My Friend Purin

Worst Titles Ever

I'm too lazy to explain how these came about, but these are the worst possible titles suggestions meant for some CDs.

- Nautical Adventures

- Sea of Mystique

- Riviera of Love

Urgh. Sounds like bad porn movie titles.

Sentimental Ramblings

A casual meet up with friends (W, Q, T) resulted in us gate crashing VJ's fund raising dinner. It was really accidental. We were in the area and happened to stumble upon an open gate.

I met a peer who now works at the school. I am glad that I am not her, trapped in some eternal loop of students and exams and the past. She is probably happier than me. But that is really not the point.

I have always tried to cling on memories, experiences, sentimental whatnots, the coattails of the past. It's the garang guni blood in me at fault. But during this zhuo4 bo2 break in Singapore made me realized that there is little reason to do so. I am steadily gathering more memories with each passing year (darn aging!), and it is impossible to preserve the past. Things change, people age, buildings crumble, botox dissipate.

So what matters, who matters? People constantly move in and out of my life. The different jobs, the different schools, the different countries! It is like a drive-through. I should probably start spitting into people's food.

Easily impressed

It rained today, rather heavily, and the streets are not flooded. The drainage system works. See this (3rd paragraph).

I manage to collect my passport in -10 seconds. My number was blinking before I could locate the collection booth. Argh. The days when I was stuck at SSN office and at the driving license place. Arghs X100.

Clean public transportation. I noticed I'm the only one using my knuckles to prevent excessive finger contact with the holding poles (those metal I-don't-know-what-you-call-them-poles).

I just had lunch and there are TWO kinds of meat in my noodle. Prawn and pork. It's almost a miracle.

Told you I'm easily impressed.

Singapore Mornings

It's 6:36am and I am in Singapore. Everything seems familiar yet a lot smaller. The furniture especially. The countertops seem lower, so does my desks, and of course, the shower head is too easily within reach. Even my bathroom shadow (think Mickey Mouse with horizontal ears) on the ugly brown floral tiles, seems shorter. I guess I have been in supersized America for far too long.

The air is humid, even at this time; it lacks the crisp dry coolness of Calgary's mornings where I wake up with a dry throat, dry eyes, dry hands, dry everything. My skin is retaining its suppleness (ahh.. youth) and pimple potential in this humidity.

It's interesting to be back after so long, 2 years to be precise. I am easily impressed! My HDB has lifts on every floor. H1N1 is a constant topic (argh) and laminated pictures of me at graduations litter the house (argh X2). It is weird for I never got to printing out my own pictures and only scanned through them with minimal effort to pick out decent facebook pictures.

I'm surprised that the mornings are so quiet in Singapore. I remember them to be a lot noisier and busier. It's 7:14am and school assembly should be starting soon.

Oh Yatta

With the passing of Michael Jackson comes the closure of my childhood chapter. When your childhood icons die, you are probably old.. or at least much older than before.

To distract myself, I listen to Yatta:

Of Commitment

From http://xkcd.com/310/

Uniform Dullness

I'm in Calgary, Canada where a uniform dullness has beset upon the city. It is as if a thin veil of uneventfulness covers the city and its people. I am extremely under stimulated.

To curb this disease of dullness, here are some pictures to excite.

Madison Square Park

At Madison Square Park, drinking Starbucks, taking pictures of cute kids.

Stage 2 and Onwards

Ah, I haven't blogged in a while.  I have graduated and have been conferred my degree along with the rights, responsibilities and privileges attached.  I did the required photo-taking, hat-throwing and polite-clapping.  

There, this ends yet another leg of my overpriced education.   

2009 is going to be a year of pondering and deciding.  I'm have been 'hanging out' and will continue to be doing so for the next few months until I start graduate school (once again).  I've always been more of a thinker than a doer.  Graduation school probably suits me more in this manner.  I can continue to live in my own bubble world of ideas and concepts that most people do not care much about.  Well, I get to be the brains for humanity or, in all likelihoods, be a slave for publication.  Ah, or maybe... graduate school is where they lock up useless bums and give them a sense of purpose instead of setting them free to wreck havoc upon banality of reality.

Whatever.  I get to go back to Singapore to find my acupuncturist in another attempt to 'fix' my bad liver.  It's not the alcohol.  Really.  Why does no one believe me.  I am pretty sure I drink more apple / grape juice than alcohol.  Anyway, I'll probably spend long hours wandering the streets where my friends toil in corporate buildings earning their living and becoming self sustainable.  I will try to drown my sorrows drinking mocha frappuccinos and delude myself that freedom of thought is of greater value than money.  Ahh.. the sweet scent of money, when will I ever feel your dirty crinkly love again?

Of values and life, of wants and desires, of needs and longings.  Where is the fine balance?  Why must one always give up something for another?  It is a life of limited resources and limited time.  Of the choices we must make and responsibilities we must take.  The burden of growing up.

AWARE Saga

It is 3:08am on a Saturday morning and I am actively following the AWARE EGM in Singapore on 3 websites.  ARGH!  I so wish that I am in Singapore right now so I can be in the midst of all the happenings.  Everyone else I know seems rather apathetic to this!  Why!  

I want to know what happened!!  I really hope someone managed to sneak in a video camera to record the EGM.  Singapore seems strangely exciting.

Of religion

These days, I have a tendency to use the words 'I' and 'blasphemous' in the same sentence.  Since there is apparently no purgatory (depending on religious views), I seemed destined for some horrid fiery place filled with smoke and boiling lava.  

Being the practical person that I am, I think I will probably confess to some religion because the expected value of believing in 'some' religion (if it is true) is higher than not believing (see Pascal's Wager).  Anyway, it seems that as long as you believe moments before death (or maybe even after death, before the golden heavenly gates), the religion benefits will kick in.  This is unlike human earth aka reality where you have to wait for weeks before your insurance gets approved.  It is a really good bargain for I heard that heaven has streets paved with gold and diamonds and lots of free food.  Points up to religion for feeding my hungry self!  God sure knows what people want.  (Again, this sounds really blasphemous...  But I don't mean it in a blasphemous way.)

Anyway, I have nothing against religion; I think it does a lot of good for a lot of people.  But I would like it more if people question more instead of relying on faith.  However faith is one of the main tenets for religion!!   No faith = no religion.  Can't we have more doubting Thomas-es around!  Interesting read: Jesus Made Me Puke by a Rolling Stones undercover journalist who infiltrated a fundamentalist Christian camp.  Go read it even though I know you religious-un-blasphemous-self doesn't like sound of the title.

I wish people think more, but most people do not have the time to think or for that matter, want to think.  How easy it is to live life accepting what others' say without questioning.  It is a simple life, without ironies, without contradictions and without a (personal) voice.

Life and Music

Tao Sar Piah 101

One day not too long ago when I was feeling hungry, I made tao sar piah with OF using a recipe I found online.  Chinatown sells the same thing at 12 piahs for $5 but I was trying to save money.  It is only 25 cents each in Singapore and you can buy one big box for $10 SGD?

Started with the dough

Cut the dough evenly and roll it into balls

Cooking the green bean filling

2 different sets of dough - oily and the not-so-oily

Did some fancy rolling to combine the dough before adding the filling

There!  One batch

Make it all shiny and pro-looking with egg yolk glaze

Towards the end... Out of shape piahs

DONE!!!  Yum!

The filling...

Purin likes it too!

Smells nice!

Happy Purin!  

Purin wants more!

We finally finished making the ~50 tao sar piahs at 7am in the morning.  We started at 10pm or so.  Looks much more difficult than it seems...  

Fantastic Contraption

I've been playing this physics game.  The advantages of being jobless.  One of the best games ever!! 

The objective is to get the red object/s in the red area.

A link to see my fantastic contraption.

Another link to see my fantastic contraption.

And the pros:

Here, here, and here.

Unemployed

Today is my first day without a job.  I'm not in school and jobless.  It is kind of depressing.  But I get to sleep late.  I've been rather tired of work.  It became tragically repetitive, boring and depressing after some time.  And I have been working at the same place, doing the same thing for approximately 11 months.

Yikes.  I'm glad to get out of my job.  I would have liked to stay a month longer... but things are the way things are.  Not within my control.  Typical.  But at least I do not have to drag myself out of bed each morning and go to a place I do not wish to go, meet people I do not wish to meet.  But I need the money.  Ah, life is full of contradictions.

I just feel unproductive.  I really don't like wasting time.  Work was a total waste of time but at least I got paid.  I applied for some craigslist jobs.  Lots of things seemed pretty dubious.  -_-..

Well, I have approximately 1.5 months to figure things out.  Maybe I can land something interesting.  The economy is tragically bad, lots of firms want unpaid interns to exploit.  Tragic.  Maybe I should go on a holiday.  I don't know.

Lots of reading to do.  But I just don't feel like reading.  

Strangely Disturbing

Read the previous blog post before seeing this.  It really changes your perception of things...

Cute Turtle

This is super funny.  I keep watching it over and over again.  What's wrong with me!! 

Different Worlds

Today at work, a bunch of interns mentioned something about the 'Projects' in NYC.   I have absolutely no idea what the Projects are and I have been in New York for 2 years.  I'm so out of touch... Anyway, I learnt that Projects are affordable government housing aka HDB-like things in very dingy neighbourhoods, apparently rife with crime and drugs.  Projects are also dirt cheap, someone in the group stays in a 5-room Project apartment for $800!!!  Hello, I thought this is New York with its overpriced rent!!

The interns mentioned that I lived in a different world.  Probably so.  I seemed to exist in a couple of extremely distinct, non-overlapping worlds.  I flutter around the edges of these worlds, not really belonging to any of them, yet not being fully excluded from them.

It is like being at the edge of a bubble, and looking into a world that is not mine.  Hm..  so what exactly is my world?  

Forbes' Billionaires

Mexican drug lord makes Forbes' billionaire list
- CNN

What do software mogul Bill Gates and banking investor Warren Buffett have in common with wanted Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera?

Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera, pictured in 1993, ranks 701th on Forbes' yearly report on billionaires.

They are all featured in Forbes magazine's world's billionaires report as "self-made" billionaires.

Guzman Loera, whose nickname means Shorty, escaped from a Mexican prison in 2001. He heads the powerful Sinaloa cartel, investigators say. Authorities on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border blame the Sinaloa and other cartels for a surge in violence in the region.

He ranked 701th on Forbes' yearly report, with an estimated fortune of $1 billion.

Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora expressed outrage at the publication and described Forbes' calculations on Guzman Loera's fortune as mere "speculation."

"I will never accept that a criminal could be recognized as someone distinguished, even if it is by a magazine like Forbes," Medina Mora said to local media during a drug traffic summit Thursday in Vienna, Austria.

Forbes is "comparing the deplorable activity of a criminal wanted in Mexico and abroad with that of honest businessmen," he said.

Did Medina Mora really say this: comparing the deplorable activity of a criminal wanted in Mexico and abroad with that of honest businessmen

Can someone tell me how honest businessmen become Forbes' billionaires? Thank you. Goodwill, good karma or good luck?

I'm such a skeptic. Tragic.