Author: lioneltan

The lonely hero

Can still remember the day vividly. The day that I had to report for National Service. Woke up early and grabbed a croissant wich from BK before taking a bus down to CMPB all by myself. Didn’t inform any friends and also convinced my parents that I was ok to go by myself.

It was quite unreal because I knew I was probably going to be away from civilised life as I know it, and that I was going to be surrounded by strangers. As I trudged out to the parade square, I happened to see a familiar face in the stands. Turns out that Island was also there to send her friend off.

It was kind of comforting to see a familiar face before getting on the bus that took me (and a bunch of other guys) away from CMPB.

Made it to the school soccer team

Through some strange fluke, I managed to make it to my JC soccer squad to play a friendly against a Japanese school that came to pay us a visit. Maybe my skills were better than I thought or everyone else was shite.

Anyway, my outstanding contributions during the game was an outrageous backheel flick-pass in midfield, as well as a through ball that was too heavy and easily cleared by the keeper.

What’s my name in Chinese???

My first Chinese lesson didn’t turn out too well and probably set the pattern for the rest of my life. Everyone was made to go to the blackboard one-by-one to write out their names in Chinese for the teacher to see.

Well… I didn’t know how to write my name in Chinese, and the incredulity of the Chinese teacher made me so embarassed that it probably set in stone my attitude towards the language for my life.

Its easier to blame my Primary One teacher than to say my Chinese sucks… :p

Writing 4 in Chinese

Even when I was  in kindergarten I was already “kay kiang”…

We were being taught Mandarin in classes and we had to learn how to write numbers. One, two and three were written as one, two and three horizontal lines, so I thought it was a cinch and decided to do some advance homework.

Apparently, “four” written in Mandarin was not four horizontal lines… 🙁

Finally back online!

Was without the Net for 2 days back at PIL’s because SIL had terminated the Singnet account. I wasn’t aware of that for the 1st day, so there was nothing much I could do. On the 2nd day, I thought of connecting a wireless router to the Hubstation and it proved to be more challenging than I thought as I couldn’t get an IP assigned via DHCP.

Turned out that the solution was remarkably low-tech. I just had to turn the Hubstation off and on again to get it to work. Think there is some setting in the Hubstation that remembers the last MAC address that was connected to it. Wasted 3 to 4 hours of my time…

Stuck in Sydney

There we were, waiting at Gate 1 to board our flight from Melbourne to Sydney when suddenly an announcement came up over the PA system that our flight failed some engineering tests and had to be cancelled.

What followed was a maelstrom of activity as we scrambled to change flight bookings, hastily arrange for accomodations, and try to make sure everything was in order.

Well, I’m in Sydney now and I’ll be leaving for the hotel I booked last night soon. Hopefully nothing goes wrong from here…

Pork Ribs

I love pork ribs, and I normally have no problems polishing off a plate of them. Unfortunately, today on Oz Day 2009, I met my match.

Unc Nick brought FIL, Esh, 7th Aunt and myself to a club in Sydney. I ordered a rack of ribs, but what came was a rack of ribs from some mutant pig!. The ribs were stacked on top of a pile of potato wedges!

I finished off most of the ribs, save one. Quite a large pile of potato wedges was left behind though…