Things we do for $14

Biscuit's license renewal letter had come earlier in Jan, but somehow walked away before I found time to pay the bill. Nevermind, I'll be a little less anal and more cool I thought, a reminder letter will come. well it never did, but a $100 fine from the AVA did find its way to my door. Nevermind, I'll be cool and just write a letter of appeal, feign ignorance and send a cheque for $14. Another AVA letter came - prove to us that he is neutered it says. Umm, duh. Dear AVA, do you even check your database, i did send you the original sterilization cert you know? nevermind, I'll be cool, I'll just call the vet and have them send over another copy. All hassle came and went, and Bis is finally 'legalized' for another year. In retrospect, I should have just gone to AVA when the renewal was due to pay the $14, it would have been so much simpler. But I thought being a little less anal and just chill, as C would have done, would be a nice change. But frankly, the total exchange of 4 letters between AVA and myself, and the vet, just to prove Bis' eunuch status and get him legalized, is too much effort. Next year, I'll be sure to pay the $14 on time. Been there, done that, not worth the hassle.

Motherhood yoga 101

We had a lesson in pre-natal yoga today as part of the teaching module. And *gasp* while I'm accustomed through the years hearing about colleagues talk through their pregnancy, to labour, to maternity, it's quite another (shocking) thing to have to go through a lesson of physical pregnant anatomy. My mental state seemed to have entered permanent retard shock during those 3 hours, hearing how women in class and the teacher describe groin pain, pelvic splits, back pains, tissue tears and other stuff rather as a matter of factly. We even had the privilege of watching a live birth video - no holds barred, full pregnancy from stage 1 of labour till delivery. I mean, if my shocked retard state wasn't enough , I think I was fully distressed and traumatised when watching how the vagina just moved open and the baby's crown slowly birthed through. If that wasn't bad enough, there was the cutting of the umbilical cord to the delivery of the placenta and all the blood gush. Gawd. Even some of the moms in the class were aghast, I guess it's a different view of themselves during delivery...I doubt many have the chance of looking between their legs and watching their babies slowly emerge from the what formerly was a very small space between the legs.

All this talk about hips permanently widening, loose saggy pouchy skin, pigmentation and emotional trauma etc etc...while I'm not a ra-ra motherhood type of person to begin with, think I'm now permanently traumatised by the whole childbearing idea. YP used to complain that pre natal yoga class is boring and doesn't do much, but I think she didn't realise how many of the poses are can complicate birthing and poses are subjected to a mother's stage of pregnancy, position of baby in the tummy etc. At first I thought pre natal yoga must be a walk in the park, now I'm thinking it's the most difficult form of yoga to teach. I'm not letting any pregnant mothers in my yoga class if I have to teach. Gosh I just don't think I can handle it. Gimme monkeys anytime.

'O silly snippets

Very intense heavy rain today. And so I remarked to C.

Me: it's raining like crap. Wouldn't it be really bad if we're animals at the zoo?
C: ?
Me: I mean, with rain so intense, they would have nowhere to go...
C: that's why they have dens...and in every den at the zoo, they have their own private dvd players, plasma tv....
Me: .....
Me: what about the bird park, if we're birds at the bird park, there's surely no dens for us to hide...
C: I'll just take out an umbrella
Me: Umbrella?! People pay good money for a ticket to the birdpark, and you (bird) take out an umbrella?!
C: well it doesn't make sense for us (birds) to get wet right, when people come to see us. So we'll just pose for them with our umbrellas...

Then later....(still raining intensely but braving the rain to buy dinner).

Me: ...if you only had 1 more day to live and had to choose between either a last meal - for which will enable you to live yet another day, or a..
C (interrupting): the BJ of course!
Me: (rolls eyes)
C: I rather die happy.
Me: but if you had the last meal you could live another day..
C: but will still die tomorrow, so I rather die happy with a smile on my face. No point in having the last meal when I'll still die after another day...

well,, gotta give this guy points for creative imagination.

Twas Too Good to be True

There I was ecstatically celebrating my first successful foray into downloading a full episode of K-drama, and successfully installing a video player. Noodle, my mac, was powered up for nearly 48 hrs in my excitement and enthusiasm to download some 10 episodes. Too good to be true? Indeed. I thought my bad techno-karma luck cut me a break, but alas it's too good to be true. After some 48 hrs of downloading, none of what I had could be viewed or played........ nothing wrong with the vids, or player or my mac. Just that several mac users have had similar problems and had to give up in sheer frustration because some of us has the bad luck of the player just not being quite compatible on our macs.

Sob. Bwahhh. (Huge sigh of resigned fate).

Back to the rental store I guess.

K-Drama Re-obsession

Now that the MBA is over and done with, I'm back with my darling love K-drama. Having just finished Hong Gil Dong and a resulting entire week of sleep deprivation, panda eyebags, swollen eyes, and intense lack of focus at work, I'm moving on to Chilwu the Mighty, and Daring Sisters at the same time. Yah, quite intense. The beauty of modern technology is I can get access to these online at crunchyroll, or mysoju or veoh. Sad part is sometimes my anti-techno karma comes into play. Biggest headache - no subtitles. Aww man.... back to the rental store.

Makan sutra

The journey to vegetarian-ism is strange, at least for me. In modern context I'm what you would call a pesco-vegetarian (after reading Sunday times couple of weeks back). I've been off meat for a record of nearly 12 weeks. Not bad. Except these past days I get strange sudden fixations and desires for strange foods. Like Hokkien Mee. Then yesterday the image of McD's Fish Filet would not leave my mind during yoga. And today, i have a sudden craving for french fries, not just any french fries but big fat solid ones like those you get at a cafe or american restaurant like hard rock's. I've also increased my potato chips intake recently, from maybe 3 or 4 large bags per year, to 1 bag a month. Umm...it just struck me that they are all carbs and unhealthy food.

Zen my big butt?

A massive attack of hokkien prawn mee seized me recently - or rather, the catalyst was watching tables of people at toa payoh lor 5 hawker center devouring plate after plate of cholestrol-rich noodles. C of course kindly provided chaueffer service after yoga class one night at 9.30pm. The thing is, I haven't had hokkien mee in over 4 or 5 years, and the day I deigned to desire it, is the day the stall is closed. C said nary a word, so I squeaked, how about lor 8? No sign of the elusive HM at lor 8, it's not meant to be I thought. C insisted we be sure, and lol and behold, one lone ranger in the corner. Evil eyes bore on me and cheerily clapped, "Aha! Thanks to me we found it! you gave up too easily".

The $8 plate of HM came and went, alongside with some (looks like $5 worth of) *gasp* PORK LARD. When I pointed to the plate and asked HM uncle "uncle, what's that?". Uncle act innocent, pointed to C and said, "Dont know. He asked one". So the fate of the pork lard went something like this:

Me (looking at plate with 1/2 pork lard left, looks at C): You shouldn't be eating this anymore. You look too full.
C: Uh huh. (Continues to shove 4 more spoonfuls of HM AND PORK LARD into his already full mouth).
then later...
C: (groaning & looking very green). oh my gawd....the pork lard has expanded in my tummy. Oh gawd (groan groan groan). I'm never gonna eat pork lard for another 5 yrs.

Point of this story? Men don't listen, and women can't find directions (at least where hokkien mee is concerned).

A Horsey tale

Today is a great day of great service (except for rather crabby taxi drivers). Firstly, shop lady at the Kodak store at Forum cheerfully volunteered to help me carry 12 rather heavy photo frames to the taxi stand, and even chose to accompany me while I waited for a cab. Wow, this is service with an extra smile and mile. Then, service during dinner at Rider's Cafe is nothing short of fantastic, and good enough to rival those at 5-star hotels coupled with loads of enthusiasm. The food is pretty darn good despite the basic menu, and it's in.the.middle.of.nowhere location at Fairways Drive is the real sweetie (in Singapore speak: si-beh macham ulu). For some reason, the service staff must really enjoy their jobs as service staff - no qualms for complaints even for my picky self. If you fancy your meal accompanied by rather unique whiffs of eau de horsey fragrance, it's a pretty interesting experience altogether. Save for the cafe, everything outside is pitch black, except maybe for the headlamps of a car or two driving by. That leaves me to suggest to C, that maybe horses can be made to wear "headlamps" (just like miner's hats) - and wouldn't it be interesting if we have night racing horses? Just like F1 has its first ever night race, Horse racing can do the same...all you would hear is the thundering of hooves and the bobbing of "headlamps" whilst everything else is in pitch black darkness? Better still, the horse number should be illuminated (just like xmas tree lights) on the hats that horses would wear, so we know which horse is in the lead. And given the push towards public transport, who knows someday we may revert back to horse-carts as a form of transportation. Horse hats would be illuminated in red (for Hired) and green (for Available). Ahhh...such is my brilliance and out of the box creativity. I amaze myself sometimes.

How to Fish

On our way back from Amirah's Grill (which by the way, serves really decent middle eastern cuisine in an intimately cozy space with very hip-swaying music) where C got his kebab craving fixed, there was a healthy brainstorm in the car on methods to catch the 2 elusive arowanas that his client was going to give him. C's original plan was to buy a big fishing net, jump into the pond and net the fish - because apparently, "arowanas swim damn fast". O...k....but how about these suggestions:

- freeze the pond and carve out the cubed fish. Defrost soon after.
- drain half the pond so fish have limited space to swim. Easy to grab.
- heat up the pond it's so hot, fish would jump out. Then grab them.
- dissolve 100 paracetemol tablets into the pond, tranq the fish and nab them.
- partition the pond, herd them to one small space and jump in!

Now, once the fish is caught, my question to C was, how is he planning to transport the fish to his place. The look on his face says, I.havent.thought.that.far.ahead.yet.

Will the bank still accept payment in lieu if fish are dead? hmm.

Fish & (e)Con(omy)

It's quite possible the world is moving back to the barter trade economy, what with inflation and prices of commodities and essentials escalating at an alarming rate. C had just gone to meet a client, and as all clients always do - tell their architects they love the concept, but will have to think about it, money being one of the major concerns. There's no such thing as a free blade of grass, really. So this one particular client implied pretty much the same thing, but oh by the way, "you like my (rare) arowana (fish)? Why don't you take one". And then promptly went on to offer 2 arowanas to C. Umm, so these days architects get paid in fish do they? In turn I wonder how he is going to divvy up the 'fish' parts to his contractors, suppliers, and....convince the bank to accept payment of fish in lieu of cash for the monthly mortgage. Hmm. Going by market rates, 1 arowana = few hundred to thousand dollars. So basically, pay the bank 1 fish, it's sufficient to cover the monthly housing loan. Umm, so how many ikan bilis needs to be traded at tekka market for 1kg of beef trimmings?? No ikan bilis? Will dried shrimp do? As with all economics, it's about demand and supply right? So moving back to an economy trading on fish, would generate a high demand of refrigerators to store fish, or for dehydrating equipment to preserve fish. How will productivity of a country be measured, in GFF (Gross Fishy Factor)? Will Starbucks start serving Nemo lattes???!

And as with all things, this also highlights the difference between C and myself. I'd research to the death and prepare data and facts, arming myself with concrete knowledge and making a grand presentation to my clients on "WHY YOU NEED TO GIVE ME 2 FISH". C, on the other hand, will talk about something else totally unrelated to the work or project and make fun out of everything, and the clients will just simply jump up and say, "HEY, WHY DON'T YOU TAKE 2 FISH?".

Books R' Us

These 30% coupons that Borders sends out from time to time are sure to incite a mass descent of eager beavers ready for massive book bargains to the store. You think baskets are only used at supermarkets for carrying groceries? Some of us bargain hunters pile up books in baskets like cheap groceries. Of course, i don't really actually NEED any of these books, but I can't help being drawn to the beauty of them like a moth to flame. My latest succumb to temptation - 3 new cookbooks and 4 novels. Am I going to read the novels - most probably yeah, am I going to use the cookbooks? Probably not since I've gone pesco vegetarian. But being a veggie-ian doesn't stop me from loving food, and admiring pictures and dreaming of whipping up a storm in my future dream kitchen. My most prized acquisition today: Piri Piri Starfish by Tessa Kiros. Being the proud own 3 other of Kiros' cookbooks, her recipes and stories are a beautiful journey of her life's work in the joy of cooking. The recipes are true to form, I was never let down for each of those that I've tried out. Yum. Can a cookbook lover get any more deliriously happier than that?The other 2 that joined my cookbook collection today: Padma Laksmi's Tangy Tart Hot & Sweet, and Nguyen's stunningly beautiful Secrets of the Red Lantern, a very seductive exploration of the recipes of Vietnam.

Quiver on O' Jelly

There's no doubt in my mind that not having practised yoga in 4 weeks my muscle tone and stamina would have seriously deteriorated, but its amazing when reality hits - my fingers were trembling (and not even from exertion) just by stretching my arms overhead, and the hammies feel so tightly knotted as if I've been wearing 4 inch high heels for weeks, and (heaven forbid) the quivering of jello thighs as work on the squats. Muscles tremble when we are starting to get exhausted holding a position we are unaccustomed to holding, yes its normal, but when the jello thighs start trembling as soon as squats begin, now that's a serious sign of Hello, Get your arse back into the motion of regular exercise. No excuses, cough and cold is over, MBA is over. My physical self (and appetite) is back with a vengeance. Have begun to hallucinate about loads of pasta, and even crave sugar rather intensely. I'm going to bring my yoga practice back to where it should be.

on a more sober note, I'm really lucky. All these are just superficial stuff, not a big disaster to lament over. Had chanced upon a blog about another girl called Wennie - whose last name is also nearly same as mine (!), and yes, I'm the luckier of the two of us. I wish her the best.