Category: My Good Life

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.

A day of ups and downs …

An old friend of mine called me up for lunch and he brought another old friend of ours. They have decided to dine at New York New York and there we were, seated around a small table not unlike the movie setting of the three MoD (Mob of Death) in “Thank You for Smoking”. Except that I am now no longer in their industry anymore. And throughout the meal, the topics were all about what money can buy and how much more money they want. I guess moving into the non-profit industry does open up my horizon in a sense that there is a bigger picture out there whereby people are not only motivated by money such as national defense and nation building just to name a few. One down.

New York New York took over Nooch (that took over half of HMV at Citylink) and I thought the Western food concept must have worked better than Asian noodle. There seems to be quite a crowd. To cut a long story short (so that you can skip to the next paragraph), I will not go back there again. The service was bad as most of the servers cannot speak English (I joked that this is not Beijing Beijing). The servicing is slow (from food to bill). And the burger was the worst burger I have ever eaten in my life. The meat was soggy and tasted nowhere near to beef. The bread was soaked in butter. Just bad. One down.

Round the corner, I visited HMV, my favorite music store in town. Found Iron Maiden’s new CD and I was overjoyed. I listened to the first song and I fell in love with it. Then I walked around and found Tata Young’s new CD (she is from Thailand). I looked at the front cover and I was really tempted to take one home. THOSE LEGS! (see picture below) I did some serious sampling and concluded that if I was to buy that CD, it would have been for the cover. Some songs are nice. Most of them are pretty bad. So I just grabbed the Iron Maiden CD. One up.

Have you ever been inside a meeting room full of executives and you think to yourself, hmmm, perhaps this meeting could have been done in 10 minutes and why do we all have to sit for hours? One down.

Tuesday is usually the day when Cynthia, TK, and myself get together for a movie and a nice dinner. TK was not free so Cynthia decided to dine at Rice Table and do some shopping at Orchard. To those who are new to Rice Table, they serve Indonesian food in a sampling style. Upon arrival, they will bring along 14 dishes with rice and soup. We used to love the place. It is still hard to get a seat inside as booking is always required. Today we tried the food and the standard has gone down. I don’t think I will go back there again. One down.

I am impressed that Cynthia, who are not into high end cosmetic products, actually know more about SK-II than me. Okay. I confess. The only thing I know about SK-II is that it is an expensive but popular skincare brand. She told me that SK-II has Miracle Water. “Miracle Water? Ya right!” was my reply. And behold … one moment I was teasing Cynthia about Miracle Water, another moment, a rather decent looking beautician – fair skin with big eyes – was pouring Miracle Water onto Cynthia’s hand. I saw no miracle but I was too mesmerized by the ritual that I have totally forgotten that. While Cynthia has gotten herself some SK-II stuffs, I did some window shopping myself and decided on getting either Polo’s Black, Armani’s Code, or Dior’s High Energy, or all of the above the next time I transit Changi Airport (which is very soon). For such a happy shopping experience, one up.

Cynthia asked me if I wish to join one of her colleague’s farewell dinner. This guy is a cool dude so I gladly said yes. And there I was, dining with one of the International consulting firms. Gosh, how I missed that sort of environment compares to where I am now – more of a local setting. All the beautiful people with interesting stories. Too bad, my phone ran out of battery. Otherwise I would have taken some cool pictures as testimony. Let me recall … we have the front desk receptionist (*cough*), a Chinese lady from the US office (oh how I love those LA stories), a friendly India lady, a Chinese guy who grew up in Holland and we clicked immediately when it comes to music, a dude who plays violin, Cynthia’s boss (hmmm), and the dude who is leaving the firm and becoming a brand strategy consultant. A brand strategy consultant? What’s that?

All in all, a lovely evening. Cynthia paid for my share and I had 2 pints of beer with all these beautiful and interesting people from around the world. What more could I ask for?

Since I was going to have a jamming session at my home, it was unsightly for my guests to see the stacks of magazines, piles and piles of CD, opened and unopened letters, and miscellaneous junks on the coffee table, on the sofa, on the dinning table, and on the floor. All the possible places where I could hide all my junks were all full. I even have boxes of junks outside and inside my home.
I was pretty ambitious on Tuesday night wanting to spring clean all my cabinets from toilet, to bedrooms, to living room, to kitchen, and to storeroom. In the end, Cynthia and I only managed to clear one side of the wardrobe in our common bedroom (there were no clothes inside) and the TV cabinets. We ferried the junks from our home to the trash container downstairs and with multiple trips, we managed to nearly fill up the entire container. I mean, the container is not small at all. It is amazing how much junks we collect over the years. On the bright side, we have uncovered money notes of various nationalities including 100 American dollar bills!

More to come I guess.

I don’t remember buying roasted meat in my life for the dinner that I cook. Well, when I was back in Hong Kong, my mother used to ask me to go downstairs and get some roasted meat but I never cook anything back in Hong Kong. Last week, ran out of idea what to cook, I wanted to try something new. I thought of duck, I thought of porridge. So duck porridge it shall be.
Since I have not bought any roasted meat in Singapore before, I really did not know how much it cost. I always thought that it is expensive. Perhaps S$40 to S$60 per whole duck. Although the roasted meat seller and I conversed in different dialects, I gathered that half a duck only cost … S$11.20! I have no idea if it is a reasonable price but S$11.20 sounds … cheaper than what I thought!

Then I was thinking, perhaps I shall use duck neck to cook with the porridge and not to waste all those seemed to be tasty duck meat. I asked how much the duck neck cost and in a different dialect, the seller answered S$0.50 per piece. Ouch! That sounded expensive!

The seller asked me how many pieces of duck neck do I want (in dialect) and I answered, “Erm … how many do I need (bear in mind that each piece is S$0.50) for making duck porridge?” He frowned and hesitated and just when I was about to answer “four please (that will be S$2)”, the seller held out 2 whole pieces of duck neck (that came with heads) and said, “That’s all I have and probably not enough for duck porridge.” I was like, “Erm … that looks good. I will take both please”. S$0.50 for a whole piece of duck neck with head? That is just so … reasonable!

The roasted duck meat was really good, probably one of the best I have tasted in Singapore. The stall resides in one of the HDB blocks off Boundary Road. I guess they use quite a fair bit of red dye though because my porridge looked a bit … erm … reddish.

At times, I would call in one of my usual restaurants and order dinner. And at times, I would pay a visit to the mini-mart besides the restaurant to grab some beers. Last week I bumped onto Gayles on the following day after she was voted out of the Singapore Idol. At first I was wondering why this girl took so long to make payment via NETS (she was with 2 young kids and a friend of hers). When she turned around, I was petrified. Okay, she is not exactly a celebrity as per se. But still, she was on TV and I have voted for her episode after episode.

Inspired by how John Maxwell defines charisma, I tried to get the people around me to talk about themselves more. So this guy making my Latte asked me if I was a local (my accent gave it away?) and I got him to tell me more about coffee. Well, did you know that Latte is created at 75 degree – the optimal temperature for making coffee? Ha!

Today while I pumped petrol, this attendant talked to me in Mandarin and I was trying to talk to him in English. After a while, I gave up and talked in Cantonese. Turned out that his Cantonese is better than his Mandarin (not sure if I can say the same about my Cantonese). So he talked non-stop. I learned that both Mobil petrol station and the one opposite the road, Exxon, are owned by the same (erm … unpleasant) boss. A petrol attendant’s job scope includes cleaning of the actual petrol pumping station, cleaning of the mini-store, as well as the toilets. Anyway, another attendant pulled him away before he could tell me more. Perhaps next time.

I have always known that deep inside, I don’t want to be anything else but a consultant. Our morning meeting at the client site finished early (11am) and our next meeting was after lunch (2pm). We tried to bring the meeting forward but the interviewee was out-of-office. So, I have decided to take my team to lunch at Sentosa, the island resort, instead.

It was a bright and sunny day and I proposed to first have a drink at the bar (picture on top) and then drive to the “ferry” to have Mexican food (picture on bottom left) for lunch. After our wonderful meal (considering a S$10 lunch …), I suddenly saw this bright orange monorail train zoom passed us (objects seems to move a lot faster when near). I waited till it made its return trip to take a picture using my phone (bottom right). It is on testing stage and here you are. First look at what the new Sentosa offers.

I met up with my good old friend of 10 years RC and he suggested having hawker food at Amoy Street (pretty rare of him as our favorite lunch outings are usually some fancy places such as … erm … Hooters). After our meal, RC needed my company to visit MayBank for the refinancing of his housing loan. I pondered for a while and heck, I need to refinance my loan too.

MayBank is famous for its low interest rate but also notorious for its customer service department. Since both RC and I needed to inquire about the same thing, we took one queue number and waited, and waited, and waited, and waited what seemed like an eternity (30 minutes does seems like an eternity during office hours). Finally our number was flashed and we matched to the counter.

The young, attractive, and pleasant looking relationship manager greeted us and I told her that we wished to inquire about housing loan. I knew how weird it must have sounded (since RC and I don’t look like blood brothers) and I reassured her that we are looking at two properties here – one for my friend and one for me. She laughed and asked if we knew what she was thinking. Oh well. Put RC and I together and a conversation is sure to be lively.

Towards the end of our lively inquiry, she asked if any of us worked in a bank so that we can get a better interest rate. I replied no and RC replied likewise and both of us made some jokes out of it. In the mist of the laughter, she casually said that we could marry one instead. Now, I was wearing my wedding band and RC didn’t … so … erm … lucky man he is?

As I walked out of MayBank, I commented to RC that our relationship manager is pretty. RC’s reply was that she is too thin. I starred back at him and asked what is wrong with thin people (well, I am certainly not fat).

Perhaps the title should be “I met this pretty relationship manager from MayBank but RC found her too thin”. (Damn you RC, thin people can be attractive too! Hahaha!)

Wow … I am an inspiration to my little sis (been reading her site)? Well, I really don’t think I write well. Just some random dumping of my thoughts and ideas. I really think that my sister should write a book on Christianity (yes, she submits articles to her Christian church’s publication).

Lora, da dudette and my little sis, I am proud of you and keep up the good work in your website!.

PS. Her website can be reached from one of the links on the left: Lora’s Blog.

Though Benny lives just with jogging (read: not walking) distance from me, we hardly see each other. Anyway, he belongs to my list of good-friends-whom-you-see-once-in-a-year category. This time round, I took him to have ice-cream. I swear as I listen to his experience in his full time trading, I so want to write a book for the notice and layman like myself.

I did not know that we have a cat in our condo that likes to rest on car’s bonnets. I wonder if she does the same to my car as I have seen her for a couple of days. The cat must be from the land properties behind our condo.