A view of the river and beyond

NBS and Vince had us over to warm their new digs. It was quite a reunion of all the folks we once worked with but have since moved on to manage more responsible things.

The apartment is quite comfortable for the two of them. I'm envious of the view they have that stretches all the way south. The city skyline is just on the horizon and considering the distance as the crow flies, that's awesome.

Distances between people over time made dinner conversation a little more cautious, polite even. We basically caught up with each other and our current activities and concerns over a selection of dishes both home-cooked and purchased. As always, there was more than enough to go around.

Too bad we couldn't stay longer after dinner. We'd already had a full day out and had just arrived at their doorstep fresh from sweating it out at the fitness club. We hadn't even showered. The fact that nobody remarked how rank we smelled shows how polite the company has become. And the animals were texting me repeatedly, asking when dinner-time was.

The man in the iron suit

We like Tony Stark because he is a fundamentally flawed hero. No doubt his heart's in the right place (well, figuratively speaking, anyway), but why does he have to be so smug about doing the right thing? Such hubris he carries on his iron shoulders, you feel like slapping some sense into his thick armoured head. And here exactly is where the sequel of the year picks up in Iron Man 2.

Tony Stark/Iron Man opens on a grand high note, making a spectacular entrance into his own Expo to the welcome of a bevy of leggy dancing "Ironettes", and it goes downhill for him from there. The Senate and the military are after his technology, Hammer Industries ramps up its aggression in competition against Stark's, and a foe he doesn't even know of takes up a personal vendetta against Stark himself. All this while he's basking in the glory of his own successes as the bringer of peace to the world.

Why we like Tony Stark is because he fends off his attackers so deftly. His wit in the Senate hearing is a disguise for the fact that he does not win the argument as much as he embarrasses his opponents to the point that they lose credibility in the debate. We like his irreverence and his taste in all the good things in life -- wine, women and all things geeky. Somehow, we are swept up in the mystique of Stark that his excesses seem forgiveable.

Which is why Mr Stark needs to be brought back down to earth. Whiplash makes a great nemesis not because his power matches the power of the Iron Man suit, but because his arrival forces Stark to reflect on the injustice done to the person wearing the Whiplash suit. Thus Stark, the futurist, realises that he has to look into the past for the wisdom to answer many of his current problems. And through Nick Fury, he realises that Iron Man cannot stand alone as the protector of the whole world.

What impresses me about this sequel is that it doesn't go all out to raise the stakes with effects. Yes, there are improvements and upgrades, including the bulky War Machine armour, but nothing that distracts from character portrayals. What IM2 has more of is human characters to balance out the iron-clad superheroics. The movie is really all about the people, anyway, and not the suits -- a fact that seems to elude Justin Hammer.

As before, IM2 promises great thrills, witty humour, and the exhilaration of noisy, powered flight sequences accompanied by the beat of ordnance and collateral damage. Two words: woo hoo!

The end-of-credits sequence adds another piece to the the Avengers puzzle, so stay and keep watching if you want.

Blinkin' lights

If there is going to be a weak spot at Drama "Sectionals", it's going to come from the tech crew. Bunch of imports are too good at their jobs to rehearse with the rest of us and make us feel like it's such an imposition on their time when they do come down and grace us with their presence.

Maybe they don't have a sense of how crucial their skills are to the production. All they know is switch on light, switch off light at roughly when according to the script. If that's the level of their commitment then I'm not surprised that many instances of long, awkward blackouts; lights up catching backstage crew setting the next scene on stage; actors speaking in the dark; stupid, avoidable, unforgivable lapses in production are the result of tech crew keeping their rehearsals to a bare minimum.

Well, we still have a few runs left before showtime. We'll squeeze every last bit of effort from whatever scraps they are holding out to us, and I'm sure we'll be made to feel grateful for it. Thanks, guys.

Sugar rush

Nearly passed out again at the fitness club. Likely the result of two factors. First, we were working out the legs quite intensively with a step-board. My lower extremities probably hogged all available blood, leaving little for the brain. Starved of oxygen, brane go by by.

Second, insufficient calorific intake. My last meal was six hours before starting the session, so there wasn't much left in the tank to burn anyway. Must remember to eat, if I'm going to work at this rate. My trainer bought me a Coke Zero to replenish my blood sugar level. It tasted terrible... but I perked right back up! The effect was almost instantaneous. Fuelled on sugar alone (artificial at that) I completed my training for the day without further difficulty.

Right. I'm not advocating tanking up with sugary drinks all the time. It worked surprisingly well in a pinch and saved me from my own stupidity, but the sugar either all burns to nothing, or stays inside and becomes fat which we're trying to avoid. Nothing beats having proper meals which become material to replace worn muscles, sinew and tissues after a workout.

Uncle Baba and Auntie Bibik go to dinner

Jen’s "Tok Panjang"
We got an invite to Jen's Peranakan themed fund raiser. June went all out to get an appropriate kebaya for the occasion, while I made do with a borrowed batik shirt.

Jen created a "museum" out of her collection of Peranakan paraphernalia and even had spare garb for guests that did not dress according to theme.

It was quite a sociable evening. Apart from the Nyonya feast that awaited us, we were also entertained with a round of singing Peranakan songs, including a song that taught us how to address relatives by their proper titles, and we got a sampling of some traditional games as well -- some strange hand-pinching game and a nostalgic impromptu session of five-stones.

Amazing to see how traditional and modern fit so well together. For the sing-along, iPhone owners whipped out their devices and downloaded lyrics for the rest of us primitives to share.

And dinner... Jen outdid herself with her offering of so many homemade dishes, some you can see from the slideshow above.

Must say, Jen throws great parties!

Mel opens house

Today's episode of "Teachers Behaving Badly" didn't quite go off as anticipated. Amy had filial duties to perform at short notice, effectively eliminating our venue and the Wii that goes with it in one fell swoop. That meant no raucous, embarrassing, uncoordinated flailing of limbs and other appendages in front of friends and family, though we'd been looking forward to this occasion for a week since we planned it.

But Mel came to the rescue, opening up her home to us social refugees. She fed us homemade pasta and mashed potatoes, a tastier, heartier and more substantial meal than she feared. She may not have been able to provide a Wii -- given the number of fragile things within too easy reach of a careless nanchuk swing -- but the company was good as always. Just put us all together and we entertain ourselves with or without external aids.

Poor Amy. I bet she was looking forward to today more than any of us. We must do a make-up or remedial session for her real soon.

Also, poor Jojo. Her rabbit took a turn for the worse and today, after weeks of palliative care, she and Derek finally made the decision to let him go. For pet owners, that's always a tough choice to make.

Money's worth in sweat and pain

Found a free afternoon to run solo at the fitness club. It's almost like my second home already. Campus is still first. Why have I been spending so much time at a place of torture? One, I spent a lot on it already so I feel like I have to milk my money's worth in sweat and pain. Two, I'm scared. A few breathless nights weeks ago reminded me how much I enjoyed breathing. It's an activity I would like to be able to continue doing for a while more yet. If building up my cardio-vascular endurance is going to help (as per doctor's advice), then I'm all for it. Mmmm... breathing.

A new age

I'm quite convinced the new age of information is already upon us. Had a little research exercise for my class. Broke them up into little groups and assigned each group to look up one item from a list of concepts and philosophies related to environmental sustainability. Once in a while we've got to let them go and forage material for themselves.

I was all prepared to send them off to our traditional hunting grounds: the campus library and Computer Labs. Instead, out pop iPhones, Blackberries, Nokias and every imaginable sort of wi-fi enabled handheld device. Nobody needs to go anywhere. Information comes flowing in where they're seated.

No need to worry any more that there aren't enough terminals to share among kids these days. Welcome to the age of mobile computing... in the classroom!

Only time for tech run

On site rehearsal for Drama Club "Sectionals" went reasonably well, considering how late we arrived thanks to morning rush hour traffic and a brief stop over at the wrong location. Too many schools share similar names. Grr.

Having only two hours to rehearse was good for running tech cues. The tech guys surprised us with their selection of music because I've never heard any of it during our regular rehearsals. Once RodO got into the theatre space, he lost his usual hesitancy and dictated everything like he was on home territory, which probably it was. That worked really well for the efficiency of the rehearsal as we ran cue-to-cue rather than going for a full run. That means we only ran light and sound transitions while the actors just provided their bodies and a couple of lines for cues.

Our transport company was very professional, bringing a couple of extra hands for loading and unloading our stuff onto the truck. They even secured our more fragile bits of set to prevent damage enroute. But the service was quite expensive, though. It would have been so much cheaper to rent a self-drive pick-up, but I'm not confident of driving one of those, accustomed as I am to driving a compact.

Bumped into Wendy A at the fitness club in the evening. I was on the machines, she was bodypumping. Whoa. The place is becoming like a recreation centre for our staff.

Bath day for cats

Bath day for the three cats. Kaiser is developing some nasty bald patches in his coat. At first we thought he and his best buddy, Maui, had a serious altercation. But we've been observing them interact over several days now and though Maui has a tendency to play rough, he isn't showing any particular signs of violence; at least not of the kind that would result in this degree of damage.

Kaiser's condition has to be some kind of mange. So this morning we took the cats one-by-one into the shower for a good scrub-down with tea-tree oil shampoo. Kaiser was first and though he was quite freaked out at the water and suds he mostly maintained his composure. A good beginning.

Momo was next. She yowled and kept yowling all through her bath. If the neighbours didn't know we had a cat, there's no keeping it a secret from them now. Not only that, they'll think we're cat abusers going by the noise Momo was making. Real drama queen, that one.

As for Maui, bathing him was like bathing a wildly animated rose bush. He was constantly growling and randomly slashing at us with his sharpened talons. My "loose hands" technique of holding him didn't guarantee I would be scratch-proof but my damage has already faded away. June was not so lucky, getting some nasty gouges in her extremities. Ouch.

Finally, all three cats are clean. Have to keep monitoring Kaiser, though. If this doesn't work, we'll have to take him to Doc Kasey as the next step.

Getting real with fitness

Sneaking off to the fitness club with Jojo wasn't such a big secret rendezvous thing after all. Kids caught us at the parking lot so our exit from campus wasn't as discreet as it could have been. Didn't want to spend the time explaining that we were trying to do something to rectify the state of our deteriorating health. Told them we were 'busy'. Let them start rumours if they want.

Didn't have as much trouble with our low-impact stretch-and-tone class after all. Working out on the Wii already taught me the basic movements and gave me enough flexibility and balance to keep up. But the class provided a social environment in which you can't be lazy and cut corners on movements, and a responsive instructor to make minor adjustments on form which the Wii is still technologically incapable of as yet.

June wants me to help her with what I've learned so far, but in the comfort of our own living room. Time to dust off the Wii and see if that helps her get started. I'll provide the social environment and let the virtual instructor conduct the workout.

Thunderous

Came home to one of the worst thunderstorms I've ever experienced. Lightning flashed continuously, thunder came in unending rolls. The cats were nowhere to be found, Q-tip ran back and forth across the floor in a panic, and all the electricity in the air tripped the fusebox, leaving us all in the dark. The video (above) is nothing more than a short sample of the thunderous noise driving Q-tip nuts. Just imagine all that going on for about 30 minutes at least, and me with nothing to do but marvel at nature's fury.

In the midst of the storm, I had to abandon Q-tip. Had an appointment with my fitness club instructor and finally got a full workout. No drama this time. I survived all his machines of torture and got rewarded with a great stretching cool down. As I stretched, he applied pressure. Together, we managed to pop my spine in several places -- something I hadn't been able to do for some weeks now. That felt great! Reason enough to make a return trip next week. Spinal alignment... mmm!

Have faith, World Cup viewers

S'poreans worried that they will miss out on televised 'live' World Cup matches this year need fret no more. The Acting Minister of ICA is confident FIFA will be reasonable about their demands because we offer such an important market for viewership in this region. As this Minister himself has said so, I absolutely believe it. His name, Lui Tuc kYew, (which translates as "money for football") practically guarantees it already.

Now we are 6

Off-Duty Ed is 6 years old today! 6 years soldiering on with a platform that's fast becoming passe. Micro-blogging's the in-thing now. Nobody reads longish posts any more. And there's less and less time being spent off-duty too.

So to celebrate today's milestone I've put aside lesson prep, essay grading, lecture research, and worries about drama "Sectionals" and Drama Night in favour of vegging out in front of the TV. NCIS:LA and CSI: woo-hoo! Rest of the evening spent collapsed, asleep on the floor. A pre-nap before bedtime.

Why attending assembly talks is compulsory

It's great that there are vendors who give assembly talks on current issues like "cyber-wellness". It's important that the kids learn to protect themselves online, where problems like privacy invasion, identity theft, viral infections and personal harassment are all too easily encountered and can be a real pain-in-the-a** to say the least.

These are 21st century skills we are talking about, dealing with a medium our society is increasingly becoming dependent upon, so by all means provide the necessary instruction to our kids. But for heaven's sake, can we please engage a vendor who actually knows -- and uses -- the Internet as a daily tool for life and not some obnoxious Luddite who sits longer on his moral high horse than at his keyboard, going tsk tsk, and shaking his head at the world passing him by?

His talk and the videos he showed were excruciating to sit through. The first was about moral choices we make in choosing subject matter to blog on. Fine, you know: don't insult others, be sensitive to their feelings... otherwise they will commit suicide and you'll get in trouble with the Principal. O_o The second was about how playing online games turns gamers into violent, obsessive mental patients with bad American accents. Honestly, the acting in these videos would make Bolo Santosi look like an Oscar contender.

Actually, considering the religious source behind this material, I'm not surprised by the quality of the message. The amount of demonizing going on in both the criticism of the medium and in the portrayal of its effects on its consumers was laughably unbelievable.

Herein lies the problem: I agree you have an important topic to broach with the kids, but if you're going to grab their attention, you'll have to respect them as an intelligent audience. Talk to them about real problems of an everyday nature, not try to frighten them with exceptional case studies (trust me, they aren't scared in the least). Show them practical skills for self-defence, not make them swear off the computer forever (trust me, they won't). And don't be a clown when you deliver your material. Humour is good, but only if it is the vehicle for the message and not for the messenger. As for today's speaker, if the medium was the message, we were sadly not impressed.

In the spotlight

Had to stand-in for missing actors during today's rehearsal. I thought I knew the script quite well already but once in the spotlight I realized just how much I'm asking of the kids. Apart from line and stage direction memory, there's also timing and coordination with the other actors on stage. That's a lot of pressure and I can only say that I'm glad I was just a stand-in.

Truly, my time in the spotlight is over and it's the kids' turn now. My job now is to ensure that the lights shining on them are indeed spotlights they can sing and dance in, and not headlights to freeze in front of.

Ended rehearsal once again too late to join my fitness class though I had intended to finally make a start. Darn it! Made up for it with cheesecake from NYDC. :(

One month to curtain

The days of long nights begins as we're only a month away from curtain. Never felt so underprepared before. Usually by this time, there's at least a sense of what the show is going to sort of look like, but this year all I can see are fragments with edges still needing rounding-off if they're going to fit together.

Not about to panic just yet. Each day, each rehearsal, brings new and interesting developments to our little story. I think we have an awesome narrative, but to pull it off we're going to have to work doubly hard from now. A comedy is that much more demanding to do right.

Mel and I had dinner at Arbite in Gardens after rehearsal. Quite a cool little place with its whitewashed walls randomly studded with colourful Lego bricks. Quite homely, if you're into modern urban-style homeliness. Not too many tables so it's comfortable and not likely to be noisy. The living room area is a nice touch; gives me the feeling that we are welcome to take our time over our meal and not have to hurry off too soon.

The menu looks generally light and healthy. The salad came in a basin, greens fresh and crispy though the vinaigrette dressing was a little sweeter than I expected. The pork stew I ordered came in another basin and a side roll. It was the consistency of a vegetable soup with pork bits -- just what I was looking for. I didn't need to stuff myself. I wanted comfort food and what I got didn't disappoint.

Finished off with the last piece of carrot cake in the display rack. Me and I appreciated the generosity with which the raisins were packed in the cake. Went well with the tea and the shop talk that we had to get through. Yes, it was a business dinner, after all.

Drizzly tempest

Took kids to watch "The Tempest" by The Bridge Project. Mel wanted so badly for the kids to like their first experience watching Shakespeare performed 'live', but was disappointed that this version didn't quite capture their imaginations.

I will say the play had its moments -- lots of them. The comedy was spot-on with timing and characterization, the romance scenes were sweet, the evil plotting scenes were clearly sinister and I enjoyed them all. But the exposition scenes somehow didn't have the same level of energy in them. I know I nodded off from time to time because despite the fact that these scenes are meant to glue all the different elements of this difficult play together, the audience shouldn't be made to feel like they're watching the glue dry.

For me, I saw this production as a collection of brilliant vignettes that were related more or less sequentially, but missing a powerful thread that ties them all together coherently.

But knowing the state I'm in healthwise, I also knew my fatigue would kick in at some point and I was expecting to knock out occasionally. So I wasn't really looking for a coherent story as Mel was.

I was there to steal ideas for tech and staging, and I was not disappointed. It was a large stage divided in half such that upstage was completely flooded with maybe a half-inch of water, downstage was completely dry. Upstage served as the holding area for the actors who were not involved in the scene being played out downstage. They sat on a chair each, immobile, lights down, but because of their proximity to the play area they were ready to go when they were needed.

Downstage, the play area focused on a central circular sand pit. A fantastic device it was for representing the world, an external location, the spirit realm, the concepts of reality and imagination, and an external location observed from an internal location like images in a crystal ball in a fortune-teller's tent. So versatile!

The presence of 'live' music and hand-crafted on-the-spot sound effects reminded me of MU days. The music was haunting and really added to the organic nature of the magic that was supposed to weave through the whole play.

So yes, there were many magical elements that the play offered, lots of promise of thunder and wonder to be wielded by a skilled and powerful wizard inspiring shock and awe in the audience. But what came out in the end was somewhat more understated. The pace and skill perhaps, of a gardener tending the rhododendrons rather than Gandalf in mortal combat against the Balrog. What it could have been.

Doctor's advice

Did you know that MtE has a lift operated car parking system? It was quite a novelty to wait in a designated location while a parking attendant hails an elevator car for you to drive into. He selects a floor with a vacant lot, then up you go to find it. The thrill, of course, in in negotiating M2 into this narrow box. Traversing two speed bumps tells you that's far enough, the door can shut behind you now. M2 is quite a small vehicle and I'm feeling the claustrophobia already. Wonder how the Benzes do it?

I was at MtE for a review of my health condition. Dr TB recommended to wean me off the meds which is a good sign. Even better, he thinks exercise will do me good, so I can put my fitness club membership to use again. I still left with a fistful of pharmaceuticals (an over-the-counter prescription drug and a top-up for my inhaler) and a big hole in my pocket. -- about as big as when I take the pets to the vet anyway. Figure I should be worth as much. Yes, Q-tip?

Not epic

Harryhausen did a fantastic smack-bang job with his stop-motion version of "Clash of the Titans". Today's CGI version was a total washout in comparison to it's classic(al) counterpart. "Clash (2010)" went for a darker, angstier narrative -- which is usually promising -- but for a story of these purported proportions it didn't quite work.

Dark means that the screen literally went dark with lots of shadows and blues, greys and blacks. I don't know if this was the effect of the 3D glasses we were wearing but I'd readily trade in the illusion of depth perception for a richer palatte of colours.

There's little point going all dark and moody if the characters are people no one cares about. It could have been Perseus and the Argonauts, a team effort coordinating different strengths to take down a common foe; but it was more like Perseus and the practically-anonymous bunch of tough-looking guys that died easily. Before we could get to know them and even start to recognize them by face, they've already hit the dirt like just another red-shirted Star Trek security detail.

Problem is, the whole thing is almost entirely from Perseus' teenage 'why-me' whiny perspective. It's a fantasy of laying the smack-down on everyone who's ever pissed you off, at first resisting then finally accepting all the deus ex-machina devices that've been conveniently provided along the way. That's just too easy and does little to develop him as a character much.

This narrative simply went for the central plot and doggedly remained there. No back-stories for the supporting characters, very little build-up to the next epic encounter, the whole mission undertaken with the efficiency of an audit check and about as entertaining. There was very little humour (except a perfunctory dig at the useless robot owl of the original version), and as such very little joy in the telling of this tale. Not fun at all.

When you set out to recreate a movie of this scale, this grandeur, but condense it into a series of tightly cut scenes that keep such sharp focus on the main through-line all the time, I'm sorry but you cannot expect to call it "Clash of the Titans" again and get away with it. That name has already been taken. Instead, try "Mash of the Tightened", that might have worked better.