And I Stayed Home On A Saturday Night... As Usual

it was back to contained living in the village on saturday night. dinner in the village with alex... and we came back to my place for a bottle of sauvignon blanc and grapes. as always, a long drawn conversation with alex always puts my sanity back in place.

Dinner And Drinks With The Usual Suspects

friday night was the first weekend night after so many months that i stayed up way past my bedtime. talking about ageing.... (blaaah!)


the kick-arse zhi char dinner with the usual suspects at good old river valley road

followed by drinks and good old conversations and banters at villa bali...


it felt like i was back in ubud all over again...

and mr turner got all too comfy...


nice...

My Occupational Drool Hazard

i totally cannot get enough of stephanie, the host of axn's sony style tv show.

i was mentally drooling over her during one of the media interviews i was hosting during a publicity drive for the show.


when i grow up, i'm gonna be just like her. *chuckle*

Bond That Never Breaks

time sure flies real fast when you are in the company of old friends. i woke up this morning and looked at lichelle, still deep in slumber.

and it hit me that come monday, she'll be gone back to the philippines before moving to dubai for good. and i don't know when i'll ever get to see her again. and come monday, i'll be back to my own again.

a conversation with felicia and lichelle over kaya toast and iced tea last night was one of the most heart-rendering moments in the history of our friendship. it made me resolute to preserve our links which we first soldered in our early formative years back then while studying in the university.

an attempt to call porcks in HK last night for a quick banter and hellos was futile. we understand you porcks... you musta been busy with A.

and lichelle and i got more than we bargained for when me made a quick call to pavithra who is currently doing her PhD in the states. her parents were around and we made the most genuine declaration to pavithar's mom: "we miss your dhal and sambar dishes so very much auntie!"

pavithra - we miss you lots too.

but if there is one thing i do know, is that, no matter where around the world my friends are, that bond is never gonna break.

David's Big Three O

as promised to felicia (and i grudgingly made the promise lest she spends another disappointing morning in the staff room before her first lesson of the day), here's a pictorial scoop on david's 30th birthday celebration last saturday held at aloha chalet.

felicia picked me up from home...


...with her two boys in tow, ryan and nicholas... look at 'em... awww... m e l t...

shortly after we arrived, these two cute lil' munchkins turned grumpy but... awww, they're still oh-so-cute...

the early birds...


and loads of grub...


the satay came along with a satay-man to bbq it


lesson learnt: natural daylight gives you that high-definition effect on photographs, zoom in for open pores and blackheads (and whiteheads if i may add) but it's alright cos i still love you guys


david's co-workers from the civil service very soon descended upon the party and totally eclipsed us misfits... i received a gag order and was barred from talking to them in case if i were to verbally misbehave


after several rounds of playing hide-and-seek with ryan, nicholas and leslie's kids, i was totally pooped and was forced to claim extreme fatigue despite the kids' protests wanting to carry on.

i managed to convince ryan and nicholas that trains are more fun to play with and you get to sit down at the same time...


after many satays, kick-ass chicken wings, meat patties, and other wonderful greasy bbq-ed meats later... we needed the best facial cleanser to strip the oil fields off our faces...


marie (david's mommy), david and dora...


the satay-man provided the tempo while dora's dad, uncle dick yip, plucked his ukelele to a birthday song for david...


all and all, it was a very merry evening for all of us. soon afterwards, wei came round to pick me up for our dvd night back at my place... but not without amusing the girls with his terrific yorkshire accent first. scones and tea anyone?

have a very merry, happy and joyous 30th birthday david.

Eskew Me You A Model Is It?

facilitating a photo shoot in a studio can be a long drawn and draining affair. it starts with stripping off the make-up off the model's face, the length of time taken to put on make up takes up an epic proportion in itself. then comes the dressing up part. only then will the photo shoot proper take place and you wait for the cows to come back home. if you've several costumes to put on, then i'd say good luck to you. because the make up and hair will have to change all over again to fit whatever you're wearing.

since my early days on my first job in advertising, i dread going for photo shoots... worse of all if it's a whole day of doing photo shots of products. one cannot exactly talk to the products and request that it should look sassy and sultry can he?

so there i was, grumbling my arse off early morning having to wake up real early at 8am (on top of my usual 9.15am rise and shine) just because i had to travel all the way from home in holland village to mediacorp's publishing studio in ang mo kio's most bellicose industrial tech-park district.

my morning mood shot right up to the other extreme pole of eternal happiness and joy when i walked into the photo studio....


...as i caught an immediate glimpse of someone i've not seen for a long time, leaving his imprint of cosmetic genius on stephanie carrington's face... it was...


...GREGO!!! the mostest darling girl friend and love of the universe to every living being on planet earth... chuckle.

of course we got back to our tasks after half an hour of histrionics which over the years, have become very much our customary way of greeting one another (even on the streets if we were to bump into one another... no kidding).

grego as usual, is a leonardo da vinci in the realm of beautifying the face of anything that walks this planet. i'd very much would like to post my own shots of stephanie fully made up and in her most sublime modelliscious studio poses... but i can't just yet or else arena magazine will come after my arse in court for leaking out those shots. you all will have to wait for arena's june issue i guess.

teaser: stephanie's so hot i almost turned straight but i pushed happy thoughts of a naked bodied nakata in my head.

being the digicam whore that i have recently turned into, i cannot resist hijack a pose with stephanie. but i shan't post it here because i look thrice her size in photos.

note to self: adopt felicia's fabulous diet plan

the happiest person that day was of course ian, the only other colleague of very hetero inclination who tagged along with me to help facilitate the studio photo shoot.

guitar-god ian and stephanie

i for once was a very happy man that day at work. it's always good to be able to go to work and laugh, and bump into old fabulous friends like grego.

And Back Again...

after a exactly a year in barcelona, our favourite chee-bie is back in town for a week's visit.

loads of catching up and loads of culinary adventures to re-enact. crystal jade was a start last night.

felicia, seto & lichelle

the same old parennial infamous lines once uttered by lichelle kept cropping up the whole of last night:

"...custard bun? what's in a custard bun?"

"yeah i got 4 As (in reference to distinctions obtained in the A level examination)... you mean you all don't get 4 As meh...?"

it's good to have you back... it feels like you never did leave somehow.

News In Brief

hookay quick updates:

1. my deferment off reservist this week is granted!

2. in relation to article 1, i will be at work as per normal

3. in relation to article 1 and 2, that means i can spend more time with lichelle!

4. in relation to article 4, lichelle will touch down today, monday, at 12 noon

5. in relation to all of the above mentioned articles, today has got to be the bestest thing that has ever happened to me in the past couple of months!

note to felicia: the blog posting on david's birthday party has gotta wait, you have no idea how i slogged over the whole of sunday sprucing up the apartment anticipating lichelle's arrival.

"Come Hither" Says The Village

it's friday at last. i can't wait to be back in the arms of holland village where home is. clock a'tickin'. gotta run.

Oh Tis' So Soft!

new faces for toilet roll advert found in cold storage; shou chen and cynthia (yeah, the one who was casted as annabelle chong for the recent stage play).


shou chen: "oh my, how soft is this?"

cynthia: "oh yesss... it's like as if a baby's fingers had just caressed my derriere"

shou chen & cynthia: "ohhhhhh..."

Wanna Know What A Contrail Is?

as i was on my way to work in the morning, i came across a spectacular sight in white streaking high up in the sky. i have seen it once in a while and i thought it was just plain air pollution in the sky until lynda explained to me some time ago it's actually called a contrail.

according to wikipedia:

Contrails or vapour trails are condensation trails and artificial cirrus clouds made by the exhaust of aircraft engines or wingtip vortices which precipitate a stream of tiny ice crystals in moist, frigid upper air. They are not air pollution, though they might be considered visual pollution.

very nice. i showed lynda the picture and she surprised me with more information when she saw how the contrails were formed in the picture below: "hmmm, must be either from an A4 or an F16 lor"


"huh?" she threw me off into bewilderment. "airplanes lah" she shrugged me off with total impunity with her knowledge. this small girl damn zhai, everything also she knows.

I Am Socially Degenerating

right... this is bad. an ultra conservative introvert of a friend that i know, says i have no life to me today, on msn:

muckaroo says: hey u know what dean?

pornstar says: ah what? u want to say what? what i know? u faster say lah! i bloody busy right now, crazy freaky monday running like bloody headless cheeken all!

muckaroo says: i'll make this short sharp and sweet and will try minimise the pain that i may inflict on you when i am gonna say this

pornstar says: ah faster say lah, i'm gonna lose my head over work very soon

muckaroo says: i read your blog

muckaroo says: and i was thinking

muckaroo says: that i am, in no way anywhere near your league

pornstar says: ah huh? what u wanna say, faster lah don beat ard the bush liedat

muckaroo says: well, what i really am saying is this - GO GET A LIFE can? or a bf or something... or a pet...

pornstar says: eh hallo... u nabey say i got no life! cheebye u! fuckeroo muckaroo u! nabey!

muckaroo says: correct what! look at me, you know and we all know that i am nowhere being the socialite that you have always been but i think after reading your blog, it's clear you got no life. correct?

muckaroo says: perpetually stuck in the village... tsk tsk, what's wrong with you? degenerative socialite is it?

note to self: buy a PDA, start filling up my electronic calendar with imaginary social events

Have Extreme Humidity Will Stay In

during lunch with colin, sean and warren on saturday; colin remarked that i have not been out to the clubs on weekend nights since late last year.

take late last year, say... november or december. and it is april 2007 now. so that makes a total of... give and take... i have not stepped into the clubs for five months then.

more math. for my case, weekend night means both friday and saturday nights. so it's two weekend nights. there are approximately four weeks in a month. that makes eight weekend nights in a month.

so, if i have been staying home for approximately five months now, that mean, i have roughly spent 40 weekend nights at home so far. away from the clubs. not bad for my case. and i don't even miss it. i tend to prefer less crowded places these days, meeting up a friend or two for tete-a-tete over tea or simply hanging out with a friend by the pool downstairs for quick gossips.

this weekend was almost the same as the other weekends in the past five months or so. friday night was an almost mandatory cable/dvd night. woke up the next morning on saturday at eight to find colin had risen earlier than i did and left for the gym. sean dropped by in the nick of time when i was done with household chores and we hung out at the pool downstairs for a quick tan.

"how ya doin'?"

then it was lunch in the village with colin, sean and warren. a real quick one, cos it was frigging humid outside. colin and i got back home for our siesta under the whirring sound of air-con... lee kuan yew was right: air-con has gotta be the best invention of the 20th century.

nightfall, colin left to fulfill his social calendar duties. while waiting for mr hunky-dory wei to come over, i decided to beat the heat and humidity by gorging my face with half of a watermelon. there was just way too much fibre, i went bloated right after my last slice of the melon. bad idea.

reruns of little britain and french & saunders trailed late into the night over countless vodka cranberries. the best bit was the company that wei was, i can never get enough of his au naturel english accent. we both think we'd one day do a emily howard & florence get up together and walk around in the village with dainty parasols, petite lacy gloves and in victorian accoutrements.

"i'm a lady. are you a lady? regardez les enfants, they're playing footy my dear florence."

sunday was extremely lazy a day. after breakfast, we came back to my place and watched a super duper total lesbianic nutty french movie, "8 femmes". gosh... catherine danueve at 60 yrs old is still stunning.

we sought refuge in air-conditioned pho hoa for vietnamese lunch. i thought the mural on the walls of pho hoa was gorgeous.


air-con wasn't enough for wei, he had to have shades on while having lunch.


back at home in the evening after wei had left, i was left to my own devices in dealing with the extreme humidity. perspiring terribly while i was e-filing my tax returns online.


much later, i somehow felt the cool down. it's gotta be the phalaenopsis i have been staring at, blooming in full might on the dining table.

Goodly Friday 13th

i woke up this morning, completely oblivious to the fact that today is friday 13th, until a colleague told me when i arrived at the office. not that i am superstitious or anything remotely like that, but au contraire, i always hold odd numbers in high regard. odd numbered days in the calendar have always held lots of goodliest things for me.

it's just like beethoven's odd numbered symphonies - namely his 5th, 7th and 9th symphonies - they are absolutely very profound works in the history of classical music. and since i have been basking with all three symphonies plugged into my ears on the headphone and mp3 player at work since early morning, everything is a-okay on friday 13th thus far.

so come what may today, and friday being the day of my religion's holy sabbath, i think i'll do just fine for the rest of the day.

Les Enfants Terribles - My Consumer Team

from left: KS (marketing manager of Oosh), greta, lynda, ian

haiyoh these people all so terrible last night at Oosh's official launch and opening.

ian was perpetually sounding off like a motion sensor every time the waiter trawls him with free flow of piper heidsick "lovely darling, oh it's so lovely, marvellous, gorgeous!". he kena my syndrome lor. then because of the campy lines ian was spewing, my friend wei suspects ian is gay.

lynda went to and fro non stop to the sashimi buffet table and danced with strangers.

greta was shamelessly cruising and hijacking the trays of food every time a waiter walks near her...and doing squats on the dancefloor.

shou chen went missing but he was generally well behaved.

me... well i have an impression to make, so i was good boy and did not get drunk until i got home and finished up a quarter of a bottle of jack daniel's with wei.

young people these days ah, tsk tsk!

Wagner Gives Me The Rush

i frigging love wagner's opera and orchestral arrangements and overtures! i mean like i really frigging HEART his works since i was in secondary one, like 13 yrs old. BIG TIME!

he gets me going when the going gets tough at work. it's like going on a high octane ride and rocket off the cliff into the distant horizon of the sky in a nanosecond, cutting through the sky and slicing and dicing the fluffy white clouds and to end on a superb high rush still going through your head... it's more than all that, like his ride of the vylkyries. fucking shiok!

the overture to die meistersinger von nuremberg always gets me going at work especially when i'm beset with loads of junks to clear on the very last minute before i knock off. wagner... i totally HEART you!

Dean's Axiom #1

dean's wisecrack overheard during lunch today (die die must blog this for posterity):

"i'd rather jump into a field of knives then to be in shou chen's massive freak-out session"

grin

Awww Shooo Shweeet!

this is seng han and lynda. i like to refer to seng han better as ah seng. these two got damn cute story to tell lor. they were once primary school sweethearts. yeah they started real young... must be the genetically modified food these young people have been taking these days.

after 16 years, they caught up again. and ah seng being linked to my blog (check out: "AhSengz"), of course lah i came along for dinner and beer with them.

ah seng is now single and totally available, so all of you single girls out there who are interested, i am contactable on my mobile. pimping charges apply, surcharge rates to be advised.

caveat emptor: ah seng may look like a badass boy, but i tell you, this fella writes damn well (i wish i have at least half of his writing skills), he sings bloody well, and beneath that badass exterior actually lies a very polite boy. and he has an uber cool job. contact me to find out more.

With Erasure On The Bus In 1994

almost 4.30pm in the afternoon, it's raining pretty heavily outside. dark, grey, sombre, wet and gloomy - perfect weather while i am on an auto-cruise mode at work sending out e-mails, going down my tasks list for the day and changing the music playing on my laptop.

then i stumbled onto a track which threw me back to the early days of 1994: "Always" by Erasure. i recall plugging in to my headphone and discman, playing the track over and over again when i was on the bus, returning to camp every sunday night before 2230hrs during my national service trainee days at the police academy on thomson road. it was always a journey of misery having to go back to camp every sunday night in your police uniform, polished black boots, a load to carry on your back and a less-than-hirsute round head.

that was almost 14 years ago. time flies. the days of youth behind me. you can try look back for sure, but you won't catch it looking back at you.

Field Of Balls On Easter Sunday

the long good friday weekend was a total bummer as usual. vegetated at home and did another round of visit to the national museum in a totally conscious state because the last visit several weeks back was a total drunken-stupor blur.

but i did the unthinkable.

woke up so early at 7am on sunday morning for volunteer work with the same lot of under-privileged kids... all 40 of them kids.


so this is what my neighbourhood looks like under the 8am morning sun on a sunday... and the whole lot of us (along with hirman and may) went for this...


yeah i know this whole this is so totally not me... soccer?!?!?! it was a match organized by adidas, in a drive to scout for talents and to send the best two players to spain for soccer camp. but so as long as the kids are happy having a field day, i'm good.


and while the kids were in awe of the presence of our national team goalkeeper lionel lewis, i went "whoa he's GORGEOUS!!!" in my heart umpteens of time. dang... i think he's straight. he's gotta be straight. he plays soccer for kryst's sake! grin...

when the match ended, hirman and i jumped into may's cute kick-ass green mini cooper for the best claypot chicken rice on the island along race course road. and hirman had to break the claypot and expected me to suck-up to the coffee shop auntie who served us, in a bid to let ourselves off the crime he committed. bummer.

sunday evening proved to be a perfect wrap-up with alex in ikea. i bought some beddings and had the perfect dinner to induce me to sleep, ready to face monday.


nasi goreng dinner at ikea... yummm....

A Weekend Backlogged

hookay this is way long overdue but i've tonnes of pictures to post for this entry. or else porcky is gonna send me a stinker e-mail complaining how i've slacked on updating my blog. we go back to saturday, 31st march 07.

the second weekend of the spore fashion fest, that was another round of alcohol-filled afternoon. with the whole gang this time round - my flatmate colin, his significant other roy, alex and lynda. i think i took a non-stop swig from 12 noon right up till 5pm. how incorrigible. but i have, again, sam to thank for the wunderbar free flow of all things alcoholic.


project runway rejects - alex, sam, colin and roy


it was tough trying to convince colin that haagen dasz does not carry the same sedative properties of alcohol - teetotaller schmetotaller


models went through rigorous allergy tests to ensure that they weren't allergic to pollen when they strut beneath the canopy of flowers along the runway


flower girls

going for more swigs during the interval before the second show started was a major mistake for that afternoon...


everything was a blur to me when the second show started... and when it ended, i stumbled out to grab a cab and made my way to dora's place for her birthday dinner.

i arrived at dora's place early evening... or rather, i stumbled in drunk according to dora and company while they were preparing to bake some pies. to commemorate the unsightly event, they made this on one of the pies...


alphabet 'D' as my initial, and... well you can see it for youself, a champagne flute with bubbles... the girls think i need rehab. but the pie rocks!!!

refer to dora's blog entry for more details which i can barely remember:
http://cameldiaries.blogspot.com/2007/04/in-which-she-channels-mrs-dalloway-and.html

and i found this magnet-stuck on dora's fridge door...


the days when we were staying in NUS' hall of residence - seto, lichelle, felicia and dora - those were the days before wrinkles started to gain permanent residence on their faces...haw haw!

note to self: must upgrade night face cream


and the birthday girl showing off her blowing skills. i shan't publicly say how old dora is right now because it's rude to reveal a lady's age but here's a hint, there were three big candles and one small one. three and one... go figure.

and the lot that i love...


we lamented on how the gang of usual suspects, us, have shrunk tremendously over the years. lichelle has gone to barcelona, ngiap in atlanta, porcky in HK, leonard busy with his newborn and yvonne, well, i think she was nicely sloshed at the american club that night - but we take comfort in the fact that no matter where on the globe our friends are at right now, we love one another and that has not changed.

after many long conversation and lots of laughs, good food and drinks, and several packs of kick-arse durians later, we called it a night at 2am and left the birthday girl and her husband david to do the cleaning up...heh!

but i still do remember going home that night feeling all blissed out. love you all. sniff sniff...