March 27, 2003
Morning
Days appear to pass quicker when days are filled to the brim. Every morning as I wake, shaking off the shroud of sleep, I feel the passing of all mornings — I half-crawl, half-fall out of bed, thinking that yesterday morning is pretty much the same, and tomorrow morning might well be too, except perhaps for the measure of sunshine through the window. Every morning as I wake, I feel a little older — not for the passing of all mornings, but for the growing awareness that each day I awake with the excitement and eagerness of youth. Posted by sniffles at 08:49 AM | Comments (2)

March 26, 2003
Pitter patter
A discussion is going on at Tara's blog as a result of her comment about being at the age of where most people have children. I think I practically grew up with the belief that I will one day have children of my own. I'm not sure if it is something that has been simply reinforced in my upbringing — I have plenty to say about the conservative (read "subtly sexist") nature of my upbringing, but that is entirely another whole series of stories. I don't doubt that having children is an entirely enriching experience in itself — I love children and have deep, almost personal, interests in the issue of children's education. I have, in fact, taught ankle-biters to ear-bashers anywhere from the ages of 6 to 15 in my not-so-distant past. At the same time, I question the validity of the social pressure which dictates that one should have children — I believe it is something personal that ought to be the choice of the partnership of individuals. From the moment you marry, people begin to ask you when they will hear the "pitter-patter of little feet", or mini-versions of you (I wish that there are better metaphors, one gets tired of these real quick, I assure you). Or if you are hanging around with another woman who has children, you will be questioned about when it's "your turn". I can pinpoint the exact moment that I know I can live without having children, and do so without regret. I was at a restaurant with a friend whom I don't often see, and her three young children were with us. It was the kind of day when children get restless, and I watched her mechanically listen to the eldest (who wouldn't stop talking in order to draw attention to himself), feed the youngest, and make sure the second-oldest child is also eating. I say "mechanically", because at some point, one does these things out of habit, one's reaction towards children becomes so second nature that one is no longer able to pay attention to what one does or say. This is a kind of interaction which I do not want to have with children, especially not with children of my own. It is not for me to say what others choose, but this is what I know for myself. I realised then, that if I do have children, I probably would not want to cope with more than just one child. I despise the possibility that my children would have to fight for my attention. And I would go mad worrying about what is the right thing to do for my child. So, in the meantime, other people's children are a lot of fun. Having a child is a great responsibility that I don't know if I am able to cope with. It is because that I recognise the amount of care and love that is required from me that I do not think I want a child. Incidentally, for those of you out there who are worrying about being past the child-bearing age, ever thought of adopting a child who needs loving parents? There are endless possibilities in this world. Posted by sniffles at 10:37 PM | Comments (6)

Holding hands

The very reason why that poetry excites one to such abandonment, such rapture, is that it celebrates some feeling that one used to have (at luncheon parties before the war perhaps), so that one responds easily, familiarly, without troubling to check the feeling, or to compare it with any that one has now. But the living poets express a feeling that is actually being made and torn out of us at the moment. One does not recognize it in the first place; often for some reason one fears it; one watches it with keenness and compares it jealously and suspiciously with the old feeling that one knew. Hence the difficulty of modern poetry; and it is because of this difficulty that one cannot remember more than two consecutive lines of any good modern poet.

-- "A Room of One's Own", Virginia Woolf

Posted by sniffles at 09:51 PM | Comments (0)

March 24, 2003
Come to think of it
It didn't even occur to me that anyone (apart from me) might buy the t-shirts! I made a decision this morning — all profits coming from these shirts will go to Oxfam Canada's Iraq Humanitarian Response fund. Posted by sniffles at 12:10 PM | Comments (2)

March 23, 2003
I don't usually like pink

This is the kind of thing that happens when I can't get to sleep. Wanna wear it?

Posted by sniffles at 09:25 AM | Comments (4)

March 22, 2003
You may say I'm a dreamer
I'm sorry I have been dull lately, or perhaps I am always dull. Maybe I just feel dull, and not because the sky is grey. I have been concentrating, mostly on getting things done. Perhaps there is some kind of comfort to be had from being a little more mechanical, from habits driven passion, or passion driven by habits (sometimes it is hard to tell), ruthlessly knocking off items from my to-do list. I have no idea how many people braved the rain in Montreal today, but it was more than the 200,000 of last week. People were angry. I saw two signs bearing John Lennon's face, and one bearing Bob Marley's. And someone had "want freedom fries with that?" Non, non à la guerre. It has been several months since I'd noticed that I have a weakness for French bookstores. My ability to read French has improved markedly, so maybe it is due to the reminder that there is still so much ground to cover every time I walk into a French bookstore that makes my heart flutter. If anything, I have noticed the apparent difference between book cover designs - French book covers tend to look much less flashy — none of that inch-and-a-half tall gold serif lettering — they are generally much less "exciting", hence possessing a sense of reserve and a kind of elegance. Looking at books like these make me feel like writing. Aaron is a gracious host, and cooks insanely delicious pasta. Someone posed the question, "How would you finish the statement of 'I am ...'?" such as "I am a student", or "I am an architect", or "I am currently a computer geek". Lately, I have started to think that it doesn't really matter - what matters is that I do things. But anyhow, what or who are you? Posted by sniffles at 10:33 PM | Comments (0)

March 21, 2003
The world is exploding
Netscape DevEdge has launched DevEdge Strategy Central, full of evangalism goodies including case studies and articles on why standards-compliance is the way to go. See also Mozillazine. (hat tip: Chris) Posted by sniffles at 03:37 PM | Comments (0)

March 20, 2003
OpenWeb is launched

OpenWeb is live:

Le site openweb.eu.org se lance le 21 mars 2003, avec l'objectif de proposer un ensemble de ressources francophones sur les standards Web. Son contenu, original et produit par des professionnels, a été conçu pour tous les niveaux de compétences. Les sujets traités vont des techniques de design web à l'accessibilité, en passant par des articles de vulgarisation sur les avantages des normes ouvertes.

Congratulations to the team! This looks to be an outstanding, much-needed resource.

Posted by sniffles at 07:06 PM | Comments (1)

RSS Feed for "Where is Raed?"
I've made a feed for Where is Raed?, scraped hourly. Help yourselves. Posted by sniffles at 11:26 AM | Comments (0)

March 19, 2003
Dusk and dawn
I walk a little way to work and a little way back home every day. The weather is warming up, even if temporarily. Today it was sunny, and the snow had been melting, leaving behind blankets of white with jagged edges on the grass-slopes, slightly stained with dust and dirt from the air, the ground, and the streets. The radio has been on CBC Radio One all evening. Night passes here in this city, silently, peacefully, as dawn explodes in another. I think I know a name for this feeling. It's called helplessness. Posted by sniffles at 10:53 PM | Comments (1)

The wait

Australia will fight by its own rules:

The Defence Minister, Robert Hill, yesterday tried to clear up confusion over which United States military commands Australian forces would and would not obey in the war against Iraq.

As the leader of the coalition attack, the US will direct any Australian military action. But Australian armed forces are subject to more stringent rules of engagement than those of the US, as Canberra is a party to more international treaties.

Australian forces are not allowed to attack civilians, civilian targets, hospitals, places of worship, dams or nuclear power stations. Unlike US forces, they are banned from using landmines or cluster bombs.

Salam, from Baghdad:

[...] Wherever you go you see closed shops and it is not just doors-locked closed but sheet-metal-welded-on-the-front closed, windows-removed-and-built-with-bricks closed, doors were being welded shut. There were trucks loaded with all sort of stuff being taken from the shops to wherever their owner had a secure place. Houses which are still being built are having huge walls erected in front of them with no doors, to make sure they don't get used as barracks I guess. Driving thru Mansur, Harthiya or Arrasat is pretty depressing. Still me, Raed and G. went out to have our last lunch together. The radio plays war songs from the 80's non-stop. We know them all by heart. Driving thru Baghdad now singing along to songs saying things like "we will be with you till the day we die Saddam" was suddenly a bit too heavy, no one gave that line too much thought but somehow these days it is sounds sinister. Since last night one of the most played old "patriotic" songs is the song of the youth "al-fituuwa", it is the code that all fidayeen should join their assigned units. And it is still being played.

Posted by sniffles at 09:18 AM | Comments (1)

March 17, 2003
Crying NO

I was going to write something else tonight, but my friends who are bleeping me, making little square windows flash on my screen — my friends from different sides of the world, on the other side of town, or on the other side of the divide, are saying, "Have you heard? Have you heard ...?"

Yes, I have heard. Australia commits troops to war. Bush gives Saddam 48 hours. How would Mr. Bush have reacted if a leader of another country asks him to leave the States, or else it's war?

Meanwhile, some Australians sing 'No War' for supper at the Sydney Opera House. How did they get up there?!

The Opera House chief executive Norman Gillespie said after that he condemned the action.

"While we respect the right of Australians to protest, it was a totally unacceptable way of doing it.

"To deface such a wonderful icon ... It was an act of reckless vandalism, totally unacceptable."

Honestly, if war is on your doorstep, a wonderful icon means very little if there is a possibility that it could be completely destroyed. Those tiles are replacable. I saw a poor guy whose job was to replace the tiles under the cover of dusk when I'd visited the quay.

Posted by sniffles at 09:39 PM | Comments (0)

March 15, 2003
All about ...
All About Lily Chou-Chou wasn't the film I'd expected to encounter, but then again, these days I tend to walk into movies knowing little apart from the title, and at best, the basic plot. I had no idea what I was in for. If someone were to ask me what the film is about, I would say that the words "youth", "pain" and "music" come to mind, but these words conjure up different things for different people and are really all too exclusive in the ideas they represent, perhaps even too cliché. I think of age-old discussions revolving around "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead!" with old friends about existential anxiety many years ago. I think of my sister; I think of people I know and the people I used to know, I think of the me that I used to know — I think of the those I love and those I have loved. I remember the bad critique I received when I first performed Debussy — but no one had taken the time to explain to me how one should approach Debussy! At certain times during the film, my fingers had itched ... have I played that before, or have I sight-read it? I was good enough once upon a time to have sight-read that ... I believe this is the first film I have seen which gives true weight to the aspect of living part of one's life online. It makes me wonder if those who haven't "lived" online could relate to it in the same depth as I did. "All About Lily Chou-Chou" provides a startling insight into the darker aspects of the school-age youth today. Coupled with intensely beautiful photography and deeply moving use of music, its surrealistic story-telling seems only to emphasise the truth it portrays. Posted by sniffles at 10:42 PM | Comments (0)

A book in one day
Left to my own devices for the day (because I was too slow in registering for Constellation W3 before it sold out — see also Karl's blogpost), I read a small jewel of a book and attended the peace march in Montreal, which numbered 200,000 today. Needless to say, the weather was a whole lot more pleasant, being some 20 degrees warmer. Not wanting to repeat the same mistake as last time, I made sure I was near the front of the procession, which was how I ended up being part of flag-carrying collective. For some reason, the guy who was heading up the whole flag deal noticed me and beckoned me over to help him at the front (hence I got this lovely view). When we arrived in front of Guy-Favreau, I slipped away and made my way west, where on the corner of Saint-Urbain, percussionists were playing and people were dancing in the street. Posted by sniffles at 10:01 PM | Comments (0)

March 12, 2003
Was it your day? It certainly wasn't mine!
Three buses sped past my stop this morning without pausing to pick up passengers, presumably because they were so full that people were virtually falling out the windows. (Well, I exaggerate, but you know what I mean.) I could see it really wasn't going to be my morning by the time the nice man at the information counter told me that I was in the wrong building, and that the place I wanted to go was some three blocks away, just as it was beginning to snow madly. The highlight of the morning was when I somehow got locked in the toilet. However much I jiggled the lock, the sliding bar wouldn't catch. Fortunately, there was space about a foot high between the floor and the base of the door. Some days, I am awfully grateful that I am of such a slight build ... Posted by sniffles at 10:30 PM | Comments (4)

March 11, 2003
Under the shadow
Where is Raed? appears to be a blog from Baghdad (found via Boris, who swindled it from Joi Ito). Posted by sniffles at 10:39 PM | Comments (3)

Working girl
I'm a few days late in announcing this as it all happened rather suddenly, but I've just gained employment for at least a little while (as my boss keeps saying) — and some of you will at least giggle at the irony — I'm now a graphics and print publishing kind of person, with some amount of technical support thrown in. Ahem. :) The environment is lovely and dynamic, and freakishly familiar, but that's another story altogether. Don't worry, I'm not retiring from the Web world quite just yet ... Posted by sniffles at 09:59 PM | Comments (4)

All mixed up
Ahh, the entries for the WThremix competition are in. I can't say I find them all impressive, but it is a challenge to arrange the amount of information that the W3C has on their front page. This is particularly nice, except they did not use the W3C logo. Later ... Petr Stanicek has done a very nice version of the W3C front page. My only complaint is that the menus are too low down on the page, but it looks great (via Webgraphics). Posted by sniffles at 08:57 AM | Comments (3)

Winter wonderland
I was waiting for the bus a couple of blocks north of my usual bus stop, pondering about Web issues (what else), when the guy smoking a cigarette said to me, "Isn't it lovely warm weather we are having?" I was wrapped up in my big coat, my lovely new thick scarf around my neck, beanie on my head and my hood pulled over it. "Oh yes! Brilliant, eh? Not going to get much hotter than this!" "The bus is coming, at least," said he, gesturing down the road. "It's air-conditioned, so it'll be a relief." The bus arrived. "What's your name?" I told him. "And you are ... ?" "Arto." "How do you spell 'Arto'?" "A-R-T-O." "Oh, cool. Is it short for something else?" I was only going a short way down the road. He took down my phone number. Getting off at my stop, I called out, "See you when the weather gets colder!" Posted by sniffles at 08:51 AM | Comments (2)

March 09, 2003
Being unbeautiful

Why Nerds Are Unpopular, by Paul Graham (merci, Olivier):

If I could go back and give my thirteen year old self some advice, the main thing I'd tell him would be to stick his head up and look around. I didn't really grasp it at the time, but the whole world we lived in was as fake as a twinkie. Not just school, but the entire town. Why do people move to suburbia? To have kids! So no wonder it seemed boring and sterile. The whole place was a giant nursery, an artificial town created explicitly for the purpose of breeding children.

Where I grew up, it felt as if there was nowhere to go, and nothing to do. This was no accident. Suburbs are deliberately designed to exclude the outside world, because it contains things that could endanger children.

And as for the schools, they were just holding pens within this fake world. Officially the purpose of schools is to teach kids. In fact their primary purpose is to keep kids all locked up in one place for a big chunk of the day so adults can get things done. And I have no problem with this: in a specialized industrial society, it would be a disaster to have kids running around loose.

On a completely different note:

d: i am old now.
me: :)
me: happy birthday !
d: danke.
me: :D you're older than me!
d: yeah, but you're far sexier.

Have a smashing birthday, Dan baby.

Posted by sniffles at 10:23 PM | Comments (3)

The tourist
Under strict instructions from Aaron, I visited the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. "Never mind about the other paintings and such," he said, waving his hand in punctuation. "Go see 'El Jaleo' by John Singer Sargent." So I did. Later, I found that Henri didn't like the museum much, but I enjoyed its intimate atmosphere, its serenity and the scent of the flowers in the courtyard. The sight of sunlight striking the 16th century Venetian window frames not only took my breath away — it made me itch for my camera which was unfortunately in my bag in the cloakroom. Photography isn't allowed anywhere in the museum, which is a real shame. The space around "El Jaleo" in the Spanish Cloister had been specifically designed for it. The gold frame is hung leaning slightly forward, so that one has the impression of watching a performance on stage. Apparently, the painting used to be lit from the bottom (again, in accordance with the idea of a stage) but the light fittings were being fixed or re-installed, so we weren't so lucky. What moved me was the amount of subtlety and care which Mrs. Gardner (as all the museum assistants called her) had employed in installing the collection. The paintings did not make as deep an impression on me as the gentle suggestion of beauty by the integration of portals, tiles, and other art objects into the museum's interior architecture. I was awestruck by the treasures of old books and letters; in the Long Gallery's chapel on the third floor, there was a leaf of Gregorian Chant from a 15th Century Italian choir book which completely swept me off my feet. (Okay, so I get excited about such things ...) So next time if you happen to have a few hours in Boston, have a peek in the Gardner Museum — it has been designed based on the concept of intimate experience of art and has a feel that is very different from typical museums. Feed thy senses. Posted by sniffles at 07:04 PM | Comments (0)

Here comes the sun
The sun sweeps through the windows, alongside the wind that is lifting snow from the streets and the rooftops, showering fine white flakes over everyone and everything. A young man closed his eyes and nodded in time to the music pumping into his ears by way of twisted wires. Having accidentally bumped into me when the bus lurched, the guy with ruffled brown hair apologised then said, "The sunshine is back!" Indeed, we were all squinting. He started singing, "Here comes the sun ..." and we both went "doo doo doo doo ..." Happiness swings to The Beatles as we serve antipasto garnished with poetry: Untitled. Posted by sniffles at 05:33 PM | Comments (0)

March 08, 2003
Whirlwind Boston
Pardon the silence; I have been in Boston since Thursday and just got back home this afternoon. Stepping out of Kendall station, barely an hour after arriving in Boston, a man says to me, "What are all you Chinese people doing in this country? Why don't you go home?" Ten years of living in Melbourne, I have only been taunted once for my Asian appearance (by visiting hooligans from Brisbane). Not a bad score for my second time in Boston. Snow was falling fast and taxis were in short supply. I finally managed to grab hold of one at an awkward point on the road. The taxi driver was from India and lamented to me about the poor job market, especially in IT. He had qualifications in mathematics and had moved on to computing and had found it difficult to be employed in the field. I am horribly sleep deprived, so it's off to bed. More tomorrow. Posted by sniffles at 09:52 PM | Comments (0)

March 04, 2003
Whinging kettle
Meet my new kettle. It's supposed to whistle, but it seems to whinge instead. As the steam comes out of its spout, it would make a weak swishing noise, gradually rising a little in pitch, and then it would continue making that feeble squeak until I come and turn the stove off. As I pick it up, it will continue to complain — slosh, squeak, swish — as I pour water into my mug — slosh, squeak — and it won't stop until I put it back on the stove. Meet my new whinging kettle. Posted by sniffles at 11:00 PM | Comments (2)

Speaking in tongues
Recently, Sam has written "Francophones vs. francophones", and Tara has expressed her views on promoting French online. Whilst I don't speak French (much) or write in it (at all), the discussions about pushing the Web presence of languages other than English, or of how québécois differs to French deeply interest me, for numerous reasons. If you have known me for a while, you would know that I am a non-native English speaker. I don't know which is my mother tongue (or my mother dialect, to be precise), because I grew up amongst a chorus of Chinese dialects; I learned English from perhaps the age of five, and Malay (Bahasa Malaysia) at school when I was six or seven years old. I had a preference for English because I valued its efficiency and its rich vocabulary at a young age, and therefore I excelled at it relative to the other languages I was exposed to. In hindsight, the level of language taught at school was very, very poor. And in hindsight, I wished that I pushed the boundaries of getting better acquainted with my ancestral tongue. In any case, I was more interested in music, science and mathematics to have really paid attention to languages. My most interesting experience from a linguistical point of view was when I moved from Malaysia to Australia at the age of thirteen. My written English level was correct to the letter and to the comma, but I could not speak. It was not because I was not able to speak English — the real shock for me was to speak English exclusively. As Tara has said, she would begin a sentence in English and finish it French, or vice-versa. I had four or five Chinese dialects at my disposal, phrases in colloquial English, and of course, Malay. My true native tongue was a palette of colours — I picked and chose whichever word was most appropriate for the sentiment, or for my purpose of expression. It wasn't very long ago that I remarked to Karl, who has been learning Mandarin: "I don't know how to swear in Mandarin. I don't know how to say anything rude in Mandarin. Anything rude or negative that we had to say, we expressed in Hokkien." At that, I said something quite terrible — in Hokkien — just to prove the point. Languages are always in the process of dying or evolving. To me, it is folly to believe that any language can remain pure or absolute. And yet at the same time, the death of a language takes with it a disappearance of a culture, amalgamations which ultimately limit the diversity in the way we communicate and the way we think. Let's take the particular case of Bahasa Malaysia Baku (formal Malay, as opposed to street Malay). I remember Malay as a young language — "proper" pronunciations and grammatical rules were still being defined and clarified when I was at school. Teachers had to pass certain exams in order to teach in Malay - most teachers, like my mother, had to learn the language. It is a language which has phonetically incorporated many English words in the area of science. The historical reasons for education in Malay resulted in a very big change which has caused problems, such as the drop in English proficiency in several generations of Malaysians, combined with the lack of material in Malay at higher education levels — especially in science and technology. It could be seen as a socially expensive experiment to see if a language could survive at keeping abreast with current technological developments. Whilst English is not the world's most spoken language, for now it makes up about a third of the Web. I am guessing this will gradually change to reflect the true distribution of languages in the world. If I could write fluently enough in other languages that I know, saya tetap menulis dalam bahasa-bahasa tersebut. Who knows, 可 能 明 天 会 更 好. Posted by sniffles at 09:50 PM | Comments (0)

March 02, 2003
Quiet time

There are such moments when existence encloses you within its vast walls, encircles you in its arms so you wouldn't feel lost. The sunshine of yesterday lured me into the street, the heat of the night still pumping in my bloodstream; I ran on adrenalin. I bookshop-crawled. I teased the sleepy young man in the art-supply shop who wouldn't give me a discount. I bought a lovely red kettle from a shop which I walked in on a whim.

An old hymn sang in my head and slipped out through my lips — I remember an English teacher telling the class about the sexual connotations in its text. But I have forgotten her name and the exact supposed connotations. Funny the things you remember. Funny the things you forget.

A woman stopped me in the street for a survey and asked me to pick from a list of thirty words one which best describes my situation in relation to the world. Almost all were dreary and depressing. I read the list three, four times. I picked the word "hope". She asked, "What are you best at - starting, keeping going, or stopping." I thought for some moments. "Starting," I said. She asked, "What are you worst at?" "Stopping," said I, getting the feeling this survey was biased towards negativity. It was a beautiful day; she picked the wrong day to sell a self-help service.

That was yesterday. Today, when the world is drippy, puddly and weeping with rain, leaden with clouds and hazy memories of sunshine, one stays home and tends to domestic gardens, such as laundry, stove-scrubbing, and floor-mopping. This little pig didn't have roast beef, and this little pig stayed home. It is fair to have rainy days when there are sunny days. If all days were sunny, it would get terribly dull.

Posted by sniffles at 09:56 PM | Comments (1)

March 01, 2003
In the snow

Papers in the roadside tell of suffering and greed,
feared today forgot tomorrow.
Here beside the news of holy war and holy need,
ours is just a little sorrowed talk
blown away

-- "Ordinary World", Duran Duran.

Posted by sniffles at 10:43 PM | Comments (0)