Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Wed 24 Dec
It was a surprisingly quiet Christmas eve today. I was expecting that my mahjong kakis might have wanted a mahjong session, but I guess they had other programmes. So I spent it on fruitful activities, i.e. taking care of Jadon, playing with him, and of course, playing on Xbox 360. I couldn't resist buying Fable II, so I've been on it since. Anyway, Jadon now is very fun to play with. Everyday at some time, he would be very cheerful, and it is very easy to get him to laugh. He almost managed to flip onto his stomach, but now he still has one trapped arm he is unable to manoeuvre from under his body. It is fascinating to see the progression of a child's development.
Thu 25 Dec
My wife's graduated students from the batch two years ago were from a really united class. They had been having gatherings occasionally and had invited their teachers usually, and my wife had gone a few times too. This time round, the class rep organized them together, and told my wife that they wanted to come visit the baby. And they did, visiting on Christmas day. A full thirteen of them, which I consider to be a pretty good number considering class gatherings after a couple of years have passed.
They were a sweet bunch. Hmm, actually, quite literally. They bought a fondue set for us, along with the chocolate, and all the fruits/biscuits/cakes. It was a good gift idea I think. It is relatively unusual, so chances are not many people have it, and you can use it on the spot on yourselves as well! So we all had fondue till we were bloated. On top of that, we bought some Mcnuggets, and I had a log cake ready as well. On top of that, they bought Jadon a pair of booties, and some wet tissue. One student specially gave us a set of drink glasses in addition.
The girls in the class were all excited to see the baby, and they took turns carrying him. Some were equally excited by my hamsters too. Anyway, that class is a fun bunch.
Fri 26 Dec
Today was a quiet day spent on doing chores. In the spare time, I watched anime and played Fable II. I was deliberately being escapist, and not resuming my work on the Masters' dissertation.
Sat 27 Dec
We stayed home today as well, and today Jadon was in a bright mood the whole day, so he was a lot of fun to entertain. In the evening, we ordered in supper from MacDonald's and pigged out. My internet connection for my old computer (come to think of it, it is 5 years old! That is close to venerable for a PC) died, and I eventually deduced it to be a malfunction of the ethernet card.
Sun 28 Dec
Last service of the year! I went to Expo earlier to have lunch with my network pastor and one of my boys. We ate at the Macau Express outside Hall 4. My Macau fried rice took eons to arrive (a whopping 25 minutes!) and wasn't good enough to warrant the hunger. Ps Khong talked about next year's plans in some detail, and at the end, he asked us if it sounded exciting, and that there was a lot of work to do, which incidentally were the exact same two comments I made to my network pastor before service when he mentioned some things to me ahead of time.
After service, there was a massive phototaking for the whole youthnet, and when that was finally coordinated and over, I held a short debrief for the three cells regarding their Christmas event. We then made our way down to my G12 leader's place to celebrate the full month of his newborn son Lucas. We had a simple dinner, and had some worship session before praying for the child.
When I reached Pasir Ris, I detoured to Challenger to buy a new ethernet card, and started fixing it up in the computer. But I was wrong! It turned out that the new ethernet card didn't work either, after I troubleshooted the drivers and stuff. Apparently, the PCI slot had died. Which didn't bode well for the motherboard. Anyway, I fixed up a USB wireless device in the interim till I can think of what to do with it. A complete overhaul seems somewhat costly, especially when I already have another quadcore, and I'll probably get a barebone to serve as a media PC for the TV in my bedroom. Hmm.
Mon 29 Dec
My wife and I headed down to Tampines Mall to buy some stuff for Jadon's use. I needed to go to Standard Chartered to settle something regarding my prior renovation loan anyway. We bought a few things from Kiddy Palace, and on the way back, I spotted a sale by Freshbox, selling two items (including three-quarts and shirts) for $28. In the end, I got myself two new pairs of three-quarts (good deal, for $28!), although I don't see how I will be able to wear them all once school reopens. I think I have nine pairs of three-quarts or bermudas for casual wear.
Tue 30 Dec
I spent the afternoon changing the hamster cages with my wife, and watching TV in the evening. I've only started catching The Little Nonya recently, but it seemed a decent watch in terms of storyline. Although it does exemplify what I've always accused Mediacorp Channel 8's drama serials of doing - having one rape /attempted rape scene per drama series. The Little Nonya alone seemed to have gone way over the top on the quota. I think there has been at least two rape scenes so far? And today's there's one more drugged rape. A bit excessive and repetitive as a plot device in my opinion, if it is to underscore the plight of women in those days. I think in the whole show, nobody seemed to have married the right person either. Anyway, I don't know if it's just me, or does anyone else find that the guy playing Alexandre looks awfully like an Asian version of Jim Carrey, minus the elastic face?
It was a surprisingly quiet Christmas eve today. I was expecting that my mahjong kakis might have wanted a mahjong session, but I guess they had other programmes. So I spent it on fruitful activities, i.e. taking care of Jadon, playing with him, and of course, playing on Xbox 360. I couldn't resist buying Fable II, so I've been on it since. Anyway, Jadon now is very fun to play with. Everyday at some time, he would be very cheerful, and it is very easy to get him to laugh. He almost managed to flip onto his stomach, but now he still has one trapped arm he is unable to manoeuvre from under his body. It is fascinating to see the progression of a child's development.
Thu 25 Dec
My wife's graduated students from the batch two years ago were from a really united class. They had been having gatherings occasionally and had invited their teachers usually, and my wife had gone a few times too. This time round, the class rep organized them together, and told my wife that they wanted to come visit the baby. And they did, visiting on Christmas day. A full thirteen of them, which I consider to be a pretty good number considering class gatherings after a couple of years have passed.
They were a sweet bunch. Hmm, actually, quite literally. They bought a fondue set for us, along with the chocolate, and all the fruits/biscuits/cakes. It was a good gift idea I think. It is relatively unusual, so chances are not many people have it, and you can use it on the spot on yourselves as well! So we all had fondue till we were bloated. On top of that, we bought some Mcnuggets, and I had a log cake ready as well. On top of that, they bought Jadon a pair of booties, and some wet tissue. One student specially gave us a set of drink glasses in addition.
The girls in the class were all excited to see the baby, and they took turns carrying him. Some were equally excited by my hamsters too. Anyway, that class is a fun bunch.
Fri 26 Dec
Today was a quiet day spent on doing chores. In the spare time, I watched anime and played Fable II. I was deliberately being escapist, and not resuming my work on the Masters' dissertation.
Sat 27 Dec
We stayed home today as well, and today Jadon was in a bright mood the whole day, so he was a lot of fun to entertain. In the evening, we ordered in supper from MacDonald's and pigged out. My internet connection for my old computer (come to think of it, it is 5 years old! That is close to venerable for a PC) died, and I eventually deduced it to be a malfunction of the ethernet card.
Sun 28 Dec
Last service of the year! I went to Expo earlier to have lunch with my network pastor and one of my boys. We ate at the Macau Express outside Hall 4. My Macau fried rice took eons to arrive (a whopping 25 minutes!) and wasn't good enough to warrant the hunger. Ps Khong talked about next year's plans in some detail, and at the end, he asked us if it sounded exciting, and that there was a lot of work to do, which incidentally were the exact same two comments I made to my network pastor before service when he mentioned some things to me ahead of time.
After service, there was a massive phototaking for the whole youthnet, and when that was finally coordinated and over, I held a short debrief for the three cells regarding their Christmas event. We then made our way down to my G12 leader's place to celebrate the full month of his newborn son Lucas. We had a simple dinner, and had some worship session before praying for the child.
When I reached Pasir Ris, I detoured to Challenger to buy a new ethernet card, and started fixing it up in the computer. But I was wrong! It turned out that the new ethernet card didn't work either, after I troubleshooted the drivers and stuff. Apparently, the PCI slot had died. Which didn't bode well for the motherboard. Anyway, I fixed up a USB wireless device in the interim till I can think of what to do with it. A complete overhaul seems somewhat costly, especially when I already have another quadcore, and I'll probably get a barebone to serve as a media PC for the TV in my bedroom. Hmm.
Mon 29 Dec
My wife and I headed down to Tampines Mall to buy some stuff for Jadon's use. I needed to go to Standard Chartered to settle something regarding my prior renovation loan anyway. We bought a few things from Kiddy Palace, and on the way back, I spotted a sale by Freshbox, selling two items (including three-quarts and shirts) for $28. In the end, I got myself two new pairs of three-quarts (good deal, for $28!), although I don't see how I will be able to wear them all once school reopens. I think I have nine pairs of three-quarts or bermudas for casual wear.
Tue 30 Dec
I spent the afternoon changing the hamster cages with my wife, and watching TV in the evening. I've only started catching The Little Nonya recently, but it seemed a decent watch in terms of storyline. Although it does exemplify what I've always accused Mediacorp Channel 8's drama serials of doing - having one rape /attempted rape scene per drama series. The Little Nonya alone seemed to have gone way over the top on the quota. I think there has been at least two rape scenes so far? And today's there's one more drugged rape. A bit excessive and repetitive as a plot device in my opinion, if it is to underscore the plight of women in those days. I think in the whole show, nobody seemed to have married the right person either. Anyway, I don't know if it's just me, or does anyone else find that the guy playing Alexandre looks awfully like an Asian version of Jim Carrey, minus the elastic face?
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Wed 17 Dec
Today was spent purely doing chores. We vacuumed the place, use the powerful beater to clean the couches in the living room, and use a steamer (don't know what to call it) to sterilize the couches as well. Sometimes we lay baby on the day-bed of the couch, so it had better be clean.
A funny thing happened today. When I was renewing my Pet Lovers' Centre membership, my card was traced to a person known as Mohammad Yassif. They checked every detail, and it was still that guy, except the handphone number which was mine. It was one heck of a joke standing there, and the shop assistant trying to convince the person on the line at headquarters that it is a Chinese man standing before him. Another assistant came by to settle the incident, and explained that the one handling my membership application at the Simei branch then could have stapled the wrong receipt to the application form. The receipt is apparently tagged to the membership card, and you have to sms the code on the membership card to the centre, hence the correct handphone number. It was quite funny on hindsight actually, but that wasted a good half hour of my life.
Thu 18 Dec
Today is my birthday! I finally see the big 3 in front of my age. My wife and I went out to White Sands at noontime, and I collected my Samsung Pixon at last! So exciting to have a new toy. Bwahaha. But need to charge 10 hours for first charge, so I have to postpone the exploration. We ate lunch at Coffee Club. There is a Visa promotion that if you spend $30 in a single bill (easy to hit for two persons), you can get a 500 g cake for your birthday, although you need to inform them three days in advance. Free cake leh, of course must get lah! So we reserved a mango mousse cake (there are only two to choose from; I can't seem to remember what the other one is). I ate the softshell crab pasta, as I had previously said I would, and the softshell crab was delicious. The miso base was a bit salty, as expected, and though it tasted good, it was too heavy on the tastebuds for one person to finish everything. My wife ordered the Christmas special. There was this lobster bisque soup, which tasted heavenly. My wife chose lasagna as the main course, which was delicious! The dessert in the set was a pecan and cranberry tart with ice cream on top, and that was a tasty treat as well. I think Coffee Club's food quality has been consistently good, despite new offerings on the menu.
I went back to take a rest and keep an eye on Jadon. My wife was going to make me a coffee cheesecake! It had to sit in the fridge for some hours to solidify, so by the time it was ready, it was almost midnight. My wife got me to change on the pretext of taking photos, and when I came down, I was surprised to find Shups, Weiling, Steph and Alvin at the door with a present and a bottle of white wine. Apparently it was a birthday surprise that was coordinated (last minute) by my wife. After eating the cheesecake and drinking the wine, Weiling left, and the rest of us had a mahjong session.
Today's session was shocking. We played a total of three rounds, stretching from midnight to 11.30 am the next morning. I led the first round with twice zi mo (自摸) and man tai (满台), giving me over twenty bucks of winnings. By the end of the third round, I was down to having lost $15. Starting from the second round, Shups had this unbeatable streak. It was something like the last time we played mahjong when I was running almost invincible, but she took it to the extreme. She cleaned out all $40 base chips of Steph, and Alvin ended up paying for both his and Steph's losses, which brought his winnings down as well, and at the end of it all, Shups won $60+ from all three of us, and we were playing 10c/20c!!! As Collin puts it, strange things happen during mahjong sessions at my place.
Fri 19 Dec
I took only a short nap before I had to go out to attend to something, and I hung in there doing work and watching anime thereafter till normal bedtime at midnight. Guess I'm not that old when it comes to staying up late after all. I was rushing my holiday-eating-school-project like mad because I didn't want to be a bottleneck to the vendors, partly out of responsibility, and the other part is that I don't want a point when they claim that it was our fault for delaying the project, if it ever got delayed.
Sat 20 Dec
Today was the second time we brought Jadon out far away. This time round, it was to Heeren. My wife has a penchant for going out to town on a Saturday, bringing the baby along. Of course, it was not for no rhyme or reason. Her cousin was in the finals for this 88.3 fm campus competition where one finalist from each tertiary institution compete for the top prize of $1500 and air tickets to Taiwan (and two special prizes of just the air tickets to Taiwan) in some radio DJ-ish competition.
Before the competition started, we went around the fifth floor searching for a place for lunch. We found this new outlet called Dai Ka Jie (大家姐). We tried their salted egg and century egg congee, plain noodles with special sauce, and sour plum roast duck. The congee was tasty. The texture is more like home-cooked porridge, and not the ultra-smooth kind that Crystal Jade serves, but its flavour was strong, and well-complemented by a generous helping of both eggs. The only flaw was that it became watery quite fast. The noodles had no other ingredients, but the sauce had an interesting taste that I couldn't quite place, but was delicious. The pleasant surprise was the roast duck. The duck meat was tender and succulent, lined with crispy skin. The meat was thick as well, and proportionally there was relatively little bones. The sauce was sweet and tangily sour, and added a nice flavour to the duck meat. The entire meal came up to about $27 in total, so it wasn't very expensive.
We went down to the atrium area to support my wife's cousin, but the sound system was so jarring loud that we decided to protect Jadon's eardrums and went around shopping instead, but kept a lookout for each time her cousin appeared. Later, Jadon cried in hunger, so we detoured back to Dai Ka Jie and requested for hot water to warm the milk. The waiter was very nice, and got us to sit down somewhere, prepared the hot water, and moved new customers to another area because our pram was kind of in the way. Therefore, I thought it was only fair to at least get a beverage, so I ordered an avocado shake. Now I had been raving about the Bedok Block 216 market's avocado shake for a long time, but ever since the market closed for renovations and the fruit stall had vanished, I had tried various substitutes. I tried one at Suntec near Carrefour, which was passable. I tried one at Thai Express, which blood brudder Shaofeng says is good, but I found lacklustre. The one from Dai Ka Jie was better than the others I had tried in that it had just enough milky taste, and rich avocado taste, but it just doesn't match up to the original of Block 216 market. I sure hope that stall returns after renovation. It is seriously good stuff.
We returned to the atrium in time for the announcement of results, and my wife's cousin managed to clinch the special prize, earning the air tickets to Taiwan. It's a good deal through and through. He always had the gift of the gab anyway.
Sun 21 Dec
Today was Christmas service. I had invited some students to church, but none went in the end. Anyway, they gave out star clappers at the entrance. It was a cheerful celebration, and the atmosphere was pretty good. I wanted to do a debrief with everyone regarding their Christmas event, but less than half were around because of one reason or another. Sigh. After service, I went with my wife and her girls to Daily Fresh for some corn and ice cream before heading home.
My blood brudders came over in the evening with their wife/girlfriends in tow to celebrate my birthday, albeit somewhat belated. After they played with Jadon a while, we set off for Manhattan Fish Market at White Sands for dinner. Yuren wanted to eat that, and I was willing to give it another shot, so we went. The service today was much improved, and I think the waiters and waitresses were more attentive than before. The only thing was that the credit card system was not up yet. Anyway, we ordered a lobster platter, a premium sea catch (whole fish) platter and a seafood platter for two to share among the eight of us, and fried country mushrooms in addition, other than the soup of the day and iced tea. I didn't get to fully enjoy the dinner because Jadon was acting up a bit and demanded to be carried. My wife suffered more because she handled him first to let me eat my dinner. In any case, the food was good. The flame-grilled lobster was delicious, just like the prawns (this time, the meat didn't stick to the shell). The whole fish was a bad idea though. Not that it tasted bad, but it was like one whole fried fish to dissect. Too many bones, and I think I would have rather eaten the fish in fillet form.
After dinner, they came back to my house for some chitchat, and Yuren was recounting about his trip to Japan, and we were discussing on how the civility of the people, as demonstrated at the subway when they form neat queues and let the passengers out first before boarding for instance, would never carry over to Singapore. It's a culture thing, and we sure don't have it here.
Mon 22 Dec
I went down on one long journey to the west in the afternoon, going to NIE to meet my supervisor for my Masters' dissertation. I was really thankful for my Pixon, because I watched three whole episodes of anime travelling from one end of the island to another. I stopped by the newly expanded Jurong Point for a short detour to buy a cake for my supervisor before heading down to NIE. The journey was long, but at least the meeting was fruitful, and we ironed out a whole lot of nitty-gritty details. My first draft that I sent to my supervisor, which was my unguided attempt, was a mess. Apparently there are many rigorous guidelines on sequence and how to present, which I was completely ignorant of.
After the meeting, I decided to go explore Jurong Point a while. The place is now huge. I was looking for a place for dinner and ended up at Lai Lai (来来红烧牛肉面). The food took eons to arrive, but fortunately I had some readings that my supervisor passed to me, so I read them to kill time. The beef noodles were delicious, and better-tasting than I last remember of the Liang Seah St branch. I wandered around the place a bit and noted many interesting shops and areas, but it was just window-shopping. On account of my wife hurrying me home on the basis that Jadon was 'talking' happily non-stop, I made my one-hour train ride of a journey back.
I think Jadon is a sociable kid. He apparently has no fear of strangers. So far anyone who has carried him or talked to him, he always responded and has never cried or seemed unhappy. My wife brought him to her grandmother's place, so my wife's aunt, grandma and cousins were playing with him and he was making cute and happy noises throughout. Even when the Indonesian friend of my wife's aunt came by and played with him, he was still chirping away. I think prayers over the child during pregnancy are really powerful. So far, almost everything we prayed for turned out exactly as we prayed. At least for the items we could measure. Things like intelligence, filial piety, and etc would have to wait till he's older to verify. I think we'll write out a checklist of what we had prayed for and start ticking away to see how precisely God answered our prayers.
Tue 23 Dec
I went out early in the morning to post out something for my student's university application, buy an ink cartridge for my printer, and buy Magnolia milk back. If you are drinking Magnolia milk, be sure to get the 2L bottles instead of the 1L cartons. The milk in the 2L bottles is thicker and creamier. Seriously. Anyway, when I was at Challenger, I strayed and bought Fable II for the Xbox 360, full knowing I probably do not have enough time to play it out.
In the evening, my wife and I, with Jadon in tow and my mother-in-law accompanying, made our merry way to Bedok. We left Jadon at my mother-in-law's place, and went to Hair De Vogue to have our hair cut. After that, we went over to eat at Botak Jones before picking up the kid and having my father-in-law fetch us back home.
I eagerly opened Fable II to test, and when I loaded the game, to my horror, the words were all in Korean! I couldn't believe it, because the cover said that it was the English version. At first I thought it must be a scam for Challenger to offer it at $60 only; perhaps they realized that the discs were wrong. Undaunted, I went to try every item on the initial menu and persistently test out each option till I eventually found the language option and switched it to English. Fortunately, I didn't bring it back to Challenger to demand a change. But having said that, I wonder why the heck was the game in Korean as default? Surely I'm not the only one who suffered this, and surely there must had been others that didn't persevere as I did. Hmm. I wonder. Maybe I should google to see if any forum reported this glitch.
Today was spent purely doing chores. We vacuumed the place, use the powerful beater to clean the couches in the living room, and use a steamer (don't know what to call it) to sterilize the couches as well. Sometimes we lay baby on the day-bed of the couch, so it had better be clean.
A funny thing happened today. When I was renewing my Pet Lovers' Centre membership, my card was traced to a person known as Mohammad Yassif. They checked every detail, and it was still that guy, except the handphone number which was mine. It was one heck of a joke standing there, and the shop assistant trying to convince the person on the line at headquarters that it is a Chinese man standing before him. Another assistant came by to settle the incident, and explained that the one handling my membership application at the Simei branch then could have stapled the wrong receipt to the application form. The receipt is apparently tagged to the membership card, and you have to sms the code on the membership card to the centre, hence the correct handphone number. It was quite funny on hindsight actually, but that wasted a good half hour of my life.
Thu 18 Dec
Today is my birthday! I finally see the big 3 in front of my age. My wife and I went out to White Sands at noontime, and I collected my Samsung Pixon at last! So exciting to have a new toy. Bwahaha. But need to charge 10 hours for first charge, so I have to postpone the exploration. We ate lunch at Coffee Club. There is a Visa promotion that if you spend $30 in a single bill (easy to hit for two persons), you can get a 500 g cake for your birthday, although you need to inform them three days in advance. Free cake leh, of course must get lah! So we reserved a mango mousse cake (there are only two to choose from; I can't seem to remember what the other one is). I ate the softshell crab pasta, as I had previously said I would, and the softshell crab was delicious. The miso base was a bit salty, as expected, and though it tasted good, it was too heavy on the tastebuds for one person to finish everything. My wife ordered the Christmas special. There was this lobster bisque soup, which tasted heavenly. My wife chose lasagna as the main course, which was delicious! The dessert in the set was a pecan and cranberry tart with ice cream on top, and that was a tasty treat as well. I think Coffee Club's food quality has been consistently good, despite new offerings on the menu.
I went back to take a rest and keep an eye on Jadon. My wife was going to make me a coffee cheesecake! It had to sit in the fridge for some hours to solidify, so by the time it was ready, it was almost midnight. My wife got me to change on the pretext of taking photos, and when I came down, I was surprised to find Shups, Weiling, Steph and Alvin at the door with a present and a bottle of white wine. Apparently it was a birthday surprise that was coordinated (last minute) by my wife. After eating the cheesecake and drinking the wine, Weiling left, and the rest of us had a mahjong session.
Today's session was shocking. We played a total of three rounds, stretching from midnight to 11.30 am the next morning. I led the first round with twice zi mo (自摸) and man tai (满台), giving me over twenty bucks of winnings. By the end of the third round, I was down to having lost $15. Starting from the second round, Shups had this unbeatable streak. It was something like the last time we played mahjong when I was running almost invincible, but she took it to the extreme. She cleaned out all $40 base chips of Steph, and Alvin ended up paying for both his and Steph's losses, which brought his winnings down as well, and at the end of it all, Shups won $60+ from all three of us, and we were playing 10c/20c!!! As Collin puts it, strange things happen during mahjong sessions at my place.
Fri 19 Dec
I took only a short nap before I had to go out to attend to something, and I hung in there doing work and watching anime thereafter till normal bedtime at midnight. Guess I'm not that old when it comes to staying up late after all. I was rushing my holiday-eating-school-project like mad because I didn't want to be a bottleneck to the vendors, partly out of responsibility, and the other part is that I don't want a point when they claim that it was our fault for delaying the project, if it ever got delayed.
Sat 20 Dec
Today was the second time we brought Jadon out far away. This time round, it was to Heeren. My wife has a penchant for going out to town on a Saturday, bringing the baby along. Of course, it was not for no rhyme or reason. Her cousin was in the finals for this 88.3 fm campus competition where one finalist from each tertiary institution compete for the top prize of $1500 and air tickets to Taiwan (and two special prizes of just the air tickets to Taiwan) in some radio DJ-ish competition.
Before the competition started, we went around the fifth floor searching for a place for lunch. We found this new outlet called Dai Ka Jie (大家姐). We tried their salted egg and century egg congee, plain noodles with special sauce, and sour plum roast duck. The congee was tasty. The texture is more like home-cooked porridge, and not the ultra-smooth kind that Crystal Jade serves, but its flavour was strong, and well-complemented by a generous helping of both eggs. The only flaw was that it became watery quite fast. The noodles had no other ingredients, but the sauce had an interesting taste that I couldn't quite place, but was delicious. The pleasant surprise was the roast duck. The duck meat was tender and succulent, lined with crispy skin. The meat was thick as well, and proportionally there was relatively little bones. The sauce was sweet and tangily sour, and added a nice flavour to the duck meat. The entire meal came up to about $27 in total, so it wasn't very expensive.
We went down to the atrium area to support my wife's cousin, but the sound system was so jarring loud that we decided to protect Jadon's eardrums and went around shopping instead, but kept a lookout for each time her cousin appeared. Later, Jadon cried in hunger, so we detoured back to Dai Ka Jie and requested for hot water to warm the milk. The waiter was very nice, and got us to sit down somewhere, prepared the hot water, and moved new customers to another area because our pram was kind of in the way. Therefore, I thought it was only fair to at least get a beverage, so I ordered an avocado shake. Now I had been raving about the Bedok Block 216 market's avocado shake for a long time, but ever since the market closed for renovations and the fruit stall had vanished, I had tried various substitutes. I tried one at Suntec near Carrefour, which was passable. I tried one at Thai Express, which blood brudder Shaofeng says is good, but I found lacklustre. The one from Dai Ka Jie was better than the others I had tried in that it had just enough milky taste, and rich avocado taste, but it just doesn't match up to the original of Block 216 market. I sure hope that stall returns after renovation. It is seriously good stuff.
We returned to the atrium in time for the announcement of results, and my wife's cousin managed to clinch the special prize, earning the air tickets to Taiwan. It's a good deal through and through. He always had the gift of the gab anyway.
Sun 21 Dec
Today was Christmas service. I had invited some students to church, but none went in the end. Anyway, they gave out star clappers at the entrance. It was a cheerful celebration, and the atmosphere was pretty good. I wanted to do a debrief with everyone regarding their Christmas event, but less than half were around because of one reason or another. Sigh. After service, I went with my wife and her girls to Daily Fresh for some corn and ice cream before heading home.
My blood brudders came over in the evening with their wife/girlfriends in tow to celebrate my birthday, albeit somewhat belated. After they played with Jadon a while, we set off for Manhattan Fish Market at White Sands for dinner. Yuren wanted to eat that, and I was willing to give it another shot, so we went. The service today was much improved, and I think the waiters and waitresses were more attentive than before. The only thing was that the credit card system was not up yet. Anyway, we ordered a lobster platter, a premium sea catch (whole fish) platter and a seafood platter for two to share among the eight of us, and fried country mushrooms in addition, other than the soup of the day and iced tea. I didn't get to fully enjoy the dinner because Jadon was acting up a bit and demanded to be carried. My wife suffered more because she handled him first to let me eat my dinner. In any case, the food was good. The flame-grilled lobster was delicious, just like the prawns (this time, the meat didn't stick to the shell). The whole fish was a bad idea though. Not that it tasted bad, but it was like one whole fried fish to dissect. Too many bones, and I think I would have rather eaten the fish in fillet form.
After dinner, they came back to my house for some chitchat, and Yuren was recounting about his trip to Japan, and we were discussing on how the civility of the people, as demonstrated at the subway when they form neat queues and let the passengers out first before boarding for instance, would never carry over to Singapore. It's a culture thing, and we sure don't have it here.
Mon 22 Dec
I went down on one long journey to the west in the afternoon, going to NIE to meet my supervisor for my Masters' dissertation. I was really thankful for my Pixon, because I watched three whole episodes of anime travelling from one end of the island to another. I stopped by the newly expanded Jurong Point for a short detour to buy a cake for my supervisor before heading down to NIE. The journey was long, but at least the meeting was fruitful, and we ironed out a whole lot of nitty-gritty details. My first draft that I sent to my supervisor, which was my unguided attempt, was a mess. Apparently there are many rigorous guidelines on sequence and how to present, which I was completely ignorant of.
After the meeting, I decided to go explore Jurong Point a while. The place is now huge. I was looking for a place for dinner and ended up at Lai Lai (来来红烧牛肉面). The food took eons to arrive, but fortunately I had some readings that my supervisor passed to me, so I read them to kill time. The beef noodles were delicious, and better-tasting than I last remember of the Liang Seah St branch. I wandered around the place a bit and noted many interesting shops and areas, but it was just window-shopping. On account of my wife hurrying me home on the basis that Jadon was 'talking' happily non-stop, I made my one-hour train ride of a journey back.
I think Jadon is a sociable kid. He apparently has no fear of strangers. So far anyone who has carried him or talked to him, he always responded and has never cried or seemed unhappy. My wife brought him to her grandmother's place, so my wife's aunt, grandma and cousins were playing with him and he was making cute and happy noises throughout. Even when the Indonesian friend of my wife's aunt came by and played with him, he was still chirping away. I think prayers over the child during pregnancy are really powerful. So far, almost everything we prayed for turned out exactly as we prayed. At least for the items we could measure. Things like intelligence, filial piety, and etc would have to wait till he's older to verify. I think we'll write out a checklist of what we had prayed for and start ticking away to see how precisely God answered our prayers.
Tue 23 Dec
I went out early in the morning to post out something for my student's university application, buy an ink cartridge for my printer, and buy Magnolia milk back. If you are drinking Magnolia milk, be sure to get the 2L bottles instead of the 1L cartons. The milk in the 2L bottles is thicker and creamier. Seriously. Anyway, when I was at Challenger, I strayed and bought Fable II for the Xbox 360, full knowing I probably do not have enough time to play it out.
In the evening, my wife and I, with Jadon in tow and my mother-in-law accompanying, made our merry way to Bedok. We left Jadon at my mother-in-law's place, and went to Hair De Vogue to have our hair cut. After that, we went over to eat at Botak Jones before picking up the kid and having my father-in-law fetch us back home.
I eagerly opened Fable II to test, and when I loaded the game, to my horror, the words were all in Korean! I couldn't believe it, because the cover said that it was the English version. At first I thought it must be a scam for Challenger to offer it at $60 only; perhaps they realized that the discs were wrong. Undaunted, I went to try every item on the initial menu and persistently test out each option till I eventually found the language option and switched it to English. Fortunately, I didn't bring it back to Challenger to demand a change. But having said that, I wonder why the heck was the game in Korean as default? Surely I'm not the only one who suffered this, and surely there must had been others that didn't persevere as I did. Hmm. I wonder. Maybe I should google to see if any forum reported this glitch.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Wed 10 Dec
A quiet day spent at home doing work remotely, helping to look after Jadon, and watching anime.
Thu 11 Dec
Today I went with my wife to Bedok. She was going to Adonis to do a facial, and she pulled me along. Just to make things clear, she hardly goes to beauty salons. In fact, her package with Adonis had stretched for donkey years, averaging perhaps 1 visit a year. Anyway, she wanted to use up her old package, so she pulled me along.
Yep, I did a facial for the first time in my life. That would be thirty years' worth of blackheads and facial dirt. It was an extremely relaxing process, and I could see how it would be enjoyable for women who want to destress or something. I can't see why men would enjoy it though. I consider myself a quarter metrosexual (because I bother about dressing somewhat), but I wouldn't waste time doing my face. Maybe if I were better-looking, it might be worth investing time and money on the face. Heh. But when I was lying there with the beautician rubbing stuff on my face, applying mask and etc, I was just thinking that I would rather be home reading manga, watching anime, playing magic, and a whole list of other things I would rather do.
Anyway squeezing out blackheads that had been there for decades was a painful process. It felt somewhat like someone poking you with the lead of a mechanical pencil. That was the point when I thought women must be masochistic, or maybe this was the reason why they could tolerate the pain of childbirth. My wife pointed out that it was because I was doing it for the first time after so long that it would actually hurt. Eventually, my wife used my name to sign another package of 10 sessions (new customers could sign a package at 50% off), so I have this feeling that this would not be my last facial.
Fri 12 Dec
It was a quiet day at home. Originally there were plans for mahjong but they fell through. I ended up doing work and more work.
I just finished reading a manga series online. I was curious about the recent movie 20th Century Boys but I missed the movie when it screened, so I went to check if there were any reviews on it, and if it was good, I'd buy the DVD when it came out. The blog review I found had a link to the manga, so I went to take a look.
I was hooked from chapter 1. From then on, I ploughed through the 249 chapters of 20th Century Boys and the concluding 16 chapters of 21st Century Boys, and finished the series in about three days. The plot was terrific. I am now a fan of Naoki Urasawa's work. His other famous work would be Monster, which I had raved about a year ago (I think) on my blog when I finished the anime series. His drawings were good, and his characters do not all look handsome or pretty like some other manga. In fact, I would consider his work to be graphic novels, because he does fantastic storytelling, having many layers to the story, plot twists, surprises and delves into psychology. Monster was a dark piece of storytelling into the concept of evil, brainwashing and the power of suggestion, just to name a few. 20th Century Boys was something that examined childhood and its implications in the future, dreams, brainwashing and cultism, and ingrained with rock and roll themes. The storyline is so rich and complicated that I could not attempt a summary. I only can say that it was supremely engaging, and if I could actually afford the time, I would re-read the whole thing, because some things revealed near the end of the story actually re-frames many situations earlier on in the series in a different light, much like the superb movie Sixth Sense's twist.
I don't usually like to read manga. Stuff like Naruto and Bleach I think would be better viewed as anime than manga because of the action. But Naoki's work is just plain brilliant storytelling. Monster was awesome. So was 20th Century Boys. Now I am on another work of his, Pluto, which is a complicated murder story set in a future where A.I. is super advanced. Think grander and more sophisticated storyline than I-Robot, or more murder mystery involved than Ghost in the Shell, and you roughly get the picture.
Incidentally the sudden manga addiction is the cause of why this blog post took one week to arrive. Haha.
Sat 13 Dec
I went out with my wife to have a late breakfast at Ya Kun, then made our cross-country journey down to Boon Lay (literally end to end), to the terrace house of one of my boys. Today was their Christmas outreach event, so we went to give support. It was a joint effort between my cell, my wife's cell and G12 brother Collin's cell. The whole event went rather smoothly, and I could see that they had put in a lot of effort, which was commendable. They have really grown up.
Sun 14 Dec
I went to first service with my wife, and one of my boys joined us as well. Today we went to an earlier service because we were going to meet some friends for lunch. After service, we shopped at Eastpoint for a short while to kill time before heading over to Downtown East to have lunch at New York New York. The main point was to use my birthday voucher (that came with a membership) and to get a free bottle of wine. I had thought it would be a mini-sized one, but it turned out to be a proper 1L bottle. Anyway, the food was still good, but again the spaghetti with pork chop was varying in quality.
They came over after lunch to see the baby, and hung around to play the Wii for a while. A short while after, Shups, Steph and Alvin came by to play mahjong, so at one point, the house was quite crowded. It was a really small world, because they actually knew one another! Anyway, we went on to play three rounds of mahjong eventually. The first round was bad for me, and I lost about $10, but in the second round, I kept winning. Winning to the point I was unstoppable and felt invincible. It was quite amazing because I was winning about 75% of the time then, and almost 50% during the third round. And often I won quickly as well, and unexpectedly so. I couldn't quite believe it, but I actually felt paiseh to win. It was a spectacular night for me. From losing $10 at first, I reached the point of winning $30+ for a 10c/20c game.
Now what was truly spectacular was when it was the last person to be banker for the night (Shups), she actually won three times of man tai in a row, shaving my winnings down to $30 when it ended. But that wasn't the most dramatic part. One of her wins was with a shi ba lo han (十八罗汉)! For the uninitiated in the mahjong 'specials', that would be to gang (杠) four times, which was extremely rare to achieve, and wait for a single tile to complete the 'eye' to win, and she pulled it off. That would be the first shi ba lo han I've seen in my life. We originally planned to play two rounds till 11+, but we couldn't resist a third round, so we ended up playing till 4 am. The third round took very long, because I kept diao zng during my turn as banker.
Mon 15 Dec
My wife wanted to go back to her parents' place to clear some stuff from her room to make space for her sister's things, so we brought Jadon along. Every trip out is a mini-expedition. Since he was cooperative, we went over to Botak Jones for lunch first. I just realized that their meals have changed to Astons' style, which is to choose 2 side dishes from a small list of options, instead of their usual monstrous fries serving. I tried the Alaskan Pollock instead of the usual fish and chips, and it was pretty good. The mexican rice side dish wasn't nice enough to warrant a second try, but the cheese potato was tasty.
After she was done packing, we went around doing some grocery and essentials shopping in Bedok. I managed to find a handphone shop to sell off my ancient 6230 for a decent $50, and after I get my pixon, I'll try to sell off my N73 for whatever it's worth. So far that I checked, the price is about $120 to $130, which is still more than the $100 it's worth for trading in.
We packed dinner from the zi char stall at the coffee shop with the Botak Jones home, but found that the food sucked big time. I should have gone to Elias Mall to get dinner instead. Sigh.
Tue 16 Dec
I was kept busy the whole day; work never ends. In the evening, I went out to White Sands for dinner with my wife before going to NTUC to do some grocery shopping to get the heavy stuff that we couldn't buy yesterday. We decided to try the Manhattan Fish Market that newly opened here. True enough, the food was as good as I remembered it to be. The fried country mushrooms were delicious, and the flaming prawns were still soaked in that tasty sauce. But I wasn't sure if it was the prawns not being fresh enough or not being grilled properly, because it was hard to separate the flesh from the shell. Anyway, the service was bad. Really bad. Probably because they seemed to have opened in a rush, and likely the waiters and waitresses were newbies. Most of the things I asked for (a second spoon, check whether order is coming, bill) were forgotten, and the most basic serving of plain water was not done until I asked for it. The main course took a whopping 25 minutes to arrive as well, and it looked like everything was in utter chaos. I'd probably come again after a while when things have stabilized to give the service a second chance. Anyway, the food is good enough to warrant another shot.
Thank God for Collin who offered to pick me up from home and drive down to cell group. We spent a long time in cell today, hanging around to chit-chat a bit as well. We finally got a look at Lucas, my cell leader's second child, just about three weeks old. I think when people say that all babies look alike, they obviously had not seen enough babies. Lucas looked drastically different from my Jadon when he was three weeks old.
A quiet day spent at home doing work remotely, helping to look after Jadon, and watching anime.
Thu 11 Dec
Today I went with my wife to Bedok. She was going to Adonis to do a facial, and she pulled me along. Just to make things clear, she hardly goes to beauty salons. In fact, her package with Adonis had stretched for donkey years, averaging perhaps 1 visit a year. Anyway, she wanted to use up her old package, so she pulled me along.
Yep, I did a facial for the first time in my life. That would be thirty years' worth of blackheads and facial dirt. It was an extremely relaxing process, and I could see how it would be enjoyable for women who want to destress or something. I can't see why men would enjoy it though. I consider myself a quarter metrosexual (because I bother about dressing somewhat), but I wouldn't waste time doing my face. Maybe if I were better-looking, it might be worth investing time and money on the face. Heh. But when I was lying there with the beautician rubbing stuff on my face, applying mask and etc, I was just thinking that I would rather be home reading manga, watching anime, playing magic, and a whole list of other things I would rather do.
Anyway squeezing out blackheads that had been there for decades was a painful process. It felt somewhat like someone poking you with the lead of a mechanical pencil. That was the point when I thought women must be masochistic, or maybe this was the reason why they could tolerate the pain of childbirth. My wife pointed out that it was because I was doing it for the first time after so long that it would actually hurt. Eventually, my wife used my name to sign another package of 10 sessions (new customers could sign a package at 50% off), so I have this feeling that this would not be my last facial.
Fri 12 Dec
It was a quiet day at home. Originally there were plans for mahjong but they fell through. I ended up doing work and more work.
I just finished reading a manga series online. I was curious about the recent movie 20th Century Boys but I missed the movie when it screened, so I went to check if there were any reviews on it, and if it was good, I'd buy the DVD when it came out. The blog review I found had a link to the manga, so I went to take a look.
I was hooked from chapter 1. From then on, I ploughed through the 249 chapters of 20th Century Boys and the concluding 16 chapters of 21st Century Boys, and finished the series in about three days. The plot was terrific. I am now a fan of Naoki Urasawa's work. His other famous work would be Monster, which I had raved about a year ago (I think) on my blog when I finished the anime series. His drawings were good, and his characters do not all look handsome or pretty like some other manga. In fact, I would consider his work to be graphic novels, because he does fantastic storytelling, having many layers to the story, plot twists, surprises and delves into psychology. Monster was a dark piece of storytelling into the concept of evil, brainwashing and the power of suggestion, just to name a few. 20th Century Boys was something that examined childhood and its implications in the future, dreams, brainwashing and cultism, and ingrained with rock and roll themes. The storyline is so rich and complicated that I could not attempt a summary. I only can say that it was supremely engaging, and if I could actually afford the time, I would re-read the whole thing, because some things revealed near the end of the story actually re-frames many situations earlier on in the series in a different light, much like the superb movie Sixth Sense's twist.
I don't usually like to read manga. Stuff like Naruto and Bleach I think would be better viewed as anime than manga because of the action. But Naoki's work is just plain brilliant storytelling. Monster was awesome. So was 20th Century Boys. Now I am on another work of his, Pluto, which is a complicated murder story set in a future where A.I. is super advanced. Think grander and more sophisticated storyline than I-Robot, or more murder mystery involved than Ghost in the Shell, and you roughly get the picture.
Incidentally the sudden manga addiction is the cause of why this blog post took one week to arrive. Haha.
Sat 13 Dec
I went out with my wife to have a late breakfast at Ya Kun, then made our cross-country journey down to Boon Lay (literally end to end), to the terrace house of one of my boys. Today was their Christmas outreach event, so we went to give support. It was a joint effort between my cell, my wife's cell and G12 brother Collin's cell. The whole event went rather smoothly, and I could see that they had put in a lot of effort, which was commendable. They have really grown up.
Sun 14 Dec
I went to first service with my wife, and one of my boys joined us as well. Today we went to an earlier service because we were going to meet some friends for lunch. After service, we shopped at Eastpoint for a short while to kill time before heading over to Downtown East to have lunch at New York New York. The main point was to use my birthday voucher (that came with a membership) and to get a free bottle of wine. I had thought it would be a mini-sized one, but it turned out to be a proper 1L bottle. Anyway, the food was still good, but again the spaghetti with pork chop was varying in quality.
They came over after lunch to see the baby, and hung around to play the Wii for a while. A short while after, Shups, Steph and Alvin came by to play mahjong, so at one point, the house was quite crowded. It was a really small world, because they actually knew one another! Anyway, we went on to play three rounds of mahjong eventually. The first round was bad for me, and I lost about $10, but in the second round, I kept winning. Winning to the point I was unstoppable and felt invincible. It was quite amazing because I was winning about 75% of the time then, and almost 50% during the third round. And often I won quickly as well, and unexpectedly so. I couldn't quite believe it, but I actually felt paiseh to win. It was a spectacular night for me. From losing $10 at first, I reached the point of winning $30+ for a 10c/20c game.
Now what was truly spectacular was when it was the last person to be banker for the night (Shups), she actually won three times of man tai in a row, shaving my winnings down to $30 when it ended. But that wasn't the most dramatic part. One of her wins was with a shi ba lo han (十八罗汉)! For the uninitiated in the mahjong 'specials', that would be to gang (杠) four times, which was extremely rare to achieve, and wait for a single tile to complete the 'eye' to win, and she pulled it off. That would be the first shi ba lo han I've seen in my life. We originally planned to play two rounds till 11+, but we couldn't resist a third round, so we ended up playing till 4 am. The third round took very long, because I kept diao zng during my turn as banker.
Mon 15 Dec
My wife wanted to go back to her parents' place to clear some stuff from her room to make space for her sister's things, so we brought Jadon along. Every trip out is a mini-expedition. Since he was cooperative, we went over to Botak Jones for lunch first. I just realized that their meals have changed to Astons' style, which is to choose 2 side dishes from a small list of options, instead of their usual monstrous fries serving. I tried the Alaskan Pollock instead of the usual fish and chips, and it was pretty good. The mexican rice side dish wasn't nice enough to warrant a second try, but the cheese potato was tasty.
After she was done packing, we went around doing some grocery and essentials shopping in Bedok. I managed to find a handphone shop to sell off my ancient 6230 for a decent $50, and after I get my pixon, I'll try to sell off my N73 for whatever it's worth. So far that I checked, the price is about $120 to $130, which is still more than the $100 it's worth for trading in.
We packed dinner from the zi char stall at the coffee shop with the Botak Jones home, but found that the food sucked big time. I should have gone to Elias Mall to get dinner instead. Sigh.
Tue 16 Dec
I was kept busy the whole day; work never ends. In the evening, I went out to White Sands for dinner with my wife before going to NTUC to do some grocery shopping to get the heavy stuff that we couldn't buy yesterday. We decided to try the Manhattan Fish Market that newly opened here. True enough, the food was as good as I remembered it to be. The fried country mushrooms were delicious, and the flaming prawns were still soaked in that tasty sauce. But I wasn't sure if it was the prawns not being fresh enough or not being grilled properly, because it was hard to separate the flesh from the shell. Anyway, the service was bad. Really bad. Probably because they seemed to have opened in a rush, and likely the waiters and waitresses were newbies. Most of the things I asked for (a second spoon, check whether order is coming, bill) were forgotten, and the most basic serving of plain water was not done until I asked for it. The main course took a whopping 25 minutes to arrive as well, and it looked like everything was in utter chaos. I'd probably come again after a while when things have stabilized to give the service a second chance. Anyway, the food is good enough to warrant another shot.
Thank God for Collin who offered to pick me up from home and drive down to cell group. We spent a long time in cell today, hanging around to chit-chat a bit as well. We finally got a look at Lucas, my cell leader's second child, just about three weeks old. I think when people say that all babies look alike, they obviously had not seen enough babies. Lucas looked drastically different from my Jadon when he was three weeks old.
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
Fri 5 Dec
Yes, it's the last day of the last elective of the Masters' course! Now all that stands between me and graduation after a gruelling two and a half years are the last assignment of this module and the dissertation of my research, which still needs major work. My partner (and colleague) decided to start work on our final slides today itself in the three hours set aside to prepare for the presentation. And he did it in a really bo-chup fashion in about half an hour. Which was fine by me, because I didn't think it was worth that much hard work for something with a weightage of 15%.
Highlight of the day was at Crystal Jade La Mian & Xiao Long Bao for lunch. I had the shrimp wanton (I still laugh when I see this word being used...are the noodles particularly promiscuous?) noodles, and my colleague that this fried rice with XO sauce or something which was delicious. I'll try that the next time.
We were actually punctual to return to class, but we were the last group back actually. I think the rest were very serious about the course. Anyway, the presentation went well, except that my colleague forgot where his part ended, and handed over to me three slides early, so I played by ear and carried on accordingly.
Yes! The module is over. I kiss goodbye to Teachers' Network and all the evening rush hour disgusting traffic.
Today my wife and mother-in-law brought Jadon to his pediatrician for an injection combo of a few jabs. My wife said he was a brave boy who didn't cry and only made a bit of noise on the second jab. Thank God he didn't develop any complications, and only had a very slight fever on the day itself. It did make him vomit his milk out twice though, which gave us extra cleaning to do.
Sat 6 Dec
Another peaceful day at home, spent doing some school work that will end only by next January, and helping to take care of Jadon. He was a bit erratic today, so we didn't have any long pockets of time to relax and watch a DVD or something.
Sun 7 Dec
My wife and I thought we would be late to catch the shuttle bus, but we made it nonetheless and was early for service. After service was another meeting for the kids to discuss and finalize the plans for their Christmas event. When that was done, my wife and I went to Tampines to do a bit of shopping.
I can't blog about Tampines without griping, as usual. It is so darn packed on a weekend. It's really a matter of time before people are squeezed over the railings in Tampines Mall and fall off. We went to Crystal Jade Kitchen to use a voucher I got from Starhub rewards, and went around shopping for some baby stuff, birthday gifts, and full month gifts. Anyway, there is a promotional dish at Crystal Jade Kitchen, which is some lemongrass fried chicken. It is good stuff. The chicken is tender, well-fried, tasty, and has a heap-load of crispy flour crumbs very much like Long John Silver's extra 'side-dish', which I like a lot, even though I know it is unhealthy. I went to Starhub centre to check if the Samsung Pixon was available, since my phone line was up for recontracting, but unfortunately it wasn't. So I reserved a set, and I'll wait for the stock to arrive. Yes, I finally couldn't resist the temptation to get a touchscreen phone, and I wanted something that I could watch anime on while on the move, but tried to resist getting an iphone.
Mon 8 Dec
Jadon was so amusing today. He was laughing out loud and very excitedly so, and for very long when we were playing with him. It was the first time we heard him laugh so hard instead of his usual squeals of delight or chuckles.
My wife and I went to White Sands to do some shopping in the afternoon. We were buying stuff from Popular using a member's storewide 20% off coupon, buying necessities for baby, and groceries for home. My wife's aunt and cousin were coming over, so at first I thought I would be entertaining them. To my pleasant surprise, Alvin called me to jio a mahjong session, and he already had Steph and Shups with him. So from about 6 pm to 1 am we were playing mahjong, even though they have work the next day, and my wife entertained the other guests on her own.
Today's session was really dramatic. Alvin was my 'downwind', so I was doing my best to stop him, and I did too good a job that I almost felt apologetic. Thrice when he was about to win at maximum, I stopped him by winning something pathetically small. Twice when he was about to win at maximum, I qiang hu, and I was waiting for the exact same two tiles that he was waiting for, which I had actually anticipated. I think he couldn't believe it when I did that a second time. Usually it doesn't happen so often in one session especially when we weren't playing with joker tiles. I think I never guarded my downwind player so fiercely thus far in my mahjong games; he had really good hands, and/or many useful flowers/animals.
But the most amazing part was I think I zi mo at least six or seven times, three of which were men qing, which meant that I didn't chi or pong anyone else's tiles, and drew all 14 winning tiles myself. And one of them was from a measly chou ping hu worth only one tai to become four tai! It happened when I drew an animal, and got my winning tile (hua shang), and it was men qing. So I ended up the biggest winner of the night, and poor Steph lost to the rest of us. Everyone won their fair share, so my earnings wasn't much, but it was a really dramatic night, with memorable finishes. The most amusing one was when Shups won with a ban se when she had nine wan zi out (an anticlimax) and we thought she was going for a yi se, and I was doing a xiao si xi (the four winds), Alvin had a xiao san yuan going, and Steph was holding tiles that stopped us both.
Tue 9 Dec
I stayed at home today, and finally I have a day in the holidays that I wasn't doing any school-related work. Quite tragic that such a day comes only at 9 Dec.
Yes, it's the last day of the last elective of the Masters' course! Now all that stands between me and graduation after a gruelling two and a half years are the last assignment of this module and the dissertation of my research, which still needs major work. My partner (and colleague) decided to start work on our final slides today itself in the three hours set aside to prepare for the presentation. And he did it in a really bo-chup fashion in about half an hour. Which was fine by me, because I didn't think it was worth that much hard work for something with a weightage of 15%.
Highlight of the day was at Crystal Jade La Mian & Xiao Long Bao for lunch. I had the shrimp wanton (I still laugh when I see this word being used...are the noodles particularly promiscuous?) noodles, and my colleague that this fried rice with XO sauce or something which was delicious. I'll try that the next time.
We were actually punctual to return to class, but we were the last group back actually. I think the rest were very serious about the course. Anyway, the presentation went well, except that my colleague forgot where his part ended, and handed over to me three slides early, so I played by ear and carried on accordingly.
Yes! The module is over. I kiss goodbye to Teachers' Network and all the evening rush hour disgusting traffic.
Today my wife and mother-in-law brought Jadon to his pediatrician for an injection combo of a few jabs. My wife said he was a brave boy who didn't cry and only made a bit of noise on the second jab. Thank God he didn't develop any complications, and only had a very slight fever on the day itself. It did make him vomit his milk out twice though, which gave us extra cleaning to do.
Sat 6 Dec
Another peaceful day at home, spent doing some school work that will end only by next January, and helping to take care of Jadon. He was a bit erratic today, so we didn't have any long pockets of time to relax and watch a DVD or something.
Sun 7 Dec
My wife and I thought we would be late to catch the shuttle bus, but we made it nonetheless and was early for service. After service was another meeting for the kids to discuss and finalize the plans for their Christmas event. When that was done, my wife and I went to Tampines to do a bit of shopping.
I can't blog about Tampines without griping, as usual. It is so darn packed on a weekend. It's really a matter of time before people are squeezed over the railings in Tampines Mall and fall off. We went to Crystal Jade Kitchen to use a voucher I got from Starhub rewards, and went around shopping for some baby stuff, birthday gifts, and full month gifts. Anyway, there is a promotional dish at Crystal Jade Kitchen, which is some lemongrass fried chicken. It is good stuff. The chicken is tender, well-fried, tasty, and has a heap-load of crispy flour crumbs very much like Long John Silver's extra 'side-dish', which I like a lot, even though I know it is unhealthy. I went to Starhub centre to check if the Samsung Pixon was available, since my phone line was up for recontracting, but unfortunately it wasn't. So I reserved a set, and I'll wait for the stock to arrive. Yes, I finally couldn't resist the temptation to get a touchscreen phone, and I wanted something that I could watch anime on while on the move, but tried to resist getting an iphone.
Mon 8 Dec
Jadon was so amusing today. He was laughing out loud and very excitedly so, and for very long when we were playing with him. It was the first time we heard him laugh so hard instead of his usual squeals of delight or chuckles.
My wife and I went to White Sands to do some shopping in the afternoon. We were buying stuff from Popular using a member's storewide 20% off coupon, buying necessities for baby, and groceries for home. My wife's aunt and cousin were coming over, so at first I thought I would be entertaining them. To my pleasant surprise, Alvin called me to jio a mahjong session, and he already had Steph and Shups with him. So from about 6 pm to 1 am we were playing mahjong, even though they have work the next day, and my wife entertained the other guests on her own.
Today's session was really dramatic. Alvin was my 'downwind', so I was doing my best to stop him, and I did too good a job that I almost felt apologetic. Thrice when he was about to win at maximum, I stopped him by winning something pathetically small. Twice when he was about to win at maximum, I qiang hu, and I was waiting for the exact same two tiles that he was waiting for, which I had actually anticipated. I think he couldn't believe it when I did that a second time. Usually it doesn't happen so often in one session especially when we weren't playing with joker tiles. I think I never guarded my downwind player so fiercely thus far in my mahjong games; he had really good hands, and/or many useful flowers/animals.
But the most amazing part was I think I zi mo at least six or seven times, three of which were men qing, which meant that I didn't chi or pong anyone else's tiles, and drew all 14 winning tiles myself. And one of them was from a measly chou ping hu worth only one tai to become four tai! It happened when I drew an animal, and got my winning tile (hua shang), and it was men qing. So I ended up the biggest winner of the night, and poor Steph lost to the rest of us. Everyone won their fair share, so my earnings wasn't much, but it was a really dramatic night, with memorable finishes. The most amusing one was when Shups won with a ban se when she had nine wan zi out (an anticlimax) and we thought she was going for a yi se, and I was doing a xiao si xi (the four winds), Alvin had a xiao san yuan going, and Steph was holding tiles that stopped us both.
Tue 9 Dec
I stayed at home today, and finally I have a day in the holidays that I wasn't doing any school-related work. Quite tragic that such a day comes only at 9 Dec.
Thursday, December 04, 2008
Mon 1 Dec
I had to make a trip back to school today to settle next year's budget for the Media Resource Unit, and to discuss something with my vice-principal regarding the big-project-that-will-eat-up-my-dec-hols. My wife also had to go back to settle the budget for her club, so we headed off together, detouring to Burger King for a late breakfast. We were so full from the breakfast that we skipped lunch, and went for an early dinner at Sakae Sushi.
I think they changed the menu a bit so we decided to give them a chance; for a while, I was referring to them as Sucky Sushi. My wife tried the tempura ramen, and the soup base was a long mile short of the quality of Ministry of Food that I always rave about. If you do check out MOF, make sure you try the Bugis Junction outlet, because I think the food quality is the best there. Anyway, I tried this yuzu soba (yuzu = pomelo!) in soup which was quite good - good enough to make me remove the Sucky Sushi label at least. Now there is a 1-for-1 red plate promotion for UOB credit cards (up to maximum of two red plates per table), so we had swordfish sashimi, our favourite hana maki (two plates) and a soft shell crab crepe. My wife was joking about sitting at two separate tables to make full use of the promotion, but I think my idea is better - order 4 red plates, eat, pay the bill (for 2 red plates), walk out and in again! The promotion clause says cannot split bill and etc, but they didn't say limited to 2 free red plates per customer per day!
Too bad I'm not cheapo enough to try it.
Tue 2 Dec
Another day at Teachers' Network. Highlight of the day was lunch, and today we went out to Great World City. Originally we were looking for Fish n Co, but we couldn't find it, so we ended up eating at Crystal Jade Kitchen. We had porridge and dim sum, so that was a satisfying meal. I realized what I hate the most about the elective. It is not so much the elective itself or the venue, but a mixture of the time the course ends and the venue. By the time I board the train, it is always jam-packed, especially when I transfer train at City Hall. Now I know some people do that everyday, but these days when I'm on this course, I feel truly empathetic. It is quite disgusting to be dead tired after a long day, and still have to squeeze like mad, stand the whole way, and have one another in your face. I am seriously glad I don't work far away from home that I need to catch the train at evening rush hour.
Wed 3 Dec
A day of rest, but only barely. I had to work on that holiday-consuming project the whole time, and on the assignment for the elective. Sigh. I think this should be the worst holidays ever, when the work carries this far into December, and likely all the way till January. If the project was thrust upon me two months earlier, for instance, in August, then I am very sure it would have been completed by now. Having to work with a team via email and phone only is really, really tough.
In the evening, my wife and I headed off to Parkway Parade for dinner. We went to Sakuraya Fish Mart, and we ordered an unagi don each, and had one slab of swordfish and one slab of salmon served as sashimi. That was delicious, but expensive. However, it was a lot of sashimi. Bwahaha. Today's meeting was in Touch Centre Chapel, so it was a tight squeeze for so many people. I was shocked to discover that one of my course mates in the current Masters' elective is in fact in my church, and in Youthnet no less, who just got promoted to Ps Julie's G12. Small, small world. After the meeting, we headed to a nearby coffee shop with Collin and Eric to celebrate Eric's birthday in advance. He would have flown off to Shanghai the next time we could meet, so we had to do it early.
Thu 4 Dec
It was another day at Teachers' Network. One more day and I'm through! I went to congratulate my course mate on her 'promotion' and she was shocked to find out that we were from the same church. Highlight of the day was lunch at Fish n Co, which we finally located. But today's lunch was disappointing. Not the food, which was excellent. We had the Premium Seafood Feast platter which served 3 to 4 persons, so the three of us shared one slab of grilled seabass, ten prawn fritters, three scallops, four mussels, a heap of calamari, two huge prawns served with some special sauce with a load of roe, fries and rice. The prawns tasted exceptionally good. What was disappointing was that we waited 35 minutes for this! And the place wasn't even a third full. A waiter and waitress came by to apologize, but offered no explanation for the appalling delay. In the end, we were 20 minutes late for the second session of class. Not that we were really hurrying, but it was irritating to wait that long on an empty stomach.
After class, my colleague dropped me off near Wheelock Place, so I went in to spend a $10 voucher my wife got from the last year-end staff dinner, buying two DVDs on sale. I dropped by Marks & Spencer to get two boxes of the must-buy cherry brandy chocolates before heading home in the usual peak hour traffic.
Anyway, I chanced upon these two interesting videos. The first one is about a female pilot without arms! A really powerful testimony of human will, and she reminds me of Nic Vujyjic (off-hand can't recall the spelling) who was born without limbs.
The second video is about the pistol shrimp, which can use its claw to create a shockwave that can kill small fish or stun bigger fish. It gets its name quite literally. Nature is so amazing.
I had to make a trip back to school today to settle next year's budget for the Media Resource Unit, and to discuss something with my vice-principal regarding the big-project-that-will-eat-up-my-dec-hols. My wife also had to go back to settle the budget for her club, so we headed off together, detouring to Burger King for a late breakfast. We were so full from the breakfast that we skipped lunch, and went for an early dinner at Sakae Sushi.
I think they changed the menu a bit so we decided to give them a chance; for a while, I was referring to them as Sucky Sushi. My wife tried the tempura ramen, and the soup base was a long mile short of the quality of Ministry of Food that I always rave about. If you do check out MOF, make sure you try the Bugis Junction outlet, because I think the food quality is the best there. Anyway, I tried this yuzu soba (yuzu = pomelo!) in soup which was quite good - good enough to make me remove the Sucky Sushi label at least. Now there is a 1-for-1 red plate promotion for UOB credit cards (up to maximum of two red plates per table), so we had swordfish sashimi, our favourite hana maki (two plates) and a soft shell crab crepe. My wife was joking about sitting at two separate tables to make full use of the promotion, but I think my idea is better - order 4 red plates, eat, pay the bill (for 2 red plates), walk out and in again! The promotion clause says cannot split bill and etc, but they didn't say limited to 2 free red plates per customer per day!
Too bad I'm not cheapo enough to try it.
Tue 2 Dec
Another day at Teachers' Network. Highlight of the day was lunch, and today we went out to Great World City. Originally we were looking for Fish n Co, but we couldn't find it, so we ended up eating at Crystal Jade Kitchen. We had porridge and dim sum, so that was a satisfying meal. I realized what I hate the most about the elective. It is not so much the elective itself or the venue, but a mixture of the time the course ends and the venue. By the time I board the train, it is always jam-packed, especially when I transfer train at City Hall. Now I know some people do that everyday, but these days when I'm on this course, I feel truly empathetic. It is quite disgusting to be dead tired after a long day, and still have to squeeze like mad, stand the whole way, and have one another in your face. I am seriously glad I don't work far away from home that I need to catch the train at evening rush hour.
Wed 3 Dec
A day of rest, but only barely. I had to work on that holiday-consuming project the whole time, and on the assignment for the elective. Sigh. I think this should be the worst holidays ever, when the work carries this far into December, and likely all the way till January. If the project was thrust upon me two months earlier, for instance, in August, then I am very sure it would have been completed by now. Having to work with a team via email and phone only is really, really tough.
In the evening, my wife and I headed off to Parkway Parade for dinner. We went to Sakuraya Fish Mart, and we ordered an unagi don each, and had one slab of swordfish and one slab of salmon served as sashimi. That was delicious, but expensive. However, it was a lot of sashimi. Bwahaha. Today's meeting was in Touch Centre Chapel, so it was a tight squeeze for so many people. I was shocked to discover that one of my course mates in the current Masters' elective is in fact in my church, and in Youthnet no less, who just got promoted to Ps Julie's G12. Small, small world. After the meeting, we headed to a nearby coffee shop with Collin and Eric to celebrate Eric's birthday in advance. He would have flown off to Shanghai the next time we could meet, so we had to do it early.
Thu 4 Dec
It was another day at Teachers' Network. One more day and I'm through! I went to congratulate my course mate on her 'promotion' and she was shocked to find out that we were from the same church. Highlight of the day was lunch at Fish n Co, which we finally located. But today's lunch was disappointing. Not the food, which was excellent. We had the Premium Seafood Feast platter which served 3 to 4 persons, so the three of us shared one slab of grilled seabass, ten prawn fritters, three scallops, four mussels, a heap of calamari, two huge prawns served with some special sauce with a load of roe, fries and rice. The prawns tasted exceptionally good. What was disappointing was that we waited 35 minutes for this! And the place wasn't even a third full. A waiter and waitress came by to apologize, but offered no explanation for the appalling delay. In the end, we were 20 minutes late for the second session of class. Not that we were really hurrying, but it was irritating to wait that long on an empty stomach.
After class, my colleague dropped me off near Wheelock Place, so I went in to spend a $10 voucher my wife got from the last year-end staff dinner, buying two DVDs on sale. I dropped by Marks & Spencer to get two boxes of the must-buy cherry brandy chocolates before heading home in the usual peak hour traffic.
Anyway, I chanced upon these two interesting videos. The first one is about a female pilot without arms! A really powerful testimony of human will, and she reminds me of Nic Vujyjic (off-hand can't recall the spelling) who was born without limbs.
The second video is about the pistol shrimp, which can use its claw to create a shockwave that can kill small fish or stun bigger fish. It gets its name quite literally. Nature is so amazing.