Over the weekend was the CUMSA Annual Ball - with the theme as 881 this year, no doubt inspired by Royston Tan's getai mania. Of course it's something that I won't forget since I had so much trouble organising it last year. (Let's just say that the preceding year's ball usually sets the tone for the following year).

Some of my favourite photos from the night...
The Dai-gor... (check out the massive ring!)

The prim & proper & pretty ones... You decide who's which... =X

Kenrick the Cambridge Graduate... ;p

Chea Lu, my (ex-)college wife... muahaha.. she's since abandoned the kids and me to go to another college... tsk tsk...

Table Photo - we were obviously stuffing ourselves with Tiger beer.... and we were seated right at the back, much to our annoyance....

It sure was a fun ball, though the entertainment got a little draggy towards the end, when the dessert and coffee were finished but there were still performances going on....

Labels: Cambridge, CUMSA Annual Ball

Another dearth of posts I'm afraid...


Earthquake in the UK last night! The largest one since 1984 (i'm not even sure if there were any between then and now... ;p)

Sad to say, but I THINK i slept through it.. Well, it did happen at GMT 0056, and it was only for 10 seconds, and I was asleep already (need the rest man!). Although I swear I did get woken up, and was in a semi-conscious state, and I thought I heard people saying there was an earthquake in my corridor/staircase. I thought it was a dream then, and it rang a bell when people were discussing it this morning, so it must have been true.... loL.

Anyhow, i'll post soon enough. Too much bits of stuff to tidy up... =X

Labels: Cambridge, Earthquake

Sometime back, I was watching an episode of Pitagoras Switch, and that's when I learnt about the Rube-Goldberg machines - which is a very difficult name for an overengineered device, which performs just a very simple task - like press a button for example. But there are some really wonderful machines out there though, of which, these two were particularly impressive:

The Honda Rube-Goldberg advertisement... Damn cool I say.

And this one. All the setup just to get a nice bowl of Ramen - but it's still damn cool nonetheless and I could just watch it over and over again.....

Just something for your Saturday afternoons... =)

Labels: Rube-Goldberg Machines

Over the last few weeks, I managed to watch a few movies, mostly on DVD, and I've enjoyed most of them...

Powaqqatsi - Life in Transformation
I watched it as part of the CUUNA film screening. It's quite an interesting film about the developing world. It has no dialogue, no actors, only great cinematography and music. If you think you've seen all the "developing world images", then you're wrong, cos most of the scenes shown were so raw, and quite eye-opening. It's still quite relevant even though this film is twenty-years old...


High School Musical(again!)
Haha... I just had to watch it again. And of course, I discovered that Leon is a fan of it as well....
(referenced to this post)

That Thing You Do
(oh my... Liv Tyler...)

Oh classic show. Got inspired to watch it again after my Sec 1/2 classmates formed a Facebook group for our lower sec class. We performed to "That Thing You Do" during assembly (i think it might have been during the JRIC - Junior Rafflesian Investiture Ceremony) then.... Memories.... =)

Palm Blossom
A Korean "coming of age" film. By coming of age, they meant lots of sex. A little disturbing though I thought. If you watch it, you'd understand. What's with this "love" for older women man?

I guess my favourite coming of age film is still "the Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys" - go watch it if you haven't already...

Secret (不能说的秘密)
WAH! Finally caught the Jay Chou show.. To be honest, I really liked it, not so much for the story line I guess and I'm probably just romanticising anyway, but what the heck... it's nice to escape reality once in a while...

桂綸鎂(Kwai Lun-Mei or Gui Lunmei) - she's so pretty! So worth your money just to go and watch her... haha...

yubikiri... And I really enjoyed the piano/music pieces as well. No wonder it won Best Original Film Song at the 44th Golden Horse Awards.... well done!

Labels: Movies

Oh, I meant to write something tonight, but I was too caught up preparing for the steamboat tonight. Preparing a steamboat for 10 people by yourself is no mean feat, and is quite draining and tiring, especially when I haven't had my beauty nap today and was up since 5.45am and haven't had a break since.

So, I shall go recuperate (not v much, since I have to be up at the same time tomorrow morning) and hopefully find some time to write tomorrow instead. Good nite!

Kiss me out of the bearded barley
Nightly, beside the green, green grass
Swing, swing, swing the spinning step
You wear those shoes and I will wear that dress.

Oh, kiss me beneath the milky twilight
Lead me out on the moonlit floor
Lift your open hand
Strike up the band and make the fireflies dance
Silver moon's sparkling
So kiss me

Kiss me down by the broken tree house
Swing me upon its hanging tire
Bring, bring, bring your flowered hat
We'll take the trail marked on your father's map

Oh, kiss me beneath the milky twilight
Lead me out on the moonlit floor
Lift your open hand
Strike up the band and make the fireflies dance
Silver moon's sparkling
So kiss me

It's been such a busy CNY period that I'm so glad I finally get my time off now... Some things that I did included my annual Pineapple tart making cycle, CNY dinner at Uncle & Auntie Cho Mee (Auntie Sulina & Uncle Gerry)'s house, dinner at Jinling with the NatScis, watching Lion Dance at Market Square, and such... Though I must say, it's not quite as festive as it may seem.

1. Pineapple Tarts - I've only had time to make one big batch of it thus far. There're still 15 cans of pineapple sitting in my room at the moment... =X

2. Uncle Gerry. I kinda like this shot cos it has the "Chen" poster in the background, which is Uncle Gerry's surname... And he looks kinda relaxed and happy in this shot...

3. Lion Dance Performance by our very own CU Lion Dance Troupe. And the main lion is played by my neighbour Chris and Yijin.

I liked the ears in this next shot... Too bad they were performing in the shade, so it's a bit darker than it should have been...

What do you call the stupid doll head huh? I seem to recall that as a kid, I was quite scared of the doll, cos i think it looks rather freaky... Does anyone else think so too?

-----------------------------
I had my head-of-class discussion (i.e. viva) for my lab report, which had sucked up my entire first 3 weeks of term, today. Glad that I got an alpha-minus (i.e. A-) for it, which is as good as it gets really, since the highest mark given for my experiment was an alpha-minus.... At least the hard work didn't go to waste...

Labels: Cambridge, CNY

It's STILL foggy now. That's more than 24 hours of fog already. It's the worst fog of my 3 years in Cambridge and the only other time I've seen fog this thick was when i was in Venice in Dec 2005, resulting in my flight being cancelled (and my rock being confiscated, though the latter not a result of the fog... ;p)

To give you an idea of how thick it is:
When I was cycling to the boathouse this morning at 6.10am. It's a little out of focus too I think. =X

While we were out - the visibility was really down to less than 100 metres. It certainly was stressful steering the boat through the fog, the worry not so much about crashing into the banks (since I'm fairly familiar with the river), but crashing into other crews ahead, who might be coming the wrong way (as they often do.. idiots!) or stopped and not pulled in (idiots!)

[edit]Fog is a cloud in contact with the ground. Fog differs from other clouds only in that fog touches the surface of the Earth. The same cloud that is not fog on lower ground may be fog where it contacts higher ground such as hilltops or mountain ridges. Fog is distinct from mist only in its density. Fog is defined as cloud which reduces visibility to less than 1 km, whereas mist is that which reduces visibility to less than 2 km.
-source Wikipedia[/edit]

I actually have a few other things I can write about, but I shall save that for tomorrow. The busiest part of my term has finally passed (i think...), and today happens to be EXACTLY half way through this term. DAMN FAST! :( Today shall be my slack and watch anime day - I haven't had much of this lately...

Labels: Cambridge

It's so foggy out there that visibility is only a couple of hundred yards, and my hair was wet from the fog (actually dripping wet in fact) from just cycling back (only about 5 mins or so)... gosh... I hope my outing is cancelled tomorrow...

Labels: Cambridge

Wah, what a nice chapter to write a CNY post on (ignore the 2 in front). It honestly doesn't feel anything like CNY here, other than the fact that everyone tells me that.. haha... :)

But well, it's a fairly tiring start to the Lunar New Year for me as well - at this moment, the thing I'd like to do most is to go to bed (it's 9.45pm only). My only consolation is that I'll have a fairly relaxed day tomorrow.. compared to what I've been going through the last couple of days rushing to finish my lab report... And I estimate that I've cycled at least 15 miles in the last 2 days (that's about 24km).

If only I had Nagi milady to spend the New Year with.... =)

Labels: Cambridge

A series of short and random posts I'm afraid. Can't help it that much really... ;p

I was at Xi-lin's place today and we were watching tele after dinner, and we watched "The Choir: Boys Don't Sing" - a documentary about this guy called Gareth, who goes to Lancaster school and tries to revive the choir and the singing culture in the school. It's a sort of teacher-type reality drama you might say. It's actually really inspiring I though, to see the trials and tribulations of a (musical) educator. (I'm not even gonna try and describe it, cos I think I really suck at that).

There's a brief blurb on it at the BBC website. Unfortunately, I don't think it's out on DVD yet, but maybe someone will rip it off TV, so you might find it somewhere... But it's definitely worth getting a copy of. I hope I manage to catch part 2 of 4 next week (it's 1/4 today).

And on the topic of educators, I've started a placement at The Netherhall School! Very excited about it. I went there on Tuesday and it was such a wonderful feeling to be back in a school. It was very similar to what I did during my last summer break when I was attached to Dunman Sec - had a wonderful time there as well. :) So yes, I'll be there till the rest of this term, so I'll keep updating.

Labels: Cambridge, TV

Wah, damn chio.

Labels: Photography

Apparently, according to a certain unnamed source, Kenny "looks like he hasn't slept for days". It certainly does feel a little like that this morning though.