WCG/Back to the 70s

Yesterday was a pretty interesting day. it started out with meeting baby at city hall for WCG.

someone got my hopes up in that there would be a halo 3 open category but there wasn't. but it was still awesome anyway. we met darren there and kenneth came later. finally got to see rainbow road in RL. me and marion thought he'd look like my brother, what with being the same age and everything but no, he doesn't look half as gay. hahaha.

i think we all had quite abit of fun, haha. its not so much the event but who you spend it with, really.

so WCG was interesting, spent most of the time sampling games, watching games, and laughing at fail cosplayers. was fun. haha

after that i went home and left for event no.2, Dominic's Birthday Party, themed as 'Disco Divas', everyone there was dressed as some cliche from the 70s.

Pictures probably on my mom's blog haha. so everyone had fun, but my cousins and i had to leave early: they had church tomorrow and we carpooled. but my mom stayed behind.

I'm Back!

Back in the New York Groove;

Hey look, i updated this dusty old thing. Though i doubt websites can actually get dusty.

If you're looking for an explanation for the 4 months of nothingness, you won't find one here. I'm probably going to be updating this quite frequently again. No promises, but have a little faith. don't think I'll bother with the reviews and such, maybe once in a while. they were horrible biased anyway. ha ha.

I hate the red underline when you're lazy to capitalize your 'I's when you type 'I'll', and i hate that 'ha[no space]ha' isn't in the English dictionary.

Anyway. today we celebrated Samuel 's birthday. [apparently Samuel[Aposthrophe(wtf i spelt{wtf 'spelt' is the past tense of 'spell'} that correctly)]'s' is not allowed either. I give up.

So today we celebrated Samuel's Eighteenth Birthday at Cha Cha Cha in Holland Village. More red lines. Mexican cuisine is awesome. All round we had Burritos, Fajitas, Tacos, and Margaritas; all perfectly acceptable words according to spell check. I had a ground beef burrito, personally i taste that its better than the hard shell ground beef tacos. A lot less messy too. I'm not sure what was had on the other end of the table [Kenneth Ang, Kenneth Kan, Javin and Keith], on our end we had Long, Yu Sheng, Samuel and Me. Huiwen and Tzuling kinda came together and were seated near center.

er. Picture 4 square tables together in a 2-Dimensional Column, then seats at every exposed face. Starting from the top, which is toward the street, away from the kitchen, and going clockwise, we have:

1. Kenneth Ang Ken Ji
   
2. Javin Soh Jing Ye
   
3. Kenneth Kan
4. Long Jun Hong
5. Tay Yu Sheng
6. Samuel Tay Kai Wen
7. Bezner Lim
8. See Huiwen
9. Lim Tzu Ling
10. Keith Heng Sheng Yuan

Note, the conversations at the table were had in two separate halves. the top two table chatted amongst themselves and the bottom two tables chatted amongst themselves. this lasts until after dinner.

So. after that incredibly detailed explanation of the seating arrangement, which really isn't important to the post at all, i guess we'll move on to the drinks. We had 4 jugs of margarita to go around, 2 at a time. 1 jug wasn't enough for 10 decent glasses all round apparently. so 2 jugs with enough for 5 people to refill once.

first round was 2 jugs of lime margaritas; my half of the table got refills. second round was 1 jug of lime margarita and another jug of strawberry flavored margarita. Some people got refills.

So here's the interesting thing. Interesting observation of the placebo effect in play today. [placebo pronounced play-see-bow]

First a short definition/explanation of what placebo effect is:

the tendency of any medication or treatment, even an inert or ineffective one, to exhibit results simply because the recipient believes that it will work

Watch this for a quick and fun example [HD is awesomer]:


so what happened was, i think after the first round of drinks, the barkeep decided that we weren't quite ready to be drinking so much, and the second round of margaritas were really weak. it was like a $40 pitcher of slurpee.

surprisingly though, it seems that a lot of them still got drunk. They were doing weird and crazy stuff under no influence of alcohol. ha ha. its all in the mind.

i think long, yu sheng and sam were like falling around and being all crazy, i didn't really see javin at all the whole night ha ha. and keith could only talk about jamming. it was so weird. 7 kids who thought they were drunk. at least we had fun, haha.




okay. so after that, we decided to walk to town. we kinda walked about 2 bus stops then took 165. everyone went off at thompson for some LAN gaming, they're not going home tonight; but kenneth and me went to hougang to head home, where i took a bus to get home and kenneth walked.

planning to go to WCG tomorrow but i gotta wake up at 8. So yeah. first of many posts. hopefully. haha. enjoy the video and the visualization.

A Night Out at Tosto's

[ Edit: I Promised. :) ]

TOSTO'S

What is it:

Tosto's is… well I'm not sure what it is. I guess you'd call it a café, though I'm not used to having so much food at a café. Either way. It serves you your coffee, espresso, or any latte macchiato concoction you might consider having.

Either way, I've just reached home, from a interesting experience at Tosto's, apparently, Tosto's, along with Nuance Watson, Body Contours, and The Creative Department, had hosted a aptly named 'Blog Party'.

At the 'Party', they had invited a group of bloggers for dinner, to sample the food, and to take part in the sandwich making competition. The winning sandwich makes it to the menu. So. I didn't win, but if you do get there, I believe the two winning sandwiches were Prototype Fish and Diving Dancers… or something and other.

ANYWAY. On with Tosto's.

Why Its Great:

So Tosto's is a café, as consumers, we expect from them:

1. Coffee
2. Good Coffee
3. Lots of Latte

As Tosto's, they give us:

1. Coffee
2. Good Coffee
3. Lots of Latte
4. A slice of Italian Coffee-Related cultures
5. Healthy and Tasteful food

So naturally, that’s good isn't it. ha-ha

First Up: The Coffee


Anyway. At the event, I myself had sampled the Latte, which for non-coffee people is basically espresso with milk.

So I was abit apprehensive, I'm used to my Iced Venti 3 Pumps Vanilla 2 Pumps Hazelnut Latte at Starbucks, which is a tad bit sweeter than a standard latte; naturally, when I order a latte, I expect it to be bitter, boring, and unfinished at the end of the meal.

This was not the case. It’s a good cup of latte. I don't remember putting any sugar in, but the latte was not too bitter for my tastes, which says something. There's that rich taste of the espresso, with the milky frothy substance which I learnt to be known as La Crema [Crème?].

La Crema on Expresso

So that’s the coffee, then there's the food.

If you're there, you MUST try the Mandarin Duck thing. Not sure what its called exactly, but when you're there, and you see the menu, you'll know it. Mandarin Oranges and Duck never tasted so delightful. There's this sweet tang, with the oriental-ish duck breast, making it tangy and refreshing.

Mandarin Duck Thing

Follow that up with a perfectly constructed Ricotta Cheesecake, then a nice cup of latte, or freshly brewed coffee. Before we move on, More pictures of food:





Next, the Ambience.

I don't know a place in Singapore where I can get coffee in a more Italian way than at Tosto's. The espresso machine RIGHTFULLY has its BACK facing AWAY FROM THE CUSTOMER. That’s the way you do it. And at Tosto's, they know their coffee. I should know, they were telling us so much, it felt like a classroom. ['okay class. This is Arabica coffee. This is robusto coffee. Can anyone tell me the difference?'] But I learned lots a new stuff, so no complaints.



Why it Sucks:

Sorry Michael, but I got to do this.

So. Tosto's is great and all, but well, lemme start with the small things, the not so important.

The Menu. Sure, you got good content in the menu, but it’s a folder. It’s a folder with pieces of paper slipped in. I don't know, maybe its just me, but your décor is all classy and exquisite, but your menu is just shabby. So yeah.

The Ambience.

So yeah, its classy, and there's the Italian Culture, until you head to Italy and see what its really like there. Here, you only sit for your coffee, and I was offered cappuccino! At Night! But yeah. Not important.

We Didn't Win.

I guess what really sucks, was that we didn't win. Nah. What was abit of a problem was perhaps the location. Its at the arrival halls of Terminal 3 and 2, at Changi Airport. Not only is it hard to get to, its difficult to enjoy a perfectly crafted cup of coffee with all the hustle and bustle and noisy greetings all around you.

But I like the airport. ):

We didn't even have to pay for the stuff we ate, but I don't know, gut feeling tells me its going to be pricey. So for youths that live off their parents like me, I think this sounds like something you go to barely once a month? I can't say for sure, I had no look at the prices. But then again, I go to Starbucks weekly, so who am I to say?

Should You Get It:

Hmm. Well. Depends I think… no scratch that. I was going to say, if you liked coffee, but no. now I think I might understand why they have so much emphasis on food there. You should go there. I recommend, a Breakfast with your family, on a Saturday perhaps. Even if you don't appreciate good coffee, you'll find the food delighting and worth the trip. I think the first time I was there, I didn't even have any of the coffee. I had the duck orange mandarin wrapthing. And it was all good.

My Rating:


Its good, but the location really sucks, for me really. I don’t know. People of my demographic, headed from school or even home all the way to the airport. Sounds too much of a chore. But say, class gets cancelled, and you're let off school after 2 hours. Tosto's an option.

Where You Can Get It:

As mentioned, currently the only place you can get it is at the Airport, Terminal 2 and Terminal 3, in the Arrival Hall. That’s B2 for Terminal 3 and Level 1 for Terminal 2. I'm not sure if they plan on expanding, but at the moment, you're only going to find them there.

Halloween

Slash Smashed

Self-Explanatory Michael Jackson

Kenji: '...leave me alone...'

NSFW!!!

Kenji's Self Inflicted Scars

Time to Leave these two alone...

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Now playing on iTunes: Queen - Killer Queen
via FoxyTunes

Top Hat

If any of you have ever tried doing slash for halloween, on a budget, you'd know how hard it is to find a suitable tophat. that flare at the top, the nice bendy up rim thing, and the conchos, well. i got fed up of searching. so i decided to make my own. with some metal wire and lots of duct tape.

so. i drafted 4 stages

STAGE ONE: Framework



here you can see the wig that dad got from the states [thanks dad!], and the frame of the hat coming to shape. i used 3 rings of wire, started from a base ring, then made 8 slightly bent struts jutting out. it was messy at first, then i added another smaller ring, to hold it in the center. then it started to take shape. the final ring made it rigid, and made it stop looking like a crown. all held together by tape.

here i cheated a little. that styrofoam crown you see was originally meant only for measurement and forming. then i decided to stick the metal 'tube' onto it, turning it into the rim of the hat. how's it look? haha

so i brought all that, the wig, the hat, the accessories, down for friday night starbucks, where we wore it most the night. haha

STAGE 2: Covering



so here i added more tape to the inside, to cover it up in a complete layer, excluding the top. i intend to get black tape, maybe electrical tape to texture the outer layer. so now the outside is sticky and ugly. just wait and see. but first, hat with wig:



so thats where it is right now. tomorrow i'll move on to stage three, texturing and coloring, and then stage 4, final touches.

anyway there's this too:



which was inspired by: