Friday 11 September 2009

The Culprit

Have I told you that I used to have such a tidy-spotless-lovely living room? Well, the term 'used' to is the watchword. It was still possible to keep it clean before Rania started walking, but now? It’s practically not viable. IF I let her alone in the living room, when I came back I would find:
a) A scattered and ripped newspapers
b) Ripped pages from the yellow pages
c) Sofa pillows on the floor
d) A smiling baby tried turning off the TV
e) Or 90% chance, all of the above

So you can imagine, me, running like a frenzied Frankenstein to scoop up my baby, who was trying to put up one of her legs to climb the coffee table in the living room.
I guess those articles on ‘baby-proofing your home’ are true, that once you have a walking baby, men, you will have no time to baby-proof your home.
Just yesterday, I was talking on the phone with my mother on my computer table when I realized some smudges on my white drawers. The smudges were black handprints of 5 little fingers, guess who the culprits was... It took me 30 second to realized the culprit was the smiling baby who sit under the computer table, observing the computer switch box , making decision on which switch to push, he he...

From DIVA: See the world from the eyes of Turike...


Anyway, now her hair is long enough to have a ponytail. Cute, isn’t it?

Tuesday 8 September 2009

Able to upload pictures, finally.

I'm finally able to upload pictures. It was rather difficult to do it this time with a new computer. Wait, have i wrote that I have a new computer? Yeah, we have a NEW ONE, it's a SONY VAIO JS, the sleek, lean desktop, yeah!!! 4 Gigs, plus we decided to invest on a new, extra disk storage of 1... TERRA bytes!!! Yeah, my baby rules!


From DIVA: See the world from the eyes of Turike...


( Ijust put the "undercover economist" book just to make the picture looks more intelligent :p normally the keyboard is smudged with chocolate-covered little hand prints, and right now i'm reading the X Men comic instead of the "undercover economist" :p)

Anyway, back to the problem. Before, it was easy for me to upload pictures from my phone camera. Just turn the bluetooth on, simply send the pics to the laptop (before was a laptop) then upload it via blogger tool.
But now... *sigh* first I have to allign the handphone and the PC, and I have to do it via a PC Sync program. Which was like, difficult, because every time I try to syncronise the phone, it upload 200 pictures in the picture folder instead of a single picture that I wanted to upload in the first place. Then afterwards, like I mentioned earlier, my freaking browser didn't allow me to upload pictures from my PC folder OR even from the web.
So, now I need to use a picture uploader on the net and embed the pictures instead of uploading it.

But, what the heck, I using a Sony Vaio JS, can't complain, woohoo!

Monday 7 September 2009

Can't somebody tell me!!

CAN SOMEBODY TELL ME WHY I CAN'T UPLOAD MY PICTURES, EVEN FROM PICASA! HUAAAAAA!!!!

Geylang Serai Night Market

We went to Geylang Serai Night Market Yesterday. The market, a temporary one, opens during the month of Ramadan, the fasting month for the Muslim Community. During the Ramadhan, the practising Muslim are supposed to fast, or refrain from eating, drinking, smoking or anything to do with passion, from sunrise till sunset. In Singapore, it's about from 5.45 am to 7.10 pm. For those of you who never heard of Ramadhan, muslim-fasting, etc, click here.
Just like a Christmas market that sells Christmas candy, sweets, traditional stuff, this market also sells stuff commonly famous during the Ramadan. This night market becomes THE hot spot during the month for the Malays.
From DIVA: See the world from the eyes of Turike...


The market was actually a very big one, with area as big as 3 football fields stitched up together (OK, I over reacted). The wooden and unlevelled platform could make you trip here and there. You can find almost anything in the market, from toys, typical malay food, kebayas from Indonesia, carpets, aromatherapy candle from China, till, yep, "shot the can and throw the ball" game stalls. And I had a feeling most Malays in Singapore AND Johor Baru had the same intention as us that nite: searching for food.
From DIVA: See the world from the eyes of Turike...

By the way, did you notice the lady in gold head-covered dress? Well, she was wearing a telekung, or praying dress for muslim. Indeed, she was praying at that time and at that place. Sweet, huh?

As muslims ourselves, last nite we decided to go there after fast-breaking, hoping to find some good dinner. And whatta good meal we had. After 30 mins of coming in and out of alleys filled with 2 millions Malays (!), we arrived at the Geylang Serai Market. This one was a permanent market, that sells chicken, meat, etc during the day and at nite became a famous hawker centre. I ordered a fried kway teow and unlucky me, this was what I got. It was RED...rice noodle with everything. But it was nice, well, take into account that I was totally HUNGRY at the time.
From DIVA: See the world from the eyes of Turike...

Remind me to go there after DINNER instead next year.

Thursday 3 September 2009

On civility, tipping, hostile waitress and pesky molesters in Singapore

The Oprah Show last night talked about civility or being civilized. The show had given me yet another proof that even people from developed countries can be less cultured that those from 3rd world countries. Let's just say that cab-snatcher, pesky molester, I'm-a-customer-so-I'm the-queen and touch-me-bump-me people exist everywhere, even in Singapore and the States!

Talk about civility, I just had a very unpleasant experience last week when a Malay (or was it a Bangla?) guy followed me from Bugis MRT and tried hard to have a conversation with me. It was sickening, man! But what's more sickening was when no one seemed care enough to help me. One girl who eventually helped said she was sorry for not helping me earlier because she taught we knew each other. D'oh! Something has to be done in the future to get rid of these pesky molesters... and to brush up the society civility as well. I was lucky I was taller than the guy. But what if the victims were skinny foreign maids or small-build mainland Chinese shopkeeper, wouldn't it be fatal? I just wanna say to all the foreigners out there in Spore to be careful and vigilant when an ugly-looking bangla, malay or dark-skinned* man approach you for ANY kind of reason, RUN! And if you somehow *knock on wood* got molested don't be afraid to scream for help and to take pictures of your molesters. The least we can do is to send his pictures to newspapers, have it printed and circulated island wide under the headline: UGLY LOOKING AND SMELLY MOLESTER. The statement 'low crime doesn't mean no crime' is indeed correct.

Talk about civility and the Oprah show again, during the last part of the show they talked about 'hostility' towards waitresses and the importance of tipping. I realized in most countries that I've visited tipping are somehow a must, between 15-25% of total and in Singapore however, tipping is not an obligation. Some generous uncles or cab drivers a couple of times gave me a 10 or 20 cents markdown to round down the fares. Now, hostility towards waitresses... well, in Singapore, compare to other countries I've visited, there were times when I feel that I was the one being intimidated by the waitress, no kidding! I found that some waitresses who didn't speak English or even singlish, mostly from mainland china, were the most hostile. Some were even unfriendly towards baby Rania ; once a waitress took away a plastic spoon Rania was using for entertainment purposes – well, rania was checking the earth's gravity effect using the spoon. Another time a waitress took away her baby chair abruptly without consulting me, when Rania's feet was still strangled inside the chair. She said she's gonna keep away the baby chair back since it seemed for her I was not using it anymore. Blah!

I don't know whether it's because I look foreign and Indonesian, or that's the way they behave towards every customers regardless whether they are white or copper skinned (hum, interesting...).

(*) No offense towards Bangla, Malay or dark-skinned people in S'pore. And to hostile waitresses /waiters.