Jelebu Dry Laksa, the Restaurant

Finally toddled down to Vivocity to taste this Jelebu Dry Laksa in a way more commercial setting. I didn't bother going earlier since the restaurant just opened in September, still didn't take reservations, and suspended online delivery. The year end crowds were sizeable and we'd end up in an unwanted queue if we got there later than 11.45am.

Had a date with old friends, and they suggested laksa in an air-conditioned venue. Vivocity worked okay as a convenient location for all of us. We made it there at 11.30am to no queue and only six people ahead. We easily got a table. Whewww.

There were four of us and we thought to share some starters. Ordered shrimp, luffa and egg soup, three pieces of scallop atop an otah pillow (don't bother ordering this unless they have otah with something else), and I really liked those taupok poppers stuffed with mackerel drizzled with rojak sauce and peanuts. 

Then we all had mains of laksa, of course. Some opted for Tigers prawns; a few of us opted for a lobster laksa. The presentation of the lobster laksa that day was... average. We ordered a full lobster and it came deshelled and piled in a heap. LOL I think the kitchen didn't care about presentation very much and just slapped on the meat. For $56++, I expected the heap to look a bit nicer. I very much preferred how it looked in the pop-up. Well, at least a full lobster was indeed given, and the flavors were all in. They added a dollop of sambal at the side if I wanted an extra punch. 

Steamed Prawns & A Whole White Snapper for K!

Off we went to TOTO Seafood to welcome K's short jaunt into town for the festive season. I know riiiight, this is like my fifth visit there in two weeks. It's really my to-go casual restaurant with friends who share similar tastebuds. We really love the ambience and the decent food, and most of all, Choya could come along. Went easy on the drinks. Well, nothing heavy. We had beer to start, and also brought a bottle of Oban Distiller's Edition (distilled in 2007 and bottled in 2019), and paid a reasonable corkage. They had no soda, but cheerfully offered plenty of ice cubes and iced water. 

Everyone had a big lunch and it'll be a looong two months of mad feasting. We decided not to over-do the cholesterol and wisely skipped the crabs and fishhead curry tonight. K missed our local zi char food. Opted for a big plate of prawns steamed with Chinese wine and garlic, san low (style) beehoon, har jeong chicken wings, spare ribs, sweet potato leaves in black bean sauce, and stir-fried qing long vegetables. Nobody wanted too much meats, but we loved the chye poh and soy steamed white snapper.

We did great with the bottle of whisky — we finished it. Well, it wasn't a full bottle of whisky to begin with. Heh. Then the boys still wanted a small plate of chicken and pork satay at the end of the meal to nibble with the rest of the whisky. Ha! No satay for me, thanks. I finished up the fish and was so stuffed. 

Boxing Day 2022 :: Eurasian Curry, Fish & Beef!

Went over to our friends’ table for dinner. K outdid himself with not one but three dishes! There was a pot of Eurasian curry, and oven-baked a sole, as well as two slabs of seared ribeye and sirloin. They even rustled up two cheeses and some ham. It was quite the ideal meal for the man too, since he could go low on the carbs and still get in all the nutrients.

We made no contributions, except to boil up a pot of basmati rice and brought it over, and filled our stomachs. K said that the curry wasn't Devil Curry, but Curry Cocu. It was one of those Eurasian curries that are done in the family at festive seasons but not well known or documented. Food was sooooo good. K can really cook. And he never goes big on the marinade or the seasoning. He likes to keep it effective and simple to salt and pepper, lemon or lime. Unsurprisingly, we went easy on the alcohol. Nobody wanted to drink and feel like crap the next day. We all needed our sleep. 

Choya is now familiar with the friends and their three cats. She can now wander around their home freely, even with three cats around. Two mostly ignore her and chill out where they want, and it's usually away from Choya. They co-exist in peace close to one another. But the youngest Siamese girl is quite ferocious and would poof up and hiss if Choya goes near her. Luckily for all of us, even when the cat's growls turn loud and angry, Choya simply moves away. Choya understands a cat's 'NO.' Then the humans step in to soothe any ruffled fur. Heh.

Christmas Day 2022

I'm getting the quiet Christmas holidays I want. NO OBLIGATIONS. I don't want raccuous parties, I don't want to drink copious amounts of alcohol; I just want to read. I honestly wouldn't have minded skiing this season, trekking or doing something quiet in a wintry town. But as it is, there's a Smol Girl. So I'm keeping it really quiet and fiercely guarding my mind space.

A joyful mind maketh age flourishing: a sorrowful spirit drieth up the bones. [23] The wicked man taketh gifts out of the bosom, that he may pervert the paths of judgment. [24] Wisdom shineth in the face of the wise: the eyes of fools are in the ends of the earth.

~ Proverbs 17:22-24, Douay-Rheims

While Ryo’s pawrents are off skiing in the Dolomites, we took him for a staycation at ours and included him in our Christmas dinner. Ryo isn’t used to dining at restaurants or hanging out at bars the way Choya does so comfortably. He’s also a tad afraid of the dark. Christmas Day dinner isn’t the most ideal to take him out. So we stayed in. He was as happy as a lark rolling around on my floors.

Ryo was the cutest Christmas elf and came bearing loads of gifts for Choya and us. Aiyohhhh. His pawrents shouldn't have lah. I'm rationing Choya's gifts anyway. Keeping some. Otherwise there would be too much good stuff given to her in a two-week period! 

We had the foresight to take the floofs out for a mid-afternoon pee. There was a weird squall that rolled in at 5.30pm and lasted through dinner. Thank goodness there was no crackling thunder. I tasked the man to eyeball the floofs while I prepped dinner. It was nothing fancy — oven-charred Brussels sprouts, and a main of fennel roast pork with rhubarb sauce. The man was very happy with dinner.  

Choya had her usual raw meats, offal and bones. She shared a Christmas log cake (beef) with Ryo. I also grilled him beef chuck, and sliced it up for him. That silly boy doesn’t have a voracious appetite and I’d need to tempt him with small portions of food thrice a day. But he also can dig in his heels and not eat the whole day. This boy only eats when he's really hungry. He's 16kg; I have no idea how he's willing to go without food if he isn't in the mood for it. When he finally comes to look for me to ask for food, that could be at 11pm. Zzzzz.

Christmas Eve Dinner 2022 :: 28 Wilkie

We finally got around to checking out 28@Wilkie. Helmed by Chef Seth Lai who joined the restaurant in 2020, the five-year-old restaurant has flown under the radar, but trotting out innovative menus, and consistent standards in the quality of food. It also touts itself as a 'caviar bar', alongside Dom Perignon branding. 

We bravely turned up for dinner on Christmas Eve. Oof. Popped an antihistamine and tucked in to dinner. There was a complimentary glass of champagne. The meal began with lovely light flavors in the form of Hokkaido snow crab with granny smith apples and hybrid caviar. That caviar was oddly sweet. Not quite for me. I loved the lobster with Jerusalem artichoke and kinkan. 

Since we're both not white wine people, we opted for red wine. I chose an easy 2011 Barolo Riserva Bussia Cascina Dardi from the family estate of Alessandro e Gian Natale Fantino that would go with the menu. Then we had monkfish with turnip and perilla, and drizzled with ankimo gravy. Not bad at all. Then we had pasta!!! It didn't disappoint — tajerin with parmigiano reggiano and white truffles. The man had the Tochigi wagyu with foie gras, and he enjoyed it, surprisingly. I skipped that and asked to swop out the beef. They replaced it with amadai (tilefish) for me. That was really tasty. 

There was a palate cleanser of mikan with pomelo and lemongrass. The savory dessert was pretty okay. The man really loved the Nagano apple with cinnamon, matcha and buttermilk. The petit fours were weird, and too sweet for me. There were nougat, osmanthus chocolate, and salted egg macaron. 

Food was delicious and well-executed, and it was a really pleasant experience because the kitchen knew what they were doing, and we needn't wait forever for our food to arrive. It made Christmas Eve dinner very memorable. I suppose I'd pop in again at some point, but it wouldn't be my first choice of restaurant since we have too many similar options around. 

What of Translucent Children and Wind Sickness

I definitely wasn't very keen on reading Louise Erdrich's 'The Hollow Children' published in The New Yorker on November 28, 2022. But I had 30 minutes before coffee with C and I didn't feel like going to the cafe that early. Plonked myself on a random bench to read.

The story follows the journey of a school bus caught in a terrible blizzard in North Dakota in 1923. It's fictional, but there were so many real-life incidents, and an especially severe blizzard in some years. So in actual recorded history, the blizzard of 1923 was terrible. These natural disasters bring out a parent's deepest fears, and also that of caregivers, school bus drivers and such. The children themselves too. 

The story began with the men at the town's Tabor Bar trading stories over beers. It led to them telling stories about their ancestors and people in the past and what they experienced. They got to the blizzard of 1923. Diz talked about an Uncle Ivek in the family who was a farmer, a part-time schoolteacher and one of the bus drivers taking the children to school. 

An interview with Deborah Treisman at the magazine threw up the question of why the bus driver wrote down his experience, 

The story begins with some guys swapping stories in a bar. Normally, you’d expect what follows to be a tall tale—a story that’s been handed down and changed a bit with each retelling. But, in this case, you tell us that Ivek, the bus driver, wrote down what had happened to him. Why is it important that there’s a written record?

Ivek records his experience because, for him, this was even more than a life-or-death drive in a blizzard. It was an unnerving plunge into another world. His experience of terror and pity, his tender desperation, and his overwhelming fear for the lives of his students make his story a timeless one for schoolteachers. My parents were schoolteachers. My oldest daughter is a schoolteacher. The idea that schoolteachers should even have to think of arming themselves? Unbearable. That is also why I wrote this story.

At 8am one April morning, Ivek took the wheel of the school bus and took his charges to school. He drove along the road till he saw a white churning mass. He couldn't outrun the blizzard. He slowed down to feel the tires along the road in the whiteout. He tried to get the children to sing and be calm. They even managed to split food in lunchboxes in the bus to share. 

Wind sickness and hallucination are for real. In any physical endeavor. Nature reminds us that she will always triumph if we don't keep our wits about us. In that drive, Ivek thought he had driven the bus into the lake, and settled at the bottom. At this juncture, he saw that the children had turned hollow and translucent. Thankfully, that was not real. He got to the school safely, with all the children intact and not too afraid. 

The chill in Ivek was far deeper than the fire could touch. The reality of the cold world beneath the ice was stronger than the warmth of the school. He turned away from the stove so the children wouldn’t see his tears. What was up and what was down? If he turned back, would the children still be warm and alive? Gritting their teeth in pain and happily whimpering as their numbed feet and fingers prickled to life? Or would they be frail blue human bubbles he’d failed to rescue? Would his son and his daughter be among them? Dissolved to froth? He closed his eyes. Again, he was down there with the fish darting in and out, lakeweed clogging the children’s mouths, each seat inhabited by a small, vanished life. And who was he? The driver or the one driven from existence by relentless snow? He reached—  

Agnid pressed into his open hand a cup of snow she’d melted. He looked at her. She was sturdy. The water was hot, steeped with a piece of boiled wool she’d cut away from her coat. This was, she said, an old cure that her mother used for wind sickness, times when the mind could no longer bear the wind’s moans and mumbles and a person started hearing human voices.  

He took the cup, drained it down. It tasted horrible, and he was cured.

Or, rather, he was better. For the drive would leave its mark upon him in a way that someone who had not seen those children, blue and hollow under the lake, would never understand. That was why he wrote it down. 

A Christmas Meal with BFF

The BFF is off to the islands diving over the Christmas holidays. Before that, I grabbed her out for a Christmas dinner together. Didn't bother booking a 'nice' restaurant for a meal or dressing up. That's too fussy. Too much festive foods are a no-no for me; they might just make my IBS and indigestion flare. We didn't need 'designated' Christmas meals to be turkey and ham things. It's not necessary for us. 

BFF and I settled for comfort food. That was more important to keep our stomachs happy. We opted to have bowls of congee for our festive meal at Ah Chiang's at Tiong Bahru estate. We didn't have to make any reservations, and there was plenty of tables available when we walked in at 7pm. 

Added stir-fried watercress to share, and one century egg for me. Sliced ginger for her, and loads of red chillies for me. It was raining all day, but it cleared up in the evening. Our giant bowls of lean pork congee, and minced pork and fish congee were utterly satisfying. Happiness is this simple — comfort food with great company. Our friendship remains strong, and we value each other. There's nothing more I want for Christmas.

A Farewell Lunch at Home For Y

Had Y over for lunch and to spend the afternoon in the most mundane way with us. She's working as a domestic helper in Singapore, and after 20 years here, she is going home for good come month's end. I'm glad that she has had a decent and fair current employer for the past 6 years.

She was our family's domestic helper for a number of years, and is excellent in many ways. For many reasons that I shall not go into here, after two years with us, she had to move on to another (better) employer. I only wished I could hire her in my personal capacity, but I can't. This flat is too tiny. So I've kept in touch with her, meeting up for meals, tutoring her in the courses she had taken to navigate Microsoft Office, etc, generally making sure that she is being fairly treated, and is okay.  

Y is kind to Smol Girl. She doesn't quite know how to handle her yet, but she will get used to it with some training, for them both. At the very least, Smol Girl doesn't mind Y. I've been toying with the idea of hiring a helper to help me with the dog. But a full-time helper isn't quite ideal for me. I wouldn't mind a part-time helper for say a few months when I want to travel and do stuff, or a dependable house-sitter. Haizzzzz. I would seriously consider having full-time help if it's Y. But she's going home, so that throws this idea out of the window. 

Y has cleverly saved up and budgeted her salary. She bought a residential plot of land in her hometown of Indonesia, and built a home for her family. Not only that, she has also managed to scrimp and buy another sizeable parcel of land to build a separate building that is a motel of sorts, a simple homestay to welcome local/domestic travelers. That will be her income when she's home. At least that's her plan. Who wants to work in Singapore as a domestic helper at the mercy of your employers' moods in close proximity? If you could sort it out financially, wouldn't you want to be home and working on your own terms?

This doesn't come as a surprise since I've walked through these plans with her. She's extremely entrepreneurial, and her life experiences have come in handy where she lacks structured academic education. I'm optimistic that this venture will work out. The homestay has been in operation for 1.5 years. She has been remotely running the cosy homestay from Singapore for the past year, and from her words, "It's doing okay, making a bit of money." She's even thinking of having catered food for the guests, except that right now she can't find a cook or be there to supervise food hygiene standards. Wheeeeee. I'm sooooo proud of her.

Daisy's Dream Kitchen always caters good food.

3-3-3 Pull-Ups ☑️

I had a personal fitness and strength goal to hit by the end of this year. I wanted to do 10 good pull-ups. No crazy fast, but controlled slow. I learnt how to activate and utilise the lats, traps and rhomboids to do it. After straining my elbows and biceps doing pull-ups too quickly, I learnt not to ever do that again.

I could do 10 pull-ups on the rings easily by October, but it doesn't count until I'm sure I can sustain it. So far, I have been able to do so. The requisite HIIT has been settled by Ritual this year. So at this gym, I wanted to be able to do their slow 3-3-3 pull-ups on the rings with ease — 3 seconds up, 3 seconds hold, 3 seconds down. 

Yesterday, I did it. ✔️

The gym's set of pull-ups asked for 3-3-3 X 3 sets X 40 seconds each. I know that my max is 12 in such slow sets. I didn't feel like pushing. I did 3 pull-ups a set, totaling an easy 9. The 30-minute workout was decent. Dunno about my heart rate. I still don't wear a watch that measures it. Now the problem is, I'm not sure I can do pull-ups on a horizontal bar this easily. Hahahaha. 

This year has been all about pilates and gyrotonic stretches, rotation and resistance. HIIT has been fulfilled by the low-commitment (in terms of membership rates/subscription) but effective-enough classes at Ritual. I'm not a fan of F45 or BFT types of HIIT. Even if I'm bored with Ritual, I'm not sure how I'd find an easy replacement. Fitness studios have sprouted like mushrooms. I can't have any classes that don't allow last minute cancellations; neither do I want to be tied in to an annual subscription package. The Megaformer would be a great workout. STRONG Pilates from Australia is apparently opening up in Singapore. It uses what the brand calls, Rowformers. It's similar to the Megaformer. We'll see how it goes. 

A Festive Table at Milano Pizza

Went to Milano Pizza for a festive lunch with the friends. Hadn't seen them for a few months with everyone back to traveling on work trips and stuck in long trials, consults and conferences. It was lovely to catch up with them over a looong casual lunch. The restaurant wasn't that crowded, surprisingly. 

Shared loads of food, so there was no pressure to eat so much. Whewww. The zucchini pizzette held whipped bottarga and tobiko. Okaaaay. Weird, but okay. The shrimp wedge salad was delicious. I had to have one shrimp. Just one. Ate loads of the iceberg lettuce that came with it. In fact, I ate most of it since no one else seemed to want the rest of greens. Hahahah. Also slurpped up the burrata. There were beef cheek bolgonesse pizza, and also the restaurant's famous Sicilian Grandma Pizzas — anchovies and caramelized onions, and the upside down breadcrumb.

Also had more carbs in the form of rigatoni with garlic and tomato sauce, and the lobster tagliolini. I was eyeing the pici alla gricia, but I had no more stomach space to be greedy; another time then. Everyone wisely chose to skip alcohol at this lunch. The current dessert menu held all pies. So we shared apple pies and the nutella verona chocolate pies. 

It was bright sunshine when we went to lunch, but stormed later on. Lingered a while before we left at 3pm. I was so glad that I put Smol Girl at playschool for four hours. Hurhurhur. There was a short burst of heavy rain and a bit of thunder. But she couldn't hear anything from inside the mall, and was occupied and happy. 

Not Quite About Tteokbokki

I thought the title is cute and I didn't mind a flip if it's an e-book. This isn't a genre I'm keen on; I most definitely wouldn't buy a hard copy. I just found the title cute. It's 'I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki' (2018) written by now 32-year-old Baek Sehee, translated by Anton Hur in 2022. 

The selling point is apparently 'As recommended by BTS' RM'. Ahhhhhhh. I dunno who is RM. I cannot recognize who's who in BTS, but okay.... BTS sells things huh? This would explain why I'm 1447 on our National Library Board's waiting list for a digital copy. The notification for me to borrow and read in Libby came only 6 months after I reserved a digital copy. Dohhh.

I didn't know what is tteokbokki. It made me curious. When I stared at the choices of cooking styles of tteokbokki at the restaurants, I decided not to try it. It's literally spicy stir-fried rice cakes. That meant gochujang max, and that weird sweet sauce. NO WAY. It sounds like a very thick mee hoon kuey or a very different kind of elongated gnocchi. I'd eat it if I can find a light version that doesn't have these sweet or spicy sauces layered onto the rice cakes.

This is Baek Sehee's 'intimate memoir', a recording of her dialogue with her psychiatrist over a 12-week period. The young and presumably successful social media director at a publishing house seemed to be suffering from burnout and started seeing a psychiatrist. She was diagnosed with dysthymia, a "persistent depressive disorder or a state of constant, light depression". She noted down what transpired during her weekly sessions and added her own reflections. It culminated in this book. 

I almost stopped reading at this point. I'm not keen to be mired down into reading the venting of these dark emotions, and for her to state that her type of depression is "baffling". I decided to speed-read it to just get a gist of it, and not comment or form any opinions. The book began with a Prologue to tell readers that happiness comes hand-in-hand with confronting fears and suffering and being unhappy at the same time.

Even in my most unbearably depressed moments I could still feel an emptiness in my heart, and then feel an emptiness in my stomach, which would make me go out to eat some tteokbokki — what's wrong with me? I wasn't deathly depressed, but I wasn't happy either, floating instead in some feeling between the two. I suffered more because I had no idea that these contradictory feelings could and did coexist in many people. 

I went through all of the writer's emotions and thoughts. It is, indeed, deeply personal. I sped through them because she isn't my friend. I'm not keen to know every detail or understand her. I'm not even trying to draw parallels so that I could help friends or whatever. Sorry ah, I'm not that great a friend sometimes. There're only a few people I would give my all to, to help and still not be pissed if they should yell at me or not speak to me for a few months. 

While Chapter 13 is the Epilogue, it isn't the end of the book though. We have another two chapters to go. There's a Chapter 14 that holds the Psychiatrist Note, and there's a looooong Chapter 15 of 'Postscript: Reflections on Life Following Therapy', before we reach the end of said manuscript. 

Chapter 13's 'Epilogue: It's Okay, Those Who Don't Face Darkness Can Never Appreciate the Light' does a self-reflection at the end of these sessions with the psychiatrist.

I tended to discount anything positive that happened to fall into my hands. Even when I managed to accomplish something difficult, or when I wore a pretty dress, I would immediately decide my accomplishment was no big deal; the dress would lose its power. Nothing in my grasp seemed precious or beautiful. The real problem was how this principle began to apply to people as well. The more someone loved me, the more I got bored of them. Perhaps not bored — they ceased to sparkle in my eyes. 

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

But even as I read my finished manuscript, I still hate the way I go in and out of depression and happiness, and it's hard to find meaning in it. I went in and out of the clinic that way, and here I am, before I realized it, years later. 

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

This book, therefore, ends not with answers but a wish. I want to love and be loved. I want to find a way where I don't hurt myself. I want to live a life where I say things are good more than things are bad. I want to keep failing  and discovering new and better directions. I want to enjoy the tides of feeling in me as the rhythms of life. I want to be the kind of person who can walk inside the vast darkness and find the one fragment of sunlight I can linger in for a long time. 

Some day, I will.

Chapter 14 'Psychiatrist's Note: From One Incompleteness To Another' holds her psychiatrist's thoughts, especially when she knew the patient would be recording the sessions. The psychiatrist didn't expect the manuscript to hold such vivid details, and raw emotions put out for the entire world to read — it was as thought the notes in the patient's chart came to life. 

I found the psychiatrist's words/advice rather helpful. An extract here from the end of this chapter has the psychiatrist putting this on record, 

This is a record of a very ordinary, incomplete person who meets another very ordinary, incomplete person, the latter of whom happens to be a therapist. The therapist makes some mistakes and has a bit of room for improvement, but life has always been like that, which means everyone's life — our readers included — has the potential to become better. To our readers, who are perhaps down and out from having experienced much devastation or are living day-to-day in barely contained anxiety: I hope you will listen to a certain overlooked and different voice within you. Because the human heart, even when it wants to die, quite often wants at the same time to eat some tteokbokki, too.

Tasty Snacks & Edibles

That day I had chores to do at home, and scheduled a few deliveries to receive since those were chilled and frozen items, and edibles. Then surprise surprise, more edible gifts from the friends also arrived. J's Christmas box of dips, cheese and crackers arrived beautifully packed from Loaded Gun Kitchen and The Cheese Deli.  

Then the friends' 滿月盒 arrived (to celebrate their newborn son turning a month old). The sweets and savory items were supplied from Traditional Bakes by Nicole Tan. I was surprised to see glutinous rice in there, along with a small tub of sambal. There were two portions of Chinese-style glutinous rice; it was almost 5pm, and we had no dinner plans that night. I decided to snack. I promptly ate one portion of glutinous rice that held peanuts and a ton of fried shallots, and the sambal was spicy. Wow, those were delicious! 

All these presents meant that I didn't have to think about the menu for meals at home this weekend. We would have a few hearty meals planned at the restaurants, and wouldn't want to eat so much at home at lunch or even for dinner. We could rustle up something with all these gifts. I had cooked up a batch of Impossible beef bolognese sauce to keep in the fridge for the weekend. Boiling up a batch of wholewheat fusilli to go with that would meet all needs for carbs. 

Since there were no plans to head out for dinner tonight, we stayed in. Didn't even need to go out to tapau food or to order in. We had loads to eat. There were stuff in the fridge, including tomatoes and butterhead lettuce. There were the two hard-boiled red eggs too. Muahahahaha. We were sorted. Dinner was a platter of crackers, dips and cheese. BEST. We didn't need anything more substantial. These were enough! 

The man had a huge huge carb-filled lunch and couldn't have anything heavy for dinner either. Neither could he stomach a steak or a fillet of fish. The aged gouda boerenkaas was full of umami and while Smol Girl loved that scent, I didn't let her have beyond a small nibble. I allowed her to have a few pieces of comté. The cheeses went so well with the dips. 

Puppets Kali, Sang and Jun

From Papermoon Puppet Theatre's facebook page.

I'm not a fan of clowns, dolls or puppets. They're so creepy. I had this damn sus-face when I was pulled along to watch 'Stream of Memory' produced by Esplanade Theatres by the Bay and Yogyakarta-based Papermoon Puppet Theatre. 

An impressive puppet installation popped up on the front lawn outside the Waterfront Theater. It's titled 'Kali – A Stream of Memory', featuring a larger-than-life puppet, houses on stilts and miniature puppets created from clay, wood and rattan. In Bahasa Indonesian, the word kali has a number of meanings, depending on how you use it and how you link it. It can be used to mean sungai/sungei, a river, or the name of a species of fish, or any small river fish, literally ikan kali. So I suppose you could reference this Kali as the River God or something. 

The performance celebrates the relationship between humans and nature. Sang and Jun spend happy days by the playground — the river. One day, they met the giant Kali, an old and forgotten figure of the legends. It reminds us the nature is omni-present. We can't ignore it and we shouldn't seek to bend it to our will. Nature binds urban lives and communities and gives us meaning to our lives. 

The Waterfront Theatre is a mid-sized versatile black box with technical theatre capabilities about 5000sqm, with the capacity to take 700 standing pax and 610 seated. It's meant to cater for dance and theatre performances. The performance had ticketed seats in chairs and on the floor. We requested for for floor tickets, dressed comfortably and happily sat on the floor. NO REGRETS. The sense of being immersed in the storytelling was way more enveloped than if we had been further back in the seats. TBH, I would love to watch this literally by the river in the cool climate of Yogyakarta. That would be sooooo awesome. I feel that this Waterfront Theatre is too big for this performance; the theatre studio might have worked better. The puppets were best experienced up close, shuddersome as they could be. I tried to ignore that and focus on the story. 

Al Solito's Delightful Uni Pasta

The friends went to check out Al Solito for dinner a few months back, liked it, and generously scored us all a reservation for another awesome dinner together. No thanks to the recent rainy season, we've been staying in loads more or lugging the dog everywhere, which limits our venue choices. Meals like this aren't often had these two months, and are precious. 

Started off with oysters, calamari and a small Japanese-style pizza. I was told that the chicken karaage was very good too. That grilled cabbage with bacon was soooo juicy and tasty. Blanched and grilled. Mmmm. There were pork loin with garlic, and a 200-g slab of sliced wagyu beef, both of which totally filled us up. 

We shouldn't have done three plates of pasta. That killed us. Skip the Neapolitan — it's done the weird sweet style that children like. The creamy mentaiko pasta was decent and the uni pasta was surprisingly delightful. The man still ordered crab croquettes! Wahahaah. GREEDY.

What a lovely meal with the best company. I've been rather wary of Piu M since their standards crashed that week, and haven't bothered searching for another 'replacement'. Al Solito is a wonderful alternative. Opted for wine over sake tonight. I couldn't deal with sake again so soon this week. HAHAHA. But a highball to start the meal with is always welcomed.

Coaxed A Pot of Purple Shamrocks To Grow

Smol Girl welcomed our non-furry house guest.

When V went away for a vacation, she asked me to plant-sit. She said it was a sad plant that dropped all its leaves. She thought that if she shifted it to me, it might give it a higher chance of survival. Well. I have no green thumbs. All my friends know that. When I plant-sit, I literally let the pot sit there and water it every three days. That's it. 

Nobody dares to give me plants as gifts. Not without asking me first. I don't like plants very much. I don't like flowers either. I'm allergic to soil, remember? This is why my home has no plants in that way. I have a number of artificial greens from IKEA though. I'm especially uninterested in gardening. Also, I can't have plants dotting my floor. That's too attractive to the dog. She doesn't usually nibble at the plants, but just in case... Many plants are toxic to dogs, and most soil bits would induce diarrhea if ingested in larger quantities (relative to a 7kg dog).

After two days, I took a hard look at the plant. It was sad. It had like three stalks of leaves left. I was like, hey I think I know this plant. It's oxalis triangularis or purple shamrocks. This is highly toxic to domestic furries. Not that I know anything about plants. But I Googled about its care. I didn't really want to have to tell V that her plant died. I didn't need to think about sunlight or otherwise since my patio never gets direct sunlight. I wouldn't have minded growing herbs, except that nothing would survive. Even airplants conk out after a few weeks. 

Rejuvented plant.

I sighed and decided to re-pot it. There was nothing to lose eh. Spread out giant pieces of paper and plastic sheets on the patio floor, put on gloves and dug out the plant. Oh my. This plant isn't dead. The roots were wet, but alive; not rotten. There were plenty of fat orange bulbs/tubers in the soil. ARE THEY HIBERNATING?!!! Apparently the oxalis triangularis goes dormant after a period of intense growth. Okaaaay. I aired out these tubers, then placed everything back into the pot. And waited. 

Lo and behold! The tubers sprouted! Woah. They grew and grew. Even after V got back, the pot sat on my patio to continue growing. It coincided with a busy period at work for me, so I couldn't get the plant back to V; she was neck-deep catching up with work too. Once the pot stabilized, I found a window, and zipped out to transport the happy pot back home.

A month later, V sent me a photo to tell me that she found an ideal spot for it while watering it sparsely . This corner is a balance between direct light and bright shade. Ha! I still dunno anything about plants. But I can see that this manja pot of cheerful weeds is really rather chirpy. V sent another photo yesterday. It even flowered. Oof. I'm so amused by this little plant. 

Black Pepper Crabs at Toto!

L is in town for two weeks. Figured that he'd love to see the other parts of Singapore that isn't too snazzy and air-conditioned and sanitary. L asked Choya to come along to dinner too. To Toto Seafood for dinner it was. We gotta support pet-friendly restaurants. 

I didn't dare to over-order. Curry fishhead, sambal potato leaves, prawn paste chicken, and an easy claypot tofu and vegetables formed dinner. Carbs were supplied by fried mantou and small bowls of jasmine rice. The stars at the table were the pair of black pepper crabs. I intended to prudently order only one crab. But it was a pair for S$88 and the boys insisted that they would happily eat them all. Okaaaaay. The man was stunned that L demolished one rather easily, and skilfully. Those practiced digging. They cleaned out the crabs. Good job, boys. Muahahahha. 

We were right. L loved this place and the food. He didn't feel like perusing any Michelin-starred menus or dining in hotel restaurants. When he gets personal time on these trips, L enjoys visiting our hawker centers and checking out the stalls. In his words, somehow, Singapore doesn't have the buzz and grit of Tokyo and pre-pandemic Shanghai. Well, now that I haven't been traveling for two years, I feel it rather keenly. It's a tad... So it's up to us to find activities and corners to rejuvenate us and lend meaning to our daily routines.  

12 Bytes / Essays on Big Tech & AI

In an interview with The New York Times in September 2019, Jeanette Winterson was asked what sort of reading she did while writing and working on a book, and what type of books she would avoid. She said,

When I am writing I do all my research before I start and don’t refer back to anything until the editing stage. If I read for pleasure it will be anything well known and loved but never anything new. I have so many books in my house that there is plenty to choose from. When I am writing I like looking at old photographs of cities — London or New York or Singapore and so on.

I'm glad that the author came to speak at the Singapore Writers Festival (SWF) this year. It was such a treat for me to hear Jeanette Winterson speak in person for an hour to a small audience at at the Singapore (ticketed and held at the Mandala Club). This session was moderated by Kenneth Kwok. She discussed about how she writes and what inspires her. She also held a ticketed Keynote 'If We Can Imagine It'. Moderated by Mrigaa Sethi, the author referenced her previous book and talked about sex bots, and from all accounts, it was a thoroughly entertaining and lovely lecture; too bad I couldn't be there.

The esteemed author believed that climate breakdown and artificial intelligence will dictate the way we live; they have already done so and will influence these faster in the future. In a lengthy interview with Claire Armitstead for The Guardian in July 2021, the author spoke about how she placed women at the center of technological innovations since the Industrial Revolution, 

12 Bytes also includes a chapter on the sexbot problem, which touches on one of the book’s most insistent, and nerdiest, themes: that a benign Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) will not come to pass until we have divested the patriarchy of its control over the datasets on which all artificial intelligence is based. This means writing women back into history as active contributors to the modern world, capable of imagining the future, breaking codes and solving the knottiest scientific problems.

“It’s disappointing. It’s so crude, and it’s the place where the investment is going,” says Winterson of the global sexbot industry. “On the one hand, I talk about why an AI companion is a lovely idea, whether it’s a robo pet or just a voice that talks to you. That’s the positive side. But it’s always the same with humans, isn’t it? Then, we have sexbots, which are based on 1950 stereotypes about how a woman should behave: acquiescent, willing, always ready and patient in the home. How can that combo of 50s behaviour and porn-star looks be good for us as Homo sapiens?”

I haven't read all of Jeanette Winterson's books. I like her writing, themes and focus. But I'm not a die-hard fan. I read a few, and of course I read the recent releases. We have the most recently released '12 Bytes'. First published in 2021 in the UK, this edition was released with this line 'How We Got Here, Where We Might Go Next'. The second US edition published in 2022 is titled '12 Bytes: How Artificial Intelligence Will Change The Way We Live and Love'. (Reviews here, here, here and here.)

I read the UK edition '12 Bytes: How We Got Here, Where We Might Go Next' (2021). Unfortunately our library didn't stock the digital copies of this book. IRONIC. So I had to get the hard copy. 

These 12 long essays touch on the role of artificial intelligence (AI), on humanity, art and religion, and how we live and love. The author categorized the 12 essays into four zones — ZONE ONE: The Past, ZONE TWO: What's Your Superpower?, ZONE THREE: Sex and Other Stories, ZONE FOUR: The Future. 

It's not an easy read, I confess. I had to read it twice. These aren't stories. This isn't fiction. It's Jeanette Winterson's musings on artificial intelligence, computing technology, space exploration, climate change and our future. You'll need to decide if you like the author's tone of voice and the direction of this discussion. It's a history lesson delving into ancient philosophy, Ada Lovelace and Mary Shelley, SpaceX and its satellites, and the same old land grab at the newest frontier — space. Unfortunately this name, Tesla's egotistical narcissistic owner who really isn't a genius, keeps coming up in the discussions. Dammit.

My favorite essay has to be 'Gnostic Know-How' from 'ZONE TWO: What's Your Superpower?' The author wrote exactly what I've thought about and grimaced at as the pandemic pushed new technology to the forefront. The cult of tech and the cult of whatever-New-Light-Church aren't dissimilar. In fact, there're so many eerie parallels in their beliefs, the progression of rituals to 'eternal life'. We might as well worship chips and core processors. Our God is Electricity. 

Our new AI religion has what all religions have. 

Believers: the Singularity disciples, the Transhuman evangelists (there's even a Mormon group), the Biohax converts, the life-extension enthusiasts, the start-up brain-unloaders, the science labs printing 3D body parts, the stem-cell researchers who will 'match' your perfect body ideal — so many, so different, yet all of these sharing a Gnostic unorthodoxy of loosely overlapping ideas anchored to the central, but updating text of accelerating change, inside and outside the human body.

On the other side are the Sceptics, who take up the Orthodox position of believing in the unique specialness of being human. They do not believe that altering the human substrate can happen in the near future. Brain upload is sci-fi. AI promises are a Utopian/Dystopian distraction from climate breakdown, disaster capitalism, gender and race inequality, and the increasing surveillance and manipulation of our lives by Big Tech.

And then there is the priestly cast of tech types. Mostly men, who believe themselves to be chosen/ superior/ the new directors of humanity's future. The ones with Special Knowledge; the hard maths mysteries of programming the next world. 

//

Not for nothing is the coming glory of AI often called the Rapture of the Geeks. Or Nerds. The Rapture, for Christians, is when Jesus returns, and the Saved get swept up to eternal life.

Those of us brought up in religious homes are fascinated and horrified in equal measure by the similarities between AI enthusiasts and ole-time religion.

You know the basics: This world is not my home. I'm just passing through. My Self/Soul is separate from the Body. After death there is another life.

Bread at Dinner

It was one of those weekends when I refused to fix anything meal dates and gave my stomach a rest. Often, it's tedious to think about food when I'm not particularly hungry. But we gotta eat something right? So I assembled dinner. It wasn't even cooking. That was easy. 

The larder had chilli and cheese sourdough from Dearborn and a jar of their savory butter. Thawed out a pack of British Cumberland sausages from Sidecar and boiled them up. Fried up eggs; done sunny-side up for all of us. Added the usual raw peppers and cherry tomatoes at the side. Also heated up a pack of Soup Spoon's clam chowder to round up the meal. I made sure to heat it up piping hot. It was so good on a rainy evening. 

Dinner was literally bread, sausages and eggs. Breakfast foods at dinner, made a tad more savory. Wheeeeee. It was ridiculously satisfying. The man didn't mind it too since he was perturbed by all the '3s' his Lumen flagged all week. The non-fancy basic happy breakfast-dinner plate hit all the right notes with our stomachs, and met our nutritional requirements. 

The Yellow Pitaya

I've always liked dragonfruit in all its forms — the standard bland white flesh with pink skin, the red/pink flesh with pink skin, and the super sweet white flesh with yellow skin. I like the pink ones best probably because they're not that sweet, and I can eat it all day, every day. The red/pink flesh ones are usually from Vietnam.

The yellow dragonfruit is perfect once in a while, but because it's too sweet. I can't eat it often. This super sweet yellow dragonfruit cannot be eaten by myself in one go. I mustn't. It's got this odd laxative effect, and I will get minor runs if I do. I swear there're some sort of prebiotics in there. The fruit is thorny, so be careful while holding it. Often, the suppliers slice off the thorns, but some sharp bits are left.

The man has fallen in love with the yellow dragonfruit. He has only recently discovered it. Hahahaha. I never offered it to him because he always declares he hates the taste of dragonfruit. Then I offered him one super sweet yellow one, and he got hooked. Okay, just nice, I can split one with him. Then nobody will get the runs. 

The super sweet and juicy yellow pitaya is native to Central and South America. Dragon fruit cacti grown from seeds can take up to seven years to produce fruits. The ones we get here are mainly supplied from Colombia or Ecuador. In Singapore, I usually buy it for about $9-$10 per piece of fruit. With the mad weather patterns this year and so much rain, I'm sure fruit production and harvest are all affected. Each fruit is therefore, really precious.  

Sushi for J's 36th!

Celebrated J's birthday with dinner at Miraku. I hadn't seen her in the nights for a few months. Hahaha. We've been catching up over lunch and coffee as and when. Our October and November months were a bit mad, so we literally only met like twice? Made a date and went off to have ourselves some sushi. 

We skipped the ebi tonight. We were happy with the options of fish and shellfish. She had some preferences and I had mine. I got all my shiny fish that the restaurant had. I passed on the fried item and took the beef and egg yolk. J passed on the beef and took the fried fish. She must be one of those rare pokémons who likes to crunch shiso leaves raw like that. Eeeps. I gave all of mine to her. 

J wisely stuck to two glasses of umeshu soda. I unwisely opted for the 500ml bottle of sake. Whatever happened to drinking less?!!! Tsk tsk, impie. At least this was dinner, not at lunch. Yeah, I slowly finished it over the course of the meal before the soup and dessert. Nope. Not even tipsy. 

Happy Birthday sweets! You don't look feel a day over 30! Carry on buying the priciest Mayday 五月天 tickets because they're worth it and you totally deserve a great seat at a good show. Every year. Oof!

Awayuki Ichigo :: 淡雪いちご

I got a box of lovely Awayuki light pink strawberries from Saga a few weeks ago. When I topped up my fruits that day at the store, they offered me this new batch from Nara. Of course I took it. I LOVE STRAWBERRIES FROM JAPAN. 

This batch of Awayuki strawberries (淡雪いちご) from Nara's pretty decent too. Still firm and crisp; fragrant and sweet at levels that I can manage. Not cloying Mmmmm. These can't keep for long either. Best to inhale them within three days. Hurhurhur. 🍓🤍

I offered one to Smol Girl at tea time. She had her usual of venison topped with yoghurt. Placed the ichigo on a side plate. I didn't think that the dog cared about strawberries. She definitely doesn't like red strawberries. But today, she ate ¾ of this light pink strawberry. Hmmmm. This girl's got some fancy preferences. 

Lunch from Warung Ijo

Gosh, it was soooo good to see D and N. It has been wayyyy too long. We had them over at ours. Ordered in small portions of food from Warung Ijo via Oddle. It's a place which I've been meaning to check out but I never got around to it. Might as well order in lunch and check out their Indonesian vegetarian flavors. 

We definitely wouldn't be able to finish that much food, so I ordered prudently. The delivery was super efficient and arrived a whole lot earlier than its stated hour. That was fine. The oven would keep the food warm. We shared the carbs in the form of nasi goreng si itam buah keluak and kwetiau goreng. Added on sambal fried fish, jamur asam manis, belado tauhu and tempe telor, and stir-fried spinach. Oh, and just for fun, emping! I asked for extra sambal belado. It was spicy! Food flavors were pretty good. Then I realized what is missing. Belachan and ikan bilis. Hahahaha. 

Our friends also brought an eggplant salad that they had rustled up at home. Awwwww. The ingredients, i.e. the vegetables were all homegrown. 💚 The small black eggplants were GOOD. I love its texture and flavour. They made an extra box of just grilled eggplants for us to keep. We could just toss in some leaves for lunch tomorrow, or a piece of sous vide chicken breast, if the man prefers. 

It was great to get together for a chat over an easy lunch. Food was secondary, tbh. Seeing them was the highlight of the week. We've missed them very much. The hours simply flew by. It's wonderful how valuable friendships are always picked up from where it's left off. Not that we haven't been in contact. We have, over texts and such. In a way, when language is what we're all great at, we never lost touch. 

Doors & Memories

I scanned through the contents of the magazine and saw 'Hinges' by Graham Swift published in The New Yorker on November 14, 2022. Passed it over because of the genre, but decided to read it the next day. I do like the author's writing. 

Siblings 49-year-old Annie and 51-year-old Ian Holroyd's father Ted died. Their mother is still alive. This story is narrated from Annie's perspective, about how she felt about her father's death. She was suddenly at a loss for words. She didn't want the minister's practiced descriptions and felt angry at them. She wanted something authentic and non-pretentious. 

The minister would conduct the funeral and speak all the niceties — drawing up "a sketch of the man himself". Ian would read the eulogy, and Annie was to read a poem at this funeral. She felt anxious at this funeral the same way she remembered feeling anxious as a child. 

She remembered many events of the past, names and people, words and incidents. She remembered her Kirby Street childhood. And a carpenter named Joe Short. She was nine, and was peculiarly worried about her home's front door that was creaking badly. Joe was coming to fix it. Her father assured her he would. 

But she surely couldn’t have thought, then, what her forty-nine-year-old self could think: that ninety years was the length of a decent human life, though rather longer, as it had proved, than her father’s. And she surely couldn’t have thought then, as she thought now, that there were two things, generally made of wood, specifically designed to accommodate the dimensions of a single human being. Two objects of carpentry. A door and a coffin. It was like the answer to a riddle.

In an interview, the author explained how and why he wrote in the scene of one-sided sexual tension young Annie remembered with Joe the carpenter forty years ago,

The carpenter, though a seemingly minor character, comes to play a significant role—both serious and mischievous—in the story. When Annie has her memory, she is looking at her father’s coffin (with her father inside it). She has the thought that a coffin and a front door are both examples of carpentry, and that they are both “person-size.”  

I don’t think I’m alone as a writer in seeing sex and death as a sort of inseparable combo. This is as old as humanity, as old as mythology—“eros and thanatos,” as it can be grandly called. It’s not just that Annie remembers at her father’s funeral that her first sexual feelings occurred in her father’s presence but that this sexual memory, as she looks now at her father’s coffin, is a means of restoring his presence, of bringing him back to life. What’s more, the sexual memory links with a whole set of possible sexual shenanigans (to do with the carpenter) that Annie, as a young girl, was not entirely unaware of. I hope that this brings into a story about death and a funeral a dimension of humor, even comedy. I’d hate to think that any story of mine didn’t have at least a flicker of humor. And sex and humor—another rich combo.

Annie was fidgeting with a loss of words to use when talking about her father. She had all these memories of her father going through her mind during the funeral service. She was to read a poem after Ian delivered the eulogy. She considered ditching that, and to talk about a memory of her father when she was little. In the end, she kept to the script, and read the lovely little poem chosen and printed out in the Order of Service booklets distributed to attendees.

The author wrestled so much with the protagonist's vocal words and inner thoughts because that is a whole process behind a grieving mind. That's how our mind's eye views situations and find links and meaning to the different streams of memories an event might induce. The author said, 

As you say, this story has quite a lot of focus on particular words, even a blunt, obvious word like “door.” This is something I like to do generally in my fiction: take particular words or combinations of words, perhaps familiar expressions or clichés, and see them in some new light. Though stories are made with words, they are driven by things beyond and beneath words. For this very reason, stories can prompt us to an awareness of words and our mysterious relationship with them.

ความอยากอาหาร :: ต้มเล้งแซ่บ

I had an insane craving for the Thai style spicy pork spine soup (tom leng saap or tom saap leng, ต้มเล้งแซ่บหรือต้มแซ่บกระดูกหมู) with sticky rice. I can do this soup quite easily. It's easier to prep than a pot of tom yum soup. BUT I didn't feel like cooking my own, so I stopped by Un Yang Kor Dai for a fix. Went there for lunch after gym, so I first inhaled two coconuts because I needed to replenish electrolytes. Chilled coconut juice in its shell is sooooo refreshing. 

Ordered a dish of grilled eggplants for the man who wanted vegetables. I didn't want any. I was very focused on finishing my pork ribs and soup. The tangy and spicy mix of fish sauce, lemongrass, chillies and lime and lemons is irresistible. The only way to eat this dish for me, is to pair it with sticky brown rice. Wheeeeee.

Un Yang Kor Dai presents their leng saap with a flourish. They fire it up before pouring in the soup. The restaurant's version is fairly watered down in terms of spices and chilli. There isn't a ton of chillies and spring onions or coriander piled in the soup. The kitchen has opted go light on those. This version isn't as fiery as what I would have liked, or what any stall in Thailand offers. But it would do. 

Half A Peking Duck To Myself

I had a long week of sorting out administrative stuff for the old folks. After a few house visits, I was exhausted and hungry. Randomly strolled to Peach Garden at Chinatown Point. It was mad crowded on a week day (why ah?!), but they had a table for a solo diner.

I hadn't arranged to lunch with anyone. Didn't want to join my fellow volunteers for lunch either. I needed some downtime to myself. On many days, I prefer having a coffee or a meal alone. That means no dog too. NO SMOL GIRL. Hahaha. It gives me time to recharge. Today, it was just me, my food, my phone and my thoughts. I didn't even bother to reply messages. Opened up Libby and read.  

Accepted the appetizer of achar. For $5, it was decent. Had a bowl of shark cartilage fish maw soup, and half a Peking duck. That was utterly satisfying. Asked for the duck meat to be stir-fried with mee sua. Took a bowl of that and tapau-ed the rest home for lunch the next day. The 1.5 hours of solitude were pure bliss. And yes, while not thinking about work and reading, by the time I got home, I had figured out some fairly acceptable solutions to messy (work) situations.  

Doong Ji in the East

The man wanted a tofu jigae of sorts. I'd usually find a few dishes free of gochujang and kimchi to eat at any Korean restaurant. Hopped in for an easy dinner at Doong Ji Korean Restaurant. We always take a table outdoors, of course, and for a good reason, we only come in the evenings. 

Their menu offers standard Korean decent-enough fare, which works for us. The ordering system is fuss-free. Scan menu into phone, order and pay via its online platform. Perfect. The servers are friendly enough too. Tonight, the man got his tofu jigae, and I decided on a beef bulgogi with brown rice. There was banchan and we ordered an additional serving of vegetables. Made for a filling meal. 

Had the moscato soju tonight. If it was a tad sweet, I couldn't tell. The ice cubes melted down and diluted it to a most acceptable flavor. I was tickled that this restaurant's ice cubes fit into the small shot glasses. We're in the East so often that I dunno why we didn't move here to Katong or Joo Chiat. Maybe we should. Heh.