changes

I think I should stop being lazy and write something on this blog of mine ;)

Yes, my dear friends. Thanks very much for the smses and short notes :) The "Looking for Me" blog is still v much alive. The new "by invitation" blog has not gone live yet...I've not missed you out in my invitation list :) I know this makes me sound terribly popular as a blogger, but trust me, I don't think I have that many fans..I am just lucky to have many caring friends ;)

Will start the new blog probably only in the last week of August or slightly before that, so stay tuned!

Change is the only constant. How apt. I guess most of us would have gotten used to it by now. I don't know why I'm so proud of this...sounds silly..but I've just changed my sms notification sound. Instead of the rather errm..irritating sounding Bugs Bunny speech "What's this? A letter! For me!", which has often earned me stares from curious onlookers especially in a crowded train ;p I've changed it to something, which I hope is less juvenile, maybe more sophisticated and more melodious ;)

I'm moving!

Yes. As you may have guessed...from the header...or from the little hints that I have dropped in previous postings....this little blog of mine will be moving soon :)

I'll still be blogging as usual. Shall endeavour to blog on a more concientious basis going forward :) If possible, I shall aim to blog for at least 350 days from September 2008 onwards ;p Sounds like a tall order. May sound like a potentially boring read for some of my loyal fans out there ;p Have faith :) Let's give it a try. Let's give ourselves a chance :)

The new blog shall be by invitation :) The new blog will also be slightly different in flavour from "Looking For Me". Perhaps we could play a game of spot the difference between the 2 blogs if there's sufficient interest ;p

For those of you who are still keen to read my postings:
a) If you are v sure that I know that you read my blog, I have your e-mail address, no action required ;)
b) If you think that I probably may not know that you read my blog, please drop me an e-mail, msn message or sms ;p

For those of you whom I've already requested for your e-mail addresses, just sit back, relax nd wait for my invitation :)

Thanks a lot!

Special Kyushu Ramen

This blog posting is especially for a good friend whom I just had dinner with :) Welcome to kestrel's blog ;p Hope you have fun reading it ;)

Thought I should write on the dinner that I had. As you may have guessed it. Special Kyushu Ramen :) It was rather yummy! Tastes quite different from the ramen that we're used to. Especially like the roasted sesame seeds that they have in the soup :)

I guess I'm pretty much into a ramen mood since last year when I was introduced to the marutama ramen (or as my friends fondly call it the basketball ramen ;p) at central mall. Yep. For those of you who have tried it, it's the ramen with chicken stock ;) Which, I think should be a relatively healthier option than the usual pork based ramen that we are used to :)

Anyway, back to Kyushu ramen. Googled on the specific differences of kyushu ramen. Apparently, noodles in kyushu ramen are very fine, and often undercooked (i.e. they taste rather springy). They use pork-based, very thick white soup and goes well with roasted garlic :) Not too sure how many outlets in Singapore sell kyushu ramen. But this particular shop that I went to was along Mohammed Sultan Road. Prices are relatively ok and food tastes rather yummy too :)

My new Toy :)

Bought a new "toy" yesterday ;)Definitely took quite a bit of efforts to acquire it. Firstly there was the awful crowds of people at the IT fair to navigate through while I browse the various booths in search of that particular laptop that would suit my needs ;p Secondly, there was of course the rather difficult weighing process i.e. which model to buy, how much to spend etc ;p Thirdly, there was the queue to do the free RAM upgrade for my new purchase ;) and of course, finally, lugging my new purchase back home via the MRT cos taxi queues were long and it definitely doesn't make much sense to drive down to suntec and not be able to find a parking lot for the car ;)

All in all, am glad that I have finally settled on my new laptop :) Have spent the whole of last night and this afternoon downloading the neccesary programs to bring the laptop up to speed (more in terms of the stuff that I would need ;p)...and in case you're wondering, no illegal programs (maybe not yet;p), basically stuff like freeware and shareware ;) e.g. picasa, sun jvm etc ;p

Have got a new blog project in mind :) for this "project" to take off, would appreciate if you, my dear reader can e-mail/ msn me the e-mail account that you use the most frequently. Thanks :)

PS: Have loaded a picture up with this blog. Guess the picture serves as a reminder of the good trip that I had recently ;p This was also the first picture that I experimented with my laptop's bluetooth ;p Anyone knows where this is? :)

Back

I realised that my blogs are always titled Back etc ;p Pretty uninspiring and uninnovative I gotta say.
Right. Shall work on it to make it better in the next posting :)

Been really away from SG for quite a while..a grand total of 17 days :) Must say I really really had a good break. 10 days away down in under in Aussieland visiting my family, followed directly by a 5 day course up North in M'sia..followed by a short 1+day trip in M'sia :) This is probably my first time transiting in Changi airport. Thought I"ll share my short transit experince at Changi.

I had a grand total of 2 hours to transit at Changi. Knowing me, needless to say, I spent like the first half an hour searching for an internet kiosk, to trouble-shoot my wireless@SG account..and of course to surf to my heart's content ;p Replied to a couple of smses on my handphone ;) (gotta say that I was pleasantly surprised to get 1 particular sms haha ;p) Next up, it was to treat myself to a really good chinese meal (having been relatively deprived) down under ;p

I walked into a particular restaurant after much hesistation, more so because, the people inside caught me eyeing their menu several times and asked me twice if I wanted to dine at the restaurant ;p (I was going through this complicated thought process of whether to head for the foodcourt for good ol Singaporean food or to head into the restaurant for Chinese food ;p). So, I went in a little reluctantly. Ordered food and asked for water. The waitress asked "still or sparkling", to which I very calmly replied "just water will do" ;p and she finally understood :)

Made my way to pay the bill after my rather satisfying bowl of noodles ;) Asked the cashier if there were any credit card discounts, to which she kept saying "yes, you can pay by credit card". Repeated my question twice, before she finally understood me and rather reluctantly said "yes. 10% discount for UOB credit card" Needless to say, I proudly whipped out my UOB credit card and got my discount ;p Perverse as this may sound, but I do get my kicks out of these really small victories ;p But then again, this really makes me wonder if (a) the restaurants in the transit areas are solely for tourists and not for locals like myself, or (b) I don't look Singaporean?

Just some musings about my 2 hour transit at Changi ;) Till next time. No pics this time I guess.

La Viva Tapas

Was out for dinner with 2 good friends of mine. A very nice way to spend a Friday evening after a long week at work, with tapas, Sangría, nice company and great spanish music in a rather cosy ambience at Chijmes :)

For the uninitiated...like me (I may have taken spanish lessons before. But when it comes to spanish cuisine, I'm totally clueless!), here's some useful information, courtesy of wikipedia :)

Tapas is the name for a wide variety of appetizers in Spanish cuisine. Tapas have evolved into an entire cuisine; at Spanish restaurants, patrons may order many different small tapas, and combine them for a full meal.

Sangría is a wine punch typically from Spain and Portugal. The word sangría comes from the Spanish sangre meaning blood ("sangue" in Portuguese). It typically consists of
red wine, chopped or sliced fruit (often orange, apple, and/or peach; occasionally kiwi or banana), a sweetener such as honey or orange juice, a small amount of added brandy, triple sec, or other spirits. gaseosa (carbonated water).

Illustrations in the photogrid :)

The Local Tourist

I recall writing something on being a tourist in our own backyard...a.k.a. the local tourist concept...Some time back, the ST used to have this column - The Accidental Tourist, which I enjoyed reading immensely. The column talks about the little known nooks and corners of Singapore...really, if we take the time to walk and explore around..we are more than our concrete urban jungle of buildings and HDB blocks ;)

Anyway, for work purposes, we have had foreign visitors for the past 2 weeks. Naturally, the conversation always strays to the attractions that they have been visiting in Singapore after working hours. To our amazement, our visitors have been very adventurous. They have taken the MRT on their own, and invariably, all of them would have visited Chinatown, Little India, Orchard Road and the Night Safari :)

For this week, we brought one group of foreign visitors from the former USSR for dinner at a seafood restaurant at One Fullerton. Well, guess the restaurant is a popular choice for one to bring corporate clients..and in particular, caucasian corporate clients ;) You can hardly find any table consisting of only locals at the restaurant.

Needless to say, we brought our visitors out to see our Merlion in its night time glory after dinner. Our visitors were highly unfazed (cos they have already seen the merlion in the day time on one of their trips ;p). But all of us were fascinated..and we the locals, were the ones who ended up taking pictures of the merlion haha. We were remarking among ourselves that we would hardly be at the merlion in the night, if not for the fact that we had to entertain our visitors, oh well :)
(posted some pics taken with my trusty handphone around the Singapore river)



Believe it or not. These pictures above are taken in Singapore. We still have such roads around ;p Simply paved single lane 2 way roads with no street lights. No buildings flanking the side of the roads. Never seen them before? ;) Let me know if you want to know where they are ;p

The thing about cooking

No pretty pictures to complement this blog. My next posting..I'll try, will attach new pics to go with it :)
Was talking to an old friend yesterday, someone who's based overseas in the US and hence, we get to meet up once in a very long while, either in Singapore or in the US. The thing about old friends, I guess is that, despite the long periods of non contact, we never seem to have the problem picking up the conversation from where we last left off ;)

Anyway, my friend made a rather interesting point about cooking. Good authentic Singaporean food is hard to come by in the US. Hence, according to him, any homecooked food done in the US will taste extremely good. However, when he's back in Singapore and he reprises the same cooking, it simply does not taste as good. His reasoning being, once back in Singapore, comparables are abundant. When such food is no longer scarce, his cooking no longer tastes as good!

I wonder what it would be like to cook Chinese/Singaporean food overseas. Granted, one may be able to find Asian food/ingredients in Asian supermarkets or markets in general, but somehow, I don't think we'll be able to find all the ingredients to reproduce the same dish in entirety. This is purely based on my observations from browsing Asian supermarkets and markets in general overseas. When it comes to cooking Chinese/ Singapore food overseas, I guess we have to adapt the recipe based on the available ingredients that one can get overseas..

Agree? Disagree? If you have stayed overseas and cooked overseas, would you care to share your recipes? ;)

More people than computers

Hehz. My friend said that I should try to keep up the momentum in blogging..more in anticipation of the next chapter of my life that I will be going into :) I said I'll try, so here I am ;)

Was down at the IT fair at suntec today. Was definitely amazed at the number of people thronging the exhibition halls at suntec. We kept encountering people who have made their purchases and were carting back boxes of scanners, printers, computers etc. Must say that I was rather impressed with the innovativeness of the vendors, who probably supplied trolley carts (think those carts that you use when you go travelling) together with the products, to enable their customers to cart back their purchases easily.

Apparently, cash purchases saves one up to a maximum of 3% on the transaction price. Yepz. For payments by nets, you pay 2% more. For payments by credit cards, you pay 3% more.

I'm sure that there are people who carry $1,000+ (or even more) in cold hard cash to make their purchases of these electronic products. Maybe it's just me, but the idea of carrying a thick wad of cash (think $1,000 = 20 x $50) to buy computers certainly sounds odd ;p Must be rather hard to keep that many bills in one's wallet! It certainly won't fit into my fat wallet ;p I keep having the mental image of someone who takes out a bundle of cash from his front shirt pocket and counting out the many bills in front of the cashier to make their purchase. Hehz.

Back..but not with a vengence.....

Just realised that it's been at least 1.5 months since my last update! Time flies....not that I have anything burning/ pressing to write about. But thought I should force myself to write somthing to regain some of the blogging momentum ;)

For a revival to blogging. Let's start with some observations and generalised statements.

a) Observations: Out of the 12 friends that I see online on my msn. only 2 are female.
Generalised statement: men likes to chat online more than females.

b) Observations: Had to honk (seriously, I hardly use the horn when I drive!) at an Auntie driving an SUV who tried to cut into my lane without realising that I was coming behind in the lane.
Generalised statement: I shall be cowardly and refrain from generalising. I might just reach this stage one of these days ;p

c) Observations: Out of the 9 blogs that I read on a regular basis, only the blogs by my female friends are updated frequently.
Generalised statement: Females like to blog more than males ;) (yep. I guess I can attest to that to some extent by this very valient attempt to update my blog ;p)

Ok. realised that it's rather crappy stuff that I've written..but at least it's something to spark off thoughs ;) I'm sure most of you do not agree with what I've written. do feel free to leave your comments ;) and we'll see how things develop from there ;)

The supermarket

It's certainly been a while (again..yes. I'm sure I've said this more than once ;p)

Been going supermarket shopping for the past 2 sundays. Had errands to run over the past 2 sundays, so thought I'll throw in some grocery shopping as well. Yes. Supermarket shopping, in fact, hypermarket shopping is one of my favourite activities. In Singapore or overseas ;p

This probably sounds pretty auntie-like ;p (Yogz, if you're reading this, please don't laugh!)

Yepz. Imagine your friend here in T-shirt, shorts and flip-flops, hair in a ponytail, joining the throngs of families doing grocery shopping, armed with the green shopping basket and the occassional shopping list. Afterwhich, I would be armed with plastic bags of groceries. Gives me a good workout too. Groceries can be very heavy! I've come to appreciate that I can't be too ambitious when I'm doing grocery shopping alone ;p

I would usually be walking in the carpark to the car amidst many pairs of watchful eyes. Why watchful eyes? Cos where I do my grocery shopping, the carpark's rather crowded. Parking lots are hard to come by. Hence, there are usually many waiting cars around who will kind of "trail" people who are going to collect their cars and zoom into their vacated lots. Yes. Getting a lot to park one's vehicle can be a mildly competitive experience in my area. It takes a mixture of luck, speed and skill :) Spices up an otherwise lacklustre sunday afternoon ;)

*No pics for today. Wanted to post the pics of my painted toenails (ys, they are still intact, but slightly chipped ;p) but decided that it probably looks too macabre ;p yes. me and my twisted humour*