The Early Years (2002-2005)

Ah, good ol’ alumni news brought this little tidbit: Liu’s off-the-job tinkering has revived his childhood interest not only in model airplanes, but also in LEGOs. By combining the plastic bricks with a heat sensor from a burglar alarm, Liu recently cobbled together a device that launches toy mice at his two Birman cats. Dubbed a “mouseapult” (as opposed to a catapult) by Liu and his wife Julie, the device sits on the floor in the middle of a room, rotating around in search of a warm body. When it spots a moving heat source, the mouseapult hurls a fur mouse toy from its magazine in the direction of the heat source. (Link)

Sadly, I didn’t have time to blog about this after a madcap work day yesterday, but RIP, Anne Bancroft. Here’s to you Mrs Robinson; Jesus loves you more than you will know.

I love this project - putting up art in vacant storefronts in Downtown Crossing, in Boston. I’m pretty sure I saw something similar to that recently - was it here in Singapore or over in Bonn? Dagnabit, can’t remember. Anyway, no one loses here - place looks more upmarket, artists get publicity. One thing I’ve always thought is that those large grey concrete pillars of the MRT line should become canvases for Singaporean artists.

Since I’m a big language usage buff, I’ll make a comment inspired by this letter to the Straits Times this morning that my friend sent on to me: The Certificate of Marriage issued by the Registry of Marriages spells ‘solemnise’ as ‘solemnize’. I believe this is American English and is not the form used here.

I was in the taxi, when my handphone rang. Some random phone number. Oh well, picked it up. Was promptly greeted by a little boy’s voice, asking “Daddy, when are you coming home?”

You know, they always say “you’re more likely to be murdered by someone you know than by a stranger”. Which got me to thinking: would people also be more likely to be hit by a car by someone they know than pure random chance would have it? Since people tend to congregate in certain areas - near work, near their house - and the people they know probably tend to cluster in similar geographic areas, the probability - however minute - of people knowing the *#@! who hit them is probably increased.

I don’t drink coffee, but I stumbled on the Blog of a Coffee Addict, which seems to have branched out nicely into caffeinated-soda coverage - and one thing that almost everyone learns about me quickly is that I drink way more Coke and Pepsi than is good for me. (I did say I was fidgety…) Via the blog, I learnt that first graders have behavioural problems due to caffeinated sodas:

Also, I saw a man play what looked like a didgeridoo in the underpass between Lido and Wheelock Place. A didgeridoo! Boy, these buskers are branching out.

So I finally found some breathing room and watched the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy today. As an avowed Douglas Adams afficionado, there’s a lot I could quibble with - my main gripe would be that Eddie never tried to make tea - but on the whole it was a pleasant enough amalgam of the first and bits from the other books. (If there really is a sequel, I’m dying to see the talking cow and the Total Perspective Vortex.)

Yesterday night, I watched Mirando Al Cielo, a really cool interpretive dance show from Producciones Imperdibles, outside Raffles City. I totally chanced upon the show - was walking to the MRT from Funan, my spankin’-new 160 GB hard drive in hand. Mirando al Cieno means “looking to the sky”, and indeed, that’s what us audience members did: the stage was transparent pyrex, and we were seated under the stage in these deckchair-like seats and watched the dances unfold against the night sky and the Raffles City backdrop. Since we weren’t allowed to take photos, the pic below, taken from a set of photos of the Cultural Festival of Albacete back in April 2004, shows kind of what it’s like. Pure visual pleasure.

I know people say things like “our bathroom is so clean you could eat off it”, but this is most bizarre: Marton, a restaurant in Taiwan with toilet-themed decor, and worse, toilet-theme food (the name’s a clear pun on ma tong i.e. toilet).

Ah, the rigours of adapting to a new job have made the possibilities of random websurfing somewhat sporadic… but here goes: Buffydavamp wonders what will become of the Holland Village dog now that the market is being renovated. Shagster - for people who’ve been more than friends. The Guardian talks about the Turner Prize nominees.

I think the interesting part about Bob Woodward’s article on his relationship with W. Mark Felt (aka Deep Throat - article reprinted in the Guardian) was the revelation that they’d known each other for a long time, even back in Woodward’s Navy days:

Okay, I know I was surfing the web one day, and saved this picture because it was incredibly bizarre, but I have no attribution for it. Where is it from? Who are these people? Looks like a Japanese gameshow to me…

More on gnome liberation… this time, about Barga, Italy, the European Gnome Sanctuary.

W. Mark Felt comes out and says he was Deep Throat (links to a PDF file of an upcoming Vanity Fair article), which is what Timothy Noah over at Slate has always felt, um, I mean maintained. As Noah’s article puts it, “Woodward has stated that the real Deep Throat has lied in order to protect his identity”, and Felt did come out with an explicit denial back near the end of the last century. Ah, and just as I was typing this, it’s been confirmed by Woodward and Bernstein. Thus endeth one of the great mysteries of the last century.

The only weird thing about Paris Hilton getting married (ho-hum, another random Hilton life event) is the fact that her fiance, Paris Latsis, has the same first name… so if she takes his last name - they’ll have exactly the same name. I always thought going out with someone with the same name as you would be a strange experience. Yeah, that’s EXACTLY why I’m not dating Daryl Hannah.

The New York Times features a cool device, the Babble from Applied Minds (since the article referred to the Cone of Silence from “Get Smart!”, I took the chance to post a pic of one of my favourite shows):

Great sports moments of the last few weeks: The Champions League final - exciting stuff, even if I’m sworn to hate Liverpool. Should they be in the Champions League next year to defend the title? I say no - if World Cup holders have to qualify like everyone else, I think defending Champions League winners should do likewise. The European Grand Prix - how I wish I could’ve stayed on in Germany for a few days just to be at Nürburgring. Afleet Alex nearly falling to the ground in the Preakness along with jockey Jeremy Rose, before Afleet Alex and Rose recovered to win. Lord knows how Rose managed to cling on, but the Afleet Alex back story (colt abandoned by mother, raised by humans, now connected to a children’s cancer charity) is pretty good.

One thing about switching to using an electric (well, battery-powered) toothbrush is that it’s very hard to go back to regular toothbrushes… The recently-departed (and missed) Mitch Hedberg once said that escalators never break, they just become stairs. Same thing with electric toothbrushes - mine ran out of juice today, but all that meant was that I had to actually move the thing about more.