bookporn #40: ISEAS, Singapore

I thought it was about time I bookporned the place I’ve become attached to (in both senses of the word): the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore, in all its vasty, lofty glory. Its glory is not confined to the mere aesthetic; it is a place where a Southeast Asian specialist can dissolve quietly [...]

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links for 2008-12-25

Philosophical Lexicon hysterical (tags: philosophy hilarious dictionary language reference) Braille Fail « FAIL Blog: Pictures and Videos of Owned, Pwnd and Fail Moments faille! (tags: hilarious) LRB · John Lanchester: Is it Art? "Most games, as Poole argues, are work-like. They have a tightly designed structure in which the player has to earn points to [...]

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bookporn #39: Ethnic Travel, Insight Into Vietnam

Hanoi is without question, for me, the crazed, dirty, artsy, gutsy, eccentric capital and lifeblood of Southeast Asia. Take Paris. Grime down the buildings and filth the gutters; change all the signboards into Vietnamese; add a million streetside phở vendors, a million ardent touts, merchants and basket carriers, citywide communist broadcasts twice a day and [...]

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on the move again

On the move again; my next words will probably hail from Vientiane, Luang Prabang or Hanoi. This will be my first extended encounter with the remnants of the French colonial empire — I’ve always been much more familiar with the doings of the British Empire, and I understand its legacies almost innately: the trauma of [...]

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links for 2008-12-08

I Heart Global Warming // Current Greenland is thawing (stunning cinematographic evidence provided) and things are changing faster than we can understand, and I still can't watch those last five minutes of the video without feeling an indescribable sorrow (tags: helplessness video currenttv world environment climatechange) World Without Water // Current Current Vanguard looks at [...]

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Being an Unforgivably Protracted Debunking of George Bernard Shaw’s Views of Islam

I mentioned in the passing, in an earlier post, that I had come across a bizarre interview between George Bernard Shaw and a Saudi mystic. Firstly, a correction: the mystic in question is not Saudi as I had initially thought, but was born in Meerut, India; he was a Sufi Sheikh by the name of [...]

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bookporn #38: the food edition, or, how I am a sucker for gimmicks

I am not generally a complete sucker for gimmicks. BUT. In Suntec City, a colossal, scrupulously modern shopping complex in Singapore, there lie the fruits of the labour of sheer genius. Behold, the Food Republic: a Singaporean hawker center made to look like a library. This is clearly a ploy: it is a pernicious, utterly [...]

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