Wednesday, November 28, 2007

The Mission

Huanghui was telling me about her part in the show on the mission on selling prata some time back.. and not long ago, ripple suggested giving yunying a surprise visit for a belated birthday celebration, and yunying is involved in the same show.. wah jia lat, go there gotta buy prata from both teams...from sources, we got to know that they are filming on sat morning at fong seng prata. together with borong ripple js and bangzhi, we woke up early, met up and drove there. upon arrival, we realised there were no cameras, no lightings, no mediacorp people, hhmm did we get the location wrong? call up the info source, but no answer.. in the end called up huanghui to realised that it's the next day!!!

So we ended up going to the new balance warehouse sale nearby and we spent a total of around $700!!! huge damage to pockets.. cake was half melted in the sun, got it into the fridge and then brought it along the next day... woke up early again.. this time, filming crew could be seen even before we parked.. saw huanghui immediately after alightling and caught a few shots of her.. and with the slr attracting lot's of attention from the crew, i was asked to pose as her fan trying to take her photo and then the host will came over and get me to participate in their "most creative prata photo" contest to stand a chance of winning a digital camera and a photo printer.. the prize was quite attractive, so i agreed, before knowing that i have to buy 5 pieces of mushroom and cheese prata at a whooping $20!!Ok... paid up and waited a long while for the prata.. but there were free gifts.. 5 packets of vitagen collagen, 2 bottles of shokobutsu bady wash and 2 bottles of shokobutsu face wash.. not the $20 seems worth it.. and so with such a creative art director like ripple, we submitted this photo for the contest.

After finishing the 5 pieces of prata, we proceeded to the other side where yunying was.. she was really busy looking for customers, going all out to get curious people walking by to sit down and buy some prata, even had to get kids to go on stage for karaoke, and sing along with them..

Here, the pratas were cheaper, only $2 a piece, but it's prata kosong!! 10 pieces entitles you to a lucky draw chance to win a karaoke entertainment system!!
Other then lucky draw, they even invited a guest star, this person called wang chuan yi from taiwan, do you know him? i dun even know who he is when he walked in, but ripple went bersek on the sight of him, while we asked one another who this person is... they decided to give away his album if someone is willing to buy the pratas in huge amount... and ripple (the only one) offered to buy 20 pieces!!
So we ended up with 20 pieces of prata kosong for take away!! nearing the end of the session, it's time to surprise birthday girl with the half melted cake, cos it was a hot day and the cake was kept in the car for a few hours.. but it's the thought that counts right!!


At the end of the filming session, it was time to announce the 3 winners for the "creative photo" contest!! luckily there weren't too many entries, only about 12 photos to choose from, and from what we see only 1 other seemed more creative than ours!! haha our halloween mask entry got selected!!! yeh... new digital cam and photo printer!! if you want to try for the prize, you can go down this sat (not sun), same place. 9am to 12pm...

Monday, November 26, 2007

The Tattooist: Gala Premiere

Remember these 2 posts from a year ago? here and here. finally, after a year's wait, the movie is finally out!! most excited person is none other that bangzhi himself. imagine watching yourself on big screen, a person who fear watching horror movie had to watch himself die in the show. how does it feel? weird? gotta ask him. i was invited by him to the gala premiere, with the huge camera, i think i look like the event's photographer, some people actually mistook me for the official photographer and wanted me to take photos for them.Lots of people at the premiere, posters of people with tatoos on their bodies was hung up, they even got a person to tatoo on the spot at gv vivo!! not many stars seen there though. but today's star is bangzhi, so let's not care about the rest.

Interview cannot siam, this group of students from i cannot remember which poly conducted quite a pro interview with him, and andie as well, win star search getting busy, need to go for interviews and lot's of photo taking with fans.. i lost count of how many people wanted to take photos with him and of him that evening.
The bang brothers, took me quite a while to photoshop the oily faces man!!
The tattooist is showing at cinemas from this week onwards, remember to go watch it, support bangzhi, support local talents. it's a good show...

For the Supporters

If you have been reading this blog.. you would have known that andie won star search 2007, you can check on previous post of it here. to thank all his supporters, from family to friends to fans, he organised a gathering and had some food catered.Sweat baby article on zaobao, they purposely chose the photo where he looked really sweaty, or isit the oil on his face causing that. haha



By the time i got there, most of the people had left, i couldn't attend it earlier cos was in malaysia, wasted, didn't get a chance to take photos of andie with his fans.. but at least there are some small fans around, cousins, relatives, parent's ex student's children etc..

And since there's some time, it's time for some group photos, as of course it has gotta be the newest most in pose..

Congrats once again andie.. enjoy your holidays before work starts next year!!

Saturday, November 24, 2007

Visit to Malaysia

It's grandma's birthday, and we are having a simple get together lunch session at her place in kulai. if you have never heard of the place, it's in johor, around an hr's drive from the customs. on a sunday, we had to go early in the morning to avoid the jam, so we set of at 6, and by 7 plus we were there already, and how can we mis ba kut teh for breakfast.

I love the ba kut teh there, the herbal taste is strong, the pork is really tender, very different from the one we have in singapore. dad is a fan of the ba kut teh as well. but i think price have been increasing, now it costs almost like that in singapore. but for nice food, it's worth it. see more of the food on justximplyfood.

Grandma's place is away from the city, the whole place has a retro feel, the window, the grilles, walls, roof. the well which has already dried up, vegetables and fruits growing right outside the house... perhaps leon, ilona and rene will know what i'm talking about. this time round i went there and found another technological improvement, the manual gate to the house have changed to a remote controlled one, so much mroe convenient now.

Golden Birthday

It was goldie's birthday, or belated birthday celebration, and it's supposed to be a surprise to her, she only knew we were meeting up for a normal get together dinner, but i nearly let the cat out of the bag. plan is the get a cake, then go for dinner at lemongrass at 7pm.. but miss gold said she had something on and wanted to change the time to 8pm, so fine, we arrived at 8pm, a couple were late, but golden girl was even later, i think she arrived sometime near to 9pm.. we were all famished.. luckily we got them to prepared beforehand, once she arived, the food could be served. you can see the food we had on justximplyfood.
At the end of the dinner, the cake was brought out and we had a simply birthday song session for her, by then, most of the customers have left the restaurant already, we were the last there..

After which we actually wanted to find a place for coffee and chit chat, but on a weekend evening, everywhere was crowded, and we had no where to go.. so we went home!! haha how sad right? anyway, before that , we took some photos along orchard road, and this might just be the next in thing when it comes to posing.. everyone has to act busy, as if you are doing something and not noticing the camera.. in a group, i find it quite cool..

Oh another thing, heard from goldie.. her brother came over to her and made a pact with her that he won't get her a present for her bd and she won't need to get him a present for his.. haha when did giving a present become some form of an exchange??

Thursday, November 22, 2007

A Simple Wedding Dinner

Attended richard's wedding dinner at riverview hotel. itwas was a small cosy event, just some family members and business partners. Food was ok, not very fantastic, but the mood was good. it has been a while since i attended wedding dinners with my parents though.
I was still exploring around with my new lens, and i didn't dare to move around too much to take photos, just in case i get in the way of the official photographer. but this is a photos that i like from that evening.

Congratulations richard!!.

Visitor from Hong Kong

It has been a while since i met wenfu, the last time was when i visit hong kong, quite a number of years ago, and he didn't have any chance of visiting singapore too. finally he was sent here for a short business trip, and we took the chance to meet him with him and a few other jc classmates. wenfu still looks the same as i met him the last time in hk. many others who haven't met him since jc will say otherwise, becuase of his different hairstyle..

Everyone seems busy with work and family, some have new additions to their families, that really takes up a lot of your time!
Other than wenfu, it was also a while since i last met qiwen and jason, should be at jason's wedding that i last met them.. and i cannot remember how long ago was that.. i found out that jason blogs about investments.. something interesting, you might wanna check it out if you have some money and thinking of what to invest and you do not want to put your money with those financial advisors at the bank, but he suggest that you have to start reading from the beginning of his blog to follow on what he has wrote... 8percentpa.blogspot.com.
I find that it's always these few of us meeting up at jc gatherings, what happened to the rest of the guys?? maybe we need to make use of facebook to get the mia ones...
Proceeded to dempsey for some wine after dinner, and i realised that many of them haven't been there since the revamp of the dempsey area, can even get lost in there, we had a bottle of white and a bottle of red, and i still think i dun like the taste of red.. i should just stick to white..

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Birthday Celebration

Had a gathering with caiyun sumitra kianhong sebastian huijie to celebrate terry and yihan's birthday, i was really late because i was watching a movie before that and i didn't know the show was that long!! ..
I wondered if the 2 of them arranged it to wear similar colour top!! haha so interesting that they wore something so alike in colour even though the colour combi is not very common.

During most of the time of the gathering, terry and yihan were making paper cranes.. yar for some reason... if you wanna know why? go ask yihan, anyway, i still think that smaller cranes are nicer than the larger ones, the large ones looks very clumsy.. happy birthday to both of them!!

New Lens

Was looking at reviews regarding a lens that i was eyeing.. the canon ef24-70mm f/2.8 for those who do not understand, it's ok .. it's just a better lens that the one that came with the camera with i bought it. last weekend, i went down to alan photo at sim lim and got it!! yeh!! Photos are really different from the kit lens that came with the camera. indoor photos looks so much better with f/2.8, loving the lens so much.. and there's no better way to test it out than to have a model to pose for the cam!! arranged to watch stardust with bangzhi at vivo, so i took the chance to take so photos with the new lens.

Walked around vivo to look for a place for early dinner at 5 plus, saw this thai restaurant called thai accent. the place is quite big, with lots of seats and it feels very spacious, but i wasn't impress with the food, the price is quite high for that kind of standard and ambience too, details here.

Here are some photos i took at the restaurant when we still had some time after dinner before the show starts. bangzhi got his hair cut... now he looks like an army boy


Stardust is a nice show, ok, i like to watch fantasy shows with magical happennings, like harry porter, so probably that's why i like this show. bangzhi felt that the lead actor and actress wasn't good looking enough for a beautiful romatic story like that, i felt that it was ok. michelle pfieffer acted really well as the witch!! if you haven't watched the show, remember to go catch it!

After the show, we proceeded to mingbao's place for 2 rounds of mahjong, together with bingwei and jiemin.It was jiemin's lucky night, laly luck was following her all the way!! someone threw her winning card, but she felt that it was too small, so she chose not to win it... a couple rounds later, she got a flower, 1 more tai.. and immediately got her winning card, another 1 more tai!! and 3 tai, suddenly become 5 tai, zi mo somemore!!

A happy girl at the end of the game..

Now for some updates of jerard, can see a substantial growth in size, but i realised that he still like to keep his eyes close, so difficult to get to see his eyes..
It's really not an easy task to take care of a new born, so much attention is needed but looking at the satisfied look on the baby's face after the feed, an looking at the baby as he looks around innocently is quite warm.. mingbao has been busy... or isit lazy. when it comes to updating jerard's blog! when can we see a new entry?

Monday, November 12, 2007

Baby Nathaniel

You might have remembered on this post. I visited yvonne, leon and little nathaniel at the hospital on friday, nathaniel is a really active kid.. love to look around to see who are these aunties and uncles around him!! And whenever someone comes in and ask yv how's she, her standard reply "good, good, epidural is good", she can be the spokesperson for epidural, lets see if she blogs about it. anyway, you can visit nathaniel's blog often to check out how he is progessing..

Yihan's Birthday

It's deepavali and it's yihan's birthday as well.. met up with the birthday boy and terry for lunch. initial plan was to go to this jap restaurant at paragon, heard a lot about their soba, but when we reached there, the queue was so long that we decided to go elsewhere.. ended up at this place where yihan claims has the nicest pasta (his standard) ... reviews of the food can be found here.

Lunch was ok, i should have order pasta instead of rice.. after that we went to shop for his birthday present.. in the end he settle for a pair of adidas sneakers..
Happy birthday yihan.. all the best for your big quest next week!!

Clubbing on Deepavali Eve

It was the eve of a public holiday and it's wednesday, and what's happening every wednesday? mambo night!! it has been a while since we all went for mambo at zouk, so the plan was to relive the good old times, 10pm at zouk.. i was busy with work and was late, when i called bingwei at 10:30 pm to check on where i should meet them at zouk, there was a change of plan, the velvet queue stretches all the way to copthorne hotel!! and that's really long.. cannot imagine the main zouk queue.

We proceeded to attica at clarke quay, clarke quay is another place that i haven't been in ages, the place changed so much, and it's such a vibrant place now.. Paid $28, cos holiday, for cover with 2 free drinks, the drinks were quite sucky though. the crowd and the music were very disappointing, so we decided to change venue again.. across the river was brewerkz, since there's no suitable place to dance, maybe we should just sit down for some beer.. walked across the river and ..... how unlucky, they were closing in half hours time..

Some of us were hungry and all of us didn't drive because we though we'd be too drunk to drive back, and thus we gotta have more alcohol to drink.. in the end, me sufang bingsong jiemin bingwei and kenneth hopped into 2 cabs and off we go.. destination: 0830, at bt timah.. in fact we should have gone there from the beginning.

There was food, there was beer..
And there was personal entertainment system.. with retro programs on it.
And when you get really high and tired, you can just lie of the cushion seats for a nap, no one to bother you or to wake you up, you can even snore!! We clubbed till around 3 in the morning (i couldn't really remember the time) and went back to sleep..

Lesson learnt: go mambo only if thursday is a working day, just need to take leave for thrs...

Saturday, November 10, 2007

Salsa at Marina Square

Libing together with the guys from xen bar had a performance at marina square. and the photos i took are quite similar to the ones i posted on their past performances so i shall not post them this time.
During a break, this small kid actually walked up the stage and weanted to join the dancers, so they just played along and got him to dance a few steps on stage, absolutely sporting little kid.

After the performance, we went for lunch at azabu sabo, and i ordered my fav cold sabo again!! it's really good, you must go try it.. read it from my food blog.. and yes, libing walked around marina with his make up still on, even while he was having lunch...