Adios 2007 Part 1

I wasn't at work but found out that everyone left at 3pm to celebrate the end of the last working day of the year. 3pm and no one opened the fridge for a spot of fizzy delight. Tsk tak.

I was asked to come eat. Wendy was inspired to roast a chicken and bake fruit. Not at the same time. So I ventured down to carve a bird with Zul and Furqan, the other hilarious attendees at this afternoon swoiree of sorts. The food turned out all good and tasty, topped off with scoops of Haagen-Dazs and dirty conversation. Thanks for the present Wendy.

By 7pm, I had showered and was ready to hang out with people younger than I. Curry in hand (compliments of the mommy) I somehow made it to the confusion that is Hougang (in fact I was close to the labyrinth known as Sengkang. I did not freak out.) The party was underway with way too much food. Sushi, meatballs, sandwiches, pasta salad (butterflies no less), spizza pizza. Regina organised this shindig with Shuyau at his home. She would not let a party go by without some element of madness. Hence we had masks/hasts/headgear to put on. You may recognise humans behind some of them. Then we had the year-end we-all-deserve-gifts lucky draw. Performed as a Taoist ritual, we shook plastic sticks (with names of eventual winners) in a cup and everyone hoped their stick wouldn't fall out till the top 10 prizes were left to distribute. I won erasers and a notebook. How copywriterish. Somewhere along the way I got a giant pencil to simply reinforce the dream.

Post games and madness, I left at 130am for Zouk. You crazy 33-yr old I hear you say. Yes, I had to go to Zouk for French electro-house DJ David Guetta and because Allan was already sloshed with Long Island Tea destroying his liver cells. (FYI/FYA Zouk makes the most killer tea.) There was a queue at 2am (will this nightmare of linearity ever end?). It was crowded but manageable. I lasted till the end, about 530am. Allan snaked off at 4am. I took an interesting taxi ride home where the driver wanted to return me a dollar for 10 cents change, purely for conversation and advice on where to get passengers at 630am. Go figure. (Am going to back Zouk Sat 19 Jan, Sister Bliss from Faithless, guaranteed good time, come!)

After milk and cookies, I was asleep.

See the rest of the pixes at my Flickr.

The Naked Island - Free E-Book Download

I was reading BoingBoing.net and came across an article that highlighted a book written by an Australian World War II prisoner, Russell Braddon, in Singapore. Time to get historical and print stuff with company printers and paper.

Get the download for The Naked Island here.

It's A Dog Gone Christmas!

Farah invited some people over to her place for a Christmas bbq. How could I refuse more tasty treats and crazy conversation? Iggy was over the coals wrestling drumsticks when I arrived. Along the way in, I ran my fingers over 2 dogs and 2 cats. But the woof that stole the show was Hunter.

Hunter was adopted as 3 week puppy and moulded to form under Iggy's fine and intensive training. Apparently Hunter attacks at the "Go" command. This fine evening Hunter was pretty much the patient pet, scouring around the table for the generous hand. At times and at certain angles, he looked like another head at the table. He also lent Agnes doggie ears (as seen from a certain angle once again).

Post pasta, lamb, salad, onion rings, fries, crackers, coke and ice cream, we people settled down to talk and it was quite a bit about Hunter. About 11ish, Iggy pulled out the blanket. It turns out Hunter needed his blanky at about this time of night before he went to sleep. How cute. Check out the video, haha.

Truly it was a canine Christmas to remember. (I was accosted by the new cat with socks, Adel I think. He walked all over me, clamped on my thigh and bit my leg. That was quite fun.) (Am I turning into a cat person?) (Oh dear).







The rest of the pixes are at my Flickr.

An Eve Of Marmalade, Hearts, Art and Fondue

Eat and make merry, that was my Christmas. The eating started early at Marmalade Pantry (ooh, hoity toity, atas and all that). I was the first there, in the restaurant, perhaps even jolting the service staff into some manner of action.

This gastronomic adventure took place at the Georgina's suggestion. Apparently, the eggs on toast with sausages and sauteed mushrooms were too much to pass up as a celebratory meal, a heartiness of Christmasy proportions, a resurrection of days of culinary plentifulness. I hadn't been to the MP so I said yes. Simple.

Since I had the time, I found out that the individual items on the Xmas menu came up to $42, and so the $45 festive combo price (inclusive of coffee/tea and petit fours) was perhaps not much of a bargain.

Soon I was joined by Jorida and then Gerald, all of us not at work. The ex-colleagues showed up pretty late and we had to order the pita bread with eggplant and mint dip again! (How appetizingly dreadful!).

Soon the conversations got going and the plates started coming. Goodness the portions were large! I had the butternut and parsnip soup and chicken pot pie. We shared the sticky date pudding and Elvis cupcake. It all sounds good and scrumptious and it mostly was. (The pot pie crust was inedibly hard though.)

Lunch all said and done, half the group ran off with individual commitments and personal preoccupations. I, Mun Hoe, Nana and Mr Chew had nothing better to do but to buy fruit for fondue later, go around in circles while MH went to buy a bus ticket and prevent boredom at the Casa.

MH taught us Hearts, an evil card game where people try to hurt each other's egos with the Queen of Spades. Yikes. I lost majorly. Then Christine came trudging up the stairs to join us. She joined the game as Nana poured more wine. I started winning - 4 zero scores and final one in a round of five. Not bad, one blemish.

Dinner was the finest Por Kee had to offer. Well, it was much need carbo and protein to tackle Pictionary, Headbangers/Post-It and more wine. Chuiying (to check spelling) joined us to make merry.

I was peeing when the clock struck twelve. Merry Christmas eh. Flush.

Homemade Pictionary was a hoot, especially among people who think they can draw and others who think they can read minds. The drawing on the left is Peter Pan. Yeah right. The reward for right answers was a dip into the fondue.

We talked and played and soon the wine got the better of me. There was a thumping beat going on the right side of my brain. After almost having fallen asleep on the couch, I said the goodbyes, forgot to pay up, stomped down 4 floors and rubbed a headache as I got into a taxi home. Voila.

One holiday down. One more to go?

The rest of pixes are at my Flickr.

Walk Up Further North

I asked Ronnie if I should nap or walk. He replied walk then nap. I replied damn.

So I went out walking as I would normally try to do on the weekends (though not at 4pm but later) and this time I chose to go up to Admiralty Road West. This road skirts the north coast of Singapore up till the Causeway. It's a little known little road that offers great views of Johor Bahru. This afternoon I was fortunate to get there at low tide and there were several beachcombers making the most of water's retreat to gather mussels. Yeah, the kind you steam and eat with garlic and butter in Italian restaurants. I took quite a number of pictures with my N73 before the skies opened up and cried their hearts out.

I was soaked by the time I turned back towards the northernmost HDB block in Singapore at Marsiling. No point rushing since I was all wet. It was still another hour plus walk in the rain before I reached home. By then, it cleared and I looked stupid. Well, I did get my exercise.

All the pixes at my Flickr.

Music and Movie

Saturday early evening was spent at Gramophone. I haven't bought a CD since June (i think) and it was high time to give back to society. I had asked Say Wee along because he was a fellow bored person this festive season. (Having recently sold his car, he was having withdrawal symptoms as well as public transport adjustment issues. Poor thing.)

We started out at the Used CDs section. OMG, there were gems to find, trash to some people going at half price or less. A $2 Million Dollar Hotel soundtrack with 3 U2 songs and one of the sexiest songs ever made, Move Closer by Phyllis Nelson for $3.

Somehow there are many vinyls on sale. And they are expensive. $40 plus for plastic and scratchy authentic sound. Sorry man, I love my CDs.

I had to get a few essentials - Jamie Cullum's Catching Tales, Amy Winehouse's Back to Black and local band Great Spy Experiment. I found an Oakenfold remixes compilation, 3 discs for $50. Sorry wallet, I have to do this.

In the end I spent too much, got a bunch of DBS canvas bags and wrapping paper for spending more than $20, shot 2 paper aeroplanes thru a board with large holes marking out Jetstarasia destinations for a lucky draw attempt and scribbled my particulars on 5 lucky draw contest entry coupons. I didn't win the plane tickets.

Dinner was at Kopitiam. Char kway teow and hot cheng teng.

Post dinner was a movie, National Treasure Book of Secrets. Met Nana, Mr Chew and Gerald for this one. The promise of a rollicking good time ala NT1 was met with too much hype. This installment is good, not great. Maybe it's Nicolas' hair. The evening ended with coffee and cheesy carbo-things at a not-24hrs-anymore 24hr cafe. There, Mr Chew and I ironed out the social responsibilities of uttering the word umbrella in the context of Rihanna's number one hit, and other issues of national importance.

And to bed with Bridget Jones. The book.

Recent Snappage

Week 50 Update

My last day of work for the year was 18 December.

Since then, not very much very interesting has happened - story of my life.

I went running on Monday 17 Dec and while going past this guy who was in my way, i felt a pull of muscle in my lower back. Ow. I completed that round and walked the rest. Yikes, the chronic back pain was back and what timeliness. One year ago, it reappeared as an unwelcome offshoot of my first reservist training. I have been nursing this ailment since Monday evening in one form or another (meaning oil rubs and painkillers).

On Wednesday, I went to visit Fon, Hseyin and Weehan to pass them presents at work. They all got bags. Then Weehan and I ended up at Kiyeki Bar at the Pan Pacific for Hseyin's colleague's going-back-to-the-US party. I had many a martini before meeting Allan at Balaclava for more mayhem.

At Balaclava, I was promptly handed a tall beer to consume and pairs of hands to shake. One hand belonged to Evelyn and another was Benjamin's. These are folks, a couple in fact, that Allan went to Melbourne with and learned to ski with and over. About midnight, Allan and I drove off to Zouk for Mambo.

The promise of Mambo took two steps to towards evaporating even before we got there. One was that Kelly pulled out of the queue. The second was the massive number of people waiting to get into Zouk/Velvet/Phuture. It was ridiculous. I bet the people at Wine Bar were laughing at us. One highlight was a drunk guy who collapsed by the gate fence and started rolling all about. I had to take a picture.

We gave up after a long while. We ended up at Thomson/Sin Ming eating bak chor mee at 230am. I met Samuel Poh there. Talk about out of the blue. He is one funny guy with a fetish for fast cars and wrestling and old rap.

Home and sleeping by 4am. Woke at 1130am. Slept at 530pm. Woke at 730pm. Boy, have I screwed up my body clock, and so soon.

Today, well, today. I saw a doctor at 10am to get more painkillers as a just-in-case for the weekend. Was in an ambulance hurtling down the CTE at 130pm because my dad was having trouble breathing. So my mother and I spent the afternoon at the SGH A&E while my dad was poked and prodded behind closed doors. At about 430pm, the doctor, an angmoh who speaks Singlish, said that he was fine, and didn't really need to be there. By 8pm we were home. Yes it takes that long at SGH A&E. Aiyaiyai.

So ends day 3 of year-end rest.

Early First Gifts

For the past few years I have been a bad attendee at the annual Kim and company Christmas parties. Usually they are a Kim-cooked or pot-lukc or barbeque affair. This time around, we had unusual circumstances to deal with. One was that Kim was gonna be in town for a limited period only and the usual location wasn't ready to support the event. So we decided to steamboat at Tan Quee Lan Street.

We got a strange table and a misbehaving cooker. Nothing boiled for a long time and the raw food just sat around. Anyway, the bigger surprise was the bill. Ask me about it personally.

Zul had to go to Zoukout and we drove (6 people in a Toyota) to Vivo to consummate dinner with coffee. Lo and behold but not unexpectedly, there was a traffic jam to the entrance to Gateway Avenue. So we did the up and over, and loop around from the other side of the road.

Coffee was at Pacific Coffee Company in the outside area, nicely done up with large seating and even swing seats. Wendy joined us late, about late 11. It wasn't long before we were asked to pack up our thirsts and leave for the baristas to brush up the place.



We deliberated our next move. We had time to think about this because it took us rather long to get to Kok Leong's car. Routes become blocked after go-home time at shopping malls and we were asked to take a rather long way to find our carparked car. Admist this extended walking, there was a periodic PA system warning advising us not be alarmed as someone was testing the fire alarm system. Yes, why not test fire alarms past midnight?

We first tried Villa Bali. It going to close soon. So we drove to The Prata Place at Evans Road. Hey, my third time there this year. I was the only one who ate, a telur bawang. And that was it. Conversation and coffee and presents! I got a t-shirt and a Change Your life diary for 2008.

Woof.

I Come In Peace

The theme of the company Xmas party was Military. The organising committee did a heck of job dolling up the office in camou and posters that elicited patriotic sentiments and hopes of a bang-on party. The days before the event many colleagues and I in tow ended up at Beach Road Market. A strange hurried madness descended upon the third floor of the generally quiet level of little shops during lunchtime over 2 days. It was more of panic for the us who didn't know what to wear.

I wasn't going in uniform, that would be too easy. I was thinking of going as a Guantanamo Bay prisoner. But the orange overalls on sale were more for welders on an oil tanker docked in Sembawang. So I settled on DIY and bought a white t-shirt for $4. Before the end of Thursday, I printed the UN logo and bought a can of spray paint for $4.50. That night was spent stenciling with a penknife. I did the spray job in the loo. Not bad eh.

The rest of day's affair is captured in bytes at my Flickr.

Tube Feed 101

Tube feedings aren't as simple as they seem. Here's a minute by minute rundown of procedure:
- 0 mins - Heat up the Glucerna. It apparently can't be microwaved and hence the tin goes in a hot water bath or large cup.
- 5 mins - Prop up the Daddy at a 45 deg angle. This helps with the food going down the tube. Check mittens and restraints.
- 6 mins - Prepare a empty small bowl for the acid test and another of water for bubble-bubble-toil-and-trouble test. Place an acid test strip nearby. Also have drinking water nearby.
- 7 mins - Wipe large syringe and feeding tube end. Insert syringe into feeding tube end. Pull out a few ml of stomach contents.
- 8 mins - Remove syringe from feeding tube. Cap the tube end. Squish out stomach contents (or whatever comes out of the tube in layman terms) into empty small bowl. Dip acid test strip to regurgitate.
- 9 mins - Check used acid test strip with colour chart on back of acid test strips box. At this time, one needs to visually match the regurgitate test strip with colour chart to determine acidity or pH level of stomach contents. If match shows a pH of 7 or less, it's half OK to feed the Daddy.
- 10 mins - Get the small bowl of water. Put open end of feeding tube into the water. If there are bubbles, call the doctor. It means that the tube is compromised! It leads to the lungs! Otherwise, it's a clear signal to begin the feeding.
- 11 mins - Retrieve the Glucerna. Give it a good shake and open the tab to expose the goodness to the germs in the air. Seriously, that's what happens doesn't it.
- 12 mins - Re-insert the syringe into the feeding tube end but kink the tubing nearest the end so that air doesn't get in. Hold the syringe up in the air. Pour 50ml of Glucerna down the transparent syringe of measurement, release the kink and let gravity and stomach pressure take care of the flow.

(All this while I have to ensure Daddy isn't being naughty and attempting another prison-break of the tubular kind.)

- 14 mins - I have found that it takes about 20 secs for 10ml to flow down the hatch. So at about 14mins, I pour in another 50ml.
- 16 mins - See 14 mins entry.
- 18 mins - See 16 mins entry.
- 20 mins - It's generally consumed by now and to top off the vanilla-flavoured beige-coloured thick liquid, I have to kink the tube again and add 20ml of drinking water. This helps to remove any clogs in the tube, a quick wash of sorts.
- 21 mins - Remove syringe and wipe down feeding tube end and cap well.
- 22 mins - Wash the syringe and bowls. Throw away acid test strip and other tissue paper casualties.
- 24 mins - Entertain the Daddy for half hour (or so) in the angled position so that digestion proceeds well and good.
- 54 mins - Return Daddy to pre-feeding alignment. Check mittens and restraints.

Woof.

Home With A Tube Up The Nose

Alrighty then.

My dad's out of hospital. He's at home with a feeding tube down his right nostril and a bad shave. The feeding tube is for the liquid diet he has to be on for a while and the bad shave was TTSH nurses' idea of cleaning him up.

He hates the tube and on day one at home he cunningly pulled it out, the whole 40cm of plastic and rubber that was his lifeline. This was about 930pm after we fed him a whole 250ml tin of Glucerna, a liquid meal replacement thats a kcal an millilitre.

Now that's a tagline "A Kcal per ml". I have been thinking that its a good way to lose weight but that would take another blog post and perhaps require defense against supermodels, fitness centres and large people bent on maintaining the status quo.

Upon asking why he did pulled the tube, he replied "There was a snake up my nose." Cute and endearing, That put a funny spin on all the frustrations we were facing looking after an old man. It is terribly tiring looking after the elderly and I have mentioned before that somehow my mother seems to pull through it albeit with a lot of complaining.

The next morning, we called the Home Nursing Foundation to have someone come around and plug in another "snake" down my dad's throat. She came around 10ish and took $50, mostly for the new tube and other nurse-type things she had to do. By the next feeding, the tube was out again. The mittens and restraints were foiled by my daddy's deviousness. The nurse came around and took another $15. I think I'm gonna be broke.

A380 Look See

Last week, I got an email apologising for not including my name in a list to visit the newest, biggest addition to the local airline's fleet, the airbus A380. I was surprised - me, moi, copywriter I? Gets asked to come along to sniff the Airbus air for writing many an EDM? No way! Well way. Woohoo.

So we made our agency asses down to Changi to see the giant aircraft. It is after all, 7 stories high and able to accommodate 555 passengers at its maximum. We did the necessary waiting - to meet our clients, to get security passes, to board the in-house bus, to go through pre-tarmac checks and to board the aerobridge from the side entrance then to enter the plane.

And what a plane. First we saw were the new Suites. They were, well, not my kind of thing. They seemed claustrophobic especially since the partitions make it hard to see around. So I guess I'm not built for superclass, atas beyond atas travel. I scooted past the Suites to the economy seats. They looked like any other economy seats except for the few extra centimeters of legroom and bigger TV screens. OKie dokie. Up the back spiral staircase to the top deck. More economy seats and then the piece de resistance, business class. Nice. The seats were wide enough for Ravi and I to sit in one plush leather seat. There was little corner for my feet and the TV looked huge. Simply put, this would be my pick for travel on this particular A380.

What sort of impressed me were the little accents of greenery and Xmas holly. They added bold yet homely dashes of colour to the interior. Well done.

See all my A380 pixes at my Flickr.

Dogs, Trees and Changes

On Dec 1, I woke up late. I showered and dressed and packed double quick. I flagged a taxi and thought 'Mister taxi driver, I am gonna make you quite happy this Saturday 7am'. "Changi Village, uncle". He took a second look into the rearview mirror, and he stepped on the accelerator. Thus began Pedal Ubin episode 4 of the year.

I was forewarned that there would be girl guides attending. About 50 of them. I prepared for them by having a teh tarik kurang manis and 2 epok-epok, one sardin the other kentang. Ah, the classic Changi breakfast of the people. Having sugar and carbohydrates processing in my tummy, I scooted along to the ferry terminal and lo and behold, young females in bright orange being organised by older members of the species in red t-shirts. Oh dear, were they thinking they would have problems finding themselves in the verdant green of Ubin. "Hey look, there's an orange thing in the jungle. It must be one of us!".

"You going Ubin ah?", asked a ferry operator/driver/brown-skinned uncle.
"Yah", I went.
"One ah?"
"Yah, one."

One the red-attired ones come forward and tell the same ferry man that her troupe of 13 were ready to depart. He waves at me and asks me to join the bright scheme of moving teenagery colours.

As I take my seat aboard the estrogen-swathed vessel, the red-one asks the ferry man in Chinese "How come there is one more person?". He dismisses her as he is more keen on my $2 than her disgust that another man may sit alongside her fair, angelic maiden of community service and knot-tying. Do they do that? Well, I dunno. It was just weird that she was concerned. I was obviously too sensitive.

By the time, we, the Pedallers Ubin or Pedal Ubinners or Jungle Fowls, made it to the basketball, some of the girls recognised the odd man out as me. Anyhow, I wasn't assigned to bring the maidens around. So all was not tense or unnervy.

The ride was ok. We did the Sensory Trail, looped around the old plantations, headed West and up to the former Thai temple and to a might-be-reopened quarry. A lot had changed on the island in the 6 months since I last been. An "official" bike track had opened up near Pulau Ketam and the Thai temple had relocated to the mainland. The latter was an action related to the re-opening of the Kekek/HDB quarry as a result of the granite shortage brought about from the Indonesian embargo. Tsk tsk. The temple was not only an obvious religious entity but an economic one too. Devotees paid for taxi rides to make the few kilometer journey and later ate their fill at the few restaurants. Now who's gonna fill the registers when the holiday season ends? Tsk tsk.

I also found out there was new puppy around, a new viewing area was set up at Pekan quarry that hosts a heronry, and that the boardwalk at Chek Jawa was already receiving visitors. Please don't go and mess it up with trash and pollute intentions with a misplaced longing to get in touch with nature for 20mins before the mozzies come and suck you dry. Think before you act.

At the end of 4 hours plus of cycling and stumbling over my words, we were back at CV having lunch - a satisfying meal of nasi lemak and lime juice. Ah, the calories of joy. Well, that's it then isn't it?

The doggies are still cute and the trees are still around to sway in the breeze. Catch all of them at my Flickr.

When The Time Comes

It's been one-kind of a weekend, the kind that sort of throws things into a unreal plane, where things you don't wanna think about cut left and right, where the weight of the unforseen comes delivered, sign, sealed, ominous and absolute. This is the bit of the blog where I realise I am going on without a story. Simply put, my father is in the hospital right now with a lung infection.

It started out simply. A few coughs and a buildup of phlegm, one could not see beyond the premature inklings of a bad cold. But it got worse and soon his breathing was affected by the mucousy buildup in the lungs. I think we tried something like 2-3 different cough mixtures before I convinced my mother to ring the ambulance. Well, I was loud and abrasive and in a "I told you so" mood. I am not that nice a person in the morning. This was last Friday, the end of November. (My dad is really old by the way, hard of sight and hearing, hence the ambulance).

At Tan Tock Seng, a lung infection was proclaimed with evidence from the a less-than-desirable white-patched X-ray of the chest. By 3pm, he had a room on the 7th floor. The docs, all three of them who endured my father's verbal and physical abuse at being poked and prodded by strangers (he knocked a tray of meds off the bed, and they clattered all over the linoleum floor). It was funny. Then the docs asked my mum and I aside and said that this case of lung infection or pneumonia wasn't easy to cure in a man of extended years and to expect the worst. The words entered my brain and were duly processed, and I remained calm and logical. It wasn't till later that the impact sort of it, and oddly physically too. It was like a heaviness across the chest and a dryness of the throat. 'So this is it' I was thinking. Nothing else really. Not like the millions of flashes one is supposed to get when falling to the death at the end of a bungee rope before the cord reaches the elastic limit and retracts. Not unfathomable but unexpected, I guess the idea that a cold may be the 'killer' was furthest from my mind. I sat in the hard leather seat in the ward and just stared blankly, nodding and mumbling occasionally at my mother's questions and rantings.

I dozed off for a while. I went to pee and wet my dry eyes. OK, bad use of liquids in a descriptive sentence. My mother and I hung around my father as the nurses came and stuck tubes into him, fed him intravenous meds, changed him, fussed about. I left about 930pm while my mother stayed over. When I got home, it felt weird not seeing my dad's room light not on (he's a little afraid of the dark). I guess I was too tired and had Pedal Ubin the next day and knocked out soon after a shower and a quick conversation with God.

I woke an hour late for Ubin. F***. It was the first time I took a taxi to Changi Point, and became $18 poorer for missing the first ring of the clock and the subsequent chain of buses. But richer for the hour of snooze! The Ubin trip deserves another post later but this catharsis is necessarily first.I got to the ward at about 4pm and found my father in a better state of health. The vacuuming-suckups and antibiotics were working and the no-food regimen was helping harden the phelgm. Hip hop hooray.

I spent 9 hours at my father's bedside today. I was adjusting, feeding and entertaining him. He's become more normal (standards differ for each family I am sure). I can only hope the lungs clearer relatively completely by end week.

More importantly, I dunno, I don't think I am ready. I don't think many will be. Though it's got me thinking about the future, of an emptier house, of the lack of demands for attention (mostly for milk) in the middle of the night and the beard I won't have to shave. It's got me thinking about the past, about how I came to realise how smart his man was for someone who didn't go beyond Primary 4 (I'll tell you about the 100 animals for $100 maths problem some other time), about the time I sat on his lap on the single front seat on the noisy 198 bus to Tekka from Jurong, about the time I came home and cried when I broke my front tooth in Primary 5, his pork-curry-rice. Plus so many other things, +++++.

Yeah you can call it a big weekend.