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.

My first fortune cookie

Yesterday, I had some Chinese takeaway in San Francisco, and got my first ever fortune cookie, containing two separate strips of white paper, one of which said:

You will receive unexpected support over the next week.  Accept it graciously.

and the other of which stated:

Your choices at the moment will be good ones.  Trust yourself.

I wanted to share this story…

I know it’s already two days after Christmas, but I just came across this story and I wanted to share it with everyone who reads this.  It’s about a Christmas gift.

P/S.  To me, it’s interesting how early in their lives people know what they want to do when they grow up.  My earliest ambition, influenced by my aunts who loved their dogs and knew so much about them, was to be a vet.  The other ambition I held with any seriousness was to be a journalist, like my uncle, who has done so much that impresses me.  Today, I realise that I’ve never had the drive to pursue any ambition, but I still remember the sense of purpose that came with having something to aim for.

i am about to go to sleep but

… something tells me to write a short blog post, and so I shall. 

A few days ago while absent-mindedly looking through a shallow box of birthday and Christmas cards that friends from long ago had given me, I saw two which made me stop and think. 

One was from the girl – I wonder if woman or lady is more appropriate, now – I liked, her familiar elegant scrawl talking about how her rag-and-flag camp was coming up, back in the year 1997.  We were but 20 then, but she wrote, with a different pen from the rest of her words, something along the lines of “We are all getting older, but hey, let’s enjoy it while we can”.

The other card was signed off by my pal’s beau at the time and my pal, though it was her beau’s writing, a well-remembered scratch.  About 10 years ago now, the two of them carted a set of 36 books to my house as a birthday gift. 

Discoveries

Recently, I discovered that wedding couples have the same glassy-eyed look at their wedding dinner.  You know, it’s been a long, hectic day, and they’re trying to take it all in because it’s so meaningful, but the day’s become a pageant of things done for tradition and there are appearances to keep up, especially at dinner, where strange relatives and old classmates appear together, groups of people who had nothing to do with each other, all gathering for the same important, happy event, and it is for you that they’ve all turned up, and there are speeches to be made and toasts to be drunk and drunk and drunk.  It’s a hectic whirl, and glassy eyes, from the couple of weddings I went to in the last few months, are the norm for wedding couples.

Also, I discovered that I can’t deal with salty toothpaste.  Colgate has this new ‘mineral salt’ formula I think, and the first time I used it to brush my teeth I was still barely awake, and my instinct was to swallow the damn concoction because it tasted savoury.  It’s a conditioning, part of my upbringing – eating savoury stuff was a satisfying experience, almost all of the time.  And I realised that the day they make deep-fried stuff-flavoured toothpaste is the day I die of toothpaste poisoning.

Another discovery, or re-discovery, because I continue to be surprised by it: MRTs are so much less crowded during year-end school holidays.  It’s stunning.  Wonder of wonders, I actually got a seat the other day, a really comfortable bit of space.  I could put my bag on my lap and open it up and take a book out and read it with my bag on my lap and everything.  That was the most pleasant MRT ride I’ve had in months.

Also not long ago, I discovered Kij Johnson, who’s rekindled my enjoyment of science fiction and whose kooky titles just make reading her that bit more fun.  I know so many of us read genres and you may not read sci-fi, but just try her out.  Read “26 Monkeys, Also The Abyss” here (you’ll see that the story’s won many awards and you’ll see a link to a cool reading of the story).  Then read “The evolution of trickster stories among the dogs of North Park after the Change” here (you’ll see it has nothing to do with evolution and all to do with an utterly superb re-imagining of the beginnings of a creation myth).  And then read some more :)

And just at the end of last month, I discovered “Skinny Pizza”.  Read a review here, and others here and here.  I have eaten at Skinny Pizza twice, both times at the Wheelock Place outlet.  Skinny Pizza’s gimmick is of course the skinniness of its pizza – basically, it’s to normal pizza what tissue prata is to normal prata.  Skinniness in this case made the pizza crust super-crunchy, which is both good and bad.  When I tried the curry chicken pizza, I found the gravy-laden centre portion absolutely delicious, full of the traditional Indian curry flavour, and the outer edges overly dry.  But I can live with that.  What I wouldn’t be able to live with, is if they discontinued their truffled fries.  It’s too bad that they are ordinary shoestring fries – if a higher grade of cut potato was used, they would be matchless.  As it is, they are still the most tasty fries I’ve ever had.

Team Singapore vs. Manchester United…

sounds like a goal fest for the team that’s going to beat my beloved Reds to this year’s English Premier League title.  It’s also, according to arch communicator Lim Swee Say at an event held this past Sunday, an apt analogy for the battle Singapore has against this scary recession.*

Known for his vivid stories and ability to communicate to the man on the street, he drew elaborate yet fitting parallels between how Team Singapore’s midfield would need to battle to win the ball against the Red Devils and how the government, employers and workers needed to work together to defend against record retrenchments; between how Team Singapore’s defence would need to be stout once its midfield teammates lost the ball and how the same tripartite partners needed to work together to minimise any unemployment downtime and get workers trained and again gainfully employed; between how Team Singapore could not just defend – because if it did it had no chance of winning – and its attackers would need to be ready to attack every chance they got vs. how Singapore’s labour force needed to become more skilled and resilient and competitive – for example, by upgrading its service quality – so that it would be ready to go on the offensive once the upturn came about.  It took him a while to draw all the threads of the analogy together, but football was a familiar enough metaphor that it engaged the audience during those sometimes meandering minutes – in fact, my impression was that the audience was held rapt by his virtuoso performance – until he completed the analogy with an almost audible click and earned spontaneous applause.

*Are things really that bad though?  At the same event, Tharman Shanmugaratnam mentioned that he knew of a range of medium-sized companies that were forecasting growth for their organisations this year.

An unexpected rainbow?

Work In Progress terminated

Came across this lyrical symptom of cost cutting, employee trimming and general corporate blood-letting: The writer of Work In Progress, a blog at TIME.com, has voluntarily left the organisation “after [her] managing editor… announced an open invitation for buyout volunteers”.  Maybe because of my work, I found that I could very much identify with her buyout-related tribulations – finding out from HR what the package would be, then realising her union had that information and she therefore did not need to tip her hand off to HR, negotiating with her boss about said package.  Two streams of questions struck me, almost simultaneously: Stream 1 – So many do not have the fortune of being in a position to volunteer for a buyout (both in terms of the company and her financial situation allowing her to).  Stream 2 – Why did TIME invite its people to volunteer for buyouts?  How would TIME judge the success of this exercise, whatever the reason?  Was everyone invited to do this, or just a section of its staff?  If the latter, how were they chosen?  Did TIME also invite them to volunteer to go on unpaid leave or some ‘reduced hours, reduced pay’ scheme?  Stream 2.1 – Are many other hard-copy magazines doing this?  (I would expect that maybe online-only magazines would not be able to save as much doing this and so aren’t.)  And are many other newspapers doing this?  And press agencies?

Thoughts would be very welcome :)

Today…

it suddenly dawned on me that, someone not remembering my name does not mean someone not remembering me.

Today…

someone whom I thought would remember my name, did not.

Alzheimer’s

The 9 Dec issue of the New York Times Magazine recognised screening for Alzheimer’s disease (may require registration) through a test administered on the telephone as one of the year’s best ideas. That got me thinking.

I think I first came across anything like Alzheimer’s in Dean Koontz‘s Watchers*. This was in my teens. The protagonist of the book, a dog with human-level intelligence, is stricken with distemper. His friends, a couple he essentially matchmade, are sick with worry that second-stage distemper would bring brain damage, and that the dog – his name is Einstein – would live his life in a kind of greyness, knowing that there is something missing and yet not quite knowing what it is.

I imagine Alzheimer’s to be something like that.

A few years ago, an aunt described to me the devastation Alzheimer’s wrought on her dad and her mum. He would wake up in the middle of the night in the house he built and has known for years and years and ask where he was. He would ask for the thermostat to be turned up, complaining it was freezing cold, only for his wife and daughter to see him not dressed.  Her mother struggled to take care of him and eventually – not without guilt – let others take care of him away from his home.

I imagine that, when he died, those who loved him were relieved.

I recently read a New York Times article titled “Love in the Time of Dementia”, and it opened like this:

So this, in the end, is what love is.

Former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s husband, suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, has a romance with another woman, and the former justice is thrilled – even visits with the new couple while they hold hands on the porch swing – because it is a relief to see her husband of 55 years so content.

I imagine that love that comes with shared experiences – mundane, intense, everyday, momentous – is a special kind of unity; even when you are alone, what you experience is shared with her, your reactions spiced and sprinkled with her own; you know her that well, and she matters that much.

*Koontz was my favourite author in my teenage years; I think Lightning, Watchers and Mr Murder are his best books.  I enjoyed how he combined the conventional elements of different genres.