"Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering - and it's all over much too soon." - Woody Allen

***


I ate at an atrocious Zi Cha place ("Sew An Seafood Cze Cha") recently. Shockingly, it was at Glutton's Bay beside the Esplanade, where all the food is *supposed* to be good. There were no ingredients in the rice and they threw in frozen mixed vegetables, resulting in it having hardly any taste (it didn't help that it wasn't salty enough either); it was the worst fried rice I'd ever had. This 'crab meat fried rice' didn't have crab, but flavoured flour packed around crab claws. Wth.

There is a 'Delilah Pub'. Gah.

A Malaysian businessman had a project in Istanbul and wanted to send an underling there to set up an office. The next day his mother called and asked: "Why are you sending my son there? Is there Halal food in Istanbul?"

I was commenting that black jokes were the funniest racial jokes, and my brother in law commented that most black jokes were written by black people.

My brother in law says the "speak bad French to get the French to speak English" trick works with everyone, even old aunties.

I now have all 6 Fabled Lands books. Yay.

USP-Stanford Multiculturalism Forum
Day 14 (19/5) - Adieu

This was the final day of the program, and we had a Forum with the Stanford students.


Walking in for the final time

On the way in, I plunged my face into a fountain (not only was the fountain water colder in the morning, I figured no dogs would've bathed inside yet). The chill was invigorating.

We didn't know they were providing us breakfast, which was nice (Strawberry Cream Cheese is weird). Unfortunately it wasn't nice enough to tempt more than 6 (?) of the Stanford students to come; various parties the night before (one had fireworks) might have had something to do with that.

During the forum we were supposed to talk about puzzles we found in America and our paper topics. I realised I could've done the thing about Asian men and non-Asian women, but in the process of doing research for it I would've been beaten up (since I'm not an Asian girl).

Someone commented on faux diversity in Stanford - in a picture they had promoting the school there was a picture of one White, one Black, one Asian. OTOH, NUS is even worse - on a similar picture we had promoting our centennial, almost all of the students were foreign exchange students.

Ady observed that the Chinese and Indians in the US want to get a Green Card and stay there. Meanwhile, those in Singapore still identify with their home countries, have a mercenary attitude and want to get out as soon as possible. I interjected that this was because those in the US are there because they want to be there, while those in Singapore had to be bribed and imported.

Despite Jag's perception that hiphop treats women as sex objects and are the lesser gender, he found that most organisers of hiphop events there were white women.

Someone overhead a black woman talking to another black woman on the train that she'd moved to a new neighborhood and it was nice, but that the best thing about it was that it was an all white neighborhood. But then as a Chris Rock routine went, "I love black people, but I hate Niggers".

When they came to Singapore, the Stanford students went to Malacca. On returning, a couple were glad to return to Singapore because affirmative action is in the Malaysian Constitution and Singapore is meritocratic. Wth. As someone pointed out: it's more likely because Singapore represents civilization, with aircon and safe drinking water.

After the forum was only the second time I saw a girl in a bikini on campus, and the second time I saw someone in a fountain.

The girls said I looked like a minah. Uhh.

For lunch we went to an Italian place where the names of the foods were in Italian and there was no English translation. My theory was that the waiter could laugh at how we mangled the Italian names. I had Spaghetti alla Vodka. It had bacon too. Mmm.

I found that 2 more batteries dropped out, including 1 rechargeable (but it was 4 years old). Gah. I then wrapped the rest in a ziploc bag to wedge them into the case.


Little Red Riding Hood (she says she looks like an Indonesian Maid, because only they take pictures alone)


Roomies

After some farewells, the 7 of us set out for San Francisco to catch our bus for LA. While waiting almost an hour for the Caltrain I got a cheap thrill out of standing on train tracks for the first time (Vinod and the other Indian guys had gotten their fill of it on earlier days).

Backpacking with 6 people using wheeled baggage was interesting. At times (eg just before turning left in front of a steep hill in San Francisco) I was almost tempted to walk a longer, steeper route than strictly necessary.

The overnight bus wasn't too bad. There was more legroom than the Eurolines bus I took.


Quotes:

They try to be colour-blinded (blind)

air'm'br'air'ce race's (embrace races)

core'noy'sear (connoisseur)

We're from Singapore. We speak English, but we have a lot of people who speak Chinese, Malay and Indian. (Tamil)

[Female student on guys not talking: They're just standing still and keeping quiet.] They're communicating with their minds. [Female student 2: Guys like to make girls talk about them.] [Male student 2: Let them talk about us.]

VietPundit: Racist America?

"I get angry when I hear some leftist idiots claim that America is a “racist” country. Sure some Americans are racist. But you know what? I’ll let you in on a little secret, ok? Some Vietnamese are racist, too. Yup, that’s shocking, ain’t it?

The truth is that there’s less racism in America than anywhere else on earth. Just from the little corner of Asia where I came from: the Vietnamese hate the Chinese, who can’t stand the Japanese, who despise the Koreans, who of course loath the Japanese, and you can complete the circle yourself. Even amongst Vietnamese, Southerners hate Northerners, and vice versa. Even in my tiny hometown of Da Nang, people from District One consider those in District Three (on the other side of the Han River) backward and stupid.

Am I making too broad a generalization here? Of course I am. And that’s the point. There’s prejudice everywhere you go. There are good people everywhere you go, too, and there are plenty of them in America. Just go to any American embassy abroad and look at the long lines of people waiting to apply for a Visa, and tell them that America is a racist country."

Google Language tools translates "台式比薩" as "Desktop Pisa".

Babelfish goes one up and renders it as "Table model ratio".


"而小印度一帶，除了清潔程度的差別之外，看起來就和印度的某些街道一模一樣。"

"An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations." - Charles de Montesquieu

***

Channeling my inner misandrist:


Men who don't want to get married have commitment issues.
Women who don't want to get married are modern, empowered women who don't need to depend on men.

Men who use sex aids are sad, perverted and can't get laid.
Women who use sex aids are liberated from patriarchy and adventurous.

Men who use computers a lot are geeks.
Women who use computers a lot are technologically savvy empowered women who don't need to depend on men.

Men who skip PE are lazy.
Women who skip PE have cramps.

Men who don't make the first move are cowards.
Women who don't make the first move are testing fickle and unreliable men.

Men who flirt are thinking with their penises.
Women who flirt are just having fun.

Men who are found in female toilets are peeping toms.
Women who are found in male toilets are escaping the queue.

Women who wear men's clothing are getting rid of impractical, outdated and sexist garb.
Men who wear women's clothing are gay.

USP-Stanford Multiculturalism Forum
Day 13 (18/5) - San Francisco

After about a week, the ends of my hair were starting to stick together a lot. Someone's theory was that it was because of the static, which is discharged in Singapore due to the humidity.

While hiking the previous Saturday, I was not the only one to damage my shoes - Tong Wei's got a hole.


We were supposed to go to Monterey today, but it fell through because we couldn't get a bus in time. Originally, Aileen, Weiwei and I were going to go to San Francisco, but the first was tempted by free lunch and so stayed behind with the rest, who did things like laundry, going for more talks in Stanford and watching a hiphop (?) concert.


Mission Dolores, the oldest building in San Francisco (founded 1776)


Chapel


Altar


One of the side carvings


Basilica


Altar


Water


Madonna and Child


Madonna mosaic


Guillermo Granzio. Mural about the Spanish arrival


Early 19th c. Spanish Colonial picture on paper with silk embroidery showing the 3 persons of the Holy Trinity


Indian hunting stuff


Cemetery








Mission

We wanted to get down to Fisherman's Wharf, and I asked one bus driver if his bus went to the sea (the bus didn't quite go to the wharf). He claimed it didn't. Later we found out, after trying the bus in the other direction, that his bus did. Mexican
busboys should learn to speak goddamn English.

We wanted to go to Alcatraz, but it was fully booked for the next 21 hours. Nearby, a scalper was hawking tickets for $30 (original price: $21.75). He claimed he was selling them on behalf of a timeshare. Right. My companion was inclined to buy tickets, but I wasn't hot about the idea - maybe I should've gone for it.


Pier 39

After lunch we went to Lombard Street, specifically the stretch dubbed "the world's crookedest street" (supposedly it's only the crookedest in the US, but I can't find information on which is the crookedest in the world).


Steep road in vicinity. It's so steep they have 90 degree parking, and tour buses and vans with a capacity of more than 8 people are banned from the vicinity.




View from top


Cable Car



Pizza ad: "Pizza Orgasmica. 'We never fake it.'" Seems they had pizzas like "ménage a trois," "doggie style," and "Latin Lover."

After that we proceeded to the Golden Gate Bridge, to walk it.







Sign on the bridge: "No U-turn". What moron would make a U-turn there?!

At one point, some of my batteries fell out from my camera pouch. Though I picked up what I could find, 1 disposable battery seemed to have rolled into the water.


Bay


Anti-suicide signs. My favourite is: "Crisis Counselling: There is hope. Make the call. The consequences of jumping from this bridge are fatal and tragic."











Rough halfway mark


Near the end


Cove on the other side


Heading back

The BART is convenient (if expensive) but the annoying thing is that it misses out large chunks of San Francisco - you need to transfer to the metro, which is annoying.

Ad at a bus stop about human trafficking: "Is someone you know being FORCED to work?" The bus driver was very amused and said: "Yeah, me!"

I don't know how people can get so upset about other people using cell phones, say, in the train. Carrying on a conversation on a cell phone really isn't very different from talking to someone beside you. Hell, since the other person isn't there it's even better since you get half the noise. If you want to ban cell phone usage, you might as well ban conversation.

I can't figure out how sales tax works. Some suggested that items below a certain price wouldn't get sales tax, but it doesn't work that way, as in these examples: $1 for 4 small chocolates (sales tax levied), $1.99 for cashew nuts at Safeway (no sales tax), $2 for 6 stink bombs in Chinatonw (sales tax levied), $4.99 + $1 for a sandwich plus a meal deal at Safeway (sales tax levied on the meal deal bit, not the sandwich, for $6.08 overall). It's seems arbitrary and bizarre.

[Someone: Sales tax probably works by classification. Basic food and non basic or non essentials. Just like Australia's GST.

The government or some 'independant body', of course, is the sole arbitrator of what is a basic food and what is not.]

The Safeway in San Francisco we went to had a coin dispenser at the end of the checkout counter which shot out the coins part of your change. This was very smart, not only because it saved labour but because some people would inevitably forget to collect their change or not bother, and they would be able to pocket it.

When I got back, I found that the guys didn't do laundry for me - they forgot, though I'd lent them my soap. Boo hoo. This messed up my clothes schedule for the week ahead.