feeling really exhausted now and my eyes are hurting from a whole day of staring at rows of tiny text.. we are doing a stock take for the store today and tomorrow ... going to find out what else has been pilfered from the store through the year (other than the laptop.. ) :O Shiplifiting really does hurt companies, especially little ones like ours that definitely cannot afford to lose these (sometimes) hundreds of dollars of goods a week.. i so wish these people who take on the whim of a moment could consider the feelings of those who own the store.. but did you know that not everyone thinks it is wrong (unless they actually get caught)? I have a friend who has shoplifted before and it was only because he thought $60 for a pair of pants was really too much to pay and so he decided to steal one and buy one.. durrhhh??? was just surfing the net for this topic and actually found this site teaching "The Art Of Shoplifting"!

e.g. 1. If possible, you should always have some money on you when intending to shoplift, because if you've got none, it's rather hard to argue that to steal the item was a spontaneous decision. As a result, if you've got no money and are caught shoplifting you are more than likely to be charged for burglary as well as theft.

aiyoh... but his article is also quite Robin-Hood/communist-sounding..

"the golden rule of theft should be enunciated: NEVER STEAL FROM SOMEBODY WHO COULD CONCEIVABLY BE A COMRADE. Hence kicking into a house on Bell Street with a beaten up old Mazda in the yard is irresponsible and counter-revolutionary!"

errr....

dinner at village wok restaurant (2 pairs chopstick) along lor 3 geylang followed by durians and mangosteens in the cool breeze of the night with close friends... ahh... life... :) beats sitting in a smoky bar and drinking beer (though that's nice sometimes too :))

spent large part of morning in Orchard Neighbourhood Police Centre making police report for stolen laptop and found a pace of life that has long disappeared from the face of Singapore... everything moves so slowly in the police station that i felt a calm serenity....like a kampung feel... hahaha... actually, i'm really not kidding.. time seems to stand still here and i chatted with the a few policemen on duty there, asking them what's the silliest complaints they receive on a a regular day. Turns out to be noise pollution.. sigh... but this one guy did give a couple of good advice on protecting your personal property like handphones, laptops and pdas.. according to him, they get at least 20 to 30 reports of lost mobile phones in a single day at each police station... and an increasing number of reports of lost palms... wow... and usually they can't do much except take down the statement and file it. however, he advised that we take down the serial numbers for these things as they do sometimes manage to recover some of them when they raid shops in sim lim and so on..

ya, guess that may be where our laptop will eventually end up.. poor thing... :(

and he says that some people really don't work at all and just go around looking for opportunities like that... makes sense i suppose.. if you could nick a handphone, even a silly (now antiquated) Nokia 3210, in something like 5 seconds and sell it for even $50 in rochor road, that's pretty good money huh? :(

they used 2,500 pieces of toast (in different degrees of "toasted-ness") to build a gigantic mosaic, which reproduce a photograph of a toaster!!

why???

and this Ass-o-tron thingy is quite addictive for some reason.. feed it a URL and it will load whatever page you selected with a picture of someone mooning superimposed on it.. i find it really funny when you do it on the webpage of someone or a company you don't really have great affection for.. :p .. or even on your own page..

somehow, this report that the Klez virus is now No. 1 has me feeling vindicated.. how come? umm... don't know..maybe it is because i now know i'm not the only one accused of being a Klez Monster :p

frankly speaking, am quite impressed with virus creators and their ingenuity.. but deleting emails (with sizes around 120k to 130k but no attachments) with random subject headings like "from your girlfriend", "to terminate", "klez virus removal tool", etc before even opening them has become almost a daily exercise for me.. sigh... wonder when it will finally die down...

btw, i'm really not a Klez Monster..

passed a car fully engulfed by flames on my way home just now! :O .. against the dark background of the night, it burned strong and bright as a funerary offering..very surreal... the incident must have just happened and the fire trucks were not there yet so there was only a small crowd in a distance .. however, my shock sooned turned to frustration as i realised i didn't have any film in my lomo camera and my digital camera was on my study table!! grr... it's really frustrating how things like that happen just when you are totally unprepared to record them down even though you are right at the scene! have promised myself never to be in a situation like that again and not have any one of my numerous cameras.. sigh.. :(

fretfully eventful day, though not altogether pleasant... found to our worst fears that the laptop that had gone missing from our shop had really been stolen. watched the cctv recording in the morning and watched (helplessly of course) this indian/malay guy in striped polo shirt (literary) walking into our office and walking out with it wrapped in a white plastic bag.. grr... that was friday night, and of the two staff who were on duty that night, one was at the cashier counter and the other on dinner break.. this guy was definitely opportunistic and we did capture lots of images of him in our video but not sure if the police will be able to do much.. they were not the last two times we reported thefts (of handphones) with video recordings of the culprits.. let's see how it goes..

had fun staying up with sis last night reading Kokology: The Game of Self-Discovery .. apparently, it is more fun to read the book with someone else.. anyway, the fun part of this Jap-translated book - comprising part psychological test and part game - is when you go through a series of seemingly random questions (mostly in story form) relating to some rather innocent and sometimes unusual situations, and your chosen response (MCQ-style) at the end reveals some rather "hidden" behavioural and personality traits and attitudes of yourself about sex, family, friends, love, work, and more!

try out some of the Kokology games here...

for those who know me, all my life i've found myself strangely drawn to weird and unusual stuff.. i found this guy Athanasius Kircher rather cool to be honest.. check out this Museum of Jurassic Technology, truely an amazing collection of esoteric craziness... :p

the Photoshop Contest shows how radically you can actually transform any image as long as you have the right skills and patience..

i think Liane's photos for the film exchange project are simply amazing.. i'm inspired :)

report for the detox weekend.. here it goes...

- Saturday: kept away (mostly) from red meats except for traces of pork rib in brunch meal at famous 48 Onan Rd Joo Chiat Prawn Mee (makansutra 2 1/2 pairs ). ate New York Cheesecake in afternoon at Onyx (Siglap) - could be toxic, if you consider sugar to be a toxin (which some detox books do). Dinner was delicious Fish Head Steamboat at Xin Heng Feng Guo Tia Tan (90 Whampoa Dr) rated 6/6 in yahoo food review site... verdict: diet was low in fats, high in cholesterol... hopefully, weak attempt to windsurf at windless east coast in afternoon helped to burn off some of that.. :p

- Sunday (i.e. today): breakfast of healthy soup noodle at home, lunch of Duck Rice at 40A Commonwealth Ave (Margaret Dr).. rated 1 pair of makansutra chopsticks - undeserving... duck is a red meat.. umm.. can i redefined red meats = ungulate?? :p and ... :"> ... oxtail stew dinner (2 1/2 pair chopstick) at Werner's Oven (German Bakery and Restaurant on Upp East Coast Rd) :O... sorry.. i couldn't resist.. discipline in detox takes time... now have even more reason to go running to burn off the extra fats and cholesterol accumulated over the gastronomic weekend.. :p

report for the introspective weekend... took time off by myself today, took a long walk from home to West Coast Park, sat with sea breeze blowing in my face, Josh Groban playing in my discman (found out my sis has the CD! :D), notebook and pen in hand, and time on my hands.. and thought about what all this restlessness meant and prayed a little.. a lot clearer now about what i really value in my life and roughly what sort of direction i should be heading... no answers yet of course but feeling a bit more peaceful now.. :)

something triggered off this restlessness in me recently... i don't know when and i don't know what, but i suddenly feel that the good life i'm having now just doesn't seem to be so fulfilling anymore.. maybe life is too good.. so good it almost feels unreal.. after a while, i start to wonder if i'm fulifilling myself or just fulfilling time in a great way (i'm really not grumbling about how things are now.. in fact, life has never been better.. just that.... :( ... )

i have this nagging feeling inside me that tells me that there is a greater purpose in this life of mine.. and clues about it are scattered about in what's happening to me and around me and my response to them... maybe i need to be more conscious of what motivates me, what attracts me, frustrates me, what i can do for hours at a stretch without feeling tired or bored, the special talents and gifts that God has placed in me, and opportunities that come in and out of my life... and maybe also what i find myself admiring in others....

maybe like what a good friend just told me... i need to give myself some time off, away from the noise and hustle and bustle, to reflect on all these things and not just brush them away....

btw, who's this Josh Groban guy everyone's talking about? He's actually put his whole album online for us to hear his wonderful voice!

just bought a dilbert google mug online! :O.... the net really makes for convenient but rash shopping... took me less than 10 minutes of frivolous typing... gulp... it's a terrible, terrible tool for depressed yuppies with credit cards... but i need a mug anyway, i think..



realised i've attained a never-before record of eating from makansutra-recommended eating spots for a consecutive 4 days! had the apparently "original" katong laksa at 49 East Coast Rd (off Ceylon Rd) for brunch (though there are also a whole bunch of other great katong laksas in the same so-called "katong laksa war" zone) and Yong He Tau Huay (Beancurd) for supper yesterday; and ate Fish Soup at Blk 155 Bukit Batok St 11 (2 1/2 pairs chopstick) for brunch and Five Star Hainanese Chicken Rice along River Valley Rd for dinner tonight... (apparently, katong has a chicken rice war as well.. wow.. what a food paradise..)

this weekend is detox weekend, i promise...

alb discovered a case of blatant bandwidth theft two days ago when this portuguese guy stole this cool pic hosted on alb's server


and linked it directly on his own site.. as you know.. bandwidth stealing is bad.... :p

so we decided to cheekily change it to this pic to embarrass the guy and watch for his reaction..



this is what he wrote in his blog after that: que porra foi aquela de meninas super poderosas aqui no blog????
ja tirei.. mas que susto... putz...
o cara renomeou a foto do site dele... e eu nao tinha salvo.. vou ver se tem no cache da faculdade a foto antiga pra voltar "ao normal".....
nerds notdead // 14:05

which translates in English to: what porra was that one of powerful super girls in blog here?
ja I took off. but that scare... putz...
the face renomeou the photo of the site of it... and I nao had saved.I go to see if pra has in cache of the college the old photo to come back
"to the normal one".....
nerds notdead// 14:05

hahahahha :D anyway, he actually had the nerves to write immediately to alb and ask why he had his pic removed and replaced..and was told the proper netiquette... :p

dinner at Hing Wa Restaurant along Beach Rd (makansutra 2-chopstick) - a Heng Hwa (apparently a dialect group) restaurant, famous for its herbal chicken soup in claypot, crispy blachan chicken, stir fried kailan with beancurd skin and a couple of other dishes.. ..quite good food... but quite stuffed now and had a bit of stomachache just now (from overeating?? :">) so can't seem to remember how much i enjoyed it.. but we did finish every last morsel so i reckon it must have been quite good... :)

i suspect i'm becoming a glutton judging from the amount i blog about food... :O

i now think that some secondary school teachers, especially the ones who have spent their whole lives teaching, are absolutely poor examples for our kids (yes, including my unborn children in the future) on what the real world is like....

background to this: i got an incredibly annoying phonecall today from this young teacher demanding that i go down to her Jurong West school to collect cash payment for some goods that i delivered to some of her fellow teachers last week. they had each made individual orders after i went down to do a demonstration on a product and the consolidated amount was substantial enough (> $200) for us to provide free delivery of the goods to them. when i sent down the goods to them last week, i had the orders neatly and individually packed, with individual invoices requesting for payments to be made via cheque written to our Company's name. so it was pretty clear how they could pay.. i couldn't understand why they still needed me to go down just to pick up the payment...

her excuses? the teachers did not have postage stamps and envelops... or worse still, the teachers didn't know how to pay by cheque 'cos they were "not professionals like us"... or even worse.. this tops it all... she and "many of the teachers" wondered how i could "differentiate one cheque from another and who had paid and who had not"... durrrrhhh???? i told her that differentiating a cheque is like differentiating one ang pow from another in a wedding... write their name on the back of the envelop lor! but then she cooked up more and more exasperating excuses like (a) the teachers were worried the cheques would get lost in the mail and (b) the teachers were not willing to pay the 22 cents extra for the postage.. hello? did they think my petrol would cost less than 22 cents??? even when i told her the only solution is to come down to our shop to pay us directly, she sounded shocked and confused... durrhhh???

i worry for the future of our nation...

cze cha dinner at makansutra 2-chopstick (i.e. 2 pairs of chopsticks) Hillman Restaurant at Blk 1 , Cantonment Rd , #01-159 - surprisingly popular with Japs and Ang Mohs... famous for their paper-wrapped chicken (see pic above), claypot dishes and fried rice - which supposedly has amazing "wok hei" ('wok air' in cantonese, meaning fragrance) - good review at makansutra page here and it is indeed yummy.. very laid-back and near carpark... so you can safely watch your car from the restaurant just in case the parking coupon expires and our favourite summons auntie appears.. :p

i'm done with my london album!! who wants to see?? come see, come see!! :) err... sorry not online.... nothing to click on line before this... :p

btw, local lomo embassy ffurious is organising a lomo LCA event in Summer 2002 - LOMO WONDERLAND THE LOMOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE - sounds really exciting - they're putting up a 42m long Lomowall made up of 3R photos taken by this funky camera..dannybunny, going for it?? :)

and.. and... this is a pic of me at The Mirror Project!! so exciting!!! :)

went to new jap restaurant Mingeijaya Sento Japanese (at Starhub Centre) today and experienced some amazing customer service (which rivals that of what I experienced in tokyo when i was there last year).. well, it was so amazing I have to blog it so you can just imagine.. The moment we walked in, every staff in the restaurant (including even the cook in the kitchen, i'm sure :p) barked out a loud something - i figure it must be the irasshaimase mentioned in the website..).. we were then brought through the pleasantly-decorated restaurant to our comfortable seats. Around us were more serving staff than customers. From the moment we sat down to the time we were ready to leave, we were pampered from hand to toe with warm towels, warm smiles and incredibly polite service. The staff, many of whom were clearly Chinese, could speak Japanese fluently and were ever ready to attend to our every need and to answer all of our unusual queries about the interesting desserts and to make helpful recommendations. Even when this particular waitress accidentally dropped a bottle of chilli powder and some of it scattered onto the chair beside me, they rushed about quickly to make everything right, with looks and words of apology and more warm towels... very impressive. What was even more surprising was yet another loud greeting we received when we were leaving our seats to leave the restaurant. Every single staff, even the lady busy serving another customer at the cashier counter, turned their eyes to fix them on us with the biggest, broadest smiles (to the point of us feeling embarrassed and awkward) and greeted us continuously until we were finally out of the door...

phew... polite service to the point of being scary... still... i'll choose it any time over bad service.. :)

Sento has another branch at East Coast Tennis Centre- very popular with the local Japanese community.

this article on cancer-causing acrylamide in some of my favourite foods really caused me to freak out and drop my dinnerware.. apparently, a bunch of renowned scientists announced yesterday that many fried, baked and processed foods (including my favourite potato chips and fried chicken, as well as grilled, roasted and barbecued food) contain acrylamide, which is said to cause cancer, damage the nervous system and affect fertility!

Lynn! get those Walker's crisps from your cupboard and toss them out!! :O the ready-salted ones contained 1,270 ppb of acrylamide - 127 times higher than what is permitted!!

it really stresses me out not knowing what is safe out there to eat anymore... over dinner just now, my nurse sis (who knows all about organic foods, strange diseases and other such stuff) was feaking me out further by saying how i should peel my fruits and wash my vegetables thoroughly to get rid of pesticides and waxy shiney stuff on apples...

i think i really need to detox..

this is the second time in a month i have been accused of being a Klez Monster.... after an earlier virus-scare, my computer is really protected now and Norton Antivirus is constantly being updated so it really can't be me...

:( ... i'm not the Klez Monster....

a wise thought came into my head today as i was pounding the ground along East Coast, with the sticky sea breeze blowing in my sweaty oily face. In order to combat the problem that most of us are facing now, i.e. feeling ever so often that we have wasted some of our days with either laziness, inertia or activities that don't amount to much at the end of the day, or ended up not fulfilling promises that we make to ourselves; what we can do is to work out what I describe as an "Ideal Day".

basically, you work out the least of what you would really wish you could accomplish everyday, if only you were disciplined enough... for example, this could include getting up at 7am to run 3km. after that, you drink a glass of milk and a glass of Orange Juice to make sure you fulfill your daily dose of nutritional requirements. you could also be planning to spend maybe half an hour to an hour reading the Bible or meditating or whatever. and then maybe working out your workplan for the day before heading out of the front door for work.

what you are trying to achieve is basically to "automate" these essential activities into a routine so after a while, you would not think twice when you do them and they are not likely to be replaced by sudden bouts of ill-discipline or laziness or be waylaid by other non-essential activities. having gotten these important things done, your mind is less besieged by guilt or frustration through the day and you would naturally also become healthier in all ways, physically, mentally and spiritually...

isn't that great?! well, maybe some of you may already be doing something like that.. but this would surely help someone less-disciplined like me.. :)

Calorie Count for Today:

Minus (i.e. good :))
- ran for 30 mins at East Coast = - 280 (? just a rough guess.. could be less 'cos hot weather made me run more slowly than usual)
- swam two laps at snail's pace at Clementi Swimming Complex = - 10 (??) - aiyah, forgot to bring goggles so couldn't swim properly, that's why the meaningless distance covered... ended up chatting and tanning at side of pool, soaking in warm tropical chlorine water... nice relaxing activity anyway..

Plus (i.e. bad!!)
- dim sum lunch at Crystal Jade = + 460 to +550 (just a really, really rough estimate based on unverified data i found on the net.. too embarrassed to reveal the source.. :p)
- coffee bean's black forest ice blended regular (with whipped cream) = +150

Therefore, overall calorie count = + 320 .... :O horrors!!!

just been told by alb that Episode III hasn't been done yet.. the existing trilogy consists of IV, V and VI.... errr...:"> feeling embarrassed now... a Star Wars fan-wannabe exposed... : p

so when are they going to make Episode III???