The lioness has moved

Heya, Lioness in Japan has moved to www.luiyuming.com. Yup, I finally got my own domain name. This idea has been incubating for awhile, and with the kangaroo’s help, I was able to update everything in just two days.



Why did I do this? Well, I have a few of reasons. Firstly, any web editor worth her salt should have her own domain name. It may be a personal blog but it is a gallery of my work and what I am capable of. I want to look more professional, too.

Secondly, search engines (primarily Google) actually regard Blogger and other blog domain names to be not much better than spam and inferior content. If you want link love from big daddy Google, you gotta spruce things up.

Lastly, I have been increasingly frustrated with my blogspot space — it is inflexible and if you compare it to the Wordpress community, there is a paltry number of themes and plugins to choose from.

Design is still my biggest weakness, as I'm first and foremost a writer, but these days, you just can’t sit in one role and make things happen. If budgets are tight, you have to multitask.

I used to be scared of technology and the Internet, but how I became braver began when I was just a rookie at a women’s magazine where any newbie was shoved the worst column — the tech page in the lifestyle section. It was kicked around like the bastard child in the family. But I forced myself to read the tech jargon and I realized that with all things tech, you would find a plethora of info on the biggest resource, the Internet.

The next step for me was to take care of our first website, Class Action Finder, where I bumbled about for a year between teaching English in Tokyo.

When I went full-time in Jan this year, I forced myself to go through trial and error. I crawled forums, learned HTML code, and googled lots of “what is”, “how to”, and “who is”. Every morning, I read articles and blogs on SEO and web trends, along with BBC and The Japan Times. I’ve still got tons to learn but this is where I am now.

Someone special I look forward to seeing

For the benefit of those who are still new to the Lioness site, I'm a dog lover — through and through. One of my ambitions is to own a couple of pugs one day but that would be much later in life as our apartment in Tokyo has a no-dog policy.

This is Taffy, one of my favouritest friends in the world. She hasn’t been well lately and you can see her skin taking on a dark hue with a crusty rash.

My elder sister sent me a bunch of pictures after a health scare (my folks thought she had a stroke) but she is doing okay now. Our previous pug, Cindy, suffered a terrible stroke and died almost immediately. Unfortunately I am well aware that this 12-year-old pug of mine has her days numbered and I just want to put up an adorable picture of her.

I hope to spend as much time with her on my visit to Singapore next week.

Passion for fusion

What struck me today is how chepalang (mixed up, or “anyhow anyway” in Singlish) my eating habits and cooking are of late. I think I have been like this for a while, since I moved to Tokyo. Back home, I used to make all sorts of different cuisines for meals but they tend to be pretty straight, like Thai curry will be accompanied by tom yum soup, or spaghetti bolognese was paired with garlic bread, or bok choy in oyster sauce went together with kung pow chicken.

Why am I waxing lyrical over daily feeding patterns? Well, I’ll get to it. I think I’ve become more adaptable and flexible — I improvise when I lack ingredients or just go without. Gastronomical adjustments aside, I think this has permeated all aspects of my new life here. Patience is a hard lesson I’ve learnt and going with the flow is a seriously valuable trait to have.

One thing that hasn’t changed, though, is I’m still as obsessed with food as ever, but perhaps more interested in other cuisines other than what I knew before (Chinese, Singaporean, Thai and Italian).

I thought the food lovers among my readers would be interested to know what has been dancing on my palate — what does a Singaporean eat at home in Tokyo? Is is possible to survive without hawker da baos (take out)?

Here is one example: Bah Kut Teh (pork ribs in tea soup is a rough translation), cold, smooth tofu in ponzu sauce (a Japanese mandarin rind sauce used in shabu-shabu), with brown rice. I refuse to buy pork ribs here because they are expensive and virtually meatless, so I just opt for the big chopped up flank pieces meant for stews. I threw in bunashimeiji mushrooms, spinach and enoki. The original version of course only has pork ribs and usually with a side of salted veggies.



Other favourites are grilled salmon and a side of Indian chickpea curry, tacos with miso soup, egg plant and ochre in assam fish curry without the fish, Korean stir-fried pork with kimchi and onions plus xiao bai cai (small white vegetable is the direct translation but it's actually a medium green leafy veggie) and shiitake mushrooms in oyster sauce, Worchestershire and sesame oil-marinated pork chops with a side of stir-fried broccoli and garlic in soy sauce, and bunashimeiji mushrooms and lemon-flavoured sausages in pesto sauce with penne pasta.

I think I’m probably not alone in mixing it all up — serious globe trotters who have lived in several countries are probably more chepalang. Even though I live in a fairly mono-cultural society now, I think I am more exposed to different cultures than before in cosmo Singapore, by virtue of the fact that I mingle in the foreign community, which is of course a veritable melting pot.

Horses won’t do well in 2008

One very Chinesey thing about the kangaroo is that he loves reading Chinese astrological predictions. He even got his mum into it, so back from Singapore last Saturday, he announced, “Babe, I got a pressie for you!”

This is what he got me. Plus, the year of the rat for himself, and the year of the sheep for his mum.



This lovely book by Lilian and Jennifer Too says 2008 will be a horrible year for horses. We will do badly in business, love, health and education.

Apparently, the horse and the rat are doomed to fail as their ambitions are mismatched and are not natural allies. But you know, I went through all the signs and the horse is definitely unlucky in love this year — she quarrels with all the animals and has no one. Maybe the monkey who is loving and kind but even then the horse will try the patience of such an ardent lover.

I might as well commit suicide. Alas, the book doesn’t completely doom the horse to a bottomless hell. The solutions to the horse’s woes are to be frugal (“Save money now, because if you think you can spend today and have more next month, you are very wrong” — I kid you not), patient, quiet (the horse picks fights with everyone and ends up very unpopular, particularly in the office), and to eat healthy, plus carry a number of pendants to ward off evil. The months of June and July are happy reprieves from the whole year of gloom.

What the f$%%&, right? The kangaroo will have an excellent year, like rats always do because they are number one in the zodiac chain. We concluded that we will only believe in Chinesey bullshit if it’s good news.

Sydney is a pretty city

The rain stopped after 13 consecutive days and this is what we had after...



Driving along the highway to Sydney Immigration where the kangaroo had to collect his new passport. The new version has a microchip in it (not unlike pets...?) and he had to go for an interview to confirm that this was indeed his passport. Just when we thought only the Japanese government is full of red tape…


The Sydney Harbour Bridge was a constant feature in our daily traipse around the city. Our hotels were always in the central Sydney, but his family and the office were in North Sydney.



I was just hanging around the Sydney Immigration building while the kangaroo did his thing. It explains the random pictures…



You find the kangaroo symbol everywhere…even on rugby T-shirts…

Pictures of the wedding in Sydney

Just a quick pictorial spread of the fun day we had with George and Jo who got hitched on a beautiful sunny day in Sydney. They have come together on a path that could tear apart most couples but they stuck together through it all.

A short rehash of their history: George dumped his ex Pip two days after she arrived in Singapore — this followed meeting Jo in Brisbane at a company conference. Jo was married, had a baby girl, lived in Brisbane, and was his colleague (some of his friends tease him that she’s older, so that’s supposedly another hurdle, but really, they are only 18 months apart). They kept up Skyping everyday for three hours and probably saw each other once a month for the two years that George was in Singapore. It was only last November that George returned to Sydney and she moved up from Brissy.

Here is their special day…



Since it wasn’t a religious ceremony, George and Jo opted for a celebrant and key family members read love poems.



On the extreme left is Lizzy, Jo’s little girl, and the other two are Lucia and Sophia, the kangaroos’s nieces.



Look who’s super sharp in their tuxes! The kangaroo and Hotel Burlington boss pose for a picture.



That’s us looking spiffy but dying for cocktails. The ceremony and photo-taking were in the sunken garden, but the drinks were in the upstairs bar.



Charles, the kangaroo’s younger brother who lives in London, stole the show with his zebra-print shoes. His wife, Alessia, rolled her eyes, “He gets his power from these shoes.” She shopped for a week to get her feather boa dress and she deadpanned, “Nobody is noticing my dress because they are looking at his shoes!”



The immediate family photo — quite a varied bunch. It was a fun party later. The bridal couple made a bubbly entrance with funky music, as opposed to serious string music. Instead of a traditional cake, they chose to serve pink and white frosted cupcakes with silver baubles. Delicious… Lots of wine and bellinis flowed and there was dancing after dinner. I don't remember much after that because I got a tad tipsy and was literally carried to bed by the kangaroo. Should be a sign of a good night, eh?

Anzac Day in Sydney

Along George Street in central Sydney was the Anzac Day parade on Friday, 25 April 2008. I was always fuzzy on the details on why this was such an important date in the Aussie calendar.

In Singapore, I woke up at dawn to go to a Woodlands cemetery to attend an Anzac ceremony three years ago. I just knew that many soldiers, Aussies, Kiwis, and British were slaughtered by the Turkish troops in Gallipoli, a beach on the coast of Turkey, during World War I. The battle instructions sent out gave the wrong location so the troops arrived at a cliffed beach where the Turkish army shot downwards and everyone was hopelessly wiped out within a matter of hours as the sun rose. After a series of hymns and prayers, we went down to the breakfast buffet where coffee and rum were served. So Aussie — they have their tipple any of the day.

But the real story to this tradition is that the soldiers found themselves in this horrible situation, so their commanders gave them rum to drum up liquid courage. It sort of was like a last toast to life and they faced the bloodiness like brave men should.

I always wondered why the kangaroo was so enthusiastic about Anzac Day. He dragged us out of bed at 4am the first time, and in Sydney last weekend, he hauled himself out of bed even though he had a horrible hangover.

I got rugged up (another Aussism) and followed him to the parade that was just one street away from our hotel at Sussex Street.



It does look like a parade like any other with marching bands but the historical and social impact can be seen in the different legions of people marching. They represented their section of the military — medical, airforce, navy, army….The whole of Australia was involved in the war and even those who didn’t fight in the frontline but were at home. They made uniforms, packed food, made weapons… the list is endless. The parade is not so much about the glorification of war, but about national solidarity in times of necessity. Widows wore their late husbands’ war medals proudly and their emotions were palpable. I felt the buzz of familial pride on my skin on this cold autumn day in Sydney.

There you go, another cultural nugget about Australia I discovered and why the kangaroo would get out of bed even though his tongue still felt furry (another Aussism) from the bucks' party the night before.