Me as Santa, jolly old elf? I was quite sorry to turn down Mom's request for me to play the role traditionally played every year by 1st uncle. The Christmas Event with my maternal clan is starting in a couple of hours but, really, I don't want to be Santa.

All year long, I've kept kids at arm's length or further. Some people have phobias of spiders. My phobias tend towards the bipedal and noisy. It feels horribly insincere to make a sudden, complete transformation and pretend even for an hour that things have changed. I know it's just a role, and actors play roles all the time, but this is family.

Hope Irwin's up to the task. He's way more paternal than me.

How do we say 'goodbye' to friends who are leaving us, if not necessarily for greener pastures, then for new opportunities elsewhere? Well, Mel got us breakfast circle people and attachments over to meet at Wayne's house for a farewell barbecue for JY and Linc.

For once, there was no messing around with a messy charcoal bbq pit. Wayne cooks with gas! Meat went on the grill, flipped a few times over, and then off for consumption (i.e., to be eaten, not tuberculosis). The biggest worry was overcooking rather than undercooking the spread. The other worry was, as usual, too much food.

We commemorated their departure the same way we celebrate each others' company every day at work: over food. Anyway, since JY still 'blades with us, we'll still be in contact with each other from time to time. And now that NBS has a pair of new pink 'blades, maybe she'd like to join us sometime?

Momo, you are such a bad example! I've been taking your lead over the last couple of days. So much needing to be done, but here I am procrastinating until there are no more days left to push yesterday's work off to. I am so dead.

Madoka, June's friend from Japan, will be arriving for a homestay with us a couple of days after Christmas over the New Year. That's gonna call for a major cleanup of our house, which, I suppose, is long overdue. Notice when I take pix in the house they're always super close-up? Now you know why.

Finally got to celebrate our anniversary, a couple of weeks late. Every year around this time, we'd pick a nice restaurant to pig out at to commemorate another year of our being together.

This year, thanks to a memory jog from Mary, I picked Wild Rocket @ Mt Emily. What I did forget was that the menu is entirely fusion which I disapprove of on principle.

Regardless, we had a solidly satisfying meal. June had a pleasant "giam chye" duck/quail soup, while I had a smooth cream of cauliflower to chase down the complementary foccacia dipped in olive oil.

What June's holding in the pix is our main dish: an Aussie ribeye. Just look at the colour... these people know medium-rare. I ordered the rare, myself. Let's just say ketchup is redundant when the meat can produce such a lovely quality of red on its own. The other things in the dish are sweet potato chunks and rocket, the leafy vegetable that the establishment takes its name from.

We took dessert at NYDC. Sorry, but fusion desserts do not compute for me. Simple, honest-to-goodness cheesecake and ice-cream (so fresh even the nuts are still crunchy).

Better start exercising to burn all these extra calories off!

We and Jen are back at 1827 for Adrian and Mary's birthday. There are some new items on the menu and it's still cheaper to order a complete 5-dish set at $40 than go a la carte. The portions are a little small, but it makes sense to go with 5 dishes instead of ordering an el cheapo 4-dish option.


I had:
Home-cured salmon
White cod soup (cod a little underdone, but I think it was meant to be because when I got used to the taste, it was beautiful)
Seafood stew in otah paste
Pumpkin custard
Coffee (which, I guess, counts as the 5th dish)


Made plans for Christmas dinner over dinner, while pouring over Adrian's holiday snapshots from a couple of years ago which he only just developed. And we all (except Mary) agreed that the year has passed by so quickly.

The concept of "blood brothers" in "Warlords" is self-contradictory and self-defeating. Loyalty among men, especially fighting men, is paramount on the battlefield. There, survival depends entirely on brothers watching each others' backs. Life-debts get owed and repaid countless times over. There is no other binding force like facing death together, and surviving, of course.

Things get a lot more complicated in peace time. Loyalties are put to the test when it comes to deciding on how to treat unarmed prisoners-of-war. Ethics, morals, honour and justice are fine ideals, but the practicalities of war necessitates that such have to be put aside for the success of the campaign. Among the three sworn brothers, played by Andy Lau, Jet Li and Takeshi Kaneshiro, there's bound to be a difference of opinion in such a life-and-death decision, and an army can only have one commander.

Other conflicts arise over the division of the spoils of war, and the code-of-conduct of soldiers during the sacking of a fallen city. Lau's greatest concern is for the welfare of the men who serve in the regiment, while Li's war doctrine is victory at any cost. Kaneshiro is stupidly caught between the two poles, unimaginative and consequently unhelpful in his sorry attempts to keep the integrity of the brotherhood intact.

Their brotherhood is based on some rigidly inflexible premises. The blood they share comes from each of them slaying an innocent non-combatant captive; their oath prescribes death on any that comes between their brotherhood. Although Li says the oath, he also reveals that he does not believe in it. As a General of the Qing army, he knows that keeping such an oath is impossible. And when Qing Dynasty politics takes an interest in Li's Shan army, the brotherhood is doomed to fall apart.

Of the movies this year, "Warlords" comes closest to depicting war is hell. "300" boasts some lovely fight choreography, but "Warlords" is just brutal hand-to-hand melee combat. Li demonstrates some wushu technique but it is understated compared to the wild swinging of bladed weapons and the thrust of spears of men concerned not so much about winning as they are about just surviving to see another day.

The greatest tragedy is that this war means nothing to the people who are fighting it. Li's Shan army fights on the behalf of a government that cares nothing for it. The soldiers have enlisted only so that they have food to eat, and to send they wages back to their families who are otherwise destitute.

It's a dark movie, and the lack of pretty faces underscores this point. Lau at some angles reminds me of DiNiro, Li is heavy-set and balding, and Kaneshiro and his scraggly beard just looks goofy as he dithers between his two brothers. Even the female lead played by Xu Jinglei (who's she?) while reasonably pleasant-looking, is no mega-babe and we wonder why she is the object of affection for both Lau and Li, as if there's only one woman in all of China. While she isn't exactly a cause of conflict between the two, their triangular relationship does become too much for the dimwit Kaneshiro to process, and his response is legend among village idiots to this day.

Closing thought: The feast Li prepares in Lau's honour looked very much like what B-lo, Mel, NBS and I, and several other people around us were having for lunch today. That so many of us can now eat like how only Generals of the past could is quite a staggering thought. That's not something we should take for granted.

The boy called Liir grows up with more questions than he has answers for. Of his parentage he is uncertain, of his talents he apparently has none, his lot seems to be nothing more than being a target for bullying or otherwise suffering. His purpose in life? Dunno.

When we first encounter him in Maguire's "Son of a Witch", he's in such bad shape he practically has to be scraped off the desert floor with broken bones, a broken face, and bordering on death. His shallow breath and his erratic heartbeat are his only signs of life. How he got there and in this condition is also a question that needs an answer.

"SoW" is the sequel to "Wicked" in which Liir is introduced as a permanent tag-along of Elphaba, aka the Wicked Witch of the West. By proximity alone Liir is assumed to be Elphaba's illegitimate son, but there is no evidence of any biological bond between the two in "Wicked".

Apart from Liir's history, "SoW" also explores how this nobody of a character -- plagued with uncertainty, inertia and self-doubt -- attempts to cope with growing up, orhaned and abandoned as he is after the watery demise of his guardian, Elphaba.

But Liir is no hero, as such. Liir's flawed sense of self leads to a tragedy that will haunt him for life, and in atonement he undertakes a series of loosely related tasks that sets him against the new political-military machine that has arisen since the Wizard's departure from Oz.

Liir must live a very frustrating life. From Dorothy (from Kansas) to the Elephant disguised as a human princess, Liir manages to find closures to their quests, and others besides. But for himself, well, let's just say that he doesn't demand much out of life, perhaps just some answers to his questions, and even then he finds that in life there are always more questions than there are answers for. How familiar that sounds.

What's admirable about Liir is that his questions determine his actions. Hence, for the most part, he really is quite a self-directed individual. It's only when he subordinates his questioning mind to the will of others, that's when his greatest regret occurs.

In life, having questions with no answers is better than accepting answers with no questions. Any questions?

The rains of the last few days washed out our cycling plans at Ubin. Plan-B it had to be: ice-skating at Ice Palace. What better way to acknowledge that winter is now upon us? The rink was packed with kids, it being "Students' Day" and they are off on their Christmas break. With such little room to maneuver, I was happy just to weave in and around the throng, round and round like a goldfish in a bowl.

But if I was a goldfish, there were piranha and 'cuda sharing the same bowl with me and the little fry clustering around the edges of the ice. The hockey guys had their throttles on 'high' and they were finding spaces to power through like the Millennium Falcon in an asteroid field. There were the gripes and grumbles about them, like how dangerous their play was and how nervous they made the other skaters feel. But where else could have they gone to practice what they love doing? I was marveling at how despite their tight constraints, they were still able to express themselves in the way they knew how. As far as I could tell, they didn't bump anyone, so hey, y'know, they have more right to be on the ice than the rest of us.

We had a small convoy bound for Seafood Paradise in Defu for dinner. This was to make up for not being able to have seafood under the sunset on Ubin. I doubt we could have had better fare on Ubin, though. Mmm... oatmeal prawns... chili crab... butter crab... apart from the sides shared among our table for eight. Gotta be fast eating with these guys, though. Wonder who made off with my mantou when I wasn't looking?

Welcome to Barrow, Alaska, where for one month every year, it remains night-time until sunrise, 30 days later. In "30 Days of Night", just as the sun begins to set for a month, a dingy icebreaker arrives bearing a crew full of pale-skinned, ill-tempered people with very bad teeth. Unfortunately for them, the local orthodontist has just flown off to spend his hard-earned cash on a sunny vacation in Florida. The strangers unsurprisingly go ballistic and turn the town upside-down.

"30 Days" is yet another movie in the survival horror genre. Only here, the survivors are hopelessly outclassed and outmatched by the visitors. Bullets don't even slow them down, so pretty soon, the town's population takes a drastic reduction with the visitors' onslaught.

In one breathtaking sequence, the camera tracks across town from a directly-overhead perspective, depicting the carnage as it takes place. Silhouetted against the snow, people get pounced on, sliced, diced and chomped on, leaving a brilliant crimson splatter on pristine white. Occasionally, we see flashes of gunshots, but we know it's a foregone conclusion. The view reminds me of an RTS simulation where things have gone badly wrong for your side. >Game over!<

For the handful of survivors to stay alive, there is no confronting the enemy. They stay quiet and hidden, doing nothing to attract any unwanted attention to themselves. That's a little difficult when among the survivors are a cantankerous Alzheimer's sufferer who needs his walkies, and a paranoid "I can't just sit here and die" nervous wreck.

To last 30 days in a frost enshrouded wreck of a town surrounded by a boatload of bloodthirsty predators, supplies are going to be a problem, and I don't remember there being much discussion on how the toilet facilities were going to work. Sneaking around, trying to stay quiet, hiding, all make for tense storytelling. Doors that don't lock very well, windows that expose too much, walls made of flimsy wood instead of reassuring concrete, the survivors' hiding spaces provide very little sense of security, and we feel it too.

Was it the scare-fest that I was expecting? Well, there were shocks a-plenty; some gory, disquieting scenes; and the atmosphere was taut throughout. Not a bad mix for a thriller, but I doubt that it will make a lasting impression on me. My mind's already too far scarred for that.

The mandatory vehicle inspection that I had to put M2 through was pretty thorough, and I got to watch the mechs put him through his paces. All the tests are in the open and there are signboards explaining what each station checks for.

The tests include an identity check to make sure the car you say is yours is yours, and no illegal mods. There is the brake test, and what appears to be an anal probe checking that exhaust levels are within tolerable limits. They check for engine noise at max rpm to ensure a happy car and happy neighbours.

Result: flunked the wheel alignment test and the headlight focus test. While I might have thought M2 was the picture of perfect health, guess I didn't realise he was actually myopic and limping around.

Had to make an appointment to have Mazda take fix up M2 before going for a retest. I do so hate the "F" grade.

It's Aunt L's 80th birthday! The clan got together to celebrate at Ah Yat Seafood Restaurant. For some reason we seem to like that place a lot.

Our 3 tables comprised 3 generations of family plus extended family we've not met before from Sabah, but who are now settled here. My table had a lot of engineering talk with notes being compared between the construction, shipbuilding and manufacturing industries. The topic of industrial accidents came up a lot, keeping us well entertained throughout our dinner.

The delectable confection in the pix (i.e., on the table, not behind the table) is a meringue cake from Canelé Pâtisserie Chocolaterie. It's light and sweet, and overgrown with lots of fruity surprises. Even the Shou figurine is made of sugar, though I doubt anyone would want to eat that.

More pix here.

Working breakfast at Cafe Les Amis, Botanic Gardens. Great ambiance for a relaxing brainstorming session 'cos there's good food, big tables and we can do the road warrior thing there as well, HP discovered. Thankfully, the weather was kind. It was cool but no precipitation for the duration of our meeting. And there's the added advantage of taking Q-tip for a stroll on the grounds after.

It was on our stroll that we encountered this guy, by the edge of the big pond where the bandstand is. The pic is a little hard to make out, but it's a squirrel looking like it's doing some exotic foraging. At least, that's what I thought when I snapped this shot. Cute, right?

Idiot! The squirrel was actually in serious trouble, but I only realized it's situation when it lost its toehold and slipped into the pond.

As it splashed around in the water, I lay on my stomach to reach it, but I couldn't get a proper grip on it. Between my flailing fingers it sank like a stone. I could only watch in anguish as fewer and fewer bubbles broke the water's surface. Then they stopped altogether.

I lay there for a long time, hoping for it to resurface by some miracle, but there were no miracles today.

If only I pegged onto what was happening sooner. If only I wasn't such a photojournalist, so anxious to grab a shot of a cute animal. The precious seconds I wasted cost the little guy its life, and this dumb photo can now only serve as its obituary.

I'm going to be beating myself up over this incident for a long time to come. I'm upset, sad, and so very guilty.

Sorry, l'il fella...

There is Project Work that is such a drag for everyone when it is a compulsory subject, then there is the real deal in which 16-17 year old students spend their holidays working on treating diseases like tuberculosis and bone disorders. The prize is a US$100k college scholarship, so there's something of an incentive, but I believe the money is more a bonus to these kids than the prime factor.

Yes, these are especially outstanding kids to be working at such a mature level, but I'm just amazed that there can be such a gap between them and our regular teenager, since they are the exact same age, after all.

What's it going to take to close the gap even just a little? From what I can see, these kids aren't just textbook smart. They are audacious enough to attempt working on things most adults have no grasp of. There's confidence in their own abilities, yet humility as well in learning from every opportunity. They believe in what they're doing, and know that it's worthwhile as people who are suffering may in time benefit from their study.

Now, that's studying with a purpose. Fox News interviews the grand prize winners of the Seimens Science Competition. Click here.

To have friends among the people you work with is a major factor in 1) making the job worthwhile, and 2) though the job isn't always fun, at least it doesn't feel like work. I say I'm not a "people person", but keeping the company of a small group of trusted individuals is nevertheless important to me. The time-outs we share while off-duty make up much of my sense of well-being, and I hope they feel the same way.

The last couple of days had me running around like crazy. Tuesday Amy, HP and I dropped in on Vays at Mount A to see how she and the new addition to her family were doing. We arrived at feeding time so hubby, TW, showed us his digital pix of "Doudou" while we waited. When we got to meet the kid in person, she looked peacefully contented, and Vays herself was upbeat as she recounted her delivery experience to us. After our visit, it was off home again to freshen up for the Prom (previous post).

Today, due to some mis-organization on my part, I spent the morning gift shopping with B-lo. The purchase was relatively painless, although we were getting a little worried when the first few stores we inquired at didn't have what we wanted in stock. But we did eventually find it in time for a nice set lunch at the Greenhouse. For what we usually pay at Friends, the set here includes a generous portion of sides apart from the entree. There was quite a variety of veggie-things, while the sirloin went down easily despite being slightly more done than I prefer. And B-lo had her own hunk of meat to drool over.

After lunch, we ran to meet Mel and Wayne for "Enchanted". What a piece of fluff. It had some gloriously funny moments, in particular the big number in Central Park, but while it tried to splice together elements from different popluar fairy tales, I felt they weren't as skilfully woven in as say, Shrek, or Neil Gaiman's intricate storytelling. Perhaps I'm asking too much. "Enchanted" was sweet but predictable.

Then I ran off again to collect June for dinner. It was the core of our usual breakfast company that reconvened at the Ellenborough Market Cafe to feast on the Peranakan buffet. Specifically, we were there for the durian puree that was cold, smooth and creamy, and without the seeds and spikes to get in the way of durian bliss. The other dishes were nice too.

Back to work in the morning, but I'm ready.

The Prom was a little tamer this year. Possibly because of the sit-down 10-course Chinese dinner and the presence of more senior staff that's why things felt a little more formal.

Not that the kids weren't having fun, they were playing along with the table games and being very competitive about it, but the cheering, clapping and general noisemaking for one another didn't exactly feel like it involved everybody. Perhaps they were saving their energy for the post-prom party later in the evening?

Or maybe I'm a bit jaded, having sat through the same MC's schtik for the third time already. I know his jokes, his routines, and despite minor variations here and there, it's usually funniest just the first time.

I promised to get some pix for NYconneX so I was also busy with my cam. Above with me are Que and Taily in one of the very few personal shots I took last night.

I have never played Hitman, but I went to watch the movie anyway. The Hitman in question is a nattily dressed bald guy with a barcode tattooed on the back of his head. How that makes him inconspicuous in a crowd, I wouldn't know.

His backstory gives him a reason for being as emotional as a hypothermic doorstop. He, and many others like him, have been raised from childhood as smart, efficient killing machines by the nameless Organization. Its clientèle are none less than political heads of state who order clandestine hits for reasons Joe Voter will never understand. The Hitmen are that good, and that expensive. No doubt the Organization itself has an agenda to run in its own interest.

In this movie, Number 47 takes the job of assassinating the Russian president, but realizes very quickly that his client has set him up. His client's agenda is so sensitive that even the Hitman himself has to be eliminated as a potential witness. 47 then has to survive hits from his own colleagues and the Russian secret police, and dodge a persistent Interpol officer hot on the trail of a phantom killer. Meanwhile, out of the goodness of his heart, he protects another witness: a woman who keeps taking her clothes off for him only to be rejected and rebuffed every time. No distractions on the job, or while trying to stay alive, 47 is such a pragmatist.

In whatever situation 47 is in, he firmly remains in control. On the job, his preparations are extensive, every detail thought through, ensuring a clean hit and getaway. His fighting skills get him out of unexpected situations, and at no time do we feel 47 is in any danger. For him, everything that happens is part of his plan, and he does have a lot of foresight.

Perhaps that's why we can't really get into the story much. Our sympathies are more for the bad guys as we wonder what 47 has in store for them, rather than for 47 himself. With the protagonist this strong and invincible, we just coast through the narrative. Though we may revel in the carnage of gunplay and thrill to the swordfighting sequence, the experience is like playing on God-mode. You get to finish the story, but there's little sense of accomplishment at the end.

Terrorism is a pretty sensitive subject for a movie, especially one that tries to reflect our present reality as closely as possible. In "The Kingdom", terrorists create a bloodbath at a family picnic for expatriates in Riyadh. The attack is coordinated with cold, calculated precision to maximize the body count of civillian men, women and children, as well as security personnel and emergency response crew.

In the attack, we the audience see the confusion and feel the panic of the crowd. We watch in horror as a man is gunned down while attempting to reach his stricken child. We are helpless as a security guard lures people to him with promises of safety, then detonates himself in the crowd. When the gunmen's vehicle gets rammed by a genuine police vehicle and they crawl out of the wreckage bleeding, there is a sense of relief that the carnage has been stopped, and when they get shot because they refuse to surrender, justice has been served. But that little prepares us for the next attack that follows, just when we think that everything's over.

"The Kingdom" puts the camera firmly in the perspective of the "good guys". The maverick FBI team that takes an officially unauthorized trip to Riyadh face innumerable political, linguistic, procedural and cultural obstacles as they investigate the attack with one of their own numbering among the dead. The team's liaison (aka babysitter), a dedicated, competent and resourceful Saudi police officer is likewise hampered by his own superior officer who is little more than an idiot and a brute. When they come under attack by the same terrorists, outnumbered and outgunned, we celebrate each time another terrorist gets taken out and the team comes closer to rescuing their kidnapped team member, and uncovering the mastermind of the operation.

The team has our sympathies as well because we get a glimpse of their families and feel their comradeship with one another while they are off duty. As for the terrorists, they are mostly anonymous; just another psycho raghead popping up to be cannon fodder or punching bag who deserves what he gets.

By skewing the view, the movie goes beyond the simple narrative and pushes us into an emotional response and shows us the motivation behind this cycle of violence. It isn't political, religious or poverty-related. It simply is the desire for revenge. One side can never view the situation from the other perspective. On "our" side, we see fathers getting killed, children murdered, innocents blown up. But in the climactic battle scene, a grandfather is killed, a brother shot, and we realize why a little boy's eyes glint with such malice in the aftermath. It never ends as long as the solution appears as a zero-sum game.

The movie wasn't as political as I had initially expected. The pacing is quick and exciting, with lots of gunplay and explosions to pass off as an action movie. At times, it almost feels like Counter-strike. Because of the pacing, the resolution becomes too convenient; they get the guy they're looking for, case-closed. Things are seldom so simple in reality.

Surfing wirelessly at the airport while waiting to collect the Wongs from their BKK trip. Flight had been seriously delayed, hence this post's ungodly hour.

Must thank NBS and B-lo for their company earlier this evening. They called me out and we had dinner at this steam-boat place on Liang Seah Street, then browsed Bugis Village to shop for girl things. Bugis Village has undergone quite a transformation. It's cleaner and has wider walkways along the main thoroughfares, and entirely air-conditioned. It looks more organized than I remember. Doesn't seem like I might find anything I want in there, but it's worth a closer inspection when I have the time.

The steam-boat came with two soups in a split boiler. On one side we had a seafood soup (strong prawn flavour) and on the other a chicken soup (strong herbal flavour). I suggest boiling the kidney and liver a little longer than what appears necessary. After I took the girls home, I was very grateful to go home myself to take care of my stomach that started doing flip-flops while I was driving.

Ah, the Wongs should be making their appearance any time now...

The bear stretches and yawns, dragging his mangy carcass outside his cave to breathe fresh morning air and blink in the sunlight once again. He'd been hibernating along with his "Heroes Season 1" box set, which is a great companion through the long dreary winter.

He's kicking himself a bit 'cos if he had picked it up at Gramophone instead of Blue Max, he'd have got it cheaper by $15! Doh! Oh, well, caveat emptor.

Heroes is the X-men tale of the '00s. All flawed human beings (losers, dark-siders, freaks) gifted with a superhuman ability. There are consequences, of course, in how they fit into 'regular' society, but to be honest, even regular human beings often find it difficult to fit in with each other as it is.

It's the tension in wanting to be part of a larger society versus the desire to stand out from anonymity and homogeneity that makes Heroes so appealing. That, plus the drive to find some meaning in our special circumstances -- but nothing less than "sav[ing] the world" will give us that meaning.

That's a nice ideal, but the danger is that we sometimes feel that we need a superpower before we can save the world. Instead of developing and using what abilities we have, we sit around and wish we we had more while the world goes to heck around us.

So if Ando, the amazing no-power man (his only skill is that he can speak English), can get caught up in the adventure, why not us, whomever we are? All right... slowly... put your hands in the air... step away from that cave... and go up, up, and awaaaaaayyy!!!

Gorgeous women's dates tend to be guys who look like crap, observes Julia Allison. She's right! Take a look at the horrendous monstrosity June ended up marrying:

A pudgy, unglam, balding (hence pathetically attempting to cover up by wearing a fish on his head), drooling troll of a human being whose very visage would scare a vampire if they met face-to-face in a dark alley at midnight.

June has her own pet theory why gorgeous babes hang out with mirror smashers, and she'll say that Allison has got it backwards. The uglier the guy, the less likely other women are likely to come sniffing around him and try to take him away. Pragmatic, and makes sense.

Whoever's right, for the guys, the obvious lesson is this: as soon as you get picked up by a gorgeous woman, get ugly real fast and you can hang on to her for life!