Twinkies taste test

I never knew what I had till they were gone. In all the time I spent in TO, I never had the urge to pick up and taste this legendary American supermarket staple. That is, not until they disappeared off the shelves not too many months ago. Only then did I regret being too cheapskate to indulge my curiosity when they were in abundance around me.

Well, the good news is, they're back. Even better, May acquired a box (a whole box!) for me to taste test. So... golden sponge cake? Check. Cream filling? Check. But the individually wrapped confections were somewhat smaller than I had imagined. The sponge cake had a pleasant springiness to the bite, though it was dry in the mouth. Definitely needed a beverage -- a glass of cold milk, say -- to wash it down. The cream was smooth and had the type of consistency that was perfect for squishing between the tongue and the upper palate.

Taste? Sweet. As expected. It's more a soft candy bar than the 'snack food' it bills itself as. So it's unlikely to be the first thing I'd think of stuffing my face with in a zombie apocalypse; but as a sideline indulgence... sure. Bring milk.

Langkawi Highlights

Langkawi Highlights, a set on Flickr.

Been out of town over the super-long weekend with seriously dodgy wi-fi and no way to update.

First time travelling with extended family, three tiers deep. Also for the first time, I belong to the highest ranking tier. Representing the next and subsequent generations were my niece and her hubby followed by their little 'un (my grand-nephew!) who turned one while we were there.

'There' being Langkawi. It was a trip we'd been planning since CNY and though the weather alternated between torrential rain and drab, patchy skies we still had a good time.

We rented two cars for island transport. Roads were quite clear, most drivers tended not to speed and navigating by GPS made driving rather easy. Stick shift, though, so auto drivers like me were last choice for wheel duty.

Accommodation was at the Federal Villas which was basic but comfortable enough. I did have a lot of wi-fi connection problems, considering that I had to pay for it (RM40/24 hrs), though some of my travelling companions had a better time of it with their devices.

Food-wise we opted to cook our own brekkie on the provided hot-plate: supermarket-bought eggs, bread, cheese, spreads, cereal, yogurt, spiced with condiments stolen liberated from the previous night's dinner. Lunch was usually a free-and-easy affair apart from one memorable occasion celebrating grand-nephew's birthday with eight lamb shanks(!) at Secret Recipe. And we were faithfully regular dinner customers at Fat Mum's (a.k.a. Eagle View Restaurant). The first night we had to wait about two hours to be served due to the unexpected holiday crowd, but we learned and ordered two hours early the next two nights. Why Fat Mum's? Because of walking distance from our hotel, and because the food was so very good. Of the mixed dishes and rice, most notable were the Teochew steamed fish, tofu in special sauce, noodles on fire (house specialty in which yee fu noodles are wrapped in alum-foil and flambeed) and the crispy squid rings which I don't usually like but these were deliciously crisp and so not-rubbery.

We descended upon every meal like a plague of locusts, almost cleaning out every dish, barely leaving the garnishes and overlooked crumbs behind. That attests to either the general quality of the food in Langkawi, or our terrifying appetites coupled with a no-waste policy.

Of tours we took a couple. The boat ride through the Kilim Ecoforest Park was an interesting look at the local wildlife -- eagles in particular -- in their natural habitat, plus some fish farming and natural landscape formations. The Sky Car ride was scenic, climbing to acrophobic heights from which we could look down and see practically the whole island and its neighbours in the Andaman Sea.

The first family trip has been a pleasant enough experience. If enough of us can find another common set of dates, another trip could be in the planning.

By popular request

Whatever people may say about the quality of our national songs, the liveliest Nat Day celebrations we have involve raucous, off-key, mass sing-alongs that bring out the spontaneity and randomness of the kids. Nice to see them all having some crazy fun together for a change.

Last-ditch effort

Annual meet-the-parents session. Used to be we would seek parental pressure as a final motivating force to get a slacking, underperforming kid pulled up by the bootstraps. At this late stage in the game, one last-ditch effort from all interested parties might make all the difference.

Current trends, however, have necessitated a new tack in the way we approach parents. The thing is for us now is to figure out what to with kids who do have a strong work ethic, but unsatisfactory results to show for it.

Interestingly, the parents are agreeing with me that their kids are overstressed, that they don't manage their time well enough, that they need to eat better and get more sleep. They recognize the need to work hard, but not to the point when it becomes counterproductive. Tired kids means their capacity to learn gets diminished; which results in poor grades; which adds pressure to perform; which begets frustrated, stressed-out, tired kids. A vicious cycle.

I suppose this new wrinkle to an age-old problem is somewhat easier to deal with. It's easier to redirect a body already in motion and make changes to a strategy that isn't working to one that does work, than to kickstart a body at rest with no strategy whatsoever.

Chewed up

The only way Tasha can interact with the world is to chew on whatever strangeness she comes across. This piece of strangeness happens to be Mr Tabby's charging/data cable. I thought I'd put it out of her reach, but I guess I underestimated her determination to explore where no canine teeth have gone before.

Fortunately, despite the Tab being first generation, I could still find a replacement cable. Tasha, you owe me $18. X(

Regulars

We're fast becoming regulars at Sun Ray. Consider it a default choice due to factors of proximity, friendly service, good food and dog welcome policy.

Looks healthy. Tastes great. Kept cold throughout the meal. It was both a drink and a dessert.

Sup du jour: crustacean-corn. June said it was too salty. I concurred. Then I realized it was probably my fault. The pepper grinder incorporated a salt grinder that I didn't notice before. So a liberal sprinkling of pepper came with a corresponding amount of salt as well. Design flaw.

Seafood spaghetti aglo olio. Nice, but I saved my stomach for...

the strip loin. As usual, served with the correct doneness of rare, with the rind of cow fat left intact. So good.

Btw, no more weekend set menu, we were told today. Never mind. What we wanted wouldn't have been included in the set anyway.

Fellow flailers!

Following up from my previous entry, I got to see a lot more of my colleagues who are enthusiastically flailing about in unfamiliar territory than I gave credit for.

The souvenir book (left) the organizers handed out is quite a thick compilation of lesson plans and strategies used across all levels of education designed to get the kids off their lazy butts and take a more active and purposeful role in their own learning.

Some of the stuff that I got to observe were tools I and anyone else have easy access to for free over the 'net. The strategies they shared were simple enough, and up to a point I'm using them the same way. It's good to know how closely parallel we are in our objectives, and even better to learn from the variations in the way we use these tools.

Dean Krishnan would be happy to see how so many of us are trying out new methods of student engagement rather than stick to the old tried-and-true formulas that we have grown accustomed to.

Maybe the four-lane highway we're all waiting for our pioneering flailers to construct is closer to realization than I had imagined...?

Give a man a fish and he'll expect you to catch more for him tomorrow

I very much doubt that such a dramatic conspiracy theory actually does exist. The quote, "people here are taught what to think" is to some extent true, but it does not occur as a result of any Head Office directive. In fact, Head Office is constantly encouraging us to take courses in which we learn about fostering in our classrooms creative engagement, critical thinking, and collaborative and self-directed learning while navigating through the wild and woolly Internet zone.

Head Office recognizes that our economy is unable to survive on mass production any longer and our task as educators is to take apart the apparatus that once churned out factory drone workers (I'm a product of that system... and no, I'm not proud of it) and rebuild a more modern structure in which to develop a new generation of imaginative, creative, analytical, design-driven problem-solvers, ready to take on the challenges of an uncertain future.

In the meantime, instead of the government asserting its authority, there has been a great loosening up of citizens' freedoms. The media are age-restricted rather than blanket-censored; Internet access and the discourse that transpires therein is largely free-and-easy; the police are hardly anywhere to be seen (sometimes we even wonder if there are enough police around to maintain law and order if things went bad); and people are becoming increasingly bold and more vociferous, taking issue with the apparently incompetent and self-serving policies of the big, bad government.

20 years ago, when the Man had it all locked down, the government was inviolable. Today there exists a relationship between the government and the people we can only describe as "no up, no down". Today, we think nothing of hurling rotten tomatoes at our MPs and Ministers whenever they say something stupid or make some gross miscalculation in their decision-making. The roles of master and servant have almost reversed places in this new flattened hierarchy.

The guy being interviewed in the Al-Jazeera clip above thinks we are sheep, but clearly, we aren't. We may be the product of an education system that tried to make us meek assembly-line operators. We are the generation that was taught what to think, but even so, we aren't thinking along party lines. Instead, we are thinking we want more opposition voices in Parliament, more representation for our own needs and aspirations which are far from fulfilled, less BS from the incumbents and more engagement in talking about the things that we want rather than having what we need forced down our throats.

If today's generation is being taught to learn by rote, it's because that's how we learned when we were that age. Pupils, parents, pedants and Principals swear by that method, so no matter what Head Office tells us, at implementation level we do our own filtration and fall back on what has always worked best: standard answers which we all agree on, making them easy for the kids to memorize and for us to grade. This is the legacy effect of an education system that surpassed all prior expectations and is now struggling to cope with a new reality. Few want to let go of a system that worked such wonders before and venture into untested waters to explore beyond the familiar. Fortunately for us, I do see the few out there, flailing about, doing their best to trailblaze a four-lane highway for the rest of us to follow. But until that happens, the old methods will still be with us for a while yet. Hence, the inertia.

Elitism is only half the story

Interesting that retired PM Goh is reminding the privileged people to guard against elitism.

I'll open a can of worms by suggesting that in creating a social divide, it takes two hands to clap. While we would like the privileged to not act like jerks who have too much money to know what to do with, the rest of us not-so-privileged folks should likewise not let the income gap cause us to despair and pigeonhole ourselves into thinking we've stagnated, and blame the 'elites' for keeping us down.

Our economic system still offers opportunity for everyone who seeks it. For us starting at the bottom of the pile, if we set our sights high, there are ways to get there -- but not through the safe, secure office job we've been promised as a child for studying our brains out and passing exams.

We're only stagnated if we swallowed that promise hook, line and sinker. The way up is tough; fraught with failure and dead ends. At times, our progress is so slow that it may look like we'll never get there, but we keep moving forward with our dreams, our plans and our goals anyway. People will kindly 'advise' us with the best of intentions to be sensible and get back on the 'safe' path again, and many times, we'll be tempted to quit. And if we listen to them, that too is stagnation.

I'm not saying that we should gamble blindly, but rather to have a dream we can articulate and have a plan we can put in action. We learn from our failures, pick ourselves up and keep climbing. And even at the end if we don't 'make it' the way we had originally defined 'make it', we're still further along ahead of where we were when we started our journey, and much happier for it.

Or just be content with what we have and live within our means, even if we have to forego the luxuries we see other people enjoying. After all, on first impression, there's no way to tell if they are up to their necks in hock in order to luxuriate in their finery.

Elitism means to keep things from people. Envy seeks to take things away from people. Both forces at work in society cause irreparable rifts between people, making them think that the existing system does not work when in fact it does. It works on the principle of Generosity: to put things in people's hands. Give.

Dog play date

Tasha's going to meet a new friend over dinner so she's spending the morning at the groomer's to get her presentable.

This is Twinkle, a fellow maltipoo. Although they both belong to the same designer breed, their genetic variables make them look and behave very differently from each other.

This is the location of our date, III Cafe. It's on East coast Road, around the corner from Siglap. But to find the place you have to first enter George's Mad Grill, then keep right to slip in through a side door and up the stairs to this little pet dining haven.

The menu for humans offers simple dishes without too much variety. We ordered two sides of ham and bacon pizza to share among our party of four.

The baked salmon was the overwhelming favourite main course, beating out the wrap 3:1. The salmon came with a zesty fruit salad which was sweet and refreshing. The salmon itself was a bit dry and overcooked for my taste -- but then I prefer the sashimi style any day.

Dog dish: huge meatballs (your choice of meat). And this is Tasha wolfing down her share like there's no tomorrow.

Group photo time! And yes, Pebbles came for the ride too. But he stuck close to his corner of the sofa and socialized with the others... from a distance. other diners brought other kinds of pets than dogs too. A couple of kids, who got somewhat more attention from Tasha than they liked, brought a guinea pig in a small mammal carrier.

Ok, so food-wise, Sun-Ray Cafe offers a better quality menu at slightly higher prices, but this place is more spacious, offering the dogs more room to run, play and mingle. The atmosphere is bright, open and friendly, so be prepared to entertain strange dogs coming right up to sniff you at your table while your dog does the same to other tables.

Down in the dumps

So we made yet another world-class top-ten: #10 on Gallup's list of the most pessimistic countries in the world. We're right up there with Greece and a bunch of rather depressing Euro countries, Haiti and Taiwan, so we're really partying with the best of them.

The linked article also recalls another poll in which we bottomed out as the "least emotional people in the world". Has anyone really seen an unemotional Singaporean? What with the road rage, the railing at government inefficiencies, the whining and complaining that's become our national pastime (along with shopping and food bingeing), "unemotional" is quite an ironic description of the Singaporean mood-meter reading.

Which is why I suspect Singaporeans are fantastic liars when it comes to providing information for inconsequential surveys. It's ingrained somewhere in our psyches from our immigrant peasant roots that we never let on how happy we are, especially in front of strangers. To do so would be tempting fate to reverse our fortune with a disaster or three. A couple of generations ago, people named their children after farm animals so that passing mischief makers -- mortal or ethereal -- would mistake the subject of discussion for a common thing, instead of the bundle of joy it was and so not bother trying to make off with it out of malice or spite.

Interpreting the Singaporean response to Gallup's latest poll has to be read within our cultural context. The fact that we made it to the top-10 pessimist list actually means the opposite. We actually are a damned happy people, but you'll never hear about that from us.

A tumble

Dropped in to see Mom. She'd taken a tumble down some stairs over the weekend. She said it was because she was stumbling around in the dark. It's what happens when you've lived in the same place for so long, you don't think you need to switch on the lights any more to navigate your way around. But a moment of inattention later, an accident occurs.

Good to see her cheerful, alert and recuperating at home. And her sense of humour is still intact. Although there's a big bump on her head, there's no concussion. However, her arm is in a cast for a suspected hairline fracture in her wrist.

It's that time of life when we start worrying about our old folks.

Dog and ball

Tasha's finally getting some mileage out of her Mazee puzzle ball. It's a simple 3-D maze enclosed in a transparent sphere. You load in a few dog treats and watch her roll the thing around until a treat falls out. Repeat until depleted. Earlier, we made the mistake of putting in tiny treats that fell out way too easily. No challenge. The bone shaped biscuits had more staying power and kept her occupied for way longer.

Yup, a blur of motion she is, chasing her new toy across the floor. We won't have to worry about what she'll destroy next... for a while at least.

Creating intelligence

I've been reading Visions by Michio Kaku. Published in 1997, it envisions the future century based on the work and research that was taking place at that time. About 15 years later, today, already some predictions have come to pass surprisingly quickly, others still need a slightly longer time-frame.

But what I want to share is three paragraphs from Dr Kaku's chapter on Artificial Intelligence. What I see in them is a parallel between the approach one AI branch is taking to create smart machines and the approach we in education default to in trying to create smart kids.

"Although researchers of the two schools of artificial intelligence sit side by side in the same building, the lines between them are clearly drawn. On one side of the debate are the distinguished founders of artificial intelligence who have spent a lifetime programming mammoth computers to model human intelligence. Their inspiration for a thinking machine was a powerful digital computer -- the bigger, the better. Their strategy was dubbed the top-down approach; they believed they could program in the logic and reasoning ability necessary for a machine to think. They assumed that thinking machines -- like Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom, who sprang out from Jupiter's forehead fully grown -- would emerge fully developed from a computer.

Their recipe for building a thinking machine was simple: First pour the complex rules and programming into a digital computer in order to reproduce logic and intelligence, then sprinkle on a few subroutines for speech and vision, attach mechanical hands, legs and eyes... Voila! You would have an intelligent robot. Inside that robot's brain would be a complete representation of the outside world, a detailed manual that described the rules for living in the real world.

Their philosophy was based on the idea that intelligence can be simulated by a "Turing machine," which forms the basis of all digital computers. But the traditionalists soon slipped into a quagmire; they profoundly underestimated the enormity of writing down the complete road map of human intelligence. Their computer-based machines turned out to be pathetic, feeble creatures. The mobile robots built on their approach consumed vast amounts of computer power, yet they were surprisingly inept: agonizingly slow and timid, they frequently got lost. They were useless in the real world." (Kaku, 1997).

The other approach is, obviously, the bottom-up approach. This approach is the learn-by-doing, trial-and-error, develop-environmental-awareness-from-your-own-immediate-surroundings method. Dr Kaku is clear that neither is the "superior" approach and that for AI to be truly successful, top and bottom must meet somewhere in the middle.

Likewise for our kids. Based on their somewhat disappointing mid-year performance, they clearly demonstrate how their top-down learning method with heavy reliance on rote gives them a lot of information to reproduce in their essays, but very little ability to string a reasoned argument together that makes much sense. The kids may have a lot memorized, but ultimately it means nothing to them. They act like conduits, passing along information but none of it is real to them. Because they have no personal stake in the info, there is also neither structure nor framework in which they can manipulate the info to any purposeful use.

Below, I'm sharing a video clip that demonstrates how a bottom-up approach does seem to boost development in the kind of discourse required of the kids for GP:

Assuming the subtitles are legit (I'm a bit dubious of the jump-cuts), this 12-year old would ace GP already. At his fingertips are issues relating to politics, religion, socio-economic inequality, law and order, and human rights which he most eloquently discusses as he explains his purpose for not being in school today.

His intelligence stems from simply being aware of his immediate environment, exercising good sense and good judgement based on a value system that respects equality, freedom and eschews exploitation and the abuse of power. He reads the newspaper, listens to people, watches TV, reads from the Internet, and most importantly, uses his own brain. He lives GP, breathes GP, thinks GP.

A kid like this is likely to view with contempt any attempt by his teacher to give him a pre-digested 'reading package'. He might even burn it for being establishment propaganda. Our kids treat reading packages like the Gospel. 'nuff said.

Being Deadpool

Playing "Deadpool: The Game" is like stepping in the playpen of a deranged, homicidal, lunatic which, in fact, Deadpool (the Marvel Comics character) is. It's a bit disturbing because when you play a role in a video game, especially in the third person, the effect is that while you are manipulating the digital puppet you lose yourself in order to take on the character's persona; but in D:TG you get the distinct impression that the PUPPET is manipulating YOU.

This role reversal is created by the character of Deadpool, who is one of the most self-aware characters of any medium in which he exists. Constantly breaking the fourth wall, he speaks directly to the reader -- in this case, the player -- while the other characters chalk up his behaviour as just another manifestation of his unstable frame of mind.

And his constant chatter never stops! While the player primarily interacts with Deadpool's ego, his id and superego lend two additional personalities (with voices to match) all having a three way conversation while at the same time addressing the player and the supporting cast of characters including the baddies, the X-Men AND the game designer whom he berates from time to time about the quality (or lack thereof) of his game design.

There's our first premise right there: the player is playing a game commissioned by Deadpool, designed by an unwilling game designer with little budget ('cos his mentally unsound employer has no money to put into game development) while the point of the game is to complete an assassination contract so that Deadpool can be paid some money so that he can pay the game designer to come up with a better job of designing a game worthy of the Deadpool name. Wow, summarized in one sentence! Terrific!

Ok, that's the meta part of the game. The playable part is dead simple: help Deadpool kill lots of people -- sometimes in the goriest way possible; pick up buxom chicks (his people skills are zero, though, so this challenge is totally impossible); and if he's taken damage, stay alive long enough for his regenerative power to kick in. If he dies, he will scold the player for letting him down. Trust me, he will die. A lot. And then the player can continue the game from the last save point, and hopefully get better results, i.e., plot progression.

Speaking of plot, there actually isn't one. That's because Deadpool has the attention span of a ravenous housefly in a septic tank. When the other characters, like Cable, try to explain the mission, motivation and other relevant exposition, all Deadpool hears is "blah, blah, blah...", while he pleads with the player to press a button and make it stop. All Deadpool wants is to kill more bad guys and get the girl at the end. As the player, honestly, that's what we want too, isn't it? Plot is just trimming and unnecessary context, a roadblock in the way of our innate compulsion to paint the town red... with buckets of blood.

Here's a good time to present a parental advisory: D:TG is ridiculously violent. Deadpool is inhumanly proficient in both melee and gun fights. We may be used to enemies being gibbed in normal gameplay, but Deadpool's stealth attacks are horrifically vicious... yet so satisfying to pull off. It's also funny as while sneaking up on a poor, unsuspecting schlub, Deadpool will occasionally turn to look at the player with a finger to his lips, or use hand signals to indicate whether to advance or stop as he tracks the movements of his target for the optimal strike.

Gameplay is a mix of run-and-gun (while running, Deadpool can shoot backwards -- a very useful skill to master!); sneak and silent kill; and some very rudimentary puzzle solving. Equipped with upgradable personal and equipment bonuses paid for with collectible 'DP points' and some unbelievable cut-scene hilarity, both the player and Deadpool build themselves up to the climactic battle which is quite a test of endurance and skill patience. And just when you think it's all over, the final confrontation with the formidable Mr Sinister is frosting on the cake. A particularly nutty fruitcake, at that.

What I like about D:TG is that it is a comedic romp hosted by a nonsensical, sophomoric psycho who gets away with gaping plot holes; a tenuous grasp on reality; and shameless, self-aggrandizing narration. The game mechanics vary wildly, as random as the game's eponymous protagonist's state of mind, yet there is still some discernible method to the madness.

What I don't like is that there are too many buttons to mash, especially when I'm not playing with a console controller but a keyboard. Although I can map the keys to my preference, some key combinations are impossible to execute without temporarily losing control of the character. As the game progresses, more and more fighting combos are unlocked, but it still comes back to mashing the most accustomed set of buttons anyway. Dexterously uncoordinated, that's me.

Some people don't like the fact that completing the game doesn't take long, but I like short games 'cos I have a life.

D:TG is violently fun and relies a lot on cheap humour (including toilet humour and bad puns -- the first game objective is to "play with Deadpool's junk," hur, hur). Gameplay is not difficult (barring the number of buttons to keep track of) but does take time to figure out the right timing to balance kill efficiency with long-term survivability. However, after playing the game once through, there seems to be little incentive for replay. Maybe that's for the best. Summer vacation is over.

Resident artist

Every day I get a surprise piece of installation art from my resident artist, Tasha. Today, she has outdone herself by discovering and using new materials from the wardrobe which she has learned to open. Not that it's hard to learn -- it slides open at the gentlest push. In this masterpiece, she has also included tissue and whatever they call paper used for wrapping new clothes in, and also the hard copy of her blood test results for a macabre touch. AND a (thankfully) unused poo bag, all carefully shredded and distributed across the floor, presumably to protest against the use of mines in warfare.

Car park tag

Every time the beginning of the month rolls around, I play 'tag' with him whom I call the 'Chief Elf'. He's the guy who manages the car wash business in my residential parking lot. Yes, I get my car washed every weekday evening at a subscription rate of $40 per month.

Our mutual problem is collection. When I have money to pay Chief Elf, I can't find him. When my wallet is empty, he suddenly pops up from nowhere and I have to 'ahem' an excuse to delay payment... next time. For the record, my accounts are square with him to date, regardless of the monthly hits and misses.

Oh, so why don't I just pay his minion elves on his behalf? Because they're mostly invisible! But they're not figments of my imagination either. I have had occasional sightings of buckets and rags, and even more rarely accompanied by one or another elf in question. Nevertheless, every morning, M2 and his neighbouring cars are clean and relatively presentable.

How I get my car cleaned isn't the point of today's story. The point is that Chief Elf has found a way to solve the collection problem. He called my cell phone. Here's the thing: I. never. gave. him. my. number! How the HEdoublehockeysticks did he get my number? Who told on me? Was it Snowden? Hope Russia grants you asylum in Siberia if it was!

Weighed down

This is what Tasha was like when I came home from work. Lethargic, depressed, even. The cone puts a lot of stress and added weight on her neck, so she can't jump or otherwise be the naughty little thing she usually is. It turns out that the cone has been quite ineffective, anyway. Apparently, when her underparts were shaved during the op prep, she may have got a bit of razor burn and that's what's been bothering her. By this morning, she'd scratched that bit raw. With a patch of epidermis scraped off, it looked really horrid. We had to cover it, but her T-shirts were the midriff-baring types, so they were no good. What June ended up making her wear is a piece of cut-out tights, long enough to do the job. Brainwave, I think.

Now cone-free, she's so much happier and almost back to her normal self. She's already destroyed her brand new pig skin chew toy... in minutes.

Cone

Oops. Spoke too soon about Tasha not needing the cone. It's obviously not comfortable but it's for her own good.

It's not a well known fact, but my bicep makes a great dog pillow.