Lost

Ok so I admit I've been away for a loooooong time. Blame it on having too many photos to sort through....

Anyway I was just about to get ready a post but I just realised blogger has redone their interface and now I have to spend the whole night figuring it out before I get round to posting something proper.

MBS

There's no way someone like me would cough up S$100 (~US$70) to enter a casino in Singapore, but apparently there's a viewing gallery above the MBS gambling floor that is open to public. I was quite surprised that anyone could walk in to view and take photos, and innocently took a few shots before my friend pointed out that I was actually standing right next to the "no cameras" sign.

Anyway this was only half of the entire gambling area. It's actually a pretty disturbing scene, with the sound of the machines producing a pretty loud hum at a certain frequency, the cigarette smoke wafting up from the smoking floor at the bottom to all the non-smoking floors above.

We couldn't wait to get out.

Break a leg...

So yes... my injured leg. I've been wearing the immobiliser for 2.5 weeks now, few more days to go before I get it checked out by the ortho and hopefully can get rid of this really uncomfortable brace. Normally one has to wear it for 4 4-6 weeks, but I had spent a week after the fall innocently walking around Japan not knowing how hurt my leg was... Ignorance is bliss but foolilsh?

Update: Got to wear it for 2 more weeks.... grrr.....

Obviously this gets a lot of attention everywhere I go. After countless queries from colleagues, I have made the following observations:

Observation 1: People's minds can be so different, but sometimes they work all in the same way. The questions I get are always the same and in the same order:

Q1) What happened??!!

- "I fell while skiing"

Q2) So what's wrong with the leg??

- Depending how much I want to play it down or play it up, my answer varies from "It's a slight fracture" to "I broke my leg". Actually a fracture is the same as a break... but somehow calling it a break makes people think its a lot more serious??

Q3) Where were you?

- "Japan"

Q4) It must have hurt a lot?

- "At first it did but it's not too bad now."

Q5) Is there good skiing there? or What color slope were you on? (mostly from other skiiers)

- This one is a bit embarrassing so I try to give a little more detail... "I was on a red slope which wasn't too difficult but I lost concentration for a moment and fell, but the ski didn't snap off so my leg was trapped in an awkward position"

Observation 2: People will always ask at least 2 questions. Even if I attempt to answer Q1 and Q2 at one go to pre-empt them, they will then move on to Q3. *Shinta says its because they're trying to be polite and they can't just end the conversation right away. So they need to ask a following question to show they they are concerned.

Observation 3: It takes about 1 stop before people give their seat up to me on the bus/mrt. I wouldn't really mind that much except for that period of time, everyone on the bus stares at me without getting up. I mean if you don't want to give up your seat, at least pretend to be asleep or something like you normally do for pregnant women and old folks!

Anyway I can't wait to be rid of it! My injured leg is noticeably thinner than the other having lost muscle mass. Am just hoping the physio etc is not too tough and that I can fully recover quickly!

Spotted #8

Seriously...

End-Hol Report Card (2010)

There's not much of an end-hol report card because:

1) I had to work (remotely thankfully) over the shut down

2) This year we managed to take a trip!

3) I'm not sure when the "end-hol" fits in because even when the shutdown ended, I'm on hospital leave for a week thanks to a fractured knee (not as bad as it sounds!)

Anyway here's the report card:

General# of calendar days not working: 11 (including 2 weekends)

# of leave days taken: 5 (reduced to 3 given 2 days off awarded)

# of minutes on blackberry: a lot =( (including having to log in and reply)

Entertainment# of days overseas: 10

# of days skiing: 1.5 (cut short thanks to the knee)

# of parties attended: 7, of which…

# of parties thrown: 4, for which…

# of roasts cooked: 5 (2 beef, 3 chicken)

Food# of good meals eaten: a lot!

Moving house...

Have decided to give Wordpress a try, so have moved my entire blog on Blogger over to Wordpress The link will be http://hungrywanderingsamurai.wordpress.com/ so please check it out there from now on!

So far Wordpress seems to be much less customisable and the posting interface is less user friendly than Blogger. Also the dashboard and the interface layout on Blogger is much more instinctive and helpful... But I decided to move because Wordpress offers better privacy controls and I can put password locks on specific posts. Also the labels vs categories makes more sense. I can't figure out what the point of having both categories and tags is though...!

Anyway I'm gonna try it out for a while and from now on all new posts will be on that site. But who knows, maybe after a while I'll give up and move it back to Blogger!

Time warp

Eh? How come its November already? What happened to October?

A new look!

Yes, I changed the look of the blog. Actually I wasn't intending to make so many changes. But Blogger went to change the templates and once I started I found I couldn't revert back to the old look. So I had no choice but to soldier forward and make even more changes... Oh well.

What I'm listening to...

I can't stand long traveling times in my daily routine, so thankfully I stay a 15min bus ride away from work with 2 buses to take. In the mornings, since the bus frequency is higher and the ride is so short, I don't usually bother untangling my earphones and listening to music.

On my way home however, my timings are more irregular and the frequency of the bus I can take is much lower. The evening crowd is also a lot noisier and younger. So I am more likely to want to listen to music and try to de-stress and block out the world.

On my playlist recently, is Emil Chou 周华健 . Listening to his songs makes me terribly nostalgic! This is the stuff I listened to in secondary school (I had the tapes back then!), and probably the only thing that has ever made me even vaguely interested in learning Chinese.

Here's a youtube clip of one of my all time favorites. I love the lyrics.. We used to write it in each other's autograph books.

Blogging reflections

Was driving earlier today, and started thinking about my blog... I started it back in 2008 because I was bored. I didn't intentionally decide to focus so much on food & travel, although I think probably 80% of the posts have turned out to be such. (Naturally I wasn't going to not blog about them, since it gives me a "valid" excuse to i) eat a lot and ii) travel a lot.)

Anyway the point is... as time passed, my "snippets" posts became less and less frequent. Now that I think about it, the main cause is probably because I have spent less time driving. Yes, I mean driving. Non food/travel posts require thinking and inspiration, unlike food / travel posts where I can usually rely on pretty pictures to carry the story. And also, I decided long ago not to blog specifically about work despite all the interesting fodder material it often tempted me with.

Ideas used come to me while I was driving and I would mentally draft my posts because my brain had nothing else to do. (Ok, start the lecture on safety later...) So since I seem to drive less now, there are fewer such posts.

Something I hope to change.

My top 10 visited websites

In order of frequency...

#10 Internet Banking 2
#9 Internet Banking 1
#8 http://www.blogger.com/ (from home lah!)
#7 http://www.capitaliq.com/ (log in both from work and at home so at least twice a day)
#6 http://www.gmail.com/ (less often cos I use BB to check)
#5 http://www.singaporeair.com/ (both for work and pleasure)
#4 http://www.asiaone.com/ (start up page at work)
#3 http://www.businesstimes.com.sg/ (no choice, for work!)
#2 http://www.google.com/ (start up page at home + via the toolbar)
#1 http://www.facebook.com/ (how else to destress?)

I wonder... what can you conclude about me from the above list???

Yes I'm still here!

Sorry everyone for not having updated my blog for so long! Have been on the road a lot, I spent most of Feb and a good part of March out of town. And I'll be spending more than 75% of April travelling too.

There are so many food places I want to blog about, that I wonder if I will ever get started because its just too overwhelming!

On another note, say "hi" to:
1) My new computer! (old one bit the dust after 5 full years of not-so-trusty service); and
2) My Canon 70-200mm F/4 IS USM!!! Yes, *Shinta finally gave in, thanks to some camera shop vouchers I received as a gift from my colleagues. That's another item on my Wish List down!

Pathetic...

Isn't it bad enough that we only gave US$50k to Haiti? Must we now make a public admission that donations depend on "the nature of our relations with the affected country..." and are "not intended to match the scale of a disaster"??

Sure of course Singapore government can't very well go around donating large sums of money each and every time a natural disaster happens, but a miserable US$50k???!!!

As one reader on Mr Brown's website points out, US$50k is exactly the same amount Cambodia donated! (Coincidentally Cambodia is one of the recipients MFA explicitly mentions having supported last year in their letter of excuses...)

Me thinks it would have been wiser to
a) shut up totally about the donation; and
b) not responded to all the comments / criticism

End-Hol Report Card (2009)

Was way too busy with work in Dec to do much blogging, and for a period of time I was afraid I wouldn't get to enjoy the annual office holiday shut down. Luckily I still managed to, and then I was too busy having fun to be blogging.

Here are the results:

General
# of calendar days not working: 11 (including 2 weekends)
# of leave days taken: 3 (phew!)
# of minutes on blackberry: <1 min per day (just to make sure nothing urgent)

Food & the like
# of ice-cream tubs purchased: 8, for the...
# of parties attended: 5, of which...
# of parties thrown: 3, for which...
# of roasts cooked: 4 (2 beef, 1 chicken, 1 pork) , and...
# of other meals out with friends: 6

Entertainment
# of movies watched: 2
# of hours at massage/spa: 4

Enjo Party!

*Shinta and I did something very domestic (and probably uncool amongst under 30s?). We hosted an Enjo party...

A WHAT?!?!

Well basically it works like a Tupperware party.
Hosts hold a gathering to "show off" the goods to friends and neighbours, who then become so awed by how much easier their lives would be if they had the items, that they buy lots of products. The key differences were
1) Enjo not Tupperware
2) The Hosts did not own any Enjo products themselves (yet)
3) "Showing off" was done by a professional demo

Basically how this started was that while visiting a friend, we found out that she was using what I called a "magic cloth"... it requires no soap to be used while washing oily greasy plates. We didn't believe the plates would be sufficiently clean at first, and insisted on testing it ourselves. It was only when we managed to easily produce the squeaky clean sound that we were finally convinced of its effectiveness.

So we did what our generation always does and googled for the Enjo contact, arranged for a demo to be done at our place (Enjo only sells through "direct marketing"), and invited a few friends over. I must admit we had an ulterior motive, secretly hoping our house would be cleaned in the process of the demo...

Well as the 1hour presentation/demo came to a close, all of us ended up placing orders for various products in the different Enjo ranges. Since *Shinta and I don't normally clean the place ourselves, we decided to stick to the kitchen related items, which we would use more of. It should be interesting testing them out once the goods arrive!

48 red roses!

My vote is for sale...

So I was innocently having a coffee at Toast Box with a friend, when this young lady approached us and asked if we could help them with a survey. Spying a stack of vouchers in her hand, we decided to let her talk more about it rather than just waving her away.

Turns out that in conjunection with Toast Box running for the Singapore Promising Brand Award, they are conducting a survey and asking customers to vote for them in exchange for a nice free coffee/tea voucher. When we asked if we could just get the voucher for just doing the survey, she looked a little paiseh when she explained that she would have to walk us through the voting procedure on our handphones and only then we could get the voucher.

So basically it comes down to 20 cents SMS for a $1.50 drink.

I have mixed feelings on this. On one hand they're effectively bribing us for our vote (something the lady couldn't deny when we pointed it out). On the other hand, they're taking the initiative to garner votes in a way that promotes their products.

Hm.. time to find out who else is running and see if they will "bribe" me to vote for them as well...

Supper

1.30am, Saturday morning
Newton Hawker Center
Supper with friends
- BBQ stingray
(1 large to share)
- BBQ chicken wings
(1 each)
- Oyster Omelette
(1 large to share)
- Small squid
(1 large plate to share)
- Beer (640ml each)

3.00am, Saturday morning
Totally knocked out (thanks to the beer!)

Spotted! #7

Ok ok, I do feel a little mean for posting this...

...but I was just speechless when I saw this tall and actually not too bad looking guy with brown hair wearing a ROYAL PURPLE JUMPSUIT (yes, a one-piece jumpsuit) and holding an LV handbag on the bus.


Look at his nice legs!
And YES, I am sure it was a guy!

It's been a year...

Happy birthday to my blog!