uber sob-ness
I’m sure all of you have heard about my rather huge and chunky solid black brick-like IBM Thinkpad (one of the last of its kind, i tell you! Lenovo took over the company’s notebook business soon after). Well, I’d managed to make the previous one last 4-5 years before giving it up for this laptop. However, while typing out the last post for your reading pleasure, all of a sudden my screen went black. Then I realised that in fact the laptop itself had turned off!
A few days later I dug out one of our old IBM power cords, wondering whether that had fizzled out on me. I plugged it into the wall socket, into the laptop, and saw the little green light of hope light up on my beloved. However, any pleasure fizzled when I saw the green light fade, and I realised that it indeed was the laptop which had gone kapoot 
Now i have to find a thinkpad repair centre and send it in (it’s only 3.5 years old! I’m determined to resuscitate it!!!!
To add onto this despair, on my way home on Friday, I found out that Federer crashed out during the first round of the Toronto Mastersl
And to top it off, I went to a Starbucks outlet on Friday (wanted to celebrate a not-disastrous yearly review at work). Much to my despair, I discovered that they had stopped selling the Dark Mocha Frappuccino!!!!! Ugh.
So I picked up a bunch of satays from a foodcourt near my house on the way home instead. Small consolation, but it sort of did the job.
Of gluttony, entertainment and stuff
I’ve had an incredibly busy weekend, one which requires an extra day (or three) to sleep it off and recover, not that i’ve had that luxury.
I’ve decided to buck the regular trend of listing events chronologically, and instead am going to list them thematically.
If that doesn’t float your boat, i don’t know what will.
Exercise
I woke up ridiculously early on saturday, and decided that while i’m up, i might as well go get some exercise! So i drove (yes, drove, i do get the irony, thank you), to the gym and got in a solid 40+min session. A happy, aching start to a busy day!
On Sunday, I had to wake up at 6am (groan) to reach the Padang for the 7.30am start of the Shape run. As usual, Sam was already there and waiting (I had to take an alternate route because my regular one was blocked off due to above mention run), and finally managed to make it to the starting point, yawning and ready for bed. Sam also said that we should try running part of the run at least. I told her I was going for the Shape Walk, not the Shape Run, and asserted that she was crazy.
Having said that, I did run a teeny bit (started and ended the route running), and finished the run in 51 minutes! (I was predicting my taking an hour and a half, quite honestly). After this we lined up to pick up the goodie bags, and some other tshirt, and went home happy, all set for a well-deserved shower.
Beautifying
After the burst of exercise on Saturday, I ran home for a shower, and rushed out again for my facial. Now my skin is smooth and glowing! (for the next half day at least!)
In the afternoon, I met up with Sam (yes, she features a lot in this weekend’s happenings), for a pedicure, where we made life changing decisions (which nail colour to get?), and important observations (Sam’s magazine told her liquid eyeliner is in, mine told me that in the summers, it’s okay to leave the house wearing next to nothing, because it’s fashion!)
People sightings
After the pedicure, we waited for miss koh in Plaza Singapura, and while there we saw Baxter (our MD!). We also popped back into our office to use the loos (The ones at PS were nasty), and to our surprise, saw that the lights were on. Sam went to investigate, and we learned that Danny was in the office. We also bumped into Snigdha (another Weber person) at the bbq later in the evening.
On Sunday, while dad and i are lounging in the living room, reading the paper/books and listening to music, dressed super casually (i was in a tshirt and pyjamas), we heard the lift door open, and an uncle stepped in, looking rather bemused. He had wanted to stop by to give us a little box to sweets to celebrate his son’s engagement, and somehow managed to end up in our house. Creepy. We thanked him and all, and when the lift door closed, my dad looked and I looked at eachother, and smiled sheepishly.
Oops.
Fooding
I decided that for Lucas’ 3rd birthday party, which I was attending on Saturday night, I should make cute little cookies for the kiddies. So i decided on these little jam sandwiched cookies, and after my gym trip, I mixed together the dough, and put it in the fridge to harden while i popped out for my facial. I came back and got to rolling out the dough, cutting the shapes, baking them, rolling the remaining dough, cutting shapes, popping them in the oven, rolling the dough…(you get the idea).
Turns out that little sandwich cookies are rather time-consuming! I finished just in time to put them in a box, put the box in a bag, to grab my things and the car keys, and make a run for my pedicure!
Two little kiddies in particular enjoyed my cookies. So much so, that I had to stop sam and johju’s little grubby hands from constantly reaching into the box while I was driving them to the birthday boy’s party!
And at the bbq, i stuffed myself to the point where i couldn’t really move off my seat, and in a half daze started to make really dumb(er) comments on life in general. Which also lead me to think about what kind of drunk I would be. (I can’t remember what conclusion we got at, but whatever it was, Alvin agreed it would be a rather scary version of me to come across).
At some point on Sunday, I said to my father, “Dad, I’ve got bad news for you.”
Dad: *doesn’t look up from the paper he’s reading* “hmm, which is?”
Me: “I bought some wholewheat flour. Which means that I’m going to start using it in my baking.”
Dad: “And…?”
Me: “And that means that I’m going to test them on you, so you’re going to have to eat them”
Dad: “Oh. that’s not all that bad to hear!”
Entertainment
Ruha’s in town these days, so met up with her on Friday night, and had dinner, at a Spanish (i think) restaurant at Clarke Quay. Also then tried to figure out how she should get herself home, by examining bus maps, and through phone calls to her mother.
I dragged father to see the Dark Knight after dinner. Batman is only there as a prop, he’s barely in the movie (loved his motorbike though), and the main character in the movie is the Joker, followed by Harvey Dent. Although looking at what our hero gets up to (Batman, not Joker), it’s no wonder all these people need disguises. Can you imagine the huge bills these guys would be smacked with to restore destroyed cities if the authorities knew where these guys lived???
But i digress, the movie as a whole rocked! go see!
Literature
I read the Reluctant Fundamentalist, by Mohsin Hamid. He previously wrote “Moth Smoke”, which I strongly recommend everyone to read. His latest offering is ok lah, but then I guess it would be kind of hard to top his first book, so i forgive him.
Health
A lot of us have gotten into the health kick recently, what with concerns over general health, fitness, weight, funny tummies, and other things.
I myself have signed up for the Shape run (walk), the Nike+ Human Race, and am thinking of taking up Pilates as well. Folks have also changed their eating habits, and making plans to exercise, and fixing their work life balance, so now instead of:
work = life
it’s now shifting to a
time at work = time doing other things
I applaud all of you, and even those of you who are still thinking about thinking about maybe doing something. There’s always a silver lining to look out for:
this one’s for you!
Just for you, my loyal fans, I have decided to come out of my hibernation from blogging (due to utter laziness and avoiding the Internet on weekends), and come back!
watch out for some mega mass postings!
*heart*
Weekend brunch
A couple of weeks ago I invited kss (who happens to be related to kjj) out for a walk at the Botanic gardens, on 5th July. On the morning of, I picked her up from Wisma Atria, and we zoomed off to the gardens, and (eventually) found a parking. After a bit of dilly dallying for a few minutes (she also showed me where the nice loos are), we started the Big Walk!
We walked past the Swan Lake (Which has a couple of signs telling us some history behind it, both of us got as far as the middle of the first line, which read, “Swan Lake was…”). We also wound around the Ginger Gardens (did you know there are numerous types of ginger? I’d be able to tell you how many, but we didn’t stop and read that sign either).
We circled around the orchestra stage thing, and then in the big grass clearing in the middle I spot a group of people who looked rather familiar. I lead a protesting kss off the walking track and onto the grass, towards this group in straw hats, and lo and behold, we see addy, sammi and bernie! Sitting on mats, which were also adorned with scones, numerous types of sandwiches, cupcakes and various forms of veggies.
Fancy that.
I declare that we should join them for a bite or two of the English-themed spread, when bernie lands a couple of candles in a couple of cakes, and sammi whips out a birthday card! (signed belatedly by the belated arrival of the belated guest: xyz).
Well fed and watered (it rained somewhat while we were sitting there too), i think we managed to pull off a fairly successful bday surprise picnic brunch for kss, and were duly rewarded for it with tea/coffee/smoothies at Jones the Grocer, at Dempsey Hill (a rather fancy organic shop/cafe) by the guest of honour herself!!
Happy early bday kss!
If I had a million dollars…
Now, i’m as modest as the next person, but I do believe I do outshine the rest when it comes to certain skills. I do possess an ability to recognise numerous songs within the first 2 seconds of its playing.
I’m also able to back up crazy arguments with infallible logic (even the most boring-minded people out there have had to agree)
I can also carry on conversations over MSN which last for hours, and manage to discuss nothing at all. (although, to be fair, the other party has to be given due credit for playing their part in this as well).
I’ve been told that if i concentrated all my genius and effort on something more “useful” than this, I could have achieved world peace by now. I’m now thinking, if i could just find a way to market these skills, I’d be rich!!!
How to achieve them goals?
Following my post on Future Ambitions, KJJ gave such a brilliant comment, that I had to put it up here for the rest of you see as well:
sounds fairly attainable: u can marry a cafe owner who possess an extra car and even more extra $$$, take his recipes and package them in your inimitable style into a best-selling book, upon which some American uni will be so impressed and confer u an honourary degree (oops, shortcut to PHD!). at the photo shoot, they deprive u of all food n drinks, u drop 20 pounds and voila!
fame, scrawniness, fortune, marriage and paper.
Anybody else have any ideas on how to achieve my goals? Would love to hear what else you folks can come up with 
Weekend plans?
Had a conversation with my mom this morning:
###
Mom: So, what are your plans for the weekend?
Me: Well, nothing on for Friday, then on Saturday I have my walk thing in the morning, and going out for dinner in the evening. Sunday’s still all clear.
Mom: How nice. Who are you going to dinner with?
Me: *slyly* Someone tall and goodlooking
Mom: Really now.
Me: *gleefully* Yep.
Mom: You’re going out with Harleen?
###
So much for trying to pull a fast one over my mother.
more weekend movies!
I realised that there have been quite a few movies that haven’t yet received an honourable mention on this glorious blog, so thought I would just have one post on the whole lot of them (in order watched):
Sex and the City
This movie, quite frankly, was the most disappointing of the lot. Other than a movie pretty much focused around ugly clothes, shoes and bags which cost more for one item than i probably earn in the whole year, the movie’s main downside was watching Carrie Bradshaw (unintentional typo: Broadshaw) amplified that many times onto the big screen! Unfortunately, as she is the main character of the entire show, we were stuck with plenty of her for the 2 hrs. Eurgh-worthy, I assure you.
Otherwise I’m guessing the storyline was pretty standard, semi-decent, but just not my cuppa skinny decaf latte.
Kung fu Panda
This movie happened the day after the previous one, and I’m not sure whether it was just a direct comparison to SatC, or fully its merit, but i LOVED the movie. It was super cute and random. Although I have to agree with my least favourite reviewer in the local paper (whom I make it a point to disagree with) that the other characters in the movie, e.g. Angelina Jolie, Jackie Chan, were really not adding much to the movie. They were more so just as reference points, but I forgive them.
Get Smart
On this particular Saturday night, the Hasan family had booked tickets to see Shine a Light, a Martin Scorcese rockumentary on the Rolling Stones. We trooped off to the cinema, collected our pre-booked tickets, and headed towards the entrance. That’s when we were stopped and Zee was asked for her ID. Turned out that that the movie was rated M18, and they wanted to check that Zee was over the age limit. Zee stopped, incredulous, and said, “You SERIOUSLY think I’m under 18?? I’m 19!!!” She didn’t have her wallet with her, and there was no way of checking her age, and she kept repeating her exclamation until I nudged her and told her to shut up.
Well, turned out we couldn’t see the movie we wanted to see, but luckily Get Smart was on at the same time, which we’d intended to see on Sunday anyways, so we managed to get our tickets exchanged for this movie. Which turned out to be hilarious! The casting was PERFECT!! a great homage to the original series!!
The Incredible Hulk
By merely watching the trailer, I could tell that this movie would be better than its predecessor (which I’m also judging by only the trailer). I wouldn’t rate it as high as Iron Man, and I still feel that Edward Norton was underused in this movie, but the action scenes were great! and the movie really picked up in the second half, with all the whamming and bamming, woohoo!
Next on my list: Wanted, and The Dark Knight. Stay tuned!
Future ambitions
The other day on MSN while talking to a multitude of people at the same, I started thinking about all the things I want to accomplish in the future, (in a shameless ploy to ensure the conversations revolved around me), and came up with the following (in no particular order):
- Write a book
- Do my Masters (Harvard Divinity School!!)
- Lose weight
- Open a cafe
- Get a car
- Get married
- Find lots of money!
It’s a fair bit of stuff, but I think it’s rather achievable. (I’ve already started working towards the cafe goal…recently made chocolate chip cookies, and chocolate cookies with peanut butter chips, and I’m planning on making fancy french macaroons soon, a rather brave notion considering i’ve never even made a simple meringue!).
Interestingly, the losing weight goal seems more unattainable than than the cafe, especially when taking into consideration the number of lunches and dinners that I’ve had out recently (I blame work for this, mostly – nothing to do with any social engagements I may have accidentally gone out on)
