Doing the Car Wash

Just getting lazy and have decided to use the estate's enterprising car cleaner's to wash my car. Management advertise for this company which does car washing 5 days a week. So far it's been a week now and it's not too bad, the car is cleaned everyday now. Saves me the hassle of getting my car cleaned, still need to do the interiors thou.

B'Day

It's that time of year again where you start to think about where the last year has gone, you are one year older, one year wiser (suppose to be), one year fatter (why you need new clothes), one year balder (less visits to the hair dressers) .... ..... ....

I got a new shirt from the missus, hhhmmmm ..... maybe she's telling me something. Well I really like it and it was so well wrapped.

Also my team in the office gave me a little card with their well wishes and also got me a cake to celebrate, ah so touching, guess only fair since they got the cake I got them the drinks. Maybe when the official pictures are up, yep even got an official camera men there to take photo's ha ha  ... I'll post them up here. Guess you can't tell my age from there hee hee ...

Sick !!

26th July !! Release of the Clone Wars Action Figures !! I did not make the midnight sale party as I was feeling a little unwell and had an early night. Went to see the doctor the following day to get some medication for the tightness in the throat. Feeling a little better now after 2 days rest. So only managed to get my toys on the 27th July (ya after the doctor's visit :) So many new stuff to get but I just got a few things that I like. Did not really get anything big but the Lego AT-AT and the AT-TE caught my eye. Of course there was a two and a half foot long Millennium Falcon, the biggest bad ass toy I have ever seen, it cost a lot of moolah to get as well. I'll pass on that.

Went to Toys R Us to see what were the left overs, and not much was left, hopefully the new stock will come in without the 1st day of release sticker which I guess the collectors will be going for.

Nothing new except for the packaging for the clone wars line but the legacy collection had parts from a droid as an additional feature and if you collect all the right pieces, you can put together a droid !! The parts might be interchangeable as well so you might get a totally new droid ? Don't know as yet to open my toys. Well since I am down with something I gave the Wave Run at Bedok Reservoir a miss this morning.

cubeecraft

I got this website (http://www.cubeecraft.com) from a colleague to make cube figures. Of course seeing that the first figure was a Star War's Stormtrooper, got me all excited about it. So I gave it a try, went to the website, get the image you want, print it out, cut it up, fold it and hey presto, you got your little cube figure. I had problems printing it out at first as it seems to want to print to A3 instead of A4 paper. With a little help from my colleague (who wishes not to be named :) I finally managed to get it printed out. Then it was the cutting of the shapes, now that's the difficult part. Had to use my hobby knife to cut along the lines. Once the parts were cut out, it was origami folding time, well not actually that complicated as origami. It's actually really simple to fold, not too technically challenging, easy for people with stubby fingers (like mine) as well. Then comes the delicate part of putting it all together. Took me about 2 hours just to get it done, 90% of that time was probably spent cutting out the shapes. So here's the first of the figures I did using A4 paper. After that was done I felt like either using bigger piece of paper or to get stronger paper to built a whole army of Troopers, maybe even coloured paper but white maybe the best for now.

TrU

Recently we went to Toy R Us to get some birthday gifts for my wife's colleague who's daughter was throwing a party. This was what we ended up with. Oh the Indiana Jones Potato Head is mine.

The party was great, food was good especially like the beef and tom yum soup. There was a clown and magic show plus face painting and even a pinata to whack around.

Got this Lizard on my arm from the face painter, actually wanted to get a Darth Maul full face paint job but figured it's going to be too difficult to get off later.

Toys Fair Goodies

Here's what I got from the Toy and Comic show held here about 3 weeks ago. Finally found some time to put up the pics well whatever I could anyways. Besides the freebies like a couple of magazines and some Pokemon Christmas cards. Even got a free Indiana Jones T-Shirt. Here's my damage.

Comics Stuff

I got the Dan Dare comic (#1) which cost $5 signed by the creator Ennis Erskine, also got a poster since I was there signed by him as well for free. Seems he was the only comic guy there, probably miss those Anime people, well wasn't really interested in those but some of the costumes are outstanding. Picked up a few graphic novels as well for reading since they were going for $10 each and they were giving away a free comic with purchase. Bought some other comics and stuff which I don't think anyone would be interested in.

Toys Stuff (well mainly Star Wars toys -- what else did you expect!!)

Managed to get some old toys which I had been collecting before and they were going cheap in the bargain bins so at least managed to fill in some missing stuff from those star wars micro machines.

Got this photo cell of Kit Fisto, it really looked nice so I bought it.

Also got some Star Wars playing cards the bigger set box (it's not opened yet) is serially number and this single deck of playing cards with the 30th Anniversary logo, numbered 1000/5000 (that's a really nice number isn't it !!) They are just too nice to open and play with.

Finally my most expensive stuff I got, which I had always wanted to get. A Star Wars LIGHTSABRE. I just love them. They light up with the distinguished lightsabre sound and they close also has that vrrooom closing sound. It makes humming sounds when you hold it just like a lightsabre should. It also makes swishing sounds when you swing it around and tapping the blade gives the striking sound., You know that twang, zap, ping sound. So COOL !! Now only got to figure out how to display them. Likely have to make some custom case or something to house it.

In case you are wondering I believe the 3 lightsabres above are Luke's, Obi Wan's and Vader's. But I could be wrong. If you are wondering what the hell am I doing with 3 lightsabres, actually it's a custom kit where you get to built your own lightsabre they give you the parts for 3 types and you can mix and match them, I think I put the parts together correctly for each one. The blade has 3 interchanging glow as well Blue, Red and Green which you can just make out.

Lucky Lucky

Again I totally forgot to tear my parking coupons AGAIN and this time I did not realised till the whole day had almost gone by. I expected a ticket when I got to my car but there was NONE !! Finally I get a break. wooo hooo .....

Ringtones

Heard the most unusual ring tone today on the bus. It was of a little cat meowing !! It was so real that for a moment I thought there was a person who had brought a cat on the bus.

SG Toy & Comic Convention 2008

The first Singapore Toy and Comic Convention was held from 27th to 29th June 2008 at Suntec City. Friday the 27th was mainly for trade visitors and I had wanted to visit the show over the weekend to see what they had. A month ago I had pre-registered to get their 'Passport' program which basically means you were given priority registration and also a booklet where you are to get stamps from various dealers and once your booklet is full you can exchange it for some free giveaways. The also had a special toy 'Bearbrick' to mark the occasion, a different version was given out on each day. Saturday was the red version and Sunday the white version.

There was an opening ceremony on Saturday which I wanted to attend as the 501st Legion (Singapore Charter) was to be in attendance with a showing of an Imperial March, but alas, I had some urgent things to do that Saturday that I had to forgo the opening ceremony and in the end did not managed to get down to Suntec on Saturday.

I decided to make my way down on Sunday morning, the doors open at 11am I was a little late due to traffic and reached Suntec only at around 10.30am (yes that's late for these kind of shows) As I made my way up to the 6th floor, they had the Bearbrick giveaway on the 4th floor and there was already a queue snaking round the level at least 500 people I estimate to be in that queue. There was a cosplay finals that day as well and lots of your favourite Manga and Anime characters were around. There was another jam at the 6th floor luckily they open the doors a little earlier, got my passport registration (actually you don't really need to register it's basically free to enter) but in the end too crowded and I gave up half way of finding all the stalls for the stamp, partly also due to the fact that I had my hands full carry toys and comics and the light sabre. More on that later.

I caught actors from Moviemania doing some stunts on stage, the story line was a terrorist plot to blow up the world and Snake-eyes (from GI Joe) and Hellboy were there to save the day. Not too shabby for a 5 minute stunt show.

Looked around the booths and came across these dolls from collectors, I thought they were really nice although they might look a little eerie.

The only comic artist, I saw around was Gary Erskine and I got an autograph copy of his comic since I was there, he did one of the Rogue Squadron comics as well but I don't own a copy of that for him to sign. Below is a really cool statue of the Predator from Moviemania. There was also a shop selling Trumps cards which I used to play when I was a small kid, a very very long long long time ago. They had battleships and fighter jets back then, now a whole host of license cards are out including English Premier League teams and Simpsons even. I saw these when I was in Canada last year but decided not to get them and it seems now can't get these Star Wars Trumps cards anymore as they are sold out and are worth a fair amount these days. These cards were only for display and not for sale, so sad.

They also had the Singapore branch of the World Famous Star Wars 501st Legion in attendance, they had a little booth and loads of badges from all over the world of the 501st Legion. It's basically a club where they dress up as Star Wars Characters, the cheapest costume's are the Imperial and Rebel officers. The most expensive being those of Trooper's and likely Boba Fett.

They also had an area where you had to queue to get in to see the display of Star Wars toys, from 1977 to 2008, heaps of stuff in there including a scene from the Emperor's arrival on the Death Star II. Here's some pics from there and of course the advertisement for the new range of Clone Wars toys with it's midnight launch on July 26th.

That about wraps up what I did at the show, it was really crowded and once I started getting my comics and toys, I could not really take any more pictures, I had to leave (stayed for about 2 to 3 hours, most times waiting in line for this and that) before the cosplay finals so I missed that as well. Will post the goodies I got and bought later.

Coming of N-Day

You know that National Day is coming once you can hear the roar of the fighter jet engines over the city. As the National Day Parade is being held at the Marina area, for the past couple of Saturday's there have been rehearsal's and from my place I could catch a little glimpse of what the fighter jets are doing. Besides the standard flypast, there's some acrobatics this year. Marina is a no go area on Saturdays unless you want to get stck with all the jams and parade participants going through their paces. The banners are up as well, over the last 2 weeks the National Day banners on lamppost have been going up, well it seems that I live in the Tanjong Pagar district although I am more towards Novena. Isn't that strange. but a couple of traffic lights away, the banners stop guess that's another constituency.

Family Day - Zoo

My missus's company had their family day recently (actually totally forgot about the pics I took till today ha ha ... ) Was digging out the photo from my recent trip to the Toy Fair and spotted the Zoo trip. Anyways here's the missus with little Barney at the entrance to the Zoo. There was a dinosaur theme going on that weekend. loads of people were there at the Zoo at least 2 other companies had their family day there as well. We got there pretty early and so managed to get in before the real crowds came. It's been a long time since I visited the Zoo, it's just huge and we spent about half a day there, too many things to see and we could not finish visiting everything. It was a really hot day as well. Loads of Animals, well it's the Zoo right so I guess that's where you find them the chimps, tiger, leopards, elephants, seals, polar bear, snakes etc. etc. I love this bit with the Arawana I think if I rememebr correctly. Th eguys just sits there puts a fish on the stick and waits for the Arawana to jump up, YES it jumps up and catches the fish. How cool is that !!! This was Ah Meng's legacy the other performing Orang Utans that took to the stage and entertain us for a bit. So after half a day of walking and free lunch from the company with the standard games and lucky draw we went home, absolutely tired out from teh day's activities.

Passing of an Archbishop

Singapore's former Archbishop Gregory Yong died on Saturday. His body was laid at the Catherdral and I did manage to pay my last respects, there was a condolence book for anywho who wished to sign it or leave a message and chants were played as his body laid in the church. I remembered him as the one who was did my Confirmation so very very long ago. Even when I was an alter boy, served mass with him when he visit the Sacred Heart church in Tank Road for it's services or for the festivals. Did not even know that he actually was with the church before he became the Archbishop until I read the papers. He will be missed by his flock but he has gone to the Father's house and we should rejoice.