Monday, February 28, 2011

Diarrhea and solid food

When you have diarrhea, everyone tells you to stock up on liquids, eat soupy dishes or congee. Yes, after having to run to the toilet every 3-4 hours or so, you get pretty dehydrated, so plenty of liquids it is.

Water, water is liquid, right? If you're stocking up on water, shouldn't you be eating solid stuff? I hate extreme diarrhea, the fact that nothing gets processed properly in my body and comes out as liquid. Well, it looks like this week's going to be a week of delicate eating.

Sunday, February 27, 2011

Chendol

Why is it so difficult to find yummy Chendol here? Do I really have to make it myself?!

Chendol is a Malaysian dessert made primarily of ice. Toppings include green coloured rice flour which look like short rats tails, red beans, a good dollop of coconut milk and the most important ingredient of all, melted palm sugar. I could eat any dessert with palm sugar... it has just the oddest yummy taste!

Anyways, I had that last night for dessert and I'm so looking forward to the diarrhea which I can predict would come, if not today, tomorrow... such is the weakness of my tummy and my greediness for yummy roadside desserts in Malaysia.

Saturday, February 26, 2011

Sudoku

I know I've written a short post on this about a week back, but I can't get over how great this game is. I play it on the train while on my way to work, while waiting in queue for my lunch... it's such a waiting-time filler!

Ever since the hubs got his android phone, he has introduced me to this game called Daily Sudoku which is also available on the iPhone. Amazing, amazing and highly entertaining game which allows me to wile the hours away. Do I sound nerdy?

Anyways, with some practice, I should be able to narrow the nightmare level to less than 10 minutes? At the moment, spending more than a half hour on one game is just not on! :D

Meanwhile, I don't think I'll be able to play the game with a pen on paper anymore. I need the colours, highlights, the ease of placing pencil marks quickly and having the program take care of everything for me.

Friday, February 25, 2011

JPEG

It's used all the time for compressed picture files. But have you ever wondered what jpeg actually means? No? Not interested? Well, I chanced upon it, ergo I'm having it etched here :P

In the computer world, all files have a three letter extension, a dot something. Everyone knows that .doc is for word documents, .xls is for excel files and .exe files are sometimes very, very dangerous. Yes, you need them to run some scripts, but like all scripts, it's very easy to hide a devious script that will create havoc on your computer.

.jpg or short for a JPEG file means Joint Photographic Experts Group
Hmm... now that I know what jpeg means, it doesn't really make sense, or does it? Saving a picture file as a jpeg file will compress the file at the same time. If you're talking about compressed files, bitmaps and gif files can't even compare to how amazing a jpeg file is.

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Dong Yi

I've started watching this Korean drama and it's really gripping! Set in the olden day era where Kings still have concubines, and it's riddled with heaps of funny scenes and plots, some elaborate, some not so elaborate.

Dong Yi, an extremely clever and observant girl, blessed throughout her life. Even after having lost her father and brother at a young age, to a trap set by the baddies, she manages to overcome everything that's thrown at her with a smile plastered on her face and become the love of the King's life. That's just the gist of it! The drama is 60 episodes long and each episode is an hour long. These are the kind of dramas you want to watch when you can't sleep on a plane that's flying halfway around the world *grin*

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Mighty Mouse

"Here I come to save the dayyyyy..."

I can't believe they don't show those kind of cartoons anymore. They were the best! Although it showed slightly violent themes if you think about it, but it wasn't all that violent because they were cartoons! Even Ultraman and Thundercats weren't all that violent. These days, they don't call them cartoons anymore but animation. It's a whole different world which we live in now... kids watching them animation tend to follow, especially the action figures.

Anyways, this entry is not about cartoons... it's about the current mouse which the Macintosh computers use. Have you tried it out yet? It's an amazing piece of equipment. It has track pad features on the top which allow users to scroll, zoom, pinch... all this and it's still a mouse! Aren't the people at Apple just the best?!

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

New Zealand's 6.3

Christchurch was hit by an earthquake today, magnitude of 6.3
Looks like it's the start of a chain of events...
Didn't something similar happen around this time last year?
What is the world coming to?
Why now?
Does extinction need to happen in order for things to be set right again?

Monday, February 21, 2011

Printers

Slow day at work today...

I read somewhere that it takes 22 seconds to print one page, that seems a bit long, doesn't it? If we're not talking about laser printers, it's apparently pretty quick, for a bubble jet. But 22 seconds is still a bit long, no?

Do we take the printer for granted? I know I have. Been living with laser printers at work, and my prints come out in a jiffy.

Have you ever stood by a printer and waited for your prints to come out? How long does it take? If there's nothing that needs doing, you might have the time to stand by the printer and wait for your prints to come out. But most people don't have the time to do so, which brings me to my question, 22 seconds for one page? Not acceptable!

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Wiling the hours away

There's a game
In the iPhone
That has me hooked
It's called Sudoku Daily

There are only 16 levels a day
Not that I know all the rules
I'm still learning
But still...
What now?

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Home

This weekend is the first weekend since the Lunar New Year that I've had to myself.
Waking up late, not eating on time and generally just lazing around.
The laundry is finally up to date and I guess I should really get to the ironing.
But it's my first weekend to myself!
The ironing can always wait, it's only two baskets full *grin*
On another note... do we really have two baskets full of clothes?!
That's a tiny bit of one too many pieces of clothing for two people, isn't it?

Friday, February 18, 2011

Whole Milk

Reading today's newspaper (The Straits Times) brought the following picture. It's part of a double page advertisement for No Frills, a house brand stocked in Cold Storage, a supermarket here in Singapore.

Whole Milk

I just don't know what to say about the kind of milk this is. I mean, it's the first time I've seen something like this. Sure it's cow's milk... right? What I'm curious about is, will you buy it? Or will you just not notice the wordings? Or will the wordings just not bother you?

I'm just trying to think... the milk which I used to drink (which was incidentally super yummy) was a Home Brand from Woolies. Did it say whole milk too?

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Photo Blog : Chap Goh Mei

One of the things to note on this final day of the Lunar New Year is the full moon.

Here's a pic taken by the hubs on the 105mm. My hands are just not steady enough *grin*

Chap Goh Mei Moon

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Internet Friends

Tonight's meet up with some friends I met over the internet back in '96 was amazing. Not only did the years not age them, everyone's character is still the same! It was a really, really great catch up, especially over some sausages and beer at a German waterhole. We should do this more often... like once every 5 years, yeah?

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Am Idol 10

The american idol is back on again! Preliminary eliminations... but it looks like for this round, there are quite a few great singers! How do you eliminate the good?

Monday, February 14, 2011

Photo Blog : Raw Fish Dish

The infamous Raw Fish Salad dish... every Lunar New Year, it's a must have dish... at least once! Of course, people tend to have it as many times as there are days, and then some! It's all in the good name of prosperity.

So this is what the hubs and I ended up having on Valentine's Day *grin*

Raw fish salad from Putien

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Laundry, Oh Laundry

I don't know what happened but I'm wayyyyy behind on my laundry again!

Not to mention the ironing... yes, don't even mention the ironing, the basket containing clothes that need to be ironed is overflowing!

*sigh* I guess I should get to it now and not be writing this, huh?

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Criminal Minds

The hubs and I were watching Criminal Minds this afternoon and it was awesomely gruesome. This series delves into the mind of a criminal. The team profiles criminals with the evidence that they have and somehow in the last 5-10 minutes of the show manages to catch the serial killer.

Today's episode was especially gruesome. It was about a pair of brothers, one brilliant and paralyzed from the neck down and his brother, a person who's mentally challenged, living on a pig farm. The brother has the amazing ability to kidnap people, usually homeless junkies, paralyze them by breaking something at the back of their neck with a hammer, collecting some spinal fluid and while they're still aware, cut into them with a knife and saw off their limbs and body parts to feed to their pigs. Gruuuuuesommmmme!

Pigs eat everything, bones and all, so when the police finally came, they only found shoes, all 87 pairs. Nothing was left by the pigs. I'm guessing that they had a really good life while they were being fed fresh meat *shudder*

Friday, February 11, 2011

Smelling Unique

I've picked up another new scent and hopefully I won't have to change it for a while. I remember getting my first bottle of Bvlgari and using it for close to fifteen years. Not the one bottle... I think one lasts me a year and a half. I'm not a massive sprayer of perfume. The scent was just comfortable to the nose, not too overpowering, my skin didn't turn it into another smell and lasted the whole day. I think I still have a couple of half bottles sitting in my cupboard somewhere.

Then in July 09, I found something from Hermes which was also easy on the nose, not too overpowering, although it didn't last as long as the Bvlgari.

While wondering around a mall today, I found one by Annick Goutal. It's a new name for us here in Asia, we usually stock the bigger more famous brands and not the cottage industry ones. But I'm glad I came across this one. It's going to be my new scent for the next 15 years!

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Paternity Leave

There should be a law in this country that grants more than 2 days of paternity leave... or was it 5 days? I'm not too sure, but I'm sure it's a whole lot less than maternity leave. The current maternity leave is 16 weeks. Sounds like a lot but I'm still envious of the Western countries where working mothers are allowed to take a whole year off without having to worry that they will lose their jobs.

And here we are trying to increase paternity leave...

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Dream High

I'm currently following the above k-drama. It's about a group of high school kids, each with their own amazing musical talent. They get to study in a prestigious music school which helps gifted kids debut sooner. Such is the aim of most kids in Korea?

The show kind of reminds me of Glee... the singing, dancing, not so much of fighting between the kids... except that it won't stretch as long as Glee will... the kids can't stay in high school forever and this will end at episode 16. After which, I'll want more. The show casts real singers and dancers making most of the singing and dancing executed amazingly well. But they have tight schedules to follow... so there will be no extending of the drama. Maybe they'll do a season 2, eh?