Please visit my other site

I am still blogging, at Blowin' In The Wind. I used to post the same material here and there, wanting to try out different weblog services. But then I read about this "Google duplicate penalty" which penalises bloggers for posting duplicate content. So I will stick to just one site. Cheers.

Google coming to Singapore?

Singapore should be so proud. "Google to open R&D centre in Singapore", said the front-page headline in The Straits Times today. "The centre -- Google's first in South-east Asia", said the report, "is a coup for Singapore". Yes, indeed. So why hasn't the story been picked up by other local media?

I couldn't find the report on the Channel NewsAsia website even several hours after The Straits Times broke the story.

That is surprising -- especially since the story has already appeared in the International Herald Tribune, San Jose Mercury News, the Hindu in India and several other websites around the world. Could it be professional rivalry that kept the local news channel from picking up the local newspaper report?

Unlikely. While The Straits Times and Channel NewsAsia belong to two different media companies, their owners are also business partners. They are joint owners of the freesheet, Today, and local television channels. What's more, Channel NewsAsia belongs to a government-linked company which highlights Singapore's achievements. I was surprised it didn't pick up the story.

Could this be the reason? Let me quote the follow-up story by the Associated Press. It says there are no firm plans yet for a Google R&D centre in Singapore. Here's the AP story:
Internet search company Google Inc. plans to open a research and development centre in Singapore, its first in Southeast Asia, a newspaper reported Tuesday.

Google's managing director of Southeast Asian sales and operations, Richard Kimber, was quoted in The Straits Times newspaper as saying Singapore was picked for its "very vibrant ICT (information, communications and technology) space.

A public relations firm representing Google in Singapore, The Hoffman Agency Singapore, did not deny the report, but said Kimber's comments were meant to recognize the city-state's efforts to foster talent in the industry and did not address the possibility of setting up a research and development centre here.

"Google's continually exploring opportunities to further our investment in Singapore and around the world, which includes actively hiring local talent across various positions. We do not have anything to announce at this time," Hoffman said in an e-mailed response to questions.

I found the story in The Age, published from Melbourne, after a Google News search. AP initially repeated just what The Straits Times said. The International Herald Tribune and other websites picked up AP's initial story. The Age published the follow-up.

I still refuse to disbelieve The Straits Times story. After all, it said:

"Although it (Google) is tight-lipped about details, it is already on the hunt for engineers to start things rolling. In particular, it needs an R&D director to head operations."

You don't get such details without deep digging.

AP in its follow-up said that, according to Google's public relations agents in Singapore, the Google executive quoted by The Straits Times "did not address the possibility of setting up a research and development centre here" in Singapore. Then why should The Straits Times say so? Even the most inexperienced reporter won't make such a mistake, let alone someone from The Straits Times.

Not The Times' university rankings

The university rankings widely reported in Singapore -- in which the National University of Singapore and the Nanyang Technological University come out among the best in the world -- are not compiled by The Times of London. The Times Higher Education Supplement is owned by TSL Education which on its website describes itself as "a stand-alone business".

The company and the Supplement used to belong to News International, which publishes the Times. A Google search led to a Straits Times report in November 2004 which began with the words:

"The National University of Singapore (NUS) has beaten several reputable
institutions, including Cornell and Columbia in the United States, to emerge No.
18 in a Times of London ranking of the world's 200 best universities."

The reporter, Sandra Davie, was right. At that time, The Times Higher Education Supplement belonged to the same group as The Times.

But the Supplement and its publisher, TSL Education, changed hands in 2005. News International sold them to Exponent Private Equity in 2005 for 235 million pounds.

This was mentioned in the Guardian last week when it reported the Supplement's editor, John O'Leary, had resigned. He left "after a period of disagreements with the paper's owner over its future direction", said the Guardian. It added he was a former education editor of The Times. He was mentioned as the Supplement's editor in the Straits Times report in 2004.

In the Supplement's latest annual rankings, NUS was 19th last year, up from 22nd, and NTU 61st, down from 48th. This was reported by the Singapore media and mentioned by various ministers. The reports I saw correctly called them the Times Higher Education Supplement rankings -- but didn't say whether or not they had anything to do with The Times. Still, I guess they attract the same attention as the US News and World Report rankings of US colleges.

The Wikipedia says:

"The Times Higher Education Supplement, also known as The Times Higher or
The THES for short, is a newspaper based in London that reports
specifically on issues related to higher education. It is owned by TSL Education
which was, until October 2005, a division of News International ... The THES is
probably best known for publishing The Times Higher - QS World University
Rankings in partnership with QS Quacquarelli Symonds Ltd, which first
appeared in November 2004, with new rankings published annually."

Singapore: The future Venice?

San Marco (left) and an artist's impression of the Marina Bay Sands.

Singapore the future Venice? No kidding. This vision of the future comes from the father of Singapore himself. Enthusiastic about the downtown Marina being built around Marina Bay, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew said yesterday: "The Marina will be like the St Mark's Piazza in Venice." Wow!

And will the upcoming Marina Bay Sands, the giant casino cum convention centre -- sorry, integrated resort -- be the Basilica of this St Mark's Piazza in Singapore?

Sorry, no offence meant. One may be a church and the other a casino. But the latter is also expected to be a tourist attraction. And let's look at the bright side. One can only marvel at the religious artefacts in the Basilica. In the casino, one can hope to get rich.

Not that I am dying to visit the casino, but good luck to those who do. I am all for more people coming to Singapore. And there's no reason why the developers can't transform the Singapore waterfront into something as breathtaking as the Piazza. There's the bay, the money's flowing in, all that's missing is a few hundred years of history. And, instead of the basilica, there will be a casino. But nobody wants an exact replica. The Minister Mentor said "like St Mark's".

He doesn't make empty promises. That's why any comparison with St Mark's -- though I would love to see it again -- makes me nervous. Venice is sinking.

Who is Britain's greatest living author?

Clockwise from top left: Amis, Pinter, Naipaul, Rushdie, Rankin, Stoppard, Rowling and Hornby (in the centre).

If Martin Amis isn't Britain's greatest living author, who is? asks the Guardian today. Amis is certainly the flashiest. His brilliance with words simply dazzles. No one comes close except Salman Rushdie, whose name also came up in the random survey of writers, critics and booksellers.

But Rushdie has moved to the US. Still, Amis has plenty of competition. The biggest contenders whose names came up most frequently in the survey were Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, Doris Lessing and VS Naipaul. Two of them have won the Nobel prize. But Pinter and Stoppard are playwrights. My choice would be a novelist.

I would choose Naipaul over Amis. Not just because I am an Indian. Naipaul has been around much longer and has covered a lot more ground, starting when Amis' father, Kingsley, was the famous writer in the family. Naipaul is a great writer in every sense, not just a story teller but a social critic like Dickens or Tolstoy.

Amis is also more than a novelist. I haven't read his criticism but have read his pieces on the War on Terror. Some may not like it, but he isn't afraid to speak up.

Still, I wouldn't call him Britain's greatest living author for one simple reason: He can be heartless. Think of books like Money and London Fields. There's no question about their brilliance. London Fields stands the whodunnit formula on its head. But it also shows a cruel streak. Some of the characters are treated with such utter contempt it becomes tiresome: Why write about them at such length at all unless one got a kick out of savagely ridiculing them? Satirists do that. But compare London Fields with Catch 22 and the difference is striking. Catch 22 is funny, not London Fields.

No wonder Amis is a sharply polarising figure -- the Hillary Clinton of the literary world -- equally hated and admired. (The same may be said of Rushdie. I prefer him to Amis.)

Interestingly, JK Rowling was also named by some in the survey as one of Britain's best living authors. She wasn't the only popular writer to make the list. So did Nick Hornby and Ian Rankin. Hornby is funny. I love Rankin.

Photoshopping my wife

Some of the pictures in my computer are older than Windows PCs. They show my wife just after our marriage. Fair and lovely, with a red bindi on her forehead and red sindoor in the parting of her hair, her creamy skin swathed in bright silk, she faces the camera with the shining eyes of a newlywed who has discovered how deeply she is loved and cherished. She looks beautiful on the beach, beautiful on the hills, beautiful in the gardens we visited.

She loves travelling and photography and that's how we ended up with these beautiful reminders of our early years. Even today, looking at them takes my breath away. My God, what a beautiful woman I married!

She teaches at a college in Calcutta while I am in Singapore. That's why I scanned the pictures into the computer -- so I could see her every day. But the pictures had faded by the time I scanned them in. After all, we have been married for more than 20 years.

I have brighter, more recent pictures of her and she is still beautiful. But I wanted the faded old pictures to sparkle too. I have an old Adobe Photoshop Elements which can transform pictures. But I was scared of damaging the originals by trying to tweak them. So I decided to copy the pictures and tweak the copies instead. If they didn't look good, I could trash them -- the originals would still be intact.

I needn't have worried -- the copies turned out to be much better than the originals. And it was so easy. All I had to do was open the pictures with Photoshop Elements, copy them by clicking on "Duplicate Image", then tweak the duplicated image with two clicks -- "Enhance" and "Quick Fix". I clicked on "Quick Fix" and a pop-up box opened, offering options like "Colour correction" and adjustments in "Focus" and "Brightness".

I noticed the difference as soon as I clicked on "Colour correction". The picture was immediately transformed. It emerged in all its colour and lost that faded look.

Now I can see the pictures of my wife undimmed by time. They just needed touching up with Photoshop.

The Great Gatsby

Scott Fitzgerald and video of The Great Gatsby starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow.

Now I know why Scott Fizgerald is considered one of the finest American writers. I just finished reading The Great Gatsby. This little novel, just over a hundred pages long, is an absolute gem, a love story that's also a morality tale. Nick Carraway, the young narrator, starts his story with his father's advice:

"In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.

“Whenever you feel like criticising any one,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”

Immediately, we know he comes from a well-off family. Money and status are central to this novel.

Jay Gatsby, the Great Gatsby, was a self-made millionaire who "represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn," says Nick. Yet they became friends. Looking back -- Gatsby is dead when the story begins -- Nick says Gatsby had "an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again."

They became neighbours when Nick -- a Yale ("New Haven") man -- left his home in the Midwest to "learn the bond business" in New York after fighting in World War I.

He gives these details in a few sentences before plunging into the action, which begins with his meeting with his cousin, Daisy, and her husband, Tom Buchanan.

He doesn't know Daisy had an affair with Gatsby five years ago. But Gatsby was a poor army officer who was then sent off to Europe. By the time he returned home and became a millionaire, she was already married.

"Immensely wealthy", she is also charming and beautiful. "Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth, but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget," writes Nick, recalling the day they met.

Gatsby was still in love with her. That's why he bought a house near her. But they had never met since her marriage. Gatsby befriended Nick to get in touch with her. There's a memorable descripton of their meeting in Nick's house.

Tom, meanwhile, is having an affair with a mechanic's wife. Vulgar, impulsive Myrtle Wilson, openly scornful of her husband, is a violent contrast to charming, delicate Daisy.

But it's Myrtle, not Daisy, who comes to grief. In the end, Tom and Daisy will be responsible for the deaths of Gatsby, Myrtle and her husband. But hardly anyone sheds a tear for the victims. Though hundreds of people used to attend Gatsby's parties, only a handful come for his funeral.

By then we have mixed feelings about him. Nick discovers he was a sham and a crook after all, just as he was always rumoured to be. There's no excuse either for what Myrtle's husband did.

But it seems unfair that Tom and Daisy are not affected at all. The rich lead charmed lives. Nick, who distances himself from them, writes: "They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made. . ."

The Great Gatsby is a sweetbitter story of love and ambition and corruption in high society and the toll it takes on those who aspire to that world. And the prose is simply out of this world.