(A melodic or harmonic configuration that creates a sense of repose or resolution.)
"But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God; I trust in the mercy of God for ever and ever." - Psalms 52:8
Monday, March 30, 2009
HD is always better
alvin's coldplay videos on youtube are in HD/Q - AND THEY'RE GORGEOUS!!! takes about a day to upload each video though, and i think he has 4gb worth so... you'll probably have one video of coldplay (live) to watch everyday for the next one week.
EDIT: omg i finally remember why there was extra crying during The Scientist!! because you turned to me and sang '... tell you i need you, tell you i set you apart...'
I CAN HEAR IT IN THE VIDEO!!
T_T
oh and here is Lovers in Japan - i need this video because i was so mesmerized by the floating butterflies (you can see my excitement briefly in the video) and the twirling japanese parasol that i missed most of the rest of the performance.
my mom was planning to celebrate her birthday on wednesday at big eater seafood (soon, soon, my crabbies...) but while i was on leave and msning alvin the details for later, he suddenly exclaimed, HEY LENNEL JUST WENT TO THE PENANG BUFFET!!!
thank you lennel, for alerting alvin and i (through your blog, yay!) to the one place we've been wanting to go to for ages. all the times we keep just missing it, which is bloody annoying. and on tuesday while having laksa at arts, the bunch of us lab peeps were just talking about penang buffets - the king copthorne one and the york hotel one.
HOW COINCIDENTAL!! so my family quickly changed our plans to go to york hotel instead of the seafood place. hehehehe. buffettttt... hehehehehehe.
this is what they offered:
kway teow soup - simple but bursting with flavor
the questionable lor bak - i thought it was going to be stewed pork from the name! haha, it ended up being something like those chinese rojak BUT BETTER. WAY, WAY, WAY BETTER.
penang rojak - i could only have a few bites of this. i kept wondering why no youtiao. :(
penang char kway teow - good stuff and full of 'haam'. *slobber*
orh luah - oyster omelette. a bit on the salty side but that didn't prevent us from getting plates and plates of this.
penang prawn mee :D:D:D - loved it. had 2 bowls all by myself!
my dad enjoying his prawn mee:
eh what the heck!! of all things i forgot to take a picture of the penang laksa??!?! $%@$&#.
here's my mom enjoying her bowl of laksa:
adrean, his kway teow mee, and his kiam pah face.
cuttlefish kangkong!! too much sweet sauce. blehhh.
AND THE BEST DISH OF THE NIGHT - BAN CHENG KUEH. THE PEANUT PANCAKE THAT LOOKED SO UNASSUMING. WE SCOFFED AT IT. LAUGHED IN RIDICULE - HOW IS THIS EVEN A PENANG STREET FOOD?? VERY FAMOUS MEH?? WE LAUGHED.
then we all got totally owned when we took our first bite.
T_T best thing ever.
everyone's spirits were lifted after the peanut pancake, haha!
eh check out that smooth face man!! thanks to jo and her tube of bb cream. fairness and smoothness are now mine to have!! muahahahahahaha.
and yes, alvin is perspiring after all the food from his father's homeland.
mummy! she looks so cute when she smiles. :)
mr chao bin is finally smiling.
we all get our final round...
chendol:
ice kachang:
then adrean goes bananas and eats 7 pancakes in total.
just look at his predatory face. hahahahaha!
after dinner, everyone's tummy were kinda distended. alvin kept trying to poke my belly but i'd yell and say it's damn uncomfortable/don't make me puke then smack his hand away. undeterred, we headed towards goodwood park hotel for their famous durian pastries.
colonial styled hotels, FTW!
check out their display (fake models, but the durian creams looked so lethal i had to take a picture. check out the strudel man.)
we bought durian puffs (which are damn good, btw) then headed home. :D
after the mass of activities the past week, i really, really missed dating alvin (instead of just seeing him at work everyday) so we had an impromptu moment and headed to Liang Court after his lecture on tuesday.
actually, prior to this post i've been on eating feasts at Liang Court (i love that place. it's quiet, and has Meidi-Ya. not the most convenient to travel to, but what the heck - the food will keep us going) with alvin plenty of times except that i NEVER have my camera. thanks to the coldplay concert, my camera was with me on tuesday! this is how much damage we did. *burp*
we're here at clarke quay! it's such a pretty place. :)
first stop at liang court (after walking through central for some wassants at Provence the bakery and walking through the beautiful mini-streets in clarke quay) -
TAMPOPO DELI! do note that this is at the basement of liang court, not the actual tampopo restaurant. i do not like the ramen there. i can get better ones elsewhere. (like marutama)
wagyu mince balls - 4 for $7 (this is the second time we're having this. alvin ALWAYS goes straight for this... he likes his meats.)
light cheese chiffon cake $4.80? $3.80? (the chiffon bit is super high quality... but damn milky la, ugh)
fruit scoop cake - $5.80 (good, good, good.)
belated pictures of my wassants from provence (my entire family loved its soft, fluffy texture)
once done, we headed to saizeriya since we were on a budget. and oh my goodness that restaurant is so cheap. see alvin's face:
'SO CHEAP! SO CHEAP!!'
we only ordered one full meal for the two of us to share. and by meal i mean salad + soup + foccacia + appetizer + main course. heh.
shrimp salad
minestrone soup
hamburg steak (main course)
eh forgot to take pictures of the escargot. it came de-shelled already which took away all the fun for us. overall, the food wasn't great and we probably won't go back unless we're really broke and we're in the area or... i dunno man, if we had to treat someone while being super broke.
hmm. wedding dinner...?
KIDDING LA. we're foodies, and will not subject you to mediocre food. haha! :D
after dinner i was still bouncing around while alvin was already stuffed to the max. we headed to meidi-ya to look for some exotic snacks for my girls and on the way i got this!
it used to be better though, all cold and fresh and light. but this time it's overladen with mayo so i gave up after some time.
then we went home feeling like fat pigs. and we knew we were going to stuff ourselves the next day (wednesday) too... and that's coming up in the next post! :)
14. Lost! 15. Speed of Sound (Acoustic, in the crowd) 16. Death Will Never Conquer (Acoustic, in the crowd) 17. I'm A Believer (The Monkees Cover, acoustic, in the crowd - GREAT FUN TO STAND ON YOUR CHAIR AND DANCE) 18. Politik 19. Lovers In Japan 20. Death and All His Friends
Encore: 21. The Scientist 22. Life In Technicolor 23. The Escapist
if we had started another round of singing WOAHHOHHHH i think they might have come out for more. oh well. :(
---
alvin's videos and pictures are way better than mine; i'll be leaving him to do the review instead. :)
Everyone has annoying habits, and a sizable part of every successful marriage is learning to live with those things each other does that annoy you. I think it's safe to say, too, that geeks have some habits that we think are awesome, but that non-geeks find a little...less awesome.
Now my wife is a geek, but she's not as much of a geek as I am, so I asked her for some help putting together a list of ten things geeks do that annoy their spouses. She was perhaps a little too enthusiastic about helping out, but here are the results:
1. Punning - I remember when I was young, and thought that I must be the only geek (well, possibly nerd at that point) who loved to pun. Then I went to my first science fiction convention, and quickly learned that not only was I wrong, but that there were plenty of far worse offenders than I. That gave me something to aspire to, of course, which I did for a while. Since college, I've scaled back on the relentless punning I used to practice, but I'm sure I'll never quit completely.
["corny", "wheaty" and "BAR-e-LEY"... you've also just reminded me of "a-maize-ing" and "you oat to". thanks for expanding my pun dictionary, babe.]
2. Using "frak," or Klingon, or both, instead of regular swear words - Yes, this is a marvelous way to avoid accidentally using real, English swear words in front of the kids. I suspect that's one of the reasons it can be annoying to others, though: it's like a loophole in the no-swearing-in-front-of-the-kids rule. I caught my wife using "frak" the other day, now that she's gotten into Battlestar Galactica, too (yes, just as it's about to end), but she claims to have done that just to make me smile and says it still annoys her when I do it. Still, I figure she'd be more annoyed by my using real swear words, so I think I'll stick with it.
[nope this is not you... or maybe i just couldn't understand what you were muttering about...]
3. Weird or over-the-top ways of celebrating mainstream holidays - Geeks rarely do anything by halves, as anyone who's ever been to a costume contest at a major sci-fi convention can attest. So if we want to celebrate something we're likely to go all-out. This can mean going to great lengths with Halloween decorations, or, as I've done several times, making tentative plans to serve rabbit for Easter dinner and venison for Christmas dinner (yes, I know, reindeer are caribou, but it's close enough). No, I've never carried through on these threats plans, but when the kids are old enough not to be upset by the joke I might just. I do insist on playing Tom Lehrer's Christmas Carol at least once each December.
[hmm, yearly halloween experiences could be considered but maybe it's only because alanna is really quite pro at it, stirring us to greater costumed heights!]
4. Dissecting movies - Geeks, in my experience (and myself included), have a habit of picking movies apart, particularly just after watching them. We will discuss everything from the special effects to the minutiae of costume and prop design, but what gives us the most pleasure is identifying plot holes (no matter how small), anachronisms, and goofs in general, and, in adaptations, picking apart the cuts and modifications. For some reason, this tends to annoy non-geeks who, I guess, don't enjoy the process.
[YES THIS IS SO YOU, i can attest to that. in the start it was extremely bewildering (er? we're not leaving the cinema yet? why?) but i think i enjoy it. at times.]
5. Wearing obscurely geeky T-shirts to "normal" places - Every geek has at least a few of these; don't try to deny it. We love them, because we get the jokes and we know that only other geeks will get them, too. Unfortunately, they can make our less geeky significant others feel a bit conspicuous when out with us—or maybe they feel the geekiness will rub off on them, I'm not quite sure. Still, I feel that if I have to occasionally let my daughter wear a Hello Kitty shirt out of the house, I can wear my shirts from ThinkGeek.
[if you had a choice, all your shirts would have some geek reference or another. obscure... hmm. not sure about that.]
6. Requiring extra room in the house for geeky things - Not all geeks have exactly the same space needs, but we've all got more than most people. There are the comic book collections accumulated over several decades, the stacks of board games and RPGs, and the old computer equipment that might be useful someday, you never know! Some of us need just a good-size closet or two, some of us need a room, and some of us take over the entire basement. For some strange reason, the people we live with tend to get a little annoyed at this.
[groan. you and your 10,000 boxes of comic books and now there's the whole soldering hobby... our future home... i foresee... A PIG STY.]
7. Geeky toys and decorations can be hard to explain to kids - Long has my plush vorpal bunny languished atop a tall bookcase, waiting for the day when my kids are old enough not to be scared by its huge bloody fangs. And how to properly explain my model of Minas Tirith to kids not quite old enough for The Lord of the Rings? I mean, if we say "You remember The Hobbit? Well, it's in the same world, but a country not mentioned in that book, and it figures heavily in a later story," that will only prompt a thousand questions about it. That's not a bad thing, of course, but it can get a bit tiresome. At least the Warner Brothers cartoon sericels hanging on the walls are easily explained by simply putting in a DVD.
[hehe. i'm thinking about your cold virus plush. but then we're going to buy various busts and models (since i love miniatures) so i don't think this will be a problem. :)]
8. Looking up information while a discussion/argument is still in progress - So what are laptops and mobile phones for, if not to resolve disputes or questions wherever you happen to be? Why would anyone get annoyed when you pull out your iPhone in the middle of a discussion about, say, a news story, and a minute later break back into the conversation with the details of the story that everyone else had forgotten? Yeah, it beats me, too, but my wife insists this belongs on the list.
[yes. distracting. and sometimes REALLY annoying because you use it to prove you're always right. LALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU!]
9. Needing to watch certain TV shows ASAP to avoid spoilers - It's tough enough to find decent geeky shows on TV these days; think of how much worse it would be to accidentally hear or see a spoiler for an episode before you'd had a chance to watch it. And keeping away from Twitter and Facebook and other social websites and services in case a spoiler happens to come across it just isn't viable for that long because, let's face it, we're geeks and we're addicted to the internet. Non-geeks have shows they're addicted to, too, of course, but, at least in my experience, not to quite the same extent.
[well this is okay. i'm like that too.]
10. Geeky projects that take over the house and whole weekends - We've done dozens of posts on projects big and small, from hacking IKEA bunk-beds to DIY iPhone stands. Some geek projects are simple and won't take but a few minutes, and some just seem to take every bit of available space in your house. I think most spouses of geeks at least understand this behavior, but I suspect it annoys them more than they let on.
[i'm not sure about this, but i'm pretty sure you will adopt such a habit when you, like me, make your first Ikea table. hehehe. OH. YOUR DIY SOLDERING PROJECT. ARGH.]
so on saturday, my girls and i made our way down to pulau ubin to take part in the 'amazing race' organized by the church for youths!
honestly, on the way there i wanted to kill some of them. so... gu... niang... and totally forgot my instructions given just the day before when we met for cell group: 'we're going to run. wear shoes. bring a backpack. we're roughing it out.'
when jolene came with her rhinestone hairband and 101 hairclips, i wanted to throttle her. and her bag... was a tote.
and suddenly two of the girls got grounded. SCREWED MAN, NOW WE HAVE TO JOIN THE BOYS TEAM!! not that the boys suck, but i just really wanted my girls to experience this together since i'd already foreseen a tough trek ahead. some bonding time, you know? you share tough experiences, you grow closer - like in the army. haha!
we reached the jetty at 12pm, thinking that the activity was going to start at 12pm - they'd sent out a message saying 'hey let's meet at 12pm instead of 1pm!'
BUT NO. they wanted us to reach the jetty at 12pm so they could mark attendance... the actual activity only starts at 1pm ON THE ISLAND. -_-"'
uncle, say so ma. then i would've brought the girls for lunch and not rushed them all over the place and end up waiting for everyone else to arrive at 1pm.
but some good came out of it - the 2 grounded girls came by 1pm! :) my team is full again! hurray!
being impatient, we didn't wait for the boys and just hopped on to a boat leaving for ubin. the girls were slowly getting more and more excited...
i think i've passed this trait down to them. they get spurts of excitement like me, bubbling slowly then suddenly they'd burst in effervescent claps or squeals. HAHA!
upon reaching ubin island, i sprung into action.
'alright girls, we're late. let's go. nat, you draw the flag, ashley, help nat. the rest of us - FACE PAINT.'
i was so gung-ho natalie gaped at me and said, 'woah vivien why you suddenly so macho.'
'yar i know. we have no time. now help me. go go go go go.'
it was quite funny now that i think of it. i think i just assumed the manly role because our team were an all girls team (oh, ps william's daughter, grace, joined us as well. she's really feisty though her pretty sandals were covered with mud.) and i took the role of leader so that i could push them to move before they all sat back and whined about the weather, the floor, the mud, the sun, the face paint and everything else.
so ok lor. time to macho them up. heheheh. and they didn't whine, and complaining was kept to the minimum. ah, they are such joys. :D
they were so funny when they tried making me into the team mascot. they wrapped me in newspaper, gave me masking tape suspenders and a mini skirt. high fashion in pulau ubin, yo! hahaha... it was really funny prancing around the island in that get-up. ashley and melissa (the twins) were certain a biker almost swerved into a tree when he went past us in bewilderment.
and can i say i am damn proud of my girls?
they completed 4 stations out of 5 (i think we were the only team) and tried so hard to catch up with my fast pace (good job!! coz i know i walked really fast and pushed everyone relentlessly) while avoiding the mud. they also braved the rain in cute little ponchos and tramping through the gorgeous chek jawa. they looked like little hobbits especially ashley who was holding on to our flag and using it as a walking stick. HAHA.
but we didn't win because i failed to realize that the chek jawa station was a quiz, and i thought we had to find a station master. T_T my fault, my fault...
so this week i'm going to treat my girls (i'm not sure what yet) to something good. they really did wonderfully when it was their first time out in the wilderness. they're all champions in my eyes - jolie, natalie, grace, melissa, ashley and jolene. :)
i love them!
---
oh and i remember i was telling the girls that once you go through this, nothing can be worse than tramping through mud in the rain. yay! stepping out of your comfort zone!
i'd love to bring them to rough it out and learn what i've learnt - when situations get tough and dirty, you get by with great company. :)
