the lastsplash

I was back at the Tower Bridge today. A look of it in the day this time. Beside the Tower Bridge is the Tower of London , the royal palace and fortress and home of the crown jewel. This is the main tower, The White Tower, where the Kings and Queens used to live. And further down the Tower of London is the London Bridge ... well, the modern-day version. And I don't think it is gonna fall down anytime soon... About another 1-km down the River Thames is the Tate Modern museum. There was some weird performance going on... And one of the exhibits, But my favourite is this Picasso work, Girl in Chemise , which I recognized instantly and got me really excited! Finally, after all that tired walking for the day we made our way across the river on the Millennium Bridge . And the bridge in at night!

Finally I am back online! Managed to borrow an XP setup disc from the hotel reception to do the recovery. My laptop had been displaying the blue screen of death for a past week ever since I shut it down abruptly at the Changi T3 security check. Oh, forgot to mention I am in London right now for a conference ! All has been well so far, 'cept for my laptop which crashed and some weird incidents at the hotel. But all that is fixed and the conference is over. So I'll be enjoying a short break over the weekend. =) Before I start working on my trip report, I have some spare time to show you some photos of the places I visited in the past week after the daily conference itinerary. The winter day is short, so we only went to a few places... This is the venue of the conference, QEII Conference Centre. It's in the heart of Westminister, where you can find the Big Ben and Abbey... A lil' silent protest against the war near the conference centre... This is certainly a "culture...

I wanted to just sneak a snaps of the famous works. To my surprise, I saw many snapping away at almost every sculpture and relief they saw. Some posed in front of the sculptures with their million-dollar smiles. There were even a couple of them with their SLRs hanging openly on their necks ! Even when so many people were doing it, I don't think photography was allowed. =p Of the museums I been to, only the Munch Museum (where I assumed it wasn't allowed and left my camera in the locker!!) and the Chinese museums, allowed photography. But anyway... I did it discreetly (at times not really!) with my new camera phone! Of course, if I wanted nice, well-taken pictures I would have bought the book and not goof around with my phone. These pictures are really to share with those who have not been to the exhibition yet, what you are missing. Nothing beats standing in front of these magnificent Greek Masterpieces , taking a glimpse at some of the objects which have left Louvre for the ...

Am truly rusty. Took two days to tackle a simple problem. Throw in the rain, the gloomy sky, inconsiderate fools in the train and bus, loneliness, Friday evening, emotional strings (the one you love ain't happy and you can't do no thing bout it but to feel the same), plus nobody to eat sushimi (sushi+sashimi) with you and some other factors, the recipe for a miserable boo boo evening. Even Chef Gusteau can't do better! Nothing like some rumbling rage driving actions (Bam!! Bang!! Boom!! Takedown!) and punk music (the tracks in Burnout Legend are awesome!!) to perk the mood! Alleviate me from this sh**y feeling. Yes, I had rediscovered the sound that had brought me thru' my teenage angst. Whereas teenage years had left me long ago, these mood swings had stayed by me. But no fear, all is well as it just mean that my heart is alive and kicking and all things will end well! -Stresemann YEAH-

It has become a tradition for four of us to come together to celebrate my dear's birthday every year. Even if it meant having to miss out a rare BBQ chalet with my colleagues. But as they say, good things usually come in pairs. I can't be too greedy, so I had to choose one. It was none other than my dear's birthday celebration! This year we had dinner at Waraku Japanese Restaurant in The Central . It was my second time there. But since they hadn't been there before, we decided to give it a try. The food wasn't fantastic, so I won't talk about it. Let's talk about the people! Theresa with "大饼" hanging in front of her, our mahjong-kaki and dear's best friend, 发发 frowning at the size of his mini bowl. It was certainly on the tiny size (including the portion of sashimi). A notable point about Waraku is the size of their regular bowls. Really big indeed. =p The real fun of the evening came after the dinner at (no, not at the pub lah ... old people...

Amazing finger work by this guy... look at the way "taps and tickles" the keys! Truly impressive performance. He's like coaxing the piano to sing out the tunes. Look out for 2:18, 3:01, 5:39...

Japanese Pasta, Hong Kong Cafe (茶餐厅), Bubble Tea, Rubik's Cube... hmmmm..

A friend of mine introduced to me a neat tool today. And since I had some time to spare, I decided to try it out! It was really easy and fun... maybe you'd wanna try out Comic Life too! I was really inspired by her heart-wrenching story... and let me present to you, my first mini-manga-story of only two pages, entitled " From Blue to Red - The Christmas Story of Stitchy-sop "! Click the images for the enlarged version! If you are observant enough, you'll notice what "Blue to Red" means... as my shy neighbour will put it, equivocate . So... are there anyone out there interested in my manga or graphic novel? heh heh.

Remember this post where I complained about not having a recycle bin near my block? Well there is one now, and it had been there for a few weeks. With that bin nearby, I decided to set up a central bin in the kitchen for collecting waste paper. A lot of waste paper is generated from pamphlets, magazines, envelopes, everyday. So it is a good idea to recycle them. Everyone at home, mum, dad, sis, will have to dispose their waste paper in that bin. Perhaps we'll move on to other things to recycle, but right now its paper for a start. Hopefully everyone will get used to it and see the importance of recycling. I was a little disappointed today when I took my waste paper to the recycling bin. There was all sort of junks and cockroaches in there. I guess someone must had thrown all their rubbish not knowing which was recyclable and decided its not their job to do so. After collecting back to the recycling centre, the workers are going to have a hard time sorting them out again. Maybe the...

This isn't exactly news, as it has been quite a while... but I am announcing (no! not that I am getting married already... ha ha) that I am a proud owner of (no! not that I already have a baby... ha ha) a new weblog. Actually it was part of an assignment for a module, Creativity and Innovation, which I took this semester. Creativity Expression , is a "portfolio of my creativity", ie. a showcase of my creative works. It is a live weblog, which means it is not a one-time effort just for the assignment, and I will be updating it periodically. And the reason I decided to post about it is because today I received an email from my Prof, Dr. Marcelo Ang, with some kind words about the weblog. So it served as a motivation for me to invite everyone to take a look and for me to keep working on it. Hope you'll enjoy!

Besides women, men have moodswing very often too. There is just no apparent reason to explain the causes of the negative feelings. Maybe it is due to complains and too much bad mouthing. Negative karma build ups, hatred and annoyance fill the mind, the air becomes foul. Every move everyone else made seems to amplify this negative feeling. And the issues that pop up seem to deteriorate to the worst possible states. Issues became problems. Problems became reasons for the moodswing. This is really weird! The moodswing actually came before all these issues occurred! The ironic thing is, I was telling a friend this afternoon how to find happiness. Look for good, life is difficult, traffic doesn't care. Why don't I remind myself of these wise advices again?

Last week, I came across this book by Adele Lang and Susi Rajah in the library. It was filled with many questions... And the one answer to these questions was quite obvious, so I decided to share with you some of the more interesting questions. 1. Why aren't low-calorie foods marketed to fat men? 2. Why is there anti-cellulite cream but not anti-beer-belly cream? 3. Why is it that only rich women can afford live-in child care when the poorest man can get it by marriage? 4. If men thought God was a woman, would they still kill and die for Her? 5. Why is a bachelor always eligible but a spinster never so? 6. Why is master a title of respect but mistress not? 7. Why can smart women get ahead by playing dumb? 8. Why are the women who fly business class usually flight attendants? 9. If nice guys never get the girl, does that mean all women are married to bastards? 10. Why is man only interested in a woman until she is interested in him? Perhaps, many of us are still unconsciously slante...

Yeah!!!* (do a Stresemann imitation) ... Finally killed off the exam! It was the last nail on the board, keeping me from enjoying my break since end of hell-month. Of course there is still the ICT (aka Reservist for those not in tune with military term), but it'll end tomorrow anyway! Double Horray! After the morning paper I had lunch at Lau Pa Sa with my dear and Theresa. The last we had lunch together was the end of one paper last semester. Time flies. Since it was a good six hours before my dinner appointment, I had chance to go Christmas shopping and get a feel of ' oh-so-free-nothing-to-do '. I started out with some meaningful activities like reading the newspaper throughly at the Esplanade library, and finishing a book. Then I made the mistake of leaving the library... Everything seemed so 'you-must-buy-me-for-someone'. Perhaps it was the Christmas bug - the spirit of giving. I discovered some fantastic shops at Raffles City Shopping Mall basement. There wer...

I was really excited about this exhibition. Finally, the works of the legendary pop artist in Singapore. First learnt about Andy Warhol only at about ten years ago, and his works I saw were only in books and websites. So, twenty years after his death, we can finally get to see the real thing. Below are the only three pictures I took, photography was strictly not allowed. Tho' I saw some people snapping away with their hand phones, and one using her SLR (perhaps she was the official photographer??). But generally there were many CCTV cameras all over the place (could be almost the same as the number of works on display), so I did not attempt to embarrass myself. Ah yes, I went along with my good friend XTT-KC. This was the closest I got of photographing the exhibition. I think students should all pose at the entrance, there were lotsa 'A's for grabs! I needed a few myself for my remaining semester. Okay, I know, cold joke. Brrrr.. Incidentally, XTT-KC wanted at least two A...