Tinker, Tailor

A friend thinks that I need to hire a PR agent. Why? Because of certain reputations that I’ve acquired. A chat with another friend on MSN seems to confirm it:

She: u doing anything tonight?

Me: depends on the weather. why?

She: there’s a hunk competition at momo tonight

She: can go down and watch if you’re interested…

She: should be quite fun

She: i’ve got like 4 friends in the finals

Me: HARLO I NOT GAY LEH!!!

She: …

She: just watch only mah

Me: i’d rather watch trees grow

I wanted to add: i’ve had enough of hunks already. i look at one every day in the mirror.
I decided to spare her the nausea

My colleagues in another department recently moved into a newly-renovated office area, and I was invited over to inspect the place.

Yet another cubicle farm.

Most of the cubicles were quite tidy and didn’t have too much junk, maybe because they’d been there for only a few days, and they were expecting visitors. Or maybe not everyone has junk like I do.

You get to know a little more about a person when you see their cubicle. Like this guy who has a real (Samurai?) sword on his desk. To welcome unexpected visitors? Or this guy who speaks perfect English and has strong vocabulary, but every single book on his shelf is in Chinese.

Then there’s this guy who has a 2-seater sofa parked outside his cubicle. His department head explained that they couldn’t fit the sofa into his cubicle, and they’re waiting for him to return from his holiday to solve the issue. I must remember to email him, to kindly offer to look after the sofa for him. The sofa definitely can fit into my cubicle, even if it means that I have to remove my office chair or reconfigure my cubicle partitions a little bit. Then I’ll never have to lie down on the thin cheapo carpet of my cubicle floor ever again.

Why am I so optimistic today?

P.S. Check out this related Joy of Tech post (”Horizontal Workspace”). Funny stuff.

I met this young guy in a meeting. I thought his glasses were pretty unique, as the frame was green. Then I realised that his polo T-shirt was green as well, with light and dark green stipes. On the floor beside his seat was his green Crumpler bag. I peered discretely at his shoes. Green canvas shoes. His jeans were, thankfully, blue.

Believe it or not, if you removed the vowels from his name, you’d be left with Grn.

“Does your favourite colour happen to be green?” I asked him quite abruptly at an inappropriate moment of the meeting (like I usually do at meetings). Some people at the meeting let out a snort, a result of controlling their burst of laughter a little too late (like what usually happens during meetings when the boss isn’t amused by a joke); others were simply horrified that I could ask such a direct and possibly offensive question at such a time.

“Yes, it is,” he answered with a smile, and was quite proud about it.

“Is your underwear green as well?” I wanted to ask, but decided that this was really inappropriate.

The incident actually happened a few weeks ago, but I was reminded of him after I completed this:

Updates below.

When a tree falls in the middle of a forest, nobody knows, and nobody cares.

But when a tree falls onto a 3-lane road and a car crashes into it and traffic is completely blocked for the next 3 hours, things get slightly more complicated.

Which is what took place on Clementi Road between Maju Camp and SIM (Singapore Institute of Management) about 6pm today.

Quite fortunately, the car was mostly intact except for the front bumper, and the 3 people in the car came out very much alive.

I chatted with a motorcyclist who witnessed the event, and he was happy to describe it in detail. A Straits Times photographer interviewed him as well, so you might hear more details in the papers tomorrow if you’re interested.

Soon after, I saw another photographer with 2 bigass Canons with bigass lenses slung from his shoulder. He was busy taking pictures, but with his Nokia handphone!

Very curious, I went up to him, noting his Reuters nametag, and asked him why he was using his phone camera. It’s as absurd as using a revolver to gun down a monster when you have 2 machineguns slung across your Rambo shoulders.

It turned out that he was just testing out his handphone, taking the pictures as a personal record, and he didn’t want to use the bigass cameras because they were more for work and the news was far too insignificant for Reuters.

How true, I thought. Being there at the scene, standing behind the police cordon and watching the Civil Defense saw the tree bit by bit, watching them extricate the Toyota with much difficulty, observing how they continued to saw the tree part by part, feeling the resentment in the waiting crowd because the police prematurely allowed the traffic into the dead end even though the road was still blocked, hearing the impatient comments observing that the Civil Defense could have just cleared a lane and let some of the traffic go first, rather than make everyone wait for them to saw up the whole tree into bits then clear the whole road then sweep up the road then load the tree parts into a lorry… Being there, it was so easy to feel a sense of importance, as if I was there when history was being made.

Sure, the event was significant to the 3 who got out of the car alive, and perhaps to the motorcyclist who got a good scare.

But, to the rest of us, it might be something to talk about for a day or two, but after that, it would be like the fallen tree - cut up, cleared up, and soon forgotten.

Update (18 Apr 2006):

According to someone who was very pissed, the tree apparently blocked both directions of the road. By the time I was there, one of the sides had been cleared.

This is what the Straits Times reported today:

A large tree fell across Clementi Road yesterday during the evening rush hour, landing on the hood of a passing car and causing a three-hour traffic jam.

Driving instructor Lim Kang Hai, 61, escaped unhurt.

‘I wanted to brake but the tree fell suddenly onto my car,’ said Mr Lim. ‘I was very scared and rushed out of the car. Luckily I am safe and need only to fix the car.’

About 50 commuters got out of their vehicles and helped the police cut the fallen tree with chainsaws and clear the road.

Mr Mohammed Shariff, 51, was one of the motorists who helped the three policemen.

Said the technical engineer: ‘A policeman and I cut the branches one by one and others helped to pull the branches off. We were trying to clear the jam as fast as possible.’

The road was cleared by about 9pm.

Have you ever played that game where a message is passed among a bunch of people, and it gets distorted along the way? Straits Times has that problem. (I don’t blame the ST photographer who interviewed the witness - all he did was pass some info and the phone number of the witness back to the newsroom.)

The good rambling librarian recommended me ArtRage after he saw my last post, so I decided to check it out.

ArtRage is a painting software, and it’s better and more realistic than procreate painter classic which I used for the painting in my last post. But because it’s more realistic, it’s a little harder to use, because the different layers of paint interact with one another.

Here’s my first attempt with ArtRage:

Just some random shapes and colours.

My only complaint with the free version of ArtRage is after painting for a while, the program loses more functionality. You cannot use the undo function for instance (but that makes things more realistic).

Anyway here’s my second attempt:

I’ve entitled this “Landscape of Venus”. Very cringeworthy, but that’s the first title that came to my mind. The more I look at this painting, the more improvements I think I can make to it. Maybe another time.

Gosh - painting on the computer is so fun. I can just collapse into a pile on the sofa and start creating images that come to mind there and then. Maybe I should give up photography

I never liked painting when I was a kid.

Partly due to my art teachers in primary and secondary school, who didn’t seem to know what art was about. Art class was all about painting dumb posters - there was no room for creative expression, and creative exploration of the paint and paper medium was actively suppressed with a lousy grade. The last straw came when my sec 2 arch rival who couldn’t draw and had no aesthetic sense handed in his nursery-standard prawn painting which resembled turd, and he got the same grade as my proportionately replicated crustacean beauty, just because I used the poster colour paint like watercolours.

Nor did I enjoy the collateral activities - laying out the materials and equipment, mixing the paint, then cleaning up, washing the palette and brushes, etc. etc. Let someone else do all that for me, and I’ll be a happy painter (unfortunately, this statement has never been verified to this day).

Then not too long ago, I was asking a friend to describe me in 1 word. His immediate response was “artist”. I’ve yet to ask him for a full explanation.

Anyway, just today, I decided to dig out my Wacom tablet and play with the painting software.

Night Field

My very first humble attempt at painting. It was fun. The only thing I needed to do when I was done was to unplug the tablet and put it away.

Quick and dirty. Quick and clean.

p.s. Special thanks to the Rambling Librarian who reminded me about the painting software.

Yeah I’ve been busy, and there’s loads on my mind. And I don’t like this combination.

I don’t mind being busy, with not too much on my mind; and I don’t mind being free, with loads on my mind. But when I’m busy with a loaded mind, I start losing sleep. My mind keeps churning when I’m supposed to be asleep, keeps churning when I’m sleeping, and still keeps churning when I wake up too early.

And thus, I’ve been walking around like a zombie lately.

Okay, I often walk around like a zombie, but this time it’s been noticeably worse.

Anyway.

Since my move into a cubicle, I’ve been trying to keep a positive mindset and make the best out of this disgraceful situation. Although my cubicle is slowly running out of room, there’s certainly room for improvement as far as my attitude goes.

And I’m appreciating an improvement that the cubicle has over my ex-office - carpeting. My ex-office had cold, hard tiles for the flooring, but my cubicle area is carpeted. Sure, it’s not the plush carpeting that the CEO probably has in his cubicle. Wait - I think he has an office. With a view! Anyway, the carpeting at my cubicle farm is the thin cheapo kind, but frankly it’s good enough for someone tired to lie down in the afternoon after lunch and catch a nap, as I found out yesterday (it helps to have a cushion as a pillow).

It’s almost lunchtime. I shall go for an early lunch, and return to my lovely cubicle. Do not disturb.

These few weeks have been busy, and the coming ones are gonna be much worse, which means that I won’t have that much time to read.

But, “won’t have that much time” doesn’t mean “completely no time”, so you can expect me to be reading still. Reading stuff like the Her World magazine which I requested for the last time but have yet to get.

Because no one lent me a copy of Her World, I had to settle for these books:

Save The Cat! by Blake Snyder

The subtitle of the book boldly claims that this is the “last book on screenwriting you’ll ever need”. I’m not exactly into screenwriting, but I heard from a few trusted sources that this is a great book, so I decided to check it out. Besides, I sometimes read books about stuff that I’m not into, just so that I can widen my perspective.

After reading this, I now understand why some movies work and some don’t. And why we felt sad when King Kong died, but didn’t feel as sad when the other humans die. The only problem with it is that it can only explain the success or failure of conventional movies, not unconventional ones films like Memento. Very good book nonetheless - you’ll learn a lot about storytelling, if nothing else. Required reading for film enthusiasts and aspiring screen writers.

Improv Wisdom by Patricia Ryan Madson

Since I’m still on topics that I’m not exactly into, here’s another.

I know very little about improv, not even enough to know whether I like it or not, but it certainly sounds interesting, so I thought I could learn something about it, and this looked like the book to read. Just to doublecheck, I went over to Amazon.com to look at the ratings. Almost everyone gave 5 stars.

What I didn’t notice is that all the identifiable reviewers were female. And that the book is really a self-help book. I was expecting something more concrete and technical with quick tips, but what I got was the improv philosophy and approach to life, so this book didn’t quite meet my expectations. The maxims in the book were quite thought-provoking: “say yes”, “don’t prepare”, “just show up”, “start anywhere”, “be average”, “pay attention”, “face the facts”, “stay on course”, “wake up to the gifts”, “make mistakes please”, “act now”, “take care of each other”, “enjoy the ride”, but I found the illustrative stories somewhat bland (with some great exceptions). It’s a thin book (about 150 pages), but it took me weeks to complete. If you’re the type that likes self-help books (few men do), go ahead and check it out if you want to learn something about improv. Otherwise, I don’t really know. All I know is that I still know very little about improv.

Photoshop Blending Modes Cookbook for Digital Photographers by John Beardsworth

Speaking of things I know little about… a lot of people think I’m some kind of Photoshop expert. I guess that’s not too far from the truth, since I can make my mom look young enough to be my sister, I can make my dad as handsome as I am (ok that’s easy), or I can make myself as sexy as Angelina Jolie (quite easy too - just expand my lips a little). But, I feel a tinge of guilt whenever I claim to be an expert, because I know that I haven’t conquered the world of blending modes. (In Photoshop, blending or blend modes can be accessed from the drop down list which says ‘Normal’ by default, found on the layers palette.)

Which is where this book comes in. Although I use blending modes quite often, some of the blend modes are still not intuitive to me, and I go through a lot of trial and error. I basically can’t visualise the exact effect without trying it out.

I haven’t had time to try out much of the stuff in this book yet, but it’s comforting to know that there’s such a book ready for me at my disposal. Once I’m done with it, I can guiltlessly call myself an expert. Check it out if you’re a Photoshop pro.

‘Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!’ by Richard P. Feynman

If you’re creative and unconventional and funny and you love science, you’re probably already a fan of Richard Feynman.

In this book, Feynman recounts many memorable incidents in his life growing up, as a student, as a researcher in the Manhattan Project (building the WWII atomic bomb), as a Nobel Prize laureate professor with curious interests, and his insights into human nature from those incidents. Although he’s best known as a brilliant physicist, this book also talks about his exploits as an artist (with his own show), as a drummer in Brazil, as an expert lock-picker in the nuclear bomb facility, or a womaniser in Las Vegas. Loads of fun stuff to read, even though he sometimes geeks out and talks about technical stuff which I don’t understand. What I like most is that it gives insight into how he thinks - how he simplifies complex concepts in his own mind to the astonishment of those around him, how he views the world with its systems and cultures around him, and how he survives and thrives even though he’s so different from everyone around him. He’s such a genius - your IQ and creativity levels will be raised a few levels after this book.

Now, for some fiction…

The Solitaire Mystery by Jostein Gaarder

After my last books review where I reviewed Sophie’s World, too many people asked me to read this, which is by the same author. I finally buckled under the pressure.

This novel has an interesting structure (I lurve interesting structures), although not as strange as Sophie’s World. Like Sophie’s World, it’s basically about philosophy, but this one has less philosophy history and more of the (ideal) mindset of a philosopher - someone constantly curious, constantly questioning, constantly misunderstood. Which really resonates with me (like Feynman’s book above). Definitely worth a read - it’ll set you thinking.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

I normally avoid bestsellers, unless I’ve got other reasons to read them. I chose to read this because this novel is written in the voice of an autistic boy with Asperger’s syndrome. According to an autistic Amazon.com reviewer, this book “got it right”.

This book gives fascinating insight into the autistic’s mind - how logical to the point of illogic, how blithely unemotional and anti-emotional in an environment of emotions, how brilliant and knowledgeable yet idiotic at the same time. The language of the book may be simple - a pre-teen could easily enjoy it - but the issues are deep and sophisticated. No wonder it won a whole bunch of prizes and awards. A wonderfully unique and fresh novel.

Ok, that’s it for now.

Will someone kindly pass me a copy of Her World???