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.