ReNe: blackout 5th anniversary

August 14 (Thursday) was the fifth anniversary of the great blackout that affected much of the eastern seaboard of North America in 2003. I read about that a while back, but I didn't think people would commemorate the anniversary of such an event... The purpose of the anniversary was to remember that time when, without electricity to power anti-social devices like televisions, people were forced to go out and interact.

I found it interesting that the blackout took place during summer; I had read that the highest power consumption (in cities around the eastern coast of North America at least) occurs around summer, meaning that more power is spent in cooling than heating. Well, ok, it's not so surprising because cooling is less efficient than heating, but it is interesting nonetheless. I wonder what the power consumption is like for cities in the tropics...

Thus, there was some stuff happening, organized by 'Streets are for People'. And luckily for us, it was just past our block so when we heard some banging and other noise-makers around nine, we took a walk down to have a look.

The first thing we saw was the mass of people and bicycles blocking up the junction of Bloor and Spadina (the 'Critical Mass Bike Ride'). The Mickey Mouse in the center of that mass was on a soapbox, but as he didn't have any amplification devices, we couldn't quite make out what he was saying. I suppose it's the usual issues about why more people should cycle not drive, and how cyclists' lives are cheap. There was a lot of noise -- drums, trumpets and noisemakers. They even had some portable potted plants; I'm not sure if those plants were there as an environmental message prop or for barricading purposes.



After a while, the group dispersed (finally allowing traffic through), and moved down Spadina with a lot of noise. Meanwhile, at the southeast corner of that junction, some one (or some ones) had set up a rave. It was supposed to be the 'Silent Street Rave' but it was hardly silent. With a couple of big speakers bungee-corded to warehouse trolleys, a macbook pro and a small colored strobe light, the street corner became an instant rave party.

ReNe: matrix olympics

With the Olympics currently ongoing, I thought the video below was very appropriate:

Matrix Olympics

ReNe: japanese shows

While we don't watch TV, we do spend an obscene amount of time on the internet. Speaking just for myself, I probably qualify as addicted. Anyway, in lieu of TV, this was what I spent two hours last night watching -- japanese tv/game shows on youtube. Not that the shows below span 2 hours; the first is ten mins, the second is six. I highly recommend the first.

Cat weight lifting


Human Tetris

ReNe: web ads rant

Ever got onto those commercial websites with advertisements? Many websites now have them. At first I didn't mind because they meant I could read that site for free. When the advertisements were still banner or sidebar ads, they were all right. They were like newspaper ads, colorful boxes at the top or sides of the articles, and I could ignore them. Once in a rare while, they were even useful.

Then they became pop-ups and that was irritating. Pop-ups can spawn like the tribbles from Star Trek. They were so irritating they spawned a demand for pop-up blockers. Luckily any decent browser these days should have a pop-up blocker.

And then came the floating ads, which appear the first time you go to the page and 'float' over the page for anywhere from 5 to 30 seconds. Not only they obscure your view of the page, they may also block mouse input and if you get impatient and click your mouse to try to disable the ad, you often end up clicking on the ad and going to the advertiser's page instead. Highly, highly frustrating, since you have to do even more work and waste more time 'chasing' the window to close it. Floating ads claim to have a higher click-through rate than ordinary ads but I suspect most of the clicks are simply erroneous clicks.

The unicast ads, oddly enough, don't annoy me as much. Probably because the websites I tend to visit don't have these. Though they are huge and sometimes you end up wondering how the hell to close it without clicking on the wrong part and landing up in the advertiser's website.

The one that irritates me the most are the pull-down ads, and especially those that combine floating and pull-down ads. These are the ones that expands automatically when the page loads or when you mouse over, but some have a tendency to expand whenever the page moves, it seems. For example, when I'm reading an article that's longer than one browser length and I scroll down; the ads float and follow you as you scroll, and then expand. You have to waste energy maneuvering your mouse around those ads. It's like tip-toeing around an unwanted visitor in your own house.

I know the more elaborate ads pay a lot more (see the little table below), and some ads are fine, but there is a limit. I have actually closed sites that irritated me with their ads without bothering to read the content, and I feed articles from sites I frequent to google reader, partly so I won't see those ads.

Side note: Apparently studies have shown that people can be trained to get used to irritating ads; case in point: television ads. Even complaints about pop-ups have dropped over time.

I've not watched TV regularly for 14 years (internet downloads are a great invention) and I've not read paper newspapers for almost as long (because the 'Staid Times' don't have much to say). I even avoid the radio (again, music can be obtained over the net in so many other ways). So when I do encounter advertisements on my favorite media, I get highly annoyed. Happily though, unlike other media, there exists ways around irritating ads.

Out of curiosity, I googled around for typical web ads rates, for non-targeted ads (targeted ads pay more, of course), prices in USD.
banner ads: 50 cents or so per 1000 (page) impressions
sidebar ads: $1.00 to $1.50 per 1000 impressions
pop-ups: 4-10xmore than a banner ad, which is from $2 to $5 per 1000 impressions
floating ads: from $3 to $30 per 1000 impressions
unicast ads: $30 per 1000 impressions

ReNe: on winterizing plants

Since we've moved to a bigger place, I've bought two plants (one mint and one ivy). From those two small pots, I've divided and re-potted them, and also started tomato and bell pepper seedlings. At the back of my mind, I knew winter would be a problem, but didn't dwell too long on it until yesterday, when temperatures dropped to 15C after a spell of rainy weather. Suddenly, it was like a preview of fall, cold toes and all.

And I wondered, just where was I going to put my pots in winter? I've seven potted plants now, eight if I count the succulent left behind by the previous tenant and which I never got around to throwing away. Luckily there is a skylight; unluckily Mike refused to let me move the microwave from the top of the fridge (which lies under the skylight) so I can put my plants there. Still, the amount of direct sunlight coming in through the skylight is not much; a pot can get perhaps an hour, unless I continually shift the pots to follow the sun's path. I suppose I can put them under reading lights at night as well.

Also, how cold is too cold? Below 10C? Below 5C? Growing plants here is very tricky, especially with the long winters. If you want to be able to harvest, there's even a schedule to follow. In Singapore, you don't have to think too much; just leave your pot out and water regularly, and seedlings can be started any time of the year.

Reading websites, there seem to be a lot involve in 'winterizing' gardens and potted plants. Already, I've missed the boat when it came to planting my tomato and pepper seedlings; apparently they should be started in spring so that they have ample time to grow in summer and be ready to harvest in fall. I started mine mid-summer and right now they're still small. Supposedly (potted) plants would grow slowly, if at all, during winter because of the reduced light and I'm to reduce the watering as well. Thus the tomatoes would have a (long) dormant period breaking up their usual growth cycle; hope that's fine.

Some notes:

• Mints require a nighttime minimum of 12 degrees Celsius and a daytime minimum of 16 degrees Celsius for active growth. Above 30 degrees Celsius growth slows. Normal ambient greenhouse humidity (70%) and lighting are adequate for mints.
• The ivy will do best in a temperature range from 60 to 70 degrees Fahrenheit (15 to 21 degrees Celcius). The maximum temperature an ivy will tolerate without added humidity is 75 degrees. The temperature range which an ivy tolerates but does not thrive in is 45 to 55 degrees Fahrenheit.
  

ReNe: about parades

I had not planned on watching the Beijing Olympics (because I never did watch any of the previous Olympics), but after reading a review about the opening ceremony in the local news, I got curious and downloaded the opening ceremony.

We were very impressed (despite the poor quality of the file; I couldn't be bothered to wait to download the HDTV version). What we liked about it:
1) the Chinese national anthem (more stirring than Majulah Singapura), the sharp goose steps, and the way the guard flipped the flag before it was raised (we liked it so much we went back to watch just that part a couple of times!)
2) the 2008 drummers
3) the entire first part of the parade where they introduced the inventions from ancient China; the scroll LED display was particularly ingenious. I really like that segment of the parade; it was very gorgeously done, from the theme to the choreography to the costumes.

The second part of the parade (the schoolchildren reciting the poem, the duet, the parade of the minorities), well, it pales in comparison to the first. Still, everything was very well done.

The sheer mass of people on the field and the amount of work they must have put in was staggering. It was, and I mean it in a good way, chest-thumping on an epic scale.

Ironically, the Singapore National Day Parade (NDP) was held a day after the Beijing Opening Ceremony, but I didn't watch it. I've not watched NDPs in years. Why? For one, I think it's a gross waste of money and resources, which can be put to better use in many other ways. For another, one NDP runs into the next year's... they're not terribly unique. They've become rather boring. People still rave about the previous Olympics opening/closing ceremonies -- what country/city did what, who sang what, etc. Maybe what Singapore should do is to hold a parade once every five years and make it unique. Make it infrequent but make it memorable.

Or, make a supremely grandiose gesture and donate the millions that would have been spent on the NDP entirely to charity. I'm sure everyone, Singaporeans and foreigners alike, would remember such a move for years and years. After all, people here in North America remember that Singapore bans chewing gum and caned some American boy for vandalism (when someone asked me that, I was like, 'WTF, even we, from Singapore, forgot about him years ago'). For once, I'd like to be approached by strangers saying, "oh, you're from that nice and generous country".

ReNe: chinese valentine's day

Apparently, today (7th day of the 7th lunar month) is qī xī (七夕), or what is colloquially known as the Chinese Valentine's Day. It's based on the love story between Niulang (牛郎) and Zhinu (织女). (No imagination with the naming... it's literally 'cowherd' and 'weaver girl').

In Japan, this festival is known as tanabata, and in Korea, chiseok.

ReNe: caning 'gum-spitting foreigners'

Forbes's most expensive cities.

13. Singapore, Singapore
Notorious for draconian littering policies, Singaporean authorities have been known to submit gum-spitting foreigners to public floggings. American tourists and expats can find punishment enough in the city's cost of living, more than 25% higher than that of Los Angeles.

Um. No wonder we always get the weirdest questions from Americans, like, "do you really cane people for chewing gum or jaywalking?" If it was a layperson, I could almost understand, but coming from a supposedly reputable news site...

ReNe: unfortunately IMBY

I had learned about nuclear power in physics classes but nuclear power as a means of generating electricity has always been an abstract concept -- for a NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) sort of reason, because there is no nuclear plant in Singapore. In my mind, nuclear power has always been one of those 'great in theory but not so in reality' thing, because of potential risks and nuclear waste removal.

Well, I can't say it's not in my back yard anymore -- Canada has nuclear power and we in fact live 31.32 km from the Pickering nuclear power plant. Moreover, with the rising oil prices and increasing environmental awareness, nuclear power is becoming a more attractive option.

Is nuclear really that good? If we take greenhouse emissions as one measure,

A typical coal-fired power plant (burning lignite) emits up to 1,150 grams of CO2 per kilowatt hour of electricity produced. The most modern gas-driven facilities emit 400 grams for the same amount of electricity. And for nuclear power plants? That number is around 30 grams per kilowatt hour when the entire life-cycle of the plant is taken into account.

It is this math that is leading to the biggest nuclear power boom the world has seen in decades.

The inexorable comeback of nuclear energy, Spielgel Online, 11th July 2008

Somehow I feel the equations are lacking something -- surely tallying the emissions alone is not enough? On the other hand, worldwide, countries may have to turn to nuclear for their power needs simply because the other alternatives are too expensive (oil, gas and even coal are becoming more pricey) or are not enough (current 'green' alternatives such as solar, hydro, wind cannot supply enough). The amount of energy that can be generated from nuclear power could be more than sufficient to meet current needs.

But what about the radioactive waste?

In the last 50 years of nuclear power generation, some 300,000 tons of the stuff has been produced, with an additional 10,000 tons coming each year. A part of that waste is plutonium, and it is incredibly volatile. Just a single gram contains as much energy as a ton of oil -- and it can give hundreds of people cancer should it be inhaled as radioactive dust. Should one stand next to a gram of plutonium for just a single minute, death is the result.

Not only that, but radioactive waste stays deadly for hundreds of thousands of years, meaning any terminal storage site has to be incredibly large, incredibly stable and incredibly isolated.

Spiegel Online

The problem of nuclear waste is probably the biggest disadvantage to nuclear power. Also, nuclear power is not sustainable; the amount of uranium is, like oil, finite. Uranium supplier countries such as Canada, Australia and Kazakhstan (in decreasing order) are scrambling to increase production at their mines.

In 2006 producers met only 62% of demand. (The rest was recycled from a diminishing supply of decommissioned warheads or taken from dwindling Cold War stockpiles.) The World Nuclear Association says uranium mining could need to increase by almost 300% in the next two decades.

Talk of such a crunch has brought the market to fever pitch. Spot prices for uranium jumped from about $7 a pound in late 2000 to a record high of $136 in June. Prices today hover at $74.

Nuclear power's white-hot metal, CNN Money, 27 March 2008

I'm not disparaging nuclear yet because we may yet find a way to circumvent the problem of nuclear waste. It is a very viable alternative because the technology is well-developed and affordable for many countries, but unfortunately, what may decide the ultimate choice for most countries could be that of pragmatic economics, i.e. the bottom line.

With energy prices rapidly approaching the unaffordable, however, concerns about waste storage may once again take a back seat. There are handsome profits to be made from nuclear energy, especially when oil and gas, but also coal, are becoming more expensive. And in Germany, with its older reactors that have long since paid for themselves, the black numbers are truly impressive. The reactors at Biblis, for example, make a pre-tax profit of €1 million -- every single day.

Spiegel Online

ReNe: royal ontario museum

We finally got to see the Darwin exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) today.

(4th August is Canada's Civic Holiday)

When we first read about the Darwin exhibit at ROM many months back, we thought we should go one day. But there never was a good day to go; I had to work on weekdays or something would come up on weekends or we were simply too lazy. And then, we realized that 4th August -- today-- would be the last day of the exhibit. Talk about procrastination... we stay 10 mins away from ROM!

Anyway, we went to ROM today with Yew Jin, who was in Toronto this week for a conference so we offered a place for him to crash. We'd heard good reviews about the ROM and we weren't disappointed. The place was huge and the exhibits well done. I don't think we've even seen a third of what ROM has in store, and we were exhausted.

The problem with museums is that of information overload. I think I enjoy an exhibit best if I had some background to the subject. With the Darwin exhibit, that was the case -- I knew about the theory of evolution, his voyage on the Beagle, the Galapagos islands, the book 'Origin of Man', and so I could skim over the parts I already knew and linger on facts that I hadn't known before, such as the pictorial view of the Beagle voyage.

With some of the other exhibits, such as the one of the First Nations people, well, I didn't know that much and so found the deluge of information overwhelming. After a while, I just let it go; didn't bother reading all of the information boards and instead admired the items on display.


Yew Jin and Mike.

ReNe: defining gender

There was an article in the NY Times today about gender testing in the Olympic Games, and it got me very riled up.

If transgender athletes are now allowed to compete officially, and if gender testing has been shown frequently to render false results, then what exactly are the Chinese authorities testing for?

The Olympic hosts seem to want to impose a binary order upon the messy continuum of gender. They are searching for concreteness and certainty in a world that contains neither.

Most efforts to rigidly quantify the sexes are bound to fail. For every supposedly unmovable gender marker, there is an exception. There are women with androgen insensitivity, who have Y chromosomes. There are women who have had hysterectomies, women who cannot become pregnant, women who hate makeup, women whose object of affection is other women.

So what makes someone female then? If it’s not chromosomes, or a uterus, or the ability to get pregnant, or femininity, or being attracted to men, then what is it, and how can you possibly test for it?

The only dependable test for gender is the truth of a person’s life, the lives we live each day. Surely the best judge of a person’s gender is not a degrading, questionable examination. The best judge of a person’s gender is what lies within her, or his, heart.

The XY Games, by Boylan JF (NYTimes, Aug 3 2008)

I particularly liked this statement:

But gender is malleable and elusive, and we need to become comfortable with this fact, rather than afraid of it.

All this gender testing does is to humiliate people, both women and men. So if a woman wins at a sport, which by the way would be her reason for entering the Games, she may not be a woman after all? Why? Somebody will have to win that competition; the competition IS set up that way. Sure, but what if her time was so fast (let's say it's a race) that it's suspicious? How small must the delta be between the winner and runner-up then, for the winner to escape suspicion of being a man? Wait, what if the competition between ALL of the athletes was very close, but they all put in brilliant times? So brilliant that they are all suspicious? Are they all suspected of being men then? Because women can't be that good?

Are women not angry at what gender testing implies?? At how incredibly patriarchal and condescending it all is?

I've always held the opinion that gender is more mental and culturally imposed than a physical state of being. Definitely there are differences between the male and female body, but I think society over-stresses these differences, and often, creates unnecessary and even untrue divisions and categories. There will be brutish males with exaggerated male characteristics and effeminate men with feminine characteristics... so what? There will be voluptuous females and slim females and amazons... what's the problem here? Are flat girls less female than those with big boobs? What about girls with chests flatter than those fat guys who look like they need mammary support?

I've received my share of such gender scrutiny before; as a teenager, I cut my hair short, did rugged sports, and refused to wear skirts (other than my school skirts) and heels. I've been told I look like a lesbian and I've been hit on by girls. I wasn't really bothered because -- and here's my admittedly odd turn of logic -- I like guys; I'm turned on by guys and I like the way they look. Hence, when I look in the mirror and I see boyish characteristics on a female face, I like the way it looks as well. Makeup and dresses don't turn me on; why the hell should I wear them? To attract guys who are turned on by makeup and dresses? I don't see the logic in wearing and doing something that's uncomfortable to attract the attention of someone who probably expects you to continue to wear and do the things that are uncomfortable should you succeed in attracting and holding his attention.

To borrow the words of Eddy Izzard, I'm probably a female gay.

So if I wasn't bothered that I was often mistaken as lesbian, then what was I irked by? It was the assumptions and expectations of others that irritated me. I'm a girl therefor I must wear 'girl clothes' and cross my legs? Whose life is it? I have no problems with other girls wearing dresses and make-up and heels; I may snigger privately as they totter down the street on overly high heels, but I'm not going to tell them they CAN'T do it. I have no right. And vice versa.

ReNe: gen x

A recent conversation topic chain over lunch one day went along the lines of, "internet generation", which led to other 'generations' including "Gen X", which led to "what you listened to if you were Gen X", which led to "Nirvana", which reminded me of "Queen".

Don't ask.

So somehow, I ended up idly surfing youtube for 'Queen's songs' (how ever did we manage before instant-gratification-net?), and yeah, wow, I'm once again hugely impressed by Freddie Mercury's sheer talent. Some people have issues with his sexuality but hey, he's a singer, not your boyfriend. Does it matter?

On another note, talking about generations -- I feel a little old. I use the internet a lot, I work with it, am practically addicted to it, but I'm not from the so-called 'internet generation', or 'Gen Z', who grew up with the internet. I'm not even from the 'Gen Y', but am at the tail end of 'Gen X'; i.e. since my time, two more generations have been defined. Trouble is, bandying words like 'generations' around makes me think of a typical demographic generation, and if TWO other generations after me have been defined...

ReNe: new batt!

So my MBP has been giving me some weird problems, and it's not even a year old.

I used to have a problem with static discharge last year but it's ok now. Not quite sure what I did though, because I did a few things around the same time. I changed from using a UK three-pin + adaptor arrangement to a two-pin; also upgraded and then re-installed Leopard (when upgrading alone gave problems); and I also moved from a drier place (St Louis) to one with higher humidity (Toronto).

My battery was also dying. The 'health' and the amount of full charge it can hold has been steadily dropping; less than a year after I bought the MBP, battery health was 33%. Full charge capacity should be 5000 mAh and my battery only had 1833; Mike's was 4599. Turned out that the problem was with a bad batch of batteries. Happily enough, it turned out Apple was doing a free exchange of these faulty batch of batteries and I got a new one today.

Now to hopefully fix the odd problems with my sleep/hibernate mode...

ReNe: when DIYing in a foreign country

Sometime back, I wrote about noting the differences in the houses between Canada, which generally have wooden drywalls, and apartments in Singapore, which generally are made of concrete. Also, the concept of posts. When Mike first made a hole in the wall, he was a little stunned at how easy it was (you don't even need a powerdrill). He has since happily made a few more holes. Since it's easy.

So today, I was amused to see a post about the reverse experience (an American who's now living in HK).

Lately, we've been preparing our guest bedroom for a new arrival; today's task was installing black out blinds and a curtain rod. Sounded easy enough. In North America, we'd always been pretty good at doing things around the house. All it should take, really, is a screwdriver and maybe a drill, right?

In Hong Kong, DIY is almost a foreign concept. The walls of most apartments are concrete or brick, layered with plaster. Complicating matters, the electric, water and plumbing lines run through the walls in a somewhat random pattern. One wrong step with the drill and we have major damage. Even something as seemingly simple as hanging a picture can create trouble – masonry hangers are available, but have a weight limitation – make a mistake with the positioning and you're left with a permanent mess.

ReNe: smokers

Living over a cafe sounds nice and all -- our apartment overlooks a patio -- but one downside is the cigarette smoke. We should have known. Who are the people who would sit outside in the sun, in an outdoors cafe? Besides 'mad dogs and Englishmen' that is.

To be fair, I think there are not as many smokers in Toronto as compared to Singapore. Still, it's a pet peeve of ours, because we think that it's not fair of smokers to force us to 'smoke' as well, and worse, this smoke drifts into our room. Grr. I can't wait for winter, where it's too cold for people to sit outside to smoke.

On a totally different note, here's something interesting I read last night.

In 1970 Prof Zhang (Zhang Jin-Zhe, head of the pediatric department in Beijing Hospital) suffered from meleana and was diagnosed to have gastric cancer and a gasterectomy was recommended. There were no fully trained surgeons around so the operation was done under acupuncture with the patient following the procedure in the mirror (guiding the surgeon performing the operation). When the surgeon said that he could not find the cancer, and asked what he should do as there was no facility for frozen section, Prof Zhang decided to risk losing half his stomach rather than the risk of missing a malignancy. The patient then continued to direct the surgeon in the operative procedure.

ReNe: the fuss about summer camp

When summer came round, I started to notice this thing called 'summer camp'. At first I paid no attention to it; I figured it was probably much like the school camps back in Singapore, where you send a class of kids away to some chalet in Pasir Ris for a few days. But then I started to think, maybe it's a lot bigger than that.

There were the advertisements everywhere; there were even the charity calls for donations so that less privileged kids can be sent to summer camp. I was mystified. Why were there huge posters in the bus-stops about summer camp? And why was it a huge deal that money be donated so that a kid can go to summer camp? I mean, I seriously doubt the kids would die if they don't go to summer camp...

I saw a young teenage boy busking a few times; his sign read, "Send me to summer camp."

And then, there was the news story a few weeks back about a girl in Quebec who was grounded by her father because she was caught on an online dating site (she was underaged, 14 I believe). Fair enough right? Part of the grounding includes not being able to go for a 3-day school trip. She was so pissed (particularly about the school trip) she took her father to court... and won. I'm just flabbergasted. Apparently the lynch-pin in the argument was that of the school trip; that it was some really important event in a young teenage girl's life.

There were also the numerous NY times articles. For example, camps that cost $10,000 for tuition (sounds like a university education), policing checks on conselors' web pages, summer theatre camps, and so on.

Am I missing something out here? Is summer camp like some terribly crucial teenage rite of passage, like the prom night? (Again, prom night here is a cultural phenomenon. I guess we can't really grasp its significance merely from movies and other media. Singaporean JC kids try to emulate the hype but sometimes it falls really flat. It's like trying to celebrate Christmas when you're not even Christian.)

So I asked some colleagues. They were like, nah, it's no big deal. It's just something for working parents to send their kids to get them out of their hair over summer holidays. They seemed a little embarrassed and changed the topic quickly.

Ok... so I guess (and these are all my personal conjectures) it's more the media hype than anything else. I guess summer camp is a big deal but not that big a deal. And I'm also guessing that, like many teenage experiences, it was probably a huge thing back then, but when you're twenty-plus and looking back, you wonder why and what you worked yourself all up for.

ReNe: honor systems

There was an interesting story in one of the local news today about a cafe in Kitchener, Ontario, where the staff trusts you to pick up the food and pay by yourself (and pay the correct amount). I like the comment by the owner, "We price the bagel for you, but we trust you to pay it. Just like you trust us not to poison you."

I think it's a very good idea, this trust system, and I am all for it. The cafe reports that they don't lose money and that people are very honest. But since the article is all about singing praises about such a system, I'd like to note the odd downsides to this trust system. Some regulars are so impressed that they always tip generously (which can set up an uncomfortable expectation). One of the commenters noted that she has actually gone to the cafe, and while the food is good, the staff is unfriendly, the regulars smug and it's embarrassing for newbies to figure their way around the cafe. My question is, are the savings from not hiring extra staff passed to the customers? Also, can I forgo the tip, since I provide the service myself?

I was reminded of Annalakshmi, an Indian restaurant in Singapore. Not quite the same system; you pay how much you think the food is worth at the counter. Sounds like a good deal, right? I think so too. The food is really good, the staff (most) are courteous and I get the impression that customers tend to overpay because they're impressed; the restaurant borders almost on swanky. However, we tend to take the 'pay what you think the food is worth' quite literally and we always pay what we thought was fair, and the old lady at the cashier would always give us a slightly dark look. It's not because she's naturally sour-faced too; her disapproving sneer darkens or smooths out depending on how much we pay. I mean, I really do not think we're underpaying, but we're poor students and we can't really afford to tip generously. Moreover, the food is all vegetarian and not made from expensive ingredients. Once the food was badly cooked and we paid less than usual. Her face was black.

So yeah, does it seem like places that run on an 'honor' system then rely on a subtle pressuring and shaming to ensure that customers pay, and pay more in the form of tips? I can't say but it's an intriguing thought.

ReNe: the dumbness of 2-pin sockets

One of the things that irks me is the use of two-pin electrical socket. It was irritating when I first got here, and downright irritating now after many months. I think that the fact that most plugs here (with the exception of big appliances like the microwave) are two-pin means that the earthing pin is missing, and that's a little worrying. But what's irritating is that sockets here do not have a switch; this means that for appliances without a built-in on/off switch, the only way to turn the appliance off is to pull the plug. Or pay money for a power strip, and it's only the more expensive power strips that have that on/off switch.

I think it's quite dumb. Never mind that, one would think that given that limitation at the wall socket, people would then design appliances with on/off switches, right? Not really. We actually have a lamp that requires the wire to be pulled from the socket to turn it off. Even appliances like the kettle and coffee grinder have a blue LED light going when not in use, continually sucking up a small but continual drain of electricity. No wonder the power consumption in North America is so high. So when environmentally friendly messages go, "save energy! turn off your appliances!", that means you probably have to bend down or crawl behind the fridge to, literally, pull the plug. No wonder many people don't bother. The 3-pin plug and wall socket with a switch seems like a much brighter idea to me.

ReNe: scaling down on consumerism

One headline in BBC news reads, "Arctic has 9bn barrels of oil". With some US politicians pushing hard for off-shore drilling and the rising oil prices, this increasing interest in the oil under the Arctic is rather worrying for environmental and ethical reasons. Given that the oil's located in the Arctic, 'who' does the oil 'belong' to? What about the wildlife? Sure, the rising oil prices have hurt everybody, some just more than others, some life-styles more than others. I think the problem is, everyone's looking at the dwindling oil supplies and trying to look for *more*, but what about looking at how we spend this oil and seeing if we can cut back unnecessary usage?

My question is: do you think it's all right to cut back on aspects of our consumerism if it meant conservation of the earth's resources?

ReNe: the fairness of coffee

Read an interesting book a while back: Coffee, A Dark History, by Anthony Wild.

What first attracted me to the book was the word 'coffee', but what was really fascinating about the book was the social history surrounding it. I'd admit I was in a hurry to return the book to the library so I skipped the parts about the bean's history, but the parts about the current global economics of coffee and social (in)justice between the countries producing and buying it were compelling.

I may love coffee and the cafe culture but I've cut down visits to cafes in the past few years because they're quite pricey -- they're all right for the occasional afternoon out with friends but not a place I should be going every few days, something we used to do when dating. And after reading the book, I can add another reason to that list: social justice, which in a way, is closely tied to the economics of coffee.

Consider: Raw Arabica coffee beans (the more expensive cousin to Robusta beans) currently sell for about 82 cents a pound on the world market. The Arabica beans are (or should be) the beans you buy or consume at fancy cafes because they are generally considered to be of higher quality. Let's say the consumer (you) pays $5 per pound for roasted beans, though the price is probably more; Blue Mountain retails for $30 per pound. (Sure, roasting costs money, but the price differential from 82 cents to many dollars seems excessive.) Also, given that it costs farmers about 60 cents a pound to produce coffee, how is that fair to the farmer? Wait, the numbers get better. That pound of coffee can make 30-40 cups of coffee. Taking the lower bound of 30 cups, at $2 a cup of plain black coffee in a fancy cafe, that means a cafe makes $60 per pound of ($5) coffee, before subtracting other costs. To be sure, there's a lot of middlemen that take the coffee from farmer to consumer, but still, in that 'cheap' $2 cup of coffee you're holding, only 3 cents goes to the farmer.

I'm quite disturbed by that. It's a very bloated pipeline.

So, what can I do about it? Stop going to cafes, stop paying for over-priced coffee? Yeah, that's one conclusion I've came to.

The fair-trade minimum price, which hasn't changed since 1988, is $1.26. But if I'm not mistaken, that price also includes the 'cut' by the fair-trade organization body; still, the farmer gets more than just 60 cents, maybe it's a dollar instead. Doesn't sound very much better, but it is still a better scenario, right? Given the choice, we should all buy fair-trade (FT) coffee, right?

However, though I don't have exact figures right now, have you noticed retailers tend to charge a premium for FT coffee? FT coffee doesn't just cost a few cents more per pound; retailers tack on a few more dollars per pound, while farmers just receive a few cents above the 'market price'. In other words, the retailers are profiting more than ever from FT coffee (and not just coffee, actually) because consumers are willing to pay more for so-called 'fair-trade'. To me, that doesn't seem very fair. I don't mind paying a bit more, if I know that all of the 'bit more' goes wholly towards the farmers. Retailers and middlemen are already making enough profit (before the FT movement came along), and now they're trying to salve the guilt of consumers while still skimming yet more off the top?

So, what's the conclusion? Give up coffee completely? Probably not, as I love a cup of joe. Plus, would that actually help the farmers? The middlemen could probably move to handling and selling other products, so the hardest hit by such an action could be the farmers. From a purely pragmatic point of view, I'd buy coffee as close to the source as possible, and I'd buy the cheapest FT coffee.

ReNe: wettest summer record

It's official -- this summer is Toronto's wettest on record. 272.8mm of rain, so far, over the months of June and July. It's fairly funny because all throughout winter, there was a lot of hype in the local news about breaking the all-time snow levels record, and I was excited as well because it was my first winter in Canada, but it only turned out to the third-heaviest for the record books in the end. In contrast, this summer didn't seem especially rainy and suddenly, it seems, Toronto just broke the heaviest rainfall records.

Unlike the locals, it does not seem terribly rainy to us. So I had to google -- what's Singapore's heaviest rainfall record?

In 1978, the highest rainfall recorded over 24 hours was 512 mm while the second highest rainfall recorded was 467 mm in 1969. And on 19 Dec 2006, the third highest on record, the 24-hour rainfall recorded was 366 mm.

All those numbers are rainfall recorded over ONE day.

And, because we actually remember that December of 2006, the amount of rain was 765.9 mm, which was a record for December since 1869.

We remember riding through the one on 19 December; we were on our way back to Singapore from KL. When the rain got really heavy and visibility dropped, we slowed down from 140km/h to 120, then 90. The North-South highway was jammed at parts so we had to occasionally moved to the shoulder to overtake the cars, and we passed by a few accidents. I remember the first accident: cresting the top of a hilly stretch, I looked down and was wondering about the black object in the middle of the road. Visibility was pretty poor, so I slowed down, and realized it was a smoking car, black because it was burnt. After that, we slowed down to 90km/h.

ReNe: missing the monsoons

Apparently, this summer in Toronto is one of the wettest to date. For this June and July, a total of 240.4mm of rain fell. That's apparently astounding because last year, Toronto received a total of 88mm for the whole summer, which was drier than usual.

Er, and here we were thinking that lately, Toronto's weather was feeling like Singapore's. Warm and humid, even if the so-called 'thunderstorms' here can't match the monsoons in South-east Asia. Last weekend was especially rainy and we especially enjoyed it. To us, it didn't seem especially heavy, but the local news said the recent rainy weather was creating 'chaos'. In the GTA, many traffic lights were out and some roads were submerged in water.

Average rainfall for Toronto and Singapore, figures pulled from World Climate's website.

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Year
Toronto	68.1	59.5	66.3	64.7	71.1	68.3	77.0	70.0	73.3	61.6	69.5	67.2	817.5
Singapore	238.5	165.1	173.6	166.4	170.7	163.1	149.8	171.3	163.5	191.0	250.1	269.7	2272.2

MiKE: Ugh. Postmodernism is Hard

I have not written in a long time. Both for this blog, and for my academic work. The problem with that, I've learned, is that at the moment of being read, stuff can make a lot of sense, but until one has to deal with the pressures of textual production, of using and combining ideas that one has read, these ideas never really becomes the 'property' of the reader.

So it's tough; it's been tough. I think I have encountered quite a lot of material, if I can recall correctly, there has been much stuff that I've read from such authors as Michael Apple, Henry Giroux, Chela Sandoval, Gunther-Kress, Theo van Leeuwen, Jay Lemke and many many others including some in the cognitive learning, semiotics, sociology of education, and other topics, but for the most part, I effectively cannot remember a thing about who said what.

And so I am starting to have doubts as to whether I have actually read all that, or have I been dreaming as the words appeared before my eyes, and I created for myself the illusion of ingesting the words and constructing the meanings?

I suppose a part of this has to do with moving away from the known and the comfortable, the life and the mechanics of getting along in a job in singapore, and moving into a new career, in a new country, in a new field, with little feedback as to whether I am treading in the right track, or soon to fall into a deep ravine with only very difficult escape.

And I feel as if I have fallen into a deep funk, knowing the way out in principle, but not able to motivate myself to move. I sit here by the computer most hours of the day, getting life sucked out of me as I watch piles of papers unread grow around me. Once in a while, when I get panicked enough, I download some more papers from journal sites which I think will be helpful for my "research", which then get added to the "to read" pile. And as a consequence of sitting before the screen too much, I am putting on weight. Not anywhere near obese, to be sure, but enough to make me feel sluggish and wanting to head over to the athletic centre and run. And then I realise my knee hurts once in a while when I run.

I know what to do. I know what I should be doing. I know that I should do it bit by bit. I know I should take notes, get started on a writing project; talk to people; join others who are in the same boat; exercise; stay away from the damn computer; all that.

But there is so much; too much. sian ah

MiKE: Marxism

Stolen from www.partiallyclips.com A brilliant comic, if you ask me.

ReNe: making a difference

This was floating around the internet. Not the first time I've seen it, nor struck by it.


I am the girl kicked out of her home because I confided in my mother that I am a lesbian.
I am the prostitute working the streets because nobody will hire a transsexual woman.
I am the sister who holds her gay brother tight through the painful, tear-filled nights.
We are the parents who buried our daughter long before her time.
I am the man who died alone in the hospital because they would not let my partner of twenty-seven years into the room.
I am the foster child who wakes up with nightmares of being taken away from the two fathers who are the only loving family I have ever had. I wish they could adopt me.
I am one of the lucky ones, I guess. I survived the attack that left me in a coma for three weeks, and in another year I will probably be able to walk again.
I am not one of the lucky ones. I killed myself just weeks before graduating high school. It was simply too much to bear.
We are the couple who had the realtor hang up on us when she found out we wanted to rent a one-bedroom for two men.
I am the person who never knows which bathroom I should use if I want to avoid getting the management called on me.
I am the mother who is not allowed to even visit the children I bore, nursed, and raised. The court says I am an unfit mother because I now live with another woman.
I am the domestic-violence survivor who found the support system grow suddenly cold and distant when they found out my abusive partner is also a woman.
I am the domestic-violence survivor who has no support system to turn to because I am male.
I am the father who has never hugged his son because I grew up afraid to show affection to other men.
I am the home-economics teacher who always wanted to teach gym until someone told me that only lesbians do that.
I am the man who died when the paramedics stopped treating me as soon as they realized I was transsexual.
I am the person who feels guilty because I think I could be a much better person if I did not have to always deal with society hating me.
I am the man who stopped attending church, not because I don't believe, but because they closed their doors to my kind.
I am the person who has to hide what this world needs most, love.
I am the person who is afraid of telling his loving Christian parents he loves another male.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I am the guy who came out to the entire school in his senior speech and got a standing ovation for his courage.

I am the girl who kisses her girlfriend on the sidewalk and laughs at those who glare.

We are the couple who planned and studied and got a damn good lawyer and BEAT the state that wanted to take our child away.

We are the ones who took martial arts classes and carry pepper spray and are just too dangerous to gaybash.

I am the transgendered person who uses the bathroom that suits me, and demands that any complaining staff explain their complaint to my face in front of the entire restaurant -- and shares with my other trans friends which restaurants /don't/ raise a stink.

I am the mother who told her lesbian daughter to invite her girlfriend over for dinner.

I am the father who punished his son for calling you a fag.

ReNe: child soldiers

Making headlines today in the Canadian newspapers was the interrogation of Omar Kahdr (see, for example, the Globe and Mail and Toronto Star). (Briefly, Omar Kahdr is a 20-year-old Canadian citizen who's was interrogated at Guantanamo Bay when he was 16. He was caught fighting in Afghanistan against the American troops.)

The topic also came up over lunch today, and I found the reactions of my colleagues (all 3 are Canadians) interesting. One said that Kahdr took part in a war and should be tried as such; she said, if your family was killed by this guy, wouldn't you want revenge? Personally, I think it's this type of thinking that leads to a lot of problems and wars.

The other two argued that he's should be tried as a child and not as an adult. One pointed out that although Omar did kill combatant troops, if Omar was a high-schooler and he were to go on a school rampage in the US and killed people, he would not have been tried as an adult. I agree with the two -- what do kids at 12, 13, even 16 years know? They may be physically big enough to handle a weapon, but mentally, these child soldiers probably do not fully understand what they are doing. (Even many adults don't know what they are doing in a war...) And by treating a child soldier as an adult and torturing him, what does that say about the captors? That colleagues added that he think it takes a sick person to be able to torture another.

To them, age is the lynch-pin in this argument. But I think that's a slippery slope (how old is old enough?), and that there's also something else that's wrong with the case -- the validity and legality and morality of interrogation and torture.

I also pointed out that it was highly unlikely that a teenager would know anything about Al Queda intelligence (anything of worth that the US side did not know already), and more importantly, that any information obtained under interrogation is highly suspect. Kahdr was, among other things, deprived of sleep before his interrogation, and people are capable of saying absolute nonsense when they are sleep-deprived. So if the information they get is suspect, why are they doing it (interrogation at Guantanamo Bay)? Lots of cynical reasons come to mind.

Under the Third Geneva Convention, which primarily concerns the treatment of prisoners of war (POWs) (Article 17):
"No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever. Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted or exposed to unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind."

Blah blah... "unlawful combatants"...blah blah
Huh.

Really funny posters

Stolen from http://www.insanepoly.com/. Of course, if you need a refresh, go read this wikipedia page on the scandal

ReNe: is google making us stupid?

I came across this article today -- the gist is the Google (and the internet) is making us lose our ability to concentrate. Though this is not the first time I've heard of this (that our use of the internet is affecting the way we think), I found myself identifying strongly with this paragraph (whose title I stole for this post):

"Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I'd spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That's rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I'm always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle."

Nicholas Carr, The Atlantic

I've written about this before. As a kid, I could easily read a book from cover to cover without stopping. Now I still read a lot, but I find myself flitting from article to article. On the computer, it's all too easy to switch between work window to browser, and my browser typically has over ten tabs open. Because pages are linked, I'd leave the page open so as not to lose the links, and because the page remains open and because leaving open tabs to articles does not take up physical space the way leaving open books and papers do, I don't feel the urgency in finishing an article and closing the tab.

I do think that our heavy use of the computer and internet has significantly affected the way we think, at least for me.

The combination of powerful search facilities with the Web's facilitation of associative linking is what is eroding Carr's powers of concentration. It implicitly assigns an ever-decreasing priority to the ability to remember things in favor of the ability to search efficiently.

John Naughton, The Observer (Wed 2 July 2008)

So, the next question is, is that bad? Probably; this lack of concentration would spill over to many other areas in life, and a lack of concentration isn't a positive trait.

Is it that bad? That's harder to say. It seems like we're trading off one skill-set for another. As students, we're told cliches such as "it's better to understand than to memorize" and that "schools should teach children to how to learn". So, maybe we're losing our ability to focus, but on the other hand, our generation is more exposed to a much broader field of knowledge and we're (probably, hopefully) more savvy at looking up things we don't know.

Does it necessarily have to be a trade-off? Now that we're more aware of it, I suppose not. Already many people are talking about changing habits such as checking email every x minutes. It's not as if we have to completely stop using Google or the internet.

ReNe: 'private patio'

The current temperatures in Toronto are still nice, as cool as Singapore during the monsoon months at the end of the year, but without the cloying humidity. But that's outside; it gets pretty warm and stifling in our apartment. An advantage, I'm sure, during winter, but right now in summer, it's irritating. So when the weather outside is nice (it tends to rain these days), we'd dine al fresco.


Look -- our private patio. Well, actually, it's the fire escape. And that's chicken rice.

ReNe: it's summertime

Been really busy lately; there's always something to look forward to every weekend.

As the weather got warmer, people started to clear their houses and hold yard sales. I'm not a good bargain hunter and Mike wouldn't wait for me to really dig through the boxes, but I still managed to find a nice terra cotta plant pot for a loony (that's $1). That's me, in the floppy hat. I've gotten some strange looks when I wear that hat. I've noticed that many locals ang-mohs don't wear hats or sun-protection devices; many of them look like lobsters after a while. The guy I'm paying; he was pretty burnt.

This was taken quite a few weekends ago, when a section of Bloor street (near our place) was closed off for a street fair. Mostly it's people selling stuff, like a pasar malam, but there are also informational booths (new age-y stuff, etc.) and street performances, as shown in the photo above. I didn't get the performance, which consisted of two women miming on an empty stage, but I thought the retro pram was fun.






Two weeks ago, we went down to this food fest during Luminato, held at many places including the Distillery district. Despite the cheap outdoor seating, the food sold were classy restaurants samples. Everything cost $5 per serving... to be frank, most weren't worth $5, such as the tiny taco with lobster, and the pork cutlet bun with fancy salad filling. They barely lasted three chomps. But the pistachio ice-cream sandwich (below) was worth the $5.

After eating, we walked around the Distillery district, which was a former whiskey distillery. We haven't been there before, but I found it very nice. With old stone architecture and wide pavements, the district was full of character.


My new haircut. Looks a bit like a helmet... I'm not too pleased. Am still trying to decide if it's the hairdresser's fault (because it didn't look like the style I pointed to in the magazine) or if my hair's simply too dry or something.

ReNe: long weekend!

I'm pretty excited -- this weekend promises to be fun. Firstly, it's a long weekend because Tuesday is Canada Day (and many people in the office do not plan to be around on Monday). Also, it's the culmination of the Jazz Festival and Pride Week.

Since last Friday, we've been going down to Nathan Phillips Square after work for the free jazz concerts (apparently the only free concerts are held at NP Sq), and it was pretty nice. We'd buy some buns from a Chinatown bakery and listen to the jazz and talk. The music's very decent and the entire atmosphere is very relaxed and festive, and the fact that it's all free is a huge plus.



We haven't gone to any of the Pride Week events yet but we do plan to go watch the Pride Parade this Sunday. If we have time, maybe the Dkye March as well on Saturday. Me, I'm hugely, hugely impressed with the support such an event has, including official support from the city. I can't see such a parade happening in Singapore, much less ten days of activities -- just look at the ban on the 'non-pink picnic' at the Singapore Botanical Gardens last year. It was apparently an official ban by the park and all I can say is, WTF?! It's just a picnic, not an orgy. But people turned up anyway (for the non-pink picnic) and I say good for them.

When I asked during lunch at work, tongue-in-cheek, if there would be an military parade or fly-past on Canada Day, my colleagues were incredulous. Eyeballs rolled, as if it was such an archaic and militant notion. "Oh, pul-leaze." I find their reaction very interesting.

ReNe: checking the weather outside

Today, my colleague sitting beside me today suddenly said, "My (weather) pop-up just told me it's a thunderstorm outside now."

We're sitting in the middle of the office so we're not beside any windows. Thus, instead of being able to look out and know the weather, we have to get that knowledge through the internet. Or we could walk into one of the offices that do have windows (but that's rude), or we could take the elevator down to the first floor (but that's slow). In other words, the most polite and fastest way to know what the weather outside our building is via the internet.

I snickered. "This is like those sad office jokes about people who sit in the same office sending instant messages to each other."

Mike and I do that sometimes. We could be in the same room, both on different computers, and sending IMs. Why? At first, when IMs first became popular years ago, it was because we could. IMs were extraordinary. Nowadays, it's because sometimes when we get so engrossed in whatever we're doing on the laptop, the only way to catch the other's attention is through an IM. IMs are now ordinary.

ReNe: raccoon problems

I'm not sure if it's because of the change from a large apartment complex to a house, or because it's summer, but lately, we've been having a fair number of visitors that are not of the homo sapien persuasion. I'm talking about bugs, flies and raccoons. (All very common in Toronto, I've heard.) Mike is currently highly irritated at the first, luckily the second problem was solved by the recent cool weather, and I'm just discovering how destructive the third can be.

We're new to the raccoon problem. I've never even seen one until I heard a couple fighting outside on the fire escape a few nights back. I was washing dishes and wondering what the hell was that awful screeching noise -- I thought Mike was doing something involving tools and rubber outside. Then I popped my head out of the fire escape door to yell at him and saw a pair of furry creatures tussling on the metal stairs.

Well, the raccoons quickly ran away before I could get the camera, but it was interesting. Curious -- why would they come all the way up the fire escape to fight?

And... that could possibly explain the pee stench in the corridor carpet, which mysteriously appeared last Sunday afternoon. At first I thought our neighbor sneaked a pet in, but now I think it could be a raccoon. We've been leaving the outer doors open when we're at home because our apartment gets really warm in summer, so a raccoon could have sneaked into the corridor.

And this morning, I noticed that a couple of my potted plants, which I leave out on the fire escape to sun, were disturbed. Initially, I thought maybe someone was trying to steal a cutting, but only the soil was disturbed, as if someone was rooting around, but the plants were not pulled out. Probably an animal then.

ReNe: summer solstice

Today is the longest day of the year -- the summer solstice. In Toronto, today, the sun rose at 5:36am and will set tonight at 9:03 am, resulting in 15 hours and 26 mins (and 46seconds) of daylight.

(I'm not sure what counts exactly as 'sunset' because I've noticed that even as late as 9:30pm, there's still quite a fair bit of light in the sky. This far up north, as compared to the tropics, it takes the sun a long time to set.)

Toronto is very lively in the summer. Last week we went to the Luminato festival, and upcoming festivals we hope to catch include Pride Week and a Toronto Jazz Festival.

The nice thing with the long hours is that we get plenty of time to do stuff and enjoy all these festivals. Last Saturday, we lazed around until we finally hauled our ass out of the door at 2pm. We cycled down to Mill Street to catch a food fair, one of the many events held as part of the Luminato festival. The food was a bit pricey and disappointing, but the Distillery district had gorgeous architecture and some funky shops. We then cycled down to St Lawrence Market to pick up a sandwich before catching the ferry to the Toronto Islands, where the Cycle Messenger World Championships (CMWC) was taking place. It was fun to gawk at the cyclists zooming past with odd-sized FedEx boxes stuffed in their messenger bags, and the race-hub/meeting point felt more like a rock concert than a race administration area. Cyclists and friends lounged on the grass, lean and tanned, often tattooed and pierced, as a live band played on. The atmosphere was competitive but in a rough and fun way -- we cycled past a checkpoint for the racers, where a big sign hung, "Park here, stupid!" By then, it was past five and the sun and our mood was still high, so we hopped over to the Waterfront, where many of the Luminato events were held as well (the events were spread out over the Waterfront and Distillery districts). We caught a free film (Whale Rider) and it was great. When we emerged from the theater at 8:10pm, the sky was still bright. We wandered around, listened to yet more live music (everywhere we went, it seems there was a stage set up and some band playing) and though about hanging around to catch some fire performance, but we were rather tired by then so we headed back. Later that night, I found out that the World Naked Bike Ride also took place that day; we were quite disappointed to have missed it.

Rene: summer fools you into doing more

In winter, people moan about the 'winter blahs' that result from short daylight hours.

I'd like to add the concept of 'summer fatigue', due to the long daylight hours.

It's very deceiving, the longer daylight hours that is. For over 3 decades, we've been used to the sun setting at 7:20pm, give or take a few minutes, and we've structured our day to the level of light outside and not the clock. Now, we look out and think, it's about five-ish, plenty of time to run errands and plus, it's not yet time for dinner. In reality, it's already seven.

So we'd end up doing too much during the daytime, having a late dinner, and then because we're used to lounging around for a few hours before bed, we'd go to bed late. I think people here in Canada tend to do more during the day because daylight (and warmth) is a precious commodity, but we're used to taking it easy during the day in Singapore (because it's effing hot) and doing most things at night. Those hours between dinner and bed are quite important and necessary to us.

No wonder we're tired. Summer fools you into doing more.

ReNe: our place is a greenhouse

One of the things that we're astounded and confounded by is the weather (as compared to what we were used to in Singapore). More precisely, the temperatures and the rate at which it changes, as well as the delta's. A week ago, temperatures were in the low twenties, then a heat wave spike temperatures over the weekend to over 30C. As average winter tempeartures can drop to -20C and summers 25C, that's a annual delta of 45 degrees; if we consider the record low of -30C last Feb and 31C last weekend, that makes it a delta of 61C!

30C? That's standard fare in Singapore. When people tell us summers here in Toronto will be "unbearably hot and humid", we scoffed. It surely can't beat the weather in the tropics, we thought.

But we forgot a couple of important points. One, after many months, we've been too well-acclimatized to the cold that Canada is famous for. Two, the houses here are designed to maximize warmth -- they are well-insulated and have large windows with tiny openings. Our current place, for example, has a fairly big window and skylight, but the actual area that can be opened to ventilate constitutes about 30% of the large window, which is about 1m by 40cm or so.

In short, it's a effing greenhouse.

We ended up taking cold showers about three times a day. There's no air-conditioning here; poor rentals are too cheap-skate to include air-conditioning as part of the rent. I'm actually fine with that, as the outside temperature isn't too unbearable and it saves on electricity, but why don't they build in better windows and ventilation then?! Will it kill the building's insulation capacity to have windows that actually open wider?

Happily, it stormed last night, cooling the air significantly. But, like I said, ventilation in this place is poor and sleeping in the bed-loft in warm weather is murder, as warm air rises. We brought the fan up but all it does is blow hot air at us. After tossing for an hour last night, a headache and stuffy feeling steadily building, I gave up and insisted we sleep on the futon 'downstairs', which is beside the only opened window.

The new laminate floor is nice and cool... if summer continues like this, we would probably end up sleeping on the floor instead.

ReNe: making yogurt

Ahahaha!! I just tried my first batch of homemade yogurt and I haven't poisoned myself (yet). In fact, it tastes really nice and creamy. And it's really very easy and much cheaper so no more store-bought yogurt for me!

The How-To
First, inoculate the milk: bring 4 cups of milk to a boil, and then cool till about 35-40C.
Meanwhile, prepare the starter: leave about 2 tablespoons of yogurt (plain) to warm to room temperature.
Next, combine: add the milk to the yogurt and stir well.
Finally, incubate: this step is highly variable. I left mine to incubate for about 5 hours. The online recipe I got it from says at least 4 hours, more if you want a sharper taste. Since Toronto is undergoing a heat wave right now (temperatures > 30C), I just lidded the bowl with a saucepan lid and left it in the corner of the kitchen. Otherwise, other ideas include the oven or a vacuum flask.

Funnily enough, I only thought about making my own yogurt because food prices have been going up lately, especially dairy. So by making my own, very approximately, the savings is 200%. Meaning, the cost of home-made yogurt is a quarter of store-bought yogurt. I hope I got that right...

ReNe: pet pee is forever

Interestingly, it has only been 2 weeks since our last post. It felt much longer because we were so busy/tired. The last post was on 24th May, and that was when we started to move into our new place. Actually, by that weekend, we were already tired because we were painting the previous weekend -- recall the previous post where we showed the 'before' shots of the cave-like apartment. After a fresh lick of paint, it looks much better now.

We shampooed the carpet on 24th May; our initial plan was to clean the place up over the weekend, give the carpet a couple of days to dry completely and then move ourselves in on Tuesday (because that's when the internet connection would be up). Easy right?

Well, there's a reason why we've been 'net incognito' for the past 2 weeks, and it can be summed as as: dog pee + carpet. In other words, one of the previous tenants had a pet (the building maintenance guy told us it was a dog) and it peed everywhere. On the stairs and all over the stairs, corner of stairs and closet, by the window, under the ladder, middle of the room, by the loft post... what the fark?!

We started to suspect something was wrong when the carpet started to stink after getting shamopooed. At first we thought maybe it was because of the wet carpet or that because we didn't get the carpet completely clean (the water coming up was still brownish) but since the shampooer (Rug-Doctor) was rented by the day, we had to return it. However, even after the carpet dried, the sharp smell of animal pee still lingered, and having owned pets before, we know what animal pee smells like.

Later, while researching online, we realized that this is a common situation -- new tenant moves in, shampoos the carpet and in doing so, removes the dust and febreeze and what-not that had been sitting on top of the stain(s) and suppressing the odors, re-wets the stains and brings the stains back up from the carpet padding back up to the carpet fibers. No wonder we did not smell it when we first took a look at this place. And no wonder there was a bottle of pet febreeze and a huge bottle of clorox under the sink.


We tried baking soda (it turned yellow; see above!) and zeolite powder -- did not work. But then, these are simply odor-lifters. We also tried hydrogen peroxide. We also sprayed on an enzyme-based solution meant especially for pet urine, which is supposed to work as a pre-treatment before shampooing again. Then last weekend, we rented the Rug-Doctor and spent the entire day shampooing the carpet, again. This time we also rented the wand (upholstery attachment) and we could see through the clear plastic that the water coming up was yellow (see the photo below)!


By the time we returned the Rug-Doctor, we were still not convinced that the carpet was fully clean but we were hopeful that the smell would improve. We were fully prepared to walk around the carpet in slippers if it meant that the smell is gone, because the carpet is so old that even the parts that do not stink of pee don't feel nice; the fibers feel matted and worn.

The smell was worse after that.

We were pretty pissed by then. Waking up everyday to a noxious smell and basically living in a litter box does amazing things to your mood. I've always thought that carpeting is a hugely bad idea in a house because it's effing difficult to keep clean. Yeah, warm and all but I'd rather wear slippers in winter. But maybe I was biased because I grew up in a tropical climate where a carpet = mold trap, and a cool (temperature-wise) floor is desirable. I remember lying on a cold marble floor as a kid during hot days. Still, there must be a good reason why carpets are so popular here, right? I just haven't found it yet.

Now I'm utterly convinced that carpets, especially wall-to-wall carpeting, is a terrible idea, even if you do not own pets. More so if you do have pets or children.

We did yet more research online, and came to the conclusion that many others did -- dog/cat pee is forever. Sure, some say you can remove it if it's a small spot and if you get to it fast enough (before it has soaked through the carpet fibers down to the padding, or even the floorboards). But with old stains like these, there's no other solution that to rip out the carpet, sand down the floorboards and seal the floorboards with polyurethane varnish.

And that's what we did.

It was surprisingly easy.

Underneath the carpet, it was truly disgusting. Yellow, brown and even black spots everywhere. The smells released were just nauseating -- flies were actually coming in through the window and buzzing around the stained areas.

The parts near the steps (both left and right) stank very badly, and here's why. Notice the yellow stains on the carpet padding.

This is one of the worse spots. A different kind of smell, not as pungent, but it attracted more flies than the yellow spots.

We showed the landlord some of the above photos and we called him over to smell it for himself. He agreed that the carpet should be changed and agreed to pay for a new floor. However, since it would take weeks for any contractor to be able to come down and install a new floor, Mike's gonna do it himself, tomorrow. The new laminate planks have already been delivered and are now sitting beside me, acclimatizing to the room's temperature and humidity. The landlord should be happy -- the labor costs saved constitutes more than half of the costs of ripping out the old and installing a new floor.

So, I was joking that Mike has leveled up his DIY skills. In our first apartment, we painted the walls ourselves and he installed all furniture and shelves. In our second apartment, Mike further learnt how to drill into reinforced concrete. He also installed all the kitchen cabinets and hob and hood by himself. Now he has learnt how to rip out carpeting, and tomorrow he will learn how to install laminate flooring. Next, he should learn how to install a toilet flush system because our current one is held together with dental floss (and that's another story).

The take-home lessons? Carpeting is a bad idea. Pet pee is forever.

This is what the place looks like right now; somewhat warehouse-shabby-chic. The shiny parts are where he painted the polyurethane varnish in an attempt to entomb the stench. Disgustingly enough, if you lean in close, you can still make out the smell despite 3 coats of varnish.