Dawn in Chittagong

Early morning
Smell of blades of grass and fresh flowers
Cold mist, surrounding the bungalow
Safe.
Tigers lurking in the bushes beyond.
Coffee table and chairs on the veranda,
Newspaper saying Superman is dead.

Up the stone steps
Careful, don’t fall
Across the grass lawn
On the swing
Don’t go too high.

Run back to the house
Into the bedroom
Open the drawer with all the toys inside
Break another one to see how it works.

Dad is home from work
Time for wrestling.

Wash up
Ready to sleep
Mom’s agreed to retell the story
Of the fisherboy who escaped from the crocodile
By putting a wooden foot in the river
And keeping his own
Safe.

The Final Word on Screenplay Writing

WAS just thinking the other day that screenplay writing might be a useful hobby to have. You get to indulge your fantasies—playing out your favourite characters and stories and imagining their movie adaptations—while leaving open the slim chance that they’ll get picked up by Hollywood some day (and make you rich).

Interestingly enough, came across an article today which discusses screenplay writing and how it’s being adapted to the computer age. And through there, learned about the screenplay writing software that’s the equivalent of Microsoft Word in the movie industry, Final Draft. Apparently it’s so prevalent that the Final Draft creators have proudly put up a list of big Hollywood names and their high praise for the software—here.

Admittedly, apart from the cursory glance at the heavily-labelled screenshot on the product page, I have no idea how the thing actually works. But when James Cameron says this about it, you have to be impressed:

“You can't win a race without a champion car. Final Draft is my Ferrari.”

Notes on Our Winged Friends

I KILLED a fly before dinner. Well it was more of a fruit fly, and I swatted it with a clap of my hands. Fast little bugger. I had to time it carefully and bring my hands together as fast as humanly possible (maybe a little faster) to do the deed.

Afterwards I had an interesting thought. I heard some time ago that flies have reflexes that are like a bajillion times better than humans. So any movement that humans make, no matter how fast, must seem like slow motion to them as they swiftly weave in and out amongst us. So the fact that this fly couldn’t escape my hands meant that it saw them coming but still couldn’t pull out in time—like a bad nightmare where you can’t escape your doom.

Putting on The Cranberries’ Animal Instinct now.

Seen on the Middle of the Road

ON THE way back from work today, saw a woman sitting in her car, stopped in the middle of the road (residential neighbourhood), being approached by a big, burly man with what looked like a baseball bat. His van was parked near hers in the middle of the road too. Heard both of them shouting.

Craned my head to follow the action but the bus moved on and there’s no window in the back, so I had to leave them behind. Strangely enough, no one else in the bus seemed to notice. Our bus driver (a woman) just honked at them a little and moved on.

Yikes.

The Slashdot Effect!

RECENTLY I’ve been getting more and more comments and emails about a little word count macro/script I wrote way back when for OpenOffice.org Writer. The main selling point of the thing was that it continuously updated the word count as you typed. I was proud as hell of it because I wrote it in Python—the coolness factor—and I used Python’s multithreading library to implement the continuous word count update. Double coolness.

I didn’t wonder too much about the sudden interest in that old macro, but now it’s all become clear. I’ve been Slashdotted! Well, not exactly. I mean, my macro didn’t make it as a main Slashdot post, and my blog didn’t suffer from any slowdowns. What I’m celebrating is that some random Slashdot user suggested to another that they can try out my macro. I have achieved the hacker’s nirvana, people. Bow before me :-)

From T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets

JUST came across this amazing little poem (or maybe a piece of a poem). Have to share it. This is from the second quartet of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, ‘East Coker’:

O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark,
The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant,
The captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of letters,
The generous patrons of art, the statesmen and the rulers,
Distinguished civil servants, chairmen of many committees,
Industrial lords and petty contractors, all go into the dark,
And dark the Sun and Moon, and the Almanach de Gotha
And the Stock Exchange Gazette, the Directory of Directors,
And cold the sense and lost the motive of action.

Commenting Using Facebook

FACEBOOK did some spiffy Web magic a few months back that allows people to post comments, using their Facebook identities, on any sites which are set up to accept them. And these comments show up as news feed stories on those users' walls and on their friends' home pages.

My blog comment provider, Disqus, has apparently been setting up the Facebook Connect feature to work since the start of the year. I just tweaked some of my Disqus settings to enable it on my blog. Now waiting for the blue Facebook Connect button to show up above my comments boxes. Hope it works!

The Dark Knight

FINALLY finished watching The Dark Knight. It's just as good as I remember it, from Heath Ledger's performance to the intelligence of the action (e.g. Batman fighting the SWAT team with their rappel lines).

I wanted to talk about a couple of things I noticed that stayed with me ever since my first, aborted, attempt to watch the movie in the theatre. First off, right from the beginning you notice there's a kind of a buzzing background noise--a tone might be the best way to describe it--whenever the anticipation builds up for action that's about to take place. I especially associated this noise with the Joker for some reason. It reminded me of a maddening, insane buzz that's also frightening, hellish.

Coming thus to the Joker--easily the most interesting character in the movie, and rightfully so. The Batman may be a complex creation--and some of that was delved into this time around as well--but in any story with the Joker, he deserves to steal the show. What interested me was--what's the driving force for him? He tells us he just wants to show us that underneath the thin veneer of morality and civilisation, everyone is just as savage as we accuse him of being. He sees civilisation as something that can be pushed over the edge and broken down, leaving the world in ruins.

And of course, the movie shows us the breakdown of civilised life in plenty of ways. The burning fire truck placed by the Joker in the middle of a road at night, the takedown of the helicopter, the hospital and the ferries carrying people across Gotham Harbour, these are all things that are unthinkable in modern cities, in the thick of law and order, and plenty of witnesses. But we see how easy it is to break it all down--how much we trust in each other to do the right thing in everyday life, and thus keep the system functioning. If people started abusing that on a massive scale, it would all crash rather quickly. Is the current financial crisis a good example of that? Probably, but even so, in a more subtle way.

And that's just looking at the movie from the Joker's point of view. What is the Batman thinking all the while he's tracking down fingerprints in shattered shards of bullets, keeping Harvey Dent on the straight and narrow, and scrambling to take out the mob and the Joker on two fronts? He says that he wanted to inspire people; we know he wanted to frighten criminals as well; but Alfred rightly points out that when he started waging war on the mob, he should have expected escalation and casualties.

But if the Batman does one thing and one thing only, he endures. I'm reminded of a scene from the classic Superman: The Animated Series episode where the Joker, come to visit Metropolis, finds Bruce Wayne and Lois Lane on a dinner date in a really high-rise restaurant, and in the course of a scuffle, throws Bruce over the edge of a balcony. He goes to check if Bruce has fallen to his death, and finds him clinging by one hand to the edge of another balcony, some eight or ten floors down. The Joker chuckles, saying, `My, my, aren't we tenacious?' and starts raining machine-gun fire down on Bruce--who quickly scrambles up the balcony ledge and into the offices/apartments below.

A Blog to Facebook Experiment

THIS post is basically an experiment on Facebook's ability to suck my blog posts in and display them in my wall. I recently changed a setting in Facebook that I hope will make it display entire posts rather than just a couple of lines from them.

I've always felt that the main area of the Facebook profile, usually occupied by the wall, is an excellent place to post my own thoughts. Unfortunately Facebook etiquette prevents me from writing on my own wall. Although Facebook itself seems to encourage it.

So the new Facebook look, which shows my own activities as well as friends' wall posts all in one big mash-up, is an excellent way to do what I've wanted to for some time. Facebook should suck in the contents of each blog post and display them fully right inside the wall/activity feed. It definitely took me some time to come to this idea, but hopefully it'll work out all right. Fingers crossed.

For Posterity: How Shit Happens

THIS is something I've been wanting to post here for a while but which completely evaded my puny memory for the past couple of years. It's for anyone who's ever worked for a large company where the most insane and inane ideas routinely get turned into everyday practice (I'm looking at you, Dilbert).

In the beginning was the plan
And then came the assumptions
And the assumptions were without form
And the plan was completely without substance
And darkness was upon the faces of the workers
And they spake unto their marketing managers, saying `it is a pot of manure, and it stinketh'
And the marketing managers went unto the strategists and saith,
`It is a pile of dung, and none may abide the odor thereof'.
And the strategists went unto the business managers and saith
`It is a container of excrement, and it is very strong and such that none may abide by it'.
And the business managers went unto the director and saith,
`It is a vessel of fertilizer, and none may abide its strength'.
And the director went to the vice president and saith,
`It contains that which aids plant growth and it is very strong'.
And the vice president went unto the senior vice president and saith,
`It promoteth growth, and it is powerful'.
And the senior vice president went unto the president and saith,
`This powerful new plan will actively promote growth and efficiency of the company and the business in general'.
And the president looked upon the plan and saw that it was good
And the plan became policy

The Divine Music

SOMETIMES when I'm about to fall asleep, an amazing melody comes into my head, plays itself out, and goes away. This is something I've never heard before, but sounds absolutely fantastic and mind-blowing. I could even say, divine.

This happened on Sunday. An instrumental melody in the style of Indian classical music started up in my head, picked up tempo and slowly morphed into a fusion violin-piece, and finally a rousing opera-style crescendo. It was just unbelievable how beautiful it was and how smoothly it flowed from genre to genre, blending every kind of music between East and West and yet, as a whole, sounding nothing like any music I'd ever listened to.

While letting this tune carry itself on, I caught myself simultaneously regretting that I didn't know enough about music to record it, write it down somehow so I could actually enjoy it over and over again. But this was such a complex piece, spanning so many styles, somehow I think even a prodigy would have trouble capturing it all. Oh well.

Shopping Spree

IT'S so easy to spend money these days. I just went on an online shopping spree and bought these two books: Getting Things Done by famed management guru David Allen and Statistics: An Introduction using R by Michael Crawley. The first is a recent favourite of mine; I read it a few months ago after hearing a lot about it on Lifehacker. The second seems to be a really promising introduction to statistics and probability modelling using my favourite statistical software, R. The author just seems to get the art of explaining new concepts. I wish I'd had this book when starting introductory statistics in uni. Anyway.

After placing the order I got a sudden urge to check out the other, more well-known book on statistics using R: Introductory Statistics with R (by Peter Dalgaard, a well-known figure in the R software community). I guess I was afraid of making the wrong choice. Of course Amazon allows you to cancel or change your order before it's shipped, but it's still a hassle. But on previewing the table of contents and excerpts of the book, I was just relieved to see that it took a much more mechanical approach to teaching--not my cup of tea. I prefer Crawley's more explanatory approach, which cuts to the heart of what you're trying to do with the statistical methods you're using, rather than just what the methods are called and how to apply them.

This might have been the first time I didn't experience buyer's remorse after a shopping spree. Well, maybe the second time. I did get an awesome pair of casual shoes recently....

Office Politics ... Get Me Out of Here!

IT TOOK five months to crystallise my hatred for office politics. When I started work, it was something of a novelty, something to get used to along with the rest of the new job. Now, it's something that slows down work, makes it less efficient, and throws up occasional nasty surprises to be dealt with.

Playing the game is sometimes fun, of course. You can have a laugh about the antics people get up to. It helps if a colleague is sympathetic and sees things the way you do.

I wouldn't say the experience is worthless. It's forcing me to discover what kind of job environment I'd like to work in. When I'm faced with a job task or problem, I don't just like to solve it--I like to solve the general class of problems in that category, and discover and handle the root cause(s). I like to tackle a problem from the ground up, and if necessary, design a new workflow to handle it.

Unfortunately, I can only do that for the relatively trivial tasks which are given to me to do in whatever way I want. For more well-established tasks and duties, things which have been set in their ways for many years, all I can do is follow along doing exactly as I've been instructed--and maybe supplement it with a little more to make things easier in the long run. But in the short run, that always adds up to more work. It's almost not worth it.

I was never into Dilbert much before, but I did know what PHB stood for (Pointy-Haired Boss). After having experienced it for myself, I actually have it like a morning dose of coffee, and I have some consolation that, I'm not the only guy in the world who has to put up with a PHB.

Stupid Windows Mistake #1

I MADE my first stupid Windows mistake since buying a brand-spanking new laptop a few months ago. It's been running like a dream so far. But a few days ago I tried to download a movie on Bittorrent, and when it was almost done the video file refused to play--even on VLC--unless I went to a special website, downloaded a codec and installed it. Well, I fell for it. But even after installing the codec, the file wouldn't play. I took the bait and caught it hook, line and sinker.

Uninstalled the codec after that, but the damage was done. Past few days, some spyware has been randomly popping up Internet Explorer windows every few minutes, and a resource-hogging Internet Explorer process has been running in the background, restarting itself every time I stopped it. The dud antivirus program Windows Live OneCare failed to find anything, so I got AnVir, which was being given away for free just yesterday apparently. AnVir found some possibly-risky programs in the system, so I got it to rub them out. Then I got rid of AnVir--despite these annoyances, I still don't like having any more programs installed than I have to.

The problem didn't go away. I then installed Spybot Search & Destroy--given rave reviews by PC World--and it found and removed a bunch of tracking cookies. No actual software on my hard drive as far as I could see. Got rid of S&D too.

The problem still didn't go away. By today I was sick of lame-duck software and tried a different approach. Since it was Internet Explorer that was being continually started up at some random ad sites, I decided to get my firewall to block Internet Explorer.

The firewall in question is the slightly enhanced--and more or less easy to use--one that comes with Windows Live OneCare. I'm on a trial version of OneCare that'll run out in about a couple of months, so I'll have to get another firewall up and running then. But for now, this simple block is doing the job perfectly. After I killed off the last couple of Internet Explorer processes that were running, they didn't respawn any more. I guess maybe OneCare isn't so lame after all.

Viva la Paz

JUST saw Spanglish and loved it. Should've seen it a long time ago. Anyway. I'm in love with Paz Vega.

The Monash Letters #1

I SET up my Gmail account in Microsoft Outlook recently for easy access and found myself going through old emails that I'd written to family when I started university in Malaysia. Going over them, I was a little surprised at how many emails I had written--I thought I'd written much less than I had. Anyway, I'm going to post some of them here. I just think they're interesting reading. It's like going back in time and meeting myself three years ago.

22 Feb 2005

The international student office is very helpful. I can go to them any time and they will help me out with any dates, deadlines, fees or advice. So I'm not really worried about immigration.

The internet connection is provided by Sunway hostel free of charge.
Of course, it's really paid for by part of our hostel fees. I paid the hostel fees today, by the way. I had to pay RM 1,985, most of it a refundable deposit for my room. The rest was a semester's worth of rent. I have about RM 2,100 in the bank, a few hundred in my wallet, the USD 800 bank draft still being processed. So I'm OK for now. I'm compiling a budget right now, will send it to you guys as soon as it's done.

About drawers, I meant there's no drawer in my desk. There is one inside the cabinet and I keep all my important papers in there. As for the kitchen, there is a medium-sized fridge, and I've put a water bottle, bread, and a sandwich spread in there so far. Technically we are allowed to cook, but not using gas appliances. So a couple of my roommates have got together to buy an electric cooker and use it to cook some of their meals. If I want, I suppose I can buy my share of it and use it too. Right now I'm eating all meals except breakfast outside, keeping daily food expenditure about RM 5.

Had a very interesting time today. The heads of the various departments in the business school talked to us about why we should choose one major or the other. The head of the school talked about the way they expect us to study now (evaluate, critical analysis, synthesis, application, etc.). The student association made us play a couple of games afterwards, like putting on our shoes as fast as possible and striking various poses. Then they gave us a tour of the university building and we had a photo shoot and got our Monash ID cards.

I also allocated my timetable online, from my hostel room, a few hours ago. It works like this: we choose four units to take in the first semester and are enrolled for them. Then we go to the website and choose which classes and lectures we want to attend, by clicking the appropriate buttons. I'm attaching my timetable, so you can see what classes I have. There are lots of abbreviations in it, though. Things like ETW1000 are unit codes. For example ETW1000 represents Business and Economics Statistics. Something like Lt7 means Lecture Theatre 7.
TR3, Tutorial Room 3. 28/2-21/3 means 28 Feb to 21 March.

Tomorrow I have the Diagnostic English Test at 9:30 am (1 hour long). After that I'm more or less free.

How Did He Get the Crazy Idea That He Could Win?

THAT'S what I've been asking myself over and over again. Obama knew that he's special, but how did he decide to take on the institution of Washington politics to win the Presidency? I mean, what was the point where he sat down and thought, I'll actually get into politics, become a Senator, then after a couple of years, stroll into the White House. I've been obsessing over all this, as you can probably tell.

OK, so it most probably didn't happen like that. But I wanted to know more about the start of his campaign, so I did some digging in the usual serious news sites and found an excellent seven-part piece in Newsweek. Now I'm glad I waited until after it all ended to get my in-depth analysis of the election. Newsweek says the major three candidates allowed its reporters to follow them across their campaign--of almost two years I believe--and observe all the plotting and tensions first-hand, in exchange for their story appearing after the election.

It's gripping reading. I just couldn't stop reading it. (I did skip over a couple of the middle chapters though. Didn't want to read details of McCain's comebacks of earlier this year.)

Oh, and I found an amazing set of candid, election-night photographs of the Obama camp, taken while they were all waiting with bated breath for the results to come in. Here it is. Watch it as a slideshow.

Waiting, watching and hoping. This photo is from the photostream of Barack Obama on Flickr.

The Skinny Kid With The Funny Name

FEEL-GOOD exercise: Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_presidents. Then, scroll down the list of US presidents while reading each name. Finally, read the last name. It goes something like this:

George Washington

...

Thomas Jefferson

...

(aside: Benjamin Franklin was never a president? Surprising!)

...

Abraham Lincoln

...

the Roosevelts

...

... a whole bunch of other WASPy names ...

John F. Kennedy

...

Bill Clinton, the Bushes ...

and then ... BARACK OBAMA.

If I forget everything else that's happened in the US since its founding, I know that in more than 200 years, there's never been anything like this. He's magic, there's no other way to explain it. I hope that the confidence and the faith he brings out in all of us eventually becomes a virtuous cycle, a self-fulfilling prophecy of global recovery and progress. But in the meantime, I know he's just landed himself in the biggest fight of his life. But then, this is what every US president-elect should be thrown into.

Kids and School

I NOTICE something strange every morning as I go to work. I see kids of pretty much every age steadily walk to school--braving traffic and crossing roads, stoically and resolutely, come rain or snow. Much like Canada Post deliverymen when you think about it. Alone or in groups, with siblings or friends, walking long distances at 8 am, which was early dawn to me in my university years (i.e. upto last year).

And the strangest part is, the parents are nowhere to be seen. It's like the kids have been brainwashed into thinking they actually have to go to school!

Now take me when I was a kid. You'd need wild horses to drag me out of bed, a court order to make me brush my teeth, and both the carrot and the stick to make me put on my uniform. And if the car wasn't available to drop me off? Back to bed!

Kids these days....

Alexander & W.

WARNING: this post (probably) has spoilers for both movies.

I'VE recently found myself borrowing a lot of movies from my local library. I always thought borrowing movies made much more sense than buying, but never had an easy, well-stocked, and convenient library system to use. But now I've just gotten the hang of taking out stuff from the local library system.

Anyway, a pattern has emerged. I've been taking out movies by directors who've released new movies recently. For example, after Burn After Reading came out, I took out and watched the Coen brothers' The Big Lebowsky. Will write about that later, maybe. Right now I want to talk about the titular movies.

When W. was released, it was just totally new to me because I haven't been following upcoming movie news from Hollywood. I just learn about new movies from Roger Ebert's reviews. So I thought that W. seemed like an interesting movie to watch. And as it turned out, I did get to watch it last weekend in the cinema. Definitely worth the ticket money.

Seemingly by chance, I'd watched Alexander recently as well--I'd seen it once already but just wanted to refresh my memory. Had forgotten that Stone had directed it, but after watching W. something just clicked and I found that he was behind both the movies. So now, with the context out of the way, I can explain what I found similar between the two movies and their title characters:

First off, obviously, they both focus on a single person on his journey through life and rise to power. If you put the two of them in parallel and look at it like that, it's a very startling similarity. I don't know to what extent Stone wanted to do that consciously, or just ended up doing it because it's his style, but the similarities are definitely there.

Both their fathers are leaders. Alexander's was Philip, king of Macedonia and obviously W.'s father is an ex-US president. They both have something to prove to their fathers--that they're worthy of leadership. Stone tries to show that neither can take criticism--Alexander blows up at his generals when they question his decisions to marry a foreign woman, to keep pushing on into India; and W. angrily crashes his car when Laura tries to critique one of his speeches.

Another thing I noticed, and I don't know how symbolic this is, is that both have armies of conquest in Asia. Alexander in ancient Persia, and W. pits the US into a war in modern-day Iraq and Afghanistan, not too far away. Their armies probably would have crossed each other's paths several times if they were in the same time period.

Ultimately, Alexander is both a tragic and triumphant figure in history--he brings a taste of civilisation and unity to half the known world, he wants to emulate Prometheus, who brought fire to mankind--but it all falls apart after his death. In W., President Bush and his inner circle are trying to bring democracy to the Middle East--they see themselves as lighting a fire of freedom that will spread throughout the region. So what if they really want to secure a continuous supply of oil? As Ptolemy (Anthony Hopkins) says of Alexander, 'no tyrant ever gave back so much'.

At the end of the movie, in a dream sequence, we see W. tilt back his head in expectation, trying to catch a baseball that's just been hit, the crowd going wild--but the ball never comes down, and the sky is pitch black. This tells me that we've yet to see the outcome of his tenure.

Of course, we have new information since the movie came out, and it doesn't look too good.