JY puts on her best smile for her mugshot. Good luck, girl!
Saturday, September 09, 2006
Friday, September 08, 2006
Watson totally crashed on me the night I got back from Malacca. I'm now posting this entry via his replacement, erm... we'll just call him Mr L33t for now. I went for an Athlon 3000+ and a GeForce 7600GT. With the other essentals thrown in, he cost me nearly $1.2K, just after my Malacca vacation AND another $200 which I had to fork out to replace M2's reverse parking sensor which also mysteriously died as soon as it's 1-year warranty expired.
Yesterday was my day to spend an awesome amount of money. No wonder I'm broke all the time. Sigh.
Oh, and this morning, I worked on reviving Watson. Turns out it was the Radeon X700 that had totally died, so I replaced it with my old, faulty 9800 and installed a spare 80G HDD, so Watson is more or less resurrected. He's ok to run Office on now, but I doubt he'll ever play games again. Time to put him out to pasture, anyway. Old people shouldn't have to strain themselves so hard.
Yesterday was my day to spend an awesome amount of money. No wonder I'm broke all the time. Sigh.
Oh, and this morning, I worked on reviving Watson. Turns out it was the Radeon X700 that had totally died, so I replaced it with my old, faulty 9800 and installed a spare 80G HDD, so Watson is more or less resurrected. He's ok to run Office on now, but I doubt he'll ever play games again. Time to put him out to pasture, anyway. Old people shouldn't have to strain themselves so hard.
Back online at last! Lots to update, so let's take it slowly...
Well, I'm back from Malacca. With me were Amy, Baggy, CQ, Dee, HP, Shah, and Vince, all stuffed into a Suzuki APV, the only Class 3 8-seater we could find on the rental market. More on that later.
We put up at the Hotel Puri, a refurbished Peranakan shophouse that's very proud of its heritage. It may not look like much from the outside, but it's quite spacious and comfortable inside. The rooms are functional, and thank God for air-conditioning. Service staff very friendly -- almost family-like even, about as familiar as that.
3 main activities that kept us occupied: eat, sleep and mark assignments. We made the absolute right choice in coming here. The food's excellent, it's quiet enough to concentrate on marking and since there are no other tourist attractions to distract us, we slept any time we felt like it without feeling guilty that we might be missing out on something.
For food recommendations, we applaud Shah for insisting we try the seafood at the Portuguese Settlement. Getting there without a map kept us in orbit around Malacca's Bandar Hilir until the Italy bakery we passed by again and again became our landmark for being lost. But the people were helpful and by piecing together their scavenger-hunt clue fragments we eventually settled at the Settlement for a magnificent feast. We polished off sambal fish, deep-fried calamari, devil chicken, 3-flavoured prawns, sambal kangkong and rice in a fraction of the time it took us to find the place. Half the fun is getting there, after all. No stingray as a mark of respect for Steve Irwin. Crikey!
A gold star for Baggy too, who found the little outlet serving the cendol and laksa she was raving about. "Donald & Lily," just across the big car park off Jln Tun Tan Cheng Lok. Fresh, concentrated coconut milk is the essence of their house specialties. If you're on a diet, too bad for you.
In the evenings, we gathered in the boys' room to watch the least intellectual of the DVDs CQ brought along (he'd taken it upon himself to be Entertainment i/c), though we never did play his card games. We were just too lazy to get ourselves that organized.
I got to drive the APV back in Singapore. For an 8-seater, it's powered by a relatively puny 1.6l engine, and looks about as sexy as a brick. I don't know how it handles fully loaded (ask Vince about that if you really wanna know) but empty it feels surprisingly nimble. Acceleration and braking are quite responsive; almost like driving a regular sedan though the vantage is slightly higher. Returned the vehicle to the rental company in one piece this time. :D
Great vacation! Got close to 40% of my marking load completed so it was a productive time too! We've proven we can travel together without killing each other so... let's do it again!
Photos here:
by s_min_y
Well, I'm back from Malacca. With me were Amy, Baggy, CQ, Dee, HP, Shah, and Vince, all stuffed into a Suzuki APV, the only Class 3 8-seater we could find on the rental market. More on that later.
We put up at the Hotel Puri, a refurbished Peranakan shophouse that's very proud of its heritage. It may not look like much from the outside, but it's quite spacious and comfortable inside. The rooms are functional, and thank God for air-conditioning. Service staff very friendly -- almost family-like even, about as familiar as that.
3 main activities that kept us occupied: eat, sleep and mark assignments. We made the absolute right choice in coming here. The food's excellent, it's quiet enough to concentrate on marking and since there are no other tourist attractions to distract us, we slept any time we felt like it without feeling guilty that we might be missing out on something.
For food recommendations, we applaud Shah for insisting we try the seafood at the Portuguese Settlement. Getting there without a map kept us in orbit around Malacca's Bandar Hilir until the Italy bakery we passed by again and again became our landmark for being lost. But the people were helpful and by piecing together their scavenger-hunt clue fragments we eventually settled at the Settlement for a magnificent feast. We polished off sambal fish, deep-fried calamari, devil chicken, 3-flavoured prawns, sambal kangkong and rice in a fraction of the time it took us to find the place. Half the fun is getting there, after all. No stingray as a mark of respect for Steve Irwin. Crikey!
A gold star for Baggy too, who found the little outlet serving the cendol and laksa she was raving about. "Donald & Lily," just across the big car park off Jln Tun Tan Cheng Lok. Fresh, concentrated coconut milk is the essence of their house specialties. If you're on a diet, too bad for you.
In the evenings, we gathered in the boys' room to watch the least intellectual of the DVDs CQ brought along (he'd taken it upon himself to be Entertainment i/c), though we never did play his card games. We were just too lazy to get ourselves that organized.
I got to drive the APV back in Singapore. For an 8-seater, it's powered by a relatively puny 1.6l engine, and looks about as sexy as a brick. I don't know how it handles fully loaded (ask Vince about that if you really wanna know) but empty it feels surprisingly nimble. Acceleration and braking are quite responsive; almost like driving a regular sedan though the vantage is slightly higher. Returned the vehicle to the rental company in one piece this time. :D
Great vacation! Got close to 40% of my marking load completed so it was a productive time too! We've proven we can travel together without killing each other so... let's do it again!
Photos here:
by s_min_y
Sunday, September 03, 2006
People bring their cats to dog shows and no one bothers. We were refused entry into today's cat show because we brought Q-tip with us. Security at the door said that Q-tip needed a vet's certification of health to get in, but the vet on duty had already left the building (it was only just after 1100 hrs!). Poor Q-tip. Being a dog means she gets subject to a lot of discrimination.
So we bought only 1 ticket for June while Q-tip and I waited outside for her. These occasions are usually good for discounts on pet supplies and we didn't want to waste the opportunity. She bought a new scratching post to replace the one Kaiser single-handedly destroyed within a couple of months, a new sleeping basket for Q-tip (who will be summarily evicted out of by Kaiser at his leisure), and 4 months' supply of kitty litter.
While June was shopping, she also made contact with the home for strays that we put Abby in. The home had set up a booth at the show to show off their more promising cats up for adoption. Abby was amongst the eligible so June got to play with her again for a while. Good news! Abby's been adopted by someone called Jasmine, so she has a proper home to stay in now.
Other than that, my Aunt Shirley arrived from London this evening. We collected her from the airport and went back to my mom's place for dinner, following which we drove her to another aunt's place where she will be staying for the duration of her vacation. M2 really put in quite a lot of work today. Never mind, he'll get a break for the next 3 days. I'm off to Malacca (again) in the morning!
Hmm... doubt I'll be updating while I'm away. In that case, see y'all at the end of the week, 'k?
So we bought only 1 ticket for June while Q-tip and I waited outside for her. These occasions are usually good for discounts on pet supplies and we didn't want to waste the opportunity. She bought a new scratching post to replace the one Kaiser single-handedly destroyed within a couple of months, a new sleeping basket for Q-tip (who will be summarily evicted out of by Kaiser at his leisure), and 4 months' supply of kitty litter.
While June was shopping, she also made contact with the home for strays that we put Abby in. The home had set up a booth at the show to show off their more promising cats up for adoption. Abby was amongst the eligible so June got to play with her again for a while. Good news! Abby's been adopted by someone called Jasmine, so she has a proper home to stay in now.
Other than that, my Aunt Shirley arrived from London this evening. We collected her from the airport and went back to my mom's place for dinner, following which we drove her to another aunt's place where she will be staying for the duration of her vacation. M2 really put in quite a lot of work today. Never mind, he'll get a break for the next 3 days. I'm off to Malacca (again) in the morning!
Hmm... doubt I'll be updating while I'm away. In that case, see y'all at the end of the week, 'k?
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