Life as a seamstress

Life as a seamstress is about catering to your customer's whims. You sew till your fingers are numb and your timble is worn out. You painstakingly sew a dress, faithfully copying the design your client wants. But your client don't really know the exact design in her mind either. She says she wants it tight at the bust, slightly cinched at the waist and a fishtail skirt. Two weeks later, just before you put in the finishing touches, she comes in for a final fitting. She has a change of mind. She wants you to alter the dress. It must be cut straight, not too feminine. The fishtail skirt must go. The neckline must be higher. She can't stand the flowery bits. It becomes a new dress. You set about unstitching it. One by one, the seams come undone. The next fitting is due in a week. You figure there'll be more sleepless nights.

A Motley Crew

Miss CHiongster loves to Party. She can survive on half an hour of sleep and lots of coffee. Her stomach is weird and her knee even weirder. SHe hates plasters and Miss D's bags. Finds them too 'wussy' she says. She's the one who gave everybody nicks. Drew our personality portraits on a little post-it note she did, and pinned it on the wall.

Gan Jiong Spider is jittery. SHe's easily flustered as her nickname aptly descibes. When a lizard is frightened, it drops a tail. GJ Spider will drop a leg whenever her jitter-o-meter hits the Danger zone. GJ Spider is also impatient and likes to mumble to herself. Sometimes it is hard to tell whether she's asking you a question or asking herself the question.

Auntie Killer is an auntie at heart. He gets excited over discounts and keeps an eye on offers. As the chinese saying goes, zhi ji zhi bi, bai zhan bai shen. Whenever he engages in light-hearted banter with aunties, he charms their socks off. You can see their smitten look as they shower compliments on him. He also loves Hip-Hop Jelly - A lime green psuedo ice-cream. It hardly melts and is great to play with. You can lick it till it turns floppy, and flap it around to gross people out. At 30cents a piece, he's cleaning out the ice-cream cabinet.

Miss D does not have a D cup, despite the misleading nick. It has its origins from other sources. Miss D is also Miss Hufferphish. She plans and plans and keeps track of the nitty gritty details. When her stress-o-meter hits Overload, she whines. She freaked Miss Chiongster out one evening and gave her goosebumps. Her pet cuss whenever things go wrong is 'Holy SHit!' She is hopeless at Excel and is thankful that Spider is good at it.

Well, the Motley Crew is adjusting. GJ Spider is cussing 'Holy SHit' nowadays. Miss Chiongster and Miss D are learning to interprete Spidey's Morse Code. Miss CHiongster lifts Miss D's bag with 2 fingers and everyone's eating Hip Hop Jelly.

Return of the Jedi

With the recent box office success of Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith, Lightsabers have found their way into Toy'R'us again. Jedi wannabes can apparently be found everywhere, sometimes in the most unlikely of places. Today, one of them found his way into our little nodescript cubicle tucked in a dusty corner of the office.

Higher power had popped in for a short chat...
Perhaps he feels there is inadquate communication between the little people on Naboo and those in Mustafar. After the usual progress report and updates, we ran out of common topics. There was awkward laughter and weak attempts at keeping the ball rolling when.. As all Jedis do when they run out of ideas, Higher Power whipped out his lightsaber! He made a valiant attempt at prolonging the conversation by asking us if we had watched the new movie and how we felt about it. To top it all off, he dished out a few sentences of Yoda speak, revealing little nuggets of family life like " 3 little boys i have", "One wife i have" and " Stay positive we must". Oh boy..

I can imagine him in a mock battle with his little boys. He'll be bouncing around like Yoda, wielding his green lightsaber with much relish, while the poor boys would be playing the Sith.

Low tide

St Michelle from afar

An old fortress - St. Michelle

Pink watermelon bits

I remember something from this economics module i took. Its an example about a girl who gets free ice-cream and her level of enjoyment keeps increasing with each additional scoop. But the increment becomes smaller and smaller as she eats more. In economic terms its called "decreasing marginal utility". If she continues eating, her level of enjoyment will drop to zero eventually.

Singaporeans have a love affair with buffets. Its this 'eat all you want', 'get your money's worth' mentality that's in our blood. I'm admit i'm also one of those Kiasu Singaporeans who lurve buffets. I've tried some terrible ice-cream buffet at suntec where you scoop the ice-cream yourself and everyone's jostling for space and the few pathetic ice cream scoops. The best was a chocolate buffet at the Fullerton. I can get high on chocolate and i spotted Li Zhi Qin that evening too. The most economical one has to be the Sakae buffet. For 16 bucks i can have all the Fried tofu, Goyoza and Chawanmushi i want. Not exactly authentic Japanese fare, having been made to suit the local palate, but they're very 'heartlanderish' and i always enjoy it a lot. I'm guilty of counting the number of plates i've eaten and feel shiok when i manage to eat my money's worth. Since the buffet's from 3-6pm, I can eat both lunch and dinner at one go. *Lol*

However, today i witnessed a case of a buffet gone wrong. Some secondary school boy was obviously determined to max out his utility level this afternoon. He was perhaps a tad overzealous in his attempt to get his money's worth and ended up puking all over the place. He left a little pink trail of watermelon bits on the floor. (I suppose since watermelon is the last thing they serve you, for dessert.) There's a puddle at the counter, a bit near the entrance and some more along the path to the toilet. He had better avoid that Sakae outlet for a long long time. The poor waitress had to put paper towels on the floor to sop up the mess. It's disgusting and absolutely aweful. Why pay 16 bucks to stuff yourself only to puke it all up?

Peanuty ice-cream

There are many ice-cream uncles along orchard road. They're strategically positioned near road junctions and other high traffic areas. They sell mostly the same stuff. A nice thick slice of ice-cream wedged between a slice of bread or small scoops of ice-cream in a mixture of flavours tucked into a plastic cup. It's a little piece of heaven in the sweltering heat. All at a dollar each.

Amidst all this competition, it seems that one uncle has found a way to differentiate himself... By adding roasted peanuts to his vanilla ice-cream. It's so yummy I traipsed down from Far East Plaza, walked along the Lucky Plaza and Paragon stretch and crossed the road just to get a cup of ice-cream from him. I know another friend who does it too. I wonder how many people out there have a craving for 'peanuty' ice-cream as well.

I was rewarded today for my loyal patronage with a more 'peanuty' than usual cup of ice-cream. The uncle sprinkled a fresh batch of peanuts into his ice-cream just after my order. Yummy. Its really good. All crunchy and a wee bit salty.

Well if Ben&Jerry's eventually comes up with a special concoction for its Singapore clientele, maybe it can consider something vanilla with roasted peanuts. "Nuts about vanilla" anyone?