The Middle Years (2006-2009)

Went to the Oh! Open House on Friday. Great to tour Niven Road shophouses. But to be honest the works that caught my eye were in the companion exhibition at Wilkie Edge - “Blink” by George Wong and a couple of works by Marissa Keller.

Scientific American’s 60-Second Psych podcast points out an interesting study from the academic journal Reading and Writing that shows that texting / SMSing does not have any impact on spelling ability. Indeed, apparently those who spell well in standard English spell well in “textese”.

Tessa Wong’s piece on how every mall in Singapore tends to have the same shops these days is right on the money. Although it leads to questions about whether malls should be the sites of diversity, versus individual shops that extend out onto the street. Even the festival markets of the US - Quincy Market etc. - seem to have lots of chains in my experience.

Saw that District 10, the restaurant, was reviewed in the Sunday Times today. Agree that their ribs could do with a touch less mustard. But my pressing question is: why is it called District 10 when its postal sector is 22 and thus it is very much in District 9?

Yeah, it’s a bit early and opinions may change by December, but this is my current round up of the decade, largely on artistic merit, with the inevitable dollop of the personal:

There’s another Final Destination? Each sequel makes a lie out of the title of its predecessor.

I’ve heard/seen the Swell Season’s Tiny Desk Concert so many times the songs feel like old favourites. Songs from their upcoming Strict Joy album (I like “Back Broke”, in particular), plus an encore version of “When Your Mind’s Made Up”. Lovely stuff, as always.

An iPhone tip: When I was travelling last month I needed handy maps of places but didn’t want to pay international data roaming costs on my iPhone. My quick and dirty solution was to load up the maps needed pretrip or when I had a wifi connection, press the power/home button combo to take screenshots of the maps, and essentially use the Photos page as a maps page when I was walking around. Not elegant, but certainly money saving.

Watched Marley and Me yesterday. Embarrassing how soppy it made me but I suppose it was made for dog lovers. Marley and Me, as summarised by the Human League: Don’t chew on me baby. Don’t chew on me oh oh.

I have Saturday 1 Aug tickets for the Reduced Shakespeare Company, looking to swap for Sunday 2 Aug. Any takers? Leave a comment.

I see the US news has picked up on the Burger King ad campaign in Singapore. Didn’t know it was a Singapore-only thing, thought it was part of the weirdness that is Crispin Porter & Bogusky’s BK ad campaign.

Billy Joel is separating from his wife. Egregious violation of the “half-his-age-plus-7” rule, methinks.

Yes, I downloaded the new iPhone OS last night in a fit of insomnia. The big changes - Voice Memo, cut/copy/paste, tethering - are great: much needed, and much-talked about.

Can’t wait for the iPhone software update. Cut/copy/paste is a must-have, while Voice memos, tethering, Stereo bluetooth, and sync notes all look like great features.

I sat down last night to read a book (David Rothkopf’s Superclass, if you must know) and realised, for all my endless reading of magazines and listening to audio I hadn’t actually soaked in the pleasure of pure unadulterated reading of books for a while.

Megan McArdle at the Atlantic has some interesting follow-up on what was not in Edmund Andrews’ (fascinating) book/NYT piece (“My Personal Credit Crisis”), specifically on his wife’s bankruptcies.

Tried out the much-hyped Wolfram Alpha and wasn’t too impressed with the simple results of a date search. Maybe it’s just me, but the difference between today (May 21) and Feb 24 should be 2 months and 27 days (i.e. counting from April 24), not 2 months and 25 days as Wolfram states.

Hey, they did what I thought they’d do on American Idol and have duets. Great idea. Although I have no idea why the judges were that harsh on Allison and not harsh enough on Danny. Hope she’s not in trouble for “talking back”. Funny that voters punish that. It ain’t homeroom.

The last six months have been the most gut-wrenching ones of my life. Watching my mother go in and out of hospital; watching various tubes inserted to help her eat, breathe, all the common functions we take for granted; gaining the false hope of a discharge only to have her return to the hospital; and finally, the traumatic last 2 weeks, where the infection finally got the better of her.

April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. I. The Burial of the Dead.