The Middle Years (2006-2009)

Meanwhile, Time’s “Person of the Year” is You. Or Me. Or something. Somehow I feel cheated by that choice. I know it’s one way of encapsulating the explosion of user-generated content and its influence, but it’s becoming a bit of a Time magazine cop-out to use a group (like last year’s “Good Samaritans” Bill & Melinda Gates and Bono) or a generic figure (the American soldier in 2003). Surely they could’ve gone like Salon and named a figure - S. R. Sidarth, as much as anyone else, helped show the influence of YouTube in 2006 - turning an offhand, obscure insult like “macaca” into ultimately something that helped bring down a would-be Presidential contender and possibly influenced the control of the Senate.

I have to say I was very, very skeptical about the film version of Charlotte’s Web. When I think about the magic of that book - or even that sheer expression of terror on Wilbur’s face in the illustrations when Charlotte is dying - it makes me well up, and I had my doubts about how much any film version could do it justice. But the reviews look good, and the preview does seem to show a film that hews to the spirit of E.B. White’s classic. Wilbur looks appropriately cute, Charlotte looks like a real spider (rather than some cartoony one), and I do like the use of some distinctive voices - Steve Buscemi, Andre Benjamin from Outkast, Reba McEntire. So… please let this be good please let this be good. Some pig, indeed.

Now that’s a really good use of long arms - World’s tallest man saves dolphins. As Cool Looking Stuff points out, this ain’t even the first time a tall person has used his arms to save a dolphin. Tangentially, I’m kind of surprised the current tallest man in the world is only 7" 9’ - I would have guessed 8 feet.

Was rewatching Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask) and realised the Gene Wilder’s doctor character was named Doug Ross, just like George Clooney’s character in ER. But I guess George Clooney’s character never lost his job for sleeping with a sheep.

Because I like allusions, references (although I’ve used the Joyce Carol Oates one before), the sense of the poem as non-hermetic unit but rather part of a whole literary world: excerpted from Lit (or: to the scientist I am not speaking to any more), by Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz

Watched Casino Royale yesterday. Daniel Craig is an awesome Bond. There’s a certain unease in his smile that seems right for the part of the proto-Bond, a not-quite-all-there double-0 in the making. And I liked the simultaneous nods to tradition - the 1964 Aston Martin, Bond making up the ridiculous “Stephanie Broadchester” name - with the debunking of it (Bartender: “Shaken or stirred?” Bond: “Do I look like I give a damn?”).

Apparently polonium-210 can be found in cigarettes. (Here’s another cite.) Good lord.

Some pieces on design: The roller toaster looks great. An awesome piece of Singaporean design. A rave review of the Tesla Roadster. I hope someday to get a chance to drive the car. It’s really nice to see that it replaces the internal combustion engine not just for environmental reasons but for performance.

Hey, Pret has opened in Singapore! File that under “things I missed while I was gone”, I guess. Or things I missed from elsewhere while I was gone, reading that phrase another way. Mmm, sandwiches.

Hey Ya!, acoustic - as I’ve said before, the lyrics to the song are incredibly sad, and this version plays up the melancholy.

There was something about the quality of the colours in the Kenyan countryside - the richness of the blue, the starkness of the yellows. I do like the solitude of this shot.

Without a doubt one of the most visually stunning things I’ve ever seen - the clouds reflected in the still surface of Lake Nakuru. Not sure how much a photo can do it justice - you just see it when you come around the bend of the cliff and all you can do is look in awe. The brown areas represent, unfortunately, the apparent retreat of the lake due to prolonged drought, possibly caused by climate change.

Am back in Singapore, trying to recover from a whirlwind series of work trips - 3 continents, 2 days. Think in the last 10 days I’ve seen savannah, desert, jungle, and temperate forests. Can’t talk about work, of course, but I’ll try to post the best pictures from what leisure time I eked out. Or you can entertain yourself first with my Kenya Flickr set.

Good Lord, I’m sitting in the lobby of my hotel in Nairobi (they moved me to a new room with no wireless Internet, so now I’ve got to use the wireless from the lobby) and suddenly in the background Toto’s “Africa” comes on.

Here’s the song stuck in my head after hearing it about 5 times tonight over dinner at Carnivore: Jambo Jambo, Jambo bwana, Habari gani, Mzuri sana. Wageni, Wakaribishwa, Kenya yetu Hakuna Matata.

Am in Nairobi now, for the annual climate change conference. My first time in Africa. Walked out of the airport into an incredible sight - people singing because some of their friends had come home. It’s a pity that I won’t have much time to catch the sights - glancing quickly at Time Out’s Nairobi guide, I really wish I could see the National Museum and the Sheldrick Animal Orphanage. But apparently in my one day off I’ll get to see the flamingoes of Nakuru National Park.

Promoting something I’m helping in organising… feel free to show up, bring friends :) Youth and Climate Change: Making a World of Difference A Clean & Green Week Youth Forum with

The Girls’s Costume Warehouse clip, just for Halloween. That “And… frog” line always gets me.

The woeful tale of Aleksey Vayner, I-banking applicant. Hell, he’s even cited as an example of “what not to do” in writing a CV. Sure, he’s a Yalie, and Yalies have been known to tell a fib or two… but faux inter-school rivalry aside, no matter how weird/sad that video resume was, it certainly shouldn’t have been leaked…