sick sad little world

in this modern day and age, singaporean parents are spoiling their children. gone were the days to corporal punishment, throwing of books out of the window and temporary body arts from the scars of the feather duster on the bodies of their children. true, society is evolving, but are we more socially intelligent than our ancestors? in singapore, well... its up to you to decide...

lately i've been having problems finding students to tutor. to increase my chances of getting a student, i applied through 4 agencies, hoping to increase the "strike" percentage (of cos, this is simple math/probability) but the results are abysmal. 3 months running and no "strikes". sigh... maybe i'm just running out of luck...

when it comes to tutors, males are seen as sex predators. so generally, old fashioned simple minded parents (simpletons) prefer female tutors over male tutors because well they think their 9 year old kid looks like those from america's next top model. personally, i rather take 10 glances and drool over the models than a 9 year old. and to all you sick bastards out there, have a life (i mean the paedophiles).

also when parents are fine with male tutors, they quote another specific requirement: chinese. not being racist but what about those not born chinese? is it God's cruel fate? why does this requirement even exist? it would be understandable to have the requirement "chinese speaking" but segregating us by our skin colours is crossing the fine line of equality of all races. and no i'm not trying to stir the harmony of the nation, i'm sending a wake up call to tuition agencies that this isn't the way to do things.

oh what am i saying. nothing gets trough the mind of a traditional typical singaporean.

:)

i'm chinese by the way.

the rain and his birthday

the perfect ambiance for a 21st birthday, or any other birthday for that matter. or for any lovely occasion. overcast skies blankets the world you know, wave after wave of rain pours down from the heavens above, and everything around you is given the gray tint. absolutely lovely i must say.

at times like this i would like to relive my inner childhood moments: standing and dancing merrily in the rain, getting totally drenched, enjoy a nice warm shower and lying down on a beach chair underneath a huge beach umbrella, enjoying a nice warm cup of espresso. well the espresso part wasn't very 'child-like' tough.

simple birthdays, simple life, and the next day would unveil the sick sad reality of this game called life.

wars and adventures

according to our most dreaded history books, the first world war was caused by many factors, some of which include the decades of antagonism leading up to the eruption of the conflict, and of course the assassination of archduke franz ferdinand (not the band) of austria-hungary. but i guess many of us would have overlooked the fact that the first world war was in fact, not between testosterone enriched men, but between men and women.

countless of wars have been fought, and till this day, much has been unchanged. from the flying pots and silverware, and the slurry of cuss words that propagate through the air like microwaves, these are the weapons of man's destruction. i truly wonder when this neverending struggle of who's right or who's wrong will cease, but i guess i just have to wait till the day finally comes.

on a lighter note, i feel the sudden rush for the need of an adventure. be it rock climbing, wall climbing, climbing buildings, trekking, the ourdoors... you name it, i crave for it. this symptom may probably be due to the fact that i've actually been growing leaves and berries on me for the past 8 weeks or so. and thinking back to the army days, gosh, i wish i was doing it all over again. all the physical torture (done to the trainees of course) and the outdoors, the trees never looked so green before.

anyways there's this great series on discovery channel that i honestly reckon most of you would enjoy. its called 'man vs wild' and it is about a man (edward michael grylls or better known as bear grylls) who puts himself in many of survival situations that you can possibly think of, and gets out of them alive. i especially love the parts where he catches trout or salmon from the river, and eat them straight out of the river, just like a bear (no pun intended). he says he loves sushi, so do i!

oh well i hope one day i'll be stranded somewhere out there, having to apply all that i've learnt from him and his show, and manage to get out of it in one perfect piece.

the locomotion

i truly wonder why the female gender has a tendency to spill over their troubles onto other people. well it is kind of like having your pants poured with iced water. oh well not really. but the point is, it is like those mini fengshui fountains you may have in your house that spills water from one level to another. but this time, instead of the good fengshui water, you get the water that pours down from a hurricane's storm. so to those guys out there who share the same fate, i truly feel for you...

on a lighter note, with my mum going away to KL, i have been given the opportunity to flaunt my culinary skills (since i don't have girls coming over to my house begging me to cook for them). i was rather proud of myself having made my 'sunshine toasts' this morning, well on saturday morning at least. simple to make and of course, simply delicious! here's a picture of them:

they're only nice when eaten while the bread is hot and toasted. i ate them when they were no longer hot though. a tad soggy but still tasted good. have i got your mouths watery?

anyways i still gotta wait till my brother gets back from thailand. and now i'm stuck in the airport with nothing to do but this.

cooking tips

do you put your soy sauce in your egg mixture before frying it, or do you add your soy sauce after you fry your eggs?

do you coil your earphones around your ipod, or do you 'orbit' your ipod around your earphones so that it the earphones are coiled up?

i tend to neither add soy sauce before frying nor after frying. and have no preference to how i'd like my earphones coiled. weird.

anyways, about the eggs, if you want to have them scrambled, you must first know how to make those scrambled eggs. scrambled eggs (those good ones) are generally not fully cooked. meaning that the egg proteins are not fully coagulated (or for those who are mentally challenged, it means to turn into a solid mass or to curdle as the protein structure changes). just like those eggs that you get from buying your big breakfast at macdonalds, i bet you are wondering how you could actually make them so delicious. right?

firstly, adding ingredients to your egg mixture will slow down the cooking of the eggs. you have impurities in your egg mixture which prevents quick coagulation of the protein. one way to best slow down the cooking process is to add ingredients a couple of seconds after pouring your egg mixture into your frying pan. and do make sure it is on low heat. say you wanted to add milk, what you can do is to pour the milk into the frying pan (lightly oiled) after having your egg mixture poured into the pan.

the above process 'shocks' the cooking, thus slowing down the rate at which the egg protein coagulate. and it doesn't just stop there. continue to stir, yes stir, the mixture in the frying pan so that you wont allow the protein to coagulate quickly. and of course, depending on your culinary skills, your eggs could turn out excellent, or equivalent to either a 20 year old yogurt or the rocks at the beach.

incubus, live in singapore

yes and indeed. after all these while. they might have missed us, a tiny red dot just off the southern tip of the malaysian peninsular. and as any die hard incubus fan, i just had to get the tickets.

actually to be honest i knew of their tour when a good friend of mine told me all about it quite some time back. i was pretty much excited when i heard about it. but well it had to be at fort canning, not that i don't like the venue, but i'd rather have the concert in a concert hall where i can choose good seats near the front. i wont even mind the deafening sounds from the speakers and amps.

i would really appreciate it if they'd play some songs from make yourself and morning view, of course morning view being my favourite album by incubus. maybe they'll play make yourself, nice to know you, pardon me, just a phase and all that. but i guess they'd be playing mostly from light grenades and a crow left of the murder.

and for those of you who don't already know, what are you waiting for. incubus, live in singapore. 7th of march 2008, fort canning park. tickets are out a long long time ago. get it in february and it'll be a bit more expensive.

see you there.

a craze swept wave

time and time again i see hordes of customers lining up to purchase their favourite doughnuts, or donuts as what most of you would know it by. it leave me wondering when, and where did the whole craze sprout out from. of course i couldn't be bothered researching it, but my hunches would say that it would have probably started with japan. or maybe one of the asian countries.

one of the reasons doughnuts became so popular is because we singaporeans are not exposed to a spread of fancy doughnuts that the americans indulge in every single day of their lives. also credit must be given to the advertisements and publicity. but this cannot solely be credited to one company alone. just like the bubble tea craze, many other doughnut-copy-companies are coming out of nowhere with their fanciful names and trademark recipes. its no wonder why singaporeans are so spoilt for choice.

it made me think again. doughnuts were actually introduced to this country more than a decade ago. for those of you who are at least my age or older, you would have remembered dunkin donuts. dunkin donuts were like the in-thing of the 1990s here, at least for me i guess. i still remembered gorging down those strawberry cream doughnuts, chocolate coated, rainbow rice and honey glazed. however, nowadays, we have cheese, kaya and whatever you may think of. to me, they appear scary and very experimental but has seem to struck a chord with the masses.

myself, although a food junkie, i'm not particularly crazy over doughnuts. so far, my doughnut count since the craze started still lingered at 1. i realise how very unhealthy those o-shaped deep fried dough buns are, plus all the added ingredients on the top that contributes to you slow demise. i've been constantly reminding others how unhealthy these things are, and of course, are as unhealthy as your favourite hawker food.

and of course you don't eat your hawker food that often, why should you eat these miniature life buoys as often? the queues don't seem to get any shorter and the fanaticism for doughnuts never seem to die. i guess i'll never know what it will take to level the situation.

then again, i'm still a fan of the bubble tea, but if you think about it, doughnuts are like cliche.

a critic's critique

i suddenly remembered that i had to write about something. a critique on customer service and it's importance. speaking for the millions out there who pays a great deal of scrutiny to the attention given to them, as well as how others treat them when they hold close to their hearts the 5 word mantra: the customer is always right.

others may have various forms of the mantra such as "the customer is your boss" or "i pay and you serve", but at the end of the day, we are all human beings and being critical is our nature.

take one case study: Banquet Food Court at Sengkang. i was queuing up to get 2 packets of fried udon for my friends who were obviously starving from food deprivation. well actually there wasn't much of a queue to be honest. however, what made it seem like a queue was the horribly delayed response from the person behind the counter. the lady, probably sick and tired of her work, rather flipped over the takoyaki balls slowly than attend to an eager customer who was going to provide her with her day's pay. so mistake number one: never let your customers wait for assistance.

okay, so i've already made my order. it was twenty minutes past two on my watch as i stood like sir stamford raffles waiting for the delicious looking udon. five, ten, and eventually fifteen minutes later, the udon was prepared. about time i say! how long could it possibly take to fry 2 packets of udon when i was the only customer? given another 5 minutes and probably i could have at least a medium rare sirloin with garlic mushroom sauce topped with baby carrots, juicy broccoli and whipped potato. i admit i was impatient, and the least i expect of the lady behind the counter was to assist me in taking a look at those udon. that was mistake number two.

somehow i started to think, maybe they needed to make those udon from scratch. and of course i am not that stupid.

and finally, mistake number three, when i was handed the "goods" there wasn't even a simple "sorry for the delay" or "i'm really sorry we had to refine the oil to make good oil to fry your udon sir" or whatever. none at all. simply put it: lack of empathy. apparently flipping takoyaki balls is like digging treasure. maybe there would be a thousand dollar note in one of the takoyaki balls on the hot plate.

and i must say, service was extremely poor.if i were to rate it on a scale of ten (which i am going to do so now), i'd give them 2 out of then. 1 point for the bare minimum standard of attending to customers (like duh) and 1 more point out of compassion.

and you didn't know i could be a critic. in fact, anyone, can be the unknowing critic.

brain aches

2 days to go and she'll be home. where the one that loves her awaits her arrival. desperation. and it has been so for days. more than days.

i've been having this awfully painful headache since sunday. i can't imagine i actually endure the pain for 4 days straight. i can't even walk, or get up without feeling the pain. and even moving my eyeballs feels as though the eye sockets are laced with sandpaper.

i thought it was just the pre-fever symptom. it was, a couple of days ago as a matter of fact. but no longer. maybe its cool fever. a new strain of fever that keeps your body temperature below 37. i don't know. probably its the headache talking. i also had these crazy thoughts about how the headache may actually be tumors. er well i better not think of it anymore.

on monday i went fishing. and as usual caught nothing. the feeling sucks. yeah. but you know, fishes have tiny brains, but they are not that stupid. anyways i've found ways to improve my rate of catch the next time round. i'm gonna catch some rays and cook and eat.

i'm rather displeased that these past few days hasn't been raining as often as i wanted it to. the skies are not gray and there's just too much sunlight.

cobwebs

yesterday i went fishing with some of my friends, 3 of them were my recruits. were. it's nice to see them, those familiar faces. kinda reminds me of old times. and i met up with tex. it was great to see him after all these time. nothing much has changed i guess, apart from him being able to drive and me not being able to drive legally. yet.

once again it almost rained today. i'm waiting for the sky to open up and splash us. i think there's just something in rainwater that makes me reminisce. some chemical. maybe opium.

another day almost over, and to start of the 'almost-over-day', i woke up at one in the afternoon. sheesh. i felt like crap getting out of bed and into the shower. and then i thought to myself, "saturday's football match has been postponed, today doesn't seem special, and no one gives a rat's ass about my existence." maybe that was a tad extreme. but i guess it's true.

i started thinking about how getting a job, a temporary one, seems like playing the lottery. so many application and yet no single fucked reply. i just need to get my ass moving instead of rotting at home. plus, i'm not earning any cash, so it makes me think twice about shopping. and it is killing me when i desperately want to get my les paul. frustrating, very frustrating indeed.

and its that time of the year where people start counting down to the new year, make new resolution which they hardly follow through and start their new work year, or school year, fresh. well somehow it'd be nice if say january first two thousand and eight brought along a extreme climatic change. sinapore begins to snow like the noth pole and the whole world turns into a huge ball of ice. that'd be nice. at least we get to experience snow. hmm.. nice.

argh whats this? cobwebs on my entire body! how long have i been sitting here?