transposable element

so i’ve finally done what i set out to do last week. and for the first time since i arrived in singapore, i stepped onto philippine grounds here in singapore. i’ve always known the embassy was on a posh road off orchard, heard it being mentioned by tour bus guides with a vague gesture pointing to its direction, but i never actually saw the place. i imagined it would be a cluster of those big colonial black and white bungalows that dot the area, transformed into an office compound.

how miserably wrong i was. colonial? yeah, the way an outhouse has colonial roots, maybe. our municipal hall back home would look grand compared to this! it was a bungalow alright, a mid-sized bunker of a bungalow, with rows of windows on one side opening to a porch. the roof was extended to cover the porch, where rows of plastic chairs make up the waiting area. you’d think it being an embassy, there’d be tight security, eh? forget it. anybody can waltz in there, though i can’t imagine why anyone would if they can help it.

considering the thousands of filipinos the embassy is serving here in singapore (think of the consular service fees they collect annually), one would think they could afford a better property, or at least to make the place look a bit more… dignified, i think is the right word. but then, maybe its barriotic feel suits just as well. a more realistic representation of a country down in the dumps.

i belatedly found out that the comments section of this blog has been having problems. apparently, the comments have been vanishing into thin air, leaving no trace in the moderation nor in the spam folder.

am not exactly sure what happened, but i’ve run a database repair and i think things are working fine now. strange. i hope it doesn’t have nothing to do with the fact that it’s ghost month here in singapore, haha! too many strange things happening of late. oblique Halloween invitations?

i had been planning to go to the embassy tomorrow, so i checked their office hours on their website only to find out that they are closed on fridays. arrgh.

aside from the opening hours, i also found this note to visitors:

Visitors are requested to come appropriately attired. The Embassy will not allow entry to skimpily attired and barefoot people or those wearing the following who are deemed to be inappropriately attired:

1. Shorts with cuts of more than three (3) inches above the knee;
2. Slippers;
3. Mini-skirts with cut of more than three (3) inches above the knee;
4. Exposed underwears (briefs, panties, bras, boxer shorts, kamiseta)
5. Shirts/blouses with plunging necklines;
6. Shirts/blouses that intentionally show the belly button/navel;
7. Pants/shorts with very low waistlines that reveal portions of private parts such as the buttocks;
8. Transparent shirts and pants that show undergarments.

hello? it’s an embassy, not a church. and is there a need to reiterate pa talaga in detail what ‘inappropriate attire’ means?

if, one day, i should ever need to flee and seek refuge at the embassy, i hope i’ll remember to ditch the flip flops and don proper shoes.

because my first batch were not satisfactory, i made a second batch, this time using a recipe that boasts to be a copycat of the cinnabon recipe. i was already salivating, i even used the more expensive bread flour that the recipe called for, instead of the usual all-purpose. and dang, it didn’t work. i had rolls that were as hard as stones; the dough didn’t rise.

huh? what went wrong? i had to find out so i tried it again. and failed again. maybe third time lucky? i made yet another batch last night, the third in about 24 hours, and when i brought them out of the oven at half past midnight, they went straight to the bin. dang.

now if there’s one thing i learned in my years of doing experimental research, it’s that it takes many many trials to perfect a protocol. i just had to give it another go… until i find out what’s wrong. and today, following a slightly different recipe, my efforts paid off:

yummy! an antidote to even the best diet pills. and no, i don’t think there was anything wrong with the other recipe. i think the yeast i used were just half dead.

for some reason i can’t remember, i’ve recently resolved to watch all the james bond films, so the last couple of weeks, hubby and i have been having bond marathons as soon as the kids are in bed. we’ve seen casino royale (daniel craig), octopussy (roger moore), the world is not enough (pierce brosnan) and from russia with love (sean connery). i know i’ve got a long way to go before i can say “i’ve seen them all!”, but i hope i can find dvd copies of them in the first place!

who is your favorite bond actor and which is your favorite bond movie? no spoilers, please!

last weekend we had the opportunity to see the da vinci exhibition at the science centre. yes, the science centre, not at an art museum.

the exhibition focused on da vinci’s life as a scientist and engineer, and the works of pascal cotte who made high-resolution photographs of his paintings. cotte’s studies of the mona lisa in particular, revealed the true pigments da vinci used and other details such as her eyebrows and lashes (she did have some!). da vinci’s machine inventions were amazing, considering the industrial supplies available to him at the time. his anatomical drawings looked like they were taken straight out of some medical textbook. and though i knew that he could write backwards, i didn’t realize that he wrote all his notes this way!

it was a small exhibit, wouldn’t have taken a couple of hours (especially if you do not have antsy kids with you who’d rather go to the water playground within the centre), but one which left me in awe of da vinci. he’s well known as an art maestro, but he’s more, so much more than that.

if you’ve read the da vinci code, and would like to read another fiction of such genre featuring da vinci and his work, i can recommend Painting Mona Lisa and The Secret Supper: A Novel.

so finally, the obstinate tooth was pulled out, and because the permanent tooth that was supposed to take its place was misaligned, jan is now wearing braces, also to keep the gaps between his other teeth intact until the other permanent teeth come.

on the first day (friday), he couldn’t talk properly, couldn’t even swallow, so he had to take it out during mealtimes. on the second day, his speech has improved but still needed to take it off to eat. on the third day, sunday, he was already getting used to it, with minor speech difficulties. we were considering not making him wear it in school, but that would mean that he will need to wear the darn thing for much longer than the three months estimated by the dentist that it will take for his tooth to move into its place if he wears the braces 24/7. fortunately, come monday, jan said he’s ok and will wear it while in school. i was worried that he might be laughed at in school. hubby worried that he might take it off to eat and forget it lying somewhere. but when he came back, it didn’t seem to be such a big deal.

oh well, i just hope that metal piece does it job. i swear i suffered a minor heart attack when i saw the bill. i think that piece of metal wire costs more than our entire khao lak holiday did! and it’s not yet clear whether the insurance will cover it, arrrgh! (it will probably be as difficult as claiming social security disability benefits!)

this came out of my oven yesterday:

it’s not really as gooey and soft as i wanted, but for a first try, i have to say it was darn good!

(those aren’t glass tiles; they are crystallized sugar as this came straight from the fridge. should have warmed them up before taking a shot, haha!)

it’s been a week since i rediscovered facebook, and i still don’t quite know what to make of it. i can see how it’s become the social networking of choice for many, combining friendster, chat, email, blog, photo sharing and other applications all rolled into one. i see a lot even busy with cattle supplies on their virtual farms.

however, i’m not yet so comfortable posting “what’s on my mind” just like that.

you see, one thing i realized is that my facebook connections or “friends” are people i’ve crossed paths with over the last three decades or so. there are those i’ve gotten to know just recently, and there are those who still remember who were my pals in third grade (details even i don’t remember anymore!). i know them at different levels. some are family, close friends, former colleagues, and there are a handful i have remotely worked with and have never even seen personally. and i’m not exactly sure if i could easily share my thoughts (pictures, links, etc) with A, a tech guy i absolutely have nothing in common with except that we used to work for the same blogging network, compared to B, who probably already knows every significant event in my life anyway, facebook or no facebook.

but, and this is the part i am enjoying, i am blown away how i got reconnected with so many friends and classmates from way back. people i haven’t seen in decades, and all it takes a simple “heya, how are you?” to bring back the memories buried deep deep into the recesses of my mind. it’s amazing how a few postings melt the time and geographical gap, making it feel like you never lost contact at all. it’s like a class reunion, sans the awkwardness.

facebook also made me face a character flaw: i am so bad at keeping in touch with friends. j is giving birth soon and i didn’t even know she was pregnant. v is pregnant with her second, and i haven’t heard from her since high school graduation. n is now a lawyer, and i am still confused as i know she had a bachelor’s degree in zoology. and dozens more of such revelations.

i realize that i need to make more effort to keep communication lines not just open but also active if i want to nurture friendships, considering i’ve relocated many times and likely to move residences again in the future. ahhh, maybe i’ll be a facebook fan after all.