Bradley's Old Fashioned Weblog
A serious and sometimes not so serious personal blog
via youtube.com
I clipped my cat’s claws because she has a habit of wanting to attack our legs and feet while we’re sleeping. She didn’t like it! She had a fit trying to figure out why she couldn’t gain any traction on the bedsheets and then tried her hand… or paw… at digging through.
This video came to my attention through Twitter via a friend (@LaiSan_C (sorry, locked profile!)).
Apparently, this older guy got so into the music by this local Singapore band that he jumped up in front of the stage and started dancing. The short of it is that none of this was organized or choreographed and just goes to show that being cool and having a good time doesn’t have an age restriction!
Here’s the information excerpt from the YouTube page:
That’s the spirit! A senior audience got up and jumped in front of KKJ’s stage at the Esplanade and started dancing to their original composition ‘Lemonade’. The choreography and the dancing was all improvised as he grooved to the song, to much cheers from the crowd of more than 500.
King Kong Jane was named “Best English Local Act” by The Sunday Times in 2008. In the same year, KKJ was crowned the Champion of Power Jam, one of Singapore’s biggest band competitions. In 2007, the band was chosen to perform for Baybeats, the largest indie music festival in Southeast Asia.
KKJ is: Jianping (drums), Renquan (bass), Colin (vocals), Ian (guitar) & Ruishen (guitar). For more information, email the band at kingkongjane@gmail.com or follow them at
Twitter: Kingkongjane
Facebook: King Kong Jane
http://kingkongjane.blogspot.com/
http://www.myspace.com/kingkongjane
And here’s the video itself!
A few days ago my wife and I came home and we walked in on the maid sitting on the floor in the kitchen. In front of her was this pile of wiring, a bunch of tools, and some electronic devices in various states of disassembly.
For a moment I wondered if she was in the process of building a bomb, but then I realized what she was up to. She was stripping all of the copper out.
I’ve known people that have done this before. It only takes a while and when you have enough copper you take it to the local recycling factory and they’ll pay you for it. Same with aluminum, steel, iron, etc.
I’m not sure where you would take something like this in Singapore and I didn’t ask, but it’s not a bad idea really. Times are tough and when you think about it, why should you throw away money? Well, not money, but you can use it to get money.
Recently I was reading an article on Rubber Slippers in Italy that reminded me of some fun times I had in the Army regarding people from island nations.
Ribbing, teasing or joking is not uncommon in the Army. In some respects, being in the Army was like being in an extension of high school, except with ranks, and not always in a good way.
Still, there were good times (at least from our perspective).
There was a guy that worked in my office, when I first got to my unit at my last duty station, that was from Micronesia. Well, with “Micro” in the name of his country, and the fact that the islands looked so small on the map, it led to him getting messed with a LOT. Not to mention his first name is Hitler. That was a double fail.
The jokes typically leaned towards making fun of how small the islands are. I can’t remember the joke exactly, but we asked how the recruiters managed to find his village up in the jungle, and whether or not he wore leaves or had clothes. We asked him if he had ever heard of telephone before leaving his island.
Ya, we really got going on him. Usually it would be a group of us in the office and he would be trying to work and we would start talking about Micronesia. As soon as he heard the name of his island he would turn and look at us and start to get pissed off.
We didn’t hate the guy. It’s just that when the days were long and we were bored out of our minds, we wanted some entertainment, and this guy always provided it without fail.
Oh, and because the guy’s first name was Hitler, when he would ask one of us to do something or to help him out, we would give the old fashioned German salute and march off, with him yelling and screaming.
Ya, the guy always flipped out. Typically our taunting would end with him throwing books and manuals at us and all of us running out into the maintenance bays to laugh and talk about how mad he got.
Months later, I would find myself in another unit with a guy from Guam. He too had that overblown sense of pride, and somehow it drew us to tease him about it.
Some of my favorites:
Guy 1: So, [Guam Guy], is there a Walmart on Guam?
Me 2 (butting in): Oh come on. You know there’s no WalMart on Guam! There isn’t even enough room for a WalMart parking lot there!
Guam guy: [insert long string of expletives and threats of violence here]
Guam Guy: Ya, man. I miss my car. I used to go on long drives around the island just to chill and listen to music.
Me: 15 minutes isn’t a long drive.
Guam Guy: What you mean man?
Me: You said a long drive. We all know you can’t take a long drive around Guam. I mean, come on. It takes longer to take a good shit than it does for a person to drive around Guam.
Guam Guy: You know what? Fuck you man.
When we wound up in Kuwait, we were on a camp that (thank God) had showering facilities.
Guam Guy was the fastest man in the camp with taking a shower, or so it seemed.
We would all be sitting on our bunks in the morning, after doing physical training, and he would walk past with his towel, wearing slippers and say he was heading for the shower. We would stretch and talk for about five minutes or so and then grab our stuff and start walking to the showers.
The showers were located about a quarter of a kilometer away (I think. I’m not too good with kilometers yet) and would take about three or four minutes to walk to, at a leisurely pace.
So, we would come out of the building we lived in and start walking up the dirt path to the showers and, about halfway down, we would see Guam Guy walking briskly back toward the building.
The first few times it happened I just sort of looked at my watch and thought, ‘WTF?’ But… when he kept doing it we started talking about.
Finally, one day I stopped him as we were heading to the showers and he was heading back.
Me: So, uh, you’re done showering already?
Guam Guy: Ya.
Me: Do you… uhhh… use soap? It’s ok to use soap you know.
Guam Guy: What the fuck are you talking about man?
Me: Dude, you just left the building like 7 minutes ago. I know Guam is small and all, and there are only like 3 showers for the whole island, but here you can take your time and use soap. You can do more than let the water tickle your ass and jump out.
Guam Guy: [Insert long string of expletives and threats of violence here]
Everyone Else: [Insert laughing here]
I don’t know what it is about islanders, compared to people from the mainland US, but they do seem to be more sensitive about ribbing when it comes to their islands. Is it common I wonder? Or maybe soldiers are just less sensitive about jokes about where they’re from because after a while, and after so many duty stations, you start to disassociate yourself with your hometown? That might be even more true of soldiers who are the sons or daughters of military personnel, who have never lived somewhere more than five years or so at a time.
By the way, don’t get the wrong idea. Messing with each other like this is common in the Army, and I wasn’t free and clear of being a victim of it either. Everyone has to take their turn being the target I guess. Plus, we were all close. If something happened and either of these islanders had a problem, we’d definitely have backed them up.
(At least it’s better than in the Navy, where you have to take your turn in the barrel).
Ya, ya, that’s a fun song right? And, much to my wife’s great displeasure, it’s true more often than not.
Well, it’s not often I have decent beans here in Singapore. I’ve started to become accustomed to eating more Asian dishes. I still miss Western food though, so when I saw a bag of Hambeen’s 15 Bean soup mix at Cold Storage at Tampines 1, I was quick to grab it up and drop it into my basket. I hadn’t actually had that soup since 2001, so it’d been about 8 years, but I remembered how good it was and was excited to try it again.
Looks interesting right? The bowl picture on the bottom right looks a little weird, but this stuff is actually good. I promise.
Here on the back of the packaging is the recipe. You can either do the quick cooking, or you can pre-soak the beans. We wound up mixing the directions a bit and doing it our own way.
The recipe calls for smoked sausage, but we couldn’t find any of that so we substituted this sliced back bacon and it worked out fairly well. We probably could’ve used twice as much and it would have been a bit better, but it was still good anyway.
The other ingredients on this were: juice of 1 lemon, 1 15 oz can of diced or stewed tomato, 2 table spoons of minced garlic, 1 cup of chopped onion, and 1 table spoon of chili powder. We cut up two red chilis and added that in as well. It could’ve used a bit more. I think when I made this the last time I put jalapeno peppers in it, but those aren’t too common here.
What you’re supposed to do is soak the beans overnight, or for at least 8 hours. Then you dump them in a pot with fresh water:
After that you bring it to a quick bowl and simmer for an hour. In the meantime you can get everything else ready by doing your chopping and whatnot.
When simmering, this stuff looks like a witches brew. Oh, and when I was first boiling it there was some white froth on top that I had to skim off. I honestly have no clue what that was all about but hey, everything turned out ok!
Well, once an hour has passed and you get everything ready you dump it all in the pot and let it simmer for, depending on whether you’re doing the fast or short cooking instructions, 2.5 hours, or 45 minutes. Then, 1 to 2 minutes before you’re done you empty the spice packet that comes with the beans into the pot.
This is where we sort of varied from the instructions a bit. We did let it boil and simmer for an hour, and then we dumped everything in, but after that we just turned up the heat about and let it go for another 30 minutes. Honestly, we should’ve left it going for that extra 30 minutes, because some of the beans were still a bit firmer than they should have been, but it didn’t matter. The stuff was good, and it helped us with leftovers not tasting overcooked when reheated.
So, this was the finished product. It cooks down pretty thick, and that’s how it’s supposed to be. My wife is used to watery soups, because that’s just how it normally is here in Asia, but this felt like home to me. It goes great over rice and it’s good by itself too.
That little bag made 14 to 16 servings. Nearly everyone had at least one bowl and then we had leftovers for 4 days! Ya… a stinky four days! Ha ha ha!
Hey, I didn’t make this up. That’s a street in my wife’s old neighborhood in the Philippines.
Kickapoo, Joy Juice, Product Of Singapore
(Picture taken in Singapore)
It’s actually not that bad!
Ya, that old joke. I couldn’t resist it, seeing as how the much more tame “cumin” spelling is what I’m accustomed to seeing in the US.
(Picture taken in Singapore)
If honey shat cookies, I wonder what she’s been eating?
(Picture taken in Singapore)
Bradley's Old Fashioned Weblog 