妻がもう一度台湾へ行きました。家に一人では寂しいになってきます。。。

We organised and held our "official" house warming last Saturday. Because we didn't want to over-invite and neglect certain groups of friends, this session was focused on our colleagues, while the previous sessions comprised of classmates and other friends. And it was a busy day to say the least. We counted over 50 guests who turned up, and even though the catering only prepared food for 30 pax, we still had quite a bit of food left over by dinner, and thankfully some other friends turned up later to help with the food. The top photo features my close friends from OCS. Most of them are featured in the picture, except for the some who couldn't make it and JJ who came (very) late. Thanks guys for coming!

We had a pretty decent spread for lunch, even if I say so myself. It was from a recommendation from one of Mabel's colleagues. Not pictured inside is the dim sum which came later, courtesy of her friends. Too bad I didn't get to eat some of the dishes as I was too busy playing host.

Mabel's colleagues came in full force! And due to the small space that we have to offer we had to indent 15 extra chairs to be put in the lobby. Mabel, as usual, went through a few sessions of acting as the tour guide. She's especially excited to introduce the rest to her walk in wardrobe and to declare that I have 20% worth of clothes in it.

Some of my friends from work dropped by as well. They're Teng Hui and his girl friend, Guan Seng, Wei Sheng and Devan. Too bad the rest didn't make it due to other commitments. And oh yeah, great shirt, Devan.

The girls from Mabel's company were being kept busy with some of our old photo albums. Close friends would realise that Mabel simply loves taking pictures. Some how we don't really develop any photos nowadays due to the fact that we archive our pictures either in our computer and upload the nicer ones on my blog.

I'm glad there was space to accomodate everyone in the end..... Space was a big consideration during the planning process. But with this house warming over, I can now say that our apartment has been "initiated", and we'll still be having regular gathering sessions here in the future. And again, thanks to all who turned up, and for the many gifts as well. It was great playing host, and we hope to have you over again soon.

Another Mabel special this week! Very similar to last week's chicken chop noodles, but with a different type of teriyaki/BBQ sauce. She also sprinkled some of the rice seasoning she got from Osaka, which tasted great. The miso soup was also an added bonus. The mashed pototoes didn't really fit into the eastern cuisine menu, but still it was a really filling and satisfying meal.

I went to Sunshine Plaza recently and finally got for myself the set of SD Kamen Rider Den-O (仮面ライダー電王) key chains. I also got the 3 rangers from Jyuken Sentai Gekirangers (獣拳戦隊ゲキレンジャー), which are now part of the displays on my fridge. I've also ordered some of the Rider Hero sets, and will be getting them pretty soon. With the end of the Ultraman Mebius series, I've been watching a lot of Kamen Rider and Sentai shows lately. I've never been a big fan of Sentai (戦隊), or more commonly known to the rest of the world as the Power Rangers. I've found them too kiddy and the storylines not deep enough, although I like the fancy smancy poses and the mysterious pyrotechnics that appear whenever they henshin (変身). But this year's series, Gekirangers seem to be a little different. They're based on Beast style fighting, which resemble more of Chinese Martial Arts to me. The 2 female leads in the show are 超可愛い！Not Morning Musume level yet, but still pretty cute. I'd give this series a try, before the predictable storylines finally bore me enough to stop. Here's a clip of the action:

I recently took a picture of all my Naruto related manga for a post I wanted to make at the GotWoot forum. It's a great forum, one which I go to everyday. The management is great in preventing any spamming, and a lot of indepth discussion is generated every day. Go there if you're an anime fan with real anime realted issues to dicuss and talk about. I believe I'm one out of two only Singaporeans participating in the forum there.... Anyway, I've been collecting manga almost 20 years ago, and I've almost completed my Deathnote manga collection. Just 1 more to go!

Passed my Japanese test taken 2 weeks ago. Not really a high score, considering that there are people who got full marks, and that the test is more of a revision of the mock test we did the week before the actual test. I'm glad I did well for the oral test though. It was more or less reading from the passage I posted in the last blog entry, together with a mini conversation based on my passage. I've always thought that it was pretty easy speaking in Japanese, due to the simple pronounications based on the hiragana characters. I used to repeat interesting dialogue in anime shows, so speaking in Japanese wasn't that hard to me. Hey, what do you expect from a person who can sing entire Japanese songs.... *cough* MM *cough* And oh yeah, a new elementary 1 class has just started last week. It's in the same day and perioud as my Upper Intermediate 2 class, which falls on Mondays from 6.30pm to 9.30pm. If you're interested, do give me a call soon, and we can even be going to class together.... just in different rooms that's all. :)


Ryoutarou gains his 3rd form, and only 1 more form to go. Hana-san is great! She keeps slapping those imagin around, and I do hope that she can go on and become a female rider since she's a singularity point as well. Check out the 1st time Ryoutaro henshins into his Axe form in the clip above.

Not much happening again this week, and I'm still thinking of what I can do today and tomorrow. I don't wanna rot at home, but I'm not too sure where else I can go. Perhaps I'll go walk around town by myself, but it sucks to have meals alone in crowded places. I still have to clean up the house before Mabel comes back, but there's more than enough time and there's nothing more worthy of procrastination than house cleaning chores. Till next week, cya!

美味しい物を食べるのは楽しいが、一番楽しいそれを待っている間だ

I hosted a secondary school classmate gathering/house warming at my place last weekend. I was really glad that most of my secondary school friends could make it. Sadly, we were so engrossed with catching up with old times and watching a movie that we completely forgot to take some pictures of the occasion. And by time Mabel finally realised we need to take some shots, only the some of the girls were still around. Still, at least I have some pretty girls to take a picture together. From the left, there is Mabel and me (duh), Noel and Ying Yuan, Diana, and Aihua. Diana had ordered a very nice gift for us, and I'd like to thank everyone who turned up. Thank you all for the gifts, and I hope you've enjoyed the lunch as much as we did.

I've completed yet another semester in my quest to be able to speak effective Japanese. We took our test last week, and we're moving on to Upper Intermediate 2 next week after a short break this week. As opposed to previous tests where we were supposed to grab a partner and to come up with a short conversation, we were supposed to write a short composition on 1 of 6 topics provided. Me, being the lazy one in class, chose the easiest one of course: self introduction. Although lazy, I still put in some effort and came up with a 1 page essay ok.... Here's what I wrote and read for the test:

ショ―ンの自己紹介

僕の名前はショーンです。若い見たいのに、実は今年もう２７歳です。３年前に結婚しました。今妻と一緒に新しい家に住んでいます。僕たちの家は”ザーコリス”というＨＤＢアパートです。たとえあまり賑やかじゃなくても、友達がいるので、寂しくないんです。僕の職業は公務員です。給料はあまり高くても、簡単な生活様式は足ります。妻も同意します、人生の一番大切のは金じゃありません。毎日も一生懸命で生きてる。仕事も、遊ぶも。

僕は日本のアニメと漫画が大好きです。子供のとき、たくさん漫画を読みました。たとえば、鳥山明のドラゴンボールと藤子不二雄のドラえもん。あの時から今日まで、僕はいつも漫画を買いました。今夢中の漫画は岸本斉史の＜なると＞、久保 帯人の＜ブリーチ＞、と人気があるの＜デスノート＞。死神のノートに名前を書いた、あの人は絶対に死ぬ。天才対天才の戦いは面白いですよね。僕は日本のＪＰＯＰも大好きです。一番好きなグルプはモ―二ング娘です。７年前に初めて聞きましたから、今まで全部の新しい歌を喜んで聴きます。他の好きな歌手は、松浦亜弥と石川梨華。毎日運転するとき、日本のＪＰＯＰしか聞きません。僕の望みはモ―二ング娘のライフコンサトへ行きます。

僕は２年前に日本語の勉強する事にしました。最初は一人で勉強するつもりでした。でも、だんだん難しくなってきました。其れでは、ＹＳＬへ入学する事にしました。今毎週月曜日のクラスを楽しみに。日本語はそなに簡単じゃありませんと思います。残念ですけど、僕は去年のＪＬＰＴ３を合格する機会を逃した。でも、今年のＪＬＰＴ３は必ず行きます。自分の為に、僕は諦めないで勉強します。

I'm too lazy to translate and type again in English, and I doubt many of you are interested in what I've said. Basically I talked about me and Mabel, my interest in manga and anime, and also some stuff on Morning Musume. I end off by saying I'll not quit and also got for my JLPT 3 this year because I had to sit out on last year's exam.Mabel's returned from her company sponsored trip to Osaka, Japan. And as expected, she didn't get me my Rakuten Eagles jersey. I ordered it online, only to have the company return my mail the next day saying they do not send products to Singapore. How sad. I've asked my sensei for help and hopefully she can do something to help import the shirts over. Anyway, Mabel got lots of Japanese snacks back, and it makes up for the majority of her harvest. She didn't take an awful lot of pictures, due to the fact that she took a smaller sized memory card with her for the trip. She visited a couple of Japanese temples and shrines, and also Universal Studios Japan. There are some videos of otters swiming around and biting Kelly's jacket, but I'm not sure whether I want to convert and post em up on youtube. And there's also a lot of publicity such as huge posters for the new Spidey movie, since the world premiere will be in Japan this time round.

And because I'm still bearing a grudge within my heart that she got to go to Japan this year without me, I've already gotten her to agree to another Japan trip at the end of the year. Similar to last year, it's going to be free and easy, and most probably we're going to check out other parts of Tokyo we've missed out the previous 2 times. Time to start doing research and to plan for more places to visit. Mabel wishes to go during the winter period, which I prefer as well since we went during the spring and summer time the previous times. I've been saving up on my vacation incentives, and this will be the trip to let go. Muahaha!

Behold! Mabel's latest dish: the ever famous chicken-egg-noodles! No, not the Oyako-don, but rather the chicken and egg combo noodles dish based on the popular meal sold in the OCS canteen. Not that it's a copy though, cause I only told Mabel about the uncanny resemblence after she had prepared the meal. And as usual, I gobbled it all down within minutes. It tasted heavenly, especially with a dash of smoked Tasbaco sauce thrown in. No complains from me, and I'd go for seconds if I didn't have to watch my weight for the upcoming IPPT.

Mabel, on the other hand, is more critical of her own cooking. Even before I could lift my fork and knife, she was already bombarding me with a horde of questions on how to improve the next time. I didn't really answer her much and ate to my heart's content before telling her that it was really good. She didn't think so, and told me dozens of ways she's already though of to improve her cooking. It's this time of conversations which make me feel like a test subject, but well at least I get to taste some great dishes. I just want to thank her once again, for making all these wonderful meals for me. Thanks dar! (no she's not watching me type these words, but sleeping early as usual)

Another new single has been released by Morning Musume! Boy they're really hardworking these days (their 33rd single and they've just released their 8th album recently as well. It's been barely 2 months since Egao Yes Nude, and they've come up with yet another great single. I've gotta respect Tsunku for churning out hit after hit for all the H!P groups. He composes and writes almost all their songs, and most of them make it to the Oricon charts. Simply amazing. The new single is called Kanashimi Twilight (悲しみトワイライト). I'd just like to say that Sayumi and Kusumi looks absolutely fabulous this time round, and Hitomi looks really wild in that hair (just look at her final pose in the live performance below). Newcomer Aika looks like a little girl, which is bad :( . The outfits reminds me a lot of Roman My Dear Boy, with those short skirts and matching ties. The song itself is pretty good, but I'd still prefer Roman, which made it to the top 25 songs on my Itunes list. But it's still a great single. Check out the PV and live performance here:


Okay, that's it for this post. I'd like to urge you guys to make full use of my tag box. It's easy! Just type in your name, your message, and hit TAG! You don't even need to enter your email. Feel free to drop a note of two, of what you think about Mabel's cooking, my wastage of money on figures, manga, etc. And do vote in the poll if you haven't done so. I've put in more photos because most of the voters opted for more photographs. See, I listen and make improvements too. Until next week, take care!

妻は今日本の大阪にいます。僕は羨ます！

As of this writing, Mabel is currently in Osaka, Japan, enjoying herself together with the rest of her colleagues. Me? I'm rotting at home and messing the place up, with the remote controllers all over the place, and dishes waiting to be washed. Fear not! She's coming back on Sunday and I have more than enough time to mess up even more before I get busy on Sunday trying to get everything back in place before she comes back and murders me.
Last week, after Mabel's success in making banana cakes, she finally gave a shot at Japanese cuisine. She made me curry rice, and it tasted great. There were some improvements to be made though, such as the gravy being a little too watery. She made the curry from the instant packages brought from Japanese supermarkets, and the miso soup from those instant packets. To be honest, it was much better than I had expected, and it gets 2 thumbs up from me. Naturally, I will support her as this means I get to taste more good stuff from her...

Mabel felt that she could do better too, and thus we decided to invite some of our friends over during the weekend, and to see how much they like it. So, we're off to get more ingredients to get ready for the weekend. It was at this very moment that I realised that I had been used as a guinea pig. Well, not that I'm complaining too much anyway.... at least I'm getting well fed.

Now that Mabel's getting all armed up for more trials in the kitchen, she's ready to buy more recipes and to get more tips from friends such as Jojo and Mabel.P. I'm also in the midst of my research in getting more Japanese cuisine recipes. Thus, Mabel would either be making Oyako-don or western styled chicken chop/cutlet in the near future. Some trivial point here: Oyakon-don, or 親子丼, gets it's name from its ingredients of chicken and egg. There's where the oya (parent) and ko (child) comes in. Get it?

And very soon, the weekend was here and our friends were gathered in our humble apartment for dinner. As we didn't have a really big dining table, we had to take turns to dine in, and naturally my priority was a little lower than the rest. But it was appropriate, as we had to make our guests feel at home. In fact, we only got our new dining chairs earlier that morning at Ikea, and even had to have William and Huiming bring over a spanner to help fix them up.

Wee Lee & Kelly, whom also got their condo lately and is barely 5 mins drive away from us. They brought along 2 DVDs, but left earlier as Kelly needed to rest. We were going to watch the premiership clash between Liverpool and Arsenal though. Kelly's also in Japan with Mabel right now, and I believe they're having a blast of a time together.

The rest of the gang also gave some rave reviews for her cooking, which made Mabel really happy that her cooking was being appreciated, even though it was only her second time making rice from the rice maker. The girls spent the rest of the time discussing about an upcoming Bintan trip, as well as helping Cheryl and Adrian select their wedding photohgraphs.

I've tasked Mabel to help me get this particular base ball jersey in Japan. It's a Rakuten Eagles jersey, a baseball team in the Japanese Baseball league. While I'm not really a big fan of the game, I've come to like the team alot, because the Morning Musume girls, and GAM (Matsuura Aya and Fujimoto Miki) are the official supporters of the team. Def Diva and GAM also sang 2 official songs for the club, which are great for the fans to cheer along before their matches. Hopefully she's able to find it for me, but I'm not counting too much as it's quite hard to find especially in Osaka. Well, I've already registered an account under the official Rakuten Eagles site, so the other option would be to order online.... hehe. Here is the official PV of GAM's song for Rakuten Eagles, called Daisuki Rakuten Eagles:

Although Singapore's MediaCorp has been promoting and bragging their rights to the Spider-man 3 movie, and even promising an exclusive premiere of the film's trailer, fans like me have already seen it 2 weeks ago, in full HD glory. And as expected, the trailer is awesome and really sets up more anticipation for the show. Just under a month to go before it hits our shores. I'd want to get an advanced booking if possible, and to catch it on its opening day. Just to avoid spoilers, but actually I've already seen more than enough footage to consider myself spoiler free. Still, images and videos of actual Venom footage is still rare, and I would want to see the amazing aerial fights between Symbiote Spidey and the new Goblin. Also, there's talk that Tobey Maguire is considering accepting the role for the 4th movie, contrary to what he had expressed earlier. I sincerely hope that this is true, and that it won't be long before talks of a new movie is in place. So many Super hero shows are coming up I can't hold my excitement.... there's the Fantastic Four sequel, the Batman sequel, the new Hulk movie, the Ironman movie, etc. Give me more!! And here is the final movie trailer should you have missed it:

2 new Transformer movie TV clips have been released this week. I've linked one here, which I thought was better as it shows Bumble bee and Star Scream transforming. I'm beginning to get warmed up to the new designs, but I'm still a little skeptical about the whole movie because I'm still a G1 kinda guy. But the Starscream and Bone Crusher scenes were really well done, and the animation from ILM is nothing short of amazing. 3 more months to go!

A Singapore made commercial has been shown on TV recently promoting a new local Chinese website. It's based on this Japanese clip which is shown on YouTube.

However, the Singapore-made one is obviously staged. Too bad for the overseas guys I can't get to show you here on my blog as it's not available online. But I get very irritated whenever I see this commercial, as I feel they have ripped off the idea from the Japanese. It's a direct copy job, and what's worse is that there is no new innovation and the whole thing being stage really ruins the original idea. What a lack of any creativity and originality. This commercial gets a big thumbs down and a big "BOoooo" from me. I just wanna find a place to rant that's all.



To conclude this week's post, I've uploaded a clip on YouTube from Kamen Rider Den-O. It's a comedy series with some good plot twists and interesting characters thrown in. While the suits are slowly warming up to me, I kinda enjoy the seeing bad luck that main character Ryotara always gets entangled with. Do check out this clip. And yeah, I've been trying to get more pictures of me and Mabel in, as the results of the poll shows most of you guys want that the most. Well, the next posts will have Osaka pics! Till next week, ja!