random late night post to keep my free domain

Let's discuss something more random, shall we? Like the newly (actually about two months) opened shopping centre at my down there. Ahem, Yew Tee Point. So, what's so peculiar about the place?

It's a rather small shopping centre, frankly pathetic by mall standards. Above is a condominium, a carpark. The shopping part takes place over...one and a half storeys. Enough to host 70-odd shops. Which is fine and dandy.

But. This shopping mall has something awesome about it. It's chock full of food.

Come on, a third of the stalls sell omnomnom-ers!

Previously, for Yew Tee, we had:

1 Food Court
1 Hawker Centre (2, but the other doesn't count)
1 McDonald's
1 Cake Shop
1 Bread Shop
...

...That was it. Now, however, we have:

3 Food Courts
1 Hawker Centre
1 Japanese Restaurant
1 Hong Kong Restaurant
1 Indian Food Joint
1 Store that sells a lot of things
1 Chinese Noodle Joint
1 Toast Restaurant
1 KFC
1 Burger King
1 Subway
1 Long John Silver's
1 McDonald's
1 McDonald's
1 McCafe
1 Old Chang Kee
3 Cake Shops
3 Bread Shops
1 Chicken Store
1 Chicken Rice Store
1 Sushi Store
1 Bah-Kwa Store
1 Bubble-tea Store
1 Soya bean Store

No, that wasn't a typo. There really ARE two Mac's hanging around the area. Best thing is, they're located 5 metres from each other. Well, one of them is air-conditioned, but still.

Think there are a couple more I missed out, or not completed yet...

Glittery, Liberating Silver

So we got Silver.

We broke our 34-year, 17 consecutive Golds-and-above streak.

So.

So?

I admit, I was shocked when I heard the results. How could we have gotten Silver? I did not believe we played a Silver standard. I still don't. It was definitely a Gold standard.

But then, you realise that this medal is really quite meaningless. It says absolutely nothing of the effort that we as a band have put in. Whatever we've done, we've done our very best, to whatever extent we could have. That is enough.

I'm quite sure every other band in Singapore has worked very hard for this. Everyone deserves a Gold with Honours.

Hey, besides, I like silver so much more than gold as a colour.

dead blog revival

Finally. Have to update.

SYF is in two days' time.

God, I still can't get part G of Overture No. 1 right.

Makes me wonder sometimes if I'm really deteriorating temporarily, or I'm set on a path of no return back to Sec 1 days.

Fine, not so dramatic. Because if I really did so I'd probably quit band out of sadness.

But still, I've been deproving at a horrendously fast rate. My endurance, my high notes...will my tone go next?

I have no idea what's causing this. None.

Damnit.

I want to play the trumpet.

the start (end) of the holidays (my freedom)

Friday was awesome day. Day off as RI's A-level results were awesome. Next week? Holiday.

Friday: Band
Saturday: Band (though I poned this)
Monday: Band
Tuesday: Band
Thursday: SMP
Friday: Band
Saturday: Band

Yea, I have a free schedule. Not complaining though. We need the practices.

Of course, with so many days taken away from me, you'd think I'd be chionging my homework like some crazy maniac these few days. Instead, I got to turn 21 in Empire: Total War. As the Poles.

>.>

So today was supposed to be band day, but I didn't go as I had an NS talk conducted by Mindef specially for PRs. The event started at 7.45 am, so my mum and I had to get up quite early to go to Expo. Saw tons of Chinamen there. Like me.

Then was a short reception, then a ferry ride to Pulau Tekong, where the Basic Military Training Center was located. The place looked not nearly as run-down nor scary as I had never imagined it to be (to be honest I don't mind going for NS at all). Oh, and the boat was nice.

There we toured the facilities in the BMTC like the hospital, the pool, the track, the bunks (nicer than the place we stayed at during the Band trip to Malaysia two years ago), the recreation area (no com, sadly), and whatnot. Then, a ride back to the HQ for a talk in the auditorium. The MC was super duper high. Like, seriously, high.

There were a few talks, by two PR officers (seriously though, what's the point of staying as a PR if you work in the damn army? I mean, if your homeland and Singapore were to fight, then you're quite screwed...), the head of the BMTC, and Minister of State for Defence (or was it Minister for State of Defence?). Then Q&A, standard fare. All in all not horribly boring and definitely quite useful. Lunch was at the cookhouse, and then ferry back to the mainland, and home we went.

Then I played Empire until like, 9.

Shit, I'm addicted.

goddamn it stupid OpenOffice Chinese word count method

I was writing up my essay for 鹰的天空. first wrote something damn lame about some guy trapped under a building after an earthquake. Decided it was too lame in the end and I couldn't ever fulfill the word quota as I was on page 2 and at 700 words. So I restarted my essay. Did the 'do-you-want-perfection' question. Did a page (with a smaller Chinese font) and checked my word count. not even 500? Bullshit! A single paragraph is like over 100 words. So now my Chinese E-Learning is complete. Not my other subjects though...

Oh and I was supposed to collect my broken trumpets with Lin Jin (he had a broken trombone) at Windworks today. Only today was staff training and the band wasn't open, and there was no way in hell I'm bringing 3 trumpets home (I brought back from yesterday's awesomely-long practice from 9-5. Didn't play it though =\).

(I'm quite Bad) minton

I played a bit of badminton just now with my dad. Quite fun but I still suck. Need to get less lazy =\ Daniel Ng, wanna play some day?

I found out about (actually it's more I remembered about) Samurize, which is basically a desktop editor. Let's you put a lotta stuff on the desktop, like CPU info, RAM, time, etc. If you think a normal desktop won't have use for such a thing since it's so cluttered anyways, my desktop is rather...empty.

Yea. The wallpaper changes often, though.

Anyways, I tried to use Samurize. Fiddled around with it for the entire night on Friday, then uninstalled it the next. D: Tried Rainmeter, but didn't like the fact that to edit your desktop you had to use Notepad.

nothing much

Again, just posting to keep my domain alive. Hopefully.

Valentine's Day passed by peacefully without my doing pretty much anything. So did Total Defence Day (got caught mildly surprised by the alarm though).

I have SMP tomorrow, as my mentor had an MC last Thursday. Means I go for SMP twice this week...

Ah well. Need to improve my trumpet playing even more. I'm actually okay, just that my endurance is still utterly disgusting. Can't really think of how to train that though.