bab, blab, bab
12/04/2009
Questions of language. Well, inflexion.
Why do sailors say “Aye captain” on a ship? Nothing unusual when you’re watching Pirates of the Caribbean, but on Star Trek: The New Generation? Their Captain might be speaking the Queen’s English, but he’s supposed to be French. Shouldn’t they be saying “Oui, Capitaine”?
Yeah. And.
Why do British pop groups sing in American? So the larger American market will understand them?
Talk about accommodating the lowest common denominator.
in tooth, i know not why i am so sad
09/05/2007
Went to the dentist today and confirmed suspicions that there is little to do to fix the tooth that’s been bugging me for a year. So, after two re-fillings and no resolution, I’m scheduled for my first root canal.
This Thursday.
It bugs me. That an otherwise pretty perfect set is going to be imperfect. The affected molar is cracked around from the buccal (cheek side), through the surface, then on to the lingual (tongue side) surface. I can feel it with my tongue.
Root canal treatment involves the removal of pulp tissue (pulpectomy) and nerves. To do this, they use different sized endofiles (imagine tiny pipe-cleaners on a handle, the size of those inter-dental brushes) to scrape out the canals where the root connects your tooth to your jaw. Though endodontists (root canal specialists) claim it’s mostly painless, I’m sure it’s uncomfortable. It starts with a bunch of local anaesthestics getting pumped into your jaw, then drilling into the tooth to get to the pulp. To isolate the tooth and keep the area dry, they put a rubber sheet over the rest of the mouth – has a small hole to show up the affected tooth – then the filing begins. The dentist usually has to take x-rays before he starts and some ways into the filing to see how much and far he has to go, and later on, whether he’s removed all the (infected) pulp and nerves. The canals are long, and some are very slim, but if anything gets left behind, it will likely get infected.
Anyway, when he’s certain the canals are clear, it gets filled – I’ll check what the filling is on Thursday, but according to Wikipedia it’s Gutta-percha with Barium. Later on, your regular dentist will cap the tooth.
There is discomfort when I put pressure on the tooth and it is sensitive to cold. But I don’t think my tooth is abscessed, since there is no throbbing achy pain. This will hopefully reduce the amount of pain I will have to suffer through. Generally I think I’ve a pretty high threshold for pain – anyone who’s had orthodontics done has a pretty high threshold for pain – but root canals can bring you to a whole new plane of pain.
Anyway, root canals are pretty expensive procedures, I think in Singapore it costs around $800 and up. The crown costs about $500 and up. Given it’s a pretty major piece of work done, and it costs a pretty tidy sum, you really want to be in hands you trust. It’s a good thing I know my endodontist and how he works. He was the one who convinced me that wearing my retainers faithfully for a year after removing the hugeass wires did nothing for him, so he’s cool. He also gets called in for second opinions every time I tell my regular dentist I feel something going on and he thinks I’m nuts. It happens more than I care to share.
Anyway, I still can’t figure out what I did to cause the fracture, but it happened about a year and a half ago. My dentist thinks I was chewing on nails. Maybe.
They really weren’t lying when they said your body starts breaking down past a certain stage.
By the way, if you ever get your tooth knocked out from its socket – you can still save it if you follow these instructions. Just thought you’d like to know.
Happy Day!
22/02/2007
Happy Birthday Michael (though not related to KF) Chang! *muaks!*
And Happy Thinking Day to you girl guides out there!
Think harder, and maybe therefore you’ll be.
Lots of stuff you didn’t know!
03/01/2007
I love the BBC’s 100 Things We Didn’t Know Last Year articles. Always informative and interesting, like how birds now rap and not sing.
I’m not sure if all the information is true (Average person in the world sends 55 greeting cards a year? Get outta here!?!), but it’s still worth a peek.
And to add to that, here are 33 Things You Didn’t Know Had Names. Bad sentence, but I didn’t name it.
Add 3 more to those 33 -
Panspermia: the idea that life on Earth originated on another planet.
Pediculosis: an infestation of head lice.
Misfeasance: o carry out a legal act illegally.
Yay. It looks like my year is starting out on a pretty good note.
ear today, gone tomorrow…
30/12/2006
I know I’ve complained a lot about this in the last year or so, but in the interest of spreading knowledge, I feel I need to tell you the best way to clean your ear. After all, what’s the point of getting my ear infected every six months if I don’t learn something from it, right?
First, about earwax. It’s basically a secretion in the ear canal which provides some protection from bacteria, fungus and (eww) insects. It also helps clean and lubricate it, because the skin in the ear canal is really quite delicate, and if it’s dry it gets itchy.
So apparently, there are two distinct types of earwax. The wet type which is more common in Caucasians and Africans, and the dry type is more common in Asians and Native Americans. But wet or dry really depends on your genes, with the wet type being dominant and the dry type, recessive. The dry type of wax is hard and gray, with the wet one being honey coloured.
Additionally, the difference in the wax type is caused by a single gene, and the mutation in the gene also reduces sweat production, which could’ve aided the ancestors of the East Asians and Native Americans (since they might have lived in cold climates).
For details on the stuff above, check out the earwax wikipedia stub.
So now we’ve got the lowdown about earwax, the next question is – how do we get rid of it?
The ear apparently should be self cleaning. The wax will build up, and through movements in your jaw, it’s supposed to move to the outter bits of your ear canal and finally flake off when it reaches the outside. To aid this natural action, you could talk a lot or chew gum. However, not all ears are built the same, and sometimes people have ear anatomies that tend to collect wax instead of drain it off.
Add to that, wax production tends to increase as you get older, so for me it was merely a matter of time.
Doctors would always tell you that you shouldn’t use a Q-tip to clean your ear. I suppose I’m living proof of that. Although it feels good, you’re actually pushing the wax to the back of your ear canal – and I know this because the first time I had my ear syringed, the wax from my left ear (the drier ear with no problems) was shaped like a potato chip – a curved flap – like it was pushed by a Q-tip against the back of the ear canal.
There are three things you can do to remove the wax in your ear. I think it really depends on how desperate you are. If you don’t have ear problems, you probably don’t need to do any of this. And if you’re not sure what your ear problem is, see a doctor.
Cerumenolysis
For normal maintenance, it would seem the safest way is to use a cerumenolytic agent. [Cerumen = earwax] There are several types of cerumenolytics, but the commonest home remedy seems to be olive oil, mineral oil, sweet almond oil or baby oil. Apply a couple of drops to a tilted head at night. Leave it for a few minutes. Drain the excess off. It’s supposed to coat the wax, loosen its grip to your ear canal, and should drop or drain off naturally in a few days.
You can also get cerumenolytics from the pharmacies here – but they’ve not really worked that great for me. Waxol is docusate sodium bp 0.5% – docusate is (hahaha) a laxative, and regularly used as a stool softner. Earex is equal parts peanut oil, almond oil and camphor oil. I think it’s probably better for regular maintenance.
You can also get a cerumen extraction kit from US pharmacies, they mostly contain a cerumenolytic like carbamide peroxide 6.5% in a glycerine base. And it might or might not include an ear syringe. So the idea is you soften with the cerumenolytic for a few days, then syringe the ear to flush the softened wax out.
Reportedly, good old sodium bicarbonate does a great job of dispersing the wax. 10% in water should do the trick. Let it bubble in your ear (tilt so it stays) for a few minutes and let it drain out.
Syringing
Though it sounds rather drastic, it’s nothing more than shooting a gentle warm stream of water to the top and back of the ear canal so the water can cascade from the back, irrigate the ear and push the wax from inside out. You can use water, or sodium bicarbonate in water. But the key is that the water should be warm (body temperature) or you might suffer dizziness. Or grow a third ear at the back of your head.
Ok, kidding about the third ear.
You have to soften the wax with a cerumenolytic first. Most sources say you should use the cerumenolytic thrice a day for 3-4 days before syringing, and I suppose it’s a good idea to do so especially if you’ve impacted cerumen. There’s really no good way to know if your earwax is so full in your ear it’s impacted, but if you can’t hear in one ear, most likely that’s the case.
Most of the times, my ear is usually impacted and infected, requiring a weeklong treatment with ear drops before I get to have it syringed. So in addition to the discomfort of an ear full of wax, it itches or hurts.
The moral of the story here is: don’t use Q-tips to clean your ear! If you really really have to, use olive oil, baby oil, almond oil or Earex to soften it first – drop a couple of drops in your ear canal, tilt your head to keep it in for a few minutes, drain the excess and then use your Q-tip to trap the rest. Don’t push it to the back of your ear, and be gentle because the skin in your ear is fragile.
If you’ve never had your ear syringed, get it done by a doctor. If fact, if you’ve no idea what’s wrong, get it checked by your doctor. It is, after all, your ear. You don’t really want to mess with it. And if you do get it syringed by a doctor, make sure he checks your ear again after syringing to verify that the ear is indeed clear. You don’t want a re-occurance because he did a shoddy job the first round.
If you’re still intent on syringing at home, you can get one here. I’d get one if it 1) weren’t such a dodgey site, 2) were a quarter the price. Tell me if it works for you!
Get professional help
Ok. If you really can’t stand the build-up of wax in your ear, are too impatient to wait for the cerumenolytics to work but too chickenshit to syringe your own ear – I won’t blame you it’s difficult to look down your own ear canal – go to your regular GP. They’ll either do the water syringing thing, or vacuum it out. I’ve not had my ear vacuumed, so I can’t tell you if it’s better or worse. However, a freshly syringed ear is the best feeling ever. It’s a mixture of relief, refreshed perspective and heightened awareness! For the first day or so you’ll hear everything! Every little crackle, every echo every snort or pin drop. Everything will be loud and the echo in your ear will drive you nuts! But after a while either the wax comes back or your brain filters off the extra sounds and it’s back to your regular programming.
When I had my ear syringed at Raffles Medical, it cost about S$50. If you work with at the local Big Why with me – that’s not covered by our medical plan, it’ll have to come out of your own pocket.
Ok. After this long discourse, I’m still stuck with otitis media so I’m on anti-infective and anti-inflammatory ear drops, before I can do anything else.
And I thought this was interesting: local online pharmacies (!!)
- Changi General Hospital Pharmacy: the best of the lot. Nice promotions section, decent UI and search and free delivery for purchases $70 and over. For the rest, it costs $5. They also have customer support and a pretty extensive FAQ section. This gets my vote!
- NTUC Healthmart: is a pretty pathetic site, uncategorised, unsearchable and doesn’t load nicely in Firefox. It’s a complete failure, so don’t bother visiting it.
- Tan Tock Seng Hospital Pharmacy: $8 delivery with a minimum order of $50. Search works, and has a good range of products. Weird layout, very typical sg e-commerce look and feel.
And this concludes my research on my ear ailment. Again, check with your doctor if you’re not sure what’s going on with your ear or have experienced the symptoms for the first time. Try the remedies above at your own risk.
Take care and have a Happy New Ear ahead!
Happy Christmas!
25/12/2006
Keeping in the spirit of giving, here’re 5 fast facts about Christmas: (in no particular order)
- We celebrate Christmas on 25 Dec, but it was previously celebrated on 7 Jan. Yeah, a Caesar adopted a new calendar, yada yada, and 25 Dec is about 9 months after Incarnation on 25 Mar. Anyhoo, here we are, in the twenty first century, celebrating Christmas on 25 Dec.
- When you talk about Yuletide cheer, you’re really referring to a Scandinavian Winter Festival called Yule (not to be confused with my favourite Survivor of all time, Yul). But hey, at least they got the dates right, and celebrate Yule on 21-22 Dec, depending on when the Winter Solstice is. Yuletide refers to the period after, between 24 Dec and 6 Jan. What we do know is that this pagan festival predates Christianity, and depending on what or when, you either sacrifice a pig for the god Freyr (Christmas Ham, anyone?) or light logs in honour of Thor.
- The Twelve Days of Christmas might be just a song for most, but it bears some real symbolism. On the twelfth day after Christmas, it’s Epiphany. The play by Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, was written to be Twelfth Night entertainment, and I don’t know if it’s because of all the Neil Gaiman stuff I read, but it makes the play sound all magical and pagan altogether.
- Santa Claus – though a variation on a Dutch folk tale on Saint Nicholas (incidentally my alma mater was named after him), was a bishop born somewhere near Turkey a long time ago with a cheeky habit of secret gifting, and a big heart. One of the popular tales of St Nick was how he saved a father’s three daughters from a life of prostitution by secretly supplying him with gold for the dowries, enabling the daughters to be married properly. For this reason, St Nick is the patron saint of pawnbrokers, with three gold balls hanging outside the pawnshop to symbolise the tree sacks of gold he gave out. While that’s not a big surprise, did you know that Saint Nicholas is also the patron saint of sailors, merchants, archers, children, and students in Greece, Russia, Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro? He is also the patron saint of Barranquilla (Colombia), Bari (Italy) Amsterdam (Netherlands), and of Beit Jala in the West Bank of Palestine. Bet yer didn’t.
- Confused over the whole Merry Christmas deal? Why is Christmas the only holiday that warrants it to be “merry” while the others are just “happy”? We’ve probably got Mr Bah Humbug and a few greeting card fellas to thank for that. A Christmas Carol. The first known use of “Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year” was in an informal letter written by an English admiral in 1699. It was used in the first Christmas card, produced in 1843. In that same year, the relatively new term found its way to Mr Dickens’ work, where Scrooge would go “If I could work my will every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding.” Bah, humbug!
And there we have it. Five Christmas facts, 60 fun minutes on Wikipedia and a partridge in a pear tree.
Adding vs Subtract
27/08/2006
Thanks to the powers that be, there is actually a blog worth reading not for trash, but for value.
It’s not this one 
The more I read it, the more of a fan I am of Guy Kawasaki’s blog. I’ll also be the first to tell you, it’s not the source of truth and shouldn’t be taken as so. But it’s the blog that sets the standard for blogs, and anyone who wants to write one. Why? It adds value. He writes about stuff he knows, not stuff he doesn’t, he lets you in on his life, no as an ego-trip, and best of all, he’ll admit it when he’s wrong. It also helps that he’s funny.
This is a great example: Ten Things to Learn This School Year are pearls of advice on a webpage. Here are some really good snippets:
2. How to survive a meeting that’s poorly run.
First, assume that most of what you’ll hear is pure, petty, ass-covering bull shiitake, and it’s part of the game. This will prevent you from going crazy. Second, focus on what you want to accomplish in the meeting and ignore everything else. Once you get what you want, take yourself “out of your body,” sit back, and enjoy the show. Third, vow to yourself that someday you’ll start a company, and your meetings won’t work like this.4. How to figure out anything on your own.
Armed with Google [qoo: UGH!!!!], PDFs of manuals, and self-reliance, force yourself to learn how to figure out just about anything on your own. There are no office hours, no teaching assistants, and study groups in the real world.
Points 7-9 in that article are my favourites. Basically, tips on being succinct. It’s an art form no one believes in anymore. Which is a pity, because so few people have so little to add but so much to say. It’s just a waste of everyone’s time. I love the notion (yeah yeah, who says notion? the people who want to use “idea” later in the sentence) of selling an idea in 30 seconds, writing one page reports and 5 sentence emails. If people could do that, life would be so much more efficient.
Yay. Read the entire article, please. It’s so worth the trouble.
VVV
20/08/2006
Why do they call it double U
When it looks more like 2 V’s? Seems that the earliest form of the letter was really 2 Vs.
I think I need to sleep earlier in general. Because I wake up late, I feel like I’m getting less of a day, even though we sleep at about 3am. Bad, I know.
We went to Funan yesterday, not for a hot pinkDS Lite, but for a haircut. While KF got his $10 EC House cut, I raided Laser Flair and ended up with more Korean DVDs. Not the serials this time, just a couple of movies.
Pistal Opera
So last night I decided to start on my loot. Put in Pistol Opera, not Korean, it was Japanese, but I liked the chick who acts in it. She’s the tall chick in Power Office Girls, the funny Japanese serial about these women working in a department store.
Back to the movie. I don’t even need to write a Haiku for it, I can sum it up in one word: weird!
It’s like watching a David Lynch movie (without the rich cinematography). It read normally enough in the synopsis at the back. She’s a professional killer, ranked #3 in the Guild. She’s tasked to off #1, a mysterious killer called Hundred Eyes to take his place.
What follows is a weird, crazy mix of violence, strange metaphorical storytelling, and seemingly inconsequential scenes. It’s like someone who couldn’t tell a straight story wrote the script.
So I can’t tell you if it’s a good movie. I couldn’t comprehend more than half of it. I didn’t know if it was funny!
Anyway. The chick, Makiko Esumi turns 40 this year. She looks good for a 40-year old.
Weird!
Gold Kiwifruit and black grapes
25/07/2006
Sharks says the yellow kiwifruit are an abomination – and go against its very grain. She says Kiwifuit are meant to be tart, anything else is a cop out.
Well I have just discovered today I like my Kiwifruit yellow. Yes, I’m a cop out, but it’s not to say the yellow ones are a walk down saccharin lane – they’re pretty tart too. It’s just right.
Anyway. While we’re on the subject of Kiwifruit – did you know
- that the fruit is actually native to Southern China
- it was only planted commercially in New Zealand in the 40s
- it was originally known as the Chinese Gooseberry outside China
- in China, it’s known as a weird fruit, monkey peach, and sometimes called the same thing as Carambola which is better known as star fruit in our parts
- you can use it as a meat tenderiser
- that like green tea, it’s a good source of flavanoid antioxidents
Again. What would life be without Wikipedia?
Anyway. Have a kiwi today. They taste better than grapes any day.
Happy Birthday, Tom Cruise!
03/07/2006
I didn’t watch a single episode of Korean drama today
And it’s certainly good to watch TV shows in English again. We had a lazy weekend, but we mostly spent it out, except for 2 hours in the afternoon when we came home to drop stuff off and I invariably had to have a nap. I’m a voracious napper. It’s a symptom of being an escapist. Napping is a great escape – a short reprieve, with the prospect of a good time in dreamland.
I set out to make Lephet Thoke yesterday, and ended up with a mess in the kitchen. I can’t imagine what the difference was – the lephet we had in SF just seemed crunchier and didn’t carry that bitter aftertaste (or weird smell) that I found with the lephet from yesterday. And after all the trouble of preparing the peanuts, and toasting the sesame seeds (which I managed to mess up). Not pretty. It’s now sitting in the fridge waiting for a very hungry KF to finish. I can’t bear to open the other 2 packs of lephet yet. The smell is still putting me off. I wonder if it needs to be boiled again or something.
And it took me a day to get rid of the smell of roasted peanuts in the house. It was good for the first ten minutes, then it got really annoying. I have to say those Ikea candles are really handy.
Today was slightly better, I made soba instead. Meidi-Ya is full of fun food buys, like Shiitake Mushroom broth, soba and dashi.
Here’s some trivia of the day: what’s the difference between jam, jelly, preserves and conserves?
Jam’s a spreadable fruit thingey. The British/Eurpoeans make a filtered, and unfiltered variety.
Jelly is American for a jam that’s made of a translucent fruit.
Preserves are jams with large fruit chunks in them. Obviously not filtered.
Conserves are preserves with a few contrasting variety of fruit in them.
And Marmalade is jam made from citrus fruit.
There we go – another mystery solved by Wikipedia.
Have a good week, and Happy Independance Day, America.
