Breakfast for Floofs and The Husband

I was a tad upset that the resort made a decision not to offer breakfast delivery for Choya to the room anymore. I only had two choices — she would either eat it at breakfast with us (out of the question), or I get it boxed to-go for the room. Of course I'd get it boxed. 

When I turned up for the breakfast on the first morning, I understood why. I went at 9.15am. The crowds were so bad that it didn't make it pleasant to be around the breakfast room after 8.50am. They were terribly under-staffed and over-stretched. The breakfast at the hotel sucked. It has never been great, but this round was particularly vile. 

The wifi went out on the first day for 12 hours. The engineers who came at 9pm to try to fix it, couldn't. I bit my tongue to tell them, 'of course not lah'. They're IT engineers or technicians! They need permissions to reset routers and reconfigure things. This isn't a matter of switching routers off and on, or align the television's date and time. The weak router overloaded and crashed when we tried to cast from our netflix app onto to the smart television. IT had to do some updating of software patches and shifting our suite's band to 5GHz. However, we were very appreciative that they bothered to work till 11pm before telling us that they couldn't do it, and would file an incident report for the IT team to follow up the next morning. 

Also, the coffee machine at the breakfast room broke down each time it saw me. It simply couldn't extract the beans as required, or it went bonkers with its sensors. It doesn't produce good coffee to begin with. The coffee beans were middling anyway. I didn't bother with the in-room Nespresso machine or its super limited choice of capsules. After two days of shit coffee in the morning, I gave up and went elsewhere for a proper coffee. I didn't need food. I'm never a breakfast person. Eating this early sends me into IBS hell. But I need caffeine. 

After two days of nonsense, I bailed out of even sitting down for breakfast/brunch at the resort. NO. Even if it comes complimentary with the suite, the experience is terrible. They don't offer anything exclusive for the villas or the suites. Everyone is expected to turn up at the breakfast room and be treated equally to lacklustre food and exhausted staff. It's chaotic. I couldn't even call it an organized chaos. The staff was at breaking point.

I simply sent the husband down to collect the floofs' box. He could grab a bite too, since he needs brekkies and protein. Nobody could screw up eggs that badly. He went between 8am to 8.20am, and had a rather pleasant time. It wasn't that packed at that window. He got his four egg whites and two eggs (with yolk). Heheheheh. He would also try out whatever dishes that didn't look like crap.  

I doubt I'm staying at the hotel again, even if it's the only one that offers a full-sized fridge and freezer in its suite. It feels like they're trying to save costs and maximize room occupancy while on minimum staffing. They don't seem to bother to go the extra mile anymore. While the owners of the property and the general manager remain the same, something has shifted in the policies. They didn't even bother to send me an after-stay note or invitation to send in my feedback. Tsk tsk. 

The husband brought back the boxed food that looked fine since it was catered by Wholesome Paws. The quality is still there, thankfully. However, the resort's kitchen consistently forgot to give us the miso broth along with the kiddos' Japanese breakfast option. I wasn't bothered since I had bone broth for the kiddos. BUT, it's just a matter of attention to details. Tsk tsk. They did remember my request to alternate the kiddos' menu daily.

Most staycations with/for floofs work if you're staying a night or two, or yours take dry food with cooked toppers. Mine's on raw and sous vide. I need proper storage. The usual hotel rooms don't cut it unless they offer a real fridge and not a mini bar that can't keep cooked food chilled. 

This suite offers a full fridge and freezer — I maximized it by bringing my whole kitchen and plenty of food for the floofs. I like to be neat at the prep and wash area, so I brought dishwashing liquid, brushes, disinfectant spray, food storage boxes, well... everything. 

My floofs ate very well on this staycation. Choya is now demanding to eat four times a day. The total volume of food remains within range. I simply divvy up into four feeds. My schedule is literally worked around hers. This Ryo has also learnt from Choya; he wonders what's so fun in her bowl. He does check it out when she's done but I didn't offer him food, so he has learnt to ask me for food. When he's over at ours, he has taken to eating thrice a day; even on Sentosa with us too. This week, I gave Ryo an extra 60g per day, and for Choya, an additional 35g would suffice. They can't be over-eating too. With the extra exercise and fun smells on Sentosa, they're both mentally and physically stimulated, and have a voracious appetite. 

It's Not Your Fault; We Deserve A Second Chance

I really enjoyed the dark comic wit that is 'Anxious People' (2019) by Fredrik Backman. The book was quite a delight to read. 

I'm sure many readers would have also watched the Swedish mini-series on Netflix that has been adapted from the book. The six-episode series directed by Felix Herngren was released in 2021. I like both the book and the tv series almost equally. One was well thought-out and written; the other was well produced and filmed. Good acting. 

A day before New Year's Eve, a desperate 39-year-old mother who needed to pay rent to avoid losing custody of her children attempted to rob a bank, only to discover that it didn't have cash. She fled into a nearby apartment building, stumbling into one with an open house. With a toy gun, she took a group of strangers (eight prospective buyers) hostage.

The police swarmed the outside of the building. A gunshot goes off, the apartment was covered in blood, and the woman-robber went missing. The scenes were set. We followed these released hostages to the police station to hear them give accounts of what happened. 

This story is about a lot of things, but mostly about idiots. So it needs saying from the outset that it's always very easy to declare that other people are idiots, but only if you forget how idiotically difficult being human is. Especially if you have other people you're trying to be a reasonably good human being for.

Because there's such an unbelievable amount that we're all supposed to be able to cope with these days. You're supposed to have a job, and somewhere to live, and a family, and you're supposed to pay taxes and have clean underwear and remember the password to your damn Wi-Fi. Some of us never manage to get the chaos under control, so our lives simply carry on, the world spinning through space at two million miles an hour while we bounce about on its surface like so many lost socks.

Through police interviews thankfully written and told chronologically so that I don't get confused, it's eventually revealed that the hostages swapped clothing and aided her to escape. Even a police officer got involved. 

These eight people are so different. We hear all of their stories, whether we like it or not. We gotta wade through their backgrounds in order to understand their actions and the ultimate ending to this story. We have young married and pregnant, and anxious couple Julia and Ro. There are the older wealthy married couple Anna-Lena and Roger who have a strained relationship, and tried to salvage the marriage and cope by flipping apartments in order to find their perfect home. We have calm and collected bank executive Zara in her fifities who's dealing with grief and guilt over a past client who died by suicide; we have Zara's psychologist Estelle who's an elderly, wise and eccentric widow. There's Lennart, an actor hired to act as a potential buyer to boost the property's appeal. Then, there's the incompetent and optimistic realtor at 'How's Tricks' hosting the open house. 

Then we have the two policemen who are a pair of father and son — an older Jim and a younger Jack. How Jim chose to handle the bank robber led to the ultimate resolution in the story. He had stood in the stairwell, and let the robber escape into the next apartment. The blood in the apartment was stage blood.

'Roger's right. We just have to play dumb. We can say you never took the mask off, so we can't give a description'

.....................

'Who helped her get out if it wasn't us?' Roger wants to know, eager for correct information.

No one has an answer to that, but Estelle looks down at her phone, reads a text message, and nods slowly. Then she smiles, relieved. 'She says she's okay/'

Anna-Lena smiles at that.

'Say hi from us.'

Estelle says she will.

And the bank robber got away, and found solace and stability in a new home, in the apartment of a very "kind and just-crazy enough old lady named Estelle". Years later, they're all okay. All of them. There're so many layers to this story for us to mull over. 

We celebrate very human themes of sympathy, empathy, past positive connections, about what it means to 'lend a hand'. Everyone has an internal battle and our own anxieties. However, in this story, in this unforseen event, everyone came together to 'help', and really 'helped'. 

Hit Palawan Beach

We try not to do a staycation over the weekend. One, it's friggin crowded everywhere. And the hotel room rates would be mad. So we do the whole week instead, and the crowds are usually manageable. Ryo came along with us to this Sentosa staycation. I don't think he understands what a staycation is since he has never gone on one. But he feels safe with us, and is happy with us in any room. So that works fine in having him settled.  

Took them out first thing to the beach. Smol Girl smelt the sea and sand. And asked to run. So I dropped her leash, and she ran and ran. And ran some more. She was soooo thrilled. At this age, she doesn't run that far away from us anymore. We can be out of sight for a while, but she would round back. Whewwwww. 

Choya hasn't been to the beach for a while. She probably missed the sand loads. She isn't interested in the water though. 'No swimming, Momma.' She has made it quite clear. She walks along the water's edge, and when the waves roll in, she runs away from it. She doesn't mind her paws get wet a little. She doesn't want to go in. If I pick her up to put her in the water, she can swim, but she will be miffed and she'll make straight for the shore. Heh.

Ryo, on the other hand, was a tad scared. He's still frightened and unsure of the outdoors and everything. He likes the sniffing and the smells, but he doesn't like being outside much. He would swim if forced to, but I don't think he wants to do it weekly. Today, he didn't want to swim at all. He didn't even want to run that much. He only trotted around. Whatever. He was willing to wait for Choya and sit with us for a bit. He tried to bolt, but with no success. 

I watched the Smol Girl sprint all around the sand. Her paws flew across the clean-enough sand. She was ridiculously happpppyyyyy. I was happy too, to see this soon-to-be nine-year-old still nimble, fast and active. Once she was done running this morning, she laid down and snoozed. She had a choice to snooze in the sun or move to the shade. I let her be. It was a hot day, but the breeze stirred continuously, and it felt wonderful to be out and about. Of course I had a giant sun hat. Ha!