The topic is interesting, but the book itself is junky. Oops.
Brilliant is not as brilliant as it wants me to think it is. Probably it’s really hard to write a book on such a huge topic, but then isn’t it the author’s and the publisher’s responsibility to focus and communicate the topic appropriately, to create and then meet readers’ expectations?
If you want to know specifically why I didn’t like the book, or what I still managed to learn from it, keep reading.
Broken idiom alert. This sign at the National Skin Centre pharmacy says:
CAUTION!
Tripping Hazard.
Mind Your Steps!
I think in the US we’d be more likely to say “watch your step” rather than “mind your step”, but pluralizing ‘step’ would be wrong in either case.
Sure, it’s logical that you’d want to be careful over the course of many steps, but conventionally, that’s not what we say.
I think we use the singular noun because this ‘step’ really means ‘manner of walking’. Here are some examples that showcase this singular sense of ‘step’.
The job promotion put a spring in his step.
The dancer has a graceful and lovely step.
The thief listened for the confident step of the policeman.
There is room for confusion because ‘step’ more often means ‘footstep’, and footsteps are often potentially plural, even when they are not syntactically plural.
The craftsman hoped his son would follow in his (foot)steps.
The sound of (foot)steps faded away down the hall.
Every (foot)step brought her closer to her goal.
Now that I think about it, the noun ‘stride’ has a similar duality: the singular noun means a manner of walking and the plural noun is used to refer to a series of individual movements.
I think there’s also pressure to pluralize ‘step’ coming from the common use of ‘steps’ to mean ‘stairs’.
The spilled water cascaded down the steps.
Anyway, the upshot is that the warning to “watch your step” or “mind your step” means “pay attention to your manner of walking”, not “pay attention to each of your footsteps”.
When I spotted this Korean drink called baekseju (百歲酒) on the menu at the very excellent and formerly close to my house Jang Won Korean Restaurant, I thought it might be a version of the famous Chinese alcohol called , which is sometimes called ‘white wine’—though not by anybody who’s ever had any.
Nope. The Chinese word
Silly ang moh, those are obviously two totally different words.
Wait, hang on, that text on the Korean menu looks, um, rather similar to what’s currently on Wikipedia…
I didn’t photograph the whole menu page, though, so it’s not clear whether those prices are subjected to service charge and tax.
That’s New Bridge Road at Cross Street, the focal point of Singapore’s annual Chinese New Year celebration.
This is South Bridge Road at Cross Street. We used to live less than a block from here, on Mosque Street. You can just see a bit of the green entrance to the Mosque on the right.
Note the new tower going up in the background in Tanjong Pagar. That red circle tower (the PS 100 Green Tower) and the dark one next to it (Carlton City Hotel) weren’t there in 2011. In fact, I used to walk straight through the empty lot that is now the PS 100 to get to work.
It’s not for nothing that people joke about Singapore’s national bird being the construction crane.
Before it was an award-winning sci-fi novel, it was an award-winning sci-fi short story. It’s commonly studied, deep, and poignant. (I’m not really a fan of poignant.)
Flowers for Algernon tells the story of a retarded man named Charlie who undergoes an experimental surgical procedure to increase his intelligence. Algernon is the mouse whose success has convinced scientists that the procedure should be tried on a human test subject. It is clear early in the book, if not from the title of the book itself, that the procedure ultimately fails. Hence the poignancy.
For more on the format, plot and themes, continue reading.
It launched with 60 posts going back several years because I’ve always had content but never a site I was particularly happy with. Content will continue to get added retroactively. Enjoy!
This amazing set meal at Ryoshi Sushi Ikeikemaru at Westgate was so good that I forgave them for including fish in my tempura.
Next time I’ll avoid the fish and it’ll be perfect.
