Killed some goats today.

Beh-eh-eh-ACK

"Oi! So early ah!?"

I turned around to see who this busybody was. "Oh", my brain said, "It's the girl from reception".

"No lah I've got this stupid lunch with the Suntec management later so I'm just preparing the shop before the temporary help takes over", I replied.

Little Girl: Oh ya, my father also got invited.

Calamity Man: Your father? He's got a shop here too?

LG: Ya. A flower shop.

"DING DING DING!" my brain registered coz I was thinking of getting flowers for my little bird who wasn't feeling well today.

CM: Where's his shop at?

LG: First floor, Tower 3, lor.

CM: Ok thanks.

So I thought I'd drop by to have a look-see and whaddya know, I know the guy!

His shop used to be at The Concourse opposite the cafe I used to manage at Keypoint yeeears ago and I did ahem, get him to send a bouquet to some girl at one point. That was like waaay back. Waaay, waaaay, waaaaay back. Like, it's all so in the past right now, one for the history books *quivering lips* heh.

We talked for a bit after registering our attendance at the lunch thingy but we both didn't stay long. Couldn't stand being in a crowd and I wasn't exactly looking forward to jostling with them for the buffet that was being kept warm and heavily guarded by Gurkhas (I made this up).

I got that bouquet I wanted after I knocked off from work, walked a couple or so kilometres to where she lives, hobbling along on my wobbly left knee and all to deliver it personally to her, my little bird.

How sweet... :-)

So it occured to me a few weeks ago that my left knee's gone wobbly. Today's morning run seemed to strongly emphasize that. I was limping by the time I finished.

Two days ago, on Monday, I also realized that perhaps I'm piling on the fats faster than I can run 'em off. I'm still eating the same way I have all my life but what used to be a tyre the size of a kid's bike's around my waist five years ago is now the size of a pickup truck's. I give it five more years to morph into the size of a bus'.

I think the cells responsible for my metabolism rate is slowly deserting me.

As though that isn't enough bad news already, last night I discovered a brand new gray hair on my head. I have now a boyband of gray hair all over my head. So not only have my metabolism rate deserted me, my melanocyte stem cells' are dying on me too.

I'm sooo going to be this old, fat guy with a full head of white hopping on one leg. Talk about growing old gracefully... .

Out of every four books I borrow, three would suck. I don't know why.

I started out borrowing one book but I realized that if that one book was to suck, I'd have nothing else to read ever since I've stopped buying the papers in protest of the skewed news that's being dished out every day and also because of economic reasons.

Then I increased that to two books and then three but still I manage to sometimes get all three books to suck. So now I borrow four books at a pop. I think it might work at this rate. So far I've managed to at least get one book out of four to be read-worthy.

I don't know, I think it's weird but when I read I can actually hear the writers' accents too and there are some forms of accents my brain don't absorb very well.

And then there are slangs. I can actually tell which part of the country from which part of the world a writer is from from his or her choice of slang. Besides Singlish, I prefer Aussie (but of course, I'm a fake Perthling), Brit and American English best.

I can also tell where a writer is from from their sense of humour and wit. For example, most French writers have none of the two and therefore I usually avoid them.

Spanglish, 'Yo yo yo wassup English', Indian English and sms English I don't like to read in a book. Don't understand the writers' style.

I also don't like books from writers who try to be overly-funny (apparently it's possible). I shut MissFit by Maria Beaumont after just two chapters, dumped it into my knapsack and promised myself to avoid anything by this woman forever and ever. She's lucky I gave her two chapters. Other authors don't even get pass two paragraphs.

I'm fortunate the library exists. Imagine actually putting money into this hobby at the rate I'm hauling books off the shelves? Dang, I'd be wasting a fortune since three quarters of the books I haul would potentially suck.

It's the last week of the year. Time just zipped by like that, didn't it?

In the name of peace on Earth, I'd like to wish all members of the human race happy holidays and a blessed new year.

Don't drink and drive. Your drink might spill.

It seems that my blog has slowly morphed into the 'ayam penyet' resource on the net.

This week alone all things *ayam penyet have conquered the top ten spots of keywords that lead people to my blog. Weird or what?

My blog has more personality than I do!

Dang, it even has its own career!

Anyway, guess what else is on the list?

'My fried foods come out soggy'? 'Obermain shoes review'? What the-?

*rolleyes*




*flattened chicken

I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who's chipped in to help raise money for the China Muslim Silaturrahim Qurban fund.

We managed to hit TEN times the original target. With me, I have the names and contributions for 15 goats ($1650). Another person who heard from me went to get five goats directly from Sister Mariah.

There are those who helped spread the word around. There are those who came out of their shells to drop by and visit me. Whatever it is, all I'm saying is that this superhero couldn't have done it alone.

So thank you people! You know who you are. God bless all of you.



15 goats standing on the wall
15 goats standing on the wall
And if one goat should accidentally fall
There'd be 14 goats standing on the wall

14 goats standing on the wall
14 goats standing on the wall
And if one goat should accidentally fall
There'd be 13 goats standing on the wall...

As stated by Sister Suraya a few days ago, the collection of monetary contributions for the Qurban thingy in aid of our Muslim brothers and sisters in China is still ongoing and gaining momentum.

What was set out to be a mission to raise $220 or enough money to purchase two goats has thus far been overly exceeded, surpassed and beaten up and chewed into little pieces by SEVEN times, ladies and germs. Yeap, seven freakin' times. One more should be on the way as soon as she (my sis) decides to wake up in the room. Lazy bugger.

I'm gonna have to tabulate all the money I kept all over the house inside three of my socks, inside the TV, under the mattress and in the washing machine soon so I hope to have all monetary contributions as well as the list of names you want the contributions to be made under handed to me by the 20th of this month.

Since we are on a roll, we might as well go for 20, right guys? Only five more to go. It's after all for a good cause. I say again, please just donate any amount you can afford. $20 is nothing for you, is it? But it means a lot in renminbi that is China's currency. It's a joint effort by Muslims for Muslims. Let our powers combine!

Earth! Fire! Wind! Water! HEART! Go planet!

Show 'em being Muslim doesn't necessarily mean being some guy under a blanket with bombs strapped to his body whose whole ambition in life is to be flying pieces of kebab.

Go Planet!

For more information in regards to this matter, please contact me directly at thecalamityman @ gmail.com so I could pass you the details of my Nigerian bank account in private.

I think my temper has toned down a lot over the years. After all, I was at one point recommended Anger Management Therapy by a school counsellor. Nobody could have imagined this I suppose but to be frank I have tried to be more tolerant so maybe that's why no one could have seen this confession coming.

Well anyway, of late there have been scenarios at work that got me snapping a little bit going through many Ally McBeal moments of imagining myself biting people's heads off.

I run an IT shop called [removed] and the things there are cheap coz we bring them in ourselves from China mainly. No middleman anywhere except for the cost of shipping them over.

You'd think consumers would be happy to know they don't actually have to pay premium prices for stuff, but you'd be wrong. Took me by surprise as well.

Below is an example of an exchange with a customer:

Dumbo: Why are your things so cheap?

CM: Coz we import and process them ourselves.

Dumbo: Are they working?

CM: (Imagining myself smacking my forehead a few times) Why would I sell things that aren't working? *Look of horror and disbelief*

Dumbo: Oh I know! They're made in China riiight...? *smirking like a smartass like as though he's discovered my deep dark secret and have successfully cornered me between a rock and a hard place*

CM: Dude, the WHOLE WORLD is made in China. Your shoes are made in China, your watch is made in China, even your skin is made in China! You paid $5000 for something and you think it's made in Japan but it's actually made in China *bulging eyeballs smoke coming out of ears and nostrils*

Dumbo: Oh ok.

The funny thing is, people like him actually end up buying a few stuff anyway. It's a strange world we live in.

Look here, we are not the enemies. We - Pinky and The Brain, operators of [removed], are your friends. We are on your side. Embrace us, love us, adore us! Together we shall RULE THE WORLD!!!

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Pinky and The Brain
Pinky and The Brain
One's a genius
The other's insane!

My left leg is acting up on me again.

For the past year I've noticed that side of my body would hurt at different areas each time, especially the knees.

I suspect it's been functioning well all these years on borrowed time. You see (I hate using 'You see' at a beginning of a sentence by the way), when I was four I got hit by a taxi and ended up under one of the rear wheels. Next thing I knew my knees were bandaged yada yada yada, took it months to recover. I was told I wouldn't be able to play sports.

But sports I played. First soccer, then running and then the creme de la creme grandfather of all contact sports... rugby.

Not only that, I also served time in an elite army unit for two and a half years and represented them in rugby too. My mother thought and still thinks (for other reasons now) that I am nuts.

I have a feeling my left knee will give up on me before old age. Time to get rich real quick so I could afford my own butler!

I'm a little pissed off currently, just a little.

Firstly I woke up 45mins late this morning and missed my prayers. I did set my handphone's alarm clock last night and it did ring this morning. Well sort of.

Thing is, my phone is broken. I noticed for the last few days that sometimes it rings or beeps but most times it doesn't. I never expected it to affect the alarm clock though, but it has.

I think it's got to do with my bright idea of taking it out for my morning runs so I could listen to music on the radio since last week. All that bouncing around in my pocket must have screwed it up.

And this, after I bought a portable FM radio for $6. I didn't wanna run with a phone in my pocket anymore coz it drags the right side of my shorts down all the time.

Alas it was not to be. Adding to my headache of thinking of where to find the money to get my phone repaired, the radio didn't work too. I set it to Class 95 my station of choice but as I was running, the stupid thing kept changing stations on its own.

The worst thing was most times, I hear four stations all at once so I have people speaking and singing in Tamil, Japanese, Mandarin and English between my ears.

My soul-cleansing and harmonious morning run was not to be.

I got back home and chucked the damn thing in the bin.

At present conditions, I think the priority is to just get an alarm clock. grab some pizza and chill out with a movie. Forget the portable radio or phone repairs or even the alarm clock.

My sister Lilies just got herself a new cat called Molly a couple of weeks ago so I thought I'd pay her a visit and have Molly for dinner. I dragged Liana along too.

Allo Molly!

Sniff sniff who's this gorilla?

What an elegant cat

I'm freeeee!

I'm back. What's for dinner?

What do you mean me? Go away you gorilla.

Bistari Nasi Ayam Penyet
Malay Village
08/12/06
Rating: 5.5 billy goats

After reading the Makansutra review on Bistari Nasi Ayam Penyet a few weeks ago, I thought I really had to try it. They have outlets in Changi Village and Malay Village. They seem to like villages a lot.

So I asked her. Of course she said yes coz she knows I won't rest in my quest to find the greatest nasi ayam penyet joint on the island. And I thought why not ask Su and Khai too since they're foodies themselves and they agreed as well.

Su also asked to bring one her colleagues from work, J and his wife Cynthia. Su said he's from Perth. Being a Perthling-wannabe and all, of course I counter-agreed. Any Perthling is a friend of mine.

We went to the one at Malay Village.

Us before we started mowing everything down.

The spread we were gonna mow down

In total, we demolished eight plates of rice and nine plates of chicken between the six of us. Of these, I had like a combined total of two plates of both. Ok, ok, MORE than that alright coz I had some of hers as well.

They all seem to like the rice. Smells like buttered rice to me but Su ahem, pointed out that well, it's actually coconut milk that they used so it's more like nasi lemak rice minus the pandan fragrance.

For me though, I was more hungry than anything, as always and not because I liked what they dished out. It was above average but as I've said before, once you've tasted authentic, all others are just lousy copycats. I'm sorry, but KF Seetoh has no idea about nasi ayam penyet. Everything is 'robust' to him.

For one, the rice is a scam. Nasi ayam penyet by right should only come with white rice. No coconut milk rice, no gingered rice, no yellow rice, blue, pink or even purple ok, comprende?

And then, they kinda forgot to include the fried tofu and fermented soybeans. I'd have closed one eye if their chicken was ok-sized but they might have used quails. I thought they were quite small. That's why I had to have two servings.

The chicken was alright. It's just chicken, fried... with the wrong spices, for your info. Sigh... . Why do these guys keep thinking nasi ayam penyet is only about rice and any old fried chicken? They just couldn't be bothered, can they?

The thing is, Bistari's chicken is salty and spicy hot. Maybe they are trying to suit local tastebuds or maybe they don't even have a clue but nasi ayam penyet is a Javanese food and Javanese food is supposed to be more sweet than spicy. Sumatran food is traditionally spicy, that's why nasi padang dishes are as such. That's where 'nasi padang' got its name. 'Padang' is a Sumatran province.

Dang I wish Ita, the authentic nasi ayam penyet cook and friend of mine hadn't changed her number. I would do ANYthing to eat her nasi ayam penyet again without actually having to go to Java for it.

Us after mowing everything down. BURP!

Actually I don't really have to tell the whole world about this but I am going to anyway. Max got me a Brother MFC 4800 AIO (all-in-one) machine for the shop last night. It's a printer, fax machine, water cooler and pancake maker.

I'm not giving it a name coz I don't really like it. It doesn't feel belong.

It's not something I'd recommend to anyone coz firstly it only does black and white and secondly we can't seem to install the stupid thingy that was supposed to allow us to fax documents directly from the computer. Kept being prompted something like 'Can't continue installation as machine was interrupted, blah blah blah'.

After more than five times trying to install the damn thing it took a lot of my patience drawn from previously unknown locations inside of me to stop me from kicking the stupid, big, fat, white thing.

I surrendered. Rather than bogging myself with this mundane issue, I might as well just settle for the old fashioned type-print-fax option. It's not like anybody would die.

I've been planning for weeks to write a bit about my adventures checking out the food places around my place of work but I simply don't feel motivated to think about what to write about them.

As the foremost and leading food expert in Toa Payoh Lorong 1, I think my food reviews hold a lot of weight you know? Yeap.

Anyway, this is supposed to be a short one.

I've been wanting to try the food from Golden Pillow 933 for a while now and I finally did on Friday.

We had the chicken curry in a fluff of bread thing which everyone said was very good, fried chicken wings and fried rice to go with our coke delivered to us for dinner.

Let's be honest here. Besides the coke, we thought everything else was dog food. In fact, I'm not even sure if any dog would wanna have them actually. They were mediocre.

The chicken curry was bland. Curries are meant to be spicy. Nothing great about the fluffy bread which wasn't as fluffy as it looked. Just the dang novelty of it that excites people I guess. I've tasted better chicken curry with bread on the outside in my time.

The chicken wings tasted like it had been fried in oil that's been used to fry a million other things before. I know, because I started my FNB career as a cook and I've done the same. The wings are dark in colour and tasted like everything but chicken.

And they must have been rushing to deliver the food coz they forgot the basic rule of not straightaway packing food while they're still fresh from the wok/pot/cooker coz they're gonna come out soggy. Fried wings are supposed to be crispy but that's my own opinion. Maybe other folks like them feeling like turd, I don't know.

On the phone, I asked the idiot what the fried rice consists of. His reply? "Aw, it's norme flied lice lor..." Ya I know, but there are many types of flied lice. Seafood, beef, kampong, what is yours? "Norme lor!"

"Wahneenabehcheetot!" I cursed to myself as my nicotine-deprived brain mentally wringed the idiot's neck, but I thought I'd give it a go anyway and if it's bad like it was eventually, I was soooo gonna put it up on my blog.

What's so bad about it? The portion was just right for me. No problem with that. It filled up two of my five stomachs in the end. I only finished it coz I try not to waste food but uh, I thought the guy could have just damn told me it was seafood flied lice in the first place.

Unfortunately their flied lice was also bland. Tasteless. It was rice with a lot of colours but no substance. It was just rice tossed around in a wok for two minutes. In total, I think they used like a baby's pinch of salt, one piece of crab stick chopped into cubes of 1/2cm on each side, a teaspoon of oil (used of course!) and three pieces of inferior prawns.

VOILA! Seafood flied lice! Bon appetit monsieur, madame... .

I was gutted but thank God she brought Ferrero Rochers. That saved the evening.

And my final conclusion is, if it's not obvious enough? I hate spending $30 on something with no substance. I could have bought a more expensive pair of trainers with that kinda money!

Say hello to Ook who's just chillin'.

Oh look! It's Papadum the hippo!

This is Confirm Chop Plus Guarantee And Lifetime Warranty Number 1, or just No 1 in short who's a champion race horse.

And meet Pinoy, the Filipino elephant (he thinks he's Filipino). He's not a good listener but that doesn't stop him from being nosey!


And uh No 1's friend, Fairy who isn't called 'Fairy' because he's white and all. More like, he's a gay horse.

There you have it. Now Boo has friends to hang out with at night when all the shops are closed. I just hope that security doesn't complain about the din they'd be making.