千九百零九： Slideshows

Discovered an amazing slideshow creating site - animoto.com

Actually more of Yong How, the photographer from my wedding last year recommended it to me. The free service lets you create 30 second videos, and I'm considering paying for the $30/year service to make the wedding slideshow..

This is one of the test videos I created.. can't even tell that its a amateur video right? hehe

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

The most difficult part of creating any slideshow is choosing the music.. and this is kinda driving me nuts..

千九百零八： Greed

It's time to do the 2nd wedding.

picking out which tiara I should borrow (in my mind thinking i probably won't borrow anything)

I'm wondering why I am putting myself through the torture of doing this again. and I am so mad at the stupid hotel.
1. They charge money for everything and this is like the worst - to change the table cloth of the main table to a coloured one, they want to charge 3000yen per piece for 4 pieces. - almost S$200 to RENT table clothes? how about i bring my own?! renting the accessories cost S$1.5k for the tiara / necklace / earrings - I am so going to just bring/borrow my own from SG. Per tiny bag of sweets as doorgifts is $15?! Do they think wedding couples are carrot heads?? and if that bag is $15 worth of candy, I won't complain, but the picture showed 2 tiny 10 cent coin type candies in a tiny bag. WTF?! Hand bouquet - $500 . They must think we are very stupid or all wedding couples are extremely rich???

2. For such a big hotel - they are telling they have no easel stand for the wedding portrait/ welcome sign. ???? they asked me to put the portrait on a chair. ???? - I am so going to buy my own easel stand as well.

I guess this comes down to the point that the hotels are too greedy. If they charge less they can earn some but this only leads to couples who don't want to spend so much money looking for alternatives instead.

千九百零七： Run

I'm quite proud of myself for having been able to run daily for the past week (besides wkend). Not very long runs, but at least kept the discipline to go down and run a little more than the day before. I hope I can run 5km continuously w/o stopping by the end of the week!

The activities are here - maps are locked for security purposes (don't want stalkers to see the maps and start following me)
http://runkeeper.com/user/booboogal

Love this runkeeper app by the way, cos it only uses GPS and not data, so basically I can still use this even though I switched off all GPRS data settings.

Trying to revise my french but not really getting anywhere. Am quite tempted to spend alot of money shopping online :(

千九百零六： Salut!

I was feeling quite silly one evening and decided to use my camera to take my own pic when I was working with the self timer:



and so this is what i look like when I'm semi-busy and staring at the PC screen. A little fierce, like I might shout at the next person who talks to me. hahaha!

This week was all business at the last minute, ie, end of day work. Which was not that great, because I wanted to go quite a few places this week.

Monday - Monday evening was a blank though, i totally can't recall what I did in the night.
Ok after much thinking I finally realised I went to the dentist. and extracted my baby tooth stump.

Tuesday - went to take a look at the interpreter sch, they said even though my english was ok, Jpnese maybe need to study more. all because of they made a take a test by reading a newspaper article out loud. Who does that in real life?! even if you don't know the pronunciation doesn't mean you don't know the meaning anyway. The lady said something like ... maybe your polite form isn't good enough in Japanese , then I was thinking, how many of your students started out with strong polite form in English?? But ok.. just abit pissed off at their snobby attitude, am glad I don't have to spend money there anymore.

Wednesday - watched Shaolin soccer on tv, was hilarious as before and nolstagic of the days in uni when we watched it in the LT and couldn't stop laughing when the fat guy ate the raw eggs.

Thursday - went to register for French lessons at Alliance Francaise Osaka, they asked me to go for the 1st lesson on 3rd July, to see if I was comfortable with the level before I needed to commit. Which was really nice of them! Am so glad I didn't spend money on the interpreter sch, the course of 1 month there would have covered 2 semesters' fees at AF. Was looking at the French Text last night and I think I need some intensive revision before lessons start. Hope I can make some new friends there! :)

Friday - couldn't really wake up today due to the late meetings last night then having to wake up to make breakfast then go back to sleep again. Still feeling super groggy, at least there is the world cup to look forward to tonight. Go Mexico!!

千九百零五： Aftermath

aftermath of the Hanshin earthquake left at the Meriken park in Kobe. everything was tilted strangely.

Today was a rare busy day at work.

Vik reminded me of my 大凶 lot I picked at the beginning of the year from the shrine. He asked me if the year has been bad so far. When I was thinking yesterday i could only think of my 3 year visa, so I couldn't think of the unhappy moments until now. There were unhappy moments, very unhappy moments I guess. but there were some happy moments. I guess with unhappiness you learn to appreciate the happy times and just take it that nothing lasts forever.

Today I thought about why I was still so nice to the people i love, who hurt me despite everything. I guess after Ayaka passed away, I just took it that life is really short and I don't want to have any final memories of me or people of me as being anger and unhappiness or alot of regret which was what i felt and still feel whenever I think about Ayaka. About words I should have said to her but i didn't, about appreciation I should have shown but didn't and About all the things we had decided to do together but she left before we could do them. I don't dare to think about our happy memories together to much because they still bring tears to my eyes. So what if the person did me wrong? what goes around come around.. and i shouldn't ruin my own karma by being mean to anyone. and i do sincerely wish for all the people i love to be happy no matter what. i guess our first instinct upon any hurt to us is to hurt the person back but after some cooling down, i'm just thinking "what am I thinking of... As if the person being unhappy will make me any happier" bearing grudges don't do much for my own health either so what's the point. just move on and everyone is happy. and u learn who are the people who really care for you in your life. Ryo always asked why I said thank u to the taxi drivers even though they are so rude and cranky. Why not? Saying thank u doesn't cost me anything and it might make their dreary day more cheerful if they at least meet 1 nice person in his day.

I watched Othello on Monday at a theater in Kyoto.. a 2 hour train ride there then a 2 hour train ride back. I didn't really know the story before watching it, it was a story of a stupid man who trusted the wrong man too easily and believed all the poison his "trusted" friend poured into his ears about his wife being unfaithful and he believed everything with a few fake evidence planted around, went mad with paranoia and suspicion and killed all the innocent people before realising it was all lies and killed himself.