why wy?

Congrats to arti, who got married last night, and sheela, who got proposed to the night before that.

funniest bit: it was pretty good of the priest to give a running commentary of what the prayers meant in english, and during the last one, the couple have to take seven steps together. You should have seen arti's eyes widen in horror after saying for the nth time, may we be blessed with many children. It was at a temple, so the food was veggie and no drinking, but at tonight's dinner, there will be alcohol (to complete the irish component of the wedding, just kidding). Although one irish guest did tell us he doesn't want to see another beer when he goes back home...

It's the season for weddings, the result of the combination of age and auspiciousness - i've attended four in the last two months and missed one or two on top of that. And it's not just me, i've read two opinion pieces about whether one should go to an ex's wedding or not. Does it sting, even the teeniest bit, just for a millisecond, to know that someone you used to care about has moved on while you haven't? i guess this only applies if you've been invited ha ha.

We ribbed the office don juan about it (he's not the marrying sort - yet) and said if he did tie the knot, he'll need two tables for all the old flames.

I've been multiplied. There's not much on my website over there yet, just a few reviews. The blog will stay here.

Sort of like my melbourne-singapore life i guess. No offense to all australians, but I really wish I didn't have to go back. I've been seduced by chicken rice, cheap cab rides and movie tickets.

boing boing has great links, like
- chocolate sushi that looks like fish (but tastes like chocolate they claim)
- disguise your vacuum cleaner as a giant cat or rabbit in a dress (i thought the point was to hide it)
- a really creative chef who makes cupcakes that look like sushi too, a jelly aquarium, and a jaws cupcake

embracing your inner auntie is something i thankfully have not experienced - yet.

this will come in handy when you are ordering something to drink in singapore
teh - tea (cha in thailand)
kopi - coffee
teh-0 - tea without milk. 0 sounds like black in dialect.
teh-kosong - tea with milk but no sugar. kosong is malay for empty.
teh-0-kosong - english tea with just hot water, no milk or sugar. not to be confused with
diao yu - mandarin for fishing, which is chinese tea without sugar or milk, because of the way the teabag hangs out
teh-C - tea with evaporated milk, C stands for Carnation, a really popular brand for evaporated milk
teh-peng - iced milk tea, peng is cold in dialect (yen in thai)
pak qu - (dialect for hitting ball) stands for milo, because it's got a picture of a boy kicking a ball on the tin

note, you can replace teh with kopi if you want coffee, except in the case of teh alia - which is ginger tea.

michael douglas (ahem, his hands don't match his face)
wong kar wai (tall and aloof)
christopher doyle (he never looks sober even when he is)
joel schumacher (ageing hippy)
miranda richardson (charming)
jeremy irons (very brit)
gerard butler (incredibly better looking in real life)
bai ling again and again (very skinny but luminous eyes)
the ong bak actor Phanna Rithikrai (quite beefy)
jean claude van damme (wears glasses, geeky, not at all like an action movie guy)
bond baddie rick yune (cute in a korean way, swimmer bod)
very very pretty thai actresses/models/hosts that make you question your own gene pool

i think that cameras, in addition to making you look fat, also make you look short. Many celebs are a lot taller than i thought they would be.

And there are alot of beautiful, well dressed people in the bangkok clubs, some of them - gasp - journalists. Trust me, they are a rare breed in singapore, at least the men.

the rest of bangkok was brilliant, had loads of great food - off the street as well as expensive sponsored hotel buffets (big thank you to the tourism authority of thailand). I had to stop myself from saying kup boon ka (thank you) to somebody today, and I almost went to the 21st storey last night (my hotel room floor).

Am writing what may be my last article on what is probably my last media trip. It's bittersweet, I shall miss being able to write, flashing my press pass with impunity, but I don't miss the stress that comes with trying to find the best angle on a story.

And this will be the last time i complain about the magically-lighting candles, which i skipped to see an underwater documentary. We had to attend a really awful closing film, a Thai version of the Hong Kong mafia movies. It was a 90 min movie that felt twice as long, all style and no substance. I was yawning, another journalist confessed to falling asleep, and I could hear someone snoring a few rows away. Thankfully, the director was sitting right at the back, so maybe he didn't hear it. Towards the end, i just wanted to be clobbered over the head with the music of andrew lloyd webber, put me out of my misery now.

The only good bit was the preview of tong yum kung, the new movie from the ong bak guy. The actors came on stage and did a little fake fighting, although there was a bigass american wrestler who challenged the audience. He picked on someone who we later figured was planted, but for a moment i wasn't quite sure cos his victim actually started turning red in the face.

When you know you are a new paper (tabloid) reporter: I actually contemplated challenging the guy, so that i would have an interesting article to write. In my favour - he probably wouldn't expect to fight a girl; not in my favour - i was wearing a skirt, high heels, had no travel insurance and am pretty out of touch with sparring. And i figured, if he was hired help, it wouldn't be very nice to kick him in the nuts (don't think it was in the job description) or elbow his eyeball. but i thought about it.

As I stepped into the shower, stretched my arms out and could barely touch each wall, I wondered: why did I ever give up being a journalist?

Am in Bangkok with an official looking press pass and a silly grin, living it up at the intercontinental hotel that has – a huge shower, three times the size of my Melbourne one, a separate bathtub, fancy toiletries, king sized bed with four pillows AND a bolster.

We saw bai ling yesterday, who is a really tiny person with gorgeous eyes. Like tau gay (bean sprout), but a very very very beautiful one. Any normal person who stood next to her would look fat. we keep running into her, no day is complete without a sighting.

but gerald butler is really really cute.

am in bangkok trying to stalk film stars. am also writing a real article, as opposed to blogging, so wish me luck.

Sometimes, I wonder if a blog should report the news - first hand, the blogger is present at an event or tragedy, second hand, the blogger as commentator. Or should a blog be an online diary, recording deeply personal things, dates (see xiaxue , sarong party girl), failure to get dates (finicky feline), getting paid for dates (belle du jour, whose site is long dead now that she's got a book coming out).

If you are wondering where this is all leading to... here's a summary of what people have been saying about the ipod shuffle. yes, it's old news, but file it under blogger commentary.

I think ipod lounge puts it best, describing it as an entry-level, suck-'em-in marketing ploy to draw people to upgrade to the ipod eventually. Now, those who can't afford an ipod yet can get a white stick of chewing gum that plays music. Even the way it is worn - around the neck - is telling. Apple wants you to flaunt this. Paint yourself black and dance and jump. It will sell, solely on the cool factor, because the specs will disappoint most geeks. Creative's Sim Wong Hoo, a rich geek, dismisses the ipod shuffle as "worse than the cheapest Chinese player. Even the cheap, cheap Chinese brand today has display and has FM."

What is surprising (to me) is the number of "apple is great, creative is jealous" comments this post generated, even among the geeks. Come on, a radio is pretty handy, most people i see on the train are already listening to little FM tuners. So Sim is right yet wrong. He really, really needs to pay more attention to design and usability. I want to see a local boy win, but unless Creative can generate the same kind of fever that causes mac sites to be mired in high traffic just before Steve Jobs speaks at macworld, it's not looking good.

I love Apple (ipod, ibook, os X, their iconic black and white ads) but it scares me the way they are becoming a company that can do no wrong. I think of the emperor's new clothes, I think of Steve Jobs naked, and I think maybe it's a good thing after all that the ipod shuffle has no display.

Finally had my experience of the kallang roar during last night's soccer match at the national stadium. 50,000 people, mostly dressed in red, standing up for wave after wave, all cheering. Head over to the straits times to see pictures, note they only have a 3-day archive.

It helped that the lions (singapore team) won against indonesia 2-1. Thanks to johan's little bro, who is with the cheerleading team, we got super seats in front opposite the grandstand. and right in the middle of die-hard fan territory - our seats had this sign - reserved for die-hard lions vocal group. We did a pretty good job i think, making a lot of noise and waving our inflatable signs (in between lots of mock fights star wars and zatoichi style) - they look like the inflatable sausages that divers use. Only in singapore will you have a mat swearing in hokkien and a malaysian (okay, singapore pr) cheering the same team. And both of them knew the singapore national anthem better than i did (although all of us were wondering why the tempo was so fast).

A bit of history: Going to the national stadium to see a match was a really big thing 10 to 15 years ago, when singapore was playing each of the malaysian states. Then we won and they kicked us out of the league (my patriotic recollection) although match-fixing was whispered on both sides. So we started our own league but it was never the same because singapore is so small, suburbs don't have enough of an identity to play against each other. Interest just waned, in favour of EPL, until a few weeks ago.

Have discovered the Bob Awards, best of blogs, and there are some gems there, like

prepare to meet your bakerinaa recipe/food/funny blog, the most recent entry is about the magic of lemons, and having supermarket guys look at you funny.

does this mean i'm a grown up
a mom who calls her two kids the prince and princess of wails deserves to be read.

i've been wavering on the fence for a while, but this is the last straw. I'm turning my back on the dark side of windows as soon as i finish my degree (or when this laptop conks). It's back to mac for good. I wanted to copy a copy protected cd to my ipod but it was no go on the pc. Which actually drove me on, like really motivated me, to find a way around it. Pop it into the mac, they show up as audio straight off, and it's just a matter of clicking the import button. A mac and a right click mouse - perfection.

the illusion is shattered... cynthia nixon revealed that the sex and the city girls swop their manolos for comfortable flats in between scenes. And, for a moment, i thought that the live-in-my-stilettos woman was real. Can add her to the mythical bigfoot-yeti list.

am checking out the bangkok film festival and actually getting excited. Will miss out on most of oliver assayas, - clean, irma vep, destinees sentimentales - as well as the motorcycle diaries, the pornographer and born to fight, a thai action blockbuster, because they are being shown in the earlier part of the festival. Damn damn damn. Which is really unfair because i will have to sit through the magically-lighting candles AGAIN. With Joel Schumacher himself. Am seriously contemplating leaving between the first and last song to do some shopping.

Thankfully there's more promising films too, like demon lover, ray, deep blue (am sucker for underwater docus) and loads of films from latin america. But am sure i will miss some of them because i have to be at some hand-shaking thing or other.

aiyah, i really wanted to watch clean. maybe the schedule will change and they will show it again.

These are the strangest letters and answers I've heard for a while.

Here you go wrong is thinking sex is special. It isn't. Monkeys have it, and not because somebody gave them flowers and expensive jewelry. But consider this: While your girlfriend was the antithesis of selective about the men she slept with (apparently, not only sowing her wild oats, but a soybean crop equivalent to that of mainland China's), she appears quite picky about the man she relationships with.

and

Q: I thought this guy at work was interested in me. He went out of his way to see me, and said, ''Call me, we should go out sometime.'' I left a message, but he never called back. It upset me, so I ignored him for a while. I still can't figure out what happened. How can I get some resolution?
Left On Hold

A: Guys who ask you to call them for dates aren't asking you out; they're merely making conversation. A guy who wants you will crawl naked across broken glass and eat dog food, if that's what it takes to get on your calendar. After he licks up the last little bit of Alpo, he's unlikely to settle for ''sometime'' — a word which should be your cue to forget a guy until he phones to make plans for an hour you can find on your watch. Why a guy is all talk and no clock is immaterial. The essential point is that ''sometime'' is no time at all, which makes it a very bad time for a date...

Both from the letters page of The Morning Call

And here's a drinking game you can play when watching the iron chef.

we saw sting last night! Sting is still very very very sexy, even after he admitted the 8-hour tantric sex marathon was a fabrication. The music was mellow with some dancey bits, and we bumped into lots of friends cos it's sting, and the concert was sold out.

longest freestyle song: Roxanne
most bhangra sounding song: Desert rose
song that had most polite response: sacred love
song that had everyone dancing: Every breath you take

There's shameless, and then there's steven lim, wannabe singapore idol cum super hero and roaming eyebrow plucker.
Warning: He sings when you open the page, so turn the volume down, and there is a very eewww picture of him in the buff somewhere.

He says he is an aspiring singer and actor, but his claim to fame so far is:
- singing she bangs and stripping to yellow speedos during the singapore idol audition. He didn't make the first round selection, can't imagine why.
- playing a murderer on Crimewatch, which is the police dramatisation of case files
- two, not just one, best soldier awards during his national service (ns)
- top 100 contestants for star search, another talent programme on tv
- finalist in assorted karaoke contests

Maybe comedian would be a more accurate billing.

But this is the bomb - steven, 28, has proudly declared he is single again (move over brad pitt) and is looking for luurve. Unedited excerpt follows:

My trust had been betrayed by a 16 year old girl and we ended our six months relationship on 26th December 2004. All the promises she had given cannot be fulfilled but all turned around and laughed at me at the last minutes. She used to listen to me and put me in priority. She had changed suddenly and heartless and I am so so heartbroken because I really love her. I cried so badly while walking in Orchard's shopping malls feeling betrayed why she had chosen her job over me. She dun care about me anymore!... I need someone (a gal) that dun argue too much and rather be submissive towards me to save time on quarrels, supportive towards my passion in performing art, pure and can gradually give me 100% of total devotion, pretty, slim, dun irc, dun smoke/drink, preferably no curfews so we can roam together if we want to, close to female friends rather than guy friends and age between 16-21.
Contact me with the following numbers and email me with pictures if interested. Thank you. Extra note in case you regret you contact me. I always subsidize 2/3 of my girlfriend expenses only, not full. Just my way of doing things.


I don't know what I find more disturbing - his egoism, his cheapskate-ness or what a 28-year-old is doing with 16-year-old girls. I definitely couldn't deal with dating a teenager. (we can't see this movie, you're not old enough; when you go NS we will only have weekends together, so sad; must study hard and do well for your o levels etc etc)

surf the internet while waiting for pages
get stressed before offstone (newspaper speak for the publishing deadline)
get even more stressed when your page is already late and the bosses are standing behind you as you make the corrections
wonder if i am whinging with an e, that is whingeing. both are in my dictionary, but history of past use suggests the e
taking a break in chitchat (yes, it's chit-chat)
alternatively beg, threaten and buddy-buddy the artists to send their art in early so i don't have to hang around
do the same with the production guys over the phone
blog
snack
deciding [EAT ME: President S R Nathan (top) and Dr Ng Eng Hen (above) have volunteered their lunchtimes.] would not make a good caption.
double clicking a lot
insert commas
get annoyed when the elevator muzak a colleague plays aloud starts to waft over to my section
listen to colleagues eat peanuts (better than elevator muzak)
make a picture or line 0.5 points thinner, 3mm higher
try and stay awake (can be very challenging, or at least not fall asleep in front of the supervisors)

all in a day's work really.

I don't know why I've never really "hung out" in little india, but I did last night and it was buzzing, even midweek. Everyone was shopping, eating, bargaining, crossing roads with wild abandon.

7pm: First stop a general provisions shop where mum proceeds to scold the man for selling her the wrong henna powder. I walk out and linger among the bindis to avoid embarrassment by association.

7.15pm: Dinner at a vegetarian restaurant in upper dickson road. It was an all you can eat for $6.90, but hats off to anyone who can manage more than two rounds. It has the best commercial bubur hitam i've eaten, with little bits of sago, even mum agreed. And I'm a bubur hitam snob, because mum's version (family secret) is the best in the universe.

7.45pm: We are curious and stop by at an ice cream parlour next door that sells only kulfi - which is a north indian ice cream with milk, pistachios and spices like cardamon. The durian kulfi was ammaaaazzzing. Better than Hagan Daaz and ben and jerry's (except cherry garcia). And wednesday nights was one for one, so we had another on the house. It is always a bit of a shock to see mum eat ice cream (and ask for seconds) because she is so anti-dairy, but it was her birthday.

8pm: We walk past more food places that still smell heavenly, despite being stuffed to the gills. Marked for next visit.

8.15pm: Mustafa's is an old-style department store, they believe you should be able to buy everything under one roof. So, there's gold, money changers, electronics, sewing machine parts, a supermarket, clothes, a pharmacy and goodness knows what else. It's a building that looks a lot smaller on the outside but goes on forever. AND it's open 24 hours.
It's narrow, crowded but just fascinating to see the rows and rows of shampoo, watches, dahl etc etc on display. And it's the only place where security puts plastic ties on your bag to deter shoplifting. I bought a swatch-lookalike casio, with many many many functions, although the one I will use the most is probably the ILLUMINATOR!!!

9.45pm: After a couple of phone calls, I finally locate mum (the place is that big). We decide to call it a night and walk past some not-so-sleazy KTV bars to get a taxi. All around us people are still shopping, eating, bargaining, crossing roads with wild abandon.

we were in vienna two years ago, and we saw this sign at an outdoor concert (picture below). Then, we thought it was really cool, both the design and the philosophy. Now, it turns out someone is making them into t-shirts. Still cool, i guess commercialisation is one of the ways of spreading the message.

on a religious note, someone was commenting how all the mosques are still standing after the tsunami. Faith aside, it would make sense because all the mosques were built with concrete and expensive materials. That's why they raise money for them, like the churches in europe, while believers continue to live in wooden houses. religion is all well and good by me, but i can't buy that whole killing-someone-for-it nonsense that goes around from time to time.

An old quote I saved from somewhere:
It was said that one of the worldís greatest tragedies of the spirit was to be born with a religious sense into a world where belief was no longer possible. Was it an equal tragedy to be born without a religious sense into a world were belief was possible?

vienna, summer, 2003 

words i've just learnt:
fagstag- a straight man who hangs out with gay men, like fag hag.
MILF- mom i'd like to fuck, refering to all the ashton-wannabies who want to hang out with demi moore.
GILF- grandmother i'd like to fuck, a more perverse extension of MILF, but really, if you think about it, being grandma-obssessed is very normal if you are of grandfatherly age yourself or if sophia loren is involved.

fed the ipod again, with the cds i was eyeing and finally bought. veloso turns cheesy songs that i never liked into delicate melodies, eg diana (paul anka) and feelings (butchered by many). And gilberto gil makes me want to karaoke dance in the train. you know when people sing to music but really badly because they have earphones and people around them can't hear the backing track so they sound even more out of tune? same with dancing.

so my pod really needs to watch its weight, i have a measly 3.2gb free. and i never thought i would have to delete songs.

on a side note, i feel like i've already developed a tamogochi/neopet relation with my pod, except for the part you can play the game to see how fast you can kill off your pet. i blame it on my lack of furry friends as a child and my allergies.

i watched phantom of the opera with my cousins and, sad to say, the critics are right. decent plot, decent songs (assuming you don't already hate weber) yet it felt somewhat flat and straight forward. I couldn't help wondering if it could be better. Baz Luhrman and full creative control would have been brilliant. Ang lee for something more contemplative. Drop in will smith's character as the date doctor from hitch (the trailer they screened before) for a little post-modern irony. anything but the candles which magically ignited AFTER they rose from the lake. yes, this is in the days before electricity, as one character casually mentions at the start of the film.

if there's anything joel schumacher is famous for, it's not subtlety. take for instance the huge swaroski engagement ring (dunno why her rich boyfriend cannot afford cartier) christine gets that she tried to hide. in the first place, it's way too tua liap (huge), and she wears it on a chain on her otherwise bare neck where the phantom spies it (he would be blind to miss it) and gets really pissed off. Then again, schumacher does use the massive ring as a plot device.

kung fu hustle, on the other hand, is absolutely brilliant, discounting the fact that it's a stephen chow movie and some parts are so slapstick you want to cringe. but the fighting bits are fun and deliciously OTT (over the top).

we just returned from one wedding at the hyatt (johor) and heading to another at the hyatt (singapore) in, say, 2 hours time. It has been raining pretty much non-stop since new year's eve. there goes all the post-christmas sales i hoped to go to, it's much to wet to contemplate shopping.

The first wedding (johor) had a bollywood theme, so I put on my only sequinned top and a pearl necklace that is actually from india. Joe claims he doesn't have anything bollywoodish and came as a himalayan refugee (thick tibetian jacket with a che guevara shirt - don't ask me how it connects). All the female guests got mehindi (henna tattoos), jingly-jangly bangles and a bindi. Bollywood dancing seems to involve raising your hands to the air and jingling your boobs - a lot. It's the same for men and, for both sexes, there's the classic hide-your-face-behind-a-shawl-and look-shy move, which cracks me up to no end.

if you want to have a laugh (it also serves as a note of caution), check out these tattoos that mean something bad.
my husband pimps me out
melon head
i'm an ugly guy

links are from a typical singaporean