Moving stuff out
30/08/2008
I’d really rather be in Japan
Nah, just moving my knitting-related photos and frustrations over to another blog and another Flickr account.
Was impressed with Vox years ago when Netjackal told me about it, and am still impressed with them now. It’s almost as if they know what a blog user wants (and needs).
How? Maybe they spend more time implementing what someone needs than by pandering to politics and beauracracy. Maybe. Or maybe they’re just lucky. I wish Y! bought them instead of wasting that much time on crap like 360° and Mash – which they’re now shutting down. Poor Mash. It didn’t even make it past beta. It’s middle name would’ve been “Ill-Conceived”. Mash Ill-Conceived Yahoo! (or the other way around, like Oriental names). Like a sad child whose parents struggled with the status of their relationship, and had another baby partly to “make their relationship stronger”, and partly to replace or sustain their other child 360°. His short, sad life ended before it really began.
Yahoo! Communities should just adopt. Vox is a bright, good kid, who’s growing up real fast. They might have to marry it instead.
Why do I like Vox?
1. Plenty of themes to choose from. Like P-L-E-N-T-Y. The theme I chose for my knitting blog is part personlised. All I did was add that image up top. Easy, yet personal.
The trouble with a load of blog products, free or otherwise, like Blogger and the (now defunct) Y! 360°, Livejournal, Moveable Type, Typepad, etc was that they took too much time and effort to look presentable. Either there was no/little choice – like Blogger/Y! 360°, or it took too much trouble messing with the damn CSSes – like with MT. MT was a real pain, because I’d have to find templates for my version of MT and all, and I’d have to log into the MT admin, test it and stuff. That explains why I’m not changing the look of this blog. It also explains why the commenting is screwy, and I lost the ones from the previous domain. Ah well.
2. Easy to use. Relatively. A quick set up, it still is easy to find my way around set-up and publishing, stuff like that.
3. They make it easy to find content to publish. A lot of the time, the main problem with blogs is that the person writes a few entries, then decides there’s nothing to talk about and stops. Vox tries to help them along by making it easy to add a host of content like photos, audio clips, videos, books and all. They also get content from third parties, so you’re not limited by what you have on hand. You can also get plugged into your own Flickr/Photobucket account easily. So there’s always something to talk about.
4. They find friends for you. Another obstacle for bloggers is that not all of them are all that famous and because they’re mostly writing personal stuff, they don’t get a lot of readership. I mean, who’d write if no one’s reading? Vox scours your addressbook to look up your friends (by their email address, silly) so you can add them in your “neighbourhood”. It’ll also send a notice to the folks who aren’t on Vox to tell them where your blog is. So it’s kinda like Facebook in that way. Gives you an overview of your friends’ updates, and tells the lame ones who aren’t on to check you out, mesmerise those lame-ohs and try to make them cool.
This satisfies the Love/Belonging needs in Maslow’s Hierachy. Very clever, these social new-fangled internet 2.0 babies.
5. They help you belong. So if you are going to write about something specific, for example knitting, where you can’t pay your friends and family to read that stuff, you can find groups to share those interests. What’s on those groups? Basically, collective posts. It’s a digest. People write on their blogs, and choose to post to those groups, quite like Flickr photo groups, it’s like a large collective blog.
This satisfies the Love/Belonging, Esteem and perhaps even Self Actualisation needs in Maslow’s Hierachy (if your self actualisation needs are that complex).
The one BIG thing they don’t solve, is your baggage. Most blog publishers are, by now, not virgins anymore. This wouldn’t be their first blog, and unless they’re willing to make a clean break, there does not seem to be an easy way to import older posts onto Vox. Yeah, there are probably issues associated in doing so, it will require a lot more diskspace, they’d have to write import tools for a host of different blogs, etc. But I’d be the first to ditch my MT blog for this – if I will be able to import the old entries. It’d be perfectly ok even if I lost the comments. That saves me and my favourite service provider some maintenance time.
I don’t know if I’d pay for it. Maybe. After all, I now pay for a Flickr Pro account! Yeah, I’d pay for it if the price is right ~ $50 a year. That should cover the import of my old entries, sort of hosting for the year, and if I pay for it I definitely want my own domain. Yeah.
Why do I feel like I just wrote the bulk of someone’s PRD.
payback
26/08/2008
I’ll be the first to admit that my less than perfect eyesight has caused many really embarrassing episodes of mistaken identity. Just a couple of weeks ago, while waiting for KF to arrive at a restaurant I flagged and waved to a couple of hapless Asian American boy-men in a silver late 90s beemer (the similarities stop there) while they passed me with a look of complete terror in their eyes.
Or the other time when I smiled and waved at a friend at a very busy Hong Lim Food Center only to realise that he was acknowledging some other dude who was sitting BEHIND me. All that with a bunch of strangers at the same table. This one is debatable – since it’s hard to tell if someone’s looking behind me, so I’ll put it down to his fault, but damn it was embarassing.
There was also this time I smacked someone I thought I knew on the shoulder (I think it was at a PC Show) only to have him turn around bewildered. I don’t know what was more terrifying – that I was wrong, or that I smacked the dude on the shoulder.
Yesterday it came full circle while I was having dinner at Pasta Pomodoro. KF and I were seated near the entrance, waiting for his cousins to arrive. I’m looking at the menu, and when I look up, a preppy-casual, smug early-thirtysomething ABC looking dude with the typical Asian-American haircut, small eyes and a tan, is inching his way up to our table with a Crest-Whitening-Strip-enhanced smile. I frantically try to match his face with a rudimentary facial profile database in my head, hoping it isn’t someone from school I had a skirmish with, or even worse – someone from college I tried to hit on. No search results. Phew. I widen the query to include old classmates and co-workers. Nada.
Sidenote: While that sounds like a task that takes minutes to complete, it’s actually a split second job – maybe cos I’m so clever – and I guess it’s a human flaw, but I made eye contact with smiley subject while the split-second searches were underway. I wonder why I do that, it could been incredibly incriminating if it were really someone I knew – how else would I be able to feign bad eyesight? Anyway, I need to make a mental note to be more discreet.
So I nudge KF and ask him if that’s someone he knew.
As I did that, the confident smile began to wane, and once KF looked up and the smiley dude established immediately that we weren’t who he thought we were (ok, KF wasn’t who he thought KF was, blah, just a technicality!), he picked up his wry smile in double-quick time, turned around and slinked back to the seat he came from. Sort of like that stupid move some guys do, like they start out as if they’re going to shake your hand, but just when you extend your hand to shake theirs, they flip it up and brush their hair back, and if they’re really good, they shoot this metrosexual look of utter heowness while doing so. Sorta. Except I couldn’t see if it was a look of heowness he had. But last I saw, he was e-m-b-a-r-r-a-s-s-e-d. I bet if he had less of a tan, I’d see him blush.
That moment – though I didn’t even know the poor dude – was pretty priceless. I know this gloating is all going to come back and haunt me, and I’ll smash my personal best for Most Embarrassing Moment yet again but for now, I’m just basking in the sunshine, knowing first hand that it happens to the best of us.
北京北京，我爱北京
24/08/2008
I’m pretty sure Olympic fever has officially subsided here, Michael Phelps aka “Aquaman” (I didn’t have the heart to tell people here what Aquaman means in our country) beat Mark Spitzer’s record, the Redeem Team did what they set out to do, the Water Polo team ended their 20 year drought, so everything’s pretty much said and done.
Was really impressed with the Opening Ceremony – it was huge, perfected, and pretty.
The morning after, however, it seemed like all the West wanted to do was poke at it – oh the girl was doing a Milli Vanilli, oh the fireworks weren’t real, oh people were detained for protesting over the human rights issues in Tibet.
My response to all of that was – what is it to anyone else? Why do Americans, of all peple, feel like they need to have a say in another country’s domestic issues, or performance for that matter? Don’t they have other more pressing issues of their own?
Then I get to thinking, do I really feel that way – defensice – because of some waylaid pride I feel? After all, though I’m ethnically Chinese, I don’t feel Chinese (in the National sense) in any way shape or form.
我是华人，我不是中国人。
So after years of believing that, do I really have any right to feel any nationalistic pride for the Homeland of Ancestors I Never Knew? On my dad’s side of the family, even my grandparents were born in Singapore. They don’t even speak Teochew too well. I thought it was ok, but when I hear some of the second/third generation Chinese folk here speak Cantonese, I guess thats what I sound like speaking Teochew (and Cantonese, for that matter).
I wonder if I would feel the instinct to defend any other country. I think about Southeast Asia, would I feel like I’d jump to the defence of Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia or Vietnam if they were in the same situation?
In all likelihood, not.
I mean, why do I feel excited when Asian celebrities – like Lee Hom, Rain (isn’t he Korean?), Jackie Chan, Andy Lau, Emil Chau – appear at the closing ceremony, in front of gazillions of people? Is it because I know who they are? Is it because they’re fine examples of Chinese talent? Is it because they don’t look and sound like complete idiots when interviewed?
Knowing that “my people” built the Great Wall, invented gunpowder, the compass, paper and printing for some strange reason seems to give me some sort of confidence. But for sure, I don’t feel any affinity to the ones who built the Birds Nest and the Water Cube. When exactly do I split it down the line? Do I even make the distinction because of the social stigma the mainlanders bring with them?
With being Singaporean, I embrace it without question. From our accent to our idiosyncrasies, our authoritarian rule to our Lians and Bengs. I accept our flaws and am proud of our accomplishments.
So complicated, being Chinese.
Think I’ll go have a peanut butter jam sandwich now.
Overheard: Sovereign Wealth Funds
20/08/2008
We were just kicking back after a light lunch, watching TV, when I saw a familiar sight.
Images of the Singapore skyline and the Raffles Hotel (along with the super well-known jagar there).
It was the most surprising thing, since it was a European news segment on KQED (a public educational channel). It seems that Germany is passing legislation to limit the amount of non-European holdings on German companies if those companies are deemed to have influence on national security.
They cited recent buys by sovereign wealth funds picking up large stakes in European banks, and utilities services.
And on that list, apparently Singapore’s GIC has picked up something like a 6.3 billion Euro stake in UBS, and something similar in Kelda Group, a company that provides water in Yorkshire, UK.
Go GIC!
extra superfluous
14/08/2008
I heard two different people say “deja vu all over again” twice today. Once on CSI where the washed up stripper blonde said it, and now the announcer for the Olympics 100m Women’s Freestyle.
Talk about deja vu all over again!
Thank you for reading. Arigato gozaimasu. Kamsahamida. Xie xie.
olympic hero
14/08/2008
We’ve finally hooked up the oldskool (pre-LCD or flat panel) TV in our room, and have been watching the Olympics on it. All we’ve seen this last week or so, are filler events leading up and down from the Michael Phelps swims.
The dude, is probably the biggest hero in the US right now. When he gets back to Baltimore, they might erect a gold statue of him and children will scatter flowers around it, he’ll be given the keys to the City, invited to White House dinners, and appear on Perez Hilton with a supermodel on his arm. Frequently. Maybe.
I just caught his 6th World Record breaking 200m individual medley.
In the leadup to the race, NBC aired a little docu-promo. What makes Michael Phelps such a lean, mean, swimming machine, in typical CSI-BionicMan-TVDrama style.
A computer graphics enhanced image of Phelps standing in his swimsuit, feet and arms stretched apart and graphics swirling around him. According to them, Phelps stands 6’4″, but has relatively short legs (length of which are typically found on men standing 6′), relatively long torso (length of which is typically found on men 6’8″), double jointed elbows and knees (someone tell me what that means, please), size 14 feet which are as good as flippers, hands the size of dinner plates that help propel him, a 32″ waist and a flat backside. I’m not kidding. They said “flat backside” on tv.
According to the SF Chronicle, the poor guy has been reported to be dubbed the “American Superfish” by Xinhua News Agency, along with what he eats (12,000 calories a day).
He deserves the attention, but the poor boy is like a subject under a microscope with 300 million people watching him. I’m not sure any hero really needs that.
But it’s that vs as much controversy as the American media can dig up over the Chinese managed event. What with the fake singing, the fake fireworks, the stabbing, the underaged gymnasts, Michael Phelps and the US Gymnastics Team, there doesn’t seem to be a raging war and a pitiful recession.
splitting hairs
14/08/2008
I think today’s a good day for one of those things – the fine line between “presume” and “assume”.
Assume
as sume [uh-soom]
verb (used with object), -sumed, -sum ing.
1. to take for granted or without proof; suppose; postulate; posit: to assume that everyone wants peace.
2. to take upon oneself; undertake: to assume an obligation.
3. to take over the duties or responsibilities of: to assume the office of treasurer.
4. to take on (a particular character, quality, mode of life, etc.); adopt: He assumed the style of an aggressive go-getter.
5. to take on; be invested or endowed with: The situation assumed a threatening character.
6. to pretend to have or be; feign: to assume a humble manner.
7. to appropriate or arrogate; seize; usurp: to assume a right to oneself; to assume control.
8. to take upon oneself (the debts or obligations of another).
9. Archaic. to take into relation or association; adopt.
-verb (used without object)
10. to take something for granted; presume.
To assume means a lot of things, but chiefly the definition that I particularly have a gripe with, is #1 and #10. To suppose or take for granted without proof
Presume
pre sume [pri-zoom]
verb, -sumed, -sum ing.
-verb (used with object)
1. to take for granted, assume, or suppose: I presume you’re tired after your drive.
2. Law. to assume as true in the absence of proof to the contrary.
3. to undertake with unwarrantable boldness.
4. to undertake (to do something) without right or permission: to presume to speak for another.
-verb (used without object)
5. to take something for granted; suppose.
6. to act or proceed with unwarrantable or impertinent boldness.
7. to go too far in acting unwarrantably or in taking liberties (usually fol. by on or upon): Do not presume upon his tolerance.
Again presume means a lot of things, but chiefly it means to assume, or (and I like this one) take liberties.
The thing is if you look at it as just the verb, “assume” seems a little more severely self-centered than “presume”. Presume seems to come across as knowing it’s an assumption, but having to make it anyway. Like it was backed into a corner. Presumed dead. Presumed innocent. There is that element of in-an-absence-of-evidence in “presume” that makes it a little less idiotic.
Presumably one of the world’s greatest managers once said
Don’t assume, it makes an ass out of u and me
Assume, now, has taken on an almost buffoonish definition, probably from the years of management evolution where assumptions have been trained to be thrown out the door for being idiotic. A large part of my growing up was learning to separate unnecessary expectations and assumptions from my actions and reactions. They make situations much more complicated than those situations need to be.
It’s hard, trying to be mindful of my agenda, ego and emotions playing up in situations and being honest about my objectives. Of course in many situations hindsight is always clearer.
I do realise I grew up a rather presumptuous little brat. That I wouldn’t have to worry about the essentials in life like earning a living, that I would probably have a roof over my head (in my 12 year old mind I decided I could always stay at home until I got married and the dude would probably have a house anyway, or his parents’ live in one, right?). It’s funny how much simpler life seemed when I was 12. It’s a unsettling to have to simplify life to the point where I’m happy again.
So here we are. The trifecta. Assume, Presume, Presumptuous. Unfortunately, Assumptuous probably sounds too much like a delectable body part (and therefore a noun than an adjective) to be taken seriously.
Of all three, I suppose I have to despise “Presumptuous” the most.
Since it’s the action, it invariably will end up inconveniencing me. For example, presumptuous relatives who figure I’ve nothing better to do with my time than to make an excruciating 40 minute drive in downtown traffic to pick up food I didn’t ask for and on the way give someone a ride home so I can move their garbage cans indoors. In the middle of the day.
A) Granted I spend my days at home,
B) I’m not working full time right now,
C) Resultingly I’ve a lot more spare time on my hands
There are a bunch of reasons for that.
1. I can afford it/my own food.
2. I don’t want to drive 40 minutes downtown.
3. I enjoy free time, I’m a lazy-ass b*st*rd and I’m not ashamed to say it.
4. In fact, I’ve pretty much planned to enjoy my f*cking free time being free and this upsets my plans.
And of course, there is the good friend of presumption, expectation, to join in the frey and complicate matters. There is always an expectation of acquiescence to the presumption. Because, for reasons A-C above it would seem that I’m the ideal candidate for odd jobs for scraps.
This behaviour, not just this specific example, is pretty universal. Some people presume to think for others. Some people presume to require others to give in to a relationship more than they are prepared to reciprocate, some people assume that the world just revolves around them, some people assume they’ve bigger problems than you, some people assume that just because they don’t have a symbol of something that the something that they don’t have that something they’re looking for.
Some relationships allow for easier tactical execution of a solution (for me). With non-familial relations excommunication is the simplest. With familial relations, it seems that communication is probably more appropriate, though less savoury given my temperment.
The irony is, in the example above, if they just asked, I would’ve been happy to oblige. I guess I don’t do well when I’m told. That’s my ego. That’s also someone else being presumptuous. So I figure I just have an issue with presumed authority.
All this just to tell you, if you want a favour, ask for a favour. Don’t plan my day for me.
how the best plans go astray
11/08/2008
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This morning I got up to an early (for me) start when KF made a phone call in the room. I don’t get how those silicone earplugs and help me filter out sounds, but when it comes to talking, I can pretty much hear it all.
Anyway, I dragged myself out of bed, and was presented with the option of going with him to Burlingame to get the brakes on his car fixed. And I figured, since he probably has to wait a couple hours for the job, we could stroll over to Burlingame Avenue to a yarn store where I got a couple of yarns I haven’t been able to find anywhere else. I needed just a little more to lengthen a scarf I made, and probably another skein of an orange one so I could make a pair of mitts or something. Yay. Win-win for everybody.
So we had a quick breakfast, and headed off. We got to the mechanic’s at 11am, and heard the drill. We left at about 11:20am, and proceeded to walk to Burlingame Avenue. We decided to walk through the residential area and re-lived a bit of our house-hunting fun from a few months back. Here’s the route we took. The walk started out fine, but it got progressively hotter. It’s hot in Burlingame! It was probably about 26-28°C but it isn’t as humid as it is at home, so that made the walk more tolerable.
We had lunch at Barracuda, because it was the first restaurant we saw. It was here about three years back that I first realised that while sushi is a sophisticated food, having sushi on a date, especially a first date, is probably a bad idea because over in the US, the makis are rolled and cut up way too big and there’s no elegant way to eat it. You either have to bite it in half – unglam; or stuff the whole thing in your mouth – lagi unglam.
Anyway. After some food I was all ready to hunt for my yarn store. I even brought that almost-complete project along so I could keep working on it if we had to wait. When we got to the store it was closed.
Very annoying. I walked 3 miles total, under the blazing California sun, and the yarn store where I got the yarns that I really can’t find anywhere else online, is closed.
UGH!!!!!!!!!! No win-win!!! It was more like walk-walk-walk and more walk!
So when we got home I made bacon+scallop spaghetti.
happy birthday singapore!
09/08/2008
Happy National Day, my comrades at home. You have a lot to be proud of (somewhere on the top of that list would include an absence of loogie on the streets).
I feel sorry for the NDP Committee, having to deal with our teeny little parade after the spectacle that was the Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony.
It is a tough job, but I’m sure it’ll be totally breathtaking anyway.
Happy Singing!
juggling
07/08/2008
The place is still kind of sparcely furnished. We’ve the bed we shipped from Singapore, I ordered another for the spare room, and there’s a dining table that came with the house.
I like the empty living room, but it’s hecka echoey. It does make cleaning up a breeze though. Hee.
Our room is complete though. I carved out a space in our room just for me. I am sitting there now, almost 3 in the morning. I can’t really sleep, I think I had too much tea. I have a nice little armchair, a matching ottoman, a little work light, and my knitting gear (some of it) stuffed into a box under the window by the chair. I even got a pseudo-designer magazine table – which FedEx delivered and left at my doorstep, how clever – to complete the space. It’s comfortable.
I enjoy being at home. It’s the only place that feels like home.
Cos. Outside on the streets it feels like a throwback in time. Cyclists hovering all over the street (them greenies), people spitting everywhere – on the road (again them greenies), on the sidewalk (what we call the pavement), potholes in badly maintained roads, old cinemas, bad traffic, bad manners. Of the lot the spitting has to be the most disgusting. It’s not surprising to come across random but generous wads of rather malignant looking loogie just standing there in the sun, glowing, waiting to be trampled on.
The horror. The irony. The civilised nation.
While it might be just one more thing to look out for while navigating myself around the city, the other being poop, it’s not something you’d expect in a large, cosmopolitan city in a developed country, you know, a member of the First World since you’d have to pass pretty stringent GDP criteria, and I’m thinking, the higher the GDP, the better the education, and therefore the more civilised. It’s a wild presumption on my part, I agree. I mean, they can’t spell, and they don’t really speak English anymore.
On the issue of littering and spitting and gum, I have to say even though our policy back in Singapore is a tad authoritarian, I am grateful for growing up in a relatively clean, sterile country. Yes, it would’ve been better if people refrained from behaviour which is selfish and inconsiderate out of the goodness of their hearts. But education alone would have taken too long. Now, I feel proud when people mention how clean Singapore is. Yes, we don’t do it through the goodness of our hearts, we do it because there are consequences of not complying. But, I don’t have to put up with gum or loogie on my shoe, and more importantly, people everywhere are the same whereever it is they say they come from, so I’m grateful for the practical, realistic and deliberate decision to raise the social standard of the lowest common denominator.
There is no perfect state.
I would suppose there is much to be said for being the Land of the Free. Perhaps some day I will appreciate the hubris and the gile of a people blatantly unafraid to speak up, unafraid to oppose, unafraid to question, unafraid to look stupid. Maybe that someday I will appreciate how my earnings will be taken to subsidise a broken system flooded with inefficiency and a misguided belief in welfare. It might even be the same someday when I find enjoyment in having someone with dubious intentions and intelligence decide what’s best for me and how I should think and what I should do. When that someday comes I hope I don’t get shot dead on the free streets, and I certainly hope I don’t land near a gleaming loogie.
And that’s why I relish being at home.
