Merry Christmas, 2009

Merry Christmas, wherever you are in the world!

This year, we find ourselves in a new country, for Christmas. We didn't really expect this, last Christmas...but events led us overseas, in the course of the past year. For those who haven't been reading recently, we are now in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. This is a big city, compared to Singapore (in area and feel) and one that, we feel, has more to offer us, just now. As yet, I am new here, so I am forebearing to comment on many things, until I understand, better, what this country is all about. However, I have seen much, so far, that is promising. I think our time, here, shall prove interesting.

The biggest surprise is that Christmas is actually celebrated in Malaysia, when it is a widely known Muslim country. In every supermarket, there are Christmas trees and crackers, Christmas pudding and mince pies - and every traditional accompaniment of Christmas is available on sale. I think this is a hopeful sign for the nature of the society in which we find ourselves. It is an effort at inclusiveness that the festivals of other religions should be openly celebrated and supported. Indeed, in the newspapers, a Malaysian politician was quoted as encouraging Malaysians to spread the Christmas spirit! It is quite refreshing to see such inclusiveness. I hope it is more than skin deep, for, if it is, then Malaysia will prove to be a society that welcomes others from all over the world. I shall wait to see if this is so, in the months ahead.

The only thing that is missing from Christmas, in Malaysia, is snow. But then, I very much doubt whether Malaysia has snowed for many thousands of years, if at all. So, we shall have to do without snow, this December. However, I should note that, though White Christmases were common in my childhood, they have become rarer in the land of my birth, in recent years, since global warming took hold. Indeed, I don't think any of my children have ever seen snow. In a way, that is sad, because snow provides memories of wonder, in most childhoods of my generation. I hope, one day, then, that my children have a White Christmas and get to build their own snowman. Here's hoping.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to:http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

IMDB is the Internet Movie Database for film and tv professionals. If you would like to look at my IMDb listing for which another fifteen credits are to be uploaded, (which will probably take several months before they are accepted) please go to: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3438598/ As I write, the listing is new and brief - however, by the time you read this it might have a dozen or a score of credits...so please do take a look. My son, Ainan Celeste Cawley, also has an IMDb listing. His is found at: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3305973/ My wife, Syahidah Osman Cawley, has a listing as well. Hers is found at: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)

The Prince and the Frog.

A couple of days ago, Tiarnan, three, came across a frog in the garden. He peered down, carefully, at his local resident amphibian.

"I would kiss you," he confided to the listening frog, "but I don't know if you are toxic."

How funny. He must be weighing up all those stories of aristocrats who have been turned into frogs and await a kiss from a handsome soul, to transform them back into a human being.

So, to Tiarnan it was not a frog he met in the garden, but an inconvenienced Princess awaiting her Prince. A pity, then, for the poor Princess that this Prince knew something of frog biology and wasn't overly keen on testing whether she was of a poisonous species or not!

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to:http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

IMDB is the Internet Movie Database for film and tv professionals. If you would like to look at my IMDb listing for which another fifteen credits are to be uploaded, (which will probably take several months before they are accepted) please go to: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3438598/ As I write, the listing is new and brief - however, by the time you read this it might have a dozen or a score of credits...so please do take a look. My son, Ainan Celeste Cawley, also has an IMDb listing. His is found at: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3305973/ My wife, Syahidah Osman Cawley, has a listing as well. Hers is found at: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)

Kim Peek, Mega-Savant, dies.

Kim Peek, the internationally renowned mega-savant, has died of a heart attack. He was only 58.

Though he had a massive heart attack on Saturday morning, his death was not announced until today.

Now, I was rather surprised by his death - not because 58 year olds don't die - but because our lives had crossed, peripherally and so he seemed, therefore, so much more alive than he otherwise would have been.

Kim Peek appeared in the ITV show Superhuman Genius, along with my son, Ainan. Now, the two never met, their filming being in different continents, but they did appear in the same show. That fact gave me an awareness of Kim Peek, his life and his particular special qualities beyond that of the casual reader.

It is a far from gentle reminder of the fragility and unpredictabilty of life that Kim Peek should die the year following the TV show.

Kim Peek was primarily known for his phenomenally retentive memory and, by the end of his life, he had mastered fifteen areas, including history, geography, music, sports and literature. Though highly gifted in some ways, he was disabled in others, having poor motor skills, being unable to dress himself and having been born with a separation of both sides of his brain.

He was most famed for being the inspiration behind "Rain Man" - yet I think the real life Kim was far more interesting than the fictional character he inspired.

The world has lost a unique individual, who overcame great personal difficulties, to live a life that touched many people. He made a habit of travelling the world, to talk to large audiences and show them his gifts. In doing so, he helped change people's attitudes towards the disabled.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to:http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

IMDB is the Internet Movie Database for film and tv professionals. If you would like to look at my IMDb listing for which another fifteen credits are to be uploaded, (which will probably take several months before they are accepted) please go to: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3438598/ As I write, the listing is new and brief - however, by the time you read this it might have a dozen or a score of credits...so please do take a look. My son, Ainan Celeste Cawley, also has an IMDb listing. His is found at: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3305973/ My wife, Syahidah Osman Cawley, has a listing as well. Hers is found at: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)

The most popular internet searches on my blog.

It is bizarre what having a blog tells you about people. Most bizarre of all is what they are interested in.

I would like you to have a guess at what are the two most popular searches to arrive on my blog? Both searches have been popular for a long time, so this is not just a one off: I have been seeing them, in high prevalence, since the day I posted about their subjects, some long while ago.

What kind of thing most interests people? What concerns them most? To give yourself a better chance of getting the right answer, think of a few top answers, likely to end up on my blog.

Got them? Well, I don't know about you but I am surprised to observe that for several months now, the two top regular searches to my blog are: "What is Macaulay Culkin's net worth?" and "Is August Rush a true story?"

I would like you to further guess at what percentage these searches are, today, on my blog. Out of all the infinite possible searches, how prevalent are these two?

Well, coincidentally, they are both at 5% of my visitors' searches, today. There is fluctuation, however, with both reaching higher, Macaulay Culkin in particular sometimes reaching two or three times that prevalence.

Anyway, I find the situation both incredible, and revealing. Firstly, a lot of people are very curious about the net worth of famous individuals. It is as if they are using their "worth" as a proxy for their, well, worth (in terms of how important they are as an individual). What is very surprising in the case of Macaulay Culkin is that he hasn't done any high profile work since he was a primary school kid...and yet people still remember him and are curious about one thing: is he still rich?

As for August Rush, that tells a different kind of tale. It tells that in the modern world, people have lost sight of what is fiction and what is reality. They are not able to distinguish the two, readily, for themselves and so have to seek out online verification for their misplaced suspicions. Anyone, with a strong understanding of the real world, and a knowledge of literature would see the derivative nature of August Rush's plot and recognize it as a reworking of old fictional stories. Even had they not read those prior works, someone with a strong sense of reality and understanding of the world, would know that this could not have been based on real people. However, people nowadays are not very discerning...hence the untold numbers of searchers who think that August Rush was real, and want to find out who it was "based on".

The other thing that is notable about these searches is that they are trivial. It doesn't matter whether Macaulay Culkin is rich, or how rich. So, too, August Rush is just a minor film, telling an obviously fictional story of an unbelievable boy. It is quite derivative of both films and books and is not, therefore, a great work of art, in itself. Thus, it should not inspire the degree of interest that it does: it is not important enough. Yet, now, people don't know what is important - so they trawl the internet for the trivial.

On another note, a rather surprising note, I still get searches landing on my site, occasionally, for David Hartanto Widjaja, the Indonesian student who allegedly attacked his Singaporean lecturer and then supposedly committed suicide. I also receive searches for Singapore's two other high profile suicides: Dr Allan Ooi, who preferred death to a life of servitude working for the Singaporean armed forces and Nordin bin Mondong, who, in my view, was not paid enough to feel it was worth staying alive and threw himself, literally, to the tigers.

That people still search for these three individuals up to a year after their deaths, prompts me to marvel at the impact their passing made in Singapore. Perhaps people are shocked that so many people would consider Singapore's artificial "utopia", so disagreeable that they would rather be dead. There is a message in their choice, concerning the nature and pressures of Singaporean life...and I think anyone who has lived there, and is not a multi-millionaire Minister, would know what those pressures are.

My condolences to their families. Perhaps they will gain some consolation, should they stumble across my words, that people still care enough about their loved ones, to be searching for them, so long after the events in question. In a sense, there is hope in their interest, that not all searches on the internet are trivial: some people are actually thinking about other people and perhaps, valuing their lives.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to:http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

IMDB is the Internet Movie Database for film and tv professionals. If you would like to look at my IMDb listing for which another fifteen credits are to be uploaded, (which will probably take several months before they are accepted) please go to: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3438598/ As I write, the listing is new and brief - however, by the time you read this it might have a dozen or a score of credits...so please do take a look. My son, Ainan Celeste Cawley, also has an IMDb listing. His is found at: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3305973/ My wife, Syahidah Osman Cawley, has a listing as well. Hers is found at: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)