"doors closing. place foot here"

i love my rides on the smrt trains. their timings are predictable, you won't get stuck in traffic and best of all, it provides one with a good free dose of 'human behaviour at its uncensored best' entertainment. well, that's if you bother to observe what goes around you instead of shutting your eyes and pretending to be oblivious to those in need of seats around you. ahem. yes, squirm in your seats you guilty ones.

from damn public displays of affection (think guys' roving hands all over their gfs, "spineless" gals who cannot seem to stand upright without the support of their bfs, couples doing the 'let's see how long we can french kiss?' thingy), to damn bratty spoilt kids who think that the standing support bars and hoops are for monkey-bar-ing or for a fireman's practice, to people talking super loudly and airing their dirty laundry in public, to dirty old men (DOMs) who keep starring at gals' cleavages and thighs (to be fair, some gals really ask for it lah, don't even know how to sit properly in skirts. dunno deliberate or wat), the list is non-exhaustive man. as long as there are homo sapiens around, you will definitely discover/see something new in every ride. seriously. maybe smrt ought to make that their unique selling point instead.

so anyway, to cut to e chase, i'm gonna report on 2 recent sightings in the train. the first being: "doors closing. place foot here". the next time you hear this sickening 'dank i'm gonna be late cos i freaking miss the train' alert and know for sure that you can't squeeze your fat sorry ass in, do this instead: stick your foot in between the doors, wait and stare towards the train driver's direction. since they gotta be sure that all doors are properly shut before they can cruise along to the next station, you are almost guaranteed that the train doors would open again and presto, you can worm your way in! i saw a beng doing it the other day and i was like 'wah this beng damn smart lor, why didn't i ever think of that?' however, pls don't quote me on this hor (see disclaimer on my page). i do not want to be held responsible for any fatalities or injuries. i don't think it's exactly failproof though. for one, if you're wearing open-toed shoes, especially ladies in heels, it wouldn't be v advisable to pull of this stunt as the heel might jus get stuck in that platform gap smrt keeps warning us about. also, for the northeast line, i'm not too sure how much trust you would place in sensors instead of drivers' doing the check. so attempt at yr own risk.

moving on to the second sighting. the other day i saw 2 convent gals blatantly ignoring the 'no eating and drinking' rule on board the train and proceeded to have a nice mcdonalds feast of their own in full view of everybody! ok, i've seen pple eat onboard before but they normally try to be kinda discreet so pple will just close one eye. what's really bad was that they were in school uniforms leh. back in my generation, if got pple complain, sure liao one. further more, nowadays with the advent of mobile cameras, very easy to take picture of face leh, very hard to deny that you didn't do it also. hahah, speaking of which, that was exactly what i did. *evil laughter. i've been contemplating for awhile now whether i should post it to stomp, blow it up and get the 2 gals royally screwed. but scared later i'll kena fragged by the blogging community, the 2 gals' frens or smthg so i guess i should just stick to posting and rambling here instead.


and you know what's the best (or rather it should be worse) part of the whole thing? everybody was looking on with looks of disapproval on their faces but hey hey, nobody bothered to do anything about it. how typical.

stupidity.

just came back from a gal's night out dinner gathering with uni school mates. cos one of my gfs is a big fussy pot, we had dinner at boring billy bombers yet again. not that the food is bad, just that it's nothing new. what i wanna rant about though is their total inflexibility to accomodate a customers' request. boo. they deserve a gems service award alright - God, E Management Sucks.

one of my gfs wanted to have something light as she was feeling terribly 'zhang-ed' (bloated / full) from her indigested lunch. poor gal. so the only thing that appealed to her was the fish 'n fries junior meal. but yeah u guessed it, the manager kept on insisting that they are not able to serve her this kid's meal cos she was obviously more than 10 years old. so she tried reasoning with the manager that hey, by offering her what she wanted, both parties would stand to gain. she'll get her small portion of food and they'll get the money from e sale. if not, she'd rather not order anything and they wldn't make a dime either! but the manager didn't wanna hear anything of it, insisted that this is their policy. fullstop. she suggested that what my fren could do was to get a normal-sized order and share it with the rest of us instead. yeah we know that alright. duh! what if an individual came alone instead? she wouldn't be able to share the normal serving with anyone then right? so how? are they gonna turn her away after all that time and effort spent by stationing their staff at the entrance and trying to attract passerbys to 'come dine with us?' can't they just freaking be flexible and accomodate the customer's request? customer is always king leh. simple logic also don't know ah?

unbelievable man. dunno whether it's a case of people adhering too closely to rules and regulations or the fact that people just have no common sense to see and do what's best for the long-run. sg customer service sure has a long way to go.

just pig out

i'm back. with more food recommendations! there goes my diet... again. but oh well, who cares? life is short, you never know when your last meal would be. thus we ought to eat without an ounce of guilt nor condemnation, right? agreed totally.

anyway, a friend of mine was telling me how great this "kolo mee" is. on and on he's been going. and i decided that we need to put a stop to it. i'll give him no more leeway to brag. i'm gonna try it for myself! so wahla, there i found myself at upper thomson this evening (it's located in one of those shophouse place somewhere near where springleaf road is). the name of the stall is 'jia xiang' (家香) Kuching Sarawak Kolo Mee. i swear i've seen this stall some place else before (i think it might have been vivocity, can't remember liao). another of those food franchise thingy i bet. thank goodness there wasn't much of a crowd then and we promptly plonked ourselves at an available seat while he did the honours of ordering for us: the standard charsiew kolo mee, fried wanton, wanton soup, mushroom veges and cold barley drinks.

well, i wasn't exactly blown away by the kolo mee like he said i would be. it's not too bad either, just a little on the salty end though. i expected it to be much oiler than normal but that wasn't the case. the portion was kinda small though for 3.90 bucks. wasn't very full after that and we even contemplated going for round 2. until he suggested that we should check out the prata at a stall nearby known as 'The Prata Place'.

the egg prata they serve is damn yummy man. so crispy and yet fluffy. the curry was also shiok-a-do-da-dooo! spiciness was just nice. i found myself wishing that we had gone for this in the first place instead. hehee. but then again, eating too much of one thing can make one feel rather 'je-lak'. washed it all down with a cup of warm and aromatic teh-haliah (tea with ginger). never felt this satisfied in a long while.

the verdict: 3/5 for kolo mee (top) and 4/5 for shiokalicious egg prata (bottom).

one thing's for sure. i'm going back for more. i'm eyeing their murtabak next. yes i'm such a glutton :D

cool breathspray marketing

chanced upon this at topshop recently. man how they've diversified... apparently they're into selling breathsprays now too!



pretty ingenuous don't you think? want to learn the art of ass-kissing or telling a white lie without flinching? then you need either the ass-kisser or liar liar breathspray. lol. can't imagine the look on my irritating apple polishing ex-colleague's face if i gave her that for her birthday pressie. idea sia. *evil luff.

what the hell did i do?

2 posts in a day. yippee. ok technically it's the next day, so it doesn't count.

that's beside the point. i'm blogging again bcos i'm soooooo freaking frustrated. i hate myself for upgrading to blogger beta. i hate the fact that they do not show the titles of all your past blog entires under the archives (it's now classifed into a years and months format which i no like!). and when i tried to do a rss javascript thingy, it doesn't work right! don't understand why that stupid 'work sucks' entry keeps appearing right at the top of the list even though i blogged that about more than 3 months ago. and i think i've tried almost every bloody way to put it back to where it belongs but alas no! it continues to plague me by coming up on top again and again. argh.

yes, i'm a perfectionist. ok i'm anal. any wise ideas, anyone? this new post had better do the job of burying it down under.

i feel the earth move under my feet

i'm sure you would have heard about it by now. yeah we experienced 2 major tremors over here in sg around noon time when a quake hit Sumatra and the aftershock slightly under 2 hrs later. was at suntec city meeting up with a client when it happened. i could literally feel the building move together with the items on the table. at first, we just starred at one another wondering if it was just our mind playing tricks on us. but if all of us experienced it then eh, something must be wrong indeed. though it was reported in e news that it didn't last for more than a minute each, it did seem like more than that to me. perhaps it was because after the shake, the brain's still in the midst of trying to figure out whether it's really still-still for good. well well. the reaction of the staff in the company was rather slow though. a couple of people sat rooted to their seats, engaged in their con calls despite pleas from the company's designated safety personnel who came around to inform us to get the hell out of the building. being ever so kia-si (scared to die), i zipped out as soon as i could. it was no joke climbing down the freaking spiral stairs. i think one gets giddier from that rather than from the building shake. thank god i was located on the 10th storey something floor. can imagine the people on the higher storeys cursing and swearing as they made their way down.

since it was close to lunch time, we took the opportunity of having a long lunch. ironically, we had to go back into the building (just another part of it though) before the all clear announcement was made. but everything seemed ok so we took the risk. and then it struck again when we made our way back to resume the meeting. i didn't feel anything this time round. could be because i was on the ground level. i can imagine more cursing and swearing for those in their offices man. who needs the gym when you have to make your way down a zillion flight of stairs twice a day? this time round, the company didn't take any chances and decided to send their staff packing for home. lucky pigs. i wasn't so fortunate though. had to head back to office with my boss to continue with work. sigh. i wonder what i need to do to get employment at that place instead. :|

anywayz, thinking back on it, it was kinda scary. at first we suspected that since the building is located near the circle line works-in-progress station, it could be caused by the construction's digging and piling. hey, who's to tell? if nicoll highway could cave in, this could very well be a possibility too. uhrm, it's kinda evil to say this, but the whole escapade was kinda exciting. it's not everyday that you get to feel a building shake leh. but yeah, my heart goes out to the casualities in indonesia. may they find peace and be comforted in this event of tragedy.

p.s. gorilla, hope you are reading this safe and sound.

the verdict - red hot chilli peppers

just remembered that i owe u guys a verdict on the red hot chilli peppers!

here goes:

1) do not attempt to do the gargle if u have any ulcerations in yr mouth. you've been warned.

2) do not mix the pepper in warm water to gargle. it'll open up the pores on yr tongue and u can imagine the sting from the hotness of the chilli pepper amplified like a zillion times!

3) if one avoids the 2 fatal mistakes mentioned above, this gargle is actually pretty effective! the first time i tried it, my throat felt much better, so much so that i was able to chomp down my dinner without the discomfort that a sore throat brings when one attempts to swallow. i believe that the hotness of the peppers actually gives an anasthatic effect numbing the whole throat area. i didn't like the taste of the concoction though. often times i only managed about 2 mouthfuls of it before pouring the rest of it away. it definitely tastes better as a seasoning. one thing's for sure though: this ain't a miracle cure - gargle once and your sore throat is gone forever! it helps soothe but it does not heal. having enough rest is still the way to go.

final verdict: this is not a remedy i would recommend for the faint-hearted. attempt at yr own risk. ahahahahahaah.