31 May 2008

Bookworms ahoy!

Sharing of the books I read in May.


The first book is a Chinese Mandarin book a colleague of mine lent to me titled 处女座的医生是这样的 (This is How A Virgo Doctor is Like) by author 欧阳林. A direct Manglish translation of the title is "A Virgo Doctor is Like This one".


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It's a realtively thin book containing several short stories revolving around a male clinic doctor in Taiwan, who is also the author of the book.

It's a light and easy read. It is just like reading a personal blog really, only in good old hardcopy instead of on monitor screen.

The stories are interesting and about the right length for a quick relaxing read, like when doing business in the loo. =P

Comparing it to blogs, I would say it's about as good as
Mr Iron Rod's, slightly better than Kenny's, and worse than mine.

*ehem* =P


I am a big fan of the Dragonlance series of fantasy novels, and I have been slowly going through my collection according to the time line of the series after my shipment of stuff from England arrived last year, and after I have gotten my lazy arse to unpack and sort out the books.

So far, I have gone through The Meetings Sextet, the Preludes (only 5 out of 6 since I don't have the 4th book, yet), the Chronicles Trilogy, and the Legends trilogy. Most of them were rereads.

Yes, I reread story books, novels, comics...

The two Dragonlance books I have gone through this month are rereads, and both by my favourite authors Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. Any book from these two is a must read. =)

The Second Generation picked up the story after the War of the Lance. It contains five stories introducing the offsprings of the Heroes of the Lance and bringing the readers up to speed with the happening in the world of Krynn.


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A little excerpt from The Second Generation that I like:

"He's my son. Those draconians- I was afraid-" Tanis gave up. "How could you understand? You've never been a parent."

"If degenerating into a mindless idiot is what it means to be a parent, I shall certainly take care that I never achieve such a dubious distinction."


The Second Generation is a must read for all Dragonlance lovers, especially those who don't want to miss a thing when reading the following novel.


Dragons of Summer Flame, while following the naming convention of the Chronicles Trilogy, really doesn't follow the Chronicles directly. Do go through the Legends trilogy and The Second Generation before Dragons of Summer Flame.


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Forces of good and evil banded together to fight the father of all Gods for the survival of Krynn, that alone should be enough to get Dragonlance lovers to pick up the book, if the death of at least one of the Heroes of the Lance is not sufficient to draw the attention.

I said 'at least one' because this is a reread and I have read books further down the time line of Dragonlance series and found out about the truth of a certain "death" in this book. I won't spoil it here, of course.

After all, don't you want to find out why the Gods depart Krynn and about the end of an age? The story that led to the beginning of the Age of Mortals without the magic as Kyrnn known it.

Here's a little excerpt from Dragons of Summer Flame that I really like:

"Why do I keep lying to him?" she asked herself miserably. "One lie on top of another. All tiny and harmless to begin with, they seem to be growing in size."

A tiny pile of sand had changed to a mountain of boulders. She had to labor* to keep them in place, for if one shifted, they would fall, tumble down and crush her. Yet the mountain of lies was now a barrier, was keeping her seperated from Palin.


Don't lie, kiddo! Especially to someone you love.

The return of my favourite character, Raistlin, in both Second Generation and Dragons of Summer Flame, is enough reason to mark them as must read but really, Margaret and Tracy delivered again in these books. They are fantastic.


* yes, silly American spelling.

29 May 2008

Random Bits & Pieces

A few days before the Bowling Queen's birthday, this happened...



yup, me is scaringly ugly

After the birthday celebration and when I had finally hauled my lazy arse to get the blog entry done, I sent a shameless plug heads up to the colleagues.

To which the birthday girl replied...


erm... yea... 21

=P



Come on people, give face and put something in the comment leh!
=(

27 May 2008

"boh liao"

Giant size noodle?

I want!


I am in the world of giants!

Making a fool of myself is what I am pretty good at.

=P

Find your own world of giant wall papers at your local Secret Recipe restaurant. Hope you go to one that doesn't require you to wait for an hour before the food is ready.

*cough*QueensbayMallPenangBranch*cough*

Sorry, must be the giant size chilli.

25 May 2008

Happy Birthday Bowling Queen!

I have hesitation in posting this entry (read notes at the end for details) but decided that in the spirit of Great Place to Work I shall risk tarnishing my non-existent goody Mr Nice reputation further, just to share this recent birthday celebration that happened in the office.

A lady colleague turned the wonderful age of 27 21 a few days ago. In celebration of such joyous occasion her generous colleagues had banded together to shower her with presents.

A LCD monitor, a telephone, a head set, a keyboard, a docking station, an ergonomic chair, a jacket, a white board, and even a packet of sour plum powder!

All wrapped nicely (in newspaper) a day before the birthday.

Taking the day off a day prior to your birthday is not a good idea

By the way, the items were conveniently available in the cubicle already, Santa Claus must have been awarding the well-behaved colleagues earlier this year.

That's the sour plum powder, oh, and some expired coffee powder

Tagged on the monitor was a birthday wish signed by the colleagues, also served as a note to say "Ha ha!".

=P

Nothing says cheap sincerity better than a home made greeting card

I didn't know how the birthday girl reacted when she came in on her birthday. By the time I got to her cubicle all the "presents" were already unwrapped.

A half-sphere cake was bought after going round the island looking for one that resembles a bowling ball.

Why bowling ball?

Well... the birthday girl is a dedicated bowling player with bowling gloves and all that, don't play play! This "fact" is unknown to most people (probably includes the birthday girl herself).

If you look closely, you can see three bowling ball holes

Colleagues and friends gathered around her cubicle and sang her the birthday song, so energetic and involved we were in singing that the song turned out rather like a funeral song...


Da birthday gal, Lay Ling "Bowling Queen" NG

Hope you enjoyed your birthday, Lay Ling!



It is most disheartening that colleagues are automatically associating me with any pranks that happened in the office, despite me being a victim. There are photographic proofs of the REAL pranksters in action in that entry leh!

While I play the role of the messenger since I like to share and I write blog, that doesn't mean I am in any way involved in the prank lar.

I am veli the nice one!

*innocent look*

Unless you have photographic proof* of me in action in any prank that I might or might not have been involved, I deny all charges! =P

* I reject all your photographic proofs since I am sure they are all faked using Photoshop. =P

22 May 2008

Meh!

I have been destroying my slacker reputation lately, not only do I not disappear from the office around 17:15 hours, I have been working later and later into the day.

This is just so wrong.

Work not going too smoothly, been working on a model for way too long now and still not getting anywhere near the target.

Me no likey. =\

Think perhaps it's time to forget logical problem solving and engineering technique, it's time to start praying to the Modelling Goddess.

Meh.

19 May 2008

Lycanthropy

I can always tell when it's at or near full moon, since I have difficulty in sleeping the few days before, on, and after, the actual day of a full moon.

I don't remember in what year this started, but I remember that night so many years ago, when I suddenly woke up in the middle of the night to full alertness for no apparent reason.

And the first thing I saw was that bright full moon out of the window, somehow it seemed larger than usual, and very low in the sky close to the horizon.

Enthralled and at the same time feeling a bit scared, I covered my head with my pillow (I was really young then, okay?) and peeked at the full moon until I fell asleep again.

Whether or not my full moon sleeplessness started since that day I honestly could no longer remember, but I remember that night and that huge bright full moon.

It's really until many years after, when I have been exposed to this lycanthropy notion and when I have started to take myself less seriously that I started joking about me having werewolf blood.

I heard that the sleeplessness may have something to do with the gravitational force of the moon, but hey, saying I have werewolf blood sounds so much cooler!

=P

I probably should add now that instead of gaining a lot of body hair and transforming into a wolf, I lose hair and become bald! Scary in a totally different way, hehehe. =P

And no, saying I am "colour wolf" is not funny, so don't or I will bite your head off next full moon.

15 May 2008

The Forbidden Kingdom

功夫之王, literally "the King (or Master) of Kung Fu" is called "The Forbidden Kingdom" instead as its official English title.

Why?

I don't know lar! Probably the same person who wrote the story line for the movie came up with the translation for the title?

After watching Iron Man a week prior to watching The Forbidden Kingdom, here's my not-so-neutral review of the movie.

Oh come on! All reviews are opinionated one, okay?

After you have seen this review, you no longer need to check the other reviews liao since this is the bestest.

=P

*Spoilers alert*

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The story line sucks monkey balls is weird. A twisted mix of the Monkey King, the Chinese Gods and Goddesses, and time-space travelling of an American boy.

Mega stars Jet Li and Jackie Chan are probably the main reason people like me were conned into watching went to watch the movie.

And they did not let me down. The fighting scenes between the two kung fu masters were great.

Many scenes in the movie were taken at fantastic locations in China, they were beautiful.

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In short, Chinese-kung-fu-wannabe-American-boy with weird dreams came into possession of a magical staff. The staff belongs to the Monkey King, who was trapped in stone form by the bad guy in another time-space and required the staff to set himself (the Monkey King) free.

Boy's job was to return the staff to the Monkey King. Boy helped along the way by an immortal (well, eventually) and a vase misguided girl full of teenage angst.

Bad guy sent lesser bad guys and a bad lady with fantastic hair/wig to stop the boy.

After overcaming obstacles, good guys finally reached the Monkey King and handed over the staff, Monkey King kicked bad guy's arse and everyone live happily ever after.

In between start and the end got a lot of kicks and punches lor.

A lot of jumping ah, running ah, falling ah, walking on people's head ah, etc.

A lot of fighting lor, then mar sure got a lot of "oofff", "ouch", "arghhh", "owww", "ah, I die liao", etc.

Image source

Funny how the bad lady with long white hair who should really do shampoo commercial with her super duper archery skill that sure hit one only chose to shoot a single arrow, and only after the good guys were running away.

Why not just fire a few more arrows to take care of business? It's not like she cared about taking them alive, she just wanted the staff only mar.

You know lady, just shoot them before you even approach them would have saved you a lot of trouble.

Oh well.

So, if I were to give Iron Man a 9.5 out of 10, then I would give The Forbidden Kingdom a 6 out of 10.

11 May 2008

Mr One-third No More

As of 12:40 hours, Saturday, 8th of May, Mr one-third was reunited with his missing two-third.

Just thought you might want to know. =P


The composition of a husband + father of one

Me is complete again!

Me happy. =)

08 May 2008

Lead by Example


Freebie alert!

Buy a McDonald's value meal and say this chant "Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun" in 4 seconds to get a free Big Mac. (1 to 28 May, 3 to 8pm at participating restaurants)

Easy peasy, McD freebie!




It's no secret that I don't care much about politics, but I just have to plug this worthy read after a colleague brought it to my attention.

My respect to Mr Lim.

On a somewhat related note, I tried to fulfilled my voting duty this year since I am finally back to the country after almost a decade overseas, only to give up in digust after trying in vain to get myself registered for voting numerous times at the post office.

The system was always down. Every freaking time I went, no matter the time nor day.

I have a feeling my vote ended up somewhere anyway, probably as one of those magically appeared votes after a "miscount".

04 May 2008

Vocabulary Lesson with CK

I have used "damnit" to mean damn it for ages, and I just realised it's a misspelling. It should be "dammit".

I was hoping Wiktionary got it wrong so I checked my good old Oxford dictionary too.

It's really "dammit".

Dammit!

03 May 2008

Why?

I have a lovely and loving wife.

Yes I know what you are thinking: why would such a lovely lady pick a spud like me?

Who has given birth to our adorable baby boy.

Beware of those teeth!

I have very supportive parents, who have given me more than I have asked for.

I have no idea how I am ever going to repay them, I suppose I will just have to be like them and treat my children likewise.

Yes young man, you are the lucky one

I have a job that provides steady income, not fantastic since given the choice I would rather not work (yes I am a slacker, heh) but that's just wistful thinking. Wouldn't mind the pay being higher mind you, but generally I am content with the job.

For the time being anyway.




So why am I often depressed?