Weird Science

We were disappointed. And not just because we had psyched ourselves up too much for it. You think- a Michel Gondry film with Gael Garcia Bernal. What could go wrong? Quite a bit apparently.

What made Eternal Sunshine one of our favorite movies is that despite its lovely impish charm, at its core, it has a soul- a poignant, and oftentimes devastating narrative. It's about a love so hardwired into your very being that even modern science can't reach it. You may be able to erase memories, but you can't erase destiny. Science of Sleep on the other, in Jude's words, is a victim of its own cutesiness. Without the origami mind of Charlie Kaufmann, Michel Gondry's writing and directing exude more whimsy than anything else. It's charming for sure, and the whole stop-motion animation and papier-mâché props are delightful for their childlikeness; but at the end of the day, that's about all there is. I guess I understand his whole the unconscious as governed by its own perverse logic and the blurring of dream and reality spiel, but like Stephane's one-second time machine, the film is interesting for that moment, but then nothing much more.

It wasn't without its redeeming moments though: the scenes of Stephane directing his own dream sequences as if it were a TV show were definitely TiVo-worthy; I love Charlotte Gainsborough's crisp French/ British accent and slightly kooky disposition; how can you not be enamoured by water made from cellophane and a felt-cloth Noah's Ark of handmade trees?; and like Eternal Sunshine, what's a Michel Gondry film without a sweet soundtrack? This track is particularly enchanting, resonating the dream-like whimsy that is so much of the movie.

So ultimately, watching Science of Sleep was a lot like eating cotton candy- it conjured sweet memories of a childhood suspended, with moments of laughter and delight- nothing particularly sad or upsetting; but in the same measure, because of that, like cotton candy, it was also neither very substantial, nor terribly satisfying.

WTF, what's with the white rabbit on the blue bus?

As I got on the UM Blue Bus bound for central campus this morning, I noticed that one of the passengers in front of me had a larger than usual head. In fact, as I observed him/her/it more carefully, this passenger appeared to be a larger than life ... a RABBIT. WTF man!

A Tale of Two Cities

Ok, so my Lost counter has counted down its last second, I've watched the season premiere, and I must say, this girl is one happy camper! :) From the jaw-dropping, "OMG!-are-you-messing-with-me?" opening 5 minutes, to one of the creepiest breakfasts ever shown on TV, to the heart-meltingly sweet Kate and Sawyer reunion, I was riveted. Transfixed. Awe-struck.

Without spoiling it too much for those of you who haven't watched it yet (I think Season 3 isn't going to start in Singapore till later this year, if not next), let's just say this season opener is way better than the first episode of Season 2. Less claustrophobic, more expansive. And I'm not just talking geography. It's about obsession, pride, civility, and... nourishment. You'll know what I mean. My only disappointment is that we didn't get to see the rest of the Losties like Locke and my new favorite character, Desmond (whose middle and last names are David and Hume. You put two and two together...) Love that Scott'ish burr, brudah!

Guess who's going to watch it again tomorrow when ABC.com loads a repeat up on the website?

Most of the time, we live our lives within invisible systems, blissfully unaware of the artificial life, the intensely designed infrastructures that support them. Accidents, disasters, crises — [when] systems fail we become temporarily conscious of the extraordinary force and power of design, and the effects that it generates. Every accident provides a brief moment of awareness of real life, what is actually happening, and our dependence on the underlying systems of design. Every plane crash is a rupture, a shock to the system, precisely because our experience of flight is so carefully designed away from the reality of the event. As we sip champagne, read the morning paper, and settle in before takeoff, we choose not to experience the torque, the thrust, the speed, the altitude, the temperature, the thousands of pounds of explosive jet fuels cradled beneath us, the infinite complexity of onboard systems, and the very real risks and dangers of takeoff and landing.
-Bruce Mau, Massive Change

Thriller redux Indian style

Found this via MrBrown.com. I concur with him, this is wrong on so many levels :O

Countdown

Just one more day people. By 9pm tonight, it'll all be a matter of hours...

Jude teaches till 8.30 tomorrow night and I'll be d@%*ed if we don't make it back by 9pm. Apparently the first 5 minutes will take your breath away (or so say the message boards and the people who've watched the premiere in Hawaii over the weekend).

As emotionally compelled as I am by the relationships on the show (ok fine, one relationship in particular...) that one hour every week isn't easy on the mind either. We're talking myths galore, literary connections, philosophical underpinnings and pop culture references. If you want to do some homework on what's been invoked so far (and I'm sure will continue to be in the new season), you only have slightly more than 30 hours to wrap your head around:
Don DeLillo's Underworld. Alan Moore's The Watchmen. Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and The Tempest. The Book of Revelations. John Locke. David Hume. The Greek word thipsis. John Mayer's ''Waiting for the World to Change". Creed's "My Own Prison". The lost continent of Mu. All things H.G. Wells. Pink Floyd. George Orwell. P.S. Shelley's "Ozymandias". The defunct performance art/electronica band The KLF. Charles Dickens. The word oulipo.

To psych you up for tomorrow, here's a video of all the promos that've been aired to date:

Be still my beating heart, be still...

Hello Kyra!

I'm an aunt (again)!

My cousin, Brigid, had her first baby, Kyra last week and here she is in all her delicate bundled sweetness.

Congratulations cuz, and I hope you and Leonard get some sleep!

A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on.
-Carl Sandburg

Fixed!

I swear, you can learn to do anything via the internet. If I ever decide one day that I'm going to build my own hairdryer, I'm sure I'll be able to find out how to online. So anyways, after a couple of disgruntled comments from IE users that my webpage was clearly discriminatory of their browser choice (oh puhlease...) as well as a really sweet long-distance call from my dad just to ask me if there was something wrong with my site coz he couldn't see it properly, I decided to apply myself more actively to solving the whole IE problem. Ok people, in the past two days, not only have I gained a whole new vocabulary- hack, quirk, workaround, element- all of which have a totally different meaning from what I'm used to, I've also felt more ignorant and clueless than I've ever felt before. I mean, I'm fairly intelligent, right?... But really, trying to understand these online discussions about scripts and codes was like trying to engage in a conversation about quantum physics in a foreign language... So anyway, to make a long story short, in the end, Serene Koh- the English major with no technical computer background whatsoever- has managed to solve the IE bug problem of her website all by herself. Here's how it looked like on IE before the workaround:


Here's how it looks like now:


I'm actually rather proud of myself :) For those of you who are interested, here is where I finally found the solution I needed (this is after having to suffer through many incomprehensible websites). I had to then tweak the code some more, and after much painstaking experimentation, finally got it right.

I am woman, hear me roar...

Unchained Malady unleashed

I got a little present from Serene in the form of the image above. She knows that I have long harbored ambitions of musical granduer and of fronting my own band. I thought that it would nice to let the dear readers of this here blog in on some of those ambitions ;)

The band would be called Unchained Malady. And we would be playing ironic, out-of-tune cover versions of Adult Oriented Sentimental Rock Songs. We may be the first to do this. In fact, we could be the first in a brand new GENRE!!! (*nudge* *nudge* 504 people) Think along the lines of Cake's debilitating and uninspiring version of I Will Survive (unlike Gloria Gaynor's version) or Ronan Keating's When You Say Nothing At All (a.k.a. "The Please Shut Up" song...) and you get the picture. The distinction between Unchained Malady and Cake is that we only do ironic love songs. I can just see it now- it's playing like a movie in my head... Serene doesn't know what she's started ...

New and improved

If you told me three years ago that I would one day find myself spending the weekend going through lines of HTML code, designing my own webpage, I would have thrown a book in your face. As an English major, as far as I was concerned, the computer was for email and word processing. Period. I've never been very computer savvy- I mean I could fiddle with settings and preferences and that kind of thing, but doesn't everyone? Until I met my dear husband, computers and the Internet served a purely functional purpose.

Today, I've become drawn to the design aspect of the Web- something Jude and I share. I really do appreciate well-designed webpages and admire the effort that goes into conceptualizing both the aethetics as well as the usability behind them. And after this weekend, I must say that I have new-found respect for all you web-designers out there. It's such mind-numbing, tedious work- just one little error can profoundly mess up the whole structure of the page. Such a pain, but in the end, also very gratifying...

The site is about as good as I can get it with what little HTML skills I have (anything's better than my Google Pages one which really looks like a glorified Powerpoint presentation). It's nothing fancy- I just used the wallpapers I made a couple of months ago as the anchor design and revolved different color paletttes for each page. A huge thanks to everyone who commented on which wallpapers they liked, but in the end I made a few more that just had a single color so it wouldn't be too distracting. It's meant to be my professional website so it's no where near as fun to read as the blog (well, we try to make the blog fun to read...).

One huge problem I have though is that because it's CSS script (she talks like she knows what she's saying...), it doesn't show up well with IE6. A third of the main text gets chopped off. It looks fine on Firefox , Safari, even Linux, and I haven't even checked Netscape (do people even use Netscape anymore???). Jude and I wonder how many people still use IE, and according to Chrispy, it's substantial enough. What's wrong with you people? Wake up and smell the tabbed browsing! Anyways, if anyone has suggestion on what I can do to the code to make it show properly on IE, I would be most grateful. Until then, it's actually a little comforting knowing that only a small(er) group of people can view the site in its multi-colored entirety. I'm still a little nervous about putting so much of myself out there...

So anyways, ladies and gentlemen, my second (and hopefully, final) attempt at a professional webpage:
(I'm going to change the link from my avatar in the blog sidebar so it'll link to the new site from now on.)

Raindrops keep falling on my head

What a way to start the Fall. It's been raining all week and for most of today, and I feel as if summer's been over for weeks already. As much as I love Fall and everything associated with it- the colors, the fruits, my birthday!- I hate the fact that we're not going to be able to enjoy the breezy warm weather again for another 8 months (if we're lucky...). And if there's something this household doesn't do, is go down without a good fight. So what do we decide to do on this rainy first day of Fall? Well, defiantly throw a BBQ party of course! What else do people do?

We just needed to tell ourselves that we at least attempted to bring the grill out for one last hurrah before retiring it for the year. So we had some our friends over for grilled short-ribs (Korean kal-bi), teriyaki chicken, veggie skewers and hotdogs. It was like playing catch-and-mouse initially- we'd take everything outside only to have it start drizzling, and so we'd move the stuff back in. I even started grilling the veggies in the oven coz I didn't want a house full of food (we had 12 lbs of beef ribs people...) but nothing to eat. Eventually the weather held up and we managed to hang out and cook outside for a bit before it started to really pour. There was more than enough food to go around and right now, we still have at least 4 lbs of beef, 2 huge bowls of salad, grilled veggies, hotdogs (and buns), and beer in our fridge. Guess what's for dinner for the next week?...

Frankly though, now that our little demonstration of defiance against the gods of the seasons is over, I have to admit that I am looking forward to the Fall. As the rain beats down against our windows and my feet just that slightly tingly from the chill, I anticipate many more such nights when I'll make myself a mug of hot chocolate or milky tea and curl up in bed with a book or the laptop. It'll be nice- we've been through it before and we survived... :)

Happy first day of Fall everyone!

The morns are meeker than they were,
The nuts are getting brown;
The berry's cheek is plumper,
The rose is out of town.

The maple wears a gayer scarf,
The field a scarlet gown.
Lest I should be old-fashioned,
I'll put a trinket on.

- Emily Dickinson, Nature 27- Autumn

Say "moo"...

Aren't these such cuties?? Man... Jude and I got so excited we ended up spending an inordinate amount of time last night going through our Flickr album figuring our which photos we want to turn into these mini namecards (we decided that bold and abstract ones work best considering the sizing of these things...) Thanks to Moo, you can now use any of your Flickr pics and fashion them into persoanlized namecards. You get 10 free (but limited to only 10, 000 sets), and with a Pro account, it's $19.99 for a set of 100. I'll bet their servers are going to crash any moment now from being overloaded with orders after they were featured on BoingBoing yesterday

Jude and I've decided to work on our webpages this weekend so we have something legitimate to show for at the back of the namecards. Once those are done, we're definitely going to order a set each for ourselves. They're going to be so preeeety!! :)

What a Ball...

I don't often talk about my school on the blog because I figured, who wants to know about what an ed school does? I personally think what we do is important but let's just say when most other people think about schools of education, scintillating isn't a word that automatically screams out at you... at least not until today.

Arthur Levine, former president of Columbia's Teachers College, pulls no punches in his as yet unreleased report on the state of teacher education in the US (full report here, executive summary here). In a nutshell, Levine tears ed schools to shreds by going through the various problems of the institution, starting with the hodge-podge of state requirements, the uncoordinated responses of ed schools to these requirements, and the failure of the liberal arts model for schools which should be more professional in nature. He puts some of the blame for this mess on the lack of good leadership, namely ed school deans who he feels not only lack vision and direction, but have also too often sacrificed rigorous teacher preparation at the altar of academic research. BUT (and you knew this was coming...), the only dean who was not only spared his scathing criticism but also given a glowing tribute, was my Dean. Here's what he says about her:

In the course of this study, Deborah Ball, the dean of the University of Michigan’s School of Education, offered the most lucid and compelling explanation of what a teacher education curriculum should be. Her conception might be described as an enriched or advanced major: that is, a traditional subject matter major in an area such as history, music, or chemistry, combined with additional specialization in how to effectively communicate that subject matter or more specifically how to enable students to learn it. The future teacher would graduate knowing what to teach and how to teach it... The logic and clarity of Ball’s description are uncommon and refreshing. They stand in marked contrast to the teacher education curriculum nationally, which reflects the historic confusion of the field with regard to purpose. In our conversations, teacher education faculty were generally more concerned with the mechanics of the curriculum than with its intended goals.

I think my dean is doing a great job. She's not only an accomplished academic but also a wonderful person to boot. And at her core, she is an educator. In every sense of that word. Last year when I was teaching a class to pre-service teachers, the program had a crisis where there was a sudden surge in enrolment and there weren't enough instructors for the course. All the other sections were full and no one could take any more students. What was my dean's solution? She stepped forward and took on that extra class. Mind you, she was on sabbatical that semester but she used it to "return to the action" as she called it. For her, a sabbatical is supposed to be a time for faculty to try something new, work on their own research, and basically step back from the normal humdrum of academic work and explore. And she felt that going back into the classroom to teach undergrads was the perfect way to fulfil these goals. I was immeasurably impressed- not many full professors (and a named chair at that) would 1) give up their sabbaticals to teach undergrads; 2) spend weekly Wednesdays with grad students talking about teaching these undergrads; and 3) do 1) and 2) with as much as enthusiasm as a new teacher on the first day of school.

When I grow up, I want to be just like my dean.

Of Machinima and restroom etiquette

I would like to say that my interest in this movie is purely academic, but alas I cannot. Oft a subject shunned by many, the etiquette of behavior in a men's restroom is an unspoken social norm that even I adhere to. For instance, one sacrosanct rule at the urinal would be not to look over at your neighbor. This unspoken compact is adhered to in restrooms all over the world, and as this video would suggest, non-compliance will lead to general anarchy and a profound tear in the very fabric of civilization.

Now to explain my academic interest in this clip. This video represents a nice example of the emergent art of Machinima. The hacking of video games to transform them into movies is surely an unintended use for the games. This activity however, has gained somewhat of a following. Heck, there's even a Machinima film festival being hosting by the Museum of the Moving Image in NY. I think that the art of Machinima offers artists and filmmakers interesting possibilities, in terms of conveying their vision and message. Think about it, I am not sure how you would produce the above video with real people, without them breaking in laughter in front of the camera. I am not much of a gamer (I am still trying to justify the purchase of a Nintendo DS lite in my mind), but I think that there's a secret thrill in seeing one's favorite games being used in ways that the developers did not originally intend. Also, given the ubiquity of electronic games now, I also think that Machinima offers filmmakers new audiences if there is something that goes beyond merely teen humor. Martin Scorsese once said that the future of cinema lies in the hands of a 12 year old with a handycam in her hands. I think that his prophecy of what is to come should be amended to, the future of cinema lies in the pale, pimply teenage boy with the game control in his hands.

Countdown meme

10 Favorites
Favorite season: fall
Favorite color: green, orange or lavender, depending on my mood and the context
Favorite time: when I read in bed just before I fall asleep
Favorite food: sushi
Favorite drink: duh… coffee. Preferably Illy's
Favorite ice cream: mango ice-cream from Stucci’s
Favorite place: southern tip of Western Australia, from Margaret River to Augusta.
Favorite sport: to watch: platform diving or competitive figure skating; to participate: does running count as a sport?
Favorite actor: haha, where do I start? Are we talking TV (Denis Leary), film (Ed Harris) or international (Tony Leung)?
Favorite actress: because they're both luminously beautiful and crazy talented: Nicole Kidman and Kate Winslet

9 Currents
Current feeling: physically: full from brunch; mentally: happy and relaxed, ready for the new week
Current drink: black coffee from the espresso machine at SI North
Current time: 12:48pm EST
Current show on TV: we're not at home right now
Current mobile used: Nokia
Current windows open: iTunes, Word, Firefox, Mail
Current Song: Wuthering Heights, Kate Bush
Current clothes: white tank top, capris, Lacoste sneakers
Current thought: that this meme is not easy…

8 Firsts
First nickname: Sero (from my friends in secondary school)
First kiss: on the cheek
First crush: Ke Huy Quan from Indiana Jones/ Goonies
First best friend: Joy (primary school)
First vehicle I drove: my dad’s Mitsubishi Galant
First job: filling in COE (Certificate of Entitlement) forms at my mum's office when I was 16.
First date: at Delifrance in Wisma Atria, and a definite mistake.
First pet: I’ve never had a pet (not a real one at least)

7 Lasts
Last drink: yoghurt smoothie
Last kiss: when I woke up this morning
Last meal: vegetarian hash (made with red potatoes, sweet potato hash, piquillo peppers sauteed spinach and fried shallots) with a side of buttered onion rye toast, at Zingerman's
Last website visited: Pandora
Last movie watched: The Illusionist
Last phone call: Jude calling me last night to tell me he was picking me up from the Ann Arbor Brewing Company
Last TV Show watched: Iron Chef America

6 Have you evers
Have you ever broken the law: not consciously, no…
Have you ever been drunk: yes, from a Smirnoff cooler
Have you ever kissed someone you didn't know: nope
Have you ever been close to gun fire: nope
Have you ever skinny dipped: nope
Have you ever broken anyone’s heart: I guess, yes...

5 Things
5 things you can hear right now: I have my earphones on so all I’m hearing is Tori Amos.
5 things on your bed: there are only 3 things on the bed: a comforter and two pillows
5 things you ate today:
i. yogurt smoothie
ii. vegetarian hash
iii. toast
iv. coffee
v. water
5 things you can't live without:
i. my husband
ii. my family
iii. my friends
iv. a computer with internet connection
v. coffee
5 things you do when you get bored:
i. finish reading the half-read books/ magazines we always seem to have lying all over the house
ii. go for a run
iii. look for interesting recipes to experiment with
iv. organize my iTunes music
v. watch whatever's on Bravo or the Food Network

4 Places you have been today: too early in the day to have been to so many places:
i. home
ii. Zingerman’s
iii. SI North

3 Things on your desk right now:
i. water bottle
ii. laptop
iii. Virtual PC software

2 Choices:
Black or White: depends on what we’re talking about- coffee: black; clothes: white
Hot or Cold: again, it depends- coffee: hot; weather: cold

1 Place you want to visit:
Just one? Italy, or Ireland

Curry and home

Look what Rick and Emilee got us as a thank-you gift for taking care of Kumo last week?- a cookbook of curry recipes that Rick's been experimenting with (which by the way, we've had the pleasure of being very willing and satisfied guinea pigs of...). I had been thinking about getting the books myself not only because of it's very alluring pink and orange cover (yes, like my cousin Terri, I do judge a book by its cover...), but also because more than any other food, curries remind me most of home. I mean, we can get pretty decent Chinese food in one or two places here and in the Chinatowns that we visit, but authentic Southeast-Asian curries- that woody, savory spiceness, the layers upon layers of complex flavors and textures, that vibrant color- are much harder to come by. And my mum's thick and luxuriously rich chicken curry- man, don't even get me started...

From what I've read so far, this book covers a wide spectrum of curries, not just Southeast-Asian, but also those from Africa, India, and the West Indies. And one of the things I appreciate most about it is that it's structured almost as a cultural narrative of sorts. She traces the ways in which Indian spices and recipes travelled with Indian migrants, shares the sentiments she associates with certain recipes, and peppers the book with little anecdotes about the provenance of certain dishes, one of which I hold especially dear to because it's about Fish Head Curry from Singapore, Mutthu's in Little India to be exact :) In her words, "Diners tucked in as if there were no tomorrow." I'm getting wistful just thinking about it...

She even dedicates a small section of the book to talking about the Raffles Hotel in Singapore and how the Tiffin Room there has been- and still is- reknown for its curries and chutneys. Rudyard Kipling and Somerset Maugham are just two eminent guests who've stayed at the Raffles and Kipling is said to have coined the phrase, "Feed at the Raffles when visiting Singapore."

Most Singaporeans visit infinitely more humble establishments for their frequent curry fixes, which itself tells you something about the centrality of curries to Singaporean life- regardless of income and social stature, when it comes to curry- in a pot of steaming fish head curry, with simple prata, or in delicate portions served on white linen and fine china- all Singaporeans respond the same way, with gusto and relish, as if there were no tomorrow.

Thanks Rick & Emilee!

This curry was like a performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony that I'd once heard.....especially the last movement, with everything screaming and banging 'Joy.' It stunned, it made one fear great art. My father could say nothing after the meal."
-Anthony Burgess

What a cupcake...

Lemon cupcakes
Originally uploaded by jyew.

...and I'm not just talking about the baked good. If anyone knows how to say "no" to a five-year old, please let me know, because I clearly do not possess that ability. All they have to do is to give me one of those saucer-eyed "you-mean-the-word-to-me" looks, coupled with a tight hug and a snuggle, and I turn into mush, least of all a cupcake.

So Audrey comes over a couple of nights ago determined to show Jude & I her new outfit for school (she started kindergarten last week). It was cute- a leopard-print skirt with leggings and a denim jacket- definitely a walking Gap ad. Anyways, somehow, between her tellling me about her new teacher, Miss Connor and me carrying (yes, carrying) her home, she managed to convince me that I needed to bake her some cupcakes. I don't know how it happened, I don't know what magical powers of persuasion she conjured- it's all a blur.

All I know is when I brought these lemon cupcakes over just now (topped with melted chocolate because one can never give a five-year old enough sugar right?...), the look on her face was so precious that it made all the effort worth it. They ain't no heavenly cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery in New York (famous already even before the publicity from Sex in the City and that Saturday Night Live skit on the Chronicles of Narnia), but for the little girl next door, they were good enough :)

Shake it like a Polaroid picture

Just when you thought Polaroids were dead, they resurface on the web in the form of the Polaroid-o-nizer™, a nifty online tool that allows you "polaroidize" any picture that you have. I like it coz you don't need an external application like Picasa and you can caption your pictures in a sweet handwriting scrawl. The only thing is that the photo needs to already be online and have a URL of its own.

As always, retro is the new chic!

A green dress and a pretty bow

So I think I'm getting better. It's the end of the week, I'm going to take most of the weekend off and do nothing (except puppy-sit for Rick and Emilee- yup, Kumo the labradoodle...), I had a great class this morning with a professor I've been waiting a year to take a class with, and the sun is back out after what I thought was going to be the beginning of a very early Fall...

But the highlight of the past two days is that the dress I ordered for my best friend's wedding has arrived! And it's lovely! (the picture does not do it any justice...) Thanks to everyone who shared their thoughts and advice on my initial choice of the brown polka-dotted dress :) But I tried it on at the store and it just didn't look right. I guess you really have to look like Julia Roberts to pull a dress like that off. Besides, on retrospect, the color isn't particularly festive I suppose. So this is what arrived at our doorstep yesterday:

The catalogue says it's a keylime green, but in reality, it looks more pistachio than anything else. The color theme of the wedding is cream and green so the dress will fit right in. More importantly, the cut is really flattering, which basically just means it gives me curves where I need, and hides the bad ones that I have... I'll have to work on my abs a little from now till December but I've been planning to do that anyway. *Sigh*, in a perfect world, I'll have the arms of Evangeline Lilly from Lost (or Carrie-Ann Moss's in The Matrix) and Gwen Stefani's abs...

And shoes! I think I'm going to go with a pair of peep-toes after some wise fashion advice from the bride-to-be. And unless I want to be wobbling all the way down the aisle, they'll also definitely be better for my flat feet than too-delicate strappy heels. I have my eyes and heart set on these sweet semi-retro peep-toes, but believe it or not, they actually cost more than the dress!! Sam thinks they're a little much, but I love the bow! The color takes a little getting used to but it does grow on you. *And she talks like she can actually afford the shoe...*

I think I'll shop for the shoe when my best friend visits next month; will keep you all posted of course- I mean, why else do we keep a blog except to foist all the mindless shenanigans of our life onto our unsuspecting friends who love us too much to complain??...

Have a great weekend everyone!

Happy Anniversary!

A good one with the in-laws
Originally uploaded by jyew.

My parents celebrate their 31st wedding anniversary today. They've essentially spent more than half their lives together, which means they've been with each other longer than they've been without! Whenever I think about that, it never fails to blow my mind :) It'll be nice when Jude and I celebrate our 31st anniversary in 2034...

Happy anniversary dad and mum!! :)

Happy marriages begin when we marry the ones we love, and they blossom when we love the ones we marry.
- Tom Mullen

Hanging on...

It's all over- school finally begins today. And I'm having a fever.

I think I've been drinking too much coffee and working too many late nights on my internship. Thankfully this semester will be relatively light so I'll hopefully be able to recover soon without some insane schedule hitting me straight between the eyes right away. Jude starts teaching today and I think I'm about as excited for him as he is about the whole thing. It's going to be hard work of course, but I know he'll do a great job :)

So something that's been helping me get through these past days- Pink Martini and their Hang on Little Tomato (link to streaming audio). Their sound is an eclectic mix of samba, classical, jazz and even trip hop, but this track in particular is a lovely gem. Sweet, whimsical, and so full of hope. So to all of you for whom the next three & a half months are just going to be one fantastic circus of pedagogical acrobatics, academic pins to juggle, and rings of teaching fire to jump through, just keep hanging on! Like a little tomato...

Hang on Little Tomato
The sun has left and forgotten me
It’s dark, I cannot see
Why does this rain pour down
I’m gonna drown
In a sea
Of deep confusion

Somebody told me, I don’t know who
Whenever you are sad and blue
And you’re feelin’ all alone and left behind
Just take a look inside and you will find

You gotta hold on, hold on through the night
Hang on, things will be all right
Even when it’s dark
And not a bit of sparkling
Sing-song sunshine from above
Spreading rays of sunny love

Just hang on, hang on to the vine
Stay on, soon you’ll be divine
If you start to cry, look up to the sky
Something’s coming up ahead
To turn your tears to dew instead

And so I hold on to this advice
When change is hard and not so nice
If you listen to your heart the whole night through
Your sunny someday will come one day soon to you
- Pink Martini

30 days

See sidebar for countdown timer...

Waffles, waffles everywhere...

Waffle breakfast
Originally uploaded by jyew.

You know those incomprehensible food cravings you get for no rhyme or reason? The ones that make you see a particular food everywhere and in everything? For me, it's been waffles. Don't ask me why. I've been pining for them lustfully for the past week and I was in the middle of persuading Jude to go for a waffle breakfast today when he wisely reminds me that we actually have a waffle iron we inherited from Olivier, and that we should just make our own. How brilliant! Besides, this being the last weekend before school begins, it was actually a good idea to take some time to leisurely make breakfast. With me writing my first pre-candidacy paper, and Jude teaching in the Fall, we'll be lucky to put anything in our stomachs in the mornings...

Anyways, I found a great recipe that makes light crisp waffles. That's how I like my waffles- I don't like ones that are too dense and cake-like. Waffles are a breakfast food and they shouldn't sit too heavy, and they must be crispy. If they're going to be soggy, have a pancake instead. The key to the lightness of this recipe is separating the egg and beating the white on its own. The things is, I don't bake enough to justify buying any baking appliances, least of all a hand-mixer (do an egg-beater and a spatula count?), and so it was my arm muscles to the rescue. I saw Jamie Oliver do this on his show once and it didn't look too hard. And really, it wasn't- about 4 to 5 minutes of sustained whisking to get the soft peaks that the recipe required. I always knew doing those free weights were more than just about having trim arms... :)

In the end, the batter turned out really well- it's a little thinner than what I had expected, but apparently, that's what makes the waffles crispy. Ther finished product turned out just the way I like them- crispy and crunchy on the outside, light and fluffy inside. Next time though, I'll leave them in the waffle iron a little longer so they'll turn a nuttier brown, and use the buttermilk specified in the recipe (we only had regular milk).

We ate the waffles with butter and the maple jelly we got from Montreal- deleeecious! There's just something very satisfying about making something you love on your own, plus there's now that faint aroma of vanilla and toasted sugar lingering in our house :) And it wasn't even difficult at all to do. Try it- you'll never have another Aunt Jemima frozen waffle again!

Thanks again Olivier for your waffle iron!

The Perfect Waffles

* 3-1/2 oz. (3/4 cup) bleached all-purpose flour

* 1 oz. (1/4 cup) cornstarch

* 1/2 tsp. salt

* 1/2 tsp. baking powder

* 1/4 tsp. baking soda

* 3/4 cup buttermilk

* 1/4 cup milk

* 6 Tbs. vegetable oil

* 1 large egg, separated

* 1 Tbs. sugar

* 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

Heat the oven to 200°F and heat the waffle iron. Mix the flour, cornstarch, salt, baking powder, and baking soda in a medium bowl. Measure the buttermilk, milk, and vegetable oil in a Pyrex measuring cup; mix in the egg yolk and set aside.

In another bowl, beat the egg white almost to soft peaks. Sprinkle in the sugar and continue to beat until the peaks are firm and glossy. Beat in the vanilla.

Pour the buttermilk mixture into the dry ingredients and whisk until just mixed. Drop the whipped egg white onto the batter in dollops and fold in with a spatula until just incorporated.

Pour the batter onto the hot waffle iron (mine takes about 2/3 cup) and cook until the waffle is crisp and nutty brown (follow the manufacturer's instructions for timing at first and then adjust to your liking). Set the waffle directly on the oven rack to keep it warm and crisp. Repeat with the remaining batter, holding the waffles in the oven (don't stack them). When all the waffles are cooked, serve immediately.

The various Englishes of Singapore

I know that I've gone on ad-infinitum frequently about the use of English in Singapore. But only now have I found a humourous clip that best illustrates what I've been trying to convey.

This clip comes from the Talking Cock in Parliament event, which is an evening where local celebrities come onstage in the old Parliament chambers (which has been transformed into a performing arts venue) to deliver speeches in the style of how our government does its business. It's a rather daring venture and is perhaps another sign of the increasing liberalness of the country.

In this clip, Ruby Pan, a trainee teacher, takes on the various forms of English spoken in Singapore in voices that all too familiar - the American accented radio DJ, the crisply enunciated, British-sounding newscaster, a local teenager speaking in the vernacular, and a Filipino migrant worker. She's actually very good and drew the most laughs at the event.

We haven't decide yet if this clip makes us homesick or not... :)

Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq...

So yes, I was upset that Lost didn't get as many nominations as it did last year (or as many as I think it should...); I was also sorely disappointed at Megan Mullally's sleep-inducing thank-you speech. You would think that having played the self-absorbed, acerbic, totally un-P.C. and keel-over-laughing hilarious Karen Walker for 8 years, my favorite character on Will & Grace would have accepted her Emmy with a little more flair and punch. But no, she didn't, and I could have spent that 30-seconds watching my nails dry and it would have been more scintillating.

Still, I dutifully sat through bits of the Emmy's happy enough, especially watching Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart give out an award together and the former throwing an obnoxious hissing fit at the shame (and sham if you ask me) of losing to Barry Manilow :) But the most delightful moment of the night hands-down has to be in the middle of Hugh Laurie and Helen Mirren's presentation. He was at his annoying best, translating with an affected accent everything she was saying into French. Helen Mirren is of course not one to be outdone, and throws words like "winnowing" at him, daring him to find the right French word. And after she delivers the line, "[winnowing] literally hundreds of stunning performances into a meagre list of just five...", what is dear Mr. Laurie's French translation? "Poof! Cinq..."

Just exquisite! :)

1.2 million photos geo-tagged on Flickr in 24hrs!!!

According to the latest entry on Digg, 1,234,384 photos were geotagged in the first 24 hours after the launch of the new Geotagging feature on Flickr. The latest entry on the Flickr blog outlines what geotagging is and how you can go about using the new tool. Essentially, you can associate your photos to a location on a google-like map. We've geotagged some of the photos from our camping trip in the U.P.. You can find our geotagged photos at this link.

I have to say that Flickr has made taking photos and sharing them so much more fun. They really have improved the way I use the photos I've taken by enabling me to sort them in sets, categorizing them with tags, sharing them with friends/family and participating in like-minded groups. Now, with the geotagging feature I can show people exactly where the photos were taken and even find other photos (or individuals) that were taken in the area. I know I'm sounding like an acolyte at the altar of Flickr, but I give credit where credit is due. Flickr has definitely improved the my experience with photography and to a certain extent, is also dictating the way I take my photos nowadays. It's making me take photos with the knowledge that I'm going to share them with family and friends. So much so that I realize that I've been taking a lot of photos to show the context of a situation.

Stranger Than Fiction

[click for trailer and website]

I concede- Will Ferrell has finally made a movie I'm looking forward to watching.

10 things we learnt from camping in the U.P.

Miner's Castle, Pictured Rocks, MI.
Originally uploaded by jyew.

So we came home a day early- well, technically not a day since we left the campsite past 9pm last night and drove through the misty, foggy night to get home at 3am this morning. We didn't get to bed till 5am... The weather was just too dreary to stay an extra night- we would have been stuck in our tents while it poured outside and we didn't want to deal with the yuckiness of packing up in the rain. And with high humidity and no wind, we would have been bug fodder in no time...

Nonetheless, all in all, it was a good trip, shower or no shower. It was great just hanging out with Rick, Emilee & Kumo, and the U.P. was gorgeous! A kind of rugged, untouched beauty I had never associated with Michigan. A shout-out to Ms. Anderson! We thought of you Melanie, although we didn't get a chance to go as far north as Sault Ste. Marie :) The U.P. rocks!

Some lessons we learnt:
1) We are sorely under-prepared for camping. If we're going to do more of this camping thing, we're going to have to spend way more time at R.E.I. How are we supposed to know that a simple sports pocket bucket would make all the difference between cleaned dishes and clean dishes??
2) When you're obsessed enough, even a camping trip becomes one extended Lost moment...
3) Everything tastes better cooked over an open fire- pork chops, franks, hot dog buns, marshmallows, potatoes, etc. I swear, if we had boiled water over the campfire, that would have tasted better too...
4) I like S'mores (which I had never had before). Ummm... that ultra-sweet, ooey, toasty, chocolatey, crunchy yumminess...)
5) Pyromaniacs are born when their friends systematically teach them how to build good campfires and they then spend the rest of the night throwing every possible thing into the fire to "just see what happens..."
6) Thankfully, even in our thirties, there are still things in this world that can take our breath away. (See Pictured Rocks)
7) There's nothing like using water freshly pumped from a well to wash up early in the morning.
8) The U.P. is sorely under-rated as a travel destination. There's so much to see and appreciate, and I'm not just talking about Mackinac Island and the people who gather there every year for the annual Somewhere In Time conventions...
9) Give my husband a beer, a deck chair and a quiet beach, and he can sit there forever.
10) I can survive three days without a shower. But just barely.

For more about the trip and the U.P., here are the photos.

Big Knob

We're off to the UP (Upper Peninsula) tomorrow, the Big Knob to be specific. We're meeting Rick and Emilee to do some camping we've been putting off for too long. It's going to be a 5-hour drive up north and maybe some hiking before we get to the beach/ campsite. I'm kinda excited, but nervous at the same time. This is only the second time I've been camping (the first time was with Olivier and the Lazzaros to Kentucky to rock-climb) and the whole there-might-not-be-a-proper-bathroom thing still bothers me a little... Bugs I can deal with; walking along trails, no problem; beaches and forests, I love; and even eating camping food is fine with me; but no shower everyday- errrm, not so much... What I am looking forward to though is the scenery of Northern Michigan and Lake Michigan that so many people rave about. And to see a beach again- oh, you have no idea how happy I'm going to be! :)

As for camping food- I think we've packed more than enough. Jammed-packed in our cooler are bread, bananas, dried fruit, soup, instant cup noodles, instant coffee (this girl ain't going nowhere without caffeine...), Chinese pork floss (novel, I know but so inspired no?? It was Jude's idea...), peanut butter, granola bars, crackers, 5 gallons of water, aloe vera drink and a couple of cans of peanut dessert. And I haven't even told you what Rick and Emilee are bringing- so far they've mentioned steak, mac 'n cheese, bacon and eggs and maple/ walnut cereal. Man... talk about a classy camping trip!

We should be all set in terms of equipment- we've got our tent, sleeping bags, cooking utensils, lantern, bug spray, ground sheet in case it rains, head lamps, foldable chairs, Swiss Army knife, and something no camping trip can be without- loads of plastic and ziplog bags. I'm taking my husband's word for it- he's the one who survived a massive rainstorm during military training in Australia with all his clothes dry and intact while the rest of his platoon-mates found themselves with soggy socks and underwear. All because he packed everything in ziplog bags. I always knew I married a smart man :)

So till Sunday when we get back!

Singapore Dreaming

Just testing out an audio streaming application here. Please bear with the me. Also, if this experiment succeeds, please enjoy this track from the upcoming movie Singapore Dreaming. It's a little ditty produced in a very traditional Asian pop style. I can almost imagine this track being sung (albeit out of tune) in a thousand karaoke bars across Asia and Chinatowns. Somehow this is the kind of music that my parents must have danced to at their wedding.

Another 5 things meme

We were tagged by Noor :

5 things in my our refrigerator
1. two bottles of beer left over from Jude's birthday TWO MONTHS ago...
2. maple jelly
3. half a block of Parmesan cheese
4. kim-chee from Il-Hwan
5. seedless grapes

5 things in my our closet
(erm, which one?)
1. winter coats
2. extra blankets for winter
3. various bags, backpacks and luggages
4. umbrellas
5. Manfrotto camera tripod

5 things in my our purse
(seeing how Jude does not carry a purse- one hopes he does not, this is a mix of what we both usually have in the backpacks we carry to school)
1. iPods
2. house keys
3. cell phones
4. sunglasses
5. gum

5 things in our car Ocha
1. maps of Ann Arbor and Southeast Michigan
2. map of Chicago
3. iTrip FM transmitter for the iPod
4. two 15-lb dumbells we just got after trading in our 8-lb ones (see my previous post)
5. a small crate of car-cleaning supplies: polish, chamois, glass cleaner, etc.

5 people we're tagging:
1. Stan
2. Terri
3. Chrispy (he needs to update one of those three blogs...)
4. Allison
5. Zahra & Jennie

M. Ward - Chinese Translation

I just came across this sweet little video of M. Ward's Chinese Translation on wurh.com. It merges our love for animation with great songwriting. We haven't heard much of M. Ward's music before this but according to a Google search, his latest album is "the mother of all front porch records". I don't really know what that means but he does have a quiet and low-key style that we both really enjoy. All in all, we think that this is one humdinger of song and a great video to boot. BTW, the chinese translation to the lyrics are pretty accurate :)

Daddy's girl

My new toy
Originally uploaded by jyew.

What can I say, at the end of the day, as old as I will ever become and as independent as I think I'll ever be, at the end of the day, I still lean on my dad to save my day, or in this case, my bus-rides to school and self-flagellating gym sessions. My 20GB ipod moved on past the pearly gates of mp3-player heaven last month and I've been ipod-less ever since. No amount of updating, erasing, prodding, kicking, smashing, wailing (mostly on my part) could revive it...

Anyway, so I sheepishly (and shamelessly I might add) asked my dad for a be-earliered 30th birthday present and in his wonderful generousity, not only did he say yes, he didn't even ask which model I was getting or how much it was going to cost. *sigh*... In return, I felt it right that I shouldn't be too indulgent, so instead of a brand new 20GB, I chose a refurbished 4GB nano instead. The thing is sooo slim I can't believe it holds as many songs as the mini. It's so sleek and portable- I lurve it! The only thing is that I have way more songs in my iTunes than the nano can hold, so I figure it'll act as a rotating jukebox of sorts- I'll put in and take our different songs everytime I update it.

And in a spurt of excitement that almost rivaled mine, Jude sugested that I get the new Nike + iPod attachment for the nano. I haven't gotten round to figuring out exactly how it works, but in the words of Adrien, just looking at the ads makes me want to run out and jog for hours! Basically it acts like a pedometer and wirelessly sends information about your running pace from a transmitter you attach to your shoe to the nano. The nano not only records your speed, based on all that info, it will also then suggest appropriate songs from your playlist to match your running pace! And it gives you the number of calories burned too. It's all about motivation and psyching you up to the optimal level I suppose, which is great because trust me, I need all the psyching I can get when it comes to going to the gym...

Speaking of motivation and exercising, can I just say that free weights are the Devil's instruments of torture??!! I decided to move from the weight machines to free weights last week and I think my arms are still swearing at me from under their breaths... We have a couple of 8-pounders at home, but the gym only has 12.5s and up. So what choice did I have? Let's just say, until yesterday, my shoulders could not feel a thing...

Anyways, off to fiddle with the new toy now- thanks again Dad! :)

Wall art

Wall of posters I
Originally uploaded by jyew.

We finally got round to putting up all the posters we've been accumulating over the past few years. For the last month or so, we've been tripping over frames and mounting boards sticking out from every corner of the living room and having our wall filled up in various degrees of completeness.

Jude and I are envisioning an organic process of just building on on what we have now, slowly adding more pieces as and when we buy a new one. The whole idea is to fill up the entire wall. As impoverished grad students, this is about the closest thing to collecting art I guess. :) We like how it looks now- gives the living area an eclectic feel of some sort. It's nice!

Little Miss Sunshine

Watch Little Miss Sunshine because it is one of this year's best-written films; watch it because it will make you forgive the directors for ever having made Napoleon Dynamite. Watch the movie because it manages to capture the heart and hurt of an endearingly fractured family without overdoing the quirkiness or pummeling you with the cute factor.

Watch Little Miss Sunshine because with that opening shot, Abigail Breslin will just draw you right into her adorably artless aura with those over-sized glasses and pudgy hopefulness; watch it because Steve Carrell will be hard-pressed to top this performance of a lifetime.

Please watch Little Miss Sunshine because I can't remember the last time an audience erupted into spontaneous unanimous applause when a movie ended, and watch it because everyone has to be reminded that we all have the right to love ice-cream.

Of brown polka dots and red shoes

Despite the very consistent and disciplined posting of this past month (which could be easily misconstrued as us having much free time and little else to do), Jude & I have actually been crazy insanely busy this summer. He's been taking stats classes (don't ask. Just. Don't.), and I've been over my head churning out papers as part of my internship for Columbia (which I'm not complaining about because it is going to pay for our trip home over Christmas). Blogging has been a relief from the mentally claustrophobic drone of academic writing and so, in my latest attempt to take a break from work, I have a flaky, ditzy question, people...

What shoes does one wear with a polka-dotted silk brown dress?

Ok, before you think Serene Koh has clearly lost it and gone off the deep-end with that random question, I have to say this: my dear best friend is getting married in December and she has wonderfully asked that I be her bridesmaid (ok, I KNOW, it's matron-of-honor since I'm married, but I turn thirty in 70 days- and yes, I'm counting-, let me hold on some semblance of my youth please...). Since I am clearly not the center of focus of the day and she has graciously let me choose my own dress, I thought I'd get something versatile that I can wear both at her wedding and whenever else as well. So this is what I picked from JCrew:


I love the sweet polka dots (I think there're polka dots somewhere in the wedding theme), it's a warm and lovely chocolate brown, light and flirty enough for the crazy humid Singapore weather, and more importantly, it can take me from chapel to cocktail party ( I hope). Now my headache, what the heck do you wear with a brown dress? Black shoes? Beige? Or god forbid, white? My style gurus Stacy and Clinton from What Not to Wear always say, when you can't figure out what color shoe to wear, go one extreme and make it a statement. They once paired a turquoise dress with a pair of red shoes and it was stunning. So people, red shoes with a brown dress? A bit much? At a wedding?...

I have a pair of scarlet red satin red heels I wore for our wedding reception that look almost identical to this, except they have ankle straps instead of slingbacks, complete with the teeny diamante buckle.No one's going to be looking at my feet right? (Heck, no one's going to be looking at me for that matter...) So what do you think? What would Stacy and Clinton think? Or maybe I should just go buy a pair of strappy champagne sandals (which will undoubtedly flatter my flat feet, making them look like a cross between an overstuffed dumpling and a strung up beef roulade...)

Oh, as an aside, after telling me that the dress is lovely and for me to go get it, this is what else my best friends has to say about it:

Just to test your movie-buff credentials, which blockbuster 1990 hit starring major characters from Seinfeld and Chicago Hope featured "this dress" in a polo match?!"

Answer

See why she's my best friend? We speak movies... :)

We aim to please

So, in light of my husband's personal and professional axiom, we've once again improved the usability of the blog. In an initial attempt to provide categories to our entries (as per Noor's suggestion), what resulted was an unwieldy long list of entries for each category (and only a few categories at that...). So, until Jude materializes his grand plan for a home server system so we can host MovableType on our own, we have to rely on del.icio.us for the time-being to make categories.

I created an account just for the blog and tagged every single blog-post into categories (we have 330 posts in case anyone's wondering; 331, if you count this). This might actually be better than the categorizing system in Wordpress or MovableType coz you can tag each post with more than one tag. So if you look at the sidebar now, we have a section for Categories, and each tag will take you to the respective del.icio.us page. Jude should be proud- the tags represent the aggregated information disseminated by this blog, a representation of collective group knowledge formation, and the outward manifestation of both our inner cognitive processes- guess who's been proof-reading all her husband's academic papers?... :)

Are we the Internet?

I feel that the issue of net neutrality and its political, social and cultural implications have not been taken too seriously by the general public here in the US. What started out as a Government funded project to ensure that communications lines stay open in the event of an emergency, has now been handed over to service providers with the intentions that the free market would do a better job at allocating this resource which was developed with public money. While I understand the logic and wisdom of doing that. What I don't understand is how we got to a stage where service providers, who claim operating losses, want to distinguish web content and develop a two tiered system where those who pay more get to sue the higher bandwidth. I know that the issue is a little more complex than that, and below I attach an essay that I wrote for a class as an initial foray into the issue. In addition, there is a group called "We Are the Web"who have just released the following video in support of net neutrality. Somehow, I am not sure how Robin Hood, BAAAAAD dancing, Tron guy and Leslie Hall are going to help the cause... Maybe the point is to frighten, annoy and repulse the powers that be into submission. You've got to watch the video to know what I mean...



Essay on net neutrality:
Net neutrality, or the principle that all Internet traffic should be treated the same regardless of the recipient, sender or the type of information, has been the subject of much recent controversy. Telecommunications company, Verizon, has recently called for tariffs to be imposed on Internet firms like Google and Yahoo. [1] Their argument is that Internet content providers have been “freeloading” on the expensive infrastructure developed by telecommunication firms. Ostensibly the tariffs charged would aid in recouping the costs incurred for infrastructural development. This argument seems to be based on the notion the telephone companies, who own the lines through which all Internet traffic is routed, can and should discriminate the bandwidth they provide for financial gain. However, I believe that Verizon’s arguments for “increasing excludability” to its infrastructure is not justified. [2] This is because Verizon is discriminating the usage of its bandwidth because it can and not because it is experiencing extra costs because of the large amount of traffic attributed to popular websites. Using this example as a starting point, this paper will further elaborate on the issues raised by the net neutrality debate and attempt to present a scenario when it be would be justified to allow the usage of the Internet to take place freely.

A frequently cited argument for net neutrality has been that the free access of all users to online content and services is the reason for much of the innovation on the Internet. This notion rests on the assumption that the Internet is a public good that should remain neutral to the type of information that is transmitted. This argument has some economic merit because, like most information goods, the costs incurred in maintaining the network is independent of the level of usage. The bulk of the cost comes from investments made to infrastructure development and the cost of sending an additional packet of information on the Internet is essentially zero. [3] What this highlights telephone companies can and should charge users and content providers a fixed connection charge for providing access to their network. This will help recoup a portion of their costs in developing the network. However, the notion of the Internet as a public is dependant on the fact that there is sufficient bandwidth for everyone and little congestion on the network.

Another argument for why traffic over a company’s infrastructure should remain free is that the bandwidth of the Internet’s backbone is inherently a shared resource. This is mainly due to the end-to-end or “connectionless design of the Internet. [3] Utilizing the TCP/IP protocol and packet routing technology for transporting information across the Internet. The design of this technology is reliant on interconnectivity between the various networks as information packets are routed across the most efficient networks regardless of their ownership. [4] Thus if a telecommunications company resorts to discriminating against traffic from certain websites by charging tariffs, what results is the breakdown of cooperation between the networks to carrying information across their lines regardless of origin and purpose.

However, one problem with treating the Internet like a public good is that it may be subject to the “tragedy of the commons”. This describes the phenomenon where unrestricted use of common pool resources, like bandwidth, would ultimately result in the “overgrazing” of these resources. The problem with free access to the Internet by the end users, such free usage of bandwidth may cause network congestion and a social cost being imposed on the users by way of degraded service, delays and dropped packets. [3] Thus some mechanism for congestion control of the network bandwidth is needed. A highly persuasive way to do this is through the use of pricing. The rationale here is that pricing allows for the efficient allocation of bandwidth as it makes users decide for themselves whether their packers are more or less valuable than the cost of the service. [3] Additionally, pricing avoids the problem of having the provider decide whose and what information should be charged for using the network. Instead, pricing allows the “invisible hand” of market mechanisms make socially optimal decisions of whose information deserves priority in times of traffic congestion on the Internet.

This paper thus outlines an approach to regulating the use of network infrastructure that views net neutrality as a design problem. [5] Using economic principles and mechanism design approaches allows future policy makers to regard bandwidth on the Internet as a scarce resource that must be regulated through pricing mechanisms.

References:
[1] Mohammad, A. Verizon Executive Calls for End to Google's 'Free Lunch', The Washington Post, Tuesday, February 7, 2006; Retrieved on April 16th, 2006, from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2006/02/06/AR2006020601624.html

[2] DeLong, J. B. and Froomkin, A. M. (1999). Speculative Microeconomics for Tomorrow's Economy. First Monday 5(2), 2004, p1-29. Retrieved on April 16h, 2006 from http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue5_2/delong/

[3] MacKie-Mason, J. K. and Varian, H. R. (1995). Pricing the Internet. In Public Access to the Internet. Edited by B. Kahin and J. Keller. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press: 269-314.

[4] Tanenbaum, A. S. (1996), Computer Networks, 3rd ed., Prentice Hall. Chapter 1. (p1-76).

[5] Roth, A.E. (2002)'The Economist as Engineer: Game Theory, Experimentation, and Computation as Tools for Design" Fisher-Schultz Lecture - Econometrica, 2002. http://www.ww.uni-magdeburg.de/vwl2/teaching/DownloadablePapers%5Croth_2001.pdf

Egg tarts

Piping hot egg tarts
Originally uploaded by jyew.

A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do- if you miss egg tarts and no where in Ann Arbor sells a good one, you try to recreate it at home. Admittedly it doesn't look as authentic as the ones you'll find at tim-sum restaurants- and no where near as pretty- but the taste comes close enough. I was too lazy to make the crust myself so I just bought ready-made pie-crust. And instead of a tart molds, I used a muffin tray, which is why my tarts are a little deeper than the regular ones. They look almost like Portuguese-style egg tarts.

But the texture was good- all soft and wobbly. The custard isn't as sweet as I had expected which was good and the egginess isn't too overwhelming in case anyone's worried...

I'll probably have to tweak the recipe a little to get it closer to how I remember my favorite egg tart in Singapore tastes like, so my overall verdict: it isn't perfect, but for now, it'll do, and I'm happy :)

Hong Kong Style Egg Tarts
Ingredients:
* 2/3 cup white sugar
* 1 1/2 cups water
* 9 eggs, beaten
* 1 dash vanilla extract
* 1 cup canned evaporated milk
* a box of Pillsbury ready-made pie crust

Directions:
1) Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Combine the white sugar and water in a medium saucepan, and bring to a boil.

2) Cook until the sugar is dissolved, remove from heat and cool to room temperature.

3) Use a muffin paper cup to trace and cut out pieces of pie-crust to line the muffin trays. You should get about 5-6 tart shells from each sheet of crust.

4) Strain the eggs through a sieve, and whisk into the sugar mixture. Stir in the evaporated milk and vanilla.

4) Strain the filling through a sieve again, and fill the tart shells. (Both straining processes are important coz you want a really smooth custard.)

5) Bake for 20 minutes in the preheated oven, until golden brown, and the filling is puffed up a little bit.

The Girl(s) from Katong

It has finally happened! Someone has seen the light and decided to write a song about my sisters and I! The Girl from Katong is OUR song- we grew up in Marine Parade, lived in the East all our lives, all went to school in the Katong area, and have always fervently believed that all things East Coast are the best (prawn noodles, kaya, laksa, Parkway Parade, the beach, the highway...).

And all thanks to local band, Serenaide. Think Pulp meets R.E.M- breezy guitar indie pop. And my dear husband for sending this my way :) I can't believe the day has come when "Marine Parade" and "Katong" are actually in the same song together (and not for NDP no less!)

Yes, all is finally right with the world... :)

She was the girl from Katong
Magical Marine Parade
I want to sing you this song
Disappearing in a fade

She caught me looking at her
From the corner of her eye

Over me, over you
She said run over you over me..

And in a blinding flash
We ended in a crash
I got her to her feet and then she smiled at me...

She was the girl from Katong
Magical Marine Parade
I want to sing you this song
Disappearing in a fade

- The Girl from Katong, Serenaide

Great, now all I can think of is a bowl of Katong laksa...

You think you know serendipity?

Say "hi" to my brand new olive green/ocean blue Puma Lab II sneakers. Without going into too much detail, suffice to say that I got them at the deliriously ridiculous price of a Mocha Freeze (a small one at that...). Don't worry, no one's gut was slit, no horse heads severed (we watched The Godfather I and II back-to-back last night...)- everything was legal, all parties were happy, and my feet are especially grateful for the divine comfort of my new shoes.

So does this mean I now have official membership to the geek-chic/ Urban Outfitters-shopping/ indie chick sorority? Man... I'm so cool right now I can hardly breathe ;)

A cultural experience

Jude with Josh and Christine
Originally uploaded by jyew.

Bridal showers really are a curious phenomenon- they're not conventional in Singapore and nobody I know at home had one. So I went to my first shower yesterday for Christine hosted by her mum & sis, and Josh's mum. It was fun, but I was a little nervous during the days leading up to the party- how does the whole gift registry thing work? Do I get it delivered or do I bring it with me? If I give them a present at the shower, do we still get them another for the wedding? What's the appropriate greeting on a bridal shower card? "Happy Shower!", "Congratulations!", "Good Luck!", "Now You're Clean!"??...

In the end, I got something from their registry delievered to her place- it's a Chrysanthemum Bundt Cake Pan (because everyone who knows Christine knows she is THE domestic baking goddess...) and wrote a message on the card that didn't involve having to decide what the greeting should be. The shower was both really enjoyable, and a rather enlightening cultural experience. I discovered that 1) it's traditional to record down the present that each person has gifted (I think this will be thought of as a little too forward at home- you usually don't want to make these things too obvious); 2) you pass the presents around so everyone can ooh and ahh over how soft a set of towels are, how sparking the new punch bowl is, and marvel at the technical design of that electric fondue set; 3) the bride-to-be isn't supposed to break any of the bows on her gifts. She has to bundle them all together and that's what she'll hold as her bouquet at the wedding rehearsal. If she breaks any bows, that's the number of kids the couple will have. Christine broke two :)

Oh, and we played a game where we all had to guess the answers to a bunch of trivia questions about Josh and Christine, like who had a higher undergrad GPA (Christine), what their Chinese zodiac signs are (Josh- Rabbit; Christine- Horse), and where exactly they first met (Rm 411, School of Information, University of Michigan). Guess who won??? Heehee... Yup, I was rather pleased with myself :) My prize was a jar of jelly beans, which Jude & I have been happily munching on all since yesterday. The dark green ones are gooood...

So all in all, I had fun, and gained new insight into another facet of American culture. More importantly though, it was wonderful to see how blissfully happy Josh and Christine are. We're definitely looking forward to the wedding in October!

Oh please...

I can't believe this- someone has actually gone and remade Infernal Affairs. I knew it was bound to happen... Does Hollywood's lack of originality know no limits? Is nothing sacred anymore?

Admitedlly, The Departed is pedigree stuff- Martin Scorsese at the helm, Jack Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon and Mark Wahlberg. But c'mon, you take one of Hong Kong's best movies in recent years and repackage it into another glossy, slick flick passing off as a psychological thriller, which then means it can no longer be a thriller since so many people have watched the original that nothing about the narrative is going to be surprising anymore.

I feel sick...

Guilty pleasure

[** Spoiler warning: Ok, I've just been duly chastised by my best friend for irreparably spoiling her Project Runway-watching experience. She is no longer willing to be my emotional crutch or name one of children after me. Apparently, Season 2 isn't over in Singapore and by clicking on the show's link, she was disillusioned to not only find out that the episodes showing in Singapore now are not "live", but also too much information about things she didn't want to know. So, warning to those of you at home: don't read on or foray into the unknown if you want to watch the rest of Season 2 and Season 3 in ignorant bliss!...]


I love Project Runway.

It's my one reality TV indulgence. Ever since religiously following the really early seasons of Amazing Race, I've categorically avoided all reality TV programs- I think they're exploitative, self-aggrandizing, and full of talentless wannabes in search of their 7 seconds of fame, only to be relegated to Battle of the Network Reality TV Stars once they're no longer the flavor of the moment. Who cares if you can perfectly parallel-park a 16-wheeler? Or that you've invented an all-in-one sash-dress-underwear held together by velcro? And honestly, just because your voice can quiver at a pitch higher than Mariah Carey's does not automatically mean you can sing.

Now Project Runway on the other hand, I like (I even got Jude addicted too!). I mean, these people have real skill, and they're actually making something of their own creation. Honestly, once you get pass the whole hand-fluttering "omigod-i-luuuuuurve-this-faaabulous-fabric" poseur fashionista routine, it really is great TV- drama, humor, backstabbing, and a whole ton of nail-biting tension thrown in for good measure (even though I didn't think last night's controversy was as big a deal as if they had revealed that one of the contestants slept with Heidi Klum... like say... Kayne! She turned him straight! *gasp*...)

My money's on Uli to win- her designs are beautiful, but still wearable and she's got such a down-to-earth feel to her. The best thing is, she stays above the bitchiness that some of the contestants alwways descend into... I just hope they don't get rid of her just coz she may not be as interesting (see Katherine and Bonnie). And who else was sad to see Malan go?? At first, I thought he was kind of arrogant and pompous (what's with that silly accent??); but when he took full responsibility for that tree trunk of a dress and how upset he was that he had to leave, I felt so bad for him...

My other favorite is Bradley- dear endearingly wacky Bradley. I'm not sure how far he'll get, but please just keep him on coz he's so scruffy and sweet! And c'mon, didn't you just love his whole "I think she doesn't like my beard" thing last night? I was so happy he didn't have to leave on his birthday last week, and that the judges loved his panic-induced outfit! :) Besides, I think he might also be the only guy among them who's not gay (well, and maybe Michael), but Jude thinks these days, you never know...

Our friends are already planning for a Project Runway finale party (we had a low-key one for Season 2). This time, everyone has to turn up to the party wearing their favorite outfit from the season- I don't care if I have to tape, staple or glue the darn thing together, I'm there already!

Carry on!

I'm a fish out of water. I'm a squid with no ocean.
-Bradley, Project Runway

Pitchfork (Part II)

For part duex of the pitchfork music festival report, here's a couple of grainy and amatuerish video clips of Jens Lekman playing at the festival: