gnatweds

Do take a minute off your busy day of work, family and friends and have a peek into Karen's blog

Karen's my classmate from the NUS philo hons class of '98-'99, and the amazing pint sized dynamo has been travelling the region.

Now, when we say "travel" for Karen, it actually means really down to earth, rucksack on back, trudge through towns we've never even heard of (much less travelled to), multi-hour train, bus and plane rides and climbing impossible precipices and dense rainforest type travel.

(This is opposed to get stuff into the de riguer backpack, haul to airport, haul into car in other side of the world, haul into hotel type travelling that most of us... okay okay... we do.)

Karen's just been to Myanmar, and she's brought back an amazing, if very sad, tale to tell about the country. I think I speak for the rest of this blog's readers when I say the thought of actually travelling to Myanmar hasn't even entered our conciousness... so please take the time to read her blog (click on the link now)

I have my own adnap, and its name is Eugene.

Yep, he is a reverse panda again (get it adnap, panda? heheheh) thanks to a blisteringly hot morning on sunday when we went wakeboarding again. He's a rosy, ruddy red, with large white patches around the eyes where his sunnies were.

This adnap rather carnivorous, and not into bamboo shoots at all. Despite blandishments to get him to try some.

At one sitting, it can also polish off great gouts of wine, cava and whiskey. Add brandy and gin to that list.

Funnily enough, after two hours of sitting in the sun, he finally decides he needs sunblock... hummmns. Was tempted to tell him, too late, but oh well.

Remember that spot of sunshine I posted up? Well, okay, it kinda rained a bit, but it was still sunny enough in the in-between bits to cause a fit of energetic enthusiasm

We did laundry with a vengence... went to the gym, swam, and it was so good that we (five of us - four docs and me) decided that we'd go wakeboarding on Sunday.

It was very fun indeed, and it was great for the tan. (G now looks like a reverse panda.. whites around the eyes where his sunnies were perched and beet red elsewhere)

Now, we haven't actually been wakeboarding for almost two years now... so you can well imagine the ache that we both experienced on monday. All these almost forgotten muscles reminding you of their presence: I can also just picture a grumpy muscle saying: "serves you jolly well right for waking me up so rudely and stretching me to my limits like that.''

BUT to add insult to injury, two of us from the wakeboarding group are down with bad bad GE.
Puking and pooing. G suspects it could be the water in the longkang we were boarding in.

But that said, there are at least three more persons I know in the office who have the GE symptoms too.

Owww.

This isn't very fun at all.

But one bright spark in the whole deal. G made a bet with me: he reckoned that five of us (given that we hadn't been boarding for quite some time) would not use up the three hours boat time we'd booked. The penalty: cooking, cleaning and washing for a week.

Hahahahhahah. Yes, G is cooking, cleaning and washing for a week (duh!!!) ... speaking of which, he's supposed to be ironing too! Where are my clothes dude?

Check it out! Actual blue skies. Going crazy with the laundry today to take advantage of the break in weather!
Think been suffering from SAD - Seasonal Affective Disorder. Not enough sun = frumpy, grumpy nat. Yayaaayayyy!

Besides getting rave reviews: I've found a new use for Eugene's Jambalaya - it is an instant cure-all for someone on the brink of drunkeness.

Met two good friends AL and TH for a drink at Villa Bali, in Malan Road, and we ended up coming back to coronation road; where they steadily went through loads of whisky - both the glenfiddich and the suntory.

We were watching the Mad TV Memoirs of Geisha spoof - which can be found here I swear, everytime you see it, it actually gets funnier and funnier!

"It haaaaaaaaaaard" - go watch it, it's worth that five minutes of your time. Better if you watch the real trailer too!!

But everyone seemed pretty okay. But then, I opened this laptop to try to enter a blog entry,
but TH decides that he has to take away the computer and proceeded to type on this blog some gibberish, which included "Raffles, Raffles fight fight fight." yes, my sentiments exactly. Whaaaat???
I had to physically wrestle the computer away from him... to his wails: "I always get edited! Naaaat! Don't edit meeeeeeee!"

Riggght. That's when I figured, this chap may have had a bit TOO much of the good stuff.

Anyway, shortly after that, he crumples into a little heap, and says "I'm drunk".

We served him up some water and some jambalaya and he was instantly okay. In fact, he was so perked up by the food he could utter: wow, this is good.

Humm... maybe G should try to pursue his second career as michelin star chef?

Why is it that some of the best food in the land is always found in the red light district?
Okay, I understand why these makan joints would be most likely to be open till real late; but it's the sheer variety, quality and fame of these places that continually surprise me.

For instance, in SG, there's Geylang. And people make pilgrimages to Geylang for, among other things, claypot rice, dao huay, beef kuayteow, Taiwanese stinky tofu, durian joints and Sin Huat.
Sin Huat is a grubby, dimly lit coffeeshop that makes no attempt whatsoever to lighten/prettify the atmosphere. The lighting is provided for by dim flourescent tubes. The tables are, well... utilitarian, and the chairs plastic.
But this same Sin Huat place has actually been featured in the Food Channel, with Anthony Bourdain slurping its stuff down, it's also got mentions in the New York Times, and several US papers including one in Boston, and according to local guide, the Makansutra, it gets... SIX chopsticks. This is equivalent to getting, oh four Michelin Stars or something.

With so much hype, everyone who even claims to be half a foodie will make that little pilgrimage to you know, actually find out what it is all about.

Okay, I grant you, it's pretty nice. But it's not die die must go back! And between both of us, we had a small veg - stir fried kai lan, a small grouper and a plate of the famous crab beehoon. And guess what is the damage? $98 bucks. No joke. In a coffeeshop.

Well, yes, we were very full after the meal; and it was something we simply had to try out, but whoa... first and last time man.

The chef/owner/waiter one man show is also notorious for being rather grumpy. But here in Sg, we looove our grumpy cooks. In fact, the grumpier and nastier they are, the longer the queues.

You should visit Karen's site - look at the links on the side - and read about the Eng Seng Pepper Crab Nazi. This woman basically yells at you, essentially orders the food for you, but they are so popular that on a weekday, they are sold out of crabs an hour and a half into opening!

I'll admit any day that the pepper sauce is simply fantastic - rich, buttery, spicy, yummy with the consistency of tar. It also looks like tar, but its manna from heaven, I tell you.

So in the same way, there are char kuay teow nazis; prawn mee nazis... you get the idea... scattered around the island.

See, the reasoning is if they can afford to be soooo mean to customers; they must have something good to offer!

We are suckers for punishment lah, I tell you.

Looks like the Wees and the Nathans (one half of the Nathans can be found here) will be in Siem Reap at the same time we're planning to go!

Yep, finally decided on the Angkor Wat temples for our week off work in February. Of course, G booked his leave for the week after CNY, which means... yikes, trying to juggle both families when it comes to reunion dinner and plenty of running around to both sides of the family.
Cham. And I haven't even gone to the banks to get new notes!!!!!

Anyhoos. The Angkor trip was decided after hours and hours of flim flamming around ideas like learning to snow board in Hokkaido (too expensive... 2.6 Gs each owww.. . not huneymoon so canch spend that kind of dough anymore) and swanning around with Dennis in Japan; Bali Diving (which is great except we've been there to dive twice already); and Maldives diving (the flights don't leave daily, grrrr and with tax its quite a lot).

In the end, it was the fact that the Wees were planning one too, and Feb is supposed to be a nice cool month to go, and that Gene Wee had found this REALLY nice hotel called de la paix. Its got a couple of nice packages, one of which offers you the option of shopping for your own dinner with the hotel's chef. Which is nice, but you can also opt to do your bit for the community by buying a tonne of rice or sponsoring little kits for kids or their school books. (click on the connect link on the website's home page)

We had initially stumbled on this place called FCC which stands for Foreign Correspondents Club, its very old world and there's a wonderful package that brings you to the temples and you get massages and stuff after... gorgeous.
BUT there were some not-so-good reviews on tripadvisor.com including one about dodgy water which tasted like metallic. Hummmmm.

So, I freaked out and G had to make bookings at the other one.

Speaking of G... he's gone back to his cooking phase, which means plenty of yummy food - including stuff like jambalaya, baked chicken and shepard's pie - for dinner. The man can't clean to save his life, yes, I have to do the kitchen clean up after, wipe the stove etc, clean the bits of veg stuck in the drain strainer, mop the oily floor and kitchen counters, but MAN, he can cook.

Garkh. It is really pouring. Sg is experiencing one of the wettest decembers ever. Try the Met agency's website, and all it says is rain rain and more rain.

It hasn't stopped since Fri night/sat morning... and since we don't have a dryer, it means that G is running out of clothes. Me? Heh, like all women, I have enough clothes to fill three wardrobes.. so no worries there... but it is getting gunky sitting in the laundry basket waiting for its turn at the machine.

Congrats to Simon and Wendy, their new baby boy was born on Sunday night.

Ahah! betcha you had to do a double take. Yep, have changed the way the blog looks. It took some researching on the net... but surprisingly, its actually quite easy.

Was tired of the generic template that Blogger served up, so found this one.
What do you think?

Comments please?!?

Yes. In case you are wondering, it is 3 something in the A.M. Couldn't sleep lah. But think after all this fiddling around, gonna go koon soon.

It seemed amazing enough; bright sunshine as I woke up from a quick nap.
How the day has cleared up, I thought cheerily, getting into my blading duds.

It was still shiny all the way on the AYE/ECP, until I hit the Marina South stetch. Right in front of me was a bank of dark, angry, roiling clouds.
Hummm... I thought... as I stepped on the accelerator a bit more... If I hurry, I can get about 30 mins in at the East Coast - which still looked relatively clear.

The minute, I jest you not, the MINUTE I got to Fort Road, just passing that damned speed camera, big fat plops of rain came down.
Cursing roundly, I had to turn back and drive another 20 minutes to West Coast Park on the other side of the island, where I spent 20 minutes slip-sliding, frantically trying to get some purchase on extremely wet concrete, when guess what, IT STARTED RAINING again.

And this was tropical storm strength; there was so much force in each drop it felt as if my windscreen was going to shatter.

Sigh. So I drove to my mom's (very near West Coast Park) where I had, yet again, too much to eat!

Maybe I can get some swimming in tomorrow.

Double sigh. My washing seems like its never going to dry.

Triple sigh. The home is still redolent with the pong of durian, despite Gene having taken it out of the fridge and bringing it to work in the am.
I really don't want to know what the hospital's pantru smells like now (!) hahhahaha

This is the closest we get to a white christmas and new year. It's been pouring buckets and buckets.

One electrical storm fried a couple of cars and a friend's broadband connection over in the centre bit of the island, and yesterday we were driving in rain so heavy that visibility was down to about 5 m.

Delivering curry fishhead to our parents (we stumbled upon this recommendation in the makansutra) meant getting extremely wet pants and shoes.

Still, it made for relatively cool weather in what would be our version of winter I suppose.
So much so that yesterday we boiled up some mulled wine (!) and invited some pals over.
The wine was nice and hot and spicy, G also cooked up some hot spicy whisky toddy thingie and the lot of us ended up playing Jenga on the floor of the apartment... (PS: to spice up Jenga, just up the number of blocks people have to remove during his/her go).

But since G had to work today, it meant a relatively quiet night. We drove to Geylang (its was PACKED!) to get durian for his call... and managed to buy one expensive mother of a fruit and it was the stinkiest damned thing ever!!!! It stunk up the car within 5 minutes and I had to open the window to avoid gagging.

And dinner was a humble but yummy repast at 2300 at Adam Road Hawker Centre... had very yummy prawn soup and fried noodles.

Speaking of which - have been on a carbo binge ever since Africa.I need to go exercise but the weather is quite dodgy... hummmm. conundrums conundrums.
I am getting fat :( but if i go blade now, the likelihood of me slipping on the wet road and landing on the bum is very high indeed. Fat = more weight = more mass to thump the ground = massive owww... hummm.

Anyway. Happy New Year all. To a great (and slimmer) year ahead.