On to Patong Beach

Now, for a change of pace, we're in downtown Patong Beach. So busy, so many tourists here... lots of shopping to do. So it's time for me to get to work again. No more lazing about by the pool. Sigh.

Totally R&R

Phuket (Naka Island)
Welcome to pretty Naka Island, where there is nothing to do but relax and get pampered all day. Sit by the beach, read in your private gazebo, or dip in your private pool? So spoiled for choice we are. XD

Vacation interrupted

Interrupted my vacation in Skyrim to take a vacation on Naka Island, Phuket. Beautiful resort environment, everyone's charmingly polite and obliging here. Hmm, a bit hard to type here 'cos it's dark in the free wi-fi area and I can't see the keys properly without straining. More updates in a while... when it's brighter. Tomorrow.

La luna

A couple of views of tonight's lunar eclipse. But we didn't have to go all the way to Marina Bay or wherever. We looked out of our bedroom window, and there it was. How obliging!

In other news, I went to get my eyes checked because I've been having trouble reading with my contacts on and I wondered if my prescription was correct. Turns out there's nothing wrong with my prescription; what I need are reading glasses! So I ordered a pair to be made and shared between June and I 'cos we're both getting there. :p

Polar bear rug

The other thing that Q-tip does in the living room is this polar bear rug impression.

And like polar bears, always alert for opportunities for nom.

 Is there a chance for a snack over here?

Meanwhile, Kaiser looks down disdainfully at the goings-on at ground level.

Sorry, no food here. Back to your game of "I am Nanook! Fear me!"

You can't handle the truth

Why only now that the Northern neighbours have declared their distaste for LKY's "Hard Truths" nine months after publication? Because it's a bloody long book and they've only just finished reading it.

Rollin' right along

Am I addicted to sweat and adrenaline? The day I take off from the fitness centre is the day I end up feeling sick as a dog (no offense, Q-tip!). That was yesterday. Today, I drag my sorry carcass back to the irons and all my aches, pains and general nausea are gone. It's my body punishing me for being lazy, I just know it!

Did a little Christmas shopping on my own. Thought it would be nice to try out some muscle relaxing devices for people who spend too long sitting in their office chairs (no, obviously not me). Sampled a thumping from Osim's uPapa Music Sync thingy and got my back rolled with a uRelax. Do. Not. Like.

Sorry, but though the staff were very accommodating, showing me how to work the controls for myself, I could not find a setting I enjoyed on either product. The rollers were knobbly and hard; the thumpers were, for want of a better word, intrusive; and the vibrations made my skin itch.

I don't know how Andy Lau gets such a kick out of being ensconced in an egg that agitates its embryo so much. Maybe because he's endorsing a much more expensive product? But for me, using the darned things made me feel...old. I'll be looking elsewhere for a suitable gift.

There's a Q-tip in the living room!

Something's up with Q-tip. Lately, she's been looking like a much perkier dog. She has been pottering about the house more, and seems not as stiff-jointed as before. Even more surprising, she is actually behaving more sociably -- instead of hiding in her room so much, she is now sitting with us in the living room, just out of reach but physically present. Last night, she even dared to bark at the stranger at the door, who turned out to be June coming home from work. I wonder if this new behaviour has anything to do with the daily dose of salmon oil, which is the only recent change in routine for her; or if she somehow senses the approach of Christmas and isn't taking any chances with Santa's Naughty-and-Nice list?

If "NFS: The Run" were real

Aw, man! A timely reminder to keep the fast, reckless driving confined to NFS: The Run; and not bring it to real life on the roads. Not even NBS could cause this much damage, eh?

Wiped out

The weather for the past couple of days has been great for the above activity, or rather, the lack thereof.

As for why no one greeted me at the door when I came home tonight, well, there's your answer. Hello, you all think I feed you for free, izzit?

Edit 01:
Parking at Sunday service is going to bankrupt me. Since they installed this new parking gantry system, it now costs $7 and hour (or part thereof) when we're so used to FOC all day. Wonder if  there is sufficient grounds to argue for this amount to be deductible from the monthly tithe?

The cat, the other cat, and the egg

Although Puss spins off from the Shrek franchise, the look and feel of the movie starring the feline in the floppy footwear is very different from that of Far, Far Away. Here, we have the origin backstory of the unlikely partnership between Puss and misfit egghead, Humpty Alexander Dumpty. It's a childhood bonding taking the two through a story of crime, duplicity, betrayal and vengeance -- though not necessarily in that order. And a quest for redemption is in there too, holding the whole narrative together.

Where Puss hails from is realistic: people are people, not fantasy backdrops. It's a place where magic doesn't occur on a regular basis; but of course a talking cat with stylish skillz and a walking egg are bound to bring their own fantastic elements with them wherever they go. Magic beans, giant beanstalk, stolen golden egg-laying golden gosling are all part of this Mother Goose mashup, though the stoic residents of San Ricardo accept it all unquestioningly.

Overall, quite a fun romp, though not quite as laugh-out-loud in humour as Shrek. Despite the logic, the fairy-tale elements feel awkward in this mix, and rather than accepting them as natural, there is more effort taken to explain the connections than it's worth. And in the case of Kitty Softpaws, there is no fantasy precedent at all but a sad morality tale about how inhumane it is to declaw your cat. Nevertheless, the story is just about clever and engaging enough to follow through its twists and turns to the end.

M2 amidst the exotics

Took M2 for his 40k servicing at the new service centre in Ubi. Was a bit worried about the staff I knew since Mazda got bought over by Eurokars. Would they have survived the shuffle? Happy to know that SR, Rosie, and Anna the cashier are still around. Oh, the reason for the pix (above) is that the new place also houses the dealership for Porsche and the basement parking lot is full of these pristine still wrapped in plastic beauties. Yummy!

Sweet auto-pimped rides on The Run

The premise for "NFS: The Run" is a coast-to-coast race across the USA over the varying types of terrain therein. Story mode is straightforward: having pissed off the mob, your character takes the offer of a 10% cut of a $25m purse if he can cross the finish line first ahead of 200+ other racers.

It would have been nice to drive continuously from SF to NY, overtaking expensive cars as you go, but the whole sequence is broken up into race segments where you take on a handful of racers at a time. Occasionally, the cops are there to try spoil things for you, running interference and setting roadblocks while you are busy concentrating on being #1 badass authoriTAH of the asphalt.

What's a big innovation from previous versions of NFS is that each race is now broken up into checkpoints so when you wreck, get busted or fall so far behind there's no hope of catching up, you can reset to the last checkpoint and just drive better, rather than restart the race all over again. The higher the difficulty setting, the fewer the checkpoints, of course.

The Run also removes the ability to customize your own ride. If you want fancier wheels and finer tuning, you have to earn them by defeating Challenges.

So, the story is just to get the player's feet wet. The real meat-and-potatoes of the Run is Challenge mode in which the driver not only has to finish first, but also beat the clock to unlock rewards. For the more sociable gamer, there's Multiplayer mode too -- beat real people, win more stuff. Bragging rights go without saying.

There are some annoyances, like keyboard controls reverting to default after customization, and sometimes the screen locks up and crashes back to Windows. Time to install more RAM, perhaps?

Slowly working my way through single player. It'll still be a while yet before I'm feeling sociable enough to take my show on the information superhighway.

Shopping for loans

Time to think about options for refinancing my home loan. With my 3-year lock in period having expired, the bank is now offering me a generous new rate of 4.08% per annum. While that doesn't sound like much under normal, everyday circumstances, when applied to a 6-figure principal, it's a whopping extra bushel of dosh every year -- I don't gross enough a month to cover the interest alone!

Good thing is, the bank's current refinancing package offers a rate that is actually lower than the initial rate. Still shopping around for better deals, though. I know they're out there.

Out of the Stone-Age

Finally pulled myself out of the Stone-Age and shelled out for a Blu-Ray player. Can't believe how much prices have fallen. This thing I had girded myself to pay in excess of $2C for came in at less than $150. Yes, it's a simple model and apparently "smart" too. I thought that meant wi-fi "smart". It just turned out to be that it had a LAN port on the back. Eh, no wonder so cheap.

Happy hols, x13!

I have a good civics group this year. "Good" as in um, well, "good". Even our wild, informal college annual photo is trying very painfully to have some semblance of wildness and informality. I told them that based on our year-end results, we're not exactly the scholar types. Success doesn't come easily to us. Instead, we number among the majority that have to work like crazy just to remain afloat. But if I know this group, work ethic is something I don't have to worry about. It'll be a tough, uphill struggle against a steep learning curve next year in J2 and these guys will have their noses to the grindstone all the way. I'm proud of them now, and I know I'll be even prouder of them when we finally get to the end.

My jaded eyes

Finally coming down to the tail-end of supervising the kids' projects. Now it's time to assess the final submitted artifacts. Our rubric is based on a scale of expectations where the highest attainable band is at the point where the work produced surpasses what we could reasonably expect of it. And here, things get sticky. The more the kids seek the supervisor's advice, the higher the supervisor's expectations get. And this year, the kids have been exceptionally diligent.

Because neither they not I have left much room for personal insight and inspiration, I cannot honestly say that anyone's work has gone that step beyond. Sorry kids, but ironically this is one instance in which our hard work throughout the year has not paid off. Well, from my perspective, anyway. Hopefully, you'll be able to score more points in other parts of the assessment that other eyes (apart from my jaded ones) are prepared to be more generous towards.

Oil have nothing to do with that!

On Elim's recommendation, we purchased a bottle of salmon oil for the benefit of the animals' coats. Who wouldn't want their pets' fur to be luxuriant, smooth, fine and shag-carpet like? And what feline could resist the aroma of fresh fish essence? If I were a cat, I'd be clawing my owner's face off just to get at the bottle of tantalizing promise. But no, not my cats. They can stomach lizards, 'roaches and each other's vomit when we're not looking, but 5ml of SALMON oil a day they sniff suspiciously and gingerly back away like it's the Worst Thing on Earth! Fortunately, it's not going to waste. Q-tip just loves the stuff; can't get enough of it. Fine. Nice coat for the dog, then.

Games for playing and plays for watching

Finally, after a long drought of worthy PC games available on the market, suddenly the floodgates have opened and now I am spoiled for choice. Great timing too, 'cos I would have been too busy to give any of the above much attention anyway. But once this week is over and the year starts winding down, there's enough material here to keep me off the streets and out of trouble. XD

Caught the 'Richard III' last night with Mel. Very efficient presentation using minimal set. Just a quick arrangement of a few furniture elements to depict spatial and power relationships between the players make amazingly diverse scene changes quickly.

'Richard III' is usually played to test the boundaries of the Elizabethan Era M18 rating for violent content, though the violence was mostly sanitized by abstractions in Mendes' version. Here, the plots laid bare by Kevin Spacey playing Richard III reveal the inner workings of a twisted supervillain's mind, and seeing how they pan out in reality is what's fun. The bodies are really just a foregone conclusion.

Dark humour abounds with the juxtaposition between lines laden with intense drama and snarkily casual asides. It shows the awkwardly human cracks in the many social masks that Gloucester (a.k.a., Richard III) deftly switches between on his painful and bloody climb to the top of the Royal heap.

Great play, glad I caught it. But the real drama of the evening took place right after curtain-call with Spacey halting the applause to pay a personal tribute to his high school drama teacher whose early mentorship encouraged the development of Kevin Spacey, the actor of stage and film that we know today. Oh, did I mention that said teacher was seated in the audience with us, having flown in from Taiwan to audit the performance? Yes, that puts a context to what would otherwise have been an odd outburst onstage. And with the tribute came a rallying call to continue supporting Arts Education in school today! Can I have an "amen" to that, brother?

Left behind

What do you say to the kids who have found out that their final grades don't permit them to move up to JC2 along with their friends in the coming year? In a system that thrives on its rigour, education here inevitably brings about casualties. In situations like these, all I can do as CT is to help the distraught adjust to their situation and encourage positive thinking so that they can bounce back from this, their first truly major setback in life.

Honestly, it is better to face retention in JC1 now than it is to receive an unsatisfactory grade at the 'A's in JC2 next year. Although that's not very comforting right now, there is wisdom in the statement.

I wonder if I should tell them about my own horrendous experiences as a student of their age? I've not decided yet whether that would cheer them up or depress them further.

Meantime, the kids who are movin' up have to deal with survivor's guilt. I have an emo class.