Blue moon

The radio DJ just announced that tonight we're going to witness blue moon midnight tonight - June 1st 2007. This is going to be the second full moon or extra full moon in a calendar month. So watch out tonight!

May 31st. Today is also Vesak/Wesak Day. Is it coincidence that Buddha achieved enlightenment on 4th month 15th day on lunar calendar, when full moon usually occurs?

I would love to be at Borobudur today.

Happy holiday everyone!

Paper-less, not paperless

I throw away a lot of stuff periodically. Remove clutter. Simplify my life. Make room for something else.

Tonight is one of those times. Although the "stuff" is mainly just paper. It's such a waste sometimes, for people and companies alike to print so much paper. I'm constantly contradicting myself, because I'm the culprit who prints almost every other day. It takes a huge effort and a big awareness on our part to limit ourselves from printing so much paper that we probably won't read or need later.

I'm not saying we should eliminate paper altogether. Imagine the paperless world, everyone will be constantly carrying around some sort of electronic media reader and you'll be lucky to find people who have that rare 20/20 vision. I suppose 99% of the population would agree that nothing beats reading from a book, the paper-in-your-hands feel is unsurpassable. Information that can be contained in a physical medium is more reliable and easily accessible I suppose.

Yeah, recycling maybe the solution. Let me know if you know any good methods to dispose of electronics, plastic bottles, newspapers, magazines, books responsibly in Singapore. Been wanting to find out but I guess I stopped short on being proactive about it.

It would be nice if:
- Banks would just stop sending confirmation letters or monthly statements. With every statement comes an envelope and for bills, more marketing brochure and a return envelope!
- All bills could come in as email attachments (though I notice many companies have offered this option to their customers). Yeah, 1,000,000 companies to follow suit.
- Marketing pamphlets could be limited. I throw those away every time I find them in my mailbox.

Here are some good practices that have been around for a while:
- People who carry their own mug to work or environment-friendly water bottles to travel instead of buying readily available plastic water bottles every time. Sigg water bottle is a good example.
- Companies who carry water dispensers instead of water bottles.
- Plastic cups that were replaced with recyclable paper cups.
- I went to Ikea the other day and found out they are now charging customers for plastic carrier bags. It was a first for me but I suppose it makes sense! Supermarkets should start implementing this. You won't believe how many people would carry their own shopping bags to save 10 cents.

I'll post again if I find out more...

First day of the week again

Something I read today that I like:

Walking is a series of controlled falls. Each step forward shifts our center of gravity. In harmony with this fall, our bodies extend a leg to catch the center and balance it momentarily before it is cast forward again.

Someone who thinks about walking.

Wow.

Happy Sunday. Here's a picture I took at red dot Traffic. Thought they're cute.

Just when you thought it couldn't get worse (or better)...

This is what I encountered today while uploading some files.



Don't you just love it? I'm almost nuts trying to do this and yet I can't get mad.

Overwhelmed

By the simplicity of this idea.

Why didn't I think of this? Not exactly original, but it's so mind-bogglingly simple I can't believe I missed that. Well, just wrote my future self a mail earlier. Can't wait til 20 more years!

Until then, let's hope this Web 2.0 thing will evolve. Maybe the message will be lost. I think I can live with that...

Another weekend

Everyone has a story to tell.

There's always a story behind an invention, behind a picture, behind a person's sad smile, behind the laughter of a child, behind a song, behind the feelings we have right now.

Of course! What was I talking about? David Pogue's post on Simplifying Diabetes Shots is one example on how everyday inventions are created from our simple needs. A need to simplify our life. Isn't everything we see, touch, use every day created to make our life easier? However, things that were made for that purpose in turn make our life more complicated more often than not. One thing spawns another, and we can't stop creating "things". It's a vicious cycle. Can't we get them right the first time? A friend once remarked, if we were to live our life without all these modern inventions (think plowing a rice field in the day, sipping hot tea after a long day in the field, then gazing at the sky at midnight), would we be a happier individual today? Perhaps so.

But I digress.

What's so interesting and exciting now is it's up to us to pursue and discover these stories. Come to think of it, isn't that part of our life, if not our mission? To find out life stories, how a person become who he/she is today? How from then on, we move on in life, knowing these people in our midst. Perhaps the more subtly overlooked but even more difficult question is: How do we become the person we are today? What's our story?

I love these stories. A contractor who invented a door latch that only needs a little push to open because he often had his hands full when going to a locked laundry room. A mother who invented a ready-to-mix syringe for her diabetic child because once she had to run to her car to get the right mix of doses, risking her child's life due to the delay. A woman who became famous around the world after her powerful portrait graced the cover of a magazine yet whose name was unknown and lived in obscurity. A child who died in a concentration camp, leaving behind a diary that stunned the world. A grandmother, trying to make ends meet out of cleaning toilets to feed her family. Fascinating, really.

To be honest, I can't even accurately describe my life story. Why I became the person I am today. Life is just one event after another, how do you attach some semblance of meaning to it? Toddlers, teenage years, twenties passed by in a blink of an eye. Time is running fast. We are mere mortals! It's a constant battle.

What will you tell your grandchild? What's your story?

Reading in reverse

I'm not a fan of long articles. I like them to be short, sweet, and precise. I like it if an article manages to carry the information that matters most and be done with it. At least that's how I approach it.

That's why after reading the first few paragraphs, if it's still interesting, then all's good. If I get impatient trying to finish it, I'll do what I've done quite naturally, surprisingly: I'll start reading from the last paragraph.

Let me tell you what I've found so far about this practice:
- It makes you a faster reader.
- It'll give you a fresh perspective of the essense of the article.
- You'll find out how it all ends faster! Duh.
- I'm a weirdo.

Newspaper articles, blogs, essays, emails, messages, I've tried them all except for books (too grand for me to even think of trying). All done with due respect to the authors of course.

Have you tried reading an essay, an article, or a book starting from the last paragraph?

Eternal Summer 盛夏光年

This is a story of eternal love, youthful turmoil, friendship, and a process of growth. It transports you back to your high school days, brings back all those sweet memories of youthful exuberance (okay, I'm speaking like a 80-year-old granny), when you can throw every caution to the wind and get away with anything. Did I mention, it was a story of gay love?

Jonathan (Bryant Chang) was a class monitor; circumstances led him to be beckoned by the teacher to be friends with troublemaker Shane (Joseph Chang) . Ten years later, Shane grew up to be a handsome young basketball player, and Jonathan into the best friend who watch his plays quietly from the side of the court but unbeknownst to Shane, who is secretly in love with him too.

Everything changed with the arrival of Carrie (Kate Yeung), the Taiwan-born Hong Kong transfer student. What follows is a tangled web of events that built up to the climatic mid point, and ended with a "???". I'm giving too much away.

The actors gave a solid performance as an ensemble, but retained an individuality on each of their character that you can't help but care. Kate Yeung possesses such an unconventional beauty that gets you noticed the moment she walked into a scene. Bryant Chang was fragile and torn at the same time, conveying such emotional aggravation of one-sided love that the audience can feel in the pit of their stomach. He won the Best New Performer title at the Golden Horse Award last year for this role, and deservedly so. Joseph Chang is shaky at best in the beginning. He made it up to the audience into the second part of the movie with his performance as a torn young college undergraduate who has to choose between the affections of his girlfriend or his best friend.

This movie is so much better compared to another movie, Formula 17, of the same genre that came out around the same time. The end leaves a lot to be desired. Yet it was still well worth the ticket price to see the performances of these young stars. I can imagine myself seeing more of their future movies in the cinema. Taiwanese films are making waves yet again.

Randomness

Do you believe things are random? Random thoughts cross your mind at random hours, coincidences happen on a random day, inventions made out of random device found on a random street, defeating science, bending our strict mechanical workings.

Throw all rules.

We happened to be born to random parents, chosen by some random supreme being. We happened to be born in this random skin, on this random continent, on that random date, hour and time. Consider this, I am stating the irony, the rule of chaos rules the universe. No one really knows what's happening or what will happen in the next instant. There's no such thing as logic. You can fly, I can walk on water. People laughed when you told them one day you'd be afloat in the air without suspension. Look what a random Yuri Gagarin did.

Here we are. This world, sputtered out of randomness.

Delightful read: 10 Most Amazing Coincidences

Longhand

MSN featured a piece on cursive handwriting today. Oh boy! How long has it been? 10, 15 years since I last wrote them?? Nowadays 90% of the time I spend writing is on computer; what they call 'keyboard'ing. Could not quite call myself sms fiend, but I could do that pretty okay I suppose. Writing on actual paper using actual pen? 10%. Oh wait, make that 5%. Maybe that's also a little on the high side?

When did you last receive a real long handwritten letter that ran pages in printing, let alone in cursive? Or to lesser extent, a handwritten card (this is probably more likely)? Recent articles on the media touched on the evolution of English, how we write, form our sentences, how text-ing has creeped into our communication culture, et cetera. Yet this piece inspired me to write in longhand again, in cursive handwriting no less. It's painstakingly slow, but beautiful. Remember that neat English document (think The Declaration of Independence)?

Theory of evolution dictates that only the strong, the useful will survive. Cursive handwriting may not serve any useful purpose now, but I just hope this tradition will be passed on to our children and not become extinct like a lot of other traditions.

Hm...

Personalization.

Google features holiday logos, a lot of people knew that already. Now they're introducing a logo that's gonna stay. So they're taking Apple's route now too eh, putting an "i" in front of their product names. "My Google" was probably not creative enough?

Bhutan: Modernity or Tradition?

I've been fascinated with Bhutan for the longest time. Check out this interesting article on Bhutan published on IHT last week.

King Jigme Singye Wangchuck is probably the one of the most admired kings in the world. He introduced the concept of Gross National Happiness, a somewhat unfamiliar if not strange notion in this era of globalisation where everything is measured in terms of money/quantity/growth. Add that to the fact that he also married four beautiful sisters at the same time, abdicated throne in favour of his son late last year, voluntarily gave up absolute monarchy and ordered a parliamentary election to be held in 2008, made him quite a figure I'd say, plus he made the list for Time magazine's 100 People Who Shape Our World in 2006.

We grow too fast

I'm repeating cliches. Time really flies. In the blink of an eye, here I am, reminiscing the past. The past was so far away, yet it's also so near. It was right before my eyes, and then it was gone. All that was left was the idea of the past, the flicker of memories like blown dust. One day it may hit you again. Or not. Sometimes intact, sometimes in a fraction.

I am bad at recollecting memories. And I'm really afraid some day what's left in the nooks and crannies of my brain will be gone. I know it's going to happen. It's already happening. Maybe since I was born. Cycle of life, guess it's inevitable eh. Brain breakdown. Wahaha!

Anyway, sat down today, one thing leads to another and I started flipping through some old pictures. Snapshots of life, memories, random stuff. You don't even know which goes first, who the people in the pictures were, where you were, what occasion it was, it's all a mess of cris-crossing dots and lines on the same paper continuum.

And what a heck of FUN it was! You'd go "What was I thinking?!", "Was that me?", or "I wish I could do that again!" (most likely). All in good times. I truly need visuals to remind myself every now and then. We really grow too fast.

Enjoy!

Sunday

This was a peculiar Sunday sky in Singapore, though normally you'd get good weather, but the sky yesterday was just spectacular. Perfect shade of blue and white. From the moment I touched down, I noticed the beautiful little bundles of clouds (imagine small cluster of pillows that you could jump from one to the other - not the ones in the picture though). It continued til late afternoon.