The blurness of strangers

Made an NLB book run with June. Once again, they had people taking care of the North so our assignment was three locations in Jurong West.

The first drop was almost rejected outright. Apparently, the girl had asked for DVDs but we only had books in our bag for her. The second was to a blind lady with kids. She had asked for audio books, but as far as I could tell, there were both normal books and a few kids' CD-ROMs in her bag. Fine, her kids could use the CD-ROMs and someone could read the books to her, but no audio books like she had asked for? Our last drop was to a kid who selected three books out of the eight we had brought for him. He seemed to only like sports-related materials but had no idea what to do with the Photoshop manuals and novels that were also in his bag.

Three drops, three problems. NLB needs to establish better, or perhaps more specific communications with their disabled clientele. Perhaps next time we could teach them to use CARL for locating specific materials that they would want rather than rely on the blurness of strangers to make choices for them.

Er... no, we didn't choose the books, they were already pre-packed for delivery, in case you're wondering.

Party on, NYeDC!

09 J2 Seniors make a grand entrance to their Farewell Party.

This must be the longest party ever organized by the Drama Club. In a 7-hour marathon session, we bade the J2 Seniors farewell and then we hosted the "Timepieces" post-production party for the cast and crew of Drama Night 2009.

Perhaps the plan was too ambitious. We ran into problems of overcatering due to a number of last-minute no-shows, plus keeping the crowd entertained with party games proved quite a toughie. People were mostly interested in eating, chatting and finding their own entertainment among themselves... sounds familiar?

Credit to the J1s, though, who soldiered on till they were quite worn out, playing host and running the programmes, then late at night after all the festivities were over, working out the accounts until Security came up to chase us all home.

The J1s and the Club need a morale booster after this. Perhaps a little brainless entertainment or a little team-bonding exercise in Term 3 would do them good. I've seen them able to work hard, now I want to see if they can play just as hard too.

Lazy Thursday

It's good to have some money coming in for a change. I picked up two cheques, one to reimburse me for Drama Night expenses; the other a refund of my premium on a cancelled insurance policy.

I also discovered the real reason why on one Saturday some weeks back, this odd-looking fellow was measuring previous M2 in the parking lot. Apparently, the guy who rear-ended me earlier this year wasn't happy with the amount my insurance company was claiming against him and he requested an independent investigation. Fortunately, the investigation was in my favour so today I was summoned back to my workshop to sign a release paper acknowledging the conclusion of the case.

I remember that day... I had the impression it was the OTHER guy being investigated by HIS insurance company, so I cooperated fully with the investigator and his measuring tape. If I had known I was the one being investigated... well, I still would have cooperated fully, but perhaps not half as enthusiastically.

Spent the rest of the afternoon at Brew n Groove, hangin' with the Boyz: Anthony, Vince, Weng (hon. Boyz), and a couple of their frenz. We occupied a corner furnished with plush armchairs around a coffee table and discussed Someone's upcoming wedding plans. With several married dudes around the table, we had quite some experience among us to share and entertain ourselves with for most of the afternoon. Nice, lazy Thursday afternoon.

Out in the sun

Nothing like a little sun, sand and surf to remind us we're on a break. We planned to cycle the park connector to Bedok from ECP. But we gathered a larger party than usual, so what eventually happened was that our intended expedition to parts unknown became more of a social event on the beach instead. With bicycles.

Some highlights: met NBS again. Haven't seen my partner-in-KrIme much since her move up to Head Office. And while she and I were pushing the boundaries of how far we could pedal in a half-hour, the rest of the party took the same time to teach Fen to ride a bike. Fen's a fast learner. By the time we regrouped, Fen was already pedalling quite well. Next lesson for her is how to steer to avoid obstacles.

We regained our spent calories at Fish & Co, Parkway Parade. It's been quite a while also that the whole lot of us have had a meal out. After today, our party will split and scatter ourselves around the world on our various vacation plans. Me? No money, nowhere to go. I'll enjoy my staycation right here, thank you very much.

Print vs Digital

One topic that we like to discuss in GP is the viability of print media in today's digitally networked world. Both concepts require quite a lot of unpacking. Print media generally refers to mainstream print, which is a decent working definition, but "today's digitally networked world" is a bizarre, amorphous beast to pin down and study for an adequate compare-and-contrast exercise.

Fortunately, this Wired article might offer some help in the matter: "Eighteen challenges in contemporary literature". Or maybe not.

More to life than just Sims

A mental checklist of all the media that have passed through my perusal this past week, just so that I can assure myself that I haven't Simmed myself to death and have actually done other things as well.

Let's see... while waiting in line for two hours on "Let there be Sims" Day, I finished Pratchett's "Nation" which I have been slowly digesting for the longest time. "Nation" isn't a difficult book to read, but trying to find time to read whole tomes has actually been a problem this year.

On the same day commuting home on public transport I also finished Gaiman's "Coraline" in graphic novel format. Had to get that read before the movie opens in the next few weeks. And I began "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" allegedly written by Austen and Grahame-Smith. It's a fanfic mashup of the classic Victorian tale set in an alternate universe in which the Bennett girls have been trained in the Shaolin arts in order to combat the plague of the undead ravaging the English countryside; but in the meantime they also have to get married to eligible bachelors as Victorian society demands. The amiable Bingley and the insufferably haughty Darcy come to mind, if only those damned zombies wouldn't keep distracting the girls from their domestic destinies. It's a fanfic all right, though I'm not sure if it's been written by a fan of Austen or a fan of zombies. But it's hilarious, nonetheless.

Got my movie fix yesterday from "Blood: the Last Vampire". Woohoo! Non-stop fighting at a breakneck pace filmed manga-style for maximum excitement. Wouldn't you know it, but the story is viewed from the perspective of a character called Alice who in keeping with the Traditions of Alice gets her world compeletly turned around and no one can say for sure what's real and what's fantasy any longer.

And today it was "Angels and Demons": a scavenger hunt through the Vatican to prevent the seat of Catholicism from being vaporized by an anti-matter detonation. The conflict between science and religion feature strongly in this movie, though the premise isn't as controversial as it was in "The DaVinci Code".

It's almost enough for me to confess, "forgive me Father, for I have Simmed". But looking at this list, I have to say that's not all I've been doing.

Hangin' in Sunset Valley

If anyone asks, tell them I've been out of town for the last few days. Sunset Valley, to be precise, doing my best to maintain some semblance of a work-life balance, yet keep my people happy and moving towards achieving their life-long desires at the same time.

Yes, I'm the type of player that wants to see his Sims succeed in life, that they are fulfilled and accomplished by the time the Reaper comes for them. A boring, safe, predictable way to play "The Sims 3", but it's still challenging nonetheless. For someone like me, it's easy to grind a Sim upwards towards a career-oriented goal (but it's still a grind, nonetheless), but I had problems with someone who wanted more wealth than she could possibly earn on the career track alone, and major problems figuring out what to do with another who wants to make and keep 20 friends all at once -- and simply 'cos that's so not me, I haven't a clue.

There is only one way I can see to get rich in The Sims 3 and that is to marry or move in with someone who's household value is vastly superior. If anyone knows of a way to earn pots of Simoleons by some other means, please inform me at once. I'd like to try other pathways than the obvious. But marriage was how I managed to move from my initial pokey little house to the multi-storey mansion on the hill next to a graveyard (and its resident ghosts) -- the very lap of Sim luxury itself.

I think I can pride myself on my overall guidance of my Sims in their lives. Too bad I can't say the same for myself. Better cut my virtual vacation in Sunset Valley short and get my real life back on track again...

3 hours and counting...

1100. 3 hours to the release of The Sims 3. I'm having brekkie overlooking the line I'll be joining in a little while. First 600!

Shaking speares in the park

Oh, what an evening! It's closing night for "Much Ado About Nothing" and we the audience are sitting on our picnic mats on the grand slope of Fort Canning Hill overlooking the amphitheatre. We, meaning Amy, B-lo, HP, June and me. Around us is a packed house and lost in the midst are a number of our students who happened to choose the same day as us to go.

The heavens were merciful and held off the rain so we could enjoy shaking our speares in the park for the entire evening. Our picnic was a simple affair compared to what some of the other revellers around us brought. But we were very happy with our own buns and sausages, potato salad and grapes, and other miscellaneous post-meal snacks. When else do we get to eat our way through a literary performance without looking anti-social?

The performance was entirely enjoyable. The cast delivered Shakespeare in a most accessible way, sounding very much like plain English which would have been reassuring to anyone in the audience apprehensive about sitting through a whole evening of Elizabethan chatter. The play is a comedy and and the performance delivered loads of verbal humour and sight gags that we might never get to experience from just reading the text alone. Hope our lit kids in the audience will look at Shakespeare through new eyes after this.

The set was particularly intriguing in that it was elaborate without being fussy, nothing extraneous but everything purpose-built with depth and character. We are in the courtyard of colonial bungalow with a swimming pool at left. The pool contained enough water to swim a couple of strokes in, so it wasn't there just for show. The bungalow set was a series of tall, narrow doors and opening louvres that opened out into the courtyard, revealing a long dining room set behind them. While character asides take place in the courtyard, dinner is going on in the background clearly visible to the audience. That makes for a set that looks like there's a whole world that's living and breathing behind the action that takes place onstage. Amazing.

Another evening well-spent with good food, good company and good entertainment. :D

"Monsters" in 3D

June and I volunteered for nephew sitting duty today. As it turned out, we wanted to watch "Monsters Vs Aliens" in 3D and our agenda happily coincided with theirs.

The movie was a fun romp through a familiar theme: outcasts of society saving the day for everyone. All but one of the (human) male characters are portrayed as weedy, incompetent and self-serving, while the female characters tower over them (literally, in the case of Ginormica). Only Gen. Monger has a clue, knowing when to stay out of the way before coming through for the team in the big finish. So yes, there are obvious feminist overtones but I saw it more as a critique of the males of our species as opposed to a statement from the ladies.

As for nephew sitting, I'm still glad that at the end of the day, I can return them to sender. There's just so much we can do to contain so much sonic and kenetic energy within acceptable levels in a public space. There's so much looking around to maintain spatial and environmental awareness so that they don't wander off or somehow allow the environment to interact with them in a negative way. And as far as behaviour goes, they are already considerably well-behaved and obedient.  Wonder how parents of more feral children cope?

SQ baggage

Got a peek into the world of SQ's flight crew. May needed a replacement for her cargo bag a.k.a. suitcase. She also needed a ride and new M2 was available, so we took her over to this pokey little shophouse in Siglap which happens to be THE supplier of cargo bags for SQ's flight crew. They also do repairs.

The staff looks to be all-male handyman types. Brusque in appearance, but they know their luggage and made very practical recommendations on the kind that could withstand the most punishment from airport handling. They actually talked May out of a more expensive but very lightweight Samsonite which she really wanted. It was simply too fragile for her and her frequent-flying career. In the end, she took home a sober-looking Delsey that looked and felt more solidly constructed than her preferred choice.

The name of the new M2 is still under deliberation. I've always wanted to name a Mazda "Hatta" so that his full name would be "Madaza Hatta" for a Lewis Caroll in-joke. But I'm also contemplating J0513, after Josie and her most aware Pussycats, 'cos when we acquired him was in the middle of their big hoo-ha and somehow the name stuck with me. At this point, I'm still open to suggestion.

Possibilities and definites

And so we have arrived once again at what passes for the summer vacation in the West. Those idyllic three-month long breaks, by the way, are a tradition that goes back some two hundred years when the kids of the farming community were needed back at their homesteads as farmhands. It wasn't really a "vacation" at all, unless you like farmstays.

Here, we get a month. Probably a holdover from when we once followed the colonial timetable, but we have taken it as our God-given right anyway.

Today our month of unstructured time stretches out before us with endless possibilities. Possibly we could go to the beach; possibly we could go cycling; possibly we could have long, leisurely lunches on lovely lawns in the sunshine; possibly we could explore strange, exotic and wonderful locations -- and I know of some people who already have that planned.

But there are also some definites too. Like we definitely have to finish our mid-year marking (plus last term's backlog); we definitely have to get our lecture plans firmed up and researched; we definitely have to meet among our various committees to assess our mid-year achievements and make plans for the rest of the year... um, that's all I remember so far. If I've forgotten anything, drop me a line to remind me, ok?

Anyway, I'm not planning to moan about it. It's the summer hols, and whatever the outlook the mood is upbeat. *rubs hands together with glee

Down for the count

The daily fruit juices have not kept me safe from the flu bug. I've been dosing myself nearly every day with a pineapple-starfruit blend, but the last of my defences crumbled today. Perhaps I should have gone with a stronger, if less palatable blend?

Such a bad week to be incapacitated too, but then I could have said the same thing any other week before. Have to remind myself that I am not indespensible, and that a day's rest means a day's rest.

*clangs handbell and cries "unclean, unclean!"

A place to mark

Today was a good day to get some marking done. June was away in HCMC and wouldn't be back till the evening and since campus should have been deserted I drove out there determined to focus on my scripts with no distractions. That worked well. I had a very productive couple of hours that put a more significant dent in my marking load than I had thought possible. Quite proud of myself for that.

What I hadn't counted on was meeting Jojo on campus too. Like me, she needed some place to mark while Derek gave tuition across the road. What she encountered on campus was this grizzled creature at its most unglam -- unshaven, in googly glasses, sans corset, dentures and botox jabs that help create the illusion of a younger person on normal working days. The horror, the horror.

Regardless, she recognised me and invited me to lunch anyway. So we made a threesome at Sizzlers for salmon and salad. A fitting reward for the hours of pain that "marked" the earlier part of my morning. :)

Yes, there's still quite a mountain of scripts left to be marked, but today's session tells me I may yet pull off a miracle before the week is over.

Goodness graciousness!

Woke up at 0530. Quick rehearsal with script amendments at 0700 on campus. On-site rehearsal at 0845. Showtime at 0910. We were the opening act welcoming the GoH as he made his rounds through the five stations of the Circle Line. This is what he saw...

Please don't crowd the doors

Excuse me, the train is not for you to exungulate yourself in

Don't play on the train! Wait fall down, how?

Oh, this poor lady performing her "National Service". Won't someone give her a seat?

One polite applause later and we're ready to explore the rest of the Circle Line

Guess who had the tough job of following up our act?

Tech and fixes

Got an early preview of the new Circle Line subway system that brings public transportation right to the campus doorstep. We have long awaited this development and have watched eagerly every day as the construction mess that we have had to drive through for a couple of years slowly evolved into the steel-and-glass structure that started taking shape only a few months ago.

Today, I rode the train to visit three of the five stations to sound and tech check for tomorrow's little performance. It's great to work with a professional tech team. Whatever I ask for, I get. Head mikes? Check. Handheld wireless mikes? Check. Channel for sound FX? Open and check! Tech is ready to go, no worries. T -15 hours and counting...

Our patron fed back on our script, and did we ever get a taste of corporate interests clashing with our artistic aspirations. In attempting to inject humour in a potentially dreary morality play, we scripted some sequences and lines of conflict that our patron interpreted as not good for its public image.

Basically what our patron would rather we say was that if passengers wanted a more confortable ride, they have the means within themselves to do something about it. That prompted a hasty rewrite at about 2100 hrs tonight, and a mass email to all cast to note and adapt to the changes in a hurry. Ah, the nature of commissioned work.

Blooding the newbies, pt 2

After encountering a major hiccup that threatened to scuttle NYeDC's committment to the MRT project, the J1s are working quite enthusiastically on our little morality play again. Fortunately for us, it turned out to be only a scheduling difficulty that we could resolve and so our project lives on.

So good to see how the J1s are pitching in to get this performance going. Our dramaturgh has done some fine thinking on her script. From her rough concepts, the rest of the cast members were happily adding on their own bizarre interpretations as we workshopped the scenario today. Even my J2 directors, YuT and Nick have cast themselves in the project even though I said the J2s could take a rest this week.

And while this is going on, my laundry list of to-do items has expanded rather than shrunk. I am so looking forward to the June hols during which I hope to recover a smidgen of the sanity I am prepared to lose over the next week and a half.

Blooding the newbies

Running hot from Drama Night, NYeDC's next project is to put up a skit for the long-awaited opening of the Circle Line that will bring Mass Rapid transportation right to our doorstep.

Predictably, our patrons want us to present a moralistic tableaux enshrining the proper etiquette of commuter behaviour in trains and stations. No problem. We wanted to involve ourselves in community theatre and here we are -- under the media spotlight, no less.

The opening ceremony is being organized by our local broadcasting body, and somehow it's been decided that our item be among those performing in front of the VIPs. Yipes! As of today I have a rough concept for a script and no confirmed cast, but I have faith in my troops. Tina's offered to help out too, so we'll see how our first rehearsal will go tomorrow.

Hello, you're kinda' cute!

Derrick the Dealer tells me M2 is likely to be exported, but he doesn't know yet where to. Meanwhile, I've finally taken possession of new M2, and here he(?) is! We will probably be adjusting to each other for some time as we work out how our different contours are supposed to fit together. There's no second-skin feel to the cockpit yet.

New M2's dashboard is quite pretty at night, all lit up with a rather aggressive red display. As it is, it's still quite bright in the parking lot but the dash is already glowing like a cylon with orders to shoot on sight. Cool.

Car wash day

It was a sombre little ritual we carried out with M2 as we carefully washed him with our own hands in preparation for the next stage of his journey.

Legally, I have ceased being M2's owner for a little over a week now. He belongs to Derrick the Dealer who, despite having paid in full for him, has been kind enough to let me continue driving him for now 'cos I have been too busy to collect the new M2.

But the day to part has arrived already. The exchange will take place at sundown tomorrow, new for old.

I should feel excited, itching to try out my new ride. But all I feel is sadness at the thought of a good friend moving on. Who knows where the road will take him? India? Thailand? The Philippines?  Or might I still be able to bump into him (not literally, of course) on the busy streets of S'pore? But I do know he has quite a few years of adventure left in him.

Dammit. No wonder I don't have many friends. Partings are so flippin' difficult for me.