Idle Thoughts

leaving

2006-07-20T08:47:00.000+08:00

how sad is it that even as a bona fide civil servant (not just a civil-servant-to-be anymore), i spend huge chunks of my time thinking about what i want to do when i'm done with my term of servitude? [not that it will be done anytime soon.]

and now, the possibilities stretch before me - like an open road, a powerful car, and my music blaring on the stereo - what will i be tomorrow?

i think this blogspot journal might just abt have reached the end of its useful lifespan. it'll stay up, of course, but...look over at the LJ if you want updates. otherwise, it's been nice knowing you, and of course, so long and thanks for all the fish.

election results are out

2006-05-07T01:14:00.000+08:00

once more,

It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
(Macbeth, Act V Sc. i)

it is, after all, springtime.

2006-04-26T22:57:00.000+08:00

i'd forgotten the beauty of language.

Winter Spring

A script of trees before the hill
Spells cold, with laden serifs; all the walls
Are battlemented still;
But winter spring is winnowing the air
Of chill, and crawls
Wet-sparkling on the gutters;
Everywhere
Walls wince, and there's the steal of waters.

Now all this proud royaume
Is Veniced. Through the drift's mined dome
One sees the rowdy rusted grass,
And we're amazed as windows stricken bright.
This too-soon spring will pass
Perhaps tonight,
And doubtless it is dangerous to love
This somersault of seasons;
But I am weary of
The winter way of loving things for reasons.

-- Richard Wilbur, Winter Spring

2006-04-12T20:49:00.000+08:00

it's amazing - i still remember how to log into blogger. :p yes, i know, there has been perilous radio silence on this blog since CNY, although i've been sporadically updating the LJ (check there, i tell you, that's where the good stuff is). so - i'm still alive, peeps, mostly. work continues to be stressful, alternating between stressful-because-important, and stressful-because-full-of-stupid-details-no-one-gives-a-shit-abt-except-Finance. -sigh- next week is going to be filled with the latter, i suspect.

but never mind that, because i am going to put work out of mind for four days, and vacation away in Sydney! (with my cell on roaming. :p) so - i'm back, but i'm off again - i may update from Sydney, who knows. but i'm still here. :)

Happy Lunar New Year

2006-01-31T11:55:00.000+08:00

let me first say:

Happy Chinese New Year! to one and all. :)

you know, i've been updating the LJ more often than this blog, lately - i don't know why - maybe it's the convenience of the LJ's Friends page. so if you are really interested in what i am up to these days, the LJ is probably a better place to look. but we'll see.

Chinese New Year. it's really good to be home for Chinese New Year - it's the first time in four years - but so much has changed over the last four years. yes, the family visiting is still the same - we still start with my dad's older brother, and then move on to my grandpa, and on the second day my extended family on my dad's side descends on our house. but all the other visiting that i remember, that we used to do, has been truncated, reallocated slots or just dropped altogether, and i find disconcertingly large slots of free time hangin' about in our CNY visiting schedules. (which means that we get to come home and take a nap, not necessarily a bad thing. especially when you have a huge sleep debt, like me.) but -mostly because of the ex-chiefs' reception today- we are not traipsing about to one another's houses nearly as much; and i haven't seen the other navy kids at all! (though admittedly that is partly because, well, we're mostly all grown up and scattered to the four winds now.)

so it's familiar, but not familiar at the same time, which is really disconcerting, and sort of strange. ah well, she says, times change, and people with them.

it's nice to know some things never change, though. i'm on laundry duty this week, since my maid is on Chinese New Year home leave, and this morning i managed to dye one of my tshirts violently pink, and gently tint the rest of the load of clothes i washed this morning...damn red shirts and their lack of colour-fast dyes! :)

a meme!

2006-01-21T20:44:00.000+08:00

oh lordy, i've been tagged by The Old Man with the four meme. -grin- but since i'd actually been contemplating doing it (though given i've not been behind a computer all week, not really contemplating it too hard), here goes:

4 Jobs You've Had In Your Life

1. Relief Teacher at RGS
2. Receptionist ("hello, you've reached ____, how may i direct your call?" chris tan once told me i have a telephone operator voice)
3. Cube Monkey/Foot Soldier (my current job)

i've only had three jobs - i blissfully did not work while in college. because i am lazy that way.

4 Movies You Could Watch Over And Over Again

1. When Harry Met Sally
2. Clueless (i know, i know)
3. You've Got Mail
4. Alex and Emma

4 TV Shows You Love To Watch

1. CSI (Las Vegas; and Miami; and New York)
2. Numb3rs
3. House
4. The West Wing (right up to the end of Season Five; Six is sort of sketchy...)

oh, i'd love to watch Firefly if someone would lend it to me -- i watched one episode prior to watching Serenity at my friend's place, and laughed my head off during the entire episode. it's really great writing.

4 Places You've Lived In

1. Newport, RI, USA
2. Chicago, IL, USA
3. Upper Serangoon, Singapore
4. Upper East Coast Road, Singapore

4 Places You've Been On Vacation To

1. ITALY (Rome, Florence, Venice, and assorted places between)
2. New York
3. Melbourne, Australia
4. Alaska!

4 Places You'd Rather Be

1. Hyde Park, in Chicago (in my apartment on the seventh floor, with the snow falling outside and tea boiling on the stove)
2. Florence
3. New York
4. London

4 Of Your Favourite Foods

1. Pisang Goreng
2. Roti Prata
3. Pasta. lots of Pasta. with tomato cream sauce.
4. Chocolate

Coffee isn't a food, is it?

4 Websites You Visit Daily

1. The New York Times
2. my Livejournal Friends page
3. About Last Night, at the ArtsJournal
4. Dan Drezner

urm. i'm not going to tag people - partly because the people i would tag have already been tagged - feel free to play along, peeps. :)

it's been a long time

2006-01-16T21:21:00.000+08:00

my eldest cousin -the oldest Kwek cousin in my generation- got married this week (on a thursday!) in a combination of traditional Teochew wedding, tea ceremony and all, and formal solomnisation at the hotel at which they held their wedding dinner (rather than the Registry of Marriages). it was a rainy rainy day, but inside it was all warmth and cheer, and laughter and teasing, and camera flashes, and hugs. i haven't spent much time with this side of my family over the last few years -especially since i have been away- so every time we get together for a family function, i am struck anew at how much of me comes from them. how noisy and loud and uninhibited my aunts are (and the slightly bemused looks on the faces of the aunt and uncles who have unknowingly married into the craziest family in Singapore), and how the cousins are more alike than we seem.

Brian is the second of my cousins to get married -his youngest brother got married last year, or no, i think it was the year before, now- and my second cousin's wedding is going to be in November - and it is so weird to be surrounded by people who are married, or going to get married, and only two years ago this wasn't on my radar screen at all!

* * * * *

i'm on course at the moment, and this gem jumped out at me from an otherwise uninspiring lecture:

"They've got some kind of genuine Techno-Confucian Mandate of Heaven thing going on. It's being carried out by really bright, eager, workaholic city apparatchiks who are keenly rehearsed." - Bruce Stirling on Singapore

i greatly enjoy the notion of being a "city apparatchik".

* * * * *

i never thought i'd say this, especially not after i grumble and whine and complain about the long hours but --

i wish i were going back to work tomorrow morning.

* * * * *

february was so long that it lasted into march
and found us walking a path alone together
you stopped and pointed and you said "that's a crocus"
and i said "what's a crocus" and you said "it's a flower"
i tried to remember, but i said "what's a flower"
you said "i still love you"

photos!

2005-12-09T06:24:00.000+08:00

i know, i know, posting photos instead of real content again. -grin- and not updating. but what can i say. nothing much has happened -except my very first work-trip, which commenced with takeoff at 0600 hrs, and was short and stressful. (it was just a day trip, people, nothing to get excited about. although - i've never done a day trip to another country before!)

ok - so this lovely lady on the left is my godsis. she showed up at church last sunday, and we took the opportunity to finally take a photo that pleased both of us. (it took a couple of tries. -grin-) another navy brat like me, she works for DSTA, and calls a Really Big Gun her 'baby'. -laugh- i knew i wasn't the only crazy one!

and this is Grandpa. :) and that's dad. :) i'll assume you know which is which...

Thanksgiving Weekend is Over

2005-11-27T20:25:00.000+08:00

The party went off mostly without a hitch last night - perhaps we could have eaten a bigger bird, but Janice would probably have keeled over from the effort of managing it on her own. (kudos to Jan for the bird she brought, in any case, it was awesome.) it was a great day - baking at ying's place (my scatterbrained-ness almost causing disaster - the oven was waaay too hot for the poor challah loaf!) - and cooking up baked pasta, and whipping up mashed potatoes in my kitchen with people standing around chattering (thanks for mashing, weineng -grin-). two of my favourite things to do are (a) cooking up lots of things; and (b) hanging out with my friends, and i really love it when the two happen at once, like last night.

Thanks for coming out, pple, and hanging out, and having fun. let's do this again sometime --

love,
J.

normal?

2005-11-26T15:15:00.000+08:00

it is raining again - the monsoon season truly is here. it's a weird sort of day for a Thanksgiving Party, halfway around the world from where the holiday is celebrated, but weird or not, that's what we'll be doing in a couple of hours. i'm at Ying's now, having baked some bread and made some pasta sauce from scratch, and the baked pasta smells awesome. my car is going to smell like food for days. but it'll be worth it. gotta leave soon to make it home in time to make some mashed potatoes for dinner, i think. :)

i'm told that it's snowed in paris, and michigan, and it's cold cold cold in chicago. sometimes i'm still startled when i step outside after work and don't get smacked in the face by a chilly wind and a flurry of white. it is late november, after all.

green like a cute, amphibious hopping creature

2005-11-22T20:14:00.000+08:00

congratulations, mr staniland, on your first published article. :)

i fully intend to spend some time digesting it this evening, but it's nice to finally read something that (a) references other academic/intellectual works; and (b) has (hopefully!) a sustained, well-supported argument with a clear thesis that i can agree/disagree with. -sigh- just the sight of endnotes makes me happier. -laugh- i know, i know, self-confessed total geek. silence, y'll.

is it only tuesday? isn't it friday yet? and THANKSGIVING yet? :)

my kind of town

2005-11-19T11:03:00.000+08:00

from drought to deluge - two posts in one day. -grin- but this merely a short one to point to a new addition in the sidebar: my old roommate's dad, Bill Testa is an economist with the Chicago Fed, and has recently -i say recently, but it's been abt three months now- started blogging about the Midwest economy (and consequently about regional growth, and what makes regions -vs. whole economies etc- grow/not grow) over on the Chicago Fed's website. more specifically, he blogs here.

for those readers interested in the mechanics/dynamics of regional growth and/or the Midwest Economy (i.e all two of you), it's well worth a read through. and i'm not just plugging it because i'm fond of Em's dad. :p

if i were a rich man, i would...

2005-11-19T08:44:00.000+08:00

last night, restless and just wanting to chill out while doing something different, we moved Girls' Nite Out from our usual haunts to the Peranakan area of Orchard Road -- Emerald Hill. and oh boy was it lovely. i think i've found my favourite watering hole here. :) we planned to start out in AlleyBar, but by the time we got there it was packed, and the nice waitress was like 'I don't have any tables, but you can stand at the bar' - we are definitely going back, hopefully next week. it looks really pretty inside. :) so we moved operations a little further up the street to Que Pasa, and Ice Cold Beer. ahhh, bliss. :)

walking around the area after finishing our drinks made my eyes pop. i mean, those houses are GORGEOUS. what do i have to do to get one? Marry a rich man? Kill a rich man? both? -grin- there's no way i can afford to live in the area on my current (and projected future) income. -laugh- but oh, the houses are beautiful - not that wide, but so long, and the ceilings are so high! spiral staircases, and lofts everywhere, and lovely gracious gardens. so beautiful. we had to leave before i started crying. -laugh- what i really want is one of those houses, with the facade preserved, but the insides all wide and open, with lots of wood and lots of space, with a lofted bedroom. (though i'm not sure how aircon fits into this picture. hmm.)

no use dreaming though. no way i'll ever get one of those babies. :) my future will be more...plebian than that.

unintentional tragedy

2005-11-06T01:15:00.000+08:00

i broke a piece of jewellery today -- my glass pendant on a metal choker from Venice -murano glass!

the pendant -the actual glass piece- is still intact, but now i need to find some way to hang it around my neck. the chains and metal choker i own have catches insufficiently fine to fit through the hole in the glass piece. am terribly afraid i will wind up wearing it on fishing line.

-sigh-

work computers -rolls eyes-

2005-11-02T17:55:00.000+08:00

ding-donging between the PCs at work and Portia the wunderkund pBook at home is making my brain hurt. i get to work, and wonder why the hell my Expose is suddenly non-functional, only to realise that -wait- PCs don't HAVE Expose. esp crappy old machines like my work PC.

all that was an elaborate lead-in to: you've noticed this blog has grown increasingly silent. yet the LJ (yes, there is a LJ. see the link in the bottom of the sidebar?) has not fallen into complete and utter silence. (in fact, didn't i just post there to celebrate my first Milo Dinosaur? perhaps not.) why is that, you ask. do i not love you anymore?

and the answer, plain and simple, is that my Evil Work PC with its Evil Internet Explorer will not allow me to update here. i open the start page, and somehow, for some reason known only to arcane programmers, the SIGN IN button doesn't appear. anywhere. and hitting enter, which usually works on Portia as well as non-Mac machines, doesn't work. i've finally figured out how to get Mozilla to do it (force it through the login page anyway) but it's a pain, even though ostensibly this is a better browser. so updates on the Blogger will be few and far between, i suspect. (though perhaps not this weekend, since it will be a long one!)

please keep an eye on the LJ -i'm an attention-whore, i know, i know- because LJ lets me log in, even at work. -keeps a wary eye out for heads peeping over cubicle walls- (thanks to my sudden burst of typing -typing = productivity. not.) plus i can change the colour of the text over on the LJ -i can't do it here, my WYSIWYG editor won't load! -bitchbitchwhinewhine-

all right. back to work for a bit before heading off home for the weekend. some serious sleep time, plus hangin' out with the parental units! (erm. yay?)

(oh, and Ry -- i intended to write you an email when i got into the office, erm, 10 hours ago, but erm...i forgot. i'll write when i get home, i promise. -grin-)

nothing at all

2005-10-30T00:09:00.000+08:00

it's amazing that you can speak right to my heart
without saying a word, you can light up the dark
try as i may i could never explain
what i hear when you don't say a thing

the smile on your face lets me know that you need me
there's a truth in your eyes saying you'll never leave me
the touch of your hand says you'll catch me whenever i fall
you say it best
when you say nothing at all

all day i long i can hear people talking about
but when you hold me near you drown out the crowd
old mr webster could never define
what's being said between your heart and mine

the smile on your face lets me know that you need me
there's a truth in your eyes saying you'll never leave me
the touch of your hand says you'll catch me whenever i fall
you say it best
when you say nothing at all

sing a song of sixpence

2005-10-26T23:48:00.000+08:00

the more time goes by, the less strongly i feel the yearning to be part of a choir again. tonight, i went to a concert put up by the philharmonic chamber choir (of which my senior, evan, is a member. not to mention our very special Eekia.) and -- while there were definitely moments when i thought to myself -there, that's what's missing from my life: the breathing in total accord; the wall of sound; the blend and mix of voices and parts and people to create a single voice out of 35 individual ones. i miss those perfect moments, and the small but heartfelt nod of appreciation and thanks that Mr Toh used to hand out when we'd performed well. but less and less do i want to put in the hours, and the caring and the effort and the hard hard work training this voice of mine back into some sort of reasonable shape. so i languish, singing songs in my car and at my desk and at home, and make do.

speaking of making do - here's yet another place i wish i could be, right here and now --

i aten't dead

2005-10-20T20:54:00.000+08:00

hmm -- i seem to have to say that more and more these days, online anyway. =p yes, work is taking over my life, but i ain't dead yet. managing to have pretty cool and fun Girls' Nites Out every friday night (though this week we are down to TWO -boooo to the other girls, though in their defence, they're off having exciting lives too) and hanging out with grandpa on weekends is also fun. (plus last weekend i got to take a NAP. for four hours.)

just to leave all with some fodder for thought:

a. the best nominee Bushie could come up with to fill a spot on the Supreme Court -his LEGACY, for crying out loud- is his White House Counsel and ex-personal lawyer, whose highest qualification is her loyalty to him?

b. my government thinks that it's a good idea for people who have been arrested not to have access to legal counsel until the police have finished their investigation, because then the defence counsel might compromise the investigation. it's nice to know that personal rights and liberties are taken so seriously, isn't it?

back to daydreaming about vacations in the Bahamas (getting a Real Tan) now...:)

OH! and the countdown begins -- Game One of the 2005 World Series (the Fall Classic) begins on Saturday at 7.30pm CST -- Houston Astros at the Chicago White Sox. They've prepped The Cell and everyone's raring to go -- oh, i miss my city.

a roundup of daily events

2005-10-08T07:31:00.000+08:00

my first paycheck comes on monday. (of course, by that i mean -- the Civil Service will electronically transfer my first paycheck into my bank account on monday, minus CPF, minus the parking fee, minus what i'm giving to SHARE...erm...any more minuses and i'll have to pay them!) so it's a good time to quickly blog about what work's been like so far, no?

i'm really enjoying it so far. i may bitch and whine and complain but ultimately, i like it. the adrenaline rush is crazy - i crash every single night, just come home, eat shower and then fall asleep- that might be the only part i really dislike. but there's real thrill in just going at it all day, moving things, answering people's questions - during the day there's rarely an entire half hour focused solely on one thing. i've always got part of my mind thinking about the next problem, or half an ear listening out for my desk phone. (the dreaded "jeanette, can you come in please." always makes me think "oh shit what did i submit recently are there stupid typos ahhh my staffwork sucks" in the two seconds before "yes, ok. -click-".) after about five, that's when i can focus, finally, on doing the things that don't get done during the day -- the things that are less urgent, the things that i've procrastinated on. two important things i've gathered in my first month of work: (1) always always take paper and a writing implement into your boss's office; and (2) make lists of EVERYTHING. what you need to do now. what you need to do tomorrow. what you need to have someone else do now. and so on ad infinitum. because there's only so many things your brain can manage at once, and most of it is occupied with "oh shit what did i submit recently are there typos" kind of thoughts. :)

[i interrupt this broadcast to add: WHITE SOX WIN!!!!! they've swept the BoSox!!!! They're going to the ACLS!!!! ok, you all know i'm a Cubs fan, but i'm also a Chicagoan (of sorts). i just want a chicago sports team to win sometimes...]

the other thing i've learned is that while my driving is improving, my knowledge of Singapore roads is not. that's because all i ever do is drive from my place to work and back again, and it's not really vitally important to know how to get from here to the northwest of Singapore, because seriously, everything between here and work is...let's call it underdeveloped, instead of "the freakin' wilderness". (however, there's a great part of the drive: there's a little road -Mandai Road- the end of it, that starts from near Transit Road, and it's a single lane road that winds its way through the middle of the nature reserve, alongside Seletar Reservoir. it's an incredibly pretty view in the mornings, tranquil and green. if there's no one else on the road behind me, i slow down and watch the reservoir go by until i'm once more surrounded by trees -- and then HUGE ASS TRUCKS on the rest of Mandai Road into Upper Bukit Timah.) i know this because yesterday i went over to Shum's after work (i knocked off while there was still daylight! my colleagues and i were joking abt how we were afraid to go outside because of this alien concept of sunlight) to play xbox games and then go to dinner with the other girls. but i didn't know how to get to her place from the office! i wandered into my branch head's office and asked to borrow his street directory. "can I borrow your street directory real quick please? I need to know how to get to Sixth Avenue." i said, sheepishly. he looked at me like i was really really strange and said "you know how to get to MFA, right? it's on the way lah!" but i didn't know that! -grin- and then Shum had to direct me from her place to Raffles City, which involved a lot of me going "i don't know where the fuck we are -mad laughter-" and "is it a left turn or a right turn?" until we emerged near High Street and i was like Oh! i know now, this is how i go to church!

so, all in all, i'm having a good time at the office. sure, there are times when i want to kill myself, but i've not quite reached the stage when i wake up in the morning and think 'man, i REALLY don't want to go to work'. which i think is a good thing. so far. :) wish me luck with the next month!

who am i?

2005-09-21T22:14:00.000+08:00

I am a daughter, a granddaughter, a sister, a friend. A lover. A partner. A burden, and a pain. I am loved.

I am the girl who lives in the land of eternal summer, and misses the fall. I am the girl who loves the cold, and the damp sweet smell of falling snow, and the dust of flakes on her eyelashes, her black wool coat, their soft settling on her uncovered head. You passed me on the quads just the other day: headphones in my ears, singing out loud between Kent and Cobb.

I am the girl whose heart you broke – only you couldn’t, because it was never entirely yours, even when I thought I had given it to you, only to have it thrown back in my face. I am the girl to whom you haven’t spoken for months –for a year?- I am the girl you swore would always be your friend. I am the girl who broke your heart, because she didn’t know what to do with such a gift, and shamefully handed it back, even as it broke her heart to do so.

I am the girl who played carom and drank iced lemon tea on hot July afternoons to watch your PE class play some ball game or another in the netball court. I watched the sunlight on your hair, and the carefree way you smiled and the sound of your laughter, and dreamed hopeless of the day you would smile at me that way. But the mystery of the unattainable was far more attractive and far less terrifying than the reality of you.

I am the girl who names her car (Roxanne) and her laptop (Portia) but not her cellphone or her iPod, because, well, they don’t have names. I am the girl who professes to be a feminist, but loves it when you open the door, or hold the elevator, or wait for me to exit the lift before you do. I wear girly clothes and girly shoes, but really would be much more comfortable in flipflops and jeans. I am the girl you treat like ‘one of the guys’.

I am the girl who has loved you since she knew what it meant to love. Who has had you in her heart as the standard against which all men are measured, and against whom all other men come up short. I am the girl who reached for your hand to hold when she was scared, and never failed to find you, right there, waiting for me. I am the girl who wishes she could always be that person, for you.

boo, hiss, and catcall

2005-09-21T21:24:00.000+08:00

Chicagoans one and all:

register your protest. because Marshall Field's, that beautiful institution of State Street, is about to be renamed. MACY'S.

armageddon is upon us. nothing more to say.

storm brew

2005-09-20T20:19:00.000+08:00

another storm is rolling in - the sky outside my window is lighting up as bright as day, and for the first time in days the breeze blowing into my room is cool and damp, rather than warm and soupy. it looks like we're in for another big one.

puzzling

2005-09-17T11:22:00.000+08:00

alex got me a subscription to the Times crossword! -grin- (which means we each got the other a subscription. we are such geeks.) so now i can do the daily crossword, by which i mean i can do monday through thursday, and then cheat outrageously on the weekend. -grin-

so will shortz, the Times's crossword editor, has this to say about crosswords, and Sudoku:

"People do puzzles for many reasons. Chief among them is that puzzles give the solver a feeling of being in control. Most of life's challenges don't have black-and-white solutions, and many have no resolution at all. We jump into the middle of problems and muddle through as best we can. With sudoku - or any other human-made puzzle - carrying it through from start to finish, and finding the perfect solution in the end, can produce a feeling of great pride.

The audiences for crosswords and sudoku, understandably, overlap greatly, but there are differences, too. A crossword attracts a more literary person, while sudoku appeals to a keenly logical mind. Some crossword enthusiasts turn up their noses at sudoku because they feel it lacks depth. A good crossword requires vocabulary, knowledge, mental flexibility and sometimes even a sense of humor to complete. It touches numerous areas of life and provides an "Aha!" or two along the way. Sudoku, on the other hand, is just a logical exercise, each one similar to the last."

i can see why crossword addicts and Sudoku addicts have a lot in common, frequently to do with their common need to fill in the blanks, and to be in control of what they are doing. life almost never has clean and easy solutions, and neither does it have a delete button, or an eraser. nor can you scratch things out, as fill-in-inkers invariably do. but with puzzles, you have the knowledge and ability to do all of these things.

but i also do Sudoku and crosswords for different reasons. crosswords help me to stretch my mind, twist it around a bit, see the world from a different angle. to find new ways to use words, and new meanings for old words; to feed a wacky sense of humour; to poke fun at people, places and events. but Sudoku does the opposite. it helps me to focus, to concentrate, to centre my brain in logic and order and process. it works the brain, while at the same time being mindless. almost like meditation, really. i think of it as a way to prime the pump, as it were.

not that i have very much time, or opportunity, to work on either crosswords or puzzles now that work has begun pretty much in earnest. that said, i've discovered that i really like my work, and the people i work with. it's all turned out well, so far - i hope it continues. :)

gumbo and chilli party

2005-09-14T00:24:00.000+08:00

as promised (if only to myself) - the photo from the party last weekend - my last free weekend before work began.

pity we have no pictures of the 'after': empty plates and bowls and wine bottles scattered about; people sprawled out playing bridge and chatting and pretending to be good at carrom and learning how to play Carcassonne without getting clobbered by more experienced players. :)

a fitting end to the day

2005-09-12T19:45:00.000+08:00

a fitting end to my first day of work: the mother of all lightning storms, and a traffic jam the size of canada. :p thankfully all seen from the inside of a cab, with entertaining company along the way.

other than that, however, it's been a relatively good day. (i know, i promised whining, but really, i don't have much to whine about!) other than not getting my temporary pass issued, which is a small matter really, i had a relatively smooth introduction to the new workplace; i've gotten a staffer position in a desk i wanted, and i know a bunch of my new colleagues already. not to mention the ones i didn't already know -the ones i met just today- i already like. so as far as i'm concerned, it's all good for now.

plus my branch head is away, which gives me a little time to get stuck into reading up on past issues and so forth before anything major comes flying my way. whew! :)

it's a wrap!

2005-09-11T00:13:00.000+08:00

the party wrapped up about half an hour ago; all i want to do now is take a shower and collapse into bed. :) but i'm happy: the food turned out well, and people enjoyed themselves, and it was good to see everyone, even if i didn't get a chance to talk to many people for long because i spent a lot of time bouncing around picking things up and handing them around. :p

many thanks to people who brought food, and drinks, and to alex's mom who baked us chocolate mousse cake (the leftovers are mine mine mine mine! -evil laughter-). a convivial evening indeed. good times. :)

Seven Wonders of the World?

2005-09-10T09:25:00.000+08:00

so the Trib is running a "Seven Wonders of Chicago" contest, for which the U of C has received a nomination. :) therefore, alums and friends of alums, go forth: 'Vote early, and often!'.

we can totally beat Sears Tower, and the Chicago Hot Dog? piece of cake. :p just have to worry about the MSI and the Lakefront giving us some stiff competition...;)

off to the supermarket; chilli-cooking awaits!

update: my chilli resembles nothing so much as a big pot of pasta sauce. how depressing. perhaps it needs more beans -but i don't LIKE beans! :p not to mention i wanted to put peppers in, but the lady at the checkout counter charged me 2.11 for my peppers and then failed to put them in my bag, a fact i discovered entirely too late, and i certainly wasn't going to walk back out in to the broiling heat to recover two little red peppers. bah.

another roasting day

2005-09-06T22:00:00.001+08:00

something's seriously wonky with AIM and ICQ tonight, and i can't for the life of me get on. (GoICQ does work, but i've never really liked it...plus my ICQ friends aren't online either anyway. :p) so i'm feeling sort of cut off from the world, a sensation not helped by the fact that i have my curtains drawn closed blocking out the neighbours.

however, i discovered today that i can, indeed, wear cheongsams. after years and years of being convinced i would look horrendous in them, i tried one on this afternoon and discovered that for once my wide hips are worth something. i wound up buying a cheongsam from a shop in Chinatown - a gorgeous green silk sleeveless number. (on the other hand, mom claims the cheongsam i wound up buying makes me look like a waitress in a chinese restaurant.) and they altered it on the spot to boot. it was a full-length cheongsam when i tried it on -it reach my ankles, with a lovely dramatic slit up to above the knee. but i'm sure you'll agree that occasions to wear full length cheongsams (esp in my line of work) are few and far between. so i had it cut to knee length, a much more flexible length in my opinion.

now i cannot put on any weight. in fact, losing a couple of pounds would probably help my ability to sit down in said cheongsam. but it's so pretty!

we also went to the Settlers Cafe at North Canal Road (just next to the Clarke Quay station on the NEL) to play board games after chinatown. geeky, i know. but they have cool board games! like Carcassonne, which i like -and managed to do well in today-, and Munchkins, which we didn't get to play -it sounds complicated, but it has terribly quirky cards! i want to try next time. but people need to go play with me. :)

my biggest accomplishment today, however, was figuring out bus routes to train stations from work, and working out the driving route from my place to my brother's camp to the office. it's a long drive, let me tell you. but it's an even longer ride home. it's looking like bus-MRT-bus-walk...at least 1.5 hours. -groan- hopefully i'll be able to drive...wish me luck.

2005-09-05T09:37:00.000+08:00

reading the lastest edition of the Chicago magazine:

And yet through such as thou the race has passed
To freedom -- superstition's dreadful gate
Hath open upon the courts of truth at last;
Nor all the fears of an imagined fate,
Nor all the goblin crew of error vast
Can shut the mind from learning's fair estate.

Howard Spencer Fiske

(on our Cobb Gate, that guards the entrance to the Quads, within which each generation of graduating seniors is framed, momentarily, on its passage toward Convocation and adulthood.)

* * *

you know,

in difficult times you really see the extraordinary generosity of humanity - and its flipside, the extraordinary cruelty and meaness of spirit. but i'd like to -- just quietly salute those who worked long and hard in their academic institutions to make sure that students in the affected colleges will continue with their education in other institutions all around the country, so that the city's -the state's- next generation can gain the skills and knowledge they will need to return home to rebuild.

bagels!

2005-09-03T00:57:00.000+08:00

my bagel craving has been satisfied. :) earlier this week, all i really wanted was a warm, toasty bagel with garlic cream cheese, and nothing really satisfies that sort of craving except the thing itself. the problem, however, the real crunch, was the fact that well - i don't know where to get fresh bagels in Singapore. shum says there are frozen ones at the supermarket, but for someone accustomed to popping into the local supermarket for a batch of fresh bagels from the bakery to slather with cream cheese, frozen ones just don't cut it. so there was nothing for it - today i trekked across to Alex's place, and baked a batch of bagels under the supervision of his mother. :)

i picked a rather unfortunate day for baking - it's been raining and humid all day, so the dough was pretty unmanageable even though we used inordinate amounts of flour. but after twiddling with the recipe to make it less wet, and letting it rise and punching it down and letting it rise again (mutant, insane, crazy-growing yeasties!), we had a dough that worked reasonably well on a well-floured work surface. that's when the fun began: adding things to the dough to make a bunch of differently flavoured bagels (this was for your sake, janice - i would have made 21 garlic bagels! -grin-), then shaping them into little rounds, and sticking a finger through them to make the hole in the middle! needless to say that was fairly hard for me, and my bagels came out sort of more oval than round, but they got made...

then into the pot of boiling salted water with them, followed by egg wash and a short spell in a 400 degree oven. mmmm, the smell of baking bread! i couldn't wait to eat them. the first batch turned out sort of underdone (nothing a few minutes in a toasted prior to consumption won't fix) but the second batch -the batch with my garlic bagels- ohhhh, my bagel craving has been (partially) satisfied. slathered with soft onion-and-chive cream cheese, with some fresh garlic mixed in (there ain't no such thing as Too Much Garlic, and no self-respecting vampire would come within twenty feet of me and my bagel), warm from the oven, that bagel really hit the spot.

i didn't bring my camera, or i would have taken a bunch of photos of the process -didn't even think of it, which just goes to show how fixated i was on my bagel-craving- perhaps tomorrow i'll go downstairs and take a picture of the end product, because i consume yet another one for breakfast. yummy!

the Peanut lives!

2005-08-31T19:34:00.000+08:00

reading OGIC's post in About Last Night, with its reference to Bean Central Time brought on a little pang of homesickness - because i never got to see the Bean/Peanut unveiled in its glory before i left, but can imagine the glorious vision of the Chicago skyline and the lakeshore and the peculiarly intense blue of the summer sky reflected in its oddly shaped surface, and it is gorgeous. (the Peanut was still having its seams polished away when i left, in June.)

summer has come and passed
the innocent can never last
wake me up when september ends

as my memory rests
but never forgets what i lost
wake me up when september ends

Wake Me Up When September Ends, Greenday, American Idiot

reading about Katrina's effect on the Gulf Coast of the US rouses quite a different set of emotions - i feel more and more these days like some sort of honourary American (disloyal, i know, but there you have it - and yes, you can stop laughing now, you know who you are -- -wink-), and hearing about the death and destruction this Cat 3 storm (Cat 4, when she hit louisiana) has left in her wake is quite horrifying. add to that the fact that i've been to new orleans and like the city very much, and it makes me extremely sad (and angry, but what is the point of being mad at a natutal disaster?) that this has befallen them.

from the Times:

Peter Teahen, the national spokesman for the American Red Cross, said: "We are looking now at a disaster above any magnitude that we've seen in the United States. We've been saying that the response is going to be the largest Red Cross response in the history of the organization."

gainful employment

2005-08-26T18:07:00.000+08:00

hello darlings,

it's official, i have a job. in fact, i have The Job. those of you who've been listening to me whine on and off for the last few months can heave a sigh of relief; i certainly did. after hanging up the phone and doing a victory hop. Mindef does indeed want me, so that's where i'll be headed. soon. i don't know when. whenever we find our middle ground between "ASAP" and "i want to start in mid-september". no doubt i will hear from the HR dept soon enough.

MFA also called to schedule an interview, despite PSC supposedly informing them that i'm no longer available for employment. it's gratifying to know that i did get nibbles from all the major players i was interested in. gives me hope for the future. -grin-

and now on to the newly important issue of -- how am i going to get to work? (i am still carless; and we are in the middle of a what-car-to-get knock-down-drag-out fight - i think i shd have veto power, since i'll be driving it and my brother hasn't got a licence yet!)

a mixed bag

2005-08-23T19:27:00.000+08:00

the Economist's City Briefing on Singapore plonked in my (e)mailbox this afternoon, and there are some absolute gems you should all read (possibly sans snarky commentary from one J., but as eun pointed out a week or so ago, i've gotten snarkier with age. so the odds are low that post will be snark-free.). before that, however, i must tell everyone about my spectacular morning.

(by the way, i'm listening to Corrinne May's album, Fly Away, which my dear alex bought for me. she's not bad, not bad at all. lyrics perhaps could do with some work. but the voice -- not bad at all. :) and an RGS girl to boot! do we all sound like Kit Chan, do you think? -plaintive sigh-)

so i had an interview with PSD this morning at 11, at the Treasury. we leave my place a little early to avoid the impending rain (i had the last minute sense to stick an umbrella in the bag) and get to city hall mrt to find that (a) i'm half an hour early and (b) it's freaking POURING with rain out. so what else could we do but wander along to Ya Kun and have breakfast, right? only when the time comes for me to leave for the Treasury, it's still pouring out. monsoon-rain-type pouring. now those of you who don't live in the tropics, and more importantly, in Singapore, are sitting there wondering what the big deal is -it's just some rain over a walk approximately five minutes in duration. well - within the first thirty seconds -ie the time it took me to walk from the door of the shopping mall to the first pedestrian crossing- my snazzy pants were soaked to the knee, and water was rapidly dripping down the back of my jacket. -grin- forget the shoes.

i was late, of course. but once they saw my chicken-caught-out-in-the-rain look -very chic, i know- all the HR people very kindly fussed and insisted i go dry myself off and catch my breath -they packed the panellists off on a break while i did all i could to make myself presentable again. however, after all this big fuss and hoohah, my interview was seriously ten minutes long, possibly less. -sigh- then it was back out into the cold rainy world, having gotten into my snazzy togs less than two hours before.

hitting the road again, i knew something was wrong. but it wasn't until i had walked the same five minute walk back to the shopping mall and stopped inside after nearly killing myself falling several times that i realised i'd lost the sole of one of my (newly resoled) heels. (not the toe part, but the tiny little rubber part attached to the bottom of the narrow almost-stiletto heel...), and had been walking, essentially, on the point of a nail. how's that for fantastic balance?

so what could i do but throw up my hands and buy a new pair of sandals? (for seven bucks, so i don't feel so bad. i needed something heeled, for the pants would be too long for the three-dollar flipflops...)

ok. interview, so-so; morning, fraught with disaster. on to the Economist briefing:

No Contest

Singapore’s president, S.R. Nathan, said last month that he would welcome opponents in the election on August 27th, having been the sole candidate in 1999’s “race”. But though three men did apply to run for the presidency—a ceremonial but influential post—a government-appointed committee deemed each of them “ineligible” on August 13th. None met Singapore’s strict qualifications, which require a candidate to have been the chief executive of a large company or have held a senior government post.

Mr Nathan’s most serious opponent would have been Andrew Kuan, a former finance executive for a state-run industrial real-estate company. Mr Kuan had promised to make the presidency more transparent, claiming that his candidacy would test Singapore’s commitment to democratic principles. But the election committee quashed his bid after the state-linked media carried reports that were critical of his employment record. The committee’s rejection of all three contenders ensures that government-endorsed Mr Nathan, a former intelligence chief and diplomat, will serve a second six-year term.

how many times did the Economist manage to use the word 'government' in a two-paragraph long snippet? and how did i never notice before?

Troublesome Foursome

Singapore authorities like to keep a tight rein on public protests—unauthorised gatherings of more than four people have long been banned. But officials faced an unusual challenge on August 11th, when four protesters collected outside the offices of the Central Provident Fund (CPF), the state’s compulsory pension scheme. The quartet, which included the sister of Chee Soon Juan, a prominent opposition figure, bore T-shirts and a placard calling for greater transparency at the CPF and other state agencies. Mr Chee stood nearby but did not join the group, contenting himself with selling copies of his book.

The gathering in the heart of the business district soon attracted police, some of whom arrived in riot gear. They ordered the four to disperse or face arrest, saying they were causing a “public nuisance”. (The law forbidding such a “nuisance” is a wide-ranging statute to maintain public order.) The protesters complied, giving up their T-shirts and placard.

what the Economist failed to point out is that FORTY armed policemen arrived to disperse this little protest. that's ten policemen to each protester. -grin- i don't even have to try to be snarky! i'm sure you're ALL thinking what i would have said anyway --

podcasts and internet radio save my sanity

2005-08-22T09:45:00.000+08:00

have i mentioned how much i love internet radio? i REALLY love internet radio. i'm sitting here listening to a repeat broadcast of BBC Radio 1 while searching for the full text of last night's National Day Rally Speech (in my defence, i wanted to watch it, but had dinner at grandpa's and then had to send daddy to the airport -he's off to denmark and norway for a week- so i missed a huge chunk of it. and it wasn't three hours long this year!). Someone out there has got to have a transcript of it. (SPRINTER doesn't, because PM doesn't write out his speech in full before he gives it. he merely produces a list of talking points eerily reminiscent of my presentation notes over the years and extemporises based on those. smart man.) in the meantime, thanks to ST Online -how i hate saying that- i've downloaded the podcast of his speech, so theoretically i could listen to it over again. i do prefer reading though.

that said, if anyone could point me toward an online version of the full speech, and/or email it to me, that would be awesome. (if you don't have my email, leave a comment and i will send it along to you --)

Amended to add: the podcast quality is appalling. so i withdraw my thanks to ST Online in relief. -grin- the ends of sentences are cut off, sections are totally missing, etc etc. oh well. still need transcript...-sigh-

shoes?

2005-08-20T00:12:00.000+08:00

for those who want to know what my latest obsession in shoes is: roundtoed flats that are cutesy and weird:

and

aren't they adorable?

i am a geek, and proud of it --

2005-08-19T22:23:00.000+08:00

i want this shirt.

2005-08-18T23:09:00.000+08:00

for the people who are beginning to wonder:

I Aten't Dead. :)

and bonus points to those who spot the reference (come on, i KNOW you people know where it comes from.).

just been up to too much lately - was just realising that i haven't eaten at home for quite a few days now. what have you been up to, jeanette, i hear you ask. well -- driving refresher courses that resulted in my being able to park a car both in a parking space (in a multistory carpark to boot) and curbside (parallel parking, freshly learned today. with nary a scratch to said car, any other car, and without crashing into lampposts or anything. i did bump the curb once, but not hard at all.). i can also drive now, after a fashion, though rush hour traffic wigs me out, esp those dratted motorcycles. bleagh, i say.

and meeting old friends, and having tea/coffee/dinners with them, and generally catching up on lives. and meeting new friends, and building new friendships along the way.

and having interviews in between all of this socialising - hopefully interviews that went well - and hopefully i will be employed in the next month or two. (Old Man - it looks like i can sub for you if required. i doubt i will be employed before the first of oct, to be frank. unless wheels start turning inordinately quickly.) the interview up The Hill was fun, and meeting all the people i hope to be working with come the fall (not that we have seasons in Singapore) was also really cool. keeping my fingers crossed they will soon be my colleagues.

not much time to be homesick, these days. :) all to the good, i think.

far away

2005-08-12T15:44:00.000+08:00

I stepped into the cool of Bishan Park this morning, and suddenly the gravel beneath my feet transformed into -- the wide, tree-lined boulevard of Central Park, the walkways through the Boston Commons, the meandering paths of Chicago's lakeshore. The rush of traffic transmuted into limosines fighting buses along Park Avenue, into cars zooming down Lakeshore Drive doing the speed limit and nothing more. For a long, peaceful moment, I was far away - and then the stray call of an oriole sounded over the thunder of a C-130 lumbering overheard, and I was home again.

of show and tell

2005-08-11T01:16:00.000+08:00

am feeling rather drained by a longish day, but wanted to stick my head in and suggest people in Singapore head over to the Esplanade and catch a show of the Dim Sum Dollies if they can. i am given to understand the show has been extended for three more days next week, so go get tickets and go. thoroughly worth it, i think.

the quality of the production was very high, though perhaps the content was rather inconsistent. some of the sketches contained material that skated a very fine line between funny and offensive, or crass. some i felt fell rather flat, while others went on for too long - the Dollies stretching a moment for all they were worth, but some things are just funnier -unsaid or said quickly, in passing, like singing (in true Romantic Love Song fashion) that 'if i were to fall in love again/shoot me in the head'. it slips by and a moment later, your brain catches up to your ears and you realise what this skinny creature is singing, and it's impossible not to laugh until you cry.

my biggest complaint about the evening was the sound system in the theatre in the Esplanade where Dim Sum Dollies is playing is totally inadequate for a show that is as much singing and dancing as it is speaking. it just cannot handle more than one person singing at a time - everyone fades in and out in a most disconcerting manner, and you can't really hear the words - which is a pity, because when you CAN hear the words they are frequently hilarious. so booo for spending so much money and touting the acoustic wonder that are the Esplanade's performance spaces, only to disappoint me yet again. (at least the concert hall where the SSO plays has decent sound.)

in other news:

(a) rae and I had dinner with a whole tableful of former teachers this evening before the show - Mr R and Mr McConnell and Mrs Perry and Mr Purvis - and it was very strange listening to them be social and to be social with them - very strange indeed. but i always enjoy talking to mr R, so all in all it was fun; and

(b) Commission interview this afternoon was an unmitigated disaster; and

(c)) the other interview after went well. keep your fingers crossed for me that i'll do well next week at the return engagement?

coming home

2005-08-10T10:38:00.000+08:00

Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colours. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you were is not the same as never leaving.

-A Hat Full Of Sky, Terry Pratchett

but...but..but....

2005-08-06T23:27:00.000+08:00

i've finally finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (which i began yesterday, on the train to Gombak, sitting beside a man who clearly needed to reacquaint himself with soap, hot water, and a fresh towel). i am...gobsmacked, perhaps, is the word? as Bertie Wooster would say, gorblimey.

i await the next -and last- with (slightly) bated breath.

[oh, and -- if anyone should find themselves on the verge of swearing at a recorded menu when waiting for 'customer service' from their dearly beloved cell-providers -- pressing zero generally connects you immediately to a real human being who will be highly appreciative of all the new combinations of swear words and curses you can possibly come up with, i'm sure. i know, because i did just that earlier this evening. (well i refrained, womanfully, from cussing out the poor child who answered the phone, but am sure that i was far more brusque than necessary. however, i think they bloody well deserve it, their company colour being my favourite green nonewithstanding.)]

coming up for air

2005-08-05T22:57:00.000+08:00

ouf.

that's all i have left to say after a long week of open houses/ministry visits. i can't say it hasn't been an education week, all in all, so i have no complaints. (except about the amount of travelling i've been doing, but that can't be helped i suppose.) i've gotten a clearer picture of what life is like inside various places, and i've made up my mind what i would like to do. now if only my dream job would fall out of the sky -- but they haven't even called me yet! and they've already been on the phone with some of my peers. so who knows what the future holds forme.

still, by and large i've enjoyed the week. meeting up with old friends was a bonus amid all the crazy dialogue-session-presentations-eating-copious-amounts-of-food rounds to various function rooms and event halls - catching up with wee keong and sidney, for example, especially chatting this afternoon - that was tons of fun, and it was v cool to find out where people wanted to go and what they were looking for in their future jobs. (i hesitate to use the words 'job' and 'career' interchangably...)

however, as old hands at this scholarship round will know, what's next is Interview Season. it's beginning already. =) so this weekend is my chance to take a quick breather and recharge my enthusiasm and energy for the next couple of weeks, and i'm looking forward to making the most of it! (read: finish reading my library books, and Harry Potter -i started it on the train today -reading on the bus makes me carsick- i managed quite a few chapters on my half-hour-long train ride, but nowhere near finished yet-, and sleeping in? unlikely, since dad likes to get us up early for bfast on weekends, and church on sunday at 0800.) i suspect you won't hear much of me for a while -unless interviews and/or written assessments go badly, in which case there will be much moaning and gnashing of teeth.

a tale of three

2005-08-02T22:23:00.000+08:00

item the first: mommy cat and four little kittens living next door. mommy cat is a lovely silvery-white, with tabby markings on her legs and tail. three of the kits look like her; one -the largest of them all- presumably resembles dad, with a white body and grey patches all over. aggressive little bugger, climbing all over sibs to get to mommy. and making lots of noise in the process. the runt is a tiny little darling just precisely the same colour as her (?) lovely mommy, and she got stuck in the drain during the rain earlier (the drain is covered, and she couldn't find her way back to the entrance) necessitating a rescue mission from mother and a good talking-to afterward. i have pictures, but they are blur as a consequence of having been taken from my bedroom window. (i must've looked awfully suspicious leaning out and taking pictures of the neighbour's washing-machine, which is where the kits were hiding. under it, that is.)

item the second: i drove my mom's car today. for a very short distance -just home from the grandpere's home, about a ten minute walk and normally a three minute drive. however my terror of scratching the car made me drive at a pace more suited to an eighty-year-old half-blind lady. (my brother, in the backseat, safely buckled in: jie! you drive like a little old lady! no! even slower!!!! me: shut up! be glad you're not dead yet!) i even managed to get it into our driveway -after a fashion- dad had to adjust it afterward because there is no way mom could have gotten into the car the next day. i had to perform some fairly strenuous acrobatics to get out as it is, and i was wearing shorts and flipflops, not high heels and a suit. but the car is scratch-free and we are all still alive. hoorah.

item the third: today was the MFA open house for us scholars waiting to be deployed. (like missiles! and...erm...NSmen.) not a bad presentation at all. made me rethink my previous opinion on a foreign service job. (no. no no no.) however the same concerns exist -perhaps i'm not too worried about the location of overseas posting per se, but it is still an overseas posting. i'm not too sure i would like to be away from our merry little island for three years at a stretch, esp with that stint beginning in three or four years' time. otherwise it sounds like an awesome job. do you think they will take me in the protocol office? i LOVE protocol.

rain

2005-07-29T22:38:00.000+08:00

i am -as many of you know- optimistic about my current job prospects. despite the many cracks i make about how i'm afraid of the jobs i might wind up doing - there are bunch of openings i would be genuinely happy to start my civil service career in -chief among them being, of course, a defence policy job. this afternoon's chat with various people from various ministries -a nod to weineng for a much appreciated chat about his job and what life is like in the office, among other things- merely reinforced my optimism about said future prospects.

but an afternoon spent saying 'i did political science and economics at the university of chicago' and 'yes, i did take a class with steve levitt' as i brandished my freshly-reclaimed Freakonomics is apt to induce the odd flash of intense homesickness in someone who is just barely reconciled to the idea of not returning to college come the fall. it's not just the city i miss -not just having things to do and places to go and always ever the lake to see and marvell at- but also the academic life. the knowing that there is so much to learn from the Mearsheimers and the Levitts, and not being there to study at their feet. it's the Reg (i owe them tons of money, for some bizarre reason) -the Reg in the summer, when it is quiet, and filled with graduate students, and it is blessedly cool after the blazing heat that is a chicago hammer-and-anvil summer. it is the noise of moving in, and the crisp autumnal air, and the leaves falling to choke the drains and make the six block walk from apartment to campus a hop-skip-jump obstacle course, carrying eighteen books all vaguely to do with my BA thesis. it's waiting in the hallway yet again for duncan to show up -late- to another advisor meeting, gruffly apologetic and wanting to know what i'd been up to for spring break. (puerto rico, i told him, showing off my tan. four days in the sunshine and the pool and eating outrageous amounts in old san juan. very little rain, i said, and he murmured agreement that that made for a good spring break indeed.)

(here is that rain awaited by leaves with all
their trees and by forests with all their mountains)

now comes the good rain farmers pray for, e.e cummings

i never realised how much four years in chicago had changed me, until they were over, and i am here, and all that is left for me to do is look back longingly, and move forward.

I am a book of snow,
a spacious hand, an open meadow,
a circle that waits,
I belong to the earth and its winter.

Winter Garden, Pablo Neruda

aiyee! shoes!

2005-07-24T22:39:00.000+08:00

oh good heavens, i just got tagged by Tym with a shoe meme! of course, that means i had to go downstairs and count my shoes. -smirk- ok, before i begin, in my defence (take that however you choose) i have just moved back here from the states and had to do a great-shoe-spring-cleaning to get everything into the suitcases. it was heartwrenching, but necessary. so these numbers are...shall we say, artificially deflated?

Total Number of Shoes You Own:

erm. 46. which means, of course, 23 pairs. -wink- they include, among others, a couple of pairs of boots (one pair knee boots one pair comfy ankle boots); a bunch of strappy sandals and mules; a few pairs of comfy-yet-pointy-toed -not a oxymoron, i promise- close-toed real shoes; a pair of Teva sandals; and a bunch of flipflops/running shoes/street sneaker things.

Bonus details:

Number of empty shoe boxes cleared out while counting up the tally: One. only it's still sort of sitting there. erm. but i did clear out the closet on friday and throw out...four boxes and one box Still Including Shoes (they were worn out!).

Most Expensive Pair: white Ferragamos bought for a friend's wedding/wedding dinner and never worn again -i must go dig them out, they would look great with jeans;

Cheapest Pair: USD 10 flipflops from Old Navy, almost worn to shreds;

Brands Represented: Nine West, Teva, Diesel, Tang Studio, Ferragamo...errrrr...Charles and Keith, New Balance (running shoes!), errr...a bunch of American brands that i picked up at the Nordstrom Rack, otherwise known as Shoe-Shopping-Heaven. that's where i got my beautiful-but-painful shoes for graduation.

The Last Shoe You Bought: a pair of black strappy dressy Tang Studio sandals to match my dress for a formal dinner.

How many shoes have you under your work desk?: i don't have a work desk yet -grin- but i imagine a pair of rather disreputable flipflops will migrate there eventually. (it would be birkenstocks, if i had the disposable income to drop on a pair...)

Five People I'm Passing This Baton On To: oh man, Tym's taken Ondine! why is it my girly friends don't keep up their blogs?

1. SM -grin- when are we going out?;
2. Wandering Girl who lives in Boston, lucky thing;
3. keuq, because i'd like to see the contrast between her shoe wardrobe and mine;
4. miss chen; and
5. oh. never mind =) anyone who wants to take up the challenge. leave me a comment. -grin-

p/s AIYEE! lightning storm!

things to be cheery about

2005-07-24T22:18:00.000+08:00

trip to Ikea (spent battling the mobs of small children wandering about like a swarm of locusts) resulting in (a) a new bedframe arriving tuesday afternoon; (b) a new nightstand; and (c) a vase in which i have repotted a pretty little moneyplant, which is cheering up my desk as i speak. (any suggestions for a name?) as well as a whiteboard...

...which dad has installed on the wall so i have a place to organise my loose-leaf crap. (now all i need is a pack of whiteboard markers...not that there is a ledge to put them on...hmm.)

i played mahjong with the family sharks...i mean the Aunts this afternoon and managed to acquit myself fairly well, admittedly because my grandfather wasn't feeling too well and thus was rather handicapped in his playing ability. :p but still. we gotta take our small victories wherever they come from.

good dinner with the family at grandpa's post-mahjong session -i am positively STUFFED - they have outdone themselves spectacularly. and when jo gets back here from her gallivanting about the states, i imagine it can only get better...

my room is marginally cleaner than it was last week, thanks to extensive efforts to (a) throw crap out and (b) resort stuff into reasonable places. plus my brother has moved the desktop away, which frees up lots of space!

ahhh, the small things in life. :)

all i want for christmas

2005-07-23T10:27:00.000+08:00

if anyone is shopping early, all i want for christmas is

hugh laurie and a young stephen fry delivered to my doorstep, both of them clad in -what else- Jeeves-approved suits. or perhaps full evening wear, bowties and all.

barring that,

i'll take this.

food meme

2005-07-22T16:31:00.000+08:00

taken from Chocolate and Zucchini:

if you were a condiment, a kitchen gadget, a spice, a herb, a pantry staple, a food chemistry phenomenon, a dish, a cookie, what would you be?

take it in the spirit it was intended - if you could be all things kitchen, what would you be?

i'll think about it and update this post to let you know when i decide. a nice sharp knife? i know! a mandolin...

the (dis)United Nations

2005-07-22T11:02:00.000+08:00

reading over the papers today at breakfast - trying to get into the habit, since i do vaguely need to know what is going on in Singapore if not the world - i came across a review article on UN reforms written by the Ambassador of Poland to Singapore. Now he doesn't really say anything we didn't already know -that is to say: the UN requires reforms, but not just cosmetic reform, but there are some stumbling blocks- but it kicked me right back to those early days in my career as a historian/political scientist, and i remembered how little i knew then (and realised, quite possibly, how little i know now). and how things didn't make as much sense then as they do now -thank you, University of Chicago. but anyway: a brief return to my historian-roots as a History 7 student (History of the Modern World, if that makes any sense to you - basically a current affairs paper. i was a UN/USSR specialist.):

M'sieur Ambassador points out various principles the UN has to bear in mind when contemplating reform: the principle of state sovereignty and the related notion of the right of self-defence; the principle of democracy and its related notion of the right to self-determination; and the principle of non-intervention. Nothing unusual there - state sovereignty and non-interference are the founding principles of many inter-state institutions (not the least among them our own ASEAN, where these princples tend to outweigh all others), while the increasing number of democracies in the world (say what you like about democratic peace theory, you don't often see democracies headed in a rush for the exit marked 'tyranny and absolute dictatorship') suggests that this particular institution had better sit up and take notice of democratic interests (and notions of what constitutes acceptable behaviour both within the state and in interstate relations). But he claims that

"The basic problem of the UN stems from the lack of clarity and consensus on certain principles underlying collective action in the international environment. These principles have to be adequate to meet new threats, challenges and expectations."

this is where i disagree. i think the basic problem of the UN may be an insoluble one: it is the head-on clash between the need to preserve state sovereignty and related state rights including non-interference, and what has increasingly become the point of the UN exercise, which is intervention, humanitarian or otherwise. many will claim that the failure of the UN to become the world's policeman is caused by the lack of a UN army (blue helmets nonwithstanding) - 'i say!' they remark, 'look at America, she can intervene wherever she wants, because she puts half her troops on an aircraft carrier group and zooms around backing up her velvet glove with a bloody big iron fist!'. [it's easy for single states -relatively easy, in any case- to decide when and whether to intervene. and even the US has all sorts of domestic troubles whenever she decides to stick herself into business elsewhere. imagine the collective action problem within an institution comprising many many independent states! (not, you say, that most of them matter, seeing as they contribute little to the cause in any case. but their votes in the GA matter. and the votes of the few who sit on the UNSC matter.) but it's not the collective action problem that i'm thinking about. at least, not directly.] i think the real reason the UN isn't the world's policeman is -well, the world doesn't WANT it to be one. independent states are unwilling to give up their (god-given) rights to self-whatevers in order that sometime in the misty future, when trouble might arise in their backyards, they can call on a supranational government for help. (heaven only knows it's bad enough having to call on your own government.) the profit/loss ratio doesn't balance in anyone's favour, except the people who are in trouble now -and even then you see a general reluctance to call in help from outside. states would often rather go it alone - reliance on an outside institution is perhaps seen as a sign of weakness and failure at self-government, and merely invites future trouble.

i don't know that there is a good way to resolve the conflict between these competing principles of governance. the modern solution has tended to lean toward an agreement that 'something must be done' in situations requiring humanitarian intervention, followed by a general consensus on looking the other way when the time comes to step up to the plate and insert your own troops and resources into the picture. after all, if you cannot even justify the loss of your troops to what is ostensibly a defence of the homeland (coughcoughiraqcough) then how can you tell mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers that you've sent sons and daughters to die for a people they've never met, never even heard about until they started being slaughtered in large numbers somewhere very far away?

i used to be fairly optimistic about the future of the UN (-amused- how silly the examiners must have thought me, grading those essays i wrote back when i was eighteen and still sort-of-vaguely idealistic and believer-in-the-goodness-of-the-world). but now, after learning all about game theory and the principles of international relations and collective action problems and so forth, it's hard to see a clear path for an international institution such as the UN, with so many competing interests and internal differences between member states. i mean, if an institution like the European Union finds it hard to get off the ground, comprising as it does states that are geographically close to each other, with plenty of shared economic interests, and similar political systems, as well as social and cultural conditions, then how can we expect anything of a vastly larger institution without any of those things? perhaps there is such a thing as aiming too high.

and now i must go and make a start on packing my room. the new mattress is coming, but right now there is nowhere to put it!

silence is golden and all that

2005-07-20T17:43:00.000+08:00

was back at the old Alma Mater this morning - though 'back' is not necessarily the best word, considering the Alma Mater has moved from Ghim Moh to Bishan (and i no longer have a direct bus, funny as that sounds - i took a cab to bishan, for crying out loud!) - to have tea with mr R and have a look around the new grounds. i have to say this: the new campus is freaking GINORMOUS. it is HUGE. it's bigger than i could possibly imagine. the kids look tiny and lost in it, unlike our campus, where the somewhat-less-than-the-full-complement of 1800 kids wandering around made the grounds look filled to overflowing. and mr R was pointing how much of his life is spent walking to and from class, waiting for lifts, etc etc. mindboggling. (lifts!?!)

the new campus is also fairly ill-designed for tropical weather - every time it rains everyone settles in for a good dampening. the hallways -corridors- are all open (this is not to say they don't have roofs, just no walls), and whenever the wind blows the rain winds up dancing all over the nice slippery concrete floors. not to mention the fact that it is never a good idea to let girls in thin white shirts and boys in thin white pants to get wet every time it decides to thunderstorm in Singapore, which is to say approximately twice a week.

on the other hand, it's a gorgeous set up. it's big, and it's airy, and it's spacious. you walk around and feel like you can breathe. (a big deal, seeing as i am feeling extremely claustrophobic at the moment.) everything is white, and green, and there's airconditioning in the classrooms, and the lecture theatres are huge and bright and clean, and there are lifts -- it's like being in one of the new ITEs, or a highly improved, much expanded RGS. they have a new indoor gym, and a new multipurpose hall, and the gym kids have their own facilities for the first time, i think. and a new track, and accompanying field. and i assume we have access to the RI swimming pool - i imagine it makes no sense for the schools to have TWO pools between them. there's a performing arts centre, which is by no means perfect, but in comparison with LT1 in the Ghim Moh campus, it is a paragon of its kind.

i guess, in the end, it all comes down to nostalgia and sentimentality -- this campus, no matter how big and comfy and filled-to-the-brim with wonderful things, is not the campus where i spent most of my 17th and 18th year playing carrom, doing math tutorials, running on a really hot track, or drinking copious amounts of ice-lemon-tea. it's not the place where we shoved a bunch of benches together to study for the A levels, or took naps, or watched the world -and crushes- go by in the late afternoon sunlight. it's not the place we escaped from to have Johnson Duck Rice or ice kachang in Ghim Moh market. however, the kids who go there now -i feel entirely entitled to call them kids, as i have had it pointed out to me that now i am a J7!- will never have known that RJC. their memories of JC will be built entirely around this new place - and they really do have a blank slate to write their memories on. in a little while, the college will have settled into its new grounds, and new-old traditions will spring up, and it will be as if we had never been elsewhere.

2005-07-14T19:45:00.000+08:00

oh, how i miss my apartment and my kitchen, and my city with its supermarkets and its farmer's markets and its fresh windy straight streets and the crash of the lake against the point and the weight of summer pounding the top of my head between 55th Street and the entrance to the blessedly cool Reg.

Lament

Everything is far
and long gone by.
I think that the star
glittering above me
has been dead for a million years.
I think there were tears
in the car I heard pass
and something terrible was said.
A clock has stopped striking in the house
across the road . . .
When did it start? . . .
I would like to step out of my heart
and go walking beneath the enormous sky.
I would like to pray.
And surely of all the stars that perished
long ago,
one still exists.
I think that I know
which one it is—
which one, at the end of its beam in the sky,
stands like a white city . . .

Ranier Maria Rilke
trans. by Stephen Mitchell

i already miss winter, and the sharp scent of fall, and the sneaking approach of spring. to have traded all of that -the bursting of trees into bloom, and the spread of daffodils and tulips, and the starkness of the trees against a leaden sky, and the incredible bitter cold of a blue-sky winter morning- for the unchanging sun-rain-sun of here --

amazon.com

2005-07-12T09:20:00.000+08:00

ai! Amazon.com turns ten on sunday (July 16th). they're a decade old this weekend!

it makes me feel old. -amused-

congratulations to my favourite online bookstore (not, as you may have noticed, my favourite bookstore ever: that distinction belongs to the Seminary Co-op/57th Street Books combination.) and be sure to catch what looks like a rather fabulous concert streamed live on amazon.com this saturday, 5pm Pacific time. (i fancy that means over here in Singapore i get to miss it, as i will be in church like a good little girl. anyone got any way to record streaming video?)

who's next?

2005-07-08T18:02:00.000+08:00

Robin Cook, in today's Guardian, has this to say in response to yesterday:

...The danger now is that the west's current response to the terrorist threat compounds that original error (by which he means the mistake of arming bin Laden for the war in Afghanistan against Russia, and not seeing the long term effects -blowback, indeed). So long as the struggle against terrorism is conceived as a war that can be won by military means, it is doomed to fail. The more the west emphasises confrontation, the more it silences moderate voices in the Muslim world who want to speak up for cooperation. Success will only come from isolating the terrorists and denying them support, funds and recruits, which means focusing more on our common ground with the Muslim world than on what divides us....

the death toll continues to rise, and the horrific pictures of the injured, the dead, and the mangled remains of Tube trains continue to pile up on newspaper front pages and websites all over the world. even my beloved Pete and Geoff Breakfast Show on Virgin Radio is subdued this morning, trying their best to provide information and help people get on with their lives instead of their usual irreverent taking-the-piss morning radio.

i find it more and more impossible to get into the heads of people who believe that terrorism will accomplish their ends. who believe it is possible to frighten people -whole societies of people- into doing what they want with random acts of violence. who believe that killing people is not only permissible but desirable -for why else would the bombs go off in the tunnel, at rush hour, in a city as densely packed as london?- as a means to an end.

i don't know what to say, so i'll let Ian McEwan speak for me, also in today's Guardian:

In Auden's famous poem, Musee des Beaux Arts, the tragedy of Icarus falling from the sky is accompanied by life simply refusing to be disrupted. A ploughman goes about his work, a ship "sailed calmly on", dogs keep on with "their doggy business". In London yesterday, where crowds fumbling with mobile phones tried to find unimpeded ways across the city, there was much evidence of the truth of Auden's insight. While rescue workers searched for survivors and the dead in the smoke-filled blackness below, at pavement level men were loading lorries, a woman sold umbrellas in her usual patch, the lunchtime sandwich makers were hard at work.

It is unlikely that London will claim to have been transformed in an instant, to have lost its innocence in the course of a morning. It is hard to knock a huge city like this off its course. It has survived many attacks in the past. But once we have counted up our dead, and the numbness turns to anger and grief, we will see that our lives here will be difficult. We have been savagely woken from a pleasant dream. The city will not recover Wednesday's confidence and joy in a very long time. Who will want to travel on the tube, once it has been cleared? How will we sit at our ease in a restaurant, cinema or theatre? And we will face again that deal we must constantly make and remake with the state - how much power must we grant Leviathan, how much freedom will we be asked to trade for our security?

Just for A01A

2005-07-08T10:12:00.000+08:00

my darlings -

cheryl is in town for just another week, so we would like to arrange a dinner to meet up, hang out, catch up before she takes off to go back to her high-flying life in boston. (lucky child.) so - msg me at the same number as last time (leave a comment if you don't have it) and let me know what works for you between monday and friday next week (11th through 15th July) and we'll set something up, ok? so far it's me and gail and cheryl - i know there are more of us out there hiding in the woodwork.

i'll return us to regularly scheduled (that is, not at all scheduled) programming now. =)

walking is good for my health? how?

2005-07-07T22:02:00.002+08:00

i am:

1. the latest inductee, it seems, into the Singapore Ice Kachang Club. we walked fifteen or sixteen kilometres today (sixteen would have been what, ten miles?) through jungle and on road and stairs and whatnot. there was a break at the halfway point where we ate ice kachang (for non-Singaporeans: a local dessert comprising shaved ice flavoured with various syrups and sweetened milk, piled over a bowl of assorted bits like beans, corn, and jello cubes. sort of like a sno-cone on steroids.), and i became the fifth member of the SIKC (misspell that, and you get SICK, which is what i feel after the amt of sun i got today). i've also experienced the treetop walk -a suspension bridge at treetop height through the jungle. sort of scary - suspension bridges wig me out.

2. exhausted. i bid thee goodnight -- tomorrow is another day. Changi Naval Base!

neil!

2005-07-06T23:42:00.000+08:00

another productive day:

met Cheryl for a late lunch at coffee club in wisma, where we sat and ate, and chatted about buying chef's knives, and work clothes, and all kinds of other things...before we wandered off to borders, stopping intermittently to shop, and stood in line for THREE HOURS to get neil gaiman's signature on a bunch of books. gail joined us, and it was a good catching up time before cheryl takes off for boston once again. plus we got neil's autographs, and he personalised -finally!- my Dream Country, almost my favourite sandman of all time, and certainly the one containing my favourite line re: getting a thousand cats to do something at the same time. and i have a picture! of neil signing things, and a blurry shot of me standing next to neil while he personalises my book. (i told gail not to use the flash, because i figure he's gonna get about a bazillion flashes in his eyes before he gets back to the hotel tonight, and i didn't want to make it a bazillion and one.) yay! =)

then gail and i went to eat la mian xiao long bao at crystal jade in scotts (it occurs to me that that sentence will make no sense whatsoever to my non-Singaporean readers. translation: we had noodles and steamed dumplings at a chinese restaurant in a shopping mall called Scotts.) and it was yummy. i haven't had la mian or xiao long bao for a while, so this was a wonderful meal. and we rounded up the day with some wandering and some rather fruitful shopping. (though i still need to get a pair of driving mocs that won't cost the earth. where oh where can i find them?)

and i met an old friend on the train on the way home. it was v cool. i hadn't talked to him in years, and there he was, getting on the same train as i was (and we get off the train at the same stop, too!), so we had a nice chat on the way back.

tomorrow, i am going Walking with dad and his friends. hopefully i will not die of (a) dehydration, (b) heatstroke, or (c) exhaustion before the afternoon is out. will be fuelled by Toa Payoh chicken rice, and the promise of ice kachang at the end of the trek!

passed! what a relief

2005-07-06T10:23:00.000+08:00

add to the list of adminstrative dominos --

passed the Basic Theory Test yesterday! and converted my licence. now i am the proud owner of a temporary licence that comprises two pieces of paper -one white, one blue- stapled together, with the words 'You may drive while waiting for your photocard licence' printed on the white one, along with my address. (i'm not sure my name is on either of them, come to think of it.) the actual photocard licence is supposed to arrive in the mail within two weeks. keep your fingers crossed, everyone.

the Basic Theory Test sure is different these days from when i took it back in 2001 (and failed, i might add, the first time). it's done on touchscreen computers now. no more pencil and those ridiculous OAS where you have to colour bubbles for not only your answer but your name as well. of course, because it's all computerised, you no longer have to wait an entire month to get your results in the snail mail. it's instant gratification (or doom as the case may be). you finish the fifty MCQ test, and then click -press- the End Test button at the bottom. the system goes, horrified that you have finished in less than an hour, 'Are You Sure you want to End Test?' (leave aside remarks abt grammar etc please), and if you answer 'YES (dammit, i was done ten minutes ago but was too nervous to actually end the test and see how i fared)', the screen immediately flashes 'PASSED' or 'FAILED' (i presume) and you know. so efficient, right? =)

so now i have to go sign myself up for a refresher course in driving, since i need to learn how to drive on THIS side of the road! -grin- i still look the wrong way first when crossing the road. one of these days, i'm gonna get run over by a lorry. (that's a small truck to you non-singaporeans...)

Graduation Day

2005-07-04T13:12:00.000+08:00

as promised to various peeps, graduation photos have been uploaded to Flickr. =) my dad handed me this cd this morning with my photos burned on it, and a cool picture of Rockefeller burned on the cd label! very cool. (i know, i am a geek, but cd-label-burning is very very cool...)

anyways. let's begin with me and the parentals:

alex, his brother amos, cece and i:

Mari, Brian and I - i missed the official Mathews House phototaking!:

Alex and I - why do you always stand with your arms crossed? :p

and finally My Diploma -huge sigh of relief-:

applause, please.

2005-07-01T16:37:00.000+08:00

-takes a deep breath-

things i have accomplished in the last eight hours:

(1) finally put the rest of the clothes in my suitcase on hangers and stuck them in my closet. (this does not include the ones lying on the floor in my maid's room waiting to be ironed. only the no-ironing-required ones. ie the minority, but still.)

(2) registered myself for the Basic Theory Test next Tuesday in the AM. however, that short sentence does not begin to capture the trials and tribulations the process encompassed. first, i was misled by the website into going to the Traffic Police Headquarters on Ubi Ave 3, which is (a) not the right place at all and (b) abt fifteen fucking miles from where the right place -at the driving centre- was. ok so i'm exaggerating. but i still had to walk a good half hour in the baking afternoon tropical sunshine and stickiness to find the driving centre. and had to ask the nice policeman at the Traffic Police HQ and then some random stranger who was racing a remote-controlled car in the parking lot of the Audi service centre how to get there. then i had a nice long half hour wait in the airconditioning to register myself for the test.

the lady who registered me was v nice. when she realised an opening had popped up for next week she quickly said 'you want to do it sooner? next week can? very fast. next slot is in august.' needless to say we made conspitorial faces at each other and took the slot. so now i am registered to take the test next week. pray i don't fail. make sure i study this time, yah?

(3) registered myself for my gym package - i have unlimited access for the next three months. whoopee. pilates and lifting, here i come. (and cardio, i imagine, as well.) need to get some of this chicago-induced weight gain off, and improve my cardiovascular fitness, which is currently really crappy.

so now i am poorer and dirtier and tireder, but slowly and surely the adminstrative dominos are beginning to fall...

now to deal with the new mattress - and remodelling my room. -smirk-

yet another placeholder post

2005-06-29T01:12:00.000+08:00

well, my darlings, i am safely home and all in one piece, too! despite having schlepped an extremely heavy, filled-to-the-brim duffle bag and a stuffed laptop bag all over God's Green Earth (read: onto a plane in chicago, off a plane in tokyo, and then back on another plane in tokyo, and off again in singapore), and -i am proud proud proud of this- lifting my 68 lb big black samonite off the baggage carousel in Singapore and onto a luggage cart, unassisted. (shame on you, lazy singaporean men who stood ard and watched me struggle! but i put some muscle into it, and got it accomplished in the end.) the flight was long and miserable - i think i was allergic to the plane!- but on the tokyo-singapore leg i was seated next to a lady who went to grad sch at the U of C, and we immediately became absorbed in a conversation about hyde park and the good ol' days. she was on a fulbright-funded trip to Southeast Asia to study comparative religions, so we also got into a big discussion about religion and politics and all the sorts of things you're not supposed to discuss at polite dinner-table conversations. ah, the U of C, and its alums, she sighs.

am jetlagged out of my mind, which is my excuse for missing Ying's party this evening- my heartfelt apologies to those i shall not see for another month because of my missing it - you know who you are- and also my reason for being awake at one am yet again, despite having been totally unable to keep my eyes open three hours ago. bah, i say. plus my tummy thinks i have deprived it of lunch -i was not hungry at dinnertime- and now sits complaining as i type. am still feeling ambivalent about being back. (my room is too small for all my stuff! and there is not enough storage space, or bookshelves, or mirrors -yes i am vain- and i can't for the life of me see how i can arrange it so that there will be enough. perhaps when my brain is less fogged up.) unpacking is proceeding at a snail's pace - the duffle and the backpack have had their contents removed and redistributed but not necessarily put away- it's just too hard to find them their proper places when i am so out of it. unpacking is harder than unpacking- the disorder in my room grows by the minute.

perhaps i would never have been ready to leave, though. as i told amanda this morning - perhaps we are never ready to leave. it just has to be done and done fast, without thinking about it - like pulling off a bandaid and hoping it doesn't hurt too much, that you aren't reopening a wound, yanking off a scab. and when the pain and flurry subsides, the deed is done, and cannot be undone.

(actually, the real reason i am still up and bustling abt at this ungodly hour is not that i am jetlagged -i can be jetlagged in bed under the covers rather than at my desk- but rather i am working on putting my music on a new iPod -from mommy- which entailed somehow getting the music off the old one -which my brother has inheirited, he having killed his being caught in the rain- and loading it onto the pBook, which it is doing very slowly now. ahhh Appletalk, what would we do without you. but in any case, once that is done i shall seek my bed.)

back in civilisation at last!

2005-06-25T13:33:00.000+08:00

rolled into chicago this afternoon after alex battled city traffic for the first time in almost two weeks. tired now - spent the day running ard helping shum and amanda move things, and moving my stuff into the hotel (my parents and i are in a suite! i have my own bathroom!), and then going out to dinner at Fogo de Chao. and i just spent like an hour packing my crap and repacking it. fingers crossed that everything will eventually fit into bagspace that is currently available. -groan- i have so much STUFF.

more updates re: the Yellowstone adventure when i get back to Singapore and look at the bazillion pictures dad took -there are bound to be some halfway decent ones of me and my parents and alex and amos there. right? but for now --

tomorrow is my last day in chicago.

i think i'm going to spend it like my favourite days in chicago are spent -- shopping, walking up and down the MagMile, ducking into starbucks for an iced coffee on a summer day where temperatures inch toward 100F. people-watching, and carrying shopping bags, and talking to strangers and their dogs, and wondering where they come from and where they are going. seeing the chicago skyline against an impossibly blue summer sky. watching the sailboats out on Lake Michigan, their tiny white sails against a lake whose colour is never the same two days in a row. complaining about the heat, and loving every minute of it. it seems a fitting way to say goodbye -or at least, 'til we meet again'- to this wonderful city that has become my second home.

happy father's day

2005-06-20T07:08:00.000+08:00

hello boys and girls:

coming up again to say

Happy Father's Day

to my dad. who -i'm ashamed to admit- had to remind me of this fact this morning. however, considering that for the last two weeks i haven't really known what day it was or what time, it's not surprising i failed to recall it was sunday. (in my defence, i knew sunday was father's day.)

back to internet-silence, for a while more. check out the LJ for important public service announcement, singers.

later, 'gators -

J.

yellowstone update

2005-06-17T12:01:00.000+08:00

ok, so i was mistaken -- i have just enough time to post a filler post to let people know where i am and what i'm doing, etc etc. am in west yellowstone, MT, in a motel two blocks away from the west entrance to the Yellowstone National Park. we drove here -road trip!- we being my parents, alex, his brother amos, and i, all piled into a Ford Expedition ( we started out in a Nissan Armada, but it had brake issues - NOT GOOD.) driving the 1600 miles from chicago to here. got here two days ago. no cellphone reception, no email (we are in a bar checking email believe it or not). therefore much silence.

the yellowstone experience has been good thus far - bison, elk, babies of all kinds, osprey, bald eagles. photos will be forthcoming, along with more description. gotta go now, but i figured if i didn't update soon i would get testy emails of complaint (you know who you are...).

later, 'gators -

love,
J.

convocation

2005-06-12T21:19:00.000+08:00

Convocation is over and i have safely graduated from the U of C. it was a beautiful, sunny, incredibly hot day in Hyde Park, and walking from Ratner (where the Class of 2005 had assembled for the last time as a class) to Harper Quad for the ceremony, i just -stared at the buildings, drinking in the sights and sounds and smells of campus one more -one last- time, before i leave. the way the sun warms the stone of the buildings, in the summer; the way the air hangs thick and heavy, like home, and is filled with cottonwood and the scent of flowers and of heat. one last time walking through Hull Gate like we own the place, straight through the middle of the quads into Harper Quad, two by two, down a narrow aisle pressed on either side by friends and family, following the sound of bagpipes and the sight of our class banner and the school crest floating ahead of us, just like the first day when we moved in. all i could think was -this is it. one last time. i'm all done here. all done.

the ceremony went well -- i wound up sitting with someone i knew, thankfully, and we snarked our way through the three hour ceremony, it was good fun -- i didn't trip and fall, or lose a shoe, despite their being incredibly painful (why'd i wear them, you ask? they're pretty, doh.). i got the right diploma. it didn't rain. one of the student speakers was "That Guy" from hum class or soc class - you know That Guy, the one who always has something to say, who's done the EXTRA reading, or hasn't done ANY reading and is bullshitting his way through. That Guy.

and afterward, i couldn't find anyone in the crush. so -- i apologise to those of you i didn't get to see, or hug, or take a picture with, or say a proper goodbye to. it's been a pleasure and a privilege to have met you, and spent time with you, and shared four years of this incredibly insane ride with you. being here at the U of C has changed me -in profound ways- and a lot of that is because of you - how you've taken me into your lives, and made me your friend. i know that in all likelihood i shan't see most of you again -the world is small, but it's not THAT small, and i live on the other side of it- so i'd just like to say thanks. and cheers, to the good times. good luck and godspeed. =)

to those who are at home - i'll be back soon. photos forthcoming, and all that. packing proceeds apace -tonight is the last night in my apartment here on 55th Street. then it's off to Yellowstone, and then it's off to home, four years of my life packed into two suitcases, and a lifetime of memories crammed inside my head. i have no doubt that this time, as the plane leaves the tarmac at o'hare, my eyes will be filled once more with tears.

2005-06-10T11:00:00.000+08:00

spent this morning thoroughly annoying people by mailing 130 pounds of books home to Singapore. manhandling the boxes of books down to the car, then from the car to the post office, then the whole process of writing out customs labels, weighing out the packages, then muscling them into the bins...was really painful and frustrating. not to mention it turned out my box of winter clothes was too large, and i had to buy two littler boxes and break it down right there and then in the post office. gah.

the parentals are here - got in this morning - gonna spend tomorrow downtown shopping, if my body holds up - tired already! and graduation isn't even here yet, and i'm not done packing --

moving is a pain

2005-06-08T21:27:00.000+08:00

who knew i had so much CRAP?

-moan-

back to packing -- will come up for air after graduation --

done.

2005-06-03T06:10:00.000+08:00

i'm all done.

took my last final -the words running through my head over and over, in counterpoint to frantic attempts by scurrying braincells to retrieve information about Rawski's book (safely ensconced in my bag!) and the Taiping Rebellion, 'last final last final last final'- and turned in my last paper. and so i'm all done.

all that's left is to wrap up my four years here at Convocation in a week. and of course pack up my apartment and send my things home, and prepare to leave -without looking back- no more escape route, no more bolt hole. it will be strange to not be returning in the fall; to not have a set of keys to the apartment on my keychain; to not have another chicago spring where it sprints from sunshine and eighty degrees to rain in the time it takes a final final.

but for now, i'm looking forward to cece getting here tomorrow, and my parents and amos next week. and just spending a week with no demands on my time in the city i've adopted as home.

cooking gumbo

2005-06-02T12:48:00.000+08:00

i came up for air earlier this evening -- it should have been a relatively unstressful senior finals week for me, seeing as i have but two finals and two final papers to write (both of which i've had all quarter to do) but as you know, i am ridiculously bad at doing things without a deadline to add time pressure. which resulted in my having to write two ten page papers (having done some research for the one, and almost none for the other) between the friday of ninth week and the thursday of tenth (senior finals week). my finals schedule wound up being one final with accompanying paper on tuesday, and the other on thursday -tomorrow, at one pm.

the first final and paper have been safely completed and turned in, and the second paper has been written -squeezing blood out of a stone!- as of last night. so today was spent pretty much entirely on avoiding studying for this final final. hanging out at shum's, i decided i would make gumbo for dinner. now i'm sure everyone who's been over to my apartment knows -- i cook as work-avoidance. hence, the more work i have to do, the more elaborate and/or new the recipe i choose to cook for dinner. seeing as i'd never cooked gumbo before -despite the fact that i LOVE the dish- this would be an exciting challenge.

it turned out rather well, i think. onions and garlic and okra (ewww but integral to the dish) and celery, cooked in butter then simmered with smoked sausage and chunks of chicken pulled off a marvelous rotisserie chicken from the grocery store. everything spiced up with lovely sharp hot cayenne, and smokey-sweet paprika, and oregano-thyme-bay-leaf, salt and black pepper, and finally file powder, mixed in with ground cumin and corriander. it smelled divine while it was cooking -just adding the chopped up smoked sausage made my entire kitchen smell of gumbo. it makes me hungry just thinking about it. (you can guess what i'm gonna be eating for lunch -leftovers anyone?)

cooking soups and stews is my favourite kind of cooking, i think. it never ceases to amaze me how much fun i have chopping up stock veggies (onions, carrots, celery) and garlic and tossing them into a pot to cook; how everything simmers and the spices cook and blend and suddenly the entire kitchen -sometimes the entire apartment- fills with the warm, comforting smell of gently cooking food, promising a steamy delicious warm meal in just a little while. and it's a one-pot meal, and it doesn't take much brain power (especially when you fail to measure out spices, like i did - a splash here a splash there, taste and add more-) but occupies the hands with slicing and dicing and stirring. and not to mention having to taste multiple times along the way to make sure the flavours are balanced!

so now i'm hungry again. but it's midnight, and it's bedtime, and i have a final in just over twelve hours...

Memo: I'll Be Back

2005-05-27T07:28:00.000+08:00

mes amis:

it is official: i am booked on a one-way flight home for the 26th of June, on good ol' United. (fingers crossed.) was going to take the LAX-SIN non-stop on SIA, but alas, it was (a) really expensive and (b) booked solid. ahhh! business travellers. i hate them all. -grin-

but yes. so everyone who is home/will be home and whom i haven't seen in forever (you know who i am talking about -grin-), clear a space for me in your busy social calendars! (and help me get over being homesick for chicago that much sooner. odd, i know. but it'll happen.)

a short post, just to post the date of my return (in case i forget, you know, to tell someone). minding the water boiling in the kitchen now...

i am in love

2005-05-23T11:24:00.000+08:00

-dreamy sigh-

penance, or The Music Meme

2005-05-21T23:59:00.000+08:00

adrian, my friend, in penance for having not talked to you in weeks (i'm sorry!) and not staying up to date with what's up with you, i'm going to spend the next half an hour wrestling with these questions (they're harder than they look!). just for you. -grin-

Total volume of music files on my computer:
4.73 GB or 4.8 days or 350 songs on Portia's hard drive
8 GB or 1732 songs on the iPod (it strikes me i shd name it...)

The last CD I bought was:
Glassworks by Philip Glass

Song playing right now:
Fallen by Sarah McLachlan

Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me:

1. Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own from U2's How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb
2. Breathe (2 AM) by Anna Nalick, because i can't get it out of my mind after i've heard it
3. Disappear by Hoobastank
4. Sand In My Shoes by Dido
5. ?? (An Jing) by Jay Chou

Five people to whom I’m passing the baton:

Alex, because i can :p
S. the Languishing Cat, because i have no idea what's on her iPod!
SM!
Evan -whenever it is you get back home -grin-
Bob, because it's always fascinating to hear from bob. :p

in other news, i cut my hair yesterday for the first time since August. i think about five to six inches must have come off. it's now the shortest it's been in -years, i think. just brushing my collarbones, with plenty of flyaway layers and curly messiness. i like it. =)

i'm not sure if i love or hate Quentin Tarantino

2005-05-20T13:16:00.000+08:00

ROLL ON SEASON SIX!!!!

for those who haven't heard my incessant shrieking over the last week - tonight was the season finale for CSI Season 5, and it was directed by none other than Quentin Tarantino himself -a big CSI fan. (like me, only i am not as cool, nor do i make as much money.) it was a rocking good episode, made me very happy -because it made me very excited, and worried, and angry, and claustrophobic, and really really grabbed me and yanked me into a storyline and made me care about what happened next. (partly because it was NICKY and not some random person in danger.) i swear, if my hands had been ard QT's neck around 8.15 tonight i am not sure he would have survived my squeezing it really hard. and oh, the hint at the end - "I want my guys back" - we want you to get them back too, griss! no more shift split, pleaase, TPTB!

all i can say is -- do i REALLY have to wait til SEPTEMBER for the next season?!

the end of the saga

2005-05-19T16:31:00.000+08:00

have only just returned from Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. am exhausted, seeing as it is three thirty am - we went to the 12:01am screening at AMC River East, because we are crazy that way. (not, however, as crazy as the people who were lined up outside when we emerged - they were in line for the 3 am screening.)

the movie was not as bad as i expected, but not as good as it could be, unsurprisingly. plenty of cringe-worthy moments, particularly in the Anakin-Padme (Hayden-Natalie) interactions. but as always, R2D2 saved the day (we all know who the REAL hero of the entire series is, now don't we?) and there was plenty of yoda, enough to keep anyone happy.

and having seen the rest, really, i just had to see this one. it wouldn't be right otherwise.

but now i am off to seek my pillow, and not wake up in time for my thursday am class. ahhhh...

another bout of nostalgia

2005-05-18T23:19:00.000+08:00

was going to write last night, but -failed. emily and i went back to BJ for a Mathewsnik get-together hosted by our old RA, one Aaron Foss in his new RA-room in Dodd-Mead (yes. -wrinkles nose- never mind. he's still OUR ra.) and we invaded our old turf at Mathews (to round up the missing Andrew and Brian) and for a moment i remembered what it was like to run up and down the windy staircase -the rooms on the second-and-a-half floor- hanging off a stair rail and chatting with people and getting in the way of people bearing laundry- and the big fourth floor double where Bob now lives (he used to live in my old room!) -the odd, cold floor and the doors that slam shut in the stairwell. and i was reminded that (a) i don't spend nearly enough time with the mathewsniks from my year -Mariangela, Andrew, Brian, Joanna, Carolyn, Will, Liza, Sam and Lili, and of course -Aaaron- and (b) i am really really going to miss them when the quarter is done. i'm really glad i met them, first year; that we lived together for two years, running into one another on the stairs and in the laundry rooms and eating together in the dining hall (suffering the same bad food and bad coffee and eating tons of ice cream between us) and watching tv for hours sacked out on the crappy old lounge couches (which have since been replaced). and study breaks in aaron's room and in Paul and Kathy's apartment, and playing with Bix the Cat. there are a lot of good memories associated with those two years, and these people (and the ones who have already moved away), for which i am both thankful and saddened that there are to be so few new ones after this.

there is at least one more round of merry-making to look forward to, for which i am thankful. but i am reminded that there is also one more giant bundle of people and places to miss when i leave.

placeholder post

2005-05-16T13:35:00.000+08:00

i know -- i promised to update and then long silence. but i've been --not so much busy as avoiding real life for a bit as it sinks in more and more than graduation draws near and there is much left undone.

evan's visit was great fun - other than the awesome U2 concert we went to monday night, at which we shouted and sang along and pretty much went deaf, we went to a Cubs game, where the Cubs beat the Mets quite handily (they should pay us to come watch them; i've never seen the Cubs lose when i've been at the ballpark!) and i got a cap to pledge my allegiance to my baseball team (you can see said cap in my Flickr gallery, click to the right); and we also went to the Art Institute and Shedd Aquarium, my first visit in a long time. the Art Institute was, as always, wonderful -i got to stand (or sit, rather) and stare at my favourite piece in the whole museum - a very lovely Monet- and wander through the East Asian gallery, which is my second favourite part of the museum. also got to take some pictures of the very graceful Arabesque, and make fun of modern art with Evan. and the Shedd! Pacific white-sided dolphins, and beluga whales, not to mention the sweetest frogs i have ever seen. they are tiny -the length of the first knuckle on my thumb- and so clever at camoflauge i totally did not see them for the first three minutes of staring into their habitat. if one of them hadn't moved i would never have seen them. but it did move, and suddenly -- there were frogs EVERYWHERE. it was amazing. i went back to that habitat three times, just to watch them. if it weren't for Bono, the froggies would definitely be the highlight of the week.

but Bono there was. no pictures or recordings, my darlings, because (a) i abided by the rules printed on the tickets and (b) the purse i carried was too tiny to fit my monster digicam anyway. (i need to get me a little flat cool sony baby that fits in pockets, etc. or a camera phone, infinitely preferable though not with quite the same resolution.) but despite a rocky start -a frog in his throat, he said- the concert was a blast. lots of old favourites -Pride (In The Name Of Love), and Where The Streets Have No Name, for example, though no With Or Without You- interspersed with a generous leavening of songs from the latest album, like the lovely City Of Blinding Lights, and of course Vertigo, beautifully done. and Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own, one of my favourites from the album - and a gorgeous showcase of Bono's voice. i hadn't realised how much it's changed over time -but going back and listening to his older stuff, i have to say - that voice has only gotten better with age. and Miracle Drug -such a luminous entry, and oddly enough, i really like the lyrics. sure, there are concert gimmicks, and sometimes his politics and his social ideals kind of get in the way of the music -but i certainly don't object, if i means i can be in the same room as Bono -even if the room is, you know, United Center.

in any case - it was a good week, and a good weekend. lots of doing nothing, and hanging out with Alex at his place (food network, and other cable channels including TBS which showed Entrapment today! mmm catherine zeta-jones and sean connery) though now i have to actually do some work. but i did drag the old computer out from its hiding place, dusted it off, and uploaded some old pictures from last year and the year before onto Portia. (and some onto Flickr, as well.) so now all my pictures are (putatively) in one place. =) i am pleased.

more updates from me as the week progresses and i find new and creative ways to avoid writing this paper on the CTA for Barker and Tolley, and try to find something to memorialise for Alitto's History of the Qing class. suggestions etc are greatly welcome, particularly with respect to "things the Emperor should give a shit about" (or not, come to think of it) during the late Qing dynasty -something to do with confrontation with the West, but not about Opium?

U2 rocks!

2005-05-10T13:48:00.000+08:00

this man:

is officially the hottest man to ever shake a tambourine. mmmm.

more from me tomorrow about the U2 concert, among other things-i-did-today, when i have regained (a) my voice, (b) my hearing, and (c) my sanity.

endings

2005-05-07T11:42:00.000+08:00

i was sitting in my living room watching tv earlier this evening when it struck me: in just a little over a month, this living room -this bedroom, this kitchen, this apartment- won't be mine anymore. in just another month my undergraduate career will be over, and i will be moving back home.

it's a very unsettling thought.

i guess i am mostly ready to be done with college, and probably getting less ambivalent about moving back to my old room in my home in Singapore. after all, i really do like my room at home. (i liked it more before the mango tree that shielded my window had to come down.) but the closer i get to leaving, the more i worry about adjusting back to life in Singapore: a place where i don't know where to buy groceries, where there are no farmers' markets to get maple syrup and jams and breads on the spur of the moment, where i don't know how to cook the food (believe me, i really do need to learn how to cook something other than italian food and 'asian' food out of packets). where i don't know where i will wind up working, and how i will get there, and what i want to do. i worry about going back to school, and i worry about not going back to school. it's a long list of worries. i try not to think about them too much, but sometimes, when i'm sitting here in the apartment just doing what i've done for the last almost-two years, it hits me.

soon, i'll be done, and i'll be out of here - out of this apartment i love, and this city i've learned to love, and away from this college that has been my second home for four years. and -oddly enough, this really saddens me- i'll be back in a land with no seasons -with no winters, and no falls, and no springs.

genocide

2005-05-06T13:11:00.000+08:00

i have just watched Hotel Rwanda for the first time (thank you sheryl and netflix) and it leaves me with the (almost-) uncontrollable urge to bang my head repeatedly against the wall. it was a very good movie. don't get me wrong. it was an amazing movie. but its very amazingness makes me want to cry. only -- the things that people do to one another - the depressing, heartsickening, wrenching things that people can do to one another in the name of small -miniscule, really- differences, real and/or imagined -- these things have ceased to make me cry, and instead make me angry. and sad -but not in a weep-tears-and-get-over-it way; in a what-is-there-to-do kind of way. and more cynical. (really? i hear you ask. can she be more cynical than she already is? well, perhaps. i can certainly stay cynical, can i not?)

it's hard, to watch stories of people slaughtering one another in revenge, in a mass explosion of rage and insanity and unconstrained brutishness. it's even worse to think well - why don't the other countries -the countries with the money, the manpower, the medical resources, the stockpiled food- come and stop the killing, feed the refugees, make sure the children get their medical needs attended to? and know the answer: because we just don't care enough. because there's nothing in it for us. because the rwandas and the somalias -they produce nothing we really need; they don't have hidden treasures, only years and years of humanitarian intervention, and risking the lives of our sons and daughters for people we don't know, and a country we feel no patriotic fervour for (if we feel any at all). and really, perhaps asking people to sacrifice their children for the sake of keeping two raging mobs of angry people from killing one another somewhere in a country far away is a little too much to ask.

what's the solution? i don't have an answer, really. (well, i do, but it involves a big red button and the end of all my hopes for the nobel peace prize.) i don't think anyone does. but i guess marcus has it right when -after the movie- he said "it sort of puts all our problems into perspective, doesn't it?"

like shining from shook foil --

2005-05-04T22:17:00.001+08:00

i remember this from Evans's classes --

God's Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs --
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Gerald Manley Hopkins

back from NYC

2005-05-02T12:25:00.000+08:00

am back from visiting ying and janice over a crazy weekend (it was the Columbia Varsity Show weekend). got to see Jan's tiny new place, and see Charles and Lynn for a bit, and even managed to get Ying to fit us into her crazy schedule. yummy burgers from the Corner Bistro, delicious pho from our hole-in-the-wall restaurant in Chinatown (that we discovered over winter break, with my brother and Cheryl and Derek), and handmade udon and yuzu (japanese lime) ice cream in the east village. and oh! new york bagels, with scallion/garlic-and-herb cream cheese. isn't it funny how my new york trips revolve around two things: shopping and food.

not much shopping this time, however, so it was mostly food. the most productive shopping i did was between Avenue Q and the Varsity Show on saturday afternoon, when we emerged from the Union Sq subway to see the remnants of the regular farmers's market, and i bought a pint of maple syrup. it's delicious -i made maple-syrup sugar cookies pretty much the moment i got home, and licking the syrup off my fingers was a heavenly experience- and oh so fresh! (had to restrain myself from buying a huge loaf of fresh bread, and jam/chutneys too!) and once i managed to tear myself away from the market (there were people selling little tiny potted herbs! i could have fresh mint, and basil growing in my living room...) we hit up the Strand. 18 miles of books to which i wanted to pledge my allegiance by buying a tote bag. which i did -i have the cream canvas tote bag with the bright red Strand logo on it- as well as getting one for shum (red Strand logo on black) and one for amanda (orange on brown) too!

also, on this trip we finally got to see a performance of Avenue Q. it was totally awesome -mindblowingly good- i had such a great time! it is so much better watching it staged -even though the listening to the soundtrack was already pretty awesome. the guy who was the puppeteer/voice of Rod/Princeton in this production -not the guy in the original cast- is an even better singer, and he is a GREAT actor. he emotes what the puppet is supposed to be feeling -it is a seamless performance, man and puppet. i was very impressed. (it probably doesn't hurt that he's cute. and had a great pair of jeans. i really wish i knew where they are from.) they had great chemistry -the cast, i mean- and were clearly enjoying themselves to the hilt. the woman who does Christmas Eve has an even more incredible voice in reality than on the CD, and the one who plays Gary Coleman is a riot. the spoken lines are sometimes better than the sung ones, and the sung ones are wonderful enough. i'm so happy we got to see it! :)

what's a trip to new york without a trip to the museums, right? this time we did make it to the MOMA, on friday night when it's free (and therefore a complete ZOO). my beloved Starry Night is there, as are a bunch of really cool Picassos, like Violin and Grapes (i think that's right). i stared at it for a long time. oh! and there was a tres cool chess set in the Architecture and Design section, but unfortunately there wasn't a replica in the store, or i would totally have gotten it. i did get a cool hologram picture of MOMA though. but the Whitney Museum of American Art really stole the show, as far as i'm concerned. we went earlier on friday afternoon to see the Tim Hawkinson show at the Whitney and it was a blast! Tim Hawkinson is clearly some guy who (a) loves to work with power tools, (b) has too much free time and (c) is a geek through and through. it was incredibly fun, and i loved the entire exhibit. if you are in New York at some point in the next couple of months, you should see the show before it goes. totally worth it.

no photos, i'm afraid - i brought the camera but didn't take a single shot! and now, it's back to the regular grind of trying to pass my chinese history midterm on tuesday. :(

the ST = the WSJ? i laugh in the face of absurdity

2005-04-29T04:14:00.000+08:00

after all my griping about the ST Online charging money for access, i am reminded that there is one Grand Dame of the daily world who charges for access: the Wall Street Journal. but come on. on the one hand, the WSJ. on the other hand, the ST. in between, a bottomless, gaping -yawning, even- divide.

in any case, i pay for neither: i don't read the ST, and i read the WSJ headlines on tuesdays and thursdays when marcus brings it with him to our chinese history class. :)

anyway -- off to new york for the weekend, to see the wizard -janice, and ying, and nicki, and charles, and hopefully ryan and possibly cheetung if we can dig him out of the woodwork- so expect nothing until sunday night, and then possibly photos. (alex wants to go to MOMA, and i am inclined to go with him, though if i get bored i shall sit down at the cafe and study for my chinese history midterm.) til then, have a good weekend, my darlings --

falling like dominos

2005-04-27T03:53:00.000+08:00

just a few days ago, Singaporean bloggers were up in arms about how Acidflask had been treated by his scholarship board, and other tangentially related public figures. and consequently, much discussion over what the future of Singapore blogging might be -whether it could develop from a bunch of online journal ramblings about the minutiae of personal lives to some form of public discussion about wider issues. today, i find that two of these Singaporean bloggers bit the dust: Acidflask, under the pressure of a lawsuit, and Nilsinelabore.

i don't really know what to say, other than to express my sadness that it has come to this -- that we cannot even keep this little corner of the world for ourselves to express what we think and feel without official censure. (not to say, of course, that it is a corner without criticism, as comments frequently demonstrate. but at the very least, criticism has been reasonable, argued -as opposed to 'you suck!'- and most importantly, non-threatening to my continued way of life.)

just a few days ago, because of this big fuss kicked up over the whole racist-comment affair, as well as Acidflask's upset with PSC, i was reminded in class of Habermas's theory about civil society and the public sphere, and how it grew out of coffeehouse associations. where people would gather and read the newspapers and discuss things aloud -in a most civilised manner- over tea (and presumably crumpets, or the crumpet-equivalent in Viennese coffeehouses). i mused quietly about the potential blogs have to be a new cybercoffeehouse, linked to one another by -well, links, and trackbacks, and responses to each other in comments and whole response posts. little communities of people discussing the same issues, providing different opinions and points of view, learning from one another. a little Habermasian microcosm.

oh well, she says. another dreambubble burst.

two things

2005-04-26T11:10:00.000+08:00

have accomplished two things today:

(1) booked hotel rooms at Yellowstone for my post-graduation trip, and am now feeling particularly broke; and

(2) printed out two copies of the BA thesis, ready to get them bound tomorrow, and turn them in tomorrow after class. at which point i will officially be done with my undergraduate political science career.

wish me luck!

kaching kaching!

2005-04-19T02:09:00.000+08:00

it's official: we are going to get not one but two megadevelopments involving casinos in Singapore, worth 3 billion USD. not surprising, considering the economic advantages that having casinos on the island will bring. not just taxes, but increased tourism revenue, higher hotel occupancy rates, so on and so forth. so we will get one complex on the Marina waterfront, and the other on Sentosa.

i'm mostly surprised by their turnaround on the entertainment complex -i was under the impression that the government wanted these casinos to be casinos, plain and simple -none of the attendant hotels and food courts and eZones and family entertainment centres and cinemas. i wonder what caused the turnaround: the investors, whom i believe are a consortium of Vegas casino owners, and business sense; or the need to make casinos more acceptable to the 'moral fabric' of the Singapore public by making the casino 'less than 5% of the total space' involved in these developments.

but oh! i've just read the related article on measures that the Government is taking to make sure that gambling does not adverse affect said 'moral fabric' of Singapore. take a look:

Singaporeans and Permanent Residents of Singapore will be charged an entry fee of SGD $100 per day, or $2000 per year. (that's roughly 1250 USD per annum, and somewhere between 60 and 65 USD per day, if my back-of-the-envelope/inside my head calculations are right.) Non-Singaporeans and non-PRs will not be charged an entry fee.
A system of exclusion (not voluntary) will be put in place so that those in financial difficulty or receiving social assistance will be denied entry into these dens of iniquity. (of course, a voluntary exlusion system will be in place, but i have no objections to you banning yourself from doing something you think is harmful.)
Operators of casinos in Singapore will also be barred from extending credit to Singaporeans, to 'make it harder for them to lose more than they can afford'. Again, of course, i can only assume that if you are a non-Singaporean, credit will of course be extended to you so that you can give us more of your (foreign) money.
Advertising in local media will not be allowed. (ok, i'm pretty sure i don't have any objections to this point. but mostly because i dislike television advertising in general -it pays for my CSI and West Wing, i know, i know- so the less i have to tolerate the better. esp since casinos ads are so CHEESY! i've only seen ONE i liked, and it was for Crown in Melly.)
And of course, in a classic Singapore move, there will be a new National Council on Gambling set up to advise MCYS on the effects of problem gambling; and social workers will be 'trained' to identify 'compulsive gamblers' and refer them to social services.

wow. i gotta go sit in the corner and think about these things for a while before i'm absolutely sure i can marshall a coherent argument about liberty and the freedom to choose and all that. i do know that i'm very indignant about the different restrictions applied to Singaporeans vs. non-Singaporeans. there are two implications of these restrictions vying for my attention inside my head, neither very appetising:

Singaporeans are babies and incapable of making responsible decisions for themselves, while foreigners (non-Singaporeans) are not babies and are perfectly capable of making responsible decisions. Therefore we must restrict the various freedoms of the Singaporean to ensure that he makes the 'right' choice (ah, the sweet scent of paternalism).
Everyone is a baby and incapable of making responsible decisions for themselves, but we don't care what foreigners do because they don't live here most of the year. (well, other than the expatriats.)

i am reminded of Ainsley in 17 People in the second season of West Wing:

"I believe that every time the federal government hands down a new law, it leaves for the rest of us a little less freedom. So I say, let’s just stick to the ones we absolutely need to have water come out of the faucet and our cars not stolen. That is my problem with passing a redundant law."

On Blogs

2005-04-18T05:45:00.000+08:00

the recent furore over the PSC scholar who (rather unwisely) posted racist remarks (among other rather asinine comments) on his blog, and the consequences of his actions, underscores a rather fundamental point about blogging.

i'm not sure why some people seem to consider blogging -and by extension, internet presence- as some kind of alternate reality that is separate and distinct from the real world. after all, you would imagine that in a world of Google, Yahoo, and various other search engines, not to mention the increasingly interconnected (and organically growing) world of blogging in general, people would realise that nothing is really private. once you choose to put something out there, online, in black and white, it's fair game for comments, argument, debate, criticism, rebuttal, and any other form of response you can imagine. you might not imagine that simply posting random remarks about your day might be of interest to someone, somewhere, but if that's the case, why publish it online then?

part of the reason blogs have proved to be such a phenomenon over the last year or two is precisely their power to put people's words and opinions out in the public sphere, where other people can read them and respond to them. blogs are not just about putting the minutiae of daily life out there for a close circle of friends to read. blogging has created a new arena for public discussion and expression that previously didn't exist, by making it easy for people to publish their work without needing either access to physical media or arcane knowledge of computer programming languages and/or internet publishing tools. blogs have become one more way in which people access news, filter information, and read and write commentary on current affairs, and their audiences grow day on day. in a society that values checks and balances on power, blogging has provided yet another way to get the word out, and to test the information that is transmitted through the 'regular' channels. blogs have become a new means for investigative journalism that isn't, theorically, checked by editors and newspaper corportations' wider interests. instead, they are checked and balanced, neatly enough, by one another. (oh, free markets at work!)

so what i'm saying is, if you are going to say something online, you had better be prepared to stand behind what you say. don't say things on your blog that you're not willing to voice in reality, just because you think the theoretical anonymity of the internet can shield you. because if what you say matters to someone -if it inspires them, or if it offends them, or if it in any way strikes a chord in them- they are going to want to respond to you, to know who you are, and why you say what you say. it's human nature. we like to know who our friends or our enemies and opponents are. being online is not a get out of jail free card.

reading the New York Times Book Review

2005-04-18T03:07:00.000+08:00

i have discovered a terrifying fact: Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code has been on the NYTimes best seller list for 107 weeks. at 52 weeks per year, that is more than two years on the best seller list, with no end in sight. this week and last week, it's been in first place.

Mitch Albom's Tuesdays with Morrie has been on the paperback best seller list for 121 weeks, while The Five People You Meet In Heaven has been on the list for 80 weeks. oddly enough, Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond has been on the nonfiction paperback best seller list for 135 weeks, which is more than Dan Brown's effort. i'm not sure if i'm reassured, because according to the Times, the book is "An argument that Western dominance is due to geographic advantages."

out of the 15 books reported on the Times's paperback best seller list, six of them -or a little over a third- are romance novels, written by honest-to-goodness romance writers like Amanda Quick and Julie Garland. in other words, being a romance novel writing in America is a very good deal, as well as being, say, John Grisham, or Mary Higgins Clark, or Sue Grafton.

monkeys, typewriters, and Shakespeare, among other things

2005-04-15T10:40:00.000+08:00

kwek just pointed me toward this rather startling CNN report, which calls to mind the whole giving monkeys typewriters and getting shakespeare thing: MIT Students Pull Prank On Conference. tres cool.

this is somewhat in lieu of a real post, since i spent the greater part of today tromping around downtown and getting all tired. (haul: one new blazer from H&M, which is the same blazer that both amanda and shum already own; and new moisturiser from Origins :) i am well pleased. oh! and we saw Freakonomics, but i decided Amazon was the better route.) the point of going downtown? getting my driver's licence unsuspended, which it has been since....oh, the end of second year, after my Louisiana Car Accident Adventure. (shows you how often i drive, eh?) it's all done now. yay.

all right. more now. because it's thursday evening and i'm browsing blogs and getting more and more upset by the minute. first, i am forcefully reminded of the racism, arrogance, and stupidity that runs rampant in the world -personality traits which i have grown accustomed to not seeing, oddly enough, here at the U of C- at least, not overtly, and certainly not in my face. this makes me madder than mad (i was shrieking my head off in my room) but i think i'm just going to leave this at "sometimes, people are just fucking idiots, and we should accept that". (i am reminded of Dr House, who was accurated described as wanting to believe the worst of people so he could never be disappointed. smart man, that one.)

and then i wander over to Bookslut, and what do i see but this nifty little piece of reporting on the RedEye and Red Streak. RedEye and Red Streak are the Trib and the Sun-Times's attempts (respectively) to capture the attention of the feckless, non-newspaper-reading Chicagoan youth. studies apparently have shown that young people -specifically college people- don't seem to read the newspapers anymore (hmm i wonder why.) which naturally scares the living daylights out of the newspaper industry. what really pissed me off about this article, however, is this:

Hartman's "convenience sample" consisted of 112 students in journalism or mass communications at two downtown Chicago colleges, Roosevelt University and Columbia College-Chicago. About half were the traditional college age of 17 to 24, while about 30% were aged 25-29 and a little more than 10% were 30 to 34. The students were 70% women, but the sample otherwise roughly reflected Chicago ethnic and racial demographics.

the sample was 70% female. it was 112 students in journalism or mass communications. you think it might possibly be a non-representative sample and your results might totally fall apart when you did do a study with a more orthodox random sample, mr hartman? it sounds remarkably like he just asked for a show of hands in journalism class: "how many people in the room have read the RedEye? which is, by the way, a newspaper. And the Red Streak? ah. yes, thank you. i think i'll go write a quick paper for presentation now." i think that if i were to write a paper with a sample as non-random as this, even calling it a 'preliminary finding' would not save me from flunking the paper as well as the class.

this remark from the Sun-Times, however, makes it worth your while to read the article:

Both papers had high recognition among respondents, though the much more heavily promoted RedEye scored higher than Red Streak, which Sun-Times officials acknowledge is published only to annoy the Tribune and confuse the market.

before any of you ask, yes, i read RedEye (or at least, encounter RedEye at least twice a week, when i am on campus). why, you ask? the answer is simple: they have a crossword. and it's a crossword that i can complete all week, generally speaking, in the time it takes to eat my lunch, and without access to Google, which i frequently require to do the NYTimes crossword by the time Wednesday or Thursday rolls around. if i read the rest of the newspaper at all, it's because the crossword has been completed (or alex won't let me do it, because he's saving it to do in class). i somehow don't think that the newspaper industry thinks that crossword puzzles will turn out to be their saving grace in the new millenium.

Levitt!

2005-04-13T11:29:00.000+08:00

so most people who read this blog already know that one of my favourite teachers here at the U of C is Steven Levitt. no doubt many have already seen this, but Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner have just put out a book titled Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. that link takes you to the book's website, which includes a blog written by Levitt and Dubner.

there are also various interviews with Levitt re: this book, at Kottke, and NPR. (with a nod toward Crescat for the links.) Slate is also doing a two-part excerpt from the book, for a little taste of what is to come.

it looks like Freakonomics is going to be somewhat of a survey of the various things he's done in the last few years -cheating in classrooms and sumo wrestling, studying gangs, that sort of thing. should be well worth a read, not in the least for a glimpse into the way economics can figure in areas outside those traditionally considered its domain. (like business, and union-management disputes, and interest rates...) i'll pop into a bookstore -57th Street Books is bound to have it prominently displayed- and take a look sometime later this week.

who should decide whether we get trains?

2005-04-11T13:43:00.000+08:00

so i've finally figured out how to make myself some cool new icons for my LJ page. (speaking of cool new icons, alex has revamped his LJ and renamed it "where's my jetpack?" in honour of one Leo McGarry. -grin-) that, my darlings, was the highlight of my evening -making CSI icons which i will have to bring into my icon-rotation. (seeing as i am cheap and am on a free LJ account, i only get three icons at a time!)

the main point of this post, however, seeing as it is pushing one am where i am, is to remind myself what i want to write about for my urban policies paper. tentatively titled "Should Public Transportation Be Public?", it recalls an argument -a rather heated one, as i recall- i had with leon over tea at Delifrance something like two summers ago. (kudos for the inspiration -grin-) points tentatively to be raised: should public transport companies be run like any other private company (seeing as public transport could very well be a public good -if left to the market we wouldn't get enough of it, particularly in the areas where there would be low ridership, potentially areas where people cannot afford to own alternative means of transport, like cars); how should government/city administrations regulate public transport; should public transport be subsidised (yes! crieth the bus-taker who doesn't pay taxes.); and how much competition is feasible in a single market (none? perhaps it is most efficient to have the people who own the buses own the trains and the taxis as well? integrated systems, anyone?).

if this is the paper that gets written, it'll wind up being a policy options paper ("how much should governments interfere with the market for public transport?") and of course the hardest part for me will be to remain "impartial" between different policy options. good ol' argumentative me will probably wind up backing one policy to the hilt anyway, and failing the class miserably, thereby failing to graduate with an economics AB and having my scholarship revoked, and owing PSC bazillions of dollars. let us hope not.

opinions would be much appreciated below. :) (as would any alternative paper topics for an 'Urban Policies' class.)

scholarships, etc etc.

2005-04-09T06:25:00.000+08:00

a recent furore in the New Paper (and probably other fora, but i don't follow Singapore news anymore, since ST Online has decided to start charging outrageous rates for second-rate -at best- news) about two PSC scholars breaking their bonds. some information here and here, from the point of view -loosely speaking- of the scholars. PSC's response is here.

discretion is probably the better part of valour. but i do know the scholar in question, so am unlikely to remain silent. so i'm limiting my remarks to these, quite simply. look at the PSC response, and tell me it's not stone-walling in the most time-honoured tradition of bureaucracies anywhere. (it's not even very GOOD stone-walling at that, but i blame that on the New Paper's editorial inadequacies, and quite possibly the abilities of the PSC spokesperson.)

allow me also to point out that 'conducting regular feedback sessions' means jackshit. i can conduct regular feedback sessions, then take the feedback and throw it out the window and merrily continue on my happy destructive way. (much like a herd of elephants in the bush, i imagine.) Singaporeans, of all people, should fully understand the difference between a gesture in the desired direction, and real change in a government organisation. and we should understand that the first is far easier and far more commonplace than the latter.

Of Poets and Poetry

2005-04-05T12:09:00.000+08:00

for some reason, these lines from Yeats have stuck in my mind since i first read them, a long time ago. who had written them, and what poem they are from totally eluded me for the longest time -- thank god for google. =)

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world

-- The Second Coming, W. B Yeats

final run

2005-04-02T12:41:00.000+08:00

rejoice with me, for i have completed a full draft of The Thesis. as of this morning. it's missing a bunch of citations (by which i mean there are sentences, lots of them, with (CITATION) at the end and no other explantory remarks) and i'm sure it is chock full of structural problems (that i hope will merely require a moving around of already-written sections with minimal adjustment, as opposed to complete rewrites of multiple parts at once), but hey, it's outside of my brain and onto paper.

i turned it in to my BA advisor to have a look over it today, when i went to see him to get some paperwork filed that will, hopefully, allow me to graduate in one piece in nine weeks. now i am sure that when i return on thursday to have a chat with him about the paper itself (as opposed to what we did on spring break, and why i don't seem to know how to fill in paperwork) he will comment that while it's great that i am 'ahead of the curve' in writing this complete draft, and it's great that i have a complete draft, the work itself is utter crap and he will be forced to give me an F for the course. =) but until then, i'm going to bask in the unadulterated glow of accomplishment.

photos, anyone?

2005-03-30T07:01:00.000+08:00

a quick post of vacation photos to cheer myself up -it's turned grey again here in Chi-town, though it remains warm. spring is definitely on her way. there are more photos over at the LJ if anyone wants to see more pictures of sun, sand, sea, and perhaps even some rum...

here's me performing a rather lame attempt at a salute inside a guardhouse for the fort at the top of old San Juan --

look at how lovely the colours are! you should have seen them slowly baking in the sunshine...

proof, perhaps, that we were at the Barcardi rum distillery? drinking their mojitos or tropical punch? did you know they give you two free drinks just for showing up?

tourists, i presume, can't spell, which is why it doesn't matter if locals can't either!

spring break is over

2005-03-28T12:54:00.000+08:00

hi y'all:

back from Puerto Rico, toasted the colour of toffee. and, of course, sunburned and peeling in spots, which makes me itchy and irritated, but still. =) it's worth it, to no longer be pasty white.

we spent a lot of time (read: three mornings in a row) lying in bikinis (or shorts, on alex) on deckchairs by the pool, slathered in sunscreen, wearing shades to block out the glare, and pretending to read books. there are photos, but not on my camera, so they are unlikely to be up for a while. there was jumping into an icy cold pool when the sun got too hot, which no doubt led to more sunburn, since there was no reason to go back indoors. alex taught me how to swim, in a vague fashion, the freestyle. i need more practice, which i guess means i gotta hit the pool more this quarter!

Old San Juan, where we spent the rest of our time, was also pretty cool. lots of trinket shopping, and many other tourists. we also climbed all over an old fort, with an honest-to-goodness dungeon, which oddly enough was located on the second floor. i also discovered that i would have been too short to be a rifleman defending this particular fort: i couldn't see over the parapet to fire!

a very short update, i know. but it's getting on to the time when i should fall into bed and/or look at the BA again in preparation for the spring quarter, which starts tomorrow. thankfully, my first class is at three on mondays. (just like JJM, last quarter.) but still. i can't believe it's school again...

cool geeky pictures

2005-03-12T06:58:00.000+08:00

a short, and very geeky, post: if you ever wanted to know what Tylenol, or Claritin look like under the microscope, go here. my personal favourite -of the ones i looked at- is the Tylenol. though Claritin is a close second. (mostly because i actually take these drugs!) and asprin is so spiky! i can see why people might get stomach ulcers from a regular asprin regimen.

all right, i'm going back to the origins of the Pacific war...

there are times when i hate being Singaporean

2005-03-10T11:50:00.000+08:00

March 10, 2005
Gay parties may have led to sharp rise in new Aids cases

By Leslie Koh
THERE was a sharp rise in new Aids cases last year and it could be linked to a popular annual 'gay party' on Sentosa, Dr Balaji Sadasivan said yesterday, quoting an unnamed expert.

Calling it an 'epidemic', the Senior Minister of State for Health told Parliament that the number of new cases of Aids infection rose 28 per cent last year, from 242 to 311.

Nine out of 10 of the new Aids sufferers are men and a third of them are gay. There are more than 2,000 Aids patients in Singapore now.

Dr Balaji said an epidemiologist - an expert in the spread and control of diseases - had suggested to him that the spike might be linked to the Nation parties held every August on Sentosa.

The Nation parties, which attract a predominantly homosexual crowd, could have allowed 'gays from high-prevalence societies to fraternise with local gay men, seeding the infection in the local community', he said.

He added: 'However, this is a hypothesis and more research needs to be done.'

Started in 2001, the annual Nation parties - held on National Day - have drawn as many as 8,000 people from the region.

Dr Balaji's statement drew immediate fire from the party organiser, Fridae.com. Its chief executive officer Stuart Koe called it 'irresponsible'.

Instead of making 'sweeping statements' that misinform the public, the Government should focus on education, he said. 'The Government has never targeted any of its Aids campaigns at gay men. Is it any wonder that there is a rise in the number of Aids cases in the gay community?'

Last year, police turned down an application to hold a similar Christmas party, deeming it contrary to public interest.

Yesterday, Dr Balaji said the Health Ministry was most concerned about the rising number of Aids patients. For every such case diagnosed, there may two to four undiagnosed sufferers - making for a possible total of 8,000 Aids patients here.

The ministry is looking into over-the-counter test kits that allow people to test themselves with their saliva.

Similar self-tests are used elsewhere, such as in America and Europe, but have also drawn criticism worldwide.

Action For Aids' executive director Benedict Jacob-Thambiah said: 'What if someone tests positive? How are you going to change his behaviour without counselling?'

He also believed such test kits might encourage risky behaviour as people become lax again if they find the results negative.

But Dr Lily Neo (Jalan Besar GRC) disagreed. Sufferers still needed to go to clinics to confirm the results, where counselling could done, she said.

Apart from self-test kits, the Health Ministry is also considering laws in the battle against Aids, such as ensuring spouses are told if their partners have the disease.

There is a need, Dr Balaji said, to 'de-stigmatise testing' and at the same time prevent discrimination against Aids patients.

yeah, quoted in full here, without a link to the Straits Times because they're making people pay to access their online content, and frankly, they aren't worth the money. (i'd rather give it to the Times so i can do their daily crosswords.)

before i even BEGIN the rest of my rant, let me point out to you that our Senior Minister of State for Health stands up in Parliament and quotes a fucking UNNAMED EXPERT source when talking about something that clearly Singaporeans have very little information about -the gay community and more specifically the health issues that may or may not pertain to the gay community in Singapore. it pushes every single button i have as an academic and a scholar that he cannot name his source publicly. why? is the source perhaps afraid that he will be stoned to death the moment he leaves his front door? does he not care to be associated with his research? or perhaps -wait for it, this is a shocker- his research isn't at the stage where he's ready to stand behind his conclusions, as he says in the very next sentence, and therefore SHOULDN'T FUCKING BE TALKED ABOUT RIGHT NOW IN PARLIAMENT, for crying out loud!

i have to say, this whole AIDS and the gay community in Singapore thing is a hot button issue for me. it just enrages me to see how poorly the ST reports anything that isn't mainstream news (well it pisses me off to see how poorly the ST reports ANYTHING, for that matter) but in this case it is even more than that. it's how terribly our politicians present themselves in public - i cannot believe a Senior Minister of State would stand up in Parliament and quote an unnamed source -how terribly, oh, i don't know, Soviet Union in the Cold War -spy-movie-esque - on something that EVERYONE knows is a hot button issue that Singaporeans both at home and all over the world have concerns with. debate. argue about. it's an issue that tears families apart. and it's an issue that many Singaporeans have no information about (despite having really fucking strong opinions. it's like banging your head against a brick wall.), and things like this article don't help matters. they spread misinformation, or the lack of information that then becomes speculative misinformation, and before you know it we will be the fucking Bible Belt of Southeast Asia. (ok, i'm exaggerating, but i'm angry.)

and hey, i have a POI question for the ST: do they mean new AIDS infections (AIDS all in caps because it's a fucking acronym, you morons, not a word) or do they mean an increase in HIV infections, and do they know the difference? do they care?

and the remark about not having an AIDS campaign targetting specifically at gay men: well, what are gay men, more stupid than the next guy? they can't understand that they are at risk for contracting sexually transmitted diseases if they are sexually active, regardless of the gender of their partner? it's not like the mode of protection they use is different, boys and girls. helllllloooo SingHealth.

how do i think we should deal with this AIDS epidemic, you ask? (well yes, of course i am willing to call it an epidemic. why shouldn't i? medical health professionals across the globe are willing to call it that, much less my very own bumbling fool of a Senior Minister of State for Health, who happens to be a doctor.) for one thing, i don't remember if it's part of health education or whatever the hell they are calling it in schools these days, but we need to get our heads out of our asses and realise that our children are no longer lily-pure innocents, and we damn well better be giving them the information they need earlier than we think they need it. so sex ed in school should include how to have safe sex, not just avoid the question of sex all together. you would think that our pragmatic little nation-state would be less prudish, wouldn't you. the more people -kids- know about sex and sexually transmitted diseases, the better their position to prevent contracting it.

have a campaign to educate adults, if you like. we like campaigns in Singapore. after all, we don't see to be winning the war on heroin and cocaine and ecstacy and all the other fun drugs we see anti-drug posters for on the MRT. take them down and stick up some graphic pictures on what AIDS patients look like, and how to avoid contracting it. maybe that'll do something. here's something to think about: a campaign to remind people that everyone is responsible for his or her own sexual health. if your partner doesn't want to wear a condom, don't have sex with him. if your partner doesn't want you to wear a condom, don't have sex with him/her. don't put yourself in a position where you can't say no. (ie, don't get drunk out of your mind and forget/be unable to make the decision. because you can't undo it afterwards.) i think life -or at least sex and STDs- would be a lot simpler if we could just learn, as the human race, not to abuse alcohol. bloody drug.

and make it the law that if you have an STD, or at the very least, if you have HIV, you must inform your spouse and/or all other sexual partners. i don't know how it would be enforced. knowing the government it would probably involve people signing things. i guess if i were to venture a method i would advocate a policeman and/or a lawyer following said person ard making threatening remarks about jail and/or righteous shootings. (Pratchett's Going Postal comes to mind.) all right, this is going to cause all kinds of problems with people being willing to TAKE an HIV test in the first place. if i had it my way, and this being Singapore, hey, who knows, i might not be far off track here, it would be mandatory for everyone over the age of, oh, twenty-one, let's make it, to have regular blood work done. once a year is probably enough for most people. though for some people, once every six months is probably more prudent. (this is where i face my major conflict between my liberal side, which says the government shouldn't be allowed to regulate individual behaviour; and my megalomaniac-i-know-best side, which screams that my government shd use all its paternalistic power and instincts to stop people from being incredibly, wantonly stupid.) of course, if i really had my way, people would be a lot more sensible and responsible about their sexual (and other social) behaviour, and we wouldn't NEED to have mandatory testing and reporting, but we all know that's not going to happen, right?

all right, i'm no longer as angry as i was when i first read this article. i'm back to my default state of deep deep disappointment. i was right, when i posted a couple of days ago that --

you know,

people never do fail to disappoint.

great scott!

2005-03-08T12:03:00.000+08:00

so. today was the day of The Great Shooting-Range Expedition. it is, oddly enough, back to freezing temperatures here in chicago, so when i get to Stuart a couple of minutes earlier than the appointed time, we wind up standing around making random chitchat about how cold it is and how excited we are until...Professor Levitt shows up, and then suddenly we are on the move. :) nicole, liyana and i wind up riding with Prof. Levitt to the gun range (on the way, we talk about having never shot a gun before, and the differences between different types of guns, and being indentured servants of the government. it was an interesting ride.).

we get to Hammond, IN a little ahead of schedule, having not driven over the speed limit nor gotten lost along the way (at least, not too egregiously lost; we missed Summer St. but realised it as we were driving through the intersection, so were able to find it fairly quickly on the next pass), and wind up meeting up with everyone else and eating lunch at a little diner across the street from the gun range. it was an awesome little diner, and the prices stunned all of us chicago folk -being able to eat two eggs and what looked like most of a pig carved up into breakfast meats for a little under four dollars? wow! (i had pancakes, and my usual neverending stream of diner coffee. mmm-mmm.) Marie, our TA, ate with the three of us, and it transpired that no one at the table had shot a gun before, so we took a commemorative road-trip-virgin-gun-shooting photo. and then it was time...

we showed up at the gun range, and the lady who runs the place -Deb- introduced us to the process of loading a magazine, loading a gun, aiming a gun, and firing it. then she gave us strict safety instructions, handed out eye- and ear-protection, ammunition, and guns, and we trooped downstairs into the range. (only twelve people at a time are allowed down in the range; and only six shooters, because there are only six booths. so Marie assigns the first twelve by counting from the back of the room, on the theory that the further back you are the more nervous/less excited you are, and therefore you should go first. not coincidentally, all five girls are in the first twelve.) once we had all loaded up our magazines, the first six people stepped up to the booths, and the other six of us all stepped a cautious couple of steps back, and waited for the first explosion. and waited. and waited some more. the six in the booth all loaded up their guns, took careful aim at the targets, and...waited for each other to pull the trigger. it was a real-life game-theory-esque scenario. finally, someone pulled his/her trigger. all of us watching jumped like a mile into the air. it's really quite loud! even through the ear protectors. like having a balloon explode next to your face. after this first shot, however, all hell breaks loose. it sounds like (a very slow outbreak) of WWIII in there. then everyone is done shooting, and i get my turn.

so i grab my target sheet and my loaded magazine and step up to the end booth, where i promptly forget how to load the gun. i do however manage to get the target strung up and pushed out to twenty-five feet. then i remember how to load the gun, and get it all ready to fire. bring it up to line up the target. it's surprisingly heavy -it really doesn't look that heavy. i am, of course, nervous as all hell, which doesn't help in lining up the shot, and i'm almost afraid to pull the trigger. finally, i decide what the hell, line up the shot, and squeeze the trigger before i can change my mind. the bang is startling, the muzzle flash even more so, and the recoil, while not violent, certainly messes up my ability to take another shot right away. but every shot after that first one is easier. (mostly because now i know what it feels like, and what to expect.)

i can see the fascination, sort of. i mean, i fired twenty rounds today, and spent a lot of time trying very hard to hit a specific part of the target. (for those who are curious, i am very proud of the fact that every single shot hit said target, mostly clustered around the poor guy's torso. no wild shots next to his ear or anything. that, however, is easily explained by the fact that i am too short to take a head shot on the poor guy.) a great part of my fun came, i think, from getting things lined up and accomplishing what i set out to do. (perhaps throwing a dart into the bullseye would bring me the same level of satisfaction.) i have also gained a new respect for people who can fire multiple times, without pause, at a moving target, and hit it. or even hit in the vicinity of said moving target. it's hard! it's hard to hit a stationary target without stopping to reaim in between shots! (that said i am still proud of my accomplishment this afternoon. =p)

all in all, it was an interesting couple of hours. i got to do something i would never have gotten to do at home, and learned something in the process. i'm not sure what contribution that made to my understanding of the relationship between guns and crime, and the gun control debate, but i sure as hell had fun!

the end of ninth week creeps up

2005-03-07T11:34:00.000+08:00

things i have found out this weekend:

(a) Texas-style chilli is very much like a spicy beef stew. it does not involve tomatoes, or beans; it involves frying lots of onions and garlic in spices, then simmering them gently in ale to pick up the burnt crunchy bits leftover from pan-searing chunks of beef; then simmering the whole concoction for three hours on the stove, while the apartment fills with the smells of slow-cooking beef. no wonder we were starving by the time dinner rolled around.

(b) roasted veggies do indeed taste wonderful (cover veggies in olive oil, sea salt and black pepper, then put in Very Hot Oven for twenty minutes to half an hour) but only if you remember they are in the oven and don't, oh i don't know, get distracted by a Very Hot George Clooney trying to save the world from nuclear disaster, getting himself all scratched up and dirty in the process. (wearing Kevlar and No. 4s, to boot.) ditto for pasta.

(c) you can't read very much about the German war economy in WWI without either falling asleep, or having all your economist sensibilities thoroughly offended (so of course you go off and read a few pages of Cosmo and dream about tinted lip balm from Neutrogena; what self-respecting female economist wouldn't, i ask you? -grin-).

(d) if you are an unfortunate male in the company of three giggling females who have rented three movies: Enemy at the Gates; The Peacemaker; and Three Kings, you will NOT get to see the movie that does NOT have George Clooney in it. (esp if the three girls in question are Sheryl, Jeanette, and Amanda.)

now i really should go get some more work (read: reading) done. tomorrow, i shall have no time before class, no time at all. because i get to go shoot guns in Indiana! (supervised, of course, by Professor Levitt and his TA. damn, i love this class.)

(my BA advisor, Adria, says i put too much information in parentheses in my BA. i blame this blog for my bad writing skills. -grin-)

Anna Deavere Smith

2005-03-02T13:52:00.000+08:00

we were at a performance tonight, a one-woman show by Anna Deavere Smith (who some of you may know as the National Security Advisor Nancy McNally on The West Wing -she jokes about being the first black female National Security Advisor, before Condi Rice) on snapshots of her America. and i was fascinated. (not so much by Dean Danielle Allen's very very long introduction beforehand. i know this is the inaugural presentation of her new brainchild series, but that doesn't really justify boring the bejeezsus out of us for fifteen minutes before the main act.) she did some very...what is the word i'm searching for...what i imagine to be accurate and sharp impressions of various people from various walks of life: a Korean shopowner talking about the aftermath of race riots in LA and the Rodney King trials; a woman, in prison, on the death of her child by an abusive male partner; a cowboy, from Utah, who talks about toughness and optimism in a way that is touchingly real and romantic and hopeful and innocent. and she became these people -you look at her, and she is Anna Deavere Smith in a black shirt and black pants (and sometimes, a black duster pretending to be a trenchcoat), but the words coming out of her mouth are enlivened by some other spirit, some other understanding. it's not her speaking. it's Maria, the juror on the Rodney King trials, talking about how people behave under stress; it's Studs talking about moral slippage, and how there is no defining moment of American history. it was great, and awesome, and i'm glad i got the chance to go and see her in action. now she'll be more than just Nancy McNally to me.

i have to say that two characters stood out the most in my mind. while the others were interesting, in their contexts, i was really touched by the darkest character, and the lightest one. by the woman who talked, in a low, dead monotone, about the night her daughter died of the physical abuse endured at the hands of a man she thought she could 'fix'. about the long-term abuse she and her children by some other man suffered, and how she stayed because -what else could she do? and she thought, she really thought, she could fix him. i guess it struck me because she said something about people not wanting to stretch their negative imaginations; people don't want to believe that such darkness exists in the human spirit. perhaps other people do have such an optimistic view of human nature. i sure as hell don't. i may never have seen -or not known i was seeing- abused women, or children, or men, for that matter, but i don't have any trouble believing that people are capable of doing such things. and that women, or children, cannot imagine leaving their abusers because what else do they know? (now you know why i am a good Hobbesian.)

on the other hand, the cowboy who talks -and swigs his Coors Light- about rodeo when asked what is beauty -why it's the rodeo, he can't imagine anything better than being with the other guys at the rodeo, eating and drinking and making merry and knowing what you want to do. sure, having a ranch is nice, but being at the rodeo, now that's living. his wife pokes fun at him -thinks that without a college degree he's not smart enough to talk to college professors who fly into Utah to talk to him and ask him questions- but his answers are spot on. what's toughness? she asks him, and he replies it's having his broken nose fixed without anasthesia so that he can go back to the rodeo and ride again right afterward. and as a bonus, he can breathe again, after they fix his nose, for the first time since he broke it the first rodeo he ever went to. that almost made me cry. it sure as hell made me smile.

i guess it's hard for me to hold both people in my mind at the same time. to remember that while there are bad evil nasty cruel animal-people in the world, there are happy optimistic cheerful tough and brave people too. it's hard to balance when to expect nothing or expect the worst; and when to take a little leap of faith and believe in the goodness of the human heart. (no prizes for guessing which route i usually take!) maybe it'll be a little easier for me to remember now, with a picture of a beer-drinking, broken-nosed cowboy in my mind.

too much television makes my brain mushy

2005-02-28T03:02:00.000+08:00

hello boys and girls, and a special shout-out to dad, who stopped by here out of curiosity the other day, and then sent me photos of my brother in his new army uniform! (the kid looks extremely brown -sort of like a tree, what with the extremely tanned skin and the green No.4s, and the short hair. i am assuming this is the point of the exercise. -grin-)

yet another long silence from me. but with good excuse this time: Draft Two of The BA was turned in successfully and relatively on time thursday evening. it hasn't moved along significantly since Draft One, but there are certain rewritten and therefore hopefully new-and-improved sections, plus a little more story-telling re: What ASEAN Has Done To Counter Terrorism. next up: ASEAN and Diplomacy; and How Southeast Asian Nations Really Cooperate. to wit: they catch the criminal in Malaysia, refuse to try him there, return him to Indonesia, who promptly releases him back into the free world. lalala. in any case, the thing is done for a bit; i have to turn my attention back to my real classes. which means i have to (a) catch up on my Mearsheimer reading, not a real big chore by any standards because as you all know, i love reading about death and destruction in WWII; (b) catch up on my Islamic Politics reading, which is slightly more of a chore, but it is about Iran and i know nothing about Iran, so this is a learning experience; and (c) catch up on Crime reading, which is a disaster because i haven't done any of it since about second week. much as i adore Steve Levitt, this Crime final is going to Suck Ass, esp for my GPA and peace of mind.

other than that, i've been up to: (a) acquiring as many episodes of House, M.D as i possibly can, since i have decided that it's rapidly becoming one of my favourite, not-to-be-missed shows (anyone who has access to Fox, it's on tuesday at 8pm CST, right after American Idol; for those w/o Fox, it's...easily acquired online. -wink-) -i think i have a thing for scruffy older men with sharp tongues, and Hugh Laurie's really cute; (b) acquiring as many episodes of CSI: Miami, despite my earlier objections to it as a spin-off of my beloved CSI, because frankly, after several wintry months in Chicago, a show that spends ninety percent of its time outdoors in the Florida sunshine is highly appealing, and i happen to like Emily Proctor; and (c) sleeping what feels like 18 hours a day, but really works out to about five hours per day the last week, and then something like 20 hours yesterday. just couldn't keep my eyes open. -growls-

and i've tested my DVD burner and discovered it works. however, my DVD player has gone kaput. (isn't that a nice word? kaput. kaputkaputkaput.) again. damn you, Sears. now i have to take it downtown and have it replaced. -sigh-

before i do that, however, i am going to go wander off and finish writing my Crime homework assignment: a memo to Mayor Daley on whether bars should have earlier closing hours in a bid to lower crime. ('no, Mayor Daley, earlier bar closing times means drunk drivers and disorderly intoxicated yuppies on the streets when babies are still out and about to be run over. bad idea.') and then watch some of that aforementioned CSI: Miami, which i rented from Hollywood Video yesterday. hoorah!