Calamity circus

In the wake of last week's MRT worksite collapse, yet another fatal construction site accident has occured, this time near NUS.

Thursday April 29, 4:17 PM
1 worker confirmed dead, 5 missing in Ayer Rajah worksite accident

SINGAPORE : One worker has been confirmed dead and another five others are still missing in a construction site accident at Ayer Rajah Avenue on Thursday.

The Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) said 10 workers were taken to hospital, while another 17 were treated for injuries at the worksite.

SCDF said the workers were working on a six-storey steel girdle when it collapsed into the basement of the building. The building is next to the INSEAD Institute along Ayer Rajah Avenue One.

The collapse site is a square of about 200 by 200 metres, and three metres deep.

Rescue officers are continuing their search for missing workers believed to be pinned under the steel beams.

Last week, the collapse of a temporary wall at an MRT construction site caused a road section along Nicoll Highway to cave in, leaving four people dead. - CNA

As usual, local news sites prove once again that they cannot handle the traffic when such an event occurs. Hooray for local news!

If this doesn't drive the government to push for higher safety standards in our backwater construction industry, I don't know what will.

Shutterbugged

So I went ahead and signed up for a wedding photography course conducted by Stanley, the guy who shot for my wedding day. No, I don't intend to switch careers. Not when my photography sucks as bad as it does. :)

The oops bit is that I'd forgotten I'd promised to loan my cam to my brother-in-law for his vacation, which overlaps two lessons. Doh! Thank goodness GrunGe agreed to lend his 300D to me to cover the two sessions. Actually, nevermind goodness, thanks G! :)

Flash, Defender of the Universe
Part of the course covers flash photography, and most indoor event photography requires the use of a flash. Which means I had to get a flash unit. Stanley was recommending that I pick up a hammerhead flash gun, but being the lazy cur that I am, I decided to go with a standard hotshoe mount flash.

I more or less had my mind set on the Sigma EF-500 Super DG, and went down to Alan Photo to check the price. Steven quoted $380. :( After I told him that TKFoto had quoted $360 including tax, and some calculator punching on his part, he agreed to match the price. Can't say that I was happy about the initial quote, but I guess I should have expected to bargain a little, regular customer or no. Picked up four extra Sanyo 2100mAh NiMH AA rechargeable batteries for $2.50 each as spare for the flash.

Am I going nuts over a hobby that I barely rank as 'amateur' in? Time will tell, I guess.

Random imagery

Light business


Shophouse shambles


I should have asked for wet weather allowance

Mozilla blues

I've been getting gibberish from blogspot blogs lately. This kind of crap only happens to my Mozilla FireFox sessions. IE gets away scot-free, damn it.



Sent a note off to the blogger team, hopefully someone's looking into the problem.

Good omens

Phones were buzzing and singing nonstop this afternoon about today's cave-in at the MRT construction site along Nicoll Highway. If I'd stopped to ask the cat sitting atop the neighbour's car bonnet, chances are it'd already been to see the queen and back.

Mozz and I didn't manage to get close enough to the site to snap pictures of the fracture proper, and we were turned away at the Concourse by security as well. Yeah I know, I should have hidden the camera. Silly me.

Frankly, I think the whole situation has been blown all out of proportion by the media in its frenzy to bring you the news now damnit now. People calling the radio stations and being put on air, some with interesting perspectives to relate ("billowing yellow smoke, smell of gas, crane toppled in"), some without ("my boss called to ask if anything happened to me, but I was safe, hahaha"). J ranted about how the reporters on the telly kept going on and on about the whole thing, as if it were a terrorist attack or such.

The injured will be sent to TTSH, the dead are dead, rescue teams search for the missing. It happened, now get on with your own life. Let the people involved settle the dust, and you can look in afterwards.

I am reminded of a comment Faz made once; when I'd given him the link to the Straits Times Interactive, and he'd read about the demolishment of the ANA hotel on the front page: "a hotel gets torn down in Singapore and it becomes front page news?"

Sure, it's big local news. Most of us grew up knowing where Nicoll Highway was, most of us cross it several times a year, if not just in one week. Most of us were not there when it happened. That's a blessing, don't you deny it. And in this "big picture" world, the collapse really is just a small detail. Isreal and the Hamas killings. Insurrection in Iraq. Maradona in hospital. Kevin Spacey mugged by youth in London park.

"Good thing it didn't happen during peak hour," said J. Now that is a significant truth. And I am so very glad of its reality.

Heaven on a dish

... can be found at Akane.

The master is truly the master.

Reality checks, Life takes pawn en passant

This has been a really crappy week.

J stayed up really late one night, berating the credit card company for blocking her internet purchase, which was, of course, a time-limited offer. And had to wake up at 6am for a conference call. Which started a big cycle of insomnia for both of us.

I received a statement from said bank with an annual subscription charge for their credit line, and a $5 interest charge, which annoyed me to no end. Apparently I'd let a monthly GIRO payment bring the usually-black account into the red for a while, and $5 is the minimum interest charge. So I called up and cancelled it. The bank officer tried to persuade me of its usefulness as an overdraft facility; I countered with the availability of other proper, and far cheaper, overdraft facilities available from other banks should I require one. Game over, insert coin to continue.

J managed to drop a loaded plastic IKEA drawer on her big toe. First time I'd ever seen her super-pain-tolerant-self rolling on the floor and bawling loud enough to wake the neighbours. She shrieks even on the most ginger contact with the blackened nail; tomorrow she'll visit the clinic for a professional opinion. I hope nothing's broken.

The father of my dear old friend passed away last night, from cancer. Just attended the wake. The deceased used to be a large and jolly man; his cadaver lying there in the coffin looked so shrunken and shriveled. For a moment, I was at a totally different person's funeral. Then reality asserted itself with the realization that I'd spoken to the correct son just minutes ago. Not a pleasant feeling.

The brother of another friend attempted suicide last night. He survived, but the whole family is in really bad shape from the shock.

Come on, hit me again. What's next?

Mini mana?

Sent the car in for servicing yesterday to solve a couple of problems. Wiper noise was apparently caused by the arm hitting something under the bonnet, fixed. Interior light doesn't come on - I thought the bulb had blown, but the CSA (agent) says the whole unit is faulty. Stock for the part came in this morning, so I'll need to bring the car back for a 1-hour job in the next couple of days.

The third and more worrisome problem was that the engine would cut off (ie. stall) sometimes upon de-clutching, resulting in complete power loss. Usually when trying to employ engine brake with downshift. The weird thing is that the car stalls way too gracefully, without the shaking or shuddering normally associated with a clutch stall. A quick re-ignition would kick the engine back to life, but all the same, I'd prefer it not to happen while I'm negotiating a bend.

At first I thought it was due to my own bad driving habits, but then, J had also encountered the same problem several times. It's strange that this car has stalled on the go more times in the first three months than the old March, also a manual, had stalled in its entire eight years of service.

The CSA tells me that they'd upgraded the car's software and increased the engine idling speed slightly. Haven't run into the stalling problem again so far; we'll see how it goes.

Killin' me coffee shop

We moseyed over to Purvis Street and into Killiney Kopitiam for lunch today, after employing the usual phlegmatic destination-deciding methodology.


It's too damn hot

Like in many establishments, the staff are far more friendly when it's less crowded. Curtness is a culture during busy periods. Good thing we got there early.

The auntie-slash-waitress recommended the 'special' Winter Melon soup set, white rice and egg scrambled with diced long bean. Decent-sized and tasted ok, but priced at $5. Most of that must be pure profit.


All this could be yours for just five dollars!

The kopi-penh hit the spot, though. I haven't had a decent one in a while; it's usually hot kopi or kopi-C lately.

Easter hues, Monday blues

Another relaxing long weekend, over and past. Spent most of the time lazing around the house and playing Disgaea on the PS2, and still managed to find time for a swim on Saturday with Akane.

Last week, with strong recommendations from both Dake and Derien, I started reading George R. R. Martin's A Game of Thrones, the first book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series. 22 pages was enough to get me hooked; my last read was terribly insipid by comparison.

GRRM's pace is fantastic; the story flows smoothly without stagnating, and the plot is deep and involving, multi-threaded as it is (in comparison, Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, IMHO, suffers from terrible fits and starts, over-dramatization and general long-windedness). Each chapter, unnumbered, is named after one character, subtly focusing your attention, and neatly sidesteps the fancy-chapter-name problem prevalent in most works of fantasy/sci-fi.

A Song of Ice and Fire looks like it's a keeper.

Moshi moshi chawanmushi
Tried this Japanese restaurant called Megumi along East Coast Road. According to sources, the chef used to work at Akashi before moving out to start his own restaurant about a year ago.

We ordered a beef kami nabe (paper hotpot), chawanmushi, some tamago yaki and one plate of the house speciality Megumi maki. The kami nabe (try saying that ten times fast, will you) soup base tasted quite similar to the stock used in some of Akashi's soup-based dishes, so my source was probably correct.

Service was passable - we had to ask twice before someone brought an extra plate of sauce for the hotpot. I wasn't terribly impressed by the food quality and taste either. Overall Megumi isn't bad, but I wouldn't recommend it.

The beatings will continue until morale improves
So it's back to work on a lazy Monday after an even lazier Fri-Sat-Sun. In the rush to get to work, I forgot that my handphone was still hooked up to the charger, and left home without it. Doh.

Meaningless photo of the day:


Shophouses along TQL

Drawing with light

One of these days, I'll have to take the time to sit down and sort through my photos, and actually pick some for printing. Steven from Alan Photo did a quick calculation for me yesterday - if I'd shot on film and developed everything, I'd probably be out about $2k on prints alone.

Just gotta love digital.

Two casual pics taken yesterday:


Pass us by


Splash?

Ups and downs and the merry-go-round

"Price is going down. Better not sell, or I'll miss out on a few bucks per share. Gonna wait for it to come up again."

That could well have been the sentiments of investors just before the market crash. Do we learn? Is history doomed to repeat itself (ugh, cliche)? Maybe.

The see-saw is always fun to ride until the fat boy on the other end suddenly jumps off. 'S funny. Experience tells us that he's going to jump, yet we hang on, stubbornly believing that we'll know when it's time to jump off.

But it's fun, isn't it.

Food attack weekend

Tried Shoki Japanese Restaurant in Orchard Plaza on Friday night. Family-style restaurant, extensive menu. They do stuff from yakitori to oden to sashimi. The food in general was a little too salty for me. There was a mushroom and egg dish, kinojo tamagotoji if I remember correctly, mushrooms and half-done egg cooked in a dashi broth which went down well. Tofu steak was good, probably the best thing that night (too bad I don't really like tofu!). The highly-recommended sake kamameshi, or hotpot rice cooked with salmon, was ok; nothing to shout about. Complimentary mochi dessert with sweet red bean paste was nice. On the whole I didn't think the dinner was fantastic. Not bad, but not exactly noteworthy.

Went back to Ju Shin Jung for dinner on Saturday night without a reservation. Boy, was that a mistake! In direct contrast to the first time we went there, the tables were fully packed, waiters bustling, kids screaming and jumping in the ball pit. The staff whipped up an extra table for us though, and we had a pretty satisfying Korean BBQ. Don't have much to add to the previous review except that there was a side-dish that seemed to be stewed diced mushroom with shredded beef, yummy.

Sunday night saw us at what I think I remember as Fatty Weng's cze char outlet in Guillemard, not at the Badminton Hall but slightly further down at the corner of Guillermard Crescent (at least their chopsticks were labelled "Fatty Weng Restaurant"). We went there on the recommendation of one of Mom's friends, who said that the beef hor fun was good. Personally, I felt that the beef hor fun ($8) was only so-so, the pai kuat wong (beef rib king) was tough and salty, and the butter prawns could have been better for $20. Their deep fried soon hock ($26) was fantastic, however, and the bo choy (spinach) was done very well. Pretty ok overall, I guess.

Just saw Oishi Pizza (Map) on Shien's messenger status. Gotta remember to give it a shot sometime, it combines two of my favourite culinary categories. :D

Real virtuality

Mogi is an online multiplayer game in Tokyo. The twist? It's played in the real world, mapping the player in the virtual world by the location of his mobile device.

Now that's what I call mobile gaming. Not silly little head-to-head football games on the train.