Yes, after a two-week-long vacation, I’m now back in Singapore.

And it’s a 40 degree Celsius transition too.  I almost forgot how sweltering hot our weather can be.

I don’t think I’ll do any kind of mini-site for my White Christmas + New Year 2010 mini fireworks celebration thingy, so I guess you don’t need to look forward to it.  All I’m gonna do is perhaps to just post them photos on my Flickr account with some captions, that’s all.  I don’t even feel like writing a decent blog entry about it anymore because that’s a full 2-weeks of events to write >_>;  I’m getting old and impatient, yes.  XD

I’m uploading some photos from my iPhone (which are all horribly, unbelievably grainy), and still waiting for most of the nice scenary shots from Reko’s DSLR.  When all the photos are done and arranged chronologically (if I actually bother to arrange them), I’ll post up the link here.  :D

Just as the title says:- Happy New Year all!

May year 2010 brings you new friends, new opportunities, new hope, etc etc. :)

Ho hum.

*Cough* So, here I am, trying to make a decent, long post.

What should I start with? Hmm…

iPhone – My best purchase in Year 2009

Okay, let’s start with my iPhone. It’s not a new purchase anymore, as I have it for almost two months. I’m still loving it, despite bad photos under poor lightings, as well as the disturbingly short battery life. The display is bright and colourful; the features are user-friendly; the App Store is filled with free (and paid) goodies; and I get free iPhone to iPhone messaging, thanks for the various apps out there. I’m also slowly getting used to the touch-keyboard. I still could not walk and SMS at the same time without looking at the phone, though.

Checking on Facebook and Twitter, as well as my emails have never been easier. Just a tap on the screen, and everything is loaded. Now I just need that IM+ application (which will cost me EUR7.99 T_T), and I’ll be connected to all networks (including emails) via Apple’s Push Notifications.

At the same time, my phone functions as a great MP3 player that plays songs with album cover as well as lyrics. I’ve yet to get my hands on that Sennheiser earphones with mic, but Apple’s bundled earphones are doing great on its own. So I guess I’ll save my money on that till the next PC fair… XD

Birthday Cruise – 11/11/2009~13/11/2009

Yeah, and so that was my birthday present this year – a 3D/2N StarCruise trip to Malacca/Port Klang.  He was initially mulling to take the junior suite, but honestly the price was totally not worth it.  In the end, we settled on a cabin with balcony.  (No pictures, because I’m really too lazy to upload =x)  We didn’t go for any shore excursions, and we stayed on the cruise for the whole trip.  Food was okay, service was pretty good, bed was comfy, TV programmes were bad (despite it being cable TV)…  and really, there’s nothing to do on the ship.  We finished walking the entertainment decks even before the ship left the harbour.  -_-;  It was essentially just a rest-and-relax trip.

That’s a good thing because I was already half-sick before the trip, and hence I was still sick while on the ship.  I just slept early, woke up, had breakfast, then went back to cabin to sleep/rest, woke up for lunch, went back to cabin to sleep, then woke up for dinner, walked around the open deck and went back to cabin to rest.  XD  The balcony that we had to ourselves was a nice feature.  Just standing by the balcony, feeling the wind, mist and rain hitting your face (yes, it was raining in the middle of the sea) was such an exhilarating experience.  And of course, having your boyfriend standing behind you and wrapping his arms around you was a bonus.  :P

Oh, and I did received a birthday cake and a birthday card from the crew on my birthday itself.  :D  It was a chocolate cake, albeit not very fresh, but still, it was a nice gesture from them.  :)

After this cruise, I’d say… no more cruise to neighbouring countries.  The next time I’ll go on a cruise would be an Alaskan cruise or cruise to see the ice fjords or something.

Upcoming Christmas Trip

Ohhhhhh, this is making me excited.  XD  And damn it, I haven’t pack anything yet!! >_<!

I’ll be flying to Finland (yes, again!) on 19th this month to spend my first real white Christmas!  The moment we touch down, most likely we’ll start to do some shopping for food that Reko and his mom will be preparing for the Christmas eve feast.  I love shopping in their supermarkets, because the stuff they have there is so different from our supermarkets here!  Although I can’t help them in preparing the food, I’ll try and see if I’m able to take any photos during their cooking process… mwahahhaa.  Oh yeah, don’t expect to see Turkey on the table… As far as I know, they get ham for Christmas, not turkey… @_@

And and, we’ll be shopping for a real Christmas tree too!  For the first time, I’ll get to put Christmas decorations on a real Christmas tree!  :D  And full of presents at the bottom of it too!  Can’t wait to pass the presents and opening them in front of their fireplace… :D :D :D

After Christmas, we’ll then be heading towards Rovaniemi, Lapland to visit Santa! I’m still deciding whether to queue and take a picture with him or not… because I think a polaroid with him costs EUR25.00 and you can’t take photos with your own camera.  >_>  Oh well… we’ll see how bad the crowd and the queue would be then… No Christmas cards sent from Santa Claus’ post office for you guys, sorry!  Because it’ll probably be Chinese New Year by the time you receive them… XD

I’ll be spending the New Year there too, and will only be on the plane back to Singapore on New Year Day itself.  After this trip, I don’t think I’ll be going Finland anytime soon again though… I’ve been there during early Spring, Summer, and Winter (this time)… the only season I’m missing is Autumn.  But since the right time to go during Autumn is hard to predict…. hmm… we’ll see how it goes.  >_<

Ah, the updates on my normal life ends here.  Below would be stuff regarding World of Warcraft.  So if you are not interested, you can stop here and continue with what you are doing before you came here… XD

My World of Warcraft Updates — Don’t Read If You Ain’t Interested

I have no life.  LOL.  I admit it!  Every morning I wake up, I’ll go work.  After work, I’ll go gym on alternate days, and then I’ll be home to play WoW.  Honestly… I have no idea why I’m grinding money in the game.  I will log in my two level 80 characters, do the easy daily quests, and get some gold.  Then I’ll log on to my low-level shaman to play in some battlegrounds, leeching some XP from Alterac Valley.  Last weekend, Reko and I actually started new characters again.  /facepalm

I had this sudden urge to play a mage again.  I had one before… and I deleted her after she got to around level 30-ish, because I think she was too weak.  But after so many patches and all the classes had went through so many changes, I’m starting to like mages again, since they are not as weak nowadays in PvP.  And so, I started a mage (Blood Elf mage, naturally), and Reko started a priest to level with me.  WoW nowadays is like a noob game, if you know what you are doing.  It’s so easy to level at the beginning now.  Mana regeneration is fast for spell castors, and if you are equipped with a wand, you can kill mobs before they even reach you.  Easy-mode, I say.

Of course, the end game content is still not easy, especially for me and Reko who couldn’t join normal raiding guilds to gear up our main characters.  It was so disheartening to see people calling out for groups in Dalaran, saying “LFM ToTC, link achv.  Gear check @ Dalaran Fountain!”  (It means Looking For Members, link achievement to show that you have went through the dungeon before, and there is a gear check on you to make sure that you have the right gear for the raid.)  I mean, players without a raiding gear would need to start from somewhere, but where can they start if everyone who’s organising raids demands experienced and geared players?  Zzzzzz…

And thus, Blizzard just came up with this patch that they hope would solve this problem.  It’s a dungeon finder, and basically you just need to “queue” up to join a random raid group.  Of course, if they are not happy with one player, they can vote-kick him/her, but it’d require the whole group to agree to kick.  In order to make people use this new feature, Blizzard threw in lots of incentives – giving emblems and achievements for frequent usage of this new dungeon finder feature.  I nearly tried to queue for my hunter just now using this feature, but at the end I still gave up and didn’t try it, because I was afraid I’m too inexperienced and would drag the group down or something…

If one day I’m living in Europe for one reason or another, I’ll make sure Reko and I would go join a raiding guild, just to see what I’ve been missing out on… >_>  I miss the sense of cohesiveness within guild mates… but I don’t miss the emo-drama that always seem to plague all online communities.. -_-;

I need to update my blog more often.

I know I need to, and believe me, there’s really stuff that I want to blog about. However, everytime I sat down in front of my computer, the mouse automatically goes to the World of Warcraft icon… =x

I’ll try to do a proper update soon (maybe tonight, if any one of you can hijack Blizzard’s WoW servers and shut it down for 30 minutes) regarding my new iPhone, the cruise trip that was over a week ago, what I’m doing on WoW, and of course, my upcoming trip to Finland to spend both Christmas and New Year’s with Reko and his family.

Images will be scant (I hate uploading pictures), but it’s not like there are many people reading my blog anyway. XD

This is almost like an old wish coming true. I still remembered, a long time ago, that I had desperately wished that I had access to mobile blogging. That was like, seven years ago, when blogging was a new “in” thing then.

It’s really amazing how technology has evolved. I’m now typing this in my office, using my iPhone to connect to the Internet with the 3G network. What’s next? Perhaps we could just think out loud what we wanted to blog, and it’ll appear in our websites? O.o Scary thought, but for some reason I think it might just be the situation in the future…

Talking about the future. Reko had been asking me plenty of times that given a choice, would I want to go to the Maldives or take an Alaskan cruise? Damn… Both sound just as good, if you asked me. I really want to go to the Maldives before thy submerged die to the rapidly rising sea level. But I also want to feast my eyes in the majestic ice fjords before they all melt away as global warming worsens. Argh… Decisions, decisions T_T

On another note, I’ve been thinking whether if it’s time for me to change my job. Don’t get me wrong – the company is still treating me well. I just realized that I’ve been dreading to go work every morning, something which I never experienced in the past. My relationship with my colleagues has been very fragile… Even though they are of my age and sometimes there are topics to talk about, most of the time I just don’t click with them. I game; they don’t. I love instrumental movie OSTs; they don’t even notice the music in the background. Sigh… After working with them for 6 years, I thought I don’t need to wear a mask in front of them anymore. But the moment I was straight and direct with them, they took offense. I’m like, what…?

Recently there’s an even more ridiculous issue. A colleague of mine, not in the direct same department as me but we shared the same office, actually told me this: “I’ve been working for such a long time, so this is my advice to you. Don’t be so capable at work, people are not going to like it.”

…

What the…? So people are talking behind my back because I’m capable? And it’s not my fault that they are less capable than me, right? So am I supposed to pretend that I can’t finish my work and drag all the stuff just so that I won’t seem so “capable”? Am I supposed to just blindly follow the instructions when it’s obvious that there are better alternatives out there? I simply pointed out that some things can be done better, in a more efficient way. It’s not really “my fault” that the supervisor decided to use my suggestion, is it? And if it benefits all parties, why are they complaining?

“You don’t understand. You need to stand in their shoes and think how they’d feel.”

Funny. My suggestions had helped them. If someone’s suggestion had helped me, I’d be grateful for it.

“No you are wrong. They’d think that you are just trying to prove that you are more capable than them.”

…

Honestly, I was rendered speechless. There must be something wrong with their thinking if that’s really what they thought. I mean, if all the staff thinks like that, the company gonna just go bust eventually. -_-;

Even though I know I didn’t do anything wrong, I felt slightly disturbed by what my colleague said. After a day or two, I managed to get hold of one of my supervisors alone and asked her if I really appeared as if I’m trying to show off. She laughed and said, “You ARE capable. You don’t need to show it off. We all can see that.”. Still perturbed, I told her about the conversation that took place. She frowned and shook her head in displeasure. She told me not to care about what others said and just concentrate on doing my work. She has the same comment too: “If that’s what they think, then there must be something wrong with them.”

Now I felt better, but it still doesn’t hide the fact that some of my colleagues are unhappy with me. I find it increasingly hard to pretend that everything is fine and dandy, and that I had to smile at their jokes and partake in their aimless chats.

Which prompts me to start wondering if it’s time to change a working environment…? Despite of the human relationship problems, I like it here. The view is one of the best, the location is great, the company is still maintaining their perks to the employees, my pay is pretty good (given my qualification) and my supervisors have been great too. Also, I’ve no idea if I’d be moving, if at all, to any other countries once Reko graduates. All these are the reasons why I’m still hesitating to make a move.

Maybe some day, when I reach my limit of putting on a mask…

A test entry using my spanking new iPhone! Installing apps are a breeZe and typing on the new iPhone is much better and easier than my old iPod Touch.

Hopefully this phone can last for a long time… coz I’m loving it!!

Ok, so I’m here at the airport, waiting for my mom’s flight to touchdown. And using my iPod Touch to connect to the world via wifi, of course.

The best thing about using iPod Touch for blogging-on-the-go? There’s the ‘return’ button that gives you paragraph! Making paragraphs on the Net with Nokia 5800 is literally an imposssible thing. But the bad part is the auto spelling correction thing, which can be a double-edged sword, depending on how you look at it. Not to mention, there’s this lag that’s constantly eating up the words I typed because I am typing too fast. But then again, it could be because my iPod Touch software was super old. Mind you, my iPod Touch is the first generation of its kind xD.

Before I get upset with the software lag and starts to throw it against the wall or something, I have good news to share. Yes. Yours truly has managed to slim down a lil! Ok, granted, 5kgs ain’t that much, but at least it’s something! And all the credits go to my dearest. If it’s not because of his suggestion and insistence that we should have only veges on weekends, I wouldn’t have slim down in such a short time. So thank you, dearie! :D

Oh, my mom’s flight has landed. I’ll update again some other time. Hopefully by then, I’ll be using my spanking new Apple iPhone!

I’ve changed my layout – again.  Yes.

I tend to do that pretty often, if you hadn’t noticed it by now.  :D

I know I haven’t been blogging that often lately… but that’s because I’ve kinda lost interest in blogging about my mundane life.

I’m still playing World of Warcraft, for those who haven’t been catching up with me.  I already have a max level character,  a Blood Elf holy-specced priestess.  Unfortunately, I’d get really stressed up while healing a party in instances, and I’d feel really guilty if someone in the party died at a boss or something.   Hence, to alleviate my stress, Reko convinced me to start a DPS (damage-per-second) character.  Knowing that I’d prefer to go for range attack than close-up encounters, he suggested a hunter, and I went for it.

I must say it was a nice change.  I’m no longer stressed about keeping everyone alive, and could just enjoy the game.  Of course I still suck when it comes to real combat against players (i.e. PVP action) since I’m lousy at macro and hotkeys, but I’m still enjoying myself in Alterac Valley (a 40 players vs 40 players battleground) even though I’m dying pretty often when it comes to one-vs-one.  XD  Thanks to an AV holiday last week, my exp shot up pretty fast and my hunter shot up to level 77 from level 71 in just three or four days.  I went from being Neutral with the Frostwolf faction to Exalted in the same period too.  (I’m talking about faction reputation here, for those who don’t understand what I’m saying.  XD)  It was quite a feat, really.  I’ve got tons of PVP / AV achievements at the same time too.

In short, I’m really starting to enjoy the game ever since I started a hunter.  :D

Yeah, I do miss healing, and the feeling of being “useful”, but like what Reko says, it’s just too stressful for me and instead of feeling useful, I’d start to feel “useless” and that’s not the point of playing a game.  While I do agree with that, sometimes I can’t help but wonder why I’m so stressed with healing in WoW.  I didn’t remember I was that stressed up when healing in Ragnarok Online >_>;  Maybe it’s because it’s a more complicated game system in WoW.  XD

Games aside… Work is still the same with me.  Not much of any changes, except for the fact that my company had terminated some people a few months back, which I think I had blogged about it briefly.  Let’s just hope my colleagues and I will be safe from the next wave.

Some troubles between my parents… but nothing new.  Just hope that things don’t get blown up.

Oh yeah, my nephew is getting cuter and cuter by the day.  :D  And no, I still can’t muster up enough courage to carry him.

Hmm, and I need a new modem soon.  Good thing my Singnet broadband contract has ended, and I can go re-contract with them and get a brand new modem.  Hur hur.  But I’m gonna wait till the Comex exhibition to see if there’s any drool-worthy deals.  =D

And I need a new CPU.  And monitor.  What I have now at my own place sucks.

OH YEAH.  My upcoming birthday present this year from Reko is… *drumrolls*… A STAR CRUISE TRIP.  =D  I’m so looking forward to it!  First of all, I’ve never been on a cruise.  This will be the first time for me!  And then secondly, it’s a welcome break~!  And of course, some private time with your dearest is always good. ^_^

This is a song, which never fails to make me tear up.  This is THE classic NDP (National Day Parade) song, We Are Singapore, complete with THE original version too.  All the others that I found on Youtube were just later versions.  This is the one which accompanied us (those born in the ’70s and early ’80s) through our school years.

I remembered, fondly, of how I used to dig up enthusiastically for my white NDP cassette tape every time National Day drew near.  The first three songs on the tape was We Are Singapore, Count On Me Singapore, and Stand Up For Singapore.  I remembered playing these three songs again and again with glee, singing along with aplomb and at many times with eyes that were brimming with tears.

I was moved and touched by these songs back then, even though I must admit that I’m not a very patriotic person.  Yet these songs, especially this particular piece “We Are Singapore”, never fails to give me goosebumps and bring tears to my eyes, no matter how old I am when I listened to it.

I was so happy to be able to find this original classic version on Youtube, and is immensely grateful to the person who uploaded it.  The casette that I treasured so much was unplayable long ago… and I wasn’t able to find those original songs on CDs anywhere.  -_-

Anyway, happy birthday to my home country, Singapore.  You’ll be 44 this coming Sunday.  :)

There was a time when people said
That Singapore won’t make it, but we did
There was a time when troubles seemed too much
For us to take, but we did
We built a nation, strong and free, reaching out together
For peace and harmony

Chorus 1:
This is my country, this is my flag
This is my future, this is my life
This is my family, these are my friends
We are Singapore, Singaporeans

Singapore our homeland, it’s here that we belong
All of us united, one people marching on
We’ve come so far together, our common destiny
Singapore forever, a nation strong and free

Repeat Chorus 1

(Singapore Pledge Recited, Then Sung)
We the citizens of Singapore
Pledge ourselves as one united people
Regardless of race, language or religion
To build a democratic society
Based on justice and equality
So as to achieve happiness
Prosperity and progress for our nation

Chorus 2:
We are Singapore, we are Singapore
We will stand together, hear the lion roar
We are Singapore, we are Singapore
We’re a nation strong and free forever more

Repeat Chorus 2

This is my country, this is my flag (We are Singapore, we are Singapore)
This is my future, this is my life (We will stand together, hear the lion roar)
This is my family, these are my friends (We are Singapore, we are Singapore)
We are Singapore, Singaporeans
We are Singapore, Singaporeans