If you like Edward Hopper

May 31st, 2007 Treats, elsewhere

There is a really cool sketchbook online here. Paintings on display in Boston, Museum of Fine Arts May 6, 2007 – Aug 19, 2007.

A Jolly Weekend

May 27th, 2007 Uncategorized

Residents of The Beaufort

The brood of Indian Peafowl were in front of our balcony: 2 males with fantastic plummage, 4 females and 1 baby. One of the males, trying to attract the attention of the peahen with baby, performed a mating dance to the delight of kiddies.

~

Cousin C: “I want to sit at the balcony. There is a very good view of all the peacocks.”
Me: “I think the peacocks are thinking the same thing of us.”

~

“Jie Jie, I brought your picture to show and tell.”
“Show and tell? My picture?!”
“Um, all my friends said you look very old.”
“Baby, did you bring the right picture?”

~

“Come out of the bath-ah! Or else we won’t go to Vivo City for lunch!”
“We haven’t finished!”
“Why are you taking so long?”
“Because we are beautiful girls.” (Hilarity ensued.)

For Coke

May 26th, 2007 Uncategorized

Dude: Hainanese Cartoons! from Hut Du Gai Kar Sui.

It seems there was a drama played in Hainanese recently (blogged here and here). The plot doesn’t sound entertaining but I would have watched it for the novelty factor.

Old Harry’s Game

May 25th, 2007 radio

Andy Hamilton clopping about on coconut shells is Satan. I love the (somewhat) humourous philosophical arguments and the guest appearances: Buddha, Da Vinci, Nietzche, Edith Piaf, Elvis, Satre, Enstein, etc. It’s on bittorrent if you want the whole thing.

A Self Fufilling Prophecy

May 25th, 2007 Uncategorized

From ST: Students of top schools worry more about elitism by way of TakChek. The response is interesting.

“While 52 per cent of young people from top schools said it is very important or somewhat important for them to be a member of the elite group, only 43 per cent of those from neighbourhood schools felt that way.”

To lay expectations of success on a child and grooming the child towards it makes a difference in building good habits for success. Top schools have this intense competition compared with merely good schools in the neighbourhood. Whether the child is screwed up by the experience (scarred or collects bad habits) will depend on the parent’s ability to balance that out, to maximise factor of success.

Let’s say you have become a gazillionaire and wish to spend your money on your alma mater – a neighbourhood school. Can you create that sort of intense environment without causing a riot? Yes, through a lower student teacher ratio. Separation of faster and slower learners is important for teachers to cater to the needs of both. (Balance the natural competition with some team building events to bring the two groups together outside of school .) But within each group, allow for choice of interests (keeping in view the various needs for examinations). Naturally grouping like-minded individuals together brings about enthusiasm and competition.

How I love not working

May 24th, 2007 atschool

(Missing the mental challenges at work? Not if you are making progressively futile stabs at econometrics!)

Mightly Miffed with MS Office; Extremely Exasperated with Excel
I hate damnable programmers dictating what I want from my excel. I am only a small time office bum and need not a thousand commands at my finger tips and what I want, I know where to get it, thank you very much. This damnable Excel 2007 has a thing called ribbon. “The changes make working with the programs easier, faster, and more efficient.” I don’t particularly need or want to be faster, easier or more efficient. I am quite happy with little old slow poke me.

Bird Murder
All the other birds – a pigeon and two mynahs – saw the taxi but not this pigeon, who flew itself under the right tire to be squashed. The mynahs were shocked and made screaming bird noises at the gasping, choking creature. The other pigeon, stood a little away. My brother, who was a scout in his teens has all sorts of life skills like bird murder with one’s bare hands, told me over the telephone to step on its head. Luckily for me, the pigeon made its final gasp and died before I reached it. Would I have the stomach for such things? I have been humming ‘If I Were A Man’ from Victor/Victoria – I think I would have made a wussy, girly man if I were one.

Feed your inner anglophile!

May 23rd, 2007 radio

BBC Reith lecture 2007: Bursting At the Seams
BBC’s Quite Interesting Series 3 and a bit of Series 4, where else but youtube

Mr Big, The Whore of Mensa

May 23rd, 2007 books

A wall of books opened, and I walked like a lamb into that bustling pleasure palace known as Flossie’s. Red flocked wallpaper and a Victorian decor set the tone. Pale, nervous girls with black-rimmed glasses and blunt-cut hair lolled around on sofas, riffling Penguin Classics provocatively. A blonde with a big smile winked at me, nodded toward a room upstairs, and said, “Wallace Stevens, eh?” But it wasn’t just intellectual experiences. They were peddling emotional ones, too. For fifty bucks, I learned, you could “relate without getting close.” For a hundred, a girl would lend you her Bartok records, have dinner, and then let you watch while she had an anxiety attack. For one-fifty, you could listen to FM radio with twins. For three bills, you got the works: A thin Jewish brunette would pretend to pick you up at the Museum of Modern Art, let you read her master’s, get you involved in a screaming quarrel at Elaine’s over Freud’s conception of women, and then fake a suicide of your choosing – the perfect evening, for some guys. Nice racket. Great town, New York.

There are probably many writers who write about the tussle between girls who are brainy and girls who are hot. Woody Allen’s one of them. In the Whore of Mensa, a man seeks out an intellectual selling her knowledge for a bit of money. I love it to bits. Oh, not just the intellectual whoring – which, one finds it with a sympathetic wry smile – but that Flossie – the Mamasan – is a chap who didn’t finish college because he was thrown out for low grades. Perfection!

In Mr Big, the same detective Lupowitz is hired by Heather Buttkiss, a stripper looking for God. A little into the story, Heather Buttkiss revealed she is actually Claire Rosenswig, a student at Vassar.

The voice on the other end was Sergeant Reed of Homicide.
“You still looking for God?”
“Yeah.”
“An all-powerful Being? Great Oneness, Creator of the Universe? First Cause of All Things?”
“That’s right.”
“Somebody with that description just showed up at the morgue. You better get down here right away.”
It was Him all right, and from the looks of Him it was a professional job.
“He was dead when they brought Him in.”
“Where did you find Him?”
“A warehouse on Delancey Street.”
“Any clues?”
“It’s the work of an existentialist. We are sure of that.”
“How can you tell?”
“Haphazard way how it was done. Doesn’t seem to be any system followed. Impulse.”
“Crime of passion?”
“You got it.”

What’s absolutely mind-tickling is that the murderer is revealed over Fettucine by the Pope who attempted to keep up the illusion that God exists and refused Lupowitz access to God. The Pontiff also revealed to Lupowitz Clair Rosenswig’s true identity. Confrontation. Gunshot. Claire Rosenswig, finally revealed as a professor of Physics at Bryn Mawr, is down and fading but not before the last word. Lupowitz gets in a nose thumbing at science. The end.

Humour

May 21st, 2007 popscience

Comedy, the easiest thing to make people like you, is basically a form of grovelling according to Quirkology.”The top jokes had one thing in common – they create a sense of superiority in the reader. The feeling arises because the person in the joke appears stupid..or pricks the pomposity of another.”

On the msn with V, a friend:
Me: btw, please make your way to ‘X’. all and sundry will be there. i shall be there in my bikini frightening away men by the busloads so pool and beach shall be empty.
V: HAHAHAHAHA!!
Me: if you happen to know a bloke now partially blind, bring him along. I’ll put him out of his misery and make him completely blind.
V: HAHAHAHAHA!!

That’s all folks!

May 21st, 2007 atwork

Saying goodbye? Forget about the drab little thank you messages. Choose from one of the four:

A. Never ever will my shadow darken the doorways and corridors of this benighted pit of Hade’s navel. Pig out on the remains of my stationary, yer grave robbers!

B. I will let you know where my new office is after the white coats decide to tell me. The list of stationery is in my GTD folder. I separated it by names and types of stationary. On the excel sheet on my desktop, you can exchange or bid for the stationary of your choice. Help file available in pdf or html format.

C. I am not worthy, I am not worthy (to kowtow several times while saying it, moving out of the door). I have taken all the stationary. Suckers!

D. Thanks for all the fish!

(I was going to put up A but there was no time after I did the help files and smuggled all the stationary.)