M's birthday :-)

Do U know what day is today?

29 September is my mother's birthday !!

My sisters like to name her as "M". Becos the letter stands for Mother and my mother don't have a Christian name / nickname :D

Anyway, the day kicked off when my 1st sister (Da Jie) gave M a red packet as birthday present. I don't know how much was inside and I don't bother to ask as I won't give "red packet" to be so-called birthday gift.

U might be wondering why M accept red packet as part of her gifts was becos none of my sisters knew what to buy for her present, so they gave red packet every year instead of birthday presents -- I think so !!

After that, I went separate ways with M and Da Jie as I secretly plan to buy a birthday gift to her. I know that it seems to be in last minute, but at least I don't give red packet as a birthday gift as I'm just a student and it's better to have something to give her at the end of the day rather than empty-handed.

At around 6pm, I "reunited" with M and Da Jie (they waited me at Toa Payoh MRT station - becos I didn't receive M's call cos my phone suckz). And since the time was early than expected, M and Da Jie went to do a little shopping while I was waiting on a staircase - playing my new iPad and left a message in Path.

When M had done her shopping and while we were on the way to the venue to had our dinner, we met third sister (San Jie), Rodrick (my 1st nephew) and Brian (my brother-in-law). Rodrick shouted very loudly to M, while running to her way: "Ah Ma (Grandma in hokkien language) !!". M was extremely happy when she saw Rodrick and walked extremely "faster" than her normal speed ~ LOL

While I was chatting with San Jie about the blog thingy, we arrived at the Chinese restaurant (i forgot the name :-P). Anyway, we went inside and sat in. I recorded and uploaded this keek while waiting for my 2nd sister (Er Jie), BB (my 2nd nephew) and Daniel (another brother-in-law of mine).

After a short while, Er Jie, BB and Daniel came in to the restaurant. Thus, the waitress asked M whether it was ready to start the 1st dish. Dad would be coming later as he was working OT. 

Beng Thin Duck Salad

Crispy Roast Chicken

Dad came after the 2nd dish was out but becos he need to wash his hands and thus, he came on the time where the 3rd dish was already out !! LOL...

Crab-meat Fatt Choy Pottage

Fujian Prawn Ball & Ngo Hiang

Cantonese Style Deep Fried Garoupa

Crab-meat Scrambled Eggs with Lettuce

Fujian Fried Noodles

After the fried noodles was served, that should be the last dish before the dessert. However, M went on to order an additional dish - Kou Rou Bun (a roasted pork packed with an empty bun).

Kou Rou Bun

While waiting for the dessert to come after I finished the 2 buns, I found that my 2 nephews were playing together. So, I recorded a video on them. :-)

Daily Dessert

Dad was very angry becos of the longer waiting time to start the birthday song and the preparation of the ordered birthday cake. He teared the menu paper into tiny pieces and hid them under the table, maybe becos there's nothing for him to eat and made him angry in a way >_<"

 Finally, the birthday cake arrived.

"Happy Birthday" in Chinese Characters

6 candles indicated that M is now 60 years old !!

Here's the funny moments when M was going to blow the candles; Er Jie was stunned on his son's craziest behavior and San Jie was laughed her ass off while taking pictures of that moment 3:-D

Watch the video and find out !! :-P



After that, the waiter helped us to slice the cake into 10 pieces.

My plate of sliced cake ~~ yum-yum !!

And lastly, the peach !! For the Chinese, we believed that eating the peach while you're celebrating birthday, especially for those who are aged 50 years and or above, he / she must eat these peach-like lin rong to "extend" the lifespan. A sign / taboo to follow - some kind of an old tradition !!

After the celebration, we parted ways and waved goodbye with one another. While on the way home, Dad drove me, M and Da Jie to the nearby OCBC bank, so as to let M deposited the money from the red packets to her bank account. While waiting for M, I login to my new iPad and keeked in a new video - featuring my father and I in his lorry :-P


Upon reaching home, I put down my things and gave my birthday gift to my mother personally. We took some photos with the gift together :-)

A cat-decorated mug with a "feather" bought with the gift-box 

This present was bought when I mentioned in the previous (way above) paragraphs that I was going to buy a birthday gift to M, instead of red packet. Initially  I wanted to buy a wok but it was heavy and expensive and I don't know which brand she like.
Note: I was supposed to go for the free Genting trip for today and tomorrow, but somehow I was not selected as 1 of the 20 bloggers. U can see the last blog entry that I wrote: "My Personal Winter Fashion". Guess I am not a famous blogger just yet as I don't have any sponsors in the meantime ~~ Oh well :S

How to cook a simple dinner?

Inspired by the high amount of page-views from this blog entry - "Dinner Time !!", I decided to further expand the story out.

I recorded a video of my mother's cooking skill on a set of 3 dishes dinner and uploaded to YouTube !! :P

I'm not intend to make this kind of prank to my mother, as I want to showcase her cooking skill (although not the pro lvl yet) but undiscovered for 50 years is quite long, so I decide to make this blog entry for her.

After publishing the video successfully in YouTube (which took me about 3 hrs - including processing time), I made a promise to the YouTube audience (as stated in the credit - near the end of the video) about the "More specific details..." in the blog. So I start off these unseen details below that I did not reveal in the video.

First, let u all see my kitchen stove 1st !!

This is really tidy and neat before all the cooking started. Btw, the pot already contained boiling soup that I didn't mention about the fourth dish (I miss out the part she's preparing for the soup, but oh well)

Anyway, I went on and took other pictures on ingredients that my mother already prepared first hand.

Here are the ingredients :D

Eggs - to be used for the 1st dish

Mushrooms - to be used for the 3rd dish

My mother told me that the water washed for the mushroom cannot be drink, as they are poisonous (idk what will happen if i did, maybe google later and try it out if it's not dangerous :P)

Here are the rest of ingredients !!

Washing the rice and using rice-cooker !!

Cooking Tip: If you don't know how to make your rice soft to eat, put more cups of water than your cups of rice. For example: 3 cups of rice -> need 4 cups of water !! If you're going for a normal standard, then it is 3 cups of rice -> 3 cups of water.

And here we are all the 3 dishes after I finished recorded the video

It seems I've made the 1st dish to look "small" ~

The pot of soup is distributed into 3 bowels

Becos it was my mother, sister and I were eating the dinner at that time. Dad had not come home yet, however ~ he always ate alone maybe becos of his body odor and he liked to eat first before shower (cos he works as a construction supervisor !!). Plus he always came home very late...Oh well ~_~

Without much further ado, after I took necessary pictures for my blog entry, I took this very last picture before I started to eat the dinner happily ever after. Haha !!

And here are the leftover dishes when I finished eating !! (very paisei for stating that the above is the last picture ~ LOL)

Leftover for my father !!

If you're a fan of simple cooking / you want to try out cooking yourself a lunch or dinner (maybe u can try it out, to catch the heart of your loved ones -- LOL), then you'll definitely not going to miss out this important info !! ~~ I think :)

[Case Study] MMOHut

This is the first case study that I create and like to share with all the readers here about how MMOHut founders using YouTube as one of their social media platform to earn a living, other than using their website, website forums and Facebook page:

Official Website

Official Facebook Page

MMOHut is committed to creating and maintaining the most detailed free MMO & MMORPG portal on the internet. They aim to provide detailed reviews, screenshots, videos, and resources for every client and browser based free to play MMO & MMOPRG.

 

Aside from bringing their latest MMORPG news and reviews, they also strive to connect all the gamers with one another. 

Because of the wide range of genres and personal preference, the goal of their reviews is to inform and outline the features of each game rather than overly critique. They use a five scale grading system (Poor, Fair, Good, Great, Excellent) and encourage their viewers to rate games on a 1 – 5 star scale.

Rating Scale

Their members are also encouraged to contribute their own reviews and discuss games on their forums.

To the most up-to-date information that I know, they have expanded their community of 2 admins to 4 admins (Omer, Spunify, Omer's brother and Kitty) of managing between the website and youtube channel.

2nd admin in MMOHut: Michael aka Spunkify

3rd admin in MMOHut: Kitty

Recently, around 1 week ago, their website and youtube videos they created have been taken over by this social networking site: mmoflag . Its functionality and interface are working almost the same as pinterest, but instead of pictures, they include gaming-related videos. This helps to combine their massive forum community with an image-centric easy to read format that not only makes finding out news easier, but makes posting faster than ever! Also, it is compatible with their users' existing forum account so they only need to fill out one brief page to get connected!

Here is the video that MMOHut introduce how this new social networking site greatly beneficial for their gamers: 

mmoflag - share MMO news and content from around the web

In my personal opinion, I love playing online role-playing games. Most of the new games I played were mostly from their website - no matter it is popular or not, I will intend to try it out and uninstall them later :P

The reason of why I want to share the success of MMOHut is not because of their awesome gameplay (as there are many other sites doing this kind of business as well), it's because they tend to bring out the uniqueness of the gameplay of each RPG to their fullest - which makes the players from around the world to have that interest to explore the new games themselves.

Without them, the new MMORPG / MMO will never discovered and make necessary quality improvements for the games that everyone would enjoy for the fun.

The Queen: an Untold Fairytale

SDZ's annual concert is coming up, and this year it's a dance musical! 

Ticket sales start tomorrow! 

So if you're keen, let me know, so that I can inform my friend about it in advance !! 

It would mean so much to me and my friend if everyone can come watch!! ♥

Waves 17: The Queen: an Untold Fairytale

Date: 9 November 2012

Venue: Kallang Theatre

Time: 7pm

Ticket Prices: $16 (circle) / $20 (stall)

Please, please do try to come down and support!!! 

PS: Click on the above link to find out more details of this play :)

Russian Red's MTV Session

iisjong.blogspot.com: WIN! Russian Red's MTV Session

If you're a fan of Russian Red, click the above link to find out the details !!

The Prediction

Today, I saw my mother was playing the poker cards to predict whether she had any good luck for the horse racing tomorrow.

So, I interrupted her playing :P

In favor of her effort, I gave her $10. Because people believed that giving red packet money to someone who helped you doing the prediction, must reward them for making the effort or else that someone will kena the bad luck you had...I think !!

Anyway, I don't know how she did it, but she said her skills only had 20% to 30% passed down by my grandmother, not the full "horse-power". And, my mother admitted that she will not be as powerful as my grandmother.

Here is the result that she displayed:

My mother told me that this was difficult to read the results as she had not reached the "level" yet. But, she could roughly foretold some parts of the story. 

"2 young guys with a bad heart are thinking me and wants to cause me harm, and I myself was thinking of his scolding. My heart is still thinking of a young woman."

(Btw, the card I'm represented was heart & diamond)

Why was it 2 and not 1? 

My mother told me that heart represented as my body, which was the first card I randomly picked from a deck of cards and diamond was the second card that I picked to represent as my soul.

My mother did not know what is 4, 5, 6 means, cos she only knew the number of hearts, 7, 8, 9, and all the king, queen and jack. Furthermore, I had some hidden secrets that I don't dare to tell her, which made the prediction more hard to read. So, she returned me back the $10 I gave her as she was unable to read the result.

Note: I don't usually believe on the prediction on a deck of cards. Not unless the person can guess out the story to be 80% true, then I will buy the story. 

PS: Whoever can predict or read the picture shown above, feel free to comment below !! I promise U that I will not delete the comments, even if they were bad...

Collection of the Mystery Gift

If you have not read the last blog entry I made for SAFRA PK Challenge 2012, 

please click here.

I received this email on 14 September, after I complained many times to their Facebook page about their empty promise they made to a blogger.

According to this email, I need to go down to their HQ to retrieve the goodie bag by showing this email in the duration from 16 to 23 September.

Yesterday, I went down to the HQ of SAFRA after I settled some personal things in SPGG (Singapore Polytechnic Graduates' Guild).

After showing them this email in the service counter, I finally gotten the items.

Enclosed in an envelope instead of a bag

Here are the items inside of the big envelope:

$10 KTV voucher (valid till 31 Jan 2013)

Tattoo sticker of the amazing spider-man !!

LOL about its tattoo instruction :D

Obviously no use to me at all - cos I'm not a girl :P

I thought it was a mud plate...

not until, I flipped its back that it is a magnet >_<

Finally, something useful: a notepad !!

*PS: sometimes, you just can't figure out how the org able to change the term "goodie bag" into a big envelope full of useless items !! 

This is something that they really need to improve about.. haizz !!

Dinner Time !!

I was confused about what to eat for dinner. 

Initially, I discussed with my mother to buy take away food tonight from the nearest Kopitiam. My mother listed a lot of variety to me, but nothing interested me as I had those food recently. It was so awkward if I went and bought them again.

In a nick of time, I suggested to my mother to make some home-cook dishes. 

But, this time, I was the one to choose the ingredients while she did the cooking. I wanted to try a dish with different ingredients this time. Rest assured, no matter what the taste like, I was the one who ate them later.

1st dish: Egg Fried Rice !!

So, you might be thinking what is so special about this dish...

Well, the only changes in the ingredients: 

Normally, we use leftover white rice (took from the fridge) to use as the main rice for a fried rice. In this case, I choose the leftover chicken rice last night to test it out.

And, do you know what happens when I ate it? 

It was extremely nicer than using the normal white rice. (Idk how to describe it in words..)

2nd dish: Fried Mee Hoon !!

3rd dish: Pork bone soup with corn !!

These 2 dishes are my mother's set. 

I found their appearance look quite nice, so I took their pictures as well.

Note: 

This is my first time to write what I eat during my dinner time. Cos I usually eat outside and it is seldom that I get to taste my mother's cooking skills.

My Personal Winter Fashion

I received an email from nuffang about their event to give all bloggers a chance to go for the free trip to Genting, Malaysia. I was very excited about it, cos I never been to places outside Singapore.

 However, there are some conditions:

Also, you need to register an account with them in order to join this contest to win the free trip. Here is the list of steps that you need to do in order to participate:

I do admit that I don't have any fashion sense for whatever season, because I didn't get to go to other places other than in Singapore. I only been to places such as Sisters' Island, Turtle Island and Sentosa. For countries who have winter season, like Japan and China, I don't have the experience of how it feels like. Therefore, this blog entry is by far the most difficult that I encounter.

Thus, I need to imagine myself to "experience" the coldness of the fun. In order for me to think what is the coolest of a winter fashion looks like on myself. The very first step that I did is to turn on the air-con in my bedroom. Although I set the temperature at 25 degree Celsius, I would still shiver and tremble. 

The air-con is set in a position whereby it is placed beside my table where my laptop is. Even though the distance between me and the machine is only around five rulers long.

Searching through all my clothes in my 2 wardrobes, I don't have any set of clothing that is suitable for winter. So, I took out this long-sleeve shirt with a hood attached with it. Its functionality is to provide me the warm against the coldness of the air-con. LOL !!

Seeing the hood reminds me of the recent PS3 games: The Assassin's Creed III !

Anyway, I put this shirt on as my "jacket" and I took a picture of myself.

In order to see how it looks like in full cover, I took another picture in the kitchen's restroom instead. Because my bedroom don't have a mirror, haha !!

As for my personal opinion about me wearing this shirt and how it relates to my winter fashion, please continue to read as this is not the end yet. If you have read my past blog entry about my digital collage design, you'll know why I choose this style as my personal winter fashion. If you're the new reader, please click the link here.

(PS: most of my blog entries are tend to be long-winded and thanks for reading !!)

Go to RWG’s website: www.rwgenting.com.sg to book your winter holiday through RWG’s iHoliday booking engine now!