Down by the riverside

A new long walk route to try: Punggol Waterway Park. NParks has done a terrific job of prettying up the Punggol River. Although it now looks manicured and well-maintained by an army of gardeners, it still retains its authentic swampy, all natural smell.

Such a long stretch of picturesque greenery to traipse along. My route took me from the main car park all the way to the Sunrise Bridge and back along the opposite bank.

Tasha will tell you that the mad not-Englishman was at it again. It's blazing hot today, and he didn't bring enough water. Fortunately, there are public toilets at both ends of the route for a top-up of fresh tap water and a vending machine for cold drinks (the one at the Sunrise Bridge end only accepts old coins, not new). 

Tasha can't resist taking a peek at the river from this end of the Sunrise Bridge. The name suggests that perhaps the best time to walk this route is early morning. Will keep that in mind next time.

Finally back at our starting point, taking a break before crossing the Adventure Bridge back to civilization.

Yes, Tasha deserves a good lunch after all that calorie incinerating exercise.

Me too.

Rain on our parade

Totally underestimated the circumference of Bedok Reservoir. That wouldn't have been a problem, necessarily, except for this torrential downpour... which the weather reports were warning about, but somebody evidently didn't listen. At this point, it's too late to turn back and run for the car. At the same time, it was one heck of a walk to complete the circuit in this crappy weather. In between breaks of, ahem, extreme humidity, we ran (ok, brisk walked) from cover to cover, making the 5km distance seem miserably interminable.

By 'we', I mean the dog and me. That's one wet and miserable dog taking shelter with me in the porch of a public toilet awaiting our first break in the weather. It got progressively worse from here on out. Mental note: DO trust the weather forecast next time you're planning an outdoor activity. Thanks.

Coffee, cake and dog

In our quest for more dog-friendly eating establishments, Tasha and I visited PARK at Holland Village. While the staff are very friendly with dogs, perhaps the place still isn't all that well-known to the dog owning public. No other canine friends were around for Tasha to socialize with. Anyway, there is only one table reserved indoors for diners with dog. Dogs and owners are free to sit at any of the outdoor tables. PARK is still working on a menu for pets, but for the moment, it's food for humans only.

My craving was initially for cake and coffee, but this appetizer of a portobello mushroom topped with a mound of crabmeat, Parmesan and alfalfa was too tempting to pass over.

An iced latte was refreshing in the warm, humid afternoon.

This wasn't the cake I had in mind, either; but I'm a sucker for banana pancakes. If it's on the menu, I have to try it. I like the thick stack of pancakes sandwiching slices of slightly scorched bananas, but I could have done without the caramelizing on the topmost banana slices: too sweet for my teeth. The a la mode vanilla ice cream was a nice counter as it had the full flavour of vanilla (including the little black dots of real vanilla) without being too sweet.

 And, of course, the dog who is happy to be out and about in the afternoon, sniffing new smells and sampling bits of banana from the pancake.

Tasha visits GBB

Another nice day for a walk. GBB is setting up a tropical Christmas backdrop for seasonal photo ops.

Oy! Tasha the photobomber.

GBB has quite a few of these odd, scenic touches which can only be improved by the presence of a dog.

Next time, I'll remember to carry some treats with me so that I can get her to focus on the camera and not on whatever's behind my shoulder.

Long walk: by dog

I Tasha! Erm, no, I mean, 'Anonymous'! I taking over my stupid human owner's blog to protest my mistreatment!!!

Stupid owner taking me on a loooong walk. His idea was to walk from Kent Ridge Park to the Henderson Waves. We got lost once, retraced our steps then found out that the path was right all along! Extra 2 km added to a 12 km route.

Henderson Waves at midday. No shade! Only mad Englishmen and dogs go out in the noonday sun. My owner is not an Englishman, but he is mad.

Oh, my Dog! Crossed the bridge -- for no purpose! Then crossed back. Why???

Yay! Water break!

The Forest Walk is very high. If you look down, it's so scary! But where my stupid owner walks, I must follow anyway. Stupid pink leash.

Finally! Back at the Hort Park. Five minutes to rest and drink more water at the pool. I not liking pools. Places where they have more water than I can drink is scary.

 Ah! The reward for a long walk is a fat sirloin steak, medium-rare at the Colbar which welcomes dogs like me!

Aaa...! This is my biggest complaint! My stupid owner so stingypoke! Ate the whole plateful and only left me three tiny beef cubes of lean meat. Even the gravy he cleaned off first! Haiz.

Total walking distance: 14.1 km. I have proof! I never walk so far in all my life!

And who sleeping in my comfy bed while I was out??? Ah, me, such a tough life, I having!

Occasion for cake

A bit belated, but Tasha celebrated her first birthday today with this pretty made-for-pets cheesecake May brought back from Japan. Don't ask me what it tasted like because it wasn't meant for human consumption.

Ask her.

Or him.

It was a pretty cake... while it lasted.

Stanley, Stanley, quite contrary

How to describe "The Stanley Parable"? The format is that of a first-person... not a shooter, but a walkabout while attempting to interact with... things. So although it plays like a game, it's more like an interactive story that is so totally immersive that player (you) and playable character (Stanley) are virtually indistinguishable from each other -- as long as the player accepts the narrative. The narrative is provided by the male narrator's voice who tries to tell the story, but ether the story doesn't cooperate; or the narrator breaks the fourth wall to interact directly with the player/Stanley; or you/Stanley may decide not to follow the narrative and do things your way instead. "Do things", however, is a sticky point because if you don't follow the narrative, what exactly do you do? Without a narrative, there is no objective to strive for and accomplish other than, what? Escape? Survive? Walk around until something happens?

The bizarre audio-graphical experience (I can't call it either a game or a story) is ultimately a story about itself, entirely self-referential, and a running commentary about the rules and conventions of the first-person game. It's an entirely linear path that branches with every decision (for or against the narrative) with no way to go back -- doors literally close behind you -- until you come to one end or another. Because of the number of decisions you could make along the way, there are a huge number of ends you can experience (I probably haven't experienced them all yet) but each end leads to a fresh new beginning right at the start of the narrative and the promise of a new ending at the end -- if you do something different from the previous time. Maybe.

Maybe the player's objective is to experience all the possible endings, good or bad? Or maybe the objective is to finally understand the parable and turn understanding into action? Or maybe there isn't any objective at all, whether you follow the narration or not, and just explore the frustratingly familiar but strange environment of Employee 427 like a virtual Ambrose in Barth's "Lost in the Funhouse". Around, and around, and around.

In any case, after I had my fill of the game, I took the dog for a walk, nearly started a conversation with a cute girl I met on the street about her shi-tzu but didn't invest more time beyond saying a polite "hi!", and went home to fold the laundry. Decisions, decisions...

Walk this way

Look at my gaggle of ducklings, taking a long morning stroll through the park for a good cause. For each kilometer walked, NTUC will donate a corresponding kilogram of rice to the needy per participant. In this annual Walk-for-Rice event, our planned route was 8km long (my GPS tracker counted 9.7km to be exact), so my little flock should have amassed 288kg of rice in total at least.

Personally, I've been training for this event. My asthma's been making a comeback so I figured I'd better not be unprepared. For the past week or so, I've been walking 4km twice a day around the neighbourhood. The exercise has been doing me a world of good. Since I started, I've been able to breathe again. The trade-off: a couple of awesome blisters from all that walking. Worth it, I guess.

Back in circulation

The old Samsung SIII has a new lease of life. The previous charging problems it had seems to have been resolved by replacing the original USB micro-B cable with a borrowed Blackberry one. Also borrowed are an external battery charger and a couple of extra batteries for additional support.

As for the battery drain problem, turning off most of the automatic notifications -- which involves logging out of the apps themselves -- now keeps the thing running a whole day before needing an overnight recharge.

The reason why the SIII is back in action is because the wife's iPhone crashed after installing the latest iOS 7 update and is now in permanent Recovery Mode. In the meantime, I'm learning to love the new Note 3.

Goodbye, Papa!

F-i-L checked out last Saturday morning. His demise is the closest I've ever come to the loss of an immediate family member. While not entirely involved with the legalities and procedures therein, I was mostly a witness to the proceedings, service support to the bereaved and somewhat of a participant in the sending-off rituals that lasted the past five days.

"Somewhat of a participant" is because there is a little awkwardness when two families that profess different religions are united in marriage. Both religions make it a point to honour our parents and it is on this basis that mutual respect for both parties is facilitated. As a family member, there are certain ceremonial obligations that have to be performed in a traditional Chinese funeral. It helped that our funeral director had experience in these matters and was able to advise on what was necessary and what was could be waived for a potato-eater like me.

I didn't have to participate in the evening chanting services, so I sat with the other guests to listen and watch. Although the unfamiliar ritualistic vocalizations might have scared me as a child, I learned to appreciate the subtle harmonies and the complex, yet gentle percussive rhythms that combined to create a calming and peaceful effect on the emotions, and focus reflective, prayerful thoughts towards our dear departed.

My specific duties as son-in-law was to provide this flower and fruit basket as a token of my regard and esteem towards my father-in-law:

and also to sponsor the band that played before the last rites and accompanied our procession behind the hearse as we made our way to the cremation:

Papa, who so loved to travel is now on the ultimate trip. He will be missed.

Getting in sync

This post is a day late, but dNYel went on our annual retreat. While we're planning for the coming year, we're also taking the opportunity to bond as a department with a coordinated activity. 

This year, we're learning to synchronize with each other through percussive rhythms. Our instructors are from ExtraOrdinary Horizons, a group of hearing-impaired musicians who put our own sense of rhythm to shame. dNYel comprises many different characters with many different styles of self-expression, so getting us to move to the same beat would be quite an achievement.

You can see how well we did in the vid below:

Still all there

F-i-L made it through the night, which is a relief. His blood pressure returned to normal. Mentally, he's still all there, quite aware of his surroundings, able to process who has come to visit him and behave accordingly. He may not be up to conversing much, but his thoughts are still coherent and responsive. That's good.

We'll continue to take each day as it comes.

At the departure gate once again

Having experienced quite a few departures already this year, I was hoping I would ride out the rest of the year in peace. But the trend continues its inevitable, inexorable path through the remainder of the year. F-i-L's losing his battle with cancer. Initially, radiotherapy seemed to have it beaten back, but all of a sudden in the last few weeks, it came back with a vengeance.

F-i-L's physical deterioration has been rapid and alarming. From the jolly, portly, happy-go-lucky gentleman that he was, the disease has wasted him down to... shall we say, his most basic structure? His once healthy appetite reduced to taking sips of fruit juice periodically over the day to sustain him. Now as he rests in the hospice, the doctor reports a significant drop in blood pressure...

I think back to last Saturday, when he was still lucid and made a bit of a show in presenting his grandsons a souvenir each to remember him by. At first, I thought it went somewhat over-the-top, in full view of the other hospice patients and all. But now I believe his timing was just right. Things moved so very quickly immediately after that, so if not then, there wouldn't have been another opportunity to make them promise to study hard and make him proud.

His closest kin are keeping vigil overnight. This night in particular might just be the longest night for the family.

At the Cornerstone

Exploring more dog-friendly eateries with Tasha. Here, we're brunching al fresco  at Cornerstone, in Bishan Park. The service is very good: prompt and polite. Even the gardener ambled over, swiped Tasha's water dish most unexpectedly, emptied it into the bushes and walked away with it. While we were still blinking in amazement, he returned it with a fresh refill of water. A nice, if dramatic, flair for service in that guy.

Maybe it was still early and the crowd hadn't built up yet, but food arrived within five minutes of our order. The sup du jour was this sweet, creamy pumpkin soup. Mmm... smooth.

Our side order of onion rings was fresh and crispy, though a little bit oily. Nice if you have someone to share them with, but probably too much if you're dining alone. The dog can't help. Dogs don't eat onions. No matter how hard they beg.

This full rack of BBQ pork ribs is also meant for sharing. Very tender, the meat falls right off the bone and makes for clean eating. BBQ sauce was sweet and tangy. For best results, ditch cutlery, engage fingertips. Gave a bone to Tasha to gnaw on, but she just kept tossing it around instead, like she didn't know what else to do with it. Silly girl.

Maui's new diet

Speaking of the cost to feed pets, Maui's special prescription diet alone costs $40 a week for 12 wet food pouches. Fortunately, the wife found a dry food alternative in KL. This pack of dry kibble also costs about $40 by rough conversion and it should last him weeks. This is the 3kg pack. Next trip up to KL, a 6kg pack is coming back.

The kibble are these flat disc-shaped granules that smell quite nice. The other non-UTI cats in the household would help themselves to Maui's share if he wasn't able to defend his bowl from foreign incursion. Fortunately, he is.

Kasey gave Maui an encouraging health report. His incision is healing nicely, struvite traces in the urine sample were very low and the bladder damage is no longer as extensive as it was a week or so ago. So now the daily dosage of anti-inflammatory is down to 1mg and Maui can look forward to having his Elizabethan collar (a.k.a. lampshade) removed in a couple of days.

Children? Costs? Carrots? A view from C-level

It's neither the costs nor the extrinsic carrots that make people consider whether to have kids or not. Costs are no object if you love your kids. If you have to be rewarded for having them, perhaps you aren't having them for the right reasons.

Above all else, when we become parents, we want to be the best possible parents to our kids. This means we want to provide the best possible chance of survival to our kids, and assure ourselves that our kids can grow up and live long and happy lives.

At our current level of social development, we tend to concentrate our available resources on raising one kid, or at the most two, for replacement sake. The fewer the number of kids sharing resources, the more likely the chance of survival. But that's literally putting all our genetic eggs into one (or two) baskets. The game we are playing is a gamble and the stakes are really high at the level we are playing.

The stakes are raised even higher when resources alone are not enough to secure assurance for the lives of our egg-baskets. We have artificially inflated the stakes even higher by pegging our kids' happiness and survival on personal achievement, evidenced by quality certification and documentation. Nothing less will do. Not for us, not for our kids, and certainly not for society whom we feel is beholden to us to help raise our kids, though how we arrived at this delusion is a mystery.

In a social structure like this, parental love becomes conditional. Parents love their kids when they score straight As, or their love is withheld until they do. Kids who need constant parental love are often made to feel they have to deserve it. Acceptance is gained by having to prove oneself again, and again, and again. Thus, within the household, relationships are strained all round. Given a choice, who would want to live like that?

The stakes aren't so high if you raise pets, though. General maintenance; medical expenses; treats; toys and the like are not cheap, but we spend without thought because we love our pets. Granted, they don't cost as much as raising kids, but that only makes things worse, doesn't it? The dog failed basic obedience; is probably as emo-psycho as any teenager and probably has a few undiagnosed learning disabilities as well, but hey, what the heck, right? Her future isn't dependent on stellar academic records, so we still love her just the same. She's done nothing to make us proud of her, but we still do our best to make her happy, anyway.

If we want more kids (the human kind), we have to make the C grade respectable again. My educational influences taught me that C stands for 'Competent', and that was good enough a benchmark to aim for. Achieving a C does not require kids to work unusually hard nor feel as unhealthily pressured, scared and hopeless as many kids are experiencing now. Aiming at a C allows a kid to develop interests, learn from other less academic sources and become more well-rounded as a person. By having time and space to see the world in all its horrors and wonders, a kid acquires broader perspectives and whatever knowledge is picked up in school falls into a useful context that helps make sense of the often weird and confusing things that happen around us all the time... if only we would look up from our books once in a while, busy as we are chasing an ultimately unappreciated bunch of As

But in our current society, encouraging your kid to aim for a C is the height of irresponsibility when all the other parents are making their kids score As by any means possible. This is not a game any rational person would want to play. And S'poreans are nothing if not rational.

No yelling at kids. Srsly?

So now a study recommends we don't yell at teenagers because the effect is as bad as hitting them? To be fair, I've not had the urge to yell at a kid, nor hit one for any reason, but then, I'm not a parent of one, either. Hence, it's not my prerogative.

What happens when kids get yelled at? Apparently, they "feel sad" and sometimes "angry". But isn't that the reason why we yelled at them in the first place? To make them feel sad and angry as a consequence of something stupid they did or said. If they're smart, they won't do it again. If they're not, they'll just have to repeatedly keep feeling sad and angry until they become smart. That's how some people learn, sorry.

Yeah, I get the rationale for positive reinforcement for positive action ("more carrot, less stick"), but kids also have to experience negative consequences for negative behaviour because... that's life! Consequences come swiftly and unexpectedly. Very seldom will they arrive after a calm deliberation in which various strategies are weighed and debated before being regretfully meted out. Put one foot out of line, get your head bitten off. When parents snap and lose it, that's the lesson to learn. Once the kids leave the comfort and security of their parents' home, the rest of the world isn't going to treat them much nicer. They'd better get used to that reality fast.

And, anyway, why can't kids feel sad and frustrated? Why would we want to deprive them the right to feel sad and frustrated? A childhood is good only if the kid grows up feeling positive and happy all the time? No wonder the pharmacies are doing so well these days.

Make-up dinner with dog

Thanks to inclement weather, our plans for a morning meet-up with her doggy pals fell through. To make up, we took Tasha to Sun Ray Cafe (again) for dinner.

The menu looks quite different from before. They must be in the middle of re-stocking, or something, as some menu items were unavailable.  Anyway, instead of the lamb chops I settled for, I got a whole stewed lamb shank served with a side of Yorkshire pudding. The meat on the thing! Soft, tender muscle and tendon. See the bone opening? The knife was shaped just narrowly enough to probe all the way in and extract the marrowy goodness. It was all I could do to to stop myself from seizing the bone and gnawing the meat right off it. Not that anyone would mind my lack of decorum, but the sheltie who parked its forepaws on my lap and gazed longingly at me might have benefited from stuff I dropped if I was eating carelessly.

This is the wife's pork chop. A little on the dry side, served atop a bed of caramelized carrots and sweet potatoes. She liked it well enough, but because she doesn't eat fat, she left me the absolute best part of her dish.

And, no, this wasn't the sheltie.

Fly, little ones, fly!

And so we mark the end of the formal timetable with a graduation ceremony for the seniors. Three weeks to the first paper of the finals and they're on study leave: finally off on their own to prepare themselves at their own time, at their own pace.

The period of day-long consultations has also begun, the kids booking personal time with us; along with the practice mock exams (yes, for the first time we're introducing mock exams in the plural!) and focused skills clinics (another first!).

In yet another first, I lost a kid to a voluntary "U-turn", i.e., backing out of this year's finals in hopes of obtaining a better result in next year's. This one was a confidence issue and, through no urging from anyone, decided unilaterally to stick around for one more year. I might lose a couple more, now that this one has set the precedent.

There's probably something wrong with society when only meeting extraordinary expectations qualifies as meeting normal expectations.

In other news, I am now the proud owner of a Samsung Galaxy Note 3. The unexpected purchase was the result of the S-III suddenly and inexplicably developing power management problems. Just today, something was draining power at a very high rate, causing the battery to overheat. I exchanged batteries and the same thing happened. Both batteries flat in just a couple of hours. Then they refused to charge, though this problem may be an unrelated one. The charging cable (and I tested with three separate ones) did not sit in the port tightly enough to keep charging for long. The warranty has just expired so there'll probably be a bunch of extra charges if it goes for repair, so... new phone time.

Big stretch

She held this position long enough for me to notice, activate my phone cam, zoom, adjust focus and put the shutter timer for two seconds.