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Here comes a new electric car called Bamgoo. This is a Japanese single-seater concept car made of bamboo. Apparently, “Bamgoo” is a name derived from Bamboo. The outlook of the Bamgoo looks very similar to that of the Corbin Sparrow which is also a single-seater electric car.

Bamgoo was on a road test in Kyoto, western Japan, recently. This is an ecological-friendly concept car developed by Kyoto University’s Venture Business Laboratory.

I think Japanese are one of the most innovative people on earth to have thought of such a creative idea to build the electric car using bamboo. This is against the traditional way of using steel for building the car chassis. I’m not sure how practical it is to drive a bamboo-made car. Anyway, I think the Japanese just have some interesting ideas popping up every now and then.

Bamgoo measures 2.7 m in length, 1.3 m in width and 1.65 m in height. This single-seater electric car weighs 60 kg and it can run for 50 km on a single charge.

Here is a video clip of the Bamgoo being driven around by a mother with her kid on her lap:

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My chubby nephew has been begging me for a few months to bring him to his most favourite restaurant, Country Manna, for meal. The last time that we had been to Country Manna was in late April this year when we were celebrating the 10th birthday for our chubby, cute, adorable, lovely and charming nephew. 

During that time, we were having our American country-style meal at the Country Manna’s Serangoon Garden branch. We have had an enjoyable chat with the restaurant manager who told us that the Serangoon Garden branch would be closing down in May due to the contract was expiring. 

My sisters and I felt sad to hear that because Country Manna restaurant is one of our most favourite restaurants. We like the American country-style environment and the delicious food there. We recalled that Country Manna used to have more than 10 branches all over Singapore but it is left with one at the present moment, ie. November 2008.

This one and only one Country Manna restaurant is located at Sun Plaza of Sembawang. So, I drove my sisters, my niece and my nephews all the way from the east side to the north side of Singapore today.

Chicken and Celery Soup Topped With Pastry :

Baked Scallops :

Whole Spring Chicken with Baked Potato, Salad and Peaches :

Here is a brief note on Country Manna : 

Country Manna was founded by a group of Christian businessmen in 1993. Country Manna Restaurants feature healthy oven-baked country meals and superior service. Using a special mixture of herbs and sauces, the Country Manna oven-baking process removes most of the harmful oils that occur during the cooking process while sealing in the succulent, natural flavors.

We like the food there. My chubby nephew likes the American country-style food at Country Manna when he was 1 year old. He is 10 years old now and he still likes the Country Manna’s chicken soup topped with pastry, spring chicken, bufflo wings and so on.

We sincerely hope that the one and only one Country Manna restaurant located at Sun Plaza won’t vanish just like the rest of the branches. 

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The Crocs crazy sale is on at the Singapore Expo Hall 4A from 14 Nov (Fri) to 16 Nov (Sun). The business hour starts from 10 am and ends at 8pm. The Crocs Expo Sale is offering up to 80% off the usual price. Wow, this seems to be a good deal for whoever wishes to own a pair of the expensive Crocs shoes.

My sisters and I were on leave on Friday and were attracted by the hugh discount. So, we didn’t hesitate to go to the Singapore Expo at Hall 4A to hunt for our favourite Crocs shoes. When we reached there at 10:30am, to our surprise, the hall was already fully packed with eager buyers.

Everybody was grabbing different models of Crocs shoes and was then busy trying out the shoes. It was not surprised to see many people were holding a translucent big plastic bag which was filled with Crocs shoes, apparel or accessories.

The usual price is SG $49.90 and the Crocs shoes are selling at SG $20 to $25 per pair at the Expo sales. If you longed to own a pair of Crocs shoes, I guess you won’t hesitate too much to buy a pair at the discounted price.

I bought this pair of biege Croc shoes :

My sis bought the orange pair of Crocs shoes :

My sis also bought this pair :

Crocs Accessories – Rivets (Jibbitz) :

Guess what? We queued up close to 2 hours just for the payment. I think the Crocs organiser didn’t do a good job in organising where to quene up for paying. The crowd was re-directed to quene up at a different location and it was causing some quene-jumping here and there. Some of the payment processors at the payment counters were down on the first day and this added more frustrations to those people who had been lining up for quite a while.

I guess the Crocs organiser also didn’t expect the overwhelming response from the public especially when the world eoconomy is slowing down. Anyway, I think this is a good sign because it shows that the people’s purchasing power is still strong and it is going to help to boost up the economy somehow.

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Year end is coming, it’s time for me to make a plan to clear my excess annual leaves. I still have 11 days of leaves brought over from last year and I have to clear them before the leaves are forfeited.

I plan to clear 4 days of leave in the month of November and 7 days in the month of December. Most probably I’ll take a day of leave on every Fridays so that I will have a shorter workweek for me to rest especially after I was having a busy work schedule in the past few months.

I don’t have a concrete plan yet as to what I’m going to do when I’m on leave. Maybe I will ask some of my friends out for lunch or visit museums or go to the beach and so on. I think this is a good time to catch up with friends and ex-colleagues.

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Everything is slowing down when the world economy is weakening. Everybody’s morale is going down the hill too. Overtime is controlled as the customers are pulling handbrake on goods shipment so most of my colleagues are knocking off at 6pm sharp these days.

Since the urgency of producing the outputs is no longer there at the production line, I don’t have to stay back late probably starting from this week. So, I left the office at around 6:30pm today when the sky was still quite bright. I will need to adjust to going home early from now onwards as I have been working late for the past 3 months and I’m quite used to going home late.

One thing good about going home early is that I will have more time to do those things that I like to do. For example, I have bought a few books which have been sitting on the book shelf and have been collecting dusts for quite some time. Now, it’s about time to take the books out for me to do some reading.

I think I would better schedule my time accordingly and do some planning for myself. Maybe it’s time for me to start thinking about my resolution for next year.

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I read the newspapers and get to know from the advertisement that now is the crab season. Many restaurants are promoting the crab feast. One of the restaurants is promoting buffet of crab and durian delights. I think this is something special as I don’t get to see this kind of crab plus durian buffet that often.

I called upon my second nephew who loves to eat crab very much. This little cute and chubby boy was so delighted to see the advertisement which was promoting the crab buffet. He told me immediately that he wanted to go to the restaurant to eat his favourite crabs.

My sister made a booking at the Ellenborough Market Cafe and then we brought our nephews, the 2 chubby boys, to the Swissotel Merchant Court hotel at noon time today. When we reached there, we were surprised to see there was a long queue of people waiting to enter the Ellenborough Market Cafe. Maybe because it was a Sunday.

Despite the world economy is slowing down, many people are still willing to spend money to enjoy good food especially when the restaurants are promoting crab and durian delights. These are the food that we don’t get to eat so often for buffet style.

So, we filled the plates with the crabs of different flavours immediately after we were ushered to our table. The crab dishes include Sri Lanka Black Pepper Crab, Nonya Crab Popiah, Curry Crab, Chilli Crab and so on. The durian creations featuring on the buffet are Durian Creme Brulee, Durian & Mango Napolean, Durian with Red Bean Agar-Agar, Durian Pengat and so on.

Here are the pictures of the yummy food.

Sushi, Mussel, Crabs, Prawns and Fried Rice :

Crayfish, Abalone and Other Varieties of Food :

Black Pepper Crabs :

Black Pepper Prawns and Crabs :

Crayfish, Crabs, and Kang Kong Vegetable :

Prawns, Oyster, Mussel, Crabs, Fried Rice and Bun :

Abalone, Durian Cakes and Vegetables :

Durian Cakes and Pastries :

Durian Pengat :

Besides the crab and durian delights, Ellenborough Market Cafe also serve their usual spread of International, Local and Peranakan specialities. My sisters, my nephews and I find that the Ellenborough Market Cafe is generous enough to serve the different varieties of food in big portions. The tastes of the crab dishes and other food are very delicious. They serve real Abalone instead of mock Abalone in their buffet bar.

We really like the nice and yummy food there. We consider this as value for money. Furthermore, my sister is a HSBC credit card holder so we are entitled to enjoy the offer of “one dines for free with every three paying adult diners”. It really helps to save some money for us to enjoy the good food.

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My 12-year old niece came to me and told me that school holiday will be coming soon while I was using the Internet. So, any problem with that? She then reminded me to set up a Blog for her as I had promised her a couple of weeks ago. I told her that I was busy at that time and I will set up the Blog for her during her December school holiday.

Wow, kids really have good memory. They can remember things so well especially those promises made by adults. Well, I think I would better keep my promise. Otherwsie, my niece is not going to trust my words anymore.

My niece was asking me whether it is better to use a free web hosting service such as www.blogger.com which is managed by Google or to use a self-hosted Blog like mine. I told her about the pros and cons of having a free hosting. If she chooses to use www.blogger.com, it is a free web hosting service but her domain name will look something like this “www.xxxx.blogspot.com” which is quite long and hard to remember.

She told me that she prefers something like my Blog site entitled “Laingan.com” which is short and simple. However, she hesitated after knowing that my Blog is hosted on a paid web hosting called BlueHost because it needs money to use the hosting service.

Anyway, I told her that I will be paying for her and why she has to worry about the money. Furthermore, a domain name costs around US $8.95 to $10.00 per year and this is something affordable. I can add her domain name to my web hosting server as BlueHost allows its users to host unlimited domain names as well as to host 100 MySQL databases. Meaning to say I can set up 100 WordPress Blogs on a single web hosting.

So, I asked my lovely niece to choose her favourite WordPress theme first and then think of an easy-to-remember domain name later. Once she has her favourite domain name in mind and I’ll start to buy a domain name from the domain name registrar for her. After all this is done, I can proceed to set up a WordPress Blog for her very soon. Stay tuned.

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‘The global economy is slowing down. The stock market is crashing as it is already in the bear market. The Lehman Brothers has gone bankrupt. Investors are in a panicky mood for buying high but selling low. 

It seems like the world is likely to head for a deep recession. Everybody is panic because a recession looming for the US could affect countries all over the world. This is understandable because most parts of the world are relying on export to the world’s biggest economy, ie. USA.

Consumers will restrain themselves from buying goods, retailers will suffer from the declining sales, big corporations will probably cut jobs and retrench staff in order to survive and so on. If this really happens, it is going to affect you, me and everybody. The fate for everybody is either to keep or lose the job.

Now, even my customers are on holding the shipment till further notice. This is quite surprising but not totally unexpectable. They are reactive to the weak economical outlook. Probably they foresee the demand will be low and the consumers will be holding back on spending.

The chain reaction to this is to cut overtime, to cut traveling , to plan for plant shutdown and so on. The emphasis is on cost saving.This also translates into many people are going to be very free. Perhaps it is a time for people to plan for budgeted holidays. 

I’m very busy with my work since the past few months. But I foresee myself is going to be very free soon in view of the activities are slowing down due to the poor eoconomical climate. I think the pace for everybody and for myself is to slow down. Do one thing at a time, no hurry, no fire-fighting, take my time, relax and have peace.

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I lost something yesterday. My goodness, I had lost my pair of spectacles! It’s quite unbelievable to have lost it. I myself also cannot believe it could happen. But the fact is that it did happen. It made me so busy and panic the whole morning searching all over the place for it. It was really a Monday blues for me.

I did not realise that my pair of spectacles was lost until I was about to step out of my house and get ready to go to work. I have the habit of stuffing my pocket with things. There are a few items that I will put inside my pocket before going to work. I will put my purse inside the right pocket of my pan. As for the left pocket, I will stuff it with comb, car key, company toilet key and thumb drive. 

My pockets are always full of things and I also don’t know why. Maybe it makes me feel more secure this way to have my pockets occupied with something. The next thing that I will do is to put on my spectacles. But I cannot find my pair of spectacles everywhere on the Monday morning. I used to put the spectacles on my study desk, dining table or near the basin inside my bathroom but I just cannot find it. It’s strange. I must have misplaced it somewhere.

I was really vey panic for failing to find my spectacles because I don’t have any spares although I still keep my two sets of old and worn spectacles. Furthermore, it was not safe to drive without putting on spectacles so I called up my superior and told him that I was going to take an urgent half-day leave since I would be late for work after spending the time looking around for my spectacles. 

Then, I tried to recall what I had done the day before yesterday and why I had removed my glasses. I remembered that I took off my spectacles when I was reading Adam Khoo’s newly-released book entitled “Secrets of Building Multi-Million Dollar Businesses”. After that, I went straight to my bed without putting on the spectacles again. I only found my spectacles were lost the next morning.

Since I got to go back to work in the afternoon, I hastily borrowed a pair of spectacles from my sister and then set off to my office. Although I find it funny to wear somebody else’s spectacles, it is better to put on glasses that can help me see clearer than not having any.

Later, I received a call from my niece at around 2:45pm. Guess what? She told me anxiously that she had found my spectacles inside her schoolbag. She denied that she had done it and I trust her words because my niece is a very honest and innocent little girl. I guess it must be some “dumb dumb” who had mistaken that my spectacles were hers. Anyway, I’m glad that I have found back my one and only pair of spectacles. It’s really a lost and found!

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My sister had forwarded an interesting email to me a few days ago. The email is talking about a jobless man who was applying for an “office boy” job in a famous software company.

He was initially accepted by the HR manager who then asked the jobless man to give him his email address and he will send him the application form to fill in as well as to notify him the date to start work.

The jobless man told the HR manager that he didn’t have an email address. Guess what? The HR manager immediately declined to offer him the “office boy” job. Reason being that a person who doesn’t have an email account means that this person doesn’t exist.

This sounds so cruel to have been rejected a job offer just because the jobless man didn’t have an email account. What I can say is that : “This is life!”. 

On the other hand, if I were the HR manager, I will also find it hard to believe that anybody applying for an office job does not have an email account especially when we are living in a world that utilises computers and Internet as our communication intensively.

We rely on information technology and Internet is a part of our everyday life. It is a hard cold fact that a PC-illiterate may lag behind the society for not knowing how to use a computer and not having an email account.

However, I’m not trying to say that this is the end of the world if a person doesn’t have an email account. Sometimes, going against the flow may end up hitting the jackpot somehow. 

Read the inspiring “tomato story” below and it may change your way of thinking.  

Hope you enjoy reading the “tomato story” and get inspired. For me, I will choose to keep the email account even if I plan to sell tomatoes 🙂

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