My Tainted Wall

Painted one of my home walls today! Since I was on MC, I might as well tried to do something with the house while I'm stuck at home.



This is the blank wall. No wait! There's stuff written there already! Not clear enough. But yes, I was so uncreative I decided to just write some words to get myself started.



Then the colours came raining down! As you can see, I was doing a terrible job at painting. Had earlier walked to CompassPoint to buy two boxes of acrylic colours just for this paint job!



The unfinished product thus far! Its too late to do the black outlines or draw anything else. Will have to continue another day! This is the beginning of the magical coloured room!!!!!

Looks damn bloody childish right? If you have the chance, come over and take a closer look, its a terrible mess!

Super happy.

MC

Am on MC today.

Doctor told me to go home to rest yesterday but I didn't listen. Down with a bad sorethroat and yellow phlegm. Didn't even bring my meds home.

Hopefully will get well by today. Cuz staying at home alone is boring...

And i just wasted my whole morning sleeping like a pig.

Least I get to update my Facebook and Twitter and do some trading :P

And here's a couple of pictures for entertainment:



I'm catching a rainbow in New Zealand!

This was in Lake Taupo shortly before we headed down to Turangi.



This was in Kai Iwi Beach where the winds were extremely strong!

Jumpshots were a MUST on everything that looked good during our trip. And the nicer the backdrop, the higher my jump!

Miss the weather there!

Twitter Is Great!

What a revelation.

Took some playing around to harness the power or Twitter. Its great not as a friend site, but more as a collector of all this relevant that I'm interested in!

Haha.

What a Twit I am.

Twitter Is Crap

Maybe because I've got no friends. Yet.

Nothing fun aside from status updates. Wtf.

Crap.

I'm A Twit

Hello, new Twitter-er!

Using Twitter is going to change the way you think about staying in touch with friends and family. Did you know you can send and receive Twitter updates via mobile texting or the web? To do that, you'll want to visit your settings page (and you'll want to invite some friends).

Activate Phone: http://twitter.com/devices
Invite Your Friends: http://twitter.com/invite
The New York Times calls Twitter "one of the fastest-growing phenomena on the Internet." TIME Magazine says, "Twitter is on its way to becoming the next killer app," and Newsweek noted that "Suddenly, it seems as though all the world's a-twitter." What will you think? http://twitter.com

Biz Stone and The Twitter Team
http://twitter.com/biz

BNP Paribas FC

Dear Futsal Organizers.

Tonight's game was seriously not fun. I would like to lodge an official complaint against the team we played.

If you're out to randomly injure your opponents using our soccer match as an excuse, I really don't feel like playing anymore.

If you're fielding young kids who look like they just entered varsity, under the guise of your established highflying name, I really don't feel like playing anymore.

If you're organizing a league that somehow makes our team play their team not two but THREE consecutive weeks in a row, I really don't feel like playing anymore.

This is rubbish. Doesn't matter that we won comprehensively. I've never seen such aggression from an opponent since the days of ICAP (and weren't they kicked out of the league for violent conduct?).

Week in week out we're just hoping to get a good exercise and get our corporate team hanging out together. You can see from our previous season's league positions what we mean.

But when a team like this just wants to use agressive play, ankle-breaking tackles and flailing elbows to make your life on the pitch a living hell, then there is no more joy in evening football anymore, is there?

Heck, we were just one or two more rough tackles away from an all-out melee out there.

I trust you will look into this promptly and organize things more sensibly.

Regards,

Texas At Horizon

2nd weekend in a row we played at Horizon Hills. This was what we were training up for all week. The mini tournament or Texas Scramble. Given that we were given a 26-stroke handicap meant that we hopefully wouldn't come in last even though we were plying with the pros.

Once again the course was seriously beautiful and scenic. I tried to take a picture of every hole until I slowly forgot about it haha. And we played pretty ok. Definitely better than our showing during the Ambassador's Cup. Ben bought himself a whole new set of clubs (to show how serious he was). Think I'll go invest in a few new ones myself.

We ended up with a raw score of 85. 5 better than our previous competitive Texas game. After handicap we actually came in 3rd! Which was pretty respectatble given the competition and the course.

Highlight was the 160m par 3 17th hole! This was the notorious island! With a 5-iron I managed to get it onto the green! For a moment I even thought that I had won the nearest to pin (didn't though).

Bummer was the causeway traffic, which took us almost 3 hours to clear customs, and the rain midway into the bottom 9. Boo those.

Midweek Thursday we played our futsal game against SJII (St Joseph Institution International) FC and lost 2-4. Felt like I played a really good game but the goalkeeper and the goalpost kept me from scoring more than my solitary goal for the team. Bummer man. Knee and ankles feeling ok though. Hopefully getting better.

Gotta take IPPT soon.

The Hell That Was Horizon Hills

Spent the whole day in JB yesterday at Horizon Hills Golf and Country Club with some of the company people. We're sussing the course out so that we're more familiar with it when we play again next week in that Texas Scramble tournament.

My oh my was the course tough or what. I think it's one of the toughest course I've played so far. We got very well acquainted with the sand bunkers. They look like wide open mouths trying to swallow up your ball all the time. They're really deep and really steep facing the holes. Eugene even put on a "Bunker Show" for us when he was stuck in one for 6 strokes. Haha. The fairways were also really narrow and there were alot alot alot of water bodies. Think I lost a total of 9 or 10 balls. Haiz. Need to stock up against before next weekend.

In the end, I scored a 119, Eugene got 116 and even Lasse who had an ok game could only manage a 94. So that shows how tough the course was.

Yet, as challenging as the course was, we actually had lotsa fun! Somehow it was very exciting and inspiring at the end of some of the holes, to know that you survived and didn't double-par it! Haha.

Its off to the range most of next week to practice, practice, practice!

Oh and you gotta click on the scorecard to enlarge it.

Pictures From Our NZ Trip - South Island

Darn. Had blogged this post halfway already and then I accidentally deleted it without saving. Damn frustrating. Anyway, was mentioning that it seems impossible for me to post our trip pictures on Facebook, so I'll try to direct people here instead.Have added some pictures to the North Island blog as well. So technically if you're reading this for the first time, you should start with the previous post first.


Our first stop in the South Island was Kaikoura! Unfortunately we couldn't go out to see seals due to the choppy seas, so we had to settle for the seal colony at the Kaikoura Peninsula. This fella is the size of a big dog and starting growling at me the closer I got.


Our trusty Mazda 3 for our South Island tour. Served us really well and I'm impressed with the new range of Mazdas, especially the fuel consumption. Think we clocked some 1,800km on this baby in our little time here. Can you spot a pesky seal?


St James Walkway, Lewis Pass. Heading to the west coast and this was the first snow we saw on our trip. Not only was the ground covered in snow, it was literally snowing while we were playing around. Friggin' cold though. Here is my best "throw snow" impression.


Franz Josef Glacier. An amazing view from the scenic lookout. It would have taken us an hour and forty-five minutes to walk to the terminal of the glacier.


Haast. This is wifey screaming for dear life as she is being attacked by sandflies! Corner shadow is me calmly taking a picture of her in distress.


Queenstown. We got ourselves a damn power room. That is The Remarkables there and this picture was taken from our balcony. I shit you not!


Pelennor Fields! This was near the location of where the LOTR battle was filmed. On our way to Milford Sound. Wifey is so enthusiastic in her jump!


The Southern Alps behind me! The scenary starts getting abit too beautiful and mesmerizing that you just feel like stopping everywhere to get a picture. I'm so pumped I'm jumping for joy! I would've been more creative with my jump but its really windy and cold!


Homer's Tunnel. I'm so psyched I'm power jumping now! Check out those abs! And then the mountains behind.


Milford Sound. What more can I say?


Fergburger. Queenstown. One of the best burgers I've ever had. Period.


Linus Pass. This was during our drive to Christchurch and would be the last time we would see natural snow. Boohoo!


Christchurch. Full of old buildings and architecture. The city walk was probably most fun in this city.


Auckland. The best highlight was Mt Eden. You get a 360 mesmerizing view of the city and when the weather permits, you get fantastic blue sky. Here I am fiddling with my camera. Summit's in the background and there is a crater in the middle. Its huge. You can almost imagine a postcard out of this picture if I weren't in it!


The skytower. There was a skyjump platform up above and we were straining our necks for a long time trying to catch someone jump from there. Then we realised nothing was gonna happen...

That's it folks. I think overall we had a really awesome and fun trip. Between me and wifey, we took more than 3,000 pictures, travelled more than 2,500km on the road and had so many nice funfilled surprises and sights along the way. If you're wondering if New Zealand's a good place to go(especially with the wifey), hell'yea!

Pictures From Our NZ Trip - North Island

Wow, it took awhile just to get the pictures into this computer. Cameras these days are abit too high-tech for me. Tried to load them on Facebook but it keeps jamming on me. Darn.

Hopefully they'll look okay here!


We start heading out of Auckland towards Whitianga. I'm so pumped up right now!


This was in Coromandel, the beginning of our 40min trek down to Cathedral Cove. The cove wasn't especially spectacular but the views from the car park were the beginning of the breathtaking sights throughout the course of our trip.


And this was me 15min into tramping...


Our trusty bright red Ford Focus during our North Island tour. So early in the trip and it's muddied all over. Served us very well. Wifey is trying to grab her scarf (to wrap around the exposed waist?) because its really windy.


The Swoosh. Its a fun ride in Rotorua where wifey and myself are hoisted on a crane some 40m high and released like a gigantic swing, whereby at the lowest point, we're just ONE metre from the concrete ground. The scary part was while we were dangling for dear life, one of us had to pull the release cord then sent us plunging(obviously it was me). I swear the series of shots leading up to this photo would have exponentially added to the humourous effort.


The Zorb. Extremely over-rated and expensive. I have no idea why anyone would pay 50bucks to roll down a hill in a giant ball. All over in 20seconds and I climbed out of that stupid ball feeling pukish. Oh, and wifey is just pretending that the ride's awesome.


I dunno about you but this animal rates as one of the funniest in our travels. Which part of the "Survival of the fittest" theory did this poor bovine fit in to survive till this day? Camouflage definitely wasn't one of its strengths. Has it been hiding at the zebra-crossings all this while?!


Hell's Gate. Thermal geysers, hot spring et al. The sign says it all. Steaming. Cliffs. All 120degs of it.


This was a popular brand of potato chips over there. Bluebird. Try saying it in Hokkien. Didn't taste good at all and in fact was quite smelly.


My virgin bungy jump. At Lake Taupo. Freakin' awesome. This is the most popular jump site in the North Island. 47m drop. Jump platform is on the right. There're scarier places to jump, but this was a start. The DVD and photos cost almost as much as the jump itself. Haha.


Turangi, south of Lake Taupo. Here's wifey thinking that she's caught a rainbow!


That night we both got high at Stell*r, a swanky restaurant in Wanganui. Good food, good wine, good company.


One of the best and surprising sights on our trip. Kai Iwi Beach. Somewhere along the way between Wanganui and Wellington. The crashing waves of the Tasman Sea has caused this erosion of cliffs in such magnitude. Just the awesome power of Mother Nature in full glory. That black speck is wifey, who got so emotional that she ran as far as her legs could take her, until the strong winds blew her back to me :) Took awhile to get this jumpshot right as the winds were so strong.


Te Papa. Wellington. Father sky and mother earth. Nuff said.


On board the InterIslander, South Island bound! Wifey thinks she's stronger than the wind. The winds are so strong that we cannot stay on the deck for more than 10minutes without getting blown away. Haha.

Going out liaoz! That's it for the North Island. Later tonight will post some South Island pictures!