Google, Kindle, Android, IOS, Facebook...

Just realized that these days, those of us who are connected seem to be getting this slew of offerings that keep flying of the shelves. A couple of days ago, it was Amazon with its Kindles. And in a couple of days, Apple will be releasing some more new stuff. Facebook has just gone through one round of new upgrades. One more is supposed to come in the coming days. Before that, we had all other stuff from HTC, Samsung.... Every few days, I seem to be reading about some new release. And how come? All because I am quite 'well-connected'.

I'm on FB like many. I have articles delivered to my iPad at rates which I have no time to keep up with. I am bombarded with reviews, teasers, speculations... They just keep coming. I never imagined that there can be so much to read. Minus work, housework, 'chasing' after the kids, I actually have not much time. But still I am in the know because all the info I need to know is delivered to wherever I am, to be read at my convenience.

Anyway, to keep consumerism going, this new social networking is a perhaps the best way to get to your potential customers. However, many of these networking sites have abilities to keep track of our lives, our likes and dislikes. Privacy policies are in place but that's just one software away from prying into our lives. And I've come to realize also that many of us don't mind many of the privacy issues. We announce to the world where we are, what we are going to do, who we're with, what we had for dinner, what we've just bought.... even love is professed in this public domain. Very often I know where my friends are. I know who check in with who into a particular place. Some may argue that the info is only for our friends' consumption. But I also notice that many don't bother recalibrating their settings. And there are those of us who accept just anyone to be our friends.

And if you think the telcos would be a safe bet to send messages, think again. The SMSes we send out get stored over a period of time. Some telcos keep messages for a long time. So, FB provides your life's timeline. Telcos stored your supposedly personal messages. Amazon via their latest offering will be able to keep detailed records of your reading and surfing habits too.... it's not available in Malaysia yet but someday, it will.

Back to FB. It's actually quite easy to draw a pattern of behavior from FB. If a person unfriends you, you know the other party probably has an issue with you. This is one of the more obvious examples. Patterns can be drawn from our posts, the way we respond, etc, etc that allows more info than which meets the eye to get through. Sometimes, it is even possible to read into a person's mind via his responses. Imagine what companies can do with the information that they have on users. Tailored advertisement, reading content... all that would be possible. In short, it is possible to even programme us via what we read. Articles are easy to write...

Back in 98 (if memory serves me right), the BN went on a marketing glitz which made majority of the country feel or really good. Suffice to say, BN won big time that year. We were all bought by the feel good factor. Inequality was there, cronyism was thriving, yet majority of us felt good enough to give BN a resounding victory.... it was all in the marketing... Imagine how we can be influenced now that our individual tastes can be scrutinized. And they have the means to deliver the persuasion tailored for you only... Scary! Plus peer pressure can be a useful tool too. You will be informed what your friends are listening to, what they are watching, which phone they are buying. Keeping up with the Joneses' at its best. We've this trait built in; and the media needs only to awaken it. The credit cards do the rest even when you don't have the actual cash... Sometimes, I wonder whether this is all a conspiracy to enslave us all...

Look at the hype surrounding the impending Apple release of products. They are so many articles about what experts are saying about the new products. It builds the hype. It makes people wait in anticipation. It gently prods people make up their minds to get one.... there is nothing like building that desire slowly. Suspense keeps us seated, makes us take note... causing us to crave for it.

There are many pros too but like everything else; you always get both sides. Man is a social creature. We want to know what's happening to the people around us, not that it matters to us... we want to have the things that our friends have, not because we need them, we want to keep up with our neighbors... All those companies? They just know which buttons to press so that they make more money. And they're very successful at it. Apple is the most valuable company. Amazon, Google... they're all industry leaders making tons of profits. And they all have one thing in common, they're all involved directly or indirectly in social media.

Too much?

What does too much do to us? Diabetes, heart problems, hypertension... these are all outcomes of too much. Too much good stuff apparently kills. Too little also stunts and eventually kills too. We see plenty of that in Africa.

So, too much or little of everything seems to be a problem. The answer is obvious... striking a balance. But the way to this obvious solution doesn't seem to feel so obvious. It's been 5 weeks of unrelenting pursuit of my lil one's lessons. As much as I try to minimize tilting the balance, it was just not possible with so much to catch up and a limited time frame. I've to give credit to my girl for her compliance. If it had been my boy, he would have balked and there would have been many sessions of wall hitting.... or 'long piak'.

Up to 12 homework a day, that's what my primary going girl comes home with some days. And there are only 5 examinable subjects and other 'unimportant' subjects like Physical Education, Pendidikan Sivik and Kemahiran Hidup. So, it's quite amazing to me how she gets more than 5 homework each day. Perhaps it is this 'too much' that causes them to later ignore their homework at secondary school.

When a kid is in Primary school, it is easy to make them toe the line. That line becomes very crooked in secondary school. Just compare the school bags of a primary kid and his secondary big bro. The kiddo's bag will probably be 2-3 times heavier than his big bro's. And in the worse case scenario, the big bro's bag might even be empty except for some writing materials. Many just leave their books in their drawers at school or don't bother at all. I've had students who can turn their Science book into an English one and then , all in the matter in one day if need arises. Too many....

And as if school is not enough, there are always the extra classes. School starts at 7.40 a.m. And it's supposed to end at 1.10 p.m... Primary that is. These days, kids as young as Primary 3 have to attend mandatory extra classes carried out by the school. Some drag up till 3.30 p.m. By the time a kid gets home, he is extremely bushed. And if he's slow, there is this constant need to play catch up. Add that to us, parents' punya kiasu-ness, there is the after school extra lessons... or tuitions. These usually take place at night. I look back into my own childhood. I cannot ever remember being this busy! Yet again too many....

I've been sitting with my girl lately. I discovered that her teachers make efforts to give as much work to them as possible. I think her teachers are very hardworking. But then I realized this... for my girl to do well, she has to be really good at memorizing and regurgitating the answers. She grapples with language issues because Mandarin is not her first language. It impedes her comprehension. The system has no place for kids with such disadvantage. One just has to catch up. And this is where more boys languish since a great deal of them are faced with language issues. Most boys just don't have their language side of the brain fully operational at that age. My boy went to Chinese school too, took the Chinese paper for his SPM and now his little sis reads better than him. Yet again, too much...

Language... boy or boy! BM is tough. Chinese is just as tough. The only language that is not hard is English... at school that is. Yet, many of students have poor grasp of the language. Many find it tough at school. Easy syllabus but poor mastery. When you compare English to the other 2 languages, you can see how inadequate it is. I don't know whether it's because of our racial politics but I feel that there is this effort to memartabatkan each language from diehards from both sides. I am struck by how little real information passages in both languages contain. Yet for BM and Mandarin, the difficulty level is high. And mastery remains so-so. Too much? Too little? Too many languages to learn. Jack of all trades, master of none.

Too much or too little... It's about striking a balance. Give too much here, expect too much there, something has to give somewhere. There used to be a balance somewhere.

As my lil one, she has way too little time to day dream. Everyday, she is just as tired as us. A kid's life... it's not much different from ours. I thought 21st century living, with all that technology has to offer us... rupa-rupanya, it turns everyone of us into a consumer, waiting to consume the next new thing to replace the not so old new thing. And we slog for that material replacement.... UNESCO has an interesting study about materialism, the London riots...

Bak Kut Teh

Bak kut teh... it's just a soup dish cooked with herbs, a potpourri of everything edible from an animal. Bak refers to pork. There is chick-kut-teh too, obviously a chicken based soup. Of course you can have duck-kut-teh.... The 'teh' is supposed to be good....

Anyway, this is one of our favourite bak-kut-teh haunts. It's located at Lot 7 (I always get confused with its name even after so many years here), just beside Putra Medical Centre. We come here quite often as this is one of the places that our lil one likes a lot, usually after our swim. This hawker centre was one of the most popular ones in Alor Setar when we first arrived more than a decade ago. Then it went on a slide. But after the Putra Medical Centre, adjacent to it was extended and went through a facelift, the area has become busy again. It seems to have found another lease of life. And this hawker centre too.

What's so special about this bak-kut-teh? I guess the soup. For any bak-kut-teh to be nice, the soup (or the 'teh') must be nice. There are few other bak-kut-teh stalls around Alor Setar but this is one of the better ones. There is another one which is quite nice at Pekan Simpang Kuala. There are the yu-tiao and lightly scalded vegetables with meat floss and its sauce. But you only have 2 choices of vegetables.

The stall is rather popular. If one goes slightly later in the evening on a weekend, one might have to wait for quite some time to be served.

Apart from the bak-kut-teh, there is also this chee-cheong-fun. It's nothing as nice as the ones you get in Penang but again, this is one of those places you can get such kind of chee-cheong-fun in the evenings.

Four Weeks....

It's been 4 weeks since I embarked on a task which I did not know how much I would accomplish. More than a month ago, Jov jolted me to the fact that my girl was struggling with her Science, that she did not quite know what was required of her. It took more than a fortnight before I decided that I would take myself to task to teach her. The problem is I am not Chinese-ed, which basically sums up the whole problem.

And her Science is in Mandarin. I had great difficulty understanding the questions, let alone read her books! Trying to teach content without language competency is a torture. Plus I work full time. So time is a rare commodity. I spent 2 weeks searching for help.... By and by I found a few. The Besta dictionary is a great help but it's a bit slow and it wasn't something I carried with me all the time. But my iPad is with me most of the time. So it was only natural that I looked to it as an alternative.

Enter the Pleco app and the beginning of 4 interesting weeks.... I started from scratch. there were times when I felt like throwing the books away. So many words to learn and so many times I kept forgetting. But I persisted.... writing and rewriting the words onto the screen. The going was extremely slow. That which should take 10 minutes took 3-4 times the time. Still, I refused to throw in the towel. The first week was tough. There were times when I thought, perhaps I should just teach her the concepts in English and hope she picks the rest up herself in Mandarin.

Most of my free time was taken up by this exercise. When I discovered that I could buy an add-on in Pleco which would read the words to me, I told Other Half that I wanted it. That add-on became my intonation teacher. Going by visual would have taken me more time as I would have to go through the 4 tones in my head for each word. By the second week, the going was slightly easier. But I was still writing a lot on the screen. Sometimes, by the time I got the end of the sentence, I had forgotten what it was all about. (But the app Translate, which is essentially Google Translate turns app; helped out a lot with sentence translation) My vocabulary continued to improve. My word recognition got better. But I was still struggling a lot. My eyes were tired most days... from staring into the screen and coping with the transitional eye change that comes with middle age. Both are painful experiences.

It's now just past the 4th week. I am still struggling. But I now have a new tool in my arsenal... OCR!! And it's a truly wonderful add-on. By just using my camera on the iPad to capture the words, meanings and how they're pronounced would appear on the screen. If the need arises, I can take it a step further by having the pronunciation done too. It has sped up the reading by leaps and bounds. I can now cover more in a session. But iPad camera does not autofocus. I have since found out that the iPhone 4 has that capability, which means that words thay I OCR via the camera will be crisp and clear. Moreover, the iPad is way too big to hover over the book line by line. It's heavy on the wrist. An iPhone would be lighter and more nimble..... But for now, the iPad would have to do.....

Four weeks! I do not know whether I have the persistence to keep going but I shall try. I can now read more than I could before I began. I can now make more sense of stuff said in Mandarin more than before. My vocabulary has probably increased by many folds. I can even go to the bookshop, look through a Science reference book and tell whether it contains all the information required. I can look at a word, and even though not quite remember how to read it, for some reasons still be able to make a contextual guess what it means or know what it means.

My gardening has gone on hold. My brain feels 'fried' on many nights. My eyes feel like they are going to pop out on many of those nights too. Sometimes I am so mentally bushed that I find my patience running really thin. But it has been a rather interesting learning experience too. For one, I surprised myself in that, I lasted this long. Another is that I found that I could enjoy it once I allow myself to take the pitfalls as they come along... it's the getting up that makes it enjoyable. Being able to get up means you are moving on; very much like getting up after a fall while learning how to cycle. Also, in learning... even though this learning experience is rather painful because the learning curve is rather steep; because Mandarin is a language of character recognition, I find myself feeling ecstatic after each milestone.... But learning has to be meaningful. Meaning makes it bearable, more fun, etc, etc... and the meaning comes from understanding the content to be able to teach my girl.

And one more thing..... I am so going to get myself an IPhone or an iPod, if the reportedly and supposedly tweaked iPod Touch comes with an upgraded auto focus camera because the OCR process would be clearer. I am fortunate that I have the necessary tools to hasten my learning. I am even more fortunate that I have the means to get them. Without these tools, I would probably have given up in utter frustration. Technology is indeed an enabling tool... if you know where to look for it. My friend offered to read for me, teach me so to say. I told her that my digital teacher does not get tired no matter how many times I bug it. And I think I am persistent (no, dogged enough, LOL!... ) enough to stay focus. So four weeks.... and now I am anticipating the big Apple do said to be next week.... because now an iPhone seems to have turned into a need....

When I Grow Up

I want to be a doctor, lawyer, engineer. When I was a kid, there was this 001 Card at school which had this column for ambition. My first recollection of being asked was in Std 2. And everyone (me included)would put down the choices above, policeman (woman), teacher being some of the other choices. Kids.... small world, limited contact, and everyone chose almost the same ambitions but in different order.

Then sophistication crept in and these became more vogue - investment banker, stock analyst, venture capitalist, consultant (this or that).... and all kinds of engineering subdivisions, software engineers... scopes which did not exist when I went to university. And we thought that was sophisticated enough....

I read somewhere that we should train our kids to think of possibilities, of jobs not in existence yet cos the job specs will continue to evolve.

After all would anyone of us imagine the existence of this other realm too where old traditional occupations take new forms. It may seems a little unconventional now but in time, they will be. After all, if one watches a slew of sci-fi stuff, what may seem an overdrive of imagination is actually a peek into the future... provided the world does not come to an end; either through divine intervention or man's folly. For me, I think the more vivid (in my mind) of those sci-fi shows were Space 1999 and Lost in Space... .. Well, there is no Moon Base Alpha yet but we do have an ISS orbiting up there now.

I would never have imagined 20 years ago, jobs which didn't feel like real jobs, i.e. earning money via 'play' would come mainstream and overtake the traditional ones in terms of income generation. Jobs like video (online) game tester, or game farmer where they play and earn money by selling passwords for the different levels that they've done. We'd have labelled such people bums!

But dig this? Vice goes online too. Professional pimping gone online... and gambling too. Now, they don't need to go to Genting or Singapore. Even Vegas comes to them. And gambling takes on other guises too... with many saying that it's a legitimate way of earning money. Illegal betting and lotteries still take place in those hidden away corners but there are slowly gaining a sophistication that comes with the internet. Want a game of poker that plays real money?? Well it's just a few keyboard punches away. And the hope of winning big is stoked in ways unimaginable before.

Online gaming is another area. Micro transactions occur where players once drawn in and get hooked will pay to purchase items for their farms or whatever virtual game they are playing. I play Fragger occasionally... A gem whe you throw grenades through a series of puzzles to blow up your enemies... For a couple of bucks you can buy a solution. That's micro transaction.... it makes money out of impatience for a solution to a level. But lots of people bite. We are a generation of quick fixes, remember? Billions of dollars exchange hands this way! I wonder if a major disaster were to strike and all these people whose skills seem to be farming in the digital world, running digital restaurants, basically just running digital worlds... will they have the enough real skills to survive? I mean, actually survive and not just survive digitally. Generation Y, Z... sophisticated gens they are, but to get their hands dirty or to even slaughter a real chicken??

Then also this... some claim that playing games like Starcraft helps them be millionaires. Read this article about Charlie Cheever who says playing Starcraft helped him learn what he really needed to know about being successful. But the lessons he said he learned from playing the game... I think you learn it doing other things too. It's not an exclusive thingy. There should be lots of millionaires from among the Starcraft gamers going by what he says but reality check will probably show us that most gamers are basically just end users!

So, when I grow up...... who knows what a kid today might be doing? He will be doing one of those jobs that does not exist today.

Those Mad, Mad Years

I am discovering plenty every day.

Adolescence, the awakening. No more child, the innocence gone and only memories of the cute 'was' is etched in our memories. Been down this road with my kid.... another ongoing.

Both Other Half and I truly enjoyed our kids' childhood. Am glad for our lil one. Cos the second time around, you know the road better. And you tend to be more relaxed. When difficult moments come, you know there is an end to that tunnel.... But we can never claim to totally know, cos each kid is still different.

It seems the years between 14-17 are the most reckless years. A pre-teen is fun. They listen and obey.... well, most of the time, anyway. But the teen years that follow will awaken the need for attention of a different sort; socialization in the real sense, go out, hang out... with peers.... Man is a social creature and this age marks the beginning of this need to socialize. Their world expands to beyond their parents. I call this period the marginal years, years of self discovery. I now understand better why the choice of peers is very important too. Studies on teen brains are beginning to show that the recklessness is very real during those 'mad years'. I've just reacquainted myself again with terms such as amygdala, myelin sheath, etc, etc... My biology is rusty but it is still enough to help me understand the physiology of the changes, somewhat. So, because of that, being with their own peer is something that they automatically gravitate towards. Recklessness during this time also means giving in to the pressure of your peers (one seeks peer approval) and given the fact that all are in the same phase, it's double jeopardy. Peer pressure makes us do lots of crazy things. We lose some along the way due to the craziness. Those who survived the recklessness of the youth survived because they are supposed to be naturally the better specimens... the process of natural selection takes place. Well, in theory. So the recklessness was also nature's way of singling out the undesirable ones...

I now understand better why my elders had this set of rules to follow. Kids who are mollycoddled are more likely to go wayward. Kids who have everything too easy turn soft too easily. Kids need more than just their parents to 'parent' them. My elders might not have understood the biology behind it but even they understood the importance of the communal role in raising a kid. Our boy had the benefit of this communal role via a few of our church friends. But in today's individualistic world, it's every one for their own... well, most of the time anyway. I now understand why my mom said sometimes our kids must be taught by others and that parents should sometimes empower others with that authority to discipline their kids. My teachers had my parents blessings to cane me. Touch a kid today, and you might find yourself being hauled to the police station. Kids learn that they not only had themselves to please but also the community. Those mad, mad years require community effort. But these days, most of us would just shrug this role off.

It seems the 'madness' begins right around 12 and might even last up till 25. But there is good news. The mind becomes sensible and recklessness reduces with age. LOL! Adulthood, it seems catches up with everyone. And fatherhood, it seems tamper the tempest in the male species by reducing their testosterones. How's that? But the road to it is fraught with unknowns.

Still the problem seems to be those mad, mad years. And I realize this too.... we seem to be lacking that community spirit in raising each other's kids. We are too caught up by the individual in us to bother. That community upbringing has now been taken over by tuition centers where many kids spend most of their time. I know many of them spend their weekdays at school and tuition centers. And tuition centers take up their weekends. They are left with hardly much time to hang around their own neighborhood. Their hanging places centre around those tuition centers. Communal roles have now been taken over by peers.

Playing games have gone into their homes, seated on a chair and facing the computer screen.... 21st century interaction. So we make excuse adn say we go for quality.

An American friend of mine used to complain to me that American kids spend way too much time on sports. I think physical games are better than the virtual ones. At least physical games come with physical limitations. Physical games are played outdoor. Digital ones come with virtual ones and we know that they can continue to be pushed as long as you have a computer with you. It can be restarted again and again. No end, no moving on.... one can even play till one drops dead at the chair!

What caught my attention more than anything is how shallow many of these kids are. They are a generation of throwaways. Bored with a phone? Get a new one! As long as you have the cash, there is no problem. And that is why too more kids are willing to do anything for it. Those mad, mad years make it all the more fun, especially with their peers to cheer them on; senses suppressed (or heightened, depends on how you see it)! Mad, mad years. They're necessary to prepare one for his future but so many go sesat.... but I supposed they'll regain their sensibility, somewhere down the rites of this passage... hopefully with just scars and not just festering wounds.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde... rupa-rupanya there's a little truth to the novel. It has to do with a little chemical adjustment that the brain undergoes. And why this post.. of late I've been in contact with teens who, from all outward appearance seem to be a picture of well-being but upon scrutiny, seem to have this something that is just quite unexplainable.

Buffet...

Roasted potatoes and it was unanimous that these were among of the best roasted potatoes we've taken anywhere. You know how much kids love potato wedges. Well, this is even better than any of the wedges that we've taken.

And these potato pieces topped my boy's list of food taken the most times for this particular food outing. Spicy, soft and juicy, I found them delicious. I think honey is one of the ingredients used in its preparations but the combination of herbs and everything else the chef put in seem to make them taste very good.

And they were part of this buffet spread made up of really yummy displays. They tasted just as good as they looked!

The makan place was the g Cafe at Gurney Drive. I like the decor; chic urban modern. The dining area is spacious and one gets a view of the happenings around Gurney Plaza. I have always liked the way the big old trees were preserved when they built this place and sitting in a concrete building with lots of windows looking into the greens amidst a park-like feel was rather relaxing. And we were in no rush to do other things except to eat. 8)

Penang is a hawker haven. You get really good food; cheap and delicious almost everywhere. Eating in Penang is an adventure of its own. Because you get good food everywhere, hotel food pales in comparison. After all, hotel food is usually just that... hotel food; which is almost predictable. But this spread was a different hotel food experience.

My salad mix... I was spoilt for choices. Mixed bean salad, mussels which were really succulent, and generally everything was nice. They had more than enough types of salad dressings to keep me happy. I tried 4 before giving up. My stomach isn't just as it used to be... which is one reason why we generally don't go for buffets. My kids are small eaters too. But we decided to do something different for a change this time.

This buffet had a really nice spread... Irish stew, Money Bags, egg foo yong, salmon, chicken.. the list is just so long that everyone will find a few things they like. The prawns were really yummy; really moist and soft. My girl took a small hill of them and I stuffed in quite a few too! 8) Even Other Half who usually steer clear of prawns couldn't resist taking a bite! I notice that the portions they put out on the buffet spread were small, which meant that the chef was constantly replenishing them. It makes the food taste like a sit-down meal.

The soups were good. This is the lotus soup. The soup was soothing and everything else in it nicely cooked. Really clear soup.... really sweet too.

This was the carrot and coriander soup. See the Mickey in it??? Other Half added a big dash of parmesan into it. The breads were nice and fresh. With a little butter on them, and this soup as the dip, it was another winner. Basically I've not much to complain about except for this little one thing. The watermelon we took was, I think, too ripe or perhaps cut and left too long there. It had a 'sourish' taste to it.

Not forgetting too the desserts. There were just too many to even begin but suffice to say, they kept both my kids and Jov happy. I had wanted to give Jov a nice treat for her willingness to come and sit with my girl and help her with her lessons before going off for her studies these last few months. I also wanted for her (and us) to have something nice as memories. She made me realize that my girl needed extra coaching for some of her subjects and had taught me a thing of two how to make the connections in Mandarin. And the outing was a nice one. Anyway, the cakes were actually good. Most hotel (even some 5-star ones) have cakes which taste too dry and not rich enough. Most of the sweet stuff they had there were yummy enough to make you go for seconds!

I tried almost all the major items but left out Murtabak, crackers and many of the desserts. My final 'food' was a cup of rather strong coffee that was delivered to the table steaming hot.

Priced at RM58 per person; children below 12 get a 50% discount, this buffet is good enough to make us think of going back to try their other culinary adventures. Saturday lunch deal is the Family Lunch. There are different themes for different days and meals like Surf and Turf, Indian Curries, Shell, etc, etc.. all priced differently. As for me, this is one buffet that didn't taste like a hotel buffet. Definitely a good experience cos you get so many nice stuff in one sitting.