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Showing posts from August, 2003

Halberstam on Red Sox conversion

David Halberstam (whose The Best and the Brightest I'm now reading) has a nice piece on the Red Sox Nation in the Boston Globe today. I think back on how I became a Red Sox convert - a citizen not by birth (having been born half a world away, and in a country without any baseball) but by naturalisation. I suppose "convert" isn't the right word, given that not knowing any baseball in Singapore I was unlikely to start following any team (having said that, I do remember seeing the Skydome when I was in Toronto in 1993... but that hardly counts). I became a Sox convert through osmosis: I think it was the constant feed of Sox news from boston.com (then my home page) and from TV, as I whiled away my Sunday afternoons in college doing work and watching the Sox on Fox 25. And then came the 1999 ALDS - my roommate had taken the term off, I had the room all to myself, and so to add some semblance of noise I left the TV on constantly - and then I saw Game 5, Pedro coming on i...

What would you do if I sang out of tune?

So why is it Friendster arranges profiles on pages so that early adopters get shafted by getting put near the back? Is there no justice? He said in a melodramatic tone of voice. And I recognise it's super-geeky to be sneakily proud of having a low Friendster and ICQ number, but yeah. Interestingly, it's quite clear that the pattern of Friendster adoption leans northeast/New York initially - so if you look at my profile (search for Daryl Sng) you'll notice that the newer users tend to be my Singaporean friends, and the older ones my American friends... Oh, I get by with a little help...

Had we but world enough, and time

It's August and the Sox, as always, are good enough to break my heart... I can't believe we're almost 3/4 of the way through 2003, but then it does seem like my army stint was a world ago... Just watched Secretary . Maggie Gyllenhaal is great stuff and the movie's hot - and she really does look like her brother. But the whole last 15 minutes really loses the snap of the rest of the movie, the pace slackens so much that it becomes just gratuitous. Then over the weekend I watched Sex, Lies, and Videotape - interesting to compare with Secretary , since James Spader is still master of that vacant, tabula rasa look of the voyeur. Would make a good double-bill, methinks.

Ipso facto, using up your oxygen, you know I'm shallow

Happy National Day to all fellow Singaporeans reading this... spent the earlier part of today listening to the directors' commentary for About a Boy - man, the Weitz brothers are really cinematically literate! I do like their oeuvre: American Pie is one of the only so-called gross-out comedies that holds up with repeated viewings, probably because it actually features powerful women, and I found Down to Earth a good remake of Heaven Can Wait . But anyway, the commentary is interesting, because it's a good reminder that directors constantly think of numerous things in crafting their movie even if the ordinary moviegoer can't be expected to get them: the Weitzes talked about imitating Scorsese's shots from Casino , and the switching of lenses, and all sorts of interesting technicalities. Question: why is it I can think of lots of pairs of brothers as directors (the Weitzes, the Farellys, the Coens), but not any pairs of sisters? Is it just because there aren't enou...

Breathe in for luck

Apologies to readers of this blog for the tardy updating. [Tardy: Tardis: Doctor Who: I wish I had a time machine.] I plead the usual excuses: work, work, and work. Or, to be more specific, I've dedicated the first three months at work (June, July, August) to adjusting to being part of the workforce, which has consequently meant a reduction in time spent on expositing my thoughts to the world. It is nice having some spending power though, after 2.5 years of receiving a pittance - bought a Canon Powershot S45 digital camera, for my first foray into digital photography. Still, at least in sunlight, I think my Lomo takes much more interesting shots. I don't even have time to surf for random things like I used to, although Friendster is a lovely procrastination tool (the fake Friendster profiles are the funniest: try searching for FirstName: hotasians Last Name: hotasians and then click through all of her friends). And of course, there's been love. Ah. Those who know me enough ...