Finally arrived! My New Lego!

Yep! It's finally here, my new Lego Y-Wing Attack Starfighter. This ain't no puny new model which is being sold in the Lego shops right now. This has a respectable 1473 pieces of plastic lego fun!

Ordered it straight from the US coz the Singapore collectors were selling it for way over 300 bucks. Gonna find an auspicious day to start building it.

Interested in Delicacies?

Saw this ad in the classifieds. Wonder what are DELICATED teachers? Some kind of delicacy?

The Illusionist

It is almost expected that this movie will be compared to The Prestige (starring Hugh-wolverine-Jackman and Christian-Batman-Bale). Both are about magicians in, uh, oldish times. heh. But, that is pretty much where the similarity ends.

While The Prestige is basically about two magicians trying to outdo each other and find out the secrets of each other's magic tricks, The Illusionist is about a magician trying to get back together with his gal who is (of course) engaged to the unreasonable prince.

The Illusionist stars Edward Norton who is one of my favourite actors. I've had a huge respect for him ever since I saw him in Primal Fear (if you've not watched this, go look for the vcd, it's an excellent detective movie). He doesn't disappoint in this movie. While he usually plays some psychotic character, he shows a tender side this time.

This movie isn't so concerned with telling you how the magic tricks are done. Instead, some of the tricks do look like they are magic. But the director doesn't try to tell you whether they are really magic or not. Instead, he basically concentrates on how Edward Norton tries to get back together with this girl whom he was separated from in his teen-years coz she was rich and he was poor. There's this evil prince who gets in their way (as always) and well... the rest is pretty much what you need to watch to discover.

Good movie. A mix of fantasy and detective mystery. But don't expect alot of action.

Apocalypto

Ok, I've been lazy again. Have caught a couple of movies but due to World of Warcraft, I'm ashamed to say I've not kept up with my movie blogging. So here are some quick updates.

I liked Apocalypto. Basic story is: small happy village (with perverted sense of humour) gets ravaged by warriors from the 'advanced' mayan city. man saves wife and child by hiding them in a dried-up well. Man then gets dragged to mayan city but then he has to escape to go back to get his wife (who is very pregnant) and kid out of the well before they get drowned by water filling up in well coz of rain.

Yep, that's the main gist of the story.

Plenty of action and bloody scenes. Mel Gibson doesn't hold back on the brutality of the ancient fighting scenes. There are impalings, beheadings, arrowings, slicings, etc, etc, all in full bloody goodness. Not many sex/nude scenes except for some glances at the tribal women who were topless. But then again, that wouldn only be 'exciting' for those of you who find your cheap thrills from National Geographic documentaries.

The characters are likeable, especially with names like Jaguar Paw and Turtles Run. Because Mel Gibson doesn't really use big familiar hollywood names, you kinda feel more for the characters coz they feel more down to earth.

Two main problems I had though.

1. They didn't really show much about the mayan city other than the scenes in the middle of the movie. So, I was a bit disappointed coz I had expected a movie which showcased more about the mayan culture and also about why they mysteriously disappeared from the face of the earth.

2. There's this chase scene in the movie that went on and on... they ran (both pursuers and the pursued) for almost 24 hours non-stop... I know adrenaline can keep people going, but 24 hours? Seems to be stretching it a little.

On the whole, good movie. Very enjoyable and didn't feel like 2 hours at all.

Coincidental meetings

This past weekend has been a weekend of coincidences. Quite nice to bump into some old friends/aquaintences.

On Friday, went with my bother to catch The Illusionist at Junction 8. Well, i guess if I'm gonna go Bishan, it's kinda expected that I'd bump into people I know. After the movie (which was quite good), saw two sec 3 prefects in Long John Silver. Must admit that I do miss working with the prefects. Living a life of carefree-nojobness is so contrasting to working in RI.

On Saturday, met up with some friends for lunch at Takashimaya. After lunch, went to Kinokuniya (my all-time favourite bookshop) and as I was browsing, I met two former students. Students from almost 10 years ago. One's taking a course in university, another is starting work as a systems engineer. It's really nice to see these students doing pretty well in life. I mean, they weren't exactly in a top or even average school. I believe that school was in the bottom percentile in terms of school rankings. Guess it's like they say, these are the rewards of being a teacher.

On Sunday evening, had a very pleasant surprise when a friend from my Secondary School days (yes, you read it right, my SECONDARY SCHOOL days) suddenly dropped by my house! We were pretty good pals in school coz we were classmates and he stayed near my place so we went to school together and kinda did our projects together as well. Since JC, we only met occasionally when we bumped into each other in Serangoon Gardens. I think the last time I met him was.. uh... more than 10 yrs ago? Probably closer to 20... Anyway, we had a good time catching up. He's teaching in St. Andrew's, so of course, I'm wondering if that's somewhere I should work towards, going back to serve in my alma mater.

All in, a very interesting weekend. One thing I am enjoying about this period of nojobness is being able to catch up with some friends which I rarely meet up with. It's sad that when I was bz working, these kinda things usually take a second place. Guess it all boils down to priorities.

Dreams again

Oh my goodness, think I might need serious help. Just woke up from a dream where I had secret access to a lego van (kinda like a special lego shop on wheels) which sold super exclusive lego sets. The van stopped at a certain bus stop where I clamoured with a few others to buy the special lego sets.

In my dream, I gawked at lego sets featuring robots and ships from the Babylon 5 TV series... (I'm guessing most of you blog readers probably won't have seen this series, but I loved it. One of the first and best series to launch the multi-episodic arc style of current sci-fi programmes.) One of the lego sets which I was drooling at was the Starfury and some mechs which looked liked the ones from Aliens. Then I had the salesguy from the van say something like the robot costs US$250 coz it's a collector's item while the ship costs US$55 coz it was still in production. Lolz... I seriously need help.






The Babylon 5 Starfury









I'm actually waiting for a Star Wars Y-wing Ultimate Collection Edition to arrive. Ordered it from the US about 2 weeks ago and I've been eagerly waiting for it. Here's a pic of what it looks like. Isn't it drool-worthy?

WoW - Burning Crusade Launch

I just got back from the launch of Burning Crusade at Suntec. I think it was a really lousy launch for such a popular game. Asiasoft should fire their events management company or Blizzard should fire Asiasoft for making such a mess out of the launch.













Firstly, hundreds of people turned up for the launch. I know WoW is popular but I admit I was surprised at the number of people who turned up for the launch. What you see in the first pic is probably just 1/3 of the crowd! The others snaked all the way out of suntec towards Millenia Walk. Why was the launch such a failure? It can be broken down into three reasons.

1. Utter disrespect for the intelligence of WoW players. They actually used a low-class amatuerish MAGIC SHOW for the launch!! In the second pic, they had a pseudo-hot babe come up with some stupid mask and start swinging two little fireballs! And she was so amatuerish she almost hurt herself at the end! (Though it would probably had been more interesting if she had hurt herself.)

Then they had this guy dressed in some stoopid alliance-looking paper armour come up waving a wand and then shooting out some sparklers! OMG! Did they think we were 4-year olds?!! Then the girl comes out again swinging some sword like an ultra-noob. Then they attempt a magic trick! The Fake-Armour-Guy (ie. FAG) puts some contraption around his neck and the girl inserts the flexible sword into the contraption... Ooooooooooooh! So magical! NOT!

Then the FAG received a 'quest' from some big shot from Asiasoft and then proceeds to put a little preorder card into a supposedly glass case. Then he covers the case with a cloth and when he removes it... VOILA!!! A ULTRA-BIG EMPTY BURNING CRUSADE BOX!!! So exciting!!! Confetti guns go off! And Glenn Ong makes a fool of himself. Sigh.











2. Totally inefficiency of the event staff. You have hundreds of people at the launch. A pretty successful launch if you asked me. They had a huge long counter (as you can see in the last picture). Wanna guess how many groups of people were doing the exchange of the pre-order cards for the game? ONE! ONE FRICKING GROUP! And they had other staff either standing around or wheeling in new stocks... yeah.. you have a mountain of boxes of WoW, but what's the point when you only have one exchange counter! The queue moved so slowly and I just could not believe that no one took the initiative to organize the people into more exchange counters.













3. Lousy event planning skills. Can you imagine having such a huge event and having no instructions anywhere? I was quite keen to see what this Onyxia's Challenge and dunno what Wheel of something was about but guess what, there were no instructions anywhere! So no one knew what to do with whatever they got. I received two cards with plenty of icons and two sheets of stickers. Uh.. SO WHAT!? There weren't even any instructions on the cards. I looked around, went near the wheel and the Onyxia board... nothing! Wonderful. Makes you want to take the cards and stuff them down the throats of the organizers (and Glenn Ong, who was a lousy emcee).

I couldn't believe how hopeless the whole situation was. I decided to go off to Funan for a walk and returned about 1.5 hours later. And guess what... there was still only ONE counter. Well, thankfully the queue was a little shorter so after about 30mins, I finally got my hands on the new Burning Crusade.

It's quite an irony. On one hand, it's great to see a launch event like this in Singapore. Really shows that we are becoming a little more savvy when it comes to product launches. But when you see how poorly the whole thing was put together, I kinda wished all they had were a row of counters to efficiently exchange the cards for the games instead of all the embarassing festivities.

Nintendo Wii is supposed to be launched in Singapore soon. Hope they do a much better job than this.

Shameless Begging

Dear friends & readers,

I would like to make a shameless appeal to you to VOTE FOR ME.

Yes, I am sad to say I have succumbed to the world of popularity competitions. I've entered my movie reviews into a movie blog competition by Golden Village. If I win, I get a 6 mth VIP movie pass for two!! Free movies for 6 months!!

Now, many of you know my sad jobless state... so please vote for me & get your friends to vote too! Votes only cost $0.20... much much much cheaper than voting for Singapore Idol or Project Superstar. I think you get a chance to win some Tommy Hilfiger sunglasses.

Simply type:

MOS(space)(NRIC)(space)(GENDER)(space)5

eg. MOS S1234567A M 5

and send the sms to 73300

Closing date is 31 Jan.

You can view the contest site here: http://www.moviesonspaces.com/

My spaces movie blog site is: http://exzekestencemovies.spaces.live.com/

Thanks!

Spelling boo-boo

Heh.. looks like GV (or their distributor) needs to look for someone who can check their spelling better.

Saw this display for 'Beatrix Potter' at GV Plaza.

Fast Food Nation

Gonna keep this review short coz I'm feeling bored. Rainy weather is such a put-downer.

I was disappointed with FFN. It didn't have quite the effect as compared to Super Size Me. I think it tries to shock with the gory scenes of cattle being slaughtered and it tries to anger with the scenes of how the illegal immigrants were exploited. But as a whole, I didn't find the movie very funny or enjoyable.

I started looking at my watch after about 30mins, wondering how much longer.

Sorry, despite many good reviews, I'm gonna say give this one a miss unless you're some huge environmentalist or fast food hater.

The Queen

Heh heh.. you can see that I'm running out of movies to watch. I mean, I'm actually watching The Queen... a british-type movie.

To be frank, I was deciding between The Queen and Fast Food Nation and though I was leaning towards FFN, TQ was showing about 30mins earlier and I didn't really want to hang around waiting for FFN to start. So, I bought a ticket and went in, not having much expectations.

I am surprised to say I actually enjoyed the movie! TQ is basically about how Queen Elizabeth II handled Princess Diana's death. It tries to tell the story behind why she behaved the way she did.

For such a serious subject matter, there were actually quite a few laughs in the movie. Most of them come from the behaviour of the royalty as well as the wimpy Prince Charles. I don't know if it's intentional but seeing how the royalty had to behave the way they did was quite funny. But the movie does manage to show that royalty or not, they are also still humans.

The actress playing Queen Elizabeth II (Helen Mirren) does a pretty good job of showing a queen who is conflicted with having to carry the weight of the monarchy as well as being the type of queen the people expected her to be.

Anyone who knows me knows how I quite dislike british type movies. I must say this one was quite enjoyable. So, if you are looking for something funny yet with some emotional depth (unlike Borat), this movie should do a decent job.

iPhone competitor

Wow... less than 24 hours and it's in the net that there is another touch-style phone coming from LG. Apparently LG came out with this phone first so the rumour is, they might sue Apple!! haha, let the phone wars begin!

Pan's Labyrinth

Pan's Labyrinth, PL (heh.. same initials as my name... uh, not relevant, but dun care), has received many glowing reviews in movie websites and magazines. So is it really that good? or is it just some foreign arty arty film?

Well, first off, this movie is in Spanish. So you have to READ the subtitles to make sense of what's happening. This probably already puts off a good number of you. heh.

The movie has two main story lines, (1) the fairy tale of a girl who is supposed to be a lost princess finding her way back to her kingdom and (2) the story of a girl (the same one) caught in the middle of a civil battle together with a mother and step-father. During the whole movie, the director switches from one story line to the other. As usual, I'm not gonna try to be arty farty about my review. The simple question is, nice to watch or not?

PL is not particularly exciting. But, it has a strange way of keeping my eyes glued to the screen. The fantasy characters the director created are quite interesting. Special mention goes to the monster with his eyes in the palm of his hands. It's quite a scary scene but not nearly violent or horrifying enough. Interestingly, the scariest parts of the movies are actually those which were supposedly rooted in reality, what was happening in the 'real world'. Other than the brutal killing scenes, there is the torture scene which really makes you squirm in your seat. You don't see the process. Just the prelude and the end. The worst scene involves a knife in a person's mouth. I think you get the picture.

So, is PL good? I think if you don't like foreign films, this one will not do much for you. But if you are open to them, PL does have an interesting story to tell. The ending feels a little rushed. But on the whole, you do leave the cinema feeling like you've just gone for a nice ride.

How I'm passing time

A quick update on my life. It's 10 Jan and yes, I'm still jobless. Sniff. Sounds pathetic. I've sent out a few job applications and the difficult part is waiting for the replies. It doesn't help that all these companies don't tell you if you have not been shortlisted. They always have this 'Only shortlisted candidates will be notified' clause in their advert. It's really quite irritating. (1) You don't know if they are still considering you or not and (2) you don't even know if they've received your application (esp when I prefer using email then snail mail).

So what am I doing in the meantime?

1. watching movies. many movies. (hence the many movie reviews on my blog)
2. building lego (i'm addicted to lego star wars. very expensive hobby.)
3. gaming (mostly on my DS-Castlevania, Portrait of Ruin and Gamecube-Zelda)
4. catching up on some reading. (I've finished re-reading the last 2 Harry Potter books.)
5. mall-visiting (this is kinda like a natural by-product of watching movies. What to do, cinemas are in malls what...)
6. jigsaws. (just completed a 1000-piece puzzle of Howl's Moving Castle. Quite impressed with myself coz it had plenty of single colour pieces to sort through)

7. blogging/surfing

Yeah, I know to some of you, this sounds like life. It's fun for a while but it also gets boring. Having no income is even worse, especially with the Wii and PS3 launching very soon.

So that's it what I've been up to. Hoping to get a job by the end of the month...

New iPhone

Finally, the new apple iPhone.

Likes:
1. Really cool design. Thin & widescreen.
2. New multi-touch system. No keyboard / number pad / click wheel.
3. Gorgeous screen.
4. Wifi & Quad-band

Dislikes:
1. Only 8Gb
2. Can't directly access iTunes from phone. Must use computer.
3. Can't download wirelessly from computer. Silly, since the phone has bluetooth & Wifi.
4. Released in Asia only in 2008!

Wish:
They would release a video ipod with these features, minus the phone, with larger hard disk.

The Arena

I just saw the new debate show, The Arena, and it was interesting that Loyang Secondary was up against Raffles Institution. Looking at the three debaters from RI, I thought they were a pretty competent trio since I've had the chance to work with them before. But I have to say that at the end, I have to agree with the final results. Personally, delivery-wise, I think RI edged out Loyang with their calmer disposition, but Loyang weren't thrashed coz I thought they fought back with more charisma and fire. RI also seemed to deliver a more steady argument. But I felt that the point which really tipped the scales is that Loyang controlled the fight. From the beginning to the end, RI seemed to only be in defence mode and allowed Loyang to dictate the arguments. Honestly, the motion would make it seem that RI should have an easy fight. But instead of piling on the offensive, they chose to keep picking up after the Loyang team. So, disappointed as I may be with results, I do think Loyang deserved to win this one.

As for the new format, I think it's an interesting step forward but it might get tedious to hear the judges talk every single round, simply coz I dun think the judges are really saying much. This is the age of 'instant-criticism' a-la-american idol/project superstar/so you think you can dance/etc, so I guess it's only natural for TCS to take the same route. But I don't know if it's effective if the judges aren't more interesting. The other thing is this messy button mashing. It seems like a really stupid system which the debaters can't really get the hang of. I think that the technical team should come up with a simpler system. Why must the debater hit his own button if the opposing team wants to rebut? It's should be piece of cake to design a system where one press can stop the debater's timer and start the rebutter's and vice-versa. Last but not least, and this is the most irritating point, why on earth is the results show 30mins later, after the news!? That's just plain stupid. It takes no more than a minute to announce the results and here we have to sit through a recap of the debate which just ended barely 30mins ago. Come on, surely the viewers aren't such a forgetful lot?

Well, there appears to be a 'Wild Card' round. Talk about being a copy cat. Oh well, at least that means RI has a chance to come back.

I WANT!!!

OMG... I just saw this on gizmodo.com, it's an actual home projector! The projector is hidden inside R2-D2 which is apparently half the actual size of the original and the remote control is in the shape of the Millennium Falcon!

It's so useless... it's cool!

Blood Diamond

I enjoyed this movie. The story was pretty interesting and there was sufficient action and drama to keep my eyes glued onto the screen.

There are three main stories intertwined together in this movie. One story is about the civil war in South Africa and how the people suffered. The next is how blood diamonds are farmed and used to buy weapons for the war. And the third story is basically about a father searching for his family through the war. Of course, there is the obligatory love story between Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Connelly. Thankfully, this is quite a minor story and doesn't really feature strongly in the movie. Given it's subject matter, the movie is pretty violent. Plenty of killing, blood, hand chopping, senseless slaughter.

All the actors do a pretty believable job in the movie. Leonardo is pretty convincing as the conflicted diamond smuggler and Djimon Hounsou is excellent as father searching for his family. Of course, Leonardo is still trying hard to shake off his teenage image and while he succeeds to some degree, I couldn't help but still think of him as a young guy. I think it's his face. He just has this boyish look, despite growing more facial hair.

For these kind of movies, I think the critical factor in deciding if it's any good is whether it manages to leave behind a message in your mind. For me, there were some very strong messages. (1) how senseless all the killing was in Sierra Leone. People killing each other, as if their lives were totally worthless. (2) how abhorrent the rebellion soldiers were in training children to become soldier who killed without a second thought. (3) how our ignorance in buying conflict diamonds continue to support these people in their senseless war.

If you are looking for a decent action movie with a social message attached, this is it. If you want to dissuade your girlfriend or fiance from getting a diamond ring (and going with something cheaper) this movie might be your lucky break.

Blood Diamond - Prelude

Before I write my thoughts on the movie, I'd like to say something about an irritating incident.

I first went to catch Blood Diamond at Suntec Eng Wah as they were screening it in digital format. I'm a big supporter of digital movies and try to watch them at a digital cinema where possible. So, I settled into my seat with my drink and as the movie started, I couldn't help but feel irritated coz the people were all the wrong size! For some reason, all the characters were stretched sideways, like when we try to watch normal TV programmes on a widescreen tv. At first, I tried to tolerate it but as the movie went on, it just felt wrong. I mean everyone in the movie, even the starved africans, were stretched sideways, making them look plump. So, I went up to the cinema staff to tell them that they'd probably made a mistake with the aspect ratio for the movie. I was then told by the manager that this was the way the movie was supposed to be screened! He said they had asked the distributor to come in to check it out in earlier and they had said it was correct. He then kinda suggested that perhaps I just wasn't used to this kind of filming. I was like... HUH? Since when would a director try to make an artistic statement by asking that his movie be screened in the wrong ratio? So, I asked for a refund and said I wasn't gonna spend money on a movie which was obviously in the wrong ratio. The redeeming point is that the manager willingly (not grudgingly) gave me a refund.

Well, today, I went to GV Grand to catch BD in normal film format and although there were the few irritating 'hairs' and 'scratches' on the screen, the movie was in perfect ratio. I have no idea what went wrong with Eng Wah's digital screening. My thoughts on the movie will be in the next post.

Confession of Pain

I am a Tony Leung fan so almost any movie with him will go down well with me. He was excellent in Infernal affairs and I think he does a great job again in Confession of Pain.

Tony Leung is kinda like the bad guy in this movie. Very early in the movie, we are already shown that he is the killer which Takeshi Kaneshiro must track down. The twist? The two of them are good friends. I'm not sure if this is the best way to tell this story. It might have been a little more interesting if it wasn't revealed that Tony Leung was the killer. Then it would have made for a nice revelation scene at the end. But I guess the writer preferred to dwell on how Takeshi discovers that Tony Leung is the killer.

Shu Qi played a real bimbo in this movie. Well, I guess you could argue if she was really 'playing' the role. Heh, it appears to be a pretty natural role for her. It was a little funny to see her play this kinda supporting role when she is supposed to be one of the bigger stars in Hong Kong.

One main complain is the LOUSY dubbing. This is one movie where I really wished they had used Tony Leung's original voice. The voice they chose was just wrong. It didn't fit Tony Leung at all and I found it very jarring. The tone was too high and he sounded too chirpy. Quite irritating.

Other than that, CoP is a pretty good movie. Personally, I don't think it comes close to Infernal Affairs but it's still pretty good. Then again, it might be pure biasness on my part since I am quite a Tony Leung Fan.

Borat

After staying at home for the whole of New Year's day fixing my jigsaw, I was quite happy when my friend messaged me at 10.30pm and asked if I wanted to catch a midnight show. We decided on Borat coz we weren't really in the mood for anything serious (like The Queen) or angsty (like Blood Diamond).

Borat is about this guy who impersonates a TV reporter from Kazakhstan and goes around the US making a documentary about life in the US. The thing is, all the people in the movie are real people who think they are actually talking to a TV reporter trying to learn about the US. They never knew they were being taken for a ride. And this Borat is basically an obnoxious guy who does unimaginably things like pooping into a plastic bag and bringing it to the dinner table as he doesn't know what to do with it. Check out this article on how the producers lied to these people & their reactions.

The movie makes fun of a wide spectrum of things: Jews, Christians, Etiquette trainer, humour coach, texas rodeo, gays, prostitutes, african americans, etc, etc. There's almost nothing Borat doesn't make fun of... which makes me wonder how our dear Singapore censors actually passed the movie. On one hand, I'm glad they've let such a movie through but on the other hand, I'm surprised they allowed such anti-semitic humour through knowing the kind of stand they make against racial humour.

OK, I guess the question is, is the movie funny. I will have to admit that I laughed my head off. But you know, it's kinda like guilty humour. You know it's really bad to laugh at such things yet as you watch it, you can't help but laugh coz it's just so stupid. So, my simple advice is, if you can't take politically incorrect humour then give this movie a miss. Some people feel that Borat is a very cruel joke which made fun of innocent people who were trying to be nice. Actually, that's quite true. He does come across as being quite cruel (esp one scene involving a nice old jewish couple who ran a bed & breakfast which they had stayed at). If you want to watch Borat, just make sure you aren't offended by such antics.

New Year Humbug!

2006's over and 2007 is here. Uh... I hate to be a killjoy, but... so what? Maybe it's age... I've just come to take 31 Dec & 1 Jan as any normal day. It's been like this for the last 2 or 3 years. This year, since I've been on a looooong break since September and I'm not gonna be starting work on 2 Jan, I'm even a little more bochup about this New Year holiday. What did I do on New Year's eve? Uh.. watch some tv, read a comic then went to bed. What did I do the whole of New Year's day? Heh... I started fixing a 1000-piece jigsaw which I'd bought a year ago but never got around to starting it. Not very celebratory.

I admit I was tempted to go Vivocity a few days ago but when I caught the telecast on Channel 5, I'm SO GLAD I gave up on that idea. It was really quite bad. Gurmit is such a turn-off for me. And when the show had mainly people like Hady & Jonathan & Taufik.... YAWN, I'd rather stay at home.

I was also tempted to go catch the fireworks at Marina Bay but I was quite put off by the fact that SBS/SMRT were only gonna extend their train hours to about 1.20am. That means there would be a mad rush for the train after the 8 min long fireworks display. Come on, it's New Year's Eve/Day, can't they even extend the hours to say 3 or 4am seeing that people tend to stay up on New Year's Eve to take part in the countdown? In my opinion, not much of a 'public transport service' to me. On TV, I must admit the fireworks display at Marina looked impressive.... that was until I saw the fireworks in Taipei, London & Sydney. In comparison, they made our fireworks look like the little sparks from a cigarette lighter. But ok lar, I guess compared to our ASEAN neighbours, we had a pretty good show.

So that's how the new year went for me. Pretty simple. Pretty lazy.

2006? Well, the biggest thing for me was of course my leaving the job which I'd stuck to the last 5.5 years. Leaving a job is always a big decision. There's always the sting of not having a paycheck for a couple of months. Then there's also the huge uncertainty of when I would get my next job. As a friend of mine said, the longer I stay away from work, the harder it is for me to get off my butt to start working again. It's been 4 months so I think it's really time I start doing some work. My savings aren't gonna last forever.

So, as is the custom for the new year, I shall make a resolution which I know I will definitely keep: I resolve to find a new job this year. :P heh. I'm pretty sure I won't break this one. Any others? Well, the usual ones that I know I will probably break, so I think there's not much point in mentioning them here.

So to everyone, have a happy 2007 and may you find happiness in whatever you do.