Diary of a Wimpy Kid Movie Posters and Trailer

Here's Greg

His bestfriend, Rowley

and Fregley

24 Season 8 Ep 9

This episode has got to have the most betrayals ever.

Joseph agrees to hand over the rods to CTU for his immunity but is betrayed by Farhad and killed. Farhad later learns that his friends have a different plan and wants to attack New York. Farhad manages to escape, contacts CTU to tell them of the plan and asks them to help him out.

Meanwhile, Dana follows Kevin and his friend to a forest / swamp. With the help of Arlo, Cole gets there in time before Dana gets the chance to shoot them. She tells him of her past. Cole then confronts the two and tells them to leave Dana alone. Kevin agrees but his friend refuses to do so. He stabs Kevin and goes after Dana and Cole. He gets shot and dies.

Director of CTU, Hastings gets a call from the White House. Somebody needs to take the blame for the failure of the mission. Their obvious choice is Renee. The White House sends somebody from the Justice Department to get a confession from Renee. Jacks learns about this, throws a tantrum and tries to talk to Hastings about his lack of moral character. Hastings doesn't budge.

With Cole nowhere to be found to head the retrieval of Farhad and the rods, Jack offers to help in exchange for Renee's freedom. Hastings agrees on the condition that Jack helps him out till the entire thing is over.

Next ep's preview:

Wish I Was in New York

Green Day's rock opera "American Idiot" has been adapted for the stage and is set to premiere on Broadway this April.

Listen to Green Day and the cast of American Idiot:

Read more about the musical here and here. 

The weird Addams Family is also premiering this April on Broadway!

Read more about it here and here.

And for a little political theatre, Enron will open on Broadway after a successful run in London. 

Read more about it here. 

Lastly, Promises, Promises returns to Broadway with Sean Hayes and Kristin Chenoweth!

Read more about it here.

Sizzler

One day after having buffet at Seoul Garden to celebrate Eco's birthday (post to follow since I don't have pics), Choy and I headed to Sizzler at Suntec City to eat at another buffet. Well, it's not really a full buffet, it just has an eat-all-you-can salad bar, but I can still consider this a buffet nonetheless. 

For $20 (dinner), you can have your fill from the wide selection of prepared salads, greens, dressings, pasta, fresh fruits, soups and soft serve ice creams which for me is already more than enough. For those of you who are not really salad eaters (like me), you don't have to worry since as I mentioned earlier, they have a pretty wide selection. There's so much variety that I marveled at the different salad preparations plus everything feels healthy so there's no guilt. 

The spread below is pretty long and this is just one side of the salad bar. They have another one with totally different ingredients. You mix and match, choose your own dressing and enjoy!

If you're not in the mood for a mix and match, then the prepared salads are also available. 

Here's my first attempt. Pretty tasty and I'm loving that I get to choose only the ingredients that I want in my salad. 

I also tried the spaghetti. The sauce is good but the pasta is soggy, very soggy. Feels like it's been soaked for hours. 

They also have different oils to go with your pasta but I didn't try any because I feel that they're best paired with pasta that's cooked just right.

Choy and I also ordered one main meal which already comes with the salad bar. Price range for meals would be about $25-30. Good value for money. The ribs below is a bit dry but pretty tasty and the baked potato is full of buttery goodness that I have to overlook the meal's shortcoming. 

The place has been around for quite some time. It actually feels like walking into a lobby of an old provincial hotel. Charming and nice, we spent quite a few hours just chatting there. 

Runaway winners: Soft serve ice cream, thickly sliced fresh fruits and the fresh greens.

My beef: Their staff. I didn't see a smile from any of them. I guess you really have to get used to it here. 

Upon checking their website, I realized one thing, this is actually the same restaurant that we ate at in the U.S. when I was way younger that introduced me to steaks. I'll definitely be back. 

Movie Marathon

Today we all headed back to the office after a 4-day break because of the Chinese New Year. It was a welcome break but we were not able to make plans so we all spent it at home. There was really nothing much to do since most of the malls were closed. (Good thing McDonald's was open so we feasted on that.) I actually didn't leave the house for three straight days. Most surprising, I realized that I haven't been out to watch a movie in a theater since the year started, I decided to catch up on flicks that I already downloaded.

The Fourth Kind



Saw 6

The Coffin

The Hurt Locker

Sherlock Holmes

The Women

The Other Man



Gamer



This is already a lot by my standards. I normally have a hard time keeping my concentration when watching movies from my computer as distractions are just a click away. Save for Gamer, I enjoyed the rest. I'm not a fan of gory movies so good thing I watched Saw 6 with Abby and Eco. I can't wait till the next long weekend!

24 Season 8 Ep 8

Dana tries to tell Cole about her past but was not able to do so. She decides to take matters into her own hands and heads to the girlie bar where Kevin is with gun in tow.

Jack is tortured by Sergei's men, he manages to escape, contacts CTU and has Sergei arrested. In exchange for the information as to where the fuel rods are, immunity is granted to Sergei and his son, Joseph.

Joseph betrays his father, steals the rods and pushes through with the deal. Cole and his team arrives at the scene a bit too late.

Here's the trailer to next week's ep:

Charlie Bit Me

Ang laki na ni Charlie!

Dimsum and Haato

A few Sundays ago, feeling bored and not really in the mood for the usual hawker fare available downstairs, Choy and I headed to Upper Thomson Road for lunch. Choices are aplenty with different restaurants and coffee shops lining the long stretch of this quite famous trail.

Choy was initially drawn to what could probably be home to the best Pratas here in Singapore, The Roti Prata House. Before finally deciding, we walked a bit more and eventually ended up in this dimsum house.

I have to say that this is the first authentic dimsum place that I've been to and I was excited to see a lot of different choices. Turo-turo style, you choose your dimsum and it gets delivered to you after being heated up a bit.  The heat inside was nearly unbearable so we sat by the roadside directly in front of their huge steamers. We ordered a few dimsum, siopao and a rice meal which were all good, not the best, but still good. If I have one complaint, it would have to be the rice. It was really dry and it would have helped if we had soup, however, since the sun was up and scorching, it was out of the question.

I really wanted to order some more since I wasn't able to try their roasted specialties and the custard that I was particularly interested in when we got there but I was already full. I'll have to come back next time.

We then headed to Thomson Plaza to do a little bit of grocery shopping when we chanced upon a small, modern ice cream place, Haato.

I know I am already full but upon gazing at the rows of gelato available, I just couldn't say no. They have among the most unusual flavors like Milk, Sweet Potato with Honey, Rum & Raisin which got me all the more curious. I sticked to a somewhat safe flavor, Black Sesame. The ice cream was bursting with flavor. It was creamy and very very flavorful! Definitely one of the best that I've had.

In The News: Desperation

I was reading the free paper "Today" on the train ride to work today and found some rather interesting news. I'll summarize the articles as I understood them.

Marriage Wreckers for Hire

Husband hires a marriage wrecker to seduce his wife so he can divorce her. This is apparently a thriving industry in Japan. Marriage wrecker introduces himself to wife at a grocery and makes wife fall for him. He is quite good at what he does and gets the job done. Husband, armed with photos of wife and wrecker checking in at a "motel", gets the divorce. Marriage wrecker, unexpectedly, falls in love with wife. Everything blows over and wife discovers the truth. Wife threatens to leave wrecker, wrecker kills wife and later surrenders to the police. Parang teleserye no?

"Rent" a Date

China - Because of the nation's one-child policy, parents only have their one child to ensure that their family line is continued. Youngsters are then pressured into marriage. With the Chinese New Year fast approaching, a quick solution is to rent a date for roughly SGD106.

Another Fad

Hong Kong - It seems that in order to quickly lose weight, people are swallowing ascaris worms. Government doctors have already warned citizens about the risk of doing so. Seriously? 


Source: Today

24 Season 8 Ep 7

We finally start to see some action. Most of the characters were pushed to the brink and we see what they are capable of doing.

Dana guides Kevin and his friend to steal money from an NYPD warehouse. The small time crooks get greedy and in spite of the small window given to them to escape, they still find the time to search for a plastic gun to entertain themselves.

President Taylor shares some top secret information to someone from the UN only because she was told that they share a long history of protecting each other (or something to that effect), really a bit ridiculous as you can expect this to bite her in the ass in the coming episodes.

President Hassan gets all the more paranoid and orders to have his aide taken into custody and tortured when the latter advises him to go easy on torturing people.

After coming up with nothing, Renee forces Vladimir to call his contacts again. Vladimir gets irritated and hits her. She finally hits the roof and stabs him to death. She then accidentally stabs Jack as well which as expected doesn't hurt him at all.

Sergei, after being contacted by Vladimir, sends his men to find out how much Vladimir knows about his operation. His men find Vlad dead and takes Jack with them for questioning.

Brian Hastings, the new CTU head, isn't a joy to watch. He's neither here nor there. There seems to be something lacking in the way he delivers. 


Here's what to expect next:

Madam

Clarice arrived a couple of weeks ago and quietly left this morning. Despite her early flight, she took the time to prepare breakfast for us. How sweet no? 

She brought with her a couple of sweet treats from Manila:

She has been without work for a month now. Our very big team has been reduced to just four members with Clarice to be among the last batch of casualties. It is not so bad since she is soon to enjoy a hefty separation pay. She decided to try her luck here and it seems that the stars are all smiling down on her. Only after a week, she already received an offer. The following day after signing her contract, everything has already been approved giving her ample time to relax and be with her family back home. 

On her first weekend, we took her out for lunch at Thai Express. 

Em-J and I both chose the seafood kway teow.

Clarice, who was craving for curry, had the chicken curry which turned out to be too spicy for her liking. 

We haven't really gone out much since she prefers to stay home and catch up on the latest teleseryes via YouTube but that's okay. We'll have plenty of time to explore when she returns in two weeks. 

Battle of the Hawker Centres

Hawker Centres are very much part of Singapore culture that a trip here would be incomplete without paying a visit to at least one. Two of the most popular hawker centres here are Newton Circus and Lau Pa Sat. We normally frequent Newton Circus since it is closest to where we stay.

Newton Food Centre

Based on our experience, the usual practice at Newton is stall owners approach you, get you a table and provide you with a laminated menu and you order away. After your meal, the owner then informs you of your total bill. No receipt has ever been given to us nor were we ever given a breakdown. We have never questioned this practice and we always felt that paying an average of $35 per person is pretty cheap for fresh seafood. It's not as if we eat out here all the time. I guess splurging once in a while is okay.

The last time we visited Newton, there were prominently displayed comic strips encouraging patrons to go to the stall itself, check the price of each item and order there. I later found out that one stall was suspended for 3 months for overcharging their customer. Click here for article. We ordered cereal prawns, shark's fin soup, squid, fried buns and medium rice plus lime juice. The bill for the three of us came to about $120.


Since Clarice was visiting over, we wanted to take her to Newton but Em-J's friends warned us about it and told us to head to Lau Pa Sat instead.

Lau Pa Sat

I've only been to Lau Pa Sat once and that was to eat at Happy V, formerly Jolly V, so I haven't tried their Singaporean dishes yet.  I'm always game for an adventure so last night, we headed there after work. We got there at dinner time and immediately managed to get a table. None of us were in the mood for crabs so we settled for cereal prawns, large rice, chilli kang kong, a set of chicken and beef satay plus drinks. The total bill for four was $65. Food was just as good; I even found the cereal prawns to be better than the ones that we normally order at Newton. 

I guess you can say we've already made our decision. The next time we're craving for cereal prawns or chilli crabs, Lau Pa Sat it is. 

24 Season 8 Ep 6

Dana Walsh wasted no time. Barely 5 minutes into the episode and she already has a plan eyeing an FBI lock-up and providing Kevin with schematics and a key card on how to break in. I just wish she has a trick up her sleeve as I don't want to see her go down, the way she's been acting, she might as well have screamed "Look at me, I'm breaking the law."
Despite the talk with President Taylor, Hassan cracks up the ante and has someone close to his delegation arrested for being the cousin of someone who took part in the assassination attempt. 
The infected Russian gets a glimmer of hope as he is treated by a local doctor only to be killed by his own father. How ruthless. 
Vladimir tries to double cross Jack by ordering his men to kill him as soon as the money is wired over. He has no intention of providing the information that Jack needs. His plan backfires since Jack came prepared with Agent Cole Ortiz as his back up. (I bet tuwang tuwa si Jencarps) 

A New Pair

I'm not a big fan of shoes. As long as I have one that I can use, I'm good. I normally stick to white sneakers since it's easy to pair with anything I have on for the day. I actually only bought 3 pairs last year. One was a white perforated plimsoll.

I was eventually forced to replace it with a pair of Everlast green sneakers which were not too comfortable thus forcing me to buy my white "lolo"shoes. 

This trusty pair also gave up on me recently. Good thing I chanced upon the pair below from River Island. I'm currently loving it. I'm willing myself not to get a few more since they're on sale. 

OMIGOD YOU GUYS!!!