Tried to stream Towns but can't. At first, the game's graphics went haywire when it loaded after Procaster (Livestream's broadcasting programme) was loaded.
Solved that by opening Procaster after Towns, but the stream looked horrible when I checked an hour into my stream.
Looks like that's impossible for now.
My tax assessment notice from the tax collectors IRAS came with a negative 4-digit number. Yep, looks about right.
Speaking of low income, I ran out of rice today. Only had slightly more than a single cup so my bro went out for dinner with his gf. I didn't have enough food for three anyway, only a packet of fishcakes and a packet of chikuwa.
Had enough to make an anchovy and cabbage soup with those stuff.
Skipped the rice because this was enough for one. Still have another two soup bowls' worth of soup and a serving of fishcake and chikuwa.
Tomorrow I'm all out of food other than half a loaf of bread, some chicken franks and breakfast ham.
It's either wake up early to go to the market or visit Shop N Save, except I try to keep my visits at the latter on Saturdays when my Visa debit has 3% cashback for all transactions there.
I also have some pasta, a jar of pasta sauce, canned food and instant noodles, but I try to avoid the last two and for the first, I have nothing to add to the sauce.
Looks like if I ever visit the market this week, I'm going to need to bring the trolley.
Ok, I'll admit that the above was meant to be misleading. No lies, just incomplete truths.
Some inspectors who claimed to be from the Ministry of Manpower visited my office today when I wasn't around. Apparently it was some sort of an advisory thing and I won't be penalised for any offence, so I let them do it. The guy on the phone mentioned he was going to take photos, so I had to make sure nothing was going to be made available to the public.
Thought it was fine, then I realized later in the evening that I didn't and couldn't check his credentials.
My workers couldn't anyway since they're illiterate.
That was a retarded mistake. Should have said no.
FRI
Ugh. I left the soup to cool in the reusable plastic containers and then forgot to put them in the fridge later.
The uncovered one had a thin white layer on top. The rest tasted slightly off.
Strangely, they also tasted as if I didn't add any salt. Do those bacteria consume the salt?
SAT
Went to the market and supermarket this morning at 7.30am. Both were pretty packed.
They weren't when we first arrived but the pork stall had a long queue. By the time I bought the pork and chicken the whole market was crowded.
Actually I could have chosen a stall with a shorter queue but it made sense to go for the stall with the longest queue when I knew nothing about any of the four.
Why would all the middle-aged women and their maids queue up for this particular one when there are three others with far shorter queues, sometimes even none?
Either it's cheap or it's fresh and trustworthy. From what I can tell, those are the two factors they focus on.
As for the chicken stall, there was no queue but that was because everyone was leaving after making their orders, then returning later to get them.
The vegetable stalls were packed as usual. Thought I could find some kangkong this time but it was nowhere to be seen. Also wanted to buy some eggs but they were too fragile and I thought we would barely be able to hold everything even without it.
My bro and I went together because we were buying rice. I always get him to go with me when I'm planning to buy that because these days, I only buy 10kg-packs.
Speaking of rice, I should probably stop buying Songhe exclusively and try another brand. Now that I'm getting used to the prices of rice, I realized that it is one of the most expensive brands around.
Today, it was S$28 for 10kg. Not really worth it especially when nobody here is a connoisseur or anything. I could have bought two 5kg-packs of the supermarket's own brand of rice for like $10 each. The other day I even saw New Moon's 10kg-packs going at $20.
So anyways, the pork was S$22 for 2kg of minced pork. I asked for half-lean half-fatty, ground once. I thought since I'm mostly doing stir-fry dishes I should get something with more texture or whatever that quality is called. If it's ground twice it becomes too smooth.
The chicken took some time but there was only one chicken stall in the market. The good thing was that I could tell them (it was operated by a couple) how I wanted them prepared. The two things are:
1) whether I wanted the bones removed, and if I wanted the bones at all.
2) whether I wanted the skins removed, and if I wanted the skins.
They sell the bones separately and once I saw someone asking for the bones of the chickens bought by the customer in front of her. Not sure how much it goes but for my order, it was $20 for 10 chickens' worth of deboned breasts with the skin still on, and the bones were packed separately. I wanted the bones for soup.
Speaking of soup, I'm going to have to buy a piece of pork for it. Soup made from nothing but bones (whether chicken or pig) tastes like it lacks something to me, and that something is the flavour of pork ( or beef or mutton, but pork is the cheapest).
Fish was simple since I know jack shit about all of them. I only bought a large piece of salmon fillet (near tail end) and a strip of this fish they use for fish soup outside. $20 for both. Asked him to slice the fish for me but the fishmonger doesn't provide this service for the salmon since all the fillets were pre-packed into little plastic bags.
Salmon's always easy, so much so it's just like convenience food to me. The only major difference between salmon fillets and instant noodles IMO is that salmon only lasts a week, maybe slightly more, in the freezer.
I only have three methods of preparing salmon. If it's fresh, sashimi. I rarely do that because I rarely have fresh salmon when I'm in the mood to cook. By "fresh" I mean the fish must be bought yesterday at most.
If it's not fresh, which is usually the case, I either bake (ie grill) or fry it.
Bake is the easiest. I rinse it, place it on a piece of aluminium foil with the skin facing down, sprinkle salt, pepper and chopped garlic, and wrap it up so that the splattering oil won't go everywhere. Next I can leave it to marinate in the fridge till I'm hungry or I could just put it on a grill and leave it in the oven at about 200 degrees Celsius for 20-30mins.
20mins if it's not too bad and it's already thawed to room temperature.
If the flesh is already coming apart before it's even cooked, it's not fresh (IIRC). I use 30mins if this happens or if it's still cold.
Next was vegetables. As I said, I wanted kangkong. I didn't have anything else in mind and thought I'd just see what they have. In the end, I got some mushrooms, two kinds of cabbages, a $2-box of butterhead lettuce and some spring onion.
Spring onion's hard to find later in the day, even in the 24-hour supermarket, and I need it for my fish dish using the other fish I bought.
It's easy to stir-fry that with ginger and spring onion, but usually I don't add enough ginger so it tastes as if I only cooked it with the spring onion. Did it like twice over the last few months before my bro mentioned it. Personally I didn't really need too much ginger, only enough to remove the fishy smell from the dish. More was fine, but I'm too cheap to use more ginger than was necessary.
And fish cooks so quickly that it doesn't take more than five minutes, excluding the chopping and rinsing of all the ingredients.
Also bought coffee. I think it was Indonesian beans, but I don't know. All I said was I wanted something to make black coffee with and I didn't want a mix because I don't know how. So she pointed at one and my mind was like "Whatever" and I said ok.
$13 per kg. I bought 800g, split into two bags. Not sure how long this will last me TBH. I use two tablespoon for each cup of coffee, but my ceramic cup is rather large.
While she was grinding it with her machine I went to the stall next to hers for some vermicilli, another convenient food.
Rice vermicilli is kinda tricky but still convenient. I have yet to find out how I can cook it without having it all sticking to the pan, other than by using a non-stick pan/wok.
It's convenient because all I have to do is soak it in warm water or boil it slightly, and then I can either put it in soup or stir-fry it with soy sauce.
Finally, I went to the supermarket. My bro waited outside with the full trolley while I shopped inside. Discovered that "calrose rice" isn't the kind that I normally eat and so I couldn't use the coupon I brought. In the end I just stuck with my usual Songhe rice, but like I said, I'll think about buying another brand next time.
Also bought some pasta sauce with a coupon. The tomato-based sauce should work with the minced pork I just bought... which reminds me that I had forgotten about tomatoes and onions.
Derp.
Maybe next time.
Also bought some milk and bread. Nett was about $50. Saved a total of $1.10 with the coupons, and a further 3% for using my debit card there on a Saturday. 3% of $50 is $1.50, so total savings would be $2.60. That's like 5% discount total.
I know it's a pittance but it's the feel, or the psychological effect, of saving money that matters. If saving money was really important I wouldn't have bought that brand of rice.
Now the receipt says I have almost 500 points, and the recent edition of the Passion newsletter announced that all those points are expiring by 30 June for all members.
Time to redeem. 150 points for a dollar, so that's $3 there, and I estimate that there will be about 100 points wasted.
And that's how such points, and even gift vouchers, work.
Of course that's not the end. I had to spend some time to split up the pork and chicken breasts I bought. In fact I asked both vendors to give me some of their little plastic bags just for this purpose.
It's not funny when you have 10, or even 5, chicken breasts frozen into one giant chunk. Takes forever to thaw. Fortunately the bones were already split into two bags, so that saved me some time.
