Merdeka my buddies!

It's time to be patriotic, just for a day:

Oh, My Motherland,
The Land where my life began,
Where people live in harmony and prosperity,
With God-given blessings of happiness,
Our King reigns in peace.
With God-given blessings of happiness,
Our King reigns in peace.

oh my god....


found on wikipedia by the way.

oh a belated happy birthday to Baizura too. Miss the college times.... :)

hmm.... it's more than 2 weeks since i last blogged. i'm sorry if you've been trying to get updates but yeah... it's pretty much the same. Same = routinely doing random stuff every week.

dramas, secrets, alcohol, random activities every week. I wonder if you wanna really read my blog about these? maybe it's one of the gang's turn to blog about this. check out the links. :)

reason not being able to blog so much is: i've been busy for the past week. busy = 60hr/wk. am booked for the next 7 weeks with 60hr weeks. So much for all the effort to get out of the work that i've been doing since day one in the team. Can't wait to get out of this little hole....

will be back again when i feel like it.

Adios.

Should I actually be updating myself on this on a weekly basis? Weekends are awesome. They are the only times you get to relax and not think about work, especially doing the stuff that we've always wanted to do.

Another almostly-weekly ritual to kick start the weekend, after 5 large pizzas and singstar among the 'monstars', was a movie at Village Sky City. A long movie packed with star studded cast with a so-so story line. If you're into Colin Farrell you might like him in this, even though there's not much for him to perform, since he's already a playboy himself in real life. If you're into Gong Li (especially guys out there) you'll want to switch to a younger person to look at, since she's old and less attractive now. If you're into fast cars? This one has a Ferrari. But do all cops like these have Ferrari's to drive? I'd be one helluva cop too. haha. But movies are movies. Leave the reality to the audience to decipher.

This weekend was to plan around Jason, a Christchurch friend, who visited us (the old school Chch ppl in Auckland) during his business trip which starts on Monday. We brought him for lunch at St Lukes Mall. Nothing special really since St Lukes Mall's like 3 times the size of Riccarton Mall, he admits it himself. What's Auckland? I'd say Auckland's more fun than Welly *teasing* haha. but to be honest I never liked Welly. Maybe one day, just one day, i might change my mind but well, I'd prefer for now Christchurch or even Dunedin over Wellington if I want to get out of Auckland. (oh by the way, some dodgy advert about promoting wellington to nz-ers: If you'd like an affair, check out www.wellingtonnz.com! the advert's pretty much about affairs and nothing about wellington!)

Back to the Saturday: We had a meal at some chinese restaurant in Balmoral after church. And Jason's apparently a Catholic church go-er but not a frequent one. Is he a Catholic? Cant remember. ANYHOW: Back to the dinner on Saturday. We had dinner where a few of the close friends met up for a little reunion, especially the star of the weekend -- Jason, and Gerald and Jessie. In fact it's been a while since I last had a catch up with G. We even had an addition to the circle: Jengis's bro Jeremy the future optometrist. Food was nice. Place was great minus the smoke from the cooking oil we experienced in a famous chinese restaurant in Blockhouse Bay a few months back. Speaking of famous, this restaurant is apparently pretty famous. In Chinese it's called "Bie2 Bu4 Tong2". In English it's called 'Star Cafe'. But it's not even a direct translation. Tell me honestly, if you happen to try to find a restaurant on the whitepages and come across 'Star Cafe' wouldn't you think it's a cafe instead of a typical Chinese restaurant? Not only that. what does "Bie2 Bu4 Tong2" mean anyway?? "Bie2" means "Do not / Not"; "Bu4 Tong2" means "different". So that means the name of the restaurant is "Do not be different" ?? Or maybe they wanna say, let's try to be normal? Or maybe the restaurant is in fact "like every other restaurant and nothing special about our restaurant anyway"? Maybe my Chinese is pretty damn poor. But the word "Bie2" could actually mean "super/extreme". However, for a layman like myself the first instance I see this word it means "do not" instead of "super". Maybe I just think too much. But at least think about how it's brand is to be named in English ya. "Bie Bu Tong" = "Star Cafe" ?? I doubt it. I remembered when I tried to look this up in the internet pages just by knowing it's Chinese name. ..... pretty hard to link the two names together.

So you know what did I do? I looked up the yellow pages, by eliminating the names which sounds like non-Asians from the search results. In the end I dialled one by one. At one point, I asked a random Chinese Restaurant (in Cantonese) "Do you know the number of Bie Bu Tong Restaurant"? Not surprisingly they, as competitors, would not even to say no more. That's my conclusion. Name it properly in English or Mandarin. Establish some link between the name in two languages somehow. You might just put off some potential customers like me. :)



Singstar continued from the previous night with some bloody stupid songs I sang with Jengis. Somehow Christine took a video clip of it. Check it out (if she uploads to YouTube that is). Had a pretty late night but it was all fun.

somehow the song Mia 'sang' was ringing in my head for the next 24 hours!



Sunday was all food and no exercises. It all started with a dimsum/yumcha at China Restaurant. Had coffee at Mission Bay and weekly sunday dinner at my place, all cooked by Jan and helped by her chics. This was followed by a new release dvd called 'Cry Wolf' before we ended the weekend.



Pretty tired but it was awesome! At least I had the day off. And yes, it's Monday and I'm sitting here. almost 5pm now. Kevin just blogged.

Happy Mother's Day. It's actually on Saturday in Thailand. "suk sun wan mae" in Thai., as taught by Non the superfriend from Thai.

Currently listening to: 666 - amokk

amex sux. i've just cancelled my card. not that i'm not able to pay it off. it's just absurd to pay over $50 for the annual fee. Bullshit. Now i'm just down to one card. visa. should i also go for a priceless card as well? haha. nah. one credit card will do for now. besides why should one pay so much for the annual fee when there's not much benefits in it?

airpoints: What the fuck is that? Do you know how much is a ticket to fly down to Christchurch from Auckland? $109 one way the last time i checked it. so that makes $218 per return. What is Airnz airpoints? another point collection scheme where you can use the accumulated airpoint 'dollars' to redeem an air ticket. The concept is pretty easy. Dollar for dollar redemption, ie if you want to purchase a $150 ticket you have to have 150 Airpoint Dollars.

I've been an airpoints member for almost 2 years now. Spent almost 15 thousands of dolllars just using this card. how many points do you think i've accumulated? 189 airpoint dollars! That means you have to spend $79 to earn an Airpoint Dollar. Bloody fuckin' Airnz Point Collection Scheme.

What's worse is: you have to pay around $50 for the damn membership fee.

The worst of all is: $79 for one airpoint dollar is considered good enough. because I was using American Express! Doesn't seem to be accepted in as many places as Visa/Mastercard. And if you want to pay using Amex, you HAVE TO sign it. CAn't use the bloody fucking PIN.

And yeah, Visa/Mastercard lets you accumulated Airpoint Dollars. But pretty damn stupid too, cos you have to spend twice as much money, ie $150 to earn a single Airpoint.

Conclusion? Fuck Amex. Fuck Airpoints.

It's friday. Chill......

It was a cold start to the weekend. Bloody Auckland rain kept pouring non stop. So we decided to just sit at home and do nothing until Janice suggested that we should have steamboat at my place.

It was basically the same bunch of mates sitting around a boiling (or was it REALLY boiling all the time?) pot... catching up and watching dvd.

Yes, another cantonese dvd. BUT this is some classic Hongkong gangster movie. 'Young and Dangerous' (Gu Wak Zai if you know cantonese). Yvonne actually brought the whole Young package - 5 episodes! Guess we might have a marathon for the night! Yet halfway through the show my mind's only on the food itself! Though it was less than 2 months when I last had a steamboat gathering this was awesome! Mainly because the meal was not at a restaurant and held at home instead you don't feel that restricted! $10 per person was still a bit too much for all of us in the end.

After the dinner a few of us went to Orange to play pool. It was just plain drama from Mei and Christine with the Snap game. haha. but we had fun. that's the main thing!

Sunday. Another miserable rainy weekend. At least I had enough sleep to start my day at the Food Show at ASB Showgrounds. $20 was a bit too much at first but from the amount of food samples we took there, accompanied with free wine tasting and coffees in between, and most entertaining of all the Liquid Kitchen (Cocktail performance) it was worth more than $20!

There was one thing that made this visit an expensive one: I lost my umbrella! He'd been my company for 8 months now and I feel sad to part with 'it'. Consolation? It's free anyway. :) I didn't spend a dime getting it!

I remembered I 'borrowed' this green umbrella (let's call it Greeny) during my trip to the Waiau Waterworks at the Coromandel. Paying more than $10 bucks per visit was indeed worth the money!..

back to my sunday... the food show visit ended with TWO visits to the Warehouse. All because of my intention of trying to get a replacement for Greeny. Bugger. Fucking Warehouse(s). They've sold out all the bloody umbrellas. Who said 'everyone gets a bargain'. Eh?

A bit of a random thing followed by a gathering again at my place! :) We continued watching Young and Dangerous while Janice randomly wanted to cook for all of us.

If I have to kiss someone it's gotta be the food. Yeah! weekend! food! oh yeah! (ok i shall stop thinking about it)
overall, it's fucking awesome food!

It was indeed a good weekend, though everyone appeared pretty tired in the end.

Hmm.... shall I tell you more drama?.... Nah, I'll save it for next time.

I've watched Superman. It's a comic. No complaints.

Last night we went to watch this movie called 'Dragon Tiger Gate'. Title itself was pretty corny already, even though the original title is in Chinese.

Bear in mind, this is a Hong Kong movie. Based on a comic. I thought i'd give it a try, who knows you'll be surprised? No I wasn't surprised at all the first minute I stepped into the cinema:

Asian is found at every seat. By the time we got in there it was almost full. sat in the third row. what can we say? free seating! hehe!

I basically laughed from the first scene right to the last. Inside me at least. Just to respect the film and the effort put into making it. But somehow, it's not only me who laughed, the rest of the ASIANS laughed.

ASIANS.

I am one. it's not a bad thing being an asian. cheap stuff obtainable wherever you're around an asian area. BUT, for this topic's argument's sake, why can't we make it right for our films? Take for example:

Notice how they slow-mo Dragon's running scene? IS THERE A NEED TO DO SO?

Notice how Tiger and Xiaoling met for the first time? when they crossed a bridge. How did they end up chatting like they're in fact strangers?! that's plain bull shit.

Maybe i'm wrong. Maybe i'm critical. Maybe it's meant to be like that, 100% original from the comic. but hey if you're gonna make 100% copy of the original, why not splash some cash to put in some real effort to make it at least a B grade American movie?

I've seen some good Chinese movies lately, namely Huo Yuan Jia. Apart from that? None.

There have been a few good ones the past few years though I can't list ten of them!
Infernal Affairs 1, 2 and 3
Hero
Initial D
Election


Look, if you're gonna make a good movie from comics, live up to the expectation! Initial D's an example!
Action movie? Look up 'Hero'. it's a thousand times better than your Electric Drilling kungfu style... lame!
Scriptwise? Infernal Affairs is number one!

Or try this, real life GTA: it's better than Gate.



Enough of my rambling.....

By the way, thanks to Jan for the movie. At least we now know how bad the movie was!

ps: as a consolation prize, you'll get to see a hot chic and a pretty gal: Li XiaoRan and DongJie.

Imagine this:

It's August 2006. It's lunch break. You're thirsty. You need a break. You go to the vending machine getting yourself a bottle of Coke. Coin's in, bottle's out. You down half the bottle. What you realise later is that the Coke's expired in 2004.

Fuck.

Should you sue the company?

If you're a lawyer would you represent me - the unlucky coke drinker?

If you're interested to represent, contact me!

Note: this is serious. Not just plain blogging.

Still..... you know the RnB playlist?.... help me out here.

Tell you one more thing that's blonde. my next cycle of free text only kicks in tomorrow.

so....

Sorry to those whom i've spammed. I promise not to spam again. hehe. for this month.

Alright, enough with the blonde thing. Who's up for the upcoming foodshow? ASB Showground at Greenlane. www.foodshow.co.nz

add a comment or two (as much as you want anyway) if you have anything to say.

Happy birthday to Ivy back in Malaysia. Hope to catch up with you the next time I'm back. :)

And yeah. I was told that it's Chinese Valentine's Day today. Or was it yesterday? Find that out yourself anyway. I'm pretty sure it's around these days.

.....

....

Songs from the RnB room still ring in my ear. You remember the playlist? All I know is Black Eyed Peas! The rest of it was pretty vague.... haha. Even though I have most of the songs played that night I still struggle to make a playlist as I've got around 20 Gigs of songs.

Help me out here? haha.

ok. My next cycle kicks in soon. pretty soon. enough of my spamming.