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.

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.

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.

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.

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*

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?!

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?

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!

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?

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?

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?

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

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?

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?

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

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?

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*

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!

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...

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?

Gold

I read an interesting article about gold today. There is, apparently, a lot of it sitting idly in a warehouse. I thought gold was kept in safe deposit boxes. Aren't they?

With the world economy spinning out of control with the help of some natural disasters and some brought on by humans, gold is slowly coming back as a medium to have. How come I'm the only person without a warehouse, hmm?

Photo Blog : 35mm

Piano's make great subjects
Playing with the 35mm
I can't believe how with the digital era, we're going back to the basics. Film cameras without zoom used to have 35mms lenses only

My Piano

Damnyouautocorrect!

Whenever you need to laugh, really laugh out loud... this is the one website you've gotta go to. It's amazing what the auto correct within the iPhone can do! What more, this is only in English, for those of us who speak other languages, it's a whole new world of, "Damn you auto correct!"

Home Sweet Home

There's really nothing like home. We're back in Singapore after a few days of celebration and I'm thinking that the watching-what-I-eat thing should start today. Yeah, after a few days of good food, I'm ready to settle for mediocre food!

Grand-pere

We're usually at grandfather's house (on my hubby's side) on the second day of the Lunar new year for some catch up time with cousins, aunties, uncles and their kids. It's the only day I distribute ang pows in Malaysia... I think.

I never knew my grandfathers, one passed away 4 years before I was born and another a whole lot longer than that. But this particular grandfather is old... yeah, I hear you saying aren't all grandfather's old? But he's really, really old. I think he's turning 90 this year. And I've known him for more than 10 years.

I don't think he remembers who I am, we only meet once a year on the second day of the Lunar new year when his house is open for family gatherings, and the odd gathering when there's a funeral for someone in the family. His siblings are all not getting any younger, and as a part of life, funerals do happen.

So, Grand-pere lives alone in a pretty large house... strategically placed, I think the house has 8 bedrooms. Could be more, as grand-pere has 8 kids. Everyone has gotten married and moved out, save for one daughter, who's not married, but has decided to live away from her childhood home. I can just imagine how 'festive' it would be when everyone comes back to celebrate; kids with their extended families.

Chor Yat

Today is the first day of the Lunar calendar
Many, many traditions to be held
Vegetarian for lunch *yum*
Massive choices of yummy stuff for dinner

The Lunar new year is all about eating, eating and more eating
Tossing of the thinly julienned array of vegetables with raw fish for luck
Home-cooked dishes, mandarin oranges, cookies, tarts, fried thinly sliced vegetables...
Hmm... I haven't seen any love letters around, have I?

The best part of it all is that it goes on for 15 days
Can you imagine, 15 days of merry making?
What will this do to our waistlines?
That's ok, we'll have the rest of the year to work it off!

Firecrackers

You know the Lunar new year is approaching, while living in Malaysia, when the first sounds of firecrackers start popping. These are singular ones that whistle while flying upwards and pop at the end. Currently firecrackers are illegal items, but people still find a way to purchase and let them go, usually around the eve of the day, the first and second days.

In another 10 minutes, there is going to be a cacophony of noise as the real firecrackers start. These are unlike the official ones (hosted by the governments during while welcoming the western new year) that last a whole 10 to 15 minutes with bursts of colourful light, although if you put enough of them together, it could last that long. On another note, it is fascinating that people are able to come up with the kind of fireworks that we have now, complete with flowery names like willow, chrysanthemum, dahlia and peony.

The Lunar new year firecrackers are short red sticks, tied together such that when the fuse goes off, the crackers pop one by one but at an alarming pace and sound. It's loud and according to the Chinese, that's meant to scare away the bad and old in order for the new to come into the new year.

Passwords

I vaguely remember writing about passwords around May or June last year, about how complicated your password should be to prevent hackers from guessing and getting access to your email/facebook/twitter/blog accounts. I hope you don't use one password for every internet account that you hold.

Having said that, I have a few passwords. Most of the time it's one for each account and I've written them down somewhere because you just don't remember 20 passwords for 20 accounts, I'm not that brilliant. The good thing about that is that I get my personal macbook to remember the passwords for me, so that when I launch that account, everything's there and I just have to click 'login'. The bad thing, I don't bring along that little notebook of passwords when I don't bring my macbook along with me.

So, whenever I travel and have to use another computer, a few minutes is spent pondering on what the password should be, and sometimes even the login name. For instance, Twitter is forever logged-in on the iPhone, there's no way to log out. So when I'm trying to update something on the computer, as I don't use the data roaming, I sit there for a few minutes wondering what the password could be.

Moral of the story? There isn't any... keeping a various array of passwords is good AND bad for you *grin*