My Starry Night

I’m really not a connoisseur where art is concerned.  I mean… I know enough artists to get by a normal conversation, but don’t try delving any deeper into this pea brain of mine, because you will find nothing else.

I like Renoir, don’t mind Monet, and love van Gogh, in specific ‘The Starry Night’, which is widely hailed as his magnum opus.

‘The Starry Night’ is anything but a peaceful painting.  I always feel that this painting is full of contradictions – the swirls in the night sky suggests confusion and the cry for stability, and the quiet little town below the rolling hills of the horizon depicts a state of tranquility.  Everyone could contribute their two cents’ worth, but nobody would ever find out what was going through van Gogh’s mind when he painted this.

Thanks to my recent trip to Tokyo, I could now carry my favourite art piece with me wherever I go, because I found an iPhone cover of it.

I must visit Amsterdam again.  Believe it or not, as huge a fan of van Gogh’s as I am, I actually missed visiting his museum when I was last at Amsterdam.

Oct 2011 at a Glance

This is what I had been up to in Oct 2011.  For about 2 weeks, home was Tokyo and I’d some really fun time venturing to many places alone.  Places I wouldn’t have imagined I could survive being on my own, for example Tokyo Disney Resort on 12 Oct, Tsukiji Wholesale Fish Market on 13 Oct and Ginza on 15 Oct.  But I did, and in a small way, I am rather proud of myself.

Photo365 has been acting wonky ever since I upgraded to iOS5.  Even the trademark header of their brand has disappeared.  I wonder if they are aware, and are working on it?  I hope they fix it soon.

Time flies by in a flash, doesn’t it?  We have now officially crossed over to the final two months of 2011, and Christmas is just around the corner.  My favourite season of the year, made sweeter, because this year will finally be a White Christmas for me.  I’d spent cold Christmases overseas, but never white.  Excited!

Sep 2011 at a Glance

Recently I invested USD0.99 on a fabulous app on my iPhone.  It’s called Photo 365 and what it does is allow one to take a representative photo a day on a calendar interface.  You could even add comments tagged to the photos but you don’t see it on the monthly calendar interface.

And this is what my Sep 2011 calendar looks like.  Well it’s only half-filled because I only started after mid-month.

I like it because it’s like a photo-diary, a visual representation of my life for the whole month past.

For the hubby who wishes to know what these photos are because he can’t see them clearly:

18 Sep – shot of the refrigerator after grocery shopping
19 Sep – release of Super Junior’s A-Cha
20 Sep – fried dough rice roll from Mayim
21 Sep – the two girls at 3am who were still not sleepy
22 Sep – secured my tickets to Kyuhyun’s musical The Three Musketeers!
23 Sep – finally bought Evolution to combat the ticks
24 Sep – secured Europe trip airtickets and upset to find choice seats unavailable
25 Sep – lunch and dessert with XX, BH and Jessica at Heartland Mall
26 Sep – my Lola arrived!
27 Sep – redeemed free air tickets to Seoul!
28 Sep – signed up for JLPT N5 Prep Class at Ikoma
29 Sep – Started reading ‘A Modern History of Japan’
30 Sep – done with the planning of my impending Tokyo trip

The Puppy and Her Antics

The last time when the hubby was getting ready to depart for the airport, I discovered that puppy Belle had a swollen red eye.  We panicked, and as a result, I didn’t send him off.  Instead, I headed for the pet hospital with my mum.

Thank goodness that was just a scare, and not a cherry eye as I had feared.

But guess what?  The hubby flew off again Friday evening, and on Saturday morning, I discovered that the puppy’s eyes were both swollen!  It happened that the hubby was doing a transit at Narita, Tokyo so I could inform him of her situation.

I grabbed the screen off WhatsApp, so that was essentially what we talked about prior to his boarding the flight again to Dulles.

I have no idea what triggered the allergy.  The vet was none the wiser either.  And so, I attribute it to the fact that the puppy missed her daddy.

And oh, I didn’t attend the lunch appointment with my friends.  Well, in fact the whole lunch thingy was postponed because I told them as a matter-of-factly that I wasn’t in any mood for lunch, and that I wanted to wait at the vet’s instead of going for the early evening appointment they allocated to me.

The puppy is much better now, but she is still wearing the elizabethan collar to prevent her from scratching her eyes.  Just in case.

*  If you didn’t know, pressing both the Home and Sleep buttons on iPhone allow you to make a screenshot.

‘Pimping’

Not in the truest sense, thus explaining why the inverted commas.

Many I know would spend thousands of dollars pimping their rides, but not me.  14 years and 3 cars on, I could safely say I belong to a group of car owners who spend the bare minimum on our rides.  Let’s just say that a car is just a means of transportation for me, to me.

I would rather spend on other stuff for example pimping my techie gadgets.  My latest acquistion is a white jelly case for my white iphone.  If I could have things my way, I would rather not have a case for the cell phone, but having dropping and narrowly saved from rendering great damage to it, I’ve grown ot be a little more cautious.  Gawd, it’s really slippery and extremely prone in finding its way out of my hand.

After weeks of an intense search, I settled for a jelly case with ballet shoes and some musical notes.  A crotchet and some quavers, to be exact.  Something simple and different.

Oh, it just occurred to me that with a title Iike this, I might be inviting many spam comments like my other post where I wrote on the mini stations of the Cross during my retreat this year.  Mostly comments with links to lewd-looking websites.  Oh… you don’t want to know.  WP has been great in catching the spams, but I make it a point to clear the spam inbox whenever I see such comments.  In a heartbeat.  But I’ve been receiving far too many spam comments on that particular post I’m thinking of locking the post or changing the title.

Thoughts on spam, anyone?

Almost, Bliss

I am greeted with this scene every single morning when I open my eyes.  Bliss, isn’t it, to have a dog look at you with so much love in her eyes.

No, it isn’t.  Not when it was her constant nudging you with her cold, wet nose that woke you up.  Or when she breathed down into your face with her smelly, fishy breath.

But I love her all the same, this silly, goofy puppy of mine.

I am falling in love with Instagram, a free app downloaded onto the iPhone.

Disclaimer:  I tend to have more pictures of Belle-Belle because this puppy is a camwhore.  In contrast, Paris hates the DSLR or any other object pointing at her.

Why…

The iPhone is, ultimately,

just a glamorised version of the iPod Touch

and a much smaller version of the iPad

with a cell phone function.

There is nothing to get used to,

except how to create my own ringtones,

and type accurately on touchscreen.

The verdict is out.

This is the one Apple product

the technophile in me doesn’t care for.

I might think differently if I have not had

the iPod Touch and iPad first.

But oh well…

Beginning of an End

Two significant events just took place within the last 6 hours – I watched the final installment of Harry Potter film series, and I got myself an iPhone.  Sounds ordinary enough and trust me to make a mountain out of a molehill eh?  Yea, that sounds like me all right.

I started reading the Harry Potter novels back in 2000 when the 4th book was still not released and never looked back since.  I also got the hubby, who was then the boyfriend, hooked on the books as well.  Naturally we were looking forward to the first of the film series which premiered in 2001.  And every time a new installment was about to premiere, I would assiduously read all the books again from Book 1 to that installment.  Gosh, I must have read Harrry Potter and The Philospher’s Stone at least 10 times!

A decade and 8 movies later, I’ve finally closed a chapter on this aspect of my life.  (By the way, I’ve always knew that Severus Snape is a good guy and Neville Longbottom has always been my favourite character.)  There’s a sense of… loss?  I can’t quite place it, but it’s strange that there isn’t another Harry Potter book or movie to look forward to next summer.  After all, it has been such a large part of our lives in the past decade.

All I have to do now is to wait for the DVD series to be released.  But, life will never be the same again.

And on top of that, I decided to make yesterday even more memorable with the acquisition of my first iPhone.  It’s not a happy decision but my Blackberry Bold has been failing me repeatedly of late.  The problem all started when I was ‘forced’ to update the operating software on my ‘Whiteberry’ when I sync-ed with my iMac.  Then the phone started behaving real wonky – WhatsApp stopped working properly, I kept getting the alert that the phone is running short on memory whenever I updated application software, I missed many calls because no one could reach me, and the phone was getting sluggish because it was low on memory.  And I abhor the new Calendar display.  I think the people at RIM forgot that not everyone with a BB have a full screen display.

As a consequence, I deleted some applications including WordPress, Universal Converter and Player for YouTube.  And the performance only improved slightly.  It doesn’t make any sense to me at all – I updated the OS and the BB started mal-functioning?!  Sure, I could always revert to the older version of the OS, but I’m not going to risk losing all my information and be at the mercy of SingTel’s BB technical support.

Deciding to acquire the iPhone was a momentous decision for me, especially when I have been holding out for so long and I still detest typing on a touchscreen very much.  I vacillated numerous times but the constant lagging from my ‘Whiteberry’ was getting to me.  There are other cell phones out there including Androids and the good old Nokias, but if I need to move away from BB, the clear choice for me is an iPhone.

I have a thing for white cell phones – my past 4 cell phones are all white.  I know the iPhone doesn’t look white but that’s because I chose the privacy film so it turned out looking black – might change it back to the normal kind since the sales assistant didn’t do a good job applying it on anyway.  Now I need to decide whether to retire my NEC N08A or my Whiteberry.  Ya, with just two cell phone numbers, I really don’t need 3 active cell phones.

With the collection of an iPod, iPod Mini, iPod Touch, MacBook Pro, iMac, iPad and iPhone (all still fully functional, by the way), my iFamily is now truly complete.  Now, I just need to concentrate on growing 3 more pairs of ears and 2 more pairs of hands.

The Cell Phone Purist

Me thinks that the little sis would not be too pleased to learn that she has become the topic of my post today, but… she’ll survive.  And I’ll survive her ire.  It’s too weird a conversation not to blog about.

So here was what transpired.  I texted her a message, asking her to remind the two old folks at home about a lunch appointment this weekend.  The text conversation as below (sorry, we lapsed into a little bit of abbreviations and Singlish, which I would type in italics):

Me: Sunday lunch appt hor.  Pls remind the two old folks.
Me: Its our version of reunion dinner.

Sis: Can you quit e bad habit of sending when u havent finish what u want to say?  They know.  Thks for earring.  Watch a korean drama call ‘my princess’, its funny!

Me: It looks fine on my phone.  Its because ur phone is old skool.
Me: Ur bro in law loves it too.  I don’t like the girl.  Smtg wrong with her teeth and it annoys me.

Sis: Ya my phone is old, so v troublesome when im replying n u keep sending.  Its a funny show.  Maybe her teeth too straight thats why.

Me: I get u a blackberry.  Or iphone. U choose.
Me: Or whatever u want.  Just upgrade from the old skool type.

Sis: No…I love my phone!  I even bought extra batt in hongkong, so it can last long long time.  Thks but im not going to change.

Me: U r crazy.

She is crazy.  I offered her a free cell phone (and the latest model to boot!), yet she refused it.

I don’t know what to make out of her.  We are so different that she is utterly unfathomable to me.

But perhaps we are not so different after all.  Because I can understand why she would want to buy an extra battery for her beloved Samsung cell phone albeit with very basic functions.  I love my whiteberry (that’s what I call my white-coloured BlackBerry 9700) so much I am contemplating getting another spare set in case this one conks out.  The hubby thinks I’m crazy.

I guess little sis and I did inherit the same set of genes after all.