Name Dropping (2)

On a lighter note, 2 omissions from my earlier post:

Famous person I have sat next to on a plane – Vivienne Westwood (Milan, 2003)

Famous people I have sat at the next table to – Salman Rushdie (NY, 2001), Alexander McQueen (Paris, 2001)

Pork Too

On the web, nobody knows you are a pig. Porcorosso is much amused by the fact (as recounted by the Sensei) that some friends of dubdew know of Porcorosso only as such. Which raises the question of identity – not just on the web but in the real world out there. Are we defined by what we do or who we are – and what does the latter mean anyway?

Last week I had lunch with a colleague who was disappointed by the realisation that to his lawyers he was just a source of income or in his words, a "billing figure". Lawyers, like sharks, are not fussy about what they feed on.

Anyway, back to identity. In The Great Gatsby, the protagonist invents a past – but in doing so, does he invent more than just a past? Does he invent himself in the process? Are we anything more than the sum of our pretensions? In Hume's acclaimed demolition of Descartes, the knockout punch was the premise or presupposition of self. Let me suggest an alternative – I blog therefore I am.

Blogito ergo sum. 

You have to check this out

This is your plastic surgeon?

Thought of the day – in Hokkien

Porcorosso is intrigued – apparently there is an old Hokkien saying:

If there is a red pig on top of a hill, then the ground will be strewn with half eaten sweet potatoes.

Anyone knows the origin or even the way this is written or said in Hokkien? Or what it means?

All the world a stage

Who would you get to play you in the film version of your life? Not that that particular film is likely to be shown at a cinema near you any time soon or even made for that matter?

Tony Leung (the shorter one) maybe, Tom Cruise is the same height but different sensibilities – maybe Denzel if one can overlook the obvious. No point in getting Meryl Streep because every character just ends up being Meryl Streep, even a man.

Ideas on a postcard, please. Better still, get your people to talk to my people. 

Holy Grail

Let me say again what my perfect wine would be – tastes like a thousand dollars, costs about five dollars and nobody's ever heard of it.

You will have read about my disappointment with the 1996 Duhart Milon – it did not cost an egregious amount of money but it was hyped and something was expected of it. On the other hand, I have a dozen or so bottles of $30 wines in my (ordinary) fridge. I think I will open them all tomorrow at lunch. If I find one good one, I will be very happy.

Maybe the Da Vinci Code was right - the holy grail is not what it is, it's what's inside it. 

Topless Models in Raffles Place

Strange thing this – there were well built young men with no shirts on squirting hand cream on to the hands of passers-by in the heart of the financial district this afternoon. Two middle-aged ladies were heard to comment "They're a little young to be doing this, aren't they?" 

Dialectics and diatribes 2

Mr Porcorosso is not a political animal (more of a pig's liver than anything else, as the name suggests and as you will see later). However, he noticed that, in the recent general elections in Singapore, it was the things that needed to be said which raised the question whether and why they needed to be said at all.

No, not the strong mandate thing (that had been prepared a long time before April 2006) - the smaller thing, the one about politicians not needing to communicate in dialect to an increasingly sophisticated electorate and thereby breathing a sigh of relief, possibly. I don't think this is true.

Mr Brown is a clever man and says many interesting things (please Mr Brown put this quote in your blog and say Porcorosso said so). One of the funniest things he did this year was the podcast of the pig's liver gag – my favourite spinoff was the poll to find out how pig's liver in Hokkien should be translated into English (I think it's tee-uh kwa by the way but said very quickly). If you don't understand Hokkien, you may have still gotten the joke but probably only 90% of the joke, as opposed to 67% of the vote.

Recently, the Speak Chinese campaign thing did a premiere of the film Jasmine Women to launch this year's campaign bits. The irony was that about 10% of the film was in Shanghainese – the dialect of evil women. Great touch. Chinese cool but Shanghainese rocks.

Speaking of Rockson – he had more than 500 comments in his last blog. Rockson is also a very clever man (but please don't put this in your blog). Dubbie sent me a song last weekend – in Hokkien and not to be played anywhere. It was written by a Malaysian called Ah Niu (a very clever and funny man) – I don't think he would have had as much success if he were Singaporean - probably his songs would not be as good (or as funny). 

The great and very evil Peter Mandelson (very, very clever man but not funny) once said it is not the policy which matters but the communication of that policy. I agree – and communication goes both ways. Hougang was not lost on a Teochew card, nor was it lost on an $80 million upgrading promise. More fundamentally, it was won and lost on who the electorate wanted to represent them. Isn't that what it's all about?

If and when Porcorosso has children, he will teach them Cantonese. This is not so they can watch the movies of Stephen Chow (now he's a very clever and funny man) they way he made them to be understood. Rather, as a matter of principle, Cantonese is the language of their forefathers. Chinese, like English, is a language of necessity.

Back to politics, anyone remember Dr Lee Siew Choh? Anyone old enough? In his last spell in Parliament as an NMP, his sole campaign was to bring back Cantonese progamming onto our television screens. Now that's a single-minded person.

So you heard it here first – Mandarin cool, Hokkien beng, Teochew rules, Shanghainese rocks but Canto pops!

Closer than you might think …

Definition: porcorosso - a person who makes a living suing celebrities.

From this weird site.

Thanks to a friend of a friend.

Geek speak

There is a book about the early days of the Internet called Where Wizards Stay Up Late at Night – this title is no coincidence. Those of us who waited up until the witching hour to play AberMUDD (as in multiple user dungeons and dragons) will remember – not all of us made it to wizard (I for one lacked the dedication) but most of us who were there will rue the opportunity that passed us by. The dot com revolution was right in our face and we let it pass by. We had our own bulletin board in 1987 – way, way, way before hotmail or yahoo was even a twinkle in anybody's eye. We missed it – then 10 years later, some guys from California wanted to talk to me about interactive mahjong. They suggested breakfast and I said that was too early in the day for me. Let it pass by. Once more.

This must never happen again.