Went to Dashun's house just now to fix his PC. His PC is recently ill and is down with a terminal disease. Many unknown viruses have infected his PC and caused his norton unable to perform live update. Too bad.. I guess the only way to resurrect the PC is to do a brainwash (format).

Went to the LOTR exhibition today at science centre with a group of friends. Thinking that I actually made claims together with some of my NS friends that watching LOTR is a big big "NO". I only watched LOTR 1 prior to this exhibition and because of this outing, I actually went on to watch LOTR 1 again to refresh my usual poor short-term memory and LOTR 2. And as for LOTR 3, I never could find time for that. LOTR isn't that bad after all.

The exhibition hall is not big after all - smaller than the size of an exhibition hall of the Expo's. Almost all costumes of LOTR characters were on display and I noticed that they were all tailored by "Three Foot Six" - a costume company in New Zealand. Ornaments, swords, rings, shields, etc were also among the many items being displayed. Video excerpts of how costumes were tailored, make-up were done, 3D computer graphics (CG) were deployed, etc. I remembered watching an excerpt showing the 10 hours long tiring process required to do makeup on "Uruk-hai" (if my memory works for me). I cannot imagine how one can stand the 10 hour long makeup session.

The ticket costs me $16 and I believed the bulk of it goes to the approximately 3-hours long video clip "Making of LOTR". From the 3-hours extract, there are particularly 2 parts that interests me most. The first part is on how CG and AI are used to create "Massive Crowds" scenes. AI is used to generate random parameters for tens of thousands of armies to determine their physique built, expected next movement, etc. Everything just looked perfect. The second part that amazed me most is the making of Gollum / Smeagol. This character is a withered, piteous creature and does not in any way resembles a human. I bet little will know that many movements of this character actually mimicked by a human by the name of Andy Serkis. He is a choreographer with massive talent. He was actually called on to to focus on voicing Gollum but then the director of LOTR decided and wanted Gollum to be the most interactive digital character ever made for a movie, with a combination of live action and digital animation. This talented and gifted actor's abundance, extensive emotional depth and expressions really impressed me. Of course his face was never on the LOTR show but then he did say his spit (when he tried to imitate Gollum) did appear on the show. I got to add humourous to describe him.

IMPRESSIVE.

Heart pain ar..

Finally my friend called.
Will be meeting him in less than half an hour's time.
Sometimes I do feel very bad because it is always him coming down all the way to Ang Mo Kio to look for me for a chit-chat session and I never even once drop down to Bedok to look for him. And many times, he always come down from Bugis by cab and always I just sit comfortably at home waiting for his call. haiz.. what a lousy friend I am.

Perhaps I will drop by near his house one day and have Bedok north's famous "ba chor mee" with him.

I am very happy to have him as a friend.

One day perhaps I will accompany my mom out shopping. I was told by my elder brother that about she saying it has been very very long since I last went out with her. I don't know when.

You know what is being touched? Touched is when you are ill and the entire community decided to work out on a PayPal website for donations to help lessen the medical bill burden. I am going to donate S$10-S$20.

Installed 2 screensavers.
They are 2 very popular screensavers and I think many should have seen them in places like Courts, Harvey Norman, etc. The 2 screensavers show screens of fishes swimming in a tank.

My shoutbox is down.
activetopic.com is no longer active anymore.
I guess the company has gone bust or so.

Reached home early today at around 6:30pm. I packed a packet of "cai fan" for my mom and a packet of 'nasi lemak" from "Hup Lee" for myself. Immediately right after I finished my dinner, I felt unusually sleepy and just sleep on my bedroom's floor with a mat laid out and not on a bed because I had not had my bath. Slept soundly until 9+ before my mom woke me up and asked me to have my bath before I sleep. As usual, I always feels very alert (eyes big big) after a bath.

Went to my friend's house to help format her PC and as promised, dinner will be provided. Fried chicken, potatoes, fried vegetables, fried egg and corn soup with a bowl of rice were the dishes. I never am good with eating rice from a bowl with a pair of chopsticks and my clumsiness was so obvious that my friend noticed it. A plate with metal spoon and fork were provided in place of the bowl and chopsticks combination. I found myself like a little child, needing special attention during meal-time. Rice was little but I did not get a second serving. Luckily my mom bought bee hoon.

I cannot sleep again :(

Watched Van Helsing last night.
It's a nice show and definitely not a comedy.
But then my gf and I kept laughing.
Guess we are the only ones who found the show a bit funny.
sigh..

Decided to watch Van Helsing later at PS.

Today's plan
1. Went for the library to return a Microsoft Office book.
2. LOTR1 movie screening.
3. Nap.
4. TV.

Blogger never refreshes itself and it always retrieves from caches.
erm..i will try to remedy that problem by adding a piece of code now and hope it will work like a charm.

Felt guilty for leaving my working colleague, Poh Lee, alone on Saturday. I was supposed to work on yesterday together with her but then I could not make myself available for work that day for a very valid reason. Another colleague of mine, Geraldine, had agreed to work on behalf of me that day but then she never turned up and of course I had no right to blame her for that. Who would want to work on a wonderful Saturday? I knew Poh Lee don't blame me for that after knowing why I couldn't work that day. Thanks a lot.

Made up my mind to watch LOTR 1 today. I had watched this show before but then I sort of forgotten the entire story plot blame on my far too excellent memory. If my mental mind allows me, I will continue LOTR 2. I will try to complete the entire LOTR series within this week.

My friend is a pro-pirated VCDs "burner". He is damn good at it right now. Volunteered to burn movies for me for free and have the cover of the vcds scanned and printed in full colour. That's very good of him. Lots of new movies at the moment but yet to watch any of them.

I feel happy with my life.

The CrazyOne is sick and I think he really needs everyone's support and wish. Sounds rather serious to me. He is a rare helpful person.


Hi everybody and thanks. Asta (astaec) emailed me the other day asking where I was and this was my reply to her.

=========================

Ummm I have been a little depressed. Neither my wife or I are having any real luck in finding a job. Recently my vision just went haywire. Everything was blurry with or without my glasses. I thought it might correct itself but it didn't. So my Dad agreed to pay for seeing the Optometrist. Well she didn't find any damage with my eyes and found my vision indeed has changed dramatically since I saw her in August. So she felt that there was a good chance that some medical condition was the cause and suggested I get a physical.

Well my Dad agreed to pay for the physical. Got the results last Monday 5-10. Was told that I have:

Diabetes
Hypothyroidism
High cholesterol
High iron count

I have been given some medication for the Thyroid and Diabetes. And do have a new pair of glasses however my vision fluctuates throughout the day causing some minor difficulties.

The following is a reply I have been sending to folks. Sorry it isn't more personalized...
As far as I have been told my medical infirmaries are probably due to a Liver dysfunction and this particular problem is usually caused by genetics. My wife Wendy did some research and found that this condition is somewhat rare, 5 in every 1,000 people, and it mostly happens to women. The biggest problem, right now, is I have way too much iron in my blood and there is only one way to get rid of the excess iron and that is a procedure called a phlebotomy, which is draining of all the blood from my system. At some point to much iron can become toxic and poison the system. The main problem right know is finding someway to finance seeing a liver specialist to determine the course of action we need to take. We have two appointments Tues, one with the State and one with a non-profit organization called Doctor Cares to try to get some financial aid. However even if we do get some aid it may be another two to three months before being able to see the specialist.


Spencer

=========================

Well our first of two appointments today is in two hours. I am not really feeling physically bad right now. The medication that I was prescribed seems to be helping some. I just wish my vision would settle in. It flucuates throughout the day that sometimes with my new glasses I almost have 20/20 vision. But at other times it deterioates that the glasses hardly help at all. And I hope we can get the financial aid we need so I can see the specialist. We don't really know precisely what the ailment is as far as the name goes yet. I don't suppose we will until we see the specialist. Anyway thanks all for your thoughts they are greatly appreciated. :)

The CrazyOne is sick and no one knows what illness is he sufferring from. Hope it isn't anything serious and his adamant character will help him overcome the illness. We need the crazy one.

I think I am going to set a record today for making the most number of entries on a single day. Guess I have got nothing to do and am going through in my mind the 2 blogs I have read earlier on.

Yet another entry for today.

I guess I have always been keeping worries, problems, etc all to myself. It isn't very good. I have all along been like this. I think I need to be more open.

I think I need to be a better person.
Doesn't seem to be one.

Will be working this coming Saturday :(
Hope I will be able to find a replacement for me so I can go to Sentosa this Friday.

Finally found out what's the reason as to why my norton anti virus is unable to perform live update. All because of a damn virus that modified my hosts file without my knowledge.

Who owns the Internet?
http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Internet/2002/WhoOwnstheInternet.asp

Interesting site
http://www.pandasinternational.org

She also found a job at AMK!
hehe..near my house.

Today is my first day of work. Nature of job is data-entry, administrative work, scanning job, etc. All the way from morning till lunchtime, me and 3 other colleagues just sit down there doing nothing, waiting for our PCs to be set up. Good life indeed :)

Hope somehow I will get hold of the 2 videos that show US soldiers torturing Iraqis detainees. I am not a sadist.

I have been restricting myself to only Admin/Data entry/IT-related temp jobs. Seems like I have got to include sales and waiters into the list very soon. I have sworn never to step into F&B job and will do so only if there isn't a choice. erm... do I have a choice now?

I think it's time to change the layout of my blog.
But... I am just too lazy to do so.