My Favourite Wife by Tony Parsons

What can I say? Singapore, the island, is not very big, but just see how it is being invaded by ERP gantries. It's madness!

jinnpod - Plurk.com

I first heard of Plurk from Scobleizer's tweet, but I didn't sign up because it looks more complicated than Twitter. But Twitter began having problems with their server load and keeps going down more often than I like. Then Cowboy Caleb plugged it too and he seemed like having fun with it. So I decided to check it out.

Well, one thing is for sure. It's definitely going to distract you from serious work. As much as I like its colourful and interactive interface, I'm not sure I'd prefer it to Twitter. Twitter is simple and straight-to-the-point, which is what I liked about it in the first place. So I'm not giving it up yet, but I really wish they would solve their downtime problems soon.

Meanwhile, go sign-up at Plurk and add me as friend! As you can see, I don't have many friends.

Silver of Truth by Lisa Unger

The new 3G iPhone was announced in WWDC last night - priced at US$199 (OMG!) and US$299 respectively for the 8GB and 16GB versions.

From the Apple website, Singapore is one of the "Coming soon" countries. I can't wait to get hold of one, but I wonder how much $ingtel will sell it to us peasants when it's launched in SG.

I have quit smoking for a long time, although I do smoke a stick or two once in two blue moons when I'm out drinking and surrounded by friends who do. I actually could get sick if I smoke more than that. Heh.

During my Hanoi trip, I had a chance to visit a village in the mountains. We followed our guide to one of the houses built on stilts. The owner of the house, a woman, lives with her sister. They offered us home-made wine (drank neat!), Vietnamese tea and bananas. The owner then whipped out a long bamboo pipe. She demonstrated how to smoke tobacco with the pipe. Tobacco leaves were inserted at the end and lighted. She inhaled hard a few times to make sure the leaves were burning. There was water in the pipe and bubbled as she inhaled.

Then the guide took over and he was a smoker. My eyes lit up.

"Can I try?" I ventured.

So he passed me the pipe, put in some tobacco and then I was inhaling away like a true blue smoker.

Man, I couldn't remember when was the last time a smoke made me high.

To satisfy my Pho craving since my return on my trip to Hanoi, I went to Pho 24 at Millennia Walk for lunch.

I ordered take-away Kopi Siew Dai (coffee less sweet) & other hot beverages at a foodcourt. After she had finished preparing them, she told me that the one marked with CL was the Kopi Siew Dai. I've been wondering since what CL really means. Why not just an asterisk or SD?