The commencement ceremony was held yesterday night. I was dead beat the whole day from not having enough sleep. Luckily my boss allan was kind enough to let me leave work early. Phew! So I rushed home, got my gown ready, and went down to the university cultural centre with my parents just in time for the ceremony.

The building was nicely decorated with thousands of colourful little lights. When we arrived the place was already teeming with people. In the robing room a nice lady helped me with my gown. I may never get married this lifetime so this gown may just be the most important gown in my life! It had to look right!

Getting the hood (which is tangerine for computer science graduates) to look right on my robe was quite tricky. Moreover the board cap made me look weird!

Last Sunday, my Dad and I celebrated mother’s day with my Mom. It was just the three of us as my brother was away in Osaka, Japan during that period of time.

i remember many a time when I was young, I queued with my Mom overnight along with thousands of other people just to buy the limited edition phonecard that was limited to the first 2000 people. I also remember the numerous times I had tagged along with my Mom to go shopping for these cards all over the island. My brother didn’t share the same passion. But I was fascinated by the beautiful designs and colours on these cards. My Mom says that when she dies, she wouldn’t have much money to leave us. All she would have would be these collections.

nowadays, Singaporeans don’t really collect these cards anymore. So in recent years, my Mom started collecting red packets (you know, the ang pow you get your money in every Chinese New Year). I even spent the whole of today helping her display the red packets nicely in albums. She is very proud of her collection, but she isn’t selfish about it. She shares whatever she has with her fellow red packet collecting friends. This wouldn’t be an interesting blog entry to most people, but I’m blogging it because it would make my Mom happy.

One thing to note is that my Mom only collects commercial red packets, that means only those released by companies. Store-bought red packets are a no-no. They may look more beautiful but are simply meaningless, she says.

Some red packets aren’t actually red, but come in various unique colours such as yellow. I always get excited when I come across the uniquely coloured ones. One of my favourites is this one from starhub, featuring their mascot dog, sparky.

There are purple and pink packets too. I simply love the purple one from cadbury chocolate! Look, there’s even one from awfully chocolate. Anyone knows where this shop is?

The pink ones are so pretty too! One from tian po jewellery…

… Another one from the Taiwan shihlin street snacks.

There are red packets released by fast food restaurants.

The ultra adorable qoo drinks!

And our favourite m&m’s!

One rather unique red packet is this very narrowly shaped one from the Tung Lok group of restaurants. This orange packet is so narrow that you can’t fit in a dollar note without folding it. I think it’s only meant to hold coins.

Also, in these couple of years, gold packets are gaining in popularity and more companies are releasing those.


I think the gold packets give off a more classy and “expensive” feeling. My favourite is this one from American express that has a pop-up feel to it.

Last but not least, here’s one for the guys.

Well organising, arranging and displaying the hundreds or even thousands of different red packets was exhausting and sure took up a lot of time! But I was glad as it allowed my Mom and I to spend some time together. We had dinner at the keng eng kee seafood place, in the Alexandra Village vicinity. Everyone please do not go there!

the food was expensive, it took damn long for the food to be served, and it wasn’t exactly worth waiting for! One couple seated right behind us walked away in a huff after waiting a long time for their food that never came. At 8pm, I was already feeling super hungry as I barely ate anything the entire day. And a hungry wanting is a cranky wanting. I managed to get our food served immediately.

The fried rolls came first, each one containing egg, prawn, vegetable, ham and mushroom. To their credit, the dish was actually very delicious! But then again, it ought to be since they called it their house specialty. Moreover, anything that is deep-fried tends to taste good. And it cost 9 bucks.

Next came the sweet and sour chicken balls. It wasn’t good. And I don’t see no balls. 8 bucks for the dish.

The last dish we ordered was sambal kang kong. But when it came, it wasn’t sambal at all! We asked the waitress about it, who admitted the mistake but asked if we could just let it go. My Mom was ready to agree but I said no way man. We ordered sambal kang kong and that’s what we were getting. No matter how busy they were, that was not a good reason for us to live with their mistake. The kang kong cost 6 bucks.

the total bill came up to $25.60. $23 for the food, 50 cents per bowl of rice, 20 cents per towel, and $1.20 for a can of barley. Amount of time wasted: irrecoverable. Everyone please do not go to this place. The food sucks, the service sucks, and they don’t even charge cheaply. Remember, it’s keng eng kee seafood. Don’t go there! *ROARRR*

All right again for the 1035263th time, please vote for me at blogfest 2006. Instructions are on the right. Oh yeah if anyone has any red packet to spare, please contact me too. My Mom and I would both be delighted!

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I’m not doing too well. This is my final semester and I just have this feeling that I would be coming out of the school of computing with nothing learnt. It’s quite depressing. Lately, I’ve been wondering how I can get through this last semester and what lies in store for me after graduation. Up until now, I have no idea what career path to take. The irony about being in the school of computing is that it has made me hate computing, and I doubt I would enter the IT field next time. What I really love is doing design, or writing, and I don’t have the relevant degree for either of these.

For the final year project, we have formed teams of six to develop an integrated resort management system using j2ee. We held our first group discussion on Friday. I was very disappointed that I couldn’t contribute much, and I fear it would continue to be that way. What I can contribute is probably in terms of design. I would love to design the whole web portal that is required. The design component would play a part of the grading, but it is still hardly the emphasis of this project.

I just feel so goddamn depressed.

But a yummy slice of cheesecake never fails to cheer me up. Following that depressing four-hour-long discussion was dinner at secret recipe. The strawberry shake was not too sweet so that’s good.

Tom yam spaghetti. I seemed to have eaten it before at the secret recipe outlet in City Square, Johor Bahru before. It was not too shabby.

And the yummy cheeze chocolate cake! Secret recipe serves the best cheesecakes in town man, really. The cream cheese filling is very rich, yet light at the same time so you don’t get sick eating it.

Speaking of food, udon-bo at the Takashimaya food basement serves a mean chicken teri don with lotsa chicken meat, for only $4.50! It comes with a bowl of miso soup too. Cheap! People should hurry there before they raise their prices.

I’m also having this tcc craze lately and visiting the tcc boutiques every opportunity I get. I’m trying to accumulate enough receipts to become a tcc member. I love tcc for their wide selection of coffee, great service, and the artful design of all their boutiques; every single outlet looks unique! The café royal flambe I had yesterday was the first liquor coffee I ever had. Notice the blue flame around the sugar cube.

The coffee came first, to which the waitress added brandy from a fancy-looking golden flask. The sugar cube was placed on a teaspoon on the brim of the coffee cup. Once the sugar cube had soaked in the brandy, the waitress ignited it. After it melted, the waitress stirred it in, and the coffee was ready. Wow! A flaming coffee cocktail!

The mon cheri came with a leaf on the froth, and a pretty pink layer on the bottom. It looked good but tasted quite crappy and way too sweet.

Potato wedges.

Something interesting I spotted on the way home was this black sign on the ground at the bus stop near Orchard Cineleisure. It read “take drugs and you could spend 12 months in a cell this size with 2 other people.” it was probably about 2 by 1.5 meters. It surprised me because I thought jail cells were bigger than that, and this tiny cell was supposed to fit three people. It seemed a pretty effective way of letting people know that drug takers would not be let off lightly in Singapore.

Anyway, it’s my mom’s birthday today. We got her a cute-looking cake in the shape of a face from Angie the Choice. It tasted yummy! Not too sweet and the chocolate cream was heavenly. I finished my slice within a minute.

Mom looked so happy just now, like the smiling cake. Happy birthday, mom!

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The Changi ferry terminal has been revamped and the place looks a whole lot better now. They have finally installed scanning machines so that people can no longer bring in illegal stuff. Before this, the policemen would just conduct random checks on people’s belongings, which means theoretically drug traffickers could get away scot-free if they’re lucky.

Some pictures taken from on board the ferry…

I always get excited when big ships pass by along the way.

That’s my mum and dad. The background didn’t look this bare. But under my mum’s instructions, I removed the window panes and curtains from the background, and above is the finished product. Meanwhile, the ferry took only about a half hour to reach Pengerang.

From there, we took a cab to my relatives’ place in a small town called sungei rengit. I think avid cyclists would be familiar with this town, or at least Pengerang. The place is quite popular among cyclists, perhaps due to its lack of traffic along the long roads.

My relatives own a two-storey shophouse that sells snacks and wares and distributes newspapers throughout the whole town. Despite the nondescript outlook, they are easily one of the wealthiest families in the small town. The business has been running for many decades, started by my grandfather when he first came from China. Due to the festival, the shophouses were mostly not open for business. The black vehicle on the extreme right belongs to my boss roland, who was also there for the holiday.

Every Chinese New Year when we visit, we would rent the same room in this hotel nearby, called tai hoe. The interior of the room sucks and I can’t be bothered to even take photos of it. I’m still quite pissed that they removed the big mirror and wardrobe from our room this year, and didn’t even bother to tell us when we called to make the reservation. At least the windows provided a decent view. We could see the main street and also fireworks at night.

(Update: in February 2008, we stayed at tai hoe hotel again for one night during the Chinese New Year holiday. In the middle of the night, we were woken up by cops who knocked on our door and checked our IDs. The lady boss of the hotel claimed it was a “routine check”. But we asked around and realised that just months back, she had been fined and jailed for running a prostitution ring within the same hotel (with young girls from Indonesia)! Needless to say, we were taken aback and extremely disgusted when we heard that. So everyone, please boycott this hotel!)

At night the vehicles make quite a bit of noise when everyone is trying to sleep, especially those darned motorcycles. There are no high rise buildings at all so everyone sleeps in low level buildings and is pretty much subjected to the same noise pollution.

Unlike Singapore where people need licenses for firecrackers and fireworks, in Malaysia it seems everyone is free to play with these. During the first day of Chinese New Year, everyone would release fireworks into the sky like nobody’s business. Obviously they aren’t as grand as those we see in Chinatown or during the national day parade, but they do add a good festive spirit.

I spent most of my first day in Pengerang sleeping, although I did remember to have two ramly burgers for dinner. That’s the one thing I cannot miss when I go to Pengerang. Eat first, diet later.

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