ぼくの日記

Monday, May 29, 2006

Exploring Star World

29th May 2006, Monday

Woken up at 11 plus after suffering an excruciating pain in my stomach...I sensed a bout of diarrhea forthcoming...could it be the soursop after dinner or could it be the dinner itself when Mom experimented with spicing a usually-detested Long bean Fried Rice with a spread of sliced potato and spam and well covered with Parmesean cheese for her own version of baked rice which was quite appertizing...

The abdominal agony followed by the twice visit to the loo got me up till around 1 plus while I assured myself I would be well enough to report to work today...
I was pleasantly and unexpectedly entertained by one channel in my basic subscription of the cable network which I seldom tuned to.... "Star World", a subsidary channel focused on American free-to-air sitcoms, soap operas, dramas and reality shows.

I actually started to be quite interested with the line-up of programs early Saturday morning when I was awakened prematurely by the relentless flushing of the water cistern in my room which required an extra nudge to stop the water supply altogether.
By then my sis and her beau were at the airport, getting hyped up for their Taiwan-Hong Kong trip which means the house will be without her presence for the next week or so...
I tried to get back to sleep on a wonderful Saturday morning but my mind and ody just couldn't obliged and so I just channel surf till I started watching this sitcom known as "Arrested Development" which is hilarious in a rather sleazy kind of way (Now we are talking)...This was followed by "The Simpsons" (when Homer was forced to get a degree in Nuclear Physics in college) and "Whose Line is it Anyway?"...boy I sure missed those shows when the American humour can really tickle my funny bone which can be really witty at times (if you understand it) which is almost non existent in other high quality Taiwanese and Japanese programming that I had been tuning to these days...

The American humor surely was a breath of fresh air after tragic Taiga dorama and bewildering anime series left me really in need of something to spice up my life with...

However last evening I was watching how the American education had degenerated so badly when around 1/3 of the student population would drop out in high school and people like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Gates were hitting the distress signal to rectify the problem so as to resurrect the American student's position back to the top 5 in the world (now they are like 29th in terms of Mathematics)
It was ironic to be followed up by this reality game show known as "The Scholar" with these 10 high school seniors with highly accoladed academic showings vyed for the final prize of a scholarship of around US$240,000 which should warrant them the financial mean of any Ivy League colleges out there...
While the challenge is interesting (with them taking film making classes and form 2 teams to beat each out with a 2 minutes long short film), a lot of focus on the internal squabblings (typical reality show credentials) and flirting around...at least half of the contestants got too intimated with each other and I only watched like 40 minutes of this particular episode to feel that they should focus more on winning the scholarship than doing the "O.C."...but then these 17-18 years olds got raging hormones which I had experienced before , so I couldn't fault them....afterall my good ol' buddy, CS had been too engrossed with skirt chasing in his varsity days...

I think I would kept tune to more of what Star World get to offer, that is if I remembered which was why the "alert" feature on the digital box should come in handy...I hope...
Anyway more on American TV, "Lost" which I had been following closely is at their finale for season 2 and I had been anxious to find out the truth about "the others" and finally by Sunday my "extraction" is done..only to found out I had "extracted" "24" finale instead...urgh....feel like killing myself there and then....

While Yogjakarta, Java in Indonesia suffered yet another calamity in the form of an earthquake of richter scale of 6.4 and death toll up to 4600 now (as of this morning) on Saturday, I went downtown, busking in the annual Great Singapore Sale...
Met up with Chan as we went checking out the various joints in Far East plaza which offer what we are interested in most, collectible toys (or figurines as I like to put it)...
Beside the grandfather of all toy retailers in Singapore, The Falcon Hangar, there are also that specific "Toy Nation" which was owned by this Hongkie who sold an item off without taking his auction on Yahoo for that same item which I bidded happily only to be disappointed by his irresponsbility...
Then there are other outlets like "Toy Questz" and "Earth X" which I had only seen this new stall since they relocated from Clarke Quay....
My main aim of the trip to the overcrowed Orchard Road would be taking the opportunity of the 20% storewide discount from Kinokuniya to stock up on my manga collections as well as getting my girl's Taiwanese idol magazine (nearly shot myself when lining up with that during payment) and a manga-exclusive figurine which I felt the timing of its arrival couldn't be more perfect...
A strange yahoo auction transaction was held at Starbucks Coffee at Plaza Singapura when my buyer who apparently had worked there before enlisted an ex-colleague to his to help him get the items (some really old BK Simpsons figurines going at $1 each)...I had a strong urge to ask for the payment in the form of a Frappucino instead (which cost more of course!)

Almost the La Tendo clique made our presence felt on that afternoon which didn't see an improved human traffic and the manpower status of Tay-chan & Eng Keong were enough to cope with Vincent still in Japan for his "chaperone-cum-guide" service for the St. Margeret girls...

For Sunday, once again I started my day pretty early and spent a great deal of the morning backing up files from my PC especially the capacity of my hard disk in decimating at an alarming fashion...
Meanwhile Dad continue his refurnishing tourney..this time the ceiling of the 2 toilets as well as painting of the pilings and toilet doors....

My lass finally called in the afternoon after I was starting to worry not hearing from her for like 3 days...
The call further compound the fact how much I wanted her back by my side and the sentiments should be shared across the line as well...
However this conversation span around me interrogating her expenditure habits over there which she didn't appreciate a single bit...me bad...
Well she said she would be going to France on business purposes this midweek and perhaps would join her colleagues to Paris...well luckily she does not own any fake designers' brands accessories if not she would be caught in the new stiffer legistration system across Europe on such bootlegged novelties...
Japanese word of the day: 星の世界~ho-shi-no-se-ka-i~(Star World)They would be showing the new season of "Rock Star" soon...this year in search of the vocalist for this new band called "Supernova" with ex members of Motley Crue, Metallica and Guns N Roses...cool dude!

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