Haircut!

I was tired of my shabby hair, thus I spontaneously decided to go to the barber today.

Usually, I would go to the barber at Yio Chu Kang as that barber's skills are not bad and she understands what kind of hairstyle I want (I had told her I wanted 罗志祥 hairstyle). She would also give her advice on how my hair should be trimmed, which portions I should leave and how I should style my hair. All that for $8!

Nevertheless, I was going to work and didn't want to waste time making a detour to Yio Chu Kang. Thus, I went to the nearest EC House at Khatib. It was a BAD MISTAKE!

I gave instructions on how my fringe should be like, and that the top of my hair should be short. I specified that I didn't want a slope and I wanted my hair to be generally shorter than usual.

The result was a disaster!!! The barber practically destroyed my sideburns and desecrated my left fringe! She shouldn't have left a gap between my left fringe and my left sideburns! I wanted nicely shaped sideburns but now it looks so wispy!

I was rather angry at this and swore that I'll never go back to EC House again. I wanted to do something drastic like go to the barber at Yio Chu Kang to touch it up, but I concluded that it would only make things worse. The best thing to do was to wait for my hair to grow back again before another trim.

Thus I prayed to God that I would lift my eyes off my own selfish needs and look up to His desire and others' needs. Thank God that the anger subsided :)

Eventually, I looked at myself in the mirror and realised that it isn't all that bad. Hahaha.
I guess confidence comes from within, not without.

Alright, I have to go now. Still busy with work and stuff. I'll revamp my blog when I have the time ;)

Till next time!

The Tides Of Time Are Contrary

Argh!!! So many things to do, so little time! Have to finish the game project and submit my University application by end of this month! Fancy the deadlines being at the same time. Apart from that, my evenings are usually burnt:

Monday - Prayer Meeting
Tuesday - Leader's Meeting
Wednesday - Bible Study
Thursday - Synchronized Prayer
Friday(tomorrow) - Tuition

But they were all so good! :D
Maybe except tuition. Nah just joking.

Well, cause of the busyness, I haven't been updating my blog, nor going on MSN, nor checking Facebook for quite a while. Perhaps its not a lack of time, but a lack of time management. This was due to momentary distractions, which came in the form of Plant VS Zombies and Harry Potter.

Okay, I've enough of posting. Gotta do stuff. Hopefully have time for a proper post soon - I haven't even posted about my bros' birthdays.

"We don't not wrestle with blood, but against principalities, powers and the clock."

- Pastor Kong, adapted from Eph 6:12

Random Moments

Hey all, I've photographed various random pictures over the past few days, from 5 July to 11 July!

Enjoy my random collection!

// Code for random generation.
printf("WOOHOO: %d\n", rand() * 100);

Ernest's Chess pieces
Strategize. Overcome. Dominate.

Qiming drinking beer
nah, it's just lemon tea

Mark over at my place
We've got similar shirts! Can't see the rest of the design though :(

Right...

Death to Barney

:)
Mr Robin's doormat.

I pricked my thumb,
while picking up broken ceramic pieces. Went to a Jap restaurant to celebrate mum's birthday, and Jed broke a cup. Awesome.

Bandaged
Not that it was necessary, but who cares?

Someone once said, "Sanity is for the weak." Actually it is a Dawn of War quote, spoken by Chaos marines. So if you are random and crazy, you are strong. Well not really.

God has not given me a spirit of fear but of power, love and a sound mind. (2 Tim 1:7)

Well enough randomness, that's all for today :D

New Picture!

I love editing pictures and adding captions to them. Thus, when Sheryl sent me a breathtaking scene of the sky at East Coast Park, I decided to edit it XD

W406 Version!

DaCliquex Version
I anticipated they might want a DaCliquex version so I did one lawls

Hope you like it!

The Same Power Lives In Me

Hi guys, playing on my music playlist is the song "You Are Here (The Same Power)" by Hillsong. I heard it when I went to Fabian's house to pray with him. It is a very simple song, but full of meaning.

The song reminds me of God's strength in me, especially during these tough times.

You Are Here (The Same Power) - Hillsong
The same Power that conquered the grave
Lives in me
Lives in me

Your love that rescued the earth
Lives in me
Lives in me

Hope you guys are blessed! XD

Trip to Johor Bahru! (Part 2)

Hey all, here's part 2 of my trip!

Me outside Mr Robin's house

Back to Business
After that viewing the condominium, we went back to Mr Robin's house. As he drove back, he said to me "Hope you learnt something today" ;)

Mr Robin, Jeffrey and Gen Yuan discussed loads of technical stuff about various projects, which were hard for me to follow. We were discussing about getting references for the art style we were using when Mr Robin brought up Starship Troopers.

Starship Troopers is an extremely old sci-fi movie released in 1997. I first came to know of it when I played a custom game in Warcraft 3 about Starship Troopers.

The movie has many similar elements to Starcraft; it is about a human Federal army fighting against bug-like creatures that looked and operated like the Zerg. I told him that I heard the movie was good, but I've never watched it before.

Mr Robin replied "You must watch it! Its a very good movie! If Transformers 2 is rated 2/10, Starship Troopers is 10/10!"

At this, he went upstairs to search for the CD. After finding it, he personally switched on a computer and played the disc. He set it to full screen and adjusted the volume to ensure that I have a pleasant experience. It was almost like I was being compelled to watch it. But I was genuinely interested anyway :D

I thought Starship Troopers would be a PG family show like Star Wars. I was horribly wrong.

Countless soldiers were being decapicitated or ripped to shreds throughout the whole show, with brains being sucked out of people's skulls, bodies dissolved in jets of acid sprays and limbs being torned off.

However, the gore didn't bother me that much; I have seen enough gore in other movies and games. It was the scenes with nudity that got me uncomfortable. It was then that I checked the CD cover, only to find that it was a Restricted movie. T.T

Well, I didn't like the movie because of the mature scenes and the disgusting deaths of the soldiers. It kinda portrays humans as expendable, which I really hate as every single soul is precious. But I have to say that the plot is quite interesting.

Games Show
By the time the movie was over, it was already about 7pm. Mr Robin decided to visit an Online Games show before dinner. We saw their advertisement with the words "Biggest Online Game Show" printed on it. It was very vague and really poorly advertised. Mr Robin joked that it could mean a commercial game show (e.g. Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, 百万大赢家)

When we reached there, we found out that this "Biggest" game show was really small with not many people. There was some weird chinese game about being a business man. Not interested :P

A game called wulin(武林) looked quite fun. Mr Robin commented that the game wasn't very well done in technical terms though.

There was also a Street Fighter 4 competition, with a Sony MP3 Player as the prize. Well, I can't even execute a "Hadoken" properly...

The cool thing was that I encountered this:


As usual, By2 would be promoting 希望 Online or Seal Online. They even have a song called "Seal The Love". They will be there on 5 July at 5pm, which is today :/

Okay I'm not that excited about By2 anymore hahas. Weiren would probably say that I have grown into maturity :P

Dinner
We walked over to City Square shopping centre to have dinner. Mr Robin treated us to dinner at a Sudenese Restaurant!!! XD The meal was like rice with various dishes - Beef, Chicken Curry, Kangkong and squid. To me, the nicest dish was the Kangkong vegetables - the meat were kinda tough and not really appealing. Thank God for the meal though; I'm happy as along as there is food to eat. Furthermore it was FREEEEEEEEEE!

Back To Singapore
Jeffrey and I took bus 950 back to Singapore together. A security guard stopped me and asked me to take out my passport. Do I look that suspicious? hahahas :D As the bus crossed the causeway into familiar ground, a sense of safety and belonging subtlely entered my heart. There's no place like home :D

I reached home at 10.45pm on friday. The journey felt more like a holiday trip than a project meeting :) I've also decided to join Envisage Reality! I'll be going back to JB tomorrow for an important meeting. This means that I won't be able to make it for By2's 签名会 T.T

Oh well, sacrifices have to be made to achieve greatness.

Thank God for this job and the opportunity to shine for Him in the marketplace!

Trip to Johor Bahru! (Part 1)

Yo guys, I went for a company meeting at JB on friday! Before I start describing the journey, I remembered the name of the donuts and coffee shop! It is called "J.CO Donuts & Coffee" hahas

Man this is going to be a super long post, so I'll split into 2 parts :X

Crossing Over
Mr Robin Tan, my boss, arranged for Jeffrey, a colleague, to meet me at Woodlands. From there we will take bus 950 to JB.

I was thinking what to wear as I didn't want to appear rich, 'cause JB isn't the safest place in the world. I wanted to wear a T-shirt with bermudas and slippers. However, I felt the peace of God after praying and knew that everything's gonna be alright. Thus, I decided to glorify God by looking sharp rather than to be paranoid and dress sloppily :D

Or maybe I'm zilian.

Promptly, I changed into a T-shirt and jeans. I opened my passport and was shocked to find out that the last time I travelled to Malaysia was in 28 July 2002! That was even before I came to City Harvest! Thank God that I had Jeffrey with me, or I would be very lost. In fact, I was quite blur as I went through the customs and the various counters - I was even stopped by the security staff 3 times on my way to JB and back.

Jeffrey and I met in Woodlands at 10.10am as we were supposed to rendevous with Mr Robin in JB at 11am. Upon arrival, we waited for Mr Robin's car at City Square shopping center. As we chatted, Jeffrey told me something that surprised me. The company's office was actually Mr Robin's house itself! (O_O)"

Finally, Mr Robin arrived to pick us up. As we entered the car, I took a glimpse at his attire. The boss of Envisage Reality was wearing a T-Shirt with shorts and slippers! Cool huh? XD

Yup, that's the dress code for the games industry! :)

Lunch at Johor Bahru
Mr Robin drove us to have lunch at some "ulu" (obscure, unknown) place. This "restaurant" boasts a wide variety of food, ranging from western to Chinese to Japanese and Korean. To me, it was more like a high-class hawker center than a restaurant.

What a "ulu" place.

I ordered a Japanese Spicy Chicken set and a Black Soya Bean drink. The food was pretty average, nothing that special. The drink was quite blend too.

You must be thinking "I didn't know Israel was so particular about food". Well, I will gladly eat any food but value for money is of interest to me :D If the food is free, I won't really mind about the quality hahas

I paid 10RM(SGD$4) for the meal and Mr Robin covered the rest (Yay!).

The Sacred Office
After the meal, we went to Envisage Reality's sacred office - Mr Robin's abode. His home was super grand and beautiful! From the outside, it resembles some sort of barred fortress:

Mr Robin's House!

Another view of the house

The sliding gate of his house

I was further wow-ed as we entered his home! It was extremely spacious and beautifully decorated, except that it was kinda messy haha. Right in the center of the living room was the workspace - about 7 computers arranged in a circular fashion. It looked like a secret operations base or a military command center. Only it wasn't underground. XD

Mr Robin wanted to protect the IP (Intellectual Property) of our projects, so he'd rather me not take photos of the bungalow's interior. Still, its the coolest office I have ever seen in my life haha.

He showed me several project demos, including the game I'll be working on. Thank God for granting my desire - I'm no longer called to produce the casino game!!! Instead, I'll be working on an awesome XBox 360 game based on an old classic game! :D

Property Viewing
We were at the "office" for awhile when Mr Robin had to pick up another colleague, Geng Yuan, one of our artists. He's a talented mainland Chinese who earned singaporean citizenship.

After picking him up, Mr Robin took us to see JB's housing estates. He wanted to open my eyes to see how expensive HDB flats in Singapore are.

Viewing JB's property

He brought us (Jeffrey, Geng Yuan and I) to a condominium. The place is pretty cheap, but the scenery was kinda slum-ish and there aren't many facilities, save for a small swimming pool.

Nice atmospheric view but the landscape is marked with zinc-roofed houses and construction work.

View of the living room

At least there are some nice terrace houses from this view.

Mr Robin then chatted the property agents. They discussed about loans, monthly payments, interest rates, renting, etc. I learnt quite a bit about the property market, and discovered the meaning of the term "mark-up" :D

Hey wait a minute! I thought we're supposed to have a project meeting. How did this turn out to be a property business trip? Haha it was fun though.



Well, I'll continue the next half of my trip to Johor Bahru on my next post! Keep a lookout for it! =D