Dollhouse: "Vows"

Tough slog of a premiere. Perhaps my expectations were unfairly raised by the great unaired episode set in a dystopian future of the "Dollhouse" universe. Still, this episode dragged for me. Ballard is as unsufferable in his holier-than-thou attitude as ever, and the standalone story of the week (with BSG's Jamie Bamber) does nothing for me. The attempt at softening up Topher in his conversation with Whiskey left me cold too. Maybe I wasn't in the mood to watch this, but really hoping the season picks up from here. The next episode can't come soon enough...?

How I Met Your Mother""Definitions"

Strong season premiere. Marshall fooling around with the Indiana Jones whip is amusing. While Lily has been one of my favorite characters, she's falling rapidly down the scale though with her bizarre way of manipulating her friends' lives, first with Ted and Robin's relationship in the past, and now with locking Barney and Robin in the same room so they can work out the exact nature of their relationship. I liked Lily much better when she's playing off Marshall as the happily-ever-after couple. The locked-in-the-room scene does have the fantastic payoff where Barney and Robin ostensibly put on an act as boyfriend-girlfriend just to get Lily to back off, but it's so clear to the audience, even if it isn't to them, that their "fake" declaration of love is truer than either Barney or Robin would like to admit. Very nicely set-up scene. Ted as a douchebag at the university is fun enough, though I'm probably not alone in being indifferent at this point as to who the identity of the titular mother is. As I've said, a nice start to the season for HIMYM. The next episode can't come soon enough!

The Office: "The Meeting"

Hilarious cold open. Michael seeks Oscar's advice on what to expect during a colonoscopy...nuff said :) Michael's attempts to eavesdrop on the titular meeting between Wallace and Jim, however, hits the wrong side of the line for me in terms of Michael's general obliviousness...coming across as insensitive and then descending into mean-spiritedness as he tries to sabotage Jim's proposal after he got to know about it from Wallace subsequently. Michael's fumbling attempts to remedy the situation after he discovers that Jim was actually pulling for him does set up the potentially fascinating scenario of Michael and Jim as co-managers, though the irony won't have escaped the viewers that Michael could have gotten so much more if he hadn't dissuaded Wallace from accepting Jim's proposal in the first place.

The Dwight/Toby pairing is fun for two characters one would never have thought would be partners-in-crime, or law enforcement in this case, and this is one well I wouldn't mind if the writers revisited in the future. Pam, however, is becoming increasingly dislikable by the season. What happened to the sweet receptionist from Seasons 2 and 3?!? She just comes across as smug as she's trying to ask her colleagues as to who's coming to her wedding, and though Kelly, Ryan and Meredith aren't exactly angels themselves, one expects better from Pam. Come to think of it, the way her character has generally been written these past few seasons, perhaps I've been the silly one for expecting anything different.

Reservations aside, the Michael-Jim dynamic presents really interesting plot points for the episodes ahead. The next episode can't come soon enough!

The Office: "Gossip" (Season 6 premiere)

And the good folks of Dunder-Mifflin are back! I enjoyed the season premiere, showcasing Michael in good form (so to speak) again where he inadvertently chances upon the fact that Stanley is having an affair, and in a bid to be "in" with the crowd, spreads this around like hot cakes. Upon realizing the potential consequences of his action, Michael's way of solving the problem is to spread other gossip of his devising, so that Stanley's situation would get lost under the sea of false rumors.

Laugh-out loud moments center on Andy actually thinking he might be gay just because Michael spreads the rumor that he is. The two golden moments are Oscar's outrage in his TH right after Andy seeks his opinion on the matter, and Jim's expression after Andy tells him he's confused about his sexuality.

In classic "Office" fashion, on top of the hilarious moments are the moments of heartfelt warmth, where Jim and Pam admit to the rest of the office that, yes, indeed Pam is pregnant (a rumor that Michael had spread without knowing it was actually true) in order to cover for Stanley. The ending scene with Pam's radiant smile upon seeing Jim put up the ultrasound of "Little Tuna" on the picture frame on his desk is the perfect close for the episode. One of the (many) things that make this show so brilliant, and such a joy to watch, is its ability to tug at the heartstrings of the audience without descending into the mawkish, and showrunner Paul Lieberstein, who wrote the premiere, demonstrates how it's done again.

Welcome back, Dunder-Mifflin. The next episode can't come soon enough!

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood Episodes 1 - 23

Disclaimer: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (FMAB) is the first encounter of any kind I have with the Fullmetal Alchemist series. I have never read the manga, nor have I watched any episodes of the first anime series before watching FMAB.

Being hardly an anime fan, I've found myself (pleasantly) surprisingly engaged to the series "Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood" ever since I caught the first episode on Hulu some months back. The story centers around two brothers who, in a failed bid to resurrect their mom through human transmutation (a taboo of alchemy), finds that they have paid a dear price for their transgression and hubris. The elder brother, Edward, lost one of his hands and legs, while the younger Alphonse lost his whole body, and only managed to stay "alive" because Edward somehow managed to transmute his brother's soul into a suit of armor. In a bid to regain their bodies, Edward has now joined the State army, so he could be in a position to search for the legendary Philosopher's Stone, which enables alchemy to be performed by circumventing the principle of equivalent exchange.

I love the close relationship between the brothers, and how they look out for each other. The single most impressive aspect for me is the character design; even though there are tons of characters, each is distinctive and well-drawn, and this is especially amazing considering that in a manga/anime format, the characters have to be physically mapped out too. The Homunculi make for fearsome enemies, and the series, like most anime, isn't afraid to shy away from more brutal depictions. However, and crucially, there are lighthearted moments of slapstick humor and warmth to alleviate some of the more grim proceedings. Memorable episodes to date include "An Alchemist's Anguish", a stomach-churning yet heartbreaking tale of the Sewing Life Alchemist, Shou Tucker who, in a bid to receive continued state funding for his research, resorts to converting his daughter and her dog into a chimera, in order to demonstrate that his efforts to create a talking chimera have been successful. Other installments that comes readily to mind are "Those who Lurk Underground" and "Death of the Undying", featuring especially well-choreographed and thrilling duels between Greed vs. Wrath and Lust vs. Roy Mustang, respectively.

I haven't realized the furious pace at which FMA: B has been going at until I watched the first few episodes of the first anime, and the pace shows no signs of letting up. The last few episodes have really upped the momentum (and gee, I thought the series was going at maximum gear already), with the re-appearance of Ed's and Al's dad, and the capture of Gluttony, one of the homunculi (the previews for next week's episode look positively awesome!).

Count me in as a new fan of FMA in general and FMA: B in particular! The next episode can't come soon enough!

Dr. Cai Mingjie

The Straits Times ran an article two weeks back on a Dr. Cai Mingjie, a former Stanford-educated researcher with A*Star who is now working as a taxi-driver. Being a wannabe academic myself (or at least, I wanted to be one several years back), this topic naturally hits close to home. During the course of grad school, I gradually steered my career aspirations away from academia (and it's incredible how many of my lab-mates and friends in the US feel the same way I do), and this (horror) story has done nothing to raise the desirability of academia as a long-term career in Singapore. The true reasons for Dr. Cai's dismissal from A*Star might never be known, but it appears from the article that his work was deemed unsatisfactory by an external scientific board which then recommended that his contract not be renewed.

I've always found it a little galling the insistence by universities, research institutes, etc, that quality of research is measured by such metrics as number of papers published per year, importance of journals the papers are published in (through the impact factor), the number of citations your papers receive etc. Sure, these measures do indicate to a certain extent the productivity of one's scientific work, but anyone's who's ever done a research project will know that this is not all there is to it. Different projects in different fields inherently incur different time requirements, so a certain field might naturally yield more papers than others. In addition, as Toby Ziegler put so eloquently in the episode "Eppur Si Muove" of "The West Wing", there's no telling where undirected research might take us, X-rays and Penicillin being among the two best examples. Too strict an adherence to judging research performance based on quantifiable guidelines might constrain researchers to devoting time and funds only to short-term projects that might yield papers quickly, in order to "save their jobs", but might not be the researcher's true passion, and what's the point in that? And it might even be counter-productive...work done in haste and too narrow a scope might not be necessarily be of the real practical worth that the higher-ups hope the work to be in the long run.

Sure, researchers receive funding from various sources like corporations, from taxpayers etc, and should be answerable to these entities in some way, and metrics like number of papers published are an obvious, tangible way of assessing research performance. But a seemingly inflexible way of assessing performance solely (or mainly) on these metrics, either during the award of tenure or in renewing contracts, is just the kind of thing that will send shivers up the spines of budding researchers or grad students just embarking on their PhDs. Imagine spending (or going to spend) so much time and sweat on a degree just to get into a career that could well see you jobless in middle-age.

Dr. Cai Mingjie's story is a sobering cautionary tale for all of us who are foolhardy enough to want a career in academia in today's remorseless research climate (publish or perish, indeed). My best wishes to Dr. Cai.

Pictures of Chengdu Concert

Some pictures of 静茹's concert in Chengdu. Thanks to my friend for kindly taking all these wonderful photos!