Red Banana

First encounter. Sweet and not that starchy.

Saturday Indulgence

Omurice Keisuke @Bugis+ and Awesome Coffee @Bugis Junction

Rat

Few nights ago was awakened by my mum in the middle of the night as she spot a rat ran past in her almost hoarded room. We did a rough search by shifting her boxes and containers lying on the floor, yet still no sign of it. There was nothing much me and my boy could do since it was late and we did not wish to disturb our noise sensitive neighbours downstair. I sprayed quite a bit of insect repellent every nook and cranny that I could think of hoping to at least prevent it from entering me and my boy's rooms.  My mum made a rat trap and put it in the middle of her room. The rare scene was - wow, she finally willing to tidy up and shift her things around.  That's good news.

Found it yesterday.  Though I am not sure if this rat was that rat.

Just wish she ever has the brain cell to learn her mistake and not keep picking and keeping things in such untidy, messy condition.

Metal Robot Spirits : Knight Gundam ~Lacroan Hero~

Received it yesterday. Yay! Pre-ordered and waited for a few months from P-Bandai.

Something Simmering

Spot this interesting pattern formed underneath the lid, but let’s just forget what's cooking down there till dinner time.

Here's what I found out later.
Stir-fried then steamed pork fillet with black fungus 黑木耳炒猪肉片

A simple and homey dish with white rice.

Accomplishment by the weekends

Paris By The Book by Liam Callanan was finished a few days ago.


This was a story of family. A broken family searching to piece itself back together. With a bookstore in Paris added as the backdrop, I simply couldn't resist but pick it up.

A missing person, a grieving family, a curious clue: a half-finished manuscript set in Paris. Heading off in search of its author, a mother and her daughters find themselves in France, rescuing a failing bookstore and drawing closer to unexpected truths.

Some passages I like :

Joking, sarcasm, anger was a way of pretending that I was fine, that I didn't miss him. And part of me, I confess, did not. But the reader in me, the makeshift muse, word-drunk and bereaved, she suffered. And, yes, the rest of me, my fingers and mouth and hair and stomach, I missed him like air, like water, like a second skin, like a book you love, you need, but is no longer on the shelf when you go to look because it turns out it was never written.

Reading him in double-spaced, 12-point Times Roman was an entirely different experience, and not just because he fussily preferred throwback typewriter fonts: the words here seemed jittery, loose, like a photograph in a tray of developer that refuses to fix.

I didn't love my job, but loved having a job. I was proud of having a job. I was proud of supporting our family - and supporting a fellow artist. And I did believe that, that Robert and I were fellow artists.

Madame does not believe in fairy tales, and nor, for that matter, does Eleanor: it's not a question of belief, I've heard Eleanor say more than once. But here is what I believe, Stories provide a frame, a form, a mold. And a good story, one that's retold for generations, demands you pour the messy contents of your own life into it to see what happens as it hardens and sets.

I don't get interviewed about writing, but if I did, I would say that what writers need fear most is not writer's block but writer's knifes, some hammered and sharpened against that selfsame block, able to cut through anything.

Raising my kids is about raising yourself as a grown-up, and I was enough of one now to know, unlike Robert, when to leave.

---

Bought Saturday and finished reading today. A quick read indeed.

First of all, I do not want to compare it with the author's previous best-selling books decade ago - Hannibal Lecter and The Silence of the Lambs. Just read it as it is - not that bad I should say.

Cari Mora is the caretaker of an old mansion, notoriously known as previously belonging to drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. Living in Miami Beach, Cari is trying to stay under the radar and out of trouble. Years ago, she fled to the United States to escape her life as a child soldier, and has had wobbly immigration status ever since. Hans-Peter Schneider does bad deeds for even worse people, including the kidnapping and selling of young women to the highest bidder. When he spots Cari Mora, he knows that she will be his next target and when he discovers the infamous house she is responsible for (and what possibly lies underneath it), he sees an oppourtunity he can’t turn down.

Saturday Shopping

Went to Kinokuniya @Takashimaya yesterday to catch up with my manga reading. Including my boy's selection which is not shown here, we have bought 47 books in total. Pretty heavy.



The window display - a running robot - of Under Armour is damn cool.



With the loads of books, we couldn't walk far. Dinner was at Menya Musashi 麵屋武藏 located at B2 in the shopping mall. The black garlic soap base Ramen was indeed quite good.

Legends of Old Bohemia

Waited for 3 weeks and finally arrived yesterday.

Thanks to a Chinese book titled chatuxuan 插圖選 (1992) that I bought for $6.50 at a flea market decades ago, I came to know and appreciate illustrations by Czech illustrators like Adolf Hoffmeister, Mirko Hanak, Jiří Trnka, Květa Pacovská and few others, especially for picture books.

Been collecting some of their works ever since which were hard to come by. 20 years ago, most of them were bought and sold by Japanese collectors, with a few found on AbeBooks.com. Only around 10 years ago, secondhand and antiquarian bookstores in Prague started to go online. A blessing for buyers to easily find books but the prices have shot up since then. 😓

Today's Friday

#sgig #onceinabluemoon

If not rushing to a seminar, I hardly walk out and got to see such beautiful sunset cast at this hour.

#lightandshadow #tgif #haveaniceweekends


National Library





After the talk it was almost 9pm plus, the cafes at the library were closing.  Spot this place called Steat Out opposite the road so I just walked in and ordered a black pepper chicken set. Nothing fantastic but not bad either.