John & Belle Have A Blog

'Tis the season!

For updating the blog!

Surely it should be an annual affair, at the least. In this case, the occasion is remaking last year's Christmas book. The layout wasn't right before. Now I have made it perfect!

That is to say, 'tis the season for making books. So if you'd like to buy Squid and Owl and/or Mama In Her Kerchief and I In My Madness - A Truly Awful Christmas Volume as nice PDF's, specially optimized for iPad reading - why, you simply go here! Honestly, they look great! (And the price is very reasonable, I say.) In the past I've tried to sell them as POD products, which was ok. This is more sensible. The higher resolution on an iPad makes a difference. I read a lot of comics on my iPad these days.

So I've been thinking about this eBook business. The devices are lovely. The fact that my iPad has a somewhat higher resolution than my mac screen makes a significant difference for reading. But, basically, Epub (or EPUB or epub or EpUb or however you capitalize it) and Kindle are bad formats.

Mama In Her Kerchief and I in My Madness - a Visitation of Sog-Nug-Hotep: A Truly Awful Christmas Volume

Hey, I made another book [with Blurb]!

You can read the whole thing online at Issuu. (Yeah, I should probably update the blog more often ... true, true.)

Nah, all that information is out of date. But you can buy a newer, better laid-out, niftily optimized for iPad e-version of the book here.

Candyland

This is funny because it's true. I love kheer (rice pudding) and generally have a high tolerance for Indian desserts, but there's some large swathes of candy-like stuff I just don't get. Little orange piles of noodley things? Squares of um...something? With silver leaf on them (admittedly cool.)

Obama Returns From India With These Gross Candies For Everyone

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama returned from a recent diplomatic visit to India with several boxes of these disgusting candies that taste, smell, and look really weird, grossed-out White House sources reported Monday. "I feel bad for not wanting to eat them, but they're just awful," said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, adding that Obama set the candies out in a common area and frequently checked to determine if anyone was eating the disgusting things. "They make me want to puke. One is like this log of sour paste surrounded by some kind of seeds, and another is really hard but tastes like soap. I think these jellied things might be aloe-flavored." Gibbs also confirmed that Obama's attempt to prepare aloo gobhi, an Indian dish consisting of cauliflower and potatoes sautéed in garam masala, stunk up the entire White House.

On a related holiday note, good garam masala (from the Indian store) is an incredible way to pep up traditional sweets such as pumpkin pie, gingersnaps, gingerbread, and the like. Not one that's heavy on the cumin, obviously, but many adapt to a sweet flavor profile beautifully and will have people asking why the gingerbread is so good. Usually the answer to all such dessert-related questions is "there's an incredibl amount of unsalted butter in there," so it's nice to be able to say "it's garam masala" for a change.

Coinky-dinks

I know Singapore is a small town. But for real, this is crazy. My business partner Cheu doesn't want me telling people this for some reason but this crowd...or...small group of people or whatever doesn't overlap with the people whom she doesn't want to know, so... We were on a mission for find stuff for the store because we were selling so well (and seriously, we sell the tar out of some vintage furniture), so we went to "Stephen's" (not his real name) store/warehouse. We walked into the very back yard and there it was: the car-ride from the aunty Lim's shop down at the bottom of Gillman Heights Block B. You put 50c in and it would surge around vaguely, while the voices of little Chinese girls singing "Oh Susannah" chimed out, which involved a singular confusion about how the name of the state "Louisiana" is pronounced. I don't even think they got into the buckwheat cakes. There was also a duck, which we bought for the store,

But this is all ours.

Halloween

The costume we ordered to make Violet a "candy-corn witch" won't get here quite in time for her to wear it to school Friday, so now we have paid for it and I have to sew one anyway. This seems sub-optimal. We are having a fun Halloween party, much of it taking place in our yard, as long as those poisonous caterpillers are really all dead. They seemed dead. John and I went on a revolting binge of killing them a few weeks back in an attempt to save a tree which was otherwise going to be an etch-a-sketch drawing in ten minutes. They were brilliant scarlet and black, and full of thick, green ichor. Later we learned they're poisonous. Reflecting on it, that's pretty much how nature tells you things are poisonous; look: I'm striped crimson and black with extra yellow bits! It's probably better we didn't know at the time, or we might not have been as ruthless. I should totally make this cake, though, right?

My mom is rolling her eyes, but this is way easier than some cakes I considered. You just twist the marshmallows into twisty triangles! That's all there is to it!

Walkin' After Midnight

Is everyone who talks about "fiat money" crazy, tout court? Or is there some sensible person out there who talks about it? Not that the concept is incomprehensible, but do non-crazy people call it something else?

Additionally, I can't decide whether I feel happy about the Sing dollar's rise (it was pegged tightly to a basket of currencies including the US dollar but is now floating more freely.) On the one hand, John got a raise! On the other hand, the money we have invested in America is worth less! But then, we'll probably want to use that money to buy things in the US for the most part, so it doesn't matter. But money is fungible so that's a stupid way of looking at it?

That's Going to Leave a Mark

A Singaporean has recently lost 100 million (SGD) at the new casinos.

A Singaporean businessman has set the gaming world abuzz with news that he recently lost a staggering S$100 million at the two casinos Resorts World Sentosa (RWS) and Marina Bay Sands (MBS).

According to Today newspaper, the tycoon is on the Forbes list of the 40 richest people in Singapore. He is not the only one who’s been losing big — another tycoon from the timber-rich East Malaysian state of Sabah also reportedly lost about S$50 million around the same time.

Together, the duo’s combined losses of S$150 million have set tongues wagging, even among the local high-rollers’ circle.

And lest you think that they are hurting badly from the losses, a high roller who is a regular at both local casinos told the same newspaper, “These guys can well afford the losses.”

Unlike Henry Quek the local businessman who lost S$26 million at RWS back in June and tried to sue the casino for giving him too much credit, both men have accepted their losses without much fuss.

Quek, who is the managing director of seafood distrbutor, Far Ocean Sea Products, has also reportedly settled his outstanding debts with RWS.

Gaming analysts told The Straits Times that high rollers generally bet at least tens of thousands of dollars a hand.

Also known as “whales”, they usually play baccarat or blackjack at the casinos’ exclusive private rooms. Industry insiders and other players say it is not uncommon to see bets of more than S$300,000 a hand.

Um, if you were being referred to as a "whale", wouldn't you sort of feel you were being ripped off? Or flensed or rendered or something? I haven't been yet to either casino, though I am curious to go to the top of the Marina Bay Sands, where they have connected 3 tall buildings with what looks like a cruise ship in the sky. There is an infinity pool up there that looks pretty amazing (let the flash part reload a few times to see it. God I hate flash and every site ever that uses it. Somehow the most elite, cool brands always use this horrible flash-heavy site you can't link to or navigate properly and often has music. DO NOT WANT.) You have to buy like $100 in chips right away (a pointless measure to exclude poor people who can't afford to gamble.) They give it back? Or let you use it to pay for food?

Too Much Time?

You know what's weird? There's this one dude who makes it in early to every comment thread on the entire NYT site to post a topical limerick. I mean...what? Now of course searching around I don't see one immediately. OK, here we go. Not like I'm one to complain about "dorking around on the interwebs." Actually, I do lots of "realshop" now, as we call it in our family. Realshop is the opposite of Photoshop; you manipulate actual objects to achieve some desired effect. You can see many of them here.

EDIT: the canonical phrase is, of course, "dorking around on the loserwebs." Sorry, everyone.

I Knew This Day Would Come

Last night at the fine Italian restaurant La Nonna (warning, flash page wth stupid camera-shutter noise) two humorous things ocurred. One, Zoe can actually read now and said "Oh my God restaurants are so expensive!!!" with genuine horror. Which, yeah, pretty much. Which is why we don't eat there all the time, but my kids have no doubt eaten in expensive restaurants approximately 500 times as often as I had at their age, and are generally rather blase about things like that. This restaurant used to have wild boar ragu with penne, which the girls loved and would split. They removed it, and there was nothing perfect for a while, but they have now insituted a one free pizza per child policy (of a reasonable, thin, 8-inch in diameter pizza) and have oxtail ragu with pappardelle, making for the perfect combination, since Violet and I can split pasta and John can eat Violet's pizza. House-made pappardelle, they are super-tender and good. Secondly, somehow it came up that I didn't know what Kirby Krackle was. Zoe turned to me with perfect seriousness and said, "have you read Kirby's 'The Demon'"? I was dying but, what could I say but yes? And it turned out Kirby Krackle is perfectly obvious and I would have figured it out myself eventually, but to have a 9-year-old be like, Mom, you know, in the spash page of the Demon Etrigan?, where...etc. A child of mine! I told John he is raising cute girls that will break the hearts of nerds of whatever gender, but he seems OK with that. I guess the only way it could have been worse would have been if it were Devil Dinosaur.

Cut-Up

Sometimes I feel like spam is starting to demonstrate the possibilities of Brion Gysin's cut-up method, championed and practiced by William S. Burroughs:

it?, and Dead it was? Beauty filled with Spice Christ. It is in the familiar with steel pipes to read it?, and Dead it was? Beauty filled with Spice Christ. It is in the familiar with steel pipes to read it?, and Dead it was? Beauty filled with Spice Christ. It is in the familiar with steel pipes to read

Some kind of Dune fanfic or something, right? How mentats feel about the kwisatz haderach?

Greedy

This is a funny story of blogger hubris run wild:

A young food blogger who demanded that he and his three companions be given free meals at an upscale restaurant in the Joo Chiat area has sparked a huge furore online. The group of four had walked into Private Affairs, a small but exclusive eatery in Joo Chiat, for its Sunday champagne brunch promotion that costs S$68++ per person. The blogger in question, Brad Lau, who runs a food blog called ladyironchef had informed the management on Friday that he would be coming down to review the Sunday Brunch promotion. On the day itself, he and his partner came down at about 130pm, followed by his two other companions, each of whom came down half an hour apart. According to Private Affairs’ operations director Ross Valentine,  the four of them had brunch until 430pm, even when the restaurant’s official brunch hours was from 1130 am to 330pm. Brad and his partner also enjoyed two glasses of champagne each. 

When presented with the final bill of $435, the blogger initially refused to pay and repeatedly told the restaurant’s chef, “I never pay for food in any restaurant.” The restaurant eventually offered to waive off the cost of the meal for him and his partner as well as the cost of the champagne out of goodwill, thus lowering the bill to $159. Still upset but finally relenting to pay, the blogger then threw his credit card onto the bar counter in front of the cashier before storming out. 

His site is down and the newspeople can't get him. To the brave belong the fair, and all...but I can't imagine trying this stunt.

Looking Bad

This post from Lawyers, Guns and Money reminds me of something Zoe said the other day (and btw, Scott, would you please stop posting Mad Men spoilers on the front page? I'm only on season one.) The girls and I were watching some animated movie about an awesome stallion in the American west, teaming up with a Native American kid to resist the depradations of the U.S. Army. "This really happened, right?," Zoe asked, as the soldiers messed up a village. I told her, pretty much, yes. She is conscious that she's a white American rather than anything else, and so she spent the rest of the movie saying, "cut it out, Army dudes. You're making us look bad!"

Dreams

When my little sister wished me good night as a child, she would say cheerfully: "don't dream!" This is because both she and I had horrible vivid nightmares all the time. (I'm quite certain I've written about this before, but let's pretend I didn't) I actually did Freudian analysis three times a week for a year or so to get rid of this (really, lying on the couch like in a New Yorker cartoon and everything). It worked! So, if you're troubled by horrible nightmares and have lots of money, I have a solution for you. I thought it was common gospel, though, that other people's dreams are boring, which I why I was surprised to read this NYT article on people forming dream clubs. Basically like a book club only with the members describing their dreams rather than reading a book. As it happens, my own dreams are really interesting. (I know you're thinking everyone thinks this about their own dreams). They sometimes take the form of awesome space operas, like one in which I entered a colony ship in which all the inhabitants were frozen, awaiting revival at their destination. To populate the new world they had created various environments in the unimaginably vast ship. One of them was the pre-Cambrian era, in which I stood on the bare rock and peered queasily into the teeming ocean. Anyway, I came to realize that the ship had made an error, and they had overshot their destination and had now been asleep for thousands of years. I revived them all, and was trying to explain the truth of the matter to them, though they were all very skeptical. Finally I led them to a huge window to look at the completely unknown starfield, which included a bloated red giant, and they contemplated it in silence and horror as they recognized it didn't resemble the view from their destination solar system at all. See, interesting, right? To be fair I haven't had a dream quite that great in some time, but it happens. Anyway, I thought the stereotype was someone else is narrating their dream to you and it's all "and my brother was there, but it wasn't my real brother, and then we went up to this crumbling tower, and blah blah blah." Do you generally feel this way about people's dreams? My helper Tena always wanted to scour mine for numbers to bet on the 4D lottery. Don't think she ever did any better than SGD250 on that, but there you go.

All Alone

John and the girls set off for Oregon today (via Narita, LAX, and SFO.) It seems...super-quiet around here. It has been endlessly raining in Singapore lately, even triggering some serious floods. One in particular flooded a lot of low-level stores along Orchard Road (the main shopping street). The Hermès store was fully inundated, up to the ceiling, destroying who knows how many hundreds of thousands worth of leather bags etc. I assume they have a policy of destroying damaged goods rather than letting employees make off with a soggy Kelly bag. One imagines a hecatomb at Hermès headquarters, with high-level employees scattering barley on the unfortunate luggage before consigning it to the pyre. I went by it tonight and it is still closed tight, with signature orange stretched across every window and door.

Earlier, however, it was sunny, and I worked on my tan. It's a tough job, but...um, no one needs to do it, actually, but it's awesome. When I come downstairs and find that the coffee fairy has been there (otherwise known as our new helper Malou; our long-time helper Tena has retired after 9 years working for us to her house in the Philippines) I have to reflect on my privilege. You all please remind me never to complain about anything, ever. (OK, being sick and my children being sick, that's still on the table). But on the whole I have a wonderful, amazing life and am feeling pretty grateful now.

It's John's first time taking the girls across the Pacific by himself, but I'm sure they'll be fine. The girls are seasoned travelers after all. I'll be meeting them in NY and flying back via Frankfurt after visiting my dad in Bluffton S.C. John and I, handing the kids off as we are, each have a round-trip, but the girls will be flying all around the world. Singapore/Narita/LAX/SFO/Eugene/JFK/Frankfurt/Singapore, plus a train ride from NYC to Savannah, GA and back (we're doing the sleeper car thing, which is great fun). It's strange because you have a general sense that your children will be like you in some important sense, but really their childhood is so different from mine that it's incomprehensible.

Aviatrix!

I've been searching for the name of this amazing series of books for ages, ever since I read them in Georgetown, S.C., and at last, through the magic of the intertubes, I have found them. The Linda Carlton series, published in the early 30's, is about a girl pilot who eventually acquires her own gyrocopter, thereby becoming the most bad-ass person ever in my 11-year-old eyes. John just scored me the first three on Abe books, but the last two of the series are apparently incredibly rare, which is making me gnash my teeth over the fact that I had the fourth one at one time. Then again, that was basically when my family was at its brokest, so maybe I just checked it out of the library. My mom was working on an assembly line for a while, during which time my step-dad contributed to life by taking me and Ben to the beach on Pawley's Island, drinking beer, and having us all sing the Rolling Stones song "Factory Girl" when we picked her up after work in our 1967 convertible Camaro, white with red leather interior. That car was the bomb. (But the song really pissed her off). Later she got some office-type job, and used to steal food, like packets of Lance crackers, from the break room for us to eat at home. Other than that we mainly just ate beans and rice, box macaroni and cheese, and chicken, first roast, then as salad, then as soup. Being poor sucks. The kids at school made fun of my shoes because they were from Payless rather than being branded tennis shoes. My mom believes that my firm determination to acquire and wear the best clothes and shoes ever (a determination to which my bursting closet bears witness) was born in this merciless crucible.