- The Power of Habit | Slate Magazine
This article single-handedly inspired me to buy the book, which single-handedly inspired me to change my life. I exaggerate, of course, but believe me when I say that the article – and the book – are good reads that must be taken with a pinch of salt. - Why women lose the dating game | The Age
“‘We arrived at the top of the staircase,’ Bolick wrote, ‘finally ready to start our lives, only to discover a cavernous room at the tail end of a party, most of the men gone already, some having never shown up – and those who remain are leering by the cheese table, or are, you know, the ones you don’t want to go out with.'” - 21st-century girl | Nature: International Weekly Journal of Science
“‘Do you dream of mammoths?’ a talk-show host once asked me. I knew not to give him my first choice of answer; that would have enlightened his audience over the course of three and a half hours — so long as they had the basic grounding in biosciences required to understand it. I also knew enough to avoid my second answer, which was that his question was unintelligent, and that the entire interview had taken time I could have spent better in the laboratory.” - The Eye Test | PUEBLO Crew In Captivity in North Korea
I seriously cannot remember how I came across this site but this anecdote, along with many others like it, is painfully hilarious. - Adam’s “rib” a Biblical euphemism | Improbable Research
“In a letter to the editor in the American Journal of Medical Genetics, two authors suggest that the story of Adam’s rib being the humble beginnings of Eve is the result of a mistranslation. In reality, they suggest, the story is an explanatory myth for why humans are one of the few mammals lacking a baculum, or penile bone.”
So I’ve been using Gmail Meter on my work account for a couple of months now because I’ve always been interested to know how and whether email at work is used efficiently.
I don’t have any conclusive data (because I’ve not been actively tracking things!), but I thought I’d share some interesting statistics which recur every month, without fail (the graphs and pie chart I’m using are from July 2012, BTW):
- From the visual above, most email is sent in the morning and just before lunch.
- People enter the office after lunch and try to send a bit of email but they’ve more or less cleared their quota for the day.
- Work is still done in the evening, after dinner. Work-life balance, anyone?
- LOOK AT THOSE PEAKS! The most emails are sent at the start of the week, on Mondays.
- Thankfully not a lot of traffic on weekends, though you can see some traffic from me last weekend – I was clearing stuff in preparation for the surgery I underwent on Monday.
Last but not least, most email messages I get are not exactly… relevant to me. Either that or I don’t like storing a lot of mail in my inbox.
My review of Alfian Sa’at’s Malay Sketches is now up on the Quarterly Literary Review Singapore (QLRS).
On the Subject of Race
Alfian Sa’at sketches what it is like to be Malay in Singapore
Henry Do you know what you can say? To a black man. On the subject of race.
Charles “Nothing.”
Henry That is correct.– David Mamet, Race, Samuel French: New York, 2010.
Two years ago, a couple of friends and I watched the premiere of Charged by Chong Tze Chien, a play with a National Service setting that explores tensions between the Malay and Chinese communities in Singapore.
Those I watched the play with were ethnic Chinese Singaporean, English-educated professionals with an upper-middle/lower-upper class background. I am an ethnically mixed (Chinese-Indian), English-educated professional with a middle-class background.
When the play ended, I exited the theatre with this unspoken sentiment: This was a great play that more ethnic Chinese Singaporean people need to watch so that they know how minorities in Singapore feel. And true enough, my friends had this to say collectively when we discussed the production over drinks: This was a great play – and we didn’t know Singaporean Malays felt that way.