So I got one.
It's rather huge, but that just means I can dump my whole room inside.
It was Saturday night after Campus when I first entertained the thought of saving for one after my friend told me about how he did so. It's roomy, the bag, but still $179 is quite the fortune to pay for a bag.
On Sunday my cousin Sandra and my parents were walking at the Raffles City Marketplace when we walked past the Crumpler shop, and I slowed to scan for prospective models.
Immediately (it was quite alarming actually), Sandra looked where I was staring and said, 'You like it? You like the bag?'
'Um... well I was thinking of saving for one, yes...'
'But you like it? YOU LIKE THE BAG??'
At which point my father jumped in.
'You like it? You want it? You like the bag? Come! I buy for you! You want or not! You like the bag?'
'Um. Ok?'
Isn't it nice to have people fawn over you once in awhile.
As much as I am grateful to my father for splashing such money on me (yes. it is splashing) I couldn't help but roll my eyes at the conversation he held with my mother. My mother was quite naturally appalled at the extravagant prices, and my father said 'Aiyah it's ok la. I'm not spoiling them la, but at their age, they need identity...'
Identity. Lol.
Honestly, I like the Crumpler more for the space and the uber sweet shoulder strap. The cushion is damn comfortable can.
It's nice to have branded goods, but I'm not exactly insisting that all Christmas presents if any have to be Bvlgari and above.
Actually as I am typing this in school, I realise that apart from my specs, which happen to be quite good quality stuff, just about everything else I have is branded. Half of the stuff are things people blessed me with. My phone (in part anyway), my hoodie, my watch, my shoes, my bag, my Nike t-shirt, my Dockers pants.
You don't have to be rich to be blessed with material people.
orchestrated by Renhao at 10:36:00 am
© 2004-2007. All rights reserved. You have been warned.
Three posts in a day my God I must be bored.
My previous set of strings, the GHS Contact Core Bright Bronze, was getting a little tarnished, and rust, in my carelessness, had begun to grow on the first and second strings, marring the sound by abit, that, not to boast, was probably only detectable by me, because 1) I know I have a more sensitive ear, and 2) I've been hearing that string plucked by my own finger everyday, so I could tell when the sound was beginning to go off.
The Contact Core, you should know, is not a very common set. Especially since I bought the Ultra Light set, from 10-46 if I'm not wrong.
If you dunno what I'm talking about, you're probably normal.
So at Yamaha the other day, armed with a blue note, I put myself in front of the strings section, staring at every single pack that had ACOUSTIC printed somewhere on it. And after having a 10-46 pack, seeing a set labelled Light: 11-52 made me roll my eyes and scoff in disgust. Light my ass, it'd light a fire on my fretting fingers that's what it'll do.
So I settled upon the the Extended Play section of strings. Now these strings, which most brands have in some form or the other. Extended Play, Extended Life, whatever.
These EXPs have their windings, for the lower strings, and just directly on the first two strings I guess, a coating of special material that retards oxidization, and thus, as the name suggests, extends the play or life of these strings.
Now these strings come with a price, for long life, pretty much just like any other thing... Porcelain bowls cost more than paper bowls, high-end graphic cards, which can play more games for a longer duration before requirements get too much to handle, cost more than a basic on-board card.
$24. +.
Which very obviously makes me utterly frightened of making one wrong move and snapping the string. $4. TOCK-OOOONNGG... and my face and tear ducts will also tock. Thank goodness I remembered what Graham told me about replacing strings, and followed his method, which I won't put here because it involves extra descriptive work on my part and will only serve to deepen that confused frown on your face anyway, so forget it. Graham said do this this this, then, when you're sure it's not gonna stretch anymore, you can then snip off the excess strings dangling off the machine heads.
After I snipped off the strings, I ran my thumb on each of them, and my heart stopped AND fell six feet when all I heard was a mindless buzz on the second string. Quickly I used the pliers to twist the little bit of string around the hole to try to secure the damn string. And thank thank thank thank thank thank thank thank double thank God that it did catch and tighten in the end.
And now I'm playing every night until my fingers everything but split into two, because even though I have little problem fretting hard enough, the cumulative toll on my accustomed-to-even-lighter-strings fingertips wasn't too amusing. Maroon lines indicate where the string had pressed into my hand, and I have this bad feeling that behind my callused skin my flesh had already been sliced into, and that if I just squeezed hard enough blood would happily gush out. It's quite bad.
But like I said, I'd rather have abit of pain for a week or so than live on light strings, although the light strings also provide an unforgettably bright tone for my guitar. But most guitars use my current string set guage, so I thought I'd better get used to it.
Plenty of time too, with Extended Play strings.
orchestrated by Renhao at 10:03:00 pm
© 2004-2007. All rights reserved. You have been warned.
Ok, so now that I'm all bathed, conditioned, exfoiliated and clean, let's hear about what happened today.
Nutrition is actually getting more interesting. Ben however made the huge mistake of taking the middle seat, beside me, leaving his left for Ryan, and we terrorised him with our utter lameness all through 9 to 11am.
Mehhh.
I blame Ryan for my picking up all his actions. Like when Anna Jacobs said something about sucking blood, and we both bared our teeth hissed and moved towards Ben with our hands clawed.
Ryan: -covers his face- I feel ashamed.
RH: only because I did it too.
Ryan: yes.
RH: bloody hell.
And then after that, Benny Elton KJ Ben Ryan and me...
WENT TO PLAY LAN! DELINQUENTS WASTING TIME HOO0~!
No we were not delinquents. With the exception of yours truly everyone else walking into the LAN shop in formal wear.
Leather shoes included. Coolness, finesse and other accessories sold seperately.
Batteries not included.
So yeah there we were. 3 hours straight. BF1942, CS1.6-3 maps, Warhammer 4000 Dawn of War.
Warhammer was damn good. But I just don't think a noisy LAN shop with some sec school guy shrieking CHEE BAIIII every other 5 minutes and sounds from WC3 (A HERO HAS FALLEN), CS (TATATATATA), BF1942(TATATATA), SWAT4(TATATATATATA), is good for a strategy game like WH4k-DoW.
Oh yeah we played SWAT4 for 15min, and quit sometime after my ally Ryan (RYAN OF ALL PEOPLE) went 'Hmm what's this do...' and sprayed M16 bullets in my fucking face. Apart from that the game was lagging so we were more moonwalking than anything else. Ben very typically took that opportunity to line his rifle up and press the MOUSE1 button in glee.
After KFC, which I regretted suggesting, I'm still feeling full goodness, we exited the building.
The rain was roaring at our stunned faces in laughter as it fell in huge drops.
Since I had my trusty Zara hoodie and an umbrella, I chose to take the bus. And er Ryan volunteered too. Dunno why. So sacrificial.
Mehhh.
Long story short, umbrella no umbrella, it made noooo bloody difference. The only thing that kept me dry was... hey hey hey! My hoodie.
Seriously guys. I don't pay $75 for nothing. And. Zara isn't a classy brand for nothing. Even as it was still slightly damp it still kept me warm in class.
Since I could effectively not feel the rain on my upper body, I wondered where the hell I was going wrong with my umbrella. Because rain was running down my partially waterproof bag.
And right onto my ass.
Really, it's not at all amusing when you feel water trickle down your butt crack. Not. Funny.
In any case rain was more or less pouring off us when we got onto the bus.
You are my sunshine, my only sunshine,
You make me happy, when skies are grey......
orchestrated by Renhao at 7:22:00 pm
© 2004-2007. All rights reserved. You have been warned.
An executive was in quandary. He had to get rid of one of his staff. He had narrowed it down to one of two people, Debra or Jack. It would be a hard decision to make, as they were both equally qualified and both did excellent work.
He finally decided that in the morning, whichever one used the water cooler first would have to go.
Debra came in the next morning, hugely hung-over after partying all night. She went to the cooler to get some water to take an aspirin and the executive approached her and said: "Debra, I've never done this before, but I have to lay you or Jack off."
Debra replied, "Could you jack off? I feel like shit."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I don't normally cut and paste stuff, although it is a well-known practice for people to just dump song lyrics as a blog post, reflecting their present feelings. I came back tired after a long and mildly traumatising day to see this email, from the joke newsletter I subscribe to, and it was so retardedly funny I just had to put it up. I especially like the last part, when I can very clearly imagine Debra, eyebags and all, sighing and saying 'I feel like shit.' Priceless.
orchestrated by Renhao at 7:12:00 pm
© 2004-2007. All rights reserved. You have been warned.
Just when I thought I'd give up and go as the Grim Reaper and suffer the dire consequences of wearing the same costume, my cousin Sandra brought us to Toys R Us today.
I think it was because my brother, who had an upcoming (cheesy) play, something about not giving up your dreams, had to get two pairs of boxing gloves. And when I saw the package labelled 'Adult Cape', my shopping frenzy switch was totally flicked on.
So I bought one of those masquerade masks and that would make it easier to borrow one of Benny's rapiers. Dressing as Kuchiki-taicho and carrying Napolean's sword doesn't quite hit the mark. And then there's the 12 bucks to spend on the Vilage voucher too.
Lucky I got some money from that guitar sale.
In other news, my Fight AIDS team and I appeared in the papers today! And they spelt my name Wng Renhao.
Wng.
What the wng is your problem people? Huh? You got a printed, black-and-white copy of our names, you took it down in a notebook once more, you spelt everyone else's name correctly, and then you call me Wng Renhao, 18.
It's their fault. It's not mine, because I only can write my o like an a, because of my cursive handwriting. And Bao's handwriting was hardly cursive. There was no way an O could have been missed out since I was staring at the notebook while she wrote ALL of our names.
ONE WHOLE FUCKING LETTER MISSING YOU BLOODY DONKEYS.
orchestrated by Renhao at 5:28:00 pm
© 2004-2007. All rights reserved. You have been warned.
S I A N E D ~
orchestrated by Renhao at 4:49:00 pm
© 2004-2007. All rights reserved. You have been warned.
Interesting experience today. We were all very furtive at first, with all our exhibits, keen for others groups not to see our stuff so we can pull out our trump card later and pw3n 7h3m n00bz. But slowly with nothing else to do, we warmed up to each other and started walking around seeing other exhibits.
We spoke at length especially with our direct neighbour, the NUS team, which I only know as the team who managed to get the main field, discussing the idiocy of our Estate managements, this cannot that cannot. That certainly was a freaking headache for us. For us to secure the koi pond's use we had to detail every single material used in the production of our ambient ad and assure them that it is impossible for their stupid gold bars of koi to eat it to their death. In fact, that was the point we discussed the most touring other groups. Well, advertising problems in general, whether permissive or financial problems, or others. The NUS guy even informed me when the News938 reporter was two booths away, allowing me to put everyone en garde so that I wouldn't be stranded alone answering questions that I would have to smoke, while the others gasped and marveled at the genius of other groups.
One group I was impressed was the other NUS group. Their posters caught attention because with the use of agar-agar and black paint, they spectacularly recreated the effects of Karposi's Sarcoma sores. And they did it with more sensous pictures than ours can you imagine? I thought our hands-in-ya-pants ad would be provocative enough. These people's three pictures were one woman stretching over a man.
Both naked.
Of course they had the sense to cover the nips with words.
And the four men, being intimate.
And the guy! Sprawling on a sofa! PANTS DOWN! With a girl in between his legs! He's MOANING FOR GOD SAKE!
Spectacular. Simply spectacular. When I called Zhi over and showed her the sores pictures, she went WHOA! Reason I showed her the sores pictures was because HPB in true Singapore style said that for the press conference the sores were abit too much, saying one shouldn't stereotype diseases like that, although I don't really understand what that meant. So they had to photoshop the sores out (the originals were still allowed for the campus ads) and print special un-sored posters.
While we were setting the projector up earlier in the morning, Hai and I were seriously puzzled why the projector only emitted a fuzzy circle of light, although it was clear from the color-matching that Bao's laptop was successfully connected with the projector.
We realised after 15min that the translucent slide-cover was over the lens.
Himbo moment hoo0~!
If even Hai could have overseen such a thing, I think we can all be forgiven for that occasional idiotic incident.
Well I'll leave you with some pictures.
Cool right the handsdownyapants? My favourite. :P Zhi's friend, the female model, must have felt damn happy hugging a defined chest and chiselled abs. When the ad agency woman saw the picture, she totally snapped out of her sleepiness and went WHO IS THIS GUY?!! And she called her friend over and they giggled over the many shots of his hot bod in Bao's camera.
orchestrated by Renhao at 6:48:00 pm
© 2004-2007. All rights reserved. You have been warned.
Wow it was a great weekend. Saturday I went to Campus and brought Ryan along, and today Ryan brought me along to Lighthouse, where time passes like nooooobody's business I tell you.
You can read more about some stuff that happened, on RoG, which I updated. Again. Which is good I suppose. I covered Saturday's highlight. Two posts, my friend, is enough to knock you out, so I'm sorry if you want to read about Lighthouse that can wait -yawn-. Anyway I took notes, so less chance of me forgetting stuff. Like I usually do.
Sa, jaa-ne~
orchestrated by Renhao at 6:59:00 pm
© 2004-2007. All rights reserved. You have been warned.
So I followed Sandra's advice and after washing my face today I swabbed my face with my mom's Step 2.
Have you ever felt the thin line between cold and fiery pain? Tell you something. I felt both sensations slamming into me like a freight train (two freigts, one from each side). I thought it was just cold, then oh my God you could just see my cheeks my nose my forehead catch fire. I did everything but scream wildly for the whole neighbourhood to hear.
Now I know how Macaulay Culkin's character in Home Alone felt. It. Is. Not. Funny. Trust me on that.
Maybe it's because I exfoliated just now?
orchestrated by Renhao at 2:10:00 pm
© 2004-2007. All rights reserved. You have been warned.
Updated: Dear Jesus
orchestrated by Renhao at 1:53:00 am
© 2004-2007. All rights reserved. You have been warned.
From now on I will insert update notices for my branch blogs into my normal posts, like so:
(You people are a bloody lazy bunch you know that?)
UPDATED: RoG (1 post I mentioned before)
UPDATED: JoI (1 post today)
orchestrated by Renhao at 11:06:00 am
© 2004-2007. All rights reserved. You have been warned.
Things have been going well these couple of days, and praise God indeed for this flood of blessings, however small.
First was yesterday, when I had to sign up for my church's youth camp. Spaces were seriously limited, so even though I had no funds on hand, I gave my roommate-to-be the go-ahead to put my details down first. What I was worried about was whether my parents would allow me to go or not.
When I got home, I showed the info sheet to my mother. As usual, she said 'You go talk to your father la.'
When I showed it to my father, just when I was getting ready to hear 'Go talk to your mom' (My response of 'Already did' was actually waiting on my lips), he said 'I'll pay.'
I went silent for awhile, although my dad didn't notice as he was still busy reading the details (or was he?). After awhile I found my voice to say, 'What's that?'
'I'll pay I'll pay.' he said, waving an invisible fly away.
'O... ok.' I muttered, still in shock.
Praise God eh. The work of the tithe.
Then today, I sold off my electric guitar, which Ben gave to me so long ago, after he essentially got it free from China. Made $200 out of it. Originally I planned to get a sword from Caesar's, for Halloween, but decided it wasn't worth it because Benny had that sword anyway, and also I have a million things that would be much more useful than a sword.
So then I thought of a sound card. AN x-Fi sound card, to be precise. That was my original plan after all, to get my speakers first, then the x-Fi sound card. And then my sound system would be uberised.
Then I decided to wait, again.
When I got back, another idea hit me. I've been wanting a new handphone for ages! This would be a perfect chance for me to pick one up.
So after playing around with the model that I had been eyeing, I called my dad to ask for permission. He said that he didn't mind in principle, but he advised me strongly to think it over.
And after some persuasion I did.
And I'm glad I did. Because my father dug my contract sheet up, and I'm due for new plan eligibility.
Blessings keep fallin' on my head
they keep fallin'
they keep fallin' on my headdd...
We're getting new phones Wednesday.
orchestrated by Renhao at 11:29:00 pm
© 2004-2007. All rights reserved. You have been warned.
The video you see is an example of a You Mix. Here are the rules copied from the blurb of this video.
- Use the soundtrack of one video and the motion pictures from another one
- Editing of the movie or the sound is not allowed
- Only the audio can be shifted in time
I dunno how big this thing is. Maybe its huge underground, or maybe this guy is trying to start something. By all means an interesting idea, but we'll probably waste our time viewing half-penny wannabe videos with no sync/artistic link/etc. at all. This video however is amazing (as I've waxed countless times to all online). Just as if this video was made for Crazy Frog. I saw some of the original, with the original song, and the video paired with Crazy Frog is so much better. For some reason it makes the video super steamy. Like, more than it already is. Or if you wish to talk dirty (some people don't get it till you do, apparently), it sizzles muh jizzle.
Enjoy. ;)
orchestrated by Renhao at 4:20:00 pm
© 2004-2007. All rights reserved. You have been warned.
PSI 150. Pretty shocking.
When this haze phase began a couple of weeks back (I think), and up to the point of PSI 50, I kinda enjoyed the smokey smell. To me it represented a thousand things, none of which I could have identified. A memory hotpot.
But when the haze reached it's unprecedented critical levels these past couple of days, my senses have been screaming OVERKILL every time I stepped out of the house.
I don't remember the last major haze in 1998 (again, I think) as this bad. Decreased visibility of the opposite block when its 50m away is terrible.
My father was suggesting we should put in a compensation claim to Indonesia for this. For what though? For us carrying on with our lives with nothing changing except that we bitch about the haze all day and develop coughs and breathing problems? Let's be real here shall we. Unless the health guys say the condition is too bad so please stay at home and don't go to school/work, we nothing to claim from them. Unless we're struck with mass bronchitis, of which I'm not hearing any news. Besides, I'm sure most of the relevant authorities are already working round the clock to catch the culprits. People often forget the size of our country. Just because we find murderers within half a week of the crime doesn't mean others can.
We have to learn to stop blaming others.
orchestrated by Renhao at 10:33:00 pm
© 2004-2007. All rights reserved. You have been warned.
Shifted to Blogger beta. And somehow my Unicode characters don't show properly anymore. And since you people don't even follow my Please set your encoding to Unicode to fully enjoy my blog! anyway, I removed all the cute little flankers. So there. No more weird characters for you.
In any case, I am embarking on an ambitious project. Some of you will vaguely remember Mezzo Sforzato. Yes it's that fiction blog of mine with like an inch of dust all over it now.
With the addition of two more blogs, I now have four blogs under my name.
Crazy isn't it? But I'm tired of mashing my tirades, accounts, revelations, stories, and all into one blog. There's no focus. People read an excellent post on looking to God one day, and come back the next week to find a tirade with more colors than your digital camera claims to have.
So Fortissimo will be the head blog, where it serves, I hope, all intents of a weblog - recording daily life and casual observations for an audience to read and the author to look back and laugh to himself.
Mezzo Sforzato is where I will host all my original works. Poems, stories, well I doubt I'd put a play in there, unless it's like a 5-minute play. Even then I don't really want to think about the formatting ahead of me. Don't expect this to be updated all that often, I don't write for a living, and I doubt I will, unless my blog somehow generates some revenue. Xiaxue. Bleh...
Revelation of Grace, as you probably guessed, is the Christian branch. I put a couple of posts in there, and here I have a sub-ambition. My first series there will be on Christian cults. An expose, if you will, on their erroneous beliefs. Don't expect to get them all at one go. I'm not about to go out there and criticize something which I have a half-past-six knowledge of. For now, I do feel that the post Calling to Jesus will bless you. Tremendously, even. It's a simple truth, so I'm not sure if you're sniggering now and screaming DUHH, but most of God's messages are dead simple. Live simple. Whatever. Expect this to be updated once a week average. And I'm being guardedly pessimistic here. I'm predicting that after Fortissimo, this will be the second most updated blog.
Journal of Influence is what it suggests, an analytical journal where I detail incidents which have caught my attention. Of course, these incidents require a little something in them - the use of the art and science of persuasion and influence. Anything which has this factor, I will endeavour to break down to its very nuts and bolts. Non-Communication students (if you haven't already figured out that this was a COM course) can also read, no worries, because I will briefly explain the principles theories what have you before I go on. I don't really relish the thought of blank faces reading my deepest bestest analysis.
At the end of it all, I require your support if this is to become a success. Fortissimo's layout doesn't come with comment support, and I have a tagboard here anyway, but the branch blogs are fully Blogger templates, so feel free to leave your comments there. For future reference there are links to the three branches in the left column. I look forward to your responses.
Next post: foosball developments.
orchestrated by Renhao at 4:18:00 am
© 2004-2007. All rights reserved. You have been warned.
5pm today was supposed to have been quite a scorcher, but the haze reduced the baking sun to a glaring orange glow in the sky. To haze or not to haze?
Quite a good mood today, as I wandered around Tampines Mall, waiting for my mother. Of course, as usual it turned out that she went home straight and claimed that she did not see my two missed calls.
Strolling around the third level, I spotted Cards 'n' Such and decided to go in to have a look for a handphone holder, which I've been wanting for a long time. Turns out they did have them, and even with holes to pull your charging wire through. Just what I wanted.
It suddenly occurred to me then to take a stroll around the floor to see if there was anything else to spend on. If I really thought I wanted the handphone holder, my decision would not suffer the test of time. There popped in two other contenders along the way. First was an NIV Bible. To my pleasant surprise there was a cheap (no-frills, naturally) pew version of the Bible for just $15.90 (expensive? Bibles average at $35). I wanted an NIV version for reference because the translations are so different, that especially when I'm talking to Ryan, and he's holding an NIV (New Intl Version) and I'm holding an NLT (New Living Translation), we are saying two different things. The meaning is there, but the differing choice of words can seriously be confusing.
The Zildjian Trilok Gurtu Signature drumsticks were the other contender.
I was very impressed by it when I tried it out on the digital drum set the other day. Light, thin, good grip, and I, an non-drummer, could do pretty impressive things with it.
The thing is, my brother has an NIV Bible that he hardly touches. And the drumsticks - I don't play drums, so of what freaking use would a pair of drumsticks be to me?
So I got the handphone holder. A black porcelain cat kinda smiling like ^^. Lovely indeed.
orchestrated by Renhao at 6:17:00 pm
© 2004-2007. All rights reserved. You have been warned.
It seems that it's true that I work best late night.
Up till now I have been snapping this in response to my parents' nagging about studying. That consists of 1/3 lie, 1/3 hope, and 1/3 minimal experience.
Of course, tonight, before delving into my work, I succumbed to several episodes of School Rumble Nigakki! before I could make myself get off. It seems I have to be in a state of tired alertness, meaning I'm alert enough to shovel on with my work, but where fatigue blankets my usual 1001 random thoughts from zipping around my head at twice the speed of sound and totally distracting/confusing/arousing/dazing me.
I thus met what I thought was an impossible target of completing half my work tonight. Well, this morning.
Alright, I'm going to collapse. Already a headache is glowing malevolently at the back of my head.
Adieu~
orchestrated by Renhao at 2:16:00 am
© 2004-2007. All rights reserved. You have been warned.