Lunch for Today (VI)

Spize: The Supper Club at Bedok Road. This place is half an island away from where I live. Not that I mind. Sources informed me they sell the best roti john in Singapore, and I'd gladly travel the island two times over for good food. Besides, I find there is a certain tranquility in travelling long distances.

The place is within walking distance from Tanah Merah Station. I would like to say that Spize is nestled comfortably in a small village center, away from the hustle and bustle of life. But while the human density on the pavement was low I couldn't get rid of the incessant drone of vehicles, even when I turned away from the main road, so the statement would be too far away from the truth to make it even a tolerable exaggaration.

Took the roti john chicken special, the most special thing about it being there is very little chicken.

Overall was decent though. That orange dressing you see adds a nice sourish tinge, something like thousand island cream. Best roti john I've had is still from a vendor at Sembawang Camp. That may be a biased judgement, because the times I had roti john then was when the superiors weren't around or when the workload wasn't a lot. That is to say, the times I had roti john in camp was when I was feeling relatively happy.

Customary post-lunch walk ensued after I cleaned my mouth on a national day banner conveniently hanging around. Weather was cool. No sun. Windy. You should know me by now. I love those walks down long roads through landed property, hearing the faint sounds of people going about their lives in their homes, children playing, mahjong tiles clicking, the sound of television, maids hosing gardens, birds chirping, the occasional dog barking, overcast sky above and the road before me.

Update

Toto $8 million. Didn't win anything.

Good

Free performances last weekend at the Esplanade, caught The Trees and the Wild. Here's what a friend has to say. Some free recordings on their myspace. Their live performance at the Waterfront was breathtaking.

Update

Yesterday I went to watch a free chinese chamber music performance at the Esplanade. And then I caught some indie music performances, also free. Citizens of Ice Cream, a Malaysian band, was good.

Today I spent ten minutes on the streets furiously contemplating whether to have economical rice or Popeyes for dinner.

Tomorrow I'm going to bump into someone and have the wind knocked out of me.

General Interest (Can't believe I typed this out for you!)

As a graduate student from Stanford University, I collaborated with my adviser Mark Lepper on a set of studies that demonstrated these differences. The first study took place at an elementary school in Japantown, San Francisco. A small classroom was set up with a table and two chairs. In one chair sat the experimenter; let's call her Ms. Smith. On the table lay six markers, each a different color, and six piles of anagrams, each of which was labeled with a different category and consisted of a series of jumbled letters that could be rearranged to form a word related to that category. For example, one card labeled "animal" contained the letters R-I-B-D, which could be rearranged to form the word "bird". One by one, seven- to nine- year-old students, half of whom were Asian American - children of Japanese and Chinese immigrants who spoke their parents' native language at home - and half of whom were Anglo American, entered the room and sat across from Ms. Smith.

Each child had been previously assigned, at random, to one of three groups. The first group of children was shown the anagrams and colored markers and told by Ms. Smith, "Here are six piles of word puzzles you can choose from. Which one would you like to do? It's your choice." After choosing a category of anagrams (let's say animals), each child also chose a colored marker with which to write the answers (let's say blue). The second group of children also saw all six anagrams and all six markers, but as each child perused the options, Ms. Smith said, "I would like you to work on the animal anagrams and write your answers with a blue marker." The third group of children was also interrupted while they looked through the anagrams and markers, but this time, Ms. Smith flipped through a stack of papers and announced, "We asked your mom to fill out a form earlier. It says here that your mother wants you to work on the animal anagrams and write your answers with the blue marker." In reality, none of their mothers were asked about their preferences. Instead, when Ms. Smith chose for the children she picked the same anagram and marker that the previous child from the first group had freely chosen. This procedure ensured that children in all three groups worked on the same task so that their performance and reactions were easily comparable. After the children completed the anagram task, they were left alone in the room for several minutes, during which time they could continue working on the anagrams or choose to explore the other word games in the room, such as crosswords and word search puzzles. While the children played, their behavior was discreetly observed and recorded by another experimenter.

Such small differences in the way the task was adminstered yielded striking differences in how well the children performed on the anagram task. Anglo American children who were allowed to choose their own anagrams and markers solved four times as many anagrams as when Ms. Smith made their choices for them, and two and a half times more than when their mothers supposedly chose for them. These children also spent three times as long working on anagrams during their free play compared to the other two groups of children. In other words, Anglo American children did better and worked longer when they were able to exercise personal choice. The moment anyone else told them what to do, their performance and subsequent motivation dropped dramatically.

By comparison, the Asian American children performed best and were most motivated when they believed their mothers had chosen for them. These children solved 30 percent more anagrams than those who were allowed to choose their materials themselves, and twice as many anagrams as children who were assigned materials by Ms. Smith. When Asian American children were allowed to play freely after solving their puzzles, those who believed their mothers had chosen for them spent 50 percent more time playing with anagrams than those children who chose for themselves, and three times longer than those for whom Ms. Smith had selected the materials.

Indeed, a number of the Anglo American children expressed visible embarrassment at the thought that their mothers had been consulted in the experiment. Mary had an especially memorable reaction. After being read her instructions, she reacted with a horror that only seven-year-olds freely express: "You asked my mother?" Contrast this with the reaction of Natsumi, a young Japanese American girl who thought that her mother had chosen for her. As Ms. Smith was leaving the room, Natsumi approached her, tugged on her skirt, and asked, "Could you please tell my mommy that I did it just like she said?"

-Iyengar, The Art of Choosing, pg 47 - 49.

For a look at how countries fare on the individualist - collectivist scale, try this.

Tehehe

Went to catch Argentina v Germany and Paraguay v Spain quarter-finals at a community center last night. A lucky draw was held after the 2nd match, top prize $1000 worth of shopping vouchers. There was a small crowd who stood by the stage listening to the prize-winners' name read out, and after the last prize-winner was drafted there was a chorus of boos (or "errgh-er") and everyone walked off even though the organiser was still talking. I propose that we find such scenes delightful because we have just witnessed liberated behavior. In an age where graciousness is always harped on (there's a morbid fixation over it on, for example, The Strait Times forum) it is always very refreshing to see people behaving in an honest manner.

And then a lady requested for us to help pile up the chairs. I assume no one helped; I was resolute in getting away, so I didn't look back, and as I exited the auditorium I heard her say, in a reproving manner: "All these young men, don't want to help". This is one thing I like about Singaporeans, and I don't mean it in a sarcastic way.

I watched 20 minutes of Vicky Christina Barcelona on Okto earlier. I thought it was boring, so I went online. And then I saw some comments on the film's Wiki page, which made the film sound very good. So I decided to give it a 2nd try. I caught another 5 minutes of it before I decided nah, this film isn't for me, I have completely no idea why this film is so highly regarded. Life is like that. Someone finds that the film "reverberates with implacable melancholy, a sense of loss," I find that it's little more than Sweet Valley High for adults.

Dream

Just woke up from a gripping dream. Many friends and I were eating at a coffeeshop. We were cleaning it up after eating, and I was not pleased with that. So I shouted at another: tell me one good reason why we should be doing this. I don't mind cleaning up for a legitimate reason but this is unreasonable. Cut to me walking to some place with urgency, to distance myself from this friend I shouted at and another.

I am back in school, I see those two friends walking through the gates too. I am fearful for some reason. Cut to a classroom, we're all in it. I feel worried and angry. A pope's in front, and the reason why I'm fearful becomes clearer. Those two friends report on me. They say I had possessed some one else, I don't know who. And that's a sin. After class, the pope comes to speak with me. He asks me, gently, what exactly happened, and I told him I possessed someone. He asks me what it was like to do so and I told him I felt transcendental, like as if I were flying and I could still see myself in my HDB flat doing things. And then because I knew I was going to be in trouble I possessed the pope. I lay down on the ground writhing, the pope collapses. The two friends rush in, dream ends.

Admittedly, a lot of details are missing. I don't know if they're missing because they weren't in the dream, or if they were and I forgot about them. Probably a combinaton of both. For example, I can't recall the first possession, if it ever happened. But it's ok. Dreams don't really matter in real life. In the context of the plot, the ambiguity is healthy.

My dreams, at least the ones I remember, are usually as such. There's a lot of cutting and usually the overall plot is incoherent. Come to think of it, some details in the above account may have been superimposed by me. A number of these dreams are very gripping, if for no perceptible reason at all. That is, in the dream I recall being very fixated over things, very breathless. I don't wake up with a start like you see in shows. I just open my eyes and lie on the bed, as though I have just been released from a physical claw. To maintain the utmost fidelity to my dreams however, I've learnt to pen down the details as quickly as I can, while replaying the scenes over and over in their sequence so I won't forget them. It's always like a race, the fabric of the dream dissipating by the second while I try to capture as much of it onto paper, though it is always a mediocre attempt because dreams of any kind, not just the best, have one and only one moment of vitality and they cannot be resurrected in any form once the transition to a conscious state has been made.