Lush. There's a big lush somehow-untouched area of near-rainforest just a block or so from our house that we went to check out today. There are plants that look like they're straight out of the Jurassic area -- with leaves about a meter across. Lots of bird activity -- we think they were cockatoo or parakeets, but after a minute or two of trying to figure it out, we discovered that our legs were swimming in mosquitoes. Ran screaming. We lasted less than five minutes out in the real wilderness. I'm sure we're already legends among the mosquitoes living there. "Remember the time those big dumb humans came out here without any repellent and just stood there?" While we're at it, what's the first symptom of malaria?

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year, usually; all the good food and family cheer of Christmas without all the bunkus. Since we're devoid of family (and friends, mostly) in this hemisphere, this year we're at least trying to do the meal properly. I've inherited from my dad -- if not love for the meal, at least a slavish insistence that certain things about it be just so. Dad always had to have the cranberry sauce that comes out in a cylinder shaped like the can. To me, the proper Thanksgiving meal should have:

Turkey, the sliced-off-the-bird kind.

Mashed potatoes.

White gravy.

Stuffing.

Green beans.

Salad.

Sweet-potato casserole, with the melted marshmallows on top.

NFL football.
That last part might be a problem, but we've been stocking up on the other necessities. We found a tiny Butterball turkey breast that will actually fit in our tiny oven. Marjorie's adding her own touch this year, her family recipe fruit cocktail.

The game. Science fiction writer Hal Clement writes:

"Writing a science fiction story is fun, not work. ... the fun... lies in treating the whole thing as a game. ... the rules must be quite simple. They are; for the reader of a science-fiction story, they consist of finding as many as possible of the author's statements or implications which conflict with the facts as science currently understands them. For the author, the rule is to make as few such slips as he possibly can. ... Certain exceptions are made [e.g., to allow travel faster than the speed of light, but] fair play demands that all such matters be mentioned as early as possible in the story..."

Perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself, presuming that other people will actually end up reading this science fiction story I'm working on, but for the last few evenings I've been trying to do my homework on my hard-science subject matter, for the reasons he cites. It is fun. I've only written a few actual snippets of story written so far, but I have a page or two of solid plot worked out. I've been thinking about little else these days while on buses, trains, and toilets. Only occasionally is the little doubter in my brain chiming in. I'm wondering if maybe famous people are just people who are born without that little punk. Or maybe, in the grand tradition of American letters, they just kill him with alcohol. ;-)

No smilies in my story, I promise.

Update: Too weird. I quoted this Hal Clement guy, then in looking up more about him, found that he died only seven days ago.

Singlish.
If you were interested in how much of the population in Singapore speaks, this is an excellent example of Singlish in the form of a well known fable. I personally do not understand all the Singlish words (I'd need my Coxford Singlish Dictionary). I stole this off somebody else's website, who stole it from a defunct website, so I don't feel too guilty.

The 3 Little Pigs – Singapore version

Ones apron a time got tree little pig, call them Ah Beng, Ah Seng and Ah Tee. They think they big already and no wan to liv with mama, because liv with mama sometimes quite pek chek and also can become suaku! So they say goodbye to their mama and go out of house. Mama tell them to be careful of the big, bad woof, because you know, this big, bad sabo king want to eat them. They tell their mama, "we know lah, not scared one". We build house so woof cannot get us. If he try, he will be sorry.

The first pig, Ah Beng he think he very clever, he also cannot wait one, very kancheong type you know. So he build a house very quickly. Finish very fast- how? Aiyoh, he use straw lor, just tie and tie and tie together and then very quick okay already.

This woof very clever kay see, so he pretend and say nice things and ask Ah Beng to let him to inside house. Little Ah Beng also quite clever, he say, "No way man, I know you, don't bluff. Sorry you not welcome here".

The woof say "U no let me in mare? U dare mare? I blow your house down then you know". And he blow and blow and he poon and poon and he use all his inside strength and jia lat man, Ah Beng's house come down.

...

Moral of the story :->

Number 1 - do things slow, slow, must plan, think, plan, nowsdays they say strategic planning. No lush and lush and chin chai build. Chin chai do things ownself die - never think, how can use straw build house, how can house be strong, sure kanna one lah.

Number 2 - don't be so tum sim. Blow down one house, two house not enough want to blow until all tree. Given people some face, don't be too hao lian! In the end too tum sim also kanna - woof kanna heart attack.
Same lah we all also like that, enough is enough, some people pia until they mati.

Number 3 - those who got must kongsi with those who no got then the world sure better place. Remember : if you have and your neightbor no have, kongsi lah. And those who tumpang must know cannot tumpang too long, or else. But when kongsi right hand must not know what left hand give or else no use lah.
This mean kongsi quietly, don't let whole world know you give okay.
Very chim, right?

Mandarin harangues. We've had a student volunteer coming in every Friday, and he's been giving me a weekly snippet or two of Mandarin. Last week I asked him to translate the subway announcement I've phonetically memorized. I wrote it out on our white board as it sounds to my ears; then, he came and figured out exactly what the woman is saying from my very bad attempt. I reproduce it for you here. The first line is my guess; the second line (in bold) is what's actually being said (transliterated to western characters), and the third line (in italics) is a rough translation. Some of the characters are a little off, but they're the closest I could find (the two dots over a lëtter should be one, and the cîrcumflex should actually point down):

Tha cha chi choo hi
Dà jiã qî zhù yì
All of you, please attention

Willamee tsu tsi de ah chien
Wèi lë nî zhì jî dë ãn quán
For your own safety

Sin chun tan qua sen ho vien
Qîng zhàn zài huáng xiàn hòu miàn
Please stand (at) yellow line back side

Tsie-tsien
Xiè xiè
Thanks

The dà jiã part is actually made up of the character for "big" plus the character for "house", but together means "all of you". He wrote the Chinese characters, too, and I could reproduce them here, but I have no idea how to look them up.

Yikes. One of the things on that Things To Do Before You Die list -- "See orang-utans in Borneo" -- just got a little scarier. On nearby Sumatra (not Borneo, but close) a whole lot of people at one of these camps were killed last night during a flash flood. Another article put the death toll at 92 and counting. That's a lot of people, and it could easily have included us. The horrible irony is that most of those killed were eco-tourists, and they're blaming the floods on over-logging.

BBC List Part Two: I've done everything on Mark's list and a few more than Mark by virtue of living in Hawaii as a kid:
30. Trek through a rainforest- We went rainforest camping on Kauai when I was a kid. It was an amazing, and very wet family adventure. I lost all four of my front teeth on the trip, but not due to an accident, just the right age for it.
37. Fly over a volcano- I've actually hiked into Mt. Kilauea with my family. Hopefully, someday soon I can do this again with Mark.
I've also been Whale-watching (#4). We did that when we lived in Massachusetts.

I mostly agree with Mark's "will do, someday" list, but he's on his own for Antartica. Brrrrr.

The Hajj. They've been showing an amazing thing on late night television here. The Malaysian channel has been having live (I assume) coverage of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, where thousands of Muslims come each year as part of the Hajj (pilgrimage) they must do once in their lifetime. The coverage is just a slow camera sweep from various angles, and the priest's chanting is subtitled. Incredible stuff. It's understandable, but a shame, that they don't allow tourists; it would really be something to see.

I found this BBC list of 50 Things To Do Before You Die. I'm doing pretty good on it, I think. I'd break it down this way:

Done:
1. Swim with Dolphins
12. Climb Sydney Harbour Bridge
13. Escape to a paradise Island (I'd count Tioman, definitely)
15. Go white-water rafting
24. Ride a motorbike
40. Ride a rollercoaster
42. Go paragliding
47. Visit Walt Disney World, Florida
48. Gamble in Las Vegas

Will do, someday:
2. Scuba dive on Great Barrier Reef (though there are plenty of just-as-nice places)
4. Go whale-watching (seen a whale, but not as part of a trip)
5. Dive with sharks (missed a great chance in South Africa)
7. Fly in a hot air balloon
9. Go on safari
10. See Northern Lights
11. Walk the Inca trail to Machu Picchu
14. Drive Formula 1 car
16. Walk Great Wall of China
20. Grand Canyon helicopter ride
22. See elephants in the wild
23. Explore Antarctica
27. Wonder at a waterfall (well, a REAL one)
29. Explore the Galapagos Islands
30. Trek through a rainforest (sorta done this, but not really)
32. Ride a camel to the Pyramids
36. Climb Mount Kilimanjaro
37. Fly over a volcano (I've done this from a distance, but I want the close up experience)
38. Drive a husky sled
39. Hike up a glacier
45. See tigers in the wild
49. See orang-utans in Borneo (hopefully very soon!)
50. Go polar bear watching

Would do, but doubt i'll ever be able to:
3. Fly Concorde to New York
8. Fly in a fighter jet
26. Climb Mount Everest
28. Go into space (would drop everything for a chance)
33. Take the Trans-Siberian Railway, Moscow to Vladivostok
43. Play golf at Augusta, Georgia
44. Watch mountain gorillas

Already chickened out on:
6. Skydiving
17. Bungee-jumping

Surely would chicken out on, given the chance:
35. Go wing-walking

Huh?
18. Ride Rocky Mountaineer train
46. Do the Cresta Run, Switzerland

Don't care that much about:
19. Drive along Route 66
21. Ride the Orient Express
25. Try ranching
31. Gallop a horse along a beach
34. Catch sunset over Uluru
41. Fish for blue marlin (though I'd love to see one)

I feel good about this list not for the things on it that I've already done, but because there's so many things on there that I'd like to do, and are potentially within reach. And of the nine on there that I've done, six happened with Marjorie, just in the last 5-6 years. What a gal...

RSS. This blog now has an RSS feed, for those of you with a predeliction for aggregating. (If you have no idea what I'm talking about, never mind; ignore this post.) I don't use an aggregator, so someone please tell me if it's working...

Some further tribulations of writing science fiction:

1. How do you even name your characters, if they're from a species that doesn't even use sound to communicate? In most science fiction of this sort, they'll make up some random string of letters, like "Q'flth", which is just cheating to my eyes. Or, they'll have some quasi-Native American sounding name, like Speaker For Ancestors or StarToucher or some other such nonsense. It's a real problem.

2. Similies and metaphors are pretty much right out. You can't very well say a character has, I don't know, skin like tissue paper if there's no tissue paper within fifty light years. Just about everything you'd want to compare something to is man-made or earth-specific.