My first watches

I am sentimental when it comes to watches. It's a mechanism that tells the time and in a way represents the time and moment when I obtained each time piece

I had many watches over the years but the very first watch I ever bought was the Swatch Approaching Dial

It was purchased during my first year into NS and I wore it everyday. I still have it and would put it on each Sunday, just to give the auto quartz a little charge. Sadly the original strap is beyond repaired. 

I had my first automatic during my honeymoon. It was a bit of fun to have a square face beauty that exposes the internal mechanism. 

I wished I had been more careful with this fossil me3009. After getting the glass chip off, it is too deadly to put it on my wrist. 

Lately, I took a big leap and got myself my first highend watch.  It's a little out of character for me, as I have been saving to pay off my mortgage. Nonetheless I have been slaving for 10 years and its "timely"  for a small indulgence. 

I won't reveal the model nor the sum I had paid for it. All I would say that it's my 2nd automatic and it has sapphire glass. Hope it won't ever chip off 

An idea

Its been the 3rd day of my 2 weeks leave to explore Life as a Stay home parents. Ok. Its mostly becos my mom whom is the caretaker of my Little One is somewhere in Europe.

Before all these, I used to wake up early to prepare for work. Waking up early gives me time to play my games, check my messages and most of all, read the Straits Times. Well since I am on leave, I see no reason to wake up at 6.30am and would stretch my sleep for as long as possible. That is till my LO wakes up hungry. This would be about 7.30ish.

So there goes my Morning Me time and for the rest of the day, I would be sufficiently rested but am out sync with the news, current affairs and FB trending topics. And this got me thinking, what if there is a Newspaper just for kids. Wont this be a brilliant idea.

It could come with 2 main sections, that cater to ages 1-3 and 3-6. There would be articles that is not too heavy with words but yet gives young children a summary of the real news. This would encourage them to read and ask about the larger world out there.... (I might regret this part).

There would also be articles on what is relevant to their age group. Why I should finish my vegetables. Why is mushroom a killer. What to do with the class bully. Why I should stay in bed when there is noises coming from my parents room. You know, things like this.

There would also be fun parts that consist of puzzles and games. Just so that the kids are drawn to the papers.

Anyhow, I aint much of a writer and not at all a biz person. So if someone has the capability, I hope he/she takes this idea and introduce it for all.

My ladies (part 2)

Well its been eons since I wrote anything here. Strangely I am inspired by a funny conversation while on lunch. We were comparing about our old phones and my colleagues were amused that I never own a Nokia.

I showed them this blog post and instantly I am intrigued to update it. And yes there is still no Nokia (sorta)

My ladies having no constraint of camera (Yeps no longer at a defence company then) have also became a lot smarter... so to speak. Yes the Apple iPhone has came and I decided to venture with the Androids.

The first is a Legendary beauty. The HTC Legend. She was tough with a full metal enclosure. When I dropped her, the floor tends to have a tiny dent.

There is one minor problem. She has a buck tooth. Having said that, I din mind it one bit.

The second is also from HTC... I must have a thing for Taiwanese girls perhaps. I gotten HTC Legend at $0 cost and managed to trade her in for $50. Not a bad investment. So came HTC One X. With something call Beats audio. 

Till this day, I wonder why the "feature" simple make music louder. Anyway she din last me as long as I hope. Phone aint built for IP rating then and I gotten her wet. Yes wet. YES quite WET.

So in my depression, I had to have a new phone. I pop by Mobilesquare and paid for a phone without a contract. To be honest, I could have signed a contract then, but the Telco decided to stop offering 12 GB of data. I am a heavy user with an average of 8-10 GB of usage per month. 3G of 12GB beats 4G of 3GB anytime.

I set my eyes on my first Phablet, the Korean Samsung Note 3. I find the stylus to be the best part. I could actually take some notes. And I almost never use it. 

Anyway its been 3 years since I bought it and it has weathered through with dents and cracks. 

I am in the market for a new lady. I had wanted Note 3 younger sister, Note 7. But apparently she has an explosive temper. Seeing there is little worthy substitute, I might settle for a Chinese chick. 

She seems to have everything I want and is dirt cheap. I just hope she aint secretly eyeing my CPF. 

Cooking notes

Well I gather that there is no more any visitors to my blog.
As such this will become my log to compile all my cooking notes

Pork Burger
http://goodyfoodies.blogspot.sg/2011/02/i-cooked-homemade-pork-burgers.html

Preparation time: 5-10 minutes
Cooking time: 12-14 minutes
Makes 2

Ingredients
250g pork mince
1 small onion, finely diced
2 garlic cloves, finely diced
2 tbsp sweet chilli dipping sauce
3 tbsp of fresh breadcrumbs
1 egg yolk
A pinch of salt and pepper
1 tbsp of extra virgin olive oil
2 burger buns

Direction
Mix and cook



Chocolate Lava Cake
http://www.noobcook.com/chocolate-lava-cake/

Preparation time: 15-20 minutes
Cooking time: 11 minutes
Makes 3

Ingredients

100g dark chocolate (example, Cadbury Old Gold 70% cocoa), cut to small cubes
100g unsalted butter, cut to small cubes
2 eggs
50g caster sugar
20g self-raising flour


Directions
1. Melt dark chocolate and butter using either the microwave 

2. In a large bowl, use an electric whisk to beat the eggs and sugar till the mixture turns pale and frothy. This will take a few minutes.

3. Pour melted chocolate/butter you prepared in step 1, into the egg mixture prepared in step 2. Stir in the flour. Use a spatula to mix everything evenly.

4. Grease your ramekins with some melted butter (so that the cake will come off cleanly when it is baked). Fill the ramekin almost 3/4 full with the chocolate mixture and bake in a preheated oven of 180C (356F) for about 11 minutes. 

movie script idea

Ok bear with me on this. I had this thought while taking the cramp train from work and I tot it would make an excellence movie.

Intro
Guy with wife and young kids. Everything good in his life. Then suddenly kanna accident. Ended in comma.

Rise of zombies
Some decades later, an unknown virus began infecting humans. And the became mindless zombie. Unlike the other zombie flick, these zombie aint stupid. Not those that would rush and chew. They are smart enough to run away when something goes bad.

Rise of machines
Machines were created to tackle the zombie issue. these biomechanical robots were so effective in dealing with the zombies, that zombies ended up hiding away. It din take long before the machines became sentient and sense that the humans are fearful of their effectiveness and seek to shut them down.

World war 3
Human began a pre-empt strike to take down the machine mother. some power mainframe la. it reacted by deeming humans as a potential zombie and commence warfare. this resulted in heavy loss to both sides, with zombie coming in to complicate things for the humans. It ended with borders to ensure peace to all. But tensions are ongoing

awaken the main protagonist
Within the borders, a bio-mechanical robot was attacking the zombie fraction and was alerted to see the humans. Human respond with attacks and chase it away. While the robot retreat, it saw a girl and froze. system error. Human then manage to seize this robot and take it back to their camp. Back at camp, they open the machine to get the spare parts and found a human body attached to it without any limps. Its eyes were closed with wires coming out of its brain.

The robot awaken and began killing, but when the girl appear again, it stopped. unknown why. the robot sees memories of its past and realise that it has been robo converted. the girl was his granddaughter whom look like his daughter.

It was then learnt that during the wall, the robots taken over a hospital that holds coma patients. and decided to bring them back to study human better. these human machine were more effective in killing as they were able to make creative deadly decisions. as such 100s of them were formed. they are part man and part machine now.

So now the main man, received calls from his master and directed him to go back. he over rides it and knew he has to end the war. so a renegade team is form that managed to sneak them into the main base.

As he fights his way thru, he faced off with newer machines that has zombies in them. They are far more deadly but has a witness that they desire to kill humans only. SOOOO he managed to win somehow.

As he approaches the mainframe, he is confronted by a higher level robot. It has both zombie and human attached to it. And the human is no ordinary human, but the president.

story goes that during the zombie infestation, the president was the one whom release the machines. He gotten scare and decided to terminate them, but they saw this first and captured him first. He was the first human machine and became part of the collective. it can be seen that he is not alone and was in fact in a room with 5 others. with 3 of them being zombies. The zombie collective wants to kill humans and the human collective is killing zombies. the collective doesnt see the protagonist as a threat as he is one of them.

he resent it and began fighting, but ultimately loss and died.

the human renegade see that they are losing, resented to fate and just then the zombies appeared and started attacking. zombies still see themselves as humans and wanted to end the machine wars.

and as i mentioned the zombies aint stupid, they were building military effort all along. and yes they won. as the human and zombies looked at each other, they know the next conflict is not far away. and the story ended.

the president then recap that the machines were part of a war effort that needs endorsing. when a parasite mutated and created the zombies, he used it as a leverage to go out on war. should effort be spend on cure, the infestation would have been controlled.  

Looking back

6 months have passed. I knew it as my workplace has asked me to change my password once more.

Looking back, this past 6 months have been a mixture of excitement and challenges. I am grateful to have left the awful SME and landed into this secured location.

Nevertheless, I have friends from my old place who are still holding the fort. They were shopping around and I could see that the job market is not rosy as before. I do hope they are able to find somewhere stable soon. After all, staying there any longer is a headache.

I looked back regularly to assure myself that I made the right choice to leave. Reading the latest financial report issued has certainly gave me assurance. No new revenue this FY, no profit and increase in losses, law suits growing and general "forecast" of new revenue in the next FY.

It is not amusing to see that the company is crumbling. Lies and living in past glories have led the employees to hope for a better tomorrow. A tomorrow that may never come.

At my new position, I have seen some products and solutions that could have been my previous place product and solution. Perhaps they have not given enough thought on challenging other sectors. Perhaps they simply believed that the money is not worth the effort. Perhaps simply because the leader is too blind to lead.

In any case, I hope for my friends to find a new beginning soon.

Ideas on Cafe 2

Just today a colleague bounced off an idea with me. Its exactly the same as my Beer kitchen idea. He jioed me to join in if he starts one. I am fairly interested and would likely contribute.

Anyway to continue my list of ideas

5. My Best Friend and me. A place where you can bring your dogs to dine with. There would be extensive menu for dogs, while the human will only a menu with selection of Hotdogs. The place will be an opened area to allow the dogs to smell each other butts. However if you have an unfriendly pooch and Cesar Millan aint on duty, you can opt for a private area.

PS. No cats allow

6. well to be continued

Ideas on cafes

I long harbour the thought of having my own cafe one day. After all, I do like to enjoy drinks with my good old friends and it be a perfect opportunity to waste my time away.

Sadly there are way too many things holding me back. I need this job to pay my bills and cant risk it going away. etc etc etc. So the possibility of me having one started would be next to zero in this couple of years.

What I could have is to throw out several ideas I have been holding onto. If someone steals it, make it a success, I would be happy for that person. Goes to show, my ideas would work.

1.  Cafe Top Ten. It will serve only 10 dishes, with 2 less popular dishes eliminate weekly and replace by 2 new dishes. A giant chart will be shown and votes comes in the form of orders.

2. Beer kitchen. You get to mix and brew your beer, cider, etc there. You paid for ingredients and the kitchen keeps the beer for you. When you collect, you get a table to share it with your friends and bring home the remainder in bottles. For the ATAS group

3. Laser Tag Pub. Just a pub that gives you free laser tag games when you buy a specified amount of drinks. AND a laser tag gaming arena that rewards the winning team with drinks ( loser have to buy them a round). Kinda like a biz that supported by a companion biz. Oh and the games are live cast in the pub. I must add that this target audience are NS ppl :)

4. Mircowave me. A DIY place. heh. Well its simple. Its a canteen layout and all food are in microwave containers. You choose what you want, pay for it and self cook. Now here is the kicker. There is NO ONE working there. Food are replenished at certain hours and you do everything yourself. The target is mostly people who eats alone. Those who are looking to fill up and run off. Its open 24/7.

Ok I got a few more and would probably pen it in the future.

PS. If you did found success with my ideas. Do buy me a drink.

Work Life balance

Its been too darn long since I wrote anything here. I hate to admit, but its largely becos I am busy with work.

In my years of working, I am almost never this tied down before. At my first work place, I could cramp all I need to do in a few hours and slack the rest of the afternoon. Well thats a maintenance role and nothing to do, is consider a good thing to have.

At my 2nd work place, I was sweating endlessly from all the site work. However when I know that the Coy is crap and cheating ppl, I decided that enough is enough. I aint going to lose sweat for them no more. I found a new place and chill out for the remaining weeks there.

At this current place now, I am packed till 7pm daily. Its amazing how time flies by when I am rushing through reports. When there is a call for lunch going out, I noticed that 4 hours has been burnt and my stomach is crying for food.

I must say, I do like this busy lifestyle. It gives me purpose. It gives me drive. And most of all, it allows me to value the free time I have left.

grin