Snapshot

March 31st, 2006 Uncategorized

Canberra has the weather of my childhood: the dappled sun, the gusts of breeze, the sound of children at play, the chirping trees and the somewhat dull quiet of the neighbourhood. Sometimes when working in the library, I enter a dreamlike phase: I would be reading a journal for a paper and my mind would think about taking the bus to Ah Phor’s house because I haven’t seen her in a while. When work was done, I came out of the dream with disappointment and wished of bullet trains to Ang Mo Kio.

Sick at home today, I found the weather outside the window sweetly agreeable. The clouds ilke Veemer’s pictures of his home in Delft and a dark skinned, pony tailed woman walked with a swaying gait to the market, holding a small brown purse. Now nobody uses baskets to the market. Alone at home with my books around me, I pretend for a few hours I am back in Canberra, the sun is rising slowly and so is the march of my five hundred words.

(But this is not Canberra. I have no five hundred words but five hundred paces to the doctor.)

On the table, my pearl necklace gleams in the light. I am superstitious and imagine that wearing makes me invisibile to scoldings. Why do women gain pleasure from wearing jewels? I feel like a soldier waking up to the call of battle: putting on my war paint and my scratched armour. It seems easier at war: your enemies wear a different colour uniform from you. At work, your comrades could be your enemies.

This small dot is too small

March 21st, 2006 Uncategorized

Takchek has been wondering where is home

Is it my selective hearing that everyone who has spent some time out of Singapore wants to leave? My brother C, was whinging about this over Chinese New Year, when he returned for the holidays. My father who was posted to Malaysia loved Kulai. Although both never said it, they didn’t want to come back to Singapore. They can’t say that, of course, we are in here- we might be hurt. Then there is the guilt of dumping responsibilities. (As though we are burdens.)

The important question is not, where home is, but who do I want there. One easy way to separate out whether if Singapore is the problem is to ask if you had a choice, who would you want with you. I suspect, in most cases, the answer would not be everyone in the family. The whole point about going out to another place is being away. Singapore can become the city with the most sense of fun and energy but the small land size mean one has to go overseas to be away. People need to be away sometimes, to gain perspective. Besides, it gives people new things to talk about.

Space is our problem.

Election’s around the corner and the government is desperately drawing and redrawing boundaries, going for the two small opposition areas. So what if they get it? They should just us a break: a little opposition is not a horrid thing and then what is there to motivate them from doing better? Again, the problem of space.

What I did today at work

March 20th, 2006 atwork

(Because I might forget what I was like when I was working in XXX organisation.)

1. Spoke with my boss in the morning. She repeated some stuff about the meeting we had last friday on new intiatives. Told her about staff performance issues last weekend. Confirmed that she would be doing the opening for the training later today and the meeting with some VC folks tomorrow.

2. Got annoyed with phone engineers for bothering me phone problems that I figured they can resolve easily.

3. Clarified with some folks on headcount for 2004 and 2005 for submission of certain performance data to the group.

4. Reported on weekly statistics to the GM.

5. Updated weekend’s performance numbers.

6. Gave some people time off.

7. Promised to roll out the roster for next quarter.

8. Delivered the training to new managers. Dropped the ambition to be a teacher: too much activity in boring another person to sobs.

9. Continued typing out training notes for the day 3 training.

10. Re-distributed the work for P’s team to the other teams.

Felt: Tired, bored, cold.
Lunch: Fried rice and chicken.
Dinner: Pizza

Perhaps Love

March 14th, 2006 music, screen

Lately I have gone mad over this little show by Peter Ho Sun. It’s a big production with big casts, to be sure, but the essential plot is so small: Lin Jian Dong once had a heart breaking relationship with Sun Na but this girl went to shack up with a director (and another, and another). Ten years later she is with a director, Nie Wen, putting her into his musical which is about a girl who has lost her memory and is picked up by the circus master and everything is fine and dandy until her childhood sweetheart shows up. The story within a story fills in the gaps in the story of these three persons. It has to, because in reality, the characters are weak. I feel rather alienated from all that passion in the screen. Lin Jian Dong and Sun Na felt like they were testing to see if the spark remains. Nie and Sun were so cold on screen that one could understand Sun Na for going with Lin Jian Dong for a bit of fun.

I am completely mad over the drama in the music. Lots of big Phantom of the Opera/ Les Miserable POM-POM sounds. The circus master’s voice – played by Jack Cheung – was strong and loud but could be a tad richer, more heavy in the bass. I want my hair to stand when he got angry. I want to feel my heart rip out from its cage. Some bits it did – when he was snarling in Men Are Born Jealous – some bits it didn’t, like in Fate song.

I love the climax at the end, when the circus master flew across the trapeze and folded his arms to fall down to his death. The cherry black blood on white snow was pure drama – like Tosca. I was disappointed to see him walking up and saying “It’s a wrap!”, however. It would have been delicious to have ended there.

The opening dance sequence added the correct fantastical touch. The scenes were cut so fast at times I found myself unable to focus on the chronological order of the story. Somehow that improved the experience of the present in the movie although the movie was so much about the past than the present. I also love the appearances of low girls singing about the world in the gutters. A bit frivolous – I suppose to apologise for Sun’s unattractive money-face of her character – but added pleasant cynical colour to overall taste of the film. The pained ex-lover was rather bland. Takeshi Kaneshiro has a lovely smooth voice but needed more colour to show the yearning, the anger, the bitterness – I couldn’t figure out why I was constantly prompted to look at his anger. What anger? Zhou Xun has an endearingly precise diction and was adeqeuate in her singing parts overall. She didn’t need to be anything but the girl everyone fights over. (How tough is that?)

In summary, ignore the plot you have something 100 times classier than Moulin Rouge.

*The VCD is sold at HMV is of very poor quality – one would be better off waiting for the DVD.

The Anthropic Universe

March 12th, 2006 popscience

Scientists have been trying to put together a theory of everything. One of them I really don’t get is the the anthropic principle.

David Deutsch: The idea that we should condition all our predictions on the assumption that we are here to ask the question is called the weak anthropic principle.

Martin Redfern: And that is the final anthropic principle.

The problem set forth seems to me is: why are able to observe anything at all of this universe. I think this question is not very scientific – closer to philosophy. We are able to observe the universe but what we observe of this universe is from the perception of a human being. Now, should we have intelligent lifeform in another place, this intelligent lifeform is produced exactly in the same way life form is produced here and it can be observed that other universes has a place exactly like earth then what we imagine the universe to be would become true because everyone would hold the same sort of theory about the laws of universe, not because the laws of universe precieved is true . So, I tend to think is not that we purposely condition our predictions on the assumption we are here to ask the question – the weak anthropic principle – but that we can’t help it asking the question and finding an answer from the perspective we hold.

Should the intelligent lifeform developed elsewhere that is different from us, then from these two perspective – providing that we speak a common language – we would have to compare notes to figure out the common laws of universe as we understand it.

Breaking the crayon breakers

March 11th, 2006 elsewhere

I came across this article 32 Traits of Creative People while looking for something else.
Being creative is only helpful to others not to oneself. The person who preaches this is not concerned about the the social problems of those who are unfortunately creative but for himself so that he can preach to organisations needling their managers to think out of the box. If, on my deathbed, I were to give advice to a person to have a good life, I would encourage a person play down these characteristics in particular those below.

Sensitiveness is suppose to help a person be more aware and more considerate as they say but it is not true. It is the insensitive who wins because the whole point is one’s own utility and only in competition to achieve our individual utilities that we come to win-win solution, not a sensitive person, considerate to another’s needs. A sensitive person always gets makan-ed.

Not being motivated by money but by a sense of destiny, or to self actualise reduces the importance of managing wealth. Some artists are not poor because they are not earning but they manage it badly. Easy prey.

Be adaptable, tolerant of ambiguity or flexible and one would be accused of being fickle minded and appears to be indecisive or worse a double crosser. No body likes a person who doesn’t take a stand: for or against the crowd of us. May result in one having very little friends to turn to in times of trouble.

A question asker, is often thought of being critical, annoying and a dissident. Sometimes killed. At best, exiled. Observing the world differently and seeing possibilities is makes a person suspected of being insane. Having specific interests will get one labeled weird in one’s entire lifetime.

Able to fanaticize, imaginative is often called day dreamers. Always at the losing end in an organisation: unable to focus on the task assigned.

Being original, ingenious and a divergent thinker is truely dangerous. A crowd pelting one with stones is really tough on one’s ego and health.

Being independent, self-disciplined, and non-conforming just makes a person a poor subordinate. A dumb but exact follower always wins in any situation.

A Moment in Peking by Lin Yu Tang

March 5th, 2006 books

I don’t read Chinese novels but from those I have been forced to endure during school days, I formed the impression that Chinese books either record the minuitae of life and living or just melodrama. This book falls into the former category and goes into details of all the family members of Tseng and Yao, the elites in Chinese society. The story, set in the period between the Boxer Rebellion and the Sino-Japanese War, reads like a Chinese period drama. The time peroid is exciting: an entire society is deciding whether to cast away the old ways and enter into modernity. Perhaps because structure of a family is not one to withstand great tension therefore the writer subjected the characters to very little tension. There are some tragedies – a prodigal son, some young deaths, a bad daughter-in-law, unrequited love, unfaithfulness in husbands – but the characters treat these happenings with restraint and foresight so the impact is often minimised.

My only complaint of the story is that the characters have too much foresight. Lin lays a heavy hand in using dreams, oracles and morals to guide the characters. In fact, many dreams happen exactly the way it was said to happen, which is sometimes true to life but in a book, rather incredible. Perhaps, conditioned by English novels that dreams are mainly symbols and hints, I am not used to this technique employed.

Reading the book, it strikes me that old fashion society is not a straitjacket and the modern or post-modern world is not as liberal as imagined. In fact, what appears to be liberal most of the time can be easily explained as a desire to be for others to accommodate to one’s ways rather than greater consideration for others.

Found: a link to a undergrad thesis on Lin Yu Tang here. Link thanks to David Harris

Pen Shopping

March 3rd, 2006 TreatsTags: Pens

A thing bought at bonus payout time is a tangible commemoration for one’s hard work over the past year, said my colleague trying to cajole me to owning a Tods bag. I easily resisted the bag but the idea grew and grew and I went to Fook Hing with an idea to buy a new pen. I felt an impossible task: I already own three perfect pens and there is probably nothing that is even better. They are my three Pelikans: the size (capped) is just right for my hands and I bought some old style nibs that gives a slightly oblique shape to my characters. I hardly ever use the other new style nibs that I own.

A skinny bloke let me try the Omas and Namiki demonstrators. Both good pens, nice and smooth but the desire for ownership didn’t strike me with these two pens. I was a little bit more interested in the Omas but it is filled with cartridges – not a habit of mine to buy cartridges. Pelikans strikes me as more utilitarian than beautiful. Further, I did not wish to own another Pelikan. I was staring hopelessly into the display windows when Johnny – shop owner, I’m guessing – said to me, If you like good nibs, let me show you the Sailor pens. They make very good nibs. He showed me the 1911 series. I fell for it and took it home.

I wanted at one time to quit my job to sell pens. After my pen buying experience, I figured that pen selling is out of the list of things I can do. The speed with which I am stereotyped is amazing. I don’t know how to stereotype people. I can’t tell the
motives for buying a pen.

*I also bought private reserve grey flannel. If anyone’s interested: the colour is a bit like soot.