Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Hola

Hola! 3rd day of work and still not much happening yet. I'm keeping myself busy with tons of online courses. Some of them are quite interesting and some of them can put an insomniac to sleep. Big companies have tons of policies to read as well...snore.......zzz..........

It's so bloody hot and humid here and I'm still not used to it. I always take a shower before I go to work and I end up being soaking wet again by the time I reach the office. The walk usually takes 10 mins but I've been slowing my pace down to try and reduce the perspiration...doesn't work. Grr...

An old college friend of mine took me out to dinner at the hawker centre the other night. She went berserk with the ordering (so did I) and we ended up with so much food that we couldn't finish! I feel so guilty. I took a photo but can't upload it since I don't have my laptop yet and this desktop machine doesn't have an infrared port. But I can describe what we ate!
  • Chap fan - rice with dishes that I can pick out. Sort of like Nelayan in Melbourne except here they don't limit you to three dishes. You pick out as many as you want and then pay. I must have picked about five different dishes! And all in all, it came out to SGD$6. Got greedy and got myself the pork chop, pickled vegetables, luncheon meat, veg curry with tofu and prawns.
  • Penang style rojak - err...I'm not sure how to explain this dish but it's got sliced fruits and cuttlefish mixed with peanuts and prawn paste. I haven't had it in years and that was one plate of food that we finished off!
  • Stir fried prawn mee (noodles) - prawn mee is usually served as noodles with a prawn stock based soup and sliced pork, etc. I think it's a Singapore thing but they have a variation here where they stir fry the noodles and soup. Weird...and it wasn't very delicious.
  • Durian ais kacang - bowl of shaved ice served with all sorts of jelly, palm seed fruit (?), red beans and topped off with a sugary sauce. This variation included generous spoonfuls of pureed durian. Delicious! And definitely not for my friends in Australia and the meek tongued.
  • Popiah - spring roll sorta dish. I'm not a big fan but my friend ordered it for herself.
So that was Monday night...

Last night, I got lazy and dropped by another fast food join, this time Kenny Rogers roast chicken. Yes, you heard me right. He actually has a chain of roast chicken restaurants in Malaysia and Singapore(anywhere else?) Overall experience? YUK! Very, very forgetable and I think it's given me a tummy ache today too. My stomach hasn't settled all day and it feels like exploding right now (not the stomach if you know what I mean). I guess I'll have to eat ice cream to fix it. :-)

One interesting observation today - I work in Suntec City which consists of five modern buildings housing many offices. It has modern lifts, modern offices, modern urinals, etc. etc. but a squat toilet?!? It must be in the interest of hygiene since squat toilets are more hygienic but I haven't seen or used on in years! Lucky my hotel is nearby so when I had to make that Kenny Rogers induced emergency stop, I went for option B (hotel). Go figure...wish I have a way to transfer pictures and I would have taken a photo. Maybe it's better this way. I think people might look at me funny if I start taking pictures of the toilet or maybe even arrest me.

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