www.natashayong.com

Serangoon Central Mega Mall will boast of 618,000 net lettable sq ft. Above the current Serangoon MRT with the Central Bus Interchange occupying a portion of the ground floor. To be ready in 2010.

New American International School to be ready in 2011 along Upper Serangoon Road

The Puccini Gala: A Celebration of Puccini's Works or what I'd like to call my 'virgin opera experience'. It was only in July that I was telling Sabby and Julia that opera / classical music was REALLY not my kindda thing. I am truly a convert, a 360 degree convert. Turandot totally changed my perspective of this music genre.

Wendy was over at my place some time back, sniffing through my computer's music collection and commented in disbelief, "Fwah, if not that I see it with my own eyes and hear it with my own ears... I wouldn't believe you're into these kind of music!". Honestly, I'm still in shock myself!

In conjunction with the 150th anniversary of the birth of renowned Italian opera composer, Giacomo Puccini; Singapore Lyric Opera (SLO), Singapore Lyric Opera Orchestra, Singaporean conductor Joshua Tan Kang Ming and renowned Opera Soloists presented the best of Puccini's works in a one night only concert at the Esplande.

Puccini's operas have long been regarded as the most popular in the repertoire and are frequently performed in opera houses around the world. The soloist included Cecilia Yap (Soprano), Tan Khar Gee (Soprano), Ha Seok Be (Tenor) from Korea and Zhang Feng (Baritone) from China. My treat for the night was catching Sabby on stage in the chorus again. As usual, the chorus performance was stunning.

Throughout the 2 hour long performance, pieces from Tosca, Gianni Schicchi, Le Villi, La Boheme, Madam Butterfly and his final masterpiece, Turandot filled the halls. There were familiar tunes from Tosca and Turandot and new pieces from La Boheme and Madam Butterfly which I really enjoyed.

Retired political leader, Professor Tommy Koh was also in the audience with his wife just 2 rows in front of us. I remembered catching the couple at the Dim Sum Dollies' Little Shop Of Horrors, the wife was queuing in front of me while waiting for our turns to use the washroom. We had a brief chat about nothing...

After a night of glass shattering, breath-taking opera; the bunch of us (consisting of friends and friends' friend) decided to chill at Max Brenner. I had to get myself a yummy HUG MUG of Javanese Dark Chocolate & Orange Peel. The drink was warm, rich and full flavored in the right sweetness.


Pure Heaven!

Of the group of friends, Sabby and Daniel (friend of Celeste's) were most passionate about the art of opera. Daniel has been singing for 8 years. They were talking opera lingo - 'Aria', 'Tenor', 'Soprano', 'Mezzo Soprano'... opera techniques - 'resonance in the head', vocal ranges and projection of voices...

I was glad Celeste and Yan were with me. Our comments went something along the lines of "The singers' dresses were really pretty...", "The conductor looked rather gay..." I felt so shallow!

50,000 runners will be stomping the tarmac just 2 weeks from now at the Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon 2008! Your faithfully, will be one of them ;)

I was at the Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon 2007 grounds last year as a spectator / supporter. I loved the energy and spirit of the event. There was an air of encouragement, drive and good cheer. For a change, I wanted to take on the challenge and burn off the soles of my Asics GT-2110!

I'm keeping to my own promise to run 10km at the marathon.

It is kind of ironic cause I figure I was in much better shape last year. The removal of the corporate gym membership early this year meant lesser cardio fat burning, stamina building exercises. It disrupted my original 10km training programme, and with little running motivation, I went on to pick up golf and fencing!

Then there was the usual procrastination to get back into a serious training routine. And when you finally decide to put your heart and soul back into the game... you get hit by the office flu bug!

I'm back in the pink of health now, but with only limited time before the event, I'm just doing simple running on Wii Fit. Just to strengthen the legs and get my body back into the running rhythm. And don't look down on Wii Fit, cause I was quite egar to shed off some pounds last month which I quickly did with the exercises. Wii Fit is now almost a daily companion to my healthier way of life! In addition to that, I've also picked up juicing again! Couple of times a week, different types of fruits and vegetables.

Being able to take part and (hopefully) complete the race is an experience in itself. No stressful targets... just out there to soak it all in.

So to the brave souls who will be taking on the 42km run - Wei Sian, Edna and John... keep strong and run the good race!

Adobe CS4 Launch Singapore

I've read enough raved reviews in the design community about Adobe's latest CS4 release. The hype stated that the release is 'significant' enough to make you want to fork out your $$$ for an upgrade. As much as I am tech geek when it comes to the most popular software in the design industry, I cannot help but also feel I am playing a catch up game with all these new features and releases. Somehow it just didn't feel all that long ago since the Adobe CS3 Launch last year.


(From Left) Adobe Evangelists' Tim Cole, Karl Soule and Paul Burnett

The CS4 Launch was held at The Rock Auditorium at Suntec City (14 Nov), catering to a larger expected crowd. It was a full day of new feature presentation with Tips & Tricks from Adobe Evangelists' Tim Cole (showcasing Illustrator, Adobe InDesign & Photoshop), Karl Soule (showcasing OnLocation and the Production Premium products) and Paul Burnett (showcasing AIR, Flash and Dreamweaver). Having the chance to pick up some product insights from these masters alone made the trip worth every penny.

What is much improved throughout all the Adobe products is tighter integration. For this reason alone, the upgrade is well worth it. Imagine no longer having to go back and forth the different products when changes occur. There were also numerous updates that make daunting and repetitive tasks a thing of the past. For a product like Illustrator, it also highlighted the ridiculous number of steps to do a simple job.

So what's new in the box?
Adobe Photoshop CS4
- New 3D engine, draw directly onto 3D objects
- Improved 'Dodge Tool', included ‘Protect Tones’ so facial tones doesn’t change
- 'Content-Aware-Scaling Tool' which is smart enough to auto-generate according to patterns when scaling. No more awful picture scaling
- 'Active eyedropper' and Curves to modify portions of your picture based on colour selected

Adobe Illustrator CS4
- Spring-loaded Panel
- Multiple Artboards
- Live Gradient on Artboards
- 'Blob Tool'
- Crop by Artboard

Adobe InDesign CS4
- Output Flash Flipbook
- Smart Guides
- Error Indicator

Adobe Flash CS4
- Object-based animation model; eliminates the need for manual placement of keyframe and tween adjustments
- 3D transformation capabilities; 3D rotate and translate tools
- 'Bones Tool' delivers inverse kinematics to create chain-like animation

Adobe Video Production Suite
- New speech search in Premiere; imagine what this means to online video search ability!
- Dramatic cut in rendering time - You can almost see jaws dropping from Kenny and myself! We were impressed.


Karl Soule showing off OnLocation and the Video Production Suites

The launch ended with the trio's ‘Best Kept Secret of CS4′ and a set of CS4 Premium at the lucky draw. As usual, no luck this time round.

Best tip of the day has to go to Tim Cole to improve pictures taken with lower resolution cameras in poor lighting conditions

1. Take 4 - 6 shots.
2. Load in Photoshop CS4
3. Goto 'Tools/Load Files Into Layer/Auto-Align Layers/Convert Smart Objects'
4. Goto 'Layer/Smart Object/Stack Mode/Median'

Photoshop CS4 will rebuild for you an enhanced image.

This time round I learnt a great deal from the examples and solutions showcased. Unlike those usual hard sell product events. Still as much as I am excited by the new features, there isn't one thing that might compel me to make the immediate upgrade. CS4 may need to wait till next year...

*Photos above are from www.hardwarezone.com's forum

Awww... warms my heart that Godchild will be receiving the BEST gift of Jesus this weekend. Spent some time in the week, thinking and looking around for a gift to keep.



Cross from Cathedral Art USA


Card has a neat little prayer card cut out


Gift all boxed up, looking really pretty

The camp is drawing near... and we have the T-shirt designed in spicy red!
Registrations are still OPEN!
Drop me a note for registration details.

"What is the ONE thing that matters most to you?"

On 9 November 2008 the perpetrators (Imam Samudra, Amrozi Nurhasyim and Ali Ghufron) of the Bali Bombing in 2002, were executed by the Indonesian firing squad. The bombing killed 202.

Around this time last year, we were in Bali and made it a point to visit the epicenter of the bombing zone, known as ‘ground zero’. In place of where the bombing occurred now stands a bombing memorial. On a marble wall are the names of the victims. It is a wake up call and reminder to what Terrorism is.

The Legian Street is now filled again with buzz from pubs and shoppers at surf shops. But for me who recalled witnessing the tragic event on the media, it reminds me it could have been anyone of us, one of our loved ones...

Related Posts:
Kill Bill @ Halloween
Creeping up to Halloween

This year at the Halloween Bus Tour 2008, we were KILL BILL!
Detailed post coming soon!

www.cnn.com as Barack Ombama wins the 2008 Presidential Election

In my opinion, there are 2 elections that the world really care about:
The US Presidential Election and The Election of the Pope

But what really ROCKED the world this time round at the Obama Vs. McCain 2008 elections was the POWER OF MEDIA. So many of us (myself included) under estimated the emotions and impact media can cause in the decision making process of a vote. This time round, a President was born out of the Internet!

The Obama Online Media Team should be rewarded with a big fat bonus, if they don't already have one. The Presidential Online Campaign was so successful, it will no doubt be taken as a case study for effective online marketing strategies. The team did many things right through 2 years of development and the website, www.barackobama.com saw numerous significant improvements.


www.barackobama.com splash page

If there is one thing Barack Obama does well, it is to toy with one's emotions. For a while, the above image of Obama and his family pride the landing page of the website. We all know that splash pages are so dated as they rank lowly on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) standings and are a total waste of time for your viewers. Yet, in this case, 2 messages are vital:
The POWER of WORDS and the POWER of IMAGERY

Somebody should really count the number of times Obama said "Change" and "Hope" throughout the entire campaign. By themselves the words are great, but just look how it transform when you put a wholesome, decent family picture next to it!

It didn't take too long that being found on the Internet was, and still is the no. 1 priority online. It's the simple rule of 'You don't exists, unless you're found'. In a race to the White House, you'd want to be found EVERYWHERE!

This election was the 1st in history to understand and harness the power of sharing and communicating through social media platforms to not only get out a message, but to energize a group of Americans into action. On MySpace alone, Obama has over 270,000 friends, Facebook shows over 200,000 and YouTube shows over 16,000 in subscribers. In addition, Flickr & YouTube Videos were integrated into his website.


Will.i.am's "Yes, We Can" from Barack Obama's remarks after he won the Democratic presidential primary in South Carolina

Yeah, and don't forget to rally some of your superstar supporters to spice up a Martin Luther King "I Have A Dream" MTV for all those young voters!


The all so important Red Button

But the most important button stood red and bold on the right hand corner of the website. A 'Please Donate' button. Obama rasied over US$600 million during the campaign. At least half of that money has been raised through small website donations by over three million Obama supporters, giving an average of under US$100. It is also the first time a candidate has chosen to bypass public financing. In comparison, John McCain was given US$84 million from the public purse. If I had to name the smartest thing Obama did - this would be it.

The extra money gave him the edge to do so much more in delivering his message. It was clear that money and resources in putting materials such as videos, issues and even a blog online made an impact.

It was also timely that I completed my read on "The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream". There's much hype and review on the book. Much like Bill Clinton's "My Life", I thought a little insight into the biography of the next US President would be interesting.

On 5 November 2008, the United States of American have their 1st African American President. Who would have thought... Undoubtedly, one of the most emotional elections in history. This time the Americans voted with their heart.

Unfortunately, after reading a book, countless articles and watched the presidential debates; I am still scratching my head as to what Obama has to offer. So really, what's the CHANGE???

After 2 years of the DS Lite, Nintendo released the new version of DS Lite - DSi.
Over 170,000 of 200,000 DSi units released on the 1 Nov launched in Japan have been snapped up in just 2 days! Retailing at ¥18900 (about USD$190) the newer unit is around USD$30 more expensive then its predecessor.
 
What's in the box with the extra $$moola$$:
- 12% or 2.6 millimeters thinner
- Larger screen, 3.25 inches as opposed to the previous 3 inches
- 0.3 megapixel VGA camera producing 640x480 pixel images
- Improved speakers, audio quality and audio-playing function
- SD memory card slot
- Nintendo DS web browser built in
 
What is a BIG Bummer!
- Removal of the Game Boy Advance cartridge slot
- No compatibility with accessories that require the GBA slot
- Reduced battery life due to higher power consumption
- Incompatible with flash carts like the R4 and M3 (read that DSi wont allow use of flashcarts or hacks... sure... but we'll see)
- Region lock
 

With the new SD slot in place for the DSi, you have a sense of where Nintendo is going with both the Wii and the DS.
Nintendo has announced last month that they will be addressing the lack of memory space of the Wii with an expandable 2GB SD Card in Spring 2009. Up to 60 games can be stored on the card instead of the patetic 512mb that comes originally with the console. Essentially, the Nintendo Shopping Channel will offer download not only for the Wii but also for the DS. Mii characters created and photos can be exchanged between the 2 platforms.
 

Nintendo DSi Games Line-up


DSi Vs. DS Lite

The rest of the world will receive the DSi before Fall in 2009. It is all so tempting!!!

After an awful, awful practice game at the spanking new Kallang Bowl at Leisure Park Kallang last month, I went into this year's Annual Bowling Tournament - worried! This year, we have a new structure of 3 to a team instead of 4. John and I roped in KS, who is also considerably new to the game. At the practice games he was throwing gutters, but toward the end; he hit a TURKEY - 3 strikes in a roll! It boasted his confidence for the tournament. I was crossing my fingers that I was more in form so we can keep our overall team scores up. It didn't help that John had to put our team right smack in the centre of the MANAGEMENT Team and the STRIKE FORCE (who came in strong as the Champions).

Thankfully, unlike Kallang which had one of the most horrible and glaring lighting; I managed to find a suitable house ball and rolled my way to a decent 10th spot for women overall out of 39! Inclusive of the 20pts handicap, my score stood at 145, 123, 124. The team kept last year's standing, coming in 7th but out of 27.

Considering this is a once a year affair with practically NO practice in-between, I felt it was rather commendable.

John, a seasoned bowler later approached me if I wanted to join the company's team to bowl on a more competitive level!!! I'm like "SERIOUSLY, you must be KIDDING!!!". John went on to comment that I already have the form, with nice footwork and a good follow-through. I just need guidance to be trained to perfect my throw and understand the strategies in the game. I'm still having the feeling he is pulling my leg with the invitation, but honestly... bowling will remain... just... a leisure activity...

View details of 2007's Bowling Tournament

If I only have 3 words to describe the 2004 Tony Award Musical "Avenue Q" (book by Jeff Whitty, music and lyrics by Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx) it will be 'CUTE', 'CRUDE' and 'SMART'.
For most of my life, musicals have always been along the likes of composer, Andrew Lloyd Webber and large scale song and dance. They were grand, spectacular and breathtaking! What "Avenue Q" offered, with it's comic take on 'life' through puppets was like a breath of fresh air!

I knew about the musical when in debuted in 2003. FINALLY it has made its round into Singapore after Manila. The Singapore Repertory Theatre (SRT) will be joined by Carla Guevara (of "Miss Saigon" fame), together with Aiza Seguerra, Joel Trinidad, Frenchie Dy, Rycharde Everley, Tenee Chan and Felix Rivera in it 1st ever run in our little conservative island.

As soon as I heard wind of the performance months back, I secured preview day stall tickets! Woohoo!


Avenue Q Cast

Similar to the award-winning (and unfortunately now ended) sitcom "Seinfeld," it manages to humorously exploit some of the more trivial aspects of day-to-day life; this time in a neighbourhood much like Sesame Street. It's a parody, irreverent and off the wall!



That's the delicious central conceit that infuses every element of ''Avenue Q,'' from its bright but gritty ''Sesame'' streetscape of a set (designed by Anna Louizos, and deftly scaled up for Broadway) to its archly educational animated segments, which parse words and phrases like ''commitment'' and ''one-night stand'' on video screens on either side of the stage.



But it is in its songs and performances that ''Avenue Q'' plays most piquantly on the contrasts between the world according to children's television and the reality of adult life. The nature of the twinkly songs, unfailingly tuneful and disgustingly irresistible, can be deduced from their titles: ''Everyone's a Little Bit Racist,'' ''Schadenfreude'' and ''The Internet Is for Porn''.

There's something about the puppets, they can be so rude... so imperfect... but there's still a soft spot. They're like babies with bright goggle eyes! So easily forgiven!

At the heart of "Avenue Q" is a story for the search of the 'purpose in life', failures, sex and all our general pettiness. The main characters of Princeton, Kate Monster, Lucy (a more babe-alicious and decidedly less uptight variation on Miss Piggy), Nicky and Rod (à la Ernie and Bert), Trekkie Monster (a brown version of Cookie Monster), the wannabe comedian Brian, his Japanese fiancée, Christmas Eve, as well as the landlord, a has-been actor named Gary Coleman (from the different strokes) speaks of adult-size issues: repressed sexuality, unemployment, racism and depression. Replace the 'Q' to any other name and you'd realise that the story and characters are very much a reflection to anyone of us.



After the melodic, witty, hilarious and toe-tapping tunes are over, we take home a lesson worth the cost of a college education. That, while good intentions and true love triumph, "Avenue Q" doesn't conclude on a sentimental note. "Everyone's a little bit unsatisfied," the puppets tell us, but "life goes on."

Listen to Song snippets of "Avenue Q"

The Church is a very human organization but also the garden of God's grace. It is a place where great sanctity keeps blooming. Saints are people who make the living Christ visible to us in a special way. Some saints have given their lives in the service of Christ and his Church; others have spoken and written words that keep nurturing us; some have lived heroically in difficult situations; others have remained hidden in quiet lives of prayer and meditation; some were prophetic voices calling for renewal; others were spiritual strategists setting up large organizations or networks of people; some were healthy and strong; others were quite sick, and often anxious and insecure.

But all of them in their own ways lived in the Church as in a garden where they heard the voice calling them the Beloved and where they found the courage to make Jesus the center of their lives.

Happy All Saints Day!