Read: Neverwhere

Between Omar and the still unfinished 100-page photobook, I finally finished reading Neverwhere yesterday. It was by far my favourite Gaiman novel yet. The book is fully of delightful weirdness set in a hidden underground world below the city of London. Gaiman is the king of weird. In a way, Neverwhere was like Stardust in being an adventure, except that our accidental hero Richard Mayhew didn’t set out looking for one like Tristran Thorn did.

Highly recommended.

Barefoot

We both mentioned Barefoot Books before. Apparently, its “studio” here at Summertown is the company’s foothold in the UK. We finally bought some of their products recently, online, armed with a thirty percent discount code.

We bought four books, three jigsaw puzzles, and an alphabet flash card set for Omar. It will be quite sometime before he will appreciate most of products, but we simply couldn’t help ourselves. We were particularly excited about the Barefoot Books World Atlas and Landmarks of the World puzzle, which features the Petronas Twin Towers.

When we received our order (YAY!) one item, the abovementioned Landmarks of the World puzzle was missing. I misunderstood the confusing shipment invoice which stated that it was being sent separately. Afi also noticed that One Moose, Twenty Mice had a torn page.

I called their customer service number to ask about both. The person on the line said that she will look into the missing item and arrange a replacement for the book. I followed up the phone call with an email for good measure. The puzzle arrived the next day. (YAY! ×2) Then, a reply email arrived asking me to confirm the shipping address for the replacement book. I gave it, and the book arrived soon after. (YAY! ×3) They asked that we give away the damaged book to charity.

That was supposed to be the end of it. But, last Wednesday by chance we bumped into a delivery courier when we were returning from town who were going to buzz our apartment. We were not expecting any delivery so it was quite a surprise. The package turned out to be another copy of One Moose, Twenty Mice! I emailed Barefoot Books straightaway about the extra copy but apparently their Director of Operations will only be back in the office on Monday, tomorrow, for a decision.

:P

Sophie

I saw Sophie a few months ago at a shop. I really liked it. Afi wasn’t impressed, but I thought the rubber giraffe was cute. Besides, Omar was then too young to appreciate it.

Now, however, Omar is at that phase when he wants to chew everything he can get his little hands on. Then, I came across Sophie again online. After thinking about it overnight, I bought it via Amazon.

Sophie arrived on Friday morning. I ripped it out of its packaging and gave it to Omar straight away. Then, I took that picture above.

As usual, I googled Sophie up before I bought it. Apparently it is quite a famous toy. Watch out for the Malaysian connection in the video above!

Censorship

The US government wants to censor the Internet. Before you ask what it has to do with the rest of us not in the United States, consider that US laws have the habit of being exported or copied by other countries, for example via trade agreements.

Already we have heard many times politicians and ministers in Malaysia talking about the “need” to police the Internet to preserve social order. The Americans are doing it to protect the interest of the entertainment industry, which argues that the free Internet is depriving them of millions in lost revenue, because they do not get paid when people sample or share copyrighted songs or videos. Still, once the United States start to censor the Internet, for whatever reason, it will be easier for other governments to do it too.

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SOURCE: American Censorship Day.

Melancholy

We are counting days to go home. It feels like only yesterday when I first arrived with Mak and Abah and time just flies by that our journey in Oxford is coming to an end soon.

Having spent twenty percent of my life here, it is just natural to feel a bit melancholic about leaving Oxford. Oxford has witnessed almost six years of my ups and downs.

Since a few months ago, every other day I’d tell Sayang the things I’m going to miss about Oxford. I’ll miss the famous scones at The Rose. I’ll miss Kebab Kid, Costa Coffee, Covered Market, Barefoot Books, Pret A Manger, Blackwell’s, and the list goes on and on. I'll miss attending those brilliant seminars and lectures. I’ll miss listening to inspiring talks by great people.

However, I have come to realise that my Oxford journey is just a temporary phase. What’s more important now is to finish my thesis, settle down and continue serving the society. Talking about my thesis, I’m tempted to buy this t-shirt. It reminds me of Dr UmiM, who bought three of them for herself, Dr Faez and Dr Lin at a time they were so much absorbed with their theses.

Godspeed.

Blackwell

Afi had wanted to take me and Omar to Blackwell’s for a while to look at their children’s books collection. We finally went there last Saturday.

Blackwell’s is a well-known seller of academic books closely associated with the city and university, and the shop at Broad Street here was its first to open back in 1879. We arrived at about 1530 and the sun was already low. Afterall, sunset was at about 1620. A shop assistant helped us with the disabled access door and elevator to push Omar in on his pushchair.

It was busy inside the shop. There were a few families with young children too, and we had to do quite a bit of manoeuvring between bookshelves, children on the floor reading and other pushchairs. We looked at some picture books for Omar. There quite a few that we really liked but in the end we selected three with three-for-two offer.

We bought Otto the Book Bear by Katie Cleminson, Miki and the Moon Blossom by Stephen Mackey, and Knuffle Bunny by Mo Willems for Omar. They are all beautifully illustrated. However, my favourite of the three is definitely Knuffle Bunny, which is really funny. Afi also wanted to buy How to Solve It by George Polya, so to make it an even three I picked up The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, and The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett.

The new books add to the stack of books I have to read, hopefully by the end of the year. I am currently reading Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, though stalled at the moment as I work on the 100-page photobook. After that, I will read The Clone Redemption by Steven L Kent, Habibi by Craig Thompson, and Inheritance by Christopher Paolini. Habibi is my first ever graphic novel so I am really excited about it. On the other hand, Inheritance is released three long years after Brisingr that I have forgotten most of the story. I suppose this is one of those times when Wikipedia comes in handy.

All I need to do now is find the time to read them all.

Finder

We all know how annoyingly frustrating it is to misplace stuff around the house — keys, glasses, mobile phones. At least you can ring up your mobile phone, so long as the battery is not dead. Often when we misplace something Afi would wish that we could “miss-call” them.

So here’s an interesting concept called Finder by designers Chu Wang, Qiujin Kou, Qian Yin & Yonghua Zhang.

You paste stickers with RFID tags on your stuff and register it on the smart phone-like finder device. Next time when you misplace your stuff you can call them up on the device and it will point them out for you. Cool, huh?

The idea is not totally original, though. RFID tags are common enough nowadays that it is only a matter of time somebody finds a way of applying it in everything. There are already various forms of key finders out there in the market too. I also remember clearly reading about something similar in Cory Doctorow’s Makers, where a character spends whole days tagging the entire content of his apartment.

I wonder if and when the product will finally make it to the market. Also, it would be great if they can integrate the finder function into smart phones, for example, instead of having another standalone device to misplace. Afterall, all you need is an RFID scanner. Well, maybe they’ll have it on iPhone 6.

:P
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SOURCE: Yanko via My Modern Met.

Passport

Your Malaysian passport needs to be valid for six more months in order to travel out of the country. I thought everybody knew that. The requirement is printed inside the back cover of the passport, and I remember reading about it several times elsewhere before too, perhaps on airline booking invoices.

So I was surprised when a friend was denied from boarding a flight recently because she had less than six months left on her passport. Maybe it was an oversight on her part.

For that matter, the are several other details printed at the back of the passport, one of which is you cannot send your passport by mail from one place to another. After all, your passport is a form of personal identification just like your national identity card. I assume everybody knows about that too.

More Lego

Lego has released item 4184 The Black Pearl, Jack Sparrow’s favourite ship from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. It comes with six minifigures including of course Jack Sparrow, Will Turner, and Davy Jones.

Sailing ships are my favourite Lego models, though I have never owned any. :( While the 804-piece Lego is interesting simply for being The Black Pearl, it is not that impressive. The model ship does not look as menacing as the ship in the movies, and the all black colour scheme while true to form gets a little boring.

More interesting is the 1097-piece Queen Anne’s Revenge, item 4195, from the latest Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. This earlier release is a bigger model than The Black Pearl and comes with seven minifigures, which again include a Jack Sparrow. I particularly love the blood red sails.

Movies tie-in aside, item 10210 Imperial Flagship is the best. It is not only bigger with 1,664 pieces and nine minifigures, but also has a lot more detail. The full-featured gun deck has four cannons. There is even a full-featured galley, or kitchen for us landlubbers.

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All pictures from Lego.