tissue paper

When I was younger — primary schoolish — I used to try to stimulate fevers on exam-eves: cold showers with clothes on and then sitting infront of the fan. I learnt in the army there's a much simpler method: ingesting toothpaste, though the timing and the amount seems to be a refined art that eludes me.

It used to be a fever used to be a fever. Today you get a fever and it could be any one of these things — SARS, bird flu, dengue, HFMD, shingles etc. It's so weird.

And I've been dreadfully quite sick the past few days; I was perfectly fine on Monday, and I woke up on Tuesday with a sorethroat, which progressively evolved into fever, weakness and body aches. I was gamely dolled up for the night too, for a sumptious meal at the Meritus Mandarain to mark Social Worker's Day [well that's what the SASW is only good for it seems] but alas, the illness took it's toil as the day wore on and I was forced to miss the dinner. On hindsight, it was probably a good thing. There is no telling what I would have done to that useless president. That night I had difficulty sleeping. My body ached and the night was spent not tossing and turning cuz i didn't have the energy for that, but in slight shifts of the body which brought much valued respite, if only for seconds. I discovered my mum's bed took more kindly to mine; the hardness must be the factor.

Day 2 was much better but I was still feeling weak so I stayed home. The fever resided, but the cough, sore throat and headache started stealing the limelight.

Day 3 today was the worst. I thought I felt better in the morning, but the lull was probably just an uneasy truce as fever, cough, headache, sorethroat and weakness discussed how to work together. In the afternoon, they did; coughing makes the headache worse, the fever came back and it made me weak so I can't control my coughs. touching my crown sends pain down my head and spine, and they brought along blisters.

Dengue would have killed me, plus my lymph nodes are still not swollen so that rules dengue out. HFMD is something only the young children get; i'm pretty sure the unsanitary years in PAP nursery education would have immuned me against it. It could be shingles. Or maybe some new-fangled bad-assed disease that spreads via the internet.

Interestingly, the symptons for the above conditions all involve loss of appetite; while I have lost my sense of smell and taste, I totally feel hungry all the time. In fact, as I type this, I am craving for the nasi lemak downstairs or the mee pok at North Plaze.

In whatever the case, whatever happens, it's been a good life and I won't miss much.

cheers

Seoul: Food

Interrupt the usual dose of flaming with something nice: more belated pics of Seoul, this time of all the yummy yummy food we had there.

Our very first meal in Seoul.

Assorted grilled stuff. Got egg, got pork, got chicken, got beans. Very nice.

The food in Seoul is really nice; in fact, it is the second fave thing I look forward to everyday, after bed time in our nice cosy hotel. Sadly though, it is quite challenging to find food, or at least, local food.

On the first morning we woke up and started exploring the hotel vicinity. Just outside the hotel, we bypassed a whole street of food stores without eating anything cuz we weren't hungry yet. Big mistake. We got hungry awhile later and could not find a single food store after walking a few blocks. Thanks to some form of convoluted central planning, it seems the streets in Seoul are arranged thematically. We passed by whole streets selling handicrafts, jackets, plants but no luck with food. Eventually we reached the subway station and discovered we had walked 3 subway stops from our hotel.

We found a food store eventually and we encountered the next problem: language. We target stores that have english wordings on the outside [and thus an english menu], but these are few, especially for local local food. This store that we found had english words [yay!] but it seems they were only for show [boo!]. The shop auntie didn't understand a single bit of english. She did understand some Chinese though, so we managed to order some food in the end.


Yummy pork knuckle soup. The pork was really tender and juicy and it literally melts in your mouth. The soup base was flavourful and thick like gravy. This was easily the best dish I had for the whole journey. KM wasn't too impressed though; I think it's because he's a very conservative eater.


KM's cold noodle. He wasn't so lucky. Apparently auntie's chinese was even worse than mine; she understood noodle in chinese, but she ended up serving cold noodles. It's really quite nice but I think being up so early in the morning, walking an hour plus in the spiteful cold kinda makes appreciating cold noodles abit hard.

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Language would continue to haunt us in our neverending quest for local food. There was this time we went into this local store out of desperation. We resorted to using Lonely Planet: pointing at the korean words in this food glossary section. It worked quite well: I got a nice stewed beef rice while KM finally got the hot noodles he craved for.

The irony is where English failed us, we can count of Chinese. Apparently alot of Korean food stores employ Chinese help, abit like how we employ Fillipinos, so on a couple of occasions, we could order through them.

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We did capitulate once or twice. We had Burger King once. And Vietnamese food.


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Another morning we had breakfast at this atas cafe. After we ordered the food at the counter, they gave us this coaster looking thing to bring back to the table.

KM hypothesized that it was just an elaborate token we use to collect our food from the counter when it is done. I felt that it would fly to the counter when our food was ready. Reality was a compromise: it started playing a monophonic tune and flashing lights.


KM had this weird alien-y green tea concoction. He lived to say it tasted weird.

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I can't talk about Seoul food without talking about the donuts. The Seoul people love their donuts! Just beside our hotel was this three storey donut cafe: Doughnut Plant.

The donuts here are so-so lar. I think they appeal to a health-conscious crowd, using whole wheat bread for the donut so generally I think the place sucks.

Just a block away is a 3-storey Krispy Kreme and opposite that is Dunkin Donuts.

Basically hor, I think Dunkin Donuts and the Doughnut Plant live on the leftover crowd from Krispy Kreme. At any one time from 10 am to 10 pm, the queue at Krispy Kreme is super duper long; the only reason I am able to get my daily KK fix is because I live next to it. For some reason, after a certain time, they start giving out donuts. I haven't figured out the exact formula yet [it's not a simple buy one get one free concept], but on average I get at least one extra donut, and there was once I ended up buying 2 donuts and leaving the place with 5. Coolness.

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Another bit of funny-ness. We were at this ginseng chicken restaurant. Seriously, you know you are allergic to alcohol, people put one small cup of clear yellow-ish liquid that is cold, you gulp it down in one second before anyone can react: you are asking for a very bad allergy reaction.

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Last meal:

From Seoul: Food

Option T.

more general flaming

Damn, flaming sure is addictive. This time, on this article DPM Jayakumar urges S'poreans to keep perspective on Mas Selamat's escape that appeared on CNA.

Here we go:

'...Deputy Prime Minister S Jayakumar called on them [them being the sg public] not to overlook the other good work done by the agencies.'

Yeah. Other good work. Like the Huang Na killer escaping. Or the fine responses our Sg police never fail to give our fave opposition politician.

'After the attack, the IRA claimed responsibility for the attacks and issued a warning saying they only had to be lucky once whereas security agencies had to be lucky all of the time.

Recalling that incident, Professor Jayakumar who is also Co-ordinating Minister for National Security said that is something security agencies have to always bear in mind.'

It must've been Mas Selamat's lucky day. Very lucky day.

'While Professor Jayakumar had no conclusions yet from the inquiries taking place, he commended the thousands of officers involved in the efforts to locate the fugitive.'

Like noone commends me when I home visit my clients in their dank and dark quarters, talk to them, befriend them and offer them slight slight solace. Oh right. Cuz that's my job.

'He added that he was heartened by Singaporeans' efforts in coming together for the search.'

This weekend I'm organizing a Search Party for Mas Selamat. $25/person. First drink free. Email for details.

'Laurie Garrett, Senior Fellow for Global Health, Council on Foreign Relations, said: "There is no government on earth that will have enough money, enough personnel, enough organisational capacity to take care of everybody. It will literally come down to "Do you know your neighbours? Do you know who's needy? Are you there to help them? Do you know how to take care of your family?” And then when the dust is settled, we will see what's left of government."'

Noone is expecting the government to take care of everybody [i personally know my clients aren't at least]. We just expect them to take care of that one person in their prison.

Maybe the ISD should consider outsourcing. I hear the KKK is looking for employment. At least they don't let their targets go.

general flaming for the week

I don't generally comment on political/media stuff [yeah, right] because people generally only comment when things get really stupid [looking at you PAP] and I don't feel like posting 10 times a day. Besides my lecturer always says 'flame the argument, not the person' but you know how it is with me and fire; always out of hand.

Apparently, NUS magazine Ridge covers some silly political forum in their online portal about 2 months ago. At this point, we should all have already moved on and focus on bigger issues like blaming ourselves for Mas Selamat's escape and if there's leftover time, maybe fighting global warming. Apparently dengue this year is gonna be meaner so we should also be doing something about it since LKY says we shouldn't trust the government to get things done.

But no. Cuz 2 months later, SDP accuses the Ridge of censorship because apparently one of the Ridge's reporter had requested an interview with Chee Soon Juan, but the transcript of that interview was not published at all so that must be censorship because everyone else does it in Singapore. So maybe now we could all get a good laugh and move on since actually the interview was just to get a better understanding of the silly political forum which was what the article was about.

The Ridge replies recently and says so too. Mostly it was a good reply other than the very lack of expletives and vulgarities.

Of course the SDP must have the last say [as of now] and the plot thickens: the Ridge reporter who had asked for the interview promised it would be published, only for his editor to not want to use it. I particularly liked the reporter's email apology that the SDP produced saying that he was sorry to '...Mr Chee for having spent some of his personal time for an unpublished interview'. I'm sure Mr Chee has lots of personal time actually, when he is not behind bars.

Ok. Editors are always gonna have a final say in what appears and what doesn't, and when something doesn't appear, it doesn't necessarily mean censorship. I can think of so many reasons for an editor not to want to use an article, in this case, Chee's interview: the reporter did extra work, no more space le, not newsworthy, not auspicious etc etc. In this case, I think it was a matter of taste [has anyone read the interview? i can't believe the dude is a phd].

And like. Chee is so last century opposition? Now everyone is talking about JBJ lor.

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And here's the bit my flames get really out of hand: this really is like a playground squabble: the bigger kid from the broken home with all his issues picking on the tiny tot happily minding his own business in the sand pit. Like all broken kids, they do their best work only in the playground.

chatterbox

Alot of things to say but tomorrow must wake up early early to kick some butt [or get kicked] so I will just talk about the funnest thing today: Chatterbox at Meritus Mandarin! Thanks to my wonderful colleague.


They shifted le. To their ex-revolving restaurant on the 38th floor. Here we can still see the mechanisms in place. The new location has alot more ambience than the old one; it's no longer literally a chatterbox because the seats are more spaced out. Only slight bad thing: the floor creaks.

















We had lobster laksa which is alot nicer than it looks on the already very nice picture except the serving is quite small even for a small eater like me.


I totally cleaned the bowl.

The view is also uber [pity the restaurant doesn't revolve anymore]. Who needs the silly Singapore Flyer to get a good view when you can just come to the Chatterbox? I think it costs $38 for a 30 minutes ride, $62 to add in a cocktail [i imagine you get one teensy cocktail to last you the whole experience]. For the reasonable cost of Chatterbox meal, you get the same view while eating yummy good. Good things in life don't have to be priceless.


Note this other pic. The green patch of greenery which the black patch of clouds seems to have taken a liking to is the Istana. Something wicked this way comes.


Misc musings: HSBC and UOB cardholders get discount. High tea on Saturdays and Sundays at $29.90++.