1) Fish have tongues!
At IS's wedding dinner, a menu item was steamed live soon hock.
mf: Live? How do you steam a fish live? Certainly unlike drunken prawns!
When the fish arrived, it was rather crooked; it must have been thrashing about until it died =(
And hence the tongue hung out!
2) Shinjuku, Singapore
It was a Mon morning, almost like that Mon morning in Tokyo except that I woke up after what I recalled to be the loudest thunder clap I'd ever heard instead of an earthquake.
Waited for the rain to abate before leaving for work. That was the first time I took the train to work at that hour. When I reached Tanjong Pagar, it was so full of people and immediately I thought "Shinjuku", although I didn't get swept along..
やっぱり, we are not as crowded (yet?)
3) Warding away the ticket
An amazing number of parking coupons!
And about tickets, received an sms from Singtel:
Easi-ERP lets you pay your ERP violation charges @ reduced rate via your STM bill.Dial *ERP(*377) to register NOW & enjoy 60% off your ERP admin fee(U.P. $10)
Winner..
4) Mr Bean!
So cute.. I like his bear too :)
5) Song mee
At first I thought that was the name of the shop, but it was its key item
There's the super song version too: fried :p
6) Ominous sign
Took this just before my driving lesson two days before my test (which I failed)
7) Dear Grams
Aunt came by to cut her hair, snowy white..
I’m moving in with her soon cos the internal works for the upgrading will start on 10 Apr..
Went to Na’s new place on Sat (with little 饅頭), very nice! Quite inspired by her room lights, hmmm.. We went shopping after that, girly things, homely stuff, お久しぶりね! :) From that trip and others, got myself two pillows, one duvet, one pink princessy canopy for the bed, and a whole lot of bathroom accessories! Oh oh, and my white towels too :p
Honestly, I can't remember the last time I went to the zoo; it must have been secondary school, or even primary school!
Last day of term break, there were countless screaming children, but I only remember one who pronounced scary as scaaaly..
Scary! :p
My obligatory poser shot aside..
White tiger! So so beautiful..
But it was a little unsettling to see the male pacing - very quickly - as if he was contemplating if he could clear the moat to reach the noisy people!
Interestingly, all white tigers alive today can be linked to one ancestor called Mohan, and tigers are only found in Asian. And, the zoo didn't seem to have regular tigers, not on map anyway..
I like big cats but the photos of the leopards etc didn’t turn out too well..
The baboons caught our eyes with their red red butts.. The reddest butt belongs to the alpha male, or the female in heat- we actually saw a very quick fuck :p The female had a horribly big, red and ugly butt! We were so traumatised..
Picking lice :p
I can’t get over these babirusa. I think they are mathematical, sleeping in parallel so that the flies couldn’t reach at least a part of them - they were asleep but madly twitching from the flies!
A hippo yawns to show affection. If you go "huh?", a zebra bares its teeth for similar purpose, to attract mates or something.. Maybe to take attention away from the dizzifying stripes? ~.~
Tight ass I’ll kill for, but oh, dizzy…
The giraffes are less dizzifying, though they can give me a neck strain.. Still cute, those two things on their heads :)
(Well, I can’t get a clear shot of the tall animal’s head.. Make do with a picture of a banner :p)
Koalas eat shit as babies - serious! Nutrients and all that shit.. Oops.. POS, you're useful after all, can rear baby marsupials, heh heh :p
These free-ranging orang utans were scary - they peed from up there, I saw! Luckily no one happened to be right under.. We steered clear..
But the elephants are cute!
Alright, maybe the real ones aren’t as cute.. But I’m always intrigued by their trunks and big ears (Dumbo’s fault :p)
Learnt quite a bit of stuff from this trip :) Oh, our zoo is going to focus on Asian animals so the younger polar bear will be sent to another zoo when the old mother dies.. I like polar bears, so pretty, although I distinctly remember a warning sign with a cartoon of a polar bear having a boy for food cos he jumped into the polar bear compound..!
It was a bit warm and threatening to rain. But it was so much fun! Fuelled by KFC, amused and entertained just by staring at our four-legged friends, and satisfied by ice cream when it finally rained at the end =)
She spent a record of 68 continuous hours in the house!
Sore throat erupted on Wed and escalated out of control in no time. Chirpy doc said throat was inflammed, hence the sore throat, flu, fever, cough..
Quite stoned on Thurs and Fri, just trying to find a good position to be in so I could breathe. The best positions were found on Eeyore! No pillow ma :p Poor Eeyore was so flat on one side at the end of it!
Cough worsened on Fri, but the stuffy nose and fever dissipated by Sat. It must be the ant I swallowed - I was convinced an ant fell into my cough syrup!
Had nothing but porridge on Thurs, Fri AND Sat (plus a spoonful of Sito's hor fun) - was so sick of it that when I woke on Sun, I spread kaya on my bread for the first time in a long time, and packed hor fun for lunch! :)
Have to learn to eat more sensibly. Haven't been so ill for a long time. And a total waste of time, weekend time! Gaaar!
But it was a good rest, watched a lot of TV since I couldn't do anything else. Now I'm addicted to the weekend 7pm show on Channel 8 :p And I saw the MIO advert - so cute! :)
The second week of CNY was hectic and tiring, but exciting and happy too! .. Ok, sans Mon when I flunked my driving test (can't help but whine about this :p)
Had to do some ridiculous research on Mon after driving test, BUAY SONG was written all over my face - value-add?: not sure; "extra"?: definitely!
Luckily things got better from there..
Our boardroom became ops room for budget debate from Tues. Ordered KFC for dinner. And while we worked, we talked.. Alright! We gossiped, we complained :p So it was quite fun la, and funny too, especially when one of our laptops ran low on battery..
Word du jour: juice
Common definition: as in fruit juice
Definition in office: laptop power
Connotations: everything imaginable
LY: I need juice!
mf: Um, that sounds..wrong!
LH: Juice, I also have!
Fyi, LH is still lactating..
!!
For interest, I went to M-W and found eight definitions! Besides the usual of (1) the extractable fluid contents of cells or tissues, and (2) motivating, inspiring, or enabling force or factor, there were also (3) the natural fluids of an animal body (plural), and (4) a medium (as electricity or gasoline) that supplies power!! We have been using (3) and (4) :p
It was quite late by the time we were done and it was also the time when cabs were hard to come by. So LY, LH and I shared a cab. The cabbie on Wed night was the funniest ever! Four of us were just chatting and somehow..
LH: 男人都不是好东西!
And uncle almost braked in the middle of nowhere!
LH: I mean, office 的男人都不是好东西! :p
Uncle: Ya, I thought you meant that, so I carried on driving, heh heh!
Quite nice, gave us something to laugh about at the end of a long day =)
But little did we expect an even longer Thursday..
Everything for Fri was sent up early but somehow things started to flood in towards the end, and there were so many changes!
After too much dim sum the past couple of days, we had chicken rice instead, followed by LY's birthday cake! She turned 3X on Friday :)
The poor girl, we were joking that she might have to stay until midnight and we could wish her happy birthday.. But the joke came true!! 她一脸无奈...
Some debris.. Leftover breakfast
We killed trees..
.. and sapped the earth’s fuel!
After sending up the fifth version of the day, we left the office looking forward to an easy Friday, just watching the proceedings..
But our simple wish was not to be granted! There was yet another change, at 654am! It filtered to us at only 911am and we started working madly again =(
We left office before ten, hoping to carry on in Parliament. But we were held up by what I called "the most efficient" security clearance..
Rushed out everything by 11 plus, prepared a set for the bosses and finally sat down in front of the TV in the business centre.
Minutes rolled by. Perspiration dripped right to the heart, chilling it; we were running over time!! To put it simply, we were eating into other departments' time and one department was sitting with us in the business centre! Stress..
But we were lucky; we were given extended time!
After confirming the final delivered speech, we went for a really late lunch and returned to office by 5+
Quite an exciting and fun journey, don't mind doing it again but pls spare us the last minute changes!
Btw, check out Mr Brown's podcast on the 6.5m population (which is a landuse planning parameter, not our desired target ok...)
I did! But only during the second quake..
It was nothing like the tremors I felt in Tokyo one spring night in 2005 - I was shaking side to side in my futon - but because this time we were in a high-rise building, it seemed to feel scarier.. Or was I freaked out by everyone else??
Chinese New Year came and went all too soon! Yesterday was 元宵, no 鲍鱼鱼生 like last year (hee, 鲍鱼, not very 生 :p) but we had prawn 鱼生 instead, neither 鱼 nor 生 :p
This year quite good, in the mood for photos again! Amid all the CNY happenings, I failed my driving test, and had a lot of fun working long hours (next post, with photos too!)
Our super yummy steamboat lunch!
WT shocked us in the middle of lunch with his appearance - dread locks! So everyone wanted a piece of him.. Actually just a picture with the star..
This one is like Beauty and the Beast!!
This one, WT cheated; he stood on tip-toe
Oops, my bra showed up very clearly in the photo :p
After spending some time lazing in Aunt’s room…
... the cousins crawled into Grams' room for games!
And this year, Yan excused herself from visiting her godmother so we spent the pm together watching TV, lazing in the room, munching nuts and getting fat :p
Family photo :)
Eldest Uncle painted pink over the ugly green doors.. But somehow I miss them ugly green doors..
Sito popped by in the evening for dinner. The aunties were so excited! My third aunt hunted him down, and asked him what his dialect was and - best - shouted his reply across the living room to the kitchen!!
Warned him about what happened to Ling's bf - Grams gave him a lot of food during lunch! True enough, Grams came over with an extra scoop of rice! She was nice, he could eat - good! :p But she chided me for letting him do the dishes :p
Watched a bit of Harry Potter before we left for Just Follow Law. Quite funny but thought the central theme didn't come across very strongly..
Second day of the new year, I watched the second movie of the year with CY - Protégé. Quite a heavy show for the am but it was good, I like the ending scene of the little girl and Daniel Wu.
Went to CY's place to 拜年 before she came over, took some 大头贴!
(See my ugly pimples? Sighs..)
*gasp* CY’s hand was on Bow’s balls! :p
The boys came over shortly. CY couldn't recognise Ting anymore - actually even I could barely recognise him! He's 16 this year, so fast.. And his bro and cousin are now 13 and 12.. But these boys ah, simply refused to take pictures! Unlike these younger kids at PS's place, very cute right? :)
Btw, I finally managed to carry LH's boy without him crying! Learnt from them that I had to distract babies from their parents by pointing out the birds in the sky, the ball in the driveway etc - really 骗小孩! :p
Went to Sito's place to 拜年 last Sunday. Read a lot of my 长恨歌 while he worked - I finally finished it yesterday morning!! After more than a year!!
Some random CNY pictures now..
The head of the roast chicken at Beng Hiang, during our (pre-)CNY lunch :p
Passed by this place on eve of CNY - everyone was buying roast chicken or duck!
This side said 不斩, the other read 斩 :p
Returned from first day of work to find a lion dance team downstairs! But they were only drumming, no lion..
But during another lunch, at Amoy, I saw a lion dance! Interestingly, it was a Malay team!
(Oooh, we like the noodles at this stall!)
Was roaming Chinatown last Sat, and ジャンジャン!
No more pictures from this point, just some thoughts..
Just a few years ago, CNY used to be very fun. But it had been variable in recent years, like, last year wasn't too fun somehow..
In the first two decades of my life, CNY was the time, the only time, when we got new clothes, new shoes, excluding school wear of course. It was about $200 for all of us every year, so there wasn't much we could buy.
Now that I'm finally financially independent, new clothes and new shoes and even typical CNY goodies come easily, but that has also diminished the significance of CNY..
Which only made me realise that the only way to revive the good old CNY vibes is to inject new life - we need kids! :p To that end, I have two married cousins with one couple holding their ceremonious wedding in June and Ling is due to get married in the second half of the year. Got hope =D
