The Early Years (2002-2005)

Tonight marked the Lantern Festival, and stupidly I went downstairs to watch the fireworks on the Singapore River without bringing my camera. But it was great stuff - rockets, maroons, that sort of thing. Lately there’ve been loads of firework displays on the river, which makes for a magnificent sight against the backdrop of the skyscrapers. (What if you were working late in one of those skyscrapers? Isn’t it bizarre to look out and see a plume of coloured flame rising up?)

All those years of listening to Guns N’ Roses (standard adolescent fare), and I only just realised what “Axl Rose” is an anagram of. Oh, and he’s had awful plastic surgery.

From A Capital Idea, I learnt that the Christian Science Monitor has a language blog, Verbal Energy, by Ruth Walker. Here’s an excerpt from a piece on the morphed transitive form of verbs like “graduate”:

One day, I’d like a photo of myself taken by Richard Avedon.

Over at John and Belle Have a Blog, proud mum Belle Waring notes her kid’s predilection for rocking out to the Shins. Very cool I thought, for a mother to play music like that. Made me think of what my parents sang to me growing up. My memories of the songs sung are mostly older tunes -“Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?”, “Walk Like a Man”, “Wake Up Little Susie” - although I do remember hearing a lot of Barbra Streisand’s “Woman in Love”.

The Smoking Gun has the official, deeply cynical documents on Britney’s sham marriage. Britney’s recent spate of publicity desperation reminds me of the Simpsons episode (“Treehouse of Horror VI”, if you want to be precise, and yes, I’ve watched way too much of that show) where giant advertising statues come to life and the only way they can be stopped is if people don’t pay them attention. Just don’t look. But I can’t avert my eyes from a trainwreck!

A quote highlighted in my weekly e-mail from the Plain English Campaign: “If you sat at home spouting cod scientific terminology, management-blah and corporate catchphrases, your partner would soon slap you or ask you to leave. And you would really have issues around that.”

I guess this is what they mean when they talking about erecting buildings.

Jammed for a bit with two friends yesterday. Right now we have two guitarists (I play rhythm) and one singer/guitarist, but we’re just starting out so we don’t even have a name, just building up our repertoire. Two things learnt: I apparently have latent talent as a bassist, and the E to G#m7 transition in the verse of the Beatles’ “You’re Gonna Lose That Girl” is deceptively simple, but sonically very effective.

It’s quite scary how much love one can feel for one’s dog (click for more pictures of Coconut). Funny too how loyal one becomes to the breed one owns. Can’t imagine having a sedate dog after getting used to the hyperactivity of a Westie.

Apparently, Britain is going to offer to pay off 10% of Third World debt to international agencies like the World Bank (New York Times and Guardian stories). Text of Gordon Brown’s intended words to the Trade Justice Movement, based on those stories:

Cynthia Nixon is in a relationship with a woman now, a la Samantha in Sex and the City. “My private life is private. But at the same time, I have nothing to hide. So what I will say is that I am very happy.”

The New York Times has an article on Rosabeth Moss Kanter, business guru, on the topic of confidence. I really like her definition of confidence as “a belief that persistence and hard work will yield results”: it’s certainly not self-deception, and it’s certainly achievable.

If you ever feel inclined to adopt the Naked Downward Facing Dog pose, San Francisco is your place. Flowers in your hair optional.

Every time I think about moving this blog over to Movable Type, the folks over at Blogger add stuff that I like, use, and incorporate… the WYSIWYG editor, individual post pages, well-designed templates (well, only for my reviews page), convenient picture uploading, commenting. I’m not a very demanding blogger, really. I know my PHP and my URL rewrites, but I’m not really at the stage where I need to switch. I don’t care that the commenting facility is kind of strange and should really show the previous comments. Okay, I do care, but not that much. But I would like one thing: categories. Please.

As anyone who knows me knows, I try scrupulously to avoid using Microsoft products, as an aesthetic choice. (WordPerfect 11 user, checking in.) So I’ve used Firefox since the days it was Firebird, and was very pleased to see its growing success. Freaked out a bit when I downloaded Firefox 1.0 Preview Release because the extensions link didn’t seem to have Tabbrowser Extensions, which I depend on (I link to open all bookmarks & all history in new tabs), but a quick Google search fixed that. The thing about tabbed browsing is, once you’ve used it, how could you ever go back to Internet Explorer and its multiple windows clogging up the taskbar?

Hurricane Ivan hit my Jamaican relatives a few weeks back. What’s scary is that that same storm is forming again. Went north, came back. Speaking of hurricanes, this is so, so wrong. Or at least prone to alternate interpretations. (Incidentally, Hurricane Ivan also destroyed Hell.)

Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution discusses a study comparing cellphone users and drunk drivers that found: When controlling for driving conditions and time on task, cell-phone drivers exhibited greater impairment than intoxicated drivers.

Zach Braff, of “Scrubs” and Garden State fame, is now blogging too. But under the Fox Searchlight website, so goodness knows how long it’ll last. Can’t wait till Garden State comes to Singapore. If ever.

My old friend Alice DuBois writes in the New York Times about rediscovering a diary she once wrote of a trip to Uffizi. Made me want to dig up all my notes from my stints writing for Let’s Go. I’ll see if I can find any choice bits.