limmy-log

Yes, you can, Dil! Let me know! :)

Sun, 19 May 2013 21:42:51 +0800

Yes, you can, Dil! Let me know! :)

Sorry, Young Man, You’re Not the Most Important...

Sat, 18 May 2013 11:22:01 +0800

Sorry, Young Man, You’re Not the Most Important Demographic in Tech
Alexis C. Madrigal, theatlantic.com

Despite companies’ hamfisted, male-focused marketing efforts, women are the dominant users of a wide variety of new technologies.
If you’re a man between the ages of 18 and 35, you used to be tech industry’s most coveted pri…

Paradigm-changing read. Women in their 40s to 60s are the leading users and gatekeepers of access to tech devices. Looking at my Mum, I believe that!

Quick bite at Sophie’s, a French cafe near the office....

Fri, 17 May 2013 12:07:48 +0800

Quick bite at Sophie’s, a French cafe near the office. Quintessentially quaint. @jofid

Sunflower spotted at the office! @jofid

Fri, 10 May 2013 12:40:53 +0800

Sunflower spotted at the office! @jofid

Russian politics: Chechnya and the bombs in Boston | The Economist

Sat, 04 May 2013 08:00:19 +0800

Russian politics: Chechnya and the bombs in Boston | The Economist:

Most of those who live in the North Caucasus are caught somewhere in the middle: between a perpetually fearful state that is wary of the independent power base even peaceful Salafism represents and the Islamist rebels who, by simply asking for a package of bandages or a piece of stale bread before they return to the mountains, make them a target for the police. Local authorities have responded with paranoid and indiscriminate crackdowns, treating every Salafist as a potential terrorist. Moscow is largely out of energy and ideas; the conflict may have crossed into a state of intractability.

It remains unclear how much of this history had to do with the bombs in Boston. The fact that two young men of Chechen origin committed an act of terror is not the same as saying Chechen terrorism has come to United States. Mr Kadyrov, usually spectacularly unreliable in his pronouncements, may have gotten it more or less right when he suggested via his Instagram account (his preferred method of communication these days) that the “roots” of Dzhokhar and Tamarlan’s “evil” are best found in America, not Chechnya.

In the end, whatever twisted sense of grievance and fury that drove the Tsarnaevs may have found its ultimate trigger in their adopted homeland more than in the one of their memory. Dzhokhar and Tamarlan are Chechen and Muslim, but they are also immigrant young men, struggling with their own sense of isolation and frustration. The language and motifs of the Caucasus militancy may have acted as a kind of salve, however desperate, for whatever dislocation they felt in America. Their uncle, who lives in Maryland, called the brothers “losers” who didn’t know what to make of themselves in America and thus were left “hating everyone who did”.

And so, in Boston, the cultivated sense of grievance and justification of the North Caucasus militants may been infused with the feelings of loneliness and revenge found in American men who commit acts of horrific violence: a case of “Beslan meets Columbine”, with disastrous results. If al-Qaeda and American male-rage have anything in common, it is that both foster the sort of self-obsessed nihilism that can have tragically bloody results. “I don’t have a single American friend,” Tamerlan is quoted as saying in a photo essay that followed his aspirations as a competitive boxer. “I don’t understand them.” Now it is America struggling to understand the Tsarnaevs.

Oundle School Mencap Holidays

Sat, 04 May 2013 00:32:22 +0800

Oundle School Mencap Holidays:

So April came and went, and I got no notes from friends saying that they gave to anything. :( So I’ll just have to keep publicising my own giving!

A couple of Oxford friends of mine, Elliot and Margot, trained and ran for the Brighton Marathon to raise funds for Oundle School Mencap Holidays, a residential holiday programme for children and young people with learning disabilities. Click through to find out more!

Ok, so I started this “Love Story” cover in defense...

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 17:02:23 +0800

Ok, so I started this “Love Story” cover in defense of Taylor Swift. Yes, for some reason, this past week, I found myself in multiple conversations about her music, whether it’s any good, whether it’s worth listening to, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

My personal opinion has always been: look, girl’s the youngest songwriter that Sony’s publishing house every hired. Her songs aren’t T.S. Elliot, but they’re authentic, they resonate with what a girl of her age group then and now would want to say and sing. Of course, we don’t always want to hear that (I shudder to think of myself at 13, and all the things I used to make people listen to me say—yikes), not any more than we always want to hear our friends wax lyrical about their lives/troubles (come on, admit it, we want to be there for them all the time, and we certainly do try our best, but we’re human, am I right?), but don’t we all need to get something off our chest sometimes? So am I going to judge anyone who wants to put up her Taylor Swift CD (or should I say MP3?) at full blast and scream “WE ARE NEVER EVER EVER GETTING BACK TOGETHER”? No, because she/he might need to do that.

Besides, her songs are hard. To sing. Melodically/Range-wise, I find them pretty challenging. Could be because I’m not a country singer. Where do you breathe? And do you belt it, or do you lock into your head voice? All these questions!

That being said… after singing “Love Story” a few times for the recording, I’m thinking to myself, “I’m 10 years too old to be singing this.” And that’s true. I should be singing any one of the other songs found here, which I normally do. That’s true. But so is the song. It’s true. Kind of a silly story, doesn’t give great advice maybe, but it’s true.

Popsicles at the office! #foodforthought indeed

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 16:18:58 +0800

Popsicles at the office! #foodforthought indeed

Selected passages from President Obama's address at the "Healing Our City" interfaith service.

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 09:00:09 +0800

Video

I’m here today on behalf of the American people with a simple message. Every one of us has been touched by this attack on your beloved city. Every one of us stands with you. Because, after all, it’s our beloved city, too. Boston may be your hometown but we claim it, too. It’s one of America’s iconic cities. It’s one of the world’s great cities. And one of the reason(s), the world knows Boston so well is that Boston opens its heart to the world.

Over successive generations, you’ve welcomed again and again new arrivals to our shores; immigrants who constantly reinvigorated this city and this commonwealth and our nation. Every fall, you welcome students from all across America and all across the globe. And every spring, you graduate them back into the world — a Boston diaspora that excels in every field of human endeavor.

Year after year, you welcome the greatest talents in the arts, in science, research. You welcome them to your concert halls and your hospitals and your laboratories to exchange ideas and insights that draw this world together.

And every third Monday in April, you welcome people from all around the world to the hub for friendship and fellowship and healthy competition — a gathering of men and women of every race and every religion, every shape and every size — a multitude represented by all those flags that flew over the finish line.

So whether folks come here to Boston for just a day, or they stay here for years, they leave with a piece of this town tucked firmly into their hearts. So Boston’s your home town, but we claim it a little bit too. I know this — (applause) — I know this because there’s a piece of Boston in me.

Like you, Michelle and I have walked these streets. Like you, we know these neighborhoods. And like you, in this moment of grief, we join you in saying: Boston, you’re my home. For millions of us, what happened in Monday is personal. It’s personal.

Our prayers are with the injured, so many wounded, some gravely. From their beds, some are surely watching us gather here today. And if you are, know this: As you begin this long journey of recovery, your city is with you. Your commonwealth is with you. Your country is with you. We will all be with you as you learn to stand and walk and, yes, run again. Of that I have no doubt. You will run again. (Applause.) You will run again because that’s what the people of Boston are made of.

Your resolve is the greatest rebuke to whoever committed this heinous act. If they sought to intimidate us, to terrorize us, to shake us from those values that Deval described, the values that make us who we are as Americans, well, it should be pretty clear by now that they picked the wrong city to do it. (Cheers, applause.) Not here in Boston. Not here in Boston.

You showed us, Boston, that in the face of evil, Americans will lift up what’s good. In the face of cruelty, we will choose compassion. In the face of those who would visit death upon innocents, we will choose to save and to comfort and to heal. We’ll choose friendship. We’ll choose love. Because Scripture teaches us God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love and self-discipline.

And that’s the spirit you’ve displayed in recent days. When doctors and nurses, police and firefighters and EMTs and guardsmen run towards explosions to treat the wounded, that’s discipline. When exhausted runners, including our troops and veterans, who never expected to see such carnage on the streets back home, become first responders themselves, tending to the injured, that’s real power. When Bostonians carry victims in their arms, deliver water and blankets, line up to give blood, open their homes to total strangers, give them rides back to reunite with their families, that’s love.

That’s the message we send to those who carried this out and anyone who would do harm to our people. Yes, we will find you. And yes, you will face justice. (Applause.) We will find you. We will hold you accountable. But more than that, our fidelity to our way of life, for a free and open society, will only grow stronger, for God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but one of power and love and self-discipline.

Like Bill Ifrig, 78 years old — the runner in the orange tank top who we all saw get knocked down by the blast, we may be momentarily knocked off our feet — (scattered laughter) — but we’ll pick ourselves up. We’ll keep going. We will finish the face. (Applause.)

In the words of Dick Hoyt, who has pushed his disabled son Rick in 31 Boston marathons, we can’t let something like this stop us. (Applause.) This doesn’t stop us. (Applause.) And that’s what you’ve taught us, Boston. That’s what you’ve reminded us, to push on, to persevere, to not grow weary, to not get faint even when it hurts.

Even when our heart aches, we summon the strength that maybe we didn’t even know we had, and we carry on; we finish the race. (Applause.) We finish the race, and we do that because of who we are, and we do that because we know that somewhere around the bend, a stranger has a cup of water. Around the bend, somebody’s there to boost our spirits. On that toughest mile, just when we think that we’ve hit a wall, someone will be there to cheer us on and pick us up if we fall. We know that.

(Sustained applause.)

Our faith in each other, our love for each other, our love for country, our common creed that cuts across whatever superficial differences there may be, that is our power. That’s our strength. That’s why a bomb can’t beat us. That’s why we don’t hunker down. That’s why we don’t cower in fear.

We carry on. We race. We strive. We build and we work and we love and we raise our kids to do the same. And we come together to celebrate life and to walk our cities and to cheer for our teams when the Sox, then Celtics, then Patriots or Bruins are champions again, to the chagrin of New York and Chicago fans. The crowds will gather and watch a parade go down Boylston Street. And this time next year on the third Monday in April, the world will return to this great American city to run harder than ever and to cheer even louder for the 118th Boston Marathon.

(Sustained applause.)

Bet on it. (Sustained cheers, applause.)

Tomorrow the sun will rise over Boston. Tomorrow the sun will rise over the —- this country that we love, this special place, this state of grace. Scripture tells us to run with endurance the race that is set before us. As we do, may God hold close those who’ve been taken from us too soon, may he comfort their families and may he continue to watch over these United States of America.

I’ll say it again. People running towards explosions to...

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 10:31:00 +0800

I’ll say it again.

People running towards explosions to help. Blood bank rejecting donors because they’re at capacity. All wounded made it to hospitals and survived.

Restaurants staying open to provide food and battery for charging phones, Dunkin Donuts especially, by request of local law enforcement officials.

Google doc with lodging offers. Massive photo and video upload to aid investigation.

Survivor comes to and first thing he does is offer description of suspect.

Suspect was found because a Watertown resident ~~kept his eyes open after lockdown was relaxed, saw the blood around the boat and~~ lifted up the tarp, then immediately went home and called 911.**

Quick on the uptake. Look out for each other. Tough as nails. Don’t mess with this city. City of Heroes. City of Minutemen. #bostonstrong

**Correction:

The Watertown man who found Dzhokhar Tsarnaev hiding in his boat says he is an “incidental hero.”

David Henneberry tells WCVB that contrary to what’s been reported, he did not see blood outside his boat. There was “no indication of anything.” Instead Henneberry was simply going outside to fix some foam rollers that had fallen off.

When he rolled up the boat cover, he saw blood on the floor of the boat, then he looked toward the front and saw more blood. When he looked toward the engine, he saw a body. He did not see a face.

“It’s surreal,” Henneberry said. “I wasn’t out on the prowl. I was out to see my boat and I stumbled upon this.” (source: The Two-Way, NPR)

His words were, ‘I levitated off the ladder.’ He does not remember going back into the house. He told his wife, ‘Lock the doors,’ and he called 911.” (source: New York Times)

Love the paper planes overhead! #singapore #changiairport...

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 11:00:08 +0800

Love the paper planes overhead! #singapore #changiairport @elisetay_ (at Changi International Airport (SIN))

Big <3s for orchids. National flower win. #singapore...

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 09:59:57 +0800

Big <3s for orchids. National flower win. #singapore #changiairport (at Changi International Airport (SIN))

Tragedy in Boston: How to help - CNN.com

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 01:01:38 +0800

Tragedy in Boston: How to help - CNN.com:

In case you were wondering, like I was.

#Bostonstrong.

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 23:37:55 +0800

#Bostonstrong.

Help Jane go teach special needs children in Uganda

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 01:35:00 +0800

Help Jane go teach special needs children in Uganda:

Starting the ball rolling on my Birthday Project! I gave to my dear friend Jane, who’s going to Uganda to teach special needs children this summer. Jane, fighting! :) xx

"Christianity is not a staircase, where you have Step 1: The Gospel. Step 2: Good Works. Step 3:..."

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 23:52:46 +0800

“

Christianity is not a staircase, where you have Step 1: The Gospel. Step 2: Good Works. Step 3: Going Overseas… Step 6: Marriage. Step 7: Babies.

If anything, Christianity is like an empty elevator shaft, where God reaches down, and pulls you up.

But if Christianity -were- a staircase, every step would be the Gospel. First step, the Gospel. Next step, the Gospel. The Gospel, the Gospel, the Gospel, all the way until you’re 95, and the next step would still be the Gospel.

”

- Heard at Reality LA on January 8, 2012.

A tale about #productdesign: Day 1 Me: New teapot? Mum: No, very...

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 12:47:41 +0800

A tale about #productdesign:
Day 1
Me: New teapot?
Mum: No, very old, just found it. It’s so good! It looks nice, its spout pours neatly without spilling, and look! (presses button on top to enable dispensing)
Day 2
Me: (tilting the teapot nearly upside down) Mum, this teapot’s handle is in the wrong place.
Mum: I know! The spout is so high up that it’s backside has to be in the air to get all the tea out. Such an elegant looking teapot, such an ugly position!

The tale is better in Chinese.
Happy Belated Birthday, Mum!

"This is not just an island, but a relatively small, very overcrowded island, and it is not too hard..."

Sun, 31 Mar 2013 23:49:03 +0800

“This is not just an island, but a relatively small, very overcrowded island, and it is not too hard to see how such conditions might produce a reserved, inhibited, privacy-obsessed, territorial, socially wary, uneasy and sometimes obnoxiously anti-social people; a negative-politeness culture, whose courtesy is primarily concerned with the avoidance of intrusion and imposition; an acutely class-conscious culture, preoccupied with status and boundaries and demarcations; a society characterised by awkwardness, embarrassment, obliqueness, fear of intimacy/emotion/fuss — veering between buttoned-up over-politeness and aggressive belligerence… Although we are in many ways very different, I have noted a number of important similarities between the English and the Japanese, and wondered whether the smallish-overcrowded-island factor might be significant.”

- “Watching the English,” Kate Fox.

Can we add Singaporeans to that list?

As my March 2010 stop in Geneva was a brief and private one,...

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 22:22:00 +0800

As my March 2010 stop in Geneva was a brief and private one, just to see family, I only have this to say about it:

It’s pretty!
It’s cold.
It’s very expensive!
We hopped over to France for a bit, and I was very happy to be back in the French Alps.
I really should’ve learnt some French before getting there.

ie: I pretty much already summed this up with my quick note back then.

Siena. Where one truly feels the simple things in life are...

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 00:35:00 +0800

Siena. Where one truly feels the simple things in life are best.

(At least when the palio isn’t happening!)

It’s no secret that my memory reel of 2009-2010 has been playing real, real slow. Some of that is busyness, mixed in with a whole lot of laziness—a distracted projectionist, I am—but when it comes to Siena, I think the truth is the film catches.

The story, this story, doesn’t want to be told in words, it wants to be told in feelings.

It wants to be told in silence.

It wants to be told in contented sighs at the pleasure of things that are supposed to be so ordinary: family lunch, back garden, sun above, field of green.

It wants to be told in pause, on a high civic tower, by a music school well, and in motion, climbing steps, passing schools.

It wants to be told in brown roofs and animal fountains, in colourful rooms of jumbo manuscripts in display cases lining the walls, larger-than-life mosaics covering the floors, in flag after flag after flag.

It wants to be informative, include a proper representation of that shell-shaped horse racing space that somehow manages to unbridle a whole city twice a year, uniting and dividing by contrade, forging and destroying relationships.

Yet it wants to be quirky too, include asides to the Mediterranean way with English (“Pisa, it’s so strange! It’s like some aliens came and put those buildings there in the middle of nowhere.”), to the Ape car (italian for “bee,” because it looks like one, and it sounds like one!), and to how up-to-no-goods try to pick up girls moving around in numbers that match their own for no reason but that alone.

It wants to be told in a promising sip of breakfast espresso, the happy sticky feeling of gelato melting down your hand, the comforting bite of home-cooked pasta, unplanned, unpretentious, just to cap off a good day.

And most of all, it wants to be read in three impossibly long shadows, cast by the golden light only found in an April sunset in Italy. Curly hair, blonde hair, dark hair—shadows don’t show things like that. I can’t even tell you who was standing where. But the point is, we were there. And that’s as much about the story as I can really tell you.