Aggregated Facebook updates

If I were a compulsive updater of my Facebook status, here are some of what you might have seen over the last few days.

Sim Li Chuan likes his colleague’s new haircut!

Sim Li Chuan is on a one-Haruki-Murakami-short-story-a-night-before-bed diet.

Sim Li Chuan will remember to prepare for meetings in future.

Sim Li Chuan just had extremely shiok! bak kut teh – soup was hot and peppery; tenderloin was tender; kidney was cooked just right; salted veges absolutely hit the spot – and the kungfu tea was… extremely skilled :p

Sim Li Chuan is happily catching up – hang on, need to talk to colleague I haven’t seen in a while – with a colleague he hasn’t seen in a while.

Sim Li Chuan is enjoying a roadshow by some colleagues and admiring their presentations and poise.

Sim Li Chuan will absolutely remember to prepare for meetings in future.  Goodness!  *Angry at himself*

Sim Li Chuan is looking forward to late night coffee/dessert with his pal.

Sim Li Chuan is disappointed.

Sim Li Chuan appreciates the talks he has most nights with a too-generous-and-good-natured-for-his-own-good colleague.

Sim Li Chuan is opening an ill-deserved gift.

Sim Li Chuan makes a resolution.

Sim Li Chuan is impressed with himself.  He remembers who Dan Roam is.

Sim Li Chuan is enjoying talking to a colleague and relating the time Calvin said, “By my troth, I’m off!” and his mother said, “Whither goest thou, young rogue?”.*

Sim Li Chuan and his colleague agree that it would have been even more surreal if Hobbes were the one speaking in Shakespearean with Calvin.**

Sim Li Chuan just had a quite satisfying prawn bee hoon-mee dinner, and is trying not to have some more food before bed.

Sim Li Chuan is mulling over something his boss told him.

Sim Li Chuan just had more food.

Sim Li Chuan marvels at his former colleague’s ability to wrap a gift.

Sim Li Chuan wonders how to end this post.

* Here‘s that strip.

** And if you like Calvin and Hobbes, this is a great link :)

clever!

I saw a few things I thought were clever.

One was a device placed over a sink.  It holds a bar of soap.  Below the soap is a grater, and you can use it to scrape soap shavings onto your hand when you want a quick wash.  I think that’s really smart, and economical and environmentally friendly :)

Another was this interview with Sherry Turkle that Fast Company did.  Sherry Turkle is an ethnographer who studies how people interact with technology, and has written about it in her new book “Alone Together”.  Her words convey her research findings in a very genuine and accurate way.  She speaks of how the speed and frequency of incoming information have led us to shorten our interactions with others, that “[w]e’re not necessarily putting our investment in the ties that bind; we’re putting our investment in the ties that preoccupy”.  She speaks about how the metaphor of addiction is misused when we apply it to our relationship with technology, which is abundantly useful when used “in accordance with [one’s] social, professional, and personal values”.  She speaks of how this relationship with technology has created a “constant connection”, via social media or always-on email, which results in a sense of loneliness when one is not connected – the connection is the drug one could get addicted to then, maybe? – and a loss of the capability to be alone without being lonely.

And another was Laura Schroeder’s blog post about why people would work for House, everyone’s favourite brilliant misanthrope doctor, and even hang around after they’re kicked off the team.  (I appreciated the post so much partly because I’m a huge Hugh Laurie fan, from Blackadder The Third times :p)  She comes up with a very plausible answer :)

Oh, and this game too was I thought clever.  Trailer for your viewing pleasure below.

Happiness and other musings

I was quite early at a colleague’s wedding last month, and picked a good spot, directly looking at the live band.  And so I got to see the live band play, and it was a good band, versatile, could sing in a few languages (appropriate since my Malay colleague was marrying a Chinese), enjoyable to watch. 

About two thirds into the night, the band began to ask for guests to join them on stage to sing.  One guest did, performed ok for an amateur; and then another went on stage, and really just stole the show.  It was clear that this middle-aged chap was used to performing with a band, and this band all strangers were just another group to jive and make music with.  And so he did, improvising a jazzy up-tempo version of some song I’ll remember later, and he did it so joyously, he was so into it, that the band, bland and professional earlier in the night, began to flex and stretch themselves too, and put their energy into it, so that, when the second and last song ended with a flourish and the chap departed the stage to rapturous applause from the band and an audience roused from its postprandial doze, I couldn’t help but think that, if the bride and groom find the sort of happiness this mat rocker did making music with his newfound friends, they would be together for a long time indeed.

*****

I was in Solo, Indonesia last November for work.  And was disproportionately joyous when I saw bolsters on my hotel bed.

*****

My pal got me a CD of instrumental renditions of some of 梁文福’s most memorable songs and I love it to bits.  My pal got the same CD from her pal, and found that she didn’t like it much.  Darned.