Meditate

If only there were a real monk doing the meditating...

Photo: Tagaytay Highlands, December 2009

A Thai Buffalo...

...is otherwise known as a carabao! Whod've thunk it? Amazing how these things work out.

Photo: Bangkok, Thailand, March 2009

Fallen Flower

This was from our honeymoon. The wife and I were having breakfast, and that solitary flower fell to the ground. Decided to take the picture, and it turned out pretty well. Makes me wonder how I can use it in a presentation.

Photo: Phuket, Thailand, March 2009

Dusk

Pointed the camera upwards and tried to frame the fading sunlight. Also thought it would be an interesting photo because of the lack of clouds.

Photo: Pier 39, San Francisco, May 2009

Rise of a Ninja

It was a post on Kotaku that got me interested in Naruto: Rise of a Ninja.

Because it's been years since I followed the anime/manga scene, I knew little else about Naruto other than that it was a popular Shonen Jump manga and anime series about an eponymous ninja in an orange jumpsuit. I'd also developed the impression, after having watched enough episodes of X-play during my three-odd year tour of duty in New York, that most games based on the franchise have been widely vilified.

Nonetheless, I held out hope for Rise of a Ninja. Partly, it was because the game features cel-shaded animation (and I'm a sucker for most things cel-shaded). Partly, it was also because the game was packaged as a cross between platformer, RPG and fighting game. But above and beyond these, there was the unmistakable fact that Rise of a Ninja was rooted in the first eighty or so episodes of the anime (with cutscenes!), and thereby promised to be a quick and easy way to get introduced to the series.

On that score I've been quite pleased with Naruto: Rise of a Ninja. I think of it like RPG-lite, a straightforward and, for the most part, no frills RPG that doesn't require an inordinate investment of time to enjoy. Character development is mostly story-based, with enough questing elements -- Deliver ramen! Play hide and seek! Race through town! -- that, while absurd, work well enough for a quick fix of occasionally challenging gameplay. This gives the game enough variety, even if one intends to just switch off mentally and just get lost in a video game for a couple of hours. Especially so. The stunning cel-shaded graphics are a huge bonus as well.

Ironically, the plot-based elements are what I liked the least about the game. While it keeps very faithfully to the anime's plot, translating these into the game resulted in storytelling where it was painfully clear that so much (too much?) was left on the cutting-room floor. Avid fans of Naruto would surely get a real kick out of reliving the anime through Rise of a Ninja; unfortunately, the uninitiated will have to make do with a decent game whose story makes only the bare minimum of sense -- as far as orange-jumpsuit clad ninjas go, anyway.

Yet games don't need to be taken all that seriously. Hence, as far as plain and simple fun are concerned, Naruto: Rise of a Ninja comes out well ahead and is a great game to own for the Xbox 360.

Chopsticks

The wife prepared an oriental dish for dinner the other night, complete with a chopsticks-and-bowl table setting. This was both something different and a pleasant surprise.

"Dear," I asked, "where'd you get the chopsticks?" These were the real deal and not the disposable stuff one can get from the supermarket; a nicely crafted wooden set with fine narrow tips. For some reason, I just couldn't place where they came from.

"Don't you remember?" she replied. "We got them in Singapore."

So reminded, I did recall:

We happened to be passing by Takashimaya and discovered a display of Japanese crockery and china that appeared to be on sale. As we didn't yet have a bowls and plates to match an oriental motif (you never know), the wife suggested it might be a good idea to see if there were any we liked. I agreed, and thus she set about to try and put a set together.

This task proved to be a little more involved than we anticipated, as the items were sold by piece -- except for the chopsticks -- and had different designs in varying amount of stock. So bowls, trays, chopsticks and all other manner of items had to be mixed and matched to get just the right look and feel for our liking. At first, it was enough for her to piece things together on her own, but soon enough it became necessary to invoke the assistance of a saleslady, who dutifully located, presented and returned items as she worked on the jigsaw puzzle of our imagined oriental table setting.

About an hour later, the wife happily presented her work: a setting complete with bowl, chopsticks and rest, lacquer tray, saucer and a quaint rectangular plate.

Now the set would have been perfect for our needs, except it didn't make sense to just buy a setting for two or even four. Doing the logistics in our heads (rattling off the number of our family members and/or possible guests we could conceivably entertain at a time), whatever we got had to be a setting of six or more, preferably either suited to eight or twelve. And even then it would have been fine, nevermind the question of how to get it all home, were it not for the price.

All things considered, it was an indulgence we could put off for another time.

So we thanked the saleslady for her trouble, just settling for the set of chopsticks.

As I recalled all of this the wife got started with her meal, but not before quietly remarking, "That saleslady must have hated us."

Quite right!

The Big Rich

Bryan Burrough's latest, The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes, certainly lives up to its name. A work of "engineered history," as Burrough describes it, the book details the fates of four men who, after striking oil, would in their lifetimes be among the richest men in America: Roy Cullen, H. L. Hunt, Clint Murchison, and Sid Richardson. The indelible mark each would leave on the oil industry, American politics and the development of Texas itself would be felt for generations.

Overall it is a fascinating account. The most interesting parts of The Big Rich are arguably those that depict the "wildcatting" days of Texas oil and the personal struggles, successes and excesses of the four oilmen who typified the new social class that would come to be known as the Big Rich. Further, par for the course for the co-author of Barbarians at the Gate, Burrough is at his best in those chapters piecing together the growing political influence of the oil industry, the latter's connection with the rise of right-wing conservatism in America, and ultimately how national events could be interpreted as revolving around Texas.

At the same time, it is often a circuitous and uneven account, if only because it does not revolve around the Cullens, Hunts, Murchisons or Richardson in a dedicated fashion (unlike, say, how Erik Larson effectively structured Devil in the White City, which could also be described as engineered history). Hence, while it shies away from being "biography plus," it does so with the trade-off that earlier chapters suffer in comparison to later ones. The difference between the two is that the former offer a hodgepodge of observations to paint the bigger picture of Texas oil in general, while the latter find a unifying theme in the inevitable narrative of the subsequent decline of the Big Rich.

Still, as engineered histories go, Burrough's The Big Rich is a remarkable achievement, if not because of the research that gave life to the colorful narrative contained in its pages then because of the cogent socio-political commentary one can find by reading between the lines.