Tuesday, July 22, 2008

お久しぶりだ

Yes I do realise I haven't blogged in nearly two months. I have no idea where all the time goes to, but between weekend rounds and weekend calls and weekends spent out enjoying myself, I hardly get any weekend time to blog. Weekdays are even worse.

But I'm not all that busy, really. I'm posted to Neuro now and life is pretty good, especially with helpful student interns around :). Life is a steady state of work with no real ups or downs, thus I can also say that things are pretty boring and not much worth blogging. You'd think that with the little amount of work I have to do in NEM I should be slacking around all the time like in DIM, but I'm somehow almost always occupied with something; it's probably the high patient turnover and need to get investigations done fast with results ready to show by the end of the day, that keeps me pre-discharging and checking on changes all the time. Quite unlike DIM where things progress a lot more slowly.

Would also love to do a little food blogging but I'm too darn lazy to do so, heh. Somehow I've been having a lot of Japanese desserts lately, albeit not intentionally. A few weeks ago I met up with some JC classmates at Central, having ramen at Marutama (starting to get boring, but the ramen and egg is still superb) and then dessert at Azabu Sabo, where I completely enjoyed my Kakigori with brown sugar syrup, golden powder and red bean paste, topped with a scoop of ice-cream. Very yummy.

The week after that my family went to MOF Izakaya at Marina Square to celebrate my brother's birthday. The food was of slightly above-average quality, nothing to rave about, but at their prices it's actually a pretty good deal. My brother had the mango kakigori and happily kept asking for more mango sauce (apparently it's free flow); I had a taste and it's pretty addictive. My mom and I shared the imo dessert (Japanese sweet potato deep fried to a crisp exterior, topped with ice-cream with red beans by the side) - very very nice.

And just on Sunday I met up with WM and R for The Dark Knight and had lunch at Shokudo at Cineleisure. The pasta (I had salmon and avocado with cream sauce) was not too bad, and for dessert I got a Goma Shiratama Zenzai - red bean paste with Japanese glutinous rice balls and black sesame ice-cream. Notice the common factor of red beans in all 3 desserts - I have a crippling weakness for Japanese red beans and I probably could eat an entire tub of it alone if someone gave me a tub. Heh.


Talking about The Dark Knight, I must say it's a superb movie, the best I've watched this year (then again I don't watch many movies but you know what I mean). Much has been said about Heath Ledger's terrifying performance as The Joker; I personally wondered how scary a psychotic clown-faced guy could be, and was genuinely chilled by his sheer madness and penchant for cruelty. The Two-Face storyline I felt was a bit too squeezed into the movie, and [spoiler alert!!!] the fact that they killed him off at the end of the movie was also pretty abrupt because they didn't allow for more character development or the possibility of him returning in a future instalment, unless of course they explain it off by saying they were just holding a funeral so people remembered him for the wonderful bastion of hope and good that he was, but he was really being locked up somewhere. That would be pushing things a bit. All in all an excellent movie, if a bit violent and disturbing; a lot of thought-provoking issues are also woven into the storyline, as already described in several film reviews, so it's not just your simple old action-packed-no-brains summer blockbuster. Go watch if you haven't.


Don't think I've yet mentioned it here, but I succumbed to some weakness at last month's IT fair and bought an ASUS Eee PC 900 - one of those small laptops (also known as Ultra Mobile PCs or UMPCs) at 398 dollars. I thought it's a real good deal for a 4GB HDD space and the 4GB hard drive that was given free with it. I went to the fair aiming for a portable video player (since a lot of my leisure time now revolves around anime and Jap dramas) but I figured the laptop has a bigger screen, can be used for a lot of other things like surfing the Net, and is just a little less portable. So far it's been great as a mobile video player though I haven't really been using it much because of work. I sometimes wonder if I can bring it to work and use in the hospital but I hardly have the time to sit around anyway. Will post some pictures of my new baby when I find the time (which may be never :S).


Lastly, for all those who know, thanks for your concern and support so far; things are settling down and getting better. For those who don't know and somehow find out but not from me, I'm sorry I didn't tell you, but I don't want too many people to worry when there's really nothing much to be worried about. I didn't even want to tell anyone at work but somehow the news got around. Oh wells. I'm just hoping for the best and letting time help with the recovery.


Back to work, then. Hope to be posting again soon, heh.

Avaris / 7/22/2008 08:55:00 PM

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