So I've been reading a lot of books on my Kindle... Getting the Kindle has helped me to reverse the trend of me browsing for books - both in the library and online, then borrowing/downloading the books, and then not reading them. Still, that only applies to the digital books...
I can't help snatching books off the book shelf in the library... But when I get home... There's so many other things vying for my time that I pretty much never get to the books. Plus these days, I'm getting lazy to bring books out to read... Either I read stuff on the phone or I'd take my Kindle...
Which brings me to the main point of this post. The procurement of eBooks.
I love the email system of the Kindle - you can set an email for your Kindle, and just mail the books to your Kindle. I personally use Calibre to organise my eBooks and mail them to my Kindle. It also can convert PDFs and ePUBs to the Kindle Mobi format. Doesn't work for all PDFs though, sometimes the resulting format is just unreadable.
But regarding the procurement...
Now that's just troublesome. It's even more troublesome for me to buy eBooks than to download illegal copies. Why? Because of location restrictions. Amazon doesn't sell eBooks in Singapore. Neither does Apple. You need complicated things like VPN to buy Kindle books from Amazon. Apple? It's even worst. You need a US payment method - credit card or debit card - before they let you download anything from the US app store. Used to be that I could download free apps without a payment method... I just tried the other day. Nope, they won't let me do that anymore. *sigh*
Amazon puts ads on your Kindle - you can pay extra to disable the ads, but I've come to like those ads. It's usually some advertisement for a book, and the ad only appears when you 'turn off' the Kindle - it's an eink display so keeping the screen on practically uses no battery - so the ads are really no intrusive. I've actually found quite a few of the books advertised interesting. And I would have purchased them if I could. You know, like without having to do all the VPN, gift card crap. If I had to go to such lengths to buy a book... I could spend a similar amount of time to get the book through some other methods... (And really, the alternative is really fast if you know where to look.)
I remember a Chinese essay regarding music piracy I had to write over a decade ago. Back when the concept of piracy was in it's infancy and I was still using things like Kazaa to get my songs. The problem then was that there was a lack of legal means to get digital music, and that many teens, myself included, has no access to a credit/debit card to buy our songs online. So what do we do then? You can't stop us from listening to songs. We just pirate. The credit/debit card problem is still there for many teens, especially in an Asian country like Singapore where parents can be pretty strict. But the next barrier is that of geographical location. After years of negotiation, Netflix has finally landed in Singapore, Malaysia, and a bunch of other countries in the region. Some dramas/movies are not available here due to copyright laws or other legal restrictions, but being able to get on Netflix without VPNs and other web trickery is definitely an improvement.
Sure there are loads of legal hoops that cooperations need to jump through, but as consumers, we don't care. Well, those who do care a little more would go through the trouble of tricking Amazon to think that we are in the US. But the rest of us would just do it some other way. And that other way does not involve publishers/authors getting a single dime.
It's simple. Give us an easy way and we'll be a lot, A LOT more inclined to do things legally. If I can get the book in two clicks, without even leaving my Kindle, why would I take the time to search for the book online, download said book, load it into Calibre, convert it into Mobi if it's in the wrong format, then email it to my Kindle?
Till the day it's easy for me to buy Kindle books on Amazon!
Saturday, April 30, 2016
Sunday, April 24, 2016
Things that work, and things that don't work
This year has been a year of trying out new things...
And as per the title... I've been trying to find out more about what works for me and what doesn't.
Things that don't work:
1) Keeping a paper planner.
Nope. Just doesn't work. I hardly used planners in the past, and now, it's still the same. I don't keep track of time that way anymore. If I need to remind myself about some important event... Either I make a mental note of it (usually enough for meetings with friends, I'll remember), or I note it down in my phone calendar (for chores that I need to remind myself to do, and for work related stuff that I would otherwise forget, e.g. attending a seminar. Also for important things like attending a meeting or appointment, that I won't forget, but is too important and therefore I prefer the extra reminder.)
2) Using desktop/wall calendars
Unless it's at work... Then maybe the calendar can be useful. Like I used to jot down when I needed to feed my 'babies'... Or collect samples... Or the dates and times of meetings and seminars. But I don't do that anymore now so the calendar at work is pretty much useless. At home? Months can pass before I even notice that it's no longer February... Heck, it was two weeks into April before I noticed that the calendar in my office desk is still showing 'March'.
The downside is basically that... I hardly take note of the passage of time and therefore I often get surprise when public holidays roll around. And then I get frustrated and stressed because I'd planned a ton of experiments to be done on that day.... :X
3) Keeping my desk organised.
Gosh yes. This has been the struggle of the ages for me. Granted, my desk in the office is pretty neat... Kinda... Well more and more pieces of paper has been piling up and I've yet to bin them... But really... It's still pretty neat. Compared to my desk at home... There's barely enough space to put my books. Yeah. I'll just keep clearing till there's enough space to do whatever stuff when I want to get stuff done but that's it. The rest of it is a mess. An organised mess. I know where everything is and I can locate them within a minute mostly. But when I try packing... I couldn't find my item even after searching for a whole freaking hour. No seriously! I kept it away in some drawer and yes it took me like a freaking hour and a half to find it. Granted I wasn't looking for it all the time... But still! Talk about frustrating!
I'll keep things decently organised but that's it. It's not going to be very neat and stuff... Not with the HUGE amount of stuff I have compared to the space. I'm definitely not one for living a minimalist lifestyle, I know. I love my stationery... You can call me materialistic. Whatever.
It's been said that a more messy desk encourages creativity, whereas a clean desk encourages productivity... In which case it's consistent with how neat I keep my office desk and home desk...
I really do wish I had a bigger desk and home so I could have my mess and still have enough space to comfortably do work though... :X
4) Scheduling.
Well... This one... I can hardly even bring myself to schedule anything. Unlike work when I can say that I'll do X experiment when, or I'll run how many qPCRs today... and at what time... I can't do that outside of work. At all. Has always been the case for me. I'm not the type to have a study plan. Then again, I hardly ever even study so...
No. Even if I draw out some sort of a plan, I won't stick to it. Plans are just not for me... When it comes to me personal life, I can't plan anything. I can't even plan a holiday properly. It's too stressful for me. I'm more of the... Spontaneous, it depends on my mood kind of person.
5) Waking up early
Ok. The verdict is still yet to be out on this one... But after being a night owl for so long and never having been a morning person... It's hard for me to get anything done in the early morning. Like, at 4 or 5 am in the morning when my sleeping pattern was messed up. My brain just can't wake up you know? And then I'll be trying to fall back asleep... And before I know it, all the time would have passed by. Or even if I do pull myself out of bed, I can't do anything intense like studying... I only feel like doing simple things like reading the news. And then again, all my time would be wasted. Ok, reading the news isn't a waste of time. But after the news, I'll find more stuff to read. Like Quora. And once I get on there... I'll read. And read. And read. And read. You get the idea. And then all the time just flies by. I console myself by saying that at least what I'm reading isn't trashy stuff. Some are actually pretty useful and intelligent answers. But too much reading ends up being a waste of time. Unproductive. Too much consumption and no production. A screwed C/P ratio as they call it. Bear in mind that while I occasionally go on answering sprees, I usually don't write anything on Quora. So I mostly just consume things there and don't produce.
Alas I'm going off topic. Yeah. I tend to be a lot more productive at night than in the mornings. So sleeping late works better for me. Like today... I basically wasted the whole morning and napped half the afternoon. And only started writing near the evening. It's like... The day only started after my nap or something. It would certainly do me good to get rid of the habit of wasting my mornings away... But I do prefer a good night's sleep at waking up after the sun rises rather than at some unearthly hour in the middle of the night. Well I wasn't even trying to wake up early though. I didn't even change the timing on my alarm clock. It was just the stress that was screwing up my sleep. First making me wake up earlier and earlier... Than changing my whole sleeping pattern completely. I mean, who collapses on the bed at 10 pm, only to wake up at 4 or 5 pm? And that's on good days. On bad days, I wake up at 1 or 2 am. And I can't sleep the rest of the night.... Nope, I'd very much rather sleep at 3 or 4am and wake up at 8:30. At least I feel like I've slept. I sleep better if I go to bed late than if I sleep early... I can survive perfectly fine on 4 hours of good quality sleep... But of course I'll need more sleep that night. I've done 3 days of 4 hours sleep before and I really felt like a zombie on day 3. Had to nap a little in the office. Nah. I try to get at least 5 hours of sleep for the most part. 6 hours is luxury. Anything more... Well generally I can't even sleep that much. I just wake up. Let's hope I get back to that sort of sleep schedule soon. Think I'm almost there...
Things that do work:
1) Switching hard copies for soft copies. I love my kindle. It's thin, has a ton of books... And I can just bring it out and read during lunch without being judged by the kind of books this weirdo is reading. Well mostly science books I guess... But then I do love Rick Riodan's Percy Jackson series too, and I'm still looking for fantasy books as good as Harry Potter. Nope. No journal papers on my kindle. At least... Not yet. Lol. I'll like to keep journal papers to the computer. Or the phone. Yeah.
It's not that I don't love physical books. I do. But they are heavy... So I tend not to bring them out... And most of the time when I'm at home... I'm on the computer, on the phone, or sleeping. And so... I end up not reading anything... And returning the books to the library unread... :X Opps.
The same goes for writing too. I prefer doing things on the computer. And preferably somewhere in the cloud. Like Evernote, Google docs... dropbox... Things that I can do at work, then continue from where I left off at home (or even on the phone) is good for me. Google docs is more for collaborations with other though... Though if I try doing some sort of game calculator again I might do it on gdocs instead of excel. Previously with my own lappy, I was using gdocs because my lappy can't take opening another program. Takes ages to open up excel. Lol. But if I were to do it again... Yeah, maybe I'll do it on gdocs instead just so that I can work on it anywhere. Sure, you can do the same with dropbox too but... If it's going to be in the cloud, and it's not something that needs to be sent out to others in excel/msoft word format... Might as well just do it in gdocs in the first place.
That said... I do love writing though. Like, actually picking up a physical pen to write on physical paper. Even though my handwriting sucks but that's another issue. There's something nice about scribbling on paper. I've come to really enjoy 'scrapbooking'. By that, I mean recording on my lab notebook....
Writing physically is something that I don't do enough of for sure. I started a physical diary in addition to all my electronic ones... But naturally I hardly write on that physical diary. It's a good thing that I have multiple blogs though... Together with my private, electronic but unpublished diary (well, I use the app day one for that), I have a pretty complete record of my thoughts and things happening in my life. For my own reading pleasure (and others too) now and in the future... Recently I'll make a grab for that physical diary once in a while... Every few weeks or so... But often times months can pass between entries. So it's a good thing that I type a lot more than that.
I do want to write more though... As in pen and paper write. Because I've bought a few really lovely pens recently. And it's such a pleasure to write with those tools. I'm definitely going to get diaries with thick paper though... Because the inky pen refills in those lovely pens bleed all over and seep through the thin paper. Tsk. Alas it's been a year and a half since I started that diary and I'm just over 1/10 of the way through. I really need to start writing more often so I can finish up that book and get rid of it huh...?
2) Doing random crafts
Ok. Admittedly I don't get enough of this done recently. But that's fine I guess. Once in a while... When I get in the mood... It's been months since I did some eraser craving but yeah... I'm way, way better at crafts than say... Design or painting or drawing. I'd love to be able to do those at a passable level someday... But that'll probably take a decade or something. *shrugs*
I'm good with my hands... But not when it comes to holding a writing/drawing instrument. I can even carve things out just fine. Sis says that I can only do the '3D stuff'. Whatever that means. I wonder what will happen when I get my 3D simi 3D doodler. It'll probably come in June? Oh wells. We'll find out then. Been really excited about that ever since I pledge it on kickstarter last year... It's been quite a long few months and I sure can't wait to try it out!
Things that I need to work on/try out
1) Going out once in a while.
Have not been out on the weekends since... Since the last time I met up with my colleagues. Ok. That wasn't that long ago I guess. Just two weeks? But nope, I've not met up with anyone outside of work in that two weeks. At least I have a meeting with my jc friends scheduled this coming Friday. If it comes to fruition. And then after that... Nothing again? Oh... Probably a trip with a former colleague to JB next week. But that's about it... But no... I feel a lot less social already. As in, my motivation levels for going out to meet with people has decreased. A lot. I don't even feel like stepping out of the house. Yeah, I'm an indoors person... A little too much I guess.
2) All my random side projects
Still need to work on getting everything done. My crafts blog... The gaming blog that got abandoned again... Well, none of those will become anything... So I'm not enforcing my weekly post rule on them. But weekly posting on Nihongo Manabu is a must, and it'll be nice if I could make more than a post a week. Managing my time and motivation levels is a huge challenge though. Motivation levels especially...? How to manage my time with all the things that I want to do... Things that I have to do... Things that I need to learn... That's definitely a challenge. I'm a procrastinator for sure. Doing things last minute is my speciality. And heck, I actually get good quality work done in that short amount of time. But last minute work doesn't work for learning something. For that you need a continuous effort over a period of time. But how I'd work that out with my lack of ability to follow schedules and plans remains to be seen. Currently I'm aiming to learn about 1 chapter of my Japanese grammar book each week. And it seems like it'll be left till the very last minute for this week's requirements... Lol. We'll see if I can actually keep this up.
3) Listening to podcast/videos.
No, I actually don't like watching things... I prefer to read things. Like books VS movies. Or even just reading the wiki page about the movie is enough for me. Or anime VS manga. I prefer to read. Takes less time IMO. Though there are things like Arashi shows, varieties where there is no substitute for watching... (Then again, remember I've not watched anything Arashi in a whole year!) But otherwise... I find that watching takes up too much time, and the amount of satisfaction, the gain I get is too little. If you talk about CP ratio, yup, watching too much videos is a surefire, easy way to screw that up. All watching and no doing. I've not tried listening to podcast in place of music for when I'm in the lab etc though. I'm not sure how that would work out. If I need to concentrate on the experiment, I don't pay attention to the music, and I'd prefer to listen to a set playlist of songs that I like and am familiar with, because I'm already familiar with the music and it doesn't take any addition brain power to process the tune, lyrics etc. Of course, not having to spend time putting down the micropipette and hitting the play button twice on my earphone remote is a huge plus (For that reason, my earphones must have remotes). A lot of people trump audio books as a way to be more productive... But I really.... Doubt it... I tried listening to audio books once, and boy, they talk so slowly that I felt like strangling the narrator throughout. Like. Just give me the damn book and I can read myself way faster than that. Even though I'm not a speed reader.... But I bet I can still read faster than they read. Sure it's supposed to be for when you're doing something. Like, exercising, or cooking... Or doing something else. But I can't... Unless I'm paying full attention to something, my mind will just drift off. It's different for songs. I don't actually listen closely or carefully to songs. Often times I find that many songs passed by without me even noticing it. My mind is thinking about other stuff. And I like my thinking time....
(Case in point, I can barely concentrate on my writing now cos I'm paying attention to the song that's playing now... A song that I've never heard of before. But just before that, I can concentrate perfectly fine because it's a song I'm familiar with.)
4) Ingress.
Still wondering if I really should play Ingress again. It's fun and all, and I only stopped because my phone died last time... But... Using the time spent on commute to play Ingress instead of doing other stuff...? Maybe I'll play it less after I hit level 8... Or only play it part of the commute... Or only on the way there or on the way back. But yeah... I actually get quite a lot of things done on the commute otherwise. Especially on the way to work. Like firing a short status update in Chinese or Japanese to weibo... Post something on instagram... Read my favourite tech news.... Clear my emails if I've not already done so after I crawl out of bed in the morning. Daily training on elevate... Maybe even make a blog post on LJ.... I'll probably play it less often once I hit level 8... Or limit it to just the commute home... Since the commute back is usually not productive anyway... Or maybe I'll get bored of the game again and drop it completely... We'll see.
Other games... Not been playing vainglory again... Maybe I'll pick it up again in a few months when I'm more free. Would definitely like to play some sort of games on the 'puter occasionally as well... Would also love it if I could cure myself of motion sickness... But I guess those will be year long projects... As with all the electronics that I got... Gotta learn enough about programming to play with them so... That'll take years too... Though hopefully by the end of the year I would be able to start doing something with them already... We'll see. Too many things that I want to try out, that often times I'm just lost in myself and have no idea where to start.
5) Writing.
I'm definitely writing a lot more now... But as for writing something more than random blog entries? Now that's something I need to do more of. Like more posts for NM, and get back to writing fanfiction again. You know, something more than just unstructured, random blog entries. I was keeping up with my 1 fic a week thing for quite a while last year... Before fatigue set in and I ran out of inspiration... And well experiments swept the rest of my writing ability away.
It's a balance. Two sides of the same coin. If I'm doing tons of science, I can't write. The science and the creativity seems to be on opposite ends of the seesaw. (I'm guessing scientific writing is not included here, but then the last time I did scientific writing proper... Like really properly... Was during my FYP thesis. Granted, I wrote some stuff in my previous job, but that was also more than two years ago. So it's really a good thing that I'm writing online. At least some writing practice is better than none.... Scientific writing is something that I need to work on for sure.) Keeping things balanced... Yeah I have to work on that so that I can keep on writing. And not have the case of having no posts appear on NM for months repeat. The lack of updates really did a huge number of the site rating... *Sigh*
6) Taking notes and making notes
*Sigh*
This is something that I'm *still* working on now. Well, I can take notes in class just fine and all. But now that I'm self studying... I'm the type who loathes writing in books. I'm trying to make myself highlight things and all in the books... Or at least my notes... I mean... I bought so many notebooks and fooscape pads and pens... I gotta use them all up right?
Well at least for Japanese I think notebooks are good because it's troublesome for me to type in Japanese. Switching languages is troublesome. Well. It's not troublesome, just slow. Really slow. Thanks to all the crap that I do on dad's lappy... It's slowing down too. I mean... But... I don't even know what I do...! I mean, there's only chrome open right now, though it has about 20 tabs open, but hey, just 1 window. And then Line is open... But that's all... Stupid ram guzzling web browsers. I'm not even running any pages with flash or games sheesh. Sure there's a bunch of stuff in the background, but it's mostly just chrome gobbling up all 8 gb of space. Somehow I've also managed to used up tons of hard disk space on my dad's lappy too... I think the photo backups from my phone to dropbox is currently eating up a lot. My Arashi songs also take up like... 10 GB at least... And I might have some videos that I downloaded years ago still sitting in the downloads folder... *shrugs* But in my defence... This lappy is old too! It's late 2011! Sure, it's 1 year younger than my mid 2010 lappy, but it's almost 5 years old already too! Yeah. I really need a new lappy. Or should I get a desktop...? Dad wants his lappy back later this year anyway... And I really need to give him the lappy back in decent working condition... :X
7) Catch up with Arashi shows
Definitely this... Have to catch up with their shows... And do a few bangumi reviews too I guess. I can put the reviews on NM so that'll be killing at least 3 birds with 1 stone. Still takes me way, way too long to do bangumi reviews though... But it's good because I'm preparing for JLPT now and watching Arashi shows and doing reviews especially is in line with my Japanese learning efforts. As for subs... They still take way too long. I think I'll leave it for now and start watching shows instead... Would be nice if I can watch at least 1 show before collapsing dead on my bed every weekday... We'll see...
8) Miscellaneous stuff that I should figure out
How to export my LJ entries... and automatically have them imported into day one. Similarly for blogger. So that if LJ ever dies one day... I'll still have my entries elsewhere to read. I still regret not having a copy of all my entries from that moblog thing that MOE did last time in collaboration with whoever. All my science loving craziness and love proclamations for chemistry... That was my first blog... I wrote all that in sec sch. This one only came in JC... By then my enthusiasm was already dying out....
Either way, it's nice to have all my entries together in the same place. And I tend to write way longer entries on these blogs than the personal diary that I keep so... A lot of the events and happenings can be traced on my online blogs, but not in that personal one. It's like, after typing a long entry on my blog... Why would I want to write the same thing again on my Day One entry? Plus Day One is a a daily thing (I try anyway), so I usually just type like... One or two sentences entries about what I'm doing at the moment. And not because I genuinely have something to write about...
It's funny how when I was putting together that video last month... I was using my blog as a tool to trace back when things occured and to remind myself of what happened. On the other hand, my personal diary only contained fairly useless information like 'I'm so bored today.' or 'Tiring day.' Lol. Pretty useless indeed... That's why I've been linking my instagram and fb statuses to it... It says a lot more than my daily entries... But my blog entries says a lot more so... :P
Yeah, time to get working on it. Automating the process is the part that's more challenging... Especially for LJ with their outdated tools...
That's all I can think of now I guess. This is a really long entry eh? Definitely something I'll like to save in Day One for sure. I wonder how much of this will remain the same 10 years on. Or even just 5 years. Would be interesting to look back and compare eh? That's the good thing about keeping things electronic. It's there, in the cloud. I can search it anything. Plus, I can use the search function. You can't 'search' in a physical diary... And there's labels/tags too. :P
And as per the title... I've been trying to find out more about what works for me and what doesn't.
Things that don't work:
1) Keeping a paper planner.
Nope. Just doesn't work. I hardly used planners in the past, and now, it's still the same. I don't keep track of time that way anymore. If I need to remind myself about some important event... Either I make a mental note of it (usually enough for meetings with friends, I'll remember), or I note it down in my phone calendar (for chores that I need to remind myself to do, and for work related stuff that I would otherwise forget, e.g. attending a seminar. Also for important things like attending a meeting or appointment, that I won't forget, but is too important and therefore I prefer the extra reminder.)
2) Using desktop/wall calendars
Unless it's at work... Then maybe the calendar can be useful. Like I used to jot down when I needed to feed my 'babies'... Or collect samples... Or the dates and times of meetings and seminars. But I don't do that anymore now so the calendar at work is pretty much useless. At home? Months can pass before I even notice that it's no longer February... Heck, it was two weeks into April before I noticed that the calendar in my office desk is still showing 'March'.
The downside is basically that... I hardly take note of the passage of time and therefore I often get surprise when public holidays roll around. And then I get frustrated and stressed because I'd planned a ton of experiments to be done on that day.... :X
3) Keeping my desk organised.
Gosh yes. This has been the struggle of the ages for me. Granted, my desk in the office is pretty neat... Kinda... Well more and more pieces of paper has been piling up and I've yet to bin them... But really... It's still pretty neat. Compared to my desk at home... There's barely enough space to put my books. Yeah. I'll just keep clearing till there's enough space to do whatever stuff when I want to get stuff done but that's it. The rest of it is a mess. An organised mess. I know where everything is and I can locate them within a minute mostly. But when I try packing... I couldn't find my item even after searching for a whole freaking hour. No seriously! I kept it away in some drawer and yes it took me like a freaking hour and a half to find it. Granted I wasn't looking for it all the time... But still! Talk about frustrating!
I'll keep things decently organised but that's it. It's not going to be very neat and stuff... Not with the HUGE amount of stuff I have compared to the space. I'm definitely not one for living a minimalist lifestyle, I know. I love my stationery... You can call me materialistic. Whatever.
It's been said that a more messy desk encourages creativity, whereas a clean desk encourages productivity... In which case it's consistent with how neat I keep my office desk and home desk...
I really do wish I had a bigger desk and home so I could have my mess and still have enough space to comfortably do work though... :X
4) Scheduling.
Well... This one... I can hardly even bring myself to schedule anything. Unlike work when I can say that I'll do X experiment when, or I'll run how many qPCRs today... and at what time... I can't do that outside of work. At all. Has always been the case for me. I'm not the type to have a study plan. Then again, I hardly ever even study so...
No. Even if I draw out some sort of a plan, I won't stick to it. Plans are just not for me... When it comes to me personal life, I can't plan anything. I can't even plan a holiday properly. It's too stressful for me. I'm more of the... Spontaneous, it depends on my mood kind of person.
5) Waking up early
Ok. The verdict is still yet to be out on this one... But after being a night owl for so long and never having been a morning person... It's hard for me to get anything done in the early morning. Like, at 4 or 5 am in the morning when my sleeping pattern was messed up. My brain just can't wake up you know? And then I'll be trying to fall back asleep... And before I know it, all the time would have passed by. Or even if I do pull myself out of bed, I can't do anything intense like studying... I only feel like doing simple things like reading the news. And then again, all my time would be wasted. Ok, reading the news isn't a waste of time. But after the news, I'll find more stuff to read. Like Quora. And once I get on there... I'll read. And read. And read. And read. You get the idea. And then all the time just flies by. I console myself by saying that at least what I'm reading isn't trashy stuff. Some are actually pretty useful and intelligent answers. But too much reading ends up being a waste of time. Unproductive. Too much consumption and no production. A screwed C/P ratio as they call it. Bear in mind that while I occasionally go on answering sprees, I usually don't write anything on Quora. So I mostly just consume things there and don't produce.
Alas I'm going off topic. Yeah. I tend to be a lot more productive at night than in the mornings. So sleeping late works better for me. Like today... I basically wasted the whole morning and napped half the afternoon. And only started writing near the evening. It's like... The day only started after my nap or something. It would certainly do me good to get rid of the habit of wasting my mornings away... But I do prefer a good night's sleep at waking up after the sun rises rather than at some unearthly hour in the middle of the night. Well I wasn't even trying to wake up early though. I didn't even change the timing on my alarm clock. It was just the stress that was screwing up my sleep. First making me wake up earlier and earlier... Than changing my whole sleeping pattern completely. I mean, who collapses on the bed at 10 pm, only to wake up at 4 or 5 pm? And that's on good days. On bad days, I wake up at 1 or 2 am. And I can't sleep the rest of the night.... Nope, I'd very much rather sleep at 3 or 4am and wake up at 8:30. At least I feel like I've slept. I sleep better if I go to bed late than if I sleep early... I can survive perfectly fine on 4 hours of good quality sleep... But of course I'll need more sleep that night. I've done 3 days of 4 hours sleep before and I really felt like a zombie on day 3. Had to nap a little in the office. Nah. I try to get at least 5 hours of sleep for the most part. 6 hours is luxury. Anything more... Well generally I can't even sleep that much. I just wake up. Let's hope I get back to that sort of sleep schedule soon. Think I'm almost there...
Things that do work:
1) Switching hard copies for soft copies. I love my kindle. It's thin, has a ton of books... And I can just bring it out and read during lunch without being judged by the kind of books this weirdo is reading. Well mostly science books I guess... But then I do love Rick Riodan's Percy Jackson series too, and I'm still looking for fantasy books as good as Harry Potter. Nope. No journal papers on my kindle. At least... Not yet. Lol. I'll like to keep journal papers to the computer. Or the phone. Yeah.
It's not that I don't love physical books. I do. But they are heavy... So I tend not to bring them out... And most of the time when I'm at home... I'm on the computer, on the phone, or sleeping. And so... I end up not reading anything... And returning the books to the library unread... :X Opps.
The same goes for writing too. I prefer doing things on the computer. And preferably somewhere in the cloud. Like Evernote, Google docs... dropbox... Things that I can do at work, then continue from where I left off at home (or even on the phone) is good for me. Google docs is more for collaborations with other though... Though if I try doing some sort of game calculator again I might do it on gdocs instead of excel. Previously with my own lappy, I was using gdocs because my lappy can't take opening another program. Takes ages to open up excel. Lol. But if I were to do it again... Yeah, maybe I'll do it on gdocs instead just so that I can work on it anywhere. Sure, you can do the same with dropbox too but... If it's going to be in the cloud, and it's not something that needs to be sent out to others in excel/msoft word format... Might as well just do it in gdocs in the first place.
That said... I do love writing though. Like, actually picking up a physical pen to write on physical paper. Even though my handwriting sucks but that's another issue. There's something nice about scribbling on paper. I've come to really enjoy 'scrapbooking'. By that, I mean recording on my lab notebook....
Writing physically is something that I don't do enough of for sure. I started a physical diary in addition to all my electronic ones... But naturally I hardly write on that physical diary. It's a good thing that I have multiple blogs though... Together with my private, electronic but unpublished diary (well, I use the app day one for that), I have a pretty complete record of my thoughts and things happening in my life. For my own reading pleasure (and others too) now and in the future... Recently I'll make a grab for that physical diary once in a while... Every few weeks or so... But often times months can pass between entries. So it's a good thing that I type a lot more than that.
I do want to write more though... As in pen and paper write. Because I've bought a few really lovely pens recently. And it's such a pleasure to write with those tools. I'm definitely going to get diaries with thick paper though... Because the inky pen refills in those lovely pens bleed all over and seep through the thin paper. Tsk. Alas it's been a year and a half since I started that diary and I'm just over 1/10 of the way through. I really need to start writing more often so I can finish up that book and get rid of it huh...?
2) Doing random crafts
Ok. Admittedly I don't get enough of this done recently. But that's fine I guess. Once in a while... When I get in the mood... It's been months since I did some eraser craving but yeah... I'm way, way better at crafts than say... Design or painting or drawing. I'd love to be able to do those at a passable level someday... But that'll probably take a decade or something. *shrugs*
I'm good with my hands... But not when it comes to holding a writing/drawing instrument. I can even carve things out just fine. Sis says that I can only do the '3D stuff'. Whatever that means. I wonder what will happen when I get my 3D simi 3D doodler. It'll probably come in June? Oh wells. We'll find out then. Been really excited about that ever since I pledge it on kickstarter last year... It's been quite a long few months and I sure can't wait to try it out!
Things that I need to work on/try out
1) Going out once in a while.
Have not been out on the weekends since... Since the last time I met up with my colleagues. Ok. That wasn't that long ago I guess. Just two weeks? But nope, I've not met up with anyone outside of work in that two weeks. At least I have a meeting with my jc friends scheduled this coming Friday. If it comes to fruition. And then after that... Nothing again? Oh... Probably a trip with a former colleague to JB next week. But that's about it... But no... I feel a lot less social already. As in, my motivation levels for going out to meet with people has decreased. A lot. I don't even feel like stepping out of the house. Yeah, I'm an indoors person... A little too much I guess.
2) All my random side projects
Still need to work on getting everything done. My crafts blog... The gaming blog that got abandoned again... Well, none of those will become anything... So I'm not enforcing my weekly post rule on them. But weekly posting on Nihongo Manabu is a must, and it'll be nice if I could make more than a post a week. Managing my time and motivation levels is a huge challenge though. Motivation levels especially...? How to manage my time with all the things that I want to do... Things that I have to do... Things that I need to learn... That's definitely a challenge. I'm a procrastinator for sure. Doing things last minute is my speciality. And heck, I actually get good quality work done in that short amount of time. But last minute work doesn't work for learning something. For that you need a continuous effort over a period of time. But how I'd work that out with my lack of ability to follow schedules and plans remains to be seen. Currently I'm aiming to learn about 1 chapter of my Japanese grammar book each week. And it seems like it'll be left till the very last minute for this week's requirements... Lol. We'll see if I can actually keep this up.
3) Listening to podcast/videos.
No, I actually don't like watching things... I prefer to read things. Like books VS movies. Or even just reading the wiki page about the movie is enough for me. Or anime VS manga. I prefer to read. Takes less time IMO. Though there are things like Arashi shows, varieties where there is no substitute for watching... (Then again, remember I've not watched anything Arashi in a whole year!) But otherwise... I find that watching takes up too much time, and the amount of satisfaction, the gain I get is too little. If you talk about CP ratio, yup, watching too much videos is a surefire, easy way to screw that up. All watching and no doing. I've not tried listening to podcast in place of music for when I'm in the lab etc though. I'm not sure how that would work out. If I need to concentrate on the experiment, I don't pay attention to the music, and I'd prefer to listen to a set playlist of songs that I like and am familiar with, because I'm already familiar with the music and it doesn't take any addition brain power to process the tune, lyrics etc. Of course, not having to spend time putting down the micropipette and hitting the play button twice on my earphone remote is a huge plus (For that reason, my earphones must have remotes). A lot of people trump audio books as a way to be more productive... But I really.... Doubt it... I tried listening to audio books once, and boy, they talk so slowly that I felt like strangling the narrator throughout. Like. Just give me the damn book and I can read myself way faster than that. Even though I'm not a speed reader.... But I bet I can still read faster than they read. Sure it's supposed to be for when you're doing something. Like, exercising, or cooking... Or doing something else. But I can't... Unless I'm paying full attention to something, my mind will just drift off. It's different for songs. I don't actually listen closely or carefully to songs. Often times I find that many songs passed by without me even noticing it. My mind is thinking about other stuff. And I like my thinking time....
(Case in point, I can barely concentrate on my writing now cos I'm paying attention to the song that's playing now... A song that I've never heard of before. But just before that, I can concentrate perfectly fine because it's a song I'm familiar with.)
4) Ingress.
Still wondering if I really should play Ingress again. It's fun and all, and I only stopped because my phone died last time... But... Using the time spent on commute to play Ingress instead of doing other stuff...? Maybe I'll play it less after I hit level 8... Or only play it part of the commute... Or only on the way there or on the way back. But yeah... I actually get quite a lot of things done on the commute otherwise. Especially on the way to work. Like firing a short status update in Chinese or Japanese to weibo... Post something on instagram... Read my favourite tech news.... Clear my emails if I've not already done so after I crawl out of bed in the morning. Daily training on elevate... Maybe even make a blog post on LJ.... I'll probably play it less often once I hit level 8... Or limit it to just the commute home... Since the commute back is usually not productive anyway... Or maybe I'll get bored of the game again and drop it completely... We'll see.
Other games... Not been playing vainglory again... Maybe I'll pick it up again in a few months when I'm more free. Would definitely like to play some sort of games on the 'puter occasionally as well... Would also love it if I could cure myself of motion sickness... But I guess those will be year long projects... As with all the electronics that I got... Gotta learn enough about programming to play with them so... That'll take years too... Though hopefully by the end of the year I would be able to start doing something with them already... We'll see. Too many things that I want to try out, that often times I'm just lost in myself and have no idea where to start.
5) Writing.
I'm definitely writing a lot more now... But as for writing something more than random blog entries? Now that's something I need to do more of. Like more posts for NM, and get back to writing fanfiction again. You know, something more than just unstructured, random blog entries. I was keeping up with my 1 fic a week thing for quite a while last year... Before fatigue set in and I ran out of inspiration... And well experiments swept the rest of my writing ability away.
It's a balance. Two sides of the same coin. If I'm doing tons of science, I can't write. The science and the creativity seems to be on opposite ends of the seesaw. (I'm guessing scientific writing is not included here, but then the last time I did scientific writing proper... Like really properly... Was during my FYP thesis. Granted, I wrote some stuff in my previous job, but that was also more than two years ago. So it's really a good thing that I'm writing online. At least some writing practice is better than none.... Scientific writing is something that I need to work on for sure.) Keeping things balanced... Yeah I have to work on that so that I can keep on writing. And not have the case of having no posts appear on NM for months repeat. The lack of updates really did a huge number of the site rating... *Sigh*
6) Taking notes and making notes
*Sigh*
This is something that I'm *still* working on now. Well, I can take notes in class just fine and all. But now that I'm self studying... I'm the type who loathes writing in books. I'm trying to make myself highlight things and all in the books... Or at least my notes... I mean... I bought so many notebooks and fooscape pads and pens... I gotta use them all up right?
Well at least for Japanese I think notebooks are good because it's troublesome for me to type in Japanese. Switching languages is troublesome. Well. It's not troublesome, just slow. Really slow. Thanks to all the crap that I do on dad's lappy... It's slowing down too. I mean... But... I don't even know what I do...! I mean, there's only chrome open right now, though it has about 20 tabs open, but hey, just 1 window. And then Line is open... But that's all... Stupid ram guzzling web browsers. I'm not even running any pages with flash or games sheesh. Sure there's a bunch of stuff in the background, but it's mostly just chrome gobbling up all 8 gb of space. Somehow I've also managed to used up tons of hard disk space on my dad's lappy too... I think the photo backups from my phone to dropbox is currently eating up a lot. My Arashi songs also take up like... 10 GB at least... And I might have some videos that I downloaded years ago still sitting in the downloads folder... *shrugs* But in my defence... This lappy is old too! It's late 2011! Sure, it's 1 year younger than my mid 2010 lappy, but it's almost 5 years old already too! Yeah. I really need a new lappy. Or should I get a desktop...? Dad wants his lappy back later this year anyway... And I really need to give him the lappy back in decent working condition... :X
7) Catch up with Arashi shows
Definitely this... Have to catch up with their shows... And do a few bangumi reviews too I guess. I can put the reviews on NM so that'll be killing at least 3 birds with 1 stone. Still takes me way, way too long to do bangumi reviews though... But it's good because I'm preparing for JLPT now and watching Arashi shows and doing reviews especially is in line with my Japanese learning efforts. As for subs... They still take way too long. I think I'll leave it for now and start watching shows instead... Would be nice if I can watch at least 1 show before collapsing dead on my bed every weekday... We'll see...
8) Miscellaneous stuff that I should figure out
How to export my LJ entries... and automatically have them imported into day one. Similarly for blogger. So that if LJ ever dies one day... I'll still have my entries elsewhere to read. I still regret not having a copy of all my entries from that moblog thing that MOE did last time in collaboration with whoever. All my science loving craziness and love proclamations for chemistry... That was my first blog... I wrote all that in sec sch. This one only came in JC... By then my enthusiasm was already dying out....
Either way, it's nice to have all my entries together in the same place. And I tend to write way longer entries on these blogs than the personal diary that I keep so... A lot of the events and happenings can be traced on my online blogs, but not in that personal one. It's like, after typing a long entry on my blog... Why would I want to write the same thing again on my Day One entry? Plus Day One is a a daily thing (I try anyway), so I usually just type like... One or two sentences entries about what I'm doing at the moment. And not because I genuinely have something to write about...
It's funny how when I was putting together that video last month... I was using my blog as a tool to trace back when things occured and to remind myself of what happened. On the other hand, my personal diary only contained fairly useless information like 'I'm so bored today.' or 'Tiring day.' Lol. Pretty useless indeed... That's why I've been linking my instagram and fb statuses to it... It says a lot more than my daily entries... But my blog entries says a lot more so... :P
Yeah, time to get working on it. Automating the process is the part that's more challenging... Especially for LJ with their outdated tools...
That's all I can think of now I guess. This is a really long entry eh? Definitely something I'll like to save in Day One for sure. I wonder how much of this will remain the same 10 years on. Or even just 5 years. Would be interesting to look back and compare eh? That's the good thing about keeping things electronic. It's there, in the cloud. I can search it anything. Plus, I can use the search function. You can't 'search' in a physical diary... And there's labels/tags too. :P
Sunday, April 03, 2016
iOS 9.3
Well, the biggest feature in the iOS 9.3 release is the introduction of the night shift mode. And for someone nocturnal like me, the night shift mode is a godsend.
I don't know if the thing about blue light is really affecting my sleep... But I do know that it was making my eyes hurt because the screen was too bright. Even the dimmest setting is too bright and painful to read on when the room is completely dark. I've even tried tweaking in the accessibility settings to have a mask over to make the screen dimmer, but it was quite a troublesome process and I didn't do it much. So in the end, my eyes hurt each time I tried to read/play on the phone before bedtime. And unlike many people who can't sleep if they use their phones before bed, it's often the other way round for me. I get sleepy playing stuff on the phone... (And I've fallen asleep and dropped the phone without first charging it, and woke up to a nearly daed phone - games were still running - several times).
So what I've found about the night shift mode is that cutting off the blue light makes the screen dimmer, less glaring, and perfect for using at night. Nonetheless.... Thanks to my varied sleeping habits... The current way of implementing night shift mode is less than desirable for me. I first set it to start at 10 pm. Then I realised 10 pm was way too early in most cases. Because I'd set the red shift to the most extreme option, the screen looks pretty... Red, and therefore I'd like it off if I'm not in bed yet. I'm most probably using the laptop, with my room lights all on anyway. And if I'm doing work, I actually don't want to fall asleep. Oh worst still if the reason I'm reaching for my phone is so that I can snap a few pictures. I *need* the night shift mode off so that I can properly judge if the lighting and color are right.
Rather than a timer... A quick on off switch say in the control center would work much better.
Or... I could ask siri to do it for me.
I just tried. It worked great. Only that I'm still shy when it comes to talking to siri.
Thus far the most that I've asked her to do was to 'wake me up at 8 am'. Or whatever time of my choosing.
More than 3 months in with a 'Hey siri' phone and that's about all I ask for siri...
Still, it's an improvement from the previous phones without an active hey siri feature. I don't use siri at all.
But well, I've always been the shy type eh?
Not much else for iOS 9.3... Notes can now be password protected. I might activate that... Though it's not that necessary since my phone itself is already password protected. And my phone tends to stay in my hands. Still, since I can use TouchID, there's no harm activating it though...
(Well, unless I'm in the lab. Then TouchID won't recognise my gloves. And it won't work properly when my fingertips are moist from sweating my gloves either. Unless I stay in the office... I end up having to type my password most of the time at work.)
The Apple Health app supposedly got an upgrade, but I've never used that app much so I don't see the difference... I've always used other apps like Argus and UP to keep track of my step count anyway... So I only go to the Health app once in a blue moon if I want to look at how many flight of stairs I've climbed.
The rest of the updates - CarPlay, and News and Education - doesn't affect me. Our new car doesn't support CarPlay. News is still only available in the US, and Education? I'm not in school anymore. And I doubt educators in Singapore will have it implemented any soon.
So that's about it for iOS 9.3.
What else was announced in that Keynote?
iPhone SE and the smaller iPad Pro. The iPhone SE is great news for several of my friends with small hands and loving the iPhone 5s form factor. Sure, TouchID is still the 1st gen version, and there's no Force Touch. But the first gen TouchID work pretty darn well already... And ForceTouch? I tried to use to often initially, but now I can't even remember the last time I've used it anymore...
For those who aren't gadget loving geeks like myself, and prefers a smaller phone, I think the iPhone SE is a great choice.
iPad Pro. Once again, it's the Apple Pencil that I'm interested in. And it's really irritating because none of the stores in SG lets buyers test out the Apple Pencil! Sure the iPad Pros are on display... But I have an iPhone and I've seen an iPad. But I've not seen the Apple Pencil. Nor the keyboard.
The iPad Pro sounds like a fantastic tool to get... But adding on the cost of the Pencil, and maybe even the keyboard... And you have a really, really expensive iPad. Sure it's still a great deal for creatives. But for a pseudo creative like myself? Nah dah. I'm pretty hopeless when holding writing instruments. Though I definitely see better results with a physical pen and paper as compared to a walcom pen and tablet. Which is why I'm interested in the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil in the first place.
But still. The iOS is not enough for my complete geeky needs. Sure it'll be quite a step up in terms of productivity with the keyboard - I can do all my light blogging on it - but not if I'm writing something that requires some research. Like. 'Some' research by having about 20 tabs open, and trying to search up the Japanese dictionary and English thesaurus. I know that you can have apps open side by side with split screen but... Well, it's probably ok if you're only using two apps at once. But more than that? I think there'll be trouble.
Say, if I'm trying to do a show review... Taking tons of video screenshots, while trying to translate, and blog at the same time... On my mac that'll be VLC (video player), MarsEdit (blogging tool, also uploads all my screenshots), Chrome (for all my Japanese dictionary needs). Oh and messenger on facebook too... for discussing with my friends if I need English phrasing help (also on Chrome, but it'll be a seperate app on the iOS). I think a computer is still better suited for that purpose... (And I'm not even doing anything really high tech or groundbreaking here?) Taking screenshots on the iOS would be a pain too because I'll have to crop each and every screenshot in a separate app. On the Mac I just press Cmd+Control+Shift+4, crop out the video area I'm interested in, then paste it on MarsEdit. I don't even pick a location to save the picture and upload it... Because that would take too much time. My reviews are always extremely photo extensive, easily having over a 100 photos per review... So you get the idea.
Well... Computers. I need to get my own computing device soon. I'm still borrowing dad's lappy now but he'll need it back soon. Why oh why are the macbook pro with retina display's base stats still so low? Even the iPad Pro has options of more storage than the basic macbook pro!!! 128 GB of storage space is NOT enough! Even 256 GB is too little... Gah. And of course the more you add on... The more expensive it gets. Hmph. *huffs*
I'll have to upgrade the ram too, because 8 GB ram? Hello... Do you have any idea how much ram web browsers eat up these days? I don't even do much. Just playing a video, Chrome/Firefox, MSWord at the same time... And my ram is all shot. Even 16 GB of ram (the max upgrade) seems... Kinda little.
Or maybe I should stick to my original plan and get a desktop after all. Sis will happily take it if I'm going overseas... Will be sometime before that happens (if at all) anyway.... Gah.
Alrights. That's all for now!
I don't know if the thing about blue light is really affecting my sleep... But I do know that it was making my eyes hurt because the screen was too bright. Even the dimmest setting is too bright and painful to read on when the room is completely dark. I've even tried tweaking in the accessibility settings to have a mask over to make the screen dimmer, but it was quite a troublesome process and I didn't do it much. So in the end, my eyes hurt each time I tried to read/play on the phone before bedtime. And unlike many people who can't sleep if they use their phones before bed, it's often the other way round for me. I get sleepy playing stuff on the phone... (And I've fallen asleep and dropped the phone without first charging it, and woke up to a nearly daed phone - games were still running - several times).
So what I've found about the night shift mode is that cutting off the blue light makes the screen dimmer, less glaring, and perfect for using at night. Nonetheless.... Thanks to my varied sleeping habits... The current way of implementing night shift mode is less than desirable for me. I first set it to start at 10 pm. Then I realised 10 pm was way too early in most cases. Because I'd set the red shift to the most extreme option, the screen looks pretty... Red, and therefore I'd like it off if I'm not in bed yet. I'm most probably using the laptop, with my room lights all on anyway. And if I'm doing work, I actually don't want to fall asleep. Oh worst still if the reason I'm reaching for my phone is so that I can snap a few pictures. I *need* the night shift mode off so that I can properly judge if the lighting and color are right.
Rather than a timer... A quick on off switch say in the control center would work much better.
Or... I could ask siri to do it for me.
I just tried. It worked great. Only that I'm still shy when it comes to talking to siri.
Thus far the most that I've asked her to do was to 'wake me up at 8 am'. Or whatever time of my choosing.
More than 3 months in with a 'Hey siri' phone and that's about all I ask for siri...
Still, it's an improvement from the previous phones without an active hey siri feature. I don't use siri at all.
But well, I've always been the shy type eh?
Not much else for iOS 9.3... Notes can now be password protected. I might activate that... Though it's not that necessary since my phone itself is already password protected. And my phone tends to stay in my hands. Still, since I can use TouchID, there's no harm activating it though...
(Well, unless I'm in the lab. Then TouchID won't recognise my gloves. And it won't work properly when my fingertips are moist from sweating my gloves either. Unless I stay in the office... I end up having to type my password most of the time at work.)
The Apple Health app supposedly got an upgrade, but I've never used that app much so I don't see the difference... I've always used other apps like Argus and UP to keep track of my step count anyway... So I only go to the Health app once in a blue moon if I want to look at how many flight of stairs I've climbed.
The rest of the updates - CarPlay, and News and Education - doesn't affect me. Our new car doesn't support CarPlay. News is still only available in the US, and Education? I'm not in school anymore. And I doubt educators in Singapore will have it implemented any soon.
So that's about it for iOS 9.3.
What else was announced in that Keynote?
iPhone SE and the smaller iPad Pro. The iPhone SE is great news for several of my friends with small hands and loving the iPhone 5s form factor. Sure, TouchID is still the 1st gen version, and there's no Force Touch. But the first gen TouchID work pretty darn well already... And ForceTouch? I tried to use to often initially, but now I can't even remember the last time I've used it anymore...
For those who aren't gadget loving geeks like myself, and prefers a smaller phone, I think the iPhone SE is a great choice.
iPad Pro. Once again, it's the Apple Pencil that I'm interested in. And it's really irritating because none of the stores in SG lets buyers test out the Apple Pencil! Sure the iPad Pros are on display... But I have an iPhone and I've seen an iPad. But I've not seen the Apple Pencil. Nor the keyboard.
The iPad Pro sounds like a fantastic tool to get... But adding on the cost of the Pencil, and maybe even the keyboard... And you have a really, really expensive iPad. Sure it's still a great deal for creatives. But for a pseudo creative like myself? Nah dah. I'm pretty hopeless when holding writing instruments. Though I definitely see better results with a physical pen and paper as compared to a walcom pen and tablet. Which is why I'm interested in the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil in the first place.
But still. The iOS is not enough for my complete geeky needs. Sure it'll be quite a step up in terms of productivity with the keyboard - I can do all my light blogging on it - but not if I'm writing something that requires some research. Like. 'Some' research by having about 20 tabs open, and trying to search up the Japanese dictionary and English thesaurus. I know that you can have apps open side by side with split screen but... Well, it's probably ok if you're only using two apps at once. But more than that? I think there'll be trouble.
Say, if I'm trying to do a show review... Taking tons of video screenshots, while trying to translate, and blog at the same time... On my mac that'll be VLC (video player), MarsEdit (blogging tool, also uploads all my screenshots), Chrome (for all my Japanese dictionary needs). Oh and messenger on facebook too... for discussing with my friends if I need English phrasing help (also on Chrome, but it'll be a seperate app on the iOS). I think a computer is still better suited for that purpose... (And I'm not even doing anything really high tech or groundbreaking here?) Taking screenshots on the iOS would be a pain too because I'll have to crop each and every screenshot in a separate app. On the Mac I just press Cmd+Control+Shift+4, crop out the video area I'm interested in, then paste it on MarsEdit. I don't even pick a location to save the picture and upload it... Because that would take too much time. My reviews are always extremely photo extensive, easily having over a 100 photos per review... So you get the idea.
Well... Computers. I need to get my own computing device soon. I'm still borrowing dad's lappy now but he'll need it back soon. Why oh why are the macbook pro with retina display's base stats still so low? Even the iPad Pro has options of more storage than the basic macbook pro!!! 128 GB of storage space is NOT enough! Even 256 GB is too little... Gah. And of course the more you add on... The more expensive it gets. Hmph. *huffs*
I'll have to upgrade the ram too, because 8 GB ram? Hello... Do you have any idea how much ram web browsers eat up these days? I don't even do much. Just playing a video, Chrome/Firefox, MSWord at the same time... And my ram is all shot. Even 16 GB of ram (the max upgrade) seems... Kinda little.
Or maybe I should stick to my original plan and get a desktop after all. Sis will happily take it if I'm going overseas... Will be sometime before that happens (if at all) anyway.... Gah.
Alrights. That's all for now!
Friday, January 01, 2016
Friday, December 25, 2015
The Three Critters
Once upon a time,
In the Land of Critters.
There lived three bacilus.
Their cell walls was white as snow,
And pili black as coal.
They were as close as bacteria to dirt.
When they slept, they slept together.
Everywhere they went, they went together.
There were no lonely nights, for they had each other.
They had many a
crazy adventures
and exhilarating rides
 |
| Saved in the nick of time! |
and close calls together.
But alas.
One day, they were not so lucky.
The first was killed, in a giant landslide.
And the second was buried, alive.
And the third got caught in the jaws of death.
The rest of Critter Land lived happily ever after.
~The End~
Sunday, December 20, 2015
Revival!
It's been a long time.
I've finally done it.
Wrote a post on my other gaming blog...
And now I'm writing here.
It's high time I revive my blogs, even as I have new ones to deal with. So far so good!
I've finally done it.
Wrote a post on my other gaming blog...
And now I'm writing here.
It's high time I revive my blogs, even as I have new ones to deal with. So far so good!
Saturday, September 12, 2015
Of news and disappointment
I guess... the only thing that could eclipse the disappointment of having to wait another 2 more months for my iMac is the disappointment with the election results.
You have to wait another mighty 5 years for that. 5 whole years.
I'd say the whole election this year was quite a disappointment. From the campaigns all the way to the results.
Nothing much left to say. The winner takes it all.
On the Apple side... it's back to waiting for the 4k iMac to be announced. If I'd checked the rumor mill earlier I'd have known that it'll be announced only in Oct, and available for sale in Nov. But I hadn't checked.
The rumor mills are exceedingly accurate these days.
Apple just can't keep stuff under wraps anymore (as much as they'd like to) because they have to outsource their manufacturing.
Either way... it doesn't matter to me. I get my products all the same.
iPhone 6s is out. Really I'd get it right away (and it better freaking last 3 years this time) if not for my parents.
Still if I were to prioritise... I guess I'd put the iMac before a new phone though.
We'll see. Sigh.
Sunday, August 23, 2015
I can't wait...
I’ve been cursing for the past week… at my laptop.
Can’t wait for next month… can’t wait for the Apple keynote. And the 21 inch iMac refresh.
This laptop is really at the end of active service. It hangs up too much. It can’t handle all the stuff I need to do on my main computing device anymore. Things like handling multiple downloads… or uploads. Playing videos while having word document open, while searching the web… my video tends to hang up and won’t pause when I want and need it to.
Still… I say it with a ping of regret because other instances it works fine… until it hangs up and the words I typed comes out in a jumble again. Pfft.
Not something that leaves me in the mood for video watching/subbing/translating.
And then there’s the iPhone too. Will need a new one too. I’ll be mighty broke next month but it can’t be helped. I just hope the stuff lasts. Esp the phone. It has to last me three years this time! Sigh.
Alright… that’s all for now!
Friday, July 17, 2015
Of dreams and reality
I’ve learnt much more and done much more in this year thus far than I did for the entire of last year… and it shows. Not just in my bloat lab note book choke full of protocols and my ugly handwriting… but also in my dreams. Like seriously.
I’ve been going to bed earlier and earlier these days but it doesn’t seem to help. I wake up as late as usual (or in the middle of the night, and go back to sleep), and feel as tired as I did if I didn’t sleep as early… only difference is that I actually remember my dreams now. And it almost always have some sort of relationship to work. Even when I was on holiday…. there was even once I said “oh I’m not dreaming about work,” in my dreams. Only to realise that there, in the dream, I was standing in the lab, in my lab coat, and claiming that I’m not dreaming about work. Ridiculous huh?
And then there’s today… the 3rd day in a row with some work related dreams… From running out as a refugee to the neighbouring country ($$$ required per pax was the same as the laser license I need to apply for, and you get this card thing - my work access card - when they let you through), to journal papers, to trying out another job only to realise I’ve been tricked and it’s not a research job (dream ended with me saying, ok I’m getting out of here, I have a better job to return to tmr), to burning blue and white paper balls with bunsen burners!?!??! (if you’re wondering about the relation to work, a Phd student in the lab appeared in the dream).
Just too much seriously. Lol. Sleeping later seems like a better option now. At least let me dream of something else?
On the plus side, it’s July. Just two more months (I hope!) till I get a new phone and comp. I can’t even playback videos properly now… it tends to hang. Videos continue playing when I try to pause, and don’t start when I try to continue the playback. How will I be able to sub anything like this!!!?!?!? Gah!
Public holiday today yay! It’s the end of Ramadan. That means hopefully I’ll have more lunch buddies soon… then again that only works if I don’t go for late lunches. I’ve been so very lonely at lunch time now. And I’m about to get even more lonely after I’m back from holiday in Aug. I’m excited for the holiday… sort of. But even more eager for the Apple fall keynote to come. It’s been years of waiting after all.
Alright. Have a crazy number of stuff to watch, and posts to write… so I’d better get started!
Saturday, May 30, 2015
Apple, macs, iPhones and Android
So, I've been keeping a lookout in the shops for the new macbooks with force touch track pad for a while now... Well whenever I drop by the malls at least. Finally got to see it maybe two weeks ago after an unintended visit to the mall. Rainy days meant long queues for the shuttle bus... And since I hate waiting, I decided to take the risk in trying to catch the public bus today. The gamble failed terribly though, when I missed two buses on the way to the bus stop. Oh wells. Thought I'd try the bookshop and get some glue while I'm at the mall, but insanely long queues made me change my mind instantly.
Thankfully for me though, spotting the gold macbook in nubox made the wasted time worthwhile.
Some quick thoughts after an extremely short hands-on session.
The first thing that I checked out was the force tough function. But first, I had to find something to force click on. Since they had cleverly use parental controls to block all but the apple Web page, I decided to try Notes instead. It'll give me a good opportunity to try out the new keys with the butterfly mechanism too. On the force touch, it took me a while to get what a 'force click' actually is. It didn't work at first, till I realised that you really do have to press pretty darn hard for it to be considered a force touch. It's like clicking down a second notch. It's a further level of resistance, like the second notch on a pipette. When the technology was first unveiled in the Apple watch, I was worried about accidental force clicks... But after trying it out, I'm happy to report that you can't possibly make accidental force clicks. You have to press really darn hard, way harder than normal, for it to register as a force click.
Well perhaps more so than the force click, the new keyboard with the butterfly keys would catch you attention first. It felt weird typing on the new keyboard. It’s a dull thud when hitting the keys, because the travel of the keys is way, way lesser than the old one. It doesn’t take that long getting used to typing on the new keyboard - I could touch type without any errors in a few moments… but the sensation of hitting the keys felt weird. It’s not as bad as the soft keyboard with microsoft’s surface tablet though, because unlike that keyboard, these butterfly keys actually do have some travel. Just way less travel then the old one. I guess it’s something that takes a bit of getting used to. It’s the tradeoff between having a ‘good typing experience’ and having such a ridiculously thin macbook. It’s as thin and light as advertised. holding the machine feels a little unreal even. Soon you’ll be able to spot youtube videos of people using the new gold macbook to cut cabbages and the like.
The full sized left and right arrow keys does feel a little unfamiliar. I suspect it’ll take a while getting used to the location and feel of the arrow keys as you fumble around for the left key while accidentally pressing on the option key in the meantime.
Unfortunately, it was pretty bright in the shop and I didn’t think of checking out the new individually lighted keys of the keyboard. Some reviews have stated that the keys weren’t as properly lit up as Apple claimed during the keynote. The lighting was uneven and there was light leakage.
Personally, I’m really excited by the new technology in the macbook, though in it’s current form the macbook isn’t for me. It’s great if you’re a light computer user, mainly using it for web surfing and maybe some simple word processing. It is a full fledged computer in it’s own right, but fundamental things like lack of storage space, and the availability of only a single port would prevent it from becoming my main computer. It’s also the same lack of storage space in the macbook pros that’s pushing me towards getting an iMac instead of a new laptop this fall. Well, I’m hoping that history repeats itself and that Apple announces the 21.5 inch retina version of the iMac at least. Definitely looking forward to getting a new computer. Something went wrong with Total Finder last night, and I took over 40 minutes restarting my lappy twice, before it would run smoothly… -.-‘’’
Summer means it’s buzzing with news from Techland. With the google I/O conference two days ago, and the Apple WWDC coming up on the 8th June, there’s plenty of Andriod and Apple news floating around. My only regret is that I’ll be in Australia for holiday on the 8th. No more watching of WWDC live for me :( It’ll be what… 3am? in Australia during the conference. No way I’d be able to stay up till so late while on holiday! (And that’s if the internet in the hotel is even fast enough for me to stream the video live!) Guess I can only read the news the day after… if I even have time.
But yes! Exciting news from Google. Android pay, Google’s answer to Apple pay is finally here. New photo application for backing up your photos and videos called Google Photos, with UNLIMITED storage. Google Now is further enhanced, and a new OS for IOT. The Google Photos app is available on both android and iOS, and I’m definitely going to check it out. (yes, it’s free).
Loads of Apple rumours about iOS 9 floating around too. Dual screen for the iPads? Force touch for iPhones? Better Apple maps? San Francisco font on the iOS? I’d say the new font is highly likely. Apple made the new font for the Apple Watch. It’s only natural that they will move it to their rest of the Apple devices. Similarly for the Force Touch. MacBooks have gotten it, it’s only natural that it will fine it’s way into iPhones. It’s only a question of when. Would it be this year, or the next? I certainly hope it’ll be this year, since I’m getting a new phone this year… no thanks to my dead iPhone 5s.
I’ve been playing around with my xiaomi quite a lot… and in conclusion, I still prefer a smaller phone. The xiaomi is a torture when I have to use it one handed… like when I’m talking to my pals through Facebook message (well, when I say talking, I mean messaging) with my left hand, while my right hand is busy feeding myself a piece of chicken or whatever I was having for lunch that day. Or when the trains get ridiculously crowded. I’ve actually dropped the phone before (and not just once) because I was trying to reach for some far away button. Xiaomi has a one handed option, but calling up that option is really troublesome - the command often fails to execute. And even then, typing on the suddenly reduced screen size is difficult - I make more errors than usual… and it really defeats the purpose of buying a phone with a large screen.
So… June is practically here already. Just another 4 more months to bear. I really can’t freaking wait to get my hands on a new computer and phone. Especially the computer. My little one has been really brave and tough to last me for all these 5 years, withstanding all my abuse. I bet it’ll still last for years to come, but it can no longer handle that level of performance I demand from my devices. Already about two or three years ago I’ve stopped using 4 browsers at once because the system could no longer take it. And now, sometimes I quit every single program that’s unused - even things like iTunes, because the computer/ram just can’t quite handle things as well anymore. Guess it’s especially bad now that I’m doing video subbing. I tried to open ageisubs so that I could do the timing myself, but the little icon just jumped around for 10 minutes before I finally gave up waiting and force quit the app. I guess the mac would perform better once I strip down all the apps to leave just a few bare essentials… but doing so would mean I can’t use it as my primary computer anymore. In other words, I need another computer.
How many more days till the Apple fall keynote?
I need to countdown!
Thankfully for me though, spotting the gold macbook in nubox made the wasted time worthwhile.
Some quick thoughts after an extremely short hands-on session.
The first thing that I checked out was the force tough function. But first, I had to find something to force click on. Since they had cleverly use parental controls to block all but the apple Web page, I decided to try Notes instead. It'll give me a good opportunity to try out the new keys with the butterfly mechanism too. On the force touch, it took me a while to get what a 'force click' actually is. It didn't work at first, till I realised that you really do have to press pretty darn hard for it to be considered a force touch. It's like clicking down a second notch. It's a further level of resistance, like the second notch on a pipette. When the technology was first unveiled in the Apple watch, I was worried about accidental force clicks... But after trying it out, I'm happy to report that you can't possibly make accidental force clicks. You have to press really darn hard, way harder than normal, for it to register as a force click.
Well perhaps more so than the force click, the new keyboard with the butterfly keys would catch you attention first. It felt weird typing on the new keyboard. It’s a dull thud when hitting the keys, because the travel of the keys is way, way lesser than the old one. It doesn’t take that long getting used to typing on the new keyboard - I could touch type without any errors in a few moments… but the sensation of hitting the keys felt weird. It’s not as bad as the soft keyboard with microsoft’s surface tablet though, because unlike that keyboard, these butterfly keys actually do have some travel. Just way less travel then the old one. I guess it’s something that takes a bit of getting used to. It’s the tradeoff between having a ‘good typing experience’ and having such a ridiculously thin macbook. It’s as thin and light as advertised. holding the machine feels a little unreal even. Soon you’ll be able to spot youtube videos of people using the new gold macbook to cut cabbages and the like.
The full sized left and right arrow keys does feel a little unfamiliar. I suspect it’ll take a while getting used to the location and feel of the arrow keys as you fumble around for the left key while accidentally pressing on the option key in the meantime.
Unfortunately, it was pretty bright in the shop and I didn’t think of checking out the new individually lighted keys of the keyboard. Some reviews have stated that the keys weren’t as properly lit up as Apple claimed during the keynote. The lighting was uneven and there was light leakage.
Personally, I’m really excited by the new technology in the macbook, though in it’s current form the macbook isn’t for me. It’s great if you’re a light computer user, mainly using it for web surfing and maybe some simple word processing. It is a full fledged computer in it’s own right, but fundamental things like lack of storage space, and the availability of only a single port would prevent it from becoming my main computer. It’s also the same lack of storage space in the macbook pros that’s pushing me towards getting an iMac instead of a new laptop this fall. Well, I’m hoping that history repeats itself and that Apple announces the 21.5 inch retina version of the iMac at least. Definitely looking forward to getting a new computer. Something went wrong with Total Finder last night, and I took over 40 minutes restarting my lappy twice, before it would run smoothly… -.-‘’’
Summer means it’s buzzing with news from Techland. With the google I/O conference two days ago, and the Apple WWDC coming up on the 8th June, there’s plenty of Andriod and Apple news floating around. My only regret is that I’ll be in Australia for holiday on the 8th. No more watching of WWDC live for me :( It’ll be what… 3am? in Australia during the conference. No way I’d be able to stay up till so late while on holiday! (And that’s if the internet in the hotel is even fast enough for me to stream the video live!) Guess I can only read the news the day after… if I even have time.
But yes! Exciting news from Google. Android pay, Google’s answer to Apple pay is finally here. New photo application for backing up your photos and videos called Google Photos, with UNLIMITED storage. Google Now is further enhanced, and a new OS for IOT. The Google Photos app is available on both android and iOS, and I’m definitely going to check it out. (yes, it’s free).
Loads of Apple rumours about iOS 9 floating around too. Dual screen for the iPads? Force touch for iPhones? Better Apple maps? San Francisco font on the iOS? I’d say the new font is highly likely. Apple made the new font for the Apple Watch. It’s only natural that they will move it to their rest of the Apple devices. Similarly for the Force Touch. MacBooks have gotten it, it’s only natural that it will fine it’s way into iPhones. It’s only a question of when. Would it be this year, or the next? I certainly hope it’ll be this year, since I’m getting a new phone this year… no thanks to my dead iPhone 5s.
I’ve been playing around with my xiaomi quite a lot… and in conclusion, I still prefer a smaller phone. The xiaomi is a torture when I have to use it one handed… like when I’m talking to my pals through Facebook message (well, when I say talking, I mean messaging) with my left hand, while my right hand is busy feeding myself a piece of chicken or whatever I was having for lunch that day. Or when the trains get ridiculously crowded. I’ve actually dropped the phone before (and not just once) because I was trying to reach for some far away button. Xiaomi has a one handed option, but calling up that option is really troublesome - the command often fails to execute. And even then, typing on the suddenly reduced screen size is difficult - I make more errors than usual… and it really defeats the purpose of buying a phone with a large screen.
So… June is practically here already. Just another 4 more months to bear. I really can’t freaking wait to get my hands on a new computer and phone. Especially the computer. My little one has been really brave and tough to last me for all these 5 years, withstanding all my abuse. I bet it’ll still last for years to come, but it can no longer handle that level of performance I demand from my devices. Already about two or three years ago I’ve stopped using 4 browsers at once because the system could no longer take it. And now, sometimes I quit every single program that’s unused - even things like iTunes, because the computer/ram just can’t quite handle things as well anymore. Guess it’s especially bad now that I’m doing video subbing. I tried to open ageisubs so that I could do the timing myself, but the little icon just jumped around for 10 minutes before I finally gave up waiting and force quit the app. I guess the mac would perform better once I strip down all the apps to leave just a few bare essentials… but doing so would mean I can’t use it as my primary computer anymore. In other words, I need another computer.
How many more days till the Apple fall keynote?
I need to countdown!
Sunday, April 12, 2015
Of history and blogs
For quite some time now, I've been trying to recall the blog I used in my sec school days. I used it pretty extensively... grumbling about school, confessing my love for chemistry, posting tons and tons of chemical structures that I created with ChemDraw. I couldn't recall the site anymore... but I did some googling work and finally found it today. 'Found' it. You can see this news article: http://www.moe.gov.sg/media/press/2005/pr20050909a.htm
My school won second place pfft. But I was part of the blog contributors who made it happen.... So I do am glad for that... but sadly... the site is long gone... and with it all my entries. I can barely remember what I wrote there, though I did remember that pretty much every entry was about chemistry. Esp the pharm chem option I was taking. Man. Those were the days. The days when I was still in love with chem. How did I end up in bio now? Pfft. Blame it on the JC days. *Sigh*.
Sad that I can't look at my old posts again. Would have loved to keep a copy for old times sake. Been recalling the stuff we learnt in sch and did in labs. It's sad. I barely remember a single shit from uni days when it was just a few years back... but I remember so much stuff from sec sch when it's been a decade or longer. Why so? Cos it goes like this I guess.
Lecture: Prof teaches about NCBI BLAST.
Me: What the heck. I freaking learnt that in SECONDARY SCHOOL.
Lecture: Basics of org chem... showing all the functional groups
Me: Scans through the list. Ahhhh I've read about them all in SECONDARY SCHOOL. Except for this one! ONE new item. Wow -.-''' *rolls eyes*
Lecture: Separation techniques - GC, HPLC, MS, NMR, UV VIS
Me: I learnt that in SECONDARY SCHOOL, JC (H2 and H3 chem?), and we're learning it again? And what, there's NOTHING NEW in these lecture notes? Are you kidding me?
Lab prac: Gel casting
Me: Zzzzz are you trying to bore me to death? We freaking did that in SECONDARY SCHOOL. All the time. So many times. Ok at least we get to use EtBr here.
Lab prac: Cell culture
Me: But... I was doing so much of it in my INTERNSHIP already.
I do remember some of the stuff that we did for the first time in uni... like SDS page and protein pull down assays... but so many things were repeats, or simple add ons to my sec sch knowledge that it's no wonder that I don't remember them at all. Boring, duplicated experiences. Gah.
I realised my 'first' blog is gone too. Myspace. I didn't migrate it. I hardly posted a thing there though so it's fine... Oh wells.
I checked my very first entry here. I wrote that this is my 3rd blog. I guess the myspace would be the first, followed by moblog… and then this. Afterwards I had a gaming blog… then LJ… and now a wordpress.
I’m reluctant to completely abandon this blog just for old times sake… but maybe… maybe it’s time. Either that or… this blog needs a serious face lift. I don’t know. Just looking at the tags I have and really… it’s been a long time. Gah. Chem spa? Lololol. Well this was made in j1 after all. Hahaha! Oh wells. I’m hardly using this anyway. No one visits this place anymore either I guess? And IMO bloodspot itself has become outdated. Ok LJ is dying but that’s a different matter.
Oh wells. Started my wordpress projects today. Let’s see how they will turn out… *cough cough*
Monday, April 06, 2015
Weekend!
So I went out with my family during the weekend... and thought I'd share some photos.
We went to Turf City during the weekend and there’s a hidden corner called the Pasarbella and it’s a really nice place. Doesn’t look like it’s Singapore in there.
Feels more like some market in the western countries… or in Australia.
Loads of food shops… selling all sorts of foods. Spanish, German, Japanese…. Seafood, cheese, cakes, pork…
Of course it’s a little pricey but… the atmosphere is pretty nice eh?
Paella. That’s the biggest pan of paella I’ve ever seen.
There’s this really nice shop (this is the corridor leading to the shop) called The Cheese Ark selling all sorts of otherwise not readily available cheese. The shop décor is really nice and more importantly, the staff is really, extremely, nice and friendly. Introducing you to the cheese and letting you try the cheese… and not talkative in an irritating way too. We were going to be out for quite a while so we didn’t want to buy the cheese right away… though we did ask what time they close. And guess what? We actually returned to that shopping centre for dinner just to buy the cheese. That’s how nice the staff are to make us want to return… of course, the cheese was great too. That’s got to be a must isn’t it? ;)
That’s the name of that… market place.
Really cute toilet signs.
We went around visiting various car show rooms around the island, but we went back to Turf City for dinner. Not in Pasarbella though. It’s a restaurant outside called the Curry Gardenn.
And boy the food was good. I didn’t take much photos though. We just attacked the rest of the dishes when they arrived. They took extremely long with the food. I guess they really put in the care and effort to cook the dish after you order… they don’t re-cook the food… but well… you really have to wait pretty darn long.
Anyway the drinks. The green one there is the butter milk, and no it’s nothing like butter beer or whatever you might expect. There’s green chilli, salt, herbs… yes salt. It’s a freaking salty and a little spicy drink. More like a soup than a drink? Supposed to be cleansing and what not but it’s darn good. The white one is lime juice. It’s good… but amongst the three it’s the least outstanding, the most normal. The last orange thing is mango lassi. Mango with yoghurt. And I just loved that too. The taste of the mango is really strong and good - it’s fresh mango - and the yoghurt provides just the right amount of sourness for balance.
That’s the BBQ chicken. Darn it was so fragrant, so juicy, so delicious. The sauce was fantastic too. It’s really ridiculously well prepared. You can smell and taste the BBQ-ness… the fragrance of the charcoal, but it’s still so juicy and tender. This is also the only dish I took a photo of yay! The rest of the food took really long to come and we were just starving by the time they arrived so… :P
We ordered a few dishes, mutton masala, some cottage cheese dish, nann… and some other dishes that I don’t quite know/remember the name of. They were all really good, very refined and well made. You can say it’s not that authentic or representative of the general food in India because dishes most likely won’t be so refined, but it’s high class and well made and definitely worth having. The prices are very reasonable too.
We went to buy the cheese after dinner… that’s the signboard and list of shops at the entrance of Pasarbelle. Passer means market in Malay by the way… and as far as I can gather belle means fine (amongst other meanings) in French. So Fine Market… and what a fine market it indeed is.
That’s the entrance to the place. Up the steps and to the left. Hidden in a small corner, with a small entrance. I really didn’t expect it to be so big inside! There’s a level 2 (or more?) too but we didn’t go upstairs.
So we bought something from The Cheese Ark. They have a really cute paper bag.
What a cute tagline. Turns out there’s a reason for it. They gather rare cheese from traditional cheesemakers that would otherwise possibly close down due to being unable to compete without mass production… and give them business so that they would hopefully not have to close down.
That’s the cheese we bought. Casatica Di Bufala. Cheese made from buffalo milk, and this one is really fresh. Love it!
Personally… I prefer soft cheese to hard cheese. Well at least I’ve not tried a hard cheese that I’ve really liked yet. I love the texture… love it when it’s ripe too… when it starts oozing… that’s really nice too.
Their address… to be honest their FB page kinda sucks. They can do so much more with it but as I can see it… they just have reposts of cheese related articles. So cold and impersonal, and completely unlike my experience when visiting the physical shop.
Alright. That’s all for this entry! Till next time!
We went to Turf City during the weekend and there’s a hidden corner called the Pasarbella and it’s a really nice place. Doesn’t look like it’s Singapore in there.Feels more like some market in the western countries… or in Australia.Loads of food shops… selling all sorts of foods. Spanish, German, Japanese…. Seafood, cheese, cakes, pork…Of course it’s a little pricey but… the atmosphere is pretty nice eh?Paella. That’s the biggest pan of paella I’ve ever seen.There’s this really nice shop (this is the corridor leading to the shop) called The Cheese Ark selling all sorts of otherwise not readily available cheese. The shop décor is really nice and more importantly, the staff is really, extremely, nice and friendly. Introducing you to the cheese and letting you try the cheese… and not talkative in an irritating way too. We were going to be out for quite a while so we didn’t want to buy the cheese right away… though we did ask what time they close. And guess what? We actually returned to that shopping centre for dinner just to buy the cheese. That’s how nice the staff are to make us want to return… of course, the cheese was great too. That’s got to be a must isn’t it? ;)That’s the name of that… market place.Really cute toilet signs.We went around visiting various car show rooms around the island, but we went back to Turf City for dinner. Not in Pasarbella though. It’s a restaurant outside called the Curry Gardenn.And boy the food was good. I didn’t take much photos though. We just attacked the rest of the dishes when they arrived. They took extremely long with the food. I guess they really put in the care and effort to cook the dish after you order… they don’t re-cook the food… but well… you really have to wait pretty darn long.Anyway the drinks. The green one there is the butter milk, and no it’s nothing like butter beer or whatever you might expect. There’s green chilli, salt, herbs… yes salt. It’s a freaking salty and a little spicy drink. More like a soup than a drink? Supposed to be cleansing and what not but it’s darn good. The white one is lime juice. It’s good… but amongst the three it’s the least outstanding, the most normal. The last orange thing is mango lassi. Mango with yoghurt. And I just loved that too. The taste of the mango is really strong and good - it’s fresh mango - and the yoghurt provides just the right amount of sourness for balance.
That’s the BBQ chicken. Darn it was so fragrant, so juicy, so delicious. The sauce was fantastic too. It’s really ridiculously well prepared. You can smell and taste the BBQ-ness… the fragrance of the charcoal, but it’s still so juicy and tender. This is also the only dish I took a photo of yay! The rest of the food took really long to come and we were just starving by the time they arrived so… :PWe ordered a few dishes, mutton masala, some cottage cheese dish, nann… and some other dishes that I don’t quite know/remember the name of. They were all really good, very refined and well made. You can say it’s not that authentic or representative of the general food in India because dishes most likely won’t be so refined, but it’s high class and well made and definitely worth having. The prices are very reasonable too.
We went to buy the cheese after dinner… that’s the signboard and list of shops at the entrance of Pasarbelle. Passer means market in Malay by the way… and as far as I can gather belle means fine (amongst other meanings) in French. So Fine Market… and what a fine market it indeed is. That’s the entrance to the place. Up the steps and to the left. Hidden in a small corner, with a small entrance. I really didn’t expect it to be so big inside! There’s a level 2 (or more?) too but we didn’t go upstairs.So we bought something from The Cheese Ark. They have a really cute paper bag.What a cute tagline. Turns out there’s a reason for it. They gather rare cheese from traditional cheesemakers that would otherwise possibly close down due to being unable to compete without mass production… and give them business so that they would hopefully not have to close down.That’s the cheese we bought. Casatica Di Bufala. Cheese made from buffalo milk, and this one is really fresh. Love it!Personally… I prefer soft cheese to hard cheese. Well at least I’ve not tried a hard cheese that I’ve really liked yet. I love the texture… love it when it’s ripe too… when it starts oozing… that’s really nice too.
Their address… to be honest their FB page kinda sucks. They can do so much more with it but as I can see it… they just have reposts of cheese related articles. So cold and impersonal, and completely unlike my experience when visiting the physical shop.Alright. That’s all for this entry! Till next time!
Sunday, March 29, 2015
Bidding farewell
It’s a rainy, gloomy day as we bid farewell to Mr. Lee Kuan Yew.
It’s… disappointing and at the same time hilarious to see how the number of Western media reports on chewing gum. It’s a long bygone issue here. It’s not as if all candies are banned anyway. Chewing gum is a novelty for us when we go overseas… but one that I’m more than happy to do without. Clean drinking water? Great economy? Clean and green garden city? Safe and secure nation? Those are much, much more important to me. Who cares about gum in the light of all these greater things? Will you die without gum? You can die from armed robberies though, or shootings. Or get sick from drinking unclean water. Or get injured in street riots and protest… and have your daily life inconvenienced by strikes. They pick on all the nitty gritty little things because they are ignorant, jealous even, of all the things that we do have, that we enjoy and they don’t.
It’s… a sad occasion indeed. May you rest in peace Mr. Lee.
Saturday, March 28, 2015
Food porn!
Some random photos of food. Ate out with my family a few times recently and this is the result…
Loot!
So I went to the IT Show last week… and I’ve finally gotten around to talking all the photos and sharing. Went on both days… and mum got a Samsung Galaxy Tab S 8.4 inch (What a long name!) on Sunday too. No photos of that though hahaha. I only took photos of my own loots.
Still have not finished ‘setting up’ all my loots. Well basically the USB fan and the new table lamp. Because my old table lamp is still working! And because my computer table is way too messy to set up the other fan…
Loads of photos coming up!
But yay for new bag packs! I hope this one lasts longer than the previous! The previous one only lasted like… maybe… 2 years? Or 3? Really short! I really like the build. And it has quite a lot of compartments for me to put all my little stuff (pens and what not!). Oh and…. the bag pack model name is really cool too. KING COBRA. Hoohohoho. I’m born in the year of the snake. Perfect.
Ok. That’s all the loot from the IT show. No BIG items like lappys because we’ve all switched to using macs (all authorised dealers here, so no price discounts at the IT fair). Save for the tablet. Next BIG item will be my mac later this year I guess.
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