12 March 2011, Saturday

WeiKurk's Wedding!

He had his solemnisation at Grace 1, Tanglin Road, and I was playing keybaards for his Worship, together with Pastor, Jennhui, Boonheng (I cant really remember who else, because I am finishing this post 5 June 2011).

His dinner was at Oriental Hotel. It was a lovely wedding and many friends from church were there. I also saw Lau and his wife.

A Sickly Day

11 March 2011 (Friday)


Sick Today!


I woke up this morning at 8.30am to find that I had not recovered. My throbbing headache has become a dull pain in the head. So I decided to go see the doctor. 


Doctor gave me a day off, and diagnosed it as the beginning of flu. I just hope that the rest I give myself today will prevent the flu from breaking out in its full intensity.


On my way to see the doctor, I passed by City Square mall, kitchener road, Verdun road and Jalan Berseh Road. I discovered new places and shops around the neighbourhood that I didn't know were there.

The Motorcycle Trade Association. Never knew such an association existed! :)

Just across the Motor Cycle Trade Association was a modern looking bar

Further down that small street, an old building, residential on top, and shop-houses facing  Jalan Berseh Road in front.

Rowell Clinic viewed from Jalan Berseh Road

Rowell Clinic from the waiting area.

Didn't realise that There were lots of apartments in construction in the direction of KK Hospital and Novena. Taken from the open field beside my block.

Taken with my Samsung Galaxy Tab.


Ok I'm going off to rest. Doctor's orders :)

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Sickness brewing & lift breaking down

10 March 2011 (Thursday)


Today was a struggling day for me. I felt weak and cold at work, at about 11am. From there it went downhill. By 5pm, I was wondering if I could survive the trip home. Christina had project to do at work, so I ate with Janson, Francis, Helga, Bryan, Thom and Jerly. We ate at the basement foodcourt at Fusionopolis until about 8.15pm, then we went home. Thom and Jerly live at Potong Pasir, along the North East Line, so we took the same train. 


I dragged myself home to the bottom of my flat to find that the Lift at my block was faulty. There was already a family of 3 waiting for the lift when I approached. I tried to hit the button to call for a lift, and it did not light up. On a closer inspection, I realised that out of 3 lifts, one had a power failure error, the other one looks like it was going up and stopping at every floor. 


The 3rd lift came, and going up, it stopped at all the even numbered levels. very strange indeed. I messaged Christina to tell her about the lift malfunction, so she wouldn't go up by herself and get trapped inside.


Once home, I slept from 10pm all the way to 8.30am the next morning.

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How my screen protector got destroyed

How My Screen Protector Got Destroyed 

(10 March 2011, Wednesday)

Today is the day where I had to rip away my matte screen protector from my Samsung Galaxy Tab.

I was standing on the bus on my way to work, at the rear door. I was not holding on to anything, and I was listening to music on my Galaxy Tab through ear-phones. The bus was rounding the bend and suddenly it did a very hard brake. 

The force was all right at first. I could handle it. But the braking force was applied for more than 4 seconds, my balance was thrown off and I knocked into the passenger in front of me. A malay or Indian chap. 

Turned out that the bus had to stop at the last moment, for a fast travelling vehicle going along the main road.

Shortly after I reached work, I realised there was a deep scratch on the surface of my screen protector. I must have held the Galaxy Tab close to the front of my body. That's where my access card was hanging. There was a metal clip where the card joins the lanyard. The screen must have scratched against it when the bus was doing the sudden brake.

YC, sitting beside me, told me to tear the protector off and throw it away. He is a hardcore Android fan, and he has seen the Samsung Galaxy S in all its graphics glory, showing off its sharp display and scratch resistant glass display. He told me it was gorilla-glass (I don't actually know what that means, but I take it to mean "very tough glass"). 

Finally I tore of the matte protector (cost me $19, costlier than average screen protectors because of the 7" display of the Galaxy Tab was larger than most mobile devices). To my pleasant surprise, the display became much more crisp, and vibrant in colour. Without the matte surface, my fingers feel much smoother and more comfortable when sliding across the display. YC has made a good suggestion after all! 


Now that the screen protector has come off, I somehow feel that the screen has become larger. I am still worried about the screen getting scratched, so I might still decide to go get a clear protector after all. Haha. 

That's how stubborn I am!

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2011 Feb 26, Saturday

Today is a sad day. My grandfather passed away.

It was the first day I went to hospital to see him. He was admitted on the 20th, about a week ago. He died at the age of 97 years old. He had swollen feet and water in the lungs, if I've got my facts right. This led him to be hospitalised. He could not consume solid food, so he was on drip and liquid food.

When I visited him at 7.15pm, his condition was stable but his blood pressure was very low, lower than 50. His heart beat was about 85 per minute. Which was quite alright. I left the hospital about 7.30pm - 7.45pm.

I did not know anything about measurement, so I did a quick search on Wikipedia. Here's the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_pressure.

Here's a brief summary from Wikipedia:

Average blood pressure in (mmHg):

1 year	6 - 9 years	adults
95/65	100/65	110/65 - 140/90

Originally, I was invited to Chingnee (Ruby) birthday's dinner where she was going to treat Christina and myself. Because Christina wasn't feeling well, we told Ching that we won't be attending. Christina was at the ground floor of the hospital while I went up to see the grandfather.

After visiting at Tan Tock Seng Hospital , I went to Novena Square to have dinner with Christina. Halfway through the dinner, I got a text message from my father at 8.35pm saying that the grandfather has passed away at 8.15pm.

The relatives had all visited him. Except for 3rd uncle which was out of country and was making his way back. Grandfather was already in there for almost a week, and the doctor was telling them since morning, that he could pass away any time. When I went there, I felt that the relatives were quite prepared for what was going to happen.

2011-02-16 Wednesday

An article was published today in Digital Life that included an interview I had with Straits Times Digital Life journalist Hellen Tan.

The article talks about local artists / graduates' expectations of salary in the industry. It interviewed Melvin Tan from Blue Sky Studios, David Kwok from Tiny Island Productions, and myself from Double Negative.

The last line from my interview mentioned Cosmas Lee our Operations Manager at Dneg SG. He says we have to "pay our dues" when starting off in the visual effects industry, before we can climb up and play bigger roles in the pipeline.

Prior to this article, I also had the good fortune to be interviewed for another article about Double Negative, written by Sherwin Loh my Anderson secondary school & Outram institute classmate. This was in 2009 if memory serves me right.

Both articles referred to visual effects as special effects. This is an inaccurate term for the visual effects industry. Special effects refers to physically created effects (outside of the CGI-computer generated imagery- realm). Examples are the use of, special make-up, prosthetics, robotics, animatronics, miniature, pyrotechnics, specially manufactured and rigged props and/or coordinated stunt-work.

2011-02-16 Valentine's Day Gift

I am still on reservist from 08 March 2011 till 28 March 2011. I've been helping Film Unit do 3D models for their Airforce Workplan.

Back at work at Double Negative, our STRAT 1 batch of people have been moved up to do TD environment work just before the Chinese New Year. They are undergoing training on the job even as I am doing reservist now. The timing honestly isn't very good. I am missing out on the training while doing my reservist. Bummer.

Today Christina and I went down to People's Park Complex to get our airfare for our tour. I bumped into Jason Ang Nicodemus Hoe Kiat (former Double Negative employee, until the Chinese New Year holidays).

After that we went to Bugis Junction for dinner. Ate at Basement 1 at the open airconditioned stall called "Eat.". I find the service staff quite bad. Not really paying attention. I just handed the lady $50, she opened up the cash register, and 15 seconds later while putting together my change, she asked me "How much did you give me again?"

After dinner we went to 2 jewelery shops. Citigems and Lee Hwa. Christina was looking for a cross to hang on a chain. We've already seen the Citigem collection in Novena Square the Sunday before. The shop at Bugis seems smaller than the on at Novena, and had a more limited range. So we moved on to Lee Hwa. Here we spotted a few designs that she liked.

After narrowing down her choices, she decided to get one at 50% discount. It was about $700, but it was a Valentine's day promotion, so it's now selling at $328. I bought this for her as a present.

After this I went to EpiCentre (a shop that sells Apple computers, devices and accessories). I asked around for earphones with a mic. My 3 months old Samsung Galaxy Tab is giving me a hard time making phone calls because of the less-than-ideal in-built mic. During the call, the other party would have difficulty hearing my voice because the mic would pick up background sounds instead of my voice. The sales staff recommended me a Klipsch ear-phone. It was not made for Apple devices (I told him mine was an Android device). Its a Klipsch ProMedia in-ear earphones with microphone. This cost $159.

At the same time there was some RBS credit card people trying to sell the card. There's a tie-up with Epi Centre, where there's a $50 voucher to redeem after you sign up for the card. I already have that card and Christina signed up for it as well!

Yesterday was ok. Some part of the day was wasted, cos the duty staff was on MC and I could not find another person to do guard duty. Also because there is a IT security workshop @ MINDEF, so the unit has less than half strength, so couldnt find people to do. So it ended up i had to let the MIDO report that there was no guard duty personnel from INTEC. I also wrote a mail to Institute SSM to apologise for the situation. Was quite fed up because they all said they could not do. I need to make them see that duty supercedes everything. And I am going to implement standby duty personnel. In this way they cannot say I inform them last minute.

After work went to Orchard took CD from Adrian, to listen to his friend, Sandra's vocal piece to which i will accompany the singing on the piano. Then i went to meet up with Siti (anderson sec classmate) and her friend, Yuping @ Toa Payoh. I ate dinner @ Mos Burger. Had a nice time chatting with them. Long time didnt meet up with Siti already.

Bought dinner back to camp for Soh and Jason after that. Worked in camp for a while, Adi called from australia, talked till 1am. After that, I asked zhaoli out for supper, so me and Jason went out to meet him @ NUS prata shop. Talked and ate till 2am. He had an exam the next day.

Went back camp, i worked until 3:30am, slept until 6:30am. Now back to work.

Nothing much in the day, just work. Finished rendering the cheesy rip-off animation sequence "One Ring to Rule Them All". haha.

For dinner, I had the biggest ice kacang of my life. But because I ate noodles also, i had to share it with Mr Soh. Nevermind. Next time i shall attempt to eat it all by myself! HA.

Went home to sleep, then wake up help Helen do website layout. From midnight until now, 1:55am.

Got a call from Adrian regarding his closed-door vocal performance on the 20 May 2004. His song and his friend's song which i will try to help them play, are in the key of C and A minor! Oh my goodness. Looks like i have to try after all, because i have no excuse to say no...? Sigh.

Still doing the web layout. :) Trust in God that tomorow will be better. Yeah!

Adrian Lim asked me to play piano for him at some internal performance. Its quite a "piano" song. To Where You Are, by Josh Groban. I sms him to say i cannot do it. For one, i cant read notes fast, and secondly, I am not good at performing without errors. And I am hearing the song now, it has a modulation, change of key. Oh man. I must be firm to tell him, if it doesnt affect his singing, it will make me look bad. Because i really cant play this well. HA

Monday night again.

Came home from informal meeting in church about hillsongs trip. Headache. So many things to do and so confused. heh heh. Came home, went online, 6 people chat with me for 1hr. (i wanted to sleep at that time). then i finally got my sleep @ 11pm. now 1am, i am awake.

Why am i awake? I wanted to do work, but now i dont have the mood. Nah, just leave it till tomorrow, during working hours. ha ha.

So what do i do now? Um. maybe i'll just sleep? ha. maybe. :)

Sundays are always tiring. Church followed by lunch with church friends, followed by long hours of concussion on my bed at home.

But last night i gotta do some work from camp at home. Animation manz. And somehow it took a turn and became more corny. A simple animated diagram of some leadership chart took to the look of Lord of the Rings, where the Circle encompassing the diagram turned to look like the RING in LOTR. Wahaha :)