Run 350

Took part in the Run 350 race which is a run for the environment. I signed up for the half marathon but did not really have time to train for it. It was actually a run which I went in with very very little training and mileage.

The run took place at the Floating Platform it started at 6am. I was there early but I forgot my wallet and in the process could not top up my cash card and so I had to find a free parking place which was a little bit further than what I would have got if I had parked in the car park near the venue. Anyway the walk to the start line was refreshing. I went with the second wave of runners.

The first 8km was really uncomfortable I think I needed that long to warm up and the next 8km was actually easier I felt. The last 5km was ok I think I did pretty well under 3hrs not the best time ever but I was happy. The one thing I took back from the race was that the sequence to the 3R’s is Reduce, Reuse and Recycle in that order. So that was it the first half marathon for the year.

Battleship

Caught the movie BATTLESHIP recently !!! Great movie I love it, it reminded me of the old days where we played Battleship on those grid paper’s in school. Easy, simple, inexpensive and fun game … for the boys anyway. I really love the part where they called out the location to be hit … awesome just like in the games e used to play.

Cruise

The family decided to go for a cruise it was a 4 day / 3 night cruise to Penang and Phuket on board Superstar Virgo. The kids were excited as it was their first time on board a ship. We took a cab to Harbour Front and boarded the vessel at around noon just in time for lunch on board. We had previously on the day before did a town check-in, so all we had to do now was get our luggage on-board. Check in was a breeze, cleared immigration and soon we were on-board the ship. Our luggage had not arrived yet so we went exploring. The Kids went wild when they saw the kiddy pool. We had lunch and then it was time to set sail. The kids actually were having a wee nap at that point and missed some of the bonvoyage festivities.

Next morning the kids went to the pool and did more exploring. They love the stairs !! We arrived in Penang around noon but we did not get down from the vessel as there was not much we wanted to see at Penang. The kids went for a swim as there was practically no one around and I tried their new slide which was AWESOME. If you ever go try it you rode down this slide and they did it such that part of the slide actually was over the side of the ship and you were actually over the water and it was transparent at that spot so you could actually see down. The only draw back was the climb to the top of the slide. We set sail in the evening for Phuket.

The third day was spent in Phuket but we were not anchored in town but on the outskirts and we could actually go down. We all went down this time but the weather was so hot that we decided to get back on-board as soon as possible. The Captain’s Gala Dinner was held this evening and we got the Japanese Restaurant which the missus always wanted to try but in previous holidays it was always full. The kids enjoyed the Kids menu served to them and was really amazed by the introduction of the Captain and crew.

Soon it was the end of our holidays and we were back to Singapore on our fourth day. Overall an enjoyable short get away.

Futera World Football Online

Futera World Football Online is an online Football management game using game codes found on Futera Football Cards.

You can collect and enter these codes into the game and they will become 'virtual' players, you set up the formation and teams and how you want them to perform as well as the latest addition is to have managers managing your team.

Firstly you have to get the codes, the Futera Base Cards and Ruby Cards from Series 1 and 2 are common codes which you can use and even share with other players. The Autographs and Memo codes are special and unique and they give better power and ratings to your team. When you register online they give you some free codes just to get you started. You add in various other players from your collection and then you are ready to play.

To start you need to select 16 players (11 players with 5 subs but you can only bring in 2 subs per match) and 5 Managers the managers need to be placed as General Manager, Assistant Manager, Attacking Manager, Midfield Manager and Defensive Manager. You will need to know a little about each manager to see how they would perform and where they should stand.

Next you setup your team and the formation you want to play, you have to have your 11 players and 2 subs in the game. Each Game has 3 rounds and there are 8 teams in each game. After first round from 8 down to 4 who play semi's and then down to 2 for the final. You have to strategically position and move your team players around to best make use of their abilities. It's an interesting game and lots of combinations, putting in all Autographs is not something you may want as they are good but there must be a right mix of cards and players. There are cards you can win too from the tournament and these are virtual cards. Some are pretty good. Now you also collect stadium cards (virtual) which allows you to built your stadium and earn Futera Tokens which will allow you to purchase stuff from futera.

I started last year playing the game since I had the Memo cards. stopped half way as was busy and just started again since the new cards were released from Futera Unique 2012. There are 5 leagues you start at League 5 and make your way up to League 1. Top 10 in each league gets promoted and bottom 10 gets relegated.

 

Not a bad run for me as I actually won League 4 once. But can't compete with the big boys in League 1.

Instrument of DOOM

Got this for my little boy as he is totally terrified of the Hair Dresser and refused to get his hair cut. Hopefully I can do this at home with him.

Futera Unique 2012

Futera Unique 2012 was released in December 2011. I managed to get my friend who goes to Hong Kong to get me a couple of boxes of it. They are similar to the Unque 2011 series.

Again there is 200 base cards with a Ruby Parallel set the design this year is different as expected, the cards are thicker and in 2011 only England players were not in their National Jersey's but this round both England and Spain are not in their jersey's due to licensing issues I expect.
  

There are more chase cards this year to get althought they limited the number of boxes being produced. 1 Case has 12 boxes and each box has 6 packs. There are only 200 cases produced. The specials you get in the packs are Hero (1 in each pack), Legends (1 in 3 packs), Memo (1 in 3 Packs), Autographs (1 in 4 packs), Managers (1 in 6 packs), 1 of 1 MemoCell (1 in 1 CASE !!) and Myhticals (1 in 2 CASES !!!!)

  

I never got the Memocell or Mythicals. Basically the Memocells are 1 of 1 Autograph on a gold plated card. The Mythical of which 10 cards were produced and limited to 10 each are legendary players and have 5 raw diamonds embedded in the card. These  are the most sought after cards for collectors and players on the online game as they have game codes.

Hero are plain cards with gold coloured stamp there are 40 to collect in the set. They don't come with codes and this I like the design and plan to collect this set but am still short of about 5 cards to complete the set.

Legends are Acetate cards with one side red and in colour while the other is green in sepia tone. They also don't have any codes and I don't really like their design as such I am not going to collect this set except for Ian Rush which I will keep for my own PC.

The Archies or Jersey cards this year are better than the Unique 2011 series they are simple with double embossing. There are 24 to collect 16 Single Memo cards (limited) and 8 Double Memo cards (limited) which are memo cards with 2 players and 2 pieces of swatches, There are some with terrific colours 3 or 4 colours and these go for big bucks, Messi and Ronald command the most. I managed to complete this collection quickly with trading and buying them off ebay. They all have game codes and the dual memo would display the country name, the 8 were - Argentina, Brazil, China, England, Germany, Holland, Italy and Spain

Autographs this time round they were 4 different design in Brown, Silver, Mint and Blue not all players have 4 designs some have 2. As with Unique 2011 I only collected the liverpool players. They all have game codes and each is limited to 60. I managed to purchase them from ebay and some I got in my packs. The list I got consisted of

Pepe Reina - (2 types)

Daniel Agger - (4 types)

Luis Suarez - (4 types)

Kenny Dalglish - (2 types)

Andy Carroll - (2 types) ... the last one to complete my collection was the Andy Carroll Brown version.

There are 10 Mangers to collect and these are used in the online game to boost your team. They are gold plated and limited.

I am still looking for Base and Ruby cards for this set and have lots to trade plus I hope to be able to trade for my Hero's that I am missing.

Futera Unique 2011

This will be FUTERA Month. Futera is a trading card company that produces one of the nicest cards. They have been producing Football cards for some years now and the Futera World Football Online game was created to interface with the cards. It started a couple of years ago when the Futera Series 1 was released and I did get a few packs when it was first released but they were expensive I think $15 a pack each or something like that. I signed up for the game as well but never really got round to playing it. However last year when I was in Hong Kong, I came across the Futera Unique 2011 series. They are premium quality cards with autographs and match worn jersey memorabilia on them.

Each case has 12 boxes, each box has 6 packs and in each pack you get about 20 to 24 cards (depends on the chase cards as some are thicker) plus a pack of Futera Series 2. In each box you are guaranteed of 1 Auto, 2 Gold and 3 Memo cards (one in each of the 6 packs).

Boxes
Packs

There are 200 base cards to collect and there is what is called Ruby Parallel cards which are basically the same base cards except that they have red foil lettering. There are about 3 to 4 ruby cards in each pack. These cards don't have any online game codes.

Base Cards

I really like the Memorabilia cards and it was here that my collecting interest started. I started to collect all the Memo cards there were 32 in total. Split between 16 Gold Memo (limited to 450) and 16 Silver Memo (limited to 299) Some of the memo's have not just single colour swatches but multi-colour ones and these go for a lot of money especially those that are very rare like with the BPL logo on them. It took me about 6 months to collect the entire set. When I was in Hong Kong I bought a few packs and managed to get David Beckham and Cristiano Ronaldo Memo's which made it a little easier as these 2 together with Lionel Messi are the 3 most expensive cards. Each card has an online game code which you can use in the game. I’ll try to post up the Memo pics later as I don’t have once around at the moment.

The Gold cards are just gold coloured cards and they come with game codes. There are 25 to collect and in the beginning I did not really like it but in recent months it has grown on me and since I got quite a few of it already I decided to get the set of 25 as well. Just got the last card I need a few days ago on ebay - Steven Gerrard. These are each limited to 295.

GOLD cards

The autographs are the most expensive of the lot and they come in various designs and numbers there are the 1of1, of5, of15, of35, of50 and of75 versions and a player can have 2 different sets. Each has a piece of the players autograph and comes with a game code. I collected just 1 each of any Liverpool player (past or present) I could find. The 2 most expensive ones in my collection were Steven Gerrad and Fernando Torres which I got for over $100+ each. I have the following autographs in my collection.
Maxi Rodriguez - of 30
Javier Mascherano - of 35
Jamie Carragher - of 35
Martin Skrtel - of 50
Ryan Babel - of 50
Steven Gerrard - of 50
Lucas Leiva - of 50
Raul Meireles - of 50
Dirk Kuyt - of 50
Fernando Torres - of 50
Peter Crouch - of 50
Jose Reina - of 50

If anyone has other Autographs and want to sell them do let me know. All my other spare Gold, Auto, Memo, Ruby and Base cards I am currently selling them or trading them away.

Presently I am looking to get some Base cards and Ruby cards for my Collection. Anyone has them for trade drop me a line. Have spare Base and Ruby to trade.

Leap Leap Leap Year

2012 being a leap year we had 29 days in February and today’s the day seems 1 of my friends acually told everyone indirectly when he was arrested that today was his birthday. So what did you don on the Leap Day !! nothing much really ??

Mini Selbulda’s Podracer

With the container as Tatooine, what’s inside is of course the Dug’s Pod racer. His figure is awesome I am definitely keeping him.

and last but not least the Selbulba Figure.

Mini Naboo Fighter

The Naboo Fighter on Naboo as the container and the really cool thing about it is that if can be changed into a Christmas ornament !!

and of course the close up of the Naboo Pilot

 

Mini Death Star

I love this new Lego figures there are 3 in the first series this is the Death Star and if you open the Death Star it will contain the TIE fighter pilot, which was real cool if you ask me.

Close up of the TIE Fighter Pilot.

First Day Blues

Kids went for their FIRST Day of Preschool Class on their own. Well in the end the 3 hours session our helper had to accompany the kids as they cried in the beginning. The School (GUG) had pretty good activities play time and they even took the kids out for a tour of the Supermarket. I had to play hide and seek with them and followed them from a distance. All in they did enjoy themselves after the first 10 minutes of brawling !!

Slam Attax : RUMBLE

I recently started collecting these as they were available in the 7-11 stores

They are Trading Cards, the base cards look like these

There are of course special cards in there as well such as the foils and here is a selection of Belts

And of course the hardest to get chase cards are the Rainbow Foils. Here is one of Triple H.

As you can see there is a slight rainbow colour to the foil. I am still missing 2 Champion Rainbow foils for my collection currently. Hopefully I can get them soon.

Ghost Rider : Spirit of Vengeance

Caught up with the Ghost Rider movie. I was disappointed. Cage can't act, storyline was not that great .... well actually I was confused !!! If you are not a fan skip this movie. Ghost Rider just was not Ghost Rider. Best part about it all was the conversation where the Rider was asked, "so how do you pee" !!

New Little Toy

Got this little guy over the weekend …. well my old Laptop needs to be replaced. Went to a PC show and got this ACER PC. Well at list I can strike one off my resolution list.

CNY 2012

I have notice something odd this year. Are the Ang Pow’s getting bigger ? Don’t seem to see any of those small red packets any more. Everything one is now ‘super-size’ but the amounts inside are not.

I really like some of the designs and especially since it is the year of the Dragon some are really nice. The pink one at the bottom from Precious Moments has got to be one of the nicer ones.

Another Year Another Million

The Annual “Hong Bao” TOTO draw is here, $10million to the lucky person who picks the correct 6 digits. This year it was won by 9 people, everyone’s a millionaire, I’m not one of them …. guess it’s another year of waiting.

This year it was a little special as I did not actually managed to go and get tickets for the draw but instead we had an office pool. Got a system 12 which is basically 12 numbers with all the various combinations. Sad to say not a single number in our list of 12 was picked !!! Guess there is a BIG “L” on our heads now !!

Freaky Rain

Every time it rains it seems that it floods somewhere. I happen to pick the kids up from ply group today and as we walked to the Bus-Stop it started to rain so I decided to get a cab. We made our way to the Taxi Stand, when we reached it the rain stopped !! As we were already at the Taxi Stand we all took a cab back home today.

Yu Sheng Count

So far the Yu Sheng (Raw Fish Salad) for this year has been 3. Not many but still all were Salmon which seems to be the standard these days. This year for some reason I quite like the dish normally I would shy away from it but not this year, I enjoyed it for some reason or other.

MBS

As its the Chinese New Year went to MBS Casino for a little bit of fun. Its my second time there not something I would do frequently anyway as it cost for us locals to get in. The other time was about 6 months ago when it was our birthday and we decided to try the Casino. I went with my brother-in-law as the missus was tired and we were only there from 10.30pm onwards, it was really crowded. even after midnight the crowd was still there. Could only get on the Jackpot machines but it was fun all in about cover up the entrance fee. We left around 3am and the casino was still crowded !!!

Kids CNY Celebration

Kids Play Group had their Chinese New Year Celebration this week and the kids did enjoy themselves dressed up in their new year clothes for the occasion.

Lion & Dragon Dance

Caught my first FULL LENGTH Lion & Dragon Dance today in a MALL !! The half hour show was great. It started with 6 drummers doing a number, I thought they were excellent. It was followed by 2 Lions doing their stuff, not as graceful if you ask me. The highlight followed where another set of performers took over one of the Lions and did the jumping on chairs and stuff routine, you could tell these were veterans the movement was so much better and they gave the Lion ‘life’. This was followed by another set of Lion performers doing the orange/cabbage routine. It ended with almost everyone in the trope participating in the Dragon Dance, it takes 10 people just to make it run around and that excluded the drummers and cymbal players. All in an enjoyable Lunch Performance. 

cough cough go away .....

Still coughing even after 2 weeks, guess all that eating during the Lunar New Year did not help.  Have not been running as well due to the cough, I think it is getting a little better hopefully it will clear up soon.

Water Dragon

The year of the Dragon in the Chinese Zodiac has arrived and this year is suppose to be the turn of the WATER Dragon. It sure was as it started with rain right at the stroke of midnight.

It was a cooler Lunar New Year and it has been a long time since I remember a cool Lunar New Year, it's usually hot hot hot and hot on these days. First day was marked by afternoon/evening showers and the 2nd day was relatively cool. Most shops are closed on the first day but have since reopened on the 2nd day. Not much ofa break this year.

We did out usual rounds with the family visiting all the relatives. Hardly meet them nowadays. The truth is it's either during the Lunar New Year or at a funeral that you meet and greet the relatives. As usual the trusty GPS in the car worked wonders and all the pre-programmed locations from las year helped !! No more fumbling with street directories (do they still sell these ??) The other thing I found out this year was that I really enjoy those left over bits of Bak Kwa, don't need to buy teh expensive whole pieces, I woudl much rather get the little bits and pieces which have been cut up already and easier to manage.

The 4 day long weekend is over and soon it's back to work !!

Reunion 2012

WE had our family reunion dinner early this year, typical as no one wanted to beat the rush of the Chinese New Year Eve reunion dinner and since now its more or less a simple get together, no elaborate steamboat or home cook meal. just some ordered food for everyone to enjoy had the yu-sheng and a big bowl of some kind of treasure meal. I think I can’t really name all the ingredients. Had to end early too as the young kids all had to go back for their bedtime. Most families now all all eat out as it simpler and less of a hassle although tradition was a home cook steamboat meal usually with Chicken Rice (home cook as well) in my family, had that in the early years and then I preferred roasted chicken so when I was older I would be the one buying the the Roasted Chicken. After dinner it was back home for last minute spring cleaning.

Ah the ingredients in that pot well let me guess – abalone, mussel, scallop, back fungus, mushrooms (2o ro3 kinds) fish cake, duck, veggies, pork knuckles.

Resolutions 2012

Mid-Jan and I am just updating my resolutions for 2012, half a month has gone by already and I am just getting round to posting some resolutions. Finally updated my resolutions list and here are the 5 resolutions for this year.

1) Update My Blog

It's time I started getting back to updating my blog. I resolve to make at least 10 posting per month (well I am on my 2nd posting so far) I should have something interesting to write about well at least 10 things I can talk about in a month at least. Must find the time to write too.

2) Complete 1 X-Box Game

Ok I think this is doable, I already got my X-Box set up, finally moved it out to the living room so I can see it and will not neglect it. Time to boot up the system and wanted to get going until I found out I was out of batteries for the controller !!! What's with that well managed to get a dozen batteries which should last me the year.

3) Football Cards (Futera 2012)

I got hooked on the Futera Football cards they are nice and I would probably talk more about it but I hope to complete the Jersey Set of the Futera 2012 Unique Series. There are 16 Single Jersey Cards and 8 Double Jersey Cards to collect I currently own 5 so it's a ways to go still.

4) Better my Marathon Time

Hope to better my Marathon time if not set a personal best. So far 2 marathons I have run ended in 6hr 16mins and 7hr 20mins I really hope I don't break the 8hr barrier this round ! Have already signed up for the Addias Sunsdown Marathon and definately will sign up for the Standard Chartered Marathon at the year end.

5) Get a New Laptop
It's time I bought a new Laptop, my current one is rather old and I think it's near EOL (End of Life) waiting for the next PC show.

That’s it, so lets see what happens to these at the end of the year. oh and I managed to finally change my little one's Birthday Countdown.

Year End … (2011)

Well it's almost mid of the month and I have yet to do a year-in-review ha ha .... guess it's a good time to start as any.

So Resolutions 2011 !! can be described in one word DISASTER. I think I never did complete any. A combination of lack of time (lame excuse), lack of passion (lamer excuse), lack of motivation (even lamer excuse) and lack of resources (most lamest excuse) lead to not one of my resolutions being fulfilled. So let's not bother about last year which basically was a wash out and look towards the new year and more “DOABLE” Resolutions !! Maybe that’s my resolution ha ha …  Now to sit down and think what can be done.