The Middle Years (2006-2009)

Wow, I went away to Oxford for a conference for over a week and in the interim my credit card expires so Godaddy took away my domain for a bit! Apologies for those of you missing the site. All’s well now. Especially since the Red Sox won the AL East.

According to this CNN interview (and probably old news, but I haven’t been as au courant with the celeb news as I’d like), Scarlett Johansson has an album of Tom Waits covers coming out:

Watched The Departed over the weekend, and my thought was: now this is how you do an adaptation. Scorsese at his finest - no one mixes the sheer brutality and the lyricism of violence like he does. Top notch acting all around, and some beautiful cinematography - I thought the final scene was a marvel of composition, and then I watched parts again and noticed all the “X"s in the scene whenever someone died. And for anyone’s who spent any time in Boston, the clear echoes of Whitey Bulger are compelling.

I watched Will Ferrell in Stranger Than Fiction a couple of nights ago, probably the first time I can remember Ferrell in a role other than “overgrown fratboy” - indeed, here he plays an IRS auditor, so he’s very much the epitome of the straight man here. It pleasantly surprised me that he held his own acting against Emma Thompson, Dustin Hoffman, and Maggie Gyllenhaal (who, incidentally, I’m convinced has one of the sexiest voices in Hollywood).

Just noting down for my own memory some good artwork that I saw (largely in Sydney, at the Museum of Contemporary Art’s The Hours exhibition), before I forget it: Matthew Ngui’s work, in general Nell, “Unlimited Radiance” - that pic doesn’t do justice to the qualities of this work (I’m not sure any pic can), which shimmies and sparkles Mathew Jones, “The New York Daily News on the day before the Stonewall Riot copied by hand from microfilm records”, 1996 (Link) Vik Muniz, “I Am What I Read”, “Che (Black Bean Soup)” Betsabee Romero, “Requiem for the Unknown Pedestrian II” - tires engraved with musical notes to create a kind of sheet-music print Los Carpinteros, “Downtown (Centro)” - furniture as landscape Nicola Constantino, the Human Furriery series - items covered in silicone nipples and anuses - the NY Times called it “sensationally tasteless”. Santiago Sierra, “465 personas remuneradas”, 1999 Nadin Ospina, Disney characters as fake Pre-Columbian art And something whose name I can’t remember, but involved boomerangs with Spanish expletives carved into them (I think).

This map made me go, woah. I mean, I know the US is an economic juggernaut, and I should expect this, but it still surprised me that New Jersey’s GDP is the same as Russia’s. (Based on their data, Singapore’s economy is the size of South Carolina’s, at US$121 billion.)

I came back from Sydney carting 6 boxes of Krispy Kremes (6 in each box). At the airport, the security guy spotted the boxes and the following exchange ensued: Security guy (in mock-stern fashion): “Hmm… you know you’re not supposed to take more than 100ml of liquids or creams into the plane”. Me (quick on the uptake): “No cream in these ones - they’re glazed!” Security guy: “Attempt to get doughnuts foiled again, damn”

As astute followers of this blog (um, if any are out there) will notice, posting frequency has declined lately… fortunately, I don’t think I’ve stopped listening to new music - although I’m not sure that listening to Stile Antico’s compline album counts as ’new music’ - but it is brutal, finding time both to experience the world and to write on the experiences.

The Sydney Conservatorium of Music, (re-)designed by Chris Johnson and the architectural practice of Daryl Jackson, Robin Dyke and Robert Tanner, completed in 2001. I like the castle / palm juxtaposition - nicely incongruous.

There are many things to like about this camera - the fast shutter speed, the balance between control and overloading functions, the general small size (although if you put it in your pocket, it’s noticeably a bit heavier than, say, the Olympus mju 780, which I was also considering). Beyond the great picture quality, the coolest part I have to say is that when viewing photos, the LCD screen rotates its image to match how you’re orienting the camera. That and the fact that the face-detect auto-focus can actually track faces, say if your subject is moving her head.

The last time I was in Sydney was post-JC, way back in December 1996: a gawky kid, 14 kg lighter. It was my first taste of independent travel - sure, I’d been overseas without my parents before, but even then others had helped set the itinerary. Sydney 1996 was the first time I ever planned a trip, decided where to go.

Jumpin’ sturgeons. Somehow this reminded me of those scenes in Asterix comics where fish fights broke out…

Wow, great news. Just last night I was listening to an old BBC podcast where Johnston’s parents were wishing him a happy birthday to him in captivity, and it was pretty heart-wrenching.

Was at the National Stadium area, too, on the last day of that grand old dame. Sure, it was definitely showing its age, but I’ll have fond memories of watching Malaysia Cup games there (the Abbas Saad -Alistair Edwards days, or even the T Pathmanathan days). And I’ll remember the two National Day Parades I was conscripted into helping out with in that area.

Man, it’s been a blistering few days - in between work and “last chance at a 5% sales tax” moments there’s been close to zero blogging time. But I did get caught up on iPhone hype news (and read the David Pogue / Walt Mossberg reviews). Still waiting for a review from someone who texts on a regular basis to see how the text input works - somehow, watching Pogue’s podcasts and reading the Mossberg profile in the New Yorker, I don’t see them as regular SMS users, though I could be wrong.

Yes, I’m back in Singapore and despite coming down with a case of a post-flight cold/fever, I shall be liveblogging for the New Media @ Arts House event today, on the “Future of Business 2.0”. Promises to be an enlightening event.

Beatles reference in the subject in honour of the 40th anniversary of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. But yes, am going to be travelling again. Regular blogging service will resume in a week…

Rihanna’s “Umbrella” may be my candidate for the song with the best beat but most overwrought lyrics of this year. That beat’s so damn catchy, but she takes the umbrella metaphor and fair beats the life out of it.

By the way - while this is hardly anywhere near a food blog - Buono, the new Italian place in Lichfield Road, is excellent, and worth the trek to the Serangoon Gardens area. Still thinking about their seafood soup. Almost like a fine wine, in that it had such a complex interplay of flavours.

I have to say, one thing I had totally not expected when I got my iPod was how hooked I would get on podcasts. And not just the podcasts I might’ve expected to get hooked on (NPR’s All Songs Considered, the Economist, the Ethicist - which is actually funnier when read, and ESPN’s Baseball Today, among others), but the language ones. I’m currently alternating between Coffee Break Spanish, trying to pick up rudimentary Spanish, and Deutsche Welle’s “Langsam gesprochene Nachrichten” - the news, read in German, slowly. It’s funny and sort of surreal hearing about, say, the G-8 summit in German while walking down Sims Avenue.