Wednesday, April 23, 2008
mana pots to the rescue!
Need some help staying awake while battling for the exams? This vial of liquid has been helping mages and priests for centuries to blast through monsters, and they are now available for geeks like you!
[ Mana Energy Potion Website ]Unfortunately, they are currently out of stock and only ships within USA. The website is a funny read by itself though.
- Anonymous (0) 11:15 AM 
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Thursday, June 28, 2007
tanjong pagar heritage (part 2)
This is the second part of the Tanjong Pagar heritage photos.
Titled "Shimmering Pearls", this work by Han Sai Por in 2001 is the first local sculpture that integrates a fountain to produce the desired effect. This has no heritage value at the moment but maybe if this blog last 50 years, things might change.
Murray Street Food Alley is a row of restored Art Deco shophouses. It was built in 1929 and restored in 1977.
"Samsui Women" was sculptured by Liu Jilin in 1999. It pays tribute to these labourers who spurred the growth of Singapore.
The Scarlet Hotel at Erskine Road had its external façade carefully restored, and a redesigned interior. This row of houses was built in 1924.
The Buddha Tooth Relic Temple is a magnificent cultural monument opened in 2007, at the heart of Chinatown. It houses the sacred Buddha tooth relic, in a stupa made of gold weighing over 400kg donated by devotees.
The entrance of Buddha Tooth Relic Temple faces Sago Lane. This region was used as a hospice for terminally ill or dying Chinese immigrant, and hence nicknamed the "Street of the Dead".
Five-foot walkway restored to its original charm, while given a new lease of life.
Smith Street used to house numerous brothels and was known as the red light district. The vice has since been cleaned up and the street is converted into Chinatown food street.
The towers of Jamae Mosque. This Indian Muslim mosque was built in 1826 and rebuilt in 1830 by Chulia muslims. It was originally named as Chulia Mosque.
Restored shophouses, built in 1928, situated along a serene alley in Tanjong Pagar.
I will be going to Civic District to take photos tomorrow. Yay! That means there will be more historical buildings to let you feast your eyes on, if you are actually interested in the first place hehe.
- Anonymous (0) 11:44 PM -
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
tanjong pagar heritage (part 1)
As part of my job in NLB, after reading up on the history of a conservation area, I can go down to take photos that I feel are of heritage interest. Gerald accompanied me on my first "mission" to Tanjong Pagar last Friday.
It was the first time I got my hands on a $1600+ SLR camera. At the time of shooting, I did not have any proper training and know nuts about ISO, aperture, shutter speed etc. except for the impatient crash course by Mr Gerald, who tried to teach me everything about the camera in 10 minutes. *grin*
Points to note:
1) Although I took these photos, please refrain from downloading them for personal use as they are still unpublished by NLB.
2) This is a long post, and might take more efforts to detect lame jokes (if any). I try to keep the commentaries short.
3) I only included a small selection of low resolution photos, which I like for its artistic value or its composition that tugs at my heartstrings.
Red Dot Traffic, designed by F. Dorrington Ward. This conserved building was built in 1928 as a police barrack. Currently serves as a creative hub and red dot design award gallery.
The exterior view and the corridor view of Airview Building, where multiple beautiful patterns can be observed. This restored shophouse was built in the colonial periods.
Cityscape model of the downtown area housed in the URA Centre. Photo shows the urban plan of the future integrated resort site in Marina Bay.
A view of Peck Seah street from the URA Centre. On the left is the sculpture "Celestial Earth" by Sun Yu-Li (1999). The inspiration stemmed from the Confucian philosophy: "a square within, a circle without".
How some of our very young Singaporeans feel about our country. I like the way students of different races contributed to this piece, displaying our multi-racial cohesiveness. Cynics might claim that this is rigged.
How could I not highlight a sculpture that used white as its base color? This macro shot, which gently sets the background out of focus, made the sculpture stands out against the waterfall in URA Centre.
Another macro shot. Kids enjoying their playtime in the childcare centre, located at the second storey of URA Centre. So energetic and carefree.
Grooming our young Singaporeans for the future, to fulfil our vision for Singapore. The composition is so meaningful, I did not hesitate to bring out the camera.
Not very heritage-like you say? The Red Dot Traffic is a huge conserved and restored landmark building: it is there as an appetiser. Stay tuned for the next part which I promise will contain much more pre-war colonial goodies!
- Anonymous (0) 11:51 PM -
Monday, June 25, 2007
me quiz time
Four quizzes, four responses. See which one got it right this time.
View Full SizeI'd say my favourite X-men hero is Gambit. The reasons given for choosing Cyclops is somewhat flattering though.
View Full SizeSpot on, Donatello is my favourite turtle. Ignoring the ugly purple belt, parkouring around the streets on sticks while catching baddies is cool.
View Full SizeAssuming that Physics does not exists where the survey originates, Mathematics would probably still go below Engineering and Philosophy, Art and Psychology probably way above Chemistry. Overall, the top three picks for this question still is pretty accurate, just the order.
View Full SizeYep, white is numero uno. But pink in second?! OMG!
- Anonymous (0) 8:04 PM -
Monday, June 18, 2007
new job
I have quitted my old job and is now employed by National Library Board as an Assistant Library Officer at the Library Supply Centre. My job scope can probably be categorised as administrative, although the responsibilities are much more casual compared to the usual office affair.
So I took a pay downgrade for this job switch, and in return get to work everyday. It seems worth it at the moment, and it better do since my old boss is a very nice person. If only I could work regularly for my old job, it would have been a really good job for me. Anyway these are small decisions in life, and I got to live with my choice hehe.
On another note, I noticed that my blog posts are becoming a bit like the "usual whining about life", on contrary to my MSN personal message. Many apologies if it is starting to get boring. I feel a bit tired to look out for interesting content after work these days. Hehe, bad excuse that made things worst... I will try to do something about it ^^
- Anonymous (0) 10:43 PM -
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
rich wq, poor wq
Today, I took the MRT home from work as usual, except I was feeling a bit unwell so I did not change out to T-shirt, and went home in long sleeves instead. As I walked past the Citibank roadshow booth beside Tampines MRT station, a female staff actually came up to me to introduce some of their financial services.
For the past one month, I have walked past that stretch of road everyday without anyone from their booth approaching me. It is a sad fact of life that people are so judgemental. Young lad in street casual = no approach. Young lad in business casual = approach. It is all in the suits and ties, so fabricated and fake.
Unfortunately for the budding financial planner, it really does not matter. Formal or informal, I am still the same old penniless Wei Qiang :) That is life.
- Anonymous (0) 10:30 PM -
Saturday, June 02, 2007
pc show
I called Daniel out to go to the PC show today. Bin, Dan and I met up at around 5pm in Suntec City. They arrived first and went window shopping at another exhibition, the annual Book Fair. When I arrived, I noticed that the Book Fair was pretty quiet compared to the last time I visited, which could be due to the competition from the PC show two storeys above, which appeals more to the IT savvy generation.
When we went up to the PC show, there were a group of "angels" blowing soap bubbles and posing for the audience. No wonder no one was at the Book Fair, everyone was up here taking photos of the girls and flirting with them, while they blew bubbles into their faces.
The PC show was extremely crowded and hard to maneuver at some places. As usual, brands like Sony Ericsson, Singtel etc. have decided to brand themselves as PC dealers and appeared at the show shamlessly (and no, handphones are not the new generation PC ^^).
I bought another pair of 512MB RAMs to put into the second dual-channel slot for $110. Hence, my PC has 2GB of RAM now. Currently, I still did not notice any difference yet, hopefully I would when I play games later at night.
Bin and Dan was looking for some handphone memory stick upgrade, but they did not buy anything at the end. When we went out of the exhibition hall, the "angels" were gone and replaced by another group of posing girls. These Sony girls were accompanied by some extremely noisy drummers, who thankfully marched off after a short performance, leaving the girls to pose by themselves to the uncannily similar group of shuttlers. It seems like some people were there to take photos of pretty girls only (not me... I declare innocence with my RAM purchase hehe).
We went out of the Suntec building for dinner at Marina Square. The place was extremely crowded as expected, and I suggested that we go to Makan Sutra Food Street at the Esplanade instead. Somehow, we managed to find a seat at the Food Street easily. I ordered white carrot cake, three barbequed chicken wings, and (you guessed it) F&N Grape.
After dinner, we went to watch a bit of the NDP parade rehearsal. We arrived at the most boring parade segment, as if we needed to watch more parade after being through national service. The parade is moved to the waterfront this year, while they build a new national stadium. It looked like a floating platform, which would be pretty fun to watch if it starts sinking during one of the rehearsals :)
As usual, a trip to the Esplanade on weekends means a free outdoor concert performance. Instead of some rock bands, the management somehow got cranky this week and invited some crappy gothic lollita electronica group. They were horrible! The female lead singer like a 3 years old screeching... the ones you see in horror movies. I should have expected gothic lollita from the way they dressed anyway. Within 2 songs, Bin suggested that we should go, as in we REALLY SHOULD go. It was unbearable so I agreed to leave, but sincerely hoped we did not demoralise the performers with our lack of etiquettes.
Near the MRT station, Bin wanted to get some magazine from MPH. Hence, we took a short detour to Raffles City. At the central stage was some percussion performers. The act was pretty interactive as instruments were handed out to the audience to play along with them. The instruments handed out were obviously producing unimportant fringe sounds, but seeing that the audience (especially the kids) were having such a great time, I must say that they did a good job as entertainers.
It seems like the foreigners were enjoying the events organised as part of the Singapore Arts Festival. I think it is quite cool that there are performance at virtually every corner of Singapore! :)
- Anonymous (0) 11:03 PM -
