I'm bored. I'm a slacker. and yet I don't seem to have all that much time on my hands either. What's with me? What's with my life? Where am I heading? No idea. Who has the answers? No one but God who ain't telling. What does that do for me? Leaves me to wonder around this arid field we call Earth to find my wind and fly to wherever I may.
No English? No Problem!
Sunday, October 14, 2007
"Since when did my life become so BORING??!! I seem to be blogging less and less... or basically, I have NOTHING to blog about!!!" ~ The Slayer
Or rather that I have nothing to blog about, I have tons of stuff I can blog about.
Problem is that some of those stuff involve potentially sensitive information about my sheep, and some of those stuff, well, could get me sued. :p
Once you take away all those potentially interesting stuff, then, well, what you get is the rest of it, which isn't very much to read about.
Well, some simple updates then:
I get one week off from the sheep this week. I'm looking forward to long hours of reading, much more adult interaction, and a lot of menial labour. ( More information when I meet you all )
Work is getting up to a more frentic pace, what with all the end of year mayhem, but I'm still looking forward to week 10 in about 4 weeks time. After that, it's time for some much-needed slacking. ( Ahhhhhhhh....... )
I'm getting used to it, and somewhat getting the hang, though I still make tons of boo-boos, some of which I don't even know how I got myself into.
Life in general........ A lot of friends on one end seem to be getting the hitch. Congrats to all! Especially the one whose lunch I just attended! It's deeply touching to see two people who have decided to commit their all to each other...
That being said, it seems I've also reached the point in my life where more of you seem to be getting hitched, or planning to get hitched, or thinking of getting hitched. I'm still deciding whether this is because of the biological clock, or is this because of the HDB salary ceiling on flat subsidies.
On my end, I don't think I'm quite ready for that move yet. Knowing the slower state of my relationship, I'm still somewhat in the 'honeymoon' stage, I think. When your relationship is going as slowly as mine...... :p But yet I'm not complaining about it. I like being a 26-year old teenager. :p
Maybe I'm just the kind of person who will sedately plod on with life.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
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For whoever is interested....... Although I probably won't be going... been neglecting my own Lindy Hop too much of late... :( And my blog... And my reading... And my comics........
Something about my job is affecting my personal life, in that if I don't make time for the stuff I want to do, I will never get that particular thing done. So my weekly schedule becomes almost like a school timetable.
Monday: Meet Jules for dinner
Tuesday: Meet Dad for dinner
Wednesday:Eat dinner on own
Thursday:Meet Candle and go for Lindy
Friday:Meet Yenn for dinner
Saturday:Shop in afternoon, reach Int'l Plaza at 2 or 3, and read in BK, then go for Jap and go out for dinner with Yenn
Sunday: Meet DF for lunch and dinner.
And I repeat this pattern every week!!! Where's the spontaneity?? Where's the life??? There are middle-aged retirees out there with more life than this!
I miss going for exhibitions, which I don't go anymore because I have either no time, or something up already on that night.
I miss going for plays, which I've stopped because 1, no nuff money now, and 2, it's not every time I see a play that interests me.
I miss going for long pointless walks, because there is no free day for me to take a long pointless walk the whole afternoon!
In a way, I'm thankful I'm in this line... at least I can wait till the holidays to reclaim whatever is left of my humanity......... :p
Thursday, September 06, 2007
fake or real?Is there a louder way to scream "FAKE!!!!!"?
But considering the exclusivity of these bags [less than 50 brought into Singapore, not for public sale, that means no lowlifes like you] I think we can safely assume that most of the bags you see on the MRT are most likely fake lah.
I wouldn't want to carry something too obviously fake. Heck, what for pretend I got the real thing? I'd rather carry something like:
[you saw this first on my blog. If anybody copies me, they're dreadful copycats and pirates! Copyright belongs to me!]I wanted to print this on tote bags to sell, but Cafepress is pretty sticky on copyrights and stuff. Sheesh.
So I settled for this: [Re: If I can't get a designer bag, I may as well pretend that I don't give a damn about them anyway]
Available at my Cafepress store, but prices are in USD, sorry!**No copying, no pirating or anything! I did this image and I put it up first! Copyright is mine, mine, mine!
Girl blowing bubbles. Only slackers have the free time to do all this
The closing down of Yahoo! Photos meant that I had to transfer a bunch of photos to Flickr instead. The funny thing is that I didn't even realise that I even had photos on the Yahoo! server :p but since they sent me a mail, well, apparently I did. :p :p :p
But transferring the photos brought me to my old Flickr page, and nostalgically, all the stuff I did during the tuition days, when I was still a full-time slacker.
Yes, another excuse to sigh, sigh, and sigh. The work is ok, but I do wish it left me more time to pursue these again like I used to, instead of sapping out all my energy at the end of the day. :s or greedily snatching every little bit of time that I had. [and I'm still lucky, compared to others in this line] I look at the stuff I used to do, and I wonder why I didn't pursue the potential in that corner enough, but had to wait till it was all taken from me.
Well, I guess you never really miss what you had until you don't have it.
So from the girl above, I guess I've turned to this:
Yes, the good things never come with no strings attached.
Monday, September 03, 2007
And then when it comes to the school hols, and I have the time to do some of the stuff I wanted, I find myself at a loss. :( Without a schedule to tell me what I should be doing at each second, I find myself moping around the house, and at the end of the week, I don't accomplish a thing. Except a lot of shopping and library books.
It's so sad. It's like I got so used to the hamster wheel that when I come off it I still feel as if it should be moving under me, but it's not. So the only thing I can do is munch on peanuts. [Which is what I'm literally doing, btw. It's raining and I was too lazy to go out to find food, so I salvaged a pack of peanuts from the fridge]
If I wanted to put it in another way, I could say that work is a bad habit that I haven't managed to break yet. :)
Sunday, August 19, 2007
It says shrimp
I buy a packet of flavoured nuts from the 7-11 during a break in the Jap lesson. Later after lesson, Yenn and I munch on the peanuts.Yenn looks at the script on the packet:

"Ra... Ka....?? Na....? What the heck does this say?"
"Erm, it says 'shrimp'."
"It does?"
"Yea."
Yenn peers more closely at the packet.
"Oh. Yea."
This is what happens when you pay too much attention during Jap lesson. :p
Incidentally, just started Level 5A with a new sensei [ok] new textbook [oh oh] and new grammar and vocab [argh!!!] Erm, suddenly the prospect of going onto 5B seems smaller..........
Saturday, August 18, 2007
I had initially planned writing a thought-provoking blog post about how risky a venture child-rearing was, but I realised I was just too tired to do it.
Yes, I know my jobload is light, when compared to some of my compadres in the private sector, but that has not stopped the tolls of stress on me.
Persistent thoughts of work, all the way to the last few minutes before sleep resulted in increasing degrees of insomnia. Insomnia led to tiredness in the morning, no small joke when you consider what time I have to wake up. A quickening of adrenaline upon reaching work [possibly psychologically induced] leads to sheer fatigue at the end of the day, which lasts for weeks and weeks. Short-temperedness and irration follows. A vein starts throbbing at the back of your head, making you wary of impending migraines.
Past a certain point you just feel very, very tired with life. I miss the quiet times in an afternoon, where I could sit somewhere comfortable, drink a good cup of tea, and read a good book, and do nothing else for the day. In these times, such moments of solitude appear far and rare in between.
At least my job still leaves me scope for this, if I am willing to sacrifice some things. I'm trying to give myself more 'me' time these days to stop myself getting more tension headaches and potential fat, by leaving work a little earlier, sleeping more during the afternoons, or simply spending more time in the libraries. I think I've officially passed the energetics of the early twenties, and possibly now heading towards the sedateness of the late twenties and the early 30s.
Urgh. Get me my walking stick next.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
- Quetz almost didn't make it, only able to leave late in the evening, and arriving in KL at around 2am.
- I got migraines due [probably] to dehydration. I got it on the trip there, and conked out the first night early, at around 8. The next day, the migraine continued [duh] and after a day of shopping, and a massage, I conked out again, at 8! I missed out on good dinners and good suppers on both nights. :( the only consolation is that I also missed out on the calories for those meals. :p
- A queensized bed is too small for 3 women. 'Nuff said.
Although all things considered, as we were driving down the highway, it dawned on me how many times in my life I had been in this same situation. Juls driving, me passenger, zooming down a highway to who-knows-where. At the same time, it also dawned on me how much I liked it. [sigh] How long can I continue to do this backpacking, roadtripping thing, I wonder?
Friday, August 10, 2007
First, all of us forgot to book hotels, leaving Juls to make a last minute call about, oh, yesterday. -_-!!!
Then it turned out that Juls would be detained in Singapore for some biz, delaying our departure time from morning to afternoon. This also caused Candle to back out, becoz of the possibility that we would be stuck in Singapore.
The last one just hit us today. Quetz remembered too late that she had an appointment at work that couldn't be postponed. -_-!!! She'll be taking the bus down herself in the evening and reaching KL at late night.
The bright side? I always have the unverifiable hypothesis that if all the bad luck happens at the start of the trip, it'll take away the bad luck that was supposed to hit us during the trip. Let's just hope this hypothesis doesn't fail me now. :S Or if it does, well, at least I'm only in KL..........
Anyway, I went to NDP last night with the DF.
( The Slayer has also blogged quite a bit about NDP, complete with better photos than mine, so I'll leave it at that for now. :p [But you were sitting in the same sector in front of me, I think. I recognized the dancing lobster!] )
Security was tight, from the moment you walked through the metal detectors, through to the Esplanade area itself. Heck, in lieu of the recent hairgel-ipod bombing, they even wanted to check all the liquids we had! Which meant the DF being detained for a good time, while they opened the 4 bottles of juice and drinks we had bought along. -_-!!!
The crowd at about 4pm. We managed to watch some pre-parade concert, which consisted of singers from all 4 races, [as politically correct as possible] singing songs from the complimentary NDP CD.

Hands Up! Some guys in uniform put on a military display. This was made interesting by the uncle in pink, who later on proceeded to poke his finger into the rifle butt. [Some photos you just regret not taking]

The crowd after sunset starts to take out their star lights and the stadium is transformed into a sparkling sea of lights.
And then what every Singaporean is really waiting for...
Fireworks!



Other than that, the celebrations were, *shrug* all right. They actually reminded me of the dance shows put on by North Korea, but still all right. The bag was probably the main draw of the event. [DF got me a red one!] It came packed with so much stuff, that DF and I agreed that the economy must be doing better than we thought. :s
Included:
- 2 bottles of Newater, peanuts and 1 pack of sour cream and onion chives
- 1 cheesy Osim animal hat
- the blinking star light
- a mini flag to put on your desk
- an official NDP07 soundtrack
- a trash bag and sticker. The sticker came with a lucky draw number and what you had to do was stick it onto the trash bag with your trash and you were eligible for a lucky draw. I have to admit, I didn't see this in the bag at first, so I was pretty impressed with the way all the trash was cleared so conscientiously by us Singaporeans until I found the lucky draw sticker. Sigh........
But the main draw for me is still.......... the bag. :p
It was a good NDP anyway, and it's pretty cool to be able to tell my kids that I was there on the first River parade, and no, the stage didn't sink.. :p Let's look to more years of independence, and great goodie bags!

Happy National Day!
Saturday, August 04, 2007
I first saw this in the Miyagi blog and am pasting it here 'cos Irene Ang is a fantastic comedic actress, and the whole dialogue is just... plain funny. :p Happy National Day.
What if Singapore was personified anyway? I think......
1. He would be a bespectacled middle-class white collar civil servant.
2. Who would grumble if he had to work past 6, and mumble that upper management better give him his overtime pay in the next month's salary.
3. He would work hard for his monthly salary, but discourage others from 'taking risks' or 'doing sales' because it's 'very hard to earn money'.
4. He dutifully goes to work on time, and leaves at 6 [unless he had to work OT] in time to eat dinner with his family and watch Ch 8 dramas.
5. 'Holiday' in his vocabulary is synonymous with 'package tour'. [my personal gripe] Any other kind of holiday to destinations outside of tour package destinations are 'dangerous'.
6. He'd shake his head disapprovingly at any one else who does things differently from he does, because they're all suicidal.
That's Singapore as I see it. How about you?
Saturday, July 28, 2007
The Great Greek Adventure - Part 3: The weird, the wonderful and the beautiful
A series of miscellaneous pix taken in Greece, because we were either amused or awestruck.
1. Recycling station. Hand in your old plastic bottles and receive rebates in your bank account. We could use one of these in Singapore. God knows we use enough mineral water bottles.
2. A Greek kacang puteh stall.
3. Roadside stalls: I like roadside stalls. Most of the time, people sell stuff or do stuff that you won't see in regular shopping centres, and to me it's like a visual buffet for the eyes. I just can't stop looking.
Each tree takes him about 3-4 hours to make, so you gotta admire the patience in this. :p
4. You gotta love bubbles. Everybody loves bubbles.
5. Close friends and acquaintances will know why I find taxi licence plates in Greece so amusing.
6. Do not buy pirated fake watches in Kusadasi, Turkey. Only go for the genuine fake merchandise. Respect the copyright of the pirated merchandise.
Final thoughts:
For every photo that you've seen of Greece on this blog, there are about 30 that you haven't, which I can't put on this blog because the loading will just kill it. The same way, I cannot do a file transfer of all the feelings, emotions, experiences that I went through on this much-too-short journey to Athens.
How to show you the majesty of their ruins and the history they have buried?
The sunsets we saw?
And all these other, little quirky sights that we could only snap in a moment, or let it be lost forever?
It's hard. It's one of those things, where you had to be there.
And everytime I look at my pictures again,
I just wish I was there again.
Monday, July 16, 2007
Because I'm buying a product coveted by apparently half the world, and hence confirming my conformist status. Soon I'll be buying a diamond ring, a house, a car, having kids, blah blah blah.... and walking in line with the rest of the sheep -_-!!!!!
First, ye gods, all I bought was a freakin' MP3 player to play music..............
Secondly, I'm conforming by buying an i-pod like everyone else. But if I'm buying to satifsy my individual needs of music, then doesn't that make me a non-conformist, because I'm putting my individual needs over societal status?
And if I'm refusing to non-conform by conforming to the crowd, does that by default make me a non-conformist among the non-conformist crowd?
(@_@) Yea, I'm twisting words around to make an argument (^_^) But anyway since by default everything we buy - handphones, jeans, t-shirts, Harry Potter books even, [btw was blase about the movie, eagerly waiting the book] - makes us a conformist one way or another, I'm not sure why you even made that statement to me. :p Heh heh heh...... (^_^)
Oh no! I used a conformist smiley! (^haha^)
Sunday, July 15, 2007
But all he offered me were empty promises
Word and deed as insubstantial as air
Yearning my soul to be saved
Then his light was cast upon me
And I tasted sweet salvation at last
Now I dance to a different light
More brilliant and technicolour than before
And I pray that my feet keep dancing
To the tunes from this:
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Monday, July 09, 2007
Read more on WikipediaNewspapers were rolled up tightly to form the so-called Millwall Brick and another trick was to make a knuckleduster out of pennies held in place by a wrapped around paper. You could hardly be pulled up for having a bit of loose change in your pocket and a Daily Mirror under your arm.[4]
And here are more innocuous everyday items that are potentially life-threatening in the wrong hands:
- Clothing accessories (belts or scarves for choking, walking sticks, umbrellas, finger rings (used as knuckle-dusters), steel-toed boots, chain-wallets, spike bands. shoe laces and belts can also be used as an improvised whip, a common form of domestic abuse, unlikely, but not impossible, that one would have enough time to remove it in an actual fight)
- Musical instruments (cymbals, drum sticks, piano wires (for strangulation), guitars or any stringed instrument with a long neck)
- Cleaning and janitorial equipment (broom/mop sticks, plunger handles, dust pans, squeegees, long thick handled brushes, litter sticks
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
Mingle2 - Free Online Dating
http://boredslacker.blogspot.com is hereby rated suitable for children and adults of all ages, regardless of whether you think the author of this blog is suitable company for your kids.
Monday, July 02, 2007
The Great Greek Adventure Part 2 - Chompin' away!
Let's get down to some of what Singaporeans are most interested in when in a foreign country, namely, the food.
The food there is actually pretty healthy, what with the Greek salad and just about everything else fried and slathered generously with olive oil. [one of their main exports] In one week, I think I ate more veg than I ever did in Singapore in a month, because almost everything was so fresh and good.
This is only applicable to the real Greek food, though, and not MacDonald's, Starbucks, or other dubious Chinese restaurants on other holiday islands. [attesting to the level of openness of the Greek economy]
The ironic thing is that in Greece, the most common junk food you'll find comes from Turkey:
Meet the humble slovaki. A piece of pita bread wrapped around lettuce, tomato, chicken [or beef, or pork] and yoghurt sauce. This is the local 'junk food', as referred to by a local we asked for directions. Anyway, in Syntagma Square, this is a pretty decent place to buy some slovakis:
Yes, it even looks like a fast food chain.
The islands were where we got our taste of Greek seafood, all salted with the sea.
Some of the places we ate at:
Patmos: Pantelis Tavern
This place was recommended by Lonely Planet, and by now, my motto is "Always Listen to Lonely Planet". Because this was a great place to eat!
The food came fast, and hot and the ambience of the place was great. Patmos being a small island, the town wasn't crowded at all and we had an outdoor table. It was a great place to sit, eat, stone and wish you weren't going back to work the next week.
Ok u see these? They look good? It was salty as the sea which the octopus came from. :S I could still eat them, but I ended up downing gallons of water while doing so. -_-!! Still I ate some of the best calamari rings I ever did. :D
Athens: Diros Restaurant
We were brought here by friends, and if you're looking for authentic Greek food, this is a great place to check out.
If I remembered the address, that is. -_-!!!!!
This is my favourite dish in Athens: Moussaka. A lasagna style dish made with potatoes and eggplants. Now you all know why I like it so much. :p
Rhodes: Very Special Greek Salad
I had to type that cos I wasn't sure of the name of the place... Bleah...
On Rhodes, we had driven to Petaloudes, which was supposed to be a butterfly sanctuary, obviously to see, well, butterflies.
We ended up walking through a Bukit Timah-style trail and seeing 2 moths. -_-!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The uplifting part about it was discovering this place at the top of the sanctuary:
But she did have some other good stuff there:
This really is the BEST Greek salad I ate there. The sauce is perfect for dunking your bread in, and its chockful of onions and tomatoes and sprinkled generously with olive oil.
But no goat cheese for me, sorry.
Actually, if you like your seafood and your carbs, Greece could be just right for you. Every meal came with bread and olive oil, a la Cafe Cartel, [but no free flow] and the calamari rings were always cooked just right, fried nicely to a crisp. I also loved the fried potatoes, chunks of cut potato, [NOT the processed wedge or crinkle fries, REAL potatoes] fried in olive oil, which I'm pretty sure I'll never see selling anywhere in Singapore. -_-!!!!
Even the salads tasted good. I'm not sure whether its due to the olive oil, or whether the veg really tasted fresher there, [as sworn by Irene, who bought a handful of cucumbers!] but damn, I never thought I'd say this about a salad, but they were good. :p
Oh, and sorry for the lack of photos for this salivating post. We ate up a lot of meals before we realised we had to take photos. >D
Monday, June 18, 2007
**WARNING: picture heavy blog post!
The Great Greek Adventure 1 - Ruin Fatigue
We touched down at Athens Airport on a bright and sunny Sunday afternoon.Greece is famous most for the rich wealth of myth and legends it gave birth to. Lots of us would remember names like Zeus, Hera, Hercules, Icarus and so on. We also remember the historical figures like Odysseus, Homer, Socrates, Plato and so on. We also remember the Hollywood stars like Brad Pitt who made Troy famous, and the movie 300 for making Leonidas famous. :p
So in my opinion, a trip to Greece is all about its myth, its history and thus, that means scampering a bunch of rubble that used to be somebody's palace.
Marble rubble that presumably used to be something
It makes one feel like Indiana Jones. Except that I never got hit by rolling boulders or chased by angry swordsmen or Nazi soldiers. -_-!!! Which leaves me that much more time and leisure to explore the ruins left behind by the great Greek civilisation.
The most famous of all, of course, being the Parthenon, located in the middle of the Acropolis...
Now the Parthenon used to be one of the most important buildings in Athens, so in ancient civilisations, the most important buildings have to kept safe from enemies, right? And what better way to keep it safe, than to build it on the highest damn hill you can find in Athens.
Argh! Bloddy high!!
So after a gruelling half n hour trek, we finally make it up to the Acropolis.
Some of the best marble flooring you will get in Athens
Magnificent views you will get up there, though, when you finally make it up... The Parthenon itself is famous for the optical illusion employed in its construction to make it look more regal and grand than it would have been.
Damn, those ancient Greeks were blardy smart......
Another set of ruins that were interesting were those at Ephesus, in Kusadasi, Turkey.
Brief history lesson: Before the sea receded several miles inland, Ephesus was actually an important harbour town, with thousands of people living in it, temples, bathhouses, and even a grand library and theatre, where St Paul was supposed to have preached.
Which of course all disappeared when the sea went away, cause what point is a seaside town without, er, a sea?? After a long while, the town became buried in sand until rediscovered.
And what ruins they discovered!
Ancient mosaic floor
Ancient engraving, wonderfully preserved
Ancient shops, after a highly anticipated ancient sale
Our guide demonstrates the use of an ancient public toilet, not that it needed much explaining
The most magnificent structures, though, had to be the library and the theatre.
Other ruins visited were the Palace at Knossos, on Crete, and the Temple of Poseidon, on Cape Sounion, mainland Greece, but these 2 were the most remarkable of the lot, because of the cultural importance of the structure, [Parthenon, Acropolis] and the amount that has been preserved [Ephesus].
If ever you visit Greece, or Kusadasi, Turkey, I highly recommend these two to visit.
Things NOT to do when visiting ruins:
1. Smoke, use aerosol sprays, or use other ozone-unfriendly products
The Parthenon is slowly being corroded due to acid rain falling on the structure. Since presumably the ancient Greeks did not use hair spray, their structures are thus not designed to withstand such environmental corrosion. Save the Past. Be green.
2. Do some decorating of your own
You may not agree with the decor scheme of the ancients. Nevermind about it. This structure has lasted longer than 200 generations of your family. HAVE SOME RESPECT!!!
3. Block other people's photo taking.
ARGH!!! Always look around first to make sure you aren't blocking other people's cameras. Your rump isn't so photogenic that I just have to have it in my photo. -_-!!!
Ok that's all for the ruins, because towards the end of the trip, Jules and Quet declared 'Ruin Fatigue', being, the viewing of too many piles of rock already. ^_^!!! More next time on Greece if I find the time!

