theCollectiveUs

While my useful possessions are in a state of disarray around my room after I got rid of 2 cupboards, apparently this got stowed in a cupboard for the last 18 years or so and no one noticed.

I find this fact very creepy.

Flashback. I was probably 4 or 5 and this is the ONLY doll I have so far in life. You see, I grew up on a healthy staple of horror movies. My aunts found shows like It, Pet Semetary, The Fly and Child’s Play perfectly acceptable for a 4 year old. I note that when they had their own kids, they did grow up on a staple of Barney and Friends.

I particularly like how the box says “I have real feelings too <3 Just like you!” I don’t think I took her out of the box more than thrice though and I distinctly remember feeling very sad that she looked NOTHING like what the box cover shows. And yes, like all dolls, she actually does look creepy.

Wonder if I can eBay this…

I was in a car one day when this bus drives up to beside my window and there’s this advertisement for an energy drink on it. I didn’t have my camera on me so I couldn’t get a pic. Alas, a Google search for a picture led to this rather amusing ‘story’ by Stomp (locally-based internet trash supported by the national papers).

The photographer felt offended by her provocative pose and commenters were quick to start a full-fledged flame war. Read the full piece here.

I feel for the offended guy, really. I’m personally disturbed by this picture and I agree totally with his opinion that the picture is lewd. Because.

WHAT THE HELL IS THAT????

And how come no one’s pointed that out????

I learnt that in one of those ‘How to Annoy Your Fellow Humankind’ classes they had back in university. If memory serves correctly, it was the class between lunch and the tutorial with know-it-all scholars. But I digress.

Kee and I got free trips to Kota Kinabalu next Tuesday courtesy of Jetstar and my promises of high adventure. We’d be flying on JetSaver Light tickets which means carry-on luggage only. My family has a grand history of being able to squeeze elephants into mouseholes though and I hope that genetics will pay off. In recent times, my mom had managed to squeeze my 29″ unicycle into a 24″ iMac box – I couldn’t put it back after – and here’s how my luggage looked like on that recent trip to Hong Kong where I had to lug all these things everywhere in Macau.

In the picture above, I had somehow managed to squeeze in my clothes, DSLR camera, a film cam, tools, an air pump and my slingbag (the black thing in the pic) in my backpack. This time I’d probably bring half of those clothes and ditch the DSLR and sling bag. We’ll see.

Accomodation will be paid for too and I’m hoping we’d get separate rooms so I can bring one less set of clothes.

You hope I’m joking.

The sun’s shining bright and the birds are singing. You feel joy and happiness at waking up to yet another beautiful morning. And then you have to take the train.

I hate the trains with a vengence. The one from Tanah Merah is NEVER punctual and the train controllers have wised up these days. When trains take longer than an eternity to come, the signboards would go blank so you’ll never know when they’re arriving. And knowing that a packed train generates less revenue than a very packed train, the glourious SMRT has taken to spending some of the extra income on some ‘subway drama series’ that no one cares about but have to deal with because the bloody trains don’t arrive.

Don’t believe me that the arrival time of trains are wrong? The next time you’re waiting for a train, the second the numbers change, start up your stopwatch. Stop it when the train is docked at the terminals. See if it tallies. I’ve been bored enough to try that a few times and statistically, they’re NOT accurate. It’s a big percentage difference (25% if you’re lazy) when a 4 minute wait turns out to be a 5 minute wait even though 1 minute is generally insignificant. But we’re not even talking about short waits like that – the train to the airport takes up to 15 minutes to arrive despite the time on the clock go no further than an 8 minute wait. And showing a number larger than 5 is rare.

So today when going home, there’s finally some sort of honesty.

Except that knowing how SMRT works, that bit of honesty is too much so they have to lie about the time on the clock. For the record, the photo was taken at 7pm.

This is one of the draws of returning for Open Mic nights.It’s got this fruity, smooth flavor that doesn’t leave a bitter aftertaste .

Apparently the rules have changed since the last time I was there and performers get a free drink. So I bought a pint of this and got another free Carlsberg after and the latter tasted like sewer water. It didn’t mix well. I later found out that Kronenbourg’s owned by Carlsberg. The irony.

It’s Talk Like a Pirate Day today.

Arrrr.

But if you, like me, have no one to talk to because you haven’t got friends and your stuffed teddy is throwing a tantrum, you can Play Like a Pirate and get a free copy of episode 1 of Tales of Monkey Island.

Here.

There’s also an offer for the whole season for US$29.95 and if you’ve already grabbed your copies from day 1, there’s a promise of some freebie. Mike, care to share what?

Unfortunately, I’m running a Mac and I’m reading some pretty average reviews of the first two chapters…. hm.

Because you asked.

I had the 1st Gen iPod Touch because it was part of a deal where I bought an iMac and paid an extra $20 or so for one. It was excellent for travel. I brought it along to Japan last year where I’d use Google Maps in the middle of a random street to get directions to my destination. I could send emails and surf the net AND I used it extensively as an mp3 player on my rides and runs.

But it wasn’t adequate.

The software upgrades were released but 1st gen owners had to pay to have new functionalities. We couldn’t play games or install useful applications without an upgrade and I didn’t want to jailbreak my device. I later bought a Nike+ iPod device, a running trainer that links your iPod to a wireless pedometer of sorts thinking it was supported. Turns out it was only supported on 2nd Gen devices because 1st Gen iPod Touches didn’t have Bluetooth enabled.

So I sold it.

The 3rd Gen iPod Touch has as far as I can tell, the same hardware as the 2nd Gen one. It might be slightly faster but I can’t tell so it doesn’t make a difference. The only upgrade for the Touch this time round is the largest available capacity is now 160GB. I bought the 8GB one because I needed storage only for 2 main purposes – to store about 3 hours worth of songs to run with and to store games and apps. Most apps are made to be only a few MB large (you’re downloading through iTunes after all) and I could always sync playlists so 8GB is really more than sufficient. The price is definitely a draw – this release comes with a price cut and mine costs only US$199.

I like how the apps are turning out. I’ve been playing Mafia Wars on it and tried to use the Nike+ on it today but the device wasn’t working very well. iTunes doesn’t work at all because ‘my location is not supported’ but the App Store is alive and well and I can install applications and games directly into my iPod. The battery life seems to have improved vastly; Wi-Fi doesn’t sap as much energy as my previous iPod. There’s now an inbuilt speaker (I think this was a 2nd Gen addition) but the best part though is that it seems to hint at the availability of an official add-on microphone. There’s a voice memo application (which may have been on the 2nd gen iPod, I don’t know) which I can’t use because there’s no mic attached, the program tells me. There’s already a version of Skype available which I haven’t tried but if it works like I think it would, that would make the iPod Touch a waaay better bargain than the iPhone.

One of the few things I didn’t like about it though is the sensitivity of the shake detection. There’s probably an option to turn this off but by default, shake seems to be the cue to skip to the next song when you’re listening to music. I didn’t realise this until I was running today and skipped through probably half my playlist before I got it to stop. I also haven’t found a way to get rid of the default icons yet – I don’t see the need for iTunes on the main page when it doesn’t work in my country. While the 1st gen Touch had a flat back, this one shares the same design as the 2nd gen Touch and features a concave back. It looks sleeker for some reason though I doubt if it is but I’m quite sure the rounded back will be harder to protect against scratches.

I haven’t many grouses about the new iPod Touch as yet. More problems will probably surface as I get into more of its functions but for now, all the faults I can find with it aren’t major annoyances.

So this week, I bought the new iPod Touch, Rock Band, The Beatles Rock Band game and Fable II.

Next week I’ll be eating grass for lunch.

Stay tuned for an overexcited monologue of the games coming your way soon.

In a warm country like Singapore, most of us can’t take cold climes such as that in air-conditioned trains. As such, we like huddling in groups for warmth as can be witnessed during peak hours, in particular near the exits.

Today, I had a long train ride home and was awakened mid-ride by someone’s bag bumping against my leg every 10 seconds. I woke up to this scene -

The carriage I was in really had this many people including a family of five which were split between standing and sitting. For some reason, the standing ones thought it a great idea to cluster right in front of me rather than the people they know and are talking to. It’s good to know I command a crowd.

When I got up at my station (and weaved through their midst, mind), one of them hurriedly took my seat like it was the only empty seat on the entire train.

Just to put things in perspective, I got off at the second last stop.

Like all other brilliant ideas, this one started with a ‘I wonder how it is like to….’

I joggled for the first time yesterday evening at the neighborhood park – that’s jogging while juggling for those of you too lazy to click. It didn’t help that the area was dim and the street lamps only served to blind me momentarily each time I stumbled into their range. And it didn’t help that there were groups of people chatting and strolling akimbo effectively blocking everything behind them on the jogging path.

Surprisingly, joggling was a lot more intuitive than I had expected. It’d probably require a lot less concentration if I could actually see what and where I was throwing but I did notice that my drops reduced quite a bit after the first 10 minutes of running. I probably kept at it for about 3km before stopping not so much because it was tiring but because it was frustrating to not be able to see. I think I should be able to pull this off over a 10km distance because I was definitely forced to slow down significantly to coordinate with my throws. I’m estimating a 1:40 finish time for that distance with energy to spare. On my last laps, I tried out juggling variations and realized that I didn’t feel like I was exerting more energy than stationary juggling.

I might probably try joggling again but I doubt if I could pull it off at an organized run given that sweaty oafs are pushing and running into me as it is.