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To reality

Dear reality,

I know we havent really been the best of friends and I know how sometimes I’d blame you for a lot of things.

Reality, I wish that things were different. Simpler. We wouldnt be the way that we are right now.

But things would never change would it? You’d always be the same. Harsh and cold. Unfair, most of the times.

Sometimes I wonder why it is this way. Its so funny how you treat the nice and people so bad and let the nasty people get away scott free. How come?

But reality, no matter. I am queen.

And as a queen, I will be able to get through all these, with poise and with dignity. And with strength and with grace with all my regality.

Maybe in time, you’ll change. And we’ll be okay.

Anyway, got to go. We’ll meet again soon

Love,
Queen Rose Marina Regalia
Kingdom of Rinaz

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May I have your support please?

Thanks for all the wellwishes. The family is doing fine. Quite a few things to ponder about these few days. *hugs to all*

A slow and lazy day today, didn’t do much except for a bit of housework and other mundane things. An easy Sunday. Initially, I wanted to blog about the typical Singaporean sunday morning. How families would stroll about their nearest hawker center or coffee shop to have breakfast together.

I love hearing the morning chatter from the throngs of people that come around as well as the ever moving stallholders who are busy preparing their food and drinks. I ordered a national favourite, the Roti Prata along one of my favourite drinks, Teh Halia (Ginger Tea).

Didn’t take any pictures though. Really wasnt in the mood to ask for permission from the stallholders for a picture.

Anyway, my prata and the accompanying curry was still wonderfully piping hot when I reached home to eat it. I’m sure my dearest would love a Singaporean breakfast. It’s such a treat!

Anyhow, being a little anti social, I spent the entire day cooped up in my room doing nothing but silly internet stuff.


Didn’t even touched my uncompleted flash animation :

Like neopets. I don’t know what got into me that possesed me to play neopets after a hiatus of many years.

I started playing in 2001 after seeing some kids playing it in the computer lab. Curious to know what the appeal was, I started. It didn’t take me long to get addicted to it. The games were nice, and the activities there were engrossing. I liked taking care of my pet. And this was what he used to look like.


My lupez2k

He doesnt look like that anymore though because of my persistant laboratory experiments on him.

I have to admit that although it has absolutely no value in the real world, I’m quite proud of the so called achivements that I’ve done on neopets. Yes, its childish. But look!

Trophies!

And look!

A high level pet

And I’m quite proud of my paintbrush collection

Anyhow, I stopped playing neopets because of the fact that Neopets took away a lot of the games that I liked and changed a lot of the activities there. It just took away alot of the fun-factor for me. Moreover there was a sheer amount of advertising in it. Every page had at least two banners. Finally I lost interest in it eventually.

Later on in the afternoon, I tried to learn a bit of Italian with this wonderful software called The Rosetta Stone Language Learning Software. Unlike other language softwares that I’ve encountered, this one’s easy to learn. You pick the picture that describes the text.

Il toro calcia l’uomo. The bull kicks the man. Easy.

But when it starts getting to this bit here

Uhh … go left. Go right. No go left. Turn behind. No no no … turn around three times and click your shoes and wish for no other place but home. This is hard!

I had to stop that software for the moment. It was much too confusing for me. Anyway, I came this podcast a few days ago and though that it was quite interesting. It was about a man’s encounter in Italy and how his language learning came in handy.

Later on, I logged in Secondlife for a little bit to say hi to an old friend, Duo. He showed me his dance floor. I must say, that it looked groovalicious 🙂


Rinaz Bijoux hits the dancefloor!

Totally unrelated to today’s post, I thought I’d also include one of my mini obsession.

It started in 1913 when a Lady called Mary Phelps Jacob created this using two silk handkerchiefs and a ribbon. And since then, it has evolved to many wonderful designs. Some curious and some amazing.

What I am talking about, ladies and gentlemen is the wonderful brassiere.


One of my latest buys and the entire set costs only $50 SG dollars!

It’s funny how I used to be embarrassed to step in any lingerie shop but now, friends would sometimes be frustrated when I stop by my favourite Minoshe shop and won’t step out till hours later.

I love Minoshe for its cheaper price and the regularly updated designs. A bra and panty set usually costs less than $30. Which I think is awesome. I’d never buy expensive undies any more.

I had an unpleasant experience of buying a bra from an established lingerie shop. It was kind of expensive but it didn’t last very long.  After a while, it tore and wasn’t good any-more.

See, just as pretty as any Victoria’s Secrets 🙂


I love the different colours. A lot of pink ones lately.

Some of my newer buys. Couldn’t help it when Minoshe had a promotion – Buy two get one free. 3 sets for under 60 dollars.

While I don’t normally wear lacy stuff, I couldn’t help but to get this adorable one. It looks so sweet. I don’t quite fancy the ribbon on the panty but I can cut it away I guess.

And lately I’ve been quite paranoid about my lingerie by the fact that I only hand-wash them and hanging them separately. They always get missing if they are left to be washed in the machine. I don’t know why but since one of my nicer ones got missing, I didn’t want to take a chance any more.

Still, for some of the lovely designs from Minoshe, sometimes they do come out with odd designs.

I thought it was really ugly. The only reason why I got it is because I liked the black chemise that came along with it.

Okay, time to get back to trying to understand heads and tails to what the Rosetta stone software is trying to teach me. Till the next time 🙂

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Atukku

I remember how you’d love to drink a bottle of orange yakult in the mornings.

I remember how impressed I was when you were reading the Chinese newspaper and talked to your friend so fluently.

I remember your attempts to make me amused with your rendition of the national song.

I remember how interestingly blue the iris of your eyes are.

I remember the way you talked, always gentle.

Alas, you’d never drink your yakult anymore. Nor read the Chinese papers. Nor sing that silly song that you made up.

You passed away yesterday night.

Though we werent so close mainly because we lived so far apart. I still cant help but feel like my heart is being dented. You were a good man. You were a wonderful grandfather.

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I’m not gorgeous but its okay

Oh sweet! Look at what was just delivered this morning. Yay!


The coy and demure pose

Tried to call up the vespa showroom but there was no reply. Thought it would be nice to try out the different scooters before making my mind up about which one to get.

I dont mind slightly heavier bikes. (Not too heavy though!) Because they are more stable but I don’t think I could get a bike which is too tall. If the balls of my feet can’t touch the ground, that’s no good.

Anyway, been looking at tomorrow.sg when an article caught my eye.

In a nutshell : A blogger here in Singapore was nominated as the hottest blogger Apparently, she was noticed by a local talent agency to sign her up with MTV.

I read about that a few days ago but I didn’t think about it much. She’s a very pretty girl and she’s very lucky to be signed up with MTV.


What an adorable face

I mean, I wish I was as pretty as she. But I’m not. So I pretty much abandoned all my hopes to become the next popular pop-star/TV host/singer/ and just forget about it. (Haah? No more Marina Carey? Boring)

However, I wonder why talent agencies or TCS or any local media here seem to favour more of the Caucasian look and then the Chinese. There is very little, if none at all Malay or Indian actors and actresses, models used for advertisements.

Even Taufik Batisah, the winner of the Singapore Idol competition, seems to be completely non existent in the TCS 5 world. Save for the one drama series, Shooting Stars and the 7-11 commercial. Sheik Haikal, Norleena Salim, Kumar … Where are they now?

My classmate, Adi, believes that the reason being is that Caucasians have much more appeal than the other races. It all boils down to marketing, people with more appeal, generate more revenue.

But I feel that the lesser fairer races also have their own special appeal. Who is to say that Indians and Malays don’t?

It makes me sad to see biasness in the media when in actual fact, most Singaporeans are in a melting pot. We interact with each other in daily life, we have best friends with each other, we even form relationships with each other. So what’s up with the one sided view?

Yes, I would like to see more diversity in races in the media. What can be done to promote it? I wish I knew.

I’m still hopeful though.

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New look!

Curiosity got the better of me. After a year of the same template, my itchy fingers was dying to try something new. And after a bit of fiddling around, a new look. What do you think?

Still dont know how to add in colour to the sidebar boxes though. Css is wierd.

—

Anyway, had a lovely and relaxing week from Hari Raya, spending time and get togethers with families.

Hari Raya is a day for forgiveness and the strengthening of bonds. Start afresh. Start anew.

Feels a little different this year though. Ketupats seem to be rarer to be seen these days and lontong pieces doesnt seem to be as soft as before.


Picture of ketupat stolen from Pniiwof blog

Okay I admit it, I dont know how to weave a ketupat. My aunt tried to teach me, when I was a little girl. But the only thing I managed to weave is my fingers. It was so hard! So according to Malay sayings, I’ll never get married :/

But I remember helping mum make lontongs till after a while, she got busy and now, we just buy the factory made ones. It doesnt taste the same though. Now I dont really have the mood to eat them anymore.

—

This article from the Sunday times newspaper caught my eye.

It says that by taking 9 days leave, we could have 43 days of rest. Quite impressive. Having more rest days is always a good thing 🙂

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Spending Deepavali holidays in Geylang

Happy deepavali to all my Hindu friends 🙂

Hari Raya is just a few more days to go!

Visited Geylang today. Heard that it would be the last year that Geylang would be around before it gets demolished for an upgrade.

As a kid, my parents brought me here quite frequently every time during the fasting month and I remember the warm, if a little stuffy alleys of geylang serai, full of people selling clothes, food and other cultural needs.

I’ve always enjoyed walking through these mazes of shops that leads round and around and exploring which little corner that I can stumble to. Sometimes it will lead me to a delicious snack corner full of delicious traditional cakes and sometimes it will lead me to a clothes stall, full of baju kurongs. It was always exciting for me to walk around.

Am a little sad to see these alleys go. We’ll never experience the old style geylang any more from next year onwards. Am going to miss it.


Stall selling colourful scarves and headgear


Lovely kebayas for sale for about S$50


During the fasting month there are many boxes like these – donations are used for the poor and needy


Crowded with other nostalgic people, like me


Man cooking ayam percik (Original one, on a stick tastes better!)


Man selling off lemang (bamboo filled with rice, slowly cooked over an open fire)


I’ve no idea what he’s cooking. But it looks so cool


Selling kuih raya (cakes and snacks)


Kebabs! Mmmm …


Seafood! Mmmm …

Man cooking Dengdeng (what a cute name) a type of thinly stripped bbq’ed marinated meat


Display of kuih raya

Putu bambu (coconut snack with sugar inside) I like!

It was easier for me to take pictures here as compared to Chinatown Most were happy to have their pictures taken. I chatted with some of the shopkeepers and he told me. “One day, maybe in 10 or 15 years from now, those pictures will be valuable”

To me, the pictures are already valuable. But the good memories, is the most valuable of all. I will miss Geylang.

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I passed my riding test!

Awesome! After a couple of previous attempts, I’m now a qualified rider on the road! My goodness that took ages to complete. I started in May 2004 and only completed it now. Some people only took a few months to do it but I guess the important thing is, that I’ve eventually finally done what I’ve always wanted to do. So now I can put a tick next to my “to do list”

Initially, I was a little apprehensive. Judging by the dark clouds above me, it looked as if, it was going to rain. I dont feel confident when it rains – roads are more slippery and harder to manage.

I arrived the Bukit Batok driving center at about 7.50am, put on my number tag, 21 and was given a quick practise before the actual test. And just as expected, it was drizzing. I sort of fell off the plank and feeling a little peeved with myself.

Later on, me and 89 other testees sat in the room for our briefing and I quickly scanned the road map for a visualisation of the road that I’ll be going through later. I breathed in deeply, concentrated and then started my test.

The tester waved his hand, signalling that test was begining. I checked for oncoming traffic and did my blind spot and proceeded to the lane change. So far so good, I thought to myself. Let me just turn over at this junction and then go up the slope.

Hey not bad! Easy does it. Dont be gabra (panic) Be cool! Look for oncoming traffic and then go. Not enough space at the road? Just stay behind the traffic light. No problem. No gabra.

I observed the other people at the figure 8 and noticed that alot of the people in front of me didnt check their blind spot. I’ll try not to do the same mistake. And then I proceeded.

I felt so lucky that the bike that I was riding didnt give me any problems. A good bike would either make you or break you. Good bike! Good bike!

Then I proceeded to the plank. Easy does it Marina. Count. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Good … Now you dont need to stay on the plank any longer, thats fine. Carry on to the emergency break.

Speed up Marina. But not too fast. Now decrease throttle! Then clutch in! Good! You’re doing fine. Continue to the road.

Speed up! Speed up! You’re on public road now. Observe your surroundings. You can do it! Its a lovely day to ride. No problem at all. Car in front of you? Signal quickly and try to move away as possible. Wonderful.

I talked to myself and tried to motivate myself as much as I can. And at length, I completed the test and waited for the results.

It was such agony. The waiting. I was complaining to the guy sitting beside me. Just give me the results already! Fail fail lah! Aaargh!

Everyone around me are feeling the same, I was sure. They had the same sheepish/in agony/pained face as I had.

Eventually the testers arrived. And they called out the names of the people who failed. I watched as how disappointed they looked. There was even a guy who crushed his result paper in anger.

“I’m going to call out some numbers”, my tester announced. “19! 20! 21!”

Haaah? Fail again? 🙁

“19. 20. 21. You all pass”

Haaah? I pass? Bluff lah. I dont believe.

“You passed lah! Unless you want to come again next time” Said the guy beside me.

I passed? Really? Wow! Really? Unreal! Wow! Oh wow!

And I looked at the slip of paper in my hands. 8 points. Unreal! From 34 to 26 to 8 points. So amazing.

Woopee! I can ride on the road now. Unreal! Zoom! Vespa GT200 here I come!


SMOOCH!

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what a wierd week

Wahoo! Its now been a year since the first entry to Rinaz Bloggariffic has been published. Happy happy birthday to bloggie!

Looking back to this day, about a year ago :

  • I was helping out with the West Spring technology club students in an Animation Competition. We were also getting ready to move to the new campus.
  • My computer was down and I couldnt play secondlife so I used my brother’s laptop to talk on the forums and got to know my dearest better.
  • Started to get extremely stressed out because of my previous company’s antics. Visually apparent from my face. Easily depressed.

One year ago, I’d never thought that I’d experience the things that has happened to me during these 12 months. I never thought that I’d ever leave West Spring and go to Shuqun and I didnt think that I’d take photography seriously. I didnt even think about taking A levels nor did I ever imagine that I’d ever go to Italy and neither did I imagine that I’d fall in love …

As far as maturity goes, I still do stupid things every now and then. Like auditioning for a television programme even though I know that I have absolutely NO chance of getting to the next stage. Breaking a pair of shoes for the Nth time. Setting a date to meet and then cancelling it, and then setting it up again and then cancelling it again. What can I say, I’m impulsive and a little spontaneous.

I dont regret doing stupid things though … We only live once. Life is too short to worry about every single mistake that we do. I want to look forward to the future and learn from the past. I want spend a good day and remember yesterday but just remember … never to linger and dwell too much.

I just want to be happy.

Now that I’m 27, I dont know if I’ve grown any wiser as compared to some years back. Gosh … 27 … I cant even start to fathom that. How did time pass by so quickly? As a kid, I never thought that I’d ever grow up to become 20. Now I cant even imagine being 30. And thats just 3 years from now.

Sometimes I think about the things that I should have done, things that I could have achieved. Goals that I should have accomplished. Just like ‘so and so’. But I know that I can never be like them. I am me. And I’d like the be the best that only I can be.

Anyway, enough with the nonsensical ramblings and lets get down with it. (with MORE nonsensical ramblings)

—

What a week.

I think I got a little too carried away with the graduation video.I was a little frustrated that the program wouldnt let me burn it to a vcd format. I decided to try to do a big no-no which was to try to get a crack for the trial version of the Ulead Video editing program. Before I knew it, I had a few viruses in my computer which I thought my anti-virus was able to pick up.

Confidently, I deleted the virii and thought that it was all good. Chatted with my dearest and decided to restart my computer when firefox decided to hang on me. Compy restarted as usual and went to the desktop as usual. But I couldnt control my mouse anymore and the whole screen just froze.

No matter how many times I restarted the computer, no matter how many times I screamed compy just looked coldly back at me. I was extremely, extremely frustrated. I spent the entire morning editing the video and it was all for naught. All my hard work. How on earth am I going to go to work the next day? Needless to say, I was extremely upset. Stupid virus. I was tired and sick from the flu and sore throat and feeling extremely low.

I was contemplating on reformatting my computer. I was just about to press the reformat key when my dearest adviced against it. “You’ll lose all your work!” and he added “why dont you bring your hard disk to school and see if the information can be extracted”

Which I did, the next day, I asked if Clement, the tech guru (and my current best friend) where I was working at, to see if he could help check out what was wrong with my compy. And he helped to delete away the virii which was *still* residing in the hard disk and extracted a few of the precious files that I was working at.

That cheered me up a little, that my work wasnt completely gone. I thanked Clement for helping me and I installed the hard disk back into my compy. I still had the same problem where it restarted and just got stuck at the desktop. Then I decided to reformat the computer. But this time, I didnt feel so bad since I’ve already saved the important files.

(Why on earth do I have so much issues with computers?)

Anyway, the next day, I found that my mobile phone doesnt want to be charged when I plugged the charger in. “Whats wrong, now?”, I asked it, furiously poking it. I brought it for the mobile phone carts to take a look at. The man who was at the counter fiddled a little with my mobile, took it apart and then fiddled with it some more and eventually concluded that my mobile phone ‘mother board’ had an error in it, making it having problems when trying to recharge. You could get it fixed, but its cheaper to buy a new phone altogether. Anyway, you can use the desktop charger to recharge your battery.

I looked at the mobile phones that was on display. Most of them were above $200 dollars. Which was a fair price for a Nokia 7260. However, I didnt feel like spending any moolah this month after being quite extravagant last month, spending over the same amount over the studio shots. And anyways, I only use the mobile phone for sms’s and calls. I dont really have any need for mms or gprs or camera or those new fangled stuff. My pre paid sim card doesnt allow it either. Undeniably, I’m quite tempted though, the phone looks sexilicious.

The week passed by quite busily with loads and loads of stuff to do, conducting surveys, helping out in alot of things for the graduation ceremony. Teachers came to me one by one to ask me for help in different things (some not related to I.T. even lol!) One teacher even asked me to help edit a password protected document. I had to crack my head at trying to fix that problem. I’m not a hacker!

In the end, I redid the document by scratch. It was much easier to do that compared to trying to guess or crack the password to the document.

Pheeww!

—

Thursday. Accompanied the vice principal and the operations manager to Yishun Town Secondary School to have a look-see. The vp tells me that the school was undergoing ‘PRIME’ which means that the school will be going for an upgrade and the current building will soon be demolished. The VP wants to see what things that could be salvaged from the school.

I was quite amazed by the school. The building looked just like Shuqun secondary. The wings were exactly the same. The general office, the library, the corridor. It was like quantum leap where its the same world, but a parallel dimension.

We walked around the the area and I was just amazed at how similar everything was. Impressive school. I saw how disciplined the students was there and watched the students marching in their parade (reminded me of when I was back in secondary school) and observed the students studying in the library. I wondered to myself if this would be a school where I’d enroll my future kids at. Students here looks extremely disciplined. I didnt even see one student with their tee-shirt tucked out. And I think that speaks volumes about the school.

VP says that its a good school where the principal came from a military background. He’s a disciplinarian where he’s like the stern father who looks after his children with an iron fist. He expects the best possible out of everyone and he puts in a big effort too. He believes that before any one can have a positive attitude, the physical environment has to be perfect. If there’s a small crack in the mirror, he’d pester the person in charge to fix it. Anything that isnt working well is to be repaired.

A nice environment makes nice people.

What a nice philosophy.

—

Friday. Graduation ceremony. Busy day, with the taking of photos and the video taping of the ceremony (how did I become the publicity team? lol) I took loads of pictures that my finger was so stiff after staying at the button for ages.

It was a nice ceremony. I liked seeing the students looking so happy. (during my time, we never had a graduation ceremony! *waves cane around) Eventually, the grand finale came and I was looking at the students faces while the video was being shown.

They liked it! And the teachers were quite impressed too. (really feeds the ego to have people say that)

I still cant convert it to a full movie, so I did the next best thing, which was to videotape the video. The quality isnt so good, but its something right?

I think I’ll end here for the moment. Till the next time. 🙂

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Its a no show for the show show

Spent my weekend editing the video for the student graduation ceremony. And I must say, that it was surprisingly addictive. A little music file here, some transition there and it was looking kind of spiffy. I liked it.

And in time, I completed the video and was feeling quite excited. I pressed convert to wmv format and watched the transfer go by. And then it stopped at 80 percent.

Eh? I must have pressed escape by accident. Then I tried again. And the same thing still happened. And I tried again. And still the same thing.

Now I dont know what to do. I guess I could bring the entire Ulead Videomaker installer to school and play it there from the “preview movie” But dang, I really wanted to share it with everyone.

Oh well

Ooh! Anyways, I just collected the photos which I sent to the printshop yesterday and I think I’m a new fan for Fujifilm printing. The picture doesnt look dark and the quality of the picture looks great! I’m so happy 🙂 I’ll do my printouts there from now onwards 🙂

And speaking of pictures, I saw the most magnificent looking dawn outside of my window this morning while talking to my dearest.

6 am

605

610

615

Anyway, am still kind of bummed about the video. Lets see what tomorrow shall bring.