I think that "Chungking Express" and "Fallen Angels" by Wong Kar Wai were both filmed around the same time, so I can't remember which is which. I think both of them are quite quirky, and while "Chungking Express" is the more famous sibling, "Fallen Angels" is the more moody and haunting film.
But the point is that in one of these films the narrator begins by muttering darkly that every relationship has its expiry date, and once it is reached, it's best to part. It is a sentiment I remember being expressed in "Annie Hall" where Woody Allen says that a relationship is like a shark - being heavier than water, it has to keep on swimming or else it will sink.
I've seen relationships ended like this. Maybe relationships are like bit torrent, you have people coming and going, sometimes you're uploading and sometimes downloading. And when you've finished giving and taking what each other needs, you move on to the next one?
No, actually the reason why I'm writing this is that I had a friend who I used to be really close to. And then over a few disagreements we drifted apart. And then after getting tired of him I broke off contact with him (but also he hasn't really bothered contacting me, except for 1 time when he mentioned my name in a blog entry). But I didn't feel like I needed to talk to him. But still I've been reading that blog, which is kinda contradictory. Until he made it private. So I'm wondering whether I should get on that reader list.
There are always other things to be done, and I might as well do them first before going back to old relationships that I left for a reason.
Blogs also have expiry dates. I made a list of 4 things I really want to do this year and maintaining this blog is unfortunately not one of them.
Sunday, 27 April 2008
Friday, 25 April 2008
Problem solving methodology
Problem:
When Portsmouth made it to the semi-finals of the FA cup, together with the likes of such great teams as Barnsley, Cardiff and West Bromwich Albion, none of which are premiership sides, I had this strange feeling in my gut that Portsmouth were going to win the FA cup. I looked at the odds: 1.75. Not spectacular but not bad for something that was in my mind a done deal. So I went out to buy the ticket. Portsmouth to win the FA cup, which means they don't even have to win the match outright, I will still get the money if it goes to extra time, penalties, etc.
Since then Portsmouth got into the final by knocking out WBA, which is good. But glancing at the schedule tells me that for the 2-3 weeks following the FA cup final I will not be in Singapore.
Solution:
I give the bet ticket to my mother and tell her Happy Mothers Day and by the way you are a Portsmouth fan now because if Cardiff win you get nothing.
When Portsmouth made it to the semi-finals of the FA cup, together with the likes of such great teams as Barnsley, Cardiff and West Bromwich Albion, none of which are premiership sides, I had this strange feeling in my gut that Portsmouth were going to win the FA cup. I looked at the odds: 1.75. Not spectacular but not bad for something that was in my mind a done deal. So I went out to buy the ticket. Portsmouth to win the FA cup, which means they don't even have to win the match outright, I will still get the money if it goes to extra time, penalties, etc.
Since then Portsmouth got into the final by knocking out WBA, which is good. But glancing at the schedule tells me that for the 2-3 weeks following the FA cup final I will not be in Singapore.
Solution:
I give the bet ticket to my mother and tell her Happy Mothers Day and by the way you are a Portsmouth fan now because if Cardiff win you get nothing.
Tuesday, 22 April 2008
How Israel Lost
Read this really interesting book called “How Israel Lost” by Richard Ben Cramer. I don’t know why I sold it off but I guess it was a little lightweight, even though it was one of the most interesting books I’ve read about the Israel – Palestinian conflict I have read. This book is very different from the previous one I’ve read, “Gun and the Olive Branch”, which took a very anti-Israel slant towards the whole affair, detailing incident after incident where the Israel military crushes the helpless Palestinians under their own wheels.
This account is altogether more nuanced, and looks at it from the ground level. There are fewer facts and figures here but a few very well chosen anecdotes which reveal the nuances more clearly than the mere numbers.
The reality is a little more complicated. Yes the Israeli occupation is cruel but a lot of it comes from the very understandable insecurity that their nation is constantly in peril. On the other hand, Israel is a democracy where even the leaders are beholden to the bloodlust of its population. Democracies are not exactly peace loving countries, because when the people feel that they have to “take a hard line”, then there is this irrational attitude that military action is a great thing.
More specifically, the main obstacle to peace are the settlers on West Bank. No politician in Israel will ever risk his career to order them to leave. Many of them are fundamentalist nuts who believe that they are on a God ordained promised land. Many others are rabble rousers who have nothing better to do than to stir up shit with the Palestinians. (I’m paraphrasing).
At the same time, the Palestinian Authority under Yasser Arafat was hopelessly corrupt. He runs it like a Godfather. Like most corrupt leaders, he is partially at fault, and partially he understands that granting cash and favours is one of the most convenient and easiest ways to maintain his hold on power. (I suddenly had this great respect for LKY and understood that his method of “breaking heads” did have a real purpose in a particular setting and time, albeit not now.)
One of the most startling charges is that there was a pact that Yitzhak Rabin made with Yasser Arafat. Just before the White House handshake, Yasser Arafat was a marginal figure living in exile in Tunisia. Rabin brought back Arafat because he had had enough of the uprising by the Palestinians and was actually using him to help control his own Palestinians! He hoped to buy time in order to fulfil his own side of the bargain, which was to uproot settlers. Unfortunately even that was too much for his own people. So he was shot, just like Anwar Sadat got shot for signing the Egypt – Israel peace pact.
So there were 2 nearly symmetrical stories which illustrate why peace is almost impossible. One concerned an Israeli who had a dream to build a house on the settlements. His relationship with his neighbours had a tentative start, because he found out that he wasn’t an Orthodox Jew fundamentalist that his neighbours but he ignored the warning signs. Eventually he grew friendly with the Palestinians in the neighbouring village and sometimes went there to hang out. One day their disapproval over this was so great that they burnt his house down. It was a house that he had spent much of his life savings and a few years trying to build. He tried to appeal to the Israeli authorities about this but nobody would lift a finger to help him because nobody wants to be seen helping a traitor.
Another concerned a lively and enterprising Palestinian. He set up a business shipping stuff in and out of Iraq. Unfortunately he was seen as favouring Israeli businessmen who were less corrupt than the Palestinians. He remained friendly to a few Israeli partners in spite of receiving warnings not to do so. In the end, he was captured and tortured by the Palestinian authorities, had the crap beaten out of him, and disowned by his family.
One way of understanding Palestinians is that Arabs have a very deep rooted concept of honour, and it’s as important to them as face is to us Chinese. Life in Palestine is oppressive in not small part because of all the checkpoints that the Israelis set up. Because most of the good jobs are in Israel, there are people who have to cross the checkpoints every day (think about the motorbikes on our causeway). And every day they are subjected to humiliating searches and threats of violence.
It is definitely an insult to your honour if you have to be subjugated to another country and still have to be forced to go there to work in order to earn a living.
Suicide bombing is a way of getting back your lost honour. You get proclaimed to be a hero in your village. It is unfortunate that Arab culture is like that but many people all over the world (but definitely not all) do see that it is understandable. Wrong but understandable.
The other thing is that there are vested interests in getting the system to work the way that it is working now. A handful of Israeli and Palestinian businessmen import petrol and other goods from Israel to Palestine, and makes a windfall by charging exorbitant prices. These businessmen are working hand in hand with the Palestinian authorities – the PA ensures the safety of these trucks. Think – no suicide bomber will attack them even though they belong to the Israelis. That’s because the suicide bombers are in for the honour, and they also know that their entire clan will be murdered if they try anything funny on these trucks.
One other big debate on the peace issue was this. It is known that when, in a last ditch to save the peace process, Clinton, Barak and Arafat met at Camp David in 2000 to negotiate a peace treaty. Apparently they were terms favourable to Arafat, and people were all saying that this is the best deal that Arafat will ever get, and were puzzled when he refused to sign it. They jumped on this as proof that he is completely intransigent.
Well not quite. The deal says that he will get 99% of West Bank. But that 99% of West Bank is 3 walled ghettoes surrounded by criss crossing highways that cut through the land. It’s as though Malaysia were to conquer Singapore, then cut a deal with us saying, “we’ll give you back everything, 99% of the land except for CTE, ECP and PIE, and you’ll have to build a wall around those expressways.” I think we would reject, too.
This account is altogether more nuanced, and looks at it from the ground level. There are fewer facts and figures here but a few very well chosen anecdotes which reveal the nuances more clearly than the mere numbers.
The reality is a little more complicated. Yes the Israeli occupation is cruel but a lot of it comes from the very understandable insecurity that their nation is constantly in peril. On the other hand, Israel is a democracy where even the leaders are beholden to the bloodlust of its population. Democracies are not exactly peace loving countries, because when the people feel that they have to “take a hard line”, then there is this irrational attitude that military action is a great thing.
More specifically, the main obstacle to peace are the settlers on West Bank. No politician in Israel will ever risk his career to order them to leave. Many of them are fundamentalist nuts who believe that they are on a God ordained promised land. Many others are rabble rousers who have nothing better to do than to stir up shit with the Palestinians. (I’m paraphrasing).
At the same time, the Palestinian Authority under Yasser Arafat was hopelessly corrupt. He runs it like a Godfather. Like most corrupt leaders, he is partially at fault, and partially he understands that granting cash and favours is one of the most convenient and easiest ways to maintain his hold on power. (I suddenly had this great respect for LKY and understood that his method of “breaking heads” did have a real purpose in a particular setting and time, albeit not now.)
One of the most startling charges is that there was a pact that Yitzhak Rabin made with Yasser Arafat. Just before the White House handshake, Yasser Arafat was a marginal figure living in exile in Tunisia. Rabin brought back Arafat because he had had enough of the uprising by the Palestinians and was actually using him to help control his own Palestinians! He hoped to buy time in order to fulfil his own side of the bargain, which was to uproot settlers. Unfortunately even that was too much for his own people. So he was shot, just like Anwar Sadat got shot for signing the Egypt – Israel peace pact.
So there were 2 nearly symmetrical stories which illustrate why peace is almost impossible. One concerned an Israeli who had a dream to build a house on the settlements. His relationship with his neighbours had a tentative start, because he found out that he wasn’t an Orthodox Jew fundamentalist that his neighbours but he ignored the warning signs. Eventually he grew friendly with the Palestinians in the neighbouring village and sometimes went there to hang out. One day their disapproval over this was so great that they burnt his house down. It was a house that he had spent much of his life savings and a few years trying to build. He tried to appeal to the Israeli authorities about this but nobody would lift a finger to help him because nobody wants to be seen helping a traitor.
Another concerned a lively and enterprising Palestinian. He set up a business shipping stuff in and out of Iraq. Unfortunately he was seen as favouring Israeli businessmen who were less corrupt than the Palestinians. He remained friendly to a few Israeli partners in spite of receiving warnings not to do so. In the end, he was captured and tortured by the Palestinian authorities, had the crap beaten out of him, and disowned by his family.
One way of understanding Palestinians is that Arabs have a very deep rooted concept of honour, and it’s as important to them as face is to us Chinese. Life in Palestine is oppressive in not small part because of all the checkpoints that the Israelis set up. Because most of the good jobs are in Israel, there are people who have to cross the checkpoints every day (think about the motorbikes on our causeway). And every day they are subjected to humiliating searches and threats of violence.
It is definitely an insult to your honour if you have to be subjugated to another country and still have to be forced to go there to work in order to earn a living.
Suicide bombing is a way of getting back your lost honour. You get proclaimed to be a hero in your village. It is unfortunate that Arab culture is like that but many people all over the world (but definitely not all) do see that it is understandable. Wrong but understandable.
The other thing is that there are vested interests in getting the system to work the way that it is working now. A handful of Israeli and Palestinian businessmen import petrol and other goods from Israel to Palestine, and makes a windfall by charging exorbitant prices. These businessmen are working hand in hand with the Palestinian authorities – the PA ensures the safety of these trucks. Think – no suicide bomber will attack them even though they belong to the Israelis. That’s because the suicide bombers are in for the honour, and they also know that their entire clan will be murdered if they try anything funny on these trucks.
One other big debate on the peace issue was this. It is known that when, in a last ditch to save the peace process, Clinton, Barak and Arafat met at Camp David in 2000 to negotiate a peace treaty. Apparently they were terms favourable to Arafat, and people were all saying that this is the best deal that Arafat will ever get, and were puzzled when he refused to sign it. They jumped on this as proof that he is completely intransigent.
Well not quite. The deal says that he will get 99% of West Bank. But that 99% of West Bank is 3 walled ghettoes surrounded by criss crossing highways that cut through the land. It’s as though Malaysia were to conquer Singapore, then cut a deal with us saying, “we’ll give you back everything, 99% of the land except for CTE, ECP and PIE, and you’ll have to build a wall around those expressways.” I think we would reject, too.
Sunday, 20 April 2008
codfish
I never had a steady experience before but I understood the ups and downs. Conversely some people might be happily married without going through a stressful break-up. What would they know?
So because I have never really explained this to anybody who reads this blog (except maybe the one who was my housemate when much of this happened) I think I should put out an account before I totally forget that something like this did happen. This episode is something I would say changed me but I wouldn’t think about it all the time.
You may have seen her before, and she would make regular appearances on my previous blog. I may have referred to her before as sea bass, when anybody would have known that sea bass is actually codfish. It doesn’t matter. Maybe I’m writing this now because I’m sufficiently distant from all those matters.
I met her when I was doing a holiday job, being an invigilator. I was very insecure around girls around that time and it would never occur to me that any member of the opposite sex would find me attractive. A bit of that would linger on today - well today I think that if I put in enough effort into it I could pass off as somebody’s boyfriend. But I wouldn’t be able to do that, work, and have other ECAs at the same time. So I’m choosing 2 out of 3, which is work and ECA.
Anyway I didn’t know if I had a crush on her at that time, but it was fun hanging out after work, playing card games in void decks. It was a relief from other things that were happening around that time, which kept me in a state of constant worry. I would say those were happy days, but bimbonic happy days. There was my best friend, and she was his friend too. And she was friendly towards everybody. I felt normal for a little while, almost part of a gang.
We didn’t see each other much after that. Later on I would find out from her that near the same time she was having a very turbulent first relationship with another guy who was a geek. I would bump into her with startling regularity - around once every year - without really keeping in contact.
One fine day, when I was about to leave for uni, I went to a gathering with all the other Singaporeans who were going to the same uni. It was a fateful gathering, considering that quite a few of those people I met I still keep in touch with. And a senior walked in with 2 girls, one of them his girlfriend and the other one - codfish. We finally exchanged emails (This was 4 years after we first met - nobody has ever ever accused me of being a fast worker) and we exchanged a few emails.
I was very surprised that she replied to me, because I was still under the impression that there was absolutely nothing interesting about me whatsoever. (And I was unfortunate enough to be hanging around with people at that time who did not correct this impression.) Then we became friends, sort of. The first few conversations were awkward, stilted. I thought about her, but not very much, during my first year in the uni. It was a very very confusing year, although I did learn a lot from school academically wise.
We finally hooked up during my first summer at home. It was an amazing experience, probably my first time in contact with another girl. And she was not bad looking. I would probably rate her as being equivalent of Tang Wei (and she bears a resemblance to Tang Wei as well), although I could be biased. Some things were going right with me at last - learning a lot of interesting stuff at school, although much of this is book knowledge I didn’t strictly have to go to uni to pick up, but I was having my mind opened to a lot of new ideas. And it was possible that I could be the boyfriend of a very hot girl. We went on 1 date, and where else could it be? We were at Borders. Sorry for being so nerdy. But we felt comfortable talking and discussing ideas. And she was really hot. But it was my last week in Singapore. A few days later, I was back in school.
It was an amazing time. Everything was wide open, anything seemed possible. She was an intellectual like me, and very probably a geek too. My head was full of new ideas, and I compulsively discussed everything with her. In a way, she played the same role as my sister, somebody to bounce off ideas with. (But she is not as smart as my sister. Heh.) And as much as I was thrilled to finally find somebody I could talk to, and was attracted to, more than that I was dazzled that somebody that attractive took an interest in me.
One day, the girlfriend of that uni senior, the one that she went to the uni gathering with, asked me if I was interested in codfish. I said yes, why not? Then she proceeded to badmouth codfish in the most horrible way. And I thought that was a horribly vindictive and self serving thing to do. This girlfriend was just terribly jealous of codfish. Turns out that codfish and the uni senior had been together for a short time, and she’s probably angry that he was still besotted with him sufficiently long after they broke up. But even with those qualifications, I would say that she’s right in a lot of ways.
Among the things she told me (and I can remember it like it was yesterday - this is one of the most shocking experiences in my life. You are in a strange foreign country, you have one link to what you think is a future source of happiness, you have experienced love for the first time, and you are on cloud nine, and some bitch contrives to pour cold water over it all.) She told me that codfish was mentally unbalanced, promiscuous, self centred. How she used that uni senior and manipulated him.
I think I was a little too ego to give her up at that point. There was something fatalistic about me, that I somehow knew I was going to see this through no matter how tragically it would end. Even if she was right, I was not about to stop this thing when I had just started. What I had been told affected me in 2 ways - firstly I was more cautious when dealing with her, and secondly I told myself, whatever she gave me, I would give as good as I got.
One of the strangest things about this relationship was that it took place entirely over ICQ. People think that love over ICQ couldn’t possibly work, and if I hadn’t been through it I might have agreed. But I can assure you that the feelings involved in this one were the most dramatic emotional roller coasters I have ever experienced. I have saved the scripts and kept them locked up in a cupboard somewhere because I wasn’t sure I was ever going to live through such extremes of emotion again, and also because I didn’t think I would ever allow something like that to happen again.
But it’s there in those marathon sessions - possibly up to 2 hours every night. There was me wondering if she would be faithful, but at one point it didn’t seem possible that she could work on her degree, play those games with me, and still have enough energy left over for another boyfriend. All those flirtations, the digressions into minute details of philosophy, then the sudden declarations of love. And how we always spent 5 minutes saying dramatic goodbyes every day. When she was good - and at that time it was quite often - she could be a very tender and emotional person. I think after this I decided that if I was going to look for somebody I would make it a base requirement that she must have a romantic personality. Anything less and I would be shortchanging myself after this. But she could also be very coy about whether she was attracted to another guy, and sometimes she wouldn’t hold back from hinting something like this right in my face. Then I would respond with every insult I could think of, and then we would break off. Typically when the conversations ended I was either extremely happy or extremely depressed. I was seldom anywhere in between after each session with her.
I probably detected the end before she confirmed it. I pissed her off, we had a great quarrel, and then we made up, was OK for a short while, and then suddenly I detected a change in attitude towards me. Quite sudden. I think it was that her old boyfriend, the one she was seeing, wanted her back. Did she take up with me so that she could increase her bargaining power over him? I wouldn’t put it beyond her to do that. But it was a horrible feeling. And on hindsight, I think just a few weeks before our relationship got terminated, she did ask me how far we saw us going with each other. Even though I knew her parents were pressuring her to get married I never said that it was going to happen, that would have been completely ridiculous. OK, I didn’t say “I will never marry you because you are screwed up” even though I was thinking that way. To be sure, I also thought “... I wished you weren’t screwed up”.
I wouldn’t blame her for breaking it off. I might have made it more difficult for her to break off, but she did, good for her. Not seeing me was no fun for her. (But maybe seeing me would also be no fun for her.)
In the end, when the euphoria of the first crazy days of the relationship faded away I think it was not that satisfying. We didn’t see each other, and if we did, I doubt the relationship would not have lasted 2 days. In the event, the whole thing lasted around 6 months, and the most intense portion 2 months in the middle. It is easy to conceal your differences over a cyber relationship. But I could not stand the waiting for her and figuring out whether she was going to be there for me. I could not stand the wondering if she was fooling around behind my back. I would sometimes lecture her on the importance of having a “stable life” but I’m sure that was more than a little hypocritical.
After that it took me a few months to get over this. I tried to get my life up and running again but in those days it felt as though somebody had sucked all the blood out of me. Maybe I was paying back for all that extra energy I had spent on that crazy cyber long distance relationship. I wouldn’t say that I sunk into a deep depression but I think I was more drained than I realised. I was in a state where when you tell your legs to walk, they don’t walk. When you tell your eyes to read they don’t read. I went back home and met her a few times. By that time she had agreed to marry her boyfriend, and was engaged. Our meetings were not happy, and I would describe them as the nadir of the whole affair, but at least it got drummed into me that it was over. I have written about those days before in more harrowing detail but I will spare you the details for later.
This was already the middle of my third year. Yes, some people will tell you that in those 2.5 years I could have had 2 or 3 girlfriends. Probably not, because Asian males are not very attractive in the USA, and because the Singaporean girls there weren’t my type. Do I regret wasting my time on that one lousy person? There were things that should never have happened, but there were also parts I would never have changed. I tend to go into things very deeply and I think that you really need a few years to properly go through all the stages.
A couple of years later my 4 “wonderful” years were up. I spent the rest of my time being more of a good boy. I returned to Singapore, and then found out that codfish had done a super crazy thing by ending her marriage, ending her career, and flying off overseas to pursue some artsy PhD. I think I decided to let the relationship play out because I knew that it would never develop into something more serious and permanent. Imagine if I had reached the stage where I married her and then let her do something like this to me - it would have been a hundred times worse than anything that actually happened between us.
In this second stage, which was also long distance and online, I thought that we might get along as friends, so we talked from time to time. I think during this time I got to know her even better than when I was going after her. At least there were no illusions. But there were a few things that we both did that pissed each other off, and I never really thought of her as a really serious person. Things came to a head when she had a new boyfriend who was somebody I had known. Then one day I said something indiscreet to her boyfriend, and she got very worked up. I think maybe she was paranoid that I would badmouth about her to her boyfriend, but in fairness this fear is probably well founded - not because I would have discussed her with her boyfriend, but because I had plenty of ammo to hit her with. I didn’t badmouth her. I didn’t need to, because I heard that both of them got sick of each other eventually.
But because of my indiscreet remark to the boyfriend, we got into terrible quarrel mode. It was then that I decided to apologise to her, seek her forgiveness, and after that never talk to her again. As was decided, so it was done. After that there were 1 or 2 emails from me, and she also tried hinting on her blog that she wanted to be friends again but we don’t talk anymore. I felt it had gotten to the point where only bad things could come out of our friendship. I doubt she reads my blog anymore, but I don’t care if she reads this entry. I don’t know if she’s single, but I don’t see her holding on to a real long term relationship.
Sorry, this is a very skeletal account. I have probably left out a lot of interesting things. There were a lot of toxic emotions involved that I have had the discipline to bury really deep in the ground, like what you would do with nuclear waste. If you’re sufficiently distant to write about something like this dispassionately you can no longer describe what it feels like to have been there.
Have my experiences with her coloured my attitudes towards women? I can’t really say that I failed if I never tried. There were 1 or 2 people after her who turned me down but most of you would know that hardly counts as trying. Because I’ll never know what could have happened if I was with a nicer person, it’s hard to be conclusive. But I would not say that I’m bitter: it’s more like “what’s the point?”
When I clung on longer than I should have, it’s not because I lost my head, but because I’m a stubborn asshole who hates admitting defeat. And I never had so much of a mean streak before I decided that I was going to be tough on her. She was one of the first people I had set out to be mean to, even if it wasn’t all the time.
If I’m not very impressed with chiobus, I suppose I have seen one up close, and they tend to be spoilt brats. If you are a chiobu it would take a tremendous amount of character not to end up as a spoilt brat. If there is anything to regret in those days, it is maybe that I could have spent that time more productively, but not because somebody gave me an education in what that love thing is all about.
So because I have never really explained this to anybody who reads this blog (except maybe the one who was my housemate when much of this happened) I think I should put out an account before I totally forget that something like this did happen. This episode is something I would say changed me but I wouldn’t think about it all the time.
You may have seen her before, and she would make regular appearances on my previous blog. I may have referred to her before as sea bass, when anybody would have known that sea bass is actually codfish. It doesn’t matter. Maybe I’m writing this now because I’m sufficiently distant from all those matters.
I met her when I was doing a holiday job, being an invigilator. I was very insecure around girls around that time and it would never occur to me that any member of the opposite sex would find me attractive. A bit of that would linger on today - well today I think that if I put in enough effort into it I could pass off as somebody’s boyfriend. But I wouldn’t be able to do that, work, and have other ECAs at the same time. So I’m choosing 2 out of 3, which is work and ECA.
Anyway I didn’t know if I had a crush on her at that time, but it was fun hanging out after work, playing card games in void decks. It was a relief from other things that were happening around that time, which kept me in a state of constant worry. I would say those were happy days, but bimbonic happy days. There was my best friend, and she was his friend too. And she was friendly towards everybody. I felt normal for a little while, almost part of a gang.
We didn’t see each other much after that. Later on I would find out from her that near the same time she was having a very turbulent first relationship with another guy who was a geek. I would bump into her with startling regularity - around once every year - without really keeping in contact.
One fine day, when I was about to leave for uni, I went to a gathering with all the other Singaporeans who were going to the same uni. It was a fateful gathering, considering that quite a few of those people I met I still keep in touch with. And a senior walked in with 2 girls, one of them his girlfriend and the other one - codfish. We finally exchanged emails (This was 4 years after we first met - nobody has ever ever accused me of being a fast worker) and we exchanged a few emails.
I was very surprised that she replied to me, because I was still under the impression that there was absolutely nothing interesting about me whatsoever. (And I was unfortunate enough to be hanging around with people at that time who did not correct this impression.) Then we became friends, sort of. The first few conversations were awkward, stilted. I thought about her, but not very much, during my first year in the uni. It was a very very confusing year, although I did learn a lot from school academically wise.
We finally hooked up during my first summer at home. It was an amazing experience, probably my first time in contact with another girl. And she was not bad looking. I would probably rate her as being equivalent of Tang Wei (and she bears a resemblance to Tang Wei as well), although I could be biased. Some things were going right with me at last - learning a lot of interesting stuff at school, although much of this is book knowledge I didn’t strictly have to go to uni to pick up, but I was having my mind opened to a lot of new ideas. And it was possible that I could be the boyfriend of a very hot girl. We went on 1 date, and where else could it be? We were at Borders. Sorry for being so nerdy. But we felt comfortable talking and discussing ideas. And she was really hot. But it was my last week in Singapore. A few days later, I was back in school.
It was an amazing time. Everything was wide open, anything seemed possible. She was an intellectual like me, and very probably a geek too. My head was full of new ideas, and I compulsively discussed everything with her. In a way, she played the same role as my sister, somebody to bounce off ideas with. (But she is not as smart as my sister. Heh.) And as much as I was thrilled to finally find somebody I could talk to, and was attracted to, more than that I was dazzled that somebody that attractive took an interest in me.
One day, the girlfriend of that uni senior, the one that she went to the uni gathering with, asked me if I was interested in codfish. I said yes, why not? Then she proceeded to badmouth codfish in the most horrible way. And I thought that was a horribly vindictive and self serving thing to do. This girlfriend was just terribly jealous of codfish. Turns out that codfish and the uni senior had been together for a short time, and she’s probably angry that he was still besotted with him sufficiently long after they broke up. But even with those qualifications, I would say that she’s right in a lot of ways.
Among the things she told me (and I can remember it like it was yesterday - this is one of the most shocking experiences in my life. You are in a strange foreign country, you have one link to what you think is a future source of happiness, you have experienced love for the first time, and you are on cloud nine, and some bitch contrives to pour cold water over it all.) She told me that codfish was mentally unbalanced, promiscuous, self centred. How she used that uni senior and manipulated him.
I think I was a little too ego to give her up at that point. There was something fatalistic about me, that I somehow knew I was going to see this through no matter how tragically it would end. Even if she was right, I was not about to stop this thing when I had just started. What I had been told affected me in 2 ways - firstly I was more cautious when dealing with her, and secondly I told myself, whatever she gave me, I would give as good as I got.
One of the strangest things about this relationship was that it took place entirely over ICQ. People think that love over ICQ couldn’t possibly work, and if I hadn’t been through it I might have agreed. But I can assure you that the feelings involved in this one were the most dramatic emotional roller coasters I have ever experienced. I have saved the scripts and kept them locked up in a cupboard somewhere because I wasn’t sure I was ever going to live through such extremes of emotion again, and also because I didn’t think I would ever allow something like that to happen again.
But it’s there in those marathon sessions - possibly up to 2 hours every night. There was me wondering if she would be faithful, but at one point it didn’t seem possible that she could work on her degree, play those games with me, and still have enough energy left over for another boyfriend. All those flirtations, the digressions into minute details of philosophy, then the sudden declarations of love. And how we always spent 5 minutes saying dramatic goodbyes every day. When she was good - and at that time it was quite often - she could be a very tender and emotional person. I think after this I decided that if I was going to look for somebody I would make it a base requirement that she must have a romantic personality. Anything less and I would be shortchanging myself after this. But she could also be very coy about whether she was attracted to another guy, and sometimes she wouldn’t hold back from hinting something like this right in my face. Then I would respond with every insult I could think of, and then we would break off. Typically when the conversations ended I was either extremely happy or extremely depressed. I was seldom anywhere in between after each session with her.
I probably detected the end before she confirmed it. I pissed her off, we had a great quarrel, and then we made up, was OK for a short while, and then suddenly I detected a change in attitude towards me. Quite sudden. I think it was that her old boyfriend, the one she was seeing, wanted her back. Did she take up with me so that she could increase her bargaining power over him? I wouldn’t put it beyond her to do that. But it was a horrible feeling. And on hindsight, I think just a few weeks before our relationship got terminated, she did ask me how far we saw us going with each other. Even though I knew her parents were pressuring her to get married I never said that it was going to happen, that would have been completely ridiculous. OK, I didn’t say “I will never marry you because you are screwed up” even though I was thinking that way. To be sure, I also thought “... I wished you weren’t screwed up”.
I wouldn’t blame her for breaking it off. I might have made it more difficult for her to break off, but she did, good for her. Not seeing me was no fun for her. (But maybe seeing me would also be no fun for her.)
In the end, when the euphoria of the first crazy days of the relationship faded away I think it was not that satisfying. We didn’t see each other, and if we did, I doubt the relationship would not have lasted 2 days. In the event, the whole thing lasted around 6 months, and the most intense portion 2 months in the middle. It is easy to conceal your differences over a cyber relationship. But I could not stand the waiting for her and figuring out whether she was going to be there for me. I could not stand the wondering if she was fooling around behind my back. I would sometimes lecture her on the importance of having a “stable life” but I’m sure that was more than a little hypocritical.
After that it took me a few months to get over this. I tried to get my life up and running again but in those days it felt as though somebody had sucked all the blood out of me. Maybe I was paying back for all that extra energy I had spent on that crazy cyber long distance relationship. I wouldn’t say that I sunk into a deep depression but I think I was more drained than I realised. I was in a state where when you tell your legs to walk, they don’t walk. When you tell your eyes to read they don’t read. I went back home and met her a few times. By that time she had agreed to marry her boyfriend, and was engaged. Our meetings were not happy, and I would describe them as the nadir of the whole affair, but at least it got drummed into me that it was over. I have written about those days before in more harrowing detail but I will spare you the details for later.
This was already the middle of my third year. Yes, some people will tell you that in those 2.5 years I could have had 2 or 3 girlfriends. Probably not, because Asian males are not very attractive in the USA, and because the Singaporean girls there weren’t my type. Do I regret wasting my time on that one lousy person? There were things that should never have happened, but there were also parts I would never have changed. I tend to go into things very deeply and I think that you really need a few years to properly go through all the stages.
A couple of years later my 4 “wonderful” years were up. I spent the rest of my time being more of a good boy. I returned to Singapore, and then found out that codfish had done a super crazy thing by ending her marriage, ending her career, and flying off overseas to pursue some artsy PhD. I think I decided to let the relationship play out because I knew that it would never develop into something more serious and permanent. Imagine if I had reached the stage where I married her and then let her do something like this to me - it would have been a hundred times worse than anything that actually happened between us.
In this second stage, which was also long distance and online, I thought that we might get along as friends, so we talked from time to time. I think during this time I got to know her even better than when I was going after her. At least there were no illusions. But there were a few things that we both did that pissed each other off, and I never really thought of her as a really serious person. Things came to a head when she had a new boyfriend who was somebody I had known. Then one day I said something indiscreet to her boyfriend, and she got very worked up. I think maybe she was paranoid that I would badmouth about her to her boyfriend, but in fairness this fear is probably well founded - not because I would have discussed her with her boyfriend, but because I had plenty of ammo to hit her with. I didn’t badmouth her. I didn’t need to, because I heard that both of them got sick of each other eventually.
But because of my indiscreet remark to the boyfriend, we got into terrible quarrel mode. It was then that I decided to apologise to her, seek her forgiveness, and after that never talk to her again. As was decided, so it was done. After that there were 1 or 2 emails from me, and she also tried hinting on her blog that she wanted to be friends again but we don’t talk anymore. I felt it had gotten to the point where only bad things could come out of our friendship. I doubt she reads my blog anymore, but I don’t care if she reads this entry. I don’t know if she’s single, but I don’t see her holding on to a real long term relationship.
Sorry, this is a very skeletal account. I have probably left out a lot of interesting things. There were a lot of toxic emotions involved that I have had the discipline to bury really deep in the ground, like what you would do with nuclear waste. If you’re sufficiently distant to write about something like this dispassionately you can no longer describe what it feels like to have been there.
Have my experiences with her coloured my attitudes towards women? I can’t really say that I failed if I never tried. There were 1 or 2 people after her who turned me down but most of you would know that hardly counts as trying. Because I’ll never know what could have happened if I was with a nicer person, it’s hard to be conclusive. But I would not say that I’m bitter: it’s more like “what’s the point?”
When I clung on longer than I should have, it’s not because I lost my head, but because I’m a stubborn asshole who hates admitting defeat. And I never had so much of a mean streak before I decided that I was going to be tough on her. She was one of the first people I had set out to be mean to, even if it wasn’t all the time.
If I’m not very impressed with chiobus, I suppose I have seen one up close, and they tend to be spoilt brats. If you are a chiobu it would take a tremendous amount of character not to end up as a spoilt brat. If there is anything to regret in those days, it is maybe that I could have spent that time more productively, but not because somebody gave me an education in what that love thing is all about.
Friday, 18 April 2008
Famine
Almost 20 years ago there was an essay writing competition. The winner of the essay writing competition would win for my school 20 Macintoshes, and back in those days, the Macintosh was seen as a Mercedes Benz like computer. Somebody from our school won, and he was a hero. We were all grateful to him for his efforts.
This Ju-Len guy did the same for his school. Not sure if he won it for my school but good for him anyway. He was a hero. Unfortunately later in life he became a “star blogger” for the Straits Times and started writing shit articles like the one I saw one morning in mypaper:
First you tell people that you’re not qualified to write articles, and then you write them anyway. But of course that does not automatically disqualify you from writing more stuff.
There is nothing wrong with his main point which is that hoarding is bad, but he makes 2 severe mistakes in this article.
First, he asserts that the main cause of rising food prices is artificial and man made. This is not true. At some point we would have crossed the threshold from a situation where everybody has enough to eat, and the main problem is distribution, to a Malthusian situation. (Malthus was the guy who predicted that the world will run out of food one day.) I read it some where that the point is somewhere around 2010, and we are near that point.
It is very reassuring to ourselves that all we have to do is to solve the problem of distribution, but it may not be true for much longer. It is very politically incorrect to say this, but all the people in China / India / Vietnam / Thailand / UAE / Qatar / Brazil who are getting richer are gobbling up more food than they did 10-20 years ago and that is creating scarcity.
The other thing is that one of the main components of our food is crude oil – not for transportation, but for manufacturing fertiliser. When crude oil prices go up, the fertiliser will get more expensive and correspondingly food will be more expensive.
So fellars don’t kid yourself that doomsday is not going to come. The end is near.
This mistake is also in believing the past is the same as the present. He points to the example of China after the Great Leap Forward but he forgets that it was a different economic situation from now. Today there could not be a person who can engineer a famine like Mao did because there is nobody powerful enough to do so.
The second big mistake he makes is saying that “free market” cures everything. The free market would have prevented the Great Leap Forward famines. But it is not a cure all. He already pointed out that the hoarding is due to the greed of merchants. Fair enough, but isn’t that what the free market expects them to do? Is not the solution enforcement and regulations?
Then there are other stupid things that he wrote, like “rice has only gone up by 30 cents”. I think he doesn’t realise that Singapore has poor people. We didn’t have many poor people when we were growing up but that’s changed now. Yes, NTUC is doing its job keeping rice prices down but it’s not just an ant bite to some people.
I wonder why newspapers like to tell lies like this. They ought to be telling people: stop eating meat. Eat more vegetables. Stop using biofuel. Stop using cars. (And for goodness sake fix the bloody MRT!) But I guess nobody really wants to tell the bad news.
Addendum: it just came to my attention that Soylent Green in the movie of its name, is actually human meat. The movie depicts an apocalyptic scenario where people don’t have enough to eat, and we have factories murdering people and processing their flesh into food products. Some people wondered whether he didn’t know about Soylent green, or if he was being subversive. The former is quite unlikely – there has to be a reason why a person would purposely put in a fairly obscure movie reference, and that particular one. He gets brownie points for being subversive and wins back a little bit of respect from me.
This Ju-Len guy did the same for his school. Not sure if he won it for my school but good for him anyway. He was a hero. Unfortunately later in life he became a “star blogger” for the Straits Times and started writing shit articles like the one I saw one morning in mypaper:
Scarcity doesn’t cause hunger, stupidity does
I am not sure how qualified I am to comment on this, because in my entire lifetime – which includes five years of living on my own, the total number of sacks of rice I have ever bought amount to precisely zero.
I only buy rice indirectly, that is, from hawkers and restauranteurs, and so far I haven’t noticed any movement in the price of rice. I don’t even eat rice that
often. For some reason, I prefer noodles and pasta. I’ve been more pained by the
rising price of petrol, but even then I’m consoling myself that even though crude oil prices have gone up four times in the last five years or so, pump prices haven’t even doubled in that time.
And yet we grumble, which is a very human thing to do. It’s also a human reaction to panic at the rising price of rice, even though it’s gone up by just 30 per cent (so I’ve read), and that according to the NTUC, only 22 cents out of every $10 spent at their stores is expended on rice.
I’m guessing that our elders, who unlike us have actually lived through times of desperate deprivation, are the ones most compelled to hoard rice right now.
But to borrow a phrase from Franklin Delano Roosevelt, “let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”.
Rather aptly, he spoke these words during the depths of the Great Depression.
Rice hoarders would do well to heed the lesson contained therein: panicking is only going to make things worse.
Let’s have some perspective here. We are very far from conditions which bring about famine.
Take the Great Chinese Famine of 1958.
During a three-year period of starvation caused by a convergence of factors including natural disaster, economic mismanagement and belief in flawed pseudo-scientific agricultural techniques, as many as 30 million people starved to death.
According to Wikipedia, the Chinese authorities now accept that the main culprits for the famine were human, apportioning 65 per cent of the blame on mismanagement and 35 per cent on natural causes. Indeed, more often than not,
starvation seems to stem from idiocy rather than scarcity.
The Bengal famine of 1943 saw up to three million people starve to death, but Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen holds that there was no actual shortage of rice at the time.
In fact, there was more rice around than in 1941, a year in which no famine occurred.
Instead, rumours of a rice shortage caused hoarding and rapid price inflation, and Mr Sen writes in his 1981 book, Poverty and Famines, that although Bengal had enough food to go around, millions of people suddenly found themselves too
poor to afford it.
People who hoard rice here may be acting on a simple self-preserving impulse, but they are actually making the situation worse.
Thankfully, we live in a fairly open economic system.
In the long run, I believe that the free market should correct the situation, as it tends to do for any good or service. If all else fails, we’ll always have Soylent Green.
(It’s a fictional product – a small, green wafer which is advertised as being produced from “high-energy plankton” – featured in a 1973 science fiction movie of the same name.)
First you tell people that you’re not qualified to write articles, and then you write them anyway. But of course that does not automatically disqualify you from writing more stuff.
There is nothing wrong with his main point which is that hoarding is bad, but he makes 2 severe mistakes in this article.
First, he asserts that the main cause of rising food prices is artificial and man made. This is not true. At some point we would have crossed the threshold from a situation where everybody has enough to eat, and the main problem is distribution, to a Malthusian situation. (Malthus was the guy who predicted that the world will run out of food one day.) I read it some where that the point is somewhere around 2010, and we are near that point.
It is very reassuring to ourselves that all we have to do is to solve the problem of distribution, but it may not be true for much longer. It is very politically incorrect to say this, but all the people in China / India / Vietnam / Thailand / UAE / Qatar / Brazil who are getting richer are gobbling up more food than they did 10-20 years ago and that is creating scarcity.
The other thing is that one of the main components of our food is crude oil – not for transportation, but for manufacturing fertiliser. When crude oil prices go up, the fertiliser will get more expensive and correspondingly food will be more expensive.
So fellars don’t kid yourself that doomsday is not going to come. The end is near.
This mistake is also in believing the past is the same as the present. He points to the example of China after the Great Leap Forward but he forgets that it was a different economic situation from now. Today there could not be a person who can engineer a famine like Mao did because there is nobody powerful enough to do so.
The second big mistake he makes is saying that “free market” cures everything. The free market would have prevented the Great Leap Forward famines. But it is not a cure all. He already pointed out that the hoarding is due to the greed of merchants. Fair enough, but isn’t that what the free market expects them to do? Is not the solution enforcement and regulations?
Then there are other stupid things that he wrote, like “rice has only gone up by 30 cents”. I think he doesn’t realise that Singapore has poor people. We didn’t have many poor people when we were growing up but that’s changed now. Yes, NTUC is doing its job keeping rice prices down but it’s not just an ant bite to some people.
I wonder why newspapers like to tell lies like this. They ought to be telling people: stop eating meat. Eat more vegetables. Stop using biofuel. Stop using cars. (And for goodness sake fix the bloody MRT!) But I guess nobody really wants to tell the bad news.
Addendum: it just came to my attention that Soylent Green in the movie of its name, is actually human meat. The movie depicts an apocalyptic scenario where people don’t have enough to eat, and we have factories murdering people and processing their flesh into food products. Some people wondered whether he didn’t know about Soylent green, or if he was being subversive. The former is quite unlikely – there has to be a reason why a person would purposely put in a fairly obscure movie reference, and that particular one. He gets brownie points for being subversive and wins back a little bit of respect from me.
Thursday, 17 April 2008
Kosovo
I read about Kosovo while at school. It was the last episode of the Balkan conflict of the 90s, or so we thought. I was supposed to have read this book, “Winning Ugly” which was a double edged assessment of the Clinton Administration / NATO’s handling of this conflict. But they couldn’t find enough copies of that book so we read an easier book instead. (Yay!)
I read that book eventually, a couple of months ago. On one hand NATO waged its first ever war and won it, which is why nobody calls it “no action talk only” anymore. But it won the conflict in a way which was a close shave, and plenty of mistakes were made on the way.
First off, the shameful way that NATO responded to the fighting in Bosnia and Croatia left their reputation in tatters. NATO decided that it wasn’t going to stand any more of Slobodan Milosevic’s nonsense, so it decided that it was going to use military force against Milosevic if he tried anything funny with the Albanians in Kosovo (like he did with the Bosnians). Well and good.
Unfortunately Clinton had this notion that the US army was too afraid of sustaining casualties to have a ground war. So what it tried to do was to bomb Belgrade into submission. It was only going to be a 2 week bombing, but it lasted a few months. The Chinese embassy got bombed. When they were asked what are you going to do if the bombing doesn’t work they said, I don’t know, it has to work.
Not long after the bombing started, Milosevic expelled a few hundred thousand Kosovo Albanians from their homes. A few hundred thousand people out in the open, and the winter approaching. Well this was very fortunate for Clinton and NATO because suddenly Milosevic was the really bad guy who had to be stopped at all costs. It was easier to get people to continue bombing Belgrade until Milosevic gave up.
Now here’s a plug for Clinton. Even at his most screwed up, Bill Clinton was much better than Bush. He understood the issues, understood what was going on, regardless of whether he had the courage or the wisdom to act correctly in the face of trouble. He managed something quite difficult: NATO had to act alone, because they knew that if they were to bring this issue up to the UN, Russia and China would veto any military action against the Serbs. But eventually he managed to convince Russia that it was completely wrong to support a bad guy like Milosevic. Most crucially, Russia had to tell Milosevic that it wasn’t going to support him any longer.
Eventually, this set off a series of events which culminated in Milosevic losing power. The Kosovo Albanians went back to their homes, and apart from a few poor Kosovo Serbians who probably had the shit beaten out of them, the story is over, and everybody lived happily after.
Or did it? The most alarming thing that I read in that book, to me, was that NATO did not allow Kosovo to hold a referendum about how it wanted to be governed. This is because the majority of the Albanians in Kosovo would want independence. Even after the conflict, Kosovo retained its status as an autonomous province of Serbia. So in a way it’s a time bomb – either the Kosovars change their minds about independence, or they will work towards it.
And it’s already happened – they have declared themselves independent. Serbia is refusing to recognise them, although a lot of countries have recognised Kosovo. I don’t know if they’re going to merge with Albania or anything, but at least they don’t want to take any more shit from Serbia.
I read that book eventually, a couple of months ago. On one hand NATO waged its first ever war and won it, which is why nobody calls it “no action talk only” anymore. But it won the conflict in a way which was a close shave, and plenty of mistakes were made on the way.
First off, the shameful way that NATO responded to the fighting in Bosnia and Croatia left their reputation in tatters. NATO decided that it wasn’t going to stand any more of Slobodan Milosevic’s nonsense, so it decided that it was going to use military force against Milosevic if he tried anything funny with the Albanians in Kosovo (like he did with the Bosnians). Well and good.
Unfortunately Clinton had this notion that the US army was too afraid of sustaining casualties to have a ground war. So what it tried to do was to bomb Belgrade into submission. It was only going to be a 2 week bombing, but it lasted a few months. The Chinese embassy got bombed. When they were asked what are you going to do if the bombing doesn’t work they said, I don’t know, it has to work.
Not long after the bombing started, Milosevic expelled a few hundred thousand Kosovo Albanians from their homes. A few hundred thousand people out in the open, and the winter approaching. Well this was very fortunate for Clinton and NATO because suddenly Milosevic was the really bad guy who had to be stopped at all costs. It was easier to get people to continue bombing Belgrade until Milosevic gave up.
Now here’s a plug for Clinton. Even at his most screwed up, Bill Clinton was much better than Bush. He understood the issues, understood what was going on, regardless of whether he had the courage or the wisdom to act correctly in the face of trouble. He managed something quite difficult: NATO had to act alone, because they knew that if they were to bring this issue up to the UN, Russia and China would veto any military action against the Serbs. But eventually he managed to convince Russia that it was completely wrong to support a bad guy like Milosevic. Most crucially, Russia had to tell Milosevic that it wasn’t going to support him any longer.
Eventually, this set off a series of events which culminated in Milosevic losing power. The Kosovo Albanians went back to their homes, and apart from a few poor Kosovo Serbians who probably had the shit beaten out of them, the story is over, and everybody lived happily after.
Or did it? The most alarming thing that I read in that book, to me, was that NATO did not allow Kosovo to hold a referendum about how it wanted to be governed. This is because the majority of the Albanians in Kosovo would want independence. Even after the conflict, Kosovo retained its status as an autonomous province of Serbia. So in a way it’s a time bomb – either the Kosovars change their minds about independence, or they will work towards it.
And it’s already happened – they have declared themselves independent. Serbia is refusing to recognise them, although a lot of countries have recognised Kosovo. I don’t know if they’re going to merge with Albania or anything, but at least they don’t want to take any more shit from Serbia.
Tuesday, 15 April 2008
Problem kids
Some guy from my uni wrote a letter to the listserve. He was going back home to finish his degree in NUS. He had been battling depression, going on food and exercise binges.
It’s not the easiest places. The work there is tough, the people are a little unfriendly – no better or worse than the average Singaporean. The weather is miserable. The food is American. Had to keep on telling myself that the salvation was me getting a supposedly world class education.
There was this other girl from that uni who had to return home because she attempted suicide. She was diabetic so she attempted an insulin overdose.
I used to make fun of all those people there who attended Christian Fellowship. It seemed to me like a bunch of fundamentalist crackos, even though around one third of the Singaporean community attended. But I am a little more sympathetic of those who turned to religion to get them through their days. Maybe I didn't mind it so much because I have a lust for bookish learning that approximates the Count from Sesame Street, and also because I'm probably less human than most other people.
I’m still glad I went there because you know me, I love learning. If you take away the stress of the exams and constant weekly assignments and the grumpiness of the population and the so-so food and the sleep deprivation I was like a kid in a candy store. There were some truly marvellous times.
But yes there were easier places to spend those truly marvellous times.
That which does not kill you only makes you stronger, but that which does – like, kills you.
It’s not the easiest places. The work there is tough, the people are a little unfriendly – no better or worse than the average Singaporean. The weather is miserable. The food is American. Had to keep on telling myself that the salvation was me getting a supposedly world class education.
There was this other girl from that uni who had to return home because she attempted suicide. She was diabetic so she attempted an insulin overdose.
I used to make fun of all those people there who attended Christian Fellowship. It seemed to me like a bunch of fundamentalist crackos, even though around one third of the Singaporean community attended. But I am a little more sympathetic of those who turned to religion to get them through their days. Maybe I didn't mind it so much because I have a lust for bookish learning that approximates the Count from Sesame Street, and also because I'm probably less human than most other people.
I’m still glad I went there because you know me, I love learning. If you take away the stress of the exams and constant weekly assignments and the grumpiness of the population and the so-so food and the sleep deprivation I was like a kid in a candy store. There were some truly marvellous times.
But yes there were easier places to spend those truly marvellous times.
That which does not kill you only makes you stronger, but that which does – like, kills you.
Saturday, 12 April 2008
Word from the mother (ship)
I pulled out my guidebook on funk and there he was, staring out at me on the cover. Of course they would put him there, the leader of the most colourful and most sampled band in funk music.
But I think that Parliament / Funkadelic (for all intents and purposes they are the same band. George Clinton got his gang to record under a new name because they got caught in a lawsuit) were never really introduced to a Singapore audience. In the 70s, if you listened to that type of music it meant that you were the sort with long hair, doesn’t study hard at school, takes drugs, will probably be involved in a teenage pregnancy, and will live wretched and miserable in a ghetto for the rest of your life. And you won’t be one of the yuppies who cough up $60 to go to Esplanade to watch George Clinton.
However you could be one of those people who lose a lot of money betting on football, and therefore be a major sponsor of the construction of the Esplanade. Life ain’t fair. If you really had a plaque that listed down all the individuals who contributed to the Esplanade building fund, you would get a lot of Tan Ah Kows.
Anyway I have also plonked down $20 for Portsmouth to win the FA cup at 1.75 odds. It seemed a sound investment until 5 minutes later I remembered that Harry Redknapp has a bad record of losing to smaller teams.
I had never been to a Mosaic show before, so I guess it was not good that I missed Tortoise (by all accounts one of the best shows Singapore has ever seen) or Chick Corea or Pat Metheny. Or Femi Kuti! How could I have missed Femi Kuti!!! (Femi = son of Fela Kuti)
Anyway it wasn’t surprising when I saw that I would be upgraded to the floor seats so my wisdom in getting the cheapest seats was somehow vindicated (although when the box office clerk asked me if I was sure that I didn’t have any concessions it became clear to me that I could have gotten a student to buy my tickets for me and gotten in without much fuss.)
The crowd had a huge proportion of ang mohs (only ang mohs have heard of him.) I said to Nat, who I talked into going along (I thought he was a regular concert goer because he went for Pat Metheny, only to find out later he was not.) I said to Nat, I’m probably the only Chinese here who’s not an SPG. (Nat’s Indian).
As usual, Gary Shider turned up in diapers. I told people before that some nutcase would turn up in diapers but they thought I was kidding. It wasn’t a 20 piece band (and if there were 20 guys back there I wouldn’t blame them for resting a few after they got so spectacularly snubbed by the Singaporeans). There was some short guy at the keyboards who doubled up spectacularly as a saxophone soloist. Although that didn’t make up for the disappointment that he was the entire brass section. (I was hoping for something akin to the horny horns.) There was a stagehand who doubled up as a guitarist and contributed some blistering Hendrix solos. Drummer, bassist. Bassist doesn’t get the spotlight but in the original Funkadelic Bootsy was arguably the second most important guy in the band. The other keyboardist didn’t get much spotlight, and I guess it’s not that easy covering for Bernie Worrell. There was a 3rd guitarist, and 3 backup singers, although one of them, some white chick, got a solo spot.
The proceedings were somewhat disrupted with the latest incarnation of Sir Nose D’VoidOfFunk angling for more air time than he was given, and had to endure Gary Shider telling him to get the hell off the stage.
They ripped through a few songs at the beginning, without George Clinton. “Funkentelechy”, a few lines of “promentalshitbackwash enema squad”, and the standard “Bop Gun (Endangered Species)” opened the set. Can’t recognise all of the stuff that was played but many of the standards were there: “flashlight”, “p funk”, “Tear the Roof off”, “One Nation Under a Groove”, “Get Off Your Ass and Jam”. But no “Maggot Brain”, “Aqua Boogie” or “Night of the Thumpasorus Peoples”.
George Clinton is almost 70 and you wouldn’t expect him to last the whole set. He turned up 1 hour into the show dressed up as Kenny from South Park, keeping his hood on, dramatically pointing his finger at everybody in the band. Still has a hell of a voice though.
They couldn’t go full out for the entire 3 hours, so there was slow jams that got a bit draggy at times. But the highs – like the vocalist’s solo spot, where she worked Marvin Gaye’s line “throw up both my hands” (from “Inner City Blues”), “Nature Boy” and “My One and Only Love” into what she was singing. Like the triple Hendrix guitar freak out. Like Sir nose rippling his pecs like he was some crazy caterpillar, doing acrobatic backflips and a motormouth rap, when not holding up posters like “I am Sir Nose” or “Fuck George”. Or when they dragged up 10 lucky audience members (all female) on stage to dance during the finale.
I would love to do a version of “flashlight” one day, except that we use British English here and it would be Torchlight. You could throw in the Singaporean alphabet soup for the lyrics: “PAP”, “SIA”, “MRT”, “WP”, “ISD”, “PSA”, etc etc.
This is not, to quote one of their album titles, “the awesome power of a fully operational mothership”. That would be one of the best shows to go to. But I wouldn’t pass them up if they came to Singapore, just like I wouldn’t pass up Prince or James Brown (if he’s not charging a bomb). Well James can’t come because he’s dead anyway. But it was good enough.
One character in the P funk mythology is Sir Nose, the straight laced geek who doesn’t understand funk. One big problem with the concert is that there were too many Sir Noses in the audience. Nat was hollering himself hoarse but he also thought it could have been better.
I have favoured those large, loud, outlandish bands who are willing to go out on on a limb. But I think when you start dressing up like clowns and fooling around you people treat you less seriously and there is some slighting of your musical qualities, even though “anything goes” is such an important part of the creative process. I have always thought that Captain Beefheart, Sly Stone, Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, Prince, electric era Miles Davis and Michael Jackson have typically been punished for sometimes letting their clownish antics overshadow their great music.
(the above being the review for the George Clinton concert on 10th March, belatedly published.)
But I think that Parliament / Funkadelic (for all intents and purposes they are the same band. George Clinton got his gang to record under a new name because they got caught in a lawsuit) were never really introduced to a Singapore audience. In the 70s, if you listened to that type of music it meant that you were the sort with long hair, doesn’t study hard at school, takes drugs, will probably be involved in a teenage pregnancy, and will live wretched and miserable in a ghetto for the rest of your life. And you won’t be one of the yuppies who cough up $60 to go to Esplanade to watch George Clinton.
However you could be one of those people who lose a lot of money betting on football, and therefore be a major sponsor of the construction of the Esplanade. Life ain’t fair. If you really had a plaque that listed down all the individuals who contributed to the Esplanade building fund, you would get a lot of Tan Ah Kows.
Anyway I have also plonked down $20 for Portsmouth to win the FA cup at 1.75 odds. It seemed a sound investment until 5 minutes later I remembered that Harry Redknapp has a bad record of losing to smaller teams.
I had never been to a Mosaic show before, so I guess it was not good that I missed Tortoise (by all accounts one of the best shows Singapore has ever seen) or Chick Corea or Pat Metheny. Or Femi Kuti! How could I have missed Femi Kuti!!! (Femi = son of Fela Kuti)
Anyway it wasn’t surprising when I saw that I would be upgraded to the floor seats so my wisdom in getting the cheapest seats was somehow vindicated (although when the box office clerk asked me if I was sure that I didn’t have any concessions it became clear to me that I could have gotten a student to buy my tickets for me and gotten in without much fuss.)
The crowd had a huge proportion of ang mohs (only ang mohs have heard of him.) I said to Nat, who I talked into going along (I thought he was a regular concert goer because he went for Pat Metheny, only to find out later he was not.) I said to Nat, I’m probably the only Chinese here who’s not an SPG. (Nat’s Indian).
As usual, Gary Shider turned up in diapers. I told people before that some nutcase would turn up in diapers but they thought I was kidding. It wasn’t a 20 piece band (and if there were 20 guys back there I wouldn’t blame them for resting a few after they got so spectacularly snubbed by the Singaporeans). There was some short guy at the keyboards who doubled up spectacularly as a saxophone soloist. Although that didn’t make up for the disappointment that he was the entire brass section. (I was hoping for something akin to the horny horns.) There was a stagehand who doubled up as a guitarist and contributed some blistering Hendrix solos. Drummer, bassist. Bassist doesn’t get the spotlight but in the original Funkadelic Bootsy was arguably the second most important guy in the band. The other keyboardist didn’t get much spotlight, and I guess it’s not that easy covering for Bernie Worrell. There was a 3rd guitarist, and 3 backup singers, although one of them, some white chick, got a solo spot.
The proceedings were somewhat disrupted with the latest incarnation of Sir Nose D’VoidOfFunk angling for more air time than he was given, and had to endure Gary Shider telling him to get the hell off the stage.
They ripped through a few songs at the beginning, without George Clinton. “Funkentelechy”, a few lines of “promentalshitbackwash enema squad”, and the standard “Bop Gun (Endangered Species)” opened the set. Can’t recognise all of the stuff that was played but many of the standards were there: “flashlight”, “p funk”, “Tear the Roof off”, “One Nation Under a Groove”, “Get Off Your Ass and Jam”. But no “Maggot Brain”, “Aqua Boogie” or “Night of the Thumpasorus Peoples”.
George Clinton is almost 70 and you wouldn’t expect him to last the whole set. He turned up 1 hour into the show dressed up as Kenny from South Park, keeping his hood on, dramatically pointing his finger at everybody in the band. Still has a hell of a voice though.
They couldn’t go full out for the entire 3 hours, so there was slow jams that got a bit draggy at times. But the highs – like the vocalist’s solo spot, where she worked Marvin Gaye’s line “throw up both my hands” (from “Inner City Blues”), “Nature Boy” and “My One and Only Love” into what she was singing. Like the triple Hendrix guitar freak out. Like Sir nose rippling his pecs like he was some crazy caterpillar, doing acrobatic backflips and a motormouth rap, when not holding up posters like “I am Sir Nose” or “Fuck George”. Or when they dragged up 10 lucky audience members (all female) on stage to dance during the finale.
I would love to do a version of “flashlight” one day, except that we use British English here and it would be Torchlight. You could throw in the Singaporean alphabet soup for the lyrics: “PAP”, “SIA”, “MRT”, “WP”, “ISD”, “PSA”, etc etc.
This is not, to quote one of their album titles, “the awesome power of a fully operational mothership”. That would be one of the best shows to go to. But I wouldn’t pass them up if they came to Singapore, just like I wouldn’t pass up Prince or James Brown (if he’s not charging a bomb). Well James can’t come because he’s dead anyway. But it was good enough.
One character in the P funk mythology is Sir Nose, the straight laced geek who doesn’t understand funk. One big problem with the concert is that there were too many Sir Noses in the audience. Nat was hollering himself hoarse but he also thought it could have been better.
I have favoured those large, loud, outlandish bands who are willing to go out on on a limb. But I think when you start dressing up like clowns and fooling around you people treat you less seriously and there is some slighting of your musical qualities, even though “anything goes” is such an important part of the creative process. I have always thought that Captain Beefheart, Sly Stone, Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, Prince, electric era Miles Davis and Michael Jackson have typically been punished for sometimes letting their clownish antics overshadow their great music.
(the above being the review for the George Clinton concert on 10th March, belatedly published.)
Friday, 11 April 2008
Merchant of Singapore
A lot of us did this for “O” levels. It’s a story that a lot of school kids in Singapore know. And you know Singapore is a shipping hub with all those merchants everywhere.
And in the same year I did my “O”s, There was a gang in my class of 3 guys. Now you know my school is famous for being a nerd school (even though the most famous alumnus – LKY – is a gangster), which is why when we have people smoking and cursing in Hokkien in my class I give them a lot of respect.
That’s when it hit me the other day, that a beng version of the Merchant of Venice would be a great idea. Consider the possibilities:-
Shylock is a loanshark. When he makes his plea, he’ll say something like, “you guys are only doing this to me because I’m a beng. Does a beng not have feelings?” But if you are really really brave, you can make him Indian who lapses into Tamil when he gets angry, and you can have the rest of the cast call him a “chao bhayee”. But that would mean the film will never be released in Singapore.
Bassanio is a cheongster. Always going to the hottest nightspots, always spending money like a drunken sailor, vain, narcissistic and always living beyond his means. I never really liked that guy and it’s just sad that in Singapore you can reach out and grab him out of any given crowd.
Antonio would be the rich businessman. Now it’s very unlikely these days that he would be a merchant who needs his goods to be delivered and they don’t arrive because of the weather. So maybe either he’s got credit problems now because his capital is tied up in bio research, or he will only get paid when he delivers a software solution but his programmers have hit a snag.
Now we always suspected that Antonio and Bassanio are gay lovers. There will be no need to speculate anything in this movie. It will be out in the open, completely explicit and unexpurgated.
Portia can be the classic Ah Lian. She will always be skimpily dressed and will have a killer figure. It could be unexpected that she will become an attorney but there’s nothing wrong with Ah Lians being very quick thinkers and being very sharp on their feet.
If the movie really revolves around the Singapore shipping industry we can have most of the dialogue in Hokkien. We can also have Portia lapse into Hokkien while the judge always reminds her to “use channel 5”.
And in the same year I did my “O”s, There was a gang in my class of 3 guys. Now you know my school is famous for being a nerd school (even though the most famous alumnus – LKY – is a gangster), which is why when we have people smoking and cursing in Hokkien in my class I give them a lot of respect.
That’s when it hit me the other day, that a beng version of the Merchant of Venice would be a great idea. Consider the possibilities:-
Shylock is a loanshark. When he makes his plea, he’ll say something like, “you guys are only doing this to me because I’m a beng. Does a beng not have feelings?” But if you are really really brave, you can make him Indian who lapses into Tamil when he gets angry, and you can have the rest of the cast call him a “chao bhayee”. But that would mean the film will never be released in Singapore.
Bassanio is a cheongster. Always going to the hottest nightspots, always spending money like a drunken sailor, vain, narcissistic and always living beyond his means. I never really liked that guy and it’s just sad that in Singapore you can reach out and grab him out of any given crowd.
Antonio would be the rich businessman. Now it’s very unlikely these days that he would be a merchant who needs his goods to be delivered and they don’t arrive because of the weather. So maybe either he’s got credit problems now because his capital is tied up in bio research, or he will only get paid when he delivers a software solution but his programmers have hit a snag.
Now we always suspected that Antonio and Bassanio are gay lovers. There will be no need to speculate anything in this movie. It will be out in the open, completely explicit and unexpurgated.
Portia can be the classic Ah Lian. She will always be skimpily dressed and will have a killer figure. It could be unexpected that she will become an attorney but there’s nothing wrong with Ah Lians being very quick thinkers and being very sharp on their feet.
If the movie really revolves around the Singapore shipping industry we can have most of the dialogue in Hokkien. We can also have Portia lapse into Hokkien while the judge always reminds her to “use channel 5”.
Tuesday, 8 April 2008
Fried Dumplings
Was on one of those management courses again. This time the instructor was the same as another one
Here’s a dialogue that took place in the course. They were trying to list out some factors in our work we aren’t able to control.
Instr: OK, #9, we’ve come to “bosses”. Can you give an example of how you would cope with not being able to control your bosses?
#9: Yeh. Like you manage their expectations.
Instr: OK, how would you go around managing their expectations?
#9: Like I write them a nice letter, see, and thereafter they no longer expect me to turn up for work.
Later on I was talking to one of those guys at my table, and he was telling us about this time somebody in his office threw a security pass at his manager’s face. I thought, whoa, that’s a little dramatic, but his department, being a frontline department is a very dramatic place. I asked him if that counted as a resignation. He said, “I don’t know, it could be a resignation or a firing, but what we do know is that they called the security guards to escort him out of the premises.”
So I said, it’s unlikely I’ll know the name of the guy who threw the security pass. But do you know the guy he threw the pass at? Then that guy said, well I work for him. Anyway it’s fried dumplings. Fried dumplings! I whistled… well heck no wonder.
Here’s a dialogue that took place in the course. They were trying to list out some factors in our work we aren’t able to control.
Instr: OK, #9, we’ve come to “bosses”. Can you give an example of how you would cope with not being able to control your bosses?
#9: Yeh. Like you manage their expectations.
Instr: OK, how would you go around managing their expectations?
#9: Like I write them a nice letter, see, and thereafter they no longer expect me to turn up for work.
Later on I was talking to one of those guys at my table, and he was telling us about this time somebody in his office threw a security pass at his manager’s face. I thought, whoa, that’s a little dramatic, but his department, being a frontline department is a very dramatic place. I asked him if that counted as a resignation. He said, “I don’t know, it could be a resignation or a firing, but what we do know is that they called the security guards to escort him out of the premises.”
So I said, it’s unlikely I’ll know the name of the guy who threw the security pass. But do you know the guy he threw the pass at? Then that guy said, well I work for him. Anyway it’s fried dumplings. Fried dumplings! I whistled… well heck no wonder.
Thursday, 3 April 2008
Fair and Balanced reporting
JAKARTA - MOMENTS before their Adam Air Boeing 737 aircraft crashed into the sea, killing all 102 people on board, the two pilots were frantic.
'This is really bad. It is starting to fly like a bamboo ship. Pull up. Pull up. Pull up!' screamed one.
The other yelled: 'Crazy, this is crazy.'
Their last recorded words, captured by the cockpit voice recorder, were released yesterday by investigators who blamed errors by the two pilots and a faulty navigation system for the crash on New Year's Day last year.
Investigators found that the pilots had accidentally disconnected the autopilot system while trying to fix a problem in the navigation instruments.
'Without the autopilot, the plane went out of control, listing to the right and pitching down,' investigator Santoso Sayogo told a press conference yesterday.
The plane was flying from Java to an airport in the east of Indonesia when it spiralled from the sky at a height of 10,000m. It took around two minutes to hit the sea, investigators said.
Several days passed before fishermen and navy boats located floating wreckage off the island of Sulawesi. Both flight data recorders were eventually found on the sea bed. The plane's mostly intact fuselage remains under water.
No bodies were recovered.
Transport Minister Jusman Syafei Djamal said Adam Air had registered 154 defects in the Boeing 737-400's navigation system in the three months before the crash, showing that the plane was poorly maintained.
Indonesia's transport safety chief Tatang Kurniadi said: 'The accident happened because of a combination of several factors, including the failure of both pilots to intensively monitor flight instruments, especially in the last two minutes of the flight.'
The pilots had reported the navigation system problem but sounded unconcerned, even joking just 20 minutes before the plane went down.
Later, as they tried to fix the problem, the autopilot disengaged, causing the plane to bank to the right.
The pilots were apparently unaware that they were now flying the plane and ignored 'a number of initial alerts, warnings and changes to displays' indicating the jetliner's increasingly critical situation, the National Transportation Safety Committee report said.
They were so preoccupied with the repair work they were attempting that they did not act to stop the plane's descent and prevent it from going out of control.
Well, there’s that article. Is there anything wrong with the article? I don’t think so. But look at the way that the Straits Times headlined it. “Pilots were joking and unconcerned just before crash”. This is a blatant foul which makes the pilots look really bad. But is this true?
We know that the pilots made a serious mistake in disconnecting the autopilot while trying to repair the navigation system. But that is not due to negligence. Nobody who makes a mistake in a split second should be blamed too much. If they are joking and laughing well their job is a stressful one and you can’t expect anybody to be serious all the time. Everybody knows that Indonesians like to laugh and joke.
It’s clear that the airline is to be blamed for faulty maintenance. Or you could even attribute it to the proliferation of all these budget airlines proclaimed not long ago to be the great and wonderful thing of the future. Airplanes so wonderful they don’t even need to be maintained. Governments who think that when they hands off and not regulate commercial air transport industry they are not fucking around with peoples’ lives.
Most convenient thing to do in this case is to let the dead assume all the blame. Meanwhile I feel sorry for the pilots who not only have to screw around with shitty equipment and endanger all their lives but risk these reporters slanting stories against them and letting their families face the wrath of the victims’ families.
Tuesday, 1 April 2008
Music Teacher
A dream last night. Actually I only remember dreams during the daytime, when I’m napping or about to get up.
I was in the MRT, and I bumped into my music teacher who taught me from when I was 8 to 11. She was this strict, no-nonsense kind which I respected more than I liked. (I can say the same for the other main music teacher but I respect him more as a pianist than as a person.)
We hadn’t met since I was 11. She asked me what’s going on in my life. I said that I am sitting on 20 songs that I think are good enough but I haven’t made demos of them. She said yah I know you can write music*. So what are you going to do? Time is running out, better get yourself together.
Later on I was talking to 2 of my classmates**. It was their 11 year old selves. Those were the ones who were always better with their hands than I was. They were mature for their age, but still kids nevertheless.
I was of the opinion, and still am, that among all my classmates, I had the best musical brain and the lousiest hand eye co-ordination. I am the Dr Dre who can’t rap, or the Burt Bacharach who can’t sing.
* my first compositions were written under her tutelage. Years later I bumped into a former classmate who met the teacher, and he said that the teacher told them I have music intelligence. My teacher’s Singaporean of course, which means they can only bear to praise you when your back is turned. So while I only dreamt that she said that, it is likely she does have that opinion in real life. Too bad I was lousy with my hands.
** No, Eunice wasn’t one of those 2. For some reason we hardly spoke in class.
I was in the MRT, and I bumped into my music teacher who taught me from when I was 8 to 11. She was this strict, no-nonsense kind which I respected more than I liked. (I can say the same for the other main music teacher but I respect him more as a pianist than as a person.)
We hadn’t met since I was 11. She asked me what’s going on in my life. I said that I am sitting on 20 songs that I think are good enough but I haven’t made demos of them. She said yah I know you can write music*. So what are you going to do? Time is running out, better get yourself together.
Later on I was talking to 2 of my classmates**. It was their 11 year old selves. Those were the ones who were always better with their hands than I was. They were mature for their age, but still kids nevertheless.
I was of the opinion, and still am, that among all my classmates, I had the best musical brain and the lousiest hand eye co-ordination. I am the Dr Dre who can’t rap, or the Burt Bacharach who can’t sing.
* my first compositions were written under her tutelage. Years later I bumped into a former classmate who met the teacher, and he said that the teacher told them I have music intelligence. My teacher’s Singaporean of course, which means they can only bear to praise you when your back is turned. So while I only dreamt that she said that, it is likely she does have that opinion in real life. Too bad I was lousy with my hands.
** No, Eunice wasn’t one of those 2. For some reason we hardly spoke in class.
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