Forget me not....

Just been to see my first real Bollywood movie. It was called Ghajin, a hindi remake of a tamil remake of Memento.Ok... to get this off my chest to start with... it was pretty damn bad.

So the first 10-20 minutes of the movie were ok(ish), kind of a standard action movie, of a very impressively buff Amir Kahn kicking some guys ass, then working out who he is etc.... The movie takes the basic idea of Memento (and everything else), that the main character has no short term memory. In fact the director goes as far as to write this at the beginning of the movie just in case people can't work it out. Anyhow, the first 20 minutes is not half bad as an action remake of memento. Then the horror sets in...

Suddenly, the movie drops into a flash back of our protagonist's life before he looses his memory. In summary, he's the owner of a huge cell phone company, amazingly rich and successful. A cute girl trying to get a break in the advertising film company she works in makes up a story that the big shot guy is in love with her and they're going to get married. Her boss is amazed, gives her breaks in the hope that the big shot will raise the profile of the company. The guy, hearing that a crazy woman is claiming to be engaged to him, secretly goes to see her, pretending to be an actor (she doesn't know what the big shot looks like), he falls for her. Much hilarity in sues... He ends up going to the company christmas party (where the big shot is the guest of honour), pretending to be himself (try and keep up). Even more hilarity ensues.

Ok, so that's the flashback... except that it isn't a flashback in the sense I'm used to, it is a whole (1.5 hour) romantic comedy that is dropped into the middle of the action film. As this is Bollywood, there are several song and dance numbers, which fit in as naturally as a sumo wrestler in a nunnery.

Thankfully, half way through this there is an interval..... Then it just keeps on going, dropping back into gritty action (think John Woo with indian accents), the girl rescues a train full of abducted children, is latter hunted down and killed in front of our hero, who is lobotomised at the same time, hence the memory loss. Eventually revenge is got, with the help of a somewhat awkwardly inserted female med-student character. There are more songs, people die, people cry, eventually memory man ends up caring for small orphans (I'm actually serious).

Apart from my basic hatred of musicals, whatever language they are in, it was just a damn strange movie. Most of the dialogue was terrible, the writers took the idea of memento, simplified it lots, took out all of the confusing cut scenes and re ordering. Added lots of fights and more cute women (although being a good Indian movie no one gets kissed). My guess is that after this, a studio exec decided that there weren't enough songs, or is wasn't enough of a family movie, so dropped almost a whole other film into the middle. After all, who cares if the film is nearly 4 hours long, there's an interval....and now its a family movie, with singing and dancing, and I'm assuming a catchy soundtrack for the small children to buy (to drown out the nightmares of the scenes of the nice lady being beaten to death with a metal bar).

Damn damn strange. Not going to buy the DVD.

Great blog...

Just found this great blog (via BoingBoing of course). Lots of pictures of professionally decorated cakes gone wrong...
(such as the 'When Harry met Sally' cupcake above).

genius...

Cool fish tank

Totally cool, totally too expensive, totally unnecessary....still, I love these little creatures, first saw them at Underwater world in Singapore... amazing little angels...

current mood

Festive greetings

from here

I'm longing for a past age, the time of Sherlock Holmes, the time when opium was the opiate of the masses....

then I fed myself to th fish....

Went on a trip to a Fish Spa in Buggis Junction. Totally surreal experience.
You start of sitting around a small (in this case) pool (1x2m) full of doctor fish. You sit on the side, and even before you put your feet in, the fish start swarming, waiting for food. As soon as you put a toe in, a few fish latch on and start cleaning. It fells like being tickled with a rough brush. The more foot you put in, the more fish you get. Then its just a matter of sitting back for half an hour and let the fish clean your feet and eat off any dead skin. I'm not ticklish, so I quite enjoyed it, although the previous people who went were giggling lots. The fish are pretty thorough, the auntie who ran the place suggested I spread my toes a bit and immediately the fish started weaving between my toes. My feet feel very soft and pampered now, although it would probably take several hours to get rid of all of the hard skin on my heals and the balls of my feet.... Still, pretty good fun for S$15.

yet another wonderful piece of furniture...

Tea-bagging

Great design for the ends of tea bags. (from Boing-Boing)

Ninjatastic fridge magnets

Totally cool fridge magnets...

Das Experiment

(Pic from here)

Went to see an interesting play on Saturday. The Play is called "Das Experiment: Black Box". It is based on a German Movie. Which was based (loosely) on the Stanford Prison Experiment, a psychology experiment I remember studying in Psychology at school.

In a nut-shell, a group of people sign up for an experiment, in which, half will play the part of prison guards, half as prisoners. The are left in a 'mock prison' with the guards being given instructions on how to behave and how the prisoners days should be structured. This is pretty similar to the original experiment, which was stopped after 6 days because the guards and prisoners got too involved in their roles....

The cast was an interesting mix of western and local actors, with a couple of very impressive performances. (Really should have bought a program). Interestingly the play was performed in something similar to part of a mall, with a large balcony above the main area (the prison) being used as the guards room and scientists' observation rooms. This actually worked pretty well, especially as the prisoners managed to keep in their roles very well and using their body language excellently.

The part I found most interesting wasn't so much the interaction between the prisoners and guards, but the interaction between guards. The guards started with a mix of personalities, and gradually pressured and coerced each other in to conforming or ignoring what was going on. For me, the end was a bit too Hollywood, I would have been happy if they had stretched out the first half, where tensions build and people slip into their assigned roles.

An interesting exploration of the psychology of conformity and power.

Why I love taxi drivers here...

Just got a ride from a crazy, talkative old uncle, who dropped his wife off at the same time as picking me up. Had a fantastic stream of consciousness the whole ride. Here are a couple of memorable exerts.

Driver: You work over christmas or you go back?
Adam: Working a bit.
Driver: Me, I got to work, my wife, she say "No money, no honey", what can you do?
(the uncle was at least 80, and wrinklier than Yoda)

Driver: Where you from?
Adam: England
Driver: Ah, England... you married?
Adam: No...
Driver: Ahhh, International Bachelor, James Bond, Double O seven!
Adam: Hmmm.....

Things I wish I'd made...

from here....

Scary....

Count Up Toy & MySpace Layouts

Improv Everywhere....

Welcome Back from ImprovEverywhere on Vimeo.

sweet haloween costumes....

A newer, brighter future?

Ok, its finally over. Which means I probably only have to put up with another few days of the purile, half assed 'reporting' that the BBC has been doing on the US election. If you are an evil dictator, or generally planning to slide some sneaky shit past the press, do it on US election day.... the journalists won't care, they'll all be busy trying to think of new ways of saying 'we won't know who the winner will be for another 12 hours, but it will either be this guy or the other one'. Yep, you could bomb the crap out of your neighbours, anounce you've stolen your country's wealth and are heading for the Caymann islands....

wonders...

paper gear sculptures

painting...

great way of painting/drawing

I want one...

I love this vintage push scooter, would totally kick ass coming to work on it...

Random wandering, this place is near Buona Vista station. Looks like it would be fun to play here...

Currently listening to...

Just got an album by Koop (as recomended by Andreea). I love this song. Kind of bluesy with a hint of Portishead. Rest of the album hasn't grabbed me yet, but only played it a couple of times. Kind of Piano bar fun....

Gooey Fun...

Am currently totally loving 'World of Goo'. A really simple, extremely intelligent game. The kind of thing, like Lemmings and Sim City, which is a work of genius....


You control a group of blobs of goo. You can drag them around and join them to each other to build structures, which your other goo balls will swarm over. The aim is to build a way for your goo balls to get to the exit (a pipe). The cool part is the physics of the whole thing. The links between the balls are kind of elastic and bend/stretch as more weight is applied (different kinds have different properties). So you could find yourself building a tower, only to see the whole thing collapse sideways because the balance is off... Its hard to express just how cleverly this is used in the game. It is totally intuitive and immersive. It is also made even better by the kind of crazy design of the whole game.

Get it here
Get a demo here

cool reasons to cook for halloween

From EMSL

Spies like us...

Went to see the new Cohen brothers movie 'Burn after reading'.

Ok, so upfront, I really like the Cohen brothers... so this probably won't be in any way objective...

Great film, a totally over the top spy movie... in a Sarah Palin/hockey mom kind of way (in the sense that it is totally ridiculous)

The story isn't really that important. Like Fargo, most of the fun is in the ridiculousness of the characters, who are all way too extreme to be serious. I'm impressed that Brad Pitt and George Clooney were up for playing such embarassing characters (especially Brad). All of the characters are excellent sterotypes of something... My personal favourites are the two CIA guys who appear occasionally and act as a strangely plausible deus ex machina and smoothing things over at the end...

Things of beauty...

Really want one...
from here

Compulsive Dissatisfaction

Just been to see the new Woody Allen movie 'Vicky Cristina Barcelona'
Hate to admit it, but this is the first time in ages that I've sat through a movie which has pushed so many of my buttons and that I've really wanted to go straight back into and watch again.

The movie follows two women, one who is (as Penelope Cruz points out) impulsive, passionate and suffers from 'compulsive dissatisfaction'. The other who is sensible, 'grounded' and follows the established New York path to happiness....

Enter Javier Bardem, a pasionate, charming painter who flagrantly ignores their anoying americanisms and seduces both women... Also enter Penelope Cruz, who is just damn, damn crazy.... Enough synopsis, just watch the film.

The film dances between hysterical pokes at American/New York bankers/expats and disturbingly honest emotional experiences and hangups...

in my head...

heard/noticed this in Starbucks this morning, has been depressing the hell out of me ever since....

Wonderful designs...

I love this design for a hot-tub, especially because it doesn't need any kind of power source. You make a fire in the metal coil and the water convection circulates hot water into the tub.. takes a couple of hours to heat up, but I'd like one for the mountain cabin I plan to survive in after civilization collapses...

Why the U.S. election is scary (but at least some people realise)

wonders...

one of the random things I've seen on the interweb which I'd love to try and make, especially with my love for steampunk.
(from here)

Travelers lore...

From my travels I have discovered the following.










First, England is, as most foreigners believe as cold, wet and generally unwelcoming (especially at its airports). You will be forced to queue like a refugee and will be glared at suspiciously from the moment you step off the plane until well after you've cleared immigration... and that's if you're lucky enough to hold a European passport...

Secondly, the Airbus A380 is very much the same as any other damn jumbo jet once your in it, just as noisy, still not enough toilets, nothing particularly fancy unless you are a Sheik or Lord (although they did give me a complementary pack of cards for no obvious reason).

Thirdly, Heathrow airport has yet to realised that if the plane is twice as big as all the others there will be twice as many bags, hence it will take its normal pack of hunchbacks twice as long to unload, and there will be twice as many people trying to fight their way to the luggage belt to try and see if that ubiquitous black suitcase is theirs...

Fourthly, noise cancelling headphones are wonderful, but do not cancel out babies...

there and back again

Am back, tired as hell, eyes burning, but slightly glad of the fact that just having gotten off a plane seems to excuse staring into space while people are talking to you....

A Popular pastime...

Just spent a happy half hour sitting in the courtyard of EMBL, drinking coffee with Oguz (a former student in the lab). We just discovered the following: We are both here visiting our girlfriends, and both hanging out in the library until they are finished, until then we're both spending all the money of their lunch cards....

Word of the day...

mis-wave

To return a wave to someone you think is waving at you, but is actually waving to the person behind you. Usually results in embarrassment and introversion.

Damn...I thought that girl was waving at me :(

HHAHAHAHA MIS-WAVE!!!!!!

from UrbanDictionary

OCD

As I'm back in Heidelberg and have some time on my hands I visited Star Coffee, an old haunt, where I've squandered many a morning in the past. I took the chance to pander to my OCD and have the same thing I've been having in there for years. Medium cappuccino, manchego cheese bagel and double chocolate cookie...

I'm not entirely sure why I develop these routines, I have a similar one in Singapore (Triple grande low-fat cappuccino and an oatmeal raisin cookie). Perhaps it just provides a little island of stability in my day/weekend, perhaps I just don't have much imagination, perhaps I just like these things a lot. Perhaps I'm just plain crazy....

tribal thoughts

So the Olympics is finally over. Can't say that I really cared or watched, but the parts I found interesting were the commentary more than the sport. I was fairly depressed and embarrassed every time on of the commentators implied (or just plain said) that if the contestant was Chinese the would have got a better score (Diving) or that the Chinese officials were cheating (Womens Taekwondo), even though the 4 officials were from other countries.

My main problem is that I don't really see why people are so keen to discover who is the best at running round in a circle or jumping over something. When it comes down to it, how much is it a dispassionate interest in athletic achievement, and how much is it a matter of tribal pride. When it comes down to it, the don't want to see some one running the fastest ever, people cheer for their tribe, they want one of their own to run round in a circle the fastest. That's why governments put so much money into sport, it keeps the tribe happy, gives them something to feel good about....

I'm not sure if I find it disquieting because I don't have much tribal affiliation or just because I feel there might be better uses of the money... perhaps because it is the worry that some sort of tribal affiliation (we are better than them) seems to hold countries together so much....

just a quick ramble...

Random thoughts...

I think a great idea for a website/collective/meme is a random activity group. The idea goes like this. You go to the website, where there is an activity listed for Saturday (or Sunday). It goes something like this:

Meet 11am Buona Vista MRT station.
Aprox Duration (inc Travel): 4 hours.
Cost: S$50
Dress for outdoors.
Max persons: 15
Leader will be holding a red umbrella.
Click here for inclusion/updates

The idea is that having a free afternoon and no plan, you text the number to register, you turn up at the station, with no idea what you're going to be doing. You then follow the leader, whoever decided to organise this particular day and do something. The great part of the idea is that you go end up doing something you wouldn't otherwise have thought of. It could be Clay-pigeon shooting, it could be basket weaving, it could be wandering in the jungle for a couple of hours. Perhaps a lecture on ancient Chinese ceramics. In principle once you've turned up, go along and do it whatever. You might love it, you might hate it, who cares, it will only take a few hours. You'll end up doing new things.

Think the site should be called 'Something for the weekend'

Embellishments: No-shows get lower priority for future events, option of waiting lists etc. Possibly include a vague catagory of event i.e. sport, culture, random.

The world will look up and shout "Save us",
.....and I will whisper "No"

Rorschach

From Watchmen

A great graphic novel, soon to be a hopefully good/passable movie.
Kind of an analysis of underwear perverts (super heros), with lots of thoughts about why people would do it and why it interests the public.

Assumptions....

Assumptions I've discovered people make....

1. A white guy walking down the street must be looking for a taxi.

Not just walking somewhere, that would be foolish and pointless. After all, he's white, surely he can afford a taxi. Hey, guess what I'm a taxi driver, he mustn't have seen me, I'll slow down and honk my horn to helpfully let him know I'm there, just like the last three taxi drivers did. I'm sure he'll appreciate my helpful gesture and it won't freak him out in the slightest... (sigh)

2. Single white guys walking around the centre of town on a friday night clearly need a hooker.... (although thinking about it, this might be true)

Probably not walking home, or looking for the MRT station, they need a hooker. In fact, if you're in that profession, just go and grab the guy. If you hang on to his arm long enough he's sure to take you home...

(Ok, so point 2 only happened once, but I still found it strange)

Stupidity is spreading....

Saw this in Nature today...

Iraqi national challenges British government for right to study biology and chemistry.

A British resident who is under surveillance for suspected terrorist activities is being prohibited from taking secondary-school-level science courses by the government, Nature has learned.

Zombie Thumb Drive....

Just spent a little of my quiet night in tinkering... Made myself a USB memory stick. Figured I'd take a picture of this one, I also made one as a birthday present for my brother.... Didn't take long, now have an 8Gb memory stick which looks like someone has ripped something of my computer....


The little grey stick next to it is what one of the drives looks like (there's one stuck in the plug)

Got the idea here...

and then I failed to find my soulmate....

So, spent a good portion of today sitting at my computer, pretending I can code. While I was doing this I felt like music, so ended up checking out one of the few iTunes libraries being shared on our network (there are about 3). By chance found one which had a really high overlap with my music tastes, as well as a whole bunch of things I didn't have/had lost/though might be cool... Was getting all geared up to track down my musical soul mate....

Minna thoughtfully pointed out with a smile that it was the lab computer, and that most of the music was probably mine, George's or Juliette's...

Am left with a strange feeling, like I've just fallen for an imaginary person... feel somewhat cheated... (and quite stupid)

As a consolation, I'm now listening to Metallica being played on 4 cellos... a very surreal, but not unpleasant experience. (From Minna's library)

New Lab members

Wei-Ning Sung,
Born 6pm 28/7/8
2.786kg

Mother and baby fine, father very very happy
Pictures to follow

iPathy

iPathy: The feeling of having an iPod full of music, none of which you feel any enthusiasm more.

kids...

sometime I think I need to develop better ways of telling the kids in the lab that I don't feel like answering their questions right now....

I love them really....

wandering

Hauled my coughing wheezing ass out of my apartment a bit this weekend. Wandered around a bit in an attempt to shake my cabin fever (probably didn't help my cold).

sniffles....

Have manfluenza at the moment, so I'm sitting around at home, sniffing lots and using more tissues than a teenage boy who's just got cable porn....

Conditioning, habituation, reflex or something...

1 minute.

That's about the time between me putting my headphones into my ears at work and realising that there isn't any music playing.

Don't get old. It isn't fun.

Loosing my Durian cherry....

So, having been here for nearly a year (shit). I have finally tried Durian.

I got the shuttle bus home last night and ended up talking to Fred on the way to Holland V, he was showing me a great fruit store, and was shocked to hear that I'd never tried the fruit. So he insisted on buying one and having the auntie open it on the spot. (apparently you should only eat them freshly opened, otherwise they tend to ferment).

I have to admit it wasn't anywhere near as smelly as I was expecting. The part you eat is actually quite small, (the yellow part on the picture), which is a 1cm layer around a big seed. The texture is the first strange thing, which is something like mouse... The taste is impossible to describe. Totally unlike anything I've ever eaten. Not unpleasant, just very unusual. I can't say I'm hooked yet. This durian was fairly sweet (they range from sweet to bitter). Fred also told me (after) that, like asparagus, if you eat enough it will make your urine smell. The smell also sticks to your hands amazingly, resisting all soaps. You also keep tasting it for several hours afterwards....

So I'm not totally put off, I'd be prepared to try it again. But at least I've tried it now....

Lab based fun....

This is my life.... in a game....

(from Mirana via Kat)

Eating, eating, eating

Kat's visit, unusually involved quite a bit of eating out... Here are the noteworthy places we found/revisited....

Blue Ginger
A very good Peranakan restaurant, near Tanjong Pagar. This place takes my prize for easily the best service I have ever had in Singapore. To the point where we ordered a bottle of wine, tasted it, thought it was ok, if slightly unusual, drank a bit before the maitre d' insisted on giving us a different bottle simply because it looked a bit darker than usual (in hindsight we both agreed it did taste unusual, not corked, but a bit more like sherry than a white wine usually does). The food was excellent, especially the otak otak and mackerel curry. Slightly more expensive than usual, but worth it for the service alone....

Da Paolo Pizza Bar
Still my favourite place for pizza in Singapore. Really good crispy base, good range of toppings. This is balanced/offset by the service, which has been consistently dreadful every time I've been. Ranging from being very slow (30 minutes just to order) to the waitress forgetting to order our pizzas. Still, your pizza will come eventually, it will be excellent when it comes, but perhaps order a bottle of Prosecco or two beers each (even these are slow) as the waiter is seating you...

Sun Japanese Restaurant

In an attempt to satisfy my woman's need for sushi, we went to Sun at Chijmes (near City Hall MRT). I love the sushi here, as it extends much further than the standard, salmon sashimi, tuna sashimi, rolls and wraps of most places. The california rolls with deep fryed oyster were wonderful, as well as the rolls with prawn and smoked eel. My favourite was the plate with three pieces of imported Japanese tuna, each a different cut, each visibly different colour, taste and texture. Ok, so I have never eaten sushi in Japan, but by the western approximations I've grown up with, this was far better...

Finding Nemo....

Just spent a few days diving in Pulau Tioman in Malaysia. Managed to do our PADI Advanced Open Water Diving thing, which involved very fun night diving (with cool phosphorescent algae in the water) and very fun deep dive (30m) to a couple of wrecks, where we saw several very poisonous Lion fish (see picture). We also had to do a few mental tests on the surface and at depth to see if we were affected by nitrogen narcosis. I managed to do mental arithmetic underwater but got totally lost on a simple hand game... then started to giggle. Kat wasn't at all affected, but was very amused by my behaviour.... Kind of like getting mildly stoned underwater.

We also learned more buoyancy skills (I can now float/hover upside down, which is fun). Plus a slightly tedious navigation skills dive (swim in a line, a square, a triangle)

One of the best bits was spotting a sea snake, which swam past us, dived, then did a few cool loops before falling asleep under some coral....

Again! Again!

coveting....

If I lived in a country where the climate made cycling plausible I'd probably ride something like this wonderful vintage bike remake....

Things I have learned...(or not)...this weekend

Just spent the afternoon with Mikiko and her family + Nachen and LiHeng.

I have now learned the following:

1. Mikiko's kids have MUCH more energy than I do.

2. Mahjong is not as complicated as it looks.

3. The Japanese version of Mahjong is much more complicated than it looks.

Managed to get to the end of my first unassisted game, pleased that I'd won, only to have everyone stare at me like I'd just eaten some of the tiles.... Will keep studying

...and then we got hookers...

Just spent an intrigueing evening out with one of my (nameless) friends. Had a few drinks at various bars by the river, then ended up in the bar of a very reputable hotel. It was an interesting experience, not simply because it was the first passible mojito I'd had all night, but also because of the clientele. Most of the male patrons were somewhat older than me, and generally appeared to be alone. Most of the female customers where considerably younger and seemed to possess more silicon than my laptop....

In the end I felt somewhat like an anthropologist, studying a strange, foreign tribe. I also discovered that I'm not very good at not flirting with people when I look at them, and also that I'm much more easily embarresed that I thought....

As you may be able to deduce by the fact that I'm writing this on a Saturday night, my honour remains intact...

George Carlin, RIP

Great comedian...

Photos I wish I'd taken....

By Alexey Titarenko

weekly chuckle...

Suspicious

Went to the art store on Orchard road today and bought some plaster of paris, then proceeded to drink too much coffee... So if you see news stories about a guy being arrested for twitching suspiciously and found to be carrying a large unlabeled bag of white powder , that was me...