The Early Years (2002-2005)

Just finished going through the Aug 30 issue of the New Yorker in which Louis Menand discusses how political scientists see the voters. (The article is online in which discusses how political scientists see the voters. (The article is online here.) I love Menand’s literature-review style of article - he dissects all the key books in a field with the incisive touch of a fine surgeon. In the article, Menand makes the point that people cast votes for a whole variety of reasons, and cites the following doozy, from a 2004 paper by Princeton political scientists Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels:

An old acquaintance James Khing designs for Zouk, and he sent me this link to a site that showcases Zouk’s flyers and videos of some club nights… boy, that’s a club that’s done some excellent work in promoting club culture in Singapore.

Met up with Andrew Ing of the Filter Group (he’s the former Zouk marketing manager) today on something work-related, but something he said got me thinking. I remember back when I was in America, when I wanted to DJ and clearly not ready for the big time of club work, I just got together with my friend Dave, we put together some flyers (which I will scan one day), invited loads of people, and put together one hell of a party. He opened with Japanese house, I closed with Latin/disco house, with nods to each other’s playlist. Two great sets, if I must say so myself. Or when I helped organise a rock festival (we called it Blast!), four bands slamming in the Harvard Advocate building, because - well, because I thought it would be fun to help out, and I could provide the press coverage as music editor of the Crimson. No great grand motives, and no consideration of all the reasons not to do it.

I’ve been meaning to note SeatGuru.com for a while now, but the name of the site kept eluding me - kept having these conversations where I would go “there’s this really cool site, it gives you the seat configuration for lots of airlines’ planes, and then when you rollover the seats tells you why certain seats on each airline are good or bad” and then couldn’t name the site. Well, here it is.

“It’s rock paper scissors as to whether I will get over you at all. It’s hand against hand and both hands are mine.” Ani DiFranco, “Rock Paper Scissors” My former Harvard Crimson colleague Jennifer 8. Lee writes a piece on rock-paper-scissors tournaments for the New York Times (love how the newspaper puts the obligatory period after the “8” in her middle name, as though it was short for something). In Singapore, we call the game scissors-paper-stone, presumably reflecting the British English “stone” rather than the American “rock”, but either way the idea faint boggles the mind. Tournaments! With sets and matches and strategy and everything! And an official society! Looks like people are just aching to compete for competing’s sake. Soon we’ll be challenging chickens to tic-tac-toe.

I get very annoyed by people who glibly use “culture” as an explanation to explain why anyone behaves a certain way. “Singaporeans are naturally conservative, because that’s Asian culture”, or even “I’m Asian, therefore I’m conservative”. My argument against using “culture” as an explanation is in part based on the fairly common argument that group explanations do not encompass the whole range of individual behaviour: at some level, there’s an element of free will in which you made the choice to be the way you are. (In any case, don’t people making that statement find it kind of insulting to lump all of Asia together as one mass? Even if “culture” existed I doubt it’s universal throughout Asia.)

“Whatever you do, don’t tell anyone” Queens of the Stone Age, “The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret” Jeremy Zawodny writes about Joyce Park aka “troutgirl”, who was fired from Friendster for blogging. You’d think the creators of a social-networking program would be more accepting of something that increases social linkages such as blogging. But then, Friendster has gone all corporate - they’re now advertising the fact that all the new “Apprentice” participants have profiles. Sigh. I put up with their formerly slow backend (which troutgirl helped improve by converting it to PHP) for so long, and with the fact that the e-mail alerts which tell you you have messages stopped coming in, and then they go and oust an employee for blogging about something which was public knowledge. Talk about alienating your customers.

Random fact: “facetious” is one of the only English words to feature all the vowels in the order AEIOU. “Abstemious” is another. Anyway, just a little word about the links under “fatuous and facetious”: not all are completely facetious. The “34 Million Friends Project” is a fundraising project to help raise money for the United Nations Population Fund after the US government withdrew its financial support (for a loss of $34 million, hence the name). Give a buck or two - help increase access to family planning and reproductive health services throughout the world. (Note: money doesn’t go to abortions, but to programmes such as healthcare to reduce infant mortality.)

You know something? I’d like to see some sense of actual neighbourhoods in Singapore. If I lived in London there’s an actual difference in meaning between someone living in Notting Hill and in Islington. In New York there’s a big difference between living on the Upper East Side, the East Village, or Chelsea. Sure, in Singapore the part of town you live in can reflect wealth, as it does anywhere: so you live in Bukit Timah, you got cash, that sort of thing. But I wish I could make guesses about who you are: that there’d be somewhat more liberal or conservative parts of town, artsier neighbourhoods, quirky neighbourhoods, more family-oriented neighbourhoods - the whole panoply of human types. As it is right now, Singapore is all city, but it’s also all suburbs.

Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, A tale of a fateful trip That started from this tropic port, Aboard this tiny Ship. “The Ballad of Gilligan’s Island”, written by Sherwood Schwartz and George Wyle The Ludwig von Mises Institute has an article on the monetary system of Gilligan’s Island, answering the burning question - why do people still accept the Professor’s dollars when there’s no government on the island to back up the money?

I’ve gotten burned over Cheryl Tiegs, Blown up for Raquel Welch. But when I end up in the hay it’s only hay, Hey Hey. Lee Majors, “The Unknown Stuntman”, theme song for “The Fall Guy” Was thinking about all the random TV shows I watched as a kid. There are loads of shows that everyone watched, of course, but then there are some in there that no one seems to ever talk about anymore. My dad was particularly addicted to “The Fall Guy”, so I watched along. In conversation I’ve heard references to other 80s TV shows, such as “T.J. Hooker”, but nary a peep about a show like “The Fall Guy”, even though it did go on for about 5 seasons. I wonder if this is just a function of the TV-watching habits of the people I hang out with?

Here’s Coconut, the new Westie puppy of my girlfriend and me. A real handful, but also a real joy. He lives with her, half the world away: how I wish I were there.

Wow, just called FedEx Singapore to try to send a letter overnight to the US and had to listen to a completely inept telephone person. It’s not that he didn’t answer my questions, but basically he couldn’t seem to comprehend that I’m pretty much a newbie to FedEx and didn’t know their procedures. Hence such scintillating exchanges as:

Back in Singapore, and this blog should be back in form soon. Meanwhile, I just finished reading Schott’s Original Miscellany, which is an incredible book for trivia buffs like me: it’s like the compendia I used to read as a child, what with diverse info from the Mohs scale to the hair colour of Miss America winners (70% brunette, roughly). A scintillating read.

“Child Pimp & Ho Costumes”. This anti-PC swing has gone too far.

My stupid invention #1: fake fake meat. It looks like tofu… but is made of meat. For when you’re dining with vegetarians.

In Indiana now. Saw my first “John Kerry for President” sign in this red state. May be more intermittent in my posting. But I’ll say this: the nomenclature of Indiana towns has a great ring to it. I knew about French Lick from my Boston days (Larry Bird, yeah!), but it was nice to see Bean Blossom on the road signs.

Sex and the City has finally started showing in Singapore, “only” months after the show finished its run in the US.

Here’s a funny article on the day Google went down. Frustrating as all heck. It was the day I learnt that Yahoo and MSN searches are nowhere near as good.

In a fit of consolidation, I’ve created an Arts section for this blog. So now there’s Delta Sierra Arts for film and music reviews (since I don’t only watch films at the Singapore Film Festival), Singapore Sox Fan for baseball writing, and good ol’ dsng.net here for random thoughts on life, the universe, and everything. Including punctuation and grammar. Especially punctuation and grammar.