Posted on 9 June 2007 @ 10:37 in Stress Busters
These are the 18 panda cubs born at Wolong Panda Reserve in 2006. My Yoong Ping is in there somewhere. (If the cubs are lined up chronologically, then #10 would be her. Is that her? Maybe … )
The picture came from a video posted on YouTube that fellow PU member, NekoMama7, had shared on the forum. Here’s the video link:
Shinjo and Panda 1
Shinjo is a baseball star in Japan who visited Wolong, and a documentary was made of the visit. It was split into 4 parts for upload to YouTube.
I found myself laughing just at the sight of the little cubs, and even more so at their various antics! The picture above brought on the biggest laugh – there they were, lined up and digging into their milk bowls, and there’s always the naughty one, #18 in this case, who refused to join the line but ran off. And then, #9 decided to see what the fuss was all about.
The video also offers a look at what to expect when I visit in September. Of course, as I’m no baseball star like Shinjo – or star of any sort – I can’t expect preferential treatment like he received. Still, I’ll be in panda paradise just to be in Wolong, and to see my Yoong Ping in the flesh! And of course, Hua Mei, my first panda love, who’s also in Wolong.
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Posted on 8 June 2007 @ 12:47 in The Working Life
ARR joined my table at the tail-end of my lunch yesterday and took a seat facing me. At some point in the conversation, I said to him “I’m leaving at the end of the month.”
He frowned, cupped his hands over his ears and replied “I didn’t hear that.”
I repeated the same exact sentence.
“Are you leaving the Group or the building?”
Haha, very funny, ARR. Leaving the Group.
I left the building recently to work on a project in a different office across town, but now I’m back. For a short while, as it turned out.
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Posted on 8 June 2007 @ 12:14 in Friends
It sometimes amazes me that people want to speak with me, even more so when they seek my advice. But then, friends are not any people.
And so it was that JM, a young friend studying in Canada, said hello online and proceeded to ask me what to do about her new apartment which doesn’t allow pets, at least not the type she has. Her lease begins in July and she thinks she may have to break it if the property manager doesn’t reconsider not letting her pets in.
We chatted about what to do, the main plan, back-up, etc. At the end of which, she said “If I were to talk to my dad, he’d just say get rid of the chinchillas!”
Maybe that’s an advantage of being single and on my own, and not having to deal with kids 24/7/365, which gives me the distance to be able to help?
She still hasn’t been able to reach the property manager yet, a very busy woman who wasn’t in the office all day today (JM’s time).
Among my suggestions – send over pictures of her pets, or bring them along to meet the property manager! But apparently, chinchillas don’t like travelling.
Oh well. Hope it all goes your way, JM. If not, remember the back-up plan!
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Posted on 6 June 2007 @ 10:51 in Books
Not your usual entry of what I am reading, or what I bought recently. Read on …
Sharon had posted an entry about George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four been voted ‘definitive book of 20th century’ by Guardian readers in an online poll. After following the link to the actual Guardian article, I investigated further and ended up at the full list of books. It’s a very interesting list. I thought I’d post it here, in reverse order:
1990s
Birthday Letters, Ted Hughes
Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding
Fever Pitch, Nick Hornby
No Logo, Naomi Klein
The Buddha of Suburbia, Hanif Kureishi
1980s
A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking
Beloved, Toni Morrison
Midnight’s Children, Salaman Rushdie
Money, Martin Amis
The Bonfire of The Vanities, Tom Wolfe
The Wasp Factory, Iain Banks
1970s
Carrie, Stephen King
The Female Eunuch, Germaine Greer
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M Persig
1960s
Ariel, Sylvia Plath
Catch 22, Joseph Heller
Portnoy’s Complaint, Philip Roth
Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, John le Carre
Valley of the Dolls, Jacqueline Susann
1950s
From Russia with Love, Ian Fleming
Look Back in Anger, John Osborne
The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
The Day of the Triffids, John Wyndham
Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett
1940s
1984, George Orwell
The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank
The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer
The Outsider, Albert Camus
1930s
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Brighton Rock, Graham Greene
Right Ho, Jeeves, PG Wodehouse
The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
1920s
Lady Chatterley’s Lover, DH Lawrence
Relativity, Albert Einstein
The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
The Waste Land, TS Eliot
To The Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
1910s
Howards End, EM Forster
The Good Soldier, Ford Madox Ford
The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry, Ed Jon Silkin
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
1900s
Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
The Hound of the Baskervilles, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Interpreting Dreams, Sigmund Freud
Kim, Rudyard Kipling
A nice mix of fiction and non-fiction. Poetry, too. British and American. And a good list to give anyone who asks “what should I read?”
I love it that Jacqueline Susann is in there with the best of them.
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Posted on 6 June 2007 @ 06:10 in People
In The Star, to be exact. A review of his reading at Borders Queensbay on 20 May 2007, written by journalist Choong Kwee Kim.
The article also highlights the importance of such book readings.
… convincing people who would otherwise not buy the book.
“For people who have already bought the book or are going to buy it, the author might as well not do a reading.
“But for those who have not bought it, a reading is important because it is hoped that they will enjoy it and tell other friends about it,” he (Kam) said.
Her blog entry
Scanned image of article
Online version
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