100M pens

We had a huge celebration though work yesterday since financial Q3 of this year had concluded with the manufacturing division producing over 100,000,000 inkjet cartridges for the first time ever. One quarter being 3 months means they made over 1 Million every day!
And this party must have cost a fortune (well, at least a small one). I'm not sure how much money was budgeted for the party itself but I think it was probably in the millions of dollars in total when taking into account all the lines were shut down for a day and everyone was given two half days off work - yesterday afternoon and this morning- I guess to get ready before and then to recover the next day. In total there were over 3,000 people attending.
So, I thought we had big work parties in San Diego but they're nothing like this. Besides the scale of the party itself, the other huge difference is since this was a manufacturing division party it means about half the attendees were workers on the lines or in the labs. For some reason it also happens that basically all those workers are Chinese or Malay girls and this party (and the other yearly parties the company holds) is just about the biggest deal all year for them so they all get really dressed up for the big night. A lot were completely unrecognizable even after seeing them all day in the lab with their lab coats on and hair in pony tails-and it's not just me...a lot of the local engineers say they can't recognize their test operators at the parties either...
The whole night was a really a blur of cheering competitions, management speeches, cheerleader competition (all were also employees), belly dancing, "HP Idol" competition, audience participation competitions, dancing on chairs (yes, it was recently legalized in Singapore!), and a lucky draw (raffle). Fun lah!

jalan jalan

jalan jalan is a malay term suggesting just walking around. wondering around just to take a look. I was wondering around over the weekend in a neighbor hood I almost lived in but the place was rented before I could get it. It was an old shophouse

back door to an old shophouse

traditionally the shophouses would have these types of spiral staircases linking the floors to the back courtyard

I don't think I've every seen an actual train except for the subway here but the old train yard still remains

I'm guessing this is a bar, also an old shophouse

rose tile typical of peranakan style

that's hot

Good Mexican food is hard to come by in Singapore. It's nothing like San Diego where no matter where you go you're never more than 50 feet from some sort of vendor (Roberto's, Gualberto's, Aleiberto's, Adalberto's, Gualbertos's II, El Cotixan, Juanita's, Sombrero's or Joeblowberto's). There are some things I just can't get here and one of them are the spicy carrots found at most of these places. Last Monday I made my second batch of spicy carrots- they're getting better. Okay, lah! it's not that hard but it is hard to find jalapeno peppers here so I'm trying to substitute with what I can which makes it hard to get the taste right (or the way they should taste). The first time I just used green chili's... not very spicy, more like a serrano pepper but still a different taste. It tuned out okay, not that great because I think I used way too much vinegar. For this batch, I didn't really plan out the ingredients at all and made it with just whatever I had. I found that I didn't have any onions (that weren't already rotten) so I decided to use garlic instead, like 15 cloves. I also used chili padi for the peppers which are more than 10 times hotter than jalapeno on the Scouville scale (used to quantify, pretty subjectivley, just how hot something is...mainly it's used for peppers though) but it's a completely different taste. I think I used between 20 and 30, leaving some whole and chopping most up really fine. And this time I used just under half as much vinegar. They turned out pretty good. The chili padi make it more spicy.... it's more like Thai spicy carrots.

flamenco

Saw a flamenco dance performance tonight at the Esplanade, Singapore's double durian shaped performing arts center. In style, it was a much more modern production than I'd thought it would be. I was expecting more traditional style and costumes. It was actually much better than I'd expected. At the end of the show though, I have never, ever, seen performers, of any kind, take so many bows and cheer the audience on to clap more! and more, and more!! I wasn't even surprised when after they finally left the stage, they all ran back on five seconds later.... the fake leaving then running back onstage for more applause trick, eh? I wasn't born yesterday. I had to admit it though, after working with Spaniards for a few years now at work, they really do know how to live right and seem to really enjoy life. So I just kept clapping and let them soak up the recognition. They were good, after all.

media prices

I don't understand pricing for media here. I don't think it's an issue with Singapore but rather just international media. Magazines are super expensive here... so I never buy them. For example- Something like Time magazine or the Economist should cost what, like $3.95USD newsstand price? That should be about $5.80SGD according to XE.com Conversion (Oct 15, 2007). Instead those magazines are more like $12SGD here. Twice the price! So I guess it's the shipping charges etc... If that were what the extra cost was for I could even understand but I don't think that's it. For example: The 3 books I purchased today (from the post below). I'm using XE.com Conversion for all these calculations on October 15th 2007- $1USD = $1.465SGD

Asiaddict:
Listed price on the book: $15USD. Price in SGD on the tag: $26.28. Effective exchange rate: $1.75SGD = $1USD. With correct exchange rate: $21.99SGD

Pyongyang:
Listed price on the book: $14.95USD. Price in SGD on the tag: $30.25SGD. Effective exchange rate: $2.02SGD = $1USD. Wah, not so good this one! With correct exchange rate: $21.9SGD

The Shock Doctrine:
more complicated
Listed price on the book: $12.99U.K. Price in SGD on the tag: $26.70SGD.
well $12.99U.K. is $26.5USD so that should mean $38.8SGD... but the price tag only says 26.70SGD! which is only $18.2USD.... and there was a discount of 20% off the listed SGD price. Effective exchange rate: $1.01SGD = $1USD. With correct exchange rate: $38.8SGD

So why so much variation? is it just the day they happen to convert the price from USD to SGD and print up the price tag? I doubt it (though this does happen... cannot reprint price tag in SGD each day to compensate for currency fluctuation) since currency doesn't fluctuate this much! Is it related to the publisher? or location of publication? Or content of the work? The first two books were published in Canada and the third was in England. I do understand it takes money to ship things overseas but I don't understand the differences in prices since there doesn't seem to be a methodology to it based on location. Yes, Singapore used to be a colony of the British but wasn't Canada also? Oh, never mind, maybe that was the French. I think the U.S. was...^_ ^... but I don't have any reference points for prices from U.S. published books. Oh, also foreign newspapers are also very expensive.

new books, not yet reports

I bought some books today. Two were books I though were even banned in Singapore since I hadn't been able to find them. Anywhere. For like 4 months. Today I spent some time in a very big book store here called Kinokuniya and found the elusive books. So it just turns out all the other stores I had looked at were just poorly stocked and the books wern't banned at all! My faith in Singapore is renewed!

One is called Asiaddict - a graphic novel by a man called Matz!? . You can also view the asiaddict blog here- composed by him and inspired by his book- not the other way around. Living and traveling (or wanting to) around SE Asia, I was interested in his interpretation.

The second is also a graphic novel called Pyongyang (a journey in north Korea) by Guy Delisle. I had read an excerpt of this from The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2006 - an anthology I've been ready each year since it began with the 2002 compilation. Somewhat related, I watched a documentary a few days ago called A State of Mind about two N. Korean girls training in Pyongyang for the Mass Games- the ultimate symbol of communism, emphasizing the group dynamic over individual performance. These performances are amazing... thousands of people are training every day for a chance to honor their nation by being chosen to perform in the games. The devotion these athletes have for their country is really amazing for me when considering how negatively N. Korea is portrayed in western media. The book is somewhat about the author experiencing this blind devotion from the locals while working in Pyongyang for a few months. There are a few links from the wikipedia page to videos of previous games. North Korea is currently the only country that regularly hold Mass Games. There is also another film called The Game of Their Lives I would like to see (the site linked is a little old so bear with it).

The third is called The Shock Doctrine. On the site there is also a short film you can view which pretty much summarizes the content.

german potato salad

For some reason I thought pork belly is the same thing as bacon, but I found out today it's not. Pork belly looks like bacon- Like one really thick piece of bacon, so I bought it for the german potato salad I'm making since it's oktoberfest time (actually it should be over by this time of october but they are still celebrating it here in Singapore). As soon as I sliced up all the belly and fried it up I knew there was definitely a difference between it and bacon. Bacon is made from pork belly but it doesn't taste like it at all. Bacon is smoked. Bacon is much better and while many people believe that adding bacon will make anything taste better, I think few would say the say the same for pork belly. So the hot german potato salad did not come out that well. It's a good thing I was just making a test batch today to try out some of the ingredients I had to sub in since I couldn't find all the correct ones here. Okay, actually the only thing I couldn't find were Yukon Gold potatoes so I had to use Russet.

The dressing. Wheat beer, cider vinegar, mustard, sugar, salt, pepper and pork belly fat. No bacon fat, lor. The pork belly seemed surprisingly lean when I cooked it despite all the fat that's in it. There was really no grease left over like you get when you cook bacon.

the final product

It turned out okay. I need to use bacon when I make it next week though.