MIT Weblog Survey 2005
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Old Friends
“Do you remember my friend Anne?” I’d asked mother on Saturday evening. Anne, aka mellowbug, had just called and I was going over to see her at her mother’s.
Instead of giving her usual quick “no” , mother actually looked like she was giving it some thought before answering, “Anne? No, I don’t remember her.”
And so it was, on Sunday afternoon, I took Anne to visit mother. From afar, mother saw me, gave me her usual big smile and commented that I was there again. I looked over to Anne who walked up and asked mother if she remembered her.
Looking at her in the face, mother said no. But it didn’t stop her from taking Anne’s arm and caressing it as she chatted away with Anne.
I think if mother were a toddler, I’d have to worry about her over-friendliness and going off with strangers!
It was a short visit but at least Anne, all the way home from Toronto, got to visit mother and to see the living conditions at GT Heritage nursing home.
Anne and I go back all the way to 1979 when I’d started work at my first company and she was already working there. We share a common dialect (Hakka, or Khek), even though mine is Taiboo Hak and hers is Fuichew Hak. Nevertheless, it was something common we shared, which meant she was able to converse with father when she visited, and I likewise with her mother. And despite being Hakka, there are very subtle differences in some of our words, phrases and intonations, which only the older generation, like Anne’s mother, can recognise.
In the middle of the night …
It seems someone has absolutely no sense of timing …
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I guess this is what is called a “midnight snack” ?
Meeting up
Just got a call from mellowbug, she’s home (here in PJ!), having arrived at midnight on 24 June. And yup, she and JK flew straight into unbelievably, unbearably hot weather here. She took him for a walk around the old neighbourhood at 7 in the morning, and not 15 minutes later, he was asking to go back to the house.
Hope to meet up with her soon. Already we spoke quite a while on the phone, but it’d be nice to continue doing so face-to-face.
And oh yes, she brought back a book for me. Well, one of two books I’d asked for, the latest by Canadian Chinese writer, Wayson Choy. Just days before her departure, she’d written about reading his earlier book, The Jade Peony, which I’d discovered while in Vancouver in 1999. Since then, I’d not heard of anything new by him, but after reading his name on her blog, I did a search and found that he has since published two new books. So I commented on her blog, and asked her if she could get them for me. Apparently, she made a quick trip back to the bookstore for me and managed to get his latest book, All That Matters, which is the sequel to The Jade Peony.
More on Wayson and the book later …
17 years on …
17 years ago, I bought the cassette version. 17 years later, I have added the CD version to my collection. How appropriate that the best known song from the album is a song called “At Seventeen” . And the year the album won Grammies for its engineers ( “Best Engineered Recording - Non-Classical” ) and its singer ( “Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female” ), I was 17.
The album?
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A vinyl version would complete the collection. I saw a mint copy at the concert back in February. Not for sale, but in the collection of what I would call a hardcore JI fan. He’d brought it along to be autographed by her. He also had mint copies of Breaking Silence (not one, but two copies!) as well as one of Billie’s Bones, for which he also brought along the CD version. Makes one wonder what else he had back home.
While “At Seventeen” is probably the most well-known song from the album, my own personal favourite is “In the Winter” . The other songs have also stood the test of time. In fact, the whole album has stood the test of time, sounding as good now as it did when I first heard it 17 years ago.
From the liner notes of the CD version, Janis wrote:
“In its time, “Between the Lines” was considered one of “the” albums for audiophiles; entire sound systems were developed around it. The players, pulled from jazz, classical, rock & roll, and folk backgrounds, transcended their classifications and training in order to play as one. And I myself probably sang better than I had at any time previous. It was an extraordinary to be a part of, and one that makes me proud to this very day.”
One song from Between the Lines I have not heard for many years - partly because I hardly play the cassette, not wanting to spoil the tape, and partly because I never found it in any of the downloads from the Net - is the one that leads off the entire album, a song called “When the Party’s Over” . I finally heard it again at the concert in February, it was one of six songs she sang from the BTL album. Unfortunately, I can’t share it with you online, because, while she has granted me permission to share her songs here, she does not own the rights to the songs on this particular album.
What I can do is share the lyrics here, and let you see for yourself the power of her songwriting talents.
| When The Party’s Over (Janis Ian) Would you like to learn to sing
Would you like to learn to tango
|
Bits and Pieces
TV Dinners
My sister arrived home yesterday evening to find two bodies in the TV room, each holding a bowl in hand, eyes on the big screen.
My niece had started it. She piled her bowl of rice with mussels and tofu and headed back to watch the movie that’d been interrupted for dinner. I was more “civilised”, eating at the table. But eventually, my rice bowl and I joined her and hers in the TV room.
So what was so interesting on TV that we just had to watch it? Nothing earth-shaking, no Astro premiere. Just a movie about a pinkish animal in the city. A movie about a pig, some chimpanzees, lots of dogs and cats, and an orang utan named Thelonius.
Babe: Pig in the City.
It was funny and touching, our movie of the moment, captivating two humans enough to eat our dinners in front of the TV instead of at the table.
Welcome to the 21st Century
Our computers at work have been ram’d up, each with an additional 512MB to the original 128MB. You read it right - 128MB. Soooo slow, sometimes I would almost fall asleep watching for something to move on the computer screen.
I have also recently switched to 1024 x 768 screen resolution. I’d tried once before but my multi-focaled eyes protested so much, I bowed down to their demands and went back to 800 x 600 without any fight.
Not this time, though. I have to stick to the 1024 x 768, else I cannot do my work. We are developing the latest version of our corporate web site, a version “best viewed at 1024 x 768 resolution”. It was either that or lots of horizontal scrolling to the right to read the whole page.
This time, it’s my eyes that have bowed to my demands. Good for them. Good for me. You can see so much more at 1024 x 768. Well, maybe not first thing in the morning, eyes still gummy from sleep.
Expanding my JI Collection
To my meagre Janis Ian collection (one cassette, and three CDs, one of it a double CD), I have added three more, plus two books, and two DVDs.
No, I didn’t get them from any local record or book shop. And no, I didn’t have anyone coming back from the States to ask them to bring the items back for me. I ordered them directly from her web site’s merchandise page, specifying shipping by International Mail. The alternative was much too expensive, costing even more than the total cost of the three CDs, two books and two DVDs!
I was so worried the package would be lost in the mail. But that’s just me, a worry-wart, cuz it arrived safely. I did have to go to the General Post Office to collect it. It’s years since I’ve been to the GPO. Even had to ask if it was still in the same place. What do I know? I don’t deal with snail mail much anymore, except for bills and whatnots.
Specifics of the package contents?
CDs - Between the Lines, Breaking Silence, and Hunger
Books - Who Really Cares, a new re-release of Janis’ 1969 book of adolescent poetry with photos and additional poems, and Stars: Stories Based on the Songs of Janis Ian
DVDs - Janis Ian Live at Club Cafe and JanisMania 2004
Oh yes, every one of them signed by her.
The Numbers Game
One of the things I love to do with my mother is, when we’re out in the car, I’d ask her to read out the number plate of the car in front of us. In the past, she’d not only done this perfectly, she’d actually surprised me by adding up the numbers and giving perfect answers each time. And then, beyond addition, sometimes she’d multiply the numbers and come up with perfect answers, too!
This reminds me of the evening we were watching a Taiwanese game show in which contestants were shown pairs of numbers and they had to multiply them and give the answer as quickly as possible. Mother played along, reading out the numbers and giving the correct answer each time. She even commented that some of the contestants were giving wrong answers!
Actually, her ability to do additions and multiplications so well is due to how she was taught to do them - by memory. And also by the sound of the numbers. Even I was taught that way - by memory - except for me, the teaching done in English got me to repeat the multiplication tables as in “2 times 2 is 4″, “9 x 6 is 54″, etc. Whereas, for her, she was taught in Cantonese and to say “2 2 4″, “9 6 54″, etc. So whenever she read out the car number plate to me, she would sometimes go on to give the answer, because it was automatic for her, ingrained in her memory from long ago that the dementia has not destroyed. And once I knew she had the ability to do this, I would “test” her, as a way of challenging her mind and keeping it from slipping further into dementia.
Of course, she lost this ability with her recent minor stroke. I still remember, when taking her to the clinic, I would ask her to read the number plate of the car in front of us. Sometimes, she’d say she could not see the numbers. Sometimes, she would try to read out the numbers. On good days, she would get 2, sometimes even 3, of the 4 numbers right. I could see she would be trying really hard, but the effort often tired her very quickly.
Now that she’s back to her old self (oh boy, is she back to her old self!), I tried the numbers game with her during our last visit to the clinic last week. I did the usual, asking her to read the number plate of the car in front of us. At first, she asked which car. Then she said “cannot see” . Finally, she read out the numbers correctly, but in a different way from what she’d done before.
The numbers were one, nine, four, five. But instead of reading them as one, nine, four, five, she said nineteen, four, five.
Well, is that creative or what?
*proud daughter*
Thank You, Lord!
Wait till he hears about this
A car came careening round the corner as I was leaving my sister’s house one evening. As it came nearer, I saw that it was my sister’s, with her in the driver’s seat.
“If father knows of this, he will surely give her an earful,” I found myself thinking. Buth then, the one getting an earful would be me, as he’d complain to me, and ask me to tell her to drive more carefully.
More recently, I was driving home when I noticed the Mobil petrol station along the way had no cars at any of its pumps. I looked again and saw that the minimart was empty. The place looked closed.
“I wonder what father would say if he heard of this?”
It’s almost two months but I feel like he hasn’t gone for good, but will be coming back. I see and hear things that I want to share with him. Ah well, maybe I’ll tell him when I see him, but by then, earthly things won’t interest him. All he’ll wanna do is praise the Lord all day long.
Farewell, Mrs Robinson
And here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson, We’d like to know a little bit about your for our files And here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson, Hide in the hiding place where no one ever goes. Koo-koo-ka-choo, Mrs. Robinson, Sitting on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon. Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio, (Paul Simon) |
Banroft complained to a 2003 interviewer, “I am quite surprised that with all my work, and some of it is very, very good, that nobody talks about The Miracle Worker. We’re talking about Mrs. Robinson. I understand the world … I’m just a little dismayed that people aren’t beyond it yet.”
Note: She’d won the 1962 best actress Oscar as Annie Sullivan, the teacher of a young Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker, a role she’d earlier created for Broadway, for which she was awarded the Tony, but went on achieve greater fame as the seducer of her daughter’s boyfriend in the 1967 movie The Graduate.
New Lease of Life
As I was driving towards the gate into my sister’s house this evening, I noticed a familiar blue car parked to the left of the road. It was the Langley, given a new coat of blue, and literally new lease of life.
The Langley now:
The Langley about a month ago:
I had a word with NG about the colour and he said he’d followed the original blue. Well, actually, that is not the Langley’s original colour. I’d mentioned in an earlier weblog entry that the original was a nice midnight blue, but after googling the Net for a colour match, I found a colour sample (see below) and realise that the Langley’s original blue is a lighter shade than midnight blue, but definitely darker than its current “groovy” blue.
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