JY puts on her best smile for her mugshot. Good luck, girl! 

To us, JY's not just another face in the crowd. Here, she awaits her turn in the audition room. 

But... our hopes of being the next Superstar's best 'blading buddies have come to nought. Oh, well, there'll be other auditions.

Together with Thad, the four of us binged on carbs at Swensen's, J8, just to spite the celebrity-making industry. Mmm... seafood pasta...

Watson totally crashed on me the night I got back from Malacca. I'm now posting this entry via his replacement, erm... we'll just call him Mr L33t for now. I went for an Athlon 3000+ and a GeForce 7600GT. With the other essentals thrown in, he cost me nearly $1.2K, just after my Malacca vacation AND another $200 which I had to fork out to replace M2's reverse parking sensor which also mysteriously died as soon as it's 1-year warranty expired.

Yesterday was my day to spend an awesome amount of money. No wonder I'm broke all the time. Sigh.

Oh, and this morning, I worked on reviving Watson. Turns out it was the Radeon X700 that had totally died, so I replaced it with my old, faulty 9800 and installed a spare 80G HDD, so Watson is more or less resurrected. He's ok to run Office on now, but I doubt he'll ever play games again. Time to put him out to pasture, anyway. Old people shouldn't have to strain themselves so hard.

Back online at last! Lots to update, so let's take it slowly...

Well, I'm back from Malacca. With me were Amy, Baggy, CQ, Dee, HP, Shah, and Vince, all stuffed into a Suzuki APV, the only Class 3 8-seater we could find on the rental market. More on that later.

We put up at the Hotel Puri, a refurbished Peranakan shophouse that's very proud of its heritage. It may not look like much from the outside, but it's quite spacious and comfortable inside. The rooms are functional, and thank God for air-conditioning. Service staff very friendly -- almost family-like even, about as familiar as that.

3 main activities that kept us occupied: eat, sleep and mark assignments. We made the absolute right choice in coming here. The food's excellent, it's quiet enough to concentrate on marking and since there are no other tourist attractions to distract us, we slept any time we felt like it without feeling guilty that we might be missing out on something.

For food recommendations, we applaud Shah for insisting we try the seafood at the Portuguese Settlement. Getting there without a map kept us in orbit around Malacca's Bandar Hilir until the Italy bakery we passed by again and again became our landmark for being lost. But the people were helpful and by piecing together their scavenger-hunt clue fragments we eventually settled at the Settlement for a magnificent feast. We polished off sambal fish, deep-fried calamari, devil chicken, 3-flavoured prawns, sambal kangkong and rice in a fraction of the time it took us to find the place. Half the fun is getting there, after all. No stingray as a mark of respect for Steve Irwin. Crikey!

A gold star for Baggy too, who found the little outlet serving the cendol and laksa she was raving about. "Donald & Lily," just across the big car park off Jln Tun Tan Cheng Lok. Fresh, concentrated coconut milk is the essence of their house specialties. If you're on a diet, too bad for you.

In the evenings, we gathered in the boys' room to watch the least intellectual of the DVDs CQ brought along (he'd taken it upon himself to be Entertainment i/c), though we never did play his card games. We were just too lazy to get ourselves that organized.

I got to drive the APV back in Singapore. For an 8-seater, it's powered by a relatively puny 1.6l engine, and looks about as sexy as a brick. I don't know how it handles fully loaded (ask Vince about that if you really wanna know) but empty it feels surprisingly nimble. Acceleration and braking are quite responsive; almost like driving a regular sedan though the vantage is slightly higher. Returned the vehicle to the rental company in one piece this time. :D

Great vacation! Got close to 40% of my marking load completed so it was a productive time too! We've proven we can travel together without killing each other so... let's do it again!

Photos here:

by s_min_y

People bring their cats to dog shows and no one bothers. We were refused entry into today's cat show because we brought Q-tip with us. Security at the door said that Q-tip needed a vet's certification of health to get in, but the vet on duty had already left the building (it was only just after 1100 hrs!). Poor Q-tip. Being a dog means she gets subject to a lot of discrimination.

So we bought only 1 ticket for June while Q-tip and I waited outside for her. These occasions are usually good for discounts on pet supplies and we didn't want to waste the opportunity. She bought a new scratching post to replace the one Kaiser single-handedly destroyed within a couple of months, a new sleeping basket for Q-tip (who will be summarily evicted out of by Kaiser at his leisure), and 4 months' supply of kitty litter.

While June was shopping, she also made contact with the home for strays that we put Abby in. The home had set up a booth at the show to show off their more promising cats up for adoption. Abby was amongst the eligible so June got to play with her again for a while. Good news! Abby's been adopted by someone called Jasmine, so she has a proper home to stay in now.

Other than that, my Aunt Shirley arrived from London this evening. We collected her from the airport and went back to my mom's place for dinner, following which we drove her to another aunt's place where she will be staying for the duration of her vacation. M2 really put in quite a lot of work today. Never mind, he'll get a break for the next 3 days. I'm off to Malacca (again) in the morning!

Hmm... doubt I'll be updating while I'm away. In that case, see y'all at the end of the week, 'k?

Q-tip accompanied me to Sembawang Park for a little prelim marking. Earlier on there was something of a flypast from the airbase nearby: 2 Chinooks, followed by 2 Super Pumas, followed by 2 Apaches! We felt sooo honoured.

NBS on keyboard, Ivay on the 'bone 

JY tries out her audition piece in front of a 'live' audience. Good luck, JY! We're behind you all the way!!! 

Mel powers out her 'top of the world" feeling at the Staff dinner on Wednesday night. 

A happy 'chers' Day to my friends and colleagues! The actual day is tomorrow but today are the festivities. I got a chance to sit out of the performances this year and let the new guys and a couple of evergreens take the spotlight in my stead. I was glad to get out of the way 'cos I got to enjoy a good show in its entirety.

The unnamed staff band rocked socks. A little more practice and polish (NBS, read more rehearsal time), a more confident presence from the band members (don't let Mel steal all the limelight from you), and a catchy band name, and you'll definitely top the charts on campus! I think there's actual quality here, and it'll be a shame to let it just get forgotten after only 2 outings. Cut a record, guys! Think about it...

Gotta thank various people for the miscellaneous consumables that came my way: Li Ting, Shu Hui, and the collective represented by Glyn. For the little magic wrought by KI's Taily and Que, the card of quiet understanding from Shao Xun, and warm and sincere slippin' of skin with 'deep, Stan and Jackie. For the most appropriate reporter's pad and pen from conneX' Loga. For the e-card of heartfelt appreciation from conneX' Faith. For the photo ops with 2 great gals, Mun Foong and Hui Chiet, and with Jian Sheng too! And for the album of thoughts and well wishes from 05s6a. Um... did I miss anyone out? Thanks so much, everyone!

S6a, about your album, I think that above everything else I've tried to teach you, I wanted you to learn to write truthfully, honestly and from your heart. It seems many of you have learnt that one most important writing skill going by some of the things you wrote, and I am gratified that I have done my job so well. Thanks for the encouragement!

I've also been recently blessed with a pile of prelim essays to mark over the hols (thanks...). Just how bad were the prelims, anyway? I'd appreciate feedback!

It's the calm before the storm as a sullen mob gathers outside their room of doom. Welcome to the short spell before we let the kids in to take the GP prelim paper. Yup, prelims have begun as the calendar counts down the days left to the 'A's

 

Hey, for what it's worth since you'll only be able to read this after your paper, have a good paper y'all!

The modern tricycle is an irksome machine, reminding me of everything that's wrong with today's version of 'childhood'. The tricycle I remember was a 3-wheeled, muscle-powered vehicle that transported a kid to wherever his imagination took him. Today's new-fangled contraptions come with an added innovation: the adult supervisory steering (ASS) handle, which sticks out from behind the rider's seat for a parent to grab onto and literally become the back-seat driver. As if parents these days don't have enough methods of pushing their kids around, as it is.

Sure, the parent doesn't have to hold onto the control stick, but I would think that such a device ought to be an opt-in choice rather than an opt-out one. If parents want such exclusive control, the onus should be on them to bolt on the device themselves rather than making it the default option. After all, who's riding the trike, anyway?

Fine, it's safer, 'cos who knows what horrific accidents a kid might cause if he's left pedalling by himself? Who wants to risk a civil lawsuit on grounds of parental neglience by failing to prevent junior from bringing down a telephone pole, thus causing communication outages in several sections of the neighbourhood?

But that's just it, isn't it? Childhood has become too 'safe' for society's good. From the cleanliness and sterile hygiene of infancy, to the padded surface of the standards committee certified-safe playground, to the educational safety-nets parents tend to over-provide for their growing offspring, everything about childhood is designed to enhance the viability of each individual child to employable maturity.

Is it any wonder, then, that we're having a Great Baby Shortage? With the chances of each child making it to adulthood so high these days, we don't see the need for multiple redundancies any longer. Back in the days when Safety didn't feature so much, attrition compelled us to lay our genetic eggs in as many baskets as possible. John got smallpox and died; Mary fell off a cliff and died; a mammoth stampede killed Jason; Steve got impaled with a spear in the... (ahem) wars against the Medes and is, um... not likely to bear any offspring as a result; Thomas got sacrificed to the gods for a good harvest next year; and Graargh, the Sabretooth, happily dined on Heather last weekend; leaving only Harold and Sally to carry on the family name. Two replacing two, if we were so lucky.

These days, we see that kids are so gonna make it into adulthood that we don't mind that they're other people's kids. We don't want or need our own since we're already assured that our species will go on at least till the next generation, so hey, why bother? Other parents' bundles of joy are our bundles of joy, minus the bonus of soiled diapers and screaming competitions that we really can do without.

What then do we have to do to increase the number of babies born to our populace? It isn't the money, it isn't the time, it isn't the selfish attitudes of our young adults. There simply isn't the biological incentive to make more copies of ourselves than absolutely necessary.

So what do we have to do? Remove the control handle on the tricycle, for a start. Remove the safety standards from our playgrounds. Let kids eat the dirt and crap they prefer to their sanitized processed foods. Let them play with other kids and risk grevious bodily harm as they rough-house each other. When the mortality rate gets high enough, we will compensate biologically. It's only mathematics, after all.

Forgive me. After a couple of lean, uninspired days, we get this sewage overflow.

Recently, I've had several enquiries about the Language component in GP, mostly regarding the basis on which we assign the grade. Without having to explain the entire "band" marking scheme which can get unnecessarily quantitative, here's my own qualitative approach to gauging language use in a paper:

You have to imagine your essay or compre script as a discussion between yourself and your examiner. You are both seated at a coffee table talking over the issue of your question. The examiner is most likely to be a native speaker of the language, and you are, well, you.

Ask yourself how comfortable you are with the situation. Can you have as easy and fluent a conversation with your examiner as you could with a friend? Is what you are saying comprehensible to your examiner or are you likely to get lots of "excuse me," "pardon me," "could you repeat that s.l.o.w.l.y. for me, please" requests? Are you giving the impression that you are treating the examiner with the proper respect as an equal, or -- like you do with your mother -- are you trying to brush off the issues as quickly as possible so you can get on with the rest of your life?

You can multiply these self-check questions with the application question. Sitting with you and your examiner are the authors of the articles that you are reading as your compre passages. The AQ is a full-blown discussion amongst the 3 or 4 of you, all learned, articulate men and women, interested in the world, sharing different ideas from all your myriad experiences over biccies and a hot cuppa'.

The ability to speak a language is a mark of peerage. In other words, if two people use exactly the same language, they are equals. In this case, the more equal you are, the higher you're ranked. Paradoxical, but there you go!

Kaiser got his claws trimmed. He's not gonna stab me in the toe while I sleep again! 

Look who's got a new haircut -- that scruffy snowball look was so yesterday! 

It's been this kind of a weekend for Q-tip, and us too! 

Guess it's been that kind of a week, with me feeling all self-indulgent and not making much more than brief comments about the stuff I've been ingesting. But that in itself is significant in that throughout the week some of us did manage to find time to socialize and unwind, for which I am truly grateful. It took some co-ordination, and there were a few last-minute decisions made, but I'd say the effort was worth it. Yes, this week was special. Thanks, everyone :)

So much protein in my diet. The past few days it's been a carnivore's paradise. Last night we were at Sunset with me pigging out on a fabulously thick, juicy hamburger with cheese, bacon and 'shrooms. Table for 10: Amy, CQ, Dee, Gary, HP, Jo, me, Q-tip and Vince; Anthony and Wendy joining us later.

Not often so many of us can buang our responsibilities and enjoy an evening out, but we pulled it off anyway -- without guilt too, I daresay.

Dropped in on the parental residence last night. My bro had brought back an Austrian salami as a souvenir for me from his sojourn in Germany, and it needed collecting.

Makes a nice change hanging out with the parents. It's so relaxing being with people who have all the time in the world on their hands. No rush, no schedule, just doing what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, no earlier.

I walked with them to dinner, and for the first time in a long, long while, I walked through the old route along the storm drain that cuts a narrow path between our neighbours' backyards to the coffee shop that was once my dining room. It bears a new name now, Seletar Corner, and the most popular stall there is the Western food one. The steaks are functional at best, but cheap and tasty nonetheless.

Al fresco dining on a breezy cool sidewalk with the folks. Wonder why we don't do it more often?