Euphoria

Felt good today. Went to East Coast Lagoon with Lena n D for a scrumptious meal after a hard day's work. Felt as though we went to chill out in a pub. I mean, what can be better to have dinner with the president and our club mascot- more laughs that is. I think our mascot loves it, she admitted that she loves bringing joy to people when everyone laughs at her. OKlah, we can ensure that she will forever bring joy to the world.

Chilling out at home now with a smooth jazz CD. So nice. No crummy soccer matches and no one to snatch the TV remote. PEACE! Just me, Barry White and my work. What a delightful trio. Pity he passed on, I mean he is such a fantas singer.

Why am I euphoric?
1) Had a good talk with some people(one on one), they sounded positive (could be faking.... who knows?)
2) Finished one LT and felt as though I owned the LT. Its not my fault if they did not read up before they came.
3)Finished one session of a special type of lesson. haha. oh well, i have high expectations.
4) Had a practical, loved my kids. so well behaved.
5) I'm alone at home listening to jazz!!!
6) had beef koay teow in East coast and very yummy ohluak and the icing on the cake was the mascot herself.
7) skipping lunch to get work done is one of the best things
8) decided to stop eating ice cream- so no more island creamery and toms for the moment. no more tubbies of ice cream!!!
9) there's still no bird flu in Singapore!
10) read that my bro's going back to newcastle for hols!! 3 cheers dude!

Cant wait to play tennis!

Lost Loves

Work is like a tsumani, it washes away all your loves and favourite things. Sometimes it not about time management but the amount of responsibilites you have. Since work started I hardly have time to bake, cook and the worse bit, play tennis. I din realise how much I missed playing (not that I was ever good, I just loved hitting the balls around) until I watch my kids learn the spin serve. Damn it. If only I took lessons regularly, I would have been playing reasonably well by now. Wished I was a kid again.

Anyway, there's this really fantastic tennis school by the lake. Really far away in the West. Such a great place with really good, dedicated coaches. So if you wanna learn tennis, let me know, I'll recommend.

Tennis for me started in uni. My friend taught me, played on thoughout uni, played less regularly when I started work but still played, took some lessons from SSC, took some from a private coach, now, I have a live-in tennis partner. Love to play with him (for reasons that I will not reveal in case he changes tactics). We play whenever we can.... like I said, work is like a tsunami............

Ma Kuang, Ice cream, Dim Sum and Turning 24

Ma Kuang

Decided to give myself a long awaited relief from shoulder ache, went to Ma Kuang for a Tuina (some Chinese massage). Went to the one in Ang Mo Kio Ave 10. Waited for like half an hour as there was only one Tuina specialist in the house and there was a patient before me. The sad thing was that he spoke mainly in Mandarin and the even sadder thing was that I put on my "Yes i understand everything u are saying even though I have only some freaking idea". Basically, i just nodded my head and said "OK!" to almost anything he said.

So he sat me down on a chair and tilted my head to the right, left, down and up checking and pressing my shoulder each time. He said something----- then gestured me to lay face down on a massage bed (the one with a hole for your face). He placed 4 heat/suction stuff on my back for about 10 min. It felt nice and warm, as though it was sucking the pain off my back.

Then he came over and removed it and proceeded to tuina. He used his elbows and some technique to massage my back.It was painful at times I guess its cos my "meridian points?" were blocked/chocked with stress and those long hours preparing powerpoint slides/chatting on the msn/hitting tennis balls without warming up and what ever else. So he massaged and I must say, i did feel relieved after that, like some weight being lifted off my shoulders. He said that just one session will not erase all the pain and that the pain will come back if I dont sit properly/continue doing what i always do etc. And I should not drink cold water/tea and eat watermelon. Gave me 2 big plasters to put on my back then sent me off $27.50 less in my bank account but slightly less ache in my back.

Turning 24 (stop sniggering! )
Sighs, I'm almost a quarter a century old. Had the best birthday present from ss of my little miniature stuff! Yeah!! my colleagues surprised me with a card written by so many people. So sweet!!! My department bought me a yummy coffee cake and the surprise was quite unexpected. Supposed to have a meeting (which i really needed) but the meeting was a disguise!!! Lena n D bought me indianish earrings which were so cool but i din wear them long cos I'm allergic to metal, sorry babes, my ears will get a bad rash if I wear it for a while.(except the expensive metals)

Dinner was the best of 2 kinds of crabs at NO signboard, Chilli crab and tanghoon crab with ss and SIL. Yumms!!!

My parents bought me a durian cake (Emicake) at my niece's birthday and one of the little girls asked how old I was, I pointed to the cake and asked her to count the candles. She looked at the brightly lit 2 large candles and 4 smaller ones and said, "Are you 42?" Everyone laughed. *roll eyes*


Yummie "Spike" durian & choc cake from Big O that ss bought for me.









My Bday present... So cUtE!!!



Island Creamery
Went to Island Creamery at Serene Centre. Has such lovely flavours. They have nice ice cream cakes too though I havent tried... mabbie on my next 24th birthday. Each tup of about 500ml cost $8.

1)Pulut Hitam
2)Burnt Caramel
3)Tiger sorbet
4)Apple pie
5)Coconut swirl
6)Chendol
7)bandung (the best)
8)horlicks
9)kung pao cashew
10)teh tarik (not for the faint hearted)
11)Milo
12)Oreo
13) Reverso (some chocolate thing)

just to name a few common ones.




Wah Lok Cantonese Carlton Hotel
The 6 of us went there for brunch of Dim Sum. Ala cart and not buffet.

Food:
1)polo char siew pao is good
2) Stuffed Chee cheong Fun (Crystal Jade Nicer)
3)Porridge (crystal Jade nicer)
4)Xiao long Bao (juicy enough but the one at Pudong is nicer)
5) steamed pork ribs (comparable to Crystal jade)
6)Har kao (ok lar)
7) tea was diluted just after the 2nd round
Service: ok lar... no complaints
Return: NO! Rather go to crystal jade
Misc: got free $6 worth of parking coupon, nice ambience. Won many many awards for best restaurant etc but din find the food raving....
Rating:7/10 (cf with crystal jade dim sum :8.5/10)

Picnics, Parties, Computers and Pianos

Well, had a good BDC outing on Saturday with my department. Set out rather early in the morning to buy stuff like drinks, cutlery,ice and otah. Picked SS up then set off to the beach to keep Lena company.Poor dear was there so early to chope a hut for us.

Everyone arrived soon after, bringing food and precious tots (only for those who have). Our menu:

1) Potato salad (Darth)
2) Waffles (President)
3) Tonnes of Indian Bee hoon (J and Betty)
4) Eclairs and Swiss rolls (Boss)
5) Chicken Pie (Mrs L)
6) Indonesian Otah (me!)
7) Yam Cake (Grace)
8) Brownie (Ivles)
9) Beef (Ms C)
10) Pasta (Boss #2)
11) Fruits (the "D" in the BDC)
12) Chicken Curry (CY)
13) Birthday Cake (me!)
14) Drinks (me!)
15) Snacks (President & me!)

It was a rather fun outing, playing frisbee, throwing ball, cooing over the kids. I liked it most cos some brought our partners and some brought their babies. So fun. We celebrated D's birthday (who came last/latest).
















United Square
In the evening we went to look for pressies for my nephew and niece. THe best place to shop, Toys R Us. Bought a princess set and a drawing thing. Even signed up for a free 10% discount card. I think it will come useful for a long long time to come.

Soup restaurant in United Square
Tried: Samsui chicken, potato leaves, black chicken soup, steamed rice and sliced fish san mee
Review: Great stuff! I loved the Samsui chicken. It comes with a garlic/ginger dip and the chick is so well cooked. The soup is great too!
Return: Definitely!!!
Other stuff: Loved the simple chinese teahouse style decor and the service is good.
BUT: Braised peanuts ($2), White rice ($0.8), Towels (cant recall!)
Rating: 7.8/10 (samsui chicken 8.5/10)

Samsui Chicken

















Sweet Potato Leaves
















Downtown East
Havent been there for ages. I remember we used to get a chalet there when we were in Secondary school (remember Az?) It was so changed!!!
The wild wild wet looked good, so did the escape theme park but we didnt have a chance to play.

Imagine a small chalet room with about 7 kids, snatching for the x box(yes they have that now!!! but no games!!!) screaming and crying and parents yelling to reprimand/teach their kids. It was a nightmare. The only good ting that came out of it was the pretty birthday cake. Barbie doll . Will show u a pick once i upload it.

Barbie Doll Cake (before destruction by little girls)



















Barbie Doll Cake (after destruction by little girls)




















Computer Woes
So its easy to create and set up your own computer eh? Well, it was easy enuf with the help of 4 people! KS and S went to Costronic at Simlim with me and we with the sales person and the boss put together a computer for $1900. Not too bad, including a LCD screen for like $469, 1 Gig Ram, 3.2 processor i think a whopping 500G of memory space (seagate, 250 each in case one breaks down) etc.

Sil and Bil helped me to find the elusive plug for the lcd screen.... ha ha, u cant just plug it in anywhere, u have to plug it into the graphics card (whatever that is) and to re partition my harddisk. ( i din know u can reboot from CD)

Here a tip: Partitioning the hard disk
1) U have to partition it in megabytes. So bring out your calculator
2) if you want 4 drives in total, you have got to partition it all and format it all using some format system, Ntsc (non quick version) is recommended i think
3) be prepared to wait for like 30-45min for each partition and format
4) after you installed your OS and cant find your remaining free space (cos u did not partition it), dont install /save anyfiles, reboot the entire system with your CD

Sighs, I managed to kill some sasser worms, got rid of various trojans, murdered/quarantined strange viruses, system restored my computer many times, hotkeyed stuff, went into DOS to go some stuff. Etc But i cant partition my harddisk!!!! Nevermind, a bad experience it a learning experience. Wait till u hear how i connected my internet. The last i tried my windows Xp could not detect the wireless device and i have to get the isp address and all that crap.

Blah.... the week starts in 8...7....6...hours time.

The Ghost of Kandahar Street

So here's the Ghost Story of Kandahar Street

I used to work with a small private company in Kandahar Street,right next to Sabar Menanti. No 42A or 43 I cant recall. We were used to staying overnight at the small little two storey shophouse to prepared for exhibitions and what ever we did not have time to complete in our busy schedule.

So one very late night, my colleague and I were upstairs in the shophouse office typing stuff. We were facing each other working on our laptops. To my right about 4m away was a desktop, switched off. All of a sudden, we both heard typing noises from that computer and looked in that direction at the same time. The typing continued for a while then stopped. We looked at each other but did not talk about it.

Later on, we both felt the presence of something as we suddenly looked at the particular direction at the same time.

Well, there were more minor incidences but nothing worth a read.

Anyone knows the history of Kandahar Street?

Evie Speaks

Well, work has started... instead of it beginning to pile up, it just got dumped in tonneloads! Yikes! Tomorrow is such an exciting day! The fates of the trainee padwans will be out. I wonder how they turn out. I hope all of them are as good as Kuaigonjin. :))

Class 95
So, about my drive to work each day of the 5 day work week, I tune in to Class 95 Fm from like 640am to 715am. Glenn Ong and the Flying Dutchman. I love the FD. I think he's sensible yet quirky, mature yet explorative. I love his Irish (sometimes dirty) jokes that come on almost exactly when I'm almost reaching my workplace. I love hearing about his daughters and family life. I love the way he is such a cool dad with a big responsibility.

Glenn Ong on the other hand, irritates the hell out of me. When he's on, and blabbering, giving his uncalled for (stupid) opinions, I change to GOLD 90.5 Fm, then I tune back to CLass 95 just after 7am to catch the Irish joke by FD then its back to GOLD 90.5, if Glenn is on. His chemistry with FD is just mismade. He interrupts the FD and just tries to force in his dumb ideas between FD's interesting banter. (!!!!) Vern's not as annoying (she is taking over Glen for a week or so, THANK GOODNESS!) but with the FD she's like an irritating buzzing bee making weird noises and lame comments on the show.

But I must say, I love Vern since Under ONe ROOf, but I just cant stand her co hosting with FD. Bring Joe Augustin and the FD back together again!!!!

Well, that got a load off my chest. Blogging is therapeutic!

Growing Up, Growing Old

My mother's cousin just had a quad bypass, he's 67. He was healthy, strong and always had a bright outlook in life. Looking at him, I didnt feel very sorry for him- simply because he seemed positive about the whole thing. He even joked and showed us the vein they took from his thigh and the scars he had from the heart operation. I guess,old age is a natural progression in life which I have witnessed first hand with my maternal grandmother. Sometimes, I dont feel pity for these people, because I understand that they have lost control of their own life, not out of will. They were once young, strong and the world belonged to them. Sometimes when I see them pushing cardboard boxes or collecting newspapers, I feel happy for them, not because they have to collect newspapers for a living but they are able to do things that a young person is able to. And some of these old people are very strong willed and stubborn. They refuse to give up no matter how tiring (unlike some brats!!!!) I admire them. Really.

Anyway, when I see elderly women, I tend to be reminded of my grandmothers. I didn't pity my grandmothers. I loved them. Very very much.

Connecting with the unknown
Which leads me to this. I saw a bit of National Geog following this woman who was trying to contact her husband who passed on suddenly. She tried several mediums etc to contact her husband in the other world.

Then in this book "Wild Orchids" by Jude Deavereux, also about a man who was trying to communicate with his wife who passed suddenly. (its actually a romantic novel, very well written, recommended for women whose partners have yet to propose...)

Eversince my paternal grandmother passed on, I've wanted to find out more about it. You see, on the day she passed away in Penang, almost at the very moment, a strong Frangipani scent filled my house back here in Singapore. I'm sure you have heard of incidences like this. Freaky?

Perhaps I've been watching too many Scarry movies and haunting shows.

Oh well.......

Wannahearaghoststorythatiwitnessedacoupleofyearsback?
Staytuned.