a weekend of titanium wonders

gosh i feel bloated. at least it makes me sit down and write instead of lying down on the bed like what i always do whenever i'm at home. seriously, it's as good as if i hang my spinal cords outside the main entrance, i just get horizontal all the time and slack in between these walls.

bless that ocbc titanium card. i signed up for the credit card while i was in nissan showroom a month back and just got this whole bunch of discount vouchers. a lot. from dining to travel to spa treatment, you name it. they must have really wanted people to sign up for this thing.

except most of them expire on july 31st, so i have less than a week to take advantage of them.

which to think about it, it's kind of evil.

still, i managed to drag my friends to sushi-don restaurant near rendezvous hotel just now for dinner to use one of the voucher. we spent $78 and only paid for $48, which was a good deal. at least i managed to fulfill my craving for salmon belly sushi.

ever since i shopped at tampines giants, and bought the salmon belly sushi there, i was hooked. ok addicted more like. it has this sweet creamy taste with soft texture that almost melts in your mouth. i'm not kidding.

i believe some things are just meant to be eaten raw. i mean, that was how our first ancestors ate their food, weren't they? you know, before they discovered fire. and they still managed to evolve and everything.

for one, they didn't get any summons which probably why these days we hardly evolve any more.

we are just stressed nowadays. and we swear a lot. i know at least i do. i went to newton circus hawker center on friday night after work and found out this notice of parking offence being slipped underneath my wiper when i got back to my car.

damn. that was my second time. getting fined i mean.

the only consolation perhaps is that i feel like i've joined the experienced drivers club that pay summonses and fines all the time. in fact, i bet i can always let slipped during those empty talks session with my friends, like, 'oh i must remember to pay my parking fines today'. it gives me this whole bad boy vibe among them.

which is what i so hope my fellow condo mates have realized about me by now. i mean, to ask me to become one of the 9 condo committee members during the annual general meeting is a bit too far-fetched, don't you think? especially after they've seen me for like just 20 seconds.

i was like, 'ok maybe i'll consider'. it was my first time attending this meeting since i moved here 2 years ago, so forgive me for being a bit blur. after all, i was just being polite.

how could i know later, that last year's committee got scrutinized for every little things that they put down in the presentation? i mean, let's just let those people who compared 2006 and 2007 annual reports figures to handle the whole thing, shall we? i really don't feel like volunteering to paint red dot on my chest and write 'shoot here'.

so i left in the middle of the meeting. i just chickened out. i expect when they wanted to call me to give a bit of introduction about myself before opening the voting session, they must be puzzled why i was not there.

good work adie. one of the best.

well, it's not like i have any chance to properly pull out anyway. i might never even see these people again, nor have we braided each other's hair before so it's not like we're gonna miss each other.

although i might really have to think of braiding those that really matters to me. ok i might not need those committe members right now, not directly anyway, but when i wanted to add air pressure for my car tyres just now, i realized i needed my fellow latio friends.

this might be a bit embarassing but i never know how to add tyre's air pressure before. when i asked one of the shell attendant to help, he asked me what pressure value i wanted to put in, and i was like, what?

last time when i used to cycle, i could always press the tyres with my hand to see if it had enough air in it but i guess it's a bit more complicated with cars.

i'm not ignorant you know. at least to what it matters. when people asked me how much is my fuel consumption, like how many kilometers i run with each petrol fill i said i have no idea. i really don't. i mean, we still have to fill the petrol anyway inspite of what the data shows, don't we?

ok maybe later when i decide to change to another car and need to compare but that's like a thousand light years away.

i might as well free my mind off those question marks and read my harry potter and the deathly hallows. i've completed once and now reading for the second.

i'm not a harry potter freak ok. i just like the series in a normal amount. it's like a journey, when you have reached the target destination in a hurry and now merely repeating the same route while appreciating the side scenery that you've missed the first time.

the best thing is, i can even do this in my horizontal mode.



...ed

the end is near

my eyes are tired, can't seem to focus anymore. it's just like when the effect of polyjuice potion wears out and harry needed his glasses back.

i've been reading that new harry potter and the deathly hallow since morning. to think i actualy woke up before 7 and rushed to east point's popular to queue for that book.

so uncool for a non-teenager.

it was a non-event actually. there was this boy that dressed up in robes ala hogwards student but he just paraded between cashier counters to counters without even looking at the customers. what's the point?



there wasn't even too many people out there too it was foolish to even think there'd be some devilish one shouting spoilers like 'harry's dead!!'. seems like i'm never gonna have a chance to practise my avada kedavra spell.

anyway, i've been enjoying the reading. although it's a bit sad when you know it will end once i clear the last page. with every page i turns, there's a danger of someone dying.

which is stupid really. just like when you cry watching, say, bambi. i'm sure it's so sad when the guy stopped drawing the deer.

the supplement i ordered just being delivered at my doorstep. few days ago i read this article from yahoo about 25 ways to fight ageing, and they have taking alpha lipoic acid as the no-2 item.

when i went to plaza singapure for dinner last night, i stopped by GNC and asked about it, you know, just out of interest. man, it costs $128 for a 30 days supplement.

as if they are made from diamond powder or something. how can you improve your overall being after buying that when in the end you'd be led into depression mode anyway once seeing your account statement?

so i tried this local website www.nutritionpark.com which i found while browsing through the internet. one click and before you knew it, it's on your doorstep like magic as if you cried accio supplement! and it's cheap too. barely 50 bucks inclusive of delivery. this is so the way i'm gonna manage my supplements need in the future.

but of course i had my doubts too. i mean, how do you know it's authentic and not some unsafe substance that make your chest grow or something? it's not like it has a shop that you can bang the door on, or drag the police to. but i guess, i have to take my chances.

i know i can't expect this kind of stuff that i really need to just being given to me anyway, you know, as a present or something. last friday, a female colleague of mine didn't know what to buy for her good male friend's birthday so she asked me what was my most memorable birthday gift for tips.

and i was like..

'yeah of course i've received a memorable gift before. it was..'
'wait, what about that time when i received...'
'well there must have been something..'

which by that time she already looked at me with this funny face. gosh have i really ever received one? memorable gift i mean. when it took more than a few minutes cracking my brain to find one, it surely not that memorable, isn't it?

but i'm sure that sounded worse than reality. i mean, i remember that time when my friends brought me out for birthday dinner then in the end ended up eating cake squatting at this roller skating place in orchard because the restaurant didn't allow us to eat external cake.

or that time when they tricked me into going for tea break during work and surprised me with seah street deli's 7-layered chocolate cake that i so craved, which they bought surrepticiously during lunch time. although to think about it, that was actually as a small farewell before i went to oversea outstation, not birthday.

the point is, i'm sure i'm still blessed.

now what i have to find out, is who's not so blessed until ended up being killed in this last harry potter's book installment as rumoured.

maybe in the next page.



...ed

my heart is beating keeps on repeating

my brain is in a mess. it's now functioning like a hard disk with the red busy light kept-on-no-make-it-consistently blinking, you know like when all other applications run haywire and you're forced to restart the whole system.

somehow i started to give a thought on every single single little things, analyzing every acts and then checking my phone inbox every now and then with glitters of hope kept on coming and getting dashed all day.

no wonder ppl refers this as affair of the heart. it's an affair, it's meant to be complicated, or in some case, it would even potentially involve a mongolian model and bunch of explosives. maybe this is normal after all.

or maybe i just have too much brain space for unnecesssary activities. take yesterday, everything was good wasn't it when i was all busy? at least i did nothing that i could regret of.

aside from being inactive in the first few hours of the afternoon when i had headache. but again, not that i could control that, couldn't i? i don't know why i had these headcahes lately. maybe i should get my eyes checked or something.

the durian eating escapade in jb was a success. at first, it was close to getting axed because of some miscommunication. it's a long story, i wanted it on saturday instead of sunday so that we have more time to spend but someone already made arrangements for sunday because i never replied when it was suggested via e-mail blah blah blah.

anyway, that's all history. there was this local fruit fair in angsana that we went to. it involved a lot of waiting at first till 3 of us just went ahead munching without the rest joining. i mean, why make a simple task so hard? i wanted to eat there and then go watch movie, it was not really our fault if people got delayed because of house viewing or visiting clinic or whatever.

there was a long line queuing for tickets in tebrau city jusco. apparently most people went for transformers and harry potter. since most of us already watched transformers, and i already have tickets for harry potter on monday (although i didn't mention this to anyone), we settled for die hard 4.0.

which i'm glad we did. that was no doubt the best movie so far this summer. even better than transformers. who cares about car-changing robots when you can have john mc clain? when he hit that black-haired IT-girl bitch hard on the face and pulled her hair off, it felt like christmas. what about when he flew the car to hit that helicopter? never had i applaud violence so much in my life.

then we went to danga bay for a short karaoke session. i think half of johorians were there at danga bay on that saturday night. it was all buzzy with people eating, dating, karaoke-ing and even cycling with carriage-like vehicle. it was so lively.

what's unique, at least for me, for this karaoke is that we pay by number of songs instead of hourly. it's RM2 per song, so we paid for 10 songs. they had this small cage-like mirrored boxed room where you karaoke while people can see you from outside which make you feel a bit like creatures on display. i wonder what would people say when they saw us covering our ears while our more enthusiastic member screamed their lungs out singing. i guess the theme of the night was who could deliver high pitch screaming that could break glasses.

my friend drove me back into singapore after midnight, which was really a relief. i happily tucked in to bed and then realized i left my car in my company. man, how could i forget to bring back my car? i left it there so that i could take my friend's bike to jb in the morning.

i'm such a durr-brain.

the night would have been at least close to perfect despite all of that had i got to make that phone call, or even received a brief morning message but well, sometimes we just need to reboot our brain so we could move on.

i wish.



...ed

excuse me for this i just want a kiss

it's that time in my life again when i feel like living the song lyrics. you know, when suddenly things happen in rhythms and you start waltzing you way through the pathway.

so on the way back from work just now, i stopped by the music store to buy kelly clarkson's my december album. who cares about what crap clive davis was complaining, i so dig her new songs.

maybe not those you-hurt-me-so-i'm-gonna-hunt-your-whole-clan-down numbers, which by the way build most of her album mood, but the other positive notes ones.

i don't know if those melody could break my heart or save me. one thing sure, this fire is getting hot again but i'd still touch the flame 'coz i'm a curious cat.

so far instead of burning, it tingles in a good way. you know, like the after-sensation following that extra wasabi in your sushi piece.

although someimes i'm confusing as hell. i'm north and south. i'll probably never have it all figured out, but what i know is i wasn't meant to walk this world without ever experiencing this.

the only lesson i learned now, the hard way potentially, is that something can never be divided, as abundant as it appears to be.

not equally anyway. that's why we have prime numbers.

anyway, i'm not gonna worry about my timing, i wanna get it right. i hope i creep where i belong and finding not what i knew all along.

man i feel very much alive.

although it feels weird being home on thursday night. normally i'd be at the bowling alley around this time. it's the step ladder final tonight but our team already missed the cut. we could have done better but i guess it's just impossible to have all things to go your way.

i don't wish bad things but i don't wish those bowlers well tonight.

ok maybe this is the time to actually spin those damn-i-hate-you-i'm-gonna-scream numbers.



...ed

a little bit too much foodelicious

i think there's a little baby fat around my tummy. oh sweet lord what have i got myself into?

although it makes sense actually. i had it all coming. think about it, i didn't exactly lead an active life schedule recently. no tennis, no badminton, no swimming. what i did after coming back from work, is slump on my bed and watch friends.

can't really blame myself because i just went through successive hectic weekends. when you're being deprived the luxury of resting on that precious off days, the body kinda tend to compensate during the other 5 weekdays.

i blame the human anatomy.

remember the christina aguilera concert? that was 2 weeks ago on saturday night. i must say christina rocks! my god that girl has a horse power lung, george bush better forget iran and whatever nuclear craps they're building because this baby jane has the original reactor pipes that could blow you away.

a pity that the singaporean concert crowd sucks on an otherwise a perfect night. i mean, i know that the hall looks a bit like lecture theater but that doesn't mean we have to act like being in one. stand up for god's sake. while christina was blasting her moulin rouge number, my legs almost wanted to jump off my pants and people still sit as in detention center?

at least 2 caucasian ladies came up with their senses and stood up to dance but the police came over to ask them to sit because they were obstructing the view. duhh..

anyway i still enjoyed it, although i swear next time i must fly out of this dull-jud city and watch with other fun crowd. or at least take the free standing ticket instead because i guess the way singaporeans see it, unless the ticket states 'standing', they are gonna do what we normally do on seats. sitting.

that was followed by a late night supper at tampines ave 2 because after that rush of energy and adrenaline, we just needed time to calm down and bring our heartbeat to the original level. that black pepper roti john special flooded with mayonnaise didn't seem that sinful then.

on wednesday we had this FoodMoreDelicious team building event for our office department started at 2pm, which meant a short working day. i love team building activity. ok the bonding thing is pretty ok and it's all paid for, but most importantly we can escape work and got regarded as good and supportive employees. it feels like christmas for some people.

what we were supposed to do after being divided into several groups, was to solve 10 given clues that would pinpoint a location and the food each. we must then travel there and eat to get points. it's kinda like the amazing race, except we have our bosses to drive us around, and get to eat all those free famous food.

so among the clues we solved and went to were the yu-tiao, beancurd and durian in geylang, takoyaki in bugis, gelare waffle ice cream in holland V (is gelare originated from australia? someone should question the validity of those clues), paper curry rice in kitchener road, meatball in IKEA and wantan mee in old airport road.

never had i so many food to eat without actually realized the consequences with each bites down my throat. any consolation though, we got 2nd in overall, and that yet rewarded us another large box of food goodies for us to further consume. urghh...

on food hunting around the island

on friday after work i took a bus back to kl because it has been, i dunno, last january?? .. since i last went back to my parents house. plus, my brother just came back from the states for summer holiday cum work practical so we were gonna have a little family reunion. except unlike chinese new year reunion which only happens at dinner, this time it felt a bit like harry potter grand hall dining when the food magically appears on the table around the clock. in a span of 2 days, we had fried macaroni, durian deserts, sandwich, mee jawa, lemang and rendang, roti jala and chicken curry, kfc and chocolate cake, you know, on top of normal rice meals.

home made chocolate cake

it was nice though, being pampered once in awhile like this. until you spot those unwanted bits around your tummy which even the biotherm homme abdoscuplt couldn't not fix. i so must resume my workout regime now.

and yet i still plan for a durian eating escapade in jb this weekend. what was i thinking?



...ed