Bradley in Singapore

I had the opportunity to catch up with Bradley Perrett, an old friend, for drinks today. Bradley, who currently writes for Aviation Weekly magazine, was stopping by Singapore for a week and I felt duty bound to take him out for a few drinks, especially given his love of Tiger Beer.

My family literally stumbled upon Bradley while on a holiday to London in December 2000. We had met, quite by accident, two other Singaporeans who overheard my comments (as well as my accent) regarding the musical Starlight Express during the intermission. They later introduced us to Bradley, who lived on a wonderfully cosy apartment on Charing Cross Street, a virtually heaven for both him and myself, given our shared love of books.

It is always enlightening talking to Bradley. On this occasion, we talked about airplanes and ships (a great passion of his), but also about the threat of nuclear proliferation. Bradley took the alarmist line, viewing nuclear weapons as a great danger, particularly its proliferation to states such as North Korea and Iran. I tried to argue from a viewpoint of limited deterrence, and the view that nuclear weapons actually help to limit conflicts by making escalation so costly that states automatically alter their behaviour (the recent Kargil conflict between India and Pakistan as a prime example).

Anyhow, it is always lovely talking to Bradley, and I would greatly welcome the opportunity to converse and meet up with him again.

In a subsequent MSN conversation we had, Bradley sent me his views on the Cuban Missile Crisis. He had read (and I was reading) a new account of the crisis by Michael Dobbs titled One Minute to Midnight. Bradley took the interesting line that Nikita Krushchev was the man primarily responsible for bringing the world back from the brink of nuclear annihilation. Far from it being an excellent example of successful decision making by an American administration, Bradley argues that Kennedy and his advisers were largely irresponsible, and nearly brought about nuclear armageddon. After thinking further on the matter, I have come round more towards Bradley's point of view.

Murray Perahia in Concert

I had the privilege of seeing Murray Perahia in concert. He is probably one of the outstanding living pianists still plying their trade today, and one of my personal favourites (along with Martha Argerich). His program included Bach's second partita for keyboard, Beethoven's Appasionata Sonata, Chopin's Ballades Nos 3 and 4 and assorted other works by Chopin.

I was especially looking forward to the all-Chopin post intermission portion of the programme, and it did not disappoint. One of Perahia's most popular recordings is his wonderful rendition of the four ballades, and he did not disappoint in his live performance of the latter two. He also performed an assortment of other Bach pieces (Mazurkas, Waltzes, Preludes) with aplomb.

More disappointing, in my opinion, was his rendition of the Bach partita, which is somewhat surprising given that Bach is a major part of his oevre. Perahia's recording of the Goldberg Variations remains one of my favourites to date, and he has recorded Bach extensively, but his performance lacked the crispness and clarity of his CD recordings.

It was inevitable that Perahia received a massive ovation at the end of what was a relatively short performance. He came back for three curtain calls, performing parts of two of Schubert's impromptus, and a Chopin piece that I could not identify. All in all, a wonderful concert by a world reknown pianist that everyone was more than thrilled to see

iPhone

I discovered that my mobile phone contract had run for over 30 months, giving me the option of renewing the contract, with the benefit of purchasing a new phone at a discounted price. It also meant that I was finally able to register the line under my name (it was previously under my dad's) and set up a Giro payment scheme for my phone bill (the bank account name must the same as the person to whom the line is registered to).

In the end, after weighing up the various options, I ended up getting myself the new Apple iPhone. My mom's plan was also due for renewal and because she is on a more expensive plan, purchasing the iPhone on her renewal meant that I could purchase it for $520 instead of the $870 that it would have cost under mine. However, given that I wanted to sign the new contract under my name, that necessitated purchasing a discounted phone on my plan as well, unless we wished to forgo the opportunity to buy a new phone at a cheaper rate. My mom, after a rather protracted selection process, ended up getting a Motorola V9, the main drawback being that the phone was a tie-in with Ferrari, and had a Ferrari logo stuck on the back. My dad tried to convince her that it was not worth getting a Samsung phone, similar in design (they were both flip open models) that cost over $200 more, the main additional feature being a 5 mega-pixel camera.

As for the new iPhone, I have only tested it out briefly so far, and the general impression is that it is unlike any phone I have ever seen before. It is more or less identical in design to an iPod touch, modified to include phone functionality. This means of course that it is completely touch screen - no keypad at all, and it is quite a kick to dial a number by pressing virtual digits on the screen. SMSing can be somewhat clumsy at times on the virtual QWERTY keyboard, but something that one could get used to. An additional feature for SMSing is that the iPhone tracks SMS 'correspondences' (similar to the way Gmail tracks email conversations) featuring a chain of SMSes linked together in comic book style speech bubbles. Another potential benefit I can see is being able to sync the phonebook with all its stored numbers, with my macbook, giving me a back-up copy of all my various contacts and phone numbers in the event (God forbid) that something were to happen to my phone.

In sum, it was a grand idea for Apple to move into the phone market, and the iPhone represents more of an addition to the existing design and technology rather than a fundamental new development. However, where Apple succeeds is that the iPhone represents a very real integration of technologies like music, photos, organizer etc. with phone functionality that the latest generation of phones have been moving towards, but which most existing phones have not quite succeeded in achieving thus far. It is easy to see why the iPhone, at least for the moment, is the hottest phone on the market.

It's Camels All Round

On one particular occasion when my sister invited some friends over to our home, a particularly nerdy lab mate of hers (who was unsurprisingly going out with an equally nerdy fellow lab mate) started pontificating on the difference between one-humped and two-humped camels. This certainly stuck in my mother's mind as she commented about this afterward (citing this as rather strange behaviour). I would have thought that my predilection for strange facts would have inured her to that by now. 

Still, as if to prove that no knowledge is ever useless, this piece of information came up in a pub quiz I was taking part in a few months afterwards. How many humps does a Dromedary Camel have, it asked. I could not for the life of me remember. It seems that camel humps was one of the few random bits of information that I found difficult to digest and my team got that question wrong.

So when it was mentioned that Bactrian camels, native to China, have two humps unlike their Arabian one-humped cousins, in The Man Who Loved China,  a book by Simon Winchester about Joseph Needham and the inspiration behind his magnum opus Science and Civilisation in China, I decided once and for all to set the record straight. So, Bactrian - two humps, native to East and Central Asia (also highly endangered apparently). Dromedary, far more common, native to the Middle East (and also the ones you are likely to pose for a photo with in front of the Great Pyramids in Egypt before getting asked by its handlers for a fee), and most definitely one humped.

So there, this hardly proved to be one hump too many!

J.B Jeyaretnam (1926 - 2008)

I was extremely saddened to hear of the passing of J.B Jeyaretnam, stalwart Singaporean opposition politician, who died of a heart attack on 30th September. Even more saddening and shocking for me was the fact that I only realized the fact a good 4 days later, having failed to read of it in the papers. More stunning still to me, it had not come up in the course of my daily conversations on interesting happenings in the world with my friends. I stumbled upon the news randomly while surfing the web. It will be the greatest dereliction of duty, whether one agrees with him or not, to not pay some homage to JBJ's service as a public figure and his ceaseless quest to promote democracy and justice in Singapore.

I was thus tremendously pleased that The Economist choose to feature JBJ in their obituary for their October 11th-18th issue (they only feature an obituary for one notable individual per issue). JBJ also received mention in many famous newspapers around the world, including the New York Times, and most of the British dailies. The Economist perhaps put it best. Quoting Lee Kuan Yew's assertion that the government engaged all those multitudinous libel actions to protect the government's reputation and not to silence the opposition, the publication noted that "Certainly, Mr Jeyaretnam, most distinguished of that tiny band, was never silenced. Lee Kuan Yew may have been the infinitely greater statesman, but some would have judged Mr Jeyaretnam the infinitely bigger man." I am inclined to agree.

The Return of the Prodigal Son

When my quiz team recruited me on that fateful day over a year ago now, they commented that I was a classic 'ringer' given my quizzing pedigree. Little did they know. I had missed the quiz on 17th September after my class overran and I heard later that my usual team had finished in an abysmal 5th position. The following week, I was asked to be the substitute quizmaster as Pete was suffering from some hip trouble. My team took part, without me, and finished 3rd, outside the prizes for the second week in the a row. 

This might seem to be just a minor run of bad fortune, but it has to be put into perspective. With me in their side they have never finished outside the top two. Indeed, at one point our team was so dominant that the quizmaster was attempting to come up with a suitable handicap for us after we strung together five consecutive wins, and nine in ten weeks. Lo and behold, I fail to join them for two weeks, and they splutter into a fifth and a third placing!

I could hardly afford to abandon them this week though I was quick to point out, tongue firmly in cheek, how badly they needed me, so I went for the quiz. Things got a little more complicated when Iris, an old friend from my ACJC days, ambled into the pub quite unexpectedly, having made a reservation to do the quiz. It was her first time there and she professed herself fond of 'trivia nights' as they call it in Melbourne where she studies. Oh, if there were only more ladies like her! I was sorely tempted to abandon the lads and join her team, but my loyalty held, and I stuck with them. Bros before Hoes as they say.

Given the return of the prodigal son to the team, it was quite inevitable that we triumphed this week and quite handily at that. It was a comfortable victory, apart from a round where we were forced to guess if individuals were dead or alive - far more difficult than one would necessarily think. In that round I made the gaffe of thinking Sir Roger Bannister (first man to run the four minute mile) dead - I had mistakenly thought they had a memorial service for him when I was at Oxford!

Afterwards, Iris, her sister and her friends headed over to Lau Pa Sat for supper, and I was quite happy to follow. It enabled us to catch up on our assorted acquaintances from our Junior College days and reminisce about the good and not so good old times. Come to think of it Iris is just the last in a long string of old friends who seem to be wandering into the Shoe. First it was a couple of old ACS(I) friends, then it was Edwin, Julian Han and of all people Sheryl Tan (a classmate from my first three months in JC) who popped by the Shoe the week I was the quizmaster. It was wonderful to see them all again, especially Sheryl who seems far more talkative now than I ever remembered her to be (but then again she was the quietest person I knew). So old friends in a familiar setting, perfect all round.