Harmony

The thing about harmonies is that you can't sing it by yourself! Lucky for me, I have a BFF who loves harmonies as well! (Ask anyone else and they'll threaten to check us into the asylum). As far as 8 years  back, we started our harmonizing journey as total noobies, one of us singing "Do" and another singing "Mi" and failed terribly at that point of time LOL. Luckily we improved from that era.  

Today, in a bid to have some fun during our lunch break, we decided to meet up to practice harmonies for our Kbox session next week. Jocelyn, being the embarrassing person she is, checked with her colleagues for "secluded areas so that she and her friend could practice singing" -sigh-

Unfortunately, it was lunch time and by the time we finished our food, there were too many people around to sing! All the quiet corners had cctvs but luckily we found a secluded bicycle parking area with only 1 Indian guy around! Woohoo time to party!

We put our heart and soul into singing "can I love you" from dream high, (joce taking the male part and me taking the female's part) thinking that we were harmonizing perfectly. When we finally looked up at the end of the song, we realized that the Indian guy had shifted 10 meters away from us!!!!!!!!! Wae irae?! We thought we sang quite okay. 0.0 then we started to feel secretly happy for terrorizing innocent people lol. 

Next we tried swooping roles with me singing the male part. Epic fail. IT WAS THE WORST SINGING I EVER HEARD IN MY LIFE!! It was so bad that I had to delete it right away. -depressed-

More epically, the second time we looked up, the Indian guy shifted 20 meters away already!! Lol then we started laughing like mad people in the secluded bicycle parking area. 

Highest level of self-entertainment, laughing at our own voices and how we terrorize people. ><

Ok thanks for reading until here because there is no point to this story lolol. Till next time!

Mind blowing outing

Whew, long time no update!

Had been busy with my Case Buddies (joce, hc and kc) the whole of last week since we spontaneously decided to take part in a case competition!

After 1 week of tireless nights working to perfect our idea and slides, we finally submitted our final copy at 11.55pm! (Deadline was midnight and we almost peed our pants as the deadline loomed)

After that arduous journey, we decided to have a celebration by going to play board games at minds cafe! (Haha see where the blog post title came from?) 

<oh my gosh I just realised we forgot to take a picture!>

This joce and kc super annoying the whole day!! They kept trying to make me and hc sit together =.= the worse part was that Jocelyn did it in a super obvious way lolol. Like happily smirking to kc whenever she successfully ran to chope the other seats before me. 

Haha so anyways, we totally got owned by kc the gaming genius, and I got to display my non-strategic gaming skills and total lack of general knowledge (emo sigh).

And right after the gaming session we decided to go watch a movie as well! We decided on Kingsman cause joce and I really liked the character with the hooks on her legs. ^^

 It was a mad rush to the theatre cause our game ended 6.30 and the movie was at 6.55!!! 

So joce decided that she and kc would get the tics and ordered me and hc to dapao dinner together (sigh, what's new?). And before we could agree, they shot off. =.=

Then suddenly, I received this:

So I was like, "ohhh, so this was the plan, I'm only the distraction!"

So we happily went to KFC and bought everyone's food. And went to meet joce and kc. Unfortunately kc had to leave, and joce suddenly said she wanted to buy koi, so me and hc were to enter the theatre first! (what's new?)

Unfortunately, joce's questionable smirk was too suspicious! (Seriously, she was one step away from rubbing her hands in glee). And furthermore it was already 6.55 so why would she wanna risk missing the first part of the movie?! As we stared at joce and KC's retreating backs, I was like "hc, I think they're not gonna come back!!! Right? Right???" Hc tio stunned. LOL.

We were so shocked and continued to discuss whether we have been pranked... Until we decided to happily walk into the cinema with KFC blatantly in our hands!!!! Lolol. We totally got stopped and had to retreat and hide the food first. (Most embarrassing day ever).

We took our seats and I received this:

The thing is, there was no "outer seat" beside hc and I. So I showed her message to hc and we totally were like "被骗很不爽” in disbelief。:(

Then suddenly I realized, hc and I were sitting at the wrong seats!!!!!!! My gosh, the tics were for D5 and D6 and we were at D15 and D16!!!!!! And when we went to our actual seats, sure enough there was an outer seat. :00000 so I suddenly belived the message again and started to apologize to hc that I totally spoiled his birthday surprise LOL...... 

Yea but the truth is they never came back la hahaha. Prankception!!!!!!

Thankfully the movie was nice and we really enjoyed it! For this first prank in my life I'm sure glad I got to watch a good movie :) They actually planned it since last night and poor joce had to try real hard to conceal her excitement =.="

Seriously though, the initial realization of the prank is really mind-blowing. Great job joce and kc. Hahahahaha.

Lasik at Dr Natasha Lim Eye Center!

So I decided to do lasik in the end! Dr Natasha told me that my possibility of getting Ectasia is really low, and I would be equally satisfied with it's outcome as compared to ICLs! It's day 5 post surgery and my eyes are stable enough for a report! 

Day of lasik

-I thought I wasn't afraid but I had nightmares of my doctor clicking at the lasik machine in a vigorous gamer style, waking me up numerous times =.=

-Reported at the clinic at 11am and signed the papers! :000

-Got dressed in scrubs 

Lolol...

The operation was quite a cool experience! I stumbled into the operating theatre (no specs), laid down and saw the bright fluorescent lights above me.

Dr Natasha was very kind and reassuring and told me everything that was going to happen in advance.

My bed (?) was swiveled under the first machine for the cornea-flap-cutting part. Shockingly for me, the "slight pressure" that people use to describe this experience actually meant "high pressure". I literally had to clench my teeth cause it was uncomfortable!! 

Thankfully, that ordeal ended quickly and I was swiveled to another machine for the cornea-lasering part! My flap was opened and I was told to stare at an orange dot, but, I think, because of my super high myopia (which makes things look "spread out"),  the orange "dot" literally looked as big as an orange! Lol. 

The operation ended in around 15 min and Dr Natasha looked into my eyes with a microscope and said that the flaps are well in place! :)

I spent the day sleeping and dripping eye drops every 2 hours! Eyes felt sore! And they really stung and teared when I woke up to watch my 9pm channel 8 show! :(

Day 2 to 5

Eyes felt really good in this period of time! I just couldn't strain them. Yup that's all! Suffering only lasted a day!

Conclusion

So far so good! I'm happy with my eyes so far! Praying that my review on Friday will show that I had a perfect correction! 

/edit:

1 week Post-op review shows that I have perfect eyesight now! But my eyes will get blurry when they are dry (and will be dry for the next 4 months), and I'll be dripping eyedrops all through school :0 Thank God for the good outcome!

Schools re opening in 3 days. Time to pull up my socks!

New Year's Eve 2014

Spent the day with le BFF on New Year's Eve and it was fun!!!

We resolved to cook something decent for lunch, in order to end the chronicles of unfortunate cooking episodes.

Not sure if I ever mentioned them, but here are some:

1. Jocelyn's oven tripped the electricity and potatoes ended up hard and undercooked  

2. Our baked pasta had the weirdest tomato sauce I ever tasted, and was too overloaded with our generous toppings of mozzarella cheese

3. We burnt sugar and butter into a hard caramel block which took forever to wash off (home econs class)

4. Got rashes from eating our own chocolate chip cookies =.=

So... Being passionate youths(?) who never give up, we decided to bake shepherd's pie today!!!

Here are the ingredients that we painstaking diced up.  

Jocelyn hard at work. 

We were planning to handle this ourselves but Jocelyn's brother helped out a lot. ＼(^o^)／ 

*

*

*

*

*

And finally... The end product!!!

Yummy shepherd's pie topped with mozzarella!!! 

And as usual we forgot to take a nice picture before digging in, literally. Hastily put back that slice for a picture and covered another destroyed portion with the spoon. 

Yay, it was a great success! Shared with everyone in the family and I think they think so too :) woohoo, is this the start of the series of successful cooking episodes? ^_^

Lasik vs ICL: my review

This post is mainly for the people who are researching on vision correction options. Ive read up so much (blogs/reviews on lasik) and been to some forums. So here is my chance to give back to my community (the short-sighted community) Lol... Here we go!

Disclaimer: this is all I know but is not gonna be 100% correct due to doctors/optometrists/bloggers subjective opinions... And perhaps my own memory slips! Do more research if you want to do any vision correction surgery!

Firstly, my background:

I'm the girl who's been wearing glasses since I was 9. I've always set my eyes on lasik since that's what my dad did... Until I found out about Implantable Contact Lens (ICL). 

And I was faced with a huge decision to make, as each option has their pros and cons.

Here is what I gathered from my own research and visits to the doctor, with regards to comparison between ICL and Lasik.

Visual clarity 

Research says that ICL gives better visual quality than lasik for high refractive errors above 600 degrees (which mine is obviously super high la haha). 

Link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/22865405/

People can have 6/6 (perfect) vision with bad visual quality - you can see up to the last line in the eye check, but it's just not completely sharp. 

Also, ICL has fewer instances of glares, haloes and dry eyes, which are common side effects of Lasik. 

BUT

So far, I've been to 3 lasik/ICL centers, and something seems quite weird... The mainly-ICL center said that ICL would definitely give highest quality vision, however, the mainly-lasik center says that their technology gives comparable vision quality.... Shrugs... It's a 自卖自夸 (praise whatever you sell) thing, but really scary because it's something I have to live with for the rest of my life!!

Iridotomy

I've read online about many complaints of iridotomy procedure in ICL (for the layman, it's something like the ICL will block the flow of liquid in the eye, so the doctor has to "poke holes" in the eye).

From the reviews I've read, the iridotomy is really horrible because of the increased glares and also it hurts!! If you're interested in ICL, you probably read the horror stories with regards to iridotomy too, but that's for the lower technology ICL lens. The newest 4th generation lenses has holes in them, making iridotomy obsolete, so you don't have to worry! (Not sure if these lenses are available in every country yet, from what I read there will be some FDA approval waiting time)

Risks

Lasik has a 0.01% risk of Ectasia (cornea steepening, and in worst cases, require a corneal transplant!!) while ICL has 1% risk of glaucoma and cataracts. 

I was initially put off by Lasik because I am so afraid of getting Ectasia!! But doctor has informed me that my cornea is thicker than average and my chances of Ectasia are pretty low. 

For ICL, glaucoma and cataracts can be halted - refer to next point about maintenance.

Maintenance

Lasik is much more fuss free compared to ICL (after the 2 post-op surgery checks, there is no need for visits to the eye doctor anymore). Whereas for ICL I'd need to visit the eye doctor EVERY year!! 

The doctor explained that she needed to monitor if the lens is still in place--- too big it'd cause glaucoma and too small it'd cause cataracts when it scratches on the natural lens! OTL 

Btw, you'll only realize you have glaucoma when it's very serious- there are no symptoms. Also, it causes vision loss which is irreversible due to permanent damage of optic nerves. 

Eye condition when the eye ages- cataracts

I won't deny that I was shocked when doctor told me that everyone will eventually have cataracts. To treat cataracts, the ICL must be removed and a new lens is put in!! Throwing away something so pricey is really... Ahh so wasted! (Not to mention that people with high myopia have higher risk of cataracts) (Mehh!!! High myopia is NOT FUN!)

Furthermore, there're some risks of removing the ICL (it's an invasive procedure). Whereas in the case of lasik, the procedure for cataracts follow the general treatment procedure (like for someone who didn't go vision correction surgery).

Weighing ICL and Lasik

ICL- better visual outcome, however, must live with yearly checks, and finally a removal when cataracts come along.

Lasik- not-so-optimal visual outcome (??), but lower maintenance.

Conclusion

Yup, that's all the info I have! What decision will I make? Stay tuned!!!

Post year 2 sem 1 holiday!

Woohoo, holidays are here (since 2 weeks ago)! Haven't been updating just because I've been busy slothing away. Teehee, has anyone missed me?

Just went to IMM to recontract our broadband and M1 has this new serve-customers-while-standing system. It's really good for saving space in the store but I almost passed out from standing for so long. #heartneedstopumpharder. 

Some backlog pics from studying for finals.

Wow... Looking real nerdy...

And bored... Lol

Studying with the Enactus battalion... Which turned out to be a talk nonsense session lol.

After exams my family went to sentosa woohoo~~

Here we are at Madame Tussaud's wax museum and I am WERKING it.

Hahaha.

And then to sea aquarium! I really loved the jelly fish! Apparently they are called sea jelly :0

Saw a dolphin in the distance too!

And of course, to USS!!

Check out my roller coaster face HAHAHAHAHA...

Love the holidays so much <333

Rachel's salsa competition

Went to support Rachel in her sexay salsa competition with Jingqi and Thomas. I can't believe my first trip to town for outing is in week 9 of the sem!! I've become a no lifer after school started. Wonder why I thought nbs year 1 was bad, year 2 is probably 20 times worse. I don't even know what to expect for year 3... Jingqi casually said to me, "oh, me and Thomas spontaneously went to Palau ubin to cycle last week." Me- "ok can."

Us! 

Right before the show, we realized that we forgot to buy flowers!! I think flowers are kinda impractical since they'll wilt soon but I guess it's a necessary thing to give performers haha. Thankfully scape, where the event was held, sold flowers so we went to buy a fake sunflower for Rach (erm fake flower more practical right? Haha) 

On to the show! The salsa competition was super eye opening! The "pop and lock" scene that I was used to drew cheers from their various stunts like sick body waves, isolations, box-splits etc, but what attracted me in salsa is the fiery chemistry between the male and female dancers. Woo, it was totally hot. 

Another notable thing is that at the lucky draw segment Jingqi won the first prize! This girl had her birthday luck man! No actually her luck is always very good LOL.

Finally met Rach after the competition. Rach looking all sexay~ Good job on the spectacular performance!

There was also this "social dancing" segment which people can randomly pair up and salsa away! Woah I dunno how they did it but a shy person like me would rather sit and watch (not that I can salsa anyways hehe XD) 

Ahhhh, this event really reminded me of my love for dance. Even though I can't do it well, I love how dance is able to inspire and energize people. I'll definitely try to pick it up again next time if time permits!

Here ends my short update ^_^ 

*edit*

Due to popular request for Thomas epic comment, at the risk of Rachel killing me, I shall just record it:

So me and Jingqi were drooling over the salsa ladies' costume, we were like "woah, so sexy!"

Thomas overheard and said in a matter-of-fact way "I can just wear my underwear and stick a cloth in there ah."

LOLOL.... The imagery was so funny and  we kinda giggled over that the whole night, Rachel don't kill us TT

And this is not the first epic comment from Thomas! If you're a long time reader you'll know about the "EZ link" comment also kekeke. 

Our most epic project

Woohoo so I decided to do a Samsung video competition with KC and so many epic things happened!

1) epic recruitment of Jocelyn

We actually had another team mate but she was super busy and couldn't really contribute to the team! Was meeting KC and Jocelyn for lunch and after lots of persuasion Jocelyn got recruited! We feel quite bad for girl who unfortunately got kicked out but I was quite happy that Jocelyn joined hahha. Because Jocelyn and I always get separated I almost forgot how fun it is to work with BFF hehehe. Filming throughout the day felt just like a fun outing :))

2) KC's epic drive

When we got into KC's car he suddenly couldn't turn on the engine! We realized that the wheel was locked TT sweated buckets in the hot car while we youtubed how to unlocked a locked wheel. Finally KC got through to his parents who told him to turn the wheel while switching on the engine. ._. Then we finally set off.

After that we exited from the carpark in KC's car and he decided to turn DOWN the innovation center slope. To our horror, it was a one-way road UP because the downslope has been blocked for some construction work :00 As you might have guessed, all of a sudden we had 3 cars right in front of our face!! We just looked on in horror when a guy from the DHL vehicle in front of us came out and was like "Bro, one way street la!" Lol we already knew by then lor XD Luckily the DHL guy taught us to 3 point turn and drive back up the slope! Crisis averted haha. KC says it's the worst day of his whole driving history lol.

3) having some epic bad luck at the start of the day

Jocelyn established that the driving episode as above was probably because of her bad luck cause she's been unlucky recently! Like it keeps raining during her project's pilot test TT After leaving ntu we had to find elderly to interview and Jocelyn suggested St Joseph Home. We later found out from the lady that the whole center was MOVING OUT on sat and it wasn't a good time :0 and also suan us that we should have called before coming :0 haha thankfully that was the end of our bad luck and it was good from then on!

4) being epicly thick-skinned

Through the day we had to ask for volunteers to star in our video and we just had to approach strangers - elderly and youths included. It was quite the experience getting some teenagers to act for us. The most memorable would have to be asking the hawker that sold us our fish soup dinner to pretend to be chummy with us and we just faked "hahahahhaa" all the way for the 5 secs clip lol. The hawker is super nice and obliging and down-to-earth. We were so happy to meet him! Oh yea! We also had to do an interview with Jocelyn's granny and she was also superbly good at acting and really cute haha. Met so many nice people that day. 

And we worked through the night till 3am for the vid! Here are some behind the scenes

Selfie-ing while le team mates did some filming

Working hard on the graphics.

That's all folks!

I'm sure more happened but that's all I remember lol! Lack sleep TT

School rush (Y2S1)

BUSIEST TIME OF MY LIFE...

Wow, ever since school started things has been moving so fast! Super busy that I have 5 (!!!) episodes of channel 8 drama on hold. Totally no time for tv because I reach home late all the time and cca stuff and school preparation forces me to sleep at 2 almost everyday. 

At this point you might be wondering why I have time to blog hahaha. Well... Let's just say long bus rides coupled with emo songs somehow give blogging inspiration :D

But I must say it had been a good opportunity of learning and doing new things!

Here is a summary of the highlights!

1. Got an opportunity to do lecture pitch for Enactus!

Coupled with le BFF, we were given some time to do a recruitment pitch for Enactus at a lecture hall full of Adm freshies. And we totally loved their energy! To the question "how was your first week at school", they replied "Awesome!!" in unison! We said that just to be friendly and personable and didn't expect such a good response. Anyways we had. blast sharing about our projects :)

2. Conducted interviews for BWL recruits!

Interviews were fun at the start but because there were so many candidates, it gradually got quite tiring! But I gained a greater insight on how interviewers choose their candidates and felt the pressure of creating a fab team. It's really quite difficult to judge a person through interviews since it's difficult to know if a person is very good at "fluffing" and do not mean it or if they are just nervous to perform on the spot but are actually very good team mates. I hope that the choices that me and jw made are good! :)

3. Selling cookies at NTUFest!

BWL went down to ntufest for cookie sales!

All set up!

My fringe is totally plastered cause the tentage was like an oven and it was sweltering hot!!

But we managed to sell our everything super early and made $2K plus! Sales is tiring but satisfying!

4. Setting mini projects for a "intro to entre" class!

Our faculty mentor allowed enactus to set a few project-based questions as mini projects for his class! It was quite awesome because we can get help from students (whose grade depend on the proj) so I'm looking forward to good ideas! But the part I liked best is feeling like a cool teacher, setting questions for UNIVERSITY UNDERGRADUATES, having them ask us questions and us clarifying and giving then hints and ideas. How cool is that!

And very soon I will also get the chance of leading the freshies at camp and then finally starting BWL afresh. 

Busy but exciting days coming up!

Precamp!

Hah, Jocelyn said that she was an unsatisfied fan of ankukueh because I haven't blogged much in the holidays!!! So here's an update of the precamp we had today.

Met up with the group of project leaders and directors of enactus early in the morning at 10am (10am meet at serangoon means must wake up at 7.30 okay sobs)

The new batch of directors are super awesome, they have plans for ntu to have increased awareness of enactus, so they'd be rolling out marketing plans (including people like myself having to 抛头露面 and do pitching in random lectures lol). But still it's for the better good, in the future when I tell people I'm from enactus they won't go "Huh? What?" ten times before I go into a long story on what we do and my team project. :D

On to the games!

The first game was to create the tallest and sturdiest newspaper structure! It was project leader team vs exco team so we were dying to win them LOL. 

At the start our structure seemed to be so weak and swayed with the wind OTL But Jocelyn said that it was a "dancing flower" lol. 

It really did look like one with our base looking like the roots and one flimsy train of newspapers growing upwards lolll. We struggled with the masking tape and newspaper for 20 minutes, weathering the programmers' attacks of wind, water and even whacking our whole structure!!

Eventually the structure grew to be taller than me and looked like a tree! 

Time to claim credit: in the last 10 seconds when our structure was going to bend down, I strategically twisted it the other direction and it became steady!! While the exco team's structure fell like lightning struck their tree! Muahahaha!

Victory shot with exco photobombing us :D

After that we had a few games but u must talk about the tele-match! Got unfortunate story of Jocelyn lol.

In this tele-match we had to complete stations one by one and the fatest team wins. The first station was the worst for me because we had to find polo sweets from a plate of flour and I got so much flour in my mouth!! =.= gagged continuously after that and was miserable.

But Jocelyn was more miserable Hahaha. There was this 10 elephant spins station where we had to make ourselves dizzy before throwing a cup of water into a pail. 

As expected from her always carsick/seasick/dizzy/headache moments, she was so dizzy that she tumbled into a big puddle of water!! Super miserable >< (actually I also had to crawl to the water pouring station after spinning but comparatively not as miserable lol)

And the story doesn't end here, Jocelyn still had a lot of flour in her mouth and she started drinking the dirty water from the pail!!! For a moment I really thought she became bonkers :0

But other than 3 scratches she is ok lol.

Jocelyn ah, next time don't so clumsy hor....

Last station was the water bomb games!! Weijian was "it" and we (all girls) had to protect him from getting wet.

Us and our weapons

Scheming face cause Jocelyn was in the exco team and she was going to help my team and turn the tables hoho.

As expected, my team won!! Unfortunately they told us that we can't make allies in the real game. :/ 

Finally the end of a super eventful and fun day. Tired!