19 darlings

I've always wanted to post this, but coz it took some time to sort out which pic was of which cow. Hence the overdue post on the milking cows...

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0508
Brown and white. Non-milking cow. She's the blind cow. She stays indoors all the time coz apparently she gets bullied by the other cows when she's out with them. And besides she can't see where she's going, so better to keep her inside. Back when i was washing the cow house, i did it when the cows were out in the field and she was stuck inside, getting drenched from the water spraying all over. She was pretty irritated and kept kicking and moo-ing initially, but gave up soon after and just stood there and stared at me looking really pissed off.

0495
Brown and white. the famous favourite cow which i saved from the gallows. She's not that skilled at pooping into the cellar below and is therefore relatively dirty at the legs and the udder as well. But she almost never kicks when being cleaned. In fact, she'd stand to the side when i go by to clean her and move back after i leave.

0516
Brown and white. Relatively clean. No complains.

0490
Black and white. Stands out for the white patch on her left cheek. Stopped milking about a month ago coz she's expecting a calf... anytime now!

0515
Brown and white. This one alwayssssss poops onto the mat and then sits on her own poop. Inge says she's "special". She's always dirty and does not cooperate that readily to let me clean her udder. I can be cleaning her half way and she'd suddenly kneel down and eat her cow feed. Coz her back teats are always hiding behind her hind legs. And she wouldn't budge. So i've just gotta wait for that golden window of opportunity to come when she shifts her legs slightly exposing the teats for me to clean.

0460
Brown and white. She's relatively clean. No major problems. Though she did kick me before, once.

0512
Brown and white. Relatively clean, no problems.

0527
Brown and white. Latest mother cow. Youngest of the lot. She has a unique darker shade of brown from the rest and a pretty shiny coat of hair. Must be the post-pregnancy glow.

0475
Brown and white. Cow which wears a harness over her udder. She has a giant udder which cannot be cleaned from just a single side. Gotta go on her left and right to clean the teats on both sides.

0483

brown and white. This is the cleanest of the lot. And it's not by chance poop in the right place and therefore stay clean. She's clean allllllll the time. Brownie pointsss!

0524
Brown and white. Non milking cow. She used to have a funky armani hairdo on the top of her head, but it's kinda tamed now. Always very curious to turn round and nudge me when i'm cleaning her neighbour.

0494
Brown and white. Only milked from 2 back teats. She's the smartest of the lot. Usually cows kick on the side which hurts. Meaning if i'm on her right and am rough with the left teat, the left hind leg will kick... hence sparing me another blue-black on the arm. 0494 is the only cow who's gotten it. I approach her from her left, regardless of whether i'm rough with her right or left teat, she always kicks on the left. Because of that, i've been kicked several times by her already.

0120
Black and white cow. The star milking cow. According to Unni, she gives very good milk and alot too. Extra brownie points!!

0482
Brown and white. Stopped milking about a month and a half ago coz she's expecting a calf anytime now! She's got scary teats which have bumps growing on em. Back when she was still milking, I didn't dare touch her teats. One of the 2 cows which had to have fat applied to her teats twice a day to keep em soft.

0528
Brown and white. Newest kid on the block to join the big girls. She's expecting a calf in winter hence the promotion to join the milking cows. Occupies stall formerly owned by Big Black. She's the young cow with white legs which makes her look stunted and as though she's floating in the air. When she was first brought to her stall from the field, she stood for a whole day in her stall. Must have not been used to the small space.

0480
Brown and white. Relatively clean cow. Has distincitve long skinny teats. Towards the end, she started to get into the habbit of kicking me when i cleaned her.

0518
Brown and white. The considerate one. She usually steps backwards when i come by to clean her teats, so that i can have more space. Extra brownies points!!!

0521
Brown and white. I always save her for last to be cleaned. Coz one of her teats is always bleeding. And i've got to clean the dried up blood from her teat, which of course results in her being irritated with me and kick kick kick. Lucky the bloody teat is not on the side which i clean her from. So she can kick all she wants.

0076
Brown and white. Cow nearest the door out to the fields. She's always the first one to be unbuckled, coz she's the 'leader' and she'd turn and head for the door and all the rest will follow. But she has the tendency to stand and stone after she's been unbuckled. 10s later, then she slowly turns and makes her way out. Some diva or what.

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Now you know... faces of cows don't all look the same. Every cow also has a unique tuff of hair at the top, some straight, some short, some curly, some standing, some messy...

Fly by 20s

I hadn't realised I was going to turn 24 till Chinese New Year when i saw that this was going to be the year of the dog...

When you get to your 20s, birthdays are no longer fun big-party events which you start counting down to a month before. It's just another number, another ordinary day. Until Saturday, I thought the 30th was actually on Tuesday... I was that aloof about it lah.


Oh well have a great year ahead... Happy Birthday to me.

It's true

(situation 1 day before departure... pic has 4 out of the 5 shoes i bought while in Norway)

Your feet shrink in colder climates and expand in a furnace-like place like sg.

Lucky the shoes i bought from Norway were kinda loose fitting. Now they fit just right...Heng ahhhh.

So if you are buying shoes from someplace very much cooler... you know what to do...

London

The flight from Oslo to London took about 2 hours.

Apparently the whole of Europe was having sucky autumn weather...

Once there, i had to scan my bag again to get into the transit area. There were lots of people getting their bags checked and the woman kept shouting "if you have any bottles, take them out now!". Some Norwegian woman kenna scolded for smuggling cosmetics in her jeans pocket while walking through the dectector-thing. (Cosmetics and a whole long list of things were not allowed, such as liquids). And so there was a big drama rama scene going on with her, her husband and a few of the security officiers.

Anyway my backpack made it through but not the smaller handbag that i was carrying. Then i remembered i was carrying the Rice lunch i had brought with me from Norway inside. Coz yoghurts was also on the list of no-no items. Well rice lunch is similar to that. Anyway the man who checked my bag was different from the person who sat there and watched the x-rays. The man quickly rummaged thorugh my bag and returned it to me. Rice lunch made it through! Must have been coz it was placed upside down! Blueberry flavour somemore leh!!


I only had 5 pounds with me. It was all bcc had in her house. And i didn't bother to change any money since i was only there for a few hours.


After a little walking around and some research on the possible things i could spend my 5 precious pounds on. I bought a magazine, a drink and a Flake. Flake! My favourite Cadbury choc!!

Also got 2 postcards. Not the one below... but coz it was kinda funny, i had to take a pic of it.


4.5 hours of waiting, it was pretty much walking and sitting around. And going to the toilet...

'overdue if red'

the toilet auntie must be pretty stressed

walk somemore

sit somemore

walk somemore

sit somemore

London was the first place i had seen alot more Asians than i was usually used to in Norway. Coz there aren't many Asians in Svolvaer, it was definately a different feeling to just be part of the crowd again... A Singaporean lady sat beside me at the waiting area. She spoke on her handphone and it was the first time i had heard a Singaporean (other than bcc and myself) speaking in 3 months. Wha i was so excited i tell you. I wanted to go 'ey talk somemore leh!!' Some crazy loon i am man...

9.30pm. 10 hours down, 12 more to go...

Miss Miss Miss Miss

I'm starting to watch more animal programmes on the National Geographic and Animal Planet channels. It's crazy considering that i once used to hateeeeeeeeeee watching animal programmes.

Major hang overrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...........

It's been exactly a week since i've got back...Wonder how the baby animals are doing.... the rabbits should be hopping around now i guess.



And of course i miss Mitzy and Graatas. Mitzy loves to sleep in funny positions. Damn relaxed or what. And the pic of Graatas, it was when he was locked out of the kitchen and desperate to get into the house.



There are 2 kittens that hang around at the park connector behind. Both are spotted. One's white and grey and the other's white and light brown (kinda like teh-si that kind of brown). Grey and brown... the same as Graatas and Mitzy! They've got these special long bushy tails. They were the first cats i saw since coming back, and i had the natural reaction to go pick them up like how i always pick Mitzy and Graatas up when i see them.

But of course the kitties ran away...

Last but not least.... how can i not forget my 0495...

A little tactfulness goes a long way dear

Years back when i was having a complexion problem, someone came up to me and said "Aiyoh, what happened to your face." A couple of months later, i started seeing my bourgeois dermatologist, i didn't have a single pimple for 9 months. And her, her complexion just went downhill.

People should be old enough to know that issues on women and weight go together like oil and water. Say already. Don't go around commenting about the weight i've put on after staying away for 3 months. It's not as if i don't know or it's not obvious enough.

It's tactless, it's not nice and it's just plain rude.

Besides, the concept of "retribution" isn't just something people make up to scare others...

It actually does happen.

Fishy ah-sicks

After much psyching up, i decided to step on the weighing machine. I knew i've put on some weight. But when you gotta face the truth, you better face it smack in the face.

I've put on a whopping *kg. It's too embarassing to say. Anyway, i've got to lose it, or at least some of it by 3rd dec. Cos it just doesn't seem logical to be lugging all that extra fat around for 21km.

So today i got my ass moving and went for a run. Took my Ah-sicks out and true to it's "Most adventerous pair of ah-sicks in singapore" it smelt a little of fish. Ewwwwww. All thanks to this...





That is the famous fish drying racks that are all over Lofoten. At different times of the year, there'd be different kinds of fish up there drying. Bcc and i went down there to take a look coz i wanted to take some pics. And when we were standing under the racks, we realised that it was raining some bloody fish juice. Ewwwwwwwww! Thank goodness we had an umbrella coz it was kinda rainy that day.

In the end, my shoes have ended up smelling a bit fishy now. Talk about the most adventurous pair of ah-sicks in singapore.

Anyhow back to my plan to shed some excess deadweight. The haze's not helping, coz i can't stand the smell of it. It's not just the burning kinda smell but some funky smell which smells like a cross between a dead rat and burnt plastic.

Bleh.

I thought mm would make a fuss when she saw me all geared up to go out. Thank goodness she didn't. Wait till she finds out i'm hitting the waters again this weekend!

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By the way if you keep seeing me wearing the same old clothes. It's only coz i've got nothing else that'd fit me comfortably. So don't be rude.

First Singaporean meal

Came back and met Karen and pw for dinner in the evening. Damn hardcore or what man?!

Anyway, first meal back had to be Chinese food of course.



That's cereal prawns, baby gai lan, hotplate toufu and fried you tiaos... and for dessert, mango ice and pomelo..

Yummy yummy! and today i had ban mian and was commenting to pw how fantastic it tasted... she was going "erm, it's ok only lah..."

View with caution: Rated PG

Bcc's sent me a pic of Esmeralda improved.


That was taken after bcc had returned home from sending me off at the airport.

Her hat's gone, head melted into her body, one arm's fallen off and the other's fused into her body.

Now she looks worse than Poor Esmeralda

One broken down plane and a really irritating American ah pek

I left for the airport Tuesday morning. The journey home was to take me 24 hours, 4 flights, 3 countries and a whole lot of waiting in between.

It's true when people say that when everything goes too smoothly, something is bound to happen. The first 3 flights went perfectly. There were no delays, baggages arrived on time, check-ins were fast. Till i got to London.

The last leg of the journey is from London to Singapore. 12 hours in a cramped place with hundreds of strangers. The minute i stepped onto the plane, it was really really warm. I thought maybe they had the heater on or something. The captain later announces that the tail engine, which supplies the air conditioning is down so there's no air conditioning for the time being and it'd only be on when we are air bourne.

More waiting later, he tells us that the engine is "unservicable". A while later, he says that the gound engineers are bringing in a "standby engine". Then shortly before we were about to take off, he says that the video system's gone wonky and that the crew were going to perform the safety demonstration manually. But somehow it manages to reboot quickly, so we were able to watch it on the personal screens.

The whole waiting process in the plane took a full hour. That's 60 minutes without air conditioning in a small space filled with hundreds of heat-emitting bodies. A poor old man sitting in front of me was getting sick from the heat, coz the steward was bringing him ice cold towels to put on his neck. Some other American ah pek gets irritated and gets out of his seat to go over to an air stewardess and says "it'd be nice if someone would tell us what's going on... blah blah". A while later he calls an air steward over to make the same complaint. Just what we need... Unconstructive blabber.

We finally took off. When the plane was slowly making its climb into the air, a part of the ceiling in the row in front of me where the lights and oxygen masks are falls out and hangs dangerously above the poor old man who was sick earlier. Someone in the row attempts to push it back up. But it doesn't help. An air steward comes over when the seat belt sign goes off and snaps it back into position... but as you can see from the left side, it's still not completely in.

The irritating American ah pek continues to be irritating and terrorizes the poor English uncle who wore Snoopy socks sitting behind him. A couple of times he turns around and glares at the poor English uncle and the second time he says "what are you doing?! stop pushing against the chair, each time you bang against it, you are getting into my space! How would you like it if someone was banging behind you?!" i was thinking give him a break lah, he was only using his laptop and putting up his tray table loh! And it wasn't as if the American ah pek wasn't getting into the poor English uncle's space when he reclined his seat!

Poor English uncle, he must have been repressed the whole 12 hours sitting there, making sure he didn't hit the irritating American ah pek's seat. Coz another time after dinner, he put his tray table up and i guessed it must have hit soooooo hard on the irritating American ah pek's chair to cause him great distress and discomfort that the irritating American ah pek slammed back right into his seat in retailation. Poor repressed English uncle. The second time he used his laptop, he was reduced to really putting it on his lap and not the tray table in case he'd hit the seat again when he put it up and cause a major paralysing back injury to the irritating American ah pek.


Who can blame him man, afterall, Americans rule the world don't they.

The next morning during breakfast, the captain announces something's gone wrong with some catering thing. So some people were going to get their breakfast late. But if it helped, they served the tray first which contained yoghurt and a muffin. Lucky i got mine first, while the rest had to wait for their hot breakfast to be cooked. The hungry passengers only got theirs after i had already finished my hot breakfast, ate my muffin, drank my tea (i would have had time to gulp down the orange juice too if it wasn't that i was too full), and chomped down my yoghurt.

Other than the few hiccups, the rest of the flight(s) went pretty well. Watched 3 movies in 12 hours. Among them... cars. Yah i know... some c gin na again. But it was of sentimental value ok.


At least the inflight entertainment was one thing which didn't break down.

Seeing everything

It snowed the night before i left.

It was 3am and i was looking out the window to do a last check for Northern lights. In the night sky against the street lamp, i saw white flakes falling from the sky (you can see the reflection of the snow flakes in the pic below)... could it be?!??! I look towards the cars on the street and see snow on the roof and the bonnet.

I race downstairs and tell Bcc. I must have been like some swa-ku down there saying "can i go out? can i go out?!??!". So i put on the heavy duty pants and jacket and boots and go outside.

Judging from the snow on the cars, it'd probably been snowing a while already, and the snow coming down was pretty little now. Snow is exactly like really fine ice on the ice kachang. With that kind of ice, it'd make fabulous desserts, the melt-immediately-in-your-mouth kinda ice kachang.



There was little snow accumulated on the cars, so i could only manage this...

Poor Esmeralda

the next morning, i look out of the window and see this, it had snowed more in the night. I told bcc "there's more snow on the ground" and she said "of course lah." i was about to scream at her "you mean you knew it was going to snow somemore in the night and you didn't tell me?!?!??!"

She thought i had told her "there's no snow on the ground"


Later after breakfast, i went out to the verandah to make another snowman! some c gin na i know.

Esmeralda improved

Snowing the night before i leave, it must have been a sign that i've seen all there is to see. Snow, northern lights, animals, cow births. and now it's time to go back home alreday.