"No preservatives, No artificial colouring n flavouring, No essence"

If the cakes don't have the essence of cakes, are they cakes?

I have acute gastritis again! What's more, I'm also experiencing excruciating stomach cramps! So far, I've been to the crapper three times already, each time muttering prayers and promising stuff to God. On my third visit I had even promised to give up porn if he would just let the pain go away....

Anyway, so I went to the doctor and he prescribed me some German-made Ultracarbon Charcoal tablets for the gas. When I was ready to take them, I realized that they're real charcoal! If you look at the picture carefully you might notice the charcoal smudges on my index finger.

I was contemplating if I should take them. Surely you can trust the Germans. Right?!! But it's charcoal... from the coal mines... handled by sweaty miners with their dirty hands.... Isn't it comparable to licking a stone? eating soil?

Then I felt the gas acting up and had no choice but to pop in two tablets followed by lots of water. I didn't get to taste them. But I plan to take a bite off one tomorrow and tell you what they taste like.

UPDATE: Pretty anticlimactic... it doesn't have any taste! I even bit it a couple of times it to confirm. Paper probably has more flavor. It tasted like very clean paper.

1. I will open a private account with a stable bank not stupid enough to get affected by the credit crunch, then live off the interest.

2. I will buy real estate, small companies, and people (including 1 senator and 1 army general) off the interest.

3. I will find the laziest bum on the street and make him a millionaire by drowning him in millions of mixed coins in the 4 smallest denominations. He can only keep the money if he can tell me the exact figure.

4. I will occasionally take a cab with a disguise on and each time pay the driver 10,000 dollars, thereby creating a mythical passenger all drivers hope to take for a ride.

5. I will still take the subway regularly and at random points in time ask an old lady to give up her seat for me. If she doesn't, I'll ask the person sitting beside her to give up his seat and pay him 1,000 dollars. I will make sure my identity is known so that every time I get on the train, everybody stands up to give up their seats for me. I can increase the value till I meet this objective.

6. I will keep my job but hire someone at half the salary to do it for me. And I will still take all the credit. When I don't like a certain project, I will double what the client paid just to not do it.

7. I will regularly use the line from the movie Down to Earth, "Shut up before I crush you with my wallet!"

8. I will buy lottery tickets for all the possible realistic combinations (i.e.only up to 3 consecutive numbers out of a six-number combination) and see if I will win. When 4 consecutive numbers come out, I will know that God hates me and become a criminal mastermind.

9. Everyone who needs something from me (except my immediate family, selected relations, and close friends) must kowtow before they speak.

10. I will hire my own blogger to blog here, hehe. Okay, maybe the guy from number 6 can also do that at no extra pay.

Last weekend, while browsing through the organic soaps section in one of the local health and beauty shops here, I stumbled upon Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps. I think it was the colorful appearance of the bottles that attracted my attention.

I picked up a bottle for a closer look. Hmm... "18-in-1 Hemp Almond Pure-Castile Soap"... whoa! HEMP?!! Is that the same hemp known by other names like mary jane, hashish, grass, weed, pot, ganja, dope?!!

I mean, I know this stuff can also be used for medicinal purposes. I think I read it somewhere and also saw it on CSI:Miami where Delko bought some illegally for his cancer-stricken sister. (Oh and Horatio is marrying the sister in the next episode I think.) But it's quite surprising to find the stuff freely accessible in a liquid soap when a TV cop had to get it the hard way.

Anyway, I bought one because I thought it smelled good (or was that the drug kicking in?). When I got home, I continued reading some of the finer prints on the label and realized that this Dr. Bronner dude must have been smoking his soaps. It was quite an interesting read. Here are some of my favorite lines:

- Clouds when cold. (What?)
- If Cap Clogs, Poke It. (That sounds dirty.)
- Do Not Squeeze Bottle and Shoot Out Soap. (That sounds dirty too.)
- Absolute cleanliness is Godliness! (That doesn't sound dirty... just stupid.)
- To simplify & enjoy life more, dilute 1/2 oz... (... and smoke it?)
- Enjoy body rub to stimulate body-mind-soul-spirit. (What's the difference between soul and spirit?)
- Within 9 minutes you feel fresh and clean. (Really? 9 minutes? How did he figure that out?)

Want to torture yourself with the whole thing? Here you go (163 KB). There's an even longer and more confusing version (957 KB) on Dr. Bronner's website, where I also saw his picture... which confirmed my theory about him smoking his magic hemp soap.

So I followed the instructions and diluted the soap in hot water, dipped my towel in, and applied it on my face. I waited 9 minutes and didn't really feel any different. My face felt a little cool, but I couldn't define that as fresh since it was obviously just cold air hitting my warm face.

Oh, and I didn't find out all the 18 ways of using the soap. Maybe next time I'll try using it undiluted and see whether any magic feeling appears.

I woke up late this morning too lazy to go out and eat. When I opened my cupboard, this is the only food I had left:

Hmm... Buddha Jump Over the Wall?

Buddha Jumps Over The Wall is an expensive Chinese stew containing meats and other stuff so delicious that even Buddha would jump over the wall to steal a taste. Buddha was of course a vegetarian.

I bought this canned Buddha Jump Over The Wall (the Chinese aren't particularly good at subject-verb agreement) around 8 months ago curious to find out what it tastes like. It didn't matter to me that this is a vegetarian version as I had been addicted to some really good veggie meat at one point in my past. I have seen the dish on a couple of restaurant menus (meni?) and was unfortunately too much of a cheapskate to try one. An order of the real thing could set you back around $40. This canned one costs around $1.

As I was heating it up, I realized something. If this is a vegetarian version, shouldn't they have called it Buddha Stayed Within The Walls? Talk about irony. I was even thinking how dumb the manufacturers were to miss that.

But after tasting it, I saw the logic behind the name. Buddha sure would need to jump over the wall to escape eating this one! Yuck.

SBS Transit, the company that operates buses and trains here in Singapore, has this promotion where you can redeem stuff using bonus dollars (BD) earned from your trips. To earn bonus dollars, you should spend $1 more than the previous week on your fares as explained in the rules. All you need to do is register your ez-link card (similar to our prepaid MRT cards but can also be used to pay for bus fares, government transactions, and McDonald's) and you’re on your way.

I registered my card some time ago but hadn’t really planned on how to go about earning these so called BDs. Maybe I was just bored, or there were no hot chicks around, but yesterday on the train I suddenly came up with a solution on how to maximize my earnings. First of all, can anyone help me confirm that it is not written anywhere in the rules that there has to be a minimum amount to qualify? Can I spend $0.50 this week and $1.50 next week and still earn 1 BD for next week?

If so, then this is how it should be done. Assuming you spend $3 everyday on transportation ($1.50 to and $1.50 fro):

1. You need 2 ez-link cards.
2. Register Card A only.
3. Week 1 – Use Card A on Monday morning only. Use Card B on all other trips for the week.
4. Week 2 – Use Card A on Monday morning and afternoon. Use Card B on all other trips for the week.
5. Week 3 – Use Card A on Monday and Tuesday (morning only). Use Card B… you should have figured this out by now
6. Week 4 – You get the picture
7. And so on. Only go back to Week 1 after you use Card A for the entire week.

Bonus Dollars Earned:

1. Week 1 – 0
2. Week 2 – 1
3. Week 3 – 2
4. Week 4 – 3
5. Week 5 – 3
6. Week 6 – 3
7. Week 7 – 3
8. You will keep earning 3 BDs until you go back to Week 1.

Stuff you can redeem:

1. Manicure worth $25 – 5 BD
2. Pedicure worth $40 – 6 BD
3. 1 hour gaming + 1 jug of drink worth $25 – 5 BD
4. Squid Ink Risotto worth $14.80 – 4 BD
5. Potato Gnocchi worth $9.80 – 3BD
6. Mud Ooze worth $4.50 – 2 BD
7. 1N Deluxe Sea Facing Room worth $336 – 12 BD
8. Suite for 2 worth $800 – 20 BD (fully redeemed -_-)
9. Soya Milk worth $1.30 – 1 BD
10. Nestle Fitnesse Breakfast Cereal worth $4.67 – 2 BD

Now, which reward should I go for first?

I was in a company-wide meeting earlier. It's that time of the year when the big kahunas tell you "nice job" and "keep up the good work" and all that nonsense.

Anyway, I was standing near a long line of computers. Think internet cafe without the partition. Right smack in the middle of these computers I saw this:

At first I thought it was a printer. But where does the paper come out? Hmmm.... Is it perhaps a scanner or a photocopier? But again, where does the paper come out?!! Is it a shredder? Where will the shreds go? It doesn't have one of those compartments for the shreds.

I couldn't resist my curiosity, so I took a closer inspection. There seems to be 3 buttons. 2 of these are marked "EJECT" while the middle 1 is marked "BREAK", very interesting. Is it some sort of external shared CD-ROM? Let's say you have 2 PCs with no CD-ROMs, do you connect the 2 PCs to this device? But I checked the wires at the back and there was only 1 set of wire connecting it to the PC on the right.

I didn't dare touch the POWER button so I just took a picture of it instead. Perhaps someone out there can tell me what it is. I'm obviously too lazy to Google about it. I only have time to blog about it and label the picture.

Is it a 3-disc CD changer? A waffle maker? What the hell is it?

That was what the piece of paper I pulled out read. "Piece of cake," I thought to myself. OK, first word. I made the thumbs-up sign. She said, "Good!" Good. (I dunno why I left out "A")

Alright, second word. I brought my hand to my ear, *sounds like*, then I pointed at my shoe. "Shoe!" Nope! I rubbed my shoe. "Leather!" Good! *Sounds like* *sounds like* "Leader?" *THUMBS-UP*

Third word. Hmmm... I pointed down trying to act out the word 'this.' "Here?" Nope. *point point* "Now?" Nope! *point point* *point there* *point here* "This?" *Thumbs-up* then *right palm out* (wait).

I then pulled out 4 fingers, *one-two-three-four* trying to assign each letter of 'this' to each finger. "This 4?" *Shake head* I was holding up 4 fingers then pointing at the last 2 fingers. "Two?" Nope. Time's running out.

Change tactics. Third word. OK, 'is' is a linking verb. I made two interlocking circles with my thumbs and index fingers. "Chain?" *Keep going* *keep going* "Uhh... rubberbands?" (Back in school, the rubberband vendor displays his rubberbands in a chain.) I wonder how she knew that, we didn't go to school together. *Keep going* *keep going*

TIMES UP! *POOF* Then I woke up. I began to think, how in the hell do you act out the word 'is' in a game of charade?!! For a two-letter word, it's pretty tough! There should be a rule not to include this word in the game! If joyfulchicken had LSS, I got IS-S. It sure got me thinking the whole day.

That was actually one of my realistic dreams. I would have done the same things in real life. Well, maybe I would have gone on to the next word. But still, it made me realize I was quite intelligent in that dream. Unlike the other dreams where I take a test and not know one single answer! If only I didn't have to dream up a crappy sentence to guess...