2011 Resolutions

Alright been wanting to do this for awhile but kept putting it off. Had it all written out in my head already, just have to transfer it to this blog haha.

Before that, one quick announcement -

I SOLD MY IPOD TOUCH.

So long, my friend

Very sad k, got sentimental value. And monetary value of course, of  $280! Which is pretty decent I guess for a secondhand. :/ (O.P. $336 i think) But very sad to part with it la, cos it's a gift from pewi. BUT, think of it this way - it's like he's getting me an iPhone! yea.

I posted my ad up on Monday afternoon, by Monday evening I got an offer for $270 already. I negotiated it up to $280 and the buyer arranged to meet me.. and within the next 24 hours I got another 3-4 offers! Wth. HWZ is full of buyers.
But yea, 280 was about the best I could get so I just sold it for that. Now, waiting till Feb 3rd till I can recontract and get my IPHONE4.

Hope something weird happens and the price somehow drops. 16 or 32GB though?


OK sorry for the slight digression, on to my 2011 resolutions!

1) SAVE MONEY ON FOOD
Like really, I spend like mad for a person as poor as me. My biggest expenditure is FOOD. I can't resist a good meal! Guh. I used to be very thrifty on food k, always eat cai fan, $2.30-$2.70 per meal only. But in the recent years I would happily have meals that were in the $10-20 price range. Which is not good!

I want to go for exchange in Year 3, that requires a shitloads of money already. And not to mention... I'm not a rich kid. I need to save save save. So this year, I aim to spend less on food!

I would write 'I need to save money in general' but then I just said I'm going to buy an iPhone so that is highly contradictory so... lol. Baby steps yea? Food first. =X


2) AS HIGH CAP AS POSSIBLE 5 PLEASE
One of my dreams before the previous semester of uni was to get into Dean's List, which is like the top 2% or 5% of your faculty. With a CAP of 4.4, I don't think this is possible. I need a 5 this sem! Which is like mad.. but... we'll see how things go :(

Going to work harder than last sem I hope. Less Starcraft2, less slacking, more mugging.


~~~
Wow ok I think that is it. lolol. There are some others but they aren't really strong enough convictions to want to define as a resolution. So I guess that's that, and I will see you guyssss next time!

highlights of 2010

(I'll try to slip in as many pictures as i can! to make it more readable. haha. more pics after the page break :p)

Gonna hop on the bandwagon and write a 'reflections' type of post about my year.. Probably more like a 'highlights of 2010'? I'll just start writing and see how things go.

Well, 2010 marked the start of a year when I'm free of NS, after 2 years of being trapped within the clutches of the SAF. It marked the start of a long wait to the start of school, which I can say many (if not, most) NSFs look forward to. I think being in army just makes you appreciate the outside world more, such as your friends, family, and yes, even studying.

I just counted - I made 155 blog posts this year (not including this one). That's roughly about 1 blog post every 2 days! Wow, that's rather frequent. Anyway, I'll just be referring to them to help me recall what has happened this year, because I do not have superb memory like my other half.



Walk down memory lane -

010110 - Stayover
Oooh I had been thinking for awhile what I actually did last year for NYE and this blog post reminded me. Watchnight service + stayover in church as usual. Yes, i remember the great time of Taboo and Mad Gab.. both of which I haven't played in ages :/

One of my favourite games!

Won't be doing that this year though.. going to play mahjong with si en, her friend and pewi! Hope it'll be fun and hope i win alot haha.


Hair
Yes, the end of army means the start of styled hair once again.

The end of LOST

The final season of LOST began, and subsequently ended some time in... no idea when. April? May? Basically the whole series wrapped up with this final season, and the ending was far from satisfactory. I have complained and talked about it at length in this post, you can go check it out if you're a LOST fan.


World of Warcraft
I started playing this back in June 2009 but could never really play it actively, in a proper guild, raiding frequently, due to army. When I came out of army I was a full-time WoW player, raiding in a regular guild and gradually progressing up from a lousier guild to a better one till I was eventually in the best guild on my server.

During that period I got very frustrated with the quality of players then, as seen in my long rant here. Quite an interesting read IMO, if you play WoW haha.
So many highlights in my WoW 'career':

Dominating heal-meters in Valithria Dreamwalker fight

Ranked 9th on my server in gear (click to enlarge)

One of my proudest achievements back then, which was pretty hard still (not like +20% damage or whatever) and extremely vexing because had to keep putting together a team to attempt :

Kill shot of Lich King (click to enlarge)
Celebratory post here.

Got hacked.

And got it back

Cleared all the achievements necessary for:

Bloodbathed Frostbrood Vanquisher! Sexy drake!

And a concluding post for WoW here

And of course, tried to sell my WoW account...
AND SOLD IT FOR $$$$

Ah, World of Warcraft, I will miss you. If I had no life and too much money to spend, I would definitely start playing again.But for now.... this will be just one of my memories.


Work work @ IBM @ Expo
Held my first official part-time job (The previous was relief teaching for a week at SAJS which I won't really count) working for Stoneforest at IBM.. Basically I just covered people who went on leave.

I must thank my AWESOME colleagues there - Eunice, Natalie, Shirley, Sharon, Tsai Chin, Esther, Yvonne, Onil, Sylvie.. ooh shoot hope i didn't leave anyone out. Every single one of these people were very warm and welcoming and friendly and helpful!
Like they are busy-ass busy but they still dropped whatever they were doing to help me out. Seriously, model model colleagues. I think I have praised them through the roof but they really are awesome!

They set the example for me to be to my future interns/part-timers - I must make sure they feel welcome and confident and happy. rawr. THANKS COLLEAGUES LOVE YOU ALL! (though probably none of them will read this lol)

Pulled my wisdom tooth
Owww. Most painful experience of the year, but yea. Of my life, probably.. I felt like I was being tortured. You can read my account here if you want.


Lakers beat the Celtics in NBA Finals

Yea yea i know this is 07/08 but it looked cool so i wanna put it.

I was rooting for the Celtics :( They had a great run too, with Rajon Rondo exerting himself as the next generation leader and just dominating several games with triple doubles and the such. (Remember this dive that outhustled Jason Williams?)

And the Lakers vs Celtics finals was such an exciting series, it went all the way to Game 7 ... and what an exciting and emphatic way to end it too (with a clutch Ron Artest 3 pointer which he has a very funny post-game interview about, kobe going cold but the celtics going colder -_- )


Spain wins World Cup
And World Cup!
Wow, I didn't realize it was this year too, it seemed so long ago.
I was rooting for Germany as after watching them demolish England... how can you not? I even wrote a poem for them:

onward we march

the german machine

soak defend absorb

break

forward we go

the german machine

clear turn run

pass

goalwards we press

the german machine

cross flick lob

shoot

to the crowd

the german machine

jump wave somersault

celebrate

But yea, they lost to Spain who eventually went on to lift the World Cup.

muacks

Psych Camp
Went for my first NUS camp in preparation for school... I must say it was a pretty last minute decision, which was probably one of the best decisions I've made this year.

My thoughts about the camp are here, and I made some good friends whom I'm still in contact now and still treasure very much. seniors! :

smelly chonghui

darren

huijun

Ok the last 2 shots we look quite cui cos we never sleep much the previous night haha. I slept about 1 hour or something, so did they.


Orientation Week
My 2nd NUS camp, which was kind of like the sequel to Arts Camp which i couldn't go because I had reservist -_- The long post I made about O week (more of a picture spam)

Was glad I went though! Made so many friends who would be my lecture mates, lunch buddies, twitter friends, etc.

Wa I now then notice Si En got the seh sia hahahah. 

Starcraft 2!
After 10+ years of waiting, the sequel to the popular Starcraft was finally here!!
Went to queue for it with dom and ben, it was mad crazy at Funan la

This was just outside, inside still got queue.

The release was at 12pm, by 8am the queue was already until outside I heard. lol. nerds are mad.

And if you follow my Twitter, you'll know that I have climbed pretty high up in the ladder rankings. Well, not really THAT high but decent!

2400+ rated, 4th in my diamond league. Click to enlarge!
(and I'm ranked 200+ in SEA i think)

Diamond League for all match types :)

Turned 21!
Birthday blog post here.
So I hit the milestone, and had my little dinner gathering. Loved the company, thank you all for coming!

The people that matter.

And of course for all the presents.. (must say this first)... AND OF COURSE PEWI PEW PEW FOR YOUR RIDICULOUSLY EXPENSIVE PRESENT

He got me this. Yes, an iPod Touch 4

Turned un-single

Met szehong at Psych Camp, never really knew her then... ok you can ask me if you really want to know our love story lol. Nothing fancy or extraordinary la. One of the best things that happened to me in 2010 for sure :)

Finished my 1st semester in university
Ah yes, one sem has gone and passed in NUS. A review of the modules I've studied can be found here, along with my results here. A relatively slack sem in my opinion, and I only obtained the CAP i got.. sigh. Hope to do better next sem


Alright, I think that's about it? As I said, going to play mahjong later with pewi, Si En and her friend (pewi hasn't replied me to confirm today!! shit hope he's not like drunk or kidnapped or something) hope it'll be fun and hope i win! Hope they're camera friendly and we can take some pictures at least to commemorate the end of this year and the beginning of the next :D

Thanks for reading my lovely reader(s)! Happy New Year!

DTF and double movie

Met up with bestie yesterday! Our original plan was just to eat lunch and watch a movie. I wanted to watch Gulliver's Travels, she wanted to watch Meet the Parents - Little Fockers. So what do you do when you can't decide which show to watch?

You watch both shows!!

Because we were kind of leaning towards Gulliver's Travels, we wanted to watch that, but there was no space for the earlier show, only the 4.30PM one. Then we realized that Little Fockers was at 2.50pm, and the runtime for Little Fockers was such that it ended exactly when Gulliver's Travels started!

So on a crazy impulse, we decided to watch BOTH. Lol.

Then right, we discovered a flaw in the Nex cinema system - You exit the theatre from the same door you entered from. I think this is because the actual 'exit' was not fully constructed yet or something.

So we originally thought we would have to run from the previous show to the next and re-enter from the front. In the end we just walked out of our theatre and into the adjacent one (As you can see our first show was Nex2 and 2nd show at Nex1) .... We didn't even use our tickets! And there was no security personnel there to stop us!

This is so flawed? We could have not bought tickets and still got into that show man. Rawr. We thought of trying our luck and going to a third one but after the 2nd show there were some movie personnel standing outside already :/

Anyway, for lunch we ate at Din Tai Fung!

Xiao Long Bao! (10 for $9)
I prefer the Crystal Jade one though.. DTF's xlb the skin like quite thick and there's much less meat inside! grr

The next item takes the cake -

PORK CHOP FRIED RICE @ $9

THIS IS THE BEST BEST BEST BEST THING IN THE WORLD!
Seriously this is probably the best thing on the menu.
First, the fried rice is extremely fragrant and tasty and delicious. Like you know how some Fried Rice is abit overcooked and has a chao ta smell or too saltish cos there's too much MSG? This is PERFECTLY cooked, none of that!
AND the best best thing about it is the PORK CHOP. Wow. A very generous serving of pork chop like you've never eaten before. The skin is very slightly crispy, and the meat is VERY tender and very JUICY!! Like you can literally feel the pork juice or whatever explode in your mouth when you bite into it! SUPER SHIOK.
This is easily the best meat I've ever eaten in my life. Haha.

And it's not jut a outlet thing! When i first ate this at Raffles City outlet of DTF, it was equally good! So it's some secret recipe that DTF uses or something.

Haha ok that's all I have. I highly recommend the Pork Chop Fried Rice from Din Tai Fung, it is the best meal you'll ever have :D

And on a side note, if you have Twitter, be sure to follow me, and some fake accounts that are quite funny you can follow:
@Fake_PMLee 
@realFASS
@therealfakeNTU
@fakeMOE

You don't have to be from NUS/NTU to follow them! gogo!