Thursday, July 31, 2008

Gas balls

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Of all the beverages that I've consumed, milk ranks pretty high up my list of favourites. Ever since I was a kid and milk came dessicated in yellow/red Nespray tins, I'd always loved the taste of milk. It's creamy, creamy and...well, creamy. Smells nice. It's also smooth when it slips down your throat, and it tastes great both hot and cold (the same, unfortunately, cannot be said for Coke. Nor 100 plus. Eww that's kinda gross).

And which other drink lends itself so easily to bubble-blowing competitions? My second sister and I used to stick those curly psychedelic-coloured straws that 7-Eleven gave away with their Slurpees into the cups of milk my grandma prepared, take in really deep breaths, and blow as hard as possible to see who could create the thickest 'milk foam' layer before our mum would hear the bblp-blpp-blpp sounds coming fast and furious from the dining table and yell at us to stop being so disgusting don't play with your food and just drink it down. On hindsight, I would probably have had great potential as a milk steamer on a coffee machine, except for the saliva bit (think about it, though. It's exactly the same principle. Water jets mixed with air sprayed into milk= milk foam. Voila). I would definitely have been cuter than an overheated steel pipe by a light year.

And I've probably just entered your list of weird people to avoid from today onwards.

Anyway, I really love it. There's nothing better on a hot day than to kick back with a tall glass of ice-cold milk. And since Singapore is infernally hot most of the year, you can imagine how often I crave it.

Which really sucks because I'm lactose-intolerant.

I suppose I should think of it as cosmic karma for putting bubbles in unnatural places, or for stealing from the babies of the world's greatest flatulence generators, but every time I drink milk these days, I end up producing loads of gas. I'm serious, it's loads. Enough for Powergas to tap into and reduce dependency on foreign imported LPG. And if you think it's just gas production, you're wrong. Not only does my stomach make the most embarrassing rumbles as it merrily attempts the impossible (that is, to digest the 9% lactose), I can assure you that the feeling of bubbles rising up in the stomach is terribly uncomfortable. You know that old butterflies-in-the-stomach feeling? It's something like that. Just that it feels like an entire butterfly park got transplanted in there. A butterfly park during metamorphosis season. It's disgustingly ticklish.

And you know how milk just doesn't go with chilli? Well, today I made the big mistake of drinking a whole carton of milk. And then eating rendang for lunch.

Oo-er. Any moment now, I'm going to balloon up and float off haplessly into the sunset. And then explode when the volatile gases in my stomach ignite.

Posted by yuene at 4:07 PM

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

That's my boy.

From time to time, Mr Fuzzy-Wuzzy likes to give me surprises, especially when I least expect them. It can be for no apparent reason, and can range from the pleasant, like taking me out to our favourite sushi joint, to the not-so-pleasant, like telling me "Dear there's a cockroach over there I'll leave you to handle it tell me when it's safe to come out" before barricading himself in the bedroom, leaving me to face said creepy-crawly alone. I suspect it's got something to do with the fact that I was his first and only girlfriend. It makes you just want to pull out the stops to impress the girl. And it does, which is a lot coming from a very unromantic girl.

But anyway.

I'd had a bad day on Monday, and I'd gone out to salsa the irritation off both Monday and Tuesday. When I got home yesterday, I greeted him as usual and then headed to take a bath. When I opened the door, there on my pillow was a nice little bouquet of flowers to cheer me up. It was a very nicely composed bouquet, with a rose and carnation.

And of course, not-so discreetly stapled onto the crepe wrapping, was the price tag which he'd forgotten to detach.

To borrow a phrase from Pioneer Woman, we're just keepin' it real.

Posted by yuene at 3:42 PM

Monday, July 14, 2008

Is it me or...?

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I don't know if there's something up with my olfactory nerves today, but for some strange reason only known to God, I'm getting this whiff of shit. Not the evacuate-the-building-it's-mustard-gas type, more like the at-least-it-blends-in-with-the-soil-around-the-bush-i-did-it-next-to-because-there-wasn't-a-loo-and-i-was-urgent kind (if you haven't had that experience, well then lucky you). Which would be all fine and good if this was a toilet.

Unfortunately, it's actually a coffee joint down in town.

Mr Fuzzy-Wuzzy says that it's the smell of coffee beans, but I'm predisposed to discount his opinion, since his snout is stuffed up more often than not. Or maybe he's right and it's those Kopi Luwak beans, which would probably form a plausible explanation for the shitty smell in the middle of an atas coffee joint (read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_Luwak for more info on the most expensive cup of joe you'll ever drink--what is it about us Asians and eating animal waste-infused THINGS??? Seriously, people.)

Alternatively, it could just be the poor ventilation in here, especially when they are heating up food (I'm starting to detect this undertone of chicken breast in some vinaigrette in the air). Certainly not as exotic as the earlier hypothesis, but a lot more appetizing.

But then again, that wouldn't explain why the cookie that came with Mr Fuzzy-Wuzzy's macademia-flavoured coffee has Mama Lemon Dishwashing Liquid as an aftertaste. oO Aren't we taking the idea of hygenic food preparation a little far here?

So I guess my taste buds got wired up a bit wonky this morning. I'll just keep telling myself that because, if anything, the alternatives are kind of disturbing.

Just a little.

Not too much.

Posted by yuene at 9:34 PM

Thursday, July 10, 2008

... Alriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight



Am I the only one here who finds the facial expression on the bean hilarious? It has "WTF?!?!" written all over it. Which is kind of funny, considering that the advert is about 'soy+fruit= so joyful together!'

He looks anything BUT joyful.

In fact, he looks like he's about to call for a paternity test.

I have to admit, though, that I'm not quite sure what he was expecting as the final product. A fruity flavoured soy bean (don't ask me how he's going to find that out; let's not go there, shall we)? A pale berry that when squeezed, oozes milk?

Whatever it is, I guess he can take comfort in the fact that they won't be banning his offspring on the grounds of it being a genetically-modified food.

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Posted by yuene at 7:26 PM

Thursday, July 3, 2008

On Monday, our water dispenser broke down. Not in the sense of 'not being able to dispense water'. Neither was it crying because the boss yelled at it for slacking. Nothing of that sort, really.

In fact, it was taking its job so seriously that it decided to get us to lead healthier lifestyles by sending the water right to our cubicles' metaphorical doorsteps (I mean, who wouldn't want running water laid?). Either that, or it'd been inspired by legends of worldwide floods. Whatever it was, the water had almost reached my cubicle when my colleague, who'd gotten up to wash her cup, screeched, "OMG the dispenser is leaking water!!!!"

We hurriedly got the cleaner auntie to mop up the mess while Pauline called maintenance. Turned out they were shorthanded and could only make it on Wednesday. We eyed our little artesian well-wannabe.

The maintenance guy came on Tuesday. The hot water was still fine, so we could use that. Turns out, though, that the cold water compartment had sprung a leak and had to be shut off until it could be repaired. As for people like me who prefer our water cold, we would have to walk over to the nearest dispenser at the secondary area for that. Which would be pretty nearby if not for the wall inbetween our workspace and the secondary area. And since walls are mostly impenetrable, that means that we have to walk all the way around.

So for the past 2 days now, I've been making the trek across and back, and I can't help but feel a little like I'm some sort of tribeswoman, walking for miles to the river and filling up my jar before placing it on my head and swaying back. Okay, maybe not the head-jug bit. My cup is a bit small for that sort of stunt. But you get the idea. This is way too much work for a cup of water.

I can't wait till the machine gets fixed.

Posted by yuene at 12:18 PM

After a long hiatus

Well, I'm back.

Posted by yuene at 12:11 PM