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We’ll be leaving for Melbourne in 11 hours! Spent the past few days shopping for some cardis and new tops (love MNG’s latest season…all plums and greens and rich autumn colours!), packing and preparing a list of places to shop and eat…thanks a million to M for lending me her four Melbourne shopping guides (I swear on my bunnies that I won’t throw it away…*grin*) and a surprise gift: a Luxe Melbourne travel guide!! Chock-full of information on hip places to eat and shop! Lovely! =D

Will be bringing my laptop with me…hopefully Crown Towers has free internet service so I can blog and upload whatever photos we’ve taken on the very same day. Or maybe the day after…hehe…=) If not, then check back here for updates after 19th September!

Byeee…

Argh.

I just wrote a totally angry post. But I deleted it. Cause it’s too personal. But I’m fricking pissed off. These people should just go…

argh.

If w = # of wodrs in my post, and e = # of errrors I make, and i = # of interruptions while I’m writing, my mistakes can form the following equation:

e = cube root of (w*(i+1)).

I squirmed when I read throug my last post. The spelling mistakes! The gramatical mistakes! Gah!

PS: And yes, the mistakes above are intentional just to prove my equation. I like being right. *grin*

I woke up early (well, early for me!) yesterday to pay my ex-music teacher (J…hmm…not to be mixed up with my soon-to-turn-into-a-full-Singaporean friend J) a visit at his new studio in Paramount. Well, it’s not that new…it’s been opened for months actually! I left home about 10.30am to go to Strudels to buy some cakes to bring over. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any available parking lots, so I decided to detour to Bakers Inn @ Bangsar Village instead. The thing I love about Bangsar Village is the availability of parking spaces. I’ve never once gone in and had to wait yonks for a free parking space! Well, ok, I admit that I’m rather choosy, ie. my precious car must be parked in the basement whenever possible and I like to be less than 20 car park spaces away from the entrance…*grin*. Luckily, Bakers Inn was already opened and all the freshly made cakes were beautifully lined up at the glass counter. I choose 6 different types of cakes, one of it being their light and lovely Strawberry Shortcake. While paying, I kept an eagle eye on the waiter to make sure he put all 6 slices in as there was once where I paid for 4 cakes and only got three!

I left Bangsar Village in less than 15 minutes (free parking, yay!) and was on my way to Paramount. Luckily, the morning jam had dissipated, so it was a quick 15-minute drive there. I parked my car in Giant’s open car-park (sorry to my car…it had to get a tan!) and made my way up to Fantasia Music Studio. The studio was situated on the 2nd floor of the shoplot, and as I walked up the carpeted steps, I was greeted with a cute sign requesting visitors to leave their shoes on the shoe-rack. I padded up the remaining flight of stairs barefooted and peeked through the glass door to see Y seated behind an office desk…wah…really like ’si-tou-poh’ (boss’s wife!)….=) As I stepped inside, I was greeted with a sunny looking reception area, decorated mainly in wood, with shelves and shelves of music books lining both walls. The office desk was extremely neat, with a computer at one end and two seats for guests. There was this huge gigantic giraffe at one corner near the entrance…I bet kids would be entranced by how tall the giraffe is. I mean, yeah, I know giraffes are tall. But this isn’t a real one. It’s probably made out of wood. Tall wood. Ok…I’m babbling.

J was still in a class, so I chatted to Y for awhile. I also gave her a copy of our wedding DVD from ages ago…so shy-lah…took so long for me to pass them a copy (both J & Y were our emcees during the wedding dinner). The two kids were also there, Y (another Y…I’ll call her M-Y for mini-Y) and J (henceforth known as M-J for mini-J, not the other MJ that is so famous for being bad and all…). M-Y showed me her new phone - I honestly thought it was a play-phone until I asked for her phone number and she really did give me one - while M-J was in the playroom at the back watching Star Wars. Soon after, J came out and gave me a good whack with his drum sticks…I hope he doesn’t say hello to me like that everytime…I’ll soon be covered with bruises…*grin*.

J gave me the grand tour of the studio, which consisted of one room for cello and violin lessons, two rooms for piano classes, another room for drums (3, yes, THREE drum sets!), a small pantry, and a room for the two kids to play in. What I liked most was that each of the room had walls that were painted in different pastel colours…how sweet! And I was treated to a short performance on the drums too! Argh…how my fingers itched to get a hold on those drum sticks. But more about that later. We sat at the reception area and chatted awhile, and I was being a big busybody, asking Y about her new book, The Sky Is Crazy…ie. how did she get it published, etc. To cut a semi-long story short…don’t quit your day job just yet….=) It’s hard work, which is why the more I hear about her journey to get to this point, the more I admire her! I don’t think I would’ve had the perseverence nor the tenacity…I would’ve probably given up halfway.

Anyways, if you happen to be in a bookstore, do check out her book…it’s full of tales and funny stories about what people get up to in an airplane, and how the stewardess/stewards handle these crazy nutters (well, they sounded pretty crazy to me…hehe…). Ever wondered what the captain meant when he asks the stewardess/steward to ‘cross-check all doors’ (I hope I remembered that phrase correctly…)…? Does the mile-high-club really exist? What’s it like in the First Class cabin? Go buy the book! Oh yeah, managed to get my hands on some photos from that day’s book talk at MPH Midvalley, and a pic of the lovely author herself!

Well, with my curiousity about book publishing whetted, it was time for lunch! We went to a nearby restaurant…I didn’t note down the name, but I must bring hubby here one day because the food is pretty good…we had fried ladiesfingers (I’ve always wondered…is it ladyfingers or ladiesfingers?), fish head in black bean sauce, rice wine chicken and steamed egg. I felt quite stuffed after the meal as it’s abit more than what I usually have for lunch nowadays, which is bread and whatever I can find in the fridge to use as a filling…=)

I followed them back up to the studio after lunch…main reason: I wanted to enroll for drum lessons! And no, this is not one of those spur-of-the-moment things that I sometimes do. I took a few drum classes back when I was 16 and I regretted stopping when I did. I never bothered to do anything about it, until recently when I saw Arthur Kam performing during our company’s annual dinner. It was not so much the type of drums he was playing on, it was the rhythm. The totally infectious rhythm! At the same time, I was also contemplating taking up the piano again. I stopped when I went to uni, and although I visited the music center there from time to time, I didn’t have much regular practice. The piano is still at my parent’s place, and although I occasionally have a tinkle whenever I drop by for dinner (hmm…that sentence sounded abit dodgy), I haven’t sat down and properly played a song for a long long time. Anyways, music always held a special place in my heart. Whenever I listen to songs, I listen for the melody before I hear the lyrics. I don’t know how people who have never learnt music perceive the music that they listen, ie. what goes on in your mind when you hear a melody? For me, what I hear in my head when I listen to a song is the ‘do re mi’ of every single note. And then I feel like translating it onto the piano. Which never happens cause when I finally am near one, my memory fails me…hehe…=) But I digress. I thought that since I have so much time right now, why not learn either one…pick up the piano again, or learn drums? Well, wise words from J: he told me to learn something new, don’t just continue with something that I already know. So, drums it is! Tentatively, my lessons are scheduled to begin the week I return from Melbourne…can’t wait! Lessons with J are always fun. When I was young, I learnt the piano with J and the violin and electone with another two teachers. And I always looked forward to my classes with J (my least favourite class and instrument was the violin!). Put it this way…I go to his classes with a light heart, while I go for my violin classes kicking and screaming. Both are music classes, both instruments are fun to play…so what gives? Well, when it boils down to the nitty gritty, it’s the teacher that’s important. And J is a great teacher.

I left at about 3pm after another very informative chat with Y. By then, the car was unfortunately sizzling hot…hehe…I had the aircon on full blast all the way home.

I spent the rest of the evening reading Y’s sister’s blog…oh heavens. Her name starts with J too! Her blog had some pretty interesting links and the one that really caught my eye is KL Konfidential. What a superbly witty blogger!

I finally pulled myself away from the computer at 5pm and started making the dough for the pizza base that I was preparing for dinner. An hour and a half later (one hour for the dough to prove, half an hour to clean up the mess I made when measuring the flour), I had the pizza base in the oven and the rest of the ingredients were all sliced and diced and in the fridge. I let Moshi and Moro out in the balcony to stretch their bunny legs and gave their cage a good wash. The two bunnies have become really affectionate…they always come over to give my fingers a sniff whenever I’m at their cage, and Moshi has started gently nipping at my fingers while Moro prefers to lick. I don’t know if it’s because they expect treats whenever I go near them, but I’ll just make myself happy and pretend that it’s because they love me…*grin*.

Hubby got home pretty late last night…he has been having quite alot of work lately, and with his 2 week holiday coming up, he probably has lots to clear and handover. We watched the season finale of CSI: New York while having freshly baked pizza (straight from the oven, don’t play-play!), and after a quick wash-up, I managed to catch House as well. And I can’t say it enough….House is such a great show! Last night’s episode was entitled Maternity…do check out the episode guide here if you’re interested (I’m lousy at narrating episodes).

Ok…this post has grown into a monster…I think I’ll stop here for now!

*sob sob*…I didn’t manage to install Movable Type version 3.2 because I’m a highly incompetent web non-programmer who only knows how to upload files via FTP but do not know what else to do to them to get them to work.

In short, it failed. So I’ve decided to put it aside to be tested again on a rainy day.

The good news?

I’ve finally got my photo gallery up. I decided to give another shot at installing Doug Bowman’s photo gallery template, and after a few tweaks here and there, I managed to get it up and running! I’ve just spent the last two days trying to customize it a teeny tiny bit, and right now, I’m uploading my photos while typing this entry. I decided to document the problems that I encountered, in case any of you do decide to install and happen to run into the same problems as yours truly.

• Problem 1: Plugin error for MTCollate at line 544. If you encounter this problem, do open up the MTCollate.pl file and do a search for ‘uild‘. What I found was that the ‘build’ command got split into two lines, ie. ‘b‘ on one line, followed by ‘uild‘ on the other. Once I fixed that, the problem went away.
• Problem 2: Another error for another MT plugin: Collect.pl. This time, the error message showed that one of the commands wasn’t closed properly. Since I ain’t a hotshot Perl programmer (not even a non-hotshot one, actually!), I did a search through Google but couldn’t find any versions other than the one I downloaded. I was about to give up when I went back to the website to download the zipped file again and saw that there was another download link for the plugin code. What I did was to copy the plugin code and paste it over the existing one in my server. Once I did that, problem solved!
• Problem 3: Despite following Doug’s clear instructions, some of the templates I created kept on linking to the .php version instead of the .html version. To solve that, simply open the template, copy the source code, and paste it into the Template Body
• Problem 4: If you have a problem with Photon, I think one way of solving it might be to uninstall and reinstall the program, at the same time, delete and recreate your weblog. Highly recommend you make sure Photon is working before setting up your weblog! Once I did that, I was able to ‘autodiscover‘ my weblog and grab the categories, so do give it a try.
• Problem 5: This is actually unrelated to setting up the photo gallery templates, etc. I was trying to create my own header, and for some reason, the background colour I used just couldn’t blend into the photo gallery’s background. I tried using GIF format with a transparent background, but it really degraded the graphic. Surfing around, I discovered that I could use the PNG format and the graphic still remained pristine. I was really really happy until I viewed my website on Internet Explorer. *Argh* All the graphics had gray backgrounds instead of the transparent one that I created. Wtf?!? Googled ‘PNG Internet Explorer transparent‘ and found that Internet Explorer doesn’t support transparent backgrounds for PNG format images. Apparently, there’s a workaround but I didn’t bother to even try it. I switched all my graphics back to GIF, after all, a little degradation in quality won’t kill anyone! *grin*

And that’s about it…=) Do drop by in a few days time to view my spanking new photo gallery right here.