Went to Singapore General Hospital for my very first blood donation yesterday. Blood donation is voluntary and blood is not for sale here. And I have, for the longest time, wanted to donate my blood. Just couldn't find the time to. My blood type is O- which is pretty rare which is pretty much the reason why I wanted to donate.

On Saturday, my meeting ended early and I thought why not? I had a couple of hours to spare, my kids were home with my husband and I had the use of the car. So I drove over to HSA.

I registered at the counter and the nurse gave me some phamplets, a questionaire and a sticker which she asked me to paste on my T-shirt. The questionaire was typical, asking me to declare that I'm HIV, Hepatitis free etc. The first stop was to check my blood pressure and temperature. Next was the haemoglobin level check. A nurse pricked my middle finger. It was quite painful! She squeezed a drop of blood from my finger into a beaker containing some blue solution. My blood drop sort of floated on the surface. She looked at it and squeezed another drop of blood onto a plastic strip. I was curious so I asked her what she was doing. She told me if my haemoglobin level was high, the blood would have sunk to the bottom of the beaker. I looked and sure enough, there were small little globs of blood in the beaker. Mine floated which meant my level was low and she had to do a more detailed check to see if I met the hb requirement. I just made it! Mine was 12.4 g/dl and the minimum level for lady donors got to be 12.0 g/dl.

Next I went into a hall and there were about another 12 people lying in the reclining chairs. They looked relaxed so that eased me a bit. I was getting kind of apprehensive by then. I sat down on the comfy chair and immediately a few nurses came over. One asked whether i was feeling cold, whether I needed a blanket and another asked whether I needed a drink.. wow... wish i could have people fussing over me like this everyday!

One of them cleaned my arm with an antiseptic solution and gave me an injection. Told me it would numb the area so that I wouldn't feel anything when they insert the needle. She showed me the needle and I was shocked! It looked huge and I was wondering what had I gotten myself into! But she was right, I didn't feel anything at all. She placed a rubber ball in my hand and asked me to squeeze it every 5 to 10 sec. I looked down at the blood bag and I could see it gradually being filled up with my blood... my precious blood.

The nurses came over to check on me quite freqently. It was over in about 20minutes. 300cc of blood had gone into that little bag! Again, the nurses fussed over me. I suddenly realised that I was the only one surrounded by nurses. The rest of the donors had one or two checking on them from time to time. I wondered why I was getting 'special' attention. Was I looking sickly, turning blue or what?

It was much later when I realised why. The sticker that I had on my T-shirt? It said "Be Nice to Me. This is my First Donation!"

A few blog sites got hacked into recently. One of them, Xiaxue, had her 3 years' worth of blog entries and 3000 emails in her gmail account totally wiped off. The hacker even left nasty entries on her blogsite. While I'm no fan of xiaxue, this is not something i'll wish upon her.

So fellow bloggers, please remember backup your stuff and make sure you change your passwords every now & then.

Again, I had to dig through my brother's vast collection of rock songs to locate these 3 fantastic old numbers.

I got my copy on Saturday. Didn't pre-book. Just walked into a little bookstore and bought it right off the counter at about 10.00am. So i wonder why are people pre-booking and going as early as 5am to queue for the world-wide launch at 7.10am. And it's not like there's a limited prints.

I was looking forward to the book, yes, but not at the expense of losing a couple more hours of sleep! I read in the newspapers that a family actually book a hotel room right across Borders so that they could be the first (or among the first) to get the book. wow.

Anyway back to the book. I finished it on Sunday morning. Although it's not as riveting as the first four books, it was definitely better than book 5. Book 5 has way too much anger. This has a good mix of humor, adventure, romance and of course, death. No spoiler here. No worries! It gave much more in-sight to Voldmort's early days. Yeah.. it's ok. But book 4 is still my fav.

Hmm... and what's with the children edition and adult edition? The difference is only in the cover, right? All the while i've bought the children edition, am i missing anything?

National Kidney Foundation (NKF) 's CEO Mr. T.T. Durai sued Singapore Press Holdings and one of its reporters for defamation. But revelations in the court proceedings threw the entire nation into an uproar.

NKF is a non-profitable, voluntary health organisation which seeks to prevent kidney and urinary tract diseases and to improve the health and well-being of individuals and families affected by these diseases. And being a non-profitatble organisation, it seeks funds from the public through fund raising events like the annual NKF Charity Shows etc.

This is all very commendable since their main objective is to help patients and families affected by kidney diseases.

It all started with an article written by a SPH's reporter. I didn't read it but apparently the reporter questioned the transparency of handling the donation money and the justification of luxurious renovations to the CEO's office. Well, Durai decided to sue SPH for defamation.

But during the court proceedings, it was revealed that the CEO, Mr. Durai, gets $25,000 per month, 10 to 12 months bonus, travels via First Class or Business Class for overseas trips, has 8 Mercedes at his personal disposal and other undisclosed directorship fees. Wow!

And all the while the public was misled to believe that without our continual donations, the reserve funds will last only 3 years. But again in the court, they did some calculations and realised that even if all fundings were to stop immediately the reserve is enough to last for more than 20 years!

Two days after the court proceedings, Duari withdrew his suits.

But damage was already done. Thousands withdrew their monthly contributions. NKF Building was vandalised. Tens of thousands petitions for Durai's resignation. Many lost faith in the charitable organizations here. Well, yesterday the NKF Board and Durai resigned under tremendous public pressure.

The best part of this whole thing was none of these would have come to light if Durai had not been so cocky and sued SPH.

This is called.... Digging one's own grave.

The new NKF board & CEO will have a lot of damage control to do. Good luck to them!

I kept hearing the same thing from friends everywhere. Everyone's telling me I've put on weight! I was in denial and somehow i managed to convince myself it's just temporary...hahaha.. yeah right. Finally i have to face the truth... i am getting fat! I could not fit into the pair of jeans i bought just a couple of months back. And the weighing scale said I've gained like 4~5kg. Shit!

Tour de France is now on. After watching it for the last one week, I decided I want to take up cycling. It looks fun and it's a good way to burn of fat and increase fitness. My husband owns a road bike and was supportive of the idea. So on Saturday, we went down to his regular bike shop to check out the bikes. The lady owner was very helpful and in no time, we picked out one that's suits my height.

The bike was fitted and delivered to our house that same night. I was so eager for a test ride. But within one minute, I ended up on the kerb, with a skinned elbow, scratched palm, bloodied knees and a bruised ego. I'm totally not ready for a road bike.

Moral of the story.... Tour de France is hazardous to health.

I've caught a bit of CSI on and off over the years but didn't really pay much attention to it. Partly because i'm not really a TV person and partly because i hardly get a chance to sit through any entire show. You know, too many distractions.. the kids would asking for things, wanting me to help with their stuffs, or they would be fighting.

And also because i'm not used to shows with too many characters. Too complicated. I mean, all the while i've watched shows with 2 main characters.., Starsky & Hutch, Laura Holt & Remington Steele, Lavern & Shirly, Mulder & Scully. Keep it simple.

Not too long ago I caught an episode of CSI:Miami on Starhub TV. And it happened to be that CSI:M-NY crossover eppy and i must say i enjoyed it. CSI and CSI:M have ended it's 5th season and 3rd season respectively in US. So i'm way way behind.

Knowing it will take ages for the DVDs to reach our stores, i bought both Season 1 & 2 CSI:Miami DVDs when i was in US. And back here, i bought Season 1 & 2 of the flagship CSI. Surprisingly the price of the box sets are cheaper in US! Season 1 CSI:M is selling here for S$131, which is about US$77, and I got mine for US$39 from Orlando! And I always thought that videos and stuffs are cheaper here.

I've got 72 episodes more to go! It's going to be CSIs very night for the next couple of months!

I guess the next best thing to hosting the Olympic Games is .. to host the International Olympic Committee Session (IOC). Celebrities have been arriving in Singapore since 1st July to lobby for votes for their own country. I haven't really been following the news but if I'm not wrong, David Beckham, Raul Gonzalez, Muhammad Ali, Ian Thorpe, British PM Tony Blair, Princess Anne, Hilary Clinton and many others are already here.

Needless to say, security is all beefed up. Many roads leading to the hotels the representatives are staying and Raffles City Convention Centre (venue of the session), are all blocked off. Traffic is a nightmare in town now.

I think the winning city will be announced tomorrow on 6 July. I'm not a sports fan so I didn't really follow the news too closely. Besides Tour de France is on! yeah!