bunny

happy birthday!

Sunday

yoohoo! happy 21st birthday to smelly ho diwei!

i got up early enough to watch doraemon and laze around in bed before i cleaned the hamsters cages and realised that i did not have enough bedding for them! the cage was only half filled and the hamsters were sleeping in the pail then. i don't have much of a choice, so i went to jurong point in the rain to get some bedding for them. this time i got them corn cob bedding and anchovies!

by the time i got home it was close to 3, i continued to clean the cages, gave them some anchovies and they took them out of their mouths as soon as they put them in. yiddy yaddda..ironed my clothes, read a little and it was time to head for my bro's birthday dinner. we had dinner at soup restaurant. i like that place, quaint deccor, good food. misa travel's husband & wife team gave us a treat at the airport outlet after our visit to the NATAs fair.

then we were home for the cake

and bran and i got ourselves another bunny! this time it's a netherlands dwarf. it's so soft and small it's like a teddy bear. and the ears are only slightly more than 1cm.

welcome!

bran with his other love

a simple solution

i read this in TIME and here is the gist of the cover story.

Diarrhea kills more young children around the world that malaria, AIDS and TB combined. Yet a simple solution - a fistful of sugar + a pinch of salt + a jug of water - can prevent many of those deaths. Why isn't it more widely used?

Many tiny patients in Bangladesh are weak, malnourished and dehydrated. They've suffered attack after attack of diarrhea and, in some cases, are clinging to life. Five-month-old Sohag had suffered diarrhea for seven days before she was admitted. Her weight plummetted to 2.75kg, just over one-third of that expected of her age. But her 15-year-old mother had never heard of diarrhea before Sohag was admitted.

Chronic diarrhea is the cause of 5000 young lives daily. Most cases of diarrhea can be traced to food or water tainted by intestinal bugs and rotavirus. Many children die from dehydration as they lose critical body fluids faster than they can be replaced. As in Sohag's case, many do not know how to prepare a life-saving remedy that can be assembled for just a few pennies.

While diarrhea is a major killer in developing countries, in the rich world it is usually no more than an irritant. SO developed nations channel health-care funds into areas preceived as presenting greater risks. Antiviral drugs are purchased and vaccines are ordered to guard against the potential threat from avian influenza instead of getting packages of rehydration solution costing just 6 cents a littler to those at risk of dying from diarrhea elsewhere. But far more children die from diarrhea daily then have ever died from avian flu.

Diseases that have high profiles and vocal activists - such as AIDS, TB and malaria - attract far more interest and money from big donors and governments, based partly on the misconception that they kill the most children. Celebs don't host concerts to fight diarrhea. WHO spent $7-10 million on controlling diarrheal diseases, but spent $217 million on HIV and $123 million on TB.

it's about time someone do something about this. Ben always say "charity begins at home", but we have a simple solution here, now, what are we waiting for?

tuesday

my parents picked me up from my work place after driving 6 rounds around the area because the car was not allowed to wait there. =)

IMM has changed so much. I love the new wing. they finally have some wingtai managed brands there. but it seems like they are going to implement parking charges because we saw dividers at the entrance. hmm..

we had lunch at ajisen and momma HATES it. heh. she complained about everything, from the soup base to the ramen to the green tea.

after shopping for some bananas and groceries, we came home and all of us took a nap immediately.

monday

another work-filled day, but i'm loving it.

i have half a day off tomorrow as a bonus for working our arse off for the anniversary celebrations! oohlala~

and i am so upset with bran. he says i need to lose 5kg.

of celebrations

it's been exactly a month since i joined cathay and the celebrations yesterday was a blast! the 'younger generation' in the office checked into a bungalow at nsrcc on thursday, packed the goody bags and ate and ate.

we woke up at 5am to move all the goody bags and what nots to the club house. that weili sure can perspire alot. she looked like she just came out of a pool when she was arranging the goody bags. i didn't stay at nsrcc long after the last tee-off at 9am. i had wanted to go to conrad earlier to practise on the piano before the reception at 6pm. i returned to the office to make some changes to the gala masterlist before ben brought me and christine to the hotel to join the 'older generation'. heh. whatever could go wrong went wrong. the delivery truck was late because of an earlier function, the truck could not find the unloading bay, and rai got stuck in the cargo lift! hahahaha! so we had to drag/carry the over 70 cartons to the passenger lifts because the smaller trolley was in the cargo lift as well. we were already delayed by an hour. we packed over 300 goody bags for the gala dinner. i was bathing at the fitness centre when ben called and ordered me to be at the lobby in 10. eh..but i still had soap suds on me. and i had not practised on the piano. we returned to the office and made more changes to the masterlist. by the time we got back to the hotel it was already 5pm.

the hotel's pianist was playing at the lobby and his playing was, of course, impressive. so, i didn't play at the cocktail reception, a month of intensive practice gone to naught. i couldn't muster up enough courage to play before such a large crowd either. so i stood faithfully by my booth to sell the aircraft models.

christine, boon, daniel, judy, elaine, tracy, sherril, ah-li and myself

the pyrotechnics at the openning was awesome! yadda yadda. by the time we packed up and moved all the cartons back to the office, it was already close to 2am. ben kindly sent a few of us home even though it was out of the way. i reached home at 2.30am and left for school again 6 hours later. omg the male hamsters are humping each other again.

phamtom of the opera

oooh! you heard it from me first! phantom of the opera at the esplanade, performance from 23 march 2007! i remember watching miss saigon 5 years ago and it blew me away. Wee!

letithia

i have been preparing for a performance for a long time, but when the day draws nearer, i realize i am not that prepared after all?

have you experienced this before?

anyway, does anyone know what is a letithia? how do you even pronounce it?

hee. the baby in the middle is letithia. this photo is so funny! the 2 babies (2 months apart) isabelle and letithia, and toddler brendan are all in it, but i guess diyang only wanted to take a picture of his mom and the baby.

this week passed pretty fast because there was loads to do at work. i can't believe i had to work overtime on a friday! the bunnies are currently at bran's place. when we bought them about 4 weeks ago, bran commented they were like a computer mouse. i would place my hand on them like i would on a mouse and slide them around the parquet floor when they refused to move. their furry paws make it so easy to slide them around. they have grown so much ever since. i'm beginning to suspect if the pet shop lied about them being dwarves. hmm..

a hamster died mysteriously yesterday. sigh..they were all fine when i left my house, but by the time i got home it had already been mutilated by the other hamsters. i have no idea what happened..it had probably suffered from internal injuries because it had been whimpering like a dog everytime it was squeezed by the other hamsters.

pasta

i got up early today, went to the market with my dad =), ironed the clothes, played the piano and went off to bran's for a pasta dinner. yum yum, aunty nancy makes great pasta. on my way back, i boarded the feeder bus and saw bran cycling very fast on his $500 bike (which i can't pedal because my legs are too short). bran was chasing after the bus i was in. silly boy... =)

midweek

it's wednesday! yay! bran baby met me for lunch today and waited for 4 and a half hours for me to come home with me. i hadn't expected him to wait for me, i thought he had gone home since he was lugging his soprano sax and he had been awake since 5pm yesterday. he's sleeping soundly beside me now =) the bunnies are always so excited when bran is around, because bran will rest them on his tummy and stroke them till they fall asleep. i barely have time to even pat them.

i'm spending too much on lunches! each lunch costs between $5-$10. too bad for me because we're reluctant to get lunch from golden shoe. too hot and crowded there. soon i'll have to bring yesterday's leftovers to the office.

project runway now!

sore legs and arms

it's been a busy busy week. bran sent me to work on friday and waited 3 and a half hours for me to have lunch with me. thankie bran.

cathay's sales and marketing department had an picnic + bbq outing today at sentosa. they had said they would meet us at 8.30am (!! that's like going to work) at tanjong beach, and all of them arrived at 9am. hmm...some of them brought their families along, and it's heartwarming to see that the department is very closeknit. a colleague even had to take half a day off to prepare the food. we played captain's ball, volleyball and musical chairs. this is beginning to sound like a primary school story-writing....story. i barely did anything but my arms and legs are so sore.

buns

My lappy finally collapsed after serving me faithfully daily for 2 and a half years. I got it back from the repairman but had to wait till my bro returned from taiwan to connect me to the net, and my previous hard disk is dead. I managed to retrieve all my files and my dad insisted the guy replace the dead one with a 80GB hard disk. I am barely using 4GB now! Soo…

happy 5 years anniversary bran! this is a week late but I still want to announce it. –beams- the pet shop called on Tuesday to let us know the bunnies have arrived. We jet down to the pet shop and got ourselves a brown dwarf and a light grey mini lop. I still have the tendency to call them hammy. They’re currently at my place since I have the cage from the previous rabbit which hopped to our door 10 years ago. They will be moved to bran’s place soon. Bran was so excited about them he was at my house for 3 days.

love-love!

don't ask me why the lop's ears are like that...

My days as an intern at cathay pacfic has started on Wednesday and I’m pretty excited about what they have in store for us. The 4 of us will have to start working on a campaign next week. I don’t think I can divulge much here but I’m enjoying myself there, sans the mrt and lunch crowd at raffles place. Sometimes they make really silly jokes, but I figured I would look silly laughing to myself, so I would look over to weili or christine hoping to find someone to laugh with, but they won’t raise their heads! weili says she did the same, we probably tried looking over at different times, or I’m too short.

airforce open house 2006

oooh..airforce open house 2006 was...similar to what it was 3 years ago. but the aerial display was rousing. actually it was almost the same as what they had presented 3 years ago, but i still loved it. in fact, everything was parallel to the previous open house except this time my dad visited the open house with bran and i, and bran had duties there this time. he was helping out at the syfc booth.

that's us 3 years ago, bran was so skinny then

bran

bran on...i forgot

bran on the apache

that's bran and my dad, where did my dad get that cap from

i had to wake up at 6am to pass bran my camera because he wanted to capture his flight from seletar airbase to paya lebar airbase. possibly the shortest flight ever. heehee, i think that's so silly. but it saved him lots of trouble getting in. we had to queue in the hot sun to get past the security, wait under the sun again for the GOH to arrive and make some speech before we could get in, and walk a distance to get to the exhibits and grand stand while bran just plopped himself inside.

bran and i just took about half an hour to finish all the exhibits while my dad spent 4 hours scrutinising all the exhibits. bran had to help out from 12 to 4 so i bought myself 2 books from the SAF officers' wives club and read them while waiting for my dad. he headed for the jacuzzi pool right after we reached home.

lop lops

a couple of days ago, bran popped by the pet shop a jurong point and fell in love with a lop-eared rabbit. he described it as love at first sight (heehee), and he was very heartbroken when a couple bought it while he was on the phone with me contemplating whether to get it. so after exams, we checked out a couple of pet shops but coincidentally, all their lop-ears were sold out.

holland lop

look isn't it adorable! we played with some bunnies at the usual pet shop and it would just seat itself comfortably on our palms while we stroke it. anyone knows where to get the lop-ears? mini lop, dwarf lop, holland lop, any lop except english lops.

english lop

sunday

i woke up especially early today to deliver bran's sample papers right to his doorstep. i left my house without breakfast, took a bus down to bukit panjang plaza to buy bran's favourite sushi and panadol. by the time i got home i was too tired to do anything.

i have always enjoyed watching my hamsters' lifes go by. today, when they sat on their butts to clean themselves again, i called my mom over to look at how fat they are. i could even see the multiple layers of flesh on them. and my mom said 'yah loh, like owner like pet. all got big butts.' humphf.

friday

i woke up to a hurting neck after a 13-hours sleep this afternoon. i'm in agony. i can't turn my head to the right. my mom attributed it to my long sleeping hours and shrimp-sleeping posture.

bran has fallen ill. it is no wonder. he went out cycling at the wee hours till 6am yesterday morning and he had a paper yesterday. he only woke up at 7pm today. bran always took care of me whenever i'm ill. papa is not home tonight, my brother is back in camp. i couldn't possibly leave my mom alone at home. i'm feeling really guilty..

argh..i don't think i can get down to study. the sims is so addictive. all my 5th-generation sims gave birth to twins and now i have too many sims to handle.

Team France

Team France's fireworks display was spectacular! in fact i felt it was better than National Day's!

i returned to school for the SIP Launch this morning, returned home and met bran to watch fireworks in the evening. taking bus service 700 would usually take us 30 mins to reach town from the terminus, but today it took us more than an hour. the bus took half an hour just to get from Tangs to SICEC. we decided to alight there instead of waiting it to turn to esplanade and we scampered all the way to marina square. the display started just as we got a spot with an okay view.

i love their display! sometimes, it looked like the sky was showering the earth with golden dust, at other times it looked like meteor showers. i particularly liked the very colourful one which looked like floating flowers raining down on the land. at times when they have a lot going on, especially the finale, it just made me euphoric. ever realized that looking at beautiful things make us happy too?

i caught singapore's and what's that country? new caledonia? displays from home. singapore's was...predictable. the same gold coconut head and some red balls. new caledonia's was very disappointing. where did that country pop up from anyway?

how time flies, it's mid-august already.

i am so carefree these days, i have absolutely no discipline to sit down and do any work. uh, i know there's not alot of work to begin with. i know i have to start going through the presentation again, i have to prepare for calculus lecture and i have to write some silly reflection. usually i would have started on my tasks the first thing after dinner. but there's so much time to waste that, i don't know when i should start doing my work. i hate it when i'm not in control of myself. the only thing that motivates me to wake up now is controlling my sims.

i can see the fireworks from my place, with the help of a good pair of binoculars of course. somehow, i miss seeing the military planes from my old place. bran would rush out to the balcony everytime he hears a rumble. now, i can only hear them roar but they're no where in sight.

*gasp!

weili..any news from you..is bad news..i don't dig the idea of presenting to a large group. i really hope nobody turns up for lecture next week..really, really. i'm proud of our work, but we'll be presenting to the wrong audience. bran save me..

bran's brother had 2 tickets to the parade but aunty nancy and uncle billy wanted to go..so..bran and i just watched from the outside. so we made a trip down to marina to catch the flypast. the chinook was so near us when it was flying back! it was right above us! it seemed like i could reach the flag if i just stretched out my arms. the f16s were as impressive as usual.

i was so carefree the past week that i have almost forgotten that i needed to attend school today. i spent my time sleeping, playing sims 2, watching the hams live their silly lives, checked out online auctions, went out with bran whenever we could yadda yadda..ooh! anyway! check this out if you're a sim-fanatic. this in from diyang. yay yay! another sims expansion will be out in october. i can't wait!