Ten things I hate about...

Ten Things I Hate About Christmas

10. It starts in November
9. Crowds and long queues everywhere
8. No parking everywhere
7. Kids running around and screaming for things they want
6. The same Christmas songs playing over and over again
5. Restaurants jack up prices and bookings must be confirmed weeks in advance
4. Deadweight loss
3. Lonely people feel even more lonely
2. Guessing who might give me a gift and feeling guilty if I left anyone out

Lastly and most importantly...

1. No one seems to remember or care what Christmas is really about

In the beginning, there was...

... a Homepage?

Hands up those who remember Homepages.

In the days of the early Internet (yes I am old enough to remember that), we had Homepages and not Blogs. There was none of these fancy WYSIWYG software (not free anyway), and we had to painfully code in HTML, make sure our tags were all closed, crossed our fingers, upload the page and hoped it came out ok.

The standard framework for a Homepage was quite simple:

1) Who am I
2) My Family
3) My Good Friends
4) My School
5) My Hobbies
6) My Links

These were the days before digital cameras, so photos were scanned in manually (and in low resolution because digital storage space was expensive).

After a while we got bored because there was nothing else to add, and the culture of frequently updating it with news on our lives (ie blog) didn't exist yet. I don't think there were many anonymous Homepages for that matter.

Anyway, we soon forgot/abandoned our Homepages.

I wonder what has happened to my Homepage now. It's been probably a good 12 years since I last saw it. I don't even have the link for it anymore, much less remember how to log in and update/delete it. The domain name has probably disappeared in the dotcom fallout, or been taken over by some other big name and my account lost because I didn't re-log in.

Or have I under-estimated cyberspace and are the remnants still floating out there somewhere?

Food Bytes: As they say, "third time lucky" (Jones the Grocer)

Today I was feeling very grouchy and sulking away in the car refusing to choose a place to eat, so it was lucky that *Shinta could read my mind and know that the best thing to do was to head straight for Dempsey to cheer me up. There's something about the sight of spaceous white bungalows surrounded by lush greenary that just cheers me up. Lured by the smell of good coffee, my bad mood dissipated once I stepped into Jones.

This was our 3rd attempt at getting a table here. On our previous 2 tries, we had unfortunately arrived after 12.30pm on a weekend, and the place was packed packed packed. Today at barely 11.30am, we even had the luxury of choosing whether to sit inside (air conditioned, wonderful smell of fresh coffee brewing, but shared wooden tables) or outside (breezy view of green trees, nice view of the other white bungalows, blue sky!!! but ants, counter like seats and view slightly obstructed by parked cars barely 1m away). What tipped the scales was the presence of little kids sitting inside and making not-so-little noises. *Shinta and I headed outside right away.

A few weeks ago, we had been eating at Culina just a stone throw away (literally) and was lured into checking out Jones as our next possible hangout. The place is what I would call a high-class bakery / coffee store, filled with tons of baked melt-in-your-mouth delights.



(I had my Canon Ixus with me today, and so was slightly trigger happy)

One of the things I knew I had to order was coffee. It was a pleasant surprise when my milk coffee came with an ice-cream. The sweet milky mixture thankfully didn't drown the rich coffee taste.



When we asked the waitress what she recommended, she didn't even hesitate to suggest the full breakfast. Given that we had also seen (on our previous try-to-get-table-but-got-turned-away visits) many others ordering it, my expectations for this were pretty high. I'm not sure if its just my tastes being slightly different, but it was unfortunately not what I expected.

We would have preferred the tomato to be grilled a little longer and softer. (yes, "we". When it comes to food, we are very very Singaporean in our habits and tend to share meals, especially when we go somewhere new. If its an old favourite however and I know exactly what I want, God forbid if *Shinta tries to touch my food!!!!!) We love runny yolks and hence had ordered the poached eggs. Unfortunately we weren't too fond of the vinegar on it, nor were we fond of the too thick and yucky tasting white. The bread was sourdough (not my fav), and not warm enough for the slab of butter on it to melt right away.



One thing we did like though, was the bacon. Liked it enough to order an extra side portion of it. Look how greedy we were:

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*Shinta: (picks up one piece and pops whole thing into mouth)
Me: Are you not going to cut away the fat bits?
*Shinta: (silence)
Me: Here you go. I'll cut it away for you
*Shinta: (picks up piece and puts it grudgingly into mouth)
*Shinta: (sulky voice) It's not as nice
Me: .......
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Next up was the coconut pancakes with ice-cream and fruit bits. It was pretty good actually, the pancakes were light and fluffy and the coconut wasn't too overpowering. For some strange reason, I can't remember what the fruit bits were. I suspect its because *Shinta ate most of them.

The problem with pancakes and me (actually the problem is probably only with me) is that I love the idea of pancakes, but whenever I order them, I never like them as much as I thought I would. Or as much as they probably deserve to be liked. And I get tired of them after a few mouthfuls.

*Shinta says its because I have been spoilt by McDonalds hot cakes, which are cheap and although tasteless and not very good, very effective in soaking up the sweet sticky syrup which I like. Therefore my mind is wired to think that all pancakes should be sweet and sticky, and serve solely as a conduit to bring the syrup to my mouth. Leading to my inability to appreciate the light fluffy well made ones... Very sad. I am a plebeian

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Jones The Grocer
#01-12, 9 Dempsey Road, Tanglin Village
Tel: 64761512
Hours: 9am-11pm
http://www.jonesthegrocer.com/
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Blue? Grey? Maroon? Bold? Larger? Smaller?

Have spent a good part of the evening trying to customise the colours and fonts on this site. I must say I'm either really blur, or this is just not very user friendly. Why can't I remove the borders around the photos, or at least set it to be a different colour from the dividers? Why can't I adjust the size/colour/font of the post headings independently of the other text? Why do some of my "hard returns" not translate into a "next line" even after I try tweak the html? And why is uploading and arranging the layout of photos such a serious pain?

For someone who used to be very fluent in html, javascript, C++ and Matlab, I should be very very ashamed of myself.

Big Bus & Little Car

1. Big Bus never keeps to its own lane, but slowly creeps over into the adjoining one (even on a straight road), scaring Little Car next to it with its size and speed

-> Stick to your own lane!!!



2. Big Bus thinks it owns the road and forces Little Car to give way by randomly cutting out without any regard for Little Car who is directly next to it

-> Just cos you signalled doesn't mean you can barge out without checking first whether Little Car is alongside, or without letting Little Car pass first!!!!!

3. Big Bus never gives way to Little Car which needs to turn left. This is especially true and problematic when it comes to the Red Big Bus Lanes in the very congested town area.

Poor Little Car needs to turn left. However, because it is scared to death of the Red Big Bus Lane (how much is the fine??!!), Little Car can only cross after the bus stop, when the Red Big Bus Lane becomes a Dotted Red Big Bus Lane.

At the same time, Big Bus travelling along this busy road is going straight and needs to cut to the right, creating crossing lines of traffic. Again, Little Car is forced to give way to Big Bus (cos Big Bus is cutting out without any heed for Little Car).

This creates a situation where:
(i) Little Car is forced to jam break to allow Big Bus to come out creating a jam in the middle lane;

(ii) Little Car cannot cut into the left lane, and that lane is totally ineffective after the bus stop;

(iii) Little Car has trouble turning left and there is effectively only 1 lane for it to go to.

Ok, I don't have a perfect solution for this scenario, but at the very least, Big Bus should give way to Little Car sometimes, or alternate turns to give way so that both lanes can be used. But no... Big Bus hogs the road because it is Big Bus and that is a Big Bus Lane. *sigh*

Driving mindlessly...

Have you ever done a routine action so automatically and without thinking, that if you're interrupted halfway through, you realise you don't know what you're doing? Or at the end of the action, you realise you don't recall the in between bits at all?

I've been driving a lot recently, and I realised that's been happening to me sometimes. You see, there are 2 routes that I drive very frequently: Point A to Point B, and Point A to Point C. There are a variety of ways to get from Point A to Point B, and usually (depending on the time of day (and how heavy traffic conditions are expected to be), I would chose Route B1 which is the shortest in terms of distance. Likewise, I usually choose Route C1 to get from Point A to Point C.

The problem then arose because 2/3 of Route B1 is similar to Route C1, until I hit a roundabout and have to choose a different exit. So yesterday, with my mind day dreaming about more interesting things (such as what to eat for lunch) and not focusing on where I was going, I forgot to take my hand off turning the wheel and ended up going the wrong way. Results? Unnecessarily getting caught in a jam and getting to my destination totally late. *sigh* Time to pay more attention!

Food Bytes: The yummiest chocolate cake (for now) (Pump Room)

On Sunday, we decided to stop by our "local neighbourhood store", Great World City. Yeah ok it doesn't really qualify as a neighbourhood store, but its where we can do our grocery shopping, *Shinta can get his hair cut, I can get my 40min neck/shoulder/back massage (My Feet!) and do some window shopping without having to fight through the crowds of Orchard Road.

There's tons of good stuff to eat here, and my current favourite is Pump Room Bistro. This has opened for only a few months, and probably the other outlet at Clarke Quay is better known. Every time *Shinta and I come here, our order is more or less the same... I'll get an appetiser (usually the yellowtail carpaccio), he'll get the steak, and we'll share a beer and dessert.

This time, only the lunch menu was available, and although they were willing to make a special request to the chef for *Shinta's steak, they sadly would not allow me to order the carpaccio. So I ended up with the salmon avocado salad. I thought the salmon wasn't really salty enough, bu the avocado and salad mix was pretty good.

Our routine is quite standard, we order everything in advance, and once we're done with our appetiser/main, we ask for the dessert. That's where the problem starts. The "self-saucing" chocolate cake understandably requires some time to prepare, but given that we ordered it upfront, shouldn't they either (1) warn us that it will take x mins from the time we end our mains, or (2) estimate accordingly and get it ready? And so, impatient us sit there twiddling our thumbs, contemplating whether or not to cancel the order. Finally as we're about to give up..... the cake arrives and when we poke it and warm chocolate sauce oozes out invitingly, all is forgiven.

Likewise this time, we waited.. and waited.. and waited.. Finally, 10min after being assured "only 3 min more", our dessert arrived. Next time I think I'll just tell them to start preparing the dessert right away after we ordered.

I forgot about complaining after I started eating though. Its an extremely rich chocolate gooey thick sauce just bubbling out from the hot soft crumble cake. Give me a thick rich fudge chocolate cake over the light sponge ones anyday!

Note 1: BTW, I must apologise for the blurry photos. The i-phone really doesn't live up to all the hype

Note 2: Yes I know my posts are usually a day late, but better late than never right? =)

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The Pump Room @ Great World
#01-66/67, 1 Kim Seng Promenade, Great World City, S(237994)
Tel: 68873229
Hours: Sun-Thu 10am-1am, Fri-Sat 10am-2am
http://www.pumproomasia.com/
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