lollerskater

Ok so far it's 2 down already. Operations Management aka. "that online module" thing, was pretty okay. Pretty...Pretty...Pretty Good. The paper went well, I could answer everything but it was damn tricky. Totally MCQ and all the options were really similar. But heck it, it's over. The answer key is out already online, silly thing is that I don't have a question paper and I don't even know which set I got. Yes there were 3 different sets of question papers out, some measure imposed by UB to minimize cheating.

I did my Management info-systems paper today. Damn friggin' easy lah! All thanks to my IT professional guitarist in my band...The Great Benson! I even found the time to go jamming yesterday with them. It was a rather terrible session. I kept screwing up. As a matter of fact, every single damn thing that could go wrong went wrong. Murphy's Law of Jamming. My bassist almost went ballistic on my drummer, I broke 2 strings, I couldn't get my timing down, I forgot chords, my tone sucked donkey dick all thanks to that piece of crap of a Marshall AVT digital amp. I hate digital...as far as audio is concerned.

Well bad patches are pretty good in a musical context, it gave us the opportunity to realise and iron out all our errors and flaws. I think it's really important for us to have a goal oriented approach, especially so when it comes to our music. We keep coming up with new material that it's crazy, we spend rehearsing the new material and completely forget about the old stuff. Anyways the next time round will be much better.

Other than the fact that I've got one more midterm paper to go...

I've also got a new friend to go along with this...

And this...


After a seemingly endless wait it's finally here...

The Xotic Effects RC Booster!!!!

Yes I'm a guitar slut, I photoshop my pedals too.
I've been playing non-stop, it sounds so damn good I just wanna leave it on the whole time. It functions primarily as a booster. Just to give me that extra push and contrast from my rhythm tones when I kick into a solo. The best part is that it does not colour my guitar tone, it merely amplifies it. Plus I get to tweak it to perfection and really cut through the mix.

Neighbours in Balmoral please standby for sleepless nights.

I Heart RC Booster!

Christopher.

Ok folks here's Part Deux. The last we heard of our 3 Chinese heroes they were forlicking to wicked beats in the forest. Today is no exception just a change of scenery and a new tune. If you're a good boy/girl and watch it till the end I might give you a lollipop if my mood serves me right.



Speaking of moods I'm not really in the best of them right now. I'm up to my neatly plucked eyebrows in studying hell. My interactive online course thing's exam is on friday! This friday...1 friggin' day away. I've just only finished watching the last lecture which encompasses the exam. It pisses me off that no one told me about the whole extra credit thing. But nevermind. Anyways I think I will do fine as always. It really boils down to simple arithmetic, that's all operations management is. I just got to get down to what is what.

On a much happier note I just got word from the nice Mr. Misse that my Xotic Effects RC booster pedal is in! WooT! I'll be collecting it next week right after midterms. It's about 300 dollars in damage. But it's going to worth every single ice cream scooping earned cent!

Here's some video of Scott Henderson having his manly ways with the pedal.

http://www.prosoundcommunications.com/english/video/scott_henderson2/index.html

I'm gonna wrap up operations management tomorrow morning right before I head down to work. One bit of me is totally convinced that I can ace this thing but another side of me is totally doing the whole doubting thomas act...heck I don't even own the textbook dammit!

Till the morrow.

Christopher.

I just realised that up till now I have not posted anything regarding Dylan, the new dog in my household. Anyways I've included some pictures along with the post so all those wondering wtf is a Cairn Terrier will finally get an idea of what I'm talking about...without me going "You know Toto the dog from The Wizard of Oz?"



Thank goodness that's over.

She's only still a puppy, we got her when she was only about a month old and now she's just about 3 or 4. I must say she's grown lots...really. It's pretty damn amazing how this whole growth spurt takes place. Equally interesting but at the same time damn friggin' irritating is the fact that she has learnt how to bark...or more rather discovered her innate ability to make shit loads of noise. Ironic though, because my sister Charm choose her due to her subdued nature as a puppy thinking that it will continue. Dylan and Miko the cat hardly get along, all Dylan wants to do is play, but all Miko wants to do is climb all over the place and leave his at fur on my clothes/sofa/bed/floor/etc. I'm not the type to like cats, never have and never will.

Another picture of Charm and Dylan.

Midterms are coming really soon. I've got my first paper on friday, operations management. Probably the best and the worst thing about the course is that it's completely taught online. Yes online! I get to view the lecture on my computer beamed straight to me from UB. UBer right? This means I can attend a lecture while smoking away in my room wearing my underwear taking notes at the same time! Bad news is that I tend to slack whenever I'm on my computer, spending my time looking at guitar porn and other means of distraction whenever possible. Which means all the time. I'm pretty damn behind lectures, well just about 3 lectures, which translates into being 1 and a half weeks' worth. But all will be fine, I've got the whole of tomorrow morning to make up for it.

I spent my day in school attending on measly lecture, management information systems, it's pretty ok if you can get over the accent and the silly antics of the lecturer. But I guess he makes it all the more interesting, no complaints about that. It's probably through fault of my own that I feel I'm not doing as well as I should be. Yup the paper is next week.

I met up with Valerie, Cherie and Jachin after school. I took Jachin to get some strings and a guitar tuner to revive his lost passion for playing. Hopefully that works out well. I know it will actually. I have faith in him. I also checked out the new Fenders at Sweelee...sigh all super cannot make it. I'll concentrate on just getting pedals for now I guess.

Yes and here it is my Valentines' Day present from Valerie.


I'm not really sure you can actually see what this is. Under the rushed nature of me taking pictures of it due to the fact that I don't have my camera right now, they're well, not really that clear.

You folks at home probably think it's some picture, painting, caricature, or whatever. Folks, in actuality this is a multi-layered paper cutout of my guitar.
All those different colours are not painted on or whatever, they are actually different layers of different coloured paper, individually cutout and layered to resemble my guitar.

Valerie secretly took a picture while I was in the loo. *how sneaky* And through weeks and weeks and endless sleepless nights she began toiling away on my present, replicating each and every single layer to form this. There's loads of detail in the picture, she even got the wall pattern, guitar bridge, body pattern, knobs, pickguard, vine, frets... aiyah EVERYTHING right!

I was super lost for words when I got it. Really I seriously feel I don't deserve something like this. So much work has been put into it, it's crazy!

And for those of you who don't think it's an accurate impression...

LO AND BEHOLD!

WAH LIEW!

Now I'm gonna ask her to do all of my other guitars!

Kidding.

Christopher.

My good friend Da Great Ong, or more rather Great Gong as we fondly refer to him as, sent me this video online. He challenged me and said there's no way I could be able to watch it all the way to the very end. I tried, I failed miserably the first time round. But I finally made it to the very end with help from Valerie. Don't worry I'm not going to show you some gross videos of people pooping on themselves or anything of that kind of proportion.

Just watch it, don't be a pussy.



Enjoy!

Christopher.

Work's going great, very soon I will be broke student no more and become a fully feldged guitar slut. ALL YOUR GUITAR PEDAL ARE BELONG TO ME!!!!! Also guitar too...if I save enough money. I've got an Xotice Effects RC Booster on order from Mr. Misse! I went there looking for a delay pedal. It's something like an echo sort of effect for guitar sounds to add some texture to the tone, and sometime for pretending you're playing in some arena, or perhaps a cave for that matter. Instead, being the great guy he is; he took out almost every single pedal he had in stock. I fell in love with an RC Booster. It's coming anytime soon! I super cannot wait.

Yeah well today is Valentines' Day. I've become somewhat apathetic towards that Hallmark induced day. It's a mere product of commercialization if you ask me. Just a day to convince guys to buy 10 dollar per stalk roses for their objects of affection. I'd rather not though. Anyways I met up with Valerie for breakfast and headed to Killiney Kaya Toast. The original one mind you. The one which I remember from my childhood spending sunday morning breakfasts amid loud shouts of "KOOOOOOOOOOOPIIIIIIIIII SIEW TAI!" and also the presence of a twitching kopi uncle. Well the surround sound still remains but alas the twitching guy is no longer there.

Our rendezvous was cut short because she had to go to class and I had to head off to work. But it's ok, she came with her folks to visit me. I got the last Valentines' day cake Island Creamery had to offer.


Yeah but I was super busy, the place was friggin packed. It was really nuts, I worked from 4 till 10 and my dinner just slipped by. As a result I'm still wearing my apron. LOL.

I saw this advert at Serene Centre a couple of days ago...

Does not Bite?

Anyways Valerie gave me my present this morning, I was totally lost for words when I saw it. Really. I can't begin to imagine the amount of effort she put into it in putting it together for me.

I don't have a camera with me now, but when I do I'll take some pictures and post them here.
I'm the meantime here's a hint, it looks something like this.


Happy Valentines' day.

Christopher.

Yes I am! I'm officially working at Island Creamery now. I had my first work outing today. My forearms are sore from scooping all that ice cream. I've just pretty much got so sick of working at the shop, I so needed a change of environment. Well I got it. It's a really relaxed atmosphere. A few bus stops away from my house, something to do other than slack time off during my off days from class. Plus I get free ice cream! WOOT!

I had dinner with Valerie and Family yesterday at Bugis Junction, we ate at this Japanese Western food place. The food was pretty damn good. I'm really surprised. Usually I would never touch Japanese interpretations of any other food other than Japanese with a ten foot pole. I had the Cuttlefish Ink Pasta. A rather adventurous outing, but it tasted so good. I could have sworn they added some tasty truffles inside. It made my whole mouth black though.

Enough about the black. They have a special sauce they call the BROWN SAUCE!

Notice the obvious grammatical errors.

There was another dish I couldn't make out. There was a picture and a listing on the menu, different names though. Scutch egg or Scotch egg? I was afraid to ask.

I also just found out my really bummer self-proclaimed poor friend is insanely rich. He just told me he's a CINDY! Back in his homeland, he has servants to cut his toenails. And another group of servants to collect his toenails and sell them on the black market to be grounded into a local delicacy! I wish I was a cindy too. But alas I can only be a Chris. I tried my very best to emulate his stature, observing him very closely from a picture taken from his friendster. My cindy is a model too.

CHECK DIS!

My feeble attempt.


Scooping ice cream is no damn joke.

I've got jamming tomorrow once again, I worked out a really heavy metal sounding riff, which will most probably morph into something crazy under my band. I'll be trying it out tomorrow!

Waiting for Valerie.

Christopher.

My new year was mostly filled with eating, loads of eating. First stop grand-dad's place, dipped into my family's signature Naugh Hiang, or however the hell you spell it. Of course there were the mandatory chinese new year snacks, pineapple tarts, bah kwa and whatever the hell else. There's something that I will never really understand with chinese people. There's always this insatiable need to make people eat! Eat and EAT MORE! Dammit Auntie I've got IPPT to take soon! Again I ate shit loads when I headed over to Valerie's place. As mentioned before her mother is a domestic goddess! Her cooking is super awesome! I actually feel bad about the frequency of which I've been making digestive appearances over at her house.

What chinese new year would be complete without BUA KIAO! WooT! Gamble ah gamble! HUAT AH! I won about 40 bucks worth of 2 dollar notes off Colonel Lam during the first day. Everytime he handed me a two, I answered nicely..."Thank you Uncle", of course I could sense the "I'm going to get you back so bad" disgruntled type thoughts underlying his speech.
I BUA KIAO'ed at Val's house, Cherie's house and Avis' house!
But it was good shit. Second day I won much more as well. But that mofo Avis managed to score the seemingly impossible!

TRIPLE 7!

In some ban luck circles a 777 yields a 21 times win, hundred times or even a maddness 777 times! We stuck to 7 times for the sake of Val.

I watched the new jet li movie as well. Damn he looks so old in the movie. But it was good shit, the fight scenes were really top notch. Frankly speaking, I'm not that much of a fan for action movies. I can't stand the random senseless explosions. Ok, this one had close to zero explosions and gunshots, the storyline wasn't so good either, I still enjoyed it nonetheless.

I also went to check out the newly revamped Shangrila Cafe, you know the one downstairs just next to the outdoor garden, with the really nice buffet spread. It's called The Line now. Very very nice decor. Much better than Hyatt's dungeon of a Mezza9, IMHO. Nice place, but I got interrogated by the deadly duo of Val's Tan cousins. I'm only kidding, it was all in good fun.


I'm off now to clementi to check out more pedals.

I'm officially a guitar pedal slut.

I want...

Paint that thing red and leave the "Ai" on it and you're suited up for a CNY gig!

Christopher.