Happy Mid-Autumn Festival!

It's interesting to celebrate the festival with my co-workers. A colleague brought in some mooncakes today to share with the team and it's amazing how open-minded everyone is as my colleague explained about the festival and the moon-cakes. Questions flew around:
- is it an important festival? I heard that Hong Kongers got a day off.
- Normally we take tea when we eat this. Immediately people offered tea leaves, made tea...
- why do you put egg yolks in there? Are these really duck egg yolks? Is there a reason why you use duck egg yolks? How can you tell that they are duck egg yolks?
- what flavours are these? One is Lotus seed paste; the other is sweet bean paste. One commented that," I like it. It tastes like refried beans." And the Lotus seed paste moon-cake is reborn as the refried beans moon-cake....

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival to the Nuts in London, New York and Singapore!

Party!!

We had a party to celebrate quierotango's birthday.

Lots of happy people full with good food (curry, chicken wings, baked fish, sushi, cake) and alcohol. We sure know a lot of good cooks! See Springlily with my home-made Sangria. The white was a lot more tasty than the red.

Everyone had a go at my wii. People got really serious - look at the intense expressions on everyone's faces. It took some people a long time to beat the computer. I shall not name names but a couple really sucked at games. Well, we can blame the lack of hand-eye coordination on them being slighty tipsy from the wine and vodka jellies.

Our favourite game - Tennis

BTW, no pictures of the sexy birthday gal who wants to remain anonymous...

a new turn

as with many major events in my life, this new turn happened in the space of a week. after almost 12 years as a journalist, i officially signed away my vocation this monday, and took on a new one as a conference director. i don't know what that means yet, but will find out in three weeks. it was not something that had been brewing. the door opened, and someone invited me to walk through it. and so it is, i stepped out into the unknown, and will see soon enough how well i can fly.

Times Square Still Extremely Unsafe for Children

http://gawker.com/news/i-hate-your-kids/times-square-still-extremely-unsafe-for-children-260660.php

Spring!

Finally we feel the effects of Spring. Last Saturday, the nutz gang went to Shea stadium for a Mets game. For one nut, this is the first baseball game! The weather was not perfect but we had fun in the sun. Lots of hotdogs, peanuts and beer later, we sobered up enough to realize that the Mets lost miserably. Good thing I prefer the Yankees. The Mets did have the world's cutest little fan. A little boy, about 5 or 6 years old refused to give up even though the Mets were down maybe 5 at the 9th inning. He single-handled rallied the remaining Mets fans to cheer the team on. We all went to Flushing Chinatown for Taiwanese after. The smelly tofu and oyster omelette were delish!

I lurve Singapore day event

We got up exceptionally early on a Saturday to attend the hawker event. After much deliberation we decided that to give the organizers time to get their act together, we should not arrive first thing but give them about an hour to get ready. It seems everyone had the same idea and we could see a long line snaking outside when we arrived. Luckily for us, it was a gorgeous day and after the spell of horrible cold and wet weather we had, being in line outside on a nice warm day was not too bad. Even better yet, a couple of our friends who lived right by the park were in line 45 minutes ahead of us and we managed to join them right at the entrance and saved ourselves a long wait. All the Singaporeans got a goodie bad which turned out to be quite disappointing - mostly stuff we played as kids and write-ups on how those games are played - zero point and five stones etc.

Needless to say, the place was really crowded with long lines in front of every single food stall. We were previously given strict instructions that only one portion would be given per person. Since we have different interests and have no intention of spending the rest of our day in a line, Doremon's group went to her hokkien mee stand and the rest of us lined up at the laksa stand. Our line was moving much faster so we got Doremon to join our line, played nice to the hawkers and managed to get extra portions! We then re-joined the hokkien mee stand and through the same process, managed to eat 4 things in an hour and a half. It's not the best food we had and we did not eat what we set out to try. Hokkien mee was not served yet and we got Char Kway Teow. The chicken rice and the nasi lemak lines were crazy long so we did not even bother trying.

Even so, I was really happy. We left just when the entertainment was starting to get annoying, with bottles of Hainanese chicken rice chili in hand, to a patch of grass, and a relaxing afternoon reading and playing five stones. Pure bliss. Dare I say, I heart New York too.

I Heart Singapore

Ok, so it was Singapore Day last saturday. No, it's not national day; it's just singapore day (don't really know what that means). On a practical level, it translates into a whole bunch of singaporeans and their friends (6,000 of them!) congregrating at central park for free makan and free sunshine during the day, and another 300 of us swooping into the New York public library during the evening for cocktails and dinner. I was not at the day event because i had some Spanish concerns that overtook my Singaporean patriotism (i'm sure the other kacangs will have something more to write about on that).

The evening event, however, went far beyond my expectations. The cocktail hour was very classy, decked out with a spectacular presentation of hors d'œuvres on trays with orchid insets served by abercrombie & fitch models lookalikes. i was semi-seduced now. We bumped into some unexpected company (some welcome, others not so), did some checking out of our fellow country people, and then proceeded to the dinner hall for the banquet sponsored by Min Jiang restaurant of Goodwood Park Hotel (they will remind you of this a few more times throughout the evening).

The first thing that hit me was this I Heart Sg sign, which i thought was pretty in your face. But i figured i could Heart Sg the entire evening if it was as nice as the cocktail hour, which it turned out to be. I was told by our host from the Overseas Singapore Unit (OSU; part of the prime minister's office, no affiliation to Contact Singapore, New York Singapore Association, or the Kacang Puteh Club) that this event was conceived as a way to tie in the uncoordinated efforts of the various overseas singapore units (i'm paraphrasing), and that, no there was no agenda whatsoever except to get fellow Singaporeans in a foreign land together. Thoroughly seduced by now by the glorious food "sponsored by Min Jiang restaurant of Goodwood Park Hotel", which i was told was specially adapted to fit into the evening's chi-chi scheme, i believed him. Even when Kit Chan came forward to talk about how "there's no place like home", i continued to believe, probably drunk from the Mapo Tofu martini. I should have known better. At the end of an unexpectedly enjoyable evening filled with entertainment only a true Singaporean can fully appreciate, the whole cast got on stage and did a rendition of, you guessed it, "We are Singapore." I guess this is singapore's way of subtly reminding us that New York is NOT home, even if we call it so for now.









mapo tofu martini

jury duty

Last night, i got a letter from the subordinate courts, a subpoena to appear in person at the court for "wilfully" ignoring two previous letters to respond as a potential juror. i ignored the first letter, thinking it was a mistake. i put in a good faith effort to respond to the second online, where i was told by my American computer that i couldn't, because i am not American. And now, i am to explain in person, not online, why i failed to carry out my civic duties (green card or no green card), or face a fine of US$250. Has this happened to anyone else?

star gazing

okay, don't say nobody contributes to the blog. a little belated, worth putting on record nonetheless.

my mother always says i have a "straight eye", which means i see nothing in my peripheral vision. she said this the second time after i walked past her without blinking my eye. she was not pleased (on a related note, if i have ever done that to you, it's because of my "straight eye", so don't take it personally).

In bangkok a few weeks ago, while i was shopping at the mall, zhang ziyi (or ziyi zhang, as she likes to be called apparently) sauntered in front of me, with david gan and entourage in tow. My girlfriend pssted to me, and I had to look around before she said, “in front of you la!” huh? Oh.

The very next day, as I was navigating through business class in the plane to get to my coach class seat, I came face to face with Anthony Bourdain. The only reason I saw him was because someone taking his photo was blocking the aisle, and annoyed me enough for me to look at what he was trying to capture. There he was, right under my nose, smiling with no reservations for somebody's point and shoot camera.

so, that was two birds in two days. more than double my claim to fame in the last two years.