genting highlands

so my dad arrived in singapore yesterday and we went about, watched a movie (Forbidden Kingdom -- a real mixed bag, perhaps i'll write about it sometime), then we decided that we should go for a trip to Genting Highlands. should be fun. relaxing. i'd never been there too.

so here i am, late at night.. ok, not that late. i'm in Starbucks, sipping my Chamomile Blend tea, trying to stay awake until we can give my mum and sis a ring. blogging. yarss.. so what happened today.

i had two games of bowling with my dad. it's been a really long time since i last bowled (last time was during the first radar battery outing.. whenever that was) but i felt i did fairly reasonably. netted 2 spares and 1 strike each game but failed to capitalize on them -- i got scores of 98 and 97 respectively. i find that my aim goes off when i get excited / nervous / whatever and that if i clear my mind, ball goes quite straight. kinda like what happens to my golf swing. haha. i'm going to really train my golfing skills (more accurately, the lack of them) during my study in the US. can anyone say public golf course? :)

i tried rock-climbing for the first time. fun. tiring. i like it. gives purpose to all that upper-body strength building. especially chin-ups. didn't finish the one go i made today -- i dropped after i couldn't quite figure out a way to proceed. i asked one of the guys and he told me that the next step was to reach up 1-handed. given that i couldn't find any higher footholds, that would mean a 1-handed chinup, maybe boosted with a jump (it's about half a body length above my head.. or so it seemed from my vantage point). i'm going to try that tomorrow. i admit, the thought scares me, to suddenly lose control and fall, but hey, no guts no glory. if i do it right, i might be propelling my body upwards completely free of the wall before grabbing that sole handhold and setting my feet right. heh. i half expect to fall off. oh yeah, falling off is quite the experience. i did voluntarily it but boy, freaky. haha.

then i tried my hand at archery. it was a recurve bow. fun. but my arms were really tired by then. haha, i spent too much time at the wall. so 12 shots. most went way awry. but by the end, i was getting the hang of it, landed 3 arrows on the inner circle. ok, so the target board was just a few meters away and the inner circle was quite big.. my arms were tired! haha. doesn't matter. i kept making the mistake of keeping the bow drawn though -- it saps the strength from your arms really quickly.

i guess the highlight would be the earlier starbucks session (wherein i discovered i could get free wireless internet access) and i just chatted with my dad. i like the small things. people often mistake the "big kill" as what they should look forward to but each time, the kill has to get bigger to derive the same level of satisfaction. the "small kill" is really what keeps the world turning. i got that from "The Ethos Effect", a deep and really interesting (in my opinion anyway) book by L. E. Modesitt, Jr, one of my favorite authors. anyway, talked about life plans.. i think i now have a clearer picture of what to do and what to focus on. still too early to say much, but looking good.

oh, and i forgot to take photos. haha. tomorrow.

solitaire

over the past weeks i have spent much time at this form of art called klondike solitaire, 1 card vegas scoring to be exact. i have finally reached the first milestone of 1000 games. this is my story.



heh. pompous. i like it.

upsey-daisy

i guess i just had to comment that this was a day of ups and downs.

1. woke up around 7:30 - feeling about right. body clock still good to go.
2. received news that i wouldn't be able to meet my friend for dinner - disappointed.
3. had a good session in the gym - feel good. feels like i'm getting somewhere.
4. got out of the house late - on it's own, not a good thing but since i was checking to see if i should do anything for the day.. alright.
5. went to visit the central lending library - basement is awesome. first time. think the layout is sweet.
6. wasted time reading magazine - admittedly i'd been out of the gaming news loop for a bit but nevertheless... no good.
7. managed to put in study time despite not being in the mood for it - good. must have the mental discipline. not very efficient but hey, it's about keeping the momentum.
8. wandered about raffles plaza's basement - good stuff. place looks pretty nifty now with lots more restaurants and shops. certain spots have really nice ambiance.
9. made myself eat dinner despite no appetite - good. must keep eating. must not go underweight. much work was spent gaining those few pounds. lol.
10. slacked about instead of sleeping - not so good. but i had much on my mind so kinda excusable.
11. won poker tournament - yay! not that it means much. and it generally means i'm too pumped to sleep easily. so up and down. summarizes my day really. heh.

i20

yay! my i-20 is on the way. now to apply for a new passport and order more transcripts from Australia. haha, this should be fun.

on other news, just won a 20-player poker tournament online. feel pumped. especially since i really wasn't expecting to win, being a small stack beside two massive stacks. somehow, somehow. haha, guess the balanced player won -- one was way way too shy (read: afraid to risk his/her chips even with decent hands) and the other was a tad too aggressive, almost to the point of being a calling station.

ooh, stayed up beyond my bed-time. guess i was hoping to see some of the old crowd online.

free rice

Free Rice. Supposedly some generous dude who wants people to improve their vocab as well as help world hunger is sponsoring this vocab testing / game-ish website. i first saw my sister playing it. personally i think it's funny. feels closer to a gameshow thing than a test. mostly because i make a lot of educated guesses, haha. using intuition, feel, and breaking down words into their components and guessing meanings with reference to the component

for example:

diluent means:
mischief
casket
thinner
senility

which do you think the word means? i've never seen the word before but i pretty confidently guessed it (and got it right). haha. fun fun. kinda. getting a kick out of guessing for some reason. hehe. anyway, my top score is 41, why not see what you get?

Update

hmm... not much to say. been sleepy these days. not too sure why but most likely it's because i've been studying. studying makes me sleepy. and hungry. lol. for some strange reason my metabolism always goes up when i study. not much to say so let's just share what happens in a typical day for me:

~7:30am - my body clock wakes me up. i'll usually be groggy.

~7:30 - 8:30++ - i do my quiet time. depending on how groggy or distracted i am, it may take longer or shorter. i read one chapter (currently in Matthew), ponder, then go online to read it in The Message translation, ponder a bit more, then read the online commentaries for the chapter.

~8:50 - ~9:30 - i go to the gym. i run on the treadmill. today, i tried to test how fast i could go on the 2.4km run (i've received the sms reminder to do ippt) and i didn't do so well. lol. 13:44. heh, it's not as bad as it seems. i'm still confident of getting a silver should i be on the actual track. the thing is, i've found myself changing.. less masochistic. lol. just a few months ago, i'd just have kept going top flight and end up woozy for the day, perhaps longer. now, i decided to slow it down.

anyhow, i've been counting the days and doing a bit of calculations. right now, i can reliably run at 8kph for about 2+ km. to get gold on the ippt, i need to go at 15kph for the distance so i'll be increasing my speed by 1kph per week and hopefully before i leave, i can grab gold. and $400. hehe. cash for doing what i'd probably have done anyway sounds good.

i do weights as well, going for balanced strength mostly. oh and reconditioning for the chin-ups. lol.

~9:30 - ~11:15 - this is kinda like the twilight zone. i'm not too sure where the time goes. sometimes i stay in the gym longer. sometimes i'm doing housework. sometimes i get abducted by little green men. ooooh, the nasty buggers. lol. anyhow, it's supposed to be mainly wash-up, planning, and housework. i think i'll try timing it.. but not tomorrow. i'm planning tomorrow to be housework day. hehe.

~11:15 - ~11:45 - brunch. dang, i get really hungry. and come to think of it, i'm eating too long after my exercise. mm.. must do something about this.

~11:45 - dinner - study in the library. usually. sometimes i wander about like lost geese for a while. like today. was wondering where to go since Mark wasn't feeling well and i was meeting someone in Redhill for dinner. today i settled on Jurong East Library. which i used to love but now i prefer Woodlands. hehe. current progress on my corporate finance (management accounting) book is that i'm done with 7/17 chapters. it's really a crash course. lol. i'm enjoying it even while i mutter obscenities about whoever edited the book (Corporate Finance Demystified). hehe. nothing major, just that the self-testing sections of the book haven't been updated very well (inconsistencies).

dinner - knockout - after dinner, things become very random. sometimes i accompany a friend shopping. sometimes i go celebrate a friends birthday. sometimes i meet friends. sometimes i just go home and knock out. lol.

sooo.. pretty boring, huh? anyway, next goal is to start waking up 6am so that i actually have a separate breakfast and lunch plus i prefer that timing for my body clock given how much i front-load my day.

just moving along

today marks day 3 in singapore. met a friend today (it was high coincidence that we both planned to go to Woodlands Library, that this fact was mentioned, and even higher coincidence that he brought his finance book and notes) and happily looked through his notes. good stuff. it's the third day that i've started reading up on accounting and it's looking great so far. if i had capitalism 2 on hand, i'd probably have loaded it up and written all sorts of tables for it. lol.

on other news, slept at 8:30 last night and woke up at 4am. today, it's looking to be sleeping before 10pm. hopefully that'll land me near my ideal time slot of waking up at 6am.

and on a final note, read an interesting article on protein and fitness. seems like my habit of exercising before breakfast may have serendipitously been right on the money. haha.

Singapore

ahh.. i'm back, the familiar sounds of singlish floating in the air. hehehe. did some housework in the morning, visited a friend for lunch, fell asleep 3:30pm. lol. i'd been working to sleep earlier before i flew over and it kinda shows -- 3:30pm = 12:30am in LA. i woke up 10pm+ to the sounds of MSN since i didn't turn my computer off before i zonked out.

anyway it's good to be back even if it's just for a few months. the plane trip was alright, watched only 2 movies this time, Chariots of Fire which i thought was great (winner of 4 oscars including best picture), but then i'm a bit biased since i hold Eric Liddell as a role model. the other was Stormriders which was disappointing.. and long. very long. as i'd guessed while watching, (i just checked) it's based on a comic and while yes, remaining faithful to the source is important, the plot meandered. yes. meandered. when the introductory scenes take up a significant chunk (felt like 15 or more min), i had a bad feeling. they should have either split it into two or more films or throw out some of the subplots. i think the only part i really liked was the opening scene with the swords all over the place, it has a very dark / punk feel. very cool. reminds of FFX though this movie is much older.

oh wait. there was a third. and that was irritating too. Beowolf. bah! turns out it's CG although very photo-realistic. that's not the low point though. it meanders as well. like it can't quite decide whether it's a drama or an action monster-killing flick. and i'm slightly irritated that Angelina Jolie gets protrayed as the seductive demon. her image in that respect is rather over-used in my opinion.

the TV shows i watched were cool though, the coolest being "Dragons Den" which is a panel of 5 top British venture capitalists and people go to them, making a pitch to raise funds for their company in exchange for equity. i find it really fascinating and educational. a must-see. :D

well, if you like that stuff. haha. the other was "Ad Factors: The Creatives", on the advertising process when working with an external firm. i knew advertising was important but until the numbers show up.. ack. can't find a source to confirm my fuzzy memory but if memory serves, the successful campaign for a middling soda manufacturer brought its sales from around 1m to 100m+. or was it 10m+? argh! whatever the case, big numbers. hehe. =D

and the last show was about Cadbury breaking into Wrigley's grip on the gum market in Britain. the interesting part was the approach, Cadbury going for the "new" experience which is to be expected, while Wrigley's went for more of the old stuff which also is to be expected but which i also feel to not be a very smart ploy. i think they should have gone for a double-pronged counter-attack, i.e. more of the old to retain the existing base, and new stuff to grab more of the expanding market or at the very least, muddle up Cadbury's advertising blitz. but ah well. i'm no expert. at the latest, Cadbury's been busy carving out market share from Wrigley's but there're plenty of factors at work, not least the fact that Cadbury has deep enough pockets to keep up a sustained campaign.

it was a long post so i'll condense it: plane trip long, watched a few things, Chariots of Fire good, Storm Riders bad, Dragon's Den must be watched. =D

all's well

anyway, just an update as i realized i've eh.. forgotten to blog for quite a while. things are alright, been accepted into Azusa Pacific University for the MBA - International Business program, normal intake which means i save both time and money. maximum two years study. just as well since i've been pretty antsy for a while now.

on other good news, i've been recommended for the Dean's Fellows Program which sounds pretty nifty. "will receive free textbooks during the program, and the opportunity to work with research faculty and attend academic conferences. This is a competitive program, accepting fewer than 5% of applicants." not sure how that will go but being recommended sounds good to me.

and before i forget, i've passed my driving test. made more mistakes this time as i hadn't been driving much lately and i used a different car but hey, things went well. 5 minor mistakes for better or worse. hehe. admittedly, i was kinda happy-go-lucky about the test half expecting something to occur such as emergency vehicles coming up right behind me (response being to immediately find a place to pull over) or the lights to go dead again. but nothing happened. hehe. so i passed.

finally, i'm arriving in Singapore on the 16th, early in the morning, and staying for i dunno how long. a few months probably. i'll see how it goes, priority being to settle my student visa to the US.