Friends of Pretensions will know that that she is an amateur musician and enjoys singing. Her vocal teacher just tossed her a Tosti score last week and said "This is nice and it''ll be different; try to learn this." Anything seemed better than the umpteenth repetition of "Oh Holy Night" (the last piece) and Pretensions is in the process of note-bashing her way through the art song "Tristezza" (Sorrow).

While searching for musical crutches, ahem, recodings, she came across this wonderful Joaquin Pixan recording of the piece on Youtube and thought she'd share it. P hopes she will eventually sing it 1/10 as well - pity this spanish tenor is so unknown, P thinks his voice is fabulous!

P also found the translation for the lyrics (she's a lazy part-time musician).

Guarda; lontan lontano
(Look, far far away)
muore ne l'onde il sol;
(the sun dies in the waves)
stormi d'uccelli
(flocks of birds)
a vol tornano al piano.
(fly back to the plane)

Una malinconia io sento in cuore
(A melancholy invaded my heart)
e pur non so perchè;
(and I do not know why)
guardandoti negli occhi,
(looking into your eyes)
o bella mia, muto mi stringo a te.
(my beautiful one, I hold you silently)

Copre l'ombrìa d'un manto
(A shadow like a coat covers)
le cose, il cielo, il mar;
(things, the sky, the sea)
io sento tremolar
(I feel the tears)
ne gli occhi il pianto.
(filling my eyes)

Suona l'avemaria ed é sí triste
("hail Mary" rings and it's so sad) <-- melody ringed by church bells> e pur non so perchè:
(and I do not know why)
devotamente preghi, o bella mia,
(You faithfully pray, oh my beautiful one)
io prego insieme con te.
(and I pray with you)

Tenera ne la sera
(Tenderly)
che s'empie di fulgor,
(in the splendor of the evening)
dai nostri amanti cuor
(from our loving hearts)
va la preghiera.
(rises the prayer)

E la malinconia
(And the melancholy)
mi fa pensare
(recalls me)
e pur non so perchè,
(and I do not know why)
che un giorno, ahimè,
(that one day, alas)
dovrà la vita mia
(my life will lose)
perdere il sogno e te!
(this dream and you) '

P's choir is also performing the Nelson Mass (or Missa in Augustis) and she came across this great Youtube video of the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra and University Chorus performing it. Please be warned that the first 20 minutes of the video is of the Mozart Horn concerto - just fast forward to the 20 minute mark. The entire mass is performed over about 40 minutes.

Pretensions knows that the movie Be Kind, Rewind, starring Jack Black, Danny Glover and Mia Farrow was shown ages ago, near the beginning of this year. However, she recently discovered the show's Sweding site which is still a lot of fun - view a sweded version of Google and swede yourself onto various video covers!

For the uninitiated, the film's premise has Mos Def working as a video store rental attendant, when his friend (Jack Black) comes in and accidentally erases all the tapes with his magnetised body (long story, watch the film). Mos and his friends then embark on a project to remake all the movies in the store, using an old VHS camcorder, bad acting and cheesy effects. The resulting movies were described as being from Sweden, hence the term Sweded.

Sweded movies have now taken off somewhat and a number of fans have been producing their own versions of hot movie scenes. Check out the Jurassic Park and Aliens videos below - the effects make the '60s USS Enterprise look state-of-the-art and the overacting is pretty hilarious.

For more sweded movies, check out www.swededmovies.org, swededcinema.com and swededfilms.com. Check out the Lord of the Rings sweded edition here too - it's great!

Motorsport ain't really Pretension's thang, but the whole town has been so focused on Singapore's first Grand Prix night race, that she felt she should really blog about it a little.

It is the first Formula One race to be held in Singapore since 1973 and the first night race in Formula One history ever (prohibitively expensive at ~$150 million ). Like Monaco, the Singapore race is being held on a street circuit in the downtown Marina Bay area, which has meant LOTS of rather inconvenient road closures, traffic jams and parking nightmares. P had dinner in the Orchard Road area on Friday night and all the trains and buses were absolutely packed to the gills; and there was no parking to be had for love or money. You can view an animated route map here.

As it is the first night race, there has been a lot of concern over safety (poorer visibility, important when driving at 300km an hour) and environmental friendliness (1500 metal halide light units using 3.18 million watts of electricity). Bernie Ecclestone, F1 president, stated quite baldly to the press that the intention of having a night race was to cater to the sport's main fanbase in Europe. The timing of the race means that it will be broadcast in Europe in the late afternoon to early evening, prime-time viewing hours for fans.

About 60% of the sponsorship for the race has been provided by the Singapore Tourism Board and the remaining 40% by Singapore GP Pte Ltd, a private company owned by local hotel tycoon Ong Beng Seng.

Last night, P tuned in with everyone else to watch the qualifiers, as Ferrari's Felipe Massa swept into pole position, finishing 3/10 of a second faster overall than his closest rival, McLaren's Lewis Hamilton. P refused to pay S$168 for a general walkabout ticket, much less the S$248-1388 for Grandstand tickets, but understands that her colleague's husband is going today (he's a motorsport fan) and will try to get a secondhand report from him next week.

P was far more interested in the F1 fringe events including the numerous racing parties around town last week. Sadly they also assumed very well-padded wallets, but would probably have been more fun. Here's a list and short description.

	Redbull F1 party pic from Dennis Lau's blog
	Fashion Show at Stylo Mercedes Benz event
	Amber Lounge Party
	Vacheron Constantin Watch from Grand Prix D'Horlogerie de Geneve show

The Stylo party has been in the news for the local celebs who attended and for the big messup with valet parking, where 50 car keys got mixed or went missing, resulting in local comedianne Patricia Mok waiting more than 1 1/2 hours to go home.

There are 2 R.age videos on the parties which P spent some time trying to embed unsuccessfully. Those interested can click through to them here and here.

Pretensions attended the Games Convention Asia (GCA) 2008 at the end of last week. Only the second in the series, GCA describes itself as the first and only platform for the entire electronic game market in Asia - there were speakers and demos from all the big players, including EA, Ubisoft, Lionhead, Crytek, Nexon . In practice, the convention is divided into a business/research and a public component. P went to bits and pieces of both - she's decided that she's really blogging for 2 different audiences here and will therefore split the information down the middle.

This installment is for gamers and will look at new and upcoming games, console launches and other products that gamers might be interested in. Game Developers should read Part 2. This writeup does not even pretend to be comprehensive, it's just what caught P's fancy and attention.

New & Upcoming Games

• Tom Clancey's EndWar

P attended a talk by Ubisoft's Michael De Plater on the lessons learned by developing tactical strategy game Endwar. She'll blog more about these in the next installment of this post, but was quite impressed by the way Endwar put you squarely in the shoes of the commanding general of an apocalyptic war. For those not in the know, Endwar is based on the Tom Clancey novel of the same name and is set in the same universe as Ghost Recon and Splinter Cell. The plot melds the end of stategic Nuclear War with the energy crisis to create a new world order, with Russia, the USA and a destabilised Europe (now the European Federation) as its main factions. De Plater was asked if China might end up as another faction but hedged a lot on this (basically the game's targetted audience is Europe and the US, who presumably want to play as themselves).

There are several units available for play in this game of global warfare; including artillery, engineers, tanks, various combat aircraft etc. The game's AI is supposed to be a big step forward, as squads will automatically go to ground under enemy fire; squadmates will rescue the wounded etc.

De Platen was particularly proud of the game's voice command feature. Now arm-chair generals can actually issue voice commands to the troops through their headsets. This would obviously be really cool if it actually works as portrayed.

Multiplayer will be an important part of the game. As it is scheduled for a November 2008 release on multiple platforms (DS, PS3, Xbox), it remains to be seen how these will be handled in multiplayer. The PC version will come sometime later.

If you want to see the trailer P saw, you can view it here.

• Star Wars - The Force Unleashed

Join the Dark Side in this fabulous Star Wars game that allows you to play as Darth Vader's secret apprentice! Xbox and PSP versions of the game were available for sale at the exhibition. Sadly, P is a PC gal so will have to go on practicing her mouth-breathing 'til the PC version becomes available, if ever (PC version has not been confirmed; unfair!! LucasArts that stardestroyer is pointed at your HQ).

• Blackshot

Blackshot is a new PC first-person shooter (FPS) MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Game) from Korean developer Vertigo Games. It looked basically like a military mercenary shoot-'em-up in Die Hard type environments and is free to play. There are lots of these games around, but not many that add the MMO functionality. The game was launched at the GCA with the press participating in a "Capture the Flag" match.

• Rock Band

OK. P knows that this Music video game that enables you and three other pals to live out their Mat Rock fantasies is old news in most places. However, the GCA finally saw the game coming to Singapore (25th September). After all, it's only been available in the States for a year - P wonders what the holdup was. Check out the official website here.

• Soul Caliber IV

Soul Caliber IV is the fourth installment of Namco's "sword-fight to the death" games and is a lot less serious about itself than it used to be. I mean it even allows you to fight as and against Yoda, Darth Vader as well as the returning Soul Caliber cast. P was impressed by the speed and snazzy graphics of the game on the PS3.

• ELAN online

ELAN looks like a local version of the wildly popular cutesy Korean MMORPG Maple Story. Version 2 was made available at the S'pore Gamers Association booth. Unlike Maple Story, ELAN players must buy an online activation card to continue playing after their 14 day free trial. However, this is pretty cheap, about $5. Like Maple Story, there appear to be plenty of in-game items available for very real cash. Check out the website here if you are interested.

• Spore

Pretensions has already blogged a little about Spore in the post before this one. The newly-released game was on demo at the GCA public are and both the normal and collector's edition were available for sale at the standard RRPs of S$56.90 and S$79.90 respectively. The collector's or galactic edition is similar to a collector's edition DVD with a Spore poster, some "making of" videos and various handbooks. Go create your creature today!

• Mirror's Edge

This game was also on demo in the EA area. It's a very good-looking first-person free-running game, where you get to take the role of a daredevil freerunner named Faith who tries to free her sister from a totalitarian government. Faith acts as a courier for organised crime and in the process shows off her athletic skill by sliding from rooftop to rooftop on connecting pipes, taking vertical jumps off walls and doing superman frontflips from hgh buildings. P can't quite explain just how thrilling this game looks, so suggests you watch the trailer below. The game is due for release on Xbox and Playstation in November. The PC version might make X'mas.

• Farcry 2

P is definitely not a fan of the First Person Shooter, but Far Cry made such an impact because of its graphics, that she kind of feels she has to include a para on the sequel. She is hoping that Ubisoft learned their lesson with the first game, which had hardware requirements more appropriate to a Cray supercomputer and brought most home PCs crashing to their knees. Reportedly they have, and the game looked lovely. It will be released later this month for consoles and PC. P heard rumours that the Singapore government wanted to ban the game for the amount of in-game violence (it's basically a Rambo/Die-Hard in an African setting in video-game form), but I guess they got over it, although the rating was not discussed.

You can view the trailer here.

• Need for Speed: Most Wanted

Another game spotted at the EA demo area was the latest incarnation of the Need for Speed franchise. Those familiar with the series know that it features circuit and drag races in the mythical city of Rockport, with police chases thrown in to spice up the action. P kinda preferred the Nanyang Polytechnic stand that featured the night F1 race coming up on the Marina Bay circuit in Singapore. The motion feedback looked quite impressive for a final year project.

• Saints Row 2

The Saints Row franchise was uhm, inspired, by the phenomenal success of Grand Theft Auto. It follows a somewhat similar format, being a sandbox type game with you playing a career criminal with attitude and a blazing gun. The game was on demo at the GCA and is due out in the US later this month. One big feature is the multiplayer co-op mode, where you can pair up with a "brutha" and take out rival gangs together. Recent previews have also revealed other multiplayer modes such as Gangsta Brawl (an organised or disorganised free-for-all) and StrongArm (a competitive tourney where the events include Destruction Derby, Hitman and Escort). P thinks you get the idea, but if not, please check out the game's website here.

• Battleforge

An EA game, Battleforge is a PC-only multiplayer card-based Real Time Strategy game - think "Magic: the Gathering" on the PC, but with fantasy armies and units, rather than individuals. Most fun were the monster units, like the giant horned Juggernaut. The cards give you various offensive and defensive elemental magics, eg fire, ice, shadow as well as structure cards (tower of healing etc). There is an in-game auction house that allows you to buy cards (with real money) and trade cards with other players. The game is currently in close beta and will be launched in December this year.

• Games Factory Online's Serious Games

Games Factory Online is a Dutch company that develops educational games and also games for marketing and sales purposes. They were part of the GCA Business exhibition and showed P their new slate of games, including one that aims to teach young diabetics how to deal with their disease. Hennie Van Velzen, their director, told P proudly that his company develops "serious games" or games that can bring about practical outcomes. They have also developed a portal called Climate Quest, aimed at educating young people about the environment and a entrepreneurship education game, Enterprise. That being said, P can see that the interim money-maker in their portfolio would probably be Stratego for the PC and Nintendo DS. They also have Rummikub for the DS and iphone.

• Peter Molyneaux's mystery game

Peter Molyneux of god game fame gave a keynote lecture at the GCA conference. Most of it was about the development of Fable 2, but when asked what Lionhead was working on next, he claimed that it was something very experimental and new. Your guess is as good as P's unless you work for Lionhead...

• Misc

Some other news snippets

• • Warhammer Online was launched at GCA
  • Hasbro and EA are partnering to launch console versions of their board games.
  • Spore Origins will eventually come to the Nokia Ngage (DS only at the moment)
  • Run Up Games is producing a whole lineup of MMOs including Mo Xiang Online, Kicks Online and Luna Online.

Consoles

• Wii Fit promos

Lots of Wii Fit demos at the GCA. P saw this at the ground floor of the convention centre - she thinks she prefers real hula-hooping herself. The Wii Fit has only been officially available in Singapore since August, but it has been unofficially available a lot longer than that...

New Products

• Figureprints services coming to Asia (eventually)

Created a really funky creature in Spore? Proud of your World of Warcraft alter-ego? Now you can immortalise them forever in plastic! Figureprints had a tiny offshoot of a booth at the public area of GCA showing off their 3D statues. Avid WOW players (SZ maybe?) might already have heard of them as the rep told P that they had had some kind of coupon thing going with WOW, which was very successful. The technology is based on rapid prototyping 'tho the rep told P that Figureprints process was much faster. For more info and prices etc, surf to their website here. The service is not officially available in Asia yet, but P thinks there is a potentially huge market especially with all the Anime fans out here...

ASUS World GameMaster Tournament

This was not really P's scene especially when the commentary was absolutely deafening, but there was a massive Gaming tournament being held in the middle of the public exhibition area. Games featured included Call of Duty 4 and Defense of the Ancients. P thinks the accompanying photo is of the latter.

Pretensions was very tempted to buy a copy of the videogame Spore while at the Gaming Convention last week. She is still holding out (largely because she suspects she won't have time to play and she's heard lots of bad press about the draconian digital rights management), but has been having lots of fun fooling with the free trial of Spore's Creature Creator.

For the uninitiated, Spore is Will Wright's (famous for "The Sims") new game that allows you to create a species and guide its evolution through from the unicellular stage all the way to its first voyage into space. Pretensions first efforts are best described as wyvern-like with dragonfly wings - P calls him Flitter.

Here's a video of Flitter and 2 juniors dancing.

Here's another creature I developed called Treemimic - it has two mouths with multiple mandibles and spends time lying in wait for prey while camouflaged to look like a plant.

There is a huge Spore community uploading their creatures online. Have a look at the weird and wonderful creations here(warning: very memory intensive page).

Pretensions spent Thursday night listening to a talk by Felicity Aston. Briton Felicity Aston was originally trained as a meterologist but is now an adventurer and travel writer, travelling to the wildest parts of the globe for documentary purposes or just for the hell of it. Her bio says that she has "tracked the jaguar in Paraguay, rafted iceberg choked rivers in Alaska and searched for 'hidden people' in Iceland's lava fields.

Felicity joined the British Antarctic Survey in 2000, and was posted to Rothera Research Station in the Antarctic Peninsula. She spent two and a half years there, helping to run the research station and monitoring ozone depletion and climate.

Felicity began the talk by asking us to imagine ourselves lost in the vastness of the Antarctic.

"Imagine yourself standing on an vast plain of snow and ice that stretches endlessly in every direction that you can see. It is only broken by rocky upcrops and what look like mountains in the distance, no buildings, no human-created structures as far as you can see. The sun glares off the endless field of white, but despite being in Antarctica during the brief summer, you are still cold, huddled in your three layers of clothing and your breath steams. What is most striking is the silence. There is no noise at all, no sound of birdsong, or airplanes passing overhead. It is as if the world is holding its breath."

Felicity spent nearly 3 years at the frozen South Pole, arriving during the brief Antarctic summer (from July to October) when Rothera's one runaway was open. During summer, the station is relatively crowded with visiting research personnel, but they soon leave come October, just before the last ship arrives bearing 7 months supply of food and other provisions. At the end of October, the seas begin to freeze over, and the climate becomes too cold for aircraft, meaning that the station and its 20 personnel are completely isolated during the long Antarctic Winter.

The 20 staff members included:

• Mountaineer/adventurer types
• Mechanics
• Communications specialist
• 1 Chef
• 1 Doctor/Dentist (MD with 2 weeks dentistry training)
• Various scientists
• Base Commander

Life at the research station was gruelling. Due to the heavy snowfall, all personnel were rotated through chores involving shovelling snow away from doors, windows etc. Likewise, all personnel had some fireman training, but when a fire did break out on an auxiliary lab, it spread too quickly for anyone to do anything about it.

Felicity also had the fortune/misfortune to experience the Antarctic winter, when temperatures can drop to -60C and the sun is merely a glow on the horizon for a few hours a day. She told us that it was impossible to go outside for too long in conditions like this. However, the scientists simply had to - many of the marine biologists even continued diving under the ice in the freezing conditions (apparently your face hurts a lot for 3 minutes and then everything goes numb, so its OK).

Felicity herself had the unenviable task of keeping a large number of automated weather stations working and also of monitoring the ozone hole over the Antarctic. Despite the ban on CFC use, the ozone hole has not shown signs of shrinking, infact it was at its largest ever 3 years ago. Climate records of the Antarctic region show an alarming 3C temperature increase over the last 50 years, with similar rises in Siberia and Alaska. The rise has not been confined to air temperature but is also reflected in the water temperature. As a result, krill populations have decreased and penguin colonies have started moving further south.

However, Felicity also wanted to point out that temperature rises in the Antarctic also affected the rest of the world, as global atmospheric circulation is created by the dual polarities of the tropics and the poles. Essentially, warm air in the tropics rises and moves north and south towards artic and antarctic, where it cools and descends. The whole circulation creates weather patterns and if the differential is lost, it creates abnormal weather.

She feels that much of today's floods, hurricanes and tsunamis may be due to the effects of global warming.

In order to draw attention to the plight of Antarctica, Felicity would like to encourage tourism to the area, but tourism must be properly regulated. In fact, there is currently a UN conference on the subject going on in Iceland to mark International Polar Year. Read more about it here.

For her part, Felicity is leading 7 women from 7 Commonwealth countries - Cyprus, Ghana, India, Singapore, Brunei, New Zealand and Jamaica back to Antarctica next year. They will brave blizzards, crevasses and temperatures below -50C to ski 800km to the South Pole. The expedition aims to raise awareness of the value of the Commonwealth, highlight the achievement of women around the world and foster inter-cultural understanding. You can visit expedition's blog for more information.

The Singaporean applicants have been narrowed down to two and P thinks she saw one of them at the talk. The duo are 36-year old Sophia Pang who manages to juggle being a mother-of-three with working as a freelance IT consultant and kickboxing instructor and 36-year old Lina Goh who is a Senior Engineer at the National University of Singapore. P wishes them all the best - she wouldn't last 5 minutes!

Pretensions spent parts of the last two days at the Asian Game Developer's Convention (GCA 2008), attending selected talks at the conference and also visiting the business and public exhibitions. She is planning a full report when she has time and is less exhausted, but in the meantime, she would like to leave you with an amusing video from Korean online games developer Nexon's hit MMORPG Maplestory. This is also in honour of Pirategirl's "Speak Like a Pirate" day on Tblog.

Pretensions spotted this in her issue of Wired magazine sometime ago, but has only just got round to blogging about it. Written and illustrated by Christoph Niemann, a New York-based illustrator, this book tries to teach young children basic chinese by hiding characters in the illustrations used throughout the story.

The story is about Lin, a young girl, and her pet dragon. She is heartbroken when he escapes into the wild and sets out after him, having many adventures and encountering colourful characters.

P thinks its a great way to take first steps in chinese and it looks like a beautiful book. The Pet Dragon is available from Amazon.

Avenue Q, the outrageously naughty puppet musical is finally coming to Singapore at the end of October and Pretensions has tickets! Perhaps best described as Sesame Street on Speed, the production stars such characters as Trekkie Monster, the Internet addict, Brian, the out-of-work comedian and odd couple (in more ways than one) Nicky and Rod. Songs include "The Internet is for Porn". "I'm not wearing underwear today" and "it sucks to be me".

Just about everyone P knows has seen this musical in either London or New York, so she's really looking forward to attending come November and will definitely post a review.

In the meantime, hope you enjoy this hilarious video that used to be shown in the interval of the West End production.

Happy Mid-autumn festival to all of P's readers! Today is the 15th of the 8th Lunar month, known as the Mid-Autumn (Zhong Qiu) or Mooncake Festival, because of the traditional cakes eaten during this time. Traditionally, families would be gathering tonight to gaze on the bright yellow Harvest moon and eat pomeloes (a tart fruit) and Moon Cakes, but given that it's been pouring rain outside since 6pm, I guess we'll keep the activities indoors.

There are quite a few myths connected to the Mid-Autumn Festival, the best known of which is that of Chang Er, the Moon Fairy. In the version P learned at school, Hou Yi was a famous archer who lived in a mythical China which sweltered under the heat of 10 suns. Crops were failing and lakes dessicating in the heat, when the Emperor of China summoned Hou Yi, commanding him to use his archery to shoot down the extra suns. Hou Yi complied, leaving one sun burning so that the earth would not be completely dark. As a reward, Hou Yi was given an Immortality pill, which would grant him eternal life. However, the pill could not be taken before special preparations (fasting etc) were undertaken. Hou Yi took the pill home to his beautiful wife, Chang Er, and instructed her to keep the pill in a safe place. However, Hou Yi had an apprentice Peng who coveted the pill and made plans to steal it. One day, when Hou Yi was away, Peng stormed into Chang Er's room and forced her to reveal the pill's hiding place. In order to prevent the evil Peng from gaining the pill, Chang Er swallowed it herself. Immediately she felt herself become lighter and lighter, and flew up to the moon. Upon reaching the moon, she coughed up part of the pill, which transformed into a hare. Today, you can still see the shadows of the woman and the hare on the moon, if you look hard enough.

Another myth concerns the origins of moon cakes. Apparently these round cakes came about during the Yuan dynasty when a group of dissidents planned a revolt against the opressive Mongols. As gatherings were banned, the rebels came up with idea of distributing moon cakes to the Han population (Mongols didn't eat mooncakes), each containing the time and date for the rebellion. The rebels attacked and overthrew the Mongols and started the Ming dynasty, all thanks to Moon Cakes!

P has eaten quite a few traditional (baked lotus seed paste with or without salted egg yolks) mooncakes this year. She has also tried a few weird and wonderful variations, including Szechuan Gardens Rum & Raisin Chocolate Truffle, Raffles Hotel traditional and Champagne Truffle Mooncakes etc. They're not bad, but if she wanted chocolate truffle, she would have ordered chocolate truffle - guess the hotels and restaurants are catering to the jaded palate nowadays.

P thought mooncakes were getting rediculously expensive at between $24-45 a box of 4. That was until she read about the luxe St Regis Almond Snowskin with Premium Birds' Nest and Custard Paste at $228 for 8 mini-mooncakes!! View the details at this post on ieat.ishoot.ipost here. Apparently the silly pastry is gilded with pure gold leaf - ieat.ishoot.ipost recommends it as the ultimate "impress your future in-laws before the wedding" gift. I think it would only impress on P how daft a person would have to be to spend so much on 8 miniature pastries.

Hope you got to enjoy a few mooncakes today anyway!

This post was inspired by a recent case in Singapore, where a 24 year old executive, who wanted to be identified only as "Ms Tan" (her online nick is JT) reported receiving a putrid pack of curry sauce from the McDonald's outlet in Compass Point in the east of Singapore. According to her, the sauce was black, hardened and possibly rotting - worse, she saw maggots crawling over a part of the sauce. 

Originally posted in the local newspaper's forum, the information has been circulated widely over the internet and today was reported in the free newspaper "Today", despite McDonald's appeal against "irresponsible speculation, postings and circulation of emails and blog postings on this matter." The National Environment Agency and Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority have since been called in to investigate the Compass Point outlet but no more maggot-infested sauce packets were found. 

This led P to wonder about McDonalds and its food safety - this is not the first McD food nightmare in Singapore this month. On September the 8th, the STOMP forum reported rats falling from the false ceiling of the Tampines branch of McDonalds. Apparently the manager and staff caught and removed the rats and pasted black bin bags over the ceiling holes (pictured). Read the original post here.

Checking the company's global website reveals that they claim the highest standards for their food.

To wit: The bedrock of all our socially responsible supply efforts is our commitment to ensuring that all the foods and beverages we serve our customers are safe. We do business only with suppliers that share this commitment and work with them to continuously monitor, test, and track our ingredients. We have stringent standards and checks in place in critical areas throughout the food supply chain—from "fork to farm."

However, as an icon of globalization and the age of Megacorps, McD has always been a big fat target for critics and opponents, and food quality and safety has always been an easy angle of attack as it is close to everyone's heart. As a result, past food scandals have always made headlines. P recalls reading about the E Coli outbreak in Preston, UK that resulted from undercooked burgers (1991), and a similar lethal outbreak among English children (1 died) in 1996.

It has also been the target of many urban legends usually about the gut-twisting origins of its meat, from Worms, to Franken-cows to Cow eyeballs. Wikipedia has an entire entry about this if you have a slightly sick sense of humour. Of course the 2004 documentary "Supersize Me" put McDonald's food "safety" in an entirely new light. Even if it didn't make you sick immediately, what were the long-term effects?

P is waiting avidly for the next installment in the Singapore McD circus. She's not planning on a burger anytime soon 'though.

Regular readers (P must have some, fingers crossed) might have been wondering why P has been so quiet lately. It's not because she's run out of stuff to blog about - there is no shortage, worry not! However, P has reached her limit in dealing with Tblog's technical problems/limitations and lack of support. Her XML/RSS hasn't been updated since June, and she's posted quite a bit in the interim.

However, the thought of leaving her favourite Tblog people (PG/SZ/LadyG/OS/Raj... you know who you are) makes P quail, so she's decided to take PirateGirl's long-ago suggestion to mirror her blog elsewhere to heart. She's also decided to do it the hard way and build a blog (more or less) from scratch on some free hosting she signed up for. P's using Wordpress with all its templates and widgets, so it's definitely not really from scratch, but it feels that way to an untrained non-programmer.

Please, Tfriends, go visit P's new blog here at http://pretensions.0fees.net/... and comment on the design and any problems you might spot (wishlists accepted too). P is migrating old posts manually to her new blog, so lots of old links are still placeholders or don't exist at the moment (no time - P has a dayjob).

P isn't planning on abandoning Tblog just yet, but makes no guarantees about the future, especially if she encounters more technical problems here. She will also start posting properly again end of the week.

Pretensions read in the local newspaper today about the development of a new made-in-Singapore movie called Nine Lives. So far, so normal; however the twist is that Nine lives is a made-for-GPS-assisted-mob ile device movie. It capitalises on the Global Positioning System inherent in a mobile phone or PDA to allow the viewer to watch scenes from the movies that were shot in the same location. This means that the viewer in a sense "creates" the film as he or she can watch the scenes in any order, depending on what order s/he visits the set locations.

The film, a drama/comedy directed by Kenny Tan is intended to showcase GPSFilm, a new software that has been developed by Scott Hessels, an assistant professor at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, and two 4th-year students.

P thinks this new idea has great potential, but is unsure that it is realistic. Will film viewers want to walk round a city to view all the scenes? What if they shoot North by Northwest in GPSFilm - won't it get rather expensive (not to mention confusing) travelling round the globe to see the movie? It might work a lot better as GPS-enabled travel guide, telling you the history of Notre Dame as you move round the cathedral or walking you through Greenwich Village.

Well, readers, you too can find out, as the software is freely available for download at this site. In the meantime, enjoy a short movie about GPSFilm below.

One of Pretension's colleagues forwarded her a link to a blog entry last week. The post was entitled "A disgrace to Malaysian tertiary education" from Adrian Hoe's Pragmatic Revelations blog.

Basically, Adrian blogged about the perceived drop in quality of Malaysian university education as evidenced by an article published in a local newspaper, the New Straits Times on August 23rd. The article was meant to be an advertorial commemorating the&nb sp;award of an honorary PhD in education to some local politician (P thinks so, the article is pretty unintelligible). Unfortunately, the article read like it was put together by someone who dropped out of school at the age of 12 and obviously failed spelling and grammar. Interested Tbloggers can read the full article here. Below please find the following excerpt.

 "Yang Amat Mulia Raja Zarith Sofia comply have interest profoundest field documentation. Apart from producing book, Yang Amat Mulia Raja Zarith doubled up guest writer in The New Straits Times newspapers and in personal column it "Mind Matters" in The Star newspaper. Besides writing, Yang Amat Mulia Raja Zarith comply active presenting a working paper at the conference national level and international."

Sounds like a Malay article was put through Babelfish!

On August 26th, the New Straits Times printed the following retraction, claiming "gross factual and grammatical errors" (no kidding!). While one could argue that english is not everything in a university education, this is not the first time P has received complaints about the Malaysian education system, and usually from people in the know. P's job takes her to universities around the world and on her last visit to Malaysia in July, she was told shamefacedly by a group of hangdog lecturers that they would not be able to meet international standards. As you may imagine, an embarassed silence loomed all round the conference table.

While attending a concert in KL that night, P started up an interval conversation with her Malaysian neighbour and mentioned her visit to nearby universities. "And what did you think?", asked the unnamed music-lover, "Disgusting, isn't it?". Cue more stunned silence from P.

On returning to Singapore, P found the Education in Malaysia blog, which had lots to say about the long decline of the Malaysian higher education system. Over the last few years, Education ministers and academics in Malaysia have been lamenting the lack of Malaysian universities in the top 100 of the Times Higher Education supplement, especially in comparison to its tiny neighbour Singapore, who has two universities in the ranks, the National University of Singapore at #33 and Nanyang Technological University at #69 (2007 results). In comparison, the University of Malaya, often considered Malaysia's top university, weighs in at #192.

The Teh Tarik sessions at the University of Cambridge (UK) are organised by a group of bright young Malaysians to discuss burning political/national issues. A recent session on Malaysian universities was pessimistic about the future, with many present attributing the decline to several factors:

1. Backdoor racial selection - There are two exam systems for entering university, STPM and Matriculation. Matriculation exams are reputed to be much easier and have an intake that is 90% Malay (Bumiputera) - positive discrimination gone mad! (Non-Malaysians might want to note here that the Malays are the native population of Malaysia, and make up 60% of the population; Ethnic chinese 25% and Indians 10+%)
2. Poorly chosen Key Performance Indicators - apparently university staff can gain as many points for participating in the National Day Parade as for publishing good academic papers! Which would you choose?
3. Politics in Teaching - Malaysian teaching staff are commonly known to be chosen by networks and connections, rather than qualifications.
4. Medium of Instuction - Malaysia made the political decision to use Bahasa Melayu (Malay) as the medium of instruction in most schools. This policy began in 1970 and most english schools were forced to switch to Malay by 1981. This has had a drastic effect on the standards of English in the country. What's worse is that most Chinese students go to Chinese-medium schools and Indians to Tamil-medium schools until the secondary level, which makes the integration back into Malay-medium higher education even more difficult.

The entire article has been reproduced by host Shawn Tan on Din Merican's blog here.

P would also like to point to the 2:1 ratio of men to women entering university. This is very unusual for most developed countries, who have approximately equal numbers at this level. Basically, to P, the decline points to the dangers of mixing race and religion with education and pandering to the popular vote by introducing positive discrimination. She is not trying to bash Malaysia, but there are obviously problems and steps must be taken if Malaysia wishes to avoid following this road to its bitter end.

Pretensions would like to apologise for the disapparearance of the search engine and table of contents from her blog for the next 2 weeks or so. She is trying to sort out why her Tblog RSS XML has not updated since June and is trying to remove all extraneous scripts and elements from her HTML to see if this helps. Elements will reappear at intervals during the testing period. Any inconvenience is regretted.

She will continue to post. Any technical help from more web-savvy individuals would definitely be welcome.

Pretensions has been catching up with her reading, so has a few new (to her) books to blog about. A recent read was Rollback by Robert J Sawyer, a science-fiction novel published in 2007. P was attracted to Rollback because it promised to take on the thorny issues of aging and eventual death.

The premise of the book is that eminent scientist Dr Sarah Halifax decoded an alien radio transmission in 2010 and helped mankind formulate a reply. It is now 2048, and Sarah, now 87, receives a reply to the transmission (radio signals travel very slowly through space). She has the opportunity to make a real difference to the fate of humanity, but can she live long enough to do so? Enter millionaire industri alist Cody McGavin, who, for reasons of his own, wants the alien message decoded and decides that Sarah is his best avenue to accomplishing that. He offers Sarah a rollback, a newly developed treatment that can literally reverse aging. The treatment is commercially available and tested, but is so expensive that only the top tier of society can afford it. Sarah accepts on one condition, that her husband of 60 years, Don, must undergo the treatment with her. Cody agrees, but to the couple's dismay, the process works for Don but not for Sarah, leaving him a physical 25 year-old married to an 87 year-old woman.

Don struggles to come to terms with his newfound youth and hormones, while dealing with friends and relatives who either don't recognise him or want his youth for themselves (lottery syndrome). He searches for a job but finds himself unhireable becaue of his obsolete skillset and ends up embarking on a tempestuous clandestine affair with Sarah's graduate student, Lenore.  In the meantime, Sarah struggles to decode the message before she dies of old age.

P really liked Sawyer's writing and his characterisation. Don is a decent man, stuck in a difficult situation, and he struggles to do the right thing, while suffering terribly from guilt over giving in to his suddenly youthful hormones. Sarah is inspirational, overcoming her physical disabilities and mental aging in her quest to uncover the secret of the alien message. The love shared by the couple leaps out from the pages of the book and is shown to be enduring. P doesn't want to spoil the book for those who might not have read it, but the ending is a bittersweet but happy one and quite unexpected.

Most of all, P liked the themes dealt with in the book. Besides the central one of aging and how society copes, there is also one of elitism - can we justify saving only some people and not others from death and aging? Should humans play god and interfere with the natural order? The aliens, called the Dracons, also probe deeply into the human psyche, raising questions of ethics and comparative morality. The human race in the book has to make choices as to how it wishes to present itself to the aliens - should it lie or tell the truth about its development and which answer will facilitate continued contact?

The book ends with a really optimistic vision of humanity and the future, reminiscent of early Star Trek. This is a great book to read when depressed or feeling disappointed with life. Interestingly, Sawyer, the author, has speculated here about making a film adaptation of his novel. P hopes it does get made some day; she reckons it would be a far more intelligent take on aging than some of the other efforts she's seen in this direction.

Even the Singapore Science Centre has caught the racing fever in advance of the upcoming 1st Singapore F1 Grand Prix. In addition to their Science of F1 exhibition, they organised a Science in the Cafe talk on Monday by Mr Eric G Holthusen, Fuels Technology Manager of Shell Asia-Pacific about its contribution to the F1 fuel mix. The talk was very well-attended and besides the usual free food, recipients received little Shell goodie bags containing promo material and a cute little toy Ferrari that made vroom-vroom noises when its wheels were "revved" on the ground.

P's readers may know that Shell has been the technical partner of Ferrari, developing and supplying fuels and lubricants to the team at their races worldwide. This partnership was first forged in the 1930s with Enzo Ferrari's first car, a 125C, which ran on a mix of benzene and aviation fuel.

An F1 car relies on hydrocarbon-based fluids for:

1. Lubricants
• Engine Wheel-bearings
• Hydraulic Fluid
• Gear Oil
2. Fuel

Shell and other fuel manufacturers formulate special fuel mixes that may contain up to 25 different hydrocarbon streams and a blend of more than 200 chemicals. Each mix is like a special vintage and is tailored to the engine's needs and the expected weather conditions on the track. This means that fuel developers spend most of the F1 off-season mixing and testing different fuel mixes, even as the engineers modify the hell out of the engines.

Usually, manufacturers have to balance power with acceleration. Higher octane fuel gives more power, but this is seldom important in a tight city-circuit. Instead, the team may go for fast acceleration to enable the drivers to zoom out of corners. However, this may all change with a heavy rainfall. In wet slippery conditions, the fuel mix may need to be changed to a slow accelerating one so that the driver can maintain control (crashing and burning doesn't earn too many points).

At the beginning of the F1 season, fuel mixes are fingerprinted and registered with the F1 body. At this point they can no longer be changed.

Once the F1 season begins, Shell sends a 3-person support team that travels with the Ferrari team around the world to manage pitside maintenance. There is a complete laboratory setup at the pit. In Singapore, the Shell team will be flying in a 22 foot container full of analytic equipment which will serve as their working laboratory. As cars zoom in for their pit-stops, lubricant samples are taken very quickly to test for quality and wear. For example, high levels of chromium and lead may indicate wear on the engine. If levels of wear are too high, a decision may have to be taken to change the engine even if it means going to the back of the grid.

The logistics of shipping the fuel are also very challenging. The tight regulation of F1 fuel formulas means that fuel has to be mixed in one place (usually Chester in the UK for Shell) and then that mix is shipped or flown out to the 17 F1 racetracks all round the world. A single F1 season may require 200,000 litres of fuel and 40,000 litres of lubricant, making it a real challenge to make sure everything arrives ontime.

P also had the opportunity to wander round the exhibition and gawk at the cool cars on display especially the $200,000 model (see below). She spotted plenty of middle-aged men clutching car magazines and having a whale of a time playing with the racing simulators and gawking at the car-tech. Below are some photos of what was on display (P's not much a motoring fan, so the labels aren't very informative, sorry).

$200,000 souped-up sports car. Drool...	Racing Simulator	F1 car
Motion Simulator		Historical Race Car