Talk about multi-tasking... Currently I'm chatting online, updating blog, uploading photos and checking out message boards.... yeeps... the power of the Internet...

I donno whether you guys are affected, or whether it's just me, but my poor, faithful little tagboard is down. Kaput. Kicked the electronic bucket. I donno whether this is a temporary glitch or whether the company has given up for good, but I hope it'll come back. if not, I'll put in a replacement. You guys seem to love it so much.

Flea market at Braddell again tonight! But due to underwhelming demand the other time, I don't think I'll be selling my shirts there again. Instead, I cleared out my wardrobe for all my old, haven't-worn-in-centuries clothes and am planning to hock it there instead. "$2 for everything! Take! Buy! Please!" [although most likely, we end up selling most of my mom's old stuff instead, which is almost twice the amount of stuff I have]

Clearing the wardrobe, however, has turned out to be something of a timecapsule opening. Memories abound in the cupboard full of old clothes. T-shirts from O-week in NUS, JC house shirts, [the old green house shirt] all the way back to the sec 1 Fiesta shirts. [Slayer: Remember those? Still have them... hehe] And even a very, very old shirt from my cathecism classes when I still went to church. [oh boy, that one is old, all right...]

A person's lifetime... recorded in T-shirts...

Then as you go even further back, you find other stuff, stuff that you had when your fashion sense was non-existent and you were the willing barbie doll for your parents to doll up. Gods, I shivered when I saw clothes from that era. *shiver* Those were the times when your dressing was entirely dependent on the tastes of your parents and grandparents. At the present time... you'd have to force me under pain of death to wear some of those things again.

Are they that bad? Well, take a look:


There may be fauna hiding among all the foliage in this skirt.


Vertical stripes may be flattering, but this dress looks like it was recycled from some curtains.


No, this isn't my dad's or my brother's shirt. A drawback to my cross-dressing days, when I wore baggy shirts and nothing with even a touch of feminity.


No offence to certain people, but this reminds me of the SCGS uniform, albeit a pink version of it.


I just know my grandmother bought this one for it. She had a penchant for floral designs, and for forcing her granddaughter to wear them whenever they went out. Explains my later cross-dressing days.

*shudder* Not surprisingly, I'm pretty glad to be able to get rid of some of them......

Why do I bother? Why do I even bother??

Latest f-ing basket case to be added to my gripes list: Yahoo! Geocities. The Great Teacher Su stuff is currently being hosted there, and today when I open the Geocities page, what do I get?

3 advertisements for Yahoo! Hosting plans.

No file manager

No upload

NOTHING in other words that would allow someone to create even the most BASIC of webpages.

Now for the curses: *Deep breath*

WAT THE F-- IS THIS??? WAT KIND OF F-- RUBBISH IS THIS?? YOU CALL YOURSELF A FREE HOSTING SERVICE?? YOU BUNCHA SAITEI KUSOS! I HOPE YOU AND ALL YOUR SERVICE STAFF ROT THEIR A-- OFF IN HELL!

K now I feel better. Aahhh.....

When their service decides to work again, I'll see if I can post up the first GTS cartoon.

Bleah.

Quick update of my life:

Mon: Hari Raya Puasa saw me and Candle going down to Pulau Ubin for a day of cycling. We got ourselves scorched by the afternoon sun, explored the island and came across some quirky characters.

One of them was a female cyclist, whom we encountered while cycling along a dirt path in the midst of jungle foliage. This lady was wearing makeup and heels while cycling in PU. So who's there to admire her [not very] pretty face? The lizards and the trees?

Another was a group of old ladies, sitting along the edge of the island, facing the sea, and singing. All these ladies, in a row, singing away. [slightly out of tune] And once again, we have no idea why. We don't even know what they were singing, seems to be a pretty out of tune scale.

Once we decided that our skin was scorched enough, [hello, skin cancer...] headed back to the town for some drinks, and very refreshing and cool coconut. Sigh...... Despite kampung appearances, btw, prices on Ubin are almost the same, if not more, than the mainland. Beware.

Other than that, PU is a pretty nice place to go once in a while. In the midst of the jungle, and admiring the quarry, you wonder what's so great about civilisation.

Tues: Read and stone.

Wed: Went back to NUSSUX to help Angie photostat some stuff for her research. The central library has been magically transformed from a dull, musty, place with books and papers to... a place that actually looks quite hip. The furniture is much nicer, and the lush, red armchairs are definitely more comfy. Hee. Note the one girl in the corner, reading Agatha Christie leisurely while everyone around is reading notes or typing furiously away at their laptops. :p

However, it's only the appearances that have changed. As I found out, the borrowing system remains the same, with the RBR books still being borrowed by the paper-down-a-slot method. Duh. Nice trappings, primitive systems.

And I got this. :) :) :)

My first piece of REAL software. Yea, that's it. REAL. As in, NOT PIRATED.

*gosh! gasp! shock! horror!* I ACTUALLY PAID FOR SOFTWARE.

Well, that's because of this offer which I decided to take advantage of. I didn't want to pay the pirate $10 for another stupid 30 day trial run. I like authentic software. I just don't like the price I usually have to pay for it. Bleah. But when it's affordable, why not? It's more stable, and actually has a guarantee of quality. That means if it breaks down, you can return it to the shop, and not have to hunt down some tattoo-ed gangster somewhere and risk getting leg and limb chopped off.

*hugs the CD* Real software......mmmmm.......

The cinch came in that I had to write down my name and matric no, in which I *innocently* wrote down my name and my old matric no. *whistles away as she leaves the store*

Other than that, NUS hasn't changed much. The bizad canteen gained an extra stall, and that's all I saw. Plus western food uncle's food is just as good. Mmmm....

Readingwise, I seem to be on an anti-religious mood, starting off with The Jesus Mysteries, [find it in the libraries if you can. It's... intriguing] and I, Lucifer, by Glen Duncan. It's written from the perspective of the Devil, and how God has given him a month in a human body. If he repents, he gets to go back to Heaven. If not......The writing is wickedly witty, and I love it. It makes me laugh at every paragraph, like this:

"Angels had pure spirit and a one-dimensional existence blowing smoke up the Divine Bottom morning noon and night. Man, apparently, was going to have the entire natural world, sentience, reason, imagination, 5 juicy senses and, according to the development leaked before the war, a get out of jail free card courtesy of Jimmeny Christmas [guess who] to be phased in not long before the fall of the Roman Empire with limitless retroaction."

OMG! *LOL* :)

K hungry now and time to get on with the rest of my life. Cya guys.

This is me, now: (@__@)

Suffice to say, one of my latest illustrations nearly killed me and me eyes in the making. While the concept seemed pretty easy, execution... well, almost executed me. Click here to see the image.

Plus: My current favourite image, because it reminds me of Paris. Sigh...

Ok, shameless self-promotion over......

Book Sale at Expo

I'm thinking of placing myself under house arrest in Dec. This as the result of a HUGE book sale I went to at Singapore Expo. Innocently, I went there, thinking of getting a few good bargains.

Never expected that the sale was almost the size of a whole hall.

NEver expecting that there would be loads of books I was interested in, but wasn't willing to spend the money for.

Never expecting to leave the place with 2 huge plastic bags, one in each hand. [they were damn cheap! I swear!]

Even while picking out books, I garnered a few looks from people [prob wondering how this girl managed to carry the basket of books all over the place] and like thank god the cashiers accepted NETS. If I went to all that trouble of getting the books only to queue and find out that I couldn't get them in the end............

Ok.... book sales get me high...... i'm such a nerd........

Sigh....... anyone wanna borrow from my 'library'?

[insert] Check this out guys. Lemon Tree Guy isn't the biggest clown in the Idol competitions apparently...

http://www.geckoandee.com/idol/MI_W4_Britney_Barbie_Sexy_Shorts.wmv

Courtesy of Angie Pangie, who's just sent me an email with all the links. Thanks gal!

[end insert]

I hate it when I get a great idea.

And it hounds me day and night.

Refuses to let me sleep properly.

Until it gets released.

It's almost 2am, but I'm still fired up with creative energy. [curse you, muse. couldn't you hit me in the daytime instead?]

And I've come up with:

1 fully-working GTS website. [had to chope the space before someone else did. But won't release it in the blog until I feel it's time. :p Or that I can handle the drawing]

1 terrible cartoon [all lettered] with bad jokes

3 rough cartoon sketches

3 new GTS pix, here's one:


GTS shows off her best Bruce Lee impersonation.

My muse is like my cycle.... Calm most of the time... nothing forthcoming, and then without warning, *BAM!* !@#$%! And then calm again...

That's why when i get an idea, I go all out in the start..... and then it peters down....... *cue to balloon deflating*

Wonder how I keep this blog going......

I'm gleefully using the com while my bro is still at school, and my parents have just gone out. BLISS IS MINE!

Ok, this sounds nuts, but the house has not been at peace since my mom has been clearing her leave for the year. A house with one menopausal woman and one menstrual one does not a good house make, I'm sorry to say. (^^!) And plus I've gotten so used to doing stuff when no one's around, that it feels weird doing them when someone IS around. Ergh.

On the bright side, the excess time on my hands means I've gotten to do a lot of other kooky stuff, like:

1) More artwork and T-shirt designs, manga-based this time. Most of them... well, only exist as jpeg files and ideas in my head at the moment. Heh. [Shameless self-promo time: Click on Aki@Side7 link to check out what I've been doing with all my free time]

Also been browsing through the papers, and discovered a section in the classifieds for 'business opportunities'. Various stalls for rent are listed here. Hmm. Would try, but depleting bank account says no for the moment...... Although am realising that self would like to go into that direction in the future...

Incidentally, another cartoon that I did for GTS. To those in the know, the references should be obvious... :p



2) Trying to reconnect Dragonfly and myself with our Chinese heritage. Well, in the sense that I laughed my heart out watching him struggle to read a primary school Chinese textbook and he laughed his heart out watching me struggle to use a pair of chopsticks the proper way. Like, I din' even know I was using them the wrong way all these years!

Just as well realised that Daddy also used chopsticks the wrong way, so now I know who to blame...... :p

3) Making papaya smoothies. Found an old blender in the storeroom, and hit on the bright [yet insanely mad] idea of making papaya smoothies. Which brought on a whole list of problems.

First, when said blender was plugged in, nothing worked. Dad said he thought something must be wrong with the plug. [blender works on a 2pin plug]

Dad takes out wide array of baffling tools and dissects the 2pin plug with the precision of a brain surgeon.

"Er, if you do that, and it still doesn't work, can we still bring it back to the shop for repairs?"

"Yup."

"You sure?" He tugs apart the 2pin plug and the wire, and now tears the rubber casing off the wire, exposing the 2 wires underneath.

"Yup."

"Watever..." He takes apart another 3pin plug, and proceeds to screw in the 2wires to the fuses. [Ok, it seemed easy when he was doing it, but it's a little hard to explain here]

Having done that, he plugs in the new 3pin plug, switches on the power, and then switches on the blender.

Nothing works.

He switches off the power, on again, and then switches on the blender again.

Nothing works again.

At this point of time, I'm reading through the warranty card to see if it has already expired, while father fiddles with blender somemore. It turns out that one has to securely screw on cover in order for blender to work, and it was nothing to do with the plug after all. :p :p :P

All that trouble, for an overly thick cup of papaya juice..... hai..... [which incidentally I made sure EVERYONE in the house drank at least a cup, in compensation for my efforts in getting the thing to work, and cleaning up the mess later]

Currently going through the tuition equivalent of unemployment... Since all my kids have finished their exams, the only thing that remains for me is to await their results, and see if the parents wanna rehire me in Jan.

Which means... I'm damn freakin' free around this period. :)

But which also means... I'm damn freakin' broke around this period. :(

Which means... I have a whole lot more time to draw. :)

But which also means... I don't have the money to go out, shop, or buy new materials. :(

Bleah......... Business graduate becomes starving artist. I can just see the headlines in the New Paper now.

And btw, notice the new link? Side7 provides space for other starving artists like myself to host their artwork. You can see my gallery if you click on the button.

On another note, here's the 2nd piece for Candle to browse:



Seeing as we never had a real graduation photo with all of us in gowns, I took it as the theme for this design. Tell me what you think, k? Then it's back to the Photoshop for any changes and the 3rd design.

And for Yenn:



This would look groovy on a Tshirt, if only she'd wear it... :D I also sense potential for a comic here, but not anytime soon... :p Lemme get on with Candle's postcards first...

Lotsa stuff, lotsa stuff...

First up, from now on, all Funny Farm designs will be put up in my Side7 gallery. It's sorta an artists' website where all can post up their artwork, and garner praise/criticism without the rotten tomatoes. What I'll do is update you guys on new designs on my blog, and you can click on the link to see the designs. My apologies, but I need to clear out the rest of my photobucket album before I can use it again, and I'm still not sure what to chuck and what not... hee... And at least u guys can see some other illustrations I might be dumping in there from time to time...

Second down, check out this livejournal entry. Geesh! And they used to call Singapore a dictatorship? Some land of the free..... this stinks of Orwell all over...

Third left, I had a pretty eventful day yesterday, being All-Saints' Day, I did the following:

[Some entries are real long, so they're in separate entries. Just click on what you want to read instead of scrolling down all the way]

Went to the CCK cemetery and columbarium with parents

Went to Novena church for service, which was essentially an abridged version of the usual Catholic mass.

Went to Toys R Us and Sakae Sushi with Yenn.

That's it. :) Today I plan on snuggling up with the PC and doing more illustrations. *Yawn* Life of a Slacker...

Day of the Dead

Technically, that's today, All Souls' Day, but technically, most saints are dead too, so I guess it counts too......

This Monday morning saw me traipsing around ashes and graves as my parents had decided to go down to visit my long-departed [Christian] relatives. Me, being of Slackdom, opted for that as opposed to a comfortable morning in front of the PC.

One thing you realise, as you drive into the CCK area where all the cemeteries and the columbariums are, is that most death rituals are most likely done for the benefit of the living, than the dead.

Take for example, the Christian columbarium, the Gardens of Remembrance. The outside of the columbarium resembles, at first glance, a posh country club. Yes, a country club. The whole thing is very stylishly designed, with gardens, and nice polished granite walls. My dad even tells me that there's perpetual piped music inside.

I donno about others, but if I have to live the rest of my dead eternity listening to bad organ renditions of Christian hymns...... I think my ghost will just go insane and haunt the place with my baleful wails.

"Noooooo.......... More................. 'Holy holy'.....................Want..................... Linkin....................Park......................"

Then the priest will have to come and exorcise me to Hell.

And even the 'middle-class' columbarium, where my uncle and my grandmother's mother was looked like a Pasir Ris chalet. Only the inhabitants er, stay for life and the rent is paid by their relatives.

Some interesting bites from my dad:

1. The space, or 'flat' where my deceased uncle rests actually just contains a handful of soil. When I asked about it, he said:

"Your uncle was actually buried at a cemetery, and later on, the government decided to take back the land. They exhumed all the graves, but because your uncle had been dead for so long, [almost 40 years] there was nothing left of him, even the coffin he had been in. We figured that since we had been paying for the land all this while, and we'd continue to pay for the space [in the columbarium], we may as well take what we can of the dirt [from the graveyard plot] and put it in there.

If the government is going to make us pay for the dirt, then we might as well have the dirt and keep it!"

Er... ok...

2. Every person has a story to tell. Even those of the dead, if the living still remember them. Through my parents, I learned that my deceased uncle had a strong desire to become a Christian missionary at the age of 7. [Yikes! So how did his future niece turn out so paganistic?] I also learned that my distant aunt was a gentle, easy-going soul who loved to play the accordion, of all things. [there's that whatever-gene that came down to me]

All these long, distant people. And somehow, their lines went down and merged, and I was produced, in the far off future. How would their lives have affected mine? Was it because of my deceased uncle's Christian tendencies that my Taoist-almost-nonbelieving Dad got attracted to my Catholic Mum? [hence resulting in a lot of religious confusion in me...] My mother's line, consisting of a line of women who managed to all be different, in a yet quirky and easygoing way.

2 distinct family lines, boiling down to me and my brother.

Hmmm. Sometimes it's worth to go down to a place like this, simply for the stories.

Oh, and apparently, the nearby military camps make it a habit to conduct training sessions in the cemeteries, to encourage bravery in their troops. [how many people dare to spend the night in a cemetery, AWAKE and on the alert the whole night?] So if ever you are at the CCK cemeteries and you notice fleeting figures jumping from behind one gravestone to another, or blurry figures behind trees at the corner of your eyes.... Don't run screaming from the place. :)

Although when my dad told me that, the following scenario popped to mind:

It is the dead of night. The cemetery is empty and quiet, except for one man praying at his parents' graves.

[translated from Hokkien and muttering under his breath] "Please lah, please lah, all I need is the 4 numbers lah. Ah Lian is sick already, cannot work so hard, and children all in school leh."

The leaves rustle in the distance, and the wind blows them so that they brush past him. He shudders.

Suddenly, what was that??!! He thought he spotted a grey blur at the corner of his eye, but as he whipped his head, there was nothing. Don't think too much, don't think too much, he thinks to himself.

"I know lah, you two never like me to play the 4D, but now I really need the money lah!"

He hears a leaf-rustling sound from behind his parents' grave again. The joss sticks that he has offered to them are suddenly extinguished by a gust of wind. He gulps and continues his plea.

"Your son is begging you already! PLEASE LAH!" He abruptly shouts out the last 2 words, in sheer desperation and fear.

"ARGH! ARGH! WHO GOES THERE! FREEZE OR DIE!" Pte Lim couldn't stand it anymore and jumped out from the grave he was hiding behind. His large, fear-stricken eyes stare at the man and his shaky hands thrust the rifle at his face, the end of the rifle only inches away from his face.

*THUD* The man falls backwards, eyes wide open and body rigid, in a manner no one could doubt. Pte Lim stood there, shaking, and as he calmed down, wondered how the hell he was going to explain this to his sergeant......

Pregnant Fish?

Why the funny title? Reason coming later...

Possibly the best time to go to Toys' R' us is on a weekday afternoon. That's when parents are at work, [no adult shoppers] kids are at school, [no screaming kids and half-mangled toys on floor] and the store is practically empty. So what can 2 [supposedly] grown up 'young adults' do at a giant toys store?

1. You can go in there, manhandle the merchandise, oops, I meant play with the toys. Upon entering the store, we saw leftover Halloween merchandise, and immediately grabbed tridents with to jab each other in sensitive abdominal areas. Ya! Take that!

2. You can try on dumb costumes which you'd never do in the presence of 50 ogling customers, as Yenn did with the mouse hat.

3. You can gleefully open the package and see what the inside looks like. "What do you think the board game looks like inside?" "I donno." and proceeds to open the box, and take out the gameboard and play money. "Ooooh......"

4. You can ogle and drool over all the toys you want without feeling embarrassed or having kids give you strange looks.

"OMG IT'S A POOL TABLE!!! AND IT'S ONLY $40!!!"

"UNICRON FROM TRANSFORMERS!"

"LIMITED EDITION X-MEN UNO CARDS WITH COLLECTOR'S TIN!"

"AAAARRRRGGGHH!"

Ok, so most of the above statements came from me...... :p

Then Sakae Sushi for buffet lunch. [Students' Price too. HA! And you guys wonder why we didn't get regular jobs! :p] And can I state for the record that Yenn has a SICK FETISH for PREGNANT FISH. Yes, I'm talking about the shisamo sushi that Sakae has on its red plates. I mentioned that I once got turned off by the thought of eating shisamo because it was pregnant fish, and she kept PEEPING at every damn pregnant fish that went by her on the conveyor belt.

Me: "Will you stop that!" after the umpteenth time she has lifted the cover to peek at the egg sacs of the fish.

Yenn: "Wah, look at the eggs in it. Every time you eat it, you're killing countless lives!"

Me: "They're already dead! And everytime you do that, it's like you're lifting up the skirt of a pregnant woman to peek at her ovaries!"

She's sick lah, I tell you......

Ranting again

THE WORLD HATES ME!!!!!

Ok, not the world, just the IDIOTS who run the auction sites...

I've been trying to register as a seller on ebay and yahoo auctions lately, not realising what a total disaster registration would turn out to be.

Firstly, Ebay just WON'T let me register. Everytime I click on the link to create a seller's account, the dumb page won't load, and the Security Alert window pops up umpteen times but the page won't. WTH. ARGH! And this is for just a dumb registration form!

Secondly, I tried my luck on Yahoo! Auctions, and worse still, they asked me for a Security Key, which apparently I created when I first applied for my Yahoo account umpteen years ago, so HTF am I supposed to remember that I had it in the first place???? I can't remember WTH I put in as answers to my security questions, and so they won't let me create an account either. WTF WTH WTH!!!!!

DOES ANYBODY REMEMBER THIS KIND OF INFO???

So the only auction website I can ever enter is Yahoo! Auctions Singapore.... wah freakin' cow lor... Looks like I'll have to think of something else to promote my images overseas... :(

And speaking of images, belated birthday cards for Candle:



Caption reads: Your Card's Here.

And



Caption reads: Sorry, I got a little distracted.

I hope the pictures turn out, because this is the first time I'm linking from Side7. If not, click here to go to my gallery. I really, really miss Photobucket's unlimited storage...... :( :( :(

2 things: Photobucket Limit and DoE's Birthday. Scroll down for the latter.

Photobucket Limit

Photobucket has finally done the commercial thing and has slapped a storage limit on my previously-unfettered account. :( Which means that I had to delete a good deal of pictures on my account in order to upload newer ones. :( :( :( A bulk of the pictures being my Funny Farm album.

*WAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!*

Shit lah. And the premium upgrade is $50 for a year. Grrrr...... Shine kudasai ano kitanai ne.....

So for any FF pics.... pls go to the tripod website lah.... sigh.... though it'll only be a matter of time before I bust the limit on that one as well....

DoE's Birthday

On a more interesting note, yesterday was DoE's birthday. Tanjoubi Omedeto Gozaimasu! And the night was spent BBQ-ing at her condo.

Bites for Slayer and Sylver:

1) The food, consisting of chicken wings, sotong, cuttlefish balls and about 4 different kinds of cocktail sausages, we realised, tasted FAB when generously smeared over with honey. Especially the chicken and the sotong. :) :) :) The first time I smeared the food over, Jubilee and Tak could only look upon it in horror ( "We're all gonna be diabetic and cancerous!" ) but once they started eating...... they were smearing on that honey pooh-bearstyle as fast as they could. Note to self: Honey is now an essential ingredient for all BBQs. :D

Oh, and it's especially OUTSTANDING on marshmallows....... mmmmmm..........

2) DoE's little sis has now formed the childishly-adorably-irritating habit of calling me "Tablet". I have no idea why.

Plus, she nearly gave us all heart attacks when she perched on a ledge outside her house to wave to us in the pool downstairs. In case you don't know, their apartment is like, 2 stories above the pool floor. *shudder* The invulnerability of youth. Her guardian angel must have a full-time job, together with OT.

3) DoE probably invites us for the entertainment value.

Me: "You can take this fishball off now, he's nearly done."/"You can eat him now, he's done"/"Bring the chicken over and let's fry him"

DoE: ( With a curious look ) "Why do you refer to all the food as 'he'?"

Me: ( In the case of the fishballs ) "Because they're balls?"

DoE: ( Narrows her eyes at me )

Me: "Don't worry, your sis is out of earshot"

4)I have to admit, this is one of the weirdest, cock-est but yet coolest ( In a freaky, far-out way ) thing I have done on a birthday. :D

You know what to do when you don't have a birthday cake for the birthday girl? You create a birthday chicken out of a spare wing and a bunch of sparklers.

This idea was damn weird, but have to admit, the effect was cool. :D The idea was to stick the sparklers into the chicken wing, creating some kind of pyramid thingy.



Like so. Then you light the topmost stick.



And then... FIRE IN THE HOLE!



BURNING! THEY'RE BURNING! HOLY SMOKE, LOOKIT THAT SUCKER GO!



And the coolest thing: We arranged it so that the top stick, as it burned, would spark off the 2nd stick, and so on, and so on, creating some kind of pyrotechnic chain display. ( You know, like what I did at Redang ) It was so freakin' cool! ( Undiminished by the fact that the sparklers were stuck into a chicken wing )

Of course, the off-side of it was the smoke it created....



I'm not sure whether it's clear from the pic, but there was enough smoke there for someone to panic and think the condo was on fire. The alarm was set off, and a bunch of firefighters came running up along the pool floor, SWAT-style, only to be confronted by a bunch of very bemused partymakers and a slightly burnt, pathetic looking chicken.

No lah, that din' happen. Hee. But there was a awful lot of smoke.

After that, all over...... Another of our party turns 23...... sigh... Till the next bday... *wink wink at somebody*

service, please!

[An essay on service in Singapore follows. If you'd rather not digest it all, scroll down to the designs below... If I don't know you did so, you won't hurt my feelings. :p]

There is a coffeeshop in AMK, which I like to walk to most Wednesday mornings for a good roti prata breakfast. Usually, what I do is walk over with the latest 8Days, order my prata, teh ping, and sit there contentedly reading my mag while I eat.

The one thing that bugs me about the coffeeshop is the lao uncle and the aunty assistant that go around taking orders for drinks. Half the time, they don't notice that I'm there, despite me waving my 8days frantically in the air. [Oi! Kio zhui ah!] I used to joke with my father, if we went together, that he must've done something to the lao uncle, something so horrendous that now the lao uncle refuses to serve the both of us drinks. And indeed, usually we'll be halfway through our breakfast before someone realises that hey! That table has no drinks!

Makes me wonder if these people are really interested in earning their keep sometimes.

Which is why, today, I felt that I crossed some kind of threshold with the lao uncle. I went there in the morning, as usual, and ordered my prata. After choosing a table, I looked around, and as usual, lao uncle and aunty assistant were nowhere around, so I prepared myself for a long wait.

Who knew, after I read a few pages of my 8days, the lao uncle silently came up to me, plonked my teh ping on the table, and just as silently took the money I had left on the table and left! Before I had even managed to order anything!

Now this is what I call service. :)

Most restaurants in Singapore [and indeed, any other place that employs service staff] get a LOT of flak for providing bad service, and sadly to say, some of this flak is justified. I remember one time in the Edo Sushi branch at Changi Airport, my friend was kept waiting for hours for her dish, [while she forlornly looked at all of us eating] only to be told later that they had run out of the dish she ordered! The waiter made some mumbled apology and we paid and left. Not even a discount given. :p

Another time, at the Country Manna at Suntec City, they totally garbled up our orders, and forgot to serve us anything. [I had a stinking feeling that night that all the waiters were new] We had to remind them 2X before the manager came out and confirmed our order with us again!

And be noted if you ever go to this sidewalk bar in Orchard next to the Thai Embassy. One of the waiters [who doesn't wear specs] there has a terrible memory, because everytime we ordered something through him, he forgot about our order, and we had to re-order through another waiter. Then again, the waitress there suffers from the same memory disorder as well.

It's practically shameful, considering that these are all respectable eating places. We pay these people 10% service charge, and this is the service we get in return. And I'm pretty sure that there are many others out there who have even more horror stories about the service staff.

Are we too picky? Is our bad attitude rubbing off on service staff? Are they underpaid? Are they totally untrained? ( This last could be true )

Well, if the above are true, then how does that explain other places who offer great service? The sales staff at The CD Store, for example, lets you lounge around in a leather sofa while the staff play the CDs you want to listen to through the store speakers. They even let obviously-cannot-buy customers like me and Quet sit in the store and listen on as well. And they're friendly, and always there to fulfil your requests.

But, you may say, they get to work in an airconditioned environment, wear nice clothes, and so the work isn't as tough as in a restaurant, where you have to remember numerous orders, walk in and out of a sweltering kitchen, face bad-tempered diners, and get lousy pay, all the while balancing plates of food on your arms.

Then how do you explain people like the lao uncle, who can recognise regular customers and remember their orders? [let's see Macdonald's try that move] How do you explain this other wanton mee stall in AMK, who recognises my dad on sight, and who will automatically serve him his order the moment he sits down? Or the economical rice stall people at the Bishan Interchange who greet every customer with a hearty greeting and can even recommend what to eat? Surely these people work in much worse conditions than the waiters at, say, Edo Sushi? [either that, or they're a whole lot more nicer to me than to other customers]

I dunno. But I do know that good service is not an impossible thing, if you wish to provide it. That's why the staff at Robinson's are continuously commended for their service. I remember that, while working there, good service ethics were always emphasized again and again to the staff. My old Robinson's colleagues were always helpful and cheery towards the customers, even, in the case of one, in the throes of migraines. Maybe that's what spurred my interest in retail.

In the meantime, we as customers live with what we can. But I daresay, for an 80cent teh ping, that was pretty good service I got. :)

Random bites

Munch munch...

Just discovered Abi-station... so that's where Krystal got her icon... hee...

So I made the following:



And



Aah! Kawaii ne! I love the coloured glasses... but I dunno if I have the guts to wear it out on the streets of Orchard... :p Same thing with the bandana. If I actually wore something like that out... Can imagine Candle rolling on the floor laughing.... [Don't deny it! You will do it!]

Plus, another upload for the as-yet-non-existent portfolio, here's a postcard design commissioned by Candle.

The request was for 3 4R pictures, with all our friends in it, [the NUS gang] since, I realised to my chagrin, we have no photo with all our faces in it.

With Candle's permission, I am displaying the 1st picture that I've designed for her. Of course, the one condition was that our faces should not be displayed on my blog. Thus, I had to do a little 'airbrushing'... mwahahaha...

Hence the following:



Don't we all look so happy? *grin*

I'm still having probs trying to print it out though... for some reason, my stupid bakana printer keeps printing them WRONGLY for me... like there's this white bar to the right of the postcard that always appears... kitanai! Resolution also sucks big time... *In a pissed off fit* I WILL PREVAIL over lousy printers!

Also, more birthday pix: [Why didn't I think of this while I was designing Slayer's?? Sorry, fren... :p]



Hang on Krystal... trying to think of more...

*On a design spree*

Boo!

Halloween special... I know we don't celebrate Halloween in Singapore, but well, it was fun doing it... :p


[in an effort to not clog up my blog with too many pix, other designs are on the Funny Farm website Of course if you want to buy them *cough cough* you're always more than welcome to. *grin*]

At least I'm starting to get better at the designing.... I mean, I can actually do a pumpkin now! :p

Now, however, I face the additional obstacle of having to market my designs out in the big, big, saturated consumer cesspool that is the Internet. *Sigh* I've been trying to go through Cafepress, but not without my own obstacles. For one, Cafepress deals in USD, which makes it mucho more expensive for local customers. Every price has to be multiplied by 2, and for what? Even my primitive operation in my home can produce the same thing and for less than half the price.

The potential of it lies in being able to reach out to the American market. If I can get even a small foothold in that market through my shops, *ka-ching*! because of the currency differences. And guess who needs the money for her own domain name? Sigh............. whole buncha problems with online businesses as well...

But who am I kidding? It's not like I can afford a shop in Far East... :p

Argh, atama ga itai desu yo....

Whenever I start to create or upload a website, I inevitably start cursing, swearing, and shouting at the dumb computer. Sometimes it's a coding mistake, [which after much cursing and calming down, I'd later find] and sometimes it's something totally inexplanable. [is there even such a word?]

Today, it's the latter, sadly enough. Coding mistakes are easily rectified, but when you're DEAD CERTAIN you've already checked the BLASTED SAITEI CODE DOZENS OF TIMES AND TESTED IT AGAIN AND AGAIN AND IT ALL LOOKS OK ANYWAY ON DREAMWEAVER SO WAT THE BLASTED HELL IS KITANAI TRIPOD DOING TO MY CODE...................

Yea I'm pissed. And I'm getting hungrier to boot and my pasta hasn't heated... Not in the best of moods. :(

Anywayz, do me a favour. Check out the link to my Funny Farm website [can be found on the right to my blog] and tell me just how the damned website looks to you. If the tagboard doesn't have enough space, well, email me or leave a comment at the end of this entry or something.

Just please tell me what it looks like on your end, cos it sure looks like KUSO on mine...

Birthday Pack!

A while back, Slayer 'commissioned' a Birthday Pack for a someone down under. Well, now her Funny Farm Birthday Pack is complete, and en route to her as we speak. [or rather, that's what I hope so anyway]

Pix of it: [shameless self-promotion once again]


The shirt I did.


The Dolphin Birthday Card. A little extra...


The whole pack together.

Hoping that it reaches her safely, in one piece, and intact. :p HOpe you get it, fren.

And of course, anyway who wants the same...... *cough cough* It's $12 a pack, for a shirt, and postcard.... I can even wrap it in *nice* plastic and send to the person's address for you.

Any takers? *cheshire grin*

To Yenn, Candle, and Krystal:

You good. You all good. You all very, very good.

And why I didn't buy the top? Er, cos it was like $50 over bucks... hahaha... plus I wanted to preserve the lives of every straight Singaporean male......

we will be SAVED!

OK i wanted to do a review on this, but am temporarily suffering writers' block.... wait...

aummmmm...........

fine that didn't work. Let me start off instead with some interesting stuff that happened before I watched the movie.

[First up, this has to do with menses and stuff, so if you feel your delicate sensibilities will get offended, fast forward...]

I was having lunch with Juls and Jordan at the Sakae Sushi at the Heeren. [Terrific offer going on there on. For each buffet lunch, get 2 red plates free. We had 3 plates of salmon sashimi between the 3 of us. Ah oishiiyo.....] After a while, I felt a need to go to the toilet to change my pad. [2nd day yah, gets a bit *hmph* after a while]

I start searching my bag. Doo-dee-do-dee-do... where're my pads...

Where are my pads?

WHERE ARE MY PADS????

OMG I went out with 2 guys on my 2nd day and I forgot to bring them and it's been wat, 4,5 hours already??

I search through my bag, taking out the books I had in it, while the guys continue eating. Finally, I realise that I really DID forget to bring them, and that somehow before the movie, I'd have to get Juls to go with me to a pharmacy to buy them. The thought of all the possible dumb jokes Juls could make about this makes me groan inwardly.........

Anyway, I don't say any of the previous out loud to the guys. However, while we were walking out, and Jordan was some distance ahead, I ask Julian if we could go to Watson's before the movie started. [Jordan wasn't joining us for the movie]

Julian leans slyly over to me and asks, "You forgot to bring your pad is it?"

WTF???? "HOW THE HELL DID U KNOW???" I *almost* shout out to him.

"I don't know! I just know! When you were searching through your bag, the thought came to me that you forgot to bring your pads!"

"WTF YOU MEAN YOU JUST KNOW???"

"I just knew! That's all! I don't know how!"

OMG OMG OMG I seriously think i hang out too much with this idiot. Will someone PLEASE intro me some NORMAL guys.................

Anyways, the movie, yah..........

Saved!

If ever there's a movie to really get me burned in Hell, I suppose this would be a nominee for the title...

Meet Mary. Mary studies at American Eagles High School, a fundamentalist Christian high school in the States. Mary is also part of the Christian Jewels, the requisite cool-girl gang in every high school, headed by the extreme-bitch-ina-holy-facade Hillary Faye. Mary has a boyfriend Dean.

Who confesses to her that he may be gay.

OOPS!!! Mary is so shocked by the news, she bumps herself on the head, and sinks to the bottom of the swimming pool.

Where she receives a "vision" from "christ" telling her to "help" Dean in every way she can.

[There's a reason for all the ""s, and it will be better understood if you guys watched the movie]

So she tries her best to help Dean become, well, heterosexual. Finally, she decides to have sex with him to "de-gay-ify" him. Well, OBVIOUSLY she gets pregnant with his kid, which makes for a lot of madcap religious jokes around the school. Especially when she mixes with the castouts of the school, whom the head bitch calls "Satan's Crew". This includes a rebellious chainsmoking Jew, [a jew at a Christian school!] and the wheelchair-bound brother of the Head Bitch.

If anything, it's tempting to dload this movie, burn 100s of copies and send them to say, City Harvest Church. It plays on LOADS of Christian stereotypes, and parodies them to the extreme. When you see the beatific look on Head Bitch as she sings, you just want to snort along with the Jew. And since she's the Head Bitch, well, obviously, she practices a very hypocritical form of Christianity, in which I am right, and if you think I'm wrong, you must be part of Satan.

An interesting example? The pastor of the school confides to Head Bitch that Mary may be going through some emotional difficulties, and to gently help her through it. Head Bitch responds by kidnapping Mary in a van, and performing an exorcism on her. OMG. Well, of course Mary calls her a lunatic, and in a fit of 'holy' anger, Head Bitch throws the Bible at Mary's back! Now if that's not a metaphor for fundamentalists worldwide, I don't know what is......

In the process of the movie, Mary realises that nothing, not even religion, is as clear-cut as everyone, even the pastor, makes it out to be. What Would Jesus Do? Indeed, nobody really knows. And the end message of the movie is: to know WWJD, each one has to find his own way, make his own path.

And THAT is the only way to God. :p

Highly recommended for Hellbound Yenn to watch... hee... you'll like it.

Quick bites

Chomp chomp...

1) Right after last week's post on how f**ked up love was, Dragonfly msn-ed me:

D: So what are you going to do about Dragonfly? Hahaha

??? Does the guy have a 2nd sense of when I'm talking about him on my blog? Apparently he was surfing the net when he accidentally clicked on the link to my blog and saw the nick in the first line. What the...

And the answer to the question is... a secret of my own. Hahaha... :p

2) Sale at Seiyu has been fantastic. Already I've bought a brown top, at the Bugis outlet, and *cough cough* some underwear I was badly in need of. The whole store is on 20% off and it's ending soon, so buy whatever you can!

3) Went shopping at Bugis on Saturday night with Yenn and Candle, ostensibly to help Candle shop for a pair of casual shoes, but in typical female style, ended up trying on everything other than shoes.

We went into the Bysi shop, where I tried on a brown, long-sleeved top, with lacing at a generously-cut bodice. [so I wanted to try on something different...]

Walked out of the fitting room, only to be regaled by Candle's fit of shaking laughter.

"What??"

"The top ah... draws a LOT of attention to your bust. " And she went off in fits of laughter again.

"Ok fine... but does it make me look fat or anything?"

"Friend, with THAT top, NO ONE'S gonna be looking at ANYTHING but your bust."

The joys of being generously endowed...

Love is a stranger thing than I thought...

After talking to a couple of my friends about a) boyfriend problems b) parents-of-the-boyfriend problems c) singlehood problems and d) what I should finally do about Dragonfly, the above title is the conclusion that I have come to.

Love, is a strange, strange thing.

I recently found a book at the library titled, "Love at First Sight", published by DK. Not a trashy romance novel, but a informative book about what kind of people we would find attractive, and why we find them attractive.

The book states 3 theories on why we find some people attractive.

1) Echoism - People whose features harmonise our own are deemed more attractive.
2) Harmonism - People whose features are symmetrical are deemed more attractive.
3) Patronism Copulist- People whose features are most similiar to the first bond in our lives are deemed more attractive. So, for example, if you were close to your mom when you were young, you would look for someone similiar in features to her.

Pretty interesting no? The book was even chock-full of pictures of celebrity couples, comparing which couple would make it, and which wouldn't.

So apparently, our decision on finding a mate depends rather heavily on these unconscious perceptions of people's faces. Because your brain already has a checklist in it, every time you look at someone to check out their potential [or beoh them, to put them in plain terms] you're actually subsconsciously ticking off those items on your mental checklist.

However, compatibility obviously goes beyond the physical. We also check out a person's sensation-seeking levels, as mentioned in a previous post. According to that other study, couples who have the same level of sensation-seeking are more likely to stay together longer. This is because their sense of adventure, or exploration, mirrors each other. They are more likely to be more communicative with each other, and open-minded with each other.

And then you have the other societal cues that are also indoctrinated in us from birth. Our [potential] husband must be able to support the family, pull in a good salary, be faithful and loyal, be a good father, and generally help with the housework. All these also stem from primitive urges, very caveman-like.

We think of ourselves as a civilised people, but we never realise how caveman-like we still are at heart. Because women are the ones who carry the child through pregnancy, they are also the only ones who are sure that the child is theirs. Hence, they have a stake in caring for the child, because that's the only way their genes will get passed down. That's also why, through the years, women have also been delegated the household chores, and the rearing of the children. Because they are positive of the 'ownership' of the child.

Men, however, can never be 100% certain that the child is theirs, because they didn't give birth to it. [well, er, nowadays, they can more or less be, due to DNA testing] Thus, they feel less of a need to participate in the long term care of the child. It pretty much depends on how the man feels is the best way to sow his wild oats, and hence pass on his genes. He can either f**k as many women as he wants, hereby ensuring a number of offspring bearing his genes, or he can dedicate his time to one child, hereby ensuring that that child will survive to a ripe old age.

In this way, this is why young men are, well, so ready to spread the love. Because since they're young, their best chances of genetic survival is to spread the love around as much as possible, so that they have as many of their kids running around. And unfortunately, the instincts of the women they f**k are geared towards long term care. So men will tend to marry later and have kids, because by then, the chances of that kid surviving will be higher.

What an unfortunate match. But that's the way to keep the human race running.

So you see just how abysmally difficult it is to find a perfect match?
1) Your mate has to have the right set of features
2) Your mate has to have the same level of adventure as yourself
3) Your mate [for women] has to be old enough to want to devote themselves to long term childcare rather than massive spreading of sperm.

Complicating the matter are other things, like the human chemical makeup that gears everyone towards sex. Dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin and the usual estrogen/testosterone, all running around in our blood, urging us to go forth and f**k. All the while with the above subconscious cues wired in our brain.

Let's not talk about the esoteric part yet, which brings in the zodiacs, western and eastern, the 8 characters, the palms and others...

Let's also not talk yet about the implications for homosexuality, asexuality, transexuality, whatever-sexuality.

And we see

Just wat a blardy f**ked up thing love is.

*Sigh*