'Oh, it'll be fun.'

'It is recognised, Lawrence, that you have a funny sense of fun.'

Vindication of Title

As anyone who has ever taken the time to look at one of nature's fine works might have suspected, all trees really are graceful. This means that, among other things such as olive trees, firecrackers and caterpillars, all lobsters are indeed graceful. It also this page should no longer be there. Well done, Gilbert.

Edit: The post might have been a little premature because the proof really seems quite sloppy.

耐心

你需要的是耐心。耐心地慢慢积累，耐心地等待时机。不能因为眼前没有成绩而气馁。你需要的是专心，不能因为心急着要办成一件事而把所有其他事都置之不理。做事要稳妥，从容；做人也要如此。

Possibility C

Maybe you just suck at it, in which case you should start looking at alternative futures right now. Oh dear.

Ardent

" ... desde el salar, ardiente y mineral ... "
Positively burning with passion.

三十年河东，三十年河西

'Up to the late 1960s, Cambodia was the shining star of Indo-China, a confluence of intellectuals, traders, artists and bourgeois who lived, played and worked there. Phnom Penh was the jewel of Asia then. Lee Kuan Yew, the first Prime Minister of Singapore visited Cambodia in April 1967 at the invitation of Prince Norodom Sihanouk. Cruising along the capital's elegant boulevards in a Mercedes convertible, Lee turned to his host and said, "I hope, one day, my city will look like this".'
Perhaps it was telling that Harry chose the verb "look" instead of "be"?

Engmalchin

'A Malayan language will arise out of the contributions these communities will make to the linguistic meltingpot. The emerging language will then have to wait for a literary genius who will give it a voice and a soul, a service which Dante performed for the Italian language.'
But the supposedly disparate tongues whose agglutination Dante sparked to form the Italian vernacular were rather closely related in the first place -- no more, really, than dissimilar dialects. To hope for something similar with such a diverse group of languages, with different roots, different histories, different syntaxes, even different writing systems, is rather a stretch. Maybe, just maybe, it will happen one day. But not, I dare say, anytime in the foreseeable future.

A Depressing Thought

'While in other countries, political parties come and go, but the country remains the rallying point for the people’s feelings, in Singapore, the Government has become synonymous with the country. Indeed, Singapore is often seen as the creation of the PAP, made to its image and likeness. Hence, dislike of the PAP, even though it does not translate into dislike of Singapore, effectively blocks out any spontaneous outpouring of patriotic emotion. ...If loyalty towards the country is blocked, it has to be directed elsewhere. In Singapore, it is directed at the good life which the country has come to represent. ... There is by now an almost adulatory quality about the attachment of Singaporeans to the affluence which their parents never knew and which came their way so quickly. ... This kind of loyalty is, of course meretricious. It changes with its object. Hence, when the good life diminishes, so will it. When the good life disappears, so may it. But the most insidious aspect is its mobility. It will uproot and move with the good life. Hence, if economic prosperity is no longer in Singapore but moves to Canada, Australia, the United States, China, it will re-locate itself accordingly. ... Such a volatile, mobile loyalty is of course a travesty of the patriotism it has displaced and a mockery of all the earnest effort that the Government and the people have put into the building of the country over three decades.

Even if such a sinister scenario does not arise, a growing emotive estrangement between the Government and the people is not a healthy thing. It could create a schizoid society where head is divorced from heart, where there is a double agenda and double book-keeping with people agreeing with the Government in public but saying something else in private.' - The PAP and the people - A Great Affective Divide (1994). (It really is a discredit to the Gahmen that they had to employ their sledgehammers and pound the table instead of delivering a similarly eloquent riposte.)

...

'If there are passionate Singaporeans working in Singapore, I have yet to meet them.'

Have we really all turned into a bunch of money-grubbers with no ideals whatsoever?

Section View of Snowstorm (selected details)

Supposedly when the sub-prime mortagage crisis hit America, entire swathes of less-glitzy suburbs emptied out and turned into vacant shells, as their bankrupt residents simply left with their meagre belongings before the bank came to repossess their houses. A somewhat even more surreal version of this is happening in Dubai. Dubai has been going quite crazy lately ... sort of like Singapore on steroids and with far more impulsive planning. Perhaps the crunch, now that it has come, will drive them far crazier too.
On the somewhat brighter side, some firms are still not in a "just retrench" mood. I don't know how true Toyota's sentiment that simply shedding 10 per cent of its North American work force would be a disaster' because '"if respect for people goes out the window, then they lose the foundation for the future because then suddenly people are going to say this company is not any different from any other company."' So what if propsective employees don't discern between Toyota, Nissan and GM? As long as they are willing to work at any one of those firms, isn't it all the same for the employers? But maybe benefits do accrue to Toyota due to employee loyalty. It would be interesting to find out, in an objective, rigorous way, for sure. Either way, it is a heartening thing to know that cold, hard capitalism isn't all there is in this world.

Szym

One day, I will learn Polish, so that I can read Wisława Szymborska's works untranslated. And master all of Szymanowski's piano sonatas. Or maybe you are only experiencing a strange, passing fixation with that consonant group at the moment.

Metaphor of Purpose

I should be a candle, shining with a warm brilliance so that I may illuminate those around me.
It sounds awfully trite, and there will be no doubt many, many occasions when I would simply fail to live up to it, but let it stand as a reminder of my life's purpose.

Proactivity

On the second day of Exercise Warrior, when we were on our way to the platoon ambush site in the rain which had been going on since forever, this guy with two plum blossoms on his epaulette and a red beret came up and started talking to the GPMG team. (Or maybe he didn't have his red beret then, but for some reason in my memory his red beret was an inseparable part of him, whatever the rest of his attire.) 'Hi ... what do you think is the MG commander's job? ... It's to look for a job to do. You should never be waiting around doing nothing ... go and find an arc of fire to cover, run somewhere and deploy your guys ...' And then he went off to talk to the trainee platoon sergeant.
Then the only response we could muster, being handicapped by thoroughly soaked attire and a full combat load, was "okay, so it's true that the higher your rank, the more you talk." Now, his comments start to make rather more sense. The MG is a powerful asset, and the commander should be constantly trying to maximise its effect, to get it to work for the rest of the platoon, so that life is made that little bit easier for the whole platoon.

A Hierarchy of Power

Chekhov's "The Princess" left a strong impression in my mind that stayed for days, and its tirade against hypocrisy is still embedded deep inside today. The stories from Wena Poon's superb collection "Lions in Winter" resonated deeply when I read them, and still leave residue impressions, but these are somewhat less clearly-defined than that left by the Chekhov. By comparison, Effie Chuang's short stories are interesting, particularly "The Gulag" and "Bravado", but nowhere as powerful.
Whence the difference? Is it in the wealth of detail that bring the stories to life, that flesh out the characters and make them more than just abstract conceptions in the author's mind? ('The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.') Is it just a matter of resonance, that I as a reader am more receptive to and remember more deeply certain stories and messages? Or probably some combination of both.

Post-Admin

'Until quite recently, then, the American military Services have been inclined to consider post-conflict operations not as a part of war itself, but as something belonging to its aftermath—a view that has obscured “the fact that the principal condition for strategic success in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq was the establishment of a political (and to a certain extent an economic) order favorable to the United States.”'
Echoing, on a larger scale, Staff Alan's remark to the effect that the exercise isn't over until the post-admin is complete.

Next

'Next, a range of advances in the cognitive sciences, biotechnology, medicine, and nanotechnology appear to be converging toward giving humans heretofore unprecedented capabilities to modify or enhance the physical, cognitive, and socio-emotional performance of individuals. Possibilities range from giving combatants pharmaceuticals to resist fatigue or function longer without sleep to accelerating muscle growth or cell strength with temporary or permanent genetic modifications, to improved human-machines interfaces, to better predictive methods for assigning individuals to the combat roles for which they are best suited. By way of illustrating that such things are already here, the drug Ritalin not only improves the academic performance of hyperactive children, it can also do the same for normal children. Ritalin is “commonly thought to boost SAT scores by more than 100 points.”'
(Adam Russell and Bartlett Bulkley, Human Performance Modification Primer (Herndon, VA: Scitor Corporation, January 2007), FOUO (For Official Use Only), pp. 1–5, 9–13.
Michael S. Gazzaniga, “Smarter on Drugs,” Scientific American Mind, September 2005, pp. 33–34.)
Science and technology really seem to have a way of sneaking up on you while you aren't watching.

Am I still attached to Shanghai?

Not really. Come to think of it, I do not have the same sense of attachment to any one place that some people show so strongly. All my relatives are there. Most of my friends are here. My childhood memories are scattered over three places eleven thousand kilometres apart. Certainly many precious memories are linked to this Most Serene city-republic. But I wouldn't feel as sorry or sad to leave, whether for a year or a decade, as you seemed to be yesterday. When I fly between Singapore and China -- and this is the one thing I would miss most, really, when I finally change citizenship -- the immigration counters welcome me home on both sides. I feel slightly sad at not being able to enjoy the same welcome on both ends any more ... but in an objective analysis, of what importance is such a trivial matter of appearances? At heart, nothing has changed. My home is everywhere and nowhere. It is not a place, but the company of your family, of your good friends, the warm fuzz of memories.

A touch of magic

That one passage near the end of Chopin's "Konrad Wallenrod" Ballade didn't quite come through, but still yesterday's recital was very, very good. Haydn came through with a nice mix of reserve and emotion. Bach-Busoni's Chaconne was thoroughly engaging and powerful ... although rather more Busoni than Bach at some points. It reminded me a bit of Godowsky's Passacaglia actually. Similar in form, similar in spirit. Chopin's four Ballades were nicely executed ... with some minor slips, but then again they are difficult. The second left the most vivid impression ... the profoundly calm andantino and the calamitous storm of an interruption. And the three Chinese pieces, like crowning jewels, small episodes in comparison to the long narratives of the other pieces but sparkling in a clear and unique light.
And to think the pianist was only 22. Amazing.

Phantasmagoria

An allegory of illusions; a product of dreams or fever. Maybe the two are not so different, are they.

LOL

This thing is quite like Ravel's Boléro, actually ... except less refined.

A touch of Québec

You have violated your own language laws. You are hereby fined a pitiful amount of dough and given a stiff but suitably stern formal warning.