This Kiss, this kiss
I read this post on Suanie’s blog recently and it certainly brought back a very warm memory of a similar situation I was in when I was a young and naive spring chicken that had just flown the coop.
*Rewind x number of years*
I had newly arrived on the shores of Australia, a fresh university student still very green behind the ears with my bag and baggage. My first thought when I landed was “Wow! Their airport people wear shorts!” Hehe…yes the Ozzies do love their shorts, especially the hulking grown men!
I stayed in a halls of residence which housed students from all over the world from more than 50 countries. One of my friends was a Mauritian Guy (MG), a med student, who was a really sweet guy. During my birthday, we had the customary dinner out and when MG arrived, he came up to me to wish me Happy Birthday. He then bent his head towards my cheek and out of reflex, I leapt back, almost knocking his head and leaving MG looking very bewildered as the rest of my friends roared with laughter! Coming from a conservative Asian community, kissing on both cheeks like how the French do was totally something new for me! I was never allowed to forget that incident throughout my Uni years and before I left for good after graduation, we did finally kiss each other goodbye ala French style on the cheeks!
*Fast forward back*
Now, having seen more of the world from seeing my gay tutors kissing at the tram stop to mwah-mwah air-kissing by my French-African contacts, I’m finally a lot more savvy and hopefully matured! However, that little incident plus my 3 years living in a mish-mash of culture and nationalities never fails to remind me how cultural differences can be so funny yet so wrongly misinterpreted at times!
Pinkelle Still Eats!
Hello there to all my foodie friends! To those of you who used to see my old blog peppered with food pictures and food reviews and are now wondering if I still eat, well, I still do!
I am, however, eating and cooking at a new site shared with ParisB called the Pink Parisian! So do surf over there! I’ve uploaded some of my Phuket food pictures too (finally!) so hope to see you there! The bad part of doing that is that I run out of easy, no-brainer food posts to post here! Heh…but here’s a little teaser of what you’ll find at the Pink Parisian!
Because life is like a box of biscuits, you never know what you’re going to get! 
Dearly Departed
Let’s observe a minute of silence in this blog for two heroes who have finally perished after fighting for months. They were two brave souls who went down fighting till the end!
Track down this murderer….
I’ve just spent the last one hour in the bathroom, freshly showered, scrubbing away at a really, really gross watery grave I found my final two so-called pets floating belly-up in. Gosh, it still gives me the creeps to think of the algae-infested aquarium that naturally didn’t smell too good!
He must be found…
I grew up with a black mongrel called Blackie of which I was terrified! Blackie was more of a guard dog for the house and lived in a kennel outside. All I remember of Blackie was memories of me peeping at him then fleeing the minute he barked.
Blackie got poisoned by thiefs who tried to break into our house and for a while, we were pet-less till an aunt gave us a terribly cute but naughty puppy we called Snoopy. Snoopy was also a mongrel but a terribly cute and very naughty one. Again, for some reason, I was terrified of Snoopy and those times he managed to squeeze through the wire and run into the house, I would leap screaming onto the chair till someone removed him! Snoopy got given away after that when he got too naughty and that was the end of any attempt to have pets in my childhood!
Hunt down this animal….
Many years on, I finally decided to give pets another go. Keeping animals can’t be that hard, can it? I have friends who are so in love with their pets and I figured I was probably missing out on something! I figured keeping fish shouldn’t be too difficult. I like fish and I like watching them. I just never knew how much trouble they’ll be!
J gave me 2 fighting fish to start me off and promised me they were hardy little critters. For a while, I was thrilled and watched them almost everyday and even added on 2 more, out of my own accord! After a while, neglect took over and it wasn’t too long when they were all belly-up!
Next I tried with guppies. Anyone tried keeping these hardy, drain fish before? Can’t be too hard right? Erm no…I was actually doing quite well with them. They had started to breed, started having babies (buppies, I called them) then for various reasons, they too start turning belly-up! Oops….
My last attempt was with these two heros I caught in a Japanese game which involved catching fat little goldfish with a paper net. They were quite cute little critters, wobbling around the tank with their big tummies. That was until of course the attention span has run its course and they started having to survive in an algae-infested tank with either feast (when I remember) or famine (when I forget).
That runs to ground…
I’m a bad bad girl when it comes to pets 
Am doing much better off with my adopted dog whom I sponsor! And so herewith ends my “bond” with pets of any kind! I’ll just admire them from afar, like Wuching’s goldfish, thank you very much!
Stand Away, Highly Contagious!
I was recently ill but not ill enough to get an MC and so I dragged my sorry self to the neighbourhood doctor. The kindly doctor peered at me through his Coke-bottle glasses and frowned when I explained my symptoms to him:
-
Coming into the office extra early to access my blogs, simply because the connection here is faster! I’ve recently started leaving my PC on standby mode at the end of the day simply because it takes too long to start up in the mornings!
- Bookmarking so many blogs that my Bookmarks list is way, way longer than my arm and it can take me half a day just to go through them!
- Plonking myself in front of the laptop at home after work to read more blogs and feverishly check for comments every so often! I live for them and double digit comments make my day! Heh!
- Getting stressed when I run out of fodder to blog about and start being extra attentive to things I read or see!
- Carrying my camera in my bag sometimes and take pictures of almost all my food, at various angles! Otherwise there’s always the trusty camera phone! Oh, and Picasa is now my best friend! I take a crappy photo and think “Tis ok! Picasa it like mad later!”
- Giggling away to myself in my cubicle when I read something funny. My colleagues probably think I’m a hopeless basket case!
- Meeting more people and making more friends online through their blogs than in real life! *tsk tsk* There’s definitely something wrong when someone tells you your friends/acquaintances all don’t have real names!
- Researching foodie blogs to look for somewhere to go for dinner or what to cook over the weekend!
- Trying to find time to do other stuff (like that 4-letter W word) amidst blogging and blog-hopping! Interesting where priorities can lie! *wink*
- And finally…getting my own dotcom because I was feeling bad for my blog readers when I had “Dark Side” posts!
The doctor beamed in understanding at my symptoms and pronounced Blogivitis! He gave me an MC to stay home to…erm…indulge in my Blogivitis and warned that it is highly highly contagious! He asked me to trace the source so he could warn others and it was you, Rinnah! *grin*
No point containing this virus since blogsphere seems to be overwhelmed with it already!
Emergency: Houston we need backup!
So while they’re trying to find a cure for it, I’ll do my part as a “responsible” blogger and pass it on to:
-
Zara and Zaria’s Mama - I’ve always been amazed at how this career mom juggles her two beautiful girls and blog at the same time!
- Ms Fair Face - has this virus spread to Singapore already?!
- Ah Pek - because he’s always so generous with his links!
- Precious Pea - because she updates her blog almost everyday with such mouth-watering food!
