Young Fry of Treachery

On the passing of another year

2011-01-02T22:29:00.003+08:00

One year ago I made a list of things to do. The concrete things I mostly managed; the waffly ones were, well, waffly. "Grow in wisdom and temperance" - yeah, right. What a pompous twit I was.

Lots of things have happened (duh). I became a teacher briefly, and I hope my erstwhile students have recovered. ('Egregious' actually means "very bad", 4P; I should have corrected myself a long time ago damnit. I mixed it up with 'gregarious' as you should have figured out.) It was a short ten weeks but that time changed me. It was the scope of the responsibilities and the feeling of the sand always shifting beneath the feet that did it. It's a rare teacher indeed who's ever in total control of the situation; every lesson was a challenge, and I think it's good that I had the courage to occasionally laugh at my pretence of being in control. Some people tried so hard not to, but I think it's okay to lose face sometimes; it makes you the bigger man (or dweeb, actually).

Brandenburg. Ouch. Organizing your very own Bach concert on a whim is no joke. Who does that anyway? I learnt two things: how to apply for an Arts Fund grant, and how to kill yourself through overwork. I guess I should never have plunged in without getting a team together first. Still, on the positive side I had a chance to play with many great musician friends for the last time in a long while.

As an aside: my mom told me of a childhood connection to Brandy 2 (the concerto grosso one). Apparently when I was a kid (two years old) the opening to Brandy 2 was the theme music for the arts channel on TV, and every time it came on I'd stop whatever I was doing and listen till it was over. Guess it must have resonated on some subconscious level.

Then it was preparing for the trip and then actually getting to Yale. I can't believe I dragged myself and my mom all around New York, New Haven and a bit of Boston. And then OIS (fun times) and then the few days before classes started, and then living for the weekend every week, and midterm season, midterm season redux, Thanksgiving break, reading week, finals, flying back home. Went by just like that. I'm glad I met great people in OIS and my classes and had awesome suitemates; my term would have sucked without these little mercies. Looking back I should have partied more, and that's reflected in my grades.

So since I live by terms now, not years, new term's resolutions are in order. I resolve to

Party at least once (I need help for this)
Take classes I'm excited for
Keep my grades up
Stop sleeping in the 9am classes
Stop trying my luck with the rice in Morse

Happy 2011!

on leaving singapore

2010-06-16T16:25:00.003+08:00

As my departure for university nears I'm starting to get more apprehensive about it.

I think for slightly more than two years I've been buoyed along by this post-admissions-outcome glow. I was ridiculously happy - hey, who wouldn't be? - and somehow it's actually lasted this long. But now as I'm having to settle visa forms, flight and hotel bookings, and thinking about setting up a bank account... rooming with a total stranger probably from a culture quite dissimilar to mine... the laundry situation O.o... it's getting kinda daunting.

And let's not forget that my brains have rotted. I can understand about 30% of an average Chinese text. I've done nothing to my mind in NS except attempting to plough through Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy and learning enough Cyrillic to read the labels of vodka bottles. I can barely remember all the math and economics that I did and that's going to be awfully important later on.

I'm flying out of Singapore on National Day. When I booked the flight I downplayed the obvious significance - after all it's just a date. But the significance looms ever larger and it seems a very decisive up-yours to Singapore, and although the whole notion of patriotism is ridiculous to me I wonder whether I'm quite ready to leave the place I grew up in. It's all making me feel quite conflicted.

Come to think of it, once Yale said yes NUS never had a chance. When I did the US apps nearly 3 years ago I'd only applied to those schools that I thought were definitely better than NUS (the economists will recognise an application of ordinal utility here), so when an offer came along it seemed natural to take it. Looking back at it I think it was kinda self-centred. I know it'll be tough for my mom.

All things considered, there was a time when I really looked forward to independence and moving out of Singapore for ever and ever. Now I'm not quite so sure.

sporadic update #5

2010-06-15T10:47:00.006+08:00

I thought about giving my writing some impetus the last time but that hasn't turned out well. It's been about four weeks since I last wrote. On the plus side, there are now a few things to report!

For instance, my badminton skills have improved significantly (from zero) ever since the geog guys started playing badminton fortnightly.

I've changed the default font on my blog to Franklin Gothic Medium because according to a survey on a site I just found (code style) it's the most common un-fugly sans serif font on Windows systems. Myriad Web isn't even represented in the survey, so this means no one apart from myself has been reading the blog the way it's supposed to look. Fail.

I finally went down to books actually a few weeks back, with adam. It's a lovely place - I want my house to look like that when I get one. Shelves everywhere O.o and lots of gems I never thought I'd find in Singapore. I got George Perec's Life: A User's Manual and a collection of Roger McGough's poetry (including Summer with Monika). That place made my day.

There've been three birthday parties that I've been to since my release from hermithood (organising the brandenburg project) - Adam's, Jing Xun's and Brenda's. I got slightly drunk at the first, thoroughly wasted at the second, and we got peck wasted at the third by playing 猜拳 (cai1 quan2, guess fist - or "the finger-guessing game", as Google Translate tells me). All good fun.

Sidetrack: Amazingly 猜拳 has its own page in the Chinese Wikipedia (and even more amazingly, I can still read about 80% of it). Apparently it can refer to scissors paper stone (rock paper scissors) or the one where you guess the number of fists open at the time (which was the one we played for drinks). Both are documented in Ming Dynasty books, the latter in the encyclopedic 五杂组. Bet you didn't know that.

I also bought a new laptop last Thursday at the PC Show (HP ProBook 4310s) on which I'm typing this blog entry now. PC Show was mad and godawfully crowded but it's always fascinating. Anyway the laptop's running Windows 7 now after I repartitioned the hard drive (a single 450GB drive is nuts) and got rid of Vista. Battery life is about 5 hours on normal typing and web-surfing, and just over the length of a normal movie for movie playback, so I'm satisfied. I've just discovered that the Chinese input on Windows 7 is a bitch though (the old XP one used to have a correction function that would give you phrases as you went along, which was a godsend; no such luck with this one). But heck, I'm not going to use Chinese in an academic context ever again.

Well that about sums it up. I had a re: mix rehearsal yesterday and will have a TPO one later today, but that's it. Anyone up for coffee is welcome to contact me through the usual methods and suggest a place and time.

noteworth-less

2010-05-18T09:05:00.002+08:00

Wow it's been an incredibly long time since I updated, for the simple reason that life hasn't been that happening. I assume some people blog to give meaning to their life, others to document noteworthy stuff that's happened to them; I personally haven't felt the need for such direction, and my daily existence has become so humdrum as to be noteworth-less.

Let me give you an example - I play Civilization IV, and I've recently downloaded a new mod. This one is so arcane that it makes the vanilla game a walk in the park. As you might know, Civilization is turn-based. A 'quick' game is 700 turns; in the early game you have maybe 10 turns a minute, maybe more. By the time you reach turn 400+ (which in the 'real' timescale is the Victorian era), you're down to a turn a minute because of the 30+ computer opponents on a huge Earth map. By the time you reach about turn 600 (which is the furthest I've got on the noble difficulty setting), you're down to one turn every 3 minutes - which means the last 1/7 of the game (assuming you don't win it before that) takes 5 hours, most of which is spent staring at the screen waiting for the computer opponents' turns. I have taken to practicing completing the square while waiting, but I've reached turn 600 and in the slide towards futility I seem to have left the point of no return behind me long ago.

But I've decided to reverse the slide and turn causality on its head, in a sense. I've decided that maybe I should use blogging as an impetus to give direction to my life. I thought Facebook might replace blogging (notes, wall posts etc.) but Facebook's social activity is entirely derivative. If you don't already have an active social life then you're reduced to posting videos and links and comments on other people's videos and links. By contrast blogging is primary, original, creative in nature (at least more so than facebooking).

Let's see how long this motivation lasts; I give it two days.

weird dream came true

2010-04-09T13:02:00.000+08:00

It's been a long time...

A few months back I dreamt I wrote a letter to the Danish embassy about how Danish butter cookies always came broken in the tin.

(It's a fetish of mine that whenever I open a tin of Danish butter cookies, I eat all the broken ones and pack all the whole ones into airtight glass jars.)

And they wrote back to me offering to give me a tin of unbroken butter cookies.

-----

Today I opened a tin of Danish butter cookies and not one was broken. =)

2 weeks at RI

2010-01-15T21:37:00.000+08:00

I've finished two weeks of my one-term stint back at that school in Bishan – yeah that one of happy and not-so-happy teenage memories – and seen lots. Some encouraging, some not so.

First of all, it's been a steep learning curve standing up there and doing your darnedest to keep order while delivering the content you're supposed to go through. I think it's a gazillion times easier if you're doing math or the sciences or even history – at least you have readings, handouts, and a fairly comprehensive syllabus to work with. Of course there's a syllabus for English as well but my guys' abilities differ so wildly that it's a huge challenge holding the class together. Some of them have problems stringing a sentence together and keeping the grammatical number or tense agreement. Sadly, this is especially but not exclusively true of the foreign scholars. I wonder whether standards have slipped and if so, why.

And one of the saddest and scariest things about the modern age is that reading and writing (in a sustained, intellectual fashion) are skills that aren't valued any more. It's scary because I'm teaching things that hinge vitally on command of these skills. The people I'm teaching now grew up with the Internet. The younger ones were born in the year I got Internet access – that's 56kbps dialup, by the way. They've known iPods and MSN for as long as they can remember, and they've been on Facebook possibly as long as me. A whole generation of people has suddenly migrated away from books, magazines and newspapers, to grow up on blogs, podcasts and tweets – a shift of that speed and scale is alarming. I honestly believe that the piecemeal nature of information on the Internet has led directly to an impairment of our ability to store and process knowledge. Is it just me, or have kids these days (in fact, all of us) become dumber on average? Is there any way of knowing?

I'm also stunned by some of the attitudes to learning and to authority that I've seen. To be fair, they're only manifested in a tiny minority, and perhaps they aren't worse than in my time – perhaps I led a sheltered GEP-humanz life and I'd never even seen the kind of stuff that happened in the rest of RI (not to mention outside). But a few assignments I've been handed have shocked far more experienced teachers than myself – that is indicative of the level of seriousness and pride with which they treat their academic work.

As some of you may know, RISE changed hands recently, and I've been absolutely shocked by the nonchalance – indeed the slapdash attitudes – shown by some of the younger players towards their new conductor. I'm seeing ridiculously poor standards of musical and rehearsal discipline, and sec 2s speaking out of turn, talking back to their seniors and teachers. Putting it bluntly, they are perfectly happy to waste the time and energy and goodwill of their betters. I am disgusted. Or do they know not what they do? If this is true of other CCAs as well, then I think it's time to bring tekan camps back.

That is not to say that I haven't seen good things. The good thing about being in RI is that there are always brilliant students with a flair for the language who really demonstrate superlative achievement and maturity. I've seen a few extremely promising orators and writers already. But even then, many of them aren't living up to their potential. The level of energy that I've felt is rather out of proportion to the level of achievement I've seen. True, they're only 15 going on 16, and they're incredibly distracted and unfocused as us guys often are; true, as teachers and seniors it's impossible for us to expect the guys to perform at their best all the time. Perhaps it's early days yet.

It's early days indeed – just ten days into my job I've weathered day after day of teachers' throat (a perennial job hazard), late nights (8pm and more, thanks to the enthusiasm of the RISE exco, which I'm loathe to suppress), and rowdy classes (sad to say I don't have a 'stage presence' like Mrs Smith!) I sometimes look at myself and wonder what right I have to suppose that I know better than my classes, to pretend that I have anything useful to share. But then I come across some guy or other who's dumb or rude or screwed up enough that I feel like smashing his noisehole – that happens about once a day – and then all's right with the world again. Though I haven't smashed anyone's noisehole (yet).

New Year resolutions

2009-12-31T23:59:00.004+08:00

I resolve

to live out the year.
to not use powerpoint presentations unless absolutely necessary.
to use only sans-serifs in print except for titles.
to lower my expectations.
to raise my standards (not a contradiction).
to save more and drink less.
to do more and mope less.
to read cervantes' don quixote.
to keep on writing and writing and writing.
to meet deadlines.
to stop depending on others so much.
to never stop trying.
to grow in wisdom and temperance.
to never be cowed.
to learn when to stop.

Happy 2010!

Christmas 2009

2009-12-25T18:45:00.004+08:00

Life is boring as bollocks. I was hungry and nauseous throughout dinner; that's weird. Don't know if alcohol will make me feel good =D or throw up =( wtf.

* * *

(15 minutes later) Still feeling nauseous. This is strange.

Okay never mind. Some targets for the near future:

Finish the pile of books next to me, and Don Quixote and T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets which I don't have yet
Play or listen to a performance of the Brandenburg Concertos (I need help with this)
Be less crabby
Revert to Singapore time zone (GMT +8)
Waste less time on facebook and random surfing
Catch up with old friends (try, at least)
Don't screw up my job

Happy Sol Invictus!

Concert Review – OMM/WAYO 14th Dec

2009-12-15T00:46:00.000+08:00

I wish I had played in this concert, honestly. Other concerts, not so; certainly not the Rach or the Rimsky-Korsakov programmes and probably not the Mahler ones coming up next year either. But I can't help but rue the fact that this is the second time in my musical life there was an opportunity to play the Planets, and I missed it (the first one when I was too noob to be in SNYO, years back).

We saw some pretty solid playing, and I was impressed that the combined orchestra rose to the occasion. The brasses especially were fabulous, and milked the loud bits for all they were worth. I'm sure they enjoyed the mambo from West Side Story. I thought the basses did pretty well too, especially a couple of prominent passages in Holst's Saturn.

Fabulous solos from Ike, Zhaohan and especially Beverly. I'd forgotten that she was back, didn't recognise her at first and was absolutely stunned by the solos in the first couple of movements of the Planets (I think Venus); I was wondering where in Singapore did OMM manage to dig out this cellist! The quartet in West Side Story (was it Somewhere? or a later section?) did well too, as did the harps (especially the first encore).

A couple of disappointing areas though – though I'm not familiar with the score, I felt that the tempo changes in Mars (the contrast between the opening/final tempo and the quieter middle section) were rather jarring. There was too wide a discrepancy and when the orchestra went back to tempo primo it seemed more wrenched and forced than necessary. Mercury almost fell apart I think at or around the first violin solo – I think there was a missing part or section there, and it offset everyone rather. The opening tempo for West Side Story was rather controlled too, almost lacking in energy; I think everyone was too cautious there. Or perhaps it was a long programme.

Having the choir directly facing the audience in Neptune – rather than backstage as directed by Holst – seemed to make it a tad too prominent and jarring too, and the blue lighting merely cheapened the experience! The ethereal, otherworldly quality of the writing was completely unexploited. Having said that though, I guess there must have been reasons for having the choir visible to the audience; it was their only part in the entire concert and I'm sure they appreciated the visual exposure.

But these were minor details, and generally it was an excellent effort on the part of the players! I appreciated the thoughtful choice of the second encore, and I must admit I sang along to 'Land of Hope and Glory'. I don't think many people know the lyrics so here they are:

Land of Hope and Glory, Mother of the Free,
How shall we extol thee, who are born of thee?
Wider still and wider shall thy bounds be set;
God, who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet,
God, who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet.

hong kong.

2009-12-09T21:40:00.001+08:00

Been busy prepping for the Mendelssohn concert and the Hong Kong trip along with lots of misc stuff so haven't been posting. I hope that will change because I sense my meagre readership dwindling still further, and also because I need to practise writing more.

Hong Kong was fun; there were lots to see and do and wonder at. The pace of life there is visibly faster - in the MTR stations people walk at twice the speed of Singaporeans, there's hardly any conversation, and people frown at you if you don't keep right on the escalator. The buildings are set into the hillside at crazy angles and heights, and the bus routes are insanely long windy single-lane routes up 30-degree slopes – terribly scenic but hell to drive, I'm sure. Huge respec' for HK bus drivers.

The language barrier was surprising. In reality most Hongkongers know very little English – either that or they're uncomfortable with speaking it. You could almost tell the people apart by what they spoke – Hongkongers spoke Cantonese, PRC Chinese spoke Mandarin, and if it was English chances are it would be a Singaporean tourist. We managed to get by with Mandarin but sometimes it was amusing, like when peck tried for 10 minutes to get warm water at the dim sum restaurant. And apparently 白开水 means something totally different there.

I observed that the people there aren't all that friendly or helpful – certainly a far cry from Bangkok! If the waitresses didn't understand you, sometimes they'd just leave after a few seconds, or treat you like dumbasses. At the hotel reception it seemed that the smiley badge they wore on their blouses was supposed to make up for the lack of facial expression. The attendants at Ocean Park hardly smiled either – they generally looked bored. And worst of all, the taxi driver we got on the trip out of the airport gave us some Chinese Yuan coins and a Thai 10-baht note in change, shortchanging us nearly HKD100. That was a positively distasteful experience.

I came back with nearly HKD1000 left because things were as expensive there, if not more, and the variety was atrocious – I didn't see a single running shoe that I really liked at all the factory outlets we visited, for instance. It was probably winter season but still, I expected better.

We went to Macau too and it was quite a lovely place – crappy 60s-70s slummy tenements next to gleaming hotels and beautifully-preserved colonial Portuguese architecture. And of course the egg tarts – we only ate two each though we swore to get through ten. They were quite awesome but the back-street one was better than the one from the touristy-looking bakery (I think it's called Koi Kee Bakery). We went to the Venetian too; it was a glittering, glitzy spectacle of sheer opulence, a monument to the power of money. The ceiling paintings and carpets were admittedly awesome, but the amount of it was so overwhelming that to my mind it was in very poor taste.

Oh and of course we stayed up late nights to talk cock but I'm not going into that. Suffice it to say that many secrets were learnt.

What else can I say? Hong Kong positively invites comparisons with Singapore; they're both majority-Chinese, extremely urban, modern Asian cities. It is huge though, compared to Singapore, and the people move much faster. The buildings are ridiculously tall, and mostly quite haphazard and dingy – the view from our hotel window was of a highly unedifying high-rise block whose whitewashed exterior had turned part cream, part rust-stained from age and neglect. The shopping was disappointing, possibly because we didn't go to the right places. Weather was pretty good (cool and mostly dry) but I was wheezing most nights from the pollution and low temperatures. I can certainly feel the extent of government microplanning in Singapore and for once I'm glad of it.

Now back to life!

Thoughts on ORD

2009-11-11T11:14:00.001+08:00

I can't say I miss the place. I mean, that sounds terribly perverse, like Ost-nostalgie (nostalgia for East Germany) or Stockholm Syndrome (where hostages develop sympathy for their abductors) or something.

To me, NS was all about a suspension of normality. "Normal" life processes (okay, for someone like me) like going to school, mucking about at home, relaxing on the comp/piano and reading were suspended, or disrupted. Instead we had extras and staying in and avoiding the wrath of senior commanders who could dig up any damn excuse to give you extras.

They say that NS teaches you about life. I contend that this is only true because half the population of Singapore has gone through NS. The attitudes of NS permeate our society, and some people stick with them throughout their life. For instance, when you have 2 years to serve, you go through it with the "heck it" attitude cos you know that no matter what, ORD will come. But that isn't true of life, or a job - or at least, it isn't a healthy mindset, because when that happens then you're living only for death, or retirement, or a promotion, when what matters is actually the process and how it grows you.

I hated NS partly because of the discrepancy between the high-minded ideals it claimed to embody (defence of the motherland yada yada) and the sheer small-mindedness and hypocrisy of the people in it. Some people had a ridiculously inflated sense of self-importance - look at me, I outrank you, I'm gonna make you buy lunch/do my work for me just cos I can.

We had a running gag about Karma in my unit. For some people, the bad karma they accumulate just doesn't come back to get them - maybe the dice of Fate are loaded. But in the Ranking Exercise of humanity they'll get a D grade. Justice is served.

I hated my training days. Always tired, kinda hungry, never enough sleep (except at ETI, kind of, sometimes). And the bloody SOCs. And I can't shake the fact that most of my friends went to OCS and ended up getting $300 bucks more than me a month for the last year. Yes it reinforced the inferiority complex thing that I have.

Though I guess all things considered, an admin posting's pretty okay. And I can't say that the explosives weren't fun!

But mostly I hated it because I ended up in a damn boring job. Damn DAMN boring, like so boring that I even started proofreading e-texts on Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders. 60+ pages in a day of proofreading - most in English but when I got bored I did a few pages of some French stuff and a few more pages on Heinrich Schliemann's Troy excavations, I think that was in German. That's the depths of boredom I plumbed in my NS days. Other people smoked, I did proofreading for Project Gutenberg. I also donated something like 10,000 grains of rice on freerice.com, playing French vocabulary.

I started drinking a bit but not clubbing so I think that's okay.

The people were mostly pretty good though - I mean fellow NSFs. Sure you meet some weirdos and lousy fkers but most were okay. Some were good to talk to and fun to hang out with and I hope to keep in touch with you guys.

Otherwise it's been a long 22 months and I'm just relieved that normality is resumed.

haven't been posting

2009-10-31T19:11:00.002+08:00

Haven't been doing very much at all lately. been stoning at home, playing Civ IV to death and then reading a bit of Maimonides' Guide for the Perplexed (deep theology - notes on the Old Testament!) and other random books & articles without imbibing any of it at all. Also listening to Sergio Mendes' album Fool on the Hill, which has got me hooked!

Also been drinking rather more than I'm used to, but I guess it's ok (a bit of vodka or whiskey or irish cream, 3-4 nights a week, not gonna kill me). I need an authority to come over to my place and try my vodka, cos I suspect that some Schrodingerian trickery is going on and it's turning into paint thinner. ^^

I got silver for IPPT a couple of days back, which is quite awesome since I haven't really trained and I never got anywhere near there before all this NS shit.

A bad thing: I'm not feeling any motivation to get intellectually stimulated even though it's all around me. Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy is still on my table and I haven't touched it for a couple of weeks. I read Cherian George's collection of essays Singapore: The Air-Conditioned Nation, and I saw some really interesting points but I haven't felt tempted to go back and dig them up again.

I need to ask the right questions while reading, and take notes, and things, like back in school. A to-do list might help!

Hope this ennui will pass.

How to talk about books you haven't read

2009-10-08T18:24:00.002+08:00

I came across this book How to talk about books you haven't read by Pierre Bayard, a Paris University lit professor (it's translated from French). It was funny and I wish I'd read it earlier – could've saved me some mugging for A level Lit eh

One hugely insightful comment I read was (I'm paraphrasing; can't remember it word for word, obviously) that every act of reading is also an act of non-reading. A counter-gesture is what he called it. To have picked up a particular book from a shelf is to have made a decision not to read all the other books that exist. I forget, though, what conclusion was drawn from this, but no doubt it was deep, for it impressed me.

He also introduces a taxonomy of books

UB: book unknown to me
SB: book I have skimmed
HB: book I have heard about, and
FB: book I have read but forgotten

And for HB, he creates the symbols ++, +, -, and --, for what he has heard about them – extremely positive to extremely negative in that order. Brilliant.

Anyway, How to talk about books you haven't read is an SB for me; for those who're interested it's available at Borders, and there're more reviews here:

Times Online
Guardian
NY Times

On MC

2009-10-06T15:42:00.001+08:00

MCs are awesome. I had a fever and a bit of strep throat yesterday but the fever cleared up in 4 hours and the strep throat was gone by last night - and I have today to enjoy myself lol.

nugget of wisdom

2009-09-27T10:00:00.003+08:00

from my mom:

Things look much better at IKEA than they do when they're at home.

in response to this limited-edition bookcase we saw yesterday - i have the one with the ordinary pine finishing =(

FML

2009-09-14T22:25:00.000+08:00

that's my thought for today.

update

2009-09-10T22:53:00.001+08:00

I haven't been updating regularly for the past few months now, as have most of the people I know. There's nothing edifying about life, as usual. I got called back to Army Open House for road marshalling Friday-Monday so I literally burnt the last weekend under the sun – I'm still recovering my normal skin tone, and my arms are starting to peel now that my forehead's done. Not pleasant.

First time I'd been to Joo Koon MRT – that place is really the edge of the known universe for me heh. I walked past some of the foreign workers' apartments and was overcome by the appalling smell of wet socks and sweat, like after field camp but way worse. I can't imagine how they live. There were clotheslines everywhere but otherwise it seemed to be neat – probably because these people live life so lightly, no real (physical) baggage to encumber them. I wonder how on earth they could live in there. The smell alone was surely a sign of the conditions inside.

These are real Singaporean slums, tucked away from public view by sheer geographical misfortune (just some factories, the end of the PIE and a couple of camps nearby). It strikes me now how little consideration we show to these people, who are after all here to earn a decent living just like the rest of us. Just because they're foreigners, they've been relegated to the edge of our national consciousness for too long, and it's time that they are acknowledged.

-----

On another note it was good to meet up with the geog guys over the weekend, too. It's been a very long time, and we talked for ages.

One thing that Wally asked and that I didn't address properly (I'm not sure whether any of the geog guys come here!) was whether you can appreciate music without playing an instrument. I don't believe so, at least not ~~with regards to~~ as regards classical music and maybe jazz. It's still surprisingly often that I realise things about music I hadn't seen before; it actually wasn't too long ago that I started paying attention to things like tempo and expression markings, and making sense of them, and once that happened I found pieces that I'd been playing wrongly all the while just because of some screwy recording I'd heard.

I'm sure, though, that it's different for other genres of music, like most modern pop which has a fairly standard set of instruments and lyrics, and even more so for Christian music where the whole point is its accessibility and inclusiveness – all you have to do is pick up a guitar and start doing your praise-the-lord stuff (that isn't a criticism). Different sorts of music simply have different purposes, functions, even audience intended, and I can't say I'm an expert.

-----

I've set myself a pretty ambitious reading programme, too; lots of the "classics". I'm not so sure how relevant they are though – some of Plato is awfully frustrating because of how careless they are about semantics. It'll be a long hard slog to ORD and beyond. I've long given up expecting any fulfilment from NS anyway.

Ah screw it I'm gonna sleep.

the banality of life is starting to piss me off.

2009-08-27T20:49:00.000+08:00

There's nothing happening in my life. Nothing big anyway.

I did think I would start reading Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy on the computer (it's online somewhere; I've lost the link) but it is really tough going. I'm the sort of person who still needs to hold books in his hands.

I did start re-reading Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance today. It's part On-The-Road-esque travellogue, part philosophical rambling, part ego-tripping. I'm sure he has something very significant and meaningful to say about rhetoric and quality and the pursuit of excellence; I'm just not sure what.

What else? Thanks to the TPO meeting I found a new restaurant to take people to. It's called Curry Favor, 2 blocks down from Raffles City, and they do Japanese-style curry. The tenderloin beef that I had was pretty good - although it seemed more like beef stew to me.

There's a bottle of Baileys at home that's going (relatively) fast thanks to my valiant efforts.

It disturbs me that people know that hundreds and thousands of bright young Singaporeans have left this place and no one's asking why. Maybe they should set up a Panel or something.

Uniquely Singapore!

2009-08-20T22:17:00.000+08:00

Where's the compassion in our "fine city"?

A short summary: this homeless guy who was sleeping in a tent at East Coast Park without a permit got picked up by some National Parks ranger and ended up being fined $800 - going to jail for 4 days because he couldn't pay. "In court on Tuesday, Noor was asked to produce his Identity Card or passport but he said that he had lost both items. It prompted District Judge Mr Shaiffudin Saruwan to retort in jest: 'I suggest you use a bicycle chain to tie yourself to a tree or you may lose yourself as well.'"

At this very moment District Judge Shaiffudin Saruwan has made me so very proud to be Singaporean. He should have sent him to jail even longer so that at least the guy could've enjoyed a few extra days of decent shelter.

On a more serious note, wtf? In that callous remark where was the respect and compassion due a human to another human? Was the judge lost in the contemplation of his wit?

In my view that remark was incredibly degrading, unnecessarily cruel and offensive. Surely this is not what we mean by the phrase 'to pass judgement'.

Sack this dude already.

-.-

2009-08-17T10:43:00.004+08:00

Well I've fallen out of the habit of writing regular posts and these last couple of months have been pretty quiet. Just to reassure you guys that I'm still alive and posting, some thoughts:

I ran 21km in 2 hours 12 mins woohoo! Alright it's not fantastic but I think it's pretty good for a first try.

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People should be educated about the difference between (ethical) right and wrong and (factual) right and wrong. If you think about it, the confusion between the two is one of the main reasons why bigotry exists.

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I'm very disappointed at the maturity of political and social discourse in Singapore. I read the Online Citizen (TOC) and some local blogs semi-regularly, and the comments are highly unedifying. Usually on one side it's just inane and unsophisticated government bashing, while on the other we have those equally mindless cult-of-PAP fanatics. Why is no more effort being expended in being thoughtful and reasoned?

I think Kenneth Jeyaratnam's National Day message was a step in the right direction: we have got to recognise that yes the PAP has brought us economic development but no there's more to it than just GDP.

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Poets and authors and playwrights in Singapore have got to start asking the difficult questions: why else do they exist? Entertainment?

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What on earth was our foreign ministry thinking when they said they were "happy" that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was granted amnesty for half her sentence (1.5 years now) and that she will be under house arrest instead of being imprisoned? Oh the tender mercies of Myanmar's military government. Is she now expected to be grateful?And does the foreign service not have the balls to tell Myanmar their conduct is unacceptable? Or do our arms manufacturers really need their dirty money?

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I am absolutely enthralled by John Bayless's reinterpretations of Beatles songs in the style of Bach. Why is this genius not more widely heard?

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I think TPO, OMM and re:mix have got to come together and talk. They're cannibalising players off each other, and there's no way our amateur music scene can support so many groups in the state it's in right now. Music-making here could be so much better.

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From a comment I posted on someone else's blog some time ago:

Any particular set of values, of necessity, excludes others that don't agree with them. The point is that tolerance and secularism, by definition, exclude the least. Consider this statement: "the only thing I can't tolerate is intolerance".
To describe someone else as heathen is as good as saying: I am morally right, you are wrong, and therefore beneath me. It is an elitism of morality.

On National Day, 2009

2009-08-09T22:16:00.001+08:00

August is the crudest month,
festooning lamp-posts with dead banners,
dulling memory and desire, stirring
tired people
HEART TO HEART
HAND IN HAND
REACHING OUT
heart in hand
hand in mouth;
collective delusion.
April kept us warm - sweltering -
running for the blessed air-con,
defying nature
with a little touch of Siberia.

*

Subtexts keep us alive,
help us remember who we are -
This is home, truly
(kid you not)
Where I know I
(am legally bound to) be;
Where my dreams wait for me
(in my bunk after I'm back from outfield)
Where the river always flows
(damn RCOs give you crotch-rot).

But there are many amnesiacs
in Singapore. Where there's money,
it pays to forget.

*

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT
Got Girl Got Boy, Stop Fucking.
Tie Your Tubes, Then Carry On.
Don't Tie Your Tubes, We Need Your Babies.
Gays: Don't Fuck, We Only Want Your Money.

no self-contradiction at all.

*

I heard two housewives chatting -
Did you know, my last maid cheat my money
when she go to the market
so I send her back - Aiyah that's nothing;
I caught my last maid talking
to another one from her homeland,
so I dun let her go to market anymore,
Budden one day dunno why she fall down
while cleaning the windows! Aiyoh, bopian,
get another one lor. Lucky thing
corona say accident.

*

Does your heart bleed too?
Or are you one of those who,
after dining at Ministry of Food,
clubbing at Ministry of Sound,
wrinkle your noses at the Banglas
on the bus from the Ministry of Smell;
they who built your flats, your offices,
your lifts that stop on every floor
on the sweat of their broken backs
in the hope of buying a better life
one-tenth as good as your own?
Did you forget their humanity?
Did you stop to count the cost
of broken lives, O Singapore?

No, careless sentimentality costs money;
self-doubt is a loss-making business.
Didn't you learn that in your management course?

No, I studied arts,
the best way to disappoint my parents.

*

I see flags hanging along corridors,
under windowsills, twisted into
vague memories of themselves by the wind.
Don't they look like bedsheets? -
red blood, five white dots and a smear of man-seed
from the few times the newlywed couple
tried to make love for the greater good,
the survival of the motherland,
the smear when he didn't know how to do it.

In sex-ed the motherland only taught him not to have sex;
presumably divine inspiration
or porn would take care of the rest.

*

And under the grey fog of a Sumatran haze,
A crowd flowed by the Singapore River, so many;
I had not thought money had undone so many.
Unreal City, dry-eyed in the air-con
trooping out for lunch and a coffee
one desperate hour, one desperate scramble
past the quaint-hatted Japanese tourists
posing with the quaint-hatted bronze statues
of bronzed rickshaw-pullers, coolies,
now long dead; a grotesque spectacle
proudly brought to you by the STB,
in collaboration with the EDB.

*

You never give me your money,
You only give me your funny poems.

*

Who will sing of you, O Singapore?
Who will tell the stories of the land,
the million useless things -
the old Tembusu on the grounds
of the shadowed yellow house at the junction -
when the few scattered survivors from old Singapore
are gone? Who will hear the echoes
of the past in the names
of places that all look the same?
Singapore you killed Calliope
and the clay of your soil
and the bricks of your flats
are red with her blood
and the blood of the people you forgot.

*

The URA's motto: Leave No Headstone Unturned.
I still remember the serene peace
of Bidadari, the scented breeze
under the age-old trees;
it was the breath of a place
that knew its time had come.

*

Singapore I waited in the corner
of the Japanese tourists' photographs,
daring your river to swallow me whole
and make me forget.

But no Lethean waters came to meet me,
only the still waters that one man's vision calmed,
and people dead to me flowing past me
on their way to oblivion and yesterday;
they know where they're going.
They wear the same quiet optimism -
a death-mask.

And when they die, they leave behind
nothing. No memories, no whiff of regret,
no sadly-missed sweet breath,
just a chequebook and a jar of ashes,
stuffed into a maze of urns stretching
up and away as far as the eye can see.
When they die, who will sing of their stories?

*

Sweet river run softly,
there is no one left to listen.

-----

This poem was 2 days in the gestation, 8th and 9th August 2009. I'm of course greatly indebted to T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, Allen Ginsberg's America, and indeed the entire canon of Greek and other classic literature. You may of course hear echoes of many other works in it. Thanks also to Zhaohan for looking at an early draft, and Cheng for a very encouraging review. Adam I wish you could've read it in the process, but oh well.

America, by Allen Ginsberg

2009-08-09T13:11:00.000+08:00

A sound recording of Allen Ginsberg reading a draft of his poem "America" in 1956.

Walking Away

2009-07-14T22:07:00.003+08:00

It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day-
A sunny day with the leaves just turning,
The touch-lines new-ruled - since I watched you play
Your first game of fotball, then, like a satellite
Wrenched from its orbit, go drifting away

Behind a scatter of boys. I can see
You walking away from me towards the school
with the pathos of a half-fledged thing set free
Into a wilderness, the gait of one
Who finds no path where the path should be.

That hesitant figure, eddying away
Like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem,
Has something I never quite grasp to convey
About nature's give-and-take - the small, the scorching
Ordeals which fire one's irresolute clay.

I had worse partings, but none that so
Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly
Saying what God alone could perfectly show-
How selfhood begins with a walking away,
And love is proved in the letting go.

- Cecil Day-Lewis

enthu but tired

2009-07-12T22:49:00.002+08:00

I think the Soldier's Tale counts as one of the most shiok concerts I've ever played in. Mentally and physically it really felt just right, I was all psyched up and everything, and I think (I hope!) I didn't let any of the other players down. There were passages that I'd never got right before, that somehow magically fell into place in concert.

Anyhow, to bed!

this blog is facing obsolescence

2009-07-11T09:35:00.003+08:00

argharagaragargh-boom-doomph-prrrt.

I've been busy. Busy-wheezy-dizzy-busy.

Been reading Dante's Divine Comedy too. It's fascinating. I think it should be illustrated and made into a kids' 365-bedtime-story edition. I mean, 3.6 days per canto is pretty generous. Make it 300 days, give or take a few. It should be required reading, honestly, for people who want to live good human lives. You can take it religiously or non-religiously, but without a doubt it is one of the most enduring works of all time because it deals with the eternal and the ineffable.

I think Sarah Palin is her very own character assasin, and possibly at the top of her game. And it's awesome that she's taken herself out of politics. This is obviously political darwinism at work here. I think Michael Palin must be cursing the great-great-granduncle of his who decided to move to Alaska.

I wish I had more time to re-read Douglas Adams and read Kurt Vonnegut and find more humorists to pick up. The really good humorists put humanity on trial, and find it sadly wanting. Look at The Hitchhiker's Guide: you have 2 befuddled people (left over after the Vogons evaporate the Earth) and a whole bunch of amiable but clueless aliens, wandering around time and the universe with an irritatingly sentient spaceship, and they somehow manage to avoid dying without really knowing how. They are all social twits in different ways. The premise of H2G2 is actually surprisingly like Noah's Ark, come to think of it, except Arthur and Trillian/Tricia don't end up repopulating the Earth, there's no God, and the whole focus is the ark. H2G2 should also be read to kids, so that they develop a healthy sense of the surreal.

Most people who don't read enough become idiots. Life is a struggle against idiocy. Nirvana is what you reach when you get an uncluttered perspective, when your mind is finally free from prepackaged judgements and mental straitjackets.

I'll leave you with some quotes:

Words have the power to both destroy and heal. When words are both true and kind, they can change our world. - The Buddha (apocryphal)

I should never have believed that death could have unmade so many souls. - Dante, Inferno, trans. Mandelbaum

The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow... Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something. - Kurt Vonnegut, A Man without a Country.

Chrome OS

2009-07-08T22:13:00.002+08:00

[Sources here, here and here.]

Google's launching a new operating system based on Chrome, evidently aimed at hitting Microsoft where it really hurts. At first it does seem like a game-breaker: to run an entire OS and all your programs from a browser. And admittedly it does look enticing - after all the future of the computer is the internet.

But I can't help thinking that this is history repeating itself. First, we had command-line-based OSes. I guess most of my generation isn't familiar with DOS, but my family was an early adopter when it came to computers and I used it for probably 2-3 years when I was a kid.

And then came Windows 3.1, which came with a delightful tutorial demonstrating things like how to use the mouse, and windowed applications - believe it or not, applications weren't always either full-screen or boxes with the minimize/restore/exit boxes at the top-right corner! - and things like check-boxes and drop-down menus. I remember a portion of the tutorial where you could do something like choose different flavours of ice-cream and toppings and it would calculate the number of calories for that serving. Really unimpressive now but then it was quite something.

And then Windows 95 introduced the Start button and the Taskbar, another significant leap forward. (And it was also much less of an eyesore!) The Internet came along around this time too, and with it Netscape. Netscape was my first and primary browser for a long time, before I reluctantly moved back to IE because Netscape 7 was intolerably unstable.

Then came Firefox (Firebird at first) and tabbed browsing, and then I started using Opera (which I still stick to) and mouse gestures (which I cannot live without, now), and Chrome came along late last year - and now Chrome OS.

Come to think of it, tabbed browsing is awfully similar to a taskbar - they're visual ways of swapping between pages or applications. As for web applications, they've been around since javascript and flash, and nowadays with Java and all the different scripting languages you can get incredible functionality packaged neatly in a single webpage. Gmail for instance - a pretty good example of packaging combined with sophisticated scripting underneath.

But it should be pointed out this is simply a reworking of the old situation. Where once we had an OS reading programming code to display applications onscreen, now we have an OS reading code to display a web browser, which reads yet more code to display web applications, streaming videos, flash games and the like.

So now that we can spend nearly all our computer time on a web browser, it kind of makes sense to cut out the OS entirely - to make the browser the OS, as Google plans to do. Google seems to have a plan to take over everything, just that this new Chrome OS idea really isn't as revolutionary as it's being made out to be.

If you don't have programming experience or know next to nuts about computers, I guess all this would be lost on you. So to navigate away from this page, you might as well click here.

playing stravinsky

2009-06-30T23:10:00.002+08:00

Just some thoughts here.

Playing in The Soldier's Tale is really turning out to be quite an experience. For one, it's my first time playing under Mr Lim Yau. So far I've never even met him; only ever heard stories about how strict he was in YO and his fearsome reputation as a conductor. And being one of 7 players (and the most noob!) I think quite a bit of his attention has landed on me -.-

Of course it's been a challenge to meet the expectations and demands that he has, and in trying to meet them I've grown, musically and mentally. It takes some mental stamina to count the twisted rhythms that Stravinsky writes.

It's also an experience to see, first-hand, how a piece as complex as this is put together at rehearsals. At first I was just practising my part - little dismembered rhythmic or melodic motifs, sometimes just 3 or 4 notes repeated 30+ times - but then over the rehearsals I've grown quite a good sense of where and how I fit into the big picture; how, for instance, some of my notes fit in or trigger a dialogue with trombone, or how I double a bassoon line for a bar then start harmonising.

I've also realised just how vital a bass line can be. I literally set the pace for quite a few of the earlier movements, and everyone - even the conductor - follows. If the tempo's too slow, it gets sluggish, the momentum's lost, violin bows don't slice the strings just right and they end up hitting false notes or things like that; if it's too fast everyone's racing along, out of breath; if it's erratic, people seize onto tempi convenient for themselves (and different from everyone else) and the whole thing falls apart. That's a huge responsibility.

I think I've been extremely fortunate that everyone's been very patient, especially Mr Lim. And in terms of playing chamber music, I've probably learnt more from this piece than anything else.

Anyhow, it's shaping up to be an awesome concert.

George Lim does it again

2009-06-29T20:49:00.003+08:00

Frolicking gymnasts' bare antics a real eyesore
I TOOK my preschool daughter to Bishan Sports Hall last Saturday morning for her weekly gymnastic training. There were women and children there for various activities. In their midst was a team of seven young men and their coach using the gymnastic equipment.
From the start of the team's routine, five young men were practically semi-nude. They were bare-chested and wore loosely fitted knee-length trunks that exposed their pelvic bones below the waistline. They strutted and pranced in their scant garments that covered only the anatomy between the lower waist and the kneecaps.
The team frolicked and tumbled in the hall, oblivious to the parents and children around them. I grimaced as they swung vigorously on the pommel horse, and risked slipping out of their loose trunks. Even worse, as they gripped the rings and the parallel bars, it did not take much gravity to expose their pubic area to the children. It was an eyesore to onlookers as the young men trampled on their modesty in public.
Bishan Sports Hall has been the de facto venue of the Singapore Open Gymnastics Championships for a number of years. It is also the proposed venue for the gymnastics competition events of the Singapore Youth Olympic Games 2010. It is the key gymnastic competition site for the Asian Youth Games.
I, therefore, urge the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports to do something about those who bare their torsos without any regard for other users. Perhaps, the authorities should impose a minimum dress code that ensures decency.
Sports that allow male athletes to train semi-nude are swimming, water polo, windsurfing and sumo wrestling. But gymnastics is a sport that requires proper leotards for women and body-fitting singlet and shorts or tights for men.
George Lim
ST Forum (Online), 29 June 09

Although I'm far from being gymnastically-inclined, obviously you need mobility to move or swing or jump or whatever it is these guys were doing. (I do know that much.) So what's George Lim's problem? It's a sports facility, obviously people aren't going to be in tuxedos. I'm quite sure no one else could be bothered; I mean, the weather's hot, your mind's focused on training, I'm sure they weren't gratuitously flashing, so who cares? He should call the police next time if he feels so offended (I'm sure they'll laugh him out of town). Or take his daughter to a posh air-conditioned kiddy gym.

And if you read his letter it becomes clear that he was observing them pretty darn closely. He describes these guys' pants in two different ways: "loosely fitted knee-length trunks that exposed their pelvic bones below the waistline"; "scant garments that covered only the anatomy between the lower waist and the kneecaps". He even describes how they "risked slipping out of their loose trunks" and how "it did not take much gravity to expose their pubic area".

I think he's got a vivid and disturbed imagination, his wife should be careful about letting him into areas where he can see young men, and the BG has a competitor (and possibly new ideas on where to stalk O.o)

This guy would obviously feel very much at home in Saudi Arabia or Iran. I wonder why ST even gratifies him by printing or posting up his crackpot letters. And I hope MCYS doesn't feel compelled to provide a reply.

I'm going to make a new label just for this sort of post. It's called Idiocy.

sneaking feeling

2009-06-24T13:30:00.004+08:00

I have a sneaking feeling that the world economy works only because

everyone wants it to
it's way too complicated for anyone to work out why it shouldn't, actually - and/or to convince everyone else.

For instance, look at fractional reserve banking. The principle behind it is, say a bank gets a $100 deposit. It can then go and loan out a much larger amount, based on what percentage the central bank/financial regulators require it to keep in its vaults - the fractional reserve requirement; this is typically about 10-15% in most countries. The corollary of this is that when someone withdraws $100 out of a bank, the amount that the bank can loan out shrinks by far more than $100.

Imagine a day when everyone decides to take out their money (a run on the bank). The amount the bank can loan effectively shrinks to zero - although in practice the loans are more often left unrepaid, and the bank goes into insolvency instead. If everyone decided to take out all their money from every bank in the world, we would all be royally screwed.

And oh, foreign exchange. Transaction costs related to foreign exchange probably cost us something like 1-2% of global GDP. (I read that somewhere, just can't remember where exactly.) And besides, where's the logic when if Zimbabwe's government expands its money supply, the value of its currency collapses, whereas if the American government expands its money supply, everyone rushes to buy more US dollars? Other than the fact that US dollars are rather more attractive things than Zimbabwean dollars.

Okay enough ^^ when I think of more I'll let you know.

concert alert

2009-06-10T18:11:00.002+08:00

Woohoo I was pleasantly surprised that Esplanade dumped an advert in my inbox plugging a concert that I'm playing in, myself. So here it is:

http://www.esplanade.com/edm/spectrum/soldier/

It's an exciting performance so do consider blowing 24 bucks on a ticket!

deep breath.

2009-06-02T18:20:00.001+08:00

I've just finished the IPSC. It was

- OFFICIAL SECRETS ACT -

but quite awesomely slack. (Haha adam ripped off your OSA thing.) As a measure of just how slack it was, I managed to finish reading Ulysses in those 7 days. Woohoo!

Now that I've finished Ulysses in 1 week, I think I'll be taking the next 1 year to understand it. It is awesome and mindtwisting. I didn't even realise Stephen Dedalus urinates and picks his nose in Chapter 3, until I read the notes.

I am human: nothing human is alien to me.

2009-05-31T21:34:00.007+08:00

I've been intrigued by this statement for a long time. I can't remember where I first saw it or in what context, but I think it's fascinating and certainly worth thinking about.

To put things in perspective, this comes from Heauton Timorumenos (The Self-Tormentor), a play by the Roman playwright Publius Terentius Afer, or Terence. It occurs early on in the first scene,

Menedemus. Chreme, tantumne ab re tuast oti tibi aliena ut cures ea quae nil ad te attinent?
Chremes. Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto. [*]
ME. Chremes, have you so much leisure from your own affairs that you can attend to those of others – those which don't concern you?
CH. I am a man, and nothing that concerns a man do I deem a matter of indifference to me. [*]

The two characters ME and CH are neighbours having a conversation; CH notes that ME is quite old (sixty years or more, he reckons), and asks why he still toils in his fields all day. ME then replies "Chreme, tantumne..." and so on. At first glance it looks as if CH is being nosey; but if we interpret it that way, his words seem far too elevated and lofty for that. (He could've just said something along the lines of "Well, I'm your neighbour and I think you're weird" but that would have made for a horrible play.)

-----

The effectiveness of this line, I think, is twofold. It clearly links the particular (I) to the universal (human), and it alludes to a common, universal quality that we all share, which might be termed "humanity".

The first half goes straight to the point – Homo sum; I am human. It taps into a pool of feelings, experiences, desires – whatever – that all people hold in common, and stakes a claim on it.

The second half – humani nil a me alienum puto – is a bit harder to interpret. I'm not a student of Latin, and all the declension and conjugation makes things really quite confusing for me; I use Wiktionary to untangle it all. The customary "nothing human is alien to me" translation has the advantage of being both accurate and succinct (except it loses the sense of the word "puto" – I judge / regard / deem).

So "nothing human is alien to me" – alien as in "foreign" or "unfamiliar", not as in E.T. I like to think that this is an embracement of everything human. In a way, it's rather like an inverse of the first part – phrasing it in the positive "all" rather than the negative "nothing", it might read like this: "I am human: all things human are familiar to me". In this way it elegantly proceeds from particular to universal, then universal to particular, symmetrical just like "three in one, and one in three" or Dumas's "all for one, and one for all".

-----

Now that I've dissected it, time to put it together and figure out what it means as a whole. There is a problem in translation, in that the Latin "alienus" had a broader meaning than the English "alien" – and nowadays, the English "alien" is hardly used in any context than little green men. "Alien" can mean extra-terrestrial, or foreign (as in "alien species" i.e. non-native), or simply distant and unfamiliar (as in "alienated", to have become estranged). Latin "alienus" simply means "of/belonging to someone or something else". [1] and [2]

An easier rendering is probably "nothing human is strange to me". This is quite a tall order; this means that one is familiar with all the joy and suffering that is the human condition. In a sense this is almost superhuman. It is probably something to be aimed at, a culmination of a lifetime of experience, not something you could pull off in an afternoon.

I think it's a worthy goal. It does not pass moral judgement – it does not disown the darker elements of human nature (sex, crime, drugs), nor does it unduly glorify the "good bits" (love, God, chocolate). Yet I feel it is a lofty sentiment because it encompasses all that is human; like I said earlier, it is an embracement.

This is why I'm more sympathetic towards people who swear and sin and make gritty movies and write difficult literature, than moralising self-righteous pulpit-preachers. The latter tend to lose sight of – or worse, disown – the uglier bits of humanity. They repress the humanity in them in the pursuit of a false goodness, or even a false Godliness.

I've written previously about George Lim, the guy who wrote to the ST Forum railing against movies that "focused on violence, crime, death and sex", arguing that "A movie that is worthwhile watching would give hope to the viewer about the meaning of life and its purpose... should result in stirring a person’s mind and heart to do good for society... should focus on wholesome family values of love and care, and respect for the elders and the government" and asking for the censorship board to do something about the films that are shown here.

He's an extreme example, but you get my point – by disowning the ugly bits of humanity, he creates a warped image of what people should be like. The crude reality is that people are human. Like I wrote in that same blog post, "The world is meaningless and hopeless and ugly and filthy and corrupt and depraved and rich and beautiful and wonderous and human in its depravity, deal with it!"

-----

"I am human: nothing human is alien to me." I'd like that to be inscribed on my headstone, when the time comes.

reading Ulysses

2009-05-26T19:36:00.002+08:00

I've been reading Ulysses at a fairly fast pace, 250 pages in the last 2 days. I'm somewhere in the middle of the 8th episode (if I'm not wrong), and very, very lost. I have no idea if there's a single narrative voice or if it shifts from character to character or whether Joyce is just trying to screw all of us over.

I need to seriously re-read it, slowly, after I'm done. And before that I probably need to read the Odyssey and Hamlet (there seem to be quite a few Hamlet references, which seem like nonsense). I also need a dictionary around while I'm reading it. What's jejune? Or crozier?

I know how to drive myself mad. I also know enough to avoid it. If I wanted to go mad, I would read Ulysses while listening to Bartok's string quartets.

emo moment

2009-05-17T22:26:00.003+08:00

in the morning hearing 'voices that care' on the radio. wtf i must be getting old and sentimental...

who the fuck posted this?

2009-05-13T20:41:00.001+08:00

OWN UP, NOOB.

Anonymous said...
may the power of sai baba and tim tams protect u from m*****. =p
5/08/2009 2:51 PM

a soldier's rhsl

2009-05-12T23:59:00.002+08:00

I've just got back from my first rehearsal for TPO's The Soldier's Tale (come watch me plz! 12 July!) and it felt like I was being slapped on the head by a bunch of seals, a different number of slaps each bar, but equally intense and painful throughout.

Mr Lim Yau's conducting is... for this one piece... ignorable. On purpose. As far as I can tell he's just waving his hands in a manner vaguely remniscent of the beat, while we play like heck and well... ostensibly I'm supposed to feel the rhythm, the harmonic rhythm, but I'm certainly not familiar enough with the piece to do that -.- need more practice.

And it was only two people at today's rehearsal: me and the violinist Kathleen. O.o she's pro - and has either practised much more than me, or has extremely good rhythm, or both. (I'd only played through the whole thing twice... asking for trouble.)

I'm completely noobified. Still counting every single quaver for dear life. I'm glad Mr Lim hasn't thrown me out yet ^^ It's an awesome piece, and he's one of the luminaries here... all in all a crazy musical challenge.

a couple more thoughts on aware

2009-05-04T18:55:00.004+08:00

Don't get me wrong, I'm extremely glad that AWARE has been reclaimed by forward-looking, sensible women. By all accounts the day of the EOGM was a good day for democracy and the voice of the people, and this whole episode has certainly shaken some apathetic Singaporeans.

I just think there's very little more that I can add to the incredible amount of internet traffic there is about it, and I should shut up. But I think the spirit of the meeting was awesome, and the new new exco should be proud of themselves, and get to work.

breather

2009-05-04T09:06:00.003+08:00

Off from work today, thank f. That place is a very nasty well of hatred.

Jakarta: nice, generally. I saw an A&W at the airport! First time in, what, 10 years? Food was cheap but not very good and I ended up pigging out more than I should have - including that way-overdone veal steak at 2am in the morning ^^ wtf. Tough like rubber. I felt that the baby cow died in vain =(

Oh yes, the performance. It was ok, lots of slipups here and there but heck it's oldies and you can't go far wrong with tear-jerkers like yueliang daibiao wo de xin (月亮代表我的心, did I get it right?), Mona Lisa and Perhaps. The audience was politely appreciative and all that.

The 2 basses we got were awful though. I heard we paid $1000 rental for each of them - one was just about playable (precariously curved bridge though) but the other ^^ wooden tuning pegs, nylon strings, flat bridge (how to play the middle strings?) etc. Generally the set-up was so ghastly that while trying to fix metal strings on the thing, the tuning pegs bent under the pressure and the bridge collapsed twice. Gave up.

Yesterday: Coffee, Borders, my first LAN, dinner. Played Left 4 Dead with adam/jx/terence/wang. Not my usual bunch but fun. I think my hearing's permanently damaged and I came out of the LAN shop 7 bucks poorer and desperately wanting a neck-brace. But it felt good while we were at it... and 3+ hours just flew past like that playing zombies and vomiting sick slime at terence/wang and playing survivors and getting vomited at. ^^ nice.

Today: Just had a look at my schedules (I've got lots of rehearsals & appointments O.o) and July is scarily busy. If someone throws a bomb at me (extra duties, regimental duties... whatever) I'm screwed into the deepest sinkhole of shit imaginable. 3 concerts in July (and 2 of them are 2 days apart.) I need to siam at least one concert and potentially a rehearsal or two here and there. Not good!

woohoo

2009-04-29T21:49:00.003+08:00

5 days out of the office, 5 days of freedom (30 Apr - 1 May in Jakarta, never been there before so I'm looking forward to that!)

What matters is that for 5 days I can not give a shit about all the hostility and bad vibes back at camp, and relax. Honestly they've all but thrown empathy out of the window and all they care about is screwing people over 'cos they can. Shucks. Enough!

and breathe.

thoughts about aware

2009-04-25T22:53:00.002+08:00

I've been reading Kurt Vonnegut's extremely short and engaging semi-autobiographical musings A Man without a Country, and lots of things he mentioned struck me. Particularly these:

"I say of Jesus, as all humanists do, 'If what he said is good, and so much of it is absolutely beautiful, what does it matter if he was God or not?'"
"For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that's Moses, not Jesus. I've never heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere."

And for those who don't know, or need reminding, here are the Beatitudes (from Matthew 5:3-5:10)

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

-----

It's struck me, too, that few people have looked at the unfortunate events at AWARE from a Christian perspective. I'm eminently unqualified in this, not being a Christian myself. But on the other hand, I've always thought that it's far better to be Christian at heart and in spirit than to be a self-righteous, lecturing Pharisee – a small-c christian rather than a capital-C Christian, if you will.

And it strikes me that looking at the Beatitudes (Matthew 5-7 and Luke 6:17-6:49) that these capital-C Christian women trumpeting their "pro-family" "feminist" agenda have missed the mark.

The old AWARE was about empowering women – including lesbian women – and this, among other things, means tolerance and acceptance, even love in the agape sense. It was very much about comforting the persecuted, downtrodden and neglected members of society. It was much closer to the spirit of the Beatitudes than anything I've heard from or about the "new guard".

It seems to me that in their zeal they've forgotten about the meek and the persecuted and the peacemakers. In their urge to change locks, hold press conferences and generally drag the good work of the old members of AWARE in the mud, they've actually lost sight of the central message of their own religion – that their God is a God of love.

Shame on Thio Su-Mien, a very un-christian Christian. She and her ilk disgust me.

more ns angst

2009-04-24T21:12:00.002+08:00

I am hard-pressed to find a better phrase to describe that post-lunch mid-afternoon ennui, than Douglas Adams' "the long dark tea-time of the soul". The morning buzz has quietly settled down, there's basically no work – it being a Friday – and except for occasional mouse-clicks and keyboard clattering, the office is basically silent.

Friday lunches are ghastly. I have a theory: early Monday mornings, they bring in a convoy of refrigerator lorries in carrying all the food the cookhouse's going to use over the week. (And on Friday evenings they get in a convoy of dumptrucks to cart away the chicken bones and putrid unused inedible sauces and veggies.) It's basically the same ingredients, just dumped together and stewed in different combinations, week after week. On Friday, they've just about run out of ways to pair chicken wings or drumlets up with whatever crappy spindly limp vegetable that's left, and that's what you get. Plus, Fridays are porridge days, I believe because they run out of rice so they've got to stretch their stock. Friday lunches disgust me. Cookhouse food disgusts me.

-----

The main diversions in office life, besides the internet connection (spotty, erratic – but amazingly fast if you can get it – and consequently unsatisfying), are eating and drinking – although that leads to morbid obesity, as evidenced by examples all around me. So my main diversion is drinking water, which can't get you fat, only better hydrated. And of course it has the side-effect of requiring frequent toilet trips, all of which lead to more time spent out of the office, hurrah.

The toilet, though, is in bad shape. The flushes, like the internet connection, often do not work. And there're flies all over especially at the urinals, getting high on the caffeine and nicotine from the semi-dried piss they feed off. The one present paranoia in my life right now is one of those flies landing on my whatsit while I'm in the process of voiding my bladder. Like my work and the food, they disgust me.

-----

Often, people with sinecures for jobs have a wonderful self-image, which they cling on to in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, of being gainfully and honestly employed in the pursuit of some noble and heroic goal, and putting in a hard day's work whilst at it. Nothing could be further from the truth; they're surfing on the internet, playing ungratifying games day after tedious day, and getting increasingly and dangerously self-delusional.

I'm not like them; I choose to be honest. I'm in the business of drawing a monthly pittance while doing the littlest jobs that no one really cares about. "Pushing paper" as you might term it, but even that might be too elevated a term for what I do. I compile files of unendingly boring papers on matters of shockingly little importance. I fend off my superior's undiagnosed obsessive-compulsive disorder attacks with a face of sullen incomprehension. On occasion I've been asked (read: forced) to scrub the floor (yes, literally). I harbor no illusions over my job.

Satisfaction? Don't make me laugh.

moral black holes

2009-04-22T22:39:00.003+08:00

Sometimes some people are just such absolute fuckers that you wonder how they manage to muddle through life. I mean, why does evolution produce people of such deficient moral fibre as my superior at work?

Maybe this is actually perverse proof of Intelligent Design. That God is really up there playing silly buggers with us.

Ok jokes aside, I really wonder why there isn't such a thing as a moral black hole, which rips up through the fabric of space-time, swallowing people up whole when they do evil things to other people. I mean, that's the feeling sometimes I get when I've been bastarded so bad I don't know what I've been hit by - that sinking feeling of "oh no I'm going to be in deep shittttttt".

And some people - no matter what you may believe about innate goodness - can really be evil, mean-spirited, cruel and selfish. These are the people we are enjoined to love as we would ourselves, while we inwardly hope and pray for the day of reckoning when they finally get their just desserts as the absolute shit-piles they are.

Perpetual Astonishment

2009-04-21T22:20:00.002+08:00

I don't know about you, but I practice a disorganised religion. I belong to an unholy disorder. We call ourselves "Our Lady of Perpetual Astonishment."

- Kurt Vonnegut (look here!)

no news

2009-04-21T21:52:00.003+08:00

I haven't updated for quite a while. There hasn't been anything going on anyway. Quite sad, life.

I don't thrive in the job. Either I get tired and depressed or I get bored. Being outfield sucks, true, but that's a whole different world of suckiness from being stuck in an office with an absolute bitch who's using you for her own purposes. Selfish, self-centred, screwing up my life. Got into my RSM's bad books just cos she clashed with him. All fucked up. All because she needed to bitch about his assigning me for some course without her knowing first. All because she needs me in the office so she can fucking slack her arse off by taking MCs, going for 2-hour teabreaks, coming in late and leaving early. Fucking lazybum. Lots of the regulars are like that, sucky people. Of course you get a few good officers at the top and the NSFs slaving away, holding the fort but the centre's all rotten.

I guess it's just a clash of worldviews. I fundamentally don't believe in making people's lives miserable just because I can. I mean, what's the point? We're all trying to live our natural lifespan without dying first and trying to get as much brownie points and good karma as we can, while we're at it, right?

And people are human. Just scolding and nagging isn't going to do any good if you're constantly wearing down a person's self-esteem. Negative feedback is self-reinforcing; it generates a negative feedback loop. (In other words, if you get screwed every time you try, you're likely to give up.) On the other hand positive feedback is self-reinforcing too.

And I look at the NSF officers; what's the difference between me and them? Nothing but 3 months more tekan, $300 more pay, and a whole different rank ladder. Crikey. And that makes a world of difference. There they are playing flash games on the internet, no one to kick their butts, while I'm running meaningless chores for a functionally-paralysed (from mouth down, typical NATO) superior with no manners. Well too bad I wasn't enthu enough to go to OCS though I tried. So now being stuck in the middle somehow gives me an excuse for mediocrity. Life famously works in mysterious ways.

I bet out there someone is trawling the internet for all kinds of shitty, angsty ramblings like this one. Thank God I'm from Bermuda!

the big two-nil

2009-04-08T22:32:00.004+08:00

has come, and is nearly gone. It's been a nice quiet day, and I'm going to turn in for the night soon. Just when things get kinda dreary it's great to be reminded of friends and catch up a bit.

We are here on Earth to fart around.
Don't let anybody tell you any different.

- Kurt Vonnegut

Aiding is Abetting

2009-04-06T20:36:00.001+08:00

A startlingly fresh perspective on the Great African Problem.

http://www.guernicamag.com/interviews/954/moyo/

new books!

2009-04-05T13:01:00.002+08:00

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, trans. Pevear/Volokhonsky
James Joyce, Ulysses
Virginia Woolf, Orlando
Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time Vol. 1: Swann's Way
Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran
Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

Yeah, good stuff. (I still don't have Dune, though)

reading

2009-04-03T21:38:00.002+08:00

I'm actually reading books faster than I'm buying them now, for a change. Just finished Ovid's Metamorphoses over the last week and took a break by learning how to read the Russian alphabet, polished off Toni Morrison's Beloved in one mega-session two days back (not doing it justice but I did appreciate it much more than I did the first time I tried to read it, 3 years back) and I'll start on Gunter Grass' Crabwalk pretty soon.

I need a good translation of War and Peace! I'll be going out to get the Pevear/Volokhonsky one tomorrow. With all the time on my hands I think I'm ready to face that tome. And then Ulysses or the Aeneid or something. And I think I should read Dune.

children nowadays

2009-04-03T21:00:00.004+08:00

I'm quite disturbed by kids nowadays (I mean primary school, kindergarten, that kind of age). They're awfully spoilt. They get the latest phones, tons of junky toys, their doting parents do their homework and overfeed them, that kinda thing. Just look at the kids you pass at the supermarket or on the MRT or generally around the place, they're glued to PSPs and stuff. Or the ST surveys that show primary 3 kids on the internet 15-20 hours a week, that sort of thing. (I mean, I do that, yes, but that's out of the time that the SAF's robbed off my life. And I'm not playing maplestory.)

The thing that really gets me is when parents don't raise their kids right. Like when they wonder why their kids are failing, when they're doing all their projects and homework for them. Or when they worry about their kids getting fat while they're busy feeding them. Parenting is vitally important for kids to be all that they can be, fulfil their potential and all that. I'm glad that my parents seldom interfered with my learning after primary 2 or 3, and almost never after pri 4.

And to tell kids that it's ok to fail is all nice and politically correct, but I believe it's wrong. Parents shouldn't be satisfied with mediocrity; worse, they shouldn't let their kids be satisfied with mediocrity. If they have to suffer to get their grades and mould their minds, by all means make them suffer.

If you thought inference questions were tough...

2009-03-19T16:10:00.002+08:00

I remember those buggers in the GP comprehensions - the RJ papers would require you to draw all kinds of inferences from the placement of a comma, or a slight change of tone or register. But this takes the cake: the New Yorker's cartoon IQ test. There're 5 cartoons whose punchlines are incredibly obscure, and you have to pick a reason (out of 4 choices) why it's supposed to make sense. Don't be depressed if you don't score too highly.

Guess who?

2009-03-18T11:16:00.001+08:00

Unlike Tony Blair, he lacks charm; he is not one of the beautiful people; his Scottish accent grates on many English ears; he resents being depicted as fat by cartoonists; he comes across as cold and even unnatural – his jaw seems to detach itself in a strange manner when he inhales while speaking.

As I read this (taken from this Foreign Policy article), I started to pity Gordon Brown. And by the last one - the thing about his jaw - the writer degenerates beyond mere character assassination and plumbs the depths of death-by-thousand-cuts. Owtch.

Kahlua

2009-03-15T15:19:00.003+08:00

Zoroaster got it half right. Life is a desperate struggle between two bitterly opposed polarities - not good and bad, nor truth and falsehood; they don't come into the picture, they are irrelevancies - we're talking about love and emptiness; ecstacy and depression; work and pleasure; opacity and perspicuity; coffee and alcohol.

Coffee and alcohol. There are but two humours - coffee and alcohol - and life's struggles are the simple tension between them. Without them, one is bereft, and in the darkness of uninitiated childhood. With either, one is unbalanced, and sees only a dim half of what life may be.

But marry both in one (if something so perfect may be imagined) and you catch a glimpse, however fleeting, of the ineffable and the infinite. And kahlua is a reminder of this fundamental duality of the human condition.

brahms piano concerto (again)

2009-03-15T13:07:00.004+08:00

Now my dream is slowly coming true. I've played through a near-perfect Brahms piano concerto. At that kind of level I've realised that technical proficiency is far from enough - and face it, my technical proficiency is far from enough. But being in the right frame of mind changes things, helps one transcend one's limitations, if only a bit.

I've realised that to play that Brahms well, I've got to feel like all the pain and sorrow in the world is crystallising within me, and ignore everything else but that state of induced agony. Now gotta go memorise the thing and get familiar with the tuttis and entries and everything, and hopefully I'll do something about it next year.

Amoretti - Sonnet XXX

2009-03-11T11:00:00.003+08:00

My love is like to ice, and I to fire;
how comes it then that this her cold so great
is not dissolv'd through my so hot desire,
but harder grows the more I her entreat?

Or how comes it that my exceeding heat
is not delay'd by her heart frozen cold:
but that I burn much more in boiling sweat,
and feel my flames augmented manifold?

What more miraculous thing may be told
that fire which all things melts, should harden ice:
and ice which is congeal'd with senseless cold,

should kindle fire by wonderful device.
Such is the power of love in gentle mind,
that it can alter all the course of kind.

Edmund Spenser

one-man campaign of disinformation

2009-03-07T10:05:00.003+08:00

Andy Ho's one-man campaign of disinformation has done it again. (For more examples of his egregious errors of fact and logic look here. Or Google his name. If anyone sees an online petition calling for his dismissal I'd be enormously grateful - in fact, I might write one myself.)

In his latest column (yes he has a regular weekly column!) he now suggests that you can catch cancer. This is nothing but alarmist, irresponsible disinformation of the highest order. And he is a trained doctor.

Yes, some forms of cancer may develop from infections - for instance cervical cancer almost always develops from a HPV infection (not to say that catching HPV invariably leads to cervical cancer); hepatitis B or C may lead to liver cancer - but the causes of cancer are far more diverse and complex than Andy Ho attempts to convey.

He suggests, for example, that the RI guy who died from leukemia a couple of months back might have caught some kind of virus (not mentioned in the article, but presumably human T-cell lymphotropic virus type 1 or HTLV-I). It is indeed possible for a HTLV-I infection to progress to leukemia but studies show that the time lag between infection and onset of cancer is believed to be about sixty years in Japan, and less than forty years in the Caribbean. (Wikipedia)

Andy Ho also mentions the Epstein-Barr Virus as a causative agent for lymphoma - which his relative has unfortunately developed - and writes that the hospital's dietician "advised my relative's wife to cook bigger portions. Her husband would then have more to eat and, for the sake of convenience, she could just consume the leftovers. No risk of catching his lymphoma, of course, she added."

Well, for a start, EBV doesn't necessarily lead to lymphoma - 95% of 35-40 year-olds in the US have been infected at some point in their lives, and they aren't dying of a lymphoma epidemic - and catching EBV is obviously not equivalent to "catching lymphoma". No one "catches cancer" or "cancer viruses"; although viral infections may develop into cancer, the two are very different concepts.

Yet he uses EBV and other diseases to suggest that "the takeaway lesson here for family members? Don't be politically uncorrect unto death."

This reminded me of a dinner conversation nearly two years ago, just after my dad was diagnosed with colon cancer. He said he wasn't sure if cancer was infectious, and maybe he should eat separately or have different food for us. It was an emotional moment, I think at one point we broke down. To me it was utterly unthinkable, and I rejected it immediately. To have done that would have destroyed a centrepiece of our family life, removed any sense of normalcy. It wasn't any question of political correctness, it was a matter of hanging together as a family.

UPDATE: I've just sent a letter in to ST Forums. It may not get published, but hopefully it'll at least hit the Straits Times editors with a dose of reality.

weak

2009-03-03T20:28:00.002+08:00

No... I can just barely do 8 pullups. I have to pass IPPT. I need to go exercise, instead of just moaning about it here.

They should make it legal - no, scratch that, compulsory - to cannibalise unfit people. Not wholesale, you get it, just parts of them. Like the flabby stomach fats and thighs and stuff. If you fry them they might be a really good bacon substitute. Then I might be motivated to go do something about my lipids.

Under the right conditions, a corpse's fat can turn into soap. Now that's freaky. At least that doesn't happen here, cos we roast cadavers to save space.

letdown

2009-02-24T21:44:00.004+08:00

I just went to gramophone at cathay and got an Ella Fitzgerald / Louis Armstrong album (I think it's a compilation, there's too many good tracks on it to be true) among other things. That album was unpriced, so just before I handed my card and the stack of CDs over I asked how much it was. Got the answer - $44.95 - gulp - skinflint philistine in me screamed wtf! but I got it anyway.

Then I got home and found out the last track on the first disc skips. My heart bleeds.

Damnit gotta go gramophone another time - and before that, test ALL the 6 other CDs just in case. Shit.

UPDATE: Somewhat happy ending - the guy at gramophone managed to get hold of another copy and exchanged it for me. (He also forgot to take off the anti-theft thing, resulting in 3 gramophone cathay staff running at me just moments after I set off the store's alarm unwittingly.) Unfortunately now disk 2 has 1 tiny tic (it skips a couple of seconds) on my favourite track, Let's Call the Whole Thing Off. But since I burnt the old (non-defective) disk 2 on my comp I don't really care any more heh.

can't be arsed

2009-02-23T09:19:00.005+08:00

Ok I haven't updated for ages, but I really can't be bothered to do a proper post or rant or anything like that. I've been swamped with an overwhelming 'who gives a shit' feeling. I didn't have a spectacularly bad week or anything, just that I don't have any sense of purpose at all at my workplace. Every day I feel a renewed sense of the truth of Tennyson's words

Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die

and that feeling kinda sucks.

I've discovered Phish and they are a level of awesome in themselves!

In other news I've been going regularly for some sunday rehearsals - Brahms' 1st Symphony, Wagner's Meistersingers Overture and the Lalo Thing - which is a welcome change from the mindless office tedium. I had some misgivings about leading the section; after all I'm new there, not exactly nice to parachute in. But then again Brahms is a nightmare, and even the Lalo Thing has rhythm issues to address. For instance: triplets are always slower than they seem, and it's quite difficult to get that across.

I like the sense of guiding them along through the piece, and bringing out the nuances and contrasts of articulation and all that. It's rather anal, but there are so many factors that make a good sound. Just consider the bowing technique: the particular angle that the bow strikes the string, the speed of the bow stroke - slow: heavy; fast: light - the length of bow used, even the finish - uplift gives it a nice crisp sound. And all that takes some experience. It is immodest, but I've played in orchestras for years and there are things you discover in that time. There're young players to guide and it's always rewarding when you cobble a section together.

There's also that SYFO business, playing the Brahms Violin Concerto, Hindemith's Symphonic Metamorphoses and the Tchaik 1812 Overture. Different kettle of fish, many players who're much more inexperienced and lots more work to be done. I'm tempted to ask to take the sectionals, because the times when I was in their shoes are still fresh in my mind, and again there's a great opportunity to guide and shape their approach to the music. And Brahms again! Fascinating work, bursting with energy. And you can't play everything the same; there are notes, and then there are notes. Again, nuances and contrasts to emphasise. But first they need to practise!

Problem is I'm getting into a kind of rut; there's so much music in my life, to the exclusion of other things. I would like to do other stuff, maybe start a poetry or literature group (public readings!) and of course I need to get back up to speed on maths and economics. All that while making sure I still can pass IPPT gah.

There are some precious few insane people out there who can do all those things with ease; I'm really not one of them, although it might look like it sometimes. It's really taken me an awful lot of effort. But one thing I will not stand for is to accept mediocrity, the acceptance of the substandard. It will just take time and patience, but I've got to escape mediocrity.

combo no. 5

2009-02-14T22:12:00.001+08:00

My God, this thing is 10 years old, and I still remember it as if it were yesterday.

Combo no. 5 (sadly I can't embed it - it'll autoplay)

heh

2009-02-10T21:16:00.002+08:00

ouch this's gotta hurt.

sounds like a plan

2009-02-09T21:39:00.002+08:00

where would we be without xkcd?

dumbass question

2009-02-09T20:43:00.003+08:00

"Do you think I'm stupid?" is possibly the dumbest question ever - and it (or its variants, e.g. "Do you take me for a fool?") is asked pretty damn often.

Anyone who asks that is obviously stupid to begin with
That question clearly invites the answer "yes, dumbass"
Even if you said "no" you'd be lying through your teeth. and bloody patronising

I hate stupidity. The only thing I hate more than stupidity is people who are content with being stupid. Because there's this perfidious breed of human that yes, is stupid, and no, doesn't try to change things.

It's easy to get smart. All you have to do is think. If you'd try to think up one thought a day that was worth remembering, you'd be on your way already. Even the judgement call, that of quality, (I mean deciding whether a thought was worth keeping or not) requires some productive thought.

It's not a slippery slope, being ignorant. And I hate people who simply wallow in it, who could catch up but just don't bother. It is the worst human sin, the lowest form of sloth, the purest degeneracy, and there're front-row seats in hell reserved for these people. How true it is, that life is very often wasted on the living.

Noobified!

2009-02-06T15:01:00.002+08:00

This must be one of the more bizarre experiences of my life, which happened just half an hour or so ago.

I was on the train, getting back after a half day at work. Really vehemently angry because, yes true I'd screwed up a form (left out the address field in a visa application for my boss - multiple addresses after all, and do military camps have street names?), but no I didn't believe I deserved the earful I got from my superior at work. After all, it was her job, and if I wasn't around she'd be stuck doing it. So much for gratitude. Shucks I feel more and more like Marvin.

So anyway, I was on the east-bound train holding on to the handholds overhead and resting my head on my hand, sick of life, etc. At Bugis this old ah-ma type lady (~70s at least) asked me if I wanted to sit down, whether I was tired - in Hokkien. She looked really concerned and all that. I sheepishly refused (of course right, everyone staring at me in uniform), said it was ok (in Chinese).

And she started talking to me! Asked me if army was tiring ("zo peng jin cham ah?"), was it tekong, talking about all her sons' and grandsons' experiences - I think, because my Hokkien is horrible and she was talking kinda softly. It could have been the price of veg or her Malay neighbours, for all I know, but she was going on and on non-stop; I could barely figure out what she was going on about. It was damn tragic, but damn funny.

At first I tried to keep up but it was completely impossible to understand her. Round about Kallang I tried telling her I couldn't understand Hokkien (yeah, I memorised that one sentence in case it ever came in useful "wa bueh hiao tia hokkien weh") - but all she did was laugh and carry on! And there I was pathetically nodding at her saying "oh uh mm" at various strategic points in the conversation. There was this gal about my age (yes ZH, she was cute) sitting next to her who, by the looks of it, couldn't understand it either, laughing at me (the bitch), but got drawn into the convo round about Paya Lebar too.

So all the way from Bugis to Tanah Merah (the girl got off at Bedok) we were basically being talked at by this ah-ma, and faking comprehension, while more and more people were looking at us and wondering wtf was going on. It would've been hilarious if it wasn't me. As for the woman she really looked damn happy that she had someone to regale with stories and anecdotes. I contemplated getting off at Kallang or putting my earphones back in, but it would've been so rude, and so wrong. So just tahan lah.

And at the end of the train ride I wasn't pissed any more, somehow. Just even more convinced that life's a total mystery.

2 things about MRT commuters that piss me off

2009-02-02T20:44:00.003+08:00

Those apparently able-bodied people who get ON at City Hall and OFF at Bugis - a mere 500m apart! I swear at least 20% of those who board the east-bound train at City Hall do that, them swine. I hope their toes fall off.
Those retards who stand up in a packed carriage the moment the train starts to move off (i.e. when everyone is most unbalanced), and inch towards the doorway in preparation for the NEXT stop, so everyone has to siam for them and fall all over each other. I especially hate it when old people do that, because I feel a tiny bit bad about falling ON them - which I do occasionally ON PURPOSE, when I feel particularly misanthropic.

and breathe...

fun theory

2009-02-01T20:44:00.004+08:00

I recently stumbled across this extremely interesting piece in Overcoming Bias, one of those rare blogs that actually make you think. It's about something which would not normally qualify as a fit subject for academic inquiry: fun. I've done a bit of Googling and here are a couple of links:

http://yudkowsky.net/singularity/fun-theory
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/01/fun-theory-sequence.html

And these are some of the questions the author poses:

How much fun is there in the universe?
What is the relation of available fun to intelligence?
What kind of emotional architecture is necessary to have fun?
Will eternal life be boring?
Will we ever run out of fun?

I guess it's a work in progress, and it seems to be all one person's work right now. Rather inexplicably too, it seems to approach it from an AI (that's artificial intelligence) angle, which to me makes no sense. There isn't much point attempting to create a more rigorous "fun system" or "model" to explore normative questions of fun maximisation or optimisation if, for a start, we're not even entirely sure what fun is.

So what is fun? Wikipedia is disgustingly unhelpful; searching for fun produces a redirect to recreation, and the two are far from being identically equal. The American Heritage Dictionary (from dictionary.reference.com) tells us that fun (n.) is

A source of enjoyment, amusement, or pleasure.
Enjoyment; amusement: have fun at the beach.
Playful, often noisy, activity

Semantically, too, the phrasal verb have fun is telling: fun is incidental to an activity, it does not exist in and of itself, but is created by people through various actions. In this, fun closely parallels the economic concept of utility: consumption generates utility; doing fun stuff generates fun. However this is circular - what stuff is considered fun? And we're back where we started.

So some questions of my own, to get myself started:

What is fun?
Is fun measurable? Not in the sense that length or mass is measurable, but in the sense that there are degrees of fun: more fun, less fun, no fun.
Is fun universal? Do people broadly find the same activities fun? Excluding, of course, psychopaths and fetishists. (A more refined fun theory might incorporate them, but I don't want to get started)
What is the relationship of fun to happiness? Are they dependent? Related? Does one generate the other?
What is the relationship of fun to utility/satisfaction? How similar/parallel are they? Are they identically equal? Is an economic understanding of utility applicable to fun?
Are humans fun optimisers or maximisers? Is the optimum level of fun also the maximum level of fun? Is fun finite in a finite universe? (Although the universe is finite, wants are infinite, for instance.)

I'm sure there're lots more questions to be answered. And even more crucially, to be asked. A dialogue from Plato and some other readings would be good.

in a bookstore

2009-01-30T22:08:00.005+08:00

What really kills me, when I'm browsing in a bookstore or CD shop, is spotting a title that someone I know would love. I laugh to myself (what would s/he say if s/he saw this?), commit the title to memory, intending to recommend or give it to him or her, then buy it to read or listen to it (just in case it really sucks and my reputation is dealt a death blow), and end up keeping it for myself. On reflection, that's how my collection grows, actually, I guess: it's a pile of all the shit that I ended up not giving you guys, in the end. I hope you'll forgive me, I'm only human, and I love my books and music too much.

motivation

2009-01-30T21:58:00.003+08:00

I do believe that sometimes we're so battered and close to giving up, that the only thing keeping us going is the sense of "I'm better than all the other lousy fuckers around me", and an overriding desire to prove it.

Pride or hubris? Honour or ego? You decide. But it makes people do extraordinary things.

gosh

2009-01-24T23:59:00.002+08:00

Today was happening. Tumbled back home from duty in the morning. As uneventful as they come.

Got to adam road for the lunch with the rest of us ex-YO fogeys - ike rachel shaggy ruolin jeremy remus alan & me - talked a lot of crap, and crashed YO after that. As always it was nice to be back, especially cos there were so many of us. Old friends and those nostalgic corridors and all that coming back together again. Dare I wish we were young again and pelting each other (and mrs wong) on the CCAB astroturf with waterbombs?

But things have changed; realities of life are being played out; people grow alternately closer and more distant, but more the latter, and sometimes meeting up is only an exercise in futility, hanging on to weaker and fainter shreds of what used to be, in feeble defiance of what is.

(When I write my Great Postcolonial Novel that sentence will be in it, somewhere.)

And I wish I could do something more for YO. It's not what it used to be; in fact that's an understatement. There's so much raw potential and energy that isn't being channelled usefully. The phrases are unsubtle, unpolished, directionless... notes barely in tune (string sections' intonation more akin to a dart board)... tempo horribly shaky... dynamics ignored. There's a lot to work on before March. And eroica is a monumental piece that doesn't deserve to be treated lightly.

Anyway after the rhsl I hopped onto a bus to Bedok (66) for the first time and fell asleep as soon as I got a seat. A bit of a panic moment when I was jolted awake by some guy who accidentally poked me, and saw lots of people randomly crossing the road, haphazard storefronts and colourful shop signs in Tamil and semigrammatical English, lots of shophouses and trash lying about (plastic bags and the like), and then I realised I was on Serangoon Road. Nothing out of the ordinary there, just not a side of Singapore I often see.

Got a call at Ubi while I was still on the bus; Sabby was at the airport. That was completely unexpected, but it saw me end the day at the airport. Cool stuff.

All that really made for a great day today.

something totally unexpected

2009-01-21T20:16:00.002+08:00

I was at my desk, kinda stoning, the usual 9-o'clock-ish feeling of "now I've turned on the comp and watered the damn plants, what next?" setting in, and I'd taken out my Salman Rushdie - Fury - to read.

It's not a book that appeals to me greatly, and I'd had trouble with it the last two times I tried reading past the first chapter. It bores the shit out of me, frankly. I'd just left it on my desk in anticipation of lotsa free time to kill.

So this staff officer, a captain from HQ CBRE was setting up for some meeting in the discussion room in my office, and he popped out and was about to ask me something (wholly unimportant) when he caught sight of that thing.

"You read Rushdie?" "Actually, sir, this's the first book of his I'm reading." "Hrm... (picks it up and looks at the blurbs) You know about him right?" "Erm... the Satanic Verses?" "No, that he's a twat."

That possibly made my day.

chick corea & hiromi uehara

2009-01-20T22:41:00.001+08:00

If this performance isn't legendary it deserves to be.

Gershwin's Summertime

Chick Corea's Spain

rant

2009-01-18T12:50:00.004+08:00

Ok those of you who've been with me in Lit classes over the years know that I'm not a great Shakespeare fan; I have no feel for the abstruse figures of speech, the convoluted characters, the plot, the great tragic flaws, and so on. But no doubt through the Merchant of Venice, Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra (just a tiny sampling of his plays), I think I've gained at least a respect for the richness of meaning that can be coaxed out of his words, if you try hard enough. I'd be the first to admit that I find Shakespeare boring and inaccessible at times (I fell asleep in a performance of Macbeth when we were on the UK-Paris trip), but at the same time I respect him for the boldness and imagination of his creative vision. English would be far poorer, far drier without Shakespeare and great poets and playwrights like him.

-----

So I was at Borders at Parkway, searching for a gift for someone. I ended up in the poetry section, right next to Shakespeare and Lit Crit. I spent ages browsing through all kinds of stuff; TS Eliot, Billy Collins, John Betjeman, a bit of The Rape of the Lock which I had no patience to read properly... and generally getting lost in words, when these two airheaded twats started dissing Shakespeare next to me.

What stung me most was how flippant and trite their comments to each other were. They started with milder stuff like "my sister did Romeo & Juliet once and I couldn't really understand it" (fair enough, maybe she hadn't tried), but as they progressed and connected, they started a race to the bottom; it seemed as though each was trying to outdo the other in bimbo quotient. Once they got serious their main grouses were "it's not a storybook leh" and "haha the words are so weird". And as they went on they started picking up random plays and flipping to the middle to browse and giggle.

I wasn't in the mood to give a response so I shut it, flipping through more and more volumes of poetry, just letting my distaste build up slowly. Eventually they tired of it and went to the chick lit, where they were way more at home. Obviously their education hasn't done them much good.

Girls these days! ^^ pfft.

blue whales

2009-01-15T21:45:00.001+08:00

Ok I guess you guys want a break from all that tosh I usually rave or rant about, right? Yeah so today I'm going to rave about the blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus).

First thing is, it's freaking huge and heavy. Those monsters generally weigh 150-170 tonnes - after they've been cut up because they can't be weighed whole. And not because they're too heavy; because they're too large to be weighed. And the longest whales ever recorded were >33m in length. Crikey. I don't think the stomach could fit in my miserably modest flat.

And yet it would choke on a beach ball. Blimey. Blue whales eat krill, mostly, except when they accidentally catch small fish, squid, or plastic bags. I'm sure I eat larger stuff than that. I mean, I eat cows. (Though admittedly, carved up.) And that's precisely what makes the blue whale so disarmingly endearing: the combination of zomg hugeness and awww vulnerability. And how can you go wrong with that?

For their 7 months blue whales drink about 400 litres of milk a day. That's insane. How many human babies can that feed? I think a standard dosage of milk is what... 400-500ml? So what, a thousand servings of milk for little toddles? Get this: we should give up on cows and farm blue whales for milk. Never mind if it tastes like piss, they'll all grow up to drink Starbucks anyway (and apparently, think it's "good coffee", both of which are descriptors that I have semantic issues with) so might as well start young right?

I won't start on their mating rituals, but apparently they sing underwater. The only time humans sing with water in their mouths is at class parties while playing forfeits for stupid games, when they should know better, ahem Daniel.

And what's more, its scientific name is an original Latin pun. (Not like, say, homo which has acquired a double meaning only fairly recently.) Balaenoptera, as far as I can tell, means "whale-thing" and comes from the Middle English word baleen, meaning whale. But musculus is the clincher: it may mean either muscular or little mouse (mouse is mus in Latin). I think that for a biologist that's an extremely acute sense of humour Linnaeus had. Maybe it was a drunken bet. (So the more buff you get, the closer you are to being a little mouse. Irony ftw!)

I think blue whales are quite possibly, other than some humans of course, nearly the coolest animals ever. Adam might question me, but he's just jealous, even if he'd never admit it. xP

back home

2009-01-12T21:30:00.000+08:00

Yes I'm back home after a harrowing day. I reported to camp for the APB course, then went over to the medical centre cos of my >1cm diameter abcess on my eyelid. It was sick - partly because it was huge, partly cos it was also sunburnt. The MO referred me straight to Tan Tock Seng's A&E, they pushed me over to the eye centre, and after a long wait at around 3:30 I got the fricking thing pierced. It was so bad that while one of the nurses was wiping the anesthetic cream off it, the damn lump burst. ftw. So in the end the doctor decided to gouge it out from the outside (damn messy but less tedious) rather than the inside (no scar but damn mafan). Zomg the thing hurt like fuck for ages, no thanks to the anesthetic needles (yes, TWO of them) that I guess hadn't kicked in before I got it dug out; and there was so much icky stuff that I literally cried silent tears of blood and pus during the surgery. Thank goodness for painkillers or I'd still be writhing and moaning on the floor.

And the upshot of all that was, I got a 3-day MC. Stingy bastards... I was expecting 5 days haha.

coming 20

2009-01-09T22:45:00.002+08:00

It's quite amazing, isn't it? This year it'll be 20 years since I was born. Solidarity (the political party) was legalised in Poland in 1989; the Exxon Valdez spilt; Ayatollah Khomeini issued his fatwa on Salman Rushdie; CFCs were phased out; people were massacred in Tiananmen Square; apartheid breathed its dying breath; and the Berlin Wall fell. 1989 was momentous.

-----

People were still using pagers and eating vanilla ice-cream; fridges were smaller, computers barely available and took ages to load MS-DOS, and how many channels were there on TV?

Cartoon Network wasn't around back then. (And I attribute the incredible stupidity of the post-1992-ish generation to the introduction of Cartoon Network around 1994, because watching TV just deadens the mind.) The CD drive wasn't around; neither were MP3 players.

Do you remember how Channel 5 always repeated Home Alone around Christmas? I think I watched it 4 or 5 times before I got immensely bored and gave up hope on TCS.

And shopping malls were like... Parkway (which still exudes an irresistable draw on my soul due to the happy confluence of Coffee Bean, Borders and Gramophone) and Thompson Plaza (which does not, due to the fact that it sucks, now).

-----

I can hardly imagine what it'd have been like to be 20 in 1989. Or what it'd be like to go back 20 years and try living with what we had. There was a striking sketch on the Mitchell & Webb Situation called "The Early 1990s House" - a couple living with only the stuff there was in the early 1990s; at the end of the episode the wife broke down when there was only neapolitan ice-cream. It actually became psychologically distressing.

Somehow my childhood was nothing as deprived as that. Or maybe it was but I never noticed. But I think I had a much more healthy and stimulating childhood than kids these days.

-----

In many ways 1989 was a year of hope - both the hope of a better, kinder, juster, more human world, and the blind but inextinguishable and sacred hope of a baby me. Somehow both hopes have been much diminished, moderated by the passing of years.

But I guess it must mean something when both these hopes refuse to die.

drudgery

2009-01-04T21:29:00.003+08:00

Girls can sit out this post, it's another NS angst rant.

I resent the fact that I'm going back to trainee life for another 7 days. True it's not very long, and yes my life is otherwise pretty decent, but no, I don't want to go to my grimy dusty shithole of a bunk and sleep on lizard poo (no one's figured out who's responsible for changing bedsheets; no one stays in; no one cares. Duh.) and wake up at 5:15 (or earlier) cold and irritated and sickened at the thought of another day of drudgery. Fixing up bridge parts is an exercise in futility.

Yes, I'm going back to build bridges. No, it's not CIP, it's not some lovey-dovey giving food to the elderly or befriending orphans kind of thing, for fuckssake get real. Bridges not as in bridge over troubled waters bridges. As in London Bridge, but not as posh. Think a dismantlable version of Cavenagh Bridge that can actually take vehicles over 3 hundredweight, and cattle and horses. (And the irony is that I'm technically a field engineer, but nevermind.)

What's the point? I'm not getting extra pay. It's just one more exquisite variety of timewasting. If a real war ever comes, we'd all have forgotten how to dig holes, shoot people - enemy combatants, not people; dehumanise them, all the easier to kill them without thinking - lay mines and detonate explosives anyway. When shit hits the fan and there're bullets zinging just inches overhead everyone'll be scared ball-less. Except emotional eunuchs, or people with a death wish.

When push comes to shove I don't know how anyone would ever convince me to take up arms for my country. But maybe I'm cynical.

sic transit 2008

2008-12-31T22:00:00.000+08:00

It seems inevitable, as 2008 is in its death throes and 2009 is just waiting in the wings ready to pounce on us bewildered mortals, that I should reflect on this year. 2008 has been a momentous year in many ways. Where should I start this? From the beginning, right. (+10 points for stating the bleeding obvious.)

2008 descended on me with a vengeance. I was reeling from events in my personal life and in the family. My mom and I were regular fixtures at my dad's bedside in December and the first few days of January. At the same time I was getting ready for enlistment, submitting university applications, and trying my best to cope with other personal issues that were coming to a head. Well, sure they weren't of quite the same magnitude of a starving Darfur farmer, but they were problems for me which reached right to the core of my person, values and character.

It was a trying period; I still find it hard to look back with complete equanimity. It is impossible to describe the mix of feelings that I experienced during that period. My reflections on 2007 are probably a product of that tortured state of mind I was in. I was angry, and angsty, and couldn't be sure of anyone to turn to, or what the future had for me.

BMT was a whirl of events. I must admit, I passed many nights awake till late, thinking, reflecting, but mostly hating myself and despairing at my situation; I did cry, lots, mostly at night, though I hope no one noticed. I hardly knew what was going on, I was quite unprepared, lost, and didn't even stop to think. Friendships and even normal social interactions were squeezed to quick flashes of recognition; days would pass without familiar faces. I was quite lost at the attitudes of those around me and my immediate superiors as I tried to adapt; I only realised later that they, too, didn't really know how best to handle 50 new, blur-kok recruits. New friends were hard to come by; I'm not a great one for talking cock or anything, nor was I even in the mood for it, with things at home and in my head in a mess. The support of friends and people around me was the only thing that kept me going. Thanks are especially due to David, Daniel, Wally and Peck, without whom I would've gone mad.

For my friends going in next year, who have no idea what to expect, just remember that your BMT sergeants and PCs are only a year or two older, doing their NS and probably hating it about as much as you!

A Level results came out on 7th March - I'm happy that I was able to make my dad proud, I guess for the last time - and my passing-out parade (POP) was on the 12th I believe. In the intervening few days my dad was hospitalised – I only found out after I got home from POP. It was a crazy roller-coaster ride of emotions. The next 2 weeks were spent shuttling back and forth from SGH, watching his condition slowly deteriorate.

We saw the best and worst of people then, at the hospital, and later at the wake and funeral; who was genuinely concerned, who was only standing around for appearances and would rather be elsewhere. For those of you who'll ever visit an ill friend, relative or acquaintance, please remember: it's glaringly obvious.

I don't want to dwell on this period. It's still raw. Just 10 days after my dad died, I managed to book out of camp for an interview for the HDB scholarship (thank goodness for those scholarship interviews, I booked out 8 times because of them!), checked my email and found out I got a place and a financial aid award to Yale. It was very unexpected; I got rejected by Chicago on 16th March, and the Princeton and Columbia emails came just the day before; these were incredibly demoralising and I'd all but given up hope already. I'd spent the least time and effort on my Yale app too. I was over the moon; needless to say from that point onwards I kept my scholarship applications alive only for the sake of booking out of camp! If the PSC OMS had come along I might just have been tempted by Mammon, but as fate would have it, it didn't so I wasn't. There wasn't much chance anyhow. I only wish papa could've known.

BSLC passed in a blur; so did CESC. 21 weeks of fatigue, ennui, angst and outfield and I got my rank (3SG), my salary ($710) and most importantly my admin job. It's a relief to be sitting in an office; though it gets boring and tedious, it does beat going outfield and the tedium of bunk and training. I do miss the gratuitous lying in the grass that is much of the field camp experience, but no I won't trade, ha. It gets lonely, but I get by. I can't really be arsed to care very much; I used to think I was a failure, so many friends getting through OCS and me stuck on a lower plane of existence, but hell, people are only human, and myself more than most. Compared with what you're going to do with the rest of your life, these 22 months are nothing.

-----

I've grown emotionally too, this year. First from grief, then from dejection and depression, and then from someone who was then, and still is, special to me. That's another raw spot that'll never heal; sure it'll scab over but inevitably something will remind me and then it'll be bleeding all over the place again. If it sounds pathetic, yeah it probably is, actually. But so are all of us, in some way or other. If you're not pathetic in some way or other do get in touch with me, I would very much like to meet you.

-----

And most importantly, there are friends. This year I've realised that more than anything else, I get by with the help of my friends, people who spare a kind thought and word. We all have our crosses to bear, but there are those who help make the burden that bit lighter, and keep us going. Adam and Zhaohan, the A to Z of my phone book. ZH I've lost track of the number of drinks you claim to owe me, but I owe you lots more than drinks. You've been a constant, true friend. If you weren't there for me, I would have crashed and burned, bad. And my phone bill for July wouldn't have hit 80 freaking bucks haha.

Adam, I'll spare you all that emo shit cos I know you hate it, but thanks. We'll get drunk together someday, alright?

Remus, lil bro, you've been unfailingly good-spirited and understanding. The only thing I hate about you is that you're taller than me, damn it!

Shanghui, thanks. I owe you.

I could go on, but this isn't a freaking Oscar speech. Just want to thank all those of you (too many!) who've stuck around me and comforted me in bad times. I will never be able to repay all of you that debt of gratitude.

-----

And I'd like to end off invoking the traditional Auld Lang Syne. I've added a loose translation into English because the original Scotch lyrics always left me stumped (I'm sure many of you - I don't know any native Scotch speakers! - have felt the same).

Auld Lang Syne
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and auld lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my dear,
for auld lang syne,
we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

For Old Time's Sake
Should old acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind?
Should old acquaintance be forgot,
and old times since?

For old time's sake, my dear,
for old time's sake,
we'll take a cup of kindness yet,
for old time's sake.

Here's wishing all of you out there a better 2009 than the 2008 we've left behind!

PS: Do hit the comments link and say hi or something... I'd love to see who stalks me, besides the usual suspects =D

Is ideology overhyped?

2008-12-30T21:30:00.002+08:00

Much has been written about a dramatic shift to Keynesian thought in economics. Governments around the world are poking their grubby hands and snotty noses into the free market, and journalists (especially the financial ones, having little to write about anyway other than the depressing stuff about oil, banks and people losing their life savings) are having a hell of a time pointing it out.

I think this is rather overstated. Sure, government intervention has become much more pervasive over the last few months (more regulatory oversight, much more spending in the economy, stimulus packages and such); sure, governments have realised that their economies will screw up big-time if they don't step in. But economic policies and schools of thought are never applicable under all circumstances; they were never meant to be. Different approaches are useful at different times, based on a government's macroeconomic aims - ranging from the growth-at-all-costs approach of China and Vietnam, to the control of inflation that countries like the UK seem to be obsessed with.

And times have changed dramatically. Who would've thought that the housing bubble would have burst so spectacularly, with such dramatic spillover effects into the money markets? And who would've thought that the effect on the money markets would be so pronounced as to affect the real economy? Added to that we had the oil-price peak, only just behind us (and possibly not for long); there was food inflation caused partly by the adoption of biofuels and the food scares we've had. Set against this, arguing (as Friedman did) that "inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon" is perhaps pushing the case too far.

New Classical approaches combined with the lack of adequate regulation were largely to blame for the brouhaha that financial institutions (and governments) are finding themselves in. It follows then that these approaches were clearly inadequate in dealing with the current situation, if not in the strictly economic sense then certainly in the sense of not being politically expedient.

To argue, then, as some economic journalists seem to be doing, that this is a new Keynesian age ("we are all Keynesians now" as Ronald Reagan said), is a bit naive, both for the reason stated earlier (i.e. a New Classical approach is clearly inadequate in dealing with the current situation) and for something more fundamental in the nature of politics. Governments have a natural bias against doing nothing; it's their job to govern, for better or for worse. Especially in a multiparty democracy, where to bum around is to hand the political initiative (and quite possibly the next election) to the opposition. Blame it on the goldfish attention spans of the electorate, but like it or not, no government would sit around fiddling while Rome burned. Obviously they had to come up with something to show the voters, and this is the result - Keynes is back in vogue.

Perhaps it is pertinent, now, to remind everyone that the subject of economics was once called political economy. And decoupling the armchair contemplation of theoretical economic niceties from the nitty-gritty conduct of economic policy is possibly more illuminating than raving about the dawn of a new Keynesian era.

particularly enlightened

2008-12-29T18:13:00.002+08:00

I thought this comment on the history of Arab-Israeli relations was particularly enlightened:

Incidentally, if Moses had turned right instead of left, the Jews could have had the oil, and the Arabs would have got the oranges.

Thanks to Chase me Ladies. Though I believe it isn't original.

my 300th post

2008-12-25T17:34:00.001+08:00

I swear, it's not my fault that ZH's in love with Connie Booth.

a thought

2008-12-24T23:59:00.001+08:00

To be honest I'm a bit relieved that this year no one has asked me to watch their church's Christmas play or musical, or go for some service or anything like that. I don't like public religion, or public spirituality. To me religion must be experienced internally, from within; it must be private. For that reason I'm spending Christmas at home, as always.

And just to piss off those who would lecture me on the "true meaning of Christmas", here's wishing all of you a

Happy Saturnalia!

new colour scheme

2008-12-24T20:38:00.002+08:00

W00t. I found this site COLOURlovers which has thousands of colour schemes and felt somewhat inspired. Hopefully this looks abit less crappy than the default blogger one. Tell me what you think!

The Stranger/What I want for Christmas

2008-12-20T10:15:00.005+08:00

Introducing the new link down the right: The Stranger - Seattle's Only Newspaper. Not for the faint-hearted. The articles are hilarious, if you can take their humour. I especially recommend the I, Anonymous (written by an anonymous reader each week) and Last Days (day-by-day summary of the week's news) columns. And Savage Love if you're the kind of person who, like Adam, likes to read filthy sex-advice columns. Beware, I read a couple of them and came out with the impression that I have the libido of a neutered amoeba. Highly recommended.

-----

And zomg you won't believe this. I want herpes for Christmas. I mean this herpes simplex virus 2 plush toy.

It's freaking cute! Go check out the website, they've got stuffed toys for flu, chickenpox, sperm, neurons, mosquitos, and of course the venereals. Who would've thought that getting gonorrhea would be so cool? (Taken out of context the last sentence sounds incredibly disturbing.) I was so interested that I checked the shipping charges, which unfortunately are astronomical (US$43). And amazon.com is basically out of stock alr. =( Oh well.

Crikey. Damn cool to get a set of STD plush toys... lmao.

Office Routine

2008-12-18T07:44:00.003+08:00

In the mornings:

Safely Remove Hardware > Safely Remove Brain, v3.8 (C:\, D:\, E:\, F:\).
Wear face: sanguine.
I'm ready for you, bitch.

final theory test

2008-12-15T09:57:00.002+08:00

Eh... damn paiseh if I fail lah.

Update: passed phew. And I got a new bike heh.

Update: my new bike sucks. Its brake pads screech like nails on glass. Damn depressing.

what if morality were... economical?

2008-12-13T08:23:00.002+08:00

No, I'm serious. Think about it. Economists, what if morality were subject to the dictates of cost-benefit analysis?

-----

Now, a post by Sam Tho (Nov 30) regarding gratuitous swearing got me thinking. Yes I'm certainly one of those who inspired the post, for I cuss without too much thought in the company of friends. (Of course, this depends on who I'm with - that night was him, Remus, Justin and me.) So Sam doesn't use the word fuck, and has never done so and doesn't plan to start. Commendable. Certainly, there are people who live by thou shalt not swear, but I see the benefits, and the costs aren't particularly compelling, so heck.

In my analysis, he greatly overestimates the negative externalities (costs) generated by swearing (the disapproval of peers and family, the breakdown of the fabric of society, the affront to morality and God, etc.) and underestimates the benefits (harmless stress-relief/catharsis, endearment to friends, better conversation, etc.). My own estimation is probably skewed towards the other extreme, simply because I perceive the benefits to be greater - because they accrue to myself and those around me - and the costs to be lesser.

Generally, I've found that if I swear

I'm comfortable with the company I'm with
The conversation is going well, and pretty interesting
It gets even better after that

This is of course an example of the familiarity heuristic. Occasionally it doesn't work, and it sucks. But usually it's fine, because I'm not usually the one to initiate the swearing.

You might say I was being economical with morality there. I think that's true; some people place a high premium on strong ideals of morality - they associate it with strong positive externalities - and it's simply easier to abide by monolithic rules than to weigh the costs and benefits each time (because the costs are so high and the benefits - of breaking the rules - are so low).

But to take this one step further, we could examine the development of morality itself. Besides divine endowment (stone tablets, burning bushes, Brian Blessed voices etc.), I think morality may be thought of as a result of people living in societies. Values and ethics develop so that people may live with each other and not hate each other as a result. And societies with developed notions of morality probably tend to fare better than those without (because they hate each other less, they're probably more inclined to cooperate).

Morality also springs from conceptions of fairness, which are to some extent shared by animals: [1] [2] To some extent there may be an evolutionary basis for morality.

But economics? Might people live moral lives simply because the benefits were greater than the costs? The effect of a change in cigarette prices on smokers' behaviour is pretty well-documented; Tim Harford gives a convincing economic explanation for the increase in oral sex among American teenagers. But to extend economic analysis to morality as a whole... probably needs a bit more thought on my part. I'll get back to you on this.

apologies

2008-12-12T23:10:00.000+08:00

Hey all, I think my readership has slowly but inevitably dropped off over the last couple of weeks. Sorry I haven't been posting; life's been dull is an understatement, and I've been in a phase of self-involved self-absorbed angst (what's new?)

Life has been depressing in its banality. There are 4 main constituent parts in my life ||: sleep, work, commute, home :|| except weekends which are a relief. The commute is a pain in the arse, especially if I can't get a seat on 969 or the train. If you're thinking that this is the most trite rubbish you've read in a month, well done you. 'Cos I fully agree.

I'm not even angry at the world now like Adam is; my anger is spent, and as I look, the world takes on a mildly malevolent glow of purple-grey-brown: something is rotten and putrid and malignant but I'm buggered if I know what it is and I can't be arsed to care.

I'm merely waiting for someone to come back and tell me that things will be fine again.

weird bird

2008-12-06T20:52:00.006+08:00

Lol I'm not in the habit of posting nature documentaries, but this bird of paradise's mating ritual is incredible. Watch for the psychedelic cyan smiley!

And the gal isn't even impressed - what a bitch.

Thanks to cracked.com

words of advice

2008-12-05T14:33:00.003+08:00

Two poems here that I thought lots of you out there might like. The first poem's achieved a sort of shiny oracular halo of fame, and I just found the second poem today - it might be useful for a sense of perspective haha. Enjoy!

Desiderata by Max Ehrmann

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible, without surrender,
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even to the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons;
they are vexatious to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain or bitter,
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs,
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals,
and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love,
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment,
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be.
And whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life,
keep peace in your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

and Deteriorata by Tony Hendra

You are a fluke of the universe.
You have no right to be here.
Deteriorata. Deteriorata.

Go placidly amidst the noise and waste, and remember what comfort there may be in owning a piece thereof. Avoid quiet and passive persons, unless you are in need of sleep. Rotate your tires. Speak glowingly of those greater than yourself; and heed well their advice, even though they be turkeys. Know what to kiss - and when. Consider that two wrongs never make a right, but that three do. Wherever possible, put people on hold. Be comforted, that in the face of all irridity and disillusionment, and despite the changing fortunes of time, there is always a big future in computer maintenance.

You are a fluke of the universe.
You have no right to be here.
Whether you can hear it or not,
The universe is laughing behind your back.

Remember the Pueblo. Strive at all times to bend, fold, spindle, and mutilate. Know yourself. If you need help, call the FBI. Exercise caution in your daily affairs, especially with those persons closest to you... That lemon on your left, for instance. Be assured that a walk through the seas of most souls would scarcely get your feet wet. Fall not in love, therefore, it will stick to your face. Gracefully surrender the things of youth: the birds, clean air, tuna, Taiwan - and let not the sands of time get in your lunch. Hire people with hooks. For a good time, call 606-4311, ask for Ken. Take heart in the deepening gloom that your dog is finally getting enough cheese. And reflect that whatever misfortune may be your lot, it could only be worse in Milwaukee.

You are a fluke of the universe.
You have no right to be here.
Whether you can hear it or not,
The universe is laughing behind your back.

Therefore, make peace with your god, whatever you perceive him to be: hairy thunderer or cosmic muffin. With all its hopes, dreams, promises, and urban renewal, the world continues to deteriorate. GIVE UP!

You are a fluke of the universe.
You have no right to be here.
Whether you can hear it or not,
The universe is laughing behind your back.

godsend

2008-11-29T10:43:00.000+08:00

Borders coupons! Woohoo you know where I'll be this afternoon heh...

boum

2008-11-26T22:46:00.002+08:00

Crazy song, I can't remember where I first heard it. Yup he looks like he's gone bonkers, but forgive him he's French.

La pendule fait tic tac tic tic
Les oiseaux du lac pic pac pic pic
Glou glou glou font tous les dindons
Et la jolie cloche ding dang dong

[Mais...]

Boum!
Quand notre coeur fait Boum
Tout avec lui dit Boum
Et c'est l'amour qui s'éveille

Boum!
Il chante "love in bloom"
Au rythme de ce Boum
Qui redit Boum à l'oreille

Tout a changé depuis hier
Et la rue a des yeux qui regardent aux fenétres
Y a du lilas et y a des mains tendues
Sur la mer le soleil va paraître

Boum!
L'astre du jour fait Boum
Tout avec lui dit Boum
Quand notre coeur fait Boum Boum

Le vent dans les bois fait hou hou hou
La biche aux abois fait mé mé mé
La vaisselle cassée fait cric crin crac
Et les pieds mouillés font flic flic flac

[Mais...]

Boum!
Quand notre coeur fait Boum
Tout avec lui dit Boum
L'oiseau dit Boum, c'est l'orage

Boum!
L'éclair qui lui fait Boum
Et le bon Dieu dit Boum
Dans son fauteuil de nuages

Car mon amour est plus vif
Que l'éclair, plus léger qu'un oiseau qu'une abeille
Et s'il fait Boum s'il se met en colère
Il entraîne avec lui des merveilles

Boum!
Le monde entier fait Boum
Tout l'univers fait Boum
Parc'que mon coeur fait Boum Boum
Je n'entends que Boum Boum
Ça fait toujours Boum Boum
Boum Boum Boum Boum Boum!

There's a sucky (and incomplete) translation here.

Ouch.

2008-11-23T08:06:00.004+08:00

As I caught sight of the front page of today's Sunday Times I felt 2 distinct waves of feeling, one emotional, one physical:

horror

and

nausea.

If Tan Kin Lian gets on the ballot for elected President, sticks and stones may break my bones but I'll crawl to any voting station to vote against him. (Unless President Nathan somehow ends his term early, I'll be voting age come 2011.) And if Tan Kin Lian gets voted in I will surely pack my bags and leave in disgust.

This man is a painful orator in both English and Chinese; he's a populist of the worst kind, and a disingenuous and deluded egomaniac. This is what our beloved national paper of record's beloved sister Sunday paper says: "Get me 100,000 signatures" and he'll run for office - so politics is just a sheer popularity contest to him; "I don't need this kind of trouble" - so elected office is troublesome to him; his political ambitions "are for Singapore" - so he would be the panacea to our ills, would he indeed!

Our former presidents were all distinguished, respected and responsible members of society. This man... Words fail to describe the extent to which I find this man unsuitable to hold any position of responsibility. The only office he should get to is a psychiatrist's.

I've been published...

2008-11-22T11:14:00.005+08:00

Finally haha. I am gratified to note that my letter was published at the top of the Forum page, which means I've joined the crackpot ranks of George Lim (woohoo!) and less dubious commentators like Narayana Narayana (I still rmb his name, that's how many letters he wrote). I am annoyed, however, at the errors the editor introduced to my letter. The most glaring one is the title he gave it: nowhere in my letter do I argue (exclusively) for a 2-party system!

It's sadly constrained by the 400-word limit. I still maintain that it's impossible to develop a coherent and comprehensive argument within that; but maybe in it's infinite wisdom our beloved ST has figured out that most Singaporeans can't sustain their attention for more than 5 paras. ^^

-----

My original submission follows:

Dear Sir,

I refer to recent letters regarding Singapore's political system.

In my view the debate boils down to this question: is the potentially monolithic mindset of a single-party system more dangerous than the chaotic free-wheeling debate engendered by a multiparty democracy? I believe that, all things considered, the balance of benefits and costs comes out in favour of the latter.

Dr Tan notes that a multiparty system is no guarantee against groupthink – but compared against a single-party system, surely it provides at least an assurance that more views are heard? Mr Tim points out that PAP MPs have challenged ministers, but these are often on finer points of policy, not on the very direction of Singapore's development – no PAP MP would throw out their party's manifesto or risk the Party Whip.

Dr Tan cites the PAP's experience in its defence – however it is fallacious to argue that past experience guarantees future performance, as anyone who has read the fine print on financial products will know. Experience did not prevent PAP town councils from investing in a manner more befitting an investment banker than a government body; neither did it prevent the LDP from plunging Japan into a decade of stagnation.

More importantly, Singapore's past growth was built on emulating best practices from around the world, policies that worked for decades. This justified the need for a strong and decisive executive. Now that Singapore has entered the ranks of the developed nations, this strategy no longer suffices. Experience does not prevent us from making mistakes, worse, it creates an environment of complacency and lethargy.

Together with the rest of the developed world we are entering unchartered territory in terms of economic and demographic development. Experience counts for little in this new game; experience cannot provide the paradigm shifts that characterise pivotal moments in history: the Industrial Revolution, the Meiji Revolution, or Roosevelt's New Deal. The fast-evolving global landscape Mr Tim references is precisely what necessitates the development of a marketplace of ideas in Singapore.

Moreover, it must fall to an outsider to point this out: the PAP's self-interest is, above all, its own survival. Singaporeans must de-link the fortunes of our nation with those of our ruling party; surely all of us would agree that even if the PAP were to fall one day on the back of mismanagement or bad governance, Singapore herself cannot afford to fall.

new links

2008-11-21T21:10:00.002+08:00

1 humour and 4 opinion sites in a new Singapore section. I've been meaning to find good Singaporean news/opinion sites for some time, but sadly, many bloggers here are either mindnumbingly dull, devoid of intellectual content, or single-mindedly contrarian. Not like I love the PAP, but they aren't the devil incarnate either...

Speaking of which, I wrote to the ST forum. And amazingly, they called back in 2 hours. O.o ISD probably will be adding another report to my file soon haha

first driving lesson

2008-11-20T22:06:00.002+08:00

woo. quite stressing. a bit scary. quite fun & kinda enjoyable. although all i did, really, was just start the engine, release the clutch & tap the accelerator a bit. and reverse O.o wow. cool.

Re: ST Forums: George Lim archive

2008-11-16T09:16:00.003+08:00

(w00tz welcome back adam!)

Check this out: The 6 Most Unintentionally Hilarious Old School PSAs. I'm sure this's the kind of public education film George Lim would be making in his happy retirement, in between walking the dog, watering the plants and playing with his neighbours' children (no reference to paedophilia intended)... I'll give you a quick run-down of just the first page:

Perversion for Profit
In this 1965 film you learn that porn entices innocent teens to enter the world of "homosexuals, lesbians, sadist, masochists, and other sex deviants". There's a hilarious cartoonish "perversion for profit" octopus engulfing the continental US on the first placard the host's holding, check it out! And *shock-horror* porn caused sixteen of the nineteen major civilisations to vanish from the earth! Apparently it goes on to show 20 minutes of pornographic images... rofl. Kinda defeating the purpose, no?
Boys Beware
Lol. Homosexuality is contagious, according to this one. "Like smallpox." The narrator sounds so measured and reassuring, makes you lap up everything he says. And the background music is priceless haha - pastoral flutes for the innocent teens; drumbeats for the approach of the shadowy, sinister, demented Homosexual. Oh dear...
Habit Patterns (1954) & Body Care and Grooming (1948)
Haha the background music is probably a period thing. Equally priceless this one: "It's a bit late for tears, isn't it Barbara?" And the other film: to the sound of growling violin trills and tremolos, the narrator comments "We're trying to prove a point about nature and beauty, and... you're not exactly helping, you know? Look at your hair. Look at that blouse. And the way that skirt hangs. And those socks. (...) You don't seem to be exactly the type to make this guy behave like a human being" as opposed to a demented sex predator, maybe?

Oh the next page is pretty amazing too. We learn that the danger of falling radiation and debris is over within a minute and a half of a nuclear bombing. "Have Americans got the guts? *turns to face camera* Have you got the guts?" lmao.

I'm sure our dear George (who I think will become a recurring figure of fun on this blog) will take comfort in these glorious movies of the 50s and 60s.

outside my flat

2008-11-13T22:23:00.001+08:00

serious!

(alright it's for lift upgrading, but still!)

they should put it on my neighbour's door hahaha

ST Forums: George Lim archive

2008-11-11T23:14:00.009+08:00

http://gssq.livejournal.com/150751.html
http://www.drmikeloh.com/07/jun01.htm

I was laughing my butt off at this bumbling social reformer/moraliser George Lim Heng Chye and his missives to the Straits Times forum page. Oh dear me... Well yeah, some of his letters are reasonable: Man exposed himself to boys yeah that sounds horrible, but oh geez read this!- All the movies are about sex and violence. Time for censors to act:

I turned to the cinema pages of the Life! Section in the Straits Times last Saturday and noted the sort of movies being shown in town. The main themes focussed on violence, crime, death and sex. Here are some of the movies:
The Black Dahlia - about Hollywood’s most infamous sex murders;
Dead man’s shoes - about revenge;
Silk - about spirits;
Death Note - about death;
The Departed - a crime drama;
Wet hot sake - about sex, sleaze and sensuality;
My Summer of Love - more sex and sleaze.
The other movies are about inconsequential events. These are time-wasters and sad to watch:
Talladega Nights - about brainless and crazy people with fast cars;
World Trade Centre - a disaster;
Rob -B-Hood - no theme.
These movies do not provide any wholesome and meaningful lessons in life. The more a person watches them, the more he would be made to feel that life is hopeless and meaningless.

Movie directors are happily ripping off the public by giving us worthless movies that harm us.

It is useless to bar only children and those below 18 from watching these movies as the tasteless pictures in the media continue to defile good sense and morals.

Where are our educators? Why are they silent on this sad state of affairs? What does our conscience tell us about such movies being screened in public? Do we have a conscience at all?

One may argue that we have a choice not to watch these shows. But if it Hobson’s choice everyday with such low quality movies, where is the freedom for one to choose a wholesome and good movie when none is available?

What about the public’s right to see good movies? And why do we create for ourselves a famine of morally enriching shows?

A movie that is worthwhile watching would give hope to the viewer about the meaning of life and its purpose. A good movie should result in stirring a person’s mind and heart to do good for society. It should focus on wholesome family values of love and care, and respect for the elders and the government.

How should we rate a movie for its value? We should not give ratings to reflect its popularity based on violence, crime and sex, but instead focus on good values such as kindness, gentleness, love, peace, goodness, faithfulness, self-control and joy.

Unfortunately, none of these good values can be found in the movies mentioned above. Movies that espouse the desirable values are rare. These are ‘Chariots of Fire’ and ‘Akeelah and the Bee’. I particularly enjoy watching Jack Neo’s portrayal of our primary school system in ‘I not stupid’.

Yet if it remains only a portrayal of our country’s meritocratic education system, it alone would not be able to help us make further progress. It is not enough just to point out society’s ills. The movie’s director should have concluded the show with lessons on corrective measures for the public.

I would like the Board of Film Censors to critically review and evaluate the quality of the movies currently being screened in public. The guiding principle of the authority should always be driven by good and responsible values that promote hope, compassion and love. And it should not be influenced by the public’s lust for sex, violence and death that leads to a sense of hopelessness for the viewer.

I've reproduced his letter in full to let the full measure of his naivete sink in. I don't know; my egalitarian instincts and political-correctness gearstick prevent me from saying anything more than that he must have had a very sad and disturbed childhood.

It seems that giving this letter an answer would merely glorify it. But since our venerable newspaper of record published it - and I'm sure many people were nodding their heads in agreement on reading his letters - it would seem that it is worthy of an answer.

Brilliant right? As if film censorship wasn't enough, this guy wants to dictate what movies we watch, so that only films with upright values get shown, so as to educate and improve young minds.

Tosh! Does Mr George Lim live in snooty Victorian England or does he have a ten-foot pole up his shithole? He intends to perpetrate social engineering - and not just that, he intends to do so by screening Chariots of Fire! Any of you - us - youngsters would lap that up? Anyone out there as ridiculously inexperienced in the ways of the world, as dear George?

The world is meaningless and hopeless and ugly and filthy and corrupt and depraved and rich and beautiful and wonderous and human in its depravity, deal with it! Even good clean family-friendly Mozart wrote the piece "Lick me in the arse"! Go on, George, ban Mozart! This time I'm with you all the way!

I absolutely detest this self-righteous sense of moral rectitude that he exudes with every word. I drip with scorn.

Sure, rate movies on how they portray values of kindness and love. I'm sure he wants to watch Barney all day, too. Or maybe not - he might take actually offence at Barney's paedophilic, effeminate and *shock horror* homosexual image! He's purple, for fuckssake!

Oh yeah, that reminds me - he has stuff to say on homosexuality too. But I'll let a better mind guide you through it: I've found an excellent and thoughtful blog by this guy Sam, who's incidentally commented on it. Go browse his other posts, it really is quite thought-provoking.

Alright that's it from me now; I've really gotta go sleep. Man, all that suppressed laughter was a good abs workout.

I am parody

2008-11-11T15:55:00.003+08:00

I know lots of you out there have heard the Arrogant Worms' I am Cow. But have you heard Helen Reddy's I am Woman? It was hilarious when I first heard it and noticed the obvious similarities in melody and lyrics, particularly this:

I am woman watch me grow
See me standing toe to toe
As I spread my lovin' arms across the land

and this

I am cow, here I stand
Far and wide upon this land
And I am living everywhere.

Brilliant! Made me love the Arrogant Worms even more haha.

new links

2008-11-10T20:11:00.002+08:00

Cos of my really suck and slack job, right, I was traipsing around the net this morning (after a 3km morning run; welcome to live activities!) and rediscovered fark.com, together with a couple of other humour sites: cracked.com and Holy Taco. Really funny stuff. Check them out, down the sidebar there! >>>

maybe boredom is erotic

2008-11-09T20:17:00.003+08:00

- or so Atwood wrote in The Handmaid's Tale (Chapter 13). But I beg to differ; I've been bored for ages and it hasn't put me in the mood for anything.

Contrary to popular belief I'm not happy with my job. When you're cooped up in a 3×7m office all day with only one other person you begin to form a deep-seated resentment against him/her. In short, my job's a mindless tedium - conducted in Chinese, which makes it worse. If you make any mistakes you get an absolute earful (in Chinese). You haven't met anal till you've met my superior. If you check the dictionary for anal you might find her name inside. And my colleague and partner in misery is ORDing on Tuesday, bugger. I'm terribly handicapped compared to him - I can't flirt with auntie-types in Chinese. I'm already inept enough (socially) in English... damnitall.

My social life is in tatters. The people I usually go out with are all overseas or mugging for A levels. I'm too lazy to call up other people, coordinate calendars, find cool spots for meals or good movies... and face it, as the geog guys know, my outing ideas are often crap. (Guys, remember tartines? ^^) I haven't heard from some friends in ages. I'm not sure if they're lost in Africa; maybe I should greet them like Henry Stanley: "Dr Livingstone, I presume?" Forgive me if I don't recognise you guys any more. But then again it's your fault too!

Yeah I think life in a monastery might be better. At least it might be mentally challenging. And I'm a sucker for austerity and passive masochism - how else to explain the love of classical music, novels and yogurt?

The only consolation is my piano is improving slightly, and I'm reading lots: in the last week, Atomised by Houellebecq, Middlesex by Eugenides (quite brilliant) and The Gospel According to Jesus Christ by Jose Saramago (chillingly heretical). You must read Middlesex, it's a very unusual narrative voice, and Eugenides writes extremely convincingly and evocatively.

Maybe I should get a good bicycle and do the 40km loop of park connectors. Though I haven't cycled in years; I might crash into a tree and mangle myself. But then again, surely that'd be more erotic than boredom...