Fluff peeking out between Moochie’s toes
The kitties seem to like it when we take more time to trim down their paw fluff. Valentin and Pepper like to run across the hall, and then skid across the last few metres before coming to an abrupt stop by the door. Sometimes Valentin can’t stop his skid in time and only comes to a stop because his rump hits the wall in the corner of the room.
Tomato & cheese filo tart
Actually, the title is not entirely accurate. This tart (at least the version I made) uses puff pastry instead of filo pastry, but I suspect it will work just as well with puff pastry. I also cheated and used frozen pastry squares instead of making my own from scratch, well, because frozen tasted pretty darned good anyway. The secret to this is a slathering of seeded mustard on the pastry.
Recipes: Tomato & cheese filo tart (Serves 4-6)
Kiwiberries
These rather cute looking fruit are kiwiberries from New Zealand. They are about the size of a small plum (or just a bit bigger than a cherry tomato). The outside is smooth-skinned like the said plum or tomato, but the insides have the taste and texture of kiwifruit and – as is fairly obvious from the picture – look exactly like the inside of a kiwifruit.
Unfortunately these fruit are fairly expensive. The handful pictured are the entirety of a S$4.85 punnet (and that was the price on promo mind you!). That said, they were quite sweet and satisfying. I think they will go nicely with a cheese platter. Yum.
Many people in Singapore own cars. And, one would think that if you own a car, you would be prepared to pay for a parking lot for the said car.
Unfortunately, as evidenced by some people living in my estate, that is not the case. The carpark allocation in the estate is 1 car lot per unit. Because not every resident owns a car, 5 of the carpark lots were converted to visitors’ parking, for the benefit of the residents as a whole. A handful of people (currently 3) decided to acquire second cars, and would park these second cars in the estate.
Now, the problem is this. The second cars are parked in the visitors’ lots. Which means of the 5 visitors’ lots in the estate, 3 are permanently occupied by second cars, whose owners – when they go out on weekends – tend to drive the first/primary cars out. This completely defeats the purpose of having visitors’ lots in the first place, since no visitors actually get a chance to use the lots.
When the estate’s management council decided to put in place a rule to prohibit second cars from parking in the estate at night, one particular second car owner decides to throw a fuss. He complained that as a resident, he should be entitled to have a second car lot and that the lots should not be given over to be used by visitors. He argued that visitors should not be preferred over him, a resident, in the entitlement of a lot.
But that argument completely ignores the remaining 29 units of residents who do not have second cars, and who – are more likely than not – to have friends who visit. The management council put the rule in place, so second car owners move their cars to park them outside every night. But what I don’t understand is this: if you can spend at least $80,000 on a second car, it’s quite inconceivable that you cannot spring for another $100+ a month to pay for season parking in a nearby public carpark.
H. said that it’s not a question of affordability, but just a basic selfishness and self-centred-ness.
***
We witnessed another example of this el-cheapo-ness recently. Last Sunday afternoon, when we were downstairs swimming, I noticed a red Ford Focus parked in a residents’ lot. With a 32-unit estate, it’s very obvious when a car which is not a residents’ car is parked in a residents’ lot. Presumably the owner – who was a baldie – and his daughter, entered the estate, climbed into the Ford Focus and drove off fairly quickly. Particularly as I was standing in the driveway and watching the bugger as he climbed into the car.
I didn’t give much thought to it, but took down the licence plate number of the car.
Today, when we came back from my parents’ place, I noticed a red Ford Focus come into the estate after us. We parked, walked towards the lift and all the while observed the fella parking head-first into a residents’ parking lot. We got up to the house just in time to see Baldie walking to the side gate with his daughter and presumably wife. They were headed towards Katong Mall, I think because the daughter had some enrichment classes there.
Now, on weekends, the public parking lots outside the estate are free. There are also paid lots available at Katong Mall. There were also visitors’ lots available in the estate today. But Baldie deliberately chose to park head-in into a residents’ lot instead.
He must be incredibly stupid though, since driving head-in into a parking lot does not stop people from realising that Baldie is not a resident and therefore not entitled to park in a residents’ lot. Cars have licences at the back and front, remember?
We went downstairs to check Baldie’s parking label and ascertained that: (i) he did not have an estate parking label (he did have a parking label (no. A025) for the Changi Green condo) and (ii) H. has a list of all the cars in the estate and Baldie’s SDP1560L Ford Focus was clearly not on the list.
Although we called the management agent to ask for the guard to be sent here earlier to clamp the vehicle, Baldie managed to move his car into a visitors’ lot just before 4.30pm (which is the time that the guard comes to work). Which suggests that Baldie is very familiar with how this estate is run, or alternatively, his friend saw the rude note I stuck on his windscreen and warned him about it.
Regardless, I intend to keep a watchout for Baldie and his Ford Focus the next couple of weeks. And if I manage to find out who Baldie’s friend in the estate is, I intend to give that resident a piece of my mind. Because I don’t think it’s entirely Baldie’s fault that he’s an inconsiderate basket case (it’s obviously also the fault of his upbringing and his parents), but also the friend who lets him get away with it.
Today has been fairly frustrating. Our 3+ year old Samsung Plasma TV started smoking and smelling of burning plastic in the early afternoon. This is the 2nd time in 3 years that this has happened (the first being just 2-3 weeks after the first anniversary of acquiring the TV). Neither of us are particularly happy about the situation (although H. slightly less so as this gave him the perfect excuse to finally acquire a HD TV to accompany his HD-DVD player).
We picked up the new set in about 10 minutes, thanks to the closing-down sale going on at the electronics store across the road.
Since neither of us are particularly handy (and we didn’t want to wait until tomorrow to get the new TV set up), I whinged at my parents to pop by our place instead. My dad is the ultimate handyman, and I figured he would have fun setting up the new TV anyway.
The woes didn’t stop though. First off, the bloody shop guy assured us that the wall bracket would be in the box with the TV etc. That was not the case, which necessitated H. trudging across the road to demand the bracket. Then when my dad and H. tried to put the bracket together, they discovered that the frame of the wall bracket was uneven. In fact, the frames were off by about a half inch, which meant that the only way to get the TV onto the bracket was to mount the damned TV at a 45 degree angle.
So H. (and now my dad) have once again trudged across the road to get a new wall bracket. Or at least to dig through as many brackets as they can in order to find a matching set.
My mom, on the other hand, is quite serenely sitting on the balcony and trimming/repotting my plants (it is almost 9pm btw). I tend to tease my mom about how terrible she is with repotting (she used to kill my cacti on a regular basis), but admittedly, she has rather green thumbs. My herbs all tend to do better after she’s had a go at them, which is why I make it a point to bug my parents to come over to our place every few weeks.
Yuzu sorbet from Haato
I have a weakness for sorbet, and in particular yuzu sorbet. It started quite innocently: I ordered it as dessert one evening at Sushi Tei several years back, and since then, I’ve been hooked. Before I discovered that it could be bought by the tub at Haato, I was stuck with ordering it by the (pricey) scoop at Japanese restaurants. So you can imagine how pleased I was when I discovered Haato and its S$25 for 3 tubs deal. I was even more pleased when J. brought H. to a wholesaler/importer who brought this in (as well as other flavours like black sesame and kyoho grape) by 2kg and 4kg tubs!
Yes, we had a 2kg tub of yuzu sorbet sitting in the freezer for a few weeks. That was quite nice. Heh. It would have been a 4kg tub but for the fact that this particular flavour didn’t come in 4kg sizes!
Single clove garlic bulbs
When I was younger, I hated garlic in any form. I would pick out pieces of minced garlic from stir-fried vegetables, garlic slices out of aglio olio, and garlic cloves from stewed dishes. Nowadays, however, I’ve turned into a vampire’s nightmare: I take garlic with everything and add it to almost everything I cook. Tonight’s seafood tomato stew had 8 cloves of garlic, including those two pictured.
When I first saw the bag of garlic bulbs in the supermarket, I thought they were onions. They resembled miniature white onion bulbs, and my first thought was – embarrassingly enough – “oh so cute!” Then I read the label and realised that it was actually a bag of garlic bulbs. It wasn’t until I got them home and used them for the first time that I realised that each bulb was a single clove of garlic! Given that part of the urgh! I feel when using garlic stems from having to peel the skins off the individual cloves, I got quite excited with this discovery.
Another picture for sizing
Each bulb is about the same size as those small purple onions that you get at the supermarket. Which is why I made the mistake of thinking that they were onions in the first place! In any case, if anyone does spot this at a local supermarket, give me a hollar so I’ll know where to pick up more!
I (finally) took a work-from-home day today – largely because the washing machine repairman was coming by again – and managed to catch the kitties doing what they usually do in the afternoons: sleeping! Moochie was curled up in a box, Valentin was sprawling on a pair of my shoes (in the corridor, hence the grainy texture of the photograph), and Pepper was splayed just underneath the window. It’s amazing how much kitties sleep throughout the day.
I often wonder whether resigning – and resigning without a job – is a good thing. I’m fairly certain I need the time to take stock. At the same time, I have bouts of uncertainty and insecurity about whether I’ll be able to get a job (and one that I enjoy doing) at the end of the day.
Today, we scuttled out of the office early and headed to Raffles City for dinner. We left the office area before 6.30pm, the light was still shining and we were done with dinner by 7.10pm. By the time we headed back home – and that was after we meandered around Raffles City (on A’s suggestion, I headed to Aldo to look for strappy sandals) for a while. We were home and kitties fed by 8pm. Now, just shy of 9pm, just shy of 9pm, I’m lounging on the sofa and blogging while H. plays another round of Zelda.
It’s really quite nice to be able to sit at home and enjoy being home.
Whenever either of us are working on the dining table (or for that matter, having a meal using the table), Valentin would inevitably jump onto the table and sprawl over whatever we were looking at/using. Today, I dumped a couple of magazines on the table – I was intending to flip through them once I finished using the computer – and minutes later, Valentin was on the table and sprawled across the magazines.
Valentin doing the Sprawl
If he had his way, Valentin will be sprawled across my laptop instead of the magazines. But I nudged him away before he could even come anywhere near my computer. He wasn’t happy with being pushed away, but then decided that it’ll be more comfortable to brace against the chair in any case.
View from the other side of the Sprawl
Doesn’t he look like he’s pretty satisfied with himself?
