Category: Diary

First it was the auto winding down of my side window when my Honda Civic detects an obstruction while winding up (please don’t ask me how it happened). Then it was the child lock that took me a while to figure out why my passengers could not get out of my car time and time again (fine, my last car Corolla did not have that feature). And when I realised that the volume of my car stereo automatically adjusts the music volume on its own [according to the car speed], I thought it was a malfunction and I nearly took my car back to the workshop (I read the manual later on and confirmed that it is one of the features).

Today, Singapore rained all day. And I was out at the military camp getting in and out of my car zillion times. Though I have my golf umbrella, I was soaking wet from head to toe. The outside temperature as indicated in my dashboard was 25-degree and what the heck, I set the climate control temperature of my air conditioner to 28-degree and guess what? There was nice warm air blowing out from the vents! I did not know that my car can blow both cool as well as warm air. Pretty amazing.

PS. What’s wrong with Singapore weather these days? As I am writing this blog, it is still pouring outside.

I have this sudden urge to get some new cables for my home studio and so I text one of Cynthia’s colleague Alex for help. He recommended one of the shops at Sim Lim Tower. And what better way to spend my lunch time at a fish soup store nearby that is so famous that you can easily find 20 to 30 people queuing wanting the S$5 or S$7 fish soup? When my taxi drive told me that that store charges extra for chili sauce, I didn’t believe. And yes, they do charge for extra chili sauce, extra vegetable and what not. Of course, no takeaway is allowed.

And by the way, it took me a while to direct my taxi driver to reach this hawker center. It is right next to the New World Centre.

I ordered a S$7 white fish soup instead of S$5 and gosh, I wish I have order the S$5 one instead. It was a lot! The fish meat tasted very fresh and the chili source is very spicy. So please be mindful if you are not a big fan of chili source.

While I am still puzzled over if the fish soup is really better than the one at Amoy Street (very debatable), I managed to get those cables as recommended by Alex. And gosh, those cables are good. My guitar sounds with greater clarity and much lesser noise. My two cables cost me S$54 and I am sure they worth every cent!

Ideas are dangerous. Not long ago, my band-mate Jason suggested that I shall start recording all the songs that I have written since 95 and make it a historical compilation. If I am to spend just 1 hour to record each song, that would be a 150 man-hours little project of mine. Truth been told, last night took me about 4 hours to record the first 3 songs. It is actually quite a lot of work. I need to readjust the key, drop the parts that I don’t like, rewrite the chorus, rewrite some of the lyrics so that I can, believe it or not, breath in between the sentences, and on top of that, I have to record each song in a state that at least it is pleasing to the ears.

I joked to Jason that if I am to produce songs faster than I record my own songs in this “historical compilation”, I may never get to finish this project in my lifetime.

PS. Photo taken in one of the restaurants in Orchard … a lovely picture as the wallpaper for mobile phones.

Avid readers of this site (and my close friends) know that despite the fact that I graduated with a Computer Science and Engineering degree, my computer at home just hates me. In the latest twist of episode, it just exploded on me tripping the fuse box of my very home – two counts. As I disseminated this unfortunate yet scary events to my friends, the common reactions from the guys were to discuss the “why” question (Mark messaged me with a question: Did you take a photo?). Girls were more empathetic. It was after all a scary event especially when I was home alone.

I sent my PC for repair the very next day and spent S$200 (S$30 for service fee) to replace my defunct Power Supply Unit with a top of line component. Fortunately, the expensive stuffs inside the PC are all safe and sound. The technician did warn me about what may happen … that stuffs inside may be fried.

These couple of days increasingly I have become more restless. I sense another transition in my life. As I was trying to articulate to my buddy AT, I seemed to have gained some clarity. I thought I was trying to wait for some memorable events to happen to my life. But in fact, I am waiting for some signs to prompt me for some action to “create” these memorable events.

I know it sounds complex but I am in this constant frustration, lost, and confusion trying to anticipate for something that I can’t even see nor feel. It is affecting my daily life. No kidding.

Strange huh?

PS. My new car reached the mileage of exactly 10,000 km when I reached home. Hmmm …

When I first took up the housing loan from ABN Amro, the branch was at a landmark location just opposite Stanchart Bank at the CBD area. Since then, ABN Amro has moved into one of the floors at that building opposite Golden Shoe car-park to recently I found out, One Raffles Quay (ORD). ORD is resided in the area that the government has earmarked as the new extension of the CBD. ORD is also where my new office will be come this December.

I entered ORD via a brand new underpass. The new building is pretty impressive. I have to exchange my IC for an electronic pass in order to get through the gates placed just outside the elevators. ABN Amro has a special counter just to help customers to change passes (which is sort of inconvenience if you were to ask me).

I chatted with some of the staffs from ABN Amro and I realised that they don’t really like the new building. I wonder why. Perhaps it is further away from the food outlets and the MRT station?

Yesterday, in the middle of the day, Cynthia screamed, “Look, it’s snowing!”. I was playing computer game when suddenly I heard the howling of wind through the gaps of my door. The raindrops were so heavy that they did look like ice. Coupled with the strong wind, seeing the granularity of the rain swirled downwards was quite a scene. I took some pictures using my phone.

… and a close up …

Back to the main story. Cynthia and I traveled to Jurong (West of Singapore) to attend the birthday lunch of my Godmother. And over there, we have met the aunt of one of the Singapore Idol’s contestant Paul Twohill. This aunt of Paul is really a super-aunt-fan-club-leader and she passionately shared with us the details of Singapore Idol.

(Cynthia in red dress and Paul’s aunt in white jacket … she really does look a bit like Paul, ya?)

Anyway, talking about Singapore Idol, some friends of mine knew that I have got all the prediction of the results correct from Rahimah onwards (that is 6 correct guesses so far as I usually announce my guess on Wednesday). Between Hady and Jon, it is a hard choice and have to see the performance of the final. According to Paul’s aunt, Jon was handpicked by some of the judges (or organizers?) to participate the competition and Hady’s boss (a rich guy who own this big club) is going to pump in S$100,000 to buy the votes. Quite some kind of conspiracy theories.

Oh, Cynthia and I am invited to Paul Twohill’s private party in November (school holiday supposingly) and Paul will sing during the party. Well, it is as though over lunch, Cynthia and I became a new fan of Paul. Reality is that I did vote for Paul during the very first round while Cynthia did vote for him the episode before Paul was eliminated. That was all the “support” we gave.

Had I not lunched with my cool friend next door, I would have missed a great opportunity to attend to a pretty high level meeting. I don’t normally blog about work at all but this one is a more inspiring one for me at the personal level.
I will save the story of our lunch for later. Upon returned to office at 1pm (pretty rare for me as I usually take a more leisure approach if you know what I mean), my partner dragged me into a meeting that I had no idea what it was about. Before I knew it, I was driven in her S-class Mercedes to HP and met the top guns from HP as well as a 3-Star General (and a 1-Star too). In my course of work, I have not met anyone beyond 1-Star so it was a big deal to me. The Managing Director of HP as well as the Asia Pacific Japan MD are both ladies. They are both very charismatic and articulated, especially the APJ MD. Just listening to them sharing their experiences made the trip worthwhile.

Then we traveled to SingTel and met the CEO and his team. A totally different feel and it was very business like. And the top floor of SingTel’s Comcenter has a great view of Singapore.

Now, back to my lunch with this cool friend JD (his picture below). I met him during the training at British Council. JD is a Vietnamese who works in Singapore for a couple of years and he took me to this wonderful Vietnamese restaurant just behind Boat Quay.

I let him made the order and the food was delicious. We had two starters and the main course was a dry beef noodle with soup that has a raw egg! He scoped the egg up and took it down in one gulp. I was like … oh wow … you do that?! And I followed suit.

And to round up to story, I can’t help but to post the picture I have taken on the way to lunch.