Sunday Meals - Instant Noodles plus Prata

Last Sunday was a hectic one cos' got to settle a number of household chores... which include cooking my own meals. Heh been a long while since I cook yeah? So I decided not to try anything too fantastic... just simple instant noodles plus wanton shrimps plus egg plus dried flavoured scallops.

It's just plain Myojo Mee chicken flavour. Added the two dried scallops, which I know are meant to be eaten as snacks and not to be cooked. I added them to the water with the flavouring and waited for the water to boil. The scallops added sweetness to the soup, while the hot flavouring added a bit of spice which is nice. Three wantons were added to the boiling 'soup' with egg as well, followed by the mee. Overall really nice. Simple meal without need for any big fuss or cooking skill. :p

Supper wasn't that great, partly cos' I had them at 515am while waiting for my family to come back from Malaysia... had the supper at the temporary Tekka Market. Quite happy that food can be found at such odd hours. Had prata, and I ordered one egg, plus one 'plaster'. The 'plaster' turned out fully cooked...zzz.... it was meant to be half or slightly more cooked. Hmm...

Million Blog List & WikiBlog Directory

Was randomly surfing some blog sites when I encounter one of those 'add to the list' concepts. The two concepts I saw are similar, since both requires the addition of my blog to a list of blogs.

The first was the Million Blog List, and it seems the reason for such a list is to

First off, welcome to the site. It is said that there are over 70,000,000 blogs in existence. This is an experiment to see how long it will take to get 1,000,000 blogs to list themselves on our site. Will it work? We think so. The experiment is to see how long will it take. What do you think? We started April 10th, 2008.

ok...added mine to the list and I'm number 1689. Maybe I can go buy 4D using this number for the coming weekend...then the effort would really mean something if I strike 4D eh? :p

Second list I came across is the WikiBlog Directory. They didn't state the reason for wanting a list of blogs according to countries and topics. I guess the two lists are affiliated to each other, since this WikiBlog Directory actually uses similar wordings, and recommends users to add their blogs to the million blog list. Hmm Wonder what is all these about...

Funny Cabal Dance to tune of "Tell Me' (Wonder Girls)

This is just too funny. The youtube is about a group of in game avatars from the Cabal Online doing the 'Tell Me' dance (a korean song from the Wonder Girls). No I'm not a fan of the korean grp...the video is just too funny....



muaa haa haa... guess there are many other more proper Cabal related dances...but this one is funny.... lolz.

Iron Man Movie - stay after the credits!

Watched the Iron Man over the long weekend at FilmGarde (Kallang). Interestingly the cinema is not bad. We were a bit skeptical when we realised that the cinema is not GV, Eng Wah...etc (the usual cinemas), but turn out that the movie theatres are quite alright.

The movie Iron Man is good! Worth watching, even for those folks who don't follow the original comics series. The plot is richer (compared to Jumper), with Tony Stark (i.e. Iron Man) being kidnapped by the rebels in Afghanistan and made his first Iron Man suit in captivity. He escaped (with the help of a doctor Yinsen) and subsequently enhanced his suit as a weapon to destroy the other weapons (e.g. Jericho) made by his company.

What he didn't know is that his long time friend (and friend of his father), Stane, is actually the guy who ordered his kidnap and execution. Stane obtained the original prototype Iron Man suit, enhanced it, and stole Stark's power generator (i.e. his 'heart') to power the new version. Stark has an old generator, which he used to power his suit, and battle Stane.

The good guy wins of course (well, this is a Marvel comic adaptation, quite unlike Batman series which is darker). What is interesting is that viewers should stay after the credits, cos Nick Fury made a guest appearance at the end and invite Iron Man to join the Avengers. :) Oh, and the artist Stan Lee also made a guest appearance in the movie (the gala with 2-3 girls)! Another interesting point is that many of the technologies displayed in the movie are already in prototype modes. :p

For those who didn't stay, you could search for the ending clips online. Here's one (hopefully it didn't get remove). During the movie, we saw the preview for Hulk, seems quite alright. I think the Iron Man has a part 2, and I will be quite interested to watch it.

BookCross@SG

Ever heard of BookCross@SG? Heh, a friend told me about it sometime back but I never participated in any of its activities. BookCross@SG (organised by NLB I think):

is a ‘book X-change cycle’ where books will be left in public places (hotspots) for a person to find and/or pick, aka “catch”, and upon completion of reading, “release” the book at any hotspot for the next potential reader to catch it. Supported by BookCrossing.com, each book will be identified by the BookCross@SG logo and “tagged” with a unique ID number.

Books are placed at hotspots which include the public libraries. A few months back I was at Marine Parade Library when I saw this BookCross spot and it was empty, so I thought the activity has died down.

However, when I visited the National Library a few days back, I saw the request for books where people could donate their english novel in the box.

In just a couple of days (I visit the library often), the box filled up! In the box there were pretty decent novels, including a Warcraft novel & AD&D novel. Not bad! So that tempted me to have a short visit to their website, and based on the number of hits, one could see that the BookCross movement is still quite active. They even organised various activities that include a short 'literary tour' of Singapore.

Heh maybe I should give it a try someday.

Afternote: There are other 'crossings' around, for example there is also Postcrossing for postcards!

Temp Tekka Market @ Race Course Road

The Tekka wet market and hawker centre had been closed since 1 May for renovation. It seems a bit strange now when I pass by the place to see a deserted location where it used to be bustling with life. I do miss some of the food there, especially the cheap chicken rice & nasi bryani. So I'll be without good hawker food for the next 16 months. The only good thing is that parking spaces are easier to find now. :p

Just for curiosity sake, I went to take a look at the temporary market located nearby at Race Course Road. It's a bit far to walk in from the main road. I took a few pictures of the stalls.

I took a walk inside and found a number of the familiar foodstalls. Looks like business is still not too bad. Of course, this is sunday, so I'm not so sure about the normal weekday crowd.

Star Cruise Aquarius - Part 2

On day three of the cruise, we had a Phuket programme. Again didn't do anything too adventurous so we opted for a simple tour of Phuket. Before the disembarkation, all the 'tourists' had to gather at this lounge, where we watched the 'Zheng Ho' performance previously.

Then individual groups were called off, and here starts the Phuket Island trip!! Firstly we visited a cashew nuts factory. Unlike the Batik workshop at Penang, this place is really a cashew nuts factory. The guide explained that the cashew apples were brought in from Thailand mainland, but processed at this outlet. I didn't know that cashew apple is edible, and the guide explained that the bitter apple flesh could be made into different products. I bought this cashew apple juice with soda, quite nice actually.

After that the bunch of us were brought to another tourist shop named Wang Tulang. Expensive place selling lotsa expensive goods, including big gemstones. Nope I didn't buy anything here. At the end of the shopping at Wang Tulang, they served us free drinks... hmmm.

Straight after the shopping, we were brought to a buffet lunch that was included as part of the package. The place is quite nice, and they served flower tempura! I wouldn't recommend the tempura for the taste but since it's somewhat a novelty I tried it. Nope didn't like it cos' it's simply bitter with not much taste.

After lunch we were brought into another shopping complex. Nice place for the expats I suppose, else why would you want to shop at the Phuket Zara? Yes, they have Zara here at the Phuket 'Central Festival'! The only purchase I made here was for a can of Oolong tea made in Singapore, and it cost me about S$0.90.

Now for the more exciting part, the Phuket beach! We were brought to patong beach, yupz the more touristy beach of Phuket. At the beach I saw this preparation and taking off....

After the beach walk, we went back to the ship. Overall I didn't spend much again, except to buy the different food / snacks back home. Spent about 1400 Baht (approx S$62) in total.

Related post: Star Cruise Aquarius - Part 1

Star Cruise Aquarius - Part 1

Went on a 5D4N Star Cruise :) Very enjoyable experience, much better than my original expectation of merely looking at sea and having short island trips. Boarded the ship on Sunday before noon. Shortly after boarding, there was an emergency drill, where all passengers have to take a life-vest and assembled at a destined area. Comical experience, but good that everyone knows where to go during emergencies.

I took a pic of the sea during a ship tour (after the drill), and here's a pic. The spotlights on the ship are quite string, and hence there are some 'stars' in the pic.

There are quite a lot of things to do onboard, including casino (no I didn't play at the tables) and cruise organised games. There are also sections for children. We also watched a show about Zheng Ho (not much historical stuff) that include Brazilian dancers wearing traditional chinese costumes (looked quite weird) and interesting chinese acrobats. Interestingly, this few days there are also documentaries on National Geographic channel about Zheng Ho. After the dinner and the live show, we continued the tour of the ship on our own. Saw this GPS map at the reception. Guess it's interesting to know where exactly is the ship.

The fun part began in Day 2, when we visited the Penang Island. Among the different options, the two of us opted for the round island tour. Guess it's supposed to be a leisure trip so we didn't get too adventurous. We visited a snake temple. It's supposed to be the Azure Cloud Temple, but seems like snakes are the main attraction. The snakes are poisonous. We took pictures with the non-poisonous python, and (de-fanged I hoped) vipers.

These are the snakes we took pics with (below).

Along the way, we also visited a traditional Malay house on stilts. The residents were making satay while we were there.

Then we visited some fruit stalls. They were selling a variety of fruits, including the nutmeg which Penang is quite famous for. There were also some cocoa tree nearby (orange arrow pointing to the fruit). Perhaps the fruit stall owner got visited by monkeys, and that's why he caught (and kept) this monkey. Quite sad actually.

After the fruit stalls, we visited a demo workshop on how batik is made. Hmm seems more like a place for tourist money. After the batik workshop, we went back to the ship. Got to wait for quite a while as we were being ferried to the ship. Had dinner on board around 8plus pm before signing up for the next day event at Phuket. All in all didn't really get to spend much at Penang (approx RM$50).

Related Post: Star Cruise Aquarius - Part 2

Is it inflation, or changing lifestyle?

We hear news about our inflation consistently hitting above 6% and feel the pinch. It's true that things are getting more expensive, with the price tags at foodcourts changing ever so frequently. Then we have the leaders telling us that to fight inflation, we can eat frozen meat and house-brand breads. This happened to the extent that even the food authority's website has some comments about why chilled meat is better than frozen meat. There was also an article in AsiaOne about how people can cook up a dinner for 4 persons using only $10.

Personally I think it's all crap / propaganda! A society that develops well amidst a booming economy and we hear 'advice' that recommends that its people eat frozen meat and house-brand bread. Zzz... then I wonder where did all the economical developments go to?

Ok... to be fair I admit it's also our changing lifestyle such that we feel the pain of rising costs. Was at a Levi fair recently when I spotted a pair of jeans that originally cost $800 over. Here's the pics. The person said the jeans have patterns that would glow in the dark under UV light. Wah. Wonder if we would really buy such jeans at such prices? $800 over, with $10 dinner for 4 persons, means this pair of jeans can feed over 320 meals! Wah!!

Not just on jeans, but it seems we have a changing lifestyle in other aspects as well. My neighbour shifted place and I spotted a stack of old textbooks being thrown away. Many of the textbooks are for uni level studies, which I seriously think is a pity to be thrown away. We used to pay many tens of dollars for these books. So I took some books and put online at Yahoo for auction at $6 each. Seems like after 2 weeks, nobody wants to buy them. Lolz. So I guess people only want new books now.

Guess it's more of a change of lifestyle. People are willing to fork out so much money for branded goods, and are reluctant to use old textbooks (despite being cheaper), but we would all mind about food prices.

So is it a case of inflation (possibly more than 6%) or is it a case of our changing lifestyle? I dunno...