binglemumps

You probably can’t tell, but this whole blogging interfaced got entirely revamped! How cool! Way to go Jimmy =)

Anyway I got inspired to write something after reading someone else’s blog. But I have nothing much to say. Aside from the fact that my last best friend at work quit on Monday. I’m not as devastated as I thought I would be, but it’s probably because I’m still in denial. Not to mention he’s left me a shitload of work and I spend all my time at work going insane with stress and worrying that I’m going to drop the ball on something and send all my projects to hell because no one else ever seems to be paying attention.

That was a really long sentence of complaint. Also, I decided to try using peanut sauce as salad dressing today and it turned out crappy. I’m sticking to my trusty soy sauce mixture. None of this premade BS.

Gah. Give me my weekend already!

Somehow that last drink always seems like such a good idea, except on hindsight when you’re passing out at the table in a Korean restaurant and calling yourself an idiot in front of your coworkers and their significant others.

Have I mentioned I love my coworkers? I must be one of the luckiest people in the world to be able to go to work every day with people I adore. We put together an impromptu clubbing session tonight and almost everyone showed up. Maybe unplanned events tend to be the most successful. We didn’t get to talk that much obviously thanks to all the loud music, but I was happy just being there. I was happy being drunk and semi-incoherent and spouting nonsense like nobody’s business. I was happy just being with them. Even if I have to put up with all the unfortunate after effects. Eeecks. The cab driver was really nice and offered me a bottle of water. Go cab driver.

Funny how I always end up writing when I’m inebriated. I have to wake up in less than 5 hours to go to Kopitiam. I hope I’ll be well enough then to enjoy the food. My god I’m an idiot.

From one of the comments on Mr Siew Kum Hong’s blog about the AWARE EGM:

‘You are a politician. Politicians use power, crowd psychology, and they play to the gallery of their (in your case, gay and lesbian) supporters. Your intention is garner support to strengthen your base.

I am a family man. Family men shower love on their wives and children. My intention is to preserve the sanctity of marriage, family unit and protect children.

Let’s see who prevails. Power or Love.’

WTF!!!! Ugh. How did that even make sense!! I dunno why this issue gets me so riled up every time. I HATE STUPID PEOPLE. Power or Love WTF!! People like that should be quarantined. I want to protect children too!

Now I’m too annoyed to study. Thanks Mr Solo Bear person. Ugh.

Went out for drinks tonight and ended up once again at the Cigar Bar with 3 of my coworkers. Two of them are from out of town, so I’ve never been out with this combination of people before, so it was really refreshing. They have very different personalities, but all three of them are people I really enjoy talking to and working with, people that I have so much to learn from and whose opinions I really value.

In the last year when I was slaving in misery and being all broken up about my best friends quitting on me, they were the ones that kept me laughing. 90% of the reason I worked so hard was so that I wouldn’t let them down. And I’m really happy that there are people who exist in my life that provide this kind of motivation.

I remember one time back in secondary school when I was on a bus (190?) with PY, and she asked me who I respect. It was a really difficult question to answer. I admire a lot of people and I can see a lot of good qualities in other people that I don’t have, but respect is on a totally different level. I can’t describe what it is in words, but I do know that I respect these 3 friends of mine, and I think I’m really lucky to have in such abundance something I once thought was so hard to find.

It’s been sweltering the last couple of days. Thankfully it looks like we’re getting back to a happy 25 degree celsius on Wednesday, although I know Germ won’t be too pleased about the further drops in temperature thereafter. Give me the cold anytime man (although my maximum tolerance is SF type winter, which I understand doesn’t even really count). If I’m cold I can put on more clothing. I just don’t know what to do about this bloody heat, especially when I’m in the weights room at the Y and the fans are mysteriously not on.

Now that I’m done with the weather report, we can move on to more interesting topics. BTW do you notice that Americans tend to talk a lot about the weather? Is it just a conversation starter/filler or is it really that interesting? I guess in Singapore the extent of the discussion would range from ‘today is quite hot hor’ to ‘today is damn hot lah’, so we’re not really used to this.

Anyway, I spent the last week in NY and the singular impression I’ve gleaned from it is that people there are crazy jaywalkers. I don’t understand why everyone is in such a hurry. It’s not like you get things done any faster. I do my fair share of jaywalking too, but I just don’t see the point of doing it when the car is 3 seconds away and you have to sprint across the road, after which you resume your semi-leisurely stroll. Plus I saw someone get hit by a car my first night there, right outside my Peter Lugers dinner. Tamade. I hate irresponsible jaywalkers. I don’t care what happens to you, but the poor driver’s probably going to be traumatised for life.

I’m also not a huge fan of NY because there are just too many buildings. I’m a city kind of person, but that is just too much city. I would never swap my ferry building bay bridge huge expanse of sky on which to watch sunrise/sunset/rainbows view for it. Having said that, I have to admit that the food in NY is amazing! Had some really expensive dinners there, but my favourite meals were the moderately priced ones at Brick Lane and Kunjip. Good food is so strangely satisfying. Also got to hang out with people I haven’t seen in a while, so that was nice =)

I think this would be the appropriate time to announce that I have a Yelp! website! I’m extra proud of it cos it has my name on it. How cool am I.

So excited today! Went to Kopitiam in Lafayette for dinner and it was soooooooooooo good. By far the best chicken rice I’ve had here! Germ and I had to create Yelp accounts so we could yelp about it. Then I got all mad cos I read a review that only gave it 2 stars because the chicken rice was decent but not worth paying $9 for. ARE YOU A MORON. If you don’t want to pay $9 for this what are you going to pay $9 for? Of course you’re going to have to pay a premium to eat Singaporean food halfway across the world. I have to pay $7-$8 for mediocre meals on a daily basis. Don’t you?? Can we put things in context here? Jeez. What a dumbass.

Also very excited cos I watched Chi Bi last night and I really liked it. I love this big army in cool formations with the war drums stuff. Step aside, LOTR and your stupid orc CG (no offence to LOTR fans – I haven’t read the books and am willing to believe that they were fantastic, but I didn’t think the movies were all that great). Plus Tony Leung stabbing people with a broken arrow and Jin Cheng Wu being intellectual (I think he has aged very well). Can’t wait to watch part 2!

I am so excited I think they might have put drugs in my teh bing.

Zhou Jie Lun is so great. Just watch this video:

How many people do you know get to dress up as a demon hunter or a space traveler (or whatever he is in Kai Bu Liao Kou) or a ninja or a mafia member or a kungfu master teaching American hooligans a lesson, complete with Matrix style effects and always involving a super pretty girl? It’s like every little boy’s dream come true. I also like this one where he pretends to be Jet Li (and I also think Jet Li is great):

I get all defensive when people bad mouth him, not because I think his music is all that good, but because you can’t deny the fact that he revolutionised the Chinese music industry, and if his style of music has degenerated into something banal and overplayed it’s only because it was so novel when he first came out. I hate it when people diss something just because it’s popular. Just because something is overrated doesn’t mean it’s necessarily worthless.

Plus I still really like his latest album!

Sometimes I think back on that one weekend he was in Singapore before he got famous, and Gracie wanted to go see him off at the airport (we had gone to his show the day before and that very night Gracie switched channels from 98.7 to 93.3 – for the first time in years – and the radio was playing a Zhou Jie Lun song, which Gracie insisted was a sign that she was meant to marry him), and I think we should have gone and I should have collected a few autographs which would be worth hundreds or thousands of $$$ now! Actually I think my cousin did give me an autographed photo of him, and it’s lying around somewhere at home. Omg I hope I didn’t lose it!

I recently decided that I should start accessorising. I think you can look very stylish with clever accessorising. But it’ll require buying lots of accessories, and I’m not sure I’m ready to do that. I don’t have enough space for these things. HR accused me of being one of the least accessorised girls he knows, because I don’t even have earrings. Then I went to work today and realised that most of my colleagues are also very unaccessorised. So the pressure to accessorise has decreased.

That was such a disorganised paragraph. Anyway in conclusion I think my accessorising plan will slowly come to a halt because I am just too lazy and because I am just not stylish by nature.

Today I went to a Cal infosession thing. I like going to these things and talking to impressionable young people. My intern was there, and E and I agreed that he was the best of the lot. I’m very proud, proud that I managed to hire him and proud that we get along so well. And I have to say, it’s really nice to know that you work in a company that gets to hire the best, and YOU’re the one they have to get past to get in. Watch me bloat with self satisfaction.

And now I have to go finish some work and bypass my anime session for the day because I wasted time trying to sell the actuarial profession to a bunch of youngsters. Pah.

Someone, or multiple someones, have been stealing my drying sheets. I know because I’ve been setting traps (although, unfortunately, the traps don’t actually catch anyone). It started because sometimes when I took too many sheets out I stuffed the extra sheet in on the top perpendicular to the other sheets, and I kept noticing that the top sheet was always normally placed the next week when I did laundry. Plus my drying sheets seemed to be depleting at an alarming rate. So I started displacing the top sheet on purpose every week. And every subsequent week without fail the top sheet is not displaced!

What asses. Get your own bloody drying sheets. Actually I’m going to write a post it right now that says just that and put it in my drying sheet box. Tamade. It really disturbs me. Not like drying sheets are expensive, if you can afford to do laundry you can damn well afford drying sheets. And if you can’t just don’t bloody use them, not like it makes a difference (I don’t even know why I use them).

Same goes with the milk in my office. There are other someones in my office stealing my milk. I wouldn’t know this for sure except there are times when my unopened bottles of milk get opened by people other than myself. Jeez. I don’t mind if my friends are taking my milk, but I don’t think random strangers should be touching my food or opening my unopened bottles.

Gah! I wish great misfortune upon these miscreants. I hope they lose a sock every week they do laundry. I hope all their food mysteriously goes bad before the expiration dates and they get diarrhoea every other day for 2 months. I hope they sprout zits in the most inconvenient places. People who don’t even have basic decency don’t deserve any mercy! Curses on them!

Over the past few years of trips home, I accumulated a fair number of chilli sauce packets that kinda lay in the fridge because I stopped going to McDonald’s (I only use them on french fries). In recent months I started facing a bit of a crisis, because Amanda’s opened and suddenly there was semi-healthy fastfood and baked french fries that didn’t make me feel gross and that had to be enjoyed with chilli sauce. So this trip home I’ve been on a sort-of-mission to steal more chilli sauce from various fast food places. I say ’sort-of’ because I’m actually quite lousy at this.

**intermission as my mum comes and is incredulous that I spent $384 at the hair salon the other day**

Ok so I’m very lousy at acquiring said chilli sauce packets because some fast food restaurants have implemented the chilli sauce pumps, so I feel extra pai seh about getting packets when there’re obviously pumps there for me to use. Thankfully I have good friends with thicker skin than me. I have to give them special mention because I’m very useless and I would have got no chilli if not for them.

PY (6 packets from KFC) – She asked for chilli sauce, then I snuck the packets in my bag and went and got pump chilli which we actually ate with >.<

Ypyeo (3 packets from McDonald’s) – He gets extra credit because (a) we didn’t even order food there, we were just using their seats and (b) this is where I discovered that McD chilli sauce is manufactured by Sin Sin, which led to the purchase of a bottle of Sin Sin Garlic Chilli Sauce.

Jerold (6 packets from BK) – She only gave us like 4 at first and thanks to his prompting we ended up with 6 more!

So I am very grateful and happy that I have friends who will help me get chilli sauce.

When I got home I googled ‘mcdonald’s singapore chilli sauce’ to ascertain that my Sin Sin sauce is the right type and found this forum thread. I love how people feel so strongly about this. Towards the end it deteriorates into general fast food bashing, but there is an interesting string on page 3 that hugely pertains to my semi-crisis situation wrt depleting chilli sauce packets-

BrUtUs: total cmi lo… lucky i still got some packs of garlic chilli…
Fantagf: I still have the packet garlic chilli but I don’t know their expiry date leh.
BrUtUs: tink try not to keep more than 6mths ba….
Fantagf: like dat chum liao, mine more than 6 mths.
QX179R: better discard them immediately..
BrUtUs: unsafe but still can try… but if see water then throw liao… me opened 1yr old pack watery….

Chum liao is right!!! Pretty sure that in my desperation I ate packets that expired in 2006/7! And there DEFINITELY was one packet that was watery (I remember asking Germ/Davis whether it was ok!!) Shimatta!

Hopefully it’s all out of my system by now. =(