The Last Week of Holidays

Sorry for not updating this blog for more than a week... it's mainly because I didn't have the mood to write, muahahahaha... So today I'll just give a summary of what's been going on for the past week =P

I spent most of the time slacking at home actually, hehe... Especially last weekend when it rained a lot and the weather was rather colder for a few days. I played a bit of video games, watch tv, read comics... but I definitely slept a lot, nyahaha... Oh, a few days ago I also finally went for a dental check-up (after not going for quite long, lol). My teeth are generally fine, but there's one problem... which is caused by one single stupid wisdom tooth! To cut a long story short, it has to be removed! The dentist explained why and how, etc... "It doesn't have to be removed immediately, but the day will come", she said in the end... Just thinking about it is freaking me out! WAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! >_< ...and so I was rather depressed for the rest of that day... I don't try to imagine the whole process much now, but still have to keep mentally prepared... for 'the day that will come'. Sobz.. T_T

Moving on to the happier stories, lol... What else did I do for the rest of the week? Well, a few days ago was my sis (Lidya) 17th birthday! Since it was a weekday, we just had a simple birthday dinner at home. I always love the birthday noodles that my mom cooks, yum yum... =P The day after that, I went for a 5-hour Kbox session with Waifong and Kenneth (I think Jinny was also coming at first but she couldn't make it in the end). It was the first time that I sang for so long (with breaks in between, hehe..), however it was so fun that time passed by much quicker than I expected! Then again, the after-effect was quite evident when we had dinner after that, because I almost lost my voice when we all talked and talked, hahaha... guess I didn't drink enough then ^_^; But I definitely had a great time! Looking forward to our next Kbox session, whee~ (don't know when, but I'm still looking forward to it)

I spent the next few days tidying up my stuff in my room, which is not really completed yet but almost, heh... and yesterday I finally found out the result of the electives allocation for the new semester - I've got my first-choice elective! Yipeee~ It's called 'Interactive Media Workshop I'. I definitely will enjoy it no matter how heavy the workload is (I hope, lol...) So now my timetable's quite finalized - I still couldn't get a less than 5-day week timetable, haiz... However, my classes are spread out quite fine, and there's only one day every week that has an 8.30 AM class - which also means I don't have to wake up too early for the rest of the week, muahahahaha.... XD

A few stuff happened today. Firstly, my sis decided to celebrate her birthday today by having BBQ with her classmates. About 15 ppl came, I think, and there were lots of food prepared! I only took a few sticks of sausages and crab-sticks, and also a bit of corn, because I didn't want to end up gaining more weight, hehehe... Judging on my current 'situation', I seriously need to exercise more... argh! Oh wellz -_-

Later in the evening, my other sis, Linda, and I went to meet my dad at Kinokuniya, since we thought that the 20% discount promotion ends today. But when we arrived there, we found out that the offer ends on 7 August intead, lol... Fyi, the promotion's called 'KINOKUNIYA PRIVILEGE CARD - 3RD ANNIVERSARY MEMBERS' EXCLUSIVE PROMOTION!' Yup, it's for members only. If you are not a member yet, however, you can still apply for the privilege card in any of the bookshop. Click on the pic below for more details.

Picture courtesy of www.kinokuniya.com.sg

My purchase for the day is: Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle artbook! Including the cover art, content and the free clear file, there's a total of 80 beautiful full-colour illustrations, whee~ Finally another illustration book added to my collection, hehe... *sitting in front of the book shelf and say, "Preciousssssss"* Below are a few shots of the book (didn't take any pictures of the content because it's quite thick, don't want to damage it by opening it too wide, kekeke...).

Front cover - Syaoran & Sakura

Back cover - Kurogane, Fye & Mokona

The clear file that goes with it XD

When I was out, I found out that there's an Indonesian Fair at Civics Plaza, Takashimaya. There were a few booths featuring arts and crafts from Indonesia (it was quite late when I checked it out so I only took a peek). And according to my dad, there were a few dance performances and a fashion show today. The fair will still go on tomorrow, if I'm not wrong.. will be going there to check out more of the activities, and hopefully more performances. Will blog about it tomorrow if I'm home early, hehe...

Until then, ta ta for now~ =D

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

HOLIDAY~

Long time no post! The exams ended 2 weeks ago, and about less than a week ago completed my DDP. So now.... it's the holidays!!!! Yahoooo~ \(^0^)/ It almost felt that the semester would never end, but it's finally really over! Just hope that I won't have to repeat any of my core modules next semester *touch wood* >_< Edit: Somehow a big portion of this entry disappeared, and I don't remember all of what I wrote, waaaaaaaaa..... I've re-typed whatever I could remember of the missing pieces, but it's not as detailed.... so for those who read this entry for the first time...sorry, u missed quite a bit.. so please settle with what you see here now... T_T

So far this week, I've been trying to catch up with all the sleep that I missed for the past few months, play some video games, watch some animes, and even managed to complete a short flash animation for Pat. She's setting up a new online business with her friends, so she asked for my help to make an animation to promote it. In the past I've made simple animations before like for text, image transitions and other effects..but not character animation. This time, the video consists of short character animation scenes. It's quite a challenge, but I managed to make a simple character animation and the final video looked decent enough, hehehe... A good new experience, learnt new stuff & revised flash techniques after not using it much for quite some time, yeah~ Might be making a new deviantart avatar using flash, just a simple animation. Actually, I've been planning to change my deviantart avatar and ID pic but was too busy to make them, haiz... Will make sure I make them this hols, lol... During last year's hols, I was busy with rushing Digital Design stuff most of the time. But this year's different since I'm not involved in any event, so I should have more time to do my own thing, hehehe... It's not that I didn't enjoy DD... I miss the whole thing and also the people... *awwww* XD

On another note, I've also got a part time job. It's similar with what I did last year - voice sample collection and transcribing. But this time it's slightly different. The voice collection is not via phone conversation, but in a noisy indoor environment, like a mall for example. The voice samples will be used for some voice recognition project, if I'm not mistaken. My work will start either next week or the week after, so will still have some time left to rest before I get busy again then, hahaha...

Anymore interesting things happened lately? Well, there was another traffic accident occured near my place. Note the word 'another' - this is because such accidents occur quite frequently around here, especially at night.... Somehow quite a number of drivers like to speed here in the evening...don't know why... Anyway, this time it's a taxi vs a motorcycle. Seemed that the impact's quite strong, because the motorcycle was laying a few meters away from the taxi, and the front part of the taxi was crushed quite badly. What different with this particular accident? Before the taxi and motorcycle were towed away, my mother noticed that the last two digits of both their plates were identical - 13! A mere coincidence? Don't know, but it's quite scary when you think about it @_@

Ok, enough of the scary story, haha... Oh ya, I also went for a Photoshop CS3 Preview Seminar 2 days ago! ---------WARNING: This long paragraph mostly about stuff related to Photoshop and some other similar content. So if you're not interested to read this topic, you're welcomed to skip to the next paragraph ^_^ ---------
During the 2 hour seminar, the trainer didn't really talk about CS 3... but CS 3 'Extended' instead, lol... I did't know there's such a version before I went there, so it was quite a surprise. What's so different about CS 3 Extended? First of all, it includes an improved Adobe Bridge for file browsing, organizing and adding details to files. Secondly, there's an 'Auto align layer' function where Photoshop could align two similar pictures which are not really aligned exactly the same - this is really helpful especially in photography editing. The trainer demonstrated how to use that new function together with masking to edit a group picture. It's the solution to the common problem when I took group pictures and I sometimes want a better expression of one person's face in another similar but better version of the same group picture! (Don't know if you know what I'm talking about, so pardon me if you don't, hehehe...) There's also a special 'Black and White' function where we could modify a picture to a greyscaled one, but at the same time still able to apply other colour tones over it. It's different with changing the whole image into a greyscale mode, since in that case we can't apply colours over the image. There are a few more new and improved functions in CS 3 Extended, but the most notable one is the capability to support 3D files! We could actually import a 3D format file into Photoshop and add some lighting, rotate the 3D object, and even switch from shaded to wireframe mode! That would eliminate the hassle of taking a screenshot or exporting a flat image from a 3D software, then do some editing in Photoshop *drool*. Although it's a rather short 2 hour seminar, I got to know quite a lot of CS 3 Extended's new features and it made me want to get my hands on the software! Muahahahahaha.... well, at least I want to try it out somewhere someday XD

Quite a long entry there, hehehe... Will end here for now, gonna watch American Idol in a few minutes, wheee~ So tata for now and watch out for more of my holiday adventures! >=D