more fuel efficient than the conventional 4-speed automatic gearbox in the old Nissan Sunny we used to have. The steering feels a lot lighter than the old car, although the turning radius on the Latio Sports is wider, but I can still make a U-turn in 2 lanes if I keep more to the left of my lane on the approach to the turn.
The interior is really something else. The back seats are so roomy it doesn’t really feel like a compact car. The front seats are pretty comfortable as well, with height adjustments for the driver’s seat for a higher sitting position. The tachometer and speedometer are housed in a sharp looking binnacle – or rather, trinnacle, if there is such a word - behind the steering wheel. The handbrake has morphed into a pedal to the left of the foot-brake pedal, which takes some getting used to, but also provides space for an inclusion of an exceedingly long armrest, which makes driving the car that much more comfortable. Add to that a head unit that includes an auxiliary input, plays MP3 and WMA CDs – and cassette tapes, if you are THAT old – and a 12 disc CD changer, and I could drive this for the rest of my life.
With breaks in between for meals, sleep and other activities of course.
So what happens to the old Nissan Sunny?
It’s going to be scrapped. Which is pretty sad, because it was actually a pretty good car. It was reliable, it took us where we needed to go, and most importantly, it doesn’t spontaneously combust. Sure, the power plant was somewhat thirsty, and the rear seats were a bit cramped (but why should I care? I don’t sit there…), but it served us well and got us where we needed to go. And it’s still looks pretty new, despite the battle scars on the front bumper.
Kinda sad, but that’s the way it is.
Anyway, my brother and I were watching Wildboyz on MTV the other day, and they played this game with some Russian nomads, called “Vodka Slap”.
“Vodka Slap” is the name of the game, not the name of the nomads.
So “Vodka Slap” is a 2-player game. And the idea is that the first player holds a shot of vodka in his/her mouth, and the other player has to slap the first player’s face once, to force him/her to expel the vodka in his/her mouth. The players take turns being the slapper/slappee until one of the players manages to hold all the vodka in his/her mouth after being slapped. Then the game would end, and that player wins.
It doesn’t look like a fun game to play, but it sure is fun to watch.
