Farewell

Dear friends, family, readers and fellow bloggers:

Tales From Chambana has reached the end of its run as of 31st May 2006.

506 posts and almost a year to the day it started, its time to bid adieu and look toward fresh beginnings.

I would like to thank all of you for your patronage, support and comments over the last twelve months. It astonishes me no end the level of response to my feeble attempts at self expression.

A new blog will be set up in due course which will afford greater privacy and freedom of expression than this platform.

If you would like to continue following the tales spewing forth from a slightly rotund, boring grad student's life, please send an email to and I'll update you with a forwarding address and password once the site is ready.

Thank you. Its been a splendid journey.

Till we meet again.

May the coming better the going.

Vandice

Scientifically proven ways to 追马子

Love special: Six ways to woo your lover

LET YOUR BODY DO THE TALKING
We all hunt for the perfect chat-up line, but in reality, our body gives away a great deal before we open our mouth. It is estimated that when you meet a stranger, their impression of you is based 55 per cent on your appearance and body language, 38 per cent on your style of speaking and a mere 7 per cent on what you actually say.

So what can we learn from the experts? There are a number of actions that signal "I like you" to another person. Adopting an open posture (no folded arms), and mirroring another's posture help create a feeling of affinity. Most people are not conscious of being mirrored, but evaluate those who do it more favourably. And it is worth adopting stances that enhance your masculinity or femininity, such as placing hands in pockets with elbows out to enlarge the chest.

You could also indulge in a "gestural dance", synchronising your gestures and body movements with those of the object of your desire, such as taking a sip of your drinks at the same time.

EXPERIENCE FEAR TOGETHER
A dramatic setting can kick-start your love life. Meeting a stranger when physiologically aroused increases the chance of having romantic feelings towards them ...

It's all because of a strong connection between anxiety, arousal and attraction. In the "shaky bridge study" carried out by psychologists Arthur Aron and Don Dutton in the 1970s, men who met a woman on a high, rickety bridge found the encounter sexier and more romantic than those who met her on a low, stable one. A visit to the funfair works wonders too. Photos of members of the opposite sex were more attractive to people who had just got off a roller coaster, compared with those who were waiting to get on. And couples were more loved-up after watching a suspense-filled thriller than a calmer film. Why? No one is sure, but the adrenaline rush from the danger might be misattributed to the thrill of attraction. But beware: while someone attractive becomes more so in a tense setting, the unattractive appear even less appealing.

SHARE A JOKE
An experience that makes you laugh creates feelings of closeness between strangers. A classic example comes from experiments carried out by US psychologists Arthur Aron and Barbara Fraley, in which strangers cooperated on playful activities such as learning dance steps, but with one partner wearing a blindfold and the other holding a drinking straw in their mouth to distort speech. Sounds stupid, but love and laughter really did go together. You can read about it in "The effect of a shared humorous experience on closeness in initial encounters" in the journal Personal Relationships (vol 11, p 61). We suggest that the blindfold/drinking straw approach is best confined to the laboratory.

GET THE SOUNDTRACK RIGHT
Psychologists at North Adams State College in Massachusetts have proved what Shakespeare suggested - that music is the food of love. Well, rock music, at least. Women evaluating photos of men rated them more attractive while listening to soft-rock music, compared with avant-garde jazz or no music at all.

USE LOVE POTIONS?
Can you short-cut all the hard work of relationship-building by artificial means? People have been trying to crack this one for thousands of years. A nasal spray containing the hormone oxytocin can make people trust you - an important part of any relationship - though there's no evidence yet to suggest it can make someone fall in love. And while we wouldn't suggest you try this at home, studies on prairie voles show that injecting the hormone vasopressin into the brain makes males bond strongly to females. Illegal drugs such as cocaine or amphetamines can simulate the euphoria of falling in love by raising levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine, but dopamine levels can also be increased legally by exercising. Another neurotransmitter, phenylethylamine (PEA), is tagged the "love molecule" because it induces feelings of excitement and apprehension. PEA is found in chocolate and it, too, is linked to the feel-good effects of exercise. Overall, a swift jog could be more conducive to love than anything you might find in a bottle.

GAZE INTO THEIR EYES
Any flirt knows that making eye contact is an emotionally loaded act. Now psychologists have shown just how powerful it can be. When pairs of strangers were asked to gaze into each other's eyes, it was perhaps not surprising that their feelings of closeness and attraction rocketed compared with, say, gazing at each other's hands. More surprising was that a couple in one such experiment ended up getting married. Neuroscientists have shed some light on what's going on: meeting another person's gaze lights up brain regions associated with rewards. The bottom line is that eye contact can work wonders, but make sure you get your technique right: if your gaze isn't reciprocated, you risk coming across as a stalker.

—From issue 2549 of New Scientist magazine, 27 April 2006, page 46

I wouldn't have believed reputable scientific journals contain gems like this before this article.

Enjoy.

Today's ponder: Steve has three piles of sand and Mike has four piles of sand. If they put them all together, how many do they have?

Mis?interpretation

Biblical Interpretations
Dan DeVries

Shortly after our daughter Nicole was born, father-daughter fishing trips became a regular occurrence. We would most often fish from my little aluminum boat at a small, shallow lake near our house. By age three, Nicole had an uncanny ability to sit in our boat for long periods, certain that a fish would bite at any moment.

Our family has also always been actively involved with our local church. One Sunday when we went to pick up our daughter from her Sunday school class, the teacher asked if we could meet with her for a moment afterwards.

Every parent knows that instant of dread associated with wondering what your three-year-old may have said or done to someone. We mustered up our courage and waited.

Finally, alone with her teacher, the truth came out. The week's memory verse was James 1:19. Be slow to anger. When the teacher asked the children if anyone could explain what that passage meant, Nicole's hand shot up:

"It means that when you go fishing," our daughter explained, "you crawl to the front of the boat and put the front anger down very slowly." Nicole continued, "Then you crawl to the back of the boat and put the back anger down very slowly. That way, you don't make a splash and scare the fish away."

Not quite far off the mark was she?

Today's ponder: How can you arrange for two people to stand on the same piece of newspaper and yet be unable to touch each other without stepping off the newspaper?

When I was three years old...

I don't think I can play the piece even at my age NOW.

Today's ponder: What do you say when someone says you're in denial, but you're not?

The meme of the 24

Okie, no one tagged me to do this one but I think I'm sufficiently weird to name just 24 oddities about myself.

1. I had aspirations of being a house-husband to a rich, successful wife. Seriously, I don't mind doing all that cooking and cleaning and bringing up the kids. Come on, compared to working in the jungle out there?
2. Never having had the birds and bees talk from the parents, I had the notion that girls became pregnant by locking lips with guys. It didn't help that those SBC serials always showed a couple kissing before cutting the scene to the next morning. I had no idea what happened in between until I was well on the road to teenagehood (being in a boys school didn't help).
3. All the document files on my computer have their full titles as filenames. It takes a lot more time but it makes finding information a breeze.
4. I have long eyelashes that are the envy of many a girlfriend.
5. Until recently, people mistook me for a 16 year-old. Guess I must have aged quite a bit over the last few years.
   
6. I don't like to bathe/wash my hair. That's one of the only perks that winter brings.
7. I like to douse my rice with soup to make Teochew muey. Friends bear wide-eyed witness to me pouring miso soup onto my oyaku don, or turning my plate of chicken rice into a liquidy mess of chilli, rice grain and meat.
8. I visited my first karaoke lounge at the age of 23. Ok, I admit this is very un-Singaporean behavior.
9. I am very nervous during takeoff, and I'll tighten my seatbelt, jam my legs against the footrest and mentally cycle through the emergency procedures as the pilot cranks up the engine. I know you're going to laugh but it's the most dangerous part of the flight ok!
10. I like bitter gourd soup. But that's the only form of the vegetable I'll consume.
11. I'm an introvert by nature, but there is a gregarious side to me that sometimes manifest itself. Just don't ask me when or how.
    
12. I curl my toes downward when I'm relaxing with my shoes off. I don't even notice it until the cramps start coming.
13. I have horizontal 'scars' running down my lower back, probably from all that time spent cooped up at home reading during my childhood.
14. I don't like sweet and sour anything. Sour I can accept, but a sweet dish? Gimme salted fish anytime marn.
    
15. I am very sensitive to noise (especially if I'm trying to concentrate/sleep), for example the mechanical droning of air conditioners, fans and other rotating equipment. I'll so be driven crazy if I were ever to work as a process engineer.
16. I have many more girl friends than guys, yet I come from an all-boys school.
17. Most people I email the second time around get their names shortened to initials. Just check out the 友情史.
18. I was so terrified of the Illinois winter I purchased a spare for every piece of winter gear. Two years on, some of them are still in their packaging. Talk about kiasu.
19. I hang keychains on my bags. At last count, there were about 20 hanging on my everyday backpack (which incited the excited chattering of a pair of middle-aged ladies as I was walking past them one day: "My, doesn't he have a mind of his own?" before bursting into delighted laughter. Urgh! So funny meh?)
20. I'm terrified of cockroaches. Anything bigger or smaller is a nuisance at worse.
21. My favorite fruit in all the world is chempledek. People tend to give me a weird eye when I mention that.
22. I derive more pleasure out of cooking than actually downing the fruits of my labor. Perhaps its down to the artistic streak in me.
23. I don't like my Chinese name because it's too easy to write (hehe, I used to excuse my horrible Chinese grades with the reasoning that if my parents wanted me to learn Chinese well, they would have chosen a much harder to write name with many 笔划)
    
24. Why 24? This bothers me because I don't know why.
    

Ooh. That was fun. Now who wants to join in the hilarity? Jaywalk, Trompe L'oeil, Mooiness, JasChocolate, Laughing Cow, Jettykey, Ms. Slow, Lisa, pretty parrot?

Today's ponder: How do you throw away a garbage can?

Misadvertisement 2

It's been some time since I first visited this topic. In this installment, I want to discuss advertisements from a particular sector—slimming ads.

[Many friends tell me 女人的钱最好赚. I'm inclined to agree with them, based on the fact that targetted slimming/beauty/cosmetic/fashion ads make up a sizable proportion of advertisement revenue in all forms of media except the internet. The only economic justification for such a phenomena is a healthy (if not excessive) profit margin, which supports the original assertion.]

Back to the topic. Slimming ads generally come in one of two forms: the before and after, popular among small/medium sized beauty salons, and the scantily-clad celebrity endorsed campaigns of the major players.

Disclaimer: I do not dispute the authencity of the pictures (i.e. no switching of pictures/massive photoshopping). Neither am I purporting that slimming agencies are defrauding the public intentionally. The following is just a critique of the crowd response to such ads.

Let's begin with the Before/Afters. I figure people will be impressed by the dramatic weight loss of Ms. X from using brand Y's slimming cream/pill/plaster/massage/diet regime. After all, the eyes don't lie, do they?

Clever advertisers often insert statements like "I lost 66 pounds and 66 inches after 66 days of treatment!" with such pictorial "evidence" to promote the efficacy of their product.

[It is never clear to me how 'lost inches' are measured. I suspect the average Jane is just as clueless as I am, so this makes for a rather 'flexible' unit of measure that should be taken with a pinch of salt.]

The implied message to the consumer is:

• "EVERYONE who use the product will see results like that."
  

However, a strictly rational person can only conclude that:

• ONE person has lost weight during the period she was using the product.
  

Let me explain the heaven-and-earth difference between the two statements with an analogy.

Say I show you a picture of rain falling on the Sahara along with the caption "43 mm of rain fell on this day." Can we therefore conclude that the Sahara is a wet place? Yet this is exactly the sort of irrationality that advertisers bet on.

Turning our attention to celebrity endorsement, we see the same story all over again. The ad screams:

• "Our product turns you into a babelicious beauty. Just look at celebrity Z!"
  

whilst the rational brain is whispering:

• "Celebrity Z is really babelicious and she happens to endorse this product."

We should note two important facts here.

1. Celeb Z was already babelicious BEFORE she endorsed the product (that's why she's a celeb, duh!). Beauty does not a slimming salon make.
2. Celeb Z's rice bowl depends on her physical appearance. Therefore she is strongly MOTIVATED to MAINTAIN her pencil-thin figure with or without the endorsement.
   

It is by design that advertisements should always 'suggest more than they deliver', because advertisers know that it is always the embellished truth that sells, never its plainer cousin.

Although there is a myriad of competing slimming products in the market, it is difficult for the consumer to comparison shop for the best value for money product. Why?

In order to determine the efficacy of a particular product, it is not sufficient to provide anecdotal instances of individuals who have seen results using the product. Instead, statistics of many individuals using the product must be available for a proper determination. Several useful metrics to quantify slimming products can include:

1. average weight loss/$ spent
2. average weight loss/time
   
3. average total weight loss
   
4. average failure rate

Unfortunately, such information is almost never publicly available. This means consumers are unable to make a rational buying decision. Which suggests that customers of a particular salon probably like their ads best/is a fan of celeb X, because there is just not enough information to make a carefully considered decision.

Ah, the irrationality of crowds.

If you ask me, the entire slimming industry is an exercise in making something out of nothing. After all, anyone (yes, all 7 billion of us) can lose weight just by remembering these three alphabets: IOA.

Input - Output = Accumulation

Wanna get rid of flab? The immutable law of IOA tells us to either decrease the input (count the calories!) or increase the output (exercise! 运动!), or better yet, do both. I'm sure that's what any doctor will recommend too.

Today's ponder: Why is it you have a "pair" of pants and only one bra?

If you're an ABC with a B+ on your score card...

Amateur comedy, but really strong (and believable storyline). This one I like.

Today’s ponder: If you pay for a vacation and your plane crashes on the way there, do you get you money back? (Granted you lived)

搞笑

Doesn't she (the thin one) look exactly like Olive from Popeye the Sailor Man? Anyway, this schoolgirl pair's home-made karaoke parody got them on national TV, from which this clip was extracted.

Chio ga beng, I tell you.

Today's ponder: If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

Introducing Edgar Guest

It Couldn't Be Done
Edgar Guest

Somebody said that it couldn't be done
But he with a chuckle replied
That "maybe it couldn't," but he would be one
Who wouldn't say so till he tried.
So he buckled right in with the trace of a grin
On his face. If he worried he hid it.
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn't be done, and he did it!

Somebody scoffed: "Oh, you'll never do that;
At least no one ever has done it;"
But he took off his coat and he took off his hat
And the first thing we knew he'd begun it.
With a lift of his chin and a bit of a grin,
Without any doubting or quiddit,
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn't be done, and he did it.

There are thousands to tell you it cannot be done,
There are thousands to prophesy failure,
There are thousands to point out to you one by one,
The dangers that wait to assail you.
But just buckle in with a bit of a grin,
Just take off your coat and go to it;
Just start in to sing as you tackle the thing
That "cannot be done," and you'll do it.

Introducing Edgar Guest, one of my favorite poets whose old style uplifting verses are an absolute joy to recite.

Speaking of which, the other Edgar comes a close second to Terry Brooks as my favorite fantasy author.

Today's ponder: Daylight savings time—why are they saving it and where do they keep it?

You must check this out

I almost died laughing when I finally figured out what's happening.

Yes, I know why the video's titled Robben as a kid.

Today’s ponder: When a store has double doors why do they only let you use one of them?