2007 September | Home Of Tong

Archive for September, 2007

Free bread…and almost free phone…

Friday, September 28th, 2007

Yup, I was one of those in the queue at yesterday’s class 95 decal giveaway, mainly because it is at Yishun Dam. Since it is so near my house, why not. I remembered the last time they went to Yishun Dam, the queue was so long and was moving very slowly. So I was quite surprise to see a much shorter queue this time round. But you can still see quite a jam we have made. And the single queue ended up having 2 queues. Might as well as it may help to speed up the process.

Class 95 Decal Giveaway

Take a look at the poor folks from Class 95 who are distributing the 2 loafs of bread under the rain. My salute to them for their dedication. The blue van is actually the Mediacorp van.

Class 95 Decal Giveaway

Believe me, the 3 person below are the Class 95 crews, no thanks to my driving and taking of picture with my O2 Zinc. Shh…The tall guy is Glenn Ong, with the ladies I think one is call Michelle, the other is J something…sorry I forgot your name.

Class 95 Decal Giveaway

The bread worth waiting for…or not? A coffee bread and a vegi bread, not my ideal flavor but hack, I don’t eat much bread anyway, but my family do. My son loves the coffee bread though.

Class 95 Decal Giveaway

Photos courtesy ofÂ O2 XDA Zinc that I bought recently. Starhub was selling at $388 for 2 years plan, a price I fell is quite attractive. So I called Starhub to send me a contract renewal voucher ($50) and I used my Starhub points to exchange for a further 2x $50 vouchers, coupled with trading in my HP rw6818 (at $200), I only paid $38 cash!!! The final deciding factor was that O2 gives free upgrade to WM6 (Windows Mobile 6) for this model, so a new toy for me to play. Kekeke….

Quite a nice phone with almost all the features I wanted, except for the occasional hanging, it sure is a good phone. I will want to monitor for something since I only recently upgrade it to WM6. I remember my previous phone also hang quite often but it kinda ’settle down’ after a while, so hopefully it will be the same for this. But at $38, I really can’t complain.

Posted in Home Of Tong | No Comments »

Congratulations to Annie and Malcolm

Thursday, September 27th, 2007

It has been almost 2 weeks since I last blog and boy so many things have happened.

2 Fridays again, I got a shock when one of my best friends, Annie, who is getting married asked me to be her emcee for the night. OMG, this is something that I have not done before, and I asked her to look for someone more experience but if she really need, I will definitely help her out. To cut the story short, I finally agreed to be her emcee.

It was a nerve whacking week as I try to go through the script and rehearse at home, with room door closed. Finally, the day of reckoning came and I met my co-emcee on the day itself. We went through the scripts and make some changes we deem appropriate and wait for the time to start. Everything went quite smoothly except during the second march-in when after we finish introducing, the music didn’t come on.

I can see the banquet manager frantically calling the guy in charge of the music via the walkie talkie, “Why no music?”. Later I found out that the couple, who are right outside the door, heard that too. Imagine how they must have felt like!

After another guy ran towards the music control room, did the music finally came on. Thankfully, everything went on well after that and I will finally able to go ‘off-duty’ after the Yum Seng ceremony.

I want to say a big congratulations to Annie and Malcolm and I wish them many many many many many many many wonderful years ahead!!!

I will try to update with some photos, if I do get any from them. Cheers!

Posted in General | No Comments »

Network Choir

Friday, September 14th, 2007

Yesterday, my wife and I signed up for this Sunday’s church service as Network Choir. What is Network Choir, you might ask. It is basically just ‘amateur’ church members from the network (network is our way of dividing ourselves into different group, think GRC) going on stage to participate in ministering to the rest of the church members through praises and worship. We do have the regular choir who will accompany us and do their usual stuff.

We are suppose to just worship our God with songs and dance, but because we are new, our movement are kept very simple, with 99% of the time just clapping our hands. Clapping our hands may seem simple, but if you are to clap (above your head) and jump/dance for 20-30mins non stop, it is no joke, especially for my under maintenance body. I personally feel that doing some simple actions will help to draw the tiredness away, as doing the same action the entire time makes it first of all, mundane, and secondly, the muscles will be tired very easily for been overused. But injecting some different (and simple) actions, will break that cycle and let those muscles take a few seconds break.

But beyond all this technicality, I think the most important thing is the heart. As Pastor Joe says, the thing that touches the heart of the people, is when you use your heart to worship and praise our God. If you meant every word you sing, than that heartbeat will be transferred to the congregations and draw them towards worshiping God. So what I need to do this Sunday is just to worship our God with my heart out, and give all glory to Him.

After not going on stage for at least 7-8 years now…it feels strange, and a little nervousness to go back up again. I just pray that I will not be a distraction to others but will be a tool used by God to draw others unto the Lord.

If you read this before Sunday, come join us at Singapore Expo Max Pavilion @ 9am, and watch my maiden stage appearance at the Max Pavilion. God bless you!

Posted in Church | No Comments »

Car and Mobile Broadband

Sunday, September 2nd, 2007

It has been quite a challenging week for me in terms of my personal and family life. We are deciding whether to change our car that has recently become an ‘petroholic’. As much as I try to bring him in for ‘counseling’, it does not seems to change his habit. So I have to make a decision, to put him to sleep and get a new car, or to persist on with him. With the rising petrol price, and the recent drop in COE, it has make the matter even more urgent. I have to give an answer to the dealer by latest tomorrow morning, and right now, I am still undecided.

My wife and I has been praying about it, but have yet to hear a clear answer. Pray about it? Some might ask. Yes, we believe in asking God for every major and minor decision so that we can be certain that our decision is the right one. Too many times we went ahead to decide things on our own and things turn out bad, or at best, pathetic. So in this major decision, we want to ensure we’ve made the right one, so we need our God to ‘prompt’ us.

What will be our final decision, will we change? Will we not change? Watch this blog to find out.

Any crazy thing I did was today. I actually decided to go down to Comex after church, venturing with my 2 sons as my wife has something important to attend to. So I manage to make arrangement with my mother-in-law to meet us at Suntec so that she can help take care of my younger one which I bring my elder son Denver to queue up with me. While I know it will be crowded, I did not expect that today, there is actually a cycling event going on and they close almost all the entrance to Suntec area. So this caused a major traffic jam and after about 1.5 hrs been stuck in the traffic jam, I decided to detour and park at Raffles City and than walk to Suntec (with the 2 boys). Thank God that when I make it to Raffles City carpark, there is a lot waiting for me. So about 2 hrs after I set out for Suntec, I finally reached my destination.

I aim today is simple, to sign up for the MaxMobile Unlimited plan from Starhub and in irresistible 2 years contract with 50% of subscription for the 1st year and 100% (yes, totally FREE) of subscription for the 2nd year. And it comes with a free 3.5G modem which can give me a good download speed of 7.2mbps, much faster than my office broadband (oops, did I said that out loud?). The first 50 MaxOnline customer can also get a free 30GB Creative Zen, and I heard people started to queue up as early as 6am. 6AM!!! Anyway, the offer is so good that everyone seems to be signing up. In the end I have to queue up outside of the starhub area just to be able to get into it and queue again for registration, and than wait for my numbers and queue again to pay up. All in all, I queued for more than 2hrs. Small price to pay for a wonderful package but I feel so bad than my son have to queue with him, without lunch! By the time everything is over, it’s already 3+ pm.

But it is well worth the wait as not only is the price very very attractive, the speed is also very impressive. Installation was a breeze and using it is just as simple. At 7.2mbps, it sometimes feel faster than my high speed shared broadband at home (also by Starhub). It is definitely faster than my office Internet and been an unlimited package, I might just use it in office! Will put it to further test tomorrow and see just how good and reliable it is. Wait for my report!

Posted in Computer and Internet, Home Of Tong | No Comments »