Stuff that’ll make any guy merry

My guy friends complain that the presents they have to get for girls are expensive, what with all the gems and jewellery and all that. But hey, some of these toys cost a pretty penny. That Beautiful Game Foosball Table which has been making the rounds of design websites costs over $55,700. But there are things you can get for $100 or less, and one of them is a blowtorch. (Do I hear a “Woah”?) Doesn’t get more “guy” than that.

I guess whether it’s an indulgence or something practical, there are good gifts to be found whatever your budget is. It all comes down to what floats your Trak T-1600.

Continue drooling over at Wired’s full 100 Wish List.

“See you tomorrow…”

One of my friends is renovating her new flat. A task that has enough complications on its own, and every day she comes by with new stories about home planning, many of which involve her better half, who’s a really sweet guy but who makes very “guy” requests. (Even the guy among us agrees to.) Things like breaking a second door so that the master bedroom can open directly into the kitchen, where bear in mind, a lot of Asian, especially Chinese, cooking would take place, thus saving the short walk to the kitchen past the living room. They just sound like things you’d find in Chandler and Joey’s apartment.

Anyway, her stories aren’t the first and they won’t be the last. It’s one of those you-snore-you-belch-in-public-you-fart-in-bed-and-we-don’t-know-why-but-we-still-love-you-for-all-the-snoring-belching-and-farting-that-you-do kinda things.

However, that doesn’t mean that you should give your wife a vacuum cleaner. (I do know one colleague who did, though; he insists his wife requested for it. But it was one of those Trilobite robot thingies, so maybe it’s cool at least.)

JC Penney tackles this issue in one of their Christmas ads, in 2008 and again in 2009. (It’s a girl thing. If you’re not a girl, or if you don’t have a sense of humour, you might want to give them a miss. :)

‘Tis the season for jewellery advertising

The crass commercialism that’s Christmas aside, I thought these De Beers countdown ads were quite good reminders.

I also remember a different set of countdown ads; not sure if they were for a different year or if they were done speculatively for someone’s book or by a student.

• 5 days till Christmas. Which, coincidentally, could also be your life expectancy.
• 4 days till Christmas. You could get out of this but single life is way overrated.
• 3 days till Christmas. That’s not the smell of chestnuts roasting on an open fire.
• 2 days till Christmas. Too late to fake your death and relocate to Fiji.
• 1 day till Christmas. A fat, bearded guy in a red suit isn’t going to bail you out.

Another cool Christmas message De Beers did was the Unbreakable Kiss in New York City’s Central Park (Awwww…). It’s a great souvenir for couples and hopeless romantics. Even the cynics would have to agree this is a cool idea.

A lot of the De Beers ads I’ve seen use headlines (accompanied by a stunning product shot, of course).

And ultimately, as usual, the best headlines capture the one thing you want to say in one sentiment, in just one oh-so-simple thought.

Tiffany is a girl’s best friend

The magic of the Blue Box.

There’s no denying that this innocuous, innocent looking blue box with its little white silk bow wields a power unlike any other. Few women can resist. I think even the most cynical would experience shortness of breath when presented with one.

You can tell how coveted one such box is by the number of copycat brands of jewellery there are out there that also package their jewellery pieces in similar blue packaging — a feeble attempt to look a fraction as desirable (but really, probably, receiving the reverse effect).

(By the way, the colour has been trademarked by the parent company in the United States and several other jurisdictions. It is a private custom colour by Pantone, #1837, the year of the company’s founding, and is not available in the Pantone swatch books.)

And the contents of these boxes? As simple and elegant and beautiful as the thought of giving is.

Walking through the boutique, I may have my favourites. But I think most of the designs would not be unwelcomed. (Still, the store thoughtfully includes a gift receipt with each purchase. Just in case.)

However, it may not be everyone’s cup of tea. Some might consider it not bling or showy enough. Too plebian. Others just like more bling, I suppose. I remember in August when some colleagues and I visited the new mall in the heart of town, when the taxi pulled up to the driveway, my colleagues squealed in deafening unison: “Harry Winston!” — you would have thought they saw a whale shark or something. (It was August; I had just returned from my breath-stopping whale shark encounter.) 

(That said, if a guy were to give a Harry Winston something to his gal, I can’t think of many women who would toss it into the river for “not understanding her tastes”.)

Anyway, back to Tiffany & Co.

A bunch of just celebrated a friend’s birthday. And guess where we bought her gift? We didn’t know how to present it to her, and she was busy texting so we simply put it on the table in front of her while she tapped away furiously on her BlackBerry. But, oh, she did look up for a fraction of a split second.

I wish I had a picture of her face when she saw the magic Blue Box.

Run Run Away

I like the lyrics: See chameleon, lying there in the Sun. All things to everyone. Because as we all know, Ireland is free of snakes and England is full of plague-carrying rats, Scotland is practically infested with chameleons. Hee.

Bad shopper, baaad.

My Christmas list is very short. Family and some close ones, mostly. So I was out doing my Christmas shopping, but found out that the shop I was looking for had moved. I’ll have to get the gifts from a different store in another mall. That was when I passed by a Puma outlet store and half an hour later, walked out with a new pair of sneakers and a new grey hoodie. My old pair of sneakers is worn out and lets water in. And my current grey sweater-hoodie is over ten years old and falling apart and not very warm either.

And besides, they were more than 50% off.

I know, excuses.

Enjoy the lights

I love this. From a few years ago. It didn’t so much make me smile as it made me laugh very loudly and got me quite a few stares (and some frowns) from my colleagues.

Music is courtesy of the Trans Siberian Orchestra. And the house is real. Not put together by stop motion photography with music added. It’s the brainchild of Carson Williams of Ohio, and was featured by Miller Lite in their holiday commercial. The full clip is below (and you can read more information in the side panel). He’s since started his own company doing this sort of thing. No doubt you’ll see more of the lights soon.

To Infinity and Beyond

From Star Wars to Wall•E, A Trip to the Moon to Matrix, Robocop to Terminator, Close Encounters of the Third Kind to Contact, Alien, Ghost in the Shell, Gattaca, Galaxy Quest, Jurassic Park (really?), Star Trek (the 2009 one with the eye candy starfleet), 2001: A Space Odyssey, Planet of the Apes, Twelve Monkeys, Fifth Element, District 9 and dozens of others.

Read Wired.com’s Favourite Sci-Fi Flicks of All Time, Pre-Star Wars.

And their Favourite Sci-Fi Flicks of All Time Post-Star Wars. 

And in response to the previous two lists, readers’ Favourite Sci-Fi Flicks, 2000 and Beyond. May the Force be with you, live long and prosper. Hee.

Bah humbug

I hate the holidays. Most years I’m a grouch all the way to Chinese New Year. Sure, some years are better than others. One year the dragon boat team had a kickass party; that was a year to remember. Last year I escaped and went to Phuket with my friends. This year, escape plans fell through. Need to make alternative plans. Like Bali. I love Bali. My friends know I would go to Bali at the drop of a hat. But right now, it’s an option if one is the sort to light cigars with dollar notes; the prices of flights are ridiculous this time of the year. Damnation. I could always distract myself with work. That is always an option. Only, the office is closed with forced leave from Boxing Day to the New Year. Damnation again. Need. To. Escape. Buggered.

The longest overnight test ever

The Shopper’s Overnight Test. Anyone who shops will know what I’m talking about.

You go shopping, see something* you like, you decide to “think about it”. (*Terms and conditions apply, such as items that don’t require a fair amount of research, items that are reasonably priced that you wouldn’t make much of a difference if you had bought it online, impulse buys, etc. In other words, girl shopping stuff.)

Sometimes you step out the store and turn right back in. You’ve thought about it and decided. But on average, an overnight test is a good gauge. The next day, if that dress/blouse/accessories/pair of jeans/pair of shoes is still on your mind, you might want to get it. Once I forgot I was thinking about something until a week later. That was good indication.

What about a year and a half of overnights?

That’s how long, almost to the day, I’ve sat on thinking about this pair of shoes before I finally got it. (Actually, I would have got it in April if the store I last saw it in had it in size 3 UK/5.5 US.) Every now and then, I would search for it online to see if it was still in the market. Until now.

In the end, I bought because I thought figured I would use it, for trekking as well as for city vacations (it was high time to retire my other pair of city vacation walking shoes). In the end, I bought it online at the cheapest offer I could find.

The best part, I’ve mini-road tested it. No, didn’t climb any mountains. Just walked across a flat city in a bit of bad weather. No regrets.

Desolation and hope

I used to have to take the train to work and every morning it would pass by a small industrial area. It wasn’t even an industrial district, just a pocket of old warehouses and factories that stayed on as residential blocks sprouted up around it. In fact, they aren’t that old but were refurbished to hold car showrooms and offices.

Still, on rainy mornings as the train passed through, I would look out the window and that stretch would look desolate. The offices wouldn’t be open yet and no one would be around. Puddles pooled on the side roads and the rain soaked into the cheerless grey. The landscape was void of life.

It’s a little depressing.

Looking at these stills of The Road reminds me of those mornings.

The story paints a post-Apocalyptic world where an untold disaster has destroyed civilisation. To deliver the novel’s desolate wasteland, director John Hillcoat used as little CGI as possible, opting instead to shoot in real-world locations found in Pennsylvania, Oregon and Louisiana. Any digital effects that was done were made to remove blue skies and vegetation. As cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe says, the colour green doesn’t exist. The world of The Road is a wasteland of despair, as humans turn savage and one man and his son make their journey to the ocean.

The knowledge that all these places exist serves to make the desolation feel more real.

It’s a little depressing.

I’m reading the novel right now. (Hope to finish it then catch the movie; hope it’s not opened here yet.) It’s by Cormac McCarthy and the first of his books I’m reading. Didn’t even know he wrote No Country for Old Men. I picked it up because it won the Pulitzer Prize. (And so far, I’ve liked all the Pulitzer winning fiction I’ve read.)

I especially like how he tells the story; how the thoughts of the man are written and how the conversations between him and his son are carried out. And how short they are. I don’t like long conversations, especially vacuous ones. They stress me out.

The synopsis explains that in this bleak landscape where pockets of humanity give in to their baser instincts, what comes out is an unconditional love between that man and his son. To me, it sounds less like a message of love, than it is of what the opposite of desolation is — hope.

Pictures are from a Wired article, found here.

Oh, the horror. Whee!

You know how chat pages have a space for your personal message? I have an ex-colleague whom I thought was a nice person and kindred geek until I discovered he likes to put movie endings and twists without the “spoiler” notice. Actually he does include the spoiler, but does it like this: “Luke learns his father is Vader. Oh yah, spoiler alert.”

Idiot.

I never knew he was such an obnoxious little person until recently. It’s one thing to be irritating, it’s another to go out of your way to prove yourself to be a complete @ss.

Anyhoo… if you’ve not watched 2012 yet, this ought to be sufficient space for a SPOILER ALERT.

Not that I’m really gonna say anything that you don’t already know about the blockbuster. Its teasers and trailers have been showing for months. It’s from the same director, Roland Emmerich, that brought you what is probably the best (imho) movie teaser campaign to date, Independence Day.

I like how the first teaser for 2012 didn’t have a movie website but a call to action: Google 2012. That’s teasing in the digital age for you.

Which brings us to my rant. (I’m not writing a movie review. There are so many proper ones out there, like this one.)

I watched 2012 because I relish seeing the world being destroyed.

No, not a gradual year by year destruction via global warming. But total doomsday destruction, one as spectacular as only Hollywood can serve up.

As the reviewer says: there’s childlike glee amid the destruction. Like a kid creating horrible scenario with his toy train set. With a match and some lighter fluid.

Suspend belief, not to mention all laws of science.

Never mind that as you watch the single-prop plane attempt to outfly the supervolcano, you’re thinking: “Didn’t I learn on Discovery Channel that that pyroclastic cloud travels at speeds of up to 700 km/h (450 m/h) and is made up of ash that reaches 1,000°C (1,830°F)?” You just know that said single-prop plane will emerge with a triumphant spurt of acceleration from the engineering-suspended minds of writers. Woo-hoo!

(It’s okay, I don’t know how turbo prop engines work either.)

And I’m not even going to begin to broach the whole planet alignment, end of the Long Count Calendar thingie.

However — (insert rant here) — I did scoff at how at one point in the movie, the makers present the moral dilemma that the only people who will be saved from certain death at the end of the world are the CEOs of AIG. But before the issue is resolved, before anyone even attempts to answer, the whole this is conveniently forgotten with sudden catastrophe and fast-paced action sequence accompanied by tense close-shaves and a healthy dose of human drama.

Oh, well. At least in that world, the rest of us aren’t around to see such villainy.

Will the world really end? NASA answers your concerns here.

Concerto in D Major, Largo RV.93

Ask me what my favourite Sesame Street segment is and this would definitely come to mind. Sure, there were the ladybugs’ picnic and a few others, but this one would definitely be in the top three. Although it evolved somewhat in my mind through the years. Like I thought the flower was blooming in time lapse instead of just close-up images of it. The ending also was a bit different in my head: I thought the flower had been growing in someone’s windowsill planter in the city, instead of growing like a weed on a ledge. The metaphor is a lot more meaningful like this, though. Oh, and the flower in my memory was white with the yellow centre, typical of how one would draw a flower in kindergarten.

Reading the comments below the clip, I’m surprised so many people find it sad. It was a pensive piece of music, I’ll admit. Concerto for Lute and 2 Strings in D Major, Largo RV 93 by Vivaldi. Slow but beautiful, not sad. And I always found this clip pretty. Poignant (as poignant as a five-year-old can find) yes, but exquisitely beautiful. That beauty can be found even in the grungiest places. Nature always finds a way. Maybe I gleaned from it what I wanted to, because I grew up in a flat in the city and even the tiny clovers growing in the flower pot of a bigger plant on a cramped rooftop garden was still something that could mesmerise. One step away from pretending I was in a wood somewhere looking for a hideaway hole in a giant oak.

It’s always interesting to see how different people have such different perspectives on something.

Turkey day food coma facts

Proof! Proof at last! (Well, not at last. More like at-last-I-learnt-about-it.) All that sleepiness after Thanksgiving dinner, it’s not our collective imagination but scientifically proven.

You’ve probably heard it before. The myth about the sleepiness that occurs after the traditional Thanksgiving meal. It’s really caused by tryptophan, an essential amino acid found in many protein-based foods in our diet.

They say it’s a myth, though. Probably because many other foods contain tryptophan in levels comparable to that of turkey, such as chicken or beef. Soybeans, sesame and certain cheeses are also high in tryptophan, yet do not result in higher blood tryptophan levels than turkey. Milk contains tryptophan too, which perhaps explains why you drink warm milk before going to bed.

Then again, you don’t gorge out on soybeans and cheese like you do on turkey during Thanksgiving. And if you add alcohol, like some wine, into the mix… (Cue music: dum-dum-daaaaa…)

This whole tryptophan thing, it’s on snopes.com. And the National Turkey Federation too. (And why would anyone doubt what the folks at National Turkey Foundation say?)

Maybe next year I’ll find out something about pumpkin pie. Or pecan pie. Like why there is always room for pie.

Anyway, that (the turkey, not the alcohol) must explain why I was out like a light on Friday night after a Thanksgiving-and-farewell dinner at a friend’s place.

Best wishes to them. I’ll miss baby Wyatt’s drooling and gum-gnawing on my shoulder.

‘Tis the season to jingle

I guess Thanksgiving is over and the official start to the holidays have begun. Don’t like the holidays though. This is when I become a grouch all the way till Chinese New Year. Bah.

Still, this is as good a cue as any to post this Christmas greeting. R liked it. Then again, he likes anything Bollywood or that revolves around a coconut tree. (Geddit? Geddit?) He almost tried to get us to watch a Bollywood movie last month. Almost. But he didn’t succeed. Phew.

Fortunately, this clip is about 0.5% of a Bollywood feature. Season’s Greetings.

Two great loves

Ah, Saturday. Ah, breakfast. Two great loves of mine.

First, weekends. What does a Saturday morning feel like? Almost as though there is no such thing as time. No such thing as alarm clocks, for sure. At least for half a morning before hunger pangs get the better of you and you to roll out of bed, to slip your feet into your favourite bedroom slippers and make your way to the kitchen. Where the beauty of breakfast begins.

 Time to celebrate the death of the week.

Breakfast. There wasn’t a specific event. Or a special instruction. But I do recall it started in Paris in the winter of 2005 when I was overseas for work. Almost every morning without fail, the exception being the overnighters, I would head down for breakfast. One slice of wholemeal toast, a bit of butter and strawberry jam, a slice of ham, poached sausages, sometimes button mushrooms. If I didn’t have any of those, then two slices of toast. Day after day. I grew so attached to the routine, it continued even after I came back. Wholemeal toast with unsalted butter and less-sweet jam or honey. But more than that, the wonderful ritual of breakfast every morning.

On weekends, breakfast becomes a fabulous affair.

Toast still, but savoured so differently. And once in a while, something different. Pancakes. Waffles. Maybe even a bagel with cream cheese. Eggs benedict or Florentine. Fresh fruit. Sautéed veggies and rice in paprika. (Okay, these are sometimes more brunch than breakfast, but they are definitely a weekend thing.)

Latte, not to go.

On weekends, coffee transforms from additive back to beverage, savoured slowly sip by sip as you chat with friends — over the kitchen counter or at a café or the neighbourhood kopitiam. It could be local kopi brewed in sock or an organic grind steeping in a moka pot over the farmhouse stove. I had a nice breakfast this weekend. Nothing fancy, just toast at a bakery and a cup of tea. The romantic notion I’ve painted says nothing about the queues at said bakery or the running kids and crying babies. But in my quiet corner, with my two slices — I love the sound of the crunch of toast — and the day’s paper, errands undaunting, I was in a world of my own.

Lovely commercial with excellent script (at least I think so; catch the other Lurpak spots from W+K London). Like the spot, Max was up early and fidgety too. Listen out for my favourite part.

Thankful still

My family. My friends. My sweet babboo. People I miss and wish were here but who are well. Though I’ve not used my passport since June and it’s driving me nuts, I’m thankful I’ve sat in the shade of a tree on a warm Sunday afternoon watching the denizens of Central Park “do their thing”, and what a melting pot spectrum of “things” that encompasses. (Next time we do it, we shall remember to bring a copy of the New York Times.) I’m also thankful for swarms of barracuda. And whale sharks (author would like to highlight the plural of the noun). Though I whinge and whine, though I grumble a lot, though I have good days and bad days, I guess I’m thankful I have a job and that I enjoy what I’m doing. I guess what I’m trying to say is when it really comes down to it, I really have a lot to be thankful for. Still.

Be thankful, be sexy

Thought this was funny. But it’s only once a year that you get to gorge yourself silly on turkey, chestnut stuffing, sweet potato mash and pumpkin pie.

Wednesday

Some days, I like my music the way I like my life. Simple. Work hard, be a good person, do the right thing, take only what you need, recycle.

Every Monday I roll my sleeves up with the hoi polloi. On Wednesday, I rejoice with everyone else that we’ve made to the middle of the week. Pretty much all that is on our mind is doing the best we can at work, earn an honest-as-possible wage and making it to the end of the week. Today, something happened in the office that made me wonder if the powers that be who sit in the proverbial corner office have forgotten what it feels like to be the common man. It was a moment right out of Dilbert. I was so angry. So were many others. Then at past eight in the evening, someone in the next cubicle played this song. At least that mellowed my mood somewhat. Tired. I went home and went to bed.

Norah Jones – Humble Me

Over a decade later

Rotting in front of the TV over the weekend, I was as flabbergasted to learn this rather disturbing piece of news. The people over at the National Toy Hall of Fame should really get their act together. Honestly. *roll eyes*