-
Exodus: How Migration is Changing Our World (first impression)
I’ve been pretty much hiding indoors sulking for a month since arriving in the USA (terrible, I know; there are so many people who want to be in my position). But I accepted the job, and now it’s dawning on me that I have two weeks left to Get Stuff Done before plunging back into…
-
Here
The first time I got a student visa, terrorists brought down the World Trade Center five days before I started university. I immigrated on an IR1 (spouse of a US citizen) visa on Monday and the federal government promptly shut down. …the way it’s going, if I took up citizenship, probably an asteroid would hit…
-
Who run the world
I’d like to write a story for an action movie that goes like this… Three young women go off for a beach holiday, a well-deserved break from being up-and-coming professionals in unusual fields: one is a public policy researcher, another a social worker helping refugees, and another a biologist who handles exotic viruses. All are…
-
Legoland Malaysia Lytro pix!
My family (sans B-Boy because he had to work) went to Legoland Malaysia. I’ve been skeptical of it in the past, but my teenage cousin from Los Angeles said it’s better than Legoland California, which I liked very much despite being freezing cold. What I really like about taking pictures of stuff in Miniland is…
-
Trogdor the Burninator
My parents and the Mouse (recently finished her Master’s and is going to be a Teach for Malaysia fellow) are down in Singapore for a visit so we had dinner together with our cousins Judoka and Spiderman, and my housemate and Mouse’s classmate Dormouse. I don’t know if other people think we’re just weirdoes, but…
-
Really terrible original jokes
These are some bad puns I made up. (not saying nobody else could have come up with them independently so don’t get mad at me if you heard them from a friend) Why is gambling addiction such a serious social problem in Singapore? Because it was founded by Raffles. (a friend who’s a curator at…
-
Bintan by Bike: getting there
“Hi, I called yesterday and made a reservation. Can you give me directions to Ocean Bay please? I’m cycling from Tanjung Pinang.” “You go out of the ferry terminal, go left, and straight all the way.” Considering Pantai Trikora is literally on the opposite side of Bintan from Tanjung Pinang, and stretches up and down…
-
It rubs the lotion on its skin
A couple of years ago I bought a packet of German leather scraps from Art-Friend. This was like 500g of randomly-shaped and -coloured offcuts for less than SGD 10. But I’m the kind of person who has a lot of ideas but little follow-through, so for a long time all I did with it was…
-
Samsung Galaxy S Relay 4G messing around
I’ve had an Android phone since the first model, the T-Mobile G1 (rebadged HTC Dream). I got one with a cracked but working screen off eBay a couple of months after it came out, even though I didn’t have a data plan in grad school – being able to use Gchat, Facebook, etc. at home…
-
How to explain stuff to Malaysians
My teammate who’s from a Chinese private school background was talking about one of the QC department scientists at our CMO, who likes to ask for a half a dozen more experiments than it would take to make anyone else happy with a point. “Stefan is going to keep buggering us for more data…” My…