and finally...

This is my final goodbye to blogger. I will not be writing here anymore. Will figure out a way to save all my posts before shutting down / deleting this blog and all those that I've used over the years.

Thank you blogger for being my outlet to let off steam or simply being a space to let me air my random musings occasionally (or sporadically). I'm moving on...

Hello 2012

The new year got off to a rough start. I had a lousy first day of the year.

I did a lot of thinking recently.

Is the adage "promises are meant to be broken" true? The term "janji melayu" is true definitely.. implying that promises made by people of the malay race are usually not kept.

I hate drunks. Or is the proper word "drunkard"? Is it alright that you can do and say whatever you want just because you are under the influence of alcohol? Is it alright to throw caution and sense to the four winds and hurt other people's feelings just because you're too inebriated to know the difference between right and wrong?

How many promises need to be broken before it's really, really too late? Nevermore! - quoth the raven.

My heart is dying by degrees... I feel really cold, empty and lonely inside. You can assure a thousand times, using a million words, through a hundred deeds but I know history will repeat itself.

It just did.

finality

How many more times must I endure the distrust, the broken promises and the loss of sense of security?

People told me I'm stupid & foolish but I told them.. there is more to it. Now I don't think I can fool myself anymore.

No more. It's over.

"love"

you don't love me.
you're in love with the idea of being in love with me.
you say your love is pure and unconditional yet
you force it down my throat like a bitter pill.
you say you would lay down your life for me yet
you would not hesitate to wound me, pain me and harm me. and take my life away from me.
if this is your idea of "love",
i don't want to be part of it any longer.
i thought i loved you, but i cannot see anymore the person i loved.

Goodbye.

burning away

I'm exhausted. Mentally. Physically. I know I brought this upon myself. Yet again, I don't know if I can finish my work. It gets harder and harder everytime. Guess age is catching up on me. No more stamina to go the distance. I knew I should have thought of myself first and not be concerned about what other people may feel. Why should I care about what others are stressing about? I should have handled my own stress first. At the end of the day, my problems are MY problems: no one will be there to help me out. Why should I help others if I don't stand to gain anything from it? Seriously, I am so tired of PEOPLE. This has been a terrible weekend, filled with things that should not have happened. After all the fun and laughter, I'm here alone, by myself, trying to clean up my own mess. My fault really.

I CAN'T STAND IT.

a day without train

Can one imagine the extent of inconvenience caused by the lack of train service between just two consecutive stations?

I must say that it's VERY inconvenient. What used to be a quick hardly-five-minute trip from lakeside to jurong east mrt station took around twenty mins at least. And it took another twenty min on the free shuttle service provided to reach clementi where normal train operations finally resume. Thats an additional 40mins of travelling time.

So thinking its smarter to just take bus service 154 straight to Clementi (since the bus stops right behind my block, so-to-speak), that was precisely what I did when I wanted to head to town today. Well, it wasn't such a smart move afterall.

Being the only bus that plies the Boon Lay to Clementi route, I don't understand why Sbs didn't make the bus frequency any earlier. Fifteen to twenty min interval between buses is just torturous. On top of that, there were plenty of smart, like-minded people like myself & thus, the buses were all packed to the brim with locals and foreign workers. I hardly managed to squeeze past the bus entrance doors.

I guess I shouldn't really be complaining so much since public bus services in many other countries pale in comparison to the system in singapore, but like many other singaporeans who are accustomed to the efficiency of Sbs and Smrt, the sudden lack of it is unnerving, and even frustrating.

Perhaps the best solution to minimise such disruptions in mrt services is to have a multi-prong approach instead of just, let's say, provide a free shuttle service to ferry passengers from one station to the next.

Am I making any sense? It's hard to think on an empty stomach.. I can't wait for the fasting month to be over.

daiso bananas

Sometimes, there are days when you think you can get so much done but when you're finally up and about, you realise that you can hardly complete half the things which you planned to do.

So that is the case with me today but I DID manage to go down IMM with my family and strike off stuff from our shopping list. And as the norm when we're at IMM, mummy just can't resist the temptation to drop by Daiso. The variety of things that are sold there is simply amazing. And it is the first time that I actually saw banana covers (if that's really the name for it) being sold:





I like yellow :) But honestly, who actually need banana protectors?? (ok, that sounds kinda wrong!!)

fried rice paradise

"fried rice paradise, nasi goreng very nice, that's a speciality, ninety-nine varieties!" 

I think I've known this song since I was a student in secondary school... back in the days when everybody knew Dick Lee as the Mad Chinaman and the composer for local productions like Beauty World, Snow Wolf Lake, Hotpants, Sing To The Dawn, etc. Nowadays, youths will probably recognise him as judge on Singapore Idol and composer of a couple of National Day songs and creative director of the National Day Parade on a few occasions.


Recently, I read the review of Fried Rice Paradise on Berita Harian and the writer made comparisons with Dick Lee's Beauty World which was re-staged in 2006. I didn't manage to catch the latter back then but I did watch it on television during the President's Star Charity in 1998, with Evelyn Tan, Sharon Au and Jacintha in the lead roles. Comparisons are inevitable since both are Dick Lee musicals which are rooted in Singapore culture and made use of plenty of Singlish in their libretto and script. Beauty World, I guess, is a more polished piece of work, having been around a little longer and since it's been re-staged a couple of times already, the one more commercially successful.

I think however, Fried Rice Paradise stands on its own, apart from Beauty World and although I never knew what the original Fried Rice musical was like, the re-working to update it to a 2010 audience, headlined by Singapore Idol 2004 winner Taufik Batisah, is a good, calculated move. Of course, opening during the fasting month is not such a great idea, considering the fact that Taufik, Rahimah Rahim and a few others of the cast are Malay Muslims. A mid-September opening would have been alot better.

I concede that the plot is very predictable, the songs are not as memorable as those in Sing To The Dawn, and the frivolous story is a far cry from the epic Forbidden City: Portrait of an Empress. But the only similarity to Beauty World is in its innocent, virginal heroine, the disco/nightclub scenes and the ah-beng hood-turned-good hero. Err.. maybe that's alot of similarities.

Fried Rice Paradise tries (too hard, perhaps?) to reflect Singapore's multi-racial background by having Rahimah Rahim, Hatta Said and Jacqueline Pereira as secondary characters. Unfortunately, I feel that they are non-essential to the main plot and are mostly around to provide comic relief. Even Taufik's character, Johan, is rather one-dimensional, and his "unrequited love" subplot, had no resolution whatsoever. Furthermore, from my vantage point at circle two, his voice seemed to blend too well with the 'live' orchestra and as a result, there were times when he sounds abit too soft or too muffled. Ok.. so maybe that's the fault of the sound engineers for not amplifying the actor's voice. Another flaw is the rushed finale which seemed very... rushed. Then suddenly, the protagonists have fallen in love and everyone's singing the title song.

I don't mean to sound critical and the show does have its redeeming factors. For instance, Taufik has one moment of glory within the show (hehe..) when he sings a lovely RnB ballad and his smooth as silk vocals really shine. We are once again reminded that he is an accomplished pop performer, but not really having the chops to be a Broadway star. Sebastian Tan and Denise Tan (or was it Celine Rosa Tan, the alternate, that I was watching that day? I really can't tell them apart...), though unconvincing as a pair of youths in love, have voices suited for singing musicals and their comic timing is impeccable. The secondary characters (Rahimah, Hatta, Jacqueline) do have their funny, memorable moments while the villains of the show are also commendable, such as  Darius Tan's nasal, over-the-top portrayal of night club owner Ricky Goh and Amanda Tee's hilarious interpretation of Campari, the night club hostess. She reminded me of an ah-lian version of Fran Drescher. The real surprise of the show was when Lim Yu Beng opened his mouth and sang.. I didn't know he could! And he had a very pleasant baritone too.

All in all, Fried Rice Paradise, like its protagonist, is an innocent crowd pleaser, with no noble aspirations and epic drama. It's family entertainment that is good enough to be enjoyed for an evening (though parents must know there are quite a number of rude dialect words being used) but probably not memorable enough to warrant a second viewing. With that said, Singaporeans should try to support local talent.--- my ratings: 3.5 / 5 stars!


ps. I wrote a similar entry almost five days earlier and thought I had successfully posted it using BlogPress on my iphone but unbeknown to me, there was a technical glitch and was never published. So that original entry is lost forever and a new one had to be posted.

out of the blue

I don't know why this year, I'm more worn out than usual from fasting. Maybe it's just another indication of old age. Or perhaps it's work stress; it is, afterall, common test week. I've realised that marking without my coffee-fix is very challenging.

Anyway, amid my stress and mad rush to complete my work on time, I came across this:




It made me smile for a full minute :)

my first YOG event

I am now at marina reservoir, babysitting my student spectators who are watching the rowing quarterfinals. Weather is abit dismal; it rained quite heavily when we arrived (and thus we got quite wet) but although the rain has stopped for now, skies are cloudy with no sign of sun.

Crowd is mostly made up of other students from various schools. They gamely shout, scream and wolf-whistle through all the events. I'm not sure if they are genuinely excited or simply ecstatic from being away from school and their classrooms.

At any rate, souvenir booth only accepts either cash or VISA. Tough luck as I only brought along my NETS, mastercard and ten bucks. And my poor kids are starving as refreshment booth doesn't sell anything else but breadrolls and chips which they've run out of within the first hour.

The day wouldn't have been that bad if it weren't for my bout of diarrhoea. It's subsiding but defecating in one of those blue portable toilets is definitely not a pleasant experience.

Oh well! All in a day's work for me!

it's mid-july and i'm missing june

Although my June hols wasn't much to rave about, I did manage to catch alot of TV, especially my favorite show, Ellen which airs on weekday evenings at 530pm. I don't know why I like Ellen so much. Yes, she's funny but really, sometimes the guests on her talk show aren't really that interesting. My ten-year old niece loves watching her too and blames me, (lovingly) for making her "addicted" to Ellen. Frankly, I think most of the jokes on the show flies over her head but she doesn't mind I guess as Ellen herself, as a celeb personality, is just visually interesting. My older sister, describes her as "kelakar seram". Hilariously scary.

That's not all I miss about June. I miss going to the gym and waking up late on days when I don't have CCA to oversee. I miss bringing my nieces out and talking to my mom while watching TV with her. I miss the feeling of not having to keep track of to-do lists in my head while trying to enjoy my mealtimes or not needing to keep on updating my iphone calendar with upcoming deadlines or important events.

It's only been 3 weeks since the start of the new term but I'm already looking forward to the next long weekend i.e. the National day weekend. Is there anything else to look forward to?

grumbling

It's Thursday morning. The third of week of June is coming to a close soon. That means the end of the holidays for me since I have to be back at work next week. Yes, first week of school is week after next but since teachers have not much of a work-life balance anyway, we are all expected to start our remedials, re-exams, meetings, etc, all by next week. Since first week of June is "burnt" at school, technically speaking, I have only the second and third to "enjoy" myself.

Actually, I haven't had much of a break yet. Similar to last year's June hols, I have to babysit my CCA twice a week in the morning, for three hours. At least. It's been raining alot lately... I hope today will be an exception because fine, gorgeous weather is important for my CCA to function well.

Like many other things in life, it's all in God's hands for now.

unchanged

You know the saying "change is the only constant"? Contrary to popular belief, there are certainly a number of things that never change.

mocha chips frappe

This is the first cup of cold coffee that I've had in a long time. (I've always felt that coffee is best appreciated when hot or warm only)

frust

I've changed my mind about the "low key reception" downstairs. Can't one actually sleep in on sundays in june anymore?? Why do malay weddings need to be so goddamn NOISY!!??? CUT THE SING-ALONG, for goodness sakes!!!

june is bustin' out all over

You know it's june when youths are out in full force almost everywhere you go. Happy, stress-free faces in jovial groups, decked in the latest street trends, making a nuisance of themselves in malls, wasting their parents' hard earned salary on movies and junkfood.

And malay weddings! Fortunately, the current reception at the multi-purpose hall near my block is rather low key (at the moment, at least). Not like the racket last weekend which had relatives singing karaoke from 10 in the morning til 8 in the evening, replete with a cavalcade made up of a couple of dozen of bikers revving up their engines and honking away in the afternoon, a troop of "kuda kepang" and kompang accompaniment for the chubby groom. I'd be surprised if nobody lodged a complaint with the police.

While on the subject of chubby, my worst enemy for now is my flabs which have been growing steadily with the passing months. Sure, I'm no longer the pale, skinny figure from eons ago but its kinda depressing to realise that you have to buy a new pair of pants yet again because you've just grown an inch wider at the waist.

And yes, I've been rather depressed lately due to other factors besides my undesirable weight gain. A couple of close colleagues at work have decided to call it quits and a couple of others will be transferred out -- unpleasant work experiences being root causes? Perhaps. And dismal passing rate of my Normal academic classes, growing expectations of superiors, lack of support for my CCA -- all add to my anxiety.This led to some level of insomnia and my feeling under the weather for the last couple of days.

Though I am not entirely bereft of work commitments for the next couple of weeks, I am still very glad that it's June.

food, glorious food! part 2

food, glorious food!

floating crap

Personally, I feel that people who do not flush properly after defecating are gross, inconsiderate and devoid of good manners.

For the umpteenth time at work this year, I was confronted by shit floating in the toilet bowl. It is probably not the fault of the culprit that his smelly remains are less dense than water BUT the least he could have done is ensure that most of it is flushed down properly!

t.i.r.e.d

Whenever I'm tired, I tend to picture the word "tired" in my mind, in big, black, bold letters (all CAPS! Times New Roman!) and sometimes, I even spell it out in my head over and over again like a mantra.

I don't know why I do it. I think it works against me somehow...