Freedom to Choose?

Was just wondering. Actually was reading AFA when my thoughts drifted away. It always happen. Anyways, was just wodnering the meaning of having a freedom to choose. The real meaning, of course.

It's funny how preaches always say that God has given us the freedom to choose. It's funny because if we choose to do something that is not in line with what God wants us to do, we suffer a consequence. For example, we can choose to be a goody-2-shoes or be a total jackass. But of course, God will bless the goody-2-shoes and not the jackass, right? Unless of course the jackass repents. But repentance is an entirely different thing and we shall keep this topic short and simple here.

It always happen, to me at least, when I do bad things I will suffer the horrible consequence almost immediately. Really. But I won't give you instances, cuz I ain't proud of my sins. So, if I want good things to happen to me, I have NO choice but to be a good girl right? I mean, who doesn't want good things ot happen to them. Even those super emo kids who claims they don't need God's blessings or good things to happen to them, deep deep down they must long for good things. That's irrefutable.

Ok I know that "God gives rain to both bad and good guys", which implies God's blessings is for everyone. But then again, why do we say "you will get your just dessert" to the baddies? which implies that if we do bad things, we get bad things.

So applying my Analytical Skill, I shall attempt to make a proposition (is it what it's called? can't remember. sold my AS bk already)

Since good things happen to good people, we HAVE to be a good person
if we want good things to happen to us.

"Have to" implies a MUST, which implies the lack of alternatives. So... what's that freedom to choose are we talking about again?

Life

泥だらけよ 馴染めない都会で
同じように笑えない うつむいて歩いたの
急ぎ足で すれ違う人たち
「夢は叶いましたか?」
アタシまだモガいている
In the familiar, dirty city
We walked with our heads down, unable to laugh in the same way
People hurry past
“Has your dream come true?” I’m still struggling

陽のあたり場所に出て
両手を広げてみたなら
あの空 越えてゆけるかな?
なんて思ったんだ
飛び立つ為の翼 それは
まだ見えない
カンタンに 行かないから 生きてゆける
I went out to a place where the sun shone and held out my arms
And thought “Could I cross the sky?”
I still can’t see any wings to fly with
It’s because it’s not simple that I can go on living
~ Life by Yui

I listened with amusement to the guest speaker last nite. He's a big shot in a big hotels and resort company.

When he was talking to us, he said we looked so tired (damn right, we were), but he also said we "ain't seen nothing yet." He said working world is way tougher and we better start working hard early. He recalled his experience of having to make calls in the wee hours, working on London hours and coming back to work on sundays and stuff like that.

Then i went to the company's career webpage and one of the advantage of working in that co that the brochures is proudly saying is having a "work-life balance". I'm sure not having enough sleep and forgoing my weekends is part of "work-life balance".
T'hat's amusement #1

Then he also said that he didn't work hard when he was young and that he only realised that he should start working hard when he was in his thirties. But earlier he mentioned that he was a scholar who graduated with a law degree.

Uh huh, mister. I'm so sure that getting scholarship and a law degree doesn't require much hardship. I believe you.
That's amusement #2

Life is funny right. Oh crap, i better start studying my AFA again and stop complaining cuz I "ain't see nothing yet".

AFA: Absolutely Freakin' Abstruse

Finally done with my midterms. Yayness!

Screwed up my AFA big time. No surprise.

Midterm break next week. But seriously break? What break?!? I'm almost fully booked by my project gpmates. Imagine - 4 major projects, all will be chiong-ed during the term break. Yargh!

Thinkin of buying a new lens for my camera. I like sceneries and I love macros. Um, suggestions?

Gonna read a new book this break. Just borrowed Haruki Murakami's Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World from Fels. Man, I love Murakami-san. I wanna marry his fantasies. They're pretty abstruse too, like AFA. But in a good way, very good way, unlike AFA.

Wanna go around snappy happy for one day. What ulu place in Spore that's pretty?

Gonna be a busy busy term break for me ^^

One Love - Arashi

Arrgh I'm so busy that I don't think I can can post all things Hana Yori Dango cuz I know it'll take up too much time. But I still spare some time to search and download Hanadan Final OST, which is called One Love by Arashi.

It's a very typical J-pop JE (Johnny Entertainment, for the clueless you) boys' song - meaning... the song is sung by 5 pretty boys who can't really sing have passable voice. Ok before I get thrown at with rotten eggs by JE boys fans, I do like some JE boys. haha... some of them can really act, and yes, some are really such pretty eye candies. But when it comes to singing... only a handful of them can actually sing properly. The rest are okay only. Oh well, at least they don't sing out of tune :P

One of the Arashi members is Matsumoto Jun, who plays Domyouji Tsukasa in Hanadan. It's always like that. Whenever one of the JE boyband boys play in a drama, they'll make that boyband sing the OST of the drama. Although look-wise and vocal-wise Matsujun's not that great, but he's really really a very good actor and he's charming in his own way.

I've yet put any Arashi song into my iTunes, not even those from Hanadan 1 and 2. I'm pretty picky with my songs, and I do enjoy good vocals. From Arashi, I think Ohno is the one that has a better voice. So from Hanadan collection, I've only gotten Planetarium by Otsuka Ai and Flavour of Life by Utada Hikaru, both of which are really great songs.

But I got suckered into getting One Love cuz, the heck, it's the final OST from Arashi for Hanadan. Besides, to be honest, I really love the beginning part of the song. The sounds of the drums (the band type), the bagpipe, the violen, the beat of the song - it kinda has Irish folk dance sound. Whatever it is, I love the beginning part especially.

And the more I listen to the song, the more I like it. Been repeating the song over and over again, listening to it day and night for the past few days. It's a happy love song!

Like I said, the vocals are okay only, but the tune is really nice. I don't know how to describe it, but I think it's a PERFECT ending song. It's like, the song itself is able to wrap up all those 3 years of Hanadan series. I can't think of any other song that will be suitable for Hanadan's ending song. And despite being an ending song, it give you the feeling that the song does mark the ending of Hanadan but also the beginning of Tsukasa and Tsukushi's great love story. LOL... I hope you get what I mean.

LOL, i guess u can tell I really like (more like obsessesed with) the show, huh. I mean even D, who never ever watch Hanadan before or any other j-drama before (maybe only a couple), and unfortch, got dragged by me to watch felt that the movie was really sweet and funny.

Oh wells, I shud stop now and get back to my boring, dull and lifeless presentation reading material that's titled "A Longitudinal Investigation of Auditor Error Projection Decision". *urgh* - -"

For you peeps who have more time on your hands than I do, here's One Love by Arashi. Enjoy! :)

PS: Quality pretty bad, but if you're wondering why it's so blur, it's cuz the video is supposed to have painting-effect. So yea, it's not supposed to look very clear in the first place. I've got HQ if you want ;)



And this one is the trailer to the movie. There are several version, u can look it up on youtube.



hana yori dango final trailer 2 [sub us]
by mushihimeffseb

Another version (but not subbed).

HANA YORI DANGO FINAL MOVIE ROCKS!!

IT'S SUPERB, IT'S AWESOME, IT'S SO SO SOOOO VERY NICE, IT'S THE BEST!!!

stay tune for more...

psst, i FINALLY get to watch the movie today! :D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D

Boo... I Miss iPod and iTunes

Some of you might know already that I finally got my mp4, a Creative Zen, which was bought during Comex last week. Was so tempted to buy a better one, like Samsung P2 or Creative X-Fi, but I'm such a blur+careless+unlucky person that expensive stuff and I never seem to get along very well. So after reading reviews here and there, I decided that Creative Zen is good enough for me.

It looks pretty neat. It's really slim and light that it doesn't add much weight to my bag. Guess it's pretty important for me since somehow I'm always lugging a lot of things to school. And of course that it means it fits nicely to my tiny evening bags also.

I've been using iPod for about 5 years now! The first iPod I owned was a cool blue Mini. Besides wanting a change, I felt that iPod sounds is somehow not up to my standard. I like a stereo, full bass kinda sound. And iPod didn't give me that. The bass sound is especiall sucky. I love bass sound! Of course, changing my earphones to Senheizer or Shure is an entirely different thing, and they will cost the same, if not more ex, as the mp4 itself. And after reading the features and everything, Creative is more value-for-money. It's got better stuff at lower cost. See, this is what studying accounting and finance has done to me. My buys must be justifiable and worth the price :P

But boy, was I wrong. Ok, I may be biased and I'm just lazy to learn new stuff. But still, firstly, Creative doesn't have its own player, unlike iPod which has iTunes. Which means, it's more troublesome to arrange my music and playlist. I haven't really figured out how to categorise my music, maybe that's cuz i haven't really tried. But those creative user I've spoken too also agree that Creative's a bit messy when it comes to arranging your files. And according to D, I've to use Windows Media Player, which I haven't used for the past 5 years. So i miss iTunes which automatically pops up whenever I connect my iPod.

Creative's UI is also a bit confusing and have to press here and there if I wanna get around, unlike iPod. I especially hate it when I wanna play the songs according to Artists I've to click on the artist, then have to choose the album first before playing the song, unlike iPod which allows to play all songs from the artists, regardless of the album. And then there's the slow start-up. It still has to display the word "Creative Zen" for a few seconds before I can start playing my music, unlike iPod which starts immediately.

Of course it has its good things, which i read from Cnet and anythingbutipod.com, such as it's brilliant display screen, bigger screen that iPod nano (i'm comparing with nano, cuz that's the alternative, as the iPod itself is too big for me), which is gives u better video-watching experience and other features, like FM radio, and recorder. It's got better sound also, and since I bought it during Comex, they throw in the in-ear earphones (the one that comes with X-Fi, i think) for free, which makes the sound even better. But seriously, when i tried using that earphones on iPod, the sound quality doesn't differ much. So yea i dunno...

But but... the WORST thing is, less than a week after I bought that Zen, it DIED on me!! *grrr*

Not sure what happened. It's probably a corrupted file (it's Hero by Mariah Carey. Hero, for all titles. How ironic!) , which I know somehow can't be played even on iTunes or iPod. But in iTunes or iPod, it'll just get skipped, no problem at all. But when I accidentally click on that song, the Zen just hanged. And even after I press the reset button, it just kept getting hanged. So frustrating! So much for the zen >.<

Sigh... If I had known, I'd just get myself a Nano (or maybe Samsung P2, since Shan and Novs doesn't seem to have any complain about it yet)and a good earphones even if it costs more. Suddenly, I remember what my AA prof said in class last week. "Accountants tend to measure everything based on it's monetary value. But we should also consider other factors"

In my case, I should've considered my own "zen" experience that I'd get from listening from a good mp4 player :(

Do You Know 4 Sounds like "Die" in Mandarin?

Hookay, it's week 3 of school and I still haven't find the drive to study. Seriously, i find going to school to be such a drag.

Anyways, I'm taking only 4 mods this term. Let's see...

Entrepreneurial (man, i never like tt word - always a mouthful to pronounce and tough to spell) Finance: So far it's okay i guess. One thing tho, when I saw the prof on our first class, I thought, "He's kinda cute". LOL. Seriously. Definitely the most good-looking, relatively speaking, prof that I've ever encountered. All of us thought that he's only in his 30s but he's almost 50 already! He looks much younger than his age and he's got a nice build. But too bad, he's pretty monotonous. My class is on Monday MORNINGs. No matter how cute he looks, i couldn't help but feeling bored. I almost dropped it, but damn, I paid e$70+ for tt class, and if I drop it, i'll lose e$20+.

2nd week of EF, I was lost most of the time. He just suddenly did some calculation and spoke in greek. My bad for not doing my reading, I guess. So since I was lost, I facebooked. Fenny who was sitting beside me told me that Prof has a facebook. So... obviously I went to his FB and checked him out. Can you believe it? Moi who thinks that most profs are out there to ruin her life (or GPA to be specific), and thus can't be bothered by such species, would do such a thing. But I was curious (and lost, remember). So check him out I did. And i got a surprise...or shock, can't decide. That's cuz there on my screen was a half-nekkid man (make that 90% nekkid) beaming at me. And there was a few of such pics. I couldn't help laughing, and when I showed to Fens, Eks and Yins, they laughed too. Luckily the prof was telling some joke or sth, cuz the class was laughing, otherwise it'd be weird if we're chuckling while the rest of the class was concentrating on whatever he was writing on the board. If he was some other guy, i'd be like "wow, that's hot!" when I see him on FB. But he's a friggin PROF! It's just weird. Profs are supposed to be thick-glasses wearing, pruny and balding old men. Ok i'm exaggerating, none of my profs are like tt, 'cept for one. But still...

Then met Kris (who's also takin EF, but afternoon class) after my class and while we're talkin about how young prof looks, he suddenly said, "His pants are so tight! I'd feel uncomfortable in them". LOL. Yea, I had exactly the same thought on our first class. Real tight pants. Prolly, he wants to flaunt those tight butts of his. haha... okay.... hope he doesn't read this post :P

Today's class was better. At least I understood most part. And then he was like telling us how some students made biased simulation and I guessed that amused him and he smiled a lot. A thought went across my mind. "He looks even better when he smiles". Just as I had that thought, Fens beside me quipped, "Hey, he looks sweet when he smiles." This is Fens we're talking about, who hardly make comments about guys, unless prompted. That was amusing. Then we joked that in normal setting, he looks like in his 30s, in facebook (esp in his speedos) he looks in his 20s, and when he smiles, he looks 18! LOL.... Mayb the e$70 isn't such a waste after all. Haha.... *jokes*

Curious of who he is? Come to SMoo. LOL...There aren't many prof teaching EF, neways ;)

Wow, wrote 4 paras just on EF. Moving on...

Advance Auditing: Ketan is my prof. 'Nuff said.

Advance Financial Accounting: I remembered what Erls said when she saw my book. "Car, I saw 3 really disgusting words. First, it's accounting. Then it's actually financial accounting. ADVANCE somemore!" LOL....My sentiments exactly, Erls.

It's known as the buy-one-get-one-free mod. Some people say it's 3x worse than Corp rep, some said 5x and there are others who said 10x. Dunno which one's correct yet. But since I'm an accountant-in-training, I shall be conservative and so I'd say it's 10x. But one thing for sure, the moment I mention that I'm taking AFA, those who have taken it will either have a very disgusted look on their faces, or say "Urgh, I remember that mod!" with such contempt or simply wish me luck. ^^"

Frankly speaking, I like the prof. I think she's real nice. Kinda motherly. My friends thought so too. It's just the mod. It's a killer! 2nd week is still bearable tho. But heard she accelerates really quickly. Kinda like an F1 race car. haha...

Business Study Mission: Tonnes of emails! Omg, I just can't keep up with the emails. And we started working on the mod 1 mth BEFORE school starts. Lotsa work and it feels like I'm constantly walking on a field of landmines. Never know what's gonna happen. As in... you know I mean. But I kinda expected that already. I just have to keep telling myself that there's light at the end of the tunnel (i hope *crossfingers*) MIDDLE EAST BAYBEHH!! Who knows a rich oil sheikh is waiting there for me? Mwahahaha....

I seriously think this term is gonna be a hell of a ride. I've got like 2 friggin projects for EVERY single mods and my mods are the advance types. So yeah... WISH ME LUCK!!

Sayonara, My Blue-sky Holidays

Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer
Those days of soda and pretzels and beer
Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer
You'll wish that summer could always be here
You'll wish that summer could always be here

These cuppies were so much fun to make!

I think these are the best cuppies I've made so far. I think they look so nice! Haha... Ok I should stop bragging about my babies.

Made this on the last day of my summer hols. I was actually quite busy and again it was a last-minute notice. But I took it up cuz i guess what better way to conclude my summer hols than to bake a batch of summer-themed cuppies.

At first Sophs just told me to have a beach volleyball theme. i had to rake my brain as to how to make the volleyballs. I didn't want to have a plain cuppies with volleyball pattern on top, like what I did previously with my ball-themed cuppies. That'd be too plain. Besides the bday girl is a grown-up girl. So that wouldn't do. So google google google, get some idea, included my own idea, sketch, scratch, sketch and scratch some more and in the end came up with these designs.

Acutally I came up with a nicer design, but factoring in my time availability and my fondant-sculpting skill, I decided against that. Figured, those weren't feasible. You may think those cuppies are easy to make. Maybe they are, but since I'm still quite an amateur, it took me quite a long time to make. Like almost whole day. The cupcakes itself take less than an hr to bake. It's those decorations that took forever.

The volleyball, especially, was quite hard to make. At first I used fondant ball, but the stupid fondant took forever to harden and by the time it get slightly hard, it wasn't a ball shape anymore. Cuz it was soft, it became somewhat oval-ish in shape. Luckily I remembered that I still have some white choc balls in the fridge. So I just covered that in fondant so I can make some pattern, cuz the choc ball itself was quite hard. Took me 3 balls to get it right. The first and second choc ball melted in my hand and had to throw them. Took me sometime to get the stupid pattern right also. haiz... so noob right.

But anyways, I'm quite satisfied with the final product. The design is quite simple now that I think about it. But it's got all the things I love about summer. The blue sky, the sun, the sand, the flip-flop, the water, and the starfish. And am glad when Soph's told me that Dans like all those stuff also. Again, great minds think alike! *grin* :D

Ball-themed Cake and Cuppies

Basketball Cake!

Aunt N called me few weeks ago and asked me to bake for her son's 3rd birthday. She wanted a cake and about 30 cuppies. And she told me only 3 days in advance!

I was quite busy with work plus when I called Soph (my partner in crime heh...) to bake the cake, she couldn't cuz she was busy with school. Oh gosh, I wasn't ready to bake a cake! I only bake cupcakes. My cakes so far were rather pathetic. The last time I tried to bake a sponge cake, it was super bitter and oily, I tossed the whole thing into the bin. And the last time I tried baking devil's food cake, it was so thin and tasted kinda weird too.

Was pretty stressed out cuz time was really tight. I didn't have time to experiment with cake recipes. Moreover, just like last time, she wanted the cakes to be vegan. I only had a little left carob left and was afraid it wouldn't be enough. So far I haven't found a place in Sg that sells carob. Even the organic aisle in the supermarket doesn't carry it. And asking Aunt Di for more carob was out of qn. Paiseh lah... cuz she most probably wouldn't wanna be paid again.

But Aunt N really wanted the cuppies cuz I spose there isn't anyone selling cute vegan cuppies. Sigh... So i just measure everything and make sure I've enough of everything, my time, my carob, my olive oil etc. And then I just used the vegan cupcakes recipe to make the cake and hoped for the best.

Soccer, Basketball and Softball Cuppies

Thank goodness the cake went rather well. Nothing great, but still ok lah. I decorated it as best I could. Took quite awhile to get the icing rather even. At least Aunt N said it was cute. She even added some little balls and colorful candles on top and showed the pic to me. It indeed looked cute. Too bad I don't have those pics. And what's great was that the mini ball decoration she bought was exactly the ones that I made - basketball, softball and soccer ball. We didn't even tell each other. Great minds think alike, I suppose. Haha...

YUI - SUMMER SONG

YUI - SUMMER SONG
Released date: 2 July 2008

1. SUMMER SONG
2. Oh My God
3. Laugh away ~YUI Acoustic Version~
4. SUMMER SONG ~Instrumental~

YUI's 13th single. Just like Laugh Away, I love SUMMER SONG the moment I hear it. The beginning part sounds like a cross between Laugh Away and CHE.R.RY - the accoustic guitar and the keyboard sound. I think the song has been aptly titled as it has a very summery sound and feel to it. The chorus especially has a happy, light feeling. Unfortunately though, I think her voice is a little too squeeky in some parts. The song has unusually many high parts. But I'm not really complaining. The song provides ample fab accoustic and bass sounds, which I love.

The PV is great too. It has all the summer images and colour - the beach, the breeze, sunflowers, a vast field full of little flowers, lemon yellow, grassy green, sky blue, coral blue, baby blue, lots and lotsa blue. Me likeys! The casts are the same from last time and the story is cute. YUI shows more emotion too; she smiles a lot more than usual and even grooves to the music, bobbing up and down while playing her trusty guitar. She looks like having a lot of fun making the video :)

I've got the 2nd track, Oh My God, too. Still undecided on how I feel about it. Don't really like the beginning part. But one thing I'm sure, I love the bass here. It's more pronounced than usual. It's got summer feel also. I think the song will grow on me.

Aa aah..... That reminds me that school re-opens tomorrow and I've got a blardy monday morning class. It's sad to think that today is the last day of my last summer holidays. *Sobs...* Sayonara atashi no saigo no natsu yasumi (Goodbye, my last summer holidays) :'(

Meanwhile, enjoy SUMMER SONG! :):)


YUI - SUMMER SONG
Uploaded by x-zaza-du-29