Scientific Consensus

A trailer of the upcoming Al Gore movie:

An Inconvenient Truth

I would've been impressed, but unfortunately I once read this speech by Michael Crichton (disk posted the link on his MSN nick if I remember correctly) that has made me skeptical on that issue:

Aliens Cause Global Warming

Open issue, anyway. The below article + discussion gives quite a balanced perspective in my opinion:

'An Inconvenient Truth': Does This Look Like Consensus to You?

There are some (maybe uncalled-for) harsh words around in there, but get past those and there are pretty good points. And a lot of hyperlinks.

These are quite long articles but very interesting, so take your time. =)

Photo Update II

Should be the last update. Photos from Kathy up on the SF photo page.

Should've been up since the weekend but batch resizing is much easier with Microsoft Office Picture Manager that I don't have installed at home, only in the lab. I'm stealing time again to do this, so gtg now. =P

Local Potato

Lost the steam to scream about Mathilda's exit from Singapore Idol (having let out some in Eka's place) so this line is all I'm going to say about it. =P I wonder if they purposedly put the three best singers in the unsafe group each time? Getting old lah.

Aside from that, I'm getting more and more addicted to local shows, how dangerous. 0_0 Already rooting fervently for the yet-to-be couple in Channel 8 9pm drama. Then caught the ad for the 7pm one, "Eh, isn't that the guy who played Youfu? (Got very kind face.)" so I've been watching the first few episodes faithfully too, though I'll be skipping some for other appointments in the future. Bad for me that these are shown five days a week, so that's taking really much time, and even cause me withdrawal symptoms over the weekend sometimes... Well, ABC DJ is over, but in its place I've taken a liking to Maggi & Me, so. My current practice is to skip the blah-blah parts of Singapore Idol to reduce exposure to TV screen radiation (read: guilt).

...Right. Moving on...

I had a lot of rest this weekend, and that puts me in a "soft" mood, so here's a sweet verse from my Winamp "soft" mix. Originally by Ron Sexsmith, this song is covered by k.d. lang in her album "Hymns of the 49th Parallel" (very recommended).

The leaves have lost hold
of the branches as always,
which leaves us with gold-
and wine-coloured pathways.
In the same way I
In the same way I've fallen for you.

-- "Fallen"

Target Audience

Eka just lent me The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, so I hastened to finish my Tuesdays with Morrie so I could get started on it. =D

Just got to Chapter One, and I like it so far. It's the philosophical type like The Little Prince or Dune, which are fictions with quoteworthy* moral messages delivered as the story progresses. (Thanks Eka, and keep them coming! ^_^)

The below story, which particularly impressed me, is from the Preface.

---

Our Lady, with the Baby Jesus in her arms, decided to come down to Earth and visit a monastery. The monks proudly joined in a long queue, and each of them came before the Virgin to render their homage. One declaimed beautiful poetry, another showed his illuminated paintings of biblical subjects, a third repeated the names of all the Saints. And so on, one monk after another, praising Our Lady and the Baby Jesus.

The last monk of all there was the humblest in the whole monastery, who had never studied the learned books of the time. His parents were simple people, who worked in an old travelling circus, and all they had taught him was to throw balls into the air and juggle with them.

When it was his turn, the other members of the order wanted to bring the homage to a conclusion, since the old juggler would have nothing important to say, and might lower the image of the monastery. But in the bottom of his heart, he also felt a burning need to give something of himself to Jesus and the Virgin.

Ashamed, conscious of the disapproving looks of his brothers, he took a few oranges from his bag, and started to juggle them in the air, saying that juggling was all he knew how to do.

It was at that moment that the Baby Jesus, sitting on Our Lady's lap, smiled and started to clap his hands. And the Virgin reached out her arms, inviting him to hold the baby.

---

The dark horse thing is rather cliched, but I'm touched by the content. When we give, how much is for the other person and how much is for our ego? Ah, I've been fighting this for a long time. =P


* Reminded me of Gurney Halleck and his love of quotations and "flowery phrases". My kindred spirit, as Denny pointed out, which made him my favourite character. =D

Relocation

From the Dean's circular to students, sent out today: "...the plans for our relocation are now firm: SoC is scheduled to move to the building cluster comprising Law, parts of AS6, and Biz1 in two phases, beginning June 2007 and completing in June 2009."

The circular from the Office of the Provost gave more details on the phases: "Phase 1 of SoC’s move to Law, Law Library and some parts of AS6 will involve all teaching activities and some research labs, and Phase 2 will involve the remaining SoC research labs moving to BIZ1 building which BIZ school will vacate when its new building is completed, which is expected at end 2008."

Will have to change my transportation routine when that time comes, or pray that the phase involving me isn't until July 2008. =D Will depend on whether we get categorized as "some research labs" or "the remaining SoC research labs".

Smiles for Sale

A few days ago I wanted to catch up with Ms. Jacqueline (my former tutor) but didn't manage to find her after her class in CELC. So to make my visit to the Arts worthwhile, I went into the Forum Co-op to catch up with the new manga section instead. ^___^ *excuses*

All there are the Mandarin editions. One section is for sale while another section is for rent, S$1 per book. Found this out from the salesgirl, who talked to me seeing I was the only customer there at that time. ^^ I was only browsing, as I didn't intend to buy and the rental fee felt a bit expensive (that was around 20% of the book price, I think?) so I wasn't really interested when she suggested some titles and told me about the membership scheme and such, but she was pretty and friendly so I listened and talked to her, sort of, for fun. =P Anyway I thought the info might be useful in the future too.

Also the other day I was trying on a necklace without intending to buy, but again the salesgirl was nice and talkative and I was feeling like trying out those things, so I "humored" both of us. Now that I think about it, maybe I was in fact wasting their time and effort? Huehuehue. But it's their job anyway so I don't have to feel guilty ya? Like, better than being bored when no customers come? =D I felt that way when I was doing poster presentations (equals selling ideas what) but maybe not everybody share the same opinion ah.

Felt a bit guilty anyway for my shopping companions who would have to go on the wild goose chase with me... More reasons for (window-)shopping alone. =P But I'll still drag my sister to buy clothes with me, ha.

But back to the topic... No matter if the smiles and friendliness are just for business, I'm still drawn to those. Luckily I'm stingy enough to balance that. (Er, or maybe not? =P) In my recent trip to the U.S. I found that the salespeople were very friendly -- the moment I walked into their field of view they put on a big smile and asked, "Everything okay?" (In this case they meant "Anything I can help you with?" but I think it is quite a common, general greeting that can also mean "How are you?" sort of thing.) In one particular art store the salesgirl was a "metal" kind of girl with torn jeans and everything, so when she asked in her raspy voice, "Everything okay?" it frightened me a little =D but all was fine.

On a more recent news... went to NUS Rag Day today... but as usual I'm lazy to relate an event that I share with friends (maybe because the experience is already shared so I don't have that need to "vent"). So just wait for Eka's blog to be updated, since I'm sure she will put it in her next entry, and she is a better reporter/movie critic than me. =D In short, I'm very happy that KR won a lot of awards this year! ^^

One thing I do want to vent about, is about this auntie who told us, as we squeezed our way to a better part of the audience area, that we couldn't stand in a particular spot as it would block her view. Hm, complicated yah, since where do rights end and selfishness begin? I mean, from her perspective it must be irritating that three girls came later than her and stood in front of her, so she couldn't watch it sitting down anymore. Another group of people did that to us earlier and we felt a little irritated ourselves. But in a crowd like that, I didn't think we could really expect convenience (not VIPs weh) so we bore with it. Then was it that we should be considerate and not block her view or she should be considerate and let us watch from there? I tried to squeeze away from her as a compromise, and asked if the position was okay, but she didn't want to look at me anymore, so I also took offense. =P Erm, not feeling good about that la, but what to do... heh.

Photo Update

Updated the SF photo page with contributions from Ramkumar and the link to Gu Yan's album. Should start hounding some people for theirs... *hint hint*

Beautiful, Silently

Another bittersweet beautiful song.

---

I Cried For You
Vocal: Katie Melua

You're beautiful, so silently
it lies beneath a shade of blue.
It struck me so violently when I looked at you.

But others pass, they never pause
to feel that magic in your hand.
To me you're like a wild rose;
They never understand -- why

I cried for you,
and the sky cried for you,
and when you went I became a hopeless drifter.

But this life was not for you,
though I learned from you
that beauty need only be a whisper.


I'll cross the sea for a different world,
with your treasure, a secret for me to hold.

In many years they may forget
this love of ours or that we met;
They may not know how much you meant to me.

I cried for you,
and the sky cried for you,
and when you went I became a hopeless drifter.

But this life was not for you,
though I learned from you
that beauty need only be a whisper.


Without you, now I see
how fragile the world can be.
And I know you've gone away,
but in my heart you'll always stay.

I cried for you,
and the sky cried for you,
and when you went I became a hopeless drifter.

But this life was not for you,
though I learned from you
that beauty need only be a whisper,
that beauty need only be a whisper.

Pet Peeve

Somehow, I'm particularly irritated by small gestures of un-thoughtfulness:

- people who walk side by side on the pavement and do not bother giving way to pedestrians going on the opposite direction

- people who stand head-on at MRT doors and walk right in as it opens, so alighting passengers have to bump into them

- people who proceed to lean their whole backs on MRT poles without noticing/caring that there are fingers holding on to the poles (and in a moment of nastiness made me want to poke my nails into them, if only I had long nails and if these people looked clean enough =P)

I quite wonder about this myself. I mean, there are supposedly larger things I should have gotten irritated at but do not, so why am I so particular about these? Maybe because I was here when the government started off the courtesy campaign with all the posters starring Jack Neo in buses and MRTs some years ago? =P Hopefully I do not subconsciously do these things myself sometimes, ha.

SF Trip

The awaited photos. ^_^

Agonized for quite a while whether it was safe to include the ones with my mug shots and my friends'... but well, heck. =P I was probably too paranoid. Fussing over placements took me enough time as it was. Wondered if using services like flickr would actually be quicker than html-ing this thing as I did, as they probably automatically create the thumbnails for you and such. But I was too lazy to invest time on learning about them, and I imagine copying the photos to the school server would be much more hassle-free, if I refer to my experience with Yahoo! Briefcase.

Ramblings are included with the photo pages. In general, it was fun. Half-fun and half-anxious before my presentation, and pure fun afterwards. =D Learnt to "sell our stuff" to people. Pretty exciting and very heartening to really experience that, hey, there are people interested in what we're doing.

Also did the demo for the Chronos tool, one hour per day over four days. Was a bit shaky with the implementation details since I'm not the one who developed it -- but of course tried not to show it. =D The first "customer" happened to be a little familiar with the technical details and asked something I'd missed up on reading (uh-oh). Quickly went online and read the actual paper in the afternoon, but behold Murphy's Law, of course nobody asked me about that again afterwards. XD Just realized not having namecards was a loss in these kinds of events. Plan to talk to the office after this so I can "fish" better next time.

The fishing went on in other aspects too -- next to my demo spot was a group from Seoul University, and we had pretty nice chats when "business" was slow. Somehow I often bumped into one of the Korean guys, and he happened to be quite cute, mwuhuhuh, but then on the last day I found out he was married. Fuah. =D

Thought we were quite lucky too -- Kathy met two fellow Vietnamese in the workshop she attended, and these guys have been staying in U.S. for quite a long time, though in another state. They cordially took up the role of good hosts and drove us around, showing us places. I haven't expected much sightseeing because of our relatively short time outside the conference schedule, but amazingly we managed to squeeze in a lot of things. Well, actually we skipped some technical sessions to play in the exhibitions too. =D There were many booths holding lucky draws for xBox-es and iPod Nano-s, but we weren't so lucky. =( We still got freebies all around though.

My level of shamelessness was particularly tested in a booth that let people play darts. They gave out prizes (choosing between magnetic dart games or micrometers) if you could get 35 points or more within three tries. I played four times, so that's 12 tries, and 11 out of 12 I got zero (one throw went so far off the sides that the two guys manning the booth quickly backed away a few steps, and two throws broke the darts in two) but in the last one I accidentally hit a triple 15 and got me a micrometer. =DDD Because of that incident Kathy thought I had violence tendencies. Maybe all that badminton playing helps, huhuhuh. My aim has always been terrible anyways.

Strangely enough I sort of missed Singapore at some points there. Not Indonesia. Hueuhue. What I missed were the humid air, drinkable tap water, and take-it-for-granted safe neighbourhoods.

Air: San Francisco was cold even in the summer. The phrase of the week was "Here comes the wind". (Or maybe "What's happening?" but that's sort of an inside joke, so.) The cold of the aircon my jacket could handle, but once we stepped outside, the wind froze my fingers and my face, even while the sun was blaring. The dry air sort of hurt when breathed in, and I kept getting dried blood in my nostrils. So yeah, I still prefer to sweat under Singapore's hot weather.

Water: The hotel didn't give us free water supply, so we kiasu-ly snagged bottles of mineral water from the conference. When we went to a minimart some days later we found that the brand they'd given to us was actually an expensive one. (All mineral water brands were expensive there but this one was among the more expensive ones.) I thought, "Oh, lucky." My roommate thought, "Should have taken more." =D We're from Singapore all right. At the hotel we also tried both hot and cold approaches -- asked room service for (free) pots of hot water and cooled it off, and took (free) ice cubes from the dispenser and melted those off. Mwahahah.

Food: While there we ate at a Thai place, a Korean restaurant in Japantown, a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown, an Indian restaurant, and a Chinese express gourmet place. Their Chinese restaurants always gave us fortune cookies, something Asian Chinese restaurants never did, so it made me Wiki that thing, and now I know why. But -- how come still Asian food you ask? Hoehoehoe. Just for convenience, actually. We still ate at Western food places the most, like Subway, Denny's, Carl Jr, and one Italian restaurant. The meal portions were generally huge and I had to waste a lot of food. =P Funny thing was I felt very well-fed on the flights there, but on the return flights I kept getting hungry. Maybe the food portion was rubbing off on me? =PP

As I stepped back on Changi I actually felt quite happy despite the "holiday" being over. I think it's the familiarity and the level of confidence from knowing my ways around here. And after the long flight I just wanted to quickly get home. Back to work now, with some slacking as usual. ^^0

And finally, a little wishful thinking. Another of our submissions got accepted recently, a work I shared with a former colleague. This time the conference will be in Seoul, and wuh, I kind of want to be there. ^^ (And not because of the married cute guy earlier. The place I kinda wish to visit is actually Japan, so that induced this wish as Korea might be a close enough experience.) But I don't think I'll get to go there as I'm not confident with the field we're taking on in this submission, so most probably my supervisor will be the speaker. Of course I can still go on my own to attend it, but currently financial and time considerations are pointing to negative. =P Well, let's be positive and think that there'll be next time. =D