MUST WATCH: This is Singapore for you...

I promise you, this will be the funniest (not to mention likely to be the lamest) video you'll see this year. Remember the William Hung audition video? Well, this is HILARIOUS. Abso-fucking-lutely hilarious.

Here's the context for the non-Singaporeans -- the Media Development Authority (MDA) is responsible for creating, encouraging and regulating (if you ask me, it's more like censoring) "creative" (very loosely used here) content in Singapore and here's the senior management of MDA -- it's true, the people in the video reaaaaally reaaaaally work for the Singaporean government. Seriously watch the whole thing - have no freakin idea how they managed to convince them to get into a Superman outfit for a public video. And if you're old, and completely uncool -- do not, ever, ever, try and rap. Which by the way...someone should tell MDA that rap was soooo 90s. PS: Singapore has a governing body for everything - even one to encourage people to get married, bonk and have kids - known as SDU (yes, the acronyms are a huge Singaporean thing as well). If you haven't guessed yet, SDU stands for Singapore/Single Desperate and Ugly - hahahahah....okay, okay, it's the Social Development Unit.



Thanks to our real superstar Farah for sending this along *air kisses*

Worst week of my life.

Oh my gawd. This week was officially the longest week of life - not to mention the likely to be the worst week of my life. And, it's one of those weeks when you look back and go, "WTF. I would die if I had to do that all over again, it's just not worth it." Is quitting possibility? Possibly. I mean, hell, I work to live, not live to work. Work should not be painful, if it is, you're in the wrong job.

And what's hilarious is that it's one thing that made this house of cards fall, it was a billion things that could go wrong basically went wrong and everything that was unplanned got thrown on top of it. I made a to-do list 2 weeks ago, and with optimistic hopes of completing the list. Nope, not only did my list GROW, I still have things that were meant to be completed 2 weeks ago on my list. Sigh.

To make things worse, since I was recovering from a stomach virus last week and had a throat infection on Monday, which means absolutely no cigs. Gaaaawwwd.

Had plans to leave at 5pm on the dot on Friday - did I mention that I worked till at least midnight every single night this week? And of course, I sent out my last email on Friday at 8:50pm, at work, to hop onto a cab at 9:05pm, just in time to catch Beowulf. All my plans basically went down the drain this week. Sucks ass.

Dilbert says it best. Except the last box - should say "Oh, you must be a PR consultant." Go figure, aaaarrrrrrhhhhh....

Roberto Cavalli at H&M!!!

OH MY GAWD. I cannot believe this! This is so unfair! Barely 6 months after I leave San Francisco, Roberto Cavalli's unveiling his line for H&M! And guess what? The closest freakin' H&M is in Hong Kong! Sobs. Sucks.

The only other thing that can beat that is if Oscar de la Renta or Carolina Herrera started designing for Topshop. Sigh. I want!!

Disgruntled workers are dangerous

Honestly. It's true - why do you think Google treats their employees so well? Why do you think every MNC out there is constantly shouting about how well they're treating their employees - note that I said shouting about it, it's not like they're doing much. A 15-day leave plan compared to the usual 14 honestly isn't anything to shout about, neither is a nursing room, or a pseudo flexi-hour work plan (employees choose to come in either at 8:00am, 8:30am or 9:00am and leave 30 mins later or earlier depending on what time they come in - how in the world is that flexi?).

So what's my point? Today - I feel like one. One semi-disgruntled worker. Why? I had my plans ruined. I was down with a stomach virus on Wednesday, had my Thursday (Deepavali public holiday) to recover and was ready and raring to go out on Friday for some much needed retail therapy and run my usual errands. Granted that I had to wake up at 9:00am this morning to do conference call with the Box.net dudes in Sunnyvale (did I mention I was supposed to be on leave today?) -- decided that I would go back to bed after.

Little did I know, trouble was already brewing to completely ruin my plans for the day. My phone was ringing off the hook (I'm using the Sony Ericsson P1i by the way - giving it a second chance and the speakers on the phone are astounding. Amazing sound considering that it's not from the Walkman portfolio) around noon and after dragging myself out of bed, I found out that one of my clients just dropped a bomb.

Sidetrack: My apartment now smells like an Indian wedding. No thanks to my very noisy Indian neighbors downstairs who are obviously celebrating Deepavali -- fireworks and briyani I can stand, but not the intoxicating smell of flowers like jasmine. Desperately trying to get rid of the smell - windows closed, satsuma on burner.

So instead of going off to get my brows and hair done, and avoiding the crazy weekend crowds at the malls and maybe catching Lars and the Real Girl -- I was stuck sitting in front of my computer for the past 4.5 hours working on a PowerPoint deck. Happy, happy, joy, joy - not. You know what annoyed me the most? The fact that I was rushing at the end coz I knew deadline was approaching but my phone kept ringing and ringing and ringing - even after I told the person on the other line to give me 15 more minutes. I'm no where near a technophobe - but I HATE phones. Honestly, I think phones are a complete invasion of privacy. If you need to reach me - email me, MSN/Yahoo me, text message me or even send me a message on Facebook but unless it's a matter of life and death - don't call me. I'm all for in-person/face-to-face communication but when people get too dial-happy, it annoys the fuck out of me.

And to top it off, Citrix is driving me up the wall because it keeps disconnecting me from the network when I'm working at home. And guess what? It only does that on my Mac! Asses. It's all a conspiracy I tell you. It's just a matter of time before I absolutely refuse to use MS Office on my Mac and switch over to iWork. Also need to find the time to convince Ben to help me port my work PC into a VM to run on Fusion on my Mac. Hmm...Ooo, speaking of Macs...

Thanks to Ben, I now have Leopard running on my MacBook! YAY! I love Spaces - who needs dual screens when you have Spaces! Wooooo... and not to mention the new Cover Flow function for browsing documents and Quick Look which lets you preview files (all docs and videos!) and seriously, I don't know how they do it - but Spotlight is the best search function on any computer. Oh wait, you can't use Spotlight on PCs - nah nah nah.

Ok - off to grab a bite, craving for cupcakes but will have to settle for some tiramisu Haagen Dazs and german sausage. Check out the guided Leopard tour if you're bored - be prepared to be amazed. I was blown away the first time I saw it.

Mac OS X Leopard Guided Tour: http://www.apple.com/macosx/guidedtour/large.html

I live for brunches

I never understood breakfast. Why in the world, would I, on my own free will, wake up in the break of dawn to eat food when I can have the same food at 11:30am? Or 2pm? Don't get me wrong, I loooove breakfast - the food, not the time of day when I have to consume the food. I love my eggs benedict, my freshly squeezed orange juice, side of bacon, waffles with strawberries and fresh cream and every now and then, a tall glass of mimosa or lychee bellini to wash it all down. Mmmm...man, just thinking of it is making me hungry.

Zhuang and I were planning to have brunch on Sunday at Brown Sugar, this restaurant that had some pretty good reviews, for good foie gras burgers that's reasonably priced. So here we are at 2pm, deciding to leave the house, since afterall, according to the web site, Brown Sugar closes at 4:30pm. So we called them to make a reservation and guess what? They had the balls to tell us that last order is at 2:30pm! We were like, huh?! WTF. Your web site says you close at 4:30pm, why in the world are taking last orders at 2:30pm? Talk about incompetent. Tsk tsk. Doubt any of the Brown Sugar owners are reading my blog, but if you are - you should either seriously update your web site OR their your cooks they aren't allowed to leave till 4:30pm. Ridiculous.

What I take to mean as closing time is the time of the last order, which means, if I walked in at 4:30pm, I expect to be served food and drinks and everything on your menu. Service in Singapore is pretty appalling. We were at Jaan at Raffles The Plaza for a Hans' birthday dinner (Happy 30!) and this was supposed to be a nice, semi-fine dining French restaurant (they had kids at another table, no fine dining restaurant should allow kids below the age of 12) and the waiter just made mistake after mistake! He didn't even know who was having what courses! Had the audacity to stand next to Annie with a receipt listing our dinner and asked her who was having what so he could place the cutlery! OMG. Insane. This is why they never leave comment cards anywhere. And, one of the managers even poured still water into one of the glasses that had sparkling water in it! On top of that, the ridiculously untrained waiter opened another bottle of sparkling water without asking us if we wanted another - and, it's not a matter of price - it's a matter of whether we wanted more or not. Christ. And by the way, although the food was better than Saint Pierre at Central Mall (at Havelock Rd, not the one at Clarke Quay) - it was still way below average. Granted that their pan-seared duck liver was decent (unlike the foie gras from Saint Pierre that tasted like it came out of a can), I wouldn't go back to Jaan nor would I recommend it to anyone. Should have known considering that they had reservations available on a Friday night for 6 at the last minute. Sigh.

Anyway, enough of my ranting about Jaan. Back to brunch. So with Brown Sugar out and me starving my eyes out, we decided to head over to Marmalade Pantry, which by the way, is at Palais Renaissance on Orchard Road. Note to heed - don't try to tell your cab driver to go to Palais Renaissance coz all you're going to get is a big, "Huh? What ah? What you say? Palay? Where? Dunno la. Want to go by ECP or PIE?" Seriously. Try Forum on Orchard or Delfi, or Thai Embassy. Walk a little, it's right next door.

Marmalade Pantry was decent - again, with the silly "our last order is at 3:30pm" when their web site says they close at 4:30pm and on top of that, I called to make a reservation and when I got there, they said that they didn't have the reservation down. Idiots. Place was well lit and I really liked the circular feel of the place but too bad that it's in the basement coz I hate eating in basements, makes me feel like a minion. Zhuang wasn't happy with his meal but I was satisfied with mine, would go back there but not immediately though, probably when I get bored and happen to be in Orchard on Sunday. Zhuang had corned beef hash with tomato coulis and fried egg - corned beef was underdone and on the dry side and portion was tiny. There was no sides, just corned beef, sunny side egg on top and some arugula on top. His flat white was a surprisingly generous serving at $5.50. I had a scrambled eggs with smoked salmon and creme fraiche and a glass of Pert Juice (freshly squeezed apple, orange and ginger). My eggs came with a side of salad (mmm, arugula!) and a handful of chips (sweet potato and russet I think), so it was a hearty meal, I was pretty full. And I have to say, the grilled cherry tomatoes were delicious. Sad part was that our drinks came after our food - which in my opinion, is simply unacceptable. At a restaurant, things should always come in this order - seating, menus, water, order, drinks, food, dessert menu, coffee. My Pert Juice was good, the orange juice balance the tartness of a green apple juice and the ginger gave a nice zing at the end. And poor Zhuang with this tiny corned beef portion had to order a french toast with figs, caramelized apples and honey ice cream. Again, huge portion. Can't really taste the figs in the french toast and the apples were caramelized enough but the honey and fig ice cream was yummy. I asked the server if they made their own ice cream, but she told me that they get it from Kapiti , googled it and apparently Kapiti's from New Zealand. Singapore, by the way, has some awesome ice cream places -- Island Creamery, Venezia, Haato. Total for 2 dishes, 1 dessert, 1 coffee, 1 juice and 2 cupcakes (yes - I had to get them to go, I can't say no to cupcakes) was $72.80. Not bad, considering that the portions were way bigger than Corduroy Cafe in Vivocity. Service was bearable and food came promptly.

At least I had a good brunch to round up the weekend, coz it started with a bizarre dinner at Angus Steak House in Ngee Ann City, which honestly felt like I fell down the rabbit hole and ate bad mushrooms. The restaurant looked like a colonial house with completely unattractive girls dressed up in maid costumes (with socks mind you! and now, it's not a Halloween thing) as servers and a piano that plays by itself. Steak was ok juicy but tiny as hell. Definitely not my kind of place - it's soooo Asian it's painful. Ugh. Should have stayed with my good ol' Black Angus. I think it's kinda sad to end a post about brunch with a photo of an ugly girl in a gawd awful maid costume, but nothing says it better than this photo.