A Weekend of Winners and Me the Ultimate Loser

17th December 2007, Monday

AC Milan brought some lost glory to the European contingent in the World Club Cup held in Japan (which Yuu-kun had been wanting to go watch it live but couldn't get the tickets in the end...残念ね~).
Meanwhile my beloved Red Devils get one over their fiercest and most documented rival, Liverpool with Tevez scoring from the very same spot which O'Shea scored last season... so a great bunch of winners there...
Zheng Ge Ping won the Best Actor accolade after years of toiling in the Mediacorp drama hierarchy in the Stars Awards for his reprisal of the ruffian father in "Like Father Like Daughter" which I think is a reward long due for this evergreen leading man...
Even Hady Mirza, our incumbent Singapore Idol supposedly came in as an underdog and garnered the title of the inaugural "Asian Idol".. never doubt the influence of the SMS-blasting fangirls (mainly from a certain enthic group I'm sure)

I would want to join the ranks of winners or at least not lose in my everyday aspect of life...However my 2 year old CPU gave me a reason to be totally exasperated to a point of disgust...
I had been trying to catch an AVI file on Saturday morning but its one year-old issue of "auto-shutting off" just got persistent and everytime I tried watching, it would shut off in my face mere minutes into the show...
I sought help from my most reliable source, the one who helped me fixed up the CPU, CS...
As I explained the symptoms (he seems to be a doctor for PC in some aspects) to him, he came out with the fact that it could be the motherboard or the power unit that could be the root of the problem and I agreed with him it is too cumbersome to go into a trial and error to isolate the main problem...
So he proposed I change certain parts of the CPU while salvaging the rest such as the Pentium chip porcessor, the RAM , HDD etc... but he would dropby in the coming weekend to further understand the issue...

I knew I would need an overhaul for my domestic computing needs as the auto-shutting down is just not the best mean for a person who utilizes it so extensively...

Sporadic downpours followed for the rest of Saturday as I made my way downtown to La Tendo at Sunshine Plaza as it geared itself for the permanent closure on Sunday...
Many collectors and mere gift buyers for the festive season, rummaged the shop for some really good deals while I lamented over the fact that I had paid the original prices for many of the items for the clearance sale..
But we were just glad that they could get back as much as they could and reduce the load that needed to be transported back to the new shop...

After vegetarian dinner at Fortune Center which could be the last time in perhaps the next few years or so, EK drove us down to Kallang to regroup with the rest as the weekend crowd for the place was rather impressive...
We had intended to go for a bowling session after the shop was closed for operation but the lanes were all occupied...
With time to spare before picking up his wife who would be returning from KL after midnight, our amicable friend was gracious enough to send everyone back but had my missus on the driving seat...
En route to our place, he got a buzz from Yanhui that she had arrived in Singapore and the caring husband had to travel down to Golden Mile to pick her up and apologetically requesting the likes of Karen to get her own transport back... In such a turn of events, my fumbling missus unintentionally left her handphone by the handbrake of EK's car...

On Sunday, Selina and Kevin assumed the roles of hospitable hosts as they invited the clique over for a potluck house-warming gathering...
With their flat located along Ang Mo Kio Ave 4, it wasn't hard for me to navigate to the right spot with a direct bus ride from my place...
The rest including the missus came to marvel at her 4 room flats which had underwent a satifactory renovation project which cost the couple a cool 20K or so..
It looks an ordinary 3 room like I used to inhabit myself but since the left side of the flat was along the central staircase, somehow HDB was able to enlarge the flat to accomodate an additional room to make it a 4 room flat...
However I still find the living room a bit too small for my liking but the space was made up for by the huge kitchen...

Everyone brought something to nibble on or for dinner which was highlighted by Foo's efforts to make the Japanese curry and Selina's meticulously made California Maki Roll...
It's good to catch up with them a bit especially Cheryl and her husband, Raymond who had been pretty occupied with their own flat renovation which I heard has a pretty thick Gothic theme (or just noir)...

We caught a bit of the Star Awards after dinner which was always the platform for us to just scrunitize the local artists, that is we could endure the endless commercial breaks...
My missus had been hoping to catch the performance of her fave Taiwanese boyband who made a revival (to me is excruciating piece of news) as we made our way eastwards to EK's place to pick up her mobile but she did missed it eventually...Bummer...(heehee)

Perhaps she had joined me in the ranks of losers for this weekends filled with winners...
Now counting down the seconds to my long sabbatical from work...and hopefully a winning start to 2008!

Japanese word of the day:敗者 (Loser) That description shall never fail to envelope my life...