Wednesday 4 May 2011

Jigsaw 1 AlanSzehong 0

So we decided to do something different besides the usual movie/dinner thing, thus me and sh bought a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle to complete!

Neither of us had any experience in solving 1000 pieces (Both our personal best was 250 I think haha) so we stupidly chose this nice looking one without considering the difficulty of it.

1000 pieces!

And so being the experienced jigsaw masters we were, we had a clear strategy - find the corner pieces, form the border, then work inwards from there.
I actually kept a timeline of our progress: (the times shown is the total time elapsed, not the time it took for each activity) 

15minutes: Locating all the border + corner pieces
40 minutes: After forming a part of the border, realizing we were short of a few border pieces and so have to plough through the pieces again
56 minutes: Lunch break!

See how fast sh's skilful hands are working.
@ lunch
So after lunch we continued on the border. Rather, I worked on the difficult top border which as you can see is like all blue, while SH worked on Pooh bear cos it's her favourite ><

at 1hour:45min
During this time SH also grouped all the tigger, rabbit, fence parts together. Basically, the prominent features in the puzzle.

If you haven't realized by now, the puzzle is really REALLY LONG.
2hours 22 mins - Pooh, tigger, piglet and Mr Rabbit done!

Roughly at this point we confirmed that no pieces were missing, because at first when solving the border we thought some were missing because the sky border pieces wouldn't fit.
However, by counting the length and breadth, we found that the number of pieces tallied, so it was just a matter of solving it.
It is 55 pieces long!! Madness
3:26 - All animals complete! Time for the 2 trees + sky + clouds ><

So after the main parts were done, albeit some holes here and there and everywhere, it was time to move on to ... the sky /cloud pieces.


LOOK AT IT.
WTF THEY ARE ALL THE SAME HUE

3:57 - Left tree done!
Completed the trees on the right of Rabbit.. which weren't exactly very easy cos they all look the freaking same shade of green.
4:30 - 5:40 - sorting of sky/cloud pieces by SH while I continued working on the right tree
5:26 - All tree, border, animals done! Now for the sky and clouds!

So pretty

Sorting of sky pieces.. 
Tell me this isn't ridiculous. They ALL LOOK THE SAME. It's madness.

I even took weiqin's advice and sorted them out in neat rows, according to color and shape
Putting my hand there to show you how big it is..


@ 10 hours, 36 minutes, we decided to call it a day.

Yes, it took us 5 hours to complete the animals and trees and fence and butterflies.. and another 5 to BARELY add anything to the sky/background/clouds.

The thing is it's crazy hard because there are like 500+ pieces to choose from and they all look the same. So it's like trial and error until one piece fits, you can't even identify any distinctive feature on the piece to know where it goes.
For example, we see an orange hue on one piece - but there are orange hues at like 10 different places on the puzzle. No way to tell!! Just pure trial and error!

So we had to concede - because Thursday (today) we planned to go out already and tomorrow she has to check out of her hall... so no time to work on it also!!
:(
Jigsaw 1
Alan and Szehong 0

Tuesday 3 May 2011

Scream again!

Good day, good day :)

Today was a good day. Went to Toys R Us with szehongzssz to buy a jigsaw puzzle! hahaha.

We're wearing matching outfits btw lolol.

 We were thinking of something fun to do cos like everytime go out watch movie / eat is like..... monotone. haha. ok i'm 'haha'-ing and 'lolol'ing too much it's annoying myself I shall try to cut it out hah-..... :x

Will be working on the jigsaw puzzle tomorrow! 1000 pieces k no joke! Hope we manage to complete it.

And since we went to Toys R Us, I also picked up a new Rubik's Cube! My old one was broken or something I can't remember.. overuse? lololol. Yea I was quite crazy over it for a period of time (wow it was 4 years ago, after scouring through my archives. Link here)

But I can't remember the algorithms!! Argh. I only got up to the 2nd layer and I forgot the rest of the algorithms - a good 3-4 more I think. Have to go and find and relearn :/
Show you the good (solved) side :)

Oh and I received news that instead of just two readers.. my blog actually has THREE readers! Wow! I'm going to be famous soon. Better get ready some quotable quote. Erm erm.
'Amateurs do it till they get it right. Professionals do it till they can't get it wrong.'

HA good right! But it's not original so :( Anyway yea THANKS FOR READING I will be blogging more k i promise since it's my holidays.

Wow I digress much. This blog post is supposed to be about - the movie I watched today!! Scream 4!!!

Well I'm a huge Scream fan for some reason.. I watched the entire franchise (since 1996! wow. that's really old. I was just.. 7? ) I was quite into horror movies in my teenage years so.. yea. Thus when I heard there was Scream 4, I HAD to watch it! How could I not?


That's right, that's the hot Hayden Pannetiere (from Heroes!) and Adam Brody right behind her!
And of course the original Immortal 3 at the back. (I call them Immortal 3 because they never die.. from Scream 1 to Scream 3 they will always come close to but never die)

So I will just give a spoiler-free brief gist/review of it here, and if you don't mind spoilers you can read on after the post break!

In case you didn't know, Scream 1 -3 follows the life of Sidney Campbell, and every movie there is a new killer (or killers) who wears the iconic Scream mask:
Ok that was a terrible summary of the movies. However, being the hardworking (and soon to be popular, remember?) blogger I am, I shall link you to the synopsis (synopses?) of Scream 1 2 and 3 if you want to read them!
Scream 1 (IMDB)
Scream 2 (IMDB)
Scream 3 (Wikipedia)

The plots are actually decently written unlike other crappy horror movies, that's why I can't really summarize it well! Really ok!

Anyway, Scream 4 is about Sidney finally coming out of hiding and going back to her hometown of Woodsboro and publishing a motivational book about overcoming adversities (I mean, she has gone through 3 big serial murders) And just when she comes out, another serial killer appears, and preys on the younger generation such as Sidney's cousin and her friends.

What I liked about it was how they were 'parodying the parodies'. If you didn't know, the series 'Scary Movie' spoofs almost every major horror movie ever made, with the Scream series being a big part of it. So Scream 4 seemed to be an indirect shot back at them. Their opening scene was SO Scary Movie! I almost forgot I was watching an actual horror movie and not a spoof of one.

The central theme was about how it was a 'new decade, new rules' (as on the poster), since the original murders occurred a decade ago. Thus they had to try to figure out the new rules that the murderer was 'playing by'.

If you didn't watch the previous series and followed the spoof scene (Scary Movie 1-4), I don't know how enjoyable you will find it, but I think it was a decent movie overall! Hey, it's rated 7.3/10 on IMDB ok! That's quite good for that site!
And there are cameos from big names such as Adam Brody, Kristen Bell and Anna Paquin (Rogue from X-Men!) (I didn't even notice these two lol! Didn't realize it was them) and the cast has Hayden Pannatiere (I swear her name is damn hard to spell), Emma Roberts (Julia Robert's niece! Very pretty!)
Hot

Ok I'm going to move on to the spoiler parts. If you plan to watch the movie, DON'T read on! If you're not reading on.. THANKS FOR READING SO FAR BYE.



Ok my favorite line from the movie has to be 'Don't F*ck with the originals'. Hahaha. That basically sums up the message they were sending to the spoofs and parodies and so aptly put into the show.

And because of that, I kinda predicted that the Immortal Three of Sidney, Gayle and Dewey won't die as in all the previous movies - and I was right. Lol. Even when Sidney was stabbed I was thinking 'Nah.. they won't let her die'.

In spite of that, the movie provided sufficient twists to keep things exciting.. though eventually I processed and realized the fact that everyone was going to die (besides the Immortal 3), just a matter of when.

And I LOVED the references back to the originals - the similar killings (that garage door scene!!), the boyfriend sneaking into bedroom scene (as in Scream 1), the phone call and iconic lines 'What's your favourite horror movie?' (even if they spoofed and mocked it themselves within the movie)

Ohh and that scene where Emma Roberts 'set-up' the whole crime scene... who can NOT cringe man! Ouch.

Haha ok it feels so refreshing to blog I should do this more often. Gnite!

Sunday 1 May 2011

Random fact about me

I'm a very straightforward person. If I think something is wrong, I say it. Similarly, if I think something is right, I'll say it.

I'm not one to practice ingratiation. That means flattery. Many 'nice' people do it. They are not doing it in a self-enhancing way- perhaps they are just nice and always complimenting.
This dilutes their credibility. I mean, imagine everytime u meet someone, he goes 'hey you look pretty today!', compared to someone else who only says that maybe once in a blue moon. Who's going to leave the bigger impact? Who will you believe really means it?

I don't hesitate to compliment. But I don't compliment just to be nice. I mean it when I say it. 

And with the good comes the bad. I am frank when I think sth is bad.
And I'm John when sth is good. 
HAHA k no but yea, I don't hesitate to critique either.
Don't take it to heart if I critique you. In fact, it just means I'm the only one who bothers to let you know how to improve. The rest are just too busy trying to suck up... fine they are 'trying to be nice' that they are blind to your mistakes.