once again, i have nothing to blog about.
actually, i have plenty of ideas about what i wanna blog. only problem is, i'm too tired to type anything out or to think of something witty or punny to decorate the blog post with. everyday i get home from my nursing job and all i can think of is the following:

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my brain is like a rash. full of dots/spots/pigmentations, irritatingly irritable. all i wanna do is ask God for more time in this world so that i can sleep, play World of Warcraft and have time to go out and meet people. i seriously detest the morning shift because i have to drag my lazy ass up at 5am and dress up and all. leave the house at 5.30 or 5.45. and start work at 7am. and normally i'll be so busy that i don't even have time for a teabreak or lunch. the only thing that keeps me going is running away to the rooftop for a quick smoke. 10 quick puffs and i have to run back down to the ward for a life of bedpans, latex gloves and funky smells of bodily fluids again. i've seen so much bodily fluids in the past week alone, in various colours and viscousity and smells. so much so that i could put the huang he (yellow river) to shame.

all this makes me so tired and mentally-drained (my favourite word now that i tell everyone) that i have nothing much inspiring to blog about. so like i always say, when you've got nothing to say, let the pictures say lah (that's three SAYS in a sentence, SEI SEI SEI!!!!!)!


i hate au things naturale

i have no idea what the father was thinking about when we went to Matritchie/Macritchie/McRitchie (i dunno how to spell that stupid reservoir!) on the recent Deepavali holiday. in fact, i felt cheated that he never told us who was going to the reservoir with us. he made it sound like a family outing with the rest of the paternal relatives. and so the brother and I happily followed along, thinking it'll be a really crowded outing. little did we know, the only people that went along were the brother and the parents and the stingy auntie and her husband and me. they wanted to trek to this treetop walk thingee that i was so not interested in. imagine, i could have spent my entire public holiday at home playing World of Warcraft and trying to power level. but NO! i had to succumb to a family outing and stupidly go on a really sweaty trek through some miserable forest.

it was like Brunei all over again. all the mosquitoes and foresty air and the sweltering sun. ever since i returned from brunei, i have never gotten a single mosquito bite. not one. and i just exposed myself to the greens once again and suddenly, the mosquitoes sucked the shit out of me. i'm left with reddish bites and a wierd rash.
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and i hate the smell of trees, fresh morning air, nature and all that shit. you know those pinetree air fresheners that you see hanging from the rearview mirrors of 'white trash' cars in American movies? i've smelt one of those in Canada. it's the same smell over here at the treetop walks.

the only bit of entertainment that i could derive from this entire trip to nature was the treetop walk. it's supposedly high. but i think any suicidal person would be turned off by the height of the suspension bridge from the ground. it's like at the most a 4-5 storey building. you would prolly sprain a wrist or ankle or something, jumping off from that 'height'.



and to crown it off, it's a ONE-WAY BRIDGE. i found the signboard above at the beginning and ending of the bridge. damn encouraging hor. you have to trek like an hour or so just to get to the pathetic bridge. and the only welcome you get is this silly sign, a bored-looking guy sitting in a booth with a click-counter, counting the number of people who have crossed the bridge. and you would have thought that a relatively touristy place like MacRitchie would at least have a souvenir shop or something right? wrong. there was a rest station that didn't sell anything at all. it only had toilets, another bored-looking counter assistant and someone to clean the toilets. and in a deserted place like MacRitchie, where would the Singaporeans be? of course the most developed-looking place lah! apparently, the rest station was so crowded. there was a queue outside the female toilets and loads of irritating children running all over the place. it just makes you wish that they would trip, fall and perhaps break a bone or something.

after all that bull for a day, i could at least have deserved a I HAVE CROSSED THE TREE-TOP WALK AT MACRITCHIE AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS STUPID T-SHIRT souvenir. the family ended up at Newton for a heavy lunch. putting back on every single calorie we lost for the entire MacRitchie expedition.


pau



i grew up on a lot of mediocre food.
the parents, like i have mentioned in previous posts, are really terrible at good food and fine dining. they are big fans of the hawker centre. and it's not like they know where to go in Singapore for the best laksa or nasi lemak. they just know that it's a short 5 minute drive to the nearest hawker centre where food is sold. to the parents, location trumps quality of food, anytime.

and to make things worse, they don't have a lot of friends who can appreciate gourmet cuisine too. i remember my childhood being made up of many trips to McDonald's with a very close famuly friend of the father's. we always went to the King Albert Park branch where there was a playground, a train running on tracks around the ceiling of the restaurant, and of course plenty of chicken Mcnuggets to while the time while the adults were making conversation in Cantonese. the parents knew that we kids never learnt how to speak the language of dim sum, but kids like us are really sharp. you could tell when they were speaking about something lewd. i think it was from the way they laughed or something. the harder they laughed, the more pervy the joke was. and laugh hard? a lot of that they did.

one of the great food outlets that the parents did get right though, was Tiong Bahru pau. pau, meaning buns in mandarin. actually the word pau is rather vague. because you say pau to one cheena-piang in Singapore and they will think the basic white steamed bun filled with whatever shit pau is supposed to be filled with. but say pau to another cheena-piang from another Asian country, and they will think of some other white seamed bun filled with some other shit that pau is supposed to be filled with. every asian country has their own definition of pau.



Tiong Bahru pau was one of those things that i grew up with. the first outlet originated from Tiong Bahru obviously. and up till today, they have become famous for their roasted pork meat buns. to avoid sounding like a channel 8 variety show food critic, let's just say the pau is 'fuckin' good'. the skin is just fluffy and has a light sweetness to it. and they are very generous with the roasted pork filling in the pau itself. Tiong Bahru pau is the Salvation Army of the chinese steamed bun industry.

i like the way Tiong Bahru pau does it. they stuff the filling in for the char siew (roasted pork bits) versions, pinch the top of the bun (or what i would like to call it as 'nipplizing it'), and then add the red dot, indicative of it being a char siew bun. the randomness at which they dot the buns is really what i like about it. it's never in the centre, unlike the facory-made and frozen ones you see at the supermarket. just reminds you that some times, the best things in life are still hand-made (NB: can be applied to sex too).

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