Pretensions would like to post a notice about her upcoming concert with the Celebration Chorus this Sunday. She will be performing Haydn's Nelson Mass at the Singapore Bible College Concert Hall at 7:30pm on Sunday the 30th of November. All are invited and the concert is free of charge.

P has previously blogged about this music here. It is a beautiful piece and has all the characteristic Haydn flourishes, even in the alto part which P is singing. The sopranos are given a real workout in this piece as there are several high B flats and regular entries on A and G.

So far rehearsals have gone fairly well, so P is expecting a good concert, fingers-crossed!

For those unfamiliar with the subject (where have you been?), Cold Fusion proponents claim that they can make nuclear fusion reactions run at room temperature using what appears to be a modified electrochemical cell rather than the 4 storey-high extreme condition nuclear accelerators that have been used in conventional physics.

In 1989, Martin Fleischman and Stanley Pons, both respected chemists at the University of Utah, made perhaps the most controversial announcement the world of science has ever known. They claimed that the electrolysis of heavy water using a palladium electrode produced an anomalous heating effect and attributed it to the nuclear fusion of deuterium. This resulted in a media feeding frenzy, complete with inflated claims that so-called cold fusion could provide the world with cheap abundant energy and/or nuclear weapons.

Unfortunately for Fleischman and Pons, numerous attempts to replicate their experiments ended in failure, resulting in accusations of incompetence and/or fraud and the name "Cold Fusion" has been synonomous with career suicide in the scientific comunity ever since.

However, a small community of true believers has continued to beaver away. David Nagel is obviously one of them despite a thoroughly credible background in engineering materials and condensed matter science. Nagel obviously understands the problems inherent in dealing with the legacy of Fleischman and Pons and is able to retain his sense of humour.

"There are two major problems with LENR. One is the imperfect reproducibility and control of the experiments. The second is that there is little substantive theoretical guidance for the phenomenon". Nagel likens the first problem to having a car that turns on when it wants and goes where it wants. He would like to tackle the problem by improving the metrics, as most cold fusion experiments have continued to rely on simple temperature rises as a measure of success.

In very brief, the original theory behind cold fusion proposed that it was all down to packing the palladium with deuterium. Conventional chemistry holds that when 2 electrodes, one made of platinum and the other of palladium, are immersed in a solution of heavy water (deuterium oxide), and a voltage passed between them, the heavy water breaks down to give oxygen and deuterium. Pons and Fleischman claimed that if the process went on long enough, the palladium electrode would eventually become so packed with deuterium atoms that the atoms would fuse together, generating heat energy (the temperature rise).

This does not agree with conventional physics - which says that atomic nuclei repel each other with tremendous force. Traditional fusion experiments rely on overcoming these forces with kinetic energy; hence the giant particle accelerators.

Another of the major theoretical problems with cold fusion has always been the absence of high energy gamma rays which the deuterium fusion reaction should produce. Nagel is a proponent of the lattice theory, which explains this away.

The lattice theory was first proposed by Nobel Laureate Julian Schwinger in 1994. He suggested that the crystal lattice structure of the palladium is able to absorb the gamma radiation and convert it into heat with no residual radiation. P gets very fuzzy at this point as it starts going into quantum mechanics and Einsteinian paradoxes, but suffice it to say that the point is being argued by opposing camps of theorists.

Indeed, it is quite ironic that nuclear fusion seems to have inspired so many splits in the scientific community; splits between physicists and chemists, between theoreticians and engineers, etc etc.

However this has not stopped a slew of venture capitalists and startup companies from taking up the cause over the years. While some, like Californian startup Clean Energy Technology have gone belly up over the years, others like Lattice Energy in Chicago may yet succeed.

So, are cold fusion proponents crazy garage scientists or true visionaries? Only time will tell.

During her recent trip to Hong Kong and Taipei, P spotted these interesting signs and was not sure whether to be amused or bemused.

	And the alternative is?
	Does that mean left turners? Or do two opposites make a right? Hold on a minute..
	Waiter, there's something in my coffee!

Pretensions went to the Singapore Lyric Opera's (SLO) Puccini Gala last night, despite some worries about quality. Regular visitors to P's blog might remember the uneven Turandot production she attended back in August. Still, P managed to secure relatively cheap seats in Circle 2 with a credit card discount, so felt that she could risk it.

The gala was held to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the birth of Giacomo Puccini, one of the most well-known and loved of Italy's operatic composers and the man who brought such operatic favourites as Tosca, La Boheme, Madam Butterfly and Turandot to the stage.

Despite starting at 7:30pm, the Gala was relatively short, with the usual chocolate box selection of favourites from Tosca, Manon Lescaut, La Boheme (lots of music from this), Butterfly and Turandot. The full programme can be viewed at SLO's pages here.

The SLO Opera Orchestra had obviously been gathered together from available professionals in Singapore and sounded somewhat underrehearsed. The brass in particularly were obviously having difficulty with the faster passages in the orchestral pieces (P can't remember now if it was the Intermezzo from Manon or the Witches' Dance from La Villi that made her wince). Still the orchestra managed to produce a mostly serviceable sound and obviously enjoyed themselves on the louder passages in the Le Villi Dance. Unfortunately, they took their obviously con gusto approach to music to the point that even the larger voiced singers, like Cecilia Yap and Ha Seok Be were on occasion struggling to be heard over the massed strings. Soubrette Tan Khar Gee was inaudible most of the time from where P was sitting.

Very young conductor Joshua Tan, looking like Rain's kid brother, led the orchestra with an assured beat.

Malaysian lyrico-spinto soprano Cecilia Yap delivered a nicely spun "Si, mi chiamano Mimi" and "Donde Lieta" from Boheme. Her top notes were clear and ringing and the meat of the voice solid. Her duets with Korean tenor, Ha Seok Be, revealed them as a nicely matched pair and P really enjoyed their "O Soave Fanciulla" in particular. Ha also had a nice tone to his rich tenor and carred off the tenor vehicle "Che Gelida Manina" with dispatch. He also did a very nice job with "Nessun Dorma" despite missing his top A right at the end (he faked well, so P will forgive him). He also redid the aria as an encore and did much better the second time round.

P felt that Tan Khar Gee's fluttery vibrato and small voice rather ruined two favourite arias of hers "O mio babbino caro" and "Signore Ascolta". At least Zhang Feng's baritone was able to portray a credible Gianni Schicchi and Colline.

On the whole, most of the performers were able to make P overlook the flaws and enjoy herself. She looks forward to the upcoming SLO "Tales of Hoffman" in March!

P is leaving you now with her favourite Puccini duet "O Soave Fanciulla" starring that supreme operatic duo - Pavarotti and Freni.

Pretensions' internet connection has been through a particularly bad patch lately. Her ADSL line kept going down at unpredictable intervals and coming back up whenever it felt like (totally random, minutes or hours). Needless to say, this made posting and uploading excruciatingly frustrating exercises, which is why she hasn't posted for ages.

She was also having problems with a bad .htaccess file on her Wordpress installation which meant that whenever she managed to access the dashboard, it promptly gave her a 403 error.

After 3 visits from successively more senior Singtel techs and much shrieking down the phone line about switching to a different service provider, the connection problem now seems to be fixed (fingers crossed). Apparently P's condominium is a fairly elderly development and her telephone wiring is in much need of replacement. P was suffering from significant data loss due to a combination of badly oxidised copper wires (this from a relatively new line) and bad splicing of her lines into the apartment block's main box. Hence, during peak periods, her connection would go down.

With the advantage of a stable connection, P has also sorted out her software problem and hopes to begin blogging regularly again.

Pretensions was at new research and development complex Fusionopolis for an alternative energy event last Wednesday. Despite herself, P was really impressed by the futuristic styling of the complex which was created by renowned Malaysian architect Ken Yeang, well known for his low energy skyscraper design.

Fusionopolis is intended to become Singapore's icon for R&D in interactive media, physical sciences, engineering and technology and will be developed over six phases.

A very green development, Fusionopolis was largely illuminated by natural sunlight and featured a vertical planted corridor and landscaped garden terraces for natural ventilation and cooling. On the level that P was on, there was an air-curtain preventing cool air-conditioned air mixing with the hot and humid Singapore atmosphere.

There was an upmarket supermarket (Marketplace) operating in the basement and a Harry's Bar and Starbucks (oh no!) on the ground floor but most of the retail space on the first to third levels was still boarded up, not surprising since the complex only saw its grand opening two weeks ago.

P particularly liked the curvy wood warmth of the lounge area outside the auditorium which more closely resembled an avant-garde bar space than any lab P has ever seen, 'though she guesses that the Fusionopolis labs would be exemplary as well.

Fitness First, a gym chain, has opened an outlet here and P would love to see the 23rd floor, open-to-the-sky, pool, but sadly she never got the chance. The view's probably not great at present 'though; P got a wonderful view of the construction site that's currently phase 2 from the picture window in the lady's loo!

Pretensions finally got to catch the long-awaited Avenue Q (proudly uncut and uncensored) here in Singapore last Tuesday. For those not in the know, Avenue Q is a hilarious musical spoof of Sesame Street, with puppets behaving very badly indeed. Think of it as Sesame Street 10-15 years later where all the characters have gone badly wrong.

The show begins with fresh-faced graduate Princeton arriving in New York City's Avenue Q ("I started at A, but everything else was kind of out of my budget") where puppets and humans live in quasi-harmony. He quickly meets his new neighbours, wannabe comedian Brian and his Japanese-American wife Christmas Eve, single kindergarten teacher Kate Monster, Rod & Nickie (the Bert and Ernie analogues) and of course, building superintendent Gary Coleman, who was presumably unable to find a job after the TV show "Different Strokes" ended.

Princeton's quest for his "Purpose" leads him into and out of various shenanigans, which are inevitably heralded by Avenue Q's trademark song-and-(sometimes) dance numbers. P loved Princeton's opening "It Sucks to be Me" and was very tempted to get the T-shirt (literally, they were selling them outside the door).

Princeton begins a romance with girl-monster-next door Kate, who explains that her purpose is to start a school for monsters. Despite having an unfortunate lapse with aptly-named Lucy the Slut, Princeton eventually realises that his purpose in life is secondary, his immediate need is to help Kate recognise hers. With help from the rest of the Avenue Q gang, including Porn addict Trekkie Monster (the Cookie monster analogue), Kate's dream comes true and Princeton realises that life is only "For now".

There's of course, plenty of subsidiary characters and subplot, including Rod's life as a closeted gay man and his eventual coming out of the closet and the 2 Bad Idea Bears who eventually convert to Scientology. P also loved the bit when Lucy the Slut ends up in the hospital and her ECG mimics her most significant assets! The puppet sex was pretty amusing too... (yes puppets can have sex).

The songs were wonderful, particularly comedy number "The Internet is for Porn", Gary's ""Schadenfreude" (so so true!!) and Kate's "There's a Fine Line between Love and a Waste of Time". The latter song, beautifully rendered by Philippina songstress Carla Guevara-Laforteza brought a tear to P's eye.

Other standout members of the mostly Philippino cast include Frenchie Dy as Christmas Eve. Larger-than-life in more ways than one, her scintillating personality and big voice made "When you ruv someone" really beautiful. Ironically, the role of Gary Coleman (one of my younger friends had no idea who he was supposed to be) was taken by a former child star, Aiza Seguerra, who was excellent in the dance numbers and whose warm contralto voice was perfect for the "boy"'s role.

Avenue Q won the 2004 Tony award for best musical and P enjoyed it hugely. It's running until the 13th of November, so go catch it quick! P's leaving you with the Tony footage of Avenue Q - enjoy.

P has been having lots of problems with her internet connection lately with it popping up and down every 5 minutes and completely foiling all her attempts to blog. The Singtel (telco) tech was finally able to call today and sort out the problem, which was apparently due to bad contacts. Let's hope the broadband connection lasts, but in the interim, it's back to your regularly (or irregularly) scheduled programming.

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Create your style is an intiative started by Swarovski of crystal fame, where they encourage use of their crystals in homemade jewelery designs. The Create Your Style website has numerous designs, a design tool and a user gallery where jewellery enthusiasts can showcase their jewellery designs. As part of this initiative, Swarovski also runs CYS workshops in various countries and P popped in to what she believes is the first Singapore one on Saturday 1st November.

Interested parties can download the full programme here, but in brief, there were various fashion shows, demonstrations and the sale of various kits to make necklaces, earrings, rings, mobile phone dangles and other fun bits of glittery stuff. Being the kind of girl who likes glittery stuff, P was in seventh heaven.

She particularly liked these cute mobile phone dangles.

P also liked these rather darling little mice and was told that they were not difficult to make. She caved in and bought 2 kits, one for a pair of copper earrings and the other for an Oceanic bracelet (more about this below).

P was too busy to attend the catwalk segment where models showed off the latest designs but did get to watch Mr Ayumu Yoshinaga of Swarovski Japan demonstrate his twisted crochet beading methods (it was being filmed for TV, so P may yet appear in the local broadcast).

P went to her first workshop on Saturday 8th November. She has done some beading before, mostly from kits bought during her stay in the UK and is particularly proud of a very long peyote stitch neckace that took months for her to put together. She'd been told that the Oceanic bracelet was only an hour and a half so thought that it would be easy. It was but it wasn't trivial.

First of course, the beads had to be sorted. Then, it was a matter of threading the provided nylon thread through the beads in the specified order while keeping the tension right. Too tight and the bracelet curls; too slack and the beads would slide back and forth. P had been used to working with a needle and found threading the nylon strand through the rather small holes in the beads rather difficult (she's rather chronically short-sighted).

Cindi Chen, the class teacher, was excellent at getting all 6 pupils started, given the wide disparity in experience. She was also good at coming to the rescue when things got sticky, like when P was wrestling with doubling the thread through the crimp bead, which had a super-narrow hole (it's meant to be crimped with a pair of pliers to hold everything else in place).

Still, P managed to finish in an hour fifteen minutes with a respectable looking bracelet. Not bad for S$25 (~US$15) and a little effort!

Pretensions will be going for her next workshop on Thursday - copper earrings! Wish her luck!

P has taken ages to post this review as she has been really busy at work - pity, since the film was an excellent one. Burn After Reading is a Coen Brothers movie, and as such descends from a pedigree of Coen Brothers films such as Fargo, Hudsucker Proxy and the more recent No Country for Old Men. Those who are after more of the latter should note that the black political comedy of Burn After Reading is in stark contrast to the brooding angst of NCFOM.

A-list veteran actor John Malkovitch takes the central role of Osbourne Cox, the CIA analyst who decides to quit his job before he is demoted due to alcoholism. This is the cue for his British ice-queen of a wife (Tilda Swinton), who has been having a tempestous affair with Treasury agent and neighbour Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney), to think seriously about dumping him; particularly when Ozzy chooses to stay home all day to write his memoirs. Her divorce lawyer counsels her to secure copies of Ozzy's financial files before the divorce and she does so, copying most of his personal data, including his unpublished memoirs, onto a CD. It is this CD which her lawyer's receptionist loses during her next visit to the gym, Hardbodies. Enter Ted Traffon (Richard Jenkins), the gym's manager, and his two idiot employees, plastic-surgery obsessed Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand) and stereotyped dumb jock, Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt).

A janitor finds the CD and passes it to Chad who upon seeing the content decides that "this is serious ... CIA-type shit" and persuades Linda that there may be a reward for returning the disc to its owner. However, Chad and Linda's initial attempt to contact Ozzy goes seriously wrong when Ozzy decides that the two are attempting to blackmail him for the return of the information. Linda decides to play along with Ozzy's assumptions as she needs the cash to pay for planned cosmetic surgery and she and Chad begin a seriously bungled attempt to blackmail Ozzy and/or sell the "classified information" to the Russians which ultimately results in several murders and terminations, a traumatised Harry (who discovers his wife has known about his serial philandering all along), and the CIA attempting to cover up everything.

All these lives intertwine, helped along by plenty of coincidences, internet dating and affairs, resulting in a misanthropic screwball comedy-of-errors (everyone's a loser in this picture and even the government is portrayed as idiotic). The Coen Brothers' original script occasionally loses its way, but is always salvaged by the A-list actors that lie at the heart of the action. Brad Pitt is magnificent as the happy-go-lucky brainless jock, Chad - portraying him as the ultimate gum-chewing airhead with sculpted muscles. John Malkovitch, well, what can I say? He's John Malkovitch and embodies the sad alcoholic civil servant, emasculated by his wife and superiors and taking out his rage on the world. Frances McDormand too provides lots of laughs as she relentlessly pursues her dreams of physical perfection and marrying into a better life, getting into more and more trouble as she does so, all the while ignoring the lovelorn Ted at her doorstep. George Clooney takes the opportunity to make fun of his own image as the sexiest man alive, playing a serial philanderer who finally bites off more than he can chew.

Put together with a sharply satirical script that rages at a shallow and stupid world (how many s's did I get in that sentence?), the movie is a wonderful polemic on 21st century America. Go see it and have fun but be warned that the film uses more repetitions of the F and S words than P has ever heard in one movie!

BTW, P ended up winning movie premiums so now has a poster, a notebook and a little blue "Burn After Reading" towel!