1 + 1

fabulously good news!

sk was already elated when he told me that faith is expecting during our ict last month. what’s the better news then?

he’s becoming a daddy 2 times over! i’m just so happy for him.

it really cheers up my morning and brightens the day when you receive such glorious news from your friends. :)

no deal

after being in “red alert” for the last few days, there’s still no real development in the deal which had my manager all keyed up despite multiple emails and conference calls.

looks like it’s not happening for this quarter-end, i’ll be surprised if it does. there’s even a chance that when it happens next month, it might completely bypass my team.

yeah! less work, same pay! :P

ge coming

unless you’ve been holed up in a cave elsewhere, you would probably have known that the biggest event of the local political scene is very likely to happen sometime this year.

the men-in-white have been busy going around shaking hands during weekends and the party had started to introduce new faces at such events. and as much as the gahmen vehement denial that this year’s budget is an election year budget, the progress package will no doubt sweeten the ground nicely for them.

my constituency has been absorbed into a grc. commentators had speculated that the incumbent mp is probably retiring and the new face will piggy-back on the cabinet minister leading the team into the parliament.

since my eligibility to vote more than 10 years ago, i’ve only exercised my citizenship’s rights only once during the last election. prior to that, no opposition members had contested the ward.

i hope that the opposition can put up a credible team to stand against the miw, so that election day will not be a non-event for me. :)

big deal

my manager just informed me that i’ll be helping elyn with a usd10 million deal that’s in the works. we need to coordinate the logistics portion.

as usual, those projects that involve me are the ones that are ad-hoc with no standard process in place, where many parties, both internal and external over various geographical locations are involved. guess i’ll be drowning in emails and conference calls very soon.

and the stunt my department is going to pull off is worthy of a nkf gala charity show, that is to execute all this by the month-end so that the sales team can clock in the revenue for this quarter’s results.

no jog

feeling lethargic… didn’t go for my run… sigh… need some motivation to get out my couch potato rut…

peach garden @ novena garden

doris told me i have to post a review here so that those who missed the dinner can at least read about it.

i’ve read about this restaurant previously. besides the good food, the 2 lady bosses are known to be very service-oriented and will even remember their regular customers’ preferences.

something interesting about the restaurant’s service staff here, there’re a few malay staff among them so please look carefully before you start asking for things in mandarin.

it’s not that i’m racist or anything. i’m all for equal employment opportunities but it’s a non-halal chinese restaurant here that we’re talking about… i wonder what’s the business reason for such an arrangement.

reservations are a must for saturday dinners, since it’s not a very big restaurant to begin with. and if you’re johann, you’ll reserve the roast pork too.

dainty but sinfully good cubes of very crispy skin, lard and meat made even better with the mustard sauce. give this a miss if you’re on a diet or you simply can’t stomach the layer of fat. however, your fellow dinners will probably be more than happy to help you out of your “suffering”.

next was the recommended dish of wasabi prawns. fresh, succulent prawns were served coated in an unappetising pastel green wasabi sauce. not very pretty i must say but 1 bite of the crunchy prawn meat later, i don’t think you’ll mind what colour it is. it’s that good, trust me.

depending on your tolerance for the green japanese root, you might find it a trifle “hot” like diane did. or plain mild like i did.

the sea perch were lightly fried fillets dressed simply with raw onion rings and a light sauce. rather thai-influenced, the only thing missing was the chilli padi. good for those who don’t like to meddle around with fish bones.

the tofu with crabmeat may be too bland for those with more robust palates but i like it the way it is. the only complaint i have is that the crabmeat is rather tasteless but i guess the tofu is the star here.

the sweet and sour pork, a chinese restaurant standard fare was ok, no surprises there. the asparagus in oyster sauce, was just that, asparagus with oyster sauce. not very easy to botch such a simple dish i guess. and now i know janelle loves her asparagus. :)

fried udon, another recommendation by diane, was a good choice. the thick noodles were al dente and exuded black pepper fragrance and spiciness. it was cooked simply with diced shrimp meat and omelette.

dessert for me was the very “in” dessert of the moment at most Chinese restaurants now – black glutinous rice with vanilla ice-cream. the version here is served in a coconut so you can eat the coconut flesh together with the dessert. thumbs-up for the dessert.

overall, a good place for quality chinese cuisine but expect to pay for it. our bill came to about $37 per person before discount, a bit on the high side. so if you’re interested in the shark’s fin soup and beijing duck, be prepared to pay even more.

okay, i’m done with the restaurant review now… let's talk about the little ones.

janelle is still painfully shy when she first arrived at the restaurant, clinging onto johann and burying her face, refusing to see us. here, she’s pretending that we don’t exist. haha…

cayden is starting to recognise faces/people so he may start bawling if he doesn’t like you. johann took revenge for janelle by making cayden cry. just kidding! :P i think he only likes female company. hehe…

super low

saw this weird guy in serena’s yoga class this afternoon… walked into the class wrapped in a towel, topless. serena remarked to him, “not cold?” when she came into studio. :P

at first, i thought he was wearing 1 of those beach shorts with solid colour blocks near the waist and matching prints on the legs of the shorts. only when he was nearer did i realise that the solid yellow colour block and black waistband does not belong to the shorts.

it’s his underwear being exposed by his very low-slung shorts!

and the printed boxer-like shorts were barely clinging onto his butt. i think if he had jumped up and down hard enough, the shorts would definitely have fallen off. duh!

it’s amazing that none of the ladies complained about him to serena or the gym for outraging their modesties. he walked over to occupy the space behind me on the left.

could it get any worse? yeah, it did.

how? you might be wondering…

during the class, in between the left and right turns, ups and downs, i suddenly noticed a very bright patch of yellow flashing at me. guess what happened?

his shorts had split at the butt leaving a gaping hole showcasing more of his brief. wah liao! additional ventilation hole.

he didn’t stay for the final relaxation [corpse pose]. i wonder if serena had told him about his shorts. :P haha…

4.6 km slow jog

haven’t been running since my in-camp training last month, got to get back into the routine if i want to pass my ippt by this july.

started with a slow jog and maintained the same pace throughout the entire run, because i still want to walk, not limp around the office tomorrow. :P

i clocked in at about 30:00, a most refreshing run made better by the strong breeze at certain parts of the route.

pool session

a very early sunday for me today… the lesson is from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm. had to get up early to eat breakfast, buy lunch and meet the rest at outram mrt before making our way to outram secondary school.

we had no problems locating the school with the help of the map provided, but we had a little trouble looking for the pool.

we started off with the tests. each of us is required to swim 200 metres in any of the standard styles followed by a 15-metre underwater swim with 1 breath and lastly, 10 minutes of flotation or tread water.

all of us did the 200 metres without any problems. doris’ breath was not deep enough for the 15-metre underwater swim. ky didn’t have the stamina to tread water for 10 minutes. maybe he’s too dense. :P hehe… i treaded water for the full 10 minutes since i couldn’t float like doris.

kiat led the training before we were split up into smaller groups. wee san took over our group of 4 and started off with the basics of the mask, snorkel, fins and weight belt.

we learnt the flutter kick for proper fining, then it’s clearing of the snorkel at the surface and clearing of the mask underwater. the ditching of the weight belt was easy even though we had to do it with just our right hand.

all of us couldn’t get the giant stride entry into the water right. somehow, our heads always went underwater. is it so difficult? don't think so but we just couldn't do it.

we had a quick lunch break then we had to don our tank and bc and proceeded to learn the use of the regulator and perform other exercises underwater such as removal and wearing of the bc, buddy out-of-air, cesa and adjustment to neutral buoyancy.

i guess we just need lots of practice to make all the drills become 2nd nature to us. it was a tiring and intensive day of pool training and we were glad when it wrapped up punctually at 4:00 pm.

overall, i felt that we all did okay today. therefore, as long as we do our own revision and keep our wits and nerves with us during the open water next month, we should do alright.

just hoping that i don’t get too seasick! :P

equipment try-out

second theory lesson today. 4-hour lesson from 2:00 pm to 6:00 pm but we were told to be there earlier to try out the equipment for size for the pool session on sunday.

met doris and ky for lunch at clementi before taking a bus down to mako. a few of the students were already there before us and had started trying out their wetsuits.

it was a hot squeeze into the dry wetsuit. most of us ended up sweating. it was doubly hot for me since i had 2 to try on for size. the second suit was cut somewhat smaller even though it’s a large size.

we made payment of $560 which included the following:
· $390 for course fees [after the miw discount]
· $40 for textbook and dive table
· $50 for rental of equipment for the open water dives
· $80 for extra day of the dive trip

so there, we’re all committed to go for our open water dives on the good friday weekend next month at pulau dayang.

mako sub-aquatics

first theory lesson for my scuba diving course, don’t know quite what to expect.

amy had recommended the naui qualification saying that it places more emphasis on safety and since the rest did not have any objections, we settled on this school, which incidentally was the same one that amy had gone to.

left work earlier today. took the train to buona vista mrt station with ky to meet up with doris and kl. transferred to a bus next to go to ayer rajah industrial park. there were only 11 of us for the class starting today. doris is the only girl.

today’s 3-hour lesson consists of an introduction to the equipment and touched on some buoyancy, pressure and volume concepts relating to scuba diving.

patrick leong, the instructor spoke in a well-modulated voice, so although it wasn’t sleep-inducing, we were pretty tired after the 3 hours since all of us had a long day at work too.

hungrily we adjourned to clementi for our dinner [supper for doris] before heading home.

brokeback mountain

how befitting to watch the movie on the same day lee ang won the oscars for best director for his tale of forbidden love between 2 cowboys in the conservative rural countryside of wyoming.

the movie is adapted from a short story by annie proulx. the story unfolds in 1963 where ennis [heath ledger] and jack [jake gyllenhaal] first met to herd sheeps up on brokeback mountain thus beginning the tumultuous relationship which ends on a tragic note 20 years later.

love is a force of nature. and nature sometimes wrecks great upheavals in our lives.

they had fallen in love right from the start without quite realising it. and it was something inexplicable to both as they were swept away helplessly in their longing for each other through the years.

both of them living behind a façade of normal family life while betraying their wives as they continue to meet in the mountains several times a year. something which jack very much wanted to change but ennis was not prepared to.

they were addicted to each other and yet couldn’t quit. such was the hopelessness of their situation. a happily-ever after ending might have been possible if only ennis had the fortitude to leave with jack. but who’s to tell?

*** spoiler ahead ***

the pain that ennis suffered after the death of jack was palpable and poignantly evoked. the loss he felt was especially overwhelming when he had found out that jack had kept the shirt that he had “lost” years ago on brokeback mountain lovingly hung together with jack’s own.

sad.

nyp

didn’t know that tammy and nyp are the hottest search keywords now in singapore until i read the sunday times today. i guess there’re lots of curious netizens out there who’re interested in home-made videos, aren’t there? ;)

and there’re bloggers who admitted to have exploited this craze to drive traffic to their blogs by having all the most searched words in their posts. an inadvertent outcome of all these related posts and links that do not contain the desired clip for download is that the clip has been buried deeper under all these noise.

therefore, maybe i shall also write about my friend, john who is teaching at nanyang polytechnic. or perhaps talk about a cousin who is starting school at nyp when the new semester begins just for the fun of it. :P haha…

so will traffic to my blog shoot up because of this post?

i don’t know nor do i care.

bah!

ps: to all unintended visitors looking for the clip here, i don’t have the video and neither have i seen it. please bear in mind that sharing or possession of such obscene content is punishable by law in singapore.

camera phone not

the media have been abuzz with what's stored in kids' phones these days what with almost all phones having camera and video-camera capabilities, the discussion sparked off by a tammy from nanyang polytechnic.

her private video made with her boyfriend was uploaded to the internet and caught on like wildfire. another person seeking her 15 minutes of fame in this age of salacious blogs and reality tv programmes?

unfortunately not. she had lost her phone and the clip had been distributed without her knowledge.

i wonder what is it about the episode are people most aghast with:
* a young polytechnic student, 17, having sex at her age or
* a young polytechnic student, 17, having sex at her age and video-cammed the act or
* a young polytechnic student, 17, having sex at her age, video-cammed the act and carried the clip on her mobile phone everywhere she goes?

gosh, the things youngsters do... it's not what they do but how they have done it without realising the full consequences. that is what that never changes, isn't it?

the follies of youth i guess. something that can only be tempered by age and maturity.

so what do i have on my mobile phone?

nothing to send your pulse racing... unless you like cute puppies. :) most of my pictures are of friends and family, especially my friends' kids. goes to show that i'm old liao... haha...

anyway, my mobile had become a non-camera phone now since i've restored the data rendering my camera function inaccessible. so even if i had wanted to, i'm not technologically equipped for any hanky-panky pictures for now, that is... :P