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One of those little things that required adjustment in a marriage is one’s individual preferences for movies. Personally, I enjoy movies themed around the indomitable human spirit the most, e.g. movies like Apollo 13 or TV series like Band of Brothers.

Ling on the other hand prefers movies that don’t involve a lot of swearing, exploding things or flesh-consuming critters from outer space. Now and then whenever we’re both free on a weekend afternoon, she’d prompt me to dig into our library of DVD movies and find a romantic movie. It must be a girl thing. So chick flicks like Enchanted, Just Like Heaven, Sweet Alabama, 27 Dresses - all those are her thing.

Now, as far as those romantic movies are concerned though, there’s a bunch I still haven’t dug out to watch with her. For example, the three movies based on books by Nicholas Sparks. He’s a current American author who’s written a bunch of bestseller movies, several of which are of the love + tradegy type. And everyone of those three movie adaptions already released are tearjerkers. There’s Message in a Bottle, The Notebook, and A Walk to Remember.

How’s that? Well, bluntly put… I don’t think I can handle a sobbing woman who’s crying her eyes out because the two lovers on the screen can never be together because of an accident / illness / whatever and take yer pick.

Hey I know what I’ll do. I’ll just dig out the DVDs and put them on the TV cabinet. Ling is enjoying part of her year-end break now, so she can watch them all without me LOL.

I don’t as a rule follow authors, preferring instead to read selected works after having first checked them out first if they’re any good. There’s a few however whose books I’ll pick up without hesitation. There’s Colleen McCullough who wrote seven novels dramatizing the Roman Empire, with several of those volumes 1000+ pages long.

And there’s also the late Stephen Ambrose, a historian who wrote several books based on the oral accounts of men who fought in World War II. Ambrose is best known for three books: Citizen Soldiers, which is one of my most-loved books ever, D-Day, and Band of Brothers. The latter was turned into a 10 part HBO miniseries in 2001. It’s still generally regarded today as one of the best miniseries ever, picking up several Emmy Awards, including the ones for Best miniseries and casting.

The book and TV series should be semi well-known, but here’s the capsule version. The story follows a Company of paratroopers from the US 101st Airborne that fought in several key battles in World War II.

I read the book to which this series is based on some years back in 2001, but didn’t actually watch the TV series adaption itself then. So, as soon as the Region 1 DVD set was released a year or so thereafter, I bought it online and had it shipped to Singapore. It was a beautifully produced set, coming in a specially made metallic box (below left). There were a couple of niggling issues though, specifically that the DVD set didn’t include English subtitles, which made it at times a little hard to follow. I did had the book beside me so I could roughly follow through the story in each episode, but it wouldn’t had been necessary if there were subtitles.

I picked up the blu-ray edition of Band of Brothers as soon as it was released, and Ling and I have been watching the episodes at 2-3 per evening. Like the DVD set, it came in a similar nifty metallic box (above right). There are subtitles this time, and the high definition release really makes one sit up and notice all the little details that was missed in the DVD release years ago.

I don’t know how Ling feels about the show (she at least seems to be able to follow the stories and the main characters). The show is meaningful for me as it demonstrates the heroism from a time and generation past, and the sacrifices they made just so that people today can live the lives they do now. Each episode starts with interview segments from seemingly random veterans of World War II. Ling was asking me were these veterans actually soldiers from the Company. It’s only at the very last episode when it’s finally revealed who are these veterans, and I remembered tears welling up when I finally realized that that the characters portrayed in the 12 hour series was indeed the very same elderly gentlemen recollecting their experiences from 60 years ago.

It’s sad that very few of these veterans are alive, as more have passed on since the interview segments were recorded during the series’ production 7 years ago. But Ambrose’s novel and the series have done some measure of justice to their experiences, and hopefully will introduce to future generations what some have called The Greatest Generation that has ever lived.

This couple of weeks—or 18 days to be exact—I’ll be in camp for my yearly Incamp Training (ICT) stint. Yeah, they’re still calling back 37 year old ah peks back. I’m like one of the oldest guys around in my company.

But funnily, the other day a couple of guys with me were surprised to learn I was 37. One remarked that I look maybe 30, 31 at most.

The lot were only convinced when I got up the pull-bar bar during the Individual Physical Proficiency Test the other day and the electronic display stated in large lettering I was in “Cat Z”, or personnel who’re 35 years and older.

And the surprises for them didn’t end there. I got up the bar, went up and down 5 times, then let go from the bar sprightly. Someone said the pull-up bar’s the hardest station to clear for reservist personnel. But there I was, going up and down like nothing, and looking as though I could still do a lot more but got down because I was bored. If they only knew that for the other stations, I’m utterly hopeless haha.

In any case, this blog entry isn’t about what I’m doing in this ICT this year. Rather, it’s about a not-often-discussed aspect of serving national service i.e. you do it because it’s your duty to and not (normally) because you want to. It’s about having a girl / lady at home to go back to.

Here’s the thing. Prior to my enlistment as a full-time national serviceman in 1990 to 1992, I was in JC and there was this girl from my class I had a thing for (blogged about several times already, e.g. here). During my JC2 year I went about the school taking portrait pictures of my friends, and hers was one I took. She wrote some very beautiful and encouraging words on the back of it. In the following year when I was a full-time national serviceman, on a couple of occasions I was out of the country on overseas exercises. A lot of nights we’d be out in the field in some rural, dusty area with few signs of civilization. During those NS days, I actually had this picture of this girl in my pocket wherever I went. And during those nights when all was quiet, I’d sometimes take her picture out and gazed at her.

Sounds corny eh? But when you’re in uniform and have naught but the company of unwashed men who smell as bad as you do, all stuck in some rural area or some jungle, having a girl to remember and think about helps. I mean it. It reminds you that there’s a civilian and normal life outside the army, and something to look forward to upon your return home.

In NTU I had this friend who said that if her husband or a boyfriend had to go back for national service every year, on each time he leaves for the stint she wouldn’t feel sorry. Rather, she’d feel very protected by his discharging of his duty and sacrifice of his time. She’d feel safe.

She was a very dear friend of mine, and someone I wrote music for too. And this friend of mine wasn’t Singaporean but Malaysian. Which made what she said even the more special.

These days, I don’t know if there are still army men who carry around photos of their girls in their pockets. These days, you chuck an entire JPG album into a non-camera phone or PDA, or maybe even a PSP that I see so many young fellows carry around in camp. And when you miss your girl, you just SMS.

Times have certainly changed. But while the technology to carry those memories around has improved, that men in uniform still need their supportive girls or women behind them haven’t changed; nor do I think it’s likely to, ever.:)

One of the things we discussed more than a year ago and while we still weren’t quite decided to start a family (or not) was who would get to decide on baby names. We decided on the arrangement where I’d work out a list of baby girl names, and Ling baby boy names. We’d both have to finally agree on which name of course, but we each get to decide on our list of potentials.

Lots of people I think want special sounding and looking names to be different from the rest. For me though, one thing that was firm in my mind (Ling may be thinking differently) is that the baby girl names in my list would not include any fancy or new-age spellings of a traditional name. For example, it’s Mary and not Mari. Elizabeth and not Elizebeth.

I haven’t spent too much time looking for certain, but from say A to F at least, here’re the ones I passed along to Ling the other day as my list of potential names:

Agnes (Greek) - pure, virginal

Diana (Latin) - lumious, perfect

Anna (Greek / Hebrew?) - gracious, one who gives

Esther (Hebrew) - secret, hidden

Emma (Hebrew) - the female version of Emmanuel

Of the first five, Ling liked Agnes, Diana and Anna. My favorite of the list is Agnes, so we actually had our first consensus. The rest of the alphabet soup to follow, soon enough.:)

Several months ago I wrote a short entry about the high-definition ‘war’ waged between the two competing standards, HD DVD and blu-ray. Now, one of the battlegrounds between both standards was the support each format had from major movie studios. Basically, enthusiasts were going with the standard which had the movies from the studios they each wanted.

Now, The Matrix was one set of movies in a small corner of such a battle, and for a while was published on HD DVD but not Blu-Ray. But 10 months since that post, it’s been finally released on the latter.

So, I plunked down a not too small sum of money on the blu-ray edition of The Ultimate Matrix Collection. The contents of this set of discs is roughly similar (I think) to the ten disc DVD set released a few years ago, and is stuffed to the brim with around 35 hours of content, with the main trilogy of movies themselves taking up about 7 hours.

Lots has been said about The Matrix movies of course. Many people agree that the sequels extended the story scape and depth substantially but to the point that the story also became convoluted. Who could really make sense of what KFC guy er The Architect was droning on about?

But now that I think back to the point when I first saw the movie (on disc as I missed the theatrical release in 1999), I can see why the movie was such a huge hit. No, I don’t for a moment believe we’re really right now living in a computerized virtual world created to pacify human beings who’re in reality each cocooned as some sort of biological battery. But that very premise of machines enslaving humans is interesting in itself, and makes for great story telling. If nothing else, it’s a nice change from machines only keen on exterminating humans like bugs e.g. The Terminator or the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica series (up till a point).

That said, I never really understood the back story from the first Matrix movie alone. All Morpheus said, vaguely, is that at some point the humans waged a big war against the machines, with the former blocking out the sky in a desperate attempt to eliminate the machine’s source of power.

That back story was of course fleshed out in a couple of episodes from The Animatrix. And we watched that too the other night after completing the trilogy of movies. Ling remarked that two of the shorts (The Second Renaissance Parts I and II) that told this back story were so depressing.

Still… another set that’s on its way is the blu-ray Band of Brothers. I’ve got this on DVD already, but it remains the best TV limited series I’ve had the pleasure of watching (The Sopranos remained my favorite recurring TV series). So, it’s well-worth the expense for me. And hopefully Ling will be able to enjoy it too.

It’s coming to the end of the year again. Towards the end of each year, I’d sit back and reflect on some of the key events and decisions made in the past year or so. It’s a pretty interesting exercise as you’ll see the decisions that turned out right, and those that turned out all wrong; all with the benefit of a mite bit of hindsight at the end of the year now.

So, running off my head and in no particuar order:

Going to Phuket first in June then Bali later in September (WIN). Because right smack on the week we were in Bali in September, thousands of travelers in Singapore had to postpone their Phuket trip because the airport had shut down! Too funny for words. Bali posts tagged here, with Phuket ones here.

Having a baby (IN PROGRESS). Well, not saying too much away here, but the decision wasn’t an easy one. There were concerns about health and well-being for example. Funnily, we faced little of the ‘traditional’ sort of pressures. Oh, Ling’s mum asked about it now and then, but there was absolutely no (even polite) queries or pressure exerted on my side of the family. Nor did the announced incentives in August factor into our decisions. First announced here.

Going with a Nissan Latio (WIN). Well, on the upside, the car hasn’t broken down. Moreover, our Latio survived pretty much unscathed compared to the Honda Civic I bumped into nearly a year ago. On the down side, Ling’s been remarking that the car makes funny squeaky noises occasionally, and doesn’t give her the vibes that the Latio is better built than the old Civic we were driving. And we haven’t been getting the 14 km/litre fuel consumption milleage some drivers claimed. But a 12.5 to 12.8 km/litre isn’t too bad. First blogged here, then here.

Red and silver.

Publishing a book (WIN). This, funnily, was the hardest decision I’ve made this year. My work and research has been published in several places prior to this of course, but publishing in academia is quite different from producing a commercial publication. There’s all the legalese in the author’s contract with the publisher, all my liabilities since there’re now new issues of distribution, ownership and copyright. And to top if all off, it’s not as though my book is gonna be selling a million copies allowing me to enter early retirement. The summative royalties I expect are essentially, for lack of a better word, non-existent. First blogged here.

Deciding between a PS3 or an XBox 360 (WIN). No kidding! I had long chats with Matt about the virtues of one console over the other. Moreover, the decision wasn’t as simple as which had the games I was interested in or studying. The decision to go with one of them was made when the high definition standards war was raging, and investment in the PS3 wasn’t a sure decision. It could had turned into a white elephant! First blogged here then here.

Of course I could have bought both, like Matt…

Ling having a go with Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune.

Investing in a new camera system (IN PROGRESS). And what a huge investment it turned into. I was determined to get it right this time by doing proper research, and proper accounting to what I was acquiring. So far, so good. Ok, so the photos are still a long way off to progressing from ‘crappy’ to ‘mediocre’, but I’m working on it! First blogged here.

Trying to fatten Matt up (LOST). As soon as Matt firmed up arrangements to visit and stay with us for a month in June this year, Ling and I drew up a strategy to make sure that this time, he’d leave Singapore weighing heavier than he arrived. And boy, did we try hard! We enlisted everyone’s help. Even my mum, and Doreen. Even our small group was involved. But Matt easily showed that he could beat us all without trying, and he left Singapore weighing less than when he arrived. So we failed miserably again.

He conquered durians even.

But as soon as he’s firmed up plans for a third visit, this time, it’s WAR. If we have to bury him with Banquet pratas or drown him with teh tariks this time, we will!! Ling’s tribute to The Champion here.

There you go. If I can think of any more significant milestones, I’ll append them here later.

No this isn’t an entry about the well-known “Mr. Wang” from blogsphere. Rather, Mr. Wang is a key fictional character in the subject I’m teaching this semester: Software Engineering.

Now how does Mr. Wang fit into this subject? Well, for the last couple of semesters now, this subject has been offered in a comparatively new instructional mode, specifically Problem-Based Learning. There’s at least one IHL in Singapore employing this learning mode en masse. Briefly, this mode of learning involves the use of realistic problems issued to student project groups, and students discover their own solutions and learning with the instructors typically facilitating only their knowledge discovery rather than doing actual teaching. Mr. Wang is a character I created as part of the central story that ties in three large problems that my student groups undertake to solve over the term.

But my entry this time isn’t about the instruction mode  but about the subject itself. It’s pretty funny, because I’ve been teaching Software Engineering for more than 12 years now but this is my first time blogging about it in a personal capacity. This was the very first subject assignment I had when I first started teaching in 1995, and in 2008, I’m still teaching the same thing. Oh, the instruction modes have changed, the institutions I’m at, and (naturally) the students too.

What’s this subject about? Well, in the most simplistic terms, it concerns itself with the study and employment of traditional ‘engineering’ principles in software development. Now that statement may not mean much, but if one tracks the evolution of software development in itself, that statement says a lot. Specifically, one of the analogies I’ve used in every one of my lecture groups over the years is this: if you received your first software programming assignment, then sat on a toilet bowl and starting writing code on your notebook, you’re at some level engaging in software development.

But that isn’t software engineering. You’re only said to be engineering software if you went about developing that software in a specific manner i.e. by using principles, ideas, and best practices that have its roots in engineering that’s developed over hundreds if not thousands of years. Friz Bauer, an exponent of the subject writes that:

Software Engineering is the establishment and use of sound engineering principles in order to obtain economically software that is reliable and works efficiently on real machines.

This definition is included in Roger S. Pressman’s book, one of the key reference books for students anywhere studying the subject.

Some examples of these principles: e.g. the idea that before you create a product, you’d best properly specify what is it you’re creating first. Or when you’ve finished creating the thing, you should evaluate that product against that specification you created at the start.

Now, all these ideas may seem a natural part of software development, but they weren’t always. And more importantly, these ideas didn’t stem from our understanding of software. It’s been with us for ages, long before software first came about.

Unfortunately, the subject isn’t easy to teach. I remember at one point in another institution I was lecturing at, Software Engineering was the most dreaded subject among academic staff. The complaints were usually the same. “The material’s dry and difficult to engage students with.” Naturally that sort of difficulty staff wrestle with occasionally affects student learning i.e. if the instructor finds it dry, how will students not find it the same?

Ironically, I like teaching this subject. It’s a challenge of course. But one advice I’ve given to new staff routinely assigned to my teaching teams is this: the trick is to ground in the real world and common sense every one of these software creation principles. E.g. one analogy I use. Why does it make sense to employ software metrics? Well, the idea isn’t unique in software creation. We use metrics in just about everything else we do, including looking for potential life partners! That always perks my students up.

One of the things about us three boys growing up at Lentor was in our conduct at family dinners. My mum insisted that we would always have meals together as a family.

It wasn’t too difficult early on when we were still schooling in the mid 70s to mid 80s. But when we each started national service, then undergraduates studies then finally work proper, it was increasingly hard. Still, our parents would typically wait for us to return home, sometimes as late as 8 pm, so we could all sit down for dinner together.

Whenever there was a soup dish on the table my mum would always request that we drink our soup politely and without slurping. Whenever one of us forgot, she’d remark pointedly, “he tang xiao sheng yi dian”, which translated literally means “drink soup a little quieter”. Likewise, when we were eating, the right way to do so was to chew without swankering it around in the mouth and making a din.

These lessons were ingrained in the three of us so it pretty much became natural behavior. Because of how our mum told us to adopt proper table manners, at least for me, I grew up assuming that the only and proper way of eating soup was to drink it quietly.

So, when I first saw / heard (take yer pick!) Ling drinking soup, and it went:

“SSSLLLLUUURRRRRPPPP”

I looked at her in abject horror! Now, Ling explained that no one at home ever told her that soup should be drunk otherwise. So, I went about looking around the topic of slurping, and it was quite a surprising find. Apparently, some Asians—especially the Japanese—think that sucking air as you drink soup adds to the taste.

Now, maybe I should ask some of my colleagues over at the Applied Sciences School (they teach food nutrition there) whether there’s any sort of biological basis to this. Oh yeah I could search online, but in this case I’d go with people who should really know. I certainly think there’s some cultural element to this, and definitely some sort of psychological effect. But in terms of etiquette, slurping is never considered polite, as this author says.

Be that as it may and maybe this sounds very elitist. But I honestly believe that air should only enter one’s body through the nose and not the mouth. And the loud, sucking-air slurping sound is the sort of sound that makes my hair stand in roughly the same way as say, scratching nails on a blackboard.

It’s sort of funny now. Because whenever my nephews are at Lentor for dinner and we’re also there, I see my mum teaching them the same Foo Family Table Etiquette (FATE ™) as she did for me from 30 years ago. I’m pretty certain when our own kids are old enough to dine on the family table, I’ll be passing on these very same lessons to them then too.

There’s a music CD in a wallet of audio CDs in our Nissan Latio that’s a recording of The Pirates of Penzance. One of the most well-known songs in this work is sung by a self-professed Pirate King, and part of his song goes like this:

But I’ll be true to the song I sing, And live and die a Pirate King.

For I am a Pirate King!

Personally, I think Johnny Depp’s very gay Jack Sparrow in the Pirates trilogy is at least partially inspired by the very jolly Pirate King from Gilbert & Sullivan’s operetta. Oh, this pirate operetta is nothing of the bloody or tragic kind. It’s a comedy about a coming-of-age young pirate, a bunch of supposedly cutthroat pirates, a bunch of timid policemen who’s charged to stopped them, a bunch of sisters with a Major-General character of a father thrown into the mix. Like Mozart’s comic operas, no one dies in this story, boy gets the girl, and it’s a happy ending.

Pirates, 1900 version

Funnily, my first association with this operetta wasn’t in music but on TV. Back in the semi-early 80s, Kevin Kline, Angela Landsbury and Linda Ronstadt starred in a little-known movie called The Pirates of Penzance that was based on the Broadway production of this operetta. The movie was broadcast on the old SBC Channel 5 one holiday afternoon, and boy did that movie leave an impression! Yeah, who would have thought Kevin Kline could sing. The production was incredibly infectious in its outpouring of fun and spirit, and the cast looked like they enjoyed themselves in their over-the-top roles.

Here’s a Youtube video of the track:

Pirates, 2007 version. The Pirate King looks so Jack Sparrow-esque.

On a more general view, Gilbert & Sullivan’s operas aren’t musically sophisticated, but they’re rich with memorable songs and melodies. The sort that you can hum and sing along. They’re not really considered ’serious’ classical music repetiore though.

A couple of songs from their comic operas are also adapted for piano learners at around ABRSM Grades IV to VI, e.g. “A Wandering Minstrel” from The Mikado, or “I am the Captain of the Pinafore” from HMS Pinafore. That said, there aren’t nearly as many productions and recordings of these works as say an opera by Mozart or Puccini for example. They’re typically performed on stage by opera companies like Sadler’s Wells Theatre or D’Oyly Carte Opera Company (until some years ago).

Till then though, there’re a few recordings of this opera that I’ve got…

• The Pirates of Penzance by the D’Oyly Carte Opera
• The Pirates of Penzance by the Welsh National Opera

… which are really recommended for car listening. Even Ling hums along.:)

There are three local news publications I check every morning. There’s The Straits Times Online—which requires a subscription for most of its content—that tabloid-styled daily The New Paper, and there’s Today, whose site I’ll read for the mornings when the newspaper ah pek doesn’t deliver our copy of Today in time before we leave the house each morning for work.

The three are really quite different in tone. Online critics e.g. from the numerous blog sites and forums like HWZ regard The Straits Times as the government’s official mouth piece. Just check out the posts on some of these forums and you’ll see what I mean. But I’ll still read it to at least get the raw news headlines. There’s also TNP, whose articles I take a look at mostly for fun.

There was one article though yesterday that brought to mind a topic a recent discussion. We were talking about foreign brides last Friday evening too during our small group discussions, and at one point the discussion veered to prostitution. One little bit of information Grace shared that came by way of her hubbie Roger who couldn’t attend on who patronizes these services at Geylang was so shocking that I thought I’d better not add it here on this blog (which I’m always mindful of is read by my students).

Coincidentally, there was an article right on this in TNP a few days ago. The article is right here currently, with a few excerpts below when the article gets archived. Formatted to save space.

Teens, pimp went from table to table
They solicited openly at Geylang coffee shop, sometimes in broad daylight
By Hedy Khoo, October 30, 2008

HIGH JINKS AT COFFEE SHOP: The scene at a Geylang coffee shop near where Wang and the two prostitutes touted their services.

This was the indecent proposal from two girls from China as they went from table to table at a Geylang coffee shop, at times in broad daylight. They were accompanied by their self-styled pimps - Chinese national Wang Minjiang, 36, and his nephew, Wang Youyi, 31.

Their selling point: The girls’ youth.

I’ll get straight to the point in this one: reading articles like this makes my heart boil. Not merely on how they solicit services, but why there still is a flood of this type of women coming into Singapore and abusing their social visit passes for prostitution. Is local enforcement doing enough? Or is it just that some local men are so desperate that there’s persistent demand?

A married friend of mine who also reads this blog once remarked that she packs contraceptives for her husband when he goes alone on his overseas trips. Her reason? Well of course she hopes her husband won’t use them. But if he has to, at least don’t bring home any diseases.

Sure gives you a funny feeling.

(Picture from the TNP article)