Where is my mind?

With your feet in the air and your head on the ground
Try this trick and spin it, yeah
Your head will collapse
But there's nothing in it
And you'll ask yourself

Where is my mind?
The Pixies

Sometimes I wonder where I would be now had I taken the regular route paved for Singaporeans. Not that I veered off dramatically--O levels, NS, poly, uni--just a shuffle in the education steps. I like to think those were deliberate and free choices, and I broke free from the yoke of the rigid monotone system of exams and streaming only to emerge with a degree to monotonous and repetitive work.

Watching my peers succeed in such a system with cushy jobs that pay for the occassional holiday and expensive toys make it seem worthwhile though. Tyler Durden from the Fight Club must have gotten it wrong:

You're not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You're not your fucking khakis. You're the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.

There's also the incessant complaints about work. The clueless colleagues, the irrelevance, the need to pretend you're busy when you're not, the list goes on.

Maybe people just like complaining. But what about the need to connect one's work to the greater things in life? This is where we stand on a slippery slope. One may get as much satisfaction from buying a new Xbox with his pay as another from contributing to the alleviation of world hunger. I'm not about to pass judgment on anyone who couldn't care less if their shirts were made in sweatshops.

Or maybe the trick is to find the work you love. Hardly anyone I know loves the work he or she does, and even so, the pay is unbearably low.

Choice. I think that's really the crux of the issue here. No use blaming the system. I would've have loved to attend art school (coincidentally like Hitler did) many years ago and be some dandy designer but nonetheless, I'm happy where I am and have been. Especially more so when the conventional is going through ceaseless regurgitation of education I have no interest in and wondering: Where is my mind?

Wasserbett

This one's really funny. I wonder why there are so few views on youtube.

Minorities and nationhood

Feeling ignorant about the issues in the region with regards to what I'm studying. I spent the past few semesters concentrating on samurai, exotic heritage sites and culture and naively thought tpolitics had nothing to do with them. Power, it seems, is the lowest common denominator for the desired life. Ideology and culture are the velet cloth covering it.

Well this semester I had the golden luck to read minority issues in Southeast Asia. The inter-ethnic conflicts in SE Asia (and I believe in Iraq as well), which I have been mostly indifferent to, had such complex causes that I should have paid more attention to in class. Again, I was more interested about the opium-producing minorities in the golden triangle and their relevance to Andy Lau's recent gangster movie. haha.. bummer..

Singapore history is not boring

I just want to draw attention to the blog (e-journal it calls itself) looking at the various aspects of historical and contemporary Singapore. It's something I'd read after a strong cuppa coffee, but I think it should be well worth the time, considering how little I know about my collective past.

s/pores: http://spores.wordpress.com/tag/volume-1-issue-1/

Niagara~! A curves/levels tutorial for better looking amateur photos.

Recently my friends got bitten by the shutterbug and started taking pictures with their spanking new digicams. So I thought maybe an amateur could give another some tips. So here it is: I can't think of other ways of turning mediocre pictures into better ones than the curve and levels tools found in good image-editing software like Adobe Photoshop or Fireworks, which is used here.


I took this picture of the American Falls (part of the Niagara) with a disposable film camera under a bright afternoon. I don't think anyone would use their expensive cameras near the falls and getting them wet from the mist and spray. (I got SOAKED even though I was wearing the souvenir raincoat!)

Naturally, you can see that the mist got to the lens and the picture is wahed out with white. You get a sense of the majesty of the waterfall but little else. Not very interesting.

So I applied the levels tool on the picture. The curves tool works the same way too. The idea is to increase the contrast of the colours or make the dark spots darker and the colours brighter. The picture would look better with a wider range of shades - in the dark, middle and bright ranges.

Ok, this is not a comprehensive tutorial. Just fiddle with the levels/curves controls on a copy of your picture. Be sure to check the preview checkbox in the popup dialog box to see the changes as you play with the controls. Experiment!


Jaa! Now the blue sky stands out more, like the kind you get with a polarized lens. There's more detail in the picture - the people and the birds appear to contrast with the massive fall. Now you just need to imagine the deep roaring sound of the gushing waters! (Nothing, of course, beats the experience of being there :)

Alrightey, I hope this has been helpful for all! Here's a link for more technical information on the levels/curve tools.

I'm not gonna change...

This one rocks. I was sorry to hear that The Strokes is taking the backbench now that Albert Hammond Jr. has gone solo. Cris was crazy about the band. Anyway, it's almost magical what they're doing - a bunch of guys just chilling, grooving and making music. Maybe it's because of the vibes, I love this lo-fi unplugged version more than their studio recording. Check out the stream of Albert's new cd here.

James Nachtwey

thengz, this might interest you. This photojournalist took important pictures that, in his words, recorded history and changed the course of history. I think they are a window to the darker side of the human experience.