Comfort Food

Without my regular lunch colleague who has since retired, my choice of food for lunch has actually widened but recently I been hankering for simple food for lunch. So I will drag myself in the hot sun to Maxwell or Chinatown for what I call comfort food.

Two bowls of porridge with fish cake, 'chaipoh' (preserved turnips) egg, and pickled vegetables. Hmm simple but so pleasurable.

Is this a sign of growing old?

Heartware not Hardware

The outcry over Changi Airport continues 3 weeks after the result of an international survey showed that Changi Airport has dropped 2 ranks from 1st to 3rd in the survey.

Now I always find it amusing that Singapore is so obessed with ranking. We pride ourselves on being first or the best in all sort of surveys like best worker, best ports, and we go and do all sort of weird stunts to be in the Guiness Book of World Records - biggest dumpling, biggest mass display...... We ranked our schools and now we are going to rank town councils.

Does everything need to be ranked? It is really so important to have the best airport, best port, best worker blah blah blah and if we can't win, is it such a terrible things that we have to agonize over it for so many weeks.

Come on, I like Changi Airport and I think it's great but seriously, for those who have traveled often enough, yes Changi Airport is great. It's big, efficient and near to the city but you know - it lacks something. Just think back to when was the last time an immigration officer smiled at you or said 'Welcome back' to you? Contrast this with said Australia or Thailand and you will know what I mean.

I think at the end of the day, it does not matter what ranking we are but whether our heart and soul is behind those ranking. Just look at Chinatown. It's so sterile now the Government might want to consider submitting it to whichever World authority for 'Cleanest, neatest' Chinatown in the world.

My point is - ranking - be it of infrastructure, schools or town councils is not important. What is important is that these organisation behind it delivers what it is supposed to do in the most cost economical and efficient way and with a great smile. It sure will make a helluva start of a day to be greeted enthusiastically by the bus driver or the MRT staff. And as they said, a smile a day makes the doctor go away!

I Spy ~ Typewriter Tattoo

Was on the train on the way and I couldn't believe what I saw.

There sitting in the train was a guy with a tattoo of a typewriter on his forearm!

I seen many type of tattoos but a typewriter? Now who in the world will have such a tattoo? Me think he was previously a typist or stenographer. M think it is a picture of his first typewriter.

Whatever it is, it looked totally unglam and uncool.

Cat Killers

Another cat killer on the loose! I wonder what turn normal human being into cat killers? And what happened to these people later on - will they turned to killing people when people get in their way or become a nuisance to them? Hopefully he/she will be caught soon and as punishment - maybe made to eat cat food for the rest of his life!

But one strange thing about this incident. How come Bayshore which is a private estate has so many stray cats? Much as I love animals, the number of strays who had felled to this looney is now 19 and that is a tad too many even for a big development such as Bayshore. How did the MC allowed the cat population to grow until this size? And me think the kind souls who are feeding them should stop doing so and let nature take its course.

Previously, my place too had some problems with cats. They were climbing into the windows of houses on the ground level and there was a huge hooha when one of the residents got scratched trying to chase a cat out of the house. How did that end? A vote to bring in cat traps etc was shot down but eventually there were no few stray cats in the estate.

I guess with no food to eat, the cats will simply go somewhere else so that should be a better solution than culling or posioning them.