I think I blog faster than Li Xiang as from what I know she only finishes Day 1 of our trip and here you have it, “My Version” of the Genting Trip.

Day 1 - Wednesday, 2nd January 2008
Reached Golden Mile Complex at about 6.30am, took Grassland Bus and it set off at 7.15am. The bus ticket cost SGD$65.00 per person for a 2 way trip. After much winding around the mountain, we reached Genting about 2pm. Checked into Resort Hotel to room 6154. It surely has a terrible view and not forgetting noisy because the room window is directly above the exhaust fumes that sit on the roof top 3 levels down. The hotel room cost RM160 per night for a standard room. After unloading out luggage, I immediately went down to Coffee Bean because they have free wireless Internet there as I need to bid for my modules.

We caught up with the rest for lunch at Causeway Bay restaurant located at First World Plaza. The food was not bad and one of the better restaurants located in Genting. After a late lunch, Wayne showed us around Genting Highlands and helps us apply for the Genting World Card. After that we went to take a look at the Casino located at First World Hotel and I played and lost RM10 to the slots machine. We parted with Wayne there as he becomes the god of gambler while Li Xiang and I shopped around First World Plaza. The shops there are quite limited and hence it takes us about 3 hours to finish our shopping. I got myself a Nike Dri-Fit T-Shirt and Li Xiang got herself a Diesel Blouse.

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I am back from my 4 days and 3 nights Genting trip. This is my 4th visit to Genting. The first one was in 1990 when I was 6 years old, the second one was in 1993 when I was 9 years old, the third one was in 1997 when I was 13 years old and 11 years after the last trip, I am now 24 years old. Time really flies. I was looking through those old photographs and realized that Genting did change but not that much over the last 15 years. At least 1 thing is for sure, the weather there is still as cooling.

We took a bus down to Kuala Lumpur on the 2nd day as it was very misty in Genting and hence they closed the theme park and because of that, there is nothing else we can do because we do not gamble and we have finished shopping in Genting. So off we go to KL.

I hope Li Xiang will type a detailed blog entry for each of the 4 days we spent there because I am kinda lazy. But nevertheless I have uploaded all the pictures we took (354 photos) for the whole trip to this site. Enjoy!

Genting Highlands Trip (2th January 2008 To 5th January 2008)

Hitachi 32″ LCD TV
My parents bought me a new Hitachi 32″ LCD TV (L32A01A) to replace my old Toshiba 21″ CRT TV (21VZ5E). Bought it at Best Denki at VivoCity for SGD$1099. Comes with a 3 years warrenty, HDMI cable and a wall mounting bracket. The only downside to this is that the television will get delivered to me together with a new Panasonic washing machine that my parents bought on the 8th January 2008.
Features:

• 32″ High Definition LCD TV
• Mega Pixel Resolution 1,366 X 768
• Hitachi’s Original IPS Alpha Technology
• Picture Master Full HD Alpha Graphics Engine
• 10,000:1 Contrast Ratio
• HDMI Input (Ver. 1.3) 1,000 Pages Teletext
• Manual Swivel Stand

Thank you mom and dad!

I Am Lengend
Caught I am Legend at Cineleisure, the movie is about 90 minutes long and somehow I find it very average or even slightly below average. Most people I know also said the same thing that the novel is much better. The ending kinda suck but I like how they make New York City deserted as in the technology behind it.

Barracks@House
2 weeks ago on the 18th December 2007, had lunch at Barracks@House located at Dempsey Road together with several The Digital Movement (TDM) members, ping.sg members and several guys from Microsoft. The reason for this lunch is because Joe Wilson who came all the way from Microsoft HQ wants to know the blogging scene in Singapore as part of his Asia Pacific visit. We discuss about lots of stuff including local politics, freedom of speech in Singapore, local media and what each of us think about Microsoft. It was a very good discussion and Nic is going to have more of this sort of lunch in the future. I can’t wait for the next one. Cheers to all those that I met during the lunch. It was nice meeting you all.

Last Day Of Year
This is the last day of the year before we proceed on to 2008 the year of the Olympics. 2007 has been quite a good year for me except for the fact that the USD keeps dropping, hopefully 2008 will be better for me and everyone else.

For the start, I can foresee that I will love 2008:

• New Hitachi 32″ LCD TV
• New Samsung 24″ or 27″ LCD Monitor
• New Intel Yorkfield Desktop Computer
• New Nokia N82 Mobile Phone
• New Ikea Table
• New Swissflex Spectacles

Woot!

2007/2008 Sem 1 Examination for COMPUTING 2

» CS2105 Introduction to Computer Networks A-
» CS3214 Information Systems Development Project A-
» CS3253 Management of Information Systems B
» GEK1531 Introduction to Cybercrime B+
» CAP: 3.65

I am so sorry guys and girls for CS3214, I think you all put in more effort than me into it and I think you are deserved the same grades as me, I didn’t even expect that I will get this grade.

I wish all my visitors, readers, commenters and plugins users a Merry Christmas. Hope you all have received your Christmas presents =D

I have received mine, all the way from Hong Kong, an authentic Louis Vuitton Card Holder.

Thanks mom and dad!

Amazon estimated shipping arrival date is quite accurate. After my book is shipped, it listed on the site that it will arrived on the 18th December 2007 and it really did, in fact it came early in the morning at about 10am. Here are some pictures:

In fact, I have already browse/read through the entire book and I find it quite useful especially the WordPress MU part as I am not familiar with it. I always wonder what is the difference between /wp-content/mu-plugins/ and /wp-content/plugins/ when I extracted the zip, but after reading the book, I got my answer.

Kudos to Lisa for a job well done on the book (now I know you visit my site) =D

Been a pretty busy week for me, here is a summary of what I did. It has been sometime since I posted something about my life. This is going to be a very long post.

Nokia Christmas Crimes 2007
Got invited by Dinesh to the Nokia year end party called Nokia Christmas Crimes 2007 which is located at Thumper in Goodwood Park Hotel. Li Xiang got drunk after drinking her own glass of white wine and 1/2 a glass of my white wine. It was quite a funny moment. The food was good, the prizes was good, I think they gave out Nokia N93i as prizes in certain games, but the only thing bad about it was I didn’t get to win any prizes. We were the first one there and I did not win the early bird draw =(

Nevertheless, the door gift was quite good, 2x 5 Chrismas Cards, 1x egrips (sticky tape to stick on the back of your handphone so that when it is placed on any slanted surface, it will not slip) and 1x USB travel charger made by Swiss Travel Products

Singapore Polytechnic: World Skill 2008 Sharing Session
I have been invited by Mr Christopher, who is in charge of me during my World Skills 2004: Web Design Trade, to share my experience during World Skills 2004, which I passed the qualifying rounds and got into the finals but not good enough to represent Singapore to compete against the world. The first session was the 5th December 2007 and the last session was the 12th December 2007 (2 sessions only). I shared with them some of my experience, what they can expect, how and what to prepare, show them some of my work and did a walk through of my “GaMerZ Gallery Viewer” source code.

This year there are 5 people that are from SP who are going to compete in the Web Design trade. Of which 1 of them is my brother and the other is his girlfriend, Huimin. 1 of them is good in flash design, the other I heard is good in programming and the last one I am not too sure about it. Nevertheless, I would like to wish them all the best for the qualifying rounds next year.

Been good to go back to SP, I met up with Christopher for lunch at Food Court 6, ate my favorite seafood soup with noodles. Saw several lecturers (Georgina Phua, Leon, James Ang and Ng Boon Yuen) and they still recognize me which I am quite surprised. SP has changed pretty much. Now there is shelter all the way from School of Info-Communications Technology (now it is known as School of Media and Info-Communications Technology) to Dover MRT. There are more study benches throughout the school, the lab pretty much stays the same except for their computers which they upgraded to Pentium 4 3.2GHz in T2034. But something never change is that the Internet is STILL SUPER SLOW!

And somehow I think the network administrator is sleeping. I connected my notebook to the hidden WiFi and after 15 minutes I got infected by a virus, the same virus which infect my brother laptop few weeks ago. Apparently the cause of it is because my D:\ is shared and writable by anyone. I have no problem with this setting in NUS, my mom office and even at my own home. Eventually, I reformatted my laptop which I did not even hesitate to do so because it is loaded with so much Java crap due to my CS3214. I think I must make it a habit to reformat after every semester.

Singapore PHP User Group Meetup (December 2007)
The even was held at NUS Extension located at 12th floor in Park Mall. I didn’t even know NUS has an extension there. LOL Anyway, I was invited to give a talk or rather a sharing session regarding developing WordPress plugins with PHP which I did. I spent like 30 minutes on it even though I got 40 minutes. I guess I spoke pretty fast and go through the presentation very fast. After looking through the video playback, I realized that the speed of my speech is average but maybe still fast for some people but the changing of my screen is very fast, I did not let the audience capture what is on the screen and before they know it, the screen is changed again. I would like to apologized for that.

Hong Kong
My parents, my brother and his girlfriend are off to Hong Kong for shopping on the 15th December 2007 and they are coming back this week on the 20th December 2007. They got me an authentic Louis Vuitton card holder. It is cheaper in HK then in Singapore because there is no tax, unlike Singapore GST or Thailand VAT.

Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium
Nowdays, we like to watch movies back to back, we caught at least 2 movies back to back this month for 3 times. This time it was
Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium followed by Alvin And The Chipmunks. Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium was quite disappointing and I would rate it below average because other than the interesting type storyline and visual effects, I see no other good points about it.

Alvin And The Chipmunks
The OST for this movie simply rocks, I love it. The movie itself is funny and at times heart warming. The character animation was good, the furs of the chipmunks and the way they move was animated well. I recommend this movie definitely and after the movie, if you like it, go get the sountrack either from your nearby music store or your nearby music site.

Petrol prices have been going up a lot lately. Currently 98-Octane rating petrol cost about SGD$ 2.080 for 1 litre.

Lets put this in another perspective:
- 1 litre of petrol cost about SGD$2.08
- 1 can of coke (330ml) cost about SGD$1.20 (coffeeshop price)

Convert 1 litre of coke from 330ml and it will cost you SGD$3.63. As we can see, 1 litre of Coke is more expensive than 1 litre of petrol.

Next think about the effort needed to process oil and the effort needed to process coke and you will get the whole picture that oil is not really that expensive.

Exams
My 2nd year, 1st semester exams ended on the 4th December 2007 with results coming out on the 27th December 2007 (3pm). My 2nd semester will start again shortly on the 14th January 2008. I will be going Genting on the 2nd January 2008 for 4 days 3 nights.

Hitman
Some say this movie is good, some say it sucks, but personally I think this movie is not bad because of some humorous scenes. To me it sucks in terms of storyline because the storyline is rather redundant in the sense that it does not make any sense.

The Golden Compass
This movie is the first part of the trilogy, it will be succeeded by The Subtle Knife and followed by The Amber Spyglass. The visual effect is good because it is by Industrial Light and Magic. The movie has some hidden anti-Christ meaning and hence it is banned in some country such as Canada. Overall to me this movie is just average but the special effects make up for it.

The Heart Breaker Kid
Ben Stiller is good, the content of this show is rather sexual and hence the R21 rating. In terms of humorous it was slightly average but the humorous content is rather new or unique and hence it makes up for that weakness of the movie.

I got only 2 papers this semester despite taking 4 modules (20 MCs). Out of these 2 papers, 1 of them is open book and partially it is based on common sense (CS3253) and hence I did not spend much time studying it.

I spent exactly 1 week studying CS2105 because the fucking workload is so heavy, fuck loads of stuffs to memorize, closed book exams and not even a single fucking help sheet is allowed (last semester, help sheet is allowed). CS2105 is a computer network module and of course it covers the 5 layers of network. I am fine with that, but I HAVE NO FUCKING IDEA WHY THE FUCK DO WE NEED TO KNOW signal calculations/details, WE ARE COMPUTER PROGRAMMERS AND NOT ENGINEERS. Please wake up your idea.

My exams is tomorrow at 5pm and on the brighter side, it is my last paper for the semester.

I have ordered my copy of WordPress for Dummies over at Amazon (including shipping) instead of getting it at my local bookstores because it is cheaper!

Amazon.com
Book: USD$16.49
Shipping: USD$9.98
Total: USD$26.47
Total: SGD$38.38 (USD$26.47 x 1.45)

Local Bookstore: Popular/PageOne
Book: SGD$39.90
Tax: 7%
Total: SGD$42.69

Local Bookstore: Kinokuniya
Book: SGD$42.00

I made a saving of SGD$3.62, even though it is quite insignificant, it is still money. And the time taken for the book to get delivered to me (Amazon)/waiting for the book to arrive (Local Bookstore) is about the same.

Go: WordPress for Dummies @ Amazon.com