Stop tinkering

Yesterday, as with every other day, I was welcomed home by a cacophony of barking, slobbering and the pitter-patter of paws on wood. For some reason, the dog seems to think I enjoy going deaf. Or having my ankles chewed off. The noise is usually put to an abrupt halt when the cat gives her a good swat on the nose. And after the swatting last night, I picked the hound up, looked into her doleful eyes and said, “You… you are a proud descendant of the grey wolf. So why haven’t you torn the feline’s head off yet?”

It’s really the fault of us humans, though. 100,000 years ago, in a cave somewhere, someone toted the world’s first handbag and decided “Oh, how charming. Now all I need is a dog that’ll fit into this.” And thus, we pesky human beings, with our penchant for selective breeding, have reduced the majestic wolf into a sock-chewing bundle of fur.

At least we’ve left cats more or less as they were. My cat habitually leaves cockroach and gecko bits outside my door as his contribution to the family’s well-being. And then watches as I curse and throw it all down the chute. But you get the idea. Cats can hunt. You try asking a Maltese to catch its own dinner. You’d be lucky if dinner didn’t eat it first.

And we’ve gone even further with all this genetic tinkering. Already, we’ve made chickens that get so heavy so fast their legs break under all the weight. In cattle farming, there aren’t just ways to make cows gain more weight. We can even get them to fart less. And now, scientists are looking at growing meat sans the animal. They reckon that, in a few years, they’ll be able to grow meat in meat sheets and then use the stuff to produce ground meat products. Give them a bit more time and we’ll be plucking steaks from branches. All very smart but not very tasty, I’m afraid. The thought of lamb chops grown out of a Petri dish is about as tempting as having a romp with a blow-up doll.

And therein lies the problem. Things just aren’t natural anymore. I like cats in general because there’s something beautifully primal about the way they’re built. I’d like any large dog for much the same reason – they still retain some semblance of wolf-ness which I appreciate. But toy dogs, no matter how many bags you can stuff them in, are just an anomaly. Even if they’re so darn cute.

The God Delusion

The latest from Richard Dawkins, this book is a must read.

More information here and here.

Seven months wasted

A colleague mentioned this afternoon that he was at the Singapore Idol Final last night at the Indoor Stadium to which I remarked “Oh, I didn’t know you were a teenage girl.” Needless to say, this didn’t go down well and I watched helplessly as another bridge went up in flames.

It’s true, however, that your average Singapore Idol fanatic is female, between 12 and 17 years of age and in possession of a voice so shrill that they aren’t allowed anywhere near wine glasses. Then again, the fans of almost everything are shrill teenage girls. To make dog killing a hit with them, all you need to do is film a pooch being butchered and set it to music.

But for all their screaming and placard holding, I’m sure that even they know that this whole Singapore Idol thing is a waste of time. There really isn’t any market for English music here especially when it’s trite, commercial rubbish.

Sure, the winner gets his 15 minutes of fame, cuts his first album, gets forced to sing in all those roadshows, endures even more screaming fans and then what? To give you a clue, my boss’s suggested method of picking the winner is simply to see who looks best holding a Big Gulp. Because that’s all we’ve seen the previous winner do.

And why does 7-Eleven bother to advertise anyway? I don’t go there cos “It’s a store and more”. I certainly don’t go there cos some guy who can’t sing is holding a Big Gulp and smiling. I go there because it’s 3am and, dammit, I need a beer.

The bottom line is this – it doesn’t matter who all these screaming people vote as Singapore Idol. By this time next year, they’ll all be screaming for someone else.

To hell with the books. I'm getting a smartphone.

It’s official. My mother is a geek. “But that’s impossible” you might say. Well, does your mother own a Dopod? And a Dopod 900 at that. Windows Mobile 5, QWERTY keyboard, WiFi connectivity and I can’t remember what the hell else that phone contains. Suddenly, my crummy old Nokia 7250, which I’ve been looking at with growing distaste the last couple of months, looks even older and crummier. Its features include the call function which I suppose is pretty modern if you look at it from the perspective of an anthropologist. What’s more, instead of surfing porn on-the-go, I can work my hands in much healthier ways with wholesome family games such as Bounce and Triple Pop. Or else I could choose to do vigorous arithmetic with the calculator function.

Of course, watching my mother use her new device, its drawbacks have become obvious. For one, it is far too big for any of her hands or even any of her handbags. I also suspect that the only way for anyone to use it successfully as a phone would be to have a face as big as mine. And it’s far too heavy as well. Weighing in at 285g, she might need to transport it around in a trolley.

Still, the undeniable truth is that my mother - a middle-aged woman who refuses to learn how to use an oven and who once ingeniously plugged a USB cable into a parallel port - is now more gadget-y than me. To hell with the books then. I’m getting a smartphone.

This morning on the train, a girl wearing the exact same Fabrick T-shirt I had on walked in and stood beside me. It would’ve been the perfect opportunity for romance had I not thought “Man, that’s a nice T on a not so nice girl” and looked away.

Let's all be suits

Yesterday, one of my colleagues suggested that today be “Client Servicing Day” which means that all the creatives had to come dressed like suits. My initial plan was to disregard this waste of time but I was told not to “outcast myself” and further warned in the morning via SMS (by my Creative Director, no less) that “If you aren’t dressed up, be prepared for consequences. Heh heh heh.” Hence, I am now glaring at my laptop decked in a black shirt, jeans and sneakers that don’t match.

I think shirts are one of the worst things mankind has ever come up with (along with the enema). Firstly, there are way too many buttons on the damn things. Invariably, I get all the way to the bottom and then realise that I’ve missed one out which means I have to unbutton and button everything only to realise once again that I’ve missed one out. Repeat ad nauseam. Secondly, the collar grates against my neck incessantly which leads to “Redneck Syndrome”. This explains the fact that every time I put on a shirt, I get the hots for my cousin. Lastly, shirts are incapable of absorbing sweat. And in the wonderfully humid-as-the-inside-of-a-pair-of-diapers weather we have here, that is a no-no because sweat dribbling down your back and into your nether regions is neither titillating nor hygienic.

Still, my colleagues have been very enthusiastic about the whole thing. The dude who made the foul suggestion came dressed in a full shirt, pants, tie outfit which was very impressive. This was compounded by the fact that he usually wears just a thin T-shirt, floppy jeans and slippers. We even took pictures. I won’t post them here because some of them show me with my finger in my mouth. Not good for reputation but, hey, they wanted a funny pose.

NUS Revisited

Pat and I went down to NUS for a visit on Friday. Having not been back in almost three years, this was a momentous occasion that I wanted to blog about. Except that I’d already done so. Here.

Steve Irwin (1962 – 2006)

Earlier this afternoon, Steve Irwin was killed in a freak accident while filming. He was 44.

I remember that when I first saw Steve Irwin on TV, I found him comical almost to the point of being irritating. He had the heaviest Aussie accent I’d ever heard and it didn’t help that he had to go “Crikey” every now and then. But then I saw him tackle crocodiles, snakes, spiders and lions – basically any animal that you and I would do well to steer clear of – and I found myself hooked because every time I turned on the TV, I’d be wondering “Crikey, what’s he gonna do now?”

Adding to the entertainment was the fact that, for a crocodile hunter, Steve Irwin wasn’t agile by any stretch of the imagination. I remember an episode where he jumped on top of a croc only to end up looking more like a hapless koala perched on an angry tree with teeth and claws than a trained wildlife expert. And the time he went thrashing after a snake in the marshlands and succeeded only in single-handedly displacing the entire river. But what Steve Irwin lacked in bodily grace, he more than made up for with his enthusiasm. There was the trademark bear stance he adopted when circling snarling crocs, that glint in his eye that the camera would catch ever so often and, of course, the way he could rattle off obscure facts about each and every animal he encountered while simultaneously keeping out of harm’s way.

In Steve Irwin, the world had its Crocodile Hunter and it’s almost impossible to believe that such a torrent of passion and zeal could be so irrevocably silenced. Perhaps that’s why I and countless others are so saddened by his passing. In his own way, he’d touched us all.

So here’s to you, Steve. Who’d have thought that catching crocodiles could mean so much?

Crocs

Eric Cantona once said “When seagulls follow the trawler, it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea.” The universal reaction to this was “WTF?” which is just about how I feel about Crocs.

If you haven’t noticed, people of all ages have been strolling around our shopping malls bedecked in these… well… foot-things. It’s as if ugly has become the new black. Everywhere, left feet are laughing at right feet and vice versa until they pass a shoe mirror whereupon they both start sweating despite the “breathing” quality of the Crocs they’re in.

And to make things worse, Crocs come in almost every colour. This would normally be a good thing if not for the unfortunate fact that no Croc-wearer in the world has any sense of colour coordination whatsoever. I’ve seen people dressed in black shirts, black pants and oh-my-god-are-those-yellow-Crocs. I once tried to help someone like that cross a street because I assumed he was blind.

And then there are those who like red Crocs. Frankly, they might as well be walking around in a pair of placentas because they rank almost the same on the scale of all things distasteful. Sure, red is a hot colour and on a pair of stilettos, it says “I’m so passionate, I could kill.” All it says on a pair of Crocs, however, is “I’ve got the fashion sense of Elton John. And I would like some hot gay sex.”