Bright, shiny and new

The reopening of an old mall has inextricable tied me to my neighbourhood once and for all. The crappy old mall from long ago has had a major facelift and it's back in business looking sharp, bright and shiny, and boasting some big retail names as tenants.

With all my material needs easily taken care of just a short distance from my own doorstep, there is no more need for me to go gallivanting any further. Hung out there already, twice in two days, and it has been an effort to not buy any more stuff (especially from the electronics haven on the ground floor!) than just a quick meal. Just because things are available doesn't mean I have to get it all now, right?

Yes. Life in the North...

An Arts House wedding

Congrats, Yee! Attended his wedding at the Arts House this afternoon. It was a very pleasant, easy-going service led mostly by Yee himself before he relinquished the microphone to a good-natured JP who presided over the legal formalities. Each of his guests received a personalized gift for attending based on his impressions of us or what he could recall of us. For instance, I received ice-cream vouchers due to a couple of escapades with him at Haagen-Dazs, and June got a pretty egg-shaped music-box (no, not a Faberge, quit drooling) because he remembered she likes music boxes. Yee knows how to put his personal touch to events he organizes. Would have loved to stay and hang out longer, but there was a turkey in the fridge that needed roasting.

Haven't done a Christmas thing at our place for a long time, so now that we've got our new digs, there was every reason to play host again. June wore the chef's hat tonight. She has the recipe for the roast turkey and ham nailed down, but she's been experimenting all week to discover the secret of a good pumpkin soup. With me as guinea pig, we ascertained a couple of key factors: it has to be butternut pumpkin (ours came from Mustafa, cheap and good), and it needs a sprinkle of powdered nutmeg and hand-squeezed OJ to take the edge off. There's still some in the fridge, along with the turkey leftovers. Guess what we're having for dinner tomorrow night?

Christmas. Wet. Dream.

I'm dreaming of a wet Christmas

Just like the ones in Singapore.

Where umbrellas mushroom

and thunder goes, "boom,"

As the Mon-soon visits us once more

I'm dreaming of a wet Christmas

With every pressie that I buy

May our dollar maintain as high

Though the forecasts say it's gonna fry.

(with apologies to Irving Berlin)

Early Christmas at Porta Porta

The Days of Feasting have begun! June and I are celebrating the season early at Porta Porta, a quaint little Italian eatery roughly opposite Changi Prison, if you are looking for directions. I haven't been here in years, but the place is as charming as I remember -- an oasis of old-time Euro tucked away in this odd out-of-the-way location.

Mussels are turning out to be our favourite starter! Here we have a deep dish of mussels in red sauce. Must say, the sauce packs a lot of body, a good thing to counter the mussels which were a little on the chewy side.

June went conservative with her usual spaghetti vongole. I was craving MEAT and the leg of lamb did not disappoint: boneless and all-lean, yet so tender, just so faintly pink and juicy. It came with a side of eggplant which I do not like, generally, but somehow I can stomach it if it's done Mediterranean style. Don't ask why.

All that and a bowl of minnestrone came up to a hair over $50 per person. Not too bad considering we're celebrating Christmas for two. Mass gorging with family commences tomorrow!

He who carries the biggest stick

I went to watch The Day the Earth Stood Still with no high expectations and true enough it turned out to be quite mediocre. I'm tired of the number of morality plays that tell us to curb our excesses and give a thought to our planet. Yes, I know it's an important message and I buy into it a great deal... well, sort of... but I've heard more exciting versions of it in more exciting films already.

DESS is a remake of the 1951 movie of the same title, with roughly the same message: to stop our nonsense (violence, resource depletion, pollution, you name it) or be exterminated as a favour to the rest of the species who share our planet. It's parallel to the biblical tale of the Ark and the Flood in which the whole earth gets scrubbed clean of the mess people have made of it and then life gets to start afresh all over again.

Interesting enough premise, I suppose, but where things go wrong for me is the misplaced sense of scale in the struggle to convince Klaatu, the alien... um, assessor being, that humanity still has a chance to atone for ourselves before the "Flood" washes us all away. Given the impending disaster is global in nature, it does not make much logical sense for Klaatu to base his judgement simply on the behaviour of the two individuals he has made some meaningful contact with. 

Statistically, the sample size just isn't representative enough of the entire human population to make that kind of a decision. Nor is the time scale sufficient -- what, 24 hours? -- to make such an earth-shattering pronouncement on the people of the earth. For a being representing many advanced civilizations, Klaatu seems a bit over-anxious to make up his mind about us.

OK, I know it's pointless to argue movie logic, but there isn't much excitement to carry us through either. Klaatu (and his bodyguard, the 40 foot tall cyclopean G.O.R.T.) represent an unstoppable force none of our terrestrial weaponry and technology has any effect on. Herein lies the big cosmic double standard: Klaatu say you all play nice with one another and with me, or G.O.R.T. will unleash such violence upon you the human race will not survive to see another day. So really, he who carries the biggest stick gets to walk the softest of us all.

It doesn't help that Keanu Reeves has finally succumbed to all the jokes made about his acting and has been cast to play the entirely wooden, expressionless Klaatu. There's a role written especially for him! I couldn't connect with him, nor any of the other characters so I didn't particularly care how it all would turn out in the end. That, I think, is the greatest tragedy in this script.

On the plus side, dinner was quite enjoyable. The Mussel Guys at Vivo serves up a fabulous cast iron pot of steaming Belgian Mussels in white wine sauce. Never before have I had such succulent mussels in such a potent soup -- all garlicky and almost herbal in flavour. There's a 2-for-1 deal for Citi card holders this season, but too bad neither I nor June have one. The accompanying seafood pasta we ordered was so-so, but at least now I know where we can get good mussels. Yums!

Read any Questionable Content lately?

I think my GRADUATED students and older readers would enjoy "Questionable Content" (QC) as much as I. That is to say, current students please wait till you have left college before you pick it up -- it'll be more meaningful to you then.

The characters in QC are familiar, reminiscent of my own circle of friends who are young, single, and dealing with the issue of relationships themselves. There's always a tension between platonic friendship and sexual attraction, and because that often leads to awkward situations there's a lot of humour in how the main characters balance respectable restraint with careless flirtation, the fun they have in each others' company and having conversations laced with graphic innuendo.

Much of the humour is wry and dry, but there are the occasional laugh out loud moments as the reader gets blindsided by a bizarre comment or response. The dialogue is witty, clever and sharp; and it's been a page turner for me 'cos it's fun to see how far Marten and Faye will get on with each other as friends and housemates, but never as lovers though it's obvious that they so want to.

Actually, I know how it turns out for them since I discovered QC only recently, but I've been reading QC from the very first strip to understand the circumstances in which they and their supporting characters are in now. I'm taking it in blocks of 50 strips a day so far, and it's still going to take me many more days to catch up with the current content (as of today, QC is at the 1297th strip). NBS will pedantically calculate it to 26.5 days now that she has the relevant data.

It's also interesting to watch an artist develop his art. Jeph Jacques has been drawing this webcomic for nearly five years now and in that time his initial crude line drawings have evolved into more realistic-looking people. Also, he's put in many more characters and created a more complex relationship web, but it's the consistency of his characters that make them believable: their expressions, postures and gestures are apt and emote well with the dialogue.

I don't really know why I find QC so engaging. Perhaps it's because the characters are easy to identify and identify with. They live regular, mundane existences but they get by with a little help from their friends, and that's what gets to me most. There's nothing like having a small, tight circle of good friends to keep one sane in this world.

Things that make my wife scream

I dunno, turning the living room TV into a 42" PC monitor just might be one of them!

We could have been neighbours

How come when I was living here, little eateries such as this one did not exist in the neighbourhood? The Char-Grill Bar only showed up after the Big Push North. Well cooked, reasonably priced, restaurant-standard cuisine: I would so have been a regular customer! The staff may be a little new and hesitant, but there's no denying the quality of the food. These following quick shots from my mobile phone cam and the lousy kopitiam lighting do no justice to the dishes, but trust me, they're yummy!

 
Three pretty, tender lambchops that went well with what tasted like freshly made mint sauce. Sides pictured here are cheese pasta and seasonal veggies. Somehow, this combo worked and made my mouth happy.

 
This is June's mixed grill. Odd that we were just saying how hard it is these days to find one, and here it is. Pork chop, lamb chop, a big sausage and a sunny-side up. The garden salad with the mayo applied like that reminds me of somebody's rib-cage :p. I'd say the only thing that didn't work for me was the egg which somehow took on the teflon flavour of a new frying pan, which probably was the case.

Hard to find good, cheap food (each dish was $9.80 including choice of two hot and cold sides) so I hope they made the right decision opening up here at 417 Yishun.

Bolt, the super non-super dog

The huge blockbuster movies of this year are full of big action. They're about individual people who rise up from the crowd and be a hero for the helpless and oppressed. Think Iron Man, The Dark Knight, and the other super-movies that have been raking in the big bucks these recent years: movie-goers love to be transported out of the mundane and experience moments of triumph over injustice even if it is only in fantasy.

Disney's Bolt completely reverses this notion. Super dog, Bolt, has been psychologically screwed with by the producers of his TV action series to believe he has super powers. It makes for stronger realism and heightened drama, his demented producer thinks. Living all his life on a movie set (a super-canine version of The Truman Show) he suddenly encounters the real world when he becomes an accidental stowaway in a packing crate bound for NYC. It takes a while, but what he believes about himself slowly crumbles away and he has to cope, not with new and unexpected super-powers but with new and unexpected normalcy.

This is a parable that we can expect to recur for us many times over, going by the state of our current world economy. Many of us may once have been high-fliers, performing tasks that seemed important, critical even, to saving if not the world, then our families or even our self-esteem. But with mass unemployment as  a Damocles' Sword over our heads many of us are going to have to adapt to a life that isn't defined by our jobs any more. Finding and living with a new identity, that's a tough one.

What keeps Bolt going on his road trip back West to Hollywood and home are his ability to make use of the strengths he already has as an ordinary dog -- courage, smarts, and doggy-eyes. What drives him forward and gives him a purpose and a plan is the one belief that cannot be shaken: the love of his co-star, Penny, for whom he will do anything. What gets him through hard times -- and occasionally into hard times -- are his unlikely friends, Mittens the cat who keeps him grounded on reality, and Rhino the Hamster who's loyalty and indomitable "I can!" spirit makes magic happen.

May we who face dark days ahead likewise find our own way home.

Oh yeah, and I watched Bolt in 3D too! Unglam glasses but the illusion of depth on screen made Bolt all that much more pat-able.

How are things in post-apocalyptia?

Awesome, is how. And that's how you describe a game like Fallout 3 too.

Combining RPG with first (or optional third) person shooter, it's runnin' and gunnin' with a point. Gameplay flexibly accommodates the player's personal style, whether playing as a sickeningly polite do-gooder, a snarly kill-everything-that-moves psycho, or shades of grey in between, the game responds accordingly. Actions have consequences and NPCs and quests open up differently depending on the player's past deeds.

The setting is a nuclear-blasted wasteland, presenting a huge, open play area traversable only on foot, though every checkpoint discovered puts a marker on the automap that the player can instantly jump to as long as there is no enemy activity nearby. Walking to discover new checkpoints could be tedious if not for the many opportunities to encounter enemies, stock up supplies and watch and participate in many set-pieces that add interest to the trudge. For example, there's the opportunity to release a Super Mutant Behemoth to see how it will take revenge on its captors (of course, that means having an enraged Behemoth to deal with after) and here was this bunch of Raiders in the act of punishing one of their own -- I tried to rescue the poor guy but he turned on me and I had to shoot him anyway, the ungrateful wretch.

What's fun is that the game world feels like it's living and breathing. There are enemies to kill but there are lots of other people to interact with. A few actually join as a partner -- including a dog by the stupid name of Dogmeat -- depending on their regard of the player. Dogmeat will join up regardless.

Lots of quests to keep the player occupied. Apart from the main quest, there is a long list of side quests, some of which are quite involving in themselves. And it's fun to hear your exploits being reported on the portable radio you carry as "news" reports that depending on your performance will have you praised, villified or questioned by the rather self-righteous sounding DJ.

But it's 3Dog, the DJ, who is the player's constant companion and conscience. The music he plays is far preferable to the "rival" radio station which pumps out insane propaganda messages and Sousa marches. The music 3Dog plays is oddly from the 1940's by artists like Bing Crosby, The Ink Spots, and Roy Brown. My personal favourite track is "Civilization" by The Andrews Sisters with Danny Kaye, a comical and strangely appropriate song for post-apocalyptia as it is today. For the moment I have a bunch of songs older than me playing in my head. They're catchy and the melodies sound quite simple, but I discovered very difficult to sing along with due to certain intricacies in the music that I just don't... get. Weird.

I could go on to discuss the merits of V.A.T.S. and S.P.E.C.I.A.L. (basically an innovative enemy targetting and a character customization system respectively) but they're easier to play with than explain. I will say that I'm a little disappointed that my character is already maxed out at Level 20 and I'm halfway through the main quest only. Yes, there are a ton of rare items to find that can help me increase individual stats and combat survivability but it's a little limiting to think I've reached my maximum potential already when there's so much more left to accomplish. Heh. Sounds like real life.

House warming :)

This ol' house has never seen so many people before. So good to see the brekkie people past, present and some with spouses or partners making our usual lively commotion within these walls. It's the last opportunity for us to meet this informally before they make good on their vacation plans this year and I'm thrilled we made the best of it. Even Mel Skyped in via Amy's Mac and got a real tour of the place including a virtual staring contest with Maui whom we happened to catch 'live' on webcam.

June was very efficient in getting the salad and punch operational as soon as she got back from work. M-i-L pulled out all the stops helping us with the fried noodles, a vicious red curry chicken and a bonus banana bread. Everybody brought a little something: KL made a green chix curry, Jo-jo with a sushi platter, Amy and B-lo combining with a pair of Sarpino's, Wayne brought two bottles of red, and lots of dessert items including Sha's fabulous trifle, NBS's cheesecake and Fen brought the birthday cake for the December baby among us.

Even with the help of Derek, HP, Sheikh, Vince, Linc, and KL's family, there was too much food! We really missed To*ny's appetite last night! Eventually many of our guests had to take home almost as much food as they brought, and we still have a stockpile that would last us a nuclear winter, if only it wasn't perishable within a day. As hosts, we'd better start estimating our rations better.

Hangin' with the guys really helped lighten my mood considerably. See? No pix! Too busy flitting from guest to guest to bother with the cam for once. Sometimes, the best images are the ones we store in our brains.

Downhill slide

Entries have been rather erratic lately. It's a case of too much happenning that isn't exactly worth writing home about. Even when there are days I can spot blogging potential, I'm like, whatever, I'm on vacation.

So yes, there's been a downhill slide into the doldrums, though I can't put a finger on a direct cause.

One big factor, I suppose, is the big move up north. Yes, I have a lovely new house and all, but the transition to get here has been month after month of additional stress dealing with financial, legal and housing authorities, agents and the people they represent, our renovation works and making sure every little detail is tweaked to absolute perfection. The sad thing is, all these details actually went smoothly, everyone was nice, and everyone did their best to either accommodate or help us, and I still got my nerves frayed over it.

Through it all, some routines that I use to keep myself sane like blogging and breakfast have been disrupted, there have been some unexpected changes in staff deployment that have been rather distressing, and now that I've moved into the new place I have to get used to some new routines that are going to make it difficult for me to recover my old ones.

Without going into detail, it's like this: Living this far north, it feels like I've been cut off from everyone, everywhere and everything. There's no reason to drive anywhere because everything's here: food, entertainment and public transport if I want to go anywhere further (though why would I want to?). It's a self-contained enclave, up here.

The other thing is, I'm kinda' used to living in a rat hole, basically, and the supplier of our flooring summed it up best by remarking that the type of laminate we chose "is meant for high class people, you know?" When others are talking about the collapse of the economy being due to people living beyond their means, I can't help but think they're talking about me.

Currently undergoing "Fallout 3" therapy, taking it all out on those poor Super Mutants and their ilk, though I'm pretty sure this form of treatment is not a very healthy way to deal with my baggage.

Hopefully, I'll get used to life up here soon. Then hopefully I'll recover my good humour. Till then, somebody sing me a Bob Marley tune, please?

Heck in a handbasket

The world is going to heck in a handbasket real fast. What with the global economic depression and all the nonsense in Thailand, India and in the Gulf of frakkin' Aden it looks like we've finally lost our minds and we're bent on self-destruction.

Nothing makes sense. An unhappy political minority is destroying their own country because they got outvoted at the last election which they themselves forced -- and lost anyway. A bunch of teenage hoodlums plan and execute a most effective and heroic military operation against several non-military targets resulting in a most impressive kill ratio but only because their targets can't shoot back. I'm sure there's a medal there for you boys, though it'll probably be your parents who'll have to receive it on your behalf, posthumously. And over in the Gulf of frakkin' Aden grand-scale armed robbery has become a profitable multi-million dollar business. I suppose that's one outside-the-box means of protecting oneself from the financial crisis.

What do these people want? They want to be shot at. They're militants, they're prepared for war. They have the logistics, they have the ordnance, they have the strategy. Their only problem is that no one is shooting at them to justify their raison d'etre. So if the mountain won't come to them, they must go to the mountain. And unfortunately for us, to get to the mountain they have to get through us first.

It's stupid.

Belt-tightening

While I've been occupied with adjusting my life to accommodate new schedules and new living arrangements, my virtual life has been languishing. No updates here, my online pets are neglected and are probably starving to death right now, but I still can't muster enough will to care.

Too much is happening in real life, and perhaps I'm not as capable of adapting to all these changes as I might once have been. The current financial crisis necessitating all these belt-tightening fiscal measures makes me wonder if I've spent too much too quickly in recent months. I was counting on a year-end bonus to boost my bank balance to a more reassuring level, but that's not going to happen in this current atmosphere of pay cuts and other more drastic cost saving methods.

Still, as long as I have a job, money can be earned back. And I don't owe anyone any money that urgently needs repaying. That is to say, my installment plans are still manageable, so perhaps what I'm worried about is the lack of excess, resources set aside for a rainy day, mad money to throw away on frivolous expenses.

Still, it's a new lifestyle to adapt to, having to think twice about needs and wants. Learning to forego when we're so used to buying on impulse; making do with what works rather than trashing it for the sake of an upgrade; squeezing every last bit of value from every cent we spend; and making sure we do our jobs well so that what we demand of others we deliver to them as well in return; that's how we're going to ride out this long winter of discontent. Financially speaking, anyway.

Die, monkey, die!

I've been holding this back, waiting for just the right time. And that time is now! To celebrate one big monkey off my back, let's all sing the "Hut Sut" Song!

Getting upset with the casino

Meant to put up this link since NBS and I were discussing something like it this morning. It's called, "A Visual Guide to the Financial Crisis".

And no, in our discussion we weren't particularly sympathetic with the so-called "investors" who lost money on their "investments" in High Notes and their ilk. To us, those guys being so upset and demanding compensation from the bank is like losing money at the craps table and getting upset with the casino.

Sigh. Our people are so sheltered and mollycoddled that they have lost sight of reality. Everyone expects the profits to keep rolling in, but when it's time to shoulder the risk, it's always someone else's fault.

Survivor

Look at that! Yummy, tempting pack of Oreo cookies just waiting to be dunked into an icy cold glass of milk; luscious cream begging to be oh, so gently teased out with a tongue tip tracing the gap between the twin halves of the delicate, crumbly, brown cookie sandwich. What a treat!

Then, consider that this package has been sitting on my dining table overnight already, fully exposed and accessible to the hungry cats marauding through my house. Consider the pristine condition of the package, with nary a puncture mark anywhere on it's surface. No edible material has survived five minutes of unsupervised time with the cats around, yet this brave little blue pack has already survived 24 hours and still counting.

Could it be that Oreos aren't actually food?

Where to find the cats

While the unpacking proceeds, the house may be liveable but still in an unsightly condition. The process is slow and painful, and it may yet be several more days before we throw up our hands in exasperation and decide to trash everything that we haven't yet found a place to store, stow, or conceal.

Then there are the cats who are beginning to adjust to their new environment. One coping mechanism is having a hidey-hole to bolt to when another stranger walks in to make some funny loud noises with smelly machines. Happened to catch the three cats together this one time. Must be playing 'sardines'.

Volunteer job: library courier

A morning with lots of books. First, the second phase of Project Deliver-Me, in which volunteers such as myself take library books over to the residences of disabled people and collect the books they are done with.

I got a different recipient from the two I selected books for from last week. Just so happens, she lives around the corner from campus. Probably a polio victim, roughly my age (hence you are to infer "not too old"), warm and interesting... someone I might not have minded spending an afternoon with, if she didn't seem like she was busy.

Instead, I just did my job -- deliver, collect, sign here, sign there, "thanks ma'am, my pleasure, ma'am!" The expediency at which I picked up my bag of to-be-returned books and walked down the 6 stories -- as she had directed me to -- back to M2 sorta' felt like I was running away from her, though that was not my intention. I also get the feeling she had played some kind of joke on me, making me walk down stairs while she had to get by on crutches... ironic and subtle, very subtle.

While at the library, I borrowed a couple of other books -- play scripts just to see what possibilities there might be for next year's Drama Night. Also bought another couple of books, one on ethics and the other on systems. Oddly, I don't seem to care too much about fiction any more. Maybe I prefer watching it to reading it these days. Oh, well.

Training continues

When was the last time I went bowling? Seems like forever since the Boyz fell flat on our collective faces and imploded. And no, I'm not interested in a revival tour. Let dead dogs lie, as they say.

Doesn't mean I can't keep up the training, though. Happy to say that rusty as I am, I hit the lanes today and still did pretty ok. Six game average 165 including a high 213, low of 130. Funny that the only time I break 199 is after a long break, then I settle back to my usual game.

Sigh, no consistency. Still gonna have to keep my day job for a while yet. Heh.