Hush little Kitty

Schlaft die Katz am stuhl. Bobo fotografiert die Katze wenn er mich wartet.

Seeing Humor during times of adversity - Hazed Singapore

The haze in Singapore has been getting worse, even going past 400 on the PSI today. Nonetheless everyone is trying to see the humor in the situation, like describing Singapore like "Genting (Highlands)" or "Silent Hill".

Some folks reminisced about an old show...

Others linked the Hello Kitty craze and the Haze.

For me, my nose and eyes are pretty sensitive, so I have been sneezing a lot and my eyes, watering, due to the irritation. I used to be able to see the CBD and Flyer from my apartment but now they have disappeared into the grey, scary whirls.

My Kollegen were also discussing whether the white side of the surgical masks should face outwards or inwards (turns out when you are sick, inwards, when you're not, outwards). But it doesn't matter because everyone is queuing for N95s.

What we got for less than S$20 at the Singapore food fair

I didn't have $ so I had to borrow $20 from Mr Bear. Bär and I wandered around the hall. Hmm what can we get for $20?

First I got two Portugese eggtarts (S$2) because Bär and I were starved. We had lost Mr Bear at one point when he walked out to answer a call because there was a very noisy "getai"-like performance on stage. So we wandered on and found that the Pocky stall selling a goody bag for S$6. It came with a blown-up Pocky stick, and 9 boxes of Pocky of really weird flavors, like pizza, chilli crab!? 3 boxes expire in Aug, 3 boxes expire in Nov, and the remaining 3 expire in 2014.

I bought some fresh cherry tomatoes and eggplants for S$2.50, and some Korean beer for S$3 a bottle. I wanted to buy soju (S$11) but the stall only wanted cash payments and I hardly had enough to buy a bottle. I also bought two cans of preserved vegetables and gluten (S$2), which goes great with porridge. Finally I also bought a S$1 goody bag (worth S$4) at Gardenia Bread, which was available only to PAssion members, after they buy a bag of bread. I bought some ciabatta (S$2.20), and looking into the bag, I noticed that there was an energy bar, a can of tuna (what the f?) and a bag of hot dog buns. 

So that was S$18.70 and I had S$1.30 in change!

Why it is important to know your friend's name

Duck was very hospitable and kind to me when I visited him in Vietnam two years back. So naturally I was very excited when it was his birth year and I could mail him something special, a commemorative coin from Singapore Mint.

Unfortunately I forgot his full name (I remembered the last word in his nick formed part of his name), and he changed his company address (he prefers that I mail to the office instead of his home). So I just wrote to Mr "the last word in his nick". Anyway shortly after I sent it out, he miraculously popped up in Skype, which he never after creating it, and he told me that at least 10 persons had the same "last word in his nick" in their names. Oh fun.

Well, after 2 months, the damn thing came back. Not too bad. It has restored my faith in the snail mail system :D Not sure if it was because it was registered mail.

A week in Bali (Day 4) - Tegalalang and Petulu

It started raining heavily during lunch and again later in the evening when we left Tegalalang. Seriously, don't bother to waste the money to enter Tegalalang. Bedugul and the other mountainous areas in Bali have rice terraces too, and the ones we saw going up Bedugul two days before were much more appealing.

We only had Petulu left. It was only 5.30pm when we left Tegalalang, so I was kind of regretting not having more places in the itinerary. Then again it was still raining so yeah, never mind. Omar said he never went to Petulu (the reason was obvious why later) with other tourists before. According to the travel guides, the Kokokan (Koko crunch - actually egrets) would fly off for the day for food (later we found out where some of them went... outside our hotel room.....) and coming back to roost at around sunset.

Flying in for a landing

Omar alighted at a booth just outside the village just like Tegalalang. So commercialized... argh. So he came back and asked us if we wanted to walk down the village which was about 800m and he could pick us up half an hour later. Or we could all sit inside the car until 6pm.

So we walked along a narrow village road (2-way!).  Little wooden shacks and tiled steps leading up to traditional homes lined the road, and we caught interesting glimpses of village life, e.g. a group of village boys gathering at one of the shacks to watch football on one CRT and play old video games on another, it kind of reminded me of my childhood, so I liked seeing that.

Village Life

Walking further in, we began to see the birds flying in and landing on their nests which were super high up in the tall trees. There were actually little warungs planted among the padi fields for you to put up your feet and enjoy the view at a less neck breaking angle.  It wasn't very easy to take photos, and being a tight pussy I did not buy a more powerful lens, and all my camera could capture were essentially tiny white long-legged things flying here and there.

kokokan nests

if you blink hard enough you can see the white birdies on the tree...

I would say it was ok, but I thought the village life was more interesting than those birds. I had more fun watching the funny ducks outside our hotel room. The tour guides painted a more intriguing imagery though: Locals sat that the birds are manifestations of souls of people killed in the aftermath of the failed Communist coup against the Indonesian government in Jakarta in 1965. Soon after some 100,000 people connected to the Jakarta coup were massacred in Bali, the egrets mysteriously appeared in Petulu in 1966.

Cats' "Memory" Violin Score

[original source (pdf)]

Kho Kho Nara

A whole group of bears convened upon the hapless Kho Kho Nara for its fried chicken. It was my suggestion, because fried chicken was the one thing I craved maximus from my South Korean trip. And I still hadn't been able to find the perfect place that reminded me of that wonderful fried chicken I had there (don't ask me about the fotos, they are probably in the junk somewhere that I hauled from my other home).

The restaurant is CRAMPED. After all it is located in the CBD, which means $$$$ in rentals. I can totally understand, but it was impossible to take photos nicely when another bear's elbow is digging into your ribs while the other is reaching over  you to grab at the yummy chicken wings.

"I'll make love 2 you like you want me to And I'll hold you tight, baby, all through the night" (Boyz II Men's song)

The chicken is INSANELY GOOD. Crispy, freshly fried, fragrant. Even the original fried chicken was wonderful. If the damn chicken is a man, I would bring him home and make sweet sweet love to him all night long and then eat him. It was really expensive, but really yum. I would go there just for the wings, they were that good. There were three flavors, Original, Soy Garlic and Sweet & Spicy. I personally like the garlicky one, because it carries the piquant fragrance of garlic and is yet cloyingly sweet. Vampires beware!

김치 찌개 - affordable but blah...they used cheap belly. I don't know why I had instant image of leftover samyeopsal

Beef 비빔밥

The rest of the lunch menu is ok including the banchan. Way cheaper than its dinner menu (same items by the way), but not worth writing about because they were a letdown after having those ambrosial chicken wings.

In a nutshell,

Kko Kko Nara Korean Restaurant
57 Tras Street #01-01 Singapore
Tel: +65 6224 8186