It struck me as extremely ironical that I was reading Fast Food Nation, a book expounding the evils of fast food, while stuffing my face with Billy Bombers' fatty Cookies and Cream milkshake.

Shopping is tiring, and there is absolutely nothing to buy.

How is my entry to New Year 2008 spent? Why, sitting at home getting drunk watching Frasier of course. Oh Joy.

A Frasier moment

There's an episode of Frasier in season 6 where Frasier meets his old bartender friend from Cheers. After one day both of them are bored with each other as they find that they have nothing in common. Frasier has moved on and outgrown the bartender and feels terrible about telling him as they go way back.

How TV imitates life.

Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year

Gosh, the whole of december prior to Christmas has been hell. It was so incredibly busy (the most busy I've been since I started working), that it was pretty much 4 am nights every day leading up to the Christmas holidays. I worked 2 weeks straight in the first two weeks of december, including weekends, which pretty much meant that I didn't have much rest in December. It was exhausting.

The Christmas break has therefore been an extremely welcome one. For once I didn' t have people chasing me for this, that and the other.

Unfortunately I didn't have much time to buy any Christmas presents for anyone. The only thing I did buy was a present for my boss who's been incredibly great the whole year. Buying something for someone who has everything is incredibly difficult. I scoured the whole of Orchard Road. Went to the Hermes shop in DFS -- they had really stuff, but, at $1850 for ONE SCARF, it was really a bit out of my reach. Ditto Tiffany's and LV. In the end I got a Bose Sounddock for her iPod. I hope she likes it.

One of my old school friends came down to visit, and I skipped the Chorale party to go out a group of them. Dinner was kinda shit.

Sorry -- slight digression -- I've been using my mac so often that I keep pressing the wrong keys on my PC now.

Anyway. Back to the topic -- we ate Punggol Nasi Lemak which in all honesty i think was really quite mediocre. Yet the queue was about 15 minutes to get food. It sucked -- I would not go back there.

After dinner we headed to the Wine Network at Dempsey Road and polished off 2 bottles of very good red wine -- one from Chile and the other from Australia. The company was very good -- I'm actually hanging out with people my own age for once. It's a rather accomplished bunch -- 2 doctors, one dentist, and myself. What I like about them is that they are all such down to earth and honest people. We're all from very similar middle class backgrounds who did good here. We remnisce about how we used to squeeze 4 people in a hall room during term holidays in university to save money. How getting drunk in hall was a treat 'cos alcohol was too expensive to be consumed freely. And getting drunk meant overdosing on Duty free Absolut Vodka. At S$27 a bottle with 43% alcohol, it was a great way to get drunk. How we used to have competitions in the hall to see who could outdrink each other. It doesn't really count when you pass out outside my room and had to be assisted to bed notwithstanding the fact that I collapsed in bed 2 minutes earlier. We talk about our daily lives at work. One doctor tells me how the ugly nurses keep flirting with the doctors in the hopes of snatching one (kerching! passport to Hermes!), and how he has to lie that he's married with one kid to fend off unwanted attraction.

The trappings of wealth is starting to show. One has stopped wearing G2000 stuff and graduated to Zara. He says he's going to move on from Zara soon to Massimo Dutti. Gee, and here I am in my factory outlet tshirt looking like Shrek. The Singaporeans might scoff and say pffft Zara, but it's a pretty big deal as Malaysians go. I mean, where we're from, I think Crocodile is the height of fashion.

We talk about houses, the state of healthcare in UK, Australia and Singapore, and about our next car. Adult stuff. It's such a refreshing change from "oh, when do you finish army? wat vocation?" "oh, what course are you going to do in uni?" "oh, how's exams?". There's nothing wrong with that, just that it gets tiresome if it's the same thing over and over again.

Great wine, great company. I is content for today.

I don't know what possessed me to buy...yet another iPod.......In total I have 3 now, from the smallest shuffle to the largest iPod video.

I also don't know what possessed me to promise to buy my secretary a new handphone for christmas. Christmas is a season of iWant iWant iWant.

Right now, iWant a break.

iEmbarrassed

It seems they are not as soundproof as I thought they were since I got caught by my friend outside doing it. I guess I really should not have gone "FALLLLLLLL ON YOUR KNEEEEEEES" in the lift at 100% volume thinking it was soundproof. How funny it must have been for anyone waiting for a lift to hear a voice go right past the floor.

Urgh. To think I've been doing it so often like warming up on the way to performances. I wonder who else must have heard.

SITEX

SITEX is just evil. It really is. It keeps making me spend money. Every show. Without fail.

Evil evil evil.

On the bright side, say HELLO to my er foray into the world of Apple. Hmm...well yes, I got myself a Mac Mini. I want to try it first. I guess if it's not good enough it can be my er Media Centre. It's pretty enough to sit next to my TV.

Unfortunately, the thing doesn't come for another 2-3 weeks. BAH. 2 GB RAM, 1.83 GHz Core 2 Duo. I hope it's powerful enough. What am I talking about, I use a Sempron 3100+...

Let's see. List of shopping items

Mac mini.
External HDD.
Shure headphones.
Wireless keyboard and mouse.

To buy: Apple wireless keyboard. It's hell of expensive, I'm not sure if it's worthwhile.

Perspective

Increasingly I get to know of so many people with dysfunctional families. One lives with a sister who suffers from depression and cannot hold down a job and 2 retired parents who need medical care now and then. Another has a husband who had an affair, whose mother also suffers from depression. Another has a parent with cancer. Another's parents both died within a short span of one another - one from cancer and another from an accident.

In the face of all this I sometimes get hit with a sudden realisation of how incredibly lucky I am:

1. all my family members are fine and healthy
2. all of us are gainfully employed and self-supporting

and my minor day to day moans and complaints about the late hours etc etc suddenly seem lame and small in comparision.

Why are some dealt better hands than others?

GROAN

Another reason why I do not like Americans. Their documents are simply unreadable.

QUOTE

American legal drafting lags far behind most of the English-speaking world of lawyers, as American-trained lawyers suffer from numerous sins, including:

(a) unduly archaic, complex language that could easily be replaced with plain English that everyone could understand;

(b) an aversion to good formatting, meaning that you get great slabs of user-unfriendly text;

(c) an addiction to capitalising every letter in certain words and entire clauses, notwithstanding that capitalisation doesn’t make a word/clause any more legally effective and unseemly to the eye;

(d) a kitchen-sink approach to drafting, meaning that you end up with a 50 page document containing all manner of boilerplate clauses where a 15 page document would suffice; and

(e) an incredibly US-centric view of the law, even when practising outside the US, which makes them think that references to US statutes and use of NY legal principles are the norm even when there is no US nexus.

All lawyers suffer from the above sins to some extent, but US lawyers far out-sin other lawyers operating in international deals in the international business world. Receiving a US-style document in my in-box inspires nothing but groans.

As for dealing with US trained, NY-accented lawyers – that’s a rant about unnecessarily adversarial approaches, US-centric thinking, lack of empathy and petty point scoring that I’ll save for another day.

UNQUOTE

These criticisms are all true. I don't know why they do this. Maybe it's to make more money for the lawyers.

I am disappointed in myself

for forgetting time and appointments

for often letting down my family and friends

for being lost in the forest of work, never seeing the broader landscape and the horizon

for not having the courage, tenacity nor perseverance to change the things I would like to change

for losing interest in the one activity to which I have devoted most of my spare time in the last 7 years

for feeling lost and devoid of purpose

for feeling alone at mealtimes when it is my own fault that I didn't bother to reconnect with old friends or to make new ones

More quips

From a contract to build something in rural China:

[Seller undertakes to Buyer that:]

"At least one of the Guarantee Engineers can read and write English properly."

How to find one of these in rural China????? hurhurhur

Money drives the world

I clicked on an article called "Stock Options" thinking it was an article about investment, and was puzzled why the article began with: "How do I make a good broth without using any meat? I have tried using soybeans, carrots and white onions but the broth was not very sweet."

Then I realised it was about food.....

Lately (last few months), I've been very into learning about the investment -- how people make money and stuff. Have been actively reading up on publications like The Edge, and I'm going to subscribe to Financial Times soon. The lack of time prevents me from reading more. My initial foray into the stock market hasn't been entirely successful, I think I am suffering from a net loss. Still, it could be worse.

The interest came about after realising two things:

Realisation no. 1: That one can never be rich relying on a salary -- a salary is payment for the sale of your time and soul, and there is a limit to how much time and soul you can sell. However, you can use money to invest in businesses, and get OTHER people to work for their salary while you reap the profits. So for example, if I invest in Walmart, I am "working" the cashiers at Walmart are working for me, helping me generate money, while I pay them their $5 an hour or whatever it is.

I guess that's where the term "make your money work" came from -- essentially money is just like another tool to help increase your productivity, and you effectively increase the amount of "work" generated from one person, thereby increasing the income generated.

A bunch of apples may be worth nothing more than the ability to feed a few people for a few days. But the apples can be turned to jam or apple pie, transforming it into a higher value product. In the process of transformation, the factory workers get paid, the farmers get paid, the consumers get fed longer etc. Everyone benefits, but the one who benefits most, is the person who came up with the idea.

The thing is, never mind that I am dumb and didn't come up with the idea of turning apples into jam and apple pie -- money gives me access to the idea by providing the capital for the person to implement his ideas. With money I buy his ingenuity and I then "work" through him. Brilliant.

That is why the rich will become richer, and the poor will become poorer, because the poor can never "work" as much as the rich. And this is why capitalism is thought to be evil. But the beauty of it is that, notwithstanding the exploitative nature of capitalism, it still gives a better net positive economic effect to society. it is better for the farmer to be paid a small amount for his apples, than for the apples to turn worthless in a few days after it rots. The factory worker gets paid for canning the jam. With that money, he can buy bread thereby creating a market for bread and generating wealth for the bread manufacturer and making money for the people in the bread industry.

But I digress -- I'm sure this is just basic economic theory anyway.

Realisation no. 2: $1 today, if invested continuously, becomes approximately $17 in 30 years, assuming a 10% p.a. return, and $5.7, taking into account inflation at 4% per year. That is just flabbergasting. It really puts all your purchases in context.

For example -- why do I need to buy a $100,000 Volkswagen Golf when I could achieve the same purpose with a S$40,000 Hyundai Getz? Not only is the car worthless in 10 years, it also means I lost the opportunity of investing the S$60,000 for 30 years, transforming it into S$342,000 in 30 years, after taking into account inflation. Ditto: do I really need a new pair of shoes or a new laptop? A dollar not invested is $4.7 lost. A luxurious holiday today means losing out on the ability to go on 4 other equally luxurious holidays 30 years down the line.

The maths is brutal, and so buying comes down to a choice between whether the present value derived from the purchase (taking into account all other intangibles like I may not be able to travel in 30 years) outweighs the fact that I can buy 4+ other equivalent products in future.

The world of investing is absolutely fascinating. It's amazing how people can make money out of the most mundane of things. For example, one can make money betting on pork bellies (which is a traded commodity) -- you can buy a futures contract saying: "You promise to sell x tons of pork bellies on y date for $z, and in return, I will pay you $a for your promise". If pork bellies subsequently becomes more expensive, I make money. Simple as that.

It's 5 am....I haven't worked so late for quite a while now. Poor me. I need to buy myself a present to make up.

Macbook.

Macbook Pro.

Macbook.

Macbook Pro.

Decisions decisions.

Unconditionality

I'm not one to be touched easily... Hmm. That sounds wrong.

Let me start again. I'm not one who is easily touched..... Ok still wrong.

I'm usually perceived (correctly I guess - hazards of the job) to be emotionally detached from what is generally regarded by a significant segment of society to be a touching story or moment. Wow. So wordy. Another job hazard.

But I was touched by the recent news reports revolving around ex Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. The reports say that the husband is suffering from Alzheimer's, which causes him to forget most of his past life and his family. It's quite sad really. He can't remember the names of any of his family members, though they seem like a familiar face to him. As the disease advances, they live from day to day not remembering what has happened the day before.

The headlines of the report says it all: "OK that husband has girlfriend". It seems as if he's found a new girlfriend at the nursing home - a fellow Alzheimer's patient, and is as happy as a teenager in love. Sweet. What I thought was remarkable was the fact that the wife is happy for him - to her it's more important that the husband is happy where he is. It is so selfless - to love the husband so unconditionally that the husband's happiness is so important to the extent that it overrides the fact that she is now forgotten by the husband. Unconditional love. Touching.

Bimbos come first

At lunch, I met a familiar face from school and said hi. This was a person whom I thought had rather little grey matter and lots of wool between her ears. With her were two other rather young looking women with equally glazed looking eyes. I assumed they were secretaries or something. Young secretaries tend to look rather ah lian or dumb these days. It's that blank glazed look of someone who's either on drugs or wondering if (insert Mediacorp bimbo actress of choice) will reprise on the next episode of some Channel 8 soap opera.

I was absolutely appalled to find out that they were all members of my profession at one of the top global giants of my profession. According to its website, the employer in question "has 27 offices in 20 countries and 3,800 ... advisers."

This was a person I had done a project with in school and promptly concluded was an airhead. I could run circles around her. Yet she is now being paid at least twice my salary, and we do the same work.

What the hell...my day is spoilt.

Christmas is coming

I can't wait for Christmas!

Not for any altruistic reason like oh spread the joy, celebrate birth of important religious figures and all that bs, but for the simple financial reason of the (hopefully) big... fat. bonus.

Actually, I don't really care about the amount of the money (ok, that's a lie). After all, it just gets stuffed in the bank, converted into a debt by the bank to you.

I suppose it's all about the fact that this is the time when one's (theoretically) hard work, going the extra mile and all that, gets converted into a concrete quantifiable figure. I.e. thank you for your hard work, this is what we think you were worth to us this year.

And bonus is of course relative. For example, bankers may get 5 years' bonus, but we won't so it's no point comparing and feeling sour. It's all about the comparison, what you are worth relative to your peers. The satisfaction (at least, I think) is resting in the smug knowledge (I think the Hokkien phrase is"am chio") that hurhur I got more than X , therefore I am more valuable, therefore I am better, therefore I am superior and therefore hurhurhur I'm better than you nyeh-nyeh-ni-boo-boo.

It's a double edged sword, for if one gets less than X, then by the same line of reasoning, X is better than me boohoohoo.

It's bad for work morale really, to compare. And for that reason I would not ask my colleagues. I just need to know if I'm above average, or below average.

I wonder if this displays an utter lack of self-confidence if one has to rely on this yardstick to determine one's self worth. I think it does.

In my defence, I think it's only human nature to be curious and to wonder what everyone else has got. Adam had to eat the apple. Pandora had to open the box. Likewise I have to know if I'm better.

All men are equal and will stand as equals before God on judgment day, says the bible. Yet some men are more equal than others. Hooray for capitalism.

Nigella Feasts

Having watched Nigella Feasts for the first time yesterday, I wondered what I missed my entire life! I love how she talks about food - the tone of voice, the crisp British accent, the close-frame videography panning in and out of her face - it's all incredibly intimate and sensual -- you never get to see the whole kitchen. It's just parts of Nigella, whether the face, her hands, or upper body.

She speaks to you on screen as if you were a lover (of food?). The camera constantly pans close up to the face and lips as she goes "delicious" "lovely" "marvellous", and the viewer is left to wonder if she's talking about the food or ahem, the viewer. She emphasises slowly all the emotional adjectives she uses to describe the food and the flavours, and they just roll right off her tongue. It's almost erotic really.

Man, I could sit there watching the show the whole day, mesmerised. My Hubstation shall be set to auto record. I can't decide if I should save the space for Justice League, or for Nigella Feasts.

I need a bigger Hubstation.

It cracks me up when I receive messages in reply to my messages which go:

"Dear XXX

Thank you for your massage below. We will revert to you very shortly on this matter"

My boss tells me that I should have replied: "Dear YYY, you're very welcome. I hope you enjoyed it."

Predictable routines

Of late I've been wondering what on earth I'm doing with my life. It has come down to a very predictable routine. Between Mondays to Thursdays, I go to work (admittedly late), I eat lunch in the office because (i) it's too hot outside (ii) I can't deal with the crowds and (iii) I have few friends, or rather, I can't be bothered to initiate lunch outings. At about 11 pm I get very grumpy and want to go home. I get home, turn on my computer, surf the same websites (blogs, cnnmoney.com, macrumors, kenrockwell, in that order), and talk to the same bunch of people about the same topics (how's work, what we doing for choir). On Friday, I MIGHT have evening plans, but that's more the exception rather than the norm.

On Saturday, I wake up late, and do housework. At 3 pm, I go for the weekly choir practice. Then I go for dinner. With the same people. And then I come home, and it's Sunday. I do my housework and iron my week's supply of clothes. And then I laze around. And then it's Monday. And the cycle repeats.

Week after week.

Month after month.

For the last 5 years.

Life. Is. One. Boring. Routine.

The career is going well, I can't really complain, except for the hours, but that is more by choice rather than anything else -- I choose to be working for a service provider who wants to be top all the time, leagues ahead of everyone else, and therefore some sacrifices need to be made in pursuit of that quest. It pays reasonably well, enough for me to indulge in my whims now and then without having to bat an eyelid, and the severe shortage of qualified staff and high attrition rate only means salaries will continue going up. The area I'm is also very short of qualified staff, which I guess adds to my value. I can see the pot of gold waiting for me at the end of the rainbow.

Everything is going smoothly, as it should. What's wrong? It's b.o.r.i.n.g. The job bores me. The house bores me. My "hobby" bores me -- choir bores me, increasingly so over the last few years, mainly due to the nagging feeling that it may be a childish phase that I'm outgrowing. It doesn't help that with each passing year, I get older, but the average age of its members remain the same. Conversation revolves around either school or army. The age gap between the people I hang out with is increasing. My taste buds are increasingly finding the food popular with the common masses disagreeable -- mainly because what's new to them is not new to me. I like to drink complex beer and wine, but nobody can appreciate the habit -- it's not their fault, their taste buds just haven't matured.

I can't feeling there should, and must, be more to living. It's like that movie with Jim Carrey who's living in a constructed world. I feel like that Jim Carrey. It's also like that other movie Pleasantville -- I feel like I'm living in a monochromatic world devoid of colour.

Would someone please introduce some colour in my life.

I guess if colour is not coming to me, I should go look for it. Perhaps my motto for 2008 should be to embrace change.

Spanish Adventures Part II

Throughout the trip we had pretty good rental cars, all booked through holiday autos UK. In the UK, we got a manual Skoda Octavia, which is a very reliable Czech make owned by Volkswagen. For a while I considered getting this car, but it was a bit too big for just me. In Spain, we didn't want to deal with the dual challenge of driving on the other side of the road AND having to deal with the stick shift with my right hand, so we opted for the automatic versions. It seems that automatic cars are rather uncommon in Europe, both in England and in a number of European countries I've visited, a result of which we had to pay a considerable premium for the automatic versions.

The shortage of automatic cars turned out to be a blessing of sorts -- it means that it was more likely than not the car company didn't have the class of vehicles i booked for, which meant an upgrade for me. In Madrid, we got an Audi A4, a nice vehicle, if a bit small for a travelling family of 5. In Seville, they allocated a MERCEDES E280 to me!!! Both cars were almost brand new, with mileage (I wonder why it's not called kilometrage in the modern metric age) of between 5 - 8000 km. The Merc was a real pleasure to drive, just that it was a complete bitch to drive in roads of the older towns, which I suspect were built for horse carts...

Driving on the other side of the road is a real bitch. Once or twice I found myself driving on the left side of the road by force of habit. It takes a little getting used to -- the junctions are all reversed, and the roundabouts go counterclockwise instead of clockwise -- it took conscious effort to look to my left for cars at junctions.

The most difficult part was the fact that I kept veering to the right of my road, almost crossing to either the pavement, the emergency lane, or the next lane, because I kept too much space on my left.

Anyhow, I think I've gotten pretty used to it, so next time I might rent a manual car.

I'm back from my whirlwind trip of England and Spain. Boy it was tiring but fun. It's 1.50 am, and I have a 9 am meeting tomorrow. How I will wake up in time, nobody knows. Briefly, we visited (i) in the UK: London (to see my friends, though I spent most of time working), the Cotswold countryside, and Oxford, where the sister graduated; and (ii) in Spain (in this order): Segovia, Toledo, Avila, Barcelona, Seville, Arcos de la Frontera, Ronda, Granada, Cordoba and Madrid.

I realised what I like most about holidays, is not really seeing things -- honestly, I can't remember half the things I've seen -- it's all about the food really. If the food was great or the experience was food related, I'll remember it. For example, I don't remember much of my 2004 trip to Bremen for the choir olympics, except this shop which sold ice cream at 60 euro cents per scoop. I don't remember much of my 2006 trip to China either -- I'm sure this was due to the fact that food sucked. I also like my holidays to Thailand where I spend the day essentially in pursuit of Thai food and cheap massages where the masseuses purposefully spend a lot of time kneading the body in places close enough for you to wonder if she's being suggestive. I'd be a liar if I said I didn't enjoy it. Not that I have succumbed. Tsk. Get your minds out of the gutter.

I have therefore concluded that holidays are not entirely about broadening one's horizons. It's about the pursuit of hedonistic pleasures. There. I'm immoral and I'm a pig.

The trip started off quite badly. I was barred from boarding in Changi airport 'cos I bought my ticket with my credit card on Qatar Airways, and forgot to bring the credit card for verification. I had to go home, and go on the flight the next day. The flight was also nothing to shout about, and Doha airport, where I had to transit, was shit. Reminder to self: do not sit Qatar Airways again.

So what did I like about England? Nothing much. It's hell of expensive, and the food absolutely sucks. We went to this supposedly top restaurant in Oxford. The bill came up to £250 for 6 persons, which is fine if the food were good, but the food was absolutely shite. I had roast partridge, which sounds good on the menu, but tasted like rubber.

I promised myself to do as the Romans do, so I went with my friends for "Ahfternoon teah" at Browns. It cost 140 pounds for 4, and the food was so so. To make up for the exhorbitance, I went to Tesco to buy groceries and made sandwiches to eat for most of the remainder of the trip in London. Everything in London is expensive. The cab meters are enough to give you a heart attack. They move every 3 seconds, and you sort of see this vacuum develop in your wallet as the seconds go by. Rent is also expensive. For £1,250 pounds a month, one of my friends lived in what I would describe a dump which you would have to pay me to live in. You're just bleeding money everywhere you go.

Oxford was quite pleasant. The whole town had this air of intellectual superiority which made me wish I were a student there. Whoa, I'm an intellectual snob! The graduation ceremony was conducted in Latin. Nobody understood a word of it, and the English people pronounced Latin like an extension of their upper crust English. It was quite hilarious. All of them are old fogeys, and the whole thing looked like a scene out of Harry Potter. All through the ceremony, there were a group of people outside protesting against animal testing. I say they should all have been arrested and thrown in jail.

We stayed in the youth hostel in Oxford, and I swear I'm never staying in a dorm again. What do I do for the Russia trip next year? HELP!

More to come: adventures in Spain! But before that I wanted to blog about another food related incident.

The best meal I had on the whole trip, was in Barcelona in this place called "El Quim" -- it's a sort of bar located in the middle of a market in a pickpocket infested area. The food is f-ing amazing, and I told a friend over MSN that it was so yummy I orgazzed, obviously being reference to a gastronomic experience. I supposed i should have said gastro-gazzed. He then laughed really hard and sent me a link to www.dictionary.com. It seems in English, El Quim has a rather unsavoury meaning, referring to a certain bodily part. So essentially I said: "wahlau, I orgazzed in the v*****".

I wonder what El Quim means in Spanish. I'm sure it means something else.

The Sunday Times is peppered with articles on food related topics.

The man who made his millions with "Anything" and "Whatever"

The brothers who love to cook and aspire to be chefs. One is in medical school and the other is in ACS.

The recipe for mango foam with yuzu zest.

Pictures of huge steaks being openly grilled in Tuscany.

Ordinarily I'd be delighted, but right now it all makes my stomach churn and my gag reflex act up. Another visit to the toilet bowl is in order soon I think.

Is this what is considered a hangover I wonder.

So, for the second time this morning, I plea for help.

The Alcoholic

I feel ill. Gravely so. This is the price one pays for leading a hedonistic lifestyle. Wine on Friday evening at the office. Passing out at home and waking up to a greasy dim sum buffet for lunch on Saturday. Wedding dinner with abalone, prawns, etc etc and lots of white wine. Passing out on my bed again on Saturday night, with an unrestful sleep. Puking at 6.10 am. Going back to bed. Puking my guts out again at 8.45 am.

It's now 9.35 am. I'm dehydrated, but drinking water makes me want to puke. I had a task list of to-dos for the day. But all I feel like doing is curling up in my bed in airconditioned comfort, but if I lie down, I'd feel like puking again.

HELP!

must. stop. eating. mooncakes. I thought I outgrew mooncakes, not having eaten them for the last few years. But my boss as usual got tons of them this year, and she doesn't eat any, so off to me they went. I had 12. I now have 5. I wonder where the balance went.

The height of extravagance, but in a generous way:

Boss: Oh you like mooncakes? Oh you know what's good? Bird's nest mooncakes. I really like them! I shall buy one for you next year.

Me: uhm.

I didn't even know there were such things. It sounds really extravagant.

It's strange, seeing as to how picky I am about food, that I should be ahem, how shall we put this in a nice way, not in the fittest of form. But put something I like in front of me, and I go into auto-eat mode. I attribute it to the fact that I was born 2 months premature, could fit on the palm of my dad's hand ie. severely underweight, put on an incubator for 2 months while my lungs expanded, and have therefore been making up for it ever since. It's not my fault. Oh no, I have high tea tomorrow. I hate buffets. It's one of those places I turn into a brainless eating machine.

I also always tell my friends, gosh, I'm already a genius, imagine if I were born full term, I'd be smarter than Einstein!

Work's been rather shite. Been pulling many late nighters and ignoring many calls. There's a lot of tension going round, none of which involve me. Usually that's a bad thing, but in this case, it's actually working out in my favour. I hope bonus is great this year. Word has it discussions have started. I guess I should stop going into work at 10.30 huh....I can't help it. I'm not a morning person.

Working with Japanese people is a little strange.

Client: Hello, is that xxxxx
Me: yes
Client: this is xxxxxx
Me: Hi!
Client: Hai! Hai!
Me: (awkward pause, thinking it will erupt in another round of "hai hai hai!"

I don't know if he means to say hi, or did he think I was trying to speak Japanese....I always get caught out on this one....

It's quite interesting though. My first ever negotiation, I think I did quite well.

I have a meeting tomorrow. It's 3 am. Gagh. Paycheque Paycheque Paycheque Paycheque

Stuffed to the max

Had dinner with the boss today at some swanky restaurant at St. Pierre's. Dinner was a 5 hour affair, and I'm so stuffed now I feel like puking....

Oktoberfest

Got myself invited to Oktoberfest at Swiss club -- a chance I couldn't pass up. It was quite an eye opener, and I think the real Oktoberfest in Munich must be a real blast if this was any indication. The event was held in a white airconditioned tent (there are even portable toilets in the tent), all to recreate the whole Oktoberfest atmosphere. They had a German / Swiss band playing, people dressed up in German beergirl outfits, and the whole German community was there.

The food was pretty good, they had all the usual German fare, pork knuckles, sausages, roast ox etc. The whole scene was very communal -- we squeezed on benches and ate and drank communally. The highlight was of course the beer, and I got pretty sloshed. If I track what I drank, I think I had:

5 pints of beer (that's 2.5 litres of liquid), including one pint of some stranger's beer which I just took from the table (it was unattended) and drank
2 or 3 kirsch shots


Nearer the end of the night, we were all sort of standing up on our benches and grooving (or trying to) to the German music. I was next to this rather senior lawyer who was 7 months pregnant and jiving on the bench -- thinking back, that might not have been such a good idea, what if she fell off. Then there were some people who were using the tables to dance on -- it was quite funny. This woman was rather sloshed, and danced with random strangers -- there was a German man who kept coming back to groove with her, and another sloshed lawyer said: "someone's gonna get some pussy action tonight" hahhaaha I was so shocked but amused -- I'm sure he didn't intend to say that.

I think we all left slightly past midnight -- I'm not sure how I got home in one piece without losing all my belongings. I got home, turned on the aircon, and collapsed on my bed without turning off the lights.

All in a fun night -- I hope I get invited again next year.

The taxi driver asks me if I know how to change his handphone from Line 2 back to Line 1. I take the phone from him -- the screen saver says: "Aids kills". I wonder if that's a reminder to him not to cavort with the joo chiat / geylang / desker road crowd.

And I didn't get a taxi fare discount.

The weekend was all about me, me and me. I went to watch a movie all by myself, and roamed about That CD shop which has the friendliest assistants I've ever met, and ended up buying 4 CDs. I haven't bought a CD since I was 18. That's 10 years ago. For all the choir I do, I'm not really into music. Sue Lynn asked me the other day what radio channels I listened to while we were in the car, and I realised I didn't even know the radio was on. It's just background noise. But I've decided music is good, and I want to discover what kind of music I like.

With the 4 CDs, guess what? I need a CD player. And of course I then need an amplifier, and speakers. And therefore it's time for more shopping. Since I cannot stand crap sound, I think it's going to cost me quite a pretty penny. And it needs to look cool. People tell me Bose is no good, but hey, it looks good.

Here's hoping STI will keep going strong harharhar.

I know not why it is, that my MSN Live Messenger keeps showing me this ad of this couple kissing, and asking "Are you a sex addict?".

Sloth

is waking up at 12.30 pm, and watching TV from 2 pm to 11.30 pm non stop with a break for dinner.

I watched:

8 episodes of Justice League
1 chinese movie
1 globetrotter episode
1 episode of smallville

i haven't brushed my teeth or bathed since i woke up.

Kanina Burana

It is 4.52 am. Why am I awake? I just got back from work. Why? I guess it's the guilt trip from sauntering into work consistently at 10.30 - 11.30 am for the last 3 weeks or so. I have been unmotivated, and sometimes, I feel like what this video is trying to say:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKqOUyxFHLU

BUT, this is not a sad or depressing post! This is meant to be an exciting post!

So, what have I been up to. Well, we went to sing for Carmina Burana at VCH, and, to parrot Disaster by the Bay, whom I was trying very hard to look out for, I swear it's the crappiest concert I've sung in a longgggg time, and oh we hung out with my power clique.

We were given divine request from the God himself to help out with the male and female chorus in VJ, and as an oh-by-the way thing, this combined chorus singing selected movements from Carmina Burana with...shudder....N U S S chorus....I still recognise some of them from my Magnificat days in NUS when we combined with them. This was the choir which needed to retune itself before every song. Like the conductor would play a chord, and they would all sing (and by sing I mean creep into the note like diarrhoea down a toilet bowl) until they tuned to the chord, and then start singing. Every song.

Sure, there are some powerful singers there, like a number of tenors who can sing like above a G. Except that it's no use confidently blasting / holding a high A-flat with full vibrato, when the song calls for an A or a G....and to then hold it for another 3 seconds after the whole choir had cut off and stopped singing leaving you vibrating on a high but not-in-key-note, well, that sort of takes the cake.

The male chorus was pretty ok, I liked the songs, and I made the effort to go introduce myself to these kids. So, putting names down in case I ever forget, lest I be named antisocial -- James, Keith, Reuben, Jianrui, Wayne (aka The Voice -- his placement and voice production is excellent). I cracked at least 3 times (haha so much for "helping out" with the chorus huh). They were most amusing:

Reuben: So...are you in NS?
Me: bursts out laughing "no!!!"
Reuben: Oh oops sorry, so still studying?
Me: uhm, no, guess again haha
Reuben: Oh sorry....so....you're from two thousand and wat batch ah?
Me: uhm, 1997/98.....

All in it was pretty fun, and I'm now left with choir withdrawal 'cos it will be my first saturday "off" since the beginning of the year. And how am I spending it?

The woods are lovely dark and deep
But I have promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep

I am off to ye old office. Hooray.

It has been a millenia since my last update. Things got so busy that I just didn't have the motivation to blog. So many things have happened since February.

1. My colleague quit on me. I always thought she'd be around longer, and I felt a little stupid and betrayed for having given up my secondment to London on the basis that she might not have been able to cope with the extra work so I delayed it. That was dumb. One should learn at work that it's every man for himself. Her last day fell on my birthday. Some birthday present.

The departure meant that the dynamics at work changed very significantly. I no longer have lunch or dinner outside 'cos I don't feel like eating with strangers. My new roommate doesn't really eat, so I've missed a number of dinners simply because I didn't really fancy going to eat dinner alone.

My stress at work has increased a little 'cos I now have to take a supervisory role over the new associates. The HR department deigned me buddy-material so I've been assigned buddies to 3/3 interns within 2 months. It all means increased responsibility. Stress.

2. I moved in. Another reason for the long delay was that I was busy trying to sort out what to do with my house. As a first time home owner, I had no idea what to do with the place. It took me 7 months (from Oct 2006) to decide what I wanted and to complete it.

Hunting for furniture was very stressful and took up most of my weekends. Most of the time was taken just to see things and discover what I like and what I don't like. Unfortunately, there is a great disconnect between what you like and what is a reasonable price to pay for it.

Anyhow, official shifting took place in May, which marked another milestone in life -- one of bills, bills and more bills. Being an adult is no fun I swear. I'm still glad I have my own pad and moved out of the shithole that is Tampines St 41, where the washing machine doesn't bloody work, the doors on the toilets cannot lock, the baby doesn't stop screaming. Ah, the bliss of silence. It's quite liberating to decide that I don't feel like washing dishes and therefore I will leave them in the sink until the weekend.

3. Months of hell -- these two months were really busy 'cos our European clients were busy trying to finish stuff so that they can go off for their summer holidays.

4. Concert preparations -- concert preparations started to pick up, and we got busy. I got to know some of the new people better and their characters and mannerisms. Some of them are really quite funny. One idolises the K with memorable quotes such as:

QUOTE

When the song ended, I can only stand in awe at the lone person standing in front of the choir... He is to us what Jose Mourinho is to Chelsea, what Rafa Benitez is to Liverpool, what Sir Alex is to ManU... He is (as they say in football) one of the best... Truly The Special One indeed!

UNQUOTE

aka God.

Another has now taken to calling himself God No. 2.

The newbies all have really great voices which makes singing with them quite enjoyable. Except when they go flat. Which is quite often. Gah.

5. Concert proper -- that was last Sunday -- we had our biennial concert at Esplanade. I thought it went rather well -- I enjoyed singing the first half more than the second half. 1st tenors forgot a line, so it was all I could do during performance to stop myself from reaching out to the tenor immediately in front of me -- that would be Calvin and junyi -- and strangling them. All in I thought we put in a credible peformance.

What's next? Honestly, I haven't the slightest clue. I think I might want to go to London in March for secondment, but I'm undecided.

Lessons

1. Need to practice on a remote slope somewhere the art of balancing the clutch and the accelerator. Cannot die on a slope. Very malu.

2. 1.1 litre car cannot go up the multi story carpark in 2nd gear. car will die engine. Very memalu-fying. must engage 1st gear.

3. Need to lose weight. Thunder thighs spilling over the path of engaging the reverse gear.

I sound like a beginner driver. I'm not! I'm not!!!!

Otherwise, having the car is GREAT! I've been ALL OVER singapore today as soon as I touched down from the train:

a) breakfast in Siglap while having my kopi gao and my Sunday straits times.

b) lunch at tampines.

c) visit yonder Ikea@Tampines. Wonderful place it is. Much better than Alexandra.

d) visit yonder Office. Can someone tell me if parking along a single solid yellow line in a bus bay on a Sunday is illegal? I've lost my theory book.

e) have dinner at Old Airport Road, only to find out the bloody hawker centre is under renovation.

Total distance covered on Sunday, 25 / 2 / 07: 60 km. Haha weeeeeeeeeeeee

Need to find nice parks to visit for next Sunday's activities!!!!

CNY

Ok it's been ages since I updated. So sue me. Went back to KL for a week and got my first brush with Malaysian bureaucracy. I don't know if I've been here too long, but there are so many little things which annoy me about the country.

Incident no. 1 involved my mom's office clerk. Apparently she's lazy as hell. She has to do one thing at a time, and if you give her two things to do, she'll go: "aiyah, I banyak stressss lah, jangan bagi aku stressss, bila aku stressss, I tak boleh buat kerja!!!" (translated: aiyahhh, I'm very stressed! don't gimme stress, when I'm stressed, I cannot work!!!). Typically, she'll take MC the next day, claiming headaches. On some days, she comes to work and goes: "takda hati nak buat kerja, aku dah nak transfer dah! stress sangat!" (translated: no heart to work, I want to transfer already! too much stress!). And then she spends the rest of the day gossipping with the other office clerk about the latest on-screen romance between god-knows-which-malay-superstar.

My mom asked her to e-mail some attachments (14 in all). She attaches one, sends it by e-mail. Next comes a frantic call: "alamak!!!! itu fail semua dah hilang!!! cam-na? cam-na????? alamak alamak!!! I stresssss!!! Mesti ada VIRUS!!!!" (translation: alamak!!! all the files disappeared?? how? how??? alamak!! alamak!!! I stresssss! must have VIRUS!!!!". Apparently the Virus is a favourite excuse whenever it involves work on the computer. I don't know what she expected my mom to do, like remote desktop and undelete her files is it?

As to why she isn't replaced, well, answer: the replacement may well be worse. Apparently a previous staff went: "i tak mau buat. Kalau you mau, pecatlah I". (translation: I dun wanna do. If you want, fire me").

And apparently the delivery boy for the office clocks in at 7.30 am everyday, but disappears until 11 am. Gossip has it that he's minum kopi-ing with the rest of the delivery boys from the other departments. Nothing ever gets sent on time.

Incident 2: i got BLACKFACED by a cashier from Jaya Jusco!!!! The woman in front of me bought like 15 cartons of canned drinks. I had just one can drink to pay for. So after she finishes scanning the 15 cartons and takes payment, she SLOWWWWLY goes about packing them cartons in plastic bags, as slow as baking kuih lapis. I almost puked blood and said can you scan mine? Stupid woman doesn't understand English, and ignores me. I put exact change on the table, and start looking for the scanner myself to scan my drink and walk off. I can't find the scanner (it was actually a hand scanner at the side). Still ignored. I turn around to the supervisor at the next counter and go: "can i just scan my drink? I've got just ONE item and I've got EXACT change." supervisor pretends not to understand and whines to the cashier: "eh...". I get irritated and start flapping the drink in front of the cashier and flashing money at her. Ok so I wasn't a model of good behaviour either, but she annoyed me. So she BLACKFACED me and scanned my drink.

Incident 3: apparently the waiting time to get your internet fixed if something goes wrong, is 7 working days. *7 fricking working days*. I was half minded to ask: "hmm...is there ANYTHING i can do to speed it up? like I dunno, pay an EXPEDITED or EXPRESS fee? wink wink?", but thought the better of it.

Incident 4: I've said this before, but bloody hell why are precious public resources being used to escort VIP cars around? VIP cars that seem to be exempt from the 110 km/h speed limit on the highway? This when crime rates are soaring etc etc.

I refuse to pay any tax.

It's such a pleasure to sing among non-crap singers. The current batch of tenors must be the most talented I've been in so far. With some practice we're gonna make some beautiful music come August. I can't wait

All hail the golden goose!

Had lunch today at Pierside. The food is quite yummy. The set lunch looked sucky so we ordered a la carte. We had foie gras for starters, and tenderloin steak for mains. The foie gras was so good. I say animal rights be damned, and force feed them geese with more grain!!! My friend tells me in Hong Kong they have foie gras sushi and foie gras risotto. Oh man, I'm salivating at the thought...Mains was pretty good, but not as good as I remember the first time I tried it like, 5-6 years back. They've taken away the sides (which you now have to order extra) - that's fine with me, more room for other proper food I say. I think I've only recently become a foie gras fan. Actually, make that today haha, since I've never craved for it before.

Dessert was panna cotta which was not so good. Boring. like eating egg tart.

The damage? Some $180 for uhm, 2 people. ouch. I suppose such food should be savoured once in a while. Don't think I'll go back anytime soon - it's a bit too overpriced.

foie gras, foie gras, foie gras.....

I'm hungwee.....

My car agent has pissed off to Bangkok for a week. Sigh...we all know what that means. There's little incentive for his covering colleague to get her ASS moving and to GET ME THAT CAR. So, I've resigned myself to not getting the car before next week. SIGH.

Have I mentioned my car is probably coming this week? On taking advice from ahem....my "friends" who completely dissed my choice of GOLD BEIGE for my funky Hyundai, I decided to change it to "Hip Hop Red". I hope I don't live to regret this.

But the most important thing is that there IS a car, and that it IS coming. Soon.

I'M SO EXCITED, CAN YOU TELL?!!?!!!!?!

VROOM VROOM !!!!

Ok life sux. My aircon drips water, and I have a CRACK in my wisdom tooth. I have ROTTEN TEETH.

GOD HAS FORSAKEN MEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

fuck. il coro dei malammogliati is HARD. how to teach this weekend.

i think i shall DELEGATE.

DISASTER my aircon is leaking water again!!! I feel like I'm in a tropical jungle during rainy season. The water goes drip, drip, drip. This time, I shall report it immediately to the landlord. Like, tomorrow.

I bought myself a new TOY!!!! A Nintendo DS Lite. I think I'm going into my second childhood. It was a sort of impulse buy, purpose being to keep me entertained throughout CNY when I'm going to be bored to tears in my relatives' house for an entire week.

Went to balastier today to absorb lights. By absorb I mean I walk around, and see what's available, what I like, and what I don't, just to get exposure. I did the defect inspection on Saturday, and remedial work starts Monday - will take up to a month. I'm finally getting there. Perhaps can target move-in date sometime in March.

I also went to Robinsons to check out all the beds - another reccee session if you will. The plan is to move my crappy single mattress to the new house and sleep on the floor first while I accumulate furniture on a weekly basis, starting with the bed. There were some excellent and very comfortable mattresses. It doesn't follow that the pricier the mattress, the more comfortable it is. Some if these fancy mattresses have this memory foam thing which made me feel as if i were sinking into quicksand. There were some Simmons mattresses that I quite liked, one went for about 3k, the other 5k....5k is a bit exhorbitant, but I've read that the prices at Robinsons tends to be higher, so I have to scout a bit more.

This is when I can't wait for my car.

WHERE IS ITTTTTTTTTTTTTT

I found out that my secretary also bought a car this month, of the same brand and colour, but of course her Verna 1.4 trounces my Getz 1.1 flat haha.

I was extremely tickled by the irony that I (the boss) got a crappier car than she did. I suppose that's a good sign that I'm not egoistic haha.

I reported it home and we had a good laugh about it.

Eventful weekend I say - went to test drive a thousand cars, booked a car, reported my defects i the house (joint inspection is this Saturday).

It's been donkey years since I last blogged. Went for a 2 week trip to Vietnam. Vietnam was amazing. I loved the mountain area - we went trekking (and I was kinda like the last one in the group huffing and puffing along) in Sapa, which is in the northwest of vietnam. The temperature was about 10 degrees which was just fantastic.

We opted for a homestay, which meant that we stayed overnight in a farmhouse in the middle of a paddy field with a Dzao family (a local minority). I'm sure the family benefits a lot from it, as I saw trappings of wealth like DVD player and satellite tv decoder in the house. Conveniently ignoring that, we had a wonderful time. Dinner was cooked by the family and was one of the best meals i had in Vietnam. We slept in a communal place, on mattresses next to each other. Apparently I snored so loudly that my travel mates both woke up together, and exclaimed "oh shit is that him????" together in the middle of the night. I felt rather sheepish.

The most amazing part was that I woke up to the smell of burning charcoal - the family was cooking our breakfast. It reminded me of my childhood when I used to spend time in my uncle's house in Pahang - some run down place, but the environment was similar. I couldn't recall a more joyful time during the trip than that morning.

More importantly, haha, today I finally made up my mind about what car to get, and plonked down a deposit for a Hyundai Getz 1.1 manual. Hopefully this will arrive soon. Words can't describe my excitement!!!!!