Scratchpad

Causeway Scrabble Challenge, in my new blog-to-be

2006-12-08T10:00:00.000+08:00

I have been trying to migrate to a new blog, but have been having technical problem. I will update more frequently once I am in the new blog. In the meantime, I will be off to the Causeway Scrabble Challenge in Malaysia in a few hour's time. I will be posting updates of the happening there (when I'm not playing, of course) at infidelsonic.wordpress.com. You can go there instead if you want to follow the proceedings.

The food travelogue (part 1)

2006-11-04T00:17:00.000+08:00

As was the case in my short KL trip, I was also looking for opportunities to sample local fares when I went to Holland and Germany. I haven't heard much about food in Holland apart from herrings and space cakes (erm), so I went with much anticipation of discovery. I discovered, to my dismay, the reason why Dutch cuisine hasn't made its name around the world. The unique delicacies touted as good unique local food are the likes of sate ajam, nasi goreng, atjar timoen, kroepoek oedang, etc. For the non-Indonesians: basically those are traditional Indonesian food (chicken satay, fried rice, cucumber pickles, prawn crackers), spelt with Dutch spelling - which is kinda retro to me, because it's a throwback to old spelling used in Indonesia until early 1900s and represents antiquity. Other local ethnic food would be the Suriname Chinese food, again another absorption of culture from a former colony rather than a true Dutch fare. I guess that's where they get the interestingly spelt tjasiuw pau (to Singaporeans, that should read char siew bao). I still can't explain the proliferation of Argentinean steakhouses though, of which I saw more than a handful. Since I refused to eat Indonesian food even in Singapore due to price (and authenticity) problem, I am definitely not spending Euros on tahoe goreng (fried beancurd). But the hunt for local, respectable, and affordable cuisine was rather futile that I settled for Lebanese lamb shoarma, that I hadn't heard before. If only I had tried to pronounce it more, I could have realised that it's just an alternative spelling of shawarma, which I know is same as doner kebab, which I doubt is a specialty of Holland. I decided to go even lower, scour for cheap food that any locals would get casually, the equivalent of hot dog in US. I spotted FEBO, which seemed to be THE primary local food chain in Amsterdam. Upon entering, it was just like a quick-grab counter with pre-fried hotdogs, chicken wings, sausages, in lockers where customers just put in the coin payment to unlock the door and take the food. To be safe, I ordered french fries also (which was fried fresh), with special sauce. Luckily I did, since the food didn't really inspire me. The special sauce for the fries was just mayo on one side and tomato sauce on the other side with some garnishing. It was good. But FEBO was not. Another occasion, another attempt. Sandwich shop. Menu in six languages, good. Good selection of sandwiches, promising. Oh, Gouda cheese sandwich, with choice of old or young cheese. Quite gourment, I wonder if it's chicken or ham that goes well with gouda. I ordered sandwich with old Gouda since I like it strong, and again with french fries to be safe (they had about 8 sauces to choose from - I took Picalilly, which I didn't know what, just trying). Unfortunately I didn't know the Dutch are really literal with their menu. What I got was really just that: a bun, and two slices of Gouda cheese in it. No veggie, meat, or whatever things that sandwich usually comes with. OK at least they gave me a packet of mustard. Thank goodness again for the french fries. The sandwich was ok, but I really would have loved a bit more flavour from other ingredients. That prompted me to order frikandel , which turned up to be burnt sausage (deep fried was the intention, I believe). French fries at the double. The Picalilly sauce wasn't the best - it's basically pickles and catsup, a bit like the curry sauce for chicken nuggets in Singapore's McDonald's - but it'll do. Last attempt, I saw a stand selling herrings on the day before my departure from Amsterdam. Various local fish dishes, mostly herrings. One in particular looked very traditional. The lady said it's ROLLMOPS (so Scrabblers, now you know that this word is not a mop that is cylindrical, but a Dutch "delicacy"), and it is very much local indeed. I ordered it, and she told me it's pickled raw herring in a bun. I would describe the taste as cod liver oil in solid form soaked in vinegar. None of which I really like; strong stuff. Only managed to "appreciate" the taste after a few bites, and had rather enough of it with a few bites remaining. Unfortunately no french fries around, and had to buy some malt to help myself wash it down. But all was not bad. I did have some high(er) points foodwise, when I paid a bit more to eat in a restaurant or brown cafe (bar meets cafe). I had the local pancake (panekoek, Indonesians will find the name familiar), which is comparable to crepe in the sense that there is the sweet dessert version, and the savory meal version. I had one with chorizo and olives, which was quite good. But the satisfying part of that meal was the accompanying beer, some Trappist monastery beer with no tradenames that I now vouch as the best beer I've ever drunk (Germany, you let me down). And on another occasion, had some skewered pork chunks that I chose mainly for its sauce: honey and melted goat cheese. The sauce was rather strong on the cheese and near-non-existent on the honey, but still quite good. And the french fries with herb and mayo was heavenly - the best I've had - which helped a bit. So the conclusion is, my favourite food from Amsterdam is the french fries. Gouda cheese came a close second. And I have learnt why there are no Dutch restaurants in Singapore, and perhaps most other non-Dutch cities in the world.

Return from KL (or I like butts)

2006-11-02T23:27:00.000+08:00

Just back from Malaysian trip to attend my cousin's wedding in KL. It was a rather restful trip I must say, with me sleeping in the trips to and fro, and daytime-napping in the day in between; something I haven't done for years. The banquet was quite similar to Singapore-style Chinese wedding banquet, with grand entrance for first dish, slideshows of the happy couple (though unlike those in Singapore, here it was played on a loop so the guests could catch it anytime in between bites), yum seng, guests being late by an hour and delaying the start of the ceremony... the usuals. The feel, however, was much more celebratory, even if not as lavish. People seemed more genuinely into being jolly with the happy couple, rather than just being there to attend a dinner they were invited to. I guess it helped that many guests took turn requesting for karaoke songs and getting on stage to sing, to cheers from the other guests. Also it's quite refreshing to see people were not rushing out of the banquet room as soon as (or in other cases, even before) the last dish was served. The couple got to finish their last dish in peace, before striding out to the entrance to shake hands with the guests, who left rather not in a hurry. The only downside was the food which was not as good as most Singaporean wedding, but then again, I think that was not the main point in any wedding. While on the subject of food, we relatives from the bride side was hosted to a sumptuous lunch by the groom family after the Chinese tea ceremony at their family home earlier in the morning. I didn't know that hosting the bride's relatives to meal is part of tradition (I may be wrong), so I'm putting it down to Malaysian hospitality, and boy it was great. Whole roasted pig (which made the suckling pig during the dinner banquet look inadequate by comparison), bowls of stewed pork knuckle, hainanese chicken, stir-fried fish... I have neglected mention of vegetables not by their absence, but by the lack of preference they got in the face of such cholesterol-laden delicacies. I think I'd like to attend more Malaysian weddings ;-) We were mocking my cousin that she must have put on weight during the preparatory stay with the groom's family with all this food. She replied in grave serious manner in the affirmative, that she had put on weight and was 41 kg. Okay, that got me worried.... Unfortunately I didn't get to try much other fun food in Malaysia until just before I left. In the bus terminal I chanced upon a minor delicacy that I was surprised I hadn't found anywhere else: fried chicken butts. They were selling it at RM2 (less than S$1) for a packet of 12, which was a steal in my opinion. They were the size of KFC's pop corn chicken, but more flavourful what with all the fatty flesh of the butt. Loved them, crispy (could be crispier) and tasty! I offered them to my relatives, but somehow they didn't dare try the butts, perhaps associating them unnecessarily with the organs around there (and particularly, things that pass there). Well as people say, there are breast men and there are thigh men, well I guess I'm the butt man. That sentence can be taken soooo out of context...

Travlin' man

2006-10-31T07:55:00.000+08:00

Blogger bug prevented me from posting my Europe account, and here I am leaving for KL again. I feel like a world-weary traveller. Hopefully I'll get to post something on the weekend.

They came, they saw, they reconfigured

2006-10-28T23:15:00.001+08:00

After moving out of campus, I have stayed at 5 different places in Singapore. My parents had visited me in two places, and stayed at my place both times. In both occasions, I came home from work to find that when I was in office they had reorganised my entire room: bed cabinets furnitured moves, things cleaned etc. This time round, my rented room was too small and cramped so I couldn't host them overnight, so my room would not be tinkered with (though they insisted wanting to help with cleaning of things while they're around). They stayed at a rented place in Chinatown, and only this evening got to visit my room, which was still in a shipwrecked state with all the half-unpacked stuff from Germany, mountain of unironed clothes from before I left, and general disarray. That, and the minimal floorspace to start with, would convince them that I really didn't host them not because I didn't want them, but due to circumstances. Guess what. Immediately after my dad entered the room, he said it wasn't that small. Two minutes into the room, he started saying the bed could be rotated. Soon, it was the wardrobe that could move. Five minutes later, to my protestations, some stuff are moving out of the room to make way for major shifting. I should either help, or stay helpless as they busied themselves. An hour later, my room had a new lay out, and my parents claimed there was enough place for them to bunk and save cost. They're checking out from their current place tomorrow. Apparently I have near-zero spatial configuration ability. Wonder if I had been switched in a mix up with another baby in the maternity ward. Blah.

Throwback to lecturer feedback days

2006-10-27T02:03:00.000+08:00

I'm back from Europe. Will be writing more on it, but a quick post first on a link to YouTube showing a lecturer going through his past year feedback from student. This lecturer happens to be my lecturer in 2nd year in University, so it's good to see him still going strong and jolly as last time. Great lecturer, Prof Goel, thanks for the lessons last time. Too bad he didn't have much funny feedback to share last time :-)

I AMsterdam

2006-10-19T06:07:00.000+08:00

Monday was such a rush that I didn't get to post one post before flying off to Europe. No time also to post how I tried my luck bringing liquid soap and shampoo onboard, and was asked to go out of transit in Heathrow to check those into luggage, therefore earning myself a free 24-hour London visa which would have cost me 80 poundsterlings :-) And that gave me an extra glance of Heathrow also outside the transit area :-) But anyway, here I am in Amsterdam now, in a youth hostel with free internet and in-hostel bar. And I must say I'm enjoying myself in the city where soft drugs are (sort of) legal and prostitutes are tourist attractions. No, I'm not enjoying myself on those, so I can't review whether Amsterdam deserves all the rave; I'll just take the words of others for it. What I've enjoyed a lot here in fact is the other thing it's famous for: bicycles (although Beijing kinda overshadow Amsterdam in this). I rented a bike this morning, and have been enjoying getting lost in Amsterdam since then. I had successully navigated myself on foot yesterday evening until this morning, but bicyling is a different matter altogether. They have bike lanes here, so I try to abide by the traffic rules and directions of the lanes here, which often means I ended up being steered away from the path I intended to take according to the map. Biking in Amsterdam is dangerous if you're a newbie biker. Everyone here cycles fast and confidently in their narrow narrow bike lane - and can still overtake one another, squeezing in between the car in the car lane and the other bike. Biking is like nothing to them. Quite a number of them bike single handed, either carrying office bag or talking on their cellphones etc. I have been overtaken by a few Opa (grandfathers) :-/ at least no grannies overtook me, yet. It was great fun biking in a cool climate country, quite a change from Singapore. That's why I don't mind getting lost, I basically just enjoyed cool win blowing in my face (who needs a convertible? heh) and the thrill of exploring and stopping every now and then to read the map. My only problem is that I forgot to bring gloves; my hands were freezing after a bout of biking in the rain (rains here are more like mists, very fine that you can't even hear the pitter-patter) and another after biking in the night. I actually biked all the way from my hostel to the Concertbegouw, the main concert hall in Amsterdam, to catch the local orchestra. Now that's something I'll never get to do at home, grab a bike to go catch an orchestra :-) The Concertbegouw, by the way, put Victoria Concert Hall to shame in terms of sound reproduction. I think Esplanade too. In any case, it shouldn't be compared to Esplanade since it's design is the old-style natural dome kind of building, not modern acoustics. More on local cuisine (or lack thereof) and others next time, when I don't need to feel like a self-centered pig hogging the public internet.

Tick Tick Boom

2006-10-13T01:29:00.000+08:00

No, this is not the review of the musical which I caught last Saturday during their run in Singapore. (Which has music I quite like that I actually want to buy the CD. Hopefully can find somewhere here rather than order from Amazon). Finally the "new" laptop from earlier this year begins to show sign of ageing. A bit too early for my liking but there it is. It is now lapsing into the dreaded blue screen of death from window, with all the white letter spelling the memory core dump addresses terrorising me regularly. By regularly, I meant roughly hourly. That's how frequent the laptop hung. Or rather, reboot nowadays. Last time, it had the courtesy of just hanging, letting me read the text on the screen to know something bad happened (I don't know what exactly, but something reeeeaaal bad I guess). Now, it flashes the blue screen, white text, and in a fraction of a second it has rebooted itself. Hit and run, without ID. Luckily I snapped a picture of it before, once, during one of its earlier crashes. That photographic evidence from my handphone has been transmitted to my IT helpdesk, which is as helpless as usual but is trying its best to identify the error and catch it when it happens next time. Good luck. In the mean time, this has begun to change my work pattern. I live in constant fear of sudden death of the laptop. I used to multi task; work on two Word documents and a Power Point slide, drawing from info from a few Excel spreadsheet (which are being modified on the fly) while opening responding and drafting emails. After a few crashes where all of those unsaved work disappeared, I am now transforming into a single processor pipeline rather than parallel processor. Open something, attend to it to the end without referring to others, flush it out of the way, take a sigh of relief praiseheavensitdidn'tcrash then continue with the next task. This slows me down tremendously as I can't delegate or get other people to work parallel to me as fast as if I were parallel processing, but it definitely beats picking up the pieces every time the laptop goes crash boom bang. I'm living life on my laptop minute by minute now, knowing death is not far around the corner, always prepared when that fateful moment comes, in middle of whatever it is I'm doing. What a preparation for old age.

10 in 16

2006-10-10T00:29:00.000+08:00

I have played in 10 gaming sessions in the last 16 days ... I have fun, but I don't know if fatigue will sink in... There will be at least one more session this Saturday, possibly one more in between. And Saturday evening may have another session, to coincide with the filming of the feature for Channel 5. I don't know what will get on air, perhaps just a few minutes of me rolling a pair of dice or something. We'll see. I wonder if I should bring a set of Scrabble also. I did mention about Scrabble in the interview today, and the person seems quite intrigued. Hm. Anyway, 10 in 16, going 11 in 18...

Uncaged

2006-10-04T01:00:00.000+08:00

Today was the freedom day. Set free from behind bars and wires. I feel unburdened. My teeth celebrate their independence. No more rubber bands and sticky food in front of teeth. Now to keep it light yellow (no it's never white unfortunately) and relatively straight. Interestingly, the only one who noticed the change was the boss in office. So perhaps the change wasn't really much for the better. In any case, it's over. Freedom.

5 in 10, going for more

2006-10-04T00:47:00.000+08:00

I surprised myself by not having more free time to update the blog after the end of the S2006 conference. And for starting again after the honeymoon was over. One week of going off from office on normal time (no not official knock-off time, just a reasonably early time). This Monday I have been forced into my first near-midnight knock-off. Oh well. But in the meantime, I have clocked 5 boardgaming sessions in 10 days, starting last-last Sunday. One gaming session every other day except for yesterday, which got shifted to today. Now can I stretch it to further... And I do need more. Have been pummeled left-right-centre in Settlers of Catan prior to the World Championship. I have managed to prove basically that the worst player around the circuit can become the national champion ;-/ Now to at least gain some insights after the pummelings ...

Bye to S2006

2006-09-21T00:42:00.000+08:00

And it's over. S2006 IMF/World Bank Conference has ended. The project is winding down. Freedom beckons! Freedom to play boardgame, to go home earlier and wake up later, to go back gym... Freedom to catch up on 4 backlogged project in office, to follow up on overdue administration for my staff, to sort out issues that had cropped up in my absence in office ... Ah freedom. Sometimes I wish the S2006 need not end after it settled into the comfortable daily pace...

Close encounters of the S2006 kind

2006-09-16T01:02:00.000+08:00

I finally got to see the Civil Society Organizations (CSO) Centre in IMF/WB Conference. Turned out that unlike what I thought earlier, that space was not for demo. It was too good for a demo site. The room was more like a mid-sized office partitioned into several smaller rooms and furnished with various laptop stations for activists to plug in their laptops and work, shared printers and copiers (the reason I went there), plasma TVs broadcasting key newschannels, sofa, and a spread of finger foods like pandan shortcake, coconut cupcake, etc. As one of my crews said, only in Singapore are demonstrants treated this lavishly. I don't know for sure if elsewhere IMF/WB conference does not provide this level of amenity, but I tend to agree with my crew's assessment. Perhaps the Singapore government intend to extend hospitality in return for civility from the activists. From the atmosphere I saw, it's working. Although in the first place there might not have been a threat from people who are there anyway. Besides seeing the CSO reps, today was a good stargazing day of sorts for me in Suntec. In the morning I passed by Jackson Tai (DBS CEO). I was later in the same lift with whom I believe to be Rodrigo de Rato, the World Bank Managing Director. I didn't really realise it, even when a plaincloth security officer tugged me from in front of the lift door to give more space for the foreigner gentleman. Only when some other foreign members of the entourage told him not to get off yet "Sir" when I was exiting at my floor did I get curious and a trigger in my mind flashed up the face of the person who was on the CCTV during the morning press conference. Would have been fun had I created a commotion, say like drop my laptop on his toes, in the lift where I couldn't run. heh. The afternoon I sat by a nearby sofa as Chuck Prince, Citigroup CEO, paid a visit to Citibank staff in the Suntec counter. And the final VIP of the day was none other than MM Lee Kuan Yew himself. I passed by him as he was inspecting the temporary office in Suntec. I was busy on my handphone as I walked so I had to ignore him and not pay much attention ;-) With that, I have now had close encounters with PM, SM, and MM (or at least close enough - within 20 meters). Took me 11 years since arriving in Singapore to do that ;-) Suntec is really teeming with high-profile people, and I think I may have unknowingly had close encounters with even more than what I have listed above, just that I don't know e.g. the finance minister of Uganda even if I saw him. Never mind, there's still time to brush up on the list of famous people before attending the reception of the Board of Governors ...

Novice massage chair user

2006-09-15T00:13:00.000+08:00

When one uses a massage chair with modules that can massage the hand, one should remember to take off the watch, or at least adjust it out of the way. And also take out the wallet if the chair massages the hip. And importantly: the handphone out of the pocket if it massages thighs. Especially when one's handphone is a slim fragile clamshell and the massage pressure is set to "high". *sigh*

Live from Suntec it's the IMF/WB show

2006-09-14T00:10:00.000+08:00

Involvement in the project supporting IMF/WB conference has been tiring with average 15-hour days since last Saturday. Can't say it hasn't been fun, though it's been hard too. Several changes occurred as I shifted from planning mode to implementation. My default phone mode have switched from silent mode (meetings) to pocket mode (quick answer). I have taken to walking around with my charger on me all the time, stopping and plugging it when I stopped for a talk. I have developed the ability to answer calls within one ring, and to hold an incoming call long enough just for me to finish the current call and switch over before the second caller hangs up. I have had people suggesting surgical procedures to attach the handphone to my right ear. I prefer duct tape. I have foot ache every day now from too much walking and standing as I go around from place to place depending on where we have problem. My shoes are not meant for inspections, apparently. And the various Osim massage chairs provided for the delegates in the conference area offered not much relief for the feet, just the back and shoulder. I mean, I don't think they offer much relief since I obviously didn't try them since I am not a delegate, ahem. It's interesting to see a massive operation involved in hosting this from inside the operations command centre, where various incidents of all kind are reported. I won't say more on what incidents come up more so as not to implicate any parties, but it's quite fun when often it's not you who is the problem :-) The conference has not started proper yet (which is to the detriment of Suntec shopping mall, who has had local populace blocked out but potential tourists not coming in yet) but already so many incidents filter in; I worry for the moment it hits the peak. Security has been very tight. My team has had to scramble a lot of last minute security clearance of goods delivery to comply to the police's rules. It didn't help that the police seem to not have a firm procedure since it has changed a couple of time. Must have been an attempt to confuse possible terrorists ;-) In fact I am proud to announce that the police really thought I have the making of a terrorist and deem me a threat to stop at the check point. The x-ray scan revealed I had 2 sharp objects in my pouch, which they took away while I was stopped. Watch out Mr Wolfowitz, I'm gonna needle you to death with my two dental hooks! I guess I'm the only one with braces to clean in the entire conference. Things should get busier tomorrow, with some Civil Society Organizations activities seemingly starting. Already some people were trying to copy CSO materials in the copy centre that I am putting in place. The problem is, the facility is strictly for certain groups of people only, and CSO is not part of them. We have been warned based on past conference that CSO reps may try to request, cajole, intimidate, or straight out lie their way to get help to produce documents (including "borrowing" access pass of other accredited persons to get service), so this will be interesting to see, whether they will be as creative this time round. And if the room I saw marked as CSO room is really the one designated for them to protest at, I'm quite sure they need not worry about clashes with riot police. There will hardly be enough space to put in police once the CSOs are in the place ;-) And it just amuses me to a signage "THE DEMONSTRATION SITE IS CLOSED (the site is open from 9am to 6pm)". I guess I'm not very experienced with organised demonstration, but I'm not used to the concept of the demo site being closeable, and with a stated operating hour. Oh well, I guess I must try to hang around there between 9am to 6pm more often to learn more on how to run a demonstration site ;-)

Time flies when you're having fun. or non-stop problems

2006-09-08T01:12:00.000+08:00

Almost two weeks have passed since I handed over effectively all my other tasks to my various colleagues so I can focus on the IMF/World Bank conference project. Two weeks, ample time to set up things. And it felt like yesterday. It's as if I only had had one day to do work, and many problems still remain. Murphy loves company, and his Law is particularly effective in multi-party involvement. Give every party involved one screwup, link them all up together to affect each other, add in the screwups of each party's various subcontractors (and sub-sub-contractors etc), and you have a messy and massive yarn of trouble. Not to mention non-screwups by different parties that become a screwup when concocted together (e.g. delivery of equipment: good. Fire drill: good. Fire drill happened when delivery of equipment was underway: not good.) But we soldier on. One of the directors in my team exemplified it best in his email down to his line managers. "We have problems with the security clearance for the engineers. Most of them will also not get their uniforms in time. You need to manage that in your respective team. But remember, four million smiles... " And yes, we will smile on :-)

Now I don't see you, now I do

2006-09-05T01:26:00.000+08:00

It's been long since I posted anything. I still don't have time to think much of topics, though at least today I have time to write. Work is surprisingly letting up nearer the D-day (the calm before the storm?), enough for me to take a breather over the weekend and catch an eye infection. I'd rather catch a movie ("Akeela and the Bee" comes to mind), but I shan't be picky. I think I have proven that the eye is linked to the tongue. I am quite sure I didn't drip eyedrops into the mouth (ahem), but I can taste something bitter after I squirted a drop into my eyes. So for now, I'm off contact lenses. And since my homewear glasses have been banished into the list of outmoded appearance ruiner, I went to work today with facial appearance unchanged but eyesight blurred. Vanity triumphed over vision. I must have appeared arrogant, since I didn't greet or wave at some people I work with on site. Either arrogant, or bumbling, whenever I tried to make a last minute attempt to acknowledge them when they were close enough for me to recognise. Apparently my face is rather un-glasses-friendly, as my shopping trip to find a new glasses frame failed rather flatly. I guess I'll be doing last-minute-"Hi"s for a few more days.

Long hours of work leads to death

2006-08-30T23:30:00.000+08:00

My handphone can last two days of normal use before it needs to be recharged. In two of the last three days, the battery died before the end of my working day. There wasn't a single 15-minute period between 9am - 7pm where the phone was not in use. That included SMSes during meetings and calls throughout lunch. Handphone span between charges: the new metric of hecticness.

Someone's new to Skype

2006-08-24T01:39:00.000+08:00

Multitasking is not easy. Especially if the two tasks are basically the same function that requires the same part of the brain to operate. E.g. to communicate through two channels simultaneously. That's why it seems difficult to talk over the phone and chat through instant messengers on the PC at the same time. Quite distracting. It takes habit to make it work. And so changes to the habit may shake things a bit. E.g. if one started using a new IM interface. Or one started using skype to make phone calls from the computer instead of using normal phone. Some old practices needs to be tweaked. For example, one must remember, remember, that if one is still talking on skype while the IM conversation with another person is over, one cannot, CANNOT, shut down the computer and continue talking on the "phone" as per pre-skype era :-/ Disclaimer: I wasn't the absent-minded one. I was the victim who suddenly found myself at the end of a disconnected line ...

mrbrown and the state of openness in Singapore

2006-08-23T23:54:00.000+08:00

PM Lee's National Day speech that touched on the saga of mrbrown's article on high cost of living has drawn a response from mrbrown on his blog, now that he can no longer respond through an article in TODAY. I have always thought that most people who reacted in support of mrbrown and decried the strongly-worded rebuttal letter from MICA missed two points which in my opinion were more important: 1) the government is also entitled to a freedom of speech. They are fully entitled to reply, and that should be accepted. People can be dismayed by the tone or content, and that need to be kept separate from dismay that government actually spoke out. A minor distinction to some perhaps, but I contend that principle-wise, those two are rather distinct. 2) the bigger issue is the suspension of mrbrown from TODAY. Either TODAY editors don't stand by what they published to print, or they have a fear mentality and try to cut losses by a move that can be perceived as appeasing the authority, or even actually being pressured by the authority to take the action. mrbrown actually pretty much identified those two points also in his reply to the PM's speech (plus some other points). It is interesting to note the remark that TODAY's response to people who wrote in to them was that they should write to MICA instead; which may imply - but does not necessarily demonstrate - MICA's involvement in the action to mrbrown. Why I am writing this is because of an article in The Straits Times yesterday, which mentioned that mrbrown has replied in his own blog to PM's speech. It went on to try to recap both sides of the story: PM wanting people to stand by their words, and mrbrown's blog entry that he acknowledges government's right to reply and he is standing by his words, just that he lost his mouthpiece with the suspension of his column. I acknowledge the article's effort to paint a balanced picture by mentioning about how the mass media have not published any letters from the public on the matter (although the article notedly said "mr brown believes" that people wrote in, rather than stating that indeed people wrote in). What caught my eye though was that the article failed to mention mrbrown's point on how strange it was that some of the letters received a reply referring them to MICA. That, and TODAY's reaction, sum up what I feel about the local scene. I am trying to give as much benefit of the doubt to the government, that they indeed are trying to open up and let people be heard, allowing people to speak - just that they reserve the right (quite rightfully IMHO) to reply where warranted. However, there are things beyond that, the follow-up actions, the tacit omission of information (intentional or otherwise), that reinforce in many people's opinion that "the government is clamping down from behind the scene" It is possible that these are not the government's doing; overzealous/careful media, editorial decision on what to mention in the limited space of the paper, etc. But it really doesn't matter whatever the government say, if the media still react strongly like this, especially with the media strongly linked to the government, inevitably fingers will point to the government as the one clamping down. I feel that even if the top people in the government are ready for more open communication, what Singapore needs is the readiness of the people: the opinion makers, the media, the officers. People should continue to dare to speak and stand by their words, like what mrbrown is still doing. Media should stop overreacting in self-preservation. Government officials should send signals that can give the media confidence to not overreact. The situation reminds me of a scene in the recent play "The Campaign to Confer the Public Service Star to JBJ". A government official visits the police station to follow up on investigation on the homicide case of a person who is engaged in the titular campaign. The police inspector, mindful of the sensitivity of the homicide victim, was already treating the case in a "special" way, and the official's insistence that "special" treatment was not expected only confused the inspector further, whether it should be a "special special" case since he could not really accept that the powers-that-be would be quite satisified with treating the case as a normal case without any political baggage. As the befuddled inspector remarked, it was much easier when everything was prohibited; openness - or rather, unproven openness - causes much distress on his part on what is the officially sanctioned course of action. I can imagine this may affect a lot of officials in real life, and possibly the media too. I can only hope that the government can slowly instill more confidence not by words, not by encouragement to the people, but by empowerment to the apparatus sitting between the people and the top brass. Empowerment that they need not worry when they carry out their jobs to serve the people, and need not always watch over their back for government's wrath. I can only hope.

How do I decorate my apartment

2006-08-22T01:13:00.000+08:00

Jadeite's post on porn in her lecture class - when a lecturer flashed a Playboy cover when touching on banned publication in Singapore - intrigued me. The most interesting title in the short banned list shown there is a certain "How to Decorate a Bachelor's Apartment". Now why can't I read that?! Am I not allowed to learn how to improve the home I stay in until I got married? Further research on Google failed to turn up anything about the publication above. But, it did uncover a well written albeit old piece by Alfian Saat in his blog about the list of banned publication in Singapore, by way of review of a book reviewing the 168 titles in the banned list. In a nutshell, it rightly (at least in my opinion) portrays the absurdity of trying to impose censorship using a list of "contrabands", especially if the list is too slow, too limited and overall too ineffective to keep up with the growth of contrabands (as most lists would be, I should think). A case in point would be the book Fanny Hill, which is apparently in the list of banned books in Singapore. However, a certain Scrabble player has some time back with utmost glee shown me to the shelf in Kinokuya where he discovered this particular book. Apparently the powers-may-be didn't look as hard as he did. I don't know what that says of the government and its list. (Or of that Scrabble player, but that's a different story). Which calls into question the purpose of the list. I wonder if one day it won't be necessary anymore for a lecturer to bring the list to the attention of his students. Or perhaps a day when Kinokuniya will be closed because of offences as the above *heh*

Flash Pencak Silat

2006-08-15T01:35:00.000+08:00

From one of those pesky pop-up ads, I stumbled into this Flash game. It wouldn't have intrigued me so much if it weren't called Pencak Silat (an Indonesian martial arts, for those who don't know). And it's quite evidently done with the involvement of someone who is familiar with Indonesia, since the setting is Indonesian, the usable objects are distinctly Indonesian, and what I liked most is the music. This is the first time I play a fighting game with gamelan background music. Indonesia cool :-)

MP gazing is easy here

2006-08-13T23:21:00.000+08:00

I've seen from less than 10 m away 4 Members of Parliaments over the last 4 weekends: Ho Peng Kee during Hair For Hope shaving (he was the patron of Children Cancer Foundation), Mrs Lim Hwee Hua during the Scrabble Nationals, Lily Neo during the Singapore boardgame championship, and today Eunice Olsen when she also caught the play "The Campaign to Confer the Public Service Star to JBJ". OK technically Eunice is no longer an MP. Still, my point still stand, that is, Singapore is so small that MPs are hardly the big shots like in other country, where I imagine meeting them would be a rare occasion that merits a photo for keepsake. I can easily add another 2 MPs this week if I choose to go to a talk on politics and youth that I am interested in. Alas time does not permit. I wonder if I will actually hit double digit MPs by end of the year without trying.

The Great Singapore Library Sale

2006-08-13T02:04:00.000+08:00

We went to the first day of the National Library Board sale today at Singapore Expo. The newspaper yesterday advised going at about 8am to beat the crowd. We reached there at 11:10, was duly rewarded with a 40-minute queue to get into the Expo. It didn't help that we were supposed to leave by 12:45, but we did our best to make the trip worthwhile. Book carts litter the huge section of the expo hall, with clear signs marking out the books by language and nature (Fic or non-fiction, adult or kids) and price ($2 for English books, everything else did not matter). It helped me to zoom in to the area I'd be interested in, but unfortunately most of the carts were no longer brimming with books for my selection. And the crowd had pretty much mixed the books up that amongs the computer books a few cookbooks and romance novels could be discovered. There was another section for books which were returned - the NLB people anticipated well enough that many Singaporeans would prefer to grab as many books that caught their eyes, and then when the plastic bags got heavy, they would move aside to another area to further select which to keep and which to dump back. The returned section provided a richer selection, and it was there where I picked up almost all of my purchase, including The Science of Discworld, my best find. As I would find out later though, many people simply abandoned their books elsewhere, so all over the place, as I walked or queued to pay, I just kept an open eye on books on the floor, and managed to pick a few more on my way out. The crowd was quite big in the hall, and a long snaking queue had formed leading to the area where helpers packed books purchased before customers proceed to the cashier section for payment. However, kudos to the NLB team which I felt had organised the entire thing very well. Helpers were everywhere in sufficient numbers to ensure everything moved as quickly as possible despite the volume: from staff outside who managed the queues of people waiting to get in and controled the inflow such that the hall inside didn't get overcrowded, to the 48 packers inside and the ushers who pointed out the next available packers (in absence of an electronic sign), to the people who handed out plastic bags to people who just entered and were still getting their bearings. Although I spent well more than an hour in queues, at least I know it was already as efficient as it could get, given the circumstances. Now to find time to read the 8 books I bought ...

WCG 2006

2006-08-11T22:27:00.000+08:00

One of my morning meetings happened to be at Suntec City Convention Centre. Which gave me an unexpected but welcome opportunity to pop by at the World Cyber Gaming tourney at hall 602 of the convention centre. The tourney is supposed to run 10-13 Aug, so today was for preliminaries. As expected, the crowd is small, but not non-existent. The cavernous hall was subdivided into roughly six areas. The front right area has quite a number of Xbox 360s setup for free play, with a giant screen displaying one of the ongoing games, a first-person shooter which I didn't get to identify. A bit deeper in, the mid right area was setup as an extreme sport arena, with extremely low ramps for bladers. OK not extremely low, but just not comparable to those you see on TV. Evidently bladers and gamers go hand in hand now. But it's cool to include other activities in WCG. The front left-area had another stage setup, with signs proclaiming a dance competition which would happen later on. Mid-left area where there were a few exhibits from sponsors: Samsung booth hawking monitors, gaming magazines and merchandise stores with their goods, and surprisingly, a Land Transport Authority booth. Guess what they're there for? Apparently they are selling some edutainment software. I don't know, that feels a bit out of place, but hey: it's cyber, and it's technically a game. Their promoters couldn't compare with the ladies of Samsung though, clad in their sleek sexy black. The back area was where the main bulk of the activity was to happen: the competition area. Rows of computer monitor behind the cordon fence was illuminating the otherwise dark area with the dim glow of WarCraft III and WCG screensaver. Further right, another row of wide-screen plasma TV hooked up to Xboxes were running cool racing game with very realistic graphics. The games hadn't started, but inside a small crowd - presumably volunteers from Nanyang Poly - were milling around busy with their stuff. Outside the entrance to the cordoned area, groups of youngsters, most likely the players, were chatting around, waiting for the start of the competition. Some Intel promoters in two-piece shiny white outfit were walking about handing out brochures. I must say, Samsung has better eyes when it comes to getting promoters :-) One thing I felt was that the atmosphere was actually quite comparable to one from a Scrabble tourney. People talking about their games. People clustering in front of results and pairing charts pasted on the wall. Even people bringing their own custom equipment for the game; in this case, I saw someone with his own mouse, and another person with a specialised keyboard for gaming, with its round-shaped keypads which I assume ensured that ergonomically some crucial keys are easier to access. Scrabblers need not feel different for lugging their special equipment around :-) I guess tourneys in general share the same nature, the air of competition. I saved the sixth area for last: the centre stage. In the middle of all five areas, there was a stage setup with monitors mounted on the stagefront and rows of seats for spectators and people who just want to rest. On stage, they had set up two modernistic cockpit-like booths with PCs in it either side of the stage, a centre table, and two giant screens. On the table, a young man and lady were providing commentaries on the Warcraft game that apparently was about to begin between two players inside those two presumably sound-proof cockpits, with the game projected onto the giant screens. Way cool! When I was there, the technicians were still setting up the PCs in the booths while the pre-game commentary a la soccer match ran in the background: the lady analyzing the possible strategy for the player using the Dark Elf (something about dryads and producing more gargoyles) while the guy was commenting on the map used (lots of turtles. I don't know what's that all about, I don't play Warcraft). I almost just want to sit down and watch, until an urgent call from office came in (almost forgot it's office hour). Way cool, just like live Scrabble finals in the World championship or King's Cup, but with more action. The way it's going, cybergaming is headed in the right direction to become a spectator sport. If only there's a way for Scrabble to emulate that. Actually, it will already be a good start if Scrabble can get the same recognition by SSC as a sport. In fact, in today's Straits Times Upfront article titled "Winning honours, but not acceptance" by Leung Wai-Leng that ran from first page continuing into the second, there's a mention on why SSC supports the whole thing, which I quote below [quote] Dr Bervyn Lee, director of the SSC's youth sport development division, said the SSC supports cybergaming because "participants display characteristics similar to those of persons engaging in sports, such as mental focus, endurance, fighting spirit and teamwork". [endquote] Oh goodie, finally the criteria to gain support, to put to rest my previous post on ambiguity of sports here. Now let's apply this to Scrabble. Mental focus, check. Endurance, check (I challenge those who dispute this to play in either King's Cup or any of the marathon multi-day morning-to-evening international tourneys). Fighting spirit, check. Teamwork, well, individual sports have no teamwork. So, I guess SSC will support Scrabble soon? :-) *wishful pipe dream*

The best distraction

2006-08-07T23:07:00.000+08:00

The nasty work week began. The horrendous load that was supposed to happen today, didn't. The other parties couldn't complete in time. Before I said my hurray, I did realise that this simply means I have more time now, but much much shorter time later since the deadline doesn't change. As Captain Jack would say, "O bugger." Still, I spent long hour in office, and signs of weakness begin to show. In the evening, I felt hungry, which I rarely do before 10pm. My head felt heavy, which is also not that common. I decided to just leave and go collect some stuff, felt miserable with hunger pangs and uncooperative brain as I walked and bussed my way home via Chinatown, not finding a place I fancy eating at for quite a distance. Good thing in the end I had a distraction that was sufficient to make me ignore my stomach and head until I reached home. It is amazing what an urgent and desperate need to pee can do to suppress other worldly suffering.

Email is forever

2006-08-06T23:09:00.000+08:00

As I rounded up my first Saturday work in months, I sent out a couple of emails on various subjects to several parties for their follow up on Monday, so that hopefully before lunch time Monday they got to see them and have responses. I opened my office email today and to my horror 3 parties - a vendor an internal resource and , have responded today. Sunday. Horrors, people of Singapore - horrors. Take a break, won't you. (a_x, you hear that?) Of course, some smartaleck may be wondering why I got to see those emails myself on a Sunday... On another note, looking back, Thursday was a landmark day when I first received more than 100 work emails in a day (101, to be exact). Not exactly something I'm happy or want to be proud of, but a milestone is a milestone. But somehow I have a sinking sensation that this record won't stand long *sigh*

Beer is transient

2006-08-05T03:26:00.000+08:00

I don't know how to explain this scientifically, but somehow looks like one can drink more beer than water. Or at least that's me. I can't imagine drinking up a 1 litre bottleful of water in one dinner/supper outing. I imbibed 1.3 litre of beer of various types just now with colleagues over a celebratory dinner. (Celebratory for them for closing the deal, last-enjoyment good-luck rite for me to implement the ******* deal) And somehow I am not drunk yet, but I don't really look forward to tomorrow morning, somehow. It doesn't help that tomorrow will be the first Saturday in months that I need to go back work *grumble* I'm so cheap, 1.3 litre is enough to buy my weekend ...

Leading Mr. Senior

2006-08-04T00:53:00.000+08:00

Today I started interviewing for a position in my team that would allow me to survive after September (from now to September unfortunately I am confirmed to be buried under the avalanche at work). The candidate I interviewed was old enough to be my father. I think I've come some way now to be comfortable with leading or directing people who are more senior than me. But this is the biggest age gap yet, and there is no clear disparity in skill i.e. it's not the case of a young grad leading an experienced warhorse who lack academia paper proof. It just makes me wonder, how comfortable people like him would be, working under a youngling. Like the character Randy Quaid in "In Good Company" perhaps, settling in stoically under the kid supervisor (Topher Grace) despite not in agreement on how the boss runs the show in a different style. In a totally undiscriminating environment, I'd have loved it that gender, age, race etc have no bearings to a working relationship. Age is a bit different from the rest because there can be minor age gap and major age gap (I can't imagine a minor gender gap as opposed to major... or rather, I'd rather not imagine ;p ). Major gap therefore will stand out more, and perhaps get played up more in cultures where seniority is valued. Or I may just be overimagining here. Perhaps I can learn a thing or two from the more senior guy, as in the movie. Though I wouldn't want to, like Topher, lose the job to the older guy along the way. And I wouldn't want to date the guy's daughter too *heh* Many more candidates to come, we shall have to see I will experience such a scenario.

19 hours of gaming ...

2006-08-03T00:56:00.000+08:00

... and it was good. And good thing it was spread over two days, otherwise I'd be dead. Eight hours of Singapore Boardgame Championship qualifiers on Saturday, followed by 4.5 hours of Chez Geek proving my geekiness over 3 other friends in MacDonald's until 4am (argh), resumed on Sunday with 3 hours of the Championship finals and then post-championship friendly games for another 4 hours. Basically I only either ate, slept, or played boardgame over those two days. Decadent... ah, but I also collected pledges during that time :-) And of course I cemented my reputation as the luckiest son****** in the boardgame circuit by actually emerging the Singapore Boardgame Champion :-) How lucky? consider that: - I missed the cut in the first qualifier, and only managed to qualify into the finals after signing up in the afternoon session and improving my results - The finals was on knock out rather than round robin system, and the first game was Blokus, which apparently many top players didn't like - In the three round knock out rounds, winner and runner up at each table advances to next round. I advanced all the way by being runner up, never quite winning :-/ Except when it mattered :-D - what really shows how I'm more of a fluke, I got thrashed roundly in other afterhour games later on :-) In any case, I won myself Blokus Trigon (which must get more play time; looks prettier than Blokus), and some cash that will go well to finance my extended stay in Germany during Catan world championship (or at least pay for my visa). And quite a few ribbing for not showing the same level of "skill" in subsequent games and in the meetup on Tuesday (yes, another 3 hours of gaming on Tuesday. I'm almost hardcore). Now if only they will start knock out system in Scrabble tourneys and I can apply the same level of luck...

This One's For the Children

2006-08-02T02:36:00.000+08:00

So many things to say, but don't have time at all to blog the past week due to the beginning of the build up to a terribly hectic 1.5 month of work, and some very fun boardgaming (I think I clocked more than 20 hours of gaming in two days). But I have to at least update this one: a big thank you to all who have supported me in the contribution to the Children Cancer Foundation. Today I have submitted my collection to the company, totalling $2,051. Not that big amount, was second smallest amount amongst us who had submitted collection to the company (then again, usually it's those who need more time to make up shortfalls who would be in last, right?;-) ), but still am quite proud to hit the target and do my part. At one point I had doubts that I'd be able to hit my target, but some last minute boost pulled it through. e.g. a $52 donation when I was $2 short of $2,000. (And of course some joker then later decided to transfer $1 to me as his contribution, hence the funny looking final number... ) It has been fun and heartening. I look forward to supporting someone else next year! And once again, thanks to all contributor, on behalf of the children.

After Shave

2006-07-25T01:18:00.000+08:00

The deed is done. After the third game of the second day of the National tournament, I dashed off and grabbed a cab, rushed off to Suntec City, and arrived in time to join my colleagues to be mass-shaved together for the Children's Cancer Foundation fundraiser. Thank you to my next round opponent, who was willing to wait for me when I arrived back late to resume the tournament with the game against her. The shave was an exhilirating experience, and was a quick one too. In fact since there were many volunteer shavees, we could only spare a short time for the shave, which is why we only got real short cut, rather than a thorough clean-scraping and waxing. Still, it's refreshing, in more ways than one :-) But enough of the words, the picture is what matters. I present you: my pledge page, with my face and new look. And a reminder to donate :-) C'mon people, I have colleague who has garnered $425 online pledges and much more offline, do your part too. Now to wait for the swelling support for me thank you :-)

Scrabble National Championship 2006 Eve

2006-07-21T11:47:00.000+08:00

The National Championship is here. I am still in the top division, I am still in the top half of the top division, but this may be the last year I have that privilege. It's heartening though, to see the local scene growing that the unworthy among the old guards will be regenerated duly. This year particularly, is the year of the new generation, with practically all of the upcoming youths who have been making waves in the past year finally arriving in the top division. Last year's trend with 3 have been topped with now 10 boys, close to half the field, will be challenging the oldies. And they are capable of doing that. And it helps them that there is the extra incentive of 5 available spots to represent Singapore in the World Youth Scrabble Championship. I just hope I don't become a collateral damage in the battle for those spots. I actually wouldn't really care that much for rating; I play mostly for the joy of competition in a tough field anyway. And I have achieved most of what a Scrabbler would want; the GM title, a national championship, a spell as the top ranked player in Singapore. The only thing that makes rating still relevant: my wish for a chance to play in the World Championship. Which now seems more and more a dream with all the competition coming up. I guess one day reality and incapability will eventually sink in, and I will be carefree of ratings concern, and just enjoy wrecking other people's rating. Or preventing certain people from winning certain titles *smirk* But one at a time: now to worry about remembering all my three-letter words prior to the Nationals tomorrow. Then to worrying playing with bald head. Wonder if the brain will need to adjust to lack of protection. For another day.

I'm gonna be bald and it's legit

2006-07-18T23:53:00.000+08:00

As requested by Anonymous_X, I am putting up a scanned copy of my Hair For Hope pledge card online for people to inspect. My name and the card serial number is there, so you can report me for any wrongdoing. Also, there are some details on Children Cancer Foundation (CCF) themselves, for people to have a better feel who they are donating to and feel comfortable that the donation will be put to good use. The outside flap of the pledge card is here, and the inside flap is here. Also, the online pledge page is already up, and you can find the place to pledge to me here. I actually didn't want to update yet because I haven't received access to be able to update info and picture onto the page. However, since the page got discovered and I already have my first online pledgor (thanks! you know who you are!), might as well share it.

Fight against time

2006-07-18T02:47:00.000+08:00

Apparently my arms are very flexible, my back is tense like an inflexible branch, my legs are pretty pliable with knees bent but stiff as staff with knees extended. My body can't decide if it's 28 or 17. Sigh.

Target setting

2006-07-16T03:34:00.000+08:00

It has been heartening so far to get the various positive responses to my HfH initiative. In fact, donations from some close friends and colleagues have helped me reach $420 in amount pledged so far. Thank you people! I have decided to set a target for myself, to keep me motivated and ride the momentum. I intend to get $2,000 in pledges, excluding the dollar-for-dollar matching from my company. Hopefully this is achievable. The company's target is $1,000 for each volunteer. But surely I have 100 friends who are willing to contribute to a good cause, or fewer friends, but generous ones who would give more than $20? *smile sweetly* Failing that, I still have two knees to get down on and face to lose :-) Or as last resort, I do have quite a lot of unused face masks from my previous bout of cold, and I believe I have some knives in the kitchen somewhere... though I fear I lack the skills to make this venture work despite availability of resources... so yah, I'll stay away from mugging. As much as possible. You have been warned ;-)

I am going bald! And it's not alopecia!

2006-07-15T01:12:00.000+08:00

I will be taking part in the Hair for Hope (HfH) initiative. HfH is an event organised by Children Cancer Foundation (CCF) where volunteers will have their head shaved. The hair shaving is to empathise with the children cancer sufferer who undergo chemotherapy and suffer hair loss as result of the treatment, and to show them that there are other people who understand and support them. At the same time, the volunteers will be raising funds for the children, and getting donations from friends and family who are willing to pledge some contribution in exchange for the volunteers shedding their crowning glory. The organiser mentioned that for every $1 they receive, $0.86 goes to the benefit of the children (the remaining would cover operational expenses etc). They kindly mentioned during the briefing that this compares favourably to some other charity that passed on about 10 cents from each dollar *ahem* So there you go. I'm gonna go hairless. For a good cause, at least. And I want your support too, dear readers. Please pledge some amount to me. The guideline circulated to volunteers in our company is that the recommended minimum donation is $20, but I'll leave the amount entirely up to you, whatever you're comfortable with. Just do your part. Think about the children. Think about me; my affected appearance; my exposed pate; my poor, sorry, unprotected, cold, sun-beaten, water-drenched scalp. Think about the uneven growth that will ensue. Think. Doesn't that deserve some payment? No? OK, track back and think of the children. OK, if that's not good enough, I'll give another reason. CCF is my company's charity of choice and the MD has pledged to match any donation collected by FXS shavees dollar for dollar. There you go. Need another reason? The donation itself is double tax-deductible; for every $1 you contribute, $2 will be taken off your taxable income next April. Hence the need to get your IC number and contact number when you contribute. Anyway, I will be shaved onstage at Suntec City Fountain of Wealth, tentatively together with some fellow colleagues who volunteered, on 23rd July 12 pm. The Singapore Scrabblers among my readers will note that this clashes with the Nationals. Which forces me to try to squeeze in a tough act: I may try to negotiate with my 4th opponent of the day for him to go for early lunch when I rush to Suntec, get my hair (over)done, and rush back in time to play 4th game before the rest of the field start game 5. Which means participants in Nationals will get a free look of me before and after, rather immediately... they better contribute a lot to the cause... The folks at CCF is currently also setting up a website that will put up before-and-after pictures of us, and allows people to pledge donation to their friends there too, via credit card. I will post the link to this in the future once this is available. With this available, I'd like to encourage my friends and readers overseas to also consider donating to this cause. Technically, locals can also use this channel, but I'd encourage them to just pass the amount to me directly, since an additional 4.5% will be taken out of the donation to pay the service provider, which I feel is better avoided and passed on to the children. So let me repeat: please contribute. And spread the word to others who may want to contribute. Now and only now, I will announce my email address so you can reach me to arrange how to transfer the donation: sonicrick78@hotmail.com. But I encourage you to leave a comment too in the blog, which may help encourage others to follow suit. In mid August, the total amount will be passed to my company who will consolidate and pass them on to CCF. I will update in my blog the amount that I manage to collect. Looking forward to your $upport!

Market your fruit juice and market it right

2006-07-13T23:13:00.000+08:00

The queue at my regular lunch time fruit stall was rather long today, and I felt like having a banana instead of my usual papaya and kiwi, so I abandoned the fruit seller Uncle and jumped ship to the other fruit stall a stone throw away. The two stalls have same setup: one side vending fruits, and right next to it dispensing fruit juices. But the Aunty's fruit juice stall is decidedly more customer-savvy. They came up with various juices listed under various health benefits like for weight control etc, and then below it listing the various fruit juice combo they have that serves that purpose. All curiously have aloe vera. Some have this thing called foreverlite. I almost suspected it's another faux name like cummingtonite, but I think it must be some diet drink or something. I certainly hope to have no funny mineral in my juice. And then I saw the juice that takes the cake: "juice for reliving (sic) constipation problem". Uh, ooookay. I'll pass. Masochists. And it suddenly gives new meaning to the juice menu next to it: "juice for aiding indigestion problem". I don't know which sick person would want to aid his problem rather than himself, but I guess there are such people. I'm going back to the Uncle tomorrow.

Mouth Wide Shut

2006-07-13T00:10:00.000+08:00

Good: The orthodontist said this morning I am in the last 20% of the bracing procedure. Hooray. Bad: The last 20% involves using two small rubber bands to be hooked connecting a pair of my top teeth with a pair of the bottom. Supposedly to force the bite to align. Along the way managing to clamp my mouth, making it difficult to open wide. People who think I'm outspoken and need muzzling must be laughing their hearts out now... Now I need to change the rubber bands every day, need to take them off before eating or brushing, and put them back on afterwards (unless I start sipping my lunch threw straws)... And of course, there's that mild pain, but oh yes it's there. Ugly: The way I look with two rubber bands showing vertically either side of my mouth cavity... As if I had very sticky drool both sides, dropping and connecting from the ceiling to the tongue...

The wonderful office pantry cum lounge

2006-07-11T23:52:00.000+08:00

One of the better surprises that I had coming back to office after my trip to Thailand was finding two massage chairs provided in the pantry cum lounge. They were sponsored by the vendor who offered substantial discounts and let people try them for free. And boy, it was good. Not good enough for me to part with my money :p (not that I have enough, and I don't buy big assets until I have a home of my own), but enough for me to spread the news to people that massage chair is a goood thing :-) Imagine at the end of the day, after a dizzying day of work, just plonking yourself down there and let the chairs knead away your stiff muscles, before going home, or continuing work in a clearer state of mind. Imagine lunch time, postprandial relaxation session while reading newspaper in the pantry. Bliss. Imagine the morning after staying up late night catching the finals of the World Cup, going to office to have some tiredness soothed away before starting work after the great but tiring month-long World Cup ended Imagine that morning, coming into office finding the chairs had been removed :-/ And today, one day after, I am still craving the chairs. The chairs, my antidote to Thai-massage withdrawal syndrome. Now I have another withdrawal syndrome in hand :-/ They installed something new too in our ever evolving pantry, when they removed the chairs. Auto movement sensor, that will switch the lights off when no one (i.e. no movement) is detected, to help cut down electricity consumption. Now every one minute I read my newspaper in the dark during lunch time :-/ Or have to un-still myself and wave about, since my favourite corner apparently is not directly in the line of sight of the sensor. Times, they are a-changing...

Don't nned no camera for red eye effect

2006-07-09T03:40:00.000+08:00

The boss remarked a couple days back that I got a bloodshot eye. I replied that I had a permanent brown vein in the eye which is not bothering me. Then another person told me again about bloodshot eye, and I repeated the explanation. It's only when the operation manager told me again and lent me her compact powder mirror did I see that for the first time in my life, I had totally red eye on one side only. I had never managed to cry myself on the left eyeball only, so this was definitely a first. Apparently it ran in the department. The week before, when I was on leave, the boss also had one bloodshot eyes. She attributed it to the Managing Director; the MD showed her an eye-poppingly bad report to her not long before. Well, she was half right - the MD (medical doctor) she visited said it was a burst vein, possibly due to too much pressure. A few eyedrops, and she was OK. So now she passed it on to me. I'll pass it on to my teams too, sure, this can be the en vogue thing in our business unit. But for the moment, I wasn't worried, just go to the same MD, get the eyedrops, perhaps a medical leave too since I was getting slight headache, and all would be well. Not quite so. Apparently I caught an eye infection. Didn't expect to have conjunctivitis. So on top of the eyedrops, I got eye ointment too. That was a first for me. I thought I would apply the ointment directly on the eye, and was imagining risks of poking my eyes accidentally with the ointment tube. Fortunately, I googled first to find out the right way to actually "instill ointment in the eye" as the instruction said. I need instead to tug down the skin below the eye to expose the red flesh in the inner fold of the lower eye lid. That's the conjunctiva sac, and apparently I am supposed to apply the ointment there, close my eye, and roll the eyeball around to apply the ointment thoroughly. Quite nifty. More nifty then the eyedrop application, anyway. Incidentally, I didn't know eyedrops are bitter. Don't ask.

Email invasion

2006-07-05T10:36:00.000+08:00

I had never been as happy to be looking at 98 emails in my inbox. Then again, considering that when I stepped back into office after the Scrabble trips I had 357 emails in my inbox, and about 30 more coming in throughout the day, I was quite pleased to have managed to clear almost 200 of those pesky things. And today, the count went back up to 140... the fight continues.

Epilogue: Thailand trip 2006

2006-07-04T01:36:00.000+08:00

So my Thailand trip is coming to an end. It has been fun, it has been hectic that I had only about one hour to try to go shopping for souvenirs or stuff for myself. This seems to be the bane for other Scrabblers too, the Filipinos were yesterday also talking about lack of time to fulfil the souvenir expectations of folks back home. But we got what we came for: good Scrabble. And a bit more things too that I saw or experienced: - The fastest hotel check out I've ever had: 20 seconds flat. I just went to the reception, gave her the key, topped up the amount to pay in addition to the deposit I've put in earlier, and left. It could have been faster if not for the misunderstanding I had with the cashier: I thought she meant she's charging me 950 baht per night instead of 790, where actually she meant that I needed to pay 950 more. And this speed is not unique to me, Cheah Siu Hean reported an equally fast check out. - A very drug tolerant-culture, with pharmacies called Pro Drug, and Save (sic) Drug ;-) You'd think this is the boom time of the golden triangle opium trade. - Schoolboys with lipstick and makeup and feminine hair style in male school uniform with bra visible under the thin fabric of their shirts, with voices bordering between the breaking point that signifies impending manhood and an unsteady attempted falsetto. The imagery just clashes in my mind. I know they have a lot of transgenders in Thailand, I just didn't know they start so early so openly. - Magazine specializing in cockfighting. Or at least that's what I assumed from the pictures, since the text is all in Thai. Many pictures of men proudly showing off their cocks. Um, or shall I say, showing off their roosters. Hey it's not my fault that the popular term isn't roosterfighting. - Foot, head, and back massage at the airport while waiting for boarding. They have a 15 minute express version, but I opted for the 30 minute one, and still they put two people to simultaneously work on my feet and my head. It felt good to have two people pleasuring me at the same time ;-) Too bad I still had to lug my luggage to the waiting area and into the plane later on; I was all softened up already. That's all for this year, and now entering the withdrawal period until next year's trip.

King's Cup final day result

2006-07-02T21:01:00.000+08:00

Nigel Richards (NZ) had locked in a spot in the finals for King's Cup 2006 with two games to go, after a titanic battle against Cheah Siu Hean in round 25. Nigel beat Cheah 547-482 in a game where both players got 4 bingos each: Cheah had CHAPMEN (90), HEADING (78), RETINULA (82), and HINDERER; Nigel got ISOTONIC (70), WARBLED (89) with R hooking RETINULAR, TzARITZA (102), and VEnOSITY (89). Seven of the bingos came by the 6th move of each player, and by then the board had drawn a crowd and a couple of cameramen. With his spot secure, Nigel was gibsonized and played Amnuay (THA) and then Michael Tang (SIN), to Cheah's relief. But by then the damage was done, he had lost 5 out of 7 games against Nigel, and lost his next game to Femi to lose his shot at the finals. Cheah lost 9 games the whole tournament and Nigel accounted for more than half of those. Femi proceded to beat David Eldar (AUS) to go into the finals. I started the day promisingly with two wins against Amnuay Ploysangngam (THA) and Marlon Prudencio (PHI) to get into top 15 before running into a 4 game slide against Tony Sim (SIN) and three Thais: Marut Siriwangso, Sompong P, and Atiruth Sakdiyakorn. Fortunately I managed to eke out a last game win against Lim Li Wei (SIN) to end with a positive spread. Some other nice plays reported to me: - Taewan laid down nine-timer against Charnwit through a P as the second letter, holding AHIOST? [1] - Komol played a natural nine letter through TE holding ABILOSV [2] against Charnwit Final standing after 27 rounds: #,Name,Played,Win,Tie,Loss,Spread 1,NIGEL RICHARDS (NZ),27,21,0,6,1537 2,FEMI AWOWADE (NGR),27,19,0,8,838 3,DAVID ELDAR (AUS),27,18,0,9,1516 4,KOMOL P.,27,18,0,9,1242 5,CHEAH SIU HEAN (SGP),27,18,0,9,1056 6,PANUPOL S.,27,17,1,9,1355 7,NAVAPADOL S.,27,17,0,10,1144 8,PAKORN N.,27,17,0,10,898 9,GERRY C.,27,16,2,9,429 10,TONY SIM (SGP),27,17,0,10,422 11,CHARNWIT S.,27,16,1,10,1405 12,TAEWAN S.,27,16,1,10,1285 13,AKEGAPUN E.,27,16,0,11,869 14,KAREN RICHARDS (AUS),27,16,0,11,650 15,ATIRUTH S.,27,16,0,11,630 16,WAJID IQBAL (PAK),27,16,0,11,557 17,RICARDO V. GOZALEZ (PHI),27,16,0,11,292 18,SOMPONG P.,27,16,0,11,220 19,ANDY KURNIA (SGP),27,16,0,11,151 20,ROBBIE GERARDO ONATE (PHI),27,16,0,11,-374 21,THERESA CAMILLERI (MALTA),27,15,1,11,122 22,MARUT S.,27,15,0,12,683 23,ODETTE CARMINA RIO (PHI),27,15,0,12,620 24,AARON CHONG (MAL),27,15,0,12,532 25,ALASTAIR RICHARDS (AUS),27,15,0,12,227 26,ADRIAN OVIDIU TAMAS (ROM),27,15,0,12,187 27,RICKY PURNOMO (INA),27,15,0,12,45 28,MARLON PRUDENCIO (PHI),27,15,0,12,1 29,MICHAEL TANG (MAL),27,15,0,12,-83 30,JAKKRIT K.,27,14,1,12,341 31,FERDY ANTHONIUS (INA),27,14,1,12,221 32,HUBERT WEE (SGP),27,14,0,13,716 33,NOPPADOL D.,27,14,0,13,510 34,PAUL RICHARDS (AUS),27,14,0,13,449 35,APIRAT C.,27,14,0,13,149 36,CHATCHAWIN P.,27,14,0,13,92 37,VANNITHA BALASINGAM (MAL),27,14,0,13,79 38,KUM ZI PENG (SGP),27,14,0,13,69 39,LIM LI WEI (SGP),27,14,0,13,-1 40,YEO KIEN HUNG (MAL),27,14,0,13,-24 41,AMNUAY P.,27,14,0,13,-336 42,BRO ARUN M.,27,14,0,13,-511 43,DIANNE WARD (AUS),27,14,0,13,-671 44,SHIM YEN NEE (SGP),27,13,0,14,418 45,CHARAE W.,27,13,0,14,235 46,LOUIE MARK U. DE GUZMAN (PHI),27,13,0,14,177 47,DANIEL S.,27,13,0,14,116 48,THIEN T.,27,13,0,14,93 49,SANMI ODELANA (NGR),27,13,0,14,44 50,APITHAI H.,27,13,0,14,38 51,MARTIN DEMELLO (IND),27,13,0,14,33 52,ISHTIAQ AMHED CHISHTY (PAK),27,13,0,14,-36 53,RADHIKA MAHALINGAIAH (IND),27,13,0,14,-243 54,SANWARIT A.,27,13,0,14,-253 55,PRACHAYA P.,27,13,0,14,-565 56,PAULETTE YEOH (MAL),27,13,0,14,-869 57,ALOYSIOUS CONZAGA (SGP),27,13,0,14,-951 58,KARTHIK NATARAJAN (IND),27,12,0,15,167 59,SANJOY GUPTA (IND),27,12,0,15,133 60,TAN JIN CHOR (MAL),27,12,0,15,102 61,EDIE MUELLER (AUS),27,12,0,15,-41 62,MALLIKA M.,27,12,0,15,-42 63,LAWRENCE LOW (MAL),27,12,0,15,-329 64,BARRY HARRIDGE (AUS),27,12,0,15,-372 65,WEERAYA M.,27,12,0,15,-401 66,VISAN V.,27,12,0,15,-461 67,LENNIE D'SOUZA (IND),27,12,0,15,-553 68,REX D'SOUZA (IND),27,12,0,15,-888 69,JOHN LAM (MAL),27,11,0,16,220 70,PRAKASH MENON (SGP),27,11,0,16,-37 71,SARAH LAW MENON (SGP),27,11,0,16,-385 72,DORAI RAJA (SGP),27,11,0,16,-410 73,WILFREDO C. PADUA (PHI),27,11,0,16,-503 74,ANDREE PRENTICE (NZ),27,11,0,16,-790 75,KUNIHIKO KURODA (JAP),27,11,0,16,-927 76,DAWUUD M.,27,10,0,17,-313 77,VALLIAMMAH THAMBIAYAH (SGP),27,10,0,17,-336 78,TAN KHEE CHIANG (MAL),27,10,0,17,-424 79,JEFFRY NATHANIEL SALIM (INA),27,10,0,17,-1340 80,WARODOM G.,27,10,0,17,-1450 81,WEERANEE T.,27,9,0,18,-1314 82,MANEEDA T.,27,9,0,18,-1467 83,RUBY SIM (SGP),27,8,0,19,-526 84,SUJIT U.,27,7,0,20,-1402 85,RHYS McGUCKIN (AUS),27,6,0,21,-1324 86,JERRY KHOO SWEE LENG (MAL),27,6,0,21,-2550 Answer to quiz: [1] APHOrIST [2] BLOVIATES

King's Cup day 3 result

2006-07-01T22:36:00.000+08:00

Cheah Siu Hean (SIN) thwarted Komol (THA) twice to keep the leader from the previous day in check, but it was Nigel (NZ) who benefited by virtue of better spread. Later on Nigel went on to beat Cheah in game 17 to claim sole leadership. Femi Awowade (NGR) continued his charge up the ranking from the day before. By round 17, he had strung together 4 wins today to add to his 3 yesterday, the last win against Pakorn when Pakorn under time pressure missed a simple bingo DOTAGES hooking to the only spot on the board, at the end of RAINWEAR. RAINWEARS is not good in OSPD, which was why Pakorn didn't play it. Femi's run came to a halt in the hands of Cheah Siu Hean, who throughout the day lost only two games, both to Nigel. However he did manage to end the day with a win against Nigel, to stay in touch with one win behind and one ahead of the rest of the field. Another person making a charge up was David Eldar (AUS), who after a 4-6 start (including a bye) and a negative spread, had won 10 straight including all 7 today to propel himself into the top 4. In the last game in the first table, David beat Femi to earn a match against Siu Hean in the first game tomorrow. David also won 3500 baht for winning all his games today, the only person who managed the feat. I finally managed to have a positive spread for the first time in the tourney at the start of round 16, after winning the first two games of the day. However in round 19 it was back to negative thanks to a 126 loss to Jakkrit Klaphajone (THA), which featured his nice find of the natural GIILOTV [1] through an I. Some notable plays: - Jakkrit found one of the two 8s from ADEEPW? through an R [2] against Nigel in round 14. It didn't help him avert a 195 loss to Nigel. - Komol defeated Panupol with the help of one of the two 7s in BDIIOR? [3] - Jakkrit played AACHLMN through an O [4] against Aaron Chong (MAL), who was holding EGIJOU? and responded with the only bingo through one of the floaters Jakkrit provided [5] Answers at the end of the post. At this moment I only have result up to game 19, before the final wins reported above, since I was running late for dinner and the England soccer match tonight. #,Name,Played,Win,Tie,Loss,Spread 1,NIGEL RICHARDS (NZ),19,16,0,3,1361 2,CHEAH SIU HEAN (SGP),19,14,0,5,1084 3,FEMI AWOWADE (NGR),19,14,0,5,812 4,DAVID ELDAR (AUS),19,13,0,6,1248 5,KOMOL P.,19,13,0,6,1206 6,PAKORN N.,19,13,0,6,702 7,TONY SIM (SGP),19,13,0,6,561 8,GERRY C.,19,12,1,6,310 9,CHARNWIT S.,19,12,0,7,1212 10,TAEWAN S.,19,12,0,7,984 11,NAVAPADOL S.,19,12,0,7,883 12,PANUPOL S.,19,12,0,7,877 13,LIM LI WEI (SGP),19,12,0,7,331 14,YEO KIEN HUNG (MAL),19,12,0,7,144 15,FERDY ANTHONIUS (INA),19,11,1,7,349 16,JAKKRIT K.,19,11,1,7,335 17,ATIRUTH S.,19,11,0,8,799 18,HUBERT WEE (SGP),19,11,0,8,447 19,AARON CHONG (MAL),19,11,0,8,441 20,APIRAT C.,19,11,0,8,417 21,ALASTAIR RICHARDS (AUS),19,11,0,8,415 22,THIEN T.,19,11,0,8,366 23,WAJID IQBAL (PAK),19,11,0,8,316 24,MARLON PRUDENCIO (PHI),19,11,0,8,307 25,RICARDO V. GOZALEZ (PHI),19,11,0,8,239 26,SOMPONG P.,19,11,0,8,223 27,ANDY KURNIA (SGP),19,11,0,8,150 28,RICKY PURNOMO (INA),19,11,0,8,-9 29,AMNUAY P.,19,11,0,8,-310 30,THERESA CAMILLERI (MALTA),19,10,1,8,-40 31,ODETTE CARMINA RIO (PHI),19,10,0,9,608 32,AKEGAPUN E.,19,10,0,9,359 33,KAREN RICHARDS (AUS),19,10,0,9,349 34,KUM ZI PENG (SGP),19,10,0,9,273 35,VANNITHA BALASINGAM (MAL),19,10,0,9,230 36,MARUT S.,19,10,0,9,229 37,KARTHIK NATARAJAN (IND),19,10,0,9,138 38,ISHTIAQ AMHED CHISHTY (PAK),19,10,0,9,135 39,MICHAEL TANG (MAL),19,10,0,9,105 40,DANIEL S.,19,10,0,9,79 41,CHATCHAWIN P.,19,10,0,9,-150 42,DORAI RAJA (SGP),19,10,0,9,-159 43,DIANNE WARD (AUS),19,10,0,9,-333 44,ALOYSIOUS CONZAGA (SGP),19,10,0,9,-731 45,MALLIKA M.,19,9,0,10,368 46,NOPPADOL D.,19,9,0,10,347 47,CHARAE W.,19,9,0,10,214 48,PAUL RICHARDS (AUS),19,9,0,10,112 49,APITHAI H.,19,9,0,10,83 50,SHIM YEN NEE (SGP),19,9,0,10,35 51,TAN JIN CHOR (MAL),19,9,0,10,-77 52,RADHIKA MAHALINGAIAH (IND),19,9,0,10,-171 53,MARTIN DEMELLO (IND),19,9,0,10,-198 54,BRO ARUN M.,19,9,0,10,-295 55,ROBBIE GERARDO ONATE (PHI),19,9,0,10,-803 56,PAULETTE YEOH (MAL),19,9,0,10,-818 57,SANJOY GUPTA (IND),19,8,0,11,296 58,JOHN LAM (MAL),19,8,0,11,270 59,LOUIE MARK U. DE GUZMAN (PHI),19,8,0,11,73 60,PRAKASH MENON (SGP),19,8,0,11,-84 61,EDIE MUELLER (AUS),19,8,0,11,-148 62,WEERAYA M.,19,8,0,11,-153 63,SANMI ODELANA (NGR),19,8,0,11,-206 64,LAWRENCE LOW (MAL),19,8,0,11,-222 65,TAN KHEE CHIANG (MAL),19,8,0,11,-244 66,ADRIAN OVIDIU TAMAS (ROM),19,8,0,11,-245 67,VISAN V.,19,8,0,11,-346 68,LENNIE D'SOUZA (IND),19,8,0,11,-359 69,SANWARIT A.,19,8,0,11,-496 70,BARRY HARRIDGE (AUS),19,8,0,11,-561 71,PRACHAYA P.,19,8,0,11,-617 72,RUBY SIM (SGP),19,7,0,12,-81 73,SARAH LAW MENON (SGP),19,7,0,12,-112 74,DAWUUD M.,19,7,0,12,-301 75,ANDREE PRENTICE (NZ),19,7,0,12,-600 76,WILFREDO C. PADUA (PHI),19,7,0,12,-807 77,KUNIHIKO KURODA (JAP),19,7,0,12,-837 78,REX D'SOUZA (IND),19,7,0,12,-927 79,JEFFRY NATHANIEL SALIM (INA),19,7,0,12,-1131 80,WEERANEE T.,19,6,0,13,-997 81,MANEEDA T.,19,6,0,13,-1305 82,WARODOM G.,19,6,0,13,-1322 83,VALLIAMMAH THAMBIAYAH (SGP),19,5,0,14,-513 84,JERRY KHOO SWEE LENG (MAL),19,5,0,14,-1865 85,RHYS McGUCKIN (AUS),19,4,0,15,-1197 86,SUJIT U.,19,3,0,16,-1252 Answer to quiz: [1] VITILIGO [2] PERsWADE. WAPpERED is the other bingo [3] OIlBIRD, instead of fIBROID. [4] MONACHAL [5] LOGJUICE

King's Cup Opening Ceremony

2006-07-01T13:41:00.000+08:00

No games yet this morning, because we are having the opening ceremony. I am sitting rather bored waiting for the entire thing to finish. The way the thing was delayed, I am guessing the first game will be played after lunch, to start in two hours time. Seven games today, and seven games tomorrow. The opening ceremony is actually much better organised compared to previous years, certainly better than last year. It is in the same venue, the basement of the Bangna City Shopping Center, but the crowd control is now put at the right places such that the basement area itself is no longer the overcrowded stuffy place it was last year. We even had the luxury of practising the players walk-in parade twice. Could have put in another 10 practices while waiting for the guest of honour, a Thai princess, to arrive. My commiseration to the brass band players and the flag bearers, who do not have the luxury of the chairs the players are allotted. The Nigerians again IMHO hands down win the best national costume contest, if there is one, with the red and white dashikis worn by Femi and Sanmi. Myself, I'm quite happy to have a decent clean pair of pants to wear, after forgetting to pack a pair in and managing to window shop in-between games and made a choice late evening after the end of the tourney yesterday. The benefits of playing in a shopping mall: easy access to food, shopping, and even songs and movie trailers playing on the giant screen in the concourse (OK, not really a benefit to many others). In the meantime, a couple of nice plays reported to me so far: - Nigel Richards's EPIcLESES to the second ES against Marlon Prudencio (PHI) - Lim Li Wei (SIN)'s BALLOTEES through AL against, aptly, Kum Zi Peng (SIN)whose nickname is Ball.

PS: I take my word back on the crowd control after trying to exit the hall where the ceremony was held.

King's Cup second day result

2006-06-30T22:42:00.000+08:00

Day 2 ended with 13 games played and a new leader. Komol emerged as the sole player on 11 wins after winning all eight games today, including one against previous leader Nigel Richards. Nigel lost another two games to Atiruth Sakdiyakorn and Ishtiaq Chishty (PAK). Panupol won all the games he played today, but he conceded a walkover in the first game of the day against Kum Zi Peng (Singapore) when he came late. Another climber was Femi Awowade (Nigeria) who won all but one game, losing round 10 to Amnuay Ploysangngam 464-497. On the side, one game was played for all spectators to see when Marut Siriwangso and Alastair Richards (Australia) played their game in round 11 on the giant board which is usually used to display the finals. Both players took turn running up the board to place their tiles. It helps that both are known fast players. Marut won 414-357. I remain stuck as the player with the lowest spread amongst players with same spread. I recovered my spread with back to back wins of spreads 172 and 193 against Dorai Raja (Singapore) and Vannitha Balasingham (Malaysia), but then threw it all away again with a 196 loss to Thien T. (Thailand), which was fully self-inflicted with 4 phoneys from me. Tomorrow first table will see two Thais and two Singaporeans courtesy of the Swiss pairing: Komol vs Panupol and Cheah Siu Hean vs Tony, so the second game will be a Singapore vs Thai duel both sides when winner plays winner and loser plays loser. Standing at the end of day 2: #,Name,Played,Win,Tie,Loss,Spread 1,KOMOL P.,13,11,0,2,1334 2,PANUPOL S.,13,10,0,3,926 3,CHEAH SIU HEAN (SGP),13,10,0,3,921 4,NIGEL RICHARDS (NZ),13,10,0,3,840 5,TONY SIM (SGP),13,10,0,3,642 6,JAKKRIT K.,13,9,1,3,580 7,ATIRUTH S.,13,9,0,4,851 8,AKEGAPUN E.,13,9,0,4,622 9,FEMI AWOWADE (NGR),13,9,0,4,596 10,PAKORN N.,13,9,0,4,375 11,MARLON PRUDENCIO (PHI),13,9,0,4,320 12,AMNUAY P.,13,9,0,4,66 13,CHARNWIT S.,13,8,0,5,851 14,TAEWAN S.,13,8,0,5,826 15,NAVAPADOL S.,13,8,0,5,671 16,APIRAT C.,13,8,0,5,445 17,AARON CHONG (MAL),13,8,0,5,351 18,KARTHIK NATARAJAN (IND),13,8,0,5,254 19,DANIEL S.,13,8,0,5,232 20,LIM LI WEI (SGP),13,8,0,5,232 21,SOMPONG P.,13,8,0,5,183 22,YEO KIEN HUNG (MAL),13,8,0,5,138 23,ISHTIAQ AMHED CHISHTY (PAK),13,8,0,5,98 24,ANDY KURNIA (SGP),13,8,0,5,74 25,GERRY C.,13,7,1,5,144 26,ODETTE CARMINA RIO (PHI),13,7,0,6,548 27,KAREN RICHARDS (AUS),13,7,0,6,487 28,DAVID ELDAR (AUS),13,7,0,6,482 29,HUBERT WEE (SGP),13,7,0,6,344 30,THIEN T.,13,7,0,6,341 31,JOHN LAM (MAL),13,7,0,6,287 32,RICARDO V. GOZALEZ (PHI),13,7,0,6,272 33,DORAI RAJA (SGP),13,7,0,6,174 34,PAUL RICHARDS (AUS),13,7,0,6,161 35,KUM ZI PENG (SGP),13,7,0,6,113 36,VANNITHA BALASINGAM (MAL),13,7,0,6,106 37,RADHIKA MAHALINGAIAH (IND),13,7,0,6,75 38,BRO ARUN M.,13,7,0,6,14 39,BARRY HARRIDGE (AUS),13,7,0,6,-28 40,MICHAEL TANG (MAL),13,7,0,6,-113 41,VISAN V.,13,7,0,6,-191 42,RICKY PURNOMO (INA),13,7,0,6,-196 43,FERDY ANTHONIUS (INA),13,6,1,6,-80 44,THERESA CAMILLERI (MALTA),13,6,1,6,-182 45,MARUT S.,13,6,0,7,240 46,LOUIE MARK U. DE GUZMAN (PHI),13,6,0,7,211 47,ALASTAIR RICHARDS (AUS),13,6,0,7,151 48,CHARAE W.,13,6,0,7,82 49,SHIM YEN NEE (SGP),13,6,0,7,73 50,SANMI ODELANA (NGR),13,6,0,7,-136 51,ADRIAN OVIDIU TAMAS (ROM),13,6,0,7,-138 52,WAJID IQBAL (PAK),13,6,0,7,-146 53,MARTIN DEMELLO (IND),13,6,0,7,-157 54,TAN JIN CHOR (MAL),13,6,0,7,-197 55,KUNIHIKO KURODA (JAP),13,6,0,7,-233 56,CHATCHAWIN P.,13,6,0,7,-240 57,PRACHAYA P.,13,6,0,7,-269 58,EDIE MUELLER (AUS),13,6,0,7,-277 59,DIANNE WARD (AUS),13,6,0,7,-303 60,PAULETTE YEOH (MAL),13,6,0,7,-454 61,WILFREDO C. PADUA (PHI),13,6,0,7,-500 62,ALOYSIOUS CONZAGA (SGP),13,6,0,7,-909 63,MALLIKA M.,13,5,0,8,84 64,NOPPADOL D.,13,5,0,8,-41 65,VALLIAMMAH THAMBIAYAH (SGP),13,5,0,8,-90 66,TAN KHEE CHIANG (MAL),13,5,0,8,-210 67,SARAH LAW MENON (SGP),13,5,0,8,-225 68,DAWUUD M.,13,5,0,8,-268 69,LENNIE D'SOUZA (IND),13,5,0,8,-339 70,SANWARIT A.,13,5,0,8,-397 71,REX D'SOUZA (IND),13,5,0,8,-475 72,ROBBIE GERARDO ONATE (PHI),13,5,0,8,-767 73,SANJOY GUPTA (IND),13,4,0,9,-64 74,APITHAI H.,13,4,0,9,-111 75,RUBY SIM (SGP),13,4,0,9,-192 76,PRAKASH MENON (SGP),13,4,0,9,-223 77,ANDREE PRENTICE (NZ),13,4,0,9,-456 78,WEERAYA M.,13,4,0,9,-525 79,LAWRENCE LOW (MAL),13,4,0,9,-675 80,WEERANEE T.,13,4,0,9,-775 81,MANEEDA T.,13,4,0,9,-860 82,JEFFRY NATHANIEL SALIM (INA),13,4,0,9,-1133 83,JERRY KHOO SWEE LENG (MAL),13,4,0,9,-1277 84,RHYS McGUCKIN (AUS),13,3,0,10,-899 85,WARODOM G.,13,3,0,10,-966

Belated King's Cup first day result

2006-06-30T14:42:00.000+08:00

This is a slightly belated report, of the end of King's Cup 2006 Day One. After 5 rounds, 4 players remained undefeated: Atiruth Sakdiyakorn (THA) with a monster spread of 852, Nigel Richards (NZ) on 612, Ishtiaq Chishty (PAK) 354, and Henry Yeo Kien Hung (MAL) 298. Highest debutante is Phillippines' new whiz kid Louie Mark U. De Guzman at 7th with 4-1 658. Singaporeans in top 10 were Cheah Siu Hean and Hubert Wee. I was languishing with a respectable 3-2 record but -203 spread (lowest among people with same record), no thanks to a -232 beating by Atiruth. Full standing up to round 5 yesterday (pardon the format), Thai unless otherwise stated: #,Name,Played,Win,Tie,Loss,Spread 1,ATIRUTH S.,5,5,0,0,852 2,NIGEL RICHARDS (NZ),5,5,0,0,612 3,ISHTIAQ AMHED CHISHTY (PAK),5,5,0,0,354 4,YEO KIEN HUNG (MAL),5,5,0,0,298 5,ODETTE CARMINA RIO (PHI),5,4,0,1,717 6,CHARNWIT S.,5,4,0,1,658 7,LOUIE MARK U. DE GUZMAN (PHI),5,4,0,1,461 8,CHEAH SIU HEAN (SGP),5,4,0,1,457 9,HUBERT WEE (SGP),5,4,0,1,453 10,MARUT S.,5,4,0,1,450 11,AKEGAPUN E.,5,4,0,1,412 12,JOHN LAM (MAL),5,4,0,1,385 13,APIRAT C.,5,4,0,1,354 14,MARLON PRUDENCIO (PHI),5,4,0,1,332 15,AARON CHONG (MAL),5,4,0,1,272 16,TONY SIM (SGP),5,4,0,1,248 17,SOMPONG P.,5,4,0,1,238 18,GERRY C.,5,3,1,1,340 19,JAKKRIT K.,5,3,1,1,339 20,NAVAPADOL S.,5,3,0,2,526 21,RICARDO V. GOZALEZ (PHI),5,3,0,2,398 22,PANUPOL S.,5,3,0,2,335 23,KARTHIK NATARAJAN (IND),5,3,0,2,323 24,VANNITHA BALASINGAM (MAL),5,3,0,2,246 25,AMNUAY P.,5,3,0,2,221 26,KOMOL P.,5,3,0,2,193 27,DANIEL S.,5,3,0,2,169 28,DAVID ELDAR (AUS),5,3,0,2,156 29,ALASTAIR RICHARDS (AUS),5,3,0,2,145 30,MARTIN DEMELLO (IND),5,3,0,2,137 31,LIM LI WEI (SGP),5,3,0,2,136 32,DORAI RAJA (SGP),5,3,0,2,103 33,PAUL RICHARDS (AUS),5,3,0,2,63 34,KUM ZI PENG (SGP),5,3,0,2,55 35,SANMI ODELANA (NGR),5,3,0,2,51 36,ANDY KURNIA (SGP),5,3,0,2,24 37,ADRIAN OVIDIU TAMAS (ROM),5,3,0,2,-14 38,EDIE MUELLER (AUS),5,3,0,2,-29 39,PAKORN N.,5,3,0,2,-48 40,PRACHAYA P.,5,3,0,2,-129 41,MICHAEL TANG (MAL),5,3,0,2,-129 42,WILFREDO C. PADUA (PHI),5,3,0,2,-188 43,RICKY PURNOMO (INA),5,3,0,2,-203 44,THERESA CAMILLERI (MALTA),5,2,1,2,-169 45,SHIM YEN NEE (SGP),5,2,0,3,130 46,CHARAE W.,5,2,0,3,113 47,KAREN RICHARDS (AUS),5,2,0,3,55 48,WAJID IQBAL (PAK),5,2,0,3,28 49,TAEWAN S.,5,2,0,3,-2 50,SARAH LAW MENON (SGP),5,2,0,3,-79 51,CHATCHAWIN P.,5,2,0,3,-80 52,NOPPADOL D.,5,2,0,3,-89 53,TAN KHEE CHIANG (MAL),5,2,0,3,-100 54,FEMI AWOWADE (NGR),5,2,0,3,-121 55,VALLIAMMAH THAMBIAYAH (SGP),5,2,0,3,-163 56,APITHAI H.,5,2,0,3,-193 57,VISAN V.,5,2,0,3,-198 58,WEERAYA M.,5,2,0,3,-200 59,TAN JIN CHOR (MAL),5,2,0,3,-227 60,BARRY HARRIDGE (AUS),5,2,0,3,-251 61,SANWARIT A.,5,2,0,3,-267 62,DIANNE WARD (AUS),5,2,0,3,-271 63,ROBBIE GERARDO ONATE (PHI),5,2,0,3,-318 64,LAWRENCE LOW (MAL),5,2,0,3,-334 65,ALOYSIOUS CONZAGA (SGP),5,2,0,3,-454 66,JEFFRY NATHANIEL SALIM (INA),5,2,0,3,-490 67,FERDY ANTHONIUS (INA),5,1,1,3,-338 68,SANJOY GUPTA (IND),5,1,0,4,-68 69,THIEN T.,5,1,0,4,-84 70,KUNIHIKO KURODA (JAP),5,1,0,4,-154 71,RADHIKA MAHALINGAIAH (IND),5,1,0,4,-203 72,LENNIE D'SOUZA (IND),5,1,0,4,-213 73,MALLIKA M.,5,1,0,4,-215 74,PRAKASH MENON (SGP),5,1,0,4,-235 75,DAWUUD M.,5,1,0,4,-240 76,BRO ARUN M.,5,1,0,4,-257 77,WARODOM G.,5,1,0,4,-371 78,REX D'SOUZA (IND),5,1,0,4,-414 79,ANDREE PRENTICE (NZ),5,1,0,4,-439 80,PAULETTE YEOH (MAL),5,1,0,4,-453 81,RHYS McGUCKIN (AUS),5,1,0,4,-576 82,MANEEDA T.,5,1,0,4,-588 83,RUBY SIM (SGP),5,0,0,5,-533 84,WEERANEE T.,5,0,0,5,-610 85,JERRY KHOO SWEE LENG (MAL),5,0,0,5,-802 Four games have been played so far since this result was available, more news will be posted at the end of the day, and hopefully subsequent news can be updated faster since I think I've managed to get a WiFi access.

Back to Bangkok

2006-06-29T17:24:00.000+08:00

First day in Bangkok, and it's good to be back. I'm back in the same rather dinky hotel that I stayed in last year. Yes, they still serve "snakes" in the in-room fridge. The room condition seems to deteriorate a bit; Tony Sim, my roommate for this year, said the room reminded him of the horror video game Resident Evil. It must be the askew gloomy painting hanging on the wall next to my bed. Not all got worse though. We took a look at the level 5 massage center. Which was really a fishtank (not the aquarium type) rather than a health center. Tony said the "fishes" looked better, compared to last year. If this was good, I guess I didn't miss any scenery for neglecting to check the place last year :-) Then again, Tony did say last year's stock reminded him of WWF. He didn't elaborate whether he meant the World Wrestling Federation, or the World Wildlife Fund. At least the panda logo of the second WWF is cute. I arrived at 3pm on my own and had a very late slow lunch before Tony and Cheah Siu Hean arrived at the hotel. We went to purchase provision from the nearby Carrefour before having dinner. The thing about provision shopping overseas where prices are cheaper is, suddenly one begins to eat unhealthy. I don't snack, but suddenly that Pocky stick looked so cheap, that chocolate dip biscuit surely couldn't help, where else can you get a 40 cent double scoop chocolate ice cream, and on and on and on. I just hope I do put on weight at the end of the trip. But not all are unhealthy here. Tony and I went for a healthy massage spa package in the evening. Healthy and "healthy" packages coexist happily here in Bangkok; in the same building as our spa resort, a separate door leads to a fishtank that really looks more like a classy jazzy restaurant if not for a group of ladies seated on a row of seats with number tags attached to their tops. A separate entrance led to a classy resort-type massage place which is very contrasting with the other entrance, no hanky panky at all. We opted for the scrub + oil aromatherapy + foot massage package, and it was good. The ambience of the place was nice, they put attention into small details, like putting a bowl with some live flowers floating in water underneath the hole through which one put one's head when laying face down on the massage table. Nice soothing view, nice smell, and even allows for the person being massaged to drool as he goes to sleep, leaving no signs with the spit dripping straight into the water bowl ;p Not that I did that, mind you :-) The massage left us both thoroughly relaxed, with some tingling sensation on the legs, as if someone rubbed mint toothpaste all over our legs. Or perhaps they did, they did spray something when I was drifting in and out of slumber. The thorough relaxation helped me to have a good long sleep yesterday evening. That, and the fact that there was no World Cup match yesterday :-) now, for the tournament.

Penang Open report (long)

2006-06-28T04:38:00.000+08:00

A. Ganesh won the 2006 Penang Open in convincing manner, with a 17-3 record and a whopping +2312 spread. Ganesh entered as a hot favourite, and justified it with his 12-win streak to open the tournament. The tournament itself was played with a 12-no repeat format, so only in round 13 he got to meet Nigel Richards a second time. Nigel lost 467-469 in their first encounter in game 5, and managed to beat Ganesh 430-375 to set up a potential contest, but Ganesh then proceeded to beat Nigel four time in a row and securing the championship by round 17. On round 18, Andy Kurnia had caught up with Nigel and creditably managed to beat Ganesh twice to hang on to emerge the runner up despite losing the third game to Ganesh. Ganesh's ruthlessness can be seen by his halfway record: after game 10, he has played 39 bingos, and averaged 530 points per game. Hubert Wee (SIN) was the first to suffer a steamrolling in game 3, when Ganesh creamed him at table 1 614-305, playing 6 unanswered bingos in his first 8 moves: HESITANT (72), CRITTERS (61), ORDEALs (86), AMADOUS (76), AGNIZES (113) and BIBAtION (77) to hold a 534 - 238 lead by the end of move 8. Game 6, when I was about to start my own game, I heard from behind me a moan from Malaysia's number 2 Aaron Chong, and turned to find Ganesh just started the game with a 110-point ZEPHyRS. A few minutes later, we heard a "Can I concede?" plea, as apparently Ganesh just laid down his sixth bingo en route to a 641-252 thrashing, again with no bingo replies from Aaron. All in all, Ganesh was by far the best player in the tournament, and cemented his reputation as the player to fear in the circuit, taking over Nigel's mantle. As for myself, didn't do to well in Penang Open. Here's my match report anyway, with quizzes marked with [number] and the answers given at the end of the report. Players are Malaysian unless otherwise mentioned. Rd 1: Zeenath Ariff, an intermediate player from Malaysia. She started with ALIENOR (66) while I spent 3 turns battling vowel suprlus. By the time I could score consistenly, she played VARDIES (81) to take a 317-175 lead. My dilemma started the next turn. I opened up a nine-timer line putting an N in the sixth position, and now held ABIOSS?, which had many bingos but no nine timer. She played ZiDE* (69) elsewhere through the D with Z on double letter score (DLS) and E on triple word (TWS). I challenged that off, and noted that she could play ZEDs in the same spot. Now if I bingo in my nine-timer line for a mere three-timer, I would close the gap but she would be able to pull away again with ZEDs. So I decided to gamble, not bingo, and played BODS (30) to block, keeping AIS? and fishing for a nine-timer. No bingo-friendly tiles came in sight from that point onwards :-( . L 310-442 Rd 2: Lee Yee Fun, a Penangite intermediate player. I played the normal word bingo from EIORSY? [1] for 93, and later on EGMOTU? [2] for 76. I had one more bingo ORIGANES [72], but the play I liked most was during end game, holding EIINSUV, playing UNSEVERED to ERED on the board for 42, before playing out with NIDI. W 520-305 Rd 3: Yeoh Sue-Jane, Yee Fun's daughter. I started with QUINE, after chickening out from UNIQUES (it is good). She scored consistently such that I actually only led her by 12 after bingoing TEASERs (90). I had STEEDED (71), she had OVERLONg (79), but by then the game was mine. W 475-360 Rd 4: Chuah Sim Swee. The last game of the first day, and all 4 of my opponents were Penang women. Hmm. Sim Swee started with PEALING (76). Not a good sign, too much like game 1 for my liking: crappy tiles my end, bingo lead from opponent. By the time I had workable tiles BEGINT?, I was behind far enough to actually look hard to find the highest scoring bingo, starting from a W to a TWS [3] for 103 (including 5 pt challenge). We then exchange bingos, her SOIREES (73) and my TRASHINg (90), and later on I had HOXED (51) and she ZOMBIE (57). In the end I was let down by poor endgame rack (DEENNUU) which brough me a total of 15 points in the last two moves when she scored 53. L 428-448 Rd 5: Yeap Gim Sai. Finally, a non-Penangite, but also a woman. A record for me, playing 5 females in a row. I bingoed to start for a change, OUTSIdE (64). Unfortunately she got down SCARTING (65), MINARET (69) and AXONE (67) before I got LEASHEd (87) down to even things up. Even then, she nailed ZEK (51) to go into end game with a 404-350 lead, with one in the bag (BDIPRSTT unseen). I was holding AADORTU, and gambled on playing off the A to form DA, one short of TWS line to create one bingo spot. Yeap had lost track of the scoring but recognised the ploy, and proceeded to block it with TRIP. I picked a B, and found a bingo starting from an O on the board [4], a more unlikely bingo spot that she had missed, and managed to snatch the win. W 444-417 Rd 6: Chew Han Ei (SIN). Finally, a non-Malaysian, and male to boot. Drew first blood with INNPRT? from an A [5] for 72. He later replied with AMORTISE (62) one short of DWS. I phonied with INVECTOr*, he phonied with YEALE*, and basically I outscored him the help of GONGS through the O and forming AMORTISES for 40. W 367-324 Rd 7: Femi Awowade (Nigeria). He phonied COUPIST* which I chalenged off. I played VOW, he played PO, then we exchanged bingos for two consecutive turns: PAStING (81) and EXCITED (91) from me and AUCTIONS (90) and UNHOLIER (75) from him. I later made the error of playing ALODEAS*, confusing ALODIA and ELODEAS. Off it came, he continued scoring and bingoed with TiTRABLE (85) to seal the game. L 420-504 Rd 8: Cheah Siu Hean (SIN). He started, and I held IMMOTTS. He played WEND (16), and I played the only available bingo [6], with gratitude. 5 moves later I played EXTrUDE (96) to hold a 240-82 lead. He fought back with ANAERObE (74) and FIBROSED (79), but I had too much scoring in between with ZINGED (54) and SHAY (45) to hold on. And it helped that he didn't challenge FLIPT* when I hooked EXTruDE to FLIP :-) W 478-364 Rd 9: Gerry Carter (Thailand). I bingoed GERMANE (74) to start, and QuIETENs (95) on move 3. Gerry played great catch up though with moves like consecutive SPITZ (52), HEID (49), VICAR (41) while I missed a move playing the phony WORMIES*, only to spot the bingo through a P [7] just before Gerry laid SPITZ down blocking it. We entered endgame with him leading me 339-334 with 3 in the bag. I phonied ABYED* which came off, but still won after a long desperate analysis from Gerry to find a win. To make a long story short: by that point apparently the leave in the bag was such that there was no way for him to win given any combination, if I find the optimal moves in each of them. W 375-370 Rd 10: A Ganesh. He had played everyone in top 6 so poor me at number 7 had to entertain him. It was actually promising enough since I got RENEGED (69) in move 2 and lead 125-35 by move 3. Then his bingo engine started with 3 bingos: TEOPANS (76), the nine-timer HAlATION (140) through T of TEOPANS, and LIVELODS (79). I had INCURRED (74) after his TEOPANS (which explains why I didn't block the T in the nine-timer lane), and tried to keep up with a string of 6 moves of 30 and above (50, 48, 35, 31, 30, 30), but he got down bingos number 4 and 5 SUBFIlE (72) and QUERIES (79) to whip me off. L 450-588. 450 is usually a winning score! Not one that loses by a margin of more than a hundred! Obscene... Rd 11: Hubert Wee (SIN). He scored consistently throughout, punctuated with sPUTTER (90) in between. I alternated among midscores, change, bingo of FRAGMEnT (82) which I extended to FRAGMEnTED (32) the next turn, phoney, bingo with TAMARIN (89), a string of low scores... basically, no consistency. L 372-490 Rd 12: Sanmi Odelana (Nigeria). I started, but he got first bingo in his first turn with INTERIM (67). I got back consistency in scoring, but he did the same and managed to get TANNERS (76) with the last available bingo spot in mid game. I had to play GOV (8) just to create a tight unblockable bingo spot, which paid dividend next turn when I managed to play STUcCOS there (79). However that was an error for making a word which started with an S, since it was in the TWS line, and Sanmi immediately bingoed back with PROSTIES (94). I had the fortune of picking the second blank, and we went into endgame with two tiles in the bag (unseen AABEGKUUZ) and me holding AIMNPR?. There were 3 bingo spots, all for 8-letter words, and only one location I'd consider bingo friendly: starting with P or R. The other two were challenging: ending with I, or with C or U at another spot. I decided to open a new spot by playing the P to create OP for hooks for my ?. Unfortunately, that was the game-losing error, since Sanmi got to play ZEK (43). I picked up a G, holding AGINMR? I have many bingos playable but not enough to overcome the score gap now. I needed 89 to tie, and could only muster 80 point, the highest available, an 8-letter bingo to the aforementioned I [8]. Playing the P to block the location for ZEK would have won me the game. L 445-454 Rd 13: Ishtiaq Chishty (Pakistan). A game that I threw away. I led with RATITES (75), but he eventually caught up with BONIEST (75) and DAUTIEs(68), which also clogged up the board totally. I picked up the J to empty the bag, and it became a cat-and-mouse game where I tried to create opening for the J while he blocked it up. And I threw the game away by not noticing that in one of his blocking moves, he actually inadvertently created a high-scoring play for my J: JILL (27) to his L. What happened was I did eventually find it, but after exceeding the time limit after initially creating some pointless opening elsewhere. The 10 point time penalty cost me the game. Real proof that I needed a break by then. L 375-378. Rd 14: John Lam, one of the Malaysian top players. I thought I had a rough patch losing 4 in a row and said he should me let me win. I didn't know at that time he was on 5-game losing streak :-/ His misfortune still continued, he had terrible racks forcing him to score below 20 most of the time. I only had sINNERS (62) but still had enough of high scoring in-between plays to win very comfortably. W 395-282 Rd 15: Pui Cheng Wui. He had TORMENTA (94), I had crap racks. After some clean up and tile exchange, I lined up the only bingo in DGIIOT? [9] that can play in two spots, he played VARIX to block both locations and then CLOZE (50). Sigh. After 8th move, I trailed 117-291. Then I got my break, staged my comeback with BAsSInET (91), DEEPENS (71), POOJA (39), QUEME (57), but in the end it still fell short. L 394-407 Rd 16: Paulette Yeoh. I had ROSETED (86) then scored consistently, she scored inconsistently and then had REuNITES (58). That still left me 335-277 ahead, which I immediately rectified with COlONISE (80). W 462-336 Rd 17: Tony Sim (SIN). My first move was COOEE (20) to clear off vowels. His first move was COTTY* through my O, which I challenged off. He obviously had no vowels, or at most 1. I bingoed EGOITIES (80) from my E to end my vowel surplus problem, and was happy. I was immediately dismayed to find that yes indeed Tony had no vowels, but apparently he had two blanks to go with the consonants and he bingoed with his CTTVY?? through my play [10] for 106. He scored heavily, I didn't, and my INVERSE (79) only narrowed the gap. Going into the endgame, I picked the Q. Holding AEGNNQR with two in the bag, I decided to dump the Q and fished, and got an I. I spotted an I and the eight letter with AEGINNR [11] which slotted tightly, hooking my A onto something else, only to be dismayed that Tony played BOD to take up the A hook spot. By then his tracking was already awry and it was not an intentional block. I played FEARING elsewhere, not realising that actually I could have bingoed out with GRANNIE elsewhere to win! Another blunder cost me another game. L 408-432 Rd 18: Ng Chee Eng. Nothing much to note, I opened with RIOTISE (66), he caught up later with SECeDeS (83), I fell behind on low scoring, seized back the lead with VERITAS (78) and hung on for a win. W 413-360

Rd 19: Paulette again. She opened with FATTINg (81) which I replied with AGENTIAL. She phonied DEMOTERS* which had a valid bingo [12], so I decided to play my bingo starting from the floating E, using my AHNOPR? [13]. She put down STORMED (83), I later got OCTANES (83) and she got PLAITERS (69). Along the way she got QUAI (76) too, to which I had ZIBETS (83) as the answer. A high scoring game. W 542-441 Round 20: Last round, Pui Cheng Wui again. This time I had a fair chance at winning the game unlike the first encounter, but I wasted them. Lost a turn hooking S to HILI, another turn hooking E to BYRL, and lost major points by letting Pui's phoney bingo MARLERS* (75) unchallenged. I stayed in the game courtesy of three 40-pointers while Pui struggled to balance and got down his second bingo STEALES (77), but eventually it's his last move, the unblockable XIS (42), that did me in. L 345-388 Ended the tournament on 10-10 +328 record, not really what I wished for, but a timely wake up call. Now bring on Bangkok! I hope to find internet cafe to post in Bangkok, so stay tuned. Quiz answers: [1] hOSIERY. YORKIEs scored much lower [2] GOUrMET [3] WINGBEaT [4] OUTBOARD [5] ANTIPoRN [6] TOTEMISM [7] IMPOWERS [8] IGNoRAMI [9] TIgROID [10] aCTIViTY [11] ARGININE [12] MODESTER [13] EARPHONE

Penang here I come

2006-06-22T04:50:00.000+08:00

Thursday is here! I will be off to Penang, for days of Scrabble playing and nights of soccer watching! That does leave little time to blog, but I will try to update, though mostly on the progress of the Scrabble tournament. I will be back on Monday, hopefully with some additional ringgit :D

Exams the new way

2006-06-22T03:57:00.000+08:00

On Monday I had my first test in an outsourced examination centre. The exam was part of a company-sponsored training, which required the participant to get certified by a third party. This third party runs exam worldwide at various test centres which conduct the exam on behalf of the third party (and other certifying bodies). It's an interesting model, which I think will grow more as the training and education industry continues to grow. The exam setup is simple: a room with several PCs, one for each exam taker. Everyone may be taking different subjects, so participants have much more choices in terms of time slot to choose to take the exam. Exams are multiple-choice questions type, run on the PC, which allows immediate scoring and announcement on whether one has passed or failed. No tense two-weeks awaiting the verdict. To minimise risk of cheating, all exam takers are not allowed to bring stuff in, not even pen since it's online. Bag, handphone, wallet, calculator, everything goes into a locker before I entered the exam room. I did manage to bring in a memory stick though; and the exam was run on a PC ;-) But no, I did not attempt to cheat. I have integrity. And they have security camera ;p which the admin staff said they monitor, so I can wave anytime should I need help. Since no paper, stationery, calculator etc are allowed, exam takers are provided with a plastic laminated pad, a marker, and a box of tissue. The marker can be used to scribble on the plastic surface, and the writings can be erased with the tissue. It had been years since I do manual multiplication and division of multiple-digit numbers like converting bytes into gigabytes, so I spent substantial time scribbling and rubbing on the pad when a calculation question came out. Only when the second calculation question came out did I realise there was a small button on screen that popped up that said "Calculator", which when pressed called up the Windows standard calculator ... all the time I spent going manual, and rubbing hard with the tissue paper... And somehow it felt strange to be alone in a rather spartanly bare room with a screen and a box of tissues. What's missing are just some saucy pictured magazines, a glass beaker, and a nurse checking in occasionally if one's done... But I enjoyed the privacy. It allowed me the liberty of taking off my shoes, then socks, to sit cross legged or with legs extended whatever way makes me comfortable without care that others may see. Of course, at that point I forgot about the aforementioned camera. Oh well. All in all though I like the environment. I believe it was conducive enough to help me pass (yes I did pass) and offset the effect of watching World Cup the night before.

Nokia the Strong

2006-06-19T23:53:00.000+08:00

I subjected my faith in Nokia to another test again today. Nokia has always in my eyes, from past experience, represent sturdiness in the handphone world. Today, my handphone dropped on a 3 bounce fall: to wooden shelf, toilet rim, and into toilet bowl. While I was confident it would survive the hard hits, this was the first time it was tested in water immersion, instead of just some sprinkling. After fishing it out and wiping it dry (and clean; at that point it was as clean as a toilet bowl could get, fortunately), I was happy to note that it still lit up. Thumbs up to Nokia. Only when I tried to use it, I found out the keypads were not responding correctly. So, I could receive SMSes and incoming calls, but I couldn't actually see/listen to them since the button to receive/send was not functioning. I took the the casing apart, removing the plastic keypads, and wiping dry the insides of the phone, especially the touch points behind the keypads. Now no. 5 was working. Shook it a bit, saw a few droplets of water came out; no. 1 and 4 were working. That's about it; I still couldn't call. So I left it off, and decided to shop for a new phone. One thing I don't like about Nokia (and other phones nowadays) which I discovered when I was browing on the phone shop: All models have built in camera. I don't like that; I don't need that, it must have cost me extra, some places don't allow cameras, and I don't have a choice. The only ones that don't have cameras are PDA-phones, which are again beyond my budget. I asked the sales executive for the cheapest available Nokia. Too bad the two Nokia phones with double-digit price were sold out. So to keep within my double-digit budget, I had to opt for an NEC phone instead. Not bad, sufficient features, but it is a worryingly slim clamshell design, which I am quite sure does not have the ruggedness my Nokias of the past offer me. I will have to be gingerly now on. And speaking of ruggedness, after buying the NEC, my Nokia came alife. I couldn't use the NEC straightaway since the battery was not charged, I tried to switch on the old phone and lo and behold, the circuits dried up sufficiently for all the buttons to work well. Well, some went on compensation mode for lost time, like the number "1" which automatically self-pressed many times even when I was not pressing it. But still, I now have a backup phone. And a cool one at that: I didn't reassemble it after taking the casing apart, so I now my bulky old-style 3120 has transformed into a flat-screen slim casing phone (or rather, slim no-casing) , with a bare bone look (bare bone like in Terminator when a cyborg flesh is destroyed and the internal mechanical parts show). Now to get used to pressing the touch points with tip of nail (finger to big) with memorised position (since the touch points don't show which one is which number).

Soccer commentary, the way it should be

2006-06-16T00:46:00.000+08:00

Another night missing match broadcasts because I don't have TV with cable at home and schedule (and alertness) not permitting me to catch the match outside. In comes the World Cup LiveBlog. The fan-run live running commentary describing happenings on the pitch. It has saved me from drought of updates a few time, including once where I persuaded one of our customer's staff to access it on his laptop via their office WiFi during a night teleconference at his office. And why do I love it more than other faster updates like from soccernet? Because though the soccer description may be thinner e.g. not every minute, the entertainment quotient is higher. The blogger is irreverent and fills up boring moments with his non sequiturs. Nothing near the dryness of pure match description. A sample from the Portugal vs Angola match, a report after Luis Figo was brought down by a tackle: "83:03 Figo spends a lot of time on the ground. At his age he might not be able to get up. Portugal header goes over the bar." which was quickly disclaimed less than a minute later "83:52 Just to be clear I meant Figo might not be able to get up from the ground. With Viagra these days the other thing is possible no matter your age." and on Phillipe Degen from the Swiss team "85:25 - Degen suffering from some cramps. My girlfriend usually likes to eat chocolate when she has cramps. Luckily Switzerland is known for its chocolate and I fully expect Degen to recover swiftly." Or take these from the England vs Trinidad and Tobago match: "Also worth noting that Crouch has long sleeves on. Everything about him is long. Well, not everything…or so I’ve been told…" The slow boring pace of the match allows the blogger time to spew other things along the way e.g. "16:34 Crouch’s legs might be longer than the island of Tobago." And the following after the ball struck Dwight Yorke's balls (that sounds weird) "27:27 Yorke wishes he had a mask in his shorts. He won’t be reproducing anytime soon but boy can he sing soprano." And "32:10 Another England corner and Gerrard fails to realize the object of the game is to put the ball in the goal and not over it. Shots of England fans nearly snoozing in the stands." You can tell how exciting the game is by the number of actual ball movement description vs potshots spewed. Ah irreverence. Not always the cleverest humour, but refreshing nevertheless. Now to have a TV broadcast with this kind of commentary...

Early morning in Orchard

2006-06-15T00:15:00.000+08:00

I can finally claim I have been at Orchard any time of the day. I have been there in normal hours; I have been there late night for new year's eve and Christmas eve parties; I was finally there in the wee hour of the morning, watching soccer, and then waiting for the MRT station doors to open to let me go to gym then office. That's what you do when you don't want to waste money on cab fare home to catch 2 hours of sleep. And I can say that going gym after staying up late night, and then staying up after going gym, those two combined is a killer... oh my head...

Soccer the devil incarnate

2006-06-12T22:24:00.000+08:00

I've sold my principle, my soul, for worldly pleasure. I had my dinner at McDonald's. Sorry Burger King. If only you also broadcast World Cup matches live. But seriously, McDonald's a life saver for me here. After Tiong Bahru Plaza stopped holding their public screening of World Cup matches, McDonald's at the roadside of Scott's Road now becomes my refuge. And a nice refuge it is. I am now cistting in the centre of the area where the tables are set, watching plasma TV, feeling cool breeze of the open air on my hair, getting to watch beautiful people pass by during off-moments of the match (not enough beautiful people though), and surfing the net on WiFi following commentaries on a world cup blog. Bliss.

Bad start to the World Cup

2006-06-10T02:16:00.000+08:00

Good: The opening match of World Cup 2006 was going to be broadcast on Channel 5, so I could watch from the comfort of home, with laptop at the ready and perhaps while ironing some clothes Bad: After setting up the ironing board, I turned on the TV 10 minutes before the opener to find it damaged! It was not a signal reception problem; I could hear audio but the images, including non-broadcast images like selection menu for contrast/brightness were all a blur. 5 minutes of twiddling and banging the TV (I should think my landlord doesn't read my blog) brought nothing. Fortunately I vaguely recalled hearing there might be a public screening near Tiong Bahru Plaza, so I rushed down with unkempt hair, home spectacles etc to salvage the experience, and was not that late; I only missed the first goal of the championship :-( But still caught the rest of the 4-2 match. Ugly: When I came home, I turned on the TV to find that it was perfectly OK... and my flatmate said he didn't do anything to it, he just switched it on, and it was fine, and he could watch the World Cup match. Had he wanted to. The world is not fair...

World Cup is nigh

2006-06-09T09:25:00.000+08:00

Less than 24 hours before the World Cup and I haven't planned yet which matches to catch, where to catch them, and therefore the amount I'll need to spend for this World Cup. Beers to buy, taxi fares, snack to stock up... I feel unprepared. Now where's my calendar...

A Matter of Perspective

2006-06-06T01:04:00.000+08:00

I was looking at the soft copy of a presentation drafted to request additional manpower to support a project. Since the tables are quite small, I used a 133% zoom to read it. In the Job Scope column of a table, it mentioned among others "onsite support, dismantle, shift work". I zoomed out to 100% to see the overall slide. The smallness of the fonts distorted the appearance of some, overlapping some letters one over the other, making it look thicker sometimes. In the Job Scope column of a table, I saw "onsite support, dismantle, shit work" (bold appearance as actually seen). It's just how you look at things, really.

Germany, Here I Come

2006-06-05T03:16:00.000+08:00

I'm going to Germany! Not for the World Cup, unfortunately, since I will be going in October. And not to celebrate Oktoberfest either, though I may well find the time to. I will be representing Singapore in the 2006 world championship of the board game Settlers of Catan. This will be the first time Singapore will have a representative in the event. The tournament will be held as part of the annual designer boardgame convention in Essen, Germany. I won the finals of the local qualifier yesterday, and will be given free airfare and accommodation to take part in the championship. Oh joy! It's a very pleasant surprise for myself, since I really didn't expect to do well, more to have fun. In fact, being in the finals itself was already a good result for me. There were 4 qualifiers held to select 8 person for the final qualifier. I missed qualifiers 1 and 3, and came in dead last among 8 players in the second qualifier. I took part in the last qualifier - just one day before the finals - for fun, and was lucky to emerge as one of the two qualifiers after 3 rounds of game. I only won one round of my games, while there were two contenders who won two rounds each, but I was fortunate that their one loss were both terrible losses, while I managed to achieve respectable scores in my two losses, giving me a higher aggregate than the other two. Today too brought good fortune. The format was changed to a knockout, where only top two of each table will advanced to the final table. I was in the table with one of the two favourites to win, managed to win, and saw him eliminated on tiebreaker since all three other players were on same score. Similarly, the other tournament favourite on the other table was eliminated. That gave everyone, including myself, a better chance to win in the final game. Which I did, hooray :-) The final game itself was quite an experience. Instead of using the normal Settlers of Catan board set, we were given the $600+ collector's item 3-D board game to play with. So, instead of the normal flat hex boards with pictures of mountains/hills, we played with hexes with carvings of the terrains on it. Quite cool, though all of us were unused to it and had a hard time telling a plain from a low hill at first. Now, I still bask in the joy of qualifying. I am also pleased to be able to claim that I have been the Singapore national champion of two different intellectual games. I must say though, I think I am not the best player that Singapore can field for the worlds; I simply had my chance and took it. Embarassment may come with bad results in Germany. I shall need to train.

Learning from a remisier

2006-06-03T09:07:00.000+08:00

I attended a session on introduction to share investment held by a remisier yesterday. He offered it free, and without any commitment to buy anything, to his different networks as sort of a social duty, educating his contacts - especially young adults who have just begun earning and need to plan their future finances. Unfortunately his goodwill was not well reciprocated. It's not that there were no interested people: at least 8 people indicated their intention to attend. But as is sometimes the case for free things, it was taken for granted. 5 of the people did not show up. Sometimes it takes that extra cost not to burden people, but to instill a sense of something-to-lose so people will commit. I hope this did not faze the instructor in continuing his efforts though. On my part, I should have (and actually I had, to a certain extent) set my expectation accordingly considering the session was to be an introduction. I shouldn't have hoped to learn tricks that will suddenly improve my stockpicking or timing ability. I was hoping that coming from a person in the industry, at least some experience that cannot be gleaned from reading books can be passed on. I guess not. And it didn't help that despite his good intentions and experience, the instructor is not a trained instructor and didn't really organise his materials as how trainers would. So, I didn't learn much; just reinforcing basics that I either had known, or had roughly worked out. In fact, the most novel thing I learnt from the session is that remisier is not an English word! Apparently it's only used in Singapore and Malaysia. It's not even in the Scrabble dictionary (perhaps for future, since there is surely enough citation for inclusion in the all-encompassing dictionary). Now finally, a true Singlish word that somehow still sounds a bit class, and which the print media can print without using italics or multiple punctuations (e.g. !!!). Now how many Singaporeans know that remisier is not English, I wonder.

Diminishing sight

2006-06-02T12:28:00.000+08:00

I am getting old. Yesterday my left eye was blurry, and today both are. Eyes strained by end of the day. That should teach me to not forget my contact lenses and leave home without them, or to accidentally drop the left one. Dementia, shaky hands *sigh* I feel old...

Ballooning

2006-06-01T00:52:00.000+08:00

Not ballooning as in growing in size. I wish. I had my first hot air balloon ride on Tuesday, at the open square near Parkview Square and Bugis. It was an attraction set up by Aerophile Singapore, sponsored by DHL and Singapore Tourism Board as part of their Uniquely Hip Singapore campaign (so they have started inserting adjectives in between "Uniquely" and "Singapore". Wonder what adjectives will come up next. Hope "Sexy" will turn up heh) The balloon was quite huge and was attached to a ring-shaped passenger carriage that I estimatecan carry 20 people. We got to take pictures from behind safety nettings attached around this carriage. The balloon is tethered to the ground with a tackle system that slowly extends its cable, allowing the balloon to elevate up to 150 m (about 40 storey high). The view from the top was quite nice, the Singapore skyline at night (I think it looks nicer than in daytime). However what I enjoyed most was actually when the balloon swayed from one side to another: a smooth sideways movement that's not jerky and helped you move slowly along the panorama that is the Singapore skyline. Too bad the balloon was anchored so it couldn't really move that far. Makes me want to take a ride in a real free-to-fly balloon next time. It was unfortunately a short ride for the price we paid: about 10 minutes total for $16 per person (already with discount). Then again, it didn't take much time to slowly ascend to 150 m, and it could get boring lingering in one spot for too long, so it does make sense to end it within that time. Again another reason why I'd like to ride in an unanchored balloon. All in all, quite a unique experience, not fantastic but quite enjoyable and an appetite whetter for future ballooning exploits.

Lessons from a wedding

2006-05-30T00:33:00.000+08:00

Food during wedding banquet will not be as good as the ones served by the hotel when testing their menu prior to booking the place. So, eat up and enjoy yourself during selection. During your wedding you'll be too busy taking photos to eat anyway.
Shoot for the stars, and you may hit the moon. Plan to impress your new wife by serenading her from onstage while playing the piano. After some practice, you may manage in the end a karaoke-accompanied rendition with blatant peeks at the a sheet for the song lyrics. With the background music pitch digitally scaled down a note or three. It can still earn you a loving embrace from your new wife, really, so don't worry. Be Machiavellian: if you can't get her affection by sheer talent, pity and sympathy work just as well.
Balloons lose gas in them pretty fast. Paper cranes need up to two balloons to float. Mix them with a wedding, and you'll have decorative cranes, which are supposed to grace the high ceilings of the banquet hall, parachuting slowly onto banquet tables while guests chat and dine. Yes, I'm the architect of this wedding version of Operation Market Garden (though not by design). At least the kids loved them.

I can't do front line sales

2006-05-29T01:59:00.000+08:00

I had my "apprenticeship" in a fruit stall today, helping out my dear's parents at the market. I have concluded I ought to keep my desk job. Among other things I did: misquoted fruit price, consistently used wrong-sized plastic bag (stuffing too many grapes into a tiny plastic bag; giving 5 lemons a spacious ride in a huge plastic bag), dropping fruits that customers have picked. And the tell-tale sign of my not-so-successful stint: no fewer than 3 customers actually told me what I did wrong (slide the punnet into the plastic bag rather than pick the fruits into it one by one; close the cash drawer tightly, etc) ... In my defence, I slept only 2.5 hours the previous night. But I unfortunately think I'd perform as well with 8 hours. I love my job more now.

Train the Trainer

2006-05-25T00:35:00.000+08:00

Good: I'm on a three-day course. Bad: The trainer is sleep inducing. With suspect grasp on the subject matter. Ugly: The lunch was early, so we had a longer afternoon. With steady supply of snacks but no coffee. With a trainer whose idea of combating naps was breaking into an unscheduled children game (count number, skip numbers which has "7" in it or is a multiple of 7), of which the rule he failed to convey clearly the less English-enabled Korean participants resulting in re-runs after re-runs of broken count.

Bible demystified. In fact, desanitized. Perhaps desecrated.

2006-05-24T02:07:00.000+08:00

Ye heathens repent and hearken the good word! Read ye the Holy Bibble! But be forewarned! the Holy Bibble is for them of (relatively) strong faith (if you are a good Christian and want to remain one), sound logic, and above the legal adult age. For Holy Bibble is an ambitious online project which aims to retell the whole Christian Bible (Old and New Testament) in a new angle as a comic strip, and in a style that to some people may possibly be rather blasphemous and offensive. I personally find it very funny and a bit satirical. It also educates me a bit since it brings me back to some core stories of the bible (I'm not much of a bible reader), and also some not in the bible but related. E.g. it motivates me enough to do some research on the character Lilith, whom I have known before from other comic books, but only now know is supposedly the first wife of Adam (before Eve) according to an ancient non-Christian manuscript written by a writer of one of the books in Bible (Sirach). The character design for Holy Bibble is fascinating, as it puts in personality to names which are distant before. Archangel Raphael is a nerdy-scientist type, my fave the angsty blood-thirsty Archangel Michael is, well, blood-thirsty (violence, not good for kids), but in a South Park kind of way. Many minor angels also got featured in various roles. Also in the list of cast, aside from the Abrahams and Noahs and Pharaohs, there are three girls called Ichiko, Niko, and Sanko... I wonder how that got worked in (I haven't reached the Jap babes section yet) .... and there's also two boys called Chocolate, and Chip ... The story arc now reaches the part on Lot and Sodom and Gomorrah (homosexuality and incest, not good for kids - and shows that bible does have R-rated sections). I haven't read all (just reached Cain and Abel), and if it weren't 2:30 am now I'd still keep going. It's a long way to go to Revelation, or even New Testament, but it looks like it's going to be a fun ride. PS: the comments by the authors in each strip often complements the strip.

The self-trained gym goer

2006-05-24T02:01:00.000+08:00

It's been eight months since I signed up for my gym membership, going for the classes, using the exercise machines myself when I miss classes. Today, I noticed for the first time a personal trainer guiding another person using the biceps curler machine that I often use myself. The person held the handles at an angle 90 degrees to how I usually hold it. My poor wrists. I promise I'll change my wayward ways. Eight months is nothing compared to all the better days you are going to have. Perhaps you won't even need the wristband anymore.

Return of the unmasked crusader

2006-05-24T01:27:00.000+08:00

And I'm back from my mini hiatus. My muse was missing, I was lazy, I somehow got hooked back to an ancient PC game from Sid Meier called Colonization (played it 30 hour straight. OK I took 15 minutes twice to go buy meals.) All valid reasons. But I'm back now. After all my readers have gone away due to lack of update. This is the new beginning. A new scratchpad.

Masked crusader wannabe

2006-05-09T01:28:00.000+08:00

I am suffering from flu, running nose and coughing, since last weekend. Today I decided to do a sort of experiment. I wore a disposable face mask to office. The main reason was to start being socially responsible and not spread the germ around. This in itself was sparked by an earlier decision to put the mask on around my dear to minimise the chance of her catching the bug before her impending overseas travel. Having done that, it's just one step further to extend the same consideration and courtesy to other fellow human beings. The secondary reason is to observe the reaction of others when they see a person wearing a mask in their midst. Wearing mask is not common here (though I understand that it's not that unexpected in some countries like Japan), so I expect that there will be some reactions. Reactions I did get in office, but happily they were quite muted and accepting. About 15 (or slightly more) colleagues noticed and remarked about the mask. Half inquired if I was OK, a few made non sequiturs ("hey this is not a hospital"), but encouragingly 3 people commended the act for being socially responsible. One of them mentioned he also started using the mask at home recently, since becoming a new father and not wanting to infect his young son; I hope he will take it one step further also. The experiment was not limited to the office; I also wore a mask (Note: a mask, not the mask; I replace mask periodically) when I went to buy lunch and after I left office. I noticed a number of sideways glances in the MRT, though no one was bold enough to give a full-on look. On two separate occasions perfect strangers asked me why I was wearing the mask - one pretty directly asking if it's SARS (mockingly or otherwise). All in all, not a bad experience, but it proved quite obviously people here are not used to this form of social graciousness - not many consider this as a positive thing done for them, and I'd think even fewer would consider doing this themselves. There possibly is even a negative view to it: I think it likely that more Singaporean, if s/he has to walk in a crowd with a friend who is suffering from flu, may prefer that friend to not where a mask. I personally feel that wearing a mask is the right thing to do. I will continue to do so, and hope others will consider doing it too. However I will admit upfront it will affect your comfort (harder to breathe, some may feel warm), convenience (when e.g. drinking; ideally replaced frequently to minimise re-inhalation of germs), and incur some cost (though minimal). In fact if you do choose to do it, most likely it will not be out of self-interest but because you feel it is the right thing to do, for the society in general. Which may not count for much in this country where the government encourages people to vote based on upgrading the value of their own property moreso than on a national policy. But I can still hope, can't I? :-)

The Apology Election

2006-05-06T17:59:00.000+08:00

Today is polling day in Singapore, after the count tonight all the fury will be over. Or will it. I went to the Worker's Party rally yesterday at Serangoon. The atmosphere was good with rather vociferous support, and the WP people have cause to be proud of their work, whether or not they win their respective election today. Aside from a few jibes at PAP, what I appreciate hearing was WP Chief Low Thia Kiang pronouncing that the party had from the beginning strictly instructed all its cadres to not engage in personal attacks. Whether or not this sets them apart from the other parties contesting the election, at the very least they already set a good example for future elections that this can be done. And judging by the crowd response, the people would prefer it too. LTK didn't waste the chance to score some points by saying that a particular rookie PAP MP candidate in Ang Mo Kio has insulted him (citing exact time and date of the broadcast of the interview on Channel 8), but saying he is not seeking apology from her since she is new. Apologies of course has been a sore point this election. In the James Gomez saga, an apology on his mishandling of minority candidate form was not enough to refocus the campaign into something more dignified; intervention from PAP chief PM Lee was needed to stop his party men from insisting on more explanations. Of course in an interesting twist, PM Lee in turn apologised for using the word "fix" when saying he will need to find ways to "fix" opposition members in parliament if there are too many of them. And I'd be glad if opposition be more gracious than PAP and not insinuate further or press that "sorry also must explain" as popularised by Mr Brown's satirical podcast. The election is ending, and the 2006 edition will be remembered for apologies. Which is what I think all the parties owe people in Singapore, for not putting on a better, more dignified show.

Mirror mirror into my soul

2006-05-02T01:43:00.000+08:00

Had wanted to do this for some month but kept forgetting: my Johari and Nohari windows to help myself know better my positive and negative interpersonal traits. I'd be grateful for your responses.

Election and landscaping

2006-05-01T02:58:00.000+08:00

I stay in Bukit Merah View, on Tiong Bahru Road, in Tanjong Pagar GRC. Today I went to Cheng San Library, in Hougang Mall, which is part of Aljunied GRC. 10 years in Singapore and I still cannot make sense of local bearings. I'll blame it on elections :-) On another note, just realised two candidates of different gender from opposing parties in Aljunied share 2 out of their 3 characters in their Chinese names, Tan Wui-Hua and Mrs Lim Hwee Hua (her maiden name is Tan apparently), and I share 2 characters out of the former's Chinese name. My link to the opposition has been established heh.

Being PC Over Wedding

2006-04-30T04:01:00.000+08:00

I attended my first non-church wedding solemnization in Singapore, a high-tea affair in Fullerton Hotel. It was a lovely occasion, the formal part short and sweet, the mingling cheerful, the couple obviously loving and happy, and we happy for them. The festivity didn't immerse me enough to have nothing to pick on, though. I heard the ROM officer , after addressing the bride and the groom, concluding his rites with "You may now kiss the bride". And my first thought was, why not "You may now kiss each other" ? Anal-ytic beats romantic again, I'm afraid. But still, my sincere happiness and wish for a joyful marriage for the couple, whom I met in person only today but genuinely look like wonderful people who deserve one another.

You don't like it long do you?

2006-04-28T03:08:00.000+08:00

Looks like my posts have been getting consistently longer and longer. This post is just to insert one short one here, for the fans of brevity :p No I am not turning into a columnist. I just lost touch with my snide side, that's all. I'm sure it will be back.

Elections, the game

2006-04-28T01:14:00.000+08:00

Nomination day for the Singapore election just passed. I shall be a sideline spectator of this interesting game, and I watch in anticipation. Inspired by this, I conceptualised an idea for a boardgame called, erm, Election (I have little imagination, sue me). Setup phase: players are dealts cards of Political activists, who are founding fathers of their respective parties, and a party mission card (kept secret). They are also given a number of goodwill points and influence points. Players then take turn assigning points that determine their party platform (Economy? Freedom? Equality?). Map of the country has many constituencies, randomly group some into GRCs (for lack of better term), each constituency carries certain influence point. Recruitment phase (R): Players take turn recruiting new political activists, each having attributes on how good they are at e.g. campaigning or governing. Parties recruit using influence points. Activists with similar alignment to party platform are cheaper. Campaign phase (C): All parties deploy face down their candidates in each constituency they are contesting, and reveal simultaneously. Use goodwill point to bid for numbers 1-6 in each constituency, with candidate's campaign skill as modifier. Election phase (E): Roll dice for each constituency, party that owns the number that comes up win and the candidate there becomes MP and gain the party the influence point from the constituency. Losing candidate card goes back to player's hand. Government phase (G): Parties select policy cards, and use influence points to push through policies. MPs governing skill and party platform are modifiers to determine how much influence needed to make the policy succeed. Successful implementation gains goodwill points for party or candidate (depends on policy type, national or local), or helps move towards party mission. Failed (or sabotaged) policy loses goodwill points. Majority prerogative: A party that has > 50% can spend goodwill point at end of government phase to gerrymander: break up some GRCs and swallow other constituencies etc. prior to next election. The above then repeats to R, C, E, G a maximum 5 times, and on the 6th time just R, C, and E. Winning conditions are one of the following: - the first to achieve party mission - having more than 80% of MPs after 3 straight elections (hmmm) - highest number of influence point at end of election that ends the game. Details can include influence cards and event cards that affect goodwill points or character cards, e.g. defamation lawsuit, sexy photo of maids discovered by press, national scandal of a party-supported charity, etc. Variant play can include the break-the-majority variant, where all party but one has just one MP each, and the dominant party has all other MPs. Winning condition then for the minorities is to secure one GRC, while for the dominant is simply to wipe out all other parties. Now I wonder if this work of idle mind actually merits developing into a full-fledged boardgame. Perhaps not for sale in Singapore though, heh.

Games as Sports in Singapore

2006-04-24T23:25:00.000+08:00

An article in today's Straits Times states that Team Singapore, which oversees the national sports teams, has approved cybergaming as a national sport and endorsed the CyberSport Association (CSA). This is good news. I'm glad to see that Team Singapore (and I assume, by extension, its parent organisation Singapore Sports Council) is progressive enough to admit a new non-traditional activity as a sports under its umbrella. I'm sure many Singaporeans, especially the younger generation who dabbles in activities that perhaps are ground-breaking to people who sit in the governing bodies, share my sentiment. It does bring up the grey area though on what can be defined as sports. Purists will insist on those activities which involve intense physical activities and done not as a lifelong career (to differentiate from manual labour and from professional sportsmen, who typically don't do it lifelong). Intense is of course subjective, since people can argue that the physical strains of equestrian sport makes it more a sport to the horse than to the jockey (iGallop proponents may beg to differ heh); that various cuesports (snooker and friends) or petanque hardly pose that much strain to fall under the purview of sports. Ditto motorsports like F1 racing and powerboating, where the argument for it being a sport, as best as I know, is the need for physical conditioning to maintain prolonged alertness and reflexes and to withstand the forces within the driver's box during bends - akin to a pilot's withstanding of G-force (on a more extreme level) - and the need for stamina to maintain the same level of performance throughout the duration of the race. The same arguments, physical conditioning for alertness and stamina, have been used by various mind sports proponents, e.g. the oft-cited example of former chess world champion Garry Kasparov pounding on punching bag in between moves in one of the many 4-hour long matches when defending his crown, to keep himself fresh. I believe these two would apply handsomely also to qualify cybersport as sport. In all honesty, I think the line between sports and games have long been blurred, where "sports" can cover any kind of competition where participants seriously train/prepare for it. See how ESPN, a sports channel, has pushed for programmes like World Poker Series, and the National Spelling Bee competition in US (viewers here who receive a different brand of ESPN may have caught the spelling bee in Spellbound, a wonderful documentary broadcast by Arts Central some time back). Scrabble has also been featured by ESPN via the special coverage of the US National Championship finals. In general conversation, I guess the blurring of the line is not a big issue. What would be interesting now is in official uses, such as the granting of the recognition as a national sport; what would be the applicable criteria? More specifically in local context, what are the criteria used by Team Singapore or Singapore Sports Council? The Scrabble Association wrote to Singapore Sports Council before for support for a previous national championship, but Scrabble was not recognised as a sport. Have the criteria changed from previously, or are there criteria that cybersport fulfil that Scrabble does not? Publication of the criteria will help interest groups who intend to get themselves recognised to work towards the direction specified. For example, is it due to the non-physical nature of the activity (though in which case, admission of cybersport, and chess etc before it, may seem to be contradictory)? Is it because of the trademark associated with the game (i.e. Scrabble a trademark under Mattel)? In which case, perhaps what should happen is a pooling of various boardgame (or designer games) interest groups to form a BoardGame Association (wargamers may want to consider their own WGA too), which is trademark free, even though the various boardgame played may be under the copyright ownership of commercial entities. After all, cybersport operates under the same premise: different software companies own the rights to the various games played by the cyberathletes. Or is the consideration for admission the number of participants? In which case interested associations may want to know what is the magic number, what is considered as participant (i.e. what level of involvement, demography that can be considered, etc), and any other relevant info that they can use to direct their efforts in the right path. The norm here (or the culture, perhaps I can say) is for the governing body to say that each application will be judged on its own merit, rather than providing a template to decide whether something can be approved. While I agree simple rubberstamping of applications that fulfil a template or list of criteria is unwise, it really will help Singapore to be more vibrant if a set of guidelines or criteria is released. A sense of direction may just spur all the different activists to start themselves up, work towards the criteria that the governing body can set to also support its own mission, and voila... less artificial effort from powers-that-be to stimulate activities, enthusiasts get a sense of vision and more interests will pop up, and those that really attract followers will flourish and contribute to the Singapore scene. Who knows, if there are enough interest, Singapore will have scissors-paper-stone (or as the world organisation calls it: RPS - Rock Paper Scissors), competitive eating, or even wife carrying as a national sport soon? Wives this side of the world are lighter, after all :-) (though as I understand it, there's a rule that the wife must weigh at least 49 kg. To avoid husbands starving their wives prior to the competition to gain an edge, apparently :-/) Don't laugh - Thum Ping Tjin, Singapore's former national swimmer and the first Singaporean to cross the English Channel and who now resides in England, has signed up for this year's wife-carrying world championship in Finland. There are a lot of Singaporeans with varying interests, and there may be more who may take up things that interest them, you just need to let them have more choices to do so.

Planarity Insanity

2006-04-17T02:51:00.000+08:00

I blame Wolvie on my addiction to Planarity. It is an online game where there are dots/vertices connected with lines, and you are supposed to shift the vertices until no lines intersect. It starts quite innocuously with 6 vertices. Move the bottom left away and the right one in, voila, solved. Second round adds 4 more vertices to make 10, third adds 5, fourth adds 6, etc. It begins to get unwieldy soon. By level 11 it is scary. 91 vertices. If you zoom in, you can actually notice that it runs out of space such that the blue dots begin to overlap each other. Still solvable though :-) I reserve level 12 and its 105 vertices for another day :-/ Good thing the replay value is not that high, otherwise I am really blaming Wolvie for a new addiction.

Internet addiction's not that bad after all

2006-04-15T12:06:00.000+08:00

People have been telling me Internet has been bad to me, keeping me up late, sleeping after 2 am daily and waking up a zombie going to work. So now I don't have Internet access (even until today, because the phone line got installed but the ASDL line won't get activated yet... b(i)gger). Just me and my trusty PC, over the Good Friday. Since I couldn't play my online games, I rummaged for my old offline games. Had wanted to play Master of Orion, one of the best computer games I've ever played, a classic from 1993 when turn-based games rule and real-time hadn't matured yet. But then I recalled I had a copy of MoO 3 that I got 2+ years back and never played yet (that's the thing when you got things "cheap". urm, oops? :D ). I installed it, played it - a bit different from MoO, the scale got so big that MoO3 is played as a macromanagement game as opposed to MoO where micromanagement often is where the fun is. And before I knew it, it's 5:30. Ante Meridian :D. Well since I've forgotten to sleep and I have the phone guy coming at 9am, I might as well not sleep, lest I couldn't wake up. So now, I haven't slept the last 18 hours, and had one meal in the past 34 hour (ended just now when I had two buns and coffee). Kids, don't do this at home. Even I'll get scoldings for this, so don't think you'll get away with it heh. So you see, the Internet actually prevented me from going sleepless altogether. Give me back my Internet, and I'll be back as healthy (errrrm) as before.

You're not native, are you?

2006-04-13T16:18:00.000+08:00

Giveaway sign that you are not a natural speaker of the language: when asked which block you stay in, you answer with the equivalent of "one-hundred and ten" rather than "one one zero". Should stick to English still for the moment while infiltrating the local society...

Return to TV Land

2006-04-11T11:15:00.000+08:00

After moving to my new place I seemed to have re-picked up the habit of watching TV while having my meal. Which allows me to get reacquainted with TV ads. And found that I still enjoy picking on them. I was served the warm up exercise when an ad came selling purple gold. OK not so much picking on the ad but the product: why would I want purple gold? Someone from marketing better resell the idea to me, but if I want gold I want it for the gold colour. For other colours, I'd be happy to settle with other metallic colours. Metallic blue, metallic purple, metallic green, whatever. Are we going to be introduced to green gold, blue gold, etc in the future? Or stretching it further: marble gold? Teak gold? That one, I actually would be interested in. Then I stumbled into the iGallop ad. Not the one that made iGallop looked like a sex toy (what am I talking about... it IS a sex toy...), but the one featuring Jacelyn Tay riding a horse, and Ix Shen introducing her to iGallop instead. It is a study in telling a story without telling a lie while avoiding telling the full story also. When Ix greeted Jacelyn by saying that he didn't know she rode, she neither confirmed nor denied it, but launched into this spiel about how horseback riding is good for health. Similarly, when Jacelyn was enjoying a bumpy ride atop the iGallop, Ix said something like use this everyday, and then he posed with his buff, healthy body. People may interpret it that iGallop usage led to his great health. But he was careful not to use any conjunctions to establish a cause-and-effect relation :-) I recommend this ad as a must-watch for all politicians. And for all Temasek Holdings office holders too, so they don't need people writing scripts for them that may inadvertently get leaked. Of course, in the end I shouldn't let the ads upstage the episode that I was watching. Grey's Anatomy. The one where porn was prescribed as painkiller to a hospital patient who was allergic to most anaesthetics. Porn releases endorphin, he said. Hurhur. And when there is power outage, the female attendant doctor resorted to, urm, telling him "bedtime stories" to keep him sedated. Sandra Oh is a comedic gem :-)

The HDB upgrading carrot / stick

2006-04-10T16:36:00.000+08:00

I received this in my email box sometime ago, but due to my selective email reading (which was further exacerbated by my lack of intenet access at home) I only got to see it now. It is an online petition decrying PAP's use of HDB upgrading as a carrot for voters. Or rather, the dangling of the same thing away as a stick for opposition ward voters. Senior PAP members (cum government official) openly and repeatedly state in public that buildings in opposition wards will get faster upgrading if they are under PAP. This has been the case since previous elections, but this is the first time I know a petition is conducted to garner support against it. I am not a Singaporean so I shouldn't be casting a vote on this (indeed I'm ineligible to do so), but I do agree with the sentiment. That aside, I think it is fair to spread the news on the petition, and let each individual decide whether they agree also and want to have the opportunity to sign the petition or rejecting it. So interested readers: view it, decide where you stand, and decide also whether you want to pass it on: http://www.petitiononline.com/merlion1/petition.html Interesting though that the petition seems to be low key; I didn't read this in tomorrow.sg despite this being a material that will draw interest there. Perhaps the editors are distancing themself from the near-political content? I also don't know who I received this from, as if the sender doesn't want me to know who the person is. If the person who forwards it to me read this, do let me know who you are (privately, I would think you'd prefer). Added: One of the petition sigantories there (no. 1390) suggested something that I have thought of before: people who sympathise with residents of opposition wards who are denied upgrading funds may want to do their part by donating to help their fellow citizens there. However I'm quite sure that the government has a system to prevent this otherwise it would have been done much earlier, no? I am aware that all parties here are limited to a maximum of $5000 anonymous donations a year. I wonder though if there is a law preventing or capping donations to the town council / community centre. I personally would prefer it to be non-anonymous to show the conviction and support, which the town council can use to elicit more support from other doubters; but I would understand if most people are wary about disclosing their identity. Any lawyers / people knowledgeable in legal areas who can share comment on the laws on this?

Free Singapore Film Festival screening is not good to me

2006-04-10T11:28:00.000+08:00

The Singapore Film Festival kicked off last Friday. I had no initial intention to watch the shows there (though I'm still ambivalent about watching the Indonesian show "Gie" which chronicles the life of an alumni from my senior high school), but somehow I will be watching two Japanese movies in the tail end of April, thanks to some intricate activities going on heh. However my involvement in the Film Festival was hurried forward when I decided to take up anonymous_x's invitation to catch a free screening of three short movies. The screening was held in Goethe Institut, with an un-cinema-like setting. It's really like gathering in a friend's big living room with a projector showing the movie on the wall. Which is not a bad idea, since I guess it can accommodate a more friendly atmosphere, a throwback perhaps to campus days where movie screenings like this help hostelmates mingle. Except that there was near zero social interaction here. Everybody seemed to be intent on keeping to themselves; of the twenty-odd viewers, the majority came alone, the rest came in twos (moi included), no larger group then 2. Oh well, on with the movie. The Fish was a 5 minute short animated movie from Iran which lost me on the plot. Next. One Shot was a semi-documentary from Israel chronicling the life of snipers in the Israeli armed forces. Good premise. But it made The Fish looked good. The editing was bad, but what really condemned this movie was the horrendous pacing. IMHO this would make an OK 15 minute short - perhaps 30 minutes - but the director contrived to stretch it to a 60 minute movie. Many pointless lingering shots, quite a number of interviews which could have been edited for brevity. I am guessing the director commited to an hour long result but ended up not managing to expand the interesting topic to have enough material to sustain the show for 60 minutes. The only image that intrigued me was the shots of people with black masks wielding scythes to symbolise how the snipers hold the power of the Grim Reaper in deciding who dies or lives. Only that the scythes used were not those huge long-bladed scythes, but more like a stick with a sickle attached at the end. Rather than the impression of mowing people like wheat chaffs, I got the impression of really mowing the wheats. Perhaps it's the culture, perhaps the scythes in Middle East are Islam influenced (crescent moon-shaped). Whatever, but what I saw brought to mind images of reaper rather than GRIM REAPER (CAPITALISED LIKE A GOOD TERRY PRATCHETT FAN WOULD DO). Replay Revenge covered the same setting: the Israel-Palestine violence. It was shot by an Arab-Israeli who had migrated to England, so it was in a somewhat good position to present itself as a balanced portrait of the situation. The director / narrator was doing a good job making this an informative and entertaining documentary, and I was beginning to feel that this would make up for One Shot. And that's when the movie froze half way. It seemed that the CD / DVD that the movie was played from had some problems. Some people began leaving the place, and by the time the projectionist came out to apologetically explain the situation, there were 9 people left. All in all a letdown of an outing I must say. I guess I got what I paid for (heh). Hopefully the paid sessions would be much better.

I of the undisciplined mind

2006-04-10T11:25:00.000+08:00

I caught the hypnotist Alan Bates' show two years ago and it was jolly fun, so when I heard he was back in town it didn't take long to decide to go down and catch him again. His routine was almost exactly the same as two years ago (about 95% the same), but it was still good. The thing with hypnosis shows is, the star is not the hypnotist himself but the subjects. The mental alteration may be the same, but the way people react is very different. Seeing how a bloke reacted to having the number "seven" erased from his mind (slight bafflement) was very different from how a financial analyst reacted to it (recognising the strangeness, and fighting very very hard but ultimately futilely against it). Alan always starts his show by doing a mini mass hypnosis on the crowd to see whose minds are susceptible to control - only people who have good, disciplined control of their mind can be hypnotised, so people with mental illness, or idiots, cannot be hypnotised. I am not sure whether I am proud or dismayed to say that I failed the mass hypnosis miserably :-/ My dearie though was hypnotised to a certain degree: her hands were locked in as commanded by Alan, and she couldn't unclasp them herself. She was too shy to volunteer herself to be one of the subjects though, and let others took the (dubious) "glory". Not as many people stepped forward this time compared to the previous show I watched, but there were at least two quality gems that made up for the numbers. Which brings us to one valid point why my dearie thinks she may not make as good a subject as others. Since the entertainment comes from the reaction of the subject, people who are very open and unabashed in their expression will make the best viewings. Like the Kiwi giant who enthusiastically shared a "magic" sunglasses that allowed him to see all people around him naked; it was fun seeing him comparing notes with another subject, sharing the sunglasses while pointing at a certain lady in the crowd, oblivious to the fact that people were laughing at them. (Warning: generalisation alert) This makes westerners/people from western countries who came from more open background much better subjects than local Asians. Case in point: when Alan hypnotised the subjects to not see him (i.e. he turned invisible) and he started moving things in air to make them "float" around in the eyes of the subjects, the reactions ranged from wildly mouthing "what the (epithet)" by the Kiwi (the star of the show), to bewildered observation of the events by an Australian-Indian, to total non-reaction by a Singaporean gal who was frozen in terror by the ghostly spectacle. The gal was soon released to return back to watch from the comfort of her seat, to everybody's relief. You want people who can make fun of themselves when on stage. Again I am split on being proud or dismayed when my dearie said she thought I'd make a good subject :-/ I wonder how I would react myself if given that magic sunglasses hurhur

Send Me The Pillow That You Dream Of

2006-04-07T12:05:00.000+08:00

I miss my pillows :-( They had been with me for 9/8 years respectively. They had aged (I won't say gracefully, but reasonably), and hence they were shortlisted for retirement when I was moving. Since I stay quite near Tiong Bahru Plaza, I can just buy a new one there to replace them, rather than go through the hassle of building another rather bulky stuff. What happened was the move ended too late in the evening last Saturday, so I couldn't buy a new one yet. That's fine, one night sleeping flat on the bed should be OK, I can always buy the next night. Or the following evening, when I don't have afterhour office work to catch up on. Or the following following evening, when I don't haev a social function. Or the following following following ... Think I'm getting slowly used to sleeping flat with no pillow or bolster. I still miss my pillows :-/

Welcome to the zoo, there's so many things to do...

2006-04-04T18:09:00.000+08:00

Today, we had our departmental kick-off for the new financial year, with an offsite whole-department meeting (or rather, listening to the bigwigs talk) at: the Zoological Garden. I didn't know the Zoo can hold corporate functions, so it was quite a unique experience. It turned out quite well. They have a lodge which they can set up for various functions, and today they convert it into a seminar room, with seats covered with velvety animal-print motif which I quite liked. Tiger stripes, leopard spots, zebra stripes. Our turn out was bigger than expected so they had to bring in more chairs and I saw additional motifs: giraffe spots, jaguar spots. I knew they were really running out of chairs when I started seeing covers with Holstein cow spots ;-/ The place itself may make a unique place to hold a simple wedding party. Perhaps not too big a crowd for the traditional grand 10-head-a-table Chinese banquet since the space is not that big, but simple buffet type will be nice. The idea came because apparently next to the lodge there is one holding area which is also a bedroom, with cosily furnished bed and a small sofa with window overlooking the greeneries. Hm, honeymoon night in the "wild"? What I liked most of the place though is the toilet. Semi-open concept that really makes you feel transported back to nature. One side of the toilet is wallless (if only this is a valid Scrabble word, it will be the only one with three consecutive same consonant, I think), decorated with a curtain of waterfall cascading, facing a landscape of trees. Urinals are mounted on half-height walls, so gentlemen who often like to admire the marvelously beautiful wall tiles now can feast their eyes on something more rustic, and refreshing. I wonder how the ladies is done up, though. Anyway, the kick-off meeting itself was a day-long bore (save some minor highlights, like seeing my new English boss for the first time. I have a feeling my accent will be affected...) but the experience was quite charming. I like the place. Only there can we have the Managing Director's speech interrupted by some wildlife voicing their disapproval :D

Leaving the past behind

2006-04-03T21:14:00.000+08:00

The deed is done. The move is completed. I'm in my no-internet home. So I blog from office :-) The move as predicted took me an entire night and day. I woke up at 0030 Saturday to start Operation Pick and Pack, and slowly go through all my stuff, deciding what to keep and what to leave behind. I usually move all my stuff together with me whenever I shift residence, but this time my new place is much smaller than my old one. Besides, after 10 years here, I have accumulated way too much stuff already and should start shedding them. Which was not necessarily easy. I have this disinclination to throwing away stuff; everything is still usable, why throw a perfectly (depends on perspective) functional item? The shirt is still wearable, just perhaps for own use at home. That shirt too. As rags, perhaps, but still. That pen can still be a backup to the other 15 pens I have. I mean, the ink still flows well. And so on. But I'm proud to say that in the end I filled up four big plastic bags of clothes that are in good enough condition for donation to the Salvation Army. I hope they don't mind bad fashion sense though :D Next batch of stuff I needed to get rid off were food. Too much food. I squirrel away stocks of food and beverages, but never really consumed them. And now it's such a waste to throw them. So, from several evenings before the move, I have started judiciously selecting those with reasonable expiry dates, and slowly consuming them, hoping to finish everything before I move, saving me the agony of throwing them and the hassle of moving them. So there were several consecutive nights of Danish butter cookies suppers, chocolate desserts, etc. My progress wasn't fast enough though, so on the final day I practically need not buy meals: throughout the night a few cans of coffee sustained me, plus a bottle of chicken essence. Breakfast was instant cup soup (again), supplemented by some Sara Lee cake and energy drink. Lunch was two cups of soup plus a quarter pint of Rocky Road (yum). And a few cans of beer (which is an anomaly since I don't buy beers). I think all these explained my stomach problem yesterday, naturally. Which explains my not putting on weight, I guess. Of course, I should have realised earlier that the easiest solution was to leave the food for consumption by my flatmates who are staying put :D unfortunately, the egotistic me failed to register this until I unearthed a bag of chili sauce sachets, which I refused to eat, and then thought of leaving behind in the kitchen. Gotta be more selfless in the future heh Harder to part with was my Scrabble paraphernalia. But I did in the end: I gave away 5 Scrabble boards: 1 original, 2 deluxes, 1 pocket, and 1 rather old travel that is actually quite nifty (perforated rather than magnetic) and I like a lot; my first Scrabble set. Oh well. I still have 3 other Scrabble sets so really couldn't be bringing them all anymore. Plus one Scrabble card game (which I should have given away actually). And 4 Scrabble polo shirts, all given away. And last but not least, my Scrabble game records. All score sheets from my previous tournaments. My memory of my past performances, my keepsake, my dust-gathering paper rubbish. The volume had grown, and I hadn't been looking at them that often so I guess they shouldn't stay. Going through them while deciding which to keep or throw, was a trip back memory lane - I'm quite proud that I was already quite good in the past; some words I played back then I don't recall now. Which exposes the flip side: I was already quite good back then, where's the progress now? :-/ After some nostalgic moment, most of them went to the scavenger's stack. I kept only some from memorable moments: those from the National championship that I won, from my first international tourney (Channel Newsasia Masters) and from my first Bangkok trip (more because there is an article featuring my photo, but it's in Thai so I'm still waiting to find out what it says heh). All the above a thing of the past now. Now for a (more) spartan life in my little cosy and near-to-everywhere home.

Upheaval

2006-03-31T21:09:00.000+08:00

A major change occured in office today, triggering my return to office twice. That pretty much upset the entire packing schedule today. Oh well, the graveyard shift again it is. But a more upsetting upheaval: just arranged for my Singnet broadband in my new place and apparently it can only be turned on on 12 April. Aargh, 11 days without Internet at home, what is going to be of me?! Looks like I'll be getting a healthy dose of sleep in my first two weeks in the new place.

Loud tee

2006-03-31T00:21:00.000+08:00

Seen on the front of a tee shirt today in MRT: "I may be a flirt but your boyfriend likes it." Would have been a nice saucy tee. Except that the wearer was a man .... I just don't think that tee was targeted to the gay community, really.

Massive train crash in Ticket to Ride

2006-03-29T00:11:00.000+08:00

Just to record for posterity, I just suffered my biggest ever loss in a Ticket to Ride game just now. Played online 1-on-1 against a 1600+ rated player on the USA map, and I lost 125-2 (yes, 2) after being severely foiled by several massive blockers that caused me to fail all mission cards spectacularly. It's like a house of cards crashing down, poof. He anticipated my moves well, and bum rushed me. Perverse pride in possibly the lowest recorded Ticket to Ride score ever. I would never imagine having a single digit score, but there you have it. And I thought my 50+ loss last week was bad. And I thought I'm a decent player in this game ...

Marina Showdown

2006-03-28T00:21:00.000+08:00

Sunday birthday party cum boardgame session introduced me to the game called Vegas Showdown. The players are casino resort owners who compete against each other building his own resort to be the most prestigious. The resorts all have pre-gazetted sections for gambling, dining, and free area. Owners get prestige point via various ways: building glitzier special room (moving up from lounge to theatre, buffet restaurant to five-star steakhouse, etc), constructing full casino/dining sections, arranging publicity, etc. Along the way they need to earn enough money from the existing operation to finance construction of the rooms in the casino, and bid against other players to build the currently available rooms in the market. It was a good, well-balanced game, with enough strategy, different ways of garnering points, and opportuniteis for disrupting other people's plan. Ole Wolvie at one point did the nigh unthinkable, spending loads of money buying the most prestigious unit available, despite being unable to deploy it in his complex due to a missing pre-requisite (a casino that has not proven itself by running a fancy lounge can't put in a theatre, apparently), for the sole purpose of preventing the then leader from buying it and running away with victory. Wolvie didn't have much (any?) chance of winning at that point, but his sacrifice gave me the chance to pip the leader at countback. This despite my spending 3 turns unproductively renovating my resort due to some bad layout planning where doors of some room led to dead-ends that prevented further proper expansion. I was saved by my premium zones, where several high-value rooms were adjacent, since those expensive intersections yield extra points; something that no one else bothered to try for since it risks creating unwieldy building layout (which plagued me severely). We commented that this really is a game of building Integrated Resorts, and is very topical to Singapore. We can come out with one called Marina Showdown, perhaps. Afterall, there is a Singapore Edition of Monopoly. There's even Uniquely Singapore Monopoly. Not so far out to have a Singapore version of Vegas Showdown then, no? For Marina Showdown, we can have the tile names changed: "Dragon Room" to "Raffles Room", "Nightclub" to "Zouk", "Theatre" to "Crazy Horse" :D or "The Arts House", and so on... Anyone from Singapore Tourism Board reading? ;-) I want a commemorative set, if this ever gets produced :D I'm sure this is a better idea than, say, Singlish Scrabble? I can already imagine it... High bingo BLANJAH, favourite consonant dump: ZHNG (as in Zhng My Car, Singapore's Pimp My Ride). Hm actually ZHNGING would be a valid bingo too then, no? And there's potentially a not-for-kids bingo starting with the letter C ....

Lessons in career advancement

2006-03-27T02:07:00.000+08:00

A snippet of conversation earlier today (paraphrased since I can't remember who said which): A: Unfortunately my job cannot be done by others. So it's difficult for me to take leave. Unlike the boss, who can take leave and chop up the jobs into smaller pieces for different people to do. B: Oh well at least it means you are important, and won't be fired. A: Yes, but naturally that means also I cannot be promoted since there will be a void. B: So you must find a way to pass your job to other people. A: Yes it seems. So it's like a test. You can only be promoted if you have learnt how to "arrow" people to do your own job. I guess it's part of the selection process to see if you are good enough to go up already. Which is true, since afterall managers are basically "arrowers", or more politically-correctly, delegators. Office politics explained.

Tiong Bahru here I come

2006-03-27T01:56:00.000+08:00

Finally my house hunt comes to an end. I am moving to a new place on 1 April. Kissing my cheap old place goodbye for a smaller place nearer my workplace and happenings in general. Tiong Bahru, please welcome me. Tiong Bahru itself was a compromise since my initial target is Tanjong Pagar and Outram Park/Chinatown area. However, after one too many overpriced undersized rooms, I gave up my high standards. I also gave up my requirement for staying with just fellow tenants without in-house landlord. That initially yielded me a place in Tiong Bahru which was less than 1 minute away from MRT station - very ideal. Admittedly, that 1 minute was if I sprinted, and if the timing was from the ground floor of the apartment to the escalator of the MRT (counting from the 9th floor room to the MRT door would be 3 minutes I believe), but that kind of distance was still something I fancied a lot. Unfortunately, the landlady was rather demanding: fridge was not available for use (she singlehandedly filled up the entire two-doored fridge), no cooking - including boiling ater - was allowed (she happily pointed out that 7-Eleven was nearby for instant food and she also occasionally buys her drink there, easier than NTUC). And the straw that broke the agent's back (the agent actually in the end advised me against taking the room and said he would find me another room) was when she proposed to raise the rent by $30 to cover utility bills since there is a possibility that my girlfriend may spend time over my place on weekend days. The kind of landlord that gave me worries I had initially had when I didn't want to stay under the same roof as the landlord. Fortunately my new place seems to be a reasonable compromise. Smallish, but some cabinets to stow away my stuff. Not that cheap, but does cover utilities without overly stringent restrictions on use of power supply. Not as near MRT as I had wanted, but still walkable, and I have direct bus to my office (though a bit like the Beatles song - The Long and Winding Road) and to Settler's cafe :) . The landlady seems the reasonable type, and anyway only her son stays in the appartment, occasionally. And the living room, albeit not huge, seems like a potential place to host some friends for, say, light boardgaming session :-) And the TV in the living room and young fellow occupants have raised my hopes of possibly catching Germany 2006 World Cup on TV :-) But now, firstly, the move. I have had to take leave on Friday to pack up and discard stuff that I won't bring with me; I just don't have the time to sort things out during my normal time without disrupting activities. Gotta properly rest myself on Friday evening too, rather than pack overnight like what I did when I last shifted residence. Gotta be fresh for the lifting and carrying on Saturday. Perhaps I should recruit my regular elves for assistance again.

D for Details

2006-03-25T13:29:00.000+08:00

We were watching "V for Vendetta" yesterday evening (I'm so tempted to say ve vere vatching heh heh), and there was a section where the heroine Evey was captured and underwent torture in captivity. She was shaved near bald, and for almost a year was subjected to emotional and physical abuse to force her to divulge a certain information. Throughout the period, her head remained quite bald, just with short stubbly hair. She was eventually free and looked like a liberated Sinead O'Connor. And in one scene that followed quite immediately after her freedom I noticed: no armpit hair. I was quite sure no razor was to be found in the cell, and in a year plus things do grow. So the captor shaved off not just the hair at the top, but also on the torso? It does make one wonder... V for Vanity, Natalie Portman? And remarking about the observation above in the middle of the movie did dissipate a bit the dark veil of seriousness that the movie had crafted, I do apologise :-/

Measure of busyness

2006-03-23T16:51:00.000+08:00

Yesterday and today the company is holding a product show. The entire sales force, almost all of senior and middle management, and a sizeable number of support team are on the venue. Only a handful of us support team stayed back in our now peacefule office :-) One very noticeable effect is the drop in email volume. On average I receive 70+ emails a day that I need to attend to (excluding automated emails like meeting confirmation, system status alert, etc), and fired back out 35+ emails against the offensive forces. Yesterday I received only 26. I only shot one email back out - I was shuttling between office and the show venue and had not much time to respond. Now I know how my time got burnt in office. Aside from the well-known universal time-sapping blackholes called "meetings". I wonder what the average number is of (work-related) emails that a person receive on a daily basis. This may be a suitable metric to measure relative importance of a person's function in the office. It's a bit trivial a measure, but I suppose it can still approximate pretty well for white-collar workers. I expect my boss receives even more emails a day (hm, does she). Perhaps it will make a good measure also on the number of interdependency between functions within an office, when average numbers per individual are compared across different offices. I love metrics, but I dislike statistics. How ironic.

If you want pornoaction, go to Indonesia

2006-03-21T19:27:00.000+08:00

Recently an antipornography bill was tabled in the Indonesian parliament for approval. The proposed bill has drawn media coverage outside Singapore due to the rather stringent criteria it has in defining pornography, and perhaps more due to the protests staged variously by among others women activists and segments of the populations with lower percentage of orthodox Muslims (e.g. Bali). What tickled me is the full title of the Bill, in Indonesian: "Rancangan Undang-Undang anti Pornografi dan Pornoaksi" or literally "Anti-Pornography and Pornoaction Bill". "Pornoaction", I love that. The word, I mean (what were you thinking ;p). Indonesians do so love coining new words, since using the base vocabulary typically will lead to using longer phrases to describe a concept/item if nothing is coined to represent it succinctly. And the word coined in this case do sound apt, conveys the meaning rather clearly (at least in Indonesian), and to non-English speaking local it may even sound like a standard sophisticated transliteration from English. Just that it's not, since I believe I've never heard the word PORNOACTION in English before. I searched through the Scrabble dictionary for words that start with PORNO but no PORNOACTION there either. There are some other interesting words though, like PORNOTOPIA (whoa. Must be heaven on earth for some), PORNOCRACY (the ruling system in PORNOTOPIA? where harlots rule and lowly men follow?). And, uhm, PORNOMAG (no snide comments! I have the power to delete). Of course, a proper translation for "pornoaksi" would be "pornographic acts", which some news agencies with better translators do use as the title of the bill (that unfortunately excludes Indonesia's own foreign press agency, ANTARA). But somehow I still like the false portmanteau word better. Pornoaction. I'm interested to see if it catches on, at least in Indonesia.

Pink Like a Deco Umbrella

2006-03-17T03:47:00.000+08:00

As Aerosmith sang in their song. Anyway. Are you female? Do you blog? If you answer yes to both questions, you may want to take part in project Pink. While pink is easily associated with female, I don't quite identify with a male colour. "Project Blue" was mentioned in the blog as a possible project name for males, but why blue?! Somehow the main association between male and blue that came to my mind was the Little Blue Pill. Or to be explicit, Viagra (just in case someone thought of the Blue Pill in the movie Matrix instead).

Mind your D's and T's

2006-03-17T03:30:00.000+08:00

We were cleaning up her mp3 collection, with her selecting songs to keep or discard, and me supplying new songs and supplying details for songs with incorrect or incomplete tag information. So I was going e.g. "I Will Survive, by Cake", "Sometimes When We Touch, by Rod Stewart" and she typed them into her iTune interface. Later, I noticed that the iTune showed the singer of the last song as "Rod Steward". I remarked "the name is wrong, change the d to t". And that was how the world was introduced to the raspy-voiced singer Rot Steward ...

Sing Along with Mr A-Z

2006-03-15T02:11:00.000+08:00

This is going to be a busy week but a fun one, with Mosaic in town and a slew of other events. Work is killing me, but I'm hoping my other activities will resurrect me. Army Daze on Thursday (I would have loved it to be Kings of Convenience concert, actually), Jason Mraz concert on Friday, Scrabble tourney on Saturday and Sunday day, possibly a party on Saturday evening, plus perhaps a couple of free Mosaic concert if I can fit one in after Mraz's concert or on Sunday. Whee! You can't die twice from exhaustion, right? I'm quite excited about Mraz's concert, despite getting a rather bad seat. I have been practising singing along to his songs, but his lyrics oh his lyrics are too long to memorize easily. Though he sings, the pace of the words are almost like a white guy rapping. But since white man can't rap (unless he's a violent abuser) he has to put melodies to the syllables. I look forward to singing along with MrAZ, though I was hoping for a more lively concert setting with people standing and waving, rather than the sit-down environs of Esplanade. Well, next concert then. Hm, actually wouldn't it be interesting, to have comparison of reversals, e.g. rock concert in a recital studio with everyone sitting prim and proper, and an open air orchestra performance with all standing, cheering, headbanging crowd. For the former, perhaps something like Jerry C playing his rendition of Pachelbel's Canon. The latter, hm, I don't know, Guns N's Roses' November Rain orchestrated further, with a tenor singing Axl's part, a posse of bass singers singing the menacing background chorus, and a screeching violinist playing Slash's solo guitar while being passed atop the crowds in the mosh pits. Then again, maybe not. Anyway, if anyone is going to be at the Esplanade around those times above, let me know if there is a good show that you think are worth catching together.

Capture Me If You Can

2006-03-14T03:03:00.000+08:00

They dropped by my blog often in the past but somewhere along the way lost interest and no longer leave comments. Recently though sporadically they have reemerged in my comment section. I'm talking about those spam comments. An anonymous one appeared in my latest post, which triggered this post. No harm done, a simple delete sufficed, not unlike the flurry last time which kept me busier clicking the trash can icon. In case you're wondering, I am aware of the feature in blogspot to force humans to type a distorted text to prove their humanness when posting. But I personally am against using CAPTCHA ("Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart" ) methods for such filtering. I dislike the fact that I have to inconvenience people who actually genuinely want to contribute something to my blog, just because of some silly spam. I myself am more annoyed reading those distorted-distended texts than seeing the occasional spam, so I wouldn't want to wish that on my readers. Anyway CAPTCHA itself is not one hundred % effective in preventing unwanted anonymous access. There are already automated software which can reconstruct the distorted image and then use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software to convert the image into text. This is a technology race: more complex CAPTCHA-distortion will come up and must keep on running since newer descrambler will come up to neutralise the CAPTCHA. But I'm more interested in the social-engineering approach to cracking CAPTCHA. Basically it works by outsourcing the interpretation of the image to many humans, e.g. sending them the images and asking them to type in the texts, which the spammer can redirect the CAPTCHA engine. Of course, people won't work without pay/reward, and paying them to do this can be costly. One nifty work around is to dangle another internet weakness of human: porn. Set the lewd material to be viewable only after a viewer key in the corresponding authentication, which would be the CAPTCHA image. Voila. Win-win situation. Just make sure your porn site has enough material and traffic to keep your CAPTCHA-busting elves busy. And happy, heh.