Appreciative Crap

Hi, Christmas is round the very corner and so is New year. I guess I won't be leaving entries till after it or way after it. Don't miss me though, dear readers (others can start throwing eggs at me.) A year have been over, quite quickly I would say. I'm sure some of you all have a good year, some was a little rocky and some was like a mine field. Whatever it is, I would firstly like to wish you peeps and Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Those who have a good year, I do wish it'll still be good the next, if not better. To the poor fellas who fell in the rocks or tripped a mine or two, I've got something for you.

To prevent feedbacks like "Hey, you don't understand my situation!" or "Hey, I'm far more worse!" Well, I'm not here to debate who went through deeper shit or whose shit stinks more. I admit I'm fortunate to have a great family and friends. I fell into shit-holes too, sometimes even self-dug ones. Long story short, the point I'm getting across is - Be strong and keep on pushing. I don't mean you should be some bloody brave knight that parries flaming arrows unflinchingly, you may bitch once in a while or wholetime if people around are willing to listen.

A quote that I got off some bookmark: We grow stronger as we paddle through rough waters.

A poem that doesn't rhyme or whatever crap you want to call, from me:

There are times, when you think how unfair life is.
There are times, when there's no path laid for you.
There are times, when you can't find a bridge to get across.
There are times, when you strived but found nothing.
There are times, when you strived and finally found it.
There are times, when you strived but finally found it crumbled; In your face.

But in whatever case, welcome to life.
A journey never always smooth.
Think about how blessed are you now,
Probably resting one hand on the keyboard,
And the other on the mouse.
How much better looking you are than a mofo in your high school class.
Being able to read THIS bloody chunk off your monitor screen.
And later feeling thirst, being able to walk to your kitchen to get a drink.
Sit back and don't sigh,
Close your eyes and take a breather.
Enjoy the O-two you are taking in...

For the discouraged and tattered,

MrJack

To end this, I would like to share something. I guess most of you all have read e-mails about this photographer who suicided due to depression, after taking a picture of a starved African baby who was crawling towards a medical camp. By the way, the poor infant didn't make it and became the vultures' meal. I don't know why didn't the photographer rescue it at the first place but maybe he wasn't allowed to, that's why the guilt. That's not for me to know but my point is, even when confronted head-on with 'death' itself (the scorching desert heat of the area struck by a famine and the vultures in wait to scavenge its body), the poor little thing pinned all his hopes on his last breath and died trying, in a crawling position. God bless the poor soul. Yes, I may sound damn sick but so now, doesn't that give you the reason to keep fighting and living?

God gave us Five fingers for a Reason.

Hello, I know blogging at this time's a little weird, but I've been sleeping almost the whole day. There's Rapid Application Development common test on Wednesday, some sort of dumb C++ programming test. I sort of went through the sample test paper and it leave lots of question marks in my head. Therefore since I can't get help yet (hopefully I can get by tomorrow), I've decided to just put my Sunday's working experience into words.

Anyway, my job was a kitchen helper of the banquet kitchen in Oriental Hotel introduced by Theo. Theo, Alvin and I met up at Cityhall at 9.45 am and left for the workplace as Chuan Lim will be late. We checked in, collected our uniforms and changed into it. Initially, I thought the checkered pants looked quite clowny but overall, the uniform is quite smart. It has the ability to give kitchen idiots a professional look (by the way I'm no kitchen idiot, okaaay.)

I was brought to the kitchen where I was introduced to Chef Roy, the master chef of the kitchen. My first job was to empty 3 bottles of Thai chilli sauce into a huge bowl. Following was unpackaging mini mantous and arranging mushrooms and mini abalones into bowls. I should say time passed pretty fast there. After 'massaging' the tiger prawns in the batter, it was lunch time and we left for the canteen for lunch.

After lunch, we were back to the kitchen and I was asked to help seperate some steam mantous for frying. It was also the first time I got reprimanded by one of the chefs. That was some sort of miscommunication but I guess it was unecessary to reason it out. Firstly, he's has got the grumpy old man look, and I don't want to risk having my head dunked into the huge wok of boiling oil.

Up next was preparing dishes for some banquet going on outside the function hall, which was also 'wartime' as labelled by Theo. The first dish was the cold plate and I was told to arrange the fried spring rolls on the plates. Chuan Lim and I was arranging them at hundred percent efficiency but the reason wasn't that it we were hardworking. The spring rolls were just too hot to stay in our fingers for another second. Till the last plate, we ran out of spring rolls and Chef Roy told me to get some from the warmer. I thought it was just warm and grabbed the container. Indeed it was at first but the heat went through my thin latex gloves after a few seconds and I nearly wanted to throw spring rolls away (luckily I didn't, else I'll probably get fucked for wasting over 200 spring rolls.) Unluckily, there wasn't any place near where I could put it down so I held it with my two thumbs, switched to index fingers and followed by the middle fingers before I found a space at the other end of the long table and dumped the load, before darting off to the basin to run my hands under tap water. The feeling was HOLY. Never was water felt so good on my hands. Surprisingly, it hurt at that moment but there wasn't any blisters today. After the full course was all being sent out, it was break time and we went Marina Square to slack.

We went back earlier and napped in the changing for awhile (I'll didn't want to sleep but was taken to dreamland by Chuan Lim's calm, constant, hypnotising and melodious snore. The next thing that I knew was Theo coming in to wake us up for dinner.

After dinner was the next 'war' and I heard that we're preparing dishes for 5566 and some other boyband. Who cares anyway, we're just at a kitchen where we're cut away from the world. The whole point is to last till the last dish of the banquet, throw our hats, celebrate and go home. Very quickly, everyone was back to preparing ingrdients for the next bandquet. I was handed a tub of sliced abalone and assigned to arrange the slices into rings in small metal bowls. That was the first time I've even seen so much abalone in my entire life. Hell tempted to pinch a few slices for myself but didn't because I decided that I should behave like a noob on my first day. Theo told me it's fine to just eat from the ingredients, so it'll do it next time. He called it "quality tasting" and so I'll say I was also tempted to quality taste the raw salmon while rolling them up. It was pure torture resisting.

By then, I've already came up with personal nicknames for some chefs. There's the Frying God, the Stir-Frying God and This Short Jap Chef (he just looks short to me). The Stir-Frying God was the only chef that held my attention while tossing the food in a large wok. As he tossed it, the prawns and veggies seem to be gravity-defying. The ingredients at the bottom of the wok goes up, swapping place with the ingredients at the top. That's damn style and skill and If I was to do that, I bet everything will fly and it'll start raining prawns and green beans. Anyway, the Frying God was the one who reprimanded. Apart from that, he was quite interesting as he was trying to show off his skill to me.

Red's the Frying God and Blue's me.

Spoken in Mandarin:

"Boy, want to play this?"

"I don't know how to, later fucked up."

"Won't lah see, I always dump the prawns in and go do something else."

"So, how do you know when they're ready? Colour or when it floats?"

Looking at me from the corners of his eyes, as if he has got some major top secret information to share...
"I know by experience."

I was like roll eyes, how useful it sounds to me. But later on, he further explained that the 'experience' was actually the steaming oil that appears at the edge of the wok.

I'm lazy to go into the details because they are rather similar to the ones in afternoon. Just that we all handled much more bloody hot stuff.

I shall conclude here. This job is much better than the job I had at hui lau shan (some bloody screwed dessert bar near Shaw House), don't need to feel underpaid while doing almost every shit, ranging from waitering, dishwashing, dumping garbage to simple accounting. It's comparatively good pay and welfare. 'Welfare' here doesn't only points to the meals provided and laundry service. It also goes to the 'sampling' of dishes after the banquet. I love the pork porridge topped with Thai chilli sauce crab, the shark's fin and the fried chicken. Chuan Lim is a total clowny ass. Having free shark's fin was already a privilege but he complained there wasn't enough essence and went around looking for pepper.

So after changing out, we rushed for the last train home.

ps: Running with crab and shark's fin swimming in your tummy may result in stitches and indigestion.

Argh, bloody wordy and too lazy for error checking,

out.

Presenting Chef Ho.

Fifteenth Asian Games Doha 2006, Event Number Forty-Seven

I'm sure you sporty guys have been catching Asian games live, as well as the geeks who drool over synchronized dancing babes. Well, apart from the 39 sports and 46 disciplines, a new sport was introduced by Singapore. It's none other than Track-Jumping originated from Singapore lesser than two years ago.

(WARNING: Do NOT be geh-kiang and click the link if you think the movie SAW is very gory. Do NOT view with a full stomach because I did. Rated M-18 by MrJack's censorship.)

Click here to view the results of event forty-seven, Track-Jumping.

Click here to link to the Official website of the 15th Asian Games Doha 2006.

All in all, crap aside, do still rest in peace.

MrJack, 15th Asian Games Doha 2006 reporter, thank you.

I Love NYP

Hello, and I'm back once again to brush off the webs spun around after being MIA for a fortnight. I went into a depression after having the bad haircut, was admitted to Buangkok Green Medical Park (the famous and fomer Woodbridge Hospital) and was diagnosed to be positive of a condition called "Bloody Mangkuk". The health consultant gave no prescription but told me that time could heal everything. So now, I've recovered and in case you don't realize, you just wasted 10 seconds of your precious life reading this paragraph.

I just noticed I haven't blogged much since the school reopened, just four entries and the term break is coming after the coming week. Two months have whizzed past pretty unknowningly. I'm pretty brain dead now and seem to have left my writing touch in room D701 of Buangkok Green Medical Park. So just let me flash some pictures and write on random events which might not even link.

This is Liang Teck, my classmate who either sleeps or daydreams during lectures. During this semester, here came the great transistional change. Just look at how focused he looked, reading off the bricky BDSM whoops, DBMS (Database Management Systems) text. It is one of the more boring modules (not that others aren't) and besides that, the book is freaking heavy, hard-covered and could break a spine if it is flung out of a window.

Anyway, just take a look and see how boring the text can get...

THIS BORING, and by the way Hello Kira and Deathgod.

I had three tests disasters this week, Networking Technolgy practical, E-quiz and Animation practical.

They swooped through my room like a twister and messed up everything. Networking Technology practical spent me one night trying to get a network with all devices ping-able on Packet Tracer, some simulation program. Luckily, things went smoothly for the test. I detonated myself during the animation practical test. We're supposed to make this canon ball crap that could load and fire with some silly counters. I failed miserably and the canon ended up looking obscene, due to it's repetitive penetrating motion of recoil. Fuck actionscript, and programming as well.

I noticed that the school is finally responding to we students' feedback. Maybe they were feedbacks made by seniors years ago but that's not the issue. I noticed that the E-learning Plaza at Block Q finally implemented the use of optical mice. Sadly, it's only like lesser than 5% of the entire lab's desktops. I suspect they had some spare and just chucked it for use in the E-learning Plaza.

Finally.

I honestly have nothing against wheel mice and am not fussy at all but the school glued up the wheel mice so students can't pocket the mouseball out of mischief. For this, I'll firstly curse those mischievous brats to lose their testicles like how they tampered with the poor mice. Next, I think the school made the smartest choice of gluing up the mice. The rollers collects dirt to the extent that the cursor became 70% unresponsive and pisses students like me off. When I bitched to my lecturer, all I got was "The usb port is for you to bring your own optical mouse." I don't know if he was kidding but I hope he is. To whom it may concern, please replace all the wheel mice with optical mice or do some regular maintenance so that balls don't get stucked.

Yawn, I'll continue bitching some other day.