Best choice is often the hardest.

Made the decision just a couple of hours ago to not go to the Holiday Inn workshop.

It was a painful decision but i think it was necessary to prevent any case of infecting other people with my illness.

"Money can always be earned some other time, but health is the most important."

I know it very well, but thinking of how the timing of this flu and how it forced me to give this event a skip is rather heart wrenching.

Things haven't been going well recently. Lost phone, though manage to find it at the end. Then this illness.. Shld go pray pray after i recover.

Feeling much better now, last temp taken was 37.3 degrees celsius, a good drop from the 39.0 degrees at 1pm.

Have to recover soon, lots of work and things to do.

Hates misunderstanding

3rd week of school..

Yeah! Going into the 3rd week of school! That means tutorials will be starting, so will labs. Not exactly excited with the latter.. =/
Will be spending more time in studies from now on, which means more time in library during weekdays. As for weekends, first priority will be my dear gal =D, followed by catching up with some balloons action.
Think I'm starting to understand why balloons had such a 'pull' factor on me, as compared to doing magic. Since performing magic is something that requires more presentation and talking, I subconsciously leaned towards balloons, which don't really require a lot of those skills. As much as I would like to improve those aspects through performing magic, chances to do so aren't really what I'll call abundant. Moreover, balloon twisting has a greater appeal among children, and making them happy with my works is something that's rather satisfying.
Still looking for opportunities to make use of this skill to generate some much needed income. Will be looking forward to any chances to set up booths selling balloons during any events in school. ;) Also, the website is still in progress, and much need to be done. Hope to find time after studying to accelerate the completion of the website.
Just participate in a few balloons event recently, including a small scale scrupturing event at Metta school, balloon decoration for TWCC's BGM, and also went to Yew Tee's BGM to see see look look. Sadly I wouldn't be able to be early and help out more for the President Challenge event this coming Sat, but is excited to see how it'll be like when I head down after tuition. I'm extremely looking forward to help out Vivian Tan in her job next month though, think it'll be damn fun! Haha..
Besides studies and balloons, have to also find time to exercise and run!!!! RunNUS this coming Sunday will be a good training. =)
Thats all I guess, feeling sleepy.

Missing my gal..

3 nights down, just 1 more before i can see her again! Hurray! =D

Balloons balloons..

Dunno what's wrong with blogspot, or my com. The posting page now is like plain white background, with funny layout.

Anyway, I had been pretty occupied for the past few days. First was with helping David in his decoration job, followed by a balloon scrupturing job @ Metta, and finally some pre-event training @ David's place. All were great, enriching and fun. Damn thankful and appreciative to have all these experiences.

Had recently figured out the small cube/ball that David does, the one that doesn't burst easily. Though it's a shortcut method, I like it very much. Consolation came from Gabriel who told me this,

"Balloon twisting is not about the method, but the product."

Not that the process is not important, but since there're many ways to attain a certain result, there's no need to 'die-die' go for a certain method. Hopefully I can 'find other ways of fishing' that is tailored made for myself. =)

Though managing to do the cube is something to be happy about, it soon paled in comparison among the really solid cube, the puff heart, and rose that people like Gabriel, Weilai and Baofa are doing. So these stuff would definitely be in my 'To Learn' list. Not forgetting the 2D heart, which I should aim to make it smaller.

Apart from learning these creations by other people, I also hope to find a specialty of myself soon. Something that's uniquely me. Time to let some brain juices to flow! =P

Tomorrow is my grandma's birthday, will be making some balloons for her i guess. Flowers? Most probably. =)

Ok, adios!

Joel's Ex-sch Founder's Day Event.

Yesterday I went to an event of making table centrepieces, together with joel. It was his former school's Founder day, and they were celebrating it with a dinner in their hall.

So we met up the day before to buy the necessary balloons at the Balloon Baron. Got our stuff, of course after nearly a halfday 'workshop' under David, haha. Joel initial plan was to do a Bear with flowers for and '6 flower' flower bundles. I had the impression that it should be quite easy to complete the models, as i only pictured us making just 35 tables of stuff, moreover we had almost the entire day to do them. It took the actual doing of the balloons to knock some reality into me.

The next day, joel was there at his church before me, and had already done quite some geoblossoms for the bases. After doing some, I realised that making these stuff wasn't easy at all! Got ourselves very wet due to them constantly exploding. Bad quality huh, David. (I think he wouldn't deny that since those geos were qualatex balloons, and he already hates them so much.. =/) Ok, then the making of flowers. I actually thought we'll be making not much of those, but ended up having to do almost 200 of them, or at least we tried to. We ended up doing 2 laundry baskets full of flowers, and had to stop due to time constraints. Making the bears were quite successful though, although we didn't make a lot of them as they required more time to do. The bears were a better looking one as compared to the simple bear.

Assemble part of the process were quite tedious as well. Connecting the flowers to their stems, tying them together, trimming the length, and combining it with the geo bases, all these were little little things that took up so much of our time when done in bulk! Worst thing was that the balloons were constantly bursting, i suspect due to the hot temperature. It was till the final hours of the evening when things got clear that what we'd done wasn't enough. So joel thought of the idea of using the table number stand to do a simple 'flowers on vines' presentation, which i think was the best of the situation. Great thinking man. =)

So luckily, all the table were ready with at least a certain balloon scrupture on them before the dinner began.

I think this event provided me a great experience, and gave me an idea of how important it is to plan carefully. I think we made the mistake of underestimating the amount of time required to do the scruptures, esp the flower bundle. The distribution of the scruptures among the tables were rather messy too, due to the inability to make enough identical scruptures for all the tables.
Because of all this inperfections, I had a great time an learnt a lot. =)
Some of the photos are can found here:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/photo.php?pid=8162221&id=803010354

That's all for now! Time to rest my poor fingers.. or not! =P

Not So Fast!

Happening now? When i'm still so young? I won't let hereditary issues win! I'll make sure won't have the same problems as my dad. ROAR!

Stage or not?

I would like to do shows, like children birthday shows. But that means I have to learn stage magic, buy stage props, buy nice magician clothes (basically stylish black outfits LOL). Not easy.
Last time tried doing a children's show under Reuben's recommedation, which made me realised that with what I know, I can't do a show.
Will take one step at a time. Thinking of my spongeball routine now.

A fruitful day. =)

Went to meet Rui Ming for lunch yesterday over at Dhoby Ghaut Sunshine Building. Ate the Thai food there that made us wait super long. RIP to his laptop, hope the one who kop it starts to rot the minute he/ she starts using it. Rawr!
Felt good to meet up with him, brings back the old JC days. Have to meet up with the rest of CTG 218 soon! Haha..

After that I went Aunty Betty's place to pick up a deck of Bicycle Seconds ($3.50) and 4 (1.5 inch) sponge balls ($6.00, without box).

Then I went to Sim Lim to check out prices of RAM for gal. The embarrassing thing was that I got laughed by one of the shop's uncle sort of because I still thought Pentium 4 processors was still the fastest processor till date. LOL! Now already dunno what quad core liao but somehow I didn't realise that. So funny. =.=

Leaving Sim Lim after visiting an exciting place, I headed to tampiness to visit David's Balloon Baron. Actually thought of buying the balloons in bugis area, but they sell one packet of 260's for $15.00! So expensive! Also wanting to improve my skills, I went to BB at the end. Reached there and realise that no one else is there, apart from Jessie, David and another lady, whom I didn't catch her name. Had a really long talk cock session with David.. which basically means I listened to his stories for very long. Haha! Although his thinking and theories aren't always the best, I have to admit that I felt honoured to have the chance to talk to and know a legend like him. Indeed this 'balloon-artist' (quoted from him) has done stuff that no other balloonist can achieve. He may seem full of himself, but I feel that he has the right to be so. Being the pioneer of ballooning art in S'pore, he was able to be so successful and also perform for many important people in Singapore and Asia.

Think he see the way I twist also ching-sim already. Lol. I seemed so lousy as I struggled with some twists. Even so, he didn't come down too harsh on me, and even gave me some valuable advices. All in all, learnt a lot that day, restocked my balloons, and even bought a new pump! Yay!

Hopefully everything turn out well for my dad. The environment of his current job is getting bad recently according to him. Upper management getting lousier, manpower getting tighter. Which was why he was looking forward to this new job. I can see that he still has feelings for this current job- after all he has been working there for over a decade already. But he felt that the deteriorating working environment is too much to take, and also since the company seems to have some buyover problems, might not be a bad choice to 'jump'. Prospect of the new job looked good, but now might not be within reach given the sudden realisation of some contractual issues. Sigh. My dad's like is filled with ups and downs, why can't he have something smooth this time? God/ Guan yin/ Buddha bless him and our family.

Recently went to Pek kio market for their last CLAP! fundraising event for the needy residents there. Brought over 5 decks of cards, 2 balloon pumps, 2 bags of balloons. Ended up using only the balloon stuff. Was happy with my first experience in helping out in a booth selling balloons, but I felt that I really need to improve on my speed and control, so as to burst lesser balloons. The afternoon ended with a parent complaining abt the slow making of her bugs bunny and she being frustrated, scolded her children for doing some harmless stuff. All because I did the bunny too slowly and it was due to it keep bursting. Really sucks man.

Heard from Baofa and Veronica that Wei Lai's event still might need helper, so I decided to join them without asking WL's permission. Luckily it's a rather free and easy thing, so more helpers are always welcomed. In the end I went to jurong earlier than the required time, so I sat on the upper stairs of the area where people waited for the IMM shuttle bus, and did a 160 bunny while waiting for the Chevron shuttle bus. Was determined to make one at a faster rate, but ended up only doing a little but faster. Hope to speed up my balloon making process with more practice from now on. Balloons are running out, think need to get more soon. =/

Whatever the thing is, just hope they go shun shun..

Gypsy Thread

Just finished watching the download. It's something very visual and magical for the audience, if done right. The problem is the handling has to be rather delicate and careful. It's not difficult to flash. Will spend some time to practice the effect. Dan Sperry is expectedly humourous, but I felt he could be more detail in his explanation, like giving more tips and experiences on the handling. 28 mins seemed like a lot of material would be covered before watching the clip, but much of the time was spent on meaningless stuff and humour. Watching the performances by Wayne Houchin and Dan himself made me feel the effect would be very clean. While I felt a little deceived, I'll strived to achieve that kind of standard. Time to practice!

The passing of Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett were kind of shocking to heard this morning. Knew about the MJ's news since everyone on Facebook starting posting RIP messages about him. For the latter, not many knew or talked abt it, but saw it on the Yahoo! news while I was checking out MJ's news. Kind of a bad day to pass don't you think, as her death would be overshadowed by that of MJ's. =/ In any case, R.I.P. to both of them, and may those who loved them live on happily.

Had been visiting theory11 and dananddave website recently and I have some items that I'm interested to learn!

Gypsy thread seemed to be around for a long while, but sadly I've only heard of it recently. Will be looking forward to learn it on the 1-on-1 soon, when i still have some extra cash to spare. =D

Professor's Nightmare is also another trick that belong to that ' IshouldknowthattrickbynowbutIdon't' category. Norvin said that it's not expensive to learn, probably will check out the price from Baofa's side, if not might get from Aunty Betty's.

Identity by Richard Sanders! OMG it looked amazing! Extremely visual, and very high WOW factor in my opinion. Price is a little steep though. It's definitely in my wishlist, but maybe not buying it now. ;)

Knew about Pressure for quite some time now, but haven't really got into finding out abt it. Saw the trailer again today, and since I had some balloons with me, I thought I'll give it a shot. The basic effect worked out pretty well, though I'm still thinking abt the clean-up. Have some idea abt it, though pulling it off in front of a live audience might be a little hard. Wouldn't be buying the download/ effect since I don't think I wana spend that kind of money. Would have some fun trying to figure it out and perfecting it though.

Feeling good =)

Surprised gal today with this!


















Been very happy playing with balloons recently. Very fun and entertaining hobby actually. =)
To say that it's all joy that's the motivation for this interest is not entirely true, as I also do hope to use this skill to help me earn some pocket money, which can be extremely useful based on my current situation. So I hope to learn as much as I can for now, and seize any opportunities along the way.
Gal mentioned an interesting idea earlier today, shall think abt it these few days.
Also realised that this blog is becoming something that it wasn't meant to be when I first started it. I actually wanted to make it a magic blog, something like what Baofa started recently. Then somehow it became more like a daily diary blog, haha. Anyway, will try to put more magic/ balloons stuff in this blog from now on. =)

Bintan + Horrible job + To dos

Long time since I updated!

First thing on the list would be Gal's bday also our 3rd anniversary! =)
For the photos of Bintan trip, go my facebook see ba.
Our bintan trip can be summed up with the following:

-one dizzy ferry journey
-one look at how caucasians can be more kiasu than singaporeans
-one long wait to get room
-one nice room with fantastic view
-one delicious pizza
-one disappointing trip to pasar oleh oleh
-one broken down shuttle bus (in the middle of NOWHERE!)
-one 'lok kok' shuttle bus to our rescue
-one expensive and forgettable dinner
-one heartwarning gesture from the hotel, also a funny yet beautiful misunderstanding
-one breathtaking view of the nightsky full of stars above, with creatures of similar beauty flying among us
-one sleep till xiang xiang night
-one apparently not wonderful night for my gal as woke her up thrice by accident, oops! =/
-one rather satisfying breakfast buffet
-one beautiful beach! (really REALLY nice!)
-one attempt to suntan
-one small rain that killed that attempt
-one swimming pool that kept us occupied during the small drizzle
-one stone that poked a hole in my foot T.T
-one not so Yummy pizza
-one nice and sweaty experience with archery
-one smoother ferry journey home
-two cup noodles
-one more look at kiasu caucasians

All in all, a great holiday!

Came back from Bintan with a very positive mindset of finding a job. End up till now also don't have a decent, long term part time job for this vacation.

Had a extremely lousy one that required me to work from 8pm - 8am. YES! Night to morning, and not the other way round. And doing what? Stocktaking. =.= The worse is meeting a certain weirdo. Haiz, how wish nv take up that job. Lucky only work for a week, if not really will mati.

Currently I have another one-day job coming up on the 16th, suay suay that certain weirdo also doing. Haiz.

Went for a few interviews, going for one more next week also. hope something come out of it. Never thought searching for a part time job can be so hard. Guess I took the Nomura experience too much for granted. Bye bye $18/hr. =(

So now while searching for job, I'm also starting to get interested in balloon twisting! Very fun once you get started. Going to crash another workshop tomorrow, as well as another magic workshop. Need to see how thy actually teach kids magic, as it's something I can't really imagine very very well. Teaching kids of e.g. primary sch age things like card magic seems a little inappropriate imo. Coz it seem a little adult, and sort of like giving them the head start in gambling. So for me, if I had a workshop teaching magic, I'll probably teach them the very basic of magic. Misdirection, coins, spongeballs to name some of them. But not teaching card magic would be hard, since that's what probably they signed up for, after seeing so much 'miracles' performed by Liu qian on Taiwanese tv. =.=

Ok, so what will I be doing for the rest of the holiday?
1.) Go swimming
2.) Go running/ exercise
3.) By doing 1 & 2, I wana get a more even tan! =D
4.) Get a job
5.) learn the roads of Singapore
6.) Think about Father's day
7.) Learn more balloon twisting, including a certain requested one. =P
8.) .. add in when I think of them.

Me and my big mouth

Time travel would certainly be a useful supernatural power I would want to possess now.
Everytime I watch a drama showing a actor whose rash actions brought about undesirable consequences, I'll always cringe and say to myself, why is he so stupid. Use his brain la. Never thought I'll be in this smelly shoe of this character before.
Good intention doesn't always translate to good actions.
Now that my mum also knows about it, a small misunderstanding somehow got upsized, with no welcome given.
Hate to be the screw up. Just hate it.

Just suddenly remembered something. Record it before i forget.
Actually I was talking rather politely when I called him. Started to ask him some questions, then I think I blew up when I heard this:
"If you weren't her brother, I'll use the word on you too."

"If at first you don't succeed, double undercut."

I love the quote in the title. Saw it in someone's signature in T11 forum. It's just so hilarious.

Updates!
Went out with gal today, and had some hiccups along the way. And I'm apologising here once again gal! Sorry! Will plan things in more detail next time. =)

Went to bugis to get gal's watch and then we went to a place called Bar Bar Black Sheep. Read on Hungrygowhere.com about its good reviews and wanted to give it a shot. The problem was the rather ulu location and remembering the bus stop location was a bit hard to do, and also due to poor planning. So after some efforts, we found it and had some food. There were 3 types of food that one can choose to eat: Western, Thai or Indian. The western seemed to be the most popular as we had to wait for a long time before out orders are served. We had Beer battered Fish and chips and Beef Burger with fries. Both were served with salad.

Here're the photos:

Beef Burger - S$12

Fish and Chips - S$12

The portion for both dishes were humongous! We could barely finish our own plate. Eat till wana vomit. T.T

We then went to West Mall for some grocery shopping for my Mothers' Day breakfast tomorrow and then went to play in the arcade. Fun! Love you gal! =)

Ok, till now, I've managed to exercise, play bball. Dinner meeting with MS and gang is set to be at next Sunday for now. Hopefully Charmain can make it since she's the only one who haven't replied me. Next few days will continue to send out resume and search for a temp job. Argh, I want $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$!!!!!!! $.$

Exams over! So.. what next?

Gone are the exams.. Also gone are 2 years in NUS. Seriously I think my time in there is kind of like wasted. Hopefully the results this time round will be encouraging.

Ok, so what to do this looooooooonng break?

A few stuff on the itinerary (based on chronological order):

1/2.) Meet Meisan and gang for a meal,
1/2.) Mothers' Day,
3.) Gal's Bday/ Anniversary,
4.) In the mean update my resume and find a part time job,
5.) Exercise regularly,
6.) Take IPPT and get some long overdue monetary award from SAF,
7.) Update myself on magic stuff, hit the streets with Reuben and gang,
8.) Read up on CE2407.

For something nearer, what will I do tomorrow? I'll exercise in the morning, and maybe play basketball. Then I'll prepare my resume, and start sending it out. Then I'll also look out for tuition assignment. Come evening I'll leave for tuition. Should be too late to meet gal for dinner, so I said maybe another day, probably thurs or fri? =)
Will also chiong the level in restaurant city. Wahaha, gal don't scold me for overtaking you.. =P

A great food pic

If this blog is something that introduces good food, i think this picture would make a good photo of the food. Had this in Woodlands food court today:

Haha hello..

Got reminded by gal that I have not blogged for a long time.

Exams are coming soon, soon as in next week. This time round feeling more prepared, though still scared that results will be disappointing. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst!

Hmm some interesting that happened recently.. urm.. oh ya, been sort of hooked to a few things, one being the show "Gossip Girl". I know it's supposed to be a girly show, but somehow it's quite nice to watch, haha. Another would be the facebook game, "Restaurant City"! Quite fun to see the little people walking here and there serving the computer generated customers food, and designing the restaurant is also quite fun. Haha..

There's also gal's graduation ceremony, or otherwise known as Convocation. Quite inspiring to see people wearing the harry potter robe and receiving their certs. Also met some friends there, like Kwen, Debbie and Wei Fen. Many grats to the first two for their graduation! =)

Took up a new tuition in Sembawang. The kid's pretty smart, from Catholic High. Currently sec 1. His mother is also one kind one, quite anxious about her son's results and work. Overly-anxious actually. But I guess that's how parents are nowadays. Sigh.

Ok this is a pretty boring post, so lets spice it up with some pics! Roar!

Restaurant City- Showing Me and Gal =)

Graduation Ceremony @ SIM

What is on your mind