My cousin is drinking vodka

My cousin is turning 18 this year. And she is drinking vodka. I find it unbelievable.

It seems only yesterday that she was this adorable cutie in primary school, following my bro and I around Disneyland in the US. She would only take the rides that we went on, she would tag along in whatever we did. She was just a kid. And now she's playing drinking games with her friends and she goes to Wala Wala!!! Wah lau...

Am I old or what? I can't face up to this reality. Help.

(And I can't spell vodka. It was vodkha before it starting looking weird to me.)

relaxing

I didn't have to work yesterday, and I don't have to work today. Swell :)

I woke up at 10.30am, drank a glass of chilled homemade chrysanthemum tea and switched on the computer. Phone rang. It was mum asking where we should have our reunion dinner. As usual, my family is always so last-minute with these things. After a few calls to some Chinese restaurants, we figured all the Chinese restaurants in Singapore would have been fully booked for the eve.

I surfed the net for food reviews (again) and found Whitebait & Kale at Camden Medical Centre. According to the girl at the other end of the line, they serve modern Aussie cuisine. Sounds good. Found its menu online, looks good. Ok set! Reservations for three please!

My brother better go for it, if not I won't hear the end of it from my mum. Well, he couldn't wake up for last year's dinner. Oi!!! Sleep early the night before lah!!!

Ethan is famous

Ethan the-godson-who-doesn't-like-me turned One Year Old on 9 Jan. See see, see his adorably rascal face. As usual godma, who also gets her good friends' and boyfriend's birthdays wrong, thought his birthday fell on 8 Jan. I think I've caught the one-day-before-the-actual-birthday syndrome.

All thanks to my bro, who pointed out that darling Ethan looks like the lead actress Jun Ji-Hyun of My Sassy Girl, look at the two of them!!! OMG!!! Check out the resemblance!!! Haha. The nose, the nose...looks the same!!! No wonder The Sassy Slumbering Girl is so intricately connected with the both of them :)

Anyway, the publicity I've given Ethan on my blog has *gasp* led to my friend Wynne recognising him stumbling about at IMM Building two days back. OMG!!! She heard his mummy calling out his name, looked at him and realised he's that cute boy I'm always talking about!!! She actually went home to check my blog for his pictures to verify if it was indeed Ethan she saw.

Ah, the wonders of blogging.

the dee lam that was never meant to be

Something very funny happened today. Hahaha. But before I start, just a definition:

dee lam = hokkien for mattress

My mother, who can't speak Mandarin, received a call today on her mobile phone from a delivery guy announcing the arrival of a dee lam at our house. In fact, he was already in the vicinity and wanted to make sure my mother was at home. My mum thought he was mad because she definitely didn't order a mattress! She hung up and refused to pick up his call when he rang a second time because she "didn't want to waste money on a nuisance call" (she uses a top-up card for her mobile phone).

Three hours later, I heard knocks on my house door and found a family of three - neighbours apparently - with the father carrying a huge hamper. Someone had delivered a hamper to us while we were not home to receive it so the guy left it with our neighbours. So clever.

I went looking for my mum, telling her that her broker sent her a hamper. She paused for a while, hands full of soap from washing clothes, and said: "Oh! So this is the dee lam??? Goodness!!! Why did that guy call me to say he was sending a dee lam??? It is not a mattress what."

I thought for a while before the truth dawned on me and I couldn't stop laughing afterwards. The guy had meant 礼蓝 (li lan)!!! That's what a hamper is called in Mandarin lah, mother!!!

That poor delivery guy too. He kept calling my mum's broker to get him to check with my mum if she did receive the hamper. And the broker called our house close to 11pm. Must be one stressed delivery guy!

Bangkok Posts

1. Meet Coffee the err....extra small dog. Not sure what breed he is, a miniature pincher perhaps? He's really small, the size of a chihuahua, the size of two adult hands! And he belongs to Jai and Dee, the Thai couple who are our friends. Although Coffee is fully grown, he is this size because he contracted some kind of illness when he was younger. According to Jai, Coffee was supposed to have died, if not for CPR adminstered by Jai's mother!!! Hahaha. She actually blew into his mouth, and pumped his body to revive him, and it worked. But since then, he's never grown. And here he stands (in this picture), only double the height of a cuppa noodles. Poor dog keeps trembling too, not out of fright, but because of his illness :(

2. Great restaurant that serves delicious Thai papaya salad and other mouth-watering Asian dishes. We've been there twice to eat. The first time we were there last year, the menu was all in Thai, but on this recent trip, they finally had an English menu. Seems like tourists are discovering it too! Each dish costs about S$3 to S$5, which is really quite cheap for a beautifully done up and hip restaurant that it is.

The dish on the bottom right corner is the Thai papaya salad, a tasty mix of Thai papaya, onions, ground peanuts, fried pork fat (eeks! but nice!), some kind of ham and a lovely tangy sauce. You can order either steamed or sticky rice. The latter is served in a bamboo basket (as seen in top left of picture).

Add: Som Tam Nua, 392/14 Siam Square Soi 5, Pathumwan, Bangkok. ("Soi" means lane in Thai, so the restaurant is located on lane 5 at Siam Square, a famous area for shopping.)

3. One thing that continues to fascinate me about Thai girls, especially those in university, is their size. They are so damn skinny, it's just incredible. I find myself staring at a female uni student's pencil-thin waist every time she walks by.

All Thai university students wear similar uniforms: white fitting blouse and black skirt for girls, and white shirt and black slacks for guys. The girls usually wear really figure-hugging uniforms, tucking their tops entirely into their skirts. As an accessory, they usually wear a fat belt, but because their skirts have no belt loops, the students will use a paper clip or a cute hair clip to fasten their belt onto the waist area of their skirt. I love it that the girls can choose from a variety of skirt designs, including tight straight-cut mini-skirts, long flare types and knee-length pleated ones. So interesting :)

4. Some creative person decided to declare his love with masking tape on the window of an unoccupied shop.

Now...how do you say I love you in Thai? :)

冠佑's engagement

Mayday trivia, it is. Drummer 冠佑 gets engaged to his fiancee on Jan 1 this year. Hmm....his fiancee does look quite old yar? Heh. Well, here's all the best to the couple! May they love each other their whole lives!

如果

如果他还在世的话，你能够肯定这些事情不会发生吗？

的确，我不能确定。我不否认也许会有更糟的事情会发生。因为也有其他的因素影响一个人的生活选择。

但我还是有点伤心。。。

(session 2)

bak kua hunting in bangkok

Seems like Bangkok also has its Lim Chee Guan and Bee Cheng Hiang(s). The Lim Chee Guan equivalent is called 林宜香 (only one such shop around), while the Bee Cheng Hiang clone is called 林真香, which has like a zillion branches all around Yaowarat in Chinatown!!! Even its packaging looks like Bee Cheng Hiang's!!! Ok, maybe Bee Cheng Hiang copied it...

Anyway, I think this 林真香 deliberately made itself sound like the one and only 林宜香!!! So buyers like me and leo would be utterly confused and end up buying from the wrong shop. Leo's dad, who is a frequent flyer to Bangkok, called Leo over the phone to ask for bak gua from Lim Chee Hiang, which is like The Shop to go to for those wonderfully sinful meat patties. Trouble was, we didn't know what Lim Chee Hiang translated to!!! Great.

Story goes like that...we saw 林真香 and were like "all right! we found it!". And then we bought like 20 over packets of pork floss, pork floss balls/sticks, bak gua, keropok-with-more-pork-floss thingies.

And then, Leo looked across the road and said: "Eh, how come there's another shop with a similar name? Err...which one sounds more like Lim Chee Hiang ah???"

We looked at each other, and I think we both got this sneaky feeling that 宜 sounded more like Chee. Err...oops. Wrong shop. Hope Uncle doesn't get mad about bak kua bought from wrong shop. Then again, we shouldn't risk it. So off we go, buying more bak kua from The Shop.

Bak gua from The Shop costs 320 baht (about S$12.80) per kg, while that from The Other Shop costs 280 baht per kg. Correct lah, The Shop is The Shop cos the bak gua is more expensive!!! And The Shop looks older, more antique, without the fancy bright red packaging that The Other Shop boasts.

Phew. Mission finally accomplished.

Back from Bangkok

Yes, it was a very last-minute trip. Only confirmed last week. Reached home sometime before midnight last night, and am now back at work. My luggage split open when the people in Bangkok were packing the passengers' bags in the plane. Don't know how it happened, but we were asked to identify my bag through the window. So there we were, somewhere on a higher floor looking down at the plane parking space below, as the Thai airport staff pointed out my forlorn-looking luggage out to me.

I saw some yellow stuff potruding from the bottom of the bag and figured the zip had burst open! Yikes! The first thing that came to my mind was: save my bras!!! Hahah. I had bought some bras from Thailand, the T-shirt bra types, and I was so worried they would be squashed out of shape. The next thing that came to my mind was: Oh no, I hope the bras are not the items that fell out, if not, so paiseh to pack them back in front of everybody else in Singapore right? Haha. Now to think of it, I'm so frivolous. Hallo??? My luggage split open can? I should be thinking of more important things like....how to make a claim on SIA. :)

Ok more adventures coming up later. Need to work now. And going for my first lesson of the new semester tonight. Here's to another four months of no life at night!

rude ass

phone rings...

Rude Ass insists on speaking to a colleague who is engaged with a client. He refuses to hang up and insists on speaking with her. Wah lau, people counselling other people can??? How to interrupt???

Rude Ass: I must speak to her! You know the judge has purposely stood down the case because we don't have the social worker's report??? You know we have been looking all over and we can't find the report??? YOU KNOW THE JUDGE HAS STOOD DOWN THE CASE AND THE ENTIRE PUBLIC IS WAITING FOR THE SOCIAL WORKER'S REPORT???

obviously Rude Ass - hysterical too - has had his ass whacked by the judge. He insists on giving me some document number so I can look for it for him. I oblige. But there are a lot of Cs, Ts, Ps and Gs in this document and I have to get them right, RIGHT?

Me: Sorry, is that T for Thailand? P for Philippines?

Rude Ass: Excuse me, the phone something wrong is it??? You cannot hear me issit? DO YOU KNOW THE URGENCY OF THE SITUATION??? And you're handling this so slow for me???

I nearly curse him, that Rude Ass. But of course, being civilised, and a noble-must-help-the-world-social-worker-to-be, I cool down. Wait people say, you social worker leh, how can you not help people?!?! RIGHT??????

Me: Excuse me sir, I am helping you now right?

I can hear him force a hypocritical smile before thanking me. Go and die. And you know what? Turns out the courts lost the document, which was sent by the social worker way before the deadline. And it's the third time this has happened.

Go and frigging die, you ASS.

absorbed in my thoughts

The bus-stop where I board the bus to work is almost in front of my block. But today, I walked past it obliviously. Five minutes later, I found myself at the MRT station, and suddenly fully aware that I was at the wrong place. Darn. I turned around to walk back and watched the bus I was supposed to take cruise past me. Double darn.

Now I have to pretend I intended to walk into office later than usual.

I'm totally absorbed in my own thoughts. I saw a woman yesterday who cried as she spoke to me. And I could really feel her helplessness. But I didn't know what to do. I came out of the counselling room with a splitting headache. Thank goodness my supe was around to process the session with me, and she taught me to use the Satir model. I have so much to learn.

I went home feeling less burdened, but still with a headache. I decided to read my book (The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger) to destress. Then I slept.

And today, I was still disoriented. Well, an unexpected SMS I woke up to added to the mesh of thoughts still flooding my mind.

I wish my brain could compartmentalise all my feelings and thoughts appropriately. Make it like a library catalogue. Whenever I need something, I just have to type in the keywords and pull out the info. How simple that would be.

And I won't have to miss my bus again.

结婚

结婚不是为了塑造一条完整的生命。

结婚是希望能够和我的soulmate永不分离。

但如果我的soulmate担心我有一天会离他而去，我也没办法。

谁能预测将来会发生的事情？

连我都不敢保证我会永远爱你。

那你又要我怎么回答呢？

我只知道我现在是认真的。

你相信吗？

挥手

挥手

挥手是说hi，
打个招呼，闲聊起来。

挥手也是说bye，
不知道几时再见，不如闭上眼睛来。
有时现实不是件美丽的东西，
给我选择，我宁愿选逃避。

公公，尤其是你挥手，说永远的bye。

(session 1)

Counting down to the New Year with Taiwan

我是个台湾纵艺节目迷。
新年前夕，我就守在电视机前，从六点开始，便一直看到午夜过后！我是和Jolin/阿雅/小猪/五月天等艺人count down 的。

Incredible as it sounds, I switched between cable tv channel 52 and 54 throughout. Kao Siung was celebrating on channel 54, while Taipei was on channel 52. Double "ear-candy" too, because I got to watch Mayday perform on both channels as they sped towards Taipei after entertaining the crowds in Kao Siung. :)

I thought the most entertaining parts of the celebration, however, were the last few minutes when the various Taiwan cities invited their politicians up on stage. One in Kao Siung played an old Chinese tune on this instrument that looks like a tiny clay teapot but sounds like a flute, while Taipei mayor Ma Yingjiu (always dashing and like the only Taiwanese politician who speaks Mandarin without the min nan yu accent) sang and danced with the lead singer of FIR. I don't think we'd ever get Singapore's politicians on national TV doing all these things!

Taiwan's celebrations made Singapore's so boring. I switched to channel 5 (was it?) near midnight, saw Gurmit Singh, and changed channels immediately. No more "let's hear you SCREEEEAAAAAMMMMMM SINGAPORE!!!!!". National Day is over, brudder.

As the seconds ticked by, and I watched Taipei 101 (tallest building in the world) light up in neon colours and showers of fireworks, there was leo sleeping soundly on the couch as I sat, holding the remote. He still had to wake up to fetch his parents from the airport.

This New Year's Eve, no fanfare for me, not even the barrage of Happy New Year smses that I usually get. It was a peaceful step into the New Year, leaving an eventful year behind. May 2006 continue to have a perfect balance of ups and downs.

我还是会继续当超龄 groupie 和台湾纵艺节目迷。