my wedding video

I see a trend in wedding videos. The groom pulls up at the bride's home with his merry men, only to be tekaned by the cronies jiemei of the bride. They are made to undergo all manner of humiliating acts, eat repulsive concoctions and even pay out obscene bribes, before the groom can life the veil and kiss the bride. Soon I will experience it firsthand myself.

This is my ideal wedding video:

The black car pulls up in front of the bride's house and the groom dismounts. He strides purposefully toward the front door, companions in tow. A glance at the windows reveals no gloating, giggling faces. An ominous silence hangs in the air; the house has the appearance of being deserted.

As the groom reaches the front door, it is opened from within by a gentlemen immaculately dressed in a tuxedo. He could not be mistaken for any sort of manservant, however, because of his athletic build, dark glasses, and the air of bravura radiating from him. This aura, in fact, is shared by the entire party of the groom, who is himself the epitome of sei.

Inside, the ladies are trussed up like chickens gently bound to the dining room furniture. Their eyes are wide not with terror, but with wonderment at the finesse with which they were overcome. The warrior standing over them snaps a quick salute as the groom enters. A paperclip in the kitchen is the only evidence of the swift and silent entry made by the vanguard. With a flourish, the groom magnanimously whips out a sheaf of red packets and delicately tucks one each into the bonds of the incapacitated bridal party.

He then proceeds directly to that room, and throws the door open. These final moments trickle by like an eternity as he sets eyes upon the most beautiful ... ok I'll cut the romantic crap here. You get the general idea; why is it not done this way?

opportunity costs

I'm glad my economics training has not completely gone to waste. Do you still remember?
via elia diodati:

You won a free ticket to see an Eric Clapton concert (which has no resale value). Bob Dylan is performing on the same night and is your next-best alternative activity. Tickets to see Dylan cost $40. On any given day, you would be willing to pay up to $50 to see Dylan. Assume there are no other costs of seeing either performer. Based on this information, what is the opportunity cost of seeing Eric Clapton?
A. $0
B. $10
C. $40
D. $50

If you notice a disturbing trend on this blog to link rather than write, I'm sorry. I'm tired.

little ball bearing

Singapore Angle has a really interesting piece on Patricia Herbold, nominated as the next Ambassador to Singapore. Here are a few of the more interesting things that jumped out at me:

Frank Lavin, the current ambassador, has over twenty years of experience with Asia issues, a Lt Commander in the U.S. Naval Reserves, and not to mention a B.Sc.F.S. from SFS at GU, an M.Sc. in Chinese Language and History from GU, an M.A. in International Relations and International Economics from SAIS at JHU and an M.B.A. in Finance from Wharton. [all schools truncated from the original for your guessing pleasure]

I am astounded. His educational qualifications read like the who's who of top institutions. And I don't mean top institutions in the generic sense - this guy studies at the top institution for each field. I don't know how he managed to accumulate such a wealth of academics but ... I also want!

There always has been a small collection of "plum" ambassadorships that U.S. presidents of both parties save for their closest friends and reliable contributors: Paris, London, Tokyo, Buenos Aires and Singapore.

Why is Singapore considered a plum ambassadorship? I wonder what it takes to qualify to be a plum.

And this bit is from Ms Herbold's testimony, which also contains a very concise summary of Singapore-U.S. relations for anyone who is interested.

Singapore is a strong supporter of a U.S. military presence in the region. It is a critical logistics hub for U.S. forces transiting between the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Singapore boasts the only pier outside a U.S. base at which a U.S. aircraft carrier can dock, for example. Singapore is also an important partner in promoting maritime security in the Strait of Malacca, through which one-third of the world's trade and one-half of the world's oil transits.

It brings to mind two fond memories. The first was when a bunch of friends were discussing regional militaries and someone joked that Thailand has an aircraft carrier and not enough aircraft. The comeback was: we have an aircraft carrier dock and no aircraft carrier. I didn't realise we were the only one in the world, though.

The second point is the now oft-quoted statistic about the Straits of Malacca. Soon after 9/11, I was engaged in a study of Terrorist Threats to Singapore under one of the foremost terrorism experts in the U.S. This was one of our core findings, and to this day I still wonder if the media spotlight a year or two later had anything to do with our little school project. My professor was, after all, a CIA consultant and who knows whatever other government links he had. But so what if half the world's oil flows through our Straits? Let me try to elucidate its significance to Singapore and the world, with excerpts from our research.

August 17, 1943. Bombers from the Eighth Air Force attacked ball bearing plants at Schweinfurt in a massive daylight raid. The allies had identified anti-friction bearings as a critical component of the German war machine and attempted to snap this weak link. Here is one example of input-output analysis [now more popularly know as Effects Based Operations], and how the destruction of something seemingly insignificant could have disproportionately large repercussions.

I was offended when my professor approached the problem by asking, "How could Al Qaeda attack America through Singapore?" Ethnocentric b***** I thought - but no, he actually had a very good point because the ISD had already proven it could deal with JI - and the only thing that would entice the intervention of Al Qaeda in our lion city was the prospect of dealing larger damage to the U.S. We used input-output analysis to figure if any of the weak links might reside on our soil.

The Straits of Malacca is one of the busiest and most crucial shipping lane in the world. Every year, more than US$1 trillion worth of goods are transported through the straits and the volume of shipping traffic through the straits in 2000 amounted to 49,062 vessels. The use of the Straits saves the Japanese petroleum industry about $400m a year just on transportation cost savings. Much of the trade that takes place in the world relies heavily on the Straits of Malacca, a narrow 1.5 mile stretch between Singapore and Indonesia, and it is estimated that half the world’s shipping passes through this point. It is easy to envision the world economy being severely crippled if use of the straits is made impossible, even if for just a few months. Industries, being heavily dependent on oil, will come to a standstill, especially in the poorer countries in East Asia, leading to the lack of components critical in driving world economic production.

There was little doubt in our minds of the magnitude of the problem should the Straits be blocked - we then spent a considerable effort researching dirty bombs, mines and RPGs on fast craft to determine how it might be done. Personally, I am very glad our respective governments have taken strict measures to control this threat even before any incident occurred.

And so that explains the significance of the Straits of Malacca. We also found some other less sexy and still unpublicised stuff, so I guess I will keep that to myself for now.

i am who i am

I find the new meme proliferated by MercerMachine (via Tomorrow.sg) really cool. Here's my single contribution, because I'm way too tired to come up with literary epiphanies at this hour.

I am the student who always brought an inflatable pillow to sleep in the front row. And neither the light of knowledge nor the wrath of instructors could penetrate the darkness once descended.

After scanning the trackbacks, the original on MercerMachine is still by far the best.

the kentang

One of my favorite humour blogs is The Kentang. I'd liken it to a Singaporean version of The Onion, with more dry wit than TalkingCock. Doesn't update very often, but the quality is consistently good.

Here's the latest post, which includes hilarious Singlish translations from Shakespeare and Catherine Lim.

"Translation into Singlish faces certain unusual difficulties. Firstly different races may not understand all the dialect included, especially Hokkien ones. Thus as far as possible we have tried to limit ourselves to an English and Singlish vocabulary that would be widely understood in Singapore, avoiding lengthy passages in any particular language or dialect, even in direct speech, when in all reality a local language is more likely to have been spoken than English or even Singlish" said Prof. Thamalingam. "For example, when translating the following passage:

'Ah, you’re not wearing the Jade Pendant! That’s a disappointment to me, for I had hoped to see it. I’ve heard so much about it.’ - Catherine Lim, "The Jade Pendant"

The initial suggestion of
'Aiyah, lu bo cheng lu eh pendant ah? Sad lor, kwa kwa ma buay sai'

was felt to be too inaccessible to readers from other races. Eventually we settled on
"Aiyah, never wear ah. Sad lor, actually wanted to see."

So check it out, guaranteed quite a sizeable chunk of procrastination pleasure.

bible taboo

We have a new game. It's played like regular taboo, but all clues must include some biblical references, and delivered in a sermon-on-the-mount type voice. Here were some classics:

Clues

1. Manna ... with toppings
2. Burnt Manna
3. If Jesus disciples had taken this in the Garden of Gethsemane, they would have stayed up with him
4. Jesus' disciples fell asleep because they read this label wrong
   
5. What was Wormwood?
6. What did Potipher's wife do to Joseph?
7. The remains of the leviathans in Job
   

Words

1. Pizza
2. Toast
3. Caffeine
4. De-caf
   
5. Meteor
6. Kiss-and-Tell
7. Fossil
   

Those are the best ones I can remember ... anyone else?

quidam and seperation

Here are my thoughts on two shows I caught recently: Quidam and Seperation 40. It is not a review or a summary, just some things that crossed my mind.

Circe du soleil's Quidam is an amalgamation of top cultural performances from around the world, repackaged in thematic costumes and performed against a terrific musical backdrop.

One performance that perfectly demonstrates this point was the ce3 ling2 (Chinese yo-yo) act. As a former practioner myself, I'm always interested to see what magic can be wrought from two sticks and a string, and Quidam's mix of tricks and acrobatic stunts was the best I had ever seen. I suspect this is more due to their showmanship than the actual difficulty of the sequence.

They also had two hilarious skits involving 'audience participation'. At the end of the show, I asserted that the participants were planted, while my friend disagreed. I then pointed out that the male performer was taking physical liberties with his 'volunteers' that would probably be a bit risky and offensive if they were not forewarned. To this she agreed - but I was amused to realise that her logic was "if her boyfriend was there, he would be offended", whereas I had thought the lady herself would be the affronted one. Maybe I have an overly conservative view of women in modern society.

Seperation 40 had a really good start and end, but the in-between was rather drawn-out and even painful at times. The first act was set in 200X with the Islamic Republic of Malaya celebrating its 50th Anniversary, while Singapore (now an independant country located in Suzhou Industrial Park) celebrated its 5th year of independance. In the Singapore celebration, the commentator declared, "... and now we will see a display of 120 colourful floats to symbolize 120 of our achievements in the last financial quarter ..." That really cracked me up, talk about hyperbole.

The rest of the show took place in various settings over the past 40 years, and largely fell under 3 different themes: "agree to disagree", "celebrate our differences" and various portrayals of "seperation personified". Of these, one particular sequence that stood out was the dialogue between a Malay mother and her son who was to be executed the next day. Half in English, half in Malay and crackling with emotion, it was very enjoyably piecing together all the meanings from the English bits and the body language.

Finally, the other really enjoyable part was the meet-the-cast section at the very end, where we had the chance to query the directors and actors on why things were and what the hell was going on. As one audience member succintly described, Seperation 40 was more humanistic than thought-provoking in any socio-political sense, leaving me mildly disappointed. After this weekend, they will be heading to KL to perform the exact same thing.

meebo

(via yjblog and ) For those of you vegetating in the office with no one to chat with because your company's firewalls have blocked off all IM clients known to man, here's a chance for succor.

Meebo is a multi-protocol web-based IM client that connects to AIM, ICQ, Yahoo! and MSN. Web-based is especially cool for those who don't have administrator rights to install software on their own terminals. I love the simplicity of the interface but I haven't actually managed to chat on it yet due to server issues - it's that hot off the press.

And if you're not behind an IDA firewall, you might have a fighting chance of using it, for a while at least. These IDA people damn on the ball one, poor civil servants.

what word?

I have a friend that I will describe, at best, as an infrequent blogger. Her very last post was on a word she had come across - a term for that situation when you find yourself grasping for a word; you know the meaning, and sometimes you even know the first letter but you just can't articulate it. You know the feeling.

Since she posted that, I often went back to her blog because everytime I had that sensation I would think of the word, but I couldn't remember the word either because it has damn lot of letters and syllables. Almost as bad as decheemanise. I often think that whoever coined the term definitely had a wicked sense of humour with an overdose of irony.

Anyway one day the diaryland database suffered a catastrophic failure and her blog was wiped out. So now I have no recollection of the word, and neither does she. Would anyone in the know kindly enlighten me?

decheemanisation

In a discussion over common lingo that are not proper English words, one friend came up with the ultimate example: decheemanise. To me that is the ultimate oxymoron; why do you need a word with 12 letters and 4 syllables that essentially means 'simplify'?

Quite coincidentally, I came across a global effort to decheemanise the English language. It is predicated on the assumption that clear communication is the responsibility of the speaker/writer, not the listener/reader. It is the responsibility of the more sophisticated linguist to convey concepts and ideas in a language that is easily understood by the intended audience.

The product of this is called Globish, and comprises 1500 commonly used words, which should be able to convey the same meaning as the broader English language, albeit in a less poetic way. Instead of being parsimonious with the prose, it pares down the necessary vocabulary to simplify communication. It would be pretty cool if someone could just program a Globish checker to highlight all the words in a speech/document not within this 1500-word subset, and suggest amendments. I know some people I would use it for.

I think this should be much more effective than other attempts to bridge global communication such as Esperanto. It is much easier to get experts to simplify their vocabulary than to expect beginners to pick it up at an impossible rate. And I wish someone would reduce Mandarin to 1500 words.

music to my ears

I installed the latest version of Bittorrent recently, and discovered that the bittorrent scene has gotten a lot livelier since I last used it. Suprnova is still dead, but others like Mininova and The Pirate Bay have sprung up to take its place.

On a completely unrelated note, here are my brief reviews on some recent rock/emo album releases that I think are well worth buying.

Here Come The Tears is the debut release of my favorite new old band, The Tears. Brett Anderson and Bernard Butler, the singer and musical genius behind the original Suede are back together again.

If you're into the old Suede sound, like Animal Nitrate, Stay Together, The Wild Ones and the rest of DogManStar, this is the album for you. Dark guitar riffs married to androgenous vocals.

Death Cab For Cutie is fronted by Ben Gibbard, also singer on The Postal Service. They have a lovely soothing indie sound, the perfect backdrop for working long hours at the computer. Great streaming audio and mp3 downloads are available from their website so I won't say more. Go check it our yourself.

For indie-electronica, you can also download:
The Postal Service - Such Great Heights (4.07MB)

After my disappointment with Coldplay's last release, Rush of Blood to the Head, I was a little reluctant to put more money down on X&Y. Especially after I tried it in the store and was not impressed.

But I finally got it and after further evaluation, it is good stuff. It does not have the anthem quality of Clocks or Yellow, but like DCFC, it is the perfect soundtrack for a miserable day in the office.

For other stuff I am listening to, check out My Music.

on work relationships

A colleague sat down next to me and decided to give me his analysis on interpersonal relationships in the workplace.

There are three main categories of relationships: upwards (with your bosses), horizontal (with your peers) and downwards (with subordinates). Each person will have to choose one of these to sacrifice, because it is not possible to maintain all three. And citing anecdotal evidence from superiors we both know, he went on to press his thesis that for most people, it is most beneficial to sacrifice the peer level. This was not a statement I could easily accept, because I would certainly wish to manage relations on all three fronts. But as I tried to find examples of people who had successfully balanced them all, I had to conclude that a balance only occured when they had not truly mastered any.

This led me to conclude that the satisfaction derived from a relationship is inversely related to its utility.

Downward Relationships are the most satisfying because you have the joy of watching the people under you develop and mature under your guidance; perhaps even in your own image. If this is done well, you earn their love and respect and you feel damn good but you can't eat love and respect. You may achieve a lot through your team, but this will only be fully recognised if your upwards relationship is correspondingly sound.

Upwards Relationships can be extremely rewarding in the financial or career sense if managed well. However, this generally involves a lot of ass-kissing, which in turn is extremely tiring and takes its toll on the spirit. Even if you are incompetant, you can still get places if you get enough superiors to speak up for you. You can never bluff your peers, though.

Horizontal Relationships are basically the tradeoff between the two in terms of satisfaction and utility. In addition, you also need to measure the paradigm of lateral comparisons and jealousy if you are doing too well. This is why it is the easiest relationship to sacrifice.

Call me idealistic, but I am going to try for the triple anyway. I believe that my subordinates will give me trust and respect as long as I am sincerely executing my responsibilities as a leader, looking out for their best interests. I will earn the respect of my peers through my own competence, while at the same time offering the hand of friendship that does not conceal a knife that stabs the back or slits the scapegoat. And my bosses will have to respect me for my exceptional abilities, and not merely an ability to make them feel good.

In my own experience thus far, it is certainly easier to advance if you just kiss up. But what's the point of living if you cannot live with yourself?

on speed

In light of the fact that I will not be sleeping tonight, and anticipate very little sleep at all this week, I thought it would be fitting to give my take on stimulants. Especially in the light of the recent post by Mr Brown on Overclocking Yourself.

Coffee never works for me. I used to be quite immune to it, but in one week two frappucinos destroyed two critical exam papers. My brain was fried twice and I decided it was not a coincidence - henceforth I never drink coffee if I need to think. And anything stronger than an ice blended is prone to give me a headache. I never could explain the sudden change in my body's reaction to the substance, but I'm staying off it.

So instead, my drink of choice for a few hours of extra productivity is Mountain Dew. It has the highest caffeine level of any soft drink, and I'm told by friends in CMU that it's the programmer's drug of choice. I definitely spent many happy hours programming through the night with a carton of Dew in the fridge. I'm also told it kills the sex drive, which is an added boon to us programmers.

Red Bull in concentrated form has a similar effect to coffee for me. But in one part Bull, one part water, it tastes like Ribena and actually gives me a much longer buzz. This is what I used for 30-page papers and the Singapore Amazing Race. So when I need to go for more than 24 hours at a stretch, this is definitely the choice and I highly recommend it to anyone else who faces the prospect of long nights and no sleep. I think it's good up to about 48 hours, but the crash at the end of it can be rather hard.

singapore number one

Here's a really quick link because Singapore topped a ranking I've not heard of yet: Infant Mortality.

If it's shameful that we have bloated corpses on New Orleans streets, it's even more disgraceful that the infant mortality rate in America's capital is twice as high as in China's capital. That's right - the number of babies who died before their first birthdays amounted to 11.5 per thousand live births in 2002 in Washington, compared with 4.6 in Beijing.
...
The national infant mortality rate has risen under Mr. Bush for the first time since 1958. The U.S. ranks 43rd in the world in infant mortality, according to the C.I.A.'s World Factbook; if we could reach the level of Singapore, ranked No. 1, we would save 18,900 children's lives each year.

Taken from the New York Times: The Larger Shame

my dream mobyCar

I paid a brief visit to Comex yesterday. It was mostly the same old stuff until the mobyCar exhibit caught my eye and blew my mind. It's a Mac Mini with 7" touchscreen monitor and lots of other goodies. I've toyed with the idea of installing a computer in my car for a long time, and I always figured I would put in one of our old laptops. But here is an off-the-shelf that would probably handle tricky problems like heat dissipation, and also comes with much greater computing power and a full suite of built-in functions such as:

1. Multimedia playback of music and movies
2. Wi-Fi LAN
   
3. GPS Navigation
4. Integration into car control systems
5. Wireless Keyboard, Mouse and Remote Control
   

All this for just $4500. It's not cheap for sure, but I've been seriously contemplating what additional functionality would make this a worthwhile investment. I think with just a few further specifications, I would be happy to be parted with my money.

Portability
If the computer could be easily detached from the car, I could keep all my data in one place and also not need to buy a seperate computer for home. Two for the price of one!

Wireless Broadband
This is the real essential ingredient, and I believe the various Wimax providers will be rolling out their offerings in just a few months. Perfect timing! With wireless broadband, I could really harness the full power of VoIP, IM, internet radio, e-mail and most important, I'd never be stuck for places to eat again, especially once local food websites support GPS integration. Zagats does it, I hope Makansutra catches on.

Voice Recognition / Text Reader
Obviously everything has to be hands-free, and with text reading and voice recognition facilities, I could really do work and answer emails on the move.

Speed Camera Warnings
Input all the known locations of speed cameras and voila, the computer can issue an audible warning if you are approaching a camera at more than 20km/h over the speed limit! Save a few speeding fines and the system is paying for itself already!

Periscopic Webcam
I always have trouble weaving in and out of traffic because my car is so damn low I can't see which lanes ahead are clear. If I could stick a web camera through the open roof for an aerial view of the road ahead, this would make my driving so much safer. Or, mount it on the dashboard with a continuous recording mode to resolve any potential disputes arising from traffic accidents.

And all this at only twice the price of gull wings, but so much more cool and nerdy! It's the ultimate mod, my dream come true, and I don't even have to do it myself.

flying spaghetti monsters

Some time back, I wrote that I was reading Lee Strobel's The Case for a Creator . This is a survey book of many fields of scientific research that explore the claims of the Intelligent Design movement. The basic premise is that while not discounting natural selection and adaptive mutation, the scientific conditions necessary for randomly creating life as we know it are so infitesimally small that there must be a superior intelligent agent at work to set the first building blocks of life in place.

I'm not about to do a review of the book, but I will summarise to say that the book makes a compelling case for intelligent design. And while the jury is still out on whether it is a better theory than evolution, it certainly cannot be discounted as a possibility. So now I'd like to explore the other side of the debate. Coincidentally, there has been a great deal of hoo-haa in the US recently about whether or not it should be taught in schools as a competing theory to evolution (went to the Technorati top ten for a while), so I'm sure there must be lots of information on the net, if only I could take the time to find it.

I'd like to invite anyone who surfs by to leave a comment and link to any interesting articles on this. Here is a really good article to start off with from the IHT.

Of course, we cannot misconstrue Intelligent Design to directly imply the truth of any single religion. In fact, there are at least two explanations that have been gathering large followings that support intelligent design as well. The first is FSM and for the second, you'll have to go read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.