July 2005 Archives

The BBC reports that a rap artiste has translated the works of 14th century writer Geoffrey Chaucer into hip-hop.

I haven't heard it yet, but I can imagine it sounds something like this:

Yo yo this is gangsta author Mr Jeff C
Wanta tell you about all my homies
Da Miller, Da Wife and the Prioress
And others who wanted God ta bless

It all started in April
That lovely spring
With showers so sweet
You could almost sing

We each told a story
Some more, some less
Some good, some poor,
Some better and best

I never really got to complete my tale
But that's cool, like 2Pac and B.I.G.
Cos I'm already dead
But my works live on, all in ya heads.

Yes, I loved being a Lit student...

Update: To read the Tales in the original Middle English and Modern English, try this site. The website of the rap artiste has exceeded its bandwidth (a happy problem) so I guess we'll try again later.

I updated my reading list twice this month, and realised I didn't tell anyone about it. Anyway, these are the books that have been keeping me awake late at night.

In other news, Zeldman announces that JK Rowling's site has been redesigned in accessible Flash. That's chic. I can do accessible HTML when I put my mind to it, but accessible Flash is just one league ahead. I'd like to find a Singaporean company that can do this. Then again, there has to be market demand for such skills in the first place.

And at this point in time, there isn't.

Blogging is the new buzzword in the office (finally). Today we were trading personal blog and photo gallery links. I've been working here for a year and all of us have only just opened up!

I just installed the Konfabulator and now enjoy a host of widgets, minus the price of upgrading to Tiger. You see, it's now free. And it looks good:

The great thing is, after this I managed to configure the Weather widget to show Singapore weather. I also managed to display Singapore stocks prices instead of US ones.

All in all, it's pretty nifty.

Discovery Channel's Travel & Adventure channel was showing a feature on Singapore food at noon today. Anthony Bourdain did the diplomatic thing and went to the Chinese, Malay and Indian haunts respectively.

For Chinese food, he tried the Imperial Herbal restaurant, which actually was one of my favourites when I was a child (!). He was told he was too 'heaty' after a sinseh looked at his tongue, and was told he needed ginseng. I recall he tried a fish dish and deer tendons. He also drank deer penis wine - two glasses of it! And said he felt like, ahem, Superman... although he feared the food would make him flatulent.

For Malay food, he first went to the Geylang Serai market where his Malay guide let him sample otah (which he liked) before taking him to a local eatery whose name I cannot remember. It's within walking distance of the market, though, and he enjoyed the food. Any ideas which restaurant it is?

The only snag was, while in the market he kept referring to Malays as 'Malaysians', and I was a bit surprised that his scriptwriters didn't know the difference.

For Indian food, he took him to a prata stall (again, I didn't catch the name because I had left the TV room to run an errand). He had murtabak with teh tarik. The only thing is his Indian host didn't call it that, but 'stretch tea'. Obviously the script was modified for an international audience.

But his Indian host introduced him to our very own food guru, Seetoh! Complete with hat. He took Bourdain to Sin Huat Seafood Restaurant, which I've mentioned before. The dishes he tried were the scallops (yummy dark sauce), the 'kong kong' with a delicious garlic-honey chilli sauce, the frogs legs (which I've never tried before), and the ultimate crab bee hoon, which is truly very tasty as we've eaten it countless times before. Bourdain ended the show by saying that of all the dishes he tried in Singapore, THIS was the special one.

You have to love garlic, because it's in a lot of his dishes, and you can't be fussy about ambience because it's nonexistent (I've fended off stray cats and have seen cockroaches crawling about, just outside the restaurant). Danny the 'chef' has what we call a casual and practical approach to dressing, and I was glad that Discovery Travel took a no holds barred approach and actually filmed his trademark white cotton t-shirt, black shorts and boots.

ps. This other patron says it all! Read his review and see the pics.

The past couple of weeks have been emotionally moving for me. No, nothing tragic happened. Just a few words of appreciation from people which I didn't expect, and they've made all the difference for me.

I felt I was never very close to one of the couples in my old Bible study group, so when I joined them for a last-minute dinner at their place I was touched that the wife said she missed me. I also felt a little pang when her younger son gave me a goodnight hug, because then I realised I missed them too.

A colleague emailed to say she was glad she had the chance to know me better. In fact, I never expected our paths to cross, but now I'm glad they did. I think we've learnt a lot from each other in the space of a few months. Such is God's plan, we were saying.

Yesterday, another colleague who leads the company choir, wrote in to thank me for being their pianist, because without one the choir couldn't get started again.

In both cases, I was moved even more because I felt I was just doing my job, nothing special. In fact I was hoping that I hadn't scared anyone off with my irritability! Usually, last-minute changes and a lack of communication annoy me to no end. Sometimes I wonder what I look like when I sit at my desk, scowling and hammering away at my keyboard. Very unladylike, I'm sure.

But anyway, the accumulation of these recent events has made me a little teary-eyed tonight. Thank you, sweeties, for making my day.

[Folks, I realised it's been just over a year since I switched to a Mac. I've had a lot of fun with it, making music, making new Mac friends and seeing the cyberworld a little differently (nicer fonts, at least). Cheers!]

Thanks to your advice, I finally made the trip to Sim Lim Square today, and picked up two x 1GB RAM from SGL at S$200 each. To think I nearly bought 1GB of RAM at S$599, from AppleCentre Orchard! That's nearly three times the price. And I've got lifetime warranty on my new RAM.

After I'd paid up, the lady at SGL asked me how I heard of them. I said I blogged about it and other customers wrote in to recommend this store. At this point, the only other customer stopped talking to the other lady manning the store, and looked at me. I thought he might have been a reader, but it seems he just perked up at the word 'blog'. Of course, if you happen to have been that reader, just drop a note to let me know, because I'm curious.

Anyway I told them I was glad I found this store. The lady told me they were around long before AppleCentres came along. They had contemplated jumping on the AppleCentre bandwagon, but decided against it. They don't have to worry about renting a larger space and renovating the place, and their prices are lower. Which is great, because I don't mind picking up a new 20GB iPod for S$500 (instead of S$528) or a 60GB iPod for $700 (instead of S$728).

However, since it is rumoured that iPod video is coming out, I shall wait. Not that I watch many videos, but you know what I mean.

In other news, VanPod held out for an hour this morning when I didn't skip tracks. Which is another reason why I think I can hold out a little longer :)

My last few days in the office have been spent 'lobbying' for using newsfeeds as a supplement to our website. I feel both public and private sectors in Singapore have been slow to make use of XML to disseminate information, preferring to use e-mails and more traditional forms of media for promotions and updates. And let's not even get into PodCasting yet!

Since I've been at it, I thought a list of my favourite feed pages would be handy.

Here goes:

• BBC newsfeeds
  • Podcast page
• The Guardian feeds
  • Newsblog feed
  • Podcast page (not very professional-sounding recordings! Even I can do better)
• The Times feeds
• CNN newsfeeds
  • Podcast page
• New York Times feeds
• BusinessWeek newsfeeds
  • Podcast page
• Reuters feeds
• Yahoo! news (you can add them to My Yahoo! page as well). What I like about Yahoo's services is that you can also create RSS feeds on specific subject matter. It's quite flexible and handy.
• Gizmodo (direct XML link)
• New Scientist feeds
• I just discovered Podcasting.net which has lots of feeds for everything under the sun. Of course, there's also Apple iTunes 4.9's Podcasting directory.

Feel free to contribute more of your favourite news feeds and directories.

For local readers:

• Straits Times newsfeeds. You may need to log in as a subscriber to access the full list. However I think the XML files themselves are free. Let me know if you can't get in, and I'll post the direct links to the XML files. (Anyway, SPH should give the feeds for free, so that readers will feel like subscribing for the full stories!)
• Business Times newsfeeds No problems accessing this directory, even though I'm not a subscriber.

For online aggregators, I use primarily Kinja, although my account's been neglected for a while. I might use it more now, with my O2 Mini as it's cheaper to access all my news and blogs on one page, rather than going to multiple websites. (BTW if you add my feed on Kinja, you will see an Avatar of my own face.)

For my PCs, I recommend FeedDemon (free trial available). For Macs, I use NetNewsWire Lite (free trial for the full version, available). I suppose Tiger users would have tried out the new features in Safari by now. How do they compare with the specialised feed readers?

I got back from a piano soiree which ended much later than expected. Remembering the soiree we had, years ago, in my house, I thought it would be another snooty affair and I almost backed out. [Of course, it wasn't entirely a socialite event as we had the great privilege of watching little Clare Yeo, only 8 at the time. The quietly mischievous girl, who graced our Bösendorfer, is now in the Juilliard School of Music in New York.]

Anyway, back to yesterday evening. The prospect of meeting more die-hard classical snoots seemed quite real to me. The mother of a pianist who played in my house, lamented recently that her son had switched to jazz, urgh, what was she to do? If I had met that mother at this soiree I would not be very polite, as I myself decided to make the switch after years of torment in front of the piano, playing scales and squinting in incomprehension at sight-reading pieces. To each his own!

However, the prospect of meeting new friends deemed suitable by my very cultured grand-aunt, was intriguing. Initially, when we arrived it was very hard to get the ball rolling - we introduced ourselves to strangers (friends of friends) who were also invited to the soiree. Then there was silence, so I decided to help out (with limp wrist) in the kitchen.

Fortunately, more people arrived, and it turns out that one guy was running an events company, and another guy (who played at the soiree at my house) was now promoting local artistes. He offered to see what he could do for me, so keep your fingers crossed! Thank you God for this opportunity. Tedd Joselson, piano maestro, was there too.

We enjoyed a recital by Sherwin Lee, who is performing in a concert at Alliance Francaise on 6 August (8-10pm) and 7 August (4-6pm). All proceeds go to the Singapore Red Cross Society. If any friends reading this are interested in going, please let me know soon. There won't be any golden crosses or peanuts, I'm sure ;-)

Anyway, to round off the evening, some young men and ladies started humming and tinkering around on the piano. Eventually, three of them (Daniel, Pierre and Michelle) decided to sing Music of the Night. However nobody knew how to accompany them, so I volunteered my services. I let D start singing, figured out what key it was, and played the whole song through with them. It was fun. The good thing is, I realised that I'm hardly nervous in front of an audience anymore. And after listening to them sing, I realised we have lots of young talent around!

[Off-tangent thought: All those psychology books I'm reading seem to be paying off. What's the point in being nervous, when all it does is worsen your performance? When that logic sinks in, you're able to shut off most of the emotions that affect you badly.]

I submitted a track to PenguinRemixed competition and left it at that for a week or more. I just checked the site and amazingly, found that I wasn't at the bottom of the charts but somewhere closer to the middle.

I don't expect to get into the coveted top 10, and don't qualify anyway since I'm no longer a UK resident (although I was planning to go back at the end of the year). Let's just call it a curious experiment to gauge the popularity of my music.

To recap, we have to take soundbytes from Penguin audiobooks and remix them with original music - no samples allowed.

I was pretty lazy and did minimal voice editing, unlike some other participants. You can listen directly to my track here.

ps. You can also vote for any of the partipants, but in the final tally, only votes from the UK count.

Recently acquired albums: Jamiroquai's Dynamite, Mo'Horizon's New Bohemian Freedom (High Society edition), Pink Martini's Sympathique and Hang On Little Tomato, and New Order's Best Of. The latter three were on a '3 for $49.90' offer, which is great because I half wanted to buy them individually in the past, but decided to wait.

Skimming through Dynamite has left me satisfied that Jamiroquai has a pretty consistent standard throughout their albums. My all-time favourite, however is still Space Cowboy (both the song and album).

Mo'Horizon's album is slightly chilled with laid-back drums and exotic-sounding lyrics.

As for Pink Martini, now at least I can satisfy my craving for the dangerously catchy Sympathique song (the one that goes,'Je ne veux pas travailler, Je ne veux pas déjeuner'...).

What's white, and re(a)d all over? Elizabeth Kostova's international bestseller, The Historian.*

I bought it on Saturday and just finished reading it. Considering that I have not had patience to read a complete work of fiction in a very long time, it is am amazing feat. The book is gripping, chilling, a little unbelievable at times (the coincidences, where characters with the same clues all meet each other, and everyone just happens to meet at the right sarcophagus at the same time, to meet Dracula). But it has the right balance of drama, suspense, and a dash of romance now and then, to keep you reading way into the night - as I have done. It will certainly make a great movie.

Today I completed the last quarter of the book and was glad to read the conclusion. I confess I cheated earlier on, and peeped to find out what the ending was. I was pleased to read about my church's patron Saint, the one who killed the Dragon. But overall, it is disturbing how original, holy intentions can be so easily perverted with time into heresy. What takes place as fire rituals and crossless graves in the book, parallels this world's misuse of religion to start wars and bomb innocent people.

The Dragon's prevalence in the novel reminded me of another book by our very own Hwee Hwee Tan, called Mammon Inc. It's much less sinister and more obvious in its main theme of God versus Mammon (a fictitious corporation symbolised by the dragon), which the narrator has to choose between.

Other touches I liked were the travel observations. Especially in Turkey, where I had visited some of the places mentioned in the book. So much detail and research must have gone into it. The author deserves every single buck of her book rights :)

And yes, I know I suck at writing book reviews because I haven't read enough to make comparisions with, and I probably haven't written a literary critique since Junior College.

*There are 2 publishers selling this book in Singapore, and I chose the one with the white cover (by Little, Brown, published in the UK) as it was sturdier than the American (?) version. The covers of the latter version had all curled out in the bookshop, and I really don't like that happening to my books.

The London bombings are a tragedy. I was deeply saddened to hear of it, so soon after their Olympic triumph. London is one of my most-visited cities since I was a child. I was planning a trip at the end of this year, actually.

On the bright side, this will give them some insight as how to rebuild the transport system. Certainly, backup power and announcement systems, more robust security measures and civilian training for emergency situations would help.

What won't kill London will, make them stronger.

Congratulations to London. I thought Paris was going to win, and even wore my favourite Agnes B top while watching the news. The bookmakers must be happy. And so must Tony Blair.

Imagine there's a local lad who's made good in the village. He was born and bred in the village, went to school in the village, and finally started work as a paper boy. He soon rose to manage the local newsagent's, which grew and grew. His talent and enterprising nature made him rich and famous (by national standards) while the village expanded to become a town with his help. His business won awards and international acclaim.

Then he decided, after negotiations with the mayor and his landlord, that it would be commercially more viable to take his business out of town. Perhaps the rent was cheaper, the taxes were lower and the market was larger elsewhere.

Riots and protests ensue. Those who once called him a local hero, now call him a traitor despite the fact that he gave everything when he WAS working in the town. Despite the fact that other good businesses had also established themselves in the community by then.

Back to reality. If Stephen Gerrard wants to leave, let him leave. It's his life. Being born in Liverpool, and having been at the Kop for more than half his life doesn't mean he has to stay there forever.

If you wanted to leave your job for something you feel is better (even if others disagree), would you like being mobbed, panned, and slammed about it?

It's hard to leave, as Captain of the team that won the Champion's League. People thought there was a Part 2 to the Fairy Tale with a happy ending. Sometimes there isn't.

You may notice that whatever reactions Wayne Rooney brought out in Everton fans, can now be seen in Liverpool fans ("Show them no Mersey!!!") So look on the bright side. Maybe the rest of the team will become more united (bad pun). Maybe better players can now be bought. When one door closes, a few more open. Has anyone seen it that way?

[Update: So an exciting twist of events has occurred since I last drafted this post. I'm happy that Stevie's finally made up his mind to stay. Now let's hope he doesn't change it too often.

ps. How could he ever think Liverpool didn't want him? Silly boy. But that will teach whoever's preparing the contract, to be a little more efficient next time. He's a sensitive lad, eh!]

I'm proud to say I contributed to the one million Podcast subscriptions on iTunes within the first 2 days. I decided to contribute a few more just now. While at the Music channel, I scrolled down and couldn't help but notice:

However, my curiousity couldn't be sated as I wasn't permitted to subscribe to it (my settings are UK). Dang. Has anyone tried this Podcast, and is it any good?

Today I dreamt that Tears For Fears was coming to Singapore. I attended the concert with my dream-friends. After the concert, the organiser came over and said if we passed her our CD covers, she'd get Curt and Roland to sign them.

I wanted to bonk myself over the head for not even thinking of getting their autographs. I told myself, nevermind, next time they come to Singapore I'll be ready.

Somehow, my dream fast-forwarded to their return leg concert, which I also attended. Again, we were asked for our CD covers Suddenly I realised I didn't think of bringing any again. This time I didn't want to give up. I rummaged through my bag and dug out the back cover of a brochure, and went right up to Curt and Roland who were sitting at what looked like a press conference. However I never got their autographs, because I woke up shortly after.

This evening we had a sudden change of dinner plans and we ended up dining at a different building. After dinner we went to a neighbouring minimart - and smack in the middle of their magazine shelf was a new-look issue of MusicTech, a UK Publication. And guess who was on the front cover?

Roland and Curt!!!! The main story was about all the music equipment they used to produce their latest album, Everybody Loves a Happy Ending (which is really really good and I got my copy at HMV if you can't find one). Another blurb on the cover asked, "Mac OSX Tiger - Should you upgrade?" The magazine was new, the free CD was intact (sometimes people rip it off) and it was calling out to me ("Buy me. Buy me.") So I did.

It's totally bizzarre. Oh well. I got to see a few cool pics of them chilling out in the studio. They used enough equipment to start a music shop! And interestingly, they used Reason among other types of software. Hmm.