Yesterday, as I mentioned above, I had to work on a speech and a set of minutes when I got home. But the speech was easier than I anticipated, and writing minutes isn't that painful after you've done one set for the same bigwig and sorta know what to expect. I even got to watch Buffy at ten pm (though I had to stay up an hour after Buffy to finish the minutes). In my corner of the civil service, they expect NOMs (notes of meetings) to be submitted to the meeting's chairperson within 48 hours for vetting. It's a painful standard to follow, though I can also see why it's important to write the thing when it's fresh in one's mind. On the other hand, why can't meetings just be tape-recorded and transcribed, dammit? I did not go to university in order to become a sophisticated stenographer.

I think I've ranted about every yucky thing that's transpired this week. Other nice things:

-- I had lunch with my ex-colleague Mel on Monday. I was feeling so suffocated at work that I messaged her frantically and she, dear girl, responded, true to form. So she saved me from work for an hour and we got caught up. I mean, I ranted some about work, but I tried not to make lunch all about me. The last time I spoke to her was on the phone last week, but she was driving home so she was mildly distracted. Mel and I can talk for hours.

-- My colleague Lilian also rescued me. If not for her graciousness, I would have to write up three sets of minutes (or NOMs) this week. See, I wasn't supposed to write up minutes for Tuesday, but the aforementioned colleague got sick and the task fell to me. I was supposed to write the ones for today's meeting, but the meeting was supposed to happen last Friday and got postponed. All this, on top of tomorrow's meeting which I was originally scheduled to take minutes for. So Lilian will rescue me from tomorrow and I won't go mad this time tomorrow night trying to remember who said what at which meeting (it doesn't help that almost the same people attended today's and will be attending tomorrow's meetings). Gosh, I'm such a civil service cubicle rat.

-- Terz was nice and comforting on Monday night. It's not a side he shows often, but it's there. I'll spare you the sentimental details, mostly because it'd make me sick to write them down.

-- I just vegged out to three hours (count them) of TV. I got to monopolize the TV because Terz is taking an afternoon nap that is going to go on all night, I suspect. Either that, or he's planning to wake up for a middle-of-the-night live telecast of a football game. Anyway, I watched enough TV to totally chill out without alcohol tonight. I supose that's why TV sets are so popular in Singapore, where alcohol taxes are ridiculously high. Not all three hours were silly --- I watched the Channel News Asia documentary on Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew aka the founding father of Singapore. I think I'm going to ready his autobiography soon. There's nothing like witnessing myth-making first-hand to appreciate its power. Watching old footage of Lee in the '50s and '60s was really amazing stuff. I wish I had the time, energy and resources to sit down and watch, unedited, some of the newsreels from then, including the famous 1965 news broadcast, announcing the separation of Singapore from Malaysia. I've never seen that whole episode all the way through. I suppose it would be blatantly opportunistic to exploit the moment (it's the famous bit where Lee can't help himself and cries while he's on the air), but on the other hand, there are precious few moments of genuine national feeling in Singapore's short history, and I'm of the opinion that using it carefully, without resorting to overkill the way they have for certain images of the Japanese occupation and the 1964 racial riots, would do more for nation-building than any number of efforts to reenact the latter two examples.

Okay, that paragraph went on for too long. Let me get hold of Lee's autobiography from my dad and then I'll tell you all about it.

I'm almost done drinking my lime juice and I think I want to hit the sack soon. When I have time and energy one of these days, I'll write you an entry devoted entirely to what I do on a day to day basis and what is so wrong with the civil service (at least the way if functions here in Singapore).

Oh, last note: those exam results I'm afraid of will be released next week, so that buys me a little more breathing room. Check back with me next week (I'm not allowed to say which day, alas) to find out.

What a breathless note on which to end the above comment.

Anyhow, it's just after six and I'm on the train home. It's an improvement over yesterday, when I also left at six but had to work on a set of minutes and a speech at night, and a far cry from Monday, when I left the office at quarter to eight. But my story is getting all mixed up now.

To resume, Monday was a godawful day. In addition to being stretched in twenty different directions, I also managed to misplace my (work) cellphone. I know it's somewhere in the office, and I doubt anyone took it because the number still rings (when people steal a phone, they tend to toss the existing SIM card so that when you ring it, you don't get a signal anymore; nice people who find phones but don't intend to keep them will answer it when it rings and try to put the lost phone back in touch with its owner). Bu-ut I put the damn thing on silent mode so ringing merely establishes that the phone and SIM card are intact. Cleaning my desk today didn't help me find it, alas. I'll probably throw in the towel on Friday and resign myself to replacing it.

Oh, and all this happened after I got to work on Monday and discovered I'd left my drawer keys at home --- drawer keys I needed to get to a work laptop that a colleague urgently needed that afternoon. Needless to say, I had to cab to and from home to get said keys, to the tune of $22, plus the combination of morning sun and jerky driving (and it wasn't really rush hour anymore) gave me fervid motion sickness.

[I'm not sure if 'fervid' is used correctly in the previous sentence. It sounds right, it feels right and I'm too blah to check it up.]

So that was my shitty Monday. By the time I scampered up to the room where the education minister (not the same guy who appeared with my file on TV) was filming his TV appearance that evening, sitting through the taping was a breeze compared to everything that had come before.

But my week has improved since that nadir. When I got home Monday night, three of Terz's students were just leaving. He'd brought them home to tutor them on writing argumentative essays. Since he teaches at a Catholic boys' school, you may insert your own off-colour joke here. I was just amused because they looked amused as I walked up to the apartment. Maybe they were expecting me to say something wifely and rebuking to Terz.

After almost two months of doing crosswords on the way to work, I've reverted to journal-writing --- except that all these people who push past me on the train keep interrupting, without even saying, "Excuse me."

Damn, it took me five minutes to write that sentence.

Anyway, I was thinking this morning that if I had titles for my journal entries, this one would be called My File Is On TV! Which is suitably silly shorthand for telling you that all my prep work Monday and Tuesday for certain education bigwigs to appear on TV last night did not go to waste because a certain dark brown paper file was seen on the coffee table in front of one of the aforementioned bigwigs and I know the creases of that file intimately.

My File Is On TV! is also suitable shorthand for saying that Monday and Tuesday were shitty days, work-wise, and that Monday in particular distinguished itself as the shittiest day of work at the new job so far. I think what made it worse was that the shittiness was no one's fault in particular.

It began with the unfortunate news that the colleague with whom I work closely was on two days' medical leave for tonsillitis. That meant I had to cover some of her more immediate responsibilities. As I told some of my colleagues, with the TV appearance to prep and an unrelated but important meeting on Tuesday morning, I suddenly had a lot more stuff to consolidate and clear within 48 hours of Monday morning.

Back from dinner and the first episode of season eight (I think) of ER. Dinner was at Hua Ting Restaurant at Orchard Hotel, which is a Chinese restaurant with the most modern decor I've ever seen in one. There was the obligatory red, but there was also a good bit of zen-ish dark wood and photographs of antiques (in addition to the usual fake-looking antiques sitting around). Instead of the chopsticks holders being the usual porcelain, they were stainless steel and the ivory chopsticks had stainless steel ends as well (the ends you hold, not the ends you eat with). Neato.

The food was good. The steamed buns (mantou) were a little small but yummy. And there was the usual politics-heavy conversation from my dad, which I freely admit contributing to. It's a hazard of my job, perhaps.

After dinner, Terz had planned to monopolize the TV, but it turned out the Man U game was just ending, so I got to watch ER. It was okay. I'm a big softie for ER, cruddy as it is compared to its earlier seasons. I'm going to go read the MightyBigTV, I mean, TelevisionWithOutPity recap now.

What a splendid weekend it's been so far. Last night, I stoned at home with a copy of Her World, which was as lacking in intellectual stimulus as ever and perfect for the mood I was in. I've restrained the urge to buy it for about a week now, but I gave in last night. Looking at vapid pictures with matching vapid articles was just the antidote I needed to the week's work angst. Of course, the fact that my AD (assistant director) called me at nine-ish to clarify something in an urgent document I wrote yesterday morning wasn't all that thrilling, but the Her World and chocolate raisins helped to smooth over that.

I have learned from Her World that the website shopaholicsworld.com ships free anywhere in Singapore. Also that one-day Shiatsu massage classes (where you learn to massage your partner) cost $100 per person (or was that per couple?). Also that too much sex is too much yin that eats up your man's yang. And they call Her World a fluffy magazine.

From the website, shopaholicsworld.com, by the way, I have learned that black and red are the new in colors --- black, because of the recession and general malaise that plagues the world, red I forget why. I also resisted the urge to buy a cute silver handbag from the website. I think I still prefer getting stuff in person, from a shop, where I can look things over. Pictures in magazines and on websites arenever quite the same as the real thing(s).

This morning, I had a highly successful roleplay session. (Non-roleplayers need not read on.) A friend and I are attempting to play sisters, because we both have never had the chance to play in-character family before, and it's working out quite well, even though we only play together once or twice a week. However, we're going to need to roleplay with more non-family folks soon. It's so nice to roleplay with someone who writes well and who's fun to bounce ideas off. My other roleplay session, which was going on at the same time via a different character, was just horrible in contrast: people logging off in the middle of it, an out-of-character channel discussion that caused the roleplay to come to a grinding halt, and general blahness.

Mid-afternoon, I went to my ex-colleague's home for yu sheng. (For those of you who missed the Chinese New Year entry and hence the definition of yu sheng, here it is: raw fish plus colorful shredded veggies plus crackers plus sweet sauce, stirred into a kaleidoscopic mess.) He had people over last year too and his mom's chicken curry is as yummy as ever, though not quite as spicy as I like it. There was the usual gabbery about what was going in the school I used to teach at, as well as some gossip about what it was like working at the Education Ministry. Two of us transferred in January from the school to the ministry, but we're working in different divisions (I've got the public affairs gig, she's doing organisational development, which is a catchphrase for all that corporate innovation crap that I can't stand). Apparently, O Level results will be out on Thursday and A Level results on Saturday (be still, my frantically beating heart), so I might see these ex-colleagues soon to have lunch and/or angst over results.

Note to self: Swop Saturday work schedule with someone else, since I would like to be present in person at my old school to hand out those results to my ex-students, however horrible those results turn out to be.

This is just like being a student and angsting over how one did in an exam --- except that it's worse because if a kid screws up, even in the tiniest fashion, you never know if it was somehow your fault as the teacher.

On that cheery note, I'm going to dinner with my parents. Terz is getting dressed and I should go put on some lipstick to disguise the spot on my lip where, um, there was dry skin that I peeled off. Gee, you really didn't want to know that, did you?

The clearest sign that I really don't give much of a damn about BtVS anymore, a far cry from my fanatical following of season three: Last night, I learned that Terence had taped over some of my season five episodes --- which I'd been diligently taping out of some residual sense of loyalty to the series, I suppose, since I don't particularly care for any of them so far --- with at least an entire week's worth of anime. And you know what? I didn't even give a cow. All I did was dig up some other tape to continue taping, since I knew last night's ep was "Crush" and I might have wanted to keep it for a while, and I didn't even endanger his three Band of Brothers tapes in revenge or anything.

Yes, that is how bad Buffy's gotten.

So last night's ep was all right, but I'm peeved that I made a mistake and "The Body" is not next week but the week after. Bah.

I'm leaving later than usual (7:45 am) for work today. I'm a little too blah to care, though it means the trains will probably be a little more crowded.

I shall learn from Keet to write short journal entries, without them necessarily sounding as spurty as LiveJournal entries.

Work has actually been decent these past two days --- but I have surely jinxed it by that very observation and tomorrow there'll be hell to pay.

G cracked me up today. All the way from London, he sends me this one-line e-mail from Mr Brown:

"6. That there may be a new Statutory Board set up to assist schools in Singapore manage matters of racial integration and harmony, the Team for Uniform Development, Unity and National Growth, or TUDUNG."

-- Singapore National Education 78.

My God. I just about died laughing, especially since I'd just written a too-long analysis of the tudung thing too. Good thing I didn't have time to read his e-mail till after I'd finished writing that analysis, or I'd've gotten nothing done. I want to make a badge that says TUDUNG, except that I think I'd get fired for that.

If you don't get the tudung joke, that's 'cause you're not like me, facing a barrage of media articles --- local and foreign, mind you --- on the subject day after day. I do believe I've been working on the issue for close to a month now. Of course, even if you know what the tudung issue is about, you also have to know Singapore and our wacky lives (or lack thereof) to understand Mr Brown's sense of humor.

Another reason today was good: I left work appreciably early, i.e. the sun was still out and even hot as I walked from my work building to the train station. Usually it's all nice and cloudy and evening-y by the time I get out of the building. I'm not a big fan of our tropical sun, but it certainly put a bounce in my step as I left today.

We had chicken rice for dinner tonight, with some veggies on the side. (This information is mostly for Keet, who enjoys reading about our strange and exotic foods.) Last night, Terz made bak kut teh, which is pork rib soup, boiled for hours and hours with loads of Chinese herbs and soya sauce. He made so much we had my cousin and his girlfriend over for dinner, though she had an exercise class, so we ate first and they came over at nine to eat. My cousin and his girlfriend are somewhat following in our esteemed paths of entering the National Institute of Education together to get teaching certification, before they get married and stuff. Except that they're feeling a lot more pressure to get married, since they've been going out for a while now (whereas, for those of you still playing catch-up, Terz and I only met at the NIE). Meanwhile, they're relief teaching at different schools for now and not having too horrible of a time of it. Yet.

The Body Shop no longer produces Scent of A Woman, which is a daft name for a very nice perfume. This puts me in a fix because some time in the middle of last year, all my other perfumes, though still smelling quite lovely, began to give me mild rashes. All the other scents that The Body Shop currently produces are either too sweet or too musky. I'm in quite a fix. Anyone got a hypoallergic perfume to recommend?

I've finally endured of the godawful BtVS season five to get to two good episodes. Tonight's is "Crush" and next week's is "The Body". I'm not sure what will keep me watching after that.

I got up a little earlier than usual (twenty minutes, to be precise), so I thought I'd write an entry. Also, I have all this angsty energy in me. I think it comes from a fervent desire not to go to work today, although I'm too conscientious to fake a MC for it, while on the other hand I'm well-rested and shouldn't be feeling such a strong urge to stay in bed. As it is, due to my three-hour nap yesterday afternoon, I took more than an hour to fall asleep last night (after finishing yesterday's entry) and I stirred several times this morning at least an hour before my usual wake-up time (6:45 am).

I forgot to mention yesterday that in the morning, I rang up my friend/ex-college roommate in Chicago and finally got to talk to her! We've been out of touch for a few years, on account of her being in the Peace Corps, then I did a random Google search for her one day, which narrowed her place of residence down to Chicago, then another Chicago friend ran into her on the street and phone numbers and e-mail addresses were exchanged. I've procrastinated on calling her since last November (right around Thanksgiving, in fact) and it was good to finally talk to her, even though it was a bit weird at first due to the whole out-of-touch thing. And now I might spend a couple of days with her when I go for my brother's graduation in May, hurrah! I was a little bummed about that trip because original plans to fly to the East Coast to see friends (as well as Madison, where he goes to school) were nixed due to exorbitant air ticket prices. I suppose I could get the aforementioned friends to keep their eyes peeled for a cheap domestic flight between Chicago and the East Coast for me, but I'm also too lazy to orchestrate all that.

And now I have to get dressed and go to work. Bah. May it be a quiet day. I need one of those to restore my work spirits, or this is gonna be a helluva long week indeed.

Welcome to your regularly scheduled update of What's Going On In Tym's Life.

I had this entire rant about my job thought out yesterday, as I was walking to the MRT station to go to said job, but it's become instinctive to do crosswords on the train so I didn't write the rant down. Suffice to say that I spent two hours of an already very busy Friday toying with Microsoft Word and reformatting a stupid file, just to keep a certain boss happy. I will never understand why format is more important than content, or why people pay university graduates so much money to play around with MS Word's admittedly limited formatting abilities. I was just glad when that file got e-mailed out and I didn't have to look at it anymore.

The busyness of the week extended to 2:30 pm on Saturday because I had to wait for someone to approve a document that I had to e-mail out. So I printed out some crosswords while waiting. It's no fun having to stay at work until the office lights automatically begin to dim (around 2 pm). I went home and went straight to bed, since we'd gone out till almost 2 am on Friday night too. Our good friends the Bs had a room at the Fullerton Hotel (a six-star hotel by the waterfront in downtown), so we had dinner at One Fullerton (for the record, Stuart Anderson's Black Angus has only mediocre steak and even more mediocre service), joined them for drinks at the hotel bar, then we were off to karaoke at Frog Prince. We were only there for two hours 'cause I had a big day at work on Saturday. I'm in charge of the March edition of the Ministry of Education newsletter and the writer we hired had to interview one of the political heads on Saturday morning (his only free spot) and I had to be there to nod politely and smile. And that was a really long sentence for which I apologize, but I think I'm woefully out of the habit of writing for leisure, and it's taking its toll on this journal.

Anyway.

Enough about work. It's not as if what I do most of the day defines who I am. If anything, the experiences of Thursday and Friday underscored how little I want to stay on and work for my current employer after the scholarship bond expires (July 14, 2005, for anyone who's keeping track).

The weekend's been lazy, as usual. No socialising (except for Friday night), much sleeping, and some grocery shopping. Don't we sound spectacularly boring?

I really need to start writing on weekdays. By the time it gets to Sunday night, I'm too blah at the thought of work the next day to be truly entertaining here...

It's not been too exciting of a Year of the Horse so far, but it's still been more interesting than the average week in 2002. Alternatively, perhaps I'm just glad that I'm not completely knackered by the Wednesday of this week. I had nine hours of sleep last night --- nine. The last time I did that was last Friday night, when I got home from work, we tossed around the idea of going out for dinner, but then I fell asleep in front of the couch at 7:45 pm and that was the end of the evening for us.

To catch everyone up, yesterday was the first day of the Chinese/Lunar New Year. The night before was the night of the reunion dinner. Traditionally, this means that everyone goes home to their parents (following a distinctly patriarchal line, as usual) for dinner and general festivities. In modern Singapore, this translated to a dinner at a Chinese restaurant with Terz's family as well as his aunt and grandma on his mother's side --- not quite traditional, no, but suitably festive. We had the obligatory-in-Singapore yu sheng (raw fish plus colorful shredded veggies plus crackers plus sweet sauce, stirred into a kaleidoscopic mess) to start things off, followed by the even more obligatory Too Much Food. The restaurant in question was the Kelong place at Thomson Plaza, but I admit the food wasn't as good as usual, probably because of the mad Chinese New Year rush. The steamed fish was overcooked, for instance, although the prawns were exceedingly fresh and yummy (according to Terz; I don't eat prawns usually).

Yesterday, we idled the morning away, then received a phone call from my mom asking if we were going to drop by at their place before meeting at my aunt's. Ooops. It turned out that our usual routine before (and this is only our third year of doing this) was to hang out at my parents' place for a bit before heading to the giant family gathering at my aunt's. I know I did it last year because Terz was out of the country, so I had nothing to do in the morning anyway. But this year --- whoops. Since it was a little late for two stops, I apologized profusely --- fortunately, Mom didn't mind --- and we all rendezvoused at the aunt's. This is an aunt on my maternal side, by the way. Terz's family routine doesn't involve visiting any of his relatives, so on the first day of each New Year, we usually visit my mom's relatives first (at the aforementioned giant gathering) and then my paternal grandma in the late afternoon.

At the giant gathering, I got soundly ribbed for the current public relations situation involving my job (keyword: [Ed: deleted]). Without divulging anything that would get me prosecuted under the Official Secrecy Act, I had little defence against a cousin who was grumbling about the rights of ninjas to wear headscarfs and how his little ninja boys would never get to primary school at this rate. Yes, it was supposed to be funny. Okay, it was funny at the time. Fortunately, he was the only one who gave me a hard time about it.

We also spent some time getting acquainted with Spike, the terrier-type my cousin had shipped back from Australia with him. Spike is, naturally, a huge misnomer. While he's got a formidable growl, the fluffy guy spends most of his time amiably leashed up and, even when the leash is removed, all he does is sniff around and then flop himself onto the floor wherever he's comfortable. Not too Spike-like at all. (Spike is a BtVS reference, naturally; my cousin wrote his honors thesis on the show).

And we ate a lot. Lunch was, ostensibly, chicken curry, sayur lodeh, zhap chye, and rice. But then there were all the usual New Year snacks lying around, and peanuts, and mandarin oranges. We were there for about three and a half hours, and I don't think we stopped eating for more than fifteen minutes at a time. I think Chinese New Year is way more damaging to one's diet than Christmas; at least Christmas traditions don't involve all manner of snack foods. In the time it takes a regular person to munch on a candy cane, you could eat half a jarful of pineapple tarts without thinking about it or feeling the same sickening sweetness coat your tongue.

In the late afternoon, we visited my grandma. She recently acquired a cat (well, a kitten, now about teenaged) who's one of the least responsive cats I've ever met. The cat is curious, but mostly about inanimate objects. My grandmother speaks to it in a combination of Teochew and Malay, which is fascinating. So far, it only responds to her voice calling its name (Mimi), and I wonder if it's got anything to do with the linguistic intonations of either language, as opposed to the more "English" pronunciation of the name that my dad was using.

Anyways.

The weather was really too hot by the time we were done visiting my grandma, so we went home and I slept for two hours. Then there was more online fun. I've been doing nothing of late but read Sluggy Freelance. Any PernM* players reading this, you may or may not be interested to check out the PernM* BB as well. If nothing else, the Rants section assures me that I'm not the only one who gets exasperated with the same old problems of the game. And have you seen Bushy-wushy's LiveJournal yet?

Now it's time to get some lunch, get some beer, and wait for the friends who are coming over for mahjong.

Is anyone still reading this? I wouldn't be surprised if you all gave up on it. Nevertheless, I feel guilty enough to bang out an entry right now, even though I don't think there's much to write about.

Work is work. The crisis has momentarily passed, though another is set to rear its head. Meanwhile, I've had several days at work to catch up on my day-to-day stuff, i.e. speech-writing, attending to public complaints, analysing the daily local media coverage of education issues, sorting out some other miscellany, and attending meetings. I don't spend a horrendous amount of time in meetings, but there already have been times when I wish I could get away with skipping the meeting and just reading the minutes. Oh, they don't call them minutes where I work; they're called "Notes of Meeting" or NOMs. Don't ask me why. "Minutes" is such a short and functional word.

Work was so good this past week that I got to leave the office at about six on Thursday and Friday. 'Tis a miracle. Of course, on Monday, an emergency meeting took us till eight pm, though it was chaired by the loveliest woman in the entire ministry, whom I'm now rooting for to get promoted big-time because the civil service needs more delightfully human and warm people like her.

At home, we've been cooking and we've cleared a space on our cluttered dining table so that the two of us can sit down to dinner every now and then. Don't imagine anything of banquet-like proportions when I say 'cooking'. So far, the week's home-cooked menu's included Hillshire Farm sausages (with sinful cheddar baked in), spaghetti/fettucine bolognaise and spicy chicken wings stewed in beer. We're supposed to go to the store in a while to stock up. Cooking is by far more relaxing than having to figure out every day at six or seven pm what we want for dinner. It also helps us to save money, which is always a priority with us.

This morning, I was at the bank at opening time to get crisp, new dollar bills for ang pows (red packets). Yes, it's that time of the year again. Chinese New Year falls on next Tuesday and Wednesday, for those of you out of the loop, so we married types are obliged to hand out pretty little red envelopes with money to our unmarried younger relatives and parental/grandparental units. The tradition's all right, but the bank was really insistent today that the minimum one had to exchange in order to get $2 bills was $200! I only needed $50 worth of $2 bills at the most --- what was I gonna do with the rest (besides eventually spend it)? So I took the wad over to my mom's and traded half of it with her. She had been to a different bank yesterday and they'd instituted a minimum of $100 exchanged for $2 bills. Next year, I'm asking her to get the dollar bills for me.

I also had to go to my mom's to bring her the pineapple tarts I'd bought her, for which she gave me some peanut puffs (gok zai) that she'd baked. However, this is my mother, so along the way she also offered me some ham, fruit, chocolates, cookies and various other foods to bring home; I accepted only two pears. What is it about moms and feeding their adult offspring? Every now and then, Terz's mom calls us too and tells us to pick up some food she's bought for us. They must all really think we don't eat healthfully --- which to an extent is true, but it's funny how you're not living with them and they still keep piling you with food.

The best thing about the Chinese New Year is that I only work till one pm on Monday (which is just enough time to get the daily media analysis but nothing else done, hurrah!) and we get Tuesday and Wednesday off. So it's almost like a long weekend for me already.

The sad news today is that the former President of Singapore Ong Teng Cheong passed away. I don't have a great deal of personal affection for him or anything, but he was one of the political fixtures when I was growing up and I suppose there's more nostalgia for the '80s tied in to my feelings at his passing than anything else.

The really funny thing is how Lee Kuan Yew outlives everyone. Or maybe that's more creepy than funny.

Speaking of which, anyone know what happened to Ahmad Mattar?

Terz wants me to watch that godawful comedy with Frasier and Rob Schneider and Lauren Holly and a submarine. I can't remember the title, but I'll look it up in IMDB later. I just had Anchors Aweigh in full choral mode blasting from the living room, so I'd better go check on him.