Oh, takeaway snack-size Peking duck and suckling pig! I’m glad someone finally thought of this.

Seems like it’s been around for a year or more (at Ion Orchard) but I only just discovered it last night at VivoCity. It’s prepared on the spot and nicely rolled up in egg crepe for you to take away.

I’ve always loved Peking duck but seldom eat it cos it’s so expensive and you can’t just walk into a restaurant on your own and order a duck. And, most people, when you suggest to them, “Hey, let’s go eat Peking duck today!” will look at you funny and say, “Siao ah!”

So, anyway, I gave this Modern Peking Duck a try despite already being quite full from dinner.

Kay bought both the duck and pig, but I only tried the duck because, well, I was full. And, because I had really high hopes for it, I was a little disappointed by the result.

The taste is similar to what you’d get at restaurants, with the egg wrap and sweet sauce. But what’s wrong with it is the skin-meat ratio.

In restaurants, you get a larger slice of skin with no meat. That’s what I like. A big chunk of crispy skin. In this takeaway version, it’s mostly meat and very little skin, so it just doesn’t feel the same.

I unwrapped one to show an example.

The amount of skin is a bit pathetic. When eating it, I could only taste meat and hardly skin. I suppose, for $1.20 per piece, I can’t ask for too much?

Anyway, check this out. The outlet is trying to have its suckling pig replace turkey for Christmas! Heheh.

Kay took a look at the poster and said, “Ooh, I could eat that whole thing myself!”

So I said, “Let’s get it for our Christmas dinner!”

We had originally planned to order turkey for our little get-together with two other friends. But we only decided that two days ago. By then, all Christmas orders everywhere had closed.

But Kay replied, “Siao lah! How to finish!”

I do declare, men have absolutely zero for logic. They say the most illogical things and contradict themselves all the time.

And it’s all the more annoying because I try to only date smart, intelligent men because I enjoy intelligent conversation. But all my smart, intelligent men say the most illogical things.

So I beat Kay up (metaphorically) over this until he revealed that what he was thinking was more along the lines of suckling pig for Christmas is wrong.

So why didn’t he just say that, instead?

I don’t know why men always have to complicate things by never saying exactly what they really mean!

And I don’t know why women put up with it! I always beat my partners up when they’re being illogical.

And men have the cheek to claim that women are the ones who never say what they mean! Huh!

Well, okay, women do that, too, but it’s usually out of shyness about expressing their feelings. Men do it because they just can’t be bothered to tell the truth and will just say the most convenient thing that pops out in their heads just to get you off their back because they’re lazy to answer questions.

Wouldn’t you agree?

Anyway, Modern Peking Duck is at Ion Orchard (B4-75) and VivoCity (B2-K15).

Merry Christmas, everyone! =)

I’m going to publish an archived post from my old blog today. (The one that I had in 2004/5 which I deleted after switching to WordPress.)

Back then, I had an impressive number of, like, 20 readers. Probably because my blogs then were text-heavy and only very serious readers could be bothered to read my rambling, inconsequential walls of text.

We all know that serious readers are a dying breed. If they aren’t already dead.

Today, after 6 years of blogging, my visitor count has gone up a bit, so let’s see if the number of serious readers (vs. people who just look at photos) visiting my blog has increased at all.

If you’re one of them “serious readers”, you might want to leave a comment to acknowledge your own existence, you think?

The following post first appeared on Sheylara.com on Jan 17, 2005.

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The Crazy Things We Do

Once again, I have fallen under the corrupt clutches of commercialism. I have now in my possession 28 exceptionally adorable (but also exceptionally useless) Neopets.

Huzzah.

I blame it all on the eyes.

[Qiaoyun] Angel says: “It’s a scheme to cheat parents of their hard earned money. To cheat struggling actresses who should know better than to spend money they don’t have on things they don’t need. Besides, McDonald’s is fattening and you’re on a diet!”

[Qiaoyun] Devil says: “Look at the eyessssssssss…! Aren’t they all ohhhhhhhh soooooooooo dropdeadcuddlycoo cuuuuuuuuuuuute?”

[Qiaoyun] says: “Leave me alone! *pause* Awww… but Cloud Shoyru is looking at me with such adoring, beseeching eyes…”

And so, I have in my possession 28 Neopets stashed in a Metro paper bag, where they will remain stashed until such a time as I find a nice, gentlemanly billionaire to marry, who will buy me a mansion in which I can build classy frosted glass shelves to display my embarrassing collection of Neopets and Hello Kittys and the like.

Which, of course, isn’t going to happen.

Which means that the Neopets will remain stashed in the Metro paper bag forever. Or until I decide to give them all away to a kid sister or a baby niece, whichever comes first.

I never learn.

We never really do, do we?

So, my latest hobby is to take extremely close-up pictures of Chong on the MRT because we always take the same MRT home after a gathering and he enjoys annoying me, so I whip out my camera to shut him up.

It works, because when he’s trying to leer at me menacingly for sticking the camera in his face, he actually shuts up.

Compare Chong’s mugshot to this picture of a Leafy Seadragon (Phycodurus Eques), which I took in Sentosa’s Underwater World while filming there last month:

Notice that the resemblance is almost nil?

Yes, amazing, isn’t it?

So, you’re going to ask me what the point is in comparing two completely unrelated pictures.

The point is, who knows?

The point is. The world is illogical, so live with it. If you can’t beat it, you have to join it or it will drive you nuts.

If I am half nuts, I blame it on the world.

I recently bumped into a classmate from my Japanese class on the MRT while going to class. We’ve “known” each other for two months since the start of the course but have never spoken a word to each other and never knew that we actually lived just opposite each other… until that day we bumped into each other on the train.

It also happened to be the last day of our Elementary I course.

Which isn’t quite the point, of course.

The point is that, after half an hour of awkward and inane conversation about the weather and such, she suddenly looked at me strangely and said, “You look very young. How old are you?”

Now, I find that question extremely disturbing.

It’s okay for people to ask me how old I am because it’s one of those questions people ask because they can’t think of anything else better to ask.

But what’s with the “you look very young” precursor?

I don’t know what that means. Does it mean that she thinks I behave like an old hag but I look too young to be an old hag so she just needs to find out whether I really am or not?

Or does it mean that she thinks I’m, like, 12 years old and have no business attending Japanese classes without a chaperone?

If, for example, I behave like a 20-year-old and look like a 20-year-old and she thinks I’m 20 years old, a logical statement to make would be, “How old are you? Let me guess… 20?”

Where is the logic in: “You look very young. How old are you?”

What would make an almost stranger phrase a question that way?

Prior to that question, no mention of age or job or hobby or anything like that was made.

To compound matters, she looks like 22 or 23, which I think is young, so what is so amazing about me looking young or being young that she has to make a separate comment on it?

I don’t understand it.

So, I’m going to put up another extremely close-up photo of Chong:

Followed by a picture of a jellyfish who resides in Sentosa’s Underwater World:

Note that I’m not trying to imply anything by following pictures of Chong with pictures of seafood. I mean sea creatures.

Speaking of pictures, I am featured in a four-page interview in the current issue of Playworks (the EQ2 vs WoW issue) but I am embarrassed by the way I look in the pictures so I’m not putting any of it up here.

For now, applications to buy me a mansion for my Neopets are open. Please apply here.

I want to complain!

There’s this stationery shop at Bugis Junction called A “N” BC where I spent $122 last month.

They let me apply for a membership card because my purchase exceeded $100. They said they’d mail me the card in 2 to 3 months’ time.

Today, I needed to buy stuff there again. I thought they would let me use my previous receipt as proof of membership to give me the member’s discount. So I spent about 30 minutes shopping, grabbing a bunch of stuff to buy.

At the counter, I enquired about the membership discount. And you know what the girl said??!!

“Sorry you cannot have discount if you don’t have the card.”

I kept explaining that I should technically be a member already; I just haven’t received my card. I mean, usually stores give you a temp card or allow you to use your receipt, right?

Well, this store doesn’t work that way at all!

I asked, “So are you saying your shop is discouraging me from buying stuff here for 3 months while I wait for my card?”

I certainly wasn’t going to buy without a discount because I was gonna spend another $100+ today.

Then the girl started repeating herself no matter what I said. “Maybe you want to get the member card first then you can get a discount.”

*strangle*

Her English is not very good, you see. It was a bit hard communicating with her. She seems like a foreigner.

The long and short of it is that she insisted I couldn’t use my receipt and I had to wait 3 months to enjoy membership privileges.

What a lousy freaking policy can???

So angry cos I really need one particular item (an A3 size hard portfolio case) NOW.

Dumb dumb dumb!

Lucky I already bought most of what I need at Kinokuniya already. I love the Ngee Ann City outlet. I can spend hours in there!

Okay, I feel better after complaining public, thank you.

Am right now queueing at Nando’s. The queue is ridiculous today but I have to wait for the Goonfather to finish work and manoeuvre his way through the traffic jam anyway!

How come Singaporeans are so patient about queues but then they must rush through everything else?

Anyway, Second manga class tomorrow! Whee! =D

I’ve always resented the inventions that supposedly make women “prettier”. How much pain, time and money have they cost women throughout the ages?

I’ve always wished people could be happy to leave well enough alone, and that makeup, cosmetic surgery and beauty treatments never existed. I resent having to put in so much effort to look good.

And yet, because all these inventions and implements are in place and have become the norm, I must conform to standards or be overlooked.

To give you a visual image of what I mean, let’s talk about bound feet in ancient China. It was considered beautiful for women to have ridiculously small feet. Females had to endure the pain of having their feet broken and mangled through their lives.

Imagine yourself living in that era. As a girl, you would want to have tiny, mangled feet so you can look as “beautiful” as other girls, to be an object of envy and admiration rather than to be discriminated against or overlooked.

But wouldn’t you wish that the practice never existed in the first place so your feet can grow normally without you feeling the pressure to conform?

But, the way it was, you could have happy feet and be ugly or tortured feet and be admired. Either way, it sucks.

Unfortunately, we still have what I consider barbaric practices today to mould people into societal standards of beauty. Plastic surgery, tattooing, waxing. They are all barbaric because they cause pain.

Sure, everyone has a choice whether to do it or not. But when everyone is doing it and you don’t, you lose out. You’ll find it harder to get jobs and find partners or just fit in. Your self-esteem will plunge and life will be more miserable.

And when your naked photos accidentally get leaked a la Cecilia Cheung, you get criticised by the whole world for not having put yourself under the torture of waxing your privates.

There are all these people who self-righteously claim that inner beauty triumphs over everything and that painful beauty procedures are dumb. I’m sure even they cringed at those photos.

These people go around criticising celebrities who go for plastic surgery and yet expect women to magically have hairless privates and flawless physical beauty.

There’s no such thing as natural beauty.

Cosmetic surgery existed long before anaesthesia was invented. (I suppose we can count ourselves lucky that those days are past.)

Besides the ancient Chinese binding their feet, the Maori carved up their faces with sharpened bones and applied dye on the wounds to create elaborate patterns. Burmese tribal women collapsed their collar bones to create long necks.

I think the long neck thing is still happening today. The tattooing too, with less painful methods.

In the past, painful beauty practices reflected the status of those who were able to do them. Being able to mutilate yourself was an enviable luxury. It’s still the same way today, seeing as how plastic surgery costs the skies.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE WORLD? Who the devil invented these practices in the first place? I wish people would just leave things alone and stop coming up with bizarre ideas for making humans look “better”.

Aren’t we good enough as we are?

Unfortunately, we all have to conform to all these crazy standards in order to ease into society better.

Everyone conforms to some standard or other to varying degrees. Some are easier to follow (like makeup and hair cuts) while others are tougher (like big boobs).

But everyone must conform to at least something, which is the whole problem. It’s not easy being the person who gets stared at and pointed at just because you refuse to get a Brazillian wax.

You must suffer, either now or later.

I will state for the record that I opt for beauty. I just wish the option didn’t exist. That’s all.

Who was the one who came up with the stupid PR phrase: “Can I trouble you to [insert request]?”

I know it’s supposed to be a tactful, polite way of asking for something, but what is wrong with “please”??

Why use five words instead of one?

“Can I trouble you to” sounds condescending to me. It’s the same as saying, “I’m going to give you a nasty task but I don’t want you to hate me for it so I shall pretend that I’m asking you a favour so you’ll feel awesome instead,” but in fewer words.

Someone came up with this phrase and everyone thought it was a great idea and started using it. I don’t doubt it works on most people but I see it for what it is!!!

Can I trouble you to comment?