How great are my parents? I mentioned not being able to watch NFL on Thanksgiving, and what came in the mail today from the other side of the world but a video cassette of one of last week's games. True, it turns out they are going to show one on TV here, but they aren't showing a game I'm interested in. Now I have to scare up a VCR. Thanks, Mom and Dad!

We're planning on doing Thanksgiving next Monday, which is good news; as Marjorie pointed out to me last night, they've been showing the NFL Sunday night games here on Monday early evening, which is perfect. It's only Redskins vs. Miami -- eh. But I can't complain too much.

I'm excited to see Master and Commander will be starting here soon. It does star Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany, who combined earlier in A Beautiful Mind, and were annoying together well beyond the sum of their individual annoyingness. But on the plus side, it's based on a good book (which I've actually read), it's directed by Peter Weir, and I understand that it breaks a Hollywood taboo as far as the love-interest story, in that it doesn't have one.

Other people's blogs: I've noticed that we have been popping up on some other people's blog links. It's strange, especially if you've never seen the blog before. That said I certainly enjoy many other people's blogs and even in the worst mood (as lately. I blame hormones) three in particular always seem to cheer me up:
I am the monkey- she's Australian, frequently hilarious, and rather warped.
Eeksy-Peeksy- for a silly name, the man is clearly brilliant. He seems to express the biggest thoughts using the most succinct words. Subtle, eloquent. I'd love to read a novel by him.
Metamorphosism- Very witty, and doesn't take himself too seriously. He almost never fails to put a smile on my face with his wry humour.
Eeksy and Metamorphosism are both professional writers I believe, and expats living in Europe. Our blog seems very clumsy to me sometimes after visiting theirs.
Note to Margaret Cho regarding her blog, the Elliot Smith lyrics you misquoted from St. Ides Heaven are "the moon is a light bulb breaking", not "alive. Ball breaking" and are published in the liner notes.

Feeling rather depressed today. Listening to KCRW on-line I heard Elliott's new single, and was reminded that there will be just a few more new songs from him, and then nothing more. Sucks.
The real reason for my low mood though is that it's just so lonely here for us. Mark and I rely so much on each other, and we both need friends. We have a few nice acquaintances we see socially on a semi-regular basis, but in general we don't get out much and the social isolation is getting to me.
At home when I felt lonely, I could always go to my parents house and borrow a buddy (Beau or Sadie or both) for a few days. No doggies here to borrow, and I'm not sure the land lady would allow it anyway. Sigh.

Mark's description of what happened at my office is flattering, but inaccurate. I'm very grateful he was there though. What really happened (as far as I can remember) is that the client, who had been suspected of surfing porn on our computers-which led to many porn pop-ups coming up on our computers at random times, including once while I was helping another client find information on a school (very graphic pics, I was mortified), anyway, the client came into the office and I told him he needed to leave as he had abused his membership privledges and was no longer allowed to use our computers. I based the decision to eject him on the proven fact that he had recently been rearranging our office equipment when we weren't looking even though he had been expressly told not to do that.
Long story short I told him to leave and he refused for a seemingly long time, he lingered for atleast 15 minutes, continually interrupting a session I was having with another client and basically really upsetting me. He's a freak, with a long history at our office of being socially inappropriate (i.e. interrupting sessions with other clients, continually asking the same questions, basically being an ass). I'm really hoping he doesn't come back, but I wouldn't be surprised if he shows up again.
Also for clarification I didn't tell the other student that Mechanical Engineering and Criminology would be an "odd" major, I said "unusual" and difficult due to the course load in most Engineering programs. I did make the McGyver comment though when asked what you could do with the combined degrees.

We also bought badminton racquets today, in an effort to be more Asian in our recreation. We had a little indoor how-many-times-can-we-hit-it-back-and-forth session in our living room, which was almost as fun as the time in Marjorie's old place when we moved aside all the furniture, put "Dancin' Queen" on the stereo, and discoed around in our rollerblades on the hardwood floors.

I've been helping Marjorie out at her job where she counsels students who want to study abroad in the US. I've proofread a few student essays now -- for some reason, I just love to proofread -- and it's an interesting perspective on at least one segment of the population here. Today I went in to help with their computers. Apparently they've been getting a lot of pop-up ads and such from websites of ill repute, so I installed some various scanning software and pop-up stoppers. Ad-Aware found a LOT of nefarious things going on on their system. The suspicion is that people have been treating the place like it's their internet cafe, or worse, their free peep show. Actually, they suspect it's mainly one kid in particular -- and he came in while I was there. So I got to see Marjorie take him by the scruff of the neck and send him crashing out through the plate glass window. Well, almost.

Marjorie had the quote of the week there that I overheard while she was helping out another student and his mother. The kid was looking to maybe double major in Mechanical Engineering and Criminology. Marjorie commented that that was an odd major, "unless you want to maybe be McGyver or something". They were Turkish, but they seemed to catch the reference, and laughed.

Zoophilia. The Singapore Zoo is considered one of the best in the world, with good reason. We went again yesterday. We're getting pretty familiar with it, but there's still new things to see every time. Among the new behaviors we spotted were a very bizarre ostrich dance, where he repeatedly banged his head on one side of his body, then the other, and a jaguar swimming underwater. I had no idea they did that.

The rains came just in time for my soccer game at 5pm. It was a total slogfest. It looked like a match played between five-year-olds at times, with players clustered around the ball as it moved up and down the field, because nobody could kick it out of a puddle any further than a few meters. On one of the few times when I got a hold of it, I almost scored the game-winner from 30 yards out, but the keeper tipped it over. A guy on their team hit a beautiful bicycle kick that beat our keeper but the ball just STOPPED in a puddle about a meter from the goal line. We later did get the game winner, and I saved the match in the dying seconds when an opponent had a shot at an empty net but I beat him to the ball. Pure muddy fun.

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.

It's National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). Last year I vowed that this year I'd give it a go, but it's not going to happen. What I am determined to do, though, is to write up a science fiction short story idea I've been pondering for a while. I've told the idea to Marjorie, and even she thinks it's a good idea (which is a good sign, as not all that many of the books she reads have battling starships on the front cover).

I scribbled up a page's worth of ideas on the story yesterday on the way to work. There's lots of unknowns I still have to resolve. Fiction is hard. Especially science fiction, I think; my story concerns an alien race, which means that just about every little detail has to invented; their physiology, communication, social structure... I'm determined to make my aliens aliens -- I'm sick of stories featuring aliens that are basically humans with bug eyes. I'm also determined not to write a morality play, another science fiction peeve of mine.

Whenever I've tried to write fiction in the past, my prose has always struck me as so wooden you could build a bridge out of it. Fortunately, science fiction is very forgiving in that regard. Still, another guideline I've set for myself is to actually write the thing, not just describe what happens. There are some science fiction writers out there that can actually write, so the least I can do is try to lean in that direction. Rewriting will be the order of the day; I'm planning on doing as many drafts as I have time for.

My plan is to submit it to one of the monthly science fiction magazines, probably Asimov's, since they're probably most likely to be forgiving of my wooden prose style (judging by their founder's. Don't get me wrong, I loved the man). I probably won't be posting it publicly until I've received rejection letters from all the magazines. Wish me luck...