Misc
 
Am feeling terribly homesick after calling my grandad to say Happy Chinese B' day this morning (his real / Western calendar b'day is this Thur). The whole family was getting ready to go to Koki Kiku (thx KK for correcting me), the new Japanese place that took Benkay's place in Landmark. Wish I were home :((
Got inquired on my relationship / bf / prospective marriage status. Arg. Sorry to disappoint, but unless otherwise stated, parental bodies and their parental bodies may always assume I'm single.
 
Fox's new reality TV show Hell's Kitchen starring Gordan Ramsay is doing an open casting call in town. Am tempted to go just to meet Ramsay. I still remember Vicky Tuck (prinicpal of CLC, my high school) bashing him away at prayers for being such a horrible man swearing non-stop at his apprentice chefs on telly back in erm, '98 or '99. Am drooling just at the thought of his apply pie that my family had tasted at his restaurant in London a few years back.
 
Currently reading Salam Pax: The Clandestine Diary of an Ordinary Iraqi. It's a collection of Salam Pax's blog entries on his blog Dear Raed. Mind-bloggling and often poignantly human. Imagine trying to get the latest Massive Attack and Radiohead records and watching VH1 to cheer yourself up on the eve of an all-out, impending war? It's so out of this (Western / American) world...

Haruki Murakami - The Folklore Of Our Times:
 
Short story carried by the Guardian Aug 2003.
Lucca! What a strange coincidence... does that mean Murakami could have been in the same small Italian town as me when I was working there?! =o

Cute monkey, (some) cute monks and a beautiful Tibetan sand mandala at HiMonkey.net. =D

A day in the life of a 臨記/奇哩啡/extra on the set of Lewis Lapham's The American Public*

In a moment of undue boredom I answered a posting on Craig's List calling for extras in a "dramatic-documentary musical" with Lewis Lapham, the editor of Harper's Magazine. A few days later I found meself on a Bean Town trolley "acting" as a tourist / space filler bod listening to Prof. Howard Zinn, of A People's History fame, giving a counter-standard version of the Independence War incidents that took place in Boston. The small crew of five tried to shoot with a mammoth 35mm film camera in the tiny aisle of the trolley, whilst the trolley zigzagged through crazy Bostonian traffic amidst the Big Dig mess downtown.

Though I'm not familiar with Zinn's works, the prof gave a captivating talk. If only my high school history teachers were all sweet grandpa Gandalf's or Dumbledores who have a cheeky twinkle in their eyes.

Later on, the trolley drove us to Randolf, MA to do a green screen shoot in a makeshift "studio". With Matrixy production scenes in my head, I thought the studio would be super high tech. Turns out the set was a trolley garage with huge rolls of green paper surrounding the trolley * Pft*.

The production peez claimed the shot would be 3 - 4 hrs. As time dragged on, it became obvious that the director and cameraman couldn't agree on the lighting & the speed of progress on filming. Both extras, cameraman, lighting crew and director got more stroppy and stressed out. In the end the shot lasted 7 1/2 hours. Now I know that on set time = 2x real time xp

* I can't even remember the title of the film...I only know that the last word starts with a P. Must be something like LL's The American Public or The American Power Struggle, or The American Power? So much for my amnesiac goldfish memory >.<

The director claims that they're aiming for Sundance in Jan '05. If I'm lucky, you might see my fat face on the silverscreen at an arthouse cinema near you sometime next year.

Jelly Belleys

Went to the New England Aquarium this afternoon. My last visit was 6 yrs back when my parents were taking me on the college tour. Thanx Yao & Taka for an afternoon of aquatic fun =D

Moon Jellies


Upside-down Jellies with simbiotic algae in their tentacles so they don't have to move to eat. (hmm wonder if I can stick leaves on meself so will be fed on photosynthetic sugar)



Japanese Sea Nettle


These tiny fluffy-tentacled dudes swim funny - see vids 1&2. As Yao says, "They have to work so hard!"

[apologies for lo-fi videos - am blaming it on my ghetto 1st gen Sony digicam]


Moon Jellies in action


These dudes had lines of cool pulsing rainbow lights


Penguins are always funny to watch
My first encounters with jellies was when my mum picked up a shored one down on its luck at the beach. Mum held it in her palm upside down and poked it around. The second time round was less fun. Aged 8 in a turquoise swimsuit with white polka dots and fluffy wings, I swam into what I thought was a plastic bag and OHMYGOD did it hurt. I swam as fast as I could back to the boat my family was on. My mum claims she's never seen me swim so fast (since then, before every swimming competition she'd tell me: swim like that time when you got stung!)

The upside of getting a thigh-wide jellyfish sting: I didn't get a beating when I got 60/100 on a Maths test.

20 Questions to a better personality

Woah. The diagnosis on my personality is half DEAD ON, half "What?!":


Wackiness: 24/100
Rationality: 26/100
Constructiveness: 30/100
Leadership: 34/100


You are an SEDF--Sober Emotional Destructive Follower. This makes you an evil genius. You are extremely focused and difficult to distract from your tasks. With luck, you have learned to channel your energies into improving your intellect, rather than destroying the weak and unsuspecting.

Your friends may find you remote and a hard nut to crack. Few of your peers know you very well--even those you have known a long time--because you have expert control of the face you put forth to the world. You prefer to observe, calculate, discern and decide. Your decisions are final, and your desire to be right is impenetrable.

You are not to be messed with. You may explode.

Evil?! Moi??? *looks all innocent with wide blinking eyes*

And...a Happy July 4th to y'all

Good god. No wonder this country is in shambles. It's run by pot-bellied men who like to do renditions of YMCA...*covers face in hopelessness*

Colin Powell prancing away on stage after the closing gala at the ASEAN security meeting in Jakarta, Indonesia
[from Wonkette via Yahoo News]