My grandfather

He was a man of deeds not words,
many mouths to feed, nary a complaint heard.
He would laugh at the slightest thing,
and with his music he would sing.
He always balanced the ledger,
along with his duties as marketing manager.
All round great guy was he,
I miss my grandpa already.

Saturday...

Busy day, woke up early for gym and picked up tickets for Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End on Saturday, courtesy tixs from wibblewamble’s friend. As she went for her session, I got busy with washing the car and having a short run on my own (at a different gym because of cheaper parking) before heading out to pick up some food for us. Had to practically wolf them down because we were due to attend ww’s sister’s Call.  It was interesting and the ceremony was simple yet poignant, and CJ’s speech this year was timely as it emphasized the issue of being ethical, and to reinforce that point, all the newly qualified lawyers were given a free copy of a latest book on ethics and law in Singapore.  I hope the newly qualifieds can uphold the profession as a noble and honourable one.  Sometimes, just sometimes, I wish I were a lawyer.  But I nosso smart.

After that, we rushed off to watch the show at Cathay. It was my first time watching a movie there, and the grand old dame has changed quite abit. Even though we sat quite far in front, the view was quite good. The movie itself was entertaining, a little slapstick at times, but definitely better than the second in terms of plot. It was quite long so we had to rush abit in order to make it home to cook for friends that were coming over that night. Dinner was fun with the band and a few other friends bringing a dish each, we had pizza, fried chicken, pork ribs, egg mayo, and fishballs (from Tiong Bahru). Wibblewamble outdid herself once again with mussels (in a cream sauce) and crabmeat pasta. Mum contributed fresh steamed prawns and roasted chicken that were gobbled up even though everyone said they already had enough. Dessert was a divine crepes with vanilla ice cream, caramel sauce and strawberries, which was wolfed down even though everyone said they definitely had enough after the roasted chicken wings and prawns.

Ended the night playing pictionary with cousin T and A, with much hilarity and laughter, as pictionary games do usually generate. I doubt we will be hearing the end of a rather interestingly drawn turkey. Phew! What a day! 

You know ...

… that you had really strong coffee after lunch (courtesy of Leo’s finest Italian coffee)(oh dear, I’m developing a taste for Italian stuff) when a telemarketer calls and you find the energy to banter with him.

A: hello, is this so-and-so la-ti-do?

z: wah, full name some more ah, dun like that lah, so formal.

A: Oh, I’m calling on behalf of a-bank-with-whom-zeenie-has-credit-cards-with-already and we would like to inform you … 

*please let it be a Lamborghini Gallardo*

A: …you have been selected for a funds transfer with a low interest rate of x.xx%

z: Damn! …… I mean, I dun need it lah. The last time you guys called me, it was x-1.xx%, and I didn’t take it. What makes you think that I would take it up now?

A: Maybe you have changed your mind since then?

z: well, I have to inform you that my mind still works fine and have no intention of changing it. Why fix something that ain’t broke yah?

A: eh…. Ok. Goodbye.

Dilemma's dilemma

Read this really interesting article from Scientific American on Game Theory (via crufty) and the first thing that occured to me was "i wonder if the author questioned whether to publish the dilemma for it would no longer be a dilemma after?" but enough of my silly thoughts.

In the game Traveler's Dilemma, two people separately choose a whole number from 2 to 100, and the player whose number is smaller is rewarded with a larger sum. Game theory insists that rationality should lead players to select 2, but most people pick an integer closer to 100.

A new kind of reasoning is needed to gain a rigorous understanding of this rational choice not to be rational.

Speaking from a local context, you don't have to look further than your Singapore Pools shop. How many times have we encountered long queues when passing by these shops? The funny thing here is if i pass by an empty one, i always feel the urge to go in and donate some money, but i digress. Rationally speaking, the chances of striking 4-D, Toto (not the band), or Big Sweep (nothing to do with Corrective Work Order), or even winning at the betting counter are always against the punter. Yet, Singaporeans flock to these places weekly/daily to part with their cash, which brings to mind a saying regarding the situation of foolspeople and their money parting. If they would put 2 Singaporeans against each other in the Traveller's Dilemma, i would think that they would always choose 100 since they are surrounded by irrationality in their daily lives (don't get me started), and thus the irrational decision appears the most natural and rational choice. Hence the long queues and ever hopeful faces at these places. Sigh.

On an aside, our car number opened on Sat, so congrats to all you who bought the number (ibet option hor). Thank you and please come again. =)

is it just me?

I read this news article from asiaone and did a double take on the following sentence:

"She said the police tracked down the 15-year-old girl through her ez-link card."

Really? Crickey.

Conversations from the office

A: (walking into my office) where's z?
B: he's elsewhere right now.
A: *facepalm*

C: i need to protect my product otherwise every arsehole out there will copy us, and they produce only shit.

conversations with my dog

jeanienew 035
Originally uploaded by zeenie.

During our walkies, jeanie would always try to look for tennis balls to play with, but last night, no joy.

z: how? no ball to play with? Don't look at me like that, i ain't got any balls for you to play with.....*pause* (that sounded wrong, better correct myself).... Oh wait, i do. But they're not for you to play with anyways! (nope, still sounds wrong).

musical weekend

Had an interesting weekend, fighting the urge to succumb to flu or something that everyone around me seems to have. I rarely have headaches, yet when i do, they don't just come with a half-hearted ache and then leave. Oh no, they announce their imminent arrival by making my entire body ache and my head spin, then it proceeds to induce my rather delicate digestive system to alternate between spewing gas, liquids and solids (in no particular order or preference). Couple that with work, and you have a recipe for trouble.

Mass on Thursday (Feast of Ascension) was good though, considering the lack of practice we had, and since our practices for Sunday's mass are on Thurs, that meant no practice for the mass on Sunday either. LOL But we did good. And the funkiness was really out in force. What a great band we have.

More music on Saturday night in celebrating my Aunt's birthday 'cos she hired a live band. I just love listening to live music. =)

Sunday's mass was no different and despite all of us nursing an illness of some sort, we had a good session. Almost feels like we can go pro. Almost.

Had celebrations for my Grandfather's birthday on Sunday and he's looking rather frail and weak. This from a 83-year old who still does daily marketing every morning, walking the odd kilometer or so the market and back (carrying groceries). He seemed happy about the food though. =) We got to entertain ourselves at the piano 'cos no one was playing and it was fun thinking of the various songs we could remember and sing. Almost feels like we could go pro. Almost. LOL

Ended the day watching youtube videos of Jeff Porcaro. His instructional videos are simply awesome, especially those on the shuffle and bounce.

News from NZ

Rather interesting that this made the news over there, since Jeanie has travelled by car, by boat, by bridge, and by air (no links or pictures, sorry!).

Paul Rocks!

Whenever we have time, we would pop down to Harry's to watch Paul play and be blown away by his playing every single time. Recently Time magazine did an article on him and from what i know of the man, it's quite true. He loves music and is blessed with so much talent, yet he's so humble. Definitely what musicians like us look up to. Incidentally, i just met him last night at a hawker centre. LOL

What are you waiting for? Support the man by heading down to Harry's this Thursday, Friday and/or Saturday at the Esplanade and prepare to be amazed! Or even better still, buy his album! If you're lucky, he might have a spare or two on the spot and you can even get him to autograph it. =)

brilliant post on quantum

This blog post just cracked me up! I wonder if i could get Jeanie to understand that many terms. This ranks up there with the Hans Solo in Chocolite. =)

both via Boing Boing

Small mindedness

Saw this article on the beebs and honestly, i expected better from Sir Alex. It just reeks of bitter jealousy and that if his English club cannot win it, he doesn't want/think other English clubs should either.

"I'd bet for sure that Milan will win the Champions League. I'm absolutely certain of it.

"I told their manager Carlo Ancelotti at the end of our semi-final that there is no way he cannot win it now."

Ferguson plans to toast Milan's victory with a bottle of wine given to him by Ancelotti after his side had lost in Italy.

"Carlo gave me a magnificent bottle of wine," Ferguson added. "But I immediately told him I would only drink his wine once I see him lifting the Champions Cup."

How petty. One might speculate that the wine was made with sour grapes.

ps he might turn around when Liverpool win it in Athens and say that he said those words to spur Liverpool on (you heard it here first!)

People power

This interesting bit of news from New Zealand came to my attention, where a Subway worker was released from employment rather abruptly after sharing a drink. Students (and other people too, i'm sure) are marching down to the Subway on George Street in Dunedin to protest and not only call for a boycott of this branch, but also Subway franchisees nationwide. It would be a little hard considering it is such a staple there. LOL

I note with interest that the way the news is reported in that aside from knowing that the worker is female, no mention is made of her age, race, religion, or skin colour. I thought she would be a student since the university unions have jumped in with both feet on this matter, but if she's a full-time staff, then i'm not so sure. The moral of the story, university students rallying together can form quite a force.

Power to the people! The masses united together can be unstoppable. Someday we will all come to realise this. Someday.

Also interesting is the fact that the worker at the centre of this whirlwind has Asperger's syndrome, which is part of the autistic spectrum (nothing to do with colours of rainbows, i'm sure). This won't help Subway at all. Maybe after this, they'll all close shop and have to sell their sandwiches underground. *groan* (from a dark alleyway) "Pssst, wanna get a foot-long with meatballs?" *double groan*

Jeanie eating her bone

Jeanie eating her bone 1
Originally uploaded by zeenie.

Photo time!! Click on the picture to see a series of pictures of Jeanie eating her bone. It's an artificial bone, so no hard bits to injure her rather delicate tummy. The story behind that is we used to give her real bones (she could even manage a whole lamb leg bone and hide it from us!), but as she grew older, we found that she would be in pain as she pooped. So no more real bones. =)

mythical creatures

I once read that Dragons and Aquarians have a common trait, in that aside from being mythical creatures, as non-plussed about stuff as they are, they do not suffer fools easily. However light-hearted these observations are, i have to agree. I tend to get very angsty around highly ignorant people, despite my constant self-reminders not to have any airs about it since there are a great many things out there that i am not aware of either. But i guess the difference is, i would find out if i came across something i didn't know about about, and not just open my mouth to ask damn stupid questions or make stupid comments.

Of course you can point out that one man's stupid question is another's meaning of life; also that the only stupid question is the one that you do not ask, but these people really test my limits on this. As strongly as i believe in asking questions, i also believe in self-improvement, and do not expect people to serve up all the information on a platter because it would be so easy to forget that in an instant. Compare this to researching into a particular subject matter yourself, be it floral arrangements of sunflowers to why mentos fizzes in coke. Just because it is not "within your area/sphere of knowledge/expertise" is no reason to remain ignorant, in fact it should further spur one to broaden one's horizon and explore the world. Maybe that's why some people can watch drama serials or MTV all day, while i tend to get hooked on the Discovery channel, National Geographic, Animal Planet, or even Travel & Living (i just found out yesterday that Parrot Cay in the Caribbean is pronounced 'Parrot Key').

Examples of the behavior of such people:

A: i am meeting a guy tonight and i want to sound knowledgeable about cars, what's the difference between different types of engines? Like what's V12?
(this sounded like an innocent question to me...)
z: oh, there are quite a few different types, but for petrol cars, they are all combustion engines. This depends on the 4 (or 2) stroke cycle in a cylinder. The V12 refers to a 12 cylinder engine with the cyliders arranged in a 'V' configuration.
A: What's a combustion engine? What does a cylinder look like?
(good grief, breathe, breathe)
z: Why don't you try this website called "How stuff works", there are nice pretty pictures and animated graphics that tell you alot.
A: i just want a quick summary mah, can you just tell me?

B: So where are you thinking of a honeymoon?
z: we shortlisted a few places, but Bhutan is one of them.
B: Where's that?
z: near the Himalayas.
B: is that like by the sea, that would be so cool, relaxing.
z: erm, no, i think Bhutan is land locked.
B: Too bad it's not like Maldives. So what's there to look at in Bhutan?
z: er, mountains?
*facepalm*

A: Very stressed if got proposed to. How can you tell how much the diamond is worth?
z: Depends on clarity, cut, colour, and carat
A: ballpark figure?
z: like i said, it depends.
A: roughly lah.
z: 5-15k.
A: so much difference ah?
z: yep.
A: so can tell from a diamond where it sits within this scale you mentioned?
z: personally, i can't, because i do not have a trained eye. I only know you need good light to tell, which is usually absent in the situation that you are interested in.
A: How can i learn more about the 4 Cs?
z: use google.
(yes, you can tell i switched off already, in fact, i even repeated the suggestion to use google when she persisted in the line of questioning (by rephrasing and repeating the questions)

Some of these conversations feel like it came out of a 1980's sci-fi film that featured a Turing Test (great summary here). At the risk of sounding like an intellectual snob, I think I would have had a better conversation with some of the newer AIs. Sometimes i wish i was really a dragon or water bearer, then i can breathe fire unto these people or at the very least, pour cold water on them (see chinese translation (yah, i know corny and not very effective mode of vengence)).

Upon hindsight, i should have given some really nonsensical answers, goodness knows i'm more than capable of that. Then i can post them up and give JayWalk's Sian-XMM series a run for his money.

Family capers

To prove that i'm not the only strange joker around, i found out my family can be a real bunch of comedians as well.

Family member: eh, you know ah, the other day i was at the ATM and the machine advised me to cover up the keypad so that no one else can see my PIN. Then ah, when i did so, i found that i cannot see the keypad to enter my PIN! You tell me how ah?

Another family member (who's alot younger) brought her handbag to church, it was quite cute. But when she tried to take something out of it, it turns out she didn't take out 3 other handbags that were kept in it (save storage space), but instead, put (what little, i assume) stuff she had in the smallest of them all that was inside the one that was inside the one that was inside the one that she was carrying. *slaps forehead*

recent happenings

zeenie is not a morning person. On a normal morning, all movements are slow and robot-like and the brain does not start ticking over until after 11 or so, irregardless whether caffine is imbibed. However, recent weeks (barely more than one week really) have demonstrated a newfound ability for waking really early, like 5-ish, when the sky is still dark and even the worms are sleeping so any early bird would have been disappointed. The reason for this was varied, ranging from waking up to study, to waking up to drive to work because we need the car at night, to just because have been waking up at such ungodly hours for some many days in a row and one cannot sleep.

Today was no exception, and i have only begun to shake off the vestiges of sleep. We did manage to head over to Maxwell market for breakfast though, and that was good. I have found the ultimate Soy Bean Curd. It is gorgeous! Just had to share that news to no one in particular. LOL And for avoidance of doubt, i am only able to taste and share this info with you because i 'ta pao' the thing and only just ate it. =)) I would have taken a picture but wouldn't have done justice to the taste and texture. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a taste is worth a millon more.

Anyways, definitely not a morning person. However, catch me at night and you'll meet a different person, the wit returns, back a little straighter and the laughter more relaxed and louder. =)

What's the point of this post? zeenie is not a morning person...... oh and Maxwell market bean curd POWER!

Liverpool through!

I'm lost for words. Liverpool managed to overturn a 1-0 deficit from the first leg and win the return leg by the same margin, and then go through on penalties. =))

That just made my day.......oh and the fact that today was the last day of my exams. =)