a beautiful year ahead

2007 will be a challenging year; no doubts about it.

But I just can't wait to give 2007 a swift kick in the arse and nail that one year that may very well change my life forever and possibly determine my future career(and family *sniffs*) life.

Here's a toast to a beautiful and great year ahead!

Cheers!

blogger beta does wonders

If you have a blog hosted on Blogger.com, make sure you run over right now and activate the Blogger Beta service. It's so easy and stable to use. Even someone like me, who is artistically deficit can come up with some sort of template like this. Just click a few buttons here and there and Blogger Beta does it all.

It even has NewsFeed function(check the bottom of the sidebar), although I had to settle with Reuters' News because I couldn't find the RSS link for BBC News. (Psst.. for the record, I DON'T LIKE REUTERS)


"We shall now return to your scheduled programming."

hahaha

*tickle* *tickle* *tickle*



Hahahahahaha....

the greatest magic trick of all time

"For a few brief minutes, I strive to pull off my greatest trick of all: to make them forget they are ill."

- Daniel Sokol

I just read an article on BBC(link: here) about a guy who does magic in hospital and he calls himself a Medical Ethicist. I find the article that he wrote very interesting because it spoke to me in a pretty deep way.

It's no secret that I do magic. A lot. And I always try my best to offer to do a bit of tricks here and there, at children shows, etc.. etc... but I never seem to really put my thought into why I want to spend my time doing these things. Reading that article that I mentioned above sort-of opened up 'something' in my heart. I can't really put a finger to it but as I think about that little moment of joy that I can put into someone's life, it makes all the effort worth it.

So, I urge all of you, YF-ers(if you're reading this at all), who are involved with the Christmas Outreach Program to think carefully about what you will be doing for the kids this coming 17th as well as Christmas.

Cheers!

that school of thought

I remember this thing that I said last year when I had to skip DNA '05 (Petronas...! *waves fist*) but went for ESP4, in the end:

It doesn't matter what camp you go to if your intention is to learn from what God wants to teach because camps are just a premise for a person to learn. So, even if I missed DNA '05, God used ESP 4 to teach me new things. In fact, even if I didn't go for ANY camps, I will still learn what God WANTS me to learn because if He wants me to learn, He's going to teach that to me any how.

In short, that's pretty much what came up to me last year and I thought, "Since I only get to go for 1 camp this year(2005), I hope next year(2006) won't be worse."


Yeah... right. Me and my big... uh... thinking inner monologue. *cross arms*

routine

This is my routine for the 17th December show. It's a short one. 15 minutes, maybe?

1. Is this yours?
2. 3 ropes become 1
3. My favourite card trick
4. Burger King
5. Escaping shackles

Yes...yes... I'm late by 28 minutes but hey, I was busy! Reaaally!

tomorrow

Tune in tomorrow into this blog as I reveal the routines which I will be performing for YA's Christmas Outreach Program.

Well, not "reveal" as in showing you how it's done but "reveal" as in you know, let you know what I'm doing.

No, this is not a marketing ploy to get more people into this blog. No, really, no!

Just tune in tomorrow, dang-it!













Notice how I didn't mention what time? So that you will keep refreshing this page *wink*

humbled 24/7

For the pass 72 hours, I've done almost a million(overly exaggerated, of course!) insanely stupid things(not-so-overly exaggerated, though...) and I'm tearing my hair over it constantly. So, what does that mean? Well... that means, I'm reminded daily that I'm a HUMAN and I make mistakes; although sometimes it may seem as if I make more than an average human being. Still, God, I know You are there. You can't hide. Even if You could(I'm sure You can), why would You do that? No.. don't say, "Why not?"... :-/

Plus, that ever growing list of TO-DO things are growing(magic show, I'm looking at you), which means more time will be spent at home doing things that I should be doing AWAY from the computer.

I did a major hardware overhaul of my PC though. It will probably last me another 2-3 years and that would be enough before I go off on my studies somewhere. My new rig, dubbed The RIGGED DOOM:

AMD Athlon 64 3000+
Asus M2V AM2 Motherboard
1GB Kingston PC5300 667mhz DDR2 SDRAM
256MB Asus EN7300GE with TurboCache (which bumps the video memory to 512MB)
Cooler Master Centurion 5 Case with 380W PSU
40GB Maxtor HDD
Creative SoundBlaster Live! Value

It's....cool. But too bad wireless internet refuse to work on the machine for some reason and I need to call up Chipsoft to help me out on this.

Cheers!

away

Will be on holiday for a while soon.

See you all when I see you soon.

derren brown

This man makes things look like real magic. But actually, it isn't. It can all be done with cold reading, hypnosis and/or NLP.

DISCLAIMER: Some of the videos may be a bit mentally disturbing. Nope, no gore or sex or any sort of things like that. It just makes your brain go 'hoo-hoo' for a bit.

Derren Brown put a guy who's playing a zombie video game into a trance and then literally put him on a 'film set' as if what he was playing is happening in real life:


Do you REALLY want that as a gift? Think again.



How some people get scammed easily:


There are a lot more but these three stuck out the most, for me.

metaphor

Think about this strange metaphor that I thought of to myself one day:

I am Canada.
Everyone around me is United States of America.

Canada =! America




p/s: This is purely stereotypical point of view.

MPPPU Annual Dinner 2006!

The dinner this year was a success, I would say. Heck, even the principal thinks so too, which is great, because MPPPU would always catch flak from the school about the dinner over the students' dressing/performances. The board did a great job and here are some pics taken by the camera man of the night, Woon Cherk:


Our MCs of the day: Daniel and Ming Ying. Much thanks to them for helping out although they are not on the board.


Kah Arng performed 3 songs on the harmonica(hence the mic-in-mouth pic) with his brother Kah Shiuan, Danny and Isaac as his..uh.. dancers.


Left to right: Me, Kah Shiuan, Miss Neo, Shi Yin, Pei Ni
(Shi Yin and Pei Ni are on the board this year...)


This is my friend, Mohan S, who can dance like Michael Jackson really well. He is a very nice person and very polite too.


L-R: Mdm. Yeoh(Daniel's mum), Iz, Dan, Me, Mdm. Chan


The opening ceremony, headed by the principal. Note to self: Gong was LOUD.


Presenting...the Love Hummers! It was the 3rd time this year that we performed together in school.


Group photo of the incoming and outgoing board of directors for MPPPU.


Here's Kah Shiuan performing the school song on harmonica. If you look closely, you can see almost everyone standing in respect of the school song.


After the dinner.


Clockwise: Dan, Iz, Me, Cheng Yee, Wei Leong


Camera man of the night, Woon Cherk, who dressed like someone from the China Press or something.


L-R: Kah Arng, Me, Kah Shiuan. Pardon the 'drunk' look on my face. No, I wasn't drunk and I didn't drink :D


Presenting... the new Board of Directors of MPPPU 2006/07!

staffroom politics

I absolutely marvel at staffroom politics. To be honest, I'm very disappointed that educators whom the students should look up to are fighting amongst themselves over petty things and bringing their little fights/misunderstandings/arguments/back-stabbing/brain-stabbing/eyeball-gouging to the students.

It just HAVE to be today. A day where many things didn't go as well as I would like them to.

Anyway, Teacher X came and asked me how I invite teachers for the MPPPU Annual Dinner(oh, pics will be up soon!). I thought I was gonna get a lecture on why did I forget to invite her(she wasn't on our invitation list because we're inviting only the senior teachers for each subjects); but boy, was I dead wrong. She came and asked me why did Teacher Y go. Now, Teacher X and Teacher Y both have a long standing feud over some sort of misunderstanding or whatever for a long time already and half the school already know about it. Anyway, I explained to her that Teacher Y paid the full amount of ticket to be there with the students(only invited teachers get it for free). So, somehow she got jealous and she left me with this line, "Since you said you're only inviting senior teachers, then why is Teacher Y there?" and then walked off.

Goes without saying that I was fuming for a while.

Anyway, that's between them and I shouldn't take part in their melee.