rainy day capers

Had an exam in the morning (it was terrible, dun ask me about it) so i headed to the gym after and met wibblewamble for lunch. Ate at our fav jap restaurant Haru, which provided comfort food, but not very comforing service. Is it us or is "good service" a thing of the past? People don't seem to care, courtesy has been thrown out the window and the lack of pride is quite apparent. Maybe i should start a blog where we can all whine about a bad service experience, like http://www.parkingidiots.blogspot.com/. But seriously, do provide some feedback, it helps everyone. =)

It was raining cats and dogs when we left, but ww's colleague offered to walk over with a few umbrellas (bless her!).

So there we were picking our way through the puddles when she asked "hey, you don't have to skip and hop like me, you're not wearing nice heels!" Which was true, since i was wearing my running shoes, but i pointed out that it was the adidas climacool one with vents in the underside, so my socks were getting wet.

She laughed, "Who ask you buy such a holey shoe lah!"

zeenie's retort "but it's good for my sole (soul)! bwahahahahaha!"

Sausages in the news

This is a funny story that reminds of the NUTS (no u-turn syndrom) effect that some people attain after becoming an official of sorts.

Jon Carthew said: "I don't think any of our customers actually believe that we use dragon meat in our sausages. "We use the word because the dragon is synonymous with Wales and I think everyone who buys from us knows that."

I suppose with Chinese culture being spread far and wide, they believe that consumers eat anything these days. Ha!

stop motion video

Just caught this video of a musician doing stop motion video on the net, it's brilliant!! Check it out, 'cos words fail me!

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/300969/stop_motion_musician/

Policeman tasers himself and teenager

This story sounded like a scene from a Jackass/Ben Stiller/Stephen Chow movie:
"The constable was attending the incident at a central Auckland home when he shocked himself, the 16-year-old and then later pepper-sprayed the 21-year-old woman"

bloody amazing stuff if you ask me. Will upload pictures of the bullrun as soon as i find my thumb drive! Argh!

In the wet!

Yesterday's Bullrun was wet! At the same time it was also a blast, and it was great to see Jeanie so happy, that brave little dog of mine. Memories to warm the heart! Pictures coming soon!

Aside from getting ourselves thuroughly soaked, we managed to spot Kingsley and Kaiser in the crowd and Kingsley even grinned at Jeanie. :).

update: the official bullrun pictures have been posted up! =)Spot the Jeanie!

a night out

Brought my visitor from the land of the long white cloud out to a few clubs tonight, and it was a blast and a riot. Hilarity and pandemonium were always a laugh away, and he did find our clubs very interesting to say the least. I did feel like a chaperone at times though 'cos i felt strangely detached from the proceedings at hand, even though the music was good (retro night). I guess i subscribe to the ah-lim school of thought. =)

We started off the night well, dining at Sun with Moon and we had an absolute feast (read what another blogger said about this place). It has always been our favourite restaurant (see previous post on food) and having more people around made ita meal to remember, especially since we can order more varieties. Eating is definitely more fun with more people present.

Off we went to our favourite pool joint afterwards and found Kumar in full swing there (not literally of course, he hasn't joined Cirque de Soleil...yet(?)). I guess having a club where 'everybody knows your name' is kinda cool and we had a few games of pool there and plenty of laughs. Brought him over to MOS and Zouk after. MOS was having a quiet night and so we could move around freely. He was really impressed by the sheer size of the place and the music they were playing, although the crowd was missing that certain vibe. We did spot some weird dancing like these two girls whose idea of dancing was to jump up and down and wave their arms rather half-heartedly. I have seen the Queen of England give a better wave than that! I did explain to him that depending on the DJ or artistes, like Koshee (*worship* Kosheen is teh rox0r!), the vibe can be quite narcotic. Zouk's mambo night or retro night was ok, but it just wasn't the same when i actively went there (like omg 10 years ago lor!). It was really really really weird in a way! Don't get me wrong, the music was still quite cool and funky, but to have people dancing together, waving their arms in time as if they were playing DDR is just uncanny. Since when did retro night be a euphemism for synchronised dancing? I'm really getting too old for this shit.

B, James B

Man, the weird thoughts were just flying when i saw this news article on Diddy wanting to be the next Bond.

First off, just like Q, he will be known as "B, James B y'all got a problem with that?".

Q will have an assortment of gadgets hidden in gold chains that would put Mr T to shame. Most it involves flashing the bling at the enemy until they cannot tahan and must run to the nearest jewellery to get some for themselves, leaving B to complete the mission and get the girl (who gets one of dem chains as a gift).

Next, Q will have to outsource the car jobs to "Pimp my ride" and the outcome with be a tricked-out, bling-to-the-max, 100-puh-cent-certified, gold-loving, honey-attracting mobile that will have 25' rims that can have secret messages flashing from the LEDs embedded in it, suspension that bunny-hops the car over tough obstacles like chewing gum and puddles on the road, and a sound system that will blow you off your feet with a subwoofer that pounds the daylights out of you while you lay immobilized by the sound of "Get your freak on".

B will then forgo his usual Walter PPK, and use a couple of 9mms.....ok, twelve of them 9mm......with inlaid diamonds on a gold frame......

bleah.

Trip to Malacca

Since my visitor had quite a few days in Singapore, we brought them up to Malacca for the weekend. Overall we had a great time and it was a gasteonomical treat, to say the least. Took a 40 seater home, and no traffic jam, just human jam at the causeway, and the bus is quite comfortable. Perhaps the tummies were all sated so most of us are sleeping off all the great food that we had been eating here. I shall leave the food recommendations to a later time as it is not the subject of this rant post.

We started off from our journey early enough, although it wasn't early enough for wibblewamble to get some work done (at 5 in the morning?!?). We caught our Grassland pre-booked super vip 26-seater bus at 8 and the journey via the second link was quite smooth as traffic was quite light. What was startling once we hit the highways in malaysia was the driver's constant use of the cellphone, without a hands-free kit. His longest call was around an hour and he alternated the hand holding the phone when he got tired, driving with his other hand. There were times when he even took both hands off the wheel! Now if he were driving conservatively, it might have made us feel safer but no, he was driving like a maniac! Weaving in and out of traffice, cutting other cars off in a queue for the turn-off and braking very suddenly and startlingly at irregular intervals, especially off the highways. To top it all off, he drops us off in the middle of nowhere, saying that he was sending the others remaining in the bus to their hotels, 'cos they paid 3 dollars more. This despite assurances from the rather unfeeling (almost rude) lady at Grasslands telling us that the bus would drop us off at near hotel equitorial (dunno how to spell so fancy one). We actually received better service from the 40 seater on our way home, so you dun always get what you pay for.

I think it shows a shocking lack of basic responsibility to drive so carelessly when you have 26 lives behind dependent on you to drive them to their destination. I personally would not use this company again.

Visitor from Aoteroa

A good friend  is here on a visit from windy welli so it was good to meet up again.  Caught up with a blog-pal (as opposed to a penpal) as well and it was good to put a face to the name. Turned out that out of that group of 7 of us, 5 of us had blogs. Welcome to the new media.  :)

Welfare

In the light of recent discussions online regarding the state of Welfare in sunny-land, it kinda got me thinking.  Each time I take the train, I see people who sell tissue paper.  It appears that hard times have fallen upon them and that are reduced to selling packets of tissue.  I do wonder how they are going to break out of this cycle since a) they spend their time trying to get enough money to get by, b) they may not know how to move forward from tissue paper salesmanship, c) even if they knew how to would they have the resources to do so?  And invariably I  wonder whether the government is doing anything to help them. Which is kinda warped in a way, 'cos my logic would be "but what can I do? Buy tissue paper everyday?" (Which remains a valid solution in a way, although I would end up with 3 packets of tissue everyday) "why should it come down to me? Why don't gah-men do something?" Then the train of thought chugs on, "maybe this tissue paper seller is raking it in ah, and purposely dowan to do anything about this" which are bitter judgemental thoughts, afterall, how much money can one make from tissue paper? But the basic point remains, I know about teaching a person to fish yadda yadda, and by buying a tissue (at whatever insignificant sum) would i be 'giving fish' and be providing a disincentive to wanting to break out of the cycle?

We can kid ourselves that we are doing our good deed for the day by buying a tissue, but does it help in the long run?
Who are we to judge?

Kind of an interesting "damned if I do and damned if I don't" conundrum.

However we sometimes feel they can go too far, and charge, nay demand, a premium price for the tissues, which is also strange since the point about helping the person can get lost in the price difference.

On a side track, the consumer (or singaporean, hard to differentiate sometimes) in me was thinking the other day when I saw some people giving away not one but TWO packets of tissue free as a promotion of some health awareness program, "wah the tissue paper seller today got tough competition, how come the relevant authorities nair think about the poor tissue paper seller when they give out tissue paper?" Plain cynical thoughts.

That's us, we want it on a silver platter and we want it now. Painful thoughts for a morning journey. Sigh