I’m pretty convinced the Transformers are gay. I heard that the leader of the bad guys in Beast Wars is Optimus Prime’s grandson. This begets the question: Who was the grandmother? Now we’ve all followed the series as kids and we all know that the show’s sexist and all the robots are conveniently male. There can’t possibly be a grandmother involved and since single parenthood via adoption wasn’t popular in the 80s (Calista Flockhart and Angelina Jolie, among other Hollywood trendsetters, made that a fashion statement just years back), that must mean one thing - Prime didn’t do it alone!

You know that the Autobots like their backdoor action when they’ve names like Bumblebee and J-ass.  And don’t even try denying that Ironhide doesn’t sound like bear-ish. And the Decepticons aren’t any more discrete either. Arse-Rim…I mean Starscream would probably not mind some hot robot-on-robot action with Megatron (ooo, big guy!) and Frenzy probably goes silly when Bonecrusher (might there be a missing ‘r’ in the name?) lays his magic on him.

In the movie, Optimus Prime (or is it Opt-anus Prime, huh?) was practically begging for the All Spark (now doesn’t this sound like a great name to market your dildo as) to be shoved in him. I don’t blame them really. You get a whole lot of hormonally-charged (they fight a lot, right?) males and no females of the species to have them lust over, it’s probably the only thing they can do to keep sane. They can’t lube their engines to sweet young things because they haven’t got such a concept in their world. Their only porn rag’s probably Top Gear.

Why are they called ‘Robots in disguise’ anyway? Did you really think for once that that referred to how these robots disguised themselves as cars and planes and other odd machinery? Or what about how they are ‘More than meets the eye’? It’s come out of the closet time!

Tags: transformers, conspiracy theory

Recently, I’ve developed this soft spot for nice tableware. In fact, I’m on the lookout for nice coffee cups to make pretty lattes in (you’d have thought this day would come where I’m using ‘pretty’ to describe a bland drink). I don’t want just any coffee cup though; those are common. I want quaint yet minimalistic see-through glass mugs where I can see the layers of milk, coffee and froth as I pour them in. Heck, speaking of froth, I was actually scouting around for a ‘manual’ milk frother the other day - an electric one costs >$20 which, despite my Martha Stewart ways, is very pricey.

I’m still drinking my coffee from your everyday ceramic cup now.

Anyway, I was out window shopping the other day when I actually recognized these really gorgeous double-walled glass cups.

In all earnest nerdiness, I cooed something along the lines of “Pavina glasses! SO BEAUTIFUL!” before noticing the price tag for the smaller versions (as seen here) stating $23 for a set of two. Alas.

You know you’re getting a little too into food-related sites when you can identify glassware from sight.

There’s this mattress brand I’ve been noticing recently. They’ve the funniest banners advertisements and the funniest-looking mascots. I’ll get a pic of the banners to show you guys what I’m talking about someday. In the meantime, check out their advertising campaign.

They’re hilarious. I love sheep. Angry bitter sheep. That’s why they go baaaa.

What I like best about the Sandbox Shuffle is the snap-stop-and-throw action just before the sweeping motion of the arms. The trick’s invented by this guy called Michael Karas (check out his site) and looks somewhat similar to Romeo’s Revenge and Rubenstein’s Revenge but has a bit of Yo-Yo thrown in so it would help if you’re familiar with those already.

The most difficult part of the learning process, for me at least, is the 2nd of the 2-ball part of the tutorial. Do watch out for the timing because that’s not meant to be a simultaneous ball swap and the balls are supposed to be exchanged (i.e. land in the respective hands) with about the same time difference as in a 3-ball cascade. If you’re having difficulty doing that, start by tossing the ball in the higher hand much higher than regularly, then adjusting as you get more comfortable.

The music, as usual, by the Bees, is titled The Russian and you can hear that from their Free the Bees album.

I’m wearing a Threadless shirt in the video; it’s called The Frog Piper. Unfortunately, even if you’re interested, it’s unlikely you can get it since at last check, there’s all of 4 Small guy sizes left and a bunch of kids’ sizes.

Tags: juggling, sandbox shuffle, tutorial, video

It was after lunch at around 3pm. I had another 3 hours or so to burn before a dinner appointment. “That’s a long time away,” offers one of the folks who was with me. Nay, time passes fast. After all, what’s a girl to do smack in the middle of town in a large shopping mall?

That lump was 2cm tall until I used an ice pack at Carl’s Jr. Unrelated note: Carl’s Jr has nice fish and chips.

That’s right, a girl could decide to wander off to the nearby skatepark and ask the nearest BMXer to teach her some tricks. You see, spontanity and randomness are some of my strongest suits (or weaknesses, however you see it) and take precedence over the stuff we call common sense.

It was fun though. I went up to a bunch of guys, asked them to teach me something, got referred to another guy who apparently coaches some of the local pros. The last time I rode a bicycle was 6 years back. This is the first time in my life I’m riding a BMX. 40 minutes or thereabouts later, I called it quits for the day. Among the lessons learnt were:

- Clogs and shorts are NOT proper attire for learning to BMX not least because the soles are slippery.

- I learnt from unicycling that metal pedals hurt. Apparently, metal pegs hurt a LOT MORE (see above picture)

- Bumps that don’t hurt immediately hurt more in the aftermath.

I was learning to do this…

… except, instead of going round and round, I was taught to stop when I was facing the handlebar and use my free foot to scuff the wheel. I can’t scuff.

I finally got around to fixing my new cranks and hub on my unicycle. Now it’s a proper Koxx-One bastard as one of the guys termed it. I got the spokes changed to stainless steel ones and fitted plastic pedals as well so my uni can be less noisy when I drop it.

It’s a much much smoother ride than before and because the pedals are still new and hang a little stiffly to my cranks, it feels so much less scary to do jump mounts or other similar stunts. AND, I know this is psychological but I can wheelwalk and one-foot wheelwalk significantly better. AND, because I don’t want to be scratching those very expensive cranks, I’m starting to get the idea of pedal-grabs.

Now to get me a new seat…

Some months back, I bought a pair of those colored contact lenses for the heck of it. I got gray ones because I figured it’d be pretty cool to have semi-translucent eyes. BUT, as luck would have it, apart from being grey, I think I might have gotten the ones that give the illusion of big pupils. The sort that makes you look doe-eyed and pitiful. The sort that makes you look right out of those Taiwanese teeny-bopper dramas where the lead actress ALWAYS ALWAYS looks up at the camera and pouts.

 Yea, like that. Apparently, you can’t look pitiful or sad enough anymore these days with merely mascara-ed lashes and downward-arching brows. You HAVE to have large pupils that may or may not dilate in the light as well to add to the appeal.

Now, whenever I fail at unispins, all I have to do is to look up at the heavens with my artificial large pupils and pout a bit and the Gods will have mercy on me and grant me lightning feet. When I eat too much and suffer indigestion, I’d look to the heavens with my artificial large pupils and the Gods will grant me diarrhea. When I haven’t got a seat on the train, I’d look to the heavens with my artificial large pupils and someone seated will suffer a cardiac arrest and keel over (out of his seat) and die. When I can’t find a good show on TV, I’ll look up to the heavens and … oh yeah, there’s never any good TV in Singapore so I guess that can’t be helped.

p.s: Well, my camera’s fixed so be expecting a spanking new vid from me soon enough. It’s not going to be unicycling or juggling-related and response from those who’ve seen the preview was pretty good so stay tuned!

Today marks the 2nd or 3rd time I’ve taken my BC wheel out to play. The first time was memorably painful due to the stupid fact that I wanted to save my new shinguards and used my old half-cover guards with loose straps. I went back to fetch my new guards 20 minutes and multiple calf bruises later. I never learnt to mount the wheel in part because I didn’t (and still don’t) have a wrench to tighten the plates but mostly because I’ve terribly balance.

After 2 hours and a whole bucket of perspiration later, I actually learnt to skate-mount and move a little with a passable success rate (i.e. 51% or thereabouts). Correct me if I’m wrong but the trick, it seems, is to tilt the wheel away from your mount foot while keeping your pushing foot in line with the plate such that the wheel is almost under you when you push. I’ve also learnt some other useful facts that will no doubt serve me well and good in my future BC-ing career.

- It’s a good idea to learn to BC in jeans because you’ll avoid nasty bruises from the tire rubbing the crock of your knee…

- BC-ing in new tight jeans however, is a bad idea. I now have sexy blue thighs. Smurfs the world over rejoice.

- I’m pretty convinced that BC-ers have cute pert behinds and well-toned legs from the balancing…

- However, any notions of making it big as a porn star would be ruined by the black and blue from falling all over the place.

And of course, the most important lesson for today:

- Your BC will always travel fastest and furthest when you’re not on it.

Tags: bc, impossible wheel, unicycling, tutorial

There I was, feeling all excited and browsing the graphic novels - let’s be honest here, they’re really comics - section at the bookstore when this girl walks by with her boyfriend in tow and continues their conversation with a “Well, girls don’t read books like these.” I turned and our eyes connected for that brief second where she looked slightly apologetic and me, slightly sheepish.

I love comics and I don’t see why it has to (always) be a gender issue. I’ll be the first to admit that having pictures in a book (preferably in color) is very enticing - why the hell do you think people read magazines for? It’s absurd to even suggest that you need to be male to be able to enjoy pretty pictures unless of course you’re talking about Playboy or other porno lad mags in which case, yea I don’t really know how to enjoy the sights. Also, I don’t see why comic readers would need to justify their reading habits by using the more mature-sounding term, ‘graphic novel’. So what if the characters sound childish and stupid (think Marvel and DC comics)? What’s the difference between them and characters in sci-fi/fantasy novels? I wouldn’t think anyone would consider Lord of the Rings a children’s book despite having similarly ridiculous characters. A good story’s really the selling point in books - comics or otherwise.

The last english comic I bought was a copy of X-Men Unlimited from almost 5 years back. I haven’t been at all keen on buying new books the last few years, not lest because I’ve acquired a whole shelf of novels that are, to date, unread. My enthusiasm towards comics was resurrected some time back after watching 300 and later, Sin City. The shows were great and reminded me of exactly why comics were so wonderful - they told stories too effortlessly.

I’m personally a huge fan of fiction where popular/familiar characters are being transplanted in an alternative setting. I’ve been trying to read Neil Gaiman’s American Gods for the last half a year (distractions! I blame distractions!) and am down to the last 30 pages. One of my favorite mini-series on TV was The 10th Kingdom, a reinterpretation and mashing up of popular fairy tales. Then I came across this comic series called Fables which reminded me a lot of The 10th Kingdom. Like the show, the blurb tells of a story where characters from popular fables are living in Manhattan because they’re being chased out of their former homes by evil forces. I bought volume 1 of the series which consists of the first 5 issues of comics and I just finished the book. The story’s clever, the art’s brilliant and I’m looking forward to buying the rest of the collection. At a sale at another bookstore (which unfortunately didn’t have Fables), I bought one of the Sandman books and vol 1 of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I haven’t watched the movie so the story so far (I’m at pg 10 or so) is rather amusing to me.

The next few books I’m likely to get (over the year since I’m so bloody poor) would probably be the complete Sin City collection,  more Fables, The Curious Incident of a Dog at Nightime, The Anansi Boys and perhaps the Da Vinci Code. I’ll probably get to reading the rest of my Stephen King novels that are collecting dust on my shelf soon enough. And Michael Crichton’s Prey - I love his books.

Anyone cares to recommend other books?

Tags: graphic novels

This happened one day when I was really really bored in the university hostel with nothing better to do. I’m thinking of resurrecting the story though because The Sims 2 cracks me up.

(more…)

A little background information for foreigners

Singapore’s a funny little place. We haven’t resources like fuel or food or Paris Hiltons but we’ve got a LOT of people living on our little island so we’re insecure that way. A group of Important People probably sat around a table one day to Think Hard and finally concluded that for us to not starve to death, our people have got to be smart. Unfortunately, statistics aren’t in our favor and most people turn out average. So, the Important People Thought Hard about it again and came up with the solution - we’d educate the masses and make the whole world (and us) believe we’re a smart bunch. We’d all be so in demand, we’d be offered food, shelter and all sorts of resources we’d require but lack.

Now to the Story

One of the local universities (we’ve only 3, mind you. For a population of 4.5 million.) has realised just how profitable videogames are (Screw you, Jack Thomson, says them). So they’re offering a Master’s degree in game development. The course is apparently a collaboration with “TQ Global, an international game company” which will pay for the course AND will recruit the students once they graduate. Heck, there’s a TQ Singapore so it’s even more convenient.

But wait, aren’t the news and press releases forgetting something?

Who’s gonna teach the students? Last I checked, Singapore hasn’t produced any top-notch videogames since…since… ever. In fact, last I recall, we didn’t even HAVE any semblance of a videogame industry since 3 years or so back when New Media became the new buzzword and lots of money were spent enticing big names to sow their seeds on local shores. And…and… there’s the TQ connection and who here’s heard of a TQ game (it’s a China-based company and it makes MMOs like Monster and Me and uh… Farms Online) ? Besides, does it seem likely or in TQ’s interest if the lecturers hail from competitors?

Wait, there’s more.

The average Singaporean female starts her university education at age 19 while the average male starts his at age 21 (because of compulsory army training). A Bachelor’s degree would take 3-4 years and a Master’s typically requires at least 2 years of work experience. That would mean the typical student would be nearing or in his/her thirties when he/she actually starts work. But who cares. We’re gonna be raising retirement age anyway so 30’s as good an age to start working as any.

You’ve got to love Singapore. Our enthusiasm rocks!

Tags: videogames, singapore, game degree, ntu

If it weren’t that I’m currently preoccupied with other seemingly impossible tricks, I’d be trying this out (and failing of course). Oh, and of course, it’s useful that breaking the TV set by kicking a ball into it is not very entertaining.

Tags: juggling

This is dedicated to all the spyware and phishing sites that are emailing me crap.

10) I have sensitive skin.

9) There’s no shipping options for Singapore.

8 ) The Government took all my money (see GST hike)

7) The feng shui expert says no.

6) The Brazillian Banana Spider (specifically, look under Interesting Facts) probably does the job too. And it’s free if you’re lucky.

5) My current underwear is snug as it is.

4) My dog is curious.

3) Sex education classes in school tell us that size doesn’t matter.

2) My boyfriend has a small asshole.

1) I DON’T HAVE A PENIS YOU MORONS.

“I’m no supervising technician, I’m a technical supervisor!”

- Homer in The Simpsons S1 episode, Homer’s Odyssey, when asked to apply for another job.

Well, I’m supposed to head on down to my new workplace tomorrow to finish up the paperwork. My previous job title was Assistant Producer and I’m Production Assistant now.  Am I the only one amused?

When Julia Roberts called her kid Phineas, the whole world laughed. The baby probably did too since it’s too young to understand that the world’s laughing at it, not with it.  While staring at the ceiling, I began to ponder about more common names that are mispronounced and how sad it is to actually call your kids that. These are names I’ll never call my kid:

1) Joel - People here tend to say that as ‘Joe- el’. Fans of Billy Joel will call you ‘Jol’. It sounds bad in any case. Avoid.

2) Tabitha - Locals here pronounce that as ‘teh-bee-TAAAA’. I’m not sure if it’s just unique to us so it’s worrying. It shortens conveniently to Tabby so people will start calling you like they’re calling cats. I don’t like cats.

3)  Kevin - Again, a local problem. A lot (and I mean A LOT) of people misread it as the more popular ‘Kelvin’ and will call you that. There’s a reason why you don’t want an ‘L’ in your kid’s name - L’s are for Losers.

4) Dick - I don’t think I’d hate my future kids enough to make them suffer that.

Very random post, yes.

Tags: baby names, bad names