Of Puppies and Kittens

I'm a cat lover.

I used to be a cat and dog lover, but after I took care of my friend's cat Murphy over winter break, I am now more inclined towards cats. Nothing against dogs, of course.

I went down to Mad Cat at Mineral Point this Saturday for the adoption fair by Dane County Friends of ferals. They had 5 cats up for adoption that day, but by the time I went there, one was already adopted. Mad Cat, the shop itself, owns 2 or 3 cats and they are always walking around the shop. One of the cats, a shorthaired tabby named Lucy I think, gives plenty of attitude. She actually snarled at a customer who wanted to pet her. Kinda cute...everyone likes attitude now and then, don't they? The other cat was a black and white shorthair. It's funny how these cats are so different from Murphy. Plenty of sass, plenty of weight too. The black and white cat, which I have no idea what its name is, looks like a cow to me. Heh. It looks like it weigh as much as a cow too. I'm not being mean, but both cats looked pretty bulky to me. I guess I am comparing every cat to Murphy. Murphy is sweet, affectionate, curious and perpetually hungry. He's kinda on the thin side too, but he's cute and he knows how to worm his way into your heart.

Anyway, back to the cats up for adoption. The 2 cats for adoption that were out in the shop were sleeping or just lazing in the cages. I think they don't really like the cages. I got to pet one of them, she's kinda docile, didn't tried to bite me and actually tolerated my fussing pretty well. Then I went to the back of the shop, where 3 other cats were. 2 of them were hidden under some kind of post. The 3rd cat, Lucille, was in a basket. She's cute, so I went to pet her. She's docile too. No one has adopted her yet. If I had a permanent home in Madison, I would adopt her. Too bad I am leaving in 3 months, I wouldn't subject a cat to forming an attachment to me and then left behind by me. I was there actually hoping to take some pictures of cats. I even brought my camera there, but was too shy to take it out. I don't want to explain to the volunteers there why I am taking pictures of their cats. In the end, I used my phone instead. Here's a snapshot I took of Lucille. The resolution is pretty bad.

I hope all these cats find a loving home soon. They deserved to be loved.

Pet owners looking for a cat should try looking at the shelters, instead of just buying a cute kitten at a pet shop. Kittens will eventually grow into adult cats. Cats from shelter are usually spayed/neutered, house trained and have distinct personalities. They make good pets.

One observation I have made, these cats all looked to be on the heavy side. They actually looked massive to me. I think I would have trouble carrying them. Once again, I am using Murphy as a standard. I wished I can keep a cat when I go home, but I don't think my parents are going to allow it. They would prefer dogs. Actually, they would prefer no pets at all. Now, I am considering volunteering at Friends of Ferals. Gotta think about that...

Winter Storm ...again. Why? Why??

The Chicago Auto Show is ending tomorrow. I wanted to go, but in view of the impending winter storm, I decided to stay at home instead. Sigh...I had been looking forward to it, in fact, it was the only thing that kept me going the whole week, but the possibility of being stranded on the road in the midst of a snow storm is quite deterring. In the end, I consoled myself by watching DVDs the whole weekend and looking for videos on Youtube. In case anyone is interested, autoblog.com does a good coverage of the whole show.

In response to Chris' post on microwave experiments, I went to look up some blender videos I saw months ago. Basically, this guy, in response to what his fans ask for, will blend a particular object. He has blended lightbulbs, an iPhone (and smiling all the way through the blending process), bic lighters and glow sticks.

here's the iPhone blending video:


and the Bic lighters:


If I have a kid, I am not showing him these videos and putting ideas into his head.

♥♥ 14 Feb ♥♥

Happy Valentine's Day!

I like how Google always put up this kind of nice pics at their search page...

Happy Chinese New Year

The first day of Chinese New Year was last thursday, Feb 7. Chinese New Year is a big thing in Singapore, Taiwan and China. In Singapore, the first 2 days of Chinese New Year are public holidays, and school usually ends early on the day before Chinese New Year. Let's just call it CNY for short. My family used to spend both days visiting relatives, but in recent years, we pack all our visiting in the first day, and spend the second day lazing at home.

For the third year in a row, I am spending it thousands of miles away from my family. I don't miss visiting relatives, since we see them often enough besides during the CNY holidays. What I do miss is the day before CNY. On CNY eve, it is customary to have a reunion dinner. My grandma starts preparing in the morning and I would help after school. The food is ready by 4pm. My cousins start flocking in at about 5pm. There's about 20 people (I eat enough for 2) and there's lots of leftovers, so you can imagine the amount of food that was cooked. After dinner, everyone just hangs around, watch tv, play cards and leave at around 9.

CNY also means lots of goodies. It's another custom to buy CNY goodies and offer it to guests who come visitng. Since we don't have a lot of guests, I get to eat whatever my mum buys. My favorite: pineapple tarts =D.

Another practice during CNY is married couples and the elderly giving red packets to children and unmarried juniors. These red packets contain money and signify good luck. Yeah, this is probably what I like most about CNY. The advantage of being single... Since I'm not at home this year, my aunts have called to tell me they are saving some red packets for me. How nice of them ^_^

I got together with a huge group of friends last friday to have a CNY dinner. It was at Imperial Garden near East Towne Mall. There's another Imperial Garden in Middleton, but in terms of authenticity, I prefer the one near East Towne Mall. So we had one room to ourselves and there were about 30 of us. Before dinner started, we tossed "yu-sheng", which means fish salad.

Yu shen is a colorful salad consisting of raw fish and crunchy vegetables. Sesame seeds, peanuts and sweet sauce are also added. The raw ingredients signify the renewal of life, and the sound of the word for fish in Cantonese sounds like the word for prosperity. The most important and fun part of eating yu sheng is the mixing together of the ingredients. We are supposed to toss the salad upwards with chopsticks and call out propserous sayings at the same time. However, someone made the msitake of tossing outwards. As you can see in the pic, the salad ended up all over the table.

Dinner was a 10-course meal, complete with dessert. The quantity was was a bit too much, if you ask me. All the food that we had:

The food was quite scrumptious, though it was nothing like the food my grandma cooks back home. Still, this was like a reunion dinner among friends and I got to meet up with some friends that I haven't seen for some time.


P.S.: thanks to KH for taking the photos!

Snow Day

Wednesday was Snow Day.

The amount of snow was astonishing. Makes me wonder how long they have kept it all up there before dumping everything on us in one day. They, meaning the powers above. I couldn't recognise my car because it was 1.5x its original size. I spent more than one hour brushing the snow away and digging it out, then I spent another hour helping someone else dig her car out. Even after being dug out, a lot of cars were stuck because of the uneven roads and the snow by the side. Many passerbys had to stop and help push the stuck cars.

Things I tried:

- falling onto the snow. It doesn't hurt.
- running through snow that came up to my shins
- found out that it's really cold when snow gets into my socks.
- ice that fly out from a spinning wheel will leave a nasty swollen bruise if it hit any body part.
- thawing my frozen jeans and shoelaces.

This is a funny video I found on Youtube about a guy cleaning the snow and ice away from his car.



I guess cars stuck in snow is a common sight during winter. This is another video I found on Youtube. It's horrifying yet funny in a warped way. I hope no one ever gets into such a situation.

My First Blog Post!

This is my first official blog post for this class. The previous posts were results of my experiments with uploading pictures and hyperlinking. I guess I will start off with a little introduction of myself and where I am from. I am from Singapore (hey look, a hyperlink!), a city state near the equator where the climate is vastly different from where I am situated now. Singapore started off as a British colony and gained its independence in 1965, after a brief 2 year merger with Malaysia. I completed high school and pre-university studies in Singapore before opting to come to US for my bachelor's degree. I am a Biocehmistry major in my senior year and will be graduating this May.

Enough of me, back to my blog post. As I have mentioned before, my blog is probably going to be about random things, which reflects how random my thoughts can be. This blog post is about the most exciting thing that has happened to me so far in my 21 years. For a large part of my life, I felt overprotected by my parents; even after coming to the States, I was always cocooned by my friends. Last summer, I decided to go to Japan on an impulse. With me was a friend whom I have not seen for 3 years, and her friend whom I have never met before. We met up in Hong Kong and took NWA to Narita, Tokyo.

When we landed in Japan, we were pretty much overwhelmed by all the Japanese spoken. We couldn't really understand what was being said, and after bumbling about the airport terminal for an hour, we found our train and took it to Asakusa in Tokyo. We only stayed in tokyo for a night but there was a festival at the Sensoji temple (aka Asakusa Kannon Temple) and we spent the evening at the festival.

Five-storied pagoda at the temple

Some candies sold at the festival

Of course, this was only our first night there. We spent 3 weeks in Japan. If I am going to talk about each day in detail, this blog post is going to be LONG. For the sake of brevity, I'm just going to talk about some of the things that left a real deep impression on me...for instance, this Hello Kitty...

Will you look at the size of that Hello Kitty?!!

That's me on the left, suffering from jet lag and sleep deprivation.

For those of you who don't know what/who Hello Kitty is, Hello Kitty is a fictional cat produced and marketed by Sanrio. This kitty is very popular, especially among teenage girls. Distinguishing features...extreme cuteness in its simplicity and lack of a mouth.

Picture was taken outside the Sanrio shop in the Shinsaibashi district of Osaka.


We also had fugu cuisine in Osaka. Fugu, also known as pufferfish, is lethally poisonous if not prepared properly.

And then there was Universal Studios...

All the shows were in Japanese, but I could catch the gist of what they were saying...

The most efficient means of transportation through Japan is probably the Shinkansen. I managed to get to Narita from Hakodate (in Hokkaido, northen part of Japan) in half a day, just in time to catch my flight back home.

Picture taken aboard a moving train on my way to the airport.

At the end of the trip, I was pretty amazed we managed to get by fine with Sayonara, Arigatou and frantic hand gestures. The Japanese were helpful people, though not a lot of them understand English. Even though I spent 3 weeks in Japan, I felt I needed more time to fully explore Japan. I will probably go again next summer. Has anyone gone to Japan or planning to go? If I am to go again, I need ideas of places to explore!

Petrolhead

Some of the people using Facebook might have noticed an application called Petrolhead. You get a car, you race other cars, and you can upgrade your car when you have accumulated enough points. Currently, I am a fan of that application. Here's my latest car...a Lamborghini Reventon!!



The 2008 Lamborghini Reventon was revealed in the Frankfurt Motor Show 2007. Pictures from the Frankfurt Motor Show (www.autoblog.com):









Isn't this car a mean-looking machine? Read more about it here. Only 20 are made and each costs 1,000,000 euro to own. *gasps*

Hocus Pocus!

I haven't managed to think of a theme for my blog, so it shall be about random things. Let this random blog have a random name...Hocus Pocus!


Hocus Pocus!!

ho·cus-po·cus [hoh-kuhs-poh-kuhs]

1. a meaningless chant or expression used in conjuring or incantation.

2. trickery; deception.

3. A fun and addictive game with colorful 2-D graphics developed by Moonlite Software. Little sorcerer Hocus is on a mission to prove his worthiness to join the Council of Wizards (MobyGames.com).


4. A movie directed by Kenny Ortega. Hocus Pocus (1993) is a story about 3 witches sentenced to death more than 300 years ago and are now back to seek immortality.