sigh its a new week again.. but its alright I get to eat PS Cafe on wednesday yay! Weixian's coming back, so meeting up with my ex housemates (and yaw shin) tsk so extra haha. Ate at Anatolia last friday. Turkish food at Far East Plaza (the one with the sticky powdery disgusting ice creams that they play tricks with. It was surprisingly really good and reasonably priced (something like $40 for 4 ppl to be really full.. well 3.5 lah) The rice pudding was like a creme brulee with rice bits inside. it came with the top all burnt off and in a claypot so naturally I assumed it'll be hot, but it turned out refreshingly cool and not too filling. Yum!



3 More Months to clearing leave time!

oh and apparently will be meeting elisa for dinner today yay! hmm decisions decisions on what to eat! What a tough life I lead heh. Hmm I wanna do more websites leh.. where to find ppl who'll trust me?

Was at Taka with Elisa on sat too looking for the "new" Marc Jacobs splash fragrances.. Went there before a couple of times already and they were out and I was really excited when I spied from the corner of my eye the characteristic look of the bottles at the "Other Fragrances" area at Taka. And guess what? Grass and Rain was there but Cotton wasn't!!! (cotton being the one I wanted lah) so I very very loudly exclaimed "HOW COME NO COTTON" or something like that and that was when some (strange) salesgirl came over to help us.. and I was still exclaiming over and over again things like '"HOW COME SOLD OUT!", "WHEN GOT NEW STOCK", "WHEN THE LAST ONE COME IN", "HOW COME NO COTTON", "WHEN WAS SOLD OUT", "HOW COME NO COTTON" "HOW COME SOLD OUT" "DO YOU HAVE A MAILING LIST" haha.. so in the end left my phone number and email address so they can call me back if they received new stock. And at the end of all this exclaiming, the salesgirl asked very sweetly "How about another fragrance" *rolls eyes* sense the tone lady!

Today was the day of the Terrific Tumble Down the Stairs After Lunch. It was a long enough Tumble for me to form a pretty lengthy and developed thought train, which went something like this: Oh oops, little slip there ahahah hope my colleague behind me didn't see...regain quickly now... oh oops, missed again... okay I'm definitely falling down the stairs here... this is bad... this is very bad... I can't stop moving... people die falling down this kind of stairs... ouch... make sure when I finally stop moving that skirt is not flipped up... ouch... okay skirt is aligned properly.

I swear, I thought of death. Anyway, all was fine, no bloodiness, just had to walk around the office sporting what looked like a huge love bite on my shoulder, which is great for first impressions and general reputation.

hey hey hey i have the monopoly of complaining about hourly wage! (which is incidentally less than $2 haha) :D

Some old news but...... i can't believe carrie went with big in the end!!! haha yeah decided to finish off the last 20+ episodes of sex and the city i didn't watch two years ago (at some point i was watching it something like 6 episodes a day just before i came back from the US. ahh those were the days of slacking. not to say now doing anything more constructive like that) But its a nice series.. not every episode is good but overall its smart, which is much more than I can say for a lot other shows (like lost... and desperate housewives..) Now to get my hands on the west wing episodes.. hmmm..

oh lots of ppl coming back to Singapore in the next few weeks! Yay! can't wait to meet up with some of them :D more excuses to eat more good food (thats what I'm about hah!)

so apparently I'm an uncle now. Well I was an uncle before this too lah, but from my cousins lah. This time is my brother yay! Sylvia gave birth to a damn cute Regina Tan Ruiqi (meaning queen in italiano. queen the zaiest female royalty not the we are the champions band bah) Quite cute and so far very kuai so that bodes well for now heh (so sad that parents bring up their children wanting them to be kuai kuai kuai and then everyone looking for boyfriends / girlfriends look for a naughty streak) Gonna visit them again this evening probably..

Well boss is back from leave.. so gotta go pretend to do work now haha.

My hourly wage is currently less than my sister's, who's unemployed. Haha. (She made 8 pairs of earrings today - that's like $100.)

Anyway. Time for bed.

hmm i think the drowning is quite accurate what.. (sorry for the morbidity) but then see right, your body doesn't really believe you head when you tell it that if you breathe u die (hence its impossible to suffocate yourself just by your will. think its built into your nervous response or something like that).. so you breathe in then you realise its a mistake and you scream, expelling the carbon dioxided air before having to breathe in again, hence drowning..


hmm.. such nice conversation

So we watched James Bond today even though I'd decided from my first glimpse of the trailer that he couldn't act. Actually, he can act - he's just a bit stiff when he speaks. Like when he delivered the "I have no armor left" speech I kind of half expected him to say "Ha ha I fake you" at the end coz he didn't seem very sincere. He's more attractive than Brosnan though, who always struck me more as a handsome waiter than sexy spy. Although I could just be biased because I think Toingee looks a little like him, and you can shout me down all you want, it's true. Hah.

I think I've had enough with the drowning scenes (after the "it's hell" from The Prestige I've developed a rather belated phobia of dying by water). Bleagh. I was a little distracted by the fact that she seemed to take a breath of water after screaming, and then screamed again - bubbles and all - which should be impossible right?

The family ate at Fosters today to celebrate my brother's birthday which was about a month ago haha but his siblings were too exam-ridden to set aside time for dinner, until this weekend. It was really expensive, and I don't think I'll be back. However, I did discover that oysters and steak go together. How odd.

Hmm.. apparently Tang Wee Sung and his brother of CK Tang fame are intending to buy back CK Tang shares at a hefty 10c premium over the closing price of 55c (and as a "bonus", if more than 90% of investors agree, they will pay 70c). This is also a large premium over the "book value" of the share. Wow. What a steal. All this just a week after he vehemently said he would never sell the orchard rd property, not likely to redevelop it, played down the value of his stake in the Orchard Road property, and gave a not-too-positive review of his own business. With all this negativity, why the sudden urge to help out small investors? *rolls eyes* How about I take out a loan and buy the the whole of CK Tang at 75c a share from Mr Tang so he has the money to do his kidney operation AND live off the cash so he doesn't have to - to quote an 'observer' - lead a stressful life at a helm of a listed company.

Damn rich people really good at trying to take small investors for a ride.

I really oughtta look at photos immediately after i take them otherwise I'd never realised there's a damn EYELASH in on my sensor sigh.. stupid digital camera bah.

So went to arab street today (among many other places.. as usual haha I'm a walking addict!!!). Ate at this place called House of Briyani at the corner of Kandahar St and North Bridge Road which apparently has 4 different kind of Briyani rice. It was quite expensive (1 portion... which i of course only ate half of ;) plus a lime juice was $7.50) but rather good, especially the 'sides' that came with it - the pickles, and 2 sourish curries.



Quite a number of interesting sights and shops around that area nowadays... definitely has changed since a couple of years ago heh. A city is very different from a place like Ithaca I guess.. nothing ever seems to change - the biggest changes are like a new restaurant, or walmart coming, or upgrading a carpark. Definitely no Integrated Resorts (let alone 2), megamalls, and the likes. Although increasing property prices seem to be a common thread *sigh*


sleeping beauty


trishaw rag and bone man


mannequins in a cool costume and puppet shop


staircase up to a shop on haji lane

Okay getting late.. should go sleep n..Zzzzzzzz

Damn sian.. went for a haircut yesterday at one of those $10 10min thingies (which NEVER do it in 10min and.. somehow thats something I'm always a little glad for). Told her that I wanted to short but longer on the top, and she used a clipper and ran a line over the centre of my hair. ARGH. So instead of ending up like Tom Cuise



I ended up looking like this:



which is really distressing cos I have a family dinner on Sunday and the last time I checked, hair grows at 1cm per month. which is really ... really... slooooooowwwww.. (And yet i swear it grows super fast at the most inopportune moment) Well no fear, it'll be just in time for Chinese New Year. *sigh*

Hello hello!!!!!

More than midway through a Certain Exam, and it's been the worst showing in all my glorious years of academic brilliance but well... opportunity costs my friends, opportunity costs.

I'm so happy about the Vpost letter because I happen to be generally annoyed with them for all sorts of reasons including their inability to consistently and efficiently process items which means that I had to pay that extra $10 for one stupid item being 16 minutes late when it should have been like 3 days early, and also the fact that they MEASURED my package WRONGLY and would have charged me an extra $20 if I didn't ask them to re-check (no embarrassment or apology by the way), and also that their terms are confusing and contradictory - someone sent an email saying the $10 holding fee was pro-rated over the week, another said it was $1, and their email response time is so slow it didn't make sense for me ask them to clarify, and their website is consistently down.

The whole shopping experience with them has been BAD. Bad bad bad.

So what are we using now? Comgateway? =)

Sister has been totally distracting me with prom preparations (today we did a dry run for the hair and it somehow involved me and her and her boyfriend standing in the shower with dripping heads) and tomorrow we'll have to do it all again with the makeshift paper curlers (my idea thank you very much) and I will get next to no work done of course, and right now I am sitting here with eyes prickingly tired and not a jot of work done because they were also watching Harold and Kumar and now THAT is distracting.

Haha... on the subject of doing things I never thought I'd do.. I sent a ranting complainy letter to the ST Forum yesterday about the lousy service that vPost has given me :D here it is in all its glory ;) who needs lobby groups when you have singaporean? haha

"Dear Editors

I would like to bring to light my experiences with vPost, a freight forwarding service from the USA run by SingPost. On 8th Nov, vPost received my package and sent me a bill which gave me a rude shock - their shipping charges seemed to have increased drastically. I queried vPost regarding this, and they told me the new charges took effect from the 1 Nov. They also said that they had sent a e-newsletter just 3 weeks before informing customers of the changes.

The reason cited for the price increase was increased fuel costs, an oft cited reason by many transportation companies these days. This helps explain the per-kg price increase from $7 to $9 (a 30% increase), but it certainly does not explain the 30% increase in one-time handling charge (from $10 to $13), nor the whopping 1000% increase in holding charge ($1 per item per week to $10) as these are not affected by fuel prices at all. Furthermore, being an operation basesd primarily in the USA, most of its costs ought to be in USD, which has dropped 10% against the Singapore dollar since a year ago. This should have made their costs in the USA cheaper with regards to the Singapore dollars yet these savings have not been passed on at all. Perhaps it is time for transport companies to stop hiding behind fuel prices to justify every price hike.

In a separate incident, vPost is running a "Christmas Surprise" lucky draw for its customers. I participated in this game on 9 Nov, winning a $20 Delifrance voucher. I received this voucher on 1 Dec, almost full month later although they promised that it would be delivered in 14 working days. The letter congratulating me was dated 28 Nov and the voucher had a 6 month validity from the date of issue. A pity then that the date of issue of the voucher was 1 Jul, a full 5 months before the letter was sent, leaving me with just 1 month out of the intended 6 to utilise it.

Thank goodness for competition and the Internet. A quick search and I found a couple of alternative forwarding services. I guess I will be using vPost less now. Blame it on the high fuel prices. "

Hmm my other half is midway through her bar exams now.. so I'm bored :D

So having no one to share half portions with these 2 weeks, what else to eat but a buffet right? That way I can get to pick my own portions. Of course that never works out in reality cos I always always overeat at buffets and live to regret it after that (esp the dinner buffets cos I can't sleep after).

So for my first buffet since probably chinese new years eve, I went with my family (incl my brother who is incidentally back from Italy for 2 months for the birth of his 1st daughter) to Penang Place at the Intl Business Park at Jurong East. Its a Penang food buffet (which was quite pricey: $20 for a sat lunch) which had Penang laksa, char kway teow, prawn noodles, rojak, nasi lemak, beef rendang, chicken curry, otak otak among other things.

The penang char kway teow was constantly in short supply - once it came out it was instantly cleaned out.... and no wonder.. it was one of the better ones i've tried. Quite light, not too oily, and quite a general serving of fillings (there must have been a billion cockles inside. and quite a number of prawns). The rest of the food was so-so, but the dessert was pretty good too. The kaya on the steamed tapioca rice cakes was made from really fragrant coconut sugar, and the coconut sugar syrup for the chendol was really something too.

All in all not bad. But yups quite pricey for nothing fancy (it really sucks when everything is judged by the standards of Summer Palace). But once again, overate so had no more momentum to go to the Akira warehouse sale next door.. Came home and just plonked (full stomach + duty = sleepy) on the bed.

Brother brought back white truffles (or to be exact 1 white truffle + a shaver.. a truffle shaver) from Italy which he prepared for dinner. He prepared it 2 ways: shavings on a sunny side up and shavings on tossed tagliatelle with olive oil. The sunny side up was a lot nicer (surprising coming from me cos well i hate sunny side up. with a vengeance) cos the tagliatelle was cold already, and the olive oil was a little overpowering. Plus the truffle didn't shave that well probably cos of the humidity (and age.. 4 days is prob too long). But still, it was really really good lah. Really fragrant.. quite the epitome of what a mushroom should be like. So 1/2 a bowl of tagliatelle was my dinner.. all thanks to my buffet lunch *gag*

So its sunday =) 5 more days to go before getting to eat half portions again! Yay!Probably gonna take a walk later to finish up some film.