Today my colleague asked me what’s the difference between lah, leh, loh, meh, mah, and all other Singlish as we know it.
I’m kinda used to it now, and was unable to tell him in a proper English how these should be used? Maybe I should tell him that he shouldn’t it use it in the first place, shouldn’t I ?
Anyone care to explain what are the differences between all those ?
As expected, I made a first round exit after losing 6-1, 6-2 to BHL Marine and Chevron Oronite respectively. Against each company, we were supposed to play two doubles and one singles.
The score were:
vs BHL Marine
1st doubles: loss 1-6 (where I played)
2nd doubles: loss 0-6
Single: loss 0-6
vs Chevron
1st doubles: loss 2-6 (where I played)
2nd doubles: won 6-4 !!!
Single: loss 3-6
As we lost to both companies, we were out at first round. BHL Marine and Chevron will fight it out to determine the winner. It seems like BHL Marine is going to win again. We only managed a mere ONE game, so sad.
It has been a weekend full of tennis. I woke up 7.15AM on Saturday, then headed to Paya Lebar for practice, finished about 12 PM, reached back home at Jurong East about 1.30PM, had a lunch, then went out for 3PM meeting at church. It was soon followed by young adults fellowship, and dinner at Ev. Maria’s house at Eunos. I reached home over midnight. I slept almost 2AM in the morning.
Five hours later, I woke up for the tournament, I reached SPE Bukit Timah at 8AM. The game started proper close to 9AM, and I was finished (literally) by 12.30 PM. Reached home about 1PM, had lunch at 2PM, did laundry, took a nap from 3-4PM, then went to church at 5PM.
Now, I’m just waiting for Wimbledon’s men singles finals, just to learn how I should have played this morning :p
All in all, good fun, great game (although I lost). I have one year to practice for next year’s tournament. Looking back at my game, there are few aspects I need to improve A LOT. Serve is key in tournament, especially when you’re playing doubles, and I haven’t got one. I don’t have powerful first serve, nor do I have safe second serve. Patience and consistencies are key too. Those older folks tend to be very patient in playing, while us, the younger ones, tend to try to hit winners, and with that come more unforced errors.
As any other weekend, it started on Friday night, I went for Kung Fu Panda movie, which I highly recommend you to watch. It’s hilarious. On Saturday morning, I went for Heryanto (Nyile) and Christine (Santos) wedding until around 2PM, then I headed straight to PC Show at Suntec. I accompanied a friend to get a highly discounted new, just-released HTC Touch Diamond. Retail price is $1,098, but Singtel is selling at $498 for 2-years contract. By the time we reached there about 2.45PM, everywhere in Singtel booth, they put up this sign that read: “HTC Touch Diamond Out of Stock. Contact us for reservation details“. No choice, my friend had to reserve a set which Singtel will only have it ready by Thursday earliest.
For me, I managed to buy a pretty decent $5 laptop sleeve case for my Macbook, as well as an in-ear headphone in Sony MDR-EX32LP for $38.
Few hours later, we arrived back at NBC for young adults fellowship, and after that, we dropped by CK Tang for a while before went to watch The Incredible Hulk. The movie was pretty slow, and there wasn’t enough action to thrill us, the viewers. Only three smiles from me for Hulk 
I didn’t even realised I was sitting at the same seat number in Lido and GV for different movies on different day, cool coincidence eh?
Today, a friend from Australia came, so I’ll meet her with Dian at Vivo City for lunch, before heading to church for cell group and Sunday service. Hopefully I’ll still have energy to spare to accompany my colleague to Newton Life Church for Mandarin Sunday service. Now I need The Incredible strength
Now, if we think that is tiring, imagine our pastor, Rev. Dr. Stephen Tong, who cares so much for us, that he, at the age of 67, will have session for teens at Cibubur from 5 AM today, then preached in Indonesian language at Jakarta at 7 AM, followed by 9.30 AM sermon in Mandarin, then fly to Singapore for Indonesian language sermon at 5 PM (which usually ends about 7.15PM), then continued to Newton Life Church to preach at 7.30 PM. Early Monday morning, he’ll fly back to Jakarta to teach those teens again in Cibubur, and rushed for an afternoon flight to Kuala Lumpur, and continuing his usual journey to Taiwan, Hong Kong, and back to Jakarta on weekend. Phewwwww….. Now, that’s tiring !! If it is not for God and His truth and all of us, no one in the world would ever done that.
I came to Singapore in 1999 to study in NTU. Over the last nine years in Singapore, I have bought necessary (and many times unnecessary) items for personal use. This time, let’s focus on gadgets. By gadgets, I mean anything related to computers, mobile phones, Pocket PCs, and cameras, from big ticket items like laptop purchase to small items like RAM upgrade or thumb drives or blank DVDs.
When I consolidated all these numbers, the result was eye-opening to say the least. Never have I expected myself to spend over S$20K over these nine years to buy all these items. It’s S$20,332.86 to be exact. 
And that excluding items that I may have missed.
To understand how this number came about, I tried to analyse them by category.
No surprise here, any purchases related to computer (including desktops and laptops) will be significantly higher compared to mobile phones or cameras.
To see when all these gadgets were bought will help to analyse how much I’ve spend over the years.
Back in 1999, PCs were expensive, my first Intel Pentium III 450MHz machine cost over S$2,000. Now, even my Pocket PC has a processor that’s 50% faster. Two years that followed, I fared rather well, spent less than S$1,000 for RAM upgrade, blank DVDs, graphic card, mobile phones, and all sort of small items along the way. I upgraded my PC in 2002 as I brought my first PC back to Jakarta for office use. The spike in 2003 was when I bought my first-ever laptop, Acer Travelmate 800 (to utilise student price before I graduated, but still cost S$3,300 nonetheless :x), a mobile phone, and first-ever Pocket PC, hp iPAQ 2210 (to utilise staff price that was half the market price).
Thankfully, after I started my first job in 2003, the trend went downhill from 2004 onwards (for once, downhill means good :mrgreen:). In 2004, two biggest purchases were well, two LCD monitors. I bought Philips 17″ LCD monitor to replace my 15″ CRT monitor that was spoilt anyway, and half-a-year later, I bought Samsung 17″ LCD monitor when my parents asked for my Philips LCD monitor to be brought back to Jakarta.
Early 2005, I bought a CPU fan, trying to reduce noise of my CPU when it’s working hard. Days later, I accidentally damaged the processor and motherboard when trying to install the CPU fan :’( That’s when I spent unplanned S$550 to replace the motherboard, CPU, and memory. That year also saw me managed to convince my dad to allow me to buy a compact digital camera in Panasonic Lumix FX-8. I ended 2005 by upgrading my 40GB hard drive to a 250GB one. By that time, I needed a lot of disk space to store my family ever increasing collection of photos and videos.
Expenses in 2006 were even lower, notable purchases were Dell Axim X51v, again at half the market price, RAM upgrade to 2GB when I upgraded from XP to Vista, and the excellent 3.2MP camera of Sony Ericsson K800i when I renewed my contract with Starhub.
I tried to stop myself from big purchases in 2007, and that clearly worked well as the only big expenses were a 320GB Western Digital external hard disk, to backup my files as well as to keep family photos and videos that seems to grow exponentially (it’s a hyperbole, but you know what I’m talking about).
Whatever I saved in 2007 was blown away by the turn of the year. We’re not even half-way through 2008, but I’ve already spent S$2,500 for two laptops, one Compaq Presario V3688 and an Apple Macbook (white). How laptop prices has dropped so far that in five years, whatever I spent in 2003 for one laptop can get me three nowadays.
Out of so many purchases over the years and months, were they good buys?
I hope so. I think so. I reckon they were all good buys, although sometimes they were not bought at the most appropriate time I feel. After all, is there ever a good time to buy gadgets? Tracing back on where all those gadgets are now, less than a quarter of their original purchase value are still with me now. Close to S$5K worth of PC components and mobile phones are now spoilt, due to aging and/or accidental knocks and bumps. The Acer Travelmate 800 laptop is still actively used by my brother, and S$3.3K worth of laptops, LCD monitors, thumbdrives, mouse, and mobile phones are used by my dad and mom, at home or in office.
The rest have already been sold, consumed (like blank DVDs), no longer used, or have been given to friends who can make a better use of some of them. A small portion were stolen when my house in Jakarta was broken into, and I hope that portion in the pie chart doesn’t get any bigger, ever.
Anyone here ever tried to list down your purchases over the years and see how much you’ve spent for gadgets? What do you think about mine? Have I simply bought too much?
So, my flight was delayed (re-timed to put in their official terms) to 11PM. Thankfully, no further delay to the flight. Flying alone is easy, but flying with my sister with two babies, 11 bags and boxes to watch out for, totaling 66kg is another matter altogether.
However, bringing babies to flights means special VIP service. After we checked in at the counter at Changi Airport Terminal 1, we were escorted to the crew lane at the immigration counter, bypassing at least a dozen people queuing at the usual lines. We were given front-most seats, 1A, 1B, and 1C. Get any more forward, you need to sit with the pilots already :P.
One and half hour later, we arrived at Jakarta. Carrying out from the aircraft a 15-kg toddler on your right hand with backpack on your back, and your left hand carrying another 10-kg suitcase, I think I get the preview on how it feels to be a father hahaha…. 
At Jakarta immigration, we were again approached by the officer-in-charge and was asked to the “special” lane again. No queue again, wonderful. Wish I could have that more often.
Soon after, we all reached home for a well-deserved rest. I woke up this morning, my left arm aching, probably due to bringing heavy stuff the night before. It’s a wonderful eye-opening experience traveling with babies nonetheless 
I’ll be flying back to Jakarta on Thursday for slightly over a week. My flight was supposed to take off at 9PM, but then I received an email two days ago, saying that they have changed the flight schedule to 11 PM now
With having a much better Internet connection at home now, I should be able to connect more often than a year back when I had to use 56K modem.
I think something wrong with my dinner last nite, about 1-2 hours after I had my dinner, suddenly my stomach felt bloated, whole body felt like I’m going sick soon. I guess sore throat and cold for the past two days have already given me the early sign. Fortunately it was quite late last night when I felt it, so I just went to bed.
Woke up this morning, felt better, but still not as good as I wished for, so I stayed at home today and worked from home. It won’t be effective, but I can still connect to my machine at office, I still have a phone so I can still join meetings from home, so all is not too bad. Yeah, I know, I should get more rest, promise I will
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