Jetlag is quite fun at least if there is food to eat when you walk down your apartment. Baobei and I were hit by jetlag, waking up at 5am even before the roosters start crowing. We changed and went down to the hawker center for an early breakfast. Amazing food for these two food-deprived souls. We had 2 plates of large carrot cake, 2 glasses of ‘teh’ and 3 half-boiled eggs. Strangely all these we know how to prepare, but somehow these taste better when served and prepared by others.

At the soya bean stall, I tried to order a drink pointing to the huge tank of iced soya bean drink.

Me: “Uncle, tow huay chuew zi buay… Leng eh… Suay eh…” (Soya bean drink, 1 glass… Cold… Small…)

Uncle: (Held up a small glass and looked at me with a questioning glare)

Me: “erm…” (Yes)

I really wonder if he understood my hokkien.

Then we went over to ‘Shop n Save’ for our favorite past-time in Pittsburgh - grocery shopping!!! At 7:30am! Strange  stares from the people there. What in the world are these two kids doing here early in the morning!?

We need to put two tags on our front and backs. “Jetlaggin’” “时差中”

The time now is 8:30am and we have the day to burn.

4 years abroad and I’m back. I could still remember the time I first left Singapore. It’s one of those times when you look back and say how quick time flies but when you are in it, it doesn’t seem as fast.

Hot and humid was what hit me first when I arrived. Things feel familiar yet different.

Home is home! Now to catch up on my sleep… After that bowl of fish porridge…

Graduation at last!! Finally stepping into the working world!! I am so going to miss Pittsburgh…

Upcoming plans:

• Watch Cirque du Soleil, win money @ blackjack at Las Vegas for these few days
• Savor the black pepper crab at Still Road back in Singapore
• Tianjin tour
• Jiangnan tour
• Inner Mongolia tour
• Cambodia / Vietnam (still deciding)
• START WORK!!!

Haven’t blogged since Monday. I have been struggling to recover from the dreaded spring allergies, and catching up on the newest version of the Condor Heros (神雕侠侣). As some of you may know, I should be on my way to Yellowstone. But I’m still in Pittsburgh. The plans kinda fell through, but I’m glad I stayed back here. To finish up my project, tide my baobei through the last stressful finale of her Statistics Masters exams, to clear up all those crap in my room…

In a span of one and a half weeks, both baobei and I finished up two boxes of (300 pieces each) box-tissue. Sneezing and coughing. It sucked! Baobei commented, “All those poor trees died for us to make those tissue.” But those trees are the ones to give us those pollen allergies - they deserve it! Hah- an instance of karma I would say.
1 week more, my dad will arrive here in Pittsburgh. 2 weeks more, we’ll be back home!

I’m glad it’s raining now. Down with those pollens! Darn those pollens!

Second piece of my Chess Pieces render series. Zoom in. Modeled in Maya 7.0 and rendered with Mental Ray. Render time: 24min.

I wish I have a faster computer.

For my Maya 3D Final Project, I decided to go the easy way out and do still renders instead of an animation. I experimented with caustics and lathe modeling of the glass chess set. I’m trying to simulate a macro photographic shot with that depth of field. See the 800×600 version here.

(This rendered piece has not been photo-manipulated before)

There are amazing places we can find videos online. Now we can even watch TV shows online at peekvid. Grey’s Anatomy, 24, Family Guy…. It even has the classic Smurfs and Pink Panther!!! Its resolution isn’t the best, but it certainly works!

I’m quite a big fan of soy milk and soy products like beancurd. Recently, I have also included the Silk Chocolate Soy Milk into my regular shopping list.

Then Cocoa alerted me to this surprising report on soy, saying soy may not be beneficial to human health after all, when all along I thought soy is such a great health food. In a nutshell, the report says that soy contains a number of substances which resemble the female hormones. Eating more soy may lead to “half helping of men”, “little girls starting to masturbate at an age as early as 18 months” and “men getting older faster with each serving of tofu”.

It feels like one of those many food products where you have reports saying they are both good and bad, and you don’t know which side to believe. I guess anything in excess is just harmful.

Read the whole report here.

All of a sudden, being a vegetarian becomes not the least bit appealing any more. Good for baobei since she always hated soy stuff!

I recalled seeing such an automatic mahjong table on sale four years ago at Bukit Timah, but didn’t have the chance to catch it in action. Now this video is a dream come true!

First I wonder how much this cost. Next I wonder how the table knows which is the right side up for the tiles. Nevertheless, amazing!

(Thanks IZ Reloaded)

Just checked the pollen count today at weather.com. There was a high pollen count alert for Pittsburgh. No wonder I’ve been sneezing the whole friggin’ day, and my eyes could barely open wide. Ugh I hate spring allergies. It’s funny I only developed this after my second year here in US. I thought Singapore has tree pollens too - all year round, but I didn’t get these allergy symptoms at all.

Took two pills of Benedryl allergy medicine on an empty stomach this afternoon. The effect of the medicine was amazing. I actually felt very light-headed.

Now I know this is a real cheap way to get high!