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.

Another long weekend

I was quite happy to be rostered to work on Sunday. I like Sunday shifts -- the top bosses are not around, nobody breathes down your neck, you do your work at your own pace and if you're lucky, you finish early and leave early.

Until I realised that Monday -- I'm working that day too -- is a public holiday. Labour Day. I'd quite forgotten about it. Another long weekend spent at work!

And so it begins

Had a late night last night -- not entirely work related. OK, somewhat work related -- G needed a stiff drink before facing Nomination Day today. So stiff that after we left when the wine bar closed at 3am, he popped into 7-11 for one last beer. Me, I was rostered off on Nomination Day. I offered to work instead and take another day off but the design chief said I could "escape" especially as I worked Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Ah, just desserts.

Which meant that I woke up late today -- well after the noon deadline for nomination papers to be filed, but just in time for the media frenzy to begin.

I think I will switch off the TV and not read newspapers for the next week. I should just read the parties' manifestos. Everything else in the media will be hogwash at best and hysteria at worst.

Close encounters of the lift kind

My pet peeve is a common Singaporean complaint -- people who crowd round train and lift doors, and rush in as soon as they open, without first giving way to those who want to come out. I've never understood this. Surely there would be more room for them inside if they let the others come out first?

Last Wednesday: A Chinese-speaking lady tried to enter the lift as soon as the doors opened, before L could and Queeni could leave it. Queeni snorted. Not barked, not growled. Just snorted in a pig-like way, which is Schnauzer for "ahem". The lady jumped back and exclaimed in Mandarin, "Scared me to death." And then raised one high-heeled foot and made as if to kick Queeni. That was when L stepped in. Ordinarily monolingual, he summoned enough Mandarin to tell her: "Your face also scared me to death." She was all dolled up but looked like "an extra from the Rocky Horror Show", he later told me. I still prefer to have kicked her.

Last Friday: A teenaged girl barged into the lift as soon as the doors opened, only to walk right into us -- two people and two dogs coming out. This time round, the dogs were silent. Not even a polite doggy "ahem". Young Lady promptly burst into tears at the shock of there actually being people (and dogs) wanting to come out of the lift first. When we were well down the path, I turned back to look at her -- she was still standing at the corner of the lift lobby and crying, while her boyfriend held the lift door open and looked helpless. Poor sod. The guy, not the girl. The girl's just what Queeni is biologically termed as.

Happy Easter

L (looking at a printed in Australia calendar): Why isn't Easter Monday isn't a holiday here? (It is a holiday in Australia and Britain.)

Me: Because Easter Sunday isn't a holiday here, so we don't get Monday off to compensate for a Sunday holiday. Good Friday off is supposed to be good enough for us.

And after a moment's thought: This is Singapore. When you resurrect isn't as important as when you die.

The real meaning of just in time delivery

Back in February, the government announced -- as part of Budget 2011 -- several benefits such as utility rebates, tax rebates, growth dividends, education subsidies. This week, a flyer summarising all those goodies arrived at my door step. Two months later. But just in time for the elections.

Pre-election present

I didn't even realise it until the clerk at the counter gave me a quizzical look when I tried to pay my utility bill. Thanks to the utility save handout, this month's bill was a grand total of zero.

And then I went into the office. And found out that Nomination Day is next Wednesday, and Polling Day is May 7.

Do good things come in pairs?

Just before the weekend, two of my colleagues gave me two books, saying that I absolutely have to read them. Have to say that I've never heard of either of the Toms before, but I'll go with my colleagues' recommendations. I don't know if the two of them cahooted to unload two books on me all at once -- especially as I've publicly admitted that a combination of Facebook and cable TV has eaten my brain. If I can't be prised off the couch this weekend, and if the laundry/dirty dishes/dust bunnies pile up, G and P are to be blamed. Wasn't the TV this time round. :)

Night at the museum

Nothing came to life -- most unfortunately.

The only thing that the ArtScience Museum had going for it -- other than it opens till 10pm (which suits night shift folk like me because my days don't start till late afternoon, even on a day off) -- is its beautiful architecture. I'd passed it often enough to know what it looked like on the outside -- a lotus flower -- and now I could prowl inside and try to figure out how the galleries connect. I think the exhibits I spent most time poring over were architect Moshie Safadie's notebook sketches when he conceptualised the building. And they were tucked away in two corners at the landing on the uppermost level, like some kind of afterthought.

The Tate, it is not. What's more galling is that entry to the Tate is free. This one has a S$30 entry fee. It got me into two still exhibitions -- a travelling one on Genghis Khan, and another on Chinese pottery excavated from a shipwreck in the South China Sea. Which really isn't very different from the stuff that the Asian Civilisations Museum has to offer. And frankly, I think the ACM does a better job -- and at one-third the price of admission. The Genghis Khan exhibition had a few interesting items, but it relied heavily on a video narrative -- which I could watch at home on the NatGeo channel.

I guess, with a name like ArtScience, I was expecting a cross between MOMA and the Exploratorium -- both of which I absolutely loved. Nothing like that here. :(

The king of musicals

The Lion King was the reason why I spent one summer in London angsting at the return ticket booth at Leicester Square almost daily when no returns were to be had. So you can imagine how happy I was that the production finally came to Singapore.

Breathtaking staging, wonderful costumes, amazing puppetry.

Loved it.

A Watergate by any other name

The placard that all cabbies have on their dashboard with their names printed on them said that this Chinese youngish 30-something driver's first name was Nixon.

By the end of the trip, I couldn't withhold my curiosity any longer, and had to ask him if that was the name he was given at birth, or a Western first name that he picked for himself. His parents named him Nixon.

You'd think that if you wanted to name your son after an American president, someone more salubrious than Nixon would come to mind. Eisenhower, maybe. Or Roosevelt. Maybe that would be a bit hard for Junior to spell... But Nixon! Hmm, or maybe it was that Nixon in China business.

Out of sync

The problem with working a six-day Sunday-to-Friday week (other than six days! Working on a Sunday!) is you're facing a mid-week slump on Tuesday -- just when other people are recovering from Black Monday. By the time it gets to Wednesday, you're starting to coast downhill for the second half of the week while everyone else is struggling up the mid-week hump.