Legend had it that the people of Coventry, in England, were suffering because of heavy taxation under the rule of Lord Leofric. His wife, known for her lustrous hair and beauty, protested and pleaded with him to remit the tax. He refused but would be willing to do so if she would ride naked on a horse through the streets and all the people stayed indoors with their windows shut. For the sake of the common people, she rode through the town naked and her husband kept his word and abolished the tax. She was Lady Godiva, a gift of God.
Eighty years ago in Brussels, Belgium, a master chocolatier, Joseph Draps founded a chocolate company and sought a name that “embodied the timeless qualities of passion, style, sensuality and modern boldness.” He chose Godiva.
Godiva was perhaps the earliest, and hence oldest, gourmet chocolatier that opened shop in Singapore. It was most likely in 1998 or 1999 and its first flagship shop was at Hilton Hotel Shopping Gallery.
Godiva, which sells their pralines and truffles at $25 and $30 per 100 gm respectively, is possibly the most expensive chocolates available in Singapore (for now). Teuscher (of Switzerland) sell their pralines & truffles at $28.80 per 100 gm whilst Prestat (of UK) sell their truffles at $29 per 100 gm. If Gucci sells their chocolates here they may become the most expensive going by the prices they charge in Ginza, Tokyo.
Godiva chocolates that are available here (and in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan) are made in Belgium. They are airflown here twice a week. Godiva chocolates that are available in US are made in US and they are much sweeter and less expensive.
Godiva used to sell their ice-cream here but have stopped long time ago. I was so disappointed then that I forgot to ask why.
Because of its high price (each truffle is about $5; you get six truffles per 100 gm) and there are other good choices, I nowadays usually eat Godiva chocolates once a year in August. That’s because I will receive a one-time-purchase birthday voucher from them which entitles me to 20% discount for up to $500-worth of chocolates. Other times, it is only 10% discount. I usually get about one kg by getting three to four each of every type of truffles which do not contain liquor.
I like all of them. Besides individual flavour, to savour the velvety smooth chocolate and let it slowly melts in the mouth is heavenly. Every night I will just eat two, before 8.00 pm. I call them my 仙丹(elixir of life pills) - they give me strength, vitality and fulfillment. If it is in the day, such as during the weekends or when I am on leave, I will eat three to four. Sometimes I find I have difficulty sleeping if I take more than two pieces after 8.00 pm. Anyway, it is now my usual practice not to snack after 8.00 pm if I intend to sleep at my usual hours or early.
Indeed, Godiva truffles is a gift from God.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Eli Stone
Just finished watching Episode 7 of Eli Stone. Yes, I am behind time on this – I record the episodes and watch it at my leisure when there is nothing on or when I want a change of genre. It is not a “must-watch” series to me; just one of those "feel good" shows.
Eli Stone is the male equivalent of Ally McBeal. Both are attorneys, with Ally McBeal in Boston and Eli Stone in San Francisco. Whilst Ally McBeal had songs by Vonda Shepard, Eli Stone has songs by George Michael, particularly the track, Faith. The hallucinations that Alley McBeal had were just dramatic representation of her thoughts and wishful thinking, most notably the Dancing Baby sequences. The hallucinations that Eli Stone has are due to his medical condition, brain aneurysm. However these “hallucinations” were many a times some kind of prophecies that guided Eli to do the right (moral) thing.
It is actually these visions that Eli has and the creative ways the script writers used these visions to put each episode in perspective that I find interesting and keep watching. For instance in Episode 7, Eli was chased by a fire-breathing dragon. This convinced him to take a case, even when the odds of winning was low, to sue a Dr Agon for malpractice (DrAgon = dragon). When it seemed Eli would lose the case, he saw his brother dressed as a knight on a horse fighting against the dragon. Eventually his brother provided some information that led to a successful win. At the end of this episode, the plaintiff gave Eli his favourite story book on Medieval Dragons.
Another interesting thing about this series is that every actors and actresses will do a song-dance routine. And Episode 2, in which Victor Garber sang and danced, is reason enough for me to do a review on Eli Stone. Having watched Victor Garber as the no-nonsense-at-many-times-ruthless Jack Bristow, father of Sydney Bristow in Alias for five seasons, it was almost surreal to watch him did that.
Ally McBeal ran for 5 seasons, I wonder how long Eli Stone will last, not that it matters.
Eli Stone is on every Friday at 8.00 pm on Star World (Channel 18).
Eli Stone is the male equivalent of Ally McBeal. Both are attorneys, with Ally McBeal in Boston and Eli Stone in San Francisco. Whilst Ally McBeal had songs by Vonda Shepard, Eli Stone has songs by George Michael, particularly the track, Faith. The hallucinations that Alley McBeal had were just dramatic representation of her thoughts and wishful thinking, most notably the Dancing Baby sequences. The hallucinations that Eli Stone has are due to his medical condition, brain aneurysm. However these “hallucinations” were many a times some kind of prophecies that guided Eli to do the right (moral) thing.
It is actually these visions that Eli has and the creative ways the script writers used these visions to put each episode in perspective that I find interesting and keep watching. For instance in Episode 7, Eli was chased by a fire-breathing dragon. This convinced him to take a case, even when the odds of winning was low, to sue a Dr Agon for malpractice (DrAgon = dragon). When it seemed Eli would lose the case, he saw his brother dressed as a knight on a horse fighting against the dragon. Eventually his brother provided some information that led to a successful win. At the end of this episode, the plaintiff gave Eli his favourite story book on Medieval Dragons.
Another interesting thing about this series is that every actors and actresses will do a song-dance routine. And Episode 2, in which Victor Garber sang and danced, is reason enough for me to do a review on Eli Stone. Having watched Victor Garber as the no-nonsense-at-many-times-ruthless Jack Bristow, father of Sydney Bristow in Alias for five seasons, it was almost surreal to watch him did that.
Ally McBeal ran for 5 seasons, I wonder how long Eli Stone will last, not that it matters.
Eli Stone is on every Friday at 8.00 pm on Star World (Channel 18).
A Tiring Week
This past week has been tiring.
Had second round of budget meeting, which lead to the need to verify and clarify with people who prepared their budgets, like “what were you thinking when you prepared the budget?” After which was the consolidation of the budgets which would be presented for final approval.
Mid-week I caught not the flu bug but the “uh-hum” bug. The “uh-hum” bug just gave me a constant nagging irritation in the throat – no cough, no cold, no fever. But when I had a nasty headache and kind of feverish I went to see the doctor early to prevent another episode of “my immune system being overwhelmed.”
Previously, there was this flu bug that was going around in the office but I managed to fend it off. I was feeling great but whilst at home one day, all of a sudden I got a sudden chill and then fever followed immediately which required two days of rest for me to recover. My doc said my immune system was fighting the then flu bug successfully till it cannot take it anymore and was “overwhelmed” hence the sudden chill and immediate fever. So is my immune system against the flu strong or not?
I have been getting my annual flu jab for the past three years now. Studies show that people who have flu jabs are less likely to get the flu and when they get it, they take one to two days less to recover from it. At $30 a jab, it is worth it!
Was “resting” at home for two days. Spent those two days sleeping, catching up on tv shows and restoring my computer. This time round I can’t even access the failed one-year old hard disk as its CHS values cannot be determined by the BIOS (anybody got a solution to this?). This is a first for me as I never experienced a failed hard disk within a year. My backups had always been in another partition in the same disk and eventually I will create another backup on another hard disk but unfortunately I didn't get to this stage of backup yet. As such I lost all my data and emails for the past 14 months or so. Was kind of dejected over this for the past two weeks as I should have known better and had I not been so "lazy" and so was not in the mood to do anything.
A new staff would be coming onboard so I needed to prepare and configure a computer system for him. Normally I get to know about new staff joining at least a month ahead so I get plenty of time to prep up the system. But this time round it was just a few days’ notice. It seems he was informed of his posting the same time we knew he was coming.
Hope to take some time off next week to catch up with a friend and to play with my cousins’ children.
Had second round of budget meeting, which lead to the need to verify and clarify with people who prepared their budgets, like “what were you thinking when you prepared the budget?” After which was the consolidation of the budgets which would be presented for final approval.
Mid-week I caught not the flu bug but the “uh-hum” bug. The “uh-hum” bug just gave me a constant nagging irritation in the throat – no cough, no cold, no fever. But when I had a nasty headache and kind of feverish I went to see the doctor early to prevent another episode of “my immune system being overwhelmed.”
Previously, there was this flu bug that was going around in the office but I managed to fend it off. I was feeling great but whilst at home one day, all of a sudden I got a sudden chill and then fever followed immediately which required two days of rest for me to recover. My doc said my immune system was fighting the then flu bug successfully till it cannot take it anymore and was “overwhelmed” hence the sudden chill and immediate fever. So is my immune system against the flu strong or not?
I have been getting my annual flu jab for the past three years now. Studies show that people who have flu jabs are less likely to get the flu and when they get it, they take one to two days less to recover from it. At $30 a jab, it is worth it!
Was “resting” at home for two days. Spent those two days sleeping, catching up on tv shows and restoring my computer. This time round I can’t even access the failed one-year old hard disk as its CHS values cannot be determined by the BIOS (anybody got a solution to this?). This is a first for me as I never experienced a failed hard disk within a year. My backups had always been in another partition in the same disk and eventually I will create another backup on another hard disk but unfortunately I didn't get to this stage of backup yet. As such I lost all my data and emails for the past 14 months or so. Was kind of dejected over this for the past two weeks as I should have known better and had I not been so "lazy" and so was not in the mood to do anything.
A new staff would be coming onboard so I needed to prepare and configure a computer system for him. Normally I get to know about new staff joining at least a month ahead so I get plenty of time to prep up the system. But this time round it was just a few days’ notice. It seems he was informed of his posting the same time we knew he was coming.
Hope to take some time off next week to catch up with a friend and to play with my cousins’ children.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
How To Edit MP3 Files?
I mentioned that I have Les Crane’s Desiderata as my sms notification ringtone. I might as well add that I have Sarah Brightman’s I Lost My Heart to A Starship Trooper (SB-ILMHTAST) as my incoming call ringtone. Both songs are about 4.5 minutes long.
SB-ILMHTAST starts off slowly and softly with a radioed message to contact the starship. There is also another attempt towards the end of the song, but this time the music is louder with words of passion being mumbled followed by noise of passion (this is where I usually turn up the volume way up high and low in tandem with the “noise”). Then there is the sound of lasers of the troopers firing at each other. Followed by strong repeats of the chorus.
What this means is that if I have to choose just 30 seconds of this song as my ringtone, there are so many parts I can choose from. The beginning 30 seconds is great. It comes on softly. So when I am near my phone I can pick it up before it becomes too loud for others to hear. But when I am not near my phone, I can’t hear it and might miss my call. I also like the passionate words & noise (obviously!) part and the laser part. So I ended up cutting this song into four parts of 30 seconds each.
To do the above, you just need Audacity. Audacity is a free (open source), extremely easy to use, audio editor and recorder. It supports wav, aiff, ogg and mp3 files. You can also change the pitch, tempo and bit-rates and remove noise easily. You can also install plug-ins for more functionalities. Despite its functions working quickly and smoothly, it does not hog up computer resources.
However because of software patents, you need to install the free LAME encoder to export (save your edited version of) mp3 files with Audacity. Detailed instructions are on its website.
To edit an mp3 file is like and as easy as editing a word document – you just Cut, Copy, Paste or Delete, and Save.
In a word document, you open the file, click on the beginning of the text you want and highlight it to the end of the text you want, either Copy or Cut and then save the selected portion.
Likewise to edit an mp3 file, you open the file and you will see the song’s sound wave and the time-line. Click at the time-line corresponding to the point you to want to start and drag to the end-point. You can click on the Play button to listen to your selected portion and make any adjustments you want. When you are satisfied, just save the file using another file name; otherwise your original version will be overridden.
If you have the time and are adventurous, you can play around with the other functions which can produce some amusing results.
Besides the Windows version of Audacity, there is also one for Mac OS X and Linux.
SB-ILMHTAST starts off slowly and softly with a radioed message to contact the starship. There is also another attempt towards the end of the song, but this time the music is louder with words of passion being mumbled followed by noise of passion (this is where I usually turn up the volume way up high and low in tandem with the “noise”). Then there is the sound of lasers of the troopers firing at each other. Followed by strong repeats of the chorus.
What this means is that if I have to choose just 30 seconds of this song as my ringtone, there are so many parts I can choose from. The beginning 30 seconds is great. It comes on softly. So when I am near my phone I can pick it up before it becomes too loud for others to hear. But when I am not near my phone, I can’t hear it and might miss my call. I also like the passionate words & noise (obviously!) part and the laser part. So I ended up cutting this song into four parts of 30 seconds each.
To do the above, you just need Audacity. Audacity is a free (open source), extremely easy to use, audio editor and recorder. It supports wav, aiff, ogg and mp3 files. You can also change the pitch, tempo and bit-rates and remove noise easily. You can also install plug-ins for more functionalities. Despite its functions working quickly and smoothly, it does not hog up computer resources.
However because of software patents, you need to install the free LAME encoder to export (save your edited version of) mp3 files with Audacity. Detailed instructions are on its website.
To edit an mp3 file is like and as easy as editing a word document – you just Cut, Copy, Paste or Delete, and Save.
In a word document, you open the file, click on the beginning of the text you want and highlight it to the end of the text you want, either Copy or Cut and then save the selected portion.
Likewise to edit an mp3 file, you open the file and you will see the song’s sound wave and the time-line. Click at the time-line corresponding to the point you to want to start and drag to the end-point. You can click on the Play button to listen to your selected portion and make any adjustments you want. When you are satisfied, just save the file using another file name; otherwise your original version will be overridden.If you have the time and are adventurous, you can play around with the other functions which can produce some amusing results.
Besides the Windows version of Audacity, there is also one for Mac OS X and Linux.
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