6 Jul
Oh, I’m a real weenie meanie but when I take a dislike to somebody or something, I don’t need any real or imagined reason to be mean-mean.
Hence I’m so delighted that one existing Nominated of Parliament didn’t succeed in hanging onto the mike for another two years! Good for the selection committee which has certainly done a great job in this exclusion.
Yeh! Palms together X nth times!
6 Jul
Perhaps I was dead tired after a 3 cities 4 day trip but it made me sit up to be handed a pink Singapore health declaration form onboard UA895 last night that threatened jail (6 mths to a year) and fines ($10K to $20K) if the form isn’t returned or if I give knowingly false info.
Talk of being welcoming to visitors or even a returning citizen! Sure, I know that h1n1 is now a pandemic and Singapore has 1000+ confirmed cases and dozens pending confirmation.
But why can’t we be more subtle like in Hongkong, Shenzhen and Zuhai?
Yes, their forms stressed that there are serious consequences for non compliance too but left what that might be to the imagination. Theirs were also haphazardly structured ie Shenzhen’s declaration form didn’t mirror Zuhai’s (altho both are parts of China).
There also were subtle differences: HK asked for one’s exact birthday whereas Shenzhen and Zuhai wanted to know month and year only. Zuhai’s had a slightly pessimistic demand that one provided a contact number — “NOT YOURS” — in the event the traveller is detained.
Still, some Singaporeans may prefer Singapore’s no-nonsense approach as my travelling companion kept describing the health checks at the HK-Shenzhen-Zuhai borders as a joke!
There were temperature taking going to Shenzhen and Zuhai but none at the HK entrances.
Well, jokes aside, I prefer the immigration chaps at the Hongkong airport compared to ours. They were welcoming when we arrived and when I left earlier than my friend, the exit-immigration men were not only handsome but polite and smiley, and yes spoke Cantonese like the poshest of TVB stars.
Contrast this to the chappie who greeted me with a half suspicious stare (granted it was already past midnite!) and read my alias out from my passport in unsmiley tones. He only returned my smile half-heartedly when he saw me helping myself to a sweet and greedily popping it into my mouth.
I’ve lost the thread of the arguments about why our Changi airport has lost its pole position as the world’s top airport but mayb more welcoming good lookers at the immigration could help?
30 Jun
The highlight for me at the 44th annual dinner of the Association of Banks in Singapore on June 26 was — besides the plentiful food, wine and Guest of Honour Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong — the security checks.
I was stunned to see the large Security Clearance sign at the reception and the large number of security personnel. H1n1 in high gear I thought for one fleeting moment but no, the men and women in dark blue weren’t masked or gowned.
And the speed with which the security chap relieved me of my evening bag to put it thru the sceurity scanner reminded me more of airport check in than a visit to Tan Tock Seng Hospital.
After that, I was asked to walk under the security gateway, followed by a light flick on the front and back of my body with a handheld scanner. All this while the outgoing chairman David Conner and the association’s director were coming thru same gateway to meet the GOH who seemed to have arrived.
No temperature taking whatsoever and this was at a gathering of perhaps 400 people, with many probably having just travelled overseas, as senior bankers are wont to do.
However, as I’m a hanger on at the event, I made no comment. But that didn’t stop several bona fide attendees speaking aloud what was on my mind — when we travelled on the same lift down to the carpark after the dinner.
But temperature taking or no, the dinner rolled out in orderly fashion, and notably wine was served in glasses with cut-glass bottoms.
We started with carpaccio of lobster, Queensland scallop, Dashi poached ocean prawn and balik salmon with capers accompanied with braised Romaine lettuce and creme fraiche dressing. Frankly, everything (see pix below) except the salmon and the lettuce tasted poached while the lettuce was about the only raw stuff on the plate, even though it was supposed to have been braised! Perhaps I was given the wrong menu!
pretty to look at...
lustreless soup
The pumpkin bisque with crispy dough fritter and spinach leaves was forgettable, becauuse it’s a dumb idea to put crispy fritter in soup — the stuff just turns soggy. Also, the spinach leaves far from lending color and contrast to the golden yellow of the soup just looked like unidentifiable blobs!
The main course of roasted halibut and tomato on the vine and the chocolate macadamia cake with honey parfait and bush berries for dessert though far more appetising to look at were again unremarkable.
hali-but what else?
so pretty too... but
The highpoints at the table remained the free flow of wine and nice crispy crunchy hard bread rolls. Perhaps I drank too many glasses of wine (four) and ate too many rolls (three). That’s why I found the actual courses less palatable than I would have, had I been hungry and thirsty.
Even so, however hungry I was, I won’t have labelled the dinner a “showcase of gastronomic delights” — which was what the menu at the table proudly proclaimed. Once again, I truly suspect I was given the wrong menu! 
29 Jun
Much has been said and written about how employees in Singapore after reaching a certain age find themselves out of work and out of the ability to find a new employer.
Not, however, among people I call friends or family.
I’ve a cousin, older than me by one year and with no more than A-levels. She didn’t stick with one employer but she stuck to the same industry. Now with decades under her belt, she commands so much respect and employability power that she’s got her bosses eating out of her hand.
She’s the one who drives a significant part of their business; she knows it and they know it and her job is as secure as tho she owns the business. And she’s not likely to be replaced by a computer, a robot or even a sweet young thing.
Next is the husband of our maid from yonks back (when local rather than foreign maids were the norm).
Her husband has no education, not bent on socialising or networking and yes, had switched employers a couple of times in his earlier working life and, at over 60, lost his job at a luxury cruiser builder because he thought himself too old to cross the Causeway for work every day.
“I’ll go as far as Jurong” was his reply when quizzed why he gave up a good steady job with an MNC.
And no, the moral of the story is that he didn’t end up as an elderly cleaner in a food court. Instead, he was barely out of his old job be4 new employers came knocking at his door.
Reason: he has one great skill. He can put varnish on wood in a way that makes the wood sing out its history in nuanced melody. If he hadn’t found employment, there is a steady stream among my friends who would love to hire him to help restore old wooden furniture, doors and frames that would keep him busy months on end. And their friends would continue to keep him busy..
My 3rd example is a childhood friend who is also on the wrong side of 50 with just O levels. Her first job was as secretary with an MNC in London but in the past 25 years she’s been back here and has never had any problem securing work as a senior support staff to highflying executives.
While she is no job-hopper she enjoys moving around in posh air conditoned highrise offices, to learn and upskill in her speciality. Her most recent job change came in November.
Offered an executive assistant’s position for an MNC’s newly relocated MD, she declined because she didn’t fancy going thru all that stress of settling in a new expat. But took instead a job to support other executive assistants in the same MNC’s regional desk on a contract.
Needless to say, she was so good at her job that when her contract was up, the MNC pinned her down with a permanent post, with full medical benefits and leave. And this despite her age and the rising unemployment situation in Singapore.
What do these 3 examples (I’ve plenty more) tell me? So long as you are good at your job and keep improving your set of skills in your field of expertise — or your field of expertise is a dying craft — then u will never be out of work, unless you choose not to work…
Those in charge of SPUR should chew on this.
26 Jun
Oh! aren’t they cute? and the things I’ve got to do to nudge, more like push, Her Majesty aka SM to buy them for me… when she was in Bangkok with her fam-fam, three princesses n His Majesty last week!
Naraya catch
I’m not buying these for myself but as handy little presents for friends so that they won’t feel overwhelmed or obligated. Also, they make great hongbao skins…
The good thing abt the latest cache is that SM did accept reimbursement for the purchase, unlike C who earlier bought another lot for me (which has since been exhausted, as has the lot I bought myself in Macau in February).
C has this habit of declining reimbursements for anything which means she is super generous or she’s just saying “please don’t ask me to do it again”.
I wonder what visitors would make of this?
26 Jun
Considering that there are so many exceptions to the indicators of presence of H1N1 in a person, won’t it be a good idea, Mr Khaw Boon Wan, to do some random tests on groups who don’t appear to be sick with this variant of influenza A?
If among such groups are found victims of H1N1, then it would tell us that it’s more common and dormant than we dream of and perhaps the Ministry of Health’s strategies, whether for containment or mitigation, need to be revised dramatically.
It may also explain why the benighted German researcher of A*star behaved the way he did!
24 Jun
Father’s Day was June 21 but believe it or not, I thought it was June 12 and in a fit of belated filial piety decided to go to my father’s niche in Choa Chu Kang to change the artificial flowers with a few I asked picky Siti, who is quite good at arts n craft, to make.
what Siti made
She duly made three and without more ado we dashed there, to salve my conscience where my dad is concerned. I was never close to him and that makes it worse whenever I reflect on the possibility that I could have done more for him in his last days but didn’t. That’s the curse of having nine children, with each of us waiting for the other eight to act!
Conscience somewhat salved, we dashed off for lunch at Poison Ivy’s Bollywood Veggies Farm at Neo Tiew Road.
Hadn’t been there since the last majopr family gathering at the niche two years ago when one of the siblings suggested that we had lunch together after the ceremony, bils, dils, mils, sils etc.. altogether.
No one was in the mood at last year’s ceremony, particularly as one sil insisted that we must burn 3 rounds of joss sticks. And no one dared contradict her for fear of creating disharmony in the face of the ancestor. Imagine how long we stood there!
My latest visit — impromptu and without asking anyone else beyond the immediate household to come along — was smooth and swift. And no one countermanded where we were going to have lunch since I drove.
But horrors the quiet Kranji country side saw a tour bus actually thundering ahead of me and aiming for the same destination: Ivy’s!!
It was like a country fair ground within the compound and what I remembered as a small cafe had overgrown and overflowed into the previous walkway into the vegetable gardens.
There was people and noise pollution everywhere as everyone clamoured for food, drinks and attention. We found a table in the open hot like hell with the sun beating down on us, despite the awning and the many fans trying to generate some breeze in the still high noon air.
The food was edible but barely so; the ambience not much different from a food court without the benefit of aircon.
And we might have left as disgruntled customers but for Ivy Singh Lim, the owner. Ivy, despite her motor mouth uttering deliberately politically incorrect things to draw a laugh from her audience, had PR instincts flowing right to her finger tips.
She saved the situation where I was concerned by falling upon our table as tho we were great pals. We are just acquaintances. She was solicitous towards my mother and despite our protestations, gave her a bag of muffins as a present.
pressies fm Poison Ivy
She made the maid laugh by uttering preposterous things such as saying her manager (to whom she said she paid $10K a month) was gay and topped that by threatening to kill him with a knife she always kept handy. The knife was used to cut a large banana leaf she gave the maid for her to use to culivate taugay (below) from green beans the Indonesian way.
His other bottle — Cloudy Bay — is awaiting another occasion which I’m sure I can create soon enough.
immediate fam-fam by Hans
part of the catch
21 Jun
With my birthday already over for almost a month, I must record this year’s “haul” before more time passes and everything becomes a blur.
First, MK kindly bought lunch at Din Tai Fung at Bishan (my choice because I wanted to shop at Fairprice afterwards), followed by cake n coffee at Coffee Bean. She also gave me three CDs of Hokein songs.
Unfortunately, I misplaced two of the CDs immediately so have to make do with the remaining CD. She kept asking y I’m playing the same CD in my car when I gave her lifts and I had to tell her the truth. Of cos, she was none too pleased.
noodles, soup n dumpling
TC n CT were regular as always with their celebratory meal treat and also their regular bottle of wine gift, for me to drink at home. I like going out with them as CT always wants to drive, something I could do without at night– especially when I drink!
As usual, they picked the Cathay Restaurant and we always have the table that gives us an eagle’s eye view of the junction of Orchard Road, Penang Lane, Bras Basar Road and one exit of the Orchard MRT that’s always ”people mountain, people sea”.
The dishes they picked were: shark’s bone soup, green Hongkong kailan and soft steamed rice crepe rolls filled with delectable seafood in a superior broth, all generously accompanied with garlic and chopped red chilli padi, followed by pomelo beads in mango and sago soup which is my particular favourite.
emerald green vege
shark's bone soup
roll full of gdness
chilli n garlic
rich mango sago with pomelo beads
Then there’re the usual and predictable hongbaos from immediate family: Daffy and bil.
Mum skipped this year becos she’s stopped handling money in a meaningful way. Last year, she named a sum for me to withdraw. The latest change means she’s become more detached or simply she can’t cope with money details any more. Either way, the result is the same.
Also, among the MIAs are my two regular well-wishers from overseas. Friends of over 40 years, they’ve both overlooked the day. But life goes on and life gets busier…
Nephew H provided a Philip’s electronic photo frame which I’m still trying to fill with pix… all 500 of them…be4 calling in the electrician uncle in to add a new power point to run the gadget. Wish he would stick to giving me something virtual (like MS Office which he gave as a X’mas present), as I loathe to acquire too many physical posessions.
And of cos I treated myself n immediate family to lunch at Kuishin-bo as recorded here.
