The Opulence / 1st Quarter Release

I don’t know how people do it.

Blogging is a conscious effort.

You have to give respect to the bloggers of the world. This poor blog of mine is dwindling from weekly updates to monthly updates, and now finally, a quarterly update of some kind.

Anyhow, to those 40 odd people who have been checking my blog almost everyday (just checked my stats), I don’t know who you guys are but hell yeah, thank you very much.

Let’s see.. life has been good and kind. I’m kept busy, but finally grasping the concept of giving myself a break every now and then.

Work is good.

Collin & I are still together.

Family & friends are wonderful.

Health is seemingly better than ever.

Pebble is still the most awesome dog alive.

How I Met Your Mother is my latest TV addiction.

I am also aging at an incredible speed from this moment on, which I know doesn’t make sense since the seconds tick at the same speed as per thousands of years back.

When you were 12, you never thought you’ll be 18. When you were 16, you never thought you’ll be 20. When you are 21, you’ll never thought you’ll be 25. Now that I am twenty-freaking-wtf-seven, I can only think omfg-i-am-turning-freaking-three-zero. Even saying the exact number is vulgar to me right now. (No offence to the older people around. It’s me, I’m crazy.)

Life is short. You don’t even know what happens to the world after you are gone, so really, they ain’t kidding when they say,

live your life to the fullest.

Super cliche. yes yes. Wait till you are old, handicapped, health and beauty long gone – don’t sit and moan about the things you could have done and the places you always wish to go.

OR the things you could have bought. Hahahahaha. Perfect excuse for shopaholics!

OH! I think I just found reason number two for buying the iPad 3. Wait for it..

#whyineedanipad3 reason#2 So that I can BLOG!

(Yeah right, I know).

I did tryyy to blog using Notepad but that entry died together with my one week old iPad. Long story. Basically the iPad has a faulty display which caused it do ghostly things like automatically scrolling, clicking and typing (favorite letter, T & G). I freaked out when it first happened ’cause I happened to sitting under a flickering light and was alone at the office. *sweats* So we returned it for a one to one exchange last Saturday, and in all yayness, is getting the replacement tomorrow!

The iPad really made me quite happy. I don’t know why. I think it goes with my thing for screens. Collin always say I get sucked into the TV, regardless how crappy the programs are. Heh, best money spent after a long mulling over iPad 1 AND 2.

For the curious, that entry was on a movie I watched on the inflight entertainment, My Week with Marilyn (2011).

I love it.

I was really drawn in, that charisma, impeccable and inspiring. Everyone wants to be Marilyn Monroe.

Go watch it! : )

littleredheels is hiring / fat boys at joochiat

Busy busy.

So it’s official. Zi, my dear partner ever since Little Red Heels started in 2006, the girl was who crazy enough to dabble into the vast unknown blogshop world as we dug high and low for places that sells accessories ‘spare parts’, the partner in crime who photocopied a hell thick stack of recipes from the office during our part time stint at St***ub, the skinny bitch who ate bread with me for lunch and dinner when we were part timers at the aforementioned, the chic one who applied for the awesome ex-UOB mini debit card together, the workaholic who worked OT like mad and maxed out all the shifts, the apparently meek and quiet one until you know her more, (and there is so much more we share in this years of friendship),

 

we have a lot of ugly photos. -_-” it’s okay, everyone has a past. -____-”"

… IS GOING TO NYC TO WORK FOR GOD KNOWS HOW LONG.

In her words, indefinitely.

Short and succinct. When she first told me one morning and over the phone, it caught me off guard and she was being so vague that I just sat on my bed and kept tearing. (You owe me one, girl. Grrr.)

Then Zi told me she will come back eventually, “because everything is here”. I am quoting you on that ’cause I am not too sure about words like that. Everything is a floating word that can change with time, space and people. But I’m still going to hang on to that and hope we’ll grow LRH to a stage where you have to come back because you cannot find work and passion combined so neatly!

After many grueling moments, we finally met and trashed things out. So we are going to work out this 12 hours difference. LRH will still run as it is, except that we are all going to have dedicated roles which are more or less fair between the 2 of us – just that I’ll probably do the more localised things like sourcing, and she will do the more virtual things like accounts (which makes sense, she’s an accounts grad, hello?) – and the rest of the stuff we don’t need or don’t want to do, we’ll just hire staff to help us! So yes,

LITTLEREDHEELS IS HIRING!

Work perks include awesome bosses who are young and hot, preview of the hottest and latest items on LRH, and lots more which I shall not divulge.

Interested parties may apply to littleredheels@gmail.com. We are looking for honest, tech savvy people who are customer oriented and eloquent in English. You can be anal we don’t care, as long as it is (or you are) not crazy and over the top.

Ohhh, apply ok? Or recommend someone you know is awesome. Many loves ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ in advanced!

 

 

Good food must be shared, and last week, we stumbled upon FAT BOYS at Joo Chiat Road. This is the 2nd outlet to their Upper Thomson flagship shop, and is fresh in happening eastside for 2 weeks. I never been to the latter but this one at Joo Chiat is awesome max. For once, burgers don’t taste like junk. BTW: I have nothing against junk food btw, I like junk food and for burgers, my favourite is McD’s fillet-o-fish without tartar sauce *yummy*!

We go to EwF alot, and I wonder why I didn’t notice it since it is diagonally across the road. It was bustling that day when we went but food was still good (9/10) and so was the service (7.5/10).

They had the option of concocting your own burger (which Collin went for) or ordering something from the list (I ordered Swiss Shrooms). They also serve all day breakfast – think thick waffles, eggs, sausages and bacons – which I didn’t get to try ’cause they ran out of something that day. I’ll definitely go back there again!

And no, I don’t want to move out of the east, can? If I may, Joo Chiat is fantastic ’cause it has all my favourite food!

Last but not least,

just because the camera lighting is so awesome on my iPhone 4 that day!

Two more weeks to CNY and can’t wait for the long awaited break! Hang in there, everybody! : )

this thursday, i got it all fix.

Only read on if you are interested to know or if you need to fix your MacBook’s USB port and internal hard disk, Twitterific OR StarHub Mobile Broadband. Otherwise, this could be an extremely boring post. You are warned.

-

My tech world was falling apart.

One of mere two USB ports suddenly stop working. I could tell that it isn’t dead because whatever USB devices that I plugged into the port still light up but the port just refuses to detect them. It was for quite a while but I could see past that and use the Targus USB hub (that Zi and Jack got for me as a birthday present – most practical gift ever – thank you!) ’cause I couldn’t afford to bring my macbook to Sapura to fix. I think I will die without my macbook.

Then my macbook’s hard disk started to act weird. It had this loud guzzling sound whenever I start up the macbook, and resumes to its usual silent self during usage. I though my hard disk was going to die and I put the blame on how I always put it to sleep and carry it around, instead of the proper shut down. If you know me, you know I carry my little red macbook almost wherever I go.

One day, the Twitterific on my macbook decided to go on strike as well and yes, the little stalker app at the bottom right hand corner of my screen no longer allows me to be an avid tweeter and follower. But in mac world, there is abundance of great apps so I could do with Tweet Deck when Twitterific decided to die on me.

What takes the cake is this – my Starhub mobile broadband which I have trusted and came to love just stopped working. I thought it was because I did not pay my bills for the past 5 months (erm, shy but I really thought I opted for GIRO). So I paid up and waited with high hopes that they will reactivate the service. 1 day passed. 1 week gone by, it still isn’t working.

So I called 1633 and we all know by now how their phone tech help desk is total crap. After a good 10-15 minutes of pressing 1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9/0 and the last being technical support for mobile broadband, the guy on the line says that he is not the tech personnel (???) and he will have someone call me back in 24 hours. What happens after that, I supposed you guess correct.

So here, as per everything else in life, it is always better to depend on yourself. Here’s how you solve the above mentioned problems:

-

MacBook USB port stops working

Why I love Mac, they have this thing called Disk Utility.

1. Go to Disk Utility, and select the hard drive for your MacBook
2. Click Verify Disk Permissions
3. If there are things to fix, select Repair Disk Permissions

If your MacBook USB port still refuses to work, go on to MacBook hard disk guzzles to no ends.

-

MacBook hard disk guzzles to no ends

This should get the loud hard disk problem fixed, together with the sleeping USB port.

1. Go to Disk Utility, and select the hard drive for your MacBook
2. Click Verify Disk (and most likely, a list of errors should appear asking you to repair your disk)
3. Insert your Mac OS installation disk
4. Restart your MacBook and it should reboot from the installation disk
5. Follow the instructions to access Disk Utility via the installation disk
6. Now the Repair Disk button is no longer grey out so you can select Repair Disk

Then it’s done! Exit the disk and now choose to start up the MacBook with the internal HD. Magically, the HD no longer guzzles like it’s threatening to fail anytime and yes, the USB port starts working again.

This website has a pretty decent screenshots of repairing your disk. But seriously, just follow the instructions. You cannot be stupid if you use a MacBook.

-

Twitterific asks for password incessantly and still does not work

This is damn dumb, but Collin says it due to some new system change yaddah yaddah that does not allow the third party apps to store your password. So you can key in your password a zillion times, it will still ask you for your password and nothing else.

To fix this, it’s surprisingly easy.

1. Uninstall your current Twitterific
(I will recommend AppZapper to do a relatively clean uninstall of applications. Above all, it’s FREE and super easy to use. Just drag whichever application you’ll like to uninstall and it will automatically detect the related files and delete them all. Clean and fast.)
2. Go to Twitterific to install the latest version for Mac

That simple, and it works. Though I think Twitterific should have a software update function for such instances, but it’s oh well free so don’t complain. #smgohsaysdontcomplaintoomuch (Haha, hashtag for Twitter, I think it’s plain funny!)

-

Lastly,

StarHub Mobile Broadband says the device is disconnected or is not available

I say no need to check if you have the latest firmware. I went to StarHub support site to download the drivers TWICE (don’t ask why) and even though it reads Windows/Macintosh Drivers Version 11.302.09.04.134_MAC11.303.06.05.134 (ZIP, 13.8MB), the folder contains two useless PDF and one .exe file which obviously doesn’t work on MacBooks.

So this is what you do, also very effortless. I think sometimes we over-think tech issues.

1. Uninstall the Mobile Broadband Modem (if any) on your MacBook (using AppZapper *recommended*)
2. Plug in your USB dongle and install the Mobile Broadband Modem.app again

Tadah! Mine started working like the one entire week of iPhone tethering did not happen; I hope yours will work too.

Now if only the installer window for Mobile Broadband Modem.app will stop popping up everytime I plug in my mobile bb dongle. I mean can’t it even detect that I have already downloaded the application. Pfft.

-

And all this is only possible with Mac OS. If you don’t like MacBook/Apple/Steve Jobs, just too bad. If you haven’t properly used one before, you should before making judgement.

So everything is fixed and working. I am a happy girl! : )

Now if you excuse me, I need to catch up with my 妻子的誘惑.

last sunday

These days, our lives are getting typical.

And it really is as bland as this,
but we are not complaining.

I don’t know what’s wrong (with us) but sure enough,
I shall find some ways to spice things up a little.

Like go for brunch or something.

Do some proper shopping or something.

Or visit a new place to chill or for a meal.

You cannot imagine how we can always, like a l w a y s,
go to the same places, do the same thing.

But that kind of is Collin.

I am not saying he is bland or boring or routine.
He is just very comfortable, and I mean it in a good way.

Some clever ass decides that sticking the ad on the button
will guarantee some attention. Sure did.

The skies were sunny and fluffy last Sunday.
I liked them better than rainy days now.

And without any photo editing, the shot straight out from the camera
looks eerily like the default Windows wallpaper.

Bleah. Esc Esc Esc.

I am an Apple/Macintosh convert.

he loves apple, more than me perhaps

they say, women are always lacking a piece of clothes in their wardrobe. for collin, he is always lacking an Apple product – a l w a y s !