5 Up To No Good In Melaka

Melaka, a city of many charms, mostly coconutty. I was there with Ariel, Liz, Puay (all ex-ex colleagues from a time long past when a comma in the wrong place was a crime) and uni-friend Choon How or Allan as he terms himself post-varsity (works better with the girls) last weekend. With a free one-night stay in hand, we set off late, 3pm from Woodlands in surprisingly smooth traffic. Then we missed the North-South highway entrance. As the girls sighed in surrender, affirming that men sometimes don't know where they are going, we made a U-turn in the boondocks and got back on track. We arrived at our destination at about 8pm.

Then it was food and walking and food and more walking, swalowing up Jonker St in the haphazard tempest of a rainstorm. The next day, we did it all again in the sunshine. In the end, we had laksa twice and chendol three times. And the coffee, amazing goodness. We came back (despite the one-way only streets in Melaka that had us going in circles) cholesterol-laden and happy.


Foodie highlights to note:
- Limau Limau Cafe at Jonker St - love the fruit freezes and hot chocolate
- Ole Sayang restaurant - good nonya food
- Jonker St Night Market - delicious charsiew pau and chomp-one-a-minute dimsum
- Jalan Kubu - luscious popiah, lovely wan tan mee, scrumptious roti bakar kahwin
- Machap rest stop going North - try the mee soto with a lot of chilli. 1st degree Sedap!
- Machap rest stop going South - try the mee goreng with a lot of chilli.

If you need a good online map for Melaka, try http://malaysia.sawadee.com.

An Aluminating Birthday

I am a year older. Wiser in some respects and still getting conned left, right and center. Case in point - my office sabo. I come to the office on 22 Sep, having had a prata breakfast courtesy of Gerald (how thoughtful, giving me a treat on my birthday. Or so it seemed), to find my table, stationery, laptop and other office pheriperals encased in a layer of aluminium foil.

Great effort had gone into painstainkingly wrapping my work essentials in foil. I am aghast for a few reasons. 1. The complexity of the sabo - I am indeed wowed. 2. That I am but a pawn in a grander scheme, a plot of magnitude. Unwittingly, I was toyed with, for my birthday no less. I feel used. 3. They wrapped up my cough mixture. Cough, cough.


My colleagues carried out the coup in Thailand. I am sure of it now. Orchestrated in their devious, Jatujak-lust-ridden minds, discussed over MSN.

For the entire day, I was not allowed to unwrap anything. Hooray, I could not find my To-Do list. I was allowed to turn on my computer, lucky me.













We did a Japanese lunch at a quaint little place at Purvis St. The food was good and they paid. Nice and nicer.

Creamed Too Soon

I was surprised with a wham-bam to the face yesterday. Courtesy of my fine colleagues who have apparently been plotting this embarassment for a month, i was 'tricked' into a corner. All of sudden, i was pied. It was sponge cake with hefty topping of fresh, whipped cream. Delicious. Globs of white, sugary foam were all my face, hair, shirt and were dripping off me onto the carpeted floor. It was a messy affair. They even put up A3 posters acknowledging the victimisation - cake, cream and me, priceless.

The con of an upcoming birthday. They promise more tomfoolery later. I tell them it's a bad precedent they are setting, after all, their birthdays will come around as sure as the Earth goes around the Sun. Karma.

Ministry Call Up

I was taken to the Ministry of Sound on Saturday night/Sunday morning on the pretext of free entry and meeting a sizeable bunch of banker types, lawyer types, one surfer dude and an Ecuadorean, brought together by an ex-ex-colleague who's currently twisting words on a National Green platform.

In the end there were 4 of us - the greenie, one finance type, the Ecuadorean and me. No, the Ecuadorean isn't here as part of the IMF. And we had to pay for entry :(

First impressions, MOS is a mess. And the bouncers didn't even frisk me. (-1). The ticketing area was a confusion with the logo-stamper really enthusiastic about leaving a mark on my right wrist, even before I had paid up (-1). We took the left entrance and ended up in the R&B room - Smoove. It was like a prison - with chain link fences and thousands of sweaty, young people who were more wobbling than dancing. Major crush and no sign of any control should any untoward misunderstanding take place (-1). We squeezed through and made into the next room, the main area where King Unique was playing. It was alright, not great, no great vibe or throb or feeling. To make things worse, the decor was weird and unbecoming of a massive entity like Ministry. Sorry man, (-1).

We went up to Pure, an isolation for the over-25s only. Ahem. It was decked out all white, an Ipod to dance in, a rehash of Bed Supperclub in Bangkok with lie-down and spill-drinks-all-over-the-cushions areas. Nice (+1). We boogied to relative good chill-house. Oh did I mention that there were ladies of the night present, plying their booty trade on bored angmohs?

So we danced, drank, switched rooms and did all that over again till about 4am. Verdict? I am a Zouker. That is the standard to go by and compete with. MOS fails me, (-3) so far.

It's A Katie!

They finally found out for sure. Wee Han and Hseyin are having a girl. It's been a while and everyone has been giving their 2-cents worth at guessing the sex of Foetus Cheng. Mr Ong, Hseyin's dad, a doctor no less, gave his contribution to the matter in a rather localised manner - "Can see lap cheong or not? If then it's abalone lor." Alrighty then.

Out with the blues, think with the pink. Is there a pink army truck around? Did GI Barbie go around in one?

Cravings-wise, I am pleased to report it's a daily ice cream. For now.

Hi. What Ambition Have You Achieved?

We all grow up with ambition. Coupled with fantasy, we dream of flying through the stratosphere at supersonic speeds, winning Nobel prizes when we discover the cure for cancer, stepping on to some distant planet, rescuing an old man from a blazing building. For a very few, these dreams come true - through a firmly resolute ideology of working for what you want. The rest of us get swept with the ebb and flow of the conventional tide. It's a system that moulds us, tests us and wants us to choose between Engineering or Medicine or Business or Food Science when the time comes. We grow up, and are educated to form part of a modern, worker society that is driven by money. Economics is what makes the world go round, puts food on the table, keeps GDP numbers up, and basically maintains the material world we enjoy.

Some of us are happy with what we do, others compensate our non-chalance towards and/or dissatisfaction with the job with post-work activities, hobbies and shopping, others drink and/or eat too much, the rest complain and accept this daily cycle as an eventuality, characterised by a mind-numbing regularity peppered with various holidays, weddings, birthdays and national events. Ambition in adulthood has whittled into a mercenary form - fatter wallets, powerful jobs, cooler possessions - all it takes to move up the 1st world scale.

I still don't know what I want to do. Do you? Unfortunately, society isn't forgiving to those who want to try, especially if you're an adult with financial and emotional responsibilities. People look at you funny, more sorry that this joker wants to quit the rat race than glad he's pursuing a passion. I just want to be happy and be satisfied with my contribution. That’s it, no agendas, no grand plan, no scheme to take over the universe. Is this lack a deficiency in my being? Maybe I need to have a kid to snap me out of this imaginary ditch. Zap the be-responsible-do-your-job zing right back. A pay rise would work too I think, unfortunately. Despite this rhetoric, I am but still a slave to the dollar. Sorry.

Boggling Behaviour

We have been noisily enthralled in the pleasures of word play these past weeks. Someone found the office Boggle set.

We scramble for paper and pen, rattle the box of plastic cubes, set them in place, set someone's Samsung or Nokia to 3mins (the plastic hourglass we so love was alas not part of the discovery), and we're off! Eyes racing to form patterns, neurons sending rapid electrical signals in the lexiconic bit of the brain, fingers grapsing instruments jotting down word after word after word. It's like a very controlled F1 with a time limit. Then we laugh as we compare words and what we think are words.

We've been spending anything from 15mins to more than an hour playing this game. It is strangely addictive, looking for words with your eyes. We played so much that we're slightly jaded by 3 letter words and applaud efforts 5 letters or greater. We formed UNISON once, STORAGES came by once and KITTENS stumbled our way as well. On the lighter note, ahem, we've had TITS and BRA in the same round.

Ultimately, this is a group activity and the lunatics I play with are fun to hang with, albeit the extra time we spend in the office.