Archive for May, 2005
Pot calling the kettle black
From a guest house in Southern Thailand.
Also from Thailand, this energy drink that prevents hangover. You must have it before you start on your alcohol.
Technorati Tags: funnysigns,
Sacred Journeys: Pilgrims and Missionaries
The FOM (Friends of the Museum) and the ACM (Asian Civilisation Museum) are organising this talk on Sunday, June 5 2005, starting 2:30 PM. Entry is free. The venue is ACM (From raffles MRT walk past the UOB Plaza to the riverside and cross the Cavenagh bridge. ACM is the first building after the bridge. Click to see area map)
The topics for the day
Relics and Religion in Mainland Southeast Asia
Dr. Maitrii Aung Thwin of NUS will focus on Buddhist pilgrimage sites in Myanmar and the role of relics in popular Buddhist practices in Southeast Asia.
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Travelling for God and Adventure
Dr. Roberta Wollons will examine the personal and professional transformations experienced by American women in non-Christian settings, particularly a group of women missionaries who left for Japan, Turkey and India to found educational institutions for women (colleges, teacher training schools, seminaries and academies) at the turn of the century. Â
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Heaven & Earth: Daoist Mission in China
NUS lecturer Dr. Thomas DuBois will present a lecture based on his fieldwork on the teacher-disciple networks of the ‘Heaven and Earth Teaching,’ a movement which began in 17th century China and spread through a pattern based on the Daoist Eight Trigrams–with one missionary going off in each of the eight directions.
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Technorati Tags: asianhistory, acmsingapore, museum
Singapore Chinese Language Meetup May 2005
Last Thursday, we had the Chinese culture and language meetup. We got to talk about Mandarin learning and Chinese history and culture in general.
In Southern China when someone serves tea to you, you tap the table gently with your fingers to thank the person. Jacky told us about the origin of this custom. One of the Tang emperors was visiting the kingdom incognito along with his ministers. To maintain the illusion that they were commoners, all took turns in serving the tea. When the emperor served tea, the ministers could not bow to show respect. Instead, they used the tapping of the fingers to symbolise bowing down and touching the ground - the middle finger denoting the head and the two neighbouring fingers denoting the shoulders.
Tea - from a teahouse in Chengdu
Jia Bae spoke about the Chinese influence on Korean culture and how the Koreans are more traditional than the Chinese next-doors. She also reminisced about her experiences of learning Chinese characters back in her school days in Korea.
I spoke about travel in Sichuan, one of my favourite places. (my fascination with Sichuan has led some friends to speculate that I was a panda in my last life - quite close actually - I am equally lazy and I do like bamboo dishes though I am nowhere as cute as the panda). The budget airline ValueAir has now started flights to Chengdu- the capital of Sichuan province and also one of the more laid back and interesting cities in China. Some of the other places to visit near Chengdu- Jiu Zai Guo (the heavenly scenery) , Leshan (for the giant Buddha), Zigong( for the lantern festival) and western regions of Kangding.
The Giant Buddha in Leshan
The next meetup is on Thursday, June 16, 2005. We will be talking about some classic erotic literature from China, travel in Hunan province. We would like to do something on Taiwan too - ideas welcome.
I was in Ubon Ratchdhani in Eastern Thailand over the weekend and I spotted this advertisement for a popular English language and IT training centre. They have now added Mandarin to their offering. In Thai bookshops too you find more and more “learning Mandarin” books and multimedia.
I also attended the Bookcrossing Meetup organised by Ivan Chew at the NLB on May 24. It was nice talking to the people in this group.
Technorati Tags: mandarin
Musical Baton
Got the Musical Baton from Mr. Brown and here is my list
Total volume of music files on my computer:
1115 Songs, 3 days, 18 hours, 4.93 GB
The last CD I bought was:
Iron Cross Live (Burmese) on 15/05/2005
Song playing right now:
Some Girls from the album “Some Girls” by The Rolling Stones
Five songs I listen to a lot , or that mean a lot to me:
1. New Year’s Day from the album “Best Of 1980-1990″ by U2
2. Live & Let Die from the album “The Best Of James Bond 007″ by Paul McCartney & Wings
3. Kashmir from the album “Latter Days (The Best Of Led Zeppelin Volume 2)” by Led Zeppelin
4. Debris from the album “A Nod Is As Good As A Wink . . To A Blind Horse” by The Faces
5. The Sunshine Of Your Love from the album “Live - Jimi Hendrix” by Jimi Hendrix
And the Baton fwd to (most people I know already got batoned)
Indian Government to love bloggers
Via Chien(ne)s sans frontieres comes this link to a Times of India story on Indian government thinking about granting accreditation to Internet journalists and Bloggers.
India is in the process of framing rules for granting accreditation to Internet journalists and bloggers for the first time, taking a reality check on an evolving world of net writers who could shape opinion and who have already been granted access to official corridors in countries such as the US.
“We are framing the rules for giving accreditation to dotcom journalists, including bloggers,” Principle Information Officer Shakuntala Mahawal said.
Technorati Tags: blogs