Snow Angel Nine Ball

Multimodality

2009-01-10T06:06:00.002+08:00

" In defining the genre of an educational CD-Rom, inclusion of both visual and verbal genres is salient because both semiotic systems are specialised to make meanings in different ways. The point is that the multimodal integration of the two produces a multiplying effect meaning that the one contexualises the other to produce an overall text meaning." (Baldry, 2000:60)

Baldry, Anthony. (ed.) 2000. Multimodality and multimediality in the distance learning age. Campobasso, Italy: Palladino Editore.

The postmodern rich poor gap divide

2008-10-01T19:52:00.002+08:00

This quote below reminds me of the Automation project I did a few months ago on critiqing the arguments made by an author summarising the benefits and demerits of Automation in American society in a paper written in 1983.

Silvio, Carl. 2007. “The Star Wars Trilogies and Global Capitalism” In Carl Silvio and Tony M. Vinci (Eds) Culture, Identities and Technology in the Star Wars Films: Essays on the Two Trilogies. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc.
Pg 67

I suggest that the chief contradiction of this later period lies in the dissonance that many Americans feel between the supposedly benevolent and progressive nature of our new global economy and the way that this economy does not always appear to benefit the middle or working classes of the country. Over te course of the 1980s and 1990s, wages for working Americans consistently fell in relation to the cost of living, a trend offset in most cases by employees working longer and longer hours. Between 1989 and 1997, the earnings of a median American worker fell 3.1 percent, the income of a median American family declined by 2.1 percent, while the amount of time that such a family spent at work increased by six weeks per year. This steady erosion of middle and working class wealth occurred while the general productive capacity of the economy grew by eight percent and the average salary of CEOs more than doubled (Mishel). And yet we find ourselves constantly bombarded with hype about how the new information age, systems thinking, and globalisation are revolutionising our world for the better. For instance, in spite of what these economic trends seem to indicate for the future of the working and middle classes of America, Edward Simon president of Herman Miller, can actually argue that "[b]usiness is the only institution that has a chance, as far as I can see, to fundamentally improve the injustice that exists in the world" (qtd. in Senge 5).

Ciprofloxacin

2008-02-04T16:59:00.000+08:00

Urinary Tract Infection

- severe case was discovered after being examined by the doctor at the 24 hours clinic at Bk Panjang.

- Outset was probably on Thurs night/Fri morning with pains at the upper thigh area. Foul smelling urine with cloudy sediments - symptons of bacteria infestation.

- Sunday night was feeling very cold and weak after bathing, and feeling of dying. This was the trigger to visit the doctor. Was prescribed Ciprofloxacin as antibiotics and told to revisit doctor again if fever occurs.

Review of modules taken for Academic Year 2007/08 Semester 1

2007-12-30T04:11:00.000+08:00

End of Academic Year 2007/08 Semester 1

Here’s the list of comments for the modules that I had taken for the semester:

Lexicology and Lexicography

Basically lexicology is the theory or linguistic concepts behind the art of making dictionaries whereas lexicography is the practical approach or the actual steps that go into the making of dictionaries itself that includes the types of information to be included in dictionaries, the arrangement of definitions given in the dictionaries, etc. This module is interesting because it helps undergraduates expand their understanding of how ordinary people organize the lexemes or lexical units in their mental lexicon which in a sense is not haphazardly organized but organized according to their relations to other similar lexical units such as within the same lexical semantic fields – synonyms, antonyms, etc. Thus, the mental knowledge of ordinary people’s linguistic repertoire is never independently developed in isolation to other lexical units or their contexts. Concepts or frameworks covered in this module include John Sinclair’s multi-word lexical model which involves the semantic prosodies, semantic preference, colligation and collocations of the core lexeme; the use of 3 types of evidences which are the introspective knowledge of ourselves or informants, the citational evidence gathered from various sources that include newspaper articles, google search, forum search and corpus evidence that is systematically gathered for a specific purpose in order to prove or disprove a hypothesis(corpus based), or to create a hypothesis based on the corpus evidence(corpus driven), in order to triangulate to produce for a more concrete conclusion for the hypothesis; Fillmore’s frame semantics; Ooi’s concentric circles model of Singapore English; Wierzbicka’s semantic primitives or the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach; Lexical Semantics and Mel’cuk’s theory of word relations; the WordNet database in simulating the mental lexicon for a closer representation of linguistic categorization in the brain for the linguist’s dictionary; the notion of bilingual and multilingual dictionaries and the difficulties in translating cultural concepts from one language to another especially with regards to metaphorical translations; and finally the new lexicons or the new online electronic dictionaries such as Urban dictionary that favours a more democractic and descriptive approach to the given definitions to new linguistic terms in electronic dictionaries to more rapidly record the rate of linguistic change around the world as opposed to the more prescriptive approach that is favoured in our more traditional dictionaries such as the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).

The group project consisted of critiquing some articles that were taken from the Journal of Lexicography. From this exercise, I learnt to critically assess what the background of the author of the article is and from that is able to more properly gauge his position or what the author values in order to understand his argument better. I also learnt that the lexicographer has to take into account the needs of the audience or the users of the dictionary that it is intended for so that the dictionary will be useful to the targeted audience and not solely based on the assumptions of the lexicographer. Not merely providing the meanings or definitions of the words but it is also important to provide pragmatic information to the users such as the discoursal features of words and the politeness that is associated with using certain words and finally the importance of including context of use for the words.

The individual project is one of the most fulfilling because it is a more hands on exercise in which I get to gather the 3 types of evidences – introspective, citational and corpus data to support my given hypothesis. The topic I chose was the Lexis of Shmups which is a type of 2D scrolling arcade game. For the website/software review, I chose to compare the OALD’s 3D search with the Visual Thesaurus. I especially like the visual component of these softwares because they can serve to simulate the visual imagination of the user and also because these 2 softwares are different in their own right and shows that we cannot only rely on 1 dictionary for our expansion of the mental lexicon but through complementing both dictionaries and others could we achieve a more comprehensive knowledge for the advancing of our pre-existing linguistic repertoire. The Visual Thesaurus is of course based on the popular WordNet database.

The final exam compulsory question includes the question asking the rationale for the structuring of the dictionary entries in the WordNet database as well as the organization of example sentences given in the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s dictionary. The answer I gave was the paradigmatic or ontological organization of the entries in WordNet as opposed to the sytagmatic organization of the example sentences given in the CALD which can allow users to understand what is the typical usage of the core lexeme and thus is able to infer when the core lexeme is used untypically if it is used in other contexts through extension of the typical meaning. The other question that I chose for the paper was the question that asked me to state my position as to the question on whether I agree with the view that online electronic dictionaries such as Freesearch should not be allowed to exist. I had prepared for this question and I argued that this view is not sustainable because this is the future where dictionaries are to go in the digital age where online dictionaries would be recording everyone’s use and creation of new lexicons at a much rapid pace, i.e. the tendency towards the descriptive stance of dictionaries. From a purely prescriptive point of view, advocates of this statement are merely trying to maintain the status quo, i.e., the division between the formal and the informal; and the educated and the uneducated, but the advent of these online dictionaries would only further contribute to the blurring between these divisions due to the ease of spreading due to the technological advancement of the world wide web that basically makes everyone a lexicographer who can enter his own dictionary entries into such online dictionaries, though of course a certain amount of prescriptivism would still exist where definitions that are deemed to be nonsensical or offensive would be edited and removed by the moderators and administrators of the online dictionaries. I ended off my argument by returning to the prescriptive stance that it is nevertheless important and we should not disregard it because to adhere to rules we would allow a more wider audience to understand us instead of using idiosyncratic words that none understands and hence the usage of words should be based on the context itself.

Discourse Structure

This module deals with the linguistic structure that is above the unit of a sentence. Concepts covered include Longacre’s 4 text types: narrative, procedural, behavioural and expository; Labov’s model of narrative structure: abstract, orientation, complicating action, evaluation, resolution and coda; various evaluative devices that signals to the reader what the author of the texts understand it by and why he considers it significant which includes external evaluation, embedded evaluation, evaluative action, evaluative lexicon, evaluative grammar(intensifiers, comparators, correlative, explicatives); Hoey’s Problem-solution pattern(Situation, problem, response, evalution); ideational relations – Mann and Thompson’s Rhetorical Structural Theory (condition, reason, elaboration, purpose, result, solutionhood, circumstance, evidence, motivation, concession, antithesis); action sequences(adjacency pairs, sequence expansions); discourse markers; Prince’s seven information types; Chafe’s one new idea per Intonation Unit constraint, Preferred argument structure, light starting point constraint; and cohesive ties.

The topics set for the tests and exams are predictable in the sense that test 1 consist of the topics for Labov’s narrative structure, evaluative devices, Longacre’s text types. Test 2 consists of the topic for ideational relations, action sequences and discourse markers. The final exam consists of the topic for Hoey’s Problem-solution pattern, Chafe’s one new idea per IU constraint, preferred argument structure, light starting point constraint and cohesive ties. Even though I did not do well for this module, I learnt the importance of structuring the points in support of my argument in answering the main question to give a more focused answer.

Interactional Discourse

This module emphasized on analyzing spoken discourse instead of written discourse, i.e the interactional aspects as opposed to the transactional contents of spoken discourse. The frameworks that were taught in this module include Hasan’s Generic Structure Potential(for genre of text types); Wilson’s Speaker Rights Theory(for conversation); Francis and Hunston’s Exchange Structure; Martin and Rose’s Exchange Structure(derived from Systemic Functional Grammar); Gricean pragmatics that include face and politeness. The first test consists of analyzing a given short transcript and several short questions were asked in order to test on concepts taken from Generic Structure Potential, Speaker Rights Theory, exchange structure and transcription methods. This test can be scorable in the sense that the concepts covered and the questions asked guide the students in giving the corresponding answers to the questions so it would not be rather complicated test to attempt as compared to the open type questions given in the final exams. For the presentation, my group did on the exchange structure(Francis and Hunston analysis) and politeness analysis on the Ali G interview with Noam Chomsky. My essay was done on the adaptation of Francis and Hunston’s Exchange structure to the genre of interview with Noam Chomsky. I understand that I did not do well for the essay because I had not provided a focused thesis statement at the beginning of the essay and structure the rest of the essay accordingly in support of the thesis statement under a common umbrella. The final exam is basically either comparing or identifying the similarity between 2 or 3 given transcripts of conversations/interviews based on exchange structure framework and politeness strategies. I should have done well for this module, but for the deficient nature of the essay which I have learnt is important for the module on the whole.

Language, Ideology and Power

This is one of the more interesting modules that I had wanted to take all along because this module touches on issues that affect us in the real world. Concepts or issues touched on in this module include in chronological order: language and reality(man made language), ideology, political correctness, representational issues which include the sexist representation – linguistic and graphical of women; and the Benneton Culture which is a rather controversial marketing campaign because it mixes commercial interests and at the same time championing human rights by showing controversial images such as a man dying of AIDs to instill awareness of such issues on the consumers of this culture. The controversial issue and question is: “how can one reconcile the commercial interests of Benneton with its self-proclaimed slogan of championing for human rights through the showing of such controversial images through the media and without the company itself engaged more actively in eradicating stereotyped representations of people in the campaigns.” Other topics covered include institutional control(oracular reasoning; politics of ESL classroom) – the tension between the authoritative and democratic approach between the experts and the ordinary people, feminine self-identity through other-centredness and male heterosexuality, Singapore’s Speak Mandarin Campaign, Gender, language and the politics of literacy, critical language awareness and emancipatory discourse, anti-languages and finally issues of empowerment. For the class presentation on ideology, I was in charge of providing the case study portion for the presentation and I showed the case study of the muti-racial ideology in Singapore because this issue is closer to our hearts and therefore could serve to allow the class for a better understanding of the concepts in the reading by applying Van Dijk’s reading of ideology to the multiracial ideology. The term paper was done in groups of 2 and my topic was on the linguistic analysis of the newspaper article that appeared in September 2007 on the AWOL case of CPL Dave Teo. Lessons learnt from writing the term paper is to provide at the outset a proper background behind the Straits Times (by applying the calibrated coercion that I raised in the class presentation) to better explain why the report is linguistically written in this way. Secondly, to separate the authorities and show when it is clear that the sentence is talking about the police, when the SAF and when it is not clear and finally structuring the paper thematically to provide a stronger focus for specific points raised. The final exam’s compulsory question is on a 2006 article that talks about the issue of race and politics and asked us to critically unpack the concepts of ideology, empowerment and identity as regards to the article given for analysis. The second question I chose was on this quote from the Thomas Theorem, “all people define situations as real; but when powerful people define situations as real, then they are real for everybody else in their consequences.” The question asked us to consider how institutional power can be discursively negotiated and not simply imposed top-down. The basic argument that I provided was for a more middle approach, when institutional authorities have to be aware of their limitations of their authoritative knowledge in the educational and medical contexts and hence include a mixture of social and medical model when dealing with the other people in order for a more holistic analysis or approach of the situation at hand.

FASS Awards Ceremony 2007

2007-08-20T02:09:00.000+08:00

I was part of the audience for this ceremony on 17 Aug 2007. The ceremony started punctually at 7 pm with the Dean, Prof Tan Tai Yong giving the welcome address and congratulating all the prize winners. First up was the giving away of the Long Service Awards medals - from EL department was A/P Anne Pakir. The host was A/P Paulin Straughan. what I liked about her hosting of the ceremony was that of the light-hearted way she conducted the ceremony through "comedic acts". For example, she announced her own name and went to collect her own award from the Dean in a humourous manner which made the audience laughed. There was a new category of winners this year which is the undergraduate research prize category that was different from past year's award ceremonies. This was the next category of prizes given out. Finally came the book prize winners. This was also different from previous years in that a more personalised approach where the department heads gave out the prizes to the winners instead of the dean. With that came the performance firstly by Dikir Barat, a kind of "Malaysian" style of vocal singing performance where the performers were seen to be able to interact with the audience. Some of the performers were from NTU as interviewed by the host. The second performance was by the KR Harmonica group. I feel that the performances were much shorter than last year's performance. The final prize category was the Dean's List recepients. First up was the 2006 cohort. This was the biggest group and the students had to be divided up into 2 separate groups for the photo taking. Followed by the 2005, 2004 and finally 2003 cohorts. The ceremony ended at around 8.30 pm with a reception outside the LT.

Death

2007-08-11T00:24:00.000+08:00

I have several dreams about death. It might be a side effect from the life threatening injury and operation that I had many years ago. The feeling about death is a sensation of emptiness, hollowness, voidness, and timelessness whereby I felt that a million years had passed without me noticing it.

An appropriate quote about death is from an anime character from Inuyasha. In the anime episode 115, Bankotsu, the leader of the Band of Seven stated in front of the graves of Kyokotsu and Mukotsu that "Once you are dead that's it, there's no afterlife!"

群星耀东方－王心凌、齐秦

2007-07-30T01:53:00.000+08:00

20070729 群星耀东方－王心凌、齐秦
Credits: 王心凌大陆歌迷联盟发布

那年夏天寧靜的海+迷你电影

2007-07-16T06:10:00.000+08:00

那年夏天寧靜的海
________________________________________

Most touching MTV made for this album. Cyndi also sang it in remembrance of her friend Xu Wei Lun. Quoting from the lyrics: "回憶比真实精彩" - Memories are more exciting than reality. English lyrics translated by me.

Track 2 那年夏天寧靜的海
詞曲：彭學斌＠口袋音樂
製作人：小螞蟻
編曲：涂惠源

那時我們天天在一起　太幸福到不需要距離
Those times we were together everyday. So blessed that no distance is needed

很貪心　要全世界注意
Very greedy Want the whole world to notice

只是太年輕　快樂和傷心
Only that too young happiness and sadness

都像在演戲　一碰就驚天動地
All seem to be acting. One touch and will shake the world

今天看你　昨天的你去了哪裡
Today see you where did the yesterday you went?

那年夏天我和你躲在　這一大片寧靜的海
That year summer you and I were hiding at this big and peaceful sea

直到後來我們都還在　對整個世界充滿期待
Till we were still holding full of expectation for the entire world

今年冬天你已經不在　我的心空出了一塊
This year winter you are no longer around and a piece of my heart feels empty

很高興遇見你　讓我終究明白
Very happy to have met you. Let me ultimately understand

回憶　比真实精彩
Memories are more exciting than reality

那時我們天天在一起　太幸福到不需要距離
Those times we were together everyday. So blessed that no distance is needed

很貪心　要全世界注意
Very greedy Want the whole world to notice

只是太年輕　快樂和傷心
Only that too young happiness and sadness

都像在演戲　一碰就驚天動地
All seem to be acting. One touch and will shake the world

今天看你　昨天的你去了哪裡
Today see you where did the yesterday you went?

那年夏天我和你躲在　這一大片寧靜的海
That year summer you and I were hiding at this big and peaceful sea

直到後來我們都還在　對整個世界充滿期待
Till we were still holding full of expectation for the entire world

今年冬天你已經不在　我的心空出了一塊
This year winter you are no longer around and a piece of my heart feels empty

很高興遇見你　讓我終究明白
Very happy to have met you. Let me ultimately understand

回憶　比真实精彩
Memories are more exciting than reality

還記得一起努力　還有那些　一言為定
Still remember worked hard together and those promises

現在我就當過去　是種學習　雖然好不容易
Now I treat those past as a kind of learning, although it is not easy.

那年夏天我和你躲在　這一大片寧靜的海
That year summer you and I were hiding at this big and peaceful sea

直到後來我們都還在　對整個世界充滿期待
Till we were still holding full of expectation for the entire world

今年冬天你已經不在　我的心空出了一塊
This year winter you are no longer around and a piece of my heart feels empty

很高興遇見你　讓我終究明白
Very happy to have met you. Let me ultimately understand

回憶　比真实精彩
Memories are more exciting than reality

Bye bye, never say goodbye
未來　我期待未來
Future I am expecting the future

迷你電影
__________________________________

迷你電影's MTV is a continuation of the MTV from 那年夏天寧靜的海. In this MTV, Cyndi reminisces once again about the events from MTV 那年夏天寧靜的海 symbolised by the black and white coloured shots in the video.

Track 8 迷你電影
作詞：易家揚　作曲：廖世傑　編曲：Terence Teo

白云在蓝天飞行飞到哪里
White clouds flying in the blue sky where are they flying to

把往事翻来覆去折成纸飞机
Flipping and turning around past memories folding them into paper airplanes

好多的日子像是风景
So many days seem like scenery

没抓住什么有一些失望而已
Never caught hold of anything feeing a little disappointed

想回忆想过去想自己的戲
Thinking of memories thinking of the past thinking of my show

像空气像呼吸像一场旅行
Like air like breathing like a trip

没有人代替演好
No one to replace acting well

我的迷你的电影
My mini movie

好像16厘米的回忆
Like 16 cm of memory

在我的時間裡滑過去
Slipped away during my time

酸甜苦辣的雨下在眼睛里
Tears falling within my eyes

1寸1寸心中上映
1 inch by 1 inch swelling up my heart

想回忆想过去想自己的心
Thinking of memories thinking of the past thinking of my heart

像空气像呼吸像一场旅行
Like air like breathing like a trip

没有人代替演好我的迷你的电影
No one to replace acting well my mini movie

好像16厘米的回忆
Like 16 cm of memory

在我的時間裡滑過去
Slipped away during my time

叶良俊

2007-07-08T05:02:00.000+08:00

I enjoyed listening to 叶良俊's songs. He helped Jolin composed the melody for her song track titled 什么样的爱 in her "Don't Stop" album. The song is also included in 叶良俊's album titled 《我总是听你说》released in 1996 as track 10 什么样的爱你才懂. Here's the lyrics for the song sung by Jolin as well as the MTV of the song.

什么样的爱歌词-蔡依林(Tsai, Yi Lin Jolin)
什么样的爱

歌手:蔡依林专辑:don't stop

什么样的爱

词:黄舒骏曲:叶良俊编曲:terence teo

犹豫不决
是你的脸孔
模糊不清
是我的心痛
请你别只是望著窗口
什么都不说
曾经你要我付出所有
现在你却说只要自由
所有的对为何变成错
伤心的我只想问
什么样的爱
你才懂
什么样的我
才能让你感动
我的爱难道还不够
不够让你
沉醉到永久
什么样的爱
你才懂
什么样的我
才能圆你的梦
再也不会有人像我
像我痴心爱你不回头

Stan Bush The Touch

2007-06-30T04:53:00.000+08:00

One of my favourite songs from The Transformer animation movie soundtrack - The Touch by Stan Bush:

You got the touch
You got the power

After all is said and done
You've never walked, you've never run,
You're a winner

You got the moves, you know the streets
Break the rules, take the heat
You're nobody's fool

You're at your best when when the goin' gets rough
You've been put to the test, but it's never enough

You got the touch
You got the power

When all hell's breakin' loose
You'll be riding the eye of the storm

You got the heart
You got the motion

You know that when things get too tough
You got the touch

You never bend, you never break
You seem to know just what it takes
You're a fighter

It's in the blood, it's in the will
It's in the mighty hands of steel
When you're standin' your ground

And you never get hit when your back's to the wall
Gonna fight to the end and you're takin' it all

You got the touch
You got the power

When all hell's breakin' loose
You'll be riding the eye of the storm

You got the heart
You got the motion

You know that when things get too tough
You got the touch

You're fightin' fire with fire
You know you got the touch

You're at your best when when the road gets rough
You've been put to the test, but it's never enough

You got the touch
You got the power

You got the touch
You got the power

Orson Welles and Transformers

2007-06-26T03:50:00.000+08:00

Transformer animation movie DVD cover

With the upcoming release of the live action movie in theatres, this has made me interested in finding out more information about this animation in general, especially with regards to the original classical Transformer movie way back in 1985.

Orson Welles in 1937
Picture Source: Wikipedia

Interestingly, is the fact that one of the voice actors is the famous Orson Welles that had made the movie Citizen Kane which was touched on in my EL3880B module and which I had written on about in my essay. The fact is that Orson Welles had been much limited in his ability to create films due to the curfew that had been imposed on him by the Hollywood people, and that he had to resort to other professions such as providing voice for animation, commercials, etc in order to finance his own films. Incidentally, the voice over that Orson Welles provided for the main villain Unicron in the classical Transformers movies was his very last film role in Hollywood.

Unicron in Robot mode

With regard to the live action film, it had yet to be seen. Personally, I feel that the original films would always be the most pure form and hence the best as it had not been adapted or modified in any aspects into other medium. Adaptations could signify a divergence or a creation of an entire new content separated from the original work itself.

Bit Depth and Resolution

2007-06-19T01:29:00.000+08:00

Something that I learnt from Inside your Personal Computer module is the trade off between resolution and bit depth if you have a slow computer.

Decreasing the resolution of an application or video would allow a higher bit depth to be shown, for example, 24 bit on a computer with a slower video card. However the cons is that the resolution is smaller so I can't see as much as when viewing a higher resolution video.

This can be applied to video games. Another pro factor is the drastic improvement in game performance as well as lesser lag faced when playing the game.

Here are some screenshots of Dark Crusade played inside a window at reduced resolution:

One Word Tag Line Poster

2007-06-17T15:50:00.000+08:00

Inside Your Personal Computer Final Exam

2007-06-15T16:42:00.000+08:00

Some of the exam questions that have been puzzling me:

1. What is sampling rate and sampling precision equal to in a JPEG image file?

Is it sampling rate = resolution or frames per second
sampling precision = bits per pixel or colours per pixel

2. Twisted Pair wires have 2,4,6, or 8 wires. Which is false?

Is it 2?

Some of the other questions that came out in the exam:

1. War Drivers

- What are War Drivers?
- What problems can they cause?
- How can we prevent ourselves from being made use of by War Drivers?

Kinda expected this question because it was not asked in the quiz question and it is included in the Sound Bytes.

2. Distributed Denial of Service Attacks

- What are DDOS attacks?
- What else does a hacker do to conduct DDOS attack?
- Why is it difficult to recover from a DDOS attack? How can an ISP help?

Did not do well for the last part of the question cos I misinterpretated what the question was asking.

3. Analog to Digital Graph conversion

- Write the binary digits corresponding to the values in the graph
- Plot the Analog graph on the graph
- Calculate the percentage increase in the number of bits used

Did not do well for this question because I was not able to calculate the bits correctly as well as the percentage increase.

Number of values for 0-3: 4 = 2 ^2
Number of values for 0-15: 16 = 2 ^4

Percentage increase = 4/2 X 100 = 200%

4. Why can't hard drive work very well at high altitides?

I wrote that because of the lesser amounts of airflow that is at higher altititues and hard drive require air to cushion the read/write head above the platters during spinning to prevent it damaging the magnetic surface area of the platters by scratching it

5. JPEG and Bitmap: which utilise compression and which don't?

6. Why is the minimum file size on a hard drive 4096 bytes?

The minimum file size on a hard drive is 4 KB which is 4 X 1024 bytes due to Windows XP and NTFS.

7. When a computer sends data to computer Y through a wireless access point, and there are also computer X and Z in the vicinity, which computer will get the data?

Only Computer Y will receive the data.

Total of 90 questions inclusive of True/False questions, MCQs, fill in the blank answers and short answer questions.

Understanding how the internet works

2007-06-13T23:06:00.000+08:00

Today's the final test for this module that I'm doing. I liked the last 2 short answer questions that came out in the paper. Basically, the first question asked us about TCP compared with another protocol that is similar to retransmission timeout. TCP consists of Duplicated Acks and Retransmission Timeout whereas the protocol that was posted in the question consists only of RTO. I answered that the protocol is simpler and hence easier to apply in networks and hence more scalable. The cons of the protocol is that unlike TCP which has other protocols such as Duplicated Acks in order to infer traffic congestion on the internet and adjust Window Sizes accordingly to suit the traffic condition, this protocol does not have additional protocols. TCP is thus able to more efficiently utilise the available bandwidth in the network because duplicated acks allow TCP to infer that there is some traffic congestion in the network but is not as bad as that from Retransmission Timeout. Hence, it will only reduce the data transfer rate to that of the congestion avoidance phase. In contrast, upon receiving RTO, the data transfer rate would be dramatically reduced to that of slow start phase. Here's the graph that I drew for the test:

The 2nd short answer question basically asked about P2P softwares such as Napster, Gnutella, Kazaa and what are the pros and cons of these softwares. The 2nd part of the question provides us with a scenario whereby an entrepreneur devises an algorithm to combine a Gnutella network with Google Page rank search engine and ask us to comment whether this would work or not and what are the barriers to this type of algorithm.

Besides these questions, the MCQs are tough because we have to choose the correct multiple choices (not only 1 correct choice but can also be more than 1 correct choice) in order to get the full marks for the question. Many things tested were not from the syllables. For example, I did not know what a Kalman Filter device is.

Computer Ports

2007-06-05T01:26:00.000+08:00

Here’s what I learnt about computer ports from the GEK1500 module. Some of the slower ports (legacy ports) are already being phased out and cannot be found in new computers due to the faster speeds of the other ports, especially the Universal Serial Bus port. Below is the list of some ports that are found in computers according to their data transfer speeds.

Serial Port 56 Kbps (legacy port) – normally used for slow speed modems (dialed-up), keyboard and mouse and PDA cradles

Bluetooth 1.2 – ~700 Kbps
Bluetooth 2.0 – ~2.1 Mbps

Used on mobile phones and other peripherals that do not have high power consumption

Pros: Conserve battery life as it uses very little power, do not require line of sight for devices to communicate with each other
Cons: Short range (depending on power can go up to only a few hundred metres), low data transfer rate (~700 Kbps), only faster than a serial port.

IrDA port – 4 Mbps – requires line of sight. Usually used in palm tops, mobile phones and some keyboards

Parallel port (legacy port)– several Mbps per sec up to 12 Mbps – Usually used to connect printers, can also used to connect zip drives and other old scanners and webcams

USB 1.1 - ~1.5 Mbps (Low Speed) ~12 Mbps (Full Speed) – can use to connect devices such as mouse, keyboards and webcams

A twisted pair CAT-3 or CAT-5 cable

Ethernet – 10-1000 Mbps – Use to connect computers to form a network to share resources, also use to connect to the internet via a router and to connect to a network printer

Firewire – 400 Mbps – Commonly use to transfer video files from digital camcorders, music from portable mp3 players, many pictures from digital camera and for other large file transfers. Also can be found on printers but rare. A faster standard called Firewire 800 with a speed of 800 Mbps also available which has twice the speed of the original Firewire 400.

A flashdrive, a typical USB mass storage device (storage capacities can range from a mere few 10s of MBs to today’s 2 GBs and above)

USB 2.0 – 480 Mbps – Commonly known as the Hi-speed USB port with data transfer rate up to 480 Mbps (60 MB/s). Used to transfer large video files and other multimedia files that require high speed transfer, from a digital camcorder or digital camera. Nowadays USB 2.0 ports are the most common and popular ports in computers and can be used to connect many devices such as keyboards, mouse, Ethernet cable, printers, external hardisk drives, and other peripheral devices.

UNSW related article

2007-05-27T02:45:00.000+08:00

This article looks interesting. It's a letter written by a reader regarding the inflexible education system of Singapore.

Source: http://www.straitstimes.com

I READ with dismay about UNSW pulling out, but I knew that this is something that could happen any time to many foreign organisations which test their toes in Singapore waters.
One of the major reasons is the unforgiving inflexibility of the system and the way we Singaporeans have been groomed to accept that trying is not good enough, a failure is a failure and that we have to take full brunt of the consequences of failure, no exceptions.

The many unknowns and possibilities these days are ironically coupled with technological achievements that can have indicated abilities to predict some certainties giving rise to set regulations, guidelines and norms, benchmarks and deliverables being foisted on every engagement and contract, particularly at governmental level.

The weakness in the system shows up most when, firstly, the predictions/calculated risks don't match up to benchmarks despite the utmost efforts of both parties, secondly when there are more variations, changes, scenarios that are covered by these initial guidelines and deliverables and, thirdly, when the party with clout - which is usually the governmental body or GLC - is in a position to flex its muscles which it inevitably does without conceding an inch.

I have encountered many instances and accepted them because deep down, I do take the view that guidelines and deliverables are what differentiate us from being a cowboy country and which are required to set minimum standards and achieve accountability.

However, the latest personal episode set me thinking about how flawed the system can be.

My son, who is seven, attended a premier kindergarten and now attends a premier primary school - none of the educationists in these institutions alerted me to his learning disabilities which could have been rectified at an earlier stage.

Being very apprehensive at their comments that he was not trying hard enough, I arranged for an assessment at the Dyslexia Association of Singapore.

They were an excellent team who carried out tests showing that while he was not dyslexic, he had visio spatial and motor issues that caused him to scrawl instead of write, and rendering him unable to cope with the galloping curriculum, including being expected to spell 'community service' and 'amenities' (among a list of 200 phonetically unrelated words).

I wrote to the Compulsory Education Unit to request an exemption as home schooling may be an option to help him catch up at this juncture in order that he could achieve mainstream acceptance at a later point.

I received an ultimatum to reply within 21 days with a long list of requirements which included full details of how I expected to find alternatives to fit within the national education curriculum and system failing which I would be exposed to the full penalties of the breach including a fine and jail term.

Currently, my family and I are in turmoil. It is obvious that the child needs help through occupational therapists, education specialists and also sports and music related activities. The reason why we wanted to take him out of the system is that after a full day of school, he is unable to fully reap the benefits of these specialists particularly as one-to-one support is recommended.

Instead of the system being supportive of what is a very challenging move, we get an implied threat.

In fact, it was the difficulties of challenging the system at the onset that may have exacerbated the current position.

Our request to delay his admission to Primary One as he was a premature child born in December had resulted in a whole array of requirements which so dumbfounded us that we decided to take the path of least resistance, that is, enrol him in Primary One within the requisite dates.

My elder son, who is now completing his Master's Degree in Canada, was luckier.

In the early primary years, he was also branded as being subnormal. We, as parents, knew that this was not the case. He was a great personality and very bright - but he did not always do what was demanded of him. Fortunately, intelligence tests proved that our instincts were correct. He was put in the gifted education system which did much for him.

In my case, as a child of a diplomat, I returned to Singapore in Secondary 3. I failed every subject including English despite being on the top honour roll in my high school.

I was also fortunate to have great friends and tuition teachers who pointed out that that the system then only required regurgitation - nothing more - and I became a top scorer and attained undergraduate and graduate degrees in NUS.

Perhaps the system has caused our educationists to be fully aware that their primary role is one of accountability - and there are set norms, rules and codes of behaviour and conduct which are cast in stone.

When there is any deviation to the set answers or mode, no matter how superior such deviations are - they have to be marked to be wrong.

Let me give you three instances.

Even when my son was in the gifted education programme, he was asked to give as many words for the letter Z as possible.

He included 'zeppelin' and 'zinnia' in his list. He was marked wrong. I questioned the teacher because a zeppelin is an airship and zinnia is a flower. She said they were proper nouns. I further challenged her for the differences between zinnia and rose - she dismissed me with a shrug and a frown - and my son tugged me and begged me to give in, in case he was reprimanded further.

Another instance was when he was asked to give an answer based on a graph - he put 75.2 per cent (trying to be as accurate as possible) but the teacher said the answer was 75 per cent - no negotiation.

The only reason why I wanted to raise these points was that I wanted my child to be able to look at situations from as many angles as possible - and when he is not supported for pushing boundaries, then there is something wrong because neither he nor I could find any real basis for such dismissal.

The third instance was composition-set words. One of my educationist friends in the international school system remarked how her student in the Singapore school system, whom she was helping, was thumbed down by his teacher for an essay which used more suitably nuanced words than the givens and was given a fail mark.

I myself looked at a 'model' composition which my young son was asked to follow and found not just grammatical errors, but also cliches that did not actually happen in real life - only standard Singapore textbooks and exam guides.

Relating all this to the UNSW scenario, I can see how all this harks to the inflexibility of our unforgiving system and our well-trained bureaucrats.

The guidelines are always clear and until the guidelines are changed top down, the bureaucrats must follow it to a T - that is the safest route and the route that ensures that benchmarks are met and the line is toed - so the bureaucrats have passed the test of accountability and there will be no possibility of any slap on the wrist or what my son calls 'chicken egg' - a big fat zero.

Jasmine Tan Chin Chwee (Ms)

Updates!! and end of semester

2007-05-05T02:46:00.000+08:00

Sorry for the lack of updates. Even though I had taken only 4 modules this semester but had been super busy leh. Shall do some recap for the modules that I had taken this semester.

The Child Language module is non-examinable which makes it super intensive but still lots of fun and manageable. Why intensive, because there were 2 presentations of two readings, 3 tests(including the prerequisite test), class and IVLE forum participation and one big project which is 40% of the entire module. The project is fun because we got to choose and “play” with the child to gather linguistic data for analysis. Our project topic was on “Investigation into tone acquisition by a non-speaker of Mandarin”. Why the project topic is interesting because we wanted to find out how the child who had some prior exposure to Mandarin would acquire the new Mandarin tones we were going to teach her. We basically teach the child two minimal sets of Mandarin tones. From this project, we learnt that the gathering of linguistic data from a child is not easy at all and we have to offer an interpretation of the data we gathered. I would also like to thank my partner for providing the child for the project, for without the child, this project would never have been able to start at all.

What other things are interesting for this module? Basically there are some theories that are behind Child Language research which is applicable to human nature itself. These include the nativist theory which states that language is innate to our brains as well as the “social” theory which postulates that our environment shapes the language that we use.

The language and internet module is basically about corpus linguistics. This module is one of the modules that I had wanted to take all along. Why is it interesting is because of the analysis of blog language as well as other languages that are used on the internet by the various virtual communities. The linguistic data I gathered and analysed show how language is creatively appropriated and used by different people or virtual communities which help to make each community distinctive. For the individual essay, I had analysed and compared Singapore Teenage blog language with British Teenage blog language. The main weakness of the essay was that I had focused too much on the Singapore side which made the analysis skewed. For the group project, we had carried out a research on the language of game forums, comparing the language used in DOTA Allstars forum with World of Warcraft forums. The results are expected because we found quite a lot of similarities between the language used as DOTA is a subset of Warcraft series of games. However, there were some distinctive language used for each forum because of the different nature for each game. The exam questions were rather difficult. The first question basically asks about ethics in corpus research – how to carry out the gathering of data naturally but not be a skilled imposter. Hmm, spent quite a long time about 15 minutes before starting on this question. The next question is about Sinclair’s semantic prosody and semantic preference which is one of the simpler questions. Finally, I also attempted the question on how not to resort to cultural stereotyping when analyzing corpus data. Basically, I quoted the examples from the Thai chat reading combined with my own arguments.

Cinematic discourse module is basically about watching films. What I like most about this module is because it’s not very technical or linguistically inclined. Therefore I also highly recommend this module to be taken by non EL majors. I like the part where we learnt about the different camera techniques used in movies to create different kinds of effects. My essay was focused on the topic of camera techniques used in the film Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. I had started the essay since Chinese New Year in February. Of course this sounds like kiasu but had to start the essay early so that can gather enough information to write a good essay mah. For the group project, our group did on Animatrix. Our group was deciding between doing a Muse MTV or Animatrix, and in the end the majority of votes go to Animatrix because many of our group members were anime fans. We did one of the short films inside the Animatrix: Program which was of course Japanese anime inspired and it was also entirely created by a Japanese anime creator.

Here's a link for the Animatrix short: Program:

For the exam, I did on question about characterization and difficulties involved with it, which also touched on the elusive issue of identity. However, I argued that identity even though it is elusive and complicated is nevertheless an important consideration for the analysis of characterization. For the second question we were shown a video clip for Citizen Kane and asked to answer how linguistics and discourse analysis are important in the study of cinematic narratives. I kinda expected that Citizen Kane would be used in the exam because it is such an important movie.

The last module is narrative structures. It’s not an easy module considering that the concepts taught to us were abstract and we had to do lots of self learning. Of course, for the essay I had talked about the use of camera techniques in the creation of cinematic space in Citizen Kane. This is one of the most interesting essays that I had written because I learnt a lot of new things in the process of writing. The group project that my group chose was on Shakespeare In Love. I was in charge of the cinematography portion for research and presentation. Incidentally, this movie won the best picture for the Academy Awards which is why the cinematography is important for this film. The exam for this module was the hardest as the questions were very vague and open ended. Just hope that the answers I gave were okie. Seems that the first question is similar to the question that was set for cinematic discourse about how important linguistics is in the study of narrative in general, including narratives that are not encoded linguistically. The second question I chose was on morality and whether it has structural consequence or only has occurrence in the contents of narrative. I argued that morality has structural consequence as I feel that morality can shape the plots of narrative. But I feel that my argument was not very strong on the whole.

That’s all for this semester’s work. Next, taking two more modules in the coming semester – GEK1500 and GEK1512

Recently I was trying out an email reading program called Emailcash Pro. Was wondering on the reliability of this program. But still trying it to see how it goes..

Stressful Dream

2007-02-06T23:35:00.000+08:00

Haiz, I just had a dream that my painstakingly written school notes were torn up. It must be the stress in school...

First Week of lesson

2007-01-15T02:31:00.000+08:00

The past week was my first week of the semester. The first lesson was on Language and Internet. We had a hands on interaction with a computer program called Eliza - meant to simulate a person, but its responses are actually based on rules and keywords, according to what you type, the program will respond in a definite manner. There are 2 programs we need to use in order to analyse language use in communities and chat programs - WordSmith and WMatrix. Specific patterns of language will become apparent as we analysed the language data collected from the internet. There should be similar patterns according to gender, age, occupation, and the type of forums, or country that the data is collected from.

The new module Cinematic Discourse is rather interesting. It is mainly about questioning the basic assumptions that are normally taken for granted when we watch movies, or rather, we often abide by a schema to make sense of what is happening in the movie. An example shown during the seminar is from Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven (1992). The cowboy in this movie does not know how to use a gun, nor does he know how to ride a horse. Does this mean that he is not a cowboy? No!! A cowboy does not necessarily need to use a gun and ride a horse. This is just a stereotypical assumption that we often take for granted which is the schema that we used to make sense of the world. Therefore, we have to step back, and question this assumtion. The project topics have 3 broad categories: Discourse of Home movies, Discourse of advertising and Discourse of animation.

Narrative Structures is an advanced EL module that has some relations to Cinematic Discourse and Narrative Structures. Narrative mainly involves two notions - the what and the way. The what is the content of the narrative and the way is the discourse, or how the narrative is presented. Narrative is an important concept because it is present in many other fields such as sociology, history, psychotherapy, medicine, etc. The CNM lecturer, Mr Alex Mitchell also attended this module, he seems interested to learn about the other modules in NUS. Towards the end of the seminar lesson, we were shown 2 videos. The first one has no narrative, it is just like the visualization that we see when we open an instrumental music with Windows Media Player. The second one is the Crazy Frog Video:

Why is there a narrative? Basically, there is an exposition, or opening sequence to the video where the frog just starts the music. Then the scene changes to where the evil guys are building some gigantic robot in the sea, and the frog gets dragged into the conflict with the evil guys when he went fishing in the sea. There is the climatic moment when the crazy frog confronted the gigantic robot and is able to escape from the gigantic robot, and up to the surface of the water by the end of the clip.

The last lesson of the week is on Child Language. I took this module out of curiosity, although I'm not confident about the technical aspects of the module - phonology and morphology. Was late for the class because Friday was raining heavily in the morning and there is a very big jam at Clementi area. The lecturer is very nice because she smiled at me even though I was late. Lesson started with brief introduction from the students. The assignment is to get hold of a child up to 4 years old and gather language data from the child by the next seminar lesson. The baby blues comic strip is later shown to us, although not very funny but is relevant to the contents of the module. Had the first test in the semester - the prerequsite test for this module, basically testing students knowledge in analysing morphological, phonological and syntactical data.

A lecturer in Sociology department collapsed and died on Tuesday when he was having a thesis discussion with one of the students at 2 pm. Associate Professor Ananda Rajah had collapsed in his office due to cardiac arrest. He is one of the nicest and friendliest lecturers in NUS. I had taken 1 module from him last summer term which is Singapore Society. I had enjoyed his lessons tremendously. I still remembered how he had spoken about the various food cultures in Singapore, and also how he related his experiences in the army of how the soldier says something or apologises to the tree spirit when the soldier wanted to urinate near the tree. His tutorials were also memorable, he shouted loudly when he announced that the hell gate had opened according to a diagram he drew on the board, in order to catch hold of the student's attention in class. I had communicated frequently with him by email during the term, he even asked me why I have not slept yet 2 am in the morning and still sending him emails. I want to quote some of the email exchanges I had with him in remembrance of him:

Offering to write letter of reference for me on his own initiative.

Hi Weimin

Over the years, I have had many students asking me to write letters of reference for them when they apply for foreign exchange studentships at universities which have signed memoranda of understanding with NUS, when they apply for jobs, when they apply for scholarships to pursue graduate studies at Masters and PhD levels. That kind of thing. So, if ever your are thinking along those lines, when the time comes, do let me know.

Cheers.

Ananda

Asking me why I was having late night.

Dear Weimin

My goodness! You are still checking your e-mails so late in the night?! I have, sometimes, to stay up late in the night to complete responding to student queries and other communications with people in other universities because of the time difference, but I think we all need a bit of rest at some time. Tonight, I shall have to leave rest/sleep to be little later.

Prof Ananda relating his army experience to me.

Hi Weimin

My NS experience goes a long way back. A arther long story, so I'll try and summarise. I was enlisted in 1971. At that time the SAF could not take in all the 18 year olds. I believe it was Dr Goh Keng Swee, as Minister of Defence who made the decision that 10 per cent of enlistees (who had been admited to the University of Singapore and Nanyang University - Nantah) could be balloted (a 'Toto system' which was I think in turn was based on a practice in Israel - but I could be mistaken). I was lucky or unlucky (depends on one's point of view) and actually was balloted out. So, after six months (basic training, section leaders training, school of small arms training - nowadays called BMT and SISPEC), I was allowed to go to the University of Singapore. I finished with a first class honours degree in FASS.

Went back to the SAF in Officer Cadet School (OCS), 4th Standard Military Course (SMC), SAFTI (1977). Graduated, and was posted to 6SIR, where as a 2nd Lt, I was a Platoon Commander, DyS1, and then Company 2IC. In my reserve service, after I did my PhD at the Australian National University (1986), I was posted to 1PDF. I served as Company 2IC in Delta Coy in 150SIR, and then as OC. I finished my reserve training as a CPT. That's why I had a Land Rover with driver!

I doubt if I ever met the lady you mention. She must have been in IPDF HQ. At IPDF, most of my interactions were with successive S3s.

Cheers.

Ananda Rajah

Very personal email correspondence with him, from the below exchange, this shows that he does not treat students as less equal position than him as a lecturer professor.

Yes, of course. Let's stay in touch. E-mal is great. I and many former students still keep in touch, even those who graduated. I am 52 years old right now, and I don't plan to retire so soon! But, yes, we will stay in touch. I just got a private e-mail account with gmail.com, on the recommendation fo a former student. The e-mail address is: rajah.ananda@gmail.com. Try it and see if comms can be establish through that avenue. I'm still new to the gmail account - only registered for it a few days ago.

I enjoy communicating with students. As I said, I greatly appreciate our intellectual exchanges. So, no need to be 'pai seh' or 'kek ki'. And, I'm glad to hear that there are other lecturers who are helpful. That's how it should be.

He offered me to take his module during this semester:

Want to a course with me in Semester II, next Academic Year? It is SC2206 Culture and Society. We go beyond the shores of Singpore in that one.

Cheers.

Ananda Rajah

Prof Ananda Rajah came over to my exam location personally to ask me if I have any problems - this shows that he is very dedicated.

Dear Weimin

I trust you are not too exhausted from the examination today. I have to invigilate the examination for the other students at 9am tomorrow morning. But, I'll come over to respond to any queries you might have at your location, after 9.30am. Ms Chia Hsiao Ching will be your invigilator. If you have any queries before I come over, let her know. She will know how to get in touch with me at LT11. She is a very helpful person, so do not hesitate to ask her for any assistance.

I am sure you will do well.

Regards.

PS: Did I ever mention that I enjoy our intellectual exchanges over the Forum and through e-mails? If I haven't, well here it is: I do.

The last email correspondence I had with him:

Hi Weimin

Have you followed the Mr Brown issue that has emerged in the Today newspaper, and related blogsites? The podcasts by Mr Brown and Mr Miyagi are really funny and are all about aspects of Singapore popular culture! I wish I had known about their podcasts before: could have suggested that students check out the podcasts and see how students would analyse them as aspects of popular culture. Only discovered the Mr Brown and Mr Miyagi blogsites after the Today paper issue.

Regards.

Ananda Rajah

張韶涵 - 夢里花

Angela Chang is releasing her new album in a few weeks time. Here's the video of her new MTV titles "Meng Li Hua" 張韶涵 - 夢里花 or translated directly to "flower in her dream". She mentioned that the tune for this song is from her dream and when she woke up she wrote down the tune and let the composer of the song transcribed the song into the official version in the album.

Lyrics at http://mymedia.yam.com/m/886189

I think the MTV is very surreal. The white setting of the MTV makes this song feels like it really does come out from a dream. The melody is smoothing and dreamy. Angela's vocal is still as unique and strong as ever.

10 Jan 07 Cyndi Wang Enews:

This clip is talking about Cyndi's latest enews asking people to go online auctioning for children.

RM Encoder Problem

2006-12-30T01:11:00.000+08:00

The reason why my encoder was not able to load the mpeg2 video files, but opens an activemovie window instead is because the RM encoder reads Mpeg and Mpeg2 via Directshow. The default directshow filter for Mpeg2 playback will not feed the video to the encoder software and the activemovie window will pop up.

One of the solution is to install Klite codec and set install MPEG-2 (Demuxer/Decoder) as Ligos/Ligos as shown in the diagram below.

Another solution is to install Moonlight's Elecard Mpeg player which will enable the RM encoder software to load the Mpeg2 video clip successfully.

AY 2006/2007 Special Term Modules

2006-12-29T00:15:00.000+08:00

Here is the list of tentative list of modules that will be offered in next year's special term. The list is certainly much more comprehensive and with more variety now as compared to the modules that were offered last year.

These modules look quite interesting to me and are under consideration by me:

GEK1500
GEK1501
GEK1512
GEK1511
GEK1527

NM2219
GEK1520
LSM1301

Taiwan Earthquake killed the Internet

2006-12-27T21:22:00.000+08:00

According to Yahoo News, Tuesday night's earthquake measuring 7.1 on the Richter Scale that occurred off the coast of Taiwan severely damaged the vast network of underwater cables that enables modern communication. According to Hardwarezone, it would take three weeks for the underwater cables to be repaired to resume normal services.

Wednesday December 27, 7:08 PM

Quake cuts off much of Asia Internet
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/061227/1/45o3v.html

Wednesday December 27, 8:17 PM

Internet access in Singapore severely affected by Taiwan quake
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/061227/5/singapore249388.html

Some of the effects that are experienced here for home users:

1. Unable to connect to Instant Messaging Services that includes MSN and ICQ.

2. Slow downloading of files from the internet.

3. Slow access to certain websites especially overseas based sites.

4. P2P services down including most torrent trackers.

Release of Results?

2006-12-16T02:16:00.000+08:00

There is a website that allows students to check their results before the official release date.

https://integral.nus.edu.sg/ui/exam2000a.HomePage

Some say it's the unmoderated exam results, while others say that it's the "official results" which is the same for their results when it is officially released on the actual date of release.

Personality Traits

2006-12-14T00:43:00.000+08:00

I learnt more about personality traits after I had taken the interactive storytelling and from doing the final project. Firstly, personality comes from the noun persona and persona means a mask. But personality is not necessarily to hide or disguise, but to typify a character. For interactive storytelling, the goal is to define personality - emotional, thought and character attributes - in order to drive behavior. Interesting behavior, in turn, drives dynamic, dramatic situations with a story.

Possible Spoilers ahead

I find the personality traits of evil characters or antagonists/bad guys to be particularly interesting. One personality trait often found in antagonists as portrayed in stories is of being manipulative. This manipulative personality trait I had tried to use it for one of my main characters in the final project. The iconic villain is from Star Wars’ movies who is Palpatine. In the first 3 movies, he is simply a senator who has gained more and more power throughout the trilogy to become the chancellor of the republic. In the first movie, it is he who manipulated the Trade Federation to take over the planet called Naboo which caused the former chancellor to become displaced due to his ineffectual handling of the Naboo situation. With this removal, Palpatine is able to get himself elected to the chancellor office through the great numbers of sympathy votes. By the end of the second movie, Palpatine had engineered the Separatists attack on the republic in order to gain more “emergency” power in his office. The clone armies he created are also a tool used in the third movie to destroy all of the Jedi scattered throughout the galaxy who are leading the clones in attacks on the Separatists. In the third movie, Palpatine manipulated and twisted Anakin Skywalker to become his apprentice Darth Vader, by feeding on Anakin’s desire for more power in order to save his wife’s Padme’s life from certain death which Anakin had been able to see in his dreams.

Another villain is Naraku from the Japanese manga/anime Inuyasha. In the beginning of the series, Naraku shapeshifted into Inuyasha and tricked Kikyo into believing that Inuyasha only wanted the Shikon No Tama jewel for himself to become a full Yokai and that his relationship with Kikyo is only one of the methods that he can achieve that aim. Naraku seriously injured Kikyo in the guise of Inuyasha and had wanted Kikyo to heal herself with the jewel. In doing so, Naraku would be able to corrupt the jewel for his own since healing herself by using the jewel is a selfish act. However, Kikyo sought to be burned together with the jewel in order that no other beings would be able to get the jewel for their own selfish needs again. Naraku continues with his manipulative schemes throughout the rest of the series. In a recent ended arc of the Inuyasha manga, it is Naraku who manipulated Hakudoshi and Akago to go independent from him. The purpose of this manipulation is for Hakudoshi to create Moryomaru who is initially just a puppet and his subsequent development into an independent Yokai after Akago is implanted into him contributed to him developing into a powerful Yokai, even exceeding the power of Naraku, but not that of his manipulative abilities. In the end, it is Naraku’s scheming and manipulative traits that won over Moryomaru, when Naraku let himself be absorbed by Moryomaru. But like a Trojan Horse virus, with the barrier dissolving abilities of the Yomeiju’s which he had absorbed earlier, he is able to incorporate and absorb Moryomaru into himself and gained the main powerful abilities of this Yokai which includes the Kongosoha technique.

A villain from PC Game is the final boss demon called Diablo, which is again of manipulative personality traits. It is he who engineered and let loose the demons in the town of Tristram after having possessed King’s Leoric’s son as his vassal and body in the mortal realm. But the body is too weak, and Diablo engineered the event in Tristram, in order that only the most powerful hero would be able to overcome all of his monstrosities that he created in the catacombs beneath the town. When this hero reach Diablo and defeated him, Diablo would in turn countercorrupt the hero, and hence gain a much more powerful body than he had ever before. Diablo continues with his manipulative behaviour in Diablo 2, the sequel to the original game of the same title where he freed his brothers Baal and Mephisto who are held trapped in the mortal realm. However, he had been defeated by another hero in this sequel and what future manipulative behaviour that he has will wait to be seen in Diablo 3.

I find that famous antagonists and villains are often defeated or betrayed by the ones closest to them. Emperor Palpatine during his act of killing Luke Skywalker using Force Lightning, contributed to Darth Vader turning back to the light side and gripped the Emperor and threw him down the power core shaft. Naraku would probably have met with the same fate of his destruction probably also contributed to by one of his closest minions or “detachments”. One example is seen from a recent development of the Inuyasha manga when he ordered Kanna, his most loyal detachment to destroy Inuyasha’s main weapon Tessaiga. Naraku does not view Kanna as anything else besides as merely a tool used to achieve his aims just like the Emperor just using Darth Vader as a tool but Naraku’s trait is more villainous and explicit then the Emperor’s because he would have Kanna sacrifice herself to destroy Inuyasha’s sword. In the end Kanna perished, but not before communicating the secret to destroying Naraku to Kagome through the glass shard that hit Kagome’s eye.

Review of AY 2006/2007 Semester 1

2006-12-11T04:45:00.000+08:00

I had three papers for the end of semester exam for semester 1 AY 2006/2007. The first 2 papers were advertising strategies and literary stylistics. The paper for advertising strategies is fine. It has 50 MCQs and 2 essay questions – 1 long and 1 short. Overall, the paper is okie. The long essay question asked what are the difficulties that marketers face when they plan to market to global markets such as China. The short essay question asked what is meant by a good advertising. Literary Stylistics paper was on 29 Nov 06 evening. First question is fun. I had chosen to use figurative language to analyze the poem. Figurative language can include metaphors, metaphors of transitivity and lexical density. I had used the last two mainly to analyse and interpret the poem. The poem is William Blake’s The Poison Tree.

A POISON TREE

(from songs of Experience -1794 ) by William Blake

I was angry at a friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry at a foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I water'd it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright;
And my foe beheld it shine.
And he knew that it was mine.

And into my garden stole
When the night had veil'd the pole:
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretch'd beneath the tree.

I had more worries for the second question which I had chosen to analyse the use of nouns that is provided in the passage extracted from a novel written by a South African writer. My answers are quite repetitive and kept revolving around the same points. I had my last paper on 2 Dec 2006. The last paper was for ecommerce. The paper consisted of 50 MCQs and 1 essay question divided into 3 sub questions. The questions are rather tricky – some of the question phrasing involves using the “not” word in it to confuse the students. The essay question is entirely on mobile commerce.

I had taken these 4 modules this semester: Literary Stylistics, Advertising Strategies, Interactive Storytelling and Ecommerce.

Advertising Strategies is quite interesting and for the project, I had a chance to research on StarHub MaxOnline broadband. While researching and conducting interview at the StarHub centre, I had also learnt that advertisements are not that simple. For example, there are different categories of advertisements which include brand ads and retail ads. Brand ads are those ads that emphasize on promoting the brand itself which sometimes can resort to using emotional appeals. For example, StarHub ads always uses a wacky image such as the astronaut and the dog on the moon for the recent MaxOnline FlexiSurf ad in order to portray a kind of creative image to the customers in order to entice them to be attracted to the ad. Retail ads are those ads that serve to emphasize on promotions itself. For example, what gifts are bundled with a specific service that you subscribe with and what is the amount of discounts that you can have when you subscribe to a service, etc. The project for this module is very competitive. The highest score for the report is 24/25 and a few groups have got this score. I guess the Tiger Beer TVC must be outstanding.

Interactive Storytelling is one of the best and newest modules available in NUS because it is entirely hands on module. The first assignment is creating 3 different picture story cycles simply by reusing the same images and rearranging them. I had talked about this assignment in a previous blog post. Assignment 2 is creating 8 plots out of a story premise. The key to the assignment is again reusing and mixing the plot points which enable us to realize the many possibilities of an interactive story which is not supposed to be linear based but to have multiple pathways throughout the story which gives the user meaningful choices. Assignment 3 is choosing the plot point from assignment 2 and creating an elaborated and specific scene from the plot point. The final project is building up from these first 3 assignments and creating a specific substory scene with added variables from the multi-dimensional main characters that had been created for the scene.

Literary Stylistics has quite some overlaps with literature but it is more linguistics based. The main aim of this module is to learn the different linguistic tools that are taught to us in the module, in order to analyse and then interpret the text that is given to us. The point is to show us that using linguistics as a tool for analysis can provide us with a meaningful and insightful interpretation of the text itself and thus linguistics can be a very important tool for analyzing texts.

The ecommerce module is basically about learning the various ways that a business or any individual can conduct commerce activities through the internet. It includes B2B, B2C, C2C and mobile commerce, etc. I had learnt quite many new stuffs that I had never heard of which includes reverse auction which is an auction specific to Priceline but it is also used for other businesses in order to source for the cheapest third party to help the business perform some of its commerce activities such as designing and building parts of a product for the main company. Another term is escrow services which is a third party and neutral party that holds the payment that you will be paying to the seller, but until the seller has delivered the product and you have confirmed that you have received it, then the escrow service will pay the seller. The purpose of the escrow services is to ensure the payment and delivery of the goods which is the trust factor in ecommerce that many auctions lack in.

Currently, I’m trying out the expansion for Warhammer 40k: Dark Crusade. Will update soon with some screenshots.

Arghh, just had a fever earlier today of 38 degrees celsius. Was feeling so cold man, even when covered up. Had goosebumps all oevr the body.

Had some thoughts about changing major, but it looks like I just have to continue majoring in my current major. Here's the advice from Vincent Ooi:

Dear Weimin,

Thanks for yours.

My response is as follows.

1. We in ELL would of course be happy to have you continue as our major.

2. Notwithstanding this, you’ll have to think long and hard about which major will allow you to better achieve the career of your choice. But aren’t you already taking/taken modules from both? This fact will be reflected in the exam transcript for the employer.

Ultimately, it’s a personal decision you’ll have to make – I’m reminded of the poem by Robert Frost, “The road not taken” (google if you must! J).

Best wishes,
Vincent

Just done the module preference exercise earlier today. Have chosen these few modules tentatively: Child language, Morphology and Syntax, Language and Internet, Narrative Structure and Game Design.

Interactive Storytelling Final Project Draft

2006-11-23T07:00:00.000+08:00

Oki, I just spent a total of 12 hours finishing up the draft for the final project for this module. Hope that I can revise for my other modules soon.

Nice Quote

2006-11-21T05:16:00.000+08:00

I like this quote that I read today:

"When it all boils down to is that we are all human. We share the gift of emotional response. We feel things. And we feel them in remarkably similar ways. We speak different languages, we observe different customs, but we are wired to each other and to an ultimate power source that transcends us in a way that makes us subject to a common emotional spectrum."

Advertising and Promotion - An integrated Marketing Communications Perspective, Seventh Edition, George E. Belch & Michael A. Belch, Chapter 20 International Advertising and Promotion Page 649

Interactive Storytelling

2006-11-19T05:29:00.000+08:00

There’s this interactive storytelling project that I need to finish before I can start revising for the final exams. This project cuts into the reading week and is due on 24 Dec 2006. I’ve just finished everything and sent it out for review. Hope that I can get it back soon so that I can revise it again.

The main purpose of the project is to create an interactive experience for the user who is playing this story. The crux of the project is that the user’s character through his interaction with the other characters’ in the story must affect the other characters’ personality and cause them to behave differently. It is the characters that drive the plot and not the story that drives the plot. If the story drives the plot, it will look like a movie, or linear story book that has only 1 path defined by the author through the story. In an interactive story, the plots driven by the character should provide the user with a sense of immersion through the interactivity. Only through this process can the story be said to be successful.

This site is provides an important overview of Interactive Storytelling:

http://storytron.com/overview/ov_index.html

November Rain

2006-11-09T15:47:00.000+08:00

Blogger had just given me an error message when I finished typing this post so I just lost everything I typed and now I’m retyping this entry.

It is raining now and I like this November cos it’s refreshing and cool. And most importantly it is driving away the haze. Last week was presentation week. The presentation for Literary Stylistics was on Tuesday 31 Nov 06. Our group did a song analysis on Graduation by Vitamin C. This project was to use the framework from the lecture on Sounds of Poetry and try to use this framework to see if it can be used to analyse songs. The framework includes the metrical system, the rhyme, the intonation and diction, etc. Besides this, we also analysed the additional dimensions of songs which include visual analysis of the MTV and also analysis of its narrative structure. We found that the poetic tools cannot be superimposed onto songs and when analyzing songs, we should take into consideration the melody of the song which tie in with the visual elements and background music in order to give a holistic analysis of the song. The following songs are analysed by the other groups:

1. Pussycat Dolls – Beep
2. Eminem – Lose Yourself
3. Muse – Starlight
4. Muse – Soldier’s Poem

I especially like the Pussycat Dolls song because it’s quite nice and the feeling is quite cool. The other unique analysis by the group is for the Muse song. The group did a research based on whether the lyrics was created first before the tune was created or whether the tune was created first before the lyrics were created and thus these elements could affect each other intimately which affected the entire song. For the presentation this week, the following songs are analysed:

1. Grandmaster Flash – White lines (Retro Song)
2. Eminem – Cleanin’ Out My Closet
3. Eminem – Like Toy Soldiers
4. Papa Roach – Between Angels and Insects

For the presentation on advertising, it was during last week on Thursday 2 Nov 06. The project was very interesting and I like it very much because it is doing a research on StarHub’s MaxOnline broadband service which I’m using this service and I had wanted to do a research in order to understand this service better. Besides the normal survey that I had created in order to gather information about consumer opinion with regards to the service, I had also went down to the Head office of StarHub at AOS building at Ayer Rajah Crescent on 23 Oct 06 to do a face-to-face interview with the marketing personnel of StarHub in order to gather more in-depth information about their marketing campaigns. My group’s final advertising campaign consisted of print advertisements with 3 scenes that promotes the main theme of “Maximise your time spent with loved ones” The other group presentations are really superb. These are the list of brands that the other groups had presented on.

1. Charles and Keith (Colour Print Ads on MRT Trains)
2. Fragrance BBQ (Live undergraduate actors for TVC ad)
3. Tiger Beer (Colour Sketch that was made into a TVC ad)
4. Osim UZap (Sketch Storyboard)
5. Tiger Beer (Colour Print ads – quite professional)
6. EU YAN SENG BOTTLED BIRD’S NEST EU-RE-KA (Sketch Storyboard)

In my personal opinion, I think the video advertisement made by the group on Fragrance BBQ is the best because making a video advertisement really takes a lot of effort and their jingles are also quite catchy.

I was in charge of the Q & A session for the presentation. The lecturer had asked about the survey that was done whether it was done online or offline and how many respondents were gathered. He also asked why we choose to target the age group of 19-30 and not to target the rest of the age group. My reply is that our advertising objective is to increase brand preference among this age group in order to get subscribers to SingNet and PacNet to subscribe to StarHub’s broadband service. Another problem was that we did not include the USP for the service on the slides which the other lecturer pointed it out to us.

Yesterday was the last lecturer and tutorial session for Ecommerce. During tutorial, we basically played a Jeopardy game which is a question and answer quiz session. The purpose of this game is to help us revise the basic terms and concepts for the modules and the questions are quite oki.

The final project for this semester is for the storytelling module and after that would be the final exams. I think tomorrow's playtesting session will be quite interesting....

Mosaic Picture of Celebrity

2006-10-18T04:28:00.000+08:00

This kind of picture is quite creative. It's made from a lot of small pictures to make into the bigger picture.

This specific mosaic picture is of the Taiwan celebrity Lin Zhiling.

Modifying Skin

2006-10-11T06:26:00.000+08:00

Not yet done modifying the skin. Maybe will be up soon.

Stickman Storytelling

2006-10-08T23:23:00.000+08:00

I had done this assignment for stickman picture storytelling. The main point of this exercise is to reuse and rearrange the pictures in order to convey 2 other stories with the same pictures. By doing this, I will learn the multiple possibilities of conveying a story simply by using the same pictures. The term is called multiplot story, where a story can go more than 1 way which is interactivity.

The Bitter Stickgirl has done much higher quality drawings, and rather humorous too. I enjoyed reading all of the strips.

Story 1:

Story 2:

Story 3:

Ecommerce Test

2006-10-04T17:55:00.000+08:00

Today, just had the ecommerce mid term test. It is not totally well done. I can't remember what is reverse auction because it was not prominently mentioned as a main example in the lecture. The only thing I got correct is that it is descending bidding price auction. And it is not buyers bidding for an item but many sellers bidding their services to the buyer of the service and the winner is the lowest successful bid for the seller. The other questions are okie, but I may have been wrong for industry value chains and film value chains or web. For search engine marketing, I can't remember the 2nd method used which is URL. I put another answer for the search engine marketing.

My Mid Term Holidays

2006-10-01T05:01:00.000+08:00

Updates on my school assignments. I have no life actually. Only focused on doing school works.

The storytelling assignment 2 is quite challenging. I have revised it a total of 5 times now but its not close to be rated as good yet but the 8 plots have been able to be shaped out. The key challenge is to recycle and reuse the various plot points and rearrange them in order to create 8 different plot stories.

The essay on linguistic analysis is progressing and the skeleton is out now. Currently still revising it which is due on Mon.

Must need to revise for the ecommerce mid term already!! And the advertising project has not started yet leh.

Storytelling Assignment and Linguistic Analysis of Dubliners

2006-09-27T03:26:00.000+08:00

Currently, I'm completing these 2 assignments. The first is creating 8 plots out of a story premise which is as follows:

Story Premise:

In a far off Land of two boys grew up the best of friends. But over the years they have drifted farther apart and found differing places in society. followed his father into the Corp, a group tasked with keeping the Land safe. has built his life around the seedy Underworld, the part of society kept hidden from the rest of the land. He knows it well and is comfortable with its inner workings. Now, a top minister of the Land has gone missing, taken somehow into the depths of the Underworld. is asked to find him and he calls upon his friend to help.

The first draft is no that great because I had used the same beginnings for the 8 plots and secondly, I had not created a dramatic effect by fleshing out the emotional relationship between Name 1 and Name 2. I had just edited the draft and resent it to the lecturer for evaluation.

What does the story needs to have?

Firstly it needs to be like an Aristotelien story which has a beginning(exposition) which consists of the inciting incident, a middle which contains the main plot points or the meat of the story and most importantly is the turning point which will usually drive the story in a different and unexpected direction. And finally, the ending of the story where the climax (the highest point of the story) precedes the ending and followed by the resolution of the story where almost everything ends up with their loose ends tied. The key to creating a dramatic story is to create a kind of tension between the main characters where based on their relationships, determine their actions which is like a cause and effect theory.

The 2nd assignment is to linguistically analyse the short story "The Sister" in Dubliners.

What do I need to focus on the long essay?

1. Focusing on the Nouns/Verbs, Adjectives/Adverbs and the Clause.
2. Focusing on the various themes in the story.
3. Connecting the linguistic style of the story used with the most important themes in the story.
4. Arguing why a linguistic analysis is important with regards to the specific kind of literary stylistics that is being used to write the story, which ultimately reveal that the style of the story may or may not intentionally be used by the author to portray to the reader a certain effect or to reflect the main theme of the story itself.

Advergames presentation and Advertising Mid Term

2006-09-23T02:35:00.000+08:00

Long time din blog already. Just this Wed had the Ecommerce presentation which is on advergames which I find to be quite interesting because the topic is on advertising which I'm also learning in NM3215. Joanna found a very cute advergame for demonstration, it is so simple, therefore we can effectively use it to demonstrate for the presentation. It's called the Bob A Pop game which can be found at http://kids.icecream.com The game looks like this:

I think Joanna is really very good on the project, she is able to add in 2 more slides into the presentation from the concepts that we learnt immediately in the lecture before the tutorial itself. And she also told us to make the presentation more interactive by adding some questions to ask the audience for their feedback!!

We also showed the honda advergame to show the pitfalls of this advergame which is requiring the user to enter too many personal information on the webpage that will put him off from the game. Anti-McDonalds advergame is used to demonstrate the effect of satirizing the companies for their "illegal practises" in the production of their foods. The presentation went quite well and after its over, I had this load off my workload so I can focus on other major projects.

Earlier today on Fri, I had this advertising mid term test. There was a total of 33 MCq questions and I was taking Paper Type B. There were multiple exam papers (according to my friend which is 5) created to minimize people from copying from each other. I made some mistakes in the paper...Here are the questions that I answered wrongly:

1. Consumer behaviour can be defined as the process and activities people engage in when searching for, selecting, purchasing, using, evaluating, and disposing of products and services so as to satisfy their needs and desires.

The answer I put was Learning...

2. The next question ask about some military ad that sends the message to the audience that people who join the army will be able to achieve and fulfil their accomplishments. And the need that is being fulfilled is I think Esteem needs but I put Self-actualization needs.

3.Perception is the process by which an individual receives, selects, organizes, and interprets information to create a meaningful picture of the world.

The answer I put was information search. (I must have confused it with the wordings)

4. The question asking about the couple becoming aware of a springy mattress and the traditional response hierarchy model is Hierarchy of Effects Model, but I wrote the answer as the AIDA model.

5. The Elaboration Likelihood Model is a function of two elements, motivation and ability to process the message.

I wrote the answer as motivation and involvement in the message. (Confusion again with the concepts)

6. I wrote that a more credible source is always more effective than a less credible source but this is not so. (Because a less credible source is used when the audience's initial attitude is favourable.)

Can't remember more, but the lecturer also has some questions to test student's attentiveness during the lecture. I always have problems with MCQ questions cos they look really tricky to me cos the answers are always so similar to each other, if you do not study and put everything in your brain correctly.

New Workyear 2006/2007 NUS

2006-08-20T03:57:00.000+08:00

The new workyear for NUS 2006/2007 starts on 14 Aug 06 designated as week 1. Yesterday was a long day(at least for me). Lessons started at 2pm for advertising lecture. This module is pretty exciting because we will be learning how to create an advertisment in order to promote a certain product to customers in Singapore. Basically this week's lectures are all introductory lectures. We were told which is the textbook for the module that we would be using and what to expect for the modules, etc. Some things are changed - there is no participation points as well as peer evaluation for this module which doesn't really impact much on the module as the percentage points are usually set quite low for these aspects. Additionally, presenters have to dress up for this module, which is quite surprising indeed because this is not a business module. The other thing done in lecture is basically watching many advertisements that were recorded by the lecturer and then filling up the form about which ads is the most memorable etc, and voicing out opinions in the lecture.

The next lecture for the day is at 4pm in AS1 which is the storytelling class. Not much student enrollment for this module - only 31 students, not surprising because this is a new module in NUS. One of the other rather interesting modules in NUS where we will be learning concepts relevant to telling a story via the interactive medium of new media and computers. The lecturer is rather nice too. She is a director of an interactive software design company in Singapore called Ideaforia. Her introductory slide has 3 pictures - which also involves the concept of interactivity (each student can interpret the picture differently as opposed to what the lecturer is actually trying to present to us) The first picture shows 2 twins - which means that she has a twin sister. The 2nd slide is showing a famous television personality who is preparing some delicacy - this picture serves to show us the opposite of what the lecturer intends to show which is that she does not know how to cook! Finally, the 3rd slide is about some form of sports games that she participated in which I forgot what it is...but it's rather unheard of in Singapore. Well, this lesson is very interactive indeed I can say.

After the lecture which ends at around 5.40 pm, I went to get ready to attend the FASS prize and awards presentation in LT8 which starts at 7pm(although it don't start at 7pm sharp but starts much later which is unsurprising because many people still have not arrived for the event and we have to wait for them and the letter specifically stated to arrive at 6.30pm too) The event started with the talk by the Head of FASS Prof Tan Tai Yong, basically congratulating all the prize recepients. First prize presentation is the Long Service Awards winners which are all the professors who have served for 20, 30 and 40 years in NUS. They include Prof Robbie Goh from EL dept; Prof TC Chang from Geography dept and many many others. Next up is the group photo taking with Prof Tan Tai Yong for 2005, followed by the 2004 Dean's List awards winners on stage. At 8 pm, we are treated to the performance firstly by the Resonance Acapella Group in NUS. One of the songs that they performed is the Heinekan beer ad theme song "Happy Together" which is quite well done since it is quite memorable to me. The other 2 songs they performed, I can't remember what they were. The 2nd performance is by the Winds Symphony in NUS. Two of the music pieces that they performed are Lemon Tree and First Love. First Love is very touching and it was very well performed. After this performance, the book prize awards winners were called individually up the stage to receive their prizes and took a personal photo with Prof Tan Tai Yong. All the book prize winners are the cream of the crop and they are First Class Honours graduates. Finally the ceremony ended with a short video showing, and we were treated to a reception and left the Hall for home.

The Uncanny Valley

2006-07-15T01:32:00.000+08:00

The concept for uncanny valley is important for animators and computer modelling of human characters, etc. According to roboticist Masahiro Mori, the core concept of the uncanny valley is that the more closely robots approximated human appearance and behavior, the more familiar they seemed to a human observer, until a point at which they resembled humans closely, but not perfectly. At this point, people would begin to react negatively to robots, citing feelings of eeriness or discomfort about their appearance. He called it "the uncanny valley," because of the way a graph depicting the correlation between familiarity and human likeness would dip suddenly and drastically, just before reaching perfect mimicry of the human appearance.

Image of the Uncanny Valley, courtesy of Karl MacDorman

Present computing power has developed to the point where simulation of 3D human characters especially in computer and video games are becoming more and more ubiquitous. Therefore the concept of the uncanny vally is important because it reminds animators of the "eerie models" that they may create, due to imperfect modelling of computer characters. Incorrect lip synching of characters and their speech can also be a problem. Remember that in warcraft 3, the main icons of the characters when speaking in the bottom left corner, do not sync with what is spoken? I really do feel odd about this effect.

In movies, this uncanny valley effect has also been applied, although it can be rather intentional, rather than a development flaw. For example, in horror movies such as Silent Hill, there is a monstrous figure in the film called Red Pyramid/Pyramid Head. He resembles human beings but his head is replaced by a pyramid instead of a human's head which is what makes him creepy.

A poster depicting the Red Pyramid.

Besides using the "Uncanny Valley" concept in horror movies and otherwise, the "Uncanny" effect can be used positively for humour and laughter such as in cartoons and simple animations. This example can be shown by speaking animals in movies. Although this does not model humans in any physical ways, the superimposition of human attributes onto animals, eg the ability to speak, makes animals seem to be able to relate more to humans especially children. An example is the animal film called Babe and its sequel Babe: Pig in the city. Making animals speak cause this film to be a rather popular children's movie although adults may enjoy it too as a family film.

1995 film Babe

1998 sequel Babe: Pig in the City

Inspired by Gamespot article at
http://www.gamespot.com/features/6153667/index.html?cpage=1#comments

A robot at the Toyama Robot Festival. It's called アクトロイ　ド-der (Akutoroi Do-der). Demonstrating the creepy effect of the Uncanny Valley.

Another robot in Japan

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-423501194722329023&q=creepy+robot

Brain Teasers

2006-07-14T00:11:00.000+08:00

The Man in the Elevator
A man lives on the tenth floor of a building. Every day he takes the elevator to go down to the ground floor to go to work or to go shopping. When he returns he takes the elevator to the seventh floor and walks up the stairs to reach his apartment on the tenth floor. He hates walking so why does he do it?

The Man in the Bar
A man walks into a bar and asks the barman for a glass of water. The barman pulls out a gun and points it at the man. The man says 'Thank you' and walks out. Why?

The Man who Hanged Himself
Not far from Madrid, there is a large wooden barn. The barn is completely empty except for a dead man hanging from the middle of the central rafter. The rope around his neck is ten feet long and his feet are three feet off the ground. The nearest wall is 20 feet away from the man. It is not possible to climb up the walls or along the rafters. The man hanged himself. How did he do it?

Death in a Field
A man is lying dead in a field. Next to him there is an unopened package. There is no other creature in the field. How did he die?

Anthony and Cleopatra
Anthony and Cleopatra are lying dead on the floor of a villa in Egypt. Nearby is a broken bowl. There is no mark on either of their bodies and they were not poisoned. How did they die?

Look here for answers:

http://eluzions.com/Puzzles/Lateral/more.shtml

Inspired by Eechuan

Sun Tze's Art of War

This strategy is what I have been reading. The basis of the strategy is as follows:

When the force is trapped in an irredeemable position, where there is absolutely no escape route, every soldier would fight to the bitter end to avoid defeat. Under such circumstances, the officers and soldiers become undaunted by the thought of death and are compelled to do their utmost, hoping to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
When the army ends up in a hopeless situation, the soldiers become totally fearless. Having no way out, the soldiers become totally united. Trapped inside a critical territory, the troops become more cohesive; and finally when there is no other alternative, they simply have to fight ferociously for their survival.
Therefore, without being instructed, the soldiers will become vigilant; without being demanded, they will give their best; without being urged, they will be united; and without being told, they will become disciplined.
By banning all superstitious practices and dispelling all doubts, you can lead your force to fight to the death unreservedly.To ensure that there is no wealth left is not a sign that you suddenly dislike wealth. To tell your soldiers that they are doomed is not a signal that you do not treasure life. These are measures taken to reinforce their determination to fight to the death.
Minutes before the final battle, soldiers become emotional and tearful. Those who are sitting down wet their garments with their tears, and those who are lying down wet their cheeks. It is the spontaneous manifestation of poignant bravery when they realise that there is no way out other than to fight to the death. Their courage mirrors that of Zhuan Zhu and Cao Gui of ancient times.

Sourced from http://www.geocities.com/wangawanga7/aow.htm

In other word, put yourself in a desperate and irredeemable situation so that your fullest prowess and potential can be brought out and expressed. Interesting strategy to be applied in times of danger..

Wei Xiao Pasta Costume Intros

Cyndi and Zhang Dong Liang

Gino and Xiao Qiao

Wei Xiao Pasta Animation Intro

Wei Xiao Pasta Intros

2006-07-13T03:30:00.000+08:00

Wei Xiao Pasta intro by:

Cyndi

Zhang Dong Liang

Gino

Xiao Qiao

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqGFdXO4m0U

Internet Firewall

2006-07-11T19:27:00.000+08:00

Well, I just discovered the cause of my slow and insignificant internet download speed nowadays. The reason is the windows firewall that has been set up which limits the incoming connections to my computer. Not that after the firewall is disabled did I see any great improvement in speeds, but at least there is a slight improvement which is better than nothing.

How did I found out the cause of the problem? Basically, I did a compare and contrast method. I plugged in my USB cable for my previous internet connection which has settings that do not have firewall setup. And after that I remembered the settings for it, and replugged in the ethernet cable and set the same setup as that for the settings for the USB cable for the internet connection.

Zidane's headbutt courteousy of Hardwarezone forum

王心凌 - 彩虹的微笑 MTV and Wei Xiao Pasta Trailer

2006-07-05T16:18:00.000+08:00

王心凌 - Cai Hong De Wei Xiao 彩虹的微笑

29 second trailer

微笑ＰＡＳＴＡ OST

2006-07-04T23:17:00.000+08:00

Soundtrack information for 微笑ＰＡＳＴＡ OST is as follows:

According to Simply-Cyndi Yahoo Groups, the preorder gift for Taiwan version is a VCD with shots of the show, a diary of the show's cartoon spokesmen, and lastly, a Cyndi Doll[there will be 2 different designs] with 20+ interchangable outfits.

微笑ＰＡＳＴＡ

2006-07-02T00:07:00.000+08:00

Notes:

@ This is Cyndi’s third official Taiwan idol series where she is the main character. The first being Westside Story and the second being Le Robe De Mariage Des Cieux.

@ Check out the official homepage for more goodies – the Pasta “Chao Ren” is a flash animator with fun links for the series.

@ OST for series is projected to be released on 14 July 06 in Taiwan. Preorder is from 7 July 06 onwards.

@ Check out also the trailer for the series on the homepage.

@ Full cast information can be assessed at the homepage of the series.

Official homepage:

http://www.settv.com.tw/metro/m102/#

Weblog:

http://vipblog.yam.com/pasta

Starts airing on 16 July 06 TTV Sun 9.30 pm and 22 July 06 Settv Sat 9pm.

微笑ＰＡＳＴＡ

Main Casts:

Zhang Dong Liang as He Qun
Cyndi Wang as Chen Xiao Shi
Gino as He Rui Zhe(Ah Zhe)
Xiao Qiao as Rita

Synopsis:

一對八竿子打不著的年輕男女，因為街頭的一次意外撞擊，不小心撞出漫天緋聞，也撞出一段趣味橫生的浪漫情緣，兩個平行的人生，從此交纏在一起，展開了一段浪漫而不凡的人生旅程...

A pair of mismatched young girl and guy, because of an accidental street encounter, resulted in rumours being spread about that encounter, and also contributed to an interesting romantic relationship. Two normal lives, since then are entwined within each other, developing into a romantic and extraordinary journey of life.

成曉詩，微笑Pasta的寶貝女兒，是個天真直率的平凡少女，帶點魯莽，帶點憨傻，總是以微笑面對人生，他總覺得，只要微笑，沒什麼事情大不了！縱使有挫折，難過一下，再笑一笑，也就雨過天青了，曉詩最喜歡的人是同校的阿哲學長，雖然阿哲從來不喜歡曉詩，甚至對曉詩下了「戀情永遠不會滿三個月」的魔咒，但是曉詩還不屈不撓，再接再厲，他相信，總有一天阿哲學長會看到他的真心，喜歡上他，直到他遇見何群那一天開始，曉詩一直相信和堅持的愛情信念產生了變化。

Chen Xiao Shi, Wei Xiao Pasta’s precious daughter, is an innocent/naïve and candid/frank common girl, a bit careless and not caring for the consequences, and a bit silly and foolish. Always facing her life with a smile. Because she feels that everything will not be a big problem as long as she smiles. Even when faced with setbacks, just be sad a little while, and then smile, everything will turn alright after that. Xiao Shi’s favourite person is her same school Ah Zhe senior. Even though Ah Zhe had never liked Xiao Shi, and even set down the rule of not letting a relationship last longer than three months for Xiao Shi, but Xiao Shi is unyielding. She believes that one day, Ah Zhe will see her sincerity and loves her. Until the day she meets He Qun, Xiao Shi always believes in the unyieldingness of the love that she insists on.

何群，歌壇小天王，也是現任議長何孟元的大兒子，因為青少年時與弟弟和女朋友Rita以及青梅竹馬的筱柔對音樂有著共同的理想，而投入音樂的領域中，儘管傳統而保守的父親反對，兄弟仍執著於自己對音樂的夢想和熱情一直往前走，但是，這樣的革命情感卻因為17歲那年的一次意外，這個夢想再也無法實現，因為，何群的錯誤判斷，他們失去了筱柔，阿哲跟哥哥何群也從此兄弟決裂，不再來往。何群後來因緣際會進入娛樂圈，成為今天的歌壇小天王，但是，他並不快樂，因為，這離他們當初的夢想還有一段距離，何群心裡從沒放棄過帶著弟弟一起完成夢想的心願。

He Qun, the small heavenly king of the pop idol scene, is the current minister’s He Meng Yuan’s eldest son. Because when young, he and his brother and girlfriend Rita and also his sweetheart, Xiao Ruo had a common dream/ideal towards music and therefore become involved in the domain of music. Even though his traditional and conservative father opposes, He Qun and his brother persisted in his dream towards music. But this revolutionary feeling towards music which due to an accident during his age of 17 years led to it becoming unable to fulfill. Because of He Qun’s wrong judgment, they lost Xiao Ruo. Ah Zhe and his brother also severed their brotherly ties from then on, no longer keeping in touch with each other. He Qun later joined the entertainment scene and became the small heavenly king of the music pop scene. But he was not happy, because it is far from his original music dream. He Qun has never given up fulfilling the music dream together with his brother.

這是何群新歌發表會的當天，也是曉詩試圖跟新任男友Peter完成戀情滿三個月目標的日子，但是，何群在這一天，眼睜睜看著女友Rita被阿哲帶走，曉詩也在街頭看著Peter擁著另一個女子離開，這兩條傷心的平行線在街頭偶遇，正在躲避狗仔隊跟蹤的何群，一不小心撞上在街頭失落獨行的曉詩，猛烈的撞擊使得何群的嘴唇意外吻上了曉詩，狗仔隊見機不可失，趕緊用相機拍下這難得的一刻，何群只好帶著曉詩逃跑。

This is He Qun’s new song announcement and demonstration day and also Xiao Shi’s attempt to complete her 3 months relationship with her new boyfriend Peter. But, He Qun on this day is helpless in letting his girlfriend Rita being taken away by Ah Zhe. Xiao Shi also on the streets saw Peter hugging another girl and leaving. These two sad souls met on the streets by chance. On the way of escaping from the paparazzi, He Qun accidentally bumped into a distressed and downtrodden Xiao Shi who was alone and lost in the streets. The impact of the knock led to He Qun’s lips accidentally kissed Xiao Shi. The paparazzi saw that the moment is crucial and quickly used their cameras to take down this moment. He Qun had only to take Xiao Shi and escape.

而曉詩因為和哥哥成銘打賭，不得不帶個「男友」回家，否則得在自家經營的「微笑PASTA」義大利麵店門口跳肚皮舞招客人。擔心出糗的曉詩沒有男友可以帶，所以不敢回家，央求何群收留他。同樣愛情受挫的兩人難免有點互相同情，何群收留曉詩，帶她回家，還答應假扮曉詩的男友，陪她一起回家。

Because Xiao Shi had a gamble with her brother Cheng Ming, she had to bring home a boyfriend or else she had to perform a tummy dance in her own Italy spaghetti shop “Wei Xiao Pasta” to entertain the customers. Afraid of displaying her worst because she had no boyfriend to bring, therefore she was afraid of going home and she begged He Qun to let her stay in his place. Because both of them had the same situation of having love lost, which makes He Qun take pity on Xiao Shi, he agreed to let her stay in his place and even agreed to act as her boyfriend and accompanied her to go back home.

沒想到第二天一早風雲變色，「小天王劈腿，街頭擁吻秘密情人」，何群和曉詩的「親吻照」上了頭版新聞，議長家被媒體團團包圍。經紀人Vincent為挽救危機，將計就計，否認何群和Rita的關係，宣布曉詩才是何群的正牌女友，兩人即將訂婚，全國轟然。緋聞一鬧，愛面子的何議長差點氣炸，勒令何群轉學，不料一轉卻轉到了曉詩就讀的鼎風大學，以為再也不會見面的緋聞男女變成同班同學。
這下可好，轉入鼎風大學的何群不但必須經常跟曉詩扮恩愛，也必須面對同校的阿哲和Rita。深愛Rita的何群，始終愛戀阿哲的曉詩，面對昔日戀人跟三年來始終如一的愛慕對象，該怎麼在同一個校園中和平相處？複雜矛盾的情愫，在四個人之間蔓延開來。阿哲對何群有著從高中到現在的不滿與怨恨，在同一個環境中，更讓阿哲如芒刺在背，忍不住處處與何群對立；Rita 對何群有著愧疚，卻又不相信何群在一夜之間喜歡上曉詩，甚至成為未婚夫妻，始終是阿哲頭號支持者的曉詩，礙於與何群協議保密的假未婚夫妻身分，而無法繼續追隨阿哲而痛苦，甚至遷怒何群；何群面對失去最愛，還必須在Rita面前跟曉詩演出恩愛戲碼而痛苦，轉化為一種高傲的冷漠，加上面對阿哲的憤恨，何群試圖想要化解兄弟之間的誤會與怨懟，卻不能在阿哲面前展現軟弱，這些，正考驗著何群。

It can never be anticipated that on the morning of the second day, on the cover of the newspaper, the headline reads “Small heavenly king is a double timer, on the streets hugging and kissing his secret lover”, and He Qun and Xiao Shi’s kissing photo had also being published on the headline news. The minister’s house had been surrounded by reporters from the media. The broker Vincent in order to salvage the situation, denies He Qun and Rita’s relationship and announced that Xiao Shi is He Qun’s real girlfriend and the two of them were soon to be engaged. The whole country was shocked at the news, with the rumour, Minister He who is largely a face saving person, almost exploded with his anger. He commanded He Qun to change school, but ironically He Qun changed to the school where Xiao Shi is currently studying which is Ding Feng University, and they became the same class classmates. Now, He Qun has to pretend to act as Xiao Shi’s boyfriend and also has to face Ah Zhe and Rita who are also in the same school. How is it possible for He Qun who deeply loves Rita and Xiao Shi who still loves Ah Zhe, to be able to coexist in the same school? A complicated set of relationship thus developed between the four individuals. Ah Zhe had always harboured hatred for He Qun ever since from high school and in the same school, a set of oppositional stance soon developed between the two. Rita had felt that she owed He Qun but unable to believe that overnight he had fallen in love with Xiao Shi and had even become engaged. Even more drastic is the situation for Xiao Shi, who still deeply adores Ah Zhe, but had to keep the secret of her “relationship” with He Qun, and thus unable to pursue Ah Zhe, ultimately this led her to anger He Qun. He Qun had to face losing his true love, and felt bitter having to act out his “love” with Xiao Shi, added to have to face Ah Zhe’s anger towards him, and wishing to resolve the conflict between themselves, but not being to appear weak in front of Ah Zhe, all these adds up to become a series of trials for He Qun.

何群跟曉詩這對歡喜冤家，從假未婚夫妻開始，逐漸被曉詩的樂觀微笑，微笑Pasta店所有成員的溫暖融化，找到原本被封存的笑容和溫暖性格，積極面對自己的人生，找回失去的親情與夢想。

He Qun, eventually being influence by Xiao Shi’s smile and the warmth of the employees of Wei Xiao Pasta, and found his inner locked smile and warm character, and finally actively faced his own life and searched for his lost relations and dreams.

阿哲雖然處處與何群對立，卻在一次次的挑戰、誤解之後，更加了解與認識何群，甚至喜歡上曾經以為是全世界最不可能被自己喜歡的女孩—成曉詩，甚至，還幫助她，破除自己曾經下給成曉詩的「戀情永遠不滿三個月」的魔咒。

Ah Zhe, even though has been always opposing He Qun, but in a fight with him, finally is able to find out more about He Qun and even fell in love with Xiao Shi who he though that he would never ever liked. He finally helped her, breaking his curse of “Love not lasting for more than 3 months” on Xiao Shi.

而曉詩呢？一個一直以為自己被「戀情永遠不滿三個月」魔咒的女孩，因為意外成為何群的假未婚妻，人生轉了一個大彎，但是曉詩依然樂觀面對，曉詩總是相信，人生就是這樣，沒有什麼事情解決不了，只要微笑，沒什麼大不了。

And Xiao Shi, always thinking of her cursed by “Love not being able to last more than 3 months” because of accident, became He Qun’s “engaged fiance”. Her life had turned a big roundabout, but Xiao Shi still believes that to face life is always to face it positively, because life is like this, there is nothing that cannot be solved. As long as one can smile, there is nothing that is unsolvable.

在微笑Pasta的真誠帶動下，這一群年輕人的愛情故事持續沸騰著，一道道風味特殊的Pasta正陸續上菜中。
微笑PASTA，一段愛與真誠的故事，夾雜著青春和美味，讓你邊笑邊感動，邊笑邊落淚。

With Wei Xiao Pasta’s sincere development, this group of young people’s love story continues feverishly, with every unique pasta continuously sold out. Wei Xiao Pasta is a story of love and sincerity, with a mix of youth and fragrance, making the audience laugh, feel touched, smile and cry.

金莎《不可思议》Album and Other MTVs

2006-06-06T01:52:00.000+08:00

金莎's 3rd album titled 《不可思议》 had been released on 28 May 2006. Here's the track list:

01.平行线
02.不可思议
03.失眠
04.委屈
05.亚森罗苹
06.爱悄悄离开
07.分手暂时不快乐
08.安全感
09.Wulala
10.雪绒花

Maybe I'll do the CD review after the end of term.

Below are some of her new MTVs with old MTVs.

平行线 The first new MTV from her new album
(She speaks with some Korean guy)

Di Shan Di Yan Lei(I like this song. It has a tiny bit of Valen Hsu's style which I like.)

Sha Na Jian - Guest starring A Do (I like this song too. One of my favourite Jin Sha songs.)

Kong Qi

被风吹过的夏天 with JJ 林俊杰

Le Parkour

2006-06-04T17:55:00.000+08:00

Le Parkour is a physical discipline of French origins that had been founded by David Belle. This discipline basically focuses on the elegance of the human body, in other words, it seemingly hones the mind into controlling the body to be able to do seemingly impossible acrobatic acts such as jumping over obstacles and leaping down from a 1 storey building, etc. This feature has been frequently used throughout actions films for entertainment purposes and also to stimulate consumption in our industrial capitalist society. I think one good example of a good Le Parkour applicant may be Jackie Chan, who always insists on doing various incredible stunts on his own without using special effects.

This quote as spoken by experienced traceur Jerome Ben Aoues who explains in the documentary Jump London basically summarises the essence of Le Parkour:

The most important element is the harmony between you and the obstacle; the movement has to be elegant... If you manage to pass over the fence elegantly—that's beautiful, rather than saying ‘I jumped the lot.' What's the point in that?

Some examples of Le Parkour clips are as below:

Le Parkour in Singapore:

Banlieue 13 French Action film in 2004 Featuring David Belle

Cyndi Wang - 第一次爱的人

2006-06-02T02:12:00.000+08:00

Dedicated to all who have ever loved...and who have fallen out of love.

Shorter but clearer version

Full version but of lesser quality

15 Movie By Royston Tan on Youth Subculture in Singapore(Not suitable for ages 18 and below because of vulgarities)

2006-05-30T02:58:00.000+08:00

Oh great, this is the full 92 minutes quasi-documentary film produced by Royston Tan and shown during the Singapore film festival that we watched for our Singapore society module on the topic of Youth Sub-culture. May not suitable for people below ages of 18 and below because of the explicit Hokkien vulgarities used in the film.

Homosexual themes and also the high rates of commiting suicide in Singapore are emphasized in the movie. Also reveals to us about the "hopelessness" and "plight" felt by the 15 year old underclass in Singapore who band together to form their particular youth cultures.

Film Review:

Source:

http://www.contactmusic.com/new/film.nsf/reviews/15

There have been plenty of movies about dissaffected American youth, and disaffected Japanese youth, and disaffected British youth, and disaffected Korean youth. Someday, someone will write a movie in which all these groups come together in one violent rumble to determine which country creates the most psychotic teens. (My money’s on the Koreans.)

In the meantime, Singapore — of all places — joins the fray with 15, an energetic, scary, and ultimately sad slice of life in which five aimless teens smoke, fight, pierce each other, get tattoos, and skip school, sulking their way through steamy Singaporean afternoons talking big about brotherhood, loyalty, and gang philosophy while hurling funny insults at each other. “Your brother smells like a durian” is considered a prime putdown.

Director Roystan Tan brings a frenetic style that combines title cards, special effects, animation, and music video editing techniques to show the chaos of these young lives, and amazingly enough, he got the Singapore Film Commission to back him, only to find his film censored after it was first screened.

The five non-actor 15-year-olds Tan recruited from housing projects for his film average about 5’4” and 110 pounds, yet they see themselves as big men in a world that, like the world of Larry Clark’s Kids (or Peanuts, for that matter), is almost totally devoid of adults. None of the boys has a stable family; they’ re always getting kicked out of their homes for one infraction or another. None spends much time in school, although their concern about an upcoming school talent show leads to several funny scenes of gang-related karaoke singing.

Basically plotless, 15’s longest and most memorable scene has two of the boys helping a third as he embarks on a citywide search to find the best building from which to hurl himself in a suicide attempt the next day. Toting placards that say “I Want to Die” in Chinese characters, they head out on a whirlwind tour of Singapore, stopping to insult the color schemes or the bad feng shui of the buildings they deem unsuitable.

Given how badly behaved and obnoxious the quintet can be, their despair is touching. They cling to each other, sometimes literally, looking for anchors of friendship in an uptight conformist society they think has simply tossed them out like trash. Tan does best when he slows down and lets his camera linger on the boys’ sad faces. “Men’s tears are precious,” says one, but their tears do fall. Despite their piercings and tattoos, these kids aren’t as tough as they look.

P/s: I like the part where they blended the Japanese pop music after the Hokkien music that they sing so successfully that it sounds so funny.

Present and Upcoming Movies

2006-05-14T00:12:00.000+08:00

The posters for the list of upcoming movies:

The 7 min long trailer for X-Men 3 at this site:

http://thelaststand.dell.com.edgesuite.net/sneakpeek/large.html

I like this MTV 宇恒 - 依然是朋友

2006-05-13T19:17:00.000+08:00

情人节的前一天,他离开你身边
却剩下你到至今的想念,
那一夜我陪着你,你哭了一整夜
你是否知道我对他一样很想念
直到有一天我和他碰面
在那间我们常去的咖啡店
才知道有些感受
我和他谁都不曾说出口
我们之间隐藏了什么
除了我自己没人懂
可是你,你怎么说
你知道好事不是从此避开我
哦,我一样难过
多希望我们不曾相识过
music on
才知道有些感受
我和他谁都不曾说出口
我们都是最好的朋友
谁会有勇气去开口
不在乎不再难过
我们还有好大好大的借口喔～
故事的最后
我们都不曾失去过什么
我们依然是朋友
噢～

Important Reflections Part 2

2006-05-08T05:01:00.000+08:00

The idea of working on projects and term papers is as follows:

1. To develop your understanding of the theory that we had been taught in class.

2. By working on a project, we are able to focus on 1 narrow aspect of the concept and issue and specialise on working on that concept to show our understanding of it and in the end becomes sort of like a specialist in that field.

3. The design of a project is firstly to introduce the underlying principles of what we are about to discuss, outline the main concepts and your hypothesis that will be discussed. Followed by subsections that focus on headings that discuss one concept, followed by the examples(data analysis) in order to support the concept that we are arguing on. There can be other subsections which discussed on other concepts. And ending with a conclusion why the concept is important.

Dawn of War: Dark Crusade Announced

2006-05-07T21:55:00.000+08:00

According to Gamespot, Relic had announced the 2nd expansion to the Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War PC game due to release end of 2006. In this expansion, 2 new races will be added to the universe, making the total number of races up to 7.

The Necrons, "an undead Terminator-like race with a soul but mindless and appears to be unstoppable".

The Necrons had been revealed as an unplayable race in the previous expansion Winter Assault, now they are fully a playable race in Dark Crusade.

In the new expansion, Dark Crusade, Necrons will become a fully usable race (they will most likely be toned down, as they were meant to be extremely powerful), as well as the Tau. Not much is known about them at the time, but they were seen in an official trailer for the game. Several units, including Monoliths, Flayed Ones, Scarabs, and a Necron Lord were visible. The Nightbringer also made an appearence, but it is not known wether or not he is only available in the campaign.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necron

The Tau, a technological advanced race belonging to the good side and who excels at sharpshooting and advanced technologies. In the game, their appearance are likened to Japanese anime robots.

In the new expansion, Dark Crusade, Tau will become a playable race, as well as the Necrons. Not much is known about them at the time, but they were seen in an official trailer for the game. Several units, including Fire Warriors, Kroot (Carnivores and Oxes), Hammerheads, and what appeared to be Markerlights, were visible. Commander ShadowSun also made an appearence, but it is not known wether or not she is only available in the campaign.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tau_(Warhammer_40,000)

Source: Gamespot.com
Shadowsun, a hero unit of the Tau, squaring against the Necrons.

Source: Gamespot.com
A Necronlord, a hero unit of the Necrons.

Source: Gamespot.com
A Necron warrior up against some Tau units.

Trailer of Dark Crusade

Hyping up the second expansion for the PC RTS Dawn of War, comes this little trailer and its sneak-peeks at the two new armies stepping up. The Necrons and the Tau.

New Tagboard

2006-05-06T23:27:00.000+08:00

Someone hacked into my tagboard and remove all previous postings and added several spam and nonsensical posts.

I cannot recover those messages so had to get a new chat board. This new chatter board is quite cool because it can incorporate into the design of my blog skin.

Anyway, do you know that you are destroying people's lives by hacking their tagboards and blogs. Don't think that you can run away with this, because you think you can be protected by the anonymity of the net.

Important Reflections

2006-05-06T04:40:00.000+08:00

Have some interesting thoughts after I had gone through this semester. After all these time spent in NUS, I find that the experience before taking modules and after taking modules is something like this:

Before I had gone for the module I had chosen, it’s like starting on a journey into the unknown. I won’t know what to expect and not sure what I would stand to gain or experience in this module until after I had experienced it personally by attending it. It’s the same with doing projects and assignments and writing essays. All the open ended assignments – projects and essays, its like finding a way out of a forest into the sunshine before I started researching for any ideas to write. The point is that finding the way out is not the issue, but the main issue is experience the loss and enlightenment at the end of it, even though if I don’t do well in it, I will certainly gain the experience, and will not likely to repeat the same mistakes again the next time. Also, the point about gaining the knowledge is not to benefit your own self only, but to share it among others, in order to make the world a better place. One of the advantages of taking modules that can critically assess our world, is that we can avoid falling into the structures that are created by the “evils” of this world to benefit themselves so that we will not become part of the “unequals” that are perpetuated in our society – such as patriarchical mindset, capitalistic mindset, etc even though we may be unintentional sometimes in helping the “evils”. Also, treat assignments with fun and enthusiasm so that our life will not become miserable as a result of this.

The most important skill developed in this semester is in argumentative essay writing skills, thanks to the EL modules I had taken which allowed me to learn this knowledge. The crux to writing a coherent essay is:

To have a good thesis statement that I can use and focus on throughout the remainder of the essay.
To have good structure for the essay, firstly, I need to have a theory statement, followed by relevant substantial examples to support the theory.
To have a counter-argument that shows that it cannot invalidate my original stand – if appropriated correctly, this can add structure, and increase the strength of my current stand in the essay.
Reference materials must be properly attributed to the sources and included in the bibliography to avoid plagiarism.

The most difficult part about writing such open ended essays and project is to find a right topic that you can focus in writing with the relevant examples and concepts that can be applied to show your understanding of the module. This, I think is a skill that needs to be developed further in future. But the point is still to read the question carefully to pick out clues from the question and address it. This will prevent from going out of the question which will result in penalties.

All the modules taken this semester are very interesting and challenging. Looking forward to next semester – trying a SS and Science GEM next.

Paper 4: Media, Discourse and Society

2006-05-04T21:04:00.000+08:00

Just finished this paper today. As promised, there were no surprises in the paper. We were tested on stuff within the syllables itself. Therefore the paper is okie. However, I missed out some parts about discussing why the effect in the text is ideological, and also made some other mistakes like merely grabbing the quotes in the readings and putting them in the paper.

These topics were tested:

1. Interdiscursivity
2. Ideology of advertising
3. Analysis at the level of discourse
4. Understanding advertisers

End of papers. 8 May 06 is the start of special term semester 3, so no holidays...for me...

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

2006-04-30T06:15:00.000+08:00

I just remembered that during one of the NM Gaming tutorials, one of the group presenters spoke about the idea of the self-fulfilling prophecy. I find this concept rather interesting so I went to look it up. Basically, it's about a person who somehow has knowlegde of what is going to happen in the future, but having this knowledge actually makes the person to cause the incident to happen.

From Wikipedia:

A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that, in being made, actually causes itself to become true. For example, in the stock market, if it is widely believed that a crash is imminent, investors may lose confidence, sell most of their stock, and actually cause the crash. Or, if a candidate in an election openly declares they do not believe they can win, this may increase voter apathy and result in poor support for their campaign.
Self-fulfilling prophecies are often seen as similar to the predestination paradox, in which a person travels back in time to prevent an event, but ends up causing it. These two phenomena differ on a key point however. A self-fulfilling prophecy is when a person with belief of future events alters his behaviour in a way that ends up causing these events. On the other hand, a predestination paradox is when a person with knowledge of past events goes back in time, and ends up causing the events.

Psychology

Self-fulfilling prophecy is sometimes seen as a manifestation of positive feedback in human society. In short, because a given prophecy was known, and was sufficiently credible, it affected people's actions and caused itself. Robert K. Merton is usually acknowledged as the originator of this phrase.
Examples abound in studies of cognitive dissonance theory and the related self-perception theory; People will often change their attitudes to come into line with what they profess publicly.

Other specific examples discussed in psychology include:
• Clever Hans effect
• Observer-expectancy effect
• Hawthorne effect
• Placebo effect
• Pygmalion effect

Modern

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

In more recent arts, the plot of the 2005 movie Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith was based around a self-fulfilling prophecy. The main character, Anakin Skywalker, has a premonitory dream about the death of his wife Padmé Amidala, and searches for a way to save her. However, his solution is what ends up killing her.

In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry sees his "father" save him and Sirus Black. After traviling back in time with a time turner, he tries to meet his "father" but realize it was himself standing there that he saw as his father.

In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, a prophecy was made at Harry Potter’s birth, saying that neither he nor Dark Lord could live while the other survived. To protect himself, the Dark Lord attempted to kill Harry Potter while he was an infant, but his curse backfired on him. Because of the transfer of power that occurred as a result this, the prophecy now has to be fulfilled in order for them to live in peace.

In the computer game Guild Wars, it is prophesied that some Chosen will destroy a race called "Mursaat". To prevent the prophecies from coming true, the Mursaat and some of their worshippers, the White Mantle, kill as many Chosen as possible. However, when a group of heroes see the Chosen being killed, they turn against and eventually destroy the White Mantle and the Mursaat to prevent further killings, only later to discover that they are Chosen.

Series Eight of the British comedy Red Dwarf sees a self-fullfilling prophecy started by the words "In twenty minutes all the Canaries will be dead, except for Rimmer. Rimmer will die in forty seconds of a heart attack from the shock of being told he's going to have a heart attack."

Several classic episodes of The Twilight Zone used a self-fulfilling prophecy. One example is What's in the Box, in which a man sees himself (on television) killing his wife because she had an affair. He tries to confront his wife about it, but ends up killing her.

The movie The Matrix heavily incorporates the idea of self-fulfilling prophecy. One recognizable scene that directly references it is when Morpheus takes Neo to see the Oracle. When Neo walks in to speak to the Oracle, she says "I'd ask you to sit down, but you're not going to anyway. And don't worry about the vase." Neo then says "What vase?" and knocks over and breaks a vase that is sitting on a counter next to him. Neo apologizes and the Oracle tells him not to worry about it. Neo asks how she knew, to which the Oracle responds, "What's really going to bake your noodle later on is: would you still have broken it if I hadn't said anything?"

Spoilers end here.

Final Exam Paper 3

2006-04-27T20:59:00.000+08:00

Today's exam is rather interesting because the questions can be rather open-ended. Most of the questions have been structured close to what we have done during the tutorials, so I see no reason why it cannot be done.

Exam questions:

1a. Core words borrowed from Scandinavian to English because they were less sophisticated culture.

1b. Stable word order lead to loss of inflexions.

1c. Non-Anglo Englishes are simple and basic and cannot represent detailed nuances.

1d. Standard varieties are the best varieties.

The passage for Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing from Act 3.2.91

Enter Iohn the Bastard.

Bastard My lord and brother, God saue you.
Prince Good den brother. [1280]
Bastard If your leisure seru'd, I would speake with you.
Prince In priuate?
Bastard If it please you, yet Count Claudio may heare, for
what I would speake of, concernes him.
Prince Whats the matter?
Bast. Meanes your Lordship to be married to morrow?
Prince You know he does.
Bast. I know not that, when he knowes what I know.
Claud. If there be any impediment, I pray you discouer it. [1290]
Bast. You may think I loue you not, let that appeare here-
after, and ayme better at me by that I now will manifest, for
my brother (I thinke, he holdes you well, and in dearenesse of
heart) hath holpe to effect your ensuing mariage: surely sute ill
spent, and labor ill bestowed.
Prince Why whats the matter?
Bast. I came hither to tel you, and circumstances shortned,
(for she has bin too long a talking of) the lady is disloyall.

2a. Core vs Non-Core words.

2b. 2 grammatical features that are different from PDE.

2c. Use of pronouns and addresses and the relationships between Prince, John and Claudio.

3a. Englishes has endured knocks but it has been able to survive, explain how and why this is so. (Using any one episode in the history of English)

Cannot finish this question. Only used 2/3 pages.

Re: Always A Fighter

2006-04-23T20:03:00.000+08:00

I read this article in the Sunday Times today. It's a very inspiring story of a girl's fight against cancer. The point is that no matter what we set out to do, just don't give up hope.

Her blog can be accessed at here.

The Article is as follows:

Lifestyle - Hot
Always a fighter
Sandra Leong
3547 words
23 April 2006
Straits Times
English
(c) 2006 Singapore Press Holdings Limited
The story of a young ex-RGS student Joan Chan (left) battling the final stages of tongue cancer moved her alma mater so much, it raised $130,000 for her medical treatment
ON CHRISTMAS Day last year, a 19-year-old girl suffering from Stage IV tongue cancer moved many readers to tears by declaring to this paper: I will not go quietly into the night.
The exact words of Joan Chan were: 'I'm not going to let cancer have its way so easily. If I'm going down, I'm not leaving without a fight.'
Her one wish was to beat the debilitating condition and then attend university. A place at the National University of Singapore's architecture faculty was waiting, but study plans were derailed when cancer struck in 2004.
Today, the health of this spunky, doe-eyed former Raffles Girls' School (RGS) and Raffles Junior College (RJC) student has taken a turn for the worse.
The cancer, which has spread throughout her neck and face, has taken a life of its own. It has affected her spinal cord, and even holding her head up has become a challenge.
Friends, who keep vigil at her bedside in her four-room flat in Yishun, say the doctor has given Joan just 'a few weeks to three months more' to live.
In her last entry in her blog on March 22, the 20-year-old says plainly that options for treatment are 'limited'. She adds, with the lucidity of one whose fate is beyond control: 'I just want to say my dear friends, I am prepared for the worst.'
But the story of Joan Chan has also brought out the best in people.
After LifeStyle ran her story - together with that of two other young cancer sufferers - nearly 100 readers wrote in to ask if they could help in one way or another.
Some wanted to recommend alternative treatments; others simply wanted to tell her that things - bleak as they seemed - would work themselves out. One reader sent us a copy of a Buddhist scripture that she hoped would help Joan tide through trying times.
Then last month, when her alma mater RGS learnt that her condition had worsened, students, teachers and old girls of the school quietly rallied to raise funds for her.
The target was $36,000, but in a matter of weeks, $130,000 was amassed to help her parents - her father is a taxi-driver and her mother a former childcare teacher - meet hospital bills and other medical expenses.
Current students of the school who had never known Joan offered money from their own pockets and sold T-shirts to raise funds.
With help from Joan's friends, they set up a PowerPoint presentation to share her story in the hope of inspiring their peers to donate.
The fund-raising effort was carried out without fuss, fanfare or any request for media publicity. LifeStyle only learnt of it when we were doing this story.
Says RGS principal Deborah Tan: 'I told the girls 'once a Rafflesian, always a Rafflesian'. I saw Joan as one of our flock and that motivated us to do something.'
Cancer shocker
IN JUNE 2004, Joan, then in her second year in RJC, discovered an ulcer on her tongue. As her examinations were then nearing, she thought little of it until a hard lump the size of a marble appeared on her neck.
She was referred to a specialist in January last year, who told her that the ulcer was a cancerous tumour. The cancer was in Stage IV, one stage away from terminal cancer.
The news came as a shock to the active student, who was a member of the National Cadet Corps (NCC) in RGS and captain of her softball team in RJC.
Dr Ang Peng Tiam, a consultant medical oncologist in the private sector, says tongue cancer is fairly rare.
According to the Singapore Cancer Registry, there were 214 cases of tongue cancer here from 1998 to 2002. It is not among the top 10 cancers here.
Dr Ang says it occurs in people who often experience forms of irritation on their tongue.
Smokers or people with ill-fitting dentures, for instance, may be at risk. But tongue cancer also develops among those with no risk factors, adds Dr Ang.
'Very often, these turn out to be young female patients.' In such cases, the cancer often becomes 'very aggressive'.
What starts out as a chronic ulcer on the tongue may spread to other parts of the body like the lungs.
Once this happens, there is 'no chance of a cure', he says, but medication can control the disease.
Joan's case came to light when LifeStyle contacted the Singapore Cancer Society last year in search of young people who had overcome hardships and was given her name.
Because of her speech difficulties, she shared her story via e-mail, conscientiously answering every question we posed.
She also sent pictures of her room at home, where one wall had been adorned with a rainbow mural lovingly painted by her friends.
Three months after our story came out, we received an e-mail from Joan on March 15.
She told us that she was no longer responding to chemotherapy and the one hope left was a new cancer drug called Iressa.
Though we learnt subsequently that it later proved to have little effect on her, she had to take the pills - which cost $110.35 each - twice daily.
The cost of treatment came up to a huge burden of over $6,000 a month.
Her mother had quit her job to care for her and her father did not earn enough to cover expenses for both her and her 24-year-old brother.
'My family is now faced with a serious financial problem,' she wrote. 'I was just wondering if you know of any organisations that I can ask for sponsorship?'
We called the Old Rafflesians Association, which suggested that Joan's friends put together a fund-raising proposal.
Rallying around
BUT help was already on the way from old friends and her former school. In early March, RGS principal Mrs Tan got an e-mail from one of Joan's former classmates, NUS arts student Tan Li Ling.
Li Ling, who attended the same Secondary 1 and 2 classes as Joan, had read of her friend's plight in LifeStyle. The two had lost touch when Li Ling went to Anderson Junior College and Joan RJC.
She felt compelled to do something.
The first step was to contact some of Joan's former NCC platoon mates and, together, they sent an impassioned e-mail to Mrs Tan, asking if she could help in any way.
'We knew the school would help in some way, just how much we didn't know,' Li Ling says.
As it turned out, there was no cause for worry.
Led by the principal and teachers, the school's Student Leader Network - comprising about 40 prefects, class chairmen, house captains and heads of co-curricular activities (CCA) - rose to the occasion.
They targeted $36,000 to support Joan's treatment for six months and were floored by the eventual amount raised. 'We never expected to raise $130,000... the spontaneity of the effort was remarkable,' says Mrs Tan.
The amount, collected in just a month, makes the charity drive the largest ever organised for a single student, she adds.
Head prefect Nadiah Hashim Arrifin, 16, helped to rally the 1,800-strong student population behind Joan, a senior whom none of the girls had gone to school with.
Still, Nadiah says, 'we felt a certain affinity to her as she was a former RGS girl... That got our emotions riled up'.
A PowerPoint presentation, with photographs charting Joan's life in RGS and RJC to her frail condition now, was shown to the students during their respective hall assemblies. Each cohort was then given letters of appeal to take home to their parents.
Donations started pouring in. 'Some parents even called to ask if they could help by looking after Joan's Mum by taking her out,' says RGS teacher Lim Soh Khim.
Everyone got involved, with individual classes devising novel ways to raise funds.
Nadiah's Secondary 4 class, for instance, gathered all the loose change they had after recess time to be put into a kitty.
CCAs like the school band sold concert programme booklets to the public during their performances, says band major Loh Yun Yiing, 16.
Even non-teaching staff chipped in, selling muah chee and guava fruit during recess time.
But most touching was how some students stepped forward to initiate their own mini fund-raising projects.
At the ORA Walk-a-Jogathon and Rafflesian Family Day, an annual carnival event organised by RGS, Raffles Institution and RJC on April 8, a group of Secondary 3 girls designed special Rafflesian T-shirts to be sold for $10 each.
Says Mrs Tan of her students' initiative: 'The day after they approached us, they already had the T-shirt designs and pricing plans.'
Word spread via the Internet, with dozens of student blogs helping to publicise efforts. As a result, all 500 T-shirts at their booth were sold out.
Other RGS-run booths also pledged a portion of their profits to the Joan Chan fund.
With the target well surpassed, fund-raising activities stopped on April 17.
But the care hasn't. Almost every week, Mrs Tan, teachers and student leaders visit Joan's flat to cheer her up.
They deliver dozens of colourful posters and hand-written notes, all lovingly made by students to remind her that hope is still in sight, even when the frightening reality of her condition may seem otherwise.
Asked about Joan's grim prognosis, Mrs Tan says poignantly: 'I really feel for her and her Mum. She has so much zest, such a strong personality... I visited her yesterday and I can see the goodness in her.'
Close call
A HORRIBLE scare took place over the Easter holiday last week.
Recounting what happened, long-time friend and former NCC platoon mate Thong Peiqin, 20, says Joan was rushed to the hospital after complaining that she could not breathe.
'The doctor said she was going to go either on Saturday or Sunday.'
Joan's battle-weary mother gathered her friends and asked them to 'get a funeral photo and dress prepared'.
Peiqin, an NUS arts student, remembers going 'around the whole island to pick out a nice dress for her'.
They picked a flowery sundress for her final journey that, thankfully, was not yet to be.
Peiqin says, a heaviness to her voice: 'It was so surreal. I couldn't believe I was doing that for my friend.'
Because of her current condition, Joan's parents and her brother declined to be interviewed.
But last Friday, one of her friends, Cherylene Aw, 20, passed LifeStyle this message from Joan: 'I am touched by all the fund-raising efforts that have been carried out and am happy that so much money could be raised in such a short period of time.'
When Joan got news from the school that $130,000 had been raised, she flashed a 'V' for victory sign and said 'Yay, I've done something good today', recalls teacher Ms Lim.
She also told her friend Peiqin: 'If I have to stay on to suffer for a few more weeks to do this, I would.'
For now, it's the little things that count. Like spending time with friends and family. Or getting to celebrate her 20th birthday earlier this month.
Her friends visit every day, even rostering times to make sure she always has company.
Mood swings are inevitable, but 'she throws tantrums only in front of us and not in front of visitors', says Peiqin.
When depression hits, her friends are by her side encouraging her to 'let her frustrations out'.
The apparent finality of the situation does not escape her. Much of her time is spent 'lying in bed and waiting', says Peiqin.
Living legacy
THE next few weeks of her life may be fraught with uncertainty, but one thing is for sure: Her legacy will live on.
While some of the $130,000 raised will go towards paying off outstanding medical bills - the final amount is still not known - Joan has said that she wants the rest of the money to go to a fund set up in her name.
Though details have not been ironed out yet, the fund will help other young people suffering from critical illnesses, says Mrs Tan. A panel will be set up to decide how best to organise this.
In her interview with LifeStyle last December, Joan, a Catholic, said she would not die soon as God had plans for her.
'That day is not near yet because I believe He wants me to help other cancer patients with my experience, especially the young ones like children with cancer.'
With the fund, her vision has become a reality.
And she will not succumb without a fight.
'I will not give up till the very end and I hope I will be remembered in your hearts as a fighter always,' she says in her last blog entry.
That sundress may be ironed. But for now, Joan's not ready to put it on yet.
sandral@sph.com.sg
Send your comments to stlife@sph.com.sg
Web of courage and hope
In a frank and moving last entry in her blog, Joan Chan says she has not given up, while messages of support spread on the Internet
THIS is an excerpt of the last entry, dated March 22, from Joan Chan's blog ( onlyskindeep.blogspot.com ).
'Hey guys, this is just an update for all who want to know how I am now. I just talked to the doctor and I asked him to be totally honest with me about my condition.
Apparently there is a big patch of cancer cells on the left side and the back of my neck. It is impairing the blood flow from my face to the rest of the body that's why my face is swollen.
The nerves controlling my left hand start from the neck, that's why my left hand trembles and the finger tips are numb.
The cancer has eaten into the small bone near the left ear and it's blocking the tube that connects the ear to the neck. It is causing fluid to build up behind my ear drum.
This has resulted in tinnitus, which is this buzzing sound in my ear, and mild hearing loss in the left ear as well.
The cancer has also affected my spinal cord, causing one section to be loose, which is why I always have to hold my head as my spine can't support my head anymore.
To fix this problem, I have to wait till the cancer's gone then go for surgery again to fix it. I cannot be operated on as the operation would be too dangerous. Radiotherapy is out of the question as I just went through one cycle of it.
Therefore, my options are limited and I just want to say my dear friends, I am prepared for the worst. But I want to thank all of you for your love and care. I will not give up till the very end and I hope I will be remembered in your hearts as a fighter always.'
Excerpts from an article 'Confession of a teenager cancer patient' that Joan wrote on online undergraduate portal Funkygrad.com in mid-2005 before her condition took a turn for the worse.
'Imagine having to cope with cancer at 18? This is one lesson no one will ever learn in school but it turned out to be the lesson of my life....
I have always been a fighter. Whenever I have a problem, I do not whine about it nor do I cry. Instead, I think of the best way to tackle the problem and put the solution into action.
I am a firm believer of the notion that as long as I try hard enough, nothing is impossible.
All of a sudden, I felt anger in me. Why should I bow to cancer? Why should I be sad? At that moment, all I wanted was to fight. I wanted to punch the lump in my neck with my own bare fists. If cancer wants a fight, I will take it on any time, any day...
It all ended in April 2005. I officially turned from cancer patient to cancer survivor. Victory never tasted so sweet.
From now, I know I will only get better and better. I was finally going to get my life back... I can live to see my future, I can live to realise my dreams, I can smell the flowers, I can feel the cool wind on my face, I can see the faces of my loved ones. The fight was worthwhile. Every single moment of it.'
Word of Joan's plight spread via the Internet, with many RGS girls writing about her in their blogs. Here are some excerpts. From I'm The Next Best Superstar ( superficiality-.blogspot.com ) on April 1.
'Yesterday during assembly a few students gave a talk about Joan Chan Shu Fang.
She is an ex-RGS girl who went to RJC and then NUS but forced to quit school because she was diagnosed with cancer and it was the 4th stage, I think.
First they showed this picture of her before she had cancer and then towards the end of the presentation they showed another picture of her. She was bald and all that. It was really saddening.
She's so good at her studies, CCAs and everything and she got cancer... It will be like wasting her talents and intelligence if she can't pull through...
Her family's not very well-off so the school's appealing for donations. Wish her all the best. Mrs Tan said that if the whole school population donates $3 a month then it'll be enough. Well, I think donating $3 a month is all I can do.'
From My Friendship I'll Treasure For Sure on April 8 ( just-keep-sweeming-and-sweeming.blogspot.com ).
'Just wanted to share this story with all you pokies... there is this girl called Joan Chan Shu Fang.
She was an RGS and RJC girl... sadly, when she was 18 and about to take her A levels, she was diagnosed with tongue cancer, but she still took her A levels and got AABBC... and she managed to get into a course in NUS but she was forced to back out because of her condition.
Doctors say she has less than a year to live. But there is still some glimpse of hope. The doctors are going to try this new medicine called Iressa...
Her friends have appealed to RGS to help her through this turmoil... Like I said, once a Rafflesian, always a Rafflesian. We really hope this really successful young lady will pull through and help in the society. She's only 21 this year.
And lastly, jia you Shu Fang!! we're always behind you!'
I'm thinking long term now, says cancer girl Sham
SHAM Van Boonstra-Nasution, the 27-year-old Singaporean breast cancer patient featured in LifeStyle last December together with Joan Chan, is recovering well.
For the past few months, she has been undergoing a new clinical trial treatment in London to treat her condition - stage IIIB breast cancer, which is a stage away from stage IV where the cancer has spread to other organs.
On the phone from Sydney last Friday, she said: 'Everything is going well and I have got much better.'
She said she is reacting well to the treatment, which has stopped the spread of cancer.
By the end of the year, she hopes to be '100 per cent in remission'.
Born in Singapore, she and her family migrated to Sydney, Australia, in 1996. She studied at the University of New South Wales and was a gregarious and popular student leader who organised events and parties.
Rather than wallow in misery when she was diagnosed with cancer in May last year, she devoted her energy to raising funds for cancer research.
The last time she visited Singapore, she was spotted at the premiere of local film Singapore Dreaming on April 12.
Her striking good looks caught the eye of a photographer, who captured her smiling radiantly.
She said that for now, she needs to get back to work to pay for her next round of treatments later this year.
The owner of her own business consultancy, she has a three-month project awaiting her attention in Kuala Lumpur, where she will be moving to this month.
'The last time I spoke to you, I wasn't making any plans for the future. Now I live every day like I'm not sick anymore.'
Sounding contented, she added: 'Now, I'm thinking much longer term.'
Sandra Leong
Document STIMES0020060422e24n0000r

Final Exam Paper 2

2006-04-23T01:03:00.000+08:00

Today's paper is certainly interesting. The first question focuses on the concept of remediation itself.

Here's a website devoted to explaining this issue:

"The Self-Perpetuating Vicious Circle of Media Chasing Reality Chasing Media"By Nell Farrell

Remediation: Understanding New Media
By Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin The MIT Press, 1999

http://www.zonezero.com/magazine/articles/nell/remediation.html

The 2nd question is on Tomb Raider, how it caters to both male and female audiences in order to make this game a bestseller.

Final Exam Paper 1

2006-04-21T12:51:00.000+08:00

One of the most important advice that was given to me by a lecturer during the 2nd semester of last year was that first impression always counts. Today, I apply that into the exam. I hope that it can help in some way.

The Pressures of Our Society

2006-04-19T19:25:00.000+08:00

Just some comments on this article in Straits Times today. Why did the student kill himself over such a matter? This issue shows that people are very sensitive to issues that affect their self-esteem. Coupled with the pressures that society enforced upon people, and also the misinformation that information technology(internet) provides to people, those people that cannot conform, can only resort to such an action.

Singapore
JC student kills himself, convinced his private parts were too small
Stephanie Yap
800 words
19 April 2006
Straits Times
English
(c) 2006 Singapore Press Holdings Limited
Suicide highlights importance of sex education in schools, sayscoroner
HE WAS a second-year student at a top junior college, a member of
the school volleyball team, a 'cheerful and energetic' boy who was
doing well enough in his studies to take Special Papers.
Yet on March 3 this year, the 18-year-old jumped to his death from
a Bedok housing block, because he was convinced his private parts
were too small.
Delivering a verdict of suicide yesterday, State Coroner Tan Boon
Heng was sufficiently concerned by this 'tragedy of
misinformation' to recommend that the case be forwarded to the
Ministry of Education (MOE).
'The importance of sex education to our young people in schools
cannot be over- emphasised,' he wrote.
'The case study is useful for relevant MOE officers to appreciate
the problem of the severity of misinformation even among the best
and brightest in our schools.'
The boy, who cannot be named, had confided in his mother in
October last year that he was worried his private parts were too
small.
She took him to a neighbourhood clinic, where the doctor told him
his penis was of a normal size for an Asian man, and prescribed
him multivitamins.
Despite strong emotional support from his girlfriend and his
mother, he remained convinced he had a problem. He also had a
history of being stressed over schoolwork.
In January this year, he told his mother that his life was 'boring
and meaningless' and that the only thing stopping him from suicide
was his family's love.
On March 3, after his usual volleyball practice, he took a bus
from school to the Bedok interchange, but did not take his usual
connecting bus home. When his sister sent him a text message at
around 7pm to ask if he was coming home for dinner, he replied
that he would eat out.
The next and final message she received from him was at 8pm,
telling her and their mother to take care.
They realised something was wrong, but he repeatedly failed to
answer his phone.
He jumped from a housing block near the Bedok bus interchange at
around 8.30pm.
He was semi-conscious when he was taken to Changi General
Hospital, but was pronounced dead at 10.40pm from multiple
injuries.
In his suicide note, written in a notebook he had bought 40
minutes before his death, he apologised to his girlfriend and his
family for killing himself.
'He said it was not due to the stress of his examination, but it
was more about his physical development...He still knew there was
something wrong with his body parts,' the investigation report
said.
In his judgment, State Coroner Tan said the boy's death showed
that even intelligent young people can be victims of
misinformation.
'While we are the beneficiaries of this Internet age that hails an
era of information and knowledge enriching our lives, the
less-informed also become victims to junk information and worse,
untruths,' he said.
'The deceased was so tormented by his unfounded (belief in his)
inadequacy that it drove him to end his life.'
The case highlighted the importance of sexuality education, both
in and out of school, he said.
'It may have helped if the deceased had the benefit of counselling
now widely available. If parents are aware of their children being
tormented in this way, they should seek professional help lest
such tragic deaths should happen again.'
Sex education, usually termed sexuality education, usually takes
the form of a short series of lessons.
One secondary school teacher with five years' experience told The
Straits Times that at his school, sex education covers three
periods a week for three weeks.
Students write reflection logs on topics like boy-girl
relationships, different levels of intimacy, as well as legal
issues.
However, he said teaching students how to be comfortable with
their physical and sexual development is not in the syllabus.
'But this is something that should be looked into because it is
definitely part of the students' development,' he said.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY LIAW WY-CIN
ysteph@sph.com.sg
Getting help
FOR help, you can contact:
Samaritans of Singapore: 1800-221-4444
Seniors Helpline: 1800-555-5555
SOS Befrienders E-mail Service: pat@samaritans.org.sg
Singapore Association for Mental Health hotline: 1800-283-7019;
www.samhealth.org.sg
Family Service Centre: 1800-838-0100
Care Corner Mandarin Counselling Centre: 1800-353-5800
Touchline (Touch Youth Service): 1800-377-2252
Institute of Mental Health Community Addictions Management
Programme: 6389-2387/89; camp@imh.com.sg
Credit Counselling Singapore: 1800-225-5227, Monday to Friday, 9am
to 6pm
Tinkle Friend: Children can call 1800-274-4788 on weekdays

What Is Life?

2006-04-18T23:06:00.000+08:00

Sometimes, I just wonder what is life for. Life seems so meaningless. It's just like living in a cage. Besides studying, there is no other life than that. What is the use of studying? What is the purpose of life? What is the use of gaining knowledge if in the end, we are still living under the ideology of the powerful.

Where are friends? Friends that are true, and not friends that only use you for a purpose, or only to share a common interest.

What is this world? It's a world where only the powerful can survive, all other people are just slaves to them. What is the use of saying that you want to help the poor? It's just a fake way of pacifying the people. What is the use of staying in that powerful position if only to serve your own purposes. This is a selfish world where only the fittest survive and the weak perishes.

Our Future Is In Their Hands

2006-04-17T04:12:00.000+08:00

While doing the readings for the finals, I find this article very interesting because it provokes me to critically assess our technoculture society.

- Robins & Webster: "Prospects of a Virtual Culture." In: Times of the Technoculture. From the information society to the virtual life.

In this article, it is said that capitalists are engineering our future and financing it into existence. They promised to give us a future using information technology, but what they want is actually to ensure our compliance in their schemes. It is Microsoft emperor's virtual new clothes. Technologies change, but society stands still. What capitalists find exciting are the vast commercial possibilities inherent in a new technological product - the internet or digital broadcasting or virtual reality games. Change is really the last thing they want. They want a future that just perpetuates the past. What they express is the drive to subjugate more and more elements of social life to a logic of rationality and control. This has made the world a more closed and diminished space - a space of constriction and even incarceration. The information society is obsessed with the future, but the future is merely the endless continuation of the present. It just manifests the desire of those in power to control and secure the future for themselves. Information society in fact works to foreclose the real productive possibilities inherent in the future - the capitalist enclosure of the future.

Therefore our postmodern society will just reflect the notions of Western society:

1. Captalism - The characteristic and obsession with spending money in order to consume products. (consumerism)

2. Cartesianism or the notion of transcendence - Western's concept of the mind that is valued over the body. This concept is superimposed onto information technology, making more products that appeal more to our experiences, then to physical needs. Hence, the creation of the hyperreal - empty signifiers that connotate several irrelevant concepts that correlate with capitalism and consumerism such as MTVs, pop idols, fast foods, etc.

We Are Merely Pawns In The Larger Scheme of The Powers of the World

2006-04-14T20:43:00.000+08:00

Quoting From the famous play by Shakespeare "As You Like It"

Act II, Scene 7 features one of Shakespeare's greatest monologues, which begins:

"All the world's a stage
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages..."

This famous soliloquy is spoken by the melancholy Jaques. Comparing life to a play, it goes on to catalogue the seven stages of man's life: infant, school-boy, lover, soldier, justice, pantaloon, and second childhood, "sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_You_Like_It

I just want to say that we could just be the helpless pawns of the powerful who control us in this world. The large amounts of extent that they are able to influence our thoughts, actions, behaviours and also economic behaviour.

In this postmodern society that we exist in, where television and constructed images pervades our lifestyle, all the world's a computerised stage. Remediation of images, that copies image from another image that eliminates the idea of which source that the image originates from (or simply that this images are merely constructed according to the point of view of those in power), homogenises society, making them easier to control by the powerful. As similar to Agent Smith in Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions, the copying of Smiths onto everyone else in the Matrix world, homogenises every thoughts of the humans plugged into the Matrix, making them conform to the overall ideological system of the dominant powers or the powerful at play.

Take for example beauty ads, it comes to show woman that they must beautify themselves, and be slim and sexy, in order to be able to exist in our society. Those woman that deviates from this rule, will be either not be looked at with equal respect by others, or else, they will become a social outcast. This media constructed image of the ideal woman, is actually ideologically, because firstly, it is considered a marketing ploy to promote beauty products, in order to earn money for capitalism when woman buys the products, and secondly it may actually be used as gratification for guys. The male gaze which is a concept that woman are beautiful just to satisfy the innate desires of men. Again, this is a construction imposed on woman from the overaching perspectives by the powers( patriarchical) existing in our society. A construction is created in order to constrain and restrain women, in order to make them subordinate in relation to the more powerful people who are in charge of our society, which determines their overall social conduct. This is also an overarching construction, because women plays into it, not aware that it is actually a "prison" for them.

Below is some interesting read that I found at the website:

http://www.avolites.org.uk/jokes/male-rules.htm
http://www.kappa-psi.org/webmaster/mensrules.htm

Rules from the male side (No offence intended):

GIRLS OUT THERE.. PLS READ THIS!
We always hear "the rules" from the female side.
Now here are the Rules from the male side.
These are our rules: - THEY ARE ALLTHE "ONE" GOLDEN RULES...

1. Br*asts are for looking at and that is why we doit. (a,*,i,o,u)Don't try to change that.

2. Learn to work the toilet seat. You're a big girl. If it's up, put it down. We need it up, you need itdown. You don't hear us complaining about youleaving it down.

3. Saturday = sports. It's like the full moon or thechanging of the tides. Let it be.

4. Shopping is NOT a sport. And no, we are nevergoing to think of it that way.

5. Crying is blackmail.

6. Ask for what you want. Let us be clear on thisone: Subtle hints do not work! Strong hints do notwork! Obvious hints do not work! Just say it!

7. Yes and No are perfectly acceptable answers ..to almost every question.

8. Come to us with a problem only if you want helpsolving it. That's wha we do. Sympathy is whatyour girlfriends are for.

9. A headache that lasts for 17 months is a problem. See a doctor.

10. Anything we said 6 months ago isinadmissible in an argument. In fact, all commentsbecome null and void after 7 days.

11. If you think you're fat, you probably are. Don'task us.

12. If something we said can be interpreted twoways, and if one of the ways makes you sad orangry, we meant the other one.

13. You can either ask us to do something or tellus how you want it done. Not both. If you alreadyknow best how to do it, just do it yourself.

14. Whenever possible, please say whatever youhave to.. say during commercials.

15. Christopher Columbus did not need directionsand neither do we.

16. ALL men see in only 16 colours, like Windows default settings. Peach, for example, is a fruit, nota colour. Pumpkin is also a fruit. We have no ideawhat Mauve is.

17. If it itces, it will be scratched. We do that.IBS=Itchy Balls Syndrome is common among allmales. With the exception of batty boys cos it'suncool haha

18. If we ask what is wrong and you say "nothing,"we will act like nothing's wrong. We know you arelying, but it is just not worth the hassle.

19. If you ask a question you don't want an answerto, expect an answer you don't want to hear <--yeah! don't get pissed when you asked for theanswer

20. When we have to go somewhere, absolutelyanything you wear is fine. Really.

21. Don't ask us what we're thinking about unlessyou are prepared to discuss such topics as Sex,Sport, or Cars.

22. You have enough clothes.

23. You have too many shoes.

24. I am in shape. Round is a shape.

Thank you for reading this

Effort Does not Equate to Rewards?

2006-04-11T23:27:00.000+08:00

This is a very enlightening argument that I found in an article by Nicolas Yee while reading up in preparation for writing a project. The article is A New Disorder is Born and the full article can be accessed at here:
http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/001494.php

"After 6 years of fairy tales and then 16 years of school, we are then exposed to the real world. In the real world, goals are seldom well-defined, More importantly, the amount of effort you put into something isn’t guaranteed to get you any closer to your goal. Sometimes, you put in very little effort and hit the jackpot. Other times, you work week after week to get an incredibly small payoff. One of the disillusions of being an adult is that the framework of goals and rewards we learned the first 22 years of our lives suddenly stops working."

I think this is rather true. For example, some people can get to a certain positions by pulling strings, or just by their charismatic outer appearance, etc. What do you think? In a sense, this just comes to show that our world is an unequal place and the meaning of meritocracy is just an illusion to bind the unprevileged to their original positions.

Bigs Bunny (Monster Rabbit??)

2006-04-10T16:47:00.000+08:00

Caught this interesting giant rabbit photo. Read more about the story here.

Unsettling the Military Entertainment Complex

2006-04-08T20:13:00.000+08:00

I like this article. It talks about how video games can actually be propaganistic tools of the powerful, in order to elicit ideological consent in order to legitimize their actions in the real world.

Video games and war: Discussing propaganda and pedagogy

While I use video games in general to introduce students to a spectrum of concepts and issues, from minstrelsy and cultural appropriation to patriarchy and ideological production, the most effective pedagogical introduction to the militarization of American society has come through discussion of war games. Given the historical moment of 2002-2004-when war was at the center of the national consciousness and where support for foreign policy merged with entertainment in a number of media-it seems prudent to provide tools toward understanding the images, ideology, and meaning of video war games. In the classroom, it is especially apparent how powerful these games can be in promoting an ethos of militarization. I use class time to allow some students to play these games, and I make other students critically analyze what happens to their peers as they play the games. As students scream at their enemies and shout racially tinged epithets that serve to perpetuate ugly stereotypes-and as all things military are adored, glorified, and revered-the classroom becomes a fishbowl where one can see how racial, gender, and national identities are created and reinforced against a backdrop of Manichean violence and Social Darwinism. [12]
Paralleling the shift in American foreign policy from containment and reaction to pre-emptive war, the video game industry has shown its patriotic support with the release of numerous war games. While commentators cite a post-September 11th climate as the basis of widespread support for the U.S. military, it is important to underscore the many ways in which the state garners support for the military. In discussing video games or the role of the military in contemporary American society, students can be led to think about the ideological implications of patriotic support. Whether talking about national holidays or military hardware on display during the Super Bowl, the classroom can be a forum for conversations about the interconnections among foreign policy, popular culture, and patriotism. Video war games reflect a powerful medium to explore the ways in which images elicit consent for the U.S. military. [13]
Games such as Desert Storm and America's Army allow their players not only to become soldiers from the safety of their own homes, but also provide exposure to the technological marvels of the U.S. military. Players pilot a Huey helicopter in Desert Storm or use an Uzi in America's Army. In effect, these games are venues for displaying the technological marvels of military hardware. But we also come away from these games with the sense that our tax dollars have been used productively and wisely to buy the technologically sophisticated military hardware on display-hardware that we, moreover, have been allowed to use. For all intents and purposes, Desert Storm and America's Army exist as virtual advertisements for the present and future glory of the U.S. Armed Forces. [14]
One of the most popular war games is Operation Desert Storm, a game that retells the story of the Gulf War. You are John Conyers, a Rambo-type white infantryman and lone wolf beset with the task of winning the war on your own. As the game progresses, three other soldiers join you (two white and one black); all four players form a small unit that battles the entire Iraqi army. This game allows players to feel as if they were "defending the country" and enables them "to get out frustrations" (Napoli, 2003). The power in this game is not solely in the ability of its players to occupy and conquer foreign lands, in the ability to transpose one's real fears into historically-based combat, or in the virtual ability "to cause mass carnage on a grand scale . . . through a carpet bombing" (Stallabras, 1993). Rather, it lies in the promotion of war as a legitimate industry whose product is national safety and security. In addition to being fun, war is also portrayed as being safe. In Conflict Desert Storm, death is presented as bloodless: you are able to heal yourself and others from virtually any wound. Moreover, the killing of Iraqi soldiers generates very little blood. While others may commend the game for its child-friendly images and the lack of graphic detail, the bloodlessness contributes to an increasing acceptance of war. Within this virtual world, you have the potential to die and kill others without having to face the graphic realities of war. [15]

Stereotypes and war

Racial stereotypes are an intrinsic part of video war games. Whether examining first-person shooters, urban-centered games, or sports games, stereotypical ideas about race abound. War games such as Desert Storm, America's Army, and Splinter Cell portray Arab-Americans as savages, uncivilized warriors, and terrorists. In a very real way, war games construct racialized meaning, thereby providing ideological sanction for America's War on Terror and its aggression in the Middle East. Accordingly, they can serve, in the classroom, as the basis for conversations about the haunting presence of stereotypes in American society. I begin class by listing a series of racial, national or gendered categories, asking students to write down the sources or bases of such stereotypes. I then have students play a series of war games, ask them to list and describe any stereotypes that may be present, and then link these stereotypes to larger ideological projects such as U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and imperialism, broadly conceived. Not only does this lead to a discussion of why many of them enjoy killing Arabs in the virtual war game world, it also allows students to understand how stereotypical portrayals of national and ethnic groups were instrumental in their decision to support specific governmental policies or actions. Video war games force students to connect ideologies and institutions, images and material reality. Although war may seem harmless on the computer screen, this very harmlessness ironically elicits consent for U.S. foreign policy. [16]
Another central component of the war genre of video games is their presentation of civilians. Civilians are almost completely absent from these games, and only opposing soldiers can be killed by video game players. In general, Conflict Desert Storm portrays Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia as countries without people. In this way, the allied war effort is shown not to hurt civilians. American foreign policy is thus portrayed as benign. As part of a pedagogy of peace, I pair these games with more critical glimpses at war, such as documentaries and articles that elucidate the social, cultural, familial, and personal impact of war. Games represent a powerful pedagogical tool in which students can be brought to think about their own imagination of war, its effects around the globe, and the effects of those views on their support for U.S. foreign policy. [17]
As Americans blame Saddam Hussain for 9-11 and forget the legacies of Vietnam, war becomes more and more viable and desirable as a means to conflict resolution. As either decontextualized virtual warfare or propaganda that paint the United States as a savior without blemishes, video games contribute to a historical myopia legitimizing colonial endeavors. Conflict Desert Storm is an attempt to rewrite history in very specific ways. For example, despite the fact that militaries from around the world, including many from Arab nations, participated in the Gulf War, the game chronicles the war as if it was a battle between American/British forces and Iraqi soldiers. The only choice for players is either to become a member the U.S. or British military. No Kuwait, Saudi Arabia or Turkey! Call to Duty and Medal of Honor, both of which allow players to return to World War II, also fall into a similar trap of erasure. In these two games, black soldiers are completely missing. Selective memory of this kind reinforces hegemonic ideas about western dominance, emphasizing white/western/non-Arab participation. White people are presented as praiseworthy fighters and heroes; blacks are simply missing in action. I like to compare these video war games with pictures and statistical tables that show all-black regiments in World War II and integrated Marine units of today. Again, the classroom becomes a powerful corrective space that inspires critical thought about virtual propaganda. [18]

Transformative knowledge and virtual reality: Teaching to transgress

Through their presentation of Arabs as uncivilized savages and terrorists, their glorification of the military, and their downplaying of the physical, environmental, and economic harm of war, video war games elicit consent for U.S. domestic and foreign policy. Antonio Gramsci's ideas are useful here. Gramsci argued that, as ruling groups attempt to consolidate power, "they must elaborate and maintain a popular system of ideas and practices, which he called 'common sense,'" ultimately garnering consent for their rule (Omi & Winant, 1994, p. 67). Video war games, in disseminating an image of war as bloodless play, consolidate an ethos of militarization under the guise of the "common sense" notion that American safety and security is of paramount importance. [19]
In Fugitive Cultures: Race, Violence, and Youth, Henry Giroux (1996) argues that, in a discourse of critical pedagogy, "images do not dissolve reality into another text: on the contrary, representations become central to revealing the structures of power at work in schools, in society, and in the larger global order" (p. 53). The power of popular culture-in this case, video war games-resides in its dominance of representation and its regulation of meanings. Our pedagogy therefore has to clarify these underlying relationships and hidden agendas. As virtual culture becomes a central source of information about the world for students, it is more important than ever that they clearly grasp the ways in which video war games construct images of race, nationality, and military prowess. As Turse (2003) observes, "We need to start analyzing the efforts of blurring the lines between war and entertainment. With more and more 'toys' that double as combat teaching tools, we are subjecting youth to a new powerful form of propaganda! This is less a matter of simple military indoctrination than near immersion in a virtual world of war where armed conflict is not the last, but the first - and indeed the only - resort. The new military-entertainment complex's games may help to produce great battlefield decision-makers, but they strike from debate the most crucial decisions young people can make in regard to the morality of a war - choosing whether or not to fight and for what cause." [20]
Cultural critics are not alone in noting the psychological and cultural impact of war games. Lieutenant Colonel David Grossman, a former Army psychologist, spoke of the way in which he used games to teach military personnel how to kill without hesitation, remorse, or fear. Because "blood, gore and emotions" are erased from such games, soldiers view life as a game and can thus be convinced to kill more readily. "We are teaching children to associate pleasure with human death and suffering. We are rewarding them for killing people. And we are teaching them to like it" (20/20, March 20, 2000). The development and utilization of video war games by the U.S. military is a testament to the pedagogical implications of war games. As games teach soldiers to kill and citizens to support murder without remorse, concerned educators must find ways to offer counter-arguments to a prevailing ethos of American hegemony, the militarization of everyday life, and the all-pervasive rhetoric of warfare. A pedagogy of peace that deconstructs the ideologies behind the images of video war games is one place to begin to find necessary counter-arguments. [21]

The entire article can be accessed at :

http://www.utpjournals.com/jour.ihtml?lp=simile/issue16/leonardfulltext.html

Super Mario Kill Bill

2006-04-07T16:04:00.000+08:00

As per title, the fight scene between the bride and Gogo, superimposed with Super Mario background music.

One Sad And One Cute Ad

2006-04-06T22:11:00.000+08:00

These are the ads that were shown in today's seminar class.

This ad is cute, because all the cute girls all have "male" voices due to the loss of their voice at the shouting and cheering in the stadium.

This ad is sad, because the dog's girlfriend has been raped by another dog. And he witness the scene, after he is bringing back food for her. The dog is so sad that he runs off and wants to be run over by a car.

An OSIM igallop ad with more explicit lewd references to the metaphor of sex. Look at how the models in the ad move their bodies.

A less and more neutral ad that connects the igallop to horseriding, over the lewd references.

Evolution of Lara Croft(Brainstorming)

2006-04-02T18:53:00.000+08:00

While searching for information on writing for my gaming essay, I found this interesting image which shows the evolution of Lara Croft as the game sequels are released. What is the implication of this evolution? For one thing, what I'm thinking is that this is just the improvement of computing technologies that improve the visual image of the objects and characters created in the games. These only serves to increase the realism of 3D gaming experience, and adds to the immersive experience in gaming. But not necessarily as a result of feminist progress in succeeding to downplay the exaggerated features of feministic representations in games.

Singapore TV Commercials

2006-03-27T17:17:00.000+08:00

I was just browsing around youtube, and I found this interesting site for Singapore commercials.

The link is here:

http://sgtvcm.blogspot.com/

If you are a Singapore tv commercial enthusiast or likes to watch Singapore tv ads, this is the site for you.

Anyway, here's the latest Jean Yip Ad starring Kym Jin Sha, the female PRC singer who sang the famous duet with Lin Jun Jie "Bei Feng Chui Guo De Xia Tian"

Today's Gaming And Ethnicity presentation. I used these 5 games for examples as perpetuating White supremacy:

1. Grand Theft Auto III

- Portrayal of whites are more life-like(using Hollywood actors to provide voice actings). Also the main player controlled character is Claude who is a White character that comes to Liberty City in order to claim it for his race.

2. Ethnic Cleansing

- Extreme Case of white supremacist(one of the only few extremely racist games that is available in the market as a full game)

3. NBA Ballers

- Sports games allow whites to experience playing as other races, thus experiencing their "physical and athletic prowess" without the real life discriminations.

4. Command And Conquer: Generals

- A simulation on the war on terror. Creating Arabs with stereotypical representations as being terrorists, thus portraying them as the bad guys, and hence legitimizing th e war against them.

5. Jade Empire

- Game based in China created by Canadian developers for Western players than exported to an Asian audience. Game is created from a wholly western perspective, which perpetuates Asian stereotypes, thus justifying white supremacy.

Cyberspace as the darker side of the west

2006-03-20T05:46:00.000+08:00

I like this quote because it is controversial and thought provoking.

"In cyberspace, however, there is nowhere that a sense of place can grow, and no way that solidarities that sustain human beings through difficult times can be forged."

- Sardar, Z.: "alt.civilizations.faq: Cyberspace as the darker side of the west." In: Bell & Kennedy (eds): The Cybercultures Reader.

Isn't It Nice To Have Someone At Your Side?

2006-03-10T01:29:00.000+08:00

This is one of my favourite clips from Westside Story(not the Western Musical, but the Taiwan Idol Series). It is normally felt that Taiwan idol series storylines are unrealistic because they sometimes are adopted from fairy tales, eg. Prince Turns Into a Frog. But I feel that the story in Taiwan idol series also closely resembles some aspects of our life and reflects what we are going through in our present society.

In this clip, Cyndi, after having being separated long time from her "lover" portrayed by 5566 member Wang Shao Wei, is sitting in a train, feeling lonely and sad. She has some flashbacks and beautiful memories where she thinks of Wang Shao Wei and Wallace Huo Jian Hua who are portraying characters in the series who are trying their best to help Cyndi in her life. Shao Wei mentioned that he will accept her no matter what she is.

After these flashbacks, Cyndi cries, but another character portrayed by Wang Ren Fu who is also always there to help Cyndi gives her a tissue to wipe her tears. This scene, I feel is very touching as it is warm and shows that there is always someone at your side trying to help you. I like the scene, when Cyndi turns around looking at who had given her the tissue. She looks really sad and sweet at the same time, which is a beautiful combination.

Some more clips of Cyndi in various variety shows :

完全娱乐-王心凌(说啥就得唱啥!)

周日响叮当-王心凌 (with Jacky Wu acting as the Thai/Philippine worker)

少年特攻队--王心凌被整 5566

Critical Assessment of our Technocratic Society

2006-03-08T18:42:00.000+08:00

Our present society has been saturated with media technologies, especially the internet. If you are always on the net, have you ever wonder about some of the things that we have taken for granted in our information age? Take for example, the internet is able to give us the sense of more time for us to do work, through the process of compressing time – we can connect and communicate with others instantaneously on the net using synchronous programs like MSN messenger, ICQ, AIM and other online chat programs. But have you ever noticed that instead of having more time to do more work, instead, you are getting less time? The more people you are able to connect to in the net, the more attention that you will need to divert to them. The more windows you have opened on your desktop, this means that the more total time you are giving overall to your tasks on the computer. In this sense, time compression is actually time reduction.

Do you ever have other online identities on the net that is not your real life identity? Have you ever wondered how much effort and time you devote to your online persona, such that your online identity becomes much more real than your real life identity. Usually, people treats their real life identity to be much more important than their online identity, but in our actual reality, the opposite is the case. People usually treat their online persona as much more realistic and important than their real life identity nowadays. For example, have you realized how much time you devote your life to your online identity in virtual communities such as forums, weblogs, online gaming like MMORPGs, etc. In this technocratic society that is inundated with so much virtual stuff, this is not surprising.

Finally, while being connected to the net, the fantasy of cyberspace gives you the impression that you are transcended from your physical bodies, because technology allows us to overcome physical limitations and facilitates us to connect to people far away from us, without us ever to leave our home. But have you ever wondered that in this facade of transcendence, the technology is in fact not omnipotent? Have you ever realized that the technology have to be supported by raw materials and resources such as oil, electricity, and the computer parts that you buy for the computer, they do not come freely but have to undergo a series of manufacturing processes. And have you wondered about the underlying social hierarchical structure that makes our technology able to function without fail? Do we ever hear about the cheap labour and those poor people being exploited to manufacture our computing technologies, in order that we are able to sit comfortably at home and connect to the net. Always, such underlying structures that supports our society are often hidden from our eyes, and we feel that cyberspace is flawless and allows us to transcend our physical limitations for eternity. We do not think what will happen if our limited resources are used up, and the social structure breaks down – this could result in the breakdown of our technologies too, because they cannot exists without such supports.

The point is that when using technologies, we must not assume that everything is perfect. The problem with our society is that we have become so dependent on technology that we will feel a certain sense of loss if we are not able to use the technology when it breaks down. From a critical perspective, the internet is just a simulation, and a copy of our reality, whatever social problems that we face in our technocratic society, like social exclusion, and inequality, terrorist acts, etc, they are also mapped onto the virtual world. It is a fantasy to think that the internet world is free of any problems and is a transcendence from our physical limitations and escape into a utopian world.

The Happy Prince and Other Stories

2006-03-04T02:36:00.000+08:00

The Happy Prince and Other Stories is an 1888 collection of stories for children by Oscar Wilde. It is most famous for The Happy Prince, the short tale of a metal statue who becomes friends with a migratory bird. Together they bring some happiness to others in life and in "death".

The stories included in this collection are as follows:

The Happy Prince
The Nightingale and the Rose
The Selfish Giant
The Devoted Friend
The Remarkable Rocket

‘The Happy Prince and Other Stories’ by Oscar Wilde. These stories are a selection of children's fantasies by this romantic, socialist author. In these tales, most of them being sad and even very sad, Oscar Wilde looks for a way to save one's soul in front of the misery of the world. Anyone in society who lives in the upper classes does not necessarily see the ugliness and suffering of the world when one looks at the lower classes. But in these tales the Happy Prince, or the Selfish Giant, or any other character will manage to get salvation out of their upper class blindness, by opening their eyes to misery and suffering and by doing what they can to repair these pains and evils because they will realise they have to feel responsible for the world, because they are more powerful and could easily impose their selfish rule. But the giant will discover nature, if not God, punishes him for his selfishness. The nightingale will try to redeem a young student by giving him a red rose in a season when red roses do not bloom. And yet the student will not get the love he wants because he is nothing but a insignificant person in the eyes of the girl he would like to be loved by. There is also a very sad note in A Devoted Friend and how friendship can become a mask for selfishness, a nice appearance for an ugly and egoistic attitude. Those tales are sad and at the same time they convey a moral full of hope. All is not lost if the Happy Prince can give away his happiness for those who suffer, even if later the powerful of his society will reject him when he does not look happy and beautiful any more.

THE HAPPY PRINCE AND OTHER TALES

Contents

The Happy Prince
The Nightingale and the Rose
The Selfish Giant
The Devoted Friend
The Remarkable Rocket

THE HAPPY PRINCE

High above the city, on a tall column, stood the statue of the Happy Prince. He was gilded all over with thin leaves of fine gold, for eyes he had two bright sapphires, and a large red ruby glowed on his sword-hilt.

He was very much admired indeed. “He is as beautiful as a weathercock,” remarked one of the Town Councillors who wished to gain a reputation for having artistic tastes; “only not quite so useful,” he added, fearing lest people should think him unpractical, which he really was not.

“Why can’t you be like the Happy Prince?” asked a sensible mother of her little boy who was crying for the moon. “The Happy Prince never dreams of crying for anything.”

“I am glad there is some one in the world who is quite happy,” muttered a disappointed man as he gazed at the wonderful statue.

“He looks just like an angel,” said the Charity Children as they came out of the cathedral in their bright scarlet cloaks and their clean white pinafores.

“How do you know?” said the Mathematical Master, “you have never seen one.”

“Ah! but we have, in our dreams,” answered the children; and the Mathematical Master frowned and looked very severe, for he did not approve of children dreaming.

One night there flew over the city a little Swallow. His friends had gone away to Egypt six weeks before, but he had stayed behind, for he was in love with the most beautiful Reed. He had met her early in the spring as he was flying down the river after a big yellow moth, and had been so attracted by her slender waist that he had stopped to talk to her.

“Shall I love you?” said the Swallow, who liked to come to the point at once, and the Reed made him a low bow. So he flew round and round her, touching the water with his wings, and making silver ripples. This was his courtship, and it lasted all through the summer.

“It is a ridiculous attachment,” twittered the other Swallows; “she has no money, and far too many relations”; and indeed the river was quite full of Reeds. Then, when the autumn came they all flew away.

After they had gone he felt lonely, and began to tire of his lady-love. “She has no conversation,” he said, “and I am afraid that she is a coquette, for she is always flirting with the wind.” And certainly, whenever the wind blew, the Reed made the most graceful curtseys. “I admit that she is domestic,” he continued, “but I love travelling, and my wife, consequently, should love travelling also.”

“Will you come away with me?” he said finally to her; but the Reed shook her head, she was so attached to her home.

“You have been trifling with me,” he cried. “I am off to the Pyramids. Good-bye!” and he flew away.

All day long he flew, and at night-time he arrived at the city. “Where shall I put up?” he said; “I hope the town has made preparations.”

Then he saw the statue on the tall column.

“I will put up there,” he cried; “it is a fine position, with plenty of fresh air.” So he alighted just between the feet of the Happy Prince.

“I have a golden bedroom,” he said softly to himself as he looked round, and he prepared to go to sleep; but just as he was putting his head under his wing a large drop of water fell on him. “What a curious thing!” he cried; “there is not a single cloud in the sky, the stars are quite clear and bright, and yet it is raining. The climate in the north of Europe is really dreadful. The Reed used to like the rain, but that was merely her selfishness.”

Then another drop fell.

“What is the use of a statue if it cannot keep the rain off?” he said; “I must look for a good chimney-pot,” and he determined to fly away.

But before he had opened his wings, a third drop fell, and he looked up, and saw—Ah! what did he see?

The eyes of the Happy Prince were filled with tears, and tears were running down his golden cheeks. His face was so beautiful in the moonlight that the little Swallow was filled with pity.

“Who are you?” he said.

“I am the Happy Prince.”

“Why are you weeping then?” asked the Swallow; “you have quite drenched me.”

“When I was alive and had a human heart,” answered the statue, “I did not know what tears were, for I lived in the Palace of Sans-Souci, where sorrow is not allowed to enter. In the daytime I played with my companions in the garden, and in the evening I led the dance in the Great Hall. Round the garden ran a very lofty wall, but I never cared to ask what lay beyond it, everything about me was so beautiful. My courtiers called me the Happy Prince, and happy indeed I was, if pleasure be happiness. So I lived, and so I died. And now that I am dead they have set me up here so high that I can see all the ugliness and all the misery of my city, and though my heart is made of lead yet I cannot chose but weep.”

“What! is he not solid gold?” said the Swallow to himself. He was too polite to make any personal remarks out loud.

“Far away,” continued the statue in a low musical voice, “far away in a little street there is a poor house. One of the windows is open, and through it I can see a woman seated at a table. Her face is thin and worn, and she has coarse, red hands, all pricked by the needle, for she is a seamstress. She is embroidering passion-flowers on a satin gown for the loveliest of the Queen’s maids-of-honour to wear at the next Court-ball. In a bed in the corner of the room her little boy is lying ill. He has a fever, and is asking for oranges. His mother has nothing to give him but river water, so he is crying. Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow, will you not bring her the ruby out of my sword-hilt? My feet are fastened to this pedestal and I cannot move.”

“I am waited for in Egypt,” said the Swallow. “My friends are flying up and down the Nile, and talking to the large lotus-flowers. Soon they will go to sleep in the tomb of the great King. The King is there himself in his painted coffin. He is wrapped in yellow linen, and embalmed with spices. Round his neck is a chain of pale green jade, and his hands are like withered leaves.”

“Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow,” said the Prince, “will you not stay with me for one night, and be my messenger? The boy is so thirsty, and the mother so sad.”

“I don’t think I like boys,” answered the Swallow. “Last summer, when I was staying on the river, there were two rude boys, the miller’s sons, who were always throwing stones at me. They never hit me, of course; we swallows fly far too well for that, and besides, I come of a family famous for its agility; but still, it was a mark of disrespect.”

But the Happy Prince looked so sad that the little Swallow was sorry. “It is very cold here,” he said; “but I will stay with you for one night, and be your messenger.”

“Thank you, little Swallow,” said the Prince.

So the Swallow picked out the great ruby from the Prince’s sword, and flew away with it in his beak over the roofs of the town.

He passed by the cathedral tower, where the white marble angels were sculptured. He passed by the palace and heard the sound of dancing. A beautiful girl came out on the balcony with her lover. “How wonderful the stars are,” he said to her, “and how wonderful is the power of love!”

“I hope my dress will be ready in time for the State-ball,” she answered; “I have ordered passion-flowers to be embroidered on it; but the seamstresses are so lazy.”

He passed over the river, and saw the lanterns hanging to the masts of the ships. He passed over the Ghetto, and saw the old Jews bargaining with each other, and weighing out money in copper scales. At last he came to the poor house and looked in. The boy was tossing feverishly on his bed, and the mother had fallen asleep, she was so tired. In he hopped, and laid the great ruby on the table beside the woman’s thimble. Then he flew gently round the bed, fanning the boy’s forehead with his wings. “How cool I feel,” said the boy, “I must be getting better”; and he sank into a delicious slumber.

Then the Swallow flew back to the Happy Prince, and told him what he had done. “It is curious,” he remarked, “but I feel quite warm now, although it is so cold.”

“That is because you have done a good action,” said the Prince. And the little Swallow began to think, and then he fell asleep. Thinking always made him sleepy.

When day broke he flew down to the river and had a bath. “What a remarkable phenomenon,” said the Professor of Ornithology as he was passing over the bridge. “A swallow in winter!” And he wrote a long letter about it to the local newspaper. Every one quoted it, it was full of so many words that they could not understand.

“To-night I go to Egypt,” said the Swallow, and he was in high spirits at the prospect. He visited all the public monuments, and sat a long time on top of the church steeple. Wherever he went the Sparrows chirruped, and said to each other, “What a distinguished stranger!” so he enjoyed himself very much.

When the moon rose he flew back to the Happy Prince. “Have you any commissions for Egypt?” he cried; “I am just starting.”

“Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow,” said the Prince, “will you not stay with me one night longer?”

“I am waited for in Egypt,” answered the Swallow. “To-morrow my friends will fly up to the Second Cataract. The river-horse couches there among the bulrushes, and on a great granite throne sits the God Memnon. All night long he watches the stars, and when the morning star shines he utters one cry of joy, and then he is silent. At noon the yellow lions come down to the water’s edge to drink. They have eyes like green beryls, and their roar is louder than the roar of the cataract.

“Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow,” said the Prince, “far away across the city I see a young man in a garret. He is leaning over a desk covered with papers, and in a tumbler by his side there is a bunch of withered violets. His hair is brown and crisp, and his lips are red as a pomegranate, and he has large and dreamy eyes. He is trying to finish a play for the Director of the Theatre, but he is too cold to write any more. There is no fire in the grate, and hunger has made him faint.”

“I will wait with you one night longer,” said the Swallow, who really had a good heart. “Shall I take him another ruby?”

“Alas! I have no ruby now,” said the Prince; “my eyes are all that I have left. They are made of rare sapphires, which were brought out of India a thousand years ago. Pluck out one of them and take it to him. He will sell it to the jeweller, and buy food and firewood, and finish his play.”

“Dear Prince,” said the Swallow, “I cannot do that”; and he began to weep.

“Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow,” said the Prince, “do as I command you.”

So the Swallow plucked out the Prince’s eye, and flew away to the student’s garret. It was easy enough to get in, as there was a hole in the roof. Through this he darted, and came into the room. The young man had his head buried in his hands, so he did not hear the flutter of the bird’s wings, and when he looked up he found the beautiful sapphire lying on the withered violets.

“I am beginning to be appreciated,” he cried; “this is from some great admirer. Now I can finish my play,” and he looked quite happy.

The next day the Swallow flew down to the harbour. He sat on the mast of a large vessel and watched the sailors hauling big chests out of the hold with ropes. “Heave a-hoy!” they shouted as each chest came up. “I am going to Egypt”! cried the Swallow, but nobody minded, and when the moon rose he flew back to the Happy Prince.

“I am come to bid you good-bye,” he cried.

“Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow,” said the Prince, “will you not stay with me one night longer?”

“It is winter,” answered the Swallow, “and the chill snow will soon be here. In Egypt the sun is warm on the green palm-trees, and the crocodiles lie in the mud and look lazily about them. My companions are building a nest in the Temple of Baalbec, and the pink and white doves are watching them, and cooing to each other. Dear Prince, I must leave you, but I will never forget you, and next spring I will bring you back two beautiful jewels in place of those you have given away. The ruby shall be redder than a red rose, and the sapphire shall be as blue as the great sea.”

“In the square below,” said the Happy Prince, “there stands a little match-girl. She has let her matches fall in the gutter, and they are all spoiled. Her father will beat her if she does not bring home some money, and she is crying. She has no shoes or stockings, and her little head is bare. Pluck out my other eye, and give it to her, and her father will not beat her.”

“I will stay with you one night longer,” said the Swallow, “but I cannot pluck out your eye. You would be quite blind then.”

“Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow,” said the Prince, “do as I command you.”

So he plucked out the Prince’s other eye, and darted down with it. He swooped past the match-girl, and slipped the jewel into the palm of her hand. “What a lovely bit of glass,” cried the little girl; and she ran home, laughing.

Then the Swallow came back to the Prince. “You are blind now,” he said, “so I will stay with you always.”

“No, little Swallow,” said the poor Prince, “you must go away to Egypt.”

“I will stay with you always,” said the Swallow, and he slept at the Prince’s feet.

All the next day he sat on the Prince’s shoulder, and told him stories of what he had seen in strange lands. He told him of the red ibises, who stand in long rows on the banks of the Nile, and catch gold-fish in their beaks; of the Sphinx, who is as old as the world itself, and lives in the desert, and knows everything; of the merchants, who walk slowly by the side of their camels, and carry amber beads in their hands; of the King of the Mountains of the Moon, who is as black as ebony, and worships a large crystal; of the great green snake that sleeps in a palm-tree, and has twenty priests to feed it with honey-cakes; and of the pygmies who sail over a big lake on large flat leaves, and are always at war with the butterflies.

“Dear little Swallow,” said the Prince, “you tell me of marvellous things, but more marvellous than anything is the suffering of men and of women. There is no Mystery so great as Misery. Fly over my city, little Swallow, and tell me what you see there.”

So the Swallow flew over the great city, and saw the rich making merry in their beautiful houses, while the beggars were sitting at the gates. He flew into dark lanes, and saw the white faces of starving children looking out listlessly at the black streets. Under the archway of a bridge two little boys were lying in one another’s arms to try and keep themselves warm. “How hungry we are!” they said. “You must not lie here,” shouted the Watchman, and they wandered out into the rain.

Then he flew back and told the Prince what he had seen.

“I am covered with fine gold,” said the Prince, “you must take it off, leaf by leaf, and give it to my poor; the living always think that gold can make them happy.”

Leaf after leaf of the fine gold the Swallow picked off, till the Happy Prince looked quite dull and grey. Leaf after leaf of the fine gold he brought to the poor, and the children’s faces grew rosier, and they laughed and played games in the street. “We have bread now!” they cried.

Then the snow came, and after the snow came the frost. The streets looked as if they were made of silver, they were so bright and glistening; long icicles like crystal daggers hung down from the eaves of the houses, everybody went about in furs, and the little boys wore scarlet caps and skated on the ice.

The poor little Swallow grew colder and colder, but he would not leave the Prince, he loved him too well. He picked up crumbs outside the baker’s door when the baker was not looking and tried to keep himself warm by flapping his wings.

But at last he knew that he was going to die. He had just strength to fly up to the Prince’s shoulder once more. “Good-bye, dear Prince!” he murmured, “will you let me kiss your hand?”

“I am glad that you are going to Egypt at last, little Swallow,” said the Prince, “you have stayed too long here; but you must kiss me on the lips, for I love you.”

“It is not to Egypt that I am going,” said the Swallow. “I am going to the House of Death. Death is the brother of Sleep, is he not?”

And he kissed the Happy Prince on the lips, and fell down dead at his feet.

At that moment a curious crack sounded inside the statue, as if something had broken. The fact is that the leaden heart had snapped right in two. It certainly was a dreadfully hard frost.

Early the next morning the Mayor was walking in the square below in company with the Town Councillors. As they passed the column he looked up at the statue: “Dear me! how shabby the Happy Prince looks!” he said.

“How shabby indeed!” cried the Town Councillors, who always agreed with the Mayor; and they went up to look at it.

“The ruby has fallen out of his sword, his eyes are gone, and he is golden no longer,” said the Mayor in fact, “he is litttle beter than a beggar!”

“Little better than a beggar,” said the Town Councillors.

“And here is actually a dead bird at his feet!” continued the Mayor. “We must really issue a proclamation that birds are not to be allowed to die here.” And the Town Clerk made a note of the suggestion.

So they pulled down the statue of the Happy Prince. “As he is no longer beautiful he is no longer useful,” said the Art Professor at the University.

Then they melted the statue in a furnace, and the Mayor held a meeting of the Corporation to decide what was to be done with the metal. “We must have another statue, of course,” he said, “and it shall be a statue of myself.”

“Of myself,” said each of the Town Councillors, and they quarrelled. When I last heard of them they were quarrelling still.

“What a strange thing!” said the overseer of the workmen at the foundry. “This broken lead heart will not melt in the furnace. We must throw it away.” So they threw it on a dust-heap where the dead Swallow was also lying.

“Bring me the two most precious things in the city,” said God to one of His Angels; and the Angel brought Him the leaden heart and the dead bird.

“You have rightly chosen,” said God, “for in my garden of Paradise this little bird shall sing for evermore, and in my city of gold the Happy Prince shall praise me.”

THE NIGHTINGALE AND THE ROSE

“She said that she would dance with me if I brought her red roses,” cried the young Student; “but in all my garden there is no red rose.”

From her nest in the holm-oak tree the Nightingale heard him, and she looked out through the leaves, and wondered.

“No red rose in all my garden!” he cried, and his beautiful eyes filled with tears. “Ah, on what little things does happiness depend! I have read all that the wise men have written, and all the secrets of philosophy are mine, yet for want of a red rose is my life made wretched.”

“Here at last is a true lover,” said the Nightingale. “Night after night have I sung of him, though I knew him not: night after night have I told his story to the stars, and now I see him. His hair is dark as the hyacinth-blossom, and his lips are red as the rose of his desire; but passion has made his face like pale ivory, and sorrow has set her seal upon his brow.”

“The Prince gives a ball to-morrow night,” murmured the young Student, “and my love will be of the company. If I bring her a red rose she will dance with me till dawn. If I bring her a red rose, I shall hold her in my arms, and she will lean her head upon my shoulder, and her hand will be clasped in mine. But there is no red rose in my garden, so I shall sit lonely, and she will pass me by. She will have no heed of me, and my heart will break.”

“Here indeed is the true lover,” said the Nightingale. “What I sing of, he suffers—what is joy to me, to him is pain. Surely Love is a wonderful thing. It is more precious than emeralds, and dearer than fine opals. Pearls and pomegranates cannot buy it, nor is it set forth in the marketplace. It may not be purchased of the merchants, nor can it be weighed out in the balance for gold.”

“The musicians will sit in their gallery,” said the young Student, “and play upon their stringed instruments, and my love will dance to the sound of the harp and the violin. She will dance so lightly that her feet will not touch the floor, and the courtiers in their gay dresses will throng round her. But with me she will not dance, for I have no red rose to give her”; and he flung himself down on the grass, and buried his face in his hands, and wept.

“Why is he weeping?” asked a little Green Lizard, as he ran past him with his tail in the air.

“Why, indeed?” said a Butterfly, who was fluttering about after a sunbeam.

“Why, indeed?” whispered a Daisy to his neighbour, in a soft, low voice.

“He is weeping for a red rose,” said the Nightingale.

“For a red rose?” they cried; “how very ridiculous!” and the little Lizard, who was something of a cynic, laughed outright.

But the Nightingale understood the secret of the Student’s sorrow, and she sat silent in the oak-tree, and thought about the mystery of Love.

Suddenly she spread her brown wings for flight, and soared into the air. She passed through the grove like a shadow, and like a shadow she sailed across the garden.

In the centre of the grass-plot was standing a beautiful Rose-tree, and when she saw it she flew over to it, and lit upon a spray.

“Give me a red rose,” she cried, “and I will sing you my sweetest song.”

But the Tree shook its head.

“My roses are white,” it answered; “as white as the foam of the sea, and whiter than the snow upon the mountain. But go to my brother who grows round the old sun-dial, and perhaps he will give you what you want.”

So the Nightingale flew over to the Rose-tree that was growing round the old sun-dial.

“Give me a red rose,” she cried, “and I will sing you my sweetest song.”

But the Tree shook its head.

“My roses are yellow,” it answered; “as yellow as the hair of the mermaiden who sits upon an amber throne, and yellower than the daffodil that blooms in the meadow before the mower comes with his scythe. But go to my brother who grows beneath the Student’s window, and perhaps he will give you what you want.”

So the Nightingale flew over to the Rose-tree that was growing beneath the Student’s window.

“Give me a red rose,” she cried, “and I will sing you my sweetest song.”

But the Tree shook its head.

“My roses are red,” it answered, “as red as the feet of the dove, and redder than the great fans of coral that wave and wave in the ocean-cavern. But the winter has chilled my veins, and the frost has nipped my buds, and the storm has broken my branches, and I shall have no roses at all this year.”

“One red rose is all I want,” cried the Nightingale, “only one red rose! Is there no way by which I can get it?”

“There is away,” answered the Tree; “but it is so terrible that I dare not tell it to you.”

“Tell it to me,” said the Nightingale, “I am not afraid.”

“If you want a red rose,” said the Tree, “you must build it out of music by moonlight, and stain it with your own heart’s-blood. You must sing to me with your breast against a thorn. All night long you must sing to me, and the thorn must pierce your heart, and your life-blood must flow into my veins, and become mine.”

“Death is a great price to pay for a red rose,” cried the Nightingale, “and Life is very dear to all. It is pleasant to sit in the green wood, and to watch the Sun in his chariot of gold, and the Moon in her chariot of pearl. Sweet is the scent of the hawthorn, and sweet are the bluebells that hide in the valley, and the heather that blows on the hill. Yet Love is better than Life, and what is the heart of a bird compared to the heart of a man?”

So she spread her brown wings for flight, and soared into the air. She swept over the garden like a shadow, and like a shadow she sailed through the grove.

The young Student was still lying on the grass, where she had left him, and the tears were not yet dry in his beautiful eyes.

“Be happy,” cried the Nightingale, “be happy; you shall have your red rose. I will build it out of music by moonlight, and stain it with my own heart’s-blood. All that I ask of you in return is that you will be a true lover, for Love is wiser than Philosophy, though she is wise, and mightier than Power, though he is mighty. Flame-coloured are his wings, and coloured like flame is his body. His lips are sweet as honey, and his breath is like frankincense.”

The Student looked up from the grass, and listened, but he could not understand what the Nightingale was saying to him, for he only knew the things that are written down in books.

But the Oak-tree understood, and felt sad, for he was very fond of the little Nightingale who had built her nest in his branches.

“Sing me one last song,” he whispered; “I shall feel very lonely when you are gone.”

So the Nightingale sang to the Oak-tree, and her voice was like water bubbling from a silver jar.

When she had finished her song the Student got up, and pulled a note-book and a lead-pencil out of his pocket.

“She has form,” he said to himself, as he walked away through the grove—“that cannot be denied to her; but has she got feeling? I am afraid not. In fact, she is like most artists; she is all style, without any sincerity. She would not sacrifice herself for others. She thinks merely of music, and everybody knows that the arts are selfish. Still, it must be admitted that she has some beautiful notes in her voice. What a pity it is that they do not mean anything, or do any practical good.” And he went into his room, and lay down on his little pallet-bed, and began to think of his love; and, after a time, he fell asleep.

And when the Moon shone in the heavens the Nightingale flew to the Rose-tree, and set her breast against the thorn. All night long she sang with her breast against the thorn, and the cold crystal Moon leaned down and listened. All night long she sang, and the thorn went deeper and deeper into her breast, and her life-blood ebbed away from her.

She sang first of the birth of love in the heart of a boy and a girl. And on the top-most spray of the Rose-tree there blossomed a marvellous rose, petal following petal, as song followed song. Pale was it, at first, as the mist that hangs over the river—pale as the feet of the morning, and silver as the wings of the dawn. As the shadow of a rose in a mirror of silver, as the shadow of a rose in a water-pool, so was the rose that blossomed on the topmost spray of the Tree.

But the Tree cried to the Nightingale to press closer against the thorn. “Press closer, little Nightingale,” cried the Tree, “or the Day will come before the rose is finished.”

So the Nightingale pressed closer against the thorn, and louder and louder grew her song, for she sang of the birth of passion in the soul of a man and a maid.

And a delicate flush of pink came into the leaves of the rose, like the flush in the face of the bridegroom when he kisses the lips of the bride. But the thorn had not yet reached her heart, so the rose’s heart remained white, for only a Nightingale’s heart’s-blood can crimson the heart of a rose.

And the Tree cried to the Nightingale to press closer against the thorn. “Press closer, little Nightingale,” cried the Tree, “or the Day will come before the rose is finished.”

So the Nightingale pressed closer against the thorn, and the thorn touched her heart, and a fierce pang of pain shot through her. Bitter, bitter was the pain, and wilder and wilder grew her song, for she sang of the Love that is perfected by Death, of the Love that dies not in the tomb.

And the marvellous rose became crimson, like the rose of the eastern sky. Crimson was the girdle of petals, and crimson as a ruby was the heart.

But the Nightingale’s voice grew fainter, and her little wings began to beat, and a film came over her eyes. Fainter and fainter grew her song, and she felt something choking her in her throat.

Then she gave one last burst of music. The white Moon heard it, and she forgot the dawn, and lingered on in the sky. The red rose heard it, and it trembled all over with ecstasy, and opened its petals to the cold morning air. Echo bore it to her purple cavern in the hills, and woke the sleeping shepherds from their dreams. It floated through the reeds of the river, and they carried its message to the sea.

“Look, look!” cried the Tree, “the rose is finished now”; but the Nightingale made no answer, for she was lying dead in the long grass, with the thorn in her heart.

And at noon the Student opened his window and looked out.

“Why, what a wonderful piece of luck!” he cried; “here is a red rose! I have never seen any rose like it in all my life. It is so beautiful that I am sure it has a long Latin name”; and he leaned down and plucked it.

Then he put on his hat, and ran up to the Professor’s house with the rose in his hand.

The daughter of the Professor was sitting in the doorway winding blue silk on a reel, and her little dog was lying at her feet.

“You said that you would dance with me if I brought you a red rose,” cried the Student. “Here is the reddest rose in all the world. You will wear it to-night next your heart, and as we dance together it will tell you how I love you.”

But the girl frowned.

“I am afraid it will not go with my dress,” she answered; “and, besides, the Chamberlain’s nephew has sent me some real jewels, and everybody knows that jewels cost far more than flowers.”

“Well, upon my word, you are very ungrateful,” said the Student angrily; and he threw the rose into the street, where it fell into the gutter, and a cart-wheel went over it.

“Ungrateful!” said the girl. “I tell you what, you are very rude; and, after all, who are you? Only a Student. Why, I don’t believe you have even got silver buckles to your shoes as the Chamberlain’s nephew has”; and she got up from her chair and went into the house.

“What I a silly thing Love is,” said the Student as he walked away. “It is not half as useful as Logic, for it does not prove anything, and it is always telling one of things that are not going to happen, and making one believe things that are not true. In fact, it is quite unpractical, and, as in this age to be practical is everything, I shall go back to Philosophy and study Metaphysics.”

So he returned to his room and pulled out a great dusty book, and began to read.

THE SELFISH GIANT

Every afternoon, as they were coming from school, the children used to go and play in the Giant’s garden.

It was a large lovely garden, with soft green grass. Here and there over the grass stood beautiful flowers like stars, and there were twelve peach-trees that in the spring-time broke out into delicate blossoms of pink and pearl, and in the autumn bore rich fruit. The birds sat on the trees and sang so sweetly that the children used to stop their games in order to listen to them. “How happy we are here!” they cried to each other.

One day the Giant came back. He had been to visit his friend the Cornish ogre, and had stayed with him for seven years. After the seven years were over he had said all that he had to say, for his conversation was limited, and he determined to return to his own castle. When he arrived he saw the children playing in the garden.

“What are you doing here?” he cried in a very gruff voice, and the children ran away.

“My own garden is my own garden,” said the Giant; “any one can understand that, and I will allow nobody to play in it but myself.” So he built a high wall all round it, and put up a notice-board.

TRESPASSERS
WILL BE
PROSECUTED

He was a very selfish Giant.

The poor children had now nowhere to play. They tried to play on the road, but the road was very dusty and full of hard stones, and they did not like it. They used to wander round the high wall when their lessons were over, and talk about the beautiful garden inside. “How happy we were there,” they said to each other.

Then the Spring came, and all over the country there were little blossoms and little birds. Only in the garden of the Selfish Giant it was still winter. The birds did not care to sing in it as there were no children, and the trees forgot to blossom. Once a beautiful flower put its head out from the grass, but when it saw the notice-board it was so sorry for the children that it slipped back into the ground again, and went off to sleep. The only people who were pleased were the Snow and the Frost. “Spring has forgotten this garden,” they cried, “so we will live here all the year round.” The Snow covered up the grass with her great white cloak, and the Frost painted all the trees silver. Then they invited the North Wind to stay with them, and he came. He was wrapped in furs, and he roared all day about the garden, and blew the chimney-pots down. “This is a delightful spot,” he said, “we must ask the Hail on a visit.” So the Hail came. Every day for three hours he rattled on the roof of the castle till he broke most of the slates, and then he ran round and round the garden as fast as he could go. He was dressed in grey, and his breath was like ice.

“I cannot understand why the Spring is so late in coming,” said the Selfish Giant, as he sat at the window and looked out at his cold white garden; “I hope there will be a change in the weather.”

But the Spring never came, nor the Summer. The Autumn gave golden fruit to every garden, but to the Giant’s garden she gave none. “He is too selfish,” she said. So it was always Winter there, and the North Wind, and the Hail, and the Frost, and the Snow danced about through the trees.

One morning the Giant was lying awake in bed when he heard some lovely music. It sounded so sweet to his ears that he thought it must be the King’s musicians passing by. It was really only a little linnet singing outside his window, but it was so long since he had heard a bird sing in his garden that it seemed to him to be the most beautiful music in the world. Then the Hail stopped dancing over his head, and the North Wind ceased roaring, and a delicious perfume came to him through the open casement. “I believe the Spring has come at last,” said the Giant; and he jumped out of bed and looked out.

What did he see?

He saw a most wonderful sight. Through a little hole in the wall the children had crept in, and they were sitting in the branches of the trees. In every tree that he could see there was a little child. And the trees were so glad to have the children back again that they had covered themselves with blossoms, and were waving their arms gently above the children’s heads. The birds were flying about and twittering with delight, and the flowers were looking up through the green grass and laughing. It was a lovely scene, only in one corner it was still winter. It was the farthest corner of the garden, and in it was standing a little boy. He was so small that he could not reach up to the branches of the tree, and he was wandering all round it, crying bitterly. The poor tree was still quite covered with frost and snow, and the North Wind was blowing and roaring above it. “Climb up! little boy,” said the Tree, and it bent its branches down as low as it could; but the boy was too tiny.

And the Giant’s heart melted as he looked out. “How selfish I have been!” he said; “now I know why the Spring would not come here. I will put that poor little boy on the top of the tree, and then I will knock down the wall, and my garden shall be the children’s playground for ever and ever.” He was really very sorry for what he had done.

So he crept downstairs and opened the front door quite softly, and went out into the garden. But when the children saw him they were so frightened that they all ran away, and the garden became winter again. Only the little boy did not run, for his eyes were so full of tears that he did not see the Giant coming. And the Giant stole up behind him and took him gently in his hand, and put him up into the tree. And the tree broke at once into blossom, and the birds came and sang on it, and the little boy stretched out his two arms and flung them round the Giant’s neck, and kissed him. And the other children, when they saw that the Giant was not wicked any longer, came running back, and with them came the Spring. “It is your garden now, little children,” said the Giant, and he took a great axe and knocked down the wall. And when the people were going to market at twelve o’clock they found the Giant playing with the children in the most beautiful garden they had ever seen.

All day long they played, and in the evening they came to the Giant to bid him good-bye.

“But where is your little companion?” he said: “the boy I put into the tree.” The Giant loved him the best because he had kissed him.

“We don’t know,” answered the children; “he has gone away.”

“You must tell him to be sure and come here to-morrow,” said the Giant. But the children said that they did not know where he lived, and had never seen him before; and the Giant felt very sad.

Every afternoon, when school was over, the children came and played with the Giant. But the little boy whom the Giant loved was never seen again. The Giant was very kind to all the children, yet he longed for his first little friend, and often spoke of him. “How I would like to see him!” he used to say.

Years went over, and the Giant grew very old and feeble. He could not play about any more, so he sat in a huge armchair, and watched the children at their games, and admired his garden. “I have many beautiful flowers,” he said; “but the children are the most beautiful flowers of all.”

One winter morning he looked out of his window as he was dressing. He did not hate the Winter now, for he knew that it was merely the Spring asleep, and that the flowers were resting.

Suddenly he rubbed his eyes in wonder, and looked and looked. It certainly was a marvellous sight. In the farthest corner of the garden was a tree quite covered with lovely white blossoms. Its branches were all golden, and silver fruit hung down from them, and underneath it stood the little boy he had loved.

Downstairs ran the Giant in great joy, and out into the garden. He hastened across the grass, and came near to the child. And when he came quite close his face grew red with anger, and he said, “Who hath dared to wound thee?” For on the palms of the child’s hands were the prints of two nails, and the prints of two nails were on the little feet.

“Who hath dared to wound thee?” cried the Giant; “tell me, that I may take my big sword and slay him.”

“Nay!” answered the child; “but these are the wounds of Love.”

“Who art thou?” said the Giant, and a strange awe fell on him, and he knelt before the little child.

And the child smiled on the Giant, and said to him, “You let me play once in your garden, to-day you shall come with me to my garden, which is Paradise.”

And when the children ran in that afternoon, they found the Giant lying dead under the tree, all covered with white blossoms.

THE DEVOTED FRIEND

One morning the old Water-rat put his head out of his hole. He had bright beady eyes and stiff grey whiskers and his tail was like a long bit of black india-rubber. The little ducks were swimming about in the pond, looking just like a lot of yellow canaries, and their mother, who was pure white with real red legs, was trying to teach them how to stand on their heads in the water.

“You will never be in the best society unless you can stand on your heads,” she kept saying to them; and every now and then she showed them how it was done. But the little ducks paid no attention to her. They were so young that they did not know what an advantage it is to be in society at all.

“What disobedient children!” cried the old Water-rat; “they really deserve to be drowned.”

“Nothing of the kind,” answered the Duck, “every one must make a beginning, and parents cannot be too patient.”

“Ah! I know nothing about the feelings of parents,” said the Water-rat; “I am not a family man. In fact, I have never been married, and I never intend to be. Love is all very well in its way, but friendship is much higher. Indeed, I know of nothing in the world that is either nobler or rarer than a devoted friendship.”

“And what, pray, is your idea of the duties of a devoted friend?” asked a Green Linnet, who was sitting in a willow-tree hard by, and had overheard the conversation.

“Yes, that is just what I want to know,” said the Duck; and she swam away to the end of the pond, and stood upon her head, in order to give her children a good example.

“What a silly question!” cried the Water-rat. “I should expect my devoted friend to be devoted to me, of course.”

“And what would you do in return?” said the little bird, swinging upon a silver spray, and flapping his tiny wings.

“I don’t understand you,” answered the Water-rat.

“Let me tell you a story on the subject,” said the Linnet.

“Is the story about me?” asked the Water-rat. “If so, I will listen to it, for I am extremely fond of fiction.”

“It is applicable to you,” answered the Linnet; and he flew down, and alighting upon the bank, he told the story of The Devoted Friend.

“Once upon a time,” said the Linnet, “there was an honest little fellow named Hans.”

“Was he very distinguished?” asked the Water-rat.

“No,” answered the Linnet, “I don’t think he was distinguished at all, except for his kind heart, and his funny round good-humoured face. He lived in a tiny cottage all by himself, and every day he worked in his garden. In all the country-side there was no garden so lovely as his. Sweet-william grew there, and Gilly-flowers, and Shepherds’-purses, and Fair-maids of France. There were damask Roses, and yellow Roses, lilac Crocuses, and gold, purple Violets and white. Columbine and Ladysmock, Marjoram and Wild Basil, the Cowslip and the Flower-de-luce, the Daffodil and the Clove-Pink bloomed or blossomed in their proper order as the months went by, one flower taking another flower’s place, so that there were always beautiful things to look at, and pleasant odours to smell.

“Little Hans had a great many friends, but the most devoted friend of all was big Hugh the Miller. Indeed, so devoted was the rich Miller to little Hans, that be would never go by his garden without leaning over the wall and plucking a large nosegay, or a handful of sweet herbs, or filling his pockets with plums and cherries if it was the fruit season.

“‘Real friends should have everything in common,’ the Miller used to say, and little Hans nodded and smiled, and felt very proud of having a friend with such noble ideas.

“Sometimes, indeed, the neighbours thought it strange that the rich Miller never gave little Hans anything in return, though he had a hundred sacks of flour stored away in his mill, and six milch cows, and a large flock of woolly sheep; but Hans never troubled his head about these things, and nothing gave him greater pleasure than to listen to all the wonderful things the Miller used to say about the unselfishness of true friendship.

“So little Hans worked away in his garden. During the spring, the summer, and the autumn he was very happy, but when the winter came, and he had no fruit or flowers to bring to the market, he suffered a good deal from cold and hunger, and often had to go to bed without any supper but a few dried pears or some hard nuts. In the winter, also, he was extremely lonely, as the Miller never came to see him then.

“‘There is no good in my going to see little Hans as long as the snow lasts,’ the Miller used to say to his wife, ‘for when people are in trouble they should be left alone, and not be bothered by visitors. That at least is my idea about friendship, and I am sure I am right. So I shall wait till the spring comes, and then I shall pay him a visit, and he will be able to give me a large basket of primroses and that will make him so happy.’

“‘You are certainly very thoughtful about others,’ answered the Wife, as she sat in her comfortable armchair by the big pinewood fire; ‘very thoughtful indeed. It is quite a treat to hear you talk about friendship. I am sure the clergyman himself could not say such beautiful things as you do, though he does live in a three-storied house, and wear a gold ring on his little finger.’

“‘But could we not ask little Hans up here?’ said the Miller’s youngest son. ‘If poor Hans is in trouble I will give him half my porridge, and show him my white rabbits.’

“‘What a silly boy you are’! cried the Miller; ‘I really don’t know what is the use of sending you to school. You seem not to learn anything. Why, if little Hans came up here, and saw our warm fire, and our good supper, and our great cask of red wine, he might get envious, and envy is a most terrible thing, and would spoil anybody’s nature. I certainly will not allow Hans’ nature to be spoiled. I am his best friend, and I will always watch over him, and see that he is not led into any temptations. Besides, if Hans came here, he might ask me to let him have some flour on credit, and that I could not do. Flour is one thing, and friendship is another, and they should not be confused. Why, the words are spelt differently, and mean quite different things. Everybody can see that.’

“‘How well you talk’! said the Miller’s Wife, pouring herself out a large glass of warm ale; ‘really I feel quite drowsy. It is just like being in church.’

“‘Lots of people act well,’ answered the Miller; ‘but very few people talk well, which shows that talking is much the more difficult thing of the two, and much the finer thing also’; and he looked sternly across the table at his little son, who felt so ashamed of himself that he hung his head down, and grew quite scarlet, and began to cry into his tea. However, he was so young that you must excuse him.”

“Is that the end of the story?” asked the Water-rat.

“Certainly not,” answered the Linnet, “that is the beginning.”

“Then you are quite behind the age,” said the Water-rat. “Every good story-teller nowadays starts with the end, and then goes on to the beginning, and concludes with the middle. That is the new method. I heard all about it the other day from a critic who was walking round the pond with a young man. He spoke of the matter at great length, and I am sure he must have been right, for he had blue spectacles and a bald head, and whenever the young man made any remark, he always answered ‘Pooh!’ But pray go on with your story. I like the Miller immensely. I have all kinds of beautiful sentiments myself, so there is a great sympathy between us.”

“Well,” said the Linnet, hopping now on one leg and now on the other, “as soon as the winter was over, and the primroses began to open their pale yellow stars, the Miller said to his wife that he would go down and see little Hans.

“‘Why, what a good heart you have’! cried his Wife; ‘you are always thinking of others. And mind you take the big basket with you for the flowers.’

“So the Miller tied the sails of the windmill together with a strong iron chain, and went down the hill with the basket on his arm.

“‘Good morning, little Hans,’ said the Miller.

“‘Good morning,’ said Hans, leaning on his spade, and smiling from ear to ear.

“‘And how have you been all the winter?’ said the Miller.

“‘Well, really,’ cried Hans, ‘it is very good of you to ask, very good indeed. I am afraid I had rather a hard time of it, but now the spring has come, and I am quite happy, and all my flowers are doing well.’

“‘We often talked of you during the winter, Hans,’ said the Miller, ‘and wondered how you were getting on.’

“‘That was kind of you,’ said Hans; ‘I was half afraid you had forgotten me.’

“‘Hans, I am surprised at you,’ said the Miller; ‘friendship never forgets. That is the wonderful thing about it, but I am afraid you don’t understand the poetry of life. How lovely your primroses are looking, by-the-bye”!

“‘They are certainly very lovely,’ said Hans, ‘and it is a most lucky thing for me that I have so many. I am going to bring them into the market and sell them to the Burgomaster’s daughter, and buy back my wheelbarrow with the money.’

“‘Buy back your wheelbarrow? You don’t mean to say you have sold it? What a very stupid thing to do’!

“‘Well, the fact is,’ said Hans, ‘that I was obliged to. You see the winter was a very bad time for me, and I really had no money at all to buy bread with. So I first sold the silver buttons off my Sunday coat, and then I sold my silver chain, and then I sold my big pipe, and at last I sold my wheelbarrow. But I am going to buy them all back again now.’

“‘Hans,’ said the Miller, ‘I will give you my wheelbarrow. It is not in very good repair; indeed, one side is gone, and there is something wrong with the wheel-spokes; but in spite of that I will give it to you. I know it is very generous of me, and a great many people would think me extremely foolish for parting with it, but I am not like the rest of the world. I think that generosity is the essence of friendship, and, besides, I have got a new wheelbarrow for myself. Yes, you may set your mind at ease, I will give you my wheelbarrow.’

“‘Well, really, that is generous of you,’ said little Hans, and his funny round face glowed all over with pleasure. ‘I can easily put it in repair, as I have a plank of wood in the house.’

“‘A plank of wood’! said the Miller; ‘why, that is just what I want for the roof of my barn. There is a very large hole in it, and the corn will all get damp if I don’t stop it up. How lucky you mentioned it! It is quite remarkable how one good action always breeds another. I have given you my wheelbarrow, and now you are going to give me your plank. Of course, the wheelbarrow is worth far more than the plank, but true, friendship never notices things like that. Pray get it at once, and I will set to work at my barn this very day.’

“‘Certainly,’ cried little Hans, and he ran into the shed and dragged the plank out.

“‘It is not a very big plank,’ said the Miller, looking at it, ‘and I am afraid that after I have mended my barn-roof there won’t be any left for you to mend the wheelbarrow with; but, of course, that is not my fault. And now, as I have given you my wheelbarrow, I am sure you would like to give me some flowers in return. Here is the basket, and mind you fill it quite full.’

“‘Quite full?’ said little Hans, rather sorrowfully, for it was really a very big basket, and he knew that if he filled it he would have no flowers left for the market and he was very anxious to get his silver buttons back.

“‘Well, really,’ answered the Miller, ‘as I have given you my wheelbarrow, I don’t think that it is much to ask you for a few flowers. I may be wrong, but I should have thought that friendship, true friendship, was quite free from selfishness of any kind.’

“‘My dear friend, my best friend,’ cried little Hans, ‘you are welcome to all the flowers in my garden. I would much sooner have your good opinion than my silver buttons, any day’; and he ran and plucked all his pretty primroses, and filled the Miller’s basket.

“‘Good-bye, little Hans,’ said the Miller, as he went up the hill with the plank on his shoulder, and the big basket in his hand.

“‘Good-bye,’ said little Hans, and he began to dig away quite merrily, he was so pleased about the wheelbarrow.

“The next day he was nailing up some honeysuckle against the porch, when he heard the Miller’s voice calling to him from the road. So he jumped off the ladder, and ran down the garden, and looked over the wall.

“There was the Miller with a large sack of flour on his back.

“‘Dear little Hans,’ said the Miller, ‘would you mind carrying this sack of flour for me to market?’

“‘Oh, I am so sorry,’ said Hans, ‘but I am really very busy to-day. I have got all my creepers to nail up, and all my flowers to water, and all my grass to roll.’

“‘Well, really,’ said the Miller, ‘I think that, considering that I am going to give you my wheelbarrow, it is rather unfriendly of you to refuse.’

“‘Oh, don’t say that,’ cried little Hans, ‘I wouldn’t be unfriendly for the whole world’; and he ran in for his cap, and trudged off with the big sack on his shoulders.

“It was a very hot day, and the road was terribly dusty, and before Hans had reached the sixth milestone he was so tired that he had to sit down and rest. However, he went on bravely, and as last he reached the market. After he had waited there some time, he sold the sack of flour for a very good price, and then he returned home at once, for he was afraid that if he stopped too late he might meet some robbers on the way.

“‘It has certainly been a hard day,’ said little Hans to himself as he was going to bed, ‘but I am glad I did not refuse the Miller, for he is my best friend, and, besides, he is going to give me his wheelbarrow.’

“Early the next morning the Miller came down to get the money for his sack of flour, but little Hans was so tired that he was still in bed.

“‘Upon my word,’ said the Miller, ‘you are very lazy. Really, considering that I am going to give you my wheelbarrow, I think you might work harder. Idleness is a great sin, and I certainly don’t like any of my friends to be idle or sluggish. You must not mind my speaking quite plainly to you. Of course I should not dream of doing so if I were not your friend. But what is the good of friendship if one cannot say exactly what one means? Anybody can say charming things and try to please and to flatter, but a true friend always says unpleasant things, and does not mind giving pain. Indeed, if he is a really true friend he prefers it, for he knows that then he is doing good.’

“‘I am very sorry,’ said little Hans, rubbing his eyes and pulling off his night-cap, ‘but I was so tired that I thought I would lie in bed for a little time, and listen to the birds singing. Do you know that I always work better after hearing the birds sing?’

“‘Well, I am glad of that,’ said the Miller, clapping little Hans on the back, ‘for I want you to come up to the mill as soon as you are dressed, and mend my barn-roof for me.’

“Poor little Hans was very anxious to go and work in his garden, for his flowers had not been watered for two days, but he did not like to refuse the Miller, as he was such a good friend to him.

“‘Do you think it would be unfriendly of me if I said I was busy?’ he inquired in a shy and timid voice.

“‘Well, really,’ answered the Miller, ‘I do not think it is much to ask of you, considering that I am going to give you my wheelbarrow; but of course if you refuse I will go and do it myself.’

“‘Oh! on no account,’ cried little Hans and he jumped out of bed, and dressed himself, and went up to the barn.

“He worked there all day long, till sunset, and at sunset the Miller came to see how he was getting on.

“‘Have you mended the hole in the roof yet, little Hans?’ cried the Miller in a cheery voice.

“‘It is quite mended,’ answered little Hans, coming down the ladder.

“‘Ah’! said the Miller, ‘there is no work so delightful as the work one does for others.’

“‘It is certainly a great privilege to hear you talk,’ answered little Hans, sitting down, and wiping his forehead, ‘a very great privilege. But I am afraid I shall never have such beautiful ideas as you have.’

“‘Oh! they will come to you,’ said the Miller, ‘but you must take more pains. At present you have only the practice of friendship; some day you will have the theory also.’

“‘Do you really think I shall?’ asked little Hans.

“‘I have no doubt of it,’ answered the Miller, ‘but now that you have mended the roof, you had better go home and rest, for I want you to drive my sheep to the mountain to-morrow.’

“Poor little Hans was afraid to say anything to this, and early the next morning the Miller brought his sheep round to the cottage, and Hans started off with them to the mountain. It took him the whole day to get there and back; and when he returned he was so tired that he went off to sleep in his chair, and did not wake up till it was broad daylight.

“‘What a delightful time I shall have in my garden,’ he said, and he went to work at once.

“But somehow he was never able to look after his flowers at all, for his friend the Miller was always coming round and sending him off on long errands, or getting him to help at the mill. Little Hans was very much distressed at times, as he was afraid his flowers would think he had forgotten them, but he consoled himself by the reflection that the Miller was his best friend. ‘Besides,’ he used to say, ‘he is going to give me his wheelbarrow, and that is an act of pure generosity.’

“So little Hans worked away for the Miller, and the Miller said all kinds of beautiful things about friendship, which Hans took down in a note-book, and used to read over at night, for he was a very good scholar.

“Now it happened that one evening little Hans was sitting by his fireside when a loud rap came at the door. It was a very wild night, and the wind was blowing and roaring round the house so terribly that at first he thought it was merely the storm. But a second rap came, and then a third, louder than any of the others.

“‘It is some poor traveller,’ said little Hans to himself, and he ran to the door.

“There stood the Miller with a lantern in one hand and a big stick in the other.

“‘Dear little Hans,’ cried the Miller, ‘I am in great trouble. My little boy has fallen off a ladder and hurt himself, and I am going for the Doctor. But he lives so far away, and it is such a bad night, that it has just occurred to me that it would be much better if you went instead of me. You know I am going to give you my wheelbarrow, and so, it is only fair that you should do something for me in return.’

“‘Certainly,’ cried little Hans, ‘I take it quite as a compliment your coming to me, and I will start off at once. But you must lend me your lantern, as the night is so dark that I am afraid I might fall into the ditch.’

“‘I am very sorry,’ answered the Miller, ‘but it is my new lantern, and it would be a great loss to me if anything happened to it.’

“‘Well, never mind, I will do without it,’ cried little Hans, and he took down his great fur coat, and his warm scarlet cap, and tied a muffler round his throat, and started off.

“What a dreadful storm it was! The night was so black that little Hans could hardly see, and the wind was so strong that he could scarcely stand. However, he was very courageous, and after he had been walking about three hours, he arrived at the Doctor’s house, and knocked at the door.

“‘Who is there?’ cried the Doctor, putting his head out of his bedroom window.

“‘Little Hans, Doctor.’

“’What do you want, little Hans?’

“‘The Miller’s son has fallen from a ladder, and has hurt himself, and the Miller wants you to come at once.’

“‘All right!’ said the Doctor; and he ordered his horse, and his big boots, and his lantern, and came downstairs, and rode off in the direction of the Miller’s house, little Hans trudging behind him.

“But the storm grew worse and worse, and the rain fell in torrents, and little Hans could not see where he was going, or keep up with the horse. At last he lost his way, and wandered off on the moor, which was a very dangerous place, as it was full of deep holes, and there poor little Hans was drowned. His body was found the next day by some goatherds, floating in a great pool of water, and was brought back by them to the cottage.

“Everybody went to little Hans’ funeral, as he was so popular, and the Miller was the chief mourner.

“‘As I was his best friend,’ said the Miller, ‘it is only fair that I should have the best place’; so he walked at the head of the procession in a long black cloak, and every now and then he wiped his eyes with a big pocket-handkerchief.

“‘Little Hans is certainly a great loss to every one,’ said the Blacksmith, when the funeral was over, and they were all seated comfortably in the inn, drinking spiced wine and eating sweet cakes.

“‘A great loss to me at any rate,’ answered the Miller; ‘why, I had as good as given him my wheelbarrow, and now I really don’t know what to do with it. It is very much in my way at home, and it is in such bad repair that I could not get anything for it if I sold it. I will certainly take care not to give away anything again. One always suffers for being generous.’”

“Well?” said the Water-rat, after a long pause.

“Well, that is the end,” said the Linnet.

“But what became of the Miller?” asked the Water-rat.

“Oh! I really don’t know,” replied the Linnet; “and I am sure that I don’t care.”

“It is quite evident then that you have no sympathy in your nature,” said the Water-rat.

“I am afraid you don’t quite see the moral of the story,” remarked the Linnet.

“The what?” screamed the Water-rat.

“The moral.”

“Do you mean to say that the story has a moral?”

“Certainly,” said the Linnet.

“Well, really,” said the Water-rat, in a very angry manner, “I think you should have told me that before you began. If you had done so, I certainly would not have listened to you; in fact, I should have said ‘Pooh,’ like the critic. However, I can say it now”; so he shouted out “Pooh” at the top of his voice, gave a whisk with his tail, and went back into his hole.

“And how do you like the Water-rat?” asked the Duck, who came paddling up some minutes afterwards. “He has a great many good points, but for my own part I have a mother’s feelings, and I can never look at a confirmed bachelor without the tears coming into my eyes.”

“I am rather afraid that I have annoyed him,” answered the Linnet. “The fact is, that I told him a story with a moral.”

“Ah! that is always a very dangerous thing to do,” said the Duck.

And I quite agree with her.

THE REMARKABLE ROCKET

The King’s son was going to be married, so there were general rejoicings. He had waited a whole year for his bride, and at last she had arrived. She was a Russian Princess, and had driven all the way from Finland in a sledge drawn by six reindeer. The sledge was shaped like a great golden swan, and between the swan’s wings lay the little Princess herself. Her long ermine-cloak reached right down to her feet, on her head was a tiny cap of silver tissue, and she was as pale as the Snow Palace in which she had always lived. So pale was she that as she drove through the streets all the people wondered. “She is like a white rose!” they cried, and they threw down flowers on her from the balconies.

At the gate of the Castle the Prince was waiting to receive her. He had dreamy violet eyes, and his hair was like fine gold. When he saw her he sank upon one knee, and kissed her hand.

“Your picture was beautiful,” he murmured, “but you are more beautiful than your picture”; and the little Princess blushed.

“She was like a white rose before,” said a young Page to his neighbour, “but she is like a red rose now”; and the whole Court was delighted.

For the next three days everybody went about saying, “White rose, Red rose, Red rose, White rose”; and the King gave orders that the Page’s salary was to be doubled. As he received no salary at all this was not of much use to him, but it was considered a great honour, and was duly published in the Court Gazette.

When the three days were over the marriage was celebrated. It was a magnificent ceremony, and the bride and bridegroom walked hand in hand under a canopy of purple velvet embroidered with little pearls. Then there was a State Banquet, which lasted for five hours. The Prince and Princess sat at the top of the Great Hall and drank out of a cup of clear crystal. Only true lovers could drink out of this cup, for if false lips touched it, it grew grey and dull and cloudy.

“It’s quite clear that they love each other,” said the little Page, “as clear as crystal!” and the King doubled his salary a second time. “What an honour!” cried all the courtiers.

After the banquet there was to be a Ball. The bride and bridegroom were to dance the Rose-dance together, and the King had promised to play the flute. He played very badly, but no one had ever dared to tell him so, because he was the King. Indeed, he knew only two airs, and was never quite certain which one he was playing; but it made no matter, for, whatever he did, everybody cried out, “Charming! charming!”

The last item on the programme was a grand display of fireworks, to be let off exactly at midnight. The little Princess had never seen a firework in her life, so the King had given orders that the Royal Pyrotechnist should be in attendance on the day of her marriage.

“What are fireworks like?” she had asked the Prince, one morning, as she was walking on the terrace.

“They are like the Aurora Borealis,” said the King, who always answered questions that were addressed to other people, “only much more natural. I prefer them to stars myself, as you always know when they are going to appear, and they are as delightful as my own flute-playing. You must certainly see them.”

So at the end of the King’s garden a great stand had been set up, and as soon as the Royal Pyrotechnist had put everything in its proper place, the fireworks began to talk to each other.

“The world is certainly very beautiful,” cried a little Squib. “Just look at those yellow tulips. Why! if they were real crackers they could not be lovelier. I am very glad I have travelled. Travel improves the mind wonderfully, and does away with all one’s prejudices.”

“The King’s garden is not the world, you foolish squib,” said a big Roman Candle; “the world is an enormous place, and it would take you three days to see it thoroughly.”

“Any place you love is the world to you,” exclaimed a pensive Catherine Wheel, who had been attached to an old deal box in early life, and prided herself on her broken heart; “but love is not fashionable any more, the poets have killed it. They wrote so much about it that nobody believed them, and I am not surprised. True love suffers, and is silent. I remember myself once—But it is no matter now. Romance is a thing of the past.”

“Nonsense!” said the Roman Candle, “Romance never dies. It is like the moon, and lives for ever. The bride and bridegroom, for instance, love each other very dearly. I heard all about them this morning from a brown-paper cartridge, who happened to be staying in the same drawer as myself, and knew the latest Court news.”

But the Catherine Wheel shook her head. “Romance is dead, Romance is dead, Romance is dead,” she murmured. She was one of those people who think that, if you say the same thing over and over a great many times, it becomes true in the end.

Suddenly, a sharp, dry cough was heard, and they all looked round.

It came from a tall, supercilious-looking Rocket, who was tied to the end of a long stick. He always coughed before he made any observation, so as to attract attention.

“Ahem! ahem!” he said, and everybody listened except the poor Catherine Wheel, who was still shaking her head, and murmuring, “Romance is dead.”

“Order! order!” cried out a Cracker. He was something of a politician, and had always taken a prominent part in the local elections, so he knew the proper Parliamentary expressions to use.

“Quite dead,” whispered the Catherine Wheel, and she went off to sleep.

As soon as there was perfect silence, the Rocket coughed a third time and began. He spoke with a very slow, distinct voice, as if he was dictating his memoirs, and always looked over the shoulder of the person to whom he was talking. In fact, he had a most distinguished manner.

“How fortunate it is for the King’s son,” he remarked, “that he is to be married on the very day on which I am to be let off. Really, if it had been arranged beforehand, it could not have turned out better for him; but, Princes are always lucky.”

“Dear me!” said the little Squib, “I thought it was quite the other way, and that we were to be let off in the Prince’s honour.”

“It may be so with you,” he answered; “indeed, I have no doubt that it is, but with me it is different. I am a very remarkable Rocket, and come of remarkable parents. My mother was the most celebrated Catherine Wheel of her day, and was renowned for her graceful dancing. When she made her great public appearance she spun round nineteen times before she went out, and each time that she did so she threw into the air seven pink stars. She was three feet and a half in diameter, and made of the very best gunpowder. My father was a Rocket like myself, and of French extraction. He flew so high that the people were afraid that he would never come down again. He did, though, for he was of a kindly disposition, and he made a most brilliant descent in a shower of golden rain. The newspapers wrote about his performance in very flattering terms. Indeed, the Court Gazette called him a triumph of Pylotechnic art.”

“Pyrotechnic, Pyrotechnic, you mean,” said a Bengal Light; “I know it is Pyrotechnic, for I saw it written on my own canister.”

“Well, I said Pylotechnic,” answered the Rocket, in a severe tone of voice, and the Bengal Light felt so crushed that he began at once to bully the little squibs, in order to show that he was still a person of some importance.

“I was saying,” continued the Rocket, “I was saying—What was I saying?”

“You were talking about yourself,” replied the Roman Candle.

“Of course; I knew I was discussing some interesting subject when I was so rudely interrupted. I hate rudeness and bad manners of every kind, for I am extremely sensitive. No one in the whole world is so sensitive as I am, I am quite sure of that.”

“What is a sensitive person?” said the Cracker to the Roman Candle.

“A person who, because he has corns himself, always treads on other people’s toes,” answered the Roman Candle in a low whisper; and the Cracker nearly exploded with laughter.

“Pray, what are you laughing at?” inquired the Rocket; “I am not laughing.”

“I am laughing because I am happy,” replied the Cracker.

“That is a very selfish reason,” said the Rocket angrily. “What right have you to be happy? You should be thinking about others. In fact, you should be thinking about me. I am always thinking about myself, and I expect everybody else to do the same. That is what is called sympathy. It is a beautiful virtue, and I possess it in a high degree. Suppose, for instance, anything happened to me to-night, what a misfortune that would be for every one! The Prince and Princess would never be happy again, their whole married life would be spoiled; and as for the King, I know he would not get over it. Really, when I begin to reflect on the importance of my position, I am almost moved to tears.”

“If you want to give pleasure to others,” cried the Roman Candle, “you had better keep yourself dry.”

“Certainly,” exclaimed the Bengal Light, who was now in better spirits; “that is only common sense.”

“Common sense, indeed!” said the Rocket indignantly; “you forget that I am very uncommon, and very remarkable. Why, anybody can have common sense, provided that they have no imagination. But I have imagination, for I never think of things as they really are; I always think of them as being quite different. As for keeping myself dry, there is evidently no one here who can at all appreciate an emotional nature. Fortunately for myself, I don’t care. The only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everybody else, and this is a feeling that I have always cultivated. But none of you have any hearts. Here you are laughing and making merry just as if the Prince and Princess had not just been married.”

“Well, really,” exclaimed a small Fire-balloon, “why not? It is a most joyful occasion, and when I soar up into the air I intend to tell the stars all about it. You will see them twinkle when I talk to them about the pretty bride.”

“Ah! what a trivial view of life!” said the Rocket; “but it is only what I expected. There is nothing in you; you are hollow and empty. Why, perhaps the Prince and Princess may go to live in a country where there is a deep river, and perhaps they may have one only son, a little fair-haired boy with violet eyes like the Prince himself; and perhaps some day he may go out to walk with his nurse; and perhaps the nurse may go to sleep under a great elder-tree; and perhaps the little boy may fall into the deep river and be drowned. What a terrible misfortune! Poor people, to lose their only son! It is really too dreadful! I shall never get over it.”

“But they have not lost their only son,” said the Roman Candle; “no misfortune has happened to them at all.”

“I never said that they had,” replied the Rocket; “I said that they might. If they had lost their only son there would be no use in saying anything more about the matter. I hate people who cry over spilt milk. But when I think that they might lose their only son, I certainly am very much affected.”

“You certainly are!” cried the Bengal Light. “In fact, you are the most affected person I ever met.”

“You are the rudest person I ever met,” said the Rocket, “and you cannot understand my friendship for the Prince.”

“Why, you don’t even know him,” growled the Roman Candle.

“I never said I knew him,” answered the Rocket. “I dare say that if I knew him I should not be his friend at all. It is a very dangerous thing to know one’s friends.”

“You had really better keep yourself dry,” said the Fire-balloon. “That is the important thing.”

“Very important for you, I have no doubt,” answered the Rocket, “but I shall weep if I choose”; and he actually burst into real tears, which flowed down his stick like rain-drops, and nearly drowned two little beetles, who were just thinking of setting up house together, and were looking for a nice dry spot to live in.

“He must have a truly romantic nature,” said the Catherine Wheel, “for he weeps when there is nothing at all to weep about”; and she heaved a deep sigh, and thought about the deal box.

But the Roman Candle and the Bengal Light were quite indignant, and kept saying, “Humbug! humbug!” at the top of their voices. They were extremely practical, and whenever they objected to anything they called it humbug.

Then the moon rose like a wonderful silver shield; and the stars began to shine, and a sound of music came from the palace.

The Prince and Princess were leading the dance. They danced so beautifully that the tall white lilies peeped in at the window and watched them, and the great red poppies nodded their heads and beat time.

Then ten o’clock struck, and then eleven, and then twelve, and at the last stroke of midnight every one came out on the terrace, and the King sent for the Royal Pyrotechnist.

“Let the fireworks begin,” said the King; and the Royal Pyrotechnist made a low bow, and marched down to the end of the garden. He had six attendants with him, each of whom carried a lighted torch at the end of a long pole.

It was certainly a magnificent display.

Whizz! Whizz! went the Catherine Wheel, as she spun round and round. Boom! Boom! went the Roman Candle. Then the Squibs danced all over the place, and the Bengal Lights made everything look scarlet. “Good-bye,” cried the Fire-balloon, as he soared away, dropping tiny blue sparks. Bang! Bang! answered the Crackers, who were enjoying themselves immensely. Every one was a great success except the Remarkable Rocket. He was so damp with crying that he could not go off at all. The best thing in him was the gunpowder, and that was so wet with tears that it was of no use. All his poor relations, to whom he would never speak, except with a sneer, shot up into the sky like wonderful golden flowers with blossoms of fire. Huzza! Huzza! cried the Court; and the little Princess laughed with pleasure.

“I suppose they are reserving me for some grand occasion,” said the Rocket; “no doubt that is what it means,” and he looked more supercilious than ever.

The next day the workmen came to put everything tidy. “This is evidently a deputation,” said the Rocket; “I will receive them with becoming dignity” so he put his nose in the air, and began to frown severely as if he were thinking about some very important subject. But they took no notice of him at all till they were just going away. Then one of them caught sight of him. “Hallo!” he cried, “what a bad rocket!” and he threw him over the wall into the ditch.

“BAD Rocket? BAD Rocket?” he said, as he whirled through the air; “impossible! GRAND Rocket, that is what the man said. BAD and GRAND sound very much the same, indeed they often are the same”; and he fell into the mud.

“It is not comfortable here,” he remarked, “but no doubt it is some fashionable watering-place, and they have sent me away to recruit my health. My nerves are certainly very much shattered, and I require rest.”

Then a little Frog, with bright jewelled eyes, and a green mottled coat, swam up to him.

“A new arrival, I see!” said the Frog. “Well, after all there is nothing like mud. Give me rainy weather and a ditch, and I am quite happy. Do you think it will be a wet afternoon? I am sure I hope so, but the sky is quite blue and cloudless. What a pity!”

“Ahem! ahem!” said the Rocket, and he began to cough.

“What a delightful voice you have!” cried the Frog. “Really it is quite like a croak, and croaking is of course the most musical sound in the world. You will hear our glee-club this evening. We sit in the old duck pond close by the farmer’s house, and as soon as the moon rises we begin. It is so entrancing that everybody lies awake to listen to us. In fact, it was only yesterday that I heard the farmer’s wife say to her mother that she could not get a wink of sleep at night on account of us. It is most gratifying to find oneself so popular.”

“Ahem! ahem!” said the Rocket angrily. He was very much annoyed that he could not get a word in.

“A delightful voice, certainly,” continued the Frog; “I hope you will come over to the duck-pond. I am off to look for my daughters. I have six beautiful daughters, and I am so afraid the Pike may meet them. He is a perfect monster, and would have no hesitation in breakfasting off them. Well, good-bye: I have enjoyed our conversation very much, I assure you.”

“Conversation, indeed!” said the Rocket. “You have talked the whole time yourself. That is not conversation.”

“Somebody must listen,” answered the Frog, “and I like to do all the talking myself. It saves time, and prevents arguments.”

“But I like arguments,” said the Rocket.

“I hope not,” said the Frog complacently. “Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everybody in good society holds exactly the same opinions. Good-bye a second time; I see my daughters in the distance and the little Frog swam away.

“You are a very irritating person,” said the Rocket, “and very ill-bred. I hate people who talk about themselves, as you do, when one wants to talk about oneself, as I do. It is what I call selfishness, and selfishness is a most detestable thing, especially to any one of my temperament, for I am well known for my sympathetic nature. In fact, you should take example by me; you could not possibly have a better model. Now that you have the chance you had better avail yourself of it, for I am going back to Court almost immediately. I am a great favourite at Court; in fact, the Prince and Princess were married yesterday in my honour. Of course you know nothing of these matters, for you are a provincial.”

“There is no good talking to him,” said a Dragon-fly, who was sitting on the top of a large brown bulrush; “no good at all, for he has gone away.”

“Well, that is his loss, not mine,” answered the Rocket. “I am not going to stop talking to him merely because he pays no attention. I like hearing myself talk. It is one of my greatest pleasures. I often have long conversations all by myself, and I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.”

“Then you should certainly lecture on Philosophy,” said the Dragon-fly; and he spread a pair of lovely gauze wings and soared away into the sky.

“How very silly of him not to stay here!” said the Rocket. “I am sure that he has not often got such a chance of improving his mind. However, I don’t care a bit. Genius like mine is sure to be appreciated some day”; and he sank down a little deeper into the mud.

After some time a large White Duck swam up to him. She had yellow legs, and webbed feet, and was considered a great beauty on account of her waddle.

“Quack, quack, quack,” she said. “What a curious shape you are! May I ask were you born like that, or is it the result of an accident?”

“It is quite evident that you have always lived in the country,” answered the Rocket, “otherwise you would know who I am. However, I excuse your ignorance. It would be unfair to expect other people to be as remarkable as oneself. You will no doubt be surprised to hear that I can fly up into the sky, and come down in a shower of golden rain.”

“I don’t think much of that,” said the Duck, “as I cannot see what use it is to any one. Now, if you could plough the fields like the ox, or draw a cart like the horse, or look after the sheep like the collie-dog, that would be something.”

“My good creature,” cried the Rocket in a very haughty tone of voice, “I see that you belong to the lower orders. A person of my position is never useful. We have certain accomplishments, and that is more than sufficient. I have no sympathy myself with industry of any kind, least of all with such industries as you seem to recommend. Indeed, I have always been of opinion that hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing whatever to do.”

“Well, well,” said the Duck, who was of a very peaceable disposition, and never quarrelled with any one, “everybody has different tastes. I hope, at any rate, that you are going to take up your residence here.”

“Oh! dear no,” cried the Rocket. “I am merely a visitor, a distinguished visitor. The fact is that I find this place rather tedious. There is neither society here, nor solitude. In fact, it is essentially suburban. I shall probably go back to Court, for I know that I am destined to make a sensation in the world.”

“I had thoughts of entering public life once myself,” remarked the Duck; “there are so many things that need reforming. Indeed, I took the chair at a meeting some time ago, and we passed resolutions condemning everything that we did not like. However, they did not seem to have much effect. Now I go in for domesticity, and look after my family.”

“I am made for public life,” said the Rocket, “and so are all my relations, even the humblest of them. Whenever we appear we excite great attention. I have not actually appeared myself, but when I do so it will be a magnificent sight. As for domesticity, it ages one rapidly, and distracts one’s mind from higher things.”

“Ah! the higher things of life, how fine they are!” said the Duck; “and that reminds me how hungry I feel”: and she swam away down the stream, saying, “Quack, quack, quack.”

“Come back! come back!” screamed the Rocket, “I have a great deal to say to you”; but the Duck paid no attention to him. “I am glad that she has gone,” he said to himself, “she has a decidedly middle-class mind”; and he sank a little deeper still into the mud, and began to think about the loneliness of genius, when suddenly two little boys in white smocks came running down the bank, with a kettle and some faggots.

“This must be the deputation,” said the Rocket, and he tried to look very dignified.

“Hallo!” cried one of the boys, “look at this old stick! I wonder how it came here”; and he picked the rocket out of the ditch.

“OLD Stick!” said the Rocket, “impossible! GOLD Stick, that is what he said. Gold Stick is very complimentary. In fact, he mistakes me for one of the Court dignitaries!”

“Let us put it into the fire!” said the other boy, “it will help to boil the kettle.”

So they piled the faggots together, and put the Rocket on top, and lit the fire.

“This is magnificent,” cried the Rocket, “they are going to let me off in broad day-light, so that every one can see me.”

“We will go to sleep now,” they said, “and when we wake up the kettle will be boiled”; and they lay down on the grass, and shut their eyes.

The Rocket was very damp, so he took a long time to burn. At last, however, the fire caught him.

“Now I am going off!” he cried, and he made himself very stiff and straight. “I know I shall go much higher than the stars, much higher than the moon, much higher than the sun. In fact, I shall go so high that—”

Fizz! Fizz! Fizz! and he went straight up into the air.

“Delightful!” he cried, “I shall go on like this for ever. What a success I am!”

But nobody saw him.

Then he began to feel a curious tingling sensation all over him.

“Now I am going to explode,” he cried. “I shall set the whole world on fire, and make such a noise that nobody will talk about anything else for a whole year.” And he certainly did explode. Bang! Bang! Bang! went the gunpowder. There was no doubt about it.

But nobody heard him, not even the two little boys, for they were sound asleep.

Then all that was left of him was the stick, and this fell down on the back of a Goose who was taking a walk by the side of the ditch.

“Good heavens!” cried the Goose. “It is going to rain sticks”; and she rushed into the water.

“I knew I should create a great sensation,” gasped the Rocket, and he went out.

AY2005/2006 Special Term

2006-03-03T18:50:00.000+08:00

Module Timetable for the Special Term is out. The list looks interesting but it's not a long list, which is typical of Special Term modules.

白色戀歌

2006-02-27T19:03:00.000+08:00

This old S.H.E MTV from their Together compilation album released on 23 Jan 2003 is one of my favourite past S.H.E MTV. One of the reasons is I like sad songs the most. The background in the MTV is sad too, I like to watch scenes with snow and white background, and clothings, etc. The snow effect captures my attention because it gives me a feeling of beauty juxtoposed with sadness at the same time - a combination that is sad and sweet at the same time, this combi is a potent mixture for me that is like a beautiful memory to me.

白色戀歌
bai se lian ge
The white song of love

曲：Daniel Troha/Cal Abate | 詞：李安修 | 編：

雪白的腳印是你昨夜離去的痕跡
xue bai de jiao yin, shi ni zuo ye li qu de hen ji
The snowy-white footprints, are the traces you left behind yesterday

一整夜化不去它清清楚深深的烙印
yi zheng ye hua bu qu, ta qing qing chu shen shen de lao yin
The night didn't melt the footprints, it's still imprinted there clearly

喔~~ 是你那道長長的足跡
wo, shi ni, na dao chang chang de zhu yin
It's you, who left these long traces

說明這整個冬天的甜蜜
shuo ming, zhe zheng ge dong tian de tian mi
This explains the sweetness throughout winter

喔你雪白的你雪白毛衣雪白背影
wo, ni, xue bai de ni, xue bai mao yi, yue bai bei jing
The "snow white" you, "snow white" winter clothes, the "snow white" shadow

想你雪白眼睛雪白呼吸雪白腳印和你
xiang ni, xue bai yan jing, xue bai hu xi, xue bai jiao yin he ni
Thinking of you, your snow white eyes, your snow white breathing, your snow white footprints and you

雪白的心每一次相聚不可思議點滴在心底
xue bai de xin, mei yi ci xiang ju, bu ke si yi dian di zai xin di
And your snow white heart. Whenever we meet, you're unpredictable

像雪白的森林總是驚喜我的心
xiang xue bai de sen lin, zong shi jing xi, wo de xin
Like the snow white jungle, it's never fails to surprise my heart

oh yes you did

思念在你離開那一刻起
si nian, zai ni li kai na yi ke qi
I started missing you once you left

也許這就是宿命的魔力
ye xu, zhe jiu shi su ming de mo li
Maybe, this is the power of fate

喔你雪白的你雪白毛衣雪白背影
wo ni, xue bai de ni, xue bai mao yi, xue bai bei jing
The snow white you, the snow white winter clothes, the snow white shadow

想你雪白眼睛雪白呼吸雪白腳印和你
xiang ni, xue bai yan jing, xue bai hu xi, xue bai jiao yin he ni
Thinking of you, your snow white eyes, snow white breath, snow white footprints and you

雪白的心
xue bai de xin
And your snow white heart

為何時間總是那麼急為何見面卻又要分離
wei he shi jian zong shi na me ji, wei he jian mian que you yao fen li
Why is it that time waits for no one, why is it that we have to leave after just meeting

難道不能一直守候在一起
nan dao bu neng yi zhi shou hou zai yi qi
Don't tell me that we can't be together always?

一起快樂一起歡笑一起到天明
yi qi kuai le yi qi wei huan xiao yi qi dao tian ming
Being happy and laughing until dawn

誰來告訴我為什麼是你
shui lai gao shu wo, wei shen me, shi ni
Who is there to tell me, why is it you

我管不了顧不了躲不掉在我的
wo guan bu liao, gu bu liao, duo bu liao, zai wo de
I don't care anymore, I can't hide from this forever, in my

腦裡心裡夢裡全都是你想你~~
nao li xin li meng li, quan dou shi ni, xiang ni
Brain and heart, everything is filled with you. Missing you

雪白的你雪白的心雪白的你雪白的心
xue bai de ni, xue bai de xin, xue bai de ni, xue bai de xin
The snow white you, the snow white heart, the snow white you, the snow white heart

雪白的你雪白的心雪白的你還有雪白的心
xue bai de ni, xue bai de xin, xue bai de ni, hai you xue bai de xin
The snow white you, the snow white heart, the snow white you, and the snow white heart

Lyrics and Translations from S.H.E Angelic Forum.

S.H.E singing acappella

Hear the unity of their voices.

Survey For Game Addiction

2006-02-25T15:12:00.000+08:00

This is a survey for my school project on game addiction. If anyone can help me complete the survey and pass it around, thanks so much!! Any comments please post back to me.

Click Here to take the survey

What your name means.....?

2006-02-24T15:24:00.000+08:00

Either believe this or regard it as rubbish.

Does your name begin with: A

U are not particularly romantic, but you are interested in action.You mean business. With you, what you see is what you get.You have no patience for flirting and can't be bothered with someone who is trying to be coy, cute, demure, and subtly enticing. You are an up-front person. You often don't get hints & you ever pass any. Brains turn you on. You must feel that your partner is! intellectually stimulating, otherwise you will find it difficult to sustain the relationship. You require loving, cuddling, wining, and dining to know that you're being appreciated. Your mate's physical attractiveness is important for you. You tend to be very Practical, & not very emotional Your choices are very good & can only lead to trouble. You are very self satisfied & egoistic.

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Does your name begin with: B

You give off vibes of lazy sensuality. You enjoy being romanced, wined, and dined. You are very happy to receive gifts as an expression of the affection of your lover. You want to be pampered and know how to pamper your mate. You are private in your expression of endearments, and particular when it comes to love. You will hold off until everything meets with your approval. You can control your appetite & feelings. You require new sensations and experiences. You are willing to experiment.

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Does your name begin with: C

You are a very social individual, and it is important to you to have a relationship. You require closeness and togetherness. You want the object of your affection to be socially acceptable and good-looking. You see your lover as a friend and companion. You are very sensual, Needing someone to appreciate and almost worship you. When this cannot be achieved, you have the ability to hold out on affection until you receive this.. You are an expert at controlling your desires and doing without.

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Does your name begin with: D

Once you get it into your head that you want someone, you move full Steam ahead in your suit. You do not give up your quest easily. You are nurturing and caring. If someone has a problem, this turns you on. You are highly passionate, loyal, and intense in your involvement's, sometimes possessive and jealous. You are very sharp & talented often with sense of humour. When people bother to look deep inside they cannot resist what they see. You are stimulated by the eccentric and unusual, having a free and open attitude. You get jealous of other people and lose your temper .

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Does your name begin with: E

Your greatest need is to talk. If your date is not a good listener, you have trouble relating. A person must be intellectually stimulating or you are not interested sexually. You need a friend for a lover and a companion You hate disharmony and disruption, but you do enjoy a good argument once in a while-it seems to stir things up. You flirt a lot, for the challenge is more important. But once you give your heart away, you are uncompromisingly loyal. You will fall asleep with a good book. sometimes, in fact, you prefer a good book to a lover)

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Does your name begin with: F

You are idealistic and romantic, putting your lover on a pedestal. You look for the very best mate you can find. You are a flirt, yet once committed, you are very loyal. You are sensuous and privately passionate. Publicly, you can be showy, extravagant, and gallant. You are a born romantic. Dramatic love scenes are a favourite fantasy past time. You can be a very generous lover.

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Does your name begin with: G

You are fastidious, seeking perfection within yourself and your lover. You respond to a lover who is yourintellectual equal or superior, and one who can enhance your status. You are sensuous and know how to reach the peak of stimulation, because you work at it meticulously. You can be extremely active-never tiring out. Your duties and responsibilities take precedence over everything else. You may have difficulty getting emotionally close to people.

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Does your name begin with: H

You seek a mate who can enhance your zest for life ,fun & everything You seek for. You will be very generous to your lover once you have Attained a commitment. You are very affectionate & very strong. Your gifts are actually an investment in your partner. Before the commitment, though, you tend to be very careful with your every move and equally cautious in your involvement's often as you believe that you have to look out for yourself. You are a sensual and patient lover. You will hold off till everything meets your full approval. You are a perfectionist, hard to satisfy and strong in your beliefs. Not influential, you always stand your ground. People can always count on you to stand by them in a crisis. You are a dreamer with/ a passion for life.

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Does your name begin with: I

You have a great need to be loved, appreciated... even worshiped. You enjoy luxury, sensuality, and pleasures of the flesh. You like necking spend hours just touching feeling & exploring. You look for lovers who know what they are doing. You are not interested in an amateur, unless that amateur wants a tutor. You are fussy and exacting about having your desires satisfied. You are willing to experiment and try new modes of expression. You bore easily and thus require adventure and change. Your commitments don't last very long & you often tend to stray. Loyalty is not one of your strong points. You are more sensual than sexual, but you are sometimes downright lustful.
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Does your name begin with: J

You are blessed with a great deal of physical energy. When used for a good cause there is nothing to stop you, except maybe that they aren't always used for the good. (you could dance all night.) You respond to the thrill of the chase and the challenge of the mating game.You can carry on great romances in your head. At heart you are a roamer and need to set out on your own every so often. You will carry on long- distance relationships with ease. You are idealistic and need to believe in love. You have a need to be nurtured deep within.

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Does your name begin with: K

You are secretive, self-contained, and shy. You are very sexy, sensual, and passionate, but you do not let on to this. Only in intimate privacy will this part of your nature reveal itself. When it gets down to the nitty-gritty, you are an expert. You know all the little tricks of the trade, can play any role or any game, and take your love life very seriously. You don't fool around. You have the patience to wait for the right person to come along. You are very generous & giving, often selfless. You are kind-natured & sweet, which is found to be attractive by many. You are a good friend.

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Does your name begin with: L

You can be very romantic, attached to the glamour of love. Having a partner is of paramount importance to you. You are free in your expression of love and are willing to take chances, try new sexual experiences and partners, provided it's all in good taste. Brains turn you on. You must feel that your partner is intellectually stimulating, otherwise you will find it difficult to sustain the relationship. You require loving, cuddling, wining, and dining to know that you're being appreciated. "You require loving, cuddling, wining, and dining to know that you're being appreciated ".

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Does your name begin with: M

You may appear innocent, unassuming and shy; but we know that Appearances can lie. When it comes to sex, you are no novice but something of a skilled technician. You can easily go to extremes, though, running the gamut from insatiability to boredom with the whole idea of love. You can be highly critical of your mate, seeking perfection in both of you. It is not easy to find someone who can meet your standards. You have difficulty expressing emotions and drawing close to lovers. You are often selfish, thinking you are always right no matter what. You never give in. Winning is your prime desire- at any cost. You often forget friends and family and you live for the moment.

--- most of it is correct..its not that i want perfection.. i juz want everything to be as good as one can get.. and im not highly critical of my mate.. i mean why wud i settle for less if i can get what i want right? hihi.. oh hey i dont think im always right.. im juz assertive.. i fight for what i believe it.. i do give it.. sheesh.. as if i dont have a heart??.. and who doesnt want winning?? everybody does.. and yes.. i do live for the moment.. im rarely into planning.. but if ever that i am.. its probly sumthin really so very important.. like the future.. with ahm.. you..

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Does your name begin with: N

You are emotional and intense. When involved in a relationship, you Throw your entire being into it. Nothing stops you; there are no holds barred. You are all-consuming and crave someone who is equally passionate and intense. You believe in total freedom. You are willing to try anything and everything. Your supply of energy is inexhaustible. You want to be pampered and know how to pamper your mate. You also enjoy mothering your mate. You often have the greatest love affairs all by yourself, in your head. You are very imaginative.

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Does your name begin with: O

You are very interested in fun activities yet secretive and shy about your desires. You can re-channel much of your energy into making money and/or seeking we. You can easily have extended periods of celibacy. You are a passionate, compassionate lover, requiring the same qualities From your mate. Love is serious business; thus you demand intensity, diversity and is willing to try anything or anyone. Sometimes your passions turn to possessiveness, which must be kept in check.

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Does your name begin with: P

You are very conscious of social proprieties. You wouldn't think of Doing anything that might harm your image or Reputation. Appearances count. Therefore, you require a good-looking partner. You also require an intelligent partner. Oddly enough, you may view your partner as your enemy...a good fight stimulates those vibes. You are relatively free of hang- ups.You are willing to experiment and try new ways of doing things.You are very social and sensual; you enjoy flirting and need a good deal of physical gratification.

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Does your name begin with: Q

You require constant activity and stimulation. You have tremendous physical energy. It is not easy for a partner to keep up with you. You are an enthusiastic lover and tend to be attracted to people because of their ethnic groups. You need romance, hearts and flowers, and conversation to turn you on and keep you going.

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Does your name begin with: R

You are a no-nonsense, action-oriented individual. You need someone who can keep pace with you and who is your intellectual equal-the smarter the better. You are turned on more quickly by a great mind than by a great body. However, physical attractiveness is not very important to you. You have to be proved to be worthy for a partner. You have a need to prove yourself the best. You want feedback on your performance. You are open, stimulating & romantic.

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Does your name begin with: S

For you, it is pleasure before business. You can be romantically idealistic to a fault and is capable of much sensuality. But you never loose control of your emotions. Once you make the commitment you stick like glue. You could get jealous and possessive. You tend to be very selfish often regarding yourself as the only human being on the planet.. You like being the centre of attention. You are very caring sensitive, private & sometimes very passive. Turned on by soft lights, romantic thoughts. When it gets down to the nitty-gritty, you are an expert. You know all the little tricks of the trade, can play any role, or any game, and take your love life very seriously. You don't fool around. You have the patience to wait for the rightperson to come along. You are very generous & giving, often selfless. You are kind nature & sweet which is found to be attractive by many. You are a good friend.

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Does your name begin with: T

You are very sensitive, private & sometimes very passive. You like someone who takes the lead. You get turned on by music, soft lights & romantic thoughts. You fantasize & tend to fall in & out of love soon. When in love you are romantic, idealistic, mushy & extremely. You enjoy having your senses & your feelings stimulated, titillated & teased. You are a great flirt. You can make your relationships fit your dreams, all in your own head. Once you put your mind to something you manage to stand by it and see your dreams through. You aren't very good at expressing your feelings. You like things your own way. You do not like change, you like to hold on to things. This may not always be good because if given an opportunity things may develop into great things. You work your way to the top. Attention must be given to what others say because even though you don't want to hear it their advice may turn out to save your life. !

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Does your name begin with: U

You are enthusiastic & at your happiest when in love. When not in love you're in love with love and always looking for someone to adore. You see romance as challenge. You are a roamer & needs adventure, excitement freedom. You enjoy giving gifts & looking good. You are willing to put others feelings above yours.

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Does your name begin with: V

You are individualistic & you need freedom, space & excitement. You wait till you know someone well before committing yourself. Knowing someone means psyching her/him out. You feel a need to get into his/her head to see what makes him tick. You are attracted to eccentric types. You believe that age is no barrier. You are good at responding to danger, fear & suspense.

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Does your name begin with: W

You are very proud, determined & refuses to take no for an answer when it come to love. Your ego is at stake all the time. You are romantic, idealistic, often in love with love itself, not seeing your partner for who she or he really is. You feel deeply about love & tends to throw all of your self into a relationship. Nothing is too good for your lover. You like playing love games.

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Does your name begin with: X

You need constant stimulation because you get bored quickly. You can handle more than 1 relationship at a time with ease. You can't shut off your mind. You can do 2 things at once. You are very talented.

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Does your name begin with: Y

You are sensual & very independent. If you can't have it your way, you will forget the whole thing. You want to control your relationships which doesn't work out too well. You respond to physical stimulation. However if you can make money you will give up the pleasures of the flesh for the moment. You have a need to prove yourself the best. You want feedback on your performance. You are open, stimulating & romantic.

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Does your name begin with: Z

You are very romantic but show feels that to love means to suffer. You wind up serving your mate & attracting people who have unusual trouble. You see yourself as a lover's saviour.

Contributed By Dexter

Shinobi: Blade Under Heart

2006-02-22T16:59:00.000+08:00

According to the review at imdb, Shinobi: Blade Under Heart is more of a romance movie than an action movie. Look at the poster and the ballad sung by Ayumi Hamasaki for the theme of this movie and you will notice the romance genre manifest.

Sypnosis:

Shinobi: Heart Under Blade is a 2005, Japanese, ninjitsu, romance movie. The story is an adaptation of the novel, Kouga Ninpou Cho by Yamada Futaro, which depicts the clash between two ninja clans, Iga and Kouga, and the fated love between Kouga Gennosuke (Kouga) and Oboro (Iga). The theme song of this movie was the #1 hit, HEAVEN, performed by superstar Ayumi Hamasaki.

Shinobi trailer

Ayumi Hamasaki- HEAVEN

I will post a review after I have watched the DVD. But I have not started on my essays yet!!! Which is due on Fri.

2 interesting phrases I read in the Straits Times today.

1. Sexercise
2. Epidural

Sexercises are exercises done during foreplay and/or sex to tone, build, and strengthen muscles. Sexercises are often performed as part of a Sex Diet. While normally this is a partner-assisted exercise, masturbation might also be considered a form of sexercise, if done athletically with a mind for health and fitness.
Sexercises range from Kegel exercise to aerobic and cardiovascular routines. It is important that sexercises are done properly so that no partner experiences injury. Flexibility for performing contortion specifically for erotic or sexual positions may also be practised. Most often is the spreading of the legs during missionary, and arching of the back for doggy style. Intense forward bending may be practised in pursuit of the already-demonstrated autofellatio and the sought and cartooned and imagined, autocunnilingus.
Sexercises may be fun and have its advantages of relieving stress, however it may also be very overwhelming and exhausting. Here are some tips to help with the issue of fatigue:
1) Taking a break while in the act may just be what both partners need in order to make the session long lasting.
2) Incorporating food into the act will supply extra energy (calories) for all participants.

Calories burned
Partners engaged in moderate sexual activities may burn between 0.5 to 1.0 calorie a minute. During vigorous sexual activities, couples may burn about 1.2 to 2.0 calories per minute.

Sexercise dance
A fusion of erotic dance and aerobics designed by Leda Lim of Newport Beach, California. The dance exercise was designed for women to promote self-expression, grace, sexiness, sensuality, confidence, and eroticism. Derived from exotic dance, the stylized, soft, fluid-like appearance is achieved in a series of progressive moves through training of muscle control using many parts of the body. The body's curves are emphasized by the dance positions, leading the dancer to awareness and appreciation of the uniqueness and beauty of their body. See also: belly dance.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexercises"

I was at Ang Mo Kio Hospital today for an appointment and the doctor was gossiping with the staff nurse about epidural use in childbirth.

The epidural space is a part of the human spine inside the spinal canal separated from the spinal cord and its surrounding cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) by a membrane called the dura mater or simply dura. Using an epidural catheter, both anesthesia (loss of feeling) and analgesia (loss of pain) can be administered. The space is also of clinical interest since its cranial part contains vessels (e.g. the middle meningeal artery) susceptible to lesions after head traumas, causing a lethal (if not treated immediately) epidural hematoma.

Epidural is most commonly used as anesthesia in childbirth to relieve sensation and to reduce pain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidural

Depression

2006-02-20T06:42:00.000+08:00

I dunno why I'm getting this depressing feeling this few days since the term break start. Is it due to my injury factor that has finally come over to dominate me after all these years? I need a help to get this feeling away as it is disrupting my motivation to do the assignments and school work scheduled to be due after the term break ends. Whatever the case, this is quite bad - I'm feeling like a zombie too.