New toys -- for both me and the furkids

The thing about shopping at Ikea is that after you get what you went there for, you wander around the displays and end up buying a whole lot of stuff that you didn't think you'd need until you saw that it existed.

Such as the laptop tray. It's hard plastic on one side, just nice to put a laptop computer on, and soft cushion on the other side, so it rests comfortably on your lap. Nifty invention, much better than having a breakfast-in-bed tray that I used to use when I was using the laptop on the sofa or in bed.

We also bought some stuffed toys for the furkids. Ikea is one of the few places where the children's toys are pretty good for dogs too because the eyes are embroidered on rather than buttons, ie, no little bits that the dogs can bite off. So we got a big dog and a small dog -- for our big dog and small dog.



HRH: It's bigger than me, whaddaya expect me to do with it?


Heave ho! Hmm, it's not working.


So if I can't move it, I can use it as a cushion.


Roop: Big is not a problem for me!

Watching the watcher

Night has fallen and the curtains are drawn, but nothing stops the Queen from watching over her realm.

Four dog night

I came home last night to find an extra furry welcome -- two doggy neighbourhood friends, Jagger and Diamond, had popped round for a visit. The dogs -- and their humans -- had meet in the field downstairs on their respective evening walks and decided to come up for some wine (for the humans).

Need a tissue?

One of the little idiosyncrasies of Singapore living is to chiope (reserve) a seat at the food court/hawker centre by placing a packet of tissue paper on it before you go off to get your food.


It was a damn smart agency to put this slogan on giveaway tissue packets as an ad for an online air ticketing/booking site.

In Tokyo, pocket-sized tissue packets like these are practically an advertising medium -- you can't leave or enter a subway station without having them shovelled at you. I used to think that the Japanese never needed to buy tissue paper -- C, my Tokyo friend, certainly never did. He once said that if he felt a cold coming, he'd head to the subway for tissue before he'd head to the pharmacy for cold tablets.

Are you a leader?

The Malaysian ruling party has gone from dismissing (political content) blogs as rumour mills to saying that candidates for some party posts must have blogs. Guess they underestimated the reach of blogsphere in last month's elections.

"All candidates must have blogs," the Umno general-secretary told AP. "If not, they are not qualified to be leaders."

Which must make a lot of people I know more qualified for leadership than the people now ensconced in Parliament House.

Life with dogs

I'm beginning to think that Hillary Price, the genius cartoonist behind Rhymes With Orange has a spycam in my house...


... that's how it is on our couch, in our bed -- two small dogs that occupy a very big space.

Back to work

It took a week off work to lessen (but not completely eradicate) the stiffness in my shoulders. And it took one day back at work to tighten them up again. Sigh.

L said that while I was gone, the dogs would get up from their naps and walk around the house, peer into the rooms, as if looking for me. They weren't upset or anything, it was more like they thought they were playing a game of hide and seek with me, he said.

Queeni yipped sharply at me when I came back, as if scolding me for playing the game for too long. Rupert bounced at me -- but then he does that even if I'd just stepped out for a minute to take out the trash. But at least Queeni gave me her customary face-washing welcome. Maybe that was the joy of leaving the house -- the welcome you get when you return home. I hadn't had a doggy facial for a week. I don't care what my mother says about dog licks and hygiene, I think my face is all the better for a doggy kiss.

Today is Qing Ming, the Chinese tomb sweeping festival, where you're supposed to honour your ancestors. So, quite understandably, when we took a taxi to the crematorium yesterday, the cabbie thought that we were going to the columbarium part of the complex.

It was the first time we were going to the new crematorium/columbarium complex at Mandai and I wasn't familiar with its layout. The cabbie knew how to get there but didn't know where to drop us off. Telling him that we wanted to go the crematorium and not the columbarium didn't help, he didn't speak much English and clearly couldn't tell crematorium from columbarium (and who could blame him), and I didn't know the Chinese equivalent. Telling him "the funeral place" also didn't help, he couldn't distinguish funeral from the joss sticks and paper offering thing you're supposed to do at Qing Ming.

Finally he had a communication brainwave. "Ancestor or burn?" Which in a nutshell, got the columbarium/crematorium thing down pat.

"Burn," I answered weakly, trying to dimiss mental images of was going to take place in the next hour.

Eddie would have thought that's funny.

Other people's words

Eddie's best friend, Q, in his eulogy, said we should publicise Eddie's blog because otherwise it is a loss to the blogosphere and to journalism, so here it is. I never even knew until today that Eddie had a blog. All this time he was reading mine for the doggy pictures, he never told me about his, named after his dog too. There's a pix of Sophie on it

More eulogies from other people, because I have run out of words

Remgold

Obituaries in The Straits Times and The Business Times

Obit in My Paper

Tributes from media colleagues

More tributes

Eok.net.

Yellow Canaries

No words

Men deal with shock by withdrawing to the couch with beer. Women go get their hair done. My hair now has streaks of copper and ash in different shades. Thanks, I think, Eddie.

What is there to say when you've just returned from the funeral of a friend? I look at the entry of a few days ago, where I thought I'd spend my days off from work doing this, that and the other and it is laughable. Plans of mice and men, the gods giggled, etc. And I had written about how strange it was, to think that eventually I spent my birthday at a wake. Eddie's widow shares my birthday. How much more she had to go through.

The funeral was kinda funny in that you could straightaway tell which were the media people (E's job for 20 years) and the PR people (he left journalism to join a PR agency last year). The journos had open-necked shirts, some with their shirt tails sticking out, were in sneakers or sockless. The PR people wore ties, jackets, suits and hid behind sunglasses -- the women looked like Jackie O at Kennedy's funeral. The two camps were sitting on opposite sides of the funeral hall. And ever the split between.

A PS from the previous entry -- Sophie may come over to stay for a while. Queeni had better be nice. Rupert will love to have a new girlfriend.

Still sad

At Eddie's wake, all I could think of was Sophie the grey mini Schnauzer (who was mentioned along with the family in the obit), forced to stay home while everyone else was at the funeral parlour. How do you explain to a patiently waiting dog what happened?

Bad news

Goodbye, friend.

We knew as soon as we got up yesterday from a text on L's mobile. But L didn't want to postpone the surprise party that he organised for me, even though he was very upset.

I didn't think I'd spend my birthday at a wake.

Life is short. Call that friend.

Yesterday...

... a bunch of people came over


... some of them sang along to the Guns n Roses and Bon Jovi that was playing on my iTunes while others entertained the dogs


... and I had a happy birthday!


PS -- More pix here.

I'm watching

First, a little background: Queeni eats just outside the kitchen, her dish set down next to the communal water bowl. Rupert eats in the study, where a baby gate keeps him away from Queeni when he's done eating because he eats twice as fast as she does, and then wants to help her. And after he's done eating, someone needs to stand at the gate to keep a watchful eye on him or he'll start to do some, erm, instant processing for the want of something to do since he's stuck in there till Queeni is done.

Just now, L was standing guard over Roop. Then he had to go off to do something. "Watch him," he told me.

That was when it hit me as I took over the shift and watched Roop through the bars of the baby gate. That dog is more watched than that escaped JI terrorist. The prison wardens let JI Guy go to the loo alone while we watch Roop poop. And pee. And do all manner of things. Just about the only time we don't watch him is when he sleeps. Oh wait, I do that. I have to confess that sometimes I watch the dogs sleep -- it's more fun than you think and definitely more interesting than what's on TV most nights.

Now They want us to help spot JI Guy. Maybe when They finally catch him, They might want some extra wardens. Maybe I should volunteer.

Ready to chill out

I got a bunch of books from the library (one serious and two fluffy -- sometimes I want some brainless zero-calorie reading) and baked a batch of shortbread cookies today -- I'm ready for a week's leave from work.

Not that I have nothing else to do to fill my days for the coming week. I need to get a microwave (the existing one gave up the ghost after six years' service); do an Ikea run for a bedside lamp (the last in the set of two pretty but cheap ones from Thailand finally blew; it isn't the bulb -- L changed it but it still flickers -- and I don't trust it because the other lamp in the set previously tripped the electricity for the whole house); get my passport renewed (I'm thinking of getting the new biometric one); get a haircut; get Queeni groomed; and she also has an appointment on Friday with Dr T for her quarterly post-cancer check-up.

So... busy, busy, busy. I think I'm busier when I'm not working than when I am.

What Black Monday?

It is always nice to get a Monday off. It is especially more delicious when it comes after a long weekend and the faces you see trudging off to work seem even blacker than usual.

What's that Geman word for it? To enjoy someone else's misery? Although this feeling on Easter Monday does not apply to those in the UK where today is a bank holiday. It especially does not apply to students in the UK -- you know who you are, the one cavorting round the Kenilworth countryside.

So I'm going for a leisurely meal in an empty cafe where service will be twice the speed of what it was yesterday, and then go grocery shopping where I don't need to bump carts with anyone else because the aisles will be mine, all mine.

Hey, I earned today off, OK, I worked Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

Lazy weekend

The 84-inch window TV comes with a chin rest.

Horizon envy

No real reason for this pix other than I got envious when a friend, now studying at my alma mater, posted pix of the countryside surrounding the campus. I am tired of seeing buildings out of every window, of concrete blocks stretching into the distance. I want to see space; see a horizon where earth meets the sky, with no buildings in sight; feel my soul expand with the expanse of space around me.

I think I need a holiday.

I am just lucky that I have a tree outside my window. If I manouvre myself correctly, I can see leaves and flowers, and sometimes an oriole or two, and ignore the buildings at the peripheral.

Queeni to the rescue

Which dog do you think looks more ferocious -- the little one that looks like a teddy bear, and with teeth like toothpicks; or the one with the mouthful of vampire teeth and a solid muscular body that one of our friends call the Missile?




L was walking the two furkids when I was at work. Coming up the stairs, he had Rupert on leash in one arm, and Queeni scooped up in the crook of his other arm (she has never learnt how to climb stairs).

When Roop stalled on the stairs and refused to go up, L didn't realise why and tugged at him. Then he turned round and saw the stray cat on the landing.

Missile Boy didn't quite know what to do with Cat. Cat wasn't going to wait and took the initiative first. By snarling and lashing out at Roop. That was when Teddy Bear leapt out of L's arms with a mighty growl. Luckily, she was still leashed and the end of the leash was looped round L's wrist, so she couldn't reach the cat, which then turned tail and legged it down the corridor. Otherwise, L was sure she would have done some damage. And probably got damaged herself. Cat claws are pretty sharp.

Queeni has always liked cats but I guess just not the one who was about to eat Roop. So now we know. She can get uptight and grumpy with him, but she's also protective about her little brother. Nobody messes with him. Except her.

Home alone

I'm a little concerned about the papillion upstairs. Harvey's people have gone for a short holiday. We know this because L met the guy at the mail boxes and he told him about the trip and asked if we wanted anything from Hong Kong.

L, in typical dog parent nature, asked what about Harvey. Harvey would stay home alone, and an upstairs neighbour would pop in daily to feed him. L, a bit aghast, offered to take Harvey in. Or at the very least, even if he didn't stay over, we could walk him daily. No need, he was told, Harvey would be fine, he does his stuff on a peepad and doesn't need to go outside.

Well, I hope so. I worry about the little dog who's home all by his lonesome. I look up everytime we're downstairs walking the furkids, I don't see any sign of him by the window where he usually is. And the windows are shut tight, so I hope he isn't too hot and has enough air.

Harvey may be used to being home alone most of the day, but being on his own at night in a dark house is a bit too much. Just a daily feeding visit isn't enough company for a hyper little dog like him.

Yesterday afternoon, there was a tremendous thunderstorm. There was a crack of thunder almost overhead which made Queeni nearly jump out of her fur and run straight to her Daddy for comfort. She was lying next to me but apparently I'm not comforting enough. Sniff. And I worried about the little dog upstairs.

I don't even trust Roop home alone for more than a few hours. I wonder what Harvey is going to do, home alone for a few days.

A dog of many names

Most of my gentle readers would probably already know some of Rupert's nicknames. Roop the Poop is fairly obvious, because of his carefree toilet habits.

Depending on the nature of the transgression, he is also called RuPEE or sometimes, Bloody Leakhead. (That one is mostly from L)

And then there's Vlad the Confused. Vlad because of that little snaggle tooth that shows up vampire-like against his black muzzle. Confused because of his carefree toilet habits.

Now, there's Rupert Zero. L came back from the vending machine with a new Coke variant -- Coke Zero. Which really is the Coke Formerly Known as Coke Light, Formerly Known as Diet Coke. Same zero calories, just newly packaged and freshly marketed. Rupert was watching me drink, tail wagging in anticipation of sharing. Not. And that was when Zero seemed to be another good suffix for him. The dog of big heart but little brain. And carefree toilet habits. Rupert Zero.

Queeni has no nicknames. Royalty is not amused by that sort of thing.

Joined at the hip

Sunday evening in

The windows were thrown wide open and the furkids were lying in front of it, enjoying the breeze and watching what L calls the 84-inch window TV. So I drew up the deck chair alongside them and watched with them.

As soon as the sun started to go down and the day cooled, the dogwalkers started to come out. The first to go past was the Schnauzer owned by the guy with the speech impediment so we never really caught the name of the dog. He's usually the earliest dog walker. Rupert saw them off with some frantic barking.

Ten minutes later, Junior the Schnauzer trotted briskly past to more barking from Roop. HRH joined in with a few sharp yips but mostly left Roop to do the work. There's royalty for you.

Junior was soon followed by Milo the Jack Russell, off leash as always, but quick to respond to her Daddy's "come". My two seemed so astounded by that fast recall that they were struck silent.

In less than five minutes, Mei-Tei came along. He's yet another Schnauzer, but for some reason, his tail has not been docked. He must've been groomed recently because the tail is naked -- and it looks like it belongs more on a rat than a dog.

Then Junior came by again -- he sometimes does several rounds of the estate if his mum is feeling particularly energetic.

Next on the scene was the white Japanese spitz that we've nicknamed Devil Dog because he's such a tough aggro little fella. No barking from Roop or HRH -- they've learnt to leave him alone.

By then, L had gotten out of the shower and it was time to take our two out for walkies. Or Roop would almost certainly wee in excitement at seeing so many of his friends go past the window.

By the time we got downstairs, Junior was back on his third tour. All the dogs had a prolonged sniff session after all that long-distance barking from upstairs.

Then Ginger the springer spaniel came downstairs too, her entire rear end wagging in greeting. And the dog socials continued.

Oh the things I miss when I work evenings.

Saturday night out

Yay for LC's wedding banquet last night. Finally!

L and I found ourselves at a table full of former colleagues so it was like a Streats (lookit that, we're in Wikipedia!) reunion. Even though most of us still work in the same building but in different newsrooms, there were also a few who had left and it was nice to meet up with them again.

Almost all who had left the organisation were the Foreign Talent, and many did so as soon as they had been in Singapore long enough to get their Permanent Resident permit. And the next step after getting a new job seemed to be buying a new house, especially with the rents so high and now that they are PRs, they can own property. And then some bought cars, others employed maids, as their families expanded. So not surprisingly, the talk went on to the price of property, this car versus that car.

To put it simply, the PRs out-Singaporeaned the Singaporeans.

My life in rock n roll

Got stopped again by a promoter at a shopping centre. I could fill in a lucky draw form and win a holiday, she said.

I knew what was between the lines -- the holiday was a time-share and to get there, I would have to sit through an hour's presentation and buy the damn thing first. And they might throw in high tea or something after the presentation, to make me feel like a winner.

So I decided to have some fun as she filled in the form for me.
"Your name, ma'am?"
"Ruby Tuesday."

She got as far as writing Ruby but she hesitated over the surname because of the spelling and not because of anything else.

"Here, let me fill it in for you," I offered.

She handed over the pen but continued to read out the entries I had to fill.
"Your occupation?"
"I'm a honky tonk woman."

"Address?"
"I'm in between moves. Cos papa was a rolling stone."

And she still didn't get it.
"Why do you shop here?"
"Can't get no satisfaction anywhere else."

She still didn't realise anything. I was beginning to feel bad.

I think people are not listening to enough rock n roll.

Three dog night

No room on the couch for me ... all I did was to leave my seat to go to the loo and when I got back, all the space was taken up by furry beings.

Saturday Night Live at home

Wine, chocolate and fox terrier entertainment. Sounds good to me.

Bath day

Doesn't Roop look like an extra in Star Wars?

Weather like leather

Keith Richards is the new face of Louis Vuitton. I suppose it helps if you have a face like 100-year-old leather.

I'd have thought he'd make a better spokesperson for Jack Daniels.

Or maybe he's doing it because he failed to get his doctorate in astrophysics like Brian May.

Legitimacy

L finally got round to getting Rupert's dog licence so he's now legitimate. It cost us $14 for his right to live with us. The dog, that is, not the husband. :P

Roop also has a new harness since the last one was getting a bit frayed -- he used to bite it when he was younger. He's stopped that now but this new one promises to be bite-proof. Well, at least the label says that it won't fray when bitten through.

But I have a feeling that Roop, being Roop, will once again prove to be the exception.

Cats in the family!

I have a new cousin and it's a cat!

Two, actually, Chloe and Cyrus, a brother and sister pair of American curls. This is Cyrus, the more outgoing one of the two. E was very protective and wouldn't put Cyrus down but I think Queeni wouldn't have hurt him. She was certainly very intriqued (she grew up with a kitten and likes cats) and when E brought Cyrus back upstairs, whined after them. Rupert was restrained off camera, nuff said.

Day off

OK, I'm switched off.

Weak in English?

I'm sure the person behind this DIY ad stuck at the bus stop is a very good science tutor. He just needs an English tutor.

One of the perils of subbing must be the constant desire to take a red pencil to everything you see. *Must activate shutdown*

Fifteen minutes of fame

I don't usually blog about work but last night, there was this story sitting in the subbing basket that I simply couldn't bring myself to pick up and sub...

You are beautiful, no matter what they say

I noticed him as I left the concourse of the train station. He was the only person standing still in a sea of moving people. He was eyeing people as they walked past, and when I got on the the escalator, he fell into step behind me. Uh oh, here it comes, I thought.

He was a salesman. And he was flogging meal supplements, the type that people take to lose weight.

"So are you saying I need to lose weight?"

"It's not a question of losing weight, it's a question of becoming healthy."

So he was diplomatic too.

And he talked and he talked as we stood at the bus stop, going on about how he doesn't just sell weight-loss products, he
keeps in touch with his clients to make sure that they maintain a healthy programme. And that there's a group of them called "From Aunties to Beauties".


Now I was getting truly pissed off. Not only is he "size-ist" but "age-ist". What, women over a certain size and a certain age are not beautiful?

I was so glad that my bus came and I could prise myself off him.

Why is it I can't shut salespeople up midstream?

Rain

We haven't had any rain since the beginning of the month and the field is looking scorched and brown. All the lamp posts have a ring of brown grass at the base -- it must be the calling cards left by all the dogs in the neighbourhood.

Before that, we had too much rain -- daily continuous steady monsoonal downpours that lasted all day which flooded the field.

It never is right, is it?

But at least this rainy spell didn't last for more than 20 minutes. Just in time for me to get to work. It is awful having to go to work in the rain and getting drenched before you even reach the shelter of the train station.


I think the grass and trees drank long and deep this 20 minutes.

The next door neighbour is in the process of renovating his flat. Today was the day they took out the windows and window grilles to fit in the new ones. When I went past earlier as I walked the dogs, the old windows had been removed but the new ones hadn't been installed, leaving large gaps in the walls.

It figures that it would rain today.

Spotted dick

... that's what his Daddy calls him. Among other things.

Throttled by red tape

The all-in-one process of changing the address on our identity cards when we moved in 2006 meant that all the government agencies were notified.

So efficient, we had thought. It cuts through the red tape of having to inform several different government agencies of the address change.

Famous last words. *hollow laughs*

In December 2006 and 2007, the notice to renew our TV licence arrived and I duly paid up. But it wasn't until the last payment that I realised that while the notices were sent to our new address, the address on the inside of the actual notice itself -- that is, the house for which the TV licence is paid -- was still the old address.

So last month, L made a few attempts to call the MDA to notify them of the discrepancy in the address. Nobody answered the call (not surprisingly -- doncha know, civil servants never answer the phone on the first ring) and he left a voice mail. Which was not returned (again, not surprisingly). [Just don't start me on how many calls it took to the AVA to clear up the fog over renewing Queeni's licence without having to microchip her.]

Yesterday, someone from the MDA showed up. And he had to pick a moment when I was in the shower -- blind without my glasses on but luckily, not wet yet. We did not pay our TV licence, he accused. But we did. And we could show him the notice that now had a little printout at the bottom from the post office where I paid it, showing the amount paid and when it was paid, and thus serving as a receipt of payment.

So why was he here? He didn't know either because quite clearly, he could see for himself that the licence was paid.

Aha! It must be that discrepancy in the address thing. The licence was paid, but in their records, paid for the old address, not the new. L explained to him that he had called but no one returned the call nor did anything about the problem.

So this guy gave us another number to call to inform them of the change in address. Couldn't he just go back to his office and rectify the problem, now that he could see for himself what it is? No. You must call this number, he insisted. I cannot do anything.

So L called. Again. And again. And finally got through. It took many, many tries and much patience (fast running out) before he could make the person at the other end of the line understand the problem -- that while the notice was sent to the correct mailing address, the old and incorrect address was on the inside of the notice and hence when the licence was paid, it was paid for the incorrect address.

And how was the person at the other end of the phone going to solve this besides blaming it on a "system error"? He didn't really know. But he would issue us a receipt saying that we're good and paid up -- at this new address. How about the payment for 2006? Nobody would check on historical records if the current one is OK, he said. Well, I sure hope he's right about that. L got his name down just in case because if that happened, he's going to call this guy to deal with it than to wade through another series of attempts. And then the devil got into L, and he asked the guy on the phone but what if he left his job? Then who would understand our predicament? I guess that was just one variable too many for Mr Civil Servant to deal with in a phone call.

I cannot believe that at this day and age, with Tivo, Internet TV, on-demand TV, cable and satellite TV, we are tied up in knots over a licence for terrestrial TV.

Chip in

Rupert got microchipped yesterday. He was very exhausted from the whole experience and here he is, looking dopey and sleepy. Queeni is on the high ground -- she must exert her alphadom and was kind enough not to jump him and hump him as she normally does. She sniffed him when he came home from the vet and zeroed straight in on the spot where the chip is and then kindly left him alone.

I hate needles and I hate blood but I don't think I'm being particularly over-reactive when I think that when you're bleeding, you're hurting.

Because shortly after the vet injected the chip, Roop started bleeding. Dr P was clearly expecting it and she cleaned it up deftly.

But nobody told me anything about the blood part. Everybody just tells you that it's painless -- apart from that moment that it's injected -- and that the dog doesn't feel anything afterwards.

I don't think so. If it bleeds afterwards, it's certainly feeling something until that stops and the wound heals. The bleeding went on for quite a few hours, not a lot of it but a slow sort of seep. Still, it's blood being lost.

Mandatory microchipping for newly licensed dogs, when introduced last year, was meant to enforce responsible pet ownership more so than to return lost dogs to their owners. It meant that irresponsible owners who abandoned their pets can be traced.

It also means that some poor dog bleeds just in case you turn out to be an irresponsible shit.

I would rather that microchipping be encouraged, but not made mandatory, so owners can make a decision not to subject their pets to bleeding. Queeni is a case in point. She is sedentary and not likely to run out the door and get lost. She also has had more than her fair share of health issues and I would not subject her to the pain and blood-letting of microchipping after all that she has already been through.

I'm not against microchipping. Or I wouldn't have had Roop microchipped. But now I would like to jab that thick steel microchip applicator into the AVA guy who decided that microchipping be made mandatory and the pet accessories suppliers who make/sell/import the chips and those who blithely say that "the dog won't feel a thing" and defy them to look me in the eye as they bleed and tell me they didn't feel that.

Rupert's thought process. Or lack thereof.

The cleaners are here! I haven't seen them since last week! That's seven whole days! Human days! I have to tell them how much I miss them!

If I can see through the gate, I can go through the gate!

*CLUNK*

His nose went through the gate but the iron grilles stopped the rest of his face from going through.

R, the Malay cleaner, was so concerned, she started petting him and feeling his head, never mind the dogs-are-haram rule.

We think ol' hardhead is OK because his tail never stopped wagging.

Sit and eat

Just before Chinese New Year, a colleague remarked that his Reunion Dinner would be in front of the TV. Oh, the family would gather round and eat, but they would be watching TV as they did so.

During a Chinese New Year visit, a niece brought her book to the table where everyone was sitting round having tea and read as she ate.

Just over the weekend at the Japanese family restaurant we go to, a couple came in with their child, ordered their meal and then turned on a portable DVD player and set it in front of the kid. When his food arrived, Junior ate his meal with his eyes glued onto the screen.

Today, at the next table at the food court, a mother was having lunch with her son and the kid was playing Nintendo as he was eating.

Don't people just sit and eat any more? My mother can't be last bastion of what she called table manners. Which meant no eating in front of the TV, no reading at the table. If you're meant to be eating dinner, you just sat there and ate. Granted, we didn't have Nintendo then.

My grandmother had even more finicky table manners. No elbows on the table, and not even forearms -- and that's difficult if you're using a bowl and chopsticks, you tend to need to rest your forearms on the edge of the table for support. And you had to turn your chopsticks round and use the other end when picking food from the communal plates.

My gran's standards are too high for me. But I do agree with my mum, surely the dinner table is for eating and not watching movies. That's the whole point of this Eat With Your Family worklife balance initiative isn't it? Last year, I remember the 9-to-5 shift was exhorted to go home early to have dinner with their family. Not go watch DVDs/play Nintendo with the family.

Pooped

Nah, not the solid equivalent of Roop's liquid habits. Just Queeni knackered out. She looks like she's had a long, hard day. I just don't know from what.

Aha!

The reason why Roop peed up a storm on his birthday was because his boyo friends in KCMO egged him to do so!

Here we go again

Yesterday, the birthday boyo peed inappropriately three times -- twice on the tiled floor (where clean-up was easy, like that's any better) and once in his crate (where we've learnt the hard way to line a peepad on the crate pad and swaddle the whole thing in a towel).

And this was after a week where the mop stayed unused and we were thinking that there's hope now that he's a big boyo and all.

Turning two must have been very stressful for him.

Birthday boyo

Rupert is two today. Officially, that is. We don't know when his birthday is, just that he was born in February.

Last February, he had only been here a few months and we were going crazy trying to housebreak him, we completely overlooked that he had a birthday. And because he took so long to housetrain (he still isn't completely), we still mentally thought of him as a puppy still.

It wasn't until maybe the middle of the year that I finally looked properly at his papers and realised that we'd missed a birthday and that we had an adult year-old dog. Who still peed indiscriminately like a puppy.

C, who has Colin, Rupert's littermate, decided that Valentine's Day was a good day for their official birthday since they are such sweethearts.

And the sweetheart dogs, of course, are the ones with a terrible vice that a dogowner normally wouldn't tolerate.

Oh well, another excuse for bak kwa in the kibble. Rupert also had a butter roll in lieu of a birthday cake.

Happy birthday, my sweetheart boyo. And get with the peeing programme, you're a big boyo now.

It's good to be home

The furkids always know how to make you better after a long day at work.

The joys of bak kwa

My overseas Singaporean friends who are far away from even a whiff of bak kwa this Chinese New Year will hate me for this post ... and that's why I'm not rubbing salt into the wound by posting pix.

I was trying to describe bak kwa (Wiki does it better than I can in this link) and likened it to smoked bacon, Chinese style.

Which then set off a whole string of thought. Why not use it like bacon then? Bak kwa pieces in a caesar salad. Bak kwa in carbonara sauce with pasta. Bak kwa and scrambled eggs. The possibilities are endless. That was when L looked at me strangely.

And that was when I had a bak kwa sandwich for lunch. It was good

Happy birthday

I was only kidding when I blogged yesterday that the dogs don't need feeding till next week. Not when today, the second day of Chinese New Year, is supposed to be the birthday of all dogs -- the way the seventh day is Yen Yat, the birthday of all mankind (fair's fair, if we get a day, the dogs also get theirs).


So not only did they get fed, they got an extra treat -- slices of bak kwa under their kibble for that surprise find when they reach the bottom of the bowl. Bak kwa, for my gentle overseas reader(s), is barbecued marinated sliced pork. It's available year round but has become a must-have delicacy during Chinese New Year. It's sweetish, savoury and very, very greasy. Which is why the furkids love it.

Gongxi Facai

We're back from making our Chinese New Year visits and we're exhausted. The furkids have collapsed into a heap of fur at my feet. And this was just from visiting two houses -- my parents and my in-laws. I don't know how my friends pack in a whole day of visits.

One grandma plied the furkids with bak kwa. The other doled out cream crackers. Between them and the round bellies, I don't think I need to feed the dogs till maybe next week.

All these years living with dogs and I never knew

Spotted in Wikipedia by a friend who duly alerted me:
"On the second day (of Chinese New Year), the Chinese pray to their ancestors as well as to all the gods. They are extra kind to dogs and feed them well as it is believed that the second day is the birthday of all dogs."

That's a lot of missed birthdays! Queeni and Rupert now have a not-to-be-refused reason for bak kwa.

Sychronicity

The difference between The Police in concert last century and The Police Reunion tour this century is that last time, when they launched into Roxanne, Every Breath You Take and all their standard bearers, or when Sting rushed the stage towards where you were, it would be lighted by the pin-prick glow of hundreds of cigarette lighters. Now, it was illuminated by the pin-prick glow of hundreds of LCD screens of digicams. Seriously, I think a significant number of the 10,000 strong audience saw the concert through their digicams/cellphone cameras.

The most fun part of the concert was actually even before The Police came on stage. The support band had left, saying that they "had more fun here than in Australia" (gosh, wonder why), and the roadies were dismantling their kit and setting up Stewart Copeland's and the music in the background -- David Bowie, Fine Young Cannibals -- was played at a low, barely discernible volume. They turned up the volume for the last song before The Police came on -- to Bob Marley's "Stand up, stand up, stand up for your rights". All the ang mohs in the audience rose up. All the Singaporeans had their butts firmly planted down. Yup, Sting had obviously played in Singapore before.

Snack attack

Ooh, Mummy has cookies! *glint in eye*

Mummy hasn't got any more cookies. Mummy polished that batch of cheese biscuits (well, they were meant to be cheese straws but I used a cookie cutter so they aren't the usual stick-like things but little heart shaped cookies). Silly Mummy actually thought that any cookies made a week before Chinese New Year will stay in the jar till then. So it looks like Mummy will have to rustle up some quick sugar cookies real fast before Chinese New Year.

Groundhog Day

It's grey and wet today and if there were groundhogs in Singapore, they'd be telling us that we're still in for 6 weeks of monsoon. Groan.

Enjoying the view

It was very windy yesterday so we threw open the windows to enjoy the cool breeze wafting through the house. Which meant that the furkids' windowTV was further enhanced by Sensaround, Soundaround and most importantly, Smellaround.

Today, however, is a different story. The windows are tightly shut against a raging thunderstorm outside and HRH is back to quaking. Poor thing.

All good things come to those who wait

It's even better when you're the one being waited for. For the past nights and most of the past week, I would get an SMS on my mobile from L as I was on the way home, asking if I was close to home because Rupert was sitting, waiting by the door. Some nights, he would be pacing, almost anxiously, at the door.

Each time those SMS on what Roop was doing came, I was usually just about five minutes away. I don't know how Roop does it, must be some internal radar or something. Maybe that's his hidden autistic talent. You know how some autistic people can't function socially but have some talent that they do marvellously well in? That's Roop. The part of his brain about not peeing in the house still has not kicked in fully but the part that tells him Mummy is on her way home is well developed.

All my dogs have always given me an uproarious welcome the minute I step in through the door. That's a really grand feeling. Schwarz the pug would sometimes sit by the door after I've left the house. What I've never had was a dog which somehow knew when I was close to home and sat by the door waiting in anticipation. How does he know?

Another mouth to feed

We've seen Mama Cat hanging about the garbage dump the past couple of nights so we've been feeding her.

Yesterday, L, the determinedly non-cat person, put down cat food on the grocery list. So here we are, buying cat food when we don't have cats in house but two dogs. I thought it was hilarious. He just doesn't want me to remind him about it.

A new neighbour

It was Rupert's barking that alerted us to the stray cat that hangs around downstairs from time to time. This time, she was climbing laboriously up the tree outside our window with a kitten her mouth. Until then, I didn't even know she had a kitten.

Kitty stayed in the branches of the tree, good as gold, well-hidden by the leaves. L took a picture, but there was only so far the lens could zoom. And I didn't want to go downstairs to take a photo, I didn't want to scare her. Or annoy Mama Cat. The tree was right next to Roop's prefered peeing spot so he had to sacrifice that too.

Later in the evening, another round of barking from Roop brought L to the window. This time, he saw that Kitty had gotten down onto the ground and was hiding in the bushes and there was a group of boys trying to swipe at her with their toys. One of them had a water pistol and was shooting at her. He recognised the boy as part of the bicycle gang that tried to chase Queeni.

Off he went to give them a piece of his mind. The neighbour downstairs, outside whose window all this was happening, also went out and soundly rounded off in Mandarin what L started off in English.

So he thought that they got the message loud and clear. A little while later, they were back. He yelled at them from the window and they answered that it wasn't the kitten this time, it was snails that they were after this time. Like that was any better. L was horrified to see that they were having fun by stamping on snails and crushing their shells.

What's it with little boys and snails and puppy dog tails?

Spring is sprung

The tree outside the window is in full bloom. Hope this means that thunderstorm season is over. Queeni hopes so too.

Thoughtful design

Not surprisingly, one of the two new soft toys had to be sewn up after three days of Rupert's teeth.

Only this time, I didn't have to worry about him swallowing the squeaker -- instead of being stuffed into the toy's body, this one was sewn up within a little cloth bag, like a tea bag, and one end of that was anchored by being sewn into a seam on the toy.

Now that's a well-designed dog toy with the owner's sanity in mind. And that's why I'm paying a bit more for the expensive Japanese toys from now on.

Oh yeah, it was after the toy surgery that I realised I didn't take a photo. There'll be lots of follow-up procedures later on, I'm sure, thanks to Roop.

How do u spal dis?

N dis is y 'chers always cumplain dat studens now cant spal

Witch hunt

So I'm googling for toxic pet toys to find out more and I come across this consumer report which says that a ceramic pet food bowl was analysed and was found to have more than five times the permissible benchmark of lead in the paint on the bottom of the bowl.

And who doesn't have a dog that doesn't lick his dish so clean you don't even have to wash it?

I am going on a witch hunt. Long ago, I threw out the made in China chicken jerky for the dogs. Yesterday, it was the toys. Now, I'm throwing out the utensils -- both dog and human. If dog toys aren't regulated, who's gonna regulate the paint on my pretty chopsticks?

Out went the cheery bowl. The colour (paint?) from the placemat faded, leached, I think, long ago and it was thrown out very early on. That's why I don't have faith in the bowl meeting standards. I have no confidence in China-made goods, least of all the cheap ones and this bowl was like 50 cents or $1 -- something ridiculously cheap.

Now the furkids are eating out of Pyrex bowls.

Toxic toys

A friend of mine forwarded me an e-newsletter which said that following the recall of made-in-China children's toys with lead content, tests were conducted in the US on pet toys and many were also found to have toxic lead content. The brightly coloured latex toys are the chief culprits.

Well, Rupe has a few of these brightly coloured squeaky bouncy toys. I didn't have their labels any longer so I went to the pet shop to check. All were made in China. My heart sank. He not only loves carrying them and shaking them, he also likes chewing on them.

They have since been removed and I went crazy trying to find him subsitutes -- I couldn't find anything that wasn't made in China! Finally, I settled for a couple of Japanese made soft toys. They at least squeaked but they don't bounce.

When I was at the cashier paying for them, the woman behind me was going to buy exactly the same ball that I threw out. L told her what we did, and explained about the possibly of toxicity in China-made toys. Her eyes widened as she thanked him. Behind her, a couple who were chosing toys must have overheard because he heard them muttering: "This one, cannot. It's made in China." "Alamak, this one too."

Poor Rupert. He doesn't have any more squeaky toys nor bouncy balls now. But I think I was more upset to remove his toys than he was. And I'm cross with myself. If the pet food was tainted and the toys for children were toxic, I should have realised about the possibility of pet toys too.

Sharing space

Help, there's a baldy daddy on my pillow.

Locked out

If you like the heat (and the smells, and the bits of dropped ingredients), you should also get out of the kitchen.

It sleeps two

HRH has annexed Rupert's new crate.

Not salacious enough to be controversial?

Now that the Bioethics Advisory Committee has called for public feedback on the issue of using human-animal combinations for research, I expected all the Religiously Righteous, fresh from their victory over retaining Section 377a, to launch into another frenzy.

To my surprise, there was hardly a peep. Not much on the online forum at the REACH site, nothing from the Religiously Righteous anyway, and certainly no call to march Joshua-round-Jericho-like around the site of the public forum to be held on Jan 19 like what they did at the civic district when Section 377a was being debated. I googgled a bit and there also wasn't much discussion on blogs or other online forums. What happened to those people who were so easily offended that they wrote to TNP to complain that condom ads on a bus stop near a school are a bad influence? (And I thought using condoms was supposed to be a good safe sex practice.)

I thought human-animal chimeras would be more fodder for controversy in religious and moral terms. That it held more implications and had more chances of spawning Satan's Own than two consenting same-sex adults.

And if you really think about it, biological chimeras are actually among us today. Technically, they include people who have received blood transfusions or organ transplants. But I haven't heard any objections to that on religious grounds.

I guess there's no outcry because there's no sex involved.

Playing soldiers

L found his NS helmet. Don't you feel really safe now that you know the country is being protected by an army of citizen soldiers with Rasta hair?

Where's the fire?

L had an eventful day at home with the furkids yesterday when I was at work. He heard sirens and looked downstairs to find one Rhino (it's an open vehicle with a mounted water hose, smaller and more manoeuverable than a fire engine but without the ladders and other equipment), two fire engines and one ambulance pulling up.

The former crime reporter in him leapt to the rule-of-thumb action: one Rhino, watch and see what's going on; anything more than two engines, get out fast.

So he harnessed and leashed the dogs and as a quick afterthought, slipped the tupperware of dog treats in his pocket -- because they could be out of the house for a few hours, if not all night, he reasoned.

His second thought when they were downstairs, watching and waiting: he forgot their water bowls. What if they got thirsty during the wait?

Our passports, bank books, money, and all other important stuff were his third thought.

There's dog parents and their priorities for you.

And nothing happened. All the emergency vehicles drove off. But the firemen came over to pat the dogs first.

Queeni was not impressed. But Rupert wants to be a firetruck Dalmatian when he grows up.

Writing

The last few entries were first written with pencil and paper as I was sitting up in bed, and then uploaded onto the blog the next day, with the typing also serving as an editing process. I started to do this because I was too tired and lazy to fire up the computer after having spent 8 hours working on another computer.

One night, L asked me what I was doing. He shook his head after I explained. Only, me, he said, adding that he couldn't write without a keyboard. Only me apparently also meant using wooden pencils -- the type you have to sharpen -- and fountain pens -- the type you have to fill with ink.

I can't write properly with a ball-point, it feels scratchy and makes my handwriting deteriorate. I like the feel of pencil lead on paper, the glide of ink from a fountain pen onto paper, a sort of "proper writing" feeling. And I enjoy the process of unscrewing a bottle of ink, dismantling the bits of a fountain pen to fill it. And when I sharpen a pencil, the smell of the shavings hint at more to follow, like how when you peel an orange, the whift of zest is a preliminary indication of more intense pleasures to follow. Call it writing foreplay.

Typing on a keyboard is fast and efficient, there's no denying that. But writing on paper means that I have to organise my thoughts before I set them down. There is no quick cut and paste option. And it makes me think twice about spelling and not get lazy with the spellcheck underlining my suspect spellings. And if I make a mistake, I just have to cross things out and rewrite that bit again. Having to put in that little extra bit effort makes writing feel more of a craft.

I've just realised, as I cross out bits here and add bits there, that I've forgotten most of the proofreading symbols I used to know. All that's dead. Like hot metal press. And Latin.

And one day, possibly pencils and fountain pens. God forbid.

Back to the grind

I had worked New Year's Eve and New Year's Day but it didn't feel like a hardship since the workflow went smoothly (everyone was eager to get things finished, and go off and party). Then I had two days off on medical, went back to work for a day, followed by a long three-day weekend.

Which meant it wasn't really a full week for me last week. So my work year really started yesterday. And going back to work became a drag. The revelling is all over now. Another full year of work ahead. Groan.

(Normally, I would cheer myself up and say there's always Chinese New Year to look forward to next month. But this year, I'm wondering how to handle that festival, with all its food associations, now with Dad and his feeding tube and all.)

Minutes after I left the house, L called me on my cellphone. Rupert had started to whine as soon as I shut the door and and left -- something he's never done before. He was easily placated by a squeaky toy, L added. But for me, it only made the train ride to work longer and harder as it took me towards the office and away from the furkids.


When I got home, Rupert lay down on my bag which I had left on the floor. Like it'll stop me from going to work tomorrow. If only.

At home with Rupert

I truly was not making disparaging comments about Rupert's brain, or lack thereof, in the previous post. Here, you judge for yourself.

His big new crate opens at one end, along the breadth. It's like a door in a rat cage, you lift it to slide it open. And then you can wiggle it a bit so that it sticks out at an angle so that it remains wedged open, instead of sliding down shut.

It's always open so Roop can go in for a nap whenever he wants to. The idea is that the crate is his personal space. So anyway, when the crate arrived, there was not a lot of room for it. If we placed it with the door on the right, it would stick right into a candlestand next to it. If we placed it with the door on the left, it would stick in the way of opening the front door wide.

No choice. Better to open the front door carefully than to have the crate door burnt by candles. And once the Christmas tree was taken down, we could rearrange the end tables and candlestand to make room for the crate.

That was done on Sunday. That was when the crate was turned round, with the opening on the right, instead of the left. On Monday morning, Rupert decided to go into his crate for a nap. He went to its right side -- where the door was invitingly open -- paused, and considered. Then he went to its left side -- where the door used to be -- and started banging his head against a side of wire. He had always gone in that side, and by golly, he will go in by that side, even if it means trying to walk through wire.

It took a few tries before a smidgeon of a thought took root -- that maybe, just maybe, he would go in from the right side -- where the door is.

There's Roop for you. A dog of Very Little Brain. A lot of heart maybe, affection and devotion clad in fur even, but very little brain.

Rupert and the frog

Rupert had L on the other end of the leash when they encountered a frog on the foot path after a rainy day. Something stirred in the depths of the terrier's murky brain, telling him that this thing was an animal and that some sort of reaction was required. But the brain, its existence already much questioned and hotly debated, stopped short of telling him what to do.

So he looked up at L, who did nothing -- he wanted to see what Roop would do. Which was to stand and stare. And stare.

So there they were, the terrier and the frog, eyeballing each other curiously. Roop held one paw up. It is his one and only trick and he probably reasoned that if offering to shake paw got you somewhere with humans, it may also do something with frogs. Then HRH, unleashed a few yards away, noticed his stance, knew that something was up and saw the frog for herself. The prey instinct that was non-existent in the terrier kicked in in the schnauzer and she came bearing down on the frog and had to be scooped up off the ground.

When it was time to go home, back up the same path, the frog was still there. Again, Roop stood and stared, this time at the back of the frog. If only L had the camera with him, he could have taken a whole series: Terrier and frog (front view); terrier and frog (back view).

Queeni trees a cat

HRH walks off leash most of the time. It is something that we tried at our old flat because her palatial grounds there was a rectangle of grass bordered by footpaths and it was easy to train her not to stray beyond those boundaries.

When we moved to this flat -- chosen mostly because of the expanse of greenery that it looked down to -- the palatial grounds somewhat increased and didn't have easily demarcated borders.

That was when she started testing her off-leash limits. She knew the off-leash route but the stubborn Schnauzer would every now and then try to go off course, playing one sucker parent against the other, depending on who was walking her. "Daddy lets me go there," I could see her thought bubble when she cocked her head at me as I called her back.

Then, last year, when we were in the fright of the mast cell tumour episode, all rules were lifted. We didn't know at first what she would lose with the tumour removal -- a toe, a paw or even a whole leg. She may never run again, so what the hell, we let her run where she pleased.

And when all that was over, and she was finally able to set the bum paw minus one toe on ground and run again, she continued to be given free rein. Because well, she could run.

By now, L never takes her leash along when he walks her. On the other hand, I'm the worrier. I leash her when I go downstairs with her and I unleash her only when I see that there are no children around and when the snappy Japanese Spitz that also walks off leash isn't out at the same time as we are.

All that is a long way to get to the title of this post. The other night, we took the dogs out for their final pee pretty late, at about 1am. Queeni was unleashed and had gone ahead down the stairs -- she never waits for L as he locks the door. And I'm the rear of the entourage with the beta terrier on leash.

By the time we got to the field, we were just in time to see Queeni streak after a cat. The only thing that stopped her was that the cat fled up a tree, with a yowl and a screech. Smart cat. Because if it didn't do that, it would have gone on running to god knows where, with Queeni hot on her heels. That was one close lost-dog call.

Which is yet another long way to say that it's back to the leash for HRH. Or at least until her entourage and security detail ensure that there are no interlopers lurking around the palatial grounds. Then, she gets to go off leash. Sucker Daddy says so. And Worrier Mummy was right.

(Of course I have the last word. This is my blog.)

His and hers

Ya gots yer bone-bolster, ah gots mine.

They both feel asleep chewing their bones on either side of me. I regularly feel like I've got a set of furry book ends.

Birthday girl

Queeni is seven today. Like the Queen of England, she has two birthdays -- the actual one which nobody knows when it is, and the official one. Because Queeni was adopted, I never knew her actual birthday. She had papers, but C didn't manage to get them from the guy who gave her up. So her birthday became the day I took her home from C's house. Anyway, the day of your homecoming makes a nice birthday.

I still remember that day. M had gone with me as driver. C was already back in Tokyo, so only R was at home. We rang the doorbell. Nothing. No barking, no stirring. M called R on his mobile. He had overslept, and struggled to the door minutes later. There was still silence when he opened the door, you would not have guessed that there was a dog in the house. Two dogs, actually, he was babysitting Daiya the MinPin, who has since returned to Japan with her people. I wonder if Queeni still remembers her playmate.

When we took Queeni home, she was the quietest dog I've ever come across. I even wondered if she could bark. It took her a while to find her voice, and now, she rules the roost. No doorbell, no footstep outside the door goes unchallenged.

Queeni is the first dog that I'm seeing grow from puppyhood into middle age. Schwarz was already a senior when he moved in. Spock did not live beyond four.

One dog year being seven human years, Queeni has in one birthday leapt from my age to L's, now joining him at the late-40s. With middle age, her behaviour has changed. She is grumpier and growls more, even at us when we shift her when she's taking up too much space on our bed, well, what she thinks is her bed. A far cry from that quiet, eager to please little dark puppy (she was more black then than salt-and-pepper). It surfaces only when she is corrected, and then she needs reaffirmation that she is still loved.

Typical royal.

Long live the Queen.

On the 9th day of Christmas

... I finally made cookies.

Note to self: when being smart alecky and switching ingredients (molasses for golden syrup because nobody seems to sell the latter anymore), do not expect cookies to come out the right rolling consistency.

But when adding extra ingredients (cinnamon and nutmeg) to ginger cookies, do expect the kitchen to smell wonderful.

Deciphering politicalspeak

"We can more to make public transport a choice mode of travel... In parallel, we need to update our policies on car ownership and usage... We need to enhance the ERP and extend its coverage so that driving costs significantly more, but we will balance that with lower vehicle ownership taxes."

What's that supposed to mean? Please buy a car but please don't drive it?

Auld lang syne and all that

New Year's Day was a normal work day for me but I was done early and got home way earlier than usual. The TV was rubbish so we put on the DVD that came with the Led Zep CD. So I guess you could say the year started on a somewhat retro note.

It still amazes me that all that music, all that energy was created by just four men on stage. No costumes, no backup singers, dancers, definitely no professional choreographer, and no multimedia streams. Let's see you top that, Madonna.

Maybe that's what's lacking in music today -- the side shows have got in the way of the real stuff. U2 started with just four guys, no frills and solid music. Only now, they seem to have acquired the multimedia backdrop in their concerts.

The Police are even better, L pointed out, they're only three guys . Then tell me why, when it's just three guys and no extra trimmings, a ticket to their concert here in February costs $500?

Those were the days when once a band member died, the band died with him because the band simply wasn't a band any more without him. There is no Led Zeppelin without John Bonham, no Queen without Freddie Mercury.

Now, the search for a replacement becomes a reality TV show. And this is an INXS fan moaning.

Such middle-aged thoughts on New Year's Day.
I grow old, I grow old. I shall wear the bottom of my trousers rolled.

One year older

Last year, the New Year crept up on us when we were walking the dogs. I remember that we didn't even realise that it was midnight until we heard the countdown cries wafting down from the windows. And now, having reread that post from a year ago, I realise that things haven't changed. Roop is still a poophead, not to be trusted in the house (not for more than a couple of hours anyway) and now, we can't blame it on him being a puppy any longer.

Not that it wasn't nice seeing the New Year in while walking the furkids, but we planned it a little better this year. I worked yesterday on the eve, but it was extra early hours (I won't go into how I managed to get up and be in the office at a time that was 3 hours before my usual wake-up time), then met L for dinner and we were home by early evening. When it turned 11pm, we walked the furkids, then we came back up and turned the TV on to the channel that was screening the countdown. Is it some protocol or something, that the first Singapore Idol and the current one (although they keep dropping the Singapore Idol title for Asian Idol now that he's won it) cannot be on the same stage together?

And at one minute past midnight, it was all over (for me, that is) and I was quite glad to sip the cup of ginger tea that I had steeping since last year (heh) and finally go to bed.

Happy New Year, everyone.