SOOOOOO this saturday was a really interesting saturday!! hmmm in the morning, i had a prayer meeting with my cell group! omg blogging on my com at home is soooooo much more comfy than blogging in camp. sheesh the keyboard in camp is like ABCDEFG. ooo early morning prayer meeting was gooooood. although i came like super late :X busy me. eh but its like i had to warm up like that? hahahah like early in the morning i felt really really cranky man. hmmm but the cool part is after the prayer meeting! hahaha okay this time round, for fellowship, we had LOTS of foodies, like really A LOT. lemme show you a photo :P hahaha thank you Jael's dad for giving us so much food!! i notice that most of the time, when there are such gatherings and the parents are the ones providing the food, they will spawn A LOT of food out alright!! This is also true for my mum uh! they tend to provide like wayyyyy more than enough and thats a good thing for our tummies! ^^ happy tummies, happy people!

To all those who didnt come for cell group prayer meeting...WHY YOU NO COMEEE



wah got fruits uh, finger food uh, carrot cake uh, drinks uh, still have home cooked food leh!

after the awesome fellowship, i went to buy car wipers -.- ANTICLIMAX because my car wipers aint working as good! guess that's what happens when you park under the hot sun for one whole day without lifting your wipers up D: #lazyme i actually learnt how to change car wipers yesterday! :D DIY.

LET the underwater photos begin!!! hehehhe yeap! my cell group went swimming, and i kinda joined them late, cuz last minute i decided to go, since it was pretty near to where i was buying my car wipers and way too troublesome to go home. heheh since i bought my Xperia Z, which is an AWESOME WATERPROOF phone, i was thinking hey! why not.... take an underwater cell group photo! :D and it works alright!! too bad there isnt a dedicated camera button, (which is maybe why Sony came up with Xperia ZR but anyway) we had to set timer for all the shots, so what happened was....
1. Set timeer to either 10 or 2 sec
2. Press shutter button on the screen
3. HURRY DIVE.
i absolutely love the underwater shots okay!! like how cool is thattttt. hehehe at least we dont have to invest in an underwater camera casing. and the resolution of the Z camera is really impressive alright! YEAP IM BIASED. *advertising my own phone*


TRUST ME, taking a CG photo underwater, is really really hard.

oops nope! didnt focus,

ahhhh way too early...

ANGLE guys, ANGLE

oops me and some others got cropped out from the right


AHHH tired tired tired

i wonder how jerome keeps that pose man?! i cant see underwater for nuts?!


some guys just belong in the water~


guys with what? flowers!

i obeyed the 1m rule, their advice was to not go beyond 1m deep so better play safe! hahah i still thought of throwing the phone into the water some distance away from us while setting it on timer. :P LIKECOOL. but jerome cautioned me and oh well! play safe play safe. mum will probably kill me if she finds out i took my phone for a swim man~ YOLO.


aaaaand when the guys actually get hold of a waterproof camera and we're at the pool, WE BECOME CAMWHORES.

okay i shant upload like the other 5+ shots of the same poses -.-

AH SHIT i gotta book in D: seriouslyyyyy. anyway, im sick. :( like really really bad. so i spent most my time getting much needed sleep! which didnt work out. still just as sick. what nonsenseeeeeee

anyway, its been a really really eventful saturday, spent with such awesome people, the E488 cell group!! :DD we spammed pictures, we dived, all kinda crazy stuffs, but hey that's what makes us special ;) i shall leave ya all with the wonderful photos as i got to book in soon! GOTTA RUSH DAMMIT. maybe i should have just taken MC. -.-

PHOTO SPAM TIMEEEE. because a picture is worth a thousand words. (what more a picture with cool people in it) BYEEEEE #likeadailygrace








WOHOO MY FOOT SUCCESS (y)





SQUEEEEEZE



FLOWER BOYS SAY BYEEEE. woot im not in there! photographer sigh!

DARN BOOK IN.
DARN DARN DARN DARN.

Ho ho sorry guys for the late post!! yes i know its monday already, and usually i have one up on sunday so that people can read it on the weekends but NOPE not this week! This weekend has been a really really hectic weekend for me, let me recall how i spent my last weekend...

Well this weekend is a pretty sad weekend, after realising that my favourite 'zi char' eatery will be waving goodbye to the good old place that it was housed in centuries ago, before the Japanese invaded Singapore. Here is the article, please read it first!!

Yes i do know that there are government regulations put in place for the preservation of these shophouses, but nothing beats the rustic feel of having known that nothing much has changed since the pre-war era. now, these shophouses, like the coloured ones that you see in the photo above, have become home for boutique hotels. yes its good that more boutique hotels are sprouting up, but hey hey dont you think that sometimes we got to draw the line somewhere? This place is actually located at the ends of chinatown, good old rustic chinatown is no more. On one hand, i am glad that i am a 90's kiddo and i actually get to tour these places like they were during the nineties, where everything was still pretty run down and when here and there, corners were being upgraded and given a facelift. this eatery is called "dong ya" as the chinese words read accordingly, from the traditional chinese way of reading, from right to left.


here is another photo of it, by the way, all of the photos that you see in my recent posts since last weekend, are actually taken using my Xperia Z, HURRAY FOR THE AWESOME QUALITY because my camera memory card aint with me. located at the backdrop, is the towering The Pinnacle, a HDB block. hmm i took these photos somewhere during the evening, since that was the time we headed for dinner! usually, every saturday morning, we would visit this place to have their good old traditional kaya toasts and for me, my good old milo 'bing' which means iced milo in chinese! well even though they are famous for their coffee, my family always sticks with the same drink choice for every meal,
for me, its milo 'bing', *milo fan*
bro always takes tea 'bing',
mum takes forever to finish her tea (1hour meal becomes 2hours)
aaaaand....
dad just eats his apples.


now that's traditional coffeeshop-style singaporean tea and coffee. not those typical starbucks coffee.












oh shuks i just realised i didnt snap a photo of their toasts. ah anyway, it can be seen in the article i provided above. now how did i know that the eatery was gonna go, is that dad is very frequent customer of the eatery, hence he would chat with the boss, if the boss ain't as busy. so that's when we found out that the tenant was probably going to sell the place. However, it was only on last saturday, their second last day, did i realise the notice they have put up on the walls, that they were closing! technically even though they are moving to another shop space, the ambience is still going to be vastly different. Upon discovering that they were going to close, we actually decided to eat there again in the night! quite stupidly, i didnt bring my camera in the night, hence i resorted to using my xperia z to snap all these photos.

you know sometimes we just simply assume that these 'treasures' of singapore would stay, however we are grossly wrong man. its the same idea as us treasuring our loved ones but of course different contexts. I find it particularly vintage and nostalgic, when i get to know of a tenant who is currently using the old shophouse is actually the original tenant. The way they do things, the designs of the insides, the stains on the interiors, thats what makes up the vintage nostalgia of a building.

oh God i think my camera didnt focus well. :S sorry!!
THIS
is called preserving heritage, having stained walls, having worn out wooden tables, not to mention having those good old foldable tables and plastic red chairs.
NOT
simply repainting the exterior (awful colours by the way) and changing the first floor to massive glass panels, repainting the insides and air conditioning the entire place. The only difference between these transformed shophouses and modern hotels is the exterior.

Its like during primary school or secondary school, when we are educated on the history of singapore, all you see are dark interiors, filled with screens depicting the times when the Singapore river was so muddy, you get statues of coolies working hard, you get all the clanging sounds as though people are still working, you get (very) clean versions of mock-ups of how things used to look in the past, you get the typical touristy package. Apparently that's how the government flows eh? However on the ground when i ask the people about the heritage of singapore, everyone's voice seem to resonate in the same chord: to keep these places, like 'dong ya', alone. The very idea is to keep every single aspect of it the same, even more so when such a fixture is actually present before the war. PLUS it hasnt changed hands. Until now.


now this is called the kind of heritage that we should be preserving, the tiles, the fans, the lightings, the furniture, the hooks on the wall used to hold the ropes. instead, i'm pretty sure that three months later when i walk down this aisle, it will be probably decked out with massive glass panels on the sides, the floor tiles outside redone, the rain covers that are rolled up would be gone. In fact you know what? the good old tables and chairs would be gone and so would the people.

the many frequent customers of theirs feel extremey sad that this place is never going to be the place where it used to be, as they slowly recounted the times when they brought their univeristy mentors here to eat and enjoy coffee, they good old friends from overseas to have meals. Despite being surrounded by boutique hotels, by nicely done-up pubs, boutique shops, this eatery is the gem. Some things are just left best untouched, without any air con, no fancy plates, no fancy decorations, just give us the good food. In fact, without all these fanciful things is what makes the dining experience even more rustic. :)

somehow every photo of mum doesnt seem glam. -.- sorry mum!!

So now comes the question, when is it the right time to draw the line, in the name of preserving singapore's history? In my opinion, if the government is serious about preserving our history, they should consider stepping in to prevent these gems of singapore from being missing. From what i know, the boss rents the place from the tenant, however a foreigner (not going to disclose nationality) have given a really good price, so boss has no choice but to move out, to a unit further down the road. So then again, we have foreigners coming into the picture, buying up these units and causing these gems to be gone. crudely put it, its akin to these foreigners stealing  the heritage of singapore. I agree that such cases are isolated and few to mention, however it is also because of this that's why the government should step in to protect whatever that is left of Singapore. With rapid urbanisation, we soon see these unique eateries being gone, instead, because of branding, you see coffeeshops looking pretty much the same, every shopping mall probably have the same stalls too. Example, if you want milk tea in Singapore, where do head to? Share Tea, Gong Cha, Koi. If you want coffee, you have TCC, Starbucks, Coffeebean.

Oops sorry for digressing, but what i want to bring across is that if the Singapore government is truly keen on preserving the heritage of Singapore, then they should step up efforts in preservation works or introduce/revamp policies. Just my two cent's worth, instead of pouring in money to constantly maintain the structures of old buildings in Singapore, the government can probably reimburse the tenants instead, to ensure that the original tenants remain, or review case by case the changing of hands of such units and intervene if needed to.

Currently status quo, the old national library in town is gone, and i used to frequent that place in the past, borrowing books and eating there. Now, this eatery is also another treasure of singapore that is to be gone. oh but this time, to a foreigner. Is it just me or is the anti-foreigner sentiment in Singapore rising? erm the national library died to a tunnel. photos of the old national library:



on one hand, i am glad to have been able to dine at such a wonderful eatery at such a wonderful place, but on the other, i am saddened that as Singapore advances into a vibrant city, such a wonderful eatery would be gone too.

I really do pity that the children of Singapore would close to never be able to experience first hand, the old Singapore.

good bye Dong Ya, you would be missed.
14/08/2013

i was listening to this, while blogging do enjoy! if only i had such dexterity. miss those days when i could practice the piano everyday! :/


WOAH the smaller the blaster, the harder it seems to get! it sounds kinda retarded that a smaller nerf gun would be harder to do than a big one is'nt it so? i usually have this kinda problem with plastic models because the smaller it is, the harder it is to do any correction as a minor cut would have a major difference on the model. well little did i think that this would also be true for a smaller nerf gun! okay actually till this point, even though things kinda went awry, i still think this is probably an isolated incident, and that my stand, that the size of the nerf gun doesnt matter, still stands true -.- argh still kinda angsty that i didnt manage to paint the gun well. For this week, Jerome jr, the smaller jerome wanted a modded nerf gun from me! (remember what i said in my post last week?) i was confident in pulling it off, since its really hard to be able to make such mistakes in this kind of simple modding -.- as in if you are talking about the integration of shells or dealing with air pressure ie. connecting air tubes and allowing them to sustain high pressures, or integration of another system, then YEAH the failure of such modding is way more present than for simple mods like spring replacements or air restrictors removal. anyhoo, the internal modding went well for the firestrike, despite the massive change in design as compared to its predecessor, the nerf nitefinder!

Oh yes, i am going to be trying out this new large font size, see if its better because after viewing my posts a couple of times, it seems as though a larger font would be pretty beneficial. Though i would prefer a font size that is in between THIS and this.


this, is what i was working on for Jerome's birthday present. oh yes, the paint job crapped up, and i was bloody unhappy with that. and the weather really sucked for spray painting, as in it was so humid and cloudy, the paint scheme didnt really exactly turned out the way i wanted it to be -.- yeah humidity affects the colour tone when spray painting.

i will still be doing a write up here on exactly  what i did to the internals, however i have no photos of the external cover after being painted! zzz the paint actually ran onto the surfaces that i didnt want to be painted/ kept original. SIGH. will elaborate further later.


so here is the photo of the internals, extremely simple design, just a plunger rod and air tank system. anyway, see where my screwdriver is pointing at? that spring may come lose at times if it wasnt lodged in nicely, so beware when opening up the blaster! :)


THIS is what makes the blaster work.


open up the blaster and voila! this is what you get :) it took quite a fair bit of prying to get everything apart, especially for the air tank (leftmost). what i did was to twist the assembly, allowing it to fall apart pretty smoothly. :) the clips, as you see in the middle of the photo is a total pain in the ass :)


OKAY first up, we have the barrel. right at the front, i noticed this massive hole in front, its located pretty front of the barrel so....technically it wont really affect the power that much as air will only be lost at the later stage when the dart leaves the barrel.

lmao, no glue required, just let your PVC tape make its round around the barrel. uh two to be safe! three to be as paranoid as I.



this is located at the end of the barrel, after this,

its actually the air tank already. i notice that this piece appears in all the new elite blasters, which doesnt support magazine-style (clip) reloading, like this, and also operates on a plunger system. this is also the "intelligent" system that many are talking about, which is present in blasters like the triad, whereby there are three barrels but if you load a dart in ANY barrel, the blaster sends air only through that barrel.
this is the nerf strye, clip system!

no modding to the air tank is required, leave it alone!


i cut off the rod, and here as you can see, is where the magic happens. when a dart is inserted all the way in, the dart actually pushes in those stubs into the assembly, allowing the holes in front to be opened, hence allowing air to pass through :)


HUGE air restrictor!! thats the back of the part in the previous photo btw. the whole circular plastic piece is actually restricting the air flow through the entire tube. this piece is a must go piece man. do justice to the poor air molecules and remove this air restrictor.


so after cutting away the restrictor, this is how it looks like! now can you imagine all the air flow passing through this as compared to the previous one?? BIG difference huh!!

now, we are actually pretty much done for the front portion of the assembly, the barrel portion! so now, lets head over to the back, where the plunger rod is located.


this is it, so if you take a closer look at the front,

there are actually two holes in the plunger, how it works is that when the plunger moves forward and smashes the front, the sudden gush of air causes the dart to fly out given the change in air pressure inside. so of course as this plunger moves forwards, with the two holes, air will escape real quickly the moment there is a change in air pressure within the air tank :) so i used hot glue! yes i know it looks messy. i aint really good friends with hot glue.


this is how it looks when you actually piece everything back together. this time round, i didnt do a spring replacement as it feels as though this blaster would be grossly overpowered if i did so!

The main thing that i want from this mod is to allow this blaster to shoot further, but not to the extent of causing harm on others. so we cant always go all out on modding as we shouldnt risk hurting others if the blaster is to be used for playing purposes. if its for experimental purpose, then definitely go all out!! :D but dont shoot it at others duh.


be careful not to lose this teeny weeny nut which can be found at the end of the handle of the blaster, where the battery tray is located as this is used to screw back on the battery cover.


this is the last photo that i have, which is the spray painting process! weather was really bad this time round, as in it was really humid, so the colours werent coming out they way they should, and they were taking way too long to dry. if each coat takes a whole lot longer to dry, multiply that with the number of coats that i need to do and bam! burn midnight oil i must. but i didnt because i accidentally sprayed against the parts that i wanted to keep in the original form :( parts that undergo heavy usage and the handle are usually left untouched as that is where lots of wear and tear happens, and when the paint is all torn off, it looks really messy, so yeah avoid those areas when painting! :) unless you're damn sure that the coats wouldnt fall off and that you also put a layer of primer on top of everything.

sigh sigh! jerome also went off earlier this time round, so all that was passed unto his hands was the original blaster, although i intended to show him how i piece it all back together. hence yeah i would be mixing the parts that i have modded, with the new blaster shell! :) then i will probably have to paint it on another time or something... i already painted some detachable parts so it should look milkdly different from the usual nerf blaster! :P frankly speaking, even though i covered the blaster pretty well, i guess i was overconfident that i got all the areas covered up already, and forgot that i had to keep in mind the angle of spraying. one wrong angle and bam its gone! :( oh yes i dont have thinner and seldom use it, as it may remove the original layer of paint. sigh, just that one extra stroke is good enough to send me scurrying for a replacement all over :( working within the timeframe of a day is way too tight for me man, this whole modding work, along with the spray paint job will require two days at least, and with me being in camp for the weekdays, (although my spirit isnt exactly in camp at times trollolol) it sets a really time-restraining and stressful period to work within, of which this time round, i wasnt successful :/  well at least this is a learning experience for me as i now know which areas to be more wary of :) there is always something to learn from such experiences. so i guess the plan now would be to wait until the next time we meet, probably during the next after sunday service fellowship before i can show jerome how i do it! :) he has always been having fun playing with nerf guns with his friends, and after hearing that he had so much fun for his birthday having a nerf war at home, he also did tell me that he always wanted to see and learn how to do modifications, so i guess...next weekend would be an interesting one for him! i hope ;)


How can people not know about Thepianoguys?!?!?!? to think that there are such talented people showcasing their talents for others to enjoy but yet there are many who are oblivious. i kinda prefer their non-pop songs though!


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