Wishing all of you who read my blog (I estimate around 3 of you) a Merry Christmas.

The past few days have been quite delicious, with visits to Tony's Steak House on Lorne Street, Tonino's Pizzeria in Mission Bay and Dragon's Gourmet in Epsom. Great catching up with various people!

More eating today... just finished a heavy brunch and just killing time until tonight, where we're going to have a heavy dinner. Ah, it's truly Christmas.

The Sidhe Christmas function this year was a two part extravaganza, the first part being Tron: Legacy and the second part being at the Ballroom, a pool lounge.

I went into Tron expecting "terrible" and I got "average". I was anticipating lying in my seat, writhing in agony but it wasn't actually the case. It was a mildly entertaining film with pretty graphics (bar Jeff Bridges in CGI) and an enjoyable soundtrack. Final verdict: not the worst two hours of my life. I have to say, though, movies aren't very social events. You're all focused on the screen and can't talk with anyone, so if we could avoid yet another movie for next year's Christmas do, that would be great. (Last year, they had 500 Days of Summer, but I was unable to attend that due to my flight to Malaysia ":(")

Following the movie, we had about an hour to kill and Surya really wanted to go to Strawberry Fare, so we gathered a small group and went. I was astounded at the number of new desserts I hadn't tried... there was a strawberries and cream one, a gooseberry dessert of some sort, the key lime pie was back, and there was a cranberry and white chocolate cheesecake, which I ordered. Absolutely fantastic.

The rest of the night was good. I played two games of pool with Jordan against Damon and Rob C, in which we were owned, twice. The remainder of my time there was catching up with various people, drinking, scoffing some pizza, just chilling and relaxing really. Being a Thursday night, there was some self-control to be exercised so most people started drifting away around 10pm so we could at least turn up to work the next day...

The last day of work was pretty uneventful, and I was just cleaning up my scripts and committing my code to the repository. We submitted the Zen Puzzle Garden update to Apple, so hopefully it'll go through review soon. We said goodbye to four of our artists by having dinner at Harem, and we learned of some surprising resignations for next year. Gasp.

The past week has been pretty hectic in terms of finding a flat to live in. After turning down the Mt Victoria property that I mentioned in my last post, we were kinda desperate to really wrap up the flat hunting situation before the end of the week. It so happened that we found another place at the bottom of Brooklyn Hill that Charlotte and I loved, and it also turned out that the landlord really wanted to get the tenancy sorted before the end of the week as well. So all in all, things aligned perfectly and now we have a really nice flat about 20 minutes walk from work and we are paying the same amount of money for it as the Mt Vic property.

Thank God for that.

So I'm jumping the gun a little bit, who really cares?

We're just about to head to my auntie's house for a gigantic Christmas Eve feast. I'm expecting to see five of dad's six siblings at the dinner, and all their children (and for one, their children's children) - that's approximately 30 people. Truly a celebration in typical Malaysian style!

Anyway, here's wishing you all a blessed and joyful Christmas with friends and family, wherever in the world you are. To those of you who are hard pressed during this time, I really feel for you and hope things improve in the year to come.

Arrived safely last night at just before 8pm local time into the humid awesomeness of Kuala Lumpur International Airport. The flight was quick, only 10 hours, and felt shorter by the fact so many good movies were on! I watched 101 Dalmations (nostalgia), G Force (adorably cute), Up (entertaining and heart warming) and half of Bolt (got cut short by the end of the flight). There were so many kids on the plane though, it was really annoying. This kid in front of me kept looking back and throwing his toys on the ground so I had to pick them and I just wish I could have backhanded him, or something. Sigh.

Anyway, the work Christmas party was on Wednesday at Park Road Post out in Miramar, and while I couldn't stay for very long, it was cool just chilling out and having some delectable snacks (eg, grilled prawns) and a bit of wine to accompany. I had to leave before the movie, but I was told it was 500 Days of Summer.

And yes I have Internet access, yay! So I'll probably be online in the mornings while I'm waiting for things to get in motion for the day.

Well, this'll probably be my last blog post this year. It's going to be pretty busy from now on, and I probably won't have a computer while I'm up in Auckland.

Thanks to all of you who visit and post comments and drawings. You can read more of my rantings at my 2008 Summary.

And with that, have a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year, and I'll see you in 2009.

The period between Christmas and New Years always seems so blah. It's like something's meant to be happening, but nothing does. ¯\(º_o)/¯

Anyway, we had an awesome feed on Christmas day. We had cheese platters (with some pickled onions, yum!), chicken nibbles, roast pork, glazed ham, potato salad, hot salad, green salad...and then for dessert we had these custard things in pastry cup...things. That were really really nice, so it's all good. And we also had a 5-layer rainbow jelly that took 5 days to make.

Since Christmas, I've been trying to get my sleeping habits back to normal after waking up at 4am to go to the airport. I think I'm back on track... kinda. Oh, and Sam arrived safely, so that's good too. \o/

I've been playing a lot of DS. Namely Pokemon...I've been breeding Larvitar and I finally got a good one ¬.¬ Anyway, that's half of my team, I need to get an Abra, Machop and Staryu now. Sigh. I wish the game makers would stop being so freaking stupid over IV Breeding and just make it some kind of max(father, mother, random) function. I also played Mario Kart DS over Wifi with PT, and that was lame, because he got a Blue Shell at the last course and pipped me to win the race. But all in all, we tied because I won the first two and he won the last two, so I'm not too fussed, and I fail at MKDS anyway so it doesn't bother me.

Lastly, I have also been hacking Pokemon ROMs. Yes h4xx0r lolz. I've been looking at the trainers' Pokemon. So far I've figured out level, dex number, item held and moveset. There's another number that I'm not too sure about...Weng Hao hypothesised it to be some kind of AI difficulty, and it makes sense, but I don't know of any way to test it.

Edit: So I'm up at 5am, waiting for Shereen to pick me up so we can go to the airport. XKCD is just so appropriate (but not for the same reasons)

So today we had the Christmas service at KCC. I was saying that it felt a bit hectic because I was trying to remember all my lines, as well as play the piano. But it all sorted itself out in the end.

The Christmas skit went really well. I didn't forget any of my lines (which was good), and I managed to ad-lib to cover up some late cues and also some other forgotten lines. There was a slight bit of panic when I realised I didn't know where the wireless microphone was, but frantic pointing by Andrew soon solved that. Yeah, I'm really pleased with how it went. Those of you who missed the skit will get the chance to see it later, because Uncle Ken filmed the whole thing. ¬.¬

After the service, we all went to grab a bite from Noodle Canteen in New Lynn. Cinta and I shared a honey chicken noodle, which was really nice. I kept telling myself not to eat too much, because we had an afternoon tea thing with my sister for her birthday later. In the end, I was feeling really hungry, so I took more from Cinta and also from Alice.

So after that, I made my way to Mission Bay. Despite the traffic and the lack of parking spaces, I managed to find a spot just in the back streets behind Burger King, and I joined the rest of the family at Mecca Stonehouse. At this point I wasn't feeling that hungry, but I ordered a chocolate mud cake, and after (happily) devouring it, I suddenly got hungrier. I don't know, why does it seem that I get hungry when I eat more? O_o Anyway, after that, I began stealing squid rings from Anita, and bread from my parents, and my parents got sick of me stealing food so they ordered another plate of bread and dip. Yum :3

So having been fed extremely well, I began to feel drowsy, and it wasn't until 5pm I struggled home and went straight to bed. Ahh, the satisfaction of eating too much and then napping.

So I FINALLY FOUND MY BELOVED SOUR APPLE RINGS!!! They were in New Lynn Foodtown, and it was a huge effort trying to get to them. There were these teens standing outside Foodtown singing, of all things, lame songs from High School Musical, at an obscene volume, so I had to crank my iPod to maximum to try and drown them out. Yeah, I know, it's amazing I'm still alive. But it was worth the struggle for those sour apple rings :D Yeah I also have sour coke bottles and feijoa lollies too. Ahh, happiness comes in artifically flavoured gelatinous treats.

Yeah I managed to finish my Christmas shopping, once and for all. It was actually pretty hectic in the malls today. Lots of people, no parkin
g, long queues...eh. At least it's done and I don't have to worry about it. Oh wait, I still need to wrap everything -.- Ngoh. I suppose I'll do that tomorrow.

What else..oh yes, Sam invited me (and Matt and Sam) around to his house for a simple meal of spag bol. Following that, we went to Parnell for Chocolate Boutique, but once again we were disappointed by the huge crowd standing around. So we walked further down to Movenpick where I had a sticky date pudding :3



Also! I have updated the Gallery with more kitty pictures from Sam's Farewell. Soooo cute. I also have a few pictures to share from our end-of-year bash at Wenderholm:

So the youth are doing a Christmas skit for the Christmas service this year. I thought I'd go along so I could be the musician dude, because I'm usually the musician dude and don't have to act.

And then, all of a sudden, I'm the main character dude. Wut. I have to memorise all these lines as well x_x It should be a good skit though, if we can all get our lines sorted and our acting polished.

I'm excited by the prospect of Momo's <3 Apparently the story is that Viet got bored and so we're all congregating at Momo's now. Yay! I must remember to bring some cards along.