Wed 27 Jun

I only had some minor things to settle today, so it was quite a relaxing day for me. My fiancee had to invigilate her TA paper, and do marking, so I decided to go to Sim Lim Square to replenish my DVD media. I went with a colleague who was looking for a wireless presenter to Sim Lim, and I found a shorter route to Sim Lim from school that I didn't previously know by sheer accident.

After dinner at home, I headed down to Bukit Merah for cell group. I inducted my G12 brothers into the eating of some nice ice cream from 7 Eleven, and we had a good time of sharing at cell. When I went home, I patiently waited for the download of the last episode of Death Note to finish so that I could finally complete the anime series.

Death Note has an awesome concept for a storyline, and the anime carries off the premise much better than the movie, and I already hold the movies in pretty high regard in terms of execution. The anime made a better juxtaposition of the two main characters L and Kira in terms of their intelligence and personality. It also had finer details in play. I would assume the manga to be even better at this, but I'm contented with just the anime. The story follows the manga storyline much more closely than the movie, so L's successors appeared in the anime. It is a brilliant story, and with a deliciously self-absorbed protagonist. The battle of wits therein is the most engaging I had seen in any series in a long time, and it is interesting to see Kira working in and out of the intricacies of the rules of the Death Notes to avoid detection. Nearer the end, it got a little less exciting; L's battle with Kira was far more surprising and entertaining than his successors, Mello and Near. Nearer the end, I think the plot wasn't as tight as that at the start, with some random events changing the course of the things, which made it feel like there was too much luck involved. The earlier parts were cold, well-executed planning mostly, and the plot was brimming with intelligence, in contrast. Still, this is an excellent anime to watch!

Thu 28 Jun

I finished some work in the morning before having a long staff meeting, and then invigilating the year 2 chemistry paper. It didn't look very promising, from my observation of the students' reactions to the paper. I waited for my fiancee to finish marking a class before we headed out to Bedok for dinner, and went to meet our interior designer, Ken.

Today we met to finalize the carpentry, choosing the laminate designs for our kitchen cabinets, walk-in wardrobe, study desk, TV console. We also selected the doors for our bedrooms, and toilets, as well as window grills, and door grill. Finally, we also picked the colours for all the room walls. Things are looking really good, if I picture it accurately. It is so exciting to be able to choose how the place will turn out to look like! Personally I don't think I can move into a place that is in move-in condition, because I would want to redo the house the way I like it. I have been 'forced' to stay in flats that I had no say over the appearance for more than two decades, and it was truly pointless to do anything different since they were only rental flats, but I don't think I can just do something minimal to this flat now that I have bought it.

Fri 29 Jun

I decided to help my fiancee mark her scripts because she was away on course, and it would be hard for her to exchange scripts and all during the long weekend. I started in the morning, and finished by 11+, once again at breakneck speed, and cleared the whole lot. I think next week, if some other colleagues had not finished their marking, I'd help mark more. It is important to bless others in the workplace. Heh.

We went out to the Killiney's at Siglap for lunch, and after I headed back, I helped troubleshoot some IT problems before I headed home for a nap, and then met my fiancee to go to Suntec. We headed to Carrefour to look for a home phone, and since she bought hers last time from there, which was quite good, we went looking for a Motorola one as well for our new place. We managed to find a cool looking one to put in the living room. The price was steeper than normal, but we figured it would be better to buy a good one than to keep replacing a bad one.

We spotted a cute white and brown cat at Lavender station. I made a couple of cat calls, and it came over to me, and started rolling around on the ground. Eventually he was just lying on his back with his four limbs dangling in the air, and trying to claw my waving hand. He looked very much like a baby in a crib in terms of his pose, and was fat and cute, and extremely playful. I like him. I'll come play with him another day when I pass by. Before I move to Pasir Ris, that is.

Sat 30 Jun

I spent a quiet day at home watching anime and finished the series Tsubasa Chronicles, only to realize that I had only completed season 1. On further research, I realized that season 2 is still ongoing presently. Ah well. It's yet another anime about different worlds. Sakura, a princess, suddenly reacted to some old ruins, and 'grew' wings that dissipated. It turns out that those feathers that were gone were her memories, and contain power. Syaoran, one of the main characters, was her childhood friend, was determined to retrieve the feathers. The oracle of their kingdom sent him and Sakura over to another world to look for the Dimensional Witch, who has the power to send people to other worlds. Syaoran was joined by two other people, Kurogane, who was sent to the Dimensional Witch because he had grown so powerful that there was no one left in his world for him to defeat, and Fai, who went to the Dimensional Witch to flee from someone pursuing him. The Witch obtained the most precious thing from everyone for payment, and for Syaoran, the payment was that even if Sakura regained her memories, she would not remember anything about him. With that premise, they were sent to other worlds with a magical creature Mokona who is able to detect the presence of Sakura's feathers, as well as transport them to other worlds. It is quite a good watch, with interesting worlds, and development of characters and plot, and once again, some background conspiracy unveiling slowly. It is an anime by Clamp, so somehow, some characters look very much like a few personalities from another of Clamp's anime, X, and I'm not sure if it is a deliberate tribute of sorts.

So while I try to follow the second season, I'll catch on another ongoing series, Naruto Shippuden, which, thankfully, is Naruto that is finally past the disgusting filler episodes which I boycotted. After I catch up on the existing episodes, I'll then choose another completed series to watch.

In the evening, I made my way to Ang Mo Kio to my student's townhouse for a barbecue. I had to detour several times just to find the correct bus stop, and I alighted one stop too early so I had to walk a long uphill road extra. I had a fun time eating with and talking to my students from my civics class, but too bad, a few of them were missing in action. It was a good session of CG bonding. Haha.

Sun 24 Jun

I had a brief cell group after service as usual, then headed down to Tampines Mall with my fiancee and her sister. Her reward for helping us take unofficial photos during our photoshoot was to be xiao long bao from Ding Tai Fung. We shopped around a little before I accompanied them back, and headed home in anticipation of school reopening.

I received a phone call from my subject head to help them invigilate for the year 1 team since the two new teachers had some induction course. I agreed, only to find out later that I was assigned to the classroom in which one student was given extra time. Ouch.

Mon 25 Jun

First day back in school, and right smack in the midst of the first paper which happened to be chemistry. Fortunately my subject head realized that it wasn't fair to give the extra long invigilation to someone who agreed to help them out (it's a whopping 80 min longer!), so I got reassigned to the hall where I could watch over my TA3 students. After the paper, I had a quick lunch and started marking straight away with my absolute unmoving focus, and I would have finished marking for my assigned question for the whole cohort if not for the fact that one colleague sharing the pile with me took home some classes. In any case, I finished 21 classes at one sitting, which left me with pretty little for tomorrow.

Therefore, I could accompany my fiancee to meet one of our friends at Tampines (again) but this time round, we headed to Century Square to have dinner at the Soup Restaurant. After a disappointing meal at the Soup Restaurant off Bras Basah, I was somewhat hesitant to go again, but the one at Century Square had pretty good standard, so we had a good meal there. It is interesting that this friend we met, Angeline, actually knows a few people I know too, so Singapore is a really small place. She let us listen to this song she composed and recorded with a friend, which had nice lyrics, and I am reminded of the song I wrote but had not completed with a proper tune and melody. Ah well, my inspiration only went so far.

Tue 26 Jun

Woohoo! I finished marking as of 8.30 am today. I actually had enough time to resume the final touch-up on my roadshow powerpoint slides, and to chit-chat a bit. Personally, I prefer to have a bout of intense torture but for a shorter time, than to spread it all out over a long period, hence my marking at breakneck (almost literally, since marking gives a nasty neckache for sure) speed.

The chemistry department then had an 'excursion' to Aston's for lunch. All those of us who recently were promoted or confirmed gave a treat to everyone else. Since there were quite a few, the cost was evenly spread out. I took my colleagues' recommendation, and had the prime cut ribeye, and it was really nice. I think I would stick to steak from now on. A sure and safe choice.

After lunch, my fiancee and I headed down to our new place to receive the ordered toilet bowls, basins and taps. Not the most exciting thing to do, I know, but it was good to see that the laying of tiles had really good progress. The toilets are more than half done now, and the living room tiles are being laid. I can't wait to see it completed; finally, a place of my own!

When we were done with that, we headed down to White Sands to walk around a bit. In the end, I signed up for Challenger membership, even though I'm the kind of guy who would make my way down to Sim Lim Square to get the cheapest IT stuff, but I figured I would have less and less free time to go all the way there after I move to the-east-end-of-Singapore, Pasir Ris, so I guess out of sheer laziness, paying a little more should be not too bad a choice. I bought for my fiancee Diner Dash 2, which she seemed hooked on recently (on the trial version), and inexperienced as I am, I actually helped her clear a difficult level! Hahaha.

Thu 21 Jun

Today was a stay-at-home day. I was playing Blue Dragon on the Xbox 360, nearing completion. My fiancee came over for dinner, and we were watching TV, and playing games on the computer and Xbox 360 for a while. Idyllic day.

Fri 22 Jun

My fiancee and I met our interior designer Ken in the morning. We headed down to the new flat, and we saw some progress in the tiling. It is looking good indeed. Some of the things we mentioned during the last meeting had already been done up as well. We were waiting to meet the guy who was doing our air-conditioning, but he was late, so we went to Elias Mall to have some coffee first. When the guy finally came, it was over in a jiffy. Ken and him were talking about some really technical stuff, but all we were there for was to make the final decision when the air-con units should be positioned. Everything else about how the piping runs and all flew way over our heads.

We then went to Sim Siang Choon to select the bathroom and kitchen stuff. We had selected a few things beforehand, but apparently the dimensions of the basins we picked were off, so we went around and eventually picked all the stuff for the three toilets, and the kitchen washing basin. Sheesh, these things cost a lot of money that in my very initial budgeting I totally neglected, but later realized and revised my budget. There were so many little things that I initially didn't account for, so it was an enriching experience. After a quick lunch, we went down to Vlux at Geylang to check out the lights. Ken told us to just have a look at what is available, and the prices, so that if we were to go around and hunt on our own, we would have some comparison. The lights at Vlux were definitely good looking, and not very pricey, so it was worth a look. When Ken dropped us off near my fiancee's place, he recommended us a furniture shop that he said had good prices. We went to check it out, and we found the dining chairs we spotted at another place, and the price quoted was like $40 lower per chair (after bargaining)!

I have come to realize that contacts are absolutely crucial, so in the website that I will eventually create with all the wedding and renovation experience, little though it may be, that I have accrued, I shall include all the places I have found to have good prices. The only thing is whether I actually have the time to embark on this little project. Hmmm.

Sat 23 Jun

I met two of my boys and a brother of one of them, and J, at the hawker centre off Harbourfront. We were on our twice-a-year-pilgrimmage to Sentosa. I realized that my boys always mention going Sentosa as an outing during every long holiday, but what was silly was that every single time, they picked the last week of the holidays, and a weekend! When you have the entire month to pick from, choosing a day when the beach is overcrowded seems dumb when you want to go there to relax or play ball.

Sentosa now looks extremely commercialized. I think I haven't been there since a few months back, and now everything feels different. I didn't know that the ticketing had since changed to buying first at the booth near the bus terminal. I see many parts of the beach being enclosed, or have some private function or exclusive thing. I see many more restaurants and beach pubs popping up there. I think it's now cool and happening, but it just looks very foreign to me. I think I would welcome the change if not for the fact that I am a super low-budget Sentosa visitor, in that I only want to pay $3 for the entry, and just laze or play at the beach to unwind. The food and the drinks don't appeal to me, and neither does chilling out at those privatized beach sections, unless I suddenly have too much money and time to spend and go work out in the gym to get six abs and a good build, because that seems to be the dorminant trait of the guys I see there. In the end, we walked to the middle of Siloso beach where there weren't too many people, and we played Frisbee and volleyball. Halfway, my boys went to play soccer with some other beach-goers who invited us, and I had a long chat with J, before we headed home for the day.

Mon 18 Jun

My fiancee and I went down to our new place with our interior designer. He was going to tell us how the wiring and lighting was to be arranged. I see some progress in that the hollow block wall that is to form my mum's room had already been done up, and the kitchen wall tiles as well as the tiles for the kitchen toilet were going up. It is interesting to see how the house is gradually done up.

We headed back to my fiancee's place, and inbetween, we played with this grey cat at the void deck of her block. The poor cat's blind in one eye, but she has beautiful grey and black fur which is extremely soft, and doesn't feel like a stray cat's fur. In the evening, we went for dinner, and on the way back, this very cute little brown kitten ran across my path, mewing loudly. I played with it for a long time while my fiancee went to buy some cat food for it. The kitten was chasing after my toes (I wonder if it thought they were edible or something), so I kept moving around to keep it occupied. A malay lady came by after my fiancee came back with a can of tuna and salmon kitten food, and she told us that the kitten was only about 2 weeks old, and had to drink milk. She took the kitten with her, and we went with her to the hawker centre nearby which was closed already.

She apparently is a what-do-you-call-the-profession-of-those-who-give-out-summons-for-parking-without-coupons, and she was filling in some form (probably the licence plates of those she caught), and she happened to walk by when she was done for the day. She has six cats at home, and from the way she handled the kitten, I can tell she is very experienced. She probably smells like a cat too, because the kitten kept climbing all over her. So we left the pretty kitten in her care, and headed back to feed the grey cat the cat food.

The cat ate it all up in less than a minute.

Tue 19 Jun

I went down to Sims Drive to find the HDB branch there to renew my mum's rental contract. Although I'm moving out of the house soon, since my contract expires at the end of this month, and I probably still need to stay here for another month, I need to renew it anyway. Two years ago, I escaped the increase in rental due to my income because of some fluke mistake they made, but this time round I couldn't, so the cost goes up by almost 90 bucks. Ah well, it's only for a month.

I headed back home with my mum. I detoured to the clinic to try to buy some medicine, but the doctor refused, and asked me to sit through a normal consultation, so I did. He diagnosed it to be flu, but he mentioned that one lymphatic node below my chin is abnormally swollen, and asked me to come back next week to double check if it has receded by then. Hmmm.

I headed out to Katong Shopping Centre to meet my fiancee and four other colleagues for karaoke. I actually had a sore throat and one blocked nostril, but after singing a couple of songs that were really high (horribly), my voice 'opened' and I was singing normally. Phew, else the money would go to waste, even though I was prepared to just go there and listen, given my condition. We had a great deal of fun for 6 hours. I bumped into an ex-student who I taught before, and she seemed shocked that I still remembered her name. I hope the databank in my head is strong enough to keep track of all the students I have taught before.

Wed 20 Jun

I headed over to Bedok to my fiancee's place. After we had dinner, we watched Shrek 3 at Princess. She wasn't feeling very well, and I think I must have passed the flu bug to her. Shrek 3 wasn't very funny for me, although a couple of scenes made me laugh out loud. I think the storyline was quite flat. Shrek 1 was entertaining because it was novel, and made fun of the genre and fairy tales in an unexpected way. Shrek 2 was still funny, with witty humour in general. Shrek 3 felt more slapstick for some reason, and I just wasn't that tickled. I think more could be done with the Camelot spoof, and to me, the storyline didn't flow too cleanly in that I think the ending felt somewhat rushed, and didn't feel like a climax of the movie. In any case, it's really quite hard for a part 3 to surpass the previous two movies anyway.

Fri 15 Jun

I wasn't feeling well, so I stayed at home a good part of the day. My fiancee came by to check on me, and after dinner, we went to meet J for pool. My fiancee was nice enough to come by and watch us play (and play Photohunt to entertain herself at times). I think today's track record must be the best in ages. On average, I think I won 1 in 3 games, which is quite hard to achieve against J honestly. In retrospect, I think I can be quite a competitive person, but when I'm faced with someone who I acknowledge to be better than me at something, I will automatically be humble enough to take defeat lightly, and learn the most I can from that person, because I know I can surely improve. That is how I view my games with J. I think I'm learning placement and getting better at it, albeit at an incredibly slow rate. If I can achieve a 50% win rate, that would be a milestone for sure.

Sat 16 Jun

I am hit by sore throat and cough, so I decided to stay home the whole day. I played Blue Dragon, which is really entertaining as a RPG that I sorely needed, and finished watching Zero No Tsukaima. It is a 13-part anime, revolving around a magic academy in the country of Trysting that seems reminiscent of Harry Potter. The central character is Louise, who is nicknamed Zero, because she couldn't cast any spell correctly, and always ended up with some explosion. The worst humiliation was that during the summoning of a familiar, she ended up with a human, and a plebeian (commoner; magic-users were aristocrats). The anime is a development of romance between the two characters, and the animation looked remarkably like Shakugan No Shana, which I just blogged about a couple of months back, and if I'm not wrong, the voice of Louise is done by the same person who did for Shana as well.

The storyline itself has interesting plot developments, though it can be quite predictable. Saito, the summoned familiar has a rune on his hand that belonged to a legendary familiar of a wizard who mastered the void element, the fifth and lost element. When Saito touched a magical weapon when he was fighting an aristocrat he challenged, he found himself able to use the sword, and quite adept at it as well. Although there are only 13 episodes, but every episode develops the storyline quite well, and there is a neat conclusion at the end. The only thing that spoils it for me is the mild ecchi-ness, and the harem plot where many female characters fall for the male lead. Apparently there should be a continuation of the series. Now it's on to Tsubasa Chronicles!

Sun 17 Jun

Today Hall 9 was being used for some Broadcast Asia conference thing, so I cancelled cell group. The original plan was to go bowling together, but I forgot that today was Fathers' Day, so I think the boys would be spending the evening with their parents anyway. My cell leader is quite blessed though to have her little daughter come out in time for Fathers' Day, so he gets to start celebrating before his wife. Haha...

I had a long talk with one of my boys today, in place of cell group, and he told me many things which I had guessed, observed, detected, or sensed, but was just waiting to hear it from his mouth directly. It was a good one-hour-plus talk, and I think my cell group is making progress in terms of discipleship, though not in numbers. Yet.

I was still not feeling well, so after a dinner with my fiancee's family, and a little bit of grocery shopping, I went up to her place to take a panadol and have a nap. I hit a brand new highest level of 18 for Astropop! I was carrying so many things that I decided to take a cab home, and I met an interesting driver.

When I boarded the cab, I heard a familiar techno tune - Sandstorm by Darude, which was really popular in the days long ago when I still went clubbing. The sound was crystal clear, so I thought it couldn't be the radio, and I started conversing with the driver about the music. Then I realized that his sound system sounded really good, so I asked him a bit more. It turned out that this driver had installed 12 speakers in his cab. Two at the front, one on each front door, and six speakers behind the back seat, and two subwoofers in the boot. We ended up talking about sound systems all the way till I reached home. Solid stuff, and crisp, clear sound without overwhelming bass. Man, if I had a car, I would be installing something like this too.

Tue 12 Jun

I just finished the anime series Noein. It has an interesting storyline that throws in a heavy dose of quantum physics, but without it being overwhelming. The central characters are Haruka and Yuu, both teenagers, who have a romantic relationship that doesn't get over-emphasized throughout. The trouble starts when a few cloaked characters suddenly appear in order to capture Haruka. It turns out that these characters are from another timespace, which is 15 years into the future. Apparently Haruka is known as the Dragon Torque, with the power to save La'Cryma, the timespace these cloaked figures come from, that is facing destruction with the invasion of Shangri'la, another timespace. There are some interesting little twists along the way, but it brings in complicated stuff like causality and quarks in the midst of an action-packed thought-provoking series.

I like the fact that it uses the multiverse concept which I read about when I was in sec sch, and parks it really well into an anime. The concept is that there are infinite timespaces out there corresponding to infinite possibilities of past, present and future. A simple illustration I can give that would be easily understood by Singaporeans is this: suppose today I went to buy a number for 4D draw, placing 1k on the bet. I could win first, second, third, starters or consolation prize, or nothing at all. Suppose that all these possibilities exist as parallel independent timespaces. So there is a timespace where I won first prize and get rich, and there is a timespace where I'm 1k poorer, and one for each of the other cases. From there on, at each point for everything I can choose to do, there will branch out further infinite possibilities. I like this kind of cheem stuff, so this anime gets a thumbs up from me. Now it's on to a comedy Zero No Tsukaima!

I went with my fiancee to meet my designer, and we headed down to the flat to take a look. The place now looks like it survived a bomb blast, with all the tiles being hacked away and all, and there's a ton of sand there, waiting for the tile-laying. Ken brought us there to explain to us how he was going to lay the tiles, and what kind of design he would use for the toilets. I can vaguely visualize how the house would look like when it's done. Cool. We went down to White Sands to take a look around. The place looks somewhat different now that the basement has been renovated, and it somehow reminds me of Tampines Mall, which is an all-too-common look. I manage to buy a new pair of shoes from Bata, but the leather felt pretty comfortable, and the price tag is not very Bata-ish, so I figured it may not be as Buy-And-Throw-Away as people claim it to be. The mid-brown shoes are for the coming wedding photoshoot on Thu!

I went to Hair De Vogue to have a hair cut by the man who started the salon, who happens to be the person who does my fiancee's hair usually. Now that I finally get my hair cut by him, as my fiancee has been trying to get me to do for many months, I recognize the difference in quality compared to the salon I frequent near my place. Actually my hair does look better with some styling with some wax, but I think I'm just too lazy to do it on a daily basis. Ah well.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention on yesterday's post that there is a really cool new fountain at Suntec City where the water droplets look like they are suspended in mid-air and can even travel upwards. Apparently, there are no mechanical gizmos, and it's all done through lighting. My guess is that it is powerful focused light that is blinking at extremely high frequency, with effects much like those white light in clubs that go on and off and gives a very disjointed effect in the movements of people dancing. But that's my guess. Any physics people to take it up and explain?

Wed 13 Jun

Today was a day of many phone calls. I needed to make arrangements with the shop I bought my couch from, and the one I bought a mattress for my mum, and Harvey Norman where I bought my TV from, and called a few more appliances shops to get quotes for the items I have eventually shortlisted. I came to one conclusion. It is really better to go to the big stores like Harvey Norman, Courts and etc to view the big range on display and then hunt down a cheap neighbourhood shop to buy from. The price difference can be very significant. The only drawback is that usually the neighbourhood shops accept cash only, and the other problem is that the shops may not last long. Hence it is vital to source out those with good enough reputation, and I did that, eventually narrowing it down to one place, and I made a trip to Holland Drive with my fiancee to Maximum Credit (the shop I mentioned a few days earlier that it had a name that sounded like some loanshark place), buying our fridge, washing machine, water heaters, gas hob and microwave oven there. Probably the oven, and the fans too, after we check things out a bit more. There is only one poor lady holding the fort there, but she is really helpful and friendly.

We went to the Thai Express at Holland Village for dinner, and I think that place really feels like it is not quite Singapore, with such a large proportion of Caucasians there. We then headed back by train, with my fiancee rushing for her manicure/pedicure appointment, and I, to the church prayer meeting. The session was good, but the turnout was way less than I expected. Frankly, I thought the place would be swarming with youths, but I saw few, relatively. Guess my assumption that the youths are more enthusiastic about the 100k challenge because they got more energy and commitment than the adults is a poor one. In fact, I saw more elderly folks there than youths, and it makes me wonder what is happening.

Thu 14 Jun

Today is the big day - the wedding photoshoot! I had insufficient willpower, I admit, to go try to slim down by jogging because the weather seriously put me off the last couple of weeks. I figured that if my face still looks fat, then too bad. The graphic designer doing the layout would have to do more photoshop magic at worst. We arrived there at 9 am in the morning, and by the time the makeup is all done for my fiancee, and a bit on myself, it was about 10.30 am. We did the indoor shoot with three sets of clothes all the way till almost 2 pm, where we grabbed a quick chicken rice lunch, and headed out for the outdoor shoot. We had an outdoor shoot at a classic European styled church building before heading out to Sentosa for the next outdoor shoot. We did one shoot by the side of a pond, which I never knew existed in Sentosa, honestly, and the final one where I changed to casual clothes was shot at the beach. When we were leaving, we saw that there were four more couples further up the beach taking pictures, and one more couple just arrived. I am guessing that most of them should be teachers, since the school holiday period is the best (ahem, actually, the only) time for teachers to do stuff like this.

I think our package with Di Gio is pretty good, at least for the photoshoot. We had a total of five changes of clothes (I had one more for casual), and my fiancee's hair got done up in five different ways. The people were really professional, and I had a swell time watching the make-up artist at work, and the photographer doing some preliminary editing of his photographs taken yesterday. I learnt a little something more about Photoshop today...hehehe. I still think the gowns and suits from there seems more classy than quite a few others I have chanced to see. The photographer, Sam, was a really friendly and humourous guy, so he made us very relaxed for the shoot. He was also nice enough to let us take some shots on the camera we brought, courtesy of my fiancee's sister who came along as a helper. Hence, I shall include one shot taken on my fiancee's camera as a preview. The ones with the perfect angles and all have to wait till the pictures are ready for selection.

This is the one taken at the church building, and now our picture for our MSN avatars.

Sat 9 Jun

I went down to Bedok to settle initial payment with my interior designer, after going to the bank to move my money around to my chequeing account. All this trouble because of the bottleneck at Standard Chartered...sigh. I met my fiancee and her sister, and we headed down to Covenant Evangelical Free Church for Jianxing and Suzan's wedding. From the instructions that my fiancee forwarded me, I found the fastest route there to be taking 190 from Orchard MRT. When we dropped off, we started walking, and couldn't find the place. We were in fact early when we got off the bus, and it took us close to half an hour to find it. It didn't help that the roads were all heavily curved, and we had to walk a further distance just to get around. Anyway, the church is very new and modern. I found the last statement of the solemnization pastor quite amusing. He said that the weddings bands are the world's smallest handcuffs.

After the tea reception, the three of us made our way down to Orchard again. Originally, we were toying with the idea of karaoke, but due to lack of response, the idea died. So we thought we would go catch a movie. Picking Orchard though was a bad choice on our parts. There was negligible chance of getting tickets, and the place is packed out with people - so many that we bumped into quite a few friends along the way. Eventually we made our way back to Bedok for dinner, walked around the new Sheng Siong supermarket a bit and called it a day.

Sun 10 Jun

We had an interesting service today because Ps Nina gave the message, and she can be quite amusing in her own way at times. We celebrated the birthday of one of my boys, Junhui, after service, and had cell group. I originally wanted to make it short, but I saw no point, because I was waiting for my fiancee to be done with her cell group. Three of my boys, my fiancee, her sister and one girl from her cell group went down to Marina Square to bowl. It was quite an impromptu thing because originally I wanted to arrange a karaoke outing with some of the (adult) cell members, but I forgot that today was the wedding dinner of Jianxing and Suzan. In the end, only my G12 brother Collin was free, and he suggested bowling instead. The ironic thing was that eventually, Collin couldn't make it to join us for bowling.

Anyway, I suck at bowling. I think my technique and footwork are wrong, and I personally also dislike having to try to repeat the same motions over and over in routine. But it was still quite fun to hang out together like that. We went to Yoshinoya for dinner, and suddenly, my boys asked certain things and raised certain concerns that became teachable moments for faith, so I ended up with an hour plus extension of cell group right there in the fast food restaurant. I'm not sure how much of what I said they understood, but I suppose wisdom and counsel that come at the point of need surely will be better received that what I share with them each week on regular basis.

Mon 11 Jun

Today was the final fitting for my fiancee's gowns, and my own suits. She brought her sister along to help out with the menial tasks. Amazingly enough, the bridal shop actually had quite a big range of men's suits, and many were pretty unique as well, so I think we got ourselves a pretty good deal with Di Gio. The gowns were really beautiful to start with, and even the men's side wasn't disappointing.

After the fitting, we made our way to City Hall to eat an early dinner at Ding Tai Fung. Along the way, we passed by the donut shop with the ridiculously long queue. I can't for the life of me imagine how delicious can a donut possibly be to warrant such a long waiting time. I entertained the thought of trying the donut just out of curiosity, and I concluded that many of the people queueing there must have the same burning curiosity. Hence it is a good idea for a newly opened shop to hire people to queue and pose as customers. Singaporeans somehow just love joining queues, so this tactic will surely work. By the way, the fried rice at Ding Tai Fung is excellent. After dinner, my fiancee and her sister came over to my place, and I let her sister have her first experience with the Xbox. Not surprisingly, she was somewhat hooked on the game after getting some headway.

Tue 5 Jun

Since my fiancee and I were both free, we decided to head down to the Courts and Ikea at Tampines. We headed to Courts first, and shortlisted all the appliances that we wanted to get, so that we could check out other places to see if we could get a lower price. My fiancee was hungry, so out of desperation, we went to the cafe inside Courts which we had a bad impression of the last time we were there. To be safe, my fiancee bought the lor mai kai, which looked cheap at $1, and it turned out to be really...small. But it was edible enough, so we let it slide.

We then headed to Ikea to check out what items we could get from there to cut cost, especially the shelving and racks for the toilets and all. And mirrors, which are much cheaper there. We eventually ended up at Ikea cafe for dinner, and the chicken wings were good as usual.

Wed 6 Jun

I went back to school to print the June Common Test question paper with my colleague. During the printing, somehow the topic of church and religion came up, and I was trying to talk to her more about it, but she was resistant. The printing took less time than expected, so I managed to have lunch with my fiancee. We took some time to call up several shops to find the best price for the appliances we are hunting for. The place with the best price has quite an odd sounding name that made me think "loanshark" - Maximum Credit. When that was over and done with, I headed off to have dinner at home, and then to cell group.

Thu 7 Jun

I headed back to school yesterday to finish some work, and attend to one of my students who had questions to ask about chemistry. My interior designer called halfway to discuss some things, and then my student and I ended up digressing and talking about renovation works. Apparently her family is one of those 'horror stories' with lousy contractors whose companies folded and are nowhere to be found. I had lunch with my fiancee who was in school for camp, and after that, I ended up playing Magic with a colleague to test out some decks on a computer program. J wasn't free for pool, so I went home for dinner, and spent my time on anime.

Fri 8 Jun

I headed out to Funan IT Mall to look for some Xbox 360 games. I wanted to buy both Armored Core 4 and Blue Dragon, but the guy told me that Armored Core 4 is in Japanese, and I wouldn't have noticed the small words at the bottom that said "Language: Japanese", considering the rest of the back of the game case is all in English and Chinese words. Anyway, the main game I wanted is Blue Dragon, since RPGs on Xbox platform are exceedingly rare to begin with, and this one is supposed to be really good.

The storyline of the game seemed pretty interesting, and I was playing it almost all the way since I came back home, other than the timeslots my mum wanted to watch TV. Inbetween, I had some problems with the bank, which said that my renovation loan application cannot be processed for some reason, and I had to call my interior designer to get him to fix the problem. Since his company is in Standard Chartered's database, I don't see why there can be such problems. So much for 1-hour approval in principle. The succeeding days were thoroughly problematic...

Fri 1 Jun

I headed to school early in the morning to draw keys to several rooms. It's my AVC's June camp today, and both my fellow teacher-in-charge, Jonathan, and I decided to stay overnight. Usually each PDP only requires a male and a female teacher to be present, and both of us are guys, but we decided that we would both stay to keep each other company. Jonathan only joined me in the evening because he went to sign some life-changing document that would affect what he writes under the marital status field when he fills forms next time, so I held the fort first. Originally, I planned to finish some work in school, but I ended up playing Magic with my colleague for some time. I joined my AVC campers for lunch, but for dinner I headed out to Bedok Central to have dinner with my fiancee at Pizza Hut.

We tried the thin-crust pizza, which is the newest thing they have to offer. Well, it is very crispy as they promoted, but I guess that's because they leave it in the oven for quite a long time. The crust now tastes like unleavened bread, or biscuit, and the fillings on top of it taste very dry and were hard to chew. We had both the Hawaiian and the seafood pizza, and the latter has these tuna pieces that were so dry they were hard to swallow. We shared a bowl of soup in which I discovered a thin strip of wire (probably from what they use to clean the crockery), and alerted the waitress. I was curious as to what that wire is, and when they offered to give me a new bowl of soup I declined, since we finished our soup. The manager was nice enough (or scared we would complain or something) and came out to apologize and offer us a free bowl of soup again. I declined still, and she insisted on giving us something, so we ended up with free salad.

I reached school in time to join my students midway for hustings, and after they were done, Jonathan and I were at the Xbox he brought along till about 2 am in the morning when we met the Exco members and discussed the results of the voting for the candidates running for this year's Exco, and how we were going to assign the posts accordingly. That took until almost 4 am to settle, and I headed back to try my hand at Halo (unbelievable as it sounds, but I had not played Halo on Xbox before because I thought I wouldn't take to first person shooters...of course, I was quite wrong on that actually), and slept at some wee hour in the morning.

Sat 2 Jun

I was woken up by a call to lock the classroom doors for my students at around 8 am, so after that, I decided not to go back to sleep. I found ZH in the staff room, so we headed out to have breakfast together. Jonathan went off to meet his in-laws for lunch, so I was holding the fort by myself once more. I asked ZH over to play Halo in cooperative mode, and apparently, he had not played the game before either, so we entertained ourselves all the way till he left, and another colleague, Claude, took over the reins and continued on ZH's behalf. Therefore in the end, I shelved the work I wanted to complete till next week when I am returning to school to print exam papers. The students decided to break camp early, so I was free to leave earlier.

Sun 3 Jun

I headed down to service as usual. Today my boy brought his girlfriend along, so I guess it is an improvement on his situation, since the girl isn't Christian. Yet. I had cell group with my boys, and got my fiancee to be around since the girl joined us too, and I was doing all the work trying to make conversation. Hmm, she is as quiet as my boy is. Sigh.

After cell group was over, my fiancee and I took a stroll over to Sim Siang Choon, which is rather near Expo station. We wanted to check out the kitchen and bathroom accessories first, before we go down with our interior designer so that we won't be wasting his time slowly choosing. In all honesty, I didn't realize that there is so much cost involved in properly equiping a toilet from scratch, from wash basin to toilet bowl, mirrors to shelving, and racks, and other forms of storage. Since I document every form of expenditure down in a massive Excel spreadsheet, I was telling my fiancee that next time, I would just make a new extension of my homepage and upload my spreadsheet there, along with some Word document of all the experience we have gained in the process, and benefit our friends (maybe even strangers) who are planning to get married. Frankly, I think if I document all that I have learnt about appliances, renovation, and the whole works, the Word document surely would have more than 10 pages. Hmmm...might as well turn my journey of discovery into something useful. See? I'm in the right profession. Even in such a situation, I am thinking of how to transmit knowledge. Haha...

Mon 4 Jun

The renovation works start today! My fiancee came over to my house for dinner, and then we headed down to our new place to take a look. We arranged to meet one of her contacts for air-conditioning to check the layout of the flat to see what configuration of air-conditioning we would need. The guy recommended us to do a roof over the balcony instead of full windows to the second storey because the hot exhaust from the compressor unit would not be able to escape. Hmm, back to the drawing board. Sigh.

We went to check out White Sands, now that the renovation there is almost complete. I suppose we would be hanging out there fairly often, so it is important to know what is available there. After that, I escorted my fiancee home, and I hijacked her computer to play Astropop, a game she introduced to me, and now I am hooked. I hit some major high-scores, by my reckoning, so I guess now I should be less hooked. Hehe. Since I have some time during the holidays, I think it is time to get me some new Xbox 360 games. Bwahaha.