1-Click Award

Want to know how a mouse cursor works? Here's something interesting, check it out: http://www.1-click.jp/

Try moving your cursor around in any direction, move it continuously then stop suddenly, and also try clicking you mouse! I laughed a lot when I saw this this website, hahaha... Oh, and in case you don't know Japanese, all of the men will be shouting out the direction they're supposed to go to whenever you move your mouse, like "FRONT FRONT!", "BACK BACK!", "RIGHT RIGHT!", and "LEFT LEFT!" ...not so sure whether they're also saying "DIAGONAL DIAGONAL!", that one I couldn't hear well, hehe...

Edit: after playing around with it more, now I'm quite sure that they said "DIAGONAL", too XD

It may get rather noisy... so if you don't want to wake up your neighbours, do lower down the volume XD

Thanks Nas for sharing this! ^_^

Burp~

Met Kit this afternoon to pass her the cat and pig figurines that she had ordered, and so we also took the opportunity to have lunch too. We went for the All-You-Can-Eat teatime buffet at Sakae Sushi, and oh boy, did we eat a lot! We ate and talked and ate and talked and ate and ate... then when we were leaving the place, it felt as if we were pulled down by a stronger gravitational force and our stomachs were going to explode any second! Hahahaha... Felt rather guilty eating so much... but I haven't gone to a buffet for a loooong time (don't even remember when was the last time I had one, lol), and it was great spending time with Kit after not meeting for quite some time, hehe... ^_^

I took pics of the first few plates that we grabbed, but I was enjoying all of the food so much that I forgot to shoot the rest, kekeke... Click on the thumbnail for a better view... and drool~ =P

Booth Artists Collaboration

Last week during Day 3 of Cosfest, there was this A4-sized paper being circulated around for booth artists who were present to leave their mark on (ie. just draw and sign), sort of like a collaboration piece. To my delight, it's finally posted in the art forum! Yayyyy~ Can you find which one's mine? =P

The above pic was scanned and posted online by Lancer (don't know his real name, hehe..). To see the complete listing of the artists' drawings in the collab, check it out here ^_^

A weekend of 21st Birthdays

The past weekend I went for two different 21st Birthday celebrations, two days in a row! Hahaha...Met different groups of people on both days, but both parties were enjoyable =)


On Saturday, it was Jinny's birthday party. I met Waifong and Gin at the mrt station, then the three of us headed to her house. It's supposed to be not a very long walk, but somehow we ended up making a few cuts and turns, walked in a big circle. Good thing we bumped into Sarah along the way, or we would've walked completely the opposite direction, lol... but even so, we still had to walk a BIIIIG circle until we finally reached our destination. The whole journey took quite a long time...we actually walked from when there was still sunlight until dark! Hahaha... XD

In the party we met quite a number of familiar faces, mostly from NTU. Good food, great company - really enjoyed myself there. There was even a pool table and karaoke room there, so everyone had something to do if they're not just sitting around and chatted with one another (too bad I was too shy to join the karaoke group there, just sat and watched the others singing away, hehe...). Thanks Jinny for inviting us to your party, and hope you had as much a great time, or even a greater time there ^_^

I managed to take a few pictures there. There was also a DD group picture and a group picture of everyone in the function room, but not in my camera, haiz... will go after Jinny for those pics and update them here =P So here's what I have~

All were taking turns for group pictures
(seems that Waifong and Gin caught me taking this pic, oops =P)

Since it wasn't our turn yet, let's take our own pics, kekeke...
Here's Waifong & I

Joel & Gin

Overview of one side of the function room
(quite a lot of people, right?)

A group pic with the birthday girl before we head home

Now moving on to Sunday evening, this time it's Mingzhi's birthday. He actually also invited our class people from yj, unfortunately many were busy with work and other stuff... so in the end only three of us went for his party: me, Yixuan and Nas. Oh well, it's better than nothing, hehe... Again, it was slightly raining o our way to his house, and we had to searched quite a bit for the place.. But this was not as bad as the misadventure in the previous day - The day before, we had to walk around a neighbourhood. Whereas this time, we were walking in circles in a carpark building! Wahahaha... and good thing we didn't have to walk for too long =P

Other than our group, Mingzhi also invited (I think) his secondary school friends, and the majority there were his family and relatives. We could see how close the members of his family are that evening. All of us ate and watched a hong kong drama on tv. I've watched that series before, so I know the whole story, hehehe... and good thing it has English subtitles, if not most prob Nas would be quite lost there XD

So thanks Mingzhi for the great time, although the majority of our classmates couldn't make it, heh... I also took a few pictures there, but just gonna upload one group pic here:

210 cum Computing class group =)

Ah, and before I end this entry, we found something interesting hanging on Mingzhi's room door. Also took a pic of it, just to share with all of you (click on the thumbnail for a clearer view). Enjoy~

so which one are you? =P

20.07.2007 & The Four Meme

I didn't realize the significance of today's date until I met my dad and sisters after work earlier this evening.

Dad: "Do you know that today's a special day?"
Me: "Eh? What day is it?"
Dad: "It's 20.07.2007 (read twenty O seven, twenty O seven) - Double twenty O seven!"
Lidya: "Pa... you've said that 3 times today..."

Apparently he said exactly the same thing to my sis at home and to his friend on the phone, then to me, hahaha... XD


An update about work: Today we've finally finished transcribing and reviewing all of the voice samples! Yaaaayyyyyyyyy~ Which also means it's the end of our work for this project - ie. it's the last day of work! It's a huge relieve to have completed going through hundreds of voice samples to be sent to the research centre, not a small achievement indeed~ Although we had to extend our working period to another week due to the shortage of manpower, we've done a great job here.

I worked a bit slower today than usual, so there was actually one last batch unreviewed and it was almost 6 pm! In the end the work's divided into 3 smaller parts, and Nicole and Eugene helped to clear everything before we called it a day. Soooo sorry had to trouble the two of you after you've done a lot of work yourselves... and thanks so much! Its been a pleasure working with you all this holidays. Ah, and also not forgetting Theresia and Junyien, although the both of you stopped working earlier.

Working the last 2 months certainly had its ups and downs, but it's still a fun and memorable experience. Gonna miss going to the office everyday... and also searching for different food to have for lunch everyday, lol... Looking forward to meet you all again at school~

Speaking of school... now I have exactly 2 weeks left to do other stuff in this holiday before school reopens in August! Don't really have a fixed plan of how to spend my time during that period... but one thing for sure... I gotta clean up my stuff in my room soon, hehehe... there's a mountain on my table now.... didn't get to sort them out, so I'd better do so before I'm busy again with school stuff, muehehe.. =P


A few days ago, I found out that Nicole has tagged me again... Zzzzz... thanks a lot, hor.. Hahaha, joking2. I'm not unhappy about this =D Good thing it's quite simple, hehe... I promised her that I'll do it in my next blog entry, so here it goes~

The Four Meme

Four jobs I have had in my life:
1) Student (duh)
2) Game characters designer (very short & brief, lol)
3) Research Assistant
4) Freelance artist? (currently not really a paying job... just helping some friends, hehe..)

Four places I have lived:
1) Jakarta
2) Central Singapore
3) In a small tent at Kota Tinggi (2 nights)
4) A computer lab at YJC (1 night)

Four places I have been on vacation:
1) Bandung
2) Bali
3) California
4) Singapore (that's before I moved here, nyahaha..)

Four of my favourite foods:
1) Ramen/Noddles
2) Tempura
3) Carrot cake
4) Sweets

Four places I would rather be right now:
1) my bed
2) laying down on top of a mountain/hill looking at the stars~
3) Kinokuniya, or any bookshop that sells comics XD
4) cinema (I wanna watch Transformers, Harry Potter, Paprika, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.... so many movies.... GYAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!)

Four friends I would like to tag:
1) Hendri (I know Nicole has tagged you also, so you only need to do this once! See, I so nice, ohohohoho...)
2) Patricia
3) Nasrul
4) Jinhua


I think I gonna play Pangya now...before I sleep... long time never touch that game, kekeke... Toodles~ (^-^)

Cosfest 2007 (Day 3)

Ya ya, I know this entry's rather late, considering that the finale for Cosfest was last Sunday... but some stuff happened so I could only update this blog now. Sorry.... >_<
So yup! Last Sunday (15 July 2007) was Day 3 of Cosfest VI, which was also the finale of the 2-3 days event. As expected, the number of people who turned up was huge!! The cosplayers, photographers, spectators etc filled up D'Marquee at Downtown East not long after 1 pm when the event started. It's evident that Cosfest is bigger this time round - not only has it expanded into a 3-days event and there are more booths set up on the 3rd day, even the venue is larger now! Some booths and workshops were also held in D'Tent, just next to D'Marquee. Too bad I was occupied enough handling my own booth and taking pictures of cosplayers in D'Marquee, so I didn't manage to check out the activities at the other side later in the afternoon, haiz.. I also didn't attend Day 2 of the event, therefore no write-up for that, hehehe... ^_^;

There were many many different characters being cosplayed on that, maybe almost countless! Examples are characters from Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu (a BIG group of them), Naruto (oh yes, the same characters appear every year, lol), Bleach (another big group), Kingdom Hearts 2 (Sora and a whole bunch of Organization XIII @0@), Chobits (there were both Chii and Dark Chii present, but didn't manage to take any pic of them together, boohoohoo T_T), Sakura Taisen (the pair were selected to represent Singapore in the coming World Cosplay Summit in Japan, yay!!!), Chrno Crusade (only saw Rossette, no Chrno, sobz..), Gundam (the chibi Gundam's armour was a job well done, bravo!), Harry Potter (but I didn't see Harry, lol), Star Wars, Star Trek, Chicken Little (his costume's definitely not so little, too bad didn't take his pic)... and many more which I didn't recognise, oops =P

Actually on that day I forgot to put my camera into my bag! Already left my house when I realized that, but in the end I went all the way back just to pick it up and then rushed over to Pasir Ris! It was a hassle, but I'm glad that I got my camera with me in the event, or else I would regret it for a long long long long..... long long time XD So yup, I took lots of pictures that day. I was practically so trigger-happy that I took a total of 161 photographs on Day 3 alone! However, I managed to select about 50 of the better pics to show you later in this entry, phew ^_^;

As for the cosplay competition itself: there were definitely the not-so-good ones, funny ones, good ones etc. I did witness a few of them looking rather lost on stage, which in turn looked a bit awkward... But most of them performed quite well, and one of the memorable ones was the short skit by KH2 team. Why?

For those who plays or knows the game KH2 (and even KH), there were various weapons for different characters, and the KH2 team that day appeared with the live-sized versions! They looked really good... and were made of... maybe styrofoam or something about as 'strong'. Imagine if you were to get involved in a fight without using them carefully, you can guess what would happen - they would break easily! I didn't really watch their complete performance due to the huge crowd and I was quite busy attending to some people at our booth. What I could hear was mostly "Whoa whoa", something like that...then I suddenly I heard a loud, "Oh shit!" So at that time I already guessed they broke something - specifically a keyblade - ouch! Of course the whole audience exclaimed, but the group just continued with their performance and everyone cheered loudly. So yeah, they broke one or two of their props, but it was still a good and entertaining performance (could've improved the fighting scenes, though). Furthermore, their costumes looked great, one could instantly recognise which characters they were cosplaying as (as long as you're familiar with KH2, hehe), and it was evident that they've put in a lot of effort into making all of the weapons. At the end of the event, they won the Best Group award, whee~ Kudos to them! ^0^

Ah btw, I accidentally found a video of their performance in youtube, recorded by keesiao (but never see her there le, hehe...). The video shows clearly what happened on stage, so here it is:



Of course all of the other cosplayers also did a great job with their own costumes, props and also playing their own part well, and most of them professionally posed for the cameras. The quality's definitely much better compared with when I first attended such an event a few years back.

It should also be taken note of that the event's not just about cosplay. There were 2 singing performances by the winner and 1st runner up from the anime karaoke competition that was held the day before. I recognized the 1st runner up, because last year she also performed in Cosfest by singing 'Endless Story' from the movie NANA (which was an adaptation from a manga with the same title). Last year she performed beautifully and it was very memorable. This year it's no exception! She performed (I mean sang AND danced) one of BoA's songs... I think...actually I'm not sure what song it was, do tell me if anyone of you knows, hehe... Anyway, her voice is still as good as ever and she danced well. She was even accompanied by a few other dancers, dun pray pray! Haha... XD

Another notable segment of the event was the screening of a few short animations that were part of Digicon 6+3 Singapore, which was followed by Digicon Awards Ceremony. Furthermore before the selection for the pair of cosplayers who'll represent Singapore in this year's World Cosplay Summit in Japan started, a video of last year's WCS was shown to give an idea on what it was like. There were cosplayers from Italy, China, Brazil, Singapore, Thailand, and of course Japan (not sure whether I missed any other countries who participated, but tell me if I did, hehe..). The standards were really high, and no doubt it'll be even higher this year. Everyone's amazed at the costumes, props and performances shown in the video. Including me, my jaws dropped throughout the video showcase and kept on saying, "Wowww!!!!" and "Woah!!!!" =P

And how about the booths? For my own items, the sales was better than Day 1, although just slightly, hehe... SS also sold plenty of her postcards and posters, but I'm not sure whether it's better than last year's... she said it's not as good, hmm... Our booth's location this year's not very comfortable... that's because we were situated right beside the gigantic sound systems (same as last year, but at the left side instead of the right)! So whenever there's any loud techno and booming music, and also cosplayers sceaming into the mic, it would as if we were blown away by the impact of the sound and we had to cover our ears in agony... what made it worse was that I had a migraine due to maybe lack of sleep, so I guess the effect was much greater on me compared with SS and Zijian (btw, he is SS's friend and my new friend who volunteered to help out in our booth), sobz... Thankfully i didn't faint because of that, but it felt like I was going to, lol... My head got better later that day, and I still enjoyed the whole madness, muahahaha...

I also met some familiar faces there. I saw Ren Wei walking by with his friends, never seen him for ages, siah... (actually since after JC, lol). I also recognized some of the booth owners and cosplayers whom I believe are faithful participants of Cosfest. Eugene also went there to show his support and bought a few items from our booth. Then he went to 'stalk' the cosplayers and took plenty photographs, huehehe... Thanks so much for coming and hope you also had fun there =)

When we were packing up our stuff after the event, a few other booth owners got together and traded our items with one another. It was really fun to trade and interact with the others, and I managed to get good stuff from them in exchange with mine, hehehe... Click on the left pic to get a better view =D

Overall I think this year's Cosfest is a huge success. I definitely had a blast! Minus our booth location beside the speakers, it was a great day at the booth, enjoying the performances and taking pictures of the cosplayers. I'm not disappointed at all and looking forward to next year's, yay~ Thanks and congrats to Takahan and Stephanie for organizing Cosfest for the past few years, hope it'll also be another great one next year and years after that ^_^

Hmmm, I guess i wrote too much already, hehe... How about the freakin' pictures? Where are they?? - No worries! As promised, they coming up next. It was very hard to select only a few among all of those that I have taken to be posted in this blog... so the easier solution is to just post a slideshow containing ALL of the short-listed pics instead, nyahahaha... Sorry if they're too small to view here... If you really want any particular pictures with bigger size and better quality, just leave a message in this blog, hehe... As for now, enjoy the slides! (^0^)V

Banner Done!

I've replaced the plain and empty banner with this one - graphic background and stylized title. It's 100% made using my own images and done by yours truly! Yaahoooooooo~ \(^0^)/

Do not hesitate to give me your honest opinions, whether good or bad, hehehehe... If you have any suggestions on how to improve the above banner further, by all means leave you comments =)

Nathan

Live from office! Just taking a 10 minute break before I tackle a 'not-so-easy-to-listen-to' recording, lol... Nicole kidnapped.. I mean 'catnapped' my cat sculpey, don't know what she's doing to it now in the other room, sobz... T__T

On a side note, I want to show you Nathan's personal website (He's my nephew, btw.. My cousin's first-born whose whole family are also currently living in sg). He's not even 1 year old yet and he has a homepage already. Power, siah! Dun play play, hor XD His website basically contains his diary, progress, family pics etc. It's a cute website, so do drop by there and take a peek: http://nathank.mytinybaby.com/

I've also added his website to my links section at the side. Ok la, back to work! =P

Simple and Clean

The title above is not referring to the song 'Simple and Clean' by Utada Hikaru, but rather my latest blog template, kekeke... Yes, again I changed it! And this time it's just a simple one, currently without any beautiful graphics as header etc. Why? Well, although I liked the previous skin's header, I felt that the whole layout itself was too narrow (or maybe it's just me, lol). So for now, this is the layout that I'm using =P

Time really flies, and very soon it'll be the weekends again! While continuing to work as usual, I've been making more preparations for my booth in Cosfest 2007 finale this Sunday. Gotta make more of my cat sculpeys. Oh, and I've found a way to improve it's stability, so that they can rest on more types of surfaces without sliding too easily, wheee~ A few friends have also shown some interest in them, so I have to make them even nicer than the previous batch! (^0^)

The project that I'm involved in, which is the voice collection and transcribing, is going to be wrapped up very soon, hopefully by early next week. The initial plan was to complete everything by this Friday, but we have to verify the voice samples again for the last time before submitting them, that's why it's necessary to extend... I was hoping that we could enjoy the rest of the holidays next Monday onwards, but oh well... Gotta make sure that we've done a good job before saying, "It's a wrap!" - So hang on, ppl~

Aiya, look at the time! I'd better hit the sack now if I want to wake up on time for work, lol... Tata for now, then (^_^)V

210 Gathering & Cosfest 2007 (Day 1)

A very busy week, yes it was! Lots of stuff happened, had to run here and there everyday, but all of the happenings were good things, hehehe... Won't be blogging about every single day of this week, though, too much to write about =P

I spent most of today just relaxing at home and watching Live Earth, a 24-hour concert held in 8 cities - namely New York, London, Sidney, Rio de Janeiro, Johannesburg, Tokyo, Shanghai & Hamburg. This concert's part of the move to create awareness about the crisis in our dear Earth, which will get even worse if all of us don't do anything about it... sad but true... Lots of great performances, interesting short films... really enjoyed myself watching them, and was reminded again of the crisis, at the same time. You can find out more in http://www.liveearth.org, and you can also view the concerts if you missed them in http://liveearth.msn.com . I do hope that more people have opened their eyes and became more aware of the crisis; OUR crisis - Answer the call!

The rest of this entry would mainly be about my class gathering a few days ago and day 1 of Cosfest yesterday. Therefore it will be divided into 2 sections, plenty of pics XD


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Thursday, 5 July 2007

This evening 'flew' straight from my workplace to Marina Square, to have a dinner gathering with my dear friends from JC. After having the gathering canceled quite a number of times for the past month, we finally had one today, hehehe... Not a bad turnout, it was - a total of 9 of us went for the gathering (this is considered not bad, lol). Those who appeared were (in alphabetical order): Farid, Kama, Nas, Lorraine, Pat, Sham, Shad and last but not least Shiva ^_^

After walking around in search for a place to eat in, we finally settled down in Swensen's. The prices there are rather 'ah-hem'... but once in a while I guess it's ok =P All of us just chatted away, catching up with what we all have been up to these days, joked and laughed like crazy! Especially Kama, he made us laugh and (almost) barf so much, haha... Farid has to fly back to Perth tomorrow and the next time he's back in sg would probably be end of this year... we gonna miss ya~ (especially Shiva, ohohoho... *hides*).

So it was a great and fun night, hope that we'll have our next gathering soon. Took a lot of pics, too, and here are some of them =D

Pat, Shiva, Sham & Shad

The only guys this evening: Kama, Nas & Farid

Kama thinking extremely hard to make the right choice...of food XD

The OOHs and AAHs~

Me & Lorraine

I wonder why Shiva's looking at Kama that way =\

Pat & Shiva

Shad & I

Nas & Farid - my ex-bodyguards (...nah, they bullied me a lot, too)

The cute Lorraine & the oblivious Kama

Me & Mommy Shiva

Settling the bill...

Now, a group pic~

Me & Sham, my pet parrot =P

This pic's spoiled because of Kama's tiny muscle, haiz..

Me, Shad & Kama

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Saturday, 7 July 2007

07/07/07 - a unique day, it is...it might be even cooler if it's a Sunday, too (get it? XD). Definitely there are couples who had chosen today for them to walk the aisle, duh... Today we are also witnessing the start of Live Earth concerts. Hundreds of music artists performed brilliantly in all of the 8 cities (I missed most of the first part of the performances on TV because I was in Cosfest, sobz).

And yes, today also marked Day 1 of Cosfest 2007 at Takashimaya! The event was also part of Tanjong Pagar GRC Fiesta, in which the guest-of-honour was none other than MM Lee Kwan Yew, thus the security was particularly strict for such an event. I had to let the police scan through my bags before I could go in and find my table, lol... It's rather warm this afternoon, so I decided not to wear my unusual outfit and put on a t-shirt and pants instead, hehe...

The number of cosplayers that I saw today are not as many as I thought it would be... but I'm sure the number will explode sky-high next week! XD Today, other than the cosplay competition, there were also dance performances. I also managed to catch a glimpse of MM Lee giving his speech, but it's quite far from my booth which was right at the other end... As for the booth? The sales were definitely great for SS's artworks, while I sold a few (I mean very few) of my clay figurines, which is quite expected, lol.. at least now I understand better about what people wants and know I have a better idea of what to bring next week =P

By the end of the event, we got to know a few other artists and booth owners. I even got to trade 2 of my clay figurines with another artist's artwork, yay~ Another fun day have passed and I'm looking forward to the finale next week ^_^

Now for the pics, enjoy~

Our booth

Overview of the crowd

Lelong lelong~

MM Lee Kwan Yew giving his speech

We have long hair, whee~ (what kind of comment it that? XD)

Other booths near ours

Kitty drooling at Cloud Strife *slurp*

The only cosplayer whose picture I took today (will take more next week, hehe) =P

Precioussssss

A salsa fiesta to end the day with

Cosfest VI - The Golden Experience

COSFEST is finally here once again!!!!

This year it's a 3 day event: 7th, 14th and 15th July 2007 \(^0^)/

For those who're not familiar with it, Cosfest is an annual cosplay event organized by SCC Square. People of all ages (mostly youngsters, though) would dress up in their favourite anime, manga or even movie characters, be it to participate in the competition, or just to join in the fun and meet other cosplayers. Selections for World Cosplay Summit (Singapore) will also be held, so the competition would be a more intense one. Furthermore, there would be music and dance performances, anime karaoke competition, as well as several booths selling various merchandises - like original artworks or fanarts, cosplay-related items, second-hand animes, mangas, collectibles, and many more! Even if you're non-cosplayers, I guarantee that you'll still have a lot of fun taking pictures of the cosplayers and enjoying the whole event. It'll be a fun experience for all, and thus you shouldn't miss it =P


Below is some info about the dates, times and venues for all 3 days. Check out the official website for more detailed info (including the programmes): http://www.cosfest.com

7th July 2007 (Saturday) - "World Cosplay Summit SemiFinals"
Venue: Ngee Ann City, Civic Plaza
Time: 4.00pm - 6.00pm (Cosplay Competition)
5.00pm - 9.30pm (Booths)

14th July 2007 (Saturday) - "Cosfest Showday"
Venue: Downtown East, D'Tent
Time: 12.00pm - 8.00pm

15th July 2007 (Sunday) - "Cosfest The Golden Experience"
Venue: Downtown East, D'Marquee and D'Tent
Time: 12.00pm - 7.00pm


I won't be cosplaying there (might be wearing something that I don't normally wear to blend in though, hehehe...) But I'm setting up a booth with my friend WP aka SS (check out her deviantART page for her beautiful artworks). We'll be selling some artworks and sculpey figurines on the 7th and 15th, so your support would be greatly appreciated, hehehe... SS will be selling plenty of her artwork prints as postcards and posters, while I'll be selling sculpey figurines and some of my older artworks. Unfortunately I may not be able to complete my new artworks for this Saturday, but they'll be ready for next Sunday ^_^; I'll post some pics of our items hopefully 2 days from now, so you'll catch a glimpse of what we'll have in our booth.


In the meantime, here are some pics of last year's Cosfest at Downtown East, D'Marquee. I also have pics of the previous year's but it'd be too many to post here, lol... The event is getting bigger and better so far, so do attend the event this year and have lots of fun there! And remember to bring your camera and/or video cam along, or you'll regret it =D

The big crowd... the gorgeous, the scary, the funny, the crazy ones... all in Cosfest XD

And once again, looking forward to see you all there... and remember to support my booth, ok! Ohohohohohoho..... PEACE!!!