Wednesday 31 December 2008

Videogames, An Introduction In 3 Minutes

This is so cool, and cute.



I never had any video games. Maybe that's why I better with my mouth than with my hands.

One Holiday Down, More Eating To Go

So Christmas is over and we're hours away from 2009.

What's been going on?

I have been eating a lot. Some friends I hang out with a lot have this plan to eat at least 4 distinct places this holiday season - a bar to celebrate the return of a friend from SF with cider and chicken wings, another friend's house for Christmas zhi-char dinner, Long Beach Seafood at Dempsey because lunch is 20% off with your Visa card, Indonesian food at Cumi Bali because we miss the food and the restaurant had moved to a new, bigger place, and lastly, Karu's Curry at Upper Bukit Timah Road.

I am pleased to announce that we have completed all but the curry fest.

I am not so pleased to announce that last week I felt my heart beat harder while I was trying to get to sleep.

Today, New Year's Eve, there is some plan to make an addition to list of gourmet delights with a visit to friend's uncle's shop that serves turtle soup. That gives me the creeps. Apparently, there is black chicken soup too. Perhaps that will entice me to tag along.

I have been keeping to the twice a week yoga and weekend walk/run regimen. Perhaps the heart, liver and kidneys won't decide to expire prematurely this season.

I predict however there will be more feasting and merrymaking in the coming month as it leads up to Chinese New Year at the end of January. Yikes. I have to watch the wallet too. The ballooning is not just targeting the waist.

Sunday 21 December 2008

A Short Burst Of Weddings

I attended two weddings celebrations over 2 days last week. The first wedding saw Edwin Tan, "old man" of Hall Six fame, take to the stage with his bride, Valerie. He's one funny guy. One of his buddies summed up what most of us found out over time, he's got a tough veneer but a softie at heart. It wasn't till my final two years in NTU did I discover how much of a joker Edwin was and an all-round good guy.

The dinner was a nice, sedate affair at a hotel downtown. We Sixians met up and could help trade stories, make fun of each other and complain about the food and service. Good times. My camera didn't quite make appear too often and I got mostly my fellow comrades at my table. I didn't even manage to catch a good shot of the Man Of The Hour. Whoops. Congratulations nonetheless. I like the line Edwin said about his 'taking his time' with tieing the knot - 'Valerie is someone I am most comfortable with'. That's what the rest of your life should be about isn't it?



Two days, I made my way to Clarke Quay for Ariel and Chris' wedding lunch. At Indochine no less. I couldn't wait because I knew it wasn't going to be the run of the mill affair. Indeed it wasn't. The restaurant/bar itself was quirky, an old Chinese two storey building, refurbished with the necessary commercial comforts. I had my Hall Anniversary there in 1998. The location made the photos all the more interesting.

I was told to sit at table 10 with a bunch of interesting strangers who turned out to be Ariel's philosophy classmates in NUS. What a bunch. Articulate, forthcoming, clever. They smoked like chimneys and drank like fish. They belong in advertising. Lunch was 2 appetisers, 4 main courses, a dessert and loads of beer and wine to top off proceedings. There was way too much food and we managed to stuff ourselves a little short of silly. Lovely.

Congratulations Ariel and Chris. All the best always.

Wednesday 17 December 2008

The Guitar Weeps

I have come to notice that the use of the electric guitars in music has changed over the decades (gasp!). There was a time when the guitar sound was used to tell a story as part of the song being sung. It was like the guitar spoke, plucked to express a sentiment or feeling. Everything from anger to anguish, people could relate to the screech emanating from the speakers and amps connected to the magical hands of a guitar player. People remember the melodies of the guitar solo and sing them. We may butcher the song but we remember the feeling it brought out.

I am sure there are many examples but these few classics stand out for me:

Journey - Who's Crying Now



Prince and The Revolution - Purple Rain



Whitesnake - Is this love?



Somehow this value of the guitar may have got lost post-80s. A lot of rock these days is constant jangle, rough and loud. It has its appeal but more is told with the lyrics of a song than with any of the instruments. Maybe the emo of the post-modern young person has found its way into the rock mainstream where terk jerky, angst ridden words speak volumes and drown out the six string.

No, I don't play. Yet.

Monday 15 December 2008

What I Want For Xmas

I figured I satisfy my ego by putting this out there, and just in case Santa is randomly surfing.

1. Creative Aurvana in-ear earphones

2. Mighty Minds Street Directory 2009

3. Muppets TV Series on DVD

4. Shoes (complicated because I need to replace my utilitarian black Docs and casual brown Hush Puppies)

5. Another set of long-sleeved shirt and trousers (also complicated because I am adding two units to the current business wear permutation and also because I am picky about colour and design)

Suprisingly or not, it was easy coming up with 1 and 2. The rest were tougher. Someone wanna psycho-analyse this?

There are bigger, existential, world-peace category items to wish for of course and I would trade these 5 and way more if Santa could fulfill those. But I am also a material human and had to get this out of the way and out of mind. And no one is too old to wish for presents.

Sunday 14 December 2008

Homemade Bling At Whimxical.com

I'm always supportive of folks who branch out into the entrepreneurial. I discovered that a colleague of mine makes bling, or technically, jewellery. And she sells her creations through whimxical.com. I ain't capable of assessing bling because I don't wear any (Don't Even Think About A Bling Present For Xmas!) (Think about a present, just not jewellery) (Thanks). The work looks pretty, and should appease many a bling wearer or gift giver.

Friday 12 December 2008

The Average American Has $5,710 In Credit Card Debt

My first reaction to this was wah piang! That's a lot of money to owe a bank at 15-30% interest per annum. I did more research and it turns out that Obama doesn't need to panic that much.

The problem with statistics is the use and proliferation of the average. Averages are skewed by extremes. So if nine people make $100 and the tenth made $10,000, they made an average of $1,090. Not quite representative of the situation right? To the rescue is the statistic known as the median.

The US households that did have CC debt, the median amount owed was $1,900. Here's more comforting news:
- Only 29% of households owe $1,000 or more on their cards.
- 21% owe $2,000 or more.
- 6% owe $8,000 or more.
- 4% owe $10,500 or more.
- 1% owe $21,400 or more.

More not-so-bad news:
- 23.8% of American households have no credit cards at all - no bank cards, no retail cards, nothing.
- Another 31.2% of the households the Fed surveyed paid off their most recent credit card bills in full.
- So together, the households that owed nothing on credit cards equaled 55% of the total.

Woof. So remember stats aren't everything they seem to be.

Thank God I Have A Job

Bank of America out in the US announced today it's gonna cut 30,000 jobs over 3 years. Citibank announced last month that it was gonna shed 52,000 jobs. HSBC is dropping 1,100 people from its payroll. Nomura is saying goodbye to 1,000; Credit Suisse 5,300; JP Morgan 9,200. At home, we all know about DBS shedding 900 people and NOL 150 staff in heartless moves before Xmas and CNY.

That's about 100,000 people. Or Clementi New Town.

The big question is who's employing? And what are these people gonna do?

Here's the other thing. The employed folks are supposed to keep spending to keep the economy running. Well that's gonna make things interesting. Did you know people are actually putting cash into the US government debt system at ZERO return? Sort of like hiding cash under the mattress. That means people would rather get nothing for their savings than put any money with a bank, any bank.

Isn't it amazing the world's ended up this way? Haha.

Wednesday 10 December 2008

Humble Scotch Tape No More!

Scientists have found that the peeling action of scotch tape generates enough X-rays to scan of a human finger. Shock! Horror! Radiation poisoning! Before you run off screaming and strangling your admin lady or concreting your stationery cupboard, the X-rays are released only in certain hard-to-achieve-in-the-office conditions. You need an airless chamber (no, not your boss) and a contraption to peel the tape at a constant speed (no, not your colleagues).


(images from NY Times)

But creepy eh? X-rays from plain old tape. We find new sources of energy every day. Someone should take a closer look at fart.

Monday 8 December 2008

Zack And Miri Make A Porno

Need some insane humour in your life? Go watch Zack and Miri Make A Porno. It's a film about finding a way out of the deepest trench in loserville in the middle of the coldest winter faced with seemingly insormountable odds, and finding something unexpected. The laughs started from the get-go. And paying close attention to the small conversational details. Haha. And the F-word flies around like bees on a honey farm.





Need more? Visit zackandmiri.com. Oh yes, stay for the credits!

Bigger Questions From Bad Times In Bangkok

In the name of democracy, lots of Thai folks went and sat their tom yum asses down in Suvarnabhumi airport stopping operations for over a week. Tourists got stuck, planes were stuck and it seemed like the Thai gahmen was similarly plugged into a hole. One side wanted the PM to step down, the PM said he would resist, and the military decided that perhaps they couldn't pull off another coup (this would have been number 19 in Thailand's history). Someone shot a gun on TV and another hurled a grenade at Don Muang. In the name of all that is good and holy, the courts decided that the parties weren't legit and everyone cheered, cried, picked up their mats and went home. Doesn't it all sound so insane?

The image of peace loving Thais has been forever marred by this incident. There's even an Apologies Thailand campaign now on to get the tourists back and smiling. At the same time, I think more Thais now believe in their own free will to choose than ever before. On the dark side, guns and grenades have been showing up too often in these otherwise peaceful sitdowns and marches (I blame MTV).

What would you do in the name of democracy? Someone I spoke to said "They need a Singapore style gahmen, firm and would never let this happen." Is that a good thing? My first thoughts were "Didn't airport security do anything?" "Couldn't they have called in the army?" "This is gonna bloody devastate the economy." All good questions that imply that whatever these protesters were up to was not right. Perhaps I have been too conditioned by the lack of a protester-mentality in Singapore. The last big thing was a bunch of people showing up at DBS demanding oranges for Lehmans, something the police didn't take too lightly to.

Seriously, Singaporeans are no way as publicly expressive about politics as the Thais. Are we just rational or simply uninterested? Worse still, in denial and a simmering cauldron of sentiment waiting to spill over. Take for example the recent Town Council investments losses. In some countries, there would have been roadside hue-and-cry and politicians would have quickly resigned. (A friend pointed out that ministers in other countries quit for less serious reasons. Think the example was insulting old folks in Japan). Here there were a few concerned letters to the press. Zip. So, what would you do in the name of democracy?

Monday 1 December 2008

Rest In Peace Hwei Yen

Lo Hwei Yen's death has brought Singaporeans the closest they've ever been to the reality of terrorism. Even the Yishun videos and Mas Selamat's escape were events that somehow did not shake us to our core, not like this. It wasn't a plane crash, it wasn't an accident on the PIE, it wasn't cancer. The senselessness, madness and viciousness of this incident is what we are grappling with. She was 28, just got married, and maybe one of the faces I passed by in Raffles Place. One of the people I did not know. But still one of us, a Singaporean.

Since the 60s, we've been very lucky to have escaped any kind of violence that we read about in the papers and see on our television screens. An entire generation only knows of this form of carnage from the spectator point of view. In other countries, kids grow up with bullets whizzing by every other day. They grow up stronger mentally because survival is a thing to be thankful for on a daily basis. We need to be thankful that our lives and destinies are the way they are, that all we have to complain about is the ERP, slow service and the price of chicken rice.

There will never be enough tears to bring you back. There will be the right words to fully express how we feel. But we will always remember.

Rest in peace Hwei Yen.