Rant 851 / Spess Muhreen!

What Americans think Asians do in an average day:






What we really do in an average day:


(press 9 when playing the above video).














So Singaporeans of my mum's generation were more materialistic than I thought. Apparently one reason we were invited to birthday parties back when we were young was because my father was a businessman.

A friend of mine whose father was an employee (and not a well-paying position either) was actually not invited to some of the parties.

Life.




And I just found out how shallow one of my neighbours is. It seems she's been trying to introduce the sisters of one of her daughters-in-law to my bro, despite the fact that he's already attached and there's no sign that they're going to end the relationship in the foreseeable future.

The best part is that she's been asking my mum why they haven't split up yet because his girlfriend is so ugly. Therefore she recommends those girls since they're much prettier than her.

Seriously, what?

She's like in her mid-50s and she's still that shallow!

See what I mean when I say physical age is a poor indicator of mental maturity?

Being 18 doesn't automatically make you an adult; being 50 doesn't automatically make you wise.

Even though I concur with her observation about his girlfriend, I do not agree that they should split up because of her looks. As long as they're happy, why should it matter?

Yet apparently it matters to my neighbour - she herself has a good-looking husband (or used to be good-looking).

People are people.

There will always be such people so that the good people will look good.





Sometimes we just got to admit there's nothing we can do about certain things. It's not true, technically speaking, but the available choices just require too much to be worth it.

There are choices and there are choices. There are choices that reality offers us and there are choices we offer ourselves.

For example, there are many choices available to me if I want to get a plate of Hainanese chicken rice.

1) I could buy the herbs and the chicken and cook it at home.
2) I could buy some of the herbs to make the rice, then buy a cooked chicken from a nearby chicken rice stall.
3) I could just buy a plate of it downstairs.
4) I could fly to Hainan, China.

The choices we offer ourselves are the ones whose prices we believe are worth the rewards. In this case, the only choice is 3 for me.














This month is so bad, we actually had to dip into my savings for our daily expenses. Just withdrew a thousand dollars last week.

This isn't a rare occurence - we just depend on the holiday seasons so much.

Fortunately payday is sometime during this week.

In the meantime, I learnt to cook a very simple dish. Got to know more of such recipes to prepare for the future.

Just need minced meat, soy sauce, oyster sauce, starch (we use potato but others like corn are fine too) and oil.

Marinate the meat in soy sauce and oyster sauce (black pepper optional).

Mix in some starch before cooking.

Stir fry it. The last time I did it I also added button mushrooms first into the hot oil. Another optional addition is garlic.

Finally, there's the final optional step of pouring it onto a dish of greens.

All amounts are up to you. Personally I use 2-3 tbs of oyster sauce and soy sauce (each), a generous sprinkle of pepper and 2 pinches of starch on about 400-500g of minced pork. Probably should add more starch IMO.

This is so simple.

Quite salty, should go with rice, just in case this wasn't obvious.

Anyway, August sucks. September should get better.











Also added the a new gadget and those crap at the bottom of each post.