APS Maiden Voyage

A week of stress and distress could end fatally with me slumped in my armchair, remote in hand, and 'heart-healthy' chips in my mouth. But every now and then you hit a low that's low enough to catapult you into something a bit more positive.

This week I decided to try out APS. It could well be translated Acute Pain Service for its therapeutic value, but it's actually Ah Pak San: a hill that straddles Hulu Langat and Cheras on the east of Klang Valley. It was good to get off my flubbering butt, drive to the foot of the hill and with nothing but a waist pouch hit the slopes with fury.


It was good.

The trail is steep for short stretches with plateaus for catching your breath. The foliage is thick enough to render the city a distant memory. Cicadas croak and crickets chirp to provide jungle soundtrack. And the occasional stream and waft of morning breeze makes it very refreshing. Trekkers are friendly and the trek is surprisingly rubbish-free. None of the mineral water bottle or plastic bags so typical of Malaysian parks and trails.

I only made it to Station 6 for lack of time. But it was a good 1hr sweat with a few challenging slopes and a nice vestibular-rehabilitating tumble and trot down. When you reach the end of trail, there is a roar of water (courtesy of Indah Water) that makes me feel like I'm in Lata Tembakah or some deep-forest waterfall destination.


Definitely a must-go-again, and to the peak next time!

Birth of the Macha Pan

I love green tea products. Green tea ice-cream, green tea cake, green tea syrup with red beans. But I'm not crazy about green tea. Don't know why.

Anyway, I was thinking to myself this morning: why isn't there a green tea bread? I looked it up on allrecipes.com and there was none. So, to satisfy my desire to see GREEN TEA BREAD, I decided to create my own confection. (I looked it up again and found a green-tea with red-bean filling bun on MamaFami's Spice & Splendor which looks really nice as well.

Here's what I used:
400gms bread flour
280mls water
1 tsp salt
3 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp milk powder
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp vanilla essence
2 tsp green tea powder
1.5 tsp yeast
50gm pumpkin seeds (whole, not chopped)
1 tsp black sesame seeds

Putting it all in the breadmaker with a setting for a 1.5lb dark loaf, this is the result after 3h 45mins:
A very light and refreshing chewing experience. Despite the pervasive green-ness of the bread, the macha aroma is more of an uplifting aftertaste than an overpowering trip to Osaka.
The occasional surprise of a crunchy-nutty pumpkin seed, and the grittiness of sesame made the bites interesting. Overall a nice mix of flavors, I must say. I'm glad I didn't use butter. Olive oil gave the bread the twang I wanted and didn't drag it down with a bovine heaviness.

Ethan was the first to sample it and for the first time he said, 'NICE BREAD!' There is no greater gratification than to have your two-year old pronounce that on your experimental baking.

So there it is, Macha Pan, my very first confectionary creation!

An educational explosion

I've been lamenting the deficiencies of my childhood education. Every time I sit down to play on my synthesiser, pick up a pen to write, or read about religion and philosophy, I become dismally aware of how ill-equipped to appreciate and expressing my passions in these areas.

So I literally gasped when I found these on iTunes! iTunes U has collated a mind-boggling archive of lectures and talks from top universities around the world, offering up their content for FREE. How amazing is that?

Just look at a few pickings I subscribed to today:





Imagine being able to get a university level education without having to quit my job and go back to university. This is what makes the Internet the greatest invention of the 20th century for me. It'll also be interesting to see how so much accessibility will transform the education experience.

If no one needs to GO to a university or PAY for an education anymore, what do you actually enrol in an institution for, apart from the scroll and hat at the end? Educationists are going to need to rethink and evolve what the education experience is when lectures have become a mere commodity on the internet.

For me - I'm going back to school! Hang on.. I think I never left school...

Mac Day 1

It arrived in a lowly brown box, dumped on the gravel street, pebbles still stuck to the tape. DHL had no idea what magic they were carrying in their hands. It didn't take me long to pull it out of the box and less to place it on the table, plug in the power cable, keyboard and mouse. I looked a few times in the box - no installation CDs, no motherboard software, no driver CDs, not even a warranty card... Strange. Only two manuals - 'Everything Mac' and 'Everything Else'.

The first delicious thing about setting it up is that it is only ONE piece. No desktop, monitor and one hundred dangling cables and figuring out which goes where. No wifi card, bluetooth dongle, nothing. ONE single masterpiece.

The second thing is ripping off the clear plastic that wraps everything and unveiling the black reflective apple logos embedded on the silky white.

By the time finger hits ON button, my heart is already racing.

Moment of truth. Push. And the universe leaps off the monitor. Ok I'm exaggerating. It's some kind of nebula or something captured by Hubble and stars are dancing all over the place flashing WELCOME in 10 languages or more, I can't remember. I hit BACK a few times just to watch the video and feel this tingling sensation sweep over me.. Magic washing over. Ok ok..

Now comes the wildly impossible experience(s).

MASTER - IS IT YOU?
I'm asked to key in my email and password - the one I used to buy this product online! This machine had traveled across the globe (from HK apparently) to one master and one master ONLY. It didn't have to spend a month configuring it till it becomes specially mine. It was MINE before it even met me. It was made for me. It's one mission is to serve me. My address and phone number appears instantly and I'm asked if anything should be changed and if there are any other users.

MASTER - LET ME SEE YOU
Then I'm told to sit in front of the Mac while it takes a picture of me (with the built-in cam) to get a profile pic without me having to hunt it down from some ancient snapshot on a faraway vacation. Nay.. 1 day old Mac wants to get a good look at his master. Pic taken, identity confirmed, it unfolds itself...

LET ME GET YOU CONNECTED
I'm trembling here. What comes next? Will the exciting welcome end here and the head-banging, hair-pulling, bug-fixing, system-crashing nightmare begin? I'm a wounded victim of years of Windows-abuse you see.. please be gentle on me. Before I hit a key, a screen pops up. GASP! It says, WiFi signal detected. Choose your router. Key in the WEP. You're connected!! What the... Was that all? No Wifi configuration, no PPP dialup codes, no nothing?? No way...

The bluetooth icon is hovering temptingly above. I click it. Detect devices. Sony Ericsson P1i detected. Paired. Ok.. not bad. Hang on, what's that? 3G Modem detected - use it to connect to Internet? Hell YES!! Maxis, WAP, Unet, etc........ CONNECTED. Oh my Gooooddd.... The Mac figured out how to get online through my 3G phone without me even asking it to! What took weeks of configuring and failed connections with the PC, ploughing through Mobile Networking Wizard and m-Router configurations took the Mac a total of 1 minute. WITHOUT any guidance from ME. This is like driving a car without every having to open the bonnet while using a PC is like keeping a trunk full of tools, spare radiator tubings, jumper cables and a few extra spark plugs just in case.

LET US GET YOUR LIFE ORGANISED SHALL WE?
OK. Look here, Mr Cocky Mac. If there's one thing that will make you my best friend forever, is that you can SYNC with my Sony Ericsson P1i. All the forums I've read out there say SEP1i and you just don't get along. Not that you're hostile but the SEP1i is just plain Mac-dumb. Now can you do it?? Start iSync (used the Help to find it). Device detected. Device not compatible. Ok... How about a little help here? Sony Ericsson's website seems to have a plugin available. Download. Installed automatically. iSync again (without rebooting 10 times). Sudden flurry of activity. Synchronising.. it says.. Can this be true? I've been fooled by this endless 'synchronising' spinaround that gets zilch result. The first few times I did it with the PC it took me 2 days, a few meals, a few walks in the park. Don't give me that rotating two-arrow sign. I will not be deceived... What's that? DONE? Whaddya mean done. All 2530 contacts and 190 calendar events downloaded?? NO WAY. NO %^*&#^($#^( WAY. This is when I shudder. This is when a get golfballs in my throat. This is when I want to break into tears... IT IS FINISHED?? In 2 minutes??

I shake my head in disbelief. My jaw drops like my masseters were mush. I stare at all 20inches of messianic magic. Words fail me. There aren't adequate analogies or symbols for this kind of an experience. How can I describe it? It's like being given the keys to a Cadillac after 20 years of riding a beatup Proton that needed to be brought into the workshop every week, whose air conditioning fails in the hot sun, and power windows jam sequentially. It's like being told you never have to look into the engine, you can take off your grease-covered rags and wash off that rust - it's time you drove a real car now. You deserve it.

And this is just DAY 1. I'm just scratching the surface. I'm just playing with the tip of the iceberg. I'm ready to be wowed. I'm looking forward to a life time of pleasurable machine usage and not heart-wrenching disillusionment. Mr Mac. Don't let me down.

Things I would like to do in the coming weeks/months:
1. Get PARALLEL and run Windows apps on the Mac (better than a PC does I hear!)
2. Catalog all my digital photos (6 years worth, some 100gb of it)
3. Get my KORG 01/W hooked up by MIDI and play some serious music along with GarageBand
4. Edit my home and medical videos with speed and style
5. Organise my MP3s on iTunes
6. Discover everything else I didn't even know I could do, and do all the things I never knew I should be doing!

Ahhh... the dawn of a new era for me.

Tourist in my own city

We had a week's vacation recently but decided not to burden ourselves with the stress of travel and the budget-busting expenses of hotels. So we did the unthinkable, vacation in our own home - Kuala Lumpur. We've always wondered what tourists saw in KL and what the experience would be not getting stuck in 2hr jams getting to and back from work. Instead enjoying the malls and sites at a leisurely pace.

Here are some snapshots of our little tourney..

Rabbit Park

A frolic in the rabbit park, Bukit Tinggi.

Aquaria

A journey through the underwater word, Aquaria KLCC.

Eye on Malaysia

A vertiginous ride above the city.

Mines North Lake

And cruising on a the world's largest tin-mine-turned-tourist-attraction.

All in all, not bad. KL's still the place to be!

The Learning Attitude

In all areas of my vocation (medical research, teaching and patient care) and ministry (theological learning, teaching from the Bible and shepherding) I try to factor in a source of learning to uphold the giving.

That ensures that I am not only keeping a good input-output balance, but that I'm constantly growing and developing. A leader has to lead himself well, and a teacher must first be a learner. Undergoing the riguers of learning myself makes me empathise with my students and puts me in a unique position to walk with them as equals.

I was thumbing this book: 'Critical Thinking and Clinical Judgement' by Rosalinda Alfaro-LeFevre and found a list of 'Intellectual Traits' according to Paul & Elder (2001). Among them, these three struck me as truly essential:

Intellectual Humility

Intellectual Courage

Intellectual Integrity

Paul & Elder defines intellectual humility as 'consciousness of limits of your knowledge; willingness to admit what you don't know.'. Intellectual courage is 'awareness of the need to face and fairly address ideas, beliefs, or viewpoints to which you haven't given serious hearing.' Intellectual integrity is 'being true to your own thinking; applying intellectual standards to thinking; holding yourself to the same standards you hold others; willingness to admit when your thinking may be flawed.'

Put simply, admit your ignorance, be open to contrarian views, and practice what you preach! How often have I tried to fudge an answer or asked a student to 'go home and do your homework' when I wasn't sure myself? How often do I fail to perform a complete examination when I tell my students they're not allowed to take shortcuts! How often do I teach from a text in the Bible and interpret it according to my pet theologies without looking deeper into authorial intent, historical context, canonical and christological significance? Intellectual humility, courage and integrity are not signs of weakness, they are signs of a person who seeks truth above all else and most of all of himself.

Discovering the Word through Biblical Theology

My reading/listening of Goldsworthy (According to Plan), Peterson's lectures on Biblical Theology (Oakhill Seminary) and articles from the IVP New Dictionary of Biblical Theology has been very gratifying and rewarding. The amazing thing for me is to see intellectually substantiated what I've always believed about the Bible - it's unity (in the diversity of many authors in different times and situations), it's one overarching message (built up from many narratives) and it's final convergence on Christ.


I'm learning that you not only can see themes run through this salvation history, but it is the framework of salvation history that must determine how these themes are understood. I drew a lot of diagrams to help me conceptualise how BT changes the way I read the Bible. Maybe I'll show post them up here one day.

One is a series of lenses that converges rays of light to a single focal point, the lenses being historical-literary context, canonical context, and Christological context. Put simply, a passage in the Bible is not being properly interpreted without seeing it through the whole Bible and Christ as it's framework or context. The historical-literary context asks: What is the author trying to say to the audience then and there; in their need and situation? The second then asks: Where/how does this fit in, and what does it contribute to the salvation-history story of the WHOLE Bible? The third then asks: How do I see Christ in this passage, and this passage in Christ?

Another is a set of concentric circles; the smallest being historical-literary, followed by canonical, then Christological, then God-church, then the world. Seeing it in enlarging circles helps me develop it's applicability. The smallest message unit is to the original audience, then, as part of the witness of the whole Bible, then as signboard pointing to Christ, then as God speaking to his church today, and finally, as the church being a witness to the world.

When I do my daily reading of the Bible now, I try to sit back at the end, close my eyes, and rethink the passage in these contexts... it's simply an amazing exercise for me to see the levels of significance just grow in depth and breadth to encompass all time and all of life.

Peterson in the first couple of lectures also taught me some remarkable things I never realised: that the apostle Peter was doing BT in his sermon in Acts ch 2, and he learnt it from Jesus in the post-resurrection period when Christ explained to them how the Law, Prophets and Psalms were fufilled in him! Also that the genealogy in Matthew is a sketch of salvation history milestones/landmarks - Adam, Abraham, David, and Christ - for epochal eras of salvation history!

Where have I been all these years?

Well, my excitement must give way to disciplined reading and reflection day by day. And seeing myself in the sweep of salvation history certainly adds a very important to perspective to how am I called to live. There is a sense of where we've come from and where we're headed, and the trajectory of life is being set right.

The FIT Geek

Ever felt you waste too much time on your PC? Knowing you could be doing something else more useful but can't think of what because you're too busy clicking and your mind is numbed by mindless surfing? Is your exercise bike gathering dust because you can't for the life of you spend 30 minutes pedalling nowhere?

Well.. here's a solution for you. Exercise AND surf the NET.

You'd be surprised how synergistic the two activities are. The mind-numbing effect of surfing the internet makes you FORGET you are exercising; so calories are being furnaced away while you're getting the latest lowdown on Malaysian politics, watching Marie Digby on YouTube or whatever it is you whittle your bandwidth on. No PAIN, ultimate GAIN.

How the heck do you do that, you ask? The question's been bothering me for a whole week. I've been going from twisting wires to drilling holes on my bike-shaft. I've surfed the net for adjustable-arm keyboard-tray to handheld remote-web-controllers. Then, I thought, why not ask my brother-in-law (Dr. Liew), the Mr.Fix-It-All of my family. In his typical mechatronic-genius, he knit his brows for a few seconds and dispensed his wisdom: Why can't you invert your bike handles?

And wa...laaa...


My wireless keyboard rests nicely on the tension-adjuster knob anteriorly and the edge of the handles posteriorly. The handles can be further rotated to get the correct angle to prevent RSI (though if you do, you should really just sit and work on the PC.) It's important to use a good browser like Opera where you can use a host of keyboard shortcuts to navigate - from switching tabs to going back and forward, zooming in and out, and activating voice and entering passwords automatically. And with this configuration you can still check your speed and distance every now and then.


Shown here is my workstation (under the cloth is my Korg 01/W - I haven't figured out how to play the keyboard while cycling yet.) To the right of the bike is my baby-monitor - young dads can only exercise when baby's asleep, you see... Now I REALLY have no excuse not to exercise.

In the last two days I've managed to get in 90 minutes of vigorous cycling, AND go through the whole of Malaysiakini, Malaysia Today, The Star and Reuters Health with time to spare. Talk about efficient! My next goal will be to write an entire paper or prepare a lecture while speeding through my 10k.

Who says geeks can't be fit?

NEXT PROJECT: Mount a board on those handles so I can put my wireless mouse on it too. Look out for the next edition of 'The FIT Geek!'

Laudate Dominum

Was putting Ethan to sleep with some Mozart and came to one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written, Laudate Dominum (Latin for Praise the Lord). Was pleasantly surprised to find more than one version of it on YouTube and a perfect translation into English on another website. What a wonderful night of worship through music.

I'm putting up the video which features Rachel Harnisch backed by the Berlin Philharmonic, and conducted by von Karajan. Divine.


The translation can be found at Emmanuel Music and sheet music for it at Williams Students Online

Praise the Lord, all nations;
Praise Him, all people.
For His has bestowed
His mercy upon us,
And the truth of the Lord endures forever.
Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit,
as it was in the beginning, is now, and forever,
and for generations of generations. Amen

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Caffeine Contents

I thought this might be interesting to the many 24hr-caffeinated people I have in my network of friends; many of whom you will find getting their fix in the local Starbucks or Coffee Bean. The Center for Science in the Public Interest has a nifty chart of the caffeine content in popular coffees, home brew, instant, soft drinks, desserts and illicit drugs.

I presume this is on the Center for Science in the Public Interest for 2 reasons: 1) it's in the caffeine-addicted public's best interest to know where to get their caffeine when in deprivation and 2) It's in the public's best interest not to deprive the caffeine-addicted of their caffeine. Overall, it makes the world a happier place for everyone; hence science in the public interest.

The other great website is Coffee Science which among other things, alerts us to the many health benefits we'd be missing out if we missed our morning cup of coffee. Apart from relieving headaches, and sparing your colleagues from the Mr. Hyde side of you, it also crushes gallstones and prevents cancer. Need I say more?

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Da Vinci Yawn

There are those who will decry the film as an affront to Christian belief, a tissue of lies and fabrications and a lurid exercise in cynical exploitation.

The more they fulminate, though, the more they play into Sony's hands, unwittingly promoting the very movie they would have banished from our screens.

Far better, perhaps, to use the film as a springboard for constructive debate on the nature of religion and the way the Christ story still resonates after two millennia.

It is, after all, just a movie that - like Life of Brian, The Last Temptation of Christ and Gibson's Passion before it - is only as significant as we choose to make it.

Well said! Neil Smith from the BBC

I'm not boycotting the movie. I just think my 10 bucks is better spent, Dan Brown doesn't deserve that much credit, and there's been so much coverage about it it's nauseating. People will believe what they want to believe. Beyond being faithful to history, having a healthy knowledge in it and a willingness to discuss it openly - there's really little point in getting up-in-arms. 'The more they fulminate,... the more they play into Sony's hands.' And Dan Brown's bank account, let's not forget.

The LCC-T

Air Asia is always a wonder to watch. A company that started modest with a few leased aircrafts, it is near billion-dollar industry a year with a fleet sprawled all over Asia to match. Even when the flailing giants boot them into the wilderness, they sprout up again and come up with the... LCCT!

 

I took the Skybus there on Friday, and arrived at a slightly ware-house looking place, reminiscent of Carrefour and TESCO outlets.

 

Brightly lit, bustling with activity and a couple of food outlets to keep you occupied.

 


Surprisingly crowded check-in counters, but mostly the Indonesia bound flights.

 

And a nice walk on the tarmac, like the good old Subang days.

Overall a nice experience for the budget traveler. 

Works of art - our rivers

Who says our rivers aren't beautiful?


Klang river running under the Titiwangsa LRT station

Take a look at the Klang River today. Running right through the city, what a beautiful sight it is to behold! A swirling mix of ochre and vile black, intertwining and interfacing on a canvas of water. You have to admire the artistic talent of refuse dumpers and reckless effluent dischargers.

While it was heartening to hear of tough action planned for miscreants, this sort of coloring of our waters go on every day, right under our noses in the heart of the city.

The thing to do is to get in touch with the Department of Environment or post a pix to your local paper. We are a long way from crystal clear, blue waters but if we don't something about it now, they are soon going to be pitch black.

The Da Vinci Craze

I read it for no other reason except that it is going to explode on the silver screen this May. I didn't want to be ignorant. The fact that the Da Vinci Code has generated so much of interest on both sides of Mary Madgalene alone repels me. How can one silly myth cause so much glib fanaticism on one hand and reactive defensiveness on the other? (To be fair, I have read the 'Holy Blood, Holy Grail', which in part is the basis for the newer Da Vinci Code.)

When I did pick up the book, I found myself instantly collar-grabbed into a pretty well-woven story of religious mysticism, conspiracy, historical intrigue and anagrams, all tied to a cord of murder and the struggle to vindicate a lost cause and a dead man. It was an un-put-downable. And the more I read, the more I wondered, what the heck is all the fuss about? This is just fiction. Irreverent, but fiction all the same. Until I came to (not unexpectedly) the great revelation by Leigh Teabing of the great conspiracy of the Church - a conspiracy as it were to slay the sacred feminine and glorify the masculine, deify a mere man countless millions now worship, doctor documents and secure its political campaign with blood baths and witch hunts.

It wouldn't have been more than a wince in the side were it not for the author's claims that documents and archeological evidences cited in the book were accurate. And I've seen him come on TV to say he started out trying to disprove it all and ended up the believer. The sales gimmick is as laughable as some self-contradicting inventions of the author paraded as history. But not everything in the book could be waved away with simple logic. It was indeed disconcerting to have it suggested, with claims of historical fact I could not disprove, that my faith was baseless, or worse - built on mere spinmeistering.

But what I found TRULY disturbing and reason to get very upset indeed was not that it exposed any conspiracy of the early Church. It was not the Church that was on the stand, or the Council of Nicene that was being indicted. No! The joke is on us! The great gag is on every believing Christian who can't see through the web of deceit for sheer lack of knowledge. Myself included. ON THE COUNTS OF BLATANT IGNORANCE AND UTTER DISREGARD FOR THE HISTORICAL ROOTS OF YOUR FAITH, DAN BROWN AND THE PEOPLE FIND YOU GUILTY AS CHARGED. we are in the docks, and our brazen neglect of self-education on matters as crucial as the tenets of our own professed faith should draw tears.

Every morning on my walk to the train station, I see little children in songkoks and green sampings hop onto their kereta sapu to the nearest religious school. Some of these Islamic kindergartens are not cheap and parents pay for the best religious education money can buy. Outside of regular school time. It speaks volumes of the value Muslims place on knowing the truths that undergird ther lives.

I know my wake up call has come. Whatever his intention, Dan Brown's own 'disclaimer statement' rings true: '“My hope for The Da Vinci Code was, in addition to entertaining people, that it might serve as an open door for readers to begin their own explorations and rekindle their interest in topics of faith.” That, I hope it has done and makes for a great opportunity for Christians to explore the roots and facts of their own faith.

A Malaysian forum on the topic is coming up this Thursday in PJ.

Resources abound on the Internet to start off your research:
Bible.org
Da Vinci Quest
Challenging Da Vinci

Go Public!

I am all for the switch from petrol-guzzling automobile travel to public transport. My wife and I
promised ourselves we would leave our car at home and become train-riders if the fuel price were to go up again. It has, and we have ditched our car. Though there are a 100 reasons discouraging the use of public transport in Kuala Lumpur, I can still think of a few good reasons to give it a try and make it work.


1- Save money. At nearly 25 cents per kilometre of car travel (working at 8km/L fuel consumption) the savings are considerable if you are a heavy commuter. With LRT season passes that cover both Putra & Star lines, and RM2/day City Shuttle buses, I'm saving at least RM50 a month. And I'm not even counting savings from parking
at malls.
2- Save time. It took a bullock cart 1 hour to get from Kg Baru to Masjid Jamek in the old days. 100 years of progress later, it takes the same time. Go figure. Traffic jams are a complete waste of time. There is a profound pleasure in gloating over cars stuck in jams as you whiz by in your high speed train.
3- Get more sleep. If you can get onto a train or bus early enough, you can actually catch a few extra winks. If you are desperate for a sit-down and shut-eye, take the train to the terminal where the carriage empties, and come back again in your seat of choice.
4- Get fit. With our badly connected public transport system, much of the commuting is by foot between stations and stops. Walk fast enough and you can get a pretty good workout. A 70kg adult can burn 116 calories by walking 30 minutes at a speed of 3mph. Keeping a high heart rate during the walk will also improve your cardiovascular fitness.

5- Finish a book. Trains are an ideal place to read. It's quiet, well air-conditioned, and even standing with a hand on the rail, you can finish a book with
one hand!
6- De-stress. The biggest frustration of driving in KL is not so much the petrol cost, but the traffic jams. To sit in a gridlock, seeing red (bumper lights) for
hours on end does nothing for my blood pressure. I can imagine years of my lifespan shaved off for every hour I spend in jams.
7- Save the environment. Why burn good cash on polluting the environment? Our carrying capacity for pollutant is already maxed out. The slightest puff of
smoke from a forest fire will tip us into a blinding haze. Imagine the amount of emissions reduced by leaving your car at home to be used only for long distance trips or short family outings.
8- See the city. A season pass pays for unlimited travel. Why use it only for getting to work? See the city! Go on a walkabout of Dataran Merdeka or Petaling
Street on weekends, or hit the malls. Watch your spending though - otherwise whatever you save on petrol might just be burnt on shopping. 

Inspired... by food

I haven't done this in some time, posting the latest salivary gland pumping concoction in the culinary world of our homeland. So today, I decide to pull out some choice pix of the latest appetite stimulant, or diet-program killer whichever way you like to look at it.

Though not really Malaysian cuisine, but for sheer joy-to-taste we are proud to have them in our land.

Petaling street offers some great photo ops, so a vertiginous shot of chestnuts went into my still-in-infancy TTL gallery.

Well, that's my weekend blogging quota fulfilled. In the process I realised I write in record time when I'm intensely inspired.. And nothing quite inspires like good food. So, the next time you need creative, and other juices to flow, go get a bite!

Learning Chinese the Geek Way

Did you hate your POL classes in school? Did you get sent to a Chinese temple for language tuition as a kid? Well I did, and have deep emotional scars to show for it. But, I still can't speak my own mother tongue if my life depended on it.

But all that is going to change! Well, at least it potentially and theoretically CAN change... And here's how (I propose, in theory) it can be done: THE GEEK WAY.

1) Pick a Chinese website you would like to read: like a newspaper, an interlinear Bible or the Dao De Ching for high show-off factor.

2) Get it translated using Babelfish or a Chinese-English Dictionary

3) And get it read ALOUD using YELLOWBRIDGE TALKER


Let me give you an example.

This is a screenshot of Nanyang Siang Pau in Chinese:


This is Nanyang translated into English:


After you've had a ROTFLOL session reading the direct translation, try the Yellow Bridge dictionary.

This is the headline translated en bloc, word by word, into English on Yellow Bridge's Chinese-English dictionary.


And if you've got Yellow-Bridge Talker installed, you can have the text read aloud to you simply by right-clicking your selection and selecting "Pronounce Text" or clicking the yellow speech baloon on the Dictionary page!

Is there anything you've been dying to say in Chinese - like, say, cheaper please I have no money, or please cook my chow mein really really spicy? Well, key it into the YB Dictionary, and have it read OUT LOUD back to you. My Chinese-proficient dad vouches for its accuracy and high standard of Chinese.

Also available on Yellow-Bridge is the cool Flashcards method of learning a word a day, and a Decomposition Explorer interwoven into the dictionary. No, the Decomposition Explorer is not some kind of post-mortem surgical technique. It is in fact a breakdown of each component in a chinese character complete with its individual meaning.

For instance, did you know that the word WORRY in Chinese, consists of two parts - which could mean to have strings attached to your mind, or to conspire against the soul? Now, which Chinese dictionary or teacher, for that matter, will give you that?! And it certainly makes learning impossible Chinese squiggles a lot more fun, meaningful and easy to remember.



Hah.. talk about easy and high geek appeal!! No more embarassing dictation sessions, no fierce, hefty POL teacher with the swishing cane, and no more messy brush and ink in Chinese temple classes!!