Celebrating Knowledge Conference - Networking Night

Came back from the Networking Night dinner (sponsored by Hewlett-Packard as part of the Celebrating Knowledge Conference) at CHJIMES about 2 hours ago.


Prof Tommy Koh, Ambassador-at-Large, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, gave a speech where he shared his experience in using the National Library when he was a young boy in the 1950s, and how he liked to visit the New York Public Library and the Library of Congress during his overseas posting, among other interesting annecdotes.


First time I've had dinner at CHIJMES Hall. There's something unique about dining under a large hall. Wished my wife was there but then it was work after all.

More about CHIJMES' history here and here. It's a national heritage site cum dining, shopping and entertainment site.

I've always thought the name CHIJMES (pronounced “chimes”) was brilliant. The grounds used to be a Catholic school/ church. The school was called the "Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus" and popularly referred by its initials "Cee-Hage-Eye-Jay" (CHIJ).

After its facelift, they added the letters "M, E, S" after "CHIJ" as a word play on the sound of the church bell -- although the actual sound of the church bell would've been closer to a resounding "Dong" than a "chime" (but a entertainment place called "Ding-Dong" just wouldn't sound right, would it? Especially when "Ding Dong" could mean "mad" or "crazy" in Singlish).


Oh, I couldn't resist taking a picture of the huge christmas tree outside Raffles City Shopping Centre (across the North Bridge Road entrance/ exit of CHIJMES).


Tomorrow is the start of the two-day conference at the InterContinental Hotel. If they provide free WIFI access, I might even try to blog it 'live'.

Tag: library event

Official opening of National Library & Drama Centre, Singapore (12 Nov 2005)

Today, 12 November 2005, marks the official opening of the National Library of Singapore, as well as the Singapore Drama Centre (co-located within the NL, occupying 2 levels).



President of Singapore, Mr S. R. Nathan officiated the launch.


The event was attended by about 400 guests at the Events Plaza.




Now wait a second, wasn't the National Library opened on 22 July this year?

Yes, but that wasn't the official opening.

Geomancy wasn't involved in picking an auspicious date for this. The choice for 12 Nov is to coincide with the opening of the old National Library (Stamford Road) in 1960 (officiated by the late President Yusof Ishak) -- exactly 45 years ago.

The way I see it, the event today is kind of like Singapore officially registering the birth of one of her babies, when delivery of the baby (the National Library, Victoria Street) had been a few months before in July.

Incidentally, I snapped a picture of the Christmas light-up on my way to the train station after the event. It had nothing to do with the opening ceremony. I'm posting it here 'cos it seemed like a nice scene to end the event.


Tag: new national library, national library board singapore

Asian Children's Festival (ACF) 2005 at Singapore Expo

Opening ceremony for the Asian Children's Festival (ACF) 2005 was on 7 Nov. Today, 11 Nov, was the first day of the ACF at Singapore Expo.


Here's the booth manned by my colleagues from Children's Services. You can't miss it -- they are at the front of the hall (nearer to the right):


Library members can borrow books on the spot and Spin The Wheel to win prizes (there's also a ASK! promotion, i.e. ask questions to win prizes):


Children's Librarians (with programme executives colleagues) telling a story through a play (abridged version below):

Introduction to the story: About a merchant...


... with a rat problem.


The rat was so bold that the merchant couldn't do anything to it while the rat continued to eat the merchant's rice.


So the merchant went to consult a wise old man, who in turn...


... recommended a Samurai Cat to the merchant. But alas, the rat defeats the warrior!


And so the merchant laments to the old master that his stuffed cat was better than the Samurai Cat.


The old master sends another cat, but this time an old one. The merchant balks at the old cat and wonders if the cat will be any good when the warrior has failed.


The old cat, unlike the other cat before him, doesn't pick a fight with the rat. The old cat even asks the rat to take the food and leave him alone.


The rat gets bolder and takes more food.


The comes the harvest and the rat helps itself to a rice ball...


... and gets stuck by the sticky rice. Turns out the old cat prepared the riceball for the rat.


And so, the merchant understood that old doesn't mean useless.


The old master advises the merchant that brains are sometimes better than brawn.

The cast takes a bow. They are librarians and programme executives from NLB.

Aren't these librarians cool?

Tag: asian childrens festival

Drop Everything And Read - Double your loan quotas

UPDATE (10 Nov 05):

Thanks to the good people at Tomorrow.sg for highlighting the initiative. However, I'm kicking myself for a gross typo in my comment in my submission to the editors. I wrote wrongly that AV items could be borrowed by anyone. That's incorrect. The annual Premium Membership fees still apply:
"Readers at Tomorrow.sg might be interested in this loan promotion. It's a great way to borrow more AV items (normally there's an annual fee for this)."
My apologies for the error.

This holiday season, just Drop Everything and Read.
To help you along, the NLB is DOUBLING your loan limit from 1 Nov 05 to 31 Jan 06.

YES, regular members can borrow up to 8 items, and Premium members, up to 16 items. This includes the borrowing of audio-visual (AV) materials, capped up to a maximum of four AV items at any one time.

So, what are you waiting for?

"Just one part of life's journey": Holiday in South Korea, 24 - 29 Oct 2005 (part 2)

We visited the Naejangsan National Park on Day 1. This was about 5 hours direct from clearing the customs at Inchon International Airport and proceeding by coach (we had an hour for lunch first before entering the park).

This was the view from the pavillion looking down on the lake. We reached there by cable car:




From the viewing pavillion, my wife and I then decided to walk to one of the temples in the mountain. The guide said the walk would take 20 minutes to and fro. It turned out to be more like 30 minutes each way!

Leg muscles wobbled like jello as we made our way down winding paths made treacherous with loose pebbles. The cold mountain air was making our lungs and legs work harder than normal.

I thought, "This is only the first day in South Korea!"

We were exercising more than what we did in a week back home! Matronly South Korean ladies more than twice our age passed us with ease and sure-footedness, seemingly dancing their way down the path. We wanted to give up. The more we made our way down, the more we thought about the arduous return journey up (which was harder).

We were also fighting against time (the tour group was waiting back at the bus). But we didn't give up. I knew it was hellish then, but I'd kick myself even more if I went back home thinking that I should've continued there and then. At some point while going down (which I felt was the hardest for me), I stopped thinking about tripping and falling and just left the mind take over.

So we persisted.

We were glad we did.

We reached the temple, took two gulps of the sweet mountain spring water, snapped a few pictures (to prove that we made it), started back up the mountain. At that point, you just blanked your mind and thought of only the next immediate step. Time was running out (we were past our agreed rendezvous time with the tour guide) but I was past caring. I just thought about the next step, the next rock, the next corner.

Finally, we found ourselves back up the start of the path. Made it.

Writing about it now seems overly dramatic, doesn't it? As I look back at this picture I took on the way back up, it doesn't seem that bad. But man, when you were in the thick of it...


Memory is a transient thing. I'm sure if I look back at this post years down the road, I'd be glad that I wrote this down.






Tag: holiday, south korea

Asian Children's Festival (ACF) 2005

The Asian Children's Festival, or ACF for short, opens for its 5th year. It was launched today at Woodlands Regional Library by Minister for Education, Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam.



This is a shot of the storytelling performance by two students from the Canossian School.

The girl on the left narrated the story of "The Nightingale" by Hans Christian Andersen while the taller girl on the right played the flute to represent the Nightingale and its song. BTW, the Canossian School provides education for children with hearing impairment who are deaf.

The ACF is "a campaign for children, and those involved with them, crafted with the children in mind to celebrate and honour them."

Check out the website for more details for events and the exhibition - www.asianchildrenfest.com

Tag: asian childrens festival

"Just one part of life's journey": Holiday in South Korea, 24 - 29 Oct 2005 (part 1)

Two weeks ago, my wife and I spent six beautiful days in South Korea, in a tour group with 17 other Singaporeans. One prime motivation for choosing South Korea was because of the <<大长今>> "Dae Jang Geum" Korean period drama.

Image source: Official site of Korean National Tourism Org (or see Google cache)

Naturally, the itinerary included a visit to the Dae Jang Geum Theme Park (that was on Day 2). This was taken at the "Gate of the Palace" (item 01, if you click on the map here).


Fans of the drama serial would find this particular scene familar -- it's the spot where palace courtiers and servants would wait to be announced, in order to see the king. This would be item 02 (shot from the left side of the steps) from the map.


The entire shooting site was smaller than what it appeared on TV. The location scenes appeared larger due to the camera angles.

This picture would be item 09 on the map (I took this from the opposite angle looking down on the courtyard).


This was the place where the kitchen scenes were filmed (item 16 on the map) .


They are now showing reruns of the drama serial. Sometimes my wife and I would catch certain episodes of the palace scenes, and we'd be amazed at how a slight upward camera angle or the placement of props and furnishings can make the scenary look so different.

Now that I've been to the film location, watching the drama serial again does come with a certain loss of that "movie-magic" -- but only just a little. There's also a different sense of enjoyment. I am able to view the show differently, as if a door has opened in my mind's eye and I'm seeing things that I didn't notice before.

Aside: That's something you don't lose with (fiction) books, I think. Unlike the physical world, that sense of magic would unfold from the pages and into your mind as you read.

I took about 1,000 plus photos from this holiday alone (thank goodness for Digital Cameras). Will post a few more related posts over the next few weeks.

Tag: holiday, south korea

TagClouds: What if OPACs allowed a "Browse by Tags" feature?

I was suitably impressed the first time I saw how Tags were organised and presented from Technorati.com (this was quite some time ago). What impressed me was the simple combination of:

1. Arranging the words and terms in one paragraph, and
2. Varying the font-sizes to represent the popularity of a keyword/ tag.

Alone by themselves, aspect (1) and (2) was nothing fancy. But combine them and you get a simple and compact visual presentation.

Recently, I was introduced to Lee, who maintains a site theworldisnotflat.com. I came to his "Browse by Keyword" page. First time I've seen this arrangement used outside Technorati.com; thought it was a good idea and wanted to try it out for my blog.

Thanks to Kevin, whom I emailed to ask how this could be done, he introduced me to TagCloud.com. I signed up and quickly created my own Browse by Keyword url. You can also incorporate the cloud into the blog rather than a URL (instructions in the "Implementation Guide" section when you sign in).

Suggestions for TagCloud:

• Allow for longer 'Cloud names' (you might notice that my tagcloud URL is missing a "G");
• When creating clouds, create another option for user to specify the tags that go into the cloud. Currently, the cloud is automatically generated so it doesn't give me control over what terms to specify (other than specifying drop-words).

Then it hit me -- why not do the same for library online catalogues (OPACs) or websites? For instance:

• Allow the user to Browse by Keywords presented in a 'tag cloud' (this is in addition to the typical listing of keywords/ subject categories)
• Also, for the alphabetical listing of keywords/ subject categories, vary the font-size for popular tags

I'm going to throw this suggestion to my colleagues and see what they think. If you know of any library website (not librarian blogs) that has implemented the above features, let me know.

Tag: tagcloud, opac

NLB Newsletter features "Introduction to Blogging" session

Preetam, Mr. Brown and XiaXue might be pleased to know that their "Introduction to Blogging" session (held on 16 Jul 05) has been featured in this particular issue of the NLB online Newsletter.

I'm not sure how many people read the online newsletter regularly. Personally, I hope NLB would provide a RSS feed for this in the near future.

Tag: library event

Gahmen Bloggers Meetup (GBM)

For a co-organiser of the very first Gahmen Bloggers Meetup (GBM), I sure am slow in posting this news. It got Tomorrowed already, for crying out loud... To be honest, I'm not much of a co-organiser. Vantan's doing most of the work so far. I just shared some ideas.

How did this meetup come about?

Two month's back (wow, seems like a year ago) I discovered Vantan's blog while searching for posts related to the National Library (Vantan posted this). We corresponded (I suppose like what most bloggers do) via comments and then via email. So I learnt that Vantan works in a government agency too.

A few weeks ago, Vantan -- fresh from attending the First Asian Corporate Blogging Conference -- suggested in passing to have a meetup for government employees who blog -- or "Gahmen Bloggers" for short. I replied, "Why the heck not? Nothing to hide".

Couple of emails later, we nailed the objective, scope and criteria for the meetup. Very civil service-like eh? Nah! "We all the informal kind, lah". Here's the scope of the meetup -- which was drafted tongue-in-cheek:

There are no hard and fast rules, apart from the fact that you should be a civil or public servant, listed in the SGDI. Also, if someone shares some info with the rest of us, but asks to keep it confidential, do respect that. No recording or surveillance devices will be used; no Minutes will be taken (yay!). However, in line with official policy, bar top dancing is permitted.

If you're interested, contact Vantan.

We're limiting to people working in the civil service or government agencies/ statutory boards -- you know, easier to talk-shop, network, gripe vent complain share learning experiences. You may or may not be blogging, doesn't matter. But it's strictly a meet up on your own time.

Oh, in case you're unsure of what you can or cannot share or blog at the meetup, go consult the Government Instruction Manual (IM) or your Employee Handbook. While you're at it, check out the Official Secrets Act (OSA). If you're really really unsure if you're allowed to attend, drop subtle hints to your boss to guage response...

Just kidding! : )


Tag: social blogging