Here's home

This is where Radovan Karadzic can expect to live.

After 11 years on the run, it's not too bad a deal. Particularly as the pix of the cell doesn't look very different from on-campus student accommodation at the university I went to. On top of that, he gets an ensuite bathroom and home-cooked Balkan cuisine. That's already two up on what we got.

Those crazy golfers and the things they get up to

It could only happen here. Company X organises and sponsors a series of regional golf tournaments, the winners of which meet in a world championship final. And in between teeing off, they get little treats such as taking company X's cars on a test drive.

The only "problem" is, what the Singapore winner does for a living when he's not playing golf is to sell cars for Company Y, which is the biggest rival to Company X. Which then refuses to send him to the tournament final. It says that it doesn't want him privy to its new cars and marketing plans. It offers him monetary compensation but he refuses it. All he wants is to play golf with the very best.

The whole sorry PR affair has now become a High Court case as the man is suing to stop Company X for preventing him from playing in the final.

In a more pluralistic society, Company X would have rolled out the red carpet for the Company Y employee and won him over with their largesse. Who knows, he may end up selling even more cars for them.

Instead, they blackmark him as That Man from the Rival and mutter about industrial espionage when all he wanted to do was to play golf. But then, this is how insular minds on a small island work.

Marketing campaigns reflect how a society operates. And ours isn't as gracious and as inclusive as our leaders would like us to think.

God is feeling a little gay

I'm telling ya, Jesus wept. With laughter.

Lions! Tigers and bears! Oh my!!

Well, OK, not the tigers and bears but three lions. Enough to intrigue Rupert so much that he forgot to bark. He also backed away from the window as the lions advanced down the path, until he was all backed up against the sofa and couldn't retreat any more.

The lion dance was part of some festival for Kwan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy, organised by our downstairs neighbour who's some sort of medium or devotee, along with a puppet show. The furkids were mesmerised by everything. I missed everything, I was at work. The pix were taken by L to show me what I missed. Not shown is a vegetarian meal, to which he was constantly shouted invitations to whenever the neighbours saw him standing at the window watching the goings-on.

Apparently I also missed the neighbour putting his hand to Rupert and Queeni's forehead (she didn't protest, and she normally would if she didn't know you and you tried to touch her) in a blessing. I've always been disappointed that no church in this country does a blessing of the animals service for St Francis of Assissi's saint day. But hey, now they've got Kwan Yin's blessing.

Lying in state

Here's how Queeni watches TV. Note that the royal head needs a pillow. All that's missing is Rupert peeling her grapes. I don't have to do the bit where I stand in attendance and fan her gently because she's lying on the part of the couch that gets the draft from the airconditioning.

3D puzzle

When we first moved in about two years ago, this lamp was a housewarming gift from C, who bought it in Thailand on one of his frequent trips there. It's actually comprised of flat little plastic rectangles with hook-like corners and you hook all the rectangles together and they somehow magically form a sphere. It's a really clever piece of design.

Knowing what a klutz I am and how anti-DIY L is, C had warned us that it required a little assembly. But by the time he gave it to us, he quite kindly took pity on us and put it together for us, complete with a light bulb. We were still renovating then and we simply handed the assembled lamp to the electrician who installed it for us. When we needed to change the bulb, we just had to unhook a panel, reach in, screw the bulb off and put a new one in, C instructed.

That was last week. It seemed simple enough. Only when I hooked the panels back up, the beautifully perfect sphere wasn't perfect and I know I messed it up somehow and a couple of panels aren't where they're supposed to be.

L, with his statistics background, says there's a mathematical formula to it. I'll be damned if I, the maths failure in school, needed to apply maths to changing a light bulb. I just slotted slats back where they could fit and let it be, beautiful perfect sphere of a lamp be damned. The statistician, being a non-DIY guy, didn't help beyond postulating mathematical theories. He'll fix it later. One very fine day. Or until the next bulb change.

So how many statisticians does it take to change a light bulb?

Fun at the supermarket

First, I couldn't find the Marmite. It wasn't with the bottled sauces and it wasn't with the soups. That's what I use the yeast extract for so I didn't knew where else to look for it. I finally found it by accident -- next to the bread. So that means that Marmite on toast isn't a solely British thing nor as cultivated a taste as I thought.

Then I came across breakfast flavoured milk. I didn't know breakfast was a flavour and now I'm curious as to what lunch and dinner flavours taste like.


But nothing can be as interesting as absurd seafood...

Wheels go on the road

I'd recently written about a pet peeve being cyclists on footpaths. They are an accident waiting to happen and L had a near miss yesterday. Someone cycled down the footpath behind him and he didn't even know she was bearing down on him till the mud-guard of her front wheel came into contact with the back of his leg.

He spun round, letting fly a torrent of blue words. The elderly cyclist responded just as vociferously as she pedalled off. She spoke in Chinese dialect, which L doesn't understand very well but enough to distinguish that far from apologising for hitting him, she was giving him what-for for giving her what-for. She's jolly lucky he didn't fall over or was hurt any more badly than a bruise on his calf. Or there'd be hell to pay. And that's just from him.

I think some cyclists don't want to go on the roads because they feel that they'll be at the mercy of *real* traffic. The result is that they ride on the footpaths and then pedestrians will be at their mercy. I'm sure we can compromise somehow. Don't ride up behind people who don't have eyes at the back of their heads. Or build more cycle paths. They're not unknown. We have them in parks. But the point is that a lot of people don't just cycle in parks for fun. In housing estates like ours, they cycle to the shops too. And more and more people I know are cycling to work. Our ministers who tell us to take more public transport don't seem to acknowledge that cycling is also an alternative fuel-free form of transport. And that as such, you need to provide for cyclists too.

Owww

I wrenched a muscle in my back. Again. This time, I did myself in when I dropped a slippery piece of soap and it skittered into a pail of water that was standing next to the sink. Almost without thinking, I bent over quickly to retrieve it. And that did it.

I'm very cross with myself because I know I should have squatted down instead of bending over -- all that stuff that the physiotherapist taught me.

And I thought I had been so good with the physio and yoga threapy exercises the past 10 months or so. Since the last time I stupidly wrenched my back simply by getting off the sofa. I do them at least three to five times a week and had felt my back getting stronger. Apparently not. Or maybe stronger but not strong, because at least this time round, the muscle pull isn't as bad as last time.

I think my body is telling my mind that I'm middle aged. Ouch. That hurts.

Sun dog

It's not just a bulge in the curtains. It's Roop sitting at the window in the sun that's streaming in when we get out of bed. This has become a daily habit for him now, he'll take a little sunbath while I have a quick cup of coffee before we go downstairs for the first walk of the day.

To me, it's a sign that he's become a little calmer at two-and-a-half years. Previously, he used to follow me about, watching my every move in case he'd miss something. It wasn't so much attachment as his acute need to be part of a pack.

Now, he's coming into his own and developing his own habits, and that's nice to see. What's also nice is that he's got enough control over his bladder now and doesn't need to be rushed downstairs the very first thing and I can enjoy a wake-up cup of caffeine first.

Sheer laziness

Getting three legs out of four up on the couch with you aint bad.

Desperately Seeking Mas Selamat

I took this pix a while ago and forgot about it. It is a bookmark that serves as an invitation to the launch of a new local search engine. At the bottom of the the bookmark, in the mock-up of the search web portal, some one had inked in the "Find" square, the name of the escaped alleged terrorist who is still at large.

Somebody is wicked. Very wicked. Delightfully wicked.

Digging up bones

This was what was found under the sofa. Twice as many bones as dogs -- and that's just what was kicked under the sofa, there's more scattered about -- in different varieties of textures, shapes and flavours, all for their chewing pleasure.

Dang, not only have they taken over the sofa, they've taken over the space under the sofa.

The good, the bad and the ugly

Two radio DJs have started this project where you're encouraged to video the good, the bad and the ugly side of Singaporeans and podcast it. It all started when one of them tried to leave a lift but someone else was adamant on entering it and blocked his way. It's a familiar situation for many of us, I think, and it also applies to train doors.

So that's why he thinks there are going to be more bad and ugly videos than good. Though to be fair, he emphasised that if you're going to shoot something bad, you should also shoot something good. The results would be interesting.

My only question is, how do I shoot cyclists who are coming up the footpath behind me, ringing their bell, scaring me out of my skin and then expect me to jump out of their way? (By shoot, I'm not restricting myself to video. An M-16 would do just as well.) That is one of my top peeves. It happens very frequently, and it did yesterday. I yelled at the cyclist that he has ****ing wheels and should be on the ****ing road and not the footpath. So if he'd whipped out his cellphone then, I would be the ugly one.

A couple of weeks ago, the same thing happened. On the same footpath to the train station. The cyclist came up from behind, whizzed past me, narrowly missing me. Further up the path, he wobbled where the path was uneven, veered onto the grass, tipped over and fell. He wasn't really hurt and by the time he was picking up his bike, I had caught up with him. And I laughed. In his face. Oh lord, I was ugly. But it felt good.

Been at the music store

I enjoyed the movie Shine a Light so much that I had to go get the soundtrack. And since I was at the CD shop, I also got the new Bryan Adams and the not-so-new Bon Jovi.

I had meant to get the Bon Jovi when it came out last year but dithered because nothing in it really grabbed me although it was all very listenable and in the end, I guess I sort of forgot about it. I liked Bon Jovi very much back in the 80s but then I was much younger. Now, it's one of those embarrassing 80s moments that you don't want to linger over.

L used to sneer at Bon Jovi, all backbeat and big hair, he said. At least, they've all got decent haircuts now. The backbeat is still there but they're sounding more subdued. I think the one thing that has made me stick with them still is that they're still straightahead rock 'n' roll. A bit sugary now and then but they have never condescended to slide into pop. They've still maintained that bit o f edginess.

Much to my surprise then, L took to the "new" Bon Jovi album. It had mostly to do with one of the tracks, We Got It Going On and everything to do with its lyrics: "We got it going on / We'll be bangin' and sangin' just like the Rolling Stones / we're gonna shake up your souls / We've come to rattle your bones"

The Stones are everywhere!

At home with Hockney

Photography courtesy of L

Read a good book lately

I'm a terrible fisherman, I don't have the patience for it and I can rarely bring myself to eat something that I've killed.

And that's why I never read Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It. Fly fishing is pretty alien to an urbanised Singaporean. Even when Robert Redford turned it into a movie with Brad Pitt in it, I still wasn't interested.

And then I came across the book's 25th anniversary edition in the library. It had a quiet cover with a simple pencil and ink drawing of a fly on it. Always one to judge a book by its cover, I borrowed it. Actually, I took it because it has a foreword by Annie Proulx and I was more interested in what she had to say because I've always enjoyed her books.

And I was -- err -- hooked. Line. And sinker. Except that I don't think there are sinkers in fly fishing. Right from the opening line -- "In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing."

In my -- err -- book, that's an opening line that ranks up with Austen's "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." Funny how you can remember word for word a good opener of a book you first read 25 years ago. Guess I fall for a good pick up line anytime.

A River Runs Through It is one of the most beautifully lyrical books I've read in a long while. I just wonder how it was possible to capture it into a movie. Even if it's Robert Redford.

You know it's football season...

I was sitting next to an elderly Malay man on the bus when another elderly Malay chap got on. They obviously knew each other because they did that hand-to-heart handshake and the second guy sat on the next row and the two began a conversation -- none of which I understood.

sdsdfjwerrjkv ... injury time... poiuder werjkjkl; rerwlj kj;jwer ... free kick ... sdfwejk @#!@#!!!

Aah, they were talking about Euro 2008.

Being Singaporean

I think we've met the conservative greyhead of the estate. You know the type. Elderly retired gentleman, used to being in a position of authority, has a view on everything and his view is always right.

We were walking the dogs, Rupert on leash and Queeni trotting alongside offleash. She usually ignores everyone and goes about her business but our paths crossed Greyhead's and he muttered something at her so she snorted at him and went on her way. Snorted. Not barked. Nor even growled.

Don't worry, she's tame, L assured Greyhead. Greyhead then lectured L about the virtues of keeping a dog on leash, "they could go wild on you anytime," he emphasised. "Oh really, you're an expert on safety?" enquired a now irritated L.

We're always mindful that dogs are really domesticated wolves. Queeni does get leashed when there are children about and we're always mindful of the Muslim neighbours. So I guess L felt really unjustified about the impromptu lecture on dog behaviour.

Greyhead clearly wasn't used to people talking back to him and launched into a monologue, building up for the grand conclusion -- which was addressed to me because by then, he had drawn level with me as L had fallen back with Queeni who was busy sniffing at a tree.

"Singaporeans!" he thundered.

By which he probably meant that we were ill-mannered, inconsiderate, discourteous louts, the usual complaints one makes of Singaporeans.

What I don't get is that he obviously is Singaporean too. He's one of us. Unless he somehow thinks that he's better than us. Well, he's quite beyond me.

All that while, the elderly lady walking with Greyhead, probably his wife, kept her head down, ignored everything and stepped up her pace. I bet she knew too well what Greyhead is when he's home.

A Singaporean.

'It's Only Rock 'n' Roll (But I Like It)'

L and I went to watch Shine a Light yesterday evening. Great movie.

Only a few days ago, a colleague -- who had just recently discovered Scorsese's The Last Waltz but was dithering about watching Shine a Light because he had never been keen on The Rolling Stones -- had wondered if he should watch it on DVD or in the cinema.

Definitely the cinema. The big screen makes all the difference. It was like a front row ticket to a Stones concert. And at $7.50 for a movie ticket, it's definitely cheaper than the $500 for a front row seat to watch them when they came here a few years ago. (No, I didn't go. I didn't have $500. I figured I could spend that same amount on a whole, whole lot of CDs. L somewhat sourly said that he wasn't going to pay for a new liver for Keith Richards. He said it's been said that Richards gets a new one in Switzerland every year. Legacy of Jack Daniels.)

The only funny thing about watching a movie about the Stones in concert is that you get so caught up in the music, you forget you're not in a concert hall but a cinema -- and then you suddenly realise that nobody else is bopping around in their seats except you. The first five rows of the cinema were empty -- it was a weekday evening after all, and let's face it, it's a limited audience, you have to be of a certain age to want to watch the subject of this movie -- and I seriously debated if I should manouvre my way through all the people seated in my row and go sit in the empty rows where I could dance. Only having to move in the dark stopped me. And I had to stop myself from throwing my arms up mid-song or even clapping with the screen audience at the end of each number. It is not easy to sit to the Stones.

Just last week, another colleague laughed at me when I told her that Mick Jagger is my personal hero because he's proof that there's rock 'n' roll -- and hence, life -- after 60. The man is 20 years older than I am, and moves like he's 20 years younger.

There's something to be said for rock 'n' roll.