thoughts escaping my mind
… and an old lens.
Yes, after many years with my trusty D70 that most have discarded, I finally made an upgrade to the D600. I passed on the D80, was seriously tempted by the D90, but I held out and I’m glad. The D600 is really a big change and yes, the price was a big upgrade too.
If there’s Leo’s Song, of course, there’ll be one for my Sumo.
The two are really night and day. As I often say (apparently, I like to repeat myself) one is like an Express Stream dog, the other is in Normal Stream with a future in beauty school.
But although Sumo is faster, he gets too excited, too eager, too fast and that makes him rash and behave aggressively.
I did want to record this last week, but over enthusiastically cut nails and equally over enthusiastic strumming gave me a blister on the edge of my finger.
So here I go again, embarrassing myself with an off-key rendition of Sumo’s Song.
The chords are G, D (with a high D), C, D
This is a song that I thought up after looking into the blank eyes of Leo, who, after 6 months of training, still isn’t paper trained.
It took me 6 weeks to teach Leo how to shake hands. Now that Leo knows how to shake hands, when I command “down”, he offers his paw.
I did this song in GarageBand, starting by laying down the drum track, then played out the bass track on the computer keyboard.
Then I played the ukulele, sang the song and added the barks.
The chords are F, C5? (CGCG), Am, G
So today was an early day for me. 6:30am out of the house to the market to get some inspiration for Friday’s barbecue, but I found none.
Instead, what I did find was a pack labeled “animal meat” at Sheng Siong.
When I clipped your nails too close
Blood dripped
Never a whine or a yelp
A hug and a pat
Forgive me
And you did
When you turned white
With pups in your belly
I carried your pale body to the vet
I said come home
And you did
When your white locks turned bright red
From a cyst
I said don’t you go yet
Wait to come to our new home
And you did
Before I left
I trimmed your hair
And whispered, wait for me
Alas your old heart could not
At last at home you are
Tricky has left us: 9/9/09.
It all began with me leaving my bed at my old house. It was an Ikea Lillehammer $90 bed for the frame and $30 for the slats. And I thought, I’ll just get another. But Ikea had replaced it with a brown coloured equivalent called Eina ($139) which was of even lower quality.
Then I got the wrong sized sheets – super single instead of single and thought of upgrading a few more centimeters.
Looking at the Lillehammer, which was a four sided frame on four legs, I thought, this shouldn’t be too hard.
This post covers two of my meals. This evening’s and last’s.
Both, were designed after deciding on the soup we’d have.
Continue reading “Pumpkin Soup, Tomato Soup, Smoked Beef Sandwich”
Every time I go for a walk with the dog at the reservoir, it’s a trip made in fear.
Will the monkeys be out? Will they leave me alone if I walk past them?
After going through two en bloc sales within the last three years, I feel I can make some observations of the games people play in this business of buying and selling property because of an en bloc sale.
We all know that there’ll be three parties in any en bloc sale – those who want to sell, those who don’t want to sell and those who think the potential value of the property is much higher – which is probably true, since developers are able to make a profit from redeveloping the land.
We all know that as a result squabbles, counseling, mediation and even a visit to the court to fatten the wallets of lawyers, sometimes follows.
What is not usually discussed is the level of secrecy and distrust that continues amongst members of the community from the time the en bloc sales committee gets the 80% vote to go ahead till when the last of us leaves the current property.
So the Angsana Tree at Braddell Road was hacked down on Sunday.
I was away over the weekend and on Monday, I had to go to Toa Payoh and took this picture:
*note the brakes engaged in the car ahead.
What took 80 years to grow, was felled down in one day.