Death to all carpark attendents

$70 worth of parking tickets in 1 week. What. The. Bleep. 1st one was'coz I was late for an important appointment, spent 1/2 hour trying to find a lot with no luck.. Bo pian parked in a season parking lot. Come back to see a $50 ticket under the windscreen wiper.. 2nd one was 'coz I parked at my boyfriend's place, only put 1/2 hr coupon 'coz the plan was just to eat dinner and get home in time for an 8pm FFXI appointment. Ended up that one of our members was going to be late, so watched a DVD and conveniently forgot about the car. Another $20 fly away. And another reason to hate carparks. Sigh..

DVD mania

Borrowed a whole stack of DVDs from Herby's auntie and uncle. Slowly going through them. So far, most of the shows we've watched are only so-so. But hey, that's what DVDs are for, aren't they. :P

I only watched the first half of Flash Point, but gave up 'coz the subtitles were incredibly scary. For example, Inspector Ma became Inspector Horse, and the phrase "ni zhou xian" (meaning "you leave first"), became the directly literal "you walk first". I do understand Mandarin, so it wouldn't have been so bad if the movie itself wasn't so confusing. My boyfriend tells me the action scenes later in the movie were quite good, but I simply couldn't follow the story.

Wild Hogs had some funny points here and there, but overall it was a pretty lame story. Four middle-aged guys on a road trip doing silly immature things. What can I say? The only saving grace was Marissa Tomei.

The Condemned struck me as a Battle Royale ripoff. "Stone Cold" Steve Austin probably has fewer facial expressions than Orlando Bloom. :P Same goes for the freaky chick in the white dress whomever she is.

The only one that I've watched so far that I would recommend is Hot Fuzz. Love the dry humor style. It degenerates a little in the end but all in the name of fun.

Carparks and me

I hate carparks now. The narrow ones especially. But most of them are. To date, I've put 1 batch of scratches on my mom's car. Passenger side, above the back wheel. Thanks to a pillar in the carpark of J8. There's another scratch that I told her was my fault, but it was actually Herby who did it. :P Mom says she's gonna wait till I'm an expert in handling the car, then she'll do all the patching up at one time.

Cutie toes

Cutietoes was the last name of my ranger in DAoC. ;P (This is one of the most inane posts I have ever written, so unless you're incredibly bored, do not read on.. Fair warning!) Anyway.. So I was on the toilet last night.. (I don't need to get any more graphic, do I?) Usually, I have something to read, but I didn't then. So I ended up looking at my toes..

I counted them. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10! From left to right, then from right to left. That triggered a thought that somehow led to myself wondering, "how many ways can you divide 10 into 3 groups?" I supposed I settled on the number 3 because 2 was pretty obvious to me at that point, it would be 1 and 9, 2 and 8, 3 and 7 etc. But for 3 groups.. So I started grouping my toes. Little left pinky started out in group 1 alone, and going from left to right, the next toe was in group 2, and the other 8 toes in group 3. That was 1 combination. Next was little left pinky in group 1 again, with the next 2 toes in group 2, then the remaining 7 toes in group 3. And I had 2 combinations! And so on for each possible combination. After I eliminated the repetitions, I came to the conclusion that there were 8 possible ways to divide 10 toes into 3 groups. \(^ ^)/

After that I thought.. There must be a formula to calculate such a simple thing. So I tried turning it around in my mind. There was only 1 way to divide 10 into 1 group (1 group of 10), and only 1 way to divide 10 into 10 groups (10 groups of 1). There is also only 1 way to divide 10 into 9 groups (8 groups of 1 and 1 group of 2). There are 5 ways for 2 groups. The complication really starts when you want to split 10 into 3 groups or, coming from the other direction, 8 groups (I didn't try this one :P). Unfortunately, as I am no mathematician, my brain balked at churning up a proper formula. :P

And THEN something else popped into my head. So far, I'd assumed that all the 10 toes I was dividing into groups were interchangeable. Like it didn't matter if little left pinky was in group 1, 2 or 3. But what if it DID matter? What if each little toe was an individual, and it made a difference which groups they were in? My mind just shut down then. The implications were enormous. The combinations were endless.

I got off the toilet. ^^

Ratatouille

Loved it. Awesome animation plus a really fresh, interesting storyline. The amount of work put in to make the food look realistically delectable must have been phenomenal. Likewise for animating the rats themselves. Maybe they could have dragged the opening to next year, the year of the rat! :P

Warhammer

Got a sneak peek of Warhammer at the games convention in Suntec. I groaned in disappointment when I saw it looked exactly like WoW. Indeed, passing by the booth I glanced at the screens and thought "Oh, WoW" (no pun intended). But a second glance made me realise that it was Warhammer! Unfortunately, it looked like they simply copy and pasted the WoW interface. Well, hope the gameplay will make up for that. RvR, I haven't used that term for a hell long time! It's a DAoC concept, and stands for Realm vs Realm. In other words, PvP (player vs player). Gosh I think I'm freaking the non gamers out. :P

Surprise!

A friend proposed to his girlfriend on his birthday in Sentosa.. Was highly amusing as she was led to believe that we were planning a surprise for him, but in actuality the whole thing was set up to surprise her! We told her we'd gotten a room in Rasa Sentosa so she'd have to get him there. The worst happened and it rained heavily on that day. Can you imagine trying to persuade someone to go to Sentosa in a thunderstorm? My friend had to make it more realistic also and asked her if they shouldn't watch a movie instead. Would have been hilarious to watch them play it out, one trying to deceive the other who knows he is being deceived and trying not to look suspicious.. Their afternoon was also filled with toilet visits to receive an sms on the sly, on both sides! My friend even had to "take a call from work" privately to work out a detail or two.

Well, when they finally arrived and the lucky girl opened the door to the room.. She was probably thinking, "Did I get the wrong room..?" The room was darkened and lit by candlelight, with a romantic Chinese song playing softly. The floor was strewn with red rose petals in a path leading to the bed, upon which there was a large heart outlined by candles and filled with rose petals. A bouquet of flowers rested on the side, and in the middle of the heart there lay a box..

The stunned look on her face was a surprise.. I'd have thought she would have been at least slightly suspicious. So with a little speech about making up for not being romantic, my friend handed her the flowers, dropped down to one knee and presented her with the ring. "Will you marry me?" The big question. She was so touched and stunned, she could only nod. Hugs and kisses (on their part), applause and photo taking (on our part) ensued.

The next day we had dessert at Ben & Jerry's in Vivocity. If you take a look at the pillar plastered with napkins, you might spot the one that we put up congratulating them on their engagement! (plus a "PS: Happy Birthday" on small print :P)

Life goes on..

So maybe I've been lazy in updating my blog. Truth is, I'm actually embarrassed about how little there is to update. That I've done nothing in the past few months may even be an understatement. Well, I guess I attended my graduation ceremony so now I'm officially a graduate.. ^^ Also, I've passed my driving test.. First try! :) (Auto lah, ah but then?) But it's depressing how I can't say anything much else has happened. Yes, ok! I'm looking for a job.. Stop nagging already. :P