The Pump Room

Met up with the ex colleagues (who are now friends actually) after work. At Digital Curl's suggestion, the venue was fixed at The Pump Room, Clarke Quay. Today's session included Triple L, who was the first to leave the old organisation, and by a certain coincidence, is now working in the same organisation as me.

Clarke Quay has become irrecognisable. Either that, or I've become really suaku. I must say the place has become super happening. Fountains, watering holes, eateries, coffe joints.... There was even The Clinic, whose normal seats are replaced by wheelchairs, and glasses and mugs with IV drips! Interesting but a tad distasteful.

The Pump Room's a pretty nice place to chill out after work. Dinner followed by drinks and the band which comes on at 1030pm. Here's what we pigged out on:




And then we had 2 of these...


Once again, it was just great to meet and catch up on the happenings in everyone's lives.

Sorry for being so late, people. I will try to be earlier the next round. :)

Too Much Food, Too Little Sleep

TLG was back for a friend's wedding, so I organised a pot luck for the JC peeps who could make it. The food was good, but it was waaaaay too much food for 7 people. The contributors were:

Potato salad: Shades of Pink
Salt baked chicken, Curry puffs: Vandice
Kueh pie tee: Suspension Girl
Mee siam, kueh salat: TLG's mum
Chicken pie: my mum
Vegetable salad with balsamic vinegar: moi

Honestly, the food could have fed 14 of us. So when BFC called on her way to ask what else we needed, we told her to just come and help eat.

The food kept us energised for several rounds of Taboo. Seriously, I never grow tired of this game. People's brains work really weirdly while at it. Like this....

TLG: The chicken lays this thing, and then you fry this thing, what do you get?

Suspension Girl: French fries!

The answer was "Omelette".

and this... ...

TLG: Ok, when Catholics pray, they ask God to take them away from...what?

Suspension Girl: God!

and the champion of them all has to be this... ...

Me: When I am in my Honda and I want people to get out of the way, I press this

BFC: Horn!

Me: okok, the sound that it makes.

BFC: Horn (in the 1st hanyu pinyin accent)

Me: The sound, the sound!

BFC: Horn (in the 3rd hanyu pinyin accent)

The answer was "honk". My dear BFC, changing the tone of the words hanyu pinyin style doesn't change the word, you know. But that was quite cute, really. :)

We played till almost 1am despite having to work today. And for me, it wasn't just last night. Friday night's karaoke and dinner with the cousins lasted till 1am. Saturday night's mahjong ended only at 2am!!! I was totally spaced out at work today.

It's only 10 now but I'm off to bed.

Dissociation

Planned to meet Shades of Pink for lunch-time mass today, but the girl had some last minute department luncheon that she had to attend. So I headed for mass at Good Shepherd on my own. Bumped into Yellow Beatle and then we caught up a little after mass.

Yellow Beatle: What's with The Running One ah? How did he end up with The Sailing One ah?

Purples: You asking me? How I know?

Yellow Beatle: But you ok now right?

Purples: Walau, it's been so long already, sure ok la. True colours all see already.

Yellow Beatle: That's good. So how many has he gone round the school already anyway? He's quite a .......

Yellow Beatle searches for a word, but in vain.

Purples: I also dunno la. You go and count la.

Yellow Beatle: But I'm surprised leh. I quite have respect for The Sailing One one. As in her character quite nice and good one. How come she end up with him?

Walau, how I know? Maybe people change? Maybe people just not so winner lor.

Oops. I just realised that makes me a loser for some part of my life too.

Dissociation please, people!!!

TGIMW

Thank Goodness It's Mid Week. Just 2 more days of me possibly leaving the office for home and not seeing the sun. Work's been quite crazy the past 3 days, and it's keeping me farking busy.

The coming weekend’s extremely packed too (but I'm not complaining). A wedding, a farewell for the cousin who’s leaving for Hong Kong and a pot luck with the college peeps since TLG is back. The last one's gonna be fun. More Cranium and Taboo!

I’m going to be so blardy tired by the week’s end, and then I bet I’m gonna get farking busy again come Monday.

Sheeeet.

It's only been 2 months and already I'm complaining. But no regrets coming back I guess. I'm quite sure I'll work more efficiently, with more support here than there. And I'm also pretty sure I'll learn more here than there. And the affirmation came when I had this email exchange with Cooking Girl and Ms Troublesome.

Ms Troublesome: Wah, they are going to liddat liddat. She said liddat liddat, but liddat liddat. Very sian.

Cooking Girl: Aiyah, they are like that one. "After they cross the river, they tear down the bridge." (Chinese saying: guo he cai qiao)

Purples: Ya. And then they no plan no structure one. Just assume that "when the boat reach the bridge, it will auto straight". (Chinese proverb: chuan dao qiao tou zi ran zhi)

Hmm....The Chinese language can be quite power....

LadyBird Books

I was passing by a Popular outlet sometime this week and decided to see if there were any interesting reads I could pick up. Somehow, I ended up in the kids section browsing through LadyBird books. As I started reading some of the stories I used to read as a kid, I realised I couldn't remember how most of the stories ended, or what the plot was! I'd know bits of it, but never the whole story. So I spent quite a bit of time reliving my childhood.

The Three Billy Goats Gruff, for instance. All I remember is 3 goats who wanted to cross a bridge where a wicked troll resided.
Question 1: How did they eventually get across?
Question 2: Why did they want to get across in the first place?

The Magic Porridge Pot
All I could remember was the magic pot that could cook porridge non-stop. What the actual story was, I couldn't remmeber.

Rapunzel
I'm sure everyone must have read this all-time favourite.
But what happened in the end after the witch sent her away and the prince came to the tower to find only the witch? How did they meet again?

Can you people remember?

Like a Cow.

I was scheduled to bowl tonight's league. Was pretty excited about it until I started feeling the bloatedness. The fatigue. And worst of all, the cramps. Crap. Not the toes. The toes have been surprisingly well behaved.

Still, it wasn't excuse to bowl like a cow. I'm not revealing my average. Let's just say I probably manage to attain the highest handicap possible.

No Wonder We're Family

This was how many mooncakes I took home from baking class today.

Birdkeeper, Kayestercan, Cooking Girl, Ms Troublesome, Kayestercan's friend and I shared and split the cost of the mooncakes (different flavours) so that we could get a bit of each. Champagne, rum, lotus (2 kinds), green tea and durian. Dr Lee was with 3 other friends on another table. It's really quite fun when you have a huge group like that.

From start of the class, Cooking Girl and Ms Troublesome were pretty amused by Kayestercan. Cooking Girl concluded that it was no wonder that we were from the same family when Kayestercan:

- made a mess of her recipe sheet while checking off the ingredients, and then said she wanted a new sheet
- decided not to wash the bowl, and took a new one, leaving the dirty one by the sink

Hey, at least I don't leave my bowl for someone else to wash up hor. I just wondered why we pay and still have to do the washing up.

And I wanted new recipe sheets beacuse mine got dirtied from oil stains and dough pieces - not my own scribblings!