Rainy day train

The ground was dry and sky overcast as I left the house Thursday morning, but it was raining heavily at Tanah Merah MRT station when I snapped this shot, just three bus stops away. And later that afternoon it turned blazing hot.

Crazy, indecisive weather.

Of working relationships and farewells

The time we spend at work - and consequently in the company of other office denizens - comprises a substantial portion of our waking hours. Over time, social relationships develop as a result of working together, sharing the same water cooler or by simply being within earshot.

It's no surprise then that we sometimes feel a sense of loss when people leave, especially after being comfortable around them for so long. Knowing that you can shoot someone point-blank with a fully loaded nerf gun, expect to be pelted in return with a half-dozen foam stress balls, and be all cool in time for coffee can be a very reassuring thing. It's these little things that add spice to daily cubicle life.

Some people just don't get it. Unfortunately some of those who do, leave anyway. Not that I can blame them.

Today, —
(Ok, so it's actually around 2am in the morning of the following day right now, but I've changed the posting date just to make 'today' and 'tonight' sound logical.)

Today, two such have-it people marked their final day at the office. Not surprisingly, a drinking session was arranged for tonight to commemorate the occasion.

To me, drinking sessions over the years have become synonymous with departures, since I practically never step into a bar for any other reason. Personally I think it's just another excuse for alcohol- and smoke-happy people to indulge themselves, but well.. meat, poison, whatever.



See you around, Big Bert (not pictured) and Aoki (spotlight above). Don't be strangers.

Also, of Oso
Joined up with my folks shortly after for dinner, at an Italian restaurant named Oso along Tanjong Pagar Road. We got there at 8:30pm but there was a delay in getting our reserved table ready, so I took the opportunity to fish out my camera for a quickie:



(This photo honestly looks much better when viewed at actual size, please click on it to see.)

The restaurant packs tables tastefully if a little too efficiently, placing sofa-bench-seated tables close enough to each other to peek at the next party's spread. The seats were well-cushioned and comfy, though the legs of my table weren't very balanced and kept rocking at the slightest hint of elbow pressure. Modern decor, subdued lighting and a good choice of diningware added to the comfy, slightly posh feel, though it was slightly spoilt by the volume of conversation floating across the room.

I had the sea scallop cioppino soup ($11), a polished tomato-based broth which was fairly good, and the sea bream al sale ($29), oven-baked in sea salt and filleted before serving, which turned out to be amazingly juicy and tender. Yummy. Also sampled the poached veal tonnato with fish sauce and capers, and J's risotto nero (squid-ink risotto), which held a firm texture and contained juicy morsels of squid. The risotto is definitely a winner in my book.

The warm dark chocolate crostata tart with milk ice-cream ($12) was a bit too sweet for my liking, but I polished it off anyway (no thanks to J and mother who both bailed after a spoonful each).

Wrap-up: great Italian food, above-average service, upmarket. Nice place for a good dress-up dinner.

Homeward bound

Had to take a bus back to my parents' home for dinner yesterday evening. I'd gotten so used to driving to and from work that the thought of squeezing in with the rush hour crowd made me cringe in apprehension, but somehow I managed to grab the middle seat along the back row. With my legs stretched out along the walkway, the ride turned out to be pretty comfy, and the bus made good time.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm just one of the many irrational car buyers in Singapore. After all, why spend so much money on a set of wheels when we've got such an efficient public transport system? But rush hour traffic tells the real tale - we've got lots of cars!

In a nation where cars are disproportionately expensive relative to other countries, it seems sardonic yet logical that cars in Singapore look so sparkly-clean. After all, aren't we always touted as the clean country? Maybe it's just me, but almost all of the shiny cars I saw on the road trip to Malacca last week had Singaporean license plates on 'em.

Blah. Better stop ranting on about cars before I start up on another long stretch about daily encounters with annoying drivers (yet another reason to take public transport - no drive, no worries!).

More speed is always good

And it's great when it comes at no extra cost!

Quoted from my local cable provider's website:

Enhanced upload speeds for MaxOnline 2000 customers!
Simply power off and on your cable modem to enjoy enhanced upload speeds of up to 256Kbps right away.

That's double of the old upstream bandwidth! A nice gesture from StarHub, which I quickly took advantage of to upload some photos from last Saturday's model shoot excursion.

They've also announced a new high-bandwidth cable plan, providing a whopping 25Mbps/1Mbps (downstream/upstream capacity) for just over double of what I'm paying now for 2Mbps/256kbps. Is this the beginning of a bandwidth war? I certainly wouldn't mind getting more network capacity for less moolah. (Wouldn't we all?)

Self-dissatisfaction

Went along on a model-shoot trip to Malacca on Saturday, and returned with largely disappointing results.

About the food: lunch was spicy (nyonya food), which means I didn't have a lot to eat; the dinner place, unfortunately, allowed smoking - three smokers at the table effectively killed off most of my appetite.

Photography-wise.. I don't know. I had some really badly-focused/soft shots when using the 85mm f/1.8 at larger apertures (~f/2.2ish), and I'm sure it's all about my lousy technique, since focusing was spot-on in controlled testing. It didn't have anything to do with the dirty sensor, either.

(Geh-kiang me attempted to clean the camera's sensor the night before the trip, succeeding only in making it dirtier, consequently resulting in over an hour of frantic re-wiping/brushing/swabbing to restore it to a somewhat similar-to-begin-with state of filth. I sent the camera back to the Canon this morning to get it cleaned professionally, for 21 bucks and peace of mind.)

But what's worse was that nagging suspicion, as the photos marched across my screen, that I'm getting nowhere fast. Ignoring the out-of-focus, shaky-hand and otherwise technically faulty shots, when I looked over the photos I'd taken, I saw a whole lot of nothing special.

That's not where I want to be. And that's frustrating.

Over the past week
It's been mostly work, struggling between two projects that both require heavy international support and cursing the timezone and priority conflicts along the way.

Over on the food front, we tried this place called Family's Wok at North Bridge Road, courtesy of umami's food blog. Great food, hearty portions with reasonable pricing, definitely a go-again place. Unfortunately, that same night my parents' car was involved in a collision while looking for parking, which dampened the mood quite severely.

J and I had dinner at mezza9 the other night (she likes the fried rice), which proved to me once again that I simply don't know what to order there. After minutes of agonizing indecision I picked the lamb cutlets, which actually turned out to be quite nicely done. Pricey place. In retrospect, Pete's Place just downstairs might have been a better option, but done is done.

What else? I've been trying to get some people I know to try out Yahoo! 360, Y!'s new social-network-blog-photo-integration beta service. Will it be compelling enough? Will it go the way of Orkut? (Er.. whassat? Exactly!) Is it a question of too little too late? Even Friendster has been trying to get on the bandwagon, adding blogs and photo albums to their service.

Ping me if I know you and you want to give 360 a shot.

The Count of Monte Cristo

I just finished watching the final episode of Gankutsuou (rougly pronounced /'gahn-koot-su-oh/), a 2004 anime retelling of Alexandre Dumas' classic, The Count of Monte Cristo.
One truly fantastic story, absolutely riveting with fitting music and a beautiful if unusual style of animation. (Though at times you feel like reaching in and belting out two tight slaps to the protagonist...)

Gankutsuou keeps the story as its central focus, delivering a concise 24-episode tale of love and loyalty, deceit and betrayal, darkness and revenge. I've not read the original novel - a mistake I hope to correct in the near future - but other reviews have pointed out that the plot stays mostly faithful to the text, apart from being set in an unbelievably retro-modern futuristic era. Quite unlike its Hollywood-made travesty of a cousin.

I absolutely have to recommend this anime. Don't be deceived by the first ten minutes of the first episode, it just keeps getting better.

Crash boom bang

Yesterday's foosball session at the Beach Hut was an eye-opener. Not the foosball clinic - which covered stuff that I already knew - but the DYP (draw-your-partner) mini-tournament after.

The level of play was unlike anything that we've come to know in the office. My defense was hammered over and over by shots executed so quickly that I've finally come to understand the term "unraceable shot".

...
those kids were fast as lightning
and I guess it was a little bit frightening
...

There's a point where the speed of shot execution exceeds my reaction time - the ball is in the hole before I even start to flinch. As if my defenders aren't even there. I hardly need to worry about shots from the 5-man rod on defense; the 3-man shots are so deadly that shooting from the 5-man is abandoned totally in favour of a tight pass to the 3-man forward.

One thing's for sure: we need to get Tornado foosballs for the office table. The pace and speed of the ball are really quite different from what we're used to playing on the Dynamo.

Up or down?

Up or down? You decide:


Stiff drink

In the grove

One of the better shots taken during the recent family holiday in Perth. I ended up doing most of the driving bits and not so much of the shooting bits.

Relaxed time

Relaxed time

I've been spending time on other distractions recently - the recent Perth trip, getting excited about foosball again, playing RPG games on my mostly-underused PS2.

Yes there are photos forthcoming, sometime soon I hope. I've committed to sending back a print or two of photos that I took of someone in Aus, and I really need to haul my ass off the chair to do that soonest.

Truth be told, I've been trying to realign my life's priorities recently, and time has suddenly become one of the things that I never have enough of. Time to do the things that I need, want and should. But old habits die hard, and self-adjustment doesn't come easily. Perhaps age is catching up? I hope not.

Running scare

We had a brief but horrifying encounter while on the road this morning, as a twenty-somethingish man dashed out between two parked vans and right across the path of our car, just a meter away. Barely flinching, he raced on across the street and disappeared around a corner.

I was so shocked that I couldn't even find the horn on the steering wheel. Had I been traveling any faster, our car would have slammed into his legs. J and I just sat motionless in the car for a few more seconds, stunned like two kangaroos in the headlamps.

Nothing wakes you up faster in the morning than a close call.