Sprung Spring

This week (actually it is 3 weeks now) I have mostly been trying to cope with some odd things that are as the tourist office rightly points out are "Uniquely Singapore". Perhaps it is the onset of Spring, which is something I knew only because the shops told me to buy some Spring fashions. This means the long hot winter is over and we are heading into a long hot Spring, woohoo.
Our cleaner is a bit of fruit loop, we share her with several friends here and the cleaner pimp who introduced her to us all is a keen collector of Asian art. It turns out the very impressive and lifelike picture of a proud old man is putting a curse on our cleaner, so now she can no longer clean his house. She couldn't tell him herself, we had to break the news to him and the sympathetic souls that we are thought we should move the painting around to each of the houses she cleans just to really freak her out. Shouldn't have come of too much of a surprise to us though, earlier this year when I asked her how her Christmas was she told me it was bad because her friend put a hex on her and her bag got stolen and her face kept swelling up and stuff and it was costing her a fortune in exorcisms.
I finally braved the Tampines Hans eatery that has previously been my nemisis in the past by carefully placing excessive amount of cucumbers on toasted sandwiches. I had to meet this dickhead from work there for a casual meeting and asked for a toated sandwich sans the stinking Beelzebub's Bellend, and they pushed a button on the till that said No Cucumber. Why the bloody hell didn't they do this for me last time I asked for it.
Anyway this dickhead turns up for the meeting and for a moment I forgot he was a brylcreemed, hair dying, crap waffling, old dinosaur that I normally wouldn't give a whiff of my best fart to. The reason for this new found respect was the fact he obviously didn't like cucumber either. The respect was short lived however, I only found he didn't like cucumber because he coughed it up like a cat coughs up a fur ball, twice.
Things only got worse as he proceeded in an obvious attempt at trying to impress me with how cool he was, that if we didn't do things his way he would get his "Arse Butt Kicked." It was around that time I began astral travelling thinking it would be great comedy moment to just lean over and slap him in the face and tell him to shut up.
Maybe next time, actually I probably won't because I don't plan meeting him outside of the office again. But I do take great delight when ever I am in a meeting with him in getting to the room 5 minutes earlier hiding the whiteboard pens. He can't make it through a meeting without drawing on the board, which is just too irritating for someone that I already want to punch. Apparently he now carries a set of pens on him to each meeting, which is a juvenile yet somehow rewarding victory.

Stranger Danger

This week I have been most hanging around in the lobby at work for prolonged periods. All because of a campaign that warned me not to get into lifts with strangers and despite being here several months there are still many people I consider strangers in my building. While the target of this particular campaign seems to be little kids, I think anyone would think twice about entering the lift with this weird looking chap. Lift related crimes fall under the Outrage of Modesty laws and carry a jail term of 3-10 years combined with a jolly good caning. I would also like to see Outrage of Modesty extended to girls in hipster jeans exposing uneccessary bumcrack.
The big news of late here has been the prospect of a General Election. The ruling Peoples Action Party (PAP) have been in power since independence in 1965 and although there are other parties invited to participate n the election it seems to be largely an acedemic exercise. I was asking a cabbie about it the other day and said that voting was compulsory but quite offen there are no opposition parties in his voting area so he didn't need to vote. I asked him if he could remember any smear campaigns against the PAP, ignoring my purile attempt at humour he replied it wasn't a good thing to do. Something one of the few opposition politicians found out when he questioned the judicial system and ended up in jail for a while Apparently bloggers discussing the election will be under some scrutiny so the next update could be from a cell with Bubba.
The Aussie National Basketball League (NBL) is particularly annoying, the NBL has worked out there is a sporting drought between rugby finishing and cricket starting, which is when the NBL starts. I thought I had escaped this period of pain, but now the brains trust in the NBL has decided to move team to Singapore. And not just any team, but the quality Hunter Pirates franchise are going to be calling Singers home this year.
Singapore Basket ball CEO Oon Jin Teik said. “For a little more than the price of a movie ticket, Singaporeans will not only be able to catch live world-class basketball action right on home soil, but be able to participate in a whole new form of sports entertainment that is wholesome and exciting, much like what we see today on TV at NBA basketball matches. In time to come, we hope this event will become another key marquee event in Singapore’s ever growing and vibrant sports calendar.” He has obviously been misinformed and perhaps never seen Aussie basketball. Personally I prefer hitting my shins with a stick and would probably eat dirt rather than sit down to watch the Hunter Pirates do their thing. I'm calling crimestoppers this is a serious case of fraud.

Old School

This week I have mostly been taking a trip down memory lane with Mr Foo the cabbie. Actually it only happened once, but it was a very interesting trip. It turns out he grew up in the area we now live and let me tell you there have been some changes in the Orchard area since 1958. The place we live in now used to be the forest where he would catch spiders, the subway station at Orchard used to be a Jewish cemetery, the school near to our local drinking holes on Emarald Hill was a hostipal and a Japanese admin centre in the war, and apparently there is an umarked Japanese Soldier's grave still there to this day. He used to live on Emerald Hill when there was a weird law that long term tenants became dual owners of a property if they stayed there long enough. Unfortunately for him he didn't, it isn't a cheap place to live now, and long gone are the days when he used to have evening picnics on the park that is now the school.
Talking of trips down memory lane and remembering the glory days, this week I also had the misfortune to meet Greg Matthews. By his own admission he is Australian cricket legend and all round good guy. He was shipped out to help the Reuters team win their annual 6 a side cricket competition, but it wasn't entirely clear in what capacity. If drinking heavily, regaling anyone who would listen with personal feats of cricket heroism while all the time busting moves on any female he saw, were part of his brief with Reuters then he did his job magnificently. I think I added more value to the team by cooking sausages for free beer.
Later in the evening he turned to marriage councellor as he berated me for not marrying Reidy and went further to annoy the crap out of me at the BQ Bar. When asked if I was happy, I told him I was, mostly because I didn't have to pretend I wasn't something I am not and hang out with celebrities thinking I am one. He was a little upset after that and was whinging to his mate that he was going to change managers. No idea what that had to do with anything, but I wish him well, especially as he turns 50 this year and he sounded really happy about that.
Funnily enough we did make up and was due to the efforts of another girl in the bar who clearly under the influence of a day's worth of beer in the sun told me she would like to make love to me and Reidy. After I stopped laughing I told her she would have to check with Reidy, so over she goes and starts rubbing Reidy's arm and staring cross eyed into her eyes. Reidy looked at her like she had gone mad, and Greggy, now my best friend quickly forgot his sage like advice on the joys of being married and starts nudging me saying "You're in there with 2 chicks mate."
At that point we were saved by an unassisted fall, the drunk girl fell heavily to the floor, we took it as our cue to leave. Old GM thought she actually fell rather sexily to the floor and took at his cue to pull out the old charm.

Bog Blog

This week I have mostly been doing nothing exciting. But there have been a few odd things going on at work so I will take this temporary lull in proceedings to share this with you.
The first issue, and the second come to think about it, are related to the toilet. I have been a little wary of the toilets at work. There were two reasons for this; firstly I discovered the flush is sensor driven and I have given myself a couple of surprise washes while shifting position and secondly people occasionally use the toilet bowl as a hand basin. However that is old news, buried somewhere deep in this blog. I have other issues with the toilet.
While as a Westerner I am always a little surprised that someone would choose the squat over the comforts of a comfy (albeit with a hair trigger flush) seat. People do for a variety of reasons; some say it is more hygienic amongst other things. But I think even these people would agree with my thinking that a squat is not a place to take prescription medicine. Why go to all that bother to seal a pill in a sterile packet if the user is going to crack it open, with their pants down squatting over a shithole, not a shithole like Warren New Jersey, but an actual shithole. By the way I am not the only person worried about toilets; http://www.worldtoilet.org/ is a Singaporian web site dedicated to toilets.
The other gripe I have with the toilets is the cleaning routine. They prop the door open for all to see while mopping it down. However if you happen to swing by looking to drop the kids off in the pool and they are in full clean mode, they don’t stop. No they usher you in and you feel obliged to go through the motions, so to speak. Anyway the car is prone to backfire a little when I am dropping the kids off and this is an unfortunate consequence with the door right open and the kitchen next door. I try to out wait the cleaner in this situation, but this can be a prolonged stand off lasting several hours if the cubicle I am in hasn’t been cleaned.
Speaking of cleaners, we have one that empties my bin 3 times a day, I don’t generate that much rubbish, but that’s the rules; 3 times a day. Then once a week the cleaner comes past with a bucket and sponge and wipes down my desk. I am not the cleanest of corporate citizens, so the desk cleaning has become another stand off with the cleaning staff. I don’t move my stuff and neither does she, so I end up with unusual shapes of cleanliness amongst the rubble on my desk. Eventually I am hoping to match up all the triangles of cleanliness to make one clean desk, could be a while on current form.
I was invited to join a Singaporian blog register this week. No idea what they will make of this, I suspect I will just get arrested or killed or something for taking the piss out of their patch. Click on the vote button on the site and skew the figures.
I would also like to thank a masked avenger with the handle of “Footprint” who left me a note last week to explain why stupid towns had stupid names in Jersey. It was in fact because “they are named after the first toilet makers and the first companies to dump toxic waste. But then they ran out of towns...” Makes a lot of sense now, thanks Footprint.
No photos were taken this week, so here’s an old one of a moth I took with my phone. Really I did.

Frozen Apple

This week I have mostly been in New York, which proved to be a stark contrast to the tropics with a record 27 inches of snow falling in 24 hours over the weekend. However before I managed to make it into New York I had to put in some penance in New Jersey in the middle of nowhere in a shithole called Warren. Nobody knows where Warren is, I asked my mate in Manhattan if it was far from there. He thought I ment Wayne, which it wasn't, but it begs the question who the bloody hell is naming towns in Jersey? Did the founding fathers of Jersey just name the towns after their first born, (I can imagine Wayne and Warren being popular names in Jersey).
Having seen the locals in action on a Friday night at the Tap Room bar in the charming local hotel I was staying at, I have a sneaking suspicion there is a fair amount of inbreeding going on in the boonies of New Jersey. I am no dancer as Reidy will loudly attest to, but I am John Travolta in comparrison to some of the work going on in the Tap Room as people gyrated to the cover band who were working some classic Hootie and the Blowfish and Reo Speedwagon.
Why was I in Warren you ask, well it is part of some cost cutting exercise at work, where they moved the people I deal with to Warren. It's an impressive campus, but it's in Warren, bloody stinking Warren. So when word got out about the pending snow storm coming on Saturday I legged it to the city faster than a fast thing going really fast.
The snow was meant to arrive at lunchtime, it held off until about 3:00 and then came in horizontally. Bloody hell it was cold. Committed drinkers as we are we were out in it, braving the elements both inside and out of the bars in the Village until 4:00am. The Peculiar Bar in Bleeker St has a toilet that is up there with the one at the Suez Canal bus interchange in Egypt (without doubt the world's worst toilet).
It was still snowing when we emerged from my mate's flat at the crack of noon, and it didn't stop for another 5 hours. Had brunch at Walkers on W Boulevard, right opposite the Ghostbusters fire station which was far more impressive for me than walking past Carie Bradshaw's doorstep. The city is pretty wild when it snows, everything turns white strangely enough, it's really quiet as there's no cars on the road, The whole place becomes giant pedestrian mall with the odd cross country skier whizzing past and Central Park becomes an impromptu ski and board park.
Then a day later the streets are magically clear as the garbage trucks become snow ploughs and the footpaths become ice skating rinks as the melting snow freezes over. It's only a matter of time before all the dog turds and other rubbish that were previously covered in a lovely white blanket start oozing out. Two days later the snow is starting to melt, the innocent looking puddles at the bottom of the footpaths are in fact mini ponds that swallow your whole foot and the snow that is still around is now filthy and slushy. So I headed home with some surprising enthusiasm, even as I faced the prospect of an 18 hour non stop flight, at least I knew my feet were finally going to be dry.

Lunar Dog

This week I have mostly been enjoying the year of the dog, Gong Xi Fa Cai again. The whole Chinese or Lunar New Year celebration is quite an experience over here, undoubtedly the biggest event in the, well... the Lunar Year. Largely dominated by money, the theme is prosperity, and everything is about wishing good fortune with either cash in red envelopes or oranges as a symbol of wealth. On top of that it is about family reunion dinners and eating and giving money and wishing for money and tossing.
I was a little worried about the tossing, we were invited to a reunion dinner with some friends and I was told we would be tossing for prosperity. So I saved up for the big toss, figuring that if I was required to toss I would make it a good one.
Fortunately it didn’t involve some sort of unhygenic toss off, but as it turns out it is about mixing up a special salad and some raw fish and sauces and stuff and then toss it all in the air while shouting out well wishes largely dominated by things related to making money. The higher the toss and the less the spillage the more prosperous you will be. This has been a long held philosophy of mine so I was right on board.
Everything is dominated by the Chinese New Year; Prosperity this, prosperity that. Pizza Hut didn’t let us down with another spectacular creation hot on the heels of their Christmas effort. Triumph undies were even on board with a special range of Prosperity pants called Prosperity Puppies. I would have thought this was a more appropriate name for a bra, rather than these slightly unusual and uncomfortable looking underpants.
We left our plans for the 4 day weekend a little late so with the slim pickings available ended up in Malaysia at a fairly ordinary resort. The golf was made memorable by some excellent golf cart stunt driving, unusual use of a 5 wood and a couple of holes played barefoot following an incident in a swamp.
Reidy came down with a nasty gastro thingy there so we headed home early, which wasn’t greeted with too much disappointment even though we had to cancel our fishing trip. We had booked it that afternoon and when asked what were likely to catch were told puffer fish and sting ray. Sadly we never managed to hook into some giant puffer fish, although if we had maybe I could have secreted the bottles of wine I brought back in there and I could have avoided paying the duty on bringing back wine I had already taken out the country.
The festivities climaxed with a Lion Dance in the office, it wasn’t in fact a whole bunch of sad country music fans, but yet another prosperous event. I am not entirely sure what this was about, but it involved a couple of people running around under a luminous lion costume chucking food stuffs around. All of this was to the relentless and particularly unrhythmic beating of drums and clanging of symbols. Interesting for about 5 minutes, it soon became an annoying cacophony that I was personally pleased to see the back of.

Festive Season

This week I have mostly been getting ready the year of the dog, Gong Xi Fa Cai. Maybe it was the whole festive thing, maybe it was Lou visiting, maybe it was the overseas visitors with work, maybe it was trying to forget I wasn’t in Phuket anymore but I found myself either drunk or hung over for a good part of the week.
Possibly the most entertaining evening was the Sunday where a quiet meal got out of hand and I ended up staggering home at 1:00am, making for a fantastic start to the week.
The entertaining bit came from visiting the Crazy Elephant, which had always struck me as a stupid looking place. But as it turns out there was a lively night of live music tucked away amongst the neon and ultraviolet light and dumb jokes flashing up on the many TVs in the place.
Turns out it is a blues place and Sunday is open mike night, where anyone feeling up to it can get up to strut their stuff with the house band. I was wondering why there were so many moustacheoid, high pants wearing Indians in the crowd. Turns out they were there to play, and they did it pretty well. The first bloke to get up was an aging non Indian dude from the US who thought he was pretty hot shit, but he had nothing on the act to follow who pulled out his shiny guitar complete with a wahwah handle and let rip. Aging dude left in disgust having obviously been shown up by the guitar playing prowess of Sandeep Highpants. Strangely enough I saw Sandeep outside the Standard Chartered bank in Tampines 2 days later. Dull accountant by day; axe wielding guitar playing maniac by night, fantastic stuff.
Second most entertaining event was a chap in the normally busy BQ bar who took his shirt off, poured sambuca in his hair and set fire to it. Impressive party trick, but a very strange thing to do, even stranger his hair didn’t burn.

Villa Dilla

This week I was mostly in Phuket, which to state the obvious was nice. Even the warning about being killed for trafficking drugs was nice: “Welcome to Phuket” it read, “Offenders against drug related crime will be sentenced to the highest penalty” it was then signed off “With Best Wishes Phuket Governor” Very polite people the Thais.
We had assembled with several other drinking buddies of Elliot the foot drinker to celebrate his 30th. He managed to secure a sensational villa that meant we only needed to leave the place to play golf. We would ship the staff a couple of bucks each day and they would turn it into booze and amazing Thai food that would make your bot a little hot.
Luckily we didn’t need to go far to cool down with a pool next to the dining area, which of course meant I was obliged to show off my finely honed bombing skills, crafted over a decade of landing bum first in the Canberra Olympic pool. Managed to pull off some fine bummies, runny turnies, horsies and a couple of old school can openers.
In an unrelated bombing incident one of the guests fell down the stairs on the first night, split her head open and cracked a couple ribs before passing out cold. Monkey said he didn’t push her, but he was the only other person around and was behind her at the time. Fortunately we had a doctor in the house, unfortunately he was rocket scientist. Although he could put a great model together showing the forces of gravity and the impact to the head he suggested they perhaps should seek medical advice instead.
So the now delirious and bleeding victim was driven by a still drunk Elliot, accompanied by a non medical doctor, his Thai wife acting as interpreter and a guilty looking Monkey around the island looking for a clinic. We were getting up for breakfast, just after they had arrived back home. A long night for some and a cracking start to the holiday for others.
We might well have been off to the clinic later that afternoon as another guest went bungy jumping determined to win a bet. He maintains he wasn’t scared but after 2 false starts he made his awkward fall towards a mosquito ridden swamp. With what can only be described as a brain explosion he grabbed the rope on the bounce back up and was probably lucky to not lose an arm. It did cause a sensational bruise though but I don’t think he was sober enough to feel the pain thereafter.
After an action packed 4 days we moped on home, leaving the rest of the crew and some new comers to destroying their internal organs. If you have a spare $13k USD I can thoroughly recommend this place for a week. http://www.villagetaways.com/villa.php?vid=13&cid=8

Miscellaneous Offences

This week I have mostly been dodging the law, not because I have done anything particularly bad, but because the New Year has been heralded by what appears to be an upping of the tension in the upholding of the law. The highly illegal morning crossing of Orchard Rd fills me with a sense of excitement as I fly in the face of the jay walking laws. However the other day, just before I set off the curb I looked up to narrowly miss being hit by a bus and spotted the cops hiding in the bushes and some across the road booking some other thrill seekers. Lucky, crossing the road within 50 metres of a crossing attracts a $500 fine and that would have been a particularly crap way to start the working week.
Why are the cops wasting their time on such trivial matters I hear you ask? Well they’re not, they are also upholding the pretty vague Miscellaneous Offences (Public & Order & Nuisance) (Assemblies & Processions) Laws. Some time ago a fair amount of drama erupted over a call made to 911 to complain about a white elephant being strapped to the railing of the Buangkok MRT.
The station opened recently, to even more controversy. Some bright young things at the Raffles Girl’s School printed a run of “Save the White Elephant” T shirts and were planning to sell them to raise funds for charity at the gala opening. An unusual display of outspoken initiative was dampened somewhat when police reminded the girls they could face prosecution if they failed to obtain a permit to sell them. They then went further to warn them they could be arrested should they wear the shirts en masse. Nice
But the most interesting abuse of the Miscellaneous Offences laws was the unfortunate incident where the neighbour of Mrs Wong of Woodlands was spotted nude in his bedroom getting ready for work each morning. Mrs Wong called the local press followed by the cops and them man was promptly embarrassed and then arrested.
At the time of prosecution he was facing a 3 month jail term and a $200 fine. I don’t actually know how this unfortunate incident panned out, but I did hear the officials were delaying sentencing, instead recommending he undertake a psychiatric assessment.

Kitchen Toilet

This week I have mostly been acclimatising to life back in Singapore following a very fine Christmas New Year break in Aus. It certainly leaves you questioning why you would ever want to live somewhere else after visiting over this period. Sydney has to be one of the more festive places in the world to enjoy Christmas New Year, and a big thanks to everyone who accommodated us and found time to drink, eat and fish with us.
The scarcity of fish made it more of a harbour cruise outside the heads, maybe I just scared them off with my Chopper Reid fishing stance.
After the hideous 44˚C on New Years day it was good to get back to Singapore to cool down. What wasn’t good was coming back to a construction site dumping ground in the lounge room and a toilet sitting in the middle of the kitchen.
Eager to remove as many of the unsightly bathroom and toilet fixtures (only 2 to go now) from the unit we agreed to the downstairs toilet being fixed in our absence. This was in an effort to stop us raining turds and wee down on the BBQ pit. I don’t think we actually were, but I was told our toilet was leaking down there so I would like to think we were doing a good job of it. Following some fairly irate conversations we now have a clean unit, a new downstairs toilet and the rest of the condo can now BBQ with the peace of mind that is indeed a bratwurst not a poo on their plate.
Singapore’s tourist catch phrase is Uniquely Singapore and I was pleased to note that Singapore seems to have upped the tension on its uniqueness in our absence. A blank wall at the City Hall train station had assign up apologising for any inconvenience; another sign told me not to lean on it. Maybe it was meant to be read the other way round, don’t lean on the wall and sorry for the inconvenience, I don’t know.
There is a unique courtesy drive going on the trains right now, Courtesy Ambassadors will be recognising courteous behaviour by dishing out tokens of appreciation. Wearing deodorant, cleaning your teeth, standing more than 6 inches from your face and not trying to bring a lung up through your nose would get my token if I were an Ambassador. But I am not, which is probably a good thing because I would never reach my token quotas of appreciation based on those criteria.
Some other Uniquely Singapore things spotted this week included Star Wars being classified as Romance in Borders, which would leave many a geek questioning their sexuality and a tin of Sweet and Sour Pork being the choice of vegetarians who shop at Carrefours.
I was trying to describe what it was like living in [Unique] Singapore to a mate back in Sydney, the more I went on about the more we realised Singapore is actually the “Truman Show” movie in real life. If this is the case and people are actually watching our lives unfold on TV I would appreciate if they could let me know so I can sort out how to attach a magnifying lens to my willy. Thanks.

Tropical Christmas

This week I have mostly been enjoying the tropical festive season. Although it appears to be just an excuse to encourage people to shop more, not sure that’s actually possible for some of the dedicated locals. Some arse clown has decided that it would be really cool to stick squeaky things in kids shoes, which is annoying at the best of times, but horrendous this time of year. Imagine 100 kids in a shopping mall with a rubber ducky strapped to each foot and you have an idea of what I’m talking about. Locals love ‘em, I want to punch ‘em.  
Our patch has become a nightmare, particularly as Orchard Rd is lit up like a … Christmas tree. This means every amateur photographer on the island, and there are plenty, is drawn to the lights smacking you in the shins with a tripod at every turn. In the true spirit of the Singaporean Christmas the lights are sponsored, this year brought to us by Hitachi and Visa.  Pizza Hut has even got in to the spirit with the alarmingly pink Holly Jolly Pizza. http://www.pizzahut.com.sg/html/home/index_20051122.asp
We were planning to our bit for Australian culture and head to Arab St with a couple of Aussie flags and some iron pipes. But I’ve hurt my back and can hardly put on my pants let alone swing an iron bar. So I went to see an osteopath instead. Turns out he had spent some time in Aus and had some interesting ideas on how to defuse the situation.
But not as interesting as his ideas for dealing with drug traffickers, which perhaps provided more of an insight as to why he got into manipulating spines for a living. He thought capital punishment was wrong but if he was the homeland minister then he would use drug traffickers to train new recruits on how to beat up prisoners and even use “electrical stimulation”. He went on to explain that way they would be punished every month for the rest of their lives. Nice.
Today I saw a woman with a shirt that said “I love vintage Mickey” I don’t, it stinks a bit.

Lost Blog

This other week I mostly managed to delete a blog, which was an accident and was down to me trying to sort out the email settings. I won’t even try to remember what was in there apart from the rather unsavoury behaviour from Pinchy who did his shell shedding thing and then proceeded to eat his own head.
It was around this time that we also went to the Terrorism exhibition at the recently opened National Library. It was memorable for two things; The National Library is a joke and the exhibition was a bigger one. The National Library is an impressive building but it would appear they spent the entire budget on the building and forgot the pretty crucial element to any library; the books.
We got there with 30 mins to spare before closing following a pre exhibition bevvy and were warned by the guard that we would have to hurry. Turns out you could get there 1 1/2 minutes before closing and still see everything. At this point we weren’t to know so we raced down to the lower ground floor, past the rows of empty shelves to the exhibition tucked away in a corner next to some more empty shelves.

Despite all the press and TV advertising the whole thing was set up with the appearance of something of an after thought. Sniggering loudly is considered inappropriate behaviour in a library and probably even more so at a terrorist exhibition, but there was nothing else to do as we filed past the shop front mannequins dressed up as terrorists.
Apparently people that stand with an unusual lean wearing green lab coats and balaclavas are to be approached with caution they are more than likely part of the Pembela Islam Islamic Salvation Front. You should also keep an eye out for kids in T shirts jeans and sneakers they are suicide bombers.
The exhibition was then taken up with some pretty gruesome pictures of the Tamil Tiger’s handiwork that included a lot of shooting hacking and burning. So we legged it with 28 minutes to go before closing and enjoyed a very fine Spanish meal at Chijmes instead.

Chicken Hat

This week I have mostly been re acquainting myself with Singapore and all that is odd in the place. This is because we have just returned from a week long sanity check fact finding mission in Aus. One of the facts I found was that there is actually real live music out there, not the cover band crap we have to put up with here. A pleasant afternoon was spent at Homebake in Sydney catching some fine toons including what was pretty much a Crowded House gig with all the members that hadn’t killed themselves up on stage with the elder Finn and some other Split Enz people. It seemed a million miles away from crap cover bands like “Six in da City” who we had the misfortune to see in Singapore following a comedy session at the 1 night stand.
It was a little difficult to escape Singapore when in Aus due to the country's tenacity when it comes to hanging drug traffickers. As unfortunate as the incident was, that’s the rules and they love rules here, so no surprise there was no negotiation. The incident hardly caused a stir here, in fact the only reason people knew about it was due to the stir the Aus media made. Normally the hangman quietly goes about his business and people get on with their shopping and eating safe in the knowledge that bad people are being dangled from a length of rope. Although a very brave journo did write an article questioning the whole thing in the Government owned Straits Times. I think he is due for execution some time next week.

In sharp contrast to killing people, it appears Singapore was quite busy in our absence developing a preventative cure for Hepatitis A and B; it is the humble Kleenex and they were giving the cure away for free at the lights at Tampines Central. Singporians love free stuff so it was quite a fight to get my pack. They were probably also keen get their hands on a packet as the locals use them to reserve a table at the hawker markets. There is an unwritten law that says if there is a packet on a table then it is reserved. Elliot, the occasional foot drinker has a master plan to run around the hawker markets just before they open and put a packet on every table and sit back and watch the implosion as the locals try to work out whether or not they are brave enough to break the law, even if it is only an unwritten one.
I have been a little slack of late in my efforts to get to work favouring cab over the MRT train ride. So I decided to catch the MRT last Friday to see how my fellow commuters were and if anyone had missed me. Turned out they hadn’t, they were all too busy sleeping standing up and invading your public space to notice my return. But I was intrigued to discover that the MRT is running a competition to find the best station, encouraging commuters to vote in this annual event. I am planning to skew their results by voting for the Buangkok station, I have never been there, but did report earlier the hooha over this station and people dialling 999 to complain about white elephant cut outs on the station fence. As soon as I can find out how to vote on line I will be encouraging people to do the same.

I am not typically in the habit of wearing chicken or pork on my head, but it’s nice to know you can have it if you ask.

Pig's Organs

This week I have mostly been eating Pig Organ Soup, actually I haven't, but it's one of the delectable dishes on offer in the newly transformed food court at Tampines Central. Strangely enough I haven't tried this speciality, nor have I tried the Peanut roll at Jolibean, it looks scarily like a shit sandwich to me.

Work has been a bit weird this week, first of all we had a memo come around at work that stated as of December 9, every second Friday is Eat with your Family day. Inspired by the Government decree, we can now leave work at 5:30 on a Friday night, and in fact will be prompted to leave by people doing rounds of the office. That is a very odd concept to an Aussie, back home this would mean the boss would have to come down to the pub to let you know you could go home now. But in a place where you are expected to work way too late, I'll take what I can get and shall be enjoying my drink with my friends night every second Friday.
Then we had a fire drill last week, I am used to the Aussie version of a fire drill where you find out when the drill is due and then catch the lift down just before hand to avoid the walk down the stairs, get your name marked off and head off for a coffee or a beer. Not here though, apparently they stop the lifts going down 30 minutes before the drill to prevent people going down early. They brought a fireman in to practice being a firmeman, had an ambulance here to practice being an ambulance, while we practiced not being on fire, scarily efficient and just a little bit odd if you ask me.
We went for a bike ride to Malaysia today, as one does when one is the tropics. Following a fairly damp Johor Straights crossing on a bumboat we set off for S. Rengkit for a seafood feast. It's quite an interesting ride, an infinetly poorer place than Singapore, but the locals didn't seem to notice and were a pretty happy bunch. I was somewhat of an amateur on the first outing on my new you beaut Cash Converters bike, falling off twice because I didn't kick out of the clip in pedals in time.
Malaysia is a reasonably conservative part of the world, so I was a little surprised to find the local tissue manufacturers were advertising just how many pulls you could expect get through per box of tissues.
200 is quite a few, although I have it on good authority from Degs that you can get more pulls from a tissue by splitting the 2 ply, important tip for students that one.
We're heading back home next week, and while Reidy will be kissing the tarmac when we get there, I will be kissing the Barmat at the Wallace.

Drain Fishing

This week I have mostly been haunted by the Little River Band, I am actually very disturbed to see they still exist and in fact still release albums (23 to date) and tour and stuff. I get to listem to them every day in a cab home from work courtesy of Classic Gold Easy Listening Hits FM or whatever the hell the radio staion is called. It is one of 15 government owned stations and seems to be the cabbies' station of choice. Ratings time must be such a surpirse; "And the winner is.... the government... again Yay."
I was also quite disappointed to discover Michael Bolton isn't dead, maybe I just hoped he was dead, anyway he isn't and is touring Singapore soon. If the enduring popluarity of the Little River Band is anything to go by, the baldy mulleted crooner of insipid love songs that turn your stools to liquid will be around for another 20 years in the lucrative Asia market.
We went to Hong Kong over the weekend and I was greeted with more Little River Band straight off the plane and has led me to believe that this band is sending subliminal mesages to HK cabbies to kill themselves and their passengers. Our cabby got himself up to 160Kmh within 5 minutes of leaving the airport, we also got a good look at all the lanes at various brief swervy intervals along the way into downtown Kowloon.
We went to Honkers to meet up with visiting NSW South Coast dignitaries Mummers and Rocket. When he wasn't attracting crowds of gaping Chinese dwarves he was wearing the subway as a hat and marvelling at the latest techniques in drain fishing.
Apart from the unsavoury fishing methods and the incredible crowds, and the meat sold from the roadside stalls, which is possibly only slightly more hygenic than eating fish that came out of a drain. Honng Kong is a great place ot visit.
Dramatically hilly compared to the 42Km long pancake that is Singapore, it is pretty damn spectacular. The weekend was capped off by a very generous Cathay Pacific that chose to upgrade us to Bidness on the way home.

More Photos form HK:


















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Broken Things

This week I have mostly been breaking things or had thing broken for me without my permission. Last Friday night I came home from a very hectic session at China 1 and woke up fully clothed on the bed early Saturday morning, got up for a wee and then went back to sleep. Then I woke up to the sound of running water and found the toilet cistern had a massive crack in it and was gushing water everywhere. What the bloody hell happened there? I have no idea and am open to suggestion as to how that might have happened. Then we get a letter from the body corporate saying that out toilet is flooding the BBQ area. I don’t particularly like the toilet when I am in it and I am sure the people burning sausages downstairs are none too delighted about the odd turd emerging nearby. On the upside it is Halloween tonight and there is a party down there so we will be constantly tricking the party goers with poo. So now we are down to 2 toilets.
This is also a little untimely as one of the other things I have managed to break is my knee. Well not really broken but it's sore, the GP said it was Housemaid's knee, but the surgeon I was referred to said it was jumper's knee which I am little happier about. Haven't been doing too much jumping of late though, my knee is too sore. He perscribed some anti inflammatory medicine and then gave me some other tablets for the gastric I was going to get. Bit weird going to the doctor and being perscribed a dose of bum wee, but it is getting better and I'll soon be jumping like an overjoyed housemaid before you know it.
Last Saturday it was Octoberfest and Singaporians dressed as Germans doing the duck dance is quite a sight. I was a little dusty from the night before and didn’t manage to fully participate to the same level as Elliot who managed to drink half a pint with no hands and most of a full pint with his feet. Impressed the hell out of the locals nearby, but I didn’t end up liking them too much because they won the 42” Plasma screen and I didn’t.
Then to cap it all off some wanker broke into our PC, not entirely sure what they did but it broke a lot of stuff. They seemed to like Gomez though as the music files that are there as a backup only because music piracy is illegal, were some of the files accessed. I should have got someone who knows stuff about computers to fix it, but I had to make do with me instead and rebuilt it.
We have 2 public holidays next week, yippee. Annoyingly they holidays are on Tuesday and Thursday, but I will take what I can get. The upside of this is that the holiday on Tuesday for deepavali the Hindu festival of light which is also Melbourne Cup, very considerate. Deepavali is one of the biggest events in the Hindu calendar the Indians in my team at work were bemoaning the lack of fireworks allowed in Singapore for the event. It must be mayhem in India. With the clocks shifting for daylight savings that means we will need to start celebrating Melbourne Cup at around 11:00am, I’m sure we will cope.

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Four Floors

This week I have mostly been entertaining visitors, 3 in a week has seen the alcohol index move from steady to relentless leaving my liver a pickled and angry little piece of offal. Unfortunately this has also involved tequila on a fairly regular basis and including a foolish decision to drink margaritas until the Café Iguana bar closed last Monday night. Tequila inspired hangovers on a Tuesday are not good at the best of times; they seem to be worse in 30° heat out in the Singapore heartlands. I’ve now officially given up trying to sort out a hangover breakfast so suffered in grumpy silence for most of the day.
Tequila is also responsible for making me go to Orchard Towers with one of my visitors. Or at least that is my explanation; colloquially know as the four floors of ladies of ill repute that rhyme with floors this place is in fact four floors of seedy bars. These seedy bars attract some dubious people including some very friendly ladies, some of which have very large adams apples and big hands.
It is an odd coincidence that seedy bars with friendly ladies seem to attract large sweaty blokes and I felt obliged to adopt a large sweaty name so decided I would like to be known as Stan (Apologies to any svelte and non sweaty Stans out there).  There was no fooling the locals, the name was obviously not sweaty enough and failed to attract much attention except for a lady with an unsightly bulge in her frock and the biggest head and hands I have ever seen.
I was heartened to discover during a rare lucid moment this week that the Singapore Navy has tomcat missiles. Can’t say I really wanted to know that but the poster in the train told me all about them. Apparently they can fly very close to the water for a range of 90km, which makes me kind of glad I didn’t bring my kayak over. I never thought of a missile having best things but, apparently they do and the best thing about these missiles is that I can sleep easy knowing Singapore was safe from attack.
But it did get me thinking, I hope they check the guns to see if they’re loaded before they clean them and then I wondered what they would hit if it did go off. Well it turns out they could hit large chunks of Malaysia, Sumatra and a couple of Indonesian islands. Nice work. But if you could of all that damage without having to even travel to it why bother with a navy just give everyone a Tomcat Missile launcher for home and do away with National Service. I would make such a sensible prime minister.

Shop for Chops

This week I have mostly been working too hard, which is very annoying as it interferes far more interesting activities. The other Pinchie was in town this week and he was absolutley stunned at the amount of time he was expected to spend in the office. It is bordering on ridiculous, particularly when people organise meetings at 7pm on a Friday. I'm Australian for god's sake, if I am not in line of sight of a pub by 5:30 on a Friday I get a little twitchy. To make matters worse there isn't actually a pub in Tampines so I am twitchy anyway.
The good news is I seemed to have finaly finaly solved my breakfast dilemmas; kaya toast, not healthy but tasty. But this discovery came at the cost of another unfortunate incident at Han's the inept coffee makers accross the road. I asked for a toasted ham cheese tomato and this time no stinking cucumber. Toasted sandwich with no stinking cucumber they repeated back to me, yeah no stinking cucumber I said. Well bugger me if the sandwich didn't come back with no tomato and thick slices of rancid devil's helmet.
I have finally come to the conclusion that I am a victim of some sort of cucumber conspiracy and the people at Subway are in on it as well. I carefully explain I don't want cucumber or gherkins on my six incher (Subway is unfortunately is the best excuse for a sandwich at Tampines) and they equally carefully put them on. This by the way happens world wide and is not limited to Tampines in the Singapore heartlands. It turns out that plenty of other people hate the stinking stuff and also interestingly so do cockroaches.

I have always been a strong support of meat loyalty programmes and was delighted to discover that every $10 spent at Shop N Save = 1 chop. They've got my business, although it's not entirely clear if that is lamb or pork.
I have a sore head today due to tequila so am going to retire to the couch. Reidy is back next week... hoorah.

Courteous Safety

This week I have mostly been a bachelor because Reidy went back home, I only checked my voice mail the other day, but there was a desperate plea for me to bring her home. This was only after one night, so I don't know what she's doing to people but it is having an effect.
Surprisingly I have been pretty much hangover free this week at work and have no food stories, other than to report we were nearly thrown out of a food court for bringing in beer one evening. Apparently it was Muslim food court and someone complained. So we went downstairs to the Chinese food court where they throw you out for not drinking.
My suspicions around people using the toilet bowl as a hand basin have been confirmed this week. I didn’t really know who to turn to, but an Englishman who has done some time in the region said it would have been because they couldn’t get to the squat toilet and use the hose thingy on the side. His other advice was to avoid shaking hands with people. Wise words matey.
I was intrigued to discover there was going to be a Courteous and Safety road show on Saturday at my local Train station. Well that looked too good to pass up, I would love to be able to combine courteousness with safetynesness.
The courteousness bit I could understand as getting on the trains is a bit of a free for all despite the instructions on the platform clearly showing the recommended traffic flow for people getting on an off. But the safety bit I think would have been pretty brief, the most unsafe thing you can do is sleep standing up which the average Singaporean seems to be able to do and quite often without holding on to anything. You can’t fall on to the tracks or push someone on to them as a result of some spirited high jinx gone wrong. Firstly because there are doors on the platform timed to open only when the train has safely stopped, and secondly because there are no spirited high jinx allowed anywhere in Singapore.
But fortunately I got a call to go bike riding instead, so missed the road show, but there is one at a another station today which sounds far more interesting. It also includes a Safety and Courteous race where you have to complete various challenges in a safe and courteous manner and finish with a sprint to the finish line. I am so there. Or maybe I will go to the Emergency Preparedness Road show on at the end of Scotts Rd near us. They were just getting going when I saw it yesterday and don’t actually know what it’s about but did seem to involve a recruitment drive for prison guards.
So much to choose from…….

Umper Lumpur

We got off the island last weekend, which was very exciting, and this time we even went to another country, which was even more exciting. But not that exciting, we went to Kuala Lumpur. Emma was even less excited when I told her that No, it isn't the place that Umper Lumpers come from. The hosties aboard our Japanese Air Lines flight barely had time to put away their life jackets and whistles.
The convenience of flying to KL is brought into question when a 30 minute flight takes you 5 hours door to door after check in times and transport and crap. Doesn't help when the KL airport is actually in Singapore. Well at least it felt like it was, the cab ride was at least an hour from airport to hotel. The cheerful lady at the luxury bus desk at our mediocre hotel told me it was 5 hours from Singapore on a bus to hotel door.
KL was fun for a couple of days, we went to catch up with and work mate who was on his way to India. The first thing Reidy noticed was the smell, and try as I might I just couldn't convince her it was the sewerage and not me. The second was the next day when we saw hills around the outskirts. It's a bit weird when you live in very flat place and you get excited about seeing earth bosoms in a city, but that's what happens.
The highlight of what was otherwise a pretty ordinary 3-hour "Country Tour" was the world's biggest pewter tankard at the Royal pewter factory, no it wasn't; Batu Caves was. This is a Hindu shrine in a cave (weird that) at the top of a 272 step climb. We didn't notice the climb because we were too busy being intimidated by the resident monkeys, I don't like monkeys in the wild they're just a little too sneaky and sure of themselves for my liking. The caves were pretty cool if a bit stinky but this time I couldn't blame it on the sewage. There was bit of stuff going on there, but it was pretty well deserted. Nothing like the festival of Thaipusam where 1.5 million people flock there over 3 days to either watch or participate in honouring the Hindu god Subramanian.
Celebrating the occasion is up to the individual from offering up to bread and milk to sticking steel skewers through various part of the body. Apparenently the skewering doesn't hurt due to the trance like state you are in, but I would be quite content with offering up a saucer of milk and loaf of bread. It is also celebrated in Singapore but I would imagine it would be with a little less vigour, still I'm looking forward to checking that out next year.
Malaysia must be the pre-release movie capital of the world, how else could they could have such a wide range of current movies already on DVD, and so cheap as well. If you were to buy them, and I'm not saying we did, they would even deliver them to your table while your eating, which shits all over Video Ezy as a service.
The first time I checked our flight home was at the airport after the JAL check in lady said we didn't have a booking. Aha I thought, bullshit I thought, I have it here on my itinerary I said, and just to prove it waived it in her face. Emma took in a deep breath in order to give them a good serve, but had to downgrade it to an enormous sigh when we were told that while indeed it represents a confirmed booking, it was for next Tuesday. I thought I did well to escape the wrath of Reidy, but the check in lady was treating me with some contempt.
She did manage to get us on the flight, I'm not sure what the Malaysian for Arseclown is but I'm pretty sure that's what she said to her colleague, because she too started treating us with the same contempt. Our 30-minute flight home took 2 hours due to some issues with passengers being on the wrong plane, the only thing is they didn't know who and fortunately it wasn't us. So this meant 4 attempts at counting every passenger before they eventually worked out they could cross names off a list, sure enough 5 people were on the wrong flight and had to get off. How the hell did that happen? But I did manage to watch a 90 minute movie on a 30 minute flight, I think we'll get the bus next itme.