Father X'mas and Lego

X'mas is over, but let me share a few pictures of Father X'mas made from Lego blocks! Those who visit the Lego corners in shopping malls would have seen this nice Father X'mas from Lego.

However, there are also other innovative ways of 'making Father X'mas' from existing Lego blocks. I received this gift from a corporate event, and here's Father X'mas made from the blocks. Seems like the design is from a 'Black Bulb' person who has his blog as 'blackbulbcreations.blogspot.com'. He has many other innovative Lego designs on the blog.

Hmm I wonder if anyone would made a 'Fa' chinese character from all green Lego blocks, for the coming Chinese New Year? :)

My one year experience with Adsense

Late last year around end December I decided to try out Internet advertising on blogs. I got interested from reading those stories about people earning their full income from blogging.

Naturally the 1st thing to do is to subscribe to Google Adsense, and I must say the whole process is relatively easy. Next step is to start reading up on those books and articles about blogging income.

The funny thing is that the books about Internet advertising always advise the readers that it is extremely hard to earn the full income from blogs. Mostly, blog adverts will hardly cover the coffee expenses. It is true. Lolz. After a year of fun maintaining 3 different blogs (this personal blog plus 2 other interests specific blogs), with average monthly posts of 8, 6, and 2.5 posts, the average earning per month is definitely not enough to cover my daily cup of kopi expense.

Nonetheless, it was a fun experience. It was only when I put adsense on the blog would I start to notice and try out other blog applications like music apps (e.g. imeem), blog stats tracker (sitemeter & clustermap), message boxes (cbox & shout mix)... etc. One would also realise the importance of blog aggregators like tomorrow.sg and ping.sg. The two occasions when my blog posts got listed on ping.sg top 10, the publicity resulted in me having a large spike in visitorship.

Oh well, while the money is not a lot, it was fun chatting with fellow bloggers about how to drive traffic, and explore other income earning apps beside adverts, e.g. Zlio. It was also enriching to try out different blog layouts and templates. Hmm but I had enough fun, and so I think I would blog less from now.

A friend once said that bloggers are exhibitionists, while blog readers are peeping toms. The comment was made becos' it seemed to him that I 'exposed' a lot of my private activities online. That's not true, lolz, but yah I will be less of an 'exhibitionist' from now on I guess.

And yupz, Merry X'mas to all!

OG giving away free pearls!

I was shopping at the OG near Bugis Junction and bought a pair of shoes. The cashier gave me a voucher and said that I could exchange it for a pearl. Apparently any expenditure in a single receipt would entitle the person to exchange for a free pearl. Somewhat skeptical about it, but I decided to see what was this 'pearl thing' about.

Surprise - it was really a pearl! It's a freshwater pearl, and to prove its authenticity, the person 'opened' the shell in front of me, and took out the pearl before throwing the 'oyster' into the dustbin. I saw a lot of other oysters in the dustbin.

You could still see the pinkish pearl in the oyster before the person took it out to dip in plain water. Ok ok I found out later that this has been going on for quite some time, and so those who frequent OG wouldn't be surprised. In fact I think the frequent patrons would have a collection of fresh water pearls now.

Heh but it was still a fun experience to see the actual real-life shelling of the oyster to take out a pearl. I wonder how much does each pearl cost... hmmm.

German Sausage - Wuerstelstand @ Chinatown

I'm sure many of you have heard or visited the German sausage stall @Chinatown. Nonetheless what surprised me was that there is actually a blog about it (done by the stall owner's friend I think)!

The stall is Wuerstelstand, located near the Chinatown Complex, and near the Buddha Tooth Temple (or something like that). The stall serves great german sausages and breads at value for money prices. Actually I'm somewhat confused, cos' I always thought of the stall as 'German' but apparently the blog mentioned that the stall owner (the fellow selling the sausage) is Austrian. So which is which?

You can check out their blog, which is advertised at the stall itself:

DHL Balloon is gone

I was meeting friends for dinner last week when one of them was late. He could not find the dinner location because he was using the 'DHL Balloon' as a landmark guide, and since the DHL Balloon is no longer there, that added to his location searching time.

It is somewhat sad to see a landmark icon gone. I took these photos while the balloon was in the process of relocating out of Singapore.

In an earlier blog post I commented that the 7th Storey hotel and charcoal steamboat would be gone too due to the building of new MRT lines. Well, the restaurant is 'shifting' to the Marina Barrage and those who missed the charcoal steamboat could head to the Barrage when the charcoal steamboat is ready. I think they are still renovating the shop space.

But... the balloon wouldn't be back in any way I guess. Here's a photo of the 'empty' spot, where the balloon used to sit. Maybe one day they would bring it back? Hee.

Related Post:
- 7th Storey & the DHL Balloon