Manics live in Singapore!

When did the Manics become a 4 piece again [after Richey’s disappearance]? who’s that bird???

Just found out this morning that everyone’s favourite socialist Welsh band, the Manic Street Preachers are playing Fort Canning Park in Singapore on November 24th!!! That’s the same week I’ll be in Singapore for the Lee Guiatrs All-Stars concert.. *shrugs* Looks like I’ll have to pass on the Manics

I saw them live once when they headlined T　Ｉｎ　Ｔｈｅ　Ｐａｒｋ　ｆｅｓｔｉｖａｌ　ｉｎ　Ｓｃｏｔｌａｎｄ　ａｎｄ　Ｉ　still have my old Manics tee that I　ｗｏｒｅ　ｔｏ　ｓｅｅ　ｔｈｅｍ　ｈｅｈｅ

Wonder if Nicky still wears skirt during their live performance and if he’d be allowed to wear skirt at the SG concert LOL

2 days to ASH concert!

Irish punk-pop trio ASH

48 hours to go..

I'm leaving for SG tomorrow morning and I've yet to finish packing. Can anyone lend me a Star Wars or Transformers tee for the Ash gig? LOL

I'm all set for the Ash concert - I've checked out the directions to Fort Canning and I have my gear in place (sounds like I am off to war :P) and thanks to Liz, I now have "Singapore Song" a.k.a "Seventh Circle" - that was written by Tim in Singapore and recently released as a b-side to "End Of The World"

Do you like Taiwanese food?

There's a Taiwanese food restaurant at the Gardens that's perpetually packed with patrons both inside and outside (neverending Q even on weekday) Fong Lye Taiwan Restaurant is located on the top level of the Gardens near Borders and Crystal Jade restaurant.

Fong Lye Taiwan Restaurant at Midvalley

I have to admit that I'm not a big fan of Taiwanese food - I'm not too crazy about deep fried pork innards and stinky tofu but I do like Taiwanese pork intestines flour noodles (mee sua) and "tao suan" dessert. Fong Lye serves pork intestines mee sua though it's nowhere as good as the infamous Ay-Chung mee sua in Taipei.

pork intestine mee sua at Fong Lye

Sadly, "tao suan" is not on the menu. About 3 years ago in Kaohsiung, after visiting a temple I remember stopping by to buy some "tao suan" from the local market and it was the yummiest tao suan I've ever tasted! My dad and my aunts are tao suan fans LOL and I remember dad would always make a stop at Chinatown's People's Park food court whenever we're in SG to get his tao suan fix. It's one of those Hokkien dessert that you can't find in KL for some reason though I'm told you can get tao suan now at Midvalley's food court.

had this bowl of not-so-yummy tao suan at IMM's foodcourt after the Ashin book signing

The food at Fong Lye restaurant is a little pricey - a bowl of noodles would easily set you back by almost RM20 and the sets with the steamboat are between RM27-30 though the portions are fairly big. Restaurant service is quick and efficient but the drinks are expensive! Milk tea costs RM7.30 (nope they are not refillable even at that price) - the cheapest drink on the menu is the mineral water which costs RM3.30

hmm.. did we order too much food?

yummy sausage

New lappy ThinkPad R61i

I've a new lappy!

Bought it this afternoon for just under RM2,500 and it comes with Vista so looks like I gotta get used to the new platform. It has:

- 3GB RAM (basic is 1GB but I got a 2GB upgrade for RM80)

- 160GB HDD

- Intel® Core™ 2 Duo processor T2390 (1.86GHz 533MHz 1MBL2)

- Intel® GMA X3100

- 14.1" WXGA

- dual layer DVD multi writer

which isn't too bad at that price considering it is a ThinkPad.

When I find the time, possibly after my week long escapade to Singapore, I'll need to extract the data from my old lappy, which I've decided to revive once I get the replacement part (I can't let my old lappy die like that) but whatever am I gonna do with 2 lappies? 

me new lappy - ThinkPad R61i

Ashin's new friend

I spent the day combing through every nook and cranny of Low Yat Plaza in search of a new lappy. I must have seen at least a hundred different models of Acer, Dell, HP, Asus, Toshiba, Fujitsu, Compac, BenQ and Lenovo but I couldn't find anything that I particularly like till I got to Midvalley and found the one and only Lenovo shop carrying Thinkpad lappies!!!!! hehe. It was like love at first sight.. the Thinkpad on display look almost identical to my old lappy (they retained the classic Thinkpad design) Am going back there tomorrow with the moolahs to buy it.. yippee!!

On another note, I picked up a Yoshi figurine today (my favourite Mario character!) and Yoshi found a home with my other figurines.. well it's not much of a collection but Ashin now has a new friend. LOL!

Konichiwa. Watakushi-wa Ashin, desu

In memory of my lappy

My beloved lappy died yesterday *sob* :(

It was a sudden unexpected death. There were no symptoms and it was running fine up to the night before its death. When my lappy wouldn't boot up yesterday evening, I knew something was amiss. I could almost feel tears welling up in my eyes when dad broke the news to me! How could my lappy leave me so suddenly? It lived a good 3 years of its life with me, filled with countless nights of online chatting, music and video downloading and emailing, but I guess it was time to say goodbye.

Thankfully my harddisk together with all its data are still intact, though I suspect finding a replacement for lappy won't be easy. My lappy was highly reliable and in its lifetime, I never had any major problems with it (the Thinkpad T series are tough lappies)

My lappy, you will be missed dearly!

Superband Grand Finals

FINALLY.

After weeks and weeks of pestering the staff at Mediacorp, friends in Singapore and random band sites for tickets, I finally got hold of a pair of tickets to the Superband Grand Finals on October 5th!! (on my birthday!! hoho) Damn those tickets are sure hard to come by.. why don't Mediacorp just put them on sale and save us fangirls the agony of having to hunt for tickets.

I get to celebrate my birthday watching 五月天 live. Awesome! Also performing at the Finals alongside Mayday are Beyond (two of Asia's biggest rock band) and Jonathan Lee together with some other Singaporean bands.

Looks like it's gonna be a long fun-filled week in Singapore with the Ash and Mayday shows. Can't wait!

Get Ready

1977 Ashtoria

Counting down 11 days to the upcoming Ash concert :)

So far there's no indication of what the Singapore setlist will be like, but seeing that the guys are fresh off their London 1977 gigs, I think they may be playing more songs off 1977? Or not?

Not only did the guys played the entire 1977 in the album order live at the Roundhouse and Astoria, they also threw in b-sides from the singles off that album, including "Cantina Band" (ooohhh I really wanna hear that live), "Sneaker" and "Get Ready". I hope they'll play "Get Ready" in Singapore - I have this on the Goldfinger single. It's a cover version of the 60's Motown classic by The Temptations and it's wicked!

I'm also hoping that they'll play another one of their wicked cover version of Ween's "What Deaner Was Talking About" cos they played it years ago at Zouk in Singapore.

Hmm.. I'm wondering if concert merchandise will be available at the Singapore concert? I'd like one of the 1977 tees

i want the white baby tee with the 1977 era Ash logo on the top left corner!

Forever Delayed

Almost 2 years after the Playstation 3 was first released in Japan, the console has finally arrived on our shores today. The official Malaysian launch was held today at 1-Utama. When I got there this morning, the place was already swarming with hordes of eager fanboys (our resident fanboy who already owns a PS3 was still fast asleep at home)

Various booths were set up to promote the PS3 console and games with many curious onlookers. Over at a corner I saw a Q of fanboys who have been Q-ing up since last night to purchase the PS3. The first batch of PS3 buyers were entitled to cash vouchers of up to RM1,000 from Sony.

PS3 testing zone

event itinerary

Trials and Tribulations

I put off playing Phoenix Wright 3: Trials and Tribulations long enough. I’m now embarking on the last of the 3-part Phoenix Wright series which some critics claim is the best of the series. So far gameplay has been sluggish - after a week of gaming I'm still only at episode 2. Like its predecessors, there are 5 episodes altogether.. i.e I am barely halfway through the game!

Coming fresh off playing Lifesigns, Phoenix Wright now seems so tedious.. there are so much text to be read and sometimes I find myself tapping the button too quickly to fast forward the dialogues only to miss out on parts of it!

Interestingly enough, the game introduces a new prosecutor who goes by the name Godot, a coffee junkie (drinks up to 17 cups of coffee per trial day!) wearing a Cyclops like mask who seems to hold a grudge against Phoenix.