Man of Steel

Henry Cavill as Superman in Man of Steel. Source: forbes.com 

Having watched quite a few Superman movies [ Superman (1978), Superman II (1981), Superman III (1983), Superman IV (1987), Superman Returns (2006) ], I had my reservations in watching this, since the last few were rather disappointing. (I even survived ten seasons of Smallville, by the way.)

My gut reaction to Henry Cavill donning Superman's cape was one of doubt. He just doesn't look like  Superman. Of course, Christopher Reeve was the best there could ever be, but at least Brandon Routh in Superman Returns still looked as if he fit the role well... never mind the plot, of course.

Brandon Routh in Superman Returns. Source: www.g4tv.com

Henry Cavill's costume has undergone a significant change from his predecessors. While everyone has been talking about the removal of his trademark red briefs, I think the bigger change is on the colours. Cavill's costume is now much darker, an indication of how the character and movie will turn out. Superman here is much more troubled and brooding than the previous Supermen, and being conflicted by his desire to help others and the need to keep his powers secret, he sets out on a journey to discover his true heritage.

The opening scene was perhaps a bit long, but nevertheless necessary to give the movie some backing (and perhaps to explain to people who are unfamiliar with Superman's background). We are then brought to some scenes of his childhood, where the movie explains how he got his powers of X-ray vision, super hearing, and heat vision. And of course, on how his parents have managed to instil a rock-solid sense of morality and ethics into their adopted son. Lois Lane then comes into the picture, and accidentally leads General Zod to Earth.

That's around half the movie gone. The other half revolves just around mindless action. The battles between the aliens with super strength involved punches which sent each other hurtling kilometres away and smashing through several buildings in succession, which reminded me very strongly of Dragonball. But despite taking so many hits, Superman didn't look the slightest bit injured. And one amusing observation was that although their battles took place in the sky (and everywhere else), they were always in firm sight of Lois Lane and the rest. The final scene was also coincidentally where Lois Lane could reach in just a few minutes... hmm.

I am not sure if there will be a sequel. But the charming relationship between Clark and Lois - that of a bumbling and clumsy Clark having a crush on the aggressive and confident Lois, who loves Superman while not knowing that Clark is actually Superman - is definitely impossible now, since the whole world seems to know who Superman is. And come on, his disguise is pathetic. Christopher Reeve and Brandon Routh are able to pull off the stunt of putting on a pair of big plastic spectacles and transforming into Clark Kent, but Henry Cavill in spectacles just looked like, well, Superman in spectacles.

Man of Steel was a good effort at rebooting the Superman franchise. But to me, Christopher Reeve will always be the true Superman.

Cream of leek and potato soup

Cream of leek and potato soup (serves 6 to 8)

This is not too difficult and can be prepared in advance.

Cream of leek and potato soup

Ingredients:

2 large leeks (preferably Australian), around 400g
450g baby potatoes, peeled and cut into small cubes
1.5 litres chicken stock
150ml sour cream
Salt
Black pepper
Spring onion for garnishing


Instructions:

1) Make a slit along each leek, length-wise. Rinse well, then slice thinly.
2) Pour the chicken stock into a pot, then add the potatoes in. Boil it, then let it simmer for 15 to 20 minutes.
3) Add in the leeks, season with a bit of salt and pepper, and let it simmer for another 10 to 15 minutes.
4) Let the mixture cool a bit, then blend it.
5) Heat up the mixture again. Add the cream in and stir it.
6) Serve with some spring onion and a bit of sour cream.

GRUB @ Bishan Park

GRUB opened its doors only recently, and I have heard how long the queues are during mealtimes. My gf and I visited GRUB for breakfast only because my Canopy discount card was missing (forgot who I lent it to). We reached there shortly after 9am and still managed to get a seat indoors.

Truffled egg cocotte, $7

Two soft boiled eggs, with bacon bits, spring onion, and some truffle oil. And focaccia bread for dipping. The eggs were done quite well, and the saltiness of the bacon means that no dark soy sauce is required. 

While this didn't cost much in absolute terms, when it comes to soft boiled eggs, I would still prefer our local version with dark soy sauce and pepper. And the small portion means that this is almost certainly not enough for most people. Which was why we ended up ordering another cheeseburger to share.

GRUB Breakfast Set, $15

Their "big breakfast" set, which comes with tomato chutney, garlic pork sausage (can also opt for beef), mushroom, salad, scrambled eggs, and focaccia bread. I found the scrambled eggs unsatisfactory; it was dry and not fluffy at all. In fact, I think the tomato chutney was the best in this plate.

GRUB Cheeseburger, $11

The fries impressed me more than the burger, whose beef patty was a bit tough and lacking of beef flavour. 

To sum up, I like GRUB's design and ambience more than its food. There is something about it being a lone building located amongst the greenery of Bishan Park. Average-only food, reasonable prices, but portions on the small side. They welcome dogs too, so this is another place for dog owners.

Hippopotamus @ Marina Square

I have passed by Hippopotamus several times and made a note to myself to visit it some day, and the day came when I saw it on the Palate program. Visited here for dinner on a weekday.

French onion soup, $8.90

Normal french onion soup. Nothing special, but nothing really wrong with it either.

Fried calamari, $3

This was a promotional item. At $3, it would appear to be a real steal. But don't order it. The calamari was not fresh and tasted a bit fishy and odd.

Classic ribeye, 220g, $24.90

Their menus had two different categories of steaks - the premium and the normal ones. I ordered the normal one. It is probably NZ beef, which is cheaper (and less tasty). I found the beef lacking in beef flavour. And I asked for it to be done medium rare... but it came out closer to rare.

This isn't medium rare.

Hippo Bacon Burger, $17.90

We decided to "diversify" our orders and not focus on steaks only. So we chose one of their burgers. This was so-so only too. But the sides that we selected were quite a let-down. The potato gratin was practically tasteless and we discarded more than half of it, while the ratatouille was also too bland.

After I asked for the bill, I noticed that the shop name written on the bill was "Swensen's". So they are both under the same holding company, ABR Holdings Limited! Interesting.

Tonkotsu King Four Seasons @ Bugis Village

Ramen Keisuke Tonkotsu King Four Seasons (what a mouthful!) is the newest ramen outlet opened by Keisuke Takeda, on top of the existing Tonkotsu King, Tori King, and Ramen Keisuke Dining. Each one features a unique theme, and as the name suggests, the theme of this outlet is the four seasons. Even the interior of the restaurant had been designed to fit the theme; my friend and I passed through all four seasons as we walked through. In order, it was spring, summer, autumn, and finally winter. We sat at the winter section.

Winter section

It was certainly comforting to see the usual free-flow bean sprouts and hard boiled eggs on the table! Being a big fan of bean sprouts, I never had to worry about not having enough food at any of the Keisuke outlets. Because whatever empty space in my stomach could always be filled with bean sprouts.

As I came here with only one friend, we only managed to try two seasons - autumn and summer.

Autumn ramen with egg, $14.90

Autumn ramen comes with a mixture of three different types of mushrooms - eringi, shimeiji, and shiitake - and these were stir-fried before blending into a fine paste along with some bonito. I took a sip of the soup first before mixing the paste in. It was quite thick and rich, but a little on the salty side. I actually thought it tasted like chicken broth, but the menu said the soup was tonkotsu... hmm. But I learned later that it was a mixture of chicken and pork bones.

After mixing, the resultant broth was one that was just right, as the mushrooms helped to neutralise a bit of the salty taste. This was delicious! And the soup wasn't too oily, maybe due to the presence of chicken broth in it. Compared to Menya Musashi's, I think this should be considerably less oily, also because I wrote "no oil" on my order sheet. 

The char siew was also excellent, much better than their other outlets. It was tender and juicy, and yet not too fat. I am not sure which part of the pig they used - I suspect it was the cheeks. I hope they still use this during my next visit.

Summer ramen with egg, $15.90

My friend ordered this, their Summer ramen. Although I love spicy food, I tend to avoid spicy ramen, as I think the spice spoils the natural flavour of the soup. The soup base is the same, except that they added a special powdered mixture that consists of cayenne pepper, Szechuan pepper, and ground pork. I think there was some miso too, but I wasn't too sure. It wasn't as spicy as it looks though. I still prefer the Autumn bowl over this.

Other than Autumn and Summer, they still have Spring (with basil and parmesan cheese), Winter (plain tonkotsu broth), and King (topped with ginger stir-fried pork). I wonder what I will try next?

Where's my car emblem

My mother and I had just parked our car at Serene Centre this morning when I noticed something odd about our car emblem. My first thought was, "is there a sticker over the car emblem?"

Then I took a closer look and started cursing. Some fucker had ripped it off.

We had no idea when or where the incident happened. It could be yesterday, when my younger brother parked at the Pasir Ris jetty car park meant for army personnel. Or the day before, when my mother parked at a public car park in Bishan. 

The irony is that today the Straits Times reported that "Two charged with tearing emblems from cars". It mentioned that the two were each charged with 15 counts of mischief after they allegedly removed the car emblems from a condo and hotel carpark. Their targets were BMW, Mercedes, Volkswagen, and Fiat.

Maybe it's time I install a video camera in the car. Or better still, run an electric current over the replacement emblem so that anyone touching it will get a nasty electric shock. 

Clearing emails

After neglecting to archive and arrange my office mail box for around three years, I decided that I had better do so before it gets even worse. This was also partially triggered by some additional job responsibilities I got this week, which I really need to be very organised in. So I brought my laptop back over the weekend, something which I haven't done in the past few months. 

Number of emails on my mailbox = 11,785. I spent two hours last night on it and only cleared around 1,300. And these are the straightforward ones - mostly deleted instead of archiving.

I am so screwed. 10,456 more to go.

Update as of 2nd June 2013, 1129pm:

After spending practically the whole weekend (from Friday night till Sunday night), I am finally down to 2,189. I swear that I will tidy up my emails regularly from now on.

Koh Samui (May 2013)

My first visit to Koh Samui, from 9th May to 13th May. It was triggered by my expiring Krisflyer miles, so I had redeemed the miles hurriedly for this trip in January. It turned out to be extremely worth it, because the Krisflyer miles go by mileage instead of fare price. A flight to Koh Samui can be expensive for that distance; I think Silkair charges between $500 to $800 for a return ticket... for a 1 hour 50 minutes flight to Thailand! Bangkok Airways flies there too, but the prices are not much lower.

Day 1

We reached our hotel, Code, rather uneventfully, especially since we had arranged for an airport transfer beforehand. It cost us THB800 (S$33.78) for a half-hour ride, which I felt was a bit expensive (akin to paying Singapore cab fare prices in Thailand). But considering that Code was located in a rather ulu place - around five minutes drive away from the main road, and up a very steep hill at that - the price was still reasonable. Because we learned later that cab drivers in Koh Samui would always insist on a hefty mark-up on the cab fare for just those five minutes.

Code was located at the northwest part of the island, a distance away from Chaweng, where most of the restaurants and shops are at (the east). The hotel was quite impressive. Not for being posh or luxurious, but because of its design and openness. The room was like a studio apartment - it was basically just one big room, with the living room, kitchen and bedroom all in one. Here are some pictures:

The "fully-equipped" kitchen, which was small but handy

The comfortable sofa, with the television (bottom left)

The bedroom, which could be separated by a sliding glass screen

The view from our balcony

Instead of having a fixed phone line in the room, they issued us a local mobile phone, which came with their reception and manager's numbers. I thought it was brilliant, as we could bring the phone out and use it to call back the hotel in case we need transport or something else. We were not charged on the local calls we made while in Koh Samui, by the way.

A Nokia phone which lasted us for three full days without charging. Can our smartphones do that now?

The gym was small, but suited our needs. And we had the whole gym to ourselves today too.

Some basic gym equipment

Free weights

For dinner, we took the hotel transport down to Bang Por, which was just five minutes away. We chose a restaurant which many locals seemed to frequent. The food was quite reasonably priced and tasted all right too. 

Outdoor seating by the beach

"Indoor" seats

Clockwise from top left: chilli served on coconut husks, grilled pomfret, kangkong, grilled squid

Day 2

We decided to try the breakfast at the hotel's only restaurant, Vanilla Restaurant. Topped up THB500 (S$21.11) to our room charges to include breakfast for two of us, which was quite worth it as the food was quite good. It was certainly quite relaxing to chill and take in the sun and greenery, though it became a bit warm after a while; the place was not air-conditioned and only had some standing fans.

Enjoying the scenery

European Breakfast

Poached eggs with smoked salmon

After breakfast, we went to their pool to tan. It was those kind of "infinity" pools, where the edge seems to extend to the ocean. The turn-off was that the pool was full of insects! They were probably from the night before, when the pool was well-lit and the insects just flocked in... so we had to spend some time splashing the insects over the edge to "clean" the pool.

Taken from our room balcony

Enjoying a suntan at the infinity pool

Next stop was at Chaweng for lunch. Chaweng is Koh Samui's biggest and busiest town, and is rife with hotels, restaurants, and bars. Hotel transport to Chaweng was not cheap, at THB800 (S$33.78), so we took the more affordable (and troublesome) option, which was to take the hotel transport down to the main road at THB100 (S$4.22) before flagging a common pick-up taxi at THB100 per pax. So the trip cost us only THB300 ($12.66)... but took us perhaps twice the time (and half the comfort).

From the back of the pick-up taxi

The weather was scorching. By the time we reached our destination, a restaurant called Spago, we were hot and thirsty. And the place wasn't air-conditioned, to our dismay. But fortunately, the food was pretty good.

Soft-shelled crab salad, tuna loin, pasta with asparagus and crab cream

The main courses were quite good, but the salad had way too much mustard in it. If they could reduce the amount of mustard by half or even to a third, it should be much better.

It was back to the unrelenting heat again after lunch, so we walked for a short while before seeking refuge at a Movenpick cafe for ice cream (and air-con). Stayed there for quite some time, then went for a foot + neck + shoulder massage that was ridiculously cheap at THB180 (S$7.60) each. But their massage skills and service standards were quite poor; both of us didn't really feel the "shiok" factor during the massage, and the two guys attending to us kept on talking to each other and giggling.

Dinner was at Duomo, an Italian restaurant recommended by a friend.

Ristorante Pizzeria Duomo

Squid ink pasta with salmon

We were not that hungry yet, so we just ordered a salad and a pasta to share. The pasta was definitely one of the best that I have tried so far - just the right amount of cream so that it is not too thick, pasta done just right, salmon was quite fresh, and the overall taste just blended in very nicely. This was the best meal we had while in Koh Samui.

Restaurant name: Duomo
Address: Chaweng Beach 60/33 60'34, Chaweng Beach Road

Day 3

Lunch in our room + movie on iPad

A rather simple lunch in our room - pan fried chicken thighs, smoked snowfish, canned tuna, and canned lobster bisque. We bought the chicken and snowfish from Tops Supermarket the day before, while the tuna and soup were brought from Singapore.

Dinner was at Fisherman's Village. The general manager of Code had recommended Starfish and Coffee for seafood, so we decided to give it a try. It was disappointing in many aspects: the place was full of insects and poorly ventilated, service was poor, food was only decent, and prices were higher than we thought. Highly not recommended.

Entrance of Fisherman's Village

View of Fisherman's Village from the jetty

Day 4

Our flight was at 955am, so we had breakfast at the cafe again once it opened (7am). The standards seemed to be deteriorating day by day! Our first breakfast here was excellent. On the second day, the mushrooms were sour and one out of our four poached eggs were overcooked. And today, the mushrooms were sour and all our poached eggs were overcooked! As we had to leave by 745am, there was no time to send it back to the kitchen. Pfft.

When we reached Koh Samui on the first day, we didn't get to see this part of the airport, which we did today. The airport's design was quite unique; it was a rather open and outdoor concept, and had shops lining the pavements. 

Shops lining the pavements at Koh Samui airport

For people to chill and relax

Spot the two cats in this picture!

Koh Samui turned out to be better than we thought, but it definitely does not justify a $600 to $800 plane ticket there. I would consider going again... but only when I clock enough miles on my Krisflyer card.

La Nonna @ Namly Place

Had an appointment at the west today, so we decided to try a restaurant on the Palate list that was as far as possible. Roast at Rochester was closed for a private event, and I didn't want to go to Tunglok Seafood at Jurong, so we settled for La Nonna at Namly Place.

Spinaci, $18

I thought this dish was not really well presented. The smoked duck looked dry, tough and unrelenting, for one thing. Other than that, the dish could do with more cheese, more Balsamic dressing, more tomatoes, more olives (I think we counted three tiny ones?), and can afford to have a bit less of baby spinach.

Spinach Fettucine with Clams and Mushrooms and Saffron Cream, $22

This was under their "Special Pasta" list. My first thought was... isn't spinach fettucine supposed to be green in colour? This dish was a let-down. The sweet taste of clams was noticeably missing from the sauce, and the overall taste did not blend well.

Rigatoni, $19

Fortunately we had this dish to make up for the spinach fettucine! The rigatoni pasta was served with braised oxtail ragout, which was juicy and soaked full with flavour. The ragout was also seasoned with truffle oil, but I had that they could have held back a bit on that, as it was a bit overpowering. Still, this dish was pretty good.

Tiramisu, $12

The tiramisu did not disappoint; it was rich with flavour (especially alcohol) but was not overly creamy.

After a 50% discount, the bill came to $41, which was really cheap. While there were no fantastic dishes here, I wouldn't mind coming here again to try their baked pasta or pizzas as the prices are very reasonable.

Oenotheque by Wine Universe @ Millennia Walk

Brought my mother here for lunch today, and learnt that they had totally removed their a la carte menu and replaced it with set menus only... permanently. The set menu had a choice of one to three courses, but the Palate discount only applies for three courses. It costs $44++ per pax (before discount).

Eggs Slow Cooking

I haven't had such a good starter in ages. As shown from the picture, the white puffed up ring is actually parmesan cheese, probably mixed with some egg whites to give it that fluffy texture. In the middle, bacon. Under this layer was a beautifully and perfectly poached egg, and beneath the egg, a spread of beef oxtail. This was so... darn... good. I even asked the manager if they have this for dinner, and was told that they would change their set menu every week. I hope this would still be here during my next visit!

Mackerel

Another starter. Although this was not as good as the previous starter, it was still quite impressive. A fresh piece of mackerel surrounded by pieces of zucchini, carrots, and pear. I am not sure what the green sauce is though.

Cod Fish

This required a top-up of $5. According to my mother, good-quality cod fish is more firm and has a less oily texture. If this is true, then Oenotheque's cod fish is really good. I thought the cucumber didn't go well with the cod fish at first, but after a while I got used to it. The beetroot and apple also went quite well with the fish.

Kurobuta Pork

$12 more for this dish. It came with pomelo, corn, and aubergine. This was relatively disappointing, actually. I found the natural pork taste to be a bit lacking, and the sauce (I think it's port wine sauce?) to be too overpowering. I could only dab a bit of it, or else the pork taste would be drowned in the sauce.

Riz Au Lait

This is actually rice pudding with vanilla ice cream, berries, and mango. Quite an odd combination to me, but it didn't really make an impression on me.

Although their a la carte menu has been removed, their set meals still show a considerable level of quality. My guess is that they streamlined their menu to manage their resources better - the restaurant was obviously under-staffed. We spent two full hours there, and had to wait quite a long time for our food. Our desserts took the longest time - 20 minutes. And I had to ask for the bill three times in ten minutes before I got it.

Past visit:
10th April 2013

Iron Man 3

Iron Man 3 textless poster. Source: marvel-movies.wikia.com

Iron Man 3. The worst Iron Man movie ever.

I have been a fan of Marvel since young, and out of all the heroes, Iron Man was my favourite. So I had been looking forward to all the Iron Man movies, especially the very first one.  It turned out to be fantastic. Iron Man 2 wasn't as good as the first, but the drop wasn't that drastic. Iron Man 3, I felt, was extremely disappointing. The acting was great, but the plot negated all of that.

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

The show cheapened the image of the Iron Man armours considerably. There was no focus on any particular armour now; instead, the newest version is the Mark 42 (!!!), which did not seem particularly powerful either. Each armour seems so... disposable now, as they shatter and get wrecked so easily by the bad guys, whose superpowers (bestowed by an experiment called Extremis) were too conveniently powerful without much convincing explanations. Hell, considering how powerful Iron Man was in The Avengers, the army (wait, it wasn't even an army, maybe just a platoon?) of Extremis could easily defeat Loki and his cronies with little effort, from the way they scrap the Iron Man armours with ease.

The way the (empty) armours came apart so easily upon impact also seemed illogical. So why was it that if you shove a fleshy human being in, the armour becomes so much more resilient? Why, when remote-controlled by Tony Stark or JARVIS,  did they fall apart when hit by a train (I am sure he has sustained bigger impacts before in the previous movies) or worse still, when they simply flew and knocked into something stationery? The train example can be put in another way - if they got wrecked just from a train impact, it meant that if Stark was inside, he would have died instantaneously. It doesn't make sense!

And Mandarin... wait, who? The Mandarin was supposed to be a Chinese (makes sense, no? Mandarin, Chinese?) but is a freaking ang moh here. In the original story, the Mandarin ventured into the mysterious Valley of Spirits, where he discovered the millennia-old wreckage of a starship of the Makluan extraterrestrial race, and the ten mighty rings which had powered the vessel. These rings gave him power, which he used to clash with Tony Stark many more times. It is obvious that the movie's Mandarin bore entirely zero resemblance to the original Mandarin, which makes me wonder why they even used his name in the first place.

(Full details of the Mandarin can be found at the Marvel website here.)

The Iron Patriot. Yes, it is basically War Machine with a new paint job of red, blue and white. The inconsistencies with this armour alone could make my head spin.

In chronological order:

1) The armour (with Rhodes inside) got shut down when some Extremis crony simply touches his armour and heats it up. 

2) After Rhodes was forced out of it, the Mandarin could mysteriously get someone to wear that armour and fly off to visit the US President. I thought it was not working?

3) US President captured. They brilliantly chose to "imprison" him inside the armour. So suddenly, the armour could not work again. Yes, maybe they did that because they knew he had no idea how to use the armour. But if you were the terrorists, would you even gamble on that by putting your hostage in such a powerful weapon? What if he experimented and blew you off with the armour's repulsors? 

4) US President gets strung high up in the air while wearing the armour, while the Mandarin prepares to execute him publicly. Rhodes managed to save him, and tells him "I need that armour!" Which means that the armour is still functional?

To my surprise (and disgust), rottentomatoes.com gave it a rating of 93/100 as of today, based on an aggregation of 54 reviews. Am I missing something here?

The post-credits hint that there will still be an Iron Man 4. Please don't let this deteriorate any further. There isn't much room for it to go further downhill.

Creating time

I have always found myself to be short of time. But recently, I learnt one good way of "creating" time - and that is to sleep early.

When I sleep early, say, by 11pm, I usually wake up early to do stuff. Important stuff, stuff that really matter. For example, to hit the gym when it is practically empty, or to go to office earlier to clear some work. Early mornings are usually more productive because there are less distractions - no one to walk over to your desk and demand that you solve their problems, no one to call you to ask for help, and so on. And because of this, you clear more work, go home earlier, and have more free time.

I suppose most people should be aware of the points above. But one thing that many people miss out is that by sleeping early, you cut your nights short. And what do people usually spend their nights doing? I am generalising here, but chances are that they are less important stuff like surfing Facebook, watching television, or simply just slacking around and not doing anything. At least for me, it is. 

So recently, I have been making a conscious effort to sleep early and wake up early, either to go to the gym or just to get a headstart in office. And I find that my productivity has improved tremendously.

Roast beef

Roast beef (serves 7 to 8)

Forgot to take a picture of the beef after it was roasted, but it turned out nicely medium rare. Will update this spot when I roast beef again.

Ingredients:

2kg of beef tenderloin
Salt
Black pepper

Instructions:

1) Season the beef with salt and pepper (or other beef seasonings, there are a lot of them out there) and let it stay in the fridge for around 2 to 3 hours.
2) Remove the beef from the fridge 30 minutes before roasting.
3) Preheat the oven to 240 degrees for 10 minutes, then put the beef in.
4) After 10 minutes, reduce the temperature to 160 degrees.
5) After another 20 minutes, turn the beef.
6) Remove the beef after another 25 minutes, cover it loosely with aluminium foil, and let it rest for around 20 minutes.
7) Cut and serve.

Update as of 31st August 2013:

Tried a different method of roasting this time, which involves a significantly lower temperature but a much longer cooking time. The beef turned out wonderfully medium rare, and despite its uneven shape, it was still uniformly medium rare.

The beef tenderloin this time was only 1.3kg, and the instructions (continue from point 2 above) are:

3) Preheat the oven to 100 degrees for 10 minutes, then put the beef in.
4) Leave the beef inside for 2 hours.
5) Turn up the temperature to 220 degrees and blast the oven fan for around 5 minutes.
6) Remove the beef, cover it loosely with aluminium foil, and let it rest for around 20 minutes.
7) Cut and serve.

No regrets

This past week, unsurprisingly, Garfield has been on my mind all the time. Today is the 7th day since he has left, and we are still reeling from the shock and emptiness in our hearts.

Thinking back, I was so glad that during his younger days, I brought him to so many places. Canopy at Bishan Park, the McDonald's at Kovan, Xin Wang HK Cafe outside Heartland Mall, Doggiestyle Cafe at Nex, K9 Kafe for several birthday celebrations, Casa Verde at Botanic Gardens... the list goes on and on. He was always so happy whenever we bring him out, and he would have this gleeful look on his face when we tell him "let's go gai gai!" To make things easier, I even bought a pram for him (to protect him from accusing eyes aimed at him because of all the damn 'No Pets Allowed' signs). And later, I even got a small battery-operated fan (with soft blades) to clip on the roof of the pram to make sure he stays cool. It was only when he started ageing and was too tired to go out that we stopped bringing him out. 

And if I forget to say goodnight to him, along with a pat on his head and some slight tugging of his whiskers, I would always - without fail - get up from bed to do all that before going back to bed. No matter how tired I was. I would always think, Garfield is already so old; I won't be able to say goodnight to him forever. So I must grab every opportunity to do so when he is still around. And that I did.

As he needed help in peeing/pooing and also during meals, someone had to stay at home on weekends if everyone else was going out. Most of the time it was me who volunteered. And I have never ever complained about it, or even felt that Garfield was a hassle.

Taking this one more step further, whenever my parents were going overseas, either me or my brother would need to take leave to stay at home and take care of him. Again, most of the time I was the one who took the most leave, because my working schedule was more flexible than my brother's. And similarly, I have never felt that it was a burden. "Taking leave to babysit the dog" was something that most of my colleagues were already familiar with, in fact.

Garfield has led a good and comfortable life, surrounded by all of us who love him. And while I am sad and heartbroken over his departure, I have no regrets.