Happy birthday
Dooce’s baby girl Leta is one year old. Just reading that makes me go all, awwwwww, aren’t babies great when they aren’t yours?
Dooce’s baby girl Leta is one year old. Just reading that makes me go all, awwwwww, aren’t babies great when they aren’t yours?
The McKinsey Quarterly posits an explanation for the ‘jobless recovery’ in the United States (bugmenot).
My old flatmates Kris and Mark appear to be leading a double life. Dastardly.
What does a Malaysian entrepreneur do when he spots an unused Soviet air base? Build a tropical lagoon resort, of course.
I know it’s just a brochure, but Escape Magazine makes the Highlands and islands look so good I want to take up Gaelic.
This is, without question, the funniest post I have read on mrbrown (and he is one helluva funny guy). Unfortunately, it’s funny because it’s so unbelievable that ‘Melts in your mouth, not in your hand’ Lee, king of the hill, can phrase his words so threateningly to the type of Singaporean the government wants to flourish: the smart, thinking graduate:
You don’t put your life at risk in calling me a despot. Well, in order to have your views heard, if you profoundly believe that you have that passion, I say stake your life, take on with your duties, come out, put your programme, sort it out.
Dude*, you’re, like, 80-something. You’ve done it all. You’ve been applauded over and over again. This kid is a quarter of your age and has all these ideals about making Singapore a better place, be they misguided or not (I wouldn’t know). And you tell him not to risk his life because he dared to use the word ‘despot’ in your direction?
And they wonder why so many are packing their bags and leaving. I suppose if not enough young Singaporeans are grateful for the wonderful opportunities we’ve been given (how dare we think for ourselves), they could always import more talent from China. Same same, what.
I think mrbrown’s Singlish is getting to me. Good practice for going back on vacation, hor?
(Kong simi? Outside, settle = What did you say to me? Let’s go outside and settle this manner like gentlemen.)
* Am I the first to call the M&M ‘Dude’?
What is the geekiest part of your music collection?
It’s a toss up between The Best of John Farnham and The Best of Jacky Cheung. John Farnham did a song with Australian pop group Human Nature, and Toby is so… yummy. My friends were right into Jacky Cheung back in the late nineties and I was bitten by the ‘I don’t understand a word you’re singing, but it’s nice anyway’ bug.
What is your secret guaranteed weeping movie?
Bed of Roses, starring Christian Slater and Mary Stuart Masterson. I haven’t seen it in years. I bet it’d still make me cry, though. Er, it’s not so secret anymore, is it?
If you could have plastic surgery, what would you have done?
Lasik. I’m so shortsighted.
Do you have a completely irrational fear?
Monsters hiding in dark rooms. I blame my uncle who used to play a game with us that, oddly enough, had him being a monster in a dark room who would find us and tickle us to death.
What is the little physical habit that gives away your insecure moments?
A look of intense anxiety?
Do you know anyone famous?
No, but I met Jimmy Barnes once. I never get tired of that story.
Who would play you in a movie?
Lori Petty, because I worshipped her in Tank Girl. Whether or not she’d be willing to play me is another story.
What do you carry with you at all times?
Wallet, mobile, keys, camera.
What do you miss most about being a kid?
The lack of fear.
What colour is your bedroom?
White. The flat’s a rental.
What was the last song you were listening to?
A cover of a really familiar song by The Beautiful South.
Have you ever been in a play?
Yes. I was guilt-tripped into it. I hate being on stage, and I’ll never do it again.
Have you ever been in love?
Surely.
Do you like yourself and believe in yourself?
On most days.
Do transient, homeless, or starving people sometimes annoy you?
Only when they are part of a syndicate and come up to me, will not leave me alone, and touch me. Can you tell I live in China?
What is your ideal marriage location?
Vegas. In one of those chapels with an Elvis impersonator as the celebrant.
Which musical instrument do you wish you could play?
Well, I learned the drums for a few months before I realised I hated going on stage. I still like percussion instruments.
Favorite fabric?
Cotton, baby.
What’s the one language you want to learn?
Where do I start? I’m not good with languages, so I want to, but never will, learn Spanish, German, and French.
How do you eat an apple?
I start by chomping off all the skin, the chew off the flesh in the middle before attacking the sides.
What do you order at a bar?
Gin and tonic, Tsingtao beer, or Cranberry Bacardi Breezer (if I don’t really feel like a drink).
Have you ever pierced your body parts?
Erm. Yeah. About ten too many times for my mum’s liking.
Do you have tattoos?
Erm. Hell yeah.
Do you drive a stick?
Yes. Unfortunately, when I go home, my mum drives an automatic and I haven’t driven a manual transmission since about 2001.
Favorite trait of the opposite sex?
Humour and intelligence. Muscular legs.
What kind of watch do you wear?
A Fossil digital / analog with Chinese characters on it. My long-suffering first generation Seiko Kinetic is waiting for me, post-service, in Singapore.
Most frivolous purchase?
White boots. WTF, dude.
What are you best at cooking?
Heh. Funny question. I can heat canned soup really well.
Would you ever go out dressed like the opposite sex?
Sure. I didn’t spend my childhood (and on certain days, my adulthood) being mistaken for a boy for nothing.
What’s one car you will never buy?
A Ferrari. If I were to splash out in a full-on way, I’m getting a Jag.
What kind of books do you like to read?
Historical fiction and non-fiction. Crime fiction and non-fiction.
If you won the lottery, what would you do?
Quit my job and be self-employed.
Do you cry in front of your friends?
I try not to.
What’s one thing you like to do alone?
Read.
Are you a giver or a taker?
I dunno.
When’s the last time you cried?
I think I welled up a bit watching The Majestic a couple of weeks ago. I’m a real sap.
How many drinks before you’re tipsy sleepy?
Only a couple for sleepiness.
This meme copied from Tym Blogs Too!
Two years ago, when I told anyone that I was moving to China, everyone responded with, “China? Really? Can you speak Chinese?”
At the time, I could barely string two words together in Chinese — not because I didn’t know the language, I studied it for 11 years at school, ostensibly as a first language (and failing at it most years). Singapore is not a place where I was (or currently am, Thank the sweet, sweet Lord) required to speak Chinese, Australia even less so when I moved there for university. So when I started my life as a working adult, everyone assumed I did not know the language and bitched freely in Chinese in front of me.
Back to my point. Moving to China has, to re-phrase my mother’s wise words, forced me to dredge up rusty memories of Chinese lessons (and private tuition — and still, I failed at it most years) and try to converse with the locals. Being a part-time English teacher in China enabled me to pretend I didn’t understand Chinese, so I didn’t have to speak it.
Too bad I hated being an English teacher. I don’t know how you teachers do it. I do not have the patience that is so necessary in education. Maybe that’s why I failed the Chinese subject most years at school.
My first months in Xiamen, therefore, were an absolute comedy routine for the Chinese people who had to deal with my clumsy, primary-school level, English-grammared attempts. It took me an hour to get a SIM card for my mobile phone because I didn’t know what SIM card was in Chinese, I didn’t know what SMS was in Chinese, I didn’t know how to say international direct dialing in Chinese. Taxi drivers couldn’t reconcile the facts that my pronounciation was good, but I was unable to say much more than I came from Singapore.
Have I told you I failed Chinese most years that I studied it at school?
The boyfriend wishes he would make more of an effort to learn the language, — he can’t even get a haircut without me to say ‘shorter there’ or ‘leave that part long’ (no, he’s not got a mullet). He can now understand bits of Chinese, but is nowhere near the level of holding even the simplest conversation. He always asks me to tell him what this or that is in Chinese, but that’s about the extent of my tutoring him.
As for me, my grasp on the language seems a little less tenuous today. No longer am I gulping and stammering as I try to answer someone in Chinese — I can respond in Chinese (that is peppered with English) and most people can understand me! Way to go team!
This morning I found myself thinking about a project I’ve been busy on, working with locals who do not speak English. As I’ve spent almost all my time dealing with this project, I was thinking about it — in Chinese. Now, my conversation and writing skills may have improved, but my vocabulary is still pitifully small, so my thoughts were cut short fairly quickly. And I immediately thought (in English), Oh man, I’m thinking in Chinese. Next thing I’ll be changing my mobile phone system language to Chinese and start singing karaoke or something.
I should read Collision Detection more often. A 29 January post, linking to the New York Times, finds a possible relation between a natural predisposition to fidgeting and staying thin:
The difference translates into about 350 calories a day, enough to produce a weight loss of 30 to 40 pounds in one year without trips to the gym – if only heavy people could act more restless, like thin ones.
…
“People with obesity are tremendously efficient,” Dr. Levine said. “Any opportunity not to waste energy, they take. If you think about it that way, it all makes sense. As soon as they have an opportunity to sit down and not waste those calories, they do.”
Neil complains that I ‘shoogle’ so much – I constantly fidget and move about, even when I’m sitting at the computer. My legs vibrate up and down when I sit for an extended period of time, annoying people in movie theatres. Superstitious Chinese tell me I’m shaking my luck away.
Looks like I’m shaking excess pounds away, too. Not that I have any excess pounds to begin with, but I do sometimes eat like a 250-pound rugby player who’s just completed a fast.
So.
I, like, have this project I’m doing. Last week went something like this:
Monday. Wake up go to work go do project have some dinner go to sleep.
Tuesday. Wake up go to work go do project have some dinner go to sleep.
Wednesday. Wake up go to work go do project have some dinner go to sleep.
Thursday. Wake up go to work go do project have some dinner go to sleep.
Friday. Wake up go to work go do project have some dinner go to sleep.
Saturday. Wake up go do project have some lunch go back to project have some dinner go to sleep.
Sunday. Wake up go do project have some lunch go back to project have some dinner go to sleep.
This week, because the Chinese government is so kindly giving us a one-week Chinese New Year holiday, it will go something like this:
Monday. Wake up go to work go do project have some dinner go to sleep.
Tuesday. Wake up go to work go do project have some dinner go to sleep.
Wednesday. Wake up go to work go do project have some dinner go to sleep.
Thursday. Wake up go to work hopefully finish work without overtime assuming project is temporarily finished have some dinner go to sleep.
Friday. Wake up go to work hopefully finish work without overtime assuming project is temporarily finished have some dinner go to sleep.
Saturday. Wake up go to work hopefully finish work without overtime have some dinner go to sleep.
Sunday. Wake up go to work hopefully finish work without overtime have some dinner go to sleep.
I’m not one of those people who thrive on deadlines, loving the whooshing sound they make as they go by (Douglas Adams is a genius). I meet deadlines, but I’m generally a laid back kind of person. Who likes to plan. Weird, I know.
Anyway.
Neil gets a few minutes’ attention with breakfast and our goodnight smooch. Thank Christ we’re going on vacation for a fortnight next week, otherwise Neil will start feeling that I’m not paying enough attention to him and he’ll get broody and start looking at me with hurt eyes and then he’ll meet some dashing young doctor and start an affair and when I find out I’ll be upset but it’ll be all my fault, and we’ll go through this painful tug-of-war and then one of us will die in a horrible accident where our body is never found and the other will then forget all the bad feelings and mourn, but then the dead one comes back, having actually survived the circumstances but has lost all memories and marries the other one’s deadliest enemy.
Yeah. Um. So. Vacations are good, no?
After a sustained Trackback spam attack, which I think actually slowed my server down to the point that administration pages weren’t loading properly, I’ve just come home to delete the Trackback script from all my installations of WordPress.
Help Dixon Fong, whose father died while on a relief mission for victims of the tsunami. His mother has been in a coma since 2002, so he is truly on his own.
In observance of my favourite Chinese New Year sweetie, here are a bunch of recipes for pineapple tarts from Snog Blog. Mmm.
Buster the rabbit meets gay couples in Vermont? Well, I never! Next you’ll have kids thinking Santa doesn’t exist. What is this world coming to, I say?!