ALL THINGS BIG AND SMALL 2.0

Besides Char Kway Teow, another Singapore street food dish that I miss is Teochew Fishball Noodles. The dish has two variations: soup or dry. The photo here shows the dry version. These noodles are of the flat variety, rather like the Italian fettucini. They are cooked by dipping them into a rich stock of pork bones, and quickly taking them out of the boiling stock in less than a minute. They are then made al dente by giving them a quick rinse in cold water. The side ingredients that go with the noodles: fish balls, minced pork, mushrooms, beansprouts and fishcake are also cooked in this way. But it's the sauce that makes the dish. It's a paste made of chili, onions, dried shrimp, soya sauce and vinegar. Each noodle seller will have his own recipe for the sauce. The sauce is at the bottom of a bowl and the cooked noodles plus ingredients are deftly stirred in to blend with the sauce. A separate bowl of soup made with pork bones is given to accompany the noodles. A garnish like...

Char Kway Teow is a dish loved by all Singaporeans, and what they miss most when on prolonged stays in a foreign country. It is hard to express why we love this mess of flat noodles fried in pork lard. A simple dish actually, if you look at the recipe. First heat up a wok with some pork lard. Brown some minced garlic in it, then toss in the noodles. Stir in and mix a table spoonful of soya sauce that's black and thick and slightly sweet. Add chili paste to taste for that touch of spiciness Now comes the hard part: Use your gourmet instincts to stir-fry this mixture until you can smell the fragrance. Add in bits of shrimp, Chinese sausage, and slices of fish cake. Then throw in a handfil of bean sprouts and chives as garnish. But we are not finished yet. Next break and stir in an egg over this, and finally sprinkle a handful of cockles as a final flourish. With the cockles half-cooked, make a final stir and then take what is now called Char Kway Teow out of the wok. I think the appe...

There was a time when you could easily tell people what you did for a living and they could easily understand. If you were an auto mechanic or a restaurant manager, people knew what you did. So too, if you were a doctor, racing car driver, economist or professional poker player. And then came the Information Technology revolution and the Knowledge Economy, when more and more of what we do was assigned to the Machines who could do what we did faster, cheaper and never fell sick or took vacations. Thus many jobs became redundant, among them parking meter maids, bank tellers, clerks, and all jobs which could be automated or relegated to a computer. Bosses didn't need a secretary anymore [except for reasons of prestige] because they had computers and email and scheduling software. Companies didn't need mid-level paper shufflers called managers because Management could easily obtain information on the state of their business on their computers. In the factories Robots and automation...

"The Electric Guitar Sourcebook, by Dave Hunter [Backbeat books 2006] is a new book on what makes a guitar sound the way it sounds. Dave tells you that every part that goes into the making of a guitar contributes in some way to the total tone of the guitar. From all important factors like wood and design, to seemingly inconsequential factors like it's bridge, nut, scale length, and frets. The problem is that all these components inter-act in a non-linear way to give the total effect such that the whole tone is more than the sum of it's parts. This would seem to explain what many guitarists already know-that no two guitars will sound exactly the same. Or more importantly for them, why they must have a particular guitar. In an interview with Fender Custom Shop Master Builder, Chris Fleming, Hunter's question was " How much difference is made by the mere fact of a guitar having been played or not played over the years ?" Chris Fleming: That makes a difference, p...

Fender Musical Instruments Company was the first to realize that, silly as it seems, people were willing to pay top money for bashed up guitars, that is, new guitars that have been artificially aged. And so, the Time Machines series was born. Fender's Custom Shop Time Machine series comprises a number of models built to exacting specifications of their respective vintages, including: body contours and radii, neck shape, fingerboard radius, pickups, electronics and hardware. Original materials, tooling and production techniques are employed wherever possible.Each model is available in three distinct finish packages: NOS (New Old Stock): as if the guitar were bought new in its respective year and brought forward in time to the present day. Closet Classic: as if the guitar was bought new in its respective year, played perhaps a dozen times a year and then carefully put away. Has a few small "dings", lightly checked finish, oxidized hardware, and aged plastic parts. Relic: sh...

My obsession to compare myself to a computer continues. That is I can’t help thinking that we are so much like computers, our brain is the CPU and also the hard-disk [a very very big hard disk] and Life itself is a computer program-written to Run until it completes its task and then self-Delete. And of course the programmer is what you call God. Maybe the whole Universe is one big computer program that has been started. And maybe everything programmed is so advanced that it maintains itself, reproduces itself, heals itself, updates itself etc just like the latest Windows would aspire to.. But back to the subject of what happens to the data we acquire everyday through our sensors [eyes, ears, nose etc]. One important fact very often forgotten is that before data can be turned into information, it needs to be in a form that can be digested by the computer. This is because, when we feed in data for one model, there will most probably be very diverse types. One variable may be in single di...

Following my previous article on Life as a Complex Adaptive System [CAP], it is only natural that I should explore the nature of knowledge in a data-driven context When a CAP acquires data through its sensors [in human beings: our ears, eyes, nose, tongue etc]. it needs to process this mass of data to turn it into information. Information differs from pure data. By being organized in a contextual format, information yields insights. Some of the things the human brain tends to do to data are: Categorization. Human beings are fond of sorting things into pigeon holes. Thus, this is a Monarch butterfly and that is a Swallowtail butterfly. This is an insect and not a reptile because etc etc. Categorization implies groups of objects with common properties. When we categorize, we have fewer objects to deal with and Life becomes more simple. Sometimes categorization can be quite arbitrary. When is a human considered tall or fat, ugly or beautiful? The definitions differ from person to person, ...