Red & Fast

I was walking to Chris's van one afternoon and guess what I saw! Not one, but four Ferraris parked along a driveway! They were the older models but it still looks really good.

Can I have one since you have four, please?

I think Ferrari is getting common in Singapore nowadays. Lamborghini as well. A car that will catch people's attention now would probably be an Aston Martin. I used to dislike it because of the front grill. It looks like a fish. And when I see pictures of those used in races, the outline of the grill is painted which makes the car look like it has fat lips.

Talking about the front grill, I noticed quite some time ago that supercars have this common design trend of where they place their front grills. Take a look.

Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano

Noble M600

Porsche Carrera GT

If you have observed well, the front grill is placed below the headlights and very near the ground. Looks good right? There is engineering explanation for this. Since cold air sinks while hot air rises, the cold air will flow through the front grill. Cold air is denser and produces more power when combustion takes place. To many, I think the change is not a great deal to them.

And you think only exotic continental cars are following this design trend? Japanese cars have them too! Smile! :D

Mazda MX-5

If I'm going to design and engineer my own cars in the future, this trend is definitely going into my cars. Hahaha!

And I Think to Myself

Sometimes, people don't appreciate the details. Be a General.

Mmmm!

One Friday afternoon, Kathryn, Joel and I went to this meat wholesale factory somewhere in Jurong. My mother will usually go to this place with Kathryn and every time she comes back, she will have loads of stuff to stock up in the freezer. You know, there was a very strong smell of sesame oil when we came out of the place.

Q.B!? Not related to your $10 snip snip shop.

Best! Definitely.

The spread was big. There were many types of meat from various countries. They would even state the country where it came from. There were like cheese sausages, bratwursts, otah, clams and many others. What made me excited was their label on the packaging. It wrote,

Meats, Marinates & Much More!

We bought 1 Ribeye steak, 1 Angus Ribeye steak and 1 Wagyu Ribeye steak. We wanted to taste the difference between them. So off to Kat's house! She has a cast iron pan with ridges so we can create Burger King's beef patties! Awesome.

Meet Snoa Band. That's his name according to the tag.

I'm Bosch.

Cooking the beef was fun. We only seasoned it with pepper and salt. And then came the taste test. Comparing the three, the normal beef steak had the strongest beef taste. Made you feel like a REAL macho man eating that. Angus beef had this "I don't know how to describe" taste which masked the beef taste, and Wagyu beef had the same "I don't know how to describe" taste which masked the beef taste at a greater level.

To me, the difference in taste is not a big deal, but the texture and softness of the steak has to be done nicely. Tough beef is not very nice. We also made potato wedges and fresh greens. All in all, it was a great day!

*Did you know that it is not advisable to use soap to wash Cast Iron pans?

Low Carbo Diet

I'm practicing on carbonara now. Again I searched the web to source out good recipes. I wanted a recipe with little ingredients so that it's simple.

And I did find it. Turns out that in the original Roman carbonara recipe had no cream, no mushrooms and made with spaghetti. Great! I did not have cream which makes this recipe ideal for me. All it needed was, spaghetti, Parmesan cheese, pancetta and eggs. The egg mix would become like cream sauce for the dish.

I also did not have pancetta so I replaced it with bacon. I bought linguine instead. Kinda preferred that to spaghetti.

I've tried this many times. First time, my egg mix became tiny curdles of egg, the linguine was a little hard and the taste was not really there. Was disappointed but I wanted to do better. My most recent try (probably 5th or 6th), I made sure the pan was not hot so as to not cook the egg so quickly and it did. Looks the nicest compared to the previous batches. But there are things still lacking. The egg mix does not have enough taste, the noodles can be a little softer. And maybe not burnt bacon.

I will try it again until it's good to be sold outside! Hehe.

I Scrambled Everywhere for Scrambled Eggs

Long time long time.

For the past month, my office mates have been watching Hell's Kitchen. It was really interesting to see the contestants getting scolded for their mistakes. But I think as the one scolding, it's not fun at all. As an instructor, if I see my cadets commission without the right standards and values, I would feel like I have failed. Likewise for parents I'm sure.

Okay, better not divert too far. Anyway, Hell's Kitchen has inspired me to cook! So I thought of recipes to cook. I decided to go for easy recipes and came up with scrambled eggs.

The internet is good and bad. You get a lot of results, and that many state their scrambled eggs are the "perfect", or "ultimate", or "traditional", or "Mummy's" scrambled eggs. I searched for the one which required the least ingredients so that if I were to cook it at someone's house, I could produce the same results and standards. :)

And after experimenting for the very first time! I got THIS!

It was soo good! Never made eggs with such texture in my life. I believe it's what the recipe said that other recipes did not have. What's that you ask? I shall not state it here. Hehehe.

I'm going to tackle more recipes. Next one I'm going after is Carbonara. :D

Awesomeness at 10 Baht!

The first time I went Thailand as a cadet, I had this amazing dessert after lunch at K-Town. Her stall was just a push-cart.

6 months later, I went back to the same place for lunch at K-Town and saw her again after the meal! She was selling the same amazing coconut ice cream!

She would take 2 scoops into the cup, followed by 2 scoops of sticky rice (the one you eat with the mango dessert at ThaiExpress) and then 4 more scoops of coconut ice cream. Drizzle the top with a spoonfull of roasted peanuts and evaporated milk and voila!

Ahh~

Just 10 baht! Awesomeness! :D

Mission Accomplished!

Finally, I have managed to update every single song in my iPod with its respective album art!

Right now, my iPod looks like this.

Take a look at the most left cover art, that is one of Air's albums, Pocket Symphony. Just a random observation. :)

All I can say is Yay!

My New Mission

It's been more than a month! I've always been telling myself to update and update but I always don't do it.

I am currently on a mission.

My mission is: To put good quality and well done up album cover art on every song in my iPod.

It's a very tedious thing to do and people keep saying "so free ah?" to me. Why I am doing this is because my laptop has revived! I bought a 120GB IDE hard disk from my friend. Since now I have more space, why not include the album art? It gives me a sense of satisfaction when I browse through the Cover Flow filled with many pictures. It allows me to fake that all my songs were bought too! I also get to know more about the band when I look for the pictures.

Rare!

Scary looking!

Nice.

I really like the last album cover art by Audio Adrenaline. It's the nicest among all their album covers. Once I'm done with my iPod, it's on to the 9k+ songs that Mark sent me. How long do you think it is going to take!?!

Commission loh!

Yes it's a week late! Anyway, I am cadet no more! Trainee no more! One year of listening to instructions has gone and now it's my turn to give the instructions. Commissioning parade went well. A few hiccups on my part and a few around the parade. I'm very sure everyone put in their best performance. There is no point in brooding over it and should just take it as a lesson and move on.

Everyone at this point of time was 'ahm chio-ing'.


"We're proud to present to you the newly commissioned... officers!!"

The commissioning parade is third in order of precedence with National Day Parade coming in first followed by SAF Day Parade. The rehearsals started 2 weeks before the actual event. Afternoon rehearsals were the worst because the sun would shine right on top of us! School Sergeant Major was a very inspiring person. He knew how to push us and when to give us water breaks. The commissioning parade has silent drills in it. Everyone moves accordingly without any word of command but just the sound of the bass drum. My heart beats faster everytime we execute that move. The 14, 1, 2 was also very nice after looking at the video posted up on facebook.

I would do the commissioning parade again if I had the chance. Now I'm posted to Khatib camp as an instructor. I hope my cadets will learn as much as they can and be excellent artillery officers. Likewise myself, be a good example to them and instruct them well.

My First Sewing Project

I bought an iPod Classic online recently with the help of Guan You. Initially, I rejected Apple from the beginning. It was stylish but I wondered if it really had the substance. I also felt that Apple products were made of lousy quality because almost everyone who owns an Apple product has gone to the customer service centre for servicing! I decided to take a more open approach at first impressions and decided to get the iPod. I am also going to test if product failure is caused by poor handling by the owner or the product is just lousy.

The iPod came and I realised I do not have a cover for it. Melanie has an iPod sleeve made from velvet if I am not wrong and is the nicest cover I saw. I do not like the chunky plastic ones or the rubber condoms. I think a simple cloth is enough to prevent scratches. I know it does not cover the impact of drops but if you protect it so much like how the plastic ones do, your iPod becomes so big and it won't look sleek and nice.

So I wanted to get one but the Apple online store did not have it. Even if it did, it would cost a bomb. I tried a few shops in Junction 8 but to no avail. Finally I decided to sew one myself!

Focus focus!

I used leftover cloth from my mother's Ikea curtains and made
this!

Happy happy! :) Following Kathryn's footsteps! Haha!

Finale

Man it's great to be back to the hot and wet Singapore. I enjoyed the Thailand weather. It was cold at night but scorching hot from 12am to 3pm. I got a helmet tan line just working under the sun while cleaning the gun!To sum it up, the whole trip was like this.

Sleep sleep sleep.

Haha. That's obviously not true. It was entirely the opposite! We did not get much sleep and every night there was sentry duty to guard our equipment and frequent night displacements. Adding to not much sleep comes irregular sleep. Some could only sleep start sleeping at 2am, waking at 4am for an hour sentry and then sleep for another hour before the day starts. Displacing from one location to another can take an hour to go. The journey from our last deployment ground to camp took a whopping 3 hours! People like him enjoyed.


I got to execute my role in coordinating fire from the command post which was my choice of appointment since nearing the end of common phase. Felt nervous at first because when you say fire, they really fire! The key is to stay cool even when everyone is rushing you. Just do not let it bother you but of course, do not take your time. Working in the command post has its perks too. All the ration comes to you so there is always extras. Goody for me but bad for me tummy. Best is to spam the fruits or give all away to the gun sites.

The firepower coming from the 155mm Howitzer is awesome! You can feel the shockwave through your body everytime the round is shot. When we fired a higher charge, I couldn't stare at the barrel anymore! Imagine firing the highest charge, it might feel like a knockout punch who knows! After seeing such a magnificent sight, I don't want to be laughing or playing around when artillery fire comes. You don't want to mess with the King of the Battlefield!
Hot baby!

In the end, I believe everyone enjoyed themselves. We were all smiles. Many lessons learnt and more to come. It was a fantastic experience for me. Maybe I'll write little stories of what happened in between the trip when I have more time. :)

Big Feet Small Shoes

I've been thinking of getting a pair of shoes. Preferably a canvas one. First brand that came to mind was Converse. I went down to Junction 8 a couple of times to check it out and soon found a colour that I liked. So I asked the lady about sizes and she said the biggest was 11! Turned out that only grey, off-white, white had size 12. I was disappointed.

Back then, many said that being big, having big feet is good because when sale comes, the weird sizes are left. But that is so not true! Now sales cater to the common sizes. Why like that. Have a size 12 at least in your inventory leh. :( Now everytime I see a shoe that I like, I will just ask if they have size 12 and if they don't I can stop thinking about it already. Maybe if I really really want to buy the shoe I'll try to fit size 11. Ha!