Burns Night

Robbie Burn's legacy certainly lives on, from renditions of Auld Lang Syne (which incidentally means Old Long Way) every New Year's Eve, and more quixotically, in the celebration of Scottishness that accompanies the anniversary of his birth every year. I had never celebrated a Burns night before, despite being a part of innumerable other random British and Oxford traditions, from singing in the spring on May day morning, to wearing suits to exams. This was something I was keen to rectify so I jumped at the chance of attending a Burns night celebration at the Shoe.

And what good fun it was. The place was bedecked in tartan and of course with Scottish saltires, courtesy of the St Andrew's society of Singapore. The bar staff wore kilts, and there was the obligatory piper. The most fascinating part of the Burns night tradition is a ceremonial procession honouring the haggis, where it is marched in to the sound of pipes. There is then a traditional address to the haggis, usually in the form of Burns' famous poem, read out preferably in full Scottish brogue.

Everyone was given free haggis with neaps and tatties (which I found to my disappointment was no more exciting than potato and turnip). A bottle of Macallan whisky was raffled out and the winner generously decided to share it around. I am told that the best way to accompany a haggis is with a single malt - it probably helps to mask the taste!

In the spirit of Burn's night I thought I would mention some bits of Scottish trivia. Apparently, it is a tradition that real Scottish men don't wear anything under their kilt. Perhaps the idea though is to keep everyone guessing. As a member of the Scottish parliament said: "The mystery of what a true Scotsman wears under his kilt is as big a part of our culture as the Loch Ness Monster". Perhaps the best way to find out? Find a kilt wearing Scotsman and ask him to show you!

New Year's Greetings

This is rather rather late, but better late than never. So to all my friends, and to the (seemingly non-existent) readers of this blog, I offer my New Year's greetings:

May you live in adventure and mystery, in the warm glow of enchantment, and the thrill and fright of shadowy things. Read books that are good, and wise, that make you laugh and cry. May you kiss someone you love, and perhaps more importantly, be kissed by someone who loves you. Catch a snowflake or moonbeam, delight in the inconsequential. Most of all, find something not quite happiness somewhere in between rapture and joy.

[As inspired by Neil Gaiman]

700 Sundays

700 Sundays| Billy Crystal

Those used to the name dropping and revelations that are a staple of celebrity biographies will be pleasantly surprised by this book, a quietly humourous portrait of Billy Crystal's family which ends just as he begins his ascent to Hollywood fame. The book covers Crystal's childhood as part of an extended Jewish family growing up on Long Island, centering on his relationship with his father, and delving into his three abiding passions in life - baseball, dixieland big band jazz, and what would eventually bring him fame and riches, stand up comedy.

The book had its impetus in a Broadway show, which won a Tony award, and it is easy to see its roots. The advantage is the powerfully authentic and often personal voice that comes out of many of the pages. You can almost audibly hear in your head Crystal's famous voice doing his shtick. The drawback stems from the same source: for however good it translates to prose, many parts of the book begs to be performed. You want to see him work the crowd and do the physical expressions that are fundamental to some of the portraits in the book. A number of jokes in the early part of the book fall particularly foul of the translation from theater hall to the page, in particular a re-enactment of his very own circumcision, which might have worked with Billy charm and sense of comic timing but doesn't seem that funny inked out.

What a family Billy had though. The stories abound, from his Uncle Milt founding the famous Commodore Records which meant that the young Billy had personal interactions with a whole slew of jazz musicians, both famous and forgotten. Indeed, it was Billie Holiday who took a young Crystal to watch his first movie, and Billy's grandmother decided to give Louis Armstrong a hilarious piece of advice when Louis visited the family, which Armstrong thankfully didn't take. Billy's father eventually came to work for Milt and helped in the running of the record business as well as staging jazz performances and dances, and the result is a wonderful portrait of the grandeur and sophisticated charm of big band dixieland jazz in its heyday.

A particularly powerful portrait from the book, one that is easily overlooked, comes in the third chapter which takes the form of an extended one way phone conversation between a favourite aunt and her friend in which she reveals, complete with numerous asides and digressions, her coming to terms with her daughter being lesbian, and the brave decision she made to attend her daughter's wedding. It was an utterly authentic, real and moving portrait of everyday domestic bravery which deserves to be celebrated.

One of Billy's big passions is baseball and this is well represented in the short book, from his first visit to Yankee stadium, which began a life long love affair, to numerous household games with his two older brothers where they played out entire imaginary games, including their very own backyard World Series. One of Billy's abiding memories of the 700 Sundays he spent with his father is his dad patiently teaching him the fundamentals of baseball, and Billy finally mastering a way to hit his father's wicked curveball, all of which served him well when he managed to win a baseball scholarship to College.

It was also Billy's father, along with an utterly hilarious Uncle called Berns who had a special talent for accents and mimicry which an inspired Billy soon adopted, who initiated Billy's love of comedy. Billy used to perform jokes (often boardering on the inappropriate and sometimes scandalous) copied from stand up acts he had seen, at large Crystal family gatherings. Thankfully, the extended family not only has the grace not to take offence at the gall of the young budding comedian, but actually laughed uproariously.

Tragedy was to strike when Crystal was 15, when his father died of a heart-attack during a weekly bowling game, following some angry words with Billy, leaving his son both heartbroken and guilty. The rest of the book is probably the weakest section, tapering off with largely narrative sections depicting Crystal dealing with his grief, meeting and falling in love with his future wife (which strangely seems a bit dead and lacking much sparkle), and eventually ending with the death of his mother.

700 Sundays is a short volume, but is an enormous surprise as celebrity autobiographies go. This is a funny, moving portrait of an All-American family that is equal parts laugh out loud hilarious and poignant. It certainly deserves to be read, and if you are so lucky, perhaps even seen.

Grade: B+

Book Sale

Having spent a fair amount of time spring cleaning during the December holidays, I decided to organize a garage sale of sorts to get rid of old books and CDs which were no longer wanted. It was a kind of open house excuse to catch up with old friends as well. All in all, it was fairly successful. As expected, the interesting items were mainly the ones to go - double copies of good books like Ian Kershaw's Fateful Choices, and a volume of Frank Miller's Sin City.

Karin took several black leatherbound volumes of Agatha Christie as I expected she would; I also convinced her to take Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons - given her love of British comedy, I was sure she would love the book. I also managed to sell several other classic books among them a copy of E.M Forster's Howard's End, Greg Bear's Blood Music and several others.

Of course that left me with an enormous pile of hardbacks, which had mainly been purchased on offer from Borders, in the first place, which nobody wanted to touch. It's a classic rule which I have now learnt - nobody, and I mean nobody will touch hardback fiction, even secondhand. Blackwell's bookstore in Oxford knew that fairly well - one of their few rules governing the secondhand department was that they would not take any hardback fiction.

And of course old thrillers, Stephen King novels, and other such rather banal brainless reads were also left languishing, not that I was surprised. I mean, it was rather evident that my close friends were hardly the types who would pick up this stuff which was expressly dumped by me because I hadn't read them, or felt I would never read them, or found them to be horrible.

I also failed rather spectacularly to get rid of any CDs barring three Jars of Clay albums and Savage Garden's Affirmation. Admittedly, what was on offer was rather dire - Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, Richard Marx, Bob Carlilse, Rick Price smacked of overwrought sentimental ballads and were precisely being sold being they were relics of embarrassing teenage years. And no, I deny any responsibility for the two Spice Girls CDs on sale. Still, there was some half decent rock stuff which nobody picked up.

It was good seeing some old friends again, and I was quite pleased that I managed to raise over $100 for charity - in this case Habitat for Humanity. I should really try and prune even more of the mountain of books that I own and sell them, but human beings are acquisitive creatures but nature, and it is always hard to part with what you own. Still, a enjoyable enough evening, and for a good cause.

Old Brown Shoe Pub Quiz Record for 2009

I've been keeping a record of my participation in the Old Brown Shoe pub quiz over the years. So here's how it stand for 2009. Overall, I took part in 39 of the 52 quizzes for the year, a better than three quarter participation rate. The record reads at 22 wins, 8 second places, and 9 times taking the mantle of the quizmaster.

To go an entire year finishing in the top two is no mean feat, particularly given the evenings when some of the usual team mates hadn't been around for some reason or another. It has only served to underline how effective the team is - a potent mix of Britishness, youth (well, if I show up that is!) and a completely random range of interests.

I've especially enjoyed taking the helm as the quizmaster 9 times and I sincerely hope I will get the chance to be the quizmaster on regular occasions this year as well. It's not easy to set a good quiz, particularly a balanced one, but there is a real thrill to having created a good set of questions which everyone will enjoy.

Try and Try Again

The title of this post is taken from the old dictum that if you fail, you should, well you know. Unfortunately, I'm making these new resolutions not with the enthusiasm and go getting spirit encompassed within that saying, or indeed exhibited by the little engine that could (I think I Can! I Know I Can!), but rather with a resignation bordered with hope (not the other way round).

So I hope that I can do the following this year: exercise at least once a week; set clear targets and meet them (this post is hopefully a sign of that); be more punctual; walk the dog more often, keep in closer touch with friends; blog more regularly (twice a week); pick up a nice hobby/interest/passion; decide what I really want to do with my life.

They say as you grow older you become more set in your ways. You ossify. You grow comfortable, or complacent, or resigned. Which makes it perhaps even more imperative, year on year, to make urgent changes. Because next year, it won't be try and try again, but oh f**k it all.

Best Movies of the Decade (Top 25)

Here I have attempted to distill a list of my favourite 25 movies released this decade. They aren't necessarily the movies I think will be the most influential in the years to come, nor are they necessarily the most critically acclaimed. What they do represent is quite simply movies I would definitely want to watch again, movies that I found hugely enjoyable or thought provoking. Movies that somehow lingered with me, and will continue to linger still:

1. The Lord of the Ring trilogy
   
2. Pan's Labyrinth
3. The Lives of Others
4. City of God
5. Dogville
6. Y Tu Mama Tambien
7. Kill Bill (Vol. 1 and 2)
8. There Will Be Blood
9. The Dark Knight
10. Wall-E
11. Before Sunset
12. Atonement
    
13. Milk
14. Brokeback Mountain
15. The Dreamers
16. Michael Clayton
17. Sin City
    
18. Sideways
    
19. Good Night and Good Luck
    
20. Avatar
21. Downfall
22. Memento
    
23. The Incredibles
24. Spirited Away
25. The Pianist
    

Near Misses: Star Trek, Amelie, Gosford Park, The Wind that Shakes the Barley, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Minority Report, The Constant Gardener, The Queen, Borat, Finding Nemo, Million Dollar Baby, The Bourne Trilogy, Closer, Lost in Translation, The Wrestler, Spring Summer Autumn Winter Spring, Revolutionary Road, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Casino Royale, No Country for Old Men, Man on Wire, Bowling for Colombine, Match Point, Memento

Acclaimed Films I Haven't Seen: The Royal Tenenbaums, Four Months Three Years and Two Days, Hurt Locker, United 93, Mulholland Dr., Knocked Up, A History of Violence, Mystic River

Computer Gaming Madness

Much of the first week of the holidays has been taken up by two computer games that I recently purchased. The first, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is an excellent first person shooter, and a sequel to the previous Modern Warfare game. The second, Dragon Age Origins is a classic fantasy role playing game.

Before Modern Warfare 2 was released, I decided to play through the original Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, at a slightly higher difficulty level for a greater challenge. It underlined yet again how the Call of Duty franchise had really raised the bar for first person shooters. You take on the role of both Soap MacTavish, a new recruit to the elite Special Air Service (SAS), and as Sgt. Jackson of the US Marine Corp. In the Call of Duty games you truly get a strong sense of what it feels like to be 'under fire'. The system of not having a health meter, but having the screen darken as you taken repeated hits (thus limiting your ability to fight back) makes you instinctively try and duck for cover, or for those foolish enough not to, die. This innovation is carried over to Modern Warfare 2, as is the lack of your ability to save the game at any desired point, meaning that you have to survive till specific checkpoints or replay that section.

Call of Duty 2 extends the sheer turmoil and exhilaration of combat that was present in the original, and adds multiple new and fascinating settings and perspectives. In this game you are another young recruit this time mentored by Soap who is now a captain in the SAS. It would be hard to top the original which included the detonation of a nuclear device, a stage where you are a sniper in a ghillie suit stalking through an abandoned city near the former Chernobyl nuclear reactor, and you even get to take the perspective of an aerial bomber providing air support to ground troops. Call of Duty 2 does manage to top this though- you get to try your hand at driving a snow mobile, you have to negotiate a cliff face with ice axes, and in one exhilarating sequence you are a gunner on an armoured vehicle racing through the streets of a Middle Eastern city while taking fire from all directions. The settings are diverse and novel - from a slum in Rio, to an oil derrick used to host SAM sites, to a prison near Vladivostock, even to several levels in suburban America. There is also a stage which is bound to attract enormous controversy where you play an American soldier that infiltrates a Russian terrorist cell, and which involves you taking the role of terrorists shooting up an entire airport full of innocent civilians.

There are several drawbacks to the game despite the intense combat experience, the excellent gameplay, the creative settings, and the generally effective AI. First of all, it is expensive. At $75 it is a good $20 more expensive than a normal computer game. I would have less of an issue with it, given its quality, were it not for the fact that it was also disappointingly short. I finished the game in around 10 hours on the advanced difficulty setting. An average gamer could complete it in 6-7 hours on normal difficulty. After you complete the main campaign there is an additional section that you can tackle called "Special Ops" which takes specific elements from the game (evading capture in a forest, snowmobile races, breaching and clearing rooms, surviving a wave of enemy attacks) and you earn between one and three stars by completing these set tasks at higher difficulty levels. That can't disguise the fact that the single player campaign is a bit skimpy.

Another surprising drawback was that the Call of Duty 2 plot ended up far less coherent and structured than the original's which basically involved you hunting down the Russian ultra nationalist Imran Zakhaev. The storyline got downright messy towards the end of Modern Warfare 2, and the motivation behind a crucial plot twist was never really sufficiently explained beyond some bombastic and overly cliched voice-over dialogue between missions. As someone who hardly utilizes the multiplayer component of these games paying such a hefty price for a short campaign was definitely poor value for money. But Call of Duty does provide fantastic thrills and a powerful gaming experience.

Far, far more time was spent playing Dragon Age: Origins. The developers behind the excellent Mass Effect has created a more traditional fantasy role playing game this time around, creating an enormous world to explore complete with its own back story, mythology, political dynamics and much else besides. Incredibly enough, the game even provides multiple back stories to start with, depending on the background and race of your character, with five separate 'origin' quests as a result, all culminating with your recruitment into the Grey Wardens, a group of reknown fighters committed to battling the evil threat of the Dark Spawn. The game is immensely complex, and it is easy to be completely lost in the rich tapestry of this fully realized world. From recruiting and interacting with a multitude of non-playing characters to multiple dialogue options, alternate paths and endings, the game is huge in every sense of the word.

It is also fairly difficult unless you've played through a number of role playing games, particularly the combat elements. For much of the game you will be involved in combat with three other members of your party, and it is essential to have a balance between warrior type melee combatants and ranged characters such as rogues mastering the bow and arrow skill or mages. What I disliked was the necessity to micromanage combat - you had to set out clear instructions in the tactics screen and even then you still had to pause combat repeatedly to control individual characters. The tactics menu also had drawbacks. For example I found it hard to program a mage to cast an area effect spell on a group of enemies far away - or at least to do so effectively. Often, the only way was to pause the game and take control of the character yourself.

The advantage of combat switching was that even if your main character is of a particular class - such as a mage - you can taste combat in all the various roles by playing as an accompanying character for the duration of any particular combat. In the end, I left the game at the easy difficulty setting, minimizing the amount of micro-managing I had to do, and also because I wanted to explore dialogue and character options to a greater degree. I would have preferred a more fluid combat system needing less pausing and tactical development, though.

On the whole, Dragon Age was a hugely addictive and immensely entertaining game. I spent the better part of 25 hours of direct gameplay and I still failed to finish all the various side quests and sub plots, let alone read through the immense codex outlining the history, mythology, and back story that you accumulate as you proceed in your quest. It is a superb buy but only if you are willing to jeopardize your social life for a number of weekends, not to mention risk having your significant other severely annoyed at you for neglecting them! I can't wait for the inevitable sequel that surely must follow, and indeed, for Mass Effect 2, slated for release in April 2010.

My Film Highlights of 2009

The year is not quite done, but I've decided to do a short run through of the best (and worst) movies I've seen in 2009.

Best Movie seen in the Cinema: To date, I have seen 40 movies in the cinema this year. If I go a December movie binge I might just bring the total to around one a week. There were many quite wonderful films - the brutal rawness of The Wrestler, the emotionally heart wrenching (some would say manipulative) yet also quietly funny Departures, the wonderfully adapted 1960s take on suburban unhappiness that is Revolutionary Road, the delightful Up! and the thought provoking and just generally provocative Waltz with Bashir, and the list goes on.

Two movies stood out for me, though. For sheer pure enjoyment, nothing quite beat J.J Abrams Star Trek. It managed to both pay homage to and reinvent and revitalize an old franchise, but more importantly it was just a tremendous blend of wonderfully good humour and great action. Sean Penn rightfully won the Best Actor Oscar for a chameleon like portrayal of Harvey Milk - Milk, in my opinion deserved the Best Picture Award as well. I was supposed to choose between them, but I honestly can't, so I'll fudge and pick both.

Best Movie Seen (Other Media): This was truly impossible to decide. How could I possibly choose, when I saw A Man For All Seasons, The Lion in Winter, The Third Man and The Hustler on DVD? All of them are classic films that are deservedly great. How to choose between Paul Schofield's tremendous portrayal of Thomas More as a man of conscience (A Man for All Seasons) or Paul Newman's immensely charismatic yet complex pool shark (The Hustler), not to mention a classic film Noir in The Third Man complete with a Orson Welles cameo. That's to discount Bernado Bertolluci's tremendously influential Last Tango in Paris with an unforgettable performance by Brando which I also saw for the first time this year. All brilliant movies which I would definitely watch again.

Worst Movie Seen (Any Media): Hollywood continues to churn out fairly bad, testosterone fueled action movies which ensures that Michael Bay will always have a job. While the first Transformers movie was fairly successful (mainly by not taking itself too seriously), the second one was bloated, overcooked and excessively long that took itself far too seriously. It was also not helped but some fairly bad acting (Sam's dad going "I don't wanna lose you" in such a terribly fake way in the middle of a war zone being the icing on the cake). New Moon was turgid and often excruciating. I found it impossible to overlook the often terrible lines such as "all you have to do is breath" [to make me happy], or "Bella, you're everything to me" (okay, I'll be honest and admit those aren't the exact lines, but rough paraphrases, but you get the idea!).

Occasionally I also feel the odd compulsion to watch a bad, generally brainless action movie without any plot. Thus, the abysmal Elecktra and the rather dull Fantastic Four. Oh, and I also did pay to watch Street Fighter: Legend of Chun Li in the cinemas, but that had Kristin Kreuk in it, and a local Singapore actor!


Addendum: Avatar did indeed turn out to be a spectacular movie which made my Top 25 list of the decade (as did Milk) while Star Trek missed out in that regard. So I guess Avatar and Milk are my best of 2009.

Coloured (Paper) Memories

I was attending a Knowledge and Inquiry workshop organized by the Ministry and one of the sessions involved a hands on activity where we had to try and show a proof of Pythagoras' theorem using coloured paper.

Beyond the fact that the proof was really interesting, what struck me was that coloured paper was fundamentally the same from my school days. Even more impressively, the price tag showed that it cost only 60 cents for one packet of coloured paper, compared to 50 cents when I was in primary school. The price tag also showed that it had been purchased from one of those random neighbourhood stationary shops that are slowly disappearing.

All in all, a bit of a nostalgia trip as I hadn't seen coloured paper for years. It also struck me as fairly impressive that the price had remained relatively the same even after two decades. Other stationary items (fullscap paper, pens) are now far more costly, let alone food, cars and much else beside.

I remember a budding young entrepreneur type in my primary school who used to pay five cents to fellow classmates to make ninja stars which he would then sell for ten cents to other students. Even taking into account the cost of the coloured paper, he would turn a small profit. Ninja stars made of the prized gold and silver sheets cost more of course. It was also an early introduction to colour matching since a ninja star was made from two pieces of coloured paper folded together. There were many random combinations to be had - I particularly enjoyed black/pink and green/red ones.

Given my lack of ability in folding/wrapping/creating anything, I was often the student who bought the ninja stars for ten cents, rather than ending up part of the stable of individuals earning some small change making them. To put things into context, 10 cents was not inconsiderable in those days when your daily pocket money often amounted to a dollar. A glass of soya bean milk would cost that, from the old grumpy uncle (ten cents, ten cents, all also ten cents, big one twenty cents) who also sold Walls ice cream from a large cooler which he regularly slammed (never closed or shut, always slammed). A plate of small chicken rice cost only 30 cents.

For old times sake, I tried my hand at making a ninja star (while also attempting to prove Pythagoras right of course). I took a pink sheet and a black one and tried to combine them, but of course it came out all wrong. A person who apparently took weeks to learn how to tie my shoelaces (when I was little), who gets presents to family members wrapped by other family members to whom that present is not meant for (sis wraps dad, dad wraps mom, mom wraps sis), and who often struggles to tie a half windsor knot, that was always going to prove a challenge.