Aaron's Favourite Spot 1

I have a favourite spot.

I just spent maybe half an hour on the swing in my room. Yes the swing that previously sat Elmo.

If you have no clue when Elmo plunked himself on a swing that appeared from nowhere, check back on my Xtreme Makeover: Room Edition entries.

When I was youngER,

(Just a sidetrack but this old white-haired lady ridiculously shouted "Uncle Uncle" from her window when I was walking below her flat. Apparently she was calling out to someone to pick up her bamboo poles that fell to the ground. I choose to believe she was calling out to this other person who also came by to help her. Not denial. At all.)

So anyway, when I was youngER, my favourite item at the playground was the swing. Merry-go-rounds were pretty fun too. Pity new playgrounds don't include that now.

I guess the swing still retains its place in me. Sat there watching nearly half of Grey's Anatomy, lit a tealight near the TV, and sipped to a glass of white wine.

Love that.

I'm lovin it

You know how you always hear, "Be careful of what you do/say/eat, it might come back and haunt you", well... it is true.

Let's just say that technology and I have a love-hate relationship, only that love is seldom present.

Why-technology-hates-aaron #1

• I stayed up for maybe 12 hours for a powerpoint presentation for class four years ago. When I was done, I lost more than half the slides when I tried to save the damn thing. After scolding the entire universe and waking my then-roomie, I managed to miraculously retrieve the slides. All good? WA HA HA HA. Got to class, prepared to present and realised some slides didn't include certain info/graphics...

Why-technology-hates-aaron #2

• When my group was editing a video, the machine kept hanging on us or going extremely slowly. Reason? Computers hate Aaron. Seriously. Solution? My group mate asked me to flash at her. I sacrificed and flashed. Not at my group mate. The computer. It worked.

Why-technology-hates-aaron #3

• Ok how about a more recent and obvious incident. Even my laptop hates me so much, it disfigured its face hoping to get a breather out of my sight.

So you ask, can there be anything worse than all these and more that have already happened?

Yes, I'm working with technology. Every Single Day.

Good luck Aaron.

Aaron's Favourite Moments 2

There are just some moments that make you go wow...

On the way to work, at the second level of bus 97, something made me tilt my head. The clouds were white, fluffy, and massive.At the centre of the clouds, there were a couple of holes. Through these holes, blazing sun beams shot across to the other ends of their spectrum.

The view was... wow. And I appreciated it more since heading to work at 8am isn't exactly what I smile about. A simple joy.


Watching TV at the table with my parents earlier, I saw my dad do something sweet. My mum was nodding off and her head was precariously on the brink of knocking against the wall behind her. My dad, the hero to her rescue, swiftly moved his hand and placed his palm between my mum's head and the wall. He held it there for as long as her head was nodding backwards. Sweet.

Took a mental picture of these moments.

Turning the page

This is going to sound cliche but tomorrow is really a turn of the page to a new chapter in my life.

The chapter that shouts. "YOU WILL NEVER!"

Yeah, that's right.

I will never have to think about heading to the pool or the beach for a lazy weekday afternoon.
I will never get to chance upon Oprah reruns at 1pm.
I will never be able to buy cheapo movie tickets.
I will never get to skip breakfast.
I will never be so free to think up a list of I-will-nevers...

But then again, I'm also expecting a lot from my first job. So for all the I-will-nevers, I'll also get all the I-wills..

I will never have to think about heading to the pool or the beach for a lazy weekday afternoon.
I will never get to chance upon Oprah reruns at 1pm.
I will never be able to buy cheapo movie tickets.
I will never get to skip breakfast.
I will never be so free to think up a list of I-will-nevers...

Haa... Oh well, all will be great! I have to make it great! Pray for me all!

Baywatch

This needs to be up for constant motivation for you and I, and for everyone who's working their butts off.

Redang was truly a holiday. There was one ugly fish (see bottom left photo) that probably felt sorry it looked that way after hearing my scream underwater, one hilarious fall from the swing and 20 hours of bumpy ride that smashed dozens of insects on the windscreen.

But for all that, there was love, tranquility, nature, beauty and rest.

ps: For more photos, ask me. You'll be tempted to take a real holiday.

Happy choice

hap·py (hăp'ē) adj., -pi·er, -pi·est.

1. Characterized by good luck; fortunate.
2. Enjoying, showing, or marked by pleasure, satisfaction, or joy.
3. Being especially well-adapted; felicitous: a happy turn of phrase.
4. Cheerful; willing: happy to help.

Think about it. If you don't possess any of the first three definitions, there will always be people around you who can perform definition four to chip in for your dosage of happiness however small it may be.

I love Dangerous Minds for tonnes of reasons. And you may know how I always love to use the quote from Michelle Pfeiffer's character, Louanne Johnson. She said the most powerful word in the English language is Choose.

Someone points a gun at your head. You can keep quiet and and hope the gun moves away, or you can scream for help and hope the gun moves away. It may not be a choice that you like but it is still a choice.

So if you can't choose to have definitions 1 - 3, you still have the last choice. :>

Xtreme Makeover: Room Edition - The Big Reveal

Just to prove that I can have a designer career as my back-up option, I'm posting pictures of my 98% completed room.

The Big Reveal

Highlights:

1. Display case

2. F.R.I.E.N.D.S Shrine

3. Childhood Shrine

4. Swing "on" tree that Elmo's sitting on

5. Warm light that completes the mood

For the record, I owe it to my brother who spent Sunday afternoon drilling holes for my mirror, swing and lamp. And of course, I was the one who connected the wires for the lamp. Haa who am I kidding. I would have to type in the dark now if not for him. My always willing dad had to drive me with the new furniture (I assembled the TV bench myself can) and my sweetest mum kept trying to clean up the place even though I kept saying that I would do it once every thing was in place.

On the first night that my room was more or less done (I just need to place the mat and cushions and arrange the small items nicely), I sat on my bed for maybe 15 minutes before I slept...

Thinking, wow I really like what I did.

Yangtze - The Old, The Cheesy and The Crazy

Do you know Yangtze Cineplex?

For the uninitiated, next to Outram MRT lies this building that has an ancient cinema in it. Apparently, only old men pay to watch the R21 movies there. Ever since my crazy friend, ZGZ (ZGZ refuses any chance of identification in this scandalous affair) heard about ZGZ's teacher-couple friends who were crazy enough to watch a movie there, we've been joking about watching a cheesy flick there.

Today we did it. It was pretty nerve-wrecking just finding our way through the array of massaging parlours there. When we got to the obscure box office, there were probably three shows to choose from - Temptress, Wildly Available and Lie With Me (shown at main stream cinemas too). From the screen shots, we were kinda scared looking at those from Temptress; a scantily clad lady who's dressed for SM. So we timidly settled for Wildly Available. Tickets were just at $6.50 each (is it the same elsewhere?) and the lady behind the counter even asked for our ICs! Bet no one our age appears there.

For the record, the movie was bad. Other than boobies, the movie was rather sexually tamed. Not that the movie was bad because there were no explicit sex scenes but the audio was bad, the shots were bad, the camera shook every now and then, the story line was one-dimensional, the cuts were sudden, the lighting was awful, the music was horribly cheesy and maybe because the film was old (ZGZ researched and the film was made in 1999!), the focus looked bad and the costume and make-up definitely did not look current. Z-grade. In that screening, there were maybe eight old men + two crazy people in their early 20s. I googled it and to my horror found one of the actresses to be Jane Kaczmarek, of Malcolm In The Middle fame!!!! No wonder I thought she looked familiar! (note to ZGZ: She's the wife in the movie!) Actually Jennifer Sommerfield (another credited actress) sounds vaguely familiar too.

The good thing is, it was quite an experience! That was one different side I saw of our little perfect country. And I told ZGZ that the entire building made a good feature story. I should have done that for my broadcast journalism class two years back. Smuggling the cameras, finding out the reason that keeps the old men returning for more of such movies, questioning the business trends for the massage parlours there... and more importantly, finding out about the cinema's glorious history during its heydays. I'm pretty sure the place has seen better times.

So for those of you who want to experience something different in Singapore, this is a must-try!

I need to stop taking crazy ZGZ seriously.

*IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: This social experience was intended as a reality check on the current status of Yangtze. Seriously.

Follow-up: Laptop crack & NUS Bisad TVC

Below is the next blockbuster.

This is a personality test. Which genre do you think the movie belongs to.

A) Arthouse film

B) Weepy sad story

C) Laugh your heart, lungs, stomach out-comedy

If you chose (A), you can appreciate the crack on my laptop as something stylistic and actually see the beauty of this mistake.

If you chose (B), you are a caring friend who shares the heat from what the crack could possibly burn in my pocket.

If you chose (C), damn. Stop laughing.

Anyway, there was something that brought a smile to me. In my "Picks & Puis" I commented on how inappropriate NUS Bisad's TVC was. In ths week's 8 Days, the following was printed in their Boos & Bravos column by Florence Fong & Dionne Kho on what's bad and good on television.

"BOO to the strangely out-of-place setting of the NUS Business School ad. Opening with the manicured lawns of white-picket-fenced suburbia, the ad portrays the unrestrained joy a Caucasian teenager shares with her mum at her acceptance into the institution. Are we supposed to think that it's a better school because white students think the world of it? If, on the other hand, NUS intended to trumpet its international appeal, surely there are less kitschy ways of getting the message across."

I'm glad I'm not alone on this.

Anyone broke their laptop screens too?

Xtreme Makeover: Room Edition Day 4

Ok, today was a short work day because I had to get out and breathe some non-paint-filled air. Lovely catch up by the way.

My room had some touch ups. I decided to add some texture to the paintings and gave the tree trunk some bark and the birds some lighting. See any difference in the close ups?

The next thing was my book shelf, which will be converted into a storage desk. Had it repainted and designed on the sides. Shall put that up tomorrow. It's stylo mylo lines this time so that the room won't look too kidish (It's not a bad thing either :>)

Tomorrow is a huge pack up day. Hopefully I clear up my room by the evening. (Refuse to imagine the process)

Oh, and people who're wondering what my laptop screen looks like, I'm putting up the pic in the next post.

Xtreme Makeover: Room Edition Days 2 & 3

Third day of my room's makeover.

The second wasn't a tremendously good one. For one, I had to remove my lights and it was such a chore trying to get it down. This is not a himbo statement, trust me. The screws were so tightly secured, I was telling myself out loud to keep turning. "Screw it" wasn't exactly what I could or would say at that point of time.

Ok after maybe an hour at least, the tubes and everything came down. But because I knew nuts about electrics, I just cut the wires since I couldn't get them off the boxy thingy.

Bad move. Seven hours later, I realised that cutting the wires also meant I cut off the electricity supply to the lights in my parents' room and one living room. My brother also managed to conjure nightmarish images in my mind of secondary school physics lessons, with the mere mention of "parallel circuit".

That was not the worst thing that happened yesterday. Still to do with the damn lamp, I had to stand on stuff to try to get it down right. One wrong step and I heard the slightest sound of a crack.

I'm now typing on my laptop whose screen is cracked inside. You know what a bullet shot looks like? Yeap, it looks like I shot my screen with the one wrong step. Actually, the flow of the liquid crystal stuff through the crack lines look kinda arty. Ok I know this piece of art is definitely gonna burn a big hole in my pockets.

And painting was still a pain. I really have newfound respect for ladies putting on make-up. It is a chore. My ceiling was so cake-ish that paint that was rolled over kept falling off.

Anyway, at least the rose white is on the walls now. The ceiling had to be touched up today. Man... And I finally got to paint the graphics I had in mind. It's all to do having a warm feel and a touch of childlikeness.

The walls are almost done. I need to do up the furniture with the same colors. This is seriously manual work.

And me? I've got paint all over.

Not exactly the best Kodak moment