It’s that time of the year again. The end of this one and the beginning of the next. Does anyone ever hope to fast forward his life and go 1, 2, 3 or even 10 years into the future? I doubt anybody would hope for that. Maybe except for the little kid who can’t wait to grow up to drink and smoke legally.
But when we talk about travelling back in time to the good old days, I’m sure we’ll get trains of people queuing up to try this amazing machine. Maybe something similar to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Total Recall machine would be feasible before we all pass on. You can travel to Mars or the past , all in your mind. But what if you could go back physically and undo things you’d rather not have done and do the things you should have done?
That would be nice, wouldn’t it? Or would that be terrible? I could lose all my friends overnight. Or maybe they’d all lose me. I would certainly have gone back 15 years to sell my Hougang shop for ridiculous prices. I would certainly have set up a town practice and avoided all those years of stressful, traumatic, depressing headache dentistry. And I would have certainly gone travelling to more places and not have wasted my time and money doing “charity work” for undeserving people.
Looks like we all have our regrets. But I doubt that time machine is going to be available any time soon. We’ll just have to aim and work for a better life as we move on. We can only keep saying “happy new year” as the regrets pile up. Even if we can’t undo our mistakes or bad decisions, we have to do something about the future and hopefully not repeat past mistakes.
Now for the obligatory new year resolutions.
1. New staff, better business
2. Bring my elder son on his first adventure holiday
3. Publish a book
Everybody in Singapore knows about Sakae Sushi http://www.sakaesushi.com.sg/
My son calls it “sushi moving” and he loves the place. He usually enjoys watching the sushi moving more than eating the sushi. Anyway, this interesting concept is a hit here in Singapore. The quality of the sushi is nowhere near that of well-known restuarants here and in Japan, but the sushi is really quite edible. One just needs to keep an eye on the number of “colour plates” to avoid exceeding one’s budget. As usual, red means danger. That’s the most expensive colour and you’ve got to make sure your kids don’t get their hands on too many of those.
They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but I don’t think the owners of Sakae would be too flattered by a new outlet that calls itself Saki Sushi. Not very original as you can see. In terms of pricing, they are all out to undercut Sakae. The cheapest plate costs only 99 cents as compared to the $1.20 Sake blue or green plate. I don’t know how many outlets they have, but I decided to give the one at Punggol a try.
I bought about $14 worth of various types of sushis. The cheap and “staple” stuff is all edible. All the makis are OK. Tuna and salmon are also edible, but not that great. The tuna slices are somehow not quite right. As for the squid sushi or ika sushi, that’s a total disaster.
Normal ika sushi is thinly sliced and “grooved”. The ika sushi sold at Saki is one entire piece of small squid wrapped around the rice. When you chew into it, the fibres in the squid will resist any attempt you make to bite through the meat. You’ll end up with a chewy, fibrous mess in your mouth after one hours chewing.
So remember that Saki is not Sakae. Go to a Saki if you must, but never order the ika sushi. It’s a total disaster. When can we have some decent food in Punggol?
It’s been raining and raining. Same thing at this time 30 years ago. In fact, I can remember what I was doing at this time 30 years ago. And unlike now when appointments are cancelled because of the rain, I loved the rain when it was during school holidays.
I wasn’t always this adventurous. In my early teens, I was a bookworm. But I never really liked my studies. I loved to read story book. From novels to science books by Isaac Asimov, I could spend the entire day reading them. At that time, Queenstown library was just across the road from where I lived. I visited every couple of days to stock up reading material. With the weather cool and rainy and school closed, I would tuck into pile after pile of books borrowed from the library while the other boys got themselves wet and muddy at the football field.
Hence, I can tell you for certain what I was doing during this rainy season 30 years ago. My apologies to those who were not born then. Today, I don’t like the rainy season so much. It’s downright bad for business.
Apart from dental appointments being cancelled, taxi drivers are also having a hard time. No passengers. And worse, fares are going to be increased. If the economy is really that good, why is life getting tougher for people like you and me? I guess when it rains, not everybody gets wet.
