Hog's Breath/Cafe Iguana (what's with the animals?)

Ack I lost the first draft of this post! Now I have to type everything all over again..here goes:

I had this inexplicable need to pay VivoCity a visit last Sunday. And so we went there- myself, my sis and Fenglei - and had dinner at Hog's Breath Cafe.

I had a double hog burger, my sis had a rib steak and Fenglei had a Manhattan platter (sirloin steak, chimichanga, hog tail fries) The rib steak was the best, still remarkably tender even though it was done medium well.

We then headed down to Cafe Iguana at Clarke Quay for a drink. They serve a rather big bowl of tortilla chips and dip, on the house. They were a tad hard to me, but what the heck..it's free. We ordered a jug of frozen lime margarita. The cups come with salt on the rim, though I didn't really need it cos it wasn't all that "burning". In the end I had two cups, which means that stuff must have been pre-tty good, seeing as I'm a noob drinker.
...and now five days on I still have a craving for Iguana's frozen margarita. I also do wanna try their New York Steak, which is grilled with tequila..apparently making it more tender and juicy.
Yep that evening was pretty good, considering we tried two cafes that are pretty darn worth another go.

Tonight...we dine in Aston's

The weirdest thing about watching 300 on the day that marked 300 days to ORD was that it wasn't planned!
In any case, 300 was definitely worth watching. Almost every movement in the fight scenes were dramatised by means of intermittent slow-mo. (thrown in at strategic points to capture particularly dramatic poses) And the backgrounds (which I later realised were almost entirely CG) were beautiful.
We then went to Aston's for dinner but since I'm too lazy to describe the experience I'll let these pics speak for themselves:

Charlene?

This is my first attempt at photorealism, and with all first attempts at photorealism, they don't look photo-real and do not resemble their intended subjects in any way.
Yes it's supposed to be you Charlene! Don't hold back with the criticism, and if you want me to take this off right now, just shout.

Class outing

Did night duty on Saturday night, slept 2 hrs, then joined Khai Phang, Eng Shing and Jason Chua for pool at our favourite haunt at Paradiz. For me, the highlight was when I managed to sink 4 consecutive balls-then on the fifth shot the ball went senget and sank the black ball T_T

Jason had to go off after that so me, KP and ES went to KFC after our plans to supporting the world's greatest symbol of globalisation were thwarted by a lack of seating space. We sat and ate and tok kok for a good 1 hour, during which all the last minute withdrawals came flooding in. Jibo couldn't make it cos of a project work meeting, followed by En Qi who was sick, then Victor, then WC. Khai Phang was begging me to let him go home but he had the misfortune of being stuck with me.

In any case, all was good when eq and vic showed up in the end, swelling the numbers to a healthy six! So we traipsed down to Mind Cafe, which actually serves pretty mediocre food and not-too-interesting games. But, as Cons pointed out, if we didn't make the knee-jerk trip there, we'd never get anywhere.
Xiuli hasn't changed a bit. I had this impression that people who studied abroad would kinda behave differently when they came back. I'm glad, cos I can't imagine our dear gangster chief and resident cool girl being anything other than that..
En Qi says I've become a punk and Cons says I look shaggier. huh?
As we left Mind and headed to Macs, we took a walk through what they must call The Cannery, which is actually a pretty cool place with lots of interesting dining spots.

One of them was that really gross hospital-themed restaurant, The Aureum. The reception area was modelled after a morgue, flanked by a couple o wheelchairs on which the menu was propped up. The entrance was on the right, with a sign that said something about a Clinic. Or was it really just an adjacent clinic. Oops. At least the staff wasn't decked out in surgical robes. The wheelchairs were pretty charming though, but that's because I happen to be an avid appreciator of Silent Hill. I hear that you dine seated in wheelchairs and your cutlery sits in those OT trays. And the menu apparently features molecular gastronomy, and prices which are..umm..astronomy?

It's always great to meet up with the class once in a while, even though hours earlier I'd been quite ready to renounce my membership..when people don't show up for outings I organise without reason, I take it rather personally. We need to ditch that habit of asking that infernal question "who's going". Pertinent as it may be, it really cheeses me off. At least confirm your attendance before asking who's going. WC was an especially subtle one: "Who's there? I wanna see whether it's worth my time"..or something along those lines.

..BTW, it's been a year since I first set foot into my unit! :D

Mark's Castle

Mark finally got his Nintendo Wii! So he had Soon Heng, Colin, Aston, Benison, Sng and myself over to test it out for him last Friday.
Now Mark's house is really impressive. Really really impressive. There's the entertainment room, complete with four different gaming consoles, an exercise machine, a nifty hemisphere on which I simply couldn't balance on, tons of board games and..uh..couches! There's the lift. There's that beautiful stairwell which I adored but didn't manage to get a picture of. And then there's the home theatre which is the first home theatre I've seen which justifies the term "home theatre". It's a shame that he's moving out next year! Give me leh..

The Nintendo Wii will be the best piece of slimming/exercise equipment since DDR. We started out with Wiiports Boxing and I was really into it, only to regret it later..my arm still aches..
I also got a bit overenthusiatic with baseball, only to learn that enthusiasm alone doesn't get one anywhere..at least not when you're playing against Aston. Tennis was slightly less interesting, cos you have no control of where the player goes.
We then switched to Marvel Alliance, which offered a reall fresh way of playing third person adventure games. You hold one half of the nunchucks in the nondominant hand and move your character around using a knob, while your dominant hand holds the Wii and executes all the attacks.
The hospital game was no less fascinating..you play as a noob surgeon taking directions from an attractive senior nurse in a futuristic world where placing tissue over a wound will magically seal it up and where you can keep a patient alive with shots of what I assumed was adrenaline yet you are given a time limit to save the patient which leads one to wonder why you cannot just have the nurse shoot the patient with adrenaline while you operate *gasp* In any case, my notoriously buay steady hands successfully killed off a patient in the first level T_T

Dinner was a real treat..although I was feeling really awkward throughout to have Mark's parents serve us. But I must say, they really make superb hosts and I think it was rather bad of us not to have thanked them personally before we left :(
There was onion soup, bread, cheese, pate, duck, steak (which was excellent), caesar salad, mashed potato, wine and cake. After-dinner entertainment was a short clip of James Bond fencing (for some reaason I really don't recall that scene)

Oh and thanks again for sponsoring my cab fare people! :D

God Forbid - To the Fallen Hero

I like this video a lot. Especially the mellow part.

Don't watch this if you're not into metal...

First time lucky!

I passed my TP test! For some reason, I wasn't as nervous as I thought I would be, and I really sort of just took it as another lesson. The tester forgot to test E-brake..I was thinking "any second now"..but in the end anticlimax. While the circuit went very smoothly, I earned 18 demerit points on the road for veering off course, abrupt lane changes and wide turns..which of course I wasn't even aware of, otherwise I wouldn;t have done each of them twice!
So I was actually pretty surprised when I saw him write '18', but I'd kinda expected the pass, seeing as I didn't think I'd caused him too much discomfort.

And right after that they show us this video with grim footages of accidents and interviews with the victims who survived. As much as I agree that the license is also a potential ticket to disaster, I didn't exactly appreciate the video.. Not that any of the 12 people in the room cared!

..On a side note, I think that American soldier who commented on the SAF should mind his own business. Troublemaker.

It's okay..it's just a dream

Finished this oekaki this morning..and I was apparently happy enough with it to post it here. It's my favourite scene from Silent Hill 4, not because Henry tries so hard to convince Cynthia that she's not as deaded as a doornail, but cos of the lighting and music.

what's terpsichore?

Another lagged post, this one dating back to Saturday.

So I joined the band sans Elayner for the long awaited outing at East Coast. Our band is currently in shambles because the singer wants to go overseas and hence has to quit. And the drummer will probably follow suit because..well..he's her boyfriend. Which leaves us a keyboard, bass and 2 guitars. I volunteered to switch to drums, but they'd only let me do it till we find another drummer. Bah.

I dropped by at Botak Jones hoping to steal a bite before the concert. While I was waiting for my order, one of the Botak Jones staff, this really big sized guy, came up to me and asked "you don't need to serve army ah?"
Of course.
No wonder I thought he'd looked familiar. He was the RJ basketball captain =P I'd seen him on my last visit and failed to recognise him. And so we talked about people we knew in common (basically all the PRCs I knew) as well as school.I actually had some difficulty with the burger. It was kinda dry and..I dunno..hard to swallow this time round. And by the time I was done with it I was feeling kinda sick in the stomach and really, really unhealthy. The wonderful thing is, I'll still be back for more!

I then met up with Yuh Shin at NUS Cultural Centre to watch Terpsichore: Rough Cuts 2007 (or something like that). She wears contacts too! There was this really nice band playing really nice tunes with a Highlandish flavour to them..I thought the violin as the lead instrument was a splendid concept. Wish I knew who they were! YS's friend, Zhigen joined us shortly after. He actually reads the N3 blog, which came as a bit of a shock to me..I'd been inactive there for so long that I wasn't aware that we actually had readers..!

I STILL feel like an idiot for not being able to recognise Kai Yun in the second performance. And even in her other item I had trouble spotting her among the other dancers..aye goes to show I don't pay enough attention to her. =P

AC Arts Nite

I keep forgetting that I'm have ridiculously low levels of caffeine tolerance..one ice mocha at 6 plus=eternal state of awakenness (also known as Enlightenment) At least I think I managed 4 hours of sleep last night..

I went back to Holland V yesterday with Hong Xuan and Aston..that place brings back more memories than I thought it would. We proceeded to drink at Breko but I'm not all that into beer..so that's how I ended up with that cursed cup of coffee.

And when that was done with, I headed down to ACJC for Arts nite to watch Charlene's debut performance. (as a singer) I love AC's colour scheme..RJ/RI was green where I would've liked it to be blue, so AC was perfect that way. So I met up with Shane, whom I'd met online the night before. He's a councillor, an all-round great guy to talk to and has a twin. (they remind me A LOT of a certain set of twins in RJ)

There was no shortage of bands, most of em as bad as what we get in RJ...unfortunately. Except for two particularly tight bands that could actually balance out the sound levels. And that band at the end...fwah I tell you..superb showmanship.

Charlene was pretty nervous about the whole thing, but she pulled it off. Kelly Clarkson's A Moment Like This and I forget the other one. Except for the low mic volume and maybe one part where I think she faltered a bit, she did a great job.

The thing is, she didn't seem to think so and was visibly upset. Which really reminded me of the guitar concert last year where I screwed up the solo and possibly everything else. I was so distraught immediately after that that I told myself: never again. No more performances, cos I'm not cut out for it. I went around asking everyone if I sounded like crap and, despite reassurances from all around that it was decent, I went away from that performance feeling like the world's biggest loser. On hindsight, it wasn't all THAT bad, but nothing in the world could have convinced me at the time.

I think she said something along the lines of "this won't be the last," which automatically makes her a winner, as opposed to me who was quite ready to smash my guitar and learn the harmonica at the time.

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BTW, here's some steak reviews from Colin: Mad Jack steak sucks at $11 (weight undisclosed). Aston's steak is pricey at $21 while Botak Jones is $19 (300g).

Anniversary!

I got bored today and dug out the raws for "Night Prowl" on Fruity Loops and began jamming to it. And I came to realise that, by sheer confidence, I'd completed recording the tune a year ago on this day! So it's been a year since I did guard duty during field camp with Clinton, and lived to compose a tune about it. I also embarked on a Night Prowl 2007, which is basically going to be the whole tune redone, with extra instruments thrown in for good measure. It isn't much of an improvement, but hey, you can't improve on perfection.

Ladies and gennlemen, I give you

Night Prowl