my first iPod

this picture shows day2 of my wife's arm. the blood has surface with the aid of "zheng gu shui". hope this injury heals soon. my wife will wear a bandgae to work.

no car 2day so i'll meet my wife after work, with my new iPod shuffle, have dinner n take a train home. bought my transitlink card last night, a $7 value, with $3 refundable deposit, n $5 for a ugly card. total $15.

the courier called b4 he came down. "specially for simon". how sweet my wife is. i was blogging that day and she ordered it without reading the blog. the connection.



this is how the shuffle is held on the plastic.

it comes with the liitle instruction booklet, apple stickers, iPod ear phones n shiffle dock.

nothing beats the personalized shuffle. they had to send back to factory to get it engraved. a gift forever.

bright hill drive

just this afternoon i had seamless interaction with iPhoto08 n blogger.com when uploading my pictures. now this apple seems erratic. i no longer can open any photos to preview when selecting photos via the folder .... all i get is a dead end at Photo Library, as an application.

my way around this is to drag photos out of iPhoto to the desktop. then uploading pictures becomes easier. and also since safari dont have a photo preview in the blogger's page [hope this is solved at safari3] i renamed my photos on the destop so i can easily ID my photos instead of a DSCxxxxxx.jpg file.

i mentioned my wife was going to JB with her friends in my last entry. she had went back to the office to sort some things out. she slipped in the toilet stairs and to protect herself she used her riht arm to defend and hit herself on the stairs railing.

i smsed tyger loh n siong then i'll have to saty home to take care of my wife. we had a simple dinner and headed the chinese medcine hall to get some onitment. the chinese physician was just about to leave gave us some tips to solve this injury. soak the gauze with the chinese ointment, apply it to the injury, use a bandage to secure and leave it on with reapplication when necessary.

2 hours later my wife got hugry again. i was still feeling stuffed. we headed thomson plaza, also to replenish more wire gauze and bandages. she had jaitai while i intended just a soup from han's, i had a complete meal set dinner of fish n chips. tho it's just cambell soup .... my wife walloped all the mushroom cream soup, which was great to see her fill herself, afterall i was not hungry. a great evening.

thomson plaza was packed 2nite. i had parked along right hill drive again. little did i know when u translate bright hill drive to mandrain it doesnt sond plesant anymore. yukkutti yuks.

day in the life of (a lazy person on a sunny saturday)

a lazy saturday my wife heads out to JB with her friends. i work up to a black coffee. too lazy to start off with my new quicken for mac that replaces the old faithful microsoft money on the pc. i gotta wait for the postman to come too, hopingly truful as he was expected to come in 2 days ago.

2 days ago was national day. i wished he (the postman) had arrived on the eve itself so i can have some home entertainment from this amazon shippment. i have chosed international expedited priority shipping, looks like it screwed-up. 2 software i ordered thru applestore online came in this morning instead. the courier had to have his eyes looked elsewhere, behind the door to receive the package was this semi-fat, tattooed n semi-naked in a boxers without any erection, boy this is not my day he must have mumbled.

nice tee the back print .... but i have just too many. this tee from the HK WCG is available via play-asia.com, yes too many tees i have .... some yellowed, some grew stale stacked n stocked .... too many tees. ok to console myself, this tee doesnt have a PS3 logo .... not good enuff for me.

now my list to "to buy magazines monthly" grew in numbers. there's
1) EGM US
2) GameInformer
3) PSM US
4) Playstation Official Magazine UK (picture above for sept issue)
5) MacLife US
6) MacWorld US
n bimonthly StarWars Insider

my damaged bumper. gonna get this fix by Hwee Boon, my primary school classmate who took over his father's biz in car paint spray n body repairs. i got a couple of my colleagues to visit him with their problems. decent workmanship with great prices. a nice chap my collegaues feedbacked. he'll help me do my long delayed exhaust pipe tip project as well, likely from his aquintances .... Man Exhaust. do take note it's pronouced as "mun" not "man".

finally picture for the day .... my old adi bathroom sandals neglected by the road.

the chips are down / again

finally sorted out my old P4 dell 3.2GHz laptop, it's moved out to the living room for my parents or the kids to use. my mom's first website was www.gloryjoy.org.sg, her church's website. perhaps her first encounter with the mouse. my dad watches in awe.

starhub crawls 2nite. thomson plaza was emtpy. everyone's glued to the telly for the live broadcast of the NDP at marina. my trip to amk's laserflair was a mistake. i reversed my car into the pillar of a carpark lot in a mutli-storey carpark. part of my rear bodykit bumper had cracked. still it's better not to have reversed into another parked car. i should have been more careful, not my usual style NOT to checked the blind spots. but guessed i'm blind 2nite.


stuffs rom hmv. i know i shouldnt .... but the saints are down i needed to cheer up .... teahouse hk movie dvd / DOA code3 -- the crappy movie i had set out 2nite to hunt for it, should have go hmv straight, trusting my instincts, n i wouldnt have damaged my little faithful friend / nana -- jap movie hmv was playing .... looks interesting, i have grown to like hmv's taste, the last i bought off what the y were playing was "stranger than fiction" / seinfeld season 7, i am waiitng just for season 8 but this is the last season wtih larry david so i tot might as well / garbage's new compliation cd with bonus cd of mixes.


how to tell u are getting the non cola anything? look t the ingredients on the can, th one with caffiene on it is either cola or lemon cola. bingo.

the first cd to get ripped into my new macbook's itunes is Opaline by Dishwalla.

the theme for these 2 machines (the 2 new macbooks) are Angels or Devils, song number 2 frm this album. my last ibook were running on OS X panther. i wanted to buy a family license for 5 to upgrade me n my wife's ibooks to tiger when it was launch. but we gave up the idea. this run i again didnt wait for leopard's launch which is slated for october this year. i figure since tiger is currently 2 year old and pretty stable, i should enjoy the best of tiger b4 jumping onto the leopard.

i guess i'm pretty outdated, enjoying widgets for the first time on a mac, and the iRemote is sure great. am thinking on getting a shuffle or a nano .... just for kicks .... even tho i spend all my time these days listening to cds only when driving. one are the days of a marantz cd player with a cheap amp n mission speakers. n not being a mp3 listener, buying a apple mp3 payer sure dont warrant any possible rights. still he heart itches for a little mac comapanion gadget.

and its all drawn out
there's nothing inside
and nothing to hold
nothing to find
its wearing me out
this feeling inside
i'm all drawn out

mac|life

me bored at the restroom .... my office for the next few months perhaps ??


managed to read half of macworld.


hey hey hey .... angels n devils .... black and white in the car.


some accessories bought along the way .... a red macguard for my wife's black macbook. a dicota neoprene for my white midrange macbook. a-yue cd, united93 dvd (are u sure this is gonna be a good movie??) and maclife magazine.


the boxes.

the egg shell.


the mackbook is revealed. comes with a iremote, the power cord n charger + a spare plug head for other countries. below the macbook is the thin manual n the installetion cds.


the black has a nice smooth matt feel while the white is like my old ibook, pearly plastic smooth.


since i bought 2 macbooks i asked for two separate epicards. 1 yr subs for the discount.

whammy bar repair for xbox 360 guitar hero 2 xplorer

here's a picture of the broken off soldering of the wire that connects the resistance switch (far left silver roundish thing) to the whammy bar tuning fork (black portion is the backside of the twhammy bar holder). the spring n catch does the springback action for the whammy bar to return to it's original position. this portion will break off when u remove this wole mechanism. the pearly white plastic holds down the whammy bad and the switch to the left.

once the wires are soldered back, the resonance works again when i fooled with the whammy bar on the xplorer.

lay your world on me

thomson plaza is indeed full house 2day. the car park was full and a long queue of cars stretched to the main road. the private estates along it were packed with parallel parked vehicles who came for their shopping.

it came to my knowledge by accident to discover just opposite of thomson plaza, a little small road that leads to a sin min estate, called bright hill. there, a multi-storey carpark with free sunday parking and was pretty empty. a short 5mins walk, across the overhead bridge, brought me to my shopping chore destination finally.

my shopping purchase for the day:-
1) macworld september from popular bookstore. i am trying to locate the hard to find quicken 2007 for mac. i'm gonna do a major switch to a intel mac real soon, to bid farewell to the pc world for good. i made a couple of phone calls and most shops dont carry this personal financial software. hence i skipped funan / sim lim square and buy my magazine from the chinese bookstore.
2) a manuscript book with boxes for accounting. since quicken rpoves tough to find, and thru amazon.com i'll have to0 pay close to $160, i thought i go caveman and use manaul inputs and calculations for my personal finances than a software. i love mircosoft money. but i'll be transfering my laptop to my nephews, so without quicken or m/s money, i'll be trying via manual calculations.
3) a soldering iron and a solder set. $30 .... ok so it's made in japan. but all i need a quick work on my guitar for my game. i last used a soldering iron in 1993. that was my job after the army as an engineering assistance. wonder what will i be doing if i am not in my present job? and i wonder what i'll be doing if i quit my preent job. without this job i'll be financially burden, and that's not to say this job pays well. it felt it pays us shit, underpaid with heavy responsibility.

and finally my guitar explorer is repaired. i can use that whammy bar again for resonnace.

and a song dedicated to my wife, elaine ....

i know u think you're all alone / i haven't been there when u needed me / i didn't deserve the love u gave / but now telling u i'm here if u need a friend

give me your pain / give me your anger / let me be your rock / i can be the pillar of strength that you need / i'll help u keep it all together / it's better late than never / lay your world on me / i can take the weight

don't let it twist u up inside / time never fails to make the heartache stop / you've got to let those feelings go / i'll give u everything i can if u say the word

give me your pain / give me your anger / let me be your rock / i can be the pillar of strength that you need / i'll help u keep it all together / it's better late than never / lay your world on me / i can take the weight

we all laugh and we all cry / we all hurt the same inside / we all fall down and we lose faith in who we really are / but if we can bend inside of break / the choice for us is to make it together / lay your world on me

i'll keep it all together / it's better late than never / lay your world on me / lay your world on me / lay your world on me / i can take the weight

~ ozzy osbourne / zakk wylde / kevin churko

shadow of the day

these are my wive's blythes. some other blythes are vaulted .... she named this oicture the lucky5.

---------------------------

it's been a great day out. my wife treated me to a TCC lunch at isetan scotts /shaw area. the medication made me a little pukey so i only had the soup. i finished up her remaining salmon with potato dish. the apple citrus fizzy soda was a good wake up call drink .... got my energy and suck my wife's lifeform and she got tired ultimately.

he had about 4hrs of sleep .... so did i ....

the previous nite from 1am to this morning 10am was draining ....

this blog had started when i was last told to stop work for awhile .... guess this marks as an milestone ....

and i felt i let my wife down.

* managed to locate EGM Sept with 3 diff cover. i chosed the yellow halo guy.

i broke down when i was playing this song over the car stereo .... linkin park's shadow of the day :-

.

.

.

i close both locks below the window

i close both blinds and turn away

sometimes solutions aren't so simple

sometimes goodbye's the only way

.

and the sun will set for you

the sun will set for you

and the shadow of the day

will embrace the world in grey

and the sun will set for you

.

in cards and flowers on your window

your friends will plead for you to stay

sometimes beginnings aren't so simple

sometimes goodbye's the only way

.

and the sun will set for you

the sun will set for you

and the shadow of the day

will embrace the world in grey

and the sun will set for you

.

and the shadow after day

will embrace the world in grey

and the sun will set for you

.

.

.

thanks to all colleagues who are true and showed concern and text me .... Karen / HT / Lam Seng / Steven / Adelene / Vincent / Pauline / Rick / ABK / Benny. and the pals at tower on the fateful morning who gave support.

snake eater fever again

decided to get a ak-47 for mr zombie snake. hot toys had recently released vol2 of modern firearms. i managed to find a seller who wants to let go a AK-47 from vol1. as most weapons in the 2 volumes are pretty modern, a AK-47 will suit well for a 60s character (which he did used in the game). another yahoo auctions seller also smsed me when i was on my way to drop off some second stuff to a buyer. finnaly got my series 13 metal gear solid 3 bearbrick.

so it's peninsula to serangoon to henderson to amk .... not well planned route, but nice impromtu messages that i got the chores all sorted out.

my wife received her safari blythe ... a blythe shop exclusive. hope i can get some pictures from her to post here.

..

..

this is my second snake eater by medicom toys from the metal gear solid 3 snake eater game. this figure is 1000pcs limited while the zombie face is 500 limited. still missing from the collection is the 1000pc first issue .... which sell pretty high now. if i would have bought this snake camo splitter face snake eater few months back i would pay like 60dollars less. now the price had went up, ever since the craze of MGS gone wild. this figure comes with a croc head and a M16 .... something additonal to the last figure. all 3 figures are believed to be released in 2005.

-- 2mins2midnite --

$120 to go .... 3 cds + a dvd karaoke disc for my mum .... i got linkin park for free.

linkin park's been always to young a band for me .... chester bennington's appearance in crank movie gives him a final slot for me to test em out.

ayumi or kumi koda? guess it's another shot for ayumi's new single. ayumi always portray the lonely girl.

metal gear solid 3 soundtrack in hmv ? they have MGS1 n MGS2 x2 soundtracks as well. it's only 50 thru playasia. but i guess it's nice to pick something out then waiting. 2nite will be the nite i start MGS.

powerslave .... iron maiden was pretty unsuitable for me when i first heard number of the beast. speed metal? not my genre. but i was once facinated by the cover of powerslave. 1984 was it? a second time i encouter maiden was when i played the trooper on guitar hero 2. back to basics .... another shot for the england arena rockers.

rush

missing

havent been able to contact my wife since 430pm. hope she'll ok .... possibly too busy at work. it's 820pm now.
.
.

my wife has sourced out the glass casing i've been looking for to house my chinese / japanese genre 12inch figures. kino sells these similar glass cases at $200 a pop, with a openable door. mine is more chinese / altar oriented, self assembled n serves the job well. and mine cos only a fraction of the jap made. killer.

more pix on the disposable bag free with the bape catalog. notice the recycle bape logo and the inner pocket taab.

snake eater

i'm glad my stuff from amazon came in 2day. i opted for expedited international shipping and in came in 8days after it left the US.


tho this is a newer guide, it's not really what i'm looking for. the original snake eater guide is more elaborated on the single player while this book concentrates on subsistence itself, plenty onthe online gaming aspect of metal gear solid 3. nevertheless i need a guide soon as my game is injap so with a book in hand just translate alittle of the storyline for me.

a surprise find ... bape catalog autumn/winter 2007.

bound by blood

received a sms from gamescore to come collect the 20th anniversary Metal Gear Solid box set.


initially the box looks metal, but it's a cupboard box with a metal plate MGS 1087 - 2007



the PSP portable ops is hidden on the bottom of this box set. will i be needing to buy all the guide books now since all the language will be in japanese.

DID Date Masamune 1/6th figure mini review

this 1/6th figure by DID (dragon in dreams) was released last november, in 2006. my interest in samurai grew after watching a second run on the movie "the last samurai" on blu-ray, starring tom cruise n ken watenabe. a quick search on the net to discover such of work of art, hand-made samurai armour, of metal parts, same sewing as used in the real armour .... DID is sure an upcoming company to set some new standards.

Date Masamune is DID's first samurai figure. mine is the international version that comes with 2 heads that u can interchange. there is one recent 2007 release, a second international version samurai by the name of Takeda Shingen (picture above taken from DID) also with 2 head sculpts. there are 2 limited version only for japansese market .... a higher price old man Date and old man Takeda .... these ageing samurai comes with a diorama and little more accersories.

my choice to buy Date over Takeda was mainly due to the color of his armour and the nature of this samurai. Takeda was historically recorded to be alittle more tyrant and Date is more of a goody jedi ... i mean samurai. yes, these 2 samurai are real historic chaps that the japs still honour 2day.

the figure is well packed, well secured with wires. the metal skirt is wrapped with plastic and a silicon pack was thrown in to prevent oxidation.

samurai carries 2 katanas .... these are made of metal.

the infamous moon crest on Date's helm. bushy moustage on his face armour.

the helm armor folds when placed on the floor.

the spare head with shouting mouth. his nice velvet vest. eye patch to be shared between the 2 heads.

the hair is weaved into the sculpt. the japanese aged samurai version are both more bald so no weave hair for those 2. Date's lost his right eye during his youth when he had small pox. it was told he took his eye out due to the disease by himeslf.

Date shows you his plated armor skirt.

frontal armor pose.
rear armor pose with vest.

he killed his brother who supposedly to have taken the throne to the heir of Date's father's kingdom. Date's mother claims Date is no fit to take over the rulership as he only had one eye. his mother tried to poison him while serving him food.

darth vader was a concept borrowed from the samurai. vader confronts his true identity.

PS please excuse my hasty pictures.