Catching up with friends 25 May, 2008
Posted by dear1dear2 in Dear1, Slice of Life.add a comment
Catching up with friends can be such a routine and lifeless activity, especially if the same activity is done over and over again, like what I’ve talked about earlier. The thing that needs to be fundamentally reconsidered is the purpose of meeting up and hence shape the activity around that purpose.
Going for dinner is a great way of catching up. We can chit chat about the latest craze in town, find out what one another are doing and so on. But the routine part of it is the dinnering. Every likes to see one another every once in a while, which is why we bother to organise outings in the first place. But over dinner yet again?! So I propose a new activity that is more suited for friends’ gathering, staying at home.
A group of friends can arrange to visit one person of the group at his/her home. This way, everyone can dress comfortably and be in a more relaxed mood. For food, there’s always delivery services from pizza stalls, fast foods and the like. Or how about going downstairs to one of the kopitiams and have some local hawker food, the non aircon environment and haphazard arrangement of tables and chairs will surely help with bonding.
At home, there can be many activities as well. Steamboat, pot luck or even baking for those cooking-type people. Or how about renting a movie to enjoy together in the living room, sitting on the sofa, on the floor, against the wall. Playing a board game can be fun, good old Monopoly, Risk or pool together some money and buy an exotic board game such as Scotland Yard or Ticket To Ride. And Mahjong is definitely one of those games u simply cannot find anywhere other than a residential unit. While the four probabilistic experts are busy guessing one another’s bamboo and wind suits, the rest of the people can play some interactive video console games such as PS3, XBox360 or Wii. PC games are also fine but make sure there are enough controllers to go around. Handheld consoles can be great too if there are enuff PSP and DS among the group of friends. The not so game savvy people can probably take a corner of the house and just sit down, relax, get a cold drink and start chatting away.
The things I’m suggesting here aren’t as expensive as going downtown for a meal at some fancy restaurant, but I’m sure it adds much more value to building the bonds of friendship.
-Dear1
Irritating lizards 18 May, 2008
Posted by dear1dear2 in Around the House, Dear1.7 comments
Recently, there’s an increased in the number of lizards wondering into our house. And how do we know this? From the trail of lizard shit and lizard urine they leave around the house, on the wall, on the floor… -_-*
As a precaution, we started throwing away all the rubbish bins every night even though they are not full. Personally, I feel very environmentally guilty after throwing out so many quarter-to-half used plastic rubbish bags on a daily basis, but anything to keep lizards away. Furthermore, we made sure that there are no exposed food on the table or anywhere else in the the house. Loaf of bread will be tightly bundled and packed into yet another plastic bag to make life difficult for those pesky lizards.
Not everyone dislikes lizards though. I suddenly remember Dear2 mentioning that one of her colleagues actually appreciates lizards roaming the house, “keeps the mosquito population in check” she says. Well, I respect her judgment but I won’t tolerate lizards in my house. Surely there are other methods for keep mosquitoes away, just heed all those dengue prevention ads.
So back to the story, despite the lack of leftovers or any form of exposed food, we still continue observing disgusting lizards trails. Taking a look around the house, we realized that it’s impossible to seal the house to keep the lizards out. For one, the toilet ventilation windows are fixed in place and there’s no way to seal them off, so lizards can always climb in through the windows. So now it’s time for plan C.
Every few days, we’ll spray insecticide all around the house, especially around windows and doors and sewer areas where they may possibly enter the house from. Things seems to be improving slightly, but the trail still continues. Maybe lizard aren’t that afraid of insecticides as cockroaches. After all, lizards aren’t classified as insects.
Whenever a lizard is spotted in the house, it is always hunted down. Dear1, armed with a bottle of insecticide and an opened tupperware will convert the devilish four legged beast. Although I just mentioned that they aren’t really afraid of insecticide doesn’t mean that they are immune to it, just like humans will also die from insecticide overdoes. Adopting the same theory, Dear1 will chase the lizard to the mountains and down the sea, waiting for the lizard to let its guard down. Seizing the opportunity, Dear1 sprays an overdose of insecticide on the unsuspecting lizard, covering it in a sea of toxic moist. While it struggles to get away from the scene, the poisonous fumes start to affect its movements, slowing it down to a crawl and Dear1 entraps it under the inverted plastic prison in one swift motion. Dear1 then places a shoe atop the tupperware to ensure the lizard doesn’t get away. Normally, everything will be left as it is overnight. The next day, Dear1 will quickly pick it up using paper towels and throw it away.
Some may think that this is quite an exaggerated method of catching a lizard but both Dear1 and Dear2 are not very comfortable with catching pest with our bare hands. Furthermore, it runs too fast to catch and hence the need to slow it down with insecticide.
The one thing I still don’t understand is, these simple minded animals, surely they only visit places where food is to be found. So if there’s no readily available food in my house, where are they still coming in? Grr… Sometimes I do notice lizards along the corridors and in the void decks, perhaps there are quite a lot of lizards in the neighbourhood? If so, should I call up the town council and get them to put a stop to such problems?
Temporary solution: Buy a lizard trap from NTUC and place it near potential entry points and keep all food out of reach.
-Dear1
Men’s shirts can be so expensive 13 May, 2008
Posted by dear1dear2 in Dear1, Shop till you drop, Wedding.1 comment so far
I have never been much of a shirt person up till now so I don’t really keep track of the prices of men’s shirt. Let’s think back, when did I ever wear men’s shirt…
The first time I could think of is for a secondary school alumni dinner. At that time, I have zero shirts and zero pants and I ended up having to borrow them. I remember borrowing a shirt from my dad, but not the pants because I was quite thin back then and my dad’s pants wasn’t. I borrowed the pants from another friend, I think.
The next was my JC prom dinner which I attended with Dear2! Yes, we were already an item then. :D Muck! Naturally, I was quite excited about my first ever (and probably last ever prom), and I remembered asking for $100 costume allowance from my mum since I was still a poor school kid. Eventually, I bought a deep blue shirt from a shop called V.I.P from Westmall, and a pair of black pants from Bossini.
Since then, my parents start noticing my so-called growing up and my need for men’s shirts, so they start buying some for me when they went shopping. I’m fine with it I guess, partly becos I dun have to spend any money on them. Anyway, I was going to spend 2 yrs and 4 mths in the army next and there wasn’t really any occasions. Maybe there was… The BMT passing out dinner. Why do they call it passing out? Sounded like I fainted or something. The other thing that started happening was wedding dinners. Apparently, all my cousins and about the wedding age and there was an onslaught of wedding dinners to attend and I got to try out all the new shirts that my parents bought. And there’s Chinese New Year visitings too.
I guess the next time I needed shirts was when I did my vacation internship program during my 2nd year of uni. So it’s my first office desk bound working experience and I had to wear shirt and pants to work everyday. It was then that I realized I have no short sleeve shirts, but I like folding up my long sleeves anyway, I liked the folded sleeves look. Of course, during my uni days, there were lots of opportunities to wear shirts, lots of presentations to do. And I also joined the student’s engineering club which gave me yet more opportunities to wear my shirts. And then there was my second vacation internship program with a different company.
Oh, a significant development was the fact that I not only needed shirts, but a coat as well. That was during my engineering club’s year end dinner. So as I was to purchase my first coat, my dad accompanied me to get a cheap off the shelf shirt from OG at Specialists Centre (now demolished) at Orchard Rd. Again, I didn’t have to pay for it. :P I got to wear my coat twice because I was in engineering club for 2 years. Other than that, it’s sitting quietly in my cupboard. My dad used it a few times too, for holiday trips to cold places, functions and so on.
My uni days was also the time I starting getting casual shirts, and I bought 3, I think. A grey beach printed one from Tom & Stephanie at Westmall, a dark blue checkered on from some shopping centre in Orchard and a light coloured one with a few strips from Malacca. Dear2 bought one for me too, during my army days, a grey Fubu shirt. It was young and trendy during that time, but I didn’t have a chance to wear it much, and it went out of fashion quite quickly too so I didn’t wear it after. And my friend gave me a pink Milk shirt for one of my birthdays, but it was a size too big so it’s still sitting in my cupboard. Maybe I can wear it now that I’m a little fatter. Huhuhu…
Next was our ROM of course. Dear2 and I went shopping for the right ROM attire for the both of us. We decided that our theme will be white and pink, so I was to get a white shirt and maybe dark pants. All my shirts so far were plain and I first started to look at textured shirts for my ROM. Wow, I just didn’t know there were so many types of textured materials. After much searching, I had my eyes on a vertical striped textured shirt and a matching dark pants from G2000. This shirt came with cuff links, my first. It was during a sale period so I got both pieces for around $80 if I remembered correctly.
Every now and then, my parents would still buy me some shirts when they go shopping, many of which I rejected becos of their fashion sense. Some of the shirts they choose look like those construction works will wear out in the yard! But there are some nice ones. One of which being a maroon vertical striped, quite trendy looking, slim cut shirt which I wore for Chinese New Year this year. It made me too slim and stylish, I like~ Gee…
In my line of work now, I dun need to wear shirts and that’s why I haven’t had any new additions, until last week that is.
Our wedding photo shoot is coming up and bridal packages *do not* include men’s shirts, so we have to get it ourselves. After the gown fitting session, the fashion stylist told us the shirts we need to get. Apparently, I needed 4 shirts, a cream one, a peach one, a blue one and a pink one. So last week, Dear2 and I went shopping for shirts for our photo shoot. It isn’t very easy to find becos first, we wanted something nice and with designs, which ruled out plain shirts. Second, we need 4, instead of just 1 for our ROM. We finally ended up at Robinsons at City Hall where there’s a sale going on. Luckily, we managed to spot 3 shirts to our liking, incidently, all textured vertical stripes! It was a cream Montagut shirt with mandarin collar @ $39.90 (UP$89.90), a pink normal collar one @ $49.90 (UP$109) and a blue also normal collar one also @ $49.90 (UP$109) both from Feraud. OMG! Luckily I bought them during sale time! I absolutely cannot believe the original price of men’s shirt can be hovering around the $100 mark. Maybe it’s just that I’ve never been attentive enough or I just didn’t have any need to buy them. Actually, I do know that men’s shirt can be expensive from the few times that I wandered into Zara. I actually tried on some of the Zara shirts and man do they look good. But their price looks bad, very very bad. But becos I didn’t actually buy them, so I guess the notion of expensive shirts never stayed in my mind. Until now that I’ve just paid $149.70 for my 3 shirts do I finally realize this feeling the pinch. Haha… but the shirts are really good, material is good, design is good, I liked them, and I’m going to look good in them for my wedding photos. Wuahaha… Oh no, am I going to develop a shirts fetish, I hope not. :P
That’s it for my shirt wearing history. Dress well and feel good, I guess that’s true.
-Dear1
