Sesame Beginnings

Ok, so Sesame Street may be about as far from MySpace as Elmo is from dana boyd, but I came across something that perhaps not-so-obliquely piggybacks off Jude's post about MySpace yesterday. Read in the NYT today that Sesame Street has produced a new DVD targeted at children between 6-months and 2 years old, "Sesame Beginnings". Apparently this has gotten a Boston-based advocacy group all huffy and puffy, and they've come out publicly to criticize what they see as the psychedelic warlordism of fluffy muppets and the larger apocalypse of The Television's terrorizing hegemony.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating that all you parents out there go run and get a TIVO-enabled, cable-ready, 40-inch TV just for your little tot- in fact, the work I'm doing with Sesame Street right now isn't persuading me very much that TV alone helps children's learning...- but I do think that there's something to be said about being overly rabid and paranoid. Can't people let kids just enjoy themselves anymore? Does everything have to be about a cause, or an issue that has to be advocated and debated over? I felt the same way with the furor over Teletubbies "corrupting" children and Rainbow Brite being demonic- hello?? And I'm sure Mr. Potato Head is a actually a diabolical vegetable-only fiend in disguise, bent on taking over the world and making spuds the official food of the universe.

Yes, there is something that's definitely not right when parents use television as a substitute for human interaction and stimulation, and in replacement of other activities like reading or playing outside; but when that happens, should we point the accusing finger at the box, or should we ask ourselves why these parents think that using the TV as a babysitter is acceptable in the first place? I don't think that all children's television is good- a purple dinosaur and floating gelatinous sparkies comes to mind- but I know wonderful parents who use TV as just another tool, like books, to bond with their children, and help them develop positively, on top of other things they do together like hiking, playing at the playground, going to museums, or simply just spending quiet, quality, media-free time at home. With the right scaffolding, some children's programs can help children learn language better and faster, and also introduce them to a world their sometimes sheltered lives cannot.

[steps down from soapbox]

Ok, having said that, a particular googly-eyed, ruby-clothed muppet still annoys the heck out of me. And even worse when he starts to sing...

...this made me realize something about the experts in Boston. They were more than a little Luddite in their opposition to "Sesame Beginnings," as if technology itself — a screen of any kind! — would harm children, who ought presumably to gaze only at sunsets, shake wooden rattles and cuddle corn-husk dolls. This seemed unrealistic, to say the least, and possibly even discriminatory, like the old anti-disco edict that decreed that good music could be played only on fancy guitars and expensive drum kits. The drum machine — like the television — strikes music snobs as lazy and unwholesome. Good parents don't rely on crutches like television, which delights babies without enough parental exertion. I didn't buy it."
- Virginia Heffernan, NYT

Storm in a teacup: it's their space!

So, ok ... unlike Serene, I have never had the occasion to blog about the work that I do. However, that occasion has now arisen (I am volunteering to be a Real Time blogger for CHI2006) and I think that it would be a good idea to start putting my thoughts into the blog and maybe even start making my research ideas more explicit and intentional.

Something that has been occupying both my professional and personal attention lately is the tempest in a teacup over the social networking site, MySpace. I know a lot has been written and debated about the issues that have emerged over MySpace. In fact, today's news highlighted the fact that MySpace recently hired a security monitor- who was a former prosecutor from the Justice Dept, and who helped Microsoft in a similar fashion- to develop online child-safety strategies and educational materials about online sexual predation. (Intriguingly it was interesting to find out that MySpace is owned by the conservative Fox media group…) Don't get me wrong, I certainly think that MySpace's actions are certainly warranted given the knee-jerk reactions of the general public and the level of propositioning that is going on in MySpace. However, I think that simply sanitizing MySpace does not help us understand how young people socialize. And in fact, I think that such actions will drive them away from MySpace.

This whole issue about MySpace has got me thinking about the role that online social software plays in the lives of the young people today and the implications that it may have for educators in the future. I think that the general public has very little understanding of what goes on in MySpace. What is perhaps not appreciated is the fact that the online sociality generated by social networking sites like MySpace helps create a layer of relationships that overlay existing personal social networks. Some of you know that I’m currently in the midst of a study on the use of blogs/social tagging system in the classroom. One of the things that emerged during my interviews with the students is that they were very happy to use the system in addition to class work, because it improved the relationships within the classroom. To paraphrase the interviews, because the ideas that were shared online were public, it was as if everyone was given a glimpse into the inner thoughts of everyone else, and this enabled the creation of some level of social empathy of sorts. Everyone not only knew each other better, but also had a better appreciation, and hopefully respect for each other's point of view. I don’t think enough people, especially educators, value the fact that networked technology can add this layer of sociality. A recent article about a law school professor who banned the use of laptops in the classroom simply indicates to me how much work there is to do in this area to create a heightened awareness for the positive uses of these kinds of programs. I think people are blaming the technology without fully understanding it, and instead of overcoming their ignorance, are blindly indicting the program, instead of the use of it, which I think are two different things. In fact, I was appalled to find out that there is yet to be research done on the effects of the use of technology in classroom. We simply don't know what the effects on student learning are when there is the use of laptop computers while class is being conducted?

And I don’t think that educators are the only ones who don’t know enough about these new technologies. Coming back to MySpace, I recently came across a talk that danah boyd presented to AOL staffers. I thought that danah was highly insightful in her identification of the age stratification that is going on with particular kinds of media and websites. She highlighted the fact that there is an age trajectory in terms of the use of these sites. MySpace appeals to younger teens from age 13 upwards; the 16 - 18 year olds aren't well represented, and from 18 onwards they tend to gravitate towards Facebook. This has a lot to do with the financial and physical mobility from age 16 onwards- car culture takes over, and being highly mobile, you don’t need websites like MySpace (or even want to be associated with the young ones). So, my personal take on this age-divide is that it mirrors the socialization patterns that occur when you are growing up. From age 13 onwards, all you want to do is make more friends, 16 – 18, you only want to hang out with your closest buds; and from 18 onwards - when young people are thrown into the working world or college, socialization becomes important again, but of a different nature. I think that danah's talk gives focus to a larger issue of the lack of knowledge of the parents, media and schools about where and how young people socialize. Perhaps things have changed such that the way young people socialize no longer fit prior conceptions? And perhaps parents- and the general public- shouldn't be blaming MySpace but try to get to know their children better.

Bye!

So am back in the 'ole Midwest, still a little sleepy from coming in late last night, reeling slightly from the excitement of a "by-the-skin-of-my-teeth" 15-minute transfer in Denver, and missing all our friends in the Bay Area already... That was probably the highlight of the trip- as much as the presentation went well, the city was beautiful, and the shopping was painfully good (I now have a new favorite store, no thanks to Miss Sarah Tucker- Anthropologie), the thing which I appreciated most was just being able to see everyone again, hanging out at Dave & Jen's like we used to, bonding over food, drinking bubble-tea, and enjoying Maggie's (and now Dylan's) adorable antics.

It was wonderful to see how well everyone is doing, but more importantly, that they're enjoying what they're doing, and it really does seem that California is fulfilling so many people's vision of the good life. We wish you guys were closer so we can hang out more often, but seeing how happy everyone is is even better :) You guys just have to come visit often coz these two grad students sure don't have enough money to fly out West every year... :( Take care all you Bay Area people and we love you tons!

(more photos on Flickr...)

The deed is done!

So here I am, sitting at the corner of Sutter and Powell having a croissant and coffee for breakfast as I steal the wireless off some poor unsuspecting soul (sorry!!). San Francisco is a gorgeous city and since it's Sunday, it's nice to see it still tentatively waking up and not bustling and hustling as it's going to be in a couple of hours.

So, I have overcome!

The presentation went flawlessly and it was very very gratifying. SIX people came up to me after to ask me for my paper to read more closely and share it with their students (!), and I got such validating comments from the audience after the presentation too :) This lady said something about supporting my vision, and after I was done, a little Santa-Claus grandpapa of a professor came up and just said, "Good job, keep fighting the good fight." I thought I was going to cry!

And all my friends came to listen to me. It helped so much to see them peeking in from outside the door smiling in encouragment; even my professor came and gave me a thumbs-up! :) So all in all, FABULOUS! I'm happy.

Which is why immediately after, I took a whirlwind tour of SF instead of hanging around the conference. I just wanted to unwind and relax after all that pent-up anxiety (ok, so maybe not so pent-up...) Took a bus to Haight-Ashbury to Amoeba Records, got Jude one of his request records, walked through Golden Gate Park, and bused to Golden Gate Bridge. And omigod, the Bridge is nothing short of breathtaking. NOTHING compared to postcards or apocalyptic disaster films. Simply awesome. Oh, and I saw Alcatraz. My very first frame of reference for Alcatraz was when I watched a David Copperfield special on him attempting to escape from the prison. Of course, I wasn't quite paying attention to the prison then... ;)

Anyways, sitting by the beach for an hour or so after was very very precious. It was nice and cool, kids were playing everywhere, people walking their dogs- just perfect. Made me miss beaches, wide open spaces, and the ocean even more...

Anyways, will be spending the day with Dave & Jen today. I didn't realize how much I've missed them till I heard Jen's exuberant voice yesterday. They're coming into the city and having lunch with me and we'll head over to their place in Mountain View for the rest of the day. Gonna see Jonas, Melanie, Kathy & Adrien tonight too, and I can't wait! :)

Cross-country

Boo-hoo... in less than 24-hours, I'll be on a plane across the country to a state from which everyone says flows milk, honey & sunshine. But what should happen? I'm nursing a chill I caught from walking in the cold yesterday, and the weather report says it'll be raining all weekend in San Francisco... *&^%$#@!! But I'm determined to enjoy myself so let's look on the bright side of things:
1) I'm flying with a bunch of my closest friends from my school so the 8-hour flight isn't going to be as dreary as my 2-hour one to D.C. in January. In the event of the god-awful landing in Denver for the stop-over (Frontier Airlines pilots have issues with the Denver airport I've been told...), we can form a support ring and hug each other till it's over.
2) The above said friends are also all squeezing into 2 rooms at the Crowne Plaza so it'll be like a grown-up pyjama party, except without baby-pink pyjamas with unicorns all over (I'm assuming...)
3) I'll be seeing all the SI folks who abandoned us to lonely times without them- Dave, Jen, Dylan (and Maggie too!), Kathy, Jonas, Melanie, & Adrien. We've missed you guys!
4) I might visit Stanford, but only if I know I won't get lost getting there, and if Kathy has time to hang out around campus with me... (*hint hint* hee hee...)
5) One word. Shopping. Amoeba Music for Jude, City Lights Bookstore for me, Giant Robot, and if I have time, the Haight Street shopping district.
6) Fresh seafood. Enough said :)

Well, the degree to which I'll enjoy Nos. 3- 6 is largely dependent on me not getting chewed up and spat out at my presentation on Saturday morning. But at least it's early on in my trip there. That'll give me time to heal... :)

What would you do?

So I encountered what might be considered my first intellectual crossroads yesterday. It was the trial run of my conference presentation and I thought I was fairly prepared for it. The thing isn't till next Saturday, I had my slides in order, and I knew the points I was going to make about my data, so I was pretty confident going on. But oh what a disaster it was... there were people in the audience who seemed genuinely flabbergasted at what I was saying, outraged even at my "perposterous" propostion that we are somehow short-changing certain groups of children!... The professor who was listening cautioned me strongly from making certain conclusions about my findings; she said I can't say that schools of education aren't doing a good job; other people are beating up schools of education already and we don't have to do it to ourselves; I can't use the word achievement "gap" because that somehow conveys a sense of deficiency and deprivation; use the more neutral "difference"; I'm perpetuating racial and cultural stereotypes, and my presentation is too controversial and potentially explosive; I should "re-frame" my discussion and not talk too much about the gap but more about how policy can redefine certain parameters of teacher quality, etc...

It was distressing to say the least and I for the first time, I felt the pressure to "spin" my data to make things more palatable. I appreciate my professor's remarks and I know that to some degree, she's being protective of me as a grad student, and doesn't want me to be torn to pieces at the conference, but still, I have a message to convey, and as uncomfortable as it may be, it's a message I believe people need to hear. As a research-one university, and in such close proximity to high-need areas, if we don't make a statement about what can be done- and what must be done- to help schools and children who need help, then who's going to? If all we worry about is producing feel-good, self-validating research which consoles ourselves that we are just fine the way we are, how will we ever progress and improve the things which really need improving, i.e. the life chances of ALL children?

I left the practice session disheartened and a little disappointed actually. I'm proud of what my research says, and I'm proud of what I was planning to say, but yesterday, I was made to feel somehow less for it... I spoke to a couple of people after that, spoke to Jude, spoke to some close friends, and you know what? I might change a few slides and rephrase some of the word use, but at the end of the day, I'm going to make the same conclusions. At every level- local, state, federal- we need to rethink how we're training teachers and defining teacher qualifications. Things are not going ok, and there are children who are deprived. I cannot in good conscience, in the face of empirical evidence, choose to ignore some things and highlight others just because it will go down better . I'm hoping that there will be people in the audience who will appreciate what I'll be saying, and even if I make some of them angry, that's something I'm going to have to be prepared to deal with. It's a 20-minute presentation and then a Q&A after. It'll be over before I know it. Besides, this is not about me, it's about the academic well-being of all children.

The data doesn't lie, and I'm not going to either.

This I Believe

In my lifetime, if I can write half as well as her, with half as much heart, humor and humanity, I would be happy. Sarah Adams- not a Pulitzer Prize winner or a New York Times bestselling novelist, but a simple English teacher from Washington state- on why we should all be cool to the pizza dude:

Be Cool to the Pizza Dude

This is part of a collection of audio essays from NPR's This I Believe, a project started in the '50s by Edward R. Murrow to engage Americans and encourage them to share the things which guide them through life. These essayists aren't famous people, they aren't celebrities with an image to sell; they are people like you and I, writing about people like you and I- people from red states, blue states, fly the Dixie flag, the rainbow flag, swear by Kanye, only listen to Carreras, splurge on organic, can only afford processed. Just people.

Listen, and feel your heart strangely warmed...

In the words of my wise husband, nothing beats a good public radio station.

In the big pizza wheel of life, sometimes you're the hot bubbly cheese and sometimes you're the burnt crust. It's good to remember the fickle spinning of that wheel.
- Sarah Adams

Soundtrack for today is...

...Kings of Convenience and Damien Rice.

This partly has to do with the misery that comes with missing them performing in Singapore, and partly because they just seemed the perfect people to be listening to on a day like today. It wasn't a particularly spectacular day; in fact, it was kind of grey and wet, as these on-the-cusp winter/spring days usually are in Ann Arbor. But for some reason, being the only person on the bus at 6.45am and watching the day wake up, I was struck by how pretty this little town can be even with bare trees and cloudy skies. There's kind of a rugged beauty to it all, and an amazing sense of promise of what will be in just a couple of weeks...

The music was just a great accompaniment to these somewhat pensive sentiments- the gorgeously layered strings of KOC on the one hand, and the soulful, quiet heart of Damien Rice on the other, made my 20-minute trip to school one of the happiest ones I've had in a long while. The rain was less depressing, more refreshing; the bare trees less a sign of winter cold than spring's imminent coming; and even the morning mist felt less shroud-like than usual.

Try it for yourself one day: when things seems just that little blue, put on my friends Erlend, Eirik and Damien. You'll know what I mean... :)

Parallel Lines
What's the immaterial substance
That envelopes two
That one percieves as hunger
And the other as food
I wake in tangeled covers
To a sash of snow,
You dream in a cartoon garden
I could never know
- Kings of Convenience

Beth Orton- Conceived

To usher in Spring (or so we're hoping everyday), here's the cute new video from Beth Orton, our favorite one of the season:



Warning: this video is rated 'M' for muppets. We bear no responsibility for sudden convulsions or violent nausea resulting from over-exposure to creatures otherwise known as adorablis muppetus.

(P/S: It takes a while to load completely.)

Wedding Bells

Woo-hoo! A shout-out to our dear friend Yong in Austin who's getting hitched in July!! Congrats, congrats, congrats!! Even though it's going to be in Korea and none of the SI folks are going to be there, I'm sure he knows out warmest wishes are with him & Dasan (even if Stan is probably shaking his head, sighing, "Another one bites the dust...")

And Yong, here's a little something to help you on your way towards internalizing the plural pronoun:

Maybe nothingness is to be without your presence,
without you moving, slicing the noon
like a blue flower, without you walking
later through the fog and the cobbles,

without the light you carry in your hand,
golden, which maybe others will not see,
which maybe no one knew was growing
like the red beginnings of a rose.

In short, without your presence: without your coming
suddenly, incitingly, to know my life,
gust of a rosebush, wheat of wind:

since then I am because you are,
since then you are, I am, we are,
and through love I will be, you will be, we'll be

-SONNET LXIX (Pablo Neruda)

Congratulations again Yong!

There's brandy, and then there's Pisco.

Ok, so I think I'm officially having a hangover headache. We weren't drunk or anything (at least I don't think we were... I had enough wits about me when we came home last night to prepare two salami sandwiches for today's lunch, and I distinctively remember taking a shower, so there you go...), but I think the last time we had so much alcohol was at Jude's graduation last year. With the semi-clarity that one gains the morning after, I've concluded that it wasn't how much we drank but what we drank that did us in. Three Piscos- that's what we had between the two of us (and beer later at /aut/, which is a different story altogether, and one I believe Jude can tell better than I can...)

Anyways, about Pisco, these Chilean brandy things are small, sweet and lethal, and Leopold's makes a mean one. You start sipping on one of them, and before you know it, you've eaten the maraschino cherry that you usually detest, left nothing but residual ice in your cup, and a warm glow has started spreading from your gut to your face, leaving a nice rosy hue no M.A.C. product can recreate (the first time this rosy-cheeks phenomenon happened to me, it was 1995, I was at the Hard Rock Cafe with my best friend, it was a burbon coke, and I swore I was going to turn alcoholic just so I could walk around with a perpetual and perfect "natural" blush. Yes, yes, I was shallow like that...)

On the bright side, we slept better than we ever had in a long time. Tells you alot about our threshold for alcohol. We were out cold for 8 hours straight. We're talking dead sleep... Anyways, work has been a little sluggish as a result, and so instead of reading, I'm sitting here in the living room nursing a dark fragrant coffee, and savoring the lovely citrusy smell of the lemon custard bars I just put in the oven. If only everything I put in my mouth didn't taste like sawdust... :(

Harry and the Potters in A2

Harry and the Potters are coming to Ann Arbor!
March 25th, Saturday
Ann Arbor, MI
University of Michigan - Michigan League Underground
7:00pm
FREE!

This band was highlighted on Pitchfork (see our previous post) as having one of the top live shows of the 2005. Apparently, their fanbase is made up mainly of harry potter reading, third grade - teenage females. They keep up a mean tour schedule playing high schools, public libraries etc. Should make for an interesting evening :) Be there or be square (urh ... couldn't think of a better catchphrase there).

Rethinking “a highly qualified teacher”

So, I usually don't take this space to talk about my research, not seriously anyway. I mean I talk about working with kids, churning statistics, and watching tons of Sesame Street videos, (which someone commented made me sound like a dorky, seriously over-qualified babysitter), but I just never think of a blog as the place to talk about academic stuff. If you want to read about low-income children, pathways of poverty and social resilience, go read a journal article.

But I make an exception today. Seeing how my life for the past two weeks or so has been all but consumed by this conference paper that I finally submitted an hour ago, I feel invested enough in what I worked on to share a little of that with you.

In a nutshell, my analysis focuses on the notion of teacher quality and whether or not a highly qualified teacher produces the same outcome for all children. I mean, it seems like common sense right? The more qualified a teacher is, the better children will perform. Well, yes. Sort of. Not really...

This is what I found:
The two lines represent the test scores of children from two different types of schools- the blue line represents schools where there are few minority children, and the red line represent schools where more than 50% of the children are students of color (these schools also tend to be much poorer). What the graph shows is that although test scores increase for all children as teachers become more qualified (duh, you would hope so...), there continues to be a persistent gap between them. Worse still, it seems as if the gap between children from low minority schools and those from high minority schools actually widens as teacher qualification increases. What this suggests is that not only are teachers not helping to close the achievement gap between the two groups of kids, as teachers become increasingly qualified, they actually appear to be exacerbating this gap.

Counter-intuitive you say? Not really if you think about it carefully. So here's my spiel: demographically speaking, in the next 20 years or so, America's school population is going to become increasingly diversified. Profoundly. In less than 10 years, 40% of this country's children will be children of color. But at the same time, teachers entering the teaching force are increasingly middle-class, female, and White. In other words, unless something is done, we're going to have on our hands a social and cultural chasm between students and teachers.

I argue that some schools of education are slow or unwilling to respond to this change. They are preparing teachers for a homogenous cultural and social world that does not exist and the result is that too many teachers lack the skills to work with diverse students and in complex social contexts. They get maybe that one token class on multicultural education where they receive pad and stereotypical conceptions of difference and diversity, easy answers to tough questions, and all in all, don't address the hard stuff. So, if higher teacher qualifications just means having taken more education courses which inadequately or wrongfully train teachers to work in conditions of high poverty and social disorder, it is any wonder why children in high minority schools benefit less than children from low minority schools when they get highly qualified teachers? The largely white, middle-class, female teacher population is simply ill-equipped to go into schools where so many of the children do not share their same social and cultural background.

I taught a class in multicultural education last year to a class of all White, middle-class preservice teachers. I want to think I did a decent job in getting them to think hard about what it means to teach in schools where the kids aren't growing up in the same way that they did. I made them uncomfortable and sometimes unhappy when I mentioned issues of privilege, access and equity. But I hope it was worth it. They need to know these things. They need to know that teachers must be able to teach ALL children effectively. As a teacher, you can't just go, "Oops, I'm sorry Jane, I just can't teach you as well as I can teach Mary over here. Have a good life." If we are truly as committed to education as we say we are, then we cannot tolerate a two-tiered education system that serves some students better than others.

We cannot afford to, because our children cannot afford to.

424 SAR stands down (1990 - 2006)

[click for larger version]

It has been a long time since I last thought about these guys. In fact, if it weren't for an unexpected phone call this morning, I probably would not have known that the unit was standing down. Having spent a good part of my youth with these guys, I have to admit that I am feeling a wee bit sentimental after hearing about the fact that the unit is standing down. In fact, as I am writing this, the guys are having their final parade back in the old camp. Don't get me wrong, I probably wouldn't like to don the ole' camouflage uniform again, but the closing of the unit means that I probably would not have a reason to see the people with whom worked, played and sweated it out with since the age of 18.

The National Service experience was certainly not easy for me and I have ambivalent feelings about my experience in the unit. However, indulge me in a moment of nostagia here. Here are some hard-to forget memories of the time spent at 42 Singapore Armoured Regiment:

- Sargent Jothi's midnight pep talks. The one which I still remember today was about him telling us that "the only constant in this world is change" when we were disappointed about not being able to book out of camp because of a high key recall.

- The feeling that you get when you have completed the final obstacle on the Standard Obstacle Course (the ramp) and are running towards the finish point.

- Saturday afternoon clean-up sessions where you know that you are going to book-out of camp and the radio is playing while you are doing your chores.

- Before lights out talk-cock sessions with Benedict and Lionel sharing smokes and drinks. (Which I AM sure that they are going to do tonight).

- The CO telling us on our first day in camp that "Once armour always armour" and that we had no hopes of transferring out to any other unit.

- The weird nicknames that we gave each other: small fuck, slut, gillardo, heejack ...

- Army catch phrases that we pick up: "Shout like thunder, move like lightning", "Don't pretend", "wake up your idea", and our degratory term for officers ... "occifers".

- Riding shotgun on top of the tank with the vehicle commander as it goes hurtling down a slope.

- Using a sharpie marker to cover up the dent that I made on the tank while I attempted to drive it (and it does look like I got away with it).

- The lizard which chirps "fuck you" in middle of the night in Camp Cresendo, Thailand.

And I am sure the list goes on. Feel free to add to my list in the comments :)

To the gents of 424SAR C Company Platoon 2 : It has been a pleasure indeed.

Breather...

Taking a break from writing my conference paper, I got my hair lopped off today. 6 inches. With a razor...

On another frivolous note, my shoes arrived. Suffice to say, Camper has helped my soles regain their long-lost self-esteem... :)

Guantanamo: Habeas no more ...

Habeas Corpus: "You have the body" (Latin)

"A writ of habeas corpus is a judicial mandate to a prison official ordering that an inmate be brought to the court so it can be determined whether or not that person is imprisoned lawfully and whether or not he should be released from custody."

I know that it is unlikely that many of the readers of this blog would have a spare couple of hours to spend listening to a streaming radio show and lecture. But I feel strongly enough to blog about this and suggest that listening to these 2 streaming boradcasts would be well worth your time.

- the first is a 58min NPR broadcast of This American Life called "Habeas Schmabeas" that actually interviewed a couple of Guantanamo detainees. This is the first time I have actually heard directly from any detainee from Guantanamo and the show does an excellent job of discussing the status of the detainees I found via BoingBoing. What was eye opening for me were the personal testimonies of Badr and Abdullah (sp?), two Pakistani men wrongfully detained as terrorists. (What kills me is the sense of humour that these 2 detainees still had despite being incarcerated in Guantanamo). The show also delves into the historical background and reasons for the presence of Habeas Corpus in the law.

- the second is a streaming broadcast of Noam Chomsky's lecture "Illegal but Legitimate: A Dubious Doctrine for the Times" which he delivered on Oct. 28th 2004 at the University of Michigan's Law School. I think that Chomsky's lecture provides a highly insightful account of the long documented account of states developing legitamacy for taking unilateral action. While this is interesting, the part of the lecture that pertained to the NPR show is when a student asked Chomsky what he thought about Guantanamo. To paraphrase Chomsky's reply, "Ask yourself what we are doing in Guantanamo in the first place."

A lost cause...

...or how Jude describes shoe-shopping for Serene Koh. I really ought to enjoy shopping for shoes- most women do don't they? They fight over themselves for lovely Manolo Blahniks, prim and strut in satiny, dainty Jimmy Choos, and argue over which Stuart Weitzman shoes are more droolsome- pumps or heels... And me? I walk in and out countless shoe stores, each time more disheartened as my affiliation with the Yah-Yah Sisterhood of Shoe Lovers dissipates with every shoe I cannot fit into. I am only half the woman I should be.

I have flat feet.

And that, my dear friends, has been the bane of my existence ever since I realized I was entitled to a life where I could wear more than just sandals, flip-flops and sneakers. After years of painfully swollen feet and awkward visits to shoe stores where I had to endure the mild amusement (at best) or unabashed derision (at worst) of shoe salespeople, I have come to the sad conclusion that there are only a handful of non-sneaker shoes that fit me, and even fewer that I like enough to buy. Naturalizer's and Scholl's are the epitome of comfort of course, but hardly anything to shout about in the style department. So where does that leave me? Camper's and Birkenstock's I have discovered, neither one, unfortunately, are easy on the wallet. Doesn't anyone out there appreciate the torment of a flat-footed woman on a budget and who appreciates a little fun in her shoes? I get it that I'll never be one of those girls who can sashay effortlessly in 3-inch stilettoes- my feet (and every other part of my body) isn't designed that way. But does that mean I'm destined to a life of frumpy brick-like excuses for shoes?

I bought my first pair of Birkenstock's almost four years ago and broke them in by walking all over Montreal. These Mary Jane's remind me of Audrey Tatou in Amelie which means they make me happy :) I've worn them with anything and everything, from shorts to dresses, and they're still faithfully taking me everywhere- I love them to bits!

Jude bought me my first Camper's from Chicago last year and they've been my most precious shoes since. They're the cutest things I own (I adore Camper's Twins collection) and light as a feather. I'm so blessed to be married to a man who gets what I look for in a shoe...

Which brings me to why I'm shopping for a new pair of shoes. I have a conference in San Francisco in 3 weeks and I need a pair of formal shoes. I could wear my Camper's but my suit is black; I could wear the Birkenstock's, but I think I might need a little heel action. I have gone through Zappos.com's entire collection of black women's shoes, dragged Jude through two malls, and annoyed a couple of sales people in the process. Can it really be that hard to find a pair of versatile black shoes that don't make me look either like a 18 year old party-girl or a 75 year old woman going to her 50th wedding anniversary? So anyways, after much self-flaggelation and disappointment, here's what I have to show...

Ladies and gentlemen, my second pair of Camper shoes:

[click for multi-view]

Singapore Ga Ga finally opens in Singapore

So, Singapore Ga Ga finally opens in Singapore. I heard about this film back in May 2005 and based on the trailer, I am very much looking forward to the day when I can finally catch this film. The talented filmaker, Tan Pin Pin, tries to capture comtemporary Singaporean identity and culture through found sounds and little known Singaporean musical jewels (aka the pianist Margeret Leng Tan) that mark us on the world stage. Serene and I were so bowled over by Ms. Tan's previous documentray short, Moving House, that we managed to get it on DVD. Hopefully, it won't be too long before Singapore Ga Ga comes out on DVD too.

I actually met Pin Pin during a talk about presevation and archiving in Singapore. When she heard that I was from Ann Arbor, she immediately asked whether I could get her copies of the now very famous, Found Magazine. I am sad to report that I have yet to fulfill her request and will endeavor to do so ASAP :)

In good company

As I continue to reel from my disappointment and frustration at Hollywood's dim-wittedness, here are some other recent Oscar upsets where a good film won over a great one (or even won at all...). These winners will fade into obscurity but it is the runner-ups which will be seared into audience's collective memories and film history.

1979:
Kramer vs. Kramer over Apocalypse Now

1980:
Ordinary People over Raging Bull

1994:
Forrest Gump over The Shawshank Redemption

1995
Braveheart (???)

1998:
Shakespeare in Love over Saving Private Ryan

2001:
A Beautiful Mind (???)

2002:
Chicago over The Hours/ The Pianist

It wasn’t buzz or hype that killed “Brokeback Mountain”; rather it was a combination of apathy, contempt, ignorance and timidity that led “The Academy” to confer its highest honor to a film that was remarkable for its mediocrity. However, the “Crash” phenomenon will have its fleeting place in the sun and then die out. True greatness endures and “Brokeback Mountain” will have a lasting legacy. As far as I’m concerned, The Academy Awards are now as negligible as The Grammys.
- From carpetbagger.nytimes.com

"Crash" and burn

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!! The world is not right. Travesty- a complete and utter travesty of good taste and judgment. How can I live in a universe where a glib, preachy, two-dimensional take on racism beats out a profound and unbearably haunting tale of love, longing and loss? I swear the Academy has completely and irrevocably lost whatever little good sense they had left after allowing Chicago to win in 2003 (another seismic tear in the film industry cosmos). I actually told Jude that if Crash wins, I'd never watch the Oscars again, but promptly took that back- I might just change my mind... I've never been this upset after an Academy Award ceremony before. Brokeback Mountain was unjustly and brutally robbed and even if Ang Lee did win for Best Director, Hollywood has simply shown that it can give an award to a man, but isn't brave enough to give the same tribute to an idea, a concept, a culture. Insufferable *&%$#@*&!

The Windy City

So we're back home and Chicago was fabulous as always. It's such a handsome city- vibrant, bustling, yet still charming and courteous. As always, we only spent a couple of days there but it was still a good trip with lots of eating (no surprises there), walking (I love this aspect of a city- that you can walk almost anywhere...), and discovering. We forayed out into the outer distrcits this time and unearthed the Wicker Park/ Bucktown area. Somewhat gentrified and chocablock of vintage clothing stores, hip record stores (see Reckless Records- I almost had to physically dislodge Jude from the premises...) and a gem of a second-hand bookstore, Myopic Books. I also almost bought the most droolsome pair of black Mary Janes from a John Fluevog shop in Wicker Park. Note operative word: almost.

Honestly, we would have spent the entire day AND night there did we not then crash (or so Jude would like to think) an art exhibition opening. I don't quite know how to describe Kirsten Ulve's work- a digital media artist maybe. She does commerical stuff like product ads and caricatures for Entertainment Weekly, but is a really enthralling artist in her own right as well. Her works are whimsical, tongue-in-cheek, and definitely not boring. Jude and I were really close to buying a print of one of her pieces, but we figured investing in original art at this point in our lives would be nothing short of indulgent...

Speaking of indulgence, can two people on a three-day holiday eat more than we did? If we hadn't walked so much, I think we would have collapsed in the middle of the Magnificent Mile from a gastro-intestinal arrest. Some highlights:
1) Our favorite restaurant in Chicago, Grand Lux Cafe. You can't beat this place- awesome food, generous portions (read: huge. The servers even warn you before you order), reasonable prices, and an awesome Gustav Klimt meets Art Deco interior. We've been to Chicago four times, and we've been to Grand Lux all four times.
2) Comforting, heartwarming Singaporean/ Malaysian food at Penang in Chinatown. When I first laid eyes on the Hainanese Chicken Rice and Penang Char Kway Teow, I thought I was going to cry. I think we might have overdid it a little, and by the time we were done, there wasn't room left for Bubor Cha Cha or an Ice Kacang...
3) Jude brought me to Russian Tea Time (aren't you proud of us Stan??) where we had a really hearty meal of Borscht Soup, Stuffed Cabbage Rolls (with a beet and bean salad that I didn't quite care for actually), and a tasty, crispy Chicken Tapaka. Oh my god, and that onion rye bread thing that they serve at the beginning... to die for...

For those of you who know us well realize that we could not have possibly have had only three meals, so just know that apart from these, we also partook (does this word even exist? partake, partook?) of a whole myraid of snacks, coffee, cakes, Italian take-out and two servings of MacDonald's. Oh, and before I go sit in the corner and repent of my gastronomic sins, for those of you contemplating a trip to Chicago, go check out the museum shop at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Without compare, we agreed than this has got to be the most interesting of all the museum stores we've been to, and we've been to MOMA and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Montreal. In fact, we might have spent more time in the store than in the museum itself (the exhibits were a little lacklustre to tell you the truth). Good stuff for sure.

Ok, on a completely unrelated note, just to inform anyone who might be contemplating contacting me for any reason tonight; barring a life-threatening emergency, unless your name has six letters and begins with 'A' and ends with 'N', or if you have anything you absolutely need to discuss with regards to Jon Stewart and the Oscars failing which your respiratory system would give way, please do not call me. I will ignore you. From 8pm EST till goodness knows what time tonight, Serene Koh will be unavailable to the rest of the outside world. Thank you for your kind cooperation.

My picks

BEST PICTURE
Brokeback Mountain
Let's see if Hollywood has the guts to give the award to a film that apart from spawning an entire repetoire of bad jokes and even worse parodies, has extended a daring yet heartflet call for us to comprehend the sorrow that accompanies any love that dares not speak its name...

BEST DIRECTOR
Ang Lee
For the man brave enough to make that film.

BEST ACTOR
Philip Seymour Hoffman
As TIME magazine succintly put it, the only way he won't win the trophy is if a meteorite strikes Earth on Sunday night...

BEST ACTRESS
Reese Witherspoon

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Paul Giamatti
Please give it to the man who was so brutally overlooked last year.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Rachel Weisz
Can I say that any woman who is capable of bedding Ralph Finnes after just one date should deserve any award.

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Crash
Ok, it's a toss-up for me here between Crash and The Squid and the Whale, but I have a feeling the latter might be a little to Sundance for Hollywood.

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Brokeback Mountain

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit
Because Gromit makes me happy.

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
Tsotsi

ART DIRECTION
Memoirs of a Geisha
I have to admit, even though the movie wasn't great, it was beautiful...

CINEMATOGRAPHY
Brokeback Mountain

COSTUME DESIGN
Memoirs of a Geisha

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
March of the Penguins
C'mon! They're dressed for the occasion anyway!

DOCUMENTARY SHORT
God Sleeps in Rwanda

FILM EDITING
Crash

MAKEUP
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the
Simply for making me want to look like the White Witch even though she's eeeeevviil...

ORIGINAL SCORE
John Williams (Memoirs of a Geisha)
Even though I really want Gustavo Santaolalla to win for Brokeback Mountain. Those strings made me cry on the way to school yesterday.

ORIGINAL SONG
"In the Deep"
(Crash)

ANIMATED SHORT
The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation

LIVE-ACTION SHORT
Our Time Is Up

SOUND EDITING
King Kong

SOUND MIXING
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
What's the difference between this and Sound Editing???

[Ok, you *know* that no thought whatsoever went into my choices for the last four categories right?...]

VISUAL EFFECTS
War of the Worlds
Ok, so both Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning annoyed the *%#! out of me, but those alien things, yeeks!...

Eternal Sunshine of the Jude Yew Mind

So how do I begin describing my foray into the complex and labyrinthine universe otherwise known as my husband's psyche? How do I make sense of a cartography that is meandering one moment, and straightforward the next? When will I begin to understand what makes a man walk into a car dealership, negotiate what I think (and I know deep down he thinks so too) is a pree-tty good bargain for a 2004 Toyota Matrix, come within 50 ft of the bank to extend our car loan, and then decide to change his mind?...

Maybe I'll never know, and that's what going to make the next 50 years of our life so interesting... Anyways, that more or less describes our past 20 hours. It's been a roller-coaster ride of decisions, indecisions, re-decisions, and at the end of the day, as frustrating as it was, I think we made the right choice. Climbing back into our seafoam green Hyundai after leaving the bank with our money still intact was one of the most liberating experiences in a while. The excitement of a new car gave way to the relief that we didn't take on an added burden, and that was a definite indication to us that getting a new car wasn't going to be the best idea. We would have had to compromise on too many things, and we weren't unhappy enough with our present car to do that.

Besides, if we did buy the car today, what would my precious husband do with his free time on the Internet? He wouldn't be able to meticulously research car deals to conjure up amazing bargains that discombobulated the most smarmy of car salesmen, and we wouldn't want to deprive him of that dear joy now would we?...

Spring Break

So how much of a spring break are we on?
1) We woke up at 11.00 (which meant 12 hours of sleep for me since for some incomprehensible reason, I fell asleep before 11pm last night, right in the middle of Battlestar Galactica when Jude was trying to explain to me the evolution of the Cylons...);
2) Drove 45 minutes to Troy to look at a Toyota Matrix we were interested in getting;
3) Listened to NPR's hilarious Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me all along the way (they had Jeopardy's Ken Jennings on who by the way, knows EVERYTHING, including what to do when you wake up next to a naked woman with no recollection of who she is... and he's from Utah to boot!...);
4) Came within a hair's breath of being conned into trading in our 2004 Hyundai for $4700 (did they think we were a pair of math-impaired dimwitted Asian morons???);
5) Walked fruitlessly around Somerset Mall and reconciled ourselves to the depressing fact that we were probably the poorest people in the entire complex and about 10 years away from being able to afford anything from the shops there;
6) Decided to pitch lower and go to Loehmann's instead where they sell discounted branded goods;
7) Had even less retail luck at Loehmann's;
8) And are now sitting in Panera Bread doing what we do best, drinking coffee, eating in the middle of the day, reading our notes, and being poor.

Hidden wedding photos

Stumbled onto our friends Darrell and Esther's photo site/ portfolio. They were our wonderful wedding photographers and guess what? I find a couple of pictures I never knew we had taken!

I really do love our wedding photos...

A cake and a crumb

The house smells deliriously good right now- all lemony and buttery and springy (as in the season, not the adjective...). I baked today- lemon cake with bittersweet chocolate chunks. The weather's been bitterly, bitterly cold and I figured we both needed something sunny to perk us up (even though it is technically 3 days to spring break- woo-hoo!). So on all counts, definitely an occasion for something sunny and citrusy.

The cake came out of the oven with a lusciously warm golden hue that made me giddy with glee (yes, yes, food makes Serene Koh happy- beautiful food makes me even happier!) It was yumms but the chocolate chunks I added kinda sank to the bottom even though I coated them with flour (thanks to Barefoot Contessa- guess who's been watching The Food Network???).

Have to confess though that I take credit only for melting the butter, mixing everything together and for the addition of the chocolate. Sorry, I can maintain this Wonderwoman-Ubergeek-Domestic-Goddess-Extraordinaire illusion for only so long. Let's just say I don't know what I'll do if Trader Joe's ever closed down. Wait, I know- for one, I won't be able to continue pretending I can really bake...

Help rebuild a library

Just a call for help on behalf of the New Orleans Public Library. According to the New York Foundation for the Arts, the library is asking for any and all hardcover and paperback books for people of all ages in an effort to restock the shelves after Katrina.

You can send your books to:

Rica A. Trigs, Public Relations
New Orleans Public Library
219 Loyola Avenue
New Orleans, LA 70112

Apparently if you tell the post office that they are for the library in New Orleans, they will give you a discounted postal rate.

At the same time, here are two organizations which are helping the NOPL by raising funds, so if you can't bear to part with your books, consider a small donation:

New Orleans Public Library Foundation Rebuilding Campaign

Friends of New Orleans Public Library's Restoration Fund

Dessert?

And you thought you knew good food photography. Here's a collection of photos of tiny human figurines atop edible items transformed into landscapes. They're all so whimsically composed, so sweet (the photos, not just the dessert)- a delectable show of good art, good taste, and good food!

Two of my favorites: A team of construction workers investigating a crack in a chocolate eclair:

[click for close-up]

Franciscan monks in prayful contemplation atop cream puff cathedrals:

Others to look out for:
- A team of astronauts on a crème brûlée crater;
- Workers cleaning up a frosting sugar spill around a meuille-feuille;
- A Lolita-esque scene of an older man lusting after a bikini-clad younger girl from across a bowl of toffee and ice-cream.

The Line

So how endearing is this? My dad brings my mum to watch Walk The Line (which he promptly informs me has just bombed in Singapore coz so few people have a frame of reference to country music, lest of all country music raging with fire and brimstone). He gives her a running commentary throughout the film about Cash's life (thanks in no small part- or so I would like to believe- to our Christmas present). She is duly moved. Cries. And now my dad's going to watch it again, this time without having to explain to the person sitting next to him why A Boy Named Sue actually has nothing to do with a girl.

I think it's so cool my parents still go on movie dates alone...

i carry your heart with me

[click for iTunes link]

So here's my Valentine's Day present for Jude- an iMix of songs which have in one way or another defined our relationship through the years. It's meant to capture a narrative arc of some sort so hopefully, like one of my favorite soundtracks- Mad About You, the songs will illuminate the story better than words can.

Like my best friend so eloquently says, even if you have no idea when, how or why R.E.M's "Be Mine" rocked our world, enjoy the songs as something hopefully more than your run-of-the-mill V-Day collection.

And Jude got me this unbelievably adorable Gary Baseman figurine. Baseman's the same guy behind "Teacher's Pet" and those wild illustrations for Cranium. It's called the All-seeing Fire Water Bunny armed with the Yin of Water and the Yang of Fire on each hand. Balance the World In the Palm of Your Hand so it says... It's so well-designed and thoughtfully crafted, and oh so cute! Definitely going on the mantle at my desk :)





i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)

i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

-e.e. cummings

And these are the students we used to teach ...

Thanks to some hardcore surfing by Serene, she managed to unearth these exemplars of student behavior in Catholic Junior College, the school we used to teach at. Just click on any one of the videos below and see characteristic behavior that we had to put up with for SIX painful and debilitating years!!! Now, I wonder what would happen if I sent the videos to the principal?... (evil laughter)

P.S. Check out the following comment left by one of the students who linked to these videos:
("Why do i get the feeling our principal is going to track us down very soon?") Oh, he has no idea...

Couch spuds

So let's see, we officially received cable access today at 10.38am and I do have to say that I exercised an inordinate and admirable amount of self-restriant by only watching 20 minutes of it while having lunch (do you know that the person who first brought Area 51 to the public's attention was a man named Bob Lazar? Thank you History Channel...)

But that was this afternoon.

The moment after we had dinner, the night went by in a complete blur. Jude and I sat through 2 hours of back-to-back The '70s Show (I love Hyde and Kitty, well, not together of course...), channel-surfed between The Parent Trap (with a pre-pubescent Lindsay Lohan- don't ask...) and Battlestar Gallactica (Jude almost lost his breath when it came on...), a spot of Comedy Central, about 30 minutes of Space Odyssey: 2001 (15 minutes of which was a gratuitous LSD-induced nightmare-scape that looked as if Stanley Kubrick decided to commit his s screensaver to film), and a little bit of Emeril where he made chocolate fettuccine. By midnight, you would have had to scrape us off our couch... I swear, we were like Cookie Monster let loose at a Pepperidge Farm convention. We are even convinced that ads on cable are better than on network channels... We who have been deprived are seldom lucid in our rationalizations.

Did I mention that we now have 95 channels?...

An Ann Arbor dinner

So like we don't already know that Zingerman's makes awesome sandwiches, that even though they are US$11.99 for basically some meat and cheese stuffed between two slices of bread, a sandwich at Zingerman's isn't really *just* some meat and cheese stuffed between two slices of bread... Jude and shared a large No. 13 ("Sherman's Sure Choice"- corned beef, switzerland swiss cheese, coleslaw & russian dressing on rye bread), a garlicky, mayo-ey, ooh-ey and ahh-ey potato salad, and a portion of beef and barley soup (which is more like a stew really).

We've been to Zingerman's before, but somehow, today was blog-worthy not so much because the food was particularly better than usual, but more because it was a really nice combination of good food and even better company. We were with a couple of friends and it was just an incredibly simple but comforting way to end the week. I can't think of a better way to unwind and refuge from the "mild-January-is-over-haha-gotcha!-now-it's-really-winter" cold than over carbohydrates, greasy meat, some kind of dairy, a token attempt at fibre, and most importantly, sugars, in the form of 6 oz. of gooey, sticky, lusciously sinful, deep dark chocolate gelato... and coffee of course. Oh, and we bought a loaf of chocolate chunk sourdough bread for breakfast tomorrow.

Sleeping in together, the promise of a snowy pretty morning, warm chocolate bread- the morning is so going to be just as wonderful as tonight. I can feel it already... :)

Harry and the Potters

No. 3 on PitchforkMedia's Top Five Live Shows of 2005:

Unless you frequent MuggleNet.com, you probably aren't aware that the greatest rock and roll tour of the year took place this past summer in public libraries across America. Two young brothers, dressed up like pop culture's most famous adolescent wizard, simultaneously spread the gospels of DIY synth-garage-punk and the Order of the Phoenix, causing squealing fits in hyperactive third graders, teenagers in homemade Grffyindor t-shirts, and their chaperones alike. The Decemberists wish they could lit-rock like this.
-Amy Phillips and Ryan Dombal for Pitchfork

And especially for Terri, a song just about Sirius Black, The Godfather.

Nominations

And so it begins. With Jon Stewart no less. Enough to make a girl contemplate cable.**

**Update: She did. [Dips head in guilt. Exeunt left. Slinking...]

Course evaluations

So I got my course evaluations back on the class I taught in the Fall. They were most affirming :) This is the first time I had the class all to myself, and not just as a teaching assistant, so it was a little scary to think that the evaluations were a reflection of my efforts alone, and I couldn't blame anyone if the numbers looked bad... But they aren't; in fact, out of a 5.00, I scored 4.98 on "Overall, the instructor was an excellent teacher.", 4.78 on "The instructor appeared to have a thorough knowledge of the subject.", and 4.82 on "The instructor seemed well prepared for each class." So that was nice :)

What I was more encouraged by though were not the comments about me so much as the ones about how the class had not only valued them as learners, but also prompted them to think differently about issues of equity and education. Consistently, there were high scores on items like "Students in this course were free to disagree and ask questions.", "I learned to value new viewpoints.", "I was stimulated to discuss related topics outside of class." and "I learned to think critically about difficult issues of diversity." What more can an instructor in multicultural education ask for? As a teacher, two things I've always found most gratifying- whether it's teaching 3 year olds, 17 year olds, or 22 year olds- is that 1) they grow as persons in an awareness of themselves and their abilities; and 2) they take from me a understanding of the subject area which they themselves have conceived on their own.

It's also always great to read the kind affirmations students give in their comments. This one's my favorite because it captures everything I had hoped to achieve with the class (and it also feeds the narcissistic self-validation that's always a small part of this whole teaching endeavor...):

This is honestly the best School of Ed class I've had (and now I'm done with the program). Serene was an excellent teacher- always prepared, always kind, always willing to help. Class discussion was really valuable and helped me engage in the topics and look at other viewpoints. When asked to say what I think, sometimes I can be narrow-minded but discussing with others helped me to see other perspectives and to value other viewpoints.

I've been tagged...

In response to Dave Choi's tag request:

Four jobs I've had:

Sandwich maker at Long John Silver

Arts journalist

English Literature and Theatre teacher

Custodian at the School of Public Health

Four movies I can watch over and over:

Chungking Express

The Big Lebowski

Wings of Desire

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Three places I've lived:

Singapore

Perth, Australia

Ann Arbor, MI

Two TV shows I love:

Lost

My Name is Earl

Four places I've vacationed:

Montreal, Canada

Chang Rai, Thailand

Boston, MA

NYC

Four of my favorite dishes:

Curry chicken

Jap Chae (Korean fried noodles)

Tempeh

Any kind of noodle in soup

Four sites I visit daily:

New York Times

My bloglines site

Techbargains.com

CTools

Four places I'd rather be right now:

Coast of Western Australia

Anywhere interviewing Tori Amos

Somewhere in Latin America

Anywhere as long as I've graduated

Four bloggers I'm tagging:

Dave

Stan

Jonas

Jeff

年年有余, 步步高升*

So preparation for Chinese New Year (or whatever can be considered "preparation") began last week when we gave the house a good spring cleaning of sorts- nothing elaborate like decorating the place with pussy willows and red banners for luck of course (which I do miss a little...). Mercifully, the weather was nice & mild yesterday and so we managed to give Ocha a thorough wash. I think we haven't washed the car since November when the weather turned brutal for a month or so, so if I were Ocha, I would have been eternally grateful for the good bath :)

These cleaning rituals are symbolic of ridding oneself of the remnants of the old year in order to usher in the new year afresh, ready to receive the good luck and blessings with which it comes. Here's a website to check out all the traditional practices associated with the Lunar New Year. Some of them are a little silly (not washing your hair on New Year's Day??!!) but I also grew up with so many of them and there's always something to be said about preserving some element of one's cultural identity.

Lunar New Year's Eve is supposed to be the time when all the members of the family come together for a meal, and as I imagine my entire extended family feasting on my grandman's heartwarmingly satisfying 8-course dinner, Jude and I had a roast beef dinner of our own. I know, I know, more Thanksgiving than Chinese New Year, but hey, it's just the two of us- at least we didn't just call for pizza! Some of Jude's classmates did get together for a New Year potluck of sorts today though. Everyone brought a little something homecooked and it was nice. None of the symbolic yu sheng, fatt choy, or nian gao like home, but it was good fun just the same :)

So to everyone who celebrates the Lunar New Year, here's wishing you a joyous Year of the Dog blessed with great prosperity, happiness and longevity!

*May you enjoy a surplus in your fortunes every year, and rise in success with each new endeavor! (Traditional Lunar New Year greeting)

Of robots, dolls and monsters

Isn't this plush robot absolutely adorable? It's so whimsically delightful, complete with its own little girl inside controlling the one-eyed mechanical man with a red-knobbed lever. I want!! This is the artist's blog and it comes with lots of lovely art links. The doll also reminds me of Sheeta and her robot friend in Laputa. Here's a life-size model of it on top of the Ghibli Museum in Japan.

I love dolls made of fabirc- there's just something incredibly elemental and comforting about the feel of a cloth toy, even if they are monsters. Jude bought a couple of these darling critters called Uglydolls as Christmas presents last year. Aren't they just the cutest things? My favorite is Wage. He works in a supermarket.

Of course, not all dolls are created equal in Serene's eyes. I have a very real fear of model dolls- ok, I'm not sure what you call them, but you know the ones which are really stiff (they're either made of plastic, procelain, or even wood), dressed up in real-people clothing and look amazingly life-like? Some of them have eyes which blink too... Yikes, getting the heebie-geebies already. Don't ask me what the root of the phobia is; that's why it's called a phobia- it's irrational.

Case in point, Steven Soderbergh's new movie Bubble opens tomorrow. Now, apart from the media furor that's been created because of its simultaneous release on big screen, DVD, and cable, it's also a movie about dolls. Well, dollmakers specifically. And a murder. Perfect. Go watch the trailer (or even just look at the poster...), and you'd understand why this girl had her hands over her eyes throughout the 30-second trailer with her heart palpitating wildly, and why if I ever had to choose between being in a room full of snakes and a room full of those dolls (dismembered or otherwise), I'd take the reptiles any day...

What's in a face?

How hilarious!... Stumbled on this face recognition application where you upload a picture online and they'll match it with a celebrity's. This is what I got with this shot of us:

I tried other pictures and got an insane variety of results ranging from Bill Gates and Steven Soderbergh for Jude, to Aung San Su Kyi and Jerry Seinfeld (???) for me. Go figure...

Epiphany II (albeit with a mini-crisis...)

So I had another academic/ professional epiphany today- it's seems to be an annual affair, these sudden crystallizations of clarity... Anyways, as part of our professional seminar today, we had a video conference with American Institutes of Research, a research organization which does a lot of work on education and other related fields. It was basically the professor showing us what other options there are after graduation apart from tenure-track professorships. I've never really been inclined to teach at a collegiate level anyway- it just seems a little remote from what I really want to do. And the presenters at AIR made the prospect of being a research analyst/ scientist very alluring. It's not that I want to now go work for them (although they did seem to appreciate very much the research skills with which our school has prepared us- they hire many Michigan alums because our research methodology department is apparently very well regarded, which also happens to be what my Masters was in, Educational Policy and Research Methodology, so that's a good start I suppose.) But more importantly, their presentation got me very excited about the kinds of opportunities there are out there for me to do I want to do- in a nutshell, help kids.

And this is where the crisis comes in. I'll be done with my coursework by the end of the calendar year, which means I'm going to have to start thinking about my dissertation topic. I told myself I have to figure this out by the end of this semester and today's talk has just stressed me out so much in this regard. Do I want to do a historical analysis of early childhood education/ development because my advisor's an education historian and I love him dearly and want to keep him on my committee, or do I do a methods-based analysis of more contemporary issues which may necessitate that I switch advisors and involve tons of number crunching? What's my topic going to be then? What's my conceptual model going to look like? Can I figure this all out by April? How long is it going to take? What kind of job can I get after that? Here? In Singapore? Anywhere??? See what I mean by crisis??!!

I was so bothered I thoroughly burnt myself out at the gym. Hard. We're talking 600 calories/hr hard. Think I was going to fall off the elliptical if that's actually possible. I should have run outside today actually, it wasn't that cold and the brisk air might have done me some good- what could be more cathartic than running in 38F weather? I just realized that when I get stressed, I exercise and cook (remember my big pot of chicken-mushroom pasta episode?), which is why tomorrow, I'm baking more cranberry cookies and making a big pot of curry for dinner. Thank god I don't veg out and gouge myself under stress, I don't think my body would ever forgive me.

I'm sorry if this post has been dreadfully self-absorbed- I just needed to see my thoughts in words, articulate it somehow before I can plan what to do next. I'd better figure this out soon- a girl can only run so fast and bake a finite number of cookies...

Cranberry Hootycreeks

Our friends have been most wonderful in telling us that the Christmas present we gave them turned out really scrummy so I figured I should try it out on my own (how embarassing is it when people thank you for a gift you haven't the slightest clue about and which could have been an absolute disaster...). So thankfully, the semester is starting off well (read: only two classes and research this term- my entire physiological system thanks me...) so I took some time off reading today and decided to bake. And also anything to take my mind of the depressing winter weather. Oh my, we're talking gooood cookies man... I'm sure I didn't cream the butter and eggs correctly (without a hand-mixer, I had to whisk them up by hand which meant the result wasn't exactly "fluffy"- tell me this is THE unforgivable deadly baking sin, Wendy) but who cares, the cookies turned out great!

I couldn't resist popping three into my mouth minutes after they came out of the oven (what have I been saying about Serene Koh's lack of self-control?). Y-U-M-M-Y!! I actually enjoyed the sweet creaminess of the white chocolate which was nicely balanced by the slightly tart cranberries- and this is coming from a person who categorically does not eat white chocolate (excuse me, but that's like saying decaffeinated coffee is acceptable...) We ran out of white sugar so I had to use Splenda instead but trust me, no harm done whatsoever.

Hmm... I could get used to this baking thing...

Vox Humana: New British Honda Civic ad

I have always been fascinated by sparse music arrangements that utilize one idea: the power of the human voice to translate feelings and emotions in a non-idiomatic form. When thinking about this, a number of artists come to mind: Bjork and Meredith Monk. However, I just came across this Honda ad via Digg. Click on the word "Watch" at the bottom of the webpage. I thought that this was a pretty amazing take at what recreating the experience of driving a car feels like.

Washington D.C.

So the training seminar went great- it was a little tiring sitting in front of the computer from 8.00-5.00 three days in a row exploring mounds of data, but they were so rich and able to address so many child development issues that you forget the tedium after a while. The training was primarily designed as a methodological seminar to acquaint us with this huge nationally-representative data-set which follows close to 3 million of America's children from birth, but fundamentally, people were there not to discuss things like weightings and standard deviations; I met nursing practitioners, pediatricians, federal research analysts, professors, and other grad students from all over the country who came together in order to explore a whole spectrum of issues to do with children, not just their educational well being, but also their physical and neurological trajectory, and there was even a man there from the U.S. Department of Agriculture looking at the effects of food stamps on the development of disadvantaged kids! It was just wonderfully gratifying to be in the company of so many like-minded people, working in different ways towards the common ideal of improving and sustaining the well-being of all children.

The only downside of the trip was that I didn't get to see the city much at all. All the museums and galleries are operating on Winter hours right now so they were closed by the time I got out. And it would have been too much of a hike from where I stayed to get to the monuments so the only time I got to see them was on the way to and from the airport. They looked awesome of course, especially lit up at night, but it would have been incredible to have been able to get a close up view. What I did get to see of D.C. though was gorgeous- the really quaint architecture was particularly lovely. So much of the city has been preserved throughout the years so you have these wonderfully pretty buildings that look like that came straight out of a Henry James novel... Jude would love to see the city too, so who knows, we might make a trip there one day just for the fun of it. But don't worry all you people in the Bay Area, you guys get priority of course!

Can you tell me how to get...

So guess what I spent the weekend doing? Research. On Sesame Street! Oh the bliss... The new project I'm on from this semester is focused on developing a literacy curriculum targetted at disadvantaged children, and Sesame Street is providing us with clips from the show to incorporate in our lessons. We might even be going to New York sometime this term to watch some of its production.

Basically, I spent the weekend going through tons of Sesame Street archived clips and materials and developing a set of criteria for what a good clip ought to be like. It was great to say the least- not just revisiting Ernie and Bert and Snuffalopagus (is this even how you spell Snuffy's real name?), but really getting into the whole job of understanding what Sesame Street was originally conceived to do- help underprivileged children learn while they were being left in front of the TV. I mean, the Muppets aren't just there to be cute (although honestly, someone should give Elmo a dose of Ritalin...), they have been intentionally designed to act in ways that not only captivate children, but also to help them develop a sound vocabulary and a sense of language mastery. I had never thought to consider this so carefully before. Analyzing each clip so intensely does take some of the joy out of watching the clips, but still, watching Sesame Street as research? I'm not complaining...

Anyway, I'm off to D.C. tomorrow for a training seminar. It's fully paid for by the National Center for Educational Statistics and they're putting me up at some swanky hotel in the middle of the city. The last time I was in D.C. was more than 10 years ago and only for a day (it was part of a whirlwind 10-city in two weeks tour where I got chicken pox in Disneyland, but that's another story...); but just my sorry luck, the seminar's from 8.30- 5.00 everyday which means I won't be able to check out any of the museums and galleries... *crap*... But the area I'm staying at is supposed to be pretty trendy so we'll see, I might still be able to see some interesting shops and soak in what I can of D.C.'s sights and sounds.

JCB song

[click for website]

This is courtesy of my best friend who loves me so much as to share with me this delightful song and its equally delightful website. It's written by a dyslexic guy who used to get bullied alot in school and about his dad who would rescue him from school some days and take him in his JCB, a mobile crane (apparently there're loads of them in the UK.) It's a tremendously sweet and moving song about boyhood, imagination, and a father's love. The website is superbly designed- enjoy the illustrations and you can even doodle with a virtual pencil and save your drawing.

Have fun, and don't cry too hard!


Well, I'm rumblin' in this JCB.
I'm 5 years old and my dad's a giant sitting beside me.
And the engine rattles my bum like berserk
While we're singin, 'Don't forget your shovel if you want to go to work!'

My dad's probably had a bloody hard day
But he's been good fun and bubblin and jokin' away
And the procession of cars stuck behind
are gettin all impatient and angry, but we dont mind.

An' we're holdin up the bypass, oh...
Me and my dad havin a top laugh, oh-woah...

I'm sittin on the toolbox, oh...
And I'm so glad I'm not in school, boss
So glad I'm not in school

Oh no...

And we pull over to let cars past
And pull off again, speedin by the summer green grass
And we're like giants up here in our big yellow digger
Like zoids, or transformers, or maybe even bigger

And I wanna transform into a Tyrannosaurus Rex!
And eat up all the bullies and the teachers and their pets
And I'll tell all my mates that my dad's B.A. Baracus
Only with a JCB and Bruce Lee's nunchuckas

And We're holdin up the bypass, Oh...
Me and my dad havin a top laugh, Oh weh oh

I'm sittin on the toolbox, Oh...
And I'm so glad I'm not in school, boss
So glad I'm not in school

And we're holdin up the bypass, Oh...
Me and my dad havin a top laugh, Oh-Weh-Oh
I'm sittin on the toolbox, Oh...

And I'm so glad I'm not in school, Boss
So glad I'm not in school

Said I'm Luke, I'm five, and my dad's Bruce Lee. Drives me round in his JCB.
I'm Luke, I'm five, and my dad's Bruce Lee. Drives me round in his JCB.
I'm Luke, I'm five, and my dad's Bruce Lee. Drives me round in his JCB.
I'm Luke, I'm five, and my dad's Bruce Lee. Drives me round

And we're holdin' up the bypass, Weh-Oh

Me and my dad havin a top laugh, Oh...
And I'm sittin on the toolbox, oh-oh...

And I'm so glad I'm not in school, Boss
So glad I'm not in school

I said

I'm Luke, I'm five, and my dad's Bruce Lee. Drives me round in his JCB.
I'm Luke, I'm five, and my dad's Bruce Lee. Drives me round in his
Aw, I'm Luke, I'm five, and my dad's Bruce Lee. Drives me round in his JCB.
I'm Luke, I'm five, and my dad's Bruce Lee. Drives me round in his JCB.