Mish mash of thoughts

I haven't had a byline in two weeks. And that's terrible. But I should get three this week. The thing about my job is that when the supplements are not happening, I don't really get stories to do. Which means I need to get off my butt and start thinking of stories for the Recruit pages, which is what I did. At the same time, I've got like four more stories at hand that I'm juggling but that won't get published till much later, cos that's when the supplements are happening. Again, it looks like I'm very free.

Well I shouldn't be complaining, cos after all, this job allows me to relax during the weekends! I don't carry work worries home, so I thoroughly enjoy my weekends :)

Talking about weekends, I went for Jem's 23rd birthday celebration at Sculpture Garden at Waterloo Street yesterday. So funny to be amongst a whole group of guys younger than me. Jem got a special "pouch" for one of his pressies. Haha, yar a kinky pouch-like underwear, which incidentally my bro has as well. But I digress. The guys forced him to wear it over his pants. The ever amusing Jem used this huge heart-shaped flower attached to a pole (another of the weird presents) as a prop for his dragon dance, which he was forced to do while wearing the two-sizes too small pouch. The guys actually thought he could wear a size M!!!

So imagine this teddy-bear-like guy raising that heart-shaped thing, going "tong chang tong chang, tong chang chang chang" around tables in a romantically lit private area of a restaurant. The guys held a $100 note each - there were eight such notes, which were Jem's earnings from doing a wedding video - and stuffed it into the waistband of the pouch-undies as Jem danced past them. Haha. He wasn't allowed to get the money unless he did that dance.

Sporting Jem :)

Mayday madness: This picture is courtesy of Ms Lok who interviewed them!!! Arghhh!!! (oh the picture below was taken by Jaz by the way at the Alive concert we attended recently.) Anyways, in this picture, taken at M Hotel, clockwise from top left: Masa, Monster, Stone, Guan You, Ashin. I'm gonna say something really teenage-y now...hahahahaha. MAYDAY ROX!!! WOO HOO!!! :)

Mayday madness: I get extremely irritated when clueless pple compare Mayday with tuneless and talentless F4 or even 5566 for that matter. So here's my intro of this pop-rock band that has inspired me for so long. Mayday is a five-man band made up of (1) Ashin - lead vocalist, sometimes rhythm guitarist, main songwriter who's also written songs for many other artistes including Steph Sun and Fish Leong; (2) Masa - bassist, backup vocals, sometimes pianist, sometimes accordian player (3) Stone - guitarist, mostly lead nowadays, also does loops and recently began to compose songs (4) Monster - guitarist, recently started to compose songs that are pretty good (5) Guan You - drummer, backup vocals. Ashin, Masa, Stone and Monster go way back when they were in high school, jamming together as friends. Guan You only joined much later. They are incredibly talented. Ashin used to be much the backbone of the band cos he was the composer but in recent years, the other band members have started to strut their stuff. Ashin, Stone and Monster should about 30 yrs old this year and Guan You, around 33. Masa is the comic of the group, and the youngest at about 28 I think. In this picture, L-R: Monster, Stone and Ashin. Way cool :)

Chalet-type house in Changi (2): This is the kitchen. There's Leo on the left, Power the Shetland sheepdog under the table, and Ah Wee standing on the right. Notice the beautiful mosaic tiles. Reminiscent of the past huh?

Chalet-type house in Changi (1) : This is the rabbit's house I was talking about in my earlier post.

House-visiting: Visiting people's houses can be a very interesting thing to do. Over the long weekend, I visited two houses, one in Changi and another in Stephen's Close. The picture shown here is of the Changi house in St John's Crescent. Sounds so ulu right? It sure is. It's near Changi prison and is only rented out to prison wardens and their families. My friend married a prison warden and they decided to move into this really old-style chalet type of house cos the rent was really cheap and you can never find such a house in Singapore anymore! They pay $300 a month for it. The entire row has about 6-8 houses I think and only some are occupied. Yup, all by prison wardens, some of whom have lived there for 10-20 yrs. The floor of my friend's house is paved with mosaic tiles that you find in the kitchens of the 1970s. I remember running on such tiles in my grandpa's Mandalay apt when I was just five. All the windows have louvres like what you see on the doors in the picture. There's natural light coming in in the day, and when night falls, you simply step out onto the grass patch that slopes down to a road where few cars venture. That night, I looked into the clear sky and was amazed at how bright the stars looked! Little pollution and little light from buildings around lah. The evening air was so cool it felt like I was camping in Pulau Ubin or something! If I had a kid, I'd definitely camp outside under a tent with him for fun :) This house also has an adjoining hut-like room in some sort of a backyard that I think the owners used as a kitchen in the olden days. My friend actually lets her rabbit sleep there, but this rabbit had apparently gone off to flirt with her neighbour's rabbits for some time already! My friend also added some touch of old to her house with, for eg, ship oil lamps that her dad helped her get from a real ship. She hung them on her windows. I love the house - so old, so unmarred by urbanisation, so quaint. Really peaceful.

Crabby wabby

Since I'm in such a bad mood, I'd might as well write about nice stuff to cheer meself up. I shall talk about last night's scrumptious seafood dinner at Jumbo at the East Coast Seafood Centre!

It was a send-off dinner for our beloved boss, who is leaving cos, let's just say cos he's being unappreciated by the company. It was a most wonderful dinner - great food, great company and great seaside ambience!!! Was so stuffed man. We ordered:

1. one huge chilli crab - the pincer was almost the size of my hand, no kidding.
2. one slightly smaller black pepper crab. YUM.
3. two plates of greens - dou miao and sambal kangkong.
4. mussels in oyster sauce
5. two plates of fried youtiao stuffed with prawn paste
6. fried baby squid, so crisp and delicious
7. lotsa of satay
8. sweet and sour fish
9. Tiger beer!
10. errm...I can't rem the rest liaos. I think that was it!

there were about 17 of us, and it was so fun! this beats all the "forced" bonding sessions we had to have in the past. Seabreeze/landbreeze was blowing, hands soaked with finger-licking-good chilli crab gravy, conversations peppered with jokes and teasing. I've never had so much fun with my unit before.

And our boss loved the scrapbook we made for him. Funny scribbles, weird pictures (muscular naked man with boss' head superimposed onto it), 8-line poems, lotsa lotsa cute photos.... Hmm....actually feel quite sad now. Such sweet memories he had with the department and now he has to move on. We'll all miss him very much.

Sob.

Wait a minute, this was supposed to be a happy entry.

Help, I don't need somebody

I'm so frustrated! How do you help someone who doesn't wanna help himself??? Don't you just get so irritated when pple obviously know there's a problem with themselves, but don't wanna admit it and don't want help from others? Lives wasted, loved ones get the shit.

Sucks man.

I'm in a foul mood today. Hope Naruto cheers me up later.