jo is finally 20, (and very soon we will all be) we celebrated at a very quiet phin's. happy birthday darling. don't forgot our very long movie on tuesday.

are we something to be envious of? we work at keeping our friendship while most 'friends' just drift apart after secondary school/jc/poly/uni/whatever. i suppose it's something to be proud of. recently there was a fissure amongst but perhaps it's patched now. people forgive and forget, i try. libras don't forget easily.

anyways, enough of the sentimentality. i'm embarrassing myself. (you may disagree)

last week's - i think it was wednesday's - TODAY they had a section titled "Beyond the Big O".

ok. let's be straight with each other. first glance, what comes to your mind?

i'll be honest, i thought it was a supplement sponsored by Romancing Singapore or Focus on the Family. c'mon, beyond the big o. sheesh.

but no, singapura is conservative. it is an advertorial disguised as credible articles about the release of 'O' level results (oh! remember those days!).

so "cheyyyyyyyyy" right? but i did see elisa's byline, nice job. :)

speaking of newspapers, Straits Times is making us pay for their online subscription! not that i actively read their online content as i'm a physical newspaper person, still, it reeks of snobbery and ostentation. i'm sure a lot of people will agree with me that their reason for implementing a paid subscription simply cannot be justified. what special special content do they have? none what! hao lian only.

that TODAY also! they're getting to be quite irritating with all their ad supplements. today's edition had Beijing 101 masquerading as their frontpage -- masthead and all. what irks me is that the flooding of those advertisements makes it seem like TODAY is a company that only cares for its bottomline.

"readers? readers neh mind one lah! readers aren't the one paying what."

hello, just because you've become the only free tabloid in singapore (and that's by sheer luck) doesn't mean you can slack off on content.

if this carries on where am i going to get my news? mrbrown.com?!?

(no offense to mrbrown :) )

the latest tear-jerker from the land of kimchi surely doesn't disappoint. i'm glad, at least it means i didn't throw $6.50 down the drain.

a bit of digression first - it is necessary in order for you to understand how i ended up watching the korean movie -

orchard road on a thursday morning (i had a day off from work) is so pleasantly deserted, except for large groups of pregnant wives. it's weird, i don't think i'd be one to plan to get pregnant at the same time as my girlfriends, if we were all married of course.

so wives let themselves shoulder peer pressure too?

"darling, mary/jane/karen is pregnant! about two months! she only just discovered it yesterday because she noticed she was about two weeks late and then she thought 'maybe... but could it be?' and now look what happened! i'm so happy for her!

"do you think we should try for one too? i know your mother would be so absolutely delighted!"

it's funny, then they'd all band together like a pro-mothers group, all their radiant visages! can you really be elated when you're retaining water and putting on the kilos simultaneously? gosh!

but, preggers' society aside,

i stumbled upon cineleisure's box office and decided, on a whim, to catch A Moment to Remember.

so, my take:

the plot isn't anything we've not seen before, and anyway the koreans practically endorse that genre so, no points for orginality. the koreans are, however, aces at making their audiences cry buckets, and i mean buckets, and A Moment... is such a good example.

will not go into details as movie is already ending its run, it's worth watching if you're a Son Ye Jin fan (yes i am).

should i learn hokkien?

i think i should. at least enough to hold a decent conversation with people above the age of 70. but where would i go for hokkien lessons? everywhere else you see centres urging us to learn Japanese, French, Italian, all the exotic language you will never put to use in Singapore, and people are still dying to sign up for foreign language classes.

i realised my, what do you call it? my disability when i stepped out of the lift this morning:

old lady: auntie, blahblahblabhalbhablab (this means hokkien. since i can't understand hokkien, i won't know what she's talking about.)
me: ...
old lady: blablabalbhalbhlblahblahba, blahblab. balbhab!
me: ...

she senses that i probably did not understand her (hell yeah) so she decided to go slowly, as if i were simply dumb instead of handicapped at her language.

old lady: blah blah... blah blahb blahb lift blah blahb

see that english word in there? she tried to translate what she said. yeah i guess she's pretty exasperated at my lack of initiative.

what happened next was she got pretty upset because i wasn't answering her, neither was i helping her. when you're in need of help, i'm sure it'd irk you to see the other party just standing there, right?

but how can it be my fault? it wasn't like i was pretending to be some bystander, i didn't even understood what she said! it wasn't not the first time something like this has happened, usually i reply in chinese "sorry i don't understand hokkien", then the old people assume you just don't want to help them because they're old. then they go on and on "wait till you are old yourself, then you know what it feels like."

my god! weren't they young themselves once? sigh.

i finally manged to catch the i-think-it-will-become-a-cult movie Before Sunset. yeah, the one with uma thurman's ex and the sexy julie delpy.

Before Sunrise was not as wow as i'd thought it would be. my post-mortem of watching that flick was feeling that somehow its popular sequel had upped the ante so much so that i who had not caught the lesser-known prequel thought that the first offering would be a kick-ass movie as well, if not better. in a nutshell, just stick to watching the sequel lah. you don't miss out on anything.

i think you might be a bit confused about the sunrises and sunsets. but i shan't care.

i watched the two movies in order, that is, the first one where they met and hung out in Vienna and promised to meet after six months (there, i've just given you the gist of the story), followed by their not-so-chance encounter in France ten years later.

funny, all they do is to talk and walk around town a bit and audiences can be so captivated, myself included. does jesse (ethan hawke) really miss his flight at the end of Before Sunset? i hope so. we're all dying to find out but having a After Sunrise would be overkill definitely.

the best part of Before Sunset for me would have to be celine (julie delpy) playing A Waltz for a Night. if she was accurately portraying what french people do to romance their partners, then, hell, no wonder the french have the highest sex frequency in the world. everything they do is for one reason only - to get bonked.

haha. sorry that was a bit crude. i have to go off now, i'm just about late by 40 minutes. oops.

"... but what does it mean 'The Right Man'? The love of your life? The concept is absurd! The idea that we can only be complete with another person is evil, right?"
-- Celine

seems like MRT woes get worse everyday. :(

i was flanked on three sides, left right and front, by men today. it would have been a very pleasant position if all three were of gorgeous species but alas, this is Singapore. so, get real, there are no gorgeous species.

i only learnt one lesson after that very man-ly train ride: they radiate warmth like nobody's business. i was on one of those new trains, you know the black ones with better ventilation, cooler air conditioning and bigger seats...? but today i felt so unusually thawed. heat was just uabashedly emitted from the three male bodies on my left shoulder, right shoulder and in my face! talk about... heat! (what were you thinking?)

it didn't help that the body on my right shoulder smelled like he showered in eau de perspiration. he was old, so i guess he should be forgiven. age before beauty, afterall. (but then again, smelly means smelly lah. the heat combined with the stank was enough to kill me. bedok never seemed so far away!)

til next time, but for now, let us pray...

thanks to my office pantry, i have discovered a fondness for hazelnut coffee!

having felt very restless today, i mean, i have afterall been doing relatively repetitive work this entire month, i'm bound to get bored after a while.

anyways, i was hanging out in the pantry, hunting for 3-in-1 nescafe sachets when my always roving, and therefore sharp, eyes caught sight of (some ulu brand's) hazelnut coffee! hahaha! upon thorough examination i decided to heck, just try lah. it shouldn't taste too bad. it is hazelnut coffee.

what a godsend. i think i'm going to single-handedly finish the entire packet of 30 sachets by 15 April. oh dear.

it is nearly six. wow, time flies when you've been chatting on msn, blogging, aimlessly surfing sites, playing games, oh! and doing work since 9 am. it already has been a month of internship. wow (again).

going home means trying to squeeze myself on the home-bound train during peak hour. you could say try doing OT and avoid the mad rush of home-goers, but i think you would be nuts (NUTS i tell you!) to suggest that. :)

people can commit such unpardonable sins whilst taking the trains, they ought to be shot. what worse is everyone thinks it is a-ok to do such activities! can you really forgive people who hog the poles? stand spread eagled a la Christ with both hands holding on to the hand rings for dear life? or people who sit with their legs so wide open they need two seats? how about couples who think the MRT is a love hotel? or bedroom DJs who feel the need to share their music selection with the world?

seem like i have a tad too much peeves eh? oh dear.

... being able to fart in bed with your partner sleeping beside you.

it's valentine's day today. what do you say to ignoring the commercial connotations and lapping up this special day for what it is - a day for love! love! love! "where's the love?!?"

quote courtesy of ex-sac classmate janice soh. let us thank janice for all that free-love. amen.


picture from gettyimages.

everyday i report to this unassuming vintage PC running a windows xp platform on 1mb of memory. at least, that's what it feels like. terrible, isn't it?

well you can see the entire workspace: computer, keyboard, cpu's hidden underneath the table (doubling up as a competent footrest), and note the two mice i have on my mousepad.

now i have the privilege of saying, "point your mice to this, point your mice to that." haha. yay for me! i was hunting around the office for a replacement mouse with a scrolly wheel and found one conveniently using the universal usb connection. it was to my surprise when i discovered both could work when simultaneously plugged in. (no, it doesn't mean i have two cursors running about on my screen)

great way to play minesweeper, i reckon.





ooohhhhh, look at that ice mountain sitting on the left! i'm so thankful this isn't the "Learning Place", else edmund will have a flip. haha.

my table is so bare. i need to accessorise my workspace.

went aimless surfing during office hours (c'mon, everyone does that!) and found a restaurant review of the Golden Arches, yes mcdonald's, written by Jay Rayner, author of The Apologist.

(for full article, click here)

quoteworthy:

I went to a branch close to my home. Do I need to describe it? Do I need to tell you about the slumped, resigned shoulders of the poor buggers working there? No? Good. I started with a classic: the Big Mac. This I deconstructed. First I put the slimy grey puck of a burger into my mouth and yes, Mr Raspelli, it is indeed rubbery, but so much worse than that. The thing leaked hot, greasy, salty water into my mouth. Next the bun, whose third ingredient after flour and water is sugar. It was floppy and burnt. Finally, there was a vicious bile-esque back taste to the sauce.

So far, so disgusting. On to the chips. Cardboard, yes, but fatty cardboard - and after half a minute any crispness sagged away. Next I tried one of the new dishes recently introduced as part of its 'Ever Changing New Tastes' campaign. Chicken Selects are breaded strips of chicken breast, and are a truly remarkable example of fast-food science. Although they are clearly pieces of breast, they taste of chicken not at all. They taste of salt. And then the worst item of all, a pasta and feta-cheese salad in a lemon and olive-oil dressing. After this one I needed counselling: floppy pasta, cheese-like chalk dust and a syrupy dressing packed with sugar. I studied the ingredients. In the olive-oil dressing, glucose syrup comes ahead of the oil. I only ate this because I was being paid to do so.

we already know how ruinous and god-awful mcdonald's is, so many have written books in revelation of mcd's abominable practices and ghastly slob, but i have never seen such wit! have you? i wish i could write half as well as him.

Happy Chinese New Year readers!

a time of eating, collecting ang pows (red packets), eating, catching up with distant relatives, eating, reciting four to seven word phrases in repetition, eating, gambling, eating, yeah you get the idea.

drinking, water or otherwise, is kept to the barest minimum. unless said drink is alcohol of course. to make matters worse (in my opinion at least), we talk loudly and incessantly. no sir, everyone must know we bought $10 toto tickets!

and at the end of this half month festivities, we all complain (favourite singaporean activity) of parched throats and the damn flu bug.

lol, when we will ever learn? i myself have already finished one tin of almond cookies and pineapple tarts. lucky for me blogging is a No Action, Type Only activity. :)

who says Singaporeans don't like to challenge themselves, bring themselves out of their comfort zone?

try being part of a 21-person group in a 20-person elevator. You can't hear it, but our hearts are collectively saying, "YES WE DID IT! WOO HOO!"

"and we'll try again tomorrow."



never thought i'd end up in the same boat