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

Yet another ear infection
Was supposed to be a horrible (y)ear for my zodiac animal. They were right. It’s uncomfortable, and annoying but at least this time I can hear pretty ok.

Going to be a busy week at the office.

Meanwhile, KF has been going a little nuts with the new printer – so much so that I’ve had to make a few adjustments to my post-it board to accommodate the new photos. My mom though, is pretty pleased with all the new print outs of her precious grandkids.

4R paper used to cost me something like S$8.50 for a pack of 30 (Premium Glossy). Now it’s going for $5.90. Now we get semi-glossy, which I prefer. It’s like getting it printed on matte photo paper. Anyway, that too costs less than what I used to pay, weighing in at $6.30 for a 30 pack. So far, I’ve been sticking to Epson paper, mostly because it’s thick and decent. And also ‘cos KF doesn’t want to switch since he’s happy with the current print outs.

Our favourite toy this week is the 1gb thumbdrive we picked up at Challenger over the weekend. Cost us a neat $73. Damn, I love memory.

Been uploading some old pics onto Flickr
Man, time sure flies. But some things always stay the same.

Like how despite spending five years together, KF still can’t get my birthday right.

Getting cheap
I love shopping in Chinatown – you can get close to anything there, like

• Toilettries: dotted along Eu Tong Sen Street are tons of little toilettries stores which sell soaps, powders, shampoos and cosmetics for something like 20% or more less than what you’d get at the supermarket or the department stores. People’s Park Complex houses another truckload of them, and the newly refurbished People’s Park Textile Centre (the one behind Chinatown OG along Upper Cross Street) houses another bunch. It’s a fun place to visit especially if you’re the kind that needs retail therapy.

• Chinese herbs: the stuff you put in your soups for herbal teas can all be found here. It’s a no brainer, right. But the lovely bit is, the further you walk, the more choices you have, and the cheaper it gets. Always shop around. KF likes to get Luo Han Guo from the stores here. They store owners have varying opinions about which fruit are better, but generally, dark coloured fruit are riper, and they should be sort of bouncy. Anyway, you can get good ones at the medical halls down Smith Street, small ones cost $0.40 cents a pop, and medium ones about $0.50 each. If you like the drink, just wash one fruit, crack it in half, and leave it in a pot of water to boil. The longer you boil, the darker the liquid will get. 20-30 minutes is all it takes. You don’t have to add sugar, because it’s sweet. You can add in a couple of slices of American Ginseng (you can get it where you get the Luo Han Guo – sliced up, 400g or so for $16) into your cup as you spoon the hot liquid in, or boil the fruit with Chrysanthenum. KF drinks it straight. It is very low in calories despite the sweetness, and is suitable for diabetics, apparently.
• Household items: CK Department store has loads of neat plastic household items, like the little suction hooks, soap holders, dispensers, sponges, shower curtains, I’m sure you get the idea. I like getting those suction holders for holding up sponges and stuff in the kitchen. Those go for $1.90 each. I usually get my batteries (button cell, alkaline, that sort of thing), tissues, liquid soap (shokobutsu!) there. What you really don’t want to get there would probably be like shoes, underwear or bedsheets – stuff you really don’t want to skimp on.
• DVDs: during Chinese New Year, you can get some of the older Hong Kong movies for $7 a pop. Most other times they cost between $7.90 and $12.90.

It’s a good thing I work a couple of streets away from Chinatown.

Cool deal of the week
Was very ambitious at the supermarket this week, now that Mr C is back I can buy more food as I’m sure turnover will be quite high.

On offer at Cold Storage – 2l back of Meiji Milk (the good one – full of creamy goodness) for ~$4.20 (?) and they throw in 2 tubs of 150ml plain yogurt to go along. This is the bestest deal. Cos once you have a tub of plain yogurt and milk, you can set up your own little yogurt factory.

Try at your own risk. Don’t come running to me if/when you get the runs.

This is how:

1. In a clean container spoon a little of your plain yogurt in. So I scooped about 3 teaspoons of plain yogurt into a small 2.5 inch plastic bowl with lid (it covered less than one fifth of the bowl). So one of that little tubs of free plain yogurt went into 4 such bowls.
2. Then fill the rest of the container with milk. Don’t stir or mix it. I used the milk that I bought – which works great because Meiji Milk has horribly short shelf life.
3. Leave the containers out to rest in room temperature for a day. I left it on the dinner table.
4. About 18-24 hours later (probably less, but I make it in the night, and check on it the next day after work) you’ll have another batch of fresh, plain yogurt! You’ll know it’s done when its consistency is no longer watery like milk. It’ll smell a little sour like yogurt should.
5. Stick it in the fridge! and I think if you consume it in the next week or so you should be fine.

Just remember to save your last container for your next batch of yogurt and have fun!

Braved the crowds
And it paid off pretty well. But first, the boring stuff.

Had lunch with a couple of close friends this afternoon. Which was great. We met at Mama Lucia’s, a quaint little Italian Restaurant Fraser Suites. The appetiser I really liked was a Mozarella Cheese + Tomato + Olive oil dish. That was fantastic, I don’t usually like cheese, but that was a good one. It was milky and mild, and went great with the vine ripened tomatoes, olive oil and herbs. My entree was a little disappointing, I had a seafood fusili wrapped in foil. The combination of two of my favourite people, my favourite time of the year, and my favourite appetiser made for a really pleasant lunch.

We got kicked out of the place at about 3pm, and I went to Borders to try and finish my Christmas shopping with VS. It was crowded and crazy, but I managed fine, and now I’m done.

Supermarket finds
Later in the day, I went to NTUC Fairprice with my folks and brother and found 2 gazillion things that would’ve made great Christmas gifts too!

Great find 1: a coffee cup with motorised frother. Rubber lid with sipper, plastic body and a little whisk attached to a battery operater motor at the bottom. Press a small button to actuvate. Bargain basement price of ~$5.

Great find 2: Kit Kat bundled with coffee cup. 4×4 pack Kit Kit with an insulated coffee mug and rubber airtight lid. I bought this! $9.60.

Another slow day today
Or did time seem to pass slower so I could feel the full extent of each minute in pain from the horrible throat infection I seemed to have picked up.

Ever notice how you can never find something when you really need it? I went to three different stores today to look for the particular brand of lozenges that actually taste good – and they were all out! I settled for the next best thing in the end – the cheapest thing on the shelf.

Guardian Pharmacy House Brand Equally Yuckko Tasting Dequalinium Lozenges. $1.99 for 30. Knock yourself out. Though you probably won’t be able to on these things.

Kwik on, Kwik off!
I don’t do it often, but I gave myself a manicure and a pedicure a couple of weeks back on a lazy Saturday afternoon, and have kept my nails lacquered since.

The problem with lacquering your nails is that it takes a fair amount of trouble to get the varnish off when you’re sick of it. This is where sometimes you wish you could just stick your finger into the bottle of nail polish solution and wait for the varnish to dissolve.

The Sally Hansen Kwik Off Vitamin E and Aloe Nail Moisturising Colour Remover is just that. It comes in a plastic jar, instead of a bottle. Filled with a generous amount of varnish remover, and a sponge with 3 holes for your fingers, it makes removing your nail varnish a breeze. I spent maybe 5 minutes for both hands – stick your fingers in for a few seconds, and then roll it around the sponge! Easy.

The tricky bit is trying to use it on your toes. Well – here’s the trick – leave the jar on the ground. Sit on a chair and place your toes in the jar 3 at a go. Be careful not to tip the jar. What I did was bend my toes forward towards my sole, so the varnish contacts the top of the sponge. Works like a charm.

Highly recommended – I love how easy this works. $8.10 for 150ml jar, from Watson’s.

No more sewing hems!
If you’re a short person like me, you’re bound to have to make endless trips to the tailor to get your pants shortened. It’s a little annoying, because of the inconvenience, and it costs $3-4 a pop depending on where you go.

I found the coolest thing the other day. It’s called Steam-A-Seam. Basically, it’s fusable tape for clothes. It comes in a roll, you stick one side to one surface, remove the backing, make contact with the other surface or fabric, and iron over it. It’s that simple.

From Spotlight, $14.99 for 20 yards (18.29m). For me, that’s money well spent.

Product Review: Ansell Handy Care Gloves
You dudes who don’t do the dishes or real housework can skip this bit.

When it comes to getting down and dirty with the housework I’ve found latex gloves – the kind the doctors or dentists use – to be the easiest to use. They’re cheap – usually about 10c a pair. They fit better than those crappy large yellow ones, or the gross transparent plastic-bag ones hawkers use.

The drawback – latext gloves are powdered (some people are allergic to that) and they make your hands smell bad.

Well. I found the Ansell Handy Care Gloves a great alternative. The fit is like a latex glove, but the powderless insides are coated with a moisturiser and chamomile which smell so good. $3.50 a pack of 10. I last saw them at Cold Storage Great World City. The Cold Storage Bugis Junction doesn’t seem to stock them.

Movie Review: Donnie Darko
Donnie Darko is so my kind of movie. Coming in at #92 on IMDb’s Top 250 Movie Rankings, the plot outline reads “Highschooler Donnie is plagued by visions of a giant evil rabbit who orders him to commit acts of violence and predicts the impending end of the world.” I decided to get the DVD at “giant evil rabbit”.

It’s a really dark movie – quite a fair bit happens at night, but it isn’t the Hong-Kong-horror-movie-darkness-type-cinematography thankfully. Instead, it’s a strange spiralling feeling throughout the movie, as if you’ve been sucked down the rabbithole. And it’s not anything I would’ve expected. Not that there was a dramatic twist at the end, you probably can fathom a good guess about halfway through. But in the end, I felt like I made the journey along with the dude.

The soundtrack is riddled with Tears for Fears, so the movie gets another brownie point from me. Another plus point: I don’t get it when they try to explain the logic the assumptions that pin the movie – in this case, the Philosophy of Time Travel – so that makes it easier for me to believe everything.

What I didn’t really like about the movie – was that the demonic bunny didn’t really look like a bunny. I was expecting a crazed, fang-bearing, horned bunny. It turned out to be a skinny, crude-oily ugly one.

Watch this if you like David Lynch (Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive) type movies.

I got myself a new phone today
I’ve been eyeing the Sony Ericsson K700i for a while now, but in my whole grand list of purchasing priorities, I knocked it down to like #285 or so because it costs about $500. Way more than I am willing to shell out for yet another camera (even though this one has a phone attached to it). I still think its a nice phone, but I convinced myself now’s really not the time.

So after I convinced myself with the fact that I can live without the coolest thing on earth, in comes a great offer in my physical mailbox. Starhub is offering the Nokia 3120 free for my plan if I signed on for another 2 years. So I went to one of the authorised dealers and picked the phone up today.

So far it works fine, mostly because I don’t really give a damn how it works as long as it
(a) makes calls
(b) receives calls
(c) has WAP

And I wanted the K700i.

Happy Independence Day
So up-dates:
1. 3 July – Tom Cruise celebrates his 42 birthday. It’s getting depressing, growing old with your favourite actors (they’re in their 40s!). But he still looks great.
2. 4 July – We bought an aerobie orbiter, and I learn the nasty truth: I’m a lousy thrower.
3. 6 July – My boss celebrates his last day at the company. He looks so happy, it’s taken years off his face.

What’s an aerobie orbiter?
It’s a little triangle boomerang. We had an aerobie frisbee once, and it was the coolest ever. So when we saw the Orbiter in a sports store over at the Paragon, we jumped on it. It cost about S$25.

The set up
We headed back to my parents’ place immediately after we got the orbiter. It was still bright, so we figured we could get a good hour, hour and a half of play after some tea. There’s a nice piece of land just across from the house that’s been empty since we got the house more than 10 years back.

Getting down to it
I figured, it’s a boomerang, what kind of instructions do you need besides to throw it? So we charge straight into it. We ripped the packaging apart and ran out to the field.

He sure looked good throwing it
KF gives it a throw. He tries not to overdo it, and lets it off with a light fling. You can see the orbiter in the top right corner of the photo. The orbiter takes flight, but doesn’t come back. At that, I decide that I’ll just give it a whirl.

That’s me looking like a scrunched up mess
Enough with the wussy half assed throws, I threw this one. And it took off nicely! You can see it just above the houses on the left, right in between the 2 of them.

My parents live in the one with the pink and white flowers overflowing from the wall.

A little while later, my dad comes out with his golf clubs to start knocking around too, so we show off our newly found super-boomerang powers only to be told that we were throwing it wrong. He tells us it’s easier to throw it backhanded, and against the wind. Really?

He shows us what he means – it was beautiful. The orbiter glided up, twirled it’s special way, and landed 8 feet from us after making a real orbit. I can’t believe it! So far all it did for us is climb away from us, and come back down the same path it took.

So following Dad’s instructions, I give it a try. Perfectly positioned, and raring to go, I give it a hard fling. The orbiter takes off! It climbs, and glides, and floats, and turns, and lands – on my roof! Dad had to climb up the wall, armed with a fishing rod, to get it.

In my next few attempts, the Orbiter lands on a tree, in a drain, on another tree (this time caught between branches), and in a neighbours’ porch. After that I gave up.

The moral of the story?
Sometimes you need to know when to stop and just call a spade a spade, even when everyone else around you is supportive and keeps getting you to try it. Because they’re the ones who have to salvage the situation. I think if I didn’t go all out and let it rip I wouldn’t have gotten into so much trouble, but then it wasn’t much fun.

Still it was good fun, KF had such a good time, he went to try it out on his own today at the open space downstairs.