Finally, June and JY proudly promenade towards the rink with their own in-lines.

June gets the Geoblade 1.3W...

and JY gets the Geoblade 1.5W


Fully suited up, JY prepares to leave the safety of the rink to explore the park proper. Chewie and Tones are on hand to escort her today.


In the evening, (after completing in-line training in Bishan AND petanque training in TP), we -- me, June, Anthony, Wendy and Weng -- surprise CW at the Blue Jaz with a belated birthday cake.


Celine is as surprised as CW over his little celebration.


Oh, and at Blue Jaz, this dear little black-and-white cat scrounged some kibble off June, then made itself comfortable on some cushions in the outdoor dining area.

Bowling practice at SAFRA Yishun.
6-game session.
Average: 156
High Game: 201

Took June and JY shopping for 'blades at the place where I bought mine. But to our disappointment, the shop was closed for the public holiday. Looks like 'blade buying will be delayed till Saturday, then.

To make up for their disappointment, I introduced them to Island Creamery. Ice cream is always good for a pick-me-up.

Dropped JY off at J8 where she wanted to do some shoe shopping... while June and I headed for Great World City to look at the pet store there and to catch the afternoon screening of Doom.

I have been salivating over the prospect of catching one of my fave videogames on the big screen for the last couple of weeks, though I knew enough not to expect too much from it. The game never had much of a storyline, anyway, relying more on dim atmospherics; the suspense of what's-behind-door-number-five; and sudden nasty surprises springing out of the darkness to keep things interesting.

The movie did have something of a storyline, at least more than, "if it breathes, kill it." The monsters (not that there were a whole lot of them, though) have a reason for being, the protagonist (Reaper) carries around a tragedy that haunts his past, and there's a very simplistic parallel between Sarge's approach to containing the infection problem and the hawkish US approach to containing terrorism. If you can't tell who's been infected, kill everyone; if you can't tell who's a terrorist, invade Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. Like I said, simplistic.

Most of the atmospherics have their origins in "Doom 3." The scenes and locations are dim and what can be seen is mostly only illuminated in the beams of the characters' unreliable flashlights. There's even a short segment of movie-time shot as a first-person-shooter with the same frenetic action of gunning down of whatever ugly thing pops into view. Thankfully, it's short.

Bit disappointed that the BFG9000 Sarge tots around doesn't seem as useful as it is in the game. For its firepower, its body count seems to be a Big, Fat, Geero, unless we count the accidental charring of Portman's body which happens to be in the line of fire the first time Sarge takes a pot shot with it.

Doom is ultimately a fan-boy's movie, unlikely to encourage any non-player to pick up the game. It's success will depend on the box-office. If takings are good, then maybe we'll see if Reaper and Sam return home to find "Hell on Earth."

After the movie, Chewie, who was supposed to join us 'blade shopping this morning, called me with info that Gallen Sports in Parkway Parade is offering Salomon 'blades in JY's and June's sizes for cheaper than usual. So that was how we rejoined JY in the evening, in search of that perfect pair of 'blades for the 2 girls. Unfortunately, the model Chewie got us excited about had already been sold out, so that was another fruitless shopping trip.

Amy joined us 3 for dinner at PastaMania, following which we got dessert from The Strudel House. There was a bit of a misunderstanding of our order and so the 4 of us got a slice of apple and a slice of strawberry strudel each, though we had intended to share only half that quantity amongst ourselves. Ate till bursting point, Amy and JY taking the leftovers home with them.

Took JY home after that. Long day.

My blog is worth $4,516.32.
How much is your blog worth?

Guess I won't be giving up my day job anytime soon!

Went gallivanting around the Queensway area with Amy and Anthony in the Swift. NBS, who was probably tired of Anthony pelting her with Amy's plushies, abandoned us after lunch for the ice rink. We were looking for the fishing pond apparently behind the McD's at Ridout Tea Garden but instead found ourselves at the Queens Townclub Driving Range, just around the corner from the remand prison. Interestingly enough, this location has a couple of quaint outdoor pubs, the Waikiki Spa, and a Chinese tea shop (fronted with a dramatic statue of a highly inspired T'ang poet) which, upon inquiry, informed us that the fishing pond had ceased operations long ago. Bah!

Plan B was to visit the Island Creamery in Serene Centre and sample their frozen desserts. There was an odd combination of flavours on offer today: soursop(?), Tiger sorbet, teh tarik, cookies & cream, reversO (cookies & chocolate, not vanilla cream), burnt caramel (my choice), and a few others I don't remember. The draw is that the ice cream is made on-site, the flavours are mostly local and authentic (Amy's teh tarik did really taste like teh tarik, right down to the bitter tea aftertaste), and they patiently offer generous samples to the fickle-minded.

In the evening, June, Q-tip and I were lucky enough to find the original Jerry's of Jalan Kayu. Thanks to Amy's excellent over-the-phone directions, we wound our way through Seletar Airbase to meet her and her friend, Michelle, for a light dinner, though we hadn't planned a meeting.

The place is now called Sunset Grill & Pub and is located somewhere near East Camp. The drive is along a stretch of narrow, winding, unlighted road (high-beams and fog-lights time!) leading towards the runway where we can actually watch planes taking-off while we eat. Cool.

The buffalo wings were crispy and the chilli flavour penetrated all the way into the white meat, making it hot through and through. And this was only "Level 1" hot. My half-dozen NZ mussels were wonderfully fresh, and almost completely covered with garlic and sliced onions. And white-wine sauce. Excellent. Dunno about June's fish 'n chips but because she removes the skin from anything she eats, the staff advised her to order the already skinned pan-fried fish instead next time.

Just getting there was already an adventure. Considering the menu, the service, and how dog-friendly it is, the trip was certainly worthwhile.

And below are another few pix of World Animal Day, this time from JY's cam. Keep scrolling down if you aren't tired of doggie pix yet!


Out in the sunshine.


We look like volunteers or staff at this event . Heh.


JY prepares to pounce on an unsuspecting retriever with a devastating hug attack!


Corgis at play.


JY lets Q-tip win the longest tongue contest.

Today begins with M2 being blocked in the parking lot by this truck. June locates the driver, who is busy with his coffee. "Horn and I'll come and move my truck, lah," he says. Obviously, we understand different forms of social etiquette.


Plain water or berry smoothie? Decisions, decisions.


Fur is such a faux pas at the beach.


Way overdressed for the beach. People who stopped to pet Q-tip ask us if we are locals. Doi.


This cute little doggie loves playing "fetch" with her tennis-ball-on-a-rope.

One of my PW groups arranged to meet me for an OP rehearsal, but didn't show up at the appointed time. No word from the group to postpone or cancel, so maybe they forgot? Fortunately, there were other duties to perform on campus today, so I kept myself busy and made quite a productive day anyway.

Bowling training as usual in the evening with Vince and Amy. I did good tonight, posting a 5-game average of 158. My highest score was 195, a bit low for a Clean Game, but what more can you expect if you can't string strikes together? I had one awful game though, a paltry 124; but Amy just had to record her latest personal high, 150, beating both me and Vince soundly in that game.

Had dinner at Founder's Bak Kut Teh (the signboard on the side of the building says, "Bar Ku The Founder,") on Balestier. The walls are plastered over with blown-up pix of celebrities posing with the unsmiling Founder himself, who scarily looks a little like June's dad.

The pork bones are meaty and chunky; the soup is well-peppered, giving the stomach a warm feeling going down. Their xian cai (salted veg) is prepared with lots of garlic and is slightly sweet as well. Even their home-made barley water is sweet and cold, very refreshing. Will definitely go back again with June when we get the chance.

Oh, and as a service to Vince that he'll probably appreciate, let it be recorded herein that he, Vince, got to drive the Swift before Anthony. He drove us back from Founder's to collect our cars at the CSC. Thank you.

Amy sent me her photos from yesterday, so I'll just upload a couple of her best shots below:

Q-tip prepares for a lengthy modelling session.


JY warms up with Q-tip. She'll go find a golden retreiver to hug next.


"Are we going to walk some more, or are we just gonna stand here and take pictures all day?"


"We are not impressed." Q-tip is such a diva.

And before I forget, Happy Halloween, everyone!

Am kicking myself for forgetting my digi-cam this morning. We woke up late and in the rush to deliver breakfast to Sunday service I left it lying on my desk. Doh.

We had Q-tip with us, so not really knowing our church's policy of having dogs in service with people, we did the prudent thing and deposited our sandwiches in the breakfast area, then took Q-tip out for our breakfast elsewhere. We tried our luck at the Cartel, Raffles City, and were indeed welcomed as long as we sat outside on the sidewalk, in the furthest corner possible from the outlet's doors. We had a decent continental-style breakfast and a free-flow of tea and coffee. Despite it looking like a blazing hot day, the corner we sat in was unexpectedly breezy and cool. Wonder if it's like that all the time?

Q-tip came with us to celebrate World Animal Day at Bishan Park -- our weekend hangout these days, it seems like. Which is why I missed having my digi-cam. So many photo-ops of dogs and their owners (well, mainly dogs), and nothing to show for it. Grrr. But Amy and JY both brought their cams and were happily snapping away at every cute canine walking by. JY promised to pass her shots to me later this week, so maybe a delayed upload in these pages over the next couple of days.

Knowing how fearful JY is of dogs, it was amazing how happy she was, getting up close and personal with some of the larger retrievers. I never pegged Amy as a dog person either, but she seemed pretty comfortable ambling amongst the crowd of 4-legged friends. June was, of course, right at home flitting from booth to booth, animal to animal, looking for causes to support or dogs to pet respectively.

Broke for lunch at... the Cartel again, this time in nearby Gardens. Guess if Q-tip gets accepted at one Cartel, she'll get accepted at another too, under the same conditions. Amy split after lunch and JY followed us back to Bishan for more 'blading practice. While she's practicing moving forward, I'm practicing moving backwards and I'm quite happy that today I managed to actually move backwards with intent, at least for a couple of steps. That's better than before when I couldn't move at all.

Meantime, June was persuaded to sign Q-tip up for the "slow dog" race, top prize going to the last dog to cross the finish-line. Q-tip was the fastest to finish, which meant she lost big time, but the sponsors were generous and gave spa vouchers (for human beings) as consolation prizes.

'blading over, JY and I rejoined June at the event tentage. They both got me to sign up for a 'poetry for strays' contest. So I penned quite a depressing few lines echoing a dogcatcher's thoughts while on-the-job. The judges thought it was quite good (we talked to them) but because the objective was to encourage people to adopt strays, my poem was so depressing it got disqualified. Oh, well.

It turns out the organizers were current student-teachers undergoing "service-learning," their version of CIP. Despite their anxiety that the programme wasn't turning out well, I'd say that considering that so many people and their pets showed up; that there was a brisk trade going on amongst the booths in the tentage; and that everyone and their pets enjoyed themselves under the trees and basically said, "hello," to each other, the event was quite a success. Well done, future teachers!

Day began with June waking up earlier than me, an unprecedented event on Saturday morning. She did a little marketing then returned to awaken me for breakfast. Chong Pang market for chui kueh, yu tiao and tau huay on a brekkie delivery run to the Wongs in Sembawang.

We rushed back home to get Q-tip bathed, then back off to Bishan Park for more 'blading. Meantime, I'm coordinating orders for a KFC take-out which Amy picked up for us on her way over. By the time June, Q-tip and I arrived, Vince and NBS had already done quite some exploring of the park on their rented in-lines. JY joined us soon after and we all had a picnic under the trees when Amy pulled in with our lunch orders.

After another hour or so in the rink, we broke up the party and took Q-tip home to get her ready for tonight.

Robertson Walk threw a "Halloween with a Howl" event in which pet owners could bring their pets and dress in costume for prizes.


Q-tip went as a fairy dogmother. Haha.


But in order to participate in the festivities, we had to spend some money at any of the F&B places there. We chose Bistro Cameleon where the tuna sashimi salad (above) was deliciously fresh, the tuna so smooth, and the garlic chips were surprisingly addictive.


My order was the hot-plate beef (again served with those yummy garlic chips). The beef was tender, juicy and had streaks of cow fat, so it tasted really good. Have to remember not to soak the beef too long in shoyu. It doesn't need to be that salty. Cameleon's menu prices don't seem too expensive for individual items, but it all adds up if you lose control and order whatever the staff recommend.


The coupon booklet entitled Q-tip to a free pedicure (above), us to free ice-cream, and some discounts on other stuff we bought for her, like food and fashion accessories. Blush.

But when the festivities ended, we were such lucky sods. We walked away with the 3rd prize in the Grand Lucky Draw, thanks to No. 0040 who didn't collect the prize she won, thus causing the re-draw that our ticket won. $100 worth of Centrepoint vouchers, though only redeemable at Robertson Walk. Good enough! Food and drink. What better way is there to spend unearned money?

This is Amy's car as at 0709hrs. A dark green Echo. The interior has lots of nooks and crannies to fill up with all sorts of her plushies.

This is my CT for this year. Congrats on your promo results. It's great you're all staying together next year! Keep up the good work, 'k?

And as of 1620hrs today, Echo got traded-in for Amy's new car: a pearl-white Swift. Hardly any space for plushies, except for a cubby hole in the front dash. It's now being occupied by a duck and a baby seal jostling for elbow-room with a blue hippo. Good luck!

Too bad Anthony isn't around to see the car-shopping process we started through to completion. But he's off to Japan so he's probably got the better end of the deal.

Since we're on the subject of halloween, this news item is just sad. click.

Just realized that Halloween is around the corner and for the first time in 4 years, I haven't made any plans for it. When I first proposed the idea in 2001 to the college I had a great team of librarians (led by ZL who was heart 'n soul of the inaugural fete) whose ingenuity and passion overcame our meagre resources and made it a truly memorable event, for me at least. 2002 we had a 'live' band jam session and a movie screening, 2003 a bhangra-themed event (although I suspect the bhangra music was more accidental than planned). And 2004, despite the valiant efforts of the Drama Club, and a few other CCAs, that was all she wrote for our post-exam celebration. Doubt it'll ever be revived again, and suddenly I'm in mourning.

Times have certainly changed. In these last couple of years, the JC1 cohort lost the post-exam period. That's because immediately after the promo exams were over, they all had to face a real Cambridge exam -- PW. And a lot of importance has been attached to this new subject, too. It amounts to 10% of local uni admission criteria and as such it's not to be trifled with. Kids are all so busy preparing for the exam after the exam there's no time to celebrate the end of their first year in college. As of last year, we threw a party, but hardly anyone came. This year, no one can be bothered any more.

What's ironic is that before PW became serious the kids were informally working on a real project that actually had to come to fruition -- they had to pull it off for real. They were already collaborating with one another, and even across disciplines by involving talents and skills from a variety of CCA groups who were willing to pitch in mostly for the fun of it (ok, maybe I'm romanticizing a little here). They had to plan schedules and activities, organize logistics, mobilize human and economic resources, and be ingenious in creating something out of very little. There was an actual purpose behind the Halloween Project. It was entertaining, it was student-led and run, it was creative, it was compassionate (proceeds went to charity), and there was potential for community outreach as well, given time.

Wait. Did I say Halloween is dead because of PW? Maybe not. It'll take a brave PW supervisor to mobilize a CT's worth (or two) of project groups to make Halloween the focus of their group projects. Each group could focus on different aspects of organizing the festival, after all according to the Ministry, the project task -- regardless of how the question words it -- is flexible enough to accommodate any proposal the kids wish to put up.

Halloween might be the perfect project focus because of its timing in the PW cycle. All the plans have to be laid down, carried out and documented in the groups' Written Reports; following which there are a few days left before Halloween to get the logistics and publicity together; there can be one huge bash involving the entire college and maybe the community outside as well; and everything ends just in time for the groups to report on their involvement during the Oral Presentation.

But like I said... that's gotta be a brave PW supervisor, or a pretty smart one, anyway. He or she will have to run by his or her own schedule, not necessarily in keeping with the college's schedule but still abiding by Cambridge's. Not easy. Anyone wants to revive Halloween, next year's JC1 tutors?

I hadn't anticipated it, but it's turned into another mad week. PW rehearsals seem to be going ok. The kids are taking this last stretch of the PW cycle seriously, maybe because most of their hard work is done already. Now it's time for the assessors to get into full gear rehearsing, assessing, commenting, calibrating and recalibrating our standards so as to be as fair as possible to all students in the final assessment exercise.

It's going to be like this for the rest of the week, plus a few other duties and details to take care of as well.

Am lookin' forward to the weekend already...

Since Anthony visited Blue Jaz a couple of weeks ago, he's been highly recommending the place to us. Today we got our chance to see it for ourselves. It's located on the corner of Ophir and Beach Roads, parking is anywhere in the Arab Street area -- it just takes patience and just a little luck, especially around lunchtime.

We sat in the outdoor area under a large canopy. It happened to be breezy and cool at the time, so outdoors was a good choice. No set lunch today, but today's special was the sirloin steak. It was quite a large chunk, quite thick and reasonably tender. On the side were a handful of crispy home fries and a stir-fry of zucchini and carrot. I ordered my steak rare but it came medium instead -- pink inside, not bloody. Kitchens tend to be rather conservative around here, I guess. Price-wise, for my steak and fresh lime juice: roughly $11.50. Not bad, indeed.

It rained for a spell during lunch, but the canopy held up well and we didn't even get splashed. But the one important thing I found out about this place is that it probably is pet-friendly, as long as we sit outside. "Probably," because the wait staff said, "yes," but her face looked doubtful. Q-tip will have to take her chances if we bring her next time.

Amy and NBS abandoned us after lunch, not at all interested in our after lunch activity: to drive over to Weng's and use his PS2 for the rest of the afternoon. Male bonding time, then, over Pringles, Tai Sun garlic flavoured peanuts, coffee and Konami's "Winning Eleven 8." At this game, Vince and Anthony make a pretty good team. Weng and I are still barely getting used to the controls. Silly afternoon. Wheeee!

We introduced Q-tip to JY today. Q-tip seems to be the perfect advertisement for owning a pet because she has such a good public face. She's quiet, unexciteable, fluffy and allows strangers to pet her. No biting, no barking; sometimes it seems she isn't even a real dog at all but a toy -- a bicycle with training wheels on. Hee.

But because we had a dog in tow, we had to lunch at dog-friendly Acacia rather than at J8, our original plan. No regrets, though. Acacia serves up very generous portions of presentable food, particularly from the a la carte menu. No set lunch on weekends.

My fettuccini with mushrooms and ham was such a delight. The pasta was bouncy and the cream sauce was light and tasty. There was an assortment of mushrooms and small chunks, rather than slivers, of ham. Each mouthful had a satisfying bite to it, and it all went down easily without the feeling that it was too heavy a meal.

Amy's orange duck looked gorgeous: the drumstick lashed with an attractive orangey-red gravy and resting on a mound of mashed potatoes. JY ordered a wild mushroom salad. She went wild over the sauteed mushrooms but couldn't finish her salad. But June's fish 'n chips came in such a huge platter that even with us picking from her plate, there were still quite some chips and June's 2nd chunk of fish remaining at the end of our meal. We were sorry to see it wasted, but there was no help for it. Where's NBS when we need her?

Amy was tired out from last night's nuptial duties (er... coordinating the festivities, not what it sounds like) so no bike for her. June kept her company in the shade but JY and I hit the rink again after lunch. Yay! After 3 sessions, JY is off the railing and is gliding on her own. She still takes tumbles every now and then but she's learned to fall without hurting herself, and she can stand up again without assistance. She's moving with much more confidence and all that's left, as I told her, is to work on looking like she was enjoying herself. Q: can JY rollerblade now? A: She's passed basic theory. More learning needed, but congrats for making it this far.

Next step: to do the stuff the inline hockey guys were training to do. Hur hur.