May 2005 Archives

I just had one of the best birthday dinners ever, at Zuko, a new restaurant opened by an enterprising ex-colleague. It was good seeing everyone again. You could spout absolute nonsense and everybody would know what you were punning about.

Anyway, it's worth checking the restaurant out for good Modern European fare. One of the chefs worked in Gordon Ramsay's kitchen, and he was also part of the original Les Amis. You can find it along Upper East Coast Road, after the Starbucks and Gelare Cafe.

[Excuse my blurred photographs. As you can see, the 02 mini isn't much use in dim light.]

He made an excellent foie gras, crispy on the outside and absolutely melting on the inside. Served on a bed of mushrooms.

I also sampled the scallops with spinach leaves and the seared tuna (above). Nice bits of chilli padi, if you like the spice (I do).

For the main course, I had the Hokubee beef, air-flown from Australia and reared by the Japanese, and if you bite into it (medium rare's best), you can tell why. It's leaner than Kobe, and much more affordable, but still quite succulent.

For dessert, I had the apple crumble and ice cream, good warm and cold combination. Even the crust was tasty. I sampled a bit of the tiramisu, which is the house special.

I also got what I wanted - strike 3 items off my Amazon wishlist! I had such trouble finding Sweetback's Stage 2 at my usual haunts, That CD Shop and HMV, I was relieved that my ex-colleagues chose to give that to me. I think the video of Aya in the song, 'Lover', got me hooked despite the fact that most fans feel their first album was better.

Next is Erykah Badu's Live album. First track, Rimshot, begins with a super-chilled out version of Miles Davis's So What. Maybe I should let my band members hear this version before the concert! Great album.

Lastly, Thievery Corporation's Sounds from the Thievery Hi-Fi. I loved their other album, Sounds from the Verve Hi-Fi, a compilation of latin jazz tracks. A quick skim through Thievery Hi-Fi tells me that this album would fit well in Habitat (cool furniture chain I frequented in the UK). In fact, the track 'Scene At The Open Air Market' was used in a previous Flash intro of Wallpaper Magazine. At least now I know the name of the song!

My colleagues also got me Zero 7's Simple Things remix album. I think I have to get used to this one. There are a lot of ideas in here, to soup up my own productions.

This is extremely 'boliao'* but I just discovered how to transform voices in Logic Pro 7. It is extremely simple and requires a click or two with the mouse.

For a limited period of time, readers can post requests here, making me say silly things, and choosing to convert them into the tones of any of the following:

Aliens (single voice or choir), Klingon, Robot, a singing Donkey, Darth Vader, Chipmunk (this is really, really cute), Devil (low growl), Howling Wolf (somehow it made my voice sound like Miss Piggy). There are many other effects but I suppose these are the more interesting ones.

Sound clips will be converted into MP3 format and exhibited here. As with the rest of this site, my Creative Commons Licence will apply to all sound clips.

* To non-Singaporean readers, this word means 'having nothing better to do'.

Updates

In response to Albert's first request: Here is Darth Vader, asking you to answer the phone:

The breathing doesn't sound right and needs more work, but I think I managed to tweak the 'Answer the phone!' bit, low enough to sound like a male voice.

[Hey! After listening to the mp3 file, if you have a 'Back' button on your mouse browser, click on it. When I did it on my Mac, it played my sound clip backwards!]

More Vader stuff, since some of you are into that sort of thing. Here's Vader saying, "This is Lord Vader. I am BUSY at the moment. Please leave a message (sarcastic tone)."

Sorry Shin, I don't have a Smurf effect. Would you settle for a Chipmunk?

Just got back from Jazz rehearsal. It's been going along well, although I think my right arm needs the attentions of a masseuse after playing several rounds of Blue Rondo.

Kottonwool sent me a link to Penguin Books' Remixed competition, where you can download soundbytes from their audio books, mix in your own music and upload it to their website. I've been working on a submission for the past two nights (and wee hours of the morning). A little dark electronica would do just fine.

[Now listening to: Miles Davis, Kind of Blue album]

Congratulations for the amazing comeback. Surely when you were 3 goals down, you'd think there was no more hope. Even Maradona didn't think so. Then it was time for the other captain to score, and the tables started to turn. Then your goalkeeper did the dance of his predecessor, confounding the penalty takers, and history was made.

I didn't manage to stay awake at 2am, and when I woke up I told myself to take it easy when I did hear the news on the radio. However I didn't hear anything about the results on the way to work, but a quick visit to the BBC website showed me that wild dreams do come true.

And this is coming from an Arsenal fan. Congratulations again, Liverpool!

Now the focus will be on whether they will be allowed to defend their title. Emotions aside, surely Everton would feel hard done by if they were bypassed for next year's Champion's League.

The only thing on my mind, actually, is the Champion's League final.

I was already pretty chuffed to hear that Arsenal picked up the FA Cup. My Shanghai hotel's Star Sports channel hung for days and nobody bothered to fix it, so I had to reply on SMS reports. Any mishap that happened to me when I was China, was swiftly erased in my mind whenever I told myself, "It's all right. Arsenal won the FA Cup."

I got back to Singapore and watched the replay. Man U were definitely the better players. But for once I have nothing bad to say about Jens Lehmann, who probably played the best game in his life. If he keeps it up like this, Oliver Kahn had better watch out!

I've decided to spend my birthday evening at Alpha. After all, God is my maker and why not spend time with Him and those who want to learn more about Him! [Of course, a lot of participants might actually decide to stay at home and watch the American Idol finals instead. Wednesday is gonna be a biiiiig day]

And to be in Istanbul again ... one of my favourite cities! It will be an electrifying match.

And this time, my heart will be with Liverpool. It's strange because I support Arsenal with my head, and I've always respected AC Milan, but somehow the Merseysiders have a sort of romantic history to them, that whenever they appear as underdogs I tend to support them.

Well, we shall see...

An extremely long post on what I did in Shanghai, which then digresses into an analysis of Chinese population trends, the environment, health and brand positioning. You have been warned...

H and A got married yesterday and we Bristolians had a great time at the dinner. I was really happy for the two of them, and H was moved to tears on a few occasions. I wondered if I too would ever experience such overpowering love for someone else.

The ballroom was smaller than expected, but that made it more intimate. The food was good; the company, even better! Though I'm usually not a dessert fan, I must say the chocolate mousse with a crunchy wafer base, encased in a milk chocolate heart, was the best thing ever (yes, I punned that we could 'Eat our hearts out'). And though I haven't seen many schoolmates in years, it was amazing how we could start talking as though we left off yesterday!

YM and her other half, V came over to Singapore, and so did Y from Mauritius. MH also came down from Malaysia. We had people on our table who've never come to Singapore before. The groom's parents were there, of course - his mother seemed to have a sense of humour. And I finally got to get a glimpse of his much-fabled beautiful sister!

As friends hopped from table to table, talking about everything under the sun, I looked around me and wondered, has it been nearly 5 years since we graduated? How infrequent have our gatherings become! Must we get married in order to see our friends again? Noo.....

GY brought his baby around - a cute, chubby boy, less than a year old, who liked grabbing things (taking after his father I see - ahem!). Some of us are still amazed that he was the first in our group to settle down.

Of course, seeing how many of my schoolmates actually DID become lawyers, the numbers thinned down gradually as a few of them went back to the OFFICE. One of them mentioned he still worked past midnight.

And I'll be off to Shanghai in a few hours' time, so ta ta for now and have a good weekend!

To make up for not posting in the last week (some Daily Weblog this is, eh), here are a couple of other updates:

My back. I saw a company doctor last week, who diagnosed me in about half a minute as having 'muscular spasms' in my back. I am quite certain the muscle aches are actually a reaction to the real source of pain, which is still coming from a particular part of my SPINE.

Anyway, as muscular spasms sound less fatal than spinal tumours or slipped discs, I was happy to accept her speedy prognosis and take the prescribed painkillers-cum-muscle relaxants, even though they make me drowsy. I was also given some gel to rub on my back, to relax the muscles. If the pain persists after my course is completed, I will go and see another doctor.

The 02 Mini. It's doing fine, although there were some initial problems with memory allocation. I set the camera, Office Documents and other programs to save files into my storage card and not into the device itself, which has limited memory.

Christian geeks may be interested to note that I installed Pocket e-Sword, a free Bible program for Pocket PC which has been working very well. The only problem is that it doesn't have the NIV version, but I'm fine with KJV and lots of interesting commentaries and bible dictionaries that you can install separately.

I'm not going to tinker around with the 02 Mini anymore - it gets the job done, and shouldn't be an end in itself. It's there to get myself organised, it's there so I have a quick reference when studying God's Word, and that's that.

... that's most likely the name of my new jazz band. Considering that we have little else in common save for the fact that each member comes from a different Anglican Church in Singapore. The drummer's from St John's-St Margaret's, the bassist is from St James', the second keyboardist is from St Andrew's and yours truly, from St George's.

We had the best rehearsal ever this evening, followed by a trip to the nearest neighbourhood kopi tiam (coffee shop). I was glad we had time to do some 'bonding' outside of the studio for once. I think bonding time is very important for any team, be it at work or at play.

When we first got together, I wasn't sure how we were going to pull through considering we were quite ... different. Our bassist and drummer had children that were closer to my age! And I was the only female, and the youngest member as well.

I liked listening to the new radio station, Lush 99.5, whereas the other keyboardist said of it, "You've heard one song, you've heard it all." I also didn't like hearing people putting down Macintoshes as not having software to make music with (haven't you heard of Garageband or Logic or Reason?). I thought we were off to a pretty bad start, actually.

Ironically, my teacher decided to appoint me as leader and I don't think I was particulary dedicated to the cause. Especially because I was involved with Alpha, the worship band, and my own company choir rehearsals.

But tonight, something clicked. We made mistakes, but we kept in time and came out grinning at the end of every song.

Anyway, our concert's in Woodlands (Fuchun CC Concert Hall) on 25 June 2005. Tickets are $5 each, to cover rental costs. There will be performances by several bands consisting of music students, starting with the most junior and ending with the professionals (our teachers). My band is playing just before the professionals.

We will be playing three songs, Dave Brubeck's Blue Rondo a la Turk, Miles Davis's So What, and my own composition, Restless in Rio.

The first two classics will be played close to the original styles. We don't have enough stage time to play Ronny Jordan's version of So What, although we did manage to pull it off during rehearsals.

We only started on Blue Rondo a few weeks ago, and it is the piece I'm dreading the most, because of the fast pace and heavy chords:

However, I learnt tonight that Blue Rondo has some history with my teacher. He had entered a competition in his younger days and won first prize for playing the piece. I am certainly not as adept as him but this little bit of information has spurred me on. Even if my fingers break off and fly in different directions in the process, I will practice this piece.

(I can hear 4 generations of piano teachers whooping for joy - "Vanessa's actually going to practice hard this time!!!")

So with this little announcement, I bid you good night.

I'm currently in 3 different music groups.

My still-nameless jazz band, for which I haven't had the strength nor patience to score Dave Brubeck's Blue Ronda a la Turka which is due for our practice session on Friday. Concert's in June, not very prepared for it.

Company choir. Just wrote 2 songsheets for Amigos Para Siempre and Rainbow Connection. I dislike reading notes, so I removed them all and left the chords and some lyrics. It took me a few hours after Alpha and I am dead tired and cranky.

My worship team, which will be playing this Saturday for Alpha Day Away. Playing familiar tunes because I don't know any songs outside of the ones we sing in church (that's not much) and the CDs that people gave me. I purposely don't want to learn too many new songs especially by 'famous singers' because there is a tendency to worship them or their music style, instead of Jesus.

So basically, I am up to my ears in music, and you may not find me particularly responsive or patient with emails or text messages.

I have a recurring problem a few times a year, because my mother has every material thing that she could possibly need, has seen more of the world than I have ever seen, and can afford almost infinitely more things than I can.

She has much better taste in clothing than me, and we have given her more geek toys than she ever wants to see again (a third Ixus or mp3 player wouldn't warm her heart).

In fact, I can't buy wine for my parents, because my S40+ bottles don't compare to the vintage collection already sitting in our wine coolers. And yes, she's a better cook too.

Some mothers could settle for spa vouchers, but since that used to be a regular treat of mine to my mother, it seemed a little cheapskate and unimaginative.

So what's a poor girl, at the bottom of the Income Tax bracket, to do?

A few years ago, my sister and I did a big montage of photos of us together since we were kids. She liked that. For subsequent occasions, we kind of stalled. Now my sister's away, so it was up to me to do something on my own.

I rummaged through our collection of digital photos and realised that my mum's old Ixus v3 had taken lots of video clips instead of photos. Of course, a few times I deliberately switched to video mode so I could get snippets of conversation and action shots. But the old Ixus was not well-designed - the modes were all in one row, and if you flicked the notch too hard, you'd end up in video and not camera mode. I had helped my mum sync her Ixus to my computer many times, and ended up saving most of the files on my hard drive. I actually had a treasure chest of moving, talking memories with me.

Of course, these files were transferred from my old PC to my new PowerMac, and I now had the benefit of iMovie and some rusty recollection of how to do video editing.

I really appreciate the on-the-job training I had at SPH, where I was taught by a videographer how to use Final Cut Pro. Of course, I knew iMovie had only basic features. But still, it had some decent effects and a simple timeline, although I was unable to place my text in specific parts of the stage. Transitions were decent, and I had the benefit of a powerful CPU.

There was a bit of problem figuring out what to do next. I learnt that my movie was too large to burn onto a CD-ROM, so I had to repackage it in iDVD, and burn the movie into a DVD. I finally figured out that I had to 'share' my iMovie and convert it for iDVD use. My iDVD 'home page' was simple: just one button to activate the video, with a photo of me and my sister in the background.

Next, I had to burn the DVD. The big question was: which DVD format? I did a bit of research after looking at my system information. My Pioneer DVD-writer could accept all formats! Hurrah. I walked to the nearest electronics shop and picked up a DVD-R. It worked. I tested it using DVD Player on my PowerMac. It ran fine.

Several hours later, I presented the gift to my mother. The DVD played instantly, and everything that I planned to happen, did happen. And my mother enjoyed the movie. I was so relieved... three cheers for iLife!!!

Now, what to get her for Christmas...

I don't have much time to say this, because I am totally engrossed and distracted by my brand new 02 Mini. (Am I not a staunch Arsenal supporter and geek?)

In brief: Sync software of choice was the Missing Sync. After reading about how difficult it is to totally uninstall PocketMac, and how the support wasn't as good, I chose the former. PocketMac did have a free Mac theme but frankly it didn't look that impressive and face it, it's still a Windows OS underneath the superficial veneer of an Apple logo.

Mistake: Installing demo of PocketMac, because sure enough it didn't uninstall cleanly and I had to search for obscure files in my Macintosh HD. Synchronisation took a while as I re-connected the USB cable, rebooted the Mac and 02 Mini multiple times, removed all other USB devices (due to possible hardware conflict) before it suddenly prompted me for my Registration info, hours later (hence this late post).

Apart from that horrible episode, the 02 Mini itself is a joy to use. Using GPRS, I downloaded my emails from 2 different accounts, including Google POP mail (will figure out how to do the Bluetooth Sync another day).

For viewing, you can toggle the view from vertical to horizontal (either side). Office documents open up quickly. Ringtones are loud and clear.

I've tried out their handwriting recognition and so far they got most of my words right. However I must remember to take regular eye breaks as the text can be strenuous to read after a while.

Let's see if the 02 Mini starts to get slower like my now traded-in Nokia 6600. Hopefully not! I knew the only thing I'd be downgrading to, would be the camera. Sure enough, a picture I took was grainy. I have resigned myself to the fact that nothing is ever perfect, and am now starting to pine for the new Canon Ixus 7 megapixel camera (ever so slightly).

Ah, it appears that my gazillion contacts and calendar items have been synced from my Mac to the 02 Mini. It is time to stop writing and continue playing with my new toy.

Wow, Liverpool really did it. Now they just have to do it again.

AC Milan or PS Eindhoven? I bet most people are expecting Milan to follow through with their 2-goal lead.

Chelsea, from what I read of the player reviews, was behaving like they had a celebration hangover after winning the Premier League title. From the TV replays it looks like the ball did cross the line, albeit a couple feet up in the air. Anyway, if Chelsea really were the better team in that game, they would have scored the equaliser and perhaps a winner as well, no?

Don't get me wrong. I'm neither a Chelsea or Liverpool supporter although I respect both clubs. In fact I was hoping Chelsea would clinch the Champions League title as well, because I'm curious to see how big Jose Mourinho's head can get, and how the Blues will react in future seasons after realising that they can't always win 3 titles every year (look at Man U now).

For Italian teams, I like the flair of Juve players, and when I was younger, I was far more familiar with the Inter Milan players. However AC Milan has some household names as well.

South Korea will doubtlessly be hoping for a PSV shock win, preferably with Korean players involved in the goal-making. Guus Hiddink still has his fans, I'm sure.

It will be boring if AC Milan win the Champions League as they've won it recently. It will be a dream if Liverpool win it this year, but a crying shame if they don't qualify next year. Years, decades from now, films or documentaries will be made about the title they could not defend.

Of course, I really want Arsenal to win the FA Cup. So that when it comes to the tally, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool will all be cup-winners except U-know-who. Am I evil? Have I pissed off a lot of readers (particularly Singaporean ones)? Mwahahahar.

No, I didn't take part in it (like I have the time to redesign this site!). But you can check out the participants in this year's May 1st Reboot website.

There are too many sites to review, but a random sampling proved to be disappointing - some looking like normal weblogs with fancy backgrounds. Others were image-intensive and took a while to load - some without ALT text.

Voters have also been discriminating (or shall we say, 'stingy') with the 'Ayes', giving lots more 'Nays', resulting in most websites having a negative score! The top-rated site so far, Factory4, has had an impressive 3 points at the time of writing. It's in Flash, and doesn't look too bad, but I was actually much more impressed with this year's Reboot site because of its ambient music, minimalistic layout and highly functional data sorting in Flash. If I could, I'd vote for it!

This week, if a certain pain in my spine gets worse, I might have to see a doctor and get a referral for an X-ray.

I last saw a company doctor for an illness about 4-5 years ago, so I might find sitting in the waiting-room a novel thing. I hear it could either be a slipped disc or a tumour in the spine that's hitting a nerve.

The strange thing is, the first time my spine hurt this bad, was shortly after an Alpha session last month. It hurt whenever I sneezed, or tried to stifle one. I couldn't turn my neck. Then the pain slowly subsided. But last Wednesday evening after Alpha, while lying down in bed it started to hurt again.

The only thing I did each week was to help shift two big tables - but there's always someone else helping me and it's only for a distance of a couple of metres. And really, it was an easy task. So I don't know if something's trying to deter me from doing God's work, or whether it's just an accumulation of bad seating posture, weird sleeping positions and moving house.

Anyway, the after-effect of knowing something was possibly wrong with my spine, was that my back muscles are all tensed up now, even when I try to relax. So now half my back is acheing. I'm trying to tell my body to ease off, there's no point cramping up now but it won't listen.

However, I will be (for the first time in my life) skipping this Wednesday's session because we're having a housewarming-cum-birthday dinner for my beloved grandmother. I wanted to turn up for the pre-Alpha prayer session but was told it was not a good idea as I was needed at home right after work, and surely Church people would be more forgiving than that?

So that's that. I'm using this Wednesday's absence to monitor my back - whether the pain will appear again on that day. And I'm still contemplating whether to turn up for another Alpha session that clashes with my birthday. But since I won't have many people around to celebrate with, I'm wondering what's the point. I'm getting older than I ever thought I would be.

So... who's got Tiger? What's your favourite feature? Was it easy to upgrade, and was it worth it?

Tiger reviews and tips will be posted here:

• Macworld on OS X Tiger
• Something more geeky from Slashdot
• Lots of punny headlines about Tiger (compiled by Kottke)

In other news, I just upgraded to Delicious Library version 1.5 which supports Tiger's widgets. It would be nice to see a little bookshelf widget should I upgrade my OS. Nice, but not absolutely necessary.