Found this second book in the series more enjoyable than the first, maybe because I finally got the hang of all the strange physics and specialised terminology of the discworld.
Terry Pratchett's humour is very visual -- a lot of elbows in stomachs and quick dialogue. Someone should make his work into a movie. I have a hunch that it may work as a movie.
In other news, Pratchett voices his annoyance about an article in Time that said that Rowling didn't even know she was writing fantasy. Here is Pratchett's definition of fantasy in a speech given at the Carnegie Awards.
Category: Reading
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
The Light Fantastic
Monday, August 15, 2005
Back at work for ONE day...
.. and I feel like griping already.
Sigh. This gripe is along the lines of more and more work without a corresponding increase in pay or responsibility. This is about as much as you get when you strip a gripe of its juicy detail.
Strip a gripe; bone to pick... notice how these phrases run together and makes you think of a dried out chicken bone? Okay, maybe not, but humour me.
Tales from Tioman
Well, I'm back from three days of frollicking at Tioman. Snorkelling, nasi lemak, lontong, sunset, bbq squid, bbq chicken wings, ramly burger, swinging from a tree, stories of a giant montary eel, what more can a person ask for on a holiday? :)
We tried running on the sand for the first time in Tioman. Some stretches of sand were better than others. The worst stretch of sand was too soft. Your foot kinda crumbled into the sand after you take a step, and it doesn't crumble evenly either, so it made you lunge sideways a little before you pick up your foot again. Quite a waste of energy I say! I could feel the sand sucking out all my speed and, er hmm, grace.
But it wasn't too bad, really. I'm kinda regretting being a wimp and not signing up for the Real Run this weekend, but I've such a large and full belly from being on holiday that maybe not having signed up may be a good idea after all. I also have blisters on my heel from the snorkelling fins and blisters on my little toe from running with sand and bits of coral in my sandals. Haha! I'm such a wimp! :)
Anyway, I'm thinking of going for a slow jog this evening to get the miles in this week. I am so not a water lover. I was telling my friend that while I admire and respect the sea, I don't love it. In water, I feel out of element. At least when I run, my movements seem to make aerodynamic sense -- I can exert more energy and speed up if I wanted to; in water, all my strokes seem a waste of energy. Even if I used all my strength, I would only be making bigger splashes in the same spot, which is very depressing.
And I really have to get back to work now.
Thursday, August 11, 2005
We, the citizens...
...of alienpore.
Screenshot of National Day Parade, 2005. First blogged about by mrbrown.
Comments on his post are hilarious!
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
Thoughts on the way to work
- The new SMU looks like an overgrown fish tank. I think it is the green glass effect coupled with their over-enthusiastic effort with the hanging creepers from every freakin' window.
- Singapore is so small that no matter where you stay, the airplanes from the National Day Parade would have flown past your house, if not, the army trucks would have driven by, failing which, you would at least be able to see the fireworks from your kitchen window.
- Singapore is so advanced for her age that she ought to have at least two birthdays a year so that she can get to a respectable age faster, and people like me can get another day to lie around at home doing nothing.
Monday, August 08, 2005
East, West
Did you know that Rushdie is married (for the fourth time) to Padma Lakshmi, a very sexy Indian model? See her photos here and tell me she is not gorgeous. How did Rushdie pull that off? I guess intellectual men have their own appeal. Or perhaps men on the death row by Islam... Ha!
Anyway, back to the book, the stories are grouped in three sections: those set in the East, those set in the West, and those with an infusion of both. In the East section, there is the story of a young jaunty woman at the British immigration who deliberately messed up her chances for a visa. In the West section, there is "At the Auction of the Ruby Slippers", a pretty damning piece of social commentary. The last story "Courter" was really quite sweet -- the Aya of the story and the courting Grandmaster porter won my heart.
After reading this collection, I realised that my idea of East-West relations may be somewhat naive. I relate easily to this passage:
Or was it that her heart, roped by two different loves,was being pulled both East and West, whinnying and rearing, like those movie horses being yanked this way by Clark Gable and that way by Montgomery Clift, and she knew that to live she would have to choose? (209)
But I don't anything about the assasination of Indira Ghandi by her two Sikh bodyguards, or the insidous side of colonialism. I would like to read up more on both of these topics. Meanwhile, the next book by Rushdie I would like to read is Haroun and the Sea of Stories.
Category: Books Read More!Friday, August 05, 2005
It's the weekend!
Dance of joy! :D
All I'm doing this weekend is lots of running, eating, hanging out, reading and watching DVDs! Yeeha!
Have a good one guys.
What do you think?
Do you think that to be happy, you need at least a certain amount of money?
I've been thinking about the veracity of this statement -- that every endeavor, both noble to base, requires money -- and I'm not quite sure what I think.
For sure, you need money to contribute to society. You need money to build schools, hospitals, nursing homes; you need money to employ teachers, nurses, social workers; you need money to buy meals, food and transport vouchers for the poor; you need money to help the unemployed tide through a rough patch. In a way, you can't do very much to help others if you don't have any money. In fact, most of the social work in Singapore is achieved by the donations of the rich.
The need for money on a personal level is even more apparent. You need money to chase love; you need money in your quest for knowledge, for dinners, movies, running shoes, presents, clothes, bills, bus fare, send your kids to school, buy textbooks, buy medicine, toothbrushes, etc.
There are only a very small number of people who could say, hand over their hearts, that they would be happy with nothing at all. These are usually the monks and religious types who have reached some level of self-sufficiency (or dependence on God) to be happy. This is not your average church-goer. In fact, the average church-goer here in Singapore thrives on money. This is not saying that they don't use money well, in fact, most are "good stewards", giving a significant percentage to good causes. But they are just not "nothing types".
"Nothing types" are people like St Francis of Assisi, a rich man who took the vow of poverty, Mother Theresa of Calcutta, and other types of monks. These people have lost that edge that makes a human being fight for his own survival, and are happy to either live or die for God. Even so, they still depend on the generousity of other people to pay for their food and for the orphanages that they run, which comes down to the necessity of having money, again.
Given a choice between lots of money along with the great power to do good and super-spirituality where you know the deep things in life, I'm sad to say that I'll choose lots of money. But with great power comes great responsibility and despite my utopian ideas of doing lots of good, I know that in my heart, I still haven't really really figured out that money is only the means to an end rather than the end itself.
Solo entertainment
Last night, instead of running, I da-baoed dinner, rented a movie, ate with the parents, and then buckled down in front of my computer with its five-speaker awesomeness to stare at the eye-candy on the screen. Ocean's Eleven is just full of beautiful people and well-crafted characters! Plus, it has an elaborate heist. I couldn't resist watching most of the special features on the DVD, which meant that I only got into bed at 2am.
I always thought the neighbourhood rental shop only rented Chinese serial dramas. I guess I was wrong. Though the shop auntie didn't hestitate to try to convert me. We had this hilarious conversation (in Chinese):
Me: So I return it on Saturday?
VCD Auntie: Yes. Do you watch Chinese serial drama?
Me: Er no, it takes a long time.
VCD Auntie: No lah, one, two weeks can finish already.
Me: Oh.
VCD Auntie: You should watch. This (waving at my English Hollywood flick) only a little bit exciting, cannot compare to Chinese serial drama.
Me: Er ok. I will consider next time.
Hee hee. If Hollywood flicks are the high jump in the Olympics, Chinese serial dramas are the ultra marathons in the desert.
(In other news, because of work, I haven't run since Monday. Am contemplating a jog at 12 noon today, but I vaguely remember that being a mad sort of thing to do.)
(Oh, and
Read More!
Thursday, August 04, 2005
Tantalising morsels
1. Adidas is buying over Reebok???? This makes me want to buy an Asics running shoe. In fact, I think I will.
2. A sanitary pad firm in the US are using the tagline `Have a happy period'. I don't know about you, but I could never have a happy period. I would love to have a painless, content and oblivious period, but happy is pushing it. Are these people from Mars? Maybe they are just men.
And I really need to get back to work now.
the she-cow mooooves
I'm getting strangely fond of the dancing cow with the bananas on her head they've been showing on tv. The pic on the left isn't the right cow, I picked her up at this site, but she'll do for now.
Wednesday, August 03, 2005
Crossing the English Channel in nothing but your trunks
P.J. Thum will be swimming across the English Channel this Friday. To qualify to even attempt this mammoth feat, you must first show that you are capable of swimming 6 hours non-stop in frigid waters. His training blog is replete with stories of massive stinging jellyfish...
Just as I began to tire from battling the waves, I felt a cattle-prod to my ribs: a jellyfish had smashed into my side, and I grunted, loudly enough for Norman to hear. My side was on fire, but I forged on and it eventually grew numb.
swimming though sewage...
As we entered the Mediterranean, the water slowly turned murky and began to smell. All signs of life disappeared and all I could see were shredded bits of sewage, suspended in the water around me as if in a colloid. "Don't swallow!" was all I could think of, and I tried not to gag and retch at the stench around me. I focused on Norman, and kept moving forward.
vommiting while swimming...
Things, sadly, got steadily worse. At the three hour mark, I swam in for a drink and my hands were trembling so violently that I think I spilt more than I got down. Someone on the beach tossed me a small chocolate cupcake to swallow and I forced the little bite-sized piece down gratefully. Twenty minutes later, after all the excessive saltwater in my stomach, nausea finally overcame me and it all came up again. It was oddly comforting, because as I swam through the vomit it was warm. The chunks of cupcake brushing against my legs as I kicked didn't bother me in the least. I had reached the stage where I'd have swum through urine if it was warm. I really didn't care.
In a way, it was good to practice vomiting, because inevitably while I'm swimming the Channel I will need to vomit while on the move, and so I should get some practice in it while I can.
muscles cramping up from the cold...
Still, it was barely two hours in and I was already shivering, which I knew was my main enemy. Once I start shivering, the cold has penetrated, and my core muscles would slowly cramp up. True enough, over the next three hours all the muscles in my stomach and groin area slowly locked up, and I learnt that stretching them only made it worse. The only fix, albeit a temporary one, was to work heat into the region by "jogging" on the spot.
And other very scary stuff.
A ten hour swim in the sea! In nothing but swimming trunks! It makes the marathon look easy.
I wish P.J. every success. Read More!
Tuesday, August 02, 2005
The words of a song
Strangely irritated today. Not a good sign. So I'm going to post the words of a hymn that moved me this past weekend. `O Crucified Redeemer' is sung to a lilting Welsh tune and it draws a parrallel between Christ's anguish on the cross and our bloody wars and battlefields.
Frankly, I have never thought of it this way. Our wars, our blood, our epidemics, our hungry, dying, sick children, have always seemed to be our problem, not his. But this hymn seems to say that it is Christ himself who is crying out in anguish in the most horrible and shameful moments of history.
The author of the hymn, Timothy Rees (1874-1939), was a chaplain in the trenches of the Western Front during World War I and must have seen the worst of what human beings could do to each other. He received the distinguished Military Cross for his service, and became a bishop in 1931.
O crucified Redeemer, whose life-blood we have spilt,Read More!
to you we raise our guilty hands, and humbly own our guilt.
Today we see your passion spread open to our gaze;
the crowded street, the country road, its Calvary displays.
We hear your cry of anguish, see your life outpoured
where battlefields run red with blood, our neighbours' blood, O Lord;
and in that other battle, the fight for daily bread,
where might is right and self is king, we see your thorn-crowned head.
The groaning of creation wrung out by pain and care,
the anguish of a million hearts that break in dumb despair;
O crucified Redeemer, these are your cries of pain;
O may they break our selfish hearts, and love come in to reign.
Monday, August 01, 2005
SNAKE! and other scary things
I saw a snake. Within the first ten minutes of the ten km trail run at MacRitchie, I saw the bronze coloured snake slither from the middle of the path into the bushes. My foot was 10cm from the tail of the snake when I saw it. I yelped and jumped. It made me somewhat jumpy during the rest of the run too. Later, I jumped again when a twig hit my foot, and another time when I thought I saw something shiny slither away from the side of my eye (probably an insect). Eeuw. But the adrenaline rush was useful. :)
I was running the trail route alone for the first time too. After the snake, the only other thing that really scared me was this young-ish guy walking and listening to music. I supposed he scared me because he didn't fit into any category. Usually the guys who are alone on the trail will be running and the middle-aged men with the familes will be walking. Rarely will you see a lone fit-looking male walking on the trail. When I stopped for a drink, the scary guy ran and overtook me for a short while before I overtook him again in the last bit of tree-root ridden trail by the golf course. It was a bit scary overtaking him and having him behind me.
Women running alone have so many things to worry about. I ran with my handphone and a bottle of water. I didn't use the hp at all during the run but was happy to lug it along just in case I get bitten by a snake, or someone gives me trouble, or I run out of energy... Of course there is no reception right at the heart of the trail, but hopefully nothing untoward will happen on that stretch. I keep thinking about the poor girl who was left on the MacRitchie trail with nothing on but her tennis shoes.
The next mobile phone I purchase will come with emergency tear gas. (I wish!)
Route: 10k MacRitchie. Time: 61mins 40secs. Mileage this week: 29.5km
Category: Running
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