Down with Flu and Cough

I am feeling terrible! Last night I have to go to toilet at least 5 times to clear my phlegm. My throat is in terrible shape and I am coughing incessantly. My body aches and nose is congested causing difficulty in breathing, I feel feverish all the time. It may be "election fever". I feel tired all the time and need to drink plenty of strong tea and coffee to stay alive.

It will be 7 to 10 days before I can become better again.

Election Excitement

Massive traffic jams and gigantic wave of humanity at the Serangoon Stadium where Worker's Party held their rally. It is really carnival atmosphere and lots of cheering. We also drove to Yio Chu Kang Stadium. Traffic flow is quite good but no place to park as well. The crowd a the PAP rally is rather thin even though it is right beside a MRT station.

I wonder if all the excitement of the rallies can translated into votes. If it does, then rallies work! If not, then it is "not in my backyard" mentality of wanting an opposition but not in my ward. Next few days will be exciting time for all candidates except Tanjong Pagar who had a walkover. It is going to be an interesting week....

Cool

Nan Chiau students are running in simmering heat this afternoon at the PCN. They are doing their fitness test. I feel sorry for them to run in adverse conditions. The good thing is PCN is flat and the view is scenic. So there is some relief.

I go to the pool to cool myself down and my neighbours' kids are enjoying themselves playing games in the pool. It is nice to have a swimming pool in this kind of weather.

Tomorrow is the wedding of William and Kate Middleton and the news keep broadcasting the excitement the Brits have. It is a nice distraction from the poor economic situation they are in. I do not really understand why it is such a big deal. Kate does look good just like her mother-in-law, the late Princess Diana.

Night Meetings

I am up nowadays at night for meetings. It is tiresome. So much talking and talking. Such is life in a large bureaucracy. In all meetings, there are always a few people who like to hear themselves. They like to dominate the meetings and wasting everyone's time.

Root Canal

Finally, my root canal job is done. It is stressful and traumatic experience. I am glad it is over for now. I have a 3 months break for getting a crown done to protect the root canal. It is such a long and painful procedure. I am chicken when it come to toothache. The treatment is expensive too. Cost S$800 just for the root canal. It used to cost $500. Now, it is incredibly costly!

It is extremely during the day. The heat is causing headache and dehydration. Like what Lee Kuan Yew says in Hard Truths, we have to adapt. I am thinking it may be a good idea to find a lower cost place like Cameroon Highland or Genting to live in. The weather will be nice and cool. I wonder if there is such place in Thailand. I think Thailand would be safer than Malaysia.

Noise Pollution

There is a racket at the back of my house. Another rattling and vibrating on the right. It is giving me headache and preventing me from concentrating. I wonder how it will be when it is my turn for the roof repair.

Birthday Party

B3 has a young cousin who celebrated his 6th birthday. There were games, magic show and balloon sculpture. The food is just so-so. In fact I had stomache after ingesting the food. The condo he now lives is new. It has a nice swimming pool and gymnasium. Bored, I sneak out and took a walk to the nearby nursery. The price of $68 for a large plastic rectangular pot turns me off. I walk out right away and decided to read a book at the poolside.

The book is How to read Literature like a Professor. It is quite interesting actually. I am still at the beginning and will need some time to finish. It is good to find time to read while attending kids' birthday parties.

Strictly Pancakes

We are eating out tonight. Most resturants are fully booked or not convenient due to lack of parking. B1 suggest we go to Strictly Pancakes. The first alternative was Zichar stall in AMK Industrial Park 1. CTE was moving well, many may have taken advantage of the long weekend and left the country. So we decided to try this Pancakes resturant that is started and run by undergrad in NUS. The carpark on the road is all full and we try Sunshine Plaza and there are plenty of spots.

The Pancakes place is full and we decide to wait for a table. The place is full of students and young adults. It is not really a family resturant. We wander to the mall opposite and ate dinner there instead. A table become available while we were eating and we decided to go there for dessert. We had pancakes, hot chocolate and vanilla milkshake. The meal cost $23.10. Not bad. The young adults have good capability to spend this kind of money.

It is a good experience for us to explore the concept of the resturant.

Headache

I am nursing a headache since I woke up this morning. I am blogging about it because it is unusual for headache to last all day especially after swallowing a couple of Extra-strength Tyernol. Tyernol is my favorite analgesic. I took another two later in the afternoon and still it did not work.

I wonder if it is the weather or feng shui or stress or nose blocked due to allergy. It is hard to get to the root cause. For a person educated in science and engineering, I am superstitious enough to believe in feng shui.

Thank Buddha, tomorrow is holiday.

Busy as a Bee

We are all busy as a bee nowadays. Living in Singapore is indeed work work and more work. My boys are working their butts for in schools. I am trying to keep afloat in the massive increased in my workload and my team's workload. I hope we will stablised in a few months and pressure start to throttle down. Otherwise, we may start burning out.

On the brighter side, the weather is cool due to rain rather than the blazing heat in the previous two days. I cycled with B2 in the PCN in late afternoon and slipped and fell at near the chin-up bar. B2 says now I know how to break my fall. Still I scratched my right leg.

Election is officially ON! I wonder if there will be excitement especially since there are a few quality candidates in the opposition camp. It is going to be an exciting couple of weeks ahead.

Outback Steak House

I had dinner with customers from US at Outback today. I decided to order chicken burger instead of my favourite rib so that I can eat and talk at the same time. We had plenty to discuss focusing mainly on business in Asia. There is a Chinese girl who is a PhD. The American is a big boss from US and the other is Director of ...say Specific Business. We just talk and talk. It is a good exchange of information.

The food was good. I enjoyed the company more than the food. It is nice to discuss work during dinner!

Refrigerators

We are looking around and evaluating refrigerator recently. My current refrigerator is making loud noise a couple days ago. It may be due to poor arrangement of our frozen items in the freezer compartment. The key reason is we think we may be able to save electricity if we get a newer technology and more efficient unit with 4 ticks. We bought our Maytag 10 years ago when we were living in Canada. We are using it until today and it is working fine. It is 110V and I have a 2 KVA transformer that we used to make it work. The difference is here it is 50 cycles rather than 60 cycles in Canada. Hitachi and Mitsubishi has 6 doors fridge that incorporate sunlight LED for keeping vegetable fresh and alive, anti- feature and a special quick freezing compartment for keeping food tasty after freezing. It is not terribly green to buy new appliances especially since I recently acquired a TV. I consider the refrigerator a necessity and my boys have huge appetite. So we need a big size fridge. Maybe I will wait for the price to fall...

Going Out of Business

I went to the nursery in Yishun to get buy window boxes or long containers for our plants. The place is closed. The operating hours have shortened. As we were about to turn out to the main road, Sembawang Road, we saw a big banner 80% discount and everything to go. Intrigued, we turned back and it is true. Real moving out Sale! The boss is an excellent sales person and negotiable. He keeps selling me stuff. I had a pot and a fish for my pond, five bags of black soil and two plastic pot for my tree. Tonight, the questions and answers with Prime Minister I understand why. The foreign levy has increased and the cost is becoming too high. The nursery owner has sent back most of his foreign workers. He is giving up the business. I wonder how many businesses are severely impacted by the increased in foreign levy. It is economic restructuring and small businesses are collapsing. Soon, only big businesses are left and we will be paying more for everything....inflation and more inflation.

Rising to the Challenge

My nieces were coming over to for dinner. I am slicing up Japanese cucumber and getting ready to debone roast duck when my middle niece came up to tell me her sister needs help in parking the car. I went down to the garage without washing my hand thinking I am going to give her verbal instructions. When I saw the car, I realised it is not possible. I have to take over the car as it is only 3 or 4 mm from the pillar. Any small movements to the left would have cause the car to be stucked and the car doors scratched. I have to look out for the front tyres position to make sure I do not make any mistakes. It was incredibly tight position which I have to figure and plan my moves before moving the vehicle. My niece did the right move by asking for help. Otherwise, the consequence may be expensive and she may be grounded from using the car. I am glad that I did not pick up B2 from his tuition. My wife is so smart to volunteer to pick him up while I stay home to prepare dinner. Otherwise, she will be the one sweating bullets!

Disposable Pleasures or Meaning Pursuits

I am watching 007 Casino Royale and wondering what to write for my blog. Then this interesting dialogue between Bond and a most beautiful accountant. The sascastic accountant tell Bond off. He rather treat women as disposable pleasures rather than meanful pursuits. It is interesting and insightful. I am a sucker for action movies and drive my wife blonkers who always wonder why am I always watching car chase, men get their neck snapped or guns blazing and bullets flying all over and the hero hardly ever get hit while all the evil doers are shot and getting killed.

Mindfulness

I need to learn to be mindful. This book is recommended by Daniel Pink in The New Mind. I am mindlessly living my life and doing my work enriching my employer in the process. Mindfulness is the art of conciously observing what we do in every way. I am a creature of habit. Work is stressful and is getting more stressful. Mindfulness will help us deal with stress and presence. Mindlessness is living on automatic mode and acting and reacting to orders and demand of others is a slow and painful death.

Sensitivity to Radiation

It is short and sweet trip to Osaka. I am satisfied as I accomplished my objective for the trip. The plane is half empty going to Osaka and full on my return. So more people leave Japan and fewer are going. The almost daily aftershock of magnitude 6 to 7 is quite scary for Japanese as well. There is heighten sensitivity to the food and water. My host or my colleague will tell me it is "safety water" or the water is safe. When I asked about the bowl of big juicy apples whether they are Japanese, the hotel staff immediately informed me it is safe as the apples are sourced from the south. Sakura flowers is in full bloom in Osaka. It is beautiful to walk along the river. Until in Tokyo last year, there are very few merrymakers. The country is in self-restraint. Now the Prime Minister is saying get on with normal life. I guess if the self-restraint campaign go on, the already weak economy will slow down preventing recovery. Japan, be strong. We are all with you.

Fabulous Meals and Wonderful Friends

I always like Osaka. It is not as crowded as Tokyo. The taste of the food is superior (I am obsessed with food as usual). For lunch, we had kushiyaki which is deep fried with different batter from light yellow batter of tempura. The batter is brown and the dip is a more liquid version of tonkatsu source which is sweet and sour. I also have tokomoyaki which is panfried cabbage pancake. The cabbage is soaked with flour batter and one egg. Different choice of toppings such as prawn, beef or pork can be added. It is take half an hour to cook! Luckily we are no hungry anymore.

Saving the best for last, we had Spanish dinner. My host, T-san gave me his usual warm and welcome. He always spend a lot of time and effort to pick a nice resturant to bring me to. The meal was very interesting and delicious. We have excellent appetitzers, grilled seafood salad, lobster in cream sauce and seafood shellfish rice. Dessert is fried... I have not idea what, maybe cream cheese with ice cream. The finishing touch is something interesting that my host and friend, T-san suggest we photograph it.

T-san requested I put this on my blog and wants you to know Japan will be fine.

Poor Timing to Osaka

The flight to Osaka is 1:50pm and lands at 9:30pm.  It is past lunch time leaving Singapore and then by the time I arrived, it is past 10pm and all the shops are closed.  I also do not know where to eat and have to skip dinner and eat the snack in the mini bar.  Singapore Airlines should have a better schedule.  I took the flight at 11am before.  I know why I always fly to Tokyo first and return via Osaka.

It is quite cold at night.  The cabin crews of SQ is staying in Hilton too.  They arrived the hotel before me even though I left at least 10 mins before they can leave the aircraft.  The privilege of airline crew is travel time is short.  Going pass the immigration is short.  The bad thing is they have to leave the hotel at 7:40 am tomorrow morning.  So I can't quit my day job!  Anyway, I do not have the look to pass the screening interview.

Hard Truths to Keep Singapore Going

The dvd on the interview have snippets of the 32hours of interviews with LKY. There is an opinion that LKY has that I am skeptical about. The question is that scholars are in the cabinet does well but can they survive if they are in the private? Singapore practise the mandarin system of China of the past. In ancient China, there is an imperial exams every year. The top scorers are the top scholars and are given a govt job e.g. junior magistrate and are set for life as it is iron rice bowl. They will have income stream from the official position as well as from the public who needed official blessing(in other words, corruption). The journalist did point out the scholars rise quickly in military and civil service, the private sector is different. LKY shrugged his shoulders. He strongly believe those talents can get a job anywhere and do well in life. And that is that! I do not agree with this view. Plenty of "intellectuals" are good with theory and book learning but unable grasp the reality. Mandarins are good in the government and military organisations. The hierarchy and position of power is clear and defined. They are good at talking and giving their point of views. However, when it come to execution, they are ineffectual. I have a neighbour who is in the management committee. He talks well and give very good reasoning. Any task assigned to him does not get done. He is good at coming up with rationale or avoid discussing why the task did not get done such that he always "look good". In my humble opinion, I think not all mandarins can survive anywhere. Some will not be able to get anything done. Thus likely to be fired if they are senior employees or fail if they start their own business.

Election Fever

The news is full of election activities. Suddenly, all the candidates, MPs and potential MPs are reaching out to the people. Once election is over, they all disappears again doing whatever they used to do before. The MPs will have meet-the-people sessions one evening a week and those who did not become MPs will be doing academic discussions among themselves. The ruling party is strong, extremely strong. Even then some candidates may lose and then give up. I remember Mah Bow Tan and Ng Pock Too. Both were introduced as potential cabinet members when introduced. They lost and the 2nd time round only Mah Bow Tan participated and today he is Minister of National Development. Today, with GRCs all hemmed by a cabinet minister, if PAP lost a GRC, a Minister will lose his or her job. Kind of interesting. Job security is dependent on how strong the opposition is.

TGIF

I love Fridays. It is the end of the week and the weekend starts in the evening. When work is busy and stressful, weekend is a wonderful break. Time to spend with the family and do non-work stuff like hanging around, drinking tea, enjoying food and window shopping. In the city, the choices are limited. No mountain to go to, no lake(reservoir not counted), no countryside or farms, just airconditioned shops and malls. Hence key weekend activities are tuitions and piano lessons. And while waiting for the boys, load up on caffeine and calories. I also joined the enthusiats to exercise by cycling in PCN. The pool is noisy with visitors and kids, so I avoid. Enjoys your weekend, readers.

Caught!

The culprits who stole my torchlight and damaged my bike in the process were caught in the act in camera by my neighbour's cctv. They stole footwears from other neighbours as well and was trying to steal my neighbour's bike when our gardener asked him what is he doing. We reported to police and the developer who had the contractors in for repairs. So the two men were lured back, handcuffs and arrested. What a scene! There were so many police cars in the estate and on the road outside. We hope this incident do not occur again.

Blur

Today is just a big BLUR. I am so busy at work and moving from one task to another. I am glad it is time to go to bed. I am doggone tired. I lost my torchlight attached to my bike. Someone have taken it. I am upset my personal items are stolen right at my garage. It is terrible.

Lucky Me!

I managed to "uninstall" my updates yesterday and got my computer back. What a relief! It is not back as it should be but all my office suite is working albeit fonts are not right. At least I can read my messages and files. So I am back in business:)

Hard Truths

I am three quarters through this thick book. It is very insightful and easy to read. The Straits Times editors did a fantastic job. The questions and answers format make it easy to remember a lot of the facts and insights that MM Lee presented. Today, I view the dvd that come with it. With my new LG player and tv, the stunning clarity and clear sound system bring LKY to my home office. I am apathetic when it come to politics, however I learn so much from his views and amazing conclusions from all the inputs he gathered in all the years he lived and worked. The reasoning is extremely solid and well thought out. So I strongly recommends this book. I am wiser after reading it!

No Work Too!

I forgot. This weekend I did not work as well unless trying to get my computer programs to function again is considered work. I did spent a few hours trying to get Microsoft Office programs and Outlook to work to no avail. I should have known better not to upgrade or update my programs since my system is working fine. Unfortunately, being a dutiful employee, I just followed instructions and have to spend several hours in frustration trying to fix my system. To make matter worse, it is month-end and I have plenty of reports to digest and reports to write. I also planned to answer an important email which I am unable to do so now. Can't wait for Monday so that I can get IT help!

No Exercise

Today I am so busy I did not have a chance to exercise. Actually, we want to cycle after dinner but B3's project is not completed and Mummy stopped all of us from going out until we finished it for him. B1 help out and get the marble rolling board done. I was so tired that I fell asleep on the floor in the living room. So after the board is done, I decided not to cycle anymore and B2 who keen to cycle also drop the idea. My weight tonight hit 90kg. Not a good number. I will need to reduce my calories intake. Exercise alone is not working. I also missed my nieces. It has been a while since our last get together. I know they are happy, independent and confident of themselves.

Terrible News to Share

My 2nd sister was operated for growth in her thyroid. Doctors found it is stage 4 cancer. I received sms from my eldest sister on my way home. I visited her today in the hospital. She is in good spirit and I did not realised the seriousness of her condition until I just google in the internet.