Detail Orientation

Living a digital life...

2011-04-21T21:55:00.000+01:00

So I've been trying to live a paperless, digital life as much as possible. Why? Because filing and sorting is much better assisted by a search engine, and because spending a lot of my life online has made me spoiled to not wanting to flick through paper, punch holes and physically file. And also because spending my time across multiple countries that tend to be across oceans from each other requires facilities not tied to any one physical location.

It's possible, and much aided/enabled by the following which I have obtained/signed up for:

A Fujitsu Scan Snap duplex, high speed paper scanner
An Evernote Premium account
A Livescribe Echo Smartpen
CutePDF - a free print-to-PDF freeware that can be downloaded/referenced from the link to this blog post.
Online shopping, bank statements and bills
An Amazon Kindle

There are still several routes paper takes to get completely digital though... And despite my best efforts, an entire cupboard of paper in files have not been completely eliminated. They however have been drastically reduced to one single hanging file folder/cabinet with less than 7 compartments.

Paper > Digital. Use for bills that still come in the mail despite one's best online shopping and bank statement efforts. Scan into Evernote via Scansnap, discard the ones that you don't need to keep on paper for whatever reasons, file on hanging files the ones that do.
Potential Paper > Digital Formats. Use for magazines and newspapers that have digital formats, or sometimes for procured/given paper magazines that you want to retain for future reference. Slice/tear out the paper pages for retention, scan into Evernote via Scansnap, discard paper copy. Refer to free/small subscription fee online versions of magazines and newspapers for the rest.
Recipe Books > Digital. I still keep some large, printed, show-case type recipe books (that I don't actually use, but keep for display purposes on the kitchen shelf). These days my hand-written recipe book is being converted into Livescribe format (through a dedicated Livescribe notebook for recipes) so they are searchable and retained for all perpetuity online. Or I simply search for what I want to cook on the Internet and end up finding something viable anyway (and that's when I try it, find it great, make some modifications and add to my recipe book for future use).
Receipts > Digital. If/when it shows up on my credit card statement, I throw the receipts away. Actually, sometimes I just throw the receipts away, and haven't been wrongly charged for an item ever in the last... actually, however many years I've ever had a credit card.
Cash > Digital. Use credit cards (statements = free tracking method) instead of cash, retaining cash in as small bills as possible for tips, bouncers and other cash-only dodgy venues. Oh, and I chuck coins in handfuls frequently into the jars for tips at coffee places and delis, and foreign currencies into the donation bins at airports.
Digital stays Digital. Use for online shopping mostly, and email/social network correspondences, mobile phone calls made on lines paid for by online bills. Shopping online instead of at physical stores not only save you receiving a paper receipt, it also saves you petrol money travelling to the shop, energy carrying heavy items back home and usually comes with free shipping past certain amounts. I've given up the rather Asian habit of wanting to hand-pick every single item I purchase so the wrapping is pristine and never taking the top item off the shelf, in favour of saving the travel time and energy carrying heavy items. Once digital, it stays digital. Online shopping receipts are printed into PDFs and deleted when goods are delivered and the charges show up on the credit card. It is a good mechanism of tracking multiple online orders as well, since I tend to shop once a month and buy from multiple online stores at a go. Right now the only places I go to physically are the local deli's, coffee places and supermarkets, and with supermarkets, I may one day soon cross the digital frontier and do online grocery shopping on AmazonFresh, having got good feedback and my district happens to be in their limited distribution network.

I figure even considering the shipping involved, online shopping probably has a much lower carbon footprint than going to a physical store to shop, not that eco-friendliness was top of my priority list, although the eco-friendliness of it is certainly a bonus. Having done the math on the transportation carbon footprint alone...

Physical Store Shopping: [Air/Ship Freight to country if product is not locally produced] + [Land freight to distribute product to physical stores] + [My transportation to physical store to buy and bring product back (2x)]
Online Shopping: [Air/Ship freight to country, if product is not locally produced] + [Land freight distributor eg. Fedex, UPS to deliver product from warehouse to my house as final destination]

Which frees up my time, transportation and energy to buy locally produced products for the products that count which are usually food items - valued for their freshness, quality, seasonal availability.

Embarcacao - The Vessel: Thank you!!

2010-10-14T19:07:00.000+01:00

Sometimes a distant dream comes true at a time when you least expect it. To a post written in 2007, on the 10th of October, 2010 (10/10/10 - what a lovely number!) Tam Aham Brumi Brahmanam wrote a translation of Embarcacao. I hope to reproduce his efforts here to give justice to one of the most deeply beautiful songs ever written.

Embarcacao
The Vessel

Ai, ness mundo ca tem sô sofrimento

Oh, in this world here there is only suffering
Ma naquel olhar cheio di mágoa
But in that stare full of sadness
Modê crê tão cedo na felecidade
For believing so soon in happiness
Tcheu titá fogá na solidão
Something that is drowning in deep loneliness

Ma na embarcação quta levá nôs vida
But in the vessel that takes our lives
Um bom timonero nô ta desejá, pa guiá-no
We hope for a good helmsman to take us
Na temporal nô ta reá vela
Through the storm and pull down our sails
Pa nô ca perdê na profundeza dum amargura
So we will not be lost in the deepness of a sorrow

Terra longe à vista é um doce promessa
The desired land seen so far is a sweet promise
Ma qui ta desfazê nindiferença
But it is not making no difference
Um sonho nascê na porto dilusão
Because a dream is born in the port of illusions
Fgi pa longe parcê um solução
Fly away to a far place seems to be a solution

Ma na rota incerta di nôs destino
But in the uncertain route that is our fate
Nô ta pô esperança num brisa mansa e constante
We are putting our hopes on a sweet and constant breeze

Pintchi vela dnôs existencia
That blows the sails of our existence
E na paz levá, assim, nôs nau
And so in peace takes our vessel
Pum horizonte cheio di luz e bonança
Towards a horizon full of light and peaceful feelings

Pintchi vela dnôs existencia
That blows the sails of our existence
E na paz levá, assim, nôs nau
And so in peace takes our vessel
Pum horizonte di luz e bonança
Towards a horizon full of light and peaceful feelings

2010-08-18T16:12:00.000+01:00

How do we live our lives in our sleeping, soft, silent, subtle, dreaming moments, when they shatter as we wake? How do we explain our lives to the people that fill it in our waking moments, when they can't reach us where we sleep?

I can't believe that people live like this, half-lives, half-asleep, half dreaming. I can't believe that I used to live like this.

Stateless - Bloodstream

2010-08-05T09:23:00.000+01:00

You need to be in an ice-cold room with a roaring fireplace, wrapped in furs, sipping a whisky glass filled with ice-cubes and a very good shot of espresso, listening to this.

Stateless - Bloodstream
Wake up, look me in the eyes again
I need to feel your hand upon my face
Words can be like knives
They can cut you open
And the silence surrounds you
And haunts you

I think I might have inhaled you
I could feel you behind my eyes
You've gotten into my bloodstream
I can feel you floating in me

Words can be like knives
They can cut you open
And the silence surrounds you
And haunts you

I think I might have inhaled you
I could feel you behind my eyes
You've gotten into my bloodstream
I can feel you floating in me

The spaces in between
Two minds, and all the places they've been
I've tried to put my finger on it
I've tried to put my finger on it

I think I might have inhaled you
I could feel you behind my eyes
You've gotten into my bloodstream
I can feel you floating in me

Song for Whoever: Unplayed Piano

2010-04-23T16:55:00.000+01:00

A beautiful, beautiful, beautiful song! One of those lovely collaborations between two of my favourite artists who really should be me and you in another rambling life.

Incredibly poignant... further research shows it was for/about Aung San Suu Kyi.

Unplayed Piano - Damien Rice & Lisa Hannigan
Come and see me
Sing me to sleep
Come and free me
Or hold me if I need to weep

Or maybe it's not the season
Or maybe it's not the year
Or maybe there's no good reason
Why I'm locked up inside
Just 'cause they wanna hide me

The moon goes bright
The darker they make my night

Unplayed pianos
Are often by a window
In a room where nobody loved goes
She sits alone with her silent song
Somebody bring her home

Unplayed piano (unplayed piano)
Still holds a tune (still holds a tune)
Lock on the lid (years, years pass by)
In a stale, stale room (in the changing of the moon)
Maybe it's not that easy (too many windows)
Or maybe it's not that hard (in a stale, stale room)
Maybe they could release me (stale, stale room)

Let the people decide
I've got nothing to hide
I've done nothing wrong
So why've I been here so long?

Unplayed pianos
Are often by a window
In a room where nobody loved goes
She sits alone with her silent song
Somebody bring her home
Unplayed pianos
Are often by a window
In a room where nobody loved goes
She sits alone with her silent song
Somebody bring her home

Unplayed piano (unplayed piano)
Still holds a tune
Years pass by
In the changing of the moon

Parachute - Cheryl Cole

2010-04-23T13:27:00.001+01:00

Probably the only correctly captured version of this music video available on the net. Forget about going to YouTube, the recordings of the videos are jinxed.

Just absolutely adore the dance and sync of imagery (costumes, movements, photography) used with the music.

Cheryl Cole - Parachute on muzu.tv

Socializing Your Dog

2010-04-04T17:27:00.000+01:00

Bailey's now a pretty confident puppy around the house. She's been socialized with vacuum cleaners, carpet cleaners, lawn mowers and pretty much turns her nose up at them as nothing to be afraid of (fell asleep with the vac running the other day).

I'd wanted to document what I did to socialize her, because many dog magazines, training books and websites all tell you to do this, but many don't actually tell you what exactly "socialize" means.

In a nutshell, socialization is associating something neutral to nice happening to the puppy with a particular event (eg. a vacuum cleaner turning on), preferably with the first experience the puppy has of the event, in order to cement in their minds that when the event repeats itself, it's not a bad or scary thing. The main time to do this is between the fear periods from 8 to 12/14 weeks of age but bear in mind that dogs learn all the time, even when they are adult dogs.

Think Happy Thoughts

Think about the things you remember when you were a child, say around 5-6 years of age. Were they of school holidays, a particular favourite uncle, of certain foods, smells, sounds? The memories you form in childhood would most likely be impressions, short of being a genius, few people are likely to remember lottery numbers from 1984, unless they'd won something then. Impressions are most cemented in memories when they are associated with emotions, happy or sad. This is exactly how it is for a dog and especially a puppy, memories and associations are formed from emotional responses to stimulus.

So the formula therefore is simple - happy = good; scared/sad = bad. This knowledge is a powerful thing, as you can use this pretty much to condition your dog to respond in a particular way to pretty much anything. The scary thing is that you'll have to remember that you don't turn on your dog's memories whenever you want to press "record", it happens all the time, whether you're conscious of it or not.

So something as ordinary as a vacuum cleaner can be a horrible experience for Beanie who could have been accidentally kicked when she was a puppy approaching a vacuum, to an OK to even good experience for Bailey who was cuddled in her bed and dropped random treats when the vacuum cleaner was turned on.

Reprogramming is Possible

Also remember that intense emotions experienced during an event can "over-write" less intense emotions experienced for the same event. That is, with adequate exposure and given time, even adult dogs can be reconditioned to look at an event they previously thought was negative in a positive to OK way.

I was taken aback by how quickly dogs readjust in that way when taking Beanie for a long 5 hour car ride a few years ago. Prior to the road trip, Beanie had only taken short 30 minute car trips to the vet or the park. She wasn't hugely not in favour of car rides, but the jostling and movements frequently upset her stomach and balance, and made her uncomfortable, to the point of loads of whining, crying and vomiting on some rides. So when I first started the long 5 hour trip, the first 30 minutes contained the usual whining and crying.

But a few preparation items were different for the long trip. I'd prepped a spray of doggy calming pheremone in the car, as well as comfy cushions and beds for the long haul. I'd also made sure of an empty stomach (so no vomiting) prior to the start of the trip, and fed small snacks along the way. The joy of the small treats, coupled with the creature comforts and pheremones led to a very settled dog after 30 minutes. She even fell asleep along the way, and for the rest of the journey and thereafter, all car rides were accepted with a floppy lie-down, as Beanie learnt from that one long trip, that car rides are just another excuse to take a long nap.

Associate, not Distract

One of the things I did wrong with my first dog was to distract my dog with plenty of nice stuff (treats and bones usually) when something possibly unpleasant was happening (eg. getting their nails cut). This was the result of having read and misinterpreted the less than clear instructions of socializing your dog by giving them something pleasant with something possibly unpleasant.

Timing is everything here, but you'd want to reward the behaviour of being calm or at minimum nonplussed about the event (remember - focus on what the dog is feeling during the event) rather than distracting your dog to the point that they don't remember what's happening to them except that they were getting a treat. This is what happened with my dog when her nails were cut. In desperation, while I was cutting her nails, I had to enlist the help of an ally who was dangling bones and stuffing treats into Beanie's jaws to keep her happy and quiet. The result, Beanie didn't know or remember that her nails were cut, only that being on the table (when she was groomed) resulted in the consumption of many nice things. To this day, she loves going on the grooming table, less so what happens to her after she gets on it.

The result, a lot of reconditioning after that rewarding Beanie for standing there quietly while her nails are being handled and held in a specific way to allow for them to be cut, by giving her the treat after they are cut, and not during.

I did this with my new puppy by sneaking in snips from the nail scissors when I was cuddling her, in the most uneventful way - just a few nails a day. She now doesn't mind this one bit and thinks it's normal cuddling behaviour from me, and I don't even need to treat or trick her into accepting anything until the full paw is done with a cuddle and a small bite.

Create New Associations to replace the Old Ones you Don't Want

If something has an association that you don't want (eg. dog barking = mad panic!!) - create a fresh association that the dog hasn't seen before which has a positive response and link the two.

Example: Neighbour's Dog Barks > your dog's response is to bark and run around frantically. You make a small sound (eg. duck quacking or whistle blowing) when you hear the neighbour's dog bark and give your dog a treat. Gradually, your dog comes to associate the sound of the neighbour's dog barking with the neutral quacking sound, and from there, a treat.

Beanie for example already had a really bad relationship with the vacuum cleaner. Whenever the cleaners came to vacuum around her, she would go stir crazy, even if in her crate, and bark and try to get at the vacuum from the safety of her crate. She did however have a very fond love of Pedigree Dentastix chews, which was stronger in her like-list than her dislike of vacuums (so I learnt).

So one day I gave her the chew in her crate, while proceeding to vacuum all around her. The result from that one experience was that now when she sees the vacuum cleaner, she runs to her crate and wants for a Dentastix.

So overall tips from me:

Treat, not trick. Make your dog conscious of what you're rewarding before rewarding the behaviour.
Behave as if the things which should matter (nail cutting, grooming, vacuum cleaners) actually really doesn't. Remember your dog isn't born with a list of things which should matter to him and which should not, they are learned behaviours in early puppyhood.
Be conscious that your dog is learning 24/7 and use this to good effect by modifying behaviour bit by bit.
Link associations you don't like to a newly created positive association.

Making Tiramisu

2010-02-14T22:32:00.113Z

I think from now on, every Valentine's Day I'm going to make some tiramisu, just to remind myself of how love tastes like.

Making Tiramisu

Ingredients
5 egg yolks
5 heaped tablespoons sugar
5 tablespoons full Amaretto, almond liqueur
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
500g mascarpone
10 Italian boudoir biscuits, lady's fingers
250ml espresso coffee
Dusting of cocoa powder

Method
While the sobering glass
Of espresso gently cools,
Take a risk, with two
Tablespoons of Amaretto
In the glass, swirl. Leave.

Melt overt sweetness with
Empty promises of fertility,
As the even hint of posh vanilla whisks,
Three more swags of Amaretto, and a taste:
Almond nights warm the throat, becoming
A light, frothy cream,
Almost needing substance.

As the pale scent of Amaretto fades, commit
Mascarpone into the bowl, sense
Solid cream folding into being, except
Unevenly, like so many imperfections
Sensed in a lover. This is a practice
In patience, glossing over lumpy bits,
Until the length of repetition blends
Into a habit of cream and cheese.

You are now ready. Lay gentle fingers
Into cold coffee, bed into glass, spoon
Cream mixture in gentle sequence, careful
Not to jolt the delicate cushion. Repeat
Until the lips of glass almost kiss
The outline of cream, complete.

Leave, in the cool hours of refrigeration.
Better yet, forget your effort overnight.
Tomorrow pretend to discover a new
Fondness for trifle, dusted over
With cocoa powder. Serve.

Word Commands in Training

2010-02-04T09:20:00.000Z

I've learnt the hard way, and from personal experience that 8/10 dog owners inevitably speak to their dogs in human terms, and expect their dogs to understand the grammar, vocabulary and meaning of what they are saying. We forget, ultimately, that dogs don't understand language, what they do understand is a series of frequently repeated sounds that they come to associate with an action or event. The intelligence of dogs to be able to learn many different sounds is a double-edged sword, they make us forget that we didn't actually cross the barrier of understanding of language, we merely pretended that we did. After all, isn't language just a frequently and widely used set of associations with events, objects and actions? Perhaps it's not that insane to think we might extend this language to dogs as well.

Be very careful what you say...
The main problem is that the words we (humans) are usually taught to use with dogs can sometimes work against us. Take this key example, I was taught to use "Come" to have my dog drop everything that they're doing and move towards me to get a treat. Inevitably, the word "come" was the first thing in my mind when I wanted my dog to be near me for anything, be it a treat, food, a hair cut or a nail clip. Not all of those events were actually events that my dog wanted to be near me for, however. Still helpful however, for my dog to learn to drop everything and come to me, though - except that the association with the word "come" has been tainted by the not-so-nice nail clips.

I ended up teaching (accidentally) my dogs to break up their play and "Finish" to come to me for a treat. This was done by me deciding at random intervals that they've had enough play, I said "Finish" and walked to the food bowl to dispense a treat. Very quickly they realised that whenever that word was uttered, however softly or gently, the food bowl was about to dispense something good. Needless to say, when they heard this word, they dropped whatever they were doing and ran to me to get a treat. I'd accidentally taught them the meaning of "come" but with the word "finish".

I have to now decide before even getting a dog the words I'm going to use, and what they mean and most importantly, stick to them. At the moment, I'm leaning towards words that I don't frequently use in normal speech, just to avoid the mix-up in meanings. At the same time, I have to have a clear hand gesture associated with them - vital for deaf dogs, but actually essential to avoid audio mix-up too. You soon find dogs respond to the hand signals more, regardless of what you say to them.

So the list is:

Sit. Meaning: Put your bum on the ground. Hand Signal: Two fingers to thumb, brought upwards towards the face.
Down. Meaning: Lie down. Hand Signal: Ideally pointing downwards (so that you can command a down while standing up) but my dogs ended up learning this as a downward facing palm moving down to the floor.
Heel. Meaning: Stay close to my heel when walking and on a loose lead. Hand Signal: Slapping side of thigh to indicate staying close to my leg.
Paw. Meaning: Shake paw, give me your paw. Hand Signal: Upward facing palm at dog-face level to shake the paw. Left palm for right paw, right paw for left palm.
Beg. Meaning: Sit pretty, or sit back on your haunches with two front paws relaxed and folded in front. Hand Signal: Latest trick I've learnt, so not perfected yet. Come-hither signal with index finger upwards. (Because it's funny but also because one of only hand gestures that allow you to hold a treat and do at the same time.)
Chill. Meaning: Lie down and take a break and relax. Good words to use would also be, "relax", "take 5", "kit kat". Some people call this "Settle" but I find "Chill" easier to learn because it's a single word, and also because one inevitably says "Settle Down" which is confusing. Hand Signal: Not much needs to be done with this actually, so I sweep the downward facing palm (for the down) across to the side, like a tai-chi movement.
Spin. Meaning: Turn in a circle, at the moment, any direction is fine. This apparently is a great way for your dogs to clean their feet on the rug, but I have something else in mind. Hand Signal: Index finger in a counter/clock-wise direction.
Speak. Meaning: Bark. Hand Signal: Next to your mouth, open and close hands.
Silent/Shhh. Meaning: Stop barking, keep quiet. Hand Signal: Finger on lips. Don't say anything. This is a great one to teach the kids.
Kick it. Meaning: Kick your front and back paws (usually on a rug). This helps your dogs to remove most of the mud from their paws before the end of a walk. One of my dogs does this anyway after a pooh, so wasn't that hard to teach. Hand Signal: Index and Third Finger in a walking movement.

Dog Names

2010-01-30T11:01:00.000Z

I've always had a thing for interesting dog names, and if I had my way, would like a dog named Kafka and a cat named Easter (insider joke from a Tori Amos song).

It struck me as wildly appropriate for a dog to be named after a great academic, a famous writer, poet or philosopher. As such, dog names I love are:

Tolstoy (Leo)
Kafka
Plato (joke on the famous dog belonging to Mickey Mouse - Pluto)
Auden
Kipling (see, you could go Kip for short)
Tolkien
Gandalf (already taken by a very cute guinea pig!)
Orwell (four legs good, two legs bad)
Chomsky
Shakespeare

The only exceptions to these are Socrates and Aristotle, which for some reason must be reserved for cats.

Favourite Doggy Things to Buy from Human Stores

2010-01-27T18:17:00.000Z

It's a sad reflection of the world that pet store merchandise have ended up outpricing human store merchandise, but without waxing lyrical about the good old days, why not make the best use of that fact? After all, your dog doesn't really care that he's sleeping on a paw-printed blanket, he can leave his own jolly paw-prints on it!

These are the favourite things to buy from human stores, without any negative effects.

Irma Fleece Throw £1.69 from Ikea. Larger than the average dog fleece blanket, it's machine washable and would fit dogs up to large sizes. This is my favourite dog blanket, I hardly ever get anything else and for the price, would not want to! A side benefit of fleece is that it is a magnet for dog hairs, so casting a throw over where your dog likes to sit will reduce the number of stray hairs floating around the house.
Hairdressing Scissors, £5-15 from most leading pharmacies or Boots. Because I like to groom my own dogs and only send them for a professional undo twice a year, I invested in a thinning scissors (the one that looks like it has a comb on one edge) and a regular hairdressing scissors (that cuts). I use these only for my dogs, and have another pair for real human use. These are exactly the same as grooming scissors for dogs, and for a fraction of the price.
Meat tenderizer for coprophagic dogs. A classic favourite for dogs who eat their doody - you can buy a specialized bottle of powder to sprinkle on your dog's food to stop them from doing this, or you can try meat tenderizer (which pre-digests the meat proteins in the food so avoids remnant nutrients that the dog eats up), fresh pineapple, MSG or apparently, courgette. The benefit is the flavouring, dogs love it!
Omega 3/6 vitamins, 1000mg from leading pharmacies. Buying this in bulk from the neighbourhood pharmacy allows me to get 1000 capsules (I give my dog one a day) for about £9.99 when it would cost upwards of 3 times that much from a company that makes them only for dogs.
Manicare Nail File. This one is a controversial one, doggy nail files (in metal) don't cost that much, but they don't work as well. I've found that the Manicare Nail File, albeit initially more expensive, lasts much longer and works much faster on the nail in sanding down rough spots. My dog is happier, and I am happier.
White Vinegar. Use for cleaning up instead of non-enzyme scent removers. I recommend having a bottle of enzyme scent removers as well, but if you'd need gallons of cleaners, then a bottle of white vinegar mixed 1:4 with distilled/filtered water works almost just as well.
Popcorn. The non-buttered kind work a treat with my dogs, who chomp them down like there's no tomorrow. They're also relatively fat and calorie free, while keeping them satisfied with a good chew, so are great to treat when training. A trick I learnt from a magazine would be to keep a smelly beef/meat jerky in with the air tight container where you store the popcorn, so the smell of the jerky infuses with the popcorn and smells delicious to the dogs. Also works with plain Cheerios.
Dog Soft Toys from Ikea. Many small ones are under £2 with a wide range to choose from. My puppy with softer teeth loves chewing soft toys instead of bones, and especially enjoys nibbling on soft toy paws and tails. I used to get them from pet stores at over £5 each, until a recent visit to Ikea found excellent alternatives in durable, soft fabric for under £2 each from the baby and child toy sections. Not only that, but if you're not keen on squeaky toys because of the awfully grating sound they make when they squeak, baby toy rattles (in a soft toy) provide an excellent sound that attracts dogs, with a lot less annoying sounds. My two terriers love shaking them from side to side and hearing them rattle.
Baby Bottle Cleaners/Old Toothbrushes. Even if you don't have a baby of your own, if furkids are as far as you go towards taking responsibility for another life, buy new or reuse from outgrown baby bottle cleaners or your old toothbrushes for cleaning out doggy Kongs at least once a week with a bit of dishwashing detergent. Putting them in a dishwasher is also an option, but I find that tends to leave fur in my dishwasher which over time forms a gooey muck.

Ten Ways to Save Money (and still keep your dogs)

2010-01-27T18:01:00.000Z

Because it is a truth universally acknowledged that the owner of a pet must spend a lot of money, pet stores frequently try to persuade pet owners into parting with their cash in the name of love. Since I have more principles than I have money, here are ten money-saving tips I use every day:

Use dog kibble as treats. Despite dog kibble being marketed in large quantities as food, they taste and look like small, bite sized treats to dogs. Some dogs are fussy about variety, namely they don't like eating something that tastes the same day in and day out. To these dogs, kibble aren't treats because they're boring. But other brands and flavours of kibble still are! If you have a dog like this at home, pick up tester packs from dog magazines, vets and pet stores and use them as treats. Buy a small pack of kibble (maybe the posher kind if you like) and use them only as treats to your dog. As an added benefit, they are one treat that can be eaten by puppies as soon as they are weaned, since many manufacturers tend to avoid making treats that are tolerated by very young puppies.
Find out your dog's toy texture preference so you can pick toys that he'll like. Different ages of puppies and dogs have different texture preferences. For example, Beanie likes hard, almost wood like, or plasticky textures that she can crunch into. She also prefers chicken flavoured toys to bacon flavoured ones. Bailey likes string, rope and cloth textures. Neither of them like soft rubber very much and both love shredding paper and cardboard. My winning combination of cheap toys are: a towel or rope soaked in gravy, braided then air dried; used water bottles, the harder the plastic the better. Boxes or toilet rolls (subject to supervision).
Use your old discarded pillows as dog beds. Obviously there's a size constraint to this one, but it should work up to a medium size dog. There are several benefits: 1) there isn't really a difference between an old pillow and a specially made, dog friendly, flat bed. Except the price. 2) Your scent on the pillow would make a world of difference to your dog. It would be reassuring and demonstrate your presence to a puppy, and even an adult dog will be able to sniff 'you' on it. 3) Because you were throwing it out anyway, the obvious damage your dog may do to it is limited to being suddenly far less naughty.
Newspapers can be pee'd on just fine. This is one of those things that I keep telling myself: what did people use to use before pee pads were invented? There are special solutions out there that attract your puppy to pee on newspapers, in case they aren't used to the texture or smell of it. These do work. If you're not parting with your penny buying eau de toilet, take a tissue sample of real puppy pee from one of the accident clean-up sessions and smear it on the newspapers. They trick the puppy into thinking they did it right in the first place, which sets off a positive spiral.
Buy life-time products only once... in a lifetime. There are some things you only need one of, regardless how many dogs you have. These are: nail clippers, slicker brush, a round ended pair of scissors, a doggy first aid kit (if you do get those). With these items, especially if you are planning to DIY for most of the grooming, it's worthwhile investing a fair bit of money and getting a good set, especially one that you protect from the kids and well meaning in-laws, so that you can learn to use them and use them well, for the rest of your or your dog's life.
Human things frequently cost much less than doggy things. Especially, grooming scissors, shampoo and conditioner, food/treats, vitamins, towels and fleeces. Increasingly, good and relatively inexpensive human stores have also cleverly branched out to selling doggy things. See my other post for Favourite Doggy Things to Buy from Human Stores.
Gain economies of scale with more than one dog. Buy certain non-perishables in bulk. Unless there are special medical reasons for doing so, my dogs are on the same shampoo and conditioner, the same brand of worming tablets, the same flea and tick treatment, the same food, obviously they use the same pooh bags, towels, cleaning up stuff and have different coloured leads. They also share the same treats and chews, in general. It's the stuff you end up buying and using infrequently that add to the cost of doggy ownership, not necessarily the things you think about - food and water and shelter - that a dog relies on every day.
The simple solutions are the best solutions. One of the things I've noticed with pretty much all pet stores is the increasing number of pet-keeping/managing/grooming/training gadgets there are out there in the market. No doubt the burgeoning dog owning population is one of the most untapped and profitable markets out there, but you gotta wonder how people had dogs that were well trained before all these inventions came about, and why homeless people have the best behaved dogs. Decide for yourself what the bare essentials are for you and your dog, and resist the urge to get another gadget that promises to save you xx minutes of your time. Dogs are creatures of habit, chances are all the time you'd save doing things a new and easier way would be outweighed by the learning curve you and your dog have to go through anyway.
Human food can cost significantly less than specialized dog food. It's a sad time of our lives when the food we eat cost significantly less than the food our dogs eat. Either our dogs are eating particularly well (which I doubt) or we are eating particularly poorly as a civilization. One dual-dog owning friend of mine switched recently to cooking simple recipes for her dogs with food and meat obtained from the supermarket. Not only are they far less processed and therefore healthier for the dog, they're also much more economical to run in bulk. Just remember that if you're taking on cooking all of your pet's food that you're consulting appropriate recipes to ensure a healthy and balanced diet (that's the one thing kibble takes care of!). More recipes can be found at My Dog Eats Better than my Husband.
Stop paying for the gym membership and use your best friend. Odd as I thought it would be, doggy owning friends of mine complain about needing to walk their dogs 3 times a day, and yet find the time to go to the gym to work out at least 3 times a week after work, not including those classes offered by the gym to help one stay healthy. Two most frequently quoted reasons were: 1) my gym instructor is a hard nut and would kill me if I quit, so I need the persuasion to work out. And 2) You get a balance of cardio and weights at the gym which you won't get at home. #1 makes me laugh - for one, there isn't a human I know that is more persuasive than my dog, and despite getting me to brave all sorts of weather to walk with him, I can still never get mad at my dog (or stay mad for long). And as for #2 - dog walking and spending time with your dog isn't only about a slow, long, leisurely walk, which is the frequent impression most people have. Build in sprints and games to vary the pace for a good cardio workout, play tug games with your dog, or practice lifting/carrying them around the house for endurance/weight training (overweight retrievers please apply!).

Introducing a puppy to an older dog

2010-01-27T17:58:00.000Z

Well, I have Beanie, don't I? Beanie is an absolutely darling, and in hindsight, the vet who inspected Bailey was absolutely right when he said, "You were lucky with Beanie. Think your luck ran out with this one (Bailey)."

Beanie is sweet natured, submissive, loves humans and is playful. She's even taught herself to tolerate and play with kids on her own, despite having had very little exposure to children growing up. I'd wanted another puppy to keep her company, after falling in love with the sight of two Westies walking side by side on the street, tails wagging in unison. Selfishly, as Beanie got on in years, it would also take the edge off not having a dog at all should the untoward one day happen, as it inevitably would (so I thought).

Increasingly, more dog magazines dish out advice on how to introduce two dogs, or a puppy to an older, existing dog. The majority of them say:

Introduce your pets on neutral territory like a park or public place. Easy to say when you've got two full-grown dogs, not so easy to do when you've got an unvaccinated puppy that should not be exposed to where other dogs might have been, so the park is out of the question. It's still a good idea though, premise being that dogs are territorial, and a direct introduction of newbie in oldie's territory would seem too much like an incursion. Friend's houses (who have no pets) or the car are appropriate alternative places.
Keep the younger dog in a crate away from harm until you know your older dog is used to the puppy. Again, very wise, and would work if not for Beanie pawing through the crate trying to reach the puppy like a toy... and vice versa.
Put something with the puppy's scent on it (eg. puppy's bed, pillow or towels) near the older dog, preferably days before you bring pup home, so older dog gets used to pup's scent. If older dog moves away or is otherwise averse, do it gradually to socialize the older dog. Hmm... wish I could do this. Beanie promptly went to Bailey's bed and fell asleep when I placed it on the ground. Without much ado, Bailey clambered all over Beanie's bed and used her indoor toilet tray without invitation or prior training.
Keep loads of toys and beds and anything dogs may like all around, act like there is too much of goodness to go around to avoid jealousy and fighting over toys. Beanie doesn't like toys at all unless there are treats in them, so having Bailey snatch all toys for a quick nibble didn't seem to bother her that much.
Give your older dog attention when your newcomer is around, to avoid your older dog feeling left out or replaced. This actually worked! I did also, schemingly, in the weeks leading up to Bailey's arrival, pay Beanie less attention and made less of a fuss, so the transition from all to nothing (just kidding) didn't seem quite as large. Works with frogs and boiling water, sure works with dogs.

What they don't tell you:

It's incredibly difficult training a puppy with an older, incredibly treat motivated, dog around, as Beanie goes through everything she knows how to do for 4 years now, and expects a treat for examplary behaviour. It must be because she's such a show-off, but did work in my favour as Bailey figured out copying what Beanie was doing was the quickest way to get her a treat, resulting in the ability to teach complex behaviours in a shorter period of time. Note to Self: If you feel you are being far, don't worry about not giving your older dog a treat all the time they demonstrate what needs to be done. It's not like they will stop doing it with a failed attempt, it actually means they try harder next time.
Puppy playing with older dog intensely tends to result in house-training accidents. Beanie has no concept that Bailey needed the loo and wasn't just trying to get away to incite a chase. This necessitated teaching them both that gravitation towards the toilet zone meant that the toilet zone was out of bounds. It also necessitated watching puppy like a hawk and limiting play zones to a smaller area that Bailey could manage and gradually increasing the area as her control got better.
Your puppy becomes your dog's greatest fan and longs to be her sidekick. Sometimes annoyingly so. Beanie being rather submissive isn't inclined to tell Bailey off (by growling) unless she's really ticked off, but has a long fuse. It's normally a good thing in a dog, but does require some intervention, which is the hardest thing for new duo-dog owners to figure out.
Dogs have to fight to get used to each other (OK they do tell you that part), but it's nearly impossible to know when the right time is to intervene, if there is such a time.

Potty Training: Crate vs. Paper

2010-01-27T17:55:00.000Z

For Bailey I ended up with a hybrid of both the crate and the paper methods. In the end, the clincher for me was that Bailey did not like at all being in the crate, and although she did not eliminate in the crate, she was so hugely unhappy being in the crate even for a few minutes, I had to put her in a larger place which had to be paper-protected.

It was helpful however leveraging the typical habits of puppies around this age to speed up the process:

Not going where she slept/ate allowed me to rig the stakes towards her pottying where I wanted her to
Needing to go upon waking, after a meal, after drinking water, after vigourous play. Initially, this was once every hour or so, which meant that I interrupted play every 30-45 minutes to place her where she should go to "try my luck". Performance meant treats and coming right out again for loads of play, non-performance meant back to play until she pottied where she shouldn't, which meant end of play and back to the crate (with the paper). This gave her a huge incentive to save her potty for the right place, and taught (in a roundabout manner) bladder control.
Coupled with the above, because she usually sleeps in her crate, I led her to paper before doing anything else eg. taking her out for play, attention, food etc. This gave her a huge incentive to empty her bladder and bowels before coming out, as she learnt that "empty" = play and fun.

I've been lucky that Bailey since I got her had been waking up in the middle of the night to potty, instead of toileting in her bed. This cannot be taught by the owner, and is a habit she was made accustomed to by her breeder, who assured us that she would be paper-trained by the time she was ready to go home. Check the conditions of your breeder in order to tell if this would be the case with your puppy - if the conditions are clean, no poo/pee in sight even with many puppies around, then your puppy is likely to be habitually clean which is a good thing.

It's probably also worthwhile emulating the house training method that the breeder was using if this is possible for your own circumstances. Your breeder should be more than happy to give you tips.

Potty Training 2 of 2: Paper Training

2010-01-27T17:45:00.000Z

Paper training was the only way I potty trained Beanie as a puppy, and is generally the well accepted alternative to crate training. There are variants to paper training so this doesn't always mean paper, but the method all essentially involves placing newspaper/pee absorbent material all over where puppy lives, and gradually conditioning the puppy to eliminate on the particular surface of the paper.
This is done by feeding the puppy strategically on one unpapered side of the room only, where the bed is also placed, to encourage the puppy to utilize their instinct to move away from their food/bed to eliminate on the other, papered end away from their bed and food. The premise of this training is that dogs tend to pick the same spots for future elimination, so gradually develops a surface preferences towards paper/pee pads etc.

The main thing to remember is that transitioning from paper to outside is a secondary process once the puppy has learnt to use the paper. This is usually done by taking a small piece of paper with you when you go outside, and making that association in the puppy's mind that outside is equivalent to the paper. Some dogs never need this step and make that association quite readily (the process of moving away from "home ground" generally tends to do the trick) but I guess others do rely on this step especially if they have been home-dogs for some time.

Pros:

Puppies use in their own time, so you're less on a fixed schedule in having to watch the puppy like a hawk to determine when they need to go. I still recommend looking for tell-tale circling and sniffing movements to encourage the puppy to go on paper, especially if the area where the puppy lives in is big enough for the puppy to not make it back to the paper in time.
This is the preferred method for owners who have to work or be away longer hours, as it offers more flexibility in making sure the puppy has means to relieve himself, instead of being forced to wait which is horribly cruel.
As they become more reliable on the surface/paper, a change in the positioning of the toilet can be effected. If you'd like to progress your puppy to an indoor litter tray, grass in the yard etc. just move a soiled paper to where you want your puppy to go, and the puppy tends to follow. This method was used in Singapore to train their dogs to use an actual squatting loo that was set into the ground. All the owners needed to do was flush when their dogs were done.
Smell attractant pads and puppy training solutions on newspapers do help in rigging the odds to your favour that puppies eliminate on paper to speed up the process.
This method is not cruel to dogs, neither requiring them to perform on demand, nor requiring them to hold it until their owners come home. Many dogs end up eliminating more or less on a schedule anyway when they grow older as their digestive systems settle around their feeding times, so this method doesn't prevent you from eventually training your dog to do it outside.
Allows dogs to be toilet trained indoors permanently, which is convenient for flat dwellers or people who don't have easy, quick access to the outdoors.

Cons:

Training in this method takes longer, as it relies more on coincidence than sheer willpower. While there are ways to stack the odds in your favour, nothing works 100% all the time.
The biggest drawback to this method is the fact that puppies tend to shred or play with the newspapers when they are bored (they learn all too quickly that it's fun!), ending up in one very dirty puppy and also a very dirty area. While there are ways around this (eg. putting the papers in a little tray away from your puppy's reach, redirection etc.) no single method is foolproof and much relies on your puppy already knowing a specific area to use. I have found that puppies from ages 8-10 weeks tend not to know/learn how to play with papers yet. As they become older and more exploratory, they inevitably figure out that newspapers are incredibly fun to shred. So note to self that if this method is chosen, get the preferred zone figured out by the puppy within those 2 weeks!
I did see one other drawback mentioned on a site that said if you had a habit of reading your newspapers on the floor, your dogs not knowing the difference between today's news and yesterday's news may end up doing their business on a section you haven't read yet. Never happened to me, but the simple solution is to lay your papers out on the coffee table, or read the news online.
Some people genuinely prefer their dogs never to develop the habit of doing it indoors at all for hygiene purposes. Developing the paper > outside process can therefore be a longer way to get to the same place.

Potty Training Puppy 1 of 2: Crate Training

2010-01-27T17:34:00.000Z

Crate Training is a very popular method of house training a puppy or dog. It comprises getting a small crate for the puppy, just large enough for the puppy to lie down, sit up, stand and turn around in. The puppy is taken directly to the designated toilet zone when he is out of the crate at regular intervals to eliminate and praised heavily when he does the right job in the zone. The premise of crate training is that dogs naturally do not choose to eliminate where they eat or sleep, and so would exercise bladder control until they are out of their crates.

Pros:

Teaches your dog bladder control, which is useful if the final arrangement for the puppy is to end up doing all of their business outdoors on walks.
Easier for most dogs (with exception of puppy mill dogs) to figure out, as it's apparently doggy instinct not to dirty where they sleep.
Makes it easier to manage puppy's time, as a puppy in a crate without much space to do anything won't. If done right, your dog falls into a routine much faster than a puppy that isn't crate trained.
Added advantage of teaching puppies to settle in a confined area, making travel and temporary confinement in the future acceptable to dogs.
Faster to accomplish, dogs take within a week to get the hang of this if done right, although it needs to be continued.
A schedule can be set up at timed and planned intervals, instead of just whenever puppy feels like it.
Because of the predictability and bladder controls, eliminating on command is easier with crate training.

Cons:

Built up reliance on the dog eliminating around the owner's schedule. Note that the most important word in the first benefit is the word "all". It would be cruel to provide your dog with insufficient opportunities to eliminate, especially when they are young puppies, which means 1-2 hours until they are 3 months old, then 2-3 hours until they are about 6 months old, gradually adding another hour for every month of life until they reach about 6 hours. This represents a significant commitment to taking your dog to where you want them to do their jobs, come rain or shine or frost. Because dogs develop a regular routine quickly, you should also be taking your dogs out around the same time every day that your dog is used to. And no, dogs don't understand weekends too well.
Puppies need a lot of trips outdoors on doggy duty. For puppies under 3 months of age, this is once every hour at least. Again, puppies don't understand night/day very well either, so that means multiple midnight trips to the loo outdoors for at least the first 2-3 weeks.
(You) Messing up (literally) with the crate can mean that the doggy instinct of not messing where they sleep is over-ridden. This instinct is not set in stone, and depending on the puppy, could be either fragile (1 mistake does the trick) or tenacious (multiple messes and puppy is reliable). Puppy mill dogs tend to come with this puppy instinct either broken or not developed because of how they are brought up, so bear this margin of error in mind if you feel that you may end up making mistakes or forgetting the time too often.

All of the above points basically point to crate training being nearly impossible for a dog owner working full time, unless you're working full time in the sort of company that gives you maternity cover when you get a new puppy. I've read in a number of magazines that it's generally a very good idea to take vacation to spend the first 2 weeks with the puppy to settle the pup into the house. I've found this generally makes house training go much smoother and quicker, and that the 2 week investment is well worth the time spent!

Housing Your Puppy for the First Year

2010-01-27T17:12:00.000Z

While this sounds simple at first glance, thinking through this deeper, it's not as easy as it seems. For one, no site seems to tell you exactly how much space to give your dog so that you're neither being cruel to the pet, nor giving it the equivalent of a playboy mansion when you take it home. For another, a recent search showed that many sites favoured crate training, and demonstrated how to pick the right size for a crate, but not the puppy's play area/territory.

I came up with an easy rule of thumb that worked for me.

Imagine a rectangle area, simple length (L) x width (W) on the ground.
Find out the length of your puppy as an adult dog. Look up websites or ask the breeder if you're not sure how large typical dogs of the breed grow to. For mixed breeds, assume the larger of the mix until you can be sure. (Editor's note that typically, websites tend to tell you the height of the dog, and not the length. I'm no da Vinci but I reckon that a dog can't be more than 3 times longer than it is tall, so went with the proportions of height multiplied by 3.)
L = length of your adult dog multiplied by 3, and W = length of your adult dog multiplied by 2.
For most people with a medium sized dog, this would be the space of a large bathroom or a small kitchen.

The first impression you may have is that this space isn't all that big. You're right, but this isn't going to be the place that your dog gets free run of in the house for the rest of it's life - that would be cruel. This is the place where your puppy will spend any unsupervised time, and should therefore (by calculations above) be large enough to hold a bed, water and food bowls, toilet facilities and toys.

Once the decision is made, ensure that you have easy access to it, and that it's puppy proof (nothing chewable, toxic, dangerous, sharp, swallowable and otherwise unsuitable for a young dog). Also, if possible, ensure that puppy is able to walk into it by himself, rather than you needing to carry him into it all the time (helps tons with training later on). Finally, make sure puppy doesn't get the ability to wander from this designated zone once he's in it. This is where puppy pens, baby gates and other makeshift fencing that makes your house look like a miniature version of the Israeli-Palestinian border come in. Stick with it though, this will be puppy's home for the next few months until he's old enough to be trusted on his own around the house (usually when he's 8 months to 1 year old).

One thing I didn't mention was physical height. Assume puppy's going to jump, at least at the onset, and have Height = Length of adult dog. This is to account for dogs leaning on gate while standing on hind legs, jumping dogs, dogs that take a flying leap etc etc. I'm fortunate for my Westies that a baby gate that came up to the height of my waist sufficed, but then again, Westies don't grow that tall. This is another reason why it makes sense to have an arrangement where the puppy can walk in by himself. Suddenly picking up 8 month old German Shepherd isn't quite so easy anymore...

Puppy's Feeding Schedule

2010-01-27T16:55:00.000Z

This decision is by far the hardest one, and also the one most fraught with advice from all corners. Puppies from 8 - 12 weeks typically need 3 meals a day, progressing from 12 weeks to adulthood on 2 meals per day with bigger portions.

The most important consideration is that what goes in, must come out - and that said, would be preferred not to come out at the odd hours of the morning. What they don't tell you is that when your puppy eats, aside from the obvious, also determines your puppy's waking (playful) hours. In the first few weeks, I scheduled a 24 hours divided by 3 = once every 8 hour routine. Big, big mistake. Bailey ended up being bouncy and playful starting at 1am in the morning, resulting in a bedside siege every morning in the hours of 1am-3am by a 1.5kg white furball.

More research later, I decided on a 3 meal schedule as follows...

8am: Breakfast with the dogs, feed Bailey as Beanie got breakfast.
1pm: Lunch for Bailey while Beanie got a treat to avoid jealousy.
7pm: Dinner with the dogs, feed Bailey while Beanie got dinner.

The tip of removing water and treats 3-4 hours before bed time also worked wonders in ensuring that puppy didn't wake up in the middle of the night to do their jobs, hence allowing me to let the puppy sleep through the night without waking me up for a night time play time.

Puppy's First Night

2010-01-27T16:51:00.000Z

I got Beanie, my first dog a lot older than Bailey, who was 7.5 weeks when I took her home, so I'd expected Bailey to adjust as well as Beanie could, not knowing better. I'd left Bailey on the first night downstairs with Beanie, in separate crates so Beanie didn't have to cuddle up next to some stranger.

Well, it was an hour in the car from Buckinghamshire in the middle of winter for Bailey, and must have felt like being abducted by well meaning aliens into outer space in a weird space ship, landing in what seemed like an eternity later on an alien home planet. Bailey slept all the way through, tired out by the experience, but the first night, realised the permanence of her alien abduction situation after seeing another fellow doggy in captivity from an earlier abduction, imagined the worst and whined and cried herself to sleep.

Points for making sure Beanie didn't get disturbed by a stranger: FAIL.Points for making sure Bailey had a good experience at home: FAIL.
Points for attempting not to create a clingy dog who clearly felt abandoned and didn't trust humans: FAIL.

Next night, upstairs next to my bed. The following week, I gradually increased the distance of her sleeping crate to my bed, and the following week, further away, until finally she was reassured that I was still going to be around the next morning and she'd get fed, same time, same channel. Some websites talk about ignoring your puppy when they whine and cry for attention, believing that if this attention was paid any mind, that this develops a clingy, attention seeking dog. Suspend that for the first few days I think now.

Contrary to paranoid behaviouralists, your puppy simply won't know enough about how you're going to behave in the first week to manipulate your behaviour by whining. As it is, you know little enough about your puppy to manipulate its behaviour, much less the other way around. After your puppy settles in (a week or two later, perhaps), continuing this treatment may give rise to attention seeking, which will quickly die down with ignorance.I'd thought to let my puppy learn that making a noise won't ever get me to turn up, by way of hoping that when the puppy is young without a developed bark, it is far preferable that the puppy never learnt to bark at all. Little did I know anyway that a puppy's bark, despite all best intentions, develop anyway, and sound very different from a whine and a cry!

Top 10 Money-Saving Tips for Dog Owners

2010-01-27T16:30:00.000Z

Use dog kibble as treats. Despite dog kibble being marketed in large quantities as food, they taste and look like small, bite sized treats to dogs. Some dogs are fussy about variety, namely they don't like eating something that tastes the same day in and day out. To these dogs, kibble aren't treats because they're boring. But other brands and flavours of kibble still are! If you have a dog like this at home, pick up tester packs from dog magazines, vets and pet stores and use them as treats. Buy a small pack of kibble (maybe the posher kind if you like) and use them only as treats to your dog. As an added benefit, they are one treat that can be eaten by puppies as soon as they are weaned, since many manufacturers tend to avoid making treats that are tolerated by very young puppies.
Find out your dog's toy texture preference so you can pick toys that he'll like. Different ages of puppies and dogs have different texture preferences. For example, Beanie likes hard, almost wood like, or plasticky textures that she can crunch into. She also prefers chicken flavoured toys to bacon flavoured ones. Bailey likes string, rope and cloth textures. Neither of them like soft rubber very much and both love shredding paper and cardboard. My winning combination of cheap toys are: a towel or rope soaked in gravy, braided then air dried; used water bottles, the harder the plastic the better. Boxes or toilet rolls (subject to supervision).
Use your old discarded pillows as dog beds. Obviously there's a size constraint to this one, but it should work up to a medium size dog. There are several benefits: 1) there isn't really a difference between an old pillow and a specially made, dog friendly, flat bed. Except the price. 2) Your scent on the pillow would make a world of difference to your dog. It would be reassuring and demonstrate your presence to a puppy, and even an adult dog will be able to sniff 'you' on it. 3) Because you were throwing it out anyway, the obvious damage your dog may do to it is limited to being suddenly far less naughty.
Newspapers can be pee'd on just fine. This is one of those things that I keep telling myself: what did people use to use before pee pads were invented? There are special solutions out there that attract your puppy to pee on newspapers, in case they aren't used to the texture or smell of it. These do work. If you're not parting with your penny buying eau de toilet, take a tissue sample of real puppy pee from one of the accident clean-up sessions and smear it on the newspapers. They trick the puppy into thinking they did it right in the first place, which sets off a positive spiral.
Buy life-time products only once... in a lifetime. There are some things you only need one of, regardless how many dogs you have. These are: nail clippers, slicker brush, a round ended pair of scissors, a doggy first aid kit (if you do get those). With these items, especially if you are planning to DIY for most of the grooming, it's worthwhile investing a fair bit of money and getting a good set, especially one that you protect from the kids and well meaning in-laws, so that you can learn to use them and use them well, for the rest of your or your dog's life.
Human things frequently cost much less than doggy things. Especially, grooming scissors, shampoo and conditioner, food/treats, vitamins, towels and fleeces. Increasingly, good and relatively inexpensive human stores have also cleverly branched out to selling doggy things. See my other post for Favourite Doggy Things to Buy from Human Stores.
Gain economies of scale with more than one dog. Buy certain non-perishables in bulk. Unless there are special medical reasons for doing so, my dogs are on the same shampoo and conditioner, the same brand of worming tablets, the same flea and tick treatment, the same food, obviously they use the same pooh bags, towels, cleaning up stuff and have different coloured leads. They also share the same treats and chews, in general. It's the stuff you end up buying and using infrequently that add to the cost of doggy ownership, not necessarily the things you think about - food and water and shelter - that a dog relies on every day.
The simple solutions are the best solutions. One of the things I've noticed with pretty much all pet stores is the increasing number of pet-keeping/managing/grooming/training gadgets there are out there in the market. No doubt the burgeoning dog owning population is one of the most untapped and profitable markets out there, but you gotta wonder how people had dogs that were well trained before all these inventions came about, and why homeless people have the best behaved dogs. Decide for yourself what the bare essentials are for you and your dog, and resist the urge to get another gadget that promises to save you xx minutes of your time. Dogs are creatures of habit, chances are all the time you'd save doing things a new and easier way would be outweighed by the learning curve you and your dog have to go through anyway.
Human food can cost significantly less than specialized dog food. It's a sad time of our lives when the food we eat cost significantly less than the food our dogs eat. Either our dogs are eating particularly well (which I doubt) or we are eating particularly poorly as a civilization. One dual-dog owning friend of mine switched recently to cooking simple recipes for her dogs with food and meat obtained from the supermarket. Not only are they far less processed and therefore healthier for the dog, they're also much more economical to run in bulk. Just remember that if you're taking on cooking all of your pet's food that you're consulting appropriate recipes to ensure a healthy and balanced diet (that's the one thing kibble takes care of!). More recipes can be found at My Dog Eats Better than my Husband.
Stop paying for the gym membership and use your best friend. Odd as I thought it would be, doggy owning friends of mine complain about needing to walk their dogs 3 times a day, and yet find the time to go to the gym to work out at least 3 times a week after work, not including those classes offered by the gym to help one stay healthy. Two most frequently quoted reasons were: 1) my gym instructor is a hard nut and would kill me if I quit, so I need the persuasion to work out. And 2) You get a balance of cardio and weights at the gym which you won't get at home. #1 makes me laugh - for one, there isn't a human I know that is more persuasive than my dog, and despite getting me to brave all sorts of weather to walk with him, I can still never get mad at my dog (or stay mad for long). And as for #2 - dog walking and spending time with your dog isn't only about a slow, long, leisurely walk, which is the frequent impression most people have. Build in sprints and games to vary the pace for a good cardio workout, play tug games with your dog, or practice lifting/carrying them around the house for endurance/weight training (overweight retrievers please apply!).

The Music Challenge: The Beautiful South

2010-01-07T14:07:00.003Z

The Challenge: Using only song names from ONE ARTIST, cleverly answer these questions. Try not to repeat a song title. It's a lot harder than you think.

Name of Artist: Beautiful South (who'd have thought!)

Are you male or female: Girlfriend
Describe yourself: You Keep It All In
How do you feel about yourself: We Are Each Other
Describe where you currently live: Alone
If you could go anywhere, where would you go: Rotterdam (Or Anywhere)
Your favorite form of transportation: I'll Sail this Ship Alone
Your best friend is: From Under the Covers
Your favorite color is: Little Blue
What's the weather like: Bell Bottomed Tear
Favorite time of day: Perfect 10
If your life was a TV show, what would it be called: Don't Marry Her
What is life to you: My Book
What is the best advice you have to give: Let Go With the Flow
If you could change your name, what would it be: Song for Whoever
Your favorite food is: Good as Gold (Stupid as Mud)
Thought for the Day: Baby Please Go
How I would like to die: Straight in at 37

Language or the Kiss Reprise

2010-01-07T13:47:00.003Z

As I navigate through the honey of her voice, I finally realise what she was talking about (doh!). And I don't know why but that dichotomy did not strike me until now. I've always seen language as expression, without thinking that the kiss expressed differently from language. But my mind was so blocked I never got it why there would be a choice between the two - my poetry being different from your dance.

Between the language or the kiss
I know I choose to think, to speak, to watch,
To learn, to philosophize, to dream, to envy.
And I'd wish, for you, if I could choose,
To do. To act, to move, to declare, to not
lose
The chances you would miss:
"Unforgiving the choice still is,
The language or the kiss".

Our choices make our choices. I know this now as well as I did then, and yet, knowing what I know, I would still end up gravitating towards making the choices I knew I would make. If we knew we wouldn't choose anything different, and our choices make our choices, do we really have a choice?

Pink and Glitter

2010-01-06T19:02:00.003Z

Definitely my song for this winter... this must be the only song that Tori's ever done in jazzy, big band style which isn't really her, but I'm loving it! It's soft, it's feminine, it's pink, it's big band, it's jazzy, it's coy, it's cute, it's coquettish... what's there not to like?

Having a little girl really mellowed and added a new dimension to her views on being a woman. At the same time, I must be getting old.

Tori Amos - Pink and Glitter

"Darn Roses", that is what you call all the girls in the world, even the
thorns
You’re surrounded by an army of two who adore you

Our joy isn’t about a present or a grown up motor toy
And little boys all get an honorable mention from me
But this year I’m thinking
Shower the world
Shower the world
Shower the world with pink if you please
Shower the world
Shower the world
Shower the world... with pink.

Black satin, is what I wore
That, and our hearts left on the floor
How was I in that marshmallow snow, to know?
My life would change that night?

In pink, we will paint the town
Champagne never looked so divine
On his lips the sweetest words “Love, you’ve given me quite a ride.”

Welcoming Home New Puppy: Part Two - the other dog

2010-01-02T19:01:00.000Z

Introduce your pets on neutral territory like a park or public place. Easy to say when you've got two full-grown dogs, not so easy to do when you've got an unvaccinated puppy that should not be exposed to where other dogs might have been, so the park is out of the question. It's still a good idea though, premise being that dogs are territorial, and a direct introduction of newbie in oldie's territory would seem too much like an incursion. Friend's houses (who have no pets) or the car are appropriate alternative places.
Keep the younger dog in a crate away from harm until you know your older dog is used to the puppy. Again, very wise, and would work if not for Beanie pawing through the crate trying to reach the puppy like a toy... and vice versa.
Put something with the puppy's scent on it (eg. puppy's bed, pillow or towels) near the older dog, preferably days before you bring pup home, so older dog gets used to pup's scent. If older dog moves away or is otherwise averse, do it gradually to socialize the older dog. Hmm... wish I could do this. Beanie promptly went to Bailey's bed and fell asleep when I placed it on the ground. Without much ado, Bailey clambered all over Beanie's bed and used her indoor toilet tray without invitation or prior training.
Keep loads of toys and beds and anything dogs may like all around, act like there is too much of goodness to go around to avoid jealousy and fighting over toys. Beanie doesn't like toys at all unless there are treats in them, so having Bailey snatch all toys for a quick nibble didn't seem to bother her that much.
Give your older dog attention when your newcomer is around, to avoid your older dog feeling left out or replaced. This actually worked! I did also, schemingly, in the weeks leading up to Bailey's arrival, pay Beanie less attention and made less of a fuss, so the transition from all to nothing (just kidding) didn't seem quite as large. Works with frogs and boiling water, sure works with dogs.

What they don't tell you:

It's incredibly difficult training a puppy with an older, incredibly treat motivated, dog around, as Beanie goes through everything she knows how to do for 4 years now, and expects a treat for examplary behaviour. It must be because she's such a show-off, but did work in my favour as Bailey figured out copying what Beanie was doing was the quickest way to get her a treat, resulting in the ability to teach complex behaviours in a shorter period of time. Note to Self: If you feel you are being far, don't worry about not giving your older dog a treat all the time they demonstrate what needs to be done. It's not like they will stop doing it with a failed attempt, it actually means they try harder next time.
Puppy playing with older dog intensely tends to result in house-training accidents. Beanie has no concept that Bailey needed the loo and wasn't just trying to get away to incite a chase. This necessitated teaching them both that gravitation towards the toilet zone meant that the toilet zone was out of bounds. It also necessitated watching puppy like a hawk and limiting play zones to a smaller area that Bailey could manage and gradually increasing the area as her control got better.
Your puppy becomes your dog's greatest fan and longs to be her sidekick. Sometimes annoyingly so. Beanie being rather submissive isn't inclined to tell Bailey off (by growling) unless she's really ticked off, but has a long fuse. It's normally a good thing in a dog, but does require some intervention, which is the hardest thing for new duo-dog owners to figure out.
Dogs have to fight to get used to each other (OK they do tell you that part), but it's nearly impossible to know when the right time is to intervene, if there is such a time.

Happy Christmas

2009-12-25T20:51:00.003Z

This Christmas allow me to gently dream of dimmed lights, a simmering fireplace, snow drifting softly through glossy french doors outside and a silent, musing barefoot dance on a warm carpet to Tori's A Silent Night With You.

Untitled Scribble at Christmas Time

No need for uncomfortable silences
No tribute to modern conveniences
No trite hymns to gifts of frankincense and myrrh
I didn't want anything for Christmas

These gifts gave me nothing to hold
If not of hope, not worth a weight in gold
I'd wished for a thought, a photograph, a signal
Being stubborn to stifle a memory as I was told.

Not a shameless plug to the holiday album I never thought Tori would make, but I like to think that Christmas would be lit by the traditional this season, filled with the thoughtful tunes from old instead of the jolly holiday faves played on the radio.

Welcome Home New Puppy Part One: Decisions Decisions

2009-12-20T20:36:00.000Z

Brought Bailey home today. Less prepared than I should be.

Bringing a new puppy home is a bit like going to war. I don't mean this in an aggressive way (OK, maybe I do, a little) but in a nutshell, one can never be too prepared, it's all about the terrain (your home turf), and strategic planning is the essence of success.

I don't think I've ever seen any free doggy advice site say this, actually not even the paid ones, but having now come out, battle-weary and a survivor of not one but two puppies, I can honestly say this is true. I envy the domestic goddess puppy keepers that look like Nigella, have perfect puppies and are stay home mums. I'm not a stay home mum, I risk getting criticized for leaving my dogs at home alone with no one (what's each other then?) for company while I work full-time, and I still love dogs and love what they bring to my life when I'm home with them.

But yes, before you bring your puppy home, preparation is the mother of success. And no, you can never be too prepared.

Here's some of the decisions I'd wish I'd made before Bailey came home:

A decision on where the puppy is going to spend the majority of their time when I am not able to supervise, train or play with my puppy.
While this sounds simple at first glance, thinking through this deeper, it's not as easy as it seems. For one, no site seems to tell you exactly how much space to give your dog so that you're neither being cruel to the pet, nor giving it the equivalent of a playboy mansion when you take it home. For another, a recent search showed that many sites favoured crate training, and demonstrated how to pick the right size for a crate, but not the puppy's play area/territory.

I came up with an easy rule of thumb that worked for me: Imagine a rectangle area, simple length (L) x width (W) on the ground. Find out the length of your puppy as an adult dog. Look up websites or ask the breeder if you're not sure how large typical dogs of the breed grow to. For mixed breeds, assume the larger of the mix until you can be sure. (Editor's note that typically, websites tend to tell you the height of the dog, and not the length. I'm no da Vinci but I reckon that a dog can't be more than 3 times longer than it is tall, so went with the proportions of height multiplied by 3.) L = length of your adult dog multiplied by 3, and W = length of your adult dog multiplied by 2. For most people with a medium sized dog, this would be the space of a large bathroom or a small kitchen.

The first impression you may have is that this space isn't all that big. You're right, but this isn't going to be the place that your dog gets free run of in the house for the rest of it's life - that would be cruel. This is the place where your puppy will spend any unsupervised time, and should therefore (by calculations above) be large enough to hold a bed, water and food bowls, toilet facilities and toys.

Once the decision is made, ensure that you have easy access to it, and that it's puppy proof (nothing chewable, toxic, dangerous, sharp, swallowable and otherwise unsuitable for a young dog). Also, if possible, ensure that puppy is able to walk into it by himself, rather than you needing to carry him into it all the time (helps tons with training later on). Finally, make sure puppy doesn't get the ability to wander from this designated zone once he's in it. This is where puppy pens, baby gates and other makeshift fencing that makes your house look like a miniature version of the Israeli-Palestinian border come in. Stick with it though, this will be puppy's home for the next few months until he's old enough to be trusted on his own around the house (usually when he's 8 months to 1 year old).

One thing I didn't mention was physical height. Assume puppy's going to jump, at least at the onset, and have Height = Length of adult dog. This is to account for dogs leaning on gate while standing on hind legs, jumping dogs, dogs that take a flying leap etc etc. I'm fortunate for my Westies that a baby gate that came up to the height of my waist sufficed, but then again, Westies don't grow that tall. This is another reason why it makes sense to have an arrangement where the puppy can walk in by himself. Suddenly picking up 8 month old German Shepherd isn't quite so easy anymore...

A decision on whether I was going to crate-train or paper train Bailey.
The last time I did research on toilet training puppies, many sites seemed to favour paper-training as the "matter of course" in training younglings. Over the last 4 years, this seems to have shifted in favour of crate training, and I've now tried both, with pros and cons either way. Pick one, and stick with it to avoid confusing the puppy who is likely to be as confused as a human having been permanently abducted by aliens.

Crate Training
The very popular method of house training a dog which comprises getting a small crate for the puppy, just large enough for the puppy to lie down, sit up, stand and turn around in. The puppy is taken directly to the designated toilet zone when he is out of the crate at regular intervals to eliminate and praised heavily when he does the right job in the zone.

Pros:

Teaches your dog bladder control, which is useful if the final arrangement for the puppy is to end up doing all of their business outdoors on walks.
Easier for most dogs (with exception of puppy mill dogs) to figure out, as it's apparently doggy instinct not to dirty where they sleep.
Makes it easier to manage puppy's time, as a puppy in a crate without much space to do anything won't. If done right, your dog falls into a routine much faster than a puppy that isn't crate trained.
Added advantage of teaching puppies to settle in a confined area, making travel and temporary confinement in the future acceptable to dogs.
Faster to accomplish, dogs take within a week to get the hang of this if done right.
A schedule can be set up at timed and planned intervals, instead of just whenever puppy feels like it.
Because of the predictability and bladder controls, eliminating on command is easier with crate training.

Cons:

The keyword in the first benefit is the word "all". You have to really be committed to taking your dog out to do its business outdoors, come rain or shine or frost. This also usually means around the same time every day that your dog is used to. And no, dogs don't understand weekends too well.
Puppies need a lot of trips outdoors on doggy duty. For puppies under 3 months of age, this is once every hour at least. Again, puppies don't understand night/day very well either, so that means midnight trips to the loo outdoors for at least the first 2-3 weeks.
Messing up (literally) with the crate can mean that the doggy instinct of not messing where they sleep is over-ridden. This is by no means set in stone, and depending on the puppy, this could be one mess, 3 messes, 15 messes, and very rarely, never. That's a margin of error that you have to bear in mind and live with if you mess up or forget the time.
All of the above points basically point to crate training being nearly impossible for a dog owner working full time, unless you're working full time in the sort of company that gives you maternity cover when you get a new puppy.

Paper Training
This is the main alternative to crate training. There are variants to paper training so this doesn't always mean paper, but the method all essentially involves placing newspaper or pee absorbent material all over the puppy zone. Feed the puppy strategically on one side only, near where the bed is placed, and the puppy usually wanders over to the other side away from the bed/food to eliminate. This leverages the idea that dogs tend to pick the same spots for future elimination, and trains the puppy's surface preferences on paper/pee pads etc.

Pros:

Puppies use in their own time, so you're less on a fixed schedule in having to watch the puppy like a hawk to determine when they need to go.
This is the preferred method for owners who have to work or be away longer hours, as it offers more flexibility in making sure the puppy has facilities to use.
As they become more reliable on the surface/paper, a change in the positioning of the toilet can be effected. If you'd like to progress your puppy to an indoor litter tray, grass in the yard etc. just move a soiled paper to where you want your puppy to go, and the puppy tends to follow. This method was used in Singapore to train their dogs to use an actual squatting loo that was set into the ground. All the owners needed to do was flush when their dogs were done.
Smell attractant pads and puppy training solutions on newspapers do help in rigging the odds to your favour that puppies eliminate on paper to speed up the process.
This method is not cruel to dogs, neither requiring them to perform on demand, nor requiring them to hold it until their owners come home. Many dogs end up eliminating more or less on a schedule anyway when they grow older as their digestive systems settle around their feeding times, so this method doesn't prevent you from eventually training your dog to do it outside.
Allows dogs to be toilet trained indoors, which is convenient for flat dwellers or people who don't have easy, quick access to the outdoors.

Cons:

Training in this method takes longer, as it relies more on coincidence than sheer willpower. While there are ways to stack the odds in your favour, nothing works 100% all the time.
The biggest drawback to this method is the fact that puppies tend to shred or play with the newspapers when they are bored (it's fun!), ending up in one very dirty puppy and also a very dirty play pen. While there are ways around this (eg. putting the papers in a little tray away from your puppy's reach, redirection etc.) no single method is foolproof and much relies on your puppy already knowing a specific area to use. I have found that puppies from ages 8-10 weeks tend not to know/learn how to play with papers yet. As they become older and more exploratory, they inevitably figure out that newspapers are incredibly fun to shred. So note to self that if this method is chosen, get the preferred zone figured out by the puppy within those 2 weeks!
I did see one other drawback mentioned on a site that said if you had a habit of reading your newspapers on the floor, your dogs not knowing the difference between today's news and yesterday's news may end up doing their business on a section you haven't read yet. Never happened to me, but the simple solution is to lay your papers out on the coffee table, or read the news online.

A decision about how often and when I was going to give Bailey her meals.
This decision is by far the hardest one, and also the one most fraught with advice from all corners. Puppies from 8 - 12 weeks typically need 3 meals a day, progressing from 12 weeks to adulthood on 2 meals per day with bigger portions.

The most important consideration is that what goes in, must come out - and that said, would be preferred not to come out at the odd hours of the morning. What they don't tell you is that when your puppy eats, aside from the obvious, also determines your puppy's waking (playful) hours. In the first few weeks, I scheduled a 24 hours divided by 3 = once every 8 hour routine. Big, big mistake. Bailey ended up being bouncy and playful starting at 1am in the morning, resulting in a bedside siege every morning in the hours of 1am-3am by a 1.5kg white furball.

More research later, I decided on a 3 meal schedule as follows...
8am: Breakfast with the dogs, feed Bailey as Beanie got breakfast.
1pm: Lunch for Bailey while Beanie got a treat to avoid jealousy.
7pm: Dinner with the dogs, feed Bailey while Beanie got dinner.

The tip of removing water and treats 3-4 hours before bed time also worked wonders in ensuring that puppy didn't wake up in the middle of the night to do their jobs, hence allowing me to let the puppy sleep through the night without waking me up for a night time play time.

A decision about where Bailey was going to sleep during the night.
I got Beanie, my first dog a lot older than Bailey, who was 7.5 weeks when I took her home, so I'd expected Bailey to adjust as well as Beanie could, not knowing better. I'd left Bailey on the first night downstairs with Beanie, in separate crates so Beanie didn't have to cuddle up next to some stranger.

Well, it was an hour in the car from Buckinghamshire in the middle of winter for Bailey, and must have felt like being abducted by well meaning aliens into outer space in a weird space ship, landing in what seemed like an eternity later on an alien home planet. Bailey slept all the way through, tired out by the experience, but the first night, realised the permanence of her alien abduction situation after seeing another fellow doggy in captivity from an earlier abduction, imagined the worst and whined and cried herself to sleep.

Points for making sure Beanie didn't get disturbed by a stranger: FAIL.
Points for making sure Bailey had a good experience at home: FAIL.
Points for attempting not to create a clingy dog who clearly felt abandoned and didn't trust humans: FAIL.

Next night, upstairs next to my bed. The following week, I gradually increased the distance of her sleeping crate to my bed, and the following week, further away, until finally she was reassured that I was still going to be around the next morning and she'd get fed, same time, same channel.

Some websites talk about ignoring your puppy when they whine and cry for attention, believing that if this attention was paid any mind, that this develops a clingy, attention seeking dog. Suspend that for the first few days I think now. Contrary to paranoid behaviouralists, your puppy simply won't know enough about how you're going to behave in the first week to manipulate your behaviour by whining. As it is, you know little enough about your puppy to manipulate its behaviour, much less the other way around. After your puppy settles in (a week or two later, perhaps), continuing this treatment may give rise to attention seeking, which will quickly die down with ignorance.

I'd thought to let my puppy learn that making a noise won't ever get me to turn up, by way of hoping that when the puppy is young without a developed bark, it is far preferable that the puppy never learnt to bark at all. Little did I know anyway that a puppy's bark, despite all best intentions, develop anyway, and sound very different from a whine and a cry!

Welcome Home Little Bailey

2009-12-20T20:02:00.000Z

I'm already living the next decade of my life...

2009-11-20T21:08:00.005Z

On May 4th a year ago, I wrote about the soundtrack of my life. It's odd how a year or so down the road and it feels that the next decade of my life has begun, but not as a slow transition as you would expect numbers to... moving from one to nine, but as a harsh cutover from 20 to 30.

It's not too bad the next decade, filled with mellow sounds of 70's music and progressing back slightly to angst ridden Robbie Williams with a touch of frost. Not so much beauty in depression than been-there-done-that-sweetheart wisdom.

30's - 40's soundtrack of life would be:-

Carpenters - We've Only Just Begun
Robbie Williams - Strong
James Morrison - Wonderful World
Carpenters - Goodbye to Love
Tori Amos - Take Me With You

This place has given me very much. But most of all a dream of mellow country flowers, a flavour of food... and a settling of the restlessness of youth that I haven't fully come to terms with.

I've been dreaming of a program like this...

2009-11-18T22:16:00.002Z

So, the problem with last.fm and Spotify is that all the music is at your fingertips (legally yes) but that cloud internet hasn't quite reached your iPod in the Tube yet and your videos and music isn't mobile, right?

Enter MediaRaptor, a legal and free way to record MP3s and Videos from online radio stations, last.fm, YouTube... It also trawls a preset list of radio stations and video stations and gives you the option to search for artists and videos by title or keywords and downloads pre-recorded tracks. It's no more illegal than hitting the cassette tape record button at a favourite song on the radio, only automated, digital and something we didn't use to be able to do in the 80's.

After my very first last.fm recording (Heart - These Dreams) converted to MP3 beautifully, resplendent and complete with last.fm lyrics - I am in love!

Happy Birthday Bailey!

2009-10-28T15:28:00.000Z

I have two dogs. They are both West Highland White Terriers (Westies). Beanie, my first and older dog was born on 21st November 2005 in Adelaide, Australia. She's since semi-travelled the world, having lived in Australia for a short stint in puppyhood, Singapore, and is now living out the rest of her days as an English dog in the UK. According to my neighbour, she still doesn't understand English too well, but does alright with Australian.

Today, Bailey, my second female Westie is born. The first time I set my eyes on little Bailey was when she was 3 weeks old, a faceful of rice pudding in Buckinghamshire. The runt of the litter and the quiet, small one of her pack of 3 girls and 3 boys, she was the last puppy left to be sold by her breeder.

You know how they say choose a name when you meet a dog so that it'll have a name when you bring it back home? One couldn't very well call her "Pudding" though that was tempting. Or "Polar" since she looked like a little polar bear. So she was "it" and "the new puppy" and nameless for quite a long time.

It finally dawned on me to enlist the help of current dog Beanie who had a well chosen, aptly picked name. Scribbled all suggestions from friends and family, including Facebook entries in a "name my dog" competition I'd called, and out of the tiny scraps of paper mouth-picked by Beanie was a well chewed scrap that had "Bailey" etched on it. It was actually the most voted suggestion from colleagues and Facebook friends, in line with the tagline "let your taste decide"... was quite apt of the little one and her rice pudding adventures.

I don't want to end a post without a lesson learnt though, since this is all about everything I've trawled the internet in the past 4 years to find about doggy training and ended up learning differently anyway through trial and error.

One thing I found frequently on pet advice sites when searching for dog names was the advice not to name your puppy similarly to the name of the one you have now. Now this advice I can't say I've heeded too well, since Beanie and Bailey sound like a pair, not surprisingly because alliteration and rhyme in the English language are pleasant to our ears. Pleasant enough, I suppose to doggy ears too, but confusing also. Typically when I give a command now, instead of one dog obeying what I've asked, I now get two. When calling a name (any name) two pairs of eyes look in my direction, instead of one. It cracks me up, and is absolutely hilarious, but not all that clear if you're going for clarity, distinction and ease of learning.

In hindsight, I should have named Bailey "Odie" as I'd intended, or "Inu" or "Pudding" or "Trouble". Alas, Bailey's name stuck, so Bailey it is.

Just Passing By

2009-10-13T11:29:00.004+01:00

I know it's strange for me to like a McDonald's ad of all things, but this one's really quite clever - showing on UK screens at the moment. The use of the poetry makes McDonald's classy instead of cheap, and also cements the image of McDonald's being the food of the the people (rightly or wrongly, since I don't eat it very often...)

Ad campaign "Something for Everyone" by Leo Burnett, poem written and read by David Morrissey. The music is the opening track from the 1990 Anjelica Huston / John Cusack movie The Grifters, with the soundtrack composed by Elmer Bernstein - again, classy contradictory use of indie content for a very mainstream production.

Something for Everyo..
Watch the ad...

X

2009-09-18T09:22:00.001+01:00

I miss you.

Cannonball - Damien Rice

2009-09-18T09:13:00.002+01:00

I know I should be blogging about the Tori concert, but before I go into that when time permits, just a short one (after a long absence) from me. I discovered this song again in the morning (random playlist I put on in the morning to keep doggie company) and it popped up. A long absence, the song in my ear, but one of those "what exactly is it?" moments. This song should go into the playlist of my life - and I'd like it to be played at my funeral, almost like a prayer.

Cannonball - Damien Rice
There's still a little bit of your taste in my mouth
There's still a little bit of you laced with my doubt
It's still a little hard to say what's going on

There's still a little bit of your ghost, your witness
There's still a little bit of your face I haven't kissed
You step a little closer each day
That I can't say what's going on

Stones taught me to fly
Love, it taught me to lie
Life, it taught me to die
So it's not hard to fall
When you float like a cannonball

There's still a little bit of your song in my ear
There's still a little bit of your words I long to hear
You step a little closer to me
So close that I can't see what's going on

Stones taught me to fly
Love, it taught me to cry
So come on courage, teach me to be shy
'Cos it's not hard to fall
And I don't want to scare her
It's not hard to fall
And I don't want to lose
It's not hard to grow
When you know that you just don't know...

The 7 Difference...

2009-09-02T19:56:00.002+01:00

Was just going on the net to look for a free anti-virus software to put on the new computer since the old one isn't compatible with Windows 7 and I noticed that AVG is. Actually, I noticed how many softwares out there advertise their compatibility with Windows 7, and I almost had to stop and remind myself that it's not released to market yet. Funny but I didn't notice the same thing about Vista.

This, I believe, is the difference between Windows 7 and Windows Vista, and why I think 7 will be a success in the marketplace. Amidst all the hype which is plain ol' marketing, there is actually some good supporting technical details (the support of developers... not about the code) to suggest that it'll not flop like it's predecessor.

The only question on my mind is... are they really going to keep calling it 7?

Commitment to Simpler Living

2009-07-17T09:39:00.003+01:00

I have to admit, recently I've been frequenting Life Hacking and decluttering websites, in an attempt to find happiness from a simpler life (and save money).

As a result, I've made the simple resolution that moving forward, I will not be accepting any object gifts from anyone - not for Christmas, birthdays, thank you's or any other special event.

The truth is, I'm an incredibly hard person to buy a gift for. And rather than accept items which eventually become clutter in the house (a thankless acceptance, unfortunately) I would rather live with what I have. Buy me a meal, a concert ticket, something that becomes a memory instead.

So now I have to go around announcing this to everyone. Thanks, Mum. Life is simple.

Philosophy of Spending

2009-07-12T20:25:00.004+01:00

I know I haven't posted in a while. I'm in transit. Emotionally, geographically, and mentally.

Anyway, I wanted to capture this thought I caught while washing dishes in the kitchen sink. After a 2 hour long conversation with Mum that I developed my own philosophy of spending. (My mum can have that effect on me sometimes...) This will probably change my life, or at least, change how I see things. Then again, maybe not, maybe it's nothing different from how I saw things before.

I have now 3 defined rules for money well-spent against which I will assess all my purchases:

Money is well spent when it saves me time. Either immediately, or on products that are the outcome of significant time spent, time that I cannot spend myself. Examples are: medical expertise, a locksmith, house cleaning services, pseudo-instant food when I am hungry (up to a certain taste threshold).
Money is well spent when significant effort and heart is obviously placed into an object or service, effort or attention that I am either unable or unwilling to place. Examples are: A dinner at Heston Blumenthal's The Fat Duck, tickets to a play with actors that I really like, one-of-a-kind crafted bags at Greenwich market or Etsy.com, a book written by a favourite author, a concert with Tori Amos, organically farmed eggs and meat.
Money is not well spent when an object or service fits into a particular lifestyle, however sought after, that isn't mine. Examples are: Jamie Oliver's Flavour Shaker (what are jars for?), Le Creuset pots (I can't lift them, I can't use them), Louis Vuitton bags and wallets (mass-produced, expensive efforts to look like Japanese housewives)

I made the striking realization that actually, 95% of my purchases comply with the newly realized (not discovered) philosophy. My purchases rank pretty high, I suppose, on the purity scale.

What is value, after all? I find myself asking myself that a lot recently, especially after my job keeps telling me that we're all on the corporate hunt to create "value", as if "value" is another object to quantify and multiply. Is value that mysterious meme that once sown like a seed, sprouts its produce at the end of the fiscal cycle?

No, I think to find what "value" is, we first have to ask the Adam Smith of all economic questions, which is "Why do we trade?" Why do we buy, instead of do it ourselves? And textbook though that might be, we trade because it's either incredibly difficult or impossible for us to do or make what we're buying, or simply that it saves us time to buy rather than to DIY. So thinking in terms of units - units of my own blood, sweat and tears - do I work to gain back Time that I can spend on enjoying the little bit that I have left after work? Do I work to touch and reach an ephemeral craftmanship that I cannot in my little life aspire towards? Or do I work to fit into a lifestyle in which I do not currently live?

Many people fall for #3 I think. Which is, in thinking about it, wanting to spend wealth on the appearance of being wealthy. An effort to make a statement about having arrived whilst still travelling to the destination.

And I suspect, though I am not there yet, having spoken to everyone who are (apparently) already there - that the fun really is in the journey.

[Ed: I do have to add one more rule, because this falls somewhere between the cracks, and yet is important - Money is also well-spent when it enables another to either save time, or frees up heart/effort into a cause that resonates with you. Examples are: charities that we care for, gifts to friends and family and other gestures of altruism.

Sometimes, the "value" that we are apparently all in search of (says the corporate world) does not stop with the value we generate for ourselves. As I read in an obscure article in one of the back-pages of a back-issue of The Economist - we live in an interdependent world, where through a network of interactions, a positive energy can ripple back to benefit ourselves. Not, of course, that it is why we do what we do.

One Artist

2009-06-08T19:48:00.001+01:00

Since using Tori Amos on Facebook was a lack of a challenge, I’m going to try this again... with someone else I know less songs of.

The Challenge: Using only song names from ONE ARTIST, cleverly answer these questions. Try not to repeat a song title. It's a lot harder than you think.

Name of Artist:
Sarah McLachlan

Are you male or female:
Perfect Girl

Describe yourself:
Angel

How do you feel about yourself:
Building a Mystery

Describe where you currently live:
The Path of Thorns

If you could go anywhere, where would you go:
Fumbling Towards Ecstasy

Your favorite form of transportation:
Train Wreck

Your best friend is:
Time

Your favorite color is:
Blackbird

What's the weather like:
Song for a Winter’s Night

Favorite time of day:
Silent Night

If your life was a TV show, what would it be called:
I Will Remember You

What is life to you:
Full of Grace

What is the best advice you have to give:
Wear Your Love Like Heaven

If you could change your name, what would it be:
Adia

Your favorite food is:
Ice Cream

Thought for the Day:
Don’t Give Up on Us

How I would like to die:
Into the Fire

Embarcacao: At Long Last

2009-05-17T20:15:00.002+01:00

As testament to the power of YouTube and the internet, the lyrics of Embarcacao surfaced... The actual text seem very in line with the song, although I'm not sure about the translation but in the absence of someone who might speak Cape Verdean (hope my Brazilian friend can help somewhat as it's closely related to Portuguese for some words...) I can at least try to guess at the words.

EMBARCAÇÃO (BOAT)
Texte de Teofilo Chantre (translation: trol1976trol
from YouTube)

Ai, ness mundo ca tem sô sofrimento
There's not only suffering in the world
Ma naquel olhar cheio di mágoa
Looking into these sad eyes
Modê crê tão cedo na felecidade
But how can you believe in happiness
Tcheu titá fogá na solidão
That drown in tears alone

Ma na embarcação quta levá nôs vida
On the boat of our fate
Um bom timonero nô ta desejá, pa guiá-no
We need a skilled helmsman
Na temporal nô ta reá vela
Who will manage to pull down the sails on time
Pa nô ca perdê na profundeza dum amargura
And break us away from the embrace of starving waves of
despair

Terra longe à vista é um doce promessa
Probably the far off desired land
Ma qui ta desfazê nindiferença
Will be the usual broken promise
Um sonho nascê na porto dilusão
Because dreams are born in the haven of illusion
Fgi pa longe parcê um solução
From which something keeps on chasing us away to the sea (Ed: Far from
a solution?)
Ma na rota incerta di nôs destino
Our future is an unknown course (Ed: My route has an uncertain
destination)
Nô ta pô esperança num brisa mansa e constante
(Ed: In you, I hope for a tame and constant breeze)

Pintchi vela dnôs existencia
But your wind, blow into the sails (Ed: ... candle...
existence)
E na paz levá, assim, nôs nau
(Ed: Taking peace in the vessel?) And lead our boat
Pum horizonte cheio di luz e bonança
Towards the horizon with peaceful and bright shores (Ed: And lead
out boat towards the horizon of light and tranquility) although not yet
visible

Pintchi vela dnôs existencia
E na paz levá, assim, nôs nau
Pum horizonte di luz e bonança

Here's How Your Name Sounds Like... ToneMatrix

2009-05-14T10:56:00.001+01:00

ToneMatrix: Simple sinewave synthesizer triggered by an ordinary 16step
sequencer. Each triggered step causes a force on the underlaying wave-map, which makes it more
cute.

And if you spell your name on the grid, you get very interesting results... I loved how "elly" sounded. Thanks to Nomad'y for sharing...

A Game of You

2009-05-09T22:37:00.004+01:00

If I could offer one nugget of wisdom that I've learnt so far, the kind that dawns on you at 3am in the morning, the kind that makes sense passing on to your kids - it would be that Life is like a chess game that you play with yourself, and one that is best played strategically.

It dawned on me (as these thoughts do, while I was doing the dishes) that the reason why my parents loved telling me as a child about what they felt I should do with my life, was because as time passes, and the more decisions you made, the more locked into your decisions you are. That certain doors opened close many others for good. That children never realize the severity of how locked in people become as time passes, because for them, having made few decisions of import in their lives, all doors are open, all pages are blank, all possibilities endless. And as humans, we instinctively draw on 20/20 hindsight, and the irrepressible desire to turn back time and re-write our histories.

This doesn't mean I condone parents attempting to make decisions for their kids - their pages are written, let their kids write their own - but that I now understand the human spectator instinct to look upon the life of another and desire to signpost the here-be-dragons in front of some doors, and document through stories and shared experience the folklore of doors that will close when others are opened.

It would be great if we all had that special ability that Nicholas Cage had in "Next", when he could explore the next few seconds of every possibility in his life before making a move. A genius ex of mine once tried to tell me that life had to be played strategically, and I think I ran, screaming, in the opposite direction. The thought was horrifying, that you should pick your job, your degree, your spouse... strategically. What about personal desire? What about love? What about following your heart?

And ten years later (OK, so I'm a slow burner in the thought process on this one...) I realise that he is right. It's not exactly a bleak thought. In the game of chess, some people find themselves able to play to win without certain pieces. Some neglect their bishops. Others give up their knights quickly, never quite understanding the subtlety of the sideways movements of the piece, but would fight to the death before they lose their rooks. In the strategic game of chess as life, the only strategy worth pursuing, after all, is towards the goal of winning the game as you define in.

What about love? What about following your heart, or your mind? What does capturing your opponent's king look like? And what about destiny? Do those that believe in fate see only one side of the game being played, the side that is being played against them?

I've realised that I've inadvertently castled my king early on without really understanding why I'd want to do that, that I've lost many pawns, would fight to the death before I give up my queen, and have sent knights to the slaughter. I've learnt that by playing a game of chess with someone, you can not only learn a lot about the inner workings of their mind, whether they know it or not, but also about yourself. It's a meditation, not a game of win or lose.

Each piece has it's purpose, it's meaning, it's place.

The King is the point of the game, the meaning of life. But you define what the point of the game is.
The Queen is intellect and intelligence. It's power, of mind, of spirit, of personality.
The Knights are relationships and emotion, they are subtle, not straightforward, potentially difficult to control or understand.
The Bishops are cunning, politics, manipulation - moving sideways to get at what you want. They're necessary, and everywhere. They are likely to blind-side you when you least expect it, but turn up anyway.
The Rooks are force of power, anger or brute force, direct and honest. They work opposite to the bishops, and are still a force to be reckoned with.
The Pawns are the waypoints and milestones - the individual certificates, degrees and job choices we put forward, hopefully to get us to where we want to go. They are marriage and children, family and friends.

If your glass is half-empty, you might say that no matter how you play it, you'll never win. If your glass is half-full, you might say that regardless whether black or white wins, in the game you play with yourself, you will end up picking the winning side.

Fences: The Desktop Neatening Tool!

2009-05-08T19:45:00.001+01:00

Windows without walls... but life is better with fences.

This is desktop neatening at it's prettiest and at it's best!

Really Deep Thoughts... (or not)

2009-04-20T22:52:00.003+01:00

While we're on the topic, this is what keeps me up at night (all the real work I do thinking I do either when in the shower or when washing dishes).

Why are plates mostly round?
Do goldfish have friends if they remember only 5 minutes of their lives at a time?Who named the seasons Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter?
What happens to clothes nobody wants to wear when you recycle them?
Why does ice freeze white and not other colours when water is transparent? Does that mean white is the ultimate colour?
What time did Christ really die? Is it really at 3pm when Good Friday mass times usually are?
How do people know that Christ died on a Friday and rose on a Sunday? Isn't the third day technically Monday?
What does Easter mean?
Why do we never see black flowers but see black/dark brown trees and wood?
Do dogs not dream of chasing rabbits, eating pie and other naughty things when they dream?
Who decided that Saturday and Sunday were to be commonly accepted weekends? Why not Friday and Saturday in some countries as is normal, or Sunday and Monday?
Why did we end up using visual as our primary sense when our sight isn't actually really that good?

"How Happy" Part 2

2009-04-20T22:28:00.003+01:00

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;
-- Alexander Pope, "Eloisa to Aberlard"

How odd that of all posts on the blog, not that many of them are of any real value, this is the most read, most commented post! How... curious.

I wonder if there are that many of us searching for innocence (since it can't be that the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was that big a movie hit starring Jim Carrey...) that we cease to find what makes us happy, and content ourselves only with the pleasure of the search?

If it is indeed true that ignorance is bliss (a short form translation of Alexander Pope's sarcasm in all it's glory) then are we truly seeking bliss through ignorance? I cannot allow myself to believe that. I would rather search for something than nothing - I would be first to admit that I believe in a Greater Being (let's codename that "God") because to believe in nothing at all is a dismal, bleak, meaningless prospect.

I am of the viewpoint that 3 year olds and very clever, wise people have one thing in common - they know how to ask a simple question: "Why?" (The value of this has nothing to do with the capacity to drive parents nuts with one word... over-ridden only by the power of another word, "No", with more punch per alphabet value, but barely...)

That eternal sunshine of the spotless mind must come down like the tropical climate of the Seychelles - somewhere very few people are, where very many people want to go.

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot? On my part, I think I'd like to meet someone who doesn't like beach holidays. Someone who thinks having nothing to do and drinking pina coladas all day sounds like the perfect idea of torture. I'd love to meet someone with an eternal snowstorm of a curious mind. Someone who wakes me up at 2am in the morning with strange musings (like: do goldfish have friends if they remember only 5 minutes of their lives at a time?) that keep me up at night staring at the stars.

What is the weirdest thing you've ever wondered about? Were you happy thinking about them? Or did you put it away, in your saving-up-for-a-holiday-box, to bring yourself back to more practical matters?

The Narnia Code

2009-04-18T21:17:00.005+01:00

Every now and then, I come across something that wakes up a part of me that's gone to sleep. Today was one such moment. I'd stumbled across The Narnia Code, a BBC documentary about Michael Ward, who'd made what would probably be termed as one of the most fascinating literary discoveries in recent history. I'd daresay it was compelling, and also the type of discovery to catch on faster than a new Robert Frost poem, thanks to the huge movie'ability of the Narnia Chronicles.

I've not read all 7 books of the Narnia Chronicles, I must admit. Or at least, although I can remember reading the full Lord of the Rings twice over as a kid, I remember only vague snippets of the Narnia Chronicles. I feel sure that I was fed the kind of literary diet as a child that would not have missed out these books, but at the same time, it joined the childhood stream of consciousness together with Sandman graphic novels, Norse mythology, Aesop's fables and other odd bits and pieces of information-that-nobody-knows-much-of-anymore.

So imagine my pleasant surprise coming across this documentary and learning that a secret, "third layer" of CS Lewis's subtle plan in the Narnia Chronicles was drawn from precisely the "stream of consciousness" that once made up common knowledge of people before CS Lewis's time.

Do I agree with CS Lewis? Yes, I do. Whole-heartedly. And why not? His ideas are so much more seductive, so much more enticing than the alternatives that I'm presented with by modern science and modern fact.

Watch the documentary - it's a not-so-long download on cable, and for a 250mb wait, if it sparks in you a wanting to believe, if it gives you something else to look forward to besides the end of the weekend - then it would have been worth the while.

(If Wei Chean could watch this documentary, I think she would be very edified in her long held love of CS Lewis's work.)

Incredulous
Upon watching The Narnia Code, a documentary on Planet Narnia by Michael Ward on CS Lewis's unifying theme of the seven mythological planets in his Narnia Chronicles.

Someone told me something I already knew, and had forgotten.
I know you are not the universe.
The universe is matter and mechanism, materialism,
The physical - you held me in your arms, I knew
You held a body, not a self, a discarded image
Of surreal to real, dreams to dust.

No longer do we share intimately a knowledge of the ties that bind
Us, universally drawing you from you, me from me,
That Tuesday was for war, and Friday for love,
That we know more than we know, and remember more than fact.
If it's only untrue, but beautiful, then tell me lies,
I want my sky lit with more than coloured dust.

I'd forgotten that Hope was not reserved for children, and
Dreams for courage and fairytales, that a book could lift
A mind beyond what was possible - we should all read -
And my heart would dare to think, that
I could look upon the stars and see a being
Far greater than you or I. Imagine that.

Almost Free Music from Spotify!

2009-04-14T22:16:00.002+01:00

Sometimes living in the UK has benefits. One of these is Spotify, a free music player that has just launched in the UK (and not some other places I know heheh).

If you thought Last.fm was cool, until it started to stop sharing the music that you searched on - and you switched to Deezer which did the same thing until it fell to the Dark Side of hideous ads and pulled out music - then Spotify is the next best thing.

Log in, search for plenty of music which streams instantly, it's apparently ad driven but I haven't heard or seen an ad so far and it's been 6 songs in. Happy with that.

Love the iTunes like interface, creation of play lists using drag and drop technology, recommended artists, quick, light-footed search and play interface. Great for samplers (in full), for falling in love with songs before the final purchase, for music that accompanies evocations, blogs, surfing, coffee... pretty much anything, really.

I now need an effortless, audiophilic sound system hooked up to my laptop.

How to Peel Garlic

2009-04-13T13:09:00.004+01:00

It says something dramatic about the recent state of my being that my latest, greatest scientific, geeky breakthrough was to figure out how to peel garlic efficiently in a way that hasn't been explored on the internet.

This is no small matter. Google can and will tell you (usually) everything that you need to know. From the best way to cure a hangover to how to iron a shirt. God knows everything that I've learnt in life, I've learnt from a search engine.

That said, Google probably doesn't tell you the most efficient way of doing things. It will get by, suffice, get you through the day, but the best thing about a search engine is to prove the case that life's teacher doesn't get better than trial and error and experimentation, the best loved (and most fun) way of "taking it apart to find out how it works".

Most "How to Peel Garlic" guides online in a quick and easy way tell you to smash down hard on a clove of garlic with 1) a cleaver, 2) a large frying pan, 3) your boyfriend's flat side of the head... but all of these methods get the cleaver/frying pan/boyfriend's said cheek etc. unnecessarily dirty. Some clever guides also recommend the garlic peeler, which really works (I have one) which is an unnecessarily expensive tube of silicone'y rubber in which you put the garlic clove, roll on a work top, and presto, the garlic clove pops out of the tube after some satisfyingly crunchy sounds. It does work, albeit being overtly expensive for something that just peels garlic, but only works for larger, rounder cloves of garlic.

Enter my method for peeling garlic, which works for smaller cloves too: Hold the garlic clove at the ends with the thumb and forefinger of both hands. Twist in opposite directions to hear a satisfying crunching sound as the delicate papery skin of the garlic breaks and separates from the clove. Pull with thumb and forefinger of both hands in opposite directions and watch that paper skin fall away.

Why does it work? The garlic clove inside the skin is far softer and more pliable than the paper skin that contains it. By flexing the clove, you break the contact of the skin with the clove, which creates a space between the skin and clove that "peels" it for you.

Oh, and not only is this quick, but you get a whole clove intact. Unlike the fast, smash 'em up version.

February Snow

2009-02-02T13:47:00.002Z

First day of work back from a warm vacation and it's blanketed by a white layer of fluffy snow. It's been the coldest yet for the UK in over a decade, with the heaviest snowfall in around 18 years. In the meantime, the dog came back with a cold and is sneezing, and so am I.

But I'm welcoming the white. For the first time I've been in this part of England, there is a thick 4" of snow on the ground, and more is still falling. Continuously. Previous experiences have always been with a disappointing touch of icing that melts faster than you can say "it's snowing!".

There's something powerfully cathartic about the vision of delicate white flakes indiscriminately covering everything that it falls upon with a smooth, white layer. It speaks of the power of the small in the resilience of one or two flakes persisting at the end of a branch, but also of the power of the collective, in the blanketing force that snow becomes over a blue car, a red berry, the asphalt ground, the green fields. Every colour converted to white in a resistance is futile kind of way.

The snow falls like a meme, an idea. A single flake at first, tossing and flicking in one general direction. And then another, in a slightly different direction. Then another, and another, and before long, a series of snowflakes, some catching on each other as they fall, gaining weight, gaining strength.

The half-pleasure, half-guilt of leaving footprints in the snow where no foot had trod before is soon forgiven as the new snow delicately dab away at the traces of my weight upon the white. No postman or milkman has walked today up the driveway to leave a set of heavy shoeprints upon the ground. No one will disturb the pristine levelling of the ground today, I am willing the snow to disappear as softly as it came, in the shade of a tree or a roof.

If colours mean something, and white often means purity, cleanliness, sometimes death or defeat... if only for the snow scene, white must surely to me mean redemption and force.

As colours go, white is the only colour that in nature dominates all other colours, like it or not. The only colour that can say, "Well, be whatever colour you want to be, but when it's my time, I will surpass you, exceed you, blank you out and become the colour that you will wear, regardless of the colour you are inside." Royalty may wear yellow to be like the sun, and purple to be of noble birth. In my world, royalty will wear white - the all encompassing, all dominating colour. It is the unassuming, yet celebratory colour, the colour that says "in my time I will colour everything else across the world with my shade". And I think, quite possibly, because of the prevalence of snow and cloud, it is the single most frequently occurring colour in nature.

I remember...

2009-01-16T22:42:00.004Z

Many things have changed.
You are you, and I am me,
In places so different, literally
Miles away, a different world in concept.

Sentimentality is a dirty word.
A song currently not on the top 25
Most recently played on the iPod
Crept up random, uninvited.

Deja vu doesn't quite capture it.
I could run but realise, Memory
Like fire is radiant and immutable.
To remember that I remember.

Mesh is the new Net

2009-01-07T17:40:00.002Z

[And now in my myriad chameleon phases, I am now operating temporarily as a Tech blogger. I promise this will terminate at the end of this post.]

Those who know me know that I don't normally rave about a product that Microsoft produces, unless it's very very good. I have high standards for technology, not least in the area of look and feel, and so it's very seldom that I come across a product that meets all requirements in form and functionality.

With that context, I'd like to momentarily rave about Live Mesh. The technology and concept isn't new, leveraging peer-to-peer download technology, Live Mesh allows the multiple computers and devices that everyone these days tend to own (the laptop at home, a mobile phone, the desktop at work) to talk to each other and share files. It also comes with the ability to allow remote desktop access, to extend the user's reach into the interface of computers and devices not immediately at your desk. All these brought together with and by a virtual desktop called Live Desktop, that allows you to sync with a virtually hosted 5GB+ of online storage. All that... and synchronizing across mobile devices as well as Macs. Beauty.

I may be using Live Mesh beyond what it was touted to do, which was allow seamless integration across the same platforms for similar files. What I found it did enable:

One click back-up onto the virtual desktop of key folders in Documents through the synchronization function
Remote Desktop'ing allowing me to now completely treat my laptop as well as the personal one at home as merely virtual terminals into a seamless workspace
If my laptop crashes tomorrow, well, the one I use most frequently anyway, I will not cry, because there is literally nothing on it that doesn't have a sync copy somewhere else

Mesh is that fabric of a safety net to catch me when I fall, with hopefully less holes than will let an elephant through. Am loving the interface and speed so far - will have to see if this ends up becoming a paid and potentially slower service as more users start cottoning on to the idea.

New Year's Resolutions and the Ministry of Food

2009-01-06T14:19:00.003Z

The new year has got me cooking from the Ministry of Food, Jamie Oliver’s new cookbook. I’ve never been much of a Jamie fan, but I must say that having tried the Italian based recipes from the latest cookbook, he’s got something good going on there with the easy to make, train the idiot style of food that actually tastes halfway decent and relatively similar to what you might get at a restaurant for slightly less trouble but a lot more spend.

I’m actually quite impressed by the shortcut aglio olio'esque recipe, and it’s a great book to start with if you’re not really familiar with cooking, or if you are and just wanted to know a quicker way of doing things without compromising tastes.

Foolproof Aglio Olio (as adapted from Jamie Oliver's Ministry of Food)

Ingredients:
Olive Oil
Butter [Ed: apparently a North Italian trick, and it's one that works! Whatever you do, do not skip the butter!]
Loads of garlic, sliced
Balsamic vinegar or lemon juice
Pasta
Water & Pinch of Salt

Method:

Put a pan of water to boil with a pinch of salt for the pasta. Add the pasta and cook per pasta's instructions until al dente.
Put another large pan on medium heat. Note the medium heat is important, err on the low side as you don't want to burn the oils. Glug olive oil, garlic, and a spoonful of butter per person to melt on the pan. [Ed: On the heat, it should take a couple of minutes to sizzle the garlic, I've found that by soaking the garlic in the oil, the garlic takes longer to release it's fragrance, giving you more time to transfer the fragrance from the garlic into the pasta where you want it to be.]
When you start to smell the garlic, pour balsamic vinegar or lemon juice in about equal proportion to the oil used into the pan. Stir in the pasta. [Ed: One of the tricks I've found out to avoid that oily taste that usually turns up in an aglio olio done badly is to put equal parts of acid (lemon juice or balsamic vinegar) to the oil. Jamie did a very good trick using cherry tomatoes - slightly out of season ones with extra zing work especially well - and balsamic vinegar to get just that right combination of creamy/sour in the sauce.]
Add a little of the water from boiling the pasta to cream the sauce. Stir, taste and add a bit of crushed black pepper if needed.

The Art of Corporate Communications

2009-01-04T10:31:00.004Z

I don't usually wax lyrical about corporate management or any sort of management spiel either. I am proud of the fact that I have never and will never read a management book, despite recognizing the infinite revenue capacities of the genre.

But after an enlightening conversation with an MBA friend yesterday about culture, accents, working in a large, matrixed organization - this morning I had an epiphany about... email.

Many management and communications guru wax lyrical about the evils of cold, heartless email. There are statistics about the number of (useless) emails we write and send every day, spam is condemned, email is condemned as spam. However, having struggled a little with accents across borders recently, I've come to realize that the best tool for working across borders may actually be... email.

Why? Email is an accentless, contextless medium. Despite the potential dangers of such a medium, the flipside to risk is always opportunities, and I can't help but see email as the most effective way for a corporate (read: cold) management (read: antisocial) person to get things done.

Know your kitchen. Many management communications articles focus on how remote management and the need for communications across borders due to globalization are hampered by a lack of context and the inability to build relationships across borders, especially in high context dependent cultures. Management comms articles who like to compartmentalize the human psyche focus on how we each have a "communication preference", hinting that you can tell the straightforward from the subtle in how they communicate over the phone - Jack the American blathing his needs over the phone to Yuki the Japanese nodding and silently disagreeing over the conference line. I don't believe any single person has a single communication preference. We pick, or should pick, our communication mediums and preferences based on what we want to achieve at any given time.

So we know that subtlety is not email's strongest points. But then again, email isn't the only tool in the kitchen, and the recognition of the fact is communications' biggest win. Use email to get things done; and phone/webcam and face to face meetings focused on building relationships. In a conference call among many parties, build relationships over the phone and summarize action items in an email following up the call.
Exploit the blank. Blank isn't always cold and contextless. While over the phone we usually know why we have come together for a discussion, email starts off blank, without a purpose. Exploit the fact that email is without context and emotion to set the tone and purpose of the communication. State your intentions at the beginning of the email, outline key messages by prefacing the purpose of the communication.
Summary = Clarity. I learnt this trick by accident along the way. Use your advantage in good email management to benefit groups and individuals who don't. How many threads have you come across that warble and ramble across several weeks and individuals? Pull those together in a clear summary to all involved, and you will be remembered as the essential person bringing clarity and efficacy to a situation. By making brevity your best friend, you maximize the chances of your email being read, and minimize the spam-delete instinct that many of us develop these days.
Think before you speak. Master the art of drafting. I've learnt at several points in my life that email saves you from blurting, and gives you a last opportunity to retract your words before they are spoken. Several tools allow you to do that: Keep emails in your Outbox instead of sending them automatically. This allows you to review your email one last time before hitting the ultimate send button. Save important emails as Drafts, take the time to work on them, it's worthwhile. Put yourself on CC. Most people don't notice emails that they send, but take notice of emails that are sent to them. Copying yourself on key communications allows you not only a point of reference in the future, but builds in that self-criticality that is often missing from blurt-sending.

This is why I like it cold...

2008-12-19T04:32:00.003Z

Was walking in the snow today on my way to lunch. It wasn't as cold as I thought it would be, but then again it was snowing and it's never as cold as you think it is when it snows. Being enveloped in a powder of white that you can dust off your scarf, your coat and your hair is definitely one of my favourite all-time memories, the type that sticks when you remember everything that is beautiful about life that comes for free.

There was a moment there as I reached the glass door at my destination that I glanced upwards to look for the handle, and realized that there were snowflakes on my eyelashes. I see now why it's one of the "favourite things".

What About Now?

2008-12-19T04:16:00.002Z

One of my favourite music videos (link in title):

Daughtry - What About Now?
Shadows fill an empty heart
As love is fading,
From all the things that we are
But are not saying.

Can we see beyond the scars
And make it to the dawn?

Change the colors of the sky.
And open up to
The ways you made me feel alive,
The ways I loved you.

For all the things that never died,
To make it through the night,
Love will find you.

What about now?
What about today?
What if you're making me all that I was meant to be?
What if our love never went away?
What if it's lost behind words we could never find?
Baby, before it's too late,
What about now?

The sun is breaking in your eyes
To start a new day.
This broken heart can still survive
With a touch of your grace.

Shadows fade into the light.
I am by your side,
Where love will find you.

What about now?
What about today?
What if you're making me all that I was meant to be?
What if our love had never went away?
What if it's lost behind words we could never find?
Baby, before it's too late,
What about now?

Now that we're here,
Now that we've come this far,
Just hold on.

There is nothing to fear,
For I am right beside you.
For all my life,I am yours.

What about now?
What about today?
What if you're making me all that I was meant to be?
What if our love had never went away?
What if it's lost behind words we could never find?

What about now?
What about today?
What if you're making me all that I was meant to be?
What if our love had never went away?
What if it's lost behind words we could never find?
Baby, before it's too late,
Baby, before it's too late,
Baby, before it's too late,
What about now?

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

2008-12-18T06:11:00.001Z

merry christmas!,
originally uploaded by anzyAprico.

It snowed two days ago here in Sammamish and it's beginning to look and feel a lot like Christmas - namely empty offices and empty halls as people work from home to avoid the "snow", massive "get this done before Christmas" fire drills, and the crazy rush of weekend traffic and shoppers beating recession blues and credit crunches to complete Christmas shopping before the deadline next week looms near.

But I like Christmas (generally). Top 10 reasons why I like Christmas:
10) Big(ger than normal) dinners
9) Christmas lights in town
8) Pine trees, mistletoe and holly
7) Winter punch and warming drinks (like hot chocolate)
6) It's the one time of the year that red and green go together without fault.
5) Excuses for free firework displays
4) The opportunity to exchange the random presents you've been buying all year.
3) I actually like Christmas puddings and fruit cakes.
2) The concept of being cold but cozy
1) Being able to hum Christmas jingles without anyone looking at you too oddly

This year's Christmas song award goes to "Winter Wonderland", as the most frequently played song in both the UK and the US.

Sleigh bells ring... are you listening?
In the lane snow is glistening
A beautiful sight, we're happy tonight
Walking in the winter wonderland

Gone away is the bluebird
Here to stay is a new bird
He sings a love song as we go along
Walking in the winter wonderland

In the meadow we can build a snowman
And pretend that he is Parson Brown (I never knew this lyric!)
He'll say "Are you married?"
We'll say "No, man, but you can do the job while you're in town"

Later on, we'll conspire
As we dream by the fire
To face unafraid the plans that we've made
Walking in the winter wonderland

Language of the Kiss

2008-12-11T06:52:00.003Z

If English is my heritage, then this is my birthright. In true 20/20 hindsight, the choices that we make make our choices. Did you know that then?

Laughter like a language I once spoke with ease
But I'm made mute by the virtue of decision...
Oh, the fear I've known
That I might reap the praise of strangers
And end up on my own

But you told me if I had my way I'd be bored
Right then I knew I loved you best born of your scolding
When we last talked we were lying on our backs
Looking at the sky through the ceiling...
The alphabet of feeling

I am alone in a hotel room tonight...
And I'm working through the grammar of my fears
Oh mercy, what I won't give
To have the things that mean the most
Not to mean the things I miss
Unforgiving the choice is
The language or the kiss.

History of Us

2008-12-11T06:45:00.002Z

Indigo Girls - History of Us,
originally uploaded by metaphoric.

Revisiting an old, favourite song.

So we must love
While these moments are still called "today"
Take part
in the pain of this passion play
Stretch our youth as we must,
Until we
are ashes... to dust.
Until time makes
History of us

Although I didn't go all the way to Paris, I might have gone all the way to Prague.

Interestingly, this song's evocation keyword was "Leonardo da Vinci".

America

2008-12-11T06:27:00.001Z

Razorlight - America,
originally uploaded by metaphoric.

I'm in America at the moment. Each city/country/place to me is like a person to get to know. I know it's been said before, but I do honestly think that.

America, to me, is one of those friend/colleagues that is at heart a really nice person but sometimes so difficult to work with you feel like throttling them at the throat.

So I did another matrixed, sequenced, on the surface trite evocation piece.

There are three ways to read this (a guide this time because it's not as free-form as the others):
Top to Bottom are Themes - Purpose; Pleasure; Pose
Left to Right are Time Frames: Appeal; Real; Ideal

And the song choice? Well, that's a no brainer - it was America, by Razorlight.

Leona Lewis/Snow Patrol - Run

2008-12-07T20:43:00.001Z

Leona Lewis/Snow Patrol - Run,
originally uploaded by metaphoric.

I'm really obsessed about the imagery of this song - can't believe it took so long (and Leona) for me to find it.

I keep hearing light, in shades and tones, in light, flickering breaths drawn that I had to search on 'light' for this one.

Light up, light up.
As if you had a choice.
Even if you cannot hear my voice,
I'll be right beside you, dear.

On another note, what is it with Snow Patrol's recent trend of soft, mumbling, almost monotonous verses only to hit with a thundering, swelling, glorious opus of a crescendo chorus? It worked for a while with Run, but after Crack the Shutters and Please Just Take These Photos from My Hands, doesn't the swelling chorus style sound a bit repetitive?

Run

2008-12-02T18:43:00.003Z

Shame it took Leona Lewis to bring this song to my attention. Thank you Snow Patrol - I want you in a car with me on a long, straight road to infinity. I want you lying next to me, staring at a blank canvas ceiling, doing absolutely nothing.

I'll sing it one last time for you
Then we really have to go
You've been the only thing that's right
In all I've done

And I can barely look at you
But every single time I do
I know we'll make it anywhere
Away from here

Light up, light up
As if you have a choice
Even if you cannot hear my voice
I'll be right beside you dear

Louder louder
And we'll run for our lives
I can hardly speak I understand
Why you can't raise your voice to say

To think I might not see those eyes
Makes it so hard not to cry
And as we say our long goodbye
I nearly do

Light up, light up
As if you have a choice
Even if you cannot hear my voice
I'll be right beside you dear

Louder louder
And we'll run for our lives
I can hardly speak I understand
Why you can't raise your voice to say

Slower slower
We don't have time for that
All I want is to find an easier way
To get out of our little heads

Have heart my dear
We're bound to be afraid
Even if it's just for a few days
Making up for all this mess

My Deco

2008-12-02T14:54:00.000Z

This site is beginning to become my favourite when I'm bored...

How to Clean Stuff .NET

2008-12-01T17:28:00.002Z

The website that I would go to when I remember that I need to clean... Remind me again why it wasn't a bad idea to Google "how to iron a shirt"?

Hotels should have this...

2008-12-01T17:25:00.003Z

If only just to spook guests out... I would have them in my home if not for that:

I hate cleaning
I hate fish
Bored goldfish + Electric Toothbrush probably do not = joy

My dream home will have one of these!!

2008-12-01T17:22:00.003Z

Resisting temptation to have a "things I would buy if I had the spare cash lying around in wads frivolously" tumblr blog, my dream home must definitely have one of these unfortunately named Suck UK's slide displays...

http://www.popgadget.net/2008/10/suck_uks_slide.php

Oh, and I wouldn't mind the cat thrown in for free with the sofa too!

Not Tonight, Josephine

2008-10-18T22:08:00.002+01:00

Josephine Deux,
originally uploaded by metaphoric.

Every now and then an expression and a form coalesces into such a clarity that it begs articulation.

Evocate.

Put the music on, load Mosaic Maker, type one word onto Flickr's Search.

Pick your cherries. Stick them like jotter book collages that you used to do.

Except post them back online, the sum more than its parts, drawing emotions from music, from images, from flashes of synapses firing in close sequence.

Add poetry. Add lyrics.

I ask you to listen to Josephine by Tori Amos while you look at this collage.

Gasp at the delicate nature of her beauty, wrought from the work of hands. And wait.

It's Probably Autumn Now

2008-09-07T21:03:00.004+01:00

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
- John Keats, To Autumn

The season of mists has begun. As it normally does, in rain, cloud, and infrequent bursts of sunshine, not unlike a temperamental child. This year, autumn has come early, as if in retort to my earlier scepticisms of a warm September and a frosty April. I don't normally like Septembers (my favourite months are December and February) and this year, September feels like September. No illusions of summer past it's time, no clinging on to hope that things are other than a dull and bland month. I like it that way. It's real, no pretensions, 100% pure honesty.

If we could break up the periods of one's life into months, I'm probably coming September by now. Assuming uneven months, it feels at this time of the year that the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed months of spring, the successes of an earlier summer have faded into a mellow and warm, coffee-drinking, bossa-nova listening, warm-coloured season. It's the season that holds off the seduction of crisp frost in December, the season that is wise to the innocent white of January's pale lips and skin, the season that says, "Tell me as it is and give me nothing more." It is the wise woman of the fates, the mother, the matriarch, the empress.

Eat with me the plum fruits of bliss,
Watch golden rays of sun caress the edge of night
Dance gently in falling leaves and fading light
Intoxicated by the season of mists.

One Art

2008-07-19T15:58:00.004+01:00

Over packing and getting ready to move, and watching "In Her Shoes" in which this poem featured, Elizabeth Bishop comes back to become a rather good friend:

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

As it always seems to me upon moving, and packing, and relocating,

The art of packing isn't hard to master, and quite the same,
Though different; as losing,
Yourself in labels and boxes with a name.

Pack something every day. Put another part
of yourself in a box, draw lines, imagine
That you can be divided up, a mind, a heart.

I packed two photographs, from two
Places, two faces, some memories lost
Another preserved, unused, untrue.

Even then it's impossible to lose; the
Fear of losing overcome by fear of use
The art of packing isn't hard to master
The fear of losing forgot the fluster.

27

2008-06-29T15:15:00.003+01:00

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

There is very little, and then very much, about growing up, and growing old. At the end of 26 years, the one thing I've learnt is the value of persistence.

The persistence of time, of dreams, of hope, of love.

A year, then another, then another. I'd stopped celebrating my birthday at 21. Or so I thought. This year and another, a vague and futile effort to try and make a day special. Just because. Commemorating the turn of another year, the hope of all things new, the dream of stepping closer to where I'd want to be, the belief that having someone special by your side makes things somehow better, despite being miles away from...

So I went up the wheel I'd sworn off 8 years ago - the persistence of time/
I finally got the one gift I've been waiting for - the persistence of dreams/
I found myself a dream job (although I didn't apply) and convinced myself that I'm moving closer - the persistence of hope/
And I baked myself my own birthday cake - an Oreo cheesecake, proving to myself that I could actually bake without much assistance - the persistence of love.

Each year I try to coop myself up in silence and think deep thoughts. I didn't end up doing it this year. But I did manage to get my deep thought of the year:

The risk of realising your dreams too early is that you stop knowing what to do for the rest of your life.

Be careful what you wish for.

onestringbag

2008-06-11T22:31:00.002+01:00

Just when I am trying to eliminate plastic bag in my frenetic response to the 10p tax law proposed and withdrawn, I was shopping at the supermarket the other day wondering about the even more excessive number of plastic bags that turn up from weighing fruit and vegs.

Those bags are even worse than plastic carrier bags, they're not recyclable, and are too small to be of any reuse value. Just as I thought that there must be one smart person out there who had figured out how to avoid using those bags - onestringbag appeared.

The one smart person who designed and created the onestringbag for grocery shopping happened also to shop at my beloved Victoria Market, and lives in one of my favourite cities. She's even now got the onestringbag open sourced so you can make them yourself using instructables - and in case you don't want to go through the trouble, you can buy them too.

Seven and Twenty-Seven / time like memory

2008-06-09T20:04:00.003+01:00

[memory] is what happened.
[memory] is a poem i once wrote.
[memory] is a poem that then writes me.

and visceral fantasy / dwelling in the reality of previous / our former selves staring at us / some dead, some forgotten, some writing love letters / "to your ego at twenty-four" / who says we can only give advice to our children / we can write letters to our future selves / if we would heed them when the time comes anyway / advice is cheap (and forgotten) no matter by whom / knowing my foibles, i don't think i'd take myself any more seriously at seven than twenty-seven / i'd look back and laugh at my naive insanity all the same.

funny though, how we haven't words for future besides future / but we have adjectives, nouns, verbs for what has come before / previous, former, past, ago; future, future, future, future / frevious, perhaps, fast is taken, the verb 'will be' / funny how 'will' suggests determinism sometimes / not everyone would agree we have a choice.

i am obsessed with time and the notion of clocks / tiny time pieces ticking destiny in regular motion / i didn't think time slipped by in seconds but we need some way of counting i suppose / like a metronome keeping rhythm when the fact is i am out of tune. / did you think we'd need a watch other than to meet the time to meet each other by? / these days i take to meeting you whenever / a location and an uncertain hour (you are always late anyway) / and if you are meant to be there then perhaps you will be / (and i will break up with whoever i unfortunately never managed to meet). / these days, late means time has passed and i learn to expect you two minutes after / and late to me becomes the endless waiting for someone who will never then arrive / a truly late. and perhaps then "the late mr darcy" takes on more significance than someone who is simply held up by traffic.

i just got myself a watch. / and not just a watch. / a very expensive watch / a watch that i'd wanted since i was 17.

it was the gift i'd rejected at 18, yearned for at 21, and finally got - at 27. i'd gotten it to honour a memory, and as memory-serves, memory now honours me. it's the same memory, only different - mirror imaged. the giver and not the given reversed.

do you wonder if you would know if something you've been waiting for has arrived? when the moment steals by, unspoken, unknown, unannounced?

lately i've been staring at shadows.

Cooking for Engineers

2008-05-17T20:35:00.001+01:00

This site is right up my alley...

http://www.cookingforengineers.com/

Simple Human Kitchen Designs

2008-05-17T18:44:00.002+01:00

As part of the dinner divas and life hacks part of the blog, I spotted today the most perfect, well designed dish rack that's just the thing for enuwy. Now I wonder if she's looking for a dish rack.

What I love about it - it comes with a drip tray for water to run into the sink, looks beautiful and is compact enough for small spaces.

http://www.simplehuman.co.uk/products/index.asp?cat=5

Dog Names

2008-05-10T11:53:00.003+01:00

Woke up this morning with a brain wave of names for my next dog...

I reckon dogs don't come as individuals anyway, they come in packs. Therefore, they need pack names in the variation of a theme.

Colours are popular:

Blue
Gray/Grey
Pink
Scarlet
Maroon
Blanc
Matt
Noir
Hazel
Cream
Mint

Pairs:

Bonnie & Clyde
Mills & Boon
Heckler & Koch (probably good names for Dobermans)
Ernst & Young (maybe Ernie...)

Food:

Cookie
Butter
Peanut
Almond
Dough
Sugar
Candy
Honey
Carrot (Had a dream I had a Westie called Carrot which made everyone laugh)
Cabbage (I have spoken to a real person whose name is Cabbage. Found it hard to keep a straight face.)
Peach
Apple
Cheese
Toast

Miscellaneous Items and Brand Names (I can never tell which):

Mac
Milo
Horlicks
Nokia
Sony / Sonnie
Heinz

Numbers, popular ones being:

Three
Seven
Eleven
Five

Positive Emotions:

Jolly
Happy
Cheery
Smiley
Naughty

Culturally Aligned:

For Westies and Scotties

Macduff
Macbeth
Tartan
Mac (just Mac)
Douglas
Doug

I did say that I won't be getting another dog until I can figure out what their names are. That was the case with Beanie, but Beanie's rather an individual dog name, and I had trouble pairing it with anything else. I have to say that just for laughs, Toast is quite high up on my list. I'm also rather keen on Muppet but fear that the name would create a self-fulfilling prophesy.

If you have suggestions (and they don't even have to be good) drop me a comment to let me know. I'm hopeless at names.

Otherwise I just might go with Toast, Muppet or the first name of the Maroon 5 lead vocal.

Deja Vu Redux Again

2008-05-10T11:15:00.001+01:00

london cycling,
originally uploaded by lomokev.

How's that for putting two and two together? I was browsing my favourites on Flickr and just realised that my first fave photo (taken by lomokev) was actually of Imogen Heap.

Not that I liked that many of her songs, but she was just recently mentioned in a blog comment I came to after some time.

Soundtrack of My Life

2008-05-04T22:25:00.005+01:00

In an answer to a question posed a long time ago, if you had 13 songs that made up the soundtrack of your life, what would those songs be?

And curiously (this disturbed me a little) - there were a lot of song titles with the word "dream" in them. Entirely coincidental, I convince myself.

Crowded House - Don't Dream It's Over
The Cranberries - Dreams
KT Tunstall - Suddenly I See
Maroon 5 - She Will Be Loved
James Blunt - 1973
Heart - These Dreams
Bread - Goodbye Girl
Damien Rice - 9 Crimes
Anna Nalick - Breathe (2 am)
Indigo Girls - Love Will Come to You
Craig Armstrong (Liz Frazer) - This Love
Sarah McLachlan - Good Enough
Bent - Private Road

Oddly enough, these are nice songs, not all of them are my favourite, but all of them are very apt.

Gave it more thought and came back to this one. I can't wait until I turn 30, because there'll be 3 decades of music worth mentioning at least in my life. I break them up into phases -

Decade 1: 0 - 10

Where the music influences of your life really depends on the music other people are listening to at the time.

Crowded House - Don't Dream It's Over
Erasure - A Little Respect
Depeche Mode - Somebody
Whitney Houston - The Greatest Love of All
Bread - Goodbye Girl

Decade 2: 11 - 20

The longest, most mixed up mix-tape possible.

Green Day - Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)
The Cranberries - Dreams
Heart - These Dreams
Indigo Girls - Love Will Come to You
Sarah McLachlan - Good Enough

Decade 3: 21 - 30

Progression...

Anna Nalick - Breathe (2 am)
Craig Armstrong (Liz Frazer) - This Love
Maroon 5 - She Will Be Loved
James Blunt - 1973
Bent - Private Road

Youth is a funny thing. When you have it, you spend your time wishing that you don't - and when you don't, you spend the rest of your time wishing that you did. I guess the same could be said of many other things better seen in hindsight, but it's the one thing regret cannot touch.

Ou est Christophe Willem?

2008-05-04T22:13:00.004+01:00

This one for Enuwy - the "turtle" winner of France's version of American Idol - Christophe Willem has 4 albums!! And I don't have a single one... a sure one to look out for next time I'm at Gare du Nord!

And while I'm at it, Yael Naim is not too shabby too: Check out Too Long: http://www.deezer.com/track/314819

Another one on the playlist of life

2008-05-04T21:54:00.003+01:00

This one has been in circulation over the radio and somehow made itself into my in-the-car playlist.

I also wanted to use this time to demonstrate the use of some cool technology. Clicking on the link takes you to a permalink on Deezer with the song so you can hear how it sounds like in case you don't know.

Not that there's much relevance to the music, but I'm planning on going back to previously tagged blogs and adding the songs if they're available!

Stop and Stare - One Republic

Stop and stare...
I think I'm moving but I go nowhere
Yeah I know that everyone gets scared
But I've become what I can't be, oh
Stop and stare
You start to wonder why you're 'here' not there
And you'd give anything to get what's fair
But fair ain't what you really need
Oh, can u see what I see...

And then I came across Love Song which I've been humming and didn't know who the song was by...

"I'm not gonna write you a love song..."

A faded kind of mellow

2008-04-26T22:34:00.004+01:00

This love, this love is a strange love.
A faded kind of mellow.
This love.

This love.
I think I'm gonna fall again
And even when you held my hand
It didn't mean a thing.

This love.
Now rehearsed we stay, love
Doesn't know it is love, this love

This love.
It hasn't have to feel love.
It doesn't need to be love.
It doesn't mean a thing, this love.

Eloquence is.
Liz Frazer, Craig Armstrong.

This is why.
This is when.
This is because.

The Bag Lady in the 21st Century

2008-04-26T11:35:00.003+01:00

In the 2008 Budget, a carrier bag legislation potentially imposing a tax on carrier plastic bags in 2009 should usage not fall was pledged.

Plastic bags have become the new enemy. They are the new fruits on trees, they take ages (if at all) to bio-degrade, they're unnecessary, they are everywhere. In Tesco, Sainsbury, Marks and Spencer and other supermarkets, the recyclable bag-for-life or green alternatives have started to become the fad and increasingly the norm.

Fashionable, reusable shopping carriers is the new big market, as Anya Hindmarch found out by scratching the surface, and like a pair of nice, white Birkies, I too would like to own a well-designed, hand-made shopping bag from Greenwich Market.

I'm starting to take on the belief that the only thing plastic really ought to just be my credit card, and am finding myself gravitating, almost moth-to-flame-like, to the fad of fashionable yogurt in glass bottles, eggs in cardboard cartons and clothes in cloth bags. From the technological innovation it was 20 years ago, plastic has become the sticky bane of modern society.

And quite frankly, why not? Your liquid shampoo in a posh glass bottle just seems nicer somehow, doesn't it?

These days, hippie is the new posh.

Interestingly, in this new fad that I'm starting to really think is an incredible smart idea faintly marketed, not only do you not have to be rich to be clever (tm), this particular hippie posh fad might actually have material benefits, unlike the fads that came and went before. You just have to know how to get the look.

Shop Local = Niche Grocers, not Designers.

Not only does this bring unimagined conveniences having everything you need literally next door, hippie posh dictates that you will be on a first name basis with your niche greengrocer, butcher and fishmonger, who will reserve the freshest, latest and greatest catch of the day for your royal highness's enjoyment.

The Ideal: Your buff and fit butcher bloke (if Italian, add extra points. If also doubling as a delicatessen importing ham from a relatively unknown area of Italy with a population of 25 who all make ham, add maximum points.) slices and dices your meats to your liking, and flashes brilliant, flirty smiles when you walk into the store in your sundress and sandals.

The Look: Name drop your butcher, all the previously unheard of places in Italy where produce is home-made by nonni and wait for friends to ooh and ahh.

Recyclable Bags = Designer meets Supermarket.

A finer excuse to carry an Anya Hindmarch to a supermarket I have not yet come across. This should be a no brainer. Of course you don't use cheap (free) Tesco branded plastic bags! That's so last century and unenvironmentally friendly. Your bag for life is not a plastic bag (tm), it's either a suitably sized Anya Hindmarch or, if you didn't make the queues, a hand-made, one of a kind shopper's from the likes of Greenwich Market.

The Ideal: An "I Am Not a Plastic Bag" by Anya Hindmarch. Cautiously disclose the fact that you had walked, not driven to your nearest Sainsbury's to stand 3 hours in line to get the look.

The Look: A close contender would be a hand-made one of a kind from as exotic a market as you can possibly can get. Double points if you're bagging a bag from Morocco, Istanbul or Tunisia. Maximum points if you had hand-made (personally) your bag using recycled scraps of kimono fabric purchased from a bric-a-brac shop in central Tokyo.

Walking the Walk = Showing off designer footwear.

Top marks for the very Singaporean art of wearing shorts and Crocs to Orchard Road. I lie, do the very opposite and look for casual, understated and comfortable. Because unlike the Gucci heels you used to wear, you do actually have to walk in these.

Yes I know, it's a slight inconvenience. But on the bright side, it is almost an impossibility to be reading, working or otherwise pretending to be distracted by something more important than being on the tube when you're walking, so you have got your fellow walking commuters absolute attention. You now have an excuse to perfect your street stride for more than 60 seconds.

The Ideal: Kate Moss in a recent cosmetic ad did this to ultimate perfection. As she sauntered confidently along the street to turning heads... if street lamps had eyes, they would turn too. Add points for coverage if you're listening to an upbeat tune on your iPhone/iPod, double points for stepping to the music.

The Look: Dress up for walking. Invest in swishy skirts and long legged trousers and take that stride on, baby! And yes, you now have a shameless way of assessing people by the shoes they wear.

Kissing A Fool

2008-04-04T22:51:00.004+01:00

Strangely enough, I found the Michael Buble version more compelling than George Michael's. Not going to go into why.

You are far.
When I could have been your star, you listened to people, who scared you to death and from my heart.
Strange that you were strong enough to even make a start.
But you'll never find peace of mind, until you listen to your heart.

People... you can never change the way they feel.
Better let them do just what they will.
For they will, if you let them, steal your heart from me.
People... will always make a lover feel a fool.
But you knew I loved you.
We could have shown them all, we should have seen love through.

Fooled me with the tears in your eyes.
Covered me with kisses and lies.
So goodbye... but please don't take my heart.

You are far.
I'm never gonna be your star.
I'll pick up the pieces and mend my heart.
Strange that I was wrong enough to think you loved me too.
You must have been kissing a fool.

Curiously enough, for the first time, I thought of Yvaine and Stardust. It was an odd what-if. What if Tristan went back to wed Victoria? What if Yvaine had crossed the Wall? What if the two had fallen in love, but never picked up the courage to see love through, and Tristan shook the hair out of his eyes and left Stormhold?

A strange, cold thought.

My Life is (not that) Cool

2008-03-29T15:24:00.004Z

On a whim, and because I know I'm not that good at keeping up links/appearances/contacts/friendships/acquaintances/anything at all/in general, I decided to click on Rambo Tan's blog.

Now reading Rambo Tan's blog always brings a smile to my face. Not merely because I actually know the author of the blog personally, but also because to me, and to me only, the author seems a kindred spirit (we were school mates, and walk-out-of-exams-early'mates) to the tune of this-is-one-version-of-how-my-life-would-have-turned-out.

Rambo Tan's in Singapore, living a life that I would have/and have had led, were I in Singapore. It's a sometimes happy life. A single, unfettered by most of the family, away from domestic chores but otherwise needing to fix-things-for-oneself life.

It's only been a year and a half, but looking back, that life seems so far away. Granted it was spent with loved ones, and there were friends, family, mates to hang out with at hand, but it seems now a life that I almost cannot imagine myself spending.

And the difference. Oh boy, the difference.

Singapore-Self looks upon England-Self now with some lack of understanding.

Singapore-Self wonders about:

Personal crises - what to wear when you're hanging out in Orchard Road and Holland Village, what my mother will think if I stay in a permanent state of almost-married, moving out before I'm officially wed, my family's health or lack thereof
Food - where the best char kway teow can be found (Commonwealth, I maintain), how much prices of ordinary pleasures (the teh-C kar dai) is rising, the costs of tomatoes in Cold Storage, whether most people eat in food courts or fancy restaurants
Society and Culture - What my mother thinks my aunts will say when they meet me for the first and only time in the year, whether people really dislike the government despite living in creature comforts and wouldn't vote otherwise anyway, if independent women really attract fewer Singaporean men
Self-Sufficiency - paying for a part-time, once-a-week maid, purchasing more than I can consume, affording platinum credit cards, doggy classes, the dog groomer clips my dog's nails because I'm afraid to do them myself

England-Self is consumed by:

World crises - global warming, energy conservation, income inequity and gay marriages
Food - the difference between organic and free range, whether chickens are bred with hormonal additives, buying local to reduce carbon footprints (see point above), approving of the office cafeteria switching to free range due to popular demand, cooking local cuisine with foreign ingredients
Society and Culture - the difference between the English, the Europeans and the Americans, learning to live in a high context society that is so conscious about the personal situations of everything and everyone around them, amusement at the stark similarities between English and Asian cultures, working with the Germans, working with Germans who aren't very German
Self-Sufficiency - doing my own cleaning, cooking, ironing, changing the lightbulbs, doing the laundry, walking the dog, dremelling the dog's nails because it costs 15 quid to get someone else to do them and they'd clip them anyhow and won't do such a good job

I understand now why people want to leave, and why people want to stay in Singapore. In my mind, there are no stayers or quitters, only those who favour the waters in different ponds.

Viewed from the other side of the river, Singapore-Self would perceive England-Self as silly, unnecessary, backward, unsophisticated and manual, while England-Self would view Singapore-Self as silly, self-absorbed, spoiled and small-minded.

Someone said to me the other day that it was remarkable that I had found myself, found my voice, in a place, in a culture that was difficult to understand, difficult to adapt to. Past the initial cynicism of whether that remark was true, I wondered if the purpose of coming here was indeed to find myself, or indeed, if in coming here, I had lost myself and hence needed finding myself again.

In any case, I hadn't left Singapore without a sense of self, as folklore would have had it, neither had I lost that sense of self in a foreign place, as myth would have said.

I see it now that there are merely two selves, like two sides of a coin, multiple facets of a personality that broadens and deepens with experience and exposure to different places and different cultures.

The Teochew girl side of me draws on an analogy - of a fish that takes on the flavour of the water they grow up in. This fish preferred the flavour of the waters of another pond, and swam in it.

And I have to say, I like the flavours of channel fish.

April is the busiest month of the year

2008-03-29T15:15:00.001Z

Budget Wallpaper 2008,
originally uploaded by metaphoric.

People develop traditions to bring continuity and purpose to their lives.

I've just decided that every year in the busiest month of the year, I'll get myself something special to focus my mind and keep myself going through a hard time.

This year, April's the busiest month of the year, and by my reckoning it will be until I change jobs. The inaugural theme will be the seasons, so my treat is one of my favourite photos of all time.

Easter Rising

2008-03-23T17:27:00.004Z

I just wanted to say, while I'm at it and blogging, that I am frankly aware that a number of readers on this blog read it just to know that I'm still alive, with that faintly quiet reassurance that the blogger isn't:

A dog (mine, a Westie, to be specific)
A significant other (but nobody specific)
A neurotic necrotic
A glitch in the stream of consciousness

No, jokes aside - I am well, and very much alive, and living - actually living (imagine that!).

It snowed on Easter Sunday.

I've always been warned, and this year was no exception, by the weather service and well meaning colleagues and radio broadcasters that it typically snows around Easter. Why it snows in spring here instead of winter is always going to elude me. But come Easter Sunday, after a sunshine filled dawn, a swirling, white powder began to fill the air, and danced in front of the window.

There was a strangely sweet sort of pleasure watching visibly white bits swirl in front of your eyes. I'm not quite sure what it is. This Easter was celebrated in strangely sweet, quiet sort of ways. I baked a carrot cake, I gave up Coke (the soft drink, not the other kind) for Lent, I walked the dog for an especially long time, I watched Grey's Anatomy.

And then I realised what this small, quiet joy is. It's the comfort that one gets when baking cookies on a sad day. It's the warmth of a kitten's cuddle on a cold day.

It is often said that on Easter, Christ's rising from the the dead is like the breaking of dawn after a long, dark night. It's often represented as the glorious, bright and resplendent ascension of the sun, choirs of angels optionally included.

I like to think instead that the breaking of dawn on Easter day is like any other dawn on any other day. A silent peace that creeps upon you, small and quiet, on a gentle breeze lightly kissing your cheek as you stir and open your eyes, semi-conscious of another day laid like dreams at your feet. Filled with promise, with hope.

No choirs of angels. No fifth symphony.

Love, like redemption, like grace, like promise, like hope, comes without a declaration, arrives without notice, departs without a by-your-leave.

How do we know today's the day among days? And that yesterday, things were different than they were tomorrow?

We mark the moments in our days, months, years, the hours that tick by. We keep our watch through hands that move in circles.

And I just can't get over the idea that one day, just one day, I'm going to wake up with everything around me different and yet the same, and in that instant that it happens, in that very moment, I'm not even going to know it.

Standby Buster

2008-03-21T18:13:00.003Z

The next time I am back in Singapore, I think it would be brilliant to bring a couple of these. I've been recently obsessed about saving electricity/the environment/water/money/the world and these fit right into that ethos.

Standby Busters are remote controlled electrical sockets that you can plug into as a conduit between the mains (usually tucked behind a shelf and hard to reach) and the multiplug electrical board that powers everything in the house.

You now get to turn off the electricity at the mains with the touch of a radio controlled remote controller.

Lower Cost Arbitrages

2008-03-11T14:53:00.003Z

I don't normally think about it in anything other than an economic sense, but spending some time in Shanghai is really making me feel the stark difference between a high cost market and a lower cost one.

In the first place, I exchanged a ridiculous amount of money before coming to Shanghai, which put into sharp relief what I had expected to spend in a week. But the prices here for food, accommodation and general shopping has just been absolutely ridiculous. It almost made me want to go crazy shopping. Almost.

Good quality Chinese tea (tiekuanyin) for RMB 100 - £7
All my snacks for RMB 39. That's about £2.70
Good quality Chinese mushrooms for RMB 33. That's £2.30

It really takes some thinking about it to get a sense of perspective around what we get for our money anywhere in the world.

And that's not always easy when prices are rising, Shanghai is getting more expensive than Tokyo, and Singapore is probably slightly more expensive than Shanghai because of import limitations.

It didn't strike me fully until now that what we call a fair price is really subjective. We live in the places we live in, and take our purchasing power, after some time, for granted.

This probably helps explains why the fair trade movement is so much more apparent in first world countries which are high cost markets. Our ideas being in a high cost market of what a fair price is, is influenced to a high degree by our perceptions of what a £1 or a $1 can buy in our own countries and markets, not others.

Not that I'm against fair trade, mind. I fully support paying non-exploitative, fair market rates for the goods we buy. But I would also like to call to mind the use of the marketing campaigns like: "This man earns $1.50 per week for his coffee" and look at marketing campaigns for donations and grants in the same vein: "$1.50 per week from you... can help feed his family for a week".

I think I realize now the "multiplier" power our money can make in the markets that we buy in. While in the short run it makes me almost tempted not to bargain as hard as I otherwise would to, it puts into perspective that the small things we give up, can mean big things to people who receive them.

What stops them from actually receiving the full benefit, is a series of financial, logistic and socio-economic barriers that prevents us as consumers from buying the cheapest coffee in the world directly, and instead buying them from Starbucks or Tesco.

It makes me really want to find a way to overcome these barriers, and to exploit this arbitrage in a non-profit situation.

On Why Plates are Round

2008-03-05T22:12:00.003Z

I probably have blogged this before, but honestly, as the years wear on, grow and extend, the single sole achievement of my life in terms of intellectual thinking has been, is, and probably will still be to have figured out why plates are round.

It's sad but true. And to be brutally and coldly honest, it probably is the one piece of truly independent thinking that I have ever done. Independent in the sense that it wasn't a thought that anyone else has ever thought of before - at least that I had come across so far. It really probably is because nobody else was bored to such a degree to have thought of it, but still - I am proud of this.

So, why are plates round? Or bowls and dishes for that matter? Surely because sinks are rectangular, and tables are rectangular (some are round, but most are rectangular) and the cupboards that we keep our plates in are rectangular, it would only make sense to have square or rectangular plates that would fit everything else in our world that we have? Why do plates mostly occur in a round form?

Several sensible suggestions have been offered.

The industrial - Round plates are easier to manufacture [Not sure I bought this one, surely it's easier nowadays to cut several square plates from one big sheet]
The anthropological - Squares/shapes with straight lines are artificial shapes and do not occur naturally. Our forefathers who first shaped equipment had followed the shapes of nature. [This has some merit]
The practical - It's much easier to fashion a reasonably round shape than a perfect square/rectangle with straight lines [What if you cut wood?]
The relativist - Well, spoons are round, so why not plates? [That's because square spoons poke uncomfortably into your mouth when you eat...]
The child - The better to drink soup straight from the edge, my dear... [Perhaps the sole reason why most plates are round is because of the general lack of manners all round...]

Interestingly, I note (and the shrewd would point out) that not all plates are round. Most plates are, but there exist, for fashion, design features, and in some cultures, rectangular plates. So whatever the reason, it must apply to validate why most plates are round, but also validate why some plates are acceptably rectangular.

The reason I thought of, *drum rolls and cymbals clang* is a scientific one.

Surface tension.

Surface tension, as Wikipedia tells me, is the property of a liquid to behave like an elastic sheet. More relevantly, it is surface tension that causes any liquid to adopt a spherical shape, because a sphere has the smallest possible surface area to volume ratio.

Well, well, I see the similarities. But what has this got to do with plates being round, you might ask.

Most plates are made to contain food that while not entirely liquid, may contain some liquids (gravy, sauces) or items that potentially spill over when picked up (rice, mashed potatoes). While it's not culturally sensitive to assume we all eat gravy, sauces, rice and mashed potatoes, some combination of round-plate cultures typically use plates to contain a wide variety of potentially spillable foods.

The round plate is the most mathematically efficient shape for containing spillable food, because surface tension ensures that the roundness tucks away any sharp edges that threaten to break the surface tension and cause a spill. Since any curvature also maximizes area, it is also the shape that can contain the most bits of tiny objects or liquids, and makes sense for a plate and, definitely also a bowl.

More proof, the Japanese have commonly used wooden flat rectangular "plates" made out of wood. It's used to serve sushi, which are served set in pieces on the plate. Sushi is a self-contained serving of food, and does not contain liquids or objects which may spill over when picked up.

Why are plates round? The short answer is, "So that we can heap more food on it." The scientific gastronomical answer.

Did our forefathers somehow know this before Eular, Lagrange, Young, Laplace, physics and hydrodynamics? Were we somehow born with an inner sense that allows us to live and learn about our environment outside of the 5 senses?

It always struck me how nobody really needs to consciously learn that Gravity exists. All we actually really learn in school is which scientist named it, and by what name it's known. But a baby that rolls over and falls out of bed knows gravity exists, surely and definitely.

By deep thought, accident or conscious design, the longest lasting structures that we have built and designed have its roots in scientific efficiency. It makes me wonder whether aesthetics, at its core, is Man's way of validating scientific soundness without extensive calculations. I wonder if we have evolved with a skill to assess the success of science that was essential to our survival as a species, because it is the most efficient way to exploit the intrinsic mathematics of the world around us. After all, there is no resisting the laws of nature.

Call it taste, call it aesthetics, call it that preference that babies have for symmetrical faces. I wonder if we are each born with that intrinsic ability to validate this scientific soundness without being a scientist. It would certainly explain why the greatest of mathematicians sense a beauty in their discoveries, and why we can link certain numbers to art.

Somehow, there is a strange sense of comfort that we're all born knowing what we need to know, whether we study it or not. There's a strange sense of faith in the idea that we do have everything we need, whether we know it or not.

Laundry bags as reusable grocery bags

2008-02-29T22:26:00.002Z

One of the biggest campaigns here that has captured the attention of the media and retailers is against plastics, particularly plastic bags. The Daily Mail ran a few articles yesterday about how Marks & Spencers will start charging 5p for each single use plastic bag they hand out. Instead, they are preparing to give away free bags for life to customers instead, to encourage less use of single-use plastic bags that are a key pollutant in British waters and land.

I re-use nearly every single supermarket issued plastic bags as rubbish bags anyway, but reckoned that they build up much faster than I can use them, so treat myself to intermissions of reusable, eco-friendly bags every now and then to make my supermarket issued plastic bag supply decrease a little before I start up again.

Here's an idea where something good can come out of something not-quite-as-good-but-which-we-do-anyway.

You know how most people visit hotels and end up pilfering laundry bags, shoe bags and shopping bags, especially the cotton woven ones that are usually provided by hotels in countries with low cost labour?

Yes you do. They're the ones that usually come labelled with a "Not For Sale", "Do Not Remove" indications.

Browsing through Eco Bags (http://www.ecobags.com/) today, it struck me how many of these eco-bags actually look like they may be exactly the same bags as the laundry bags many of us pilfer for free.

Why not do something useful with the petty crime? Reuse these bags as grocery bags on Wednesdays when shopping in Carrefour or bring a couple with you when you go shopping and refuse a single-use, standard issue plastic bag. It's not Anya Hindmarch, but can still do something for the world.

La Petite Moi

2008-02-29T22:02:00.005Z

On the plane ride back yesterday night, I realized that I really don't like reading newspapers. And with that thought, came to a stunning realization about myself.

Some people have lifelong passions and interests that they take very seriously. They have strong likes and dislikes, strong loves and hates. And some people, people like me, I think don't have very many large, intense, long-lasting loves and hates. They have quirks.

It has always been a difficulty for me to introduce myself. I can never really think of what to say, which is impossible, because while I do believe that I'm a relatively interesting person, I don't think that I have relatively interesting interests.

Because it's so hard coming up with likes and dislikes on the fly, I've decided last night to compile an accurate list for future reference, a list of quirks, if you will.

By some strange coincidence of fate I actually believe that many people end up sharing these quirks, whether they realise it or not.

La Petite Moi, a profile in miniature

LIKES

Drinking tea
Thinking in the shower
Singing

DISLIKES

Reading newspapers
Puzzling Rubik's Cubes (I've never successfully completed one in my entire life, and I don't think I'm stupid, I just don't have Rubik's Cubes' intelligence)
Three Dimensions

I have switched to free-range chicks!

2008-01-20T21:44:00.000Z

On the telly recently, to much controversial discussion, was a free-range bird movement, jointly supported by Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall, Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay. Particularly by the former two, through two broadcast mini-series on the life of a broiler hen, Hugh's Chicken Run and Jamie's Fowl Dinners put a stark contrast to the lives of battery hens and free-range birds.

I met Hugh's Chicken Run with a bit of scepticism, but follow up Chicken Run with Jamie's Fowl Dinners, and it almost became too much. I've switched, to eating only free-range chickens and now, my next step, buying free-range and organic eggs from the Farmer's Market, up from the Tesco's Value Eggs.

And surprisingly, like the song goes, "It's no sacrifice... no sacrifice. It's no sacrifice at all!" Admittedly, free-range costs more than value chicken. But it's not twice the price, it's two quid more for 4 chicken breasts (and they are larger). The main difference would probably be in the eggs, 1.10 for 6 large eggs, compared to 0.79 for 6 unevenly sized ones. Slightly almost twice the price, but my bet in quality is on the free-range, organic variety.

So while the three chefs are trying to change Britain's eating habits from fast to freedom, I thought about how affordable the luxury of eating conscience is here, compared to the organic awareness back in Singapore.

Despite the various food/health awareness campaigns going on, Singapore hasn't quite adopted the free-range, organic movement quite as readily as consumers have in European countries. The sensitivity factor is price. Unlike a small step up in price which still falls within my buying power, organic and free-range costs exhorbitant amounts compared to the usual standard-of-living fare that we're used to, and while the brown-rice stigma is fading, a shadow still lingers over many products.

Can money buy conscience? Can we honestly grow to believe that our dollar can save the world, prevent global warming, help chickens lead a better life and make us lose weight and gain back taste and experience?

Perhaps. But in the meantime, tune in to 3 meals for a chicken recipes proudly sponsored on Hugh's River Cottage site:

3 Meals from one bird

Meal one: Roast chicken
Serve this with nothing more than a green salad to mop up all the herby, buttery juices.
Serves 4–5

1 plump free range chicken, weighing 1.5-2kg
25g soft butter
a couple of generous handfuls of fresh herbs, such as parsley, chives and marjoram, roughly chopped
1 garlic clove, crushed
1/2 glass of white wine
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 220C/gas 7. Remove the bird from the fridge at least an hour before cooking it. Take off any trussing from the chicken and remove the giblets if they’re inside (keep them in the fridge and use them for the stock, see below). Put the bird in a roasting tin and spread out its legs from the body. Enlarge the opening of the cavity with your fingers, so hot air can circulate inside the bird.

Put the butter in a bowl, throw in the herbs and the garlic and season well with salt and pepper. Mix together with your fingers, then smear all over the chicken, outside and in. Place in the centre of the hot oven and leave for 25-30 minutes.

Then baste the chicken, turn the oven down to 180°C/gas 4, pour the wine into the tin (not over the bird) and roast the bird for another 40–60 minutes, depending on its size. You can tell when it’s done by poking a knife into the part of the bird where the thigh joins the breast; the juices released should run clear.

Open the oven door, turn the oven off and leave the bird for 15–20 minutes to rest before carving. Carve the bird in the tin, as untidily as you like, letting the slices fall into the buttery juices, then take the whole thing to the table so people can help themselves.

Chicken stock
After eating your roast, let the chicken go cold then slice, pick and tease every last scrap of remaining meat from the bones. Set this aside.

The carcass that’s left can now be used to make a rich, savoury stock – a potential base for any number of soups, stews, risottos or gravies. Makes 1-1.5 litres

1 cooked chicken carcass
the neck and giblets from the chicken, if you have them, but not the liver
1-2 onions, roughly chopped
1-2 large carrots, roughly chopped
2 bay leaves
a few black peppercorns
3-4 celery sticks, roughly chopped
½ a large leek, roughly chopped
a few chunks of peeled celeriac or parsnip (optional)
1 sprig of thyme (optional)
a few parsley stalks (optional)

Tear the carcass into fairly small pieces and cram them, along with any skin, bones, fat, jelly or burnt bits from the roasting tin, into a saucepan that will take them snugly. If you have the fresh giblets, add these too (minus the liver, which can make the stock bitter – save it for sautéing).

Add the vegetables and herbs, packing them in as snugly as you can so that you need no more than 1.5 litres of cold water to just cover everything. Bring the pan to a tremulous simmer and let it cook, uncovered, for at least three hours – up to five. Top up the water once or twice, if necessary. Strain the stock through a fine sieve, leave it to cool, then chill it. A layer of fat will solidify on the top, which you can scrape off – but I don’t usually bother unless it’s excessive.

Meal two: chicken risotto
If you use a good, tasty chicken stock to make a risotto, you need very few other ingredients to make a meal of it.
Serves 6

1.5 litres chicken stock
80g butter
1 small onion, very finely diced
400g risotto rice
1 glass white wine
grated parmesan cheese and a little more butter, to finish
salt and freshly ground pepper

Other ingredients: choose fromabout 200g peas or petits pois (defrosted if frozen)
about 200g sweetcorn kernels
about 300g mushrooms (fresh, dried or a mixture)
100-150g bacon, cut into little scraps
anything else that takes your fancy – including chopped, leftover chicken

Bring the stock to a simmer in a pan, and keep it simmering while you cook the rice. Heat the butter in a large pan and add the onion (if you want to use bacon, add this along with the onion). Cook gently for 10 minutes or so until soft but not coloured.

Add the rice and cook for just a minute, stirring well to coat it in the butter. Add the wine and cook for a few minutes until it has been absorbed by the rice. Now start adding the hot stock, a ladleful at a time, stirring now and then and adding a fresh ladleful of stock once the last has been absorbed.

The rice should be cooked (tender but still just slightly al dente), and the risotto at the right soft, moist consistency after about 18 minutes. If you’re adding peas or sweetcorn, do so after the rice has been cooking for about 10 minutes. If you want to add mushrooms, sauté them in separate pan and add, with any juices, when the rice has almost finished cooking. Leftover chicken can go in just before the end too – just make sure it gets thoroughly reheated.

When the risotto is cooked, turn off the heat, dot a little butter all over the surface, and sprinkle with a little parmesan. Cover and leave for 2-3 minutes, then stir the melted butter and cheese into the rice. Season to taste then serve, in warmed dishes, with more parmesan.

Meal three: the leftovers
Here are just three of the ways you can use up the cold meat cut from the carcass after roasting. And if none of these take your fancy, never forget that a good chicken sandwich – with fresh bread, crisp salad and mayonnaise – is a thing of joy.

The Harder Edge to Soft Paws Anti-Scratching Solutions

2008-01-20T21:27:00.000Z

So, before going any further, this is a gripe. In fact, this should be a consumer awareness article, but I won't be going as far as putting it up on any review sites.

Some context to start. I love my dog. My landlord loves her too (or has come to think she's very very cute) but before meeting my dog, she had requested that we do something to protect her hard wood floors from scratching caused by nails. This got me very worried, and so having turned to Mr Google for solutions, came across Soft Paws, among many other things to do to prevent your dog from scratching.

Developed by a veterinarian, Soft Paws are vinyl nail caps that glue on to your dogs nails. This amazing product effectively blunts your dog’s nails to protect against problem scratching; protecting against:
Damage to Household Surfaces: Floors, Doors, Screens, Walls and Furniture
Canine Skin Conditions Aggravated by Scratching
Protects You from Scratches from Your Dog
Dogs and Their Owners LOVE Them!

I bought a pack. It comes with 40 nail caps and 2 tubes of Soft Paws branded super glue that you use to stick the Soft Paws to your dog's nails. And so I did.

It worked a charm, for a while. Until I realised that the Soft Paws which were supposed to fall off naturally didn't. The glue that comes with Soft Paws really is super glue. Over time, the nails grow as they do, and the Soft Paws formed a thick, acrylic layer over the nails, changing the way Beanie walked.

Imagine artificial nails stuck on your toenails for months without coming off. That's probably what my uncomplaining dog had to put up with. I reckon when her nails started to curl, she probably just walked much less.

Dog lovers probably won't read this blog. But over time, I've found alternatives:

Skilled nail clipping - it's not something only the groomer does
Dremelling - A sanding tool which files your dog's nails down straight
A nail file - God bless Manicure, it smoothes not just your nails

Any one of these options were far less painful for Beanie, more natural, and she's still not scratching the floor.

A sharp reminder to me not to opt for the lazy way out and do the right thing for the one living thing who always looks happy when I come home.

Hello Country, Goodbye Nightclub

2008-01-07T22:47:00.000Z

First post of the new year and I thought I might do a short note about what I think this year is going to be about.

In this year:

Low-rise buildings, low-rise jeans
Organic and free-range (food)
Walks in the park
Memories (like fire, radiant and immutable)
Things of value = history, photography, old stuff

Out this year:

Modern skyscrapers, long hair
Cheap, mass-produced produce
Shopping in the city
New things, the future
Things of value = money, bling bling, new stuff

In Auxerre, we bought a lovely Trousselier rotating lamp with Le Petit Prince prints on it. Initially I thought that I would love falling asleep to the Little Prince flying through the air in a slow motion natural rotation. But having placed it in a corner, I realised there was another undiscovered beauty to it.

In the corner, narrow bands of light wait in line to take off into feathered flight as the corner narrows band after band of light, only to stretch them out into a feathered quill, swirl them through the air, then neaten them up into a narrow line of light again in a feathery carousel.

I stared at them for hours, amazed by the simple beauty of a play of light.

Light. It was only light.

After a while, I'd realised it really is just the simple things.

Comfort Foods

2007-12-17T17:44:00.001Z

I've been ill.

Not to worry, I'm getting better. But being ill is like your body's little reminder for you to stop, take a breather, and let the rest of the world get on with what it's doing for once.

Which is exactly what I'm doing - and probably why I have found the time to blog (having taken some much needed time off work to do the things that keep me sane*).

I've been sleeping a lot. That's one thing I do particularly much of when I am ill - it's my miracle cure to everything. I swear, it's better than chicken soup and penicillin (though those help too).

Somewhere in my half-waking moments, I'd dreamt that I'd woken up to the smell of freshly baked cookies. It was most definitely a dream, because unless I'd sleepwalked my way to the oven, baked a bunch and put it in, there was most certainly no other Christmas elf around that would be figuring out the oven in my house.

It led me to think about comfort foods - tastes and smells that just make one feel better when one is ill.

My comfort foods used to be:

Minced pork with garlic soup
Pi Tan Porridge
Rice Krispies or Corn Flakes with warm milk (I'm a Kellogg's baby)
Quaker oats and condensed milk
Teh (the kopitiam type with condensed milk - something about the milk and sugar combination is very soothing)
Ginger tea
Yong Tau Foo - which I eat even when I'm not ill

They now are:

Vegetable soup or any creamy soup of any kind
Quaker oats and condensed milk
Warm apple juice and cinnamon - I wish Lemsip came in warm apple juice and cinammon flavours!
Toast - with butter, with ham, with jam, with nothing at all. just toast
Warm honey with lemon juice
Carr's Table Water

So some things change and others don't. I have found that oats settle one's stomach much more than porridge, but takes a stronger stomach for digestion - so they're useful in a flu situation, and less so in a bad tummy situation.

I guess I never do eat very much when I'm ill in the first place, but give me a choice of what to eat in the worst of situations, and the list above would be what I probably could not live without. The food we eat and come to love must surely be a function of where we are. I believe this now wholeheartedly - just look at how my comfort foods have adapted themselves to harsher climes.

That said, I still take my pi pa gao loyally when I am down with a sore throat.

* Incidentally which were, in no particular order - the laundry, socks and fleeces; cook soup; blog; admire the flowers; sleep.

The Season of Soups

2007-12-17T17:29:00.000Z

January's BBC Good Food Guide finds one new year's resolution to always have home cooked soup sitting on the stove. I just realised this morning how easy it was to make, and how - given some time, mainly the chief ingredient of a good soup - this was one resolution that will keep one warm and toasty at home in the winter time.

For me, warm soups are comfort foods. Ever since I discovered Pret a Manger's soup collection, which started recently in autumn, I've been chasing up soups and soup recipes from all over.

In a cafe in Nuits-St-Georges on a recent French trip, I discovered what would possibly be the warmest, nicest, easiest to make vegetable soup possible. The secret? A Marigold brand vegetable bouillon stock powder that I have sitting on a shelf at home, thanks to enuwy's lovely recommendation a while back.

So upon coming down with a bad cold and wanting to experiment with the warming qualities of vegetable soup, I've decided to make my own:

Vegetable Soup

3 carrots
2 parsnips
1/2 a floret of broccoli
handful of barley (optional)
2 tsp bouillon stock powder
750 ml water
pepper

1. Chop vegetables roughly and throw into pot.
2. Sprinkle over with the bouillon powder and some pepper to taste.
3. Cover with hot water and bring to a slow boil.
4. Allow to boil for at least 1-2 hours for the vegetable flavours to set.
5. With a stick blender, blend into a creamy soup. Serve.

The soup feeds about 2-3 and in reality, you can toss in any sort of vegetable you like. In fact, I have my suspicion that this is one soup you can keep boiling on the stove regularly, topping up with leftover vegetables and other unwanted odd ends. Just remember to toss in a hearty amount of bouillon powder for taste and blend before serving.

This is one soup I'm definitely going to keep on my stove all winter!

Of many twinkling, coloured lights

2007-11-05T21:13:00.000Z

This year's Guy Fawkes Day was very different from the last. I was on a plane flying back from Dublin when the celebrations threw many coloured lights into the air. As a matter of fact, I was in the window seat on the plane as it landed in Heathrow airport.

I doubt many people remember the true significance of the 5th of November anymore here, all it is now is an excuse to light fireworks and have something special to do for the evening with the kids while as many twinkling coloured lights as you can manage burst into the air.

For me, by concidence, it became a revelation of astonishing beauty.

As the plane flew long over London, the ground laid out like glittering embroidery. The rolling, curving lines of street lamps, buildings, the Thames moved like a fabric, one that was fit for any queen. Every now and then, a light winked and shone, as we passed away from the tall office buildings and over households, street upon street of lined houses, gathering the fireworks for the evening.

Almost gradually, the fireworks started, rising from the ground silently, bursting in slow motion. One, then another, and another. This must be the first time I have ever seen a meme made visible. Household after household, it was a hope, a thought, a prayer rising in solemn celebration from the ground.

As the plane landed, there were still fireworks going off around Heathrow, as if the land itself was saying "this is not enough, there is more". I cannot describe how exactly the angles changed, as fireworks seen from above started to grow, and spread itself from tender bubbles into glowing umbrellas, then finally into fiery rain.

But I think I know now why the window seat is Monsieur G's favourite spot on the plane.

Things to do in a hotel room

2007-10-25T01:42:00.000+01:00

I suppose my blog has evolved into something I do only when I'm travelling. Although fret not, I'm travelling so much these days, I end up blogging more often than when I don't travel at all and stay in with many other things to do.

So I'm sitting here in a fancy schmancy hotel room (Hilton, so it's posh but not too classy) and wondering what some things to do in a hotel room that you wouldn't necessarily want to do at home would be - smart things, practical things, get your mind out of the gutter.

And it occurred to me that a really clever thing to do would be to dye your hair. (Girls only at this point, unless guys are interested in L'Oreal hair dye products as well).

So one thing I learnt this time on my trip is that the US is known for some things which are unbelievably cheaper than back home (regardless which you consider at the moment). And these things, surprisingly are:

Hair dye
Shampoo
Moisturizer
Cosmetics
Nail polish

Just to name a few. So you could technically pamper yourself with a remarkably well done, self serviced spa trip, all in the comforts of your own room.

Which is exactly what I did.

Now a few reasons why this makes absolutely perfect sense for a paying customer, and you will get this if you've ever tried to dye your hair in the comforts of your own home:

You don't fret whether the hair dye is going to fall on the floor and stain the bathroom floor because they don't get mopped up until your next hair dye job, since housekeeping takes care of this every single day.
You don't run out of towels for your hair as they're usually in free flow, plentiful supply if you don't care enough about the environment to hang them up and save the hotel some money. Granted, they are white, so you do feel a bit guilty. But the dye washes off (presumably).
Hotels usually come with a disposable shower cap, and if you are lucky, some of them also come with a comb, which is perfect for application and retention of the hair dye in a semi-professional manner.
Hotels usually come also with large mirrors, so you can look at your hair while applying the hair dye every which way.
Hotels are also equipped with shampoo, conditioner, unlimited supply of water (and potentially tissues for mopping up mess) and a hair dryer. These are all essential in the journey to a successful self-dye job.

So I wonder that people don't get the idea from Natasha in Species more often when serial killers dye their hair (and sometimes even give themselves haircuts) in the comfort of their own hotel rooms, the better to disguise their appearances when wanted by the police.

In fact, it's so convenient, and provides so much unpredicted benefits to the paying customer that from a hotel's point of view, it should be illegal or else paid for in extra dollars contributing towards potentially stained bath mats, towels, bathroom floors and other effects.

But for now, I'm loving it. And with a new and trendy hair colour coming out of the hotel room, I'm all for it.

On Mountains and Molehills

2007-10-07T02:33:00.000+01:00

[Writing this from the airport at Vancouver after spending a week on Whistler, Canada.]

I never thought that I would be one for mountains, tall pine trees, snow and the near freezing cold, but I suppose people change or else discover a deeper realization about themselves than they know.

Something about the air made me think about what I was really about. And I started to compile a new playlist. This one's of interest actually -

If you could only have one playlist (hypothetically - imagine a somewhat broken down iPod) to be stuck with on a desert island with potentially no hope of rescue, what would that be? (And to be fair, you can't create a playlist of all the songs on your iPod either)

Black Eyed Peas - Where is the Love
Youssou N'Dour - 7 Seconds
Tori Amos - 1000 Oceans
John Mayer - No Such Thing
Cranberries - Dreams
Cranberries - Linger
Cranberries - When You're Gone
Cranberries - Free to Decide
Sting - Shape of My Heart
Sting - When We Dance

That surprised me. Almost to the extent that I'm nearly realizing (we're on the edge of something here) that probably inside me there is a black, politically charged activist longing to sing out loud. Perhaps this is no surprise if you read my blog from times ago. I'm not entirely surprised if hidden behind the power suits and analytical frameworks, a hip-hopping, french-speaking girl whose favourite outfit are loose sweat shirts, jeans and t-shirts with greenpeace messages is still existent.

These are some of my all-time favourite songs. They get me up in the morning, they remind me of the best times of my life. But as much as they are reminiscent of times past, they're also a sharp reminder that these best times are times now past. With faces of friends that I love most, but do not meet.

Instead, I let my shopping define a different person from the person that my colleagues thought they knew. I bought 3 ski jackets, a bag that I absolutely adored with brown/mint tribal patterns on it: "It's a bit fractal..." was what Mariusz, one of my colleagues, said about it.

If there's one thing my colleagues learnt about me during this trip, it is that they had only scratched the surface of what they think they know about me in this one year of interaction. Funny enough, I had the same realization, except I know what I value now - the hiking, the trees, the crisp, cold air, the powder (snow), snowboarding, funk, dogs.

If I had my way about it, my perfect holiday trip would now involve a ski village, a golden retriever, and many walks in the snow and along the lake.

And I never thought I had it in me to be a nature girl.

Fast Food: Ad vs. Reality

2007-09-27T21:28:00.000+01:00

Photographic comparison of fast food ad pictures vs. the real thing taken right after purchase.

Goes to show that if you are forced at any time to eat fast food - your safest bet is the McDonald's Filet O' Fish.

City of Meat

2007-09-27T21:22:00.000+01:00

Just as we need arbitrary designations to govern the path of a knife, or palate,
around and through the body of the cow, so we need neighborhoods to negotiate
the dense tissue of the city.

Came across this article comparing Manhattan to cuts of a cow. Strangely enough, there's an uncanny similarity, and it's a dense but well written article.

Oh Joy

2007-09-27T16:50:00.000+01:00

I haven't blogged for some time. I have been bogged down in the mediocrity that I call the work-home-sleep-work routine. It's a short and simple routine, easy to accomplish, and I know if I let it, it will take the next 35 years of my life.

Like Parent Hacks and Life Hacks love to make you believe, apparently there are tips - means, ways, tricks - about this business of living mundanity. Ways, like microwaves and washing machines, attempt to shorten the time it takes to go through the work-home-sleep-work routine.

It's still 24 hours all the same, no matter whether you choose Life, choose a television or choose a washing machine.

I try to be happy. But sometimes, there is very little joy in having to decide what to cook for dinner every day, waking up at exactly the same time every morning, leaving for work at precisely 7.53am in the morning and coming home when the sunlight falls dim in the horizon.

Over the course of this dreary mind-numbness we call the yuppy life, I've realised what it takes to make me smile.

Do one thing different every day just for the heck of it. And it has to be obvious. If you take the bus to work, cycle. If you cycle, walk. If you walk, take the bus and talk to somebody on the way to work. Something, anything, to break the cycle that makes you forget your days.
See a dog smile. OK, this might be hard for those of you who don't have dogs. But try and make a random passing animal very happy and see what that does for you. Note: animals include humans if you find it hard to be kind to a stray.
Take a walk outside for 15 minutes on your own. Say nothing to yourself or anyone, even though you may have many thoughts in your head. Walk slowly. Enjoy and savour each step, each moment as the scenery on either side flick by you little by little with each passing step. Listen to the sound of your feet on the asphalt. If you like the beat faster, try jogging. If you can, try doing this around the time when the sun is either setting or rising. The result is a curious epiphany, filled with the realization of your place in the world, however big or small, and a sense of purpose about breathing and living.

I used to laugh about the vague poetry in taking in the weather, fresh air and surroundings. I suppose it must be part of living life here that suddenly, a great connection to the great outdoors wells up in some hitherto unknown part of this city girl. Suddenly there's no greater joy than to sit or walk with a loved one outside in the cool air, taking in the sunset and smiling friendly faces at passers-by.

The challenge as always, is keeping up the passion for life and everyone, keeping the romance breathing and living. It's all to easy to sink into the sofa, stay silent for two hours and hear only the occassional laughter to "Friends".

I baked Red Velvet Cupcakes this weekend!

2007-09-09T22:39:00.001+01:00

Red Velvet Cupcakes,
originally uploaded by metaphoric.

It must be an interesting combination of boredom in Reading, company at home, the use of a good full sized oven and the proximity and inspiration of Hummingbird Bakery at Notting Hill that makes for my back-to-baking experience.

That's right. I'm back. I'm back in the game, I've re-entered the martial world (read: chinese translation of 再出将湖) I'm baking again.

The first of my whisking handmade exploits - the red velvet cupcakes I'm so obsessed about.

This photograph showed what's left of it (not anymore right now though). The portions I've made ended up with 4 precious cupcakes, which were gone in... well, they're gone now.

Peace is...

2007-08-26T21:48:00.001+01:00

Her Favourite Spot,
originally uploaded by metaphoric.

Smiling at your dog whose found her favourite spot in her new house.

It's the smaller things. It really is.