The Early Years (2002-2005)

Allowing dogs to be brought to work can reduce stress, improve productivity, and reduce absenteeism. Duh.

I love Christmas carols. Make me all warm and tingly inside. Okay, the warmth is partly due to tropical weather. But really, Nat King Cole’s rendition of “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire” or the longing “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve”, or the horndog lasciviousness of “Baby It’s Cold Outside” (admittedly a winter rather than Christmas song), or the sultry flirtiness of Eartha Kitt singing “Santa Baby” - mmm.

Headed downtown to celebrate the brother’s birthday yesterday at Teahouse, and I noticed that the Chinatown MRT (subway) station has tiles with Chinese characters on them. That’s a nice touch, and not one I’d noticed before - guess either they’re new, or I must’ve been walking around in a stupor the last time I was at the station (entirely possible).

Place the State. I don’t know why but I’m fascinated with this silly US geography game. My record after 5 tries was 98% right with an average error of 1 mile (damn Oklahoma! as Maxwell Smart might say… missed it by that much).

The Guardian decides to have fun mocking some of the haloed members of the rock pantheon - everyone from the Beatles to the Clash to James Brown to - blasphemy upon blasphemy! - What’s Going On. It’s snarky and wrong-headed, but gets in some well-written jibes:

Thanks to Michelle’s blog, I’ve noticed that the Telegraph has just published a list of its top 50 cover versions of all time. Assuming we’re sticking to popular music - jazz has lots of great cover versions, but the aesthetic of originality is different there - Jimi Hendrix at #1 with his version of Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower” is a good if safe choice. Aretha’s version of “Respect” would be my #1, and yes, that’s another safe choice.

Just got back from attending a bilingual dialogue with two sculptors I really like, Botero and Ju Ming. They both have pretty good pieces of public art here in Singapore: Botero did the Bird that sits on Boat Quay, Ju Ming the Taichi Boxers that used to be outside the History Museum.

More tech talk - was trying to figure out how to put a list of my most recent posts in the sidebar, given that the sidebar is uploaded in a PHP file separately from Blogger, so Blogger’s template tags won’t work. Then I realised: hey, I could just syndicate my own Atom feed. Then I realised: wait, I don’t know how to do that. So I stumbled around, thinking I might have to program my own syndicator (not hard, some XML knowledge and some Java and there you go, but still, I didn’t want to waste a whole evening programming).

Two obscure pleasures that I was recently reminded of: Mornington Crescent and Nethack. Yeah, geekdom beckons.

As if there needed to be any further proof of blogging as a legitimate medium, Gary Becker and Richard Posner, two of the most preeminent critical thinkers around, have started a joint blog. The fact that you can even respond directly to writing by Becker and Posner through the comments is some sign of the collapsing of hierarchies that blogging can bring.

Wow, I stumbled onto Grace Chow’s blog, the blog of a 32-year-old woman who chronicled her struggles with a tumour both in the blog and in a book and just passed away… powerful stuff.

So I decided to see what the fuss about MSN Spaces, Microsoft’s new blogging product, was about, so I visited the blog of Jay Fluegel, lead programming manager of the product. I thought the freaky part was that Fluegel seemed really, really excited about meeting Steve Ballmer (“Best parts of the night besides the Sonics win: 3) Having a conversation with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer!!!”) Um - should someone really be that excited to meet the head honcho of one’s firm?

The Guardian lists the Turner Prize nominees. I’d go with Langlands and Bell (Jeremy Deller’s “The History of the World” reminds me mostly of that scene in School of Rock where Jack Black lectures on rock history), but really I’m just intrigued and impressed by how an art award can capture so much newspaper acreage. The Brits are good at these elitist awards, non? Did the same with the Booker Prize.

Two of my favourite cover versions of 2004: Jimmy Eat World’s “Firestarter” (available on iTunes - I guess it’s technically a 2001 song since it appeared on the Last Christmas 7", but this seems to be the year of general release), which directed the screw-the-world aggro of the Prodigy’s original inward, turning the tune into a hymn of self-loathing, and Beck’s lovely mellow take on the Korgis’ “Everybody’s Got to Learn Sometimes”, from the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind soundtrack.

Another cute Westie. But not as cute as Coconut.

MooT looks interesting: a whole game on etymology, word origins, and other little English quirks presumably. Anyone played it?

By the way, in the interests of keeping a manageable sidebar while still giving a shout-out to the various blogs I read, I created an extended blogroll. Meanwhile Simon World has nominations up for Best Singapore Blog - some of those nominated in the comments were new to me, and were quite interesting, including A Gonzo Journal and myrick, who had this funny post on the stupidity of the Australian who (allegedly) smuggled drugs into Bali. What, noone nominated dickchan?

Over in Slate, Timothy Noah writes about “Visitor Center Fever”, i.e. how major Washington D.C. sites such as the Capitol are getting funding to build visitor centres and other informative exhibits. And I’m going to say, bravo for his Grinchy tone. Places such as the Capitol and the Washington Monument have functions, whether for the business of government or simply as a memorial; the construction of a visitor centre and the concomitant hawking of geegaws seems to say that being seen by tourists is their primary function.

The annual PNC Bank report on the Cost of Christmas Index is out - buying everything in the song would cost you $66.3k in stores, $115.5k online. I guess 10 lords-a-leaping are kind of hard to ship.

Just got back from my fifth or so session on Neuro-Vision. It’s this new treatment here for low levels of myopia (there’s FDA approval, but I don’t know if it’s being done in the States yet).