Dear friends,

I believe I have not updated my blog for nearly a year now. Life had been really busy, and I had a lot of great experiences. Life is rosy every single day - and I can't stop being thankful. I'm a very lucky girl. :)

I had been living in the Netherlands since December 2006, so it's been 1 year 3 months that I had been away from Singapore. Last year though, I did visit Singapore twice, spent nearly 6 weeks in Singapore around April, and 3 days in Singapore in October. And at the moment, I do plan to visit Singapore soon!!

The Netherlands is a great place to live. I live with my wonderful boyfriend - my soulmate, who is the sweetest man I ever met. The winters here are really cold, but in spring and summer there are many places to visit - Little farms, beautiful flower fields, beach holiday in other parts of Europe such as Italy and Greece. Love the fresh air! Morever I'm learning some Dutch, a little at a time. :)




I am now an international e-Sports reporter. Used to work with the British Company - 4Kings. Since this February, I work with a Danish company - MeetYourMakers. I work from my home in Netherlands. I have my own writing column in our company website where I write a few times a week. On top of that, I am often being sent to gaming tournaments all over the world to do reporting and coverage work.



Here's a list of tournaments and places I had been to the past 1.5 years:

KODE5 2006, September 2006, China - Beijing
Warcraft World War, October 2006, Korea - Seoul
SuperFight II, November 2006, Korea - Seoul
WC3L Season 10, January 2007, Germany - Cologne
Battlenet Season 4, January 2007, Germany - Cologne
SteelSeries Iron Lady, February 2007, China - Shanghai
Warcraft World War, February 2007, South Korea - Seoul
European Cyber Games, March 2007, Germany - Hannover
ESWC Dutch Qualifiers, 20th May 2007, Netherlands - Enschede
Battlenet S5 Europe Finals, 22nd -23rd June 2007, Germany - Hamburg
WC3L Season 11, 22nd -24th June, Germany - Hamburg
WCG Dutch Pre-Qualifiers, 1st July 2007, Netherlands - Delft
ESWC Global Finals, 5th-8th July, France - Paris
Stars War, 12-15th July, China - Shanghai
PGL Season 2, 17th - 26th July 2007, China - Beijing
W3 Summer Grand Prix, 28th-29th July 2007, South Korea - Seoul
Blizzcon, 3rd - 5th August, United States - California - Orange County
eStars, 11-12th August 2007, South Korea - Seoul
NGL-one Season 3, August 2007, Germany - Leipzig
WCG Dutch Finals, 30th August 2007, Netherlands - Rotterdam
Clanbase EuroCup, 8-9th September 2007, Netherlands - Enschede
WCG Grand Finals, 4th - 7th October 2007, United States - Seattle
IEST Tournament, 15th - 23th October 2007, China, Beijing
KODE5 Dutch Qualifiers, 27th-28th October - Netherlands - Enschede
MGC Tournament, 1st - 5th November 2007, China, Wuhan
DreamHack Winter, November 2007, Sweden - Jönköping
IEF 2007, December 2007, China - Wuhan
Intel Friday Night Game, January 2008, Germany - Cologne
NGL Season 4 Finals, February 2008, Germany - Berlin
Extreme Masters and Samsung Euro Championship, March 2008, Germany - Hannover

Tournament name, Country, City.

My boyfriend and I work in the same company, we are always sent away for working trips together, so I have no problem with having to travel often. He's a professional Warcraft III gamer. If you google or search on Youtube, his name is Manuel Schenkhuizen with the nickname "Grubby".

People/fans made a Wikipedia profile for him where you can read here: Manuel "Grubby" Schenkhuizen

Fans posted some of his video interviews and game play videos on YouTube as well. I play Warcraft III too, just not as well as him. :p In February 2007, I was invited to a female Warcraft III Tournament in Shanghai - SteelSeries Iron Lady, where I was placed 2nd - As you can see on the picture to right. :)

We enjoyed all our trips to China, I especially enjoyed shopping in the big Chinese supermarket, where we were able to buy lots of chinese spices and groceries back to Netherlands - where we can cook nice Chinese food at home!

We also visited the Great Wall of China in September 2006, which was a memorable experience. The Great Wall of China is the only structure you can see from outer space!


Here's a video made by ProGamers League tournament for us in Beijing:

PpG and Grubby at PGL



And this is my first self-made video:

Manuel and Cassandra in Der Große Garten in Hannover, Germany




It seems at the moment that the rest of March and April, it consists of only online tournaments for us. For the rest of the year, alot of tournaments don't have a fixed date yet. For now, those that are fixed are:

LAN events coming up:

KODE5 2008,11th May 2008, Russia - Moscow
Blizzard Worldwide Invitational, June 2008, France - Paris
Games Convention, 21st - 24th August, Germany - Leipzig
Electronic Sports World Cup 2008, 25th - 28th August 2008, United States - San Jose


Wow, we are going to Russia! I told my aunty about it, but she told me not to worry because Russia is opening up, and some parts are not communist anymore. She heard that there are tour groups going there, so it should be safe enough. So I guess it should be a pretty nice place to visit, except we would have to go apply for the visa very soon, as we do not know how long the process takes!

Well, that's the updates for now, too much to talk about since I didn't write for nearly a year. Take care all, hopefully, I'll visit Singapore soon!

Greets,
Cassandra

*Laugh as much as you breathe and love as long as you live.*

Recently..

Manuel just left to Korea for Blizzard Worldwide Invitationals this evening. Sent him to the tram station, and then i am all alone in Netherlands. Well.. i'm not really alone. Tomorrow Miranda's gonna bring me shopping in Utrecht, then in the evening Arthur's gonna cook dinner for us! :D Then on Saturday Manuel's mom gonna bring me out to visit some shops that sells second-hand stuffs, and also to look for a frame to frame up my cross-stitch(spent many many days on it.. :p). Not sure what's the plan on Sunday, but i'll most probably stay home, will be watching the BWI games and finals. And on Monday evening Manuel comes back! Luckily he would only be away for a long weekend.. more like 4 whole days.

Wonder if i can watch the BWI games online? WTV? or a certain website? Anyway this tournament isn't going to be easy as all eight players are so good. Namely, Sweet, Sky, Fov, Grubby, Remind, Tod, Moon and Nilk. It's single elimination, so once you lose to someone in a BO3, you are out. Hope Manuel does well!

Had my daily dose of -->"Freaky Factory" game in Neopets. Tried hard to beat my own high score but can't. My high score is 1654. Haha.. who can beat that? ^^ Just realised that i have more than 11 million neopoints now, that's pretty much! Then i played a few games of warcraft, met a certain german player whose first sentence to me is "lol fake ppg". I lost that game.. and i totally lost touch cos' i didn't play warcraft for so many weeks! :p

Been talking to my aunty on msn recently, she asked me why i didn't update my blog and she wanna see some pictures too. Didn't take alot of pictures recently, only some pictures and video clips of Charlize cos she can walk now! Soooo adorable!! And Manuel totally enjoyed his birthday, loves the presents i got for him and also all the other gifts from family members! He didn't want a party, and just want friends and family to visit throughout the day anytime they want. I cooked Tom Yam Macaroni soup for everyone! First visitor was grandma who came at noon. He had a clanwar in the evening too, won against NoA, so 4K advanced to the offline finals! Pro-gamers even need to work during their birthday! :D

Started read this book called "The Rule Of Four" - by Ian Caldwell & Dustin Thomason. It's a thriller, about two friends who found a breakthrough while researching on one of the rarest, most complex books in the world, the "Hypnerotomachia Poliphili"(This book is more than 500 years old). They suddenly found themselves in danger when a fellow researcher is murdered. Working desperately to expose the book's secret, they slowly uncover a Renaissance tale of passion and blood, a hidden crypt and a secret worth dying to protect.."

I'm still at the first chapter, but the opening seems pretty interesting so far! After reading all four of Dan Brown's books, and not reading thriller for so long, i guess i missed it all along. I still remember those days whereby i can't sleep just because the story is so exciting and i had to read till morning to finish the whole book before i finally drop dead on my bed and sleep till afternoon! It totally destroyed my sleeping times.. the power of such books. :p After Dan Brown's series, i had been reading other kinds of books, mostly non-fiction. Now i am going back to good old fiction books! So exciting!!

Revealing the first paragraph of the first chapter:
Strange thing, time. It weighs most on those who have it least. Nothing is lighter than being young with the world on your shoulders; it gives you a feeling of possibility so seductive, you know there must be something more important you could be doing than studying for exams.

I can see myself now, the night it all began..

And so.. the characters develops.. and the story unfolds.. i hope this is a good book!! :D

Manuel's mom went out for her singing lessons. So lonely tonight.. guess i gonna read in bed and have an early night then!

Going to Netherlands

I'm leaving the house for the airport in about 13 hour's time! Been busy packing for the past hour. Feeling so tired now. Got to sleep some soon, and when i wake up, i still have to run some errands, like collecting my driving license(I lost it more than a year ago, and i just had it replaced :p), doing some last minute shoppings, finishing up some stuffs, get my maid to help me cook nice hot sambal so i could bring it to Netherlands. :D My luggage is already full, so much things to bring!

Would be celebrating my boyfriend's birthday in a few day's time. I already shopped for his present in Singapore some weeks back(plus my aunty got him a birthday present too, which explains why i have so much to bring). Well, can't reveal any of our presents here, it has to remain a surprise till he opens it on the day itself! ^_^ She is also so sweet to buy 2kg of meat jerkies(we call it rou gan in mandarin or ba gua in hokkien), cos' my previous trip she bought it too, and my boyfriend and his family love it! It's more tasty than their kind of jerkies! I love my aunty!! (Had to say this since she would be checking my blog often! Haha just kidding! :p Truth is that i mean it~ :D)

We haven't done any planning on how to celebrate his birthday. But most probably we'll have two celebrations - to celebrate together, only two of us, and another celebration with his family~ Probably i'll cook and invite everyone over. :D

I hope i can survive the long flight there! It's been 1.5 months since we last saw each other! And it's the longest period of time that we didn't meet. Considering that the previous time, we lived together for 3.5 months - 24/7 sticking to each other like glue, we would think that we could survive 1.5 months apart. But still.. the first two weeks was so hard to bear..! We were going crazy! lol! (Previously the longest time we didn't meet was 1 month.) :( I can't wait to go back into my boyfriend's loving arms! *You too honey?* *wink wink* :D

It's spring/summer in Netherlands now, probably i'll get to see alot of flowers this time! Your mom told me that the flowers are in full bloom and it's so beautiful! I wanna visit a flower field too~~~~ (Gonna take pictures of lots of flowers!) Or honey, we can go to your mom's caravan by the beach to stay there together for one or two days! *fun and romantic* *wink wink* :D

Alright gonna rest some, gonna be a busy day today! Wish me safe trip!

Clubbing at Zouk

Last night it was Huiling's Birthday! Christine, Winnie, Huiling and me had a girl's night out at Zouk~ It was fun.. we drank Water-melon Martini, hang out and danced~ I reached there one hour later, and their faces were already red from the drinks! :D
Happy Birthday Huiling! ^_^

Through The Rain

I was in Australia last July.. and here's a beautiful sunset that i saw at "Murray's Lookout", it's on top of a hill with an amazing view!


I remember 2005 as a really bad year for me. 5 family members died that year, i had to go through four family funerals in 2005 alone. Me trying to get over a heartbreak for more than a year.. seeking serenity. It wasn't easy getting over your first love if it lasted 5 years. And me trying to sue a certain magazine for using my pictures without permission, i was under alot of pressure with life's issues and eventually gave up the pursuit. I had a hard time getting used to the big changes in my life. It was scary. When bad things happen to you again and again, you'll wonder.. why? You try and try.. and there are times when you don't feel like trying anymore. And you start to question the purpose of life. What on earth are we doing here?

It's ok to cry. Cry when you need to. Even when things don't work out, when things seem disastrous, when things can't be any worse, remember that they could only get better. Shut out those people who are trying to bring you down. Surround yourself with only people who are brave enough to love and care. Think about what's truly important to you in life. If it helps, imagine if you are dying tomorrow, who are the people you wish to spend your last day with? What would you wish you had or had not done? Have you made a difference in someone's life? Will people remember you when you are gone? If people remember you or misses you, then you will always live on in their memory, even when you are gone. If you had made a difference in someone's life, then your life had not been in vain.

2006 was a better year for me. During New Year's Day, i made a wish to God.. and pray that this would be a better year. Someone told me that if i dwell on the past for too long, i'll always be trapped in the past. I knew i was trapped in the past for too long, not wanting to let go of what's familiar to me. It was scary but also exciting to finally move on. So I was ready to leave 2005 behind me. I wanted get through this. I wanted to try out new things, to do some things for the first time, to live different, to think differently. I immmersed myself in work, travelling, hanging out with girlfriends, reading good books, anything to keep myself busy. It's all good therapy, to get yourself into a good mindset and ready to take on life's challenges again. The greatest highlight of 2006 was getting together with my current boyfriend. It was worth going through all those heartbreak and pain if it means you will eventually find someone so much better. Girls/guys, it's time to let go of unfaithful partners and cheaters. You deserve better. What goes around comes around anyway. You'll survive, trust me. "When one door closes, another one opens. Often you looked so hard and long at the closed door, that you don't see the one that has been opened for you Time is the best medicine. And what doesn't break you will make you stronger.

Here, i dedicate a song to all those who are going through rough patches in life. May you see your silver lining soon.

Through The Rain - Mariah Carey



When you get caught in the rain
With nowhere to run
When you’re distraught
And in pain without anyone


And you feel so far away
And you just can't find you way home
you can get there alone
it's okay
once you say


I can make it through the rain
I can stand up once again
On my own and I know
That I’m strong enough to mend
And every time I feel afraid
I hold tighter to my faith
And I live one more day
And I make it through the rain

And if you keep falling down
Don’t you dare give in
You will arise safe and sound
So keep pressing on steadfastly
And you’ll find what you need to prevail
Once you say

I can make it through the rain
I can stand up once again
On my own and I know
That I’m strong enough to mend
And every time I feel afraid
I hold tighter to my faith
And I live one more day
And I make it through the rain

And when the wind blows
And shadows grow close
Don’t be afraid
There’s nothing you can’t face
And should they tell you
You’ll never pull through
Don’t hesitate
Stand tall and say
Yeah yeah yeahhhh

I can make it through the rain
I can stand up once again
On my own and I know
That I’m strong enough to mend
And every time I feel afraid
I hold tighter to my faith
And I live one more day
And I make it through the rain

I can make it through the rain
Can stand up once again
And I'll live one more day, and I
I can make it through the rain
Oh yes, you can
You’re gonna make it through the rain.

Christmas Celebrations and Dates - End Dec2006

Manuel and i had a nice peaceful evening on Christmas Eve, we didn't go out to join in any count-downs or see fireworks. On the the first day of Christmas, mom made nice Christmas dinner! Taco was here too. Then Arthur and Miranda came by later.

Mom and Manuel at the table. Dinner for four. Wine to celebrate~! ^_^


Manuel and i infront of our Christmas tree. We didn't change yet, still in our sleepwear~ :p


Me and Taco at the dinner table~ He has broad shoulders!


So what's for dinner? Yumm.. nice smoked salmon, fish and shrimps! And so beautifully arranged! :)


Fried potatoes/Hashbrowns in different shapes~


Beans, carrots, mushrooms~


Mixed Salads(i love the homemade dressing!) and tomatoes, i forgot the name of the other veggie with cheese~


On the couch after Christmas dinner. Full and satisfied, face a little red from wine~ Picture taken by Arthur/Miranda who dropped by. :)



On the 2nd day of Christmas, Arthur and Miranda is so nice to host a 5-course dinner for us at their place!
Me and Manuel all dressed-up before leaving the house to go Arthur and Miranda's place~


We had a present-exchanging session. Too bad i didn't take pictures of the food because we were too busy eating! :p
That's Miranda, Mom and Grandma at the nicely set up table~ They even made cute little menus for everyone of us! So sweet and innovative!


Grandma, Taco, Jorrit and little Charlize~


Arthur and Miranda busy preparing our dinner~


Peek-a-boo!!


One of the days after Christmas and before New Year, Manuel brought me out on a date to a nice restaurant in Utrecht~ Recommended his brother i think~
And we took some pictures in the elevator because they got a nice mirror there~! So fun! :D


I miss this camera.. t.t I lost it in Germany, Hannover mid March.. *Sob sob*




While dining~




More pictures can be seen at this slideshow--> Christmas Celebrations & Dates - End Dec2006

A Day in Amsterdam City - Dec2006

Thanks to Manuel's Grandma and Jorrit(Manuel's big brother), for devoting this day to me, and brought me around in Amsterdam. It was really eye-opening for me to see the red-light district and also experience the Amsterdam culture and admire the old beautiful buildings. Well, so on this adventurous day, Grandma, Jorrit, little Charlize, me and Manuel went to Amsterdam City for some sight seeing. We even visit the famous Red-Light District! It was first time for both Manuel and me to be in this red-light district, so it was really intriguing for us. It was actually grandma's idea to go there as she said that the red-light district in Amsterdam is going to be demolished soon, so it would be nice for me to see it now.

The palace is one of the first places we visit~ It's where the royalty of Netherlands still lives~




Here's some sights of Amsterdam City:




This is such a beautiful sight~ :D




This is one of my favourite pictures~ It has a cultural feel to it~ :)


A big Christmas tree in the middle of the city, as Christmas Day is approaching! :D


My honey and me in the middle of Amsterdam city.. and lots of pigeons around us! hehe~


Me and little Charlize~ We even went shopping for a new warm coat for her! It looks like a bunny suit, she looks so adorable~!


Little Charlize experiencing Amsterdam~


Here's some sights of the famous Red-Light District:

There were kinky shops everywhere! :p


Selling all kinds of funny T-shirts too~ ^^
"Good girls go to Heaven, Bad girls to go Amsterdam"


As you can see, they sell all kinds of DVDs and even sex toys.. :p


Peepshow anyone? :p


Can you see him/her in the display window? It's a common sight there. There's nowhere like the red-light district in Amsterdam i guess.. ;)


Manuel and little Charlize~


Little Charlize with her sweet sweet smile!


Then we rested and ate some pancakes. Manuel had the pancake with apples and powdered sugar, and i had the pancake with banana and chocolate sauce~ Yumm.. it's heavenly~ :D


We walked around the shops for abit, and went into a bookshop. Most memorable encounter in the bookshop is to come across this funny joke book. One of the jokes is about Michael Jackson. We laughed sillily at it~ :p It goes like this:

[One day Michael Jackson's wife gave birth to a baby boy. Michael Jackson was concerned, so he asked the doctor:"Doctor, when do you think we can start to have sex?"
Doctor replies:"Well, at least wait till he can walk first."]

;D


Overall, Amsterdam is a nice and interesting place to visit, and i would recommend it to anyone who is thinking of where to travel next~ :)

For more pictures, view the slideshow from here:

Slideshow of ---> A Day in Amsterdam City and Red-Light District