Weird Creatures In My Home
In the past two weeks I found two strange creatures in my apartment. One I carried in from the grocery store, although it traveled all the way from New Zealand. And the other is a native of Singapore that let itself in during the night. Take a look at these pictures.
Indirect Language in Asia
In May of 2010, my first week in Singapore, my manager PB* gave me a friendly warning about communication in Asia. ”Be indirect,” he said. I have been pondering that thought and occasionally writing about it for a year and a half. A couple weeks ago PB sat down with me to discuss a variety of aspects of my first Asian tour. He again kindly and firmly repeating his warning: be indirect.
We all have good days and bad days with email. In the same week my boss gave me this friendly nudge, a colleague of mine complemented my patient and kind emails. PB has much more experience in Asian business than this colleague and I put together. But I could not figure out how one person could think I was writing well while the more Asian-savvy PB saw room for improvement. So I started to mull over what I might be missing.
On this week’s plane flight to Sydney I developed a lead in this mystery. I heard a common flight warning and connected a strange characteristic of Singaporean English with PB’s advice. I had been laughing to myself about this weird facet of the local English. But now I realize it is likely deliberate and not something to laugh at.
A Life Without Driving
It has been 16 months since I moved to Singapore. One of the unexpected benefits of this move is the loss of a car. It is a joy to live in a town where I can walk to grocery stores, malls, restaurants, and public transportation that will take me nearly everywhere else.
Half a year ago I realized that not having a car was a big part of my happiness here. And that made me think about the US infrastructure that has made people addicted to cars in all but a handful of cities. My Mom in Gallatin, not far from Nashville, TN, recently asked me where I would recommend she live if she wanted to abandon driving.
To be more specific, what cities in the United States meet the following conditions:
- Have a dense living quarter that supports (urban) residences, shops, restaurants, grocery stores, etc.
- Is reasonably safe.
- Has a functional public transportation system.
- Does not get too cold (no ice or snow).
- Is not too expensive (not NYC or SF expensive, I mean).
The only city Mom and I think might meet these conditions is San Diego. Maybe Portland, but I am not sure.
Can you help us find this ideal home for a new stage of my parents’ life?
Who Is This Sexy Woman?
On 7 September I tweeted about a need for a password management tool. Craig Waters responded by re-tweet (RT) with text that included the word iPhone. That keyword was picked up by a spammer, iphone_hills, whose RT included my Twitter name. The image used by iphone_hills used caught my attention and reminded me of a cool new feature Google recently released: image search.
Forfeiting US Citizenship
Yesterday I spent an hour at the US Embassy here in Singapore. I am requesting their help replacing a lost social security card. Where mine went in the decades that have passed since I last saw it I do not know. But I need a replacement for some tax documents. While I was in the embassy, I overheard a man forfeiting his US Citizenship. I was fascinated.
The embassy here is a strange looking fortress on a hill. Its intimidating design reminds the viewer of medieval castles. Among Singapore’s shiny adolescent buildings it is completely out of place. The building’s exterior properly advertises the security throughout. Doors that seem to carry man-crushing mass swing slowly open for visitors. Multi-inch, bulletproof glass separates the staff from visitors. That glass was responsible for me overhearing the conversation I am about to relate.
Communication in Asia
A Facebook friend recommended to me Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers, a book I finished on a flight to Korea last week. This is the second of Gladwell’s books I have read and I enjoyed it just as much as the first, The Tipping Point. One part of Outliers, a discussion on Asian communication, seems to offer a piece in the puzzle I am trying to solve on how to be successful in Asia.
Western communication has what linguists call a “transmitter orientation”–that is, it is considered the responsibility of the speaker to communicate ideas clearly and unambiguously…But Korea, like many Asian countries, is receiver oriented. It is up to the listener to make sense of what is being said. [Emphasis from Gladwell.]
Alias Management using AliasHerder
I regularly present to audiences using PowerPoint. I frequently interleave canned demonstrations (videos) throughout my presentations. I like to keep directories for each session with the PowerPoint documents and videos I showed that day’s audience. But I dislike the idea of spreading copies of the same file around my hard drive when I use the same content many times.
OSX supports aliases, which are small files that link to the original documents. But there are a lot of quirky things about aliases. For instance, my Mac has no ability to replace the alias with the original file. Alias copies always produce another alias. This means when someone requests all my content on a USB, it is not possible to group select and copy. For each file I have to “show original file” and then copy that file. This is a real pain if there are many files.
After I requested help on a Mac forum someone referred me to AliasHerder. This simple tool will convert aliases to the original file. So, I can now copy an entire directory of links to a USB and quickly replace the aliases with the originals. This is done with three simple steps:
- Select all files and aliases I wish to copy.
- Drop the files and aliases to their target destination.
- Drag the target folder to the AliasHerder icon on my dock.
The internet is a wonderful place that people in need of miniature tools to ease their troubles can find help within hours. I happily donated this afternoon $4USD to AliasHerder’s author.
2011 Singapore Elections: Results and Aftermath
To briefly review, on 7 May Singaporeans chose their members of parliament (MPs) in the country’s 16th parliamentary elections. Because of the ruling party’s control of media, districting, and district consolidation into GRCs, the People’s Action Party (PAP) had maintained 100% of the 87 seats in parliament in every election from 1968 to 1989. The PAP earned 66% of the popular vote in the previous election which allowed it to carry 82 seats into the 2011 election. Under these conditions of incredible dominance, and frequent taxi driver grumbling, Singaporeans went to the polls in early May.
KitchenAid Mixer Fail
I have owned a KitchenAid mixer for years. A couple years ago I upgraded my first one to the Professional 600 series for its improved power for kneading doughs. While I only occasionally make bread with the mixer, I frequently use it to make fresh pasta. Fresh pasta is a staple meal for small groups of guests that love to drink wine and chat around the kitchen.
When I moved to Singapore I purchased a converter to allow my 110v appliances to work on my home’s 220v power. I remember palming this eight ounce hunk of plastic in the hardware store and wondering if it was what I needed. My fading memories from college electronics surfaced notions that thick iron bars and scores of copper wire turns were needed for voltage conversion at even moderate amperage. Transformers should be heavy, right?
But, shit!, surely this $40 converter would blow a fuse before doing something catastrophic to my mixer, right? Two hours later I knew this to be untrue. When I connected the 575w mixer through my piece-of-shit converter and flipped the switch, I soon heard something like a 22 caliber pistol going off in my kitchen. From that moment on neither the mixer nor the POS converter worked. I eventually purchased a S$150, 5kg converter that has succeeded for other appliances with the POS version failed. But the mixer was dead.
2011 Singapore Elections: SRCs and GRCs
Before Singapore’s elections of a couple of weeks ago, I spent time trying to figure out what was going to happen and how it worked. In U.S. elections, votes are cast on numerous issues. Citizens vote on multiple representatives from the municipality up to the federal government. In California we were annually bombarded by propositions born from an active electorate and an incompetent government. But from what I could tell, each Singaporean was only choosing his area’s member(s) of parliament (MP). And as I dug in even more, I saw that some were not even choosing that.
Previously based in California. Now living in Singapore. More details at my about me page.