A camera at hand

I've taken to carrying my dad's digital P&S (Ixus 400) in my pocket lately, since it's rather inconvenient to pop the SLR out for a quick shot at whatever catches my fancy. Plus, it doesn't attract quite as much attention, which usually makes me (sometimes the subject, too) uncomfortable.

Snapped this one with it today, while waiting for J to complete her purchase:


Upwards

I think I'll make it a point to bring it around with me more often. Better than not having a camera handy when the opportunity arises.

(Local time in Boise: Feb 26, 11:22 PM)

Road culture shock

The one thing that strikes me as odd about driving in Boise isn't the left-hand drive; I'm pretty comfortable traveling on the 'right' side of the street. Neither is it the right-turn-on-red policy, nor the dedicated middle lane for turning - that actually works pretty well in practice. Nor is it the fact that nobody parks in reverse.

It's about how every driver floors the accelerator once the light turns green.

It came as a surprise when the elderly grandmother-of-umpteen in the 4x4, idling next to me at the red light, screeched off in a blink and left me eating exhaust. It was an even bigger shock, after I gunned the throttle up to what I thought was a decent acceleration, when I glanced at the rearview mirror to see the headlights of the GMC truck behind span the entire width of the mirror.

Woah. Who cares about miles per gallon?

Equally bewildering is the average driver's propensity to brake late, and to expect everyone else to as well. My habit when overseas is to always brake early and evenly when approaching a stop, but here, more often than not, my behaviour causes the vehicle behind me to filter to the next lane where possible and suddenly pull up hard into a shuddering halt just car-lengths away.

Bang!
I wonder if their tendency to brake late was responsible for the accident we found ourselves in yesterday. We'd just come to a complete stop at a red light junction when our Mazda 6 surged forward suddenly, accompanied simultaneously by a loud thump from behind.



The driver of the Chevy claimed that her foot slipped from the brake; personally I think she just wasn't paying attention. No injuries or serious damage, but the rear bumper of the 6 had cracked and a piece of the Chevy's license plate holder had broken apart.

Later, the folks at Hertz told us that we should have called the police to make a report, as they'd make a third-party assessment of the accident. But no biggie; they'd let their insurance company handle the claim. We ended up taking a blue Camry as a replacement.



Me, I'm still going to accelerate slowly and keep my distance.

(Local time in Boise: Feb 23, 03:21 PM)

Photo update

Uploaded some trip photos here. Have fun.

(Local time in Boise: Feb 20, 01:20 AM)

The best milkshake ever

As recommended by J, we went to Moon's Cafe in downtown Boise to get milkshakes. Feeling particularly brave, I ordered the full-sized Oreo milkshake. It took a while to come, and when it did I got down to business:



Smooth, rich, thick but not too thick, and totally weight-enhancing. Stomach started waving the white flag at the halfway mark, which means I really should have stuck with the half-sized shake. Good thing the other food orders took some time to come (long cooking queue), so by the time we walked out of the cafe, we'd more or less finished the bulk of our milkshakes.

And that completely wrecked our meal tempo for the rest of the day.

So, did I think it was the best milkshake ever? Well.. maybe. Probably next week we'll try again. Half-sized.

(Local time: Feb 20, 12:46 AM)

It never rains in California

The Weather Channel is reporting heavy downpour and flooding in some parts of southern California, including Los Angeles. I hope Sam and family will be all right.

I'm in Boise ID right now, sitting at the desk in our hotel room. And it snowed this morning!



There's a nice high-speed complimentary network connection, and I've been pretty comfortable working out from here the past couple of days. We're using a cheap humidifier that J bought for the room, and the whole water tank gets cleaned out in a couple of hours. It's just so dry here!

The flight from Changi was pretty ok, but I didn't manage to get much sleep at all. The seat next to me was empty, thank goodness, but the joker in the following seat kept flipping on his reading light at odd times during "sleep hours", which jolted me awake and was really annoying.

Gotta break here, going out to get some breakfast and what I'm told is the best milkshake ever. More later.

(Local time: Feb 19, 09:56 AM)

Quick bite: Sarpino's Pizzeria

Sarpino's pizza is much better than Pizza Hut's (although that could also be said of most pizzerias, cafés and street hawker stalls). There's one nearby at Eastpoint Mall but I happened to try the one at East Coast Road.

The crust was brown and crispy on the outside and still chewy on the inside, but most importantly, didn't have a texture like week-old rags. Cheese and pizza sauce were on the heavy side, and halfway through my Canadian Classic pizza I wished that I'd ordered something with more greens - a bit jelak after three slices.

Definitely not as good as the discs from Sistina's, but at least I don't have to go all the way down to fight for parking lots at Chip Bee Gardens.

Places left for me to try on the Singapore pizza trail: Spizza, Pizza Taglio, Cantina, Fuenti and Pizza-da Donato. Why aren't any of these in the East :(

Are you a smoker?

Sigh..

Just shoot me now

.. the worst bit is when my dad pulls up a song which is way over his comfortable registers, like a Rod Stewart number.

I am so glad to be back in the study, behind a closed door and several walls. Can't imagine getting smacked by that full force five.

Turn down the volume, please

It's Chinese New Year tomorrow, and right now I'm at my parents' for reunion dinner. I sure didn't expect to get away with a quiet dinner (you know, just the three of us since J's in the US and Chris is stuck in Melbourne).

But realization strikes as I broach the door - at once, broken strains of Hotel California assault my senses and send rapid impulses to my brain with the urgency of a fish in the net, screaming take cover!!! There's a whole bunch of people at home, and they're all eagerly crowded around the telly and two microphones.

Karaoke is the bane of my annual CNY experience. Just once a year, I don't mind making the rounds to visit relatives that I only see for mere minutes out of a whole 365 days, eating all kinds of rubbish, chatting with the easygoing uncles and avoiding the questions of the nosy aunts. But I absolutely hate it when they break out the mics.

It's bad enough that the sound penetrates every living (or otherwise) cell in the body, but having it perform tremolo is something that makes my hair stand. It's worse when it's a song that I know that gets mangled! Sure, it's fun, whatever. I just wish I could wear earplugs without being rude.

Ah, the warbling has stopped. Which means I'd better go outside and get on with dinner.

More crab!

Boy, are we gluttons or what?

Tonight's dinner was mostly Sri Lankan crabs at MellBen Seafood in AMK. First time at this place for me. We had butter crab (wow), chilli crab (a little spicy for me but yummy) and crab soup (thick, creamy and spicy, plus free soup refills - great combination). Kind of overdoing it on the crab, but I guess we all had an itch to scratch, brought on by last night's fantastic curry version.

Photo by request, enjoy cuz!


The second order of butter crab

Other fillers and sides tonight included pai kuat wong-style honeyed ribs (sweet and tender), ginger-and-spring-onion frog's legs (just cooked, very tender) and deep fried seafood tofu (not bad, but I like Zi Yean's version better). Plus a couple of veggies and mushrooms.

Total damage for the four crabs and assorted extras was around $220+, not including beers and sodas; not too painful for nine people.

Although I think we could probably have polished off one more crab. ;)

Curry crab + prata = yum!

We had dinner tonight at my uncle Yeo's place, all home-cooked stuff which I have no names for but tasted really good. I surprised my aunt and cousins by digging deep into the curry crab, since they've always known me to be a non- (actually, anti-) chilli person. But over the years I've developed a taste for prata curry and chilli crab, the not-too-spicy versions, at least. My aunt had forgotten to buy bread, but she did pull out a pretty mean (and fluffy) instant prata for me to soak curry with. :)


Dusk view from uncle Yeo's flat

You could tell that everyone at the table was a true blue Singaporean crab-eater by the speed at which the crabs' bodies were snapped up, leaving a whole stack of pincers. Inevitably, the conversation flowed over to good crab restaurant recommendations, which somehow ended up being a reservation at Mellben for the same group of people tomorrow night (well, later tonight since it's past midnight now). More crabs! Dad's feeling pretty apprehensive about tomorrow's Sri Lankan crabs though, because of the tsunami-seafood poisoning scares.

Joo Chiat photos posted

Can someone tell me what the building feature in the photo below is called?



I particularly liked this one:



Anyway, see the rest of the photos here.

Home alone

J's in the States for a business trip, so I've been left to my own devices for two weekends, after which I'll fly up to join her.

Woke up late this morning, and spent quite a bit of time wondering where to go for lunch and after, searching for places I'd heard of but never been to like Colbar (search result: presumed closed).

I'm hopeless when it comes to deciding where to eat, which is why I usually end up having fast food when alone. McD's last night, and today's lunch too - but that's because I wanted to play with the free WiFi connection + O2 Mini. Mother, in her infinite wisdom, has arranged dinner for both nights this weekend with family, so I've been spared two potential junk-food meals. Thanks Mom! ^.^

After lunch I figured I would go take photos of John's soccer boys during their training session, but it turned out that they have a big game tomorrow morning and would be resting today. Oh well.

In the end, I took a rather pleasant photo-walk around the Joo Chiat area. It feels strange that I actually grew up around the East side but haven't really seen much of it for myself - well today that changed a little bit, and I'm glad I took the time to. Will probably put some photos up at the usual place later.

Got home and took my first swim for the year today. I haven't been exercising for ages; it feels really good now that I've more or less recovered from last year-end's bad spell.

And I've decided to be lazy and start bringing laundry back to Mom's for washing.

Speaking of which, I'm late for dinner, gonna scoot.

Parting photo from two days ago:

City sunset

Taken yesterday: