Celebrations

Which so happens to be rather quiet this year, innit? In fact we'd almost missed the fact that it's Independance Day - no festive decorations or billboard adverts, we didn't see many flags a-wavin' from cars or shops, heck, we don't watch telly so we won't know about the latest patriotic ads.

'Course, it's not as if we're much of a patriot ourselves - we don't have that muhibbah spirit, plus we're admittedly racist, we don't feel that grateful feeling for living in an independant country, Independance Day is just another public holiday for us to celebrate.

If we were to think of anything to be proud of, it's probably for the food. And that we'd only ever suffered from floods and never earthquakes or other far more lethal natural disasters.

Um. There's lots of things (to be proud of and that isn't great) that we're leaving out, true.

But in short, we're actually feeling that it's rather a good thing that this year's celebrations have been kept rather quiet, whatwith the political circus that's been going on the whole year that our neighbouring countries have been following with much amusement.

Conference

This week started off with a three-day conference that was work-industry-related. Three days of meeting and catching up with coursemates and other acquaintences who're in the same industry too. As it's industry-related, this means that the company pays for us to attend talks, and more importantly, eat free food and take home goodie bags.

We must say that food in Sheraton Subang isn't all that great. Only their afternoon tea break snacks were good (fried chicken drumlets and samosa). And they ran out of coffee too darn fast.

As for the freebies, we'd gotten a nice bag that looks like a laptop bag sans paddings, and interestingly - normal saline eye drops. Surbex-Zinc tablets, Bio-Enhanced Fish Oil capsules and Booster Blitz Energy Drink powder that's "enriched with Vitamin B for an instant boost of energy". Rather smart choice of freebies...stuff that keeps you awake for the lectures.

If only they were considerate enough to provide coffee during the talks as well rather than only during the morning tea break/lunch/afternoon tea break.

Normally it'll be fun to attend any conference to have a change of pace from the job. Unfortunately for us, we couldn't beg off work as we had pressing matters back in the office during the same time - thus at night after the conference we'd be back in the office doing unpaid OT till the wee hours of the morning.

A bit stressful as we definitely lacked proper sleep. Add that on to a few other things and on our drive back home from the office at 3am we were actively cussing all the way home.

We think the stress showed up in quite a few ways: On Monday evening we started feeling rather blue for missing BodyJam for 2 weeks already, and found ourselves at the Curve before choir began to watch others enjoying the class. On Tuesdays we needed destressing therapy hence another trip to the Curve for BodyJam, a bit of window shopping (Mac City selling iPod Classic 160GB at RM999 while stocks last! Normal prices RM1399!) and then later on we just chilled a while at the Chief's place - before heading back to the office. On Wednesday, even more destressing therapy in the form of a bottle of Fresh Lime Body Oil Gel from Skin Food. Very therapeutic.

And now we've time to once more connect online! With no need to OT anymore, BodyJam after two weeks, and all that destressing therapy, we can certainly feel our personal happiness going up again.

Chief's Chain

So now it's the Chief's turn for the chain story. And we pastes it here.

Alexander
It wasn't a dark and stormy night - that's really a clichéd beginning for a story. For Julien, it was bright enough to see the faint outline of Philip's naked body. Philip was sleeping soundly on the silk satin bedsheet, but Julien just couldn't even get his eyes close on that full moon night. He was looking out the dusty windows, lightly holding the almost empty wine glass. Then, he caught a glimpse of a shadow... who was this stranger in the night?

Janvier
Julien silently shut the window and kept in the shadows, to avoid being silhouetted in the moonlight. "Must get the job done quickly now," he thought while appreciating Philip's physique, "before he gets back." He downed the remains of the wine, then took out his garrotte. Why do I always get the good-looking ones? he pondered as he got into bed, cradled Philip's head and slid the garrotte around Philip's neck. Then Julien yanked and Philip jerked awake, only to have Julien flip him facedown on the bed and pressed his body down on his, his face smothered by the pillow and Julien still strangling him, when the bedroom door slammed open.

Fable Frog
Julien retreat off of the bed leaving Philip's lifeless body. Swiftly he reached for his shirt, knocking the wine glass off the side table. "What have you done?!!", a loud voice came from the door, "Not this one, not right here!!". Julien stood by the bed quiet as a mice, with his head hanging low. The light from the door shine into the dark room, as if spotlighted onto Philip's body while a shadow grew longer reaching the face of Philip.

Adrien
But then it stopped. The creeping shadow halted, as if time stood still, and the approaching figures outside the door had frozen in place. Julien kept silent, his eyes and ears, vigilant, knowing that even the slightest of movements could trigger the shadows - the frozen figures that spoke of undesired calamity.

“For Hera’s sake, could you please keep that aside?! I strictly told you to refrain yourself from using the powerful one... Wait. He’s still in there. I can sense his energy. His fear. Even so, our beloved Phillip is far too devious to just play dead. Fine. Use it.”

It was a man, and he was not alone.

Ban
One of the men produced a verrrry suspicious-looking phallic instrument about 8 inches long which he flicked on. Brilliant white light shone forth from it to illuminate the scene at the bed but Julien wasn't anywhere in sight.

"I really wish you didn't bring that obscene looking flash light of yours here. Couldn't you be a little more serious about work?"

"Oh, don't bother about me and keep concentrating on finding him."

Lifebook
"Just switch on light, dimwit!!"

Julien looked around him. Now he had to get a way out of the room, and it had to be quick before the guys found him. For the moment, jumping out from the windows was his only option.

After a minute of rummaging around, one of the guys managed to find the light switch.....

QR
"I found it!" he says and flicked the switch but nothing happened. The light wouldn't turn on and both of them turned their attention to the faulty switch.

This was the diversion Julien has been waiting for. Swiftly, he sprinted fast and silently like a cat towards the opened window. It was freezing cold with winter winds but he had to get out of there.

Legolas
"Stop right there if you still want to be in one piece." Julien froze as his mind was turning quick about what to do next when the light suddenly came on.

"You idiot, told you to switch on the lights and you got the socket." The man had a gun in his hand, pointing straight at Julien. "So you think you can get away this time? I don't think so."

"You must know, bullets won't do me any harm," Julien replied calmly, while still thinking about a way to get out of this situation.

"Heh heh... I have the powerful one to help me this time. It's game over for you now."

Jason
"Is that so? Let's see how fast your bullets are," Julien replied and he dashed to the door with supersonic speed, knocked the second guy who is blocking at the door to the floor.

The first guy fires his gun towards Julien continuously but all of them misses the target, and without any hesitant, Julien sped to the main door but his steps stopped there.

"Hi Julien."

"Freddie... Get out of my way."

"Awwww... Why the rush? How long we haven't seen each other? Don't you miss me?"

Chief
Julien was immediately stunned by that statement. Yes. Julien used to have a wonderful time with Freddie. Freddie, being a pilot, was required to fly around at least twice a month, for a period of two weeks each time. Whenever Freddie was in another country, he would definitely give Julien a call, started off saying, "Don't you miss me?"

It's JL's turn next!

Closed Door, Opened Door Policy

This is something that the Chief noted about the differences in both our family...philosophy. It started with our bedroom doors.

See, the Chief notices that the bedroom doors in our house aren't closed (when empty) or locked (when occupied). 'Course, the only time a bedroom door is closed is when the aircon is on, so that the room gets cold. Otherwise, mum has this thing about keeping the doors (and windows) open 'for ventilation'.

Not that we found any need to ventilate the room, since we're only home at night when the room isn't so stuffy or such. In fact we've done quite well with our room in James Blyth Court without much airing (well yes we did have the windows open a slight bit once in a while, but that was because it was much colder outside and was our only aircon.

So. Bedroom doors open or unlocked. See, maternal conditioning is a fine thing in many different ways. Enough reminders for someone to do something and sooner or later you'll see it done without telling, just so that you don't have to keep telling. Ahem.

This essentially means that even when we're in the room doing anything, anyone can (and do) barge in. Quite honestly we're used to family members just opening our door followed by immediate conversation, heck, our mornings are usually started by mum coming in while we're still sleeping to steal clothings or our towel to make up the laundry quota, then our dad to wake us up (supplementary to our mobile alarm), then mum again to do vacuuming or whatnot chores.

In contrast the Chief's family practise a stricter privacy policy. Door remains shut (most of the time) and locked, with family members knocking and waiting for permission to enter. Cor.

Now this does sorta spill over to other things we do.

We've had friends over to the house before, although not frequently because the telly's normally taken up by the parents which means all videogaming and DVD Nites have to be done elsewhere, which leaves us househosting for boardgames generally.

The Chief meet up with friends outside. Not many know where the Chief's place is - rarer still those who've been inside. Well then again there's rather a number of family members staying together, much akin to those rich Chinese families in them Chinese television series, so a gathering of friends would be much easier outside.

You'll realize that this makes our presence there much more noticiable.

Well even the Chief says that we're a relatively much more open fellow, shy violet that we are.

Wonder what everyone else feel about their privacy settings. Then again, we adher to the Open Door policy because we're staying home with the family. Who knows how when we stay out (a long time more, probably...)

Clan Chief, Casinos & Chicken

Now last Sunday we were a tad stressed out, as we were invited along to follow the Chief's Clan up to Genting. It's not just with a few family members, but rather the entire family was going up to celebrate the dad's birthday. Initially Chief told us that there'll be extended family members and staff coming along as well, so we won't feel so out of place, but on Sunday morning itself it turned out that only immediate family members were going!

Well, immediate family members and their married partners, of course. And kids.

And there we were. Going along together for a family trip. While it's not as if we never met the family before, it still felt slightly awkward, as we never really talked much to them, being the shy violet we are. Fact that most of the family spoke Chinese too didn't help. Yet if the Chief think it's OK for us to come along, we weren't too worried yet. After all it's not the Chinese New Year family reunion dinner we're talking about mah.

And what's there for Clan Chief to do in Genting? Hit the casinos. Us? We don't gamble, at least not with stakes that high. Even during Chinese New Year, money we set out for gambling we already count as money meant to lose. But in any case we weren't prepared to just fling hundreds to thousands towards the croupier in exchange for chips, so we contented ourself by watching the Chief do so in the Genting International Room.

At baccarat the Chief picked up a hundred. After lunch at the jackpots the Chief picked up another three.

In fact, all family members who played (all save those babysitting the kids at the theme park), came out with earnings.

Once we all were back down at the Chief's place, we were interrupted midst Super Mario Galaxy to be informed that the family would be going to KFC for dinner later, and that the Chief's dad "wanted the two of us to be there".

Thankfully for both lunch and dinner we hid away from the Chief's dad well across the other end of the dining tables, in case all we get were piercing stares. Then again, it could be that we were making a mountain out of a molehill. The only question the Chief's dad asked us was if we still wanted more chicken. Other than that, dinner went well.

Stress stress.

Camera Close-Ups Photolog

Chow Cutdown

Now the weekend saw us having a couple of food outings - beginning with bah kut teh in Klang on Saturday followed by Oriental Spoon dim sum on Sunday morning.

We've been craving for bah kut teh for quite some time really, and with Aeon Jusco Bukit Tinggi open we thought to head down for bah kut teh breakfast, then followed by a romp about Aeon to see the stores, then head back up home. So there were five of us: Junior and his Sindy, dctw, Chief and us.

It took the Chief 56 missed calls before we heard the wake up call(s). The Chief's patience is really a virtue. Plus it wasn't easy to wake us up with a wake up call, unlike a wake up kiss.

Then it was picking up the folks before heading down to Klang via the unscenic route that is Kesas. Bah kut teh breakfast was different as we tried this place recommended by Sindy, featuring bah kut teh that resembled more of braised pork rather than bah kut teh. While the herbal smell of bkt was strong, the amount of soup we had in our bowl failed to satisfy our craving. We think we shall need another round of bkt again sometime soon.

We were all very lucky to have Sindy along, as Sindy was very familiar with ordering as well as the good kind of meat/bone etc. A-hem.

Once the bkt cravings were satisfied, it was time to move on to Aeon. Since our first visit there was just to do dinner with the Klangites at BBQ Plaza before heading off to 'Nic's house for Ticket To Ride, this time we decided to take a proper look around the place (regardless of Sindy's claims that there's nothing in Aeon to look at).

Hmmm. We missed that leisurely shopping pace that we had shopping at Queensbay Mall. Maybe it's because the Chief and us did that alone.

Still, Aeon saw us all dressing up Junior - from formal blazers in G2000 to snazzy jackets in Padini Concept Store. Took some pics of him in it to tempt him into buying the jacket later on. Yet after all that Junior still walks out empty-handed! Nevermind, we think the jacket is niggling in his mind. And somehow now that the jacket is mentioned, we think we do have that particular jacket at home...

From dressing up, it was on to lunch at BBQ Plaza (that makes our second time) before paying a quick visit to the Fitness First there. The lockers there caught our attention, new kinds where the locks don't use a key but a keycard instead. Then everyone had a gander at the weighing machine where we could check our height and it'll calculate our BMI.

We. Are. Now. 59.8kg. From the 50-55kg that we are familiar with. NO WONDER WE LOOK LIKE WE'RE IN THE START OF OUR THIRD TRIMESTER. We're gonna cut down to only eating heavily with the Chief.

After Aeon we headed into Klang town for the cendol. We all took the small cendol biasa to cool off from the heat, then it was time to leave. Leaving Klang town it was time to drop everyone back, this time via the more scenic route of Federal Highway. And what did we see in our rear-view mirror? Junior asleep on Sindy's shoulder. Patut the car very quiet in the backseat.

Given our shock at starting our third trimester, that still didn't stop us from having a spanking good dim sum breakfast on Sunday morning at the Oriental Spoon in Sooka Sentral. The place was booked 2 weeks in advance by Junior, and the Chief wanted to check the place out too (it may be true that us Klangites, used to bkt breakfasts, were never exposed to the idea that dim sum comes in many varieties other than sieu mai and lo mai kai).

Begging to leave a tad early from dim sum to meet up with friends of the Chief, it was down to Pavilion...and to also mooch some yu tiao - yao char kuay in soya bean milk. Then we decided to buy another pack of yu tiao for a friend who worked at Pavilion too, only to find out when we reached the store that she was off duty on that day...so we had to finish that pack of yu tiao too.

Luckily the walk from Pavilion to Low Yat (where we got ourselves a xxGB internal hard disk) and the Time Crisis games we had in Sg Wang helped burn off a bit of calories...

Only to head out of KL and into PJ for the iPoh Ngar Choi Kai Fan, where we had pork balls, a plate of chicken, a plate of taugeh, and a plate of char siew siu yoke to share between the Chief and us.

We so need to do more cardio, except we don't have the time to do so now. Soon we'll be 9 months and ready to give birth at this rate.

Chained

So Alex brings up the topic of playing a Chain Story game as a BFF Project. We remember the last time we tried anything like that was on GMail after reading NJAPF's post where she and some friends played this game too...only the one we played on GMail never really took off (we wonder how this one will fare).

Minichapter 1: The Chain Story
Minichapter 2: Read on!

Julien silently shut the window and kept in the shadows, to avoid being silhouetted in the moonlight. "Must get the job done quickly now," he thought while appreciating Philip's physique, "before he gets back." He downed the remains of the wine, then took out his garrotte. Why do I always get the good-looking ones? he pondered as he got into bed, cradled Philip's head and slid the garrotte around Philip's neck. Then Julien yanked and Philip jerked awake, only to have Julien flip him facedown on the bed and pressed his body down on his, his face smothered by the pillow and Julien still strangling him, when the bedroom door slammed open.

Onwards to Froggie to continue the story!

Cramped

-pop-

"You are running dangerously low on disk space..."

...and we know we have a problem here. Currently our desktop has two hard drives, the main HD of 80GB which we regrettably partitioned to two, and an older HD from the previous PC of only 10GB.

Both are now reaching bursting point, and this because of pictures and music (from the iXus and ofr the iPod). We've even burned off some of our photos taken last year onto CDRs (in duplicate for some) but it's not helping.

We've even uninstalled a fair number of games, keeping the nostalgic ones like our DOS games which takes up minute space comparitively, the real-time strategy games and Heroes Of Might and Magic games. Even Diablo II got uninstalled early on!

Nevertheless. Looks like we should be getting a new hard disk. And an internal hard disk instead of a portable one, because the space is used to store our music files and we'll need iTunes to sync that with our iPods.

Sigh, it's gonna be a fair bit of work up ahead...moving files, organizing folders, especially the bit where we move music files from one place to another and need to update our iTunes regarding the file relocation ("The song could not be located because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?")...

Now to make sure the desktop can make it till we get a new hard drive.

Compartmentalization

Work: Janvier, I need you to go somewhere.
Janvier: Okay.
BodyJam: But don't be late for class!
Janvier: Packed already. Hopefully no ja- we mean traffic.
Nintendo Wii: ...I don't see you anymore nowadays...boo hoo...
Janvier: But Wii, you know it's hard when the parents always keep Bravia occupied!
Sony Bravia: I work all day. You bring Wii, I work all night too...
Work: And don't think about slacking off work for Wii's sake.
Taman Tun-nites: TGIF! DotA!
Janvier: Onz!
Nintendo DS: Gimme more love! Touch me!
iTouch: Stop touching him! Touch me!
YKLS: Sing! Sing! Sing! Sing! Sing! Sing! Sing! Sing!
BodyCombat: Lord r u coming to class.
Blog: Can we talk about something else other than Bangkok already?
Janvier: That's what we're trying to do...
iPod: You haven't been listening to anything we say for a long time...all you care for now is iTouch, especially since he's now added on that iPhone 2.0 software.
Janvier: That's not true!
iTouch: Touch me!
Janvier: You're our music player iPod. iTouch is more our PDA!
YKLS: Sing! Sing! Sing! Sing! Rehersal today, don't forget.
Janvier: Oh? Damn. Gotta miss Combat then.
BodyCombat: U not coming for class lord?
Blog: Your last update was yonks ago...
iXus: Have you renamed the photos and backed them up?
Janvier: Damned. And the Bangkok pics are on the laptop, not in the desktop. Thank goodness we've uploaded them already.
Desktop: You know, you haven't played much of that Heroes Of Might And Magic: Tribes Of The East expansion that you bought...
Boardgames: Look! That's how cobwebs are being made!
GameBoy Advance: I can't see! I'm blinded by this layer of dust!
YKLS: Sing! Sing! Sing! Sing! Memorized the songs already? Start memorizing!
Bloggers: People people let's do dinner.
Taman Tun-ites: Birthdays coming up!
YKLS: Sing! Sing! Sing! Sing!
Bloggers: Birthdays coming up!
YKLS: Sing! Sing! Sing! Sing!
Discworld Books: We're all due for a reread!
YKLS: Sing! Sing! Sing! Sing!
Blogs: Read all of us!
YKLS: Sing! Sing! Sing! Sing!
DVDs: Watch us!
YKLS: Sing! Sing! Sing! Sing!
Ambigram sketches: And we all feel so unfinished.

Honestly, we'd never thought that our timetable would look so hectic compared to last year. Then again, so far the only change to our timetable this year has been that we'd to rush from BodyJam to YKLS on Mondays (and no more BodyCombat on Mondays).

Now, with YKLS's production coming closer, there's more rehersals that'll be taking priority (second priority to the Chief of course) over other things (including gym time boo hoo) but we've to make do as we can. What we find however is that our cave time has dropped rather drastically. It's as time like these when we really wished for more than 24 hours in a day - not so that we could get more work done, but more things done. In fact, cave time has been slotted to midnight till 2am generally, although sometimes it gets later than that.

'Course, the Chief still takes precedence over all else and we don't mean that in a bad way. And thankfully we've both set aside days for just the two of us (bar celebrations or special occasions) so that's not jeopardized.

With choir rehersals soon taking about 3-4 days a week, we did thought of suspending our gym membership, at least till after the production. But heck that's a tough move to make and so far we don't see ourselves missing Jam/Combat still.

The only real part that lost out the most in all this?

Sleep: BOOOHOOOHOOOOO!!!

Bloggers Bunking Bangkok: Touch Our Body

"Please take off your bathrobe and lie down."

We get on the bed and lie facedown. We didn't need to do anything, for the service, all we had to do was just enjoy the pleasure and sensation.

She started slowly. Facedown, we couldn't see a thing, best to just close our eyes. Pushing the blanket aside from our right leg, she places her palms on our right calf. It was warm to the touch. Her palms alternate as she work upwards, left, right, left, right, until she gets past the thigh.

Then her hands trailed down and she would begin again.

Our limbs melt under her hands. She massages in small circles, easing the tension from the muscles, slowly making her way higher and higher, teasing us to succumb. Soon we feel as if we are floating on clouds...drifting in pleasure, the smell of balsam and rose intoxicating us into a mild stupor.

Her hands then work upwards, towards our back...our shoulderblades...our shoulders. Fingers ran across the shoulders towards our neck before running back down the spine.

Time is...nonexistant. Yet we know we only have an hour with her. Will we finish in time?

And soon enough, it was over.

Well, we do have Team William to thank for finding this gem of a massage parlour. The Royal Natural Spa. Just down the road from Take A Nap on Rama 4 Road.

After three days of walking, it was good to get off our feet and be pampered. Unfortunately, as we went there at 9pm there was only one masseuse for the Traditional Thai massage, so the Chief took that while we settled for the Aromatherapy Oil massage.

A warm foot bath consisting of lime, rose petals and lemongrass together with sea salt scrub, followed by the balsam oil massage, with hot ginger tea and pomelo to end it all. At the offer price of 750 baht then, it was very worth it. We were very much invigorated after the massage that Team PDA continued shopping at Patpong Night Market!

...And slept very very well that night. :)

Bloggers Bunking Bangkok: The Amazing Race

Ideally what we expected of this trip? One big gang of people going around together camwhoring left right and centre, probably with JL being the tour guide waving around a little flag a la Tour Leader and everyone else wearing thematic clothing ie. all with something in green or stripes.

Of course, knowing that there are 15 people, and that this isn't the first time to Bangkok for some of us, it's quite unlikely we'd all go together as a group/herd/swarm. After all, there's some who'd want to go sightseeing, while others just want to shop, and some who wants to tour the dark and humid places. However, once in Bangkok it was quite clear that we weren't gonna be all touring together, but split into groups.

Team Saladaeng
The group that stayed at Baan Saladaeng. Throughout the entire trip we've not seen Team Saladaeng save one night clubbing, bumping into them at Chatuchak, and dinner together on the final night (even then on different tables as they arrived later). Team Saladaeng went the sight-seeing route and went for some Siam Niramit cultural show. The rest of us gone shopping and went, "WTF is Siam Niramit?". Team Saladaeng consisted of:

Subteam Team Paul - with only a single rabid shopping member but yet the apparent leader of Team Saladaeng. Holding the title 'MallBlazer', he sped through the malls leaving other members desperately trying to keep up.

Subteam Team CamClub - consisting of the more trigger-happy members. As far as we know, winners of the Jumping Pose Photoshoot.

Team Tidur
The group that stayed at Take A Nap Hotel. The majority of us stayed here, broken down into subteams and subsubteams...yes, we choose to complicate it slightly.

Subteam Team William - comprising William and his posse. This team had their own itinerary, and won the Chatuchak Chase (being the first to arrive and last to leave). Kudos to this team for winning the the Best Spa & Massage Discovery Medal!

Subteam Team Ottamon - who suggested the Tour A (shopping), Tour B (sightseeing), Tour C (dark & humid) option. Team members were very well-versed in Tour C and takes the Go!Go!Sauna! Award.

Subteam Team Singles - two (currently) singletons on the trip whose plan for the trip was to follow some group or other, one of them holding the prestigious title of SSSS. Team Singles snagged the Happy Tree Friends Tee Bonus.

Subteam Team PDA - name suggested by the Chief. It could be due to the fact that we kept using the iTouch to keep notes, or that we were notoriously stuck together the entire time. Did a fair bit of walking ourselves doing the Mall Run and probably gotten the Highest VAT Refund Total.

Arrival - When Team Tidur left Suvarnabhumi to get their van to the hotel, Team Saladaeng was already in the lead in their taxi to theirs. Confidence in the driver waned when he drove past the hotel without noticing it, but since we'd paid upfront there was no extra charge.

Mall Run Day 1 - Team Saladaeng took the lead, with Team CamClub one step behind Team Paul every step. Team Tidur was already an hour late and thus headed straight to Central World to shop and dine, before all teams met to discuss the Club Cruise Challenge.

Club Cruise Challenge - Team Tidur (sans Team William) arrived first while Team Saladaeng slowly trickled in much later after the shows. Team William sat out of this challenge.

Chatuchak Chase - Team William took advantage of sitting out of the Club Cruise Challenge to get up and leave early for Chatuchak on Sunday morning! The rest of Team Tidur arrived second to be followed by Team Saladaeng. Team Paul deplores Team CamClub's lack of bargaining, and Team Singles snagged some Happy Tree Friends t-shirts! Team PDA decides to head back to the hotel to drop their purchases, rest and freshen up before using the free time to head to Siam Paragon and MBK for dinner and shopping together with Team Singles.

Cultural Show Craze - Here Team Saladaeng and Team Tidur took totally different challenges! Team Saladaeng headed for the Historical Cultural Show (the costumes and puppets kind) while Team Tidur opted for the Industrial Cultural Show (the chicks and ducks and ping pongs and candles and aquariums kind) instead.

Sightseeing Sprint - All teams sans Team Ottamon took part in the Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaew. Miscommunication between Team CamClub and Team PDA showed in the texts:
Team CamClub: We're going to grand palace today :-)
Team PDA: We're on the way there. Team William is currently leading. :D
Team CamClub: Where are you guys going today?
...Team CamClub arrived at the Grand Palace after all other teams have left, if we're not wrong.

Mall Run Day 3 - With everyone more or less with their own plans, Teams PDA and Singles headed back to do another Mall Run at MBK and Siam Paragon - with much better results!

Seafood Dinner Surprise - Kudos to Team William for finding out this gem of a place - Lek Seafood. Touted as "Affordable yet delicious," and so we decided to join them for dinner. 'Course, seeing how it's been three days in Bangkok now and both Team Tidur and Team Saladaeng have yet to do something together, we received this text:
Team CamClub: We all should have a final night gathering dinner together, all of us.
We advised Team CamClub to liase with Team William. Unfortunately the seafood dinner didn't turn out to be a full gathering dinner too, as Team Singles and a member from Team Ottamon was stuck in the middle of a massage, and Team CamClub showed up as the rest of us were finishing dinner, and Team PDA had to leave immediately after dinner to head for their massage.

Mall Run Day 4 - Not much shopping save to have lunch and bumping into Team Paul still blazing about in Siam Central.

Departure - Finally, only at Suvarnabhumi Airport did we get to take a group picture of everyone! Thanks to Team Shell (whom we bumped into at the airport!) for being the photographer!

Bloggers Bunking Bangkok: Shopping, Scorpions & Sweating

Before heading off for our trip we received a Mandate from Mum: Don't Buy Any More Clothes.

The usual about t-shirt quality being questionable and lack of wardrobe space was brought into play, but heck, even our last trip there we didn't shop much on t-shirts - it's a bit tough if mum goes, "So, what did you buy?" and we hold up a t-shirt that says Oral Me. Asides from the Mandate, we only had mum's request to get some tablecloths for her.

So, our initial stance on shopping in Bangkok was, "Not gonna buy anything." Like real. But it was just that we had nothing specific in mind to buy (save mum's tablecloths), whether in Chatuchak or the malls. We decided to stick to Impulse Buy, although this time we have the advantage of Chief Control (so we don't spend too much).

One day in Chatuchak. A walk down Patpong. One proper round about Siam Paragon and MBK, a quick stint at Central World. End result?

So no t-shirts nor pants. Didn't say anything about DVDs, ties, leather shoes, socks, Boots shower gels or even McDonald's (aka McThai) mugs. Oh, a $15 iTunes Gift Card too (just in time for the new iPod Touch 2.0 update, yay!). The Chief did so much better - incense, leather shoes, glass mug, stationery, pajamas, mat, sauce bowls, a sports jacket for smart casual to formal wear, even a keychain and fridge magnet. Amazing how it all fit inside the near-exploding luggage.

Speaking of DVDs. On sale everywhere was The Phantom Of The Opera and Death Note Box Set. Safe to have had assumed that they were originals, right?

We'd bought our Phantom DVD from this store on the third floor in MBK and noticed some of the DVDs that the store sold were glaringly pirated stuff. It was only when we got back to the hotel and decided to take a closer look at our Phantom DVD that we saw cartoony fonts on the hologram sticker. Cartoony fonts on a hologram security sticker???

Closer inspection revealed The Phantom Of The Opera to be a Scorpion Brand DVD.

Now based on our last trip we sorta knew that going around Bangkok was gonna be hot, and reminded ourselves that for this trip we need to pack light clothings (then again, everywhere's freakin' hot, not just Sporeland or Bangkok). Every time we stepped outdoors, it's only a couple of minutes before we've our own private waterfall while everyone else only had a slightly damp face. And throughout the entire trip, we only bought wet wipes from Boots on the final night we were there. And used probably only 3 sheets in all.

Well, on the upside we'd probably sweated off some 5kg on this trip.

Bloggers Bunking Bangkok: Flight Preparations

So happens that some time near the end of last year the bloggers started talking about going on a trip. AirAsia was having their promotions again and everyone wanted to make some sorta overseas gathering. We were a tad noncommital in the discussions because it meant diligently keeping check on AirAsia's site for air flights and ticket prices and dates...something that goes over our head.

So we'd left everyone else who was better at following air fares and the such to plan for the dates and all. Only to receive a text from Alex from out of the blue:

"We've bought our tickets. Go buy yours!"

That...was very quick. And we sorta had a wtf moment because we'd never been to the AirAsia site before, so it took us a fair bit of registering, finding our way around the site...We're not saying that we took a long time to do it, but when you're rushing to buy cheap tickets on AirAsia before they run out every second counts. After all, we were expecting someone else to buy the tickets and we pay back actually. Still, managed to get our tickets in time! We're going to Bangkok!

That left us with the problem of accomodation.

Once again, plans were left in the more able hands of others (thanks JL!) while we adopted the (Mostly) Anything Can method. A very easygoing method so long as the place is clean, air-conditioned, moderately priced and near transport or facilities, we're okay.

'Course, this was all planned last year. Then came this year and it was a bit of a problem for the Chief to initially join us for the trip - the timing of the trip wasn't really optimal for the Chief, plus air tickets weren't cheap any more. Fortunately yet another AirAsia promotion came up and other obstacles were settled, so the Chief could make it for the trip as well!

Happy-nya kita. :P All that was left was counting down the days till the trip.

Video Games Of Our Lives: BattleChess

LIFE:\blog:

It's funny how the videogames in our younger days were much simpler, yet more engrossing than some games nowadays. Also, back then we didn't have the 'Net, nor emulators (or PCs powerful enough too!), so accesibility to games were only our trusty computer stores that stock shelves of games in 3.5" or 5.25" diskettes together with manuals. Yes, game manuals! Ah well, most of them would be photocopies but still, you have something to read plus all the instructions needed and most importantly, the passwords for the copy protection. :P

BLOG:\cd chess
BLOG:\CHESS>chess.exe

Early on when we first got our 386 (with goodness knows how much MB of hard disk space - 8? 16?) we remember days where we would keep ourselves entertained by playing Interplay's BattleChess. 'Course, the only reason we loved this game was for the fight scenes. Not for playing chess - because waiting for the CPU to make a movie takes ages and sometimes they'll freeze up the PC.



So basically we'd just entertain ourselves by playing solitaire chess and causing as many casualties as possible. There's a good mix of serious and funny fights, and entertained plenty.

Then came a time when we were walking in The Mall, and we happened to walk by the electronics department and came across a telly showing a chess screen akin to BattleChess. Caught our attention, of course. Only, there was loads more details to the pieces. We'd only time to stay and watch a pawn move, and we were pleasantly surprised to hear music play when the piece moved! We've remembered the Red Pawn's Theme till now, but we never knew if it was really BattleChess and for what platform. We'd always thought that there was a PC CD version of BattleChess.

Thank goodness for YouTube.



BLOG:\CHESS>cd..
BLOG:\cd chess2
BLOG:\CHESS2>chess2.exe

Then as we bemoaned the fact that there's no Chinese Chess version of BattleChess, some time later Interplay made BattleChess II: Chinese Chess. It was beautiful. One improvement that BCII had over BC was better sound support - when pieces moved there was music to accompany them, better sound effects, and not only were we limited to listening to it via the PC's internal speakers, since we had a Soundblaster card the music was excellent.



Learned a bit more of Chinese Chess playing against the CPU, as the CPU response was much better and we weren't left with the feeling that the PC hung up on us. 'Course, didn't improve our gameplay versus the Chinese Chess players in our class then, they whom respond with a move the second you take your hands off the piece you just moved...

BLOG:\CHESS2>cd..
BLOG:\cd BC4000
BLOG:\BC4000>bc4000.exe

Then came BattleChess 4000. This one got us quite excited, with interesting-looking pieces and a snazzy new look. Robots for Rooks, mad scientist Bishops, superhuman Queens...Of course, the lure of the game was for the fight scenes and not because the game had a better library of movements and gambits to draw from, or better AI. If we wanted a good strong PC chess opponent, Chessmaster or such would have suffice. :P

At that time BC4000 was considered a game that required a lot of specifications ok? The game took 10 diskettes, and we needed to use a boot disk to increase EMS and XMS in order to play it. But it was worth it. The fights tickled us pink...



We'll thank DOSBox for allowing us to replay BC4000 nowadays - Windows XP couldn't run it and left us wailing. Anyways.

BLOG:\BC4000>life:
LIFE:\life.exe

The Thing That Is Marriage

Somehow there's a different feel to things when a close old friend gets married. Being someone we've known and kept in touch since secondary school days, the steady progression as 'Nic headed towards marriage never really had that sense of gravity until the final step...

Going steady - fine. Not like we see any more or less of him, since we don't meet much save boardgaming sessions and the Klangite meetups. In fact, as the enthusiastic boardgames prophet he'd even got LiL to join in the fun!

Engagement announcement - Whoa. This almost a year back now. It was a whopper of an announcement (although it shouldn't be too much of a surprise since they've been together since college!). 'Course, this triggered the RM50 Collection Call by the rest of the Klangites (we're not too sure how this worked, but essentially since he's the first among our group to get married he's lost the bet and have to pay everyone RM50, a semi-serious joke).

Marriage announcement - Okay. With the engagement announced, it's down to waiting for the Big Day. And an interesting date too, the six-seven-eight. This, we remembered, led to the discussion on dates to get married and stuff, and Webchitect suggesting 10th October 2010. As he goes, "TEN ten ten!" (you know, the chinese-accented way of dramatic sound-making). Still, 06-07-08 was easy to remember and wouldn't clash with the Olympics.

And as the date drew closer we soon had the preview of the wedding cards. Pretty things with lotsa love and effort put in.

Hen party cum zhimui event - As far as we knew, the zhimuis were throwing a karaoke party for the couple at Red Box Pavilion last Thursday, and the hengdais were invited. 'Course, it being Thursday night the Penang Klangite hengdais weren't able to make it and it was up to those of us here to provide 'Nic with backup against the zhimuis.

In the end he'd only three hengdais to help him out with the zhimui event. We were late and turned up after the challenges were over. :P And due to the motto, 'What happens at Red Box stays happened at Red Box' no one except the zhimuis will have evidence of what the hengdais had to go through...

Well, we still helped out with the karaoke and would say that our only tough bit was having to duet 'No Air' with one of the zhimui. And till that day we would say that we'd never listened to No Air completely - we didn't find the song all that nice so when it came up on radio we'd just tune into another station.

Big Day on Saturday - With the six-seven-eight stuck firmly in our head it took a bit of effort to remember that it was the lunch function that was on that date and not the church wedding itself. Starting out from his old house to meet all the hengdais at his family's new place at Ambang Botanic, a quick photo session on the bridal bed, then it's off to Bangsar to drop the flower bouquet (and for the assigned drivers NJH and TTY to pick up the bride's relatives).

Then it was down to Assumption Church for the rest of us to mill about usher guests. Coats were considered optional dress code, as it was gonna be rather warm at the church. In the end, it was coats and no tie for everyone (after all since you guys made suits in Bangkok might as well put them to use right?).

What caught our attention during the church wedding was that Bubbles was there, taking part in the marriage vows. Best man Ivan had to hold on to Bubbles while Bubbles held on to the rings. What also confused us was that Bubbles was wearing a veil. While, true, we'd never ascertained Bubble's gender but we always thought of him as male.

After the wedding ceremony and lunch, the hengdais thought to spend some time together till the open house at night ('Nic refuses to call it a wedding dinner heh). So we'd all milled about at Starbucks after balking at the long queue at MidValley GSC, then heading on to Sushi King to kill more time. It's during this period where we heard gems of ghost stories.

The open house saw us all helping 'Nic to finish some of the 5 cartons of wine that he'd bought, led by Ivan the Best Man and the rest of the Penang Klangites. Given that 'Nic isn't much of a drinker and LiL was there to tag team with him, the siblings Little 'Nic and Elder 'Nic was dragged in to drink up.

Wedding lunch at Holiday Villa Subang - With the Chief in tow. We were slightly absent minded that Chief thought we were still drunk from the night's drinking. Holiday Villa was idyllic, except that we were busy sweating so much that we lost the mood to take pictures even when Chief volunteered to help us take pictures. A good lunch, the three cheers followed by the table-to-table yamseng (while watching 'Nic's face slowly turn a darker shade of red as well as seeing how the wine level in his glass never seem to go down), the congratulating as we leave the hall...

And we'll once again congratulate the both of you for taking off to matrimonial bliss, 'Nic and LiL.

The Adventures Of Ms Joelle: The Castrati Cages

This story sorta came up while chatting with Shuku. We actually considered drawing it, but realized that it'll take far too long for us to commit proper work to draw it properly. And we intended it to be just a quick short story, rather than a proper one so what we're gonna just do is cut-paste and edit bits of it.

Shuku: Prettyboys.
Janvier: You're watching prettyboys? Castrati? Locked permanently in a cage. Always having to sing for his meals.
Janvier: Dressed only in a simple white gown...whenever the master comes home...he must sing.
Shuku: Not quite so extreme, thankfully.
Janvier: When the master is lounging in the garden sipping drinks reading...he must continually sing.
Shuku: ...you're scaring me. I could turn that into a story very easily.

So anyways we've just took what we wrote in the chat, editted it slightly and dumped it here:

"Ah, Ms Joelle. So good of you to visit."
"Of course Monsieur Poe. The Academy is very appreciative of your generous donations."
"Only a trifle."
"But what we find more impressive, Mssr Poe, is your vast collection of castrati chorals."
"Ah. Perhaps you'd like to come in to see? There's no need to chat here by the gates."
"Most gladly!"

As they walk through the garden they are accompanied by voices singing.



"Here. Come into the sitting room."

Mssr Poe sits Ms Joelle in a comfy chaise-lounge, and proceeds to tap a password on the security panel on the far wall. As he finishes, a wall panelling slide back to reveal an iron bar cage only as high as Mssr Poe's waist. The cage is filled full with young boys.

The image of chickens in a coop came to Ms Joelle's mind. The boys look cooped but not uncomfortable. All of them wear white smocks, and looks as if they've been brought up all their life in a cage.

Mssr Poe taps the cage twice with a ringed finger. A boy, someone in the back of the cage, starts to sing.

6/19. Miserere mei, Deus - Beasley-Murray, Timothy; Finley, Gerald; Choir of Kin

"Just marvellous, Mssr Poe!"
"Come, Ms Joelle, we shall dine here while my boys sing for us."
"Enchanted."

Mssr Poe wheeled in a tray, and set a table near the fireplace. The boys continued to sing.



"The dinner is sumptuous, Mssr Poe. I cannot identify the sauce, but I must say the meat is tender."
"A family secret, Ms Joelle. I'm glad you enjoy it."
"One question, Mssr Poe...I noticed that all your boys are of various age, but none seem to be older than twelve..."
"Of course, a voice cracking is horrendoes to hear."
"What happens when they grow up, then?"

Mssr Poe leans forward across the table and smiles broadly at Ms Joelle.

"Why, how are you enjoying your dinner, Ms Joelle?"

Hmmm, some notes about the story:
The children never learned how to speak - only sing.
They have to sing for their meals too. If not they don't get to eat.
There are boys in cages everywhere in Mssr Poe's mansion. Hidden away so that no one else can see the source of music.

Tale As Old As Time...

So Chief had gotten rather good tickets at a decent from Toyota for Disney's Beauty And The Beast musical. And we weren't letting an opportunity for such a musical slip past us in the first place - Beauty And The Beast was our first Disney animated movie, and we collected the soundtracks on cassette up till Pocahontas.

'Course, nowadays people don't use cassettes as much, so we'd looked for the CDs and mp3s too.

But we digress. So both Chief and us snagged a couple of tickets which included pre-performance refreshments. Which turned out to be a good thing as 'refreshments' consisted of pasta and lots of filling finger food and the two of us haven't had dinner yet when we arrived at KLCC at 6.30pm.

True as it can be.

The Chief is liking Toyota more and more as they seem to show plenty of appreciation for their customers. At least, for Toyota Tribes and Merit members. It may be likely that Toyota shows the Chief better appreciation than we do... :(

Anyways.

No one's got a swell cleft in his chin like Gaston.

While eating and waiting for the show to start some of the performers dropped into the room for everyone to take photos with - the frickin' tall Gaston, Two Silly Girls (Ms Look and Ms Go - we have no idea where Ms Stop was), and villagers whom we could only identify as 5 O'Clock Shadow, Barmaid and Baldy. Chief got Gaston's autograph, but we were both a bit shy to ask the rest as we didn't quite know who they were (their characters not easy to locate in the programme, and 5 O'Clock Shadow and Baldy played two roles, we noticed).

We've already read one disappointed review (WARNING unsafe picture that can scar childhood memories!) about the musical so we know that the characterization for Beast wasn't gonna be up to standard. Cannot fight the animated movie. Gotta learn one thing about musicals - they tend to veer a bit from the story they were adapted from. So had to keep an open mind.

Beauty And The Beast kept very close to the animated movie! There were scenes that kept replaying in our head as we were watching the musical - Belle singing to the lamb about her favourite part in the book as the lamb chews on the corner of the page, Chip telling Mrs Potts that there's a girl in the castle, Belle in the West Wing...

Storywise, very little variations. There are new songs, old songs have been extended, and we can say that we resisted temptations to sing along. Among the new songs, we find the Beast's song to be very nice (although we can't remember too much of it now, aiks). Gaston's song where he hints to Belle that he intends to make her his wife is somehow familiar, we've no idea if we had heard it somewhere before. However, Gaston's voice wasn't strong during The Mob Song, his voice isn't deep enough nor able to be loud enough if he went deep.

Look there he goes, isn't he dreamy?

We also liked how they expanded on the characters and the story - there's a bit more backstory for Madame le Grande Bouche, the enchantress' spell can be seen to continually evolve ("There's something on your back!"), even a cheesy song about the asylum owner Monsieur D'Arque being evil.

There was also more life in the characters, for better or worse. Lumiere, especially was very entertaining and naughty; LeFou was also clownishly comedic - he has a lot of choreography to remember, from stumbling at one point and being knocked about by Gaston at another; Gaston rather campy in a costume that made him look oddly out of proportion; the Beast a childish bully rather than an arrogant bad-tempered aristocrat. We only wished that we didn't keep thinking of Belle as Dorothy from the Wizard Of Oz. :S

Little town, full of little people.

We were considered rather fortunate that there weren't any technical faults during our show, and the only thing that has bugged us was that the Broadway Cast Recording CD sold out before the show started. SOLD OUT. So we're left empty-handed with no souvenirs. Nevermind, somehow or other we'll get our hands on the CD, just not now...

Great show. Great weekend. Lots of love to our Chief for making this happen.

Ambiguous Ambigrams 14

Right. Some of these we've been putting off for way too long now, and we'd best buck up and start working on them just to keep our hand in practise with calligraphy really.

First one, a slight touch-up from the Mk1 at the 'u/n' - 'w' area. It's been ages since we'd touched this one because we remember how much trouble we took just drawing it out (as we drew the template on a small notepad instead of an A4 sheet), but this time we were armed with a clipboard, A4 paper and a photocopier.

Trace the first half, make minor adjustments, photocopy. Then finish up the second half by tracing from the photocopy.

End result was printed out on sticker paper and made into a belated birthday present. :P

This one started out as a sketch on her birthday card. Then we decided to expand on it, but work on it was admittedly slow. :P A simple sketch, but somehow not very clear. Probably if we did it on a smaller scale we could do a bit more on ornamentation and make it clearer. Ah well, a Mk2 in the works then...

Finally, after finishing the above and scanning it, we decided to open MS Paint and doodle about. And we managed this. It's a bit vexing because the others took ages to complete while this one, 5 minutes. True, needs a bit of work but otherwise it's already passable. Not to mention that since we only needed to do the first half, then copy-invert-paste, it's the only symmetrical ambigram we've done to date.

Oh well, there'll probably be a Mk2 of this too, when we pretty it up with ornamentation. Probably.

BodyAches 45 and 36

Great. New Les Mills tracks launch in clubs this week onwards - BodyJam 45 and BodyCombat 36. However hopes for BodyJam weren't very reassuring when reading this review, and word was that there weren't much recognizable catchy music.

So Monday we headed for BJ45 at the Curve, and it was surprisingly uncrowded. Guess everyone already swarmed the place during the pre-Miracle preview, which was good as that left us all more space to move about. Impressions?

Some moves are okay, but overall we're missing old old BodyJam tracks more and more...for single tracks and techniques. Starts out fine, odd songs for the Contemporary Rock block, a torturous line dance track, and a more fun Disco block. The butterfly kick in the Contemporary Rock block reminded us plenty of Liu Kang's fatality.



Not to mention that there's usually never enough room in the studio to pull off the butterfly kick properly. Nanti nahas we all fatality each other. The Disco block is simple with some gaya moments, but what we don't understand is the obsession to have this skipping moves...our knees override our brain and takes the easier option nowadays. :P

Yeah, we guess we're also gonna be taking a break next Monday or Monday after...tunggu old tracks. :P

Then yesterday was BodyCombat. We have been missing Combat for a week over already. :S We sorta take it we've been long gone from Combat 'cos when we had to shout for YKLS our voice cracked. :P Dah lama tak practise shouting voice projection at Combat class. Of course, we'd seen a bit of what's new in Combat during Miracle and on Monday, and boy we weren't keen on lunges and knees...especially after that line dancing bit in Jam.

Still, Combat was good, with the claw move back again (although this time there's more clawing, so that particular track does look like a catfight :S ), less capoeira/ginga moves but boy are we gonna suffer with the lunging.

Today, our neck is killing us. It's been a long time since we've managed three cardio classes per week. :S