(yeah baby yeah!)

I've just finished watching "Becoming Jane" (on DVD!) - one of those shows I've been wanting to watch for a long time (in addition to Batman: Dark Knights & Red Cliff of course). And what can I say? It's a brilliant movie! (in case you wonder why I say that about every movie I watch, the reason is that I only mention the good ones! (and the horrigible ones of course... gotta name and shame... tsk tsk..)) It's probably mostly romanticised screenplay, but quite a large portion of it was based on historical accounts of Jane Austen's life. (you might have already guessed that I've been converted to a Jane Austen fan, having read & watched Pride & Prejudice, and got started on Sense & Sensibility).

Still, if the historical accounts are what it claims, then it's easy to see where Miss Austen got her inspiration for Pride & Prejudice from. In fact, I found many similarities between Becoming Jane & Pride & Prejudice. And given how much I loved the latter, you can guess that the affection follows through for this movie as well. (though given this affection, i've mentioned it remarkably few times on this blog. In fact, only a brief mention in this post [at the end] and this other post! Shocking, I know...)

And other than being an excellent film (oh, and it features such lovely country scenes filmed in Ireland! How I miss the Irish soil..... This post gives some excellent photos taken by yours truly, me... ;p but I digress once again), my friend also describes this as a "chick flick" - not quite the "Bring It On"-type chick flick. This one's more subtle, and more... elegant.... :)

Jane Austen - played by Anne Hathaway...


Jane's sister, Cassandra Austen - played by Anna Maxwell Martin.


And I shall now leave you to wonder why there's no caption for the last photo.

Labels: Movies

I was reading one of the magazines that the North East CDC produced (entitled "Spring") and there's this page which asked some primary school children some questions about Singapore. The questions asked included, "Why is Singapore called Singapore?" and "Who is Sang Nila Utama?". But as we know it, it's not the questions that matter - it's the responses that these kids give that can really be quite amusing sometimes. (refer to this article if you need examples) So here's the question which I evoked the most amusing answers:

"Why is the National Flag red and white, with five stars and one crescent?"

• "Because they represent something." -Lucas Foo, 8 (he obviously knows the answer to this one)
• "I think it is because of the lion, because they stand for some symbols about Singapore" - Devansh Sanjay, 7
• 'Because red is for good luck. There are five stars for five working days. And because the crescent looks like a banana." -Ryan Phua, 7 (best answer I say. but what happened in the past before a five-day work week? did we have 6 stars then? lol. and the banana. seriously. i wonder if I can even look at the crescent moon in the same way again....)
• 'The five stars represent the five races." - Chelsea Ho, 9 (five races? chinese, malay, indian, others, some others?)

So what does the Singapore flag stand for?
Red symbolises universal brotherhood and the equality of man, while white signifies purity and virtue. The crescent moon represents the rise of a young nation and the five stars stand for the nation's ideals of democracy, peace, progress, justice and equality.

Though I'll be damned if any of the primary school kids tell me the "correct" answer.....

Labels: Muses, Teaching

There's hardly a unifying theme in many of my posts nowadays - mostly because I never meant to have one. ;p

1. At the rate that the National Stadium is being "rebuilt", I suspect it might not be till 2020 that we'll have the new National Stadium. I say this because, unless my memory fails me, I attended the "closing ceremony" of the National Stadium when I got back to Singapore last year. In fact, I even blogged about it... But a year on, the National Stadium is still hosting the Singapore vs Brazil match! Surely we must have another stadium with sufficient capacity, capable of hosting such an event... or maybe not. Or I'm sure we could set up a football match on the World's Largest Floating Platform - then we'll have the World's Largest Floating Football pitch - which will no doubt bring in another 's worth of tourism money into Singapore!

And at a price of $60 per ticket, it's quite steep and a far cry from what we used to pay to see the Malaysia cup ($6/8 for adults was it?) But as the gahmen tells us, go only if you can afford it! Guess I'll be giving the match a miss then, or I'll just watch at some kopitiam - for $60, I could get myself wasted silly on cheap Tiger beer.

2. One of the things that I found "Uniquely Singapore" when I got back, was how horrible Singapore drivers are. Sure, we all know that - the newspaper even had quite a feature on it last year (check the Sunday times archives), but don't we all contribute to this "horrible-ness"? Ask yourself when was the last time you've cut into an available gap in the next lane in a traffic jam, only to realise that the lane you came from was faster (and thus you cut back again). Or when was the last time you honked at passengers crossing the road, instead of slowing down (fine, they were jaywalking, but what do you stand to gain by honking?). Or simply, how often do you check your rear-view mirror, to see if you might be road-hogging?

As I was reading the "bonus materials" in Freakonomics (most of it from the blog at http://www.freakonomics.com/blog), I found one article which kinda resonated with my feelings on driving in Singapore. It's titled "Making Profits from Incivility on the Roads". If the Singapore traffic police would do the same, perhaps the fines will offset some of the many taxes we currently pay.

3. Which brings me to talk about Freakonomics. As a numbers sort of person, I can identify with many of the things mentioned in the book. One of which is on "Irrational Fear". In this chapter, Levitt & Dubner discuss how our judgement may be marred by irrational fear sometimes. They used the example of how, as a parent, you might not let your kid play with another kid, when you know they have a gun in their house, but have no qualms if the other kid has a swimming pool in the house (but no gun). Sure, this might seem "rational" initially, but the number of children who drown in swimming pools are much more than the number of children who die as a results of gun-shootings.

It's up to you whether or not you subscribe to the reasoning given in the book, but it's worth reading nonetheless, if you haven't already (and once again, I'm probably the last person on this earth to read this book... ;p)

The end.

Labels: Books, Muses

Kuchiki Rukia - with the most beautiful ice sword (Sode no Shirayuki) in Soul Society.
wah. Bleach is damn exciting now! Can't wait to find out what happens next. And being back in Singapore, I think it's best to play safe, and download direct instead of using bit-torrent - If only there was an iTunes store equivalent for anime... tsk tsk...

Meanwhile, I'm probably the last person on this planet to not have watched movies like Batman (Dark Knight) and Red Cliff. Boohoo. Anyone not watched them yet/wanna watch it again? ;p

I did however get my fix on local movies. I bought Royston Tan's 4:30 from Kinokuniya the other day. I can imagine how "thick" the script for the show must have been, given the incredibly low amount of dialogue in the movie. There were some amusing and poignant moments in the movie, but still, there were moments during the movie where I felt rather restless, and just wanted it to move on.

Some shots from the movie:

Labels: Anime, Movies

you're probably familiar with some of the internet slang like LoL or AFK or WTF... but recently, i've taken a little more notice on internet slang - something which i never really paid attention to before. So here's a list of internet slang that you should take note of:

1. srsly - seriously. my favourite one so far....
2. noob - newbie. it's funny when you try to pronounce it. (pronounce it as noo-b)
3. pwn(ed) - owned. this word was mis-spelled so many times it became a new world. it basically means you died a horrible death in a game. (haha, you got pwned by me)
4. 1337 - leet.
5. w00t! - hurray!
6. OMGWTF!
7. AFAIK - As far as I know
8. ZOMG! - omg. but abit more melodramatic.
9. YHBT - you have been trolled. (troll = fake)

And on a similar note, I found out today that RAG (as in Rag & Flag) stands for Raise & Give! No one ever told us that!

Labels: Muses

In this chapter, we (Kenny) investigate the use of camera flash to see if flashing can result in a desirable effect. The model used in this experiment is none other than Bobby the dog.

We shall first look at a photo of our model without flash, and then we move on to shots with flash, including those before & after being groomed (by yours truly, Me) The effects of flash in this photo-shoot is mainly to bring out the details in the shadow zone, and is shot with a bounce card at 60 degrees.

Without Flash:


With Flash (Before grooming):
#1:
Oh, all the dirt around the eyes, and the hair all over the place!

#2:
Eeks...

With Flash (After grooming):
#3:
Notice the difference? Well, it's not perfect but still noticeably neater and cleaner.

#4:
And again...

Verdict:Flash on! (well, it'd better be useful, since I had to pay $600 for the flash... hehe)

Labels: Bobby, Photography

Well, what an interesting 3 days it has been at YCK. For a start, it was a lot more relaxed than I'm used to - I only have to teach 3 periods on day 1, 1 on day 2, and none on day 3. Although this excludes 3 periods of relief on day 2, and 4 on day 3. Still that makes about 4 period each day, which is only 50% of a school day. Not bad lah.

What else has been interesting? 2 boys in my class almost got into a fight yesterday - I had to step in to stop it. And I asked the two boys to sit separately during the lesson, and I spoke to them after the class. And to my surprise, (both) the parents of one of the boys came to school today and asked to see me! (wah, day 3 already kena the parents) But well, the parents just wanted to find out if their son was being "bullied" in school, and since I "detained" their son for a while after class yesterday, they'd asked to see me and find out more. Of course, given that I've only been in the school for 3 days, I'm not exactly the person with a wealth of knowledge on the students, so I could only tell the parents what I knew/saw (which wasn't much to be honest), but they seemed fairly satisfied with my replies anyway.

(of course, the above meeting-with-parents also caught the attention of the VP [vice-principal], and the office staff was asked why I (as a relief teacher) was handling it alone. [although my "teacher mentor", whom, i later found out, was the form teacher of afore-mentioned student's class did actually come into the office at the time of the meeting-with-parents, although she left me to handle it after i explained to her what it was about] and the office staff was also quite curious why a relief teacher had parents looking for him during his stint. my life is sooo exciting)

--------------------
some other stuff I've noticed about the school (system):

1. There is now the position of a full-time school counsellor (FTSC), whose job is to sort out the misbehaving students, who get sent to the RTC (it's an acronym for something centre, but I find it more amusing to remember it as a place for Really Talkative Children)

2. Classrooms are locked when not in use - teachers hold a key to their "home room", and it's locked when there isn't a class. So for my relief lessons, I had to draw a key to enter the classrooms. Well, security for the projector and PC in the classroom I guess, although I first observed this during my school placement @ the Netherhall (UK) school. It'd seem to be the norm nowadays with all the ICT equipment.

3. The number of MP3 players, handphones, PSPs in a class will require some arithmetic genius to work out.
--------------------

And I've gotten my laptop back! Hurray - the Powerbook is alive once more. :)

Labels: Singapore, Teaching

I've landed myself a 3-day relief teaching job at YCK Sec, after a very random long shot last night at 10pm on MSN. Quite amusing really - I was chatting with Yinxiu on MSN, and it so happens that they have an "opening" for an English RT. So I took on the challenge of course.

(*check above paragraph for grammar/spelling/punctuation errors*)

And anyhow, the reason I haven't written since I got back is because my laptop's a little jetlagged, and refused to start up the morning after I got back. Very depressing I know... I've since sent it away for repairs (my 3 year warranty ends later this month!), and hopefully it'll be sorted soon. Oh how I miss my powerbook....

Home in about 14 hours or so.

Checking in was a pain as always. Unexpectedly, I had 43kg to check-in - even though I've shipped most of my stuff back home. Most of the weight could be attributed to the electronic items I was carrying though - like all my chargers, et al. Well, they ALMOST fooled me into paying the excess baggage by saying that "ah, you're 43kg, which is 13kg over what we can give you, which is already 10kg more than what it says on your ticket (which is 20kg). BUT, we'll just charge you 5kg of excess baggage." And I thought, well, not bad, good bargain eh, buy 5kg, get 8kg free. Then they said it was gonna cost £126 for 5kg. WTF.

Obviously I wasn't going to pay that. So after removing 3-4kg, I went back to the counter, and tried to reason for 40kg, since that was the allowance we came on - and they said we could get 40kg if it was our first or last flight home. As it is, it would be my last flight after my studies. This time, the lady was a little more helpful by saying that 40kg is only if you've got a student ticket (which I don't - i have a FULL fare ticket, which is £520 one-way for goodness sake). And apparently, she's not the boss so she can't decide.

So off I go to try and figure something else out. And then we were told, if we put stuff into a "laptop bag", we could technically carry TWO hand-carry luggages onto the plane. So that's what I did. Took some of the electronics out of the check-in luggage, and put it into a "laptop case" and went back to check-in - this time weighing in at 33kg. (well, they said they might consider not charging me if I only had 35kg, and i'm under that this time). And because it was a different check-in counter this time, the guy let me in. But not without asking me to put my hand carry luggages on the weighing scale first. That came up to 16kg apparently for my "laptop bag" + rucksack. He mumbled something about that being too much still, but let me go anyway. Bless that guy.

So off I went to have my coffee, and cool down from yet another check-in episode. Many thanks to Xi-lin and Leon for coming all the way down from London to send me off, and a million thanks to Fraser for picking me up from my place and sending me to the airport! :)

I shall now try and make myself as invisible as I can when I board the plane - mostly because i'm sure they've put me beside a fat lady, or a crying baby. (if you've read Air Babylon you'd know why...) In about 14 hours' time, I shall hopefully be sweating it out in the living room at home!

Today, I had the honour of brushing shoulders, and sipping champagne with Royalty, or as close as you can get really, at the Henley Royal Regatta. Not that any members of the Royal family was actually present at the event, or that I actually got to drink champagne (the latter was ridiculously overpriced). But anyhow, it was really great fun to be at the posh-est regatta that I've ever been to, and probably will ever be.

Being a guest of a Steward friend of mine (you apparently have to go through a very stringent application process and wait about 9 years - if you're lucky, to become a member of the Henley Boat Club), I got to put on the following "ticket", which gains us access to the Stewards' Enclosure, and is a little bit like an "Access All Area" backstage pass - very cool.

Or you could fork out £32 to pay for it.

The Stewards' Enclosure: Situated on the Berkshire bank near the finish of the Course, this is a private Enclosure and admission is only available to Members and their Guests. There are three Grandstands as well as many rows of deckchairs along the river frontage.

Let me give you an idea on how "posh" this event is:

Those attending the Regatta in the Stewards' Enclosure must dress in accordance with long-established tradition. Gentlemen are required to wear lounge suits, or jackets or blazers with flannels, and a tie or cravat. Ladies are required to wear dresses or suits with a hemline below the knee and will not be admitted wearing divided skirts, culottes or trousers of any kind. Ladies are encouraged to wear hats - click here for more information. Similarly, no one will be admitted to the Stewards' Enclosure wearing shorts or jeans. Members are particularly asked to bring this custom to the attention of their Guests, to ensure that the standards are maintained and to avoid the possibility of embarrassment of a Guest being refused admission.

The use of mobile telephones is prohibited within the Stewards' Enclosure. This is to minimise the disturbance and annoyance that mobile telephones cause to other Members and their Guests.

Children under the age of 10 years and babies are not admitted to the Stewards' Enclosure.

(quoted from the Henley Royal Regatta website)

I'd write more, but I'm quite exhausted from all the packing and moving (they moved me to an ensuite room for 3 days! hurray!), so I shall leave it at this for now.

Wikipedia has a long (albeit boring) article on the Henley Royal Regatta, if you're interested.

Labels: Henley Royal Regatta, Rowing

To bring or not to bring - that is the question.

It's so stressful. I've thrown away about half of my room today - mostly paper waste though, so that's gone to the recycling bin. And then I have to decide what needs to go into the shipping boxes (i.e. stuff I wont need for the next 8 weeks), and what needs to go into my suitcases, and if it fits. Gosh. I've been packing for THREE straight days and am only just about done. Sighz.

I hate packing. I say this at the end of the every term, but yet, there's no escaping it. At least this will be the end of it.... I think.... (unless I decide to stay in the halls at NIE/NTU... hmmz)

Labels: Cambridge

I'll finally be back in Singapore on the 10th of July! The result of a very late flight booking means I don't get to fly back on the spanking new Airbus A380. :( boohoo

In the meantime, much of my time is spent putting my life into boxes once again. and I've also FINALLY sorted the shipping of my stuff back home (£200! sighz). 7 days to leaving the country.... it is a strange feeling indeed...