Grand Dame

The end came for Auntie Sook fairly quickly and unexpectedly, but she made her peace with the world and left well.

In fact, the whole world came to the Garden of Rememberance tonight to send her off. The word that kept being repeated when people talked about her was "impact". Whether knowing her as a teacher or as choir mistress, they remembered her for the difference she made in their lives.

I never knew her personally, though. She was always my sister's M-i-L and a friend of my parents. Nevertheless, what I do know of her is that she was a formidable grand dame with lots of energy and a great love for her family.

Tonight's service for her was quite a tribute from both the family she loved and the choir which she had worked so hard to build up and nurture. Auntie Sook was one amazing woman.

Too chicken to traverse

It's college Open House day! We seem to have generated quite a lot of interest, judging by the number of kids and parents wandering around our halls and jamming the "Subject Combination Chat Session" tables. Odd that among the other activities promising more fun -- like the mini-tournaments and "one-minute challenges" organized by our various co-curricula groups, the chat tables (which we thought would be the most boring section of the Open House) would turn out to be by far the best patronized. Welcome to S'pore!

Truth be told, I really wanted to experience the Tyrolean Traverse that had been set up on the fifth floor spanning the diameter of the Drum atrium. That would have been the highlight of my day, had I actually gone on it. Procrastinated too long and eventually lost the opportunity when the call for "dinner!" finally ended a rather long day.

There was a [belated] birthday to be celebrated with the promise of BBQ'd chix wings and other street food to be had at Chomps. We also got a couple of surprise dinner guests, NBS and Vince, who dropped off their invites at the table. It's about time, you two!

Troubleshoot fail

In less than 24 hours, I'm experiencing browser time-outs and blank pages at all odd hours of the day once again. And after already spending a pretty penny on sexy new router too. Grrargh! Time to give Starhub another phone-call...

Process of elimination

Since my last complaint to Starhub over my intermittent connection to the Internet at home, it seemed like they'd fixed the problem by the time I returned from BKK. But beginning this week the problem has resurfaced. Despite my terminals' insistence of my wireless 'net uplink, browsing proved impossible as regardless of which web page I wanted to access, I kept getting time-out messages and a perpetual blank browser. And this time these white-out periods were becoming longer and occurring more frequently throughout the day.

Frustrated, I disengaged from the wireless and plugged Mr L33t directly into the modem. Behold -- I'm back up to speed again! Clearly something wrong with the router, then. Half-an-hour later, I've hooked up a new Linksys router and... surf's up dudes!