We started Esther and David on miniatures painting with some larger models, first, which are horses from the Empire Pistoliers/Outriders set. The horses are less detailed and larger, easier for the beginners.
After assembly before painting:
Esther painting her horse white:
David painting his horse beige:
Here is the completed Boromir by YowCH.
After playing the rather low cost “Tribal” training guitar for almost 2 years, YowCH got a new “Ibanez” guitar on 9 Sept 2011. The new guitar (black) sounds much better, has nice neck and closer frets and a built-in pick-up with tuner. It is slightly longer than the Tribal and weights more, but sounds much brighter.
Games Bunker is a new table-top gaming shop opened in Funan centre recently, selling mostly Games Workshop products. After a long contemplation, and seeing that Esther is interested in miniatures painting while David is interested in the wargames, YowCH took out his old paints, brushes, miniatures and tools to restart this hobby again. Sadly, lead miniatures are mostly discontinued as lead is poisonous. The current ones are cast in resin, not as detailed, lighter and not so easy to modify the pose.
Here are 4 Space Marines painted about 20 years ago when YowCH was only 17:
And here is the current workspace, started on 7 Sept 2011:
The first try-out was with the Lord of The Rings set from Citadel Miniature of Games Workshop:
The following photos shows the last 4 of the 5 basic steps:
0. Cut the models out of the sprue, trim and assemble with plastic glue and file-off to detail.
1. The models of Gimli and Legolas after assembly.
2. White washed as the undercoat.
3. Base coat of colours.
4. Detailed first by deep shading the dark areas, then dry-brushing the highlights, followed by washing and blending, and finally details like the faces, weapons, clothes, etc.
This is a closer view of Gimli, Gandalf and Legolas (Gandalf was the first figure in the set to be painted, can be seen on the workspace photo above).
Currently, Baromir and Aragorn are being worked on, base coat done:
After thirteen years, to a few days, YowCH got himself a new watch. Still a Seiko automatic, also black-faced and running Seiko’s 7S26 movement on 21 jewels. The “5″ in the “Seiko 5″ series reflects the five essential features of the watch, namely shock resistant, water resistant, automatic, and day/date display.
The much loved old watch was starting to run a few minutes slower everyday, and sometimes stops in the night even with it being worn at almost all times (including sleep, shower and swim). Servicing is recommended every 5 to 8 years to change lubricating oil and re-calibrate the watch, and at 13 years most certainly needed. However, at almost half the price of a new watch, better to buy a new one :).
Last Saturday, while waiting for Grace to finish work at 5:30pm, we went to Alexandra Canal Park for a short walk.
The canal park is part of the Pubic Utilities Board’s efforts to upgrade the waterways and catchment to a fun area, under the Active-Beautiful-Clean program.
The park runs through the Tanglin and River Valley area, plenty of high-end residential condos around.
While it was a hot afternoon, the children had fun walking, running and chasing birds.
YowCH bumped into a car (Honda Fit) on 5 Aug morning during the morning jam on PIE (probably too sleepy). The damage on our car was very minor (scratched bumper and small crack on the grille) but the tailgate door and bumper of the Fit was dented.
A gentleman’s agreement was reached, and YowCH paid for the repairs which was done at Ricardo (3 days). The owner of the Fit needed a car to go around, so we paid for a rental car for 3 days at $75 per day (Altis). The repair came to about $700, so the whole incident cost us close to $1000.
On Sunday, YowCH did some home repairs on the bumper using wires, applied superglue to strengthen the crack on the grille and touched up the bumper paint.
Lesson learned: stay alert and awake while driving.
Last Thursday night, Esther, David and YowCH had some fun with coloured paper clay, making Angry Birds:
The tiny blue bird at the back was done by YowCH and the front white and blue birds were done very slowly and carefully by Esther. The rest were all put together very quickly by David.
Today, we ate dinner at Cafe Amigos, Funan Centre, with Grace’s parents and sister, as celebration for YowCH’s birthday and Mothers’ Day. We discovered that Joseph loves garlic-butter baked escargots (French snails) and foie gras (liver of fattened duck/goose).
Yesterday, we had dinner with Yan, PQ and Siu Hei.
YowCH bought an auto-dim mirror from DJenesis (owner is Rudra) which reacts automatically to dim the mirror when hit by bright headlights from the rear.
The mirror is $120, with $30 service charge for installation.
The pole lights were upgraded mid of last year from normal bulb to LED, but being single SMD, it was not very bright. While getting the auto-dim mirror, the pole-lights were upgrade to the much brighter 5 SMD LED lights. In the following photo, the driver side light has been changed and is noticeably brighter than the passenger side. Normally, about $10 to $15 for a pair, Rudra did not charge for these two SMD-LEDs.
And so, the dimmer LED was transfered to the rear car-plate lights, now a blue glow.
