Little-Wonder.Net

02 October, 2008

Butt’ in the middle of nowhere.

04:52:04 | Daily Life, Random Musing | writebacks (6)

Mum and I were at Bedok Central just a night ago when we spotted a little boy peeing in a small grass patch near the parade square with the aid of his mum (she was helping to hold his pants while her little dude had his pee).

And the little dude’s butt was visible to the whole world.

Okay, I exaggerate - it was completely visible to whoever was milling around the parade square at least.

It’s nice to be young and ignorant, without a single inhibition about showing off your privates in public. But it would be nice if the mum at least decided to let her little fountain of a kid have his leak somewhere else more secluded, instead of in the middle of a wide open space in full view of everyone.

Like that field a stone’s throw away which is lined with bushes? (So that the general public can be spared the view of his ahem.)

Or the nearest toilet which is less than a three minute walk away, at Burger King.

Of course, the bare butt was the first thing that caught my eye, because it was so bliming’ obvious. So I grimaced, leaned over to my mum and remarked - “I feel like saying ‘shame, shame‘ very loudly when we walk past that kid.”

And that was the lesser of the two evils.

What I really wanted to do was to recite the entire ’shame shame’ poem at that little fellow which goes - ‘Shame, shame. Baboo shame. Kachang puteh lima shame.’

I expected my mum to rebuke me for being so mean. (She knows my animosity towards kids very well, considering how I am constantly coming up with ways and means to annihilate any kid that crosses my path, beginning with my biggest wish of flattening kids running around at Carrefour with a trolley.)

Instead, she sniggered and agreed.

“Me too,” says she.

But we didn’t, of course.

Conscience and sheer pity for the kid soon took over, and we only broke into giggles when we were safely out of sight.

Out of curiousity - did you as a kid, ever pee’d before in public?
(And please tell me you did it in a bush.)

02 September, 2008

It’s back to haunt me!

23:44:33 | Little Things, Random Musing | writebacks (4)

Indeed, it seems that technology advancements have pampered us all too much.

Take the optical mouse, for instance. Now, you can move that little cursor on your screen so freely, without the need to yank out the balls (har har har) of your mouse ever so often to get rid of the dust within.

I salute the optical mouse. It’s made my life so much easier ever since I got my first one in … 2005. Suddenly, Photoshop seemed three times easier to use, especially since I don’t have to CTRL-Z as many times when I do my illustrations and whatnot because that stupid ball within the mouse refuses to move again.

Perhaps this perfectly explains why I was practically tearing my hair out at Sakae Sushi this evening.

Some background knowledge. Sakae Sushi is a chain of restaurants located predominantly in Asia, serving sushi of all sorts at cheap prices. (At least, they claim to make sushi affordable - but with the recent price hike, I am starting to have my qualms.) The outlets provide computer screens with an attached mouse at every table from which you place your orders.

Apart from having to deal with the occasional soy sauce soaked mouse, and perhaps the mouse which has had its inner mechanisms completely whacked out by the previous occupant (most probably a kid!) spilling water all over it which I encounter ever so often - I also have to deal with the old, traditional wheel mouse.

Yes, the wheel mouse.

With the ball within.

I am guessing that they chose to stick with the wheel mouse because the mouse was in the shape of an adorable green frog which matched the restaurant chain’s logo really closely, and perhaps there was no optical mouse in a similar design.

But what’s the point of having an aesthetically pleasing wheel mouse, especially when the ball within simply REFUSES. TO. MOVE?!?

That wheel mouse was practically as useful as … a male mouse without any balls. (Err, okay. Corny, I know. I couldn’t think of anything better, considering all that is in my head now is nothing but mice, mice, mice.)

Oh, and the frog-shaped wheel mouse had two big eyes - which were actually the control buttons. And I found it extremely disconcerting to punch my fingers directly into the eyeball of a frog, real frog or not.

In a nutshell - placing one order of salmon sushi involved twenty slams of the mouse on the table (to dislodge the ball from it’s stuck position), another twenty attempts to move the mouse at least one centimetre (that’s the maximum the mouse will move before it gets jammed again) and countless frantic punching of the eyes … err, buttons.

-Facepalm.

Someone should declare the wheel mouse a lethal weapon. It drives people mad.

08 July, 2008

The tale of two capsicums

04:29:16 | Little Things, Random Musing | writebacks (5)

Was staring very intendedly at the dishes during my dinner today, and made an interesting observation.

Apparently, a lot of ingredients being used in our food are simply there to add flavour, and not for actual consumption. Take for example, the chicken dish I had this evening. Two green capsicums were sliced and boiled together with the gravy but as far as I am concerned - no one in this family eats capsicums.

So, the capsicums were thrown out together with the rest of the gravy after all the chicken was finished.

Likewise, Singaporeans like to drink Bak Kut Teh - which according to Wikipedia, consists of pork ribs in a complex broth of herbs and spices, boiled together with pork bones for hours. My grandma prepares it every now and then, and what I often notice is how everyone gobbles up all the soup, but all the meat gets left behind.

Everything’s just for the flavour, it seems.

And people are now complaining of rising food prices. Does this mean that we should start cutting back on food wastage which occurs just the sake of extracting its flavour?

Then, an interesting idea struck me.

Is there a possibility that a brand new food industry will emerge in the coming years - which involves extracting the essence and flavour from foods and selling the au naturale ‘bottled essence’ to the masses?

As for the remaining, unused parts of the food, they can be donated to impoverished countries such as Africa and whatnot.

Minimizes the wastage, doesn’t it?

One may argue that such an industry already exists - but these are mostly artificial flavours often nowhere close to the real thing. Even if there are flavourings that uses real extracts, they are often tainted with poisons such as MSG. So there seems to be no real option for the health conscious who seeks the best so far.

But ah, well. It was just a random thought. I have no intention of heading into the food industry anyway - so if you are, my idea is yours to steal. (Hehehe.)

Okay, off to sleep.

And I don’t know why am I sitting here and rambling about capsicums at 4 in the morning.