Finally, after so long, I have something to announce.

365 DAYS MORE!

Yes, 365 more days. And it's ROD, not ORD! Big big difference.

I don't know, this one year has been so surreal for me. I guess it might seem that time has passed by so quickly, but the truth is, I felt that I have served more than a year. Like I feel so old and everything, and the truth is, I'm not even an adult yet!

The scary part now is for me to really sit down and think about my post-ORD options. In the past, my transition has always been so smooth, you needn't even think about your paths ahead. My aunt said in a nutshell: 'The world doesn't wait for you'. Right. It's time to be decisive, to examine every possible option, and to plan ahead.

The wedding was perfect. Everything about it was so right, or so I presume because I haven't attended a wedding in almost 15 years? The last one I went to, oh, can't remember anything at all. Never mind that the dinner started amazingly late; the food was great, the people were great, and the couple was in 7th heaven.

And Marina Mandarin is such a wonderful 5 star hotel, giving each guest an adorable small bear keychain as a gift! I love keychains and I love bears. I should have came earlier and go around stealing all the bears from the tables! Wahaha.


I'm watching one of those stupid MTV shows now: weird names celebrities give to their kids. Here are some whacky ones!

- Kyd

(So in the playground, the parents will say, HEY KYD, COME HERE, and when 5 kids rush over, the parents will say, MY KYD! Not all the kids!)

- Denim

(Right... Levi's has found its ambassador for 2020)

- Poppy Honey

(What sort of a combination is that? Durian ice cream sounds so much nicer)

- Puma

(It sounds so scary, like a feline cat on the loose. MEOW!)

- Seven

(The only reason why someone would name his child a number, is when he has too many children and he can't keep track. NOT creative at all)

- Rainbow

(It's a nice name. You can't possibly have a bad day, can you? Cos when you do, just think that, oh, My name is Rainbow!)

- Banjo

(When he grows up, he's one lucky chap, because girls are going to play him)

- Godess Lovestone

(HUH? Lovestone alone would have sufficed!)

Now hear this: Michael Jackson's brother, Jermaine Jackson, has decided to incorprate his own name, dotted with some class, into his son's name! It's called:

JERMAJESTY

Jermaine + Majesty = Jermajesty

I kid you not. Go google it if you don't believe.

OKAY. HMMM.

So next time, if I have to name my son, the combinations are endless! For example, my name is Jermaine and I'm a fan of Madonna. What do you get?

Jerdonna Tan

OR, my name is Jermaine and I love donuts! What do you get?

Jerdonut Tan


Thank you, Mr Jermaine Jackson!


But this one definitely takes the cake:

AUDIO SCIENCE


What?! I wonder who the celebrity was. That's downright ridiculous! It sounds more like a band name!

Audio Science. What a joke!

I felt very emotional in camp today.

One of my officers would be getting married and he showed us his wedding video today. I tell you, it was the most romantic video ever. If he uploaded it on YouTube, the whole server would crash immediately. For that moment, all those mushy boyband videos and sad Chinese MVs seemed all too insignificant compared to what I was seeing on the laptop. You could see all us seated at the couch going 'Awwww...', and it almost moved me to tears.

However, the most captivating thing in the video was not the photos (though they were beautifully taken) but the song. It was by far, the most romantic song with the most meaningful lyrics and I have never ever heard it before. It was the perfect song for a wedding, and for a video like that. You look at the photos, you listen to the lyrics, and you could never in your entire life be more touched than that.

So please, if you can, try to find the song by Collin Raye entitled 'One Boy One Girl'. You could get from me on MSN, I bought it from itunes at a hefty price of US$0.99! But I promise you, it would be the most touching song you have ever listened to. And please, throw the 98 degrees song 'I Do Cherish You' out of the window for good. Save that for your weekend kbox session.We need more quality songs like this.

One of my colleagues commented that the reason why he is showing the video to everyone now is so that the women won't cry during the wedding dinner tomorrow.

Guess I'm going to join the gals tomorrow in tears!



Collin Raye
'One Boy One Girl'

He finally gave in to his friend's girlfriend
When she said, There's someone you should meet.
At a crowded restaurant way cross town
He waited impatiently

When she walked in
Their eyes met and they both stared
And right there and then
Everyone else disappeared, but...

Chorus

One boy, One girl
Two hearts beating wildly
To put it mildly it was love at first sight
He smiled, She smiled
And they knew right away
This was the day they'd waited for all their lives

For a moment the whole world
Revolved around one boy and one girl
In no time at all, they were standing there,
In the front of a little church

Among their friends and family
Repeating those sacred words
The preacher said, Son kiss your bride
And he raised her veil
Like the night they met,Time just stood still, for...

Repeat Chorus

He was holdin her hand when the doctor looked up and grinned,
Congratulations, twins.

Repeat Chorus

Today I witnessed a rather incredulous moment during our unit mess event in camp. The usual stuff we do at the mess is always pool, table soccer and karaoke. I've never touched that mic and never will, but today we had our Indian camp mate who went up and sang 2 Chinese songs. LIKE WOW. I couldn't even read some of the words despite having 10 years of education learning Chinese in school, and this Indian could sing off every single word off Tong Hua and Shi Jie Mo Ri. Even if he memorised it, it's still a feat! And I take my hat off him. Really. You'll never experience a more spectacular moment.

Be Hua Yu cool!

BACK.

This trip was like any other annual trip back home to Ipoh. Visiting grandparents and relatives, and all my cousins. Maybe the only thing that has changed would be the strange fact that all my cousins have suddenly become mahjong addicts! We would stay in all day and just table-swim, which was not part of my itinerary! Our shopping trips were cut short because of mahjong, and my late nights were extended because of mahjong. Oh my. At least none of us would become senile in future!

After that took a ride down to KL to meet my father, and that's when the real shopping began! I spent a bomb, which was really really bad. But considering I haven't shopped for 6 months, it was just payback. I think I'll have to give The Great Singapore Sale a miss.


No photos, but here's last month's football crazy adventure on ESPN:



GO GO GO!

I am very impressed with the kids we have today. I dare say, the future is bright and sunny for Singapore!

I come to this conclusion after watching 2 amazing reality shows in Singapore. Firstly, surprise surprise, but this year's batch of Campus Superstar is not bad! As compared to the previous batch which was absolutely horrendous, this one is a breath of fresh air. Not excellent, but good enough for secondary school kids to be belting out hits live on tv. There was this awfully microscopic 13 year old boy called Shaun, ooh! He sings like a pro, although he looks like a mutated teletubby. I love his rendition of my favourite JJ Lin song 'Wings', it was so inspiring I could tear if I was there live. Beats Hady's version of 'You give me wings' anytime man!

Celeste, I'm sorry that your boyfriend got eliminated, I think it was a horrible decision, but he will survive the revival round and come back to win the competition!


Did you watch the premiere of Spell Cast? I was watching my soap drama on Star World and I was too gripped to change the channel after the advertisements! MAN! These kids are not even in secondary school yet and they can spell words that don't even exist in anyone's vocabulary! How old are they? Some dude introduced himself as 'I am in Primary the sqaure root of twenty five'. HAHAHA. Thankfully he wasn't from St Hilda's, if not I will disown myself as a Hildian right here right now!

Oh well, the words that they spell are incredibly out of this world. I can't give any concrete examples because I couldn't spell any of the words! Ho ho ho. Fast fact: I am better at Chinese spelling! I used to score 100 marks for ting xie and check this out: mo xie was a piece of cake to me. Mo xie is when you memorise one whole paragraph of some reading, and believe it or not, I could read the passage just ONCE and it will be in my head.

Now? I don't think I can even remember how to write my Chinese name!

Anyway, please watch Spell Cast on Tuesdays at 8.30 and you will be absolutely FLABBERGASTED!


[ 6 - 10 June 07 - Malaysia ]

Popped by the IT fair today, and I told myself I'll never ever step into another one. Firstly, I'm no IT geek. There's absolutely no gadgets that I would specially want to get by squeezing myself with other Singaporeans like packed sardines. If I want a laptop, camera, ipod or whatever gadget, I would have long got it on any other day, no need to go through all the crowds. But seriously, I didn't know Singaporeans were a whole bunch of IT geeks, all getting hyped up by all these laptop discounts which I can't differentiate from. I mean, even my mum could never understand why I find Sim Lim Square a boring place. What's at Sim Lim anyway? Rows and rows of shops selling IT stuff. How is that fascinating one bit? IT to me is like a foreign language, that I have struggled to grapple with since day one, and I doubt I will ever master it, hence I'm rotting away in tourism and mass communications!

The most fascinating thing today, was the World Book Fair and the Branded Goods sale, which, unfortunately, nobody even bothered. I could spend one whole day at the World Book Fair, browsing for cheap novels. And the Branded Goods sale, oh my! Just the name of the sale - BRANDED GOODS SALE - is enough to make me all hyped up like how Singaporeans get hyped up about the IT fair!

Anyway Marcus, hope you get a good deal on your laptop !


On second thoughts, I don't know if I have any strength to sit through Pirates Of The Carribean. Everyone says it's 3 hours, and I just sat through Zodiac yesterday night, a 3 hour movie too which was a complete waste of time. I cannot understand these crime shows, maybe that's why I have never been a big fan of CSI. I don't have the patience to sit through a whole movie about solving the crime.

Everybody sing with me!
G-L-A-M-O-R-O-U-S!