Two Carol Quotes

The mezzanine floor of the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple has statues of several eminent monks, such as Venerable Miao Hua (1922-2009) pictured below.

My friend Carol described it as "Madame Tussauds for monks".

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Last year I watched Women's Football World Cup final with Carol and her dad. Before that, we also watched a few Men's World Cup games together which, here in Singapore, were very late at night.

On one such occasion – a Friday – we went to a birthday party in the evening. Carol and I left around 11pm to come back to my place, where her friend also joined us. We watched a game from midnight to 2am. I napped for a bit, while the two of them went out to eat bak kut teh at one of the all-night joints on my street. Then we watched another game from 3–5am.

I was wearing this t-shirt, which dates back to my college days when I was much more into football than I am now:

"Maybe you should cross out the Sleep," Carol said.

Fundamental Questions

Two perfectly-phrased questions (one of them rhetorical) that I came across online:

1. Last year Straits Times published this article (paywalled) with the somewhat clickbaity title: 'Wild boars likely to recolonise whole of Singapore in next decade: Study'.

The article was reposted on HardwareZone, where one forum member asked the all-important question:

means what? good or not good?

Straight down to brass tacks; a classic Singaporean response. I often think about it when reading academic papers or attending conferences.

2. Twitter user Zuvele, on her kindergarten-age nephew:

I asked my nephew if he could count to 1000. He said "no". I asked if he could count to 100 - yes. 200 - yes. Why not 1000? He looked at me wearily and said, "Who has the time?"