the artificial construct

Favourite Albums of the Noughties - #1

2011-08-20T04:50:00.000+08:00

#1 Tanya Chua 蔡健雅 - Goodbye and Hello (2007)

A bit of history on Tanya: She first emerged on the English music scene in Singapore as a rocker-type singer-songwriter in 1997. Two years later, she released her first Chinese album, where she had to read lyrics phonetically. She met with middling success with her first three albums, as there was some incongruity with her music and her image, which meant that the Taiwanese audience just didn't take to her. It was only at a new label, Warner, when she released 陌生人 (Stranger), that she found her niche --> singing songs of love and heartbreak from the point of view of a intelligent and sensitive urban woman. There's a certain modern quality to her voice (something I find all Singaporean singers possess) that enables her to connect to both lyrics about surviving in the harsh coldness of cities like Taipei and the struggle to find meaningful contact when you're one soul amidst a million strangers. But there was still something missing in spire of the commercial and critical success Tanya found: She's a songwriter by nature, and due to her weakness in Chinese, she was often getting songs written for her. It wasn't exactly her own voice that she was expressing then.

That changed with 2007's Goodbye and Hello, which I really do believe is a landmark album is the Mandopop world. It had been two years or more since Tanya had released new music, and she had decided in that time to relocate to Taipei so she could improve her Chinese. And unfortunately, she also experienced the tearful end of a relationship. Drawing from her pain, Tanya for the first time ever wrote her own Chinese lyrics - a far cry form the days when she could only read hanyu pinyin. She also took the new role of album executive producer. The result is a soulful rumination of love and loss in the city. Tanya's lyrics were not, and probably won't ever be, as poetic as those of lyricists like Vincent Fang (

方文山), but in their simplicity and stark honesty, she lays bare her emotions, and it is moving and beautiful. There are songs of pure pain, such as the piano-led 空白格 (Empty Space), which is sparse in its arrangement but so evocative and haunting. It's not just all about breaking out the hankies too, as Tanya also sings about the lessons one can learn from failed relationships and move one, like the feisty title track.

The album opens with 达尔文 (Darwin), which talks about how we evolve to become better humans with each failed relationship. The arrangement is gentle, with soft guitar strumming. It's as if she's consoling herself by telling herself how said evolution is good, even though she's still hurting. Goodbye and Hello closes with the same track, except it's now called Darwin II (The Evolved Version). The arrangement is quirkier, brighter. You can imagine her singing this with a wistful smile as she looks back at the past, ready, and importantly, able, to move on.

Goodbye and Hello is my album of the decade.

Stunning song. Gorgeous video. Also a great example of how you don't need big budgets to make beautiful works of art.

Favourite Albums of the Noughties - #2

2011-08-11T06:51:00.002+08:00

#2 Britney Spears - Blackout (2007)

I've always maintained to everyone who asks that I love Britney in a completely non-ironic way. I genuinely believe that she's released some pop classics in her career. Singles like Baby, One More Time, I'm a Slave 4 U and Toxic are as good as anything any indie band-of-the-moment can produce. The only problem was that Brit was one those artists inflicted with filler-itis I'd talked about earlier (Youtube Dear Diary from her Oops... I Did It Again! album for an example). Things improved with 03's In the Zone, which was chockfull of radio-ready hits, but it lacked a cohesive sound. In fact, it was anything but cohesive. Dance pop, hiphop, electronica, balladeering, jamaican dancehall - the album was japalang, as Singaporeans would say. Between '03 and '07 came and left K-Fed, a poorly promoted Greatest Hits package, two babies and of course, the unraveling of Britney, all of which culminated in that infamous shot of bald Brit wielding an umbrella against a paparazzo's car.

It was in the midst of her personal turmoil that Blackout was released in the fall of '07. The Danja-produced Gimme More came first. She opened the VMAs that year with this song, and it was a disaster of a performance that she sleepwalked through, a performance that is now iconic, but not for the right reasons. The video was a mess too, especially for Britney, who had always been a great video artist previously. But these misfires cannot take away the brilliance of the song, which is as club-worthy as any first single club banger should be, and as irresistibly sleazy and dark. "Gimme gimme more," she purrs. It's dumb, repetitive lyrics that pop culture commentators can have a field day interpreting --> Britney's addiction to fame? The paparazzi's hunger for her? The public's fascination for building up and tearing down celebs? Whatever it is, it added an intriguing quality to an already addictive song.

This time around, with Danja taking on a huge chunk of production duties, Blackout had a cohesive sound through and through - edgy urban dance pop. Not a ballad in sight. Second single Piece of Me was yet another amazing meta-Britney moment, even if it wasn't self-penned. Follow-up Break the Ice was the piece de resistance. 'It's been a while. I'm sorry to have kept you waiting, but I'm here now," she coos at the start of this Danja production. Such a perfect opening for a comeback first single. If only, you know, she was sane and all.

Recorded during her second pregnancy, Blackout was undoubtedly a producer's album. You can hardly discern Britney's voice throughout the album, what with all the autotune, vocodering and other various effects her voice is put through in the tracks. Even when you can actually hear her, you can feel that she wasn't all that 'there' during the recording process. There's also nearly zero introspection in the album, which you'd expect from a post-divorce album (the nearest she comes is an oblique reference in the album closer, Why Should I Be Sad). It's party time all album long, and almost like she said, "Screw this," popped an ecstasy pill or two, and danced away.

All of these factors combines to produce a feeling of detachment and discombobulation that the album evokes. This somehow works, giving Blackout the cold, cool feel utterly perfect for the modern urban sound. Blackout's about an impersonal an album as you can get, but it's also pretty darn close to pop perfection.

This scorcher of a song deserved a much better video... :(

Favourite Albums of the Noughties - #3

2011-08-05T17:51:00.001+08:00

#3 Radiohead - In Rainbows (2007)

You can probably discern from my postings that I'm quite a mainstream pop fan. Radiohead was one of those bands that I knew was pretty much at the top of the credibility mountain. I know their songs of course. There was the early guitar-band sounds of "High and Dry" or "Creep", and then the band progressed with the critically acclaimed OK Computer, which I bought and from which I loved "Karma Police" the most. But then they went left-field starting with Amnesiac and bye went their accessibility factor. From "Creep" to "Idioteque" - talk about evolution.

After a mini four-year hiatus, In Rainbows was released in '07 amidst great flurry, though not actually for its content. Rather, Radiohead made headlines for the way it chose to distribute the album, making it available for download on its official website for free (sorta. Fans could pay any price they wanted). Possible industry-redefining move? Not quite, as we're seeing in hindsight. Cynical attempt to grab headlines after a lull? Hardly, when the music could more than speak for itself. Nonetheless, this move, marketing ploy or not, worked a treat in restating Radiohead's commercial credentials, as In Rainbows opened strong on both sides of the Atlantic, no doubt spurred on by four years of pent-up demand.

In Rainbows' commercial success was warranted for sure, as the album was actually a return to form. Gone was the indulgence of Hail to the Thief, to be replaced by accessibility, without sacrificing artistry. There were melodies (!) and energy to be found in tracks like "Jigsaw Falling Into Place" and "Bodysnatchers". "Nude" and "Videotape" provide those trademark Thom Yorke haunting vocals and moody, evocative instrumentation fit for a David Lynch movie soundtrack. And then there's my personal favorite, "All I Need". Just a beautiful, moving melody, low-key production and Yorke's soaring falsetto towards the end - sublime.

Entertainment 2010

2011-01-07T23:06:00.000+08:00

Just for posterity: The list of movies/books I watched/read for leisure in 2010.

The Road
Youth in Revolt
The Hurt Locker
Up in the Air
When in Rome
Precious
A Single Man
Ashes of Time
An Education
It's Complicated
A Serious Man
Shutter Island
Percy Jackson & the Lightning Thief
Kick-Ass
Iron Man 2
Toy Story 3
Inception (x2)
Berlin '36
Food Inc.
The Corporation
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
Green Zone
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I
Enchanted
The Kids are All Right
Easy A
Grown Ups
Twilight: Eclipse (on a flight! I love watching brainless stuff on flights!)
The Sorcerer's Apprentice
Eat, Pray, Love
Killers
Knight and Day
Sex and the City 2
Capitalism: A Love Story
The Social Network
The Tourist
Tron: Legacy

Favourite of the year: Inception (blockbuster as it should always be done)

Special 'Where did it all go wrong' Award: Michael Cera. Poor George Michael. Jesse Eisenberg used to be mistaken for him. But soon he will be the one people mistake for soon-to-be Oscar-nominated Eisenberg. Cera gave strong, and pretty diverse (imo) performances in Youth In Revolt and Scott Pilgrim (which were both at the very least decent films) but still gets panned for doing the same shtick. Plus, both films sadly flopped. What next? Maybe that long-awaited Arrested Development movie will revive his career.

Books (on top of the dozens for school of course):
Alan Hollinghurst - The Swimming-Pool Library
J.D. Salinger - Franny & Zooey
Alan Hollinghurst - The Folding Star
Josh-Kilmer Purcell - I am Not Myself These Days
Roddy Doyle - Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
Alan Hollinghurst - The Line of Beauty

Yes, Hollinghurst propels himself into the list of my favourite authors! Simply brilliant. Franny & Zooey was wonderful as well.

Singles Selection of 2010

2010-12-31T19:11:00.000+08:00

I gotta admit I really slacked off on investigating new music in 2010, and instead went the nostalgic route and often revisited favourites from decades past. Seeking comfort in the familiar when in a foreign land, definitely. Of course, I still managed to listen to some new music, and I decided to throw together a list of my favourite singles of 2010.

蔡依林 - 无言以对

Jolin does American R&B? Sign me up! Before she hit the big big time with 看我72变, Jolin in fact pumped out quite a few R&B-lite tunes, which I think she has a flair for, because she's got a good sense of rhythm with her singing. This is what she should be doing more, instead of the tired Ah-Lian dance pop numbers.

Take That - The Flood

Robbie's back and takes up a huge chunk of vocal responsibility immediately. Not sure how I feel about that, but I know for sure The Flood is top-notch balladeering, with an urgent and soaring chorus that just builds and builds. Epic! With great vocal harmonies, and some metaphorical mumbo-jumbo lyrics about "learning how to dance the rain" (probably about the band's evolution since its inception), this song is as good as any from the band's 90s heyday.

Marina & the Diamonds - Oh No!

Forget Ke$ha and Katy Perry, Marina is the triumphant pop story of the year! Interesting look, strong voice, quirky lyrics (that she writes herself), strong hooks aplenty - there's nothing not to love here! This song never fails to perk me up! Marina's definitely the best of the batch of 'quirky' Brit pop gals like Ellie Goulding and Pixie Lott. Do investigate!

林俊杰 - 她说

I was immediately predisposed to liking the song when I learned that the lyrics were written by all-time fav, Stefanie Sun, but 她说 is a really great traditional Mandopop piano-driven ballad. And I love the lyrics too! Well done, Stef! Also love the little piano refrain from 记得 after the first chorus. I had a period in November when I was listening to JJ constantly on my commute to my internship, and this song was a regular guest on that play list. Great melancholic sing along on the walk to the train station haha.

Kylie Minogue - All the Lovers

I think if there were to be an aural representation of words like 'bliss' and 'joy', this song would be it. Seriously, this song radiates positivity. Kylie softens her already girlish vocals, and she caresses the lyrics of the song in such an intimate, lush fashion I feel that she is singing/whispering directly to me. The Stuart Price production is brilliant too, especially the breakdown before the final chorus. It is pure, well, joy indeed (minor flaw: the breakdown is so great that there should've been an extended one for the album version of the song). Oh and the video is simply amazing too
.
Robyn - Dancing on My Own

Continuing on the path forged by 2007's With Every Heartbeat, Dancing On My Own is another melancholic lyrics set to a throbbing electropop beat-type song. If it ain't broke and all... And no one does painful yearning quite like Robyn. And the wonderful plinky electronica bits really sets off her wonderful, emotional vocals - sorta a juxtaposition of human frailty and digital cool. A perfect heartbreak song for this millennial era. And it's also my single of the year.

Favourite Albums of the Noughties Pt. 1

2010-08-11T15:46:00.001+08:00

I'm a bit late in compiling my list of the best of the decade, so sorry to my audience of five (though technically, the decade begins with '01 and ends with '10, so I'm in fact early!). Looking back in 10 or 100 years from now, I'm sure that music historians would locate the death of the album to sometime this decade. Consumers, aided by the digitisation of music and the MP3 revolution, altered their behaviour, forgoing album-purchasing in favour of buying individual tracks,, which have been mostly done on the innocuously-termed store we know as Itunes. A whole generation of music lovers has come of age understanding only the instant gratification model of downloading the latest tracks, the singles, the hits. That's not to mention those who've grown up simply obtaining their music through illegal downloads, which dramatically changes their perception of the value of music and that has consequences that will not be addressed here. In sum then, the idea of an album, one with a cohesive concept from start to finish from the recording to the album art, has in this decade begun its slide into irrelevance, methinks.

I'm certainly no different from the type of people whom I've described above. Like them, I've been afflicted with "shuffle mode-itis", and my attention span's gotten shorter such that I rarely play albums from start to finish nowadays. The probably also speaks to the quality of music that's been put out in the recent past, with complacent record companies concerned with producing only 2-3 hit singles per album, then slapping on 7-8 disposable fillers and calling it a day. Who would listen to an entire album then, when you could simply shuffle between hits from your favourite one-hit wonders.

The point of my insanely long preamble, then, is that in today's ADHD world of music listening, an album that can sustain your interest from beginning to end must indeed be something quite special. I've narrowed down my list of albums of the decade to 5, all of which have been, at one time or another, albums that I've played repeatedly, and which still holds my attention from the first track to the last as I went back to re-listen to various albums to come up with this list. They'll not be to everybody's tastes obviously, but I do genuinely believe that there is objective merit to be found in each that no one can not appreciate.

Firstly, here's some of the albums that just missed the cut of my Top 5 of the Decade:

Stefanie Sun - 孙燕姿 (Stefanie Sun) (2000)

Singapore's biggest star (arguably?) emerged the summer of 2000, proving an instant hit in the Mandopop capital of Taiwan, and justifiably so. Her distinct, vibrato-free vocals, coupled with the words and music of local maestros Wei Song/ Si Song, produced classics like 天黑黑 and 超快感. Millions fell in love with Yan Zi at first sight (or sound, rather), and I was one of them.

Kelly Clarkson - Breakway (2004)

For a 13 month stretch between 2004/05, Kelly Clarkson ruled the world, much like how Gaga is the zeitgeist of the scene now. The run of Breakway-Since You Been Gone-Behind These Hazel Eyes-Because of You-Walkaway must be one of the strongest single runs in recent memory (Again, probably only Gaga with Just Dance-Poker Face-Love Game-Paparazzi-Bad Romance-Telephone-Alejandro can top this, and she accomplished this only with a re-release). We know all these hits, and amazingly, more can be found on the album. Would it be blashemy to say that this is Thriller/Rhythm Nation 1814-like in that almost all songs are single-worthy? This is pop-rock at its finest.

Robin Thicke - The Evolution of Robin Thicke (2006)

There are some records that will sound better live. This is not one of those. Thicke always struggles with his trademark falsettos live, but on record, his voice is gloriously smooth and slick, and this entire album is one groovy ride, without being melodically dull. Guests like Lil' Wayne and Pharell add some amazing hip-hop bite. Thicke has consistently been my go-to guy for R&B music since this album.

Jolin Tsai - 舞娘 (Dancing Diva) (2006)

Jolin's an unabashedly commercial artist, with no pretense of artistry. Often, her music comes off as cheesy, or in Singapore-speak, lian/beng-ish (the closest equivalent is probably music for chavs), but, for just one album, everything fell into place. 舞娘 is still as commercial as they come, but there's a certain epic quality to the formula, having been refined to perfection. This was a pop star at the top of her game.

Antony and the Johnsons - I am a Bird Now (2005)

I had never heard anything from Antony Hegarty before this, so it was a strangely disconcerting feeling the first time I listened to his voice, so fragile it's almost cry-like. But quickly, that amazingly unique voice, coupled with his beautiful lyrics (on gender identity), begins to haunt you. Gets minus points because it is a tad too depressing.

Up next: Album #3 in my Top 3 of the decade.

The Holy Pilgrimage Pt. II

2010-07-31T01:27:00.000+08:00

Pt. I of my post on the visit to Old Trafford was a straight-up chronicle of events, and can be found here. This one is about my post-visit observations/reflections.

On the bench!!

1. Consumerism runs amok. After the match, approximately 34539 people squeezed their way into the Megastore. There was actually security personnel who had to perform crowd control, limiting the flow of people into the store. The crowd formed a massive, uncoordinated bloc that waitd outside the entrance, as the store was already bursting with people. They need a Ginomostore, not a Mega-one, methinks. The crowd situation made me wonder if it'd be as crazy if United had lost. Sure, tourists like me would probably still venture in, but I'd guess that regulars might not feel quite as inclined to entertain their kids' requests for that United scrabble set. We're more likely to splash out the cash when we're in a good mood obviously. This really highlights the importance of United maintaining their winning ways given their massive debt: It's not just Champions League earnings, but also merchandise sales, that will be affected.

Dawn of the Dead comes to life

2. The match itself will not be making it into the hall of classics anytime. Both teams played averagely, with many sloppy passes made. In fact, I was kinda shocked at how casual players looked when pinging those passes. Making it look easy, sure, but I still found it slightly disconcerting how unbothered they looked. Both sides had few clear-cut chances at goal, with most of the match being played in midfield and both teams struggled to string passes together.

3. C'est triste que I missed WR10 in action, but I am very thankful to have been able to catch United legends Giggsy and Scholesy in action. Scholes, in particular, was on form that day, and seeing him do his thing in the centre of the park, committing those "oops isn't it cute how he still doesn't know how to tackle" fouls was pure joy.

4. Poor Berbatov. He didn't do well that day, but he didn't fare that badly either. But, every time h got the ball, you could seriously feel the weight of the pressure/expectation the crowd was putting on him. Every time he messed up yet another good scoring opportunity, the collective groan from the stands got louder and ever more frustrated.

Giggsy about to score from the spot.

5. Speaking of disappointments, Michael Carrick was another who faced the crowd's wrath. Underperforming the entire season, Carrick exemplified the whole 'couldn't care less' attitude I described earlier. "Take your time, son", I remember a disgruntled fan in my vicinity shouting. And he would.... only to misplace his pass. Shape up, or ship out, Mister!

6. Nani - Ah, aren't we glad for his revelatory form in the second half of the season. In an uninspiring team performance, it was obvious that Nani was the spark of the squa, the one who proverbially 'made things happen'. Still no Ronaldo, but we'll all be expecting greater and better things to come from him this coming season.

7. Last note on the United squad -- Just want to pay tribute to Evra. Seriously, best left-back in the world (maybe not when playing for La France). ♥

8. Spurs note: Crouch does win those headers, doesn't he? And Gareth Bale was definitely the Nani equivalent for them.

Last chance you were able to hi-five that day! hah!

9. It's sad but I have to confirm that the away crowd is indeed more enthusiastic in their singing/cheering. I think that's the way it is everywhere though. And WC and I sadly were also part of the much maligned prawn sandwich crowd since I didn't know any of the songs and couldn't take part in the singing. *ashamed*

10. On to general thoughts: Attending a football match is nowadays a very wholesome event. Besides the alcohol ban, I was most impressed by how disabled-friendly the club is. There's a big section right at the corner between the East and South ends reserved for fans on wheelchairs, and there's a big MUFC Disabled Supporters' Club, which has its own publicity board inside the stadium. Also, they have a designated hangout area on their own termed the 'Ability Suite'. A big too obvious or cheesy to some perhaps, but I thought it to be a great message.

Also, that day coincided with the anniversary of the Disabled Supporters' Assocation, so that was a 3 on 3 match between some mentally handicapped Spurs and United kids during halftime. I smiled when I head someone near me say "Cone on lads, we're United, we wanna win everything." We lost 1-7 though. Oops.

It's 20LEGEND! O.G. Solskjaer, Reserves manager, leads the squad out to collect their trophy for finishing top of the Northern half of the Reserves League before the match.

11. And finally, another way match-attending is wholesome is how it is very much a family affair. All throughout the stands, there were numerous father-son attendees, including fathers with adorable, excitable children, dads with their teenage lads who might be too cool and slightly embarrassed to hang out with their parental units, and grey-haired men with their grown-up sons. I could easily imagine generations of fans attending United games - Dad brings son brings grandson and so the tradition passes on. Saturaday afternoons would be that special bonding time between father-son as they share the elation of a victory, or the despair of a loss. And eventually, such Saturdays would become amazing, shared memories. I can almost picture a Kodak commercial based on this. NGL, I felt a twinge of envy/sadness seeing these scenes of familial bonding, knowing I never had a decent dad with whom I had memories of joyful experiences. (Sorry, woe-is-me attitude henceforth ceases!)

That is why after the match, this thought came to my mind: maybe Manchester United is too big of an institution today. United is as grand and majestic as football stadiums come, but I couldn't help but envision this rosy, idealised picture of father/son attending their local club's match, where every one's voice mattered, since one's absence wouldn't simply be filled by the next football tourist. Seems like that'd be a more authentic experience, for a lack of a better description. The grandiosity and commercialism of MUFC, exemplified for example by the way the megastore is run like a well-oiled machine and by how skyrocketing season ticket prices are hurting middle/working-class football families, takes away the soul from the experience, this overthinking fan believes.

Farewell to thee, Old Trafford... I will be back!

Why you should care about the success of 'Inception'

2010-07-13T23:52:00.002+08:00

The summer blockbuster season is a time of high stakes for film studios. It's obvious why this is so. Since Spielberg's Jaws opened to, well, jaw-dropping numbers (hur hur) in 1975, Hollywood has successfully conditioned audiences to to expect high octane, larger than life, 'popcorn' movies during the months May through to August. From Raiders of the Lost Ark to Pirates of the Carribean, these summer blockbusters have budgets that run in the hundreds of millions, but have the potential to rake handsome, Apple-eque profits (ok, maybe not quite. But you get the point). Summer blockbusters define the term, 'high risk, high reward'.

Because of the risk of massive losses if an expensively-produced summer movie flops at the box office, Hollywood typically tries to play safe in choosing to produce movies that appeal to the lowest common denominator, which has often resulted in the criticism that summer is the time of dumb, brainless movies. To be fair, there have been many a great summer blockbuster - the original Star Wars trilogy, many of Spielberg's works like E.T. or Jurassic Park, and Nolan's The Dark Knight are just some of the few that come to mind. However, it seems that Hollywood has become increasingly risk-averse in recent years in terms of summer fare. Because of ever exploding budgets (Spidey 3's reported production budget was over 250 million, for example), movies' return on investment have continually decreased, and studios are less and less willing to greenlight original ideas, choosing to bankroll blockbusters only if they already have a built-in audience.

What does this mean? You guessed it - Sequels! Let's examine this summer's movie line-up for example: There's Shrek 4, Toy Story 3, Iron Man 2, Twilight 3, Sex and the City 2, Predators (I don't know how many there's been). If it's not sequels, it's movies based on a book/comic/TV series/video game - Again, Iron Man, Sex and the City and Twilight, The Last Airbender, The A Team, Jonah Hex, Prince of Persia. Remakes/'Reimaginations' is the latest low Hollywood has hit - See Robin Hood, or The Karate Kid (except now with kung fu, and a black kid!). Even when ideas seem original, they're not - Knight and Day and Killers both feature the shenanigans between a gun-toting dude (Cruise and Kutcher) and his clueless, klutzy paramour (Diaz and Heigl) Basically, studios are afraid of plunking down the cash, unless a big opening weekend based on a built-in audience is guaranteed.

I'm not saying that sequels, remakes, movies based on other source material cannot be good. The glowing reviews of Toy Story attest to the fact that they can. It's that this trend has lead to an increase dichotomy where big budgets is reserved for dumb summer fare while quality original material has to be 'indie' and made with about 20 bucks.

Additionally, there's a new trend of 3-D movies. Post-Avatar, studios are hastily converting already shot movies into 3-D ones in post production, resulting in shoddy 3-D productions in The Clash of the Titans (remake!) and The Last Airbender, for example. It's a great excuse to charge higher prices for tickets to compensate for declining sales. Now, I have no problems with 3-,D but the film purist in me does not want 3-D movies to become the status quo for blockbusters. Roger Ebert explains why the 3-D trend is not a good thing here.

This is where Inception comes in. Now the film's marketing has likened it to The Matrix meets Bond, but Inception is definitely an original idea. It's a risky one, what with its high-brow dream-within-a-dream concept, and the only reason Warner Bros was willing to produce the cash for it was Christopher Nolan. Thanks to Batman Begins, and more importantly of course, The Dark Knight, Nolan has essentially become the God of WB, which means he has earned the right to obtain the US$200 million shooting budget needed to realise his vision for Inception. Nolan is also a traditionalist, who refused to release Inception in 3-D because he's not willing to compromise on the loss of certain qualities that would result in a 3-D conversion. Inception is one of the rare summer releases that will screen solely on 2-D theatres.

The film is released this coming weekend and advanced reviews have been more than positive overall. It also has a star-studded cast led by Leonardo Dicaprio. Combine those two factors with the fact that Nolan has garnered himself a legion of fanboys post-Batman (I'm one of them) who will unquestionably support his films and you have a recipe for box office success. Or so WB hopes. Because even with the cachet of Nolan, Dicaprio et al, Inception is still quite a risky venture. Rare is the studio that plunks $200 million in an original summer movie, much less an esoteric one about "dreams states".

This is why you should care about its success. Reviews have not all been published, but I'm willing to hazard a guess this will be a good film. It will most probably end up at 80% fresh on RottenTomatoes. If that, coupled with the "From the Director of the Dark Knight" tagline, does not entice people to the movie, then I don't know what will.

The Dark Knight's success showed studios that dark, serious popcorn fare can make bank at the box office too. But it ultimately was a franchise based on one of the most popular comic book figures in the world. Inception is altogether a different kettle of fish. If it succeeds, Hollywood will perhaps see that it can be worthwhile to take some risks and invest in original scripts for the summer, and not just rely on established franchises. It will perhaps also stem the tide of 3-D films coming our way, and show that a good film done in 2D can and will bring in a large audience.

The future of Hollywood could very well depend on the success of Inception. Hands up those of us who want edgy, challenging and exciting summer extravaganzas! That is why if you love films even just a little bit, it is your duty to go see Inception!

Postscript: I guess if all else fails, we will always have Pixar.

My guide to losing weight

2010-07-01T04:40:00.004+08:00

It's 4.40am, and I can't sleep due to jetlag, having just returned home to Singapore from the UK a couple of days ago. And I suddenly had an epiphany (slight exaggeration) that I felt I ought to share with the world.
It turns out that there is a way to lose weight, or at least not gain weight, even if one is lazy. The key is to have a strong desire for nice teeth.
So everyone knows eating not long before you sleep is not good for you. At night, your body's metabolic rate slows down, so it won't have time to burn the calories of the food you took in. It gets converted to fat instead. A typical sign of a serial supper eater (that's the post-dinner meal, and not dinner itself, for any British readers out there) is a nice round tummy on an otherwise healthy-looking frame.
Like many others, I too have this penchant for snacking before sleeping. These late night World Cup/Wimbledon viewing sessions have not helped the cause. And so in my insomnia tonight, my hunger pangs struck of course. Big time. But, I managed to control myself from eating. Why? Because I had brushed my teeth. And more importantly, because I had already flossed.
See, that, ladies and gentleman, is the key to solving the obesity problem in developed countries. Have kids develop really good dental hygiene habits, and make them as meticulous as possible.
I'm quite thorough in my flossing, taking usually 10 minutes to complete flossing my 28 teeth (4 gone from wisdom teeth extraction). So even though as I'm typing this, my stomach is screaming out in need for the ice cream in the freezer as badly as Tom Cruise needs a hit movie to salvage his career (see: Knight and Day flopping), I resisted. Simply because I thought: I'd have to go through the whole damn process of brushing and flossing again. Too tedious. No way. I get to remain svelte. Yay!
Folks, there you have it. A combination of discipline (to floss nightly) + laziness (to not want to go through the hassle of 10 min of flossing more than once each night) ensures you and your child gets to be slim and trim (and have clean teeth!). Yay again!

[Liability escape clause: This weight loss method has not been endorsed by the FDA. The author shall not be responsible for any grumpiness caused in adherence to the above plan. Results may vary for individuals.]

Just a game?

2010-06-13T06:44:00.006+08:00

So I read Herman and Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent for my tutorial, and while researching for my essay, also visited Chomsky's website where I read several interviews he gave about the book.

This was a very interesting excerpt:
_______________________________________________________________

QUESTION: When we talk about manufacturing of consent, whose consent is being manufactured?

CHOMSKY: To start with, there are two different groups...One is what's sometimes called the political class. There's maybe twenty percent of the population which is relatively educated, more or less articulate, plays some kind of role in decision-making. They're supposed to sort of participate in social life -- either as managers, or cultural managers like teachers and writers and so on. They're supposed to vote, they're supposed to play some role in the way economic and political and cultural life goes on. Now their consent is crucial. So that's one group that has to be deeply indoctrinated. Then there's maybe eighty percent of the population whose main function is to follow orders and not think, and not to pay attention to anything -- and they're the ones who usually pay the costs.

He then continues:

Now there are other media too whose basic social role is quite different: it's diversion. There's the real mass media-the kinds that are aimed at, you know, Joe Six Pack -- that kind. The purpose of those media is just to dull people's brains.

This is an oversimplification, but for the eighty percent or whatever they are, the main thing is to divert them. To get them to watch National Football League.... Take, say, sports -- that's another crucial example of the indoctrination system, in my view. For one thing because it -- you know, it offers people something to pay attention to that's of no importance. [audience laughs] That keeps them from worrying about -- [applause] keeps them from worrying about things that matter to their lives that they might have some idea of doing something about. And in fact it's striking to see the intelligence that's used by ordinary people in [discussions of] sports [as opposed to political and social issues]... You know, I remember in high school, already I was pretty old. I suddenly asked myself at one point, why do I care if my high school team wins the football game? [laughter] I mean, I don't know anybody on the team, you know? [audience roars] I mean, they have nothing to do with me, I mean, why I am cheering for my team? It doesn't mean any -- it doesn't make sense. But the point is, it does make sense: it's a way of building up irrational attitudes of submission to authority, and group cohesion behind leadership elements -- in fact, it's training in irrational jingoism. That's also a feature of competitive sports.
_______________________________________________________________

I thought my coming across Chomsky's insight was really timely given the FIFA World Cup that's just started (and that fact that I just gushed all about Man Utd in a previous post), and the jingoistic fervour and excitement that accompanies it. Ever since reading the above, every time I get my entertain/sports news fix, I think to myself: I'm part of the brainwashed, depoliticized, dumb-ass 80% of the populace. Gulp.

Kenny made a really funny point when I shared this finding to him. This system of distraction was essentially the same one the Romans employed for their citizens - think the Gladatorial activities, which were also meant to divert the citizens' attention away from the problems the Empire might be facing.

The big difference between us and the Romans, however, is that while the Romans got to enjoy their Gladatorial sports for free (entry into the colisseums was free. Bread was given out for free at the shows too), we modern-day dumb-asses actually shell out a lot of hard-earned money to get entertained. The powers that be don't even need to entice us with freebies.

Oh, how we've regressed. LOL.

The Holy Pilgrimage Pt. 1

2010-05-18T05:32:00.027+08:00

Ok, so throughout my travels this past year, I've actually been pretty faithfully journaling each trip, but I've only posted summarized thoughts on them because I didn't think the world needed minute-by-minute accounts of my holidays. But, I decided to break the trend for this trip, because it's Manchester freakin' United! So there'll be 2 parts to this post: the first is a more straightforward chronicle of events and the second will be random thoughts along the lines of this or this. Please excuse the rambling!

only blue you'll see in this post!

Day 1:
So on the historic days of April 23/24, I finally made my long-awaited pilgrimage to the Holy Land, aka Old Trafford, Manchester. Thanks to the generosity of a friend, I manged to snag a pair of season ticket passes and invited fellow Man United fan Way Cherng along for a trip up north to catch United in their penultimate home game of the season against Tottenham Hotspurs.
We took a 0730 train on Friday and from Oxford, it was a 3 hour ride to Manchester Piccadilly station, the central train station there. When we arrived, we took the tram to the stop named Old Trafford which is of course where the stadium is near and also where our hotel was located. After checking in and getting a pub lunch at Wetherspoon's, we proceeded to OT for our stadium/museum tour.
The museum was great, especially the section on the Munich aircrash. I was aware of the history of the tragedy but being there, reading all the info and looking at the photos/old newspaper reports, I really felt kinda emotional. This incident was the football equivalent to the day the music died, definitely. It was amazing how Bobby Charlton bounced back to win the World and European Cup!

And as for the stadium, what can I say. Way better than the Santiago Bernabéu! We got to visit the players' dressing room, where there were tactics white boards and a TV. Just imagine Sir Alex giving one of his trademark hairdryer treatments there!

Treble season, baby!

Legend

After the stadium tour (which inevitably ends at the merchandise store), it was time to shop the vast United megastore, featuring all sorts of crap you can think up of, from Man United candy to rugs. *Sheer bliss* I got a jacket, and a 07/08 Champions' League DVD on the cheap.

MUFC candy? Doubt it's M&S quality though.

...and grass(!) lol.

Sir Alex in his youth! Amazing!

After departing OT, we took the tram back to Manchester city centre, and did a walking tour of it. We had dinner in Chinatown, and the waitress who served us in the restaurant turned out to be local! She was a Malaysian Chinese who had lived in Singapore for a long time, in Tampines even! We went back to the hotel after dinner to rest.

oh, we had time for a helicopter ride around the stadium too.

Day 2 (Match day!):
After an English breakfast at the hotel, it was time to head to the stadium for the game. WC and I each bought a Love United, Hate Glazers yellow and green Newton Heath scarf before heading in. Our seats were on the East end, pretty near to the action really. United attacked our end in the first half, but sadly, all three goals they scored occured in the second, so we only got to see the Ledley King goal up close. Also, Rooney had the audacity to miss the one match that I came to watch? The nerve! =(

Players warming up, doing that zig-zag body twisting thing I used to do during badminton training too!

Players having emerged from the tunnel.

Setting up for a FK. Can't remember if it was Nani or Gigg who took it.

United won the match 3-1 at the end, with Giggsy converting two penalties and Nani contributing an exquisite individual goal that kept our title challenge alive. You could feel the air of hope and positivity lingering after the match ended. It was not to be, as the events in May informed us, but I am so grateful the team won, putting the cream on top of the proverbial strawberries (thought this'd be a more apt metaphor for England, no?) (or the vinegar on top of fish and chips perhaps).
After the match, we walked back from OT to the city centre (the trams being crazily packed, of course), which took some 45 minutes, I'd say. We went to eat at the food court in the main mall there. Western food courts are not quite like those in Singapore, where you have stalls selling a vast array of hawker-type food. Here, food court stalls are more likely to consist of McDonald's, KFC, Pizza Hut, and some sandwich shop. There was, however, a Chinese stall there so WC and I both had roast duck/char siew rice (yes, we both love our Chinese food). Not quite local standards, but mai4 hiam2, buay3 pai4.
Then, we headed to a coffee shop to hang out and read the matchday programme before taking the 1936 train back to Oxford, where Trinity term awaited.

yay! WC looks joyful, to say the least!

remember that, folks!

(W)Hole Again

2010-05-13T00:06:00.006+08:00

Following this post, my jeans are now all patched up thanks to the sewing skills of Melissa. Thank you very much!

As can be seen (ok, maybe not really), she cut away the dangling flab of cloth from the right pocket and used it to cover the hole.
Unfortunately, for the second pair of hole-y jeans, Mel used the same reparation method, except this time she deliberately cut out cloth from the right jean pocket (which is where I always put my wallet. Gotta be careful now!) to use as cover.
Oh well! I'm glad to have my jeans back, now with none of the holes and double the edge!

Journalin' Berlin

2010-04-29T22:30:00.010+08:00

The Berlin Diaries (Isherwood inspired of course)

1. So on the day of the trip, I walk out of my apartment to head to catch my coach to airport. Walking past the neighbouring apartment, I see Hayleigh, who's actually traveling with me to Berlin. But because we booked our flights at different times, we're taking separate flights. She's flying Easyjet from Luton, whilst I'm doing Ryanair from Stansted. I have to wait for her at Berlin Schonefeld airport for about an hour. Meanwhile, our third travel mate, Caleb, is flying in from Paris and meeting us at the hostel at about 2350 that night. Such jet setters we are.

2. You know how restaurants do those really value-for-money set lunches to draw crowds in on quiet weekday afternoons? Well, the Germans of course do that as well, and they term them 'business lunches'. Sounds classier, I guess.

3. Berlin is quite a contrast from other major Western European cities. Unlike Paris or London with their gazillion year old quaint buildings and small, narrow roads, Berlin is half old buildings and half steel/glass minimalistic modernity. Not surprising considering the city was bombed into oblivion half a century ago.

At the Holocaust Memorial

4. Said steel and glass architecture, with their funky shapes, combine with the graffiti found all over to give Berlin a really edgy feel (I've been watching too much Project Runway I think.) The graffiti here is pretty darn cool, gotta say.

5. Oh, also unlike other European cities, there isn't a pigeon population the size of India + China. Sure, there's the odd one or two (or three or four) here and there, but it's not the kind of swarming over you like Singaporeans at a McDonald's circa the Hello Kitty craze that you find in Trafalgar Sq. or outside the Notre Dame.

6. There are tonnes of Vietnamese eateries all over Berlin. Was there a Vietnamese exodus to Germany that I missed out on? The pho I ate at this one restaurant was no where near as good as the one I had in Paris though.

7. Berliners are definitely not quite as fashion forward as Parisiens or Londoners even. The standard uniform seems to be: Hiking boots, jeans, simple top with a weatherproof jacket over it.

8. That said, there're plenty of individuals with outrageous and unique styles that I came across - like dudes with shocking blue or pink hair, as I had expected from what's been termed the new NYC.

9. The Berlin metro system is probably the most confusing one I've come across in Europe. There's the S-Bahn, the U-Bahn, the autobahn (ok not counted), the regular trains, a lack of clear signboards, ticket machines that do not like to accept notes - Efficient it may be, simple to understand it definitely isn't.

10. Had two people coming up to me asking for directions. What, I look German?

11. Gotta talk about my experience returning to the UK of course. The night before my flight, I merrily went over to the hostel lady and asked her how long it would take to get to the airport. She's all, "Haven't you heard? All flights to London are canceled." What!!?? Panic mode ensues. After having a strike derailed my flight back from Italy the previous trip, a freakin' volcano now?? For serious?

So I went on to Ryanair's site and the earlier flight available I could rebook was 4 days later (which still would have been canceled, as it turned out). I went to the train station the next morning to check out train options, but they were fully booked for the next 2 days and it would have cost a bomb anyway (Incidentally, the lady at the train ticketing counter was a majorly unhelpful, unsympathetic, um, person. Ugh.) Luckily, I had checked online the previous night that there were actually buses that ran from Berlin to London (Seriously, who knew?). So I headed to the bus station (on the confusing S-Bahn) located in West Berlin. There, I was told that the bus for that night (one each day) for full, but I could pay first and get on the waitlist and come and see what happens. So I did, and went back to the hostel.

Hours later, I'm checked out and I headed back to the bus station (having a room on hold till 8pm at the hostel in case I didn't manage to get on the bus). I found out I was 2nd on the waitlist. And 10 minutes before departure, we are told there's space! About 5 people on the list got to board. And so I boarded the bus and began the 19 hour ride to London.

The bus passed through Bremen, Hanover in Germany, then crossed Holland, where the customs check is this police van with a (-------> Follow Me) sign on its back that led the coach to a petrol station. Officers then boarded and checked our documents. How nice of them to do that! We didn't even have to disembark haha. From Holland, we went into Belgium and stopped at Brussels. The bus was Paris-bound, so the ones heading to London changed coaches.

From Brussels, the bus continued onto France, stopping at Lille, before arriving at Calais, where we crossed the English Channel using the Eurotunnel. That was the coolest shit. All vehicles basically drive into these long, narrow trains, one after another, and park inside. Then, with the vehicles stationary, the trains ferry us across the Channel and we emerge in Dover. English air at last! From Dover, it took another 2 hours to get to central London. Finally, after 19 hours, Victoria Coach Station! But the journey's not over!
I had to of course take another 2 hour coach journey to get back to Oxford. Good times. A friend had a three day bus ride from Croatia back to London though, so who am I to complain. So 93 euros (bus ticket price) and 21 hours later, I was back home, 1.5 days later than had been planned. My Easter travel adventures finally end, after Wales, Morocco, Italy and Berlin (sorta. still one final weekend in OLD TRAFFORD! Squee!).

Cute huskies make any blog post better.

These jeans aren't made for travelin'

2010-04-27T05:40:00.006+08:00

Here's what about two months worth of traveling with only a backpack (meaning constant wearing of the same pairs of jeans day in and day out) will do:Both pairs of jeans were bought sometime in 2008, I believe.

Yeah, I've no idea why all the tears occur in that specific geographic territory. ;)

Oh, by the way, I'm still wearing them. Gives me an edgy look, no?

Postscript on Italy

2010-04-19T02:54:00.001+08:00

Dates: 31 March 2010 to 10 April 2010
Locales: Rome, Florence, Cinque Terre, Venice, Milan (unscheduled stop)
1. Like France, payment on Italian public transport systems, especially buses, relies on the integrity of passengers. You board the bus from any the front or rear and scan your card in front of the machines installed on the bus. The driver doesn't check. Guess which end we boarded on all the time.

2. Italy must be one of the top ten tourist destinations in the world, and probably higher on a per capita basis. Seriously, Rome, Florence, Pisa and Venice were swarmed with tourists.

3. For such a popular tourist destination, Italy's citizens are unexpectedly not as bilingual as I'd expected them to be, especially in comparison to locals in other top tourist sights like Paris and Barcelona. Of course it's up to foreigners to adapt to the local vernacular always, but it's just surprising for these tourist traps. *shrugs*

4. Where ever there is money to be made, the Chinese will be there. Similar to what I observed in Spain, the Chinese diaspora extends to Italy as well, with many Italian restaurants/bars in Venice actually run by Chinese immigrants. So it's not that they're there opening Chinese restaurants, it's that they're there opening restaurants that sell Spanish/Italian food. It's pretty cool to see the Chinese boss lady mingling and hanging with the locals at the bar, speaking in Italian.

5. The St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican is the granddaddy of churches surely. Talk about OTT fabulosity. Stunning.

6. Speaking of stunning, Michelangelo's David definitely fits the description. It's much bigger than you'd expect, and is pretty awe-inspiring.

7. Something slightly negative now: Not to be sweeping and all, but our impression of the Romans was not really the most positive: There was the snobby waiter who told us snootily that the restaurant was fully booked when it was empty (maybe it was true, but it really looked unlikely. There was the impatient waitress who chided us just because some of us took a bit more time to decide our orders. And the winner: The Roman police. So when Melissa went to the police station to lodge a report for her lost passport, a policeman came out from a room, told her to wait 10 minutes, then went back in. Something important he needed to attend to first? Yeah, the football game which had another 10 min to run! Football's life and death, I suppose.

8. Italian food joints are apparently divided into 3 price/class tiers - the top is the ristaurante, the middle is the trattoria and the casual one is the osteria (which I initially thought was a place which sold oysters mainly - not a bad deduction I contend, given you have pizzerias, spaghetterias, gelaterias and even burgerias.).

9. Posted it on FB, but proud to announce that I had at least one gelato cone a day for 11 days. Mostly two scoops each time, but 3 a few times when I felt extra hungry. If you happen to visit Rome, go to this gelateria called Old Bridge, which you'll pass on your way to the Vatican Museum. Cheap, good, voluminous scoops, and friendly staff who can speak conversational Mandarin.

10. It wasn't just all ancient ruins and museums and churches in our itinerary. We spent 3 days in Cinque Terre, a UNESCO heritage site of gorgeous hilly cliffs, which we spent a large part of a day hiking across. Combine that with the number of stairs we climbed scaling towers in Pisa and Florence, and I swear I do more exercise during vacation then I do during term time.

11. Did the usual McD's in a foreign country visit. Nothing too exotic though, except a McItaly. Hamburgers are 50 cents apiece in Milan though.

12. People must think the group I traveled with was a bunch of gambling obsessed Asians. We were playing bridge any and everywhere that we were stationary for more than 10 seconds. Like waiting in line to board a plane. Asses plopped on carry-on suitcases, out come the cards. Still pretty bad at the whole card-counting malarkey though.

13. Venice is truly a unique sight to behold. No cars, and most of the buildings have been around for centuries, so what you'll see is essentially what people in the 1500s saw.

14. Unfortunately, my food experiences in Italy were a bit of a letdown. Perhaps it's because I'd set expectations too high, but none of the pastas/pizzas I had were of the host-of-a-food-programme-gushing-orgasmically-kind. It's probably also because we ate at cheap joints most of the time of budgetary reasons, but still, people do wax lyrical over plain ol' spaghetti bolognese. Perhaps good, cheap pasta is found only in Bologna (where we sadly only stopped at to change trains).

15. I have to give a shout out to Hilary (that's her anglicised name. It's Hilaria or something like that in Italian), our amazing guide to our Doge's Palace visit. Great narration of the story of Casanova's escape from the Venetian prison. At certain points, the tour group was like a bunch of kids sitting in a library listening spell-bounded to her spinning her tales. Tour guides should all be like her!

16. Those Emporio Armani ads featuring Megan Fox and Cristiano Ronaldo could be found everywhere. Makes sense what with the country being the home of Armani.

17. The original plan was to head back to London from Venice. However, upon getting to the airport, we learn that our flight had been canceled because of an airport staff strike (they had the cheek to be marching for support there! Grr.). Ervin paid 400 Euros to get a BA flight the same day because he had another flight to catch in London the next day, whilst the rest of us stayed another night in Venice, hauled ass to Milan the next day to catch a flight back from there. Only got to see the Milanese train station, and that was it.

18. 'Ciao' is used a lot indeed for greetings. Besides a plain 'ciao!', you can often go 'ciao ciao!" in quick succession. For additional emphasis, I suppose.

Gelato with stunning scenery is always a good way to end a post.

Crossing Musical Borders

2010-04-15T07:49:00.000+08:00

While blogging about the topic of Chinese here, I was reminded of a topic that I've been fascinated by, which is the successful export of Japanese, and to a lesser extent, Korean pop culture to the West relative to the export of Chinese pop culture. Music affioncados in Europe and the States sometimes adore Japanese/Korean pop/rock. Some of my American friends love Korean boybands. Some indie music blogs will post news of Namie Amuro or something. Bascially, one could say that there's some sort of niche audience for J/K-pop in the West, and they've sorta got cult status. It would be 'cool' to like L'Arc-en-Ciel, like how it's 'cool' to like the Animal Collective, if you get what I mean.

It's not the same for movies though. Japanese movies are of course appreciated in the West, with the likes of Kurosawa's Seven Samurai being universally acknowledged as a classic. South Korea's Park Chan-Wook attained cult status too. But Chinese films also get love from the West. John Woo and Ang Lee have crossed over to Hollywood, and directors like Wong Kar Wai, Edward Yang and Hou Hsiao Hsien are respected internationally.

But somehow, that is not the case for Chinese music, which puzzles me. The closest thing I can think of would be Faye Wong when she did 'Eyes on Me' for Final Fantasy. But still, no one was interested in her Chinese work. Even the indie-est of indie music lovers would not be into Chinese music. And I wonder why. Is it the ballad-heavy nature of Chinese music that doesn't translate? Is it that there is more originality to be found in J/K-pop, compared to Chinese pop, which I must say can be highly derivative? Is there some sort of cultural affinity that the West feels towards Japan, and to a lesser extent, Korea? Does Japan's status as a first-world, G7 country have anything to do with said cultural affinity? I don't know. I just feel like there is a lot of good to be found in Chinese music and I'd like for it to gain a wider audience beyond Chinese-speaking shores.

Toilet Debate settled: Up or Down

2010-04-14T04:07:00.005+08:00

I found this and just thought I should post it: It's an economics paper by a Michigan State Uni professor. The link is here. But here's the abstract:

This paper develops an economic analysis of the toilet seat etiquette, that is, whether the toilet seat should be left up or down. I investigate whether there is any efficiency justification for the presumption that men should leave the toilet seat down after use. I find that the “down rule” is inefficient unless there is a large degree of asymmetry in the inconvenience costs of shifting the position of the toilet seat across genders. I show that the “selfish” or the “status quo” rule that leaves the toilet seat in the position used dominates the down rule in a wide range of parameter spaces including the case where the inconvenience costs are the same. The analysis can be applied to other shared facilities that can be customized to each user’s preference.

Here's the evidence you need, guys out there who live/ share bathrooms with women or anyone who insists that the toilet seat should always be down. Just sayin'.
To be fair, I share a flat now with 4 gals, so this analysis doesn't work in my case given the asymmetry in inconvenience costs. Sucks for me!

Random notes on Morocco

2010-03-29T23:57:00.015+08:00

Back from 10 days in Le Maroq!

1. Morocco is really diverse climate-wise. I was expecting dry, dusty landscapes, but while Marrakesh matched my impression, Fez was actually really green, almost Cameron Highlands-like in its cool dampness.

2. Got to ride my first ever camel and donkey. The former is definitely a much smoother ride than the latter.

3. On the subject of camels, they poop. A lot. On our 1 hour ride into the desert, they pooped quite literally every 10 seconds on average. Mostly light pellets, with the occasional plop of a big dump.

3. Spent a night sleeping in the tent in the Sahara desert. Pretty much didn't shower or brushed teeth and just went straight to bed, with boots still on even.

4. Peed twice in the desert, then washed my hands with sand.

5. Saharan sand is incredibly fine.

6. Night time in the vast expanse of the desert was not as dark as I'd expected. With no other light source distracting, the moon actually provides enough light for one to walk around without feeling blind.

7. Asian tourists are rare commodities, especially in Tangier, where two girls accosted us on the street for photos.

8. Moroccans speak French more slowly than the French do, which was great for me as I could understand much more of it. I basically served as the interpreter for the group the whole time and got to practice my French a lot. Their French is not very good, I gotta say. Mine's pretty crappy and still I could detect numerous mispronunciations from various people.

9. Still not a big fan of couscous, which is a popular dish in Morocco. Their beans soup is pretty great though.

10. Due to budgetary reasons, had enough bread in 10 days to last me a lifetime (or at least the next month).

11. Worse olfactory experience of my life in visiting a tannery (leather-making joint). Makes you appreciate the price of leather, as you imagine that the workers have to endure that day in day out.

12. At said tannery, we were sorta threatened. We were promised a free tour, but as we left, were told we had to pay the 'guardian' (bad Arabic-English translation from the guide probably) of the tannery 50dh each. When we refused, he said he could not guarantee our safety afterward then. We settled at 20dh each eventually. "Student discount" for us.

13. Like in Turkey, as we walk in markets, shop owners, random people, touts all shout out "Japonais? Korean? Chinois?" to us. 98% of the time, their first guess is Japanese, reflecting Japan's status as the richest Asian country and hence the one with the most tourists of course. One guy said Singapore in his first try, which was pretty cool. Someone else said Taiwan. Independence-leaning Taiwanese would have been so happy.

14. Speaking of this nationality/ethnicity guesswork of the locals, many like instead to say "Jackie Chan?", then strike a gong-fu pose with requisite sound effect. A whole bunch of soccer-playing kids in Tangier showed off their full repertoire gong-fu moves with enthusiasm as we walked past them. We can anoint Mr. Chan as officially the most famous Asian face globally, methinks.

15. It seems Moroccans are fans of Bollywood. I noticed more of Bollywood titles than Western ones in the pirated DVD shops we came across.

16. Oxonian Singaporeans are all musically talented. Caleb and Elizabeth play the violin, Rachel can do guitar and drums, Junny can do guitar and just picked up the ukelele, which he brought along for the trip. The night in the Sahara, outside our tent, with candles lit, we jammed along with 3 German girls, who were in our same traveling van, to Coldplay, Howie Day, the Beatles as Junny played the ukelele. And for many of the songs, Elizabeth and Junny simply worked out the chords on the spot. I was impressed.

17. Moroccan cities ostensibly have colour schemes, as reflected in the buildings. Marrakesh is orange, Fez is green and Tangier is white.

18. While French carries the day in Marrakesh and Fez, in Tangiers, due to its proximity to Spain, more people speak Spanish and even English then French, it seemed.

19. Medinas (Old cities) are an assault to one's senses. From the donkeys, horses, motorcycles that stream by constantly, to the flies and bees, one is constantly overwhelmed.

20. Had my must-have McDonald's in a foreign country experience in Fez. It was a pretty atas looking setup, gotta say. I had one of the special burgers (outside of the usual McMacs, Fillet o' Fish etc, of which there were 3, that was called "Mythic Chicken". Actual burger wasn't quite as epic as it sounds. Twas basically a McChicken, but larger, and with cheese and tomato slices tossed in. They had awesome fries though.

Kindle-free 2009

2010-03-17T02:04:00.005+08:00

Just thought I should catalogue the list of non-academic-related books I read, which I started to do so last year on Twitter. The bulk of it was done over the long summer, plus one more in December. There is no time for leisure reading during term time for sure.

Fiction:
Max Brooks - World War Z
Cormac McCarthy - The Road
Cormac McCarthy - No Country for Old Men
Robert Harris - Fatherland
Margaret Atwood - Alias Grace
Jamie O'Neill - At Swim, Two Boys
Jose Saramago - Blindness
Evelyn Waugh - Brideshead Revisited
David Leavitt - The Lost Language of Cranes

Non-fiction:
Noam Chomsky - Failed States
Michael Pollan - In Defense of Food
Naomi Klein - The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
Leffler M. & Legro J. (Eds) - To Lead the World: American Strategy after the Bush Doctrine
Joseph Stiglitz - Globalization and its discontents
Bertrand Russell - Why I am not a Christian & Other Essays

Of them all, At Swim, Two Boys, The Road, and The Shock Doctrine joined my list of all-time favourites.

华语 Cool

2010-03-06T09:36:00.007+08:00

I've told some friends this, but for some reason, I've grown to appreciate Chinese, whether as a language or as a culture, so much more since I've been overseas for school. I mean, I was never one of the those 'too cool for Mandarin' type of 'banana' Chinese Singaporeans who sneered at those who were not fluent in English and spoke the 'Cheena' language (I saw so many in my course in poly). I speak Mandarin at home, come from a Chinese secondary school, listen to Mandopop, and twice participated in Chinese freakin' poetry recital competitions! But I was still very much Anglo-leaning, in that I craved and consumed mostly Western pop culture, spoke mostly English outside of home, and of course, wanted to head to a Western country for uni. I prided myself in being reasonably bilingual, but the relationship I had with Chinese was one more of utility.

My opinion changed when i headed to the U.S. Somehow, being submerged totally in English became really limiting, even slightly oppressive. And I found myself listening so much more to Chinese music. Stefanie Sun I already loved, but I think the musical love of my college life has to be Tanya Chua (More on her music in an upcoming post, soon, hopefully). I paid closer attention to the lyrics and really grew to appreciate the poetry of it. I youtubed Taiwanese variety shows to watch occasionally. I reveled in heading to Chinatown and getting to speak or try to speak Cantonese everywhere I went. I felt humbled whenever I'd attempt to speak Mandarin to Chinese internationals, but I was always keen to try (The best is this year, where I got to know this American student who's incredibly fluent in Mandarin, and participated in those international Mandarin debates for non-native speakers representing Yale. Wow, I was so humbled by his knowledge of Chinese idioms!)

Also, coming from a young country, I was amazed at the history of New York, just in its architecture for example. The gorgeous brownstones certainly have so much more character than our HDBs! Of course, America was the minor league when I got to Oxford. How utterly mind-blowing it was to see these grand colleges, all built when Singapore was, as we know so well from history textbooks, a mere fishing village! But my point is that seeing all this history in the U.S and especially here in the U.K., I found myself thinking about how as amazing as all of it was, China's got 5000 years worth of history! Beat that, suckers! hah. I don't know, I guess it just brought to me clarity on how deep Chinese history and culture is, and I find myself now wanting to visit China really badly.

This year, I've been reading so much about the Enlightenment in relation to my politics tutorials, and to read of all these thinkers and their universalised theories of good/right and sit in class hearing my tutor talk about them like they're the be all and end all of political theory... I don't know, it irked me slightly because I just felt all of it were developments in reaction to very culturally specific historical occurrences and thus cannot or should not claim to speak for all of men... (ugh, I swear, this made more sense going through my head during tutorial!) I guess my point is that it made me want to find out if Chinese philosophy provided any counter-points, especially since it developed in such different conditions compared to the Western Judeo-Christian world (I'm sure other non-Occidental cultures, like the Islamic world, have really different ideas too)!

Perhaps this new-found appreciation of all things Chinese occurred because something that becomes rare always becomes more valuable. Perhaps it was because once away from Singapore, one can break free from the negative socioeconomic connotations of the language (Ang mo pai4 vs'cheena piang' is essentially cosmopolitan vs heartlander recast in linguistic terms, no?). Perhaps it's because going to places where a lot of people are monolingual, one develops pride in being able to speak two languages. Perhaps it's because, in line with the previous statement, it feels shiok to be able to have fun with friends and shout vulgarities in Chinese in foreign countries without anyone else knowing what we're saying. Whatever it is, I'm glad because it has allowed me to appreciate the language and to want to explore the culture so much more.

I've tried taken concrete steps to do so. For the last summer vacation, I had quite a reading spree, if anyone who follows me on Twitter would notice (how I flatter myself!). I think I read something like 15 books in those four months. And I wanted to read some Chinese books actually. I remember Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma was constantly out on loan in the library, but the Chinese one was available, so I thought: Hey, why not! But I soon gave up =( It seems like 99% of the books in Chinese are printed the up-down, right-left way, which I found so difficult to get through! So, fail for me on that attempt. For now though, I'll just continue to listen to my Mandopop and marvel at the lyrical wonders of Xiao Han, and continue to hone my Cantonese skills at Chinese provision shops/restaurants. I promise though that this summer, I [i]will[/i] get through at least one book in Chinese! I just need to search harder for one that reads from left to right! The pilgrimage to ancestral lands will have to wait a bit though, as I'm not sure when I'll have the money to do so! Ah, I so regret not doing the Beijing Olympics...

Addendum: As much as I've waxed lyrical about the beauty of Chinese and all here, I'm not of Camp 'All Chinese S'poreans should be able to speak Mandarin, if not shame on you". It's cool if you don't, you just don't need to look down on people who do. I do recognise the fact that Mandarin is in no way inherent to Chinese S'poreans. Like all things on our island, the assertion of Mandarin as our 'native' mother tongue was very much engineered by our leaders to achieve their desired social/political goals.

A Penny for Them Thoughts

2010-02-21T23:59:00.003+08:00

I had some (probably less than original) thoughts about the racial and religious composition of the Singaporean community in Oxford (and by extrapolation, Cambridge as well) and its implications and prognostications. But I decided to impose on myself the much-discussed OB markers (real or imagined? still up in the air?) and shut my trap.

In other news, I'm looking forward to Easter break, and more traveling.

Mad Skillz, y'all

2010-02-01T11:37:00.003+08:00

This just needed to be posted:

Cristiano would be proud.

And how about this for a counter-attack?

United at their Fergie-influenced best: Swift, incisive, effective breaks. All hail King Rooney!

The art of the question

2010-01-22T07:58:00.003+08:00

Why should people obey the law?
Why do people obey the law?
Why do people think they should obey the law?

Gotta love political theory!

我已是陌生人了

2009-12-12T07:27:00.003+08:00

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. -- sums up aptly my Oxford experience thus far, I think. There've been moments of sheer exhilaration, and days of utter isolation and despondency. Sometimes, I wish I were less of a sentimental and nostalgic person, and could stop reliving or thinking about past moments. Because that's just it - it's history, so there's nothing I can do to change anything, and thinking about it certainly won't. I should try to forget the past and live for the future. But who or what are we, if not the sum of our histories?

Experience is a dialectic, so even if I can't control how I feel, I can control how I view how I feel. Hopefully, my experiences at Oxford will make me a better person, in every sense of the word. That's all I could ask for.

Life is short. Carpe diem, and be thankful for what I have. It's hard, but I'll try to remind myself often.

The first entirely non-instant meal I cooked in Oxford

2009-10-17T07:01:00.007+08:00

So I've been here in Oxford for close to three weeks now. The city is absolutely beautiful, the work load is ridiculously heavy, but this post isn't about either topic.

For the past two year in NY, I've not really cooked since I had a meal plan package that was provided for with my financial aid. But alas, here, no more free meals, which meant that either I could eat out daily (incidentally, prices here are not out of this world - they're expensive definitely, but no more than in NY, I think. But the difference is that American portions are gigantic, so you can either stuff yourself or tar-pau for the next day. Here, it's back to regular portions. :( ), or I could attempt to save money by cooking.

So I've been doing the whole cooking thing with regularity thus far, with a caveat. Everything I had cooked began with something instant - it was always instant noodles, instant Maggi porridge (which travelled the distance with me), or pasta with instant sauce. To be fair, I'd add lots of fresh veg to those so they were sorta healthy meals. But yesterday, I finally cooked a meal entirely from scratch! I cooked rice (without a rice cooker!), boiled bak choy (damn expensive. 1.83 pounds for TWO large stalks. lol) and fried some chicken breast (method: some olive oil, throw in different herbs shit like oregano, paprika, mixed herbs, ground black pepper, soy sauce, and just fry. lol).

Result:
Voila rice with chicken (I don't know what to describe the style/flavour, lol), bak choy with oyster sauce and fresh tomatoes.

Ok, so the rice was a bit soggy (again - without rice cooker!) and the chicken could be more tender (decided to err on the side of let's not get bird flu or some shit by undercooking it). But I'm proud of it! yay~

Oh, and I cooked extra rice and saved it for the next day where I made fried rice! Apparently, you have to use overnight rice cause it's drier or something. I fried it with tomatoes, sausages and egg. 'Twas edible, if I may say so!

Hopefully, there'll be future editions of Sterling's culinary adventures in Oxford! (Sneak preview: I did bring over chicken rice paste, nasi briyani paste from SG...)

Spring Break 2009

2009-09-23T21:19:00.030+08:00

Ok, this is more than a little late (in part due to multiple issues with Blogger), but I figured I ought to blog about my spring break this year, for posterity's sake if anything.

I spent Spring break this year on a week-long trip to Washington, D.C and Philadelphia, the former of which I enjoyed very much because of the numerous free museums and government buildings/historical monuments that I visited, including

Unfortunately, to actually tour the White House, one has to sign up six months in advance apparently. And, for foreigners, we need to approval from our embassy as well. What a hassle. I'll wait for my invitation someday. :P

Fortunately, gaining access to Capitol Hill proved tedious, but not impossible, so we managed to visit the US Capitol, the Library of Congress and the Supreme Court.

Tatiana and I in front of the huge Capitol building (which houses the legislative branch of the US government).

Zoomed-in shot of the Capitol dome from inside the building.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office that we walked past! (Ms. Pelosi, stay strong on the healthcare public option!)

Statues of congressmen, such as this one, are placed in the touristy section of the building (the only parts we were allowed access to.)

Next up is the Library of Congress, which is linked via underpass to the Capitol. It houses the largest book collection in the world, including

The Gutenberg Bible

Tati and I inside the Library. We didn't actually step into the area where the books are held (though it is possible to).

Next up is the US Supreme Court. At this point, I just want to note that though these buildings are near each other, a lot of walking has to be done to get from one to another!

The Court looking like some Greek temple, its columns regal.

Obligatory posing inside the building. The Court was in recess at that point, so there wasn't a chance of us attending a hearing, but we learned from the tour that there is a basketball court above the court!

Ok, a change of scenery as we head to the outdoors...

for some street-style horse racing (or rather, it was a St. Paddie's Day parade)

C'est moi (unrotated) in front of the Washington Monument.

This is a view from up inside the Monument. What you see is the National Mall (I know right, not quite Ion Orchard), which is a huge-ass park with govt buildings/museums lined on either side and at the end, the Capitol.

Another view from inside the monument. If you caught President Obama's inauguration this year, then you might find this pic familiar. This is the reflecting pool leading up to the Lincoln Memorial where Obama was sworn in as president. I guess they only fill it up with water when there's an event? So yeah, not so picturesque like this.

Up close with the larger than life Lincoln at his memorial.

So, Lincoln aside, guess which are the other two great American presidents to be memorialised?

One is of course first president, George Washington.

The other is war president and New Deal founder Franklin Roosevelt, here pictured with his beloved, iconic pooch.

Leaving history aside, here're some non-monumental shots of D.C.

A cavernous D.C metro station.

A row of buildings right opposite the White House. Prime real estate. Most of downtown D.C. looks like this - historical-looking buildings that have obviously been spruced up, which makes everything look v. nice and pretty, but also makes it look artificial. You need some dirt/grime for authenticity, least that's how I feel.

D.C's Chinatown, which, unlike say Manhattan's that is located in an untrendy area, is situated right in the heart of downtown D.C.

Team Obama/Biden do their part to boost the sagging economy. I wonder if Bush/Cheney merch sold as well.

Like I said, museums were a big part of my travel itinerary. One that left a great impression was the Holocaust Museum, where of course I did not really take any pics. Then, there was the Museum of American History...

where we all got to be POTUS.

Diorama with history, I think.

V. cool vintage war propaganda posters.

Dumbo's an integral part of American history, yo.

Posing in front of the 'Berlin Wall'.

Next up, some cool-looking stuff from the Air & Space Museum.

Ok, I'm tired of uploading pics, so I shall end with a shot of us attempting to pose all *nonchalantly* in some Louvre-like structure outside the National Gallery.

Keep it mind that though it was 'spring', it was pretty darn cold!

Bill and George say goodbye!

Part II of this post will be the trip to Philly, but from past experience (last Spring Break, where I blogged a Pt. 1 about my visit to Boston, but was too lazy to blog about Montreal/Quebec), said post is unlikely to happen.

Prescient statement from a great POTUS

2009-08-25T18:01:00.004+08:00

“We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals. We know now that it is bad economics.”

Frankin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression, on enacting the New Deal.

Hear, hear!

Political Orientation, circa 2009

2009-08-05T18:33:00.005+08:00

Did this quiz on political orientation on this website, PoliticalCompass.org. Turns out I'm pretty much as far left as one can get without being a commie, and quite a libertarian to boot.

Basically, the X-axis represents the economic spectrum (from pure communism on the left to pure neo-liberalism on the right) while the Y-axis represents the social spectrum (from totalitarianism/facism on the top to revolutionary anarchism at the bottom). What this quiz does well is that it clarifies the sometimes vague labels of "Left" or "Right" that we associate with people. For example, as the website explains, Stalin and Hitler were both all about totalitarian police states, putting them at the top of the Y-axis, but the former, obviously, was a Communist whereas the latter did believe in markets. So dictators both were, but on opposite ends of the economic ideological spectrum.

As of August 2009 then, I'm your typical bleeding heart liberal. But that's probably because I haven't entered the working world yet. Perhaps when I have to start dealing with taxes and money issues in general, I'll start moving towards the right. We'll see!

You can find out where you stand by taking a test here -->http://www.politicalcompass.org/. It's a bit US-centric, but still very relevant, I think. If you've never really given much thought as to what you think about certain issues and where you stand ideologically, take the test (won't take long) and who knows, you might be surprised with the result!

Served up!

2009-06-09T18:53:00.006+08:00

Yay, went to the school website a while back and saw these pics of me in action playing competitive tennis! So yeah, I have on the SLC tennis team the past two years. We're obviously not Div I or anything remotely in the same region, so it's pretty non-competitive and fun.

It's also been crazy playing tennis on early spring nights where it can go as low as 6degC! Thankfully, tennis practice is a really laid-back affair, unlike soccer practice, which is the total opposite. The coolest part of being on the tennis team is that we get to play our conference finals at Flushing Meadows! No playing on the show courts obvously, but still, it's a fun experience.

Mid-air while serving. Good clearance, I must say!

Completing the serve motion, up and over. I think serving's the only thing which, despite my lack of proper tennis training, is pretty orthodox and correct. The rest is all a bit japalang.

Hitting a forehand. Bad positioning here, for any would-be player reading, because I'm backing away from the ball, rather than stepping forward to receive it (see how my left leg is behind my right. It should be about even instead)
That's the really really small team we have. From left, that's Coach Hassan , Vaughn, moi, Adam, Ben (who are brothers), and Eelum. Hassan was also the soccer team's coach. He's a really cool guy. He was a lawyer, but left the practice to become involved in coaching instead. Vaughn's NYC born and bred, Adam and Ben were German-born, but live in NY now too. And Eelum's int'l too, from Nepal. And that's my mini-intro of my team mates. No idea why I felt the need to do that.

Too bad there aren't many pics of the soccer team, and of the ones that were taken, I'm not in them. :( lol.

Raccoon City-esque

2009-05-20T21:43:00.007+08:00

I almost missed my connecting flight to Singapore, thanks to the delay in the flight from Minneapolis to Tokyo. And then, there was the OTT flu screening at Narita. Before passengers are allowed to deplane, health authorities board each plane to screen passengers for signs for fever, etc. We had to fill out forms that make it possible for them to do contact-tracing as well. The entire process took friggin' 45 min, and meant I left the plane already past my scheduled flight time to SG. Thankfully, the latter flight waited for those of use stuck.
Imagine a bunch of workers all dressed up like that coming up the plane. As if we were in some Resident Evil movie or something... The guy is using some thermal scanning device to catch for signs of fever in passengers. Apparently, if so many as one person registers a high temperature, the entire plane is forced to stay behind.

The nice lady who took my health form.

All of us were given these yellow forms that cleared us to go through customs. We were told to wave our forms in the air, because there was apparently some discrepancy between the number of forms handed out and the number of people of the plane. That took a while to resolve. Thankfully, no one on the plane had fever, and we were cleared to leave after this. Pardon the blurred screen -twas my phone screen. But, I think the blurriness adds a certain imagined sense of paranoia, no?

Sheer Genius

2009-05-15T21:29:00.004+08:00

Two of the most important goals of United's campaign this year.

Just like that, a star is born.

And this one....what else can you say but 'wow'. It actually takes like 1 sec for the ball to go for foot to goal - that was how long the distance was. Really, Messi has an amazing ability to keep the ball stuck to his feet, but Ronaldo has the overall package and is the best player in the world.

Swine Flu Humour

2009-05-05T12:44:00.005+08:00

This is probably not such a good idea right now.

Let's hope I don't get quarantined or something when I fly back in two weeks.

Candid Camera

2009-04-16T20:42:00.002+08:00

Yay, captured on camera! This is me asking a question at a lecture on China's economic/political future by a guest speaker on campus last week. My prof sent me the photo. Love how my electric blue tennis shirt (had tennis practice after that) stands out in the pic, haha. Anyway, the big guys behind me, the girl to my right in glasses - all are my classmates in my Diplomacy and Intelligence in Modern History class. I was the last person to ask a question, and the speaker was like, "of course we have to have a question from a Chinese," so I had to clarify that I wasn't from China. Lol.

On democracy and the emergent state

2009-04-07T12:24:00.008+08:00

While reading the chapters on the Vietnam War in Henry Kissinger's Diplomacy for my history class earlier, I was struck by these 2 sections:

"Unlike democratic theory, which views truth as emerging from a clash of ideas, Confucianism maintains that truth is objective and can only be discerned by assiduous study and education of which only a rare few are thought to be capable. Its quest for truth does not treat conflicting ideas as having equal merit, the way democratic theory does. Since there is only one truth, that which is not true can have no standing or be enhanced through competition. Confucianism is essentially hierarchical and elitist, emphasizing loyalty to family, institutions, and authority."

"In the West, political pluralism had thrived among cohesive societies where a strong social consensus had been in place long enough to permit tolerance for the opposition without threatening the survival of the state. But where a nation has yet to be created, opposition may appear as a threat to national existence, especially when there is no civil society to provide a safety net. In these conditions, the temptation is strong, often overwhelming, to equate opposition with treason."

Now, Kissinger was talking about Vietnam or Indochina in the 1950s in these sections. But, which other Southeast Asian state could he have be referring to just as well? Gee...I wonder...

Singapore's political situation in the 60s was hardly as precarious as that of Vietnam, but still, as a newly-independent state, wary of both Malaysia and Communist influences, and with Confucian values as its foundation, one can see how and why the PAP government was able to successfully engineer a siege mentality in the populace which gave it legitimacy to crush opposition under the name of national security. The problem perhaps is that the trope of the nation under siege has been used time and time again such that we have been conditioned to dismiss the merits of having a strong opposition. Obviously though, this is just a breakwater that will not stand the waves of time. Civil society is developing in Singapore. The number of local political blogs and the alternative viewpoints they offer are testaments to that. So, then, it all comes down to a clash between democratic theory and Confucianism? Maybe there is legitimacy to both forms of government-running. Singapore's economic success is prove that the latter works, I suppose. The question is: Which one serves the state, and which one serves the people?

The Fed Express reaches its stop.

2009-04-04T08:30:00.003+08:00

Nothing is forever, and this .gif (from Federer's loss to Djokovic in the worst match of the year) sums up the great Swiss presently. Can't say I'm not enjoying it! Heh.

On the subject of tennis, now that Safin is pretty much done, I'm having trouble finding someone new to support. I do like Nadal very much, but he doesn't inspire Safin-levels of passion. Murray, I really like his game - big first serve, powerful off both wings, great hands, great touch, very intelligent player with lots of variety. But that personality is a massive turn-off. Ugh.

And Maria, please get well and come back soon! The WTA needs you badly!

Say cheese(y)...

2009-04-03T02:38:00.001+08:00

This looks.... awkward.

Spring Cometh

2009-04-02T09:16:00.004+08:00

Spring officially arrived the last weekend of March. Still pretty cold though. And rainy. Took a walk in Central Park, for the first time this whole year amazingly.

I just missed the spring blossom festival in DC by a week when I visited. Damn.The Shakespeare Garden. Never been to this part of the park before, It's around the 70s. In the summer, the venue hosts the Shakespeare in the Park outdoor theatre festival.

Warm weather, come already!

Of face plants and sore butts

2009-03-24T11:44:00.011+08:00

The school offers a whole bunch of fun PE classes every quarter. Every student is required to complete at least 2 quarters of PE classes as a graduation requirement. It's part of the whole 'broad-based education' mantra. I've done soccer, badminton and rock climbing thus far, and having been on the tennis and soccer teams, have more than fulfilled my PE requirements. Still, the great rates the school offered for its skiing class meant I had to sign up! So, for 3 Fridays in February, a bunch of us bused up to Thunder Ridge, a small mountain (more hill, really) about an hour north of Yonkers, for afternoons of icy pain (for me)!

Some of my fellow skiers - Tatiana, Lakshmi and Lydia and I.

I tried skiing the first week, thinking it would be easier. And it sort of is, because it's vaguely similar to rollerblading or ice-skating. But I had a big problem! I couldn't stop! So you are supposed to make a V shape with your skis to stop, but try as I might, I just couldn't! So I would go up the ski lift, and plunge straight down, constantly accelerating because I couldn't stop! Result: Face plant!
Still, the more experienced girls reckoned I did alright, and because they were bored of the beginners' hill (which was a relatively straight and gentle slope), decided to go to the intermediate one and asked me to come along. Big mistake. The whole can't stop deal? Yeah, that's exacerbated by a way steeper incline + twists and turns + dozens of experienced skiers/snowboarders constantly zooming past you. I did it twice. The second time, I gather so much speed down the final slope, and still not being able to stop, I crashed through the plastic net barrier way at the base of the hill. Thank goodness that was a plastic net, and not, say, a concrete wall!

The grace of a rhino, or something.

The next two weeks, I decided to switch to snowboarding. It's a lot more difficult than skiing in that you fall a hella lot more. Seriously, I wished I had some sort of ass padding, because I fell hard 3944394 times (didn't help that the fluffy snow had melted and refrozen to become hard as fuck ice. OUch.). But, I felt like I picked up snowboarding better. Still, I have problems, of course, the main one being that I can only go in one direction - right! So When I attempted that cursed intermediate hill again, it was lights out whenever there was a left turn. LOL. Tatiana and I on the long ski lift ride up the intermediate slope.

Off the ski slope! Our PE class was named 'Twilight Skiing' because, yeah.

Standing pretty on our board! Oh yeah, boarding is a lot of troublesome because each time you get to the bottom, you have to remove one foot from the board to be able to move, because you can't exactly glide along on a board without the aid of gravity.

Hopefully, I'll get another opportunity to snowboard or ski soon! Dream is Europe next year. Wonder how expensive it is. Target: Learn to brake on skis, and turn left and board back facing front!

A whole lotta walkin'

2009-03-22T11:08:00.007+08:00

It's funny how one does things abroad one would never do at home - visiting museums, for instance. I think I've been to the Singapore Art Museum maybe once, and some exhibitions at the Science Centre as a kid, if that counts. I haven't even been to the Singapore History Museum!

But since coming over to the States, I've been to quite a number of museums.
There's the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in NYC of course. Then, there's the Isabella Gardner Museum in Boston, the Musée des Ursulines in Quebec City. But this year especially, I've been to so many, probably because a lot of them have free admission, that it's kinda crazy!

On my weekend trip to Pittsburgh over winter break, I visited:
The Carnegie Museums - Museum of Art and Museum of Natural History (free thanks to Weiyi's CMU student pass!)
The Andy Warhol Museum

Spring break trip to D.C. and Philly:
D.C.:
Smithsonian Museums (There're like 100 Smithsonian museums in D.C., all of which have free admission. Really really cool) - National Museum of American History, National Air & Space Museum, National Gallery of Art, National Museum of the American Indian, National Museum of Natural History, Holocaust Museum
International Spy Museum (the most pricey of them all at $18. Ouch!)
Philly:
The Philadelphia Museum of Art
Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art
Chemical Heritage Foundation (this one was really random. My friend and I just wanted to pass some time before our bus back to NYC, so we just wandered in to this, as it was near our hostel. It was free, and so we got a crash course in the history of chemistry. lol)

I think my favs out of the lot are MoMA, the Andy Warhol Museum, the Holocaust Museum and the Museum of American History. Also, art-wise, I realise that I find old European art really boring, because it's 99.30492% depictions of Biblical stuff - Jesus on the cross, the Virgin Mary visited by Gabriel or some other angel, Jesus in front of the Roman Emperor - you get the picture. I understand - that was the zeitgeist of the time, so of course artists would be commissioned to produce such works, but there're only so many variations of the crucification you can see before Zzzz... For old stuff, Asian art is more interesting for me. But of course, contemporary art is still the best - for the cool factor (even if it is mostly incomprehensible to me), or the WTF factor (seen most commonly in video or installation works. I recall one in the Carnegie Museum of Art where the room was filled with balls kept afloat by strong fans and then you walk into the room. The interaction of human and ball, whether you touched them or tried to avoid them, explained some sort of relationship between human and space. Or something.)

So new resolution: Visit the friggin' history museum when I get home in the summer!
and btw, museum visiting is ridiculously tiring, thanks to the amount of walking one has to do!

The Prodigal Son Returns

2009-02-26T06:58:00.009+08:00

So United was at the San Siro in Milan this past Tues for the first leg of their Champions League 09 quarter-final. Guess who in the neighbourhood decided to drop by their training session?Aww..Memories... Glad to see all grievances over the flying boot incident have been buried by Becks and Sir Alex!Two of England's best midfielders

Two greats, one legend: Becks, Giggs and Robson.Ah, if only Beckham didn't leave....

Singaporean leaders' amazing foresight!

2009-02-21T13:35:00.006+08:00

Looks like our political leaders really deserve their sky-high wages, because they are amazingly prescient! Remember this bit of humour?

Members of Parliament from the post-65 generation will be performing hip hop dance moves at the Chingay Parade next year.

The parade will be held along Orchard Road on February 23 and 24.

The 12 post-65 MPs will perform for 1 minute with 300 hip hop dancers at the Chingay Parade.

"The whole process was very enjoyable because the Post-65 MPs, the P-65 team, are very close, so we had a lot of fun doing it. It's more because of the closeness that we have and learning a new dance skills that we're coming forward to also participate in the Chingay," said Teo Ser Luck, Parliamentary Secretary, Community Development, Youth and Sports Ministry.

A few of them are not embarrassed to admit that hip hop is not their cup of tea.

"I have two left feet, I can't dance but I enjoyed myself. I showed my kids what I did, then they went "mum, loosen up a bit!" My kids can dance but I can't," said Jessica Tan, MP, East Coast GRC.

"That's part of the fun - to laugh at yourself, to have a sense of humour about everything and that's what we're trying to do as P-65 MPs, trying to connect with the youth and having fun with them, that's the main thing," said Chris de souza, MP, Holland-Bukit Timah GRC.

"All of us are having fun. It's not important whether we perform well, we dance well or whether we look professional on tv or during the parade. Most importantly, we have to connect with the youths of today," said Lam Pin Min, MP, Ang Mo Kio GRC.

Oh how we laughed back then, thinking that only Singaporean leaders would think of such a lame attempt to connect with the younger generations.

Well, looks like someone perhaps was inspired by our ingenious MPs.

Steele: GOP needs 'hip-hop' makeover
Ralph Z. Hallow

NEWSMAKER INTERVIEW:

Newly elected Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele plans an “off the hook” public relations offensive to attract younger voters, especially blacks and Hispanics, by applying the party's principles to “urban-suburban hip-hop settings.”

The RNC's first black chairman will “surprise everyone” when updating the party's image using the Internet and advertisements on radio, on television and in print, he told The Washington Times.

Having been elected to the job that the Bush White House and its political guru, Karl Rove, once denied him, Mr. Steele is running the show his way. To those who claimed he can't make the trains run on time, he has this message: “Stuff it.”

He stiff-armed an attempt to get him to elaborate on his public relations effort, saying he would be an idiot to give his opponents too much information, but indicated the Republican Party needs to break out of being considered a regional party.

”There was underlying concerns we had become too regionalized and the party needed to reach beyond our comfort” zones, he said, citing defeats in such states as Virginia and North Carolina. “We need messengers to really capture that region - young, Hispanic, black, a cross section ... We want to convey that the modern-day GOP looks like the conservative party that stands on principles. But we want to apply them to urban-surburban hip-hop settings.”

But, he elaborated with a laugh, “we need to uptick our image with everyone, including one-armed midgets.”

“Where we have fallen down in delivering a message is in having something to say, particularly to young people and moms of all shapes - soccer moms, hockey moms,” he said, though he insisted that party messages won't be different strokes for different folks. “We don't offer one image for 18-year-olds and another for soccer moms but one that shows who we are for the 21st century.”

Mr. Steele, the former lieutenant governor of Maryland and former state Republican Party chairman, defeated four rivals in the sixth round of voting on Jan. 30 to become chairman of the 168-member RNC. At the end of 2006, after Republicans lost their House and Senate majorities, Mr. Rove nixed a growing movement among RNC members - state Republican Party chairmen and elected national committee members - to elect Mr. Steele as their next chairman.

Mr. Rove subsequently left the White House to work for Fox News, and with President Bush on his way out of the Oval Office, the RNC was free to choose its own chairman instead of rubber-stamping the choice of a Republican White House.

While other former top Bush White House and campaign officials sent congratulations on his election, including former RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman, Mr. Rove neither phoned nor wrote his congratulations, Mr. Steele told The Times.

Mr. Steele said the national Republican leadership, with its emphasis on party discipline rather than developing a strong nationwide bench of candidates, put the party in the mess it now finds itself, most acutely in the Northeast. There is not even one U.S. House member from any of the six New England states, which have 22 seats, and the Republicans hold only three of New York's 29 seats.

“We missed the mark in the past, which is why we are in the crapper now,” he said. “We had the White House, the Senate and the House and were not building a farm team over the last years. We could have been ahead of Democrats and their 50-state strategy.”

Top party officials and officeholders have suggested that Mr. Steele name as deputy chairman someone who can run the national committee's vast operations in fundraising, communications, candidate recruitment and training, and voter identification and targeting.

“I can run this organization just fine,” Mr. Steele told The Times. “There will be no deputy chairman, period.”

Still, the talk among some prominent senior Republicans was that Mr. Steele would need someone with “more experience” to provide guidance and organization. Reminded of this, Mr. Steele told The Times: “People who said I can't make the trains run on time never gave a reason. I say to them, 'Stuff it.' “

“I am not afraid of being held accountable for my leadership,” he said. “The idea I am somehow going to handicap myself before I begin is nuts. I am not going to buy into this mind-set among a few people who probably have never run anything but their mouths.”

Under Mr. Steele's helm, the “old” may seem inappropriate in the Grand Old Party's affectionate nickname. He said he is putting a new public relations team into place to update the party's image.

“It will be avant garde, technically,” he said. “It will come to table with things that will surprise everyone - off the hook.”

Does that mean cutting-edge?

“I don't do 'cutting-edge,' “ he said. “That's what Democrats are doing. We're going beyond cutting-edge.”

Mr. Steele has begun weekly meetings with Senate and House Republicans to coordinate strategy, message, policy and tactics but has no intention of trying to give marching orders to Republican members of Congress and their leaders.

“Part of it is being in the same room with them so they hear you, and you resonate to their thinking and strategy,” he said.

”My goal is to listen and to share, when appropriate, insights,” Mr. Steele said. “I think I can be helpful from a political grass-roots and messaging perspective. ... I don't plan to dictate policy under any circumstance. What I can do is tell them how the party base feels about the policies they will have to confront, like the stimulus bill.”

I wonder what is "beyond cutting-edge"... Michael Steele is just made of win. His appointment in the first place was already transparently an "oh look a black guy was popular for the dems, we need to have one of our own!" attempt. And now he's trying to connect to the urban demographic with hop-hop? From the party which does not have a single black official on the national level, a party that is basically an old white men only club? It really shows the level of thought ,or rather, the lack of it, they have put into this. Instead of evaluating their policies and ideology to see how or why they might be alienating to increasingly growing minority populations, they think: oh, young kids like hip hop, so if we brand ourselves as the hip hop party, they'll vote for us!

It's kinda eerie how this echos almost exactly the type of thinking of the PAP.

But unlike the PAP, the Republicans are not in power. Far from it, in fact. They have fallen out of favour with American voters. They are the languishing party. And with policies and leaders like that, long may that continue.

Screw bipartisanship

2009-02-12T13:14:00.004+08:00

From the Huffington Post

An Open Letter to President Obama About the Republicans (From a Former Republican)

Dear President Obama:

I know that from time to time you read Huffington Post because you've written for it. As a Huffington Post reader you'll know that no one on this web site has more faithfully supported your candidacy and now your presidency than me. As a former lifelong Republican, son of a co-founder of the Religious Right; my late evangelical leader father, Francis Schaeffer, I'm in a unique position to tell you a few things about the Republicans from inside perspective. (As you know I left that movement in the mid 1980s.)

The lack of cooperation you're getting from the Republican Party will continue. You were right to indulge in a little bit of tokenism when you had to Pastor Rick Warren pray at your inauguration. But if you think that the Republicans in Congress and the Senate are going to do more than their utmost to obstruct everything you are and what you stand for you're dreaming.

As someone who appeared numerous times on the 700 Club with Pat Robertson, as someone for whom Jerry Falwell used to send his private jet to bring me to speak at his college, as an author who had James Dobson giveaway 150,000 copies of my one of my fundamentalist "books" allow me to explain something: the Republican Party is controlled by two ideological groups. First, is the Religious Right. Second, are the neoconservatives. Both groups share one thing in common: they are driven by fear and paranoia. Between them there is no Republican "center" for you to appeal to, just two versions of hate-filled extremes.

The Religious Right supply the kind of people who at McCain and Palin rallies were yelling things such as "kill him" about you. That's the constituency to which your hand was extended when looking for compromise on your financial bailout bill.

There's only one thing that makes sense for you now. Mr. President, you need to forget a bipartisan approach and get on with the business of governing by winning each battle. You will never be able to work with the Republicans because they hate you. Believe me, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter are the norm not the exception. James Dobson and the rest are praying for you to fail. The neoconservatives are gnashing their teeth and waiting for you to "sell out Israel" or "show weakness" in Afghanistan, whatever, so they can declare you a traitor.

The problem is that when you deal with the Republican Party you're talking to the polished characters in Washington. I wish you could see the hate e-mail's that I have received over the last two years because I supported you, letters calling for God to kill me, telling me that I hate God because I supported you and that I am "an abortionist" and worse a "fag lover" because I've written that I believe that you will be a great president.

What those senators and congressmen are telling you is not what their rabid core constituents are telling them. Their loyalty is to a fundamentalist Christian ideology on the one hand and American exceptionalism of perpetual warfare and hatred and fear of the "other" on the other hand. Between the neoconservatives and evangelical Religious Right Republicans you have no friends.

The good news is that most Americans support you. And if you will just get in the face of the Republican Party and call their bluff you'll be surprised how many individual ordinary Republicans will support you, not to mention the rest of us. America is sick of the Republicans.

The Democratic Party won for a reason: the Republicans failed and have taken us all down with them! You're doing your presidency and America no favor by extending an open hand to the perpetually knotted fist of what has become the embittered lunatic fringe of our country. They would rather go down in flames than "compromise" their ideology.

As you showed us again at your press conference of Feb 9, you are a brilliant, articulate and decent man. Your Republican opponents are not decent people but ideologues bent on destroying you. To quote the biblical adage sir, don't cast your pearls before swine.

Frank Schaeffer is the author of CRAZY FOR GOD-How I Grew Up As One Of The Elect, Helped Found The Religious Right, And Lived To Take All (Or Almost All) Of It Back. Now in paperback.

A-freakin'-men. It's admirable (and frustrating) that Obama insists on his post-partisan, third-way, bi-partisan, however you wanna call it way of governing, but it is clearly not working! The stimulus bill, which a majority of Americans support, and which most economists agree is crucial, was rejected by all House Republicans, and only three miserable Senate Republicans voted yes on it. This, despite the fact that Obama sought Republican opinions in authoring the bill, courting them at the White House, etc., right from the start, and tossing in those huge tax cuts (which Macroecons 101 tell you are much less stimulating compared to direct govt. spending)! Bipartisanship for the Republicans equals my way or the highway. Well, fuck that!

Good thing Obama seems to have woken up from that and taken the offensive with his campaign-style tour of the country to sell the bill. Hope you've learnt your lesson, Mr. President. You have the majority, you have the political capital, you won. Do what you think is best, and if the Republicans disagree, so be it. Let's get the ball rolling before all political will is lost as midterm elections arrive in 2010!

Singapore soccer makes international news

2009-01-30T02:44:00.003+08:00

What a surprise to find a Singapore headline on Soccernet.com's homepage whilst on my daily visit to the site. Too bad it wasn't for qualification into the World Cup or something. Maybe next time.

Jordan and Singapore battle with broomsticks
January 29, 2009
Jordanian soccer players attacked their Singaporean counterparts with bottles and broomsticks after losing an Asian Cup qualifier on Wednesday, Singaporean newspapers reported on Thursday.
A Reuters witness at Singapore's national stadium heard loud shouts for police assistance moments after both teams had walked into a tunnel leading to their changing rooms, and saw police rushing into the tunnel.
"The Jordanians attacked with whatever they could find, like broomsticks, plastic bottles, dustbins and even a metal electric fan," the Straits Times paper quoted Singapore's team manager Eugene Loo as saying, after he witnessed the minute-long brawl.
The punch-up followed a tense game that Singapore won 2-1, which revitalised the city-state's Asian Cup qualification campaign. The teams were escorted out of their changing rooms and into their buses separately afterwards, a Reuters witness said.
"I'm disappointed that the Jordanians resorted to violent behaviour. We were only walking back to our dressing room to celebrate our victory when they rushed out to whack us - they were totally crazy," the Straits Times quoted Singaporean midfielder Mustafic Fahrudin as saying.
Singapore, known for its lack of violence, also saw rare crowd trouble in the Asian Football Federation Cup semi-final match last month when Singaporean and Vietnamese fans clashed.

I'm sure this was a Newpaper frontpage headline. Congrats Singapore for the victory, and for your brief moment of infamy!

Just not the face, please!

2009-01-09T15:24:00.007+08:00

Internal security memo sent to all students today:

Sarah Lawrence College
Department of Public Safety & Security

I am writing to tell you about an off-campus incident which occurred on Thursday,
January 8 at approximately 12:50pm. A Sarah Lawrence student was walking toward the Fleetwood Train Station on Midland Ave. between Kimball and Bronx River Rd. when he was confronted by 7 to 8 young males. One of the young males punched the student in the face and another threw a cup of soda at him. Fortunately, the student was not seriously injured and did not require medical attention. He was not robbed during the incident. The victim believes that the incident may have been racially motivated because he is of Asian descent. The young males had made several remarks, but the victim was unable to make out what they had said.
The perpetrators were described as 15 to 16 year old, dark-skinned males wearing
baggy sweat pants and sweat shirts with hoods. They were thought to be between 5’8” and 5’11”. Also near them were two 18 to 19 year old, taller, dark-skinned males, but the victim was not certain whether these two older individuals were partof the group. The college notified the Yonkers Police Department about the incident and asked that they pay special attention to the area.

So yeah, that was me actually. I was punched in the face yesterday. Kinda surreal, as these things sorta are (I feel, anyway). So there's this long straight path that I walk from my dorm to the Fleetwood train station, where I take the metronorth to Manhattan. Yesterday, I was walking down that road to the train station as usual, on my way to the city to catch a bus to Pittsburgh, where I'm writing this. It was 1250pm or so. My train was arriving at 1257pm, so I was in a hurry.

As I stepped onto that path, I noticed in front of me a bunch of African American kids, aged about 15-16. There were 6-7 of them. Immediately, they noticed me too. As they continued walking, they periodically turned around to look at me, laughing and making comments which were obviously about me. I ignored them, thinking it was just harmless insults.

Soon, because of my brisk pace, I overtook these guys, cutting through them to a clear path. As I did so, they were again making remarks, sniggering at me. I did not catch what they were saying because I was really only thinking about making the train. I pulled ahead of those guys by some distance. But there was still some way to go on that path before I reached the train station. There was nobody else on that path at this point, and the road next to it was empty.

Suddenly, someone from behind grabbed my shoulder, turned me around and punched me in the face, or more specifically, in my right cheekbone. I was stunned more than anything else. It was luckily a light jab more than anything, so it didn't hurt much. It was one of the African American kids who had punched me. The rest of them were behind him, all looking half amused, half threatening.

I am kinda wondering now why I reacted the way I did, but I did not run away immediately. Instead, I merely continued on with my brisk pace of walking, while turning my head towards them and saying, "Dude, what the fuck? Why the fuck did you do that?" They didn't answer and merely continued to make those taunting faces while continuing to follow me. So, I continued walking, all along turning behind and saying to them, "WTF?"

Then, another of those guys' face suddenly turned angry and he threw the cup of soda he held at my hands towards me. It hit my back, and wet my bags. Again, weirdly, I did not run, but continued walking quickly and just trying to ignore them. I was also just really thrown off, I suppose, just wondering why in the world someone would do such a thing. By this time, I had reached a traffic junction which I crossed. Once across the junction, I saw that the guys had stopped before crossing. There was a bus stop before the crossing, and I think they were actually walking there to catch the bus. So home safe, I thought. A few more steps later, I turned around, and as I did so, they noticed me turning around, and suddenly, they all ran across the junction and started to chase after me, this time looking really menacing. So yeah, I ran now. And I screamed, "Help!". Thankfully, I was near the train station by now, so I soon caught up to a guy on his way to the station. I turned around and saw the guys had stopped chasing, obviously noticing that I had nearly reached the train station where there were people. Finally, they turned back and headed for the bus stop. Phew.

So yeah, not a god day in all. For sure, I felt that the incident was racially motivated. Another thing I could sense from their sniggering was the way I dressed, I think, which was sorta 'nice' with a peacoat, scarf and all, whereas they were in more typically 'street' getups of hoodies and baggy sweats. I guess the combination of being Asian and 'well-dressed' made me an easy target of bully/abuse/whatever. I feel like they did it more out of a perverted sense of fun more than anything, given how the punch was seriously more like a boxing jab, rather than some roundhouse punch. So, I guess I should be thankful for that. So I only had very slight swelling and redness, which now is all but gone now, leaving only a slight pain when I touch my cheekbone.

In talking to someone about the incident later, I believe that my reaction actually helped me from getting a thorough thrashing. I really did not show fear immediately, because the punch was sorta light. I was seriously more shocked and annoyed than anything, with half my mind still sorta thinking: Shit, am I going to miss the train because of this? Because I think these bullies (who are still kids, given that they're so young) thrive on fear, they were confounded and did not know how to react when I reacted the way I did, doing the whole WTF routine towards them. And the cup of soda didn't really faze me, except that I was hoping it did not strike my new peacoat! Evidence in this theory is seen in later, when the shock had subsided a bit, and I started to really think: shit, I could really be in trouble here. This was as I was crossing the road, and I began to quicken my steps and break into a light jog. I think the guys senses my fear, and thus began to chase after me too. Good thing my fear struck me late then, since I did not have far to run.

The stupid thing now is that: I've walked up/down that path a trillion times, many times at like 2am in the night, and felt perfectly alright. And this happened literally in broad daylight. So now, I just wonder, how am I going to feel when I walk down that path? Should I start to run whenever I see a group of people (racial profiling sadly comes in too)? I really hope it doesn't mess with my sense of security. Because I need my Manhattan sojourns!

And I also wonder: These kids are only 15-16. They're so young! So they got away with this. Does that mean as they grow older, they graduate to 'bigger and better' things? Or is there a chance that this is mere teenage immaturity which will go away? I don't know... I hope it's the latter....

So I guess that's that. My first NY assault experience. Part of the quintessential American experience? LOL. Fingers crossed it's the first and last.

Whiteout

2008-12-20T09:55:00.003+08:00

The season's first major snowfall finally hits lower New York. 5in from soft, flurry wonder. Pity it didn't come earlier so we could have a snow day and cancel classes!

This is the view from my apartment window.

Oh...Bama...why...

2008-12-19T16:08:00.005+08:00

December 18, 2008, 2:47 pm
Obama Defends Warren Choice

By Brian Knowlton

President-elect Barack Obama was asked Thursday at his news conference about the furious reaction from some gay-rights groups to his decision to ask Rick Warren to play a role in his Inauguration.

The choice of Mr. Warren, pastor of a megachurch in Orange County, Calif., set off a round of criticism by gay rights groups angered by his support for California’s ban on same-sex marriages. Mr. Warren is an outspoken opponent of abortion and same-sex marriage — litmus-test issues for Christian conservatives.

Mr. Obama defended the decision as part of his effort to involve a broad range of Americans in the nation’s business without sacrificing civility.

“I think that it is no secret that I am a fierce advocate for equality for gay and lesbian Americans,” Mr. Obama said.

He noted that he had been invited by Mr. Warren to speak at his church a few years ago — despite their obvious differences — and added that “that dialogue, I think, is part of what my campaign’s been all about; that we’re not going to agree on every single issue, but what we have to do is to be able to create an atmosphere where we can disagree without being disagreeable.”
“That’s part of the magic of this country,” said Mr. Obama, “is that we are diverse and noisy and opinionated.”

Ok, so we all know Obama is all about change, and that "this is not red states and blue states, this is the United States", blah blah blah, but inviting a bigot to speak at his inauguration? There's his much-fangled "post-partisan" style of leadership, but there's also pandering... And this is just pandering to the bigots and idiots out there. It's inclusivity for someone who believes in exclusivity.

So far in his post-partisan policies, we have seen Obama stretch so far to reach out to the Right that he could very well replace Mr. Fantastic in the Fantastic Four. But it seems this 'reaching out' is extended only to conservatives. The left/liberals? Nada. Left to feast on scraps. As if they're supposed to support him because..... well, because!

Also, by giving Warren a platform, Obama is implicitly legitimizing his stance, however wrong he might think it is (which I don't even know if he does really). So you crave open dialogue, Sir, but would you ever think of inviting a racist or an anti-Semite to speak? Yeah, thought so.

Add this to the long list of Clinton loyalists whom Obama has chosen for his administration, and you really wonder: Change? What change? (Incidentally, Emanuel Rahm, his choice for Chief of staff, is a Sarah Lawrence alum.)

But to be fair, the most important thing Obama needs to do is fix the economy. So, the jury's still out on that. And his choice of Steven Chu, someone's who actually a scientist as opposed to a bureaucrat, for energy chief, is certainly reassuring. But it seems like he is going to be disappointing a lot of people along the way.

It's all relative, baby.

2008-12-12T13:58:00.007+08:00

We interrupt this ridiculously long blogging hiatus to comment on something I read on the NYT website today (and also to continue procrastination whilst trying to write this 15 page term paper).

Cholera Is Raging, Despite Denial by Mugabe
"Inflation officially hit 231 million percent in July, but John Robertson, an independent economist in Zimbabwe, estimates that it has now surged to an astounding eight quintillion percent — that is an eight followed by 18 zeros."

Jeez.
My suitemate and I were discussing how this, plus the genocide in Congo and other assorted violations of human rights in Africa, make the recession and upcoming depression seem rather trivial, which in turn makes having to complete writing X number of papers in Y number of days look like a vacation in *insert appropriate beachfront holiday destination of choice*.

Onwards with writing then, perspective firmly in mind.

2 for 1

2008-10-10T02:23:00.006+08:00

It was movie day last Friday. Caught two movies at the enormous 25-theatre AMC in Times Square. Bought tix for Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist and after that, snuck into a screening of How to Lose Friends and Alienate People. I feel completely justified in doing so because a ticket costs $12!!!
Verdict: Nick and Norah 7.5/10 (Michael Cera = +1 automatically, but a tad underdeveloped)
How to Lose Friends 6/10 (Stick to Brit fare, Simon Pegg)

By chance, both films turn out to be NYC-themed, the former being about a night out in the LES, and the latter about a Brit moving to work in a snazzy NYC mag (based on a book written about a guy who worked at Vanity Fair). Typically, both featured plenty of skyline shots of the city, including a shot of the very street the movie theatre we were in was located. Feels really neat to see that.

08/09 The Year Ahead

2008-09-12T10:22:00.006+08:00

Urgh, I didn't manage to get into any of the economics classes that I wanted. That's the crappy part of the system here, the utter randomness of class selection, much unlike the points systems Singaporeans are used to. Sure, it purports to broaden your horizon, allowing to take and maybe fall in love with a class you would never have expected to take, but on the flip side, if you already have a set academic plan, you have little or no control over it.

But this year will be interesting. I'm taking four classes, one more than the usual 3 (we take fewer class because we do independent research papers for each class on top of class work).

There's Intermediate French, which I'm already shitting myself over, because some of the kids in the class are pretty darn fluent, and the teacher speaks really quickly and uses a lot of cheem (to me) vocab, unlike my Beginning teacher last year who took time to speak and enunciate very clearly. On the first day of class, he played us this satirical French political news broadcast which poked fun at Sarkozy. More than half the class didn't understand a single word. I know I didn't. But one or two managed to laugh frequently at the jokes. Damn them. Je pense que je dois peut-etre ecouter plus de chansons francais et regarder plus de films francais.

Modern History of Diplomacy and Intelligence with a teacher who's got a really great reputation in the school. He's an ex-CIA intelligence officer and is just amazingly intelligent, really cool. Really excited about this class. Again though, crazy knowledgeable peeps. In the first class, since we hadn't done any readings, we talked about the Ruso-Georgian conflict. And these kids began throwing out their ridiculous history knowledge, referring Chechnya, Baltic problems in Estonia and Latvia, possible separatism issues in Ukraine, Poland, and some Hungarian revolution.... Yeah, I did not speak at all that class, except for the introduction (Reminded me of how lost I felt in my first Intro to US Politics class year, which incidentally also had one of the above-mentioned crazy knowledgeable kids. He knew a alot about US political history too. And he apparently edits Wikipedia entries on US military subjects...). Damn these kids too, let's see you talk some Qing, Ming, Song, Tang, Manchurian, etc. history!

Cultural Studies of the Pacific Rim is the first lecture I will take here ('lecture' used loosely as there're just like 30 ppl tops). It's classfied as a Lit class, about Asian, Asian-American lit mostly. I signed up because we're gonna be be reading my fav author, Ishiguro! And Murakami, and other such Pacific authors. We're gonna be watching some familiar movies too: Chung King Express, 2046, even Eric Khoo's Be With Me (which my teacher mistakenly announced as Indonesian in the class. WTF)! But I'm really not a Lit person, I realise. The first class, the teacher was talking about all of these abstract terms that I just felt so lost (yeah, recurring theme there). Stuff like identity, nationalism, orientalism, tropology, paleonomy ("using old words, old categories with the purpose of launching new inquiries, new investigations"). Most interestingly to me, there're quite a few Asian-American kids in this class, and many of them relate to this struggle for identity, for the search of their roots, etc. I just thought: It's funny how I've never really thought about tracing my roots, or even questioning where exactly do I draw the line on where my roots begin. Hmm. Oh well, I get to read Ishiguro!

Statistics: This was my third choice in alternate registration. It's math, 'nuff said. I didn't even bring a freakin' calculator over, lol. So I have to go get one. This will be interesting. And to show the astounding popularity of math in my school, we have 9 people in the class. Haha.

And in more exciting news, soccer! We're forming a club team this year, and will have three games, including one up to Mass. against Hampshire College. Roadtrip! Training, 3x weekly, begun Monday, and it was fucking tiring. We did what is commonly termed here as "suicides", which is basically running back and forth the field, stopping at the midpoints to do pushups, crunches or jumps. Fucking tiring for this old uncle. Earlier tonight, we had a 4 mile (8-9km) run scheduled. Are you freakin' kidding me? I didn't even run that much in the army! Erm, yeah, so I didn't go for training tonight. Lol.

So, all in all, I''ve observed that my classes seem to work diff. parts of my brain. There's the linguistic part, the analytical part in both Math and Hist., and finally, art in the form of Lit. to soothe my soul. Heh. And soccer now and tennis in the spring to keep in shape, and I'm set. And since Stats is a fall-semester class only, hopefully I'll be able to successfully register for a freakin' econ class in the spring.

And of course, more trips into the city, hopefully! Maybe see more of Brooklyn, and its hipster-haven parts.

To a good 08/09 then.

Missing the Olympics.

2008-09-03T11:51:00.009+08:00

Thanks to my general lack of productivity and industry during my summer holidays, I was able to watch the Olympics every single day, catching everything from the likes of swimming, gymnastics, tennis, athletics, volleyball, handball, diving and table tennis (of course!). J'adore l'Olympic!

Life goal: Attend at least one summer games!

In honour of the spectacle that was Beijing '08, here's one of the stars of the Games. Ms Anastasia Nastia Liukin!

*Magic fingers*

Somehow, the seeming casualness as she's doing a flip that's captured in this photo reminds me of how the characters in the Peanuts comic strips walk.

Only one word to describe her: Fierce.

On the 6 (ala J Lo)

2008-09-03T11:34:00.002+08:00

So the first week of my second year in NY was spent in the Bronx. Emily, my ex-housemate, kindly housed me in her apartment, and I took the 6 train back to her place everyday, just like J.Lo did, lol (Her first album was titled On the 6).

So, one of those day, I went to another location in the Bronx, Parkchester. My friend had invited me to her house for dinner. She picked me up at the subway stop, and we walked to her place. Along the way, one of a bunch of Latino guys shouted at her, "Hey girl, my egg roll's bigger than his!" Sexual harassment with a touch of racism. I thought it was hilarious. I mean, at least it was witty! Poor Beli though, she says she has to deal with these verbal harassments every time she walks back home.

The Hotness

2008-07-29T00:05:00.002+08:00

Lol. Forget the Real transfer sage, Ronaldo changing his race is the real shocker. And nice shorts, btw.

Champions 07/08!

2008-05-21T11:48:00.009+08:00

A little for-good-luck celebratory post before the Champion's League Final!

Manchester United - Premier League champions once again! Incidentally, they've now won the league five times in the 00s, the same number as they did in the 90s (But you only hear stuff like "back when Man Utd dominated in the 90s..."). So, there!

God bless SAF. Footballing legend, but still celebrates like a spastic. But he's more than earned the right to do so!

Love you, Fergie!

Spring Break '08 Pt. 1 - Boston

2008-04-22T10:38:00.002+08:00

Dead tired from rushing pre-break assignments, I set off for NYC the first Saturday morning at 7am (!) to catch the Chinatown bus to Boston. The day started with a hitch. One of our friends cancelled on going that very day because she fell very sick, and thanks to my tardiness, my friend Camille and I missed the train that we had wanted to take (We were supposed to meet another friend, Flavia, on the train because she catches it at the next stop. And she didn't have a phone!). Thankfully, everything worked out, as we got to Chinatown on time and Flavia was waiting for us there. Phew! Would have felt too guilty otherwise!

We stayed in this International Hostel in Boston. It was communal, and I shared a room with 5 other guys, most of whom were mature figures, which it seemed as if they were actually living there quasi-permanently, probably because they can't afford housing or something.

First stop after we dropped our bags was Cambridge, home of Harvard.

Everyone seemed to be taking pictures with their hands rubbing the foot of this statue guy located on the Harvard campus, so I figured, "when in Rome..." and all. It must be some sort of a tradition. Gained a few IQ points hopefully!

Harvard Square, the hangout area next to Harvard (yeah, duh, i know) was very nice. It had the very relaxing, laid-back, student-y vibe of Union Square, except even more so because it is not as crowded as Union Sq.

Boston is really stuffed full of tertiary institutions. We wanted to visit MIT but didn't have the time, but another big school is Boston University, which has a great campus stretched along the Charles River. Very scenic.

Pretty art on exterior walls of houses.

Bostonian architecture, which as is often the case in the US, exhibits a lot of colonial or European influences (talking out of my ass here!)

The Charles River. Incidentally, though Boston temperatures are pretty similar to NYC, it's much colder because of the strong winds!

The first night in Boston, we went to this seafood restaurant called No Name. After all, Boston is home of lobsters and what not.

The rather nondescript entrance to No Name. Camille's guidebook listed three reputed seafood eateries. We decided on this one beause it got only $$$ out of $$$$$, the lowest of the three. Heh.

So after the meal, which was ok to me, though they loved it, we went to pay the bill of course. I began chatting with the guy at the counter, and he asked me where I was from. "Singapore", I said. "Oh," he replied in a tone which made it obvious he recognised the place, which was a bit of a surprise to me, because who would know our little dot, right? "Do you know this guy? He comes here sometimes to eat," he continued, pointing me to this photo below.

Why, it's PM Lee Hsien Loong (Blurred picture of a picture. But click to enlarge)! Lol. I said, "yeah of course. He's our prime minister." Apparently, because Lee's son goes to MIT, whenever Lee comes to Boston to visit his son, they come here for their meals! And the guy told me they'd occupy a huge portion or the entire floor (it has two. they'd occupy the smaller of the two) of the restaurant ((very celeb-like indeed) and Lee would have guards standing around. Lol.
I wonder why they choose to go there instead of the more posh ones. Maybe because he can't "claim" the expense.

Random shot. Wonder why MySpace never quite took off in Singapore.

Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox. The problem with traveling with girls (or at least girls who don't give a shit about sports) is that I had to go to these places alone!

Camille and me with our bagels, coloured green for St. Patrick's Day.

Broadcast media of the devil.

Mr. Lamp Post looking sharp.

Ok, a quick googling reveals that the signs refer to Joseph Hooker, a famous US Civil War figure. But, still, LOL!

Et voila~ We left Boston on a Sunday night, taking the overnight bus to Montreal. Francophone state = chance to practice French! Or maybe not.

Holidays in America

2008-03-07T04:57:00.003+08:00

So this is way, way, way overdue! I'm gonna compile my 07 Thanksgiving and Christmas posts into one (when I really should be doing my paper!)

Thanksgiving was spent at my friend Dia's place in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. It's a pretty rural area, the kind of town where the entertainment is a visit to K-Mart or the diner. And that was what we did!

Dia's cute house.

One of her three cats. Reminded me of Baileys, of course.

The view of the forest from the backyard.

It was a nice, low-key few days. I had a sorta traditional Thanksgiving dinner, with turkey and cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and a whole assortment of pies, including apple, lemon and pecan. Like I said, the town is pretty rural, so what kids do for entertainment is mostly hang around in other kids' houses, or drive around. So, that was my first Thanksgiving experience.
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Christmas eve 2007 was spend at another friend Matt's place in Greenwich Village. His grandfather owns this brownstone place, which is really cool. It's four storeys high, but narrow, and is very old and quaint, with very narrow and steep stairs. A lot of character. Anyway, Matt has an annual family Christmas gathering on the eve, and it was quite a crowd of adults and kids.

His whole family is very artistic. His mum teaches art; he plays the cello; his uncle is a successful cellist and other relatives play violins,etc. So, the whole affair was very musical. One of their traditions is for everyone to gather, share hymm books and sing hymms, with musical accompaniment from his uncle and aunt (I think) who played the violin and the piano. I didn't know the tune to half the songs, so I just tried to keep up as much as I could.

Then, later in the night, they decided to hold an impromptu concert with a strings sextet. The sextet spanned young and old, with Matt on the cello and his young cousin on the violin, and his aunts and uncles on violins and violas. They played (classical stuff which I obviously have no knowledge of) for about 30-45 min while the rest of us just chilled.

That's the impromptu concert caught in action. Matt is on the cello in the back, and the little kid on the violin is Frankie, his British cousin and Liverpool fan.

The thing that was atypical of their celebration was that they opened gifts on Xmas eve. All the presents, wrapped simply with newspaper and marked with names, were stuffed under their tree, seen on the right of the pic. I got one too! Lol, Matt's mum gave me a set of Converse ankle socks. I ended the night playing Blackjack with his cousins.

So, that was my American holiday experience of 07. CNY to come~

Status Update

2008-03-05T08:56:00.004+08:00

For the two people out there who might be curious about how my life has been going.

Spring Break plans: Boston, Montreal, Quebec, Vermont in an intense 10-12 days.

I'm currently doing an internship at Decca Label Group, a label under the Universal Music Umbrella, in the Sales dept every Friday. It's pretty awesome as I get to geek out over chart stats.

Otherwise, life has been pretty mundane. Somehow not as motivated to study as last semester (not that that was a high level of motivation anyway!). Haha. Still taking French and environment econs, but I've finished my American politics class and am now taking a Asian Studies class on China (specifically, Manchuria) in the 20th century (almost had no choice but to take this class after I was bumped of my choices during both rounds of selection! Bah.).

Public Transport Tales

2008-03-05T08:49:00.003+08:00

So I took the NYC bus for the first time last weekend.

Boarding the bus the first time: I have a bit of trouble finding the slot to insert my metrocard, and kinda randomly poke around for a sec. I look up at the bus driver. He simply laughs.

Boarding the bus the second time: I ask the bus driver how many stops it take to get to 116 and Broadway. Her reply? A deadpan, "Quite a few".

They just don't give a fuck! Lol!

How come my school didn't do this

2008-02-27T12:35:00.000+08:00

Texas university giving freshmen iPhones and iPod touches

By Justin Berka | Published: February 26, 2008 - 04:57PM CT

Schools and universities are often big fans of Apple products, which usually translates to labs and laptop carts full of Macs. Educational institutions across the country have also started to provide students with personal laptops. Louisiana recently launched a program to distribute MacBooks to elementary school students, and now Abilene Christian University in Texas is getting into the act as well. But rather than handing out MacBooks, the university will be distributing iPhones and iPod touches to all incoming freshmen.

ACU began exploring uses for mobile devices in the summer of 2007 and ran a pilot study with faculty and and educational technology developers to determine how the iPhone could be used by students. The group came up with quite a few uses for the devices, devising more than 15 iPhone applications that they hoped will be useful to students. These applications include homework alerts, in-class surveys, directions to classrooms and offices, and meal balance information, just to name a few.

The iPhone and iPod touch program is a direct result of the study, and the usage patterns of the incoming freshman class will shape future mobile device programs at ACU. The school is also considering other ways to integrate technology and education. CIO Kevin Roberts made a recent presentation to Apple and a number of other institutions (including most of the Ivy League) about the iPhone programs, so perhaps more schools will follow suit in the future.

A Hair of a Difference

2008-01-31T06:28:00.000+08:00

Atonement (good, but not a masterpiece)'s Briony Tallis from young to old.

LOL.

Newsflash: Singapore plays a part in Maria's 3rd Slam victory!

2008-01-27T07:34:00.000+08:00

Sharapova savours sweet success
Saturday, 26 January, 2008
By Luke Buttigieg
Maria Sharapova celebrates after winning championship point

Australian Open 2008 women's singles champion Maria Sharapova says her victory is just reward for all the hard work she has put in over recent months.

Sharapova struggled with injury for much of 2007 but finally managed to shake off most of her ailments in the latter part of the year and returned to some of the tennis that she's renowned for when she reached the final at the WTA Tour Championships.

And having avenged her defeat to Justine Henin in that final in Madrid when she won her quarter-final against the Belgian world No.1 earlier this week, Sharapova completed her third Grand Slam win with a 7-5 6-3 defeat of Serbian Ana Ivanovic.

"So exciting, it's amazing," she said of her feelings about her latest triumph. "Sometimes you just … when you're putting the work in it just seems so, so hard, and you never know when that work's gonna pay off."

"When you're going through tough moments, you never know when you're going to have good moments. I'm just so thankful that I got this one."

But having been humbled by unseeded American Serena Williams in the corresponding match 12 months ago when she was the No.1 seed, Sharapova denied that she had any extra motivation this time around in an event in which she didn't drop a set.

"No, just satisfying, period, to win a Grand Slam, and to win one that you've never won before, especially after some of the tough losses that I've had," Sharapova said when asked if she was more satisfied to win it in light of her loss in 2007.

"The feeling is just so weird, because with every match you play, you finish the match and you think, there's one more to go and you've got to concentrate. Although you just beat a top player, you played really good tennis, you always feel like there's one more to go."

"And right now there's no more to go, and I just can't feel that yet, you know. I feel like I still have to get up tomorrow and play another match," a smiling Sharapova added. "But it will settle in - I hope - really soon. I mean, I don't have a match till next week."

Having come close to being ousted in the first round in 2007 when a scorching Melbourne day almost brought her undone, Sharapova was much more comfortable in the warm conditions on Saturday.

"When I was in Singapore a couple weeks ago it was so hot and humid out there," she said.

"I got to practice there for about three days outdoors. It was great, because when I got out on the court today, I was like, 'This is a piece of cake'."

"Even though it's hot, it wasn't nearly as hot as it was over there. You know, just mentally going into the match I didn't really care. Whatever it took, I was just gonna try to do everything I could to win that match."

While unsure at first whether she could say that her greater Grand Slam final experience had helped her, Sharapova did confirm that to be the case when she cast her mind back to the pivotal 10th game of the first set.

"When I was down 0-30 on my serve, when she had that opportunity to break me and win that set, I think experience definitely helped me because I didn't get impatient," Sharapova said. "I was just steady. I knew that, you know, it was for her to take."

"I mean, she's two points away from winning the first set in a Grand Slam final. You know, if you want it, take it. And she didn't. Was that experience? I was just calm. I just did the right things."

Having also revealed after her win that she has regular contact with former star Billie Jean King, and was in touch with her both before and after the final, Sharapova ominously warned her rivals she thinks her game can still improve.

"I know I've already won three Grand Slams, I know I keep saying this, but I don't think I'm at the peak of my career yet," she said. "I don't think my body has 100 per cent developed into its own."

"I've got many more things to learn, you know, in my tennis, and many things to build and improve. That takes time. It's not an overnight process. It's something that I look forward to.

Sharapova is obviously confident any time she enters a Grand Slam that she can go all the way, but two of her biggest goals for the rest of 2008 would surely be trying to complete a career slam and also success at the Beijing Olympics.

And if she can maintain the stellar form that took her to this breakthrough on Saturday, few would bet against the Russian being right in the hunt at the business end of many major tournaments for years to come.

We're glad to have helped, Maria! Really impressive two weeks of play. With this kinda of form, the French Open? Who knows! Onwards and upwards!

And thanks Novak for beating Fed~

That Reaallly Hurts!

2008-01-11T12:33:00.000+08:00

Seriously adorable baby siblings, complete with British accents. THE MOST ADORABLE THING IN THE WORLD!

The Power of a Woman's Tears?

2008-01-07T14:13:00.001+08:00

So, when all hope seemed lost, as Obama was on a seemingly unstoppable surge post-Iowa, carrying a 10+% lead in pre-primary poll in NH (when he was behind by similar margins pre-Iowa), Hillary Clinton has somehow managed to win the New Hampshire primary , reversing poll stats of a mere two days old(!),and stemming the Obama momentum train. Polling inaccurary? Or was it due to the power of her (almost) tears on Monday, as seen here? Calculated or not, women voters apparently bought it, with a large majority voting for Clinton. I do admit, I was sorta moved by it too. She's human, y'all! Of course, one could also say that the first moment of difficulty encountered, she (almost) cries. Lame!

Regardless, the nomination is now a tight two- horse race. Exciting (and with Oscar season upon us, double the fun!)

Anyway, here's a irreverent take of the Clinton/Obama relationship, set to a spoof of Rihanna's Umbrella. So, so wrong!

Autumn in New York

2008-01-01T07:03:00.000+08:00

Finally, I'm getting around to posting this! It's deep in the middle of a freezing winter now, so what better thing to do than to reminisce about warmer days past! Last fall, Adel came to NY/Chicago for a holiday and I spent two days hanging with her.

We met in Chinatown, and promptly proceeded to eat at 56 Mott Street (Still haven't caught the name, even though I've been there subsequent times!), a place which came highly recommended from Ronald and Aileen as having good and affordable Chinese food.

My huge plate of chicken + char siew rice

The funniest part of our day must have been our visit to the Chinese medical hall right opposite the restaurant after our meal. I had been looking for Chinese herbal cough/sore throat medication, and voila, there the store was! And in the end, both of us walked out with purchases of at least US$50, I think. Who've thought that we'd come all the way to NYC to hang out at a sinseh place and get Chinese medicine? Hilarious, really. Well, we thought so anyway. Anyway, Adel's medication apparently worked wonders! Alas, mine did not fare quite as well.

Fog/A really low-hanging cloud/? blocking out an entire third of a skyscraper downtown, as seen from Chinatown. You can clearly see that the /effect-of-nature, whatever it was/ extends to a distance, then suddenly ends, because the top building on the left, which is further forward, wasn't blocked up. Pretty nifty.

We didn't really take many (well, relative to some) pictures in our two days because all we basically did was walk around plenty. Also, Adel is not one to visit tourist trappings (you didn't see the Statue of Liberty et al, did you?). In fact, she's not one to see anything at all! My memory of October is fuzzy by now, but I distinctly remember that as we were walking up 5th Ave towards Central Park and chatting, I tried to point out various things around, like the NY Public Library, Saks, etc., because Adel was totally oblivious to everything around her, much to my bemusement. I remember remarking about this point, saying that it's as if we were merely just walking down Orchard Road for the zillionth time, to which she replied (paraphrasing somewhat here) that the company is much more important than the sights. And I do agree with her. It was really nice just strolling uptown and conversing with a good friend (and in cool weather!).

But Adel, now you know the next time you're here that there're nice public toilets right next to Grand Central at the Hyatt Hotel! :)

We did, as mentioned, walk around Central Park.

Getting (if memory serves me right) a Swedish tourist to take a picture of us on the bridge that was featured in Spiderman 3 (me & pop culture references. How refreshing!)

An adorable (squee!!) animal (what is it???) hanging out in its little cubicle in a tree trunk. This one has star appeal. At least a dozen snap-happy tourists were trying to capture a pictorial keepsake of its squee!ness.

Auto-timered shot on one of the many rock croppings. Featuring a guest appearance by a New York guide book, sponsored generously by the NLB.

It was evening and time to head our separate ways soon, so we tried to search for a restaurant to have dinner nearby at in Time Out magazine. We settled on Southern Hospitality, a restaurant opened by Justin Timberlake, somewhere near 3rd and 76th. And we walked there. I know what you're thinking, and we made the same comments. How teeny-bopper of us to want to eat at some celeb vanity joint. But, the prices suited our budget, and it was sorta near.

Still, we were on the southern tip of the park, aka 50something street, so that was a twenty block walk. In the end, due to time constraints, we gave up halfway and settled on a Japanese restaurant along the way, and Adel gave me a birthday treat. Merci beaucoup! (Don't I sound like a pretentious twat with my random and tired French insertions? lol. I do know more than two phrases now though, seriously!) (Anyway, Ad, I walked part Southern Hospitality last week by chance. Didn't look atas at all. Look like a typical sports bar/restaurant, with TVs showing football, baseball, etc. Just thought you should know!)

One of the places we explored was the East Village, with its assortment of small, indie clothing boutiques (with astronomical prices), record shops and art galleries. Strangely, it was what I thought SoHo would be. But SoHo has since gone more generic-upscale, so the more artsy-but-still-pricy establishments moved eastwards.

Captured in East Village. Heh.

In sharp-enough-to-pierce-through-10-Balenciaga-crocodile-skin-bags contrast to Ronald's couture hedonism, Adel shopped very little. I remember her buying something from the indie record shop, and a hippie-ish hairband thingie from Urban Outfitters from our two days. That was it. I, however, was looking for a pair of shades (The NY sun is seriously much more glaring than that of SG's. Ostensibly due to serious lack of cloud cover). So, I got Adel to accompany me to Century 21, which I recall Ronald saying is known for cheap designer lobangs (Must thank Ronald for doing all the NYC groundwork!).

The fierce-looking pair of shades inspired Adel to strike her best Charlie's Angel pose.

Who strikes the better pose? *ooh, I have a bony-looking thumb*

Why, when both come together, of course! Though the gun pose ends up looking more Japanesey kawaii cheese than sophisticated cool, I must admit. Adel, stop smiling so cheerily!

Anyway, I ended up getting a pair of Kenneth Cole shades at US$15. Though it didn't come with a case, so I've had to carry it with extreme care inside my bag every time 'lest I break it. Lol.

Our plan was to head over to Ground Zero for a tour, as it's right across Century 21, but again it was raining, so that scuttled the plan (It was also raining when Ron, Aileen and I wanted to go. What's up with that?).

I believe we ended up just strolling around SoHo, which I much prefer to 5th Ave. The same labels, but without the crowds! [Outside of post context] Seriously, this past few weeks, every time I walk down 5th, there's a stampede. And at the flagship Abercrombie store on 5th and 56th, there are queues around the block everyday to get in. WTF! And it's not as if there was any blowout sale![/Outside of post context].

For our farewell dinner, we ended up at this small, dark and cozy pizza place in Greenwich.

It was so dark that I had to lighten this pic by quite a bit. (That was a pointless comment for a typical-of-every-blog kinda self-taken before-meal boring picture, just so I had comments for every shot.)

Thin-crust goodness. Though I'm not especially discerning of good quality pizza. (Boy, I'm running out of caption ideas.)

Obligatory subway shot (And it comes down to stating to obvious). I do find the "Priority Seating" backdrop sorta amusing though. No? Just me then.

Adel then went on to catch some live music (Happening!), before heading back to SG the next day, as I trudged back to school. 'Twas a fun time had by both of us for sure though! Miss ya lots, Ad! xoxo. haha.

School's Out!

2007-12-23T09:15:00.001+08:00

First semester of college is officially over! Woot (now recognised in dictionaries apparently)! What with the (mostly) no-exams policy here, I wrote two 20+ page research papers instead, one on China's environmental protection/economic development conundrum, and the other on same-sex marriage and the US political system. In some way, I might actually prefer exams. Because for exams, if you don't study, you can still show up and try to crap something. If you don't write your paper, then that's that, no way to salvage the situation. I will have a French exam at the beginning of next semester though. It's arranged that way so we have to work on it during the hols and thus not lose touch. Urgh.

It was a worrying last few weeks trying to confirm lodging for the winter break. The school has a fucked-up policy of not allowing students, even int'l students, to stay on campus during break. Thankfully, my int'l advisor offered me a job in the admissions office for January so I was able to petition for housing. I'll be staying on campus from the 1 Jan onwards. Now till then though, I'm housed in my Serbian friend's apartment in the UES. It's nice and cozy. Apparently, it was merged into one from four studios, so it's not very big, but there're plenty of bathrooms!

I went to Chinatown earlier today to get a haircut. I found this slightly dodgy looking place, which was in located in a basement, and it cost a mere US$5! Haha, there are things which can be done cheaper here than in SG! It was like I was transported into another city when I entered the salon. There was only one hairdresser, a Chinese woman with hair styled in the vein of HK stars circa mid/late 80s. She spoke Cantonese, and her boombox broadcast some Cantonese station where, from what I could make out, the DJs were discussing Formula 1, particularly the Schumacher brothers. She ostensibly got sick of the DJs yakking because halfway through my haircut, she stopped and went to put a CD in. It was some classic Mandarin oldies CD. Like I said, in that time, I did not feel like I was in NYC.

P.S: Snow is pretty and all, but ice which remains for days is annoying! It is so freakin' slippery and I've almost fell a million times walking. It's as if you're ice-skating, and you don't even need skates.

S-N-O-W

2007-12-03T02:46:00.000+08:00

Woke up this late morning to a pleasant sight: Snow!

It's getting irksome having to wear those layers though, and it's only gonna get colder. *Brrrr*
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My R.A has organised a house meeting tonight to discuss "living respectfully with each other", which is of course linked to the "cleanliness of the kitchen". Haha. Should be interesting.

The Kuz for Prez!

2007-11-30T09:21:00.000+08:00

The more I read about him, and through watching the debates on Youtube, the more I favour Ohio Rep Dennis Kucinich as the 08 Democratic US presidential candidate. He takes a firm progressive stance on the issues, and dares to speak honestly on contested issues, unlike, for example, Hillary, who double-speaks so often so as not to offend anybody. He's very firmly anti-war, pro-universal, not-for-profit healthcare, pro-women's right (abortion), pro-environment and pro-equality.

On being the only Dem candidate who voted against the PATRIOT Act (during a recent CNN Dem debate:

Kucinich: "That's because I read it!"

Heh.

Also, he's the only one with the balls to call for the impeachment of Cheney et al. The questionable aspects of his character would probably be his slight 'koo-koo-ness'

Here's a quote from his friend Shirley McCalaine about his UFO sighting (yeah, WTF)

"The smell of roses drew him out to my balcony where, when he looked up, he saw a gigantic triangular craft, silent, and observing him. It hovered, soundless, for 10 minutes or so, and sped away with a speed he couldn't comprehend. He said he felt a connection in his heart and heard directions in his mind."

LOL.

Then, there's his imperfect record as mayor of Cleveland (Cleveland went bankrupt during his time in mayoral office.)

So those factors, plus the fact that he's way too leftist/progressive for the now much more centrist (seeing as how the whole political sphere has shifted to the right) Dems means he has a snowball's chance in hell of becoming the Dem candidate, let alone POTUS.
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In an attempt to not narrow my political education, I also watched a Republican debate. Well, tried to anyway. It was so hilarious to see each candidate try to outdo one another in claiming conservative records. "I'm more conservative!" "No, I am!" Foreign policy or health care? Who gives a shit! Ron Paul is the only ok-ish one out of the lot.

(To be fair, "Diamonds or pearls" was an asinine question for Hillary too.)

Still, Hillary or Obama over any of the Reps for sure.

The Diverse Expression of Sexuality

2007-11-17T08:07:00.001+08:00

Found these two stories off a forum. Quite lol-worthy, I think.

Cops: Man Caught in Hospital Necrophilia Act

By DAVID SCHOETZ
Oct. 30, 2007

A 24-year-old New York City man remains jailed after he was found allegedly having sex with a 92-year-old woman's corpse inside the morgue of the hospital where he worked.

Anthony Merino, who works as a lab technician at Holy Name Hospital in Teaneck, N.J., was arrested Sunday after police responded to a call from a security guard at the hospital. The guard reported witnessing the lab technician sexually desecrating the woman's dead body, according to police.

"This is a first," Lt. Dean Kazinci, spokesman for the Teaneck, N.J., police, told ABC News. "When you think you've heard and seen it all, something like this happens."
Kazinci said the security guards at the hospital told police that they caught Merino in the act of necrophilia. They transported Merino to the police station, he said, and charged him after conducting a police interview.
A spokesman for Holy Name Hospital released a statement to ABC News calling the allegations a "heinous crime."
"We are horrified and saddened for the family of the patient and are completely empathic and sympathetic to them," the statement reads.
Merino had only been working at the hospital for 14 days, according to the statement, and had passed a criminal background check before he was offered the job. The hospital also notified the dead woman's next of kin after contacting authorities.
Merino was arraigned Monday on a charge of desecrating human remains, a second degree crime in New Jersey. A judge set bail at $400,000 with conditions that included Merino surrendering his passport and submitting to a psychological evaluation. He faces a maximum of 10 years in prison, if convicted.
In addition to working part time at Holy Name Hospital, Merino also had a part-time job as a histology technician at Overlook Hospital in Summit, N.J.
Janina Scheytt Hecht, a spokeswoman for Overlook Hospital, confirmed that Merino worked for the hospital from Sept. 10, 2007, until Monday. "He has been terminated," Hecht said, adding that Merino was subject to a background check there before he was hired. She also said no one had filed a complaint against him during his short tenure on the staff.
Necrophilia is a psychological condition that falls under the umbrella category of paraphilia, according to Michael Fogel, the chair of the forensic psychology department at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology. Paraphilia involves fantasies and sexual urges in which people are aroused by nonhuman objects or pain or humiliation of oneself or a sexual partner.
"It's an extraordinarily rare condition, but it's also a very real condition," said Fogel, who previously served as the director of the Sex Offender Evaluation Unit for the Illinois Department of Corrections. In more than 1,500 evaluations he performed in that role, he said, not one involved the condition of necrophilia.
Fogel said the psychological exam will be critical to understanding what type of risk Merino may pose. He also cautioned against simply calling the suspect, if he is, in fact, convicted of the crime, "nuts."

In these type of cases, it's a sexual attraction that the individual has," he said. "That's what they're aroused to, it's what they have sexual fantasies about."

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Bike sex man placed on probation

Cleaners caught Mr Stewart simulating sex with a bike

A man caught trying to have sex with his bicycle has been sentenced to three years on probation.

Robert Stewart, 51, admitted a sexually aggravated breach of the peace by conducting himself in a disorderly manner and simulating sex.

Sheriff Colin Miller also placed Stewart on the Sex Offenders Register for three years.

Mr Stewart was caught in the act with his bicycle by cleaners in his bedroom at the Aberley House Hostel in Ayr.

Gail Davidson, prosecuting, told Ayr Sheriff Court: "They knocked on the door several times and there was no reply.

"They used a master key to unlock the door and they then observed the accused wearing only a white t-shirt, naked from the waist down.

"The accused was holding the bike and moving his hips back and forth as if to simulate sex."

Both cleaners, who were "extremely shocked", told the hostel manager who called police.

Sheriff Colin Miller told Stewart: "In almost four decades in the law I thought I had come across every perversion known to mankind, but this is a new one on me. I have never heard of a 'cycle-sexualist'."

Stewart had denied the offence, claiming it was caused by a misunderstanding after he had too much to drink.

The bachelor had been living in the hostel since October 2006 after moving from his council house in Girvan.

He now lives in Ayr.

I kinda pity the guy in the second story though. I mean, sure what he did was different, but he did it in the privacy of his own room, with a non-living thing. I don't see any harm being inflicted on anybody? It'd be like arresting someone for self-pleasuring with a dildo (Or, worse, something like a cucumber which is a living thing!), no?

No Walk in the Park

2007-11-15T10:43:00.000+08:00

Monday: Powerwalked in the cold the 25-30min round trip to the HSBC bank nearest to school to do banking. Turned out the bank was closed because it was Veteran's Day.

Today: Powerwalked in the cold and fading light at about 4.15pm the 25-30min round trip to the HSBC bank nearest to school to do banking. Turned out the bank closed at 4.00pm.

*Shoots self*

The Universal Language of Music

2007-11-13T10:09:00.000+08:00

Heard at the last Friday's school Bhangra-themed dance party held to celebrate Deepavali (or Diwali, as they call it): Sexy, Naughty, Bitchy by Tata Young! Who knew third-rate pop songs by ASEAN artistes transcended geographic boundaries? 'Twas a moment of pride when I heard it. I know the lyrics (in no small part thanks to two pals' love for the song during karaoke sessions) to a song by an obscure artiste no one else knew of! Take that, indie kids!

'Twas really nice to eat some Indian curry, samosas, etc. for a change too.

Soul Food

2007-11-02T08:08:00.000+08:00

Somehow, ever since I got here, I've been finding myself listening much more to Chinese music. Perhaps it's to compensate from not hearing or speaking the language, but there's this sense of comfort and familiarity I draw from listening to 燕姿 (Stefanie Sun) and others that I don't get from English music. It's probably just me.

Anyway, besides listening to a lot of Stefanie (I told Adel that I've decided she's my favourite musical artiste, all languages considered), I've managed to check out two high-profile Mandopop releases of these past 2 months: Jolin's 特務J (Agent J) and local talent Tanya's Goodbye & Hello.

Jolin's album, from the MVs I've youtubed, is a big disappointment. I had thought that she made some, if not much, artistic progression in her previous album, the mega-selling 舞孃 (Dancing Diva), and was expecting that with her having reached a stage where she could pretty record her farts, package it, and still be the top-seller of the year, she would take some risks. Instead, she chooses to focus more on ever-increasing elaborate dance moves and big budget MVs, with the music serving as a mere backdrop of beats for her to display her hard work at the dance studio. The thing is that there is a limit to the level of complication or intricacy you can throw into your choreography. First, there was the ribbon-tossing of Dancing Diva, then now there's the pole-dancing in Agent J. What's next? 3 1/2 pikes with 2 somersaults and a degree of difficulty of 4.0? And as she gets older, how is she gonna keep upping the stakes in dance? By no means am I against dance-pop music, but I wish she would stop regressing to more generic Ah Lian techno pop crap and put out something less dated, more sophisticated. Think electropop along the lines of Robyn, Girls Aloud, Kylie or even Britney. Sigh, I'm disappointed in you, Jolin.

On the other side of the coin, I absolutely love the singles Tanya has put out thus far for her new album, Goodbye and Hello. This is the first time Tanya contributed lyrics to the songs (usually, she writes the music and then gets others to fill in lyrics), so she's telling a more personal story. That's the PR angle anyway. But the important thing is the melodies are as good as ever, though less obvious and more nuanced and thus more likely to grow on you. The music feels less commercial and hooky (unlike something like Beautiful Love, which is a lovely song, but definitely written and produced for KTV singalong popularity in mind), and more pared-down, organic and very intimate, as if you're sitting in the bar where she's performing just a few metres away on stage, but it remains very accessible. I'm no expert on Mandarin lyrics, but by my reckoning, she's done a pretty decent job. Her theme (a lament on a previous relationship) is nothing new, but her interpretation is different from the usual "my heart's broken when you leave"-kinda obvious sentiments, and it manages to be genuinely moving. And of course, her vocals, simple, chilled and histrionics free, complement the songs perfectly.

An aside: I don't know if it's just me, but I find that in Mandopop, Singaporean female singers have this level of maturity and depth in their vocals that you don't see in most of their Taiwanese peers. Kit Chan, Mavis Hee, Stefanie, Tanya & Kaira Gong all have this quality that I'm talking about (Ok, let's ignore Jocie Kok and Sun Ho), and it means they're able to elevate even crappy run-of-the-mill ballads to a decent level.

So here are the first two singles from Tanya's album. I think both are wonderful.

當你離開的時候 When You Leave

空白格 Blank

Incidentally, Tanya's having the best success of her Mandopop career thus far, with the album debuting at No.1 in Taiwan, so keep up the brilliant work, Tanya!

Random Picture Post

2007-10-30T10:09:00.001+08:00

Up on offer at the school cafeteria last week were miniature apples. I don't know if it's because I am suaku, but I have certainly never seen them before. Cute, though not particularly tasty. It's placed next to my thumb drive and a regular (though still kinda small) sized apple for relative size placement.

The kitchen sink at my house on a mostly typical day. And all of these, especially the baking equipment, can remain there for days, at least until the next baking session. It's good that I don't cook.

377A: Hell Hath No Fury than a self-righteous NMP out to persecute

2007-10-28T11:35:00.001+08:00

You guys in Singapore probably know this noble champion of moral values, since from my brief literature survey, I gather the debate has captured the nation's attention similar to how IntegratedResortGate did a couple of years ago. Reading the transcript of what must have been an impassioned, righteous parliamentary speech of hers defending 377A, I found myself getting chills: that even the greatest of educations (A quick check on her CV shows Oxford, Harvard, Cambridge) cannot overcome deep-rooted religious fundamentalism. And make no mistake, in spite of her standing as a legal expert, her arguments are rooted in religion, not the law.

See this post, in which a blogger talks about attending a 2003 seminar organised by US-based fundamentalist evangelical group, Focus on the Family (Wikipedia the group to learn more) where Thio spoke. Here are some of the author's thoughts on Thio's presentation.

"Dr Thio Li-Ann's presentation was that the gay community has an organized agenda. She implied that our newspapers were populated by biased liberals, who through unfair reporting paint the conservative Christians as homophobic fundamentalists, while lauding the pro-gay camp as progressive. She argued that progressiveness is not relative to time, and something that's old and archaic does not necessary mean that it is backward. True; but old and archaic does not also automatically “good.” The point was superfluous at best.
She was quick to lump homosexuality with bestiality, pedophilia, and incest , and she did it several times. Homosexuality has no unique link to bestiality, pedophilia and incest. And for goodness sakes the pornography on bestiality that I know about (from all the spam – “XXX girl with farm animals” ad nauseum - I get) is heterosexual porn. She may as well have said that carrots, bananas, apples and oranges are in the same section in the supermarket, so carrots must be fruits.

Her presentation attempted to build up a straw man and then tried to burn it down. Fortunately or unfortunately, due to lack of time, she was unable to present many of her points – some that were flashed that caught my eye were some references to what homosexual men do in bed, and there were some graphic references to “fisting”. Does she even realise that the sexual practices she flashed on the screen are practiced by heterosexuals too? The use of the fear and shock tactic to garner support was quite unbecoming of an academic of her standing.

Instead of reason, she relied heavily on emotion – something I found strange coming from a law professor. She was biased, and while she found it unfair being labeled a homophobic fundamentalist bigot, I found it difficult not to see her as one. She definitely did not need the assistance of “biased liberal reporters” to perpetuate this image of her. There was scarce reasoning behind her crusade. To be honest, I wonder what drives her and her mother, Dr Thio Su-Mien, to champion against homosexuality so fervently. The level of emotionalism involved at times came across to me at least, as deeply personal."

Yes, Thio Li-Ann must have gotten her obsession with homosexuality from her mother, Thio Su-Mien, who, from more than one account, is equally homophobic. Here's a TODAY letter she sent in last year questioning the biological origins of homosexuality. I questioned whether taking the low road would result in a loss of credibility, but at some point, you just gotta wonder: Did they get spurned by some gays they had crushes on in primary school or something?

Better minds than I have picked apart (See here, here, here, here & here, among many others. And I hope you do take the time to do so.) her arguments (not that difficult to do though), so I shan't offer my own rebuttals.

But I do want to highlight something: If you had read or seen her speech, you would know she said she was inundated with threatening emails after taking her stance which so distressed her that she went to the police. Well, from my digging, it turns out it was ONE person who sent the "threatening" email. And that was Alfian Sa'at.

I got this from here:
In the press, Thio Li-Ann has spoken about one hate mail she has received, regarding someone who wanted to 'defile her grave'.

*********************

From her Parliamentary Speech:

"This August, I had my own experience with this sort of hysterical attack. I received an email from someone I never met, full of vile and obscene invective which I shall not repeat, accusing me of
hatemongering. It cursed me and expressed the wish to defile my grave on the day 377A was repealed.

I believe in free debate but this oversteps the line. I was distressed, disgusted, upset enough to file a police report. Does a normal person go up to a stranger to express such irrational hatred?"

From The New Paper:

'I have already been insulted and received hate mail, even harassment.

'But should we be a nation of cowed individuals, subjugated by fear of being called hateful names?

[...]

Since her speech on Monday, she has been called terms like 'homophobic', 'unenlightened' and 'prejudiced' on the Internet. Some called her a 'fundamentalist'.

Many other profanies, vulgarities and four-letter words were hurled at her because of her stand.

Prof Thio said: 'One person expressed the wish to defile my grave on the day 377A was repealed. And I am conveying the sense of it in the most polite way I know how.

'I don't believe in repeating obscenities.'

From TODAY:

Professor Thio herself was "shell-shocked" and made a police report after receiving an abusive email in August from an unnamed stranger who threatened to defile her grave on the day Section 377A was repealed.

"If it was just a rude letter, I'd let it slip. But this really overstepped things," the law lecturer told Today.

*********************

Some of you might be curious to know what was this mail that was "full of vile and obscene invective", with "obscenities" she could not repeat, that she had to censor by "conveying the sense of it in the most polite way I know how".

I reproduce it here for you. I know what that email is because I wrote it. And contrary to the TODAY report that said it was by 'an unnamed stranger', I actually signed off with my name, and sent it
from my yahoo email account (the one I'm using here). This is the email. It consists of four lines:

*********************

Date: Sun, 12 Oct 2007 05:03 +0800 (CST)
From: "Alfian Bin Sa'at"
Subject: a valentine
To: lawtla@nus.edu.sg
Sunday, Aug 12, 5.03am

Subject: a valentine

Dear Dr Thio,

This is a personal note to you.

I think you are absolutely fucked up.

As long as you exist, with your hatemongering and your vicious crusades against sexual minorities, I will never leave Singapore. I hope I outlive you long enough to see the repeal of 377A and on that day I will piss on your grave.

With love,
Alfian.

*********************

Thio Li-Ann has filed a police report, accusing me of 'Intentional Harassment'. On 26 October, I sat for a two-hour investigation at the Tanglin Division Police Station at Kampong Java Road. The
Invesigating Officer was a very friendly and helpful man. Those of you with uniform fantasies, please restrain from asking me if he was attractive, because I will not entertain that query. Anyway, he wasn't in uniform. In my statement, I reported the following.

1) The mail was shot off one night after clubbing with friends (hence the time). Before that, on the cab ride home, I had been told that Thio was the 'member of the public' who called the police, resulting in the cancellation of the 'Pink Picnic'. The officer asked me how I felt when I wrote that letter and I said 'aggrieved, wounded and helpless'. And then taking a cue from her Parliamentary speech, I added, 'distressed, disgusted and upset'.

2) I had sent only that one email to her, which I did not think satisfies the criteria of repetition and persistence that would constitute 'harassment'.

3) The phrase 'fucked up', to my understanding, meant 'dysfunctional'. I said I did not consider the term abusive.

4) I had not threatened her with bodily harm.

5) In fact I had not made any threats to her at all, unless she thinks being a fellow citizen with me in Singapore constitutes a threat.

6) As for 'cursing' her with death by talking about outliving her, I said I was merely pointing out the obvious fact of her mortality. I also said that since I was younger than her, I would naturally expect her to die earlier, barring any misfortune. The sympathetic policeman offered to change the word 'die' to 'pass on' in my statement.

7) On the part about pissing on her grave, I said that gesture was meant to celebrate the repeal of 377A. I also said that a few lawyers had told me it was not illegal to piss on graves.

As the interview went on, the incredulity of it all I think struck the policeman. I told him that if what I sent her constituted harassment, then it would set an impossible precedent. Anyone who has
received any message through whatever form of communication causing 'emotional distress' can file a police report alleging 'intentional harassment'.

I asked the policeman why he was even acting on her complaint, and whether he had more urgent cases to attend to. I told him she was wasting taxpayers' money and state resources. I said this was precisely the kind of 'bully-boy tactics' that she spoke of in her Parliamentary speech. I also said I considered her calling the authorities about the 'Pink Picnic' to be an example of harassment, and that I felt harassed listening to her Parliamentary speech.

I ended the statement by saying that I hoped she was aware that many of her actions have affected and hurt other people. I said I did not discount the possibility of her receiving other hate mail, but acting on me specifically as I was a strategic target, having written plays with gay themes.

I am posting the 'hate mail' here, knowing full well that there will be those who will chide me for my hot-bloodedness and impulsiveness. I apologise to those who think that my 'uncivil' four-liner has somewhat sabotaged the repeal-377A cause. But I think the exposure of this woman's pettiness, tendencies towards exaggeration, as well as her wanton abuse of the legal system, far outweights the flak I will inevitably receive.

Alfian. : )

Ok, I can't resist pulling out some choice quotes from Thio's rant.
"However, I have noted a disturbing phenomenon over the 377A debate– the argument by insult. Instead of reasoning, some have resorted to name-calling to intimidate and silence their opponents ... When you shout, full of sound and fury, and call your opponents nasty names, this terminates public debate ... Let us also speak with civility, which cannot be legislated, but draws deep from our character and upbringing."

Alright, Ms. Thio, let's see what sorta rhetoric YOU choose to employ, shall we?
"We want to be able to say, Majullah Singapura, not Mundur Singapura!" (Mundur means backward) Such meaningful, mature, metaphors in a parliamentary speech from a, again, OxfordHarvardCambridge-trained legal eagle.

"Anal-penetrative sex is inherently damaging to the body and a misuse of organs, like shoving a straw up your nose to drink. The anus is designed to expel waste; when something is forcibly inserted into it, the muscles contract and cause tearing; fecal waste, viruses carried by sperm and blood thus congregate, with adverse health implications like ‘gay bowel syndrome’, anal cancer." Good to know Ms. Thio is well-educated about the intricacy of buggery and felt the need to describe it in all its wonder to the House. Oh, fuck this. This is just hilarious. She gets her insults from School of Infantile Jibes, doesn't she? First, mundur, then, straw up your nose.

More choice civil quotes: "license for perversity", "I speak, at the risk of being burned at the stake by militant activists" Such a matyr for her cause she is.

The best part: Her speech invokes a Her World article. HER WORLD!!! "This social decline will provoke more headlines like a 2004 Her World article called: “Gay guy confesses: I slept with 100 men…one of them could be your hubby.” What about the broken-hearts involved?" HAHAHAHAHA. Me thinks she probably did a million and one of those "Is your boyfriend actually gay? 5 signs that could spell trouble" quizzes.
Fuck man, we should have quoted 8 Days or LIME for our Mass Comm papers, at least it's relevant!

OK I know I said earlier I wouldn't write much on her speech, but I just can't resist! Her hypocrisy just beggars belief!

On one hand, she says, "You cannot base sound public philosophy on poor politicized pseudo ‘science’.". And in the very next paragraph? "Homosexuality is a gender identity disorder." OxfordHarvardCambridge, people!

Seriously though, such displays of blind bigotry and homophobia from academics remind me of how the dangerous terrorists are always the intelligent ones who attend college in the US, learn important engineering skills like making bombs and such before heading back to radicalise the masses. And the scary thing is that people like Thio spout their hate from a platform of authority and respect, which gives an appearance of credibility. Also, Thio is a professor, an educator of young (and I have faith, independent, rational, logical minds) at the esteemed Law faculty in NUS , teaching among others, human rights. The joke writes itself. Alas, it would be funnier if it weren't so frightening.

Rather than the slippery slope down condoning of gay sex, incest, paedophlia, etc., I think the slippery slope we're in danger of rapidly sliding down unnoticed, like the proverbial frog in boiling water, is the one where the Christian right, learning from successful examples from its bigger, stronger brethren in the US, is seeking to influence and commandeer politics and public policy. The homosexual agenda will not be able to make you or your child gay/lesbian, but the fundamentalist agenda will most certainly want to decide for you what's best for you and what to and what not to do.

Will this sell more than the usual Britney/Angelina/Lindsay covers?

2007-10-25T11:45:00.001+08:00

HAHAHA.

Hawker Food = Best thing about Singapore

2007-10-23T04:16:00.000+08:00

Two months away from home, the thing I'm missing the most is cheap, good food! I've had enough pepperoni or cheese pizzas and sandwiches to last a lifetime. Thank heavens for Chinatown, which provides food that is at least familiar. How nice (and torturous!) is it then to come across this New Yorker article from Sept which waxes lyrical about Singaporean hawker food (& street food in general). It is long, but I think it's a very light and enjoyable piece (esp. when aided by hunger pangs for the food talked about in the articles!). I mean, the New Yorker talking about satay, chwee kueh, hokkien mee, et al. How brilliant is that?

(Originally published in The New Yorker. Compilation copyright (c) 2007 The Conde Nast Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
THREE CHOPSTICKS; Singapore Journal
Calvin Trillin
When I think back on the conversations that took place after I told people that I was going to Singapore to eat, I'm reminded of the scene in "Little Red Riding Hood" when the title character first encounters the big bad wolf. I play the wolf:

"Singapore!" Little Red Riding Hood says, in an improbable New York accent. "But Singapore is supposed to be the least exotic place in Asia. There's nothing to see there, unless you're a connoisseur of skyscrapers or container ports or obsessive street-cleaning."

"And isn't Singapore the place where you can get fined for chewing gum?"

"But, my dear, you can't chew gum while you're eating anyway."

From those conversations, I have concluded that the governmental ban on chewing gum, promulgated in 1992, remains the fact most strongly associated by Americans with Singapore. If Singapore tested a nuclear device tomorrow, the stories in American newspapers would mention the gum ban by the second paragraph. (Three years ago, the government relented a bit, in order to satisfy the requirements of a free-trade agreement: you can now buy nicotine gum by prescription.) There is a collateral awareness of the penalties that Singapore imposes for such malefactions as dropping a candy wrapper on the sidewalk. According to what's listed on a widely sold souvenir T-shirt emblazoned "Singapore--A Fine City," the acts that can bring you a serious fine include not only gum-chewing and littering and smoking and spitting but also carrying a durian on a public conveyance. A durian is an astonishingly odoriferous melon, much prized in Southeast Asia. Having smelled a durian, I must say that the prohibition against carrying one on a public conveyance (for which there is actually no specific fine) strikes me as a very solid piece of legislation. In American terms, it's the equivalent of a law against carrying a cattle feedlot on a public conveyance.

I'd always thought that I wouldn't go much further than that in supporting Singapore's efforts to treat tidiness as the nearly Athenian ideal of government. Still, had I known that it was happening I would have backed the government's scheme in the seventies to bring food venders, called hawkers, off the streets and into centers that have proper sanitation and refrigeration and running water--a scheme that was inspired by a desire for tidy streets, along with public-health considerations and the needs of traffic control and, presumably, the relentless modernization that seems to have a momentum of its own in Singapore. My support would have been based on enlightened self-interest, one of the cornerstones of democracy. For years, as I've walked past food stands in foreign lands, I've struggled to keep in mind that for an American visitor the operational translation for signs that ostensibly say something like "bhel puri" or "tacos de nopales" is "Delivery System for Unfamiliar Bugs That You Will Bitterly Regret Having Ingested." The temptation to throw caution to the wind has been excruciating, since I may love street food above all other types of food. I have never figured out just why, although I've considered the possibility that, through some rare genetic oddity, my sense of taste is at full strength only when I'm standing up. (The fact that I particularly enjoy whatever I eat while standing in front of the refrigerator could be considered supporting evidence.) For a while, I thought about testing the standup hypothesis at some fancy Manhattan restaurant by springing to my feet halfway through the main course and trying to gauge whether that makes the roasted organic chicken with fricassee of spring vegetables and chanterelle polenta taste as good as those sausage sandwiches you get at Italian street fairs.

Gathering food venders into hawker centers, under the purview of public-health inspectors, meant that a Western visitor not only can have a safe shot at a variety of Singaporean delicacies but can do so in a setting so convenient that his energy is reserved for eating. All over Singapore, there are open-air pavilions where an island of tables and chairs is ringed by eighty or a hundred hawker stands--many of them selling only one item, like just satay or just fish-ball noodles. The government has established hawker centers in the central business district and hawker centers at the beach and hawker centers attached to the high-rise public-housing projects where the vast majority of Singaporeans live. In some of the fancy skyscrapers and department stores, private operators run air-conditioned, upmarket versions of hawker centers called food courts--a term presumably selected by someone who had never tasted what's passed off as food at an American shopping-mall food court. In Singapore, even the establishments called coffee shops are essentially mini hawker centers. They might have started as places that served coffee and the pastries that the British Empire, for reasons of its own, inflicted on unsuspecting colonials throughout the world, but these days the proprietor is likely to operate the drink concession himself and rent out two or three stalls to specialists in, say, fish-head curry or Hainanese chicken rice. It has become possible to eat in Singapore for days at a time without ever entering a conventional restaurant. Since I have never been much taken with the concept of courses--my eating habits are more on the order of a bit of this, a bit of that, and, now that I think of it, a bit of something else--it almost seems as if the Singapore government of forty years ago had arranged its hawker policy with me in mind.

I don't mean that I would check the flights to Heathrow if I heard that some entrepreneur in East Anglia had created a logistically flawless collection of food stands that allowed a diner to switch with ease from, say, bangers and mash to mushy peas to bubble and squeak. Convenience isn't everything. Singapore, though, has always been noted for the quality and variety of its street food and, not coincidentally, for having a citizenry whose interest in eating borders on the obsessive. The population combines migrants from several parts of China with minorities of Indians and Malays and people who look Chinese but are known as Peranakans--a separate ethnic group, long prominent in the government and business life of Singapore, which traces its origins to early Chinese traders who absorbed some of the culture and the genes of the local Malays. The evidence indicates that every one of these groups arrived hungry.

Soon, Hainanese were cooking Peranakan specialties and Indians were frying noodles in the Chinese manner. Old dishes were transmogrified. New dishes were invented. Eventually, Singaporeans were lining up at hawker stands to eat any number of dishes available only in Singapore. Even in New York, a famously polyglot city that has, for example, three restaurants specializing in the food of the Uighur people of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, a yearning for Singapore hawker food is surprisingly difficult to satisfy. (Singapore mei fun, a noodle dish often found in Chinatown restaurants, is, it almost goes without saying, unknown in Singapore.) You can find the Malaysian version of some Singaporean dishes--asam laksa, a terrific soup with an unlikely sour-fish taste, has some similarity to the Peranakan version of laksa served in hawker centers, for instance--and some dishes in Chinatown restaurants are similar to the dishes brought to Singapore from, say, Fujian or Hainan. There are, of course, some upmarket pan-Asian places in Manhattan that do versions of street food, including Singaporean hawker food. Apparently, though, a dish that is reminiscent of what's found in Singapore serves only to make overseas Singaporeans long for the real article. Culinarily, they are among the most homesick people I have ever met.

I commiserated with a number of them this spring, when the Prime Minister's office organized a Singapore Day in Central Park. Singapore Day was supposed to be for expatriate Singaporeans and their guests, but I was among some New York feeders who wormed our way in when we heard that the festivities would include Singaporean dishes prepared by a dozen hawkers flown in for the occasion. Six thousand people stood patiently in line for a go at some food from home--completely ignoring the government exhibitions and the requisite rock band. As they waited, they spoke of the stands they head for when they can manage the eleven-thousand-mile trip to Singapore--the coffee shop in their old neighborhood that has the best kaya (a sort of coconut custard, served on toast), the fried-prawn-noodle stand in Marine Parade they always visit the first day back, the place with the best halal version of chicken rice. Nobody I spoke to mentioned any restaurants. Even though the hawkers complained that they couldn't get all of the proper ingredients in New York, the tastes I had of roti prata (a sort of Indian crepe with dipping sauce) and chwee kueh (rice cakes topped with bits of fried preserved radish) and char kway teow (a dense fried rice-noodle dish that includes, among other ingredients, eggs and Chinese sausages and cockles and chives and fried lard) and laksa confirmed the wisdom of my plan to go to Singapore to eat.

The hawkers who came to New York had been handpicked by K. F. Seetoh, a Singaporean of Cantonese descent, whose connection to hawker food is similar, on a smaller scale, to the connection the France family has had with stock-car racing: that is, he managed to recognize a lot of scattered, unexalted activity as a cultural force and figured out how to merchandise it. An energetic, self-assured man in his mid-forties, with a hint of blond in his hair, Seetoh, as he's known to everybody, began his career as a photographer. But his avocation--which is eating, since he is a lifelong resident of Singapore--eventually became his profession. He started in 1998 by putting together a hawker-food guide called "Makansutra," makan being the Malay word for "eat" or "food." The guide lists what Seetoh considers the best stands for about a hundred and forty traditional hawker dishes--the best being all that any book would have room for, since Singapore has what Seetoh estimates to be about twelve thousand stands in the government hawker centers alone. The ratings are on a chopstick scale, with the most distinguished stands receiving three pairs of chopsticks. Seetoh's business card now identifies him as the chief executive and "makan guru" of a company that is also called Makansutra. He puts out other Southeast Asian food guides, appears on television, and does consultancies. He even presides over a small collection of hawker stands in the slick marina area that's part of Singapore's modernistic performing-arts center--a building that, because of its shape (though not, presumably, its smell), is sometimes referred to by the locals as the Durian. Seetoh is helped in these endeavors by his wife, Patricia. Although Patricia says that before meeting her husband she ate mostly sandwiches and French fries, she comes from a Peranakan family that had good food as a priority. According to the Seetohs, when Patricia's father was on his deathbed he whispered something that made his family gather closer, thinking that he had some final instructions or blessings to impart. What he was saying turned out to be "laksa." They brought him a bowl of it.

Seetoh and I had become acquainted when he was in New York for Singapore Day. The next evening, at one of the sophisticated Southeast Asian places that he'd wanted to try, the Seetohs and I sampled some of the Singaporean dishes on the menu and he responded more or less the way you'd expect a barbecue nut from Tennessee to respond to what was advertised as a pulled-pork-shoulder sandwich in, say, Helsinki or Leeds. He was moved to describe the authentic Singaporean nasi lemak and the authentic Singaporean chili crab I'd eat when I got to Singapore. Given the fact that I wouldn't have thrown rocks at what we'd just eaten, I could hardly wait to sample the three-chopstick versions. I told Seetoh that I'd be in Singapore as soon as I could arrange it.

In Singapore, it was clear from the moment Seetoh picked me up at my hotel that, as interested as he was in authenticity and quality, pure capacity would also be an issue. He is an enthusiast. For Seetoh, there's always another noodle dish around the corner. He's quite willing to admit that there is plenty of mediocre hawker food in Singapore, but superior hawker fare renders him rhapsodic. The icon chart in "Makansutra" translates two and a half pairs of chopsticks--one notch below the top--as "Divine." Three pairs of chopsticks means "Die, Die Must Try!," which has become a sort of motto for Seetoh and his enterprises. It's a direct translation, he says, of a Cantonese phrase that means, more or less, "to die for." In addition to Cantonese and Mandarin and Malay and Hokkien, Seetoh speaks idiomatic English plus Singlish, a slangy local patois that is spoken only idiomatically. He speaks all of these languages rapidly.

Working mainly from my samplings at Singapore Day and from dishes that had been labelled "Popular Local Favorite" in the 2007 edition of "Makansutra," I'd come up with a preliminary list of dishes that I considered, well, must try. There were nine: chwee kueh (the rice cakes with radish), grilled stingray, roti prata, curry puffs (which Seetoh describes as, more or less, a Chinese improvement on an Indian samosa), chili crab (and its cousin, pepper crab), laksa, fish-head curry, carrot cake (which would startle someone who'd meant to order the dessert you might get in the sort of restaurant whose waitresses slouch around in sandals: it's fried white radish and flour cake, with garlic and eggs and scallions and other vegetables), and charkway teow. Seetoh looked disappointed.

"Wrong list?" I asked.

Not wrong. Insufficient. I had left out Hokkien fried-prawn noodles. I had left out otah--fish paste, mixed with chilies, folded into a coconut leaf, and grilled. I had left out rojak--a sort of salad that's held together with a sauce the color and consistency of Mexican mole, unless you get the Indian rather than the Chinese version, which is totally different and, of course, a must-try item. I hadn't mentioned mee siam, a Thai-sounding noodle dish that is not available in Thailand. I hadn't mentioned fish-ball noodles--which is odd, since I am devoted to fish balls. I hadn't even mentioned bak kut teh, a simple pork-ribs soup that is, improbably, considered a breakfast treat. (Eventually, Seetoh and I had some bak kut teh for breakfast--in a place next to the port that is said to be the busiest in the world--and I can say unequivocally that it beats Cheerios by a mile.) I had left out popiah, a Hokkien-style spring roll that includes stewed turnips. By the time we reached the Maxwell Road Hawker Centre--near where Makansutra has an office, in a row of colonial-era three-story buildings known as shop-houses--my list had about twenty items, and for the next few days every hawker center seemed to remind Seetoh of a dish I had to try before I went home. "You can't leave without having it," Seetoh would say, when he instructed me to add another dish to my list. "It'll knock your socks off."

Sampling what Seetoh considers the very best rendition of each dish required some travelling around town--a remarkable chicken rice here, an amazing chwee kueh there, a mind-blowing laksa somewhere else. At one center, though--the modestly named Old Airport Road Temporary Food Centre, which was serving a public-housing project during some construction that's part of an ambitious, ten-year hawker-center upgrading program that the government launched in 2001--we were in the presence of three venders who had been designated by Seetoh as hawker masters. There, without descending into the realm of the merely divine, you can start with rojak, then tear into some chili crab, and then decide whether you might want to end the evening with Hokkien fried-prawn noodles or have the chili-crab specialist do a pepper crab as a change of pace before you end the evening with Hokkien fried-prawn noodles. I had no doubt that I was indeed eating the food of masters. In fact, while eating at the Old Airport Road Temporary Food Centre I realized that it was incorrect to think that my taste buds operated at full strength only when I was standing: we were eating this food while sitting at a table, after all, and it was knocking my socks off. One of the principles of scientific inquiry is that even an elegant hypothesis has to be abandoned if irrefutable evidence to the contrary is encountered.

Seetoh seemed quite confident about his selection of the very best stand for each hawker dish, but, as I had learned from the people I'd met at Singapore Day--people whom Seetoh had described as "deprived and depraved"--a Singaporean devotee of hawker food doesn't have to be the author of a food guide to be absolutely certain that he knows where to find the best version of just about anything. One evening, while we were eating some fish-head curry--a dish that in Singapore includes an entire snapper head staring up through the curry sauce--a friend of Seetoh's named Daniel Wang shook his head sadly when he heard where Seetoh had taken me for char kway teow. Wang, who retired in 2004 as Singapore's director general of public health, happened to be the Ministry of the Environment engineer put in charge of building the original hawker centers, in the seventies. At his retirement, he had just presided over a $2.5-million upgrading of a beach venue called the East Coast Lagoon Hawker Centre, which was turned into something so reminiscent of a tropical resort that Seetoh refers to it as "Daniel's Club Med." Wang's contribution to hawker centers can be seen as a monument to enlightened selfinterest: given his line of work, he's quite conscious of hygiene, but he happens to be crazy about hawker food, particularly char kway teow. As a schoolboy, Wang regularly observed the cooking technique of a particular char kway teow hawker, and he remains loyal to that hawker's son--a vender who had learned well from his father, Wang explained, how to cook the noodles in lard to keep them from sticking and how to make his stock from prawns and squid and precisely when to sprinkle on white pepper. Dismissing the suggestion that childhood nostalgia might be making him a less than objective judge, Wang went on to extoll the popiah produced by a hawker who had not been among the five popiah hawkers listed in "Makansutra."

Wang was so enthusiastic about the snubbed popiah that there was nothing to do but go to the Newton Food Centre and give it a try, as soon as we had polished off the fish-head curry. At the Newton Centre, Seetoh was barely polite about the popiah and Wang did not pursue the matter, having become caught up in a discussion of a sort of oyster omelette that we'd picked up from a nearby stall. I assumed that the popiah discussion was at an end. The next evening, though, while the Seetohs and I were on the way to the East Coast Lagoon Hawker Centre to have some salted vegetable and duck soup (a dish that has replaced French fries in Patricia Seetoh's pantheon), Seetoh pulled up in front of a shopping mall called the Shaw Centre. While we waited in the car, Patricia ducked in to get some popiah, so that I could understand what a divine--or maybe even a die-die-must-try--popiah is like. In Singapore, I should have realized, a discussion about the relative merits of various popiah stands is never at an end.

The more we ate, the longer my list got. We couldn't seem to stay even. On my last evening, while we consumed some mee siam and the Indian version of rojak with Daniel Wang and a couple of his friends, Seetoh was still lamenting the dishes I hadn't had--steamboat (a sort of hot pot) and a Malay noodle dish called mee rebus and lontong (an Indonesian dish of rice cakes with tofu and vegetables simmered in a coconut curry) and nasi briyani (a dish of Middle Eastern origin) and a Hakka tofu dish called yong tau foo and Indian mee goring. One of Wang's guests said that when she gets back to Singapore on the flight that arrives around dawn she stops for kueh chap before she even goes home--kueh chap being a bowl of broth with sheets of rice-flour noodles served with pig intestines, or what Wang calls "spare parts." Seetoh said, almost apologetically, that he hadn't taken me to a kueh chap stand, and I said, "My mother used to say that it's always good to save something for the next trip."

I was, indeed, thinking about the next trip as I studied my list on the plane home. I deeply regretted having had char kway teow only once, for instance, and I didn't see how I was going to repair that deficit without returning to Singapore. I was also thinking of how convenient it would be if other cities--New York, for instance--had hawker centers serving the local specialties. New York's current mayor does not disdain tidiness, after all, and New York mayors have thought of street venders as congestion at least since the reign of Fiorello LaGuardia, who gathered some of them in places like the Essex Street Market.

A hawker center could be set up by the next time the Seetohs visited New York. I could imagine us at a place that looks a bit like the East Coast Lagoon Hawker Centre, Daniel's Club Med, although it would overlook the Hudson rather that the Strait of Singapore. There's a stand selling Italian-sausage sandwiches, of course, and a stand selling Vietnamese banh mi sandwiches. The Mayor has persuaded the dosa man of Washington Square to come into the operation and leave the Washington Square cart in the hands of a trusted cousin. There are stands run by the venders from the Red Hook ball fields--one selling pupusas and one selling ceviche and one selling Honduran tacos. A couple of Belgian French-fry venders are there, with fries good enough to make Patricia Seetoh consider reverting to her former eating habits. The Mayor's people have persuaded the legendary Arepa Lady of Jackson Heights to give up the chancy weather of Roosevelt Avenue for the Hudson River Hawker Center. There's a jerk-chicken stand and two competing falafel stands. I've been in nearly constant movement between our table and the venders all evening, bringing back, say, bocconcini or two kinds of fish balls--the plain ones and the ones with meat at the center, familiar from Eldridge Street noodle-soup restaurants like Sheng Wang and the exquisitely named Young City Fish Balls. Seetoh is saying that he's getting a bit full, and reminds me that he and Patricia have to get up early for the long flight back to Singapore. "But you haven't had a calzone yet," I say. "You haven't had a zeppole. We still haven't gotten you a classic New York pastrami sandwich, not to speak of a knish. I'm not talking about one of those nasty commercial knishes that look like vinyl coin purses. I'm talking about an authentic New York potato knish. You can't go home without eating a knish. It'll knock your socks off."

Does street food make the best cuisine?
___________________________________________________________________

Yes please to a cheap NYC food centre!

Good weekend at the office for the men in red!

2007-10-22T04:47:00.000+08:00

First, United came back from a 0-1 deficit to beat Villa away 4-1, thanks to some sloppy defending by them! My stupid live feed crapped out in the middle of the first half, when we were down, so I missed all 4 goals, the two Villa sending-offs, and Rooney's missed penalty. Crap. Still, it's a good away win, and Rooney's scored 6 in 5 now, with his partnership with a fast-improving Tevez looking more and more fluid. Good timing too, given that Saha's injured (again!!!).

Wazza the Boy Wonder is back on form!

Then, in more unexpected but most welcome news, Kimmi 'Ice-Man' Raikkonen won the Brazilian Grand Prix and the Drivers' Championship in Formula 1 in the closest title race in quite a while, thanks to Hamilton's gearbox failure! In the end, he pipped Hamilton to the title by a point, and third was Alonso (hah! I'm elated he didn't get a third consecutive title. Whiny bitch.) Who would have thought this when Hamilton looked to have the title all but sewn up one or two months ago? And of course, Ferrari won the Constructors' title after cheating McLaren were stripped of their points. Yay!

Here's to the first of hopefully many titles with Ferrari, Kimi!

And now we look forward to the 08 season, with the brand new night race stop in Singapore!

But what about Dumbledore/McGonagall?

2007-10-21T11:54:00.000+08:00

The last of the Harry Potter series may have been released, but J.K Rowling still knows how to get her books in the news!

Dumbledore was gay, JK tells amazed fans

David Smith
Sunday October 21, 2007
The Observer

There could hardly have been a bigger sensation if Russell Crowe, Rod Stewart or Sven-Goran Eriksson had come out of the closet. Millions of fans around the world were yesterday digesting the news that one of the main characters in the Harry Potter novels, Albus Dumbledore, is gay.

The revelation came from author JK Rowling during a question-and-answer session at New York's Carnegie Hall. It instantly hurtled around the internet and the world. News websites in China and Germany announced starkly: 'JK Rowling: "Dumbledore is gay".' One blogger wrote on a fansite: 'My head is spinning. Wow. One more reason to love gay men.'

After reading briefly from her mega-selling book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, on Friday night, Rowling took questions from an audience of 1,600 students. A 19-year-old from Colorado asked about the avuncular headmaster of Hogwarts School: 'Did Dumbledore, who believed in the prevailing power of love, ever fall in love himself?'

The author replied: 'My truthful answer to you...I always thought of Dumbledore as gay.' The audience reportedly fell silent - then erupted into prolonged applause.

Rowling, 42, continued: 'Dumbledore fell in love with Grindelwald [a bad wizard he defeated long ago], and that added to his horror when Grindelwald showed himself to be what he was. To an extent, do we say it excused Dumbledore a little more because falling in love can blind us to an extent, but he met someone as brilliant as he was and, rather like Bellatrix, he was very drawn to this brilliant person and horribly, terribly let down by him.'

She added: 'Yeah, that's how I always saw Dumbledore. In fact, recently I was in a script read-through for the sixth film, and they had Dumbledore saying a line to Harry early in the script saying, "I knew a girl once, whose hair..." I had to write a little note in the margin and slide it along to the scriptwriter, "Dumbledore's gay!"'

Amazed by the warm reaction of the audience, Rowling, on her first US tour in seven years, joked: 'Just imagine the fan fiction now.'

Pretty cool of J.K to have the balls to reveal this. The people who already allege that Potter promotes witchcraft and all things evil must be absolutely seething right now!

This news lead is kinda amusing too. What, are Crowe, Stewart and Ericksson supposed to be the absolute bastions of heterosexuality or something?

Livin' for the Weekend

2007-10-13T22:07:00.003+08:00

The weekend of about 3 weeks ago (time flies!), I third-wheeled along on Ronald and Aileen's NYC travels. You might recall the previous weekend I spent with Ronald, where I bunked at his exceedly crummy hostel room. Well, thankfully, Ron and Aileen's room this time was much improved (there was a en-suite bathroom!), though not Plaza-esque or anything like that still of course. There was only one big bed which they shared, thus I lugged to the city a thick comforter borrowed from my room-mate, which I laid on the floor to serve as my bed. My improvised pillow? A pack of Ronald's clothes. Well, I slept soundly enough, so it sufficed.

Saturday was supposed to be outdoorsy, with a trip to the WTC site and Coney Island, but the rain put paid to that plan. Thus, we spent the afternoon at the Met. Incidentally, one can pay any price >$1 that one chooses, though the "recommended" adult and student prices are $20 and $10 respectively. I paid $5, and got a stare from the cashier. Whatever! Heh.

The entrance to the museum. Unfortunately, you need a super wide lens to capture the entire museum.

Maybe I could make it a thing to do each time I'm out in Manhatten: Find a replica of the Statue of Liberty to pose with

I (literally) scared the shit out of Ronald, which you can see he was trying desperately to hold in.

It's tragic how we don't know how to appreciate art and instead concern ourselves more with taking pictures with the art pieces, which are reduced to mere props. Oh, the (sorta) young and shallow...

All sorts of Greek/European sculptures. Perhaps NSFW? The top middle one is young Hercules, if memory serves me correctly. Ronald, with his flamboyance, adds a dash of colour to the collage.

There're many artists and art students who sit around various sculptures to draw/sketch them. This dude, who's hella talented, is one of them.

I took this while he went off for a while, perhaps for a pee. Beautiful, isn't it?

A pretty nifty-looking, if unwieldy, chess set. It sorta reminds me of wizards' chess in Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone.

And whilst on the subject on Harry Potter, here's the Mirror of Erised!

This could very well be the very first (or at least amongst the very first) advertisement in the world! It's promoting sculpture services, I think. Can't you just picture this in Singapore's JC Decaux ad stands next to bus stops?

On to the ancient Egyptian collection. Here, Ronald and I present Posing with inanimate objects: An Introduction.

Men of ancient Egypt. It's extremely insensitive of me, but the first thing that popped up in my head when I saw this was: "That's the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists List".

Ron's practicing his product endorsement pose.

The only picture of 3 of us for the weekend! Oh, I didn't take any with Aileen too.

Sunday was mostly spent in Brooklyn. Under the pretty darn glaring sun, we walked across Brooklyn bridge. Tried B&W pictures just because.

It's hard to comment on pictures of oneself. What can one say except "lookin' good"?

Manhattan viewed from the bridge.

Empire State Building viewable thanks to the kickass 12x zoom function of my camera. Thanks Ash!

Spot anyone (or two) familiar?

Across the bridge finally! We went to the Brooklyn ice-cream factory just next to the bridge and I got myself a huge triple-scoop!

Next, it was a 30 min subway ride to Coney Island, which, with its old-school amusement park and quaint charm, seems a world away from the urban sophistication of Manhattan.

We took this ferris wheel ride, which was more thrilling than the usual, because there are two times along the ride where the cage would slide. It was a tad too thrilling for some though. That's the view of the beach through the grills of our cage.

And that was the end of the weekend! I un-thirdwheeled back to school, while Aileen and Ronald continued onwards to Dallas. Next up, Adel!

Obama takes to the stage

2007-10-03T03:29:00.000+08:00

Attended an Obama rally last Thursday evening at Washington Square Park.

Obviously because of the set-up of the event, he couldn't really go into detail about his plans should he become POTUS. Thus, it was the usual "I was one of the few Senators who voted against the war", "I'll get our men back from Iraq (care to give a fixed date?)", healthcare for all ("for the poor and the not-so-poor"), Bush sucks, etc. talking points. Oh, and there was of course a small jibe about "the Senator from New York." Heh. Poor Edwards who didn't merit any mention.

On a related note, I must rant about the event security setup, apparently done by the Secret Service. To get into the main area in front of the stage, everyone had to go through a metal detector, of which there were four of them. Yes, FOUR of them for the thousands of people.

So I got to the park at about 4.30pm, and queued for more than two hours until about 6.45pm, as the crowd inched ahead ever so slowly. By that time, I was maybe about 50 metres away from the metal detectors (positioned side-by-side in a line) and Obama was scheduled to come on stage at 7pm. So at this point (6.45pm), there were still a ton of people who hadn't got past security and who would not do so by 7 obviously.

So guess what they decided to do? They basically abandoned checking of people and just allowed everyone through! After most of us had been queuing for hours! They couldn't have decided that earlier? A lady next to me remarked sarcastically that they probably figured that any would-be bombers would probably have given up queuing by that time, hence the threat was gone. So, yeah, not so efficient.

Took this picture standing on a bench. The white tent in the background is where the metal detectors were. Yeah, from the relatively short distance away that I was, I still did not get to it in 2.5 hours.

To the sounds of Kanye West's Touch The Sky, Obama emerged to the cheers of the crowd. Somehow, it doesn't feel as cognitively dissonant as when I see our MPs doing hip-hop or whatever. Then again, the dude appears on the covers of GQ and Vibe, and even on the Tyra Banks (!?) show (Tyra and politics, now that's cognitively dissonant).

Departing the scene.

Anyway, it seems Obama hasn't much of a chance. Polls show Hilary is pulling away apparently. Can't wait for the race to heat up!

Down with the moral majority, cause I want to be the minority!

2007-09-27T09:02:00.000+08:00

The Straits Times
Sep 24, 2007
Man's skimpy attire in TV ad is disgusting

I wrote to Mocca.com on Sept 18 to voice my and my friends' disgust at the tasteless, vulgar advertisement that is being shown frequently over our television channels at all times of the day. I got a reply from the customer service saying that contrary to our opinion, they had been receiving favourable feedback.

Whilst I agree that people have different interpretations of advertisements, I am wondering who the perverts are who think that this commercial, featuring a skimpily-dressed guy trying to sell his flat, is tasteful.

If majority of Singaporeans think this advertisement is all right, then I am very sad. It means Singapore's moral values have gone down the drain!

Could we have a consensus on this advertisement? If the majority thinks it is disgusting, then Mocca.com should take it off the air.

Vivien Koh Swee Hoon (Ms)

So the "conservative majority" our MIW love to cite does exist! I haven't seen this commercial, but apparently, people can "have different interpretations", but you're a "pervert" if you do. Naked body parts, eugh! We're supposed to be shameful of our bodies, cause viewing them is a SIN! No more bra ads! No more bikinis and briefs in pools! Oh and of course, majority rules! Who gives a rat's arse about minority rights, right? That's the beauty of democracy!

Maybe Ms. Koh is a brilliant satirist.

The classroom isn't always walled

2007-09-25T04:37:00.000+08:00

For some reason, my American Politics class was locked out of our classroom last Friday (Apparently, our teacher was supposed to call security to get the room opened every time, but she didn't do that). The solution? Thanks to the still summer-like days, we had class outdoors on the grass next to the classroom building instead.

Our teacher sat on the ledge while the rest sat, in various positions, on the grass facing her. About halfway through, one student got up, moved to another patch of grass, laid flat down with his stomache facing the ground, lit up a ciggie and began enjoying his puffs.

Meanwhile, our discussion continued unabated.

Just like any other weekend out

2007-09-21T03:50:00.000+08:00

It was 8.00pm on a Saturday night and I was sitting in what passes for a lobby for a crummy hostel (Candy Hostel) in the Upper West Side waiting for Ronald to arrive, trying to read as much of the boatload of homework reading I was given. It was amazing, I thought to myself then, how the scenario was sorta like our meetups in, say, Borders in Wheelock Place, on a typical weekend night out in Singapore, except that it happened 12 time zones away.

I mean, here I was, having taken both a train and the subway to get there, waiting for him for an hour, because he's late (The shuttle he took from the airport made many stops ostensibly). Even in NYC, our culture of inpunctuality persists! It would be infuriating if it weren't so amazing.

Ten minutes later, he finally arrives to check in. By this time I had $0.90 cheated away from me by the hostel; In my hunger waiting, I (attempted to) purchase one packet of M&Ms from the vending machine next to me. And the packet of M&Ns got stuck and didn't drop. "Try kicking," the receptionist indicated, so I did, in as relatively inobstrusive a manner I could posibly do. A large black dude and his pal came along and tried to help me shake the machine, but alas, it was bolted to the ground. No candy for me then.

We went up to Ronald's 'room' and I use the term very loosely. Size-wise, picture those typical one bed, one toilet bowl jail cells you see in movies. It's about that size basically, except there's no toilet bowl (three communal bath/toilets per floor) and there's a door instead of bars. And here's the kicker: The ceiling lamp, the only source of light, was operated by pulling this long dangling string which hung in the middle of the room, right above the bed. And once we had switched on the light, we could not turn it back off! Not very conducive to sleep then, as I'd soon find out.

First order of business was dinner, and we settled some typical greasy diner after walking aimlessly for a few blocks.

The portions, as expected, were Supersized-up. I could only finish half of my pasta. Worse still was Ron, who had somehow became afflicted with a stomach bug over the course of the journey to the west, and kept having to, well, head to the gents. (Sorry, Ronald. It's too significant a part of the weekend not to be documented!)

Back to the jail cell it was after that to retire in preparation of a day of exploration on Sunday. The plan: To cover lower Manhatten (but not the extreme South ie. Financial district).

The day began at 5+ am when we both woke up from our 'sleep', thanks to that cursed light. Some brief planning and we were off to take the subway down South.

It was 8am when we reached Chinatown, and from therein on to about 7pm, we walked ALL day, with only 2 stops for meals.

It was a massive mistake to have started the day so early, we were to discover. Shops were closed and streets were desserted. So much for the city that never sleeps. It is thus that I could get this pic in the middle of the road in, erm, somewhere around Greenwich Village.

At Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village.

The cafe we finally settled upon for brunch at about 11-something, after some three hours of wandering.

Yay for alfresco dining in cool temperatures! And somehow we only took pics of us when dining (We didn't take many pictures at all in fact). I remember remarking to him about how great it'd be if the gang were here together. We'd be able to do our trademark camwhoring in so many fresh! exciting! new locales!

The Flatiron Building

Dinner at some Chinese restaurant in Chinatown. Not too bad food really, though the skin on the xiao long baos was as thick as Ron or Ivy's.

A blurry picture of us on the moving subway take by a neighbouring commuter as we headed back to the hostel and I went back to campus. In all, we covered Chinatown, Little Italy, Greenwich Village, Chelsea and SoHo, taking plenty of pitstops along the way at various Starbucks for loo breaks (Ron's crummy stomach, remember?). It's great really, then, that there're approximately 6995956 of them in the city, because otherwise you'd be hardpressed to find a public toilet. Here's a handy tip: Get a cup of coffee from there, and just keep it for the rest of the day. It's currency for you to enter any of them to use the restrooms! Heh.

So it was back to school for me, while Ron got to continue holidaying. No fair!

Canned Laughter

2007-09-18T06:32:00.000+08:00

Last Friday night, I was invited by a schoolmate who had tickets to the taping of a new Fox sitcom, "The Return of Jezebel James", which stars indie queen Parker Posey (she was in "Superman Returns"), Lauren Ambrose and other bo-mia actors, at the Kaufman Astoria Studio in Queens (apparently the only sitcom taped in NYC. The rest are done in Hollywood of course). It's not quite "Friends" or "Seinfeld", but hey, still worth a look, I thought.

It was interesting to see everything in action, I suppose, like how the sets were so fluid and small parts of it like a panel of wall could be wheeled around. The actors were pretty good with their lines. I think no one flubbed his/her lines except for star Posey, ironically.

Also, we're supposed to laugh, and laugh loudly if possible, so the mics around can catch our laughter. After you see one scene done 5-6 times though, it gets old. And it doesn't help that I didn't think it was that funny. Guess that's why it's on Fox, the network who cancelled Arrested Development and produces 'balanced' news shows like the O'Reily Factor. I bet "Jezelbel James" gets cancelled within half a year.

The best part of the experience? Free pizza! Heh. Yeah, we were each served a slice of plain cheese pizza in the middle of taping, which was a [insert deity]send because everyone was so hungry, and the shoot was looonnnggg. So long, in fact, that we left not too long after we finished our pizza.

Lesson learnt then: Attend tapings of 'live' shows such as SNL or Letterman (hopefully I'll get an opportunity to do so!), unless you have hours to spare and are prepared to go hungry.

Ring, Ring, Ring Goes that Ol' School Bell

2007-09-14T09:07:00.001+08:00

Well, there obviously aren't any school bells on campus, but it's so interesting, to me at least, to see scenarios so often depicted in movies/TV come to life in front of your eyes.

I've always been amazed at how, in movies/TV, kids in school rush out of the class the minute the bell rings, while the teacher shouts something like "Remember, pop quiz tommorow!" to no one in particular as most have already zoomed out of the class. How rude!

Well, it's sorta how it is in real life!

Say a class ends at 11. Even though the professor might still be explaining crucial stuff, at 1055, students are already stuffing paper into their folders, packing their bags, etc. One even got up, pulled his chair back in, and stood there basically waiting for the official dismissal before zooming off. And the professor doesn't feel offended or feel that it's rude that students are doing all of these even whilst she's still teaching. Fascinating!

As such, I'm usually among the last few out of the class because I wait for the word of dismissal before scooping up my stuff. Seems like the polite thing to do, I suppose.

Football in all its glory

2007-09-12T12:02:00.001+08:00

This is a highlights clip of the classic 1999 FA Cup semi-final replay between Manchester United and Arsenal. United won it 2-1 on route to the treble and it was an amazing game with all the ingredients for high drama: a cracking, electrifying atmosphere, brilliant goals (one from Becks and of course, that virtuoso goal from Giggs), red cards (Keane), disallowed goals (Anelka), penalty saves (Schmikes from Bergkamp) and extra-time match winners. Simply awesome.

I love Manchester United.

Edited to add: I just found two fellow freshmen Man United fans, and they're both Americans! Cool beans!

The City of Blinding Lights

2007-09-10T04:01:00.001+08:00

First trip to the city on Saturday. It was hot, as in Singapore-style 30deg hot and humid. My roommate and I took the train to Grand Central Station, which is pretty right in the middle of Manhatten, and just sorta walked about the area surrounding it for the day.

Times Square in the day. I didn't manage to find the building where the TRL studio is located, sadly.

They have this long section of the road closed for NYC's version of a pasar malam, where there are the same stalls, like kebab shops, fruit juice stalls (there's this brand which is run by all Chinese peeps), I-Love-NY memorabilia stalls, etcs, repeated a million times.
And ostensibly, not only leftists populate the city.

Times Square in the night. There are quite a few of these random smoke/steam?-emitting roadblocks around, which I haven't a clue what they're about.

Fashion week is on right now at Bryant Park. It's invite only, so us plebians could only gaze admiringly at the entrance, hoping to spot glamourous people as they enter or exit. How many designers can you identify in the picture?

Rockafella Center. I spy a Singapore flag!

Central Park. Or to be precise, the southern tip of Central Park. I think I saw about 10% of the park.

And a mere month after my Singapore Zoo visit, I get to visit another! This time, twas the Central Park zoo. So, more pictures of animals!

The red panda is adorable.

Our feathered cousins.

The penguins were adorable too. They seemingly just stand there, as though at attention, the whole day.

The Apple shop. So you either take this cyclindrical glass elevator or a spiral staircase down to the shop. And I held an iphone (now USD200 cheaper, so early adopters must be pissed off.)! Yeah, cheap thrill (the city is pricy, after all, so I'll take what I can get for free!) .

The Empire State Buidling by day and night.

Speaking of cheap thrills
I suppose I will go see the actual one eventually.

And that concludes the pictorial documentation of my first steps in the city. More to come in the future then! *exhausted from all the walking* I think I'll take the subway next time.

A House is not a Home

2007-09-07T10:27:00.001+08:00

My current place of residence. The college has a variety of dorm offerings, including the more regular many-rooms-in-a-long-corridor kind; then there are a few such houses converted to dorms. In related news, I have a kitchen! Which I have utilised thus far to boil water (I think I'm fast developing a rep for being 'the guy who boils water'. Everyone drinks bottled water.) to drink.

My room. I'm the bed in yellow. FYI for the unfamiliar, that black bag of mine on the floor is a made-in-Singapore SAF product. Who needs Samsonite?

Balls of Steel

2007-09-06T08:03:00.000+08:00

Stephen Colbert is a famous American humourist and satirist. Here, he is speaking at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. The man is brilliant. And has balls of steel. Right in the face of George and Laura Bush, he skewers the man and the administration with his trademark biting wit and humour, and it is amazing (Bush has this smile plastered on his face. It's hilarious.). Goes to show how comedy can be used to serve a larger purpose.

Can you ever imagine such a roasting session ever occuring in Singapore?