Steamboat, anyone?

Right. So remember I said I was getting ready for a night out with some friends? Right. It really did happen, and no, it wasn't some sort of delusional thingy on my part. Unfortunately, no pictures to prove I was there, so you guys will just have to take my word for it, muahahahaha! So yeah, we hung out at this place called Garden Steamboat or something like that, and okay, I'll admit it turned out better than I expected. For one, they had crabs and prawns, all ready-grilled for us! Yummy! All we could eat, too. Then of course, it wouldn't be a steamboat without the steamboat thingy, so yes, we all dipped into the steamboat metal cooking utensil thingy and tried not to get carbon monoxide poisoning from all the dangerous fumes the so-called 'authentic' charcoal was emitting. Fine. Third, their lemonade was superb! And when I say superb, I really mean "super large serving". Like, the thing ended up looking like a vase or something. You could probably stuff some water lilies in it and it'll look no different from what it does look like. Of course, I asked the price of it and one waiter guy said something like 4 bucks and 80 cents or something like that. Whoa. I know it's pretty pricey, but I mean honestly, it was almost worth every drop. Slurp. And of course, the friends I met up with were a truly cool bunch. I think some of them spent more time talking and laughing than eating. I say 'some', because I was doing most of the eating. You can't quite expect me to pay like 20 bucks and what, not eat? Kinda defeats the purpose of going to an eatery, doesn't it?

Consequences to date: 4 visits to the loo, diarrhoea purposes.

But yes, I had a great time. Let's do it again, you guys! Okay, gotta stop blogging now and get ready for worship practice later. Cheers!

Today I...

• Tried fiddling around with my blog - So if you guys notice something different (ahem: if you hear something different), all I can say is... Muahahahaha! Yes, Esther the HTML-impaired Technopath-wannabe has been at it again, adding stuff by trial and error to see if it accidentally manages to appear successfully... So what do you think?


• Am preparing for a night out - At this steamboat place that I've never been to before called Garden or something like that. It's a reunion of sorts with some classmates and schoolmates who I haven't met in months (and years, obviously). Looking forward to the food. It better be good. For 20 bucks, it better be...


• Posting funny little CNY messages - Yup, you know all those graphic images stuff that people post on your testimonials on Friendster. Well, if you receive one from me, well lucky you!


• Am on my second day as a laptop-using, Internet-accessing person - Enough said. The wonders of the laptop and all (refer to previous blog entry).


• Stomach ache! - Right NOW! Rushing to the toilet. Will be right back. Wait for meeeeee...! *15 minutes later* Okay, I'm back. Resuming blogging session.


• Feeling rather lethargic - I'm wondering if it's because I sleep too much, or sleep too little. I mean I know this sounds a little confusing. This week the average sleep I get each day is approximately 8 hours. I usually sleep about 10 hours. So is an 8-hour sleep too little? But then again, I know the average human being survives with as little as 5 hours of sleep. So am I sleeping too much then? See my problem?


• Have new favourites - Am currently into Howie Day's Collide, Lifehouse's You Belong To Me, and trying to finish reading The Lord Of The Rings. Yeah. Just to give you guys an update and all.

Okay, so as of today, I am officially down to my last one week of holidays before university resumes again. One week of trying to get started on assignments. One week of contemplating whether to start studying for my midterm exams. But it's also one week of late night 'Net surfing and TV, one week of sleeping until the sun is high in the sky, and one week of carbonated drinks, cookies, and hanging out with my buddies! And to that, I say:

Cheers!

Esther, the technopath?

No I'm afraid not. No such luck. I just tweaked some stuff here and there, and here I am, actually typing this out from my laptop! Wheeeeeeeeeeeee! I'm so happy! Previously the only way I could access the 'Net was from the PC, but now, with like a few cables running from the modem to my laptop to some strange port in the wall, plus my headphones and my trusty (albeit rather worn-out and malfunctioning in certain parts) mouse! I'm a happy person!

It all started with me suddenly having this urge in recent days to go online on my laptop. But I couldn't, or so I thought. Until I asked around, and a few friends told me some details, and I trial-ed and error-ed my way to the Internet! Not bad for someone as technologically unsavvy as myself, eh?

"With a great laptop comes great benefits."

Spiderman's long-lost twin brother Technoman said something along those lines. Yup, now with my dear beloved laptop I can now access the Friendster website at almost twice (maybe even thrice!) the previous speed! And you know what? Here's the best part - I can actually watch all those videos and music clips in their perfect entirety! And by this I mean that it's really smooth, like no jerks, pauses, buzzes etc etc that previously accompanied my previous video-watching days... Everything's brighter, more vivid, so beautiful! I think I'm falling in love all over again with my beloved laptop... Thanks to the Acer laptop company! Muahahahahaha!

Okay, that's it. I'm finished gloating. I'm off discovering new wonders of the Internet with my trusty sidekick, my laptop.

Cheers!

Cleaning my room

What was I doing last night? I was watching episodes 12, 13, and 14 of my current favourite show, Heroes! Simply fabulous. Of course, before that I was actually trying to clean my room. I did it, people! Okay, I didn't do it all, but at least I've started right? And I have a new record: 70% of my room cleaned up in less than an hour. How great is that? Muahahahaha! And I spent about half an hour or so rearranging some little stuff around on one of my shelves. My room looks pretty now. I can actually see the carpet on my floor. The clutter's gone too - no more clothes lying around, no more books, papers, newspapers, leftover Cola cans and junk food wrappers, no more slowly-decomposing food that I accidentally forgot to throw away... My room looks good now. Smells nice too! I'm hoping to clear up the remaining 20% or so this evening, or maybe tonight. I don't have any other reason to procrastinate. No more episodes of Heroes left to watch, sniff sniff. I guess I'll just have to wait for episode 15 to be available and download it, but I doubt it'll be out anytime soon. So I guess it really is time to really clean my room.

I'm so inspired by messy rooms turned clean that I'll actually risk violating several copyright infringement rules and post up some cute cartoons I found on clean (and messy) rooms. Hope you all get a laugh out of these, 'cause I sure did... Okay well, maybe not a laugh-out-loud laugh, but it did put a smile on my face.

How many parents would actually say this:

This one's a really cool perspective on messy rooms:

Cheers.

Heroes

So I kickstarted the enjoyment factor of this year's CNY holidays cum midterm break by watching the entire first 11 episodes of this new series called Heroes. I'm wondering if it's a new record on my part: 16 hours (inclusive of 8 hours of sleep) to watch 11 episodes. I'm just gonna cut a long story short and say that I first knew about Heroes about a month or so ago, when a little picture together with a caption and a few paragraphs' worth of words appeared on the TV page of a local newspaper. I read it and was more or less immediately hooked by the plot: normal people, call them ordinary if you must, wake up one day to realise they've got superpowers. Man, it blew me away. For those of you guys who know me, you know I'm totally into all this mutant superhuman with superpower stuff - X-Men, Mutant X, and now this. But I kinda gave up hope. I mean, what are the odds of this totally new series in America suddenly appearing on the public airwaves? Only if you've got pay TV, and I don't, so there goes Heroes out of the window or so I thought... Until one day, when I asked one of my coursemates if he had any interesting TV programs and he casually mentioned the name Heroes. To say I went ballistic would be one of the greatest understatements of the new year. I literally went nuts. So there you have it, the story of how I got my grimy hands on the first 11 episodes of Heroes. Boy, am I totally ecstatic.

One of the most moving scenes happens in the pilot episode. All you see is this mysterious guy standing on the rooftop of a high-rise building, his arms raised and his eyes closed as the background music swells to match his feelings. You can really feel it, y'know - his thoughts, his emotions. He knows he's specials, different, but nobody believes him. And he's beginning to doubt it himself, so he decides to prove to himself that he is special. And then he jumps. You've just gotta watch it for yourself how Peter Petrelli (acted fabulously by Milo Ventimiglia) fares, and whether he really is all that special after all. You're not getting any spoilers from me! Seriously though, I find the soundtrack is simply fabulous. There's this recurring theme that occurs in almost every song, and I think it's lovely. The cast is great too - seriously, I haven't seen an entire cast of actors and actresses in their element as I've seen them here. It's really rare to see the entire ensemble cast acting with such a fervour and talent - unless of course, you've watched LOTR, which to me is like the ultimate in ensemble cast acting. But we're not talking about LOTR here, we're talking about Heroes! One of a few interesting characters to watch is that of Hiro Nakamura, the Japanese who can manipulate the time-space continuum. He is such a joy to watch, his facial expressions are so adorable! Then of course there's the lovable, honest cop Matt Parkman who suddenly realises he can read minds... And who can forget the handsome artist Isaac Mendez who paints the future? And the flying politician as they call him, Nathan Petrelli... Man, all these should make for some really interesting plot developments!

"Have you ever dreamt of flying?"

Yeah, that's my question for you. If you're one of those rare people who have, and you know what it feels like to soar over the tops of buildings and trees with the breeze in your hair and that look of wonder in your eyes, you would love Heroes almost as much as I do.

And to leave you all with a quote by Mohinder Suresh from the show:
"Some individuals, it is true, are more special. This is natural selection. It begins as a single individual born or hatched like every other member of their species. Anonymous. Seemingly ordinary. Except they're not. They carry inside them the genetic code that will take their species to the next evolutionary rung. It's destiny."




Cheers.

Coming soon - Esther's escape from prison!

Hi y'all... It's been what? Almost one week? Anyway, I'm just glad this week is almost over... What with 2 midterm exams, a bunch of assignments due, this week has really been something! Of course, I still have one more assignment due on Friday and I haven't started a bit of it, but yeah, compared to what I was feeling last night (what with exam stress and all) now this moment feels like bliss! And drum roll please - bonus for me - holidays begin next week! Which means this Friday marks my release from 'prison' for approximately 12 days, yippee! I'm due back in prison on the 21st, bummer... But while the holiday lasts, it'll be a rock-and-rollin' time, oh yeah!

Well during my parole, I guess I'll be working on a few er, 'projects'... Like trying to clean up my room in time for Chinese New Year. It's like this nagging thought at the back of my mind that some curious people might actually wanna take a peep into the private world of Esther, and then ta-da! Shock for them, embarassment for me at the mess, the leftover plastic food wrappers, the multiple carbonated drink cans lying around in almost every nook and cranny... Yeah, I better start cleaning real soon. It's definitely gonna take me a long time. Then of course, the next 'project' would be trying to actually do some studying for the many midterm exams and assignments that will be due immediately upon my re-entry into prison. Sigh. Nothing more I can say about that. Third 'project' would be to er... Have fun eating and drinking all those carbonated drinks? I mean, like, what else am I supposed to do huh? Say no and pass up a perfectly good opportunity to get free Coca-Cola? Yeah right. And the cow pogo-jumped over the moon. And yes of course not to forget Esther's almost never-ending quest to finish the LOTR trilogy... Sigh! Is it really supposed to be this hard to finish what is supposed to be my favourite book?

And I guess that's it this time... Why do all my blog startings and endings sound the same? LoL!

Cheers!

"And now, the latest update..."

Yeah, I know it's been a relatively long time since I last blogged, and I know I've sorta left you all hanging as to the situation of my ear, but lemme explain myself: I just haven't had the time - and the energy - to come online... And yeah, of course the fact that my connection was playing a game of hide-and-seek with me also contributed lots to the state of blogless-ness. Yeah. That said and done, let me update you on what's been going on in my life the past week or so:

Last Saturday, I finally decided enough was enough, I couldn't stand not being able to hear anything in my right ear, so I finally gathered up the courage and dragged my buddy Trish along with me to an ENT specialist. Well, it didn't really help that it was literally pouring rain down like buckets, and that I had to drive like 7 rounds and 30 minutes around a whole area of buildings only to find out at the end that the specialist I'd originally wanted to go to had packed up and moved to an entirely different area, but yes, we finally made it to another ENT specialist, this one situated at the Timberland Medical Centre zone, but yes, in short (yeah right, just check out how long this sentence is already) I managed to see the ENT specialist, he managed to clear up my right ear (yes! I can really hear now!), and I managed to pay up 70 bucks and there you have it... An extraordinarily long sentence, and very good hearing now! Yippee!

This week has been another whirlwind of assignments and catching up on everything I'd missed last week being sick. Yes, I've gotten most of my photostated notes, and yes, I think I'm not doing such a bad job at understanding what's been going on... Things really do seem to be looking up! I mean, the midterm holidays are just next week, and yes I know we've got all this horrible midterm exams to do first and all, but you know what? Life is certainly looking up! I mean, even this downloading program that I use (which shall, for obvious or not-so-obvious reasons remain nameless here) is beginning to get its functioning operability up and running again! Previously it was total blanks in the field of connections, but now at least it doesn't say "Waiting for stable connections" any longer... Now it just says what it used to say before: "Awaiting sources"! Yippee!

And I guess that's it from me this time... I've got a tonne of assignments to research, and two midterm exams next week! It's time to get down to the crunch, people!

Cheers!