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ATMs have started dispensing $100 bills, even when I'm withdrawing just $150 or $200 at a time, at well-utilised ATMs in downmarket locations. I'm not sure when $100 bills moved into higher circulation, and it's a little disturbing. I know the cost of living is going up and sometimes a $50 bill barely gets me any change when I'm buying basic toiletries for the month (think supermarket-brand shampoo, conditioner, shower gel and "feminine hygiene products"). But the psychological effect of havi...

Context: Singapore is in the middle of the worst smog and pollution it's seen since ... recorded history, I'll warrant. The latest (I get the heebie-jeebies just thinking about it) and the PM2.5 levels are unsettling too.

(Until two days ago, I did not know what PM10 or PM2.5 referred to. Until yesterday, I never had to wear an N95 mask when going about ordinary errands outside the home.)

Anyway, I'm dumping a bunch of useful links here, because the government...

The end of the work-week got busier than I anticipated, so I didn't have the chance earlier to plonk the info for my public talk at the National Museum tomorrow:

Historia SG 2013 � History Seminar Session 1
Gallery Theatre (basement), National Museum of Singapore
2:00 � 3:30 p.m., Saturday, 1 June 2013

Prof from the National University of Singapore speaks first at 2 p.m. on place and street names in Singapore, then at 2:30 p.m. I'll speak on "Writing the City, Rendering the Invisib...

A few friends have asked for the details of the My Queenstown symposium where I'm speaking tomorrow. I've been publicising it old-school style in forwarded emails instead of plonking the information on my blog --- oops. Here you go:

My Queenstown symposium
"A forum series on social memory and development"
2.00 p.m. - 4.30 p.m., Sunday, 26 May 2013 (that's tomorrow)
Queenstown Community Centre, 365 Commonwealth Avenue, Singapore 149732 []

Speaker line-up:
Guest of honour Sam Tan, mayor of...

I am not one for doing online surveys, but here are two Singapore-related ones that I thought were worth doing this morning:

1) The is running . There are three shortlisted names for each station and the online polling interface is really easy to use.

My only beef is that the map extracts provided don't always provide enough context for someone who's not familiar with the area. I had to refer to Google Ma...

I did an email interview with the Sunday Times for its "Bookends" column, which should appear in the papers tomorrow. If you're curious about why and what I read, and how it influences my writing, go take a look.

It's good timing because I've been on a reading spree lately. It started a couple of months ago when I was pushing myself to , because I realised that I needed to diligently feed the mind and the spirit with fiction, rather than my usual daily fodder...

With reference to about having the time now to catch up on online chatter, I thought I'd plug a good cheatsheet: , a weekly email newsletter by my friend and his friend . I know, I know --- a weekly newsletter, how old-school in internet terms. But @sangsara's always had a keen nose for quirky news and a snappy way with words, and the newsletter taps into that difficult-to-pin down online Zeitgeist that's more than just a mash-up of

Since I to the National Arts Council on Tuesday (they're supporting me with a grant), I've been creeping slowly back into my social life: long catch-ups over meals with friends whom I've had to put off seeing for the last few months, a couple of work-related meetings and emails, reading longform journalism and short stories again, and even watching .

It's also nice not to feel I have to churn out 2,00...

I should've done this earlier, but I forgot. Anyway, as I'm writing the novel and researching little factual bits as I go along, I'm finding all these cool, random links.

Like today: I wanted to verify the sunrise/sunset times in the year that most of the narrative takes place, and Google sent me to this website by the US Naval Observatory's Astronomical Applications Department, . You punch in the year and details for the place you want, and the website...

It is quite something to go in two days from having half the novel written, to having almost two-thirds of it written. Because all writing is rewriting, as reminded me recently, so the current burst is fuelled by cannibalising bits and pieces from an earlier draft. The pace will slow down once I have to start writing new scenes from scratch.

That said, I've realised that writing dialogue really fills up the word count. Just have two characters banter for several minutes or so, and yo...