Thursday, September 28, 2006

Busuk, Bising n Bodoh

Yup, BUSUK! BISING! BODOH! These 3 words best describe The Housemate n his other smelly, noisy n dumbass friends from the same country. I’ve never been racist or one who really groups people into stereotypes… but seriously!! This is too much!

There were two occasions when Ben n I were on the shuttle bus, and when one or two people of That nationality got up the bus, the whole bus would REEK of this awful smell. It’s really bad… especially since we ourselves are Chinese, just not from the same country. So it worries us that we might be mistaken for them, thus labelled as smelly, noisy n stupid too.

The smell is like… ayo… just really smelly lah. I said to Ben it’s like maybe they didn’t shower for a few days or something. But he said, even back in his army days when the guys were out in the jungle for days, they never smelled as bad. So we guessed maybe it’s their diet… but to smell that bad, one would have to be on a diet of pork ass and goat fart man.

So I was thinking, luckily The Housemate is one of ‘em “clean ones”. THEN, one evening, I was watching TV in the hall when The Housemate came back from work, and Damn! The whole hall started to smell! And to make things worse, he didn’t go and shower right away. He sat in the hall for a while, walked in and out of his room, cooked and ate dinner, lingered around some more, and only went to shower at around midnight. I felt I had to disinfect and Lysol the whole couch if I were to dare to sit on it again.

Now I’m so conscious that I might start smelling like them if I sit on the couch, and so conscious not to lean back in case my hair absorbs any smelly stuff from the sofa. Now this fella, he showers every night, but doesn’t in the morning before going off to work. Yes, Aunty Bernie has been doing her “homework” and studying this smelly character. But even then, he has a regular 9-6 office job, and eats at the hotel’s staff canteen where everyone else eats. What gets him reeking of maggot eaten dead rat by the time he gets home at 7.30? What gets all of ‘em smelling like that?

Of course I’ve never been to China, and I have relatives there so I’m trying my best not to be rude, but the kind of Chinese nationals that you get here are a real embarrassment to the rest of the Chinese anywhere else in the world I’m sure. So first is how they’re “busuk”. Now we go on to “bising”.

They’re so noisy, I have to use a whole lot of Hokkien n Cantonese vulgarities if I wanna complain about it to Ben ‘cos it’s really getting to me. But I can’t complain to Ben ‘cos he’s already disliked them even before I came here, and he can’t live without his iPod cos the noise drives him bloody mad. They’re LOUD! Especially the Chinese girls. Bloody loud and absolutely “hiao”. Stupid bimbotic noisy skanky @#$%*&! Think Zhang Zhi Yi, who on her own is already bloody irritating, multiply that by 10, with all of them talking in this really high pitch “nyeh nyeh” kinda voice, and squealing n screaming every now n then. You get this noise on the bus, and even worse, at home when The Housemate has his smelly friends over.

Sometimes he has a whole bunch of them. They come, stink up the place, cook in the kitchen and leave it in a dreadful mess, use my stuff like no tomorrow… From the start we were nice, share rice, oil, salt, pepper, eggs… Bought a rice cooker n electric kettle and let The Housemate use it too. But the @##$%* had a “party” quite soon after we bought our rice cooker. The aftermath of this Fellowship of the Smellies was awful. I found a DEEP scratch in the rice pot. Our NEW rice pot. And the stupid smelly bimbos also found a way to burn a Tefal non-stick spatula. What’s worse was that after the party, The Housemate didn’t bother to replace it with a new one, but simply washed this and kept it back in the kitchen drawer.

Now I have to resort to being some sort of spy or Scrooge, counting every egg and how much rice and stuff he uses, and waiting to see if he’ll take turns to buy this stuff when it’s finished. Damn smelly Housemate and his smelly, noisy freeloader friends. Ben already told him nicely twice, that if he has friends over, they have to keep the noise level down, and clean up after.

Ya he cleans up all right. By using up half a bloody roll of my kitchen towels. Now I even have to keep my kitchen towels safely in the bedroom wardrobe, and sneak out a sheet at a time when I wanna use it. And keeping the noise down? That’s like asking Paris Hilton to say no to sex, drugs n alcohol.

Sometimes The Housemate has just one girl over. If I thought the The Housemate was “bodoh” she’s worse. The Housemate sits in front of the TV even when there’s no reception and just a message on the blank screen saying “Service Disrupted”. The Housemate squats in front of the washing machine watching the laundry spin. And of course you know the one about him trying to grow taugeh in a tin. But this girl, she’s even dumber than him! And they’re both Management Trainees! Now when this girl is over, it sounds like there are 5 girls in the apartment. She’s @#$%* loud. And she just talks and talks and talks. No, she bellows. And this bimbo doesn’t know nuts. Not only does she not understand what I say when I try to speak as slowly as possible, she speaks in a bimbotic American accent thinking it’ll make her sound like she actually can speak English, and after I say anything, she gets The Housemate to translate it for her. She says she loves watching TV, but only watches MTV. And she doesn’t even know how to cook or clean.

So little miss epitome of busuk, bising n bodoh just comes over to the apartment almost every night, makes a HELL of a noise while The Housemate cooks, and he even has to clean up cos she’s so stupid she doesn’t know how to either. Sometimes if I’m watching TV, she or The Housemate will just pick up the remote and start flipping channels. And most of the time they end up watching MTV cos they say Grey’s Anatomy or Criminal Minds has too much “talking”.

The other night there were two bimbos. This same one, and another. I was watching Suddenly Susan, and they were discussing with each other that this show was Friends, and Brooke Shields was Monica... Duh!

Anyway, now that I've finally found time to publish this post, a big event has taken place... Budak Busuk just moved out a couple of days ago! Big drama... Will have a different post about that up soon.

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Supermarket Aunty

Ben n I witnessed something the other day n realised that Singapore really isn’t the only country that needs courtesy campaigns. Apart from instances when people rush into an elevator even before u can get out, we also have supermarket trolley hoarders here! Yup, people wheeling trolleys from Géant hypermarket all the way home n leaving the trolleys in the parking lot or along the five foot way. I’ve always wondered if trolley thieves actually keep n use the same trolley the next time they go shopping, or they just take a new one each time?

One thing we don’t have here yet is the aunty-go-market basket-on-wheels-thing, so I can’t be a full-fledged market aunty. Darn!

Groceries are pretty expensive since almost everything is imported from all over the world. Unless you don’t mind drinking camel’s milk, most of the dairy products, fresh produce, etc come from other countries in the Middle East, and of course from all other parts of the world. Ben n I still haven’t found ok-tasting milk. Especially for me, if milk tastes too… uh, milky, it grosses me out. I prefer stuff like HL, which hardly tastes like milk! But of course, good luck finding that here.

Taugeh (bean sprouts) here cost a bomb! You either pay a lot for really pathetic string-thin wilted taugeh, or pay A LOT MORE, for really big taugeh. I bought ‘em big ones once… Wasn’t worth the price. Now I stick to buying ‘em bunches of green leafy stuff that they sell for Dhs.0.95/bunch at the Fresh Herbs section in Géant or Carrefour.


The Housemate just bought a pack of green beans today and plans to GROW taugeh in this butter cookies tin. Dumbass thinks he’s still in Standard Six doing an Alam & Manusia project or what?


There’s kangkung! Well, they call it Morning Glory and it’s a different variety, but kangkung by any other name still tastes as sweet… Then we have something they call Watercress which is definitely not the watercress we use for pork bone soup. This stuff is more like that “ti wan choy” stuff they sometimes sell at NTUC Fairprice. It has a weird aftertaste, but it’s nice and crunchy.


I’ve stopped buying the “paksoy” (pak choy) here cos it’s really limp n pathetic – no crunch y’know. So the other vege I get is something that looks like “chye sim”.

Other than that, we get potatoes n carrots from all over the world, depending on how much you wanna pay - cheap ones from Lebanon, India, etc, expensive ones from France, Australia… There’s also cabbage, brocolli, capsicum… So ok lah, at least I have lots of veggie to keep me happy.

The only seafood I buy is whole pomfret for steaming teochew-style (substitute kiam chye with rice vinegar), or Kingfish cuts (batang fish) for curry or asam pedas. Fish n seafood isn't very fresh though. Prawns here are called shrimp no matter how huge they are. And the white sotong here… I dare not buy man. It’s huge! Sometimes they sell it whole, and it looks like it was just fished out of the tank at Sentosa’s Underwater World. At Géant they pack your seafood nicely in these paper/foil things.


Thai fragrant rice costs about Dhs.8 for a 2kg packet. And at least there’s stuff like soya sauce, oyster sauce, sesame oil, etc from brands like Kikkoman, Lee Kum Kee, Maggi, and this Blue Dragon brand that seems to be the popular brand sold here for South East Asian and Japanese sauces and foodstuff.

Now we go on to meat… I’ve mentioned before that the chicken here smells very… uh, chicken-ny. Whole “fresh” chicken is actually frozen n thawed, sold as fresh. My Mom keeps reminding me to wash meat properly before cooking, cos cows n pigs don’t get bathed before they’re slaughtered… Now who would’ve thought of that huh. So anyway, I don’t buy whole chicken cos by the time I’m thru with cutting it into pieces (with a pair of scissors!), the chicken-ny chicken is pretty “nuah” n gross, and I start to smell really chicken-ny too. So I buy parts. Unfortunately, they don’t sell mixed parts, only packs of all wings, all drumsticks, all breasts… I wash it thoroughly of course. Perhaps too clean… especially since the taps here are heated so “C” gives u really warm water and “H” stands for Hot as Hell.

After I give the chicken a “clean bath”, I still marinade it with lots of pepper or whatever sauce, and clean, marinated chicken is then used for almost anything – chicken stew, chicken curry, chicken rendang, ayam pongteh, ayam masak merah, chicken kapitan… My choices are running out though, cos the pre-packed sauces I brought here with me are running low. What Ben n I are rationing really slowly is my Mom’s homemade kapitan sauce and Desmond's Mom's power sambal.

Beef from India is of slightly cheaper than New Zealand. This also goes into stews, curries, rendang… Oh, talking 'bout rendang. They don’t have Kara coconut cream here man. Just cans of coconut milk from Philippines and Thailand that’s quite watery. They also sell “freshly” grated coconut that's really roughly shaven, with bits of husk in it.

And then, supermarkets like Choithram have a small, secluded Pork section, selling “fresh” pork, or imported bacon, sausages, pork products. It’s damn expensive of course, so Ben n I treat ourselves to bacon and cheese sausages just once in a while. A pack of just 4 precious slices of streaky bacon costs Dhs.14, here, take my arm! And 10 really yummy “cheese dogs” (cheese-stuffed pork sausages) cost Dhs.17, and there’s my leg!

Last week, The Housemate excitedly showed me a pack of frozen pork leg that he bought at 40-over dirhams. I thought, being Chinese and all, we’d be seeing a pot of authentic “tauyu” vinegar pork leg stew. But alamak, our friend just dumped it in a big pot full of water and boiled it as soup. Here’s a pic but u can’t really see how gross it was cos this was taken after it was kept in the fridge, so the soup turned into an even gross-er jelly-like thing. It looked so gross Ben almost threw up when he saw it.

Saturday, September 02, 2006

Dunwannabe

I just realised I'm a dunwannabe. Never wannabe this or that, always dunwanna be this and that.

I’m turning 29 tomorrow! Ben managed to get this Sunday & Monday off, so it’s our first birthday together. A HSBC rep who handled Ben’s banking stuff insisted that Ben must cook for me… Don’t you think that’s so expected? Like, “oh, your husband’s a chef so you probably get to eat really nice food huh” or oh, your husband’s a chef so you don’t need to worry about cooking huh”

If that’s the case, then I wonder what people say to Ben? Like, “oh, your wife’s a housewife who was a graphic designer and who’s in limbo between graphic design, early childhood education and 'tai-tai-hood' so you probably get really creative lectures about how to wipe your nose while keeping the kitchen clean?”

We've realised that time, or the day, passes real quickly here. We figured it’s cos since you get more hours of daylight here (it’s bright n sunny from 6am till 7.30pm), your body automatically works on “daytime mode” right up till sunset. Ok, firstly I wake up rather late lah… Say about 11.30am or sometimes even later in the afternoon! Then I either prepare cover letters to fax or email out, get something to eat, do laundry or house cleaning when necessary… By 5-6pm I may go out to the nearby shops for grocery shopping, faxing or internet surfing till 7-9pm… Then by 10-11pm it’s time to prepare dinner, read the papers or Dubai guide books, wait for Ben to get home, have dinner at 1-2am, sleep.

I’m still looking n applying for graphic design jobs, cos the teaching jobs require you to be British, American or “western educated” – their way of saying “we only hire angmohs. Like out of 5, I get a call back from 1, and find out that the company is located far from our Timbuktu home. So what I do now is go for the interview anyway and ask them if I can do freelance work for them… which is usually no cos most employers of course want someone whose neck they can breathe down all day.

Ben n I have sorted out our monthly budget and hope we can stick to it cos based on how much we have to send back to Singapore to settle bills, etc, and the amount we spend here, it’s quite alarming that Ben doesn’t get to save much. That’s why I’m still hoping I’ll get a job soon so we can at least have a bit more to save (and splurge…). But it’s a good thing I was jobless last month or the Summer Sales would have killed me! So tempting… It’s like 80% of the stuff goes on sale at 50% discount, and the last week of the sale (that was last week), it gets slashed another 50% so it’s 75% off the original price.

So back to our monthly budget… We spent like about Dhs.800 on groceries (foodstuff only) last month! I guess it’s hard to calculate how much we actually spend/need cos The Housemate and I take turns to buy stuff like rice, oil, eggs, etc, and even though I use it more regularly than he does, when he has his “China Parties” he uses up a lot of stuff at one go, so I’m not sure exactly how much foodstuff Ben n I need a month. Right now I’ve set the budget at Dhs.500 and hope I can keep it to that or less.

We also spent damn a lot on cabfare, so now I’ve downloaded all the routes, maps n timetables for the public bus service so that we can budget our travelling expenses a little. But Ben doesn’t really like the idea of me travelling by public bus here. I guess I’ll try it out at least a couple of times first to see how “convenient and efficient” it is and whether it’s considered “safe” by Ben’s standards.

There’s a restaurant/café in Ibn Battuta Mall that is equipped with wi-fi whatever-you-call-it and I tried it out a few weeks back. In the end, it’s still better to pay Dhs.10 an hour at the nearby shops, cos connection at that wi-fi place was really slow, and to take a cab back from there costs me Dhs.30, plus another Dhs.10 to buy a drink and sit there… So even if I sit my butt there for 5 hours, I can’t get much done due to the slow connection.

Before I left Singapore, I applied online for a cabin crew position with Emirates Airlines. When I got here, I got in touch with my bro’s friend, Juline who flies with Emirates to ask her whatever I wanted to know about the job. She used to fly with SQ too, and comparing working with both airlines, with Emirates, much better pay, but shorter layovers and horrible passengers. Apparently the economy class cabin is converted into a dump after each meal service as the pax are really messy and demanding. It’s like an SQ Madras turn, but on almost every flight! And she said to be able to make it and enjoy the job, you have to be very “garang” and get your way with the rest, no need for the SQ “please go ahead cos you’re senior n I love your hair n nails” culture. It’s a dog eat dog world for Emirates crew.

So this kinda got me worried cos I totally cannot be “garang” lah so for sure kena bully by the big angmoh “girls”. And on top of that, Drew’s friend said that Emirates wasn’t hiring married girls anymore because of some maternity leave and benefits thing. So I decided to forget about “a rewarding career with Emirates”.

Then one day I get a call from them asking me to attend a group interview. Ben said I should just go, see-see, get free makan So I went even though I wasn’t looking forward to working with “garang” people, but only cos they pay really well (like ten thousand dirhams a month including allowances, plus lodging, transport, etc) … It was supposed to be a whole day affair, from 7.30am onwards. Of course, it would be a whole day affair if you were lucky to get through the various rounds of “elimination”. My “whole day affair” ended by 10.30am!

There were about 23 of us “candidates”, about 4 guys, the rest girls. 80% Filipino and the rest a mixture of Kenyan, angmoh, and the “lain-lain” like me. So first off, they make you wait in the bloody cold reception area for an hour till your fingernails turn blue. Then in a room, two ex-crew tell you all about the airline, the job, life in Dubai, etc. Then each “candidate” goes into a room for the “Reach” test, where they test if you can reach a certain mark on the wall with your arm/hand, which is the minimum height requirement to access onboard safety equipment. I managed to reach it on tiptoes lah.

Then, we’re divided into two groups, do some icebreaking intro thing and given a topic to discuss in 10 minutes. The topic for my group of 12 was, imagine you have to create a new world. You have to name this new world and come up with 10 professionals who will belong to this new world. Professionals must be creative, not the usual engineer, doctor, etc.

So my group starts discussing, and waste probably 8 minutes with one guy giving a detailed bio of Lance Armstrong and why he should be in this new world, and the next girl stating why that Princess Di, Prince Charle’s “wife” (didn’t she mean late ex-wife?) should be part of this new world… only to be interrupted by the facilitator that we don’t have to name specific individuals.

So finally, based on one of the facilitators' suggestions and because we had only 2 minutes left, we came up with an imaginary underwater world called Sea World (oh wow, sungguh kreatif), and we have a king, queen, doctor, driver, etc, etc. I didn’t really come up with anything except stupid smart ass remarks which was probably the cause of my “elimination”! Like someone said that Sea World needed someone to keep the water clean, like a filter, so I was like…

Bernie: Ya, a sea sponge! We can name him Bob.

SOUND: WEAK LAUGHTER FROM A FEW PEOPLE JUXTAPOSED WITH THE CHIRPING OF CRICKETS.

Then there was this girl from Lebanon, who at the start of the day had already told the room about how sad a state her country is in, oh war, war… I’m really not being a bitch, and we all feel sad about Lebanon and war-torn countries, but she just kept this sad and pathetic look on her face all day, and all her remarks were like, “oh my country war…” So when someone mentioned that our Sea World should have a warrior, she said “oh, no war, our world must have no war”. Which is of course utopically true, but smart ass Bernie then said…

Bernie: The only way you can have a world without war is if everyone was identical so that no one will envy each other…

SOUND: MORE CHIRPING OF CRICKETS.

So of course, those who didn’t say a word during the discussion, and the insensitive smart ass one didn’t get through to the next round lah. And those who came up with creative suggestions like King, Queen, Warrior, Doctor, Driver, Consultant, etc, as well as Miss Lebanon got through. Some more, no free makan, man!

So now I wonder, if they don’t want smart asses as cabin crew, why does SQ now prefer to hire degree holders, and offer early promotion to cabin crew with degrees? I mean, all an airline needs is a stewardess who wants world peace. Now with SQ dropping in ranking for Best Airline, Best Cabin Crew, etc, I've come up with a solution for SIA to boost their image and re-invent the Singapore Girl - a Singapore Girl Search reality show.

An intense regionwide competition to see who can suck up to the seniors the best while eating humble pie till she pukes without messing up her super wayang make-up, and she should puke whatever she eats cos she has to make sure she's skinny enough for SQ standards, so stick thin that she can squeeze through two carts parked side by side but can hardly lift a fire extinguisher. Then she has to hold a degree in any discipline but ensure she entertains passengers with really intelligent conversation like how she wants to study 'law', and ponder before n after each flight why she's called a Singapore Girl when she's from Malaysia, Indonesia, India, China, Japan or Korea, and why people say she's "a great way to fly".

Medical


Here's what I had to go thru to get my medical and visa done here. Went to Rashid Hospital again to get my Health Card done. Here, you get your Health Card before you get your medical done. Anyway, the Health Card Section has two entrances, one for Men and the other for Ladies. However, the door at the Ladies' Section was locked, so I had to proceed thru the "men's" door.


At the Ladies Section, there are about 4 or 5 counters, empty counters, no one there. Just one lady sitting at a row of seats under the air-con unit, busy sms-ing on her phone. When I ask "Health Card?", she approaches me, looks at my papers, then leads me to the Information Counter at the MEN'S Section.


Again, there's no one at this counter, and she just says "You, wait", and then walks back to her row of seats. Finally some guy appears at the counter, looks at my papers, clips and stamps some stuff and asks me to head back to the Ladies Section and wait at Counter #. So back I go to empty Counter #, and the same lady looks at my papers, leaves it at that counter and calls out to somewhere behind the counter for one of her colleagues, "Syarifa! Syarifa!" Then she turns to me and says again "You, wait".

After some time a lady appears at Counter #, takes my papers and money, returns some papers and a receipt, and asks me to proceed to Counter X. The sms-lady now ushers me to an empty Counter X, leaves my papers there, and calls out to the back again, "Mahmood! Mahmood!". Then turns to me again, says, again, "You, wait". After a long while, who I presume to be Mahmood appears at Counter X, takes my papers and gets my Health Card done. Then Mahmood calls out something that sounds like my name and I approach the counter. He says happily, "Oh, Malaysia? Apa khabar?" I say, "Ha... khabar baik. Itu saja u tau cakap, lain tak tau?" From the stupid blank look on his face I didn't need an answer.

With my Health Card, I now go back to Jumeirah "white house" HR, to apply for a medical appointment. It's scheduled for a Wednesday when Ben's off, so he follows me to Al Qouz (where there's more housing for Jumeirah staff). There's a "mobile clinic" at Al Qouz for Jumeirah staff to get their medical done. Here, a whole bunch of new staff wait in a small room, while some guy has 5 stacks of medical forms with staff numbers on them. The numbers are of course by Dubai standards, not in running order. So from morning, he just goes thru these stacks of papers calling out numbers, and if your staff number gets called, you go up, take the paper and the test tube thingie for your blood test. If you're in the F&B or Service unit, he hands you a small container and says, loud enough for the room to hear, "Stool test". If the staff at the table doesn't understand, he says, "Stool test. Ice cream!", and everyone in the room giggles.

Man at table finishes calling out all the numbers and he still doesn't call out Ben's staff number, so we go up and ask him, and he say, "Oh, Wife of such n such a number... no need to queue". He hands me the vial for the blood test, and my papers, and asks me to proceed to get my X-ray done. So we leave the small room and queue outside the X-ray clinic, a makeshift container on wheels. When it's finally my turn, the guy looks at my papers and says, "Oh, housewife. No need x-ray. Go for blood test".

So we go back to the small room, and by now, Ben's pissed and says we don't need to queue because he's of a higher staff grade. So we cut the queue and I go in to get my blood taken. I've never been afraid of needles, and usually just look away when the needle is being inserted, afterwhich I will actually look at the blood being taken from my vein. But this time, I looked, and hey.. no blood. So one would expect the nurse to remove the needle and try the other arm right? But No... with one inch or more of the needle still in my left arm, she moves it to the right, then to the left, up and down, looking for a vein. After a while, I say, 'maybe you should try the other arm". But she persists, digging the needle in my flesh up & down, left & right... So I say again, "MAYBE YOU SHOULD TRY THE OTHER ARM" cos by now it was getting really horrifying. So she finally and reluctantly removes the needle and draws blood from my right arm.

Now here's the weird thing about medicals in Dubai. To save time and resources, they do "batch testing". Meaning, samples of blood from 6 people are mixed together and tested for HIV and Hepatitis. So if it comes back positive, all 6 of those people have to go back for individual tests! I finally got my permanent Residence Visa after my medical came back ok, so no need to meet Dracula from Hell again.