A land flowing with milk and honey

God's word is true and eternal and it cannot fail. The above video is a testimony of his word.
In Exodus 3:17, God told the children of Israel:
"And I have said, I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt unto the land of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, unto a land flowing with milk and honey".

Assam Pedas for dinner

This dish is sting ray in assam pedas gravy. I've never tasted a better one than this, which is cooked by my talented wife. We bought the ray from Giant Super Market and it was fresh.

Had a 1/4 of a small watermelon for breakfast. Lunch was champon noodles and dinner was ikan pari (sting ray) assam pedas and a plate of broccoli. The meals were cooked by my talented wife. They were yummy and the water melon was sweet. All products were purchased from Giant.

Giant supermart is the way to go

I only used my Passion Card which is my Link Card twice at Giant and they gave me a rebate of $1.51 cts. The Passion Card is free of charge unlike the NTUC FairPrice card which we had to pay $9 subscription every month.
Besides, on every Tuesday if I shop at Giant, they will give me a 3% discount of my total purchase because I am a senior citizen (all over 60 is entitled to a 3% discount on Tue).
Therefore, I have stopped shopping at FairPrice.
Another thing I noticed is that the prices of most items at FairPrice are more expensive than at Giant...example 100 gram of Australian broccoli at Giant is 49c whereas at FP it is 71c!

All from Giant Supermarket

Had watermelon and sandwich for breakfast. As for lunch (bottom left) we had soya sauce chicken plus celery, carrots,mushrooms etc with rice.  Dinner was fried sea bass fillet with gobo,cherry tomatoes and rice.
All the above was purchased from Giant Supermarket.

Goodbye NTUC FairPrice, Hello Giant

This is my lunch,nothing much though except the mabo tofu and broccoli. Later in the afternoon, we may be shopping for our groceries at Giant. We are now reluctant to shop at NTUC FairPrice as their policy governing membership and rebates are very misleading.
In May 2016, we were stopped at the entrance of a FairPrice supermart by some sales people from NTUC. They persuaded my wife to become a member of the NTUC FairPrice. They explained that as long as we patronize FairPrice, we will get back the $9 per month subscription fees (deducted from our bank account through GIRO) at the end of each year. Now after 16 months of payment of the $9 monthly, we have yet to receive any refund. When we called them, they told my wife that she was not entitled to the refund of $144 unless she buy some NTUC shares. On that note, my wife told them she would like to resign from the membership. Besides buying from FairPrice at the average of $250 per month of groceries, we had to fork out $144 which was eventually forfeited.
Now you understand why we stopped shopping at FairPrice.

Bought 2 sea bass from Giant at $3.90 each and cooked it our style. Although the fish were fresh, my wife preferred to cook them with sauces made from vinegar, black soya souce etc. The dish don't have much appeal but it tasted great.
Top photo was taken from the internet but our 2 fishes were slightly smaller.

Roast beef day

Went to Giant Tampines yesterday to buy roast beef and bread for our meals. We had roast beef and cheese sandwiches for breakfast and roast beef rice plus papaya salad for lunch. All meals were prepared at home and they were not only healthy but delicious too!

Grocery shopping at Tampines "Giant" Hypermart

Visited "Giant" Hypermart at Tampinese and tried the nasi padang at its foodcourt. Not bad for the price of $6.50. It included rice with beef rendang, sambal kangkong and sambal goreng.
We also shopped for our groceries plus the 2 pomegranates ( $4.45 each). A pack of 8 slices of fruit cake cost only $2.20.
It isn't often that we shop at "Giant" because it is quite a distant away. Normally, we do grocery shopping at Fair Price near our place. Off course, things are much cheaper at "Giant" as compared to Fair Price e.g. 100 gms of Australian broccoli cost 49c whereas at Fair Price it is 69c.

 Haze almost gone

This photo is taken at about 9 am from my apartment. It is sunny and almost haze free. The wind is now blowing from north east and at least for the now, the sky is clear. PSI@ 3 pm was 56 which is in the "Moderate" range.

Grocery shopping & breakfast at Tampines Giant

Alcoholic pilots and cabin crew
Free and cheap access to alcohol plus loneliness may have contributed to some pilots and stewards to be alcoholics. A very small percentage of around 1% to 2% of the crew population of 9,000 (pilots & cabin crew) were alcoholics. I am not talking about the occasional social drinkers.
Most alcoholics were male crew. The bad thing was that most of these people were smokers too.
A cabin crew could easily "off-load" liquor from the aircraft bar for free. Some would filled up the 1.5 litre mineral water bottle with a choice of their alcoholic drinks like whisky ( most popular), brandy, vodka etc and bring them to their hotels to keep them company during their night-stops.
You may ask me how did they get the liquor free of charge? The answer is simple. All the crew had to do was to write off the amount of alcohol as "consumed" by their passengers...no question asked by the airline.

One steward drank so much that he had to be literary carried down from his hotel room for his flight. Another who had his superior on the same dared not drink but later collapsed on arrival at their destination. He was diagnosed as suffering from ADE ( Alcohol Deprivation Effect). One senior steward was drunk to the extent he didn't realised his wig was worn the wrong way.

A pilot was sacked after another pilot from a foreign airline reported the former for being half drunk while checking out of his hotel for his flight.

Some pilots were nice to the senior stewards who were in charge of the bar so they could have their liquor "canisters" filled up free of charge.

There were crew who not only stole liquor for their consumption but sold them to outstation bars and restaurants for a small profit.

Just like a few girls who shoplifted to pass their time the guys drank like crazy.

Please note that the above happened during my time with the airline. I am not sure about the present day crew's activities during night-stops.

Went for my evening walk
It has been a few months since I last went for my walk. The haze was the problem because one can't exercise with so much harmful gases and poisonous particles in the air. But today is different with the haze almost gone and the air quality has improved to "good".
Below are some pictures I took along the way. The pictures are mostly taken in the upper middle class area of houses that cost millions.
A few are pictures of the playground with children and adults from HBD areas.

"Crazy" by Diana Krall, Elvis Costello and Willie Nelson

19 October 2015 Monday

At last it is Monday. It is almost back to normality but not quite. Sure it's less crowded at the malls and other places. The kids are back in schools and parents back at work...that's where they should be and not jamming up the shopping malls, markets,eateries and what have you.
But still it's not 100% or even 50% normal here as the sickening haze is still around and in the unhealthy range (PSI 133 as at 8 am).
This time round the haze will be with us for almost 3 months (Sep till end Nov). It was usually a 1 month affair every year since 1997.
I wonder what will happened if the haze is going to prolong as time goes by? As for most Singaporeans they will have no place to seek refuge. But for me I have a choice of settling down either in Japan or Australia.

Lunch@ IKEA Tampinese & grocery shopping@ Giant

Thinking aloud
I have got so called friends who do not get in touch with me for ages but suddenly out of the blue when they needed me to attend some of their functions would contact me. These people organised functions to further their agendas.
In this day and age, there is no excuse whatsoever not to contact one another once in a while. We have the services of the SMS, WhatApps, Lines etc and most offer free messaging services.
Attendances for those functions aren't for free. Some can cost you $100 to $200.
So to these people I'll show them my middle finger.... lol.

However, there is a guy who is genuine and his name is Edmond. He is working as a Operations Manager in one of the restaurant chains' Limo department. Once in a while, he would invite me to his work place for dinner with some of our other ex-colleagues. In fact I will be meeting him for a meal within the next few days.
He is also a talented guy who is good in drawing cartoons and has in the last 2 weeks sent me these:

15 October 2015 Thursday

The PSI reading has been improving over the last 12 hours. Currently, it is 77 (moderate range) due to the favourable wind which is blowing from the south east. The wind from Sumatra which is south westerly is the one causing the haze. In south Sumatra, the farmers and the companies that own the land would year in year out slashed and burnt their land around the dry season. This is the cheapest method to clear their land in preparation for their new crops. Cheapest but disastrous for the neighbouring countries who have to bear the brunt of it, the hazardous haze!

Yesterday wasn't a good day for the stock market here. The STI declined marginally by 1 point to 2983. SIA was down 0.04 cents to $10.98, Wilmar International also down 0.04 cts to 2.88 etc.

The Dow Jones is currently down 157 to 16924 as at 4 am. Hate to think what's going to happen to the STI later when it opens for trading at 9 am.

China is now a big factor in deciding which way the world's stocks market indexes are heading. There is a turmoil in the Shanghai as well as other Chinese stock markets and it has been leading to
the present crisis. Just 2 decades ago China was considered a nobody but now it is a super economic world power. Lately its economy is slowing down after years of expansion. It is buying lesser of the world's commodities, oil, gas, minerals etc and this has impacted the world's economy.
So much for the stock markets, haze and China......


Lunch in Japan

My wife is having lunch with her parents in Japan and texted me the above photos. The top picture is the sashimi or raw fish and the other picture is the soba set. According to her, it cost S$15 and $8 respectively which is good value.I had almost the same sashimi set in Singapore for $65 which is not as good.

At Giant Supermart (Tampines Branch..free parking)

Spent the afternoon having snacks and bought 3 tee-shirts at Giant. The kopi O was good and cheap (90 cents for a big cup as compared to $1 at a neighbourhood kopi shop) The yam cake cost $1.20 which was also yummy. The big pork pow was tasteless ($1.30). Bought 3 home wear tee shirts at $7 each using my complimentary shopping vouchers.
It's rare in Singapore to have free parking for your cars but here at Giant Tampines it's free. The other Giant at Turf City also has free parking. The one at Alexander does NOT have free parking.

This STI closed 31 pts up to 3015. It's a rewarding trading day as you can see all my stocks went up (image below).

My Dinner

"Feed your inner Samurai" is the newest item on McDonald's menu. I saw it at nearest outlet and was tempted to try it. But then I realised just yesterday I ate the Burger King Double turkey bacon for lunch and so decide to give it a miss.
Instead, I went and had salmon sashimi and salmon sushi (picture below) and was quite satisfied.