A Complaint

I have noticed that my fellow countrymen enjoy complaining a lot. It is very annoying.

Don't get me wrong, complaints have a definite place in an organised society. They help to highlight inadequacies which need to be rectified. As they are a form of feedback, they aid in the optimisation of various processes. Complaints are useful things.

My complaint concerns empty complaints (what my father would refer to as "coffeeshop plotting"). This is when people sit around in groups and make mass complaints about various things which regulatory or legislative bodies are allegedly responsible for, and follow up with sweeping statements as to what needs to be rectified, without consideration as to how these rectifications may be viably carried out. The implication is that someone else should take care of the matter.

You know what? This is lazy. This is irresponsible. If you complain without taking any practical action, you are just being self-indulgent. And if it is a matter which is so minor that no practical action is needed, or that no further action is needed because practical actions are already in motion, maybe you shouldn't be complaining.

We have a nice thing going on in this country. How about stepping up ourselves to correct all the things that need correcting, and appreciating the things that don't?

Blue Airport

(This was originally written in the departure lounge of Tullamarine Airport.)

Airports. Are. Boring.

I’ve been down to the liquor stores, and the cafés, and the speciality shops with the strange chocolates and cosmetics. There’s only so much shopping you can do before you never want to see another duty-free store again.

Also, bookstores. Normally I love bookstores – I spent an hour at one the other day – but the airport ones seem to carry books I would never want to read, for one reason or another. (Twilight graphic novel? Really?)

I’m sitting in the departure lounge right now, my aeroplane sitting in the sun a bare twenty metres away, me in air-conditioned, soft-carpeted comfort, and I am bored.

Think of how the aeroplane must feel.

Endings

Somehow, the end of the year feels like the end of the year. It's probably just my sentimentality talking, since here in the Southern Hemisphere summer's just starting, and if anything, summer is a middle, not a beginning or end. But the year is winding down, and I find myself running through memories - both happy and sad - and feeling a little wistful.

Today our lab had our Christmas gathering, complete with a lot of food and the customary Stealing of Presents. I can't believe it's been a year since the last one. How many people have left? How much has changed? Our gathering was in the exact same room as the last time, but this time I sat on the opposite side of the table. It's the littlest things.

Every year, my co-supervisor tells the story of the one PhD student who went home for the holidays and never came back. There's a portrait of her in the lab, on one of the high shelves. Every year we are entreated to be careful, and please come back in the new year. Every year I shiver, afraid it might be my turn, and it's not so much the fear of dying as the fear of letting everyone down.

Endings, endings, endings. My last day in the lab today, tomorrow I head off with a bag in hand and another on my back. Adventure and homecoming all at once, and did you know that home can be more than one place?

We deal. We always deal. But now, with the afternoon light shining bright over the buildings (home) and through the leaves, there's an ache in my heart.

Canon Rock

I love this song more than should be legal.

It's Midnight, That's My Excuse

I have a Singapore flag on my desk. No one else I know has one on their desk, where they can see it every day and whenever their eyes shift off the computer screen for a second.

It occurs to me that I'm patriotic to a country I'm not even a citizen of.

Is that why my blood boils when I see someone with a pink IC complain, or downright smear mud on the name of their own country? They are recognised, officially, as a citizen. And yet they act as if they would carelessly throw that away. Maybe they would!

Throw it my way, won't you? I want it.

Can't Make Up Its Mind

Melbourne weather, what the heck.

(9:00 pm and the sun hasn't set yet, what kind of country am I in?)

Social Skills

You know those moments when there's another person nearby, and you figure you ought to say something, but simply can't think of something? And then the silence goes on while both of you try to find something to fill the space with, and it just gets worse and worse with every second.

Some people have the skills to deal with this. They just pull a conversation topic from... some other dimension, or something, and just like that, the tension eases. See, I can't do that. Every time I try, I end up babbling like a complete idiot.

Social skills. What are they?

Now, cashiers have the skills. At the shop where I get a bottle of apple-blackcurrant juice every now and then, there's a girl who always notices my nail-polish. I suspect she recognises me purely by my nails. Which is somewhat curious, because it's not as if the colours in my limited collection (light blue, metallic blue, apple-green, gold and lilac) are at all outré, but there you are.

Birds & Staircases

It hadn't been a long day, but I was rather tired and looking forward to a shower as I clambered up the steps to my apartment door. If I had been paying the slightest bit of attention I would have noticed the birds on the stairs before I was almost on top of them.

My apartment is on the second floor of a squat little three-storey building, surrounded by grassy lawns, low bushes and some trees. Off to one side is a small lake, populated by several water-birds.

The water-birds are both enchanting and something of a bane. In the spring the little ducklings and moorhens tumble along like balls of fluff while their parents stalk close by and hiss at anyone who walks past. This year has been a good year for chicks, so it is a common to see them scurrying across the pathways, and one has to be sharp in order to avoid stepping in something unpleasant. The birds themselves are not overly shy, encouraged by the few people who will persist in leaving bread for them. I met one of these individuals early one morning, covertly scattering his cargo over the grass. When he spotted me he scuttled away as if the police were already after him.

The birds are almost grown up now, and largely unafraid of humans, they wander everywhere. Really, it was almost inevitable that I would find two juvenile dusky moorhens on the staircase.

Each of the birds was somewhat smaller than a chicken, so the staircase must have seen immense - so immense that they could not figure the way out of the building. A tar-like fluid, dark green and pungent, dripped from the first stair, clear evidence of their distress. They called out periodically, looking this way and that, taking haltering steps up while eyeing me.

"No, you're going the wrong way," I said. I gestured firmly towards the flight of steps I had just ascended. "Down there."

One of the birds tilted its head in the direction I was pointing, then glanced back at me.

The other one stared for a moment, then purposefully led the way up.

"Suit yourself," I shrugged, and stepped into my own apartment, closing the door firmly before they could get any ideas.

About ten minutes later I glanced out again. The "fluid" had dried out by then, and the birds were nowhere to be seen.

I went back in to call maintenance.

Whippersnappers

The Fillet-O-Fish is a main-menu item with neither "Mc" nor "burger" in its name, which strikes me as anomalous.

I was in my neighbourhood Macca's the other day (according to the average Aussie, "Mickey D's" sounds dumb and they are right), and lady at the next counter got her three young children to give their own orders to the cashier. It was all very adorable until the eldest girl - she can't have been older than fourteen - asked for a chai latte, and then her mother corrected her and ordered three chai lattes, one for each of her children.

I...children are drinking caffeinated beverages with Italian names now? In public, as opposed to stealing a sip from their father's mug while their mother was looking the other way? Was it always like this, and I simply never noticed?

Why does my supervisor's five-year-old daughter have her very own mobile phone?

MENTAL BREAKDOWNNNN!!!

11-11-11

It's full of ones!

Ninja Storm

6:00 pm. A bright sunny afternoon, a few white clouds in the sky. A light wind, nothing too severe. Temperature at about 34 degrees C.

6:15 pm. "The Bureau of Meteorology has advised us of a major storm. Please close all your windows and stay indoors."

6:40 pm. Still bright and sunny, maybe a few grey clouds on the horizon.

6:50 pm. Thick black clouds immediately overhead, resembling a mass of angry charcoal scribbles.

7:00pm. Heavy rain, strong winds and significant loss of visibility. Temperature at 16 degrees C.

Melbourne weather is sneaky. Sneaky.

10/11/11 EDIT: Check out this awesome photograph of the storm!

Recipe: Laminated Pastry Dough (and Two Uses)

This is not so much a recipe as a technique. The idea is that once you know the principle of making puff pastry, you can make many things from it. Things with French names. Muahahahaha!

Villainous cackling aside, it really isn't too hard to make puff pastry. All you do is start to make brioche, and then get sidetracked. I'll even prove it by using my brioche recipe!

(No photographs at the moment. All the pastries I made were consumed within three hours of leaving the oven.)

(Recipes adapted from multiple sources, but especially this one and also this one.)

Laminated Dough

1 sachet (7 g) active dried yeast

1/4 cup warm milk

1/5 cup caster sugar

2 4/5 cups bread flour

1/4 tsp salt

3 eggs, lightly beaten

125g butter, softened

1/4 cup plain flour

Combine yeast, milk and 1 tbs of the caster sugar in a small bowl. Leave for 5 minutes until it turns frothy and the yeast floats to the top.

In a large bowl, combine flour, salt and the remaining sugar. Make a well in the centre. Stir in the yeast mixture first, then gradually add the beaten eggs. Stir until just combined; a rather tough dough will form. Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 5 minutes, until smooth.

(This is where the sidetracking happens.)

Transfer the dough to a lightly-floured baking tray. Cover with a flour-dusted piece of cling wrap. Allow to rest in the refrigerator for 30 minutes. While waiting, beat the butter and plain flour until smooth. Keep the butter mixture at room temperature.

Turn out the chilled dough onto a floured surface and role into roughly 30 by 45 by 1 cm rectangle (1). Spread the butter mixture over two-thirds of the dough. Fold the unbuttered side to the middle, and then the remaining half of the buttered end on top, lining up ends such that the dough is folded evenly into thirds (2).

Return the dough to the refrigerator and chill for 30 to 60 minutes, until it has risen somewhat and stiffened. Roll out the dough again. This time, fold it into thirds at a 90 degree angle from the previous fold. Refrigerate for another 30 minutes. Repeat this process two more times (3). After the final fold, refrigerate the dough overnight.

The dough is now done. Time to use it!

Pain au Chocolat

Roll out the dough into a rectangle, somewhat less than 1 cm thick (don't worry about it being too thin, the dough will rise later). Using a sharp knife, cut the dough into roughly 10 by 5 cm rectangles. Place a small pile of chocolate chips or chunks near the end of each dough rectangle (leave some allowance from the dough edges, so that the chocolate doesn't spill out during baking). Carefully roll up the dough around the chocolate. Place each pastry, seam-side down, onto a baking sheet lined with baking paper, spacing them about 3 cm apart. Cover with a clean tea-towel and proof at room temperature for 1-2 hours, until the pastries double in size.

Preheat oven to 190 degrees C. Brush the top of each pastry with an egg wash (4). Bake pastries for 15-20 minutes, until golden-brown.

Pain aux Raisins

About 24 hours in advance (i.e. on the same morning that you start making the dough), mix 1/3 cup raisins, 1/3 cup water and a shot of Cognac (5). Leave to soak in the refrigerator.

Roll out the dough into a rectangle, again less than 1 cm thick. Drain the raisins well, and mix with 1/2 tsp cinnamon powder. Sprinkle the raisins evenly over the dough rectangle. Carefully roll up the dough into a log, keeping the roll tight. Using a sharp knife, slice it into 1 cm thick spirals. 

Arrange the pastries, about 3 cm apart, onto a baking tray lined with lightly-greased baking paper. Cover with a clean tea-towel and proof at room temperature for 1-2 hours, until the pastries double in size.

Preheat oven to 190 degrees C. Brush the pastries with an egg wash (4). Bake for 17-25 minutes, until golden-brown.

During baking, prepare a sugar glaze. Mix 1/4 cup sugar, 1/4 cup hot water (for dissolving) and 1/8 tsp vanilla extract. After removing the pastries from the oven, immediately brush with the sugar glaze. Allow to cool.

Additional notes:

(1) Dough tends to roll into an oval shape. To get a rectangle, first shape the dough roughly into a cuboid shape. Set the rolling pin in the middle of the dough and roll it away from you. Return it to the middle and roll it towards you. Return it to the middle, position it at an angle and roll towards a corner. Repeat for the other three corners.

(2) Most recipes liken this to folding a letter.

(3) The dough ends up having 81 layers (3 to the power of 4).

(4) To prepare the egg wash, lightly whisk 1 egg, thinned with 1 tbsp water or milk.

(5) About 35 ml. For a non-alcoholic substitute, mix 30 ml water with 2 tbsp brandy flavouring.

Zombie or Not to Be

I meant to join in the Melbourne Zombie Shuffle, but the bad weather put the kibosh on those plans. Oh well.

Dressing up as something dead is unreasonable amounts of fun. I enjoy making the dark circles under my eyes more prominent as opposed to concealing them. And decent fake blood (hot water, plain flour, instant coffee and red food colouring all mixed together) makes everything better, pervasive coffee smell notwithstanding.

Anyway! Next year. Next year.

The Fall of the Axe

There's all kinds of family. There are the ones tied to you by blood, the ones which are hard to lose. And then there's the people you drag into your circle. They're there because they want to be, and in a way that makes them even more precious.

Except they aren't really yours. And sometimes they have to leave.

Disaster has struck. It's money - always the money - and four of my impromptu family will have to leave. The quiet, staunch older cousin. The carefree aunt. The snarky, no-nonsense aunt. The beloved older sister.

I have so many good memories, of all the times they gathered around me, of the support they gave just by being. Those memories only hurt now, because I'm greedy for more of them and they can't happen.

They aren't going to be dead. They'll be out there, coming over for the odd coffee or meeting but it won't be the same. Because they'll find their own family, they'll build it again just like I built mine when I first came here, and call me selfish but that thought hurts even more, the thought that they'll come back all detached and distant and not family anymore.

It's going to be so quiet next year. There won't be replacements for them, because money. There will be gaps and nothing to fill them in, nothing but the ones left huddling together as close as we can.

When the news first fell, I ran around, trying to be comforting to both those who had to go and those who would be left. One thanked me three times for coming to talk to him; he was quietly, sadly happy to speak to me. I moved to pat another on the shoulder. He immediately got up for a hug.

One I had to leave for a while. She was staring and not listening to anything I said and not moving.

I don't know what to do except be my usual, clownish self. It's what I'm good at - distract, make them laugh for a while, so they don't think of what is happening.

The clown wants to cry too.

Lunch

Cheese, plain omelette, lettuce, tomato and roast chicken on poppyseed brioche with a mug of fruit juice on the side.

I. Can't. Move.

Monolith Action Figure Part III

Yessss....

A baby monolith! And it's mine. All mine. Muahahahaha...

(If you would like to adopt one for yourself, they can be obtained from the Moon, Olduvai Gorge, or Europa.)

Element Bending

Laughed. So. Hard.

Personally, I'd take up iron-bending, for the sake of being able to manipulate many common items and indirect power over magnetism. Carbon-bending's not so bad either, except it could get messy with organic materials. Silver, nickel and gold-bending would be useful if you wanted a steady job in the jewellery industry.

You know, I see good potential for a story here. A universe where everyone can control a few elements to the point where it's a commonplace part of everyday life. Then you'd have a few heroes who could perhaps have mastery over some of the more difficult (or short-lived) elements, and villains with specialist bending abilities... So many possibilities!

Warmth

Winter is an easier time to deal with. If you're cold, you bundle up. If you're still cold, you bundle up more. When it's hot, on the other hand, there's a limit to how much you can take off, and you have to strike a balance between removing stifling clothing and covering your skin from the harsh sun.

That said, there is something to be said about the brightness of the sun, and how it casts blocks of colour intercut with hard shadows, and how clear the sky looks, and the sparkle of leaves as they filter the brilliance of a sunset.

There is something to be said for the touch of radiating heat, intermittently caressed away by the light breeze; of the crispness of the grass and the firmness of the earth; of how different everything smells on a beautiful day.

There's something to be said for feeling hope and peace for no other reason than the sun is shining.

Why does the sun make me feel this way? I don't know. There's nothing logical about this. This burning ball of hot gas certainly has no feelings for me, would kill me if I got too close, would take my sight if I looked it in the eye. Yet when I stand, face tilted to the sky, eyes closed against the brilliance, all feels right with the world. When I throw open the windows, my room feels bigger, brighter, almost thrumming with life, as if the rays are a conduit to the world outside the building.

No, I don't understand it.

But I can love it.

The Second Sure Thing

The two sure things in life are death (ha!) and taxes. I'm dealing with the second.

Why is lodging a tax return so complicated? Doesn't the government want its money?

Why do I have to lodge a tax return for two dollars worth of taxes?!

Bee Invasion!

Holy crap, there's like 50 bees in my bathroom right now. (I'm not exaggerating - if I was, I'd say there were a million of them.) The maintenance people are in there right now, fighting them with a bottle of insect spray. Meanwhile, I'm hiding in my room. Call me a coward if you like but - bees, dammit!

Okay, bees are now gone. As in, dead. Their creepy lifeless carcasses are still littered all over the bathroom. According to maintenance, the earliest we can get them cleared is tomorrow.

I just - urgh! How am I supposed to take a shower? Those - things - are all over the place!

(Fun fact - I almost left my room window open before I left for work. If I had, my room would have been full of bees as well. Does not bear thinking about.)

Kiwi!

I cried.



(I swear that at some point I'll have a post which isn't a video link.)

G-T-C-A

BioRad did it again.



So...catchy!

Fewer or Less?

I love this Wonderella comic because of:

a) Tiberius Shark pulling a McGyver
b) Wonderella casually shrugging off her apparently inescapable bonds.
c) It totally is a sippy cup!
d) The fact that the entire comic is about grammar.

Wonderella is a great comic, by the way. You want a good comic with a realistic female heroine? Here's one. (Emphasis on "realistic".)

P.S.: For the last two years I hadn't made a single blog post in September. What the heck?

Death Pad

I laughed so hard, I think I'm going to be sick. (To get all the jokes, you will need to be familiar with Death Note.)

Books

"I love to read," confesses a friend. "My favourite thing to do right after I wake up is pick up a book and read it in bed. It's like a slow start to the day."

I merely nod - my favourite thing to do right after I wake up is stare at the ceiling and think, but I'm not one to judge. "So do you have physical books, or a Kindle?"

My friend stares at me with some degree of horror. "A real book, of course."

Now don't get me wrong. The future of books is probably the Kindle. Given the ease of storage, the savings on both paper and printing, and the increased speed at which a digital book can be acquired compared to a real one, I don't see paper books lasting too much longer. That said, I grew up with books that were a weight in my lap, which had pages which had to be grasped to be turned. Part of my notion of reading involves curling up on a sofa or a comfortable chair with my back to a well-lit window, the feel of paper between my fingers. Maybe future generations will have a different idea of what is involved in reading. I don't know.

About a week ago I ordered some books from Amazon.com, including Machine of Death (a fantastic anthology, I might talk a bit more about it at some point) and What Do You Care What Other People Think? by the absolutely brilliant Richard Feynman. When they arrived, I unpacked the books and put them away, with the exception of Feynman's book, which I intended to read immediately. I plopped myself   onto my bed, a pillow at my back, and opened the book. Within seconds I was in the world the author had woven. There were only words on the paper, but my mind supplied the details - the sights, sounds, even smells - which each new word implied. I barely noticed the turning of the pages - they hardly registered as a break in the narrative's flow.

I don't think there's anything else out there which can quite compare to the experience of reading.

Recipe: Brioche Nanterre

I made a loaf of Brioche Nanterre for my (bread-obsessed) supervisor's birthday. He was extremely pleased with it, and shared it with the rest of the lab. I was told that there was some debate as to whether I had bought or made the bread.

Uh, gee. This was only my second foray into bread-making, and the loaf was rather misshapen. Also, not being a connoisseur when it comes to bread, I couldn't tell you if it was genuinely good. Nevertheless, here is the recipe for any interested parties.

Brioche Nanterre

(Adapted from a whole bunch of different recipes)

Ingredients

1 sachet (7 g) active dried yeast

1/4 cup warm milk

1/5 cup caster sugar

2 4/5 cups bread flour

1/4 tsp salt

3 eggs, lightly beaten

125g soft butter, cut into 2 cm cubes

1 extra beaten egg, for egg wash

1 tbs poppy seeds

Combine yeast, milk and 1 tbs of the caster sugar in a small bowl. Leave for 5 minutes until it turns frothy and the yeast floats to the top. 

In a large bowl, combine flour, salt and the remaining sugar. Make a well in the centre. Stir in the yeast mixture first, then gradually add the beaten eggs. Stir until just combined; a rather tough dough will form. Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 5 minutes, until smooth.

Add 1-2 pieces of butter and work them into the dough until well combined. Continue to add butter cubes, a few at a time. The dough will gain a yellowish tinge and become stickier.

Place the dough in a bowl and set aside in a warm place (about 30-40 degrees C - I turned my oven into a makeshift incubator for this purpose) for one hour, until the dough has doubled in size. Punch down the dough and knead for about 5 minutes until smooth. Cover with a lightly-floured cling film and place in the refrigerator to rise overnight.

The next morning, grease a standard loaf pan (for a non-stick pan, you can skip the greasing). Punch down the dough again and knead it for 5-10 minutes until it warms slightly and is easier to mould. Split the dough into six pieces. Roll each piece tightly between your hands until it forms a compact ball. Arrange the balls in two rows of three at the bottom of the loaf pan. Place the pain in a warm location (about 30-40 degrees C) for about 1 hour, until the dough has risen to about 2-3 cm above the edge of the pan. Alternatively, the dough can be left to rise at room temperature, but this will take about 3-4 hours.

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C. Brush the top of the dough with the beaten egg and sprinkle with poppy seeds. Place the dough in the oven and immediately adjust the temperature to 190 degrees C. Bake for 10 minutes, then lower the temperature to 160 degrees C. Bake for another 20-35 minutes. (The timing will depend on the loaf pan you use - bread in a darker pan will bake a lot faster). The bread is done when it is a deep golden-brown on the top and sides, and sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom.

Turn out the bread onto a wire rack. Rest the loaf on its side and cool for 5 minutes, then turn it onto the other side. When hot, the bread can be wrapped in a clean tea-towel or some other breathable fabric. (Never wrap a warm loaf in plastic!) Otherwise, allow it to completely cool before packaging it.

The bread can be stored at room temperature for about two days, or in the refrigerator for a week.

The Ultimate Achievement

People, people. I have created something great.

A loaf of bread. It is delicious, and I may never buy bread ever again.

Hey, where are all of you going?

Numbers and Letters

I came across an interesting little factoid recently: the number four is the only number which has the same number of letters in its spelling as its definition. This may be true, but that sparked off another idea. How about equations?

The first I thought of was THREE TIMES FIVE. Fourteen characters without counting spaces - so close! I went higher - SEVENTY-TWO DIVIDED BY THREE. Twenty-five - again, off by one. If I didn't count the hyphen, it would be correct, but "seventy two" is so ungrammatical. My grammar sensibilities did allow "SEVENTY-TWO DIVIDE BY THREE", which had the correct number of characters.

In this vein, I found several more.

SIXTY-SIX DIVIDE BY THREE
SIXTY-NINE DIVIDE BY THREE
FIVE MULTIPLIED BY FOUR
TWENTY MINUS FIVE
TWELVE PLUS THREE
THIRTY-FOUR MINUS TWELVE
THIRTY TIMES TEN TO THE POWER OF ZERO


Okay, I admit I cheated a little with the last one.

New one! π ROUNDED TO THE TENTH PLACE TIMES TEN

A Momentous Occasion

Today, I started writing my PhD thesis.

The end has begun!

On an entirely different note, while the MRT Rap is largely cringe-worthy, the chorus is good and catchy. The bilingual lyrics just gave it a touch of Singaporean flavour to a performance which was otherwise trying too hard to imitate American rappers.

We'll take the MRT
It's where you want to be
No need for ERP
Mari kita!

Let's take the MRT
Come in and ride with me
This is equality
Mari kita!

And I did enjoy the parade. I got shivers from the theme song and the main performance, which was heartfelt and genuine. OK, the puppets were creepy. But the rest was great.

(Did you notice at the end, when President Nathan was shaking hands with some of the performers, he said  something to Gurmit Singh who promptly burst out laughing and patted the president on the back? I really want to know what he said!)

Window Message

I'm staring at the block of apartments opposite my own, or more specifically at a group of four windows.

Each window belongs to a different apartment. The top left one has the letters H, A, P, P, Y arranged out, one letter to a single A4 sheet, across its length. The window next to it bears a message which is harder to read - as it is handwritten using a thin marker on more A4 paper - but a little squinting proves that it spells "BDAY". The bottom left window, just like the one at the top left, also has a printed message, and reads "S'PORE". The last window, at the bottom right, has no writing. It simply has a large and familiar red-and-white flag stretched out across it.

Happy birthday, indeed.

Vocabulary

"So why do you suppose it's Dark of the Moon?"

"Because there's a major plot point about the..."

"No, I mean why not Dark Side of the Moon? It's like there's a word missing."

"Maybe because Dark Side of the Moon was copyrighted by Pink Floyd."

"That's ridiculous. It's just a description. Of a real thing."

"Maybe they should have called it Transformers 3: The Part of the Moon We Never See."

"...I'd watch that for the title."

Transformers 3

In my humble opinion, Dark of the Moon is the best of the three live-action Transformers films. Watch it. Watch iiiittt....

(Again, don't bother with 3D. While less of a waste as with Pirates 4, and while it is used well, it doesn't really add anything.)

Actually, I'll go into a little more detail. Why do I say it's the best? Allow me to break it down.

Stuff improved from the previous ones:

• Juvenile humour - thankfully reduced to a few cringe-worthy bits. Why is this stuff in a movie about giant robots, anyway?
• Annoying government agent - the new one is less annoying, and you get a sense of rationality behind the things she does. Overall, a stronger character.
• Annoying humans - less of them. Unfortunately, Sam is very much evident. You'd think he'd have grown up by now.
• The camera - much, much better. The shots are smoother, and pull back to show the fighting so you can actually see what is happening, as opposed to a frantic jumble of metal. The slow-motion shots are also used a lot better this time. There's one scene, with Optimus bearing down on an enemy while shooting rapidly - and then the camera slows to show you that he is actually picking out multiple targets in quick succession and with perfect accuracy, simultaneously avoiding the enemy's counter-attack  That is the perfect use for slow-motion.

Really good things:

• The plot. Very well written, with several good twists and surprises. Instead of the last movie, which was pretty much random events happening just so that the characters could move from one set piece to another, there is a greater coherency about the whole thing, as well as some nicely-placed Chekhov's guns. The bad guys really show their mettle here, pulling off an impressive, multi-layered plan which takes a while to fully reveal itself. There's still some bad physics, especially with the main villainous plot, which is (literally) straight out of the 1980's cartoon. That said, in a film about giant sentient transforming robots, perhaps disbelief should be suspended for a while here.
• Trope subversions - there are a number of these, to the point that I think the writers may have been hanging around TV Tropes a little too much. Nevertheless, they helped to keep the situations plausible. There's one part where it seems the good guy and bad guy will have a final one-on-one showdown...and then the bad guy calls for backup to take out the good guy, more good guys show up, and it turns into an all-out brawl. Which is, of course, what you would expect in a real war situation. I think it actually helps the characterisation along - the characters aren't stuck in a kid-friendly cartoon, and they know it.
• More robots! There are plenty of them in this movie, with enough screen time allocated to them to make the appearance worthwhile. Even the little comic-relief characters get some good scenes. 
• The military tactics. Instead of simply slinging around hardware, there are more instances of out-gunned forces using their limited resources in an intelligent manner to overcome a vastly stronger enemy. Again, it makes things more interesting. Overall, the final battle was a lot more entertaining, in part thanks to these.
• A cameo by the real-life Apollo 11 astronauts. Optimus remarks that he is honoured. I would be too!
• Desert Megatron. That is all.

Things which still bug me:

• There's that one slow-motion shot. You'll know it when you see it, because you'll be asking the same thing I did, and the same thing the person sitting next to me was asking. "Why?"
• Actually, all the slow-motion shots where the camera is clearly doing nothing other than admiring the female lead. Just for once, I'd like a camera which stops to admire, say, Sideswipe. Or Mirage's gorgeous Ferrari alt-mode. Or even that one Mercedes-Benz.
• Sam, stop whining and grow up already!
• There were some pacing issues - sudden slowing or diversion of the plot just when things were getting serious. It was rather jarring sometimes.
• This film is pretty brutal. As in 1986 movie brutal. 
• Physics aside, there are still some plot holes and things which don't quite make sense.

Miscellaneous

• Did anyone else note the visual and thematic similarities to Half Life 2 in parts of the movie? At times I felt like I was watching a playthrough of the game, only the aliens are giant robots.
• That would actually make a pretty awesome game.
• Optimus... hmm. He's a lot more brutal in this film, and makes some harsh decisions. You can understand where he's coming from, especially since the Decepticons are also more ruthless in this continuity. I have to say, his characterisation was well done, and he shows emotion at some times while becoming unyielding at the right moments an experienced commander could be expected to. It's just a bit hard to get a handle of what his ideals and motivations are sometimes. He's certainly been built to be a separate character from his G1 counterpart.
• This film is darker than the other two, but in a good way. I think it underlines the seriousness of the conflict between the Autobots and Decepticons.

So yes. The first move was a fun introduction, the second one was spectacular but largely forgettable, and this latest one stays with you for days afterwards. A good end to the trilogy.

Recipe: Green Tea Tofu Cake

Look, I know it sounds weird, but it is delicious and my epicurean co-supervisor agrees with me, so there. The beany smell of the tofu is not at all evident after baking. And at least this cake does not contain sauerkraut.

Green Tea Tofu Cake
(Adapted from this recipe.)

Ingredients
2 1/2 tsp Matcha green tea powder
1 cup silken tofu
1 egg
3 tbs butter, melted
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 cup plain pancake mix

Preheat oven to 180°C. Lightly grease a loaf pan.

Sift together green tea powder and pancake mix. Set aside.

Drain water from tofu and whip until smooth. Beat in egg, butter and sugar. Add half the flour mixture and mix in carefully; add the other half. Mix until well-combined.

Pour cake batter into the pan. Bake for about 30 minutes, until the top of the cake is lightly browned. Remove from oven and, while still in the pan, invert over a wire rack immediately. (I'm not joking about the "immediately". Within one minute the cake will start sinking.) Allow to cool completely before removing the pan.

How to Comfort a Guy

I don't know, how do you comfort a guy? This chap is the sort who stiffens up uncomfortably at the suggestion of a hug, so that's out. And, well, I don't want to keep asking him how he's doing because that would only remind him of the bad thing which happened to him in the first place. He is so very sad, but I don't know what I could do - either personally or by enlisting help from others - which would turn that around.  I'd like to show that I care, but not for the sake of showing that I care, if that makes sense.

Hmm, people are hard.

Recipe: Quick Baked Potatoes

Yet another recipe for lazy people. Or university students. Or lazy university students. It takes about half an hour to prepare these.

Quick Baked Potatoes

Ingredients
Potatoes (enough to fill you up)
Butter

Preheat oven to 200°C. A toaster oven can also be used.

Wash potatoes well and pat dry with paper towels. Stab the potatoes multiple times with a fork. Don't forget the stabbing step, unless you like explosive potatoes.

Place the (stabbed) potatoes onto a microwave-safe plate. Cover with a paper towel. Cook on medium-high heat for 5 minutes. Turn the potatoes over, replace the paper towel and cook for another 5 minutes.

Lightly brush the potatoes on both sides with butter (or olive oil if you want to be fancy). Wrap in aluminium foil. Transfer potatoes to a baking tray and bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes.

Carefully unwrap the potatoes (there will be a fair amount of steam, so watch out). Split potatoes open by cutting a cross on top, without cutting all the way down. Lightly mash up the centre of each potato with a fork.

Add preferred toppings and enjoy. I like to top with shredded cheese, return the potatoes to the oven until the cheese melts, and then add a spoonful of Greek yoghurt (healthier and tastier than sour cream!), fried bacon bits and chopped spring onions, with sliced tomatoes on the side. Other toppings can include poached fish, chopped hand-boiled eggs, baby spinach, chopped parsley, chilli flakes or whatever else you happen to have in the kitchen. (Chocolate sauce is not recommended unless you are making baked sweet potatoes.)

Lilac Nails

Apparently, kicking a two-decade-old habit is harder than it looks. I kept nibbling on my nails during moments of inattention. Finally, I painted them in an unappetizing shade of light purple, with a topcoat to preserve the colour layer a little longer. It seems to be working, although the oddly-coloured nails keep distracting me.

Turns out that a Coke Float made with peppermint-chocolate ice-cream is both refreshing and delicious. Which is a good discovery, since I don't actually like peppermint-chocolate flavour and was looking for a way to get rid of it.

I haven't mentioned The SCP Foundation, which is a pity since it contains some well-written examples of short horror fiction the absolute right thing to do since everything there is highly classified and certainly not made-up in any way. Since they are classified, you should never read any of the articles. Especially not at night.

Update XXIX: Ice Cream in Winter

...There's twenty-nine of these things? Seriously?

Ice cream is good in any season. Even when it's too cold. Also, double chocolate ice-cream on a warm brownie. Can you ask for more?

Three-minute thesis competitions pose an interesting challenge. The idea is to summarise one's own PhD thesis for a non-specialist audience in just three minutes, backed up by a single PowerPoint slide. This is hard enough as it is, but the competitive element means that one has to stand out against everyone else in some way.

Standing out is the key phrase. Most people approach the three-minute thesis by trying to describe as much of their data as possible in an articulate manner. Unfortunately, data on its own isn't particularly interesting, not to a lay audience to whom everyone's work would sound almost equally incomprehensible. What then has to become interesting is the speaker. The speaker must display their passion for their work as they describe it, and thus inspire the audience as well.

It isn't easy. In standard article or report-writing, the speaker has to become detached from their work. They must appear as a non-entity, objectively testing aspects of the world for the truth. However, for a talk, the speaker is as much a part of the presentation as the slides are. And for a competitive presentation, it is personality which makes one stand out.

So anyway, all this boils down to a three-minute talk I had to deliver earlier today. Designing it was an interesting experience, and people afterwards told me that they didn't expect that sort of thing from me. Hey, I can put on a show when I need to. And I did win.

It can be quite jarring when the sun shines into your room, warming it gently - but the minute you step outside, you are plunged into icy air. On the one hand, I suppose I should be grateful for my apartment's good insulation. On the other hand... As if it wasn't hard enough trying to dress according to Melbourne's temperamental weather!

Why is Bacon So Delicious?

If anyone knows the answer, please tell me.

(I would speculate that it has to do with significant glutamate, salt and fat content, combined with ease of preparation and perhaps a touch of peer influence amplified through the Internet.)

Actually, I feel a bit sick after looking at those links. The "bacon explosion" does not look appetizing at all. And normally I love ThinkGeek, but that scarf. Urgh.

I'm going to go eat some kiwifruit now. Kiwifruit is the opposite of bacon, didn't you know?

I Think I'm in Love

Marry me, Kaito! I'm willing to overlook the fact that you're not a real person!

(No, not really. Besides, even if it was possible to marry a computer program, I'd have far too much competition as far as any of the Vocaloids are concerned.)

(For those of you who had a heart attack upon reading the title - Ha ha!)

(I <3 Kaito)

Pirates, Pirates, Pirates, Pirates

Or Pirates 4. :)

Pirates of the Caribbean 4: On Stranger Tides was a great, fun movie. I think a problem with the previous two movies was that they had too much plot baggage, with Dead Man's Chest setting it up and At World's End trying to resolve it. In contrast, On Stranger Tides had that light, "first movie of the series" feel. It helps that you don't really need to have watched the previous films to enjoy this one, since it has largely new characters and re-establishes the personalities of the existing characters quite early on.

Another thing is that Jack is back to being largely in control, and one step ahead of everybody. And isn't watching Jack pull off yet another daring, showy escape one of the main attractions of the series?

So, good movie. Watch it. Just not in 3D (it's pointless).

Just No

Ever been invited to something, and agreed to go, only to realise that they were only asking out of politeness and fully expected you to refuse?

So! Add that to the list of reasons why I hate lies of any shade. The seemingly harmless ones can be the most hurtful.

Gee, where did all that time go.

A Tea Story

There are three things I have an excessive passion for, leading me to be very cautious around them, for fear that I will spend all my money on them without realising it. Markers, scarves and tea.

That I enjoy tea should not come as a surprise. My mother loved tea herself, and did her best to pass it down to her children. Although for me the love came late, when at the age of seven I realised that the only reason I disliked the taste of tea was the milk which everyone insisted on adding. Milk tends to block certain aromas, due to certain fats and proteins which make up the colloid. When I stopped adding milk to my tea, a whole range of delicate flavours suddenly appeared.

It got worse, of course, when I came to Australia and found that Twinings sold a range of different tea blends - and all in inoffensive little packs of ten. Suddenly, I was addicted. I had to try every flavour! Over a space of two years I gained new favourites. The calm Earl Grey. The intense, almost meaty Lapsang Souchong. The grape-like Darjeeling, the bright, fruity Lady Grey, the spicy Chai.

One tea which Twinings didn't carry in the little ten-packs was white tea. I also wasn't about to stay with Twinings forever, not when other brands had their own enticing blends. And thus my most recent acquisition is the White Tea with Rose Pods blend from Madame Flavour. It's a very mild tea with just a touch of rose, and is packaged in little silken infusion pods. Perhaps the best part, however, are the little personal notes on the side of the box, and the letter from Madame Flavour herself within the box. You feel that you're buying tea from a person, as opposed to a faceless factory. It helps that the tea really is very good.

The other tea I want to try is blooming tea. It would be interesting to learn how to make the tea balls. And what a lovely gift it would make.

That's Certainly What I Said

A computer which can accurately use innuendo may not sound productive at first, and spending time to develop the necessary software seems like a waste of resources...until you realise that this actually furthers our understanding of how humour works. The essential ingredients which make a joke funny are difficult to distill, and often we may laugh without understanding why. Programming a computer to be able to generate a funny statement in 22 out of 28 attempts is really quite impressive. This sort of research may someday lead to  improved artificial intelligence, and a better understanding of communication.

Also, I suspect the focus on this particular class of humour was not because it was juvenile, but because it was easier for a computer to replicate. Sophisticated humour is harder to spin, even for a human.

In other news, my plant is doing well.

Geek Graffiti

Dear Esther is a gripping Half Life 2 mod which is really more akin to a film which you can walk through. If you don't have Half Life 2, I recommend, at the very least, watching a playthrough video on Youtube. It takes away some of the subtle horror when watching someone else play it, but you do get a feel of the atmosphere.

What I'm really here to talk about, however, is the cave graffiti. Specifically, the one that appears at 7:52 on this video, and which is visible at multiple areas.

It is probably a bad thing that I immediately recognised it as this image of a Helicobacter pylori cell.

Yup, I'm doomed.

Recipe: Honey Joys

I occasionally toy with writing a book entitled "Cooking for Lazy People". Here is a potential entry in the desserts section.

(No photograph, thanks to an uncooperative Bluetooth connection.)

Honey Joys
Recipe adapted from various sources

Ingredients
3 tbs honey
2 tbs butter
2 tbs sugar
2 cups cornflakes
1/2 cup sliced almonds

Preheat oven to 170 degrees C. Line a cupcake pan with paper cases.

In a large bowl, carefully mix almonds and cornflakes. Set aside.

Place honey, butter and sugar in a large saucepan. Heat at medium setting, stirring often, until boiling. Remove from stove.

Add cornflake mixture. Stir gently until cornflake mixture is evenly coated.

Spoon into individual cupcake cases. Bake for 7-10 minutes until lightly browned. Allow to cool completely. Makes about 25 confections.

Easy Going

I don't worry as much as I used to. That's good, I suppose?

Things fall into place on their own.

Patrons of Truth

"You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right."

- xkcd

Scientific research is something of an idealistic profession. You're constantly testing your own observations of the reality around you, and you're always aware that you may have to re-evaluate your current explanation for any phenomena you may encounter. That means having an open mind, and while you must always be prepared to defend your own theories, you also have to be able to accept and account for conflicting observations from another person. In essence, you are never trying to prove yourself right, but rather trying to find out what the truth is, no matter how it may invert your beliefs.

Working in science as a job complicates things. Here, you are expected to produce results. Getting results does not necessarily mean accurately predicting the outcome of an experiment before doing it; it can also mean getting an unexpected result and then figuring out what it means, and then doing a second experiment to show that the revised theory is plausible. However, the whole figuring-out process is long and painful, taking shots in the dark, as it were, so most of us would like to be correct from the beginning.

That creates a lot of pressure to "get things to work." You have a theory that something should do something you expect, and so you spend months proving that it does, even while all your experiments methodically keep failing. And it is upsetting, because you have ownership over that theory - the need for it to be right, for you to prove it - although, technically, you should have no ownership. You are supposed to be impartially seeking the truth, and therefore should be prepared to discard unsupported theories.

But it is hard to be impartial when you are working for a salary, or when you are a student on a time-limit, and when you urgently need data to publish.

It is a tough thing to balance out. And once you've discovered something important, and have been acknowledged for it, it is even harder to accept conflicting evidence which may appear later. But you have to. As a scientist, you agree that seeking the reality of the truth matters more than receiving adulation over a lie.

If you don't, you aren't a scientist. You're an attention-seeker.

Green Jelly Beans Linked to Acne!

This comic made me laugh out loud.

And then the alt-text killed me.

Thank you, xkcd. You have made my day.

Love

I give it readily. I have trouble receiving it.

If I could choose my faults, this would not be one of them.

Shark Smile

I just placed number 40 on the leaderboard for Sydney Shark (total score: 4,285,663). I also scored new records in killing/destroying every type of target except, oddly enough, scuba divers. Which, uh, probably means that I have a lot of stress which needs to be pummeled out.

This has not been a good day. There is an experimental result I badly need to verify, one which I have been working towards for a year. We have a big meeting on Monday, and I would have liked to have had the result ready by then. I was even prepared to work through as much of the weekend as was necessary. Unfortunately, the particular tool I needed, which should have arrived yesterday, is still nowhere to be seen.

I'm so close, yet miles away from my target. I've worked so hard for this. And yet it's been so hard to check if what I've created is what I need. Everything which could have gone wrong did go wrong. It feels as if the world is twisting whatever it can to ensure I don't succeed.

It feels as if everyone I'm depending on is deliberately setting out to infuriate me.

I left early today. My expressions broadcast my emotions readily, and I was upset after finding out precisely why the delivery had been delayed, so I thought it best to take myself away from everyone else. As I was passing out the door, my co-supervisor was walking in. I thought I smiled as I bade him farewell. I can't have done too good a job of it, given how he jumped out of my path so quickly he almost fell over.

What a nice day to make fools of others.

The Difficulty Factor

There's a reason a PhD is so highly valued. Well, it is a stepping stone to getting a better job, but the reason it can do that is because it is generally acknowledged that getting a post-doctoral degree is hard work. In Singapore you're more or less expected to aim for getting one straight after Masters, but in Australia they warn you off if they feel you are not ready. Many students choose to work a little or even travel around the world before they commence a PhD. It is considered a difficult, time-consuming thing to achieve.

What they don't tell you is why.

Before I started, I thought it was the technical difficulty. You are, after all, expected to produce results of a certain quality. For some courses you might publish papers which will make up chapters in your thesis, and that requires passing peer review from people who have been in the business longer than you have. There is also the time-limit, for scholarships are only offered for a certain period of time and continuing a PhD without funding is a difficult task.

However, this isn't really why a PhD is difficult to achieve. Skills can be learned with relative ease. After you figure out how to produce high-quality results, it's little trouble to continue doing so. And not everyone has to publish papers - it is possible to write a thesis based entirely on negative results and earn a pass.

The real difficulty comes from within. From you.

Why doesn't anyone warn you about the mental anguish? It is always made obvious that you yourself are responsible for your project, but it is not obvious that it translates to every mistake being on your own head. Your supervisors check in from time to time, but most of the time you are under your own power. The responsibility for completing a sufficient amount of work - the precise amount which constitutes "sufficient" is never made clear - is up to you, as is the method to achieving it. I can't define how stressful this is. It is not possible for someone who hasn't been there to understand.

I personally have become more emotional, more fragile since taking up this project. Minor details catch my eye, so paranoid am I. Failures feel like big losses, victories ignored because from experience, they are merely the prelude to even bigger disappointments. Sleep and food become expendable luxuries. Every bit of progress comes at the end of a huge fight. It feels as if I have to keep running to stay in the same place, trapped, unable to escape and unable to stop. I want to quit, so badly, except there's nowhere else to go.

And apparently, feeling this way is normal for a PhD student.

A doctorate is awarded to people who are apparently resistant to mental torture.

The Problem With Scientists

Yes.

Counselling

It sucks.

I hate telling people my secrets.

I'm aware of the irony, thank you.

I Long for One Hour Ago

No, let's talk a bit more. I need to talk to someone, and the emptiness of the internet will do.

So. I get upset for relatively dumb reasons sometimes. Wasting time appears to be one of them. Impatience is my main flaw, so inefficient use of time bothers me greatly. Inefficient use of time includes:

• Being late for a meeting
• Talking in front of me and completely ignoring me, after inviting me to come and discuss an important matter with them
• After already delaying the meeting on account of being late
• Even though I had already waited an extra fifteen minutes for them to discuss other matters
• Even though they called me in on the understanding that they were finished and ready to talk to me
• Trying to discuss why I was upset during a meeting intended to be about work
• After I repeatedly declined to discuss the matter
• After I repeatedly attempted to steer the discussion towards relevant matters
• Even though I had other things to do and wanted to wrap up the meeting quickly

And the worst thing? All of the considerations above were completely selfish on my part. I can see why I was upset, and I can't justify a single reason. These people are important to me. They weren't late on purpose, they had important things to do. The things they were talking about were important to them. Taking my feelings into consideration is part of their job. A better version of me would have understood. A better version of me would have accommodated them as they have accommodated me.

They should be nasty to me from now on. I deserve it. I don't even know how I will face them again, after what I said.

Anger is possibly the worst emotion.

Fear leads to anger. What have I been afraid of my whole life?

Being worthless, that's what. Hence the vendetta against wasting time. I'm afraid that if I don't fill every moment productively, people will quickly realise that I'm useless. I'm afraid if I make too many mistakes, I'll be abandoned by everyone who knows me. I'm afraid that if I don't keep pushing, the future won't happen. I'm afraid that if I don't push, and the future happens anyway, that means my presence was superfluous.

Such a dumb notion. My presence is superfluous. We all die in the end, caught in the endless cycle of birth and death, a cycle which is older than our species by several million years. The whole point of being human is finding meaning in spite of the pointlessness of the whole thing.

I'm looking for meaning in the wrong places. I only wish I knew where I should be looking.

I think that will be all. It was nice talking to you, internet.

Song Running Through My Head

A.k.a. "posting a song which resonates with my current situation" a.k.a. "taking a leaf out of Mariem's book".



(Except it's less of "yesterday" and more like "an hour ago".)
(Sometimes I really, really hate myself. Why can't I just shut up?)

Things

Creative post title here.

I've decided to celebrate Pi Day on the day corresponding to the way we write dates here (22/7). So, pie in July and stuff. Hopefully I'll make a successful one this year.

On the other hand, I tried making macarons. Jeez, those things are finicky! One wrong step and they don't rise, or the "foot" doesn't form, or they crack. And because they're mostly sugar and egg white, they collapse in humidity very easily. It's understandable that they're so expensive, but I am determined to learn to make them.

I'm doing a little demonstrating (i.e. tutoring, but with LABS) for a while, mostly for experience than for wages. I find it's a lot easier with cooperative students. However, the disconnection between teaching students and training them to score well on quizzes, continues to bother me.

I've realised that I don't like being lied to in order to "make me feel better." It's always so much worse later on when the lie is discovered.

I haven't written any fictional works in a while. I suppose I should try again sometime. I used to enjoy it.

And an Anniversary

Also, I'm a bit late with this, but my PhD anniversary passed a couple of days ago. I spent it, among other things, running 72 PCR samples which promptly failed.

How very apt.

I like the assonance of this post title. [/random]

Facebook II

I think I know the attraction behind Facebook. It's sorta like having a blog, except with an actual, guaranteed audience (unless you have no friends). I think I'm starting to understand the Facebook culture, although it's still quite confusing to me.

Meh. I prefer talking to myself (and the small audience here) anyhow. Call me old-fashioned, and perhaps a little overwhelmed about losing control over the things people find out about me. I like having my secrets.

Temper, Temper

I have a temper. A bad one. It gets in the way of my personal life far too often.

Oh, I have tried to control it, many times. The problem is that typically suggested methods, such as counting to ten, require one to have the presence of mind to stop and count to ten. My fuse burns out too many fractions of a second too early before I can gather that presence of mind. Currently I simply try to avoid getting angry in the first place, but some things are simply too infuriating.

Someday I'm going to get into real trouble, I just know it.

Nails

I have come to the sad realisation that I have no idea how to cut my fingernails with nail-clippers or scissors.. This realisation arose some days after I resolved to end my two decade-old habit of biting my nails.

I filed them down instead, using the file on the back of my nail-clippers which I ironically have been using as a keychain for some time.

My fingers feel funny with long nails. Like there's something stuck to them.

Wow, I really am quite pathetic.

Singles' Grumbling Day

I forgot about it. I also forgot about Discount Chocolate Day.

I did, however, find a recipe for chocolate-dipped fudge brownies. Yes. This is a thing which must be made, and subsequently eaten.

Homestuck is rocking so hard on two fronts. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly reference rocks almost as much as that sweet Bro versus Jack image which is right now lending some of its awesome to my desktop. Oh, and the music. THE MUSIC. I can't stop listening to it!

So anyway. Why did they take Pattern Fills out of PowerPoint 2007? And when they put it back in PowerPoint 2010, why did they take away the ability to adjust their transparency?
It's going to take a while to get used to this program.

Stove Rules

I have a few rules for dealing with the kitchen stove, to make sure that I never set the house on fire, burn my housemates, etc. The rules are as follows:

1. If leaving the house for any reason and for any expected duration, both stove and oven must be turned off. No exceptions.
2. When cooking anything on the stove, I must remain in the kitchen at all times. This applies even if the power is off, as the stove is electric and retains heat for some time.
3. Boiling milk must be watched with especial caution.
4. If baking something in the oven, I must set a timer if I want to leave the kitchen. The oven light should also be turned on as a warning to others that it is hot. Leaving the house is not permitted.
5. The heat on the stove should be set to the minimal level required (generally not more than medium heat). 

I've found that, with these personal rules in place, I've never had anything worse than the pot of spaghetti spilling over and hissing, and since I was always within earshot I could take care of it immediately.

What brought this on? Well, this morning, I found a kettle on the stove, with the heat up. The transparent lid of the kettle had no condensation; suspicious, I lifted the lid to check.

Bone dry.

This is, in fact, how many kitchen fires happen. The presence of water keeps the temperature of the pot at 100 degrees C, since at any higher temperature the water undergoes a change of state to steam, dissipating the latent heat. Once the water is all gone, the pot is able to reach a higher temperature, until some part of it, or even some leftover food residue, reaches its ignition temperature. 

Of course, it might not ignite at all. It might just sit there for hours getting hotter and hotter, until someone decides to touch the handle. Either way, it isn't safe.

I turned off the stove, of course, and warned my housemate as to what happened. She was very apologetic, and explained that she is quite forgetful over such matters. I left it at that.

This afternoon, I went to the kitchen and found the same kettle, steaming away unattended on the stove. There was at least some water inside, but it was only up to an inch in depth and rapidly diminishing. It was quite clear that this was what had happened the first time, only I caught it at an earlier stage.

This isn't the worst I've seen. A few years back, I was living with some different housemates, all boys. Sometimes I'd wake up early in the morning and find a very warm pot on the stove, empty and clearly left there from the previous night, the temperature control turned up to the highest heat level.

Do these people... not have any sense of safety? Have they done this a million times without consequence? Does the prospect of a fiery demise simply not bother them? Does the prospect of massive property damage and killing goodness-knows-how-many-others living in nearby apartments simply not bother them?

There was an article recently on BBC News, about car-manufacturing companies which were confident that they would be able to built a completely accident-proof vehicle someday. When I saw that article - when I had only gotten as far as the title - I laughed.

Nothing will be completely safe so long as irresponsibility exists in this world.

Blackberries

Let me take a moment to mention how enthralled I am with the latest Google Doodles.

This post is titled "Blackberries" because that was what I was eating just now. I've never had fresh ones before, but Coles was offering two punnets for $4, which was far too good an offer to pass up. And so I came face-to-face with my first real blackberry.

These things are weird. At first I thought they were like grapes, little clusters of smaller fruit gathered up in a bundle, but it quickly became apparent that they have something different going on. The little spheres, or "drupelets", do not hang on a stem independently, but are rather more like little protrusions attached to a central mass. Each drupelet contains a small seed, so the structure is somewhat similar to a strawberry, if strawberries had fleshy lobes cushioning each seed. (Both blackberries and strawberries are classified as aggregate fruits.) The central mass is firmer than the surrounding drupelets, and a little sweeter.

It's rather intriguing to note that blackberries have a distinct flavour - I doubt it would be possible to substitute them in a recipe, not even with the closely-related raspberries. All of which means I'll have to try out some blackberry-based recipes while I'm still in a country which grows them.

Hmm... Blackberry pie for Pi Day, perhaps?

I Have Decided

When I grow up, I want to be an internaut!

P.S.: Sick sick sick sick

Should farting in public be banned?

So this is apparently an issue now.

If that law does get passed, it will probably warrant an Ig Nobel prize.

Switch

I read somewhere (Reader's Digest?) that the body becomes more alert for a period in the afternoon. So even  if you didn't have enough sleep the previous night, or have done something tiring, you would feel awake and active at around 3-4 pm. Of course, once the active period ends, you go back to being exhausted.

I don't know if this is true, but what I do know is that at around 6 pm today, something seemed to click off and I almost collapsed in exhaustion. Not quite sure how I managed to drag Magellan and myself home.

Now I have to switch on my hardworking mode and get my report done. The switch appears to be stuck.

Melbourne from a 737

Qantas. Why? Your planes tend towards old, but are still functional. Your food is good. Your stewardesses - okay, standards are falling everywhere, but you still have a few good ones working for you. Your flights are relatively cheap. If you were more organised, you would overtake Singapore Airlines easily!

I had a harrowing time getting to Australia. Two big traffic jams blocking both routes to Changi Airport, a long delay at check-in because Qantas forgot to deduct a fee, poor signage leading to us almost losing our luggage, and a flu plaguing me throughout the whole thing. You know how your ears pop as the aeroplane lands? Did you know that the pain is twenty times worse if you have viscous fluids blocking your sinuses? True facts!

Anyway I'm here, more or less. I suppose it's too much to expect these things to be easy.

Here, have a Bad Romance parody, Bad Project. It's the best lab-related one I know of. This is exactly what it's like doing a science-related PhD (having a good project is slightly better). It's subtle, but "Lady Science"'s costumes are made from common lab disposables.

The title of this post references a song. Internet cookie if you can identify it.

Going Somewhere

Scene: Kitchen, yesterday.

MOTHER: Are you going anywhere tomorrow?
ME: Yes, to Australia.
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Unbreakable Threads

I'm going back to Australia tomorrow. Already I feel the excitement, of meeting my colleagues again, of returning to my familiar bench with its pipettes and racks, of telling my favourite supervisor about all the things I got up to, of sitting down with my other favourite supervisor as we trim my progress report into something amazing (or at least dry and technical, given his preferred writing style). It's all very cruel considering I'm already at home.

Here's the thing. Home is where you spend most of your time while happy. By that definition, my lab at Monash is currently home. But I can feel Singapore itching, straining to become home again. There's that roti prata stall at ION Orchard that I love, the easy feel of the EZ-Link system (if myki was the system introduced in Singapore, it would already have several horrendous nicknames highlighting its inadequacy), the trees everywhere, the lower cost of pretty much everything...and twenty years of history that I can't ignore. This will be my home again someday, once I stop leaving. I can feel it.

Until then, I have to pull away, keep it at arm's length (or ocean's length, as the case may be). This will be home, but it can't be, yet, otherwise I won't survive being away from it for the better part of a year. I have to accept there as home, for as long as I have to be there.

I have to keep pretending to myself that there's someplace else I'd rather be. The pretense is so good that I readily believe it.

But I will come home, for good, someday.

And then I will pretend that my bench and my supervisors and all the things that belong to me and which I belong to there mean nothing to me.

Review: Google Chrome

This is the best browser ever. <3
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Update XXVIII: Food@Hawker Centre

It's surprising, the sort of things you can actually buy. Browsing a FairPrice Xpress outlet yielded bonito flakes (those delicious shavings used to garnish takoyaki and various other Japanese dishes), and starch balls which are most commonly found in bubble tea. Now that I think about it, takoyaki and bubble tea stall owners obviously get their ingredients from somewhere, but the general unavailability of these food preparations in the average grocery store makes them seem a little, well, magical.

And people wonder that while I subscribe to the traditionally feminine pursuit of shopping, my favoured retail therapy grounds are generally supermarkets. (I also like discount stores - there are always the strangest things.)

For most of the time I was home today (I also spent some time outside in the company of friends - even loners get lonely), I was at the center of a web, communication passing to me and from me and occasionally through me. I think I can honestly say that I have never sent so many emails in a single day. The heads of my lab would laugh, this must be business of usual for them, but for an underling like myself, such activity is rare. Usually I have, at most, two emails which require a response. Taking the position of some sort of operator is a strange, powerful feeling.

It is for this reason that I think I would enjoy being a secretary.

Lest I forget again, there is a very firm reason that I limit my consumption of ice kachang. Consuming the equivalent of a block of ice leaves one as equally cold as a person who just consumed a block of ice. Very, very cold. Air-conditioned food courts only make things worse.

On the subject of food courts, it occurs to me how superior they can be to restaurants. Cheaper, a wider variety of cuisines to choose from, and many of the newer ones are almost on par with a restaurant anyway. Take the Food Opera@ION Orchard (the at-sign modernhipcool thing is horrible why is it everywhere now). Excellent roti prata, even better fish curry, best Iced Milo made by a drinks stall, extremely reasonable price you'd have to go to Serangoon Road to match, elegant wooden furniture and decorative elements on the walls such that you can hardly believe you're eating in what amounts to a hawker centre. Robinsons doesn't give nearly as nice carrier bags as the ones they place your take-out in. And many of the newer shopping malls have comparable standards.

313@Somerset (the at-sign again why) also has a waitress who goes around in a Segway. Yes, around the food court. No, I don't know what she does that requires riding a Segway. Hopefully not delivery of drinks.

To change the subject completely, I have a new computer. My new personal assistant is a ThinkPad Edge, in sleek silver and glossy red. He's a last-season's Lenovo, but I have every confidence that he will handle the tasks I assign him, especially now that I engage in less gaming than I used to. He weighs a very portable 1.6 kg. His name is Magellan.

All I need is that (expensive!) laptop support I saw at IKEA, and my computing life will be complete.

This post has no point. But with this much verbosity, who needs Twitter?

Facebook

I have been persuaded to obtain an account. People who know me, you may proceed to look for me, because I'm having trouble finding you.

I feel awkwardly like one of these chickens.

EDIT: Thanks, everyone!
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Confirmation

... of Candidature. I just got an email telling me who my panel members are, and asking me to arrange a time to have a meeting with them, to decide if I'm fit to continue as a PhD student. Oral presentations and fierce questioning will be involved.

So my father just read in the newspaper that students tend to do better in exams if they've taken 10 minutes beforehand to write down all their worries on paper. Having articulated their concerns, they either realise how frivolous they are, or are able to prepare themselves to meet the challenge head-on. As the confirmation of candidature is a sort of exam for me, I'll have to try this out.

Of course I'm trying to distract myself from the terror of preparing for this thing. What do you think?

It doesn't help that my main supervisor, who will inevitably be on the panel, has THAT FACE. The one which convinces you that he doesn't approve of a word you are saying. He claims that he's just thinking and his face automatically does that without his knowledge, but given that he regularly tells fairly bad presenters that they've done a good job, I don't know if I should believe him.

What the heck. This isn't going to happen anytime soon. Time for thoughts of chicken rice and roti prata!

Back Again

I've returned for a short holiday to my home country. Which is an inherently wrong statement, but what can you do. My handphone is in my mother's possession and generally switched off, but I can be reached by email or home phone.

I look forward to seeing all of you.

Writer's Block

Best published journal article ever.

I think this even tops the article describing how to make an origami model of a DNA strand. There used to be all sorts of wonderful articles by people who not only worked in science, but also played in it.
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Payment or Else

I received a rather threatening invoice this afternoon informing me, in 26-point red Arial Black lettering, that this was my "final notice" to pay for my impromptu ambulance ride and that "payment of this outstanding amount" was "required immediately". Failure to do so, the sheet of paper informed me, would result in my "debt" being forwarded to their "collection agent" for "action". By the tone of the notice, there could be no doubt that "collection agent" was an euphemism for "hired mercenary" and that "action" would involve some manner of explosive.

This did not stop me from being pissed off that this so-called final notice was in fact the first I had heard of the matter.

I suppose I will yet again have to deal with other people's messes. Sometimes I hate my life with a passion that borders on tangible.

On a Different Note...

Casu marzu is a type of cheese, produced mostly in Sardinia, which contains live maggots.

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Happy New Year, everyone!
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