I keep what's mine

30 Jul 2007, ST

One day, when I'm old and have Alzheimer's, the things I hoard may help me remember who I was

By Suzanne Sng, girltalk

SOME of my prized possessions include a doll that was part of my mother's dowry, a book of fairy tales that my father bagged in Primary 4 for being first in English, and a worn and battered set of luggage that my parents used on their honeymoon.

I also have my childhood Lego bricks and little yellow people, my massive Enid Blyton book collection proudly displayed on shelves and the first baby clothes I ever wore hung up on a tiny hanger.

Tucked in the back of my cupboard are boxes with autograph books from long-lost classmates, love letters from past boyfriends and a haphazard stack of yellowed newspaper clippings (and this column will be the latest addition to it).

As you may have guessed, I am a bit of a hoarder. I have a severe inability to throw anything away. Ever.

From observing my Mum, my sister, my aunts and my girlfriends, I realise that women seem to keep more - for want of a more precise word - stuff. From a purely pop psychology point of view, I'd say women are more sentimental.

Men, on the other hand, have what they term collections - smelly sneakers, vinyl records that haven't been spun for years and action figurines still sealed in their original packaging.

The stuff women keep, however, fall into a variety of categories.

There is the sentimental stuff, such as my family memorabilia and childhood favourites. Friends always get a trip down memory lane when they see the Famous Five and Secret Seven books lining my bookshelves and wonder why they allowed their Mums to give theirs away.

Then there are the clothes, which easily make up one huge category by themselves and take up the entire back of the wardrobe.

At least for me it does, and I know I'm not alone in stashing away fashion disasters, impulse buys and other clothes which I'll never fit into again in this lifetime.

Almost every woman has one unworn item lurking in her cupboard, probably with the price tag still on. It can't be thrown away, because that is too wasteful.

Giving it to someone else is not an option, not until you've worn it at least once. And so it remains hanging there, together with the pair of jeans that cuts off blood circulation to your lower body and the party frock that has outlived a doomed love affair.

The jeans give hope of regaining the 24-inch waist of your youth, and the dress represents the nostalgia of love lost. Never mind that both are sadly out of reach.

Speaking to a good friend with whom I share remarkably similar habits, we find that we both have an affinity for hoarding pretty but useless things. In other words, they're pretty useless.

Delicate tealight holders and candles. Mooncake boxes with intricate chinoiserie designs. Vases that never fulfill their life purpose because no one ever buys us flowers. I can't imagine a guy clinging on to these knick-knacks or having problems trashing them. In the first place, he wouldn't acquire something simply because it looks so pretty.

Other popular items for compulsive hoarding fall into what I call the auntie category. Or, as my Mum would say: 'Keep, in case.'

These include the ubiquitous oily food containers you get when you do a takeaway from the coffee shop, mini bottles of harsh shampoo and bars of hand soap snitched from hotels, tattered wrapping paper from Christmases past and more supermarket plastic bags than you can ever use. (Insert 'Save the earth' slogan here with exhortation to switch to cloth totes for groceries.)

Psychologists say that hoarding is the reflection of anxiety and the sign of a troubled mind. I say it is just a case of being a little overzealous about the virtue of saving.

The experts also say that the urge to collect may derive from the need to store supplies such as food.

It originates in the subcortical and limbic portions of the brain, which I'm not sure refers to which part of my head, but it does make me feel better about the shelves of Tupperware in my kitchen. In case of war or famine, I will be able to store a lot of food.

In a recent fit of decluttering, I removed the equivalent of 10 boxes of 'stuff' from my bedroom - and placed them in the living room instead. I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to weed out the rubbish, but all I managed to throw out was an InStyle magazine circa 2004.

I know of a fellow pack rat who is in despair that her apartment has gone en bloc because she has decades' worth of earthly belongings to sort through before the move.

Despite my attempts to relegate some of my prized possessions to junk status, I couldn't bear to do it. They may not be worth much money or even mean anything to someone else, but they are precious to me.

Whenever I see self-help books that trumpet that decluttering your home will also help improve your life, I scoff. My quality of life will only plummet if I don't have the comfort and security of the things I love around me.

Deciding that since my decorating style is maximalist (as opposed to a minimalist), I even installed more shelves and bought a new bed with additional storage underneath for hoarding purposes.

I make no apologies for the fact that I'm a sentimental fool.

The stuff I keep all have memories associated with them, good or bad. One day, when I'm old and have Alzheimer's, they may help trigger my brain to remember who I was. And that is why I keep them.

Snapfish aims to reel in online photo shop rivals here

31 Jul 2007, ST

Global leader offers 19-cent 4R prints, unlimited uploads and storage as bait

By Oo Gin Lee

SNAPFISH, the world's No. 1 online photo service by number of customers, is now in Singapore waters.

Its home is www.snap fish.com.sg, where customers can upload, store and display an unlimited number of digital pictures and order prints.

Snapfish's lure? The 4R prints come at 19 cents each.

Photo prints in 4R size cost between 20 and 50 cents each at retail and online photo print shops - and print quality can vary.

Mr Bala Parthasarathy, Snapfish's founder and now vice-president of online imaging at Hewlett-Packard (HP) Asia-Pacific, said: 'We are focused on delivering what consumers want and at 19 cents, we are lower than any retail or online provider in Singapore. The prints are of high quality.'

Spawned in the United States in 2000, Snapfish was acquired by HP in 2005.

It has more than 40 million customers in 15 countries. They can upload their photographs at any time by connecting their cameras to a computer or using Bluetooth from their camera phones.

The website imposes only one condition on its customers who want to keep their prints online - that they order at least one photo every year.

Prints are mailed direct to them.

Online photo services have been in Singapore since 2000 but snapfish.com.sg is the first service that offers unlimited uploads and storage.

To reel in users, it offers 20 free 4R prints for first-time customers, but will bill them for the $1.90 mailing cost.

FotoHub, a similar online photo service, also lets its users upload their digital photos 24/7, but only up to 200MB worth of data. It is revamping its website and will up the limit to 1GB later this year.

Customers who order prints get a choice of having the photos mailed to them or to a retail service provider, where they can be picked up.

FotoHub, at www.foto hub.com, charges 45 cents for each 4R print, but gives discounts of 30 per cent for orders placed between midnight and 6am.

The chief executive of its consumer division, Mr Eric Tan, welcomed Snapfish's entry into the market.

'This is a good thing. Snapfish's entry will help raise greater awareness about online photo printing for the industry as a whole.'

Snapfish's launch here is part of its push into the Asia-Pacific region. It was launched in Australia last December, and India is next.

Regular online photo user and freelance writer Yong Ai Lei, 37, said: 'Snapfish's unlimited storage is very attractive as it will let me easily share my photos with friends overseas. But the most important thing for me is that the print quality must be good.'

When nobody takes the trouble to ask

30 Jul 2007, ST

By Valerie Tay

THE right ear had turned a bright red, a stark contrast from the left. Still, the teacher tugged forcefully on the ear as the rest of the class winced.

The boy grimaced in pain but not a sound issued from his lips.

'Why didn't you do your homework?' the cikgu screamed, her anger getting the better of her. She gave the ear another vicious tug and I feared it was going to come off. Thankfully, it didn't but its colour deepened to a darker crimson.

The boy stood silent, hanging his head. He didn't look frightened, just kind of resolute and resigned, like he had accepted his fate.

And that had been his daily fate on a school day. Hardly a day passed when he was not berated, had his ear pulled or had his exercise book thrown in his face.

Think it's fiction? No, I witnessed those scenes countless times when I was in primary school.

If I remember correctly, his name was Chin Huat and he was always getting into trouble because he hadn't done his homework.

I could never understand why he couldn't just do his homework and avoid the humiliation and pain. Like my teachers, I'd thought I'd never seen a lazier fellow and a more hopeless case.

Then one Friday night, on a whim, my mother took me to the Haig Road hawker centre for supper. We had settled down to eat at a table when I spotted him.

Chin Huat, no longer in his school uniform, was busy at one of the stalls, serving customers and clearing tables. I watched him for a while, awed by this different side of him that I'd never seen before.

He was very efficient at his job, multi-tasking and quick on his feet, and instead of the usual quiet and sullen-faced boy I knew in school, he looked happy, smiling frequently. A confidence shone on his face like he knew he was in his element here.

It was past nine. It dawned on me that the stall wouldn't close till late as the food centre was still packed with people and business was brisk. There was a middle-aged couple busy manning the stall as well. Was Chin Huat helping out at his parents' stall? Did he come here to work every day after school?

I thought about all the homework that hadn't been done and I finally knew. That very moment, I learned that, sometimes, things aren't what they appear on the surface.

Our eyes finally met. I nodded and gave him an encouraging smile. He seemed embarrassed for a moment, before a holler from the stall brought him to a start and he resumed his duty.

With the understanding, a new respect took root in my heart. I was a lucky kid, while not so lucky kids like Chin Huat went to work after school. Overnight, my perception of him turned 180 degrees. I was the cloistered child, he was an adult living in the real world. I admired him.

He didn't last till the Primary Six exams, dropping out of school after a few more months of ear-pulling. There was no point - he wouldn't have passed.

He'd definitely be happier taking to work life like a responsible adult. And if he inherits his father's hawker stall, I know he will do well and not have to owe anybody a living.

But why hadn't he told the teacher? Explain why he could never find the time or energy to do his homework? Why didn't he say anything to anyone? For years I couldn't understand his reticence - till one day, I found myself in a Chin Huat situation.

Working as an executive in a large company, I was sent to a four-day workshop held at a hotel. Classes started at 9am every morning.

The first day I managed to arrive only at 9.30am. The trainer made some remarks about punctuality and continued his presentation. Of course, everyone knew the comment was directed at me.

The next day, I arrived at 9.30am again. The trainer repeated his call for punctuality, seemingly to nobody in particular, again.

I wasn't late on purpose. It was simply no use leaving the flat earlier. On a normal working day, I'd arrive at the office at 8.45am instead of the required 8.30am. I had sought the understanding of my supervisor and he had kindly agreed to let me start work 15 minutes later and finish work later.

You see, every morning, I would be at my son's PCF kindergarten at Bedok Reservoir (where my mother lives) waiting for the teacher to open the door at eight, drop him off and then rush off to work. I could make the office in 45 minutes by bus. My mother, who doesn't get up till 9am, would pick my son up after school.

The workshop's location was further than the office. I had to take a bus, then switch to the train, to get there. That was why I arrived at 9.30am.

I thought of telling the trainer about my situation, but decided to wait and see if he would take me aside to talk about it. No such luck.

My colleagues, too, did not ask, and I, too, did not explain.

The third morning, the trainer made another exhortation for punctuality. But by then, I had grown irritated and stubbornly refused to go to him to explain.

I also pushed aside the thought of taking a taxi to the hotel. Why should I spend the equivalent of a tin of formula milk to gain the approval of the trainer? I'll admit I do have a wilful streak in me.

Then came the last day of the training, and he took his revenge. Oh, he'd saved the best game for the last.

Taking one end of a long piece of string, he invited a participant to hold the string a little distance away from him. That participant would then invite someone else, and so on, in the great string communion.

It was obviously a popularity contest, and no prizes for guessing who would be last. I stood there waiting till the end and, in a way, I deserved it.

The trainer let a long pause develop before coolly asking the pariah standing alone, 'Would you like to join in?'

'Sure,' I replied, just as coolly, with a smile. 'I don't mind.' And I stepped up smartly, confidently, to grasp the end of the string, unrepentant and defiant to the end.

I thought about Chin Huat then, and I finally understood what I had failed to understand all these years.

Chin Huat hadn't spoken of his problem because no one had asked. No one had cared to ask. Sometimes, things may not be what they appear to be.

Next time I see a Chin Huat, I think I'll ask.

The writer is a full-time mother who has just started to do freelance writing.

I thought about Chin Huat then, and I finally understood what I had failed to understand all these years. Chin Huat hadn't spoken of his problem because no one had asked. No one had cared to ask. Sometimes, things may not be what they appear to be.

Tiramisu with strawberries

29 Jul 2007, ST




Ingredients:

500g fresh strawberries
2 Tbsp sugar
Cointreau, an orange liqueur

Cream:

1kg mascarpone cream cheese
8 large egg yolks
100g caster sugar

Coffee bath:

6 tsp instant coffee
8 tsps sugar
100ml coffee liqueur
cocoa powder

2 packets (40 sticks) of ladyfinger biscuits, also known as sponge or Boudoir biscuits

Method: Slice strawberries lengthwise in the shape of hearts. Place in glass or ceramic bowl, add the 2 Tbsp sugar and some Cointreau liqueur. Mix well and refrigerate for three hours.

Beat mascarpone cheese, egg yolks and caster sugar in an electric mixer until mixture is smooth.

Prepare coffee bath by dissolving instant coffee and sugar with a dash of hot water in a bowl before adding in liqueur. Dunk each ladyfinger in coffee bath. Cover the bottom of a medium-sized container with ladyfingers.

Pour half the cream on top, smooth out with a spatula and top with a layer of strawberries. Place another layer of dunked ladyfingers on top of the strawberries. Pour the rest of the cream on top, smooth it out. Refrigerate for at least six hours.

Sprinkle cocoa powder generously over the top. Arrange remaining strawberries into a heart shape in the centre. Serve with coffee or liqueur.

Verdict: My reservations about strawberry tiramisu disappeared with my first mouthful.

The fruit lent the dessert a refreshing texture. Wing added a generous dash of Cointreau in my serving.

Bliss with a cup of espresso.

Swansong for the Phoenix

29 Jul 2007, ST

Hotel Phoenix is closing, but there's hope its signature food will return

By Boon Chan

THE Phoenix Garden Cafe is the only place that Mrs Tan Set Yun goes to for roti prata. She describes the prata as 'nice and crisp, not so oily, nice size, not too big'.

But the cafe, located in the basement of Hotel Phoenix, will be shut down from Wednesday, and the 66-year-old will just have to 'survive without it', she says.

The 392-room hotel, which sits in the heart of the Orchard Road area, will be closing down after 35 years.

Owner OCBC Bank has said that 'major refurbishment' of the hotel and the adjoining Specialists' Shopping Centre is in the pipeline.

Roti prata, the cafe's signature dish, has been offered in its lunch and dinner buffets for 11 years. About 1,300 pratas are served on weekdays and over 2,000 on weekends.

Back in 1996, it was voted as one of the top five items in the My Favourite Dish poll in the Singapore Food Festival. The buffet, at $24.80+++ per person for weekday lunch, also offers other local dishes like chicken rice, laksa and mee siam.

The hotel's general manager Noel Hawkes, 54, says that the original idea for the buffet was 'to bring hawkers into the hotel' so that tourists could have a taste of local fare in comfortable surroundings. But it turned out to be a hit among Singaporeans too, with them making up 80 per cent of the clientele.

Executive chef Andy Yeo, 41, who has been with the hotel for 61/2 years, says the secret to its roti prata lies in how the prata goes very well with the curry, which is made from an inhouse recipe that's more than 10 years old.

After the cafe closes, chef Yeo says he will be taking a break overseas but intends to continue working in the hotel industry.

He might continue to serve roti prata, 'depending on the hotel, and if there is demand', he adds.

Also drawing its shutters for good is the hotel's wildly popular takeaway counter, The Food Shop, which offers pastries, sandwiches and cakes at 40 per cent discount from 6pm to 7pm daily.

Gone will be the cheesecake, kueh lapis, chicken pie, chocolate truffle cake as well as its most popular item, the plain sugar doughnut ($1.40), of which 200 pieces are sold each day.

Office administrator Christina Chan, 40, who is a fan of the cheesecake, laments that after the shop closes, she might be able to find something similar, 'but not at the same price'.

Pastry chef Simon Tan, 46, says most of the pastry items are made inhouse, while others like the famous ang ku kueh and other nonya kueh are supplied by a vendor.

So fans of the various kueh can still find them at the original bakery, Borobudur Nonya Delights, in Block 537, Bedok North Street 3.

As for the future, chef Tan is exploring job opportunities at a few hotels, even the possibility of opening his own cafe. If the latter materialises, he promises to offer the same kueh lapis and durian cake, along with some of his newer creations, like healthier low-fat pastries.

Phoenix Hotel might be closing down, but there's hope that its signature dishes will resurface.

Kiam chye soup for the soul

29 Jul 2007, ST

By Tan Hsueh Yun

A FRIEND told me a few nights ago that I have a 'kiam chye mia'. Translated from Hokkien, this pungent little phrase means that I have a 'salted vegetable life'.

I'd never heard of such a thing but my friend said it meant I was a loser. Make that Loser with a capital L.

Six of us were at dinner and someone asked what I'd been up to. I had just come back to work after being on leave for two weeks and moaned about spending the second one sick with a fierce bug.

All the plans I made had to be cancelled because all I could do was sleep and cough, cough and sleep.

People I've told this to, and I've told everybody I can think of (blame my inner drama queen), are usually sympathetic and I've come away realising that this sort of thing is pretty common.

Mr Kiam Chye himself often gets a cold or falls sick when the weekend comes around and is convinced that he'll be too ill to work on Monday. Inevitably, Monday rolls around and he's right as rain, having spent his precious weekend being ill.

Someone else at the table, who was on leave from work, developed a cough in the first few days of his liberation.

Other people told me it is pretty much a given that when they're out of the office for any length of time, they immediately come down with some bug or other.

I tried to ignore my sore throat at first, taking fistfuls of bright pink Chinese tablets that are supposed to tame throat inflammations. They worked, I congratulated myself and went about my business, packing my days with lots of stuff.

But one Monday morning, I woke up feeling like I had just swallowed a box of nails.

'Your throat looks nasty and I don't like the sound of that cough,' Doc Chia said and offered a medical certificate that would allow me to rest at home.

Don't need one, I griped. I'm on leave. He looked at me with pity. I was outraged, fit to be tied. You would be too if you had to spend the remaining week of your leave doped up, achy and miserable.

In truth, I should have turned that outrage on myself because I allowed it to happen.

A therapist who ironed out some kinks in my back some time ago said that people like me put off resting or taking care of our well-being until we can get time off. So when that time comes around and we can relax, the body takes its revenge.

I know all this. Earlier this year, a bout of the flu saved me from a long and torturous bout of insomnia I'd pretty much inflicted on myself.

But I didn't learn my lesson.

My reasoning is that when you are younger, you think you can do anything with impunity and so you are a bit reckless. When you're older, you realise time is marching on and you want to pack as much into your day as possible.

But being good and conscientious sounds terribly boring, and I guess I'll have to find a way to push the boundaries without actually busting through them.

One good thing though, is that I have stopped feeling resentful about falling ill because I obviously needed the painful kick in the behind that it provided.

It helps that despite everything, I managed to do quite a lot of what I wanted to do.

There was a paella lunch I cooked for my parents and two of their friends, complete with a tray of gooey brownies for dessert. It felt good to spend quality time in the kitchen and for an appreciative audience to boot.

On a weekday morning, I had time to wander through Tekka Market, one of my favourite places in Singapore, without having to hurry or jostle with the crowds. And there I found, to my utter delight, Momotaro tomatoes twice the size of the ones usually found in supermarkets. They were heavy, ripe and sweet. It was like winning 4-D.

I managed to catch up with two friends who were visiting from out of town.

And then there was all that sleeping, which heaven knows I really needed.

People say that when life hands you lemons, you make lemonade. Well, when life hands you kiam chye, make kiam chye soup. There's nothing complicated about it - you simmer the pickled mustard greens, a chopped up duck, some peppercorns and tomatoes or sour plums in water for a couple of hours until the flavours meld. But like most simple dishes, it takes some finesse to get right.

If you don't trim the duck well, the soup gets too oily. That sludgy layer of oil floating on top coats the throat in a nasty way. Overdo the pickled vegetables, sour plum or tomatoes and the soup is unpleasantly tart, instead of being pleasantly zingy.

I guess kiam chye soup is a lot like life. Getting it right means finding just the right balance.

But I have to say the balancing act is a lot easier when you're not coughing up with phlegm.

Still carrying plastic bags?

29 Jul 2007, ST

It's hip to be green but is there a line between being genuinely concerned about the planet and being an eco poseur?

By Sumiko Tan

IT'S been cloudy and raining the past week and I love weather like this.

My bed's next to a window which I keep open, and I love it when lightning and thunder wake me up at night.

I love the sound of the rain. I love it when the downpour gets so heavy that sheets of it slant past my blinds and raindrops start splattering against my face.

I love the mossy smell of dampness seeping up from the ground during a storm, and I love digging deeper under my blanket and going back to sleep.

This wet weather is weird for July, but then the world's weather has gone all screwy.

Floods in summertime Britain and China but heatwaves in Romania, Austria and Bulgaria. Mother Nature has become one capricious old lady.

The most common explanation for all this is global warming.

Temperatures around the world are rising because cars, factories, power plants and the like are emitting a lot of carbon dioxide, trapping heat in the atmosphere.

Global warming is said to be the villain behind weather woes from droughts to floods, wildfires to melting glaciers. Some even say it caused 2005's Hurricane Katrina in the United States.

The thing is, a lot of what constitutes global warming - as well as the green movement itself - continues to baffle me.

Oh, I've watched Al Gore's 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth. He did a good job of explaining global warming. He was also convincing in putting across the message that much of it is caused by humans and that we'll be in big trouble if we don't stem the emission of carbon dioxide.

It's not a view that everyone accepts, but the problem with the green movement for neutral observers like me is how vicious and personal debates always degenerate to.

Green advocates and sceptics alike are so zealous in their views - just read the Internet forums - that they put off more open-minded folk like me who want to find out more about the issues, which are often complex. (Do you really understand how carbon offsets work?)

As I gather, one hot topic right now is whether buying eco-friendly products actually reduces global warming, or is it something one does just to appear 'cool'.

With celebrities lending their names to the green cause and companies rolling out stylish, expensive earth-friendly products from clothes to bedsheets, has the focus moved from saving the planet to making a fashion statement?

There's a term for people who indulge in this - eco poseurs.

The urban dictionary on the Internet defines this as one who 'buys all the eco-friendly non-toxic household products, organic local growns, hybrids and other gree'ery'.

'They really do not 'do' anything to help our earth, they just purchase over-priced stuff from companies that try to help. So they wear the hemp and eat the organic, but do they actually take time out of their cell phone lives to give a helping hand?'

TAKE the much-hyped Anya Hindmarch I'm Not A Plastic Bag bag.

The British accessories designer is most famous for her Be a Bag project where customers can get their photographs printed onto her bags. (I've got one with my niece's face on it).

Earlier this year, she worked with a British non-profit organisation to design an affordable, environmentally friendly bag that people could use in lieu of evil plastic bags.

Made of unbleached cotton and sold for £5 (S$15), the bags with the cute logo were snapped up in Britain. Women lined up from 2am to buy them and celebrities were spotted carrying them.

When the bags came to Asia, fights broke out in Hong Kong as women rushed for them.

In Singapore, there were more people on the waiting lists than the number of bags alloted. They are now sold on eBay for many times their price. Fakes have appeared in China.

Kudos to Hindmarch for her contribution to the cause, but what can one say about the consumers?

How much of the rush for the bag was because of a genuine desire to use it in place of plastic bags, and how much merely coveting the latest trendy must-have and to be one up on your neighbour because you have the bag and she doesn't?

You see the same green chic bandwagon mentality in fashion.

The in thing now is for designers to have 'eco' lines that boast raw materials - natural silk organza, organic wool - and 'ethical' production and manufacturing processes.

All well and good, but their price tags are laughable - $700 silk dresses, $2,000 clutch bags with wooden beads, $5,000 blazers made of cork.

Is this what being green is about? Shopping choices, and expensive ones at that?

I'd always thought that the starting point of the green movement was consuming less rather than more.

Then again, who am I to sneer at the green chic chick for being insincere?

If Anya Hindmarch's I'm Not A Plastic Bag bag was dangled before me, I'd grab it too and, yes, because it is trendy and cute.

It's the same reason one of my favourite T-shirts features a huge recycling logo. It's a cool cause to be associated with right now.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter if you're latching on to the eco cause just because it's the fashionable thing to do so. It's better than not being bothered at all.

In any case, taking small steps is the only way that we, digits on the planet, can help.

While politicians and big businesses slug it out over the causes and effects of global warming, it's actually quite simple on the personal level to do your part to bring down global warming. According to Gore's An Inconvenient Truth website, it's as easy as this:

Replacing a regular lightbulb with a compact flourescent one; driving less; recycling more; checking that your tyres are properly inflated to improve gas mileage; using less hot water; avoiding products with lots of packaging to cut down on garbage; adjusting your thermostat; planting a tree; turning off electronic devices when not using them.

I'm late in the game, but I'm trying.

The other day, I surprised myself when I was buying doughnuts. The cashier was putting the plastic bag of doughnuts into another plastic bag when I told her I didn't need it - the doughtnuts could easily fit into another (plastic) bag I was already carrying.

It was no big deal of course, but I did feel virtuous and smug.

And my most important contribution of all to alleviate global warming?

I never sleep with the air-conditioner on. I get ventilation from an open window.

Which, of course, is also perfect when it rains in the early hours of the morning, as has been happening.

Talk is cheap

26 Jul 2007, ST Life

An American psychiatrist says we pay too much attention to what we say, not enough to how we act

By Loh Keng Fatt

D R GORDON Livingston has provided a listening ear for 30 years. The American is a psychiatrist and people come to him to unburden their fears, fantasies and problems.

He himself is not immune to life's trials and tribulations. In one tragic 13-month period, he lost his eldest son to suicide and his youngest to leukaemia. He also has four grown children.

His life experiences spurred him to write Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart, which nails down the truth that life is too short and unpredictable to idle away. Here's an excerpt.

'I tend to confront patients who talk about changing their lives but do not take concrete steps to do so.

I often ask them whether their latest plan to do something different is a real expression of intent, or simply a wish.

The latter can be entertaining and distracting but should not be confused with reality.

Religious transformation aside, alteration of our attitudes and behaviour is a slow process. Change is incremental.

Look at any successful prison break and you will see plenty of imagination, hours of planning, often months, even years, of slow progress towards freedom.

We may not admire the people who do this but their ingenuity and determination are lessons for us all.

One of the most difficult things to ascertain when confronted with a person seeking therapy is their readiness to change, their willingness to exercise the fortitude that is necessary to do so.

Some people seek help for reasons other than actually changing their lives. We live in a society that has elevated complaint to a primary form of public discourse.

The airwaves and courts are full of victims of this and that: childhood abuse, mistakes of others, random misfortune.

Voluntary behaviours have been reclassified as illness so that sufferers can be pitied and, where possible, compensated.

Not surprisingly, many of these people appear in psychiatrists' offices expecting a sympathetic ear and medication that will relieve their feelings of distress.

Often, they want testimony to support lawsuits or letters to excuse them from work. They are not there to engage in the difficult process of examining their lives, taking responsibility for their feelings, deciding what they need to do to be happy - and doing it.

People mistake thoughts, wishes and intentions for actual change. This confusion between words and actions clouds the therapeutic process.

Confusion may indeed be good for the soul but unless it is accompanied by altered behaviour, it remains only words in the air.

We are a verbal species, fond of conveying our minutest thoughts. We attach excessive importance to promises.

Whenever, as happens frequently, I point out to people the discrepancy between what they say they want and what they actually do, the response is surprise and sometimes outrage that I will not take their expressions of intent at face value but prefer to focus on the only communication that can be trusted: behaviour.

The disconnect between what we say and what we do is not merely a measure of hypocrisy, since we usually believe our statements of good intent.

We simply pay too much attention to words - ours and others' - and not enough to the actions that really define us.

The walls of our self-constructed prisons are made up in equal parts of our fear of risk and our dream that the world and the people in it will conform to our fondest wishes.'

# Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart is available for loan from The National Library Board under the call number 158 LIV.

# Books For The Soul is a weekly column that highlights books which move, comfort or inspire.

Big brother watching

23 Jul 2007, ST Life

I've always been dismissive of the relationship between my youngest brother and his girlfriend. But at their wedding recently, it dawned on me that what they have is what I've always dreamt of having

By Teo Cheng Wee, straighttalk

TWO weeks ago on 07/07/07, like scores of other Singaporeans, I attended a wedding.

If the bride and groom had been anybody else, I would have rolled my eyes at the cheesiness of holding the event on that date.

But I ignored all that because it was a special day. It was the first wedding in my immediate family as my youngest brother got married to his childhood sweetheart.

Like a proud parent, I found myself brimming with pride when I saw the two of them walking hand-in-hand down the aisle of the ballroom at the Meritus Mandarin Hotel, cheered on by some 500 people.

I suppose the feeling would be a natural one for most brothers, but not for me. A few years ago, I would probably have baulked at the thought of them tying the knot.

Indeed, my happiness that night showed just how far things have come as my relationship with my brother and his girlfriend had been cold for many years.

The most probable reason for this was that things started off on the wrong foot and matters just deteriorated from there.

They were all of 16 years old when they got together and my whole family viewed the relationship with suspicion.

My parents were unhappy as they wanted my brother to concentrate on his studies.

I was a bit peeved with both him (for being so blatantly defiant) and my parents (for being so blatantly lenient with him when I felt that they were much stricter with my activities).

The longer their relationship carried on, the more unhappy I became - and it showed.

During the early days of their courtship, she would ring him a few times a night - these were the days before every kid had a mobile phone - and I would get increasingly exasperated playing operator to the two lovebirds.

'It's your call. Again,' would be my usual disgruntled remark. Eventually, I got so tired of taking her phone calls that I would just let the phone ring, even if I was sitting next to it, and wait for my brother to run out of his room, scrambling for it.

Our relationship took another dip when my brother decided to move out of our home about five years ago. This was met with more disapproval from the family, more defiance from him and ultimately more unhappiness all around.

We never spoke openly about our feelings, so we raged a cold war. I hardly spoke to his girlfriend for many years - unless the occasional grunt counted - and they didn't really try to be friendly with me either.

It would not have been impossible. My second brother was more amicable and got along fine with the couple.

I made things hard by putting on a stern front. I felt he was deliberately distancing himself from the family by moving out and viewed it as a form of betrayal.

In hindsight, I realise that when there was so much displeasure at home, one can hardly blame them for not wanting to come back to a host of disapproving looks.

But I think the reason I never cared to be part of their relationship was because I was convinced it would never last.

In fact, I don't think anybody in my family thought it would. We were quite certain that this puppy love would run its course in a few years, especially when the relationship appeared rocky early on and we witnessed several angry exchanges over the phone.

THE first change in my attitude came about three years ago.

My brother was then 23, had completed his national service and was more than qualified to be an adult.

Yet I still didn't see him as anything more than a rebellious teenager - until I found out that they were going to register their marriage.

By then, our relationship had soured to the point where I had to hear about it from my mother instead of him.

Curiously, I wasn't upset. Instead, I felt as if a veil had been lifted and I could finally see my brother and his girlfriend for what they were - two people who were truly in love.

Before that, I had never imagined them as mature adults ready to commit a lifetime to each other.

Why didn't I realise this earlier? Maybe because we never hung out enough for me to witness it myself. Maybe because I mentally blocked out that possibility. I don't know.

But the ice started thawing. And once you see each other as family rather than enemy, attitudes and behaviours change and the bonds start re-forming.

During his wedding dinner two weeks ago, another truth dawned on me.

Ironically, I realised that their relationship - which I had dismissed in the past - is actually one that I had always been yearning for.

I have always harboured the ideal that true love is one where you meet your first and only love, build up the relationship through many years of bonding, weather numerous storms and ultimately get married with no doubt in your minds that you were always meant for each other.

Such a scenario had in fact been playing itself out in front of my eyes all these years, yet the wedding I had always been opposed to turned out to be the wedding I myself had always wanted.

So to my brother Xian and his wife Shan, I'm really happy for you and here's to a Happy Ever After.

I can only hope that my love story will be as beautiful as yours.

What would life be like in a world where everyone was strong and smart?

22 Jul 2007, ST

Generation aXed

By Cheong Suk-Wai

THERE are conversations and there are conversations, but a chat I had with a virtual stranger over lunch recently just about takes the cake.

All I will say of my lunchmate, whom I was meeting for work, is that he is quintessentially a gentleman, and a hugely successful one at that, as far as education and material pursuits go.

After talking shop for a few minutes, apropos of nothing, he launched into his theory of how health services everywhere were buckling under a barrage of diseased patients because those with weak genes - ergo, those more susceptible to diseases - were continuing to procreate.

Nothing wrong with that view, you might think, except that his idea of weak genes were the blue-collar folk among us, or 'labourers' as he called them. 'Labourers,' he said, 'keep passing on their weak genes because they tend to have many children.'

I fairly choked on my fish porridge.

Now I don't know what he made of me, but my stunned silence throughout his tirade did not mean I agreed with it.

In fact, I was biting my tongue because I knew of at least two sons of menial labourers - my uncles - who are now professors in universities overseas and whose offspring - my cousins, nieces and nephews - are bankers in New York and Sydney, surgeons in Glasgow and Melbourne, and lawyers in London and Toronto.

And what of the scores of hard-luck immigrants, with the proverbial two cents in their pockets, who washed up on Singapore's shores and turned it into Metropolis Extraordinaire today?

What would he make of me, the granddaughter of labourers?

If I had met my lunchmate 10 years ago, I might have had a few choice things to say to him.

But time and tribulation have taught me that the best response to such head-scratching pronouncements is to say what you know in the very pit of your gut to be right and real.

And you have to say it with much care for the person's feelings, because his view could be just as valid and, well, he is human after all.

So I asked him, gently and innocent-like: 'What would a world with only strong and smart people be like?

'What would competition be like when there are only good genes to compete against other good genes?'

'A world of smart, strong people,' he started to say but, perhaps sensing that I remained unconvinced, fell silent.

As my father likes to remind me, a world where everyone was gentle and good would be a very dull one indeed.

Life is, after all, a big test, and how would we be able to tell good from bad, if there were nothing bad to compare good against?

And what would the value of goodness be if goodness was a given?

I AM no expert on how genes, strong or weak, determine strength and intelligence, but Canadian psychology professor Steven Pinker is.

Prof Pinker, who wrote the clear and wise book, The Blank Slate (2003), told me in a chat not so long ago that science today has shown that nature, not nurture, maketh the man.

That means who you are depends on the bundle of genes you get, so no one is born pure of mind and heart, to be corrupted later by culture and circumstance.

Still, he stressed: 'By the way, intelligence is not the only morally desirable trait. A person with a high IQ would have little if he did not also have common sense, compassion and credibility.'

Touche.

In The Blank Slate, he tells of the time when Nobel Laureate George Wald, an American biochemist famous for decrying the Vietnam War publicly, was asked to donate his semen to a sperm bank for Nobel Prize-winning scientists.

Prof Wald said: 'If you want sperm that produces Nobel Prize winners, you should be contacting people like my father, a poor immigrant tailor.

'What have my sperm given to the world? Two guitarists!'

As Prof Pinker pointed out in my chat with him, strong genes or weak genes, you can always choose how you behave because 'genes do not pull your muscles every which way'.

THERE is much to be said about struggling against one's nature to be better - and having the hunger to stick it out.

In my younger sister's case, the hunger is literal.

The other day, after telling her about my 'strong gene, weak gene' lunch, I asked what she was doing for food these days, remembering that, as a factory clerk, she would live on bread and Milo for weeks so she could save for her dreams long overshadowed by my supposed achievements.

Well, having ventured out of our small town to live out her dreams in Kuala Lumpur in recent months, she is baulking at the high cost of living there.

She's cramped into a small university-sponsored flat with eight other women, with no fridge for the fresh milk she loves. I wanted to buy her one, but she said no, there are enough petty politics from eight strangers under one roof.

Conscious of not drawing a salary at the moment, she assured me she was well, then said: 'I like chappati with dhal best, but I have to think twice about buying two, because it's now RM1.50 (66 Singapore cents) for just one chappati with curry.'

The bun I was snacking on amid all this suddenly tasted tinny on my tongue.

So, even as my sister counts her chappatis, I pray that she may find a good and kind man she can have many happy babies with - strong and weak genes be damned.

Go nuts over this pancake

22 Jul 2007, ST

By Thng Lay Teen

ONCE you bite into a peanut pancake (ming jiang kueh) from this stall in Tanglin Halt market, you'll be hooked.

Blame it on its freshly roasted nuts. The aroma hits you once you nibble the 60-cent snack, and in a most pleasant way.

You understand why when you learn that hawker Teng Kiong Seng, 62, devotes one whole day to carefully handpicking 100kg of nuts that will last him the whole week, and then supervises their roasting at a factory.

The nuts are so flavourful that customers have been asking for more of them to be sprinkled over the pancake. Teng's wife generously accedes.

The best thing is, you don't have to worry about the finely ground nuts spilling out as you eat because each peanut pancake is neatly placed in a paper case.

What I also like is how the dough is thick, a little moist and springy.

Teng says that no baking powder or essence is used as he is a fan of natural ingredients.

He inherited the 40-year-old recipe from his mother-in-law who used to operate a pancake stall but has since retired.

Besides the peanut version, check out the red bean paste pancake (60 cents) which is not too sweet, and the pandan leaf green bean pancake (also 60 cents). The latter is a tad too sweet for me, but you can tell that real pandan leaves are used, not artificial essence.

Pity that the filling in the yam paste pancake (90 cents) is a bit too runny.

Many of Teng's regulars have been buying from him for the last two to three decades and his snacks are so popular that people order them in bulk for functions.

And he doesn't compromise on quality. If he runs out of roasted nuts, he won't open his stall.

Which was why I found it closed one Thursday morning when I made a trip there (it is usually closed on Mondays and Fridays).

Sadly, I had to turn back - but I returned another day. After all, good food is worth waiting for.

------------------------------------

Tanglin Halt Original Peanut Pancake

Stall 16 Tanglin Halt Market, 48 Tanglin Halt Road

Open: 4.30 to 11.30am, closed on Mondays and Fridays

Rating: ***

Marvellous muffins, wine, parsley and Chinese coriander

22 Jul 2007, ST

Q I recently picked up muffin-making. However, my muffins do not have a fluffy and soft texture. How do I make the texture better? And how do I prevent a burnt exterior while ensuring the inside is soft and hot?

Brandon Ho Teck Hon

A Muffins need to bake at a slightly higher temperature than larger cakes. This makes for a quicker rise, yielding the desired fluffy, irregular crumb, peaked top and golden-browned crust of an ideal muffin.

If they're burning, your oven thermostat may simply be off - buy an oven thermometer, which hangs from your oven rack and displays what the actual internal temperature is.

If the muffins are heavy and dense, a number of things may be at fault. First, check your baking powder's use-by date. Always buy it in small batches and use it within a year (or better still, eight months) of opening it.

Second, make sure your wet and dry ingredient mixtures are very well mixed before combining them - stir the dry stuff together for a good minute, and beat the liquids until blended and frothy, then pour one into the other.

Lastly, never overmix the batter - beating it until smooth will give you a tight, dry and leaden crumb. Most recipes tell you to stir only a few times to yield a lumpy batter, which is perfectly right.

---------------------------------

Q What's the difference between parsley and Chinese coriander?

Ivy S. L. Lim

A People tend to confuse Chinese parsley, parsley and coriander, perhaps because their leaves look superficially similar. They aren't good substitutes for each other.

Coriander is also known as cilantro, wan sui, daun ketumbar or 'Chinese parsley' (left, in photo).

Its juicy stems hold soft, feathery leaves that can vary a fair bit in size. It is an invaluable garnish and sauce ingredient across Asia, South America and the Middle East.

Coriander's aroma combines grass, flowers, maybe hints of citrus and pine. Its fresh and forward character makes it always a co-star, never an extra.

Chinese celery, also known as qin cai or kun choi, is a cousin of thick-stemmed Western celery (right, in photo).

Its flavour is flatter and less complex than coriander, with a strident celery note.

This herb is useful for adding zingy pungency to soups, stir-fries, and stews built with bland legumes or red meats.

Flat-leaf Western parsley, xiang cai in Mandarin, has a less floral and more herbal snap than coriander.

Use it raw or barely cooked to maximise its aroma. Simmer it in stews and soups for a pleasant, mellow freshness. Its clean brightness makes it a great unifier of other herbs, such as chives, dill and thyme, in herb blends.

----------------------------------

Q Red wine is used to cook red meats and white wine for white meats. Can you use red wine for white meats and white wine for red meats?

Cecilia Ng Li Cheng

A Matching red with red and white with white is an old-school and rather too restrictive rule for choosing wine to drink with food.

Choosing wine to cook with is a slightly different matter - one that is more simple and also more complicated.

More simple because the heat of the cooking process blunts and changes the profile of the wine, especially if prolonged. This both blurs the fine details and mellows out any rough edges to all but the most pernickety palates.

Fatty ingredients like butter and cream and aromatic ingredients like herbs will further disguise a wine's subtleties.

This means that if you need, say, a white wine for a sauce, almost any white wine will yield an adequately tasty result, the exceptions being those at the extremes of the taste spectrum, such as the very sweet or very acidic.

More complicated because you should try to match the weight and character of the dish with the wine's qualities. For instance, a simple citrus-scented sauce would benefit more from a light, bright sauvignon blanc than a big heavy red, and a hearty stew of red meat and game needs a robust red, not a minerally white.

You can see how the colour-matching rule can break down here: a rich seafood, like roasted salmon, may go with a reduction sauce of a soft, fruity red as well as or better than one of white wine.

Fortified wines like sherry, marsala and port have nutty, caramelly nuances that, at least to my palate, complement ingredients high in umami (savouriness), like tomato, soy sauce and seafood.

Lastly, two things to beware of: Never use 'cooking wine, basically cheap plonk with salt added; and don't cook with very tannic wines, as cooking can concentrate tannins to a mouth-imploding harshness.

Drink all you want

22 Jul 2007, ST

Alcohol buffets have popped up in three hotels. But doctors - and the traffic police - advise drinkers to exercise caution

By Huang Lijie

THE latest drinking trend to hit town is the liquid buffet. But no, it's not a super-value meal for those on some newfangled liquid diet.

We're talking about as many glasses as you can drink of wine, beer and hard liquor within two hours, priced between $48+++ and $58++ per person.

It might sound too good to toast to, but three such buffets have already popped up in hotel lounges at the Pan Pacific Singapore, Marina Mandarin Singapore and Carlton Hotel since last October.

Without the promotions, the same amount of money at these places buys between only one and four drinks.

While the Pan Pacific and Marina Mandarin see from 15 to 50 buffet guests a month, as many as 25 customers can be seen revelling in spirited indulgence on weekend evenings at Carlton Hotel.

Such positive customer response has prompted Carlton Hotel to extend its offer - originally from June 1 to the end of this month - to September. The Pan Pacific, which launched the buffet in October last year and Marina Mandarin, in May, are keeping it as an ongoing promotion.

While the Pan Pacific does not track the customer profile for its liquid buffet, both Marina Mandarin and Carlton Hotel say they are seeing more Singaporeans, rather than foreign guests, taking up the offer. The former are usually corporate executives chilling out at the lounge after work.

On why foreigners account for only 20 per cent of Marina Mandarin's liquid buffet customers, the hotel's food and beverage manager Michael Seet says: 'Most of our hotel guests are here on short business trips with a packed schedule that does not allow them to indulge in alcohol.'

As for Singaporeans, the lure of the buffet is spelled clearly in dollars and cents.

Property agent Johnson Sim, 28, who meets his business clients at Pan Pacific's atrium lounge for drinks twice a week, says he has saved 'half the amount of money' he used to spend since he opted for the liquid buffet. He has about eight drinks per buffet.

As with any other buffet, however, patrons may get carried away by the free flow of alcohol and consume more than they should.

According to Dr Alexius Chee, a consultant gastroenterologist in private practice at Mount Elizabeth Medical Centre, a person with a healthy liver should not consume more than seven units of alcohol a week.

One unit of alcohol is approximately a can of beer, a glass of wine or a single shot of hard liquor.

Dr Chee also cautions against occasional drinkers who think that they can 'make up for lost time' by accumulating their drink allowance in one sitting.

'Consuming alcoholic beverages in amounts that exceed the safe limits within a short period of time is known as binge drinking. This may lead to inflammation of the liver,' he says.

After a bout of such heavy drinking, a person might also experience violent retching, which may tear the oesophagus and cause bleeding into the stomach, says Dr Yap Chin Kong, another consultant gastroenterologist in private practice at Mount Elizabeth Medical Centre.

The police has also voiced its concerns about responsible drinking at liquid buffets in light of recent incidents of drink driving.

Police spokesman Cheryl Foo strongly advises all motorists not to drive 'after taking even a little alcohol'.

While the spokesmen for all three hotels told LifeStyle that they have not had guests getting drunk at the buffet, they are confident of tackling the situation should it happen.

Their staff have been trained to identify guests who appear intoxicated and in such cases, to stop serving alcohol. They will also offer to hire a taxi to send these guests to their next destination.

But nothing beats a disciplined drinker at a liquid buffet who is aware of his social responsibilities.

'I've a friend who passed away from a drink driving accident 10 years ago and since then, I've vowed to never drink and drive,' says property agent Sim, who takes a taxi home whenever he drinks at the Pan Pacific.

-------------------------------

Where to get your liquid fix


Pan Pacific Singapore

Buffet hours: Any two hours from noon to 9.30pm daily

$48+++ per person gets you a free flow of both alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages, excluding cocktails. There is also a 30 per cent discount on tapas orders. Between 6.30 and 8.30pm, the tapas are complimentary.



Marina Mandarin Singapore

Buffet hours: Any two hours from 8pm to midnight, Sundays to Thursdays.

At $58++ per person, guests get a free flow of both alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages, including cocktails.



Carlton Hotel

Buffet hours: Any two hours from noon to 9pm daily; valid till Sept 30

For $48+++ per person, enjoy a free flow of beer, wine and liquor, excluding cocktails. There is also a 30 per cent discount on snack items from the bar menu.

Buck$ for Blog$

22 Jul 2007, ST

Thanks to Singapore firm Nuffnang, bloggers can turn their popularity into ad dollars

By Jamie Ee Wen Wei

BLOGS were once the domain of daily musings, inconsequential chatter and random rantings.

But now, a local company wants to change that by bringing in advertising money for local bloggers.

Founded by Singaporean Cheo Ming Shen and his Malaysian counterpart, Timothy Tiah, Nuffnang provides an online platform to match bloggers with advertisers.

All bloggers need to do is to join its blog advertising community and fill up an online form, which provides details of their blogs and readerships that are used to match them with advertisers.

Launched in Malaysia in February, the blog advertising community - the first of its kind in Asia - was an instant hit, attracting 300 bloggers in just three days.

'We were only expecting 300 blogs in three months,' said Mr Cheo, 24, a graduate of the London School of Economics.

Two months later, the company started its Singapore community, and 1,800 bloggers have already joined.

Despite competition from similar online ad services such as Google AdSense, local bloggers are attracted to Nuffnang because it focuses on promoting local products and businesses, which means bloggers have a greater chance of clinching ads on their web space.

'There is no point showing somebody in Singapore an ad from the US, right? So if you sign up with Google Adsense, the ads appearing will be public service announcements, which pay zero dollars,' said local blogger Cowboy Caleb, who earned $200 in two weeks from Nike Singapore ads on his blog.

Depending on the number of unique visitors to their blogs, bloggers can earn from $2 to as much as $2,000 a week for ads placed on their blogs.

Big-time bloggers such as Wendy Cheng, also known as Xiaxue, can easily earn about $1,000 a week, said Mr Cheo.

But personal blogs with a smaller readership are benefiting from this service too.

Final-year psychology student Estee Teo, who keeps a personal blog that has up to 150 hits a day, said she earned about $7 a week from ads for Hitchoo.com, a dating website. The money, though meagre, stokes the ego.

'It feels good that someone actually wants to put their ad on my blog,' said Ms Teo.

For advertisers, the playing field seems huge.

A study by media agency Universal McCann said that Singapore's community of bloggers and blog-readers has increased dramatically in the last six months. About 75 per cent of Singapore's netizens - about 2.5 million people - have read at least one blog in the past six months. By March, 36 per cent of them had blogs of their own.

So far, at least five companies, including Nike Singapore and Hitchoo.com, have run ads on blogs under Nuffnang.

But local advertisers remain conservative. According to a report by Nielsen Media Research, Singapore's online advertising expenditure accounted for only 2 per cent of the market's total advertising spending in March this year. The total advertising expenditure was almost $2 billion last year.

Still, Mr Cheo is confident that blog advertising will pick up among advertisers.

'They have waited a long time for this, and they are very happy to explore this new medium,' he said.

And there is always the dream of becoming the next big thing on the Internet.

'Who doesn't want to be the next Google?' Mr Cheo said.

Chinese actress is world's most widely read blogger

19 Jul 2007, ST Life

BEIJING - Chinese actress-director Xu Jinglei became the world's most widely read blogger this month when her blog logged 100 million page views within 600 days, the Beijing News said on Thursday.

And Xu, who has a reputation for a high intellect and integrity, has done it without writing about sex or kiss-and-tell stuff - but focusing on her work and day-to-day life.

The 100 millionth hit was on July 12, said website Sina, which provides blog services to many Chinese entertainers, including Xu.

She started hers in October 2005 and published a book of her blogged articles in March last year.

Xu, 33, has invited 20 fans, selected from online submissions, to a party to celebrate her success.

A star of movies like Confession Of Pain, she won Best Director for Letter From An Unknown Woman at the 2004 San Sebastian International Film Festival in Spain.

An analyst with Sina said Xu's website has had two million more hits since the July 12 breakthrough.

Writer Han Han, ranked second by Sina, will soon exceed the 100-million mark too.

Reuters

I opened Pandora's box

19 Jul 2007, ST

An online radio station led me to a 1930s song - taking me to a dark corner of history and giving me a taste of a daydream

By Hong Xinyi, culturevulture

IT ALL began with a letter. I came to work one day, fired up my laptop and typed the web address of Pandora, an online radio station, into my Internet browser.

A friend had clued me in on this lovely site where you can customise your own radio stations.

Type in the name of a song or an artiste and the programme will play music that has similar characteristics, without any annoying DJs or pesky commercials sullying your musical nirvana.

There is a pleasing sense of random chance to the whole process, a sense of interacting not with a database but with a sort of sentient music guru who likes to surprise you with lovely new tunes.

Pandora became my soundtrack at work. On stressful days, I listened to my angry punk station; on days when I felt like wallowing, I turned to my melancholy singer-songwriters station.

The music played as I filed frantic copy and mulled over awkward syntax; it drowned out the functional blips and burps of noise from the photocopier and printer near my desk and gave my days a patina of aural poetry.

AND then, suddenly, on that day in May, it was all over.

Instead of seeing my painstakingly selected music stations when I typed in the website name, I was greeted with an apologetic letter from Pandora founder Tim Westergren.

'Dear Pandora visitor,' the letter began. 'We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints, we can no longer allow access to Pandora for most listeners located outside of the US.'

I was crushed. Immediately, I started frantically trying to remember what songs and artistes I had discovered on Pandora.

I went to HMV that evening to hunt down some of my lost music. That excursion was how I came to own my first Nina Simone CD. I had typed the name of this American chanteuse into Pandora because a character talked about her in the 2004 romance Before Sunset, one of my favourite movies.

I ripped that album into my iTunes and synced it onto my iPod. A few days later, while walking home one evening when the heated air was heavy with moisture, a Nina Simone song started to play on my Shuffle playlist.

'Southern trees bear strange fruit/ Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,' that languorous, dangerous voice crooned, an enchantress conjuring phantasmagoric visions.

'Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze/Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees,' it continued.

What is this, I wondered, as goose pimples started rising on my arms. I checked my iPod screen - the song was Strange Fruit.

I Googled the lyrics, three stanzas that play on the human instinct of being attracted to sensual beauty ('scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh') before twisting your mind's eye towards the horror of lynched African Americans in the American South ('then the sudden smell of burning flesh').

My curiosity piqued, I bought a book from Amazon.com about the song, Strange Fruit: The Biography Of A Song.

It tells the story of how the song, written by Abel Meeropol, was made famous by Billie Holiday in the 1930s, how it became an anthem of sorts for the American civil rights movement and how it is rarely heard today because of its profoundly disturbing imagery.

I LIKE to think of this, the story of how I found Pandora and then lost it, of how it led me down an unexpected path into a dark corner of history, as an adventure in culture made possible by the ease of modern technology.

In a recent column, Salon.com writer Farhad Manjoo waxed lyrical about his new iPhone, writing that 'sometimes technology excels exactly when it eases the banal'.

But what would happen, I wonder, if we demanded more of our technology than just an easing of the banal, if we asked for more than crisp ringtones and sharp images?

What would happen if we asked instead for knowledge, for revelation, for inspiration?

I daydream, some days, of losing myself in a vast country teeming with masses of people, each with his own esoteric passions; of finding context and purpose in the long, mangled histories of others; of being a small part of epic narratives made serpentine by the passage of centuries and the feats and follies of millions.

A taste of that daydream is what technology offers me these days, with devices and services offering increasingly niche items of culture with an increasingly stunning degree of ease.

It's not quite an epic life, I know; but it can unexpectedly, at times, soar far above the banal.

Who's that Obama girl?

15 Jul 2007, ST

A sexy, sassy tribute to Barack Obama has garnered more than 2.2m hits

By Michelle Tay

A FORMERLY unknown model named Amber Lee Ettinger could hardly be more famous now - thanks to her alias as 'Obama Girl', the most popular online fan of United States senator and American presidential candidate Barack Obama.

The curvaceous, 25-year-old brunette appears - in various stages of undress - in an amusing, risque music video on video-sharing website YouTube, breathlessly singing her love and staunch support for the lanky senator from Illinois.

It spoofs several references from popular music and culture, including the song You Don't Know My Name by Alicia Keys and TV series Baywatch.

The video, titled I Got A Crush On Obama, is so popular that it has been viewed 2.2 million times since it was posted on June 13.

The R&B ditty is also available on Apple's online music store iTunes for US$0.99 (S$1.50) and a second video, titled Obama Girl Vs Giuliani Girl, will be released on YouTube tomorrow.

Ms Ettinger and the video's creators - Ms Leah Kauffman, 21, an undergraduate at Temple University in Philadelphia; advertising executive Ben Relles, 32; and music producer Rick Friedrich - are the latest contributors to the changing political landscape of the American presidential election of 2008, where candidates and their voters alike have been posting videos on YouTube to garner support and discredit their opponents.

Mr Philip de Vellis, 33, a former strategist with Blue State Digital, made a video that has garnered 3.5 million views since it was first posted in March.

It portrays US senator and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton as 'Big Brother' in a spoof of a TV commercial, titled 1984, that launched the Apple Macintosh personal computer in the US in January that year. The original spot featured IBM as the Big Brother in its Orwellian world.

Mr de Vellis' ad, titled Vote Different, seeks to show how little like an actual conversation Mrs Clinton's one-way mode of address is.

Mrs Clinton has posted various videos on her website, www.hillaryclinton.com, detailing the issues that may form her election platform. In one, she ironically declares: 'This is the first of many talks I hope to be having with you just about every week. If we're going to keep the conversation going, you need to know what I'm thinking.'

In effect, Vote Different is a 'negative advertisement' endorsing Mr Obama, arguably one of Mrs Clinton's strongest rivals in the Democratic race for presidency.

Speaking about the candidates' and voters' use of technology in the coming elections, Mr Mike Gehrke, director of research for the Democratic National Committee, told The New York Times last month: 'It's one of the biggest innovations we've seen in politics.

'(Before,) it would cost a lot of money for a campaign to put together a good TV ad, then you had to buy time, put it on the air and later on websites. Now it goes the other way too, and you have people talking to each other and to the campaigns.'

London's The Observer suggested that YouTube has become the 'ultimate form of democracy' where, in a subversive move, voters have their say and politicians listen.

On July 23, Google-owned YouTube is set to seal its position as the hot new political advertising medium as it co-sponsors with CNN a debate among the eight Democratic presidential candidates in Charleston, South Carolina.

All the candidates will make a 30-second video that will play at some time during the debate.

Questions from the public will also be recorded and submitted via videos submitted by ordinary people through YouTube.

Mr Chuck DeFeo, who ran the Bush-Cheney online campaign in 2004 and has been involved in online politics for the past 12 years, says: 'Now with the rise of the Internet there is the ability to have a true dialogue with the voter.'

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The best... and the worst

LIFESTYLE'S guide to the best and worst US political campaign videos on YouTube.


# BEST


I GOT A CRUSH...ON OBAMA



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKsoXHYICqU

By Ben Relles, starring Amber Lee Ettinger and Leah Kauffman, co-produced by Rick Friedrich, Larry Strong and Kevin Arbouet

Number of views so far: 2,241,731

Video features a curvaceous brunette romping through New York City to a R&B ditty, breathlessly singing her love and staunch support for Illinois senator Barack Obama.

Watch out for spoofs of celebrities, pop songs and popular TV series. Lyrics include 'You're into border security/Let's break the border between you and me', 'I cannot wait, 'til 2008/Baby you're the best candidate/Of the new oval office' and 'You can Barack me tonight'.

Verdict: Laugh-out-loud funny. Can't wait for the second instalment.



VOTE DIFFERENT



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6h3G-lMZxjo

By Obama supporter Philip de Vellis

Number of views so far: 3,524,896

This is the first 'viral' video ad of the 2008 presidential campaign, spreading through the Internet community like wildfire.

It mashes up Hillary Clinton's face and voice with Ridley Scott's famous '1984' ad for Apple computers. Clinton is seen as Big Brother, lecturing from a screen to the downtrodden masses. The screen is eventually smashed and everyone liberated when a lone runner hurls a mallet at it. The ad ends with the caption 'barackobama.com', though his campaign had no involvement in the making of the video.

Verdict: Cleverly subversive and well-executed.



MCCAIN SINGS STREISAND



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTuwBw9q3Sw

By YouTube user and McCain supporter Briguy17

Number of views so far: 72,468

Who knew Republican Senator John McCain could be funny?

In an admirable attempt to woo young voters across the United States, he appeared on American comedy show Saturday Night Live in June last year singing - butchering actually - popular songs by Barbra Streisand.

A McCain fan who thought McCain deserved extra publicity for his effort posted the video online.

The video was an instant hit, eliciting comments like 'I never voted Republican in my life, but I might vote for McCain'.

Verdict: McCain is highly entertaining if not plain admirable for his ability to laugh at himself.



# WORST



BILL AND HILLARY SOPRANO



http://www.hillaryclinton.com/video/36.aspx

Number of views so far: At least 900,000 have viewed copies on YouTube

In an official video to launch Hillary's campaign song (You And I by Celine Dion), the Clintons spoof the final scene of popular TV series The Sopranos and its controversial cliffhanger.

Hillary plays mobster Tony Soprano while Bill, who plays her 'wife', appears disappointed to get carrots instead of the scripted onion rings. Both have the acting chops of wooden puppets.

There is a mention of the Clintons' daughter Chelsea, who gets jibed for failing to parallel park. But nobody gets whacked in the end.

Verdict: Even Keanu Reeves can act better than this duo.



RUDY GIULIANI IN DRAG WITH DONALD TRUMP



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IrE6FMpai8

By YouTube user itsgiulianitime

Number of views so far: 354,893

Former mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani appears in drag in this video, which was originally filmed for a 'roast' - where peers or the press poke fun at a celebrity or politician to honour him - in 2000.

But it is now being used by his detractors, notably as publicity for Kevin Keating's documentary Giuliani Time, which The New York Times called 'nothing less than a full frontal assault on the civic deification of Rudolph W. Giuliani that occurred in the days after Sept 11, 2001, when much of the news coverage shined a spotlight on his steady hand'.

In it, the current Republican frontrunner has his 'breasts' nuzzled by property mogul Donald Trump, who is helping him choose a nice perfume.

'Ooh, you naughty boy!' a blonde-wigged Guiliani screams in falsetto tones as he mock-slaps 'The Donald'.

Verdict: In no other motion picture film have two hair pieces been more terrifying than this.



HILLARY CLINTON SINGS NATIONAL ANTHEM



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfZ_gXCHaMw

By YouTube user breitbart

Number of views so far: 1,344,638

The incredibly off-key singing of Senator Hillary Clinton, wife of former US president Bill Clinton, gets picked up by microphones at an event in Iowa in January this year. Her butchering of the US national anthem garnered comments like 'Tone deaf, but a great first woman president' and 'Tone deaf, even more reason to hate her'.

Verdict: Love her or hate her, you will blush on behalf of Clinton.

What if there is no God? Only Satan?

I recently finished reading a book, "The Lucifer Code" by Michael Cody. The book is a fictional sci fic thriller, that is nothing similar to the "Da Vinci Code".

The storyline is about a terrifying religious conspiracy to stage a most ambitious experiment the world has ever seen - to prove beyond doubt the existence of a heaven or a hell.

The following is an excerpt from the book which i find interesting. Page 291. The speech is from a character in the book, Accosta, the Red Pope, who has gone to the other side.

---------------------------------

"I am a servant of the Lord. I have seen His power and i know His will. He has ordered me to return and reveal the Soul Truth."

"I have always believed in God, my God, who created mankind in His own image to worship Him. An all-powerful, all-knowing, compassionate God."

"When i was younger, I was troubled by what the philophers call the Problem of Evil. Given all the evil in the world, how can an all-powerful, all knowing, merciful God exist? Either God knows about evil, cares for it, but can't do anything about it - in which case He is not all-powerful, or He cares about it, can do something about it, but doesn't know about it - in which case he is not all-knowing, or he knows about it, can do something about it, but doesn't care about it - in which case he is neither merciful or compassionate."

"I have always squared this inconsistency by believing that my powerful, omniscient, benign God allowed evil in the world to give us, his greatest creation, the gift of free will. To trust us with the ability to choose between good and evil, even in face of our harshest trials ad tribulations. I now know the truth about good and evil. And now I know this truth it seems so obvious to me. After all, what God would create man simply to worship Him? What Supreme Being could be so vain, so petty?"

"There is no Problem of Evil because our Lord did not create us to worship Him. I always assumed God created a perfect ordered world - an Eden - then introduced the serpent of evil to test us. But this isn't true. Our Lord created an evil world then introduced good. The natural state in the world and the next is chaos - entropy. Evil is the normal way of the world, and good was only introduced as a capricious whim. The Lord only created us to enhance his amusement. That is the sole reason for our existence.

"As a child builds a stack of bricks only to knock it down again, our Lord allows us to climb higher and higher, believing in virtue and goodness and honour, only to dash us down with random acts of evil."

"There is no heaven, only arbitrary suffering. Life beyond death is as cruel and random as life on earth - except that it is eternal. There is no escape. There is no karma. No justice. No elysian fields where the good may find peace after a hard life. There is no divine order, just chaos. The Soul Truth, which i can reveal to you no is, that God, the God to whom, i dedicated my life on earth - doesn't exist."

"I am a soul in torment. The Lord I have willingly served all my life, and the Lord I am now condemned to serve for all eternity, is not God. There is only one Lord and he is the Lord of chaos and darkness. He is the Devil. Satan himself."

"Forgive me, I took my journey full of hope but I have returned with non. There is no hope. There is no God. I cannot even pray for you."

---------------------------------

The next following text passage is from another character in the book., Soames Bradley. Page 425.

"Two thousand years ago, God sent down his first son. He was a good man who preached compassion and forgiveness - he even died on the cross for humanity to teach you the true way of God. But it didn't work. Religions fought with each other over their interpretations of Christ's teachings. They got in the way of faith. It no longer became an issue of free will but of power and guilt. Where's the free will in a priest saying, "Do what i tell you to do or you'll go to Hell"? That isn't free will, that's obeying orders because you fear punishment.

"Priests are only men anyway. They don't care about understanding God - they care about building power in this world. But God doesn't want vast churches and adoration. He's not that kind of father. He wants you, His most ambitious creation, to come of age and no longer need him. That's what his first son tried to explain. Living a good life is its own reward - at death each individual will experience his own soul truth. But no one listened.

"So He sent down a second son, a darker son. Not to preach good and kindess this time, but to prove once and for all that God doesn't exist. That only the Devil hold sway. Only then could mankind outgrow the shackles of religion and develope its own sense of right and wrong - true free will. After all, one can only make a truly virtuous choice then there's no promise of reward. So this is God's gift to you, to erase Himself from your consciousness.

---------------------------------

Before any one dismissed the book as blasphemous and deluded, let's keep an open mind and enjoy the book as it truly is. A book of fiction.

Frankly, this book is quite a relative good read. Not the best though. The story is a bit slow at times. But the above concepts are quite refreshing.

Normally it takes me about 3-5 days to complete a book. But I was busy and not in the mood for reading and so this book took me more than 2 weeks.

JJ Lin's MTV causes uproar

13 Jul 2007, ST

The Singapore singer's new music video features disturbing scenes and has been banned by three Taiwan TV stations

By Aviel Tan

SINGAPORE singer JJ Lin has overturned his shy, boyish image once and for all with his latest music video in which he plays a lust-filled, piano-playing madman who kills a pretty girl, mutilates her body and cuts off her head.

The gory 21-minute-long video for The Killa, a single from Lin's new album West Side, was immediately banned by three TV stations in Taiwan, where the Mandarin pop idol is based. They deemed it unsuitable for broadcast. The album has sold 15,000 copies in Singapore.

A five-minute censored version of the video has gone to the Media Development Authority (MDA) to get censorship clearance for broadcast release.

The original uncensored version will not be shown here. It shows scenes of the victim's topless body and Lin - whose full name is Lin Jun Jie - gouging out her heart.

Various versions of the grisly video have already popped up on popular website YouTube.

Lin, 26, used to be known as the boy-next-door who composed romantic ballads until last year, when he shocked fans by going for a macho, sexy look, even baring his torso in a book.

His latest move looks set to make that striptease seem mild in comparison.

The video, which cost $250,000 to make, tells the story of how a man (Lin) develops a deadly obsession with an exchange student (played by a Paraguayan-Taiwanese star known only as Liz).

Lin's bespectacled character drugs the girl, kills her and makes her 'his' by slowly mutilating her body. He then cuts off her head and creates a grisly mural on his wall with her severed body parts.

On Taiwan authorities banning the video, Lin told Life! in a statement released by his record label Ocean Butterflies: 'The process of filming this was a great experience for me. I'm not surprised to know that it (the full-length music video) got banned from broadcasting, but I think it's a fantastic video and it would definitely be a pity if the audience can't get to watch it.'


JJ Lin Jun Jie-The Killa Movie-A


JJ Lin Jun Jie-The Killa Movie-B

When Life! asked whether the singer had concerns over negative influences on his fans, Ms Daphne Ng, the home-grown label's artiste management assistant, reckoned that youths nowadays are more well-informed and information savvy.

'It's up to them to decide whether what is depicted in the video is acceptable,' she said.

She went on to say that contrary to popular belief, local fans had actually taken to the singer's portrayal of his darker side.

'They understand that he wants to shed his boy-next-door image and continue to re-invent himself as an entertainer,' she added.

Indeed, one fan Life! spoke to, Ms Tay Jie Fang, 18, a communications student at Temasek Polytechnic who has followed the artiste since his entry on the music scene, said that the five-minute video that she saw was a breath of fresh air.

'I like the darker and tense concept and I think it breaks away from his previous music videos, which were kind of upbeat,' she said.

'I like his performance in the video and how he conveys the conflicting emotions when he decides to kill the girl he loves.'

However, Ms Sophia Tan, 19, a first-year university student, gave the video the thumbs-down.

She said: 'JJ is not being true to who he really is. 'He is just using the video to get more attention for his new album.'

Then again, Ms Cai Ming Shi, 22, a quality assurance executive with a local food company, who has been a fan of Lin's for four years, sighed: 'Whatever he does, as long as he enjoys it and is sincere about giving his fans the best in music, then I think it's enough for the rest of us.'