I went back home for lunch today

I went back to the coffee shop near my oldhome for lunch today.

To my own surprise, I could still recall the faces of the stall owners. To my greater surprise, they had not shifted nor retired after 4 years. Those stall owners had been working there since I was a little boy. One rarely sees hawkers working for so many years without having to shift or close down, at least that’s how I feel.

The scenes which appeared before my eyes as I walked towards the coffee shop reminded of the days when I used to walk home from the nearby bus stop. Treading through the footsteps of my (much earlier) youth was like wandering through a dream – I almost couldn’t tell whether I was walking or drifting.

Many changes have taken place since I moved away from here. Some of the old shop houses were knocked down and the entire area replaced with an empty field, while new flats sprung up in previously vacant plots of land. I tried to recall what each view used to look like back then as I walked along a deserted lane, a lane that was never devoid of people as far as my memory served.

A playground filled with noisy children, empty benches that were always occupied by some elderly folk, dilapidated shops which still see owners keeping their cash in high hanging buckets, vanished into the air. Just like the way it happens in dramas.

As I tucked into my lunch, I stared at the all too familiar Pandan Reservoir and the ever-busy West Coast Road, wondering if the water in the reservoir still glitters as brightly under the rosy setting sun, if the sky still turns into a lovely purple hue upon the approach of dusk, if loving couples, and happy families still stroll around the reservoir while taking in the charming beauty of the surroundings.

I wonder if I’ll float back in time if I were to stand atop the walls that form the reservoir once again.

My super belated 25th birthday present

Number 1

I only just got it last night when I went out with my year 1 course-mates in NUS: a bottle of Harley Davidson perfume.

That makes the 4th bottle in my collection.

Christopher said it must be because I had body odour. Do I? REALLY??!! Kara, the one who chose this present, said it's to help me attract more girls. Am I that unattractive? REALLY??!!

Nevermind. I don't want to hear the answers.

I'm not the type that has the habit of putting on perfume (which explains why the collection is growing, and perhaps also because it's too hard to choose a present for me.....or maybe it's just because I really stink), so I shall just keep them around for display.




Arranged according to size so that they appear nicely on the photo. The tiny little green bottle is actually a sample that I had gotten from somewhere (can't recall)


I do use them occasionally. But their main purpose shall serve as display items on my shelf.


Number 2



Yes! I finally own a copy of the book that so many have told me about!


I'm not really fussy about what presents I receive. After all, receiving presents is already a happy event itself, but this book is something that I really would like to have. Most of all, that bookmark (the one with my name on it), probably took at least a day to cut and trim, so I must mention special thanks to Sherry and Guojian.

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Though it may seem weird to receive presents so long after my actual birthday, I think it feels more so to be the one holding onto the presents for too long.

They never fail to remind you...

A financial advisor came over to my place earlier this afternoon to meet my mom regarding her investments and savings. In her twenties, she is a tall (for a Singaporean female), slim, well-dressed lady with pleasant voice and features. And also a good choice for dating too, if MY MOM might add.

After the meeting, Jasmine (the financial advisor) left and we had our lunch. The following conversation ensued:


Mom (casually): What do you think of Jasmine?

Me (alert sensors all over sounded their sirens) : Huh?

Mom: Do you think she's a nice girl?

Me (maximum alert status by now): She's ok.

Mom: How old do you think she is? About your age?

Me ('operationally ready'): I think so.

Mom: As long as you feel that she's ok, you can try dating her...

Me (state of emergency declared): You shouldn't talk too much while eating. It's bad for health.


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That's not all. Last night, Christopher was probing into my social life. Or rather, the "other half" aspect of my social life. Probed left right up down front back until he realised that he wasn't able to get anything at all out of me and he finally gave up.

I wonder whose turn will be it to ask similar questions when I meet NUSSDU gang for dinner later.....

My first office hour blog

I’m due for an interview at Carrier Singapore today. Just got to know about it from one of the HR personnel this morning when I took the company transport to work with her. It’s going to be another of those inform-you-in-the-morning-and-expect-you-to-be-ready-by-afternoon interviews. Very bad sense of déjà vu.

Over lunch with my colleagues today, 2 of them - who are from the HR department – ‘prepared’ me for my interview later (due at 4.30 pm) with the General Manager of the service department by shooting me with questions. Can’t even have my lunch in peace these days.

Ok, I’m kidding. They were just giving me some moral boosting and tips on handling the interview. I feel that I’ve been for enough interviews to know what kind of questions will be thrown at me. The question is how I’m going to answer them.
Shall I put up a good show by saying things like “Although my record shows nothing about me possessing any leadership skills, it doesn’t prove that I can’t be a leader. What I need is a chance to prove myself and only you can give it to me…(etc etc)”. Or should I be (extremely) honest and say “My greatest interest lies in design, but I’m willing to explore new fields and working as a field service engineer offers me an excellent exposure… (etc etc)”.

One of the HR staff, who is also my mom’s friend (by no coincidence), suggested that I surf the company website to get a better idea of the company’s info. Right now, I’m just too brain dead to do anything.

Have to get ready now. Still as lost as ever.....




************ * ADD-ON *
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Interviewed postponed to thye coming Monday, tentatively. Oh well, I've already been warned (and also seen for myself) that things take a long time to get done around here.

Tempie Teng once more

I had wanted to blog last night, but was too tired to do so.

It's the 3rd day of my temp job at Carrier Singapore, as an admin assistant in the Purchasing and Logisitics Department (PLD), today. Somehow, I felt as though I was working in a logistics company, at the rate they keep track of the shipment of goods and the amount of paperwork involved. Including the purchasing admin, my job scope required 4 A4 sized paper to be described in detail.

So far, Mary used up 3 pages and she hasn't finished writing down everything that I have to do. Oh by the way, Mary is the person whose job I'll be taking over. A rather cute (character-wise) girl who just graduated this year as well, she left this job so that she has more time and energy to look for a permanent job.

What can I say?

Anyway, Mary has been trying pretty hard for the past 3 days teaching me as much as possible (including how to apply for leave). Sorry to say, a brain that has been dormant for so many months can't pick things up quickly. As a result, she had to repeat herself several times.

She gave me a look as though I was a lousy and unattentive student. Hey, give me a break. I'm only human, not a robot. How can I possibly be absorbing and storing information non-stop for the whole day?

No, she wasn't bullying me. In fact, my colleagues are rather nice people. According to Mary, the advantage of a guys working in an admin department is that such departments are mostly taken up by females and guys would be 'more well favoured'. I don't know how accurate her theory is. Maybe I'll find out in due time.

老婆饼

The very first 老婆饼 that I ate was the authentic, made-in-Hong Kong one. A friend, who is a Hong Konger, that I got to know of during my first year in NUS went back to her hometown during one of the semester breaks and bought some back for us to try.

I loved it ever since.

Thus, when Erin told me she was going to Hong Kong for a short holiday last July, I quickly seized the opportunity to ask her to buy a box of 老婆饼 for me. I happily finished up the whole lot of it during my internship.

My third chance to eat Hong Kong made 老婆饼 came last week when Ru-Tian told me she was going there for a holiday. Maybe it's my misconception, but I feel that locally made 老婆饼 can never be compared with those made in Hong Kong.

All 3 brands of the 老婆饼 mentioned above were different, though they were the more famous brands. I still felt that the first one I tried was the best of all, despite that any recollection of it is now hazy after four and a half years. Can't put it down in words why it's better. Perhaps it's the feeling it gave me: 很有老婆的感觉.

Going to end this entry with a quote from one of my cousin's MSN nick:

你说牛肉面里一定有牛肉，那老婆饼里是不是一定要有老婆?

PS: Goodness knows where he came up with this...

And so, I came out from hiding...

...and went to Settlers Cafe on Sunday.

I went with my fellow KPunks, only this time we didn't play punk. We played board games and card games. Since we were no longer students, we had to go for other packages. After much consideration (we took a couple of hours or so to decide, honest), we settled on the standard package, which also includes a snack.

The waiter showed us a list of snacks to choose from. They were all common finger food, such as nuggets, meatballs and the like. The last item, however, caught my attention.



ONE TON TUNA


Does that sound like a ton of tuna or what? Too good to be true, but since it's the most interesting among the available choices, I ordered one. It turned out to be tuna spreaded over fried wanton skin.






Thanks to advances in manufacturing technology, it's now possible to create a layer of tuna no thicker than the skin of wanton. Ah, the marvels of nanoengineering. It costs $3.90 to buy this a la carte.

So much for being adventurous.



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...and went for that Genghis Khan buffet - I've been hounding HCl for since eons ago - at Takashimaya yesterday. It was mainly to celebrate his job offer from A Star and ST Electronics.

I only tried one of each type of the more exotic seafood from their huge range of international cuisine. Would have tried more, but my stomach was unusually satiable that day. The day was still too young for us to end the celebrations. Thus we went for round 2 of the celebrations: KTV.

Feeling rather bloated, we decided to walk down to Party World. Not the Orchard Road branch, but the Maxwell Road branch. Of course, I didn't forget to take every opportunity to brush up my photography skills along the way.




Anyone knows what this ad is really talking about?



走向光明的道路



Whoever put the cats there only painted 1 of them


At Party World, we booked a small room and were informed that we could have 2 drinks. We thought we were entitled to 2 drink each, and the fact that the waiter came into our room twice to take orders further confirmed our beliefs.

The truth dawned only when the bill arrived.

We had ordered a total of 5 drinks. Burnt mcuh bigger holes in our pockets than expected. It pays to be more prudent about number of free drinks. Undeterred, we went on with the 3rd round of celebrations.

No one can ever guess what we did.

Never.

Never.

Ever.

We went to Max Brenner for chocolate fondue.



See any resemblance? No? I thought so too. If not we'd be eating for free.



Bubble bubble, toil and trouble. Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
-Macbeth, William Shakespeare


Just nice too, that there were 3 cauldrons of marvellous concotions and also 3.....guys staring gleefully at them. Witches (read Macbeth) are no longer in fashion now anyway.



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I think I've gotten food poisoning from eating all those seafood and rich stuff yesterday. Didn't sleep well last night and hardly ate anything today. Right now, I'm feeling lethargic and my brain is functioning at half of it's normal speed.

Back to hiding in my hole until I've recovered.....

Most of my friends who have been catching up with me recently asked me this question:

What have you been doing all this while at home?

Training to be Singapore Idle, that's what.

The people around me have suggested that I make good use of this time do something meaningful, such as taking up IT/safety courses, picking up new skills, doing charity work, or trying chocolate fondue (from the way they describe it, I'm missing out the most wonderful method of eating chocolate).

I have this perception of IT courses, that whatever I learnt from them is only the very basic knowledge and they do not really prove useful should I be required to utillise them. As a friend recommended, I'd be better of buying the software to experiment with by myself at home. But buying original software is very costly, while getting pirated copies are against my principles.

Looking through the courses offered by Ministry of Manpower, I only further confused myself because I didn't know which ones were relevant or suitable for me.

Maybe I'll 'pick up' web design by fooling around further with my blog and its layout.

Earlier on, my mom had wanted to me join her for charity work at elderly care centres at Yishun (yikes) and Tampines (double yikes) every week. Frankly speaking, if I were to do charity work, it'll be at SPCA.

Most of the time, I'm not in the mood to do anything. Not even for exploring my interests in photography or exercising.








I just hole myself up at home, taking care of my grandma and the house (since no one else is at home), and spend the rest of the time playing computer games, reading newspapers, chatting on MSN...

It's a degrading way to spend my life, I know. I hate it.

Sometimes, I wonder who's going to take care of my grandma and the house if I'm working. It seems that work or no work, there's going to be problems.


但是。。。

也许到最后，终点是蓝天。

Been there and back

Back again after another period of silence.


I think people temporarily stop blogging for 3 reasons:

1. Didn't find anything worthy to share
2. Wish to maintain privacy
3. Not in the mood to pen down thoughts and feelings


All 3 reasons apply to me.

Sometimes, people wonder what life is all about. Till now, I've heard quite a few analogies. Life is...

• ...like a roller coaster: there are ups and downs (from HCl and Phillis)


• ...like a box of chocolates: you'll never know what you're gonna get next (from "Forrest Gump")


• ...like a bed of roses: boy, is it thorny *ouch ouch* (from some book I read back in my primary school days)

The list is neverending.

There are occasions when I think of the days before, when I used to be much happier. However, those were the days when I was blissfully ignorant. Wanting to go back to those times, would mean to stay in a little world of my own, where only the things that made me happy exist.

In other words, I would not be not giving another thought to how the Americans have turned on one another in times of crisis instead of bonding together after disaster struck. Or disagreeing that the way to stop terrorists from killing people would be to kill off all the terrorists. Or turning a blind eye to the rising divorce rates among middle aged Singapore couples.

I remember reading from somewhere, that realising how terrible the world can be will make you treasure what you have now. Kind of sounds like pessimism leads to optimism. Makes everything more gray.

When I was still young, I tried to define everything in black and white. There only right or wrong. Nothing exists in between. Growing up made me realise that trying to define everything only makes life more difficult for myself. I learnt to accept that gray areas are ever present, and the problems that arose with them must be dealt with.

Classifying everything as either black or white means refusal to face problems. Like heart attack or stroke, the problems will hit you harder when they recur, than when they did previously.

Enough of unhappy issues.

One of the best ways to make yourself smile, would be to see the smiles of those who are close to you, or are an important part of your life. But what if they're not smiling, you ask.

Well, do something that can make them smile.

Bread Complain

White breads doesn't exist anymore. Now, all we have are "enriched white bread". Retailers like to make their products sound more attractive, hence everyone adds the term "enriched" before "white bread".

After eating that bread however, I feel that they should replace "enriched" with "reinforced".

I've nothing better to do than to complain about bread these days.