I had moved!
dear fren i had moved to a new domain. Please visit me by clicking here. See you there!!
dear fren i had moved to a new domain. Please visit me by clicking here. See you there!!
The week is coming to an end. This week, we in the land of Singa should end it with a smile. A smile that is Unikly Singapore, in tandem with the latest govt buzz to "Welcome the world with four million smiles". This latest govt campaign is created to welcome the International Monetary Fund and World Bank Group meeting in Singapore in the coming September. Singapore is a 3M country, not to be confused with 3M the "sticker tape" company. Singapore 3M is ahemm...mo dei (no land), mo yau (no oil) & mo yan (no human resource) and i take my hat off to the govt for their creativity in coming out with this latest "product". We are effectively selling "smiles" and for the chinese you know what that means. "Selling smiles" is synonym with the products that bar hostesses hawk in karaoke lounges. So, one up for the marketing of Singapore Inc.! The IMF & World Bank come and go... but deep within, we do have reasons to smile. Those on my short list are.... Singapore Zoo spent $250,000 to rehab "Chawang" the elephant which gored its trainer last year. SZ could have just shipped Chawang to another zoo. According to the zoo, Chawang is very rare as its tusked are crossed. Glad to hear our zoo residents are treated like stakeholders instead of just mere exhibits! Hougang & Potong Pasir residents can rejoice as they, die2 will get their lift upgrading come 2015, as promised by the government. In the meantime, they must gwai gwai queue behind other PAP wards. Without the promise of upgrading, the govt need to change the "smile" campaign tagline to "4 millions smiles excluding those in Hougang and Potong Pasir". Hahahaha...can still watch some matches free...courtesy of RTM1 in Channel 39. As the commentaries are in Malay, can brush up my rusty Bahasa Melayu too. Kill 2 birds with one bola!! In my dreams i smile a lot...as i always (day)dream i am like the towkay above, closing deals in the comfort of my limo with a handphone!!
Last week the plague hit my fish tank. Before i start yakking about what had happened, allow me to introduce my watery friends... cardinal tetras, a happy family of 50 red nose rummy tetra, about 13 of them black tetras, 9 of them
and a couple of congo, bottom-feeding catfish and my pet Harlen, the up-side down catfish. In Singapore, we like to do upgrade: handphone, homes, even religion as Rev Kong Hee of City Harvest would have told u... My fish tank was a plain vanilla type with a few stones and a sand base. Last weekend i decided to do an upgrade for my fish tank. I added some plants, prawns, air stones and more sand to increase the substrate base. I constructed a garden with the plants and stones for my fish when incident struck.
My cardinals started to go kaput on Monday. I changed the water, added in some Chinese tea, substitute frozen worms with dry pellet (sinking type), isolated the sick fish and say a l'il prayer before the dying finally stop on Thursday. About 40 cardinals and 2 rummies perished...just like that. The cardinals and rummies were given by my friend KK and he only visited the Sunday before. Very paiseh leh... as he commented that i had done well with his fish and I had to text him on Thursday to break the bad news to him...
I managed to identify the disease through searching the internet . My finding shocked me! My fish had died of a terrible disease very much like what happened in the movie Alien when the parasite alien popped up from the gut of its victim. The fish died from parasites that burrowed through its intestine and attached itself to the fish muscle tissue. The sick fish body would turn whitish and became crooked before finally dropping dead.
The following is the abstract from the internet... The disease cycle begins when parasitic spores enter the fish after it consumes infected material, such as the bodies of dead fish, or live food such as tubifex, which may serve as intermediate hosts. Once in the intestinal tract, the newly hatched embryos burrow through the intestinal wall and produce cysts within the muscle tissue. Muscles bearing the cysts begin to die, and the necrotic tissue becomes pale, eventually turning white in color. I am glad i manage to bring the situation under control. But the crisis is not over yet as i have not identified the cause of the infection. I am sharing this with anyone who keep pets and probably have sad experiences on the demise of their pets in the past.... and hopefully bring a closure to this sad episode. You can pay your pak kum to my fish who had gone to the big tank in the sky by feeding my electronic pet at the bottom of this blog.
Cocka "Z" tag challenge, here i come!!! 1. Zeppelin...this is not. But if you have the urge to ride some hot air (beside the one from your boss) you can try the hot air balloon ride near to the open field next to the 7th-storey hotel ...psst FF, are you listening? 2. ZZZZZZZZ....my state of mind when the actions are happening LIVE in Germany. Niamah, Starhub (the cable co witht he sole right) is charging $15.50 for the privelege to watch the World Cup 2006. Even free also don't want lah...my beauty sleep is more important. Anyway, not that crazy over soccer! 3. Zircons are not only the oldest minerals on earth, they also show another interesting feature. Their oxygen isotopic composition has been interpreted to indicate that more than 4.4 billion years ago there was already water on the surface of the Earth. Who says blogging doesnt increase your general knowledge? 4. ZARA...a fashion store in town where i spent a lot of time in following my wife on her shopping trips. This is the only place where my wife will let me ogle gals, so i would leave her alone and not pester her to leave... 5. ZERO...wish everyone will have more of these in their bank account by end of the year! 4D idea for the weekend...4972! Don't forget my 10% commission if the numbers come out! 6. Zara...a potential applicant to the Malaysia Book of Record (MBR). She will be in the good company of Amber Chia & Datuk Michelle Yeoh. Read about her exploits in Zara's Mama & MBR in Teh-C ! For those with sons, if wont hurt to be friendly by dropping-by Zara's Mama blog. But my guess is, it is aready too late cos ZMM has tons of followers!! 7. Zombie...reminds me of Michael Jackson's Thriller music video. I missed his BAD's days! 8. Zakat..is the tithe the Muslims pay to the mosque... not to be confused with Zakar, which means penis in malay. So, be careful how you address the Encik Zakaria in tis world! 10. Zhonghua...also Tionghua or Choongwah in dialect...which loosely interpreted as "Chinese in the Centre". This is a hangover phrase from the olden Chinese empire which see China as the centre of the universe...and others as uncultured barbarians. BTW Zhonghua is also a brand of Chinese cigarettes that retail at RMB 50 (SGD $10, RM 23) a pack. It is the Davidoff equivalent in China. Offering Zhonghua ciggies to Chinese is a good ice-breaker...But caution hor! Offering ciggies in Singapore is an offence!