Came across these quotes while searching for fonts at fontgarden.com:

Along with my family, we reached here on Saturday evening, looking forward to dine in a seafood restaurant by the beach, but there was only a police post and a small weekend crowd enjoying family time, the sea breeze, the sand and ice-cream.

The restaurant is no longer there. But something else is, permanently, a nearby WWII memorial plaque, with this reminder:

On 28 February 1942, some 300-400 Chinese civilians were killed along the Punggol Foreshore by hojo kempei (auxiliary military police) firing squads. They were among tens of thousands who lost their lives during the Japanese Sook Ching operation to purge suspected anti-Japanese civilians within Singapore’s Chinese Population between 18 February to 4 March 1942.
The victims who perished along the foreshore were among 1,000 Chinese mates rounded up following a house-to-house search of the Chinese community living along Upper Serangoon Road by Japanese Soldiers.

What was known as the Punggol Beach Massacre happened along this beach, which is listed as one of Singapore’s historial sites by the local National Heritage Board.

My grandparents, mother and her siblings used to stay in Punggol (until the 70s) but none of her family members were harmed during the war.

We found the restaurant on another street not too far away.

Punggol is special to me not because of the food but because it was the hometown of my maternal side of the family and that one of the roads was named after my grandfather.

The ancient Roman aqueduct (about 25–13 BC) at Caesarea Maritima in Palestine, is a long aqueduct to channel water from the springs at the base of Mount Carmel, about 10 miles away from Caesarea.

In order to initiate water flow by the force of gravity, the arches and the gradient was meticulously measured.

No harm knowing some math for precision.

Picture taken on: 6 December 2005

As I was about to make my usual cup of tea, I got interested in the box divider…just wanted to see how simple (or precise) it is.

It is simply taking the inner length of the box multiply by 1.74 which is equal to A (variable for the total length of divider); divider is folded into 3 sections where the length of 1st and 3rd sections = 28% of A, middle section = 44% of A; the middle section is then folded into half to form the actual barrier. The height of the divider is 0.1″ shorter than the box’s height. Width is the same as the box.

Nothing like a little distraction for today. (^-^)

Fruit juicing is now part of the early morning routine.
Hub and I decided to revive this practice. Hence it’s time to buy more fruits.

If organic varieties are not available (we depend alot on imports) or if I’m unable to make trips to other specific supermarkets to hunt them down or if I’m feeling the ($) pinch, the regular ones will have to do.

So during the weekend (and the one before) I met the gang from Blue Whale. Whether in flesh or juice, all were delicious and all came without dents. But I made sure they were soaked in here before consumption.

I have noticed that dents on some types of apples are strategically hidden beneath label stickers. I think it’s intentional. Um…

On Sunday, I saw these broccoli sprouts too and decided to try them.

And decorate with them.

Remember this French author and illustrator whom I had mentioned earlier? I promised to show the postcards with his original art, so here are 3 from the set of 8:

I ordered them here.

Now, he’s well-loved not just in his home country but also in Japan (where else?!) and it’s only in this capital city of zakka that knicks knacks such as these can be found:

[Images from Plazastyle]

The final image I have is a little ski village, which is one of his latest works and it’s free to download! Just save/send/print a copy for yourself or for someone whom you know will thoroughly enjoy it! it’s no longer available to download.

Wednesday nights, beginning at 9pm, you will find me in front of the TV, watching:

“It’s Me or the Dog” – to witness the amazing transformation on dogs (who have almost taken over their masters’ households) become well-behaved and happy companions. The simple training techniques produce almost-immediate favorable results.

“Meerkat Manor” – an amazing animal tale with storylines fit for a soap opera: enemy battles, courage, tragedies, love and comedy. Cambridge biologists track the daily lives of a family of meerkats living in the Kalahari Desert in Africa.

“The Amazing Race 12″ – I’ll be watching a repeat telecast from Monday’s simulcast. This race certainly makes one ponder, about how we will react should we come under the same kind of pressure.

The amazing journey continues with 7 weird things about me tagged with this award given to me by Isobel. Thank you Isobel!

1. I’m a spiny-tailed gecko pest buster. To keep the long long story short, I discovered a way to stop a house lizard from entering my apartment and for the last few years, none has been spotted indoors! A documentary I saw on TV about its amazing super-sticky feet provided me with much needed insight to the way this secretive creature moves.
2. Ref to #1, I wrote about it on the tips site.
3. I get uncomfortable around dog-eared pages. Just got to turn them up.
4. I play and take pictures of my kids, aka soft toys.
5. I use my left hand to open tightly sealed jar lids and bottle caps.
6. My long hair is always tied up. Can’t seem to get work done when it’s let down.
7. I have alcohol swabs in my bag.

[Image from Mediacorp TV12/Meerkat Manor-A soap opera with a difference and CBS/The Amazing Race]

As you know, I have an affection for magnets and so my magnetic story takes a woody turn this time, with these 2 handsome faux bois slim magnet strips from the local Daiso which I had picked up a while back.

They strong resemble planks on my laminate flooring.

Here are the steps:

• Create a backup for your Blogspot blog.
• Sign up for a free blog at wordpress.com and set yourself up and get acquainted with the blogging platform. Delete the first (default) post and comment.
• At Wordpress, to import from Blogger (posts, comments and categories), select Manage > Import and Import Blogger.
• Images – You will have to download all your images at Blogger to the new WordPress blog and you can upload only one image at a time. Remember to change the url of the image location on each post. If you have lots and lots of images, this step will take up A LOT of your time and you should consider forgoing some of the images.
• Internal links – If there are internal backlinks within some of your Blogspot posts, then at Wordpress.com, you will need to manually update those posts with the new links. For e.g. Post #2 contains a link to Post #1, so you will have to edit Post #2 so as to change the new url of Post #1.
• YouTube videos – To include videos from YouTube in your posts at Wordpress, click the Code tab and paste the embed code, write your text then hit Save or Publish at once. Don’t click Visual.

  Video resizing can be done within the embed code, e.g. width=350, height=288 or width=400, height=329.

Note: As with Blogger, there are limitations in functions when you are using a free blog hosting service like Wordpress.com, which is not surprising. Still, there are many happy bloggers (over 2 million actually) out there with their free Wordpress blogs, so explore and enjoy!

Besides the usual books + magazines, Amazon jp is already housing loads of Japanese zakka, gadgets and whatnots and at the same time providing an option to order in English. Just so that English speakers don’t have to sign up for a Japanese crash course.

Just check out Ordering from Amazon.co.jp and you will be on your way to becoming a happy customer.