voyeurism

chinoiserie

the thirty-fifth episode of ventriloquy features some video footage of one of Singapore's most unique architectural sites - the Chinese Heritage Centre at the campus of the Nanyang Technological University. the Centre was gazetted as a national monument in 1998.

please do join me on a five-minute tour of the facade of the Centre, and the beautifully landscaped grounds of the Yunnan Garden. it's a 22.7 MB download.

from a geographer's point-of-view, i think it's wonderful that such a cultural gem has been so well preserved, especially right in the heart of a residential and industrial estate.

[this episode features the track 'Harry with an Ice Cream Carpet and a Bullet in his Small Questions' by Maroufleur]

rounding the corner #2

had a meeting with Allan today - hooray hooray best news is that i will be able to list him as my supervisor eventually, in my CV :-)

he deserves that honour more than anyone else.

not sure how accurate this is, and i'm loathe to publicise this sort of thing, but with God's help i'll be able to submit my thesis for external examination within three months.

all in His perfect time, i say.

so now it's time for Allan to think about who my external examiners might be.

with regards the thesis itself, here are the main things i still need to do:

- rewrite the summary into an abstract
- i need still to work on my intra- and inter-chapter transitions
- i need to beef up my concluding chapter, making the links explicit between data, findings, theory, and application
- we've come up with new names for the discourse categories

i'll get to work :-)

a tale of two cities

today, Apple-themed retail stores have their grand opening in two cities at opposite ends of the planet.

the opening of the Salt Lake City Apple store is covered at Kelly Dumont's blog - The Educational Mac.

here in Singapore, Asia's largest independent Apple reseller opened to the public this morning - i captured some footage and share it with you as the thirty-fourth episode of ventriloquy (at 20.1 MB).

on the face of it, Salt Lake City and Singapore are quite different in many ways, from their demographics to their climate. however, i suspect if we dig deeper, we'll begin to find the similarities just as insightful as the differences :-)

[this episode features the track 'Fallen: Obtained Damage' by Maroufleur]

[update: a big THANK YOU to Gary of ifoapplestore.com for featuring this episode in his November 21st entry :-) ]

[update #2: an equally big THANK YOU to David of beimac.cn for featuring this episode in his November 24th entry :-) ]

helping out

i got this from Bud Hunt's blog.

Christian Paolino, who's currently enrolled in the graduate program in Media Studies at the New School University in New York, is conducting a survey on blogging in schools:

"My topic is about teen-agers, blogging, and the degree to which it affects their ability to write. I need high school teachers (and undergraduate if applicable) to answer a short survey gathering their observations on this subject. Unfortunately I only have about a week to gather the data, so I am asking you to please consider doing so at your earliest convenience and also contact any other such teachers you may know and ask them to complete the survey. It would be very much appreciated as my efforts to contact teachers have not been very successful thus far, and the ones I have heard from were not particularly versed in blogging technology. Please send this to others you know who might be able to help. If you have suggestions for reaching a number of teachers quickly, they would also be very much appreciated. If you are interested in learning more about this project, please let me know."

if you can spare the time, and if you fit Christian's criteria, please do help him with his survey :-)

Technorati Tags: education, learning

1995 - 2005: design of a decade

exactly ten years ago, to the day, i established my web presence.

voyager's vistas was a simple collection of html files - the roots of which are still discernible from my homepage even today.

to commemorate the occasion, i've switched to a nostalgic stylesheet design for this blog.

more than that, i'm extremely pleased to be able to bring you video footage of the world's largest commercial airliner - the Airbus A380 - as it completed its inaugural long-distance flight. F-WWOW flew from Toulouse to Singapore, where it spent about fourteen hours. Singapore Airlines will be the first to fly the A380, when it enters service in October 2007.

i end the thirty-third episode of ventriloquy (at 31.1 MB) with a brief trip down memory lane, listing the highlights in my life, for each of the past ten years.

please do join me in this very special celebration of a decade online :-)