'Fluke' could have been a bleeding-heart appeal to "save the whales" but author, Christopher Moore, avoids all the maudlin and instead spins a tale of great imagination and wit, conjecturing the purpose and meaning behind whalesong, and offering an unusual perspective on why hunting the great whales to extinction isn't exactly a good idea.

Fortunately, the novel isn't about the whales themselves, but rather focuses on the lives of a struggling whale research team which comes so close to deciphering whalesong that someone or something begins sabotaging its operations in order to preserve the secret.

What's fun is the question of who is in on, and what motives lie behind the conspiracy. Is it a rival researcher, or a business or military interest? Hmm...

I like the idea that although trust is an issue between the team members, suspicion fails to drive them apart. Instead, they continue to trust each other to do their jobs as part of the team despite their personal flaws and mysterious backgrounds. This team truly believes in (I'm inferring this) not jumping the gun; nobody's perfect; innocent until proven without a shadow of a doubt guilty; and everybody has something to contribute to the effort.

Each of the main and a couple of the minor characters grow and develop. Either by discovery, learning or revelation, they eventually experience a transformation that gives their initial passion a purpose and a new perspective and direction in life. Yes, I know this is supposed to happen in a good narrative, but it's good to see the team also getting stronger as a result.

Despite the weirdness about mid-way through, 'Fluke' is a compelling, easy read. Moore liberally peppers his narrative with situational and dialogue humour. There is also some exploration on the issue of dealing with sexual attraction in a professional relationship, though the situation between the older male lead researcher and his perky, cute, smart-as-a-whip assistant who has every guy on the island drooling after her is too conveniently and unconvincingly resolved. Few of us are ever gonna get that lucky.

So, let's see... this past hols, I've managed to read Gaiman's "Interworld", Maguire's "Son of a Witch", Moore's "Fluke", and Gaiman's "Marvel 1602" (a graphic novel). I'm getting slow.

Oh, yeah. Anyway, "save the whales!"

Visited Sentosa twice in three days! This time it was to accompany our new J1s while they ran around the island on their orientation activities.

EmL kindly let us have the run of her house in Sentosa Cove, so we set up an impromptu base of operations in the most luxurious of surroundings most of us have ever seen in our pathetic little poverty-stricken lives.

There was nothing but exclamations of 'wow!' from the entourage as we went room-to-room on our grand tour. From the living room that seems to float on a koi pond, to the open-concept glass bathrooms, the backyard boat-dock, the swimming pool surrounding the house, the roof-top bbq facility, to the comfy, comfy things that people sit on (including the massage chair that nearly ate Baggy), to the four continental cars in the driveway, we're like, how on earth does anyone ever live in so much wealth and yet still be the down-to-earth, normal, all-round ok person we all know her to be?

'k. Enough gushing.

Madoka's arrival threw our lives into utter disarray. June went home to stay with her mom, we neglected our pets, destroyed our diets and drank into the night, foregoing sleep for entertainment.

And despite all the bitchin' and whinin' I've been doing, I had a really great time! We showed her as much as we could of S'pore in the short time she had, and in so doing did some amazing things that we normally wouldn't have done if we didn't have a legitimate excuse.

Hopping the barrier along the river to get a better view of the new year fireworks was one. Having our feet nibbled on by fish at Fish Therapy, Underwater World was another. Jostling with the crowds at Mustafa's while laughing at tacky souvenirs was an eye opener -- whoever would buy a plastic merlion that lights up and sings 'Rasa Sayang' at the flick of a switch? Oops, sorry, B-lo! Hogging a comfy, secluded spot in Muddy Murphy's (pix) and enjoying the cool easy listening tunes of Take 5 at the Raffles Long Bar, mocktail in hand, over two nights was kinda' special too.

But full credit to Cammy, without whom this trip might have been a horrible disaster: an embarrassment for us and a total bore-fest for her. With all his non-stop prattle (which would have driven me stark-raving nuts very quickly if I had been his sole audience), he kept Madoka entertained, flirted with and cared for throughout her stay. Between June and myself, we didn't have much to talk to her about. Language was no barrier, but we just couldn't find a common wavelength with each other. I felt so 'uncle' beside her, particularly as I found myself carrying mineral water in an unglam Watson's plastic bag on one day, and a large umbrella to ward off potential rain on another.

If anything, I was behaving like an indulgent otosan with his favourite musume. Now, that was an interesting brush with my paternal side. But Cammy, same age, same interests, his eagerness to learn language from her, and his all-out eyeball-rolling attempts to be amusing at all cost saved the day for us. So glad we brought him on board.

Well, hope Madoka has had a holiday to remember with fondness. And things are settling back to normal at home. Phew! :)

Too many late nights and early mornings. My brain is suffering sleep deprivation... can't... conentrate... Meanwhile, Madoka's pix (yet to be captioned) are here.

Happy New Year 2008! Got home late from watching the countdown fireworks at Marina Bay. This view from a "secret" location in Tg Rhu isn't bad... except for the two tall trees near the Flyer blocking the lower rockets.

Consider this a temporary post. Rushing off now for another day on the town...!

Madoka arrived in the midst of the worst rainstorm I've ever driven through. Visibility was severely down through my windshield while my wipers and lights were operating at max. And we were late. Her plane had already landed ahead of schedule even as we were getting ready to drive off to meet her at the airport. Fortunately, the torrent didn't last and we were able to take her around and introduce her to S'pore's most favourite pastime pretty much as soon as she arrived:

Yup, our eating culture. This is at Jumbo Seafood Restaurant, ECP, where we -- me & June, with June's colleagues including Cammy (at right) whom we assigned to escort Madoka on the grounds that he needed to train his conversational Japanese since he is looking for a posting in Japan soon -- demolished three chili crabs (it's been a crabby month for me!), cereal prawns, scallops in yam, and the house not-on-the-menu specialty: some tofu/nametake dish.

We took her downtown after dinner to Suntec City to have a look at the big fountain. We needed to buy time to let the crabs, et al, digest a bit so we could attack dessert!

(R-L) June, Madoka, Jamie, Jamie's hubby, Cammy and yours truly look seriously well-fed after cheesecake, chocolate milk, a brownie and ice-cream. NYDC rox!

Oh, and a small reprieve for us. We're putting Madoka up at M-i-L's instead of our place. She'll certainly be more comfortable in a proper guest room than the meagre lodging we can afford her at our place. Hope she can get along with Mimi ok. We'll see how they pass the night...

There was a lot of repeating, overlapping material during our discussion groups' sharing session as we collectively planned for next year's programme. That's a good thing, because that shows that generally, we are all on the same page on what we need and want to do for the college, the kids and ourselves in 2008.

In retrospect, we've done fairly well in helping our kids absorb knowledge, enough anyway to get through their year-end exams. But knowledge isn't really like random plankton drifting around on currents, and our kids aren't really sponges and anemones willy-nilly ingesting nutrients that unhappily float within tentacle reach. As a species, we've evolved further along than that, so to revert to such a learning pattern will inevitably bore us and our kids to no end.

I think we've begun to view knowledge as a slippery, fast-moving, shape-shifting thing, that to acquire needs to be hunted down, tamed, and manipulated into working for and with us. Or else it just isn't knowledge.

We already know that knowledge shifts with remarkable speed. A day or two ago, Pakistan was heading for a democratic election. Yesterday, Benazir Bhutto's life tragically and brutally ended by some random element that didn't agree with her. Today, Pakistan has to deal with an upcoming democratic election in which bombs and guns make more impact than a person's vote in the elimination of prime ministerial candidates. That knowledge, and its implications therein shows how uncertain the world is. Knowledge may bring hope today, despair tomorrow, but as long as we're not dead, life goes on. Hence, our kids need above all to learn how to live in uncertain times.

First, they'll need to make a habit of sampling from good information sources to constantly be aware of their environment as it changes around them. They need to identify threats and dangers, but also sense opportunities to capitalize on to sustain their existence. They need to learn that we hunt best in a pack, so we have to teach them pack dynamics and strategies so we can work together for our mutual benefit. They need to experience that not all hunts will bring back rich rewards, and so tough it out during lean times. And when times are good, they must learn how to share their bounty with others. That, and a dash of personal and collective confidence in the future too. Not asking too much, are we?

Essentially, nothing's changed since our earliest civilizations, except the nature of our prey. We no longer hunt animal prey, but information and knowledge. The good news is, there's plenty of it to be found everywhere, but it needs to be chased down to be exploited.

Our challenge as I see it: to create an environment that catalyzes the evolution of inert, invertebrate sponges into a tribe of hungry, thinking hunters with a plan for action, and not devolve them back the other way.

Today, we decided where our destination lies. Getting there is half the fun.

One final fling before the work cycle picks up again. Having failed yet again to procure black pepper crab at Eng Seng -- we were there at 1800 by which time all their crabs had already been sold out(!) -- we contented ourselves with chili crab yet again at the Red House. There was a smaller party this time: me & June, B-lo, HP, Mel, Amy, Linc & Grace, and Wayne.

Our appetites must be shrinking 'cos among the nine of us, two crabs were more than sufficient. Ok, besides the crab we had bbq squid (which was better than I expected), a so-so fried rice, drunken prawns, tofu served with all the broccoli Mel could eat, and two rounds of mantou. That altogether didn't quite add up to our usual capacity. Maybe our Christmas feasting might have had something to do with our lack of ambition tonight.

Dessert at Icekimo: proprietary ice-cream with lots of local flavours to choose from. The place seems to be a hit with the below-8 audience. Guess they were having a final fling before school starts for them too.

Time to punch in tomorrow morning: 0800. Oh, the inertia!

The teeth get a clean bill of health despite my not having seen a dentist for a couple of years already. On June's recommendation I went to L&O who have a plush and comfortable waiting area at Far East Shopping Centre. I really needed somewhere to wait as the dentistry was so backed up today, my appointment got pushed back about two hours.

While waiting I popped into Borders and bought Christopher Moore's "Fluke" to entertain myself with. It's an intriguing and light-hearted read involving the mystery of whalesong and it's got some memorable characters as well.

Back at L&O, all I needed was a clean up job. Some prodding around the spaces between the choppers and I was done. Done enough to take June out to dinner at Tonkichi.

Teeth freshly scraped, tonkatsu for dinner... ouch* what was I thinking?

Another Christmas over. Gifts unwrapped, food eaten, remains thoughtfully or creatively disposed of, carols sung, once-a-year relatives met and greeted. Another year past, a new year to look forward to.

A week to spin up to full operational capacity, then it's showtime once again! Omg.

I've been watching "Samantha Who?" over the 'net. So far, only the first three episodes are available to us in this region. It's quite coincidental I started tuning into Sam during this Christmas period because while being an obviously secular TV sit-com, SW is quite an apt parable about the experience of being "saved" in the Christian sense.

Sam wakes up in hospital an amnesiac. As the pieces of her life fall back in place for her with the help of her family and friends, she realizes that the life she lived before her accident was... let's just say disreputable. A terror and a bi*ch, once before, her new tabula rasa personality cannot believe how nastily she had once treated people. Now that her memories have to begin all over again, she's thankful that she has the opportunity to make better choices for her new life, and so put her past behind her.

It isn't like her past has ceased to exist, though. Her coma has only been for a week, so people haven't forgotten her yet. It's like being born fresh and innocent, then realizing that actually she's far from innocent. She still has to deal with the consequences of her misdeeds, and in fact, her past is an important, integral part of her identity which she is trying to re-establish, though with her new perspective of life she's a lot more idealistic and less selfish.

For the forgiven, the world doesn't go away. It's still a part of who we are and where we live. The person is still the same person, save for a new, different way of looking at life. And perhaps, one is less automatic, becoming instead a little more concerned about the consequences of the decisions one makes in one's daily life.

To top it off, SW is very funny. Because she has estranged so many people in the past, Sam has to heal the relationships of even those closest to her. Sam becomes so very earnest in making amends for her past, she sometimes makes quite terrible mistakes, making the situation worse than before. Regardless, she doesn't lose sight of her "second chance" but uses it as the foundation upon which to build a new life for herself.

Actually, just watch "Samantha Who?", and interpret for yourselves. Even if you don't extrapolate as much as I did, it's great for a laugh or lots. No link, 'cos I'm not about to get myself involved in some illegal copyright issue, so I'll just direct you to www.sidereel.com where you can do a search for Samantha Who. And that's my Christmas pressie to you (hope you have broadband)!

Merry/happy/blessed Christmas!

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.