I will be the pattern of all patience; I will say nothing.

How was your New Year
I managed to get away pretty easily on Sunday – fewer relatives mean fewer bothersome questions. The ones that pressed, received an answer that they don’t have to give me any more ang pows, but if they offer it, like now, I’m not shy to take it.

The others who asked straight up questions received straight up answers.

I met cousins I haven’t seen in ages, and some look the same, some doubled in height, some doubled in size. Some are exactly the same, and some I say the same thing to every year – Happy New Year, and Bye, see you again. Nothing in between.

Most were preoccupied with my due-anytime sister-in-law, who felt brave enough to go down to the Regent Hotel and get the jelly carp for dessert. On her own.

And I had a busy day stuffing prawns with garlic (which i detest doing, but love eating) at my brother’s because we had our Chinese New Year dinner at his place. KF was trying to keep awake, since he slept at five the night before and I woke him up at nine-thirty.

But back to the prawns. My brother has this neat prawn recipe. He gets big unshelled tiger prawns, slits them down the back and up the head – at this point, I usually remove the vein – and then he stuffs the prawn in the slit with a mixture of chopped garlic, a little salt, olive oil or margerine and kaffir line peel. We stack them stuffing side up and stick them in the oven to grill for about 10 minutes on high, and another 10 or 15 on medium.

Sometimes he gets live prawns, which freak the hell out of me because when he thinks he’s chilled them to death, one or two will jump out at me when I try to pick them up to get them cleaned and slit.

Anyway.

I spent yesterday just chilling. We went out for lunch, but Crystal Jade was closed and I had to make do with weird Thai/Vietnamese.

We wandered around town a bit, went home and started a dvd marathon. I love Hong Kong triad movies. They’re so complicated and cool. Especially the Johnnie To ones. SPL was a little violent. But anything with Donnie Yen in it is good. And the Donnie Yen/Sumo Hung bits – brilliant.

We also watched Election. This time it’s Simon Yam who does the work, and Tony Leung Ka Fai who does the shouting. No fancy fight sequences. Just plain old triad style whacking. Quite cool. I liked that.

And simply because I said I like the other Tony Leung better, we caught The Longest Night, which was surprisingly good. Set in Macau this time, it features a psychotic Lau Ching Wan and the same fatman that appears in those Johnnie To Gangster films.

Then we watched Sideways. This one – I was a tad disappointed with, mostly because I had hyped it up in my mind for a while. Not my thing.

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was funny, but I think I’ll be content with the book. I really wanted to catch it for Martin Freeman, who’s Tim in the original The Office, and who incidentally, shares my birthday. He’s gotta be a genius with those credentials, really.

I slept at around 4am.

And got up with a start at 12.30pm when my brother called. He wanted me to go and get him a replacement pot for his coffee purculator. Apparently it’s broken. So I’ll go do that in a bit. He also said, Ella is here.

I rambled something and hung up and I was in bed before I realised he meant that my sister in law had delivered the baby.

So there’s one more baby in the household to contend with, Eleanor. Let me go and grab his coffee pot and try to catch a peek at her in the hospital. Later.

Quick (late) note to my friends -

Happy New Year!

And I still accept Ang Pows, so dun shy.

Thanks in advance.

Why you shouldn’t share tables at hawker centres
Feeling adventurous, we went to Maxwell Market for lunch today. There were like 7 of us, so we had to split up into two tables. I sat with Heather and Luke.

<sidetrack>
Heather and Luke have been working very hard. The product they’re working on is so huge and tricky, and their deadlines are pretty damn tight. Add to that a whole heap of content provider complications. They’ve been putting in really long hours and they’re really stressing out. I think they’re doing great, because even though it’s difficult, they’re implementing all that goodstuff I didn’t and procrastinated on. For 2 years.

Aza-aza fighting!
</sidetrack>

When we were just about done, this lone geezer in his mid-forties asked if he could share the table. I was a little annoyed, because he asked – Is anyone sitting here? – but didn’t have the decency to make eye contact when I said – No, go ahead.

Anyway. He sat down with his food and started to tuck in, and 5 minutes later he looks at us and asks us – Are you Singaporean?

Perplexed, Heather and I answered, Yeah?

He sniggers a little, and asks Luke, “Can you run very fast? Do you run as fast as Ben Johnson or Marion Jones? Can you fight like Steven Seagal or Jet Li?”

And I’m thinking, not only is this dude seriously nuts, he’s going to sell us something. Damn.

And we return him even more confused looks. The man chuckles a bit and adds sarcastically, “Well I thought you were. Because your two girlfriends here just have their wallets and phones on the table like that. A snatch thief can come by and unless you can run as fast as Ben Johnson you won’t catch him”.

He went on to ask us another series of questions, like if we worked in the area, if we were office workers. He proudly pronounced Luke a non-office worker, because of his red cap, and Luke gleefully went along with it, saying he didn’t have a proper office job.

At this point, I had enough of answering his questions and had a load of questions of my own. Heather makes a quick exit, excusing herself to get dessert. Luke runs along with her in a dash that would make Carl Lewis proud. And I stayed there, getting ready to have some fun with the obviously Paranoid Uncle [PU].

PU: Are you a graduate? Of NUS?
Me: *Non-commital smile*
PU: Yah, you look like a graduate. Sound like a graduate. Do you work in an office around here? Cannot be right, dressed like that.
Me: (Pointing to his stiffly pressed shirt and pants with that pressed middle line down front) Uncle, not everyone who works in an office dress like you, ah?
PU: Yah, you’re right. Today is Friday. You can tell your friend, you all aren’t the only people I’ve told this to.
Me: Well, even if that’s the case, you should understand that it’s offensive to me when a stranger sits at my table and starts asking me questions. Not only that, you’re asking me things with an answer in mind. It’s rude if you ask me.

PU smiles and stands up at this point. He walks away, but his food is on the table, so it was evident he was coming back. Drat.

PU: Yah I understand your point. I apologise. Because sometimes I just get too carried away, and I forget formalities.
Me: I don’t need formalities, I just take offense when strangers ask me a barrage of questions, and especially if you are asking to make a point. If you have a point to make, just come out and make it. Don’t ask me questions to prove something.
PU: You have to understand the threat. In these times, you know what it’s like? What the threat is? You can have someone who has no qualms about strapping bombs to his chest and driving someplace and killing himself and other people along with him. Do you understand that that’s the threat? These terrorist threats are very real. Do you know what it means?

The PU looks all serious now. He is earnestly trying to show me the truth. His eyes widen. He moves forward in his seat. The passion with which he makes his point makes me sound like an insolent kid when I respond.

Me: The way I see it – it’s a big difference between a snatch thief and a terrorist.
PU: You know, the governments around the world, they are clamping down on these terrorists funding. So now they become desperado… [For some reason I wanted to laugh when he said desperado, simply because I didn't figure him for an Eagles fan, but then again. It could be a Paranoid Uncle buzzword. It's like saying "project management" or "search optimisation" in my organisation.]

At this point, I receive a phone call, and I thought, what luck! I excuse myself to pick the call, and it was a very thoughtful Eeevahn (sorry I called you a mean name in the morning). He said the most comforting four words this year – Do you need rescuing?

I guessed I would’ve run out of things to say to PU, though I wanted to find out where he worked and stuff, but when the way out called, I just figured I’ll take it. And so I left the table. PU left it to pick up some food, so I left without saying goodbye.

After talking to PU for a bit, I wasn’t as irritated with him as I was when he first sat down. At the end he was came across as a jaded, paranoid, passed-over civil servant, maybe even a police officer from the nearby police station. He spoke well, and was evidently somewhat educated. He wore his belief in discipline firmly in his demeanour, but he bore this look of pent up frustration – at not getting ahead, at being overlooked, at being surpassed by younger graduate punks. He was probably harmless, but I was not going to take being spoken to in that condescending tone without getting even. Which is juvenile and stupid, I know, and in the end I hardly got even and instead had to entertain his paranoia longer.

So the morale of the story is – there really is no getting even or satisfaction at the end of things.

Oh wait, that’s not it. Let’s try again:

And that’s why you don’t let just anyone join your table during lunch.

Yeah. That.

I can hear again!
Crystal clear hearing. I now hear stuff I have long forgotten, and will in time forget again as my brain rapidly filters all the unnecessary stuff in the background. But first, a detailed description of my very own cathartic experience.

So after 5 days or so of antibiotics, glycerine ear drops and decongestants, I went back to Raffles Medical to get my ear fixed. They couldn’t do it the previous visit because my ear was filled with fluid, most of which was me trying in vain to flush my ear myself.

This time, the doctor gave me a wry smile and said, Yes today we flush your ear. Ahhh music to my ears.

This doctor was another thing altogether. The one from the previous visit was probably my age, or slightly older. He was chirpy and a little chatty, which is unnerving since the doctors I’ve visited all my life were sullen old folk who made me take yukky green medication. The doctor dude was especially amused when I detailed how I tried to research my condition and find ways to fix it from Wikipedia.

The doctor who flushed my ear looked nothing like a doctor. He was middle aged, his hair thin and grey, and he had an old, worn smile. He looked more like one of those guys who man one of those stationery stores at Bras Basah Complex. It was hard to reconcile his very colloquial tone with what he asked and said to me. I kept imagining myself trying to buy a jotterbook and the uncle at the store was asking me how I felt.

Anyway, after a quick check of my ears he sent me out to wait while he gave instructions to this male nurse or technician dude. The dude was practically a kid, he must’ve been 20 or so. He brought me to one of the rooms at the A&E department, and dropped olive oil in my blocked ear. A minute or so later, the doctor came in, and the kid comes back with a large pan of warm water. The doctor holds up a large metal syringe – the size of which I’ve only seen one other time in my life, at the primary school dentist – and warns me that it could get messy. The kid clumsily tries to wrap a towel around my shoulders, and then holds another pan below and ear. And here we go.

First, warm water surrounds my outer ear. It’s somewhat comforting, it’s just the right temperature. It’s not hot, and it’s not cold. Then I hear something – the jet of water angrily hitting the back of my ear, it was loud, and it came crashing in. At first it sounded a little muffled, and then, suddenly, the sound got crisp again.

I hear the doctor’s voice in my right ear. Crisp, echo-ey and loud. Wah, quite a lot of dirt you had there. You see?

And he shoves the green pan the kid was holding in front of me. He was right. It was a lot of gunk floating in the water, and at the bottom of the pan lay the lump of dark hardened wax which made me feel so incapacitated for almost two weeks. It was gross to look at, yet all I felt was relief. I could hear again, and though there was nothing, I could still hear water running.

The doctor repeated the procedure in my left ear, and it wasn’t as dramatic. A piece of flat dry wax was flushed out, but that was mostly it.

And I could still hear the water running. I heard the water running for a good ten minutes, as I sat outside waiting to settle the bill. I could hear the reception ladies gossiping ten metres away. I could hear the women sitting near the reception ladies crumple her stupid plastic bag – it was so loud I wanted to go over and take it from her.

More importantly, I could hear the cashier call me. The last time I was there, she had to yell my name a couple of times before I heard her.

In any case, to celebrate getting my hearing back 100% I downloaded a new song off iTunes. it’s happy, and cute, and apt. Sorta.

Happy Dappy 2006!
I ate something bad in the last days of 2005 (this is the end of my hotpot obsession, I’m telling you) and spent a lot of New Year’s Eve spring cleaning my stomach, which is not a painless experience. Getting rid of junk is always tough. For me at least, but I’m glad it’s done. It’s strangely ironic, I almost feel like it’s a necessary purge to empty the junk box that was 2005. The universe sure has a sense of humour.

Well, the first few hours of 2006 have left me unharmed so far. Some residual pangs of pain, but there’s always that. The road to recovery not always did run smooth.

But I’m feeling good today. Things are looking up. I fixed my Flickr uploading problems (it takes settings from IE, and I had stupid proxy settings on IE. Geez!) and the weather is good. And Mom is bringing over some fried fish killies, yay!

I’m grateful for a lot of things, some happened in 2005, some pre-date it. But here they are.

Things in Life That Indicate or me, whoever
in no particular order

• The Internet. Where else could you find such a vast expanse of knowledge, stupidity, entertainment, pain, happiness, love, hate, progress, freedom and <insert random emotions I fail to comprehend>? With the ease of tapping on various pieces of plastic, we are transported into worlds that would otherwise take us too long, cost too much, etc. On the Internet, we can learn Korean, read about my favourite author, read about random lives, watch the world go by, get music, get smart, get smart about tech, get smart about (tech) business, find recipes, do just about anything. How cool is that?
• Steve Jobs. Sure the guy sold more iPods than Macs, but without him antagonising either Microsoft or Creative, our tech life would be so much less exciting.
• Microwave ovens.
• My job. After you strip the emotion out of it, there’s still something to be said about flexible working hours, casual dress every day of the week and being able to surf as part of your job.
• Books! Even with the vastness of the Internet, you need a break now and again.
• Living in a city where you can get a good variety of food, without driving.
• Tea. What would be afternoons be without this?
• Family.
• Friends.
• Photos.

That the world is a pretty wonderful place.

Here are 100 things we didn’t know in 2004, which is pretty incredible.

Hello 2006!