砂漠のJeffire

Jeffirean Stories

Friday, August 10, 2007

First of all, let's just wish this nice little island that I live in a "Happy Birthday!".

Anyway this brings me to the story of my Chinese name (again). I was supposed to have a 2-word name 杨威 and I think it's quite a cool name. However, during the 80s, cheena names (usually 2 words) were not popular, and my uncle suggested adding a word 国 to my middle name since we are a poor family and do not have a 族谱 (family tree listing) that dictates the generation's middle name-character. So my name's 杨国威 now. Seriously, I don't really lament having such a name that reminds people that my country is a powerful country (are we?) but it is a difficulty for some non-chinese to pronounce my name properly in English syllables g-u-o-w-e-i. Sometimes I get made fun of, as it sounds like "go-away". When someone tells you to go away, it hurts, doesn't it? But usually my name gives the teachers a phonics lesson as they struggle with "guawei" (Indians), "go-wei" (Malays), "guo3wei3" (Chinese). Eventually I cooked up an English name to make it easier. And it was like quite cool to have English names in my Pri 4-5-6 times, like everyone was finding one for themselves and signing class books with it. I remember starting out with the name "Jason" or something, but luckily it didn't stick with me. Hehe. When I was in secondary school, I finally took up the name "Jeff" but most people thought I was parodying the very popular Jeff Chang then. Well, I loved his songs then because they were really heartbreaking and my heart was broken every day in school anyway (especially in sec 4). But the real reason was that the name "Jeff" was just what I saw in a game manual (Secret of Mana) and I felt it was cool. I added the "fire" part because I loved the "fire" magic when playing those RPGs plus it was quite a cool extension to "Jeff". However, I only used the name substantially when I was in JC because

a. I wanted to avoid the pronouncing problem
b. I wanted to make it easier for people to remember me
c. I just felt egoistic to have such a special name
d. I was in a new world of my own as none of my classmates were in YJC (unfortunately, many of my primary school classmates were. LOL..)

So that's roughly how the Jeffire name came about. Haha.

On this 42nd National Day, I stayed at home the entire day, sleeping, watching a history documentary on Singapore (politics and transportation), the national day parade, some soccer matches, reading forums and posting replies, and doing my monthly invoice recording work. I've recorded 192 records but there are another 100+ to go. I had my craving for tuna sandwich satisfied in the morning, but the rest of my meals were quite imbalanced, in the sense I had too much carbohydrates. SIGH. How can I ever lose weight this way?

I laugh at myself.

Finally, today I read that if you use sunblock, you must:

a. get one that protects against both UVA and UVB rays
b. use makeup remover or double cleanse to get rid of the sunblock
c. find one that has high antioxidants content (ascorbic acid and ascorbates)

So, girls, do you use sunblock religiously at all? I doubt so.

Hahaha
Jeffire

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Something just flashed through my mind, okie, go and look at the photos I posted and look specifically at the ones I took with girls. They would give a great hint to how I rank the girls in terms of prettiness. (Okie, it could incite anger in all the girls but if you can see how, it means you quite understand me)

Acknowledged my existence at
12:19 AM