Taking a break from blogging

I haven't been blogging for the past 2 weeks. Perhaps it's because I have been busy catching up with friends, trying to find time to study Japanese, keeping Bob company in my room, trying to recover from my flu by taking Chinese medicine from the sinseh, getting ready to cope with increased workload, spending time with parents and the community cats in the park when I'm not out meeting friends, thinking of how to spend on more worthy stuff and save more, etc. Maybe I'm starting to lose the interest to blog. I haven't bought a new camera to replace my faulty one as I could use Sis' camera since she hardly uses it. Even then, I don't carry it everywhere I go.

Nowadays I just admire the yummy food and tuck in. When feeding the cats in the day, I will just stroke them after feeding them. Anyway, I have taken many beautiful photos of them for the past few years. I did take some photos of the simple food I cooked and of parents' yummy dinner dishes but I haven't downloaded them from the camera. Maybe when the urge to blog comes back again, you will see photos and read my blabbering. I'm not sure if it will be anytime soon. But if any of you misses me, you know where to reach me :)

Chewy ginger cookies

I spent Mon afternoon, churning out about 100 soft ginger cookies. I missed baking and decided to do a big batch since my mom and friends like the earlier few batches I made. I also added chocolate chip and raisin to some of the cookies.

Strangely, I didn't feel any kick when I tried a piece from almost every tray. So I needed affirmation from mom and friends that my ginger cookies still taste great.

Sis tried 2 and thought they are lau hong (cookies that are supposed to be crispy but turn stale) but she said the taste was not bad. I told her they are soft/chewy cookies like the Subway cookies. I was relieved when Mom tried the cookies that night and said they were good. This gave me the courage to bring the cookies to the office and offer to my friends and colleagues :)

AVA Responsible Pet Ownership Roadshow 2008

I visited the roadshow at the Singapore Expo yesterday with my parents after finishing my Japanese lesson in the afternoon. Reaching there after 5pm, the puppies at the Action for Singapore Dogs (ASD) booth were sleeping in the air-conditioned environment. Ricky gently touched one of the puppies and asked it to wake up and work to get itself adopted by the crowd who was watching them sleeping. I hope they get adopted by nice people soon.

The place at the Expo is more spacious and of course comfortably cool. There were drawings and paintings by children on their interpretation of responsible pet ownership, exhibition panels manned by AVA staff and a ferris wheel that carried some messages.


I headed to the Cat Welfare Society's booth to talk to 2 of the volunteers whom I know and find out how they were doing.



I continued to explore the rest of the hall and check out the other booths manned by other animal welfare groups. Before I left with parents for our dinner, I bought this bag, cute cat tissue holders and magnets from CWS :)

Goodbye, Rocky, Trini and Peanut

We haven't seen Rocky the long-haired black and white cat (abandoned by a Malay family) for the past few weeks and Mom learnt from an auntie that she saw Rocky being taken away by SPCA as he had an injured paw. It seems like the Malay owner had been feeding him and his nephew, Oreo and didn't do anything to help his injured paw, so someone decided to call the SPCA to help him.

Trini, the female calico cat who usually hung around my block's void deck has also disappeared mysteriously when I was away in Beijing. I did ask my Town Council officer who said he noticed that the old "sick" cat (our Rambo) has disappeared and he would let the complainant(s) know of the action being taken to remove the cat. He said he didn't remove any cats from my area so far. Mom and I hope Trini has been adopted by someone since she is a friendly cat. I have also called AVA to see if there were any cats taken from my area and the AVA officer said there were none.

First Bush disappeared, then Bony died, I have to send Rambo to a cattery, Rocky taken to SPCA and Trini has disappeared. I hope the rest of the cats in my area will remain safe.

This afternoon, I found Peanut (the hamster)'s cold body in his house. He hasn't been peeing and pooing well and also not eating well. Mom and I knew it was a matter of time before he left us. His sis, Pebble, did a few months. Now the remaining hamster, their brother, Poofy is the lone survivor after more than 2 years with us. He is losing some fur - clearly a sign of ageing. He will probably be the last hamster we are keeping since I don't think we will be adopting any more. I think the cats have been making us busy :)

Bob and my office laptop

When we let Bob out for a short while and Angel was in my parents' bedroom, I was using my office laptop to check some office emails. Bob hopped onto the table to check out the laptop and also rubbed his face against it vigorously. He really wasted no time in marking his territory :)

Angel on our lap

Recently, we noticed that Angel likes to settle on our lap or tummy for a few minutes if we are resting on the sofa. "We" refers to Sis and I and excluding Mom and Dad. This has happened the past few weeks, once a week. Here are 2 shots of Angel doing that on Sis.

Working from home

I got my office IT guy to configure my laptop this afternoon, so that I can access office emails from home in future. I was just fiddling around with the router at home and my office laptop and luckily everything went smoothly as I remember the IT guy's instructions.

I have been arrowed to coordinate 12 weekly sessions of some management meetings in Dec or Jan next year. I will be expected to get ready the meeting materials and agenda when there will be inevitable cases of late or last minute submission of papers or presentation slides. Like the current and earlier secretaries, there is no point for me to stay back in the office and wait for such emails to come in the night before or the morning before the meeting. It is better for us to bring back our laptop and try to resume some normalcy in our life.

For my case, it will be enjoying home-cooked dinners and feeding the cats with my parents before checking office emails and working on them, in between spending time with Angel and Bob. Life will be a bit more hectic when I have to take on the extra role of a "secretary" but I hope it will be an interesting experience to observe the thought processes and attitudes of the decision makers. I don't play politics but it's good to see what make the organisation tick and perhaps it may help me to decide whether it's meaningful for me to continue working here.

Water Cube and Bird's Nest

The workshop I attended early last week included a half-day tour to these 2 places.

Pretty flowers along the way and many people from around China were also there to visit their national pride.

The temperature that morning dropped to below 10 degrees and when the wind blew, it felt really cold. I didn't bring along my gloves as I didn't expect the weather to turn cold suddenly. I tried to keep my hands warm by tucking them into my pants' pockets most of the time.

We visited the National Aquatic Centre (aka Water Cube) first. Its transparent membrane reminded me of the bubble pack we usually use to wrap breakable stuff.

Inside the Water Cube, there were more people and also sights

I like the bubble look of the interior. There is a fantasy or dreamlike feel to the place.
Can you spot Singapore's flag?

There was also some fountain/water show to wow the crowd.

It won't be complete without some souvenir shops for visitors to bring some mementos home.
They even have some handphones with the bubble concept for the cover.
I bought a watch for 80RMB (about S$20) and gave it to Sis.

To get to the Bird's Nest, we had to brave through the cold again :) The stadium's exterior looks like a unique mesh of different materials.

The inside of the stadium:

From the outside of the stadium, we could see the torch resting on top.

The plants resembling lallangs presented a picture of wildness in constrast to the clean look of the manmade structures and buildings. There are some sphere-like objects which I guess are lamps since I didn't take a closer look.