. . Reunion BBQ . .

Yay! Last Sunday, during the Lunar New Year's Eve, my family and relatives gathered on West Coast Park for a simple BBQ. Also for a feast since it's my birthday was just over a week ago.

Set up a few tents and a canopy (for fearing that it might rain, and which it did that day). Like last year's BBQ, it rained and we had to use umbrella to not let the fire out. Least this time round, when it rained, we just moved the canopy to where the pit is. Simple.

Here are some pictures taken!

Stayed til late before I made my way home. Was raining when I travel home. Which was good cause it had not rain for more than 2 weeks and the grass were dying. Hah!

. . Workdesk . .

Here is a quick shot of my desk at work. These few initial shots *including the ones in the previous post* are taken without me reading the manual. Heh. Didn't have time cause had charged the battery the night before and only use it in the morning just before I left for work.

Unedited but resized and reduced resolution.

Realized, after I got home, was that there's a lot of photo options for this camera. Still learning about the camera and slowly reading the manual, which is around 200+ pages.

. . Lumix LX3 . . .

Few days ago, on my birthday, I went out to get a new compact camera!! Hah! Been eyeing on a compact camera for quite some time but didn't really know what brand or type that I should get at that time. So I checked out dpreview.com and read their reviews. One of the best compact camera that they reviewed (and that I got for myself for my birthday) was a Panasonic Lumix LX3.

Jeng! Jeng! Jeng!

Together bundled with the camera are the camera casing and also a 4GB SDHC card. Altogether with a screen protector, I had to forked out almost $700! Hah! I guess it's a good investment. I think having a compact camera is better when you're on a casual outing. Rather than lugging my Canon 400D DSLR, I can have this LX3 packed into a small bag. Not that I don't like my DSLR, just that, sometimes, a small camera will do just fine. Heh!

Here are some few unedited pics that I took with my new Lumix LX3.

Along the alley where I usually parked my bike. 7.45pm

From my room window. 9.11 AM

From my room window. 8.22 PM

Hmm, not sure about how you see it. But I think the pictures come out quite sharp and the colours came out good. Even better than my DSLR. Hah. Or maybe I need to clean my DSLR again, or get a better lense. Heh.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Other than that, I also got a new bag. Well, actually, it's from my sis and my elder brother. But, well, the story goes that my sis, who went out to get the back, got me a wrong bag. She got me the 4 Million Home bag; a camera bag. But what I wanted was a messenger bag.

Well, partly it's my fault for not describing exactly what I wanted. Eventually, I got the camera bag replaced with this messenger bag "Barney Rustle Blanket" Heh. Quite a strange name for a bag. Got it in this colour cause I've already have a slightly-bigger Crumpler backpack "Seedy Bar" in somewhat khaki.

Frecky said this messenger bag looks like those watermelons that's yellow on the inside.

. . Korean Biscuits . .

A colleague of mine, LMY, just came back from her 2 weeks holiday to Korea and she helped to buy for me 2 boxes of Korean Chocolate Biscuits!! Yay!

Ta-Dahh!

Ok, I don't know the name of this biscuit.. It's written in Korean.. Had initially asked her to help me buy these biscuits before she went for the holiday. How did I know about the biscuitss?? Well, she had been to Korea the year before *i think* and she had bought these biscuits and placed them at the office pantry to share. I had a bite and I was hooked!!!! It's damn nice!!!

The chocolate filling is appropriately sweet and not chocolatey thick; and the biscuit itself is quite soft and not hard or crunchy. Definitely one of the best chocolate biscuits I've ever had. Definitely.

Inside the box, minus 4 small packets.

I've even gave Im and Khai a packet each and they agree with me that the biscuits are good.... Heh. But that's all they're gonna get. A packet each. Sorry.

Anyway, today is my birthday! Hehe, had took a leave from work today to just slack around in the morning and enjoy the day. Went out in the late afternoon, to get something *yeah I buy my own birthday present* and had a quick dinner with Frecky at Ramen 10.

Will blog about what I've got for my birthday, some other time. Maybe tomorrow. Heh.

. . Lost my chocolates . .

This evening, when I got back home from work, I found that my stashed plastic bag of chocolates was gone except for a tin-pack of Lindt Swiss Hearts.

I got this (and some other chocolates) from Frecky from her recent family holiday/trip to Europe. Some other chocs that was in the said plastic bag were given as christmas gifts. I've ate some of them and the rest was kept tied up in the plastic bag. Tied-up! I was saving them cause I had sore throat and cough since Christmas and I didn't want to eat the chocs then.

Mom said that my sis-in-law had took the rest of my chocs and brought it to her friend's place to give it to their children. She said "The chocs were there for quite some time and nobody seems to eat it."

Haiz. It's mine. I tied it up.

This morning actually, I found my chocs out of the plastic bag and was put into a container in the fridge. Hmm, nevermind. I found a new plastic bag and put back my chocs into the new plastic bag and tied it up.

The chocs couldn't have been magically tied up back into a new plastic bag right??????

I'm feeling angry, cause now I can't have my Swiss chocolate bars.

Swiss chocolate bars le!!

Was so pissed I went out and bought some smokes. First few smokes this year.

. . Another $100 . .

Woohoo.. Got another $100 worth of CapitaVouchers today from the accountant. Hehe, my reward for coming in one of the 3rd prize winner for last month's Monthly Photoshop Submission.

d $ c $ b

Hmm, right now I'm really eyeing on something to get at Funan DigitaLife Mall, one of the shopping centres that accept the vouchers.

Hmmmmmm.......

. . Transporter 3 . .

Caught the movie "Transporter 3" last Friday, with Frecky. Actually thought of watching "Yes Man" but the the tickets were selling out fast and we didn't want to get those bad seats. Yeah, so we end up catching Jason Statham, once again starring as Frank Martin, in "Transporter 3"

The movie was great! There was a lot of action sequences; gun fires, car chases, extraordinary fights (fight choreography by Cory Yuen) and explosions! Hah! It's a guy movie I tell ya. I exceptionally like the fight scenes! It's so wonderfully shot and executed that the fights scene looks amazing. You'll feel (the pain) for those duds at the receiving end of Frank's punches.

one of the sorry fella

There's this one particular love scene between Jason and the female lead, Natalya Rudakova, that I didn't really like. Well, it's a stupid scene but I guess it's vital to the building up of the story, that eventually convinced the audiences, why Frank Martin would go all out and rescue her by the end of the story.

The old french Inspector, Francois Berleand as Inspector Tarconi, is back in this installment and his character injects comedy along the storyline.

Anyway it's a great action movie and if you love the first two movies, you'll love this third installment.

. . Watchmen & Flight . .

Finally, finished reading up the graphic novel "Watchmen" which I started some months back. Heh. Can't even remember when I bought the book.

Anyway, the story for "Watchmen" is great. Got to read it to appreciate it. Written by Alan Moore (The Leagues of Extraordinary Gentlemen, V for Vendetta), "Watchmen" is one of TIME magazine's 100 Best Novels.


Basically bought this novel when I read that Hollywood is making a movie based on this title. Kind of wanting to find out about the story beforehand and later on, see how they translate the story from comic book page to movie screen. Not sure why, but I kind of have some fascination on comic based movie. Heh. Can't wait for the movie to be out in March.

___________________________________________________________________

This is my current read, well, yeah read. "Flight" is in it's fifth volume now ( I have all the previous volumes) . I love this series of graphic novel. "Flight" is a compilation of short stories and novels; mostly, the usual comic with narrations and others, the unique ones of just drawings to tell the story.


It's a great mix of stories and art. Great inspiration book for budding comic/webcomic artists. If I'm not wrong, earlier volumes of "Flight" are available at the public libraries for loan.

. . Birds Photos . .

Finally get to finish editing some of my photos from my trip to the Jurong Bird Park some months back. I put it off for so long, but still, I had to put it up.

Here are some of the photos.

Check out the rest of the photos here.

. . Happy 2009 . .

Happy New Year to all! If there is anyone reading this at all.. Hehe..

Anyway, it had been a long time since I had been blogging. My last post was in September. That was like 3 months ago. Hah! Looking back the past year had been quite a roller coaster ride in my life. And I started this blog to archive those ups and downs...

My initial intention for this blog was to do a very simple daily rantings of my life. A storybook-like kind of blog. But it looks like I had failed. Hah! Started out good with daily posts for quite a many months. There were even times if I was unable to blog for some days, I would come back and typed in the events for the days that I had missed.

Soon after half a year, I guess, I got lazy.. Then things started to get monotonous and there was nothing much to blog in anyway. Generally, that's one of the reasons that I had stopped posting any more entries.

But I like to keep a blog going. I feel that by keeping a blog, it keeps the people close to me informed of my life and I definitely don't want to throw this blog away. So this is how it's going to be. I'm going to revamp this blog! WOohoo!.. It will no longer be an anonymous blog! Well, if you don't know me, my name is Yusman! nrySmn is basically my full name but without the vowels. Hehe..

Anyway, I'd been thinking, I want to revamp this blog to something more cheery! Something less moody and angsty and dark. And for the past postings, which I had slammed some people and say bad things and all that.. Well, I'm going to go back and edit it all.. Just need to delete it away!*Ehhm this will take a few days though.* This is going to be a friendly blog where anyone can read about me. Hehe..

What is that? Why change? Why not?! I'm always thinking of changes and new ideas every time. And every new year especially. Achievements gained in the past year wasn't that transparent. I still haven't started to learn how to cook. Put off learning the sign language. This year though, I've already thought of new ideas. Hehe..

Sometimes I can be so fickle-minded.

So, for those people who already knew my old blog theme, what do you think of this change? Tell me! Drop a comment! Email me! Cbox me!

Do tell.