Stomach Stuff

This week I have mostly been thinking I need to post a blog, it has been 2 months now, mostly because Reidy has discovered Facebook and keeps getting poked. The lack of correspondence was something that Reevey felt so strongly about that he came all the way from Tokyo to tell me this. I was hoping he would also do something really stupid worth blogging about, but the best he could do was bring a bottle of cheap rice wine with him as a golf penalty drink. Rice wine is nasty and is not really designed to be drunk on a golf course in the tropics, the last thing you need to have when you are sweating profusely on the outside is to also be hot on the inside. That and really stinky reflux is what Rice Wine offers by the way of features and ironically it was Reevey that was brought to his knees in a retching heap; suffer in your bear suit I say.
Prior to that week we got the band back together with Kappers and Dappers and new member Layla heading out for a quiet Thai Dinner that quite quickly got a little out of hand. I am not sure whose idea it was to order jaeger bombs or whose it was to order tequila shots, but there was clearly no communication between orderers as both arrived together frequently. I am pretty sure if you were to look up a Cocktails for Dummies that combo would be called a "Recipe for Disaster" because that is what it is.
It was probably Dappers who suffered the most disasters, Reidy stole his credit cards, Kappers stole his cash and I threw his phone out of a cab. We were a little surprised to find the three missing bits that his phone was now in when we drove around the block and even more surprised that once reassembled everything was ticketyboo with just a little scratch on the case. We are not entirely sure what inspired me to throw his phone out of a moving cab, I am pretty sure he told me to do it, but I was hearing all sorts of voices at the time.
The lead up to the night of insanity had been pretty quiet. We had been getting used to our new neighbourhood that is infinitely more interesting than living in a shopping mall at Orchard, just not very convenient. But given we live on an island that takes 40 minutes to drive across convenience is pretty relative. Joo Chiat is a something of a local foodies hang out, we are reminded at least once a week by the cabbies that we live 500m away form the best pepper crab on the island. We also have a noodle shop right across the road that I have been frequenting pretty regularly in an effort to work my way down the menu; so far I have tried the Heineken and Tiger.
We had also managed to squeeze in a quick trip to Aus between this and the last blog entry. In fact the last one was written late on the night before we left in an effort to not to have to tell people what we had been doing. But it backfired as Giles, Brian and a lady at Brian's work expressed their concern at the slide in the quality of speeling and grammer. I will trie to do bettter this time arownd.
Always a pleasure to head home and this was no exception as the Phoebster's first Aussie tour added a new dimension to the excitement. It was a tad cold for the tropical baby and no fan of getting dressed at the best of time she was mighty pissed off at the amount of clothes we kept putting on her. At one point it was down to -3 C in Canberra, which is 36 less than she is used to and when people rocked up to a bbq later that day in shorts and t shirts, I couldn't help but think it was a bit weird that people were dressed for summer in what was the same temp we turn our aircon to at 18 C. I am forecasting a sweaty mess when the same group of people descend on Singapoo in May next year for the Punters club tour.
Coming back to Singapore after a trip back home is always interesting, you kind of forget how unusual this place can be some times. Like one day after we got back when I went to McDonalds for my morning coffee; it is a sad reflection on the quality of coffee in Tampines when a McAfe flat white is the best in town. On this particular day there were three birds lying outside the door obviously not feeling to well, and fortunately I noticed this only after I was already inside, so the manager makes one of the people go from behind the counter, pick up the birds and shove them in a pot plant. I seem to remember bird flu originating in Asia, but this is less of a concern than having customers step over dying Indian Miner birds on the way to getting a burger.
I should have really not ever set foot in there again, but after checking out the options and seeing the sign at this place advertising Special Pig Stomach Stuff I decided better the devil you know and wait a week to see if the Maccas became a quarantine zone and then went back to ordering my regular flat white. I did actually eat in the Stomach Stuff place with some work people and ate fish swim bladder, I only found this out after I had eaten it, seems this restaurant specialises in things to do with creature's tummies.
In totally unrelated news also saw a packet on a desk at work with these instructions that gave no clue as to the content, but I have quite often said that my pat pat stick only needs mouth gassing.

Death Wish

This week I have mostly been getting ready to get off the island and to hurriedly piece together the last couple of weeks here. Firstly we moved, and we did this around the National Day holiday. The National Day holiday is the day where traditionally everyone in Singapore goes over to Lex and Ell's for a BBQ, well at least everyone I know does.
It also means traditionally there is a twinge of a headache from the going out the night before. True to tradition I did have a bit of a headache and I had to cook the BBQ having the won the right to do so by losing every game of pool at China One the night before. I did this intentionally so as to avoid any embarrassment usually associated with a Pom attempting to do a BBQ, at least that's my story. It also meant I copped lots of advice from all the blokes, particularly the Aussies there including snippets of information like Singapore use butane gas in their cylinders which burns hotter than LPG, you learn a lot of stuff around the hotplate.
The following week I suddenly found myself home alone in my new home as Reidy took the Phoebster on her first excursion to Vietnam. Conveniently Lex went as well leaving Elliott and I to our own devices, which led to me pointing a gun in a man's face. Friday started off quite well with a civilised dinner but quickly became a night of fairly heavy drinking that was capped off with strange interlude with a strange man. He is well known in these parts as being an interesting and occasionally slightly mad character, in fact he had been reported on this very blog previously. He was at the table setting off fire extinguishes at Christmas time. Anyway I said to this person, I bet you know some weird places here and he said as a matter of fact he did and scurried off to get a cab.
It is possibly not the wisest thing to do to put yourself in the hands of someone who is banned from flying on JAL, but doesn't know why. All he knows is it involved a 1litre and half of vodka and there was noone within a 6 people radius when he woke up. He was also arrested when he landed, but I digress. He took us to this house of Killeny Rd where apparently you get cheap beer. Maybe this is true but all we saw that night was an old man asleep on a camp stretcher in a gray pair of underpants. He was not going o be coaxed out by us making rattling the security cage so we eventually gave up and wandered off. We are still not quite sure if that really happened but it seems it did.
Saturday we went to Indonesia for a round of golf and you would be hard pressed to find 4 sorrier looking people than us that day. We were very sorry, even a roti prata and curry for breakfast could settle the sorryness we were feeling. Fortunately the golf was delayed by a wild storm that tore a large section of the club house roof off and blew the tents that were set up for the local family day off the beach and into the clubhouse. After a 2 hour delay we finally got going and produced some surprisingly good scores, possibly due to the fact that noone could lift their head very well.
After a fairly unsurprisingly tame Saturday night we set off on Sunday to go clay pigeon shooting and this is where I pointed a gun in a man's face. This is not something I wanted to do, but was told to do by a chap who was wandering around giving advice on shooting things. He was trying to show me why my aim was out by having me aim the gun into his left eye. I found this a very odd request and more than just a little disturbing, I have it on good authority this would be an immediate expulsion from any normal gun club anywhere in the world except maybe the middle east. This same bloke then went wandering out to the live range to reset one of the traps. Very weird but a lot of fun, the clay shooting I mean not pointing a gun in a man's eye.
We are off home tomorrow, yipee and I thought if I hurriedly mentioned that Lou, Paul and Orietta have all come to visit us this year then they won't get mad for not being mentioned in this now somewhat sporadic blog, because technically I just did.

Sea Change

This week I have mostly been looking forward to not being in a construction zone. It was a tough decision, we are going to give up having our very own construction site in our backyard, another 2 doors down, one across the road, one across the road up the hill and in 2 months time one next door. So we're off, out of the city and out to the East Coast area. Rated as one of the few good value areas left on the island, but that said still a 50% rent increase in this greedy little town.
It is hard to escape construction here right now, even stinking Tampines is caught up in the notion that it is a place on the move. A new development near the station is encouraging me and everyone else that happens to read the billboard to get caught up in the excitement of Pulsating Tampines. I have used a lot of words to describe Tampines, mostly words related to toilets and peoples' toilet parts, but never pulsating.
Tampines, pronounced Tampon-ease, does occasionally make my head pulsate, speaking of which my head was pulsating a couple of weeks ago after a busy Saturday night. Unfortunately it was a farewell to Anne that led to the hangover, on the upside it was is a particularly silly outing. The trip from the River to dinner was on a open top bus with booze provided by Alex, snacks by Pepsi Matt and an amiable bus driver that detoured slightly through Orchard Rd to stop outside our condo to pick up Reidy.
Not used to drinking on the bus, there was no toilet facilities resulting in a mad rush for the loos at Dempsey Rd. It also meant that toilets became unisex and I am still not sure what Anne meant when she assured me she saw nothing when she burst unexpectedly out of the cubicle while I was doing a wee. I am still not sure if it was an observation, or if she was just trying to relieve an embarrassing situation, maybe it was a combination of both.
But we got over it and had a tasty meal, followed by an excursion out west for a bit of karaoke. I have always said if you are going to sing karaoke then sing it like you mean it and we belted out some classics. Without doubt the highlight of the vodka and tequila inspired evening of vocal disharmony was Anne's rendition of Wuthering Heights. I thought Kate Bush had wandered into the room there for a moment, but then I finished my shot.

Jet Set

This week I have mostly been thinking I haven't done a blog for a while so I had better do one. The irregular updates have been made more irregular than usual, primarily because of our big footed baby being the prime focus of my attention rather than the pub. This is not really a baby blog (apologies for anyone who googled baby blog and was sent here, you will be disappointed) and because I hadn't been doing anything stupid, I even went to New York and didn't drink Jaeger bombs. Mostly because I couldn't keep my eyes open and my usual Jaeger guides were below par themselves. But I did catch a 2 pound bass in a lake in Pennsylvania.
However this does not mean that unusual things do not go on around me. For instance I happened to be in a bowling alley the other day. That is reasonably unusual in itself, and stumbled upon what appears to be a soft toy gambling problem. The Integrated Resort, Singapore government's name for a dirty great casino, can not come fast enough if people are having to bet on soft toy grabbing to satisfy their gambling needs.
The Integrated Resorts, yep 2 of them are being touted as one of the resons why house prices and rents are stupid right now. From what I can make out that is rubbish; it's greedy landlords doing it, and it is giving us plenty to worry about at the moment as we try to escape the construction going on in what seems like our lounge room it is so close.
So to forget for a moment that we will need to pay in rent the equivalent in our Aussie mortgage back home we went and saw Jet last week. Full of hope and expectation we lobbed a little late, and should have perhaps left when Elliott did .... before they started. He broke out in a rash, perhaps an allergy to bands who believe their own press, and scuttled off to hospital.
Reidy and I went in and sat around for 30 mins before they finally came on. I am not sure what the delay was, couldn't have been drugs and as Reidy rightly noted they aren't that famous. Eventually they came out did their best to entertain, which wasn't much so we went home before they finished. Perhaps I am getting old, but they were pretty ordinary and I was starting to feel like Victor Meldrew as I watched the local rugby playing trader types in front of us try to outdo themselves as the funniest person there.
There have been some odd things going on in my cab rides in Singapoo at the moment, the cabbies seem to be driving worse than ever. To set the scene most of them seem to think their Toyota Crowns are automatics and forget to change gears making for an unpleasent journey at the best of times. On top of this they tend to step on and off the accelerator so that occasionally you get out with a minor whiplash. But they are generally up for a chat, sometimes they even watch the road when they talk to you, and I had a very strange conversation with one the other day.
This older style cabby pointed to the new Tampines tunnel being built and told me it was going to be quicker but slower to get to work. I was a little confused about this and despite his urging to use my 6th sense still couldn't quite grasp at what he was getting at. He then told me it was because of a 6o KG limit. I am thinking aah it's a weight thing and then I realised he meant 60KPH speed limit because I think even the 2 stroke scooter that appeared suddenly at my window next to me weighs more than 60 KG. So then he said I had to use my 6th sense to work out how long it would take to travel the 9Km. I just applied a bit of elemetary maths and said roughly 10 minutes, which isn't bad really considering we had moved 1 km in the last 5 minutes on the PIE. But he wasn't going to let that get in the way of a good story and on and on we went about it for the next very slow 9km. Can't wait for that tunnel to be finished.

Construction Zone

This week I have mostly been talking real estate, a favourite topic with just about anyone who is facing a lease renewal this year. Property both for sale ad rent has gone through the roof, and for no good reason really. A recent article in the SMH suggested it is due to a bit of dubious foriegn investment is responsible, perhaps it is but I am actually quite curious to know if that was Eric Ellis' last article from Singapoo. I couldn't imagine that article being well received in the government control room, and his lease was due, so maybe he was looking to get deported rather than pay 70% more rent.
One of the reason for rents going up is supply and demand, and this being affected by greedy landlords taking huge cash lump sums to get together the rest of their neighbours to sell "en-block". This means they knock down big old places and build tall small places, so now you either live in the middle of a construction zone facing a 70% rent hike for the privlidge like us or end up moving to shoe box in middle of road in less desirable areas.
As well as talking real estate I have been learning to be a dad, people ask me what it is like adjusting to being a dad. The two biggest problems have been a temporary lack of control over my sideburns and my pants fall down when I push the pram. A haircut and a belt have fixed these issues, so it is going well now.
We have also discovered Phoebe is quite useful when one of us farts in a lift like one of us did, quite badly or well dependig how you rate farts, on the weekend. It's funny, people smile when you tell them the burning sensation around the eyes and nostrils was due to your baby. They would probably not smile if I told them where the noxious gas really came from, nor would Reidy.
I should have been surprised when I came out of the train station at Tampines and saw a tank. But it comig up for 2 years here and I am now not surprised to see a tank parked outside a suburbn shopping mall.

Late Arrival

This week I have mostly been becoming a parent, eventually after a good 41 weeks in the womb little Phoebe emerged into the world. You know you are in for an interesting time when the doctor dons a pair of white gum boots that look like they may have come from a Sydney Fish Markets surplus store to deliver your baby. I would have thought being dragged through a tight space by a suction cup attached to your head would be quite traumatic, but it didn't seem to be too much of a concern.
Being a parent is better than waiting to be a parent, which often meant Emma and friends would get tired and have to sit around in rocking chairs to get their breath back. Carrying the chairs around was becoming quite a drag, and we are all quite pleased that is over. So now we have our very own Golden Pig, which are meant to be very lucky. As per instructions from Aunty Token the Token Local Godmother we were to use the significant numbers associated with her birth to win the lottery. We had lots of 3's so filled in the lottery tickets and won nothing. She is not a lucky Golden Pig at all as it turns out, she is something of a pig though.
Being thrown into parenthood obviously means the alcohol consumption and related foolishness has declined significantly, however Singapore still manages to provide plenty of unusual things to talk about.
This week it was the death of an elderly man who lost a fight with his flatmate. While this initially conjured up images of a real life Grumpy Old Men movie gone wrong, it actually highlighted another oddball rule related to subsidised housing and single people. The current rule does not allow eldery people to live in Housing Development Board unit by themselves, so they need to find themselves a flatmate or are assigned one. Quite often this means two people sharing one bedroom, and quite often this is with a stranger and quite often they do not like each other. This was apparently not an isolated case and previous efforts of matching a 48 year old schizophrenic with 65 year old man that was killed over a lottery ticket suggests the screening process might also be a little flawed.
The other day I went to lunch and was a little disturbed to see a bloke on the footpath waving a shotgun around, and even a little worried when he shot it into a tree. But it turns out he wasn't a disgruntled HDB flatmate but a crow culler. Yep that was his job loosing off birdshot into trees during the middle of day to reduce the crow population. Judging by the pile at his feet he was quite good at his job. Very very odd I thought and went off to get a sandwich.
In tank news Matt the Crab appears to have scuttled off his mortal coil. There is no sign of him, and judging by the size of Pinchy 2 he may well have been a tasty treat, there was no sign of chilli or pepper sauce in the water so am assuming sashimi. Pinchy 2 is a far more energetic specimen than his predecessor and may well have been a gardener in a previous life judging by the way he moves the plastic plants around to create his own little sanctuaries in the tank. I also think one of the angel fish is pregnant and Reidy wants to sort out a breeding tank, she has suddenly become very maternal and wants lots of babies in the house.

Golden Pig

This week I have mostly been celebrating Chinese New Year, and this year it is the auspicious year of the Golden Pig. I saw a Golden Pig the other day on the train, she was up to her second knuckle in her nose drilling for gold, then she wiped it on the window, capping off a particularly eventful week on public transport. The Chinese New Year culminates in a big parade down Orchard Road, called Chingay, which is kind of like the Sydney Gay madis gras but without the gay, becaus that is not allowed. This year it is sponsored by the Singapore Tote, which gives me a very convenient segway to mention horse racing and my birthday. Both of which happened a couple of weeks before.
Racing in Singapoo is quite civilized as long as you are prepared to pay a bit of cash to sit in a very large airconditioned stand, which is what we did. We also had free drink, a race programme, a 3 course meal and a free bet voucher. All good except the food, which was some sort of oily orangey piece of pig flavoured road kill for the carnivores and a deep fried ball of mash potato for the non meat eaters.
We had a table reserved for lunch and as it turned out another table reserved for drinking and watching horsies being kicked and hit by little blokes with high pitched voices. The only thing was some fairly unsavoury throat clearing sniffing and snorting going on around us, fortunately with spitting punishable by some sort of punishable punishment over here we didn't get to see the results. It was a mixed day on the punt, my best selections were made at the bar and then later from the menu at the Delhi restaurant in Little India.
Chinese New year is a jolly good time over here, certainly the most festive of the holidays in Singapoo and involves a whole lot of things including lots of eating and drinking and lion dances. The first time you see a lion dance you think, that's interesting, likewise the second time, but by the third you notice the noise. And bugger me there is some noise, it's kind like kids banging drums and cymbals together with no thought about rhythm or from. In fact it is just a whole bunch of kids banging drums and cymbals. When they do it in your office they also expect to get paid for it. Having just been promoted I qualified for a dance to bring in luck and good fortune. It involves tying up a lettuce with a red packet containing cash and two oranges. The lion comes in and pretends to eat the lettuce and the oranges, then chucks lettuce leaves and orange all over the place.
I went to pick this crap up and the cleaner came up to me, to clean up I thought. But in fact she came up to tell me it was bad luck to clean it up before 3 days. Poorest excuse for not doing a job that I have ever heard, but I left the orange lying around just to be sure, but then my boss comes up and starts eating it, so I had to tell him off for eating my good fortune. I am not convinced on the leaving food lying around in the tropics over the weekend without aircon is good luck, the staphylococci I bred didn't look too lucky to me.
Matt the crab has turned out to be something of a hermit, boom tish, something like his mentor in the cricket season. He has also lost 3 legs, which is again a bit like his mentor who is also quite often legless. Interesting thing about crabs is that they can grow their legs back, good skill to have that one.

Crazy Elephants

This week I have mostly been watching a very big TV, which I bought mostly because I had a very big hangover last Saturday. I had a very big hangover because it was KP's birthday. I am not entirely sure what defines a significant birthday, I like to treat all of mine as significant, but apparently this was a significant event and if my significant headache on Saturday was any indicator then it was indeed a significant one.
KP's birthday started innocently enough with a civilized dinner on another significant day; the celebration of the day the English plonked a flag in Aussie soil and claimed it as theirs, it ws quite easy to acquire land a couple of hundred of years ago. But I digress, KP's post dinner celebrations was where the damage was done, in what is now becoming an annual event we ended up in the Crazy Elephant. This meant we needed to drink Jaeger Bombs and tequila, it had been a while since I bombed and not much has changed they still re-arrange your brain cells and make you a bit silly.
In fact so inspired was I by the Jaeger that I agreed to go to Attica, possibly one of the crappiest excuses for a bar in Singapore. I guess they wouldn't get too many patrons if it was called Shithole but that would be a far more appropriate name for the place. Picture a pretend classy place full of social x-rays and sleezy expats and that is Attica. The dancy part of the place is reached by walking up a furlined staircase, a bit like walking through a giant black furry tunnel and then when you get to the top is full of lots of furry tunnels walking around like they are the coolest of cool. It can not be stressed enough what a shithole this place is but the furry tunnels who patronise this place seem to think this place is the duck's nuts and a serious nightclub.
To be honest things were a little blurry, but I am told it was because of this we ended up downstairs again apparently. I am not entirely sure when we left but it was en masse and I magically ended up in the house, wrong bedroom but right house. Reidy had to come in cover up my starfish impersonation that was apparently scaring people in the lift going up and down outside the bedroom. And that is how I ended up buying a big tv.
Prosperity and Longetivity are not typicaly things you would associate with McDonalds, but apparently it is. In the lead up to Chinese New Year and the year of the golden pig they have brought out these little morsels to enable you to enjoy a prosperous life. Can't say I am tempted looks like a pair of turd burgers to me.
Finally this week I bought a crab called Matt for the fish tank for really no other reason than I have a friend called Matt who is actually Crabby. But I am curious to see if Matt and Pinchy are going to fight, it's a bit like one of those Discovery Channel shows where they try to work out who would win a fight between a whale and a squid. So I will keep you posted on who is the tougher; crayfish or crab.

MUSE Amuse

This week I have mostly been thinking about this time last week when I finally got to see a decent bit of live music when MUSE stopped by on their way down to Aus. For a 3 piece these boys make some noise, even in an outdoor park like Fort Canning. It was a sensational evening all round, the rain stopped raining, the breeze started breezing and the crowd started jumping. It was the most excited display of excitement I have seen from the locals, they were having a ball.
So was I, especially when I discovered there were waitresses at the beer tent, I couldn't imagine that working at the Big Day Out where the waitresses would most likely disappear into the mosh pit with the beer never to be seen again by customer or employer. Just when I thought it couldn't get any better I wandered into the crowd with Dappers and felt like a giant at a blue light disco, not a boofheaded big bloke in sight. Except for me, but I wasn't in my way so I didn't count.
But then it got even better as I was wondering what to do to for a beer and discovered I had subconciously landed 30 metres from the stage on a perfect latitude with a beer tent with no customers that was only 5 metres away. Where were all these magical beer tents coming from? Don't know, don't care they served their purpose of keeping my hops flavoured fluids up.
I might be sounding a little bit gushy about this whole MUSE thing, but they did break the live music drought for me in spectacular fashion. Even KP, who said that the next time I was going to some blokey grunge band to not ask her had changed her tune by the end of the night.
I read a review in the Straits Times that said they were good but the light show was disappointing, was the writer blind? why did he even care about the lights, I would watch them by torchlight and be happy. It only served to enforce my theory that the Straits Times has been out sourced to a local high school and the majority of the writers are 14 and a half years old.
Anyway enough of the MUSE ramblings, with ears ringing we shuffled down the hill for a beer with the Japanese version of Reevey. Turns out he is very much like the Singapore Reevey and likes to hang out in BQs but wasn't drinking flaming Lamborghinis this time. The bar did well out of Reuters that night and drawing stumps at 1:00 on a Wednesday morning seemed like a really cool thing to do. It seemed less cool later on Wednesday morning, but I got through it and then went out for Elliott's birthday night, but a couple ofjumbo Hoegaardens and a bad sausage sent me home early. Quite a good thing I think.

Pinchie Two

This week I have mostly been coming to grips with a new year and dealing with the first full week of the year. The tropical festive season was a quiet one, grounded due to fast approaching new addition to Reidy and Smithy's world, we hung out in Singapoo.
While the locals seemed to have reasonably grasped the Christmas concept, as far as eating and drinking goes it actually panned out to be just another day for most locals. As we headed up Orchard Rd to our lunch venue we were a little stunned to see all of the shops were open as per usual and quite a few locals do what they do best and shop. But thinking about it, it's actually quite a good thing particularly of you get caught in a present stand off with your partner, or if you give a crap gift you can duck down the road for a quick upgrade under the ruse of popping out to get some milk.
Chrissie Lunch was at the Equinox, I think it is the island's highest restaurant, it certainly is a long way up. The view at night is stunning, the view by day we found out is quite drab, so was the food as it turned out. It was an interesting day, particularly as we only really knew one person on the table.
We had been told that one of the table members was a "bit of a character" and it didn't tke long to find out which one. He was the one frequently regailing us with some fuity tales of derring doo of his army days, capped off by regular Sean Connery impersenations. Mostly harmless though, unlike the table full of Molly Malones' regulars who set off a fire extinguisher at their table, but this is apparently not enough to get thrown out of the Equinox on Christmas Day.
New Year was at the Hyatt, where they turned on a pretty amazing buffet that Reidy is still talking about in terms of the amount of desserts and chocolate consumed. Apparently there is a limit to how much free French champagne I can drink, but soldiered on when they told me the price of buying a beer. Entertainment came in the form of the Ultimate Kylie show and Bjorn Again.
Nice Aussie influence there, but not people I would typically go and see, but I was little surprised to see Paul Nelson pretending to be Swedish and playing keyboards. I thought he was walking around coastal Victoria, but actually he was tickling the plastic ivories at the Grand Hyaytt on Scotts Rd. More disturbing than that was the number of spotty expat kids that were there, it made us feel a little bit like we had crashed a school dance there for a while until the numbers dwindled as they disappeared off for a new year's pash.
The new year has got policing off to a cracking start with the aprehension yesterday of a naked man swimming off the East Coast after a 3 hour standoff with police. Having finally convinced him to leave they gave him some shorts for the walk out of the water, whisked him off to the hospital for a check up and then after a clean bill of health promptly arrested him for public nudity.
The New Year has also meant the arrival of a new Pinchie, he has a big set of claws to fill but he has already shed his shell once so is well on the way to doing so.

Poor Pinchie

This week I have mostly been trying to forget I am in mourning. I did this by packing off to Perth to watch a day of cricket, drink some wine on another day, played golf on another, swam on all of the days and generally shot the very frequent breeze.
The first day of the Ashes was the day we chose to go and bugger me it was hot. Bugger me it was dull as well, even for relatively keen cricket watchers. Despite seeing 12 wickets fall, (one of which is in the picture here if you look hard enough) we all agreed watching test cricket live is akin to watching paint grow. The Barmy Army failed to impress with anything close to resembling clever repartee. Chanting Barmy Army and clapping incessantly for 30 minutes at the start of play seemed a little inane to me, although the trumpet player to his credit trumpeted up a storm. The Aussie fans had nothing but beer an swearing, but that was to be expected.
Matt Cleary, freelance journalist and purveyor of strange feet odours also joined us in Perth and even he struggled to find a story at the cricket. In fact the most news worthy story appeared on the English Telegraph website in relation to a junket that we were kind of sort of involved in. We were sitting next to the chopper pilot after the 9th hole, we didn't see any snakes though. So word of advice on test cricket, watch it on Telly and keep your fluids up. But not White Russians, they can cause night terrors in crabs.
Speaking of crustaceans and I kind of was, the reason I was in mourning was that Pinchie died the previous week. I think he died peacefully in his sleep, at least he looked peaceful while a fish was trying to eat his eye. Reidy and I thought he might of wanted us to smother him in butter and garlic, but we popped him down the garbage chute instead. It was very sad day indeed and the condolence messages are still flowing in.
Singapoo has become very wet since we got back, floods, landslides, toppling trees and all sorts of carnage. I guess not surprising seeing as the majority of the island is reclaimed land, and considering that a 9 metre rise in sea level will drown Portsmouth in the UK (Elliott told me this after what was obviously a busy day in the office nursing a long held hatred of all things Portsmouth), then Singapore is destined to become the Venice of South East Asia.
The good news with the rain is they actually stopped work on the building site behind our condo, which means I didn't have to yell at them to stop pouring concrete at 11 O'clock at night and they didn't have to tell me to stop using offensive language. Win Win.
Finally and this is finally for the year, there was a great testimony to the Singaporean dedication to shopping last Sunday. The roof of Tangs department store on Orchard Road caught fire and to their credit no one was evacuated and the shoppers only found out when they were tripping over fire hoses on the way out. Great stuff and I thought was perhaps a bit of good old fashioned smoting from God, it seemed to coincide with the appearance of a particularly tacky recreation of a mini Bethlehem on Orchard Rd complete with life size and angry looking wise men with camels. Maybe it was, I don't really care; have a sensational Christmas and a mighty fine New Year.

Unusual Carnival

This week I have mostly been a little surprised, not a lot just a little, after all this is Singapoo and surprise is moderated. I was first surprised last week when I had a root canal done and found it to be almost enjoyable. I was surprised because I could watch a movie on a little screen worn on my head while a bloke in a white coat rooted around my roots in my gob. I was also surprised to find I enjoyed the movie Volcano, but that possibly could have been down to even a stupid movie being more enjoyable than having a root canal.
Then was surprised to find I was due at a seminar that was at the same hotel that George Bush was staying at. I was surprised that the 10 minute journey from home took 30 minutes and was surprised I need to be searched and x-rayed and searched and x-rayed just to get in the door. I was further surprised a few days later when I discovered George was on his way to a wizards convention. But I was not surprised how stupid John Howard looked, nor was I surprised how stupid he sounded; "Howard, in Hanoi for an Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum summit, told reporters he found some of the developments in Iraq inspiring" What a tit.
But the thing that really did surprise me a lot this week, was the apparent fervent embracing of the legalisation of sex in the botty or administration by mouth. We didn't actually make it to this carnival, but it sounded interesting and maybe just a little inspiring. Those crazy Singaporians.

Hand Toilet

This week I have mostly been bathed in Christmas lights, as has most of the island. In fact if one is to believe the papers, and we are certainly encouraged to here, then over 6 km of Christmas lights are now twinkling away until January. This means 1/7 of the length of the island and a bit over a third of the width is lit up. Pretty impressive stuff as was the effort from Tangs department store who has managed to find that elusive biblical statement that says Christmas is in fact a commercial exercise and nothing to do with any religious beliefs. It came from Matthew apparently.
Just in note to anyone who has popped by this page on the back of a search for religious beliefs, you are going to be mightily disappointed, I don't have any. It is interesting to see what people type into search engines that makes them swing by. Three searches for the four floors, one for recreational drinking and one where someone googled "wine and flatulance" all of which sent them my way for some reason.
Apart from the lights going on this week, the other big news is that bottom love and kissing people on, in or around their special places is now legal in Singapore. Plenty of sighs of both pleasure and relief being breathed around the island on what was a fairly low key announcement. What was apparently a more news worthy story was that of some fast thumbed 16 year old kid setting a new world record for being the quickest SMSer on the planet. It made the font page of the broadsheets here, the nimble fingered chap shaved half a second off the old time and is confident he can take a further 2 seconds off the new time. I wonder if Singapore will be setting up an SMS training institute to develop this skill. I did also wonder (I seem to do a lot of wondering) if this it was possibly a related story to the and he was hurriedly sending messages to his mates to brag about his first legal experience in the bedroom.
Finally in another bottom related incident this week, the toilet bowl handwasher was back. He had two really good goes at it between flushes and at one point thought he may have been doing his washing in there so vigorous was the scrubbing. I was contemplating rushing out of my cubicle to see who it was, but part of me doesn't really want to know.

Thai Lie

This week I have mostly been breathing freely for a change, it seems Indonesia's smoke has drifted off to annoy their own people instead of their neighbours. Some of the fires have even gone out, no thanks to any effort from our nearby slash and burners, it has started raining at last. So there goes the opportunity to go on so called leave with so called respritory problems.
I say so called because that's what Singaporeans like to say, everything is so called. I was coming home in a cab the other day with a cabbie who was lost, seemingly he didn't drive round Orchard very often. Quite a remarkable statement from a cabbie who's job it is to drive around a land mass that is 42km long and 20km wide and Orchard is the shopping captial of this small isalnd. But lost he was and when I told him we needed to exit onto our road he told me to tell him what so called ramp to get onto. I told him it was actually a real exit ramp which is why we were now on it. He didn't get it but we eventually made it my so called home safe and sound so I guess I have no cause to complain.
But then we went to a so called Thai restaraunt called the Thai Village just near our house. We have often passed it and thought it looked like nice. Turns out it is the adjoining spa that is nice, the so called Thai Village restaraunt is in fact a tacky Chinese restaraunt specialising in Shark Fin. Depsite their best efforts to convince us otherwise it was unlikely we were going to get a Jungle Curry there and we were not happy about the proud advertising of shark fin as a delicacy. Slightly reminiscent of a Monty Python cheese shop skit, we told them it wasn't much of a Thai place and legged it to a Thai place that was a in fact a Thai place and turns out a very good one. Except for being in a shopping mall and the very dull person sitting nearby rabbiting on and on to his two lady friends about doing business.
We enjoyed the last of the festivals last week with a public holiday to celebrate Hari Raya on the Tuesday. We also came to a conclusion that there isn't much to inspire you to do much that is off the cuff and doesn't involve booze or food in Singapore. After a late breakfast we were wondering what to do next and eventually half heartedly agreed to go to a museum. We only managed a couple of hundred metres in the general direction of the so called museum when we came to a wine bar so stopped for a bottle of champers. The next thing we knew we were at the ATM getting more cash to go to Brewerkz for more drinks and lunch, and that was pretty much it for our day, exciting stuff.

Perfect Skin

This week I have mostly still been enjoying Indonesia's gift to the region; smoke. Loads of it in fact, and something the locals are taking advantage of by claiming respitory illness related to the smoke haze. Singaporeans are not very good at coping with any form of illness, a faint hint of a sniffle and it is quickly escalated as fever and before you know it half your team is off with fever. The opportunity for taking some time off work is spreading like wildfire, which is ironic as it is wildfire that caused it in the first place.
I was a little disturbed to receive a postcard featuring Zoe Tay a Mediacorp artiste, actually everyone to do with selling any stupid beauty or vibrating product seems to be a Mediacorp artiste. Can't say I have ever seen them, which isn't surprising as I don't listen to local radio or watch local tv. Logically as Mediacorp is owned by the government, then these people are actually public servants, but I guess it would be more difficult to sell a product promoted by Zoe Tay, Public Servant. However, that wasn't what disturbed me, what disturbed me was Zoe's secret to beautiful skin; she swallows. That is quite an interesting piece of information, but I'm not sure of the relevance to beautiful skin and wouldn't she be better rubbing it all over her face?
Singapore is a small place and I perhaps shouldn't have been surprised to once more bump in to Sandeep Highpants, who was mentioned back in January following his mean guitar session at the Crazy Elephant. As it turns Sandeep is not an accountant but a project manager and one who started working with us a few weeks ago. Funny old world innit, as is this photo taken back in January at Sandeep's performance.

Hazey Fantasey

This week I have mostly been passively smoking courtesy of the very generous Indonesian Slash and Burners who chose a particularly dry time of year to set fire to much of the small areas of virgin forest still available to them. Consequently we have been in an eye watering fog for over a week, but the Indonesian Government did apologise. There is no attempt or any plans to put them out but they would like us to forgive them.
This burning forest is also the home to one of the last pockets of orangutans in the wild, pushing us them just that little bit closer to extinction. More than likely this means we are not too far away from only ever being able to see them in a zoo, which is something I did when my mum came to town last week.
I am not a huge fan of zoos, but the Singapore one is certainly a goody and breakfast with the orangutans is one of the more interesting activities you can do there. Despite a mix up with a fairly dim cafe staff we did manage to have some quality time with a big orange monkey as well as some food, considering the opening interlude with the cafe staff the food was quite a bonus.
Regular readers of this blog, and apparently there are some, will possibly be wondering if being an expectant father has impacted my alcohol intake and silly things as a result. Possibly it has, but it has been down largely due to the absence of the usual suspects to go boozing. However this period of relative abstinence was interrupted by the recent fleeting Reevey visit that required we all head over to Bintan (in the smoke fog) to tear up the very nice Bintan Ria golf course. Three beers and a curry before the 11:00am tee off set the scene. But there were rules though, the red wine did not come out until the back nine, at from that point you could buy a mulligan for a shot of wine.
Surprisingly while my game remained consistent as one of the worst rounds ever seen on the Ria, Miles remained consistent as the best round he ever played, at least according to him. But he did win so I guess we should believe him, not even the sight of Elliott's hairy bean bag on the 17th green put him off his game, he obviously had some attention issues as a child and couldn't wait to race home to ring his dad.
However, we couldn't do that before we had a few more beers and watched some fat old sweaty expats (no not us, we were watching remember) make complete fools of themselves with some local hos. Fantastic stuff that was beaten only by another expat on the ferry home who spent most of the 45 minute journey up to his second knuckle in his nose, which he would quickly gobble up, nothing like a bit of human waste recycling.
It's very festive here right now, three festivals actually; mid autumn for the Chinese, Deepvali for the Hindus and Hari Raya for the Muslims and public holidays for everyone, hoorah. Although culturally and religiously diverse they all seem to involve lights and eating, and we have managed to get along to all of them. The Mid Autumn lantern parade at the Chinese Garden is without one of the lamest things four adults can do, but the kids seem to like it. Seeing as we didn't have any (real) kids with us we went to the pub, Rochester Park to be precise and decided it could be our new favourite pub, excluding Number 5's of course.
And because I haven't been updating this for a while, I thought I should also mention we recently stayed on our very own tropical island in Indonesia. When I say very own, I meant with 12 other people, but we were all from the same party so it was our very own. This is a spectacular place to stay, and thoroughly recommend it if you happen to be in the area. Although having experienced their fishing trips, it is unlikely you will see anything above 6 cm swimming in the water.

Cairns Cans

This week I have mostly been trying to sort out my blogging, so this week was actually 3 weeks ago when I was back home in Aus, primarily to catch up with the world's worst punters for a Punter's Club trip to Cairns. I was pretty excited by the prospect of drinking reasonably heavily with old friends and also curious as to what would happen when you crossed the streams of two blogs with the coincidental meeting up with Brad and Graz the fish killers. Jaeger bombs as it turned out is what happened.
Heading to Cairns after nearly a year since our last visit home is not a gentle easing back into Aussie culture, it is like being smacked in the mouth with a sackful of beer and pies. The Cairns Cup was a day dominated by the letter B; Beer, Bosoms, Betting, Bosoms, Burgers, Bosoms, Beer and Bosoms. While the punting was predictably inconsistent we did manage to not have to spend any of our own cash and had a mighty fine day. A spate of pregnancies and an out of form Ned meant we had a quieter day than usual. Not so with the locals; they were well and truly on it.
By 4:00 in the afternoon, sober people were rarer than an original idea from John Howard. The highlight had to be the fashion parade, where people were plucked from the crowd on to a stage because apparently they dressed nice, prompting calls from the crowd for the nice looking people to display their genitalia. This was followed by the unexpected arrival of a girl who fell over the fence landing at the feet of the judges. Surprised, scared, disorientated and perhaps just a little drunk, she started pushing the judges around. I can't explain the logic, but her boyfriend came to the rescue only to be given a big shove as well. The most obvious recourse in front of a large crowd was to walk away, instead he pushed her back, right into the roses as it happened. He was escorted out by security, while she picked herself up and unable to correct a lean to the right she disappeared out of the winner's circle and on to the track. Outstanding effort and my fondest memory of the day apart from Reidy picking a 17-1 winner and the Punter's club reunion.
A trip to the reef is mandatory when in Cairns, so off we went the next day. I saw three turtles before we hit the water due to crook guts, but the real thing ws far more impressive. We also spotted a sting ray, but declined from cutting its tail off like some of the les intelligent Steve Irwin fans.
Then it was down to Sydney for a flurry of catch ups, dinners and the odd drink. Thanks to all that fed and watered us, great to catch up. Finally special mention to Orietta who crashed her car just so I could write about her crashing her car.

Lazy Lanta

This week I have most been in Koh Lanta, a sleepy little place near Krabi in Thailand. We went there because Tiger Airways were giving away tickets 4 months ago, we weren't aware back then that it is the off season in August. No wonder they were giving away tickets, it is the off season because it is also the rainy season and with good reason, it rains a lot. Except for one morning when it didn't and we got sunburnt instead of wet.
But we did have a very pleasent time mooching about our island resort, especially as we were the only people there for the first 24 hours; very rock n roll. The illusion was shattered by the arrival of more guests on the Saturday, admittedly only 6 of them, but still they were invading our space so we took off on a scooter humming a mandatory Machine Gun Felatio tune as we went.
Lanta is probably only slightly more busy in the not so rainy season, it is pretty much unspoilt with a strip of resorts on the West Coast beach. Do go to the Corner Cafe if you are ver there, their curries bring tears to your eyes both at the table and later in the toilet. Other than that it is jungle, rubber trees, cashew nuts and little fishing villages.
Singapore on the other hand is not and is currently reinventing itself as an even squeakyer cleanier place with the pending IMF forum here in September. As a result the government is ripping up all the roads that people are likely to travel on in the week they are going to be here. They are also painting the gutters and planting new plants. Bit weird really, but quite impressive to walk down to the train in the morning and see they have not only ripped up 5 lanes of Orchard Road but replaced and marked it again in one night. Couldn't imagine the Sydney Department of Main Roads pulling that off, but then they don't have access to the Bangladesh labour market.
In further preperaion for the IMF thingy that the government has been practicing handling riots and protests, even invited the media along to watch, which was a little surreal. However the Riot Police are unlikely to be doing much except drinking tea as protesting is surprisingly illegal here. But to show they are open to free speech they have made an allowance for protestors to book a time for discussions with IMFers if they so wish in a small area near the convention centre. I would imagine it would also involve people loitering in the background with guns.
Finally I was excited to see a huge tabloid headline describing the shame of the ugly behaviour during the recent National Day fireworks, maybe something crazy had happened here. But as I read on I was disappointed the ugly behaviour was actually just people jaywalking and illegally parking on one of the bridges to watch the display. I think the journo responsible for the story should wander the Rocks in Sydney after the midnight fireworks on New Years Eve to get a better definition of ugly behaviour at fireworks.

Hungry Ghosts

This week I have mostly been dodging little fires and oranges and lollies and fruit and cakes and stuff. This is because it is hungry ghosts month, where people honour their dead relatives with offerings of food and burning of hell money so that they are comfortable in the afterlife. There are some elements in danger with this, I walked around a blind corner the other day and had to leap over a little man burning things. I think he thought he had seen a ghost, he looked quite scared, I was also hungry (I was heading off for dumplings) so maybe he thought he had aroused a hungry sleeping spirit.

Working out in Tampines is in the burbs and consequently I become more involved in these kind of things like it or not and have trampled through many an offering on the way to work. I have also noticed that the people who have shuffled off their mortal coil have quite a sweet tooth, Mentos are a particular favourite amongst the offerings.
I had forgotten I had opted in for the work Hungry Ghost thing and was surprised to come into the office to find a large bucket of food on my desk. I am not entirely sure what I was meant to do with this bucket; if it is meant to be an offering for my deceased relatives, I couldn't see either of my grandmothers being very pleased with their grandson presenting them with 2 litres of Fanta, some sardines, noodles and a variety of cooking oils. One of my team members at work told me I am supposed to give it to the poor, but I think he was angling to take the stuff home himself.
I went to the loo the other day a the Pungol Park cafe and this sign was plastered across the auto flush of the urinal. Flush your pee or poo manually was the sound advice but it begs the question is urinal pooing a problem in the Pungol Park cafe. Is it a Singapore thing, I don't know. I do know people like to talk loudly on their mobile phones while they are on the toilet at work, so important tip if you are talking to a Singaporian and it sounds like they are on the toilet, chances are they are on the toilet. Kudos goes to the chap who carried on a long an loud conversation on the squat in cubicle 3 the other day.
Speaking of oddball Singaporean signs, this sign suggests that Fiona Xio's best angle is right up her skirt. Possibly it is, the add is part of a Singaporean obsession with vibrating things, chairs, feet thingies, slimming belts and my favourite the mechanical horse thing. This is basically a gyrating stool that is supposed to exercise your abs and stuff, but it is quite amusing watching 80 year olds doing what basically amounts to a pelvic thrust on a bright green seat.
Tis a funny old place here.

Reeves Leave

This week I have mostly been recovering from saying goodbye to the Reeves as they headed out to take up residence in Japan. The long series of farewells hit an alcoholic crescendo last Friday, on the eve of the eve of their departure. Andy Reeve had had a particularly busy day at Boat Quay and staggered off giggling to himself around midnight, perhaps a result of drinking a particularly large flaming Lamborghini.
Soon after the crowd began to disperse leaving myself, Nic Reeve, Elliott and our token Singaporean; Gloria to our own devices with the challenge of ensuring Nic had a last night that she would either want to forget or remember. We chose to do a pub crawl of seedy bars at Boat Quay but possibly due to the a lack of imagination or plain laziness this just meant walking around the corner to Molly Malones, acquiring a jug of marguerita along the way.
This was probably where things started to go a little awry, Elliott started playing a game with a couple of barflies that involved throwing a coaster at the bar and whatever bottle you hit you had to take a shot of. After we told him his drinking buddies were wankers he poured their drinks on the bar while they were in the toilet and we ran out Molly's like the tough little teenagers we were behaving like. Sans Elliott's laptop, but that wasn't quite apparent until the following day.
So after a little bit of procrastination we arrived at Attica, a place supposedly full of the chic and beautiful set. This obviously didn't include us, and the chic and beautiful readings were on the slide after we dropped in. The sensational dance floor moves suggested social skills and motor coordination had taken a hammering, but the signal to leave for me was when the bouncer asked Elliott to get off the podium and to put his shirt back on.
Flopped home around 4:00 and in an effort to be considerate to Emma I sent myself to the blue room, which is where she found me on the way to gym at 8:00 lying in around 4 litres of sweat having forgotten to turn the aircon on. Two hours later I found myself wandering around the supermarket with Reidy trying to sort out stuff for a BBQ to finally say goodbye to the Reeves. Two hours later again I had to have a little lie down after ambitiously attempting to peel 1.5 Kg of prawns with what was now a filthy hangover.
Turns out I wasn't alone, Andy could not drink anything at all, Nic spoke in a whisper all day and only half finished her one wine, Elliott was alternating beer with cordial and was very scared about having to go back to Molly's to pick up his laptop. Then there was Gloria, breezed in bright as a button, after having just woken up at 2:30 that afternoon.
So the farewell festival is finally over and they are now in Tokyo and we will all be sleeping a little better and drinking a little less for a while, at least until Elliott gets back from the UK.