The Chronicles of )!(@#*&$! NABEH!

Watched this show free.. and I asked the princess to come along with me. Oh.. how I have sinned!! -_-"

Its a Troy ripoff.
Its a 300 ripoff.
Its a multiple Lord of the Rings ripoff.
Its even a SHREK ripoff.

And erm.. the seating really sucked and I was put into a weird situation.. thankfully due to a fortunate turn of events I managed to sit beside the princess..

Oh well all I can do now is laugh at those who paid to watch this show.

Of climbing the corporate ladder, or rather not.

A few observations I'd like to make since I was previously considered a blue collared worker before I bleached it into white. (Or is it the other way round?)

1. Office ladies are the same as kopitiam aunties in terms of behaviour.
2. The official language is English. I'm still kinda adapting to it though.
3. Over private conversations, Hokkien, Teowchew and other dialects take place.
4. Tissue paper rule is observed in Suntec/Marina as well. I thought it was enforced only in Tanjong Pagar/Raffles Place area.
5. The morning huddles are rather fun. This would be unthinkable in kopitiam environment.

6. The most important point. Food is expensive and sucks.. real bad.

Long time no blog yet again!

Yoohoooooo...

Haha, long time no blog. Hmm I got a job at .. a bank. Don't wish to mention which one lest I get into trouble when I gossip about colleagues or gloat about backstabbing someone etc.. haha!

Hmmm I finally finished reading, 'The winning investment habits of Warren Buffet and George Soros'. I liked the book a lot and I'm pretty convinced by the content. (Which is why I cancelled one of my savings plan with a finance company btw)

So, here's the first of many many quotes I've read in this book. And I myself like this particular quote the most.

Investing rule #1: Never lose money.
Investing rule #2: Never forget rule #1.
- Warren Buffett.

Btw is he the richest guy in the world now? I do know he overtook Bill Gates and he's valued at about 3x billion?

Audi A6 Test Drive

I took my cousin's A6 for a spin and boy, was my cousin right in describing it as a wolf in sheep's clothing!

First impressions, the interior is very nicely finished but due to the clutter and mess from everyday use its just hard to feel the cabin in its original form. The speedo and tachometer display the current gear selection as well as a myriad of other information which I didn't really notice.

Rather, I was more like distracted by the performance of the 2.0L turbocharged FSI engine. As well as the ultra responsive gearbox. First round was me taking the helm and I left the stick at 'D', leaving the shifts to be controlled by the ECU. Everything was fine and dandy and there were no problems overtaking even after 100km/h.

Soon, my cousin switched with me because he was more familiar with the car's limits, and he immediately left the gearbox selector at 'S' which is the Sports mode. Oh man, I've never experienced such a rush, the car showed no signs of slowing even after reaching highly illegal limits. I finally understood all the hoohaa about forced induction being the way to go, even marques like BMW are beginning to take the FI route.

There was this incident where a silly Corolla driver tried to cut into our lane, without signalling. That's ok but there really was very little clearance between us and the front car so my cousin blasted his horn and gestured the typical 'wtf you doing' with his right hand. (No it wasn't the finger)

After which, I don't know if the driver braked because he wasn't too happy about the horn was he was following too closely to the front car. Anyway it ended with my cousin hitting 'S' mode, overtaking every single vehicle from the left and literally blitzing away. At one point we hit 180kph and no, it really didn't feel scary or fast at all.

The only downsides of this car I feel would be perhaps its tyre chewing abilities. Without quattro to put the power down to the road, the front wheel drive setup gives the front wheels too much power to handle. Evident from the burning rubber smell after the drive. Like what the Pirelli ad says, 'Power is nothing without control'. Shed with Continental Sport Contact2 tyres, it should be pretty grippy but tyre age is catching up pretty quickly.

The TFSI engine is superb, having a real flat torque curve, loads of power but the only downside would be the noise intrusion into the cabin. Wasn't really expecting an Audi to sound so sporty from inside the cabin but you give some you take some. I can still relish nudging the right pedal ever so gently and being pushed back into my seat, with the grass, trees and everything zooming by so quickly. Lucky for me, there is a speed limit warning alarm that buzzed aloud at 130kph, reminding me to slow down. Oh well, almost thought I was on the Autobahn.

Perfect way to start a boring Wednesday =D

Speed through skill

Sometimes, less is more and more is less.
I'm trying to get some products in to distribute but the supplier is really holding me up by quite a bit.

Been scouting around for a webhost so that in future you guys can surf and browse through the entire range of products (which will come when the supplier wakes up) that will definitely give your ride a beautiful shine.

Worry not, all products that are sold by me are my personal faves, and undergo vigorous testing by me during my details.

Went back to NUS today and quite interesting to see the students washing cars in the name of charity. While I can't say that the standard of the wash is fantastic, applaud their effort, washing under the hot sun. (another detailing taboo btw)

Thanks to JK for linking me up with them.

881

It was pretty nostalgic watching 881, and the princess has been spouting random spurts of Hokkien incessantly.*faint*

The soundtrack is also very nice and there's a 2nd OST in the works. You can view most of the vids online on youtube. Replacement (代替) by Lin Qi Yu is my fav!

So long, farewell.

A detailing blog I created

As per the title, I created a detailing blog, partly to showcase my works, partly to educate and partly to market. :p

projectmdetails.blogspot.com

Visit it if you're free!

For Ivan aka walking animal planet

A monitor lizard about 70cm long I reckon, almost captured on camera. This is the same spot where the pangolins were spotted~!

Now you can only see the tail because I scared it away. Damn.

Busy

I've been busy with work, interviews and business opportunities all at the same time.

This is Life and I embrace it!

The stuff is finally here!

The first bimmer I did!

Long time no blog, today I will blog about my detailing.. Hehe~

Since I got my machine, I've tried it on a couple of rides and the results are nothing short of great :)

I did this BMW sometime back and well, thankfully the clearcoat wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. The condition was mostly light swirls with some deep scratches on the boot, bonnet and roof, the most pronounced scratch was on the fuel door.

Process:
Wash with Duragloss #901
Clayed with FK1 #146 QD
Dry
Polish - Optimum Hyper with FK1 #923 mix (Reduced dusting, increased cut and working time) with LC orange light cut pad
Polish - SSR1 with LC white polishing pad
LSP - Optimum Poliseal and Duragloss #951 Aquawax after an hour.

Rims got Autoglym SRP, they're probably dirty like hell right now anyway :/ Stupid stock brake pads.

Rim before

Rim after

Fuel door before

Fuel door after

The boot

The bonnet

Side profile

More black vehicles please!

Project M

Credit goes to JK for thinking of such a simple and easy to remember name. I still think my idea was better.

Initial D. Haha, he commented that it was lame ( I don't deny it but hey, if its easy to remember..) and so his next suggestion was project M. What the M stands for.. hahaa ambiguous now that I think of it man. Lol~

Just rearranged the order of the photos, this is 1 thing photobucket isn't that good at. There is no sequencing order for the pics you upload.

So, leave a comment =)
Project_M photobucket site

Crazy ppl

I find that a few select people I know who embrace a certain faith, are really offensive at times.

While I claim to be a free-thinker I have no problems burning a couple of joss sticks to pray for the well being of my family members. People of other religions should just 'know your role and shut your mouth' instead of commenting that such acts are so 'bo liao'.

If every Sunday you have to go to Church I say you bo liao how will you feel? Offended right?
You too, were a freethinker/Buddhist by default before you were baptised. You want to embrace Jesus Christ pls go ahead and do so. But if you want to put down our religion and our praying acts, that is just pathetic of you. I don't care if somehow you manage to read my blog and feel offended because you kinda deserve it.

For now let's just leave it as that but for sure, you've been included to the excluding list in my little black book.

Hmm

Looking at how the detailing industry works, seems like its quite simple to set up your own shop literally. I've been thinking a lot about it, the labour problem, time problem, location, resources, charges etc.

Something inside of me says just bite the bullet and get it started. Think of so many problems, you can only solve them when you actually need to solve them. Adopt the chiongster mentality and just forge ahead like a cutting edge :p

Like what Mr Shingo T said, get a master's degree for what especially for those who are not so inclined in studies? I really strongly object to my dad's asking me to further my studies. Studied for 15 years already and still see no fruits of 'labour', what for study another couple of years just for a piece of paper? I don't even know what to study? More Physics?? No thanks.. Business? Maybe but maybe not. I'll pass.

CNY is also a good fresh starting, maybe I can shut all those aunties/uncles/cousins mouths once and for all. "找到工了没有？"

Me: "没有leh, 你要不要帮我打工？"

Haha~ that would honestly be a good reply. Had a good talk with my cousin and he was telling me the secret behind his success (duh, oxymoron wahaha) and he commented that I was lucky to live in such an environment full of entrepreneurs and businessmen. About everybody on my dad's side is self employed, those who are employees are all high level management type with exception of a few.

I wonder if I followed my sis' path exactly where would I be now? Some junior accountant executive? Or if I didn't change to physics and took Matl engineering under NTU, wah.. would I be in some semiconductor fabrication plant or some lab in science park or something. Or if I went for MOE.. wonder if I would be happy and contented to teach pri/sec school kids.

Anyway, to quote somebody else..
Be what you want to be because those who matter don't mind.
Those who mind.. don't matter =)

CHIONG AH!

Full detail on the ang pow chia

Recently I've acquired the long awaited Porter Cable 7424 and on Friday I detailed the 3 horizontal panels just to test out some products I have on hand.

Read more (pics on page 2 also)

Any guinea pigs?

W850i review

Having switched over from a Panasonic EB X800 'smart phone, it was no surprise that I was exhilarated by the speed that the SE W850i walkman phone offered me.

This is SE's first sliding walkman phone and the slider works pretty well, compared to the Nokia 6288, whose slider just had this feel of inferior quality. The screen is bright and the colours vivid, the buttons all feel great except for the directional buttons. It would have been better to implement a joystick instead of the pressure points, it feels like the plastic casing will give way in due time. If you have small and nimble fingers it should be acceptable for you.

While importing contacts from my SIM card, I found a minor niggle about this phone that bugged me to no end. the W850i simply cannot erase contacts on the SIM at one go! Despite referring to the instruction manual, I was still unable to resolve this minor hiccup and ended up deleting about 80 odd contacts manually.

The camera function is great and so far the pictures have turned out to be acceptable for a 2.0MP camera phone. 1 note though, the W850i does not come with autofocus, so people who value taking quality pictures should just stick with the K800i. Another weird limitation is with regards to the camera zoom function, you cannot zoom while in the normal mode. Zoom is available in all other modes - Paranormal, burst and frames so what's so normal about the normal mode anyway?

The phone came with a 1GB Memory Stick Pro Duo and it has proved to be just about sufficient. Uploading songs from my PC was a breeze with the supporting software. The volume from the phone's speakers are above average. Just try not to annoy the hell out of everyone on the train now!

With the Mega Bass equaliser setting, I enjoyed the thumping bass on my Cresyn earphones. Listening to the radio was equally enjoyable, there are 20 channels for you to store radio stations at last count, that's even more than the head unit on the Mazda6!

All 3G functions not tested as of yet.

Final verdict, 7/10.
Everything except the camera and directional keys are great. Photo taking connoiseurs , avoid this phone. Walkman lovers, take a queue number.

Tactful words

My dad told me the Taiwanese president (is he still the president) Chen Shui Bian better known as Ah Bian said the following words.

不是不说老实话,只是有些话不能老实说.

Hmm food for thought, brings back the doubts I have over this person I met on Sunday. Oh yeah, Happy new year! Doh.

May I find a job, strike 4D and live the Singaporean dream!

Curious

Why do some people or guys, have to stand so close to the urinal while peeing?
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that some of the pee might.. backsplash??

Gross

The night we tried to save a Pangolin

We went out for dinner a day back which is.. 3rd of December. My sister was driving and well on the way back, while turning into Chestnut Avenue from Petir road, we saw a Camry which was stationary. No hazard lights though, but the occupants seemed to be staring at something on the right.

At first we didn't notice it and my sis proceeded to overtake by cutting to the oncoming lane and then suddenly she hit the brakes and started with the 'ooh-ing and aah-ing'.

Apparently there was a damsel pangolin in distress and there were 2 of them! I've never seen a pangolin before and I had no idea it was called and spelt pangolin till I called the walking animal planet -->> Ivan. Wahaha~

The car in front of us moved off (they were from the same neighbourhood anyway) and we also moved on after about 3 more minutes of staring in awe to see what's happening. From what I can see, the young pangolin was dead and the parent was trying to revive its dead child.

We went back home and we decided to head back to help the adult pangolin because we kind of assumed the young one was run over, and the adult pangolin was in danger of being run over. After arming ourselves with our camera, umbrella and an unused magazine =p we drove back.

On getting back the parent was nowhere to be found, it appeared on the other side of the road about a minute later and proceeded to crawl towards the ang pao chia. *sweat + pray "pls don't scratch the car, if not I'll use your scales to cover the scratch"*

Where were we? Haa.. the pangolin crawled underneath the car with the engine still running (silly sis no sense of fuel saving in her) and fortunately reappeared on the other side -_-" Again she(assume for sake of convenience) tried to revive the young pangolin by using her snout to push against her kid but the kid was stiff to the touch. Yeah I touched it before she appeared, just wanted to know if the creature was still alive or not.

We waited and observed in awe at this display of motherly/parental love and it was frankly a very touching moment. The mother then after sniffing with its snout, pressed down on her kid with her front paws. Then she turned and looked at us, almost as if begging us to save her child. Uh uh uh it was really sad, the mother's eyes were dilated.. well actually not but you can tell she was in distress and I felt much worse than her being unable to help. I could only watch, as she tried to revive her kid, all the time being unable to express her grief through facial expressions or anything.

It was certainly a very touching moment, and tears welled up in my eyes. Ok lah got a bit lah =p

The parent then left and went into the bushes then I proceeded to roll the carcass over onto an unused magazine, and at this point of time, princess J called me. (Saving me from performing the duty of relocating the dead carcass, my sis did it wahaha)

Since then, haven't seen the adult pangolin about the area but I wish him/her/it well. It was a real eye opener in many different ways.

Edit:
#1 There are more pics, equally blur but large sized images.
#2 By saving the Pangolin, we meant moving the dead carcass to another location so that at least the parent can grieve and mourn someplace else. Kinda lame but.. what else could I do?
#3 Hai~Ren you should have called me if your friend or whoever went to try to collect the carcass, Cashew Road is not the correct add. but nvm, I'll check again tomorrow morn.
#4 Upon flipping the dead pangolin, I don't think it was a roadkill. No blood, no visible broken or oddly shaped limbs, and no it wasn't flattened.

Why I like soccer

Most of the time, goals are created from 'nothing.' Teamwork, vision, timing, opportunism, practice. Perhaps these are all attributes we can use in real life. Hey I'm starting to sound like CoI! =P

A few attributes can be found in this short clip.
1. Opportunism
Will you sit back and enjoy a 3 goal lead or go on to try for something spectacular and out of the blue? Is there that predatory instinct inside of you?

2. Timing
When do you make your move? When is the right time to call for checkmate and get in the finishing move? Are you willing to risk getting yourself into a (offside) trap?

3. Practice
How could Xavi and Ronaldinho have known and predicted each other's movements such that the goal was successful? No verbal communications or physical gestures. Just pure body language.

Ahh, the beauty of soccer. The game of life.

Edit: youtube.com is down ATM so nothing I can do about it.