A carton of apple juice a day will flush the gallstones away. This is what I shall be dedicated to this week:

Regimen:
1. For the first five days, take four glasses of apple juice every day. Or eat four or five apples, whichever you prefer. Apple juice softens the gallstones. During the five days, eat normally.
2. On the sixth day, take no dinner.
3. At 6 PM, take a teaspoon of Epsom salt (magnesium surlphate) with a glass of warm water.
4. At 8 PM, repeat the same. Magnesium surlphate opens the gallbladder ducts.
5. At 10 PM, take half cup olive oil (or sesame oil) with half cup fresh lemon juice. Mix it well and drink it. The oil lubricates the stones to ease their passage.
PS. 1cup=250ml, ½ cup lemon juice=3 lemons (aprox.)

The next morning, you will find green stones in your stools. ‘Usually they float,’ Chiu Nan notes. ‘You might want to count them. I have had people who passes 40, 50 or up to 100 stones. Very many.’

‘Even if you don’t have any symptoms of gallstones, you still might have some. It’s always good to give your gall bladder a clean-up now and then.

Banana is a discotheque/bar in the vicinity of Fudan University, though it looks like most of its patrons are not part of the Fudan community.

When I walked in, I felt very comfortable being out of place, and I thought, “Hey! The Chinese really know how to have fun!”. It was packed with people grooving to the semi-techno music. Then there were firecrackers (!), dancers dressed in futuristic pvc costumes, dancers in qipaos, dancers in leopard bikinis, and a bottle-swirling-fire-eating bartender (whom we managed to get free drinks out of later).

Nice people there too, for they were patient with us two foreigners trying to say the drinks we want into their ears.

But the best part was still managing to get free drinks (I have charm lalalalala), and then crawling into the bar itself after lights on at 3am to fool around with the bartenders woot!

And here’s how I was like at 4:23AM, after several shots and beer and other drinks (Jason, as requested):

I think humans need their vices. It’s what we resort to and it’s what keeps various industries going and making money. These industries are surviving/profiting on our degeneration, but yeah, it’s a mutually dependent relationship.

OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2 polys start love classes

By Theresa Tan

Two polytechnics have started classes on love and relationships in a Government bid to get young Singaporeans to pair up. — ST PHOTO: ASHLEIGH SIM CALL it the love elective. Two polytechnics have started classes on love and relationships, in a Government bid to get young Singaporeans to pair up. ‘We want to tell students: don’t wait until you have built up your career,’ said the Minister of State for Community Development, Youth and Sports (MCYS) at an event to promote marriages on Wednesday. Mrs Yu-Foo Yee Shoon added: ‘Sometimes it’s too late, especially for girls.’ So the Social Development Unit (SDU) has set its sights on tertiary students. It is funding varsity student bodies whose activities provide opportunities for Cupid to strike. VIDEO Learn the secrets of happy, healthy marriages (2:57) And students’ response to these love electives have been ‘overwhelming’, said SDU officials. In fact, Singapore Polytechnic’s ‘Love relations for life - a journey of romance, love and sexuality’ was among the polytechnic’s 10 most popular general elective module last year. Read the full story in Thursday’s edition of The Straits Times.

Taken from Straits Times Interactive.

I will now fess up. A long-distance relationship is really hard.

And even harder when your girlfriend has to spend all her time planning how to stuff Singaporeans with frozen pork, and who is now losing sleep over her frozen pork galore event at HDB hub this weekend, where thousands of housewives will try to poke and squeeze frozen pork only to complain that it’s hard all over so it can’t be as fresh as fresh pork but must be okay lah, minister say frozen pork nice, cheaper somemore, eat loh.

So after all the news reports show housewives smiling gleefully because they have a chance to be on TV say that they eat frozen pork, their children eat frozen pork, that their dogs eat frozen pork etc and how they all find it a cheaper and just-as-good alternative to the now more expensive fresh pork, the good word will be out on Monday’s papers that Singaporeans will make do with have fallen in love with frozen pork, and they shall have it in their wantons, their gou lou yuk, their prime rib soups, their steamboat shabu shabu etc (but please spare the bak chor mee).

What propaganda won’t tell you is how personal lives are almost wrecked by the pandemonium behind the attempt to convert fresh pork devotees to pay equal worship to frozen pork via a preaching session at HDB hub. That the personal lives of the event planners have been jeopardized is not worthy of mention, for the noble cause of shoving frozen pork into the freezers of every heartlander must be given way to.

No one will think about how a heart is breaking in the land responsible for price hikes in fresh pork because of a certain planner’s obsession with recruiting frozen pork lovers.

I will eat all this damn pork until the day I die.

From my Chinese textbook 《Hochschuldeutsch (1)》 and UBC textbook for German “Treffpunkt Deutsch” (pp 9) respectively:

ch 读作[ç]，为清辅音，读音与汉语“xi”的声母“x”相似，但发[ç]时嘴张得较大，舌尖向下接近下门齿，嘴角向后咧。ch 在 e, i, ei, eu, äu, ä, ö, ü 和所有辅音后面均发[ç]。

German ch

After i and e, the sound represented by ch is pronounced like a loudly whispered h in huge. (this is so damn straightforward)

ch 在 a, o, u, au 后面读作[x]。发音时张嘴，舌尖抵下门齿舌背向硬颚后部拾起，但不贴上，用力送气，气流通过舌背和硬颚间的缝隙，发摩擦音。

After a, o, and u, the sound represented by ch resembles a gentle gargling.

I am so glad I brought my UBC textbook here instead of selling it while I was at UBC. One of the wisest choice in my life, huh?

I want to follow the class, so everyday is German day for me from now on.

Ich kann Blut kotzen (I can puke blood).

Every German lesson (on Monday and Thursday afternoons) I sit at the back of the classroom and barely grasp the grammar the nice teacher is teaching, although I hope that will change soon. Since the class has less than 20 students, I have to answer an average of three questions per hour. Everyone answers fluently and accurately while I struggle with the answers and translations by frantically flipping though my German dictionary in English and trying my luck when it’s my turn.

I guess I should be glad I’m the class entertainer since I come up with misinterpretations like “There are many ways to lead Rome (有很多方法带领罗马）” for “All roads lead to Rome （有很多路通道罗马）”

I will pull through.

I wish it was that easy to unload everything in a certain other important organ.

I’ve been eating mountains of food of late. Other people handle their quandaries by exercising, talking, or immersing themselves in work. I’ve tried all the above, but I seem to seek solace in drowning my sorrows in food and sleep.

Which leaves me feeling very stuffed up inside. Food comforts me these days, but I know my internal organs resent me for succumbing to that pleasure.

A bowel cleanser may be what I need. To release everything for that rejuvenated feeling. With that my pimples will disappear, my bloatedness will go away, and hopefully have renewed energy. If only I can flush the things on my mind away as easily.

I want to detox my digestive system, but I need to detox somewhere else even more.

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Some friends chide me for being too trusting, and my ex-boss used to say I get too friendly ‘coz she saw me making friends with security guards and caterers and many other random strangers during our events.

In recent years, from following a house owner to his house alone in Shanghai, to befriending an old man and hitching a ride from him followed by an almost sponsored bi-plane ride in Seattle, and then following two girls in their car from Wreck Beach to downtown on my last day in Vancouver to be treated poutine (fries with sauce and your choice of meat stuff, apparently a Quebec specialty? *shrugs* but they have it at New York Fries, which does not exist in New York btw), I question my sensibility sometimes, but my instincts ain’t too bad, I think?

I had my hair done in a different salon last week, since I couldn’t find my usual hairstylist. After convincing me to do stuff to my hair, somehow I was persuaded to accept a lift from him on his electric bicycle, and I was free to try driving it. Having the experience of riding a motorbike to a tree some years back, I wasn’t particularly thrilled at his offer. But somehow I followed him to the carpark (or more like two-wheel-carpark) and took on his offer, and rode the electric bicycle to my dorm with him lighting his cigarette behind me.

Heh. It was cool.

Riding my first-time-hairstylist’s electric bicycle

The random stranger I met in Seattle who offered me a free ride and company to the out-of-the-way Museum of Flight and an almost sponsored trip on a bi-plane ride

Met 2 Canadians at Wreck Beach and the stranger on the above right pic let me try on her construction site outfit. (Being a construction worker is very respectable in Canada, unlike how we view Singapore’s Banglas)

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Having lived in cities all my life, I’ve never really had the experience of being in absolute darkness, in a place where I 伸手不见五指.

But last weekend I don’t even know what the room I ate in looks like. I groped around for the chair, fondled the cutlery and caressed the plates and somehow managed to eat my caesar salad, my soup, my steak, and my cake.

It was a blind person’s world and I felt very displaced to be robbed of my ability to see what I was eating and where I was. My eyes were open but I only saw black. There were things in front of me but I only saw black. CG was in front of me but I only saw black. There might have been rats running around, cockroaches on my food, but everything was black.

I could only be comforted by the music, CG’s voice, and the clanking of our cutlery against dishes we can’t see, or else I might have freaked out if it was both black and silent.

We managed to eat as per normal without too much fumbling around, although we did resort to using our hands to eat our food for a bit.

A very extraordinary experience to try, to live an hour of being blind.

Served by visually challenged waiters/waitresses, the dinner will humble you when you can only laugh at your helplessness.

Black Cafe. Eyes not Required. Bringing in anything that has light is prohibited in the Dark Zone.

I’ve been wanting to sell my karate gi online but I haven’t heard from any interested buyers yet.Wearing proper karate gear is like a doctor wearing his white coat — a little bit unnecessary. Haha. But it gets you in the mood for what the uniform expects of you. Otherwise it kinda just gets in the way.

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