Thu 8 May

The weekly pilgrimage to Old Airport Rd hawker centre brought me to yet a new stall. There's a fish soup stall (I forgot the name though) that has quite a few newspaper cuttings, so I went to try it. It is delicious! The soup base is thick, and has the right amount of condensed (or is it evaporated?) milk in it. I personally don't really like thick bee hoon, but the soup stock was so good that I still enjoyed it.

After a long day at school, we basically went home and rested. We dug out one of the DVDs we bought and watched it. Charlotte's Web was quite a sweet story, and the animals were pretty cute. I vaguely remember the story from the book, but I think the movie really brought it to life. Then I started working on the slides for College Day till the wee hours.

Fri 9 May

It was yet another long day. I managed to complete the main slides for College Day, so I took a breather and accompanied my wife to the gynae in the afternoon. We were both looking forward to the ultrasound scan to see what baby looked like, but this visit only had an instrument to amplify the heartbeat for us to hear. Sigh.

We rushed back to the school for College Day rehearsal, and that took up to about 6 pm before I could leave for my in-laws' place for dinner.

Sat 10 May

Today was Tommy Tenney's Godchaser conference! I was quite saddened that only one of my boys came along with me, because it was really good. The guy was quite witty and humorous (although some jokes fell flat still), and he had brilliant illustrations and metaphors to simplify many Christian concepts and ideas. I felt refreshed with a new passion and understanding after the three sessions.

After the conference, my wife and I made do with dinner at Sakura Restaurant at Eastpoint, and headed home to rest. The days are feeling drearily longer, and I am looking forward to the holidays. Hopefully that would bring solace, despite me foreseeing that I would be heading back to school maybe half the time for various reasons.

Sun 11 May

I went for service as usual with my wife, and today's service had Tommy Tenney preach as a guest speaker. He was still funny as usual, and I think he is actually a very good teacher and preacher, because he managed to impart something new to me, and made me feel like I had some form of revelation concerning God's Word. I had a long cell group after that, and then headed to my in-laws' place for dinner. Lunch was with my mum; dinner was with my mother-in-law. So my wife and I managed to catch a meal with our respective mothers on Mothers' Day.

Mon 12 May

Finally, a Monday I can have breakfast, and in peace. My first period lesson with my TA1 class was gone because it was their elective week, so I finally had some time in a stretch to do my work. Honestly, I would prefer to teach my classes to all the other stuff I need to do, but I guess at this moment, I have my work cut out for me.

A sign of me having a bit more time on my hands is this: I finally crossed the road to the hawker centre to eat lunch today! First time in about 4 weeks. I have been eating in the school canteen for a month (excluding the oh-so-wonderful Thursday lunch outings) already, and this was a welcome change.

That was important as a boost of motivation because I had to stay till 7 pm for College Day rehearsal (round 2), before I headed over to my in-laws' place for a quick dinner, since my wife decided to go to her parents' place to rest and wait for me.

Tue 13 May

Today was an extremely productive thing, and I managed to settle about four big items on my to-do-list in one sitting, long as it might have taken. Today was also the day of Gluttony, as I had char kway teow and a bowl of yong tau foo noodles for lunch, washed down with a cup of fruit juice. Dinner was at Carls' Jr, so the portion was, as usual, huge. The milk shake there was pretty good though. I was actually at Suntec City after school to accompany my wife to buy some more maternity wear, and we did some window shopping. I spotted a movie DVD of something I had wanted to watch but missed. What's new? This is happening way too often for my liking. I bought Stardust immediately, and when my wife and I reached home, we watched it.

It was a beautiful and well-written plot, and considering that it was an adaptation from a graphic novel (that I own) written by a guy that I really enjoy the works of (Neil Gaiman), it was little wonder that I enjoyed Stardust. Plus it had heavyweight stars like Michelle Pfeiffer and Robert De Niro. Neil Gaiman's work in comics and graphic novels (and lately, novels) is refreshing oddball, bizarre, but fascinating. I bought almost anything with his involvement when I was still collecting comics, especially the Sandman series. The movie had twists and turns, good humour and acting, and a nice fairy-tale-ish storyline, and was enjoyable despite me already having prior knowledge of the plot. Although the pacing was alright, I somehow thought it could have had a bit more time and room for elaboration at some points. Ah well. Watching the movie made me feel like digging out my old collection and read it again.

Wed 30 Apr

I had a typical day, and I had to wait for my wife to finish the hustings of the PDP she was in charge of before we headed down to Marine Parade for dinner. I tried out this ramen noodle stall at the hawker centre, and it was not bad, with well-fried pork ribs, but the soup tasted a tad too salty. We then went for our Cluster Meeting at Touch Centre that our tribe pastors together called for and shared a mini-sermon with us.

Thu 1 May

It's Labour Day! So we stayed home to labour and do all the household chores we could. Of course, we found time to go out shopping, and went to the place-that-I-really-dislike. We headed there early so that the monstrous crowds would not have gathered and overflowed in the two shopping malls. Yeah, I'm talking about Tampines.

We managed to snack (a lot) while we were there, and I managed to buy new black leather shoes to replace we current one which now has one huge rip across the sole. I also bought a couple of tops while I was there, and I bought a pair of Gisele Bundchen slippers for my wife. I didn't know she released a slippers/sandals series, but they look pretty good, and weren't pricey ($20+), so I gave my wife a pair to ease her feet's discomfort. On my way back, I bought a KVM to link up my two computers, and it worked beautifully! Now I can toggle between the two computers using one keyboard, monitor and mouse (hence KVM: Keyboard, Video & Mouse)! I love technology. Bwahaha.

Sat 3 May

I stayed home to help my wife with some household chores before bringing my mum to Downtown East to have a Mothers' Day dinner (way in advance). Seriously, my whole family is too practical to go on the actual day and burn a hole in the pocket eating something that is (usually) only slightly different from what the restaurants offer originally. Not to mention squeeze with the crowd, and etc. We ate at A Different Taste once again, and I feel that the restaurant should just give me a membership card or something for my loyalty.

Sun 4 May

My wife's relatives were celebrating Mothers' Day (also way in advance) today, so we went to the first service instead before heading down to her grandmother's place. Oddly enough, her side celebrates with a gathering where the mothers (my wife's aunts and aunt-in-law) cook and the children freeload! Sorry, I'm half-kidding. Of course, there are presents given, but while most mothers out there celebrate Mothers' Day by not doing the things they usually do, my wife's side does the things they usually do best - cook good food.

Sigh. My KVM suddenly malfunctioned on me, and I couldn't toggle anymore. To think that it tricked me into assuming it was working fine and threw away the receipts! I still have the warranty, but I think I have to go down to (eek) Pasir Panjang to settle the repair/exchange. Bleah.

Mon 5 May

Today was my long day, and I still had to rush some work inbetween lessons. My wife and I both felt like giving ourselves a little treat to good food, so we headed to Hi Sshou at Elias Mall for dinner. We were as usual the first customers when they opened. Anyway, if you ever do go to Hi Sshou, try the Bento Set. It has a few pieces of sashimi, fried chicken (superb!), well-grilled mackerel, excellent chawanmushi, rice and miso soup. For $15.90, with GST and no service charge. I think this is the most worth-it item on the menu, if you need to fill your stomach. The ramen my wife ate was delicious too, with a tasty and not overly salty (like Ajisen) soup base.

Tue 6 May

Today was my short day by right, but I had so much to complete that in the end I stayed all the way till about 5 pm when my wife ended lessons. We went to Wan Chai for dinner, and went home to rest. Or rather, my wife rested. I just bought a booster box of Shadowmoor (I think few readers will even know what I'm talking about), so I happily spent a few hours designing and making new Magic decks. Heh. I'd better do this before all the deadlines bury me under.

Wed 7 May

Nowadays Wednesday is always a mad rush at the start because of meetings, followed by a remedial followed by video interviews of students. But today I had finally wrapped up the last interview, and I think there should be enough data to follow up on my research on my card game. Now all I need is...time.

For lunch, I went out with a couple of colleagues to a coffee shop at the far end of Bedok South. My colleague remembered the wrong coffee shop for excellent roast pork, despite me pointing out that the good one I know is the coffee shop at the other corner of the block. Fortunately it was at least decent quality. We then went for quick dessert at the food centre opposite Bedok Camp, before returning to college for a staff conference and another meeting.

My wife and I headed down to Downtown East for dinner and movie, before I get totally tied down with work (all non-academic, as usual). We ate at New York, New York, and the quality of food was still quite good. Not as fantastic as our first visit, but still not bad. In the end, I applied for their membership card. $30 for one year membership, and it comes with one immediate free drink (I took the most expensive ice mocha vanilla at $9.90), a 1-for-1 main course voucher, a $10-off voucher, and a $15-off voucher (and free bottle of wine) for birthday month. There's also a 10% rebate that you can store on the card for use on any visit to offset the bill. My wife thinks I'm a sucker for membership cards, and I guess that's kind of true. Heh.

We watched Iron Man, and I loved it. Though some may disagree with me, I rank Iron Man second to Spiderman (1 & 2), which I still think is the best comic book to screen adaptation so far. X-men probably comes in at third. The storyline for the movie follows how Tony Stark becomes Iron Man, and the acting is excellent as usual by Robert Downey Jr. The special effects were solid too, and there was some witty dialogue and humour. It's the first in a trilogy, and if you stay all the way through the movie credits, you will see an important comic book character appear and mention something that is for a movie after the Iron Man trilogy. I'm glad I know enough about the series to appreciate the significance of this easter egg.

Thu 24 Apr

My colleagues and I went on our weekly pilgrimage to Old Airport Road hawker centre for lunch. After so many visits and trying to eat different things each time, I still have not exhausted my options for food from a stall that has a newspaper article or other about it. This time round, I went for the stall that sells the fusion food (I can't remember the name unfortunately) at the back row. They sell mee siam as well, which my colleague orders every time he joins us, so that may help you to find it. Anyway, I went for something not cheap - lamb chop ($9) and shitake mushroom soup ($4). The food was superb! The soup was thick, rich, chock full of mushroom bits, and tasted fabulous. And it came in one big bowl complete with two pieces of garlic bread. Hence the price. The lamb chop was even better! There were four solid chunks of lamb, and even after cutting away the bone and the thick fat, I thought it was an overdose of meat - to be more specific, very well-grilled, tasty and tender meat. The rice that it came with was a tad spicy, but had a really interesting and nice taste. It was not cheap for hawker centre fare, but after letting my colleagues sample bits of everything, they all agreed that it was good stuff.

In the evening after a long day, my wife and I headed off to City Hall, strolling over to Marina Square to have dinner at Qi Ji before making our way down to Bukit Merah for cell group. Today we left punctually at 9.30 pm, and got home in the usual one hour. Leaving on the dot makes a difference somehow. Reaching home at 10.30 pm doesn't feel anywhere as draining as reaching home at 11 pm or after. Even though it is technically only half an hour apart. It makes a world of difference when it is a long day. Especially when our job starts at about 7 am when we reach school and start preparing already.

Fri 25 Apr

Our Masters' course module had finally reached an end last week! No more boring sessions! But our early day was nowhere in sight because today was our annual track-and-field meet. Since I was in charge of the sound system setup, I stationed myself near the commentators and the blackbox, and tried to do some work before my laptop ran out of power. Inbetween, I managed to meet a lady who was coordinating logistics for Excelfest coming up in July. Man, I just look at what is ahead of me in schedule, and I wonder how I always manage to balance everything neatly. God's grace is more than enough for me.

After the track-and-field meet, my colleague offered my wife and I a ride back because it was not far from his new place that he was going to visit and clean up a bit. Since he was planning to eat dinner alone, we brought him to A Different Taste (they should give me a membership card and make me an ambassador or something). Anyway, only after we reached there did he realize that he had eaten there before already and had a good impression. Unfortunately, the food we ordered today wasn't as fantastic as usual. It was still good fare, but it lacked the 'wow' factor we experienced for the past two visits. Maybe the chef is a different one for weekends. Hmm...I think I should verify with a visit on a weekend. Scientific inquiry requires experiments and repeated trials. Bwahaha.

Sat 26 Apr

I had received a flyer that publicized an offer from Acer at Funan that trading in an old computer in any condition nets a discount that can be applied to purchase certain models of Acer desktops and laptops. Straightaway, I thought of the crummy old desktop still with a CRT monitor sitting in my guestroom that I couldn't bear to dispose of, seeing so little value in selling to the garang guni man, especially when the garang guni men are so irritating, acting as my weekend alarm clock in the morning without fail. I set my sight upon a quadcore model immediately that could get a $400 off for the trade-in (good deal mah, I can actually, in a way, "get back" $400 for the dinosaur in my guest room). I asked my colleague whether it was a good deal on Thu, and he instantly said he was coming with me to buy one too. He came over to pick me up, and we made our way to Funan IT Mall, still half-convinced, wondering if there was some catch or hoax.

In the end, there wasn't. They really did take in the old computers without even booting up for inspection. So I bought my quadcore Q6600 (2.4 GHz), 2 Gb ram, 360 Gb harddisk computer thrown in with wireless mouse and keyboard, speakers, a 20-inch LCD, and etc for $1219. I think it was a good enough deal, and I'd probably upgrade the ram by myself another day. Hmm, now what would I do with my current computer? I think I may just rig everything up by KVM and do heavy multitasking!

My wife's mum and aunt happened to be in the area, and they wanted to eat dinner with us, so where did you think we brought them to? A Different Taste of course! I got to verify my theory whether the food was better on a weekend, and it was. I must try the food on another weekday to confirm the assertion. In any case, the food was definitely worth it, especially since it comes with such a low price. Better still, there is a 10% for NTUC Union membership, which my wife has! Woohoo! I'm beginning to really like Downtown East. It has many eateries now, is within walking distance, and is so much less crowded than Tampines, for instance. Especially since White Sands has only a couple of decent stalls in the food court, Wan Chai, and Lerk Thai at best.

Sun 27 Apr

I went to service as usual, but without my wife because she had a headache. My G12 brother was down with diarrhoea, so in the end, I had a three-in-one combined cell with my wife's girls and my G12 brother's boys. 11 kiddos in total.

After cell group, I headed back to meet my wife for dinner. I persuaded her to go to E!Hub, which is the new extension in Downtown East for two reasons. First one was the I wanted to eat chicken rice from a shop Mr Chicken Rice that we walked past yesterday and smelt the fragrance of the chicken a mile off (my wife had the same notion). Second reason was that today was the official opening, and there was a 1-for-1 Gelare single scoop ice cream deal. I am a sucker for promotions like this and ice cream. Heh.

The chicken rice was fabulous. It is a must-try! The litmus test for good chicken rice, in my opinion is the rice, the chicken (specially breast meat, because it is hard to prepare it well), and the chilli. Mr Chicken Rice aces all three, and has very delicious cabbage soup as well. The soup stock is concentrated, and doesn't taste like the usual MSG-laden dilute soup that comes along. I had to get another bowl, and they gave it to me. A definite plus point. There was so much cabbage and some carrot that it could go with my rice without me needing to order a plate of vegetables. Enough about the soup - back to the three main factors. The rice was fragrant, and it is the thick, fat grains kind of rice - soft, and flavourful. It was good enough for me to order one more bowl of rice, even though I had so little meat left. I practically ate most of the rice with just the chilli and the cabbage from the soup. And man, the chilli! I don't take chilli usually, except for a few kinds. Chicken rice chilli is one of them. This one is spicy enough, but not so spicy that it drowns out the taste of everything else. It does numb the lips and tongue a bit, but the chilli was so tasty that I soaked my rice in it. The taste is reminiscent of Big Bird chicken rice, which was quite famous for the chilli. The chicken breast meat was so succulent and tender, as we expected. You see, as we walked by the other day, we peeked in to look at the food on the patrons' tables. My wife and I both noticed something - that even from that distance, we noticed that the breast meat didn't look dry and void of 'juice' (for lack of a better word) as the meat from many stalls, and appeared tender and moist (again, for lack of a better description). And it was certainly true. This was one of the best chicken breast meat for chicken rice I had eaten thus far. Only later did I realize that this was the relocated shop of the former chef of Mandarin Hotel's Chatterbox. Yowza! Another excellent-food joint in Pasir Ris!

After eating this, I didn't feel like eating chicken rice from my school canteen anymore. But I know I have to, out of sheer necessity of saving time.

Mon 28 Apr

It was another long day, interspersed with administration tasks and other odds and ends. After school, we went to White Sands to eat at the food court. The stewed rice that I thought was not bad turned out inconsistently disastrous to the dismay of my wife, and we had to placate our angry stomachs with ice kachang, which turned out to be pretty nice actually, with finely chopped ice and rich syrup that I could actually tell was honeydew, pineapple, brown sugar syrup and rose directly from the taste.

Tue 29 Apr

Today I settled yet more administration, and had to run all over the place to do some inventory check. I finally raised an Invitation to Quote for vendors to mass-produce my card game for the students. If all goes well, the finished product may make its appearance in end of May. So exciting! I think deep down inside is still my desire to leave some sort of legacy. I still want to publish my poetry in a book, but I guess this will do for the moment. I guess, like my good friend Yuren, I also want to achieve a form of immortality by leaving a name behind somewhere on something good.

My wife and I went home for dinner, and then went to (you guessed it!) Downtown East again. The best thing about Downtown East's E!Hub was that the cinema was Cathay. And why that matters was because a colleague gave us ten movie ticket vouchers (plus one complimentary ticket) from Cathay, which we had yet to use. We decided to watch The Forbidden Kingdom, on my request, of course. In all honesty, the storyline was quite crappy, and the feel of it makes me think "Hollywood" straightaway since they had some kind of world-travelling thing (like Narnia?), an angmoh young man as the main character (kinda, at least for the story) who gets to be a student to two kungfu masters, and plenty of martial arts mambo-jambo that wouldn't sound so cheesy if it was not all delivered together. There were some special effects, lots of nice (computer-animated, I'm sure) scenery, and a bit of humour.

But who cares? I just want to see Jet Li and Jackie Chan fight each other. Period. The two eye candies weren't really successful at distracting, and the angmoh boy was, I guess, a (nuisance of a) plot device. Frankly, they should just have a show with Jet Li, Jackie Chan and Donnie Yen slugging it out. Plot is secondary.

Mon 14 Apr - Thu 17 Apr

Nothing much happened during these four days. All I remember of these days were that I was rushing work, then going home to nap, and continue to work late into the night to finish my Masters' course assignment. Oh yeah, I had to play Lost Odyssey for about half an hour each night before I sleep to maintain some sanity.

Fri 18 Apr

Today was yet another long day. After lessons and clearing some more work, I headed down to Teachers' Network with my two colleagues. My wife didn't go because she wasn't feeling well. Apparently she wasn't the only one. By the time we reached the classroom, we were about ten minutes late, and there were just a handful of students around, i.e. less than ten out of a class of thirty. Including us. I think many took the chance to either be obscenely late, or boycott the lesson with absence. In any case, we didn't stay long either. During the break, we excused ourselves, and rushed back to college for a Parent-Tutor Dialogue.

On paper, I had three parents who made an appointment with me, but my gut feeling said that there had to be more, as previous days proved. Usually the parents of the TA students are more involved and concerned about their children, since it is a path less travelled. In the end I met ten parents, and I was among the last to finish. It was fine by me actually and I think I've always been blessed with nice parent-visitors. One mother actually thanked me for scolding her daughter and causing her to be more serious about my class, which I thought was cool. I think I have still maintained my simplest objective for PTDs - that the parents who had talked to me would walk away with a smile or laughing.

Sat 19 Apr

Finally the weekend! But I still had to wake up early. It was for a good reason though, because I was heading to the Prerelease tournament of Shadowmoor, the latest expansion in Magic the Gathering. Today yielded my best performance thus far, and I won all four games, earning the highest-end prize of six booster packs and a Prerelease t-shirt. The best thing was that the moment I got my prize, this kid approached me and asked me to sell him the t-shirt for eight bucks. I quoted him ten, and he took it. My wife said I should have charged him more, but I think it was alright. It wasn't as if I would wear it the next Prerelease to show off that I had won. Actually, the very fact that a kid bought the t-shirt from me proved that wearing it does not necessarily imply a prior victory. I bumped into one of my ex-students there, and a current student who I know but is not in my class. This was a superb day, especially in a long and tiring week.

I headed home, and then went out to dinner with my wife. We wanted to check out this restaurant, A Different Taste, at Downtown East which we had always been curious about, but only passed by after we had dinner. There was a short queue but once we were seated, the food was served fast. The food was outright fantastic! My wife ordered the sing chew bee hoon, which was delicious. They were generous with the prawns and vegetarian char siew and the prawns were exceedingly fresh. The beef fried rice was impressive, with a fragrance that preceeded it as they brought it out. They were generous with the egg and beef, and the beef itself were not the usual thick, big slices, but were quite small (but many scattered all over), so it was noteworthy that the beef maintained the succulent tenderness. We also ordered toufu and salted vegetables soup. At first I thought it was overpriced (actually it was only $6, but I thought the stuff inside was cheap), but when the soup was served, I changed my mind. The bowl was quite big with plenty of soup, but there was a lot of ingredients. Other than the said toufu and vegetables, there were generous portions of prawn, squid (which was chewy and tender, and not hard to bite through), and fish slices! The restaurant doesn't charge service charge and GST, and including the plain water (which costs 30 c per cup though) and the wet towels, the total was $17+, which I think was fair for the quality.

We are definitely coming back again.

Sun 20 Apr

I woke up earlier to do some work, and headed off to church service as usual. Today two of my boys didn't show up, another two were doing hospitality duty (and they boarded the wrong feeder bus, heading off to NUS instead of Simei), so I was left with one boy for cell group. Two of my colleagues happened to be in the vicinity, and they asked my wife and I for dinner, so we instantly recommended A Different Taste.

We decided to try out their dishes instead. We ordered cereal chicken, which was one of their trademark dishes, fish maw and crab meat soup, kai lan in oyster sauce, sweet and sour pork, and sotong you tiao. The cereal chicken was fabulous. It was like cereal prawn style, but their cereal was so well fried that the pieces were very light on the tongue and crispy. The fish maw and crab meat soup was generous with the fish maw and crab meat, and was thick and rich in flavour. It was quite well-prepared as well, and till the end of the dinner, the soup did not turn watery, maintaining the starchy texture. The kai lan tasted good too, and the sweet and sour pork were all thick but tender chunks of pork. The sotong you tiao was full of sotong meat, and was very well fried, with a thin but crispy crust. Excellent food here, and I think we'll be bringing our parents to eat again.

Mon 21 Apr

It's a long day today, and my wife and I headed home early so that I could go do some long overdue housework. Heh.

Tue 22 Apr

I love Tuesdays because I can clear all the work that I can't find time to do on Mondays. After school, I headed down to Thomson Medical Centre with my wife to get a detailed scan on the baby. Thank God that baby is healthy and has no detectable defects or problems. Baby was very active, and was moving around quite a lot during the ultrasound scan. At one point he looked like he was scratching his head, and at another he was grabbing his tiny foot with his hands. According to the sonographer (I'm guessing that's the word for the profession, but I'm probably wrong), baby looked like he was doing yoga in that pose. Haha. It's so amazing that there is a tiny human residing in my wife's womb, with all the tiny organs intact.

After the whole thing was done, I brought my wife to Bugis Junction to have dinner at Ministry of Food at the second floor. The food was as fabulous as I remember it. I just realized that I forgot to blog about the place the last time. I ordered a set meal with this seafood cooked in egg, with fried chicken, and upgraded it to hot stone rice. If you ever decide to visit this place to eat, you must get the hot stone rice (with unagi). The sauce makes it really delicious, and the portion of eel is pretty generous. The california handroll was very nice too, with thick chunks of avocado, crab stick and all. My wife ordered kakiage (tempura vegetables) udon, which was good too. We ended it with a mango dessert with crushed ice and soft serve (soft ice cream), and the mango sauce was oozing with sweetness and fragrance. That costed us about $35 after discount (I made a membership card for ten bucks there and then), and I think the price for the quality is pretty decent.

Wed 23 Apr

It was a surprisingly packed day, but I managed to clear some work. I met a vendor in the afternoon regarding my card game, and it looked like I may finally be able to get it printed and sold (most probably at cost...hopefully cheaper if can get sponsors) to students. I sure hope everything goes smoothly.

Thu 3 Apr

My colleagues and I went on our weekly pilgrimage to Old Airport Road for lunch. This week, I tried the Whitley Rd Prawn Noodles. Man, that is the best Prawn Noodles I have had so far. Hmm maybe the Beach Rd Prawn Noodles is comparable, but anyway, the soup base was so thick and flavourful that I would have asked for more soup if I could. The prawns were fresh and juicy and the pork ribs were cooked to perfection. I grabbed dessert from Blanco Court dessert stall, and had red ruby, which was interesting because it used evaporated milk rather than coconut milk. I suppose it was a healthier variant.

I had no cell group today, so I managed to go home and sneak a rest, but my poor wife still had her journey to the west to Bukit Merah.

Fri 4 Apr

I had lessons as usual, and headed down earlier with my colleague to Teachers' Network. There was an Excelfest briefing there, and it was just before my masters' tutorial, so that was convenient. The briefing was very short, but there were some important new changes to Excelfest, and I'm glad that my project is in this year's. They are giving $300 per school for expenses of preparing posters and stuff, which wasn't the case in previous years. The Excelfest is held at Suntec this year, rather than some school somewhere, which makes it bigger scale, and they are providing food for the exhibitors in the form of meal coupons, which was also something new. I think I am truly blessed. Bwahaha.

I went earlier for the tutorial, and being dead free, I helped the professor set up the place and arrange the chairs. Today's session was also conducted by Dr Loh, in place of our usual boring lecturer, and at least I felt like I learnt something from her when I talked to her. Especially before everyone else came, and I was chit-chating with her about the research I am doing, and she gave me some useful comments and suggestions.

After our tutorial, my wife and I took a bus down to Orchard to eat at Rabbit Restaurant. Our coursemate who usually gives us a ride to Bedok was absent, so we thought we might as well go walk around a bit. We ordered our usual fare, but instead of the usual sharksfin soup, we ordered a mini buddha-jumps-over-the-wall, which turned out to be a pretty nice dish too. It costs only 9+, so now you know why we keep going there for meals. It is cheap and it is good food. My wife went shopping for a while, and I headed down to Cineleisure to get my ODM watch back after sending it to replace the torn strap before we headed home.

Sat 5 Apr

I had a short day at home clearing up a little, and in the evening, took a train down to Clementi with my mother, and took a cab from there to my third aunt's place. My third aunt was throwing a dinner in her bungalow to celebrate my third uncle-in-law's 82nd birthday, and more importantly, his gradual but perceivable recovery from stroke. The 9-course dinner was from Gim Tim group, and they had this truck that could be opened up into a moving kitchen (cool sia!) that prepared the food for about ten tables. What I didn't know was that there will be a buddha-jumps-over-the-wall today, else I would not have ordered the mini one at Rabbit Restaurant yesterday. But the food was really good. The lobster was very fresh for the cold plate, and the buddha-jumps-over-the-wall was super thick and rich. The peking duck, fish, prawns were all really good too. The food was surely worth the long distance travelled.

Sun 6 Apr

I went to service as usual, and today I had all my boys with me, which is the second time this year. Usually, there's a random one of them missing for some legitimate (usually) reason. I took the chance to bring them to Lerk Thai to give them a good treat because of the bonus and promotion. It was also a nice change of environment to have cell group, even though there were buddha pictures on the wall.

Mon 7 Apr

It was a long, long day as usual, and with many things to do inbetween. I was so exhausted by the end of the day that I just went straight home to nap after dinner.

Tue 8 Apr

I had a relatively shorter day today after clearing some work, and went to clear some errands. I brought home some work to do, and headed home to do it.

Wed 9 Apr

Today was a surprisingly packed day, with meetings, and consultations with students filling up my day. I was only in the staff room for the half hour I spent to eat lunch. There was no staff conference, and there was a fire prevention talk instead. The speaker was a really funny chap, and he showed some convincing and disgusting pictures of fire accidents and victims and all. After all, he started his session saying that he was here, in short, to scare us. Which he did. The most amazing thing about the prowess of this salesman was that he didn't even sell us his product. He managed to convince us of the need for good fire prevention to the point that my colleague had to ask him where to get a good fire extinguisher for the home, and that was the point he told us the contact, and that we could order through him. I think his marketing technique was nothing short of brilliant. I bought one extinguisher for my home too, just for peace of mind. I guess the idea behind it is just like insurance - hopefully you won't need to use it, but if you really do unfortunately, you'll be glad that you actually have it.

Thu 10 Apr

Inbetween lessons, my colleagues and I went out as usual to Old Airport Road for lunch. This time, I tried the fried hokkien mee which was superb! I can't remember the name of the stall, but it is opened by brothers, and has some newspaper cuttings. Then again, it feels as if half the stalls at that hawker centre are famous for one thing or another. I also tried the durian goreng (goreng pisang, but with durian filling) which was spectacularly good. There is a thick durian paste inside that felt like liquefied durian meat. Expensive at $1.60 per piece, but every bit satisfying.

I went for my promotion ceremony at Grand Copthorne Riverfront, and it was thankfully shorter than usual, ending in one and a half hours' time. I saw a few friends who I didn't even realize were in teaching, and some who I didn't know were also promoted. The reception outside after the ceremony looked good, but there were so many people grabbing food that I didn't want to end up in some fist-fight or something, so I left. I went down to City Hall to grab junk food with my wife from Chippy's, before heading down for cell group. Cell ended slightly late, and we were exhausted by the time we reached home.

Fri 11 Apr

Thank God it's Friday! Especially since there was no masters' tutorial for this Fri! It was a joyful feeling not going somewhere for 3 hours to waste time. Congratulations to all my students who did well for Project Work - they performed exactly as I thought they would. After lessons, I headed down to Aljunied with my wife to have the monthly gynae checkup. Today's scan would reveal the gender of the baby, and it did! The gynae was 100% sure of it, no less, because both of the baby's hands were lifted above the chest, so the little protrusion we saw was doubtlessly a penis.

I have a baby boy coming! Woohoo! I would have been equally happy if it were a girl, but for the simple reason that I know my mother (no matter what she pretends to say) prefers a boy, I'm glad that everybody's rejoicing, especially the older folks.

After the gynae visit, my wife and I went to City Hall to walk around and window shop, and later, she met her friend for dinner and hanging out, and I met J, Collin and shups! for dinner and a session of pool. Sadly enough, the screw threads of my pool cue had rusted in the meantime due to infrequent use, so I carried it around for nothing. I guess I need to make a trip down to Bras Basah to get it maintained...if the Q Shop is still there, that is. We actually managed to beat J! Partly due to luck actually. After that, we all headed back to my house for mahjong. Collin commented that he was "scared" to play mahjong with me after witnessing plenty of luck during pool, and it turned out as he predicted. I won more than 20 bucks, with quite a few spectacular finishes, and shups! was the other winner with about 6 bucks. I actually felt quite bad since they came over, and had to take a cab with midnight surcharge home, and I still won away their money. But it was a fun time, stretching from 10+ pm to 4+ am.

Sat 12 Apr

I went down to Elias Mall with my wife, wanting to eat fishball noodles, but the food court area was closed for renovation. We hung out at MacDonald's, waiting for Hi Sshou to open at 12 noon. I had a bento set, and my wife had a katsu don. The food was really good. My bento set had tori karaage (fried chicken) which was every bit as good as the last time I went, grilled mackerel which was fabulous, assorted sashimi and chawanmushi. The miso soup was tasty without being too salty, but the best thing was the grilled mackerel. I've eaten grilled fish many times in many Japanese restaurants, but this time, the mackerel was actually grilled to a nice crispy surface while maintaining the juiciness of the fish meat. I think I am seriously going to skip Sakae Sushi at White Sands from now on. The only misfortune is the location of Hi Sshou, and business looks forebodingly bad, despite the quality and affordability of the food.

Today was demo day! We had demonstrations lined up for us from two different companies selling a powerful water-based vacuum cleaner that can double up as an air purifier. The most amazing thing was that both demonstrations were almost identical, not just in terms of features of the machines, but also the content of the demonstration. Both used high power lamps to show the dust, then proceeded to show how much dust there was on the couch/bed, and illustrated the inefficacy of the paper bag based vacuum cleaner, being showing how powerful the machine is. I say it cynically here, but the demonstration was effective enough to make me buy from the first saleslady. The machines were only slightly different, but one was from USA, and the other was from Germany, and both cost exactly the same price. I think the most potent selling point was the beater function, which managed to suck up a ton of dust from beneath the mattress. I sure hope it is a worthwhile investment, because I would never have foreseen us buying a vacuum cleaner/air purifier for over 3k, albeit on instalment.

Sun 13 Apr

This morning I tested out the new vacuum cleaner, and it was indeed as powerful as what we saw yesterday. The sight of that much dust and dirt being sucked into the water was quite disgusting. I just hope that it works well enough to relieve my wife of her sinus issues especially in the morning.

I had Ice Kimo twice today - once before service, and once after. I hope the shop does well, because it is yet another gem that seems under-appreciated. After cell was over, my wife and I went down to Downtown East for dinner. We ate at Hei Sushi, which moved over from White Sands, and the food was not bad. The purpose though was to spend a $20 voucher I received as a member during my birthday last year, which was expiring end of April. Heh.

At the beginning of the year, I was asking God about His purpose for me here, because I had tried to excel as Senior Pastor said we should, and I did not receive any promotion in position. Although I reasoned that it was because there was no direct vacancy available, still, some part of me felt restless, and God had assured me that He was in control. And He had to give me the same Word twice to ease my unease.

The fruition of His assurance came in quite an unexpected form though - all glory be to God! I just got promoted! My previous promotion was last year, so this was a genuine surprise because I didn't think it was possible to be promoted so soon, and to a scale that was just newly created last year for teachers with more experience generally. On one hand, I see it as more work is expected of me; on the other hand, as my colleague said, since I was already stretched to the capacity of those in the higher pay scale, I might as well be getting the pay. In any case, I thank God, because I will need more money very soon (think diapers, milk powder, baby clothes, and etc).

Mon 31 Mar

I was quite positively stricken with flu with a lethargic feel, a bad headache, sore throat and a cough. Fortunately (or unfortunately), my wife had spare medicine as she recently wasn't feeling well either, so I took some medication, and slept as early and as much as I could to recuperate. As I said I would, I went to school despite the flu so that I would not burden anyone with extra lessons to cover.

Tue 1 Apr

Today was extremely productive in terms of work and administration, and despite the flu, I was clearing bucketloads of work at a time. Until, of course, the cough mixture kicked in, and I was rendered comatose at my seat for a good half hour. I had remedial sessions with my students after lunch before calling it a day and headed home to sleep. My wife ended later than me, so by the time she came home and woke me up, we were both dead hungry.

We ventured off to Elias Mall, being quite sick of White Sands, for obvious reasons. When we got there, we figured we would drop by Hi Sshou to check out their menu, because a colleague recommended us to try their ala carte buffet. Since I just got promoted, I wanted to give my wife a good treat, so we opted for the buffet (partly to evaluate a variety of food so that we can decide if we want to come back again for their main courses).

We were the first customers of the evening, so the first round of food came swiftly. I had sashimi to myself, and other than the fact that they did not have swordfish in the menu, the tuna, yellowtail and salmon sashimi all tasted good. The slices were thick, and I am assuming it was out of generosity, and the standard of freshness I gauge to be comparable to Sakae Sushi (so it is not as fantastic as, say, Ikoi), except for the second round of sashimi I ordered which had delicious salmon belly thrown in, and the cut was oozing (healthy) oil and fat. The handrolls were pretty good, with crunchy seaweed, and for the softshell crab handroll, the crab meat was hot to a good crisp. The chawanmushi was perfect, with silky smooth texture, and just the right taste. I had a small bowl of ramen, and the soup base was excellent - not too salty, but very flavourful with a nice touch of sesame seeds and oil. My wife's garlic rice was also good, but I don't take to garlic taste much. We had the ebi tempura, and the prawns were big and fresh. The tempura flour part was fried to a good crispiness, but a little too hard at some parts. We had grilled shitake mushrooms which were tastily done, maintaining enough moisture not to be too dry and retain flavour. We also had the fried tofu which was smooth, and had the right flavour in the sauce.

In the second round of orders, we tried a chicken skewer, and a beef skewer. The chicken skewer had surprisingly tender chicken meat with a peculiar texture that I couldn't quite place. The beef itself was succulent despite being grilled, but it didn't have that much flavour for me to like it much. One highlight was the gyoza. The gyoza is the best my wife and I have eaten in a Japanese restaurant, and for that matter, dim sum places. The gyoza skin was still soft and moist, and still captured the 'juice' of the meat inside much like a xiao long bao, and the meat ingredients inside tasted wonderful. And this is coming from a guy who doesn't really like to eat gyoza.

The absolute highlight of the meal was the chicken karage (or deep fried chicken). If you had watched Ratatouille, you may recall a scene near the end when the food critic, Anton Ego, took a bite of the ratatouille and suddenly his mind had a flashback to the past when he was a kid eating his mum's cooking. When I ate the chicken karage, something similar happened, and at once a flood of memories came to mind through the nostalgic taste of the chicken - the chicken tasted like Kentucky Fried Chicken. No, not the cheap commercialized version you get in the fast food joints now. The one that was served during a time when KFC was a family restaurant with nice wooden tables and tablecloth, when the ketchup and chilli were served in bottles and you had cutlery to eat with, and there were only a few outlets. That was when the KFC original flavour chicken had this nice crispy skin that had this special full-of-flour-kind-of-powdery feel, and the chicken was actually very delicious. If you are old enough, you would know what I am talking about.

The green tea had a perfectly smooth texture, reminding my wife and me of the excellent green tea served at Sakuraya Fish Mart. The best part was that the restaurant was nice enough. I wanted to try the dobinmushi (the teapot soup thingy), and asked for it, wanting to know the price. The waitress said that it used to be in the buffet menu, but not any more, but that she would go check with her manager if it was okay to give it to us, complimentary, and they really did! And the soup stock was so rich! I drank two-thirds of the teapot by myself. The complimentary yam or chocolate with chocolate chip ice cream were also delicious, and were definitely not the cheapo brands you normally get outside. All in all, the $29.90 per person (with only 10% service charge and no GST) was super well-spent. Judging by the standard of the food and the competitive pricing of the ala carte menu, I think I would not bother going to Sakae Sushi at White Sands anymore.

Wed 2 Apr

Today was yet another sinful meal day. After my lessons, I went out with five other colleagues to lunch. Four of us out of the six were promoted, so we gave the other two (who were promoted last year or before) a treat. We originally wanted to have seafood and headed down to East Coast, only to find a desolately empty stretch. Apparently the whole belt of seafood restaurants only open in the evening. Yep, we didn't know that beforehand. So we headed back down to Siglap and ended up at Werner's Oven.

We six men had quite a feast. We ordered a platter for 3 (which is for three big Germans, I reckon, because the portion is quite big), which had a pork knuckle, smoked sausage, farmer's sausage, wild garlic sausage, two kassler (pork loin steak), sauerkraut (pickled cabbage), mashed potato and brezel bread. We also ordered ox-tail stew, a fried camembert (bread-crumbed cheese), a beef pot roast, and a pork steak with mushroom sauce. We ended the meal with a rote grutze (some berry sago thing with vanilla sauce), a fruitcake with ice cream, and applepie with ice cream.

The pork knuckle was superb! The meat was succulent, with a wonderfully crispy skin. Since I had always liked roasted pork, this was just perfect. The sausages ranged from small in size to a monstrous one about the length of a long 30-cm ruler. They were all tasty, despite me not liking to eat sausages in general (the heavily processed cheapo ones especially that is usually found in barbecues). The pork loin steak from the platter was full of juicy fattiness that oozed out with every bite - sinfully delicious. I don't like the sauerkraut, which tasted like kimchi without the spice. The mashed potato was really good, and it was the kind that did not have gravy upon it. The bread was unique, and the ox-tail stew was fabulous. The stew was so thick and rich that we broke the bread into small pieces to try to soak up as much as we could. The camembert was interesting. It was one big piece of cheese almost the size of a tennis ball that had a crispy bread-crumb exterior. If you like cheese, you will like the taste of this thing a lot. The beef pot roast had tender beef, and was quite good, and the pork steak was excellent as well, with thick mushroom sauce and many pieces of mushroom. All in all, the main course was a definite two thumbs-up. The dessert wasn't much though, so if I go again, I would just go for the meat. Frankly, I can't imagine becoming a vegetarian; I love to eat meat far too much.

Hmm the previous post was the 888th post of the blog! Woohoo! Didn't know I've blogged this much already. I think I'm the only one left still blogging out of all my friends who started around the same time.

Mon 24 Mar

Monday is the longest day of the week for me, especially since it starts first period in the day, and ends last period of the day, and inbetween, I cover almost half of my whole week's teaching load. Essentially, I almost lose my voice every end of the day. Thankfully I at least have a short break between lessons, and there's no back-to-back three periods, so there is room to breathe.

Tue 25 Mar

Finally, a true short day, but even then, I hung around to complete work till about 3 pm. My wife had lessons that end late, and had an event at night to attend, so I took the chance to run some errands, for instance, collecting some of her clothes sent for alteration, sending my watch for repair of its strap, collecting some voucher from Tangs, and etc.

Wed 26 Mar

After lessons were over, a few of us had to attend the Quickr course carried on from last Wed while the rest of the staff went for first aid course. By the time we were done, it was 6 plus in the evening. I do think that these days I'm spending much longer hours in school. Somehow the timetable and other events conspired together to keep me there.

Thu 27 Mar

What a long day today was! Other than it ending late, I still had a meeting after school to attend, followed by cell group. My poor wife fell sick again, and so was not in school. However, on her way back from seeing the gynae (to get medicine of proper and safe dosage), she stopped by Bedok to eat lunch, and my colleagues and I headed down to find her to grab some good food. I introduced them to the excellent avocado milkshake at the 216 market, and we had one satisfying lunch before heading back to school.

Surprisingly, the meeting that I anticipated to be long turned out to end on time, and I had enough time to head down to my wife's parents' place for dinner before heading down to cell group. As usual, waiting for 197 at City Hall around 7 plus was a nightmare, because I waited about 22 minutes for the bus yet again. How many times must I go through this before I will learn the lesson of walking a little further to take 961 instead, which showed up twice before 197 ever did.

Fri 28 Mar

It was a long day today in which I cleared some work before heading down to Teachers' Network with my colleagues. My wife was still on MC today for her flu though, so it was just the three of us. When we went there, we found that the classroom door was still locked, and we headed off to the library (where there was aircon) to wait. We were about to run off when we saw that someone came to open the door. Mistaking that for the arrival of the lecturer, we headed to the classroom only to wait some more. Apparently due to some miscommunication between this guest lecturer and our usual boring fellow, the guest lecturer thought that the course started at 6 pm rather than 4 pm, and arrived at 5.15 pm after rushing down in a mad hurry. I use the word 'mad' because both meanings of the word apply in this case. It looked like we found yet another person who disliked the main lecturer.

Sat 29 Mar

I woke up earlier today than usual Saturdays to head down to Guang Ming Shan (Brighthill) to "visit" my father's urn. This is a necessary annual pilgrimage to display my filial piety. I say this in a cynical tone only for the reason that I somehow feel obliged to do it, even though I don't believe there is any value in doing so. Not because I don't feel filial towards my parents, but more because now that I am a Christian, I wonder what worth is there standing in front of my father's urn and telling him things. Other than the air pollution that all the burning must surely cause, I find some things that my mother and aunt said extremely odd.

My mum was planning to buy some Afterlife Real Estate, i.e. reserve a place for the urn. There was one spot directly opposite my father's urn, so she wanted to buy that spot in advance, so that they can look at each other. Barring my Christian beliefs, trying to imagine their ghosts at their urn was a stretch of credulity in itself. Since the whole place is essentially shelves of urns, assuming that ghosts are discrete and separate and cannot overlap each other, then the ghosts must be smaller than the size of an urn right? If they can overlap each other, then it will be one confusing sight if it were possible to see it. My second aunt was keeping a lookout for urn places for my third aunt in advance as well, and she was insisting on finding something nearer the front row, for the reason that if the urn is at the back, then the ghost would be blocked and can't come out roaming freely. The thing I find most odd these days is that people are burning paper handphones to the deceased. I wonder then who they are going to call...? And if anyone had burnt down a satelite and local signal stations, and is there some SingHell network or something down there.

I think I'm too logical to be superstitious. Even my faith in God is accompanied by some form of logic still actually.

Sun 30 Mar

I woke up feeling quite sick with a blocked nose and a sore throat. Sigh. I think finally I have gotten struck by flu. I went to service as usual, taking joy in that I can still jump around praising God. After service, I had a combined cell group (my boys and G12 brother Collin's boys) at my house after we grabbed some food at White Sands first. That was a good session together, if not for the fact that we each had one of our boys absent. I had a good talk with one of my boys as well, and I thank God that my boys are willing to share personal things with me. As a spiritual father, that would be one of the most comforting things to know.

I think teaching is one of the few professions where you actually feel compelled to go to work despite being sick. One reason is a feeling of responsibility towards the students, that your absence would somehow be detrimental, but as time goes by, I do recognize that I'm not indispensable. But the main thing is a responsibility to colleagues. In the corporate world, if you aren't there, your work just piles up and awaits your return. But in teaching, if you are absent, someone else must cover your class for you, because students' time is most precious, and can't be wasted. It is more the latter reason that I think most teachers will still go to school even if they are sick, because they don't want to lengthen the already long days of their colleagues.