t-shirt

i saw someone today wearing a t-shirt that had the "Google" logo on the front, and on the back: "I'm Feeling Lucky". i want one of those!

good days

you know how mark haddon's young narrator in curious incident knew it was a Good Day when he saw x number of red cars in a row? well, i've decided a Good Day for me is one where i get to:

* read a little
* write a little
* nap a little
* gym/run a little and
* see friends a little

which means that today was a Good Day.

a Very Good Day, on the other hand, must needs involve tequila.

my police interview was this morning. please keep all your fingers and toes crossed for me (but not for too long, or you'll cut off the blood supply to them and need numerous amputations). gracias.

- had a craving for a proper southern breakfast on saturday, so decided to embark on a quest to learn how to make home fries. the secret, it turns out, is in the spices - paprika, cumin, garlic, salt and pepper. it all turns out very well for a maiden attempt and i also fry sausages and eggs and make a stack of pancakes. finally, coffee, and i have a 2-hour breakfast while reading the newspaper and missing durham with every mouthful.

mrt, a.m.

on the train this morning, i found myself seated next to this malay guy who was listening to evanescence on his discman - at about a hundred times the volume a normal person would. honestly, you could hear my immortal blaring forth from three carriages away. i really pity his poor eardrums - and it's not even as if evanescence is that great a group to lose your hearing over.

*
on the subject of the mrt, i find it rather amusing that the announcement as the train approaches boon lay not only tells passengers that the train is terminating but also somewhat morosely apologises "for the inconvenience", as if some people on board would like nothing better than to stay on board while the train travels further west, bursts off the tracks and plunges into the straits of malacca.

Truth at last, by Edward Rowland Sill

Does a man ever give up hope, I wonder, --
Face the grim fact, seeing it clear as day?
When Bennen saw the snow slip, heard its thunder
Low, louder, roaring round him, felt the speed
Grow swifter as the avalanche hurled downward,
Did he for just one heart-throb -- did he indeed
Know with all certainty, as they swept onward,
There was the end, where the crag dropped away?
Or did he think, even till they plunged and fell,
Some miracle would stop them? Nay, they tell
That he turned round, face forward, calm and pale,
Stretching his arms out toward his native vale
As if in mute, unspeakable farewell,
And so went down. -- 'T is something, if at last,
Though only for a flash, a man may see
Clear-eyed the future as he sees the past,
From doubt, or fear, or hope's illusion free.

casino

taking over the singapore stupidity watch from my brother for a day, may i point people's attention to this and say that "[using] a smartcard system in which a person's income level, betting limits and playing time are coded on a chip" at a casino is one of the most bloody idiotic ideas i've ever heard of. why don't we just have betting chaperones who put you on a leash and walk you around? yen, please do me a favour and bop the head of the person who thought of this. thank you.

email

I've been cruelly informed by OIT that my Duke email address has to go bye-bye, so I'll soon be something at alumni.duke.edu. Stay tuned.

hey, nie people! (well, person.) i had lunch at the ntu canteen today after the madding crowd had thinned and it was actually rather decent. there's a japanese stall selling $3.50 dons of various kinds - i had the soft shell crab one, and it came, in a fairly generous portion, with lettuce and mashed potato and little crabby bits in it, hot. and there's also unagi don and tendon and so forth if you fancy those. worth waiting till 1:30 for!

during lunch, choonping lamented to me that they were given an alfian sa'at "poem" to analyse in class, one so devoid in meaning that reading it was like un-reading several good shakespearean sonnets. we decided (as we have several times in the past) that the sorry state of singaporean literature is due in large part to the existence of the creative arts programme and the fact that the writers who emerge from it are often as about as creative as dr. sbaitso. (ok, fine. there are some exceptions. *ducks accusing glares*)

coincidentally enough, i was on the mrt later on when this ri fella got on at bishan, fished a CAP notebook and pen out of his bag, and picked up writing what was obviously a short story/novella of some kind. incapable of minding my own business (as usual), i said hi, and told him that if he ever intended to write, he really ought to quit the CAP ASAP (heh).

why? he asked.

i told him.

oh, he said. well, i'm not in the CAP anyway. i went for a seminar and got this notebook free.

good for you, i said.

and he continued with his work, obviously convinced that i was some kind of a nutjob.

which is probably not far from the truth.

week 6

the boss has given me permission to quit next friday if i get the new job. i'm swooning with joy.

Thinking that Mass was at 0930 this morning, I arrived at St. Iggy's at 0925 only to find that I was actually 50 minutes early. Eternal optimist that I am, I read the mistake as an opportunity to spend a little extra time praying, and felt a lot better afterwards for having done that (as opposed to getting a coffee and reading the newspaper as is my usual wont).


One of the day's readings was particularly striking, and I'll reproduce it here in its entirety (Wow, quoting the Bible for a purpose other than irony. That must be a first on this blog.)

Hebrews 12: 5-13

And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons. Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live? For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness. Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby. Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees; And make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way; but let it rather be healed.

Currently reading/just finished reading/etc.:
A Hat Full of Sky - The Inimitable Pratchett
A Short History of a Small Place - T.R. Pearson
Yellow Dog - Martin Amis

Before I run off to do the ironing, here's a big shout out and thank-you to Choonping for buying not one but two dinners for me this week because for him "it's not just the thought that counts" :)

Let it not be said that I only have negative things to say about work: after a meeting at the MOE yesterday we got an unofficial, self-declared half-day off, which was blessed relief after the three excruciating hours listening to the non-sequiturs of the MOE Director of Personnel. Went to Ghim Moh with two colleagues while considering how to commence the afternoon's gadding and mindlessly ordered hor fun which I had to pick all the chicken bits out of because it was Friday. Chatted, variously, about the state of the economy, Hendon Camp, good Italian restaurants in Singapore, Justea and expatriate teachers in junior college. The last made me feel like popping into RJC, what with it being around the corner at all, but decided not to because the last time I went the only teachers I saw were KLee and Evans, who apparently doesn't even remember me any more.

So I hopped on the MRT aimlessly, and it was about then that Von rescued me by replying to one of the many messages that I had sent to friends all around the universe saying that he was in Alexandra. Ah, I thought, the hated hospital, got off the train as it conveniently passed Redhill, got on the 33, landed up outside AH...when Von called me to say that he was heading towards Ghim Moh in a cab. By then, of course, it was threatening to pour, so Vaughn dropped off a friend, got in a different cab, and we ended up in Borders slightly damp and out about $15 between us.

(It turned out that Von was not in AH in any case, he was in Anchorpoint. Assumption is the mother etc.)

Anyway, I announced that I needed to buy ties and long-sleeved shirts for my interview next Monday (yes! I got it!) so we trotted off to Isetan and scared the salesgirl a little and Von said that it was better to do tailored shirts than buy $130 Alain Delons and also said a lot of things about cufflinks and such which I didn't understand. So we abandoned the department stores and headed for Far East Plaza where I picked a tailor shop sort of at random (well...not entirely at random...the reason I headed straight for the place I did was because I've had something made there before, once upon a very long time ago). Spent an unholy amount of time looking at fabrics and designs, Von giving me none-too-subtle instruction about which I should choose (only geriatrics wear silk! windowpanes are cool! pick collar A!), and after being slightly ripped off by the tailor (the price of one of the fabrics increased mysteriously from $65 to $70 in the space of a few breaths), I emerged with a chit receipt thing for two shirts - one white, one blue with little textured embossed squares, very subtle - which I will collect on Monday after work and before bridge.

After that was ties from Tangs, one mandarin with a black lattice pattern and the other deep crimson, and then in search of coffee because Von was "shopped out" (and pointing out all the silliest clothes to me - an undersized Celtics top and what can only be described as a diaphanous, sleeveless, $100 monostrosity). We lighted in Orchard Galilee, recapped Minz's free-main-course-redemption woes, got shushed by a very ugly man, had cappuccino (correctly spelled) and cheesecake, and talked, as always, about the horridly uncertain future.


Von says that he might start a blog, so people who know him please leave encouraging comments and such. It will, however, be very strange, and involve symbols that you must click on in a certain order before you can access entries, so don't ever expect to read anything off it. (Not to mention that fact that he says that nothing interesting ever happens to him, which is so patently untrue that it is eurtnu).

olympics

So the apple of the SSC's eye, Ronald Susilo, lost his quarter-final match while I was walking to Justin's house to play mahjong, and i thought it would be nice to put into perspective exactly how pathetic the state of singapore sport is in. I know what they say about lies damn lies, but let's think about the situation in terms of stats nonetheless.

What possible factors might correlate with how successful a country is in sport?

1) GDP per capita
Singapore is 27th in the world at US$24000, and (as everyone and his goldfish knows because they report it in every damn article on the Olympics that gets published here), we have one silver medal. More than half the countries in the top 25 list in GDP per capita are also top 25 in total Olympic medals over the past 100 years (USA, Sweden, France, Britain, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, Canada, Belgium, Australia, The Netherlands, Japan, Finland, Italy).

2) Incentives
I believe there was something in the papers about Singapore having the highest monetary incentive in the world for winning an Olympic medal (at $1 million bucks, is that a surprise?) So no disadvantage there.

3) Expenditure on sport
You can view that here. I don't know what that is in comparison with other countries, but whatever the case, it's substantial.

Well, OK, that's not so great. Maybe success at the Olympics is a function of population size. More people, more talent, right?

Sydney Olympics 2000, medals per 1 million people:

1. Bahamas: 6.78 (population 294,982; medals 2)
2. Barbados: 3.64 (population 274,540; medals 1)
3. Iceland: 3.62 (population 276,365; medals 1)
4. Australia: 3.03 (population 19,169,083; medals 58)
5. Cuba: 2.64 (population 11,096,395; medals 29)
5. Jamaica: 2.64 (population 2,652,689; medals 7)
6. Norway: 2.23 (population 4,481,162; medals 10)
7. Estonia (!!) 2.10 (population 1,431,471; medals 3)
8. Trinidad & Tobago: 1.70 (population 1,175,523; medals 2)
9. Hungary: 1.68 (population 10,138.844; medals 17)

So no real correlation there: 6 of the top 10 have significantly smaller populations than ours; Norway is about on par with us.

Where are we in context? In the overall rankings, we are joint 107th (also known as last), in the esteemed company of Burkina Faso, Ecuador, Zimbabwe, Ceylon, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Smyrna, Tonga, Vietnam, the Virgin Islands, Barbados, Bermuda, Djibouti, Guyana, Iraq, Kuwait, Kyrgystan, Macedonia, Niger, Sri Lanka and Thessalonika (wtf?). We have fewer medals than Mozambique, Suriname, Tanzania, Haiti, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Zambia, the Antilles, Panama, Qatar, Malaysia, Armenia and Cameroon, all of which have 2-3 medals.


In conclusion? We suck.

minz objects to my entry and points out that it was shaun who brought up the topic of english multiple times, which is true, so just to make that clear.

dinner

now that this is over i can confess that it was some trepidation that i agreed to the whole affair, mostly because of previously-received advice that getting friends from different social circles in your life to mix is a uniquely bad idea. it was good, though, so perhaps the advice was not well given after all. or maybe some people just tend to have more schizophrenic lives than others whereas almost everyone i know can spell and punctuate and tell that the plural of vol-au-vent is not vol-au-vents.

since minz has neglected to mention it, i shall report that a lot of the conversation centered around her imminent foray into the world of grad school in english - booklists, theory, etc. - and it's funny how some people become grad school students, so readily immersing themselves in the role, while others just kind of go 'oh, yes, and by the way, i'm writing a thesis'. i mean, i almost never talk to shaun about chem, even though he's going to caltech to do 6 more years of it - although perhaps that is a bad example because i couldn't tell you what a van der waal's force was if it slapped me in the face. but you know what i mean.

i think that if i had decided to go to minnesota that's what would have happened to me - i would have become a walking encyclopedia of everything there is to know about schizophrenia (because that's what i do, i tend to drown in information once i have access to it). and when you're in the humanities and that happens, you become learned; when you're a science student, you just turn into a crashing bore. so, well, there's another post hoc reason as to why it was a good idea to turn down grad school. still going on about it after all these months.

anyway, the tea at brown box was really nice - i do like serangoon gardens even though it's so impossible for me to get to - and yes, we must go to pow sing because i'm all excited about nonya food now, even though i am broke.

so i have to rewrite this paper i submitted because apparently it is "too academic". which begs the question: why in hell is she hiring smart people? apparently all they want are sycophants, dumbclucks, and yes-men.

Interesting article about the Olympics.

i want to blog about things that are beautiful or interesting or poignant like water wheels in japan or running a marathon after recovering from a spontaneous pneumothorax or watching the sun rise over the serengeti.

week 5

Job 3: 1-26

After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. And Job said: "Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night which said, 'A man-child is conceived.' Let that day be darkness! May God above not seek it, nor light shine upon it. Let gloom and deep darkness claim it. Let clouds dwell upon it; let the blackness of the day terrify it. That night--let thick darkness seize it! let it not rejoice among the days of the year, let it not come into the number of the months. Yea, let that night be barren; let no joyful cry be heard in it. Let those curse it who curse the day, who are skilled to rouse up Levi'athan. Let the stars of its dawn be dark; let it hope for light, but have none, nor see the eyelids of the morning; because it did not shut the doors of my mother's womb, nor hide trouble from my eyes. "Why did I not die at birth, come forth from the womb and expire? Why did the knees receive me? Or why the breasts, that I should suck? For then I should have lain down and been quiet; I should have slept; then I should have been at rest, with kings and counselors of the earth who rebuilt ruins for themselves, or with princes who had gold, who filled their houses with silver. Or why was I not as a hidden untimely birth, as infants that never see the light? There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary are at rest. There the prisoners are at ease together; they hear not the voice of the taskmaster. The small and the great are there, and the slave is free from his master. "Why is light given to him that is in misery, and life to the bitter in soul, who long for death, but it comes not, and dig for it more than for hid treasures; who rejoice exceedingly, and are glad, when they find the grave? Why is light given to a man whose way is hid, whom God has hedged in? For my sighing comes as my bread, and my groanings are poured out like water. For the thing that I fear comes upon me, and what I dread befalls me. I am not at ease, nor am I quiet; I have no rest; but trouble comes."

heh

When you search for "class size" and "Finland" on PsycInfo, you get 13 hits, the last of which is:

Kujala, A.
Keski-ikaiset vieroksuvat ylipirteaa superohjaajaa
(Middle-aged people shun an over-energetic super aerobic instructor.)

Hehe.

the woman sitting opposite me is very strange. she has an infant son (or so i gather), and she makes phone calls to her maid (?) once or twice an hour to check on every last detail of the baby's life (has he had his bath? have you fed him? don't overfeed him! is he asleep? is he awake? is he still coughing?). slightly more disturbingly, she also makes calls about once a day to what i can only guess is a pediatrician or a child psychologist to talk about her son's "night terrors" (he wakes up in the night crying and screaming. having done a whatever degree in psychology i guess she has diagnosed him herself. don't all babies wake up crying, though?) from what i can tell of the conversations, i imagine that the professional on the other end keeps telling her not to worry and to "rub medicated oil" on the child or something, but she keeps calling him anyway. ("they're getting worse! is he going to die?") i don't know. if she's so concerned about him, shouldn't she be on maternity leave or something? i'm extremely puzzled.

Currently reading:
The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler

week 4

Exodus 1: 7-14

But the descendants of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong; so that the land was filled with them. Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. And he said to his people, "Behold, the people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and, if war befall us, they join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land." Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens; and they built for Pharaoh store-cities, Pithom and Ra-am'ses. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad. And the Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel. So they made the people of Israel serve with rigor, and made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and brick, and in all kinds of work in the field; in all their work they made them serve with rigor.

squeaky wheel, no grease

I refer with great dismay to the article ("Death at Bishan Station disrupts train services", July 29) and would like to express my severe disappointment at the complete insensitivity displayed by its writer.

Instead of focusing on the tragedy of the life that was lost, your reporter
chose to lead with the fact that train services were "disrupted for an hour". He blithely proceeds to close with a recap of the measures SMRT put into place to
deal with what he clearly perceives as a mere inconvenience to commuters.

Not that one needs to read the article to be incensed - its headline alone
shows your reporter's obliviousness to what is most obviously important: the
fact that a man is dead.

Your abysmal standards of journalism have done a great disservice to both
the victim's loved ones and the reputation of the Singapore media at large.

Mr. J___ L____


Dear Mr L____,

Thank you for your contribution to our Letters page. I regret to inform you that we are unable to publish it in our newspaper.
For your information, we receive a large number of letters every day from our readers. However, we are unable to publish all of them due to space constraints.
Please continue to send your views to us. We will do our best to accommodate them.
Once again, thank you for your interest in TODAY.

Peace!

Reavathi Sinnathamby
Today, MediaCorp Press
Newsdesk 1800 236 4888

Currently reading:
The Curious Incident of the Dog In the Night-Time - Mark Haddon. (Because I must. Thanks Jiahao)

interviewing

for the police force is as long-drawn out a process as auditioning for donald trump on the apprentice...and is significantly less fun to boot. i sat for a psychometric test last friday and have a presentation next week...all this to qualify for the final interview at the end of the month. one point for reality tv.

piscine

In a Chinese restaurant, some time last week, my dad orders (in English) the sweet-and-sour sliced garoupa. To our amusement, this order gets repeated to us as the "sly fish" - perhaps, one of the brothers muses, the crafty one in the tank that's the hardest to catch?

The real punchline, however, comes the following week in the NTUC when said brother espies what he announces must be a closely-related species...the kuning fish.

on stupidity

This story courtesy of Justin (his words, from an email):

"It's like this brilliant test, where some professor asked participants to guess a number from 1 to 100, and try to be closest to 2/3 of the mean number guessed by all participants. So this brilliant participant worked out that if numbers were randomly chosen from 1 to 100, the mean should be close to 50, and the answer closest to 33. However, that should be obvious to everyone, so the answer would be reduced to 2/3 of that, which is 22. It shouldn't stop there however, but be repeated ad inifinitum. He cleverly found the right answer of 0.

The professor revealed the results, where a sprinkling of people guessed 50 (or higher) [say hello to the brain dead], a few people had guessed 0, and the majority of people had guessed 33. Hence some person in the low twenties won, which was about the same as other times the professor had tried the experiment apparently.

It should be quite obvious to us both to have guessed 22. Why? We know only too well people are idiots, but let's give them some credit, in classes like that, people should usually be of above average intelligence. That means they have just about enough brains to go through step 1. "Hmm, random numbers from 1 to 100 should generate 50 as an average, and 2/3s of that is..." If you then take another step forward, knowing most participants (who aren't brain dead) would guess 33, you can easily guess 22. If you try to be clever, and reduce it "Logically, the answer should be 0, since it must repeat to infinity!", then you've made the very fatal assumption that people are absolutely rational, and put in the effort to think on more than a basic level. Thus outsmarting yourself. If you really thought things through (to make the guess of 22), you'd probably realise the braniacs and brain-dead should about balance each other out (as it apparently did), and thus not have to adjust your answer."

This is how I get through the days.

they're holding national day something-or-another rehearsals outside our door and blaring awful marching tunes over the PA system because CLEARLY this is the best way to allow people to concentrate on their work.

i'm going home.

gahmen

MOE guy: So your research says that small classes are better?
Us: Yes
MOE guy: And how small is small?
Us: 15 kids or so.
MOE guy: 15? We thought that small was 30.
Us: No. 30 is large.
MOE guy (deflated): Oh. (Pause) So can you do some research on why large classes are better?

Sigh.

desultory

Monday. Ate a digestive biscuit this morning. The PhD woman (the one who can’t write) has quit, so that’s some good news at least. Meanwhile, we’ve sort of run out of things to do. Our library accounts have not been activated yet, which means that we can’t borrow books, which means that our work has come to an effective standstill (we’ve extracted everything we can from the journals). Sitting, bored. Sleepy, as always. The queues in the canteen are really long. Reminder to self: try to avoid the lunch crowd.

Currently reading:
Soul Mountain - Gao Xingjian