Back from dinner. Went to this quaint restaurant in the middle of nowhere.. heh..not really lar, it was next to some famous lake, but it was really like in the middle of nowhere. Anyway, food was ok. The real sell was the interesting building. Dunno lar, but I heard it was some authentic old chinese building. Here's a nice night shot. Tomorrow I'll be off to Hue, hope the hotel is good and has decent internet too.

Vietnam Day 6 - Hanoi

Have some time before dinner.

Today's been ok. But feeling a little moody. Maybe coz missing my mummy... :-P
(heh.. more like missing cable vision & xbox360....)

Saw this on Youtube.

Dunno if it's new or not, but it's my kind of humour!

If you like a good fart joke.. watch it!

This was one of the coolest finds in the Vietnamese traditional arts village.. GUCCI slippers! Wow.. I didn't know Gucci was manufactured by the traditional vietnamese......

Vietnam Day 5 - Still in Hanoi

Day's work just ended. Been travelling around visiting schools today. Then in the evening, had to do admin stuff.

I'm happy that the hotel's internet is so good... can blog easily.

No pics today coz nothing exciting to see. Hanoi is of course very different from Danang. It's certainly a bustling city. Main similarity... motorcycles everywhere.

One thing which I keep thinking about is doing a CIP trip to Vietnam. I did one many years ago and it was a very good experience for both me and the students. Maybe I should consider planning one this year.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we will have some time to see some of Hanoi tomorrow. Then again, this is a working trip, so I don't really expect much. Can always visit Hanoi again another time, budget airfares to Vietnam are really cheap!

Oh yah, pics from the sightseeing yesterday have been uploaded. Click on my album on the right to take a look.

Vietnam Day 4 - Hanoi

It's Day 4 in vietnam. Haven't been able to blog the last two days coz the internet in the hotel at Danang was really bad. Always kena disconnected after a couple of minutes. Then after that, have lots of trouble trying to connect again. I've moved on to Hanoi now and the hotel is much better. Other than the nicer room & many more TV channels, the Internet is stable! heh.

Day 2 & 3 were pretty much taken up by work. That's kinda boring so I won't blog much about it. This morning was also work but after that, we had a couple of hours before our flight from Danang to Hanoi so our hosts brought us on a short sightseeing trip.

First we went to a beach in Danang. The beaches are supposed to be famous here. Well, I must admit it's not bad, but it's not really the best I've seen. Anyway, I don't think I'd come all the way to Danang in Vietnam for the beach. After that, we travelled all the way to this place called Quang Nam I think. They had a place there which basically showcased traditional Vietnamese lifestyle. It was fairly interesting. I liked the way they had these machines to help in daily tasks and they had people there demonstrating them.

Here's a pic of four ladies who were using this simple contraption to scoop water from the lake. It really looks easier than it really is. Takes quite some practice and coordination before you can get it to work smoothly.



Here's a pic of a bullock powered sugar cane crushing machine. Basically the bulls go round and round and rotate the gears which cursh the sugar cane. I thought that was pretty cool!



The last part of the visit was a food tasting. We were served dishes after dishes of traditional vietnamese food. Here's one of the tastier ones, it's some rice skin with a bit of meat inside and some fired shallots for garnishing. It tastes quite similar to our 'har kow'.


After the sightseeing, we made our way to the airport for our 55min flight to Hanoi. So here I am now, in Hanoi. Tomorrow is the start of the second cycle. It's my first time in Hanoi so I hope to finish the work a little faster so that I can hopefully see a little of the city before moving on.

Sigh... honestly, I'm missing Singapore...

Vietnam Day 1 - Danang

Howdy! I'm blogging today from Danang in Vietnam. Yeah, I'm on another recruitment trip and this time it's to Vietnam. This trip is gonna be quite demanding. Will be travelling to 4 cities in 14 days. Quite a whirlwind trip.

It's my second time to Vietnam. I visited Vietnam 7 to 8 years ago. That time, I only visited Ho Chi Minh City. It was a really good trip. I had brought students there on a CIP trip. Quite an eye opener as we were helping the orphans there who had been affected by Agent Orange.

This time round, I'll be going to Danang, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh and Hue. Don't really know much about the other places but frankly, I know I'll generally be cooped up in the room or school marking or conducting interviews, so I don't think I'll get to see much of the cities anyway.

Quite tired coz it was a long trip today. Started off at 10am with the 3hr flight to Hanoi. Sad thing was, we had to wait almost 5 hours for our connecting flight to Danang. So in the end, it was almost 10 hours of travelling today. We arrive in Danang after Sunset so nothing much to see. Managed to snap this picture from my hotel room window. Oh yah... thankfully the room is quite decent and there is wireless internet! Heh, I know it's sad that being connected on the internet can bring so much joy.

Here's the night view from my hotel room window. Nice eh? That's the Han River you see in the background.



Dinner was not bad. Went to a local chinese restaurant and had really good vietnamese salad and steamboat. I do have fond memories of vietnamese food from my last trip. Looking forward to digging into a bowl of authentic Vietnamese Chicken Pho!

And this is Zekelor, my Night Elf Warrior on Frostmourne server. Best part of the warrior is as the name suggests, you simply fight. More action compared to the warlock coz warlock always takes time to cast the spells. Can't believe I'm still hooked. Right now, I think my warrior is about two levels higher than my warlock.

I think it's time to introduce my characters in WoW. This is Zekedar! My Warlock on Arthas server. I like the Warlock simply coz of the demons it can summon. Love the Voidwalker more than the succubus.

V for Vendetta

Caught the movie last weekend. I thought it was an very good movie. For one thing, it was a change from all the drama-type movies I'd been watching like Brokeback Mountain and Walk the Line.

I think the main idea of the movie is really clever. Especially given the current world context.

Basically, you have a society that is totally controlled by the government. A utopia of sorts. It's about how people have to give up their freedom of speech & thought to live in a society of supposed peace and security. It reminds me of a letter I read in the forum recently from an opposition party member who asks if we are willing to give up some of our civil liberties, then where do we draw the line?

Anyway, without giving anything much away, the movie is about this guy, codenamed 'V', who is a lone 'hero' trying to awaken the people by planting bombs and killing key people in the government.

It really messes up the mind. I mean, you are supposed to root for V coz he's fighting against the government. But you can't help but think how V's actions are so similar to the terrorists who have disrupted many countries around the world. And the terrorists do believe that they are fighting for the freedom of their people too.

Before you think otherwise, I am not a chim philosophical type. I don't purposely go all out to find hidden meanings/messaged in movies. The fact is, this similarity is really glaring in the movie.

Oh yah, the other thing is I hate how the censors have snipped the movie. There was one part where they were telling the story of two lesbians when suddenly, there was this obvious cut. Dunno for what. I think the adverts for movies in the newspapers should state clearly 'MOVIE HAS BEEN EDITED/CENSORED'. Then at least I can decide if I want to pay for a damaged product.

Oh well, on the whole, a very watchable movie. It's NC16 for the remaining violence. Catch it if you can.

My sad story with setting-up the xbox360 continued this morning. It's a really stupid story. But it's so dumb, I think it deserves telling.

I woke up this morning and decided to try registering for xbox live coz I wanted to access the marketplace to download demos and other stuff. As the last post stated, I had finally been able to access internet using my bridge. So I thought everything would be smooth sailing. I was so so wrong.

I tried registering for my Gamertag and after entering it, I had to enter my registered email address and password. But after entering my email & pw, it said 'xbox live cannot accept new registration right now.' So I tried a few times and everytime, the same message appeared after I entered my email & pw. So, I decided to call the helpline to see if the xbox live server was down.

I called the helpline and it was connected pretty fast. The Technical Officer (TO) brought me throught the instructions step-by-step and tried to help me troubleshoot the problem. We created new accounts... checked setup... re-registered gamertags... changed settings... checked hardware... etc...etc...etc... I was on the phone for almost one hour. I was again resigned to the fact that MAYBE my wireless bridge was the problem. Or maybe I was just fated not to play online.

Then I noticed something. You see, whenever I entered my email using the on-screen keyboard (the kind where you move the cursor to the letter using your xbox controller one-by-one), I found that the '.' always seemed a little high... but I thought it was simply the font. Furthermore, it wasn't very clear on the TV screen. Well, after one hour on the phone, I discovered that instead of typing '.' in the email address, I had been typing '-'.

sigh.

Without telling the TO, I entered the email correctly this time. And everything worked out fine.

When the TO asked me, I said, dunno why.. it just worked this time. There was NO WAY I was going to tell him that I had wasted 1 hour of his time due to a typo.

So finally, I'm connected to xbox live. And finally, I can download demos, trailers and games.

So there you have it. My fun experience with hooking up to xbox live.

The last four hours have probably been one of the most harrowing in recent months. It has also been most educational as far as learning more about networks.

And as usual, sometimes, the solution is always the simplest.

So here's the long story...

In my last post, I talked about getting the wireless network adaptor for the xbox360. Well, after speaking to a friend, I kinda decided to buy a wireless bridge instead. For those who don't know much about networks (like me), the xbox network adaptor connects to xbox via the USB port and I won't be able to use it anywhere else. A wireless bride is like a wireless box which I can connect directly into the network port behind the xbox360 and I will be able to use it with the PS3 in future. So, it kinda makes sense to get the bridge instead, right?

So, off I went to Funan and bought a wireless bridge for $135. Considering that the xbox360 wireless adaptor costs $129, I thought the price was very reasonable. After that, I went for a colleagues BBQ before returning at about 10pm to try out my bridge and see if I could connect to xbox Live. That was when the horror started.

I had to connect the bridge to my PC to be configured. So I disconnect my PC's internet and connected the bridge. I ran the setup software and it could not detect the bridge. So I tinkered around with system settings and enable a network adaptor which had a dreaded red cross next to it. After doing that, the bridge was recognised and I proceeded to configure it. Sounds simple? That was where the nightmare started. Once I disconnect the bridge, I shut down the PC coz I wanted to reconnect the internet. When I restarted the PC, the PC's fan started whirring faster and faster and faster!!! It got louder and louder and I thought the PC would burst into flames! So I powered down the PC, waited a while, then turned it on again. This time, it whirred faster, but then started slowing down, then the PC started loading windows. The logo came out... then it hung. The whole darn computer just hung. So I restarted PC again. This time windows loaded... and I accessed the web as usual. But after about 5 to 10 mins, the web browser hung. Then the whole PC hung. So I rebooted and this time, the whirring started again!!!! I freaked out lor. I tell you, it's the most horrible sound which I've heard coming from my PC. So to cut a long story a little shorter, I pretty much screwed up my PC. So, I thougt, nevermind... let's connect the xbox360 to internet. At least got some good come out of this. So... guess what, the xbox360 COULD NOT CONNECT using the bridge! So now I had two problems, PC screwed up and Wireless bridge can't work! So I decided to call Meow, a computer expert (many more times than me) for help.

For the next 4 hours (until 2.30pm) I pretty much went through solving all the problems with him. Firstly was my PC. Apparently, some driver somewhere was screwed up. Possibly by the stupid programme which I had run earlier to configure the bridge. So, Meow told me to uninstall the network adaptor and also reset my system bios. After going through step by step with him, my PC stopped doing weird stuff. It;s been 2 hours since the PC problem was solved, so right now, I think things are back to normal for the PC. PHEW! (x10000000 times). Frankly, I hate PC problems. It was 'fun' debugging it when I was much much younger but no more for me. I simply want a PC that works. Nothing else.

So onto the Wireless bridge. Over the 2 odd hours, Meow brought me through various configurations. I was moving the bridge from the xbox to the router, editing settings on the xbox, editing settings on the bridge, checking the ip setup, pinging the bridge, testing the xbox live connections and it went on and on and on and on. Nothing seemed to work. Things got a little better here and there but it always ended up with the xbox360 not being able to connect to the network. First it was invalid IP address. Then it was invalid DNS. Sigh. Nothing seemed to work. After 2 hours of struggling, (and 2 hours of HANDPHONE CHARGE!) we gave up. It pretty much seemed as if the bridge was damaged. So after many apologies to Meow (who had to go to work in less than 6 hours!) I disconnected the call and sat facing the bridge and xbox360 with resignation. Perhaps it just wasn;t meant to be.

Well, I thought, it really can't be so impossible. So I decided to tinker a little more. Tried doing some stuff which Meow had brought me through earlier. Things still didn't get better. Then I went into the xbox website and searched through some help files and found that the bridge I bought WAS in the compatible list. So that was fine. Then, I noticed that the list stated clearly that the Firmware should be version 1.10. Now, Meow had told me much earlier on to check the firmware of the bridge. But I couldn't find it listed anywhere, so I told Meow that the bridge would probably work fine even without the latest firmware upgrade. So we left it at that. Well, in my desperatin, I decided, why not. So I went to the website, downloaded the firmware, upgraded it... and as fate would have it.... it finally worked. Yes. It FINALLY worked. Sigh. To think that all that time was wasted simply coz I didn't do the simplest of things... upgrade the firmware. AARRGGGHHHHH!

Like I said at the beginning of this post, sometimes, the solution is simply the simplest one. If only I had tried that earlier.

So that's that. 4 hours of horror. Actually, the bridge thing was just tedious. It was the PC thing which really killed me. Dear readers, please heed this warning. Don't mess with your PC unless you absolutely have to or unless you are a masochist who loves to listen to your PC suffer.

It shall be a long time before I do anything scary to my PC again.

So that is the sad tale of what happened. I was so looking forward to trying out some xbox360 games tonite. Guess that'll have to wait till tomorrow. Good nite. And I certainly hope for sweet dreams.

And here is my final set-up (with the PGR3 faceplate on the xbox360). I've basically connected it to my TV and my projector. My TV is not high-def but my projector is. So I guess it all depends on what I want to play and WHEN I want to play it (projector works best at night). I'm a little irritated with the shop. I wanted to buy the wireless adaptor so that I can connect to my Maxonline, but the stupid xbox salesguy told me, "Premium Pack no need... the box say can connect to xbox live already." I mean, of course lar, it can connect using the cable lar. But to do it wirelessly, I need the adaptor what. Funny thing is, this fella is supposed to be the xbox sales guy lor, wearing official t-shirt and all that. Aiya, decided not to argue with him. Anyway, go buy from my usual game shop got discount. Stupid guy.

Here's everything that's in the box. I liked the fact that they've even provided energizer batteries for the wireless controller. Not some cheapo brandless batteries. It's little things like this that count. The huge chunk you see on the left is the infamous 'power brick'. It's no wonder the xbox360 is smaller than the original xbox, they took out the whole brick! If you included the brick in the whole package, it's probably same weight and almost same size to the original xbox.

Here's what you get when you open the really heavy (but compact) box. A really neat package.

So here it is.. finally... The entire xbox360 VIP set. Comes with xbox Premium Set, additional wireless controller, 2 games (PGR3 and DOA4), PGR3 face plate & DOA posters.

It's already 1am on 15 March.. I've not received any email abt the 'secret' location for the XBOX360 launch. Looks like I'll have to collect my xbox360 on 16 March at the shop.

So sad...

Holidays are a nice time to catch up on the movies. Managed to catch two movies yesterday and today.

First up was The Shaggy Dog on Monday. Don't ask me why I decided to watch it. It's pretty much typical Disney fare. Feel good movie with stupid characters. It's basically about how some unethical corporation captures this 300 yr old dog and tries the use genetics to find out the secret to its long life. Of course, Tim Allen starts off as this corporate stooge and then, after he is bitten, he is changed miraculously into a dog. As usual, he learns more about his family through the dog's eyes then through his own eyes.

Predictable storyline. Not very interesting characters. But Tim Allen does bring in some laughs here and there. So to me, this is a CAN WATCH IF YOU REALLY NEED SOMETHING TO WATCH. If not, just give it a miss.



Went to Plaza Singapore today. I was hoping to watch eithe Munich or Transamerica but either the timings were wrong (too late) or not showing at all. So I ended up watching Nanny McPhee.

Compared to Shaggy Dog, this This movie is certainly much better and more watchable. Again, this is supposed to be based on a series of children books so please dun expect deep, engaging storylines. The story is straight-forward enough. Kids lose mother-father ignores kids-kids become uncontrollable-father can't find nanny-nanny macphee shows up out of nowhere-transforms the kids-helps father express feelings-happily ever after. Yep, that's the story in a nutshell. The movie has its funny moments. Top of my list is the scene with the dancing donkey. Yes, you heard me right, a dancing donkey. It's not exactly a special effects extravaganza but the effects are passable. One thing which irritated me at the end was they never explained who/what is Nanny McPhee. This is definitely a CAN WATCH. If you are looking for something lighthearted and not deep, then this movie is for you.



Yeah, so that's that. I'm still hoping to catch Munich or Transamerica (if there is a suitable show time.) These two serious-er movies should be a good balance to the two movies above....

Some of you may have heard that there was this drive by some major supermarkets to get Singaporeans to buy reusable bags and use them in place of plastic bags.

Well, I was at Cold Storage today and I saw the reusable bags on sale. So, in a moment of environmental friendliness, I decided to buy one. The bag was a foldable one, no large than a cough mixture bottle.

So i picked up the little package and went to the cashier to make my purchase. Imagine my surprise when the cashier looked at me and said, "Would you like a bag for that?". Talk about contradictions....

Xbox360 Preorder

Went down to pay for my xbox360 pre-order today. Here's what I got in return for paying up earlier... a cardboard sleeve with the words 'JUMP IN' on one side a cyptic 'You'll receive an invitation to the launch on 15 March at a SECRET location' on the other. Heh.. so exciting... just another 4 days to the release!
front (or back if you think that front is the back and the back is the front)

back (or front if you prefer the back to be the front and the front to be the back)

Went to the IT show today. The newspapers had reported that the organizers had increased the corridor widths this year and I'm glad to say there certainly is an improvement from previous years. I arrived at about 1pm and surprisingly, the crowd wasn't as bad as I'd expected it to be. But by the time I left at about 5pm, some areas, especially at the back of the halls on the 6th floor were really packed.

Plenty of LCD monitors were on sale. Prices were pretty good. I must say that at some point in time, I was quite tempted to get myself a new 20 inch LCD monitor. Thankfully, I did not give in to my yearnings... partly due to the fact that I have to pay for my xbox 360 arriving pretty soon.

Instead, I bought plenty of little stuff:

- a 1 Gb Memory stick pro duo for my PSP/Handphone. At $86, it's really quite cheap. Glad that the prices of memory stick pro duo have been dropping.
- a MS Pro Duo card reader. I had thought of buying a new 1 Gb imation thumbdrive for $92, but decided that getting a MS Pro Duo card together with a reader would be more practical since I could use the card together with my PSP/HP.
- an XD card to compactflash convertor. I've been looking for this for a while coz my mom uses a camera which uses XD card. Without the convertor, she can't print photos using my photo printer. It's been quite hard to find, so I'm pretty glad to find it at the show.
- Speedball. This $10 buy was an impulse buy. It's two half-spheres which attach to the bottom of the laptop so that it lifts the back of the laptop up from the table top. Supposed to help the laptop remain cooler and also allows easy sliding of the laptop on table tops.
- a $9.90 Philips earphone. Lost my earphone for my DS. Needed a cheap one to replace it.

yeah, that's about it. ok lar, didn't spend so much. But quite please with my buys.

Tonight, I watched Fearless (starring Jet Li) on DVD. Quite a good movie. Missed it in the cinemas. The fighting is certainly up to Jet Li's standard and I thought the story is pretty ok. Not fantastic lar, in fact, kinda cliched. But come on, you don't watch a Jet Li movie expecting some deep thoughtful storyline lar.

Quite a few movies to watch. Hope to catch some this march holz.

I just had one of the weirdest and most disturbing dreams ever.

Basically, the whole dream was about me accusing my mother of how she had ruined my life! Oh wow... it's really strange. Maybe I've watched too many of those movies with scenes of deranged criminals being psycho-analysed...

The dream is fading, but what i remember was that I was looking for new courses to attend. I was checking out schools which offer post-graduate programmes. I was looking at this school with some sort of recruitment centre in a row of shop houses and as I peered into the school, no one seemed interested in serving me. All had deadpan faces, staring at their computers & files. (btw, for some strange reason, in my dream, there was distinctly a lego shop just a few steps away from this recruitment centre. Maybe a sign for me to go get some lego?)

I decided to give the place a miss and walked away. As I turned the corner, I noticed the back door open, so I entered to see if I could find out more info about the courses. I realised that I had entered into some living quarters, and it turns out to be like a senior professor. He asks me to take a seat and after a short chat, I realise that he knows me! Then he tells me that he is in some prayer group where my mom has asked them to pray for me. And that's when I started letting it all out.

I was angry that my mother had broken up my relationship with a non-chinese girl when I was young... I was angry that despite the fact that we were innocent, my mom had confronted the girl... then I let out that I had tried taking drugs coz I was fed up with the way she had handled things in my life... and, oh wow... it was a huge sob fest! Before any of you start raising your eyebrows, these things NEVER happened in real life.

Some time as I was like losing totally control, I (as in all dreams) woke up.

It was seriously weird.

It even takes beats the dreams when I dreamt I was Ultraman. (those dreams were much more pleasant).

Wonder if there is any significance to the dream.... maybe some subconscious frustrations? hmmmmm

Sec 1 GEP Camp's over.

Rest.

IT show has started but I didn't go today coz Camp just ended and I can't go tmr coz of track n field. So, that only leaves Saturday and Sunday... KILLER days for going to an IT show. Sigh.

Oh yah, I finally pre-ordered my XBOX360. It's gonna be released next Thursday, so I'm really looking forward to it. Actually, it's not that I'm excited about the XBOX360.. I think it's more the fact that it's a new console. So far, the games on the 360 dun look so hot. In fact, I can't really think of any game I'm really looking forward to playing. So... it's pretty obvious I'm getting it simply coz it's the newest thing... yeah.. extravagant...

I'm looking forward more the the DS Lite. It's looking good. Dunno when it'll be released in Singapore.

Well, wateva it is, it's the March holz. Phew. One quarter of the year gone, another three quarters to go!

Underworld: Evolution (M18)

Went to watch Underworld: Evolution today.



Frankly, I thought the movie was not bad. It's certainly not an award-winning show, but as far as action/fantasy/vampire/werewolf movies go, I thought it was quite ok.

The storyline is a little convoluted. Takes a while to understand who betray who, who killed who, why they killed who, etc, etc. But if you don't try too hard to understand it, it should be ok.

The action is similar to the first movie. Fairly coolish fighting. But this time round, the M18 goes partly to the really violent killings. Plenty of slicing off half the head, hands bursting through chest, tearing of jaws, etc, etc. Maybe I'm desensitized, or maybe the whole movie's a bit fantasy... I didn't find it very disturbing.

The other half of the M18 went into some... intimate scenes. Well, if you ask me, they weren't very necessary. I guess sex sells, but sometimes, it's like, if you don't need to show the whole nekkid thing... then dun lor.

Effects were ok. Plenty of human to werewolf transformations.

Unfortunately, I think most of you won't be able to watch it at the cinemas. So no point recommending it.. but on the whole, I thought it was quite enjoyable (which contradicts most reviews which only give it like 2 stars out of 5. Guess I simply look at movies differently.)

Term 1 is almost over, but things aren't easing up. The week ahead's gonna be a real busy one.

Tue to Thu: Sec 1 GE Camp
This is my third Sec 1 GE Camp in three years... Heh... Sec 1 teacher for three years in a row. Have mixed feelings. Camp is fun and there are interesting things planned. But... it is my third camp... a bit jaded...

Tue: Presentation to some MOE people
There's also a presentation that I have to help prepare to give to some MOE people on Tuesday afternoon. Means I have to miss part of the GE Camp. Lots to prepare... little done... coz most of the time taken up with GE camp prep so far.

Fri: Track & Field
OK lar, this one doesn't really involve me since I'm not in charge or anything. But it is gonna be a long day... Will probably end around 6-plus. What a long day to end the term! This is the first year we're having it in RJC. Would be interesting to see how things turn out.

Looking forward to some RnR (Rest 'n Relaxation) after that.

Sigh, gonna miss 3 days of WoW. Dun think there is any wireless reception at Sembawang (heh!) so no point bringing my laptop.

Here's to surviving the week!

Here's a pic of my dear form class. Looks like a really lively and energetic bunch eh? I cannot believe the singing and noise that went on in the bus on the way there! But honestly, I do like the high energy level.. just hope they use it to keep the class lively and know when to really keep it in control.

So here's to a hopefully an exciting year with 1M... ;-)


(PS. 1M-ers... if u want to see a few more pics, or download a high-res version of the pic, click on my album on the right.)