There are just way too many analysis, speculations, rumours going on everywhere now. I shall not add to the ruckus, but just hoping that the plane can be found soon, and closure for the victims’ families please. :(
On a side note, the haze is getting bad again. Sigh.
Suddenly feel like writing these down…. A wishlist that I hope to get some done before I leave the world.
1) A stay at Maldives
2) Catch the aurora borealis
3) Explore the world as much as I can with someone whom I can click well with
4) Have a karaoke room within my own house
… And a couple more that’ll stay in my heart.
Sigh.
The Year of Horse is upon us!
Indeed, in about 3.5 hrs time, we shall welcome the Year of Horse with wide open arms. Hopefully I’ll be healthier (no more eye problems, please :( ), so that I’ll be able to take care of my aging parents better!
Work is… well work. I’ve managed to request (successfully) for remote access, so that I’ll be able to work from home if the situation arises. Hopefully this year I will make less mistakes at work as well!
There’s a lot to talk about… as usual, but I always get lazy when I come to this page, lol! So hmm, well I’ll leave it at that for now, and we’ll see when I’m in the mood to blog again!
祝大家新年快乐，恭喜发财！
Something new landed in my hands!
I wonder what it is?!
Lol, OK I think its very obvious, isn’t it? Yup, its an iPad mini (with Rock case and Momax glass protector)! Nope, not the retina version. I still don’t think its worth to pay an extra $100 just for a clearer and sharper screen. And its just a WiFi version too – I’m not gonna pay extra monthly subscription charges to get another data plan for it!
Took the plunge last Friday when they had a one-day only sale at their online store. This only had about $30 shaved off the usual price, but it goes down under $400, which I decided is actually a pretty good price, considering other BNIB sets that many are selling are priced at $400. Not to mention the fact that free express delivery is included!
I had been eyeing the mini since last year, especially when the reading experience on Android is less than satisfactory, regardless on my Note 2 or Tab 2. Don’t get me wrong, I still love Android for all its functionality and customizations, but when it comes to reading ebooks or digital magazines, it just fall way short due to the fact that there’s just so many variants of Android out there and the developers can’t quite have an app that works equally well on all devices. Zinio for Android is fine as it is, but the digital magazines seemed as if they were just scanned and uploaded into the app. No matter how big the screen is, I always have to zoomed in at every page to be able to read comfortably. It will always take about 5 seconds to render each page, and another 5 seconds to render each zoom. It was really kind of frustrating.
I contemplated on getting either a Kindle or Nook as an alternative, but its hard to buy books or magazines in Amazon as they don’t allow sale of such for Singapore customers. And since I’ve already got a couple of digital magazines subscriptions on Zinio, it doesn’t make sense for me to get a Nook and subscribed again to the same mags which I’ve already paid for! So yeah, Mini it is.
First off, I’ve used iOS before. Prior to making the switch to Android, I was using an iPhone 3G. Albeit some features have been changed / added in, the feel of it is the same. It does, however, take some time to get used to it. And I still hate the fact that there’s no back button or proper exit of apps. =_=
The first thing I did was, of course, to download the Zinio app and see how beautiful my digital magazines are gonna look. Epicure was a disappointment. Although I don’t need to zoom in to read now, there’s black borders on the top and below, making it feel again, as if its just scanned PDF pages.
(Pardon the tilt as I don’t want the light reflections on the screen.)
Yup, that’s Epicure. Not good.
Fearing the worst, I loaded AppetiteAsia and crossed my fingers.
Full screen experience! Phew! The layout and everything else looked so much smoother, as if its especially designed for iOS. Very nice.
But I still didn’t get the interactive experience that I saw on demo sets with Wired magazines and the likes. So I banked all my last hopes on a US magazine, Cosmopolitan.
I had to manually tilt this to avoid the reflections while getting a clearer pic on the words.
This is interactive! On this page for example, you can tap on each male celebrity picture to see their respective favourite fragrance. Now, this is the experience that I was looking for! Local magazine publishers sure have a lot to work on, seriously.
Now, with digital magazines out for the way, I then proceeded to check how ebooks are gonna look like on my new toy. I hardly touch ebooks on Android simply because my Note 2 screen is really too small for ebooks. I mean, just a couple of lines for each page. Really? Anyway, I googled a little for some eBook reader recommendations for iPad mini, and I decided to go with Kobo. Partly also because they have an extensive eBook shop as well, so if I ever run out of books to read, I can always buy from within the app.
The kobo app follows the theme of kobo itself (I’m Captain Obvious, sometimes), which is a nice turquoise colour. I loaded my Dean Koontz and Michael Crichton’s titles into it, and it seems to work just fine. I haven’t tried extensively, but it looks nice overall.
My favourite book – Phantoms by Dean Koontz.
Looks good eh? With these two apps and endless magazines and eBooks online, I guess I’ll never be bored on train trips or onboard flights again! :D
That’s what I’ve been doing since New Year Eve.
And I wonder how long more do I have to do it…
Sigh. I wanna recover fast. I wanna go sing!
:(
Sending from mobile… Let’s see how this works out to be, yeah? :P
Well, goodbye 2013. Hello 2014.
It has been a pretty rough year last year. Got a severe eye infection, lost a sister of 32 years to some sly old fox whom she knew only for a few years. How sad is that? Well it’s not only my loss… My parents lost a daughter of 40+ years, my (soon to be ex) brother in law lost a woman he knew for 12 years. Now, how sad is that?
Nevertheless… it’s the past, and let all of us look forward to this new year. New beginnings, new chapter. :) Let’s not care about the people who do not care about us. Life actually can be pretty straight forward, isn’t it? It’s just us who kept thinking it is complicated when it is not.
Well let’s see what’s coming up this year. :D
I’m hoping to buy my mom a new phone, as the Desire HD that I passed to her sucked (well that’s why I changed it anyway!). I’m contemplating on getting her a S4, but everyone told me to wait till S5 is announced so that the price of S4 will drop. Maybe… but I don’t want her to wait for too long. I’ll probably just get it for her before Chinese New Year anyway. :P
I’m thinking of going on a road trip to Malacca with friends in the next few coming months. And then going Taiwan in June. Yes, I’ve already bought the airtickets! LOL… gonna go for their Computex! So excited about it! :D And thinking of all those night markets and street food… yum~! I so hope I won’t fall sick before or during the trip! Gonna be planning a trip to Bangkok with my parents too, but that’s pretty much being put on hold as Bangkok currently is pretty… messy and chaotic with all the protests and riots going on. Meh.
Work wise… yeah, I’ve got my 10 years long service award last year. A piece of Longines timewear that cost SGD1,590. Probably the ONLY watch that I’ll ever have in my entire life that surpassed that SGD1,000 mark. LOL. Don’t think I’ll be getting any promotion this year, but hopefully the bonus will be good! *crosses fingers*
Been playing back D2 with Reko as well. CE Necros are so fun! Splatsplatsplat. XD I think I’ll be enjoying my CE Necro for a few more months to come, before D3:RoS is here anyway. Haha! World of Warcraft will be having another expansion as well – Warlords of Draenor. Will I play it? Maybe…. maybe. I don’t usually have anything else to do anyway!
So… yeah! Everything is pretty much about trips and trips and trips! And some games. This is what my life is all about, I guess?! :D
Aaaahhhh. So many things happened. But yet I’m just too lazy to blog anything!! Omg, how did I become so lazy….
Went for the London trip with Reko in Sept. 4 days in London, 6 days in Finland. Not too bad… but there goes my savings. Blergh.
Too tired right now to blog anything about the trip though. If you are interested to see the photos, here they are:
There you go!
Now to plan other trips…. About Feb next year I’ll most likely be bringing my parents to Bangkok, thereafter in June I’ll head to TW with a friend. I simply love planning for overseas trips, coz that’s what makes the days pass faster!
I’ve got a new direct boss, new colleagues… and there seems to be more work than before. I’ve been staying in office for more than 12 hours every day… Oh geez. I’m of the same position as the rest… why am I being tasked to do so many more things compared to the others? Boss, you better promote me next year… >_>
So, we had PSI401 on Friday noon. Record breaking reading, at least in SG history. But there’s still no stop-work order from the government… so we had to still commute daily to work despite the worsening haze conditions.
With N95 respiratory masks going out of stock everywhere, we managed to order quite a few cartons of those masks from our suppliers. I got myself 5 boxes, of which 2 I gave my sis for her family, while keeping 3 for my own’s use. It’s not 3M, but Kimberly-Clark, which is a pretty reputable maker too, you know. Don’t understand what’s the fixation with 3M products…
With the mask, it really makes my throat less itchy when I’m outside. Thank goodness I got more than enough. At least I don’t need to worry where my next mask gonna come from when my mask goes out of shape or when it loses its effectiveness.
Today the haze conditions are slightly better, with PM10 readings dropping to just moderate level, thanks to the updraft winds bringing the smoke to our neighbour (sorry, Malaysians :( ). So we are enjoying a temporary respite… but the PM2.5 readings are still staying at unhealthy level. Which explains why when I open the windows to let the air flow, I started to cough after about an hour or so. Bleh.
What can be worse with such bad air quality going on at the same time?
When you wake up one morning and realise one of your eyes’ vision is extremely blurry. And then when you go to the eye doctor’s, he told you that you have dead virus in your eye.
Yeah. The dead virus from the previous eye infection is still in my eyes, and my eyes’ immune system is reacting to it, causing white spots in both corneas. And since my left eye had it worse during the infection, it’s now also suffering a worse vision compared to my right. So, back to the steroid and antibacterial eye drops.
And even more bad news? After I get weaned off the steroid eye drops, it has the chance to recur again. Sigh seriously………
So since I have trouble reading words on the computer screen (they aren’t as sharp as what they should be, and if I squint or try too hard to focus, I’ll get a bad headache), I had to resort to “listening” to The Voice Season 4 episodes. And then I came across this extremely talented (sans her worst performance – Fireworks) young country singer – Amber Carrington. She’s a country singer at heart, but I’m so glad Adam turned around for her and true to his words, he didn’t limit her in the Country genre. He pushed her limits, and she really can sing everything. One of the best (if not THE best) performances is surprisingly – Skyfall, by Adele. And in all honesty (no offence to Adele, who’s an awesome and unique vocalist), I think she sang this song better than Adele. And Amber’s live performance is actually better than her own studio’s recording (which was on iTunes), lol. She seems to be an exceptional live singer instead of a studio recording artiste.
Anyway, 口说无凭. Here’s her live performance for you to judge for yourself:
Where do I start?
I’ve got an eye infection end April. It started off with a swelling on my left eye, no itch, no redness, and then it developed into a “severe case of viral conjunctivitis” (as quoted by my currently-favourite ophthalmologist, Dr Lee). It was a very traumatic and horrible experience for the whole 3 weeks (yes it took that long to just become better, not fully recovered) where I would wake up with eyes matted shut due to the crust over the eyes, where I had to keep my left eye closed as much as possible (thanks to the cornea abrasion I got), and then my right eye started to get infected as well…
It was horrible.
I couldn’t really read anything, I couldn’t use my computer, I couldn’t even really look at my handphone until I set the system fonts to EXTRA LARGE. I can just sit there at the sofa for the entire day, at the very most, switching on the television and LISTENING to the shows, instead of watching. For the entire three weeks.
I had to visit Dr Lee everyday to peel off the membranes that were built up underneath my eyelids, to prevent further abrasion. The very first time he did that, I was in such pain that I couldn’t move from the clinic’s sofa for a whole 30 minutes. Tears were literally streaming down my left eye from the pain. I couldn’t even get up to go home. That was literally some agonizing pain that still gave me the chills whenever I thought about that. In the end, the lovely ladies behind the reception had to give me some anaesthetic eye drops in order for me to grab a cab home. They literally shoo-ed me home right after the eye drops administration because the eye drops would only last for 20 minutes.
Oh god.
I rushed back home immediately and after that, the pain started again. But well, at least I’m in my own home now. My mom got so freaked out that she dragged me to the hospital’s A&E on the same day, and in the end, the MO (Medical Officer) asked me “so why are you doing here?” after he heard that I just had the membranes peeled off in the morning by an ophthalmologist. =_= My mom wanted to ward me, but the MO simply sent me straight back home. “We don’t ward people with conjunctivitis.” Uh-huh, that’s what I said too. Guess the same words coming from different people meant different things to my mom.
Okay, yeah I know she’s just very worried. She tried her best to accommodate me, cooking stuff that’s totally non-oily, non-fried, no seafood, just… bland stuff. It’s okay. I like bland stuff.
But yeah, even Dr Lee couldn’t really be sure if it’s just a case of viral conjunctivitis as he had gave me eye drops with steroids for every hour, and the condition still did not improve after a few days. He then referred me to the National Eye Centre for lab tests, but guess what? When I reached the National Eye Centre, the doctors there just refused to do a lab test and just insisted that it’s really viral conjunctivitis. “Nothing to worry about,” he said.
Oh yeah. 2 weeks absence from work, with my left eye can’t see any shapes except colours, I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about.
Sometimes I really do hate government hospitals and the doctors working there. They get too jaded and cynical after dealing with so many people everyday who take them for granted. Okay, I don’t hate them per se, but… you get what I mean.
After that, I got referred to a cornea specialist to make sure my cornea wasn’t infected. This cornea specialist is a much nicer lady who wasn’t impatient at all. She speaks rather slowly, smiles all the time, and reassures me that everything is fine (even after telling me that both of my corneas had been infected by the virus). ~_~ That was the third week, and according to her, the virus is still “vile” but I’m no longer infectious and I can go to work. o_O I told her I still couldn’t really see with my left eye, and I’d be straining my right if I go work, but she said “it’s fine straining it”. O_O;; Oh well… if that’s what the doctor says…
So I went back to work after 3 weeks of absence from office, armed with all my medications that I had to put in my eyes. Thankfully, the virus subsided in the fourth week, and I was able to go for my Bangkok trip without much of a trouble, except that I had to bring lots of lubricating eye drops with me and applying them to my eyes almost every hour.
There’s just so many other things that I didn’t talk about here… simply because I’m just too lazy to type it all out. Now I’m just feeling jumpy every now and then when my eyes don’t feel right. But of course, sometimes I’m just being overly sensitive and that there’s nothing wrong with them. Well it’s just way too traumatic an experience… and I really just don’t want to go through it again.
This eye infection incident aside…
I just came back from Bangkok. Bangkok isn’t really a fun place to be, but the street food is awesome, the shopping is decent, but the best part is that you get to stay at luxurious hotels at a fraction of the price you’d pay elsewhere for the same level of service and comfort. So at the end of the day, it’s really just a trip to rest and relax (I wasn’t relaxing while I had that infection thing… even though I was just sitting there at the sofa from morning to night for 3 weeks).
But anyway, back in office now, looking at the pile of work waiting for me to clear. I’m kinda looking forward to my potential upcoming trip still. There has been yet another change of plans – instead of going to Finland in December, Reko and I could be heading to London for a week, and then to Helsinki for another week in September. Nothing is confirmed yet, but we’ve looked at flight timings and hotels, as well as places to go… It’ll be an interesting trip, if it’s gonna happen, that is.