张震岳 [Unplugged] LIVE in Concert @ Esplanade

Last Saturday, I paid $90 per tix to watch a show that was less enjoyable than his (FOC) school concert. WTH. Sat at the third circle, first row, 10 minutes late and didn’t feel like I missed anything at all. In fact, didn’t feel the energy of a live performance at all throughout the 2-hour concert.

A-Yue performed an exhaustive list of songs, old and new, popular and unpopular - the irregular pacing of the song sequence did nothing to liven a concert that could have been more satisfying if he had just bothered to pick up the guitar placed on stage, in front of him the whole time. Famous for being reticent - or rather, a euphemistic way of saying that he’s not a savvy performer - A-Yue truly tested the devotion of his fans and their love for his music.

The saving grace, however, was MC Hotdog’s brief performance. I had fallen back into my cosy seat, yawning and dozing off, when this madman (in a good way) swaggered onstage, cracked lame jokes and sang rude songs. Even A-Yue seemed to warm up a bit more after MC Hotdog came on.

The problem is, I guess, that A-Yue is a tad too lonely when he’s singing by himself. Give the man some company, and he’ll be fine.

Technorati Tags: 张震岳, zhang zhen yue, a yue, ntu, nanyang technological university, campus concert, hard rock cafe, esplanade, ok, free night, autograph session, mc hotdog, yes 933, peifen, rock music

Edison Chen’s Press Conference Summary

300 members of the press were present at Edison Chen’s press conference this afternoon at 3pm. He spoke for only about 5 minutes. Here is his speech in summary:

He apologised profusely, saying that those photos were stolen from him, i.e. admitting that those photos were his, and they were never meant for anyone else’s eyes.

More shockingly, he has announced that he would retire from HK’s entertainment after completing his current assignments. After which, he would go out of HK to do social work. When would he be back? He says he has no idea. He admits that he has failed as an idol and asks for everyone’s forgiveness, and that he has never been trying to escape facing everyone since the photos leaked. He emphasised that he has cooperated with the police from Day 1 and would continue assisting them in the investigation of this case. Of course, he urged everyone to stop blowing it up.

And he apologised some more. Here’s the full press conference video:

Aw, come on, Edison, that was a month’s worth of sordid, oops, I mean, solid entertainment! What’re you saying sorry for?

You can watch the video report here on omy.sg and read the story here.

Lydia Sum (沈殿霞) passes away at 60

Lydia Sum, well-respected Hong Kong comedienne, passed away at around 8am on 19 Feb 2008. She lived 60 good years, spending the last two battling liver cancer.

The veteran actress had part of her liver removed in 2006 and was hospitalised in 2002 to treat a bile duct inflammation. 36 gallstones were extracted. She had been suffering from diabetes and high blood pressure as well.

According to Hong Kong media reports, Lydia was undergoing kidney dialysis and consuming expensive traditional Chinese medicine, which set her back by tens of thousands. She was in and out of St. Mary’s Hospital the past six months, with each hospitalisation period a media fest for the local paparazzi.

She was also criticised by the media for wolfing down food inappropriate for her consumption during her illness. Early last November, she ate a number of 大闸蟹 (fresh water crabs), subsequently fell into a coma and rushed to hospital. Most recently, she was warded in the intensive treatment ward at St. Mary’s.

Lydia Sum was wheeled onstage to receive the TVB Grand Award at the 40th TVB Anniversary Awards in November 2007. She had appeared to be in high spirits, dressed in a pink suit, her signature wig and plastic black-framed glasses. She gave a rousing speech when she was handed her award, saying that she would fight her sickness to the finish.

She first joined the entertainment industry at the age of 12, and proved to be a natural with the camera at her very first audition. That successful audition sealed her fate with the entertainment industry for the rest of her life.

Lydia Sum at the 40th TVB Anniversary Awards in Nov 2007

Locally, audiences would not be unfamiliar with her starring role in the sitcom Living With Lydia. Her co-stars remember her as a jovial person who always put friendship even before a working relationship. Her professionalism as an actress is also beyond par. However, she was a notorious chain-smoker and voracious eater.

Lydia Sum is considered one of the most influential icons in the Hong Kong entertainment industry. She had acted in more than a hundred TV serials and hosted the popular variety show 欢乐今宵 for three seasons.

You can read more about this on omy and watch the vodcast here.

Technorati Tags: Lydia Sum, TVBS, Hong Kong, Living With Lydia, 沈殿霞, shen dian xia, 肥肥, 肥姐, feifei

Fly by Night 5 years Retrospective

I have been a loyal participant of the Fly by Night Video Challenge, annually since it started in 2002. The challenge is simple:

The theme of the competition is announced on Friday night. You have one weekend to conceptualise and make your 5-minute video. All entries are submitted on Sunday evening and then screened on the same night.

There’s an adrenaline rush while cheonging to complete the video and I get immense satisfaction out of the end product.

In the first year, my teammates were Xai (working for the United Nations in Laos), Wan Churn (trailer producer at Channel U), Ailin (civil servant) and Sally Poh (producer at Moving Visuals). The theme was “Next 5 Minutes” and our short film was titled “Bliss in the Next 5 Minutes”. My team didn’t make it to the top ten.

In the second year, my teammates were Wan Churn, Xai and Ailin. Sally took part again in a separate group with her new boyfriend. The theme was “Fever” and our short film was titled “A Prayer in the Rain”. Again, my team didn’t make it to the top ten. Sally and her boyfriend’s short film did though.

In the third year, my teammates were Leon Kiong (motion graphics editor at MuVee), Chitra Kumar (final year student in NTU SCI) and Lai Chow (editor at Youth.SG). The theme was “#*@^” and our short film was titled “The Symbol Life”. My team finally won this time. Unfortunately, Leon has deleted the video from his hard disk even before exporting it. Hence I don’t have a copy to show here.

In the fourth year, I joined with Leon Kiong alone. The theme was “Green Apples” and our short film was titled “The Great Fruits Massacre”. We won again.

Finally, in the fifth year, I joined with Leong Kiong, Cheng Ding An (currently preparing for his feature film, Kallang Roar) and Rachel Chan (journalist). We didn’t win, but we will still join again this year.

Technorati Tags: fly by night, the great fruit masscare, leon kiong, cheng ding an, rachel chan, the symbol life, low lai chow, chitra kumar, sally poh, ng wan churn, xaisongkham induanchanty, lee ailin, bliss, prayer in the rain, singapore short films, alvinology

Heng Hwa Bun

Have you ever heard this joke: Majority of the world population is made up of Indians and Chinese, so eventually everyone will marry someone of Indian and/or Chinese blood, and then our general skin colour will just be brown?

Well, in Singapore, majority of the Chinese are Hokkien, and my theory is that everyone will eventually end up marrying a Hokkien person. Alvin is Hokkien, but there is a slight distinction, as illustrated by this bun.

The Heng Hwa 生煎包 from Food Republic, VivoCity

It may look just like any other white-skinned bun, but if you look closely, you’ll notice that it’s fried on one side (hence the “生煎”), and there’s a saucer of dipping sauce. This, ladies and gentlemen, is a Heng Hwa （兴华）bun.

It contains a surprise in every bite. It’s neither a veggie bun nor a meat bun - there’s a bit of everything inside it, even vermicelli and mushrooms. Dip the bun into the concoction of chopped garlic, vinegar and green onion before savouring it - the skin will melt in your mouth.

Alvin’s paternal grandpapa is Pu Tien Heng Hwa （莆田兴华）, a minority Hokkien dialect group. The part of China where they live, people are poor and can’t afford to eat meat all the time. They are an agrarian society that lives near a river and make do with whatever they can glean from their land. Resulting in a clever cuisine that uses a combination of simple ingredients to produce complex tastes. Very different from Singaporean Hokkien fare.

Apparently I don’t know very much about the geography, history of Alvin’s people, so I shall stop here now to avoid embarrassing myself. Maybe I will do some more research when we next eat more Pu Tien fare. If you are familiar with the Channel 8 news anchor 黄秀玲，you may be interested to know that she shares Alvin’s dialect. You can read about her cooking Pu Tien bee hoon, a Chinese New Year staple, here.

So now you know Alvin’s not just any Hokkien.

Technorati Tags: Hokkien, food, dialect, Pu Tien, Heng Hwa, 莆田, 兴华, 黄秀玲, 生煎包

Life is…

Life is shit.

Which couldn’t be more true for Alvin right now, as he’s guarding a tower close to a cesspit that churns every hour or so and belches a stench that could only be 99% butane.

But I guess it can’t be, because his comrades can afford to light the hourly cigarette without blowing up the entire place. Butane is flammable, right?

So it’s probably ammonia. Every molecule of air within 10m radius of that sewer is permeated by ammonia.

But Alvin doesn’t live by the cesspool, and with any luck, the sewer won’t leave any permanent damage to his well-being when he finishes reservist. Yes, he’ll be coming back to real life, and guess what, continue to live in the churning pit of crap that is life itself. What better way to learn why, than to have a sobering one-on-one one-hour lesson with one’s insurance agent?

I met with mine on Monday. Let’s call him Casey for convenience’s sake. He had wanted to update me on a few developments, most significantly involving the Government’s decisions on our Central Provident Fund.

He said, from 1 April 2008 onwards, unless you have more than $20,000 inside your Ordinary Account, you won’t be allowed to use those savings on investment plans.

Of course, if you have $25,000, it means you can only use up to $5,000 on investments.

Bottom-line: Come 1 April 2008, anybody who wants to invest their CPF Ordinary Account money must have $20,000 as minimum retainer.

My curiousity was piqued. There has to be a reason why the Government is passing this new rule, right?

Yes, Casey said, because in case you need to buy a flat, $20,000 would definitely come in handy for part of the down payment.

Ahhh.

So, if I put my money in an investment plan, I can’t drag and drop it back inside the Ordinary Account and buy a flat, right?

Right.

There it was. The catch.

Casey explained, if I wanted to have my cake and eat it too, I could calculate how much I needed for flat-buying, leave it inside the Ordinary Account, then use the rest for investments.

Was I planning to get a flat soon? What sort of flat am I thinking about? We had no exact figures, but say I’m thinking of a flat that costs $300,000 - you need to put 15% as downpayment - which meant -$45,000 - which translated to -

$22,500 that my spouse and I would each have to fork out - which worked out to, for me -

44.47 months/3.7 years of work, not considering increments and bonuses.

Thinking about this gives me a bellyache. I’d only worked for about, what - a year at most?

Without looking at my CPF Statement of Account, we calculated that I was definitely in deficit. Of at least, um, I forget how we actually arrived at the figure: $10,000.

Although I was obviously unable to invest any Ordinary Account funds, Casey was unflappable. How about investing the money in the Special Account, then? And how about a sound financial plan to manage my salary?

I laughed. I couldn’t believe there was anything to manage at all, my salary being so meagre, as the astute reader would probably have guessed by now. (If you need help, 22% of our gross salary goes to CPF per month.)

We briefly evaluated my monthly expenses and I told him that I’d been out of work for half a year before I got employed recently, so the current breakdown was not accurate, having to catch up with loans and all. He said he understood and said we should probably give it three months, as a regular spending pattern should be apparent by then.

As for the Special Account, only 5% of one’s gross salary goes into it. If my Ordinary Account were in deficit, I shuddered to think of the dregs inside my Special Account. The minimum amount required for investment planning is $1,200.

Before we parted ways, I promised to check how much there actually was inside my CPF accounts, and let him know by the end of this week whether I had the gumption to invest my Special Account funds.

I learnt from Christopher Gardner in The Pursuit of Happyness that the American IRS has long hands that will reach into your bank account and deduct income tax owed to the government if you don’t file your taxes. In Singapore, likewise, the Central Provident Fund has insidious hands.

You think the moment you receive your first paycheck is a time to celebrate. You feel CPF’s firm handshake and mistake it as a congratulatory gesture, for in truth, it was really saying, “Welcome to the Circle of Life. Welcome to the Circle of Shit.”

After struggling to clear your tertiary education loan for about four years, you heave a sigh of relief, only to discover, to your chagrin, that you have to empty your CPF in order to buy a living space as attractive as a shoebox. Then you pay, pay and pay to repay the housing loan, and then you pay some more when -

When your own kid goes to university.

There must be something omniscient about CPF, for when I reached home, I received notice that, as at 31 Dec 2008, not only did I still owe more than $22,000 for my education loan, but also more than $500 worth of interest.

I need to take a shit. Maybe, if I could clear my system, I’d be able to decide whether or not to invest those funds.

Technorati Tags: Central Provident Fund, CPF, insurance, IRS, investment, living in Singapore, education loan, shit

The Poor People’s Museum Tour

Rachel and I spotted the Heritage in Photos blogging competition in the Straits Times a few weeks ago and immediately, we knew we had to take part! We love museums.

Here goes our museum blog entry.

It all started on 21 December 2007 (Friday). Both Rachel and I were off work that day and we decided to spend the day visiting museums. Our first stop was the National Museum of Singapore.

How come no Tamil?

The first thing I noticed was the signboard leading in did not have a Tamil translation. Maybe times have changed. We are no longer so politically correct about the whole CMIO (Chinese, Malay, Indian, Others) race categorisation as the four “official races” in Singapore. Japanese has been substituted instead. This is strange because I don’t recall a large Japanese diaspora here in Singapore. Must be for tourists. Then again, why isn’t German, French or other foreign language on the signboard? Maybe it’s our something left over from our Syonan-to legacy.

We faced our first and largest obstacle when we whipped out our camera inside the museum to document our journey.

No photography allowed in the Singapore Living Galleries!

No photography allowed at the centrepiece fashion thingie display of which I have completely forgotten the name ‘cos I wasn’t allowed to take a picture!

No photography inside the museum shop, too. Oh well.

We were quite excited by the Greek Masterpieces from the Louvre exhibition but it costs S$15 for adults. We wanted to go in… But when the kind receptionist told us that no photography was allowed inside, we decided to forgo it.

Here’s a nice picture of a sculptured wiener seen on a poster promoting the exhibition. It is all we can show you from the exhibition.

Since we already made the trip, we decided to try find things to do around the Museum that did not require entrance fees. Hence the idea of writing a Poor People’s Museum Tour was born.

We found savings in the form of…

Free locker!

We were very happy that the museum provided free locker services for all visitors! We were carrying a lot of barang barang on that day, and it was really a relief there’s a place to deposit them while we strolled around. Extra brownie points for National Museum staff for being so considerate!

Rachel didn’t know the tea will make her lao sai yet

Beside the locker compartment, there was a cool vending machine which sells mostly exotic Japanese (is this why the signboard got Japanese?!?!) canned drinks not usually seen in the local market. We bought a can of iced milk tea for S$1.60. It has a strong floral fragrance, and I like it very much. However, Rachel said it made her lao sai later in the evening. Still, the price was worth it compared to having a drink at the more expensive MUSE bar downstairs.

After unburdening ourselves, we headed straight to the third floor to catch the (FOC) Groovision exhibition. I have read about Groovision and their Chappie designs on omy.sg and thought it seemed pretty interesting as it is related to advertising and graphic designs.

Alas, no photography was allowed in the tiny exhibition room. Hence I can only take a picture from the outside:

Chappie mannequins have to be ensconced in luscious greenery

When we were climbing up the stairs to the third floor, we came to face with an old friend.

Have you seen this creature before?

If the creature looks familiar to you, you probably saw it at the Singapore Biennale 2006 last year, or at the Hermes boutique. It is part of a mixed media installation by Takashi Kuribayashi, where he seeks to challenge the way we look at physical spaces. This installation is held in the air by cables! At first we thought it was a real ceiling! A true hanging garden indeed.

It’s really appropriate to see this exhibition here since the refurbishment of the National Museum of Singapore itself challenges the boundaries of preservation and creation. Did Kuribayashi intend to locate his “liminal space” within another?

Here’s its bottom. It almost looks like it will poop if you pull on its flippers. Hehe.

Downstairs, we saw an interactive art installation piece. That could be viewed for free. And seemed remotely fun.

This magnet wall installation attracted a lot of people of all ages. Basically, viewers are encouraged to “interact” with the artwork by tossing and arranging the wires in any way they wanted, to constantly recreate the whole look.

This boy obviously doesn’t like his younger brother very much…

Help! Big brother, where are you?

There’s a fake spilt milk exhibit currently on that you can look at for free.

In this picture, you can see that it really looks like someone split milk all over the floor. Now I understand what the two shallow pools of water were for!

Exhibition on concrete

There was another free exhibition about buildings and constructions on the basement floor. However, both of us have no interest in concrete and we skipped it promptly. We will still mention it here as there may be concrete-lovers who happen to read this.

Halfway through our tour, Rachel had to visit the Ladies (the milk tea was taking effect). As I sat on the bench waiting for her, I noticed the museum has very long escalators. Crowds are usually sparse at the Museum and I think the long escalators make ideal spaces for dating couples to get cuddly (free hanky panky space!). However, beware of occasional disapproving conservative old ladies like the one in the picture below:

No hanky panky please!

There’s also a giant LED screen on the second floor showing abstract visuals. You can go there and watch these to kill some time.

If that gets too boring, there are plenty of plasma screens outside ticketed exhibits where you can watch video content for free.

If you really really run out of things to see…. not to worry! There’s always the giant plaque where you can read the list of all the names of individuals the museum would like to thank.

The museum is such a different place from what it used to be when we were kids. Other than the carefully preserved and restored architecture, everything else seems to have changed. It’s as if what precious little heritage that we have must be consciously left behind for our next generation, or else the winds of change would have completely blown everything apart, like the old National Library just next door, which was torn down a couple of years back.

An example of the carefully preserved architecture inside the National Museum is this spiral staircase on the second floor.

Rachel says that when she was a little girl, her father and grandfather both told her that it was rumoured to be haunted, and secrets of untold treasure inside the room the staircase led to. I think it’s definitely an old Museum icon, even if I haven’t figured out the mystery behind the spiral staircase.

Actually, photography is quite useless inside the Singapore Living Galleries. We visited it before and a huge part of it are oral histories, videos, photographs - cleverly made into short documentaries and shown on plasma TV screens. For what better way is there to document our past than to have our forebears tell us their own stories? The old Museum tried to reenact history with little plastic (or was it clay?) figurines encased in glass boxes - but how is it possible to do our heritage justice by putting it inside a jar?

That being said, we acknowledge that the modern Museum is also very much a musuem of the now and not just our past. Who would have heard of art installations and things like that inside our museums 20 years ago?

But I said that too soon. Outside Singapore Art Museum, we were greeted by the familiar grotesque bronze sculpture that used to sit outside the National Museum, along Stamford Road. (We had also realised that, to seize the now, we had better quickly hop to the Singapore Art Museum in hopes of taking some worthy pics before it closed for the night.)

The sculpture is by a Taiwanese, Ju Ming, and is titled Living World. Ju Ming is a sculptor who literally carved a name for himself in the 1970s. (You can view his other sculptures from the Living World series here.) This Living World sculpture was probably the first, or one of his first sculptures, to be displayed in Singapore as public art.

I can’t remember the exact valuation of the sculpture when it was purchased, but I remember there was a lot of public unhappiness over the money spent to buy it. This was around two decades ago if my memory doesn’t fail me. Singaporeans were still not THAT receptive to the Arts then and saw the purchase as an utter waste of money.

I don’t find it any more pleasant to look at today, but I am sure if it was bought in this time and age, there probably won’t be so much public backlash. We are used to such fanfares these days. Like the makers of the equally grosteque Croc sandals claimed, “Ugly is the new beautiful”.

I used to hate the sculpture as I think the human figures look like giant deformed jellybeans. However, with time, I now associate a sense of nostalgia with them.

The Singapore Art Museum (I will not use any acronyms in this blog entry even if the names are long, I abhor them) was formerly the site of St. Joseph’s Institution campus and is recounted fondly by many an old alumni when they attend events at this highly popular venue for weddings and such nowadays.

This chapel on the second floor used to be where mass was held for the boys in days of yore. Now, couples to be wed like to rent this venue for their solemnisation ceremonies.

We turn our attention to the art that’s housed within this museum.

An interesting wall mural called East meets West: Girls’ Power by local artist Justin Lee arrests me:

Six of the seven princesses from Caldecott Hill?

Macbook ok!

Stop SMSing when I’m talking to you or I’ll smack you head with this racquet!

??????What is this???????

I took a few pictures of artworks I like from the Singapore Art Museum’s own collection:

The two doors on this painting are really carved from wood

This 3D installation looks different when viewed from different angles

These paintings are made with earth, sand and stones!

After that, we went to see the BIG Picture Show exhibition. While I was thoroughly enjoying the evening, Rachel was already starting to yawn non-stop as she is not inclined towards paintings. Photography is strictly prohibited here, though. Hence, no photos again.

One last exhibit before we leave the Singapore Art Museum and end our museums tour for the day - Vincent Leow’s sculpture! I fell in love with his work since the first time I saw it in the newspaper.

Andy’s Venice Souvenir

Vincent’s dog is named Andy and not coincidentally, this sculpture is of “man-dog Andy”. The sculpture is macabre and yet strangely, endearing. Maybe it’s ‘cos I can relate to the yuppie lifestyle of having pets instead of kids?

I dunno. But it gave me something to think.

Our heritage is changing. Changing from what? Well, good question. The thing is, it has never been the same, which is why we have a mish-mash of stuff that we can’t recognise as “Singaporean” anymore and import works of legacy from all over the world - other people’s heritage. And then, maybe, someday, part of it will be our own.

***Seriously, to be fair to both the National Museum of Singapore and Singapore Art Museum, entrance to the former is free for Senior Citizens. The Singapore Living Galleries within the National Museum are free from 6-9pm. The Singapore Art Museum has free admission for all on Fridays, 6-9pm, which explains why we didn’t have to pay a single cent for admission during the course of our tour. It is also FOC from 12-2pm, Mon-Fri.***

Why did Miss China win?

Picture from AP (R); Zhang Zilin’s PR photo from Miss World website (L)

Miss Zhang Zilin （张梓琳）, native of Hebei Province, China, has won this year’s Miss World crown. Why do you think she’s won?

Picture from AFP

This year’s Miss World 2007 beauty pageant was held at the beauty crown cultural center in Sanya, Hainan, China, Saturday, Dec. 1, 2007. Do you think it was because she stood at advantage on home soil?

Check out runner-up Micaela Reis of Angola (L) and second runner-up Carolina Moran Gordillo of Mexico. Third World countries may not have the highest GDPs, but boy they have beauties. Check out Miss Angola’s boobs!

On the other hand, Miss China has almost none.

Why would the judges favour a flatchested girl?

She is very tall though. Standing at 1.83m, Miss China dwarves even the other contestants.

Speaking of which, here are some of the other finalists:

Picture from AFP

“Miss World contestants from left, Jennifer Guevara Campos of Puerto Rico, Vivian Charlott Burkhardt of Grenada, Christine Reiler of Austria and Deborah Priya of Malaysia applaud after they nominated into top 16 semi-finalist during the Miss World 2007 beauty pageant. -AFP”

And here’s our Miss Singapore. Sigh. Poor thing. I’m sure she’s a cutie that guys at the gym or the bar would make a beeline to chat up, but she ain’t ever going to win.

Miss Singapore Roshni Kaur Soin

And here are the Miss World champions from years 2006 and 2004.

Miss World 2006, from Czech Republic (R); Miss World 2004, from Peru (L)

It’s often the Aryan (blonde hair, blue/green eyes) look or the exotic Latina look that has won over judges. But why Miss China this year? Could it be because -

Beijing Olympics 2008!

China’s a rising superpower and will crush your country if you don’t let their baby girl win?

For the past 57 years, China has not even come close to championship at a global pageant such as this. Could it be a sign of World Domination? First Miss World, then the Universe.

Remember the days (those were also the days we believed no Singaporean would ever make it to the stardom in the pop music scene) when we would watch a pageant like Miss World and sigh, “We Asians are not tall enough,” or “Look at those cans on Miss Georgia, she’s a shoo-in,” or “That Latina has gorgeous eyes!”

But this Zhang Zilin girl seems to glow. Beside her, everybody else looks pudgy, listless and insecure.

Before the pageant, this Beijing Technological University graduate was a secretary and part-time model. She has catwalked with supermodels on designer fashion shows and had a part to play in the very high-profile Fendi show at Beijing’s Great Wall this year in October.

Fame has its price though. Her contract with her agency has it in black-and-white that she’s not allowed to get attached, and that she must handover every cent she earns from modelling (and I’m guessing the prize money from the pageants as well) for them to manage. (Now you understand why she has two jobs.)

In an interview after the contest, she said that she will brush up on her English and start on her (token) Miss World visits to parts of the Caribbean, Europe and South Africa. With the Beijing Olympics coming up and China in the centre of attention for all the right and wrong reasons, I don’t think she’s going to be forgotten as soon as the other Miss World champions.

A beautiful walking propaganda machine. How convenient, China.

Why do you think she’s won?

Technorati Tags: miss world 2007, beauty pageant, China, Zhang Zilin, 张梓琳, Miss China, Mis World, Sanya, antialvin

Cooking at home with The Naked Chef

You’ve seen the Naked Chef, Jamie Oliver on TV, but have you ventured to try any of his recipes?

Truth be told, I’ve never even watched a single full episode of his TV programme. But I do like to cook, and the Essex lad exudes a charm that reaches beyond a TV audience, so one day, I followed two recipes in his Return of the Naked Chef cookbook.

farfelle with Savoy cabbage, pancetta, thyme and mozzarella

I’d like to say that I prepared the meal in as much time as one episode allowed, but marketing to purchase all the ingredients in any average recipe of Oliver’s takes you to at least three places and half a day’s worth of journeying and traipsing.

I must say that Carrefour is still the most well-stocked, accessible supermarket - you can get herbs like sweet basil, thyme, tarragon, sage and spearmint there at $1.95 per packet. There’s a wonderful stall in the Tekka wet market run by Mr Chew, sells dill, bay leaf, thai basil and sweet basil and both Chinese and English parsley. It’s tucked away in a nifty corner but you won’t miss it.

Single serving

This pasta dish uses an olive oil base. It called for Savoy cabbage, which I couldn’t find at all, so I substituted it with baby bok choy, which is readily available at most local wet markets (but not available at ang moh supermarkets - argh).

My friend Melvin Ryan Tan would prolly be aghast at all the green bits in the pasta and swear on his life that if it were the last dish on earth he would pick out all the cabbage before he would deign to ingest a single morsel, but not all the green stuff inside is cabbage - it’s thyme!

The most time-consuming part of preparing the meal is picking the leaves off the stems. I bought three packets because the total amount of thyme both recipes required was “three handfuls”, and I spent at least an hour picking the leaves.

fantastic roasted chicken

I’m not tooting my own horn, but Oliver really names this roasted chicken “fantastic”. Most roast chix are marinated with rosemary too, but not this one. It’s supposed to be served with potatoes and a strange vege I’ve also not been able to get: celeriac. Can anyone advise me on this, please? Quite a few of his other recipes use celeriac too.

Close-up of the chicken

Instead of using potatoes and celeriac, I used Japanese yam instead - didn’t complement the chicken so well though the main dish was outstanding enough to wow on its own. In comparison to the pasta dish, the roasted chicken was cheaper and easier to prepare. Bow-tie pasta is easily available and affordable, but pancetta and buffalo mozzarella are expensive and only available at atas ang moh supermarkets.

But the effort was well worth it. The food lasted two people for about three meals - dinner, supper and lunch next day.

The gratification that comes with reading Jamie Oliver’s cookbooks can’t be found elsewhere I think. They have such unabashed character and warmth - in the first one, The Naked Chef, written way back in 1999, he’s swinging bachelor on his moped; in the second one, Return of the Naked Chef, he’s married to Jools, whom he refers to as “my lovely missus”; in Happy Days with the Naked Chef, he’s got a new baby - and in the next, the second baby has arrived and he presents a collection of family recipes.

Lovely stuff from someone halfway across the globe, totally worth half a day of grocery shopping each time you cook with him.

Technorati Tags: home cooked food, Singapore food, cooking western food in Singapore, Jamie Oliver, naked chef, chicken, pasta

Who is Oscar the cat?

Lianhe Wanbao 《联合晚报》 caught my eye yesterday as it published the most darling picture I have ever seen (Homer Simpson: “so far”) grace its front page. Oscar the psychic cat! Have you heard? Have you seen?

This picture of Oscar was taken from FOXNews.com

After hearing why people say Oscar is psychic, you’re most likely to not wanna meet him. Other than that Oscar lives a thousand miles away in a hospice on Rhode Island, USA (actually I don’t know exactly how far Rhode Island is from Singapore, so I’m just being figurative here k), this two-year-old shorthaired moggy can predict which patient will die within the next two to four hours! According to the Associated Press who interviewed Dr. David Dosa, a doctor working in Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, Oscar will curl up next to a patient who is about to pass away and will stay there until that person breathes his or her last!

He’s already successfully predicted 25 cases of death. At his 13th case, a nurse working there who had been observing him for a few months was thoroughly “convinced of his talent” when he beat a doctor at predicting the time of death of a dying patient. The patient had exhibited signs of impending death: not eating, breathing with difficulty and a bluish tinge at the legs - but Oscar turned tail from her bedside. The nurse thought Oscar’s winning streak had been broken, but it turned out that the doctor’s prediction was 10 hours early - Oscar indeed joined the patient just two hours before her last moment.

Interestingly, everybody I have met face to face (so far) expressed their horror and shuddered at this news, saying that it’s terrible to have a harbinger of death like Oscar the Cat prowling the premises of a hospice. I’m wondering if it’s because Lianhe Wanbao re-interpreted the story into their freaky Grim Reaper angle.

As a cat lover, Oscar is totally rad news to me. I’d love to meet Oscar. I mean, if time’s up, time’s up, right? (Ever tried to prise your exam paper from your invigilator’s hands before? I haven’t. Not for more than five minutes.) Anyways, furthermore, seeing as I won’t be able to bring my own cat to the hospital (and why can’t I if I am dying!?! but more on that later), it’d be nice to have Oscar to snuggle with when I go to the place over the rainbow.

The nurse also said that since Oscar is highly accurate, the hospice is able to call up family members of the dying patient so they can ask them to rush down and spend the remaining two hours with their loved one. That’s another plus why Oscar is good to have around. That is why he recently received a wall plaque publicly commending his “compassionate hospice care.”

On icanhascheezburger.com, a US-based website that - okay, I haven’t fully figured out its real purpose of existence other than provide a platform for cat lovers to speak silly cat lingo (again, more on that in a later post, perhaps) and amuse themselves with edited cat pix - many users expressed their fondness for Oscar, saying that he’s “an angel in disguise” or a “Bodhisattva kitteh”, and like me, they’d be pleased to cuddle up to Oscar in their darkest hour. You can click on the image to access its 228 responses.

Taken from icanhascheezburger.com

One of them also referred to another news story about a psychic cat.

Superstitions and scientfic speculations of Oscar’s uncanny behaviour aside, I’m fascinated by his story because we don’t have a similar animal-loving environment in Singapore.

In Japan, seeing-eye dogs are allowed to accompany their owners almost everywhere. In Germany, commuters can bring their dogs to commute in the subway, just as long as it has a ticket (half price of adult fare). In some Russian restaurants and Japanese cafes, customers can bring their cats. In Hogwarts Castle, the janitor’s (Filch’s) cat, Mrs Norris, patrols its vast corridors. And apparently in US, hospitals keep cats and they proudly roam its hallways, collared and cared for.

Why can’t we be more permissive here? Yeah, yeah, racial sensitivities. But aren’t we supposed to consider society as a whole? What about the animal-appreciating community?

So if I have the luxury of owning a pet and need to bring it to the vet or someplace else, fine, I’m not allowed on public transportation vehicles like the MRT and bus - I need to pay more and take cab or drive. But what if I am blind and can get around better with my seeing-eye labrador? You think most of us are kind enough to stop and help (without being asked) a blind person to cross the road and whatnot? I need my labby to maul any potential molesters or pickpockets, okay.

And if I know I am going to die and choose to be warded in a hospice, I can’t bring my cat along, I’ll bet. Dammit, we can’t even legally keep felines in HDB flats. It’s time we stopped treating domestic pets as if they were a complete nuisance and start appreciating them as domestic helpers.

Anyone with me?

Oh by the way, AntiAlvin here.

Technorati Tags: Oscar, cat, psychic, Singapore, Rhode Island, animals in Singapore, Mrs Norris