(Now dear reader, you should take this moment to try and guess the brand of slippers.)

Finally Keropi remembered. She was thinking of Birkenstock!

Team retreat this afternoon. So we went to the Singapore Garden Festival. It was the last day but there were still quite a bit of people walking around. There were a lot of plants and flowers outside as well as inside the exhibition hall. We could smell the strong flowery scent as we came up the escalator. It was pretty but at the same time it felt a bit strange to me to see all the plants indoors, in air-conditioned rooms and carpeting. Everything feels somewhat artificial somehow.

For most of us, it was the first time we came to the garden festival. So one of colleagues liaised with the organizers and got us a free tour. Our tour guide was a friendly Malay woman. We start on the level 6 where all the competition displays were. There were 3 categories: fantasy garden, landscape garden and floral display. Each designer was randomly paired with a local supplier so that’s why a lot of the plants used were tropical plants.

The tour guide explained that each category has a best of show, then followed by gold, silver and bronze. Someone commented that there weren’t a lot of entries so it seemed almost everyone had a chance to win a prize. The tour guide said that some of the displays will be moved to Hort Park after the exhibition is over. I thought it was a pretty cool idea but I didn’t get to find out which were the lucky displays.

The floral displays were along the sides of the hall. Some were quite elaborate while others were simple and sparse. I’m sure that the designers spent a lot of time setting up the details. The tour guide informed us that some designers took the trouble to ship unique plants to Singapore to be used in the display.

This silvery display won a silver prize. The tour guide told us that the silver containers were actually wheelbarrows which were spray painted by the designer. It was supposed to be a tribute to the gardeners. A few of us looked at the display and wonder why it won a prize since it looked pretty ordinary to us.

I liked this display best among all the floral displays. It’s simple but there’s a sense of fluidity and movement. It didn’t win any prize so I guess I don’t know how to tell a good floral display from a bad one.

These were the red flowers that were in metal tubes in display in the previous photo.

This was another simple floral display which I liked. I don’t remember if it won a prize, but knowing my taste, it probably didn’t.

Yet another floral display. The interesting wall was covered in lotus leaves. Hmm, makes me think of yummy lotus rice.

This is one of the landscape gardens. It reminds me of Genting Highlands.

Sometimes it’s easy to tell which country the designers came from. I’m sure that everybody could guess that the designer for the above display came from India. The tour guide told us that the display was meant to recreate the feeling of ruins so the designer knocked off the noses of the elephants sculpture (right of photo). I wished the designer hadn’t done it as the elephants looked strange without their noses. Now they looked more like boars than elephants. I guess this is a case of a good idea in theory but not so good when put into action?

It is easy to tell which country the designer for this display came from. The tour guide told us that much effort was made in getting the craftsman to build this display like the real thing.

This is my favorite of all in the garden festival. The window frames surrounding the garden were actually made of living pear trees. The tree branches were shaped as they grew so it could take a long time, likes years, before the tree reached the desired shape. This method was called arborsculpture. The tour guide told us that a tree cost around US$10,000 and there were over 10 of them surrounding the garden. Originally there were pears growing on the trees but they were knocked off during transportation. So pears were bought from the supermarket and tied to the branches.

After we finished touring level 6, we bade goodbye to the tour guide and went down to level 4. Level 4 housed the orchid displays and gardening shops. Level 6 was pretty dim while level 4 was very bright. We were all pretty tired by then as the tour took around 2 hours. So we just quickly walk around a bit and then left.

If I wasn’t so exhausted, I would have liked to walked around more and see all the different types of orchids.

Now I know why we were all given a well done stamp on our arm when we left. It’s really tiring to walk continuously for a couple of hours without resting.

It took a while longer for me to get back my account password. Ironically, the first thing I did when I could access my account again, was to delete my story. It wasn’t well-written and when I read it again, I had to close my eyes at the parts of it. It was that bad. So I decided to do the world a favor and removed it from public viewing.

But it reminded me of the fun I had and I decided to give it a try again. I will write a story based on CSI:NY.

Mao Mao and I met for an early lunch at Wendy’s at Jurong Point. It was a small place and there were ledges and stools along the walls. It wasn’t the kind of place to stay for long; just eat and go.

Since we skipped breakfast for the early lunch, Mao Mao and I were feeling super hungry. We ordered a meal each. Mao Mao had a quarter-pounder cheeseburger while I tried the half-pounder cheeseburger.

The half-pounder had two beef patties and was big. The first thing you noticed was that the patties are square instead of round. The cheese was nicely melted and gooey. I liked the taste of the bun which was a pale yellow on the inside. The burger tasted less salty than say, a McDonald’s double cheeseburger. All in all, it was a pretty nice burger. But it not so special that I would make a special trip down to Wendy’s just to eat it.

The fries felt similar to McDonald’s fries in taste and texture. The funny thing was, it tasted much better plain than dipped in ketchup or chilli.

Mao Mao and I shared a cup of beef chilli. It was something different from the rest of the fast food outlets so we wanted to try. It turned out to be a big bowl and was so hot that I had to blow on it to cool it down lest I scald my tongue.

As far as I can tell, the chilli was made with ground beef, beans and onions. There was also some spices added. It was pretty nice but we were glad that there were two of us to share. It was too rich for one person to finish everything.

After we filled our stomachs, we took a bus to Jurong Bird Park. Her husband got Mao Mao two tickets to the bird park for her birthday. It’s been years since I went to Jurong Bird Park and I was quite amazed that the entrance looked so nice.

Two black swans and some ducks were swimming in pond before the entrance. As we walked near to take a look, they swam over to greet us. Probably thought that we had some food for them.

Visiting the bird park was pretty fun. There were some new stuff while some parts was still as I remembered it. It was a good thing it was a cloudy day. It looked like it could rain but it didn’t, and the clouds blocked out the hot sun. We walked a lot and I was feeling pretty tired after two hours.

I wonder why there were always so many flamingos. There’s a flamingo enclosure at the zoo too. Are they easy to keep? I have to say they make a pretty sight. But they stink too. Pretty but smelly.

Some of my favourite parts of the bird park were places where the birds could wander freely. It’s always fun to see a skittish nicobar pigeon suddenly running across the path in front of you. Mao Mao and I tried to remain quiet and walked slowly so the birds won’t be scared away. But they were wary of us and inched away whenever we tried to go near them.

I think the colorful parrots were probably the most tolerant of our presence because they were so greedy. Unless you were really loud, they refused to move from the feeding stations. I managed to take some pretty close up photos of them before a loud family came along and scared them all away.

This greedy parrot had bits of food stuck to its beak!

I felt sad while looking at the eagles, ostriches and toucans. They were big birds and even though they occupied the biggest cages in the bird park, there’s just not enough room in the cage for them to soar. So they ended up sitting around, looking pretty sad and bored. And who could blame them? In the wild, they would probably have a whole forest or plains for them to fly around in.

My favorite place in Jurong Bird Park is the Lory Loft. It was such a bustling place. The moment we stepped inside, we could hear the cries from the lories. They were pretty loud for such a small creature or maybe there were just many of them? The lories were quite adorable and had lots of personality.

There was a kiosk selling cups of lory food which people could buy for $3 so one could really get up close with noisy little creatures. Of course not everybody appreciated it. Mao Mao bought a cup and we couldn’t help noticing a lory that sat on the counter and stole a bit of food from every cup that was sold. Greedy but clever little thing.

Mao Mao held the cup and a little lory landed on her shoulder. It freaked her out and she just stood there, unable to move. After a while the bird moved from her shoulder to the cup and Mao Mao made me take it so no more lories would land on her.

We moved away from the crowded entrance to a less populated part. A bossy lory grab hold of the cup and pulled it close. It wouldn’t let go so I had to chase it away so other lories would get a chance to feed. It complained loudly as it left.

Two lories also landed on my arm in their eagerness to eat. A third one happily sat on my thumb. Their claws were sharp but not really painful. One of them took an experimental peck of my arm to see if it was edible.

There were less lories in the area. Mao Mao took the cup as she felt that there was no longer any danger of “a lory attacking her”. She even tried to coax a shy lory to eat. “You are so skinny. You must eat more you know,” she said to the bird.

Then we moved to the central platform. Suddenly the their cries became deafening and they were so excited that they kept flying around, some missing hitting my face by inches. Then we saw the keeper bringing a bucket of food and we knew why the bird were so excited.

The lories were messy eaters and food flew all over the place. It didn’t help that their food were semi-liquid so there were a lot of splashing. Then Mao Mao felt something wet landed on her head. I laughed at her. Later on, we decided that it could be bird poo or it could be the liquid food. We never did find out.

Next we saw some birds about the size of a pheasant. They were not pheasants but pigeons. Mao Mao exclaimed that they were such big pigeons.

Mao Mao liked the scarlet ibises because they were so red. It shared the enclosure with another less colorful species from the ibis family. This enclosure smells too, but maybe not as much as the flamingos.

I was very tired by then and had stopped to sit down several times. We made one last trip to view the man-made waterfall. Well, there’s a photo of it. I wasn’t very impressed but maybe it was because I’m too tired to care anymore.

We left the bird park after seeing the waterfall and back to Jurong Bird for dinner. Then I went to Mao Mao’s house, had a shower, changed into some clean clothes, scared her queen and played with the tom before heading home.

Early in the morning, I alighted at a bus stop opposite Flame Tree Park. Since I was still early, I decided to sit at the bus stop for a while. While I was stoning, a monkey came down from the trees and climbed onto the dustbin. It rummaged in the dustbin, looking for food, but it was too early for any treasures in the rubbish so the monkey left.

I left too as it was almost time to meet up. Mao Mao and I had volunteered ourselves to help weed the non-indigenous plants growing around MacRitchie reservoir. The meeting point was at Venus Drive carpark.

After waiting for a while, I saw small red car slowly chugging along the road leading to the carpark. “Must be Mao Mao,” I thought. And sure enough, she called me a minute later, saying she had reached the carpark.

We joined the rest of the volunteers and once everybody had arrived, we walked towards the weeding area. It was a long 15 min walk, upslope and downslope. The grass was heavy with dew and by the time we reach the destination, my shoes felt like they were filled with water.

We were given a pair of gloves each and taught to identify the plant we would be weeding. The volunteer leader and the National Parks representative called it the batman plant because it’s leaves were shaped like a bat. (At this point, Mao Mao whispered to me that the more accurate name would be the bat plant.) They explained that the plant was very invasive and would compete with the other plants and trees for nutrients. The aim was to weed them so that the trees would have a chance to grow. We later found out that the batman plant was a type of African yam.

Me, Mao Mao and Mao Mao’s friend worked together. It was pretty fun but it was not easy weeding the plant. We had to be careful not to break the vines as we need to dig out the tubers buried in the ground. The tubers are the main growth center so merely cutting the vines away is of no use. We managed to clear quite a bit of the vines but sadly, the tubers we found were all pretty small and the biggest we had was about the size of my palm. Someone in the volunteer group found a tuber that was about the size of a newborn.

After an hour of weeding, we took a break and drank some water. Some of the volunteers were resting in the shade of the trees by then. The three of us surveyed the work we did and felt pretty pleased with the results. After resting for a while, we continued with our weeding, slower this time.

Mao Mao's friend would never wear this pair of shoes again

We stopped weeding at noon. Then we carried the bags of weeded stuff to where a van was waiting. National Parks will bring the weeds back to their office for proper disposal. The walk felt longer going back even though it was the same distance. I guess it’s because we were all tired.

One day half the fishes died after they changed the water. I stayed back late that day for work matters. Since the uncles had all left, I had to roll up my sleeves and fish out 8 dead fishes from the tank. It was very sad, especially when I saw that some of the fish had grown so big already. While I was trying to get a fish out from a corner and who should walk pass but the new Deputy Director. So I was caught with my right elbow in the water and a bunch of dead fish on the table. Luckily he was on his way home so he did not chat with me for very long. The next morning, the uncles took out another 6-7 dead fish.

After waiting a few days for the tank to settle down and the fish to stop dying, the uncles bought some more fishes to replenish the population. I looked through the bags of fish, I was surprised to find a bag filled with 2 puffer fish, like those that The Voice used to keep. Memories of how The Voice’s puffers killed another fish came to my mind. I don’t think it’s a good idea to keep them in the same tank with the other fishes.

Turned out that someone bought them without knowing that they are carnivores. An hour after they were all released into the tank, Pandi found a fish with a missing tail. So we took the puffer fish out and put them in Mao Mao’s tank which had nothing but sand and moss balls. And she named them Curry Puff and Cream Puff.

But both puffers refused to eat. We tried freeze-dried worms, live worms and even live snails but they refused to eat anything. It got us very worried. I remembered The Voice’s puffer fish would just gobble up everything. There was never any problems getting them to eat. We did not know what was wrong. After a week or so, the puffer fish died. Mao Mao was traumatized and refused to keep any more fish.

My mother will be back from her holiday tomorrow so I will have to return the kitchen back to her. Since it will be a a long while before I cook again, I decided to go all out and have a good dinner. I finished up the soba and made my usual dipping sauce. Then I cooked the rest of the dishes which would accompany the soba.

First I cut the tomato into chunks and cooked it with a little soya sauce and a dash of plum vinegar. Then I added the egg to make tomato omelet. Then I cooked the marinated chicken and then finally I stir fry shiitake mushrooms and cauliflower.

I enjoyed dinner. Then afterwards it was cleaning up so the house would be neat and clean before my parents return home tomorrow.

I cooked Japanese curry rice today. I added in chicken, carrot, onion and celery. I made sure to cut the carrot and celery into tiny pieces and cook them until they are soft and all the curry flavor had gone into them. Yup, I don’t like them very much.

I also cooked soup. It’s a fridge soup cos I just used whatever ingredients I could find in the fridge. I used a chicken breast (+ bone), tomato, carrot, celery and cauliflower. I let the soup boil and then transfer it into a thermal pot where the residual heat continued to cook it for the next 2 hours or so. It’s so easy and the soup turned out pretty tasty too.