Archive for June, 2009

Fresh From The Press

Jun 08, 2009 in My Shout Outs

holidays_2010

SINGAPOREANS can look forward to nine long weekends next year as all public holidays except one fall on the weekend, Friday or Monday.
Out of the 10 public holidays for 2010 released by the the Manpower Ministry (MOM) on Monday, eight fall on Friday or Monday, which means a three-day stretch.

The only one that falls on a weekday is Hari Raya Haji on Nov 17, a Wednesday.

Starting with the first day of the New Year on a Friday, long weekends follow with Chinese New Year falling on Feb 14, Sunday, and Feb 15, Monday. This means that Feb 16, Tuesday, will also be a public holiday.

Good Friday, Vesak Day and Deepavali all fall on Fridays, while Labour Day and Christmas Day will be Saturdays.

MOM also reminds the public that Deepavali this year will fall on Oct 17, Saturday, instead of Nov 15, Sunday, after verification against the Indian Almanac.

This year, seven out of the 11 public holidays were long weekends.

Saturday Mania

Jun 07, 2009 in My Shout Outs

I have finally gotten my passport cum IC pictures taken. They will be touched up and be ready in a week’s time. 1 dozen for 21 bucks.. pretty alright I reckon.

I have also decided where’s a good place to dine for rach and I’s lil birthday dinner next month. The theme is I WANT MEAT!

Dinner was at Astons at 6th Avenue. I had the porterhouse beef and I must say I am sorely disappointed with the service (with literally no training at all it seems) and the beef was done to medium when I asked for medium rare. Sides were also quite miserable. Now if they were to compete with botak jones I’d say they ought to do a better job. Or at least try. They failed in literally every single department. I will not be back. I do hear the one in katong is better. This brings up another point.A lack in consistency. Hardly an issue I had with botak jones regardless of the branch I visited. Astons at 6th avenue is neither value for money (unlike what they claim) nor pleasant. The chicken rice seller was far more pleasant and accomodating even, cause Keong ordered chicken rice instead. Perhaps I should have done the same but at least one thing I know for certain. I will not return.

Vivocity was next, to catch our 3d movie Monsters Vs Aliens. First of all, I concur with what ST wrote in one of their articles today. Recession? What recession. The malls were PACKED.. good grief. That being said I saw more people walking around vs the number in stores. Saw nothing which fancied my eye so no purchases done. I spent over 120USD on underwear shopping online last night cause there was a design that I wanted which isn’t available here. Actually it wasnt the design that caught my eye. It was the feel and texture that caught my fingers! It feels next to skin and you know for once, regardless of how I moved, the underwear stretches accordingly. It is really like second skin. I dislike having to rearrange my underwear sometimes cause it moved out of position and I have to adjust a little, something even my next favorite CK (of which I have quite a few) steel collection bothers me with.

Monsters and Aliens.. is watchable.. there were a few laughs but not good enough for an endorsement. 3D is fun and there are loads coming out this year including Ice Age which I will love to catch towards the end of the year. Supper was at Mr Prata near where I lived to discuss BBQ plans tomorrow and we had the pit booked via AXS on our way home. So it is a done deal. BBQ tomorrow. I hope the weather will be kind to me…

Have a great weekend all!

Fr3b

Jun 06, 2009 in My Shout Outs

I came across this at the recommendation of someone. I thought it was quite cool to register and try samples of different products for free.

I registered. Try it anyway. :)

Freedom

Jun 04, 2009 in My Shout Outs

Freedom.. is being inhabited by strands of.. black strands. Step 3 is now complete.

Step #4 of the must-do-when-thirty is gonna be in progress.

It is mid week!

Jun 03, 2009 in My Shout Outs

Good morning folks!

Before I go on I’d like to recognise the fragility of human life and how things can drastically change within a very short time.
Special mention to those who died on AF 447 en route towards Paris-CDG. Air travel still remains the safest form of transport, even though I have always wondered how things are like in the final moments before it hits the ground. Some say it is not those who are on board that matter, cause you know how many, but potentially how many lives it will cause on the ground. A plane crash on ground is like a missile… but to me every life lost is sad.. cause everyone’s someone’s parent, someone’s child, someone’s spouse, someone’s best friend, someone’s sibling. May the victims Rest In Peace, and may the families of the victims find closure.. soon, in what is probably gonna be a very long and tiring journey ahead to seek answers.

Heard this riddle on the morning show today. “What is the difference between David Blaine and the Pussycat dolls?” Answer is… Blaine does cunning stunts! Let’s see if you get this one. If your level of adult jokes is good enough you’ll get this. If you don’t, then don’t bother. It was sent in by a listener. Damn funny. Talk about reminiscing and all… I am not quite sure what they do now in school but when I was in primary school and I came from an all boys school, we used to line up in twos, hold hands, while the other hand had a finger to our lips as we walked from class to class. Vern talked bout it and yeh I almost forgot about those times even… little primary school boys holding hands with a finger to their lips. So cute! And you know the naughty and noisy ones who are made to stand outside the class? Some of them are real ‘heros’ as if standing outside was a glam thing. That all changes when you ask them to keep a finger to their lips. Everyone who walks past them will giggle and it is one of the ultimate embarrassment of that decade. It REALLY works. Simple yet an effective form of embarassment. I miss those days, but like NS, once is enough. 

On a lighter note it was a great Tuesday. I started the day with a nice hair cut (and discovering I got new breakouts which got me quite peeved) and I had all the activities planned somewhat. Dropped off Isaac’s clothes (to be honest, I am not sure if it is reminiscing. I couldn’t find the right words to express how I felt.. but I think it is as close to say, losing a loved one in death.. and one day somehow the person sorta appears in front of you again. I went through different phases, sorta like the utter disbelief when u seemingly see a dead person come alive in front of you… all the way to reminiscing which is the last stage. So i don’t know if there is a word used to describe it all… I was supposed to have a smoke with him but maybe next time.. but I did deliver what he wanted and so my job is done. No regrets whatsoever from then on.), bought tickets for Night at the museum, hung out at spins @ heeren.. thank good for the breeze! Dropped by Ngee Ann city to check out this beauty face and body shop of which I can’t remember the name right now but it didn’t impress me much anyway.. crossed over to Tangs to pick up gifts. I had half my mind to pick up a new pair of underwear, maybe the new CK Micro steel liquid, or something that willl catch my eye. Alas, my eye didn’t get catch it but my sense of touched screamed when I felt a particular pair! So I took a closer look and it was.. OMG. This is it. These are the kinda stuff which scream out to me (buy me!).

It is by Punto Blanco, and they have a wide range and I am NOT gonna tell you which one I bought cause it is the only one with the oh-so-good material and the last I wanna see is everyone in the gym changing room wearing it cause it is… better than skin on skin! Nothing else from Punto caught any of my attention.. except for this! Washed it when I got home last night and I am wearing it right now.. WOOO HOOO talk about feeling like  you aint wearing anything!

Went down to the basement cause the folks were hungry (but not me… strangely. I literally had near zero appetite yesterday… maybe it was due to the heat) and the subject of shaving came up. Ceddy began using an electric shaver and I thought.. hmm.. I have been mulling over it for a while.. and just yesterday morning I nicked myself again using blades. Fine.. TIME TO BUY AN ELECTRIC SHAVER! I used it this morning… ahhh no more nicks again! I am very satisfied. First my bar fridge and now my new electric shaver sitting on my fridge…. *grinz*

In short I was quite happy with the stuff I bought. I am sure Jayme will like hers too. My one and only birthday wish is for my breakouts to stop breaking out… urgh. I never had such bad repeated breakouts before Feb this year.. which coincides with the new role I took up then. Maybe it’s stress and very messed up hormones. Other unaffected parts of the face seems to be improving quite well actually.. Oratane really helps to cut down on the oil production. Permanently.

So thanks Rach, Ceddy and Keong for hanging out together. It was fun and thanks for handling my very volatile mood of highs and lows… LOL… luckily I am not playing in some club else the music I dish out will prolly take people from heaven to hell and back!

Back to work! While I frolick around in my chair, feeling every inch of my new… ahem!

Jun 02, 2009 in My Shout Outs

boy-jumpA very good day for me… I haven’t been this pleased for a while now.

Stock markets doing fine.. loads of green shoots. Let’s hope they dun become weeds.

I kicked off my “to do when I am 30″ list over the weekend by attending Dennis Ng’s seminar on How To Save a million dollars. I picked up a lot of info, from insurance and what insurance people don’t want you to know, and how to diversify properly. Why CPF is actually bad and is gonna make u a poor bloke if u depend on it and why it could be far better to use cash for housing loans instead of relying on CPF. Something which I never thought of much hmm..

I finished the second item on the list, and that was to visit the dentist after some 6 or 7 years. I plan to visit a dentist every 6 months from now on and I needed a good recommendation. Thanks to Jayme, I found one and I am formally endorsing Dr Ng from Royce Dental in Ghim Moh for his friendliness, his gentle touches, reassuring voice, zero selling, and a pretty cheap price! Everyone knows if the prince endorses something, it comes with a personal guarantee!

I also managed to find all 3 missng items that the ex wants. Tomorrow I shall go cut hair, book movie tickets, go shopping, and then pass the stuff to the ex along the way.

So it is a really good day.. a good vist to the dentist in the afternoon made my day. Went home after that, closed some of my trades and generally nothing went wrong at all. I am likely to spill this mode over tomorrow when i buy Jayme’s present.. perhaps one or two things for myself too. Hopefully no one spoils my mood meantime. Crossing both fingers!

Hope everyone will have a great testicle tuesday!

[Please read] – DBS Phishing alert

Jun 01, 2009 in My Shout Outs

DBS_fake

I got an email from a colleague this morning so for all DBS internet banking users please read -

Last night at around 8:20 pm, I tried to log on to DBS internet banking. I clicked on my Favorites and I was brought to the website below. If you are a DBS i-banking user, you will readily notice that this website seems to be different as it is asking you for your DBS iB secure PIN right on the first page. Typically, you will only be asked for the DBS iB secure PIN
after you have successfully keyed in your User ID and Password. In any case, since I did not suspect anything wrong, I keyed in the three numbers required. After I have entered the numbers, a new webpage appeared saying that I should wait for the SMS One Time Password (OTP). I waited for a few seconds and none came.
 
That’s when I suspected that something was wrong. So I called up DBS hotline and I was told that the website below is NOT their website. So DBS immediately cancelled my i-banking services and verified that none of my monies were transferred.
 
When I used my home computer and my colleague’s office computer this morning to log on to DBS again, thankfully I was brought to the right website.
 
I think that either my office computer or DBS’ website (or both) had been compromised. In any case, I sent DBS a print-screen copy of the website as well as details of the URL. They said they will investigate. The customer service officer said that there are some cases similar to mine that have been reported to them previously.

Kinder Bueno

Jun 01, 2009 in My Shout Outs

I couldn’t sleep so I came out to munch on Kinder Bueno. It is strange how a simple chocolate has such bittersweet tastes and memories for me..