Retrospective

For the past two years, we've spent New Year's at home, and being caught up in the festivities and celebration, we never really got a chance to reflect back over each year, remembering what it was that made it special. This year, with a little more quiet time to myself to be pensive- in the words of my dearest best friend- I thought it'll be nice to look back over the year to all the things that made 2007 memorable...

1) Jude kicked off 2007 in a big way by meeting Hiroshi Ishii in person when we were still home in January.
2) We experienced our very first ice storm in all its insane, treacherous beauty.
3) I finally picked up- and promptly fell in love with- yoga after years of thinking about it.
4) The Cooks and Cooneys brought us sledding for the first time!
5) Having not seen her in three years, my cousin, Jean, came to visit from Hong Kong :)
6) Our friends, Zahra and Jennie started their own handmade chocolate business, Hedonist Artisan Chocolates. Yay!
7) We visited Terence, Stan and Susan in Boston, my first time in Beantown.
8) Chipotle finally opened in Ann Arbor! Apart from the Mexican taqueiras in Ypsi, we've gone nowhere else for our burritos...
9) We went curling for the first time in Windsor, where I promptly slipped on the ice and hit my head hard. Way to remember the experience...
10) We "celebrated" St. Patrick's Day with Rick, Emilee and Kumo with our first corned beef dinner complete with homemade Irish bread.
11) My old friend from secondary school, Shirlyn, launched her first solo album in Singapore. She's apparently been getting a lot of radio play back home and was nominated for a couple of music awards! Really happy for her :)
12) I went to my first baseball game in Lansing. I still don't quite get the game, but the atmosphere was awesome, and the company, even better!
13) After putting it off for years and spending another several months planning the design and content, Jude and I finally got our personal websites up and running.
14) One of my best friends here, a.k.a. the Four-Year-Old Next Door, Audrey, and her mom, Tia moved away from Ann Arbor when Tia graduated... We still miss our old neighbors terribly, but thanks to Facebook, we still keep in touch. Apparently, Audrey's becoming quite the chess whiz! :)
15) I got my brand new Mac for $127.48. Never have I been more thankful for an Excel spreadsheet...
16) Watching Damien Rice "live". Enough said...
17) I got my first publication out :)
18) My sister, Sherri got engaged!
19) We saw Sonic Youth play Daydream Nation "live" at the Pitchfork Music Festival. Phenomenal...
20) We caved in to Wii-mania and bought one for Jude's parents and one for ourselves. It was inevitable...
21) Jude watched Mercury Rev "live" in Singapore.
22) We were finally home to celebrate my dad's, my mom's, and my grandma's birthday's with them. Until this year, we were never home in August.
23) Our first- and hopefully not last- tamale party at Libby's and Molly's :)
24) I dragged Jude to the Buffy Sing-a-long Musical Extravaganza and had the time of my life!
25) If nothing else, culinarily speaking, I can now say that I roast a fairly mean chicken :)
26) We welcomed to the world our nephew, Aiden!
27) In 2007, I watched two "musicals" that now have a permanent place on my for-repeated-watching-favorite-movies list- Across the Universe and Once.
28) I rediscovered my love for Scrabble after signing up for Facebook and promptly becoming addicted to Scrabulous. I now look at combinations of letters and immediately try to look for words within them. It's not healthy, really...
29) Added two new favorite bands to my playlist, Rilo Kiley and Au Revior Simone. It always makes a year when you discover lovely new sounds :)
30) I finally made candidacy and am now one step closer to completing this darn degree...
31) After two years of not seeing them, I finally caught up with Yong and Beryl again in Austin!
32) Celebrated our first Christmas in Ann Arbor with our wonderful friends here. Thank you for making what we thought would be a depressing holiday away from home so warm and joyous!

And to round things off, we just want to thank all of you who read the blog for sharing all these wonderful memories with us this year! Happy New Year!

Hiroshi Ishii talk @ NUS 01/10/07

Update on my previous post on the Hiroshi Ishii talk. Kevin has finally gotten the video of the talk up on Google video and it's embedded on this post for your viewing pleasure. There's much in this talk to think and talk about. Feel free to post a comment or start a discussion here :)

The places you will go, the people you will see 2: how I managed to meet Hiroshi Ishii

This post will detail how you too can meet Hiroshi Ishii serendipitously.

One: Make contact with the director of the National University's Center for the Arts (who also happens to be your mate's mum)

Two: Casually state your areas of focus to said director.

Three: Said director happens to have a meeting with the director of the Interactive Digital Media Lab (Adrian Cheok) and a Visiting Professor from MIT so she asks for your advice on digital media.

Four: State desire to meet with director of Interactive Digital Media and inquire who said Visiting Professor might be.

Five: Find out that professor is Hiroshi Ishii!

Six: Mention that you are familiar with Ishii's work and suggest some ways of approaching upcoming meeting. Coyly decline sitting in on meeting but nonetheless allow yourself to be persuaded to come along anyway.

Seven: Have a wife who will grudgingly help you edit the University Arts Festival press release thrust upon you by above-mentioned mate's mom so that you can attend said meeting with little knowledge of its agenda.

Eight: Smile alot at first meeting with Hiroshi Ishii, nod knowingly at all he says, and remember to ask someone to take a photo of you together so you can tell yourself at a later date that this serendipitous meeting was not a figment of your hyperactive imagination.

Nine: Accompany Ishii's entourage around the University and before you know it, you'll find yourself in several meetings where deans and faculty members of various departments will wonder what you are doing there ;)

On a more serious note, getting the chance to talk to Ishii has been great. I also attended his talk today, which is the first of a Distinguished Lecture series that the faculty of engineering @ NUS has launched. Ishii's talk was highly inspiring as he detailed his prior work in tangible user interfaces (think I/O brush). But more than that, Ishii's talk was also a call for a more interdisciplinary approach towards technology development. Specifically, Ishii is calling for more high-level vision and concepts rather than reinventing the wheel with technology. During the talk he revealed that Nicholas Negroponte had asked Ishii to abandon his research on augmented tables and to think about new and original ways in which people can interact with technology. This message seemed to not have gone down well with the engineering students as during the question and answer session, they seemed to be overly focussed on the technical details of Ishii's prior work during the Q&A segment of the talk. This seemed to disconcert him somewhat. Kevin has captured the talk on video and when he puts it up on his blog, I will be sure to link it to this post.

Hiroshi Ishii talk @ NUS tomorrow

I agreed to advertise this talk tomorrow. I know it's last minute but I think that Ishii is an interesting person for many Singaporean readers of this blog. Details of the talk below:


The Inaugural Distinguished Lecture Series Faculty of Engineering, NUS

The Distinguished Lecture Series, Faculty of Engineering, NUS is an initiative of the Faculty to bring in foreign experts and academics who could help to enhance th learning environment for innovation an entrepreneurship as well as the capabilities to teach and do research in cross-disciplinary areas which are relevant to all engineering disciplines.

Tangible Bits: Beyond Pixels
Prof Hiroshi Ishii
Tangible Media Group
MIT Media Laboratory

10 January 2007- 3.30pm to 4.30pm

Engineering Auditorium
NUS Faculty of Engineering
9 Engineering Drive 1
Singapore 117576

http://www.eng.nus.edu.sg/PACentre/courses/2007/DLSIshii.pdf

Registration is free but pre-registration is required.

To registration, please email your name, organization and email address to: engpac@nus.edu.sg by 8 January 2007.

Due to limited seating capacity, please register early.

Regards
Nurasyikin Mansor
Management Support Officer
Mixed Reality Lab