School

As Terrence Murphy says, is just to train the young to get up early so they will be useful members of the workforce later.

Mind the gap

So the reason why I haven't been online or blogging much in the past week or so is because
1. My virusscan subscription has run out.
2. The new Norton Antivirus which the rest of the coms at home use sucks.
3. The Panda Antivirus (which may or may not suck) doesn't want to install itself because it is scared and says that etrust EZ antivirus is already taking its space in the bamboo forest that is my com. All efforts to coax the Panda to mate have failed.
4. Thus the only way forward is to reformat my com and bulldoze the bamboo forest and replace it with a squeaky clean glass enclosure. I needed to reformat anyway.
5. However I can't do this without backing up lots of stuff.
6. I unfortunately have not had the time to do this because of all that work stuff and meeting up with people and playing pirates and whatnot.
7. Thus I have not been online.

However, I HAVE been taking the MRT a fair bit, and things i noticed:

1. "Please mind the platform gap."
What's up with that? Are we trying to be more and more like the British? In Paris only the number 1 metro line actually warns you of the gap, since that's the line which all the tourists (which are presumably less observant than locals) use. Kinda strange in Singapore, have more people been falling into the gaps since I left? And somehow the phrase gives me a sort of snooty British kind of a feeling. "Mind that gap, will you, ol' chap?" Singapore MRT should have something which instead says "Carefoo! Got hole!".

2. The faded Singa courtesy lions with their multilingual messages have been replaced with a warning not to kill yourself and act responsibly. Since, of course, throwing yourself onto the tracks would make lots of people late for appointments and things, you selfish cad. At first I thought it was just a series of signs at Simei MRT because of its proximity to Changi General Hospital, but then i noticed that the nice friendly colored lion with the smileyface on its shirt was indeed gone. Tragedy. I guess lots of people need to mind the gaps.

3. Jurong East is neither in the East, nor used as an indication for when the trains running east-west are coming, but for the north-bound trains instead. Poor tourists must be confused. Maybe that's when they fall into the gaps.

4. I've actually seen a dog have its hindlegs fall into the gap once while alighting from a Paris train, it sort of scrabbled a bit and its owner pulled it out. Poor thing must've been terrified. Maybe they should have the message in dog-language, too.

7:45am is too early.

So we leave the world of idle walking and waking and return once again to the one where there is never enough time. From the Paris of spacious parks and wide pavements to the crowded MRT stations of Raffles Place. Enter the world of human pod-racing and crowded bottlenecks.

Andrew's lemmas of moving faster in crowds (based, of course, on fluid dynamics):
1. The flow of people is fastest in the middle of a one-directional stream, as opposed to by the walls.

2. The flow of people moving in oppsite directions is faster the further away you are from the boundary, unless you're extremely skilled in pod-racing across said boundary.

3. The speed of flow of people onto different escalators (eg: the 3 going up from Raffles Place MRT) is proportional to the distance from other streams joining the main stream (eg: people who try to cut queue from the sides.)

4. Flow of people can be disrupted successfully if you're carrying a durian at eye-level.

Happiness is a warm bun...

Or actually, anything you make it out to be. If all this recent moving about has taught me one thing, it's that the easiest way to securing the goal of happiness is to shift the goals to wherever the ball is heading for. (that's the last soccer metaphor this world cup season, really.)

So while croissants can make you (well, ok, me) damn happy in Paris, it's probably wise not to try and find a good croissant in Bangkok, and just try for a good mango instead. Maybe if you alter whatever it is that you want depending on your life circumstances, you'll be a happier person. But then again a mango lychee drink in Chicago is no less satisfying than one in Bangkok, and probably more satisfying than, say, a bittergourd cucumber celery shake. So i guess it's also a function of knowing what you want, too. And then there's the question of whether what you want in the short term will contradict what you want in the long term... maybe your long term circumstances will be severely different from the short term? hmm.

In other news I'm back from Bangkok and about to start work tomorrow in a hopefully enlightening and enriching internship experience.

And at the least, there's good food in the area.

This week

It was good to be back.

Happily there's so much I remember fondly about the place. The people were just as forthcoming and friendly despite the looming finals (thanks guys), and just as sweet.

An attempted tiramisu was made, which was moderately successful, but only very moderately so.



A greater study of tiramisi in their natural habitat (In my mum's kitchen in singapore, of course) will be made, and better ingredients sourced out.

Many many errands were run. Certain issues were ironed out, certain chores were left undone. I now have also compiled the best 100 photos from Paris: and they're viewable here. ....... but not yet, because i intelligently left harddrive cables in Chicago so there won't be any harddrive access for a while.

Xmen3 was watched (why did so many people die?!), MI3 was not.

Much food was eaten. 3 consecutive Jap meals, because the rolls in Chicago are different and can't be found in Singapore.

Thus was a week in Chicago. Now i land back in Singapore, a different life, a different patch.

I note with amusement the presence in my bathroom of 3 yr 3 month old Conditioner....since singapore is humid i never really use it. Now my hair is colored and will soon be colored again (colored black.) i'll probably actually use it now. About time to get new Conditioner, i think.

Rush! (Stream of consciousness)

Enormous Energy High.

Need to get out and see Paris. Now.

Grab book and DVD (unwatched) to return tot he centre. Print, dash, think. Realise I need Keynes in my essay too. Hurriedly scan book and scribble notes. Must finish before I get to centre. Scribble Scribble. Adrenaline fuels my reading engines. Arrive, return books and DVD, collect French Journal. Efficient. Gotta love the centre. Decide against exploratory food outing and head back to Fontaine Sully for confit de canard. Rush. Transfer trains at Gare de Lyon, nose is captured and enraptured by freshly baked goodness. Grab a pain aux raisins on impulse. It's so good. Sugar high. Toss the bag, train pulls in. Perfect. Love Paris Trains. Descende a gauche at the Bastille stop, doa photo tourist thing for a quick while, find Fontaine Sully. Sit down (inside this time, because the sunny day is opposite to the last rainy day i'm here, and i'm hot from all this running around). Order. I'm in the corner. Ambivalent towards corners, but this one affords me a view of the whole restaurant. Waiter gives me a funny look when I order white Alsace Gerwuztraminer with the duck. Whatever, you're not keeping me from my favourite wine of this trip. Individualism and self-determination. Food arrives, this time I remember to take a photo.



Gerwuztraminer subtleties completely overwhelmed by the duck and garlic, as expected. Still good, though. love observing the interplay of food and wine. Doesn't matter! Duck is wonderful.

In this most French of French bistroes, with the old man sitting quietly in the corner reading his paper alone over a cup of coffee, the radio plays "my humps". The elder sophisticated Asian woman at the far table studiously busies herself with her food, unaware of the voyeurism of my pencil. I sip my Gerwuztraminer, which has levelled up in tasste, while contemplating the dilemma facingthe European democracies in the interwar years. The train of thought quickly shifts to the dilemma of the history of Europe student who wants to see more of Paris. Elderly Asian woman orders a dessert (not salty please). I ruminate on my potato bits. She orders a tarte aux pommes. i feel a deep affinity with her already. Germany languishes on the sidelines. I run out of space on the paper, my essay plan completely overrun by my blog post.



So i lied. I still have another 6 pieces of paper from the ridiculous 8 pages of quote printouts i have (but no organization!) which arose from kiasuness over having to return my source (see above) before my thoughts crystallized. The alcohol has depressed my biochemistry. Old man orders a port-looking thing. A third glass in addition to the two already at his table. I begin to do curious things like cut my salad into bite sized bits. I refill my wine glass for the 2nd and last time. There's now probably about 3ml of alcohol in my blood stream. Not terrifically a lot, but I still need to write a paper here.

which, i guess, i will do now.

all 5 properly inhabited continents

create your own visited country map
or check our Venice travel guide

Hmm. looks like the next bet is Japan, and then possibly a central asia/south africa thing. It's cheating to say i've been to some of those places, though, like i've only been to about 3 US states or so.

Tarts

So i decided a while ago that the basic unit of economic measurement in Paris to gauge the value of stuff should be the Tart. Now, a Tart gives a pretty standardised amount of utility, and its value is pretty constant across locations and it's easily divisible into things. So an expensive dinner would be, say, 15 tarts, and a dinner at the cheap student canteen would be, say, 1.5 tarts.

"Why don't you just use the Euro?" I hear you say.
Ah, well now. We learnt about this in JC econs, it's all about Purchasing Power Parity, you know. If you start counting in Euros, your frame of reference becomes the general world, because of the great liquidity in converting Euros, to, say, plates of chicken rice. However, since Tarts are generally less portable than Euros, its value becomes localised to Paris.

"Oh. I didn't realise that."
Thought you wouldn't. Glad to point it out.

And as a friend of mine so rightly pointed out today, if Tarts = money, and time = money, then Tarts = time.

Thus, after some quick mental arithmetic, I'd say i have only, oh, about only 7 Tarts left in Paris. =(


Raid the bank!