Incomplete

We were pretty excited when we first did the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator assessment a few years ago. It seemed almost magical that a personality scale was able to sort us into sixteen premeditated "character types": If you were an INTP you might enjoy being a scientist; if you were an ESFP you might probably end up as a performer. We like to associate our future selves with our perceived abilities, and our assumption is that there is perfect congruence between our self-perception and reality.

Four or five years down the road, when I began to be introduced to more personality scales such as the NEO-FFM, and various other abbreviated versions of the five-factor inventory, it struck me that the MBTI, or rather, its administration, was strangely idealistic and seemed to be conveying the message that everyone has it in themselves to make something out of their lives. The administrators of the scale assigned career types that have a certain level of social standing - and therefore a sense of social desirability - to participants. They also listed famous characters who were apparently of a specific character type, as though each and every one had been assessed through the MBTI, such that students might feel assured of their future success through the identification with successful persons.

I am tired and don't know what I am writing. I have been praised recently for writing decently, albeit by someone who doesn't know who the hell I am. But it still is a positive reinforcement.

I want to eat at Rock & Ash. The fries, freshly made, I wanna try it with the chocolate dip. If I'm hungry enough for a main I'd down a grilled chicken black pepper udon or an emperor chicken cutlet. But the mains don't seem fanciful enough :( Probably should add in some signature meatballs.

Exciting but unpleasant dreams

A couple of days ago I dreamt that Sparta Kooks was dressed in Superman garb and we had superpowers. Initially we were on the same team and had to kill ordinary humans (who could still fly around). I was conflicted and refused to kill people so all I did was to generate some energy to keep them from attacking me. When all but one human were killed, I became an ordinary human, then Sparta Kook and company outnumbered me. They were setting off on a minibus to get me, but I was on the same minibus and was hiding behind the last row of seats.

Early into my sleep I dreamt I swallowed something huge and had to cough it out. I woke up coughing really hard until my mum woke up too, and asked me what I was doing. In the murkiness (I was already half-awake) I replied that I nearly swallowed something. Then I went to the toilet and took a piss without switching on the light because I didn't want to be "flashbanged". Note to self: Don't be lazy and hold your bladder when going to bed.

I remember another one, where I was kidnapped and time-travelled to a remote rural location. I had to work for a pittance so that I could catch a flight back home. The cruel boss took every opportunity to dock my pay, yet I was adamant and did not give up, despite somebody who said I would never make it (not trying to discourage me but in a note of resignation).

This one was an earlier episode: I was lying flat on the top rack of a rover (the newer one) being pursued by very persistent light infantry with small arms. Rounds were flying past. The driver was doing pretty much of offensive driving and I had to hold on really tight while remaining as streamlined as possible because the overhead bridges the rover was going under were just a few inches above my body.

I was being pursued by mercenaries who used large but harmless guns. They used big bouncy balls as ammunition and after an intense manhunt I escaped detection by hiding in what I thought was a washing machine. Turned out it was one of the numerous cubicles set up in two rows of two along a corridor, for couples to make out. (I think I blogged about this before.)

Setting things right

Mini salmon-fest at Sushi Tei with salmon mentaiyaki and salmon yoshidori; getting a three-for-35 takeaway promo at Häagen-Dazs with seven other people; having chicken rice two hours before gorging on and being disappointed with Kenny Rogers' sub-par roasted chicken and ribs; Everything with Fries' NZ king salmon with original shoestring fries preceded by an unimpressive one egg soup, flushed down with bell-ringing uncle brand of ice cream in bread; and boring sausage mcmuffin with egg.

Probable dim sum next week.

Mall-hopping

When I was a child, they knew everything.

When I was a teenager, they knew nothing.

When I exited my teenager years, they knew something again.

Guess who?

Took the day off to go mall-hopping with mum; Clementi Mall, Star Vista, and Tiong Bahru Plaza. Intended to go Parkway as well as Changi City Point but we decided to call it a day. Star Vista wasn't very exciting, far from the glamour of its website. The building was just this lump of rock between buona vista mrt and park avenue rochester. There's not much of shopping to be done, and the number of restaurants/cafes just doesn't do the space justice (but there is this korean BBQ Bornga that has gotten decent ratings on hungrygowhere!).

Huge flight of stairs leading from the second floor to the basement, not extremely useful for getting up and down, and the top landing is exposed to the elements. There is no air-conditioning between shops - building probably designed to be energy-saving - so the shops are enclosed glass bubbles lined up on two sides. It's pretty warm in the afternoon. The coffee at Owl was decent though, not the instant kind that they themselves sell in supermarkets. They had this caramelised banana and chocolate ice cream (dno if i mixed the ingredients up) on toast, but we were too full to try that. Just shared a kaya butter toast, comes with cute slabs of butter on brown kaya and sliced baguette.

I had gone to tiong bahru plaza on one occasion for a movie, and the cinema sucked because the gradient of the seats is too smooth. You will get blocked and you will block people. Otherwise, the mall has a bit of old plaza sing feel to it and there is a cafe run by ex-drug offender mr benny se teo: eighteen chefs. They are coming up with a 64degrees egg soon and it sounds like a wonderful poached egg kind of thing to me.

Dropped by at bras basah to collect a complimentary textbook (ORD eprep course!) and went to cool down at nlb. Borrowed some freud books. :)

Cheescake day

The amount of food cues at home is overwhelming. Weekends spent at home are great opportunities for gluttony. Chee cheong fun, pancakes, matcha souffle cheesecake. Haven't started on any important endeavours, have a test tomorrow! Only constructive thing I did was to go cycling this morning, usual route to punggol waterway and riverside park and back again.

:/

School reopens

First day of the semester, and I started off with a bit of stumble, failing to pre-read the notes and print the required materials. I was spacing out as well, hard to focus. Leave the reading to tomorrow morning. Trying to sleep earlier now.

Chocolate Muffins Day Tmr

I added my favourite Cowhead EDIT: The Laughing Cow cheese slices (by the chunk) to the popovers, and have been going by a revised recipe - 1/4 tsp of salt, and much less milk, about half a cup. I tried to make a chocolate-filled pancake using an egg ring the night before, but did not quite succeed. It turned out looking like the matcha souffle from Hoshino, but the insides weren't too well done. The cheap frying pan doesn't have great heat distribution properties, so it takes too long to brown one side and by then the other side is too dry to make a nice golden colour.

Tried this truffle recipe as well, it's easy and the result is decent.

Truffles, in case they don't look like it.

Salmon Mentai

I ate at Sushi Tei for the first time on Monday. I always wondered why the queue there was always so long. We were there slightly ahead of dinner hours, so there were plenty of seats. What I found annoying was the server expecting you to order a drink before you even had a chance to look at the menu. I decided on two salmon-ish dishes: Salmon mentai (loved this after eating salmon mentai sushi) and a salmon wrap with golden mushrooms. Ice cream-like dessert. Wonderful meal at less than 25 dollars per pax; it is a decent eat-out once in a while.

Afterwards we went to look for Blackball, a new dessert shop in Singapore, with a branch at Bugis+ as well as Star Vista. I was expecting lots of 芋圆, like the shop in Jiufen, Taiwan, but it was nothing like that. $4.90, and you get lots of grass jelly, two yam balls, one yam dice, one pumpkin chunk and some pearls. Pretty pathetic, and if you ask me, they have got the formula wrong. Pearl and grass jelly are so commonplace here, they shouldn't be the mains; the yam balls and whatnot should be the focus in this dessert. I don't think Blackball will be a hit in Singapore.

Popovers

Following up on the muffins - I tried the recipe a second time, and this time the consistency was pleasing. But I baked them too long and they were too hard on the outside. There will be a third time soon. In the meantime, I have chanced upon English muffins sold by the pack in Cold Storage at Compass Point while buying ham for breakfast.

Made breakfast this morning; there was bratwurst (I think they are my favourite sausages for now), pan pacific breakfast ham (very little visible fat but skin is pretty chewy), scrambled eggs, failed pancakes that did not materialise, and! savoury POPOVERS. All washed down by a strawberry-banana smoothie (that contained orange juice too) but no one else liked it.

1 cup white flour

1 cup milk (I used only half of this because 1 cup makes a really liquid-y batter)

3 (good) eggs (The recipe calls for good eggs but I can't tell a good egg from a bad one)

2 tbsp melted butter

1/2 tsp salt

Slightly chewy texture, very airy and highly collapsible at the top - so eat them fast, right out of the oven! Making them tomorrow again, pairing them with reheated ready-made muffins from Cold Storage. Probably would throw in a strawberry smoothie as well.

Next up: Sauteed mushrooms and pumpkin soup. Will look for more baked goodies to make.

Hoshino

The fuwa fuwa appeared on the table, generating great interest with its airy mixture of cheese that had chosen to rise high up, out of the baking dish. Deep within the baked wobbly goodness the rice, ham chunks, button and golden mushrooms waited to be discovered by the intrigued explorer. The matcha soffle did not disappoint either, with its hot green tea custard that filled the palate with warm green tea goodness.

Food Fest

Mon - MOS @ Bedok Point, Junfa's Dinner
Tues - Bumbu @ Muscat St (Bugis)
Wed - Nana's Green Tea @ PS
Today - Potential failed attempt at making English Muffins
Tomorrow - unconfirmed Hoshino Coffee @ PS

Also, I have lost 2kg unknowingly!

Today's muffin-making process reminded me that one step taken wrongly and we will spend a disproportionate amount of time trying to correct that step (all-too-familiar feeling). I put too much milk and now the dough consistency is wrong and I can't knead it properly :( Now I have to wait one hour for it to rise and hope for the best.

~

Junfa cooked Platoon 2-minus a Christmas dinner of beef and vegetarian spaghetti, served alongside ham with applesauce, and a delectable pumpkin soup. I was intrigued by the pumpkin soup and got the recipe from Junfa, but to me I might just use it as a dessert. Junfa asked how the meal might be improved and I told him everything was about fine. Thinking back, I might suggest we heat up the ham to get the oil onto the surface of the ham, serve it hot, and perhaps boil the applesauce to get a thicker consistency.

Bumbu was a surprise to me. Tucked away in Muscat St (near Sultan Mosque) among dozens other food shops and amazingly uncrowded on Christmas Day, the ?Thai/Malay?-styled restaurant sets you approximately $20 back for an adult and in return you get unlimited orders of

- seafood egg salad (mainly prawns)
- tauhu telur (tofu with egg)
- cold tofu appetiser (sliced soft tofu with diced century eggs)
- stir-fried black pepper beef
- sweet and sour chicken
- steam fish
- kangkong

and others (which we didn't order) including
- red/yellow/green curry

I don't like (and am glad to be mildly intolerant of) prawns but the egg was done nicely. The dish barely made one round around the table before all the egg base was gone. Tauhu telur has a rojak-like gravy and the stir-fried tofu was crispy on the outside, soft on the inside. The other tofu dish tasted better than upmarket varieties from Chinese restaurants such as Paradise, without the fermented odour that lingers on the latter.

The beef was nothing to shout about, but the pepper wasn't overpowering and the meat wasn't overdone. Sweet and sour chicken has more skin than chicken but the crispy skin soothes the palate without being too jelat. Steam fish...may want to skip. Kangkong is just kangkong.

Afterwards YL and me decided to be slightly more adventurous and ordered a durian sticky rice, and a pumpkin custard. These were the two desserts that should only be considered, if at all. :P

Nana's Green Tea specialises in supposedly premium green tea. I'm not a tea connoisseur but it's definitely not the sweet off-the-shelf kind (Pokka, Yeo's etc). I chose a hot matcha latte (hot/cold) without all the bells and whistles (cream, chocolate syrup, parfait) to see what it was all about. Had a Locomoko Don - beef patty with rice, cherry tomatoes and broccoli - to go along. Mr Wong wasn't hungry and selected a parfait for dessert. In a perhaps unnecessary flaunt of technology and resources by Nana's, our orders were taken down with an iPad mini by our server; however, with the kitchen being separated from the sitting area, I presume that the iPad was used to send customers' orders directly to the kitchen without too much movement between the two locations.

The food came fast, with the matcha latte in all its frothy goodness, accompanied by a small sachet of sugar. My first sip was centred on the surprising bitter aftertaste, after which I quickly emptied the sachet into the mug. The milk in the latte lent the tea a softer edge, and it flowed easily past the first cluster of tastebuds, giving off a delicate sweetness. Past my second line of defence, the aroma of the tea emerges, and when I swallowed, the slight bitterness followed. Pretty decent. I might give the parfait a try next time.

~

My dough is currently in the second stage of rising. Just another half an hour more.

:)

Googling

Slurp in chinese.

First video yay

Look, if you had one shot, one opportunity
To seize everything you ever wanted - One moment
Would you capture it or just let it slip? 

Kids

When I was much younger I imagined working adults to be very proficient in their work and mature in their dealings. I later learnt in the army that this is called 'professionalism'. I tried to learn as much as I can in the army to achieve this professionalism and tried to earn as much respect I can with what little role I play in the organisation.

Just when I finally understood what was professionalism about, and was feeling a little better about my slight increase in professionalism, my term of service was up and I left, a slightly better person.

To my intense disappointment, this professionalism that I have so held dear to my heart was extremely lacking in what used to be my utopic idea of the working society.

Faith in humanity reduced.

Long day, little reward

There is no screen too big, no price too high, as long as it is what you like.

Something that I keep seeing at telcos and gadget shops: A shopper looks at a phone he doesn't like and says "the screen is too big" and goes on to buy one he likes with a bigger or same size screen. Another says he "doesn't want to spend too much on a phone" he doesn't like and goes on to buy one that appeals to him but with a higher price tag. This world is so surreal, filled with excuses and annoying people.

But what I wanted to say was I have been reminded that

There is nothing too big to handle, no price too high, as long as you want it.

Lessons

I was scanning through my old blog posts to put the new 'Food' label on those posts about new foodie haunts. I came across some posts about my NS experience too, and I figure, I'm finally coming to the realisation that the good times actually manage to balance out the really bad ones. Took me long enough huh. For example I came across the one on Juliet ProTerm/Golf FoundTerm graduating and some memories came flooding back, especially the ones in Thailand. I made lots of mistakes, but in the end my cadets appreciated and credited my efforts. The section was small and tight-knit, and they all graduated successfully. I managed to see mirror images of myself in a couple of them, and I hoped I gave them a better training than my predecessors gave me.

On hindsight, even though I knew I have been careful with the lives of my charges, especially during those code black training days, there were some occasions where I might have toed the line. I have never fallen out during training sessions myself; so I expect everyone else to be able to be stronger than me, because I was really unfit. But you won't been thinking that when there is a death of a trainee on your hands.

There were lessons to be learnt then.

Serious question, but not being political or solemn here. Just curious.

Is the government's basis for the GRC a form of affirmative action? Was reading an article on Harvard shared on Facebook when I came across this term.

On a lighter note, I found this when retrieving CH's notes, a 'souvenir' from TQ Live '09:

Again, a lower-quality photo for quick upload

Oracle sent us a CD souvenir of our antics at TQ Live and this amount of packaging is required for something the size of a CD jewel case, albeit slightly thicker (but bubble wrap is always appreciated!). I had refused to discard the box at that time due to a weird hoarding habit but it's now waiting to be canned together with other cardboard pieces.

Hay Dairies

If anyone is interested in trying goat milk, we can order together next time so you won't have to go down to Lim Chu Kang or purchase 1.6L at a go. Eight dollars for a 800ml big bottle and $2.50 for a 200ml one. Chocolate milk is only available in 200ml bottles.

Does anyone remember the Sony Ericsson W950i and W900i? I liked these two phones at the time but they were just too expensive. The 950i boasts an 'incredible' onboard 4GB of memory'! I was all 'wow 4GB?!' The only drawback was there wasn't a camera (I think I considered buying this phone before enlistment.) The 900i has this 'cool' swivel design that not many phones had and was so drool-worthy to me. Also, I just discovered that the 'chin design' is not unique to HTC (think Hero and One V)! The SE W910i has a reverse 'chin' too.

Pretty good colour reproduction, I would say

I took this test shot to see if the demonstration phone was working as it should. Do you see what I see? A HTC booth using a Samsung TV??

(With the recent launch of the Samsung Galaxy Ace 2, I'm seeing some challenges ahead for the One V and Desire C...)

This photo took so long to upload! This is just a 600+ kb copy.

Huh what is this?

Drink of the year.

The soya bean milk turned to curd in less than a day... It's kind of tasteless and would probably make you shit your pants all day long. Don't try. Apparently mr bean sells soya bean pudding too.

Ang moh sizes are so big, korean sizes so small.

I'm giving away this Threadless tee, size large. It's not been worn before but it went through the washing machine once. To give you an idea of the sizing, it's too big for me - too wide at the shoulders and too long. 

Toast Box

I'm waiting for my goat milk now. Placed the order on Saturday and it's arriving on Thursday.

I bought goat milk because a friend has gastric problems and he claims that the milk can alleviate his ills. So I'm going to try starting/ending the day with warm/cold goat milk and see if it helps. My stomach ailments have become more frequent and it is very distracting indeed. I have stopped taking coffee in the morning because I always wake up with a swirling stomach and coffee seems to make it worse. This is also the reason I am looking for ginger tea, but the ginger tea I have at home is spicy on the palate but doesn't really warm up the stomach. I've browsed through some basic TCM books and a few claim that Asians tend to have 'cold' stomachs (寒胃)?

Had our first meal at Toast Box today; don't try the ice tea/coffee melaka! Not for the faint-hearted. The coconut sugar has a very weird taste that I couldn't cope with and eventually I left half of it untouched. There goes $1.90 ($3.80 per glass)! The thick toast and eggs were fine though, but the supposedly delicious Bo Luo You (pineapple bun with a slice of butter) was not great. Toast-wise the butter milk thick toast was fragrant but it might get a little jelat if you try to finish it all by yourself. I have no preference for the 'traditional kaya toast' between Ya Kun or Toast Box but the folks find the Ya Kun's bread crispier. Planned to eat the fried dumplings and rice dumplings at Neil Road but were too filled up at Toast Box and Outram Park MRT felt like an inconvenient ride from MBS~

Yep, went to MBS (ArtScience) for the HP Exhibition, which I didn't really enjoy because I have ceased being a HP fan since a few years back? It felt a little short and the (I forgot the word 'merchandise' and went to google but turned up this (?!) instead) stuff at the end were total rip-offs. Some of the wands felt so plasticky but were super pricey (there is a set of six wands going for $350). A plain t-shirt with a HP crest costs fifty bucks. The cheapest things - Bertie Botts' (jelly beans...) and 'chocolate frogs' cost six bucks a pop. An exhibition guide alone would set you back by thirty. A photograph that was taken before the exhibition trail by temp staff would be another twenty for a 6R size. Too crazy!