Getting bigger

Went shopping for office pants. Waistband size increased by another inch. Sigh. Am now so close to Dad's size when he was my age.

Testing...

Hmm... this is one experiment worth trying out on the kids to see if the results are reproducible.

Edit 01:
But seriously, folks... we got a mention in "Discover" hailing what we've done to Pulau Semakau as one of "9 of Humanity's Greatest Environmental Successes"! Not bad!

Language and old age

If ever there was an incentive to develop "superior" language skills at a young age! This study of nuns' brains suggests that a strong command of language in one's teens and 20s tends to ward off the symptoms of dementia and Alzheimers' disease in old age. Read it for yourself here.

Should wave this at my kids if they ever ask why we're such grammar nazis grading their scripts. But with my kind of memory... er, what was I saying...?

Angry stomping people

Stomp (ST's purported "citizen journalism" site) fascinates me. Most of the so-called stories are little more than the tattletales of small-minded people ratting out on other people's petty misdemeanours in public -- with pictures. Yet it's a daily visit for me because the small-town gossip is just too compelling to pass up. It's almost a competition to see if the current story could possibly be any worse than the previous one.

There are few better examples of global village technology being used to perpetuate just the village. Everyone's minding everybody's else's business, airing everybody's dirty linen in public, expecting some authority or other to solve the problem for everyone. And then bemoaning how ineffectual the authorities are going about it. Tsk, tsk.

I'm not suggesting we should take the law into our own hands, enacting mob justice on every instance of loutish behaviour we encounter. I'm saying we should allow some flexibility in administering the written social rules rather than complain so loudly every time people are not slavishly adhering to them. It's quite vindictive, some of the entries, as if posted to spite someone else because the contributor isn't allowed to do the same thing.

Maybe it's all just in the eye of the beholder, 'cos on the rare occasions that I have used public transport (for example) I have yet to encounter any of that 'inconsiderate' behaviour that gets featured every day on Stomp ad nauseam. What I have encountered are clear pathways on escalators shared between walkers and non-walkers, or when there is a blockage, a polite "excuse me" more often than not has the effect of parting the Red Sea. In the trains, people are popping up and down like so many jacks-in-the-box offering their seats to people who vaguely look like they might appreciate the seat more. It's even a bit embarrassing how polite they try to be with the old and infirm, the pregnant and the child-laden.

If people eat and drink on the train, as long as they show some personal responsibility in clearing up after themselves, then there shouldn't be a problem. People are hungry, people are tired, but just because there are written rules doesn't mean we as fellow commuters cannot be more understanding and accommodating with each other.

I am now very cautious when taking the MRT. With all these camera-happy Stomp contributors around, I worry that one day my unflattering photo will appear on that infamous website with the complaint that some young whippersnapper should be giving his seat up to me instead of hogging it for himself and his $#%* ice-cream cone. I could never live that down.

Time out

Fergeddit. I'm taking the night off to play Bejeweled 2.

Not a(nother) model essay on Technology

How do I spend my Youth Day day off? By preparing material for a lecture answering the following essay question:

"Technology never provides solutions – it only poses more problems." What is your view?

What follows is NOT a 'model answer'. It's more like a coherent collection of ideas that the candidates might have included in their essays, but pitched at the level of a well-written H1 paper.

Again, to me it's just an outline for a much larger paper, since I've left many claims unsubstantiated, but even then it's still a hefty 1800+ words long. For one thing, it's a very general question, and for another I'm trying to incorporate as much subject material as I've gathered from all the essays I've been grading, so I've got a lot of mileage to cover.

Next step is to condense it to about half its size, and in a form a 17 year-old would be reasonably expected to present it in.

If you insist on reading the original, click here. But don't say I didn't warn you!

Just one thing

Quote of the day: "School teachers are concerned about creating moral people. [But] We focus more on getting the students better grades in a short amount of time. That's why we are needed and popular," says super-tutor Woo Hyeong-cheol. Woo's annual paycheque comes up to US$4 mil.

There's a bold mission statement if I ever saw one. So devoid of fluff and other distractions, the sharpness of focus makes her organizational systems and processes crystal clear, minimizing wastage of resources, maximizing output and income.

We've been discussing campus branding in our recent meetings. Too many people want too many conflicting things for our students. The more we talk, the more things get added on. What we really need is to pare down everything into one core objective that everyone can agree on and work towards.

Do we want our students to have values, or leadership, or world-readiness? We don't have time to give them everything. According to Ms US$4-mil-a-year Woo, students want results above all. If our kids just want results, they can go look for her. But we are a Ministry approved college, so I suggest we pick just one item from our existing list and run with it.

I won't arbitrarily make my choice now. I want to ask my alumni for input 'cos you probably see things quite differently from the Staff and I've already got lots of their input already. My question: what positive experience do you remember best from your days in JC? If I can detect a common thread, that's probably the best indication of how our branding should go.

In defence of the Arts

One question I'm currently grading has to do with how literature (and by extension, art) has no practical value. Have a look at the video below that YT shared with me:

Who says engineers have no aesthetic sense? Who says artists are technologically inept? Because our school system segregates Arts kids from Science kids by faculty and subject combination, this dichotomy causes them to pigeonhole themselves and they get proprietary over their intellectual turf.

Many of the essays I've read are by Arts kids vehemently defending literature as an essential, relevant but neglected part of our life experience, and hence must necessarily be "practical".

But watching this clip, I wonder if there is any need to make such a strong point about the "practicality" of art? Art doesn't have to be practical, but so what? Art is beautiful and that's all it needs to be.

Wonder if there'll be a Part 2?

Lunch party found our way to Little Part 1 cafe. Strange name. Not a lot of parking and seating, so car pooling was a smart thing to do. Also had to split tables, one for the working lunch people, the other for the fun lunch people.

Decor is cosy, homely. lots of framed snapshots on the wall, no theme I could discern. Two fell off the wall as we ate. Tremors? Free wifi! Great place to eat, grade papers and surf all afternoon.

The cafe's specialty is crepes. I had the Louisiana crepe. Attracted by the two different kinds of cheese fillings: emmental and mozza, though a bit leery about the asparagus. Ham is ham. Combination turned out to be quite pleasant. Could have done with an alternative flavour to the BBQ sauce on top -- tang was sharp, distracting. Fresh salad helped balance.

Brownie a la mode was fluffy and crumbled a lot. I appreciated the lightness 'cos I could eat the whole thing and not feel particularly guilty. Nevertheless, since mine was a communal table, I happily shared it with my fellow piranha.

Veggie items on the menu too. Know of any veggie people we could invite to lunch next time?

Slightly derailed

Been putting all my resources towards the one goal of finishing my assignment grading, and my rhythm's been thrown completely off because of it. Perhaps I've set myself an unrealistic deadline, but there are many other tasks needing my attention that I can't even look at until I get this giant bugbear off my back.

Unrealistic or not, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel already, which means my strategy has paid off! And the only casualty has been this long-neglected blog which I've unintentionally forgone because I've simply run out of steam by nightfall.

Very grateful for the lunch circle that has provided a much welcome break over the last couple of days. We don't get many chances to eat off campus these days, so yesterday's jaunt to Botak Jones, and today's extended "Land-Ex[pedition]" to Cafe Oliv and Chin Mee Chin (for kaya toast, a couple of doors down) were a real treat.

Should be back to regular posts soon, but perhaps in a new text format. Hearing a lot lately about the advantages of terse, to-the-point entries. Time to update my style.

Happy July First!

Been feeling inexplicably homesick. It's July and that means summer in TO. Bright, cloudless skies; sun on my face; cold, dry air I can breathe in with less effort than this humid soup we swim in all day here in the tropics. Wonderland, and the Jays at the SkyDome. Hot-off-the-cart Polish sausages with all the toppings you can balance between your buns (how rude that sounds!). And CHUM FM*, a constant companion that sets the mood just right for driving long distances on highways that have no end.

Without looking it up, I must have instinctively felt it in my bones. July 1, Canada Day!

*CHUM FM is a lot like Power 98 here, except I just heard a great ad for Trojan condoms, and the Internet radio works!

Raising a flap over nothing

Wayne and I had a minor disagreement over the supposed 'ethnicity' of Mudflap and Skids, the Autobot twins introduced in Transformers:ROTF. He thought they were Redneck, I had them pegged for ghetto gangstas.

When it comes to identifying accents, I have the advantage. What I didn't realise was that while my ears were good, a host of other critics had ears just as good -- and criticized both robot characters for being racially offensive.

Fine, both Wayne and I agree they are somewhat irritating. Our first impression of them is that of the Transformers' version of Jar Jar Binks. And they do set our teeth on edge with their childish antics. But to identify them as malicious "racist caricatures" is just reaching.

To be stereotyped suggests that people born into a particular ethnic group have no choice but to look, sound and behave like however the 'type' describes them to be. Autobots have a choice in the matter, though. They adopt their features and vocal patterns/dialects/patois from whatever and whomever they admire or wish to identify with.

And in a sense, that too is how the two voice actors decided to portray their characters. There's no agenda to offend anyone, it's just what works with the chemistry between co-performers as they interpret their scene.

Even if the twins are stereotypes, their portrayal is hardly negative. They talk big, but in a scrap they more than prove they can hold their own. They may be pintsized, but they are the first to inflict significant damage on the Decepticon behemoth, Devastator, before they get taken out of the fight themselves.

Sure, they admit they can't read the text of the Primes, but then none of the other Transformers on either side -- apart from old-timer, Jetfire -- can either. That criticism is like calling a layman who can't interpret ancient Sumerian cuniform 'illiterate'.

Anyway, I'm not about to overanalyze the whole thing. It just annoys me when critics get into this "Emperor's New Clothes" mode and echo each other because the angle is just too sensational to ignore.

Amidst all this criticism, I've decided to throw my support behind Mudflap and Skids. Dumb, self-righteous critic b*tches can take yo' wack s**t and shove it up yo' a** befo' I pop a cap in it. So there!

-----

And over the day's catch at Fish & Co, AMK Hub, we wished many happy returns to today's birthday girl. :)

Enough "me" time

It's been an odd sort of vacation, most of the time spent alone, like I've been quarantined with some infectious disease or something. So not a lot of motivation to go out and do a lot of stuff, like I'd been planning to before the start of the vacation.

Funny thing is, solitude is addictive. The more time I spend by myself, the more I'd rather not cross paths with anyone else, friend, neighbour or foe.

But that's quite enough of "me" time. I'm starting to lose my propensity for socializing and that's not really a good thing.

Fortunately, schools aren't staying closed for another week though some people are agitating that they should as an H1N1 precaution. Another week in self-imposed quarantine and I might not want to come out of my cave ever again.

Big staff meeting tomorrow. Best get my "social" self warmed up. The vacation ends here.

ROTF: Big, loud, long

I wonder if the enemies of the free world would pirate copies of Transformers:ROTF and watch it over and over again as a wish fulfillment fantasy. We're talking grand scale destruction of highways, buildings, a whole aircraft-carrier with full complement of squadrons and personnel, and ancient monuments going up in massive explosions that terrorists dream of while they snuggle under their bedclothes with teddy under their arm.

ROTF is big, is loud, is long... all the symptoms of sequel-itis. Transformers was a total thrill-fest, so the only way to up the ante is to add generous helpings of more. More military hardware, more combustion, more backstory, more locations, more cheesy romance (ok, maybe I'm jealous 'cos it's Megan Fox in question), more OTT laughs, and more characters than an F-16's threatboard could possibly keep track of.

So ROTF didn't get many good reviews. It's probably the law of diminishing returns at work. The first time may have been highly satisfactory but the second, with all the additional trimmings, is a bit too much.

One feature the critics can't seem to get over is how much running, ducking and covering our protagonists, Sam and Mikaela, have to do. Not very heroic, the critics seem to say. I think they've forgotten how their own game of (American) football, on which both Transformers movies are based, is played. Sam has the ball, everyone runs interference for him, clearing the path so that he can score the touchdown. Perhaps Sam is the new breed of action hero -- the running forward rather than the quarterback? Let's see if this archetype repeats itself in other action movies to come.

I went in for the Transformers Movie Marathon, so I watched both movies back-to-back. I noticed that a second viewing of Transformers allowed me to see things I hadn't seen before the first time, and I guess it'll be the same for ROTF as well. There's so much sensory input, it takes time for the mind to process it all. If anything, that's the main problem with ROTF. Leave brain at door, settle down confortably with free-flow popcorn and Coke, be shocked and awed by the systematic demolition of civilization, have fun! Why make things more complicated than that?

The Q-tip and the sea

A great day for the beach.

June wanted to drop in on a couple of friends working at a promo booth on Siloso Beach and we thought Q-tip would like an outing.

Dogs are not welcome on Siloso Beach though, so we took a very long trek to Tanjung Beach quite some distance away, part walking her and most of the time carrying her 'cos we remembered what happened the last time we let her overheat.

Q-tip had a good swim, that is, as soon as she hit water she'd frantically paddle back to terra firma. Then we'd pick her up, put her back into the water and repeat the process for a few cycles. Silly dog can swim, but she's afraid of the water. Funny, that.

More pix? Click here.

Bad things happen to good people

Sam Raimi goes back to his horror roots with "Drag Me To Hell". These days, the Raimi name may be better associated with the "Spider-Man" movie franchise, but with DMTH he reminds us that his original claim to fame was through the "Evil Dead" trilogy. Yes, even if "Army of Darkness" was more slapstick comedy than horror, it just shows his versatility in directing many different movie genres.

Anyway, DMTH brings us back to straightforward campy, shocky horror. Young, ambitious loan officer competing for a promotion turns down a loan extension for an old crone (there's always an old crone!) who curses her with a rather disproportional punishment: to be tormented by an evil spirit for three days, then be taken to hell to burn forever on the fourth day.

Cue two kinds of horror devices Raimi loves to play with. The first is rising tension followed by shock, the second is the horror of contact with vile fluid substances (blood, bile, slime and others of that nature) on the skin, face and otherwise inavertently ingested in large mouthfuls. We get both in generous portions throughout the movie.

But looking past the fun of shock after shock, revolting situation after revolting situation, there is an understated psychological parable at work here as well. Christine Brown is essentially a good person. She has a good nature, a kind heart, she is a woman in love; the sort of person that does not deserve any evil to befall her. But she makes one small mistake against her conscience, and no matter how good she has been up till then, no matter how she tries to make amends thereafter, it is still that one mistake that ends up defining her perception of the world. It is her own guilt that turns her otherwise idyllic life into hell.

Y'know, according to Christian doctrine, the scary thing is that all of us bear this exact same curse. Regardless of how good we are, or think we are, or try to be, because of our inherent imperfections, we are still destined towards, you know, the place downstairs. I believe DMTH makes up only one half of a good old-fashioned fire-and-brimstone sermon. The other half -- the redemption part -- has been left out.

Paid to stay in bed

Must be letting the notions of space travel get to me. Now I'm inspired to take up this job NASA's offering as a test subject for the effects of low gravity on the human being. It pays US$160/day and it involves lying in bed all day! Welcome to the life of a NASA "pillownaut".

Never did like camping much

Did some nephew-sitting while Ling and June took a girls' night out. The Wii played a big part in helping me out. How did we use to get by without such an invaluably useful device? Anyway, in preparation for that big event, I went shopping for a game or two that would keep two rambunctious young 'uns occupied. "Space Camp", anyone?

Good thing I previewed SC before I tried it out on them. First off, SC isn't exactly catered to my age preference (right, anyone who suggests "Parcheesi" gets their head bashed in with my walking stick!), but even putting myself in the mind of an 8 year-old the game would have bored me to tears. Actually, it's more like work than a game. Even the in-game mentor, Jim, admits at the start that it's going to take "back-breaking work" to complete the story.

Ah, the story: the player's somewhat customizeable character attends Space Camp and for the lack of other buttons to press accidentally launches him/herself to the moon. Survivability is no issue. The player has unlimited resources to complete a series of tasks in order to get home.

The main complication is that the two main resources, Energy and Metal, are locked into moon rocks which we have to mine for in pre-designated locations on the map. And they just keep replenishing -- well, yeah, it's a big moon for one little kid. With a flick of the wiimote or via a mini-Grabber game we accumulate a pile of moon rocks for processing. We can also kick piles of moon dust to find these resources too.

Step two is to process these rocks through another mini-game to extract either Energy or Metal from them. Energy converts into rocket fuel for which we need to get home; Metal we need to fabricate into tools that help us open doors to new places for exploration as the game progresses. They also help to open locked containers of unique collectible items that fill up our inventory, which I think is intended as the reward system of the game.

Yes, completist that I am, I most anally hunted down every single collectible comprising unique SC patches, and various designs and colours of clothing and headgear the well-dressed astronaut should be wearing on a moon-jaunt.

Wii games are often a collection of mini-games, but in this case, they tend to be the same three or four mini-games over and over again. the only discernable variation is in the three difficulty levels which aren't all that difficult even for an 8 year old. The only one that drove me insane was the Meteoroid defense game at the highest difficulty level -- my reflexes aren't what they used to be -- so accomplishing that task was quite a triumph (stop sniggering, remember my walking stick?).

The nephews didn't get to play SC after all, 'cos I decided they wouldn't have found it any fun. They're the "Ravin' Rabbids" sort, and that kept them entertained all night. Hey, whoever said an evening with me had to be educational?

It's alive!

So, that's why Rhumba didn't make it back to his docking bay before his charge ran out. Greedy thing was helping himself to the cats' kibble!

Another day with dad

Got the news of the passing of Sha's dad. It wasn't unexpected -- we knew he was already on his last legs -- but when it actually happened, the swiftness of it was sudden and shocking.

Which is why today, I appreciated the time I spent with my own dad. June and I met him at service and with the rest of our family regulars at 1115 SAC, we went to lunch as a group. This isn't something we do every week. Our service timings are different but because mom is curently gallivanting in the UK we thought he might appreciate the ride home... and our company, of course.

Among the reminicences we always get to hear whenever family gets together was how my dad quit smoking. Daughters are indeed a formidable influence on their father's behaviour.