I managed to attend the McDonald’s Monopoly Grand Draw thanks to omy.sg! I was there as a blogger and really I wanted to know who the winners are and how it was going to be conducted. Plus, it was the first time someone won the grand prize!

It was held at Clarke Quay and the fountain square was decked like a Monopoly game board. The crowd there were already winners since they had registered their chance card so it meant that they’ve won at least something.

They just didn’t know what something that they’d win.

In any case, McD’s had good served around like nuggets and such with a large fridge stocked with Fanta sodas for anyone to grab a can from.

The draw would start at 7.30pm but before that and while people registered their numbers, people could play at the various areas, like Chance in which you had to roll giant dice and get a double. You’d then win the actual monopoly games!

Mr Monopoly also made an appearance briefly as he surveyed the area. Did you know the original name of Mr Monopoly is Rich Uncle Pennybags?

If you didn’t, now you know!

THE MORE YOU KNOW~~~

There are 270 Chance card winners this year. However, at the event only 224 was registered. To those who didn’t register, tsk tsk so sad. The prizes are great! Why, why didn’t you register if you had the card? You could have given it to meeee.

Before the main draws for other prizes like the car, the Wavehouse package and such. We got to know who won the trips to Atlanta and Prague! Mostly, they bought the food for their family, like the breakfast meal.

And then the grand prize winner was  Mr Sankararama Subramanian receiving his prize from Managing Director of McDonald’s Singapore, Ms Judy Harman and Head of Business Development of VISA Singapore, Mr David Fowler and well, Mr Monopoly. Apparently, he said he wasn’t going to take the money for himself, instead he will use it to donate it all to hungry children in India! :O Oh my!

That’s very charitable of him.

I know a lot of people were going “Nooooooooooo!” when they heard that the money was won.

And so, it was break time after that. Just a five minute one so they could set things up properly and I could take the opportunity to grab a drink. In between these too, there were quizzes with prizes of the Monopoly houses in the size of a hand since they were actually radios.

Those were cool.

Anyway, next up was a loooooooong wait since numbers were drawn out for a lot of the Denizen voucher winners and then, also the Wavehouse package winners and well, the ultimate package winners too (which I like to call that since they had Wavehouse and movie tickets etc. It was a lot of things in that package).

Those with their number called up could collect them at the redemption counter while the “bigger” prizes collected theirs at the registration counter. Bigger prizes like a freaking Macbook air!

I was impressed with Daniel Ong, the emcee for the event because he had to call out at least a hundred numbers continuously. By the time when the number to be drawn to win the car, people were either going YAY that they hadn’t won the previous prizes or not.

For if you didn’t win the previous prizes, you would either win a movie ticket package (which was still like woah) or the car.

Of course there would be only one winner of the Volkswagen Touran 1.4 TSI.

And that was Ms Tan Wen Xin! What I noticed from the winners of the “big stuff” was that the winning meal was a McSpicy or a double McSpicy! HMMMM. Well, it’s all up to your luck anyway but it seems like the McSpicy is a winner’s favourite.

And that was the end of it with everyone going to the redemption counters to pick up the prizes they’d won. Since really, everyone of them got a prize no matter what! Everything indeed must go as McDonald’s Monopoly had said.

Hnnngh. So the chance cards are really cool. Next time hopefully I can get one! Well, unless I get the winning pair to win the grand prize of course…

While Sarah is off doing things (like guest podcasting/blogging/adventuring elsewhere), here’s a song from today’s recording!

It’s Marceline’s Daddy Ate My Fries song from Adventure Time.

Or, check out the next post of N.E.mation here. It features… THE TOILET GAME.

The Little Happy Shop is a little shop of happiness at Holland Village Shopping Mall. With the new station open, it was easy to get there. Well, relatively easy cause it was raining like heck when we were there.

THE CAST LIST:

Avariel

Joelyn

Raven

Plus me of course. We were going to attend a rubber stamp making workshop! This is apparently a super popular workshop since the slots get filled fast since it is freaking fun and that really, it’s called The Little Happy Shop, it isn’t that big.

We get a pack of things! The workshop we attended was the BEGINNER’S one. It was $29 at the time of this post and we got tools, materials and the rubber block we would be carving on. Joe (not our Joelyn) from Monster Gallery was our instructor!

From the patterns we got, I chose to do the one of a girl. Here’s Joe showing us step by step to do our stamps with his pattern of a glass of soda.

IN THEORY, it is easy but in reality, I think we all need a lot of practice and I see why he gave us a set of simple vector designs to copy from first.

It is time consuming too and huzzah for our group since he told us that we followed instructions properly and did it quite fast compared to other sessions. I ATTRIBUTE THIS to us being good with instructions and having experience in other artistic endeavours in our previous adventures.

So as we silently carved our pieces, I finished my outline with my pen knife and then started using the scraper. And then I kind of accidentally poked myself on the thumb with it.

IT WAS BUT A MERE PRODDING OF THE TIP.

How did it start to bleed like woah?!

And then Joe was telling us to be careful with the scraper for it was very sharp (he was checking on the others/carving more details on his stamp to show how it looked like).

Ha… Ha… Haaaa. I pressed my thumb (it was my left hand) to my palm to prevent it from bleeding over my rubber block while saying, “Uh huh, yes okay!” in my super casual way.

So for that moment, I continued casually carving on since everyone was concentrating on their pieces and I really wanted to finish my design in time since I had places to go after that. It stopped of course, it was a small cut like a paper cut after all.

Test print time! Instead of the usual placing the stamp on an inkpad, we press the inkpad onto the stamp itself! It’s not the usual inkpad either, it’s pigment ink of various colours.

I chose pink and we could keep any one colour that was on the table there since it was included for our pack.

Tada! Mine is the pink girl.

So even if the actual stamp looks a bit messy and not so smooth, the bits that needed to be stamped is there! Raven’s ship got windowless since she accidentally cut it off…

Yay! Clockwise from my stamp of a girl is, Avarielle’s ship, Raven’s windowless ship and Jo’s bear on a rocket!

I still had a left over piece of rubber block so I could make another stamp from it. In any case, the Little Happy Shop does sell them in large blocks and other sorts of inks that can be used for various materials like cloth, tiles etc.

This is sooo fun. Since I took the beginner’s workshop, I have the tools to make the stamps on my own now.

There’s an advanced class and it has more funky techniques and more detailing. I’m not going to attend that yet, at least not for this year but I am totally going to practice more on my own and hopefully make a proper set of Assassin’s Creed stamps.

The Little Happy Shop has more classes on other arty fun things to make, just check their facebook to see what they have! Sign up early too cause of limited spaces.

I need more EXP points and rubber blocks to make more stamps. RUBBER BLOOOCKKSSSSS.

Remember we did the mugs and left it at the studio for the people to glaze and fire it up for us? Here they are! I picked it up quite a long while ago but I finally took close up pictures of my mug.

Yes, I like Assassin’s Creed. It looks more defined in real life or in the first picture compared to this close up.

And from all the angles, you can see that this is a rather large mug. So yay! It’s pretty heavy and sturdy too. I am guessing this could fit a venti latte or something.

That’s all!

Well, I’ve finally deleted the Straits Times app. It was getting to be a subscribers only thing. It’s not that I don’t want to pay for apps, I just don’t want to pay for something that’s not properly made. Heck, I buy digital comics on Comixology and that’s gorgeous. To those who’re thinking of buying the app, I say hah to you! Not sure if they give a demo for readers to see how it is since I managed to check it out while it was free.

So here is why I think the ST app is sucky (and it still is unless they reupdated everything from the time of this post).

Warning: This is super long because it is that craptastic. I’ll do it in sections instead. Just click on the screenshots to make it bigger, I didn’t want to load it to fill the screen cause it is A LOT of screenshots.

Starting the app:

After clicking onto the app, I was ok with the splash screen of “Straits Times” and expected the app to start right away. That’s what anyone would expect right?

WELL APPARENTLY NOT!

Unexpectedly, it led to a video of boats. This is an utter time waster as I wanted to read the news and not watch boats go by on the river.

If I wanted to do that, I’d check youtube or just go to the bridge itself. If this page was supposed to be a loading sequence, it would be better with a loading progress bar with how many percentage it is left so that we’d know this page isn’t useless. As it is, the boats sequence has turned off a lot of my friends who have tried the app and would not want to use it again.

AND GUESS WHAT!  You can’t turn off this boat sequence and will start up each time you haven’t gone to the app for a while.

After the boat sequence, I expected to go to today’s news straight away instead of being faced with an option of past news. I’m not a time traveller or the Doctor, why are you doing this to me.

News of the day not loaded

When I want to read the news or ask people/shops for the newspapers, they do not give me an option of yesterday’s or last week’s news as they would know I would want the current one.

Do you think I go to the newstands and say, “Hello uncle, I want the Straits Times… No, not today’s I want last week’s”?!!??!!?

If I wanted past news, I’d search on my own in the archives. A button or settings elsewhere would be better.

Needing to download pdfs

Also, if pressed “Later” on the notification screen, it will repeatedly pop up and not close until I press “Yes”. I will go on more about the pdfs in its own section below but this is rather annoying.

Help and Settings

The buttons are small and I didn’t even notice it until I started searching for it. As for the help, I didn’t see it the first time when I wanted to try out the app and the whole interface of the iPad version is not very intuitive.

Yes. Very helpful. ONLY IF PEOPLE NOTICE THIS PAGE, DUH.

Oooh la di da, what’s this? We have to delete the pdfs on our own? So hmmmmmmm, does anyone think this might get piled up and waste the space in our iPads?

Most people won’t even check this screen. The instructions to “swipe the pdf” to delete it is rather vague as I had to try a few directions to swipe it away. It gives no option to switch off pdf downloading either.

Choosing the format:

Really.

Choosing a format. What is the point of this app now?

Apparently there are 3, which I must say is ridiculous.

More options doesn’t mean that it is good. It just means that whichever team created this didn’t get to concentrate on one proper format for the app. When I downloaded the ST app, I expected that it would have been a streamlined “give us the news” application which wouldn’t waste our time.

Reading the actual paper would be faster than loading this. Let’s break it down, shall we? (Yes, we will, since you’re reading this.)

Breaking News

If according to the instructions of the main page, the whole pinching and swiping thing does not work at all here.

Also, what is the point of breaking news to be on a different section from the “iPad edition”? I would have to close the iPad edition to go to breaking news and this is not a very immersive experience.

The kerning, paragraph and font in breaking news is pretty bad when there’s a lot of paragraphs involved since they’re all squished together. I would assume that the breaking news is grabbing material from a server where the original was just plain text.

You can’t increase font size either for breaking news which is pretty bad for those needing to read the iPad from a distance or have bad eyesight.

The iPad edition

When I first tried this without looking at the instructions, it took a few tries of pressing to know what was what. However, even after knowing the instructions, it isn’t very optimal for reading.

That’s just me trying to tactfully say, it is sucky.

Well, now that’s not tactful at all, I guess.

This is how a regular page would look like. If you decide to swipe the page to get to the next one…

I would hit the picture and be led to a page of the picture itself. The settings for this has got to change to a double tap or something that wouldn’t be so easy to enter pictures.

I mean, I WANT TO READ THE NEXT PAGE, why do I want to look at the picture itself if all you have to do is just simply touch it?!

Looking at pictures is easier than turning the next page for this app!?!?!??!

There aren’t enough interrobangs to wonder what the whole concept of this app is by this point.

Some sections are weird. You can see the headlines and a little paragraph on it. The example above, when I click on Forum Online leads to nearly the same text but with just one of the titles of the letters cut off.

This is so sad. Also, makes you go “Cheat my feelings!” especially when you realize it was just one sentence that was cut off from the “main article” in the preview of the sections.

There are a lot of sections similar to this and it is rather confusing on what the page is trying to look like here. Furthermore, under some headlines there are no contributor names, only when you click to the article itself. It may not seem like much but some of us would want to refer to our friends “Hey, did you check out this headline by X? It’s pretty neat” etc.

This is even sadder.

For an app that ST has proudly touted, it doesn’t look as if there was much thought to the content placement. I increased the font and noticed that the biggest size has a limit and that it wasn’t that big as it could have been. I like to check what the biggest size is as I have worked with students with limited visual capabilities that do use computers and technology to read as you can increase font size for them to read.

In addition to that, the article doesn’t flow to fill the space provided and instead sticks to its own columns. Basic ebooks I’ve read have been formatted to overcome this or subscription magazines like Wired on the iPad do not have problem like these. It’s in the first point when making e-subscriptions. To make text flow to the device’s resolution.

Videos

There are only thumbnails without a description of what the videos are about. Yes, it’s the picture strip you see on top of the page there are videos. I’m not going to click on every single thumbnail to find out what it is about or if they have any relevance to the current news. Is it supposed to complement the experience or something?

Or just to say, “HEY, I KNOW HOW TO PUT VIDEOS IN MY E-PAPER”.

Guess what, I know how to do that too (and those interested to do that for  your own ebooks can hire me, you know my email! Tee hee! Which leads us to…).

Advertisements

I understand the need for ads since it brings a source of income to ST however, the ads that suddenly pop up when I want to get to the next page is pretty jarring.

At one point when I wanted to close the ad when the video was playing, the whole thing crashed on me and so I had to start the ST app again and be faced with the annoying boat sequence once more.

Thanks. Thanks for letting me watch the boat sequence again.

I will pretend that I am a pirate of the Carribbean with Captain Jack Sparrow and he will ask me, “Sarah! What are you watching, matey?”.

And I will answer, “Oh captain! Boats! I’m watching the boats!”.

Meanwhile, I was also faced with this rotate your iPad to portrait orientation to view content.

I am not interested in ads and I am not going to make an extra effort to unlock my iPad orientation when I’m working on landscape mode on other apps. This is akin to asking a person to switch on their televisions to watch an ad when they were in the midst of doing work.

The PDF version

I would have thought the pdf version would at least be ok if the breaking news and iPad edition wasn’t.

Unfortunately, it was a disappointment too. Dividing it into sections is convenient but that’s where it ends.

At the beginning of starting the ST app, I would not have expected a pdf version since apps are apps. ST app isn’t supposed to be a pdf reader. I have ibooks or bluefire reader for that.

Seriously? You show us the pdf just like that?

The ST app is not a good pdf reader. It showed us the whole Straits Times front page on screen which meant it took a lot of pinching and spreading to read the actual article. Unlike pdf readers, I couldn’t expand to as big as I wanted either (HUR HUR).

The only upside to this was that it did not have those pop up advertisements that would crash it and lead to my whole pretending to be a pirate of the Carribean thing again.

And wouldn’t you know it! The pdf version of this is worse on the iPad compared to the subscription version on the Straits Times website itself.

That version I liked because I had a mouse or a touchpad to use the tools available.

This version had none of that cause duh, this is on an iPad! Oh wait, my bad. Cause duh it goes with the logic with how this app is made.

Conclusion

It think most people just downloaded it since it was free but now… I don’t know who’ll subscribe to it.

The ST app looks like it’s trying to stuff the typical newsprint format into an app instead of an app taking in the content of the newsprint. I’ll just keep to reading the online version instead of subscribing the iPad version. It’s not worth it unless they do an overhaul of the system for it.

Meh.

Ps. If I seem to be missing words, it’s probably cause of the boats. So if anything blame the boats and my rage of it even appearing.

http://www.herebegeeks.com/singapore/stgcc-2011-here-be-giveaways/

Read that!

We’re doing a game on both days and we have stuff to give away that are pretty nice! For one thing, we’re doing this cause we like playing games, heh heh.

COME AND SEARCH FOR ME at those specific times! I’ll be hanging at a specific booth for at least 30 minutes for each session. If no one picks up the prize at the first timing, it snowballs to the next session!

You can find out where by checking out the twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/herebegeeks or you can just try to hunt me down then if it’s not too crowded. Cause hey, I’ll be at one location for 30 minutes, that should be enough to look ALL around the hall anyway!

Ok. So I did receive eggs and a clue for the third piece! In fact, I finished the whole puzzle so here’s what the fourth item is.

It’s a box from a fancy pastry confectionary!

And that was what in it!

Ok, obligatory shots of the lemon and cake cause I had shots of the flour and sugar in the previous posts.

And the clues are finished! The last two:

House Targaryen – “You don’t want to wake the dragon, do you?” The Targaryen dragon eggs may hatch. (eggs)

House Baratheon – They say that “the King shits and the Hand wipes.” Keep some lemon zest handy if you’re in service of King Baratheon. (lemon)

So in total, I got ingredients to make lemon cakes plus a recipe! That and an invitation card to get to the event. So you know the recipe they send? I decided that since I did have all of that, why not make it? Here’s what they sent me BUT I modified the recipe on account of only having a baking tray, no rameskins nor buttermilk. My comments are in red.

Lemon Cakes – Serves 6 (From Craft of Cooking, Clarkson Potter, 2003)

½ cup sugar plus additional for dusting ramekins I think I used more than that.

2 eggs, separated

3 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon all-purpose flour Waaay more than this amount of flour to fit my baking tray.

Pinch kosher salt What I used wasn’t a pinch but around half a teaspoon for the amount I used.

⅔ cup buttermilk I just used regular milk.

2 ½ tablespoons fresh lemon juice I used the whole lemon they gave me instead.

Finly chopped zest of 1 ½ lemons Hah! I grated it since that’s faster and you get finer pieces.

1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda

Instructions:

Heat the over to 300 (I assume fahrenheit which is 148 degrees celcius). Butter and lightly sugar six 4-ounce ramekins. Beat teh egg whites until they hold soft peaks then set them aside. Sift the sugar with the flour and salt. In a mixer, use the whisk attachment, combine the buttermilk, lemon juice eggs yolks and lemon zest.

Gradually add the flour mixture then fold in the egg whites. Divide the batter between the prepared rameskins. Place the ramekins in a water bath (set the ramekines in a larger pan; fill the pan with enough hot water to come halfway up the ramekins) cover with aluminium foil.

Bake until the cakes rise and are almost firm, about 25 minutes then uncover and continue baking until the tops are lightly golden and the cakes spring back when touched, about 15 minutes more. Unmold and serve.

Ok. How I did it? Ignore all that, dump everything into a bowl, stir it and pour it into the baking tray, set oven to 150 degrees celcius and let it bake for around 30 minutes or so until the tops brown over.

Looks nothing like the picture they provided but it tasted pretty nice! Put more lemon if you want more sourness or sugar for more sweetness. As it is, it was good enough to go along with tea. I turned it upside down and sliced it like so.

And for those going to the Games of Thrones event…

No, I’m not bringing this there. I’ve finished it.

For those following this earlier last week, HBO Asia’s sending me clues for a Game of Thrones event. Well, the next clue is sugar. We had flour and now sugar. What are we doing for this Game of Thrones?

This bag of sugar is clearly not the dragon I wanted. Boo hiss. No matter, there’s still 2 more pieces to go to finish it. Let’s see what the puzzle piece that came with it says.

House Lannister: Sugar, spice and everything nice. That’s not what the Lannisters are made of. Well now. At least we know a Lannister pays his debts nonetheless of however non-sugary they are.

Well, they clearly are not very nice! Let’s see what the next clue brings and… if I really do have to bake something with it?

So for now we have had:

House Stark – Flour

House Lannister – Sugar

If they are giving me a House Tully puzzle piece next, I should hope I get a fish so I can make fish and chips then.

Or drink vouchers.

Cause you know, Tully.

Oh I pun.

A mysterious email (not really) and a yes from me sent a deliveryman to hand this over.

It is a bag of flour.

And it is a clue.

To bake some cookies? NYAHAHAHAH. No. No, it is not although I am tempted to give the bag of flour to be traded for some more cookies.

I received an email from the HBO Asia for the Game of Thrones. Oh my! What’s mysterious is that… Who sent them to contact me? HMM. I will hope to find out in the end if so. Or you know, hopefully one of them will state how they found me!

Still, there is an event but to know more about it, there are 4 pieces of a puzzle to solve. The first was sent out today. I can see that all four puzzle will form something.

Let’s get closer to what the bag of flour is about.

Winter is coming to Singapore soon. In the meantime, some floury snow to keep you occupied. Interesting. Well, I’ll keep the bag of flour with me for now. A game for us attending the Game of Thrones event.

I do quite like games, if you don’t know by now. Also I have noted quite a bit of my friends who received this invitation too… ARE WE TO PIT OURSELVES AGAINST EACH OTHER? GASP!!!

If so, WHO SHALL WIN THIS GAME OF THRONES?

For you win or die!

Meanwhile for those who didn’t receive the invite should check out the Games of Thrones HBO Asia’s facebook. They’ve got competitions and prizes to win there! Or follow them on twitter at @HBOAsia_GOT. This is the first piece of the puzzle, I’ve 3 more pieces till we know the end.

Let’s hope the deliveryman sends me a dragon.

Fun fact! It was a collaboration between Singapore and our other team in Vancouver!

The requirements for 2011′s Singapore 48 film project was:

Character: Jason / Jamie Chen
Prop: Apple
Line of Dialogue: “Time will tell.”

The genre that our team got was “Time Travel” which was a wild card and we won for Best Use of Character! That and a set of Crocs shoes for each of the crew cause they were one of the sponsors for this year! In fact, if you got to see all the films this year, a lot of them were very good and some were even done by people from productions companies?!.

Not sure how 2012 will be like but at this rate, the films are turning out more like a typical film fest but done in a less amount of time and even with the requirements needed!

Oh with less angst of course. 48h has always had more comedic short films and it’s pretty fun.