E amusement

A couple of weeks ago, I happened to be sitting at the bar at Eat Me, one of Bangkok’s most respected restaurant, and one that has appeared on the Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants list several times since the survey’s inception. I was having a quick dinner after being filmed snacking on a few different dishes as b-roll for a new television series I’ve been filming for CNA (which will premiere in October). While the crew went downstairs to have their own dinner (Chef Tim Butler kindly whipped up a spread for them), I stayed at the upstairs bar in order to finish off and not waste the dishes used for filming. While there, I noticed two staff behind the bar shuffling through some papers, finally extracting two. One had a black and white line drawing of Dumbo the flying elephant. The other was a portrait of Disney’s version of Rapunzel. The staff member then pulled out a box of crayons and walked the art supplies over to a family seated on the patio. I thought that was marvellous. By … [Read more...] about How doodling and art can keep kids entertained while dining out in fancy restaurants

Deepika Padukone ’s new Levi's ad has run into a major controversy after it was claimed that the backdrop and the set of the ad in question, was identical to the one in Sooni Taraporevala ’s ‘ Yeh Ballet ’. The production designer for the advertisement Rupin Suchak has admitted it to be the case. Take a look at the screenshots below: Rupin claims that he was told by the Levi's ad director Nadia Marquard Otzen to make it that way. He writes, “Yes we did :) in fact that’s what our director wanted so we had to recreate that." Sooni, however, isn't amused. She lashed out against the ad saying that this kind of plagiarism is nothing but intellectual theft. "A couple days ago someone brought this @levis_in ad to my attention. I was shocked to see our Yeh Ballet dance studio set in this ad, because it was conceptualized & created out of a derelict space by @shalzoid (our PD) from scratch and dismantled after our shoot. Basically @nadiaeye (the director of this ad) … [Read more...] about Levi’s ad featuring Deepika Padukone accused of plagiarism

SINGAPORE: My first glimpse of the lion puppet for this year's National Day Parade (NDP) is through the window of a Grab vehicle. It peeks out from behind the stands as I passed, a giant glimmering creature looking like it was cobbled together from thousands of reflective strips of a Corrective Work Order vest. Up close, it looks deceptively light. Although it's six metres tall, eight metres wide and weighs 1,000kg, I can't help but see it as nothing but a blown-up piece of origami. It was only when members of the NDP organising committee pulled me aside to give me a safety briefing when I realised that I might have underestimated the prop. You need boots, they told me, after looking at my well-worn Converse sneakers. You don’t want the edge of the structure to run over your foot - and crush it, was the implicit meaning. Once appropriately suited up, I was introduced to Jensen Lim, the 20-year-old crew member who will be my guide for the day. Although he was nervous … [Read more...] about NDP 2019: What it takes to operate a 6m tall, 1,000kg lion puppet

If there’s one thing that can make a 41-year-old man feel terribly old and out of place, it’s being completely surrounded by thousands of screaming girls watching a bunch of handsome young men onstage doing the “scissors” dance while the video screen flashes “Welcome To The 90s”. In a very retro-ironic way. It was an hour and a half into K-pop boyband NCT 127’s Saturday afternoon concert at the Singapore Indoor Stadium. My ears were ringing, my bum hurt and I was scanning my section for others who looked similarly lost. A couple of rows down, I spotted a woman glued to her phone, who seemed to have tagged along with someone I assumed to be her daughter. Squinting hard, I spotted what seemed to be a multi-generational family at the other end of the stadium. How could I tell? Half of them were waving “fanlights” while the other half just sat there, also glued to their phones. I turned to the only “chaperone” excuse I had: My wife, who was attending her first K-pop concert … [Read more...] about Dismissing K-pop without attempting to ‘get it’ is just uninformed snobbery

You're talking with someone about a game you both love. But whatever you say, he contradicts—scoffing, shouting, and rolling his eyes as if you're the world's biggest idiot. Running into an ex-roommate, you ask how she's been. She replies—in a 20-minute nonstop monologue, never pausing to ask you a single question or let you remark. When conversations crash and burn, we often blame ourselves or whomever we're talking to—assigning labels such as Naysayer or Snoozefest. But the social awkwardness that causes pain is often caused by pain. Interactive styles that started, under pressure, as survival strategies transform into conversational habits that others misinterpret as rude, weird, selfish, mean. For instance, someone who was mocked relentlessly in childhood because he lisped or loved breaking into song might adopt chronic near-silence for safety's sake. What if we reframed awkward conversations as coded distress signals—dispatched from frontlines long ago and far away? … [Read more...] about 6 Conversation Killers That We Almost Always Misinterpret