How To Resist 3 Crabs For $28?

With a letter from the doctor, that's how.

How not to? Food glorious food. The way to a man's heart is indeed through Singapore. One survey quoted the number one reason for Singaporeans not to migrate overseas was food. And like ants to Pooh Bear's lair, we descended upon Sixth Avenue in Bukit Timah to feast ourselves on crawly shellfish.

It all started when someone in my office mentioned that there was a kopitiam zhi char that sold 3 crabs for $28. Not a bad deal in Singaporean terms. So I got the number and address and set up a dinner date with 7 other people.

My first hurdle in all this was speaking Mandarin to the lady who picked up the phone. I managed to tell her I needed 12 crabs for 8 people the next day. She then asked me what ways I wanted the crabs done and I managed to mumble some gibberish about picking the choice when we got there. Phew.

At the back of our mins and the fronts of our stomach, we had the impression they weren't going to be very large. Come on, good deals aren't easy to come by. But lo and behold, they were adequately sized for us to go "Hmmm, not bad". We had 15 crabs in the end, in 3 sets of 5, done 3 ways. The waitress tried to upsell everything else on the menu but we didn't fall prey, save for a large rather salty fried rice and a vege dish.

We had butter crabs, white pepper crabs and salted egg crabs. The last two choices were good. They came impressively stacked. We came with hungry stomachs and couldn't wait to crunch and devour.

(...I fell asleep)

(the next day...)

It was over in about an hour, and 15 crabs were about right for 8 of us. It's a pretty ok deal so go and spend some money on your family at Xuan Eating House, at the start of Annamalai Avenue at Sixth Avenue (100 metres from the junction of Sixth Avenue and Bukit Timah). Call 8404 5087 to reserve your crabs, tables are not a problem.

All Hands On Deck

Misalignment can drive some OCD sufferers insane. I should let the authorities know before some psycho takes us out with petai gas and causes a delay in service.

Supermodelme.tv

An ex-colleague asked if we wanted to attend the finals of Supermodelme.tv, a local reality programme where models of all sorts came to be top dog/bitch of them all. Not a bad thing really to do on a Saturday night. I remember a promise of free booze.

Here was the interesting thing. I had trouble asking people to come with me. It took many SMS to gather a remotely interested group. Remotely I confess at this juncture to pre-empt actions later.

Organized by Refinery Studio and a bunch of other sponsors, it promised to be a little chi-chi but there was too much of a generic crowd. We got in too early - damn these fashion events. So we exchanged out coupon-denominated drinks (Tiger beer or Russian vodka) (Yes, there is a brand of vodka called Russian vodka as odd as that may be) and started checking people out.

When things got going, it happened pretty quickly. Lots of music, walking up and down and posing. The two emcees, one a very skinny supermodel Charmaine Han, and fat Malay guy in a skirt, weren't very good. Half the time we couldn't hear them.

Before the results were announced, my party decided to leave. See "remotely interested" reference earlier. I found some colleagues, accidentally for that matter, and hung out with them till the end. I saw Taufik and Benedict Goh, if those count as celebrity spots. We wound up at Wine Bar before I had to leave for Siglap to meet the welcoming committee for a San Franciscan returnee.

Howdy Hougang

I am guilty of not writing, again. I blame it on the move. We moved out of the Woodies to Hougang.

Moving is always trying and tiring. Good thing we left most of the boxes (mine by the way) in the other room and so we didn't have much packing to do. Though the packing we had to do was done painfully. We ran out of boxes and improvised with many a trash bag, pails, baskets and other things around the house. Even the large clay pot had something else in it.

The other bad bit about completing the move is unpacking. I spend a whole Saturday opening boxes and deciding where to put stuff. Guess what, I don't have enough shelving for my millions of artefacts, books and CDs. Habis. So now there are 14 boxes mostly untouched taking up space in my room. It's a large room though, so it's not so bad. Old flats were built bigger is the general concensus.

Apart from these gripes, I am so glad I got broadband back. The modem connects at 130mbps sometimes! 130! More than the speed in the office. I could finally update my Mac software. It came down at a blistering 1mb in 5 secs. Happiness is digital.

The ride to work isn't so bad. A 2 min walk to the bus stop, a few minutes wait for one of 4 buses to bring me to the train station, a 2-min bus ride to the mrt (I know I should walk but the weather ain't conducive) and a 38 min train journey across 1 interchange and 2 lines, a 2 minute stroll up to the office and I am sitting pretty. Still coming in 15 mins late each day but at least I'm consistent.

I twittered that the NEL seemed sterile, and blamed it on the underground nature of the whole line. No sunlight gets in vanquish the early morning vampires from the northeast with their pale, lifeless skin and bloodshot eyes, smart in shirts and skirts. I miss the glistening waters of Sungei Seletar reservoir that would reflect too much sun into trains that zoomed by on the red line to and from the remote north.

I think physically I am staying half the distance I was from the city barely 2 weeks ago. I've already experienced the superior connectivity of the KPE but yet to discover the hood. I need to jog around Punggol Park too.

Here's to new beginnings.