Category: My Good Life

Categories
Diary

See I Told You So / A Geek for a Day

You can laugh at me, or awe at my supreme skill of anticipation (not!?).  But look, I’ve already told you so.  Skip the 1,400-word wall of text of my previous post and scroll to the third last paragraph.  Come back when you are done, OK?  Yep, I predicted how the American Idol would end.

OK.  I know geeks are not sexy.  People think that geeks come from a world so far from this that we geeks shall all be banished into the land of Geek’dom.  Look, I don’t get glued in front of a computer screen the whole day living in a garage eating sandwiches while typing, having ketchup and mustard drip onto the keyboard, my lap, and smelling bad from inside to out.  Although I still have a whole week worth of dirty mugs sitting inside my sink as we speak, that is for an entirely different reason.

So, what exactly do geeks do, you must be wondering.  Well, wonder no more because I am going to share with you the down right unglamorous details.  There will be no holding back minus off the geek language.  Tailored especially for you!

At least I will try.

Thursday 8.50am, I dropped Cynthia at the airport.  So once again, I have been granted the bachelor status.  And I have promised her to assemble a new personal computer for myself over the weekend so that she can take over my existing machine at home.  Not bad for an excuse to buy new toys, eh?

Spent the rest of the morning watching the American Idol finale’s result show, I skipped lunch – true to the spirit of a geek’ology – and did a last minute research of what components to get.  Let me tell you, shopping for a personal computer is like shopping for a wardrobe of clothes, a full rack of shoes, a complete makeup set and skin care products, in one day, that is supposed to last you for two years and more.  It’s no easy task.

There is one particular shop I love in Sim Lim that is unique from all others.  You know how it feels when you walk into a shop looking for some real good advice and the salespersons don’t even have 5% of what you have already known?  This dude sold me a beast!  After hours of waiting for the folks to assemble my new machine (I paid 15 bucks for parking so you can imagine), when I finally got to see my new baby, gosh!  She is my F-cup bitch!  The machine looks sizably larger but in an esthetic way.  She weighs a ton too!  Nearly broke my back to carry her home.

6.30pm I arrived home with my new toy.  The first thing I did was to clear the area and prepare a temporary headquarter for some serious business.  If Cynthia was to cut short her holiday, she would have been shocked at the state of the living room right now.  The dining table was pulled to the center of the room, wires running everywhere, screws everywhere, loose and unimportant items lying on the floor, and I even set up a lamp by the dinning table, much like having an operation table in the middle of the room.  I have also prepared a towel and a bucket of water to clean up all the dust and the dirt, the breadcrumbs and the pieces of salmon that got stuck inside the keyboard.

7pm, I have finally got to switch on my new bitch!  So quiet, the machine runs; such music to my ears.  Installing Vista into my new machine was a lot less horrifying that I thought.  Machines hate me but that is another story.  Time flies when you are living as a geek.  Before I knew it, time was 8.30pm and I needed to buy a new moveable computer table before the shops close at 10pm!  The one that has wheels at the bottom so that I can roll the machine from living room to bedroom, from kitchen to bathroom – truly live the dream of a blogger who blogs anytime, anywhere.  Even when I am taking a …

Drove like a mad man, I reached the Ikea megastore at Tampines at 9pm.  I ran like a mad man from Ikea to Courts and back to Ikea and I can almost picture myself inside the “Amazing Race” show.  Who design these megastores?!  All I needed was to visit the furniture section that is right before the cashier.  But no, I have to follow a predesigned trail zigzagging through various sections before I can check out what choices I have.  It is the same at Courts.  The tables are on the ground floor.  But I have to take an escalator from the ground floor up to the third floor, run from one end of the room to another, take an escalator down to the second floor, repeat, and then another escalator down until I hit ground floor – where I was minutes ago, outside the barriers.

9.45pm I found my new computer table, with the exact color that I wanted, that weighted 19kg enough to break my poor back one more time.  Time to eat but all the restaurants close at 9.30pm.  Huh?!  All megastores should be like Mustafa, 24 by 7.  I had fast food near my area and after a long and deserving shower, it’s round 2!

11pm, I continued to set up my new found love, which was not the hard part.  I was trying to revive my old love because I ripped one component from my current machine and put it into my new one. 

(Wait!  That scene is so much like the Adam’s Rib episode from the Book of Genesis!)

2am in the morning I couldn’t revive my old computer with some antique components that I still keep.  3am, still not working fully as I wanted her to be.  5am, I felt so sleepy.  Bits and pieces of my old flame started to fall apart due to my obsessive compulsive nature.  I kept taking parts out and putting them back into the machine in different orders.  What I did, did not make sense no more.  I became a robot.

In the wee hours, just before the first ray of sun beamed into my sanctuary of freaky geeky experiments, I have decided that so long as my old computer still works – perhaps not what she was used to be – I would rather put a stop at this insanity and move on.  My old machine was about to die on me, I swear.  And Cynthia won’t be happy about this.

The moral of the story, if any, is that we often spend so much time fixing the past with our old flames and more often than not, it is better and wiser to invest time with our new found love instead.  Time to get my hands onto my new F-cup bitch tonight!  Round 3!

To fellow geeks: You must have thought that I have sold out and become commercial.  Fear not!  The next post will be so full of geek’ology and details and I promise to get you jump off your chairs and go wow. 

Stay tuned!

Categories
Diary My Favorite

Mustafa – Every Mall Should Be Like This

My good friend Amie is leaving us this week and she asked if I could help her to transport this huge pan grill of, I assume, hers to home.  Sure, that’s what friends are for.  I often wonder what she does during the office lunch hours.  Had I know she grills meat all this while …

So she wanted to make a stop at Mustafa and buy something.  OK.  Cynthia’s not in town and I’d love to have a dinner partner.  Besides, it’s shopping!  How I LOVE shopping.  So I asked Amie how long she planned to stay at Mustafa.  Apparently, she is a regular resident there and knowing exactly what she wants, she said: 1 hour.  That’s all, I asked.  I really don’t mind to shop till the cow comes home.  Oh yes, I can be your best shopping partner.

Once I spun my car into the main street, guess who was I tailgating?  (OK, I exaggerated a bit.)  I recognized my movie buddy’s car plate!  So I stepped onto the accelerator, pulled up beside his car, gently tapped onto my car horn, and waved at him.  My buddy was so shocked that he didn’t even notice the pretty girl besides me.  Kekeke.  Evil me!

I am always fascinated by Mustafa and the area around Mustafa.  I was so enthusiastic that the waiter at Sakunthala took time to explain how I should eat my Tandoori chicken meal.  Eat with the first cup of curry first (spicy), and then eat with the second cup of soup (sour and salty), and last, eat with the third cup of watery yogurt (cool sour).  It worked!  I finished everything!  Delicious!  Amie laughed because I looked so much like a tourist.

How not to get excited by Mustafa?  Every mall should be like this.  The variety and the sheer quantity of what they are selling is enough to send a thrill down your spine!

First stop: pharmacy.  There are so many pills!  I read from the news that in America, they have discovered sex hormone amongst other prescription drugs inside the drinking water.  People take pills, people visit toilets, water get treated, water get passed back into the reservoir.

While waiting for Amie to do the things she did, I was staring at the tiny boxes of “Spanish Saffron”.  What the heck is saffron?!  Apparently saffron is a spice that is anti-carcinogenic (cancer-suppressing) and anti-mutagenic (mutation-preventing), amongst some other bizarre properties.  Saffron has a certain aroma and can be used to add a luminous yellow-orange coloring to foods.  Interesting, eh?

Next, we passed this huge machine and a guy said, “10 dollar per massage!”  Guess what?  It’s an aqua massage!  How strange.  You are supposed to lie on your back inside this capsule that covers your body with some waterproof blanket.  Then comes the jets of water that cover every inch of your body facing the sky.  Wow …

I found my childhood favorite soap Cussons Imperial Leather.  I seriously don’t recall seeing any of these in NTUC.  Maybe there are.  But I haven’t seen a ‘mountain’ of soap right before my eyes like the ones I saw in Mustafa.  Unfortunately I can’t buy just one piece.  And neither did my friend wish to share the cost.  Well, next …

There are weird brands of perfumes that (apparently from Paris) I have not heard of.  Like: “Do It”.  OK, that is my favorite motto at work and inside Mustafa, “Do It” is placed in a shelf together with all other ”˜sexy’ fragrance.  Uh-huh … maybe not.  Talking about sexiness, I was at the media section with walls and walls of DVDs and CDs – English, Hindu, and other languages.  There was this Indian DVD with a really sexy cover and a NC-16 sticker titled “Dance Attack”.  I guess it is a collection of music videos.  To earn a NC-16 sticker should mean that it has some really hot and steamy stuffs inside, right?  Maybe next time I shall return to Mustafa, alone … hehehe.

In fact, I was so enthusiastic and Amie asked: You came here before or not?  Ya, that one time.  But with a guide, it was a whole new experience.  There were model boats (nice!) that range from S$2.50 to around S$40 depending on size.  There were the whole bunch of Montblanc pens chucked inside a cheap display cabinet.  MONTBLANC pens!  The price tags go all the way to beyond a thousand bucks.  Cramped inside a cheap display cabinet!  Can you believe it?

I like the stationary section.  In fact, I wanted to buy some nice desk decorations for my family and friends.  OK, maybe it is a bit mushy ya?  I must have got Facebook overdosed and have a deep desire to send some real gifts to some real people for a change.  There is one with a very nice tag line: Dear friend, even if you go to hell, I am sure to follow you there.  But then again, I think, if my friends – touch wood – do go to hell, I am not too sure if I wish to follow.

Ha ha ha … technicality, technicality.

I said I didn’t know what Care Bears were and Amie said that I have no childhood.  I didn’t know that Frangipani is a flower and she was surprised (OK, I will read more books).  And when she held out a package named “Canopy” and I asked: What is a canopy?  She stared at me with her pair of big eyes and replied: You don’t know what canopy is?

I looked at the packaging and replied, “I know what canopy is (by looking at the picture) but I didn’t know what ‘canopy’ is (the English word)”.  She replied, “Some people use it for wedding, celebrations …”

Like a kid who just learned a new word, I repeated, “Canopy!”  Amie countered, “What cannot be?  People do use this for special occasions!”  “Canopy!”, somehow the word still fascinated me.  “It can be!” she reassured me.

Before we left this wonderful place called Mustafa where every 5 minutes there was an announcement asking a vehicle or motorbike to park somewhere else other than the disabled lot, my friend pointed at a long wooden stick and told me that Indians use that as a toothbrush.

“Cannot be!” I screamed (this time I really meant cannot be).  I took a mental note of the ingredient and after some research at home, I learned that Peelu is derived from the fibers of the Asian Peelu tree and for centuries, people have chewed its branches for preservative dental care.

*         *          *

You know, I really wanted to write a short blog entry tonight.  In fact, I planned to announce something else but that took a bit longer to complete than expected.  I think most readers may not have the stamina to digest every word I write and that is understandable because there are million other better things to do in the Internet such as Facebook, YouTube, and to visit the celebrity bloggers’ websites.  Maybe one day I shall master the art of writing just enough so as to suit a wider audience.

Meanwhile, to reward my loyal readers, here is one personal thought of mine to share with you.  Over the weekend, my NAD CD player that has been with me since 2000 has died on me (after I put one of my CDs on album and song repeat for the entire weekend).  I have not really appreciated this CD player of mine until I have to use my DVD player and HD DVD recorder as a music player.  The sound was so displeasing to my ears (too ‘bright’ and ear piercing) and all of a sudden, I do miss my inexpensive NAD CD player a lot.

Why didn’t I notice and appreciate the sound of my CD player till it broke down?  (To confirm that it’s not an illusion, this morning, my CD player sprang into action again and the sound is so much better.)

For days, one of the three fluorescent lamps in my bathroom stopped to work properly.  Hence for days, I was bathing in this ‘disco light’ ambiance and it hurt my eyes.  Not only that, I couldn’t kill those annoying flying flies as part of my daily ritual because of the light setting.  So tonight, I have decided to change the lamp.  All of a sudden, the room seemed so bright.  It seemed much brighter than any given day.  But the truth is, the room was not brighter than it was before that one lamp went into a disco mode.  Just that I did not notice how bright it was.

Why do we always take things for granted once we get used to what we have?

Time to give Cynthia a good hug when she comes back from her overseas business trip this week.

Categories
Travel Blog

Photos From My Petaling Jaya Road Trip – Of PJ Hilton, The Curve, And More

PJ Hilton

After my rather unexpected encounter with the Malaysian Custom, my next challenge was to locate “PJ Hilton”.  I had no clue how exactly to get there.  It’s been donkey years since I worked in Petaling Jaya and how the whole place has changed!  There are new flyovers, streets turned one-way, new shops spawned from nowhere, and already humongous shipping malls duplicate into twice the size.  This interesting satellite city of Kuala Lumpur has officially gained a city status just two years ago.

Photo captions from left to right: (1) A slice of Petaling Jaya, (2) PJ Hilton, (3) View from the hotel room

Truly a weird feeling not sure if some of you could relate, pieces of memory of the street layout that I was once so confident in negotiating from one street to another seems to have vanished in thin air.  I have zero recollection on where is where in PJ.  OK, I do have a vague idea that PJ Hilton is along the Federal Highway but how to get to the highway?

New Paris Restaurant and the Curve

Photo captions from left to right: (1) New Paris Restaurant at SS2, a must try! (2) interesting dish with champagne braised chicken that has a sour taste served with balls of water melon!  Say what?! (3) Finally, “The Curve” signboard after a 2 hours drive … the return trip was barely a half-an-hour trip.

Fortunately, what we humanly not possible to accomplish – in my case, the revival of my faded memory – technology made possible.  Nokia Map is a great tool, though I must say the screen size of my N95 is a tad too small.  It is pretty much like a computer game to me.  There is an icon marked as my destination.  And there is this blinking cursor telling me where I am via the global positioning system established between my tiny phone and the far away satellites above me.  All I need to do is keep driving till the blinking cursor coincide with the target icon – in theory.

The Curve at Petaling Jaya

Photo captions from left to right: (1) “The Curve” is a new shopping mall with little stores along the middle of the street, (2) TGI Friday!  I wonder if they will return to Singapore one day, (3) There is … Cineleisure at “The Curve”!

And because I do remember and know some of the landmarks and eating spots in PJ, finding them in my phone is relatively easy.  Getting there, took time.  At one point, after going round and round in circle and Cynthia and I were excited to see that our car was finally heading directly to the new shopping mall “The Curve” only to realize that it was a dead end blocked by another highway.

Also unexpectedly, I have decided to call up my good old friend Catherine and her husband whom I met back when I was working in Mauritius.  Their daughters are so cute!  And they have grown up so much.  Amazingly adorable they are.

My friend Catherine and her family at PJ

Categories
Diary

My Doctor Prescribed Nanotechnology Enabled Medicine For My Jaw

Flexogan

I couldn’t open my jaw.

OK.  I could.  But not without the strange bone cracking sound from within my skull, and the pain.  It started when I was in Malaysia and it didn’t bother much till I realized that I couldn’t really sing without being able to open my mouth wide.  And I couldn’t yawn properly during my rather tiring return trip on the Malaysian highway.  Took me forever to finish eating a sandwich.  When I told my friend JL my little problem, her response was: you were speeding on the highway with the window down and your mouth wide opened, izzit?

Ha ha ha.  Farny.

Since I woke up feeling sick, I was motivated to see my favorite neighborhood doctor whom his core competency is to give out medical certificates – and I hope to have my jaw fixed.

We were like long lost friend inside his consultation room because my last visit was on December 2006.  “So you’ve changed your job,” he asked.  I nodded and he told me that I looked more relaxed and less stressed.  Really?!  And I shall trust a doctor’s observation.

“What can I do for you today,” he asked.  I told him my jaw problem.  And I told him that I may be coming down with a flu.  He said he would give me some lotion to apply and some painkillers for my jaw and my flu.

At the counter, I stared at the lotion and it says: nanotechnology.  I was amazed!  Although nanotechnology is not new, its application to our commercial world is still at its infancy stage.  It will be years before those nanoscaled swarm of microscopic machines become a reality as depicted in Michael Crichton’s novel “Prey”.  When that time comes, I don’t know what the world would become.

My friend SF asked me out for lunch and she saw the tube of lotion.  She asked if I was OK.  I waved the tube in the air and said, “This, has enough nanorobots to keep me happy.”

“There is no nanorobot inside,” she laughed.

OK.  I know she is a bio-science graduate.  But still …

“Yes, there are,” I insisted.

“No, there isn’t,” she shook her head.

“Look,” I began.  “Look,” she interrupted.  I continued, “Look, there are things inside this tube that are manufactured, programmed to carry out a certain function, and they are super tiny.  Therefore, these are nanorobots.”

“They are not nanorobots!” she reinstated.

Whatever they have inside the tube, it doesn’t seem to work wonders.  It smells really bad (bad bad robots!) and I think the painkiller does the job just as good.  In the evening, the flu virus seemed to be ahead of my willpower by a nanometer so I have decided to take the non-drowsy flu medicine my favorite doctor prescribed.

At first I felt terrible.  Then I felt like puking.  My head was spinning.  I vaguely remember such an experience.  This morning I woke up, I did a search of “cough pills” in my own site and I found this post.  OK.  For future reference, my body doesn’t go well with Dextromethorphan (or Dexcophan).

Bad bad (+)-3-methoxy-17-methyl-9α,13α,14α-morphinan or whatever it is.

Related Entry: Cough Pills

Categories
Silly Me

The Stupid Things I Did At The Malaysian Custom

A supposed to be surprised MMS to Cynthia but the telecom network failed to deliver

You wouldn’t believe what I did at the Malaysian Custom last Friday.

When I was young and needed to travel overseas on my own, my dad always made sure that all the new items I carried across the border would have the original packaging removed.  Each and every item.  As I grow older, I deduce that if the items are for self use, it is OK to carry them over from one country to another.  Where does the line being drawn?  I have no clue.  I am sure travellers visit places overseas and buy souvenirs for friends.  Some are pretty big ticket items (like the Swiss watches).  Who would shop overseas and declare all their goods at the Custom and get themselves taxed?

Seriously?

Last Friday morning, as Cynthia left our home and headed to the airport, she smiled at me and said, “See you in Malaysia tonight!”  I smiled back and said, “No no no!  See you in Singapore next week!”.  The truth was, I did not give Cynthia a firm yes that I would drive all the way and visit her over the weekend.  Call it a semi-surprise visit or an internal struggle yet to be sorted out.  I hadn’t even packed my bag that early Friday morning.

I knew she has to work over the weekend and I have thousand and one things I could do in Singapore.  But then … why not make someone happy and besides, I always love a little adventure.  I had no idea where and how to get to PJ Hilton.

So I packed my bag in a hurry (still needed to go to work for half a day), brought along a new brainless book, grabbed my Spanish classical guitar, and … that should be enough to keep myself entertained.

Except, I had this sudden urge to attempt to write some songs during this road trip and I have stumbled upon a nice neat toy a while back that condenses the entire home recording studio into a hand-held device!  I just had to buy that before heading to Malaysia!

Fast forward to the Malaysian Custom, one friendly officer asked me to open the car boot and he pointed at my shopping bag and asked, “What is it inside?”

“Erm … it’s a recorder,” I replied gingerly and already cursing my own stupidity.

He took it out from my shopping bag and clearly had no idea what it was.  It is definitely not something you can commonly see in all good electronic stores.  Carrying with him my brand new toy, he consulted his group of officers (must be like 6 or 7 of them gathering by the desk … very intimidating!)

“You need a permit for this,” he smiled.

In any other given days, I would have loved his friendly smile.  I said, “I don’t understand.  It is just a recorder.  More like a MP3 player!”

“I know, I know!  Well, you will need a permit in order to bring this into Malaysia.  But I shall tax you instead.  It is much better that way,” he said.

“Tax me?!  But it is for my own use!” I gently protested.

“Do you have a receipt?” he asked.

Now, how stupid I was?!  I could have said: no, but I remember it cost 10 bucks.  Instead, I passed him the receipt.  He took out a calculator, punched in some numbers, and said, “The tax is 30% and that will be RM 175.”

I was nearly in tears!  I pleaded with him that I bought it just before lunch and I planned to use it to record my guitar this evening (I didn’t dare to show him my mint condition S$1,500 guitar at the back seat that has a receipt inside … the best place to keep a receipt is with the item itself, no?).  I even tried to strike up a conversation with him on music.  To tell you the truth, he must be the most sympathetic and friendly Malaysian Custom officer I have ever met.

After much deliberation with all sort of analogies I could think of (he was very patience too!), he did not bulge and kept telling me that he was just doing his job.  Reluctantly, I took out my wallet ready to hand him RM 175.  He was taken aback and said, “Don’t you want a receipt?  You have to pay the tax over there.”  He pointed at somewhere far.

That’s it.  I wasn’t going to walk!  It would be a walk of shame!  And I would be haunted by this stupid moment of mine for the rest of my life!  I counter suggested that I should just throw away the packaging right here right now.  He was shocked slightly and smile, “Sorry Sir, I have already seen the box!”

“But it doesn’t matter!  I will rip the box apart.  And you won’t see it again!  Besides, I wouldn’t be able to sell that in Malaysia right?” I insisted.  OK, my heart would bleed because I do keep all my toys inside the original packages all the time.  But between RM 175 and heart pain, I would choose the latter.

As I attempted to take the box from his hand, he stopped me and said, “Let me ask my supervisor.”

The supervisor looked really cold and stern.  Actually he did look very scary.  I was not sure if I could muster enough courage to face him.

The officer presented my case.  the supervisor kept quiet at first and then let out one command in Malay.  He didn’t even bother to look at me!  The officer returned and asked, “What passport are you holding?”

Huh?!  Now only you ask that from me?!

“Singaporean passport!” I held my breath.

“Next time, please don’t do that again,” he said.  I was in such a relief that I even shook his hands!

Gosh, isn’t that a bit out of proportion?!  30% tax?!  For something that I actually use.  Lesson learned.  Always listen to what daddy say.  He has more grey hair than me for a reason.

Categories
Diary Fantasy & Sci-fi Movie Reviews

Of The Spiderwick Chronicles, Shopping, And Wedding Dinner

The Spiderwick Chronicles

“I have nothing to wear,” I screamed in desperation.  “How about that blue shirt of yours?” Cynthia suggested.  No way I was going to wear that for a wedding dinner because I have already worn that on another one.  OK, don’t panic.  Simply hit the Orchard road and pick something.  The dinner was at 7.30pm.  I have just woken up from a nap because I had to get out of my bed at 4am to send my mom to the airport.  And while I was in Orchard, why not catch a movie?  My movie partner in crime TK tried to convince me to go for the 5.30pm show, I could go to the wedding dinner directly, and he would take care of Cynthia’s dinner and send her home.  Sounded like a good plan except … I needed to return home and iron the shirt that I was going to buy right before the wedding dinner (story continues after the movie review).  So Cynthia and I went for the 3.30pm show instead.

We have no expectation for “The Spiderwick Chronicles”.  I booked it because TK suggested it.  Based on a series of children’s books written by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black, the movie adopted 4 (out of 5) books from the chronicles.  Like I always say, good stories usually make good movies.  “The Spiderwick Chronicles” is quite a neat piece of work with clever plots and enough wonders to captivate.  We were so worried that it would turn out to be that children’s fantasy movie starring a nerdy boy wizard with a pair of out-of-fashion spectacles (yuck!).  It’s not.  And it does have some frightening scenes too.  More for mature kids I guess.

Some critics don’t like the film’s over reliance on special effect.  I think, until the day when magic does exist in this world and we could actually film it, special effect is the way to go.  I thought they have done a pretty good job on that (perhaps I am bias because I did study computer graphics).  The acting to me is average (compares to Bridge To Terabithia).  The storyline is not as complex – and perhaps less violence – than Pan’s Labyrinth.  “The Spiderwick Chronicles” does seem like a mix of “Jumanji”, “Panic Room”, and “King Kong” to me.  I swear, that griffin riding scene reminded me of the online game “World of Warcraft”.  My character rides that thing day in day out!

A movie that probably won’t wow you but has enough entertainment value to captivate you in this land of faeries, troll, and goblins.

Now, back to my crisis.  There aren’t that many men’s shops in Orchard as compares to the ladies and I have this path of ‘destruction’ starting from the Esprit near Cineleisure (which has been relocated), to Takashimaya, tunnel to Wisma, and ends at Topshop.  I wish I had more time for shopping!  In the end, I picked a simple, casual, and tight fit (erm … not that tight) white shirt and a skinny tie from Topshop.  We thought it would be fun to try something different and …

… OK, I think I have overdone that a bit for a wedding party.  But hey!  Who cares?!  And it is good to see so many familiar faces at my ex-colleague (now buddy of course) Anderson’s wedding dinner.  Almost like a mini reunion.  Surreal to say the least.  You see, my ex-workplace has such a high turnover rate that seeing each familiar face reminds me of a particular juncture in that shit hole of my career.  Some memories are fond, some are less so.

Anyway, it is a good party and good to catch up with some good friends whom I haven’t seen for a while.  The next wedding (from the same ex-workplace) is … a few weeks down the road.  And I think I am the MC … *gasp*!

Categories
Diary

Mom And I Braved The Rain To Scale Up Bukit Timah – Fungus, Lots Of Fungus

Bukit Timah: (1) shiny at the base of the hill, (2) rainy at the top, (3) the summit stone

It was all bright and shiny at the base of the hill when mom asked if she should bring along her little brolly.  Sure, why not.  It’s raining season in Singapore.  Back in where my mom lives, it is her favorite pastime to trek into some of the mountains with my dad in Hong Kong.  But there is no mountain in Singapore!  When I told her that we were climbing up a hill yesterday, her eyes lit up in disbelief.  There are mountains in Singapore, she asked.  Of course not, I answered.  Just that in Chinese language, there is no difference in the informal word usage of hill and mountain.

Bukit Timah is in fact rather low.  If you visit this little bump on a rather flat disc of Singaporean land with a high expectation, you will get disappointed as it is no Mount Kinabalu.  Having said that, if you take the little trails that go round the hill instead of the straight main road that leads to the summit, there are sufficient up and down slopes that can last for hours and make the trekking interesting.  We did just that and felt that we have climbed up the hill a couple of times.
Bukit Timah metal on the ground
It was the first time I actually led the expedition.  I normally go with my buddy KF the branding consultant and follow his lead blindly.  Starting from the base of the hill, I told the World War II story of how the British and the Japanese armies fought over this little hill of Bukit Timah and I showed my mom where the military cave was (I was trying to replicate what I’ve heard from KF, he is such a great storyteller).  Just when I told her that at times I could hear the gunfire from the military training camp nearby, the sky got dark, air pressure was dropping, and there was a helicopter hovered above where we were.  So dramatic!  And if that was not dramatic enough, I spotted a piece of metal on the ground (see picture on right) and just when I was about to give it a few kicks, my mom screamed, “Stop!  It could be a landmine!”  There is no landmines in Singapore, I laughed!  And she told me about her recent holiday trips to Vietnam and Cambodia.  I shrugged, gave the piece of metal a few kicks, and there was no ka-boom.  Now you know where I got my dramatic genes from.

Raindrop falling from the sky soon after we passed the cave.  There was still a long way to go and I was determined not to cut short our expedition.  The sky roared with thunders and my mom opened her brolly.  Somehow the thought of umbrella and lightning was not very comforting.  Maybe that was why I did not bring my golf umbrella with me.  The golf umbrella could be useful, my mom said.  And she told me that in Hong Kong, people bring along a long stick during trekking to wand off wandering snakes.  “Look ma, there are no landmines in Singapore, there are no snakes in Singapore too!” I retorted.  Right at the moment, inside the dark bushes nearby, I detected a movement.  I strained my eyes and it did not look like the usual squirrels that seem to be the only inhabitant of the hill.  It has a long slender body and I just could not make out if there were legs attached.  OK, let’s move on quick as the sky was falling!

I put my towel over my head and I was complete drenched.  Every cloud has a silver lining and for us, in this wet wet weather condition, we saw quite a number of fungus spawned from everywhere (see the pictures below).  Something that I haven’t got to see before.

Mushrooms in Bukit Timah Hill

Categories
Book Reviews Diary Fiction

Can You Keep A Secret?

Botanic Gardens With A Book

I was caught on camera smiling while reading a book at the Botanic Gardens last weekend.  How embarrassing!  I’ll get to that later.  Couple of months ago, I was also caught on camera as a school project – so I was told – while I was reading a book.  It was a lovely afternoon at the Botanic Gardens and I was either reading The Medici Effect or Brand Leadership when a young girl approached me and asked if she could take some pictures of me.  I was flattered of course and besides, if my mug shot can help someone to gain a grade A+ in her school project, why not?

Me: (nervously) What do I need to do?
Her: (smiled) Just read your book.
Me: (puzzled) Just read my book?
Her: (nodded) Yes, and I will take some pictures.
Me: Shall I face the camera?
Her: No, just read the book please.
Me: Okay, okay!

I was trying to strike an intellectual post given the rather intellectual book I was reading.  I mean, I couldn’t really look that entertained and relaxed with a non-fiction book, could I?  I acted as if I was in deep thought.  I imagined a sponge, a huge knowledge sponge, while giving her the most stylish post possible without looking as though I was trying too hard.  I swear, not a word from the book got into my head while I was photographed in all possible angles – front, behind, sideway – far and near.  At the end of the photo session, she thanked me, I wished her all the best for her school project, and I regretted for not asking what the title of the pictures would be.  “Bookworms can be sexy”?  “A rare find in the Botanic Gardens”?  “Future Singapore PMs are made of this”?

Last weekend, Cynthia the Paparazzi caught me on camera while I was reading Sophie Kinsella’s “Can You Keep a Secret”.  Okay, there you have it.  Chick-lit makes me smile.  I mean, it is not the most glamorous thing to say but Sophie Kinsella’s books are actually very entertaining, however forgettable the storylines are.  It is like, a secret indulgence, a breath of fresh air in the little mountain of serious books I read, a McDonald’s meal once in a blue moon.  If only chick-lit comes with covers that are less pink or bright blue, that would be perfect for me to read in public.

Can You Keep a Secret by Sophie KinsellaIf to replace the main character of “Can You Keep a Secret” with Rebecca from the Shopaholic series, the story would pass as one of the books from the same series.  Except that the center of focus of this book is “secret”, which I find it pretty interesting.  I am sure we all have our own set of secrets that are kept away from people around us however trivial they may be.  What if all relationships begin with honesty with no holding back of secrets?  Is it really a bad thing for your friends to know some of your secrets that concern them?  How should the line be drawn between lies that are deceitful and the withholding of the truth because the recipient is not ready for it (white lies)?  What if the whole world knows your secrets (like the main character in the book)?

One thing I know though is that those secret pictures behind the closed doors of the Hong Kong celebrities should be kept secret.  But that is another story.

Related Entries: Remember Me By Sophie Kinsella – A Calculated Risk That May Or May Not Work For Some, On Sophie Kinsella’s Shopaholic & Baby, and Undomestic Goddess – A Good Read

Categories
Diary My Favorite

It’s Scrabble Instead Of Mahjong

Scrabble on Chinese New Year

Don’t get me wrong.  I love the game of Mahjong.  Just that it is hard to find companions who are willing to play by score instead of money.  Play by score, you must be bewildered.  Yep, that was how we played the game of Mahjong back in my university days when students are (or were) still pure … and poor.

Now that my younger sister Lora has finally moved to Singapore and work and coincidentally I am not travelling during this period of time like I usually do, it was time for her first time ever visit to my home during Chinese New Year!  And to prepare for her (and her boyfriend Benny) grand arrival, I have to mobilize Cynthia and her mother to help cooking as well as to take care of the kitchen logistics.  I even set an alarm clock in the late afternoon to remind me to start preparing the dishes!

It was a piece of cake to entertain Benny.  I turned on my PC, showcased my new video card, and we were ooh and aah on the smoke, and fire, and water, and splashes of water on the game’s camera.  Geeks are the simple bunch to entertain.

Lora brought yet another new DVD production from my dad.  This time, my dad has converted some of our childhood photos into digital format and made it into a movie completed with Chinese music!  Erm … not sure if I was entirely thrilled to be honest.  You know how it feels when you see those pictures of your parents taken way before you were born and you go …. eeewww, so long time ago!  It was the same exact feel, except now it is the mini-me when I was still skinny, innocent, and … less handsome.  And we were watching these pictures of me, or rather us, in front of everybody.  OK, we had a good laugh.

But seriously, I do love my dad for making such a great effect in reliving our childhood and I am happy that I have such a great photographer as my dad.

My favorite part of the evening – besides chopping the steamed steamy chicken into pieces – was the group game activity.  In the house-of-not-many-choices, I asked Benny and Lora if they wanted to play Scrabble.  And they asked if I have other games.  We went through few other less attractive alternatives and I said, “Scrabble”.  Much like when I offer my guests drink and they would ask, “What drinks do you have?”  I would answer, “Water”.  They would ask, “What other drinks do you have?”  And I would answer, “Water”.

Since there were 5 of us, Benny and Lora formed one team, Cynthia and her mom formed another, and both teams were up against the almighty me, the king of Scrabble, the walking dictionary, the world champion … to-be, and the dude to beat.

The reality is … far from it.  I keep the score of every single game that has been played since the Christmas of 2000.  Last year, my friend TK – a buddy of mine whom till today I am still fighting for the worst-speller title with – beat both Cynthia and I with a score of 176, which by the way, I am still demanding a rematch.  In last night’s three-way competition, Benny and Lora has set a record score of 247!  That beat Cynthia’s record set in 2001 by 49 points when she was playing against her mom and I.  Cynthia and her mom took the 2nd place with a score of 196.  And the humble king of Scrabble took the last place with 187.

Yet another rematch crying out loud.

PS. Click onto the picture above to take a closer look at the game.

Categories
Silly Me

Plan B – Celebrating CNY In Singapore

NTUC at AMK Hub

OK.  Don’t panic.  It is not as though I have not celebrated Chinese New Year in Singapore before.  Like that one year I had to hunt for oranges at the very last minute after discovering that it is the tradition here to pass the oranges around.  Or that year … erm … to be honest, I don’t recall that many times I have spent the holiday in Singapore.  Last year, Cynthia and I were in Melbourne.  The year before we were in Hong Kong.  This year, since our plan A road trip to Malaysia doesn’t work out, time to execute plan B.

I pulled out a large piece of paper this morning and pondered what I needed to do next.  I wrote down: spring cleaning, red couplets (揮春) for decoration and good luck, and stocking up the refrigerator.  Since I have already done spring cleaning prior to Cynthia’s mother arrival, that is one headache off my list.  I stared at ‘red couplets’ and since Cynthia planned to visit Chinatown with her mother in the morning, I delegated this wonderful task to her.  Except she can’t read nor speak Chinese at all.

First, Cynthia sent me a picture of a rat in cartoon format via MMS and asked if I wanted it.  I repeated that I only wanted either one single character (I wrote the word 福 that means ‘luck’ to her beforehand) or pairs of 4 characters.  Then came the 2nd MMS with tons of red couplets.  Bingo!  Another headache’s down.

I was pretty relax over the last item until I started to hear from my friends at my workplace all the horror stories of last minute grocery shopping in Singapore.  No way I am going to starve myself over the CNY!  Besides, I so planned to make the best out of plan A and cook some delicious dishes for Cynthia and her mother.  I even planned to invite my sister over for the first time ever brother-and-sister bonding over CNY here in Singapore!  This is big, so big that I must have sounded pretty stressed up until my friend ST kept reminding me to relax and don’t get stress.

This afternoon, on the way to the-mother-of-all-NTUC at AMK Hub, I have literally converted my car into a war-room not unlike what the US President does inside Air Force One.  I was shouting out the name of the dishes into the air and Cynthia captured a list of what we needed to buy on a piece of paper.  It has to be a decisive strike.  We have to know our exact targets and we have to … like Bush once said … smoke them out!

AMK Hub was packed with last minute shoppers.  As I saw trolleys full of NTUC bags leaving the hypermarket, I couldn’t help but to think-out-loud: there goes my chicken! There goes my vegetable!  And there goes my …  I was thinking out so loud that Cynthia has to calm me down.  My breathing went deeper, my heart beat faster, my head went lighter, and into the war zone we entered.

Inside NTUC was a total chaos.  Shoppers were grabbing everything they saw.  I went to the meat rack and there were only a few packets left.  When the meat trolley came out, I couldn’t bother to look at the list that was composed back at Air Force One.  I didn’t even care what sort of meat it was.  It was either pork belly or pork chop or nothing.  In any given day, I would not consider either.  Today, we fought for survival.  I went to the poultry section and must have grabbed the last few chickens left in Singapore.  Cynthia asked why I bought two chickens.  I replied, “Don’t think, just grab.”  I was not the only one who was going crazy, everyone was going crazy.  The last time I was having this euphoric feeling was inside the factory outlets in US.  I was going crazy with my friend grabbing all the clothes we could see.  I saw live fish inside the tank and I asked for one.  The reply was, “Sorry Sir, this section is closed and we are unable to have the fish cleaned and gutted for you.  Do you still want one?”  I was stoned for a while with the scenes of me killing a fish running through my head again and again and I told Cynthia, “I know I can do it!”.  She reminded me that a live fish was not in our list.

I have bought a trolley full of stuffs that were not in our list!  Oh well, Cynthia was right.  We could do without a fish.

How could Cynthia be so calm?!