when it rains, it pours

that's right folks, the monsoon season is upon singapore, and the forecast for the next couple of months? rain, rain and more rain.


tuesday was no fun as the heaviest downpour i can remember blew over the usually sunny east coast and pretty much flooded the whole area. don't get me wrong, a hurricane it was not, but it was strong enough to give us pause and to make riding (or even walking with an umbrella) impossible.


the hawker centre at marine parade was suddenly ankle deep in water, no mean feat as it's built on a raised area and is fully sheltered.

trees blew over on the highways causing jams, and an increased number of car accidents were sighted on my way to town on my bike (thankfully during a lull in the storm). of course it didn't help matters that my bike decided to die on me in the middle of heavy traffic, just as it starting coming down again, AND when i was already late for an apple event i was supposed to attend.

two days later, bike is fixed, new phone is running great, and work is good (if exhausting). now i am just looking forward to my first weekend off in a month...

...and lots and lots of rain.

on a lighter note

how does a relationship work without trust? how do you gain trust back if you don't even know how you lost it in the first place?

while these questions hang foremost in my head, 1:30 am is too late for heavy thoughts and i will attempt to steer myself away from them by changing the topic.

this allows me to segue into 'elastic time', a concept i once thought of as a 'uniquely singapore(an)' trait, but practiced, i now know, by almost everyone. take yesterday for example, a day when nothing was on time. my first assignment shooting cheerleaders (they showed up 45 minutes late) was redeemed by the fact that they didn't kill anyone while attempting basket tosses (this IS afterall, singapore), they almost came close a couple of times though.


and don't even get me started on the whirling dervishes who were supposed to perform at an event at 5:30pm, and only took to the floor at 9:45pm (after an array of problems ranging from bad information, to long speeches, to... well you get the point.


at least the pictures weren't too terrible.

now back to brooding.

did you know...

(useless trivia courtesy of boreme.com)

if you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee
(hardly seems worth it)

if you farted consistently for 6 years and 9 months, enough gas is produced to create the energy of an atomic bomb
(now that's more like it)

the human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out to the body to squirt blood 30 feet
(OMG...!)

a pig's orgasm lasts 30 minutes.
(in my next life I want to be a pig)

a cockroach will live nine days without its head before it starves to death.
(creepy)
(i'm still not over the pig)

banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories an hour.
(do not try this at home .. maybe at work)

the male praying mantis cannot copulate while its head is attached to its body. the female initiates sex by ripping the male's head off.
("honey, i'm home. what the....")

the flea can jump 350 times its body length. it's like a human jumping the length of a football field.
(30 minutes...can you imagine??)

the catfish has over 27,000 taste buds
(what can be so tasty on the bottom of the pond?)

some lions mate over 50 times a day.
(i still want to be a pig in my next life ... quality over quantity.)

butterflies taste with their feet.
(something I always wanted to know)

the strongest muscle in the body is the tongue.
(hmmmmmm........)

right-handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left-handed people do.
(if you're ambidextrous, do you split the difference?)

elephants are the only animal that cannot jump.
(ok, so that would be a good thing....)

a cat's urine glows under a black light.
(i wonder who was paid to figure that out.)

an ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
(i know some people like that.)

starfish have no brains.
(i know some people like that too.)

polar bears are left-handed.
(who knew...? who cares!)

humans and dolphins are the only species that have sex for pleasure.
(what about that pig?)

and yes... i am that bored.

out with the old, in with the new

$16 million, more than a year of work, and a shitload of headaches later, the Networked Interactive Content Access database (better known in the newsroom as NICA) and hermes-based news planner softwares are finally online, rendering pictoria and the old lotus notes assignment system obsolete. not a slow transition, but with immediate effect.

everything's been migrated. no fallbacks, no safety nets, just a whole lot of harried people trying to come to grips with the new system.

tomorrow will be my turn. refreshed after being off for two days, i will tackle the monster that is change, head on.

the blue lobster

not to be confused with the blue oyster of police academy fame, the blue lobster is a 4-month old joint hidden away along frankel avenue (number 87 to be exact) in siglap. if we didn't already know it was there, it would have been easy to overlook.

i could go on for hours, but to keep it short, the service was good, the food was excellent, $1 oyster nights (every thursday), good company and my mother's birthday made it a night to remember.

between the six of us, we devoured:

- baby octopus
- 48 oysters
- a cold platter (one lobster, two crayfish, 6 mussells, 6 prawns, 6 clams, 6 scallops, 6 (more) oysters and salad.)
- one bowl of seafood chowder
- one seafood marinara pasta
- one squid ink pasta
- one fish and chips
- one grilled dory with mashed potatoes
- one lobster fried rice
- two warm chocolate cakes with ice cream
- one bottle of cabernet sauvignon
- one cup of earl grey tea
- one cup of camomile tea

i'll just let the pictures do the talking.



suffice to say, it was a good dinner.

in search of better weather

stormy skies still surround us, but cracks in the clouds allow the occasional ray of sunlight to peek through. we may not be out of the turbulent weather yet, but at least we're working our way through the healing process, searching for calmer skies.

the sun will shine again.

absence

the reason it hurts so much to separate is because our souls are connected

i miss you.

rush hour

you know that something is up when 95% of the blogs you usually read haven't been updated in awhile.



busy busy busy...

eye opener

14-year-old dan (not his real name) was the young man that i interviewed and took pictures of yesterday. his easy going manner and his ability to treasure the simple things in life sets him apart from many of his peers

dan was abandoned by his thai mother after the death of his father when he was only six. "she had to go back to thailand to find work" he tells me nonchalantly, and yet his eyes carry the weight of her absence more than words ever could. after much talking and sharing, he finally spills out his anger and hurt at his abandonment.

and yet, his eyes sparkle when he talks about playing soccer with the rest of his friends at the orphanage, of how he loves riding a bicycle, and how he treasures the evenings when he gets to stay up late on a school night to watch an important soccer match.

too many children these days take simple pleasures for granted. i, for one, have started appreciating the fact that my family will always be here for me.

the same, i've come to realize, cannot be said of everyone.

completely dotty

she has an obsession with dots, not the little girl, but artist yayoi kusama, creator of the installation art piece dots obsession that was on display over the weekend at ARTSingapore.

she's the stereotype of the eccentric artist. treated for mental illness since childhood, she "channels her experiences into her work, giving it a strong and profoundly moving psychological edge", which can be translated into "nuts... and proud of it."

her themes of accumulation, repetition and obsession may not tug at my heartstrings the way it would for certain art "connoisseurs", but they sure make for fun photographs.

detours

the path through life isn't always linear, but that doesn't mean you can't find beauty in the twists and turns.