Going green

There are now potted plants all over the office. Big, leafy plants two to three feet tall, placed in corners, at the end of cubicle rows, in between filing units.

I found out from the administrators that these plants were rented. I didn't know you could rent plants. The rental includes watering once weekly and a topping up of the hydroponic feed.

They are part of some workplace health initiative the organisation is undertaking, and my particular office is getting the first go at the plants, to sort of test drive the outcome. The biggest boss emailed that we were picked because we had the highest MC rate.

I honestly don't know how the plants are going to cut down on the sick rate. I think people are falling sick because they are overworked, and we are overworked because we are short staffed. New hires might solve things better than new plants. But I guess plants are much cheaper to rent than people.

Also, I remember from biology classes that while plants absorb carbon dioxide and give out oxygen from photosynthesis in the day, the reverse happens at night.

You wanna bet that the sick rate among the night crew will only get worse? Now, among other things, we have to fight for oxygen.

Starting young

There was a bit of commotion on the landing outside our front door yesterday afternoon (and the dogs joined in happily). Turned out that the six-year-old boy down the corridor had staged a run-by toy-throwing at the three-year-old boy across the landing. Yes, he ran past the open door of the flat, and threw a small stuffed pink dinosaur inside, freaking out the younger boy.

Now, a day later, the three-year-old's mother said he won't step on the bits of the floor where the toy bounced and landed. The toy is now sitting in the basket of his dad's bicycle, which is left outside the front door. The boy insisted on placing it there yesterday. Today, he seems anxious that the toy be removed and returned to "abang down there" (brother down the corridor). His mother explained that he feels the need to right things. A concerned L patted the boy on the head. The boy then scrubbed away at it. His father explained that he does that when he is touched, and will then run to the bathroom to wash his hands.

OCD sure starts early.

So does toy terrorism.

Weekend in front of the TV

Only the Brits will consider making a TV programme that retraces the journeys of a long dead poet -- The Scandalous Adventures of Lord Byron. And only a Singapore girl whose name came from Byron and who was mad about the Romantics when she was much younger will watch it. Rupert Everett as the narrator was the icing on the cake. The bonus is when he strips down to his skivvies and tries to swim the Hellespont. Even if he didn't cross it (a Russian tanker got in the way of this Leander), I think he out-Byroned Byron on that.

Impulse buy

Sort of. I was looking for something to wear in the office when the aircon gets chilly at night when the room empties out. I was thinking of a fleece hoodie. And then I saw this. Cut and styled like a leather jacket, but it's denim. Certainly light enough to wear here. And at 70% off. What's not to like?

It's criminal

Went to Borders to get a book today. And found them selling cookware. And photo frames and gee-gaws, all stacked aptly under "crime".

Headbanger

Loopy Roopy's idea of getting into anything -- including closed doors and baby gates -- is to head butt his way through. Well, That Dog has twice banged headfirst into the oven door. The oven being hot, in use and containing a roasting chicken.

Communal watching

I'm too young to remember when TV was new. But I'm told by my mum that back in the days when only one neighbour had a TV set, every one would gather in his house to watch. Well, this is Gen Y's version. One kid with a PC with a DVD player. What's more enterprising here is that they plugged it into an electrical outlet at the communal deck. I guess when the town council planned the deck for communal sharing, they didn't expect the outlets to be used this way.

Goodbye Mr P

Vic Prooth was my Shakespeare teacher when I was in junior college. Those first lessons, we didn't know what to make of the English expatriate teacher striding in the front of the classroom roaring like King Lear, which he was teaching us.

I was soon to find out that Mr P's bark was worse than his bite. And that he did more than just teach in the classroom. He also taught in the canteen, sitting down with students who needed extra hours after class to wrestle with the intricacies of Elizabethan English. And he didn't just teach the set A level texts either. He spent time reading to us from other literature greats. I never understood the Milton, but I loved the sound of it. I told him that, years later, when I was grappling with Milton in university. He said then he had done his job. It would be like children picking up on nursery rhymes -- it's all sound, cadence and rhythm before the meaning. And if I had picked that up, then there's hope that I would understand Milton.

Mr P made me cry. Lots of times. Once in class, when he enacted Laurence Olivier's version of Lear carrying the body of Cordelia -- how one could say "never" five times over and make it sound different each time while increasingly driving it home that Cordelia had well and truly snuffed it. Once outside of class during those extra-curricular readings he held in the canteen, it was the last scene from Cyrano de Bergerac. When I asked to borrow his copy of the play so that I could read the whole thing, he had his entire copy photostated so that I could have my own copy to keep, copyright laws be damned. Another time, he lent me a copy of Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince -- I read it on the bus home from school, and wept all the way home.

Mr P taught me more than English Literature. He had a subscription ticket to the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, and he used to talk quite a bit about the concerts he attended. I had a passing interest because of a classical music background from piano lessons since young. But the piano lessons only made the subject dreary. It wasn't until Mr P started playing music and making me cassettes from his records, and later on CDs, that I realised this classical stuff wasn't just Associated Board set exam pieces and scales. That this Mozart stuff was really nice and not at all boring.

Over the years after I left school, he became a friend. But he has stayed as a teacher too. His last lesson to me was during the elections in Singapore earlier this year. He was interested in the country's political scene and if things had changed since he left Singapore. I had written that I would probably spoil my vote because I didn't want to vote for the ruling party but there was no credible opposition in my ward. He said that he had spoilt his vote for years, and always with a quote from Romeo and Juliet: "A pox on both your houses." And so that was what I wrote too. It seemed more refined than scrawling all over the ballot paper. And that was the last email exchange I had with him. He was a teacher to the very last.

It had occurred to me that I should end this with a quote from Shakespeare. It would be fitting somehow. But the only one that I can think of is Hamlet's "good night sweet prince, may flights of angels send thee to thy rest". But I don't think Mr P would have much truck with cherubim and seraphim.

I don't know where atheists go when they die. And Mr P used to positively revel in being a heathen. I'm sure that where ever he is, there'll be good music. And lots of good books.

Farewell, Vic. You will be missed.

Wish we could say the same

I sighed when I saw the cover of the current issue of The Economist. Not too long ago was the Aids memorial where I met with old friends, and thought of even older friends. Of those of us still attending the memorial faithfully every year, almost every one had dropped out of volunteering. Now, we just attend the memorial as an audience member instead of a volunteer. "Every one I used to do this for has died," said one of the ex-volunteers.

It was the saddest thing that I've ever heard.

I wish we in Singapore could say the same of the sentiments expressed by The Economist. The latest data from the Ministry of Health shows that in 2010, the number of people reported with Aids in Singapore dipped slightly. But two were perinatal. Those could have been avoided.

The fight goes on.

A week of gifts

Almost everyday now, for the past few weeks, I came home to find a stuffed toy (the dogs') on my side of the bed, sometimes under my pillow, sometimes tucked behind the bolster.

I think it was most probably Queeni who did it -- she's the one that will carry a toy in her mouth and move it about. Rupert just shakes them and drops them when he's done. I'd like to think that she left me a present everyday because she missed me while I was at work. But I think she was really just leaving a toy to bag a space for herself on the bed for later in the night when we retire.







I took these pictures over the past week. The one time I forgot to close the bedroom door when I was taking a picture, guess who got into the frame and claimed the toy for himself.

Yummy yummy peri peri

I'm not food blogger enough to take pictures of my meals before I start tucking in. But I didn't expect my order to come on a sizzling hot plate. I had to wait for it to stop spitting at me before I could start eating. So while waiting, I took a picture of it. Peri peri chicken with pasta in tomato sauce and mushrooms. At the food court next to the office. Yummy.

While everybody else was at work on Monday

... just desserts for working on Sunday.

Royalty has its privileges

HRH Queeni could have been the model for this T-shirt.

Except that I don't see her offering to help anybody.

Day out

The company I work for has a Family Day outing once every year -- usually to the zoo or bird park or something. I've never gone. Not for the past 10 years. But today, hoo boy, today, the outing was at Universal Studios at Resorts World Sentosa. Getting there was already part of the fun. There's now a boardwalk where you can actually walk across to the resort island (with a travellator for those who don't feel like walking) and a view along the way. Not to mention some cafes and a wine bar if you really need sustenance for that 10 minute walk.



Universal Studios extended their opening hours till 11pm, just to cater to us. Which meant that most of the general public got chased out after their official closing hour at 7pm, only people like us (with special wristbands) could stay on in. And ride the roller coasters without having to queue since the hoi polloi were booted out. The Revenge of the Mummy ride. Battlestar Galatica at SciFi World. Woo hoo! I went round and round and round until my stomach kinda moved up to my mouth. Contents anywhere in between. And I don't get motion sickness ordinarily.



There was a water ride at Jurassic Park, and the staff warned that we could get splashed. Somewhere in the queue, you could buy a rain poncho, but because I was a single rider (L wimped out on anything that would get him upside down or wet), I didn't have to join the general queue and missed that. I didn't mind getting splashed. Wrong. I got soaked. Head to toe soaked. As in dripping wet. I could've won a wet Tshirt contest easily, only I don't think I was Miss Congeniality when I took off my sneakers and wrung out my socks.

And that was my last ride for the night. But it was fun!

Sunday pig out

We went to the Marriott for their dinner buffet as we were nearby for the Aids Candlelight Memorial. We were quite late, but there was 45 minutes left to the buffet seating and we figured we could do enough damage in the remaining time. The staff quite kindly warned us 10 minutes before the buffet officially ended and told us that we should load up on whatever else we wanted before they started clearing the buffet set-up. So L got himself another plate of meat entrees and dessert to share -- a plateful of the petit fours and cakes (one of every variety), a bowl of ice cream (one scoop of every flavour) and made himself a bowl of local shaved ice dessert at the assemble-it-yourself counter. He was very happy with all the food on the table.

Ahhhhh

:)

Door stopper

There is nothing as heart stopping as when you get home and only one dog rushes out to give you a red carpet welcome. It verges onto panic when the missing dog is the mischievous one that gets himself into "uh oh" moments.

Luckily, we soon found out that it was because Rupert somehow got himself into a room that was shut off by a baby gate that closed on him and effectively locked him inside a room that he was supposed to be locked out of.

That's when we realised that he's learnt how to nose the baby gate open if it wasn't properly latched close. The only unfortunate side-effect was that when he barged in after nosing it open a crack, it tended to swing itself shut behind him, gathering enough momentum to swing into the latch and then he couldn't nose it open to let himself out. (That was also when we realised that when we weren't home, he's been patrolling round the house and sticking his nose into things.)

Yesterday, I came home to find this. He's learnt to use a stuffed toy as a door stopper so that the gate won't swing shut behind him. And he's so pleased about it too.

The last word

In the last election, in 2006, the ruling party won, with 66.6% of the votes cast. I remember that percentage well. Who can forget the number of the beast?

Yesterday, it won, with 60.1%.

So from where did the prime minister derive his "clear mandate"?

Finally

A long weekend. I got today off, and it's immensely satisfying to be able to lie in bed till the middle of the afternoon when everyone else is at work.

It also helps that today is Cooling Off Day. No campaigning, no rallies, just some party political broadcasts on TV tonight -- but that can be easily silenced.

Ah, peace.

Until the polls close tomorrow night, that is.

A plague on both your houses

I want to vote for the opposition. But not the way they're asking me to, in the bottom poster. Marking my vote with a tick doesn't mean voting for them, it means spoiling a vote. You're supposed to mark your vote with a cross.

No wonder the opposition never wins an election.