Assorted Ravings of the Slightly-Weird

Back!

Back from a quick trip up to Bangkok, and my observations are:

1) Things are cheap cheap cheap in Bangkok. Except, of course, at the airport duty free shop.

2) The traffic, despite the costly expressways and metro system, is still fairly horrific. Imagine being stuck on a 2-lane elevated expressway and wanting to pee really bad. Although, I've been assured that things are much better now, so I shudder to think about how things were.

3) I had one of the best meals of the year at the Four Seasons Hotel. We were there for a lunch meeting and let me just say that thank goodness the food was good. I had spiced duck breast, which was SO good. And the garlic mashed potatoes that came with it? Oh my god. And all for the princely sum of 580 baht which works out to be S$23, for a 2-course meal with an appetiser buffet, a main course and coffee.

Long weekend's coming up! Yippee! Happy Friday everyone :D

Happy Monday!

Mondays get a raw deal. Just cos they come right after the weekend, most people hate Mondays. But see, it all boils down to nomenclature. Mondays could come right before Saturdays and then hey it'd instantly jump to the top of the favourite weekday list. Assuming of course, then Saturday still came before Sunday and remained a non-work day.

Anyhoo. It's the start of a new work week and I have a funny feeling in my tummy. I suspect it's cos I had to microwave water for my coffee earlier on, and when I took it out of the microwave it looked funny. Kinda grey. Plus it tasted strange as well... As to why I had to microwave water? Well, the last person who changed the water container failed to notify us that it was the last bottle of water so on Friday afternoon, when I went to get some water to drink I realised that there was not a drop of drinking water left.

Now I guess there's no choice but to shell out 5 bucks for Starbucks. 5 FREAKING DOLLARS! Oh wait... my boss just bought me coffee. Hahahahaha. My boss is the bestest boss-woman in the world ;)

Here's wishing all working folk a happy Monday, and to those who are still schooling:
Stay in school! Work life sucks!

Where's The Beef??

I know exactly where the beef is. Hahahahaha.

Last night was the most fun I have had in a long long time. In fact, it ranks right up there in my personal Hall of Fame, next to getting my tattoo. (Speaking of which, I want another one!) Unfortunately, I can't say another word. Interested parties can email me to find out what the hell I'm going on about.

Me so sleepy... Oh and the comment by Moomoo on this entry? Hilarious.

MOO!

This entry will only make sense to people in Singapore.

I WANT A COW!

And now, with this I can actually get one. Though I'm fairly sure I can cram a cow into Sam, but this is for charity. If I can't get one the legitimate way, then I will steal one in the dead of the night.

Those who want to know what the hell I'm going on about can go here. If not, check out the picture of the day!

Moooo.

Cinnamon And Spice And Everything Nice

It's been one of the crappiest weekends ever but I can say for sure that I did something most of you have never done and will never do in your lives.

And all you gutter brains can stop thinking whatever it is you're thinking.

On Friday night I had to make a carrot cake for my mom, who was attending a kindergarten reunion. (Side note: How cool is that? I can't even remember people from kindergarten!) Carrot cake is one of my specialties, probably because the recipe I use is so easy I can do everything by hand. Which means a big deal to me since I am such a lazy ass and hate cleaning up.

Anyway as I was gathering up the ingredients for the cake at 2230, I realised that there was no ground cinnamon in the house. Since the party wasn't till Saturday at noon, I figured it would be no biggie to just go to sleep, wake up early on Saturday and get everything done then. But no... my kancheong mom insisted that I do it there and then, so we embarked on a fairly frantic search for cinnamon.

Of course, I sat there and refused to go out to buy cinnamon (I mean, come on, who goes out at 2230 to buy cinnamon) so my mom dragged my dad out with her to the 24-hr minimart while I got the rest of the stuff ready. Finally she came back after 20 minutes, without the cinnamon and suggested that we substitute the cinnamon with kueh lapis spice. After a couple of minutes hotly debating the usage of spices, we decided to grind up cinnamon sticks instead, which she had in abundance.

Here's a tip: Those big blenders that claim to do everything? They can't grind cinnamon. Instead they just churn the cinnamon sticks around the plastic container, making a hell of a racket. So we had to bring out the mortar and pestle and pound the damn things into submission.

After all that work, the cake was finally done sometime past midnight. And then I had to wake up early on Saturday morning to frost the damn thing with cream cheese. I hate waking up early on Saturdays...

So, for those ladies that were in attendance, I hope they realised that they were eating a cake made by hand, with hand-shredded carrots, hand-chopped walnuts, hand-ground cinnamon and frosted with hand-made cream cheese frosting.

Oh and FYI, hand-grinding 1 1/2 teaspoons of cinnamon takes roughly about half an hour.

All About...

... CTG. Which is what I've been promising to write about for the past two entries. But this is going to be a fairly disjointed entry because I can't for the life of me put together something that sounds coherent.

In a comment on an earlier post, B asked how I knew CTG doesn't read this. Simply put, I asked and it turns out CTG has forgotten the URL so it's fairly safe to assume that he doesn't read it. But then I got to thinking, so what if CTG reads this? I mean, so I think he's cute. Big fat hairy deal. It's nothing to get embarassed about, even if he somehow finds out. In fact, let's make it more obvious.

I THINK CTG IS CUTE.

There, I've said it. I've been "proud and loud".

Now whether anything happens from that (assuming that he somehow remembers the URL) will be a different matter. Which brings me to another point. Over the past week, CTG and I hung out a lot and, to me at least, we got along pretty well together. (Maybe he thinks I'm some kind of a pest.) Anyhow, it didn't seem like he was interested in anything else besides hanging out, so one friend suggested that either he's gay or he's not interested.

I'm not sure which is more disappointing. I mean, it'd be kinda embarassing to come onto someone who plays for a different team (IYKWIM). But on the other hand, it's probably easier to take the rejection due to someone being gay than just not being interested. With the first the problem lies with him; with the second the problem lies with me. So it's really easier to assume "Oh he's gay" rather than "He's not interested".

And that brings me to the 3rd point of the night. Which is, in this day and age gaydars have to be pretty much precise to the 2nd decimal point to be able to detect anything that is not overtly, flamboyantly gay.

It used to be that guys who were nicely dressed and well groomed had a higher chance of being gay, but now you've got metrosexuals running all over the place having facials, manicures and pedicures, getting their clothes tailored and in general paying a lot more attention to themselves. So bang, there goes that theory.

Another theory a friend has is that for Asian guys at least, guys with muscular bodies tend to be gay. I dunno on this one: wasn't working out supposed to be a guy thing? Since when was it supposed to mean anything else? But I've been told that certain gyms are gay hangout spots, so there could be some truth to it, though it seems fairly iffy to me.

So what can you do? You meet a guy who's well-dressed, well-groomed and well-built and he could be well-dressed, well-groomed and well-built because he's gay or because he's straight. What's a girl to do to tell these days? In one of my favourite movies, "For Love of the Game", Kelly Preston's character says over dinner to Kevin Costner's character that she wishes things could be easier and that people would wear tags that would say exactly what they were. So, you'd see a guy walking on a street and if his tag said "Single and available" then that'd be like jackpot. If it said "Neurotic after 2 weeks" you'd cross the street immediately to get out of his way. That way you waste so little time and avoid a ton of humiliation.

Anyway this post was supposed to be about CTG and in a way it still is. To summarise:
1) I think CTG is cute. (Duh. Else why would the "C" exist??") And frankly, I don't really care if he knows.
2) Since he doesn't seem interested, is it because he's not interested or is he NOT interested?
3) How the heck do you go about finding out if someone's not interested or NOT interested? Is there any kind of protocol to follow when you're trying to see if a guy is gay or not?

Ooooh. Comments already. Well firstly, I don't think distance should stop anyone. It sure as hell won't stop me. And secondly, I don't know what my tag would read. Possibly something like "No strings attached".

Birthdays and Other Matters

First things first.

Happy birthday Des and Moo Moo!
Sorry Moo Moo, this is one day behind since I was going by US time.

For some reason, April's a really popular month for having kids. So many of my friends are born in April. When I was in school April was a particularly lean month on the pocket money front since I had to buy presents for so many people.

Anyway, I'm just back from lunch and I'm not fired! *shew*
It was a catching-up kind lunch rather than anything else. In fact, I told my boss as we were leaving that I was afraid it was going to be bad news and she found that amusing. There's still no news on the promotion front though...

In other news, NY beat the "Red Sux" to pull out of last place in the AL East. But the Giants lost to the Dodgers again (after a heartbreaker yesterday). Early days, I know, but still it would be nice to get some wins especially against division rivals.

And I know I was supposed to write about CTG but one of my companies is reporting results today so it's been a slightly crazy day at work. Maybe tonight...

11 Hours To Go...

Egads! The dreaded lunch with the boss-woman is tomorrow or, strictly speaking, in about 11 hours time. Da-da-da-DAAA!

I'm in two minds about getting fired. On the one hand, it'd be nice to have some time off to relax. On the other hand, I'd basically be royally screwed with no income and not enough savings. And I wouldn't get to travel to HQ to see CTG again! (I've just been assured that CTG doesn't read this so it's fairly safe to write abt him.)

More about CTG tomorrow; as they say, early to bed, early to rise, means you can catch NY vs BOS at 705am tomorrow. If I do get fired, I won't be surprised that it's for watching baseball at work...

Muchas Gracias

To pay off my debt to my personal consultant on computers and all things electronic, I made a dessert for a party that she was hosting. What better way to make your way to anyone's heart than through the stomach and especially if you let chocolate lead the charge?

As a celebration of Martha's release from prison and my own re-entry into the blogging world, I decided it would be most apt to use a recipe from the Apr issue of M S Living magazine.

The cake was a breeze to make, much easier than it looked. Only grouse is that chocolate is tough to handle in our hot humid weather. Yes, even with my marble top, air-conditioned kitchen and all. It was a real pain in the butt to constantly re-freeze the chocolate leaves whilst painting and unmoulding them. Otherwise, this is a perfect cake to make if you need to throw together something quick but still want it to have the 'wow' factor.

Here's my Mint Chocolate Torte, specially for Nat. Thanks for all your help!

Snippets, Cont'd

More snippets from the past week:

Snippet #5: Continuing on from snippet #4, black sesame gelato tastes like "dirt" and durian has some onion-thing going on. Guilingao is yummy.

Snippet #6: People who take part in triathlons, mini or not, are MAD. Stark raving mad. And it should be a sin to have to wake up at 0645 on a Saturday morning to practice transitions.

Snippet #7: Apparently I have a Jekyll (how many L's??) and Hyde thing going on. I kinda like that...

Snippet #8: This is from a Friends episode a couple of weeks back, one of my favourite episodes. Anyhow here it goes:

Chandler: I'm very happy we're going to have all the sex....
Phoebe: You should be. I'm very bendy.

Snippet #9: This just in! From an on-going MSN conversation now:
Friend: ... how abt creating "moments"?
Me: moments? what "moments"?
Friend: i dunno how to explain. creating moments of intimacy?
Friend: ok i just heard myself say that...
Friend: sounds like something out of a soap opera :P
Me: it's hard to be intimate in a coffeeshop with about 20 lau ah peks sitting around you "lim"-ing kopi

Snippets

Ok. This post is just for Nat, since she emailed me to ask if I had been so busy entertaining that I haven't been blogging.

If you must know, I haven't been blogging because there hasn't been much to blog about. Just a couple of snippets here and there.

Snippet #1, also the BQOTD: My dad went to the doctor recently for a regular checkup. If you guys have seen my dad you'll know he kinda has a belly. If you poke it (as I often do) you'll find that his belly is kinda hard instead of being soft and flabby. So anyway he asked the doctor if it was muscle (since it was hard) and the doctor said:

"No, it's just a big lump of harder fat."

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH. Incidentally I've given my dad a new nickname - BBB. Go figure it out.

Snippet #2: So my boss asked me on Monday to have lunch with her on Thursday, i.e. today. This is the first time ever in 4-odd years of working with her that she's ever asked to have a solo lunch with me. I wonder if she's taking me out for lunch to tell me I'm fired, in which case the lunch would be a consolatory gesture. You know, like "I'm sorry you've been fired but hey you had a good lunch!"

For the past few days I've been going around pondering on the significance of this gesture. But now the lunch has been pushed back to next week so I have a couple more days of going around dreading my impending dismissal. I wonder what kind of redundancy package my company has... Anyhow, if I suddenly start showing up on MSN next week, it'll be THE sign.

Snippet #3: After the great dive trip recently, I'm going to organise another trip in early June, this time to Perhentian. All are welcome to come along!

Snippet #4: Apparently, lime juice tastes like Gatorade and tau huay tastes like oatmeal with syrup.

QOTD

Today's non-bitchy QOTD comes from this article in the NY Times, but first, some background information. In my four years at Cal I never ever subscribed to cable TV because I was too much of a cheapskate. Also, there was more than enough content on free-to-air for me to watch, so if I'd had gotten TV I could have flunked out. The only thing I really missed was not getting enough baseball.

But according to the article:

"Everyone who is going to pay for TV already pays for it... The only people without it are Luddites and people too old to appreciate it."

This makes me either a Luddite or someone living in a retirement home. Which I totally resent.

Addendum: Everyone who is remotely interested in baseball/softball should read this article.