even though i saw this in a harvard parking lot, i suspect the driver might be from m.i.t.

march going out like a lion!*

Turn any blog into an object of protest! Click here (via Eszter).

* BTW: The idea of March going in like a lamb, out like a lion (or vice versa): is that a rural thing, a Midwestern thing, a more broadly American thing, or a more broadly everywhere thing?

Heather Mills: I'm Worried About Next Week

Heather Mills: I'm Worried About Next Week


He's made it with all limbs in tact after two weeks, but blonde amputee Heather Mills says she "terrified" of performing on next week's "Dancing with the Stars." That's because next week, contestants will be asked to jive their way through the competition.

Jiving, a fast-moving, energetic form of swing dancing, has got Mills concerned. Says the estranged wife of Paul McCartney, "Im worried about next week; I've got to do the jive -- you try and hop on a leg that's like concrete and the other leg bounces up and down like a trampoline."

Mills wowed watchers this week when she and partner Jonathan Roberts worked a back flip into their routine and eked out a score of 18, keeping them safe, while fellow competitor and model citizen Paulina Porizkova was axed.

A Raincoat -It Came In The Night -VIDEO

A great song with OK animation, it works better with Kenneth Anger's film though...

toward a general theory of zapitivity

Great cartoon reposted by Drek on the difference between "scientist" and "normal person" (link). Only I think Drek's conclusion about it is not correct. The "scientist" would not repeat the task a dozen times; instead, after the second or third, the question would change to "I wonder if it would still happen if I [insert slight variation here]."

Dan also links to this cartoon, with his own elaboration.

IM SUPERRRRRR LAZY!


RAHHHH!



TAG REPLIES HERE:


kevin: whatever.


PussyLary: hahaha. dun have ur face, u send me ur passport photo and i'll put in lor! lol


elaine: LAZY LARRRR. anw, updated(:


Sheevonne: yah yah okok. why dont i give u the email, u go ask directly.?lol





No longer thought a witches' brew,
The well's clear water is good for you.
But drink not much for you'll
Atone-
Your inside all will turn to
STONE.

in surf city it was two girls for every boy; in soc city it's three retirees for every new ph.d.

The big annual meeting of demographers is going on in New York City, and even though I'm not able to attend, I thought I could at least write a demographically-minded post. The new issue of Footnotes, the newsletter of the American Sociological Association, has an article titled "Too Few Ph.D.'s" that makes the following observation:

"Since 1993, the 'replacement rate'--the ratio of the annual number of new PhDs awarded to the number of PhDs retiring--has steadily declined in all social science disciplines. Figure 1 shows the replacement rate between 1993 and 2003 for these disciplines. ... By 2003 (the last year for which data were available), there were two-thirds of a new psychology PhD for every PhD psychology retiree. In contrast, there was less than one third (.29) of a new PhD for every one PhD retiree in sociology."

Among other things, this observation would seem to explain:

1. My sense that, in certain institutional respects, the experience of my broad cohort in sociology has resembled that of a game of musical chairs, only except instead removing chairs, removing people.

2. The increasing difficulties editors report in finding people to peer review articles.

a half hour well spent

Reading the Veronica Mars episode guides for the episodes that I have not yet seen. So, that's over with, and I can return to the rest of my life. Hey there, life, good to see you again.

Holy Molar!!! Britney Back at Hospital

Britney Spears has gone back to the hospital.

TMZ has confirmed Spears went to Century City Hospital this afternoon. As we reported, last Sunday she went to the same hospital after experiencing significant pain in one of her molars.

Larry Rudolph, Spears' manager, tells That Other Blog that today's visit was tooth-related.

The same tooth that sent Spears to the hospital Sunday hasn't gotten any better.

Spears' SUV has just left the hospital and is headed back to her home.

freaks and geeks

I uploaded a recent article in the New Republic on Freakonomics and economists fretting about the rise of cute little studies in their discipline. My stance, which I did not do an especially good job of articulating in this panel of Freaknomics at the Eastern Sociological Society meetings, is that sociology should, at least from a strategic standpoint, be on the side of the freakonomists in their battle against the structural-modellers in economics, because the former stakes out a position that is far more congenial to prevailing tendency of sociologists to be stronger with understanding data and process than they are at math.

Update: Link fixed.

(ongoing series) things i really don't need right now but nonetheless seem to have

346. A Veronica Mars addiction.
347. An Arrested Development addiction.

So, back in 1998, my then-girlfriend bought me a TV tuner card as a present. I bought cable TV to go with it. This was whatever month the Women's World Cup was where the US won and Brandi Chastain took off her shirt at midfield. Anyway, I got sucked in and watched like every televised match of that World Cup, developing actual feelings about who would win the Ghana-Uzbekistan match. Then, after the championship, I discontinued cable. I think I need to bring television into my life every 5-10 years to remind myself why I don't have television in my life.

Remember how after the fall of Communism, multilevel marketing schemes got introduced into places that had never had them before, and it was like unleashing a virus onto a population that had no antibodies to it. Well, the SAT analogy problem would be TELEVISION:JEREMY::AMWAY:ALBANIA.* Argh.

Don't even think I am going to start on any of the other shows you recommended to me when I started Netflix. Suffice it to say that the plan where I was only going to watch shows while I worked out has run aground on the shoals of low self-discipline. I think I'm going to watch these series and then cancel Netflix. It's warm enough I can run outside anyway.

* Do the SAT and GRE still have analogies, or am I dating myself? They got rid of the antonyms but kept the analogies, right?

Arizona Swamp Company –Tennessee Woman

Arizona Swamp Company –Tennessee Woman/ Train Keeps Rollin’ –Parlophone 5C006-91 733 (1970 Dutch Issue)

Arizona Swamp Company are in fact The Nashville Teens in semi-disguise. They released this single around the same time as an amazing version of The Move’s Ella James (also on Parlophone under their usual moniker). Tennessee Woman is a quality early 70s straight-ahead rocker and is backed by a good romping version of Stroll On/Train Kept A Rollin’. Although not the wildest version known to man; it still features a nice lead guitar rave up.

Click on title for edits of Tennessee Woman and Train Keeps Rollin’

nothing up my sleeve (p < .05)

My ability to figure out magic tricks increased greatly the day I realized that magic tricks are optimal in an important sense. A trick is basically as impressive as it can be without giving away its secret. When the magician saws the woman in half, the parts you can see are all you can see. If the trick would be even more impressive if the woman wiggled her toes but she doesn't wiggle her toes, there's a reason there's no toe-wiggling.

It's distressing the extent to which I have been able to export this epiphany to the evaluation of quantitative social science.

I was recently talking to a colleague who does not do quantitative research about a paper we had both, in very different contexts, read. The paper addressed its substantive question using Approach A. It could have used Approach B instead. Approach A is good enough for the standards of where the paper was published, but Approach B would be the approach preferred by more quantitatively-discerning types. The paper acknowledged the existence of Approach B but made substantive and statistical arguments for why Approach A was superior. In talking to my colleague, I explained that these arguments were really not very good arguments, and that, indeed, people who understand the technical issues are not going to very persuaded by results from Approach A because you really need results from Approach B to be able to assert the conclusions of this paper with any real confidence.

The thing, though, was that I went on to take for granted that analysis using Approach B wouldn't yield statistically significant (i.e., publishable) results. My colleague asked how I could be so certain of this, since no results from Approach B were reported in the paper.

I replied that, if Approach B would have yielded the same results as Approach A, the author would have announced this fact to assuage the concerns of people like me. Especially because the author clearly understands how to do Approach B and it would have only taken, say, five minutes to check. So when I saw that the paper contained these weak arguments for the superiority of Approach A over Approach B, and made no mention of what the results would have looked like using Approach B, I read this as basically equivalent to the paper containing a giant invisible footnote that said "We tried Approach B and it doesn't work."

I hate this.

lost!

So, in a recent post, I fretted about having completely forgotten about having read a book--not just not remembering I had read it but not even being able to remember having read it after looking at my own underlining and margin notes inside it. I mean, forgetting you'd read something is one thing, but looking through it again and at one's markings and still having it remain resolutely foreign, that's another. Now, the kicker: a friend just e-mailed reminding me that, in fact, I've posted before about having opened up this very same book and having no recollection of ever having read it, but I had forgotten all about having done this. So I read the book, forgot about reading it, forgot about having already once marveled about having forgotten all about reading it.

Fortunately, at least, I did remember writing the earlier post once I was reminded of it.

now in my netflix queue: king antony and the gladiators of the round table

From ESPN.com:

While [Louisville basketball coach Rick] Pitino acknowledged leaving Kentucky following the 1997 season was a "mistake," he joked that at age 54 he's "too old to leave" Louisville, but understands why there's so much speculation about his interest in the job.

"It's a great job. I had eight years of Camelot, I've said that," he said. "It's the Roman Empire of college basketball."

sal promised he would sign up too. will he? stay tuned. (if you are within a few hundred miles of madison, you should sign up too.)

not exactly like reaching the top of mount everest, but not exactly not like it, either

At 6:12pm this Sunday, my wisc.edu/harvard.edu inbox, my IMAP "ACTION BIN" (where I am supposed to put e-mails I cannot dispense with quickly), and my GMail inbox are all empty; their accumulating contents having been successfully dispatched in a super-secret and super-surgetacular "Operation: Spring Cleaning" campaign. I'm not sure when the last time was I had empty inboxes. We might have to go back to the early years of graduate school, when e-mail was on a VAX and not everyone was using it.

I am giddy. I feel like taking a short run around the building here shouting "Free! Free!"

wwol week four update

I am through 4 weeks of my scheduled 10 week diet, and I am down 9 pounds. In addition to eating a pound of carrots every day I am at the office, the main staples of my diet are Lean Cuisine meals and Breyers light yogurt. When I go out to eat, I restrict my attention to the salads. Coke Cherry Zero remains my loyal companion, although one should ignore rumors that our relationship is anything more than strictly platonic.

The upcoming week should be relatively easy, but then the week after that is followed by a couple of trips, which is where I teeter closest to caloric-conscious-lifestyle ruin.

Confession: While not perfect, I've done pretty well at sticking to this diet. No way I would be doing as well if not for me announcing that I was going on a diet on this blog and knowing that if I fall off the wagon I am going to have to pronounce that to whoever reads this. Another way that having a blog has improved my life.

maybe that day the homunculus who lives inside my head forgot to press "record"

This blog will not be taken over by my anxieties regarding aging. But: another social science blogger recently posted a rousing review of a certain book that I've owned for maybe three years. I thought, "You know, I really should read that." So I pulled it off my shelf today along with a couple of other books so I could move them to my nightstand where they would, like most books on my nightstand, remain unread but still be in a kind of well-intentioned queue. Then I opened the book and saw it had all kinds of underlines and notes in the margin in my writing. I've done this before. But here, even as a flipped through it again and looked at my margin notes, it jogged absolutely no recollection of ever having read the book before. Nothing, even sentences that warranted circling with three asterisks and an exclamation point in the margin, rang any bells. None. Zero. If not for the irrefutable evidence of my own markings inside the book, I would testify under oath that I had never read it.

This just increases my conviction that I need to start moving my brain into Microsoft OneNote 2007 as much as possible. Not that I think it's that great a program, but I need to put my brain somewhere and I don't know of any better software alternative.

So, do I read the book again, since I wanted to read it and it's like I've never read it? Or do I assume because I don't remember reading it that it can't be that useful?

hello neighbour

When I was a kid, this was one of my favourite books. Not so much for Dr Seuss's rhymes (I probably can't read then), but for the illustrations. None of the homes in those pictures resembled mine! There was one illustration of the chestnut-haired boy having rice with a chinese boy who lived on a boat. The rice was these round white balls. Even the rice was not like the rice I ate!

Looking through the book today, my adult eyes noted the stereotypes and the naive idealism of

"Some houses are rich, full of silver and gold.
And some are quite poor, sort of empty and old.
Some houses are marble and some are just tin.
But they're all, all alike when a friend asks you in."

Anyway, I thought of this book only because J and I are finally giving in to the wanderlust and taking a holiday - albeit a very short one with Ma Y to visit our peninsular neighbour. For a treat, we got ourselves into a neighbour's house that will have lots of marble, even if it is not full of silver and gold.

fun for all ages

So, I remember back when I was in my twenties I would have a crisis and say, "I'm having a midlife crisis" and it was a joke. Now, I've reached the point where I say "I'm having a midlife crisis" and it's a hypothesis.

I'm thinking about buying a Wii. Thoughts?

Miki Anthony –Get Your Dancin’ Shoes On

Miki Anthony –Get Your Dancin’ Shoes On/Schoolgirl –Bradleys Records BRAD 7503 (1975 UK)

Just to ease us seamlessly back into the 70s… Get Your Dancin’ Shoes On is a loving and faithful recreation of that Wall of Sound. Brilliantly arranged by Phil Chapman and produced by Miki it also has a nice pop vocal performance and some fun touches: Cool Jerk, What I Say, La Bamba…The B side Schoolgirl sonically continues the theme with its thumping Spector beat, but it has lyrics that even Harpo wouldn’t have included in Teenage Queen!

Click below for Get Your Dancin’ Shoes On and for a snippet of Schoolgirl

acquisitions update

the jeremy tax

I have a friend whose pseudonym for the purposes of this anecdote is Cookie Smart. She sent me an e-mail this morning saying that she had just received a letter from the IRS that the name on her tax form didn't match the provided taxpayer ID number. Turns out that instead of filing her taxes as "Cookie Smart" she filed them as "Smart Cookie." She was e-mailing because she wanted to know if this is the sort of thing I would do. I told her that while I had never made that particular mistake, it did indeed sound like the sort of thing I would do, except for the fact that she'd already filed her taxes and it isn't even June yet.

I need an accountant.

I use the phrase "Jeremy Tax" for the amount of extra money I have to spend each year to solve problems caused by my absent-mindedness. The latest Jeremy Tax payment was for the cable for my digital camera I lost. Despite being missing for more than a week, the missing cable predictably turned up a few hours after I placed the order online.

institutional review boards have no jurisdiction over the dead

Three people in the past month or so, independent of one another and with various degrees of committment to the idea, have mentioned to me the possibility of doing an ethnographic study of funeral homes. If you, too, are working on this topic, I guess I would urge you not to dally.

Is this social science having a late-blooming Six Feet Under effect? Have funeral homes always been an attractive topic for ethnographers but something about the topic has prevented their from being (to my knowledge) The Great American Funeral Home Ethnography?

As a different matter regarding ethnography, I was having a conversation with an acquaintance recently about a prominent sociology ethnography in which the author, with the consent of the research participants (members of a minority group living in poverty), used their real names. The acquaintance was of the position that this was definitely wrong and asserted that their view was the consensus among people who do ethnographic research. I have to admit I don't really understand this as a general position. I do understand it in the obvious, but special, case in which naming an informant would allow one to determine the identities other people who don't want their names used. Otherwise, it seems like newspaper editors have the right idea in fretting about negative consequences of anonymous sourcing; namely, that there is basically no accountability for the writer to represent the source accurately rather than tweaking statements in ways that suit the author's argument. I recognize that people who do interview-based studies get very cross when someone says "I think you're just choosing quotes that fit your argument" or, worse, "How do we know you aren't just making this up?" But, irritation is not quite the same thing as counterargument. I can understand the idea that confidentiality is unfortunately what must be offered to get interviewees to provide honest participation, but the idea of swaddling it in ethicky goodness even for participants who express no reluctance about speaking on the record--this I don't buy.

speaking of pink shirts...

(the person who took the photo actually adjusted my shoulders in order to get the photo on the right; I'm not exactly sure how my shoulders were before that was more unflattering)

"Do you really think our cohort is sassy?"
"I guess--I guess it's just that Jeremy is really sassy."

So, I've worn a pink shirt every time I've presented in the RWJ seminar, which started out from my joke that a social psychologist should wear pink when presenting to economists because of evidence suggesting it lowers aggression and then has taken a life of its own. Now, one of my fellow fellows took it upon himself to make T-Shirts for the group and decided to make them pink as well.

My cohort is identified as "Sassy Cohort XII" on the back. One of the members of Cohort XIII's name is spelled wrong, which just proves the maxim "Check spelling twice, print T-shirts once."

I think he should have put at the bottom, "A well-endowed foundation sent me to Harvard and all I got was this T-shirt!", perhaps adding "(and a nice salary, office space, a research budget, and assorted perqs)" in a smaller font underneath.

And yes, I will continue to spell it "perqs" until the bitter end, although I have mostly given up my quixotic fight for "cel" phone instead of "cell" phone.

Helluuu everybody(:



I'm LAZY :)
me and elaine wanna be pilots.
haha,
she'll be my co-captain,
right HORNY HONEY!?!
i think i suit the requirements(:
PERRRRRRFECT eyesight what.
lol.


And i wanna go Millenia Insitude.
not bad what.
the school's new and stuff(:
haha.
right SHEEVONEE!?
haha.

oh and i wanna type smth too.
smth funny.
but i FORGOT WHAT ALR!
lol.
old alr mah
IM TURNING SWEET 16 THIS YEAR!
WOOHOO!!



tt's all.

BYE!

IM LAZY(:(:(:

standing still

Yesterday HK launched the 1st Asian Film Awards at the opening of the 31st HK Film Festival. Yesterday was also the first day the tickets to our own 20th Singapore Film Festival went on sale. The former was all glitz and excitement. The latter is clearly standing at some kind of crossroads.

This SIFF's selection is patchy but continues its SEAsian anchor. It clearly lacks the vigour of a programme that has a good mix of obvious high notes, dependable festival regulars and low-key curiosities. Still, the SIFF is always a special time for J and I. I've many fond memories of the Festival - especially of the days when the films were screened at the old Capitol and Majestic cinemas. Hey, I even have all the programme booklets my old ticket stubs since I was a teenager! It was also at the film fest that J and I first became good friends.


So this year, we persisted and got tickets to: (pictures in order from top) documentary Aki Ra's Boys by Singaporeans James Leong & Lynn Lee; documentary Changi Murals by Singaporean Boo Jun Feng; Syndromes and a Century by Thai Apitchatpong Weerasethakul whose 2005 Tropical Malady we liked; and documentary Village People Road Show by Malaysian Amir Muhhamed which is supposedly a sequel to his The Last Communist.

I remember in particular watching all 4hours of Edward Yang's A Brighter Summer Day in 1991 (1992?), the only uncensored cinema screening of Wong Kar Wai's Happy Together in Singapore, and so many smaller films that were strangely memorable. Of these, there is Unloved by Japanese Manda Kunitoshi in 2002. For me, this was a film about standing still. While we assume that things that are bigger, more expensive, more glamourous, more beautiful are better, and should always be pursued, the female character's unwavering desire to remain as she is in her career, ambitions, lifestyle...struck me. Even though the SIFF may not have remained as it is over the years - it's had its ups and its down-down-downs - let it not be unloved!

So friends, ampulets urge you to support our own film festival! Though it feels a little deflated and probably plagued by organisational/financial/existential(!) issues, it's survived 20 years. It may not have caught up with HK, kept pace with the younger Pusan, or relate to the changing cinema/festival scene in Singapore, but it's still our own.

(Tickets are available at all sistic outlets. Visit the SIFF website for the programme.)

follicular follies!

A common diversion among some friends of mine is to offer unsolicited opinions over whether the time has come for me to end my scalp's recession and just start shaving my head. A friend who had been identified with the idea of my not just shaving my head but using laser hair removal to do it recently sent me this photo that she had taken of me. She said the photo provided a good idea of what I would look like with a shaved head and, on the basis of it, she had changed her mind and I shouldn't do it. Which was good of her to express her opinion, although it's not like shaving my head was an alternative or fall back option, but rather something I am presuming I'll feel compelled toward sooner or later, albeit preferably later.

All this just reinforces the idea that what I should really do is disappear for a year and come back with a giant thick curly head of hair and a plummy British accent. You think I'm joking.

The Group –Baby, Baby It’s You

The Group –Baby, Baby It’s You/Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love –WB 5840 ( 1966 US)

OK, time to go back for a furtive visit to the Mid Sixties in order to dust off this brilliant Gary Zekley 2-sider. Both sides are vibrant examples of West Coast Pop nestled between the Girl Group Sound and Sunshine Pop (but with so much more clout!). In fact the production places this single in a similar soundscape to Brian Wilson’s work on The Beach Boys' Today album. It also sounds very much like Jerry Riopell’s production on Home Of The Brave (Bonnie And The Treasures) and there may well be a connection as Gary wrote Bonnie’s follow up single Close Your Eyes on WB around the same time.

Gary Zekley was behind so many great West Coast releases in the 60s including Alder Ray (Cause I Love Him), the nostalgic The Fun We Had by The Ragamuffins, Jan & Dean, Fun And Games, The Clique (Sugar on Sunday and especially Superman), The Yellow Balloon ( who redid these 2 songs) and so much more –check out his discography at Spectropop http://www.spectropop.com/hzekleydiscog.html


Click on title for edits of both songs

well, that should tide me over for the next day and a half*

"[name] joined Weight Watchers Online."
"Really?"
"Yes, although I just got a text message saying, 'Man, I didn't realize a Qdoba chicken burrito was 27 points!'"
"I only get 19 points for an entire day."

* I realize what a weird phrase "tide me over" is as I type it. It is "tide", right? Not "tied" or "tyde"?

apparently done with no sense of irony

From an interview with Charles Schumer in the current issue of the New Yorker:

Liberal élitism, he said, as he stirred Sweet 'N Low into his tea with a chopstick, alienates middle-income families from the Party.

Nice deployment of the accent aigu. I can imagine a dialogue: "You liberals are such elitists!" "Actually, it's élitist."

overheard

"So long as one has a resolution to the issue of feeling like one has meaning and purpose to life, a faculty gig at a research university is the best job in the world. I continue to be amazed that there are people with this job who have a sense of entitlement inflated enough to complain they are underpaid."
"I know a professor who regularly complains about being underpaid to her department's secretaries."
"She will be among the first against the wall when the revolution comes."
"Which will be especially surprising to her since she sees herself as on the side of the revolution."

conversation

When I got home from work today, I found a young lady sitting in the living room.

"Hello." I smiled. So did she. I told her my name. Her name was YY. Her voice was slight, as was her handshake.

J was in the study with YY's husband, who was helping to resucitate a dead hard disk. They stayed there for the next hour. So YY and I started to talk.

YY was a PRC citizen, but was recently granted permanent residency here. A fine arts graduate (major in print making!) from a Nanjing university, we spoke about YY's job search, her inability to make any art here, her distaste for the noise and congestion in Singapore ("why such small toilets here? I really don't understand", she had said when I told her we had to knock away a wall to make a large enough bathroom from 2 small ones), her general disillusions with life, her concern for her husband's health, her views about the corruption prevalent in Chinese art colleges, her jobless and aimless peers in Nanjing, the huge pool of fine arts graduates in China (hey, what's new?), her husband and her search for a new flat so that they could move out of his parents' place, his desire for children (her indifference to that prospect), her views on money, driving and - the future... a simple life.

I told her about where she could get relatively cheap art supplies, why students here use linoleum instead of wood for printmaking here, the teaching prospects here, J and my lack of desire for children in our lives now ("we'll have to get new furniture"), our lack of desire to drive/own a car, the possibility of her teaching Chinese and art in our schools, and yes - the future... a simple life.

My mandarin was just about sufficient to survive the conversation.

She was surprisingly open and frank. We were, after all, strangers. Perhaps she was lonely? Having been here for less than a year and with few friends, I can imagine how it was not easy.

We had common experiences (art, printmaking, married life, work, Singapore/Nanjing, flats, husbands, public transport, space), and from these there, also divergences. And from the divergences, we establish again points of relation - comparison and empathy, contrast and sympathy. Perhaps this is why it is almost always enjoyable to speak with someone from another country, background, culture. This toggling of perspectives and contextualising of experience - it helps us keep sane.

Black Fire –Do It

Black Fire –Do It/Little Bit ‘A Music – Lark 9508 (1975 NL)

Do It ( no relation to The Pink Fairies) is another fine example of crunching Dutch Glam. The song is based on a Rockabilly back beat but is firmly planted in stomping mode with its dead solid drum pattern and handclaps. Built around the chanted hook and with vocals that are just the right side of gruff, Do It is a rip-roaring call to arms: Stand up for your rights -fight fight fight… Little Bit ‘A Music is a good thumper, but doesn’t quite have the edge of the A side
Black Fire were a Frisian band from Sint-Annaparochie!!!! They released a first single My Girl/ Rock N Roll Is Here To Stay (1974) under the name Stand-By prior to signing to Inlelco/Lark. Do It garnered a couple of plays on national radio but not much else.

Thanks to Jos for the background info.

Click on title for soundclip

weight watchers online: week 3 update

Okay, so tracking my Weight Watchers points while traveling has proven difficult. Nonetheless, I was well-behaved the whole week, choosing to be skeptical about the text message I received from a friend on Thursday: Remember points don't count on your birthday. In any case, today was weigh-in day and I'm down a couple more pounds. When I entered my weight, the WW site suggested that I should " Get some encouragement. Drop in on the Newbies Get Acquainted message board." Me, interacting with strangers. And here I thought I was doing well and they would recommend some kind of reward. Part of the reason I chose Weight Watchers Online in the first place was that someone who had been successful with it said, "You won't have to talk to anybody you don't know."

you know you have been blogging for a long time when...

You are excited to get the letter saying that your car loan has been paid off, and you realize that you can link to the post when you first bought it with no money down.

(The car has remained in Madison. It makes absolutely no financial sense that I haven't sold it, although it's nice to have a car to drive when I'm back visiting, which when I left I expected I would do more than it turns out I have.)

so, how was the conference?

(me, presenting at the Eastern Sociological Society meetings)

The most common problem with giving talks at conferences is that one doesn't actually get an audience, and one is left talking almost or entirely only to the other panelists.* This leads one to feel like presenting is pointless, that one is producing a good no one else is actually interested in consuming, and various related issues that cause existential and morale crises in academics. Alternatively, one can sometimes get good attendance at a talk, but then one is dealing with this stochastic process where each additional person at a talk increases the probability that someone in the audience will be a crank or twit that provides some kind of irksome distraction that is then does much to decrease the value of the session.**

At the Eastern meetings, I gave two presentations: one fell into the first category above, and one--the panel on Freakonomics--fell into the second. The main session vandal for the second was this guy who was apparently the spouse of a sociologist, but I somehow missed this and spent much of the time when he would talk thinking, "How can this guy be a sociologist and know so little about social science?" Anyway, fellow sociologists: if you want to bring your spouse (or child, or pet) along to a presentation, that's fine, but just like if you were going to a restaurant or movie theater, try to have them behave. If he is doing things like interrupting other audience member's points with asides where everyone is supposed to raise their hand if they've read Freaknonomics, that's not behaving.

Another person in the audience wanted the panel to discuss whether Freakonomics was "the son of the Bell Curve," which I regarded as being too beyond ridiculous to know how to address and yet seemed to resonate with some other people in the audience. I suppose maybe I should consider it a victory that no analogies to the Nazis were drawn.

* I haven't had this problem with any panels I've been on, but one consequence of the rise of internet in hotels is that one can't necessarily even count on the attention of fellow panelists.

** One may be more likely at ill attended talks to be on a panel with someone who is a crank or twit and does much to compromise the panel for everyone, especially if they go on for twice their allotted time with a presider who just lets them.

trapped in a tin can!

I am writing this from my phone from a train at the Route 128 stop
outside of Boston. We have been stuck here for more than an hour. I am
supposed to be feeling lucky that I didn't fly to Philadelphia as
maybe then I would be stuck at the airport. I am out of reading
materials. The guy in front of me has these strange pimples on the
back of his head that I have studied in way too much detail. I want to
be home.

agednap

Drawing 1 of Kidnap News 2! can't access my @&$*flickr acct, so not sure if this image can be viewed larger

L amazed us one night by saying that as he grew older, he looked forward to growing old. Ah, the horror, the horror. L smiled and added how he was happily looking forward to turning 40. J was incredulous.

Perhaps L was speaking of a mental and emotional reality. And perhaps J, observing Ma and Pa J, is terrified of growing old - of its material and corporeal reality. The former is of gain, the latter of loss.

Today, I realised I was wrong to imagine time can be stolen. We are never robbed of it. Busy-ness is a poor excuse I've been making. Time cannot be taken away from us, since it is never ours to begin with. It's just a slippery thing.

So it was that last night, J and I decided to bring back our friend, Kidnap Bob! Only this time, Kidnap Bob will not only meet with kids, but grandpas and grandmas too. Will Kidnap Bob only be accused of abducting the young? Will Kidnap Bob be as popular with our frail and aged as he was with kids? Where has Kidnap Bob brought grandma and grandpa to? And will Kidnap Bob ever prove his innocence? I am looking forward already to the weekend with my notebook!

sequel to previous post

I was having a conversation with a friend on one of the couches in the lobby of the hotel. As we were finishing and I was about to stand up, she said, "Make sure you don't lose your wallet."

I looked down and my wallet had fallen out of my pocket onto the couch without my noticing.

"I read your blog."

dispatch from philadelphia

Sara and I took the train here together for the Eastern Sociological Society meetings. I bought a salad at the station but forgot to grab a fork. I picked up my ticket off the tray and went back to the cafe car for one. When I came back, the conductor was coming down the aisle to take tickets. I reached into my pocket for my ticket and it wasn't there. I looked all around my seat, in my bag, in my coat pocket. I went back to the cafe car and looked to see if I dropped it. The conductor went by, clearly hoping I would just find my ticket and not have to call into motion whatever Amtrak machinery there is for lost tickets. I looked all around my seat again, my bag again, my coat pocket again. I had Sara stand up so we could look and make sure it somehow hadn't fallen underneath her or into her backpack. I looked all around my seat, in my bag. I checked my cell phone to make sure that I had the Amtrak confirmation number in case I needed it with the conductor. I looked all around my seat, in my bag, and there the ticket was, right there the first thing I saw when I opened my bag. I understand the logical inference is that it had been in my bag all along and I just didn't see it when I was going through my bag looking specifically for it, as opposed to the ticket having some kind of magical invisibility or teleportation properties.

I said to Sara, "Welcome to my world. This is every day for me. It's like you just got to witness the ten minute abridgement of the story of my life."
"I'm not that surprised. You have told me how in the last year you've lost your iPod, cell phone, coat--"
"Did I tell you I lost an air conditioner?"
"How did you lose an air conditioner?"
"Remember how I bought two air conditioners, even though I ended up only installing one. I put the other one down in the basement and--"
"Later you took it back to the store."
"Oh, wait, you're right. I forgot that's what I did. Well, I can stop being perplexed about that."

Mighty ‘Em –Jekyll And Hyde

Mighty ‘Em –Jekyll And Hyde/What A Way To Go –Decca FR 13446 (1973 UK)

We’re delving deep into Freaky-Novelty-Schlock-Horror-Pram territory here. The sound owes a lot to Freakbeat, with added ARP/ Moog and suitably corny howls and screams. The lyrics are a bit crap, but it’s a fun trip. The B side is a pleasant Dylan/Harley type number. Anyone with any background info on this one?

Click on title for soundclip

i barely have time for a blog with typos. i don't have time for a blog without them.

Not that I mind having typos corrected. Just don't be surprised by their frequency and their occasional inexplicability.

gondor calls for aid! oh, wait, it's just jeremy dressed up in his gondor suit again.

For reasons assuredly related to my ongoing plans to split the sociological atom, I am compelled to purchase a sheet-feeding scanner, preferably one from which it is simple to scan to pdf. If you have any recommendations or meta-recommendations--that is, recommendations about what would be a good way of going about finding a good recommendation--let me know.

Completely unrelated: Is it just me, or does this AP story practically scream out the next major scandal in sports: dog steroids!

Canadian Hans Gatt... said Mackey's [dog sled] team was the best-looking team on the Iditarod trail this year. Instead of tiring, his team recovered faster than any of the others after long runs between checkpoints and maintained their speed.

''I can't run my dogs like that,'' Gatt, of Whitehorse, said Tuesday, almost 100 miles back on the trail. ''He obviously has figured out something we have not figured out yet.''

You heard it here first: I'll bet my Floyd Landis bobblehead doll those dogs are juiced.

the sociology straw that broke the chief illiniwek camel's back

So, sometime in the last week I got an e-mail saying that the American Sociological Association council had passed the member resolution that had been offered on Native American sports nicknames (see post here). Today, from ESPN.com:

Illinois trustees vote to retire Chief Illiniwek

URBANA, Ill. -- The University of Illinois swept aside the last vestiges of Chief Illiniwek on Tuesday, voting to retire the mascot's name, regalia and image.

The school will continue to call its sports teams the Fighting Illini under the resolution. Chancellor Richard Herman is to decide how and when Chief Illiniwek's name and image will stop being used and licensed to apparel makers and others.

The trustees do not say that the sociology resolution was the decisive development that led them to this vote, but obviously they're not going to publicly admit that, are they?

I know what you are thinking: If only the ASA resolution against the Iraq war had passed before the war actually started.

Update: Corrected to fix abominable error of saying "trustee's" instead of "trustees." I hate when I do that. Also, in case it isn't completely clear, my belief indeed is that Chief Illiniwek was an absurdly insensitive mascot without any defensible place in a contemporary university, and so I am very glad he is gone.

cute right, the neoprint machine

oh so cool back stairs of PQ's hse!

so many stairs la

cute reindeer!

HUMONGOUSLY HUGE!

Beautiful Garden

BIGGGGGGGGGGG BEAUTIFULLLLLLLL HSEEEEE

HELLUUU.

ystr,

Monday,

Went PQ's Hse early in the morning,

with shuen.

OMFG leh!

her hse is like HUMONGOUGLY HUGE

and me and shuen like arnd her whole hse taking pics,

as if we're like frm cheena or smth.

who have just went into the city.

SUPER SUA KOO!

Then me and shuen went to take many many neos after that.

shall upload them,

after i managed to scan in.

Today,

Tue.

went PQ's hse agn in the morning w shuen.

then met hilly pussylary at 1 plus.

went BJ,

waled arnd,

ate,

and i did MANICURE!

WITH NAIL ART!

LIKE AT LAST MAN!

Then went super heroes shop!

LIKE OMG! BIGGGGGG SALE! RAH~!

70%

and i bought a wonder women shirt!

BUT I WENT HOME AND TRIED IT ON,

TOO BIG!

RAH!

MUST GO CHANGE SMALLER SIZE SOON.

aiya go read the rest from hillary's blog lah.

lol


this blogger.

is really WEIRD!

very spaced out right!?

THIS HAPPENS WHEN THERE ARE PICS!

RAH

OH, and

LOOKING FOR CHERLYN TAN HUI TING!

URGENT!

VERY VERY IMPT MATTER!

PLS CONTACT ME IF U KNOW HER.

THANKS

gone fishing

image by J

It was like a stage. Or maybe a bear-baiting pit.

In a section of a canal that cuts across Mr Chiam's sliver of Toa Payoh and joined an even larger monsoon canal from PAP's Bishan towards the Kallang River, residents from both constituencies were joined in watching the spectacle of 4 men wading in the murky water.

A pot-bellied and bald Chinese man was moving barefoot, miraculously avoiding all the chips of cement and rock on the canal bed. Another a track-suited Malay man in jogging shoes was on the other side of the canal, similarly dancing about without slipping on the algae. They wade in the water that is knee-high by the sides, and waist-high in the middle of the canal. Above them, walking on a large beam that held a (sewerage?) pipe were two other men, skinny and monkey-like.

A fishing net was half-sunken in the water.

The audience joked, shouted instructions, or watched curiously. Boys scrambled about above ground and tossed them rocks and chunks of broken brick and cement. They were all united in weighing down the base of the net to the canal bed, before raising the top with bright yellow nylon ropes tied to the beam.

Someone shouted that there was a school of fish coming. There was a flurry of activity, and shouts for more rocks. Bald Chinese porky man rushes ahead towards the net, slips and soaks himself from head to toe. He laughs - we all did.

Last evening, there was no fish caught when J and I left the show. I don't really know what kinds of fish swim in those canals, or the water they tasted of. Later that evening, we passed by the same spot again. It was dark and the men were already gone. There were 3 boys sitting in the canal, chatting away. The water level has receded.

Every weekend, this stretch of the canal is partly given to the fishermen among us - or sometimes the fishermen among our foreign laborers. I hesitate to call these scenes idyllic, romanticise the kampong or how even the canals in Mr Chiam's ward have more spontaneous life - of fishes or man - lest the short walk becomes less solid, less real. But, of course, it is already less real now.


an image from Taipei

All I recall now is thinking there's been talk about turning the canal into some ludicrous "water sport zone". I recall J and I remarking how murky the water is, how kids have no fear of germs or strange skin infections, and where we should be heading for dinner before the week began again. And another recent conversation about communities - their sometimes cruel, selfish or ultimately self-damning exclusivity. Perhaps as a kind of theatre, communities can be more inclusive - the line of spectators almost elastic.

labels: meta

I've started to use labels for my posts. I have also retrolabelled some posts, which I will probably continue to do--ah, like so much else in my life--sporadically and incompletely. Whether going back or going forward, I am not going to go labelloony, either in giving many labels to individual posts or thinking that a post is naked if there isn't some label stuck to it.

I don't know if it is possible to include labels in my sidebar without having to entirely overhaul my template to the new style Blogger uses. If it is and I figure it out, I'll include them in my sidebar, as I know people are eager to be able to spend hours going back and re-reading all of my posts about karaoke or my short short fiction writing.

jumping to conclusion

The Kaplan story at UW-Madison is mercifully now in its denouement. Statements have been released by UW's chancellor and by almost all of the senior law faculty (including Kaplan himself). These seem like they will be good for helping move the issue out of the news and toward, to use the ubiquitious metaphor for such things, healing tensions at UW. As a social psychologist, the statements are interesting because they invoke the timehonored (and experimentally affirmed) strategy for reducing intergroup conflict--find a common enemy. In this case, the claim of common cause is against the media and other outsiders who are presented as having inflamed or distorted matters.

Meanwhile, the Wisconsin State Journal has published a concluding editorial that is basically consistent with my own opinion:

Exactly what Kaplan said or didn't say remains in dispute. But there is overwhelming evidence, including reports from other students in the class, that he was making a valuable point about how the law can be an obstacle, rather than an aid, to displaced ethnic groups, such as the Hmong in Wisconsin.

His discussion included references to Hmong culture and the effects of being a displaced minority, which offended some students. His criticism, however, was aimed at the failures of government and the law to accommodate Hmong people.

It would be unproductive to tell any students in his class that because Kaplan was well-intentioned, they should not have been offended. They feel what they feel, and their feeling should be respected.

But the rest of us have been called to make a judgment on Kaplan, a public employee at our state university. Is he a bigot? Should he be disciplined?

The answer to both questions ought to be unequivocally "No."

There are lessons in the incident for everyone.

First, the reaction to Kaplan's remarks supports his point. It illustrates the frustration Hmong people feel because the rest of us have failed to give them the accommodation and respect they deserve.

Second, we all ought to consider our freedom to discuss controversial issues, particularly in academia. If our professors become afraid of an inquisition over a phrase taken out of context or a discussion misinterpreted, how shallow will our university be?

Album Emma Bunton "Life In Mono" [December 2006]. Free Download

ARTiST: Emma Bunton
TiTLE: Life In Mono
LABEL: 19
GENRE: Pop
TiME: 49:28 min
SiZE: 74,0 MB

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
TrackList:
01. All I Need To Know 04:19
02. Life In Mono 03:49
03. Mischievous 03:41
04. Perfect Strangers 03:32
05. He Loves Me Not 03:29
06. I Wasn't Looking (When I Found Love) 03:31
07. Take Me To Another Town 04:09
08. Undressing You 03:22
09. I'm Not Crying Over Yesterdays 03:24
10. All That You'll Be 04:00
11. Downtown 03:24
12. Something Tells Me (Somethings Going To Happen) 03:42
13. Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps 02:30
14. Por Favor 02:36

Download free MP3 album of Emma Bunton "Life In Mono"

outside the ivory tower

Yes, I do have friends who hail from outposts far afield of the sheltered groves of academia. I got an e-mail last week from one who said:

> See the kind of exciting work you are missing by not being in the 
> private sector?

Above a message forwarded from someone in his company with the subject line "Looking for something to do?" that read:

> I need someone to break the "W" insignia off of glass badger charms.   
> We have 50 more to do.  Thanks!

To which I replied:

In less friendly private sector jobs, this would be a trap and anyone 
who responded by showing up to chisel away at the glass badger charms 
would be summarily fired.

BTW, Can I blog this?

April –Go-Go Little Dancer

April –I Wanna Fall In Love With You/ Go-Go Little Dancer –Pye 7N 45509 (1975 UK)

This is the follow up to April’s Rollin’ It Over (check out the August 31st entry). The A side is pretty corny and derivative, but Go-Go Little Dancer is a choice cut of Power Poppin’ Boogie Glam. Sounds like The Floyd Dakil Combo’s Dance Franny Dance as sung and updated by The Bay City Rollers with Albatross providing the backing. This is good and wholesome fun, with no relation to that geezer at the beginning of Faster Pussycat…

Click on title for soundclip

wwol: week two report

(week two weigh-in)

Okay, so we hit a bit of a rough patch in Week Two of my diet. On Friday I ate three hot fudge sundaes and half of a cow. No. Kidding. In fact, I've done fine with the diet part and am confident that I stayed under my points for the week, but I fell off the wagon of explicit tracking while I was in NYC and traveling meant that I did not get to do my weekly weigh-in on Friday like I was supposed to. So, I've made the executive decision that Week Two for me lasted nine days instead of seven days, and Sunday is my new weekly weigh-in date instead of Friday.

As for the Week Two weigh in, I was just two-tenths of a pound below last week's weight, which didn't surprise me since I thought I didn't think I really lost more than five pounds my first week. I do feel like the elevator is going down and so feel good.

BTW, I joined Netflix so I could watch TV shows while I am on my elliptical trainer. Let me know if you have any recommendations for TV series I should put in my queue. I watched a couple seasons of Buffy, The Vampire Slayer when I was in graduate school, but otherwise haven't watched series television in well over a decade, so I'm pretty teevee terra incognita. Of course, I joined just in time for it to be warm enough that I'll probably spend most days jogging outside, and then I'll just use my iPod as it seems like it might be dangerous to hold my laptop in front of my face to watch DVDs while I jog.

the boy detective in manhattan

Writing from a suspiciously large hotel room in the Hotel Lucerne on West 79th. Walking around New York City is less fun when it is really cold outside. And when you are by yourself. So I'm sitting here with room service and a book about the history of economics.

It's a lot like staying in hotel rooms in other exciting places I've traveled to for work-related purposes, only with much more honking and shouting outside.

Paul & Barry Ryan –Glad To Know You

Paul & Barry Ryan –Won’t You Join Me/ Glad To Know You –Polydor 2001 488 (UK 1973)

Glad To Know You is a totally fab piece of Psych-Bubblegum-Glam. Hidden on the B side of the full blown heart string-puller Won’t You Join Me, it’s another choice example of the brothers aptitude of coming up trumps on the B side. Check out Matayo’s I Like Rock 'N' Roll (November 20th entry) for further proof. The song twists and turns, the orchestration is understated, the guitars have real oomph, and production touches like the vocals through the leslie cabinet make this an imaginative yet totally accessible winner.

Click on the title for a full version

Helluu.

After assembly today,
Had spot check!
but only some classes!
and after 4 yrs in PL,
After carefully analyzing,
i realized tt spot checks always on THURSDAYS one!


AND! i kana caught for my nails!
after keeping for 2 weeks plus.
RAH!!!
so i was COMPLAINING to the sec 2 prefect,


"EH, why check now, i want to keep my nails for holiday one leh..
keep very long alr u noe.
then ask me cut, how to PAINT! Why cannot after hol check

?"

and i kept repeating.
i think the prefect thought i was crazy.
haha.
cos last time it it was also becos of my last fingernail.
haha.
but diff prefect.


and sheevonne was like holdint the prefect's nametag,
asking: ARE YOU A NEWBIE.?

damn funny!


so i just cut a lil lor.
heh.
and i was taking my own sweet time.
until who ah.? elaine i think,
was like. the whole class waiting for you so we can go leh.
HAHAHAHA.


and during recess,
i saw the prefect.
and agn she was laughing at me.
New LAUGHING FRIEND FOUND(:


Hees.


CLASS outing next thurs.
at marina south at 6pm(:
lol.


M.T.P tmr.
RAHRAHRAH.


and last week my clown father went to school.
and the teacher was like:
not today what. ITS NEXT WEEK!
LOLOLOL!

overheard

"I'd ask you to say hi to [name] for me, but you won't."
"Sure, I'll say to [name] for you if you want."
"Say hi to [name] for me."
"Of course, that means that you'll then be taken up as a topic of conversation. I mean, that's what 'say hi for me' really ends up meaning: topicalize me. So, would you like to be a topic of conversation between [name] and me?"
"Okay, I think I'd prefer you not say hi to [name] for me."

Meanwhile: My father turns 73 today. My father worked thirty years in a meatpacking plant and then retired (at least, from that job). It's amazing to think that was more than twenty years ago.

Helluuu.





Skipped school today.


too tired alr.


obviously la.


call me at arnd 2 plus,3 plus am,


how to sleep.
anw, today will be until 4.
and there'll be R4.
if i went to school, how to survive till then.
so skipped it(:(:(:(:






so when i woke up arnd 10 plus,


my dad told me the school called in.


walau, so EFFICIENT.


so it was like they asked why i didnt go school.


so my dad was like: im not sure also, i just woke up.


wth.


hahaha.


so the school ask if i was gg to see doctor,


and my dad just said yea shld be.






so dad drove my brother to his school.


which is only like just OPPOSITE!


And i sent my brother to his class.


see im so nice(:(:(:






and all the lil KIDDIES were STARING at me luh.


cos my brother was like.


My jie jie, my jiejie. wearing the roxy cap one!.


haha.


lol.


hahas.


and their toilet is like so small.


esp the mirror!


couldnt even see the top of my body and head. lol

see, i had to bend down la. lol.

so after tt, my dad brought me to the doctor's.

got MC, and medicine which are like PILLS.

I hate pills. So difficult to swallow!

heh.

oh and there's like ugly bloodclots in my toes.

which look so ugly, like bruises!

which means i can never go for Pedicure until my

internal injury in the toes heal.

how dumb,

who the hell gets INTERNAL INJURIES in the TOES!?!

haha.

Anyway, i think i'll be staying at home today.

cos anyway everyone will also be in school till 4.

actually, i can go suntec collect my dad's phone.

but aiya, since he's gg himself tmr.

then nvm la.

LOL.

2 More days to HOLIDAYS!

plus. tmr only 2 subs.

&& Fri only till11.20(:(:(:

YAYS!!

oh and i'll be gg to bangkok in like the 2nd or 3rd week of June.

People think i siao luh!

esp Joanne.

Cos there's like O levels chinese, extra lessons and stuff,

and yet im gg to go on a holiday.?

Lol.

aiya, but alr booked since last yr.

haha.

and i need to go there shopping!

haha

current bedtime reading

I'm reading The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. Or, to be completely honest, re-reading, as I have also listened to it before as an audiobook. I'm currently on Habit 5: Seek first to understand, then to be understood.

I wouldn't be re-reading T7HoHEP if I didn't think there was much wisdom in it, but it's sort of a starchy wisdom smothered in hokey gravy. Namely, for a book that trumpets the virtues of principle-centered living, the book has all these fake-o seeming anecdotes. They follow this basic dramatic structure:

1. Actor [person/organization/member-of-Covey's-family] has problem.
2. Actor tries standard expedient solution to problem, fails.
3. Actor decides to try way that uses T7HoHEP wisdom, even though it seems unlikely to work.
4. Success follows, often greater and more immediate than Actor could have anticipated.

The book is stories with that structure AgainAndAgainAndAgainAndAgain. So it was weird when I ran across a story that had this footnote (the only one in the entire book):

Some of the details of this story have been changed to protect the privacy of those involved.

And I thought, "Why would there be this footnote now? When various other stories seem clearly like they must involve embellishments of one sort or another, if they aren't entirely made-up..." Then I read on and the story begins:

I once had a friend who was dean of a very prestigious school. He planned and saved for years to provide his son the opportunity to attend that institution, but when the time came, the boy refused to go.

And, I thought, I wonder if he has that footnote because he was using this story and someone somewhere pointed out to him that a dean at a very prestigious school would be able to swing some kind of tuition arrangement for his child as part of the deal.

oops.

Bloglines readers and people who have checked here in the past couple hours may have been confused by a recent post that seemed like it was meant for a different, more personal-productivity or diaristic-oriented blog than this one. Um. Well. Remember when I wrote the post that made an offhand reference to a writing pact? Um. Anyway. All gone now! Back to your regularly scheduled programming!

I hate Blogger, sometimes.

distracting time

Nostalgia a wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one's life, to one's home or homeland, or to one's family and friends; a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former place or time

Other dictionary definitions replace the wistful with a taste "bittersweet", or more simply, "The condition of being homesick; homesickness", which in 1770 was classified a disease.

J: You know, people like to talk about the past.
Y: Yeah?
J: They seem happiest when they talk about the past.
Y: As in...
J: Like how guys talk about army, your mom likes to tell us about her childhood...
Y: So?
J: Well, the thing is that those times are probably rather miserable, but when they talk about it, all that is miserable feels like it wasn't there or wasn't as miserable. People love to reminisce,
Y: I see,
J: I wonder if it's only like that here. I've never lived anywhere else before.

Wistful.

Typically, the most popular chinese language drama series on TV is set in Singapore's past, the pre-independence years. Those were tough times of war, colonisation, poverty - and hardship makes for good drama.

Disease.

Some of the most popular and mainstream works on the Singapore stage are also set in similar times. I remember Kuo Pao Kun's Lao Jiu, recently made into a mandarin musical, on the lost traditions of puppetry. Of course there's Dick Lee's musical Fried Rice Paradise. The past was something you could sing, dance, laugh and cry about - the distance made it easier to mourn or celebrate.

A homesickness.

Last Saturday, J and I watched Toyfactory's 3rd staging of Titoudao. Titoudao is the name of a comic role in Hokkien opera (literally
shaving knife/blade), a hardworking and loyal servant of a family that has seen better times. In Goh Boon Teck's script, the scenes of this opera are interspersed with scenes from each stage of opera actress Ah Chiam's life - growing up in kampong
Singapore, joining an opera troupe, marrying, growing old, reminiscing... An economical script (save for 1 long childhood scene) that resisted the temptation to lament.

I remember when it was first staged in 1994, a friend visiting me in the UK then had brought its publicity brochure for me as a gift. In the early 90s, the two of us would watch every single play that was produced in Singapore. 2001 was its second staging, a staging that won the play several Life! Theatre awards (Click to readThe Flying Inkpot's Review of the 2001 performance).

But last Saturday I was sceptical. The TV trailers seemed to suggest this was going to a noisy play. And it was. But in the context of the play's street opera premise, the noise seemed apt (or else I am biased). Exposing the backstage of an opera stage, the overall stage design was effective in transiting between 3 worlds of a play within a play, the play itself and the "live" interaction between some actors and the audience. The cast was likable, their performance was energised yet practised.

Today, when I met an old gentleman who had watched the play on Sunday I asked him if he enjoyed it, he answered in the affirmative. Then he qualified, smiling gently - "as a distraction".

Perhaps he had on his mind weightier issues - business, health, family, today's Sumatran quake.

Some folks are better able to keep their eyes fixed firmly on the horizon, if not the next couple of steps. Their bodies may wander or fight some currents - maybe even remain unmoved - but it is their gaze which remains fixed. When we reminisce, tell a story, play another's part, we look inward and around, forward and back, in space and time.

========
p/s - Titoudao is showing until 31 March, everyday except Monday, at the Drama Centre. Tickets are available from Sistic.