dsng.net - the daryl sng blog

Animal Tricks

Two sets of videos of unusual animal tricks.

Rabbit showjumping

and Goldfish football / hoops jumping

Logorrhea

Just watched Akeelah and the Bee, which was really inspirational, and as tense in its finale as the best sports movies - having seen Spellbound, I was prepared to be on the edge of my seat, and I'm glad it lived up to my expectations. Anyway, this story about a mobster using $10 words in letters to his kid (offspring? scion?) reminded me of the film:

Some of his letters from federal prison, which are being intercepted and scrutinized by authorities, are full of such words as "thespian," "flippant" and "sagacious," his lawyer said Thursday.

A new form of gangland slang, or a coded message to fellow wise guys? No, attorney Ephraim Savitt said, just vocabulary Basciano wants the recipient -- his 7-year-old son -- to learn.

Longest Drive in Singapore

My friends in college used to be amused when I would say that a fellow Singaporean lived "across the country", meaning only about 30 km or so away. I guess that's what happens when you grow up in a tiny country. Anyway, this guy has compiled the longest possible drives according to Google Maps, and I tried to do the same for Singapore - thus far, my best is 60.4 km (Tuas South Ave 9 to Nicoll Drive). That's pretty piddly compared to the almost 12,000km routes recorded from America to Canada. Even Hong Kong has a 77.3km route. (Via kottke.org)

50 Best Restaurants

World's 50 best restaurants, as rated by Restaurant magazine, with, quelle surprise, has El Bulli ranked first. There's also a #51-100, which includes Iggy's here in Singapore. No Japanese restaurants, though, as the Economist notes, which seems odd.

Labels: food

Insomnia, the cost of food

A very interesting article in the Guardian puts forward the suggestion that the modern problem is not about not getting enough sleep, but about anxiety about getting enough sleep. It does seem a lot of contemporary issues centre around anxiety about getting things correct: getting enough vitamins and other nutritional aspects of one's diet, for one.

Meanwhile, Newsweek explores food inflation and its sources: rising worldwide demand, droughts, rising energy costs, and speculation. Odd not to mention the diversion of cropland for biofuels, the impact of which people have varying opinions.

Books by friends

At a 30th birthday party last night, I was reflecting how many of my friends from college had had books published in recent month, and wondering what I'd done with my life. Oh well, "30 is the new 20", as someone chirpily said.

But ennui over the passage of time and remembrance of things past aside, I should give props to those friends who had books published:

V.V. Ganeshananthan (V.V.? I will always know her as Sugi) - Love Marriage
Garrett Graff - The First Campaign: Globalization, the Web and the Race for the White House (with a glowing review from no less than Michiko Kakutani)
Jennifer 8. Lee - The Fortune Cookie Chronicles

Fiction, politics, and food-as-cultural-anthropology - a nice diverse group. Met up with Sugi recently and showed her the wonders of Singapore hawker food. Congrats to all of them - lots of good reviews popping up.

Back from the Philippines

Back from Manila, where I caught the opening of the Little League Philippine Series with fellow Sox fanatic George. Great to see all the kids having fun playing baseball. Also met a Bill Bennett - hope I got the name right - who was an instructor for MLB, and proceeded to talk about Wally Moon and baseball at the L.A. Coliseum. Man, hadn't realised how starved I was for baseball talk.

Anyway, the article by John Tierney on M. Keith Chen's challenges to cognitive dissonance research - saying in effect that a lot of the research's conclusions could suffer from the Monty Hall Problem - is a fascinating use of probability theory in an unexpected context. (Link to Chen's original paper.) The Monty Hall Problem is such a counter-intuitive one.

The Thrilla in Manila

Am in Manila for the next few days for work, and the moment I checked in I went out foraging for Jollibee fried chicken. And boy it was even better than I remembered. The mall had Jollibee and Krispy Kremes... my arteries aren't gonna like it, but my taste buds are ecstatic.

Two years on the throne

This can't be real, can it? A woman sat on the loo for 2 years.

Ness County Sheriff Bryan Whipple said it appeared the 35-year-old Ness City woman's skin had grown around the seat. She initially refused emergency medical services but was finally convinced by responders and her boyfriend that she needed to be checked out at a hospital.

Grown around the seat? Is that even medically possible? And it took her boyfriend 2 years before he said, "hmm, this needs to change"?

Sam Roi Yot National Park

So I suppose I should detail what we saw in Hua Hin and the surroundings, having thoroughly explored the area in a beat-up rented Vios (and later a Corolla Altis with even more miles on the engine). Since the beach gets all the attention, let's start with the park...

Khao Sam Roi Yot National Park started as a marine park, and some of the sights are best seen from the water. After some haggling using my rudimentary Thai, we caught a couple of boats, one around the islands before landing ashore near the Phraya Nakhon cave, and another down the Kaeo Daeng river.

If this park were in America, every peak would be named; every species of animal lovingly documented. Instead, it's a sleepy national park in Thailand, featuring some tremendous caves - Phraya Nakhon, which was discovered by a Thai king and features an entire throne inside the cave, is spectacular, once you brave the 430m climb to get in. (Our guide, a young woman, naturally hopped up the heights in surefooted mountain-goat-like fashion; we followed panting and pausing to catch our breath.)

Sam Roi Yot also has mangroves and wetlands, with an impressive array of bird life (well, impressive if I were more ornithologically inclined and actually knew the names of the species), but what is really special is simply the view: mountain peaks, either covered in a carpet of lush rainforest or beautifully wizened and craggy, rise up next to the rivers and sea. Sure, the peaks are nowhere near the heights of those in other countries' parks, but they are picturesque, and their tropical setting (you see bougainvillea grow on the mountains; you also see coconut trees at the base) makes them a unique sight.

Back from Thailand

After a nice loooong break in Thailand (including such demanding tasks as sitting in a pool and surfing the Net at the same time), it's back to Singapore, whereupon I launched straight into the human crowd surfing that was the IT Show and emerged with RAM, flash drives, and other geeky accoutrements...

Street Fighter: the Later Years amused me on my iPod while I was on holiday, and brought back all those hours spent in the arcade. Ah, wasted youth.
Meanwhile, the NY Times reviews May Pang's Instamatic Karma, a photographic record of the years Lennon spent with his non-Ono Asian love. (I just wrote that sentence to have a means of using the phrase "non-Ono". Which, punctuation aside, is spelt exactly the same way as "No, No, No", the great Dawn Penn reggae hit. Is there a word for two words/phrases that are spelt the same way but distinguished by punctuation? Such as the way "resign" and "re-sign" are very different words.)